Oh this is why every gardening person I know keeps trying to give me the food they grow

That, and we love you. Homegrown produce is a love language.

Unless it's zucchini. Then it's a cry for help.

Tomato (June) - I think highly of you; treasured friend

Tomato (September) - you are a warm body that is nearby

Fresh new asparagus - romantic love

Artichoke - fondness

New rhubarb with leaves removed - flirtatious potential

Rhubarb with leaves left on - the bloom is gone

Swiss chard - I have made mistakes

Perpetual spinach - declaration of animosity between our houses

White-fleshed potato - you are a neighbor

Blue or red fleshed potato - as above, but with overtones of camaraderie/affection

Kale - you are a person who was nearby when I had kale

Raspberries - you are a person I admire

Strawberries - you are a treasure

Onion - I am confused

Young French beans or young peas - I thought of you especially

Runner beans - mild criticism; familial ties; gift from parent to child

Pumpkins - overt romantic, sexual or childhood-bestie interest; highest declaration of loyalty

Prettily coloured popping corn, I.e. glass gem - let this seal the breach between our houses

Zucchini/courgette - cry for help, resignation

Novelty pumpkins - marriage proposal

(chortle)

Me: huh. Why is this getting a rash of notes all of a sudden?

*discovers paper bag full of zucchini on doorstep*

Me: Ah. That time of year again.

One of my coworkers grows Massive Zucchinis.

Like

Massive.

And the guy he used to give them to no longer works here. I fear for all of us.

Zucchinis make great fillers tbh Make any sort of stew/gratin/casserole that needs filler without much flavor or texture? Zucchini. Granted, half a zucchini is usually enough for a casserole but once prepared, these things can be easily frozen.

Here's my "fuck I forgot I had veggies" casserole, for your consideration:

Reblog to make him lose another 200 billion, like to make him lose 1 billion

for the people doomblogging in the notes: this isn't a "drop in the ocean fine" situation, 200 bil is already over half of his fortune lost... and he's not even done losing money yet! he's got a ton of lawsuits left to go through, owes Google money for trying to rent-dodge, destroyed Twitter's remaining brand value by rebranding to X, is playing lawsuit chicken with Microsoft as a direct result, and will have to pay off Twitter's debt... and shows no signs of even pausing to consider the stupidity of his decisions, especially as he's already plotting out loud to make a paypal alternative that breaks multiple international laws. whatever he has left is nowhere near enough to cover the debt he's currently in and unless he somehow gets it forgiven or magically earns more than he's losing, there's a countdown over his head running down until the IRS personally comes after him. unless his last remaining braincell wakes up and he hits the brakes, we might actually see someone speedrun going from richest man in the world straight to poverty, and you better believe i wanna see that :D GO FOR THE FINISH LINE, MUSKY BOY! ~Blue

Whoever needs to hear this. Please know.

"Closed at 6pm" does not mean "The entry door locks up at 6, but if you're already inside you can keep on shopping."

It means, "you should be finished and out of the store at 6pm."

This is not up for debate

This is just how things work

I just feel like if we just straight up vacuum sealed the building at 6:01 and let bitches fend for themselves Dawn of the Dead style then word would get around

My good people, I give you: Amatonormativity.

Sign language being different in every country instead of being universal is a nonsense and an opportunity wasted

“Spoken language being different in every country instead of being universal is a nonsense and an opportunity wasted”

fuck off. you ever thought in your shower that perhaps sign language is more like spoken language than you realise? that it wasn’t just. invented? one day? that it formed in multiple different places and branched off the same way as spoken languages did?

you ever thought about why french and italian are different? or japanese and swedish?

you ever thought that maybe languages are interesting by themselves and having less diversity in them would be a loss of human culture, art, and thousands of years of history? we can track the movements of ancient cultures by looking at the words they loaned from various languages (and the words those languages borrowed back) and what sound shifts have applied to them. that’s a thing we can do! but, y'know, it absolutely is a “wasted opportunity” that all the languages aren’t somehow magically identical, innit.

i must not afternoon nap. afternoon nap is the mind-killer. afternoon nap is the little death that brings total obliteration. i will face my afternoon sleepy tired and permit it to pass over and through me. and when it has gone i will turn the inner eye to see its path. where the afternoon sleepy tired has gone there will be nothing. only i will remain

I MUST NOT AFTERNOON NAP. AFTERNOON NAP IS THE MIND KILLER

PSA from the actual coiner of “neurodivergent”

Yo. Many of you need to take an entire stadium of seats. Like a football arena in Texas number.

