Well @monstrousagonies ?

I don't think so! A warrant is a purely sapio thing, I don't see how it has any thaumaturgic effect any more than the date on the calender makes a difference to lunar transformations.

The real question is whether people of the night should work for the police (also no)

Ok, but certainly in the UK all land is legally ultimately owned by the crown, which is also the entity on whose ultimate authority warrants are issued. So a warrant could conceivably be interpreted as an invitation to enter by the "true" owner of the land.

So the question might be how much ownership over a property does one have to have in order to invite a vampire in? Is it legal or emotional ownership? Could a landlord invite a vampire into a property they own but do not live in, or would the occupying tenants have to invite the vampire in despite the landlord's legal ownership? How long does a renter have to live in a property before they have enough ownership over the space for their invite to be the one that counts? If a renter never makes an emotional connection with a property as "home" does that mean vampires can enter at will?

And if the crown had a big enough sense of entitlement over British land, would that mean that vampires would require written permission from the crown to enter any private residence, regardless of the occupiers wishes?

I think this sort of misses the point in the same way the original question does. Magic isnt about what human courts put on human pieces of paper. I don't think ownership has anything to do with being able to invite vampires or not - most of the time the invitation is being extended by someone who is just.... inside the building lol not necessarily people who live there.

A more interesting question I think is what makes a place a home, and what constitutes a threshold. If you're squatting in an abandoned building, does your experience of that place make it a home? Is a shelter a home, if nobody lives there permanently? does a hotel count? if you sleep in your car, are you safe?

The real question isnt "how do vampire cops function". it's "what makes a home", which I think is more interesting.

Yeah, that's kinda what I was getting at with "is it legal or emotional ownership" that counts. Fwiw, something I'm sparking off here is that I've just finished a rewatch of buffy and there's an interesting bit in season 7 when the residents have all fled Sunnydale and spike says he can just walk into any of the houses without an invitation, which would suggest at least in that lore that it is the emotional attachment to a place that makes it a home. Spike can enter because the residents have physically and emotionally abandoned the houses even if they still have legal ownership. (in their lore it is established that a guest in a house cannot invite a vampire in, only someone who lives there can, when Dawn invites vamp harmony into the house.)

Which led me to have this tingle in the back of my mind about a British monarch whose emotional belief in their ultimate possession of all the land in the UK is so strong that it manifests thaumaturgic energies strong enough to affect vampires etc. The Crown as a cosmic manifestation of concentrated possessive entitlement sort of deal.

Like, if you knew that not inviting vampires into your home was meant to be a guaranteed way of keeping yourself safe, what could be more horrifying than discovering that a powerful stranger has such a strong sense of entitlement over your home that they too can invite the vampires in...

ooooh I love the fact you just made the monarchy even more skin-crawling haha! Also, I just realised that because I was on mobile when I replied before, I was less exclamation mark-y than usual and might have sounded a bit grumpy, sorry!

I think that's a really fun, dark direction to take it in, where "home" is about "ownership". The two Buffy examples are interesting because Dawn certainly doesn't own the house she's in - apart from her being 16, if I remember right there's a whole arc about how the bank owns the house at that point? So it's definitely a lore where calling a place home is what counts.

Interesting too that abandoning your home out of fear for your safety makes it not your home any more in the Buffyverse. I'd love to riff on the idea of like, when does your childhood home stop being your home? Whenever I dream of "home", it's the house I grew up in - I feel like in a very emotional magical world, there could be fun to be had with the idea that I can still invite people into that place, because it's still my home in my heart.

And then to expand on what I was thinking about earlier, it's interesting how much this depends on the universe you're in and the story you're trying to tell. In Monstrous Agonies, I would hope it's been politically consistent enough that the question would be "how do we keep unhoused people, people in temporary housing and other marginalised groups safe", but there's definitely a flip-side of that that's "how would cops, landlords and land-owners use this power to erode/undermine your rights".

TV Executives: “if the strike goes in, you won’t get new episodes of your favorite shows! You won’t get new movies you were looking forward to! Isn’t that terrible, what the writers are doing to you?”

