Ceci n'est pas une blog

first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line

second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all

third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below

fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?

fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves

sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it

seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him

eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night

ninth day as a second century warlord i try to tactfully ask my fake liege lord if he sent the assassin to kill my loser liege lord and it turns out the idea of using assassins never occurred to him, but now that i’ve suggested it he’s really into it. in order to save my loser liege lord i volunteer to be the one to kill him

tenth day as a second century warlord on my way back to my loser liege lord’s city i realize i won’t be able to collect my men from my fake liege lord until i bring back my loser liege lord’s head. this would have been a great thing to think of before i got myself in this situation. i go back to my loser liege lord and ask him to rescue my men, and he tells me that if he could sack my fake liege lord’s camp he already would have. that doesn’t change the fact that my men are still trapped. they’re prisoners, even. i go back to my room to sulk

eleventh day as a second century warlord i find a little caged pigeon in the rafters of my loser liege lord’s room and deduce it belonged to the assassin. without asking permission or telling my loser liege lord goodbye i let the pigeon loose and follow it north. don’t ask what i was doing in my loser liege lord’s room. it’s not important

twelfth day as a second century warlord i disguise myself as a wizard and enter the camp of the coalition leader the pigeon led me to. in the middle of my little sleight of hand performance i make eye contact with the coalition leader’s second-in-command. IT’S THE WIZARD THAT STOLE MY LOSER LIEGE LORD’S WIFE. after the banquet i corner the fake wizard and ask him what the fuck is going on and he just says “wouldn’t you like to know” and leaves. i don’t know what to say to that so i just let him go

thirteenth day as a second century warlord i’m honestly so sick of not knowing what’s going on, so i adjust my wizard costume to passably disguise myself as a woman and break into the women’s area of the camp, where sure enough my loser liege lord’s wife is. i ask her what she’s doing here and she tells me the fake wizard overheard her singing a poem she overheard on the street, not knowing it contains the coalition leader’s formation’s weaknesses. the fake wizard kidnapped her and assigned an assassin to kill her husband before they figured out the poem’s significance. she shares the first couplet with me but i’m discovered and thrown out before she can share any more. she doesn’t need to. through a bizarre coincidence of homophones, it’s the poop version of my misinformation nursery rhyme

fourteenth day as a second century warlord i go back to my loser liege lord and tell him everything, urging him to join with my fake liege lord to attack the coalition leader according to the weaknesses in the nursery rhyme. he tells me frankly that he doesn’t trust me anymore. i ask him to execute me if that’s really true, because i can’t bear to live if i can’t protect him and i can’t protect my men. he agrees to attack the coalition leader

fifteenth day as a second century warlord. due to the information in the nursery rhyme, and thanks to my loser liege lord reminding me of the weather conditions multiple times while planning our battle strategy, our alliance carries the day. my loser liege lord gets his wife back. my men tell me that our fake liege lord actually treated them really well and they’d like to stay with him if i don’t mind. i do mind, now that neither the men i love nor the man i love have any use for me, but i don’t tell them that

sixteenth day as a second century warlord i’m preparing to leave to i don’t know where, maybe to try to become a wizard for real, when my loser liege lord stops me and asks me where i’m going. he says he had hoped i would continue to work as his advisor. i was unaware i was his advisor in the first place. i agree, and he tells me he’s truly honored to have me in his service at last. he has known i am a rare and talented man with a strategic intelligence far above his ever since the day he witnessed me tying branches to my horses’ tails in six inches of mud, and could not for the life of him figure out why

I think what really gets me about non-Americans spending their free time lying about Democrats is, aside from that being incredibly Online of them, they don’t have to live with the consequences of spreading misinformation/disinformation about the opposition party to the white supremacist fascists. They can sit back and score internet points and get that sweet, sweet clout because they won’t ever have to live under a Republican administration. It’s all a big spectator sport to them as they contribute to discouraging civic engagement and hurt America’s most vulnerable in the process by enabling the GOP.

When I’ve confronted people about this they’re like “lulz why are you so mad about this post I reblogged? 😂” Because I actually fucking live here and will face the consequences of this misinformation!!!! While women are forced to give birth because Republicans passed anti-choice state laws, you have the luxury of logging off and retreating to your quaint little European home after you’ve gotten enough brownie points for the day!

