im just a worm

thinkin about the chosen one story told from the pov of the person standing next to them again. thinkin about the one who has to stand by and watch the chosen one become a weapon, a sacrifice, an offering to the machinations of plot and can do nothing but make sure they’re fed and rested and soothe them when they wake up screaming from nightmares. thinkin about the fierce devotion that has to exist to follow someone to the end of the world just so they don’t have to die alone. thinkin about the terror they’d feel every step of the journey knowing it’s not their place to change how the story plays out. thinkin thinkin thinkin.

Fuck it, post lamb stew slow cooker recipe

How high was I last night?

How much lamb stew did I want to make??

1,814¾ lbs of Lamb????

>960 cups beef broth >2 bay leaves

the unfathomable power of bay leaf

I think one of the most profound forms of love is "I'll try that, for you. I may not like it, but I'll try it."

It's a confused middle-aged man in a pottery class, whose daughter is helping him with his clay's plasticity. It's a kid scrunching up their brow while listening to their mom's favorite music, trying to figure out why she likes it. It's a girlfriend who says "Yes, I'll go with you" and her girlfriend cheering and buying a second ticket for a con. It's a friend half dragging another friend through an aquarium, the one being dragged laughing and calling out "Wait, wait, I know we're here for the exhibit, but I haven't been here! Slow down!"

It's being willing to spend some of your time trying something new because it makes someone you love happy.

Someone: yeah it was so sad when this character died

Me, who’s already read 15 fix-it fics and no longer can tell the difference between canon and fanon: when they what

#they are unionizing

Will Byers & Lucas Sinclair STRANGER THINGS (2016)

+ bonus:

+ sad bonus:

we were the liminal kids. alive before the internet, just long enough we remember when things really were different.

when i work in preschools, the hand signal kids make for phone is a flat palm, their fingers like brackets. i still make the pinky-and-thumb octave stretch when i "pick up" to respond to them.

the symbol to save a file is a floppy disc. the other day while cleaning out my parents' house, i found a collection of over a hundred CDs, my mom's handwriting on each of them. first day of kindergarten. playlist for beach trip '94. i don't have a device that can play any of these anymore - none of my electronics are compatible. there are pieces of my childhood buried under these, and i cannot access them. but they do exist, which feels special.

my siblings and i recently spent hours digitizing our family's photos as a present for my mom's birthday. there's a year where the pictures just. stop. cameras on phones got to be too good. it didn't make sense to keep getting them developed. and there are a quite a few years that are lost to us. when we were younger, mementos were lost to floods. and again, while i was in middle school, google drive wasn't "a thing". somewhere out there, there are lost memories on dead laptops. which is to say - i lost it to the flood twice, kind of.

when i teach undergrad, i always feel kind of slapped-in-the-face. they're over 18, and they don't remember a classroom without laptops. i remember when my school put in the first smartboard, and how it was a huge privilege. i used the word walkman once, and had to explain myself. we are only separated by a decade. it feels like we are separated by so much more than that.

and something about ... being half-in half-out of the world after. it marks you. i don't know why. but "real adults" see us as lost children, even though many of us are old enough to have a mortgage. my little sister grew up with more access to the internet than i did - and she's only got 4 years of difference. i know how to write cursive, and i actually think it's good practice for kids to learn too - it helps their motor development. but i also know they have to be able to touch-type way faster than was ever required from me.

in between, i guess. i still like to hand-write most things, even though typing is way faster and more accessible for me. i still wear a pj shirt from when i was like 18. i don't really understand how to operate my parents' smart tv. the other day when i got seriously injured, i used hey siri to call my brother. but if you asked me - honestly, i prefer calling to texting. a life in anachronisms. in being a little out-of-phase. never quite in synchronicity.

I imagine that the last generation to really feel this way, to really feel a before-and-after kind of world, was at the last turn of the century, which had 3 huge, life-changing inventions happen all at once.

In 1890, everybody rode horses, used candles to see at night, and communicated through letters.

By the 1920s (only 30 years later!), everybody had automobiles (or access to another form of 'self-driving' transportation like busses or trams) and nobody had horses. Nearly everyone had electricity in their houses. Nearly everyone had a telephone, or access to one.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine growing up, being taught by your parents all about how to ride horses and care for them and hitch them to a wagon, only to...not ever use that knowledge as an adult, because you have a car? Can you imagine learning how to make candles, finally getting good enough at it to be useful to your family as a teenager, only to flick a switch to turn on a light bulb as an adult?

I feel like that last huge change in technology is the same thing we are going through. I know how to read a paper map. I will never need to use this knowledge. But it's still in there; including the many patient hours my mother spent teaching me, and a lot of fond memories I have of her doing it. I know how to research a topic in a paper library, with actual books. Pretty sure I will never do that again. I memorize phone numbers, 'just in case'. In case what? The automobile (smartphone) gets un-invented? But I hold that knowledge in my head. It's there. It's part of me.

I wish I could speak to my great-great-grandmother, who had her first baby in 1900. To ask her, if what Millennials now are going through is what it was like for her Centennial generation. The absolute whiplash, from one way of life to another.

Kids born in 1890 knew how to make candles, and kids born in 1920 could not fathom why you would need to know this.

so embarrassing when i forget im checking someone's blog and i start scrolling through and liking and reblogging shit as if it's just my dash. it feels like wandering into someone else's apartment and not noticing and making myself lunch

reblog if i can wander into your apartment (blog) and make myself lunch (like and reblog as if it's my dash)

— martyr or hero, he has always been a tragedy // p.s.