Me: Bitch, that might have been an effective threat in 2007, but we have since survived a Covid shutdown and discovered ways to amuse ourselves while we waited, we can outwait this shit, too. I got a pile of shows saved I haven’t even watched yet, and a Mt. TBR waiting for me.

Compensate (and respect) your writers for their work, assholes.

It's just hilarious that they're trying to pull this whole "but your favorite shows!" nonsense.

Oh, you mean the shows you cancel after the third season no matter how good they're doing to avoid paying writers residuals? The shows that get produced and then never aired because you found a nice tax writeoff? The shows whose writing suffers because the writers' room got six weeks to write before getting booted and making the showrunner adapt all their scripts? The shows you straight up pulled from your streaming service to scam their crews out of rewatch money?

I will happily sacrifice my shows for the writers that gave them to me, no questions needed, but if anyone tries to say that the blatantly terrible way streaming treats its writers is somehow beneficial to shows, remind them of Infinity Train and Batgirl. That's the ideal they're pushing towards if someone doesn't say no, and we should be thankful that the writers are doing that for us.

Dr Doolittle-style show about a detective who can talk to animals, except instead of talking like people the animals still talk like animals, just translated into English sentences, so the plot of most episodes centres around trying to figure out what the star witness testimony actually means.

Victim's murder was witnessed by her pet snake, whose tank was in the room. Unfortunately pet snake is incapable of describing the world around them except in terms of 'rocks' and 'meat', with their descriptions of individual forms of 'meat' focusing almost entirely on body temperature and smell.

(Solved when it turns out that their description of 'warm-cold meat with rock' was actually an attempt to describe a suspect with a prosthetic limb, which is pretty unnoticeable to a human, but looks dramatically different in infrared.)

Murder at a honey farm. Each witness managed to see about ~0.06% of the full crime, in order to get the full picture, you have to get them to swarm.

Victim was found several days after death, already crawling with maggots. Days into the investigation, protag begins a frantic search to find any surviving maggots/flies that were on the corpse, after realising that how the victim tasted would give vital information about the poison used.

Also there's at least one or two animals who actually do talk in full sentences and in terms humans can understand, and the reason behind this is never fully explained.

All cats in this universe talk in terms of 'mine/not-mine' and mainly focus on territory, mates and food, with the one exception of the main character's cat who is named Watson and knows how to use sarcasm.

All insects speak in one word sentences where everything is 'food', 'enemy' or (for hive insects) 'friend' and 'queen', with the exception of seven-spotted ladybirds specifically, who for some reason speak in full English sentences and are up to date and knowledgeable about world events. The protagonists is as concerned by the full implications of this as you are.

Crows are highly knowledgeable and erudite. They are also jerks.

GUYS THIS IS AMAZING

SERIOUSLY

6000 YEARS

STORIES THAT ARE OLDER THAN CIVILIZATIONS

STORIES THAT WERE TOLD BY PEOPLE SPEAKING LANGUAGES WE NO LONGER KNOW

STORIES TOLD BY PEOPLE LOST TO THE VOID OF TIME

STORIES

GUYS LOOK AT THIS

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS

GUYYYYYSSSS

“Here’s how it worked: Fairy tales are transmitted through language, and the shoots and branches of the Indo-European language tree are well-defined, so the scientists could trace a tale’s history back up the tree—and thus back in time. If both Slavic languages and Celtic languages had a version of Jack and the Beanstalk (and the analysis revealed they might), for example, chances are the story can be traced back to the “last common ancestor.” That would be the Proto-Western-Indo-Europeans from whom both lineages split at least 6800 years ago. The approach mirrors how an evolutionary biologist might conclude that two species came from a common ancestor if their genes both contain the same mutation not found in other modern animals.” 

So, a lot of this is fascinating, but I also think that it ignores some of the nuances of how fairy tales are transmitted. Like, for example, while variants of “Cinderella” are all over the place, the most many folklorists are willing to admit is that it seems to be ~1000 years old and might be from China originally. 