Tsk, tsk!!! But being active in their own countries’ politics isn’t as fun because posts about Sweden don’t get a lot of notes, so there’s no sweet dopamine hit from internet validation ://// And dunking on ‘muricans is a nice distraction from the neo-Nazis in their own backyards 🎉

im really feeling… something… about all these insane fucking takes today about singing on the capitol steps.

they got gun reform passed. the first such victory in decades. people bled and wept for this, for years; people lost their families, their children, and somehow found it within themselves to continue fighting anyway, and they finally won something

it was absolutely a kick in the teeth that roe was overturned at the same time, and it’s completely understandable that the abortion crisis has overshadowed everything else right now

but istg some of you are inhuman, and you don’t allow for any humanity in other people. it took decades to win ANY federal gun reform, in this gun-freak country that will force you to bear a child & then force you to bury their bullet-shattered body, and in the middle of ten thousand horrible simultaneous fires it is literally just fucking fine that people held hands & sang.

this victory took years of grinding miserable effort from thousand of activists, many of whom are personally devastated by gun violence, & it’s fine that people took literally a handful of minutes to be happy. saying that people shouldn’t have sung for their victory because other bad shit happened is just — idk. some of you aren’t just morons, you’re so mean & so divorced from any normal human emotion that you genuinely barely qualify as members of the species.

also: in light of the fact that the number one cause of death in pregnancy is homicide, maybe we can take a moment to be grateful that the “boyfriend loophole” was addressed in this law

y'know say what you want about tumblr (and I have), but this is still probably the simplest and most powerful distillation of the heart of the Lord of the Rings I’ve ever read. I think back to it all the time

The spiritual successor to Miette

Might I also add

May i add the piece from artist Verbal Vomit

Glad to see we’re all in agreement that cats talk like disparaged victorian children

I am so incredibly glad we finally moved on from "i can has". Cats are clearly smart enough for advanced sentence structure and dumb enough to draw entirely incorrect conclusions about what they're talking about.

My cat, banging the cabnet door over and over and over: bang bang bang

Me: you will not earn what you desire by banging the cabinet door.

My cat: This is a test of wills, is it not? We shall see if your ability to put up with my incessant banging outlasts my eternal lust for snackie treats. Years of conditioning have hardened me for this purpose. bang bang bang

Me: ksst!

My cat, throwing herself to the ground like she's been shot: Oh! Oh I have been assailed in my own home! Have mercy, have pity! Surely in the cruel darkness of your heart there is some mote of goodness that might stay your hand! Do not strike me, I pray you!

Me: ok

My cat, after waiting about 3 minutes: bang bang bang

Can haz snackytreat

(source)

Pitch: Muppet Lord of the Rings. Miss Piggy as Eowyn. Imagine her just throwing herself at a human man playing Aragorn. Imagine her defeating the Witch-King of Angmar by going “HI-YA!” and karate chopping him.

Throwing herself at Aragorn

Then Kermit arrives as Faramir and she just bodily pitches Aragorn offscreen

Aragorn is, of course, played by Viggo Mortensen reprising his role

(Gollum falls into the lava of Mount Doom)

Statler: If you ask me Gollum’s the lucky one

Waldorf: The lucky one?

Statler: He doesn’t have to be in the movie any more!

Both: DO-HO-HO-HO-HO-HO!

man ive been watching videos of sheep getting shorn all night. makes me wanna be a sheep, getting man handled by a farmer who loves me, emerging from my cocoon of wool a totally new being. prancing around the barnyard so free, no longer weighed down by winter. i have clinical depression 

it’s posta like these that so encapsulate the spirit of tumblr while making it impossible to explain tumblr to my mom

Radiation is insane. There are rocks out there that will pull the seams of your organs apart if you stand too close to them.

#some rocks really do have auras#unfortunately the aura is 'eat shit and die' energy

Writing period dramas in the discord, lads

Wow.... so you’re telling me you took an action that resulted in the death of one person...... to save the lives of many people.... who would have died if you did nothing??? that sounds so familiar

Check my Patreon out if you’d like to support the comic, even a little bit helps. Or just to check out the reward tiers, there’s some neat bonus stuff and I tried to make them fun: https://www.patreon.com/waitingforthet

i’m gonna say it

having teenages and ppl in their early 20s with little to no experience with irl sex, dating and LGBT communities lead online discourse on what is sexual orientation and what labels mean has done incredible damage to our community

so much of the shit that has come out of twitter and tumblr in the recent years literally sounds like a homophobic fever dream but if you dare point that out you will be sent death threats by a swarm of teenagers who have never talked to a lesbian offline

It is not even remotely the same thing.

Children are arriving unaccompanied at the border. The Office of Refugee Resettlement has to put them somewhere, temporarily, while they locate family or friends for them to go live with. They are running out of space under pandemic requirements--which we actually take seriously now. 90% capacity is a cause to find more space, not shrug and wait for COVID to thin the numbers. No it’s not luxurious, but it has services and activities, schooling, heat and beds and blankets and food. It’s genuinely temporary. AOC’s response that the facilities should be licensed is a valid one, though I’m not sure a license from a state like Texas is worth the paper it’s printed on. And maybe we should find different contractors, or build new facilities instead of reusing old ones. Reasonable suggestions, all--moving it to place like CA where licensing is more likely to have some teeth would be a great idea. But none of that is doable overnight. Whatever I think of his policies, Biden is clearly someone with a conscience, and he’s only been in office a month. The need is immediate and build times are not. For the moment I’m going to trust this is the best they can do for this particular need at this particular moment.