I coined neurodivergent before tumblr was even a thing, like a decade or more ago, because people were using ‘neurodiverse’ and ‘neurodiversity’ to just mean autistic, & possibly LDs. But there’s more, like way more, ways a person can have a different yet fucking perfect dammit brain.

Neurodivergent refers to neurologically divergent from typical. That’s ALL.

I am multiply neurodivergent: I’m Autistic, epileptic, have PTSD, have  cluster headaches, have a chiari malformation.

Neurodivergent just means a brain that diverges.

Autistic people. ADHD people. People with learning disabilities. Epileptic people. People with mental illnesses. People with MS or Parkinsons or apraxia or cerebral palsy or dyspraxia or no specific diagnosis but wonky lateralization or something. 

That is all it means. It is not another damn tool of exclusion. It is specifically a tool of inclusion. If you don’t want to be associated with Those People, then YOU are the one who needs another word. Neurodivergent is for all of us.

Annoyedly yours,

Neurodivergent K of Radical Neurodivergence Speaking

We’ve had a few people in the past ask us about the history of the word “neurodivergent” so here it is in the words of the person who coined it to begin with. x -Mea

Queueing for disability pride month.

If I skipped a day… no I fucked didn’t.

-fae

people will agree w posts about how we need to protect vulnerable people all day until they find out that it sometimes means they'll be mildly inconvenienced

this is about wearing masks to protect immunocompromised people by the way. if you don't wear one you are abandoning the vulnerable and risking other people's lives.

also, if you've stopped masking it's never too late to start again! it will make a difference, it will help others.

you cannot consider yourself a leftist or punk or whatever if you can't do the bare minimum for your disabled siblings and comrades

good to know ur support of disabled people is conditional on whether or not we ask soooooooooo niceys for you to care if we live or die 👍

i was thinking about that post comparing Jessica Rabbit as an asexual to Barbie and an asexual and then i thought of the Neil Gaiman post (was it a post?) about Crowley and Aziraphale being asexual and then this happened.

anyways. thoughts?

You are so brave and correct for this

Look i tried to laugh it off, but I haven’t stopped thinking about this message because… my cat literally isn’t green

like where is the green

Oh Christ

This is the color your cat is

colors i eyedropped directly from op's cat

I drew a tree using only colours eyedropped from OP's cat.

every time i see this post all i see is some green alien kitty with antennae so i had to draw it

I originally thought those were supposed to be mushrooms, implying that this cat is moldy

Moldy forest cat

i'm happy y'all made fan art of my cat. i tried to show her and she just rubbed her face on my phone

Pet your cat OP, 50% shot it helps.

the first time I reblogged this, like a few weeks ago, it had like 4,000 notes. why do people keep insisting tumblr is dead

i had a DREAM about the green cat last night. not sure what she was up to but. nice to meet her :)

GREEN CAT IS BACK ON MY DAAAAAASH

We Love Green Cat

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

Have a nice weekend everyone 🖤

my dads response could not have been better

important addition

tee hee

tee hee

tee hee

what do you say to a trans person who’s sharing after-surgery pics?

good post op

WHICH ONE OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS—

friends romans and countrymen alike i have one hell of a story for you.

this morning i was scrolling through the silly little reels on my instagram for you page, as one does, and about a good 45 minutes into this i got recommended a candle company that puts (supposedly) real diamonds in their candles.