“Proto Germanic” and “Proto Celtic” types might have been transmitted through a common ancestor OR they might have been transmitted via contact between the two cultures (either at the highest point of contact, with the Viking invasion and settlement of Ireland, or at some point later on). It’s one of the reasons why the Historic-Geographic Method has come under a lot of scrutiny over the years, even though it can be used really, really well when you do it carefully. 

I’ve seen folklorists, for example, dredge up a story that is only found in Ireland and in a Slavic variant, but nowhere else – is it because it shares a common ancestor or is it because the story travelled from one to the other via, potentially, common links with the Vikings? Or even later? Especially since our earliest attestation to a lot of folktales isn’t much later than the 19th century, when the collection of folklore became significantly more scientific (the Grimm Brothers weren’t perfect, but they did get the ball rolling.)

 There’s a lot that goes into the transmission of fairy tales and folklore, it’s a very complex field. 

I think the first story ever told was about how if you make it back to the group, you’ll be safe and have food. Foodilocks, they called it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about compassion in Judaism, and being kind. In that light, I would like everyone to know that my current favorite Jewish supernatural headcanon is that, instead of driving vampires away with crosses or stakes through the heart, we say the Mourner’s Kaddish for them. I mean, that’s just so adorable. You see this threatening undead creature, and instead of yelling murder, you feel bad for them, and you mourn for them. Imagine being a vampire at the receiving end of that, having been chased away for years and years and told you’re a monster when you come across someone who sees you and your existence and accepts that you’re in a pretty bad place and offers help in the best way they can. I’m actually tearing up about this a little. If someone adds to this post I’ll love them forever.

It doesn’t work for zombies.

This is one of the hardest things she learns, in the business.  Saying the Mourner’s Kaddish will slow a vampire, to stare at you with wide shocked eyes (and once, memorably, to weep blood-tinged tears), unable or unwilling to lift a hand against you.  It will calm a dybbuk, enough to make it stop whatever destruction it’s begun, and almost always enough to start a conversation about why it clings so desperately to the world of the living, what it’s left undone, how it can be freed to move on.  You have died, the Kaddish says, and we mourn you as we would mourn our own dead, because someone must.

But there is no soul and no mind left in a zombie, no vestige of the self it once was, nothing left for the Kaddish to speak to.

She says it anyway, with every head-shot, with every flung grenade.

Not because she still hopes one might hear her, but because they are dead, and the dead should be mourned.

Well, I love you forever now.

@prismatic-bell

America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)

To anybody asking if the Amish are a cult, the answer is yes, very much so.

They’re a high control group that isolate you from society. The cult decides how you dress, how you behave, who you marry and how. They control what you know, blocking all information from the outside world. They control how you feel and what you’re allowed to think with threats of both social and supernatural harm. They’re a cult.

The best method to determine if a group is a cult, in my opinion, is Steven Hassan’s (cult expert and former cult member himself) BITE model.

BITE stands for Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control.

The more points a group “scores” on the model, the more of a cult it is.

I think this model is the best one for several reasons:

This is a great example of Thought Control used by cults whenever they’re confronted with criticism.

#you might notice that there are a lot of similarities between cult techniques and those of abusive partners#and that is an important thing to be aware of

yah that goes in the post

The creator of the BITE Model considers abusive relationships to be two-person cults.

and entire nations can be cults, too

There’s a podcast I listen to sometimes that is run by two people who used to be in cults and they interview other cult survivors about the cult they were a part of. It is called “Was I In a Cult?” Part of what they talk about is redefining cults to include more than just groups, but families and other relationships as well.

So I recently saw "See How They Run" (I enjoyed it) and it got me thinking about moves that "Know What They Are". Famous examples being Scream and Cabin in the Woods. And I was trying to make a list of films I think are like that and realized my personal list wasn't that long so I'm curious if other people have good examples?

the other day i started writing an office romance but i quickly remembered that i have no idea what working in an office is like

as opposed to your vast personal expertise in romance?

