save me the sunshine

Imagine having been born in 1905... And all your life it doesn't fucking stop. The Great War, the Spanish Flu, and then you go out of your mind for 7 years. Everyone is traumatised and nothing matters. Then another crash. And then the rise of fascism, and the War to end all Wars didn't and it's 1945 and you're just about still there. You may have fought or ferried the boys from Dunkirk or sabotaged the Nazi occupiers or worked in the factories and put out fires during the Blitz and you're lucky to be alive, because not all your friends made it. But you are and finally, fucking finally, it stops. It stops. You are tough as nails and you can put that strength to work into building something and you do, and people have cars and can buy icecream and you have a pension fund and the kids have money of their own and no nightmares.

I want that for us. I so want that for us. I want to be the generation that has seen fucking everything and is like a MRSA bug and unfazed and when that Cheeto finally dies, I want us to. Plant the gardens and clean the seas because we can and we want to and we remember some joy, some time of trust even when it got broken and we can say to the 20 somethings "let us show you what we can build, how it can feel."

And maybe Gen beta will take it all for granted like the boomers did, but we can give Gen Z and Alpha some peace because we, and Gen Z and Alpha have seen the Dark Times and fuck that noise.

At the start of the Pandemic, my spouse’s grandmother was in an assisted-living home, and of course they were severely locked down, because with no vaccination available and we don’t really know how it spreads and no tests and anyone over 80 is deffo gonna die…. They couldn’t take the risks. So they weren’t even allowed to leave their rooms. Staff brought meals and left them outside the door, and they left dishes outside, and that was just their life for the foreseeable future.

So we tried to make sure someone called her every day, so she would have some kind of interaction, and one time my spouse asked how she was doing, and her attitude was basically, “Yeah, this happens sometimes.”

Because that was her life. She did live through the depression, she did lose three siblings to the last pandemic. She did live through WWII, and sent a son off to Vietnam, and made a family and a household and a career while knowing one slip of a button might wipe out all life on earth. And she lived through it; she survived.

And so 2020 wasn’t the end of the world, for her. It was just another thing. Because life is made up of sunshine and rainbows and puppy dogs, AND ALSO fascists and violence and rancid millionaires living high while people starve. And when you are in the middle of the shit times, you acknowledge that they’re shit, and also that they are