Avatar

Red

@rebelforever01

I’m just an adorable little weirdo with a bit of asshole to balance things out.
26, non-binary bi, they/them

my friend asked me to pretend to be her boyfriend because her parents are homophobic af but they ended up hating me so much that they were glad when she said she was gay task failed successfully

okay so

  • be a goth. conservative christian parents don't approve of goth men. show up to their house wearing all kinds of satanic symbols if you can
  • know more about religion than the parents. they'll try to introduce you to christianity because you don't exactly look like a christian but your dad's an ex priest and has a phd in theology so *cracks knuckles* you'll correct them on every little mistake they make
  • call your fake girlfriend every annoying petname under the sun. i'm talking about babu, shmoopie, snuffleupagus. when you run out of annoying english terms of endearment call her shit like "my liver" or "my little cabbage" (actual greek terms of endearments but the parents won't know this they'll just think you're annoying :3)
  • to continue this, talk to your fake girlfriend in the most high pitched annoying voice possible but talk in your regular voice to everyone else
  • stare at her older brother's ass for just a little too long
  • have an annoying laugh. think of sybil fawlty but a stereotypical villain playing a church organ in his castle
  • let them quote bible verses to you. then ask "so when were those two destroyed for sodomy?". it's very funny to do this when judas kisses jesus, and it's even funnier when you've just corrected them over a minor mistake in church history
  • ask WHY abraham was begging for sodom. it doesn't make sense to you why a good christian man would go and beg for tha-
  • be over possessive of your fake gf (dont really do this, it's just an act)
  • go and fuck her brother in an alleyway. the parents won't know about this so it's an optional step
  • use words no one knows the meaning of. do this without realising because you always talk like that
  • just be yourself! that's enough on its own to make them despise you tbh

yes

i kissed him on the lips infront of his parents and claimed it was the usual greek greeting between men is that enough for you

Are you…. Are you secretly dating her brother OP?

yes

Avatar

I wonder why

Show up again to admit to dating the brother, but dress like a typical suburbanite and act like you've never met the parents before. Absolute power move.

asdgfgsjfh im totally doing this

want an update?

ofc you do

but i'm too tired to write all of what happened down right now so instead try to imagine the most awkward situation you've ever been in.

now multiply the awkwardness by 100

first of all i'm just gonna show the difference in what i was wearing

an example of what i would wear as my friend's fake bf:

and as my boyfriend's actual bf:

when my bf and i showed up his dad did such a double take

sooo yeah my bf told his parents he's gay, they looked surprised but told him it was fine... then they shared a look of pure horror (seriously, it was like they had just found out they're in the matrix) and said

"and uh. why is...he here?"

i went and introduced myself like we had never met before and said i was their son's boyfriend

:3

i've never seen two people look more angry before but they weren't gonna say anything because they had other family members over

the family members who had never met me before and therefore knew nothing about the fake relationship thing started asking me what faith i am. i said i was raised protestant, though i'm not very religious now, but that's something i want to change. i had never mentioned anything about being a protestant before and i had said several times that my family was greek orthodox but gaslight gatekeep girlboss

aaaand then the awkwardness began. those were probably the most awkward minutes of my life (we didn't stay for long because i thought the dad was gonna hit me [he probably was. i saw him clenching his fists several times]) and i don't think anyone has ever looked at me with such murderous intent as my bf's parents

update two electric boogaloo ig

i have a girlfriend now🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

“It's taboo to admit that you're lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven't left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you're not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are. A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn't transition well to adult life, that you'd fall right through the cracks. And look at you now, it's happening.”

I sat with a crying second grader today. (The age range is outside my wheelhouse but I was the most convenient adult.) He was crying, the other adults said, because his brother took a phone he was playing on. “Phone addicted,” everybody said. “If he would get up and play games with the other kids he wouldn’t be crying.”

He told me everyone lets his brother take things from him because his brother is younger, and doesn’t know better. He told me he doesn’t want to play because he’s tired, he has too many extracurriculars this summer and can’t get good sleep because “everyone in my camper is so loud when I’m trying to sleep.” He’s exhausted and only eight. His mom’s an acquaintance and told me she and the kid’s father are going through a separation — mom and four kids left the house to stay in a camper.

But people will seriously not listen to kids crying over seemingly minor things because on the surface it looks like a tantrum. If kids are given the space to articulate themselves they often will.

I’ve found that if a child is capable of having a conversation (that is, old enough to speak and express themselves, not injured or upset so badly that they literally cannot stop crying, and not behaving violently), then 90% of the time their reason for being upset is legitimate, or at least understandable.

Please remember that this also applies to teenagers and preteens, they might be acting like a knowitall who doesn’t give a shit, or a first class jerk, but chances are fair they feel like shit for one reason or another and adults just chalk it up to teenage angst instead

Almost every time you see someone, child, teen, or adult, who is having some emotional meltdown over something minor, it's a "straw that broke the camels back" situation.