Some of this you may already know, so I apologize if this is unhelpful. But I think it really depends on the nature of the job. I have an office job, but I only leave my desk when I need to ask someone a question who isn’t immediately around me. We are split up by department but we have these like half cubicle things so when a conversation is happening you can kind of hear what it’s about and sometimes you can poke your head up and join in if you have an answer to the problem, or they’re talking tv or movies or books or what have you and you share the interest, sometimes it doesn’t concern you so you tune it out. You get to know people by physically leaving your desk to ask them a question about a project and if they have personalized their desk/ cubicle/ office at all you can ask them about it. Mondays you ask about the weekend. Fridays you ask about plans for the weekend. Some companies have happy hour. My company does that and a hiking club and the occasional game night. We also have a service committee for giving back to the community that employees can partake in. I think my company also has a Fantasy Football thing going on. Idk, a group of my coworkers mentioned needing another person in our last company wide meeting. All these help you to get to know your coworkers a bit more outside of work so we are able to have some fun at the office and enjoy coming to work since we enjoy the company of our coworkers. My company also values work/life balance so a lot of people are gone from the office by 5, some start leaving at 4. They really don’t care when you come in or when you leave as long as you get your work done. If you have a schedule you like better than 8-5 you are free to do that. Some do 9-6, I know someone who does 5am-2pm. I know I’m very fortunate to work for a company that is values their employees and wants them to have happy and healthy lives. We have 1 on 1s with or managers every two weeks to make sure we are happy, if any problems have come it, how can those problems be addressed, do you want further education or training in something, how can we help you in your career growth. And at least with my department, any answer you give is met with compassion and without judgement. We have separate teams, but don’t compete with each other like in some companies since we know if we all succeed at our job that means more business and work for everyone. I don’t know what sort of office environment you are going for, but this is a bit of what mine looks like. Also,

My parents had a workplace romance! So the company they worked for at this time is vastly different than my office. It’s also 30+ years in the past. But this is a real life take on an office romance if that helps, too.

I’ve told my mom that her and my dad’s story plays out a bit like a romcom. My dad interrupted my mom’s interview to ask his boss for a pen so he could get a glimpse of her. They got to know each other as professionals. My mom had a crush on him from the get go and she knew he was a good guy based off of how he talked to people of the phone. He never raised his voice, never got upset with anyone, really had and still has the patience of a saint. She was an administrative assistant so she was always going around to desks bringing people things and people would bring her things, so she knew and talked with a ton of people at the office. She always liked how my dad treated her, and not everyone at the office treated her well. They became friends and would hang out outside of work. Then my dad told my mom he was leaving the company and moving to another state. My mom was devastated. This was a corporate job with a non compete clause so my dad was escorted off the premises the same day. He was allowed back to clean out his desk but that was it. As my mom tells it, she was on the elevator to leave for the day as my dad was there cleaning out his desk. He got to the elevator, pulled her off, kissed her, she got back on the elevator, and after the doors closed one of the ladies on the elevator who was also her friend was like, “you got something you want to tell us?” My mom just smiled and said, “Nope” Fast forward a year, my dad calls my mom out of the blue asking for help with a hotel reservation. My mom says, “why can’t your assistant do that?” And he replied with, “I’m interviewing with the boss to come back to the company.” My mom was so happy and excited. She was like, “Absolutely, I’ve got you! While your here would you have time to grab dinner with me?” I forget the answer but she made the reservation and when my dad came back to the company, they started dating in secret due to company policy. But everywhere they went they saw their coworkers! Eventually, they started to tell people they were dating and my mom may have had to change departments but then when they went out, they never saw their coworkers. When my dad proposed he wanted to get married the next weekend. My mom said, “Hold up, I need a little more time than that.” They eloped a month later. Friends and family were upset cause they had wanted to be there for them, but my parents didn’t care. They were happy. They both admit it hasn’t been without it’s trials, but 31 years later, they are still happily married. My dad loves when my mom comes on convention trips with him and he’s always sad if she’s not able to. My mom changed careers while I was in college and became a real estate agent. She got so busy she and my dad weren’t seeing much of each other. So, my dad went to school to get his real estate license to help her out so they could spend more time together.

I've made a shopping list, I'll be making these this weekend.

American cider is essentially cloudy apple juice... I wonder if I could make these in NZ/Aotearoa...