and in my still somewhat half asleep glory i thought "this sounds absolutely ridiculous, what do i have to lose" and clicked on the website.

upon clicking on said website i was given a 10% off code that i had to use within 15 minutes so basically my mind was already made up and i decided to text brad.

so with what was probably brads approval i scrolled through the silly little website as fast as i could and decided to stick to the more classic scents since i didnt want to be stuck with something that smelled bad (although "wap" and "i hate my boss" did intrigue me briefly) and i went with "tobacco bourbon" because thats always a decent combo.

and then in a last minute decision i decided to also get "chai tea" because it sounded interesting and who knows maybe the diamonds are real.

the court should note that i did absolutely zero research on this company.

and with my 10% off on top of whatever massive sale they were having the total plus shipping came to $63.86.

brad was also very excited about this purchase and said that if the diamonds were real he may put them in my engagement ring.

so now all thats left is to wait 2-5 business days for my candles to get delivered. i have absolutely zero expectations. stay tuned.

an update

it has been a grand total of 7 days since i ordered said candles. my credit card charge has changed from pending to processed, so i assume that it has been shipped. i do not think they have arrived, however i do have 2 packages at the post office i have to go pick up

we have confirmation that the candles have been delivered and i will try to go and pick them up today

candles have been retrieved

they were shipped in this very nondescript box with branded tape

it is 97 degrees today so i hope they are not melted

alright so. the candles have not exploded. more detailed update later after homework.

update

*for legal reasons, these candles were never in my dorm room or were burned in my dorm room*

@undercover-vampire and i unboxed the candles

the tobacco bourbon candle smelled very good actually but the chai one smelled like a craft store from september-december, which is to say, very strongly of artificial cinnamon

the candles are pretty large, about 3 inches across and 4 inches high and are in good quality glass jars

the chai one had melted a little in transit because there was melted (and still melted) wax all over the outside of the jar. but it’s been ridiculously hot so i wouldn’t put that on the company.

the tobacco candle (on bottom) had a very off center wick (tho both were off centered). this happens sometimes with hand poured candles, but it was still odd

each candle comes with this scratch off code thing that links to a certificate of the diamond inside, which is cool

i decided to put the chai candle in the freezer and freeze the wax out of it because i hated the smell and burn the tobacco one.

more updates to come

update

i burned the tobacco bourbon candle for around 10 hours and it has a very clean burn, no exploding, but it did pop a little bit ( that was my fault tho cause i didn’t trim the wick ) and if the wick wasn’t off center it would be a 10/10 candle. no sign of the diamond yet

the chai tea candle was in the freezer for about 24 hours and i was able to tap the bottom of it twice and the candle popped out of the glass and revealed the wrapped diamond

i attacked the wax with a pair of scissors for a few minutes to get the vial out

and then i washed off the vial cause it was covered in wax

the diamond is in that little plastic bag. and yes, it is a little diamond.

i scratched off the code on the side of the candle to get the certificate

so if the diamond is real it’s a .03 carat vs1 diamond worth about 26 dollars, i paid 29.99 for the candle

update

i have been burning the tobacco bourbon candle for three days at minimum 5 hours per day. the candle claims to be 100% soy wax, but brad is very sensitive to paraffin and other artificial waxes and started coughing pretty badly every time he was in my room for an extended period of time. we deduced that it was caused by the candle not being 100% soy wax.

he is upset that i “tried to poison him” (which is understandable and i put on my diffuser and humidifier with air cleaning solution and opened the window and gave him cough syrup so he’s definitely fine, but still holding my questionable candle purchasing over me head and rightfully so). so if you’re sensitive to artificial wax i don’t recommend this

we have decided that i will keep burning the candle for the experiment, but for shorter periods while he is not here with the window open and the air cleaning thing on

update

it has been 2 days and brad is still coughing from the candle (and no its not the plague he took three covid tests and they were all negative)