Kids and teens may have bigger reactions or it may take less to overwhelm them, but it's important to remember that they are still people and it's hard being a people.

I’d like to tell you a little story today about why a lot of problems need social workers, not cops.

a long long time ago…like 2010, I worked 2nd shift (2pm-10pm) in a homeless shelter. I worked on a floor specifically for men with addiction and mental health problems. For most of the shift, I was the only staff working. Most of the time, the job was chill to the point of being boring. My job was to do the little things that needed doing, and be always ready to respond if shit went down. Most of the time, nothing much happened.

So one day I’m sitting at my little desk, trying to get up the motivation to organize the food pantry a little bit, and I head SCREAMING.

By the time I’m on my feet, one of the residents was in view. Dude was 6ft 4, with a shaved head, and a SOLID build. He was screaming down the hall, and in his raised fist he had, I shit you not, a blood-covered meat cleaver. He was spattered in blood all over. I knew the man- I knew all the residents. He mostly kept to himself. Sometimes he’d talk to me about his hallucinations and paranoid delusions. (no question these ones were delusions, kids. Man eating pythons can not fit in a half inch radiator pipe.) He had a history of getting pretty worked up.

Switch the camera around 180 degrees. I was 120 lbs and 5ft 4 on a good day, and all by my self. Totally unarmed.

Ask yourself- what would an armed cop do in that situation- alone, with a huge man running at them with a huge bloody knife?

I’m not gonna pretend for one second that my fight and flight instincts didn’t kick in. The ancient parts of my brain that exist to protect me from danger by fleeing or killing something saw this and screamed a great big NOPE.

But by this point I had like 8 years of other training, to. De-escalation training. Training on keeping a cool head in a scary situation. Training that reminded me that I was responsible for the safety of the other 17 men who called this floor their home.

Training that told me that this man was my responsibility, not my enemy.

In short, the opposite of what many police departments train their officers in. They are trained to view people as hostile, to treat their beat like a war zone. To act immediately. I wont say none of them have de-escalation training, but I will say it’s a bit of a useless add-on when they’re taught to go with their gut feeling of whether or not a situation is dangerous.

Because my gut sure as hell perceived a danger.

Anyways, I didn’t run, and I didn’t attack. I rooted my feet and I asked him what was going on.

That was when I saw that he was weeping. He was terrified.

He had bought a new cooking knife off the tv- he liked cooking, and had been looking at it. But one of the side effects of his meds made him clumsy, and he’d dropped it. He’d sliced open the back of his knee, where there’s a huge vein or artery or something- and was bleeding a LOT. 

He was understandably alarmed at the river-like quantity of blood gushing out of him, and had run to the nearest help- me.

In his rush and his fear, he’d just forgotten to put the damn knife down.

The other residents had, thankfully, all stayed in their rooms, because a month before I’d got on several people’s cases for coming out to defend me- with the very best of intentions- during a previous incident. Their motives were good, but de-escalating a situation when other people are ready to throw hands is WAY harder. I’d told them to keep their buts in their rooms unless I actually called for help, and God bless them, every single one of them had done it.

This is the point when I called for help. One of the residents got the first aid kit. One called an ambulance. One gave me the literal shirt off his back because our damn first aid kit didn’t have a tourniquet so we ripped the shirt up to make one.

We helped calm the poor injured guy down, and he got a few stitches, and everybody was proud of how we’d come together to help each other out.

Nobody was hurt beyond that one initial injury. Nobody was traumatized. If anything, the guy who’d been hurt was happier, more engaged with the rest of us, having seen that everyone here would take care of him when he was in need. He hadn’t had much care given to him in his life.

So when you see meme’s of “lol what are those social workers gonna do NOW huh?” please remember that 1) we’ve been out here doing this work ANYWAYS and 2) We’ve been doing it unarmed and level headed, which is better than the cops.

Now, does social work ALSO need reform? Does social work ALSO contain racism and ableism and every other social evil? You bet! Just look at…like anything to do with CPS to look at how these systems break down.

But do not use social workers de-escalation training as some kind of “gotcha” to prove we need armed and militant enforcers on every damn corner. And please don’t let others do it, either.

A better way is possible.

We spend so much time arguing about corsets when we could be spreading the gospel of "women's clothes DID used to have pockets and they were F*CKING HUGE and we should bring them back"

Avatar

Morticia is so touched

The weirdly ironic thing about this movie is that they all would’ve totally loved this bitch if she’s been honest from the start. Like, I can perfectly see her casually mentioning that she’s a black widow and Morticia being like, “Oh really?” before making a dramatic exit, only to return a few hours later with a massive dossier off potential targets and an engraved dagger.

listen to me. we need to make college free. I’m tired of having to repeatedly explain to other adults how to be appropriately skeptical of scientific research and how to tell if something is peer reviewed or even real.

Hey fun fact, where I live it used to be free, but then the government slapped a price tag on it because “too many people were going to college”.

Margaret thatcher and Ronald Reagan’a graves are a gender neutral bathroom