Yeah, just get unfiltered apple juice.

I..b-- wh-- j--- NO??!?!?!

I mean -- WHAT?

That's like saying "ghee is essentially melted butter"

Or that "spaghetti sauce is essentially crushed tomatoes"

Look, I'm not gonna try to explain it. I've had the argument before.

Here in the USA, we had this thing called prohibition. It was dumb, and people died, and everybody hated it, but basically it changed our dialect and we never recovered and we're all bad with alcohol and cider just means unfiltered apple juice unless it's "hard cider" in which case you have to be 21 years old or older to buy it.

Judge us if you wish, but don't put booze in your cookies biscuits, they'll be dry and sad.

It wrinkles my brain that Jupiter’s moon Europa has oceans that are sixty miles deep, while Earth’s oceans only reach seven miles deep at most. I’m willing to bet good money that there’s life in Europa’s oceans. Like five bucks. You hear me, NASA? I bet you five bucks that there’s life on Europa… Now that there’s money and reputation on the line, I bet they send a mission there real quick.

I have no idea when this was originally posted, but NASA is working on their Europa mission RIGHT NOW to look for alien life! But get this, they theorize that because of the depth, gravity, and composition of the oceans, any organisms that lived there would be waaay bigger than aquatic life on Earth. So far everything’s going well with regards to their Europa mission so they should have a spacecraft on its way to look for giant sea monsters in space in only a few years. (The planned date is in the early 2020s.)

Looks like my negotiations worked. You’re welcome, humanity.

I’ve never been gripped with such cold terror and pure delight in my LIFE

explaining to an 18th century sailor that we’re looking for sea monsters in space. 

As someone who has personally had to take those calls, they do matter. It just doesn’t matter what you say in the call: the only way your calls actually reach the politician is a tally sheet of each call received on different topics. End of the day/week, the politician gets told “you had X many calls about people wanting you to do this, Y many calls about people wanting you to do this, etc.”

Individual calls matter little, but if they get tons of calls on one topic then they take it seriously. The example above was probably during a time where the office was flooded with so many calls at once that they took the phones off the hook, which actually means that calls are working especially well. When the phones are blowing up, everyone in the office notices.

The best call to your representative does not involve you making an impassioned and well-argued case, because you’re probably talking to an intern. The most effective call you can make takes 15 seconds: “I am from [place in your district] and I am very pissed about [topic].”

OI. PEOPLE IN THE THREAD. CAN WE REBLOG THIS VERSION PLEASE. DON'T STOP MAKING CALLS.

But also as another person further up says, don't let your activism start and stop with phone calls either.

Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters

Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.

As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.

Deaf Characters:

Deaf characters masterpost

Deaf dialogue thread

Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)

A deaf author’s advice on deaf characters

Dialogue between deaf characters

Mute Characters

Life as a Mute

My Silent Summer:  Life as a Mute

What It’s Like Being Mute

21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute

I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!

Blind Characters:

The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.

@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.

The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.

An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.

And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.

Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye

4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye

Learning to Live With One Eye

Adapting to the Loss of an Eye

Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision

Monocular Depth Perception

Deaf-Blind Characters

What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?

Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights

Deaf and Blind by 30

Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)

Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)

A Day of a Deaf Blind Person

Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind

How the Deaf-Blind Communicate

Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind

Raising a DeafBlind Baby

If you have any more resources to add, let me know!  I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.

I hope this helps, and happy writing!  <3

Updated with more resources, specifically for characters who are blind in one eye.

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

They existed *before beetles*

Why is this sad? Why am I sad?

https://xkcd.com/1259/

This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.

(my own photos)

Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.

Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.

You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:



Without spoilers, I want to say one thing about Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and the whole Ghostbusters franchise: it was made for the autistic community by an autistic person, aka Dan Aykroyd and it shows. It comes across so beautifully in writing and on screen.

Let me explain: the movie came about as a direct result of Dan Aykroyd's hyperfixation and special interest in the paranormal, he's said so himself many times. Aykroyd wrote Ray Stantz as he would embody himself on screen. He's said that. Ray is an extension of himself. Therefore, and naturally, Ray is autistic.