Anne Carson (2009)

Arthur S. Way (1898)

George Theodoridis (2010)

Ian C. Johnston (2010)

E.P. Coleridge (1910)

Theodore Alois Buckley (1892)

John Peck, Frank Nisetich (1995)

R. Potter (1906)

M. L. West (1987)

William Arrowsmith (1958)

Philip Vellacott (1972)

Michael Wodhull (1782)

Kenneth McLeish (1997)

David Kovacs (2002)

Andrew Wilson (1993)

Euripides - Original (408 BCE)

percy at twelve years old, relaxing at the sound of his mom's voice. percy at twelve years old, looking forward to trips to montauk so he can spend quality time with his mom. percy at twelve years old, getting attacked by a minotaur and, despite everything in his body screaming at him to get to safety, standing his ground so he can fight alongside his mom. percy at tweleve years old, avenging his mom with no training after watching the minotuar murder her right in front of him. percy at tweleve years old, dragging an unconscious grover to the border while sobbing and calling out for his mom even though he thinks she's dead. percy at twelve years old, summoning a blue coke to honor his mom's memory. percy at twelve years old, going on a quest with the sole purpose of bringing his mom back if it's the last thing he does. percy at twelve years old, encountering various life-thretening events becsuse of his godly heritage but choosing to live in the real world instead of at a camp designed to train him and keep him alive anyway because he loves his mom.

vs.

percy at seventeen years old, arriving in manhattan and sprinting toward the apartment as soon as he can. percy at seventeen years old, zooming past people on the street while sobbing because he misses his mom more than anything. percy at seventeen years old, not even making it into the living room before engulfing his mom in a hug for the first time in months. percy at seventeen years old, cuddling up against his mom and napping in her arms on the couch like he's four. percy at seventeen years old, following his mom to the grocery store, helping her out at work, and straight up refusing to leave her side for days weeks if he can help it because he wants to make up for all of the time he's lost with her.

The Barbie movie really said. Yes you will grow up and childhood wonder will vanish. Yes you will grow up and learn to hate yourself, your body, your awkwardness. Yes you will grow up and lose your confidence and certainty and sense of purpose. Yes you will grow up and the world will seem a bleaker, lonelier place every day, and society will seem bleaker and lonelier every day, and you won’t understand what went wrong in the span of just a few years, what took you from a happy and secure young girl to a sad, uncertain, scared grown woman.

And yet. You will learn to find beauty again. You will find joy in not having a purpose, in building a purpose for yourself. You will find beauty in connection, with the people and the world around you. You will learn to love signs of ageing as proof of a life well lived, of experience and happiness. You will take that little girl by the hand and tell her “I know, this isn’t what you thought it would be, but it’s real. Let me show you how beautiful it can be.”

someone probably said this already but in spiderverse i think it's interesting how when pavitr was first introduced everyone thought something bad was gonna happen to him bc of how confident and optimistic he was. and then in the actual movie we see that something bad was supposed to happen to him (police chief dying!) but it doesn't! miles stops it! and miguel berates miles for this, says it's going to cause the universe to collapse or whatever.

there's this idea that tragedy is inherent to spidermans growth, and while it's true that some spiderpeople learn important lessons through loss, no one stops to ask, is it really necessary? yeah, maybe the chief was supposed to die. but why does spiderman have to be formed through tragedy? why do we (as heroes) have to let people die? pavitr didn't lose anyone, and he's still a good spiderman! maybe, if he doesn't suffer, he'll end up better off for it!

so while miguel is arguing for all this big picture stuff about saving the multiverse he's lost sight of what it really means to be a spiderman, he's not looking out for the real individual people. yeah it's just one person who would die, but that one person means something to someone. shrugging and saying "stuff just sucks sometimes, we can't do anything about it" is the opposite of what superheroes do. pretty obviously, miles arc is also a reflection of the struggles people face in real life, working within unequal systems, where it's easy to shrug and say "that's just the way it is" and not ask "but why does it need be this way? can't we do something about it?"

miguel is arguing that you can't have your cake and eat it too. presumably, miles and co. are going to find a way to get around that and change things for the better (and maybe that's why miles has that line about two cakes in the advisors office!)

Look. Eddie knows he can be a little uptight about these things, but. There are rules. If you become a vampire, you don’t need to go full gothic Count Von Dickhead or whatever, but you absolutely cannot just wander around in a puffy vest and light-wash jeans. 

“Why not?” says Steve. He’s leaning back in an armchair, sipping on a bloodbag like it’s a goddamn juicebox. “What, are the vampire police going to arrest me?” 

He pauses. “Wait. There aren’t vampire police, are there?”

“No,” says Eddie. “Probably not. I don’t know. But there are standards which you are refusing to uphold, Steven.”

the hell is he making in there

don't forget. you're entitled to the full half hour of your fifteen minute break

yeah this is one of those posts where you read it, scroll down, then go wait shit thats fucking hilarious and scroll back up to reblog

steve’s hair is so funny to me because it’s presented in the show as something he actively spends time on and styles. he has a whole little routine!!

and yet, steve gets drenched multiple times throughout the show, and in the very next scene, his hair is lovely and artistically tousled again (e.g. the russian torture scene. his hair is soaked with blood, sweat, and tears, and two seconds later, it’s dry and beautiful again.)

i get that it’s just the real life hair stylist doing this, but in the show, it’s canon that his hair just does this lmao.