There's a forest that people say resembles the ocean. A forest where the land slopes endlessly deeper but the tops of the trees do not. Animals, plantlife… they're said to get stranger the further in one goes.
people keep trying to make "ladies and gentlemen" more inclusive.
I think we should go the other way around.
make more and more weird false dichotomies in greetings. "gamers and pianists". "oil painters and swordsmen". "vexillologists and entomologists". "chess masters and diamond artificers". "accountants and gendered individuals".
we need to be dropping shit into formal meetings to make people say "wait what? which one am I?"
I have started referring to my students as “critters and creatures.” I then offer them the option to decide where on the critter–creature spectrum they think they belong. They enjoy this immensely. I teach some critters, some creatures, some 50/50s, some critters with creature tendencies, some creatures with critter inclinations.
all i have to say is 'hello cowards' and it shuts gendering up
“Listen up, fives, a ten is speaking,” has always been gender-inclusive.
"friends and pals" is my personal favorite
was thinking about why the lack of female characters in lotr and the hobbit dosen't feel like exclusion and it's because they're just dudes being friends, like they are all just a gang of besties wandering about and the three female characters basically go "right we're doing this now" and they all just go "alright we're doing this now :)"
The women are treated as people, who are important, but happen not to be the current main characters. The men aren't men because they are better than women at swinging swords, they just happen to be male. They go off to war/ the quest because it happens to fall into their hands. None of them particularly want to. They all want to go back to their life at home where they left the women and families.
Mrs Maggot is kind and sensible. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is jealous and petty but in the end principled and stout. Arwen is beautiful and kind and learned. Galadriel is powerful and ancient and wise, but is tempted by terrible power. The Ents have lost their womenfolk and miss them, because without women there is a loss greater than not reproducing. Ioreth of the houses of healing talks too much and is a little annoying but is knowledgeable and capable. Eowyn believed her work looking after her uncle to be less important than going to war, but she realizes she was wrong. It may be noble to lay down your life, but it's possible to keep on living and building and healing and that is more important than any battle, and much better than making a home in your despair. Rosie Cotton is faithful and patient and does not take bullshit and keeps the hearth warm in times of crisis.
The women aren't excluded. They have other important things to do.
wait reblog this this is what i meant but better
The lord giveth and the lord taketh it back now y’all. Two hops this time.
every time my bf says “for the time being” i respond with “for the time bean” and then we say “all hail the time bean” and carry on the conversation like nothing happened
listen. aging into your thirties rocks. yes your joints get a little creaky. yes you can’t sleep in a pretzel on the floor anymore after a concert or a convention. and you lose some friends. but the thing is that you sort out who your real friends are and you sort out who you really are. and you get to see your friends settling into careers they like, and adopt new dogs and cats, and you find a job you can stand, and get really good at arts and crafts, and maybe that book you loved as a kid gets a movie deal and it doesn’t suck, and you learn to like new food and bake your own bread, and you realize that the great portfolio of self harm scars you all used to curate are going white with age and not updated, and half your friends are a different gender now and so much happier and maybe you are too, and you know who you are, and that it’s a journey and not a revelation. it’s a direction you’re headed, and you’re enjoying the trip.
reaching your 30′s rocks. and i’m hearing good things about what comes next, too.
i am looking into your eyes, i am holding your hand. i absolutely promise.
if you can just live long enough, your soul will build your body into a home. you will live there and you will find a way to be at peace. it’s worth the time and it’s worth the work. i promise.
Your soul will build your body into a home.
Seriously guys. Hold out until your thirties, it gets so much better. You get to be yourself, and no one can stop you
And more than that, wait until your 40s and 50s, when you stop caring what naysayers think about who you are because you KNOW, and you are ok with it. Wait until you realise that even at the unimaginable age of 50 (and beyond!) you are still a changing, growing, learning human being, only now you can just let so much bullshit go (shame, fear…) and just live into your greatest loves. Wait until you find your people and start to feel like you have something to give because you aren’t just barely holding yourself together anymore. Wait until the love you feel is freer, less greedy and grasping and more just a thing that gloriously exists and lights you up from the inside, like your heart is a hearth that the people you love warm themselves by.
you get used to it, but it's tiring, because they need you to understand your own life as a series of goalposts. what college are you going to, what's your major going to be, whatcha gonna do with that, oh where will you settle down, when can i expect grandkids.
for the longest time my goals have been so blurry that they track into each other, their undefined edges slipping quietly back into the soft night. today i want to be a writer; tomorrow i will want to be a doctor, later i will wish i took that law school free ride. how the fuck do people just know what they want to do with their life?
where do you want to be in five years? i want to be alive; which is a huge step for me. ten years ago i would have said i want to be asleep and meant i hope that i'm dead by then.
but i want a yellow kitchen and a stand mixer. i want a garden and a fruit tree (cherry, if i can make that happen) and a big yard for my dogs to play in. i want to come home and read poetry out loud to someone and have them close their eyes to listen. i want a summer watergun fight. i want to make snowmen. i want to be the house to go to for halloween. i want my life to settle around me in a softness, for it to lay down gently. if i am very, very, very lucky, i want to travel; finally go someplace overseas.
of course i don't know what i want to be doing professionally. what i actually want to be doing is curling up beside my dog, settling in to read. i want to be making myself a cup of good coffee.
i can't answer the other questions. whenever people asked me what do you want to be when you grow up, i used to say i hope i'm happy.
i hope i'm still kind, five years from now. i hope i never get jaded and mean. i hope i have stayed in therapy. what do you picture yourself doing? when will you actually be an adult about this? why are you so afraid of being ambitious?
am i not ambitious? the other day i rearranged my furniture which doesn't quite fit into my apartment. i watered my plants. i'm going to try to propagate a cherry seed. my five year goal is to spend more time laughing. to lie down in a patch of sunwarm moss. to relax for a minute. to close my eyes and think oh thank god. this is why i stayed. this is finally it.
We are receiving unconfirmed reports that it is bedtime. Citizens are advised to get into their pajamas and remain on high alert