Unlike other depictions of autistic people in media, Ray comes across as likeable and honest. He reads well as a character without diminishing his autistic traits; he's witty, bubbly and excitable about his hyperfixation in parapsychology.

Ray is slightly clumsy, optimistic and slightly dim sometimes. He's the autistic person that is never depicted in media. He doesn't show the stereotypical traits but he is so evidently still autistic. He lacks eye contact and is quite stiff in his motor movements, and his voice is often monotone. But he expresses his excitement through his movements and facial expressions all the same.

And Egon, by extension of that, is a character that a lot of people on the Autism Spectrum relate to - myself heavily included. He portrays a lot of autistic traits but he, also, doesn't come across as unlikeable. He's grounded, well-versed, understands emotions and is shown to be empathetic - even when he doesn't overly understand social cues (for example, when he's comforting Janine in the first movie).

Egon is shown to have a strong connection and relationship with his colleagues and friends, he's witty and uses playful humour in social situations. He understands sarcasm and he's reserved in his use of it. He's adverse to physical touch but he does use it when needed. He's exactly the same as I am. And that's why I hold him so close to my heart.

The connection between Ray and Egon was always really special; they bounced off of one another and finished one another's thoughts. They were able to communicate with each other in good flow always appeared to be on the same wavelength. This is common in a lot of neurodivergent people; we are able to connect in a way that we can't with neurotypicals.

What Afterlife did was - SPOILERS FOR AFTERLIFE FROM HERE ON IN - give us a fresh outlook on autism through Phoebe. Though it is not stated she is autistic, it is evident that she may be on the spectrum. Phoebe's mum describes her as suffering from "bad co-ordination", and is constantly trying to help her open up and converse with people, which her brother says is "bad advice". This sort of comment is something that auties have heard our entire lives. Seeing Phoebe on screen felt like looking into a mirror into my life and it was so, so important.

Phoebe is shown to be a fantastic scientist, which is depicted as her special interest, and is shown to struggle in other subjects and with other issues. She is shown to be well-versed and straight-forward, just like her Grandfather. Phoebe says that she "exhibits emotions differently" to other people but feels them all the same - which is a common misunderstanding with autistic people.

I think what is also incredible about Afterlife is that everyone is aware of Phoebe's struggles, but she's labeled as a "gifted, intelligent kid" by Paul Rudd's character - even after her mum just listed all the things she struggles with. That's because even now - in 2021 - a female exhibiting all of these traits is unlikely to be diagnosed until later in life. Because autistic traits in women aren't shown to be an issue to people because we know how to mask. Phoebe is still developing into a young person, and her mum dismisses these issues she has because she is intelligent. That's a real issue.

Egon, on the other hand, as a person with the exact same traits, was labeled as a weirdo and outcast. That's a whole other issue.

And it was all so well-written. I love this franchise so much.

Overall, Ghostbusters is the perfect autism representation and I will NEVER shut up about it.

All three of these characters are so well loved, even by neurotypical people, and it's because they're a very raw and very real depiction of an autistic person written by an autistic person. Autism was less understood in the 1980's, so it's no surprise that it wasn't explicitly stated, but I think that adds to the magic. I think it's wonderful that autistic people like me are able to connect with these characters in a way that allistic people never could. That's what makes Ghostbusters such a beautiful franchise for people on the Spectrum.

And we owe it all to Dan Aykroyd and his hyperfixation all those years ago.

Are fedoras really that bad?

YES YES THEY ARE

voidethered:

wait, does that mean?

oh boy…….

Luckily, this nonsense doesn’t work on girls.

Observe…

IT’S GOTTEN BETTER!

This post is immaculate

It can’t be true.

And it can’t possibly work on motorcycle helmets.

I must test it.

Nothing happening so far…

HOLY SHIT IT WORKS

What in the world?

Oh why not? This should be interesting.

Here we go!

Were all mad here in Underland!

What the hell! Never Again!

… Actually …

One more time.

Alright, I gotta try this!

Can’t be that bad!

….

