I don't know who needs to hear this, but especially with the end of the school year coming up soon, and a bunch of people about to leave high school or about to leave college, I just wanted to say:

Being an adult can be really nice, actually!!!

Like, okay, yeah, life can be fucking stressful sometimes, and there's definitely an annoying amount of paperwork.

But me and just about every single adult I know will agree: I would never choose to go back to being a teenager, even if I somehow could.

Insert obvious disclaimer that nothing is universal. But for people worried about aging or graduating into the next chapter of life, here's some words of reassurance:

talking to people while holding a beverage is awesome because you don't have to know what to do with your hands and when you don't know what to do with your face you can just take a sip

fandom playlists used to be full of songs from florence and the machine’s 2009 album “lungs.” we used to be a society

so back when i was teaching, one of the things i learned to look for were the "mood makers", as i liked to call them, of the classes. there were always 2 or 3 per class, and it was easy to find them in the first few days. you got those kids on your side, and it was a ripple effect with the rest of the students - they would all follow. so winning those kids over was huge when it came to how the year would play out. and from time to time, whenever the class was sort of faltering - middle of winter, of a big project, burn-out high - i would lean back in on those mood makers again to turn things around.

one particular class, when we had a big multi-month group project happening, were just... really struggling with getting their shit together lol. they were supposed to be practicing their presentations (english speaking class) and they were doing pretty much anything but, and their presentations were supposed to start the next class day. they were also PANICKING as i started giving out some feedback - which was NOT GREAT - as they were running through the lines they were supposed to be remembering. after realizing all of them needed so much extra work, i decided we needed to have a turn-around, so i invited one of the mood makers up to the front. i held out a cup to him, with two papers inside.

"one of them," i said, "says tuesday, and if you draw that, presentations go as planned. but one of them says thursday, and if you choose that one, everyone gets extra time to practice."

everyone was like OH SHIT. OKAY. THIS IS IT. and this mood maker, he was a big personality (they usually are) so i knew he'd really ham this up, and he did. we made a huge deal, with drum-rolls and everything, of him picking one out of the cup. he opened it up the paper and announced THURSDAY to a round of huge cheers. he was the class hero. everyone had TONS of motivation to work super hard on this gifted extra day, and really put the time in. their presentations were great. morale SOARED.

the plot twist was that both papers said thursday, because they all needed the extra time. my forever teacher advice: find creative ways to make things happen so that you get the buy-in from the class.

My theory that GMing and teaching are basically the same skill set continues unabated.

vampirism poses the question "what if there was a fundamental, horrible, unending well of want in your soul that, if truly satisfied, would lead to great pain for all those you hold closest and, in turn, their absolute and total revilement of you?" and naturally as a person with no problems I don't relate to this in any way at all.

vampirism also poses the question "what if someone you loved, through no fault of their own, needed something from you, and giving it to them and seeing them happy provided you the greatest joy, and you were the only one who could do it, but at the same time it was slowly draining all your life out of you?" which is also a completely unrelatable idea to me because I'm a normal person with no issues.

"ugh this is not what vampires are about :/ you've been poisoned by contemporary vampire romance"

VAMPIRES WERE BEING SEXY BEFORE DRACULA WAS EVEN A GLINT IN THE MILKMAN'S EYE

NEVER LET THE HATERS TELL YOU THAT VAMPIRES SHOULDN'T BE SAD AND HOT

#SEXYVAMPIRESFOREVER

They say judas is in hell because he betrayed jesus but thats actualy a misconception, that was gods plan and so he didnt do anything wrong. Judas however IS in hell because god thinks he made his son gay

You cant fucking do this to me

NEW SCHISM NEW SCHISM

[ID: “Investing at 240 notes” /End ID]

Conversations at like 4 am

far too old to care about fandom opinions i am an adult with a *sees a take* hm. never mind actually. i am in fact so blessed to have a huge brain and correct inconsequential opinions on fictional characters. there but for the grace of god go i

Something that literally changed my life was working with a friend on a coding thing. He was helping me create an auto rig script and was trying to explain something to me but his words were just turning into static in my brain. I was tired and confused and there was so many new concepts happening.

I could feel myself working toward a crying meltdown and was getting preemptively ashamed of what was about to happen when he said, “Hey, are you someone who benefits from breaks?”

It broke me.

Did I benefit from breaks? I didn’t know. I’d never taken them.

When a problem frustrated or upset me I just gritted my teeth and plowed through the emotional distress because eventually if you batter and flail at something long enough you figure it out. So what if you get bruised on the way.

I viscerally remembered in that moment being forced to sit at the table late into the night with my dad screaming at me, trying to understand math. I remembered taking that with me into adulthood and having breakdowns every week trying to understand coding. I could have taken a break? Would it help? I didn’t know! I’d never taken one!

“Yes,” I told him. We paused our call. I ate lunch. I focused on other stuff for half an hour. I came back in a significantly better state of mind, and the thing he’d been trying to explain had been gently cooking in the back of my head and seemed easier to understand.