I’m a mother, and if something terrible happened to me in, say, a natural disaster and my child had to stay at the place on the left while FEMA or whomever located relatives, I’d be okay with that. I’ve seen shittier summer camps.

The picture on the right is child abuse and a human rights violation.

Trump took children away from their parents at the border as deliberate act of cruelty as a “deterrent”, then handed them over to ICE who kept them in conditions that would be inhumane for livestock. Eventually he decided unaccompanied minors could just live in squalid encampments in Mexico.

We can’t keep doing these false equivalencies and abject lack of nuance. To do so only minimizes what Trump did, and gives the Republicans more cover to say “everybody does it!” If you call an actual refugee camp a concentration camp, they get to call a concentration camp a refugee camp with a straight face, and they’ll do it with gusto.

And we do need to care about the blue team being in charge. Because the picture on the right is what the red team will do again if we don’t.

We can’t keep doing these false equivalencies and abject lack of nuance. To do so only minimizes what Trump did, and gives the Republicans more cover to say “everybody does it!” If you call an actual refugee camp a concentration camp, they get to call a concentration camp a refugee camp with a straight face, and they’ll do it with gusto.

THIS. RIGHT HERE.

i just read a washington post article on romcoms aging poorly due to the pushiness (and oft-stalkery conduct) of the male characters therein, and it got me thinking about pride and prejudice, and specifically darcy saying, “one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”

because, like, that’s the seldom-portrayed romantic dream in the patriarchal hellscape that is our world, isn’t it?

a dude being willing to say, “i understand if you don’t feel the same way about me, and i’ll leave you alone forever about this if my attention is unwanted.”

so simple, yet so wonderful in its basic human decency

and dudes to this day wonder why women still swoon over darcy

Note also: Elizabeth turns down Darcy’s first proposal, and in the process, accuses him of doing some stuff he did not do (and also some stuff he totally did).

The next day, he surprises her on her walk. He hands her a letter, asks that she read it, and then takes off.

When this happened to me after I had turned someone down IN REAL LIFE, the letter contained a passionate argument to the tune of “actually you’re wrong and you do like me and you should go out with me” and it was creepy af.

Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth starts with: “Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you”. He goes on to set the record straight about the stuff he didn’t do (as well as the stuff he did) which is *actually relevant* to Elizabeth. And he, as promised, doesn’t romance her further.

It’s totally bizarre that even now, this can be considered unusually great dude behaviour.

Darcy’s first proposal: “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Darcy’s second proposal: “One word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”

His whole arc in the book is about learning to consider other people’s feelings and not just his own, but the fact that it’s expressed via who gets to talk and who is told to shut up is so, so telling. The first time around, he imposes his voice on her whether she wants it or not. The second time, he asks how she feels, and in exchange, offers her the gift of his silence.

And yeah, the fact that dudes still! have! not! learned! this! lesson! is exhausting.

How surprising is it that Pride and Prejudice was written by a woman, when many romantic comedies are produced and directed by men?

Answer: not at all

200 years later and the world is still full of guys who think they’re a Mr Darcy when they’re actually a Mr Collins.

200 years later and the world is still full of guys who think they’re a Mr Darcy when they’re actually a Ross Geller.

It’s the only logical explanation

So that’s what the Monster Under The Bed is reduced to these days…

The economy sucks what do you expect

hands down the BEST head canon I’ve heard for a fictional character is that Poison Ivy funds her lab experiments by selling the highest quality weed available in gotham

actually she & Harvey are married now so I bet Ivy grows the stuff, while Harley is in charge of the dealing side so that her nerdy botanist wife has more mad scientist lab time

Absolutely bold of you to think that weed isn’t legal in Gotham and that Dr. Harleen Quinzel, Ph.D. doesn’t run a legitimate dispensery with fair prices to people for both medical and recreational purposes.

how fucking dare u imply harley quinn pays her taxes

I think the funniest answer is that weed is completely illegal in Gotham due to the influence of various drug lords, and yet Harleen Quinzel somehow manages to have a completely legitimate business selling it without getting in trouble with the law, and no one can figure out how.

ok but seriously why is “much older internet friend uses you as their personal suicide hotline” such a universal experience for kids on the internet. fyi for any kids/teens following me if an adult tries to make you be their therapist just flat out block them you dont have to explain yourself or try to reason with them and ur not responsible for their mental well-being. just block them

you are all such fucking freaks i am literally an adult who experiences suicidal urges and being suicidal does not fucking entitle you to traumatize a child by making them responsible for your survival. i fucking KNOW you know better. call a suicide hotline, talk to a therapist, or talk to an ADULT FRIEND whos willing and able to support you! not a fucking CHILD