…oh my god…

ask-gmodsfmrocks:

This just gets better and better

This is one of my favourite things to look at

holy shit this stuff is back

The Gravity Falls one though

i wonder if it works for flower crowns?

here goes nothin-

w HAT THE

DID I JUST-

WHAT THE FUCK

Okay Clearly something is up.

Hmm… I wonder

I’m sure nothing could possibly…

HOLY SHIT

IT GOT BETTER

I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING SO LONG FOR THIS POST OH MY GOD!!!

I wonder what happens when you wear 8 of these at once…

Never not reblog

IT’S ON MY DASH. ACTUALLY ON MY DASH.

Oh my God, there are so many new ones

Friggin, yis

Always reblog.

IT HAS EVOLVED

The legend marches on…

BEWARE THE MAGIC OF HATS

JDNXHSBSBF

I T ‘ S  B A C K 

a classic meme from when the world was less of a tire fire

ITS ON MY BLOG YESSSS

THIS IS WONDERFUL.

time to bring back outdated memes…

what could possibly go wrong?

eww, it smells like fuckboi

welp, down this rabbit hole we go…

nothing’s happeni-

WTF-

Oh boy, this meme

I wonder if this would work with a wolf hat.

May as well try it.

Please don’t be awful, please don’t be awful, please don’t b-

get wet 4 furry

This is obviously fake

Look, I’ll prove it

Y’all are just acting

Watch and learn

WTFFFFFF

Should…… should I…….

DO IT!

Whelp guess I gotta put on the hat now

Can’t be that bad, I mean what’s the worst a squid hat can do to m-

I̖̝̪̤̠̋͞ ̛̹̱̮̳̭̓̂͑ͫ͐̎ͯ͗͝͡H͇̠͊́̚A̛̓̓҉͙̠V͍̌̏͂ͣͨͭͧ̉́E̸͙̭̣͓̓ͨͥ̿ ̽͗͗ͮ͊ͬͩͥ̚҉̪̗̝̘̟́̕A̴̴̙̝̬̪̞͂ͤͩ̍W͚̣͆ͬỎ̫̝̟͖̝͇ͥ͛ͮ͋K̨̖͓͉̺̫͉̀͗ͪ̊͌̉E͚̲̩̪̘̠͋̈͞N͉͓͕̗̱͒̔ͨͤ͛̓̂ͧ

World Heritage Post

I’ve always wanted to show this to @theforwardslash

IT WAS A CULTURAL RESET. A CULTURAL RESET. 

HAHAH

Someone call UNESCO this dinosaur of a post needs to be protected

I’m so glad it’s back to normal after that weird glitch from 2020

THIS POST HAS CROSSED MY DASH SO MANY TIMES AAAAAAAAA

I FOUND IT AGAIN

FUCKING LOVE THIS POST!! HAT TIME!!!

Precisely *how* old is this post??

Date of origin: 7:17 am, January 26th, 2014

reblogging this for safekeeping.

this is a legendary post

Omg yesssss

its back!

The sign of high quality is the fact the book was banned by the government. Trash literature NEVER EVER had any troubles with the law.

FARENHEIT 451 IS ON THE BANNED BOOKS LIST??? IT’S LITERALLY ABOUT THE SOCIETAL DANGERS OF BANNING/OUTLAWING/BURNING BOOKS ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

That’s the reason it’s on the bloody list.

BECAUSE IT’S ABOUT HOW BANNING AND BURNING BOOKS IS WRONG.

HERE’S ALL THE PDF VERSIONS I COULD FIND SINCE WE’RE ALL IN QUARANTINE AND WE CAN’T PHYSICALLY GET THE BOOKS WE DON’T HAVE

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Beloved

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (this was the only free version I could find, and it’s a downloadable thing, so do so with caution)

The Call of the Wild

Catch-22 (it was either this version or one where the entire thing was in comic sans font)

The Catcher in the Rye

Fahrenheit 451

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Gone With the Wind

The Grapes of Wrath

The Great Gatsby

Howl

In Cold Blood

Invisible Man

The Jungle (personally I don’t like this formatting, but the site doesn’t look sketchy so…) - there’s also this which is the proper book format in a pdf, but it’s directly photocopied so it might be hard to read some of the print

Leaves of Grass

Moby Dick

Native Son

Our Bodies, Ourselves (we learned about this one in APUSH!)