Now when I find myself gritting my teeth at problems I can hear his gentle voice asking if I benefit from breaks. Yes, dear god, yes why did I never get taught breaks? Why was the only way I knew to keep suffering until something worked?

I was relating to this same friend recently my roadtrip to the redwoods with my wife. “We stopped every hour or so to get out and stretch our legs and switch drivers. It was really nice. When I was a kid we’d just drive twelve hours straight and not stop for anything, just gas. We’d eat in the car and power through.”

He gave a wry smile, immediately connecting the mindset of my parents on a road trip to what they’d instilled in me about brute forcing through discomfort. “Do you benefit from breaks?” he echoed, drawing my attention to it, making me smile with the same sad acknowledgement.

Take breaks. You’re allowed. You don’t have to slam into problems over and over and over, let yourself rest. It will get easier. Take. Breaks.

“everything is wireless in the future” does it have to be tho? cause dare i say it wires and strings have been integral to the human experience since like. the dawn of time. it’s the world wide WEB baby. we need these strings

@entities-of-posts

"Kill yourself" is basic. "I hope your fandom gets a new installment that is objectively a great work but also tonally dissonant from the previous ones in a way that generates a huge newbie boom of people uninterested and hostile towards the history of the franchise" is smart. It's possible. It's terrifying. It's happening right now.

As someone who buys a shit tonne of vintage and retro items all the time I need to tell you about the "shart zone" and "prime nuclear cockroach material"

when buying used items i will do anything in my power to avoid the shart zone, which is in the range of 5-10 years old, this is a short enough amount of time for especially electronic items to have not found a way to fall apart horribly but have become out dated enough to have no support and likely will not retain any value. I do however LOVE the nuclear cockroach material zone which is anything 20+ years old. If it still works after 20 years it is going to work forever. A great example of this is my pc which exists in the shart zone and has to be revved up to turn on lawnmower style, but my N64 works fine.

The same goes for clothes, I wear the same 40+ year old knitted jumper EVERY DAY and it only has two small holes in it. It's less that they don't make them how they used to and more survivor bias. You don't see all of the retro items that fell apart within a year because they got thrown away. You only see the nuclear cockroach material that will still be here at the heat death of the universe.

Day 2 in the Middle School Time Loop: you remember that last time, everyone ignored you at recess because they were talking about a TV show that you hadn’t watched. This time, you lie and say you’ve seen it. They ask you who your favorite character is, and you don’t know any of the characters, and so you’re tongue-tied. They think you’re weirder than ever, or maybe a liar, which is worse (and true).

Day 3 in the Middle School Time Loop: you tell your parents that you feel ill. They let you stay home while they’re at work. You spend the whole day watching past episodes of the TV Show.

Day 4 in the Middle School Time Loop: Recess again. The same person asks you who your favorite character is. This time, you're ready. You eagerly tell them, and supplement your reasons for liking them with solid evidence from all 4 seasons of the show. But! Tough luck: you’re now too invested. The atmosphere turns uncomfortable. They go back to ignoring you like they did on the Day 1 that you didn’t know was Day 1.

Day 5 in the Middle School Time Loop:

The thing that abled people who advocate for the disabled community don’t get is that there are times when disabilities/accommodations clash. Horribly.

Like I spent years having to come up with a solution to get therapy dogs into a series of residence halls. Why years? Because we had to decide who got to stay and who got to leave: the people who needed therapy dogs or the people with severe allergies to animals. Who got the alternative housing? 

Things like fidget toys might seem great for some disabled people but having them in the room could be distracting/overstimulating for others. The same goes with stimming. It can’t be helped but neither can the anxiety that another person in the room feels as they watch/hear it. Additionally, something like a weighted blanket might immediately calm one kid down and send the other one into a panic attack due to the claustrophobia it causes. (*Points to myself*)

Every Metro bus in New York City has a series of seats at the front that can be lifted up to accommodate people in wheelchairs but if I’m in one of those spots then someone with a cane/walker has to journey even further to sit down.

The flashing lights of a fire alarm are there to help deaf/hearing impaired but if they’re not properly timed, they can also cause a person to have a seizure.

The worst part about all of these is that there is rarely a concrete solution that makes everyone happy/safe. And I’m not here to offer any because I don’t know them. I’m just here to remind you all that as you’re taking your education/health classes, as you’re reading your textbooks, as you’re preparing to go be an advocate, just remember that there is rarely ever such a thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to advocacy and that something you do that can help one disabled person might actually hinder another.

Food for thought.

his premature death and 20 seconds of screen time have bewitched me body and soul

I think the best advice I ever got to stop myself from getting in my head over issues i was having with a partner/friend was “Are you deciding on ultimatums in your relationship without the other persons knowledge or consent? Are you having conversations in your head where the other party is a projection you supply the responses for? If so; you have done this person a huge disservice in not allowing them to answer on their own terms. You have done so much architecture around this problem in your mind that is impenetrable for anyone who was not there when it was being built.”

That shit really changed my life and honestly? I think made me a nicer person to be around.

you ever get surprised by your own recurring issues. like come on man. I thought we were past this.