also the package does not say 100% soy wax it says premium soy wax (which is definitely a lie. brad has several soy wax candles and does not have a reaction to them. this one is definitely made of paraffin or something else synthetic because apparently he gets severe reactions to that kind of wax) (also i would not have bought the candle if it said it was made from synthetic wax)

after listening to brad cough for what is now probably 4-5 days and having scoured a sketchy gas station for cough drops, i have decided it would be a bad idea to continue burning the candle. but i would not abandon my diamond experiment so quickly. so i texted the one person i know that has little regard for their general health and safety: @undercover-vampire

and so it was decided. katya will take the candle and when diamond appears i will get them something slutty in return. you see kids, this is why you accidently get your tumblr mutuals to come to your college.

updates to come.

and an important update from the one and only brad himself @dear-brads-blog

update

we went to brads house this weekend and his mom was upset by the fact that he is coughing, tho she didnt necessarily think it was from a candle. she did give him about 65 remedies tho, including tea, gargling with salt water and nyquill. he is still coughing and in his stubborn glory refuses to do anything more about it.

@undercover-vampire is coming to get the candle tonight to finish burning it

i have still been airing out my room because being in my room makes brad cough more

i emailed the company's customer service

i could have made it a lot more detailed, but didnt want to come off as a karen or anything. we will see what they say.

update

brad went to the health center on campus and they tested him for covid, strep, bronchitis and mono and it was none of those things. they think its a viral infection from the candle and he could be fucked for up to 2 more weeks. if it gets worse then hes really fucked. we do not want him to be really fucked.

at the end of my night class i convinced my friend to take me to target, except my professor held me 25 minutes late because he has terrible time management and we had to target speedrun before they closed. I was so stressed that i left my phone in my friends car when we went in but i got brad all kinds of stuff to make the cough not as coughy (because he is too stubborn to do it himself). and, fellow romans, my friend was mildly (or perhaps severely) concerned about me cause i was mid break down looking frantically for lemon juice, and saying that this was the only time ive ever gone to target and not looked at the price of anything. then i got carded for buying vicks spray and almost accidentally stole some lemons.

@undercover-vampire came to my room to get rid of the accursed candle and said that if they start to die from it then we will be forced to freeze the wax out. this seems like a very good compromise.

i gave brad his stuff and he only insisted we return 4 of the things (which is decent) and he nearly cried over the soup i got him. this candle has put me through the 5 stages of grief.

then i vaccumed the entire box of baking soda that i had sprinkled off my carpet and swiffered and febreezed the fuck out my room. its really good that it worked cause my carpet looked like i had dumped crack all over it and i dont want to have to do that again.

and it paid off cause brad came in and sniffed my room and didnt immediately die of coughs

more updates to come

update

brad is still very much dying. if he was in victorian times he would have two feet in the grave.

@undercover-vampire has lit the demon candle

this was then followed by:

in addition, brad emailed all of his professors and res life the following email:

updates to come

and another update from brad himself @dear-brads-blog

the way to a himbos heart is with soup aparently

friends and romans we have exciting news

does it sound like a robot wrote it? kind of. is the stay safe part a little ridiculous given the circumstances? absolutely. but at least we got a response

here is my refund:

so they refunded me less than the cost of one of the candles, which is a little annoying, but at least it is something. im actually impressed they gave me anything because their site outlines a pretty strict return policy of 5 days within receiving your candle and no refunds once the sticker with the diamond code is scratched off. part of me wonders if there is someone from the company following along with this saga and that's why i got a refund...im onto yall...

and if they are reading this post, shout out to marry for deciding that my boyfriends lungs are worth $23.91

a much anticipated candle saga update cause no i definitely didnt forget about this

the candle has, unfortunately, but also to absolutely no ones surprise, fucked up @undercover-vampire. but instead of making them cough violently, they started sneezing and "passing out more than usual." so we are currently trying to figure out if we know any other poor unfortunate souls who do not care about their general health and safety or wellbeing who want to be part of the experiment. i also still have to go retrieve the candle from them.

and brad is still coughing, its better, but still not good. he went back to the health center and the nurses think it gave him acid reflux and gave him basically tums in a little orange pill bottle that doesnt close very well.

brad also does not want to put the diamonds in my engagement ring anymore so idk what were gonna do with them. i was considering posting them on ebay and auctioning them off to you all.

he also is requiring our wedding vows to contain "i vow to never poison you with a silly candle i bought off of instagram again" and if i do we are getting divorced. i suppose this is fair.

friends romans and fellow countrymen

i have exciting news

we have found a volunteer to be demon candle's guardian!!! how fun!!!!

its @femme--de--lettres and they have so graciously decided to get poisoned by the candle on behalf of my silly saga

the candle will be mailed Soon once they sign a waiver

update, the waiver has been sent to @femme--de--lettres (brad helped with some embellishments)

the candle has also been shipped and i know this is counterintuitive since the waiver has yet to be signed, but i had to mail it on friday and i know it wont actually get shipped until monday cause of when mail pickup is. they also claimed they sent me the tracking info but they did not. gotta love a campus post office.

not really sure why they mailed it priority mail one day. that seems rather silly and i definitely didnt ask for that.

stay tuned

THE WAIVER HAS BEEN SIGNED

now we wait

and now back to everyones favorite candle saga:

since our last update several of you have had some questions, which i will now answer

1. why not just freeze the wax out of the candle saph? why are you going through the process of poisoning someone else? havent you taken enough lives?

because friends and romans, we have come too far to quit now. i want to know what is in this candle. freezing the wax out would be so anticlimactic. also andie was a willing and eager participant who signed a waiver

2. could it be the tobacco scent? tobacco is a bad scent

i do not think so. brad has a few other candles that have tobacco listed as a fragrance note from notably better brands (diptyque and i think maison margella and threshold?) and he is an avid wearer of the tom ford cologne tobacco vanille. none of these things have ever induced coughing fits whatsoever. i do agree though that it could be a fragrance issue, but the actual tobacco is not the problem

3. is brad okay? i hope brad is okay. and your other friend.

brad and katya have both recovered from their candle related illnesses! brad only had one small relapse when i had to bring the candle back to my room to send it to andie

also really unrelated but idk why you all keep assuming brad and i are engaged, we are not

anyway, with these questions answered we can now move forward

andie, @femme--de--lettres, my friends, romans and countrymen, has been sleuthing (which was not part of the job description as candle guardian) and they have some exciting updates:

and, believe it or not, they did get another response from our good friend marry!!!

this is, needless to say, Interesting Information. i thoughouly scoured their website last week and the only information i found about their candle wax was that it was a """soy blend""" and so good you can "use it as lotion" which seems like a lie.

i am particularly intrigued by the sentence "the combination of raw materials is constantly changing" that sounds sketchy. and the fact that they "try to always offer the safest and best materials whenever possible." which sounds like. sometimes they do not do that and they know that.

interesting.

anywhoosies, the candle made it to andie and they are going to be unboxing it later tonight so! stay tuned!!

alright we have several updates on this mess

andie has been burning the candle for about 15 hours inside and 10 (?) outside and has not yet died of mystery candle disease. she did some poking around in the wax with a skewer and was able to deduce that there is indeed a diamond capsule in the candle

this is where we stand now with the candle burning

next up is that andie emailed customer service two more times trying to get more information about the wax and marry (who appears to be their one customer service rep) basically just gave them the same information as the first time. it looks like we will not be getting any further with that

as per the request of you hooligans we decided to test the wax with a makeup test it that we got off of amazon. we decided to use the makeup test because it says that it works on body lotion and marry kept telling us we could use the wax as lotion. here were the results:

andie tested the wax first when it was hard and then melted and the melted results seemed more conclusive and that revealed that none of the tests came back with super high results of anything. so the wax probably doesnt have a bunch of harmful chemicals but we are not really sure since we have yet to find a quirky chemistry professor to run test results on the candle. this means that its likely the reactions may come down to fragrance or just a reaction to the wax itself and not the chemicals.

but alas friends, the best has still yet to come.

andie and i did a deep dive on the company.

like a deep deep dive.

the results of which shall be revealed Soon

stay tuned

alright friends romans and fellow countrymen i know you all have been waiting with baited breath for the much anticipated update, considering i have at least 50 asks relating to this. but allow me to first explain why i have Not updated:

-it was mine and brads anniversary (1 year)

-i had every assignment ever due and then five more

-i got tonsils fucky illness (tonsillitis) which is not mystery candle disease

so alas. here we are. also i’m currently in delaware. crazy how these things happen, huh?

anyway did y’all know that ned fulmer is a florida man? kinda on brand, ngl

what’s that? oh. yes. i can get to the point.

the results of mine and (mostly) andie’s deep dive:

foreverwick candle co was started in good old 2017 by two students who may have possibly been attending michigan state (according to instagram and linkedin searches). these two people had the original trademark until 2021 when the trademark then went through involuntary dissolution

and you’re probably wondering what the fuck that means. i was too. luckily andie knew what it was:

so it sounds like the two founders either broke up or didn’t agree on something pretty massive. kinda funny considering the company origin story is about a couples first date.

a completely different person now has the candle company trademark. we did find his address, or an address of some sort that was possibly related to him, but it was to a trailer park in texas. sus.

one of the founders had some more trademarks registered to him that never went through, all to skincare related things. he may currently have an operational skin aloe cream something or other company. the highlight of the deep dive was andie finding the contact information for that one:

and there was also this:

we also think that the reason for all the skincare trademarks (cause there were quite a few) was because the founders originally wanted foreverwick to have a skincare component (potentially why they keep telling us you can use the candles as lotion?)

so we have no real answers. and i know this is vague but guys i am not about to get sued over a tumblr post.

we did discover tho that their candles were once featured on fox news, which is really really funny to me.

as this saga goes on, i keep ending up with more questions than answers. who’s to say what we will uncover next.

greetings once again my friends romans and fellow countrymen. i come bearing an update. a very exciting update:

@femme--de--lettres finally unearthed the diamond capsule!!!

the diamond, as was the case with the first one, is absolutely minuscule:

currently we are trying to figure out how to test to see if the diamonds are real. i will likely take mine to the silly diamond store in the mall that i work at and see if they can test it for me, andie was thinking of a more unconventional method for theirs

just some casual diamond arson y'know. gotta keep the saga interesting as we near what very well may be the close. we will see what happens. several of you suggested trying to scratch glass with the diamond, but they are too small for that to effectively work without them flying across the room when you inevitably lose your grip.

i suppose the end of the saga is approaching. i have many more questions than answers but-

oh?

what is this??

new information that will draw this out even more????

i see.

yes, yes. i understand

oh, this will be good.

stay tuned.

and everyone's favorite long post continues

first and very foremostly i dont know why i have three separate asks in my inbox about what the delaware post is. astounding that you know what the candle saga is and not the delaware post. but i digress.

secondly thank you to @nuri148 for consulting a mineralogist on twitter and telling us that our diamond testing methods were, at their core, silly:

also now my candle saga is on twitter. not sure how i feel about that but alas these candles do have their consequences and one of them is that this post now has 16k notes.

someone else commented that we should tell consumer product safety about the candles. not sure if that will happen yet, we want to find out whats actually in them first.

which leads me to my next point: if you or someone you know is a slightly unhinged and chaotic chemist who wants to test some candle wax, send me an ask.

and finally. andie. sweet darling wonderful @femme--de--lettres (who is still a spooky halloween girl looking for a valentines day girlfriend, i might add) decided that it would be wise to purchase 2 more accursed candles.

now i had nothing to do with this! i do not condone this behavior whatsoever! but i was curious.

andie picked out two scents:

apple cinnamon and

i will never escape this.

i would like the court to note that andie's candles were packaged FAR BETTER than mine were:

lets recall what mine looked like:

i like their addition of the "we really appreciate it!" like. i think theyre onto the saga guys. their pr team is reading this and staying updated. marry i know youre invested in my saga. please do not sue me.

anyway

there is a vast difference in pouring here.

andie chose not to scratch off the little diamond code things yet so well see how big her diamonds are.

here is the scent description for the delaware candle:

idk why they would want to go back there or why rushing river water smells like strawberries and vanilla, but at the same time i expected nothing less.

aparently tho. the icing on the cake. the delaware candle. smells like licorice.

andie, who hates licorice, then made this meme to describe her feelings on the candle:

not sure how strong flowing river water translates to licorice but alas, nothing about this company has made sense so far. and also, it aparently does not smell like licorice when it is lit.

lets all hope that andie doesnt die of candle overload.

this is the candle saga for everyone who’s asked me about it

one day it will continue

Hey remember when they found over 200 bodies of native children buried behind a residential school and the world cared for... what, a week?

They've counted about 6,000-7,000 now, for those of you who do still care

It should NOT fall on Indigenous people's shoulders to keep this known still. We’ve been doing that for generations at this point and NO ONE wants to listen to us.

We’re tired, mourning and constantly reopening our trauma and pain to keep people caring about us. It’s terrible.

I should start by noting that I am white, and not Canadian, and that if op wants me to remove this comment for any reason, please let me know.

This is a map of all the residential schools in Canada:

[link to the article it’s attached to, it’s interactable there, so you can get a better look around]

Each dot on this map represents a residential school. Blue dots mean the school is considered completely searched. Yellow dots mean they are either in the process of being searched or there are plans to be searched. Red dots indicate that no search has happened and that no search is currently planned

There were more than 130 residential schools in Canada. This map suggests that only six have been fully searched, and a little more than a dozen partially searched (I counted 15 yellow dots). That leaves at least 109 schools completely untouched.

Let that sink in; if 6,000-7,000 unmarked, indigenous children’s graves were found by searching less than a fifth of all the schools, how many are still undiscovered.

Wikipedia estimates that the body count could be over 50,000, and honestly, that could be a low estimate

[ID: A map of Canada with dozens of dots on it, 6 of which are blue and 7 of which are yellow; the rest are red. Later there is a screenshot from wikipedia reading, “Estimates range from 3,200 to over 50,000 children that were killed. Most of the recorded student deaths at residential schools took place before the 1950s. /end ID]

The residential school system was a calculated, open, and forthrightly declared attempt at the total genocide of all indigenous peoples in this country. It was literally meant to wipe them out entirely, through a combination of attrition and assimilation.

Never forget that this is what Canada is really built upon.

These are the residential schools in the U.S. I've mapped out the ones in California and there are articles about burials on these sites, some marked and some not.

I hope Secretary Haaland's Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative investigates every single one; their report is Due on April 1, 2022,

reminder that genocide doesn’t just include ending people’s lives, it includes eradicating their culture. forced assimilation of an entire people is an attempt at genocide.

i am never going to feel a shred of sympathy for straight women crying about how they feel “alienated from feminism” for their desire and/or decision to partner with men because their feelings are so far removed from reality. across the globe, feminist movements have been diluted often to the point of toothlessness to accommodate their desire to play nice with men, shedding any radical politics and actively alienating/excluding lesbians and their cause for being “too offputting/niche/divisive”

they’re never the ones who’ve been excluded from feminism because (as they love to remind us) they’re the majority. the sheer gall to accuse lesbians of excluding them when all of history shows that they’re the ones doing the excluding

i really cannot overstate the global scope of lesbian exclusion from feminist activism and the ways in which it has been devastating in particular to lesbians outside the west who are accused of being “deviant western imports” simply for existing as themselves, whose lives, rights and humanity are never a priority for the liberation movements they are called on to serve

excerpted from various books and papers, on the hostility faced by lesbians in feminist movements across the world

I try to stay away from a lot of fandom discourse, but since I’ve been seeing this on my dash again and in tags, I feel the need to make a statement on this, particularly for any young fans who follow me that might get drawn into this mindset.

Stay away from purity culture. Warn your friends away from it too, if you see them starting to fall for it. It’s very easy to get drawn into it

Almost always, it starts with one of three roots, pedophilia, incest and/or abuse. Usually it’s pedophilia. Funnily enough, that’s also what congress usually uses to try to justify passing bills that undermine online privacy & security. Because it’s an easy, extreme target, and when people attempt to argue against it, it’s nice and easy to say “Oh so you like pedophilia” rather then actually engaging with their argument.

The logic goes like this, although there’s many forms of it.

This is the foundation of “anti” culture, and it’s important to be aware of it so you can catch this false equivocation. Fictional explorations of something, are not the same as the thing itself. Fictional explorations are fiction. The characters are not real people. There is no actual harm being done. Equating fake harm and real harm is a dangerous, slippery slope, which leads us to fundamentally flawed ideas of moral purity. It’s a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions. 

A very handy trick for when you encounter this sort of argument, is to replace whatever the selected purity term is with murder. After all, we can all agree that murder is bad, but at the same time, we understand that a murder in a book =/= a murder in real life.

Let’s see that argument again, shall we?

Hopefully, it’s now easy to see why the above argument is fundamentally flawed.

Keep your eye out for purity culture in your fandom spaces, and when you see it, refuse to engage with it. Warn your friends if you see them falling into the same traps, although try to be kind about it; this is a very easy thought pattern to fall into. I don’t recommend trying to argue/debate anti’s. The attention only feeds them. Block them instead. Don’t let people control or shame you for what you create or consume, and don’t control or shame others for what they create or consume.

Also, as a note, let me be clear about something. If you are uncomfortable with any of the above discussed things, or anything in general in fiction (ie, underage ships, murder, incest, abuse, penguins, needles, etc), that’s perfectly fine (it’s also called a squick, for those that haven’t heard that term before). Absolutely control your fandom experience by blocking people, filtering tags, unfollowing, etc. However, just because you are uncomfortable with something, does not give you the right to control other people. Other people have no right to control what content you create or consume, and you have no right to do that to them either. 

Okay?

“It’s a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions. ”

“Fictional explorations of something, are not the same as the thing itself. Fictional explorations are fiction. The characters are not real people. There is no actual harm being done. Equating fake harm and real harm is a dangerous, slippery slope, which leads us to fundamentally flawed ideas of moral purity.”

Fictional characters are not real people.

If I kill off a character, I am not a murderer.

Also, creators are not obligated to explore so-called ‘problematic content’ in only certain ways. Creators are allowed to create things simply for the enjoyment of it and do not need to justify their reasons for it or use said creations as a proclamation of their real life views and morals, because those things are not synonymous.

Creators are also not obligated to explore so-called “problematic content” only under certain conditions.

You will see people (even well-meaning people) saying things like “Well, it’s okay to create X content if the creator is processing their own trauma/if it happened to them” or similar sentiments (for example, someone saying a rape victim writing about rape “is fine” since the creator could be using fiction as a coping mechanism), and that also is a slippery slope that heads straight into forcing strangers to out their trauma(s) publicly to be allowed to create in peace, without the often brutal harassment creators face from antis participating in purity culture.

Even if someone has what you would consider a “valid” reason for creating content you find upsetting, not only are they not obligated to justify themselves in general, no one is entitled to knowledge of anyone else’s trauma. It’s not anyone’s business period, but it’s certainly not anyone’s business as a means of validating their choices in writing or reading fictional stories.

i have a bad habit of everytime i get drunk i get 10x more leftist and start texting my partner about why we need to kill every nazi ever

yall are right this is a good habit

guys i do it sober too.

while this post is gaining notes, friendly reminder that ur obligation is first to protect people targeted by nazis THEN to punch nazis

reblog if you wear glasses. too many mutuals don't know they have glasses wearers in their midsts