The Red Badge of Courage

The Scarlet Letter

COULD NOT FIND Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (the ebook is 47 fucking dollars??? and i can’t even find sketchy websites that’ll let me download a pdf. if anyone manages to find a link, lmk please)

Stranger in a Strange Land

A Streetcar Named Desire

Their Eyes Were Watching God

To Kill a Mockingbird

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Where the Wild Things Are (this is a slideshow!!!! how fun)

COULD NOT FIND The Words of Cesar Chavez (however I did manage to download the first 71 pages of the book from EBSCO and I put it here but I couldn’t get the rest. sorry y’all)

rebloggan 4 links

I do my best to live by these words…

Wow! At some of the banned books! Insane!

Reblogging for those links.

I’m keeping this, that’s amazing

[yoink!]

I’m ganking this from you… annnnnnd downloading these .pdfs

I still need to do that

Why In the actual fuck is call of the wild banned it was a great book! I love it

This is heart wrenching.

Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) has been suffering from Dementia for years. She’s lots most of her money, the home she loved and there is a fight for her conservatorship

Her sister has set up a GoFundMe site for her. The link is at the very bottom of this post. Please share this information.

Read the article below and please donate if you can. Even a couple dollars will help.

https://www.al.com/life/2021/08/nichelle-nichols-star-treks-lt-uhura-faces-heartbreaking-conservatorship-fight.html

https://gofund.me/376980a8

Y’all went hard for Free Brittany over conservatorship now do the same for Nichelle

So I read the entire thing, and this one is slightly more complex than “dad is abusive conservator.” So I’m going to lay out here what’s going on:

1) Nichelle has dementia.

2) In 2010, this guy approached her all “hey so I want to make this movie with you as a costar, very good contract, please accept.”

3) she did.

4) he was lying.

5) during the next several years he moved onto her property and became a squatter, billing all his utilities and expenses to Nichelle. In other words, she’s paying for the privilege of him using her property.

6) during this time he also managed to get her to give him power of attorney over both financial AND MEDICAL decisions. Much of her savings has just kind of vanished, and it seems likely he’s been leeching it away.

Okay. So, recap: this guy is NOT a conservator. He got power of attorney, which is actually a very good and useful thing when appropriately applied. (Basically, it means if you become incapacitated you’ve already selected a person to handle certain kinds of affairs for you.) In this case, however, it’s pretty clear POA is being abused and seriously misused.

7) Nichelle’s son managed to become her conservator, with the goal of kicking the deadbeat off the property and ensuring his mom has access to her hard-earned funds so she can be old with dignity. (In a perfect world, this is how conservatorship would always be used. His interest is in protecting the person, not making a profit.) He has become her primary caretaker.

I don’t know how advanced Nichelle’s dementia is, but I can tell you from experience that as the disease progresses, being a caretaker can become a full-time job, and that, yes—this is one of those extremely limited cases where conservatorship might actually be a good idea. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s (not all dementia is caused by Alzheimer’s, but all cases of Alzheimer’s are dementia), and nearly burned down the house once because she turned on the stove, forgot she’d turned it on, and went to take a nap. Having someone of sound mind who can make arrangements for things like appropriate in-home care so this doesn’t happen is deeply important.

8) deadbeat is fighting to get conservatorship removed—and possibly reassigned to himself. That part is a little less clear. What is clear is that he does not have Nichelle’s best interests at heart.

9) this fundraiser is to help with legal fees to get deadbeat off the property and help assist Nichelle and her son in securing what’s left of her assets.

So just so we’re clear: in this case we are actually fighting FOR a conservatorship. However, this conservatorship is to protect someone with an actual medical diagnosis that means she has diminished mental capacity to care for herself (literally, that’s what dementia is: loss of memory and cognition on a scale significant enough to interfere with daily life), and to ensure that what is hers, REMAINS hers.

Reblogging this version for the commentary, since people seem to be unclear about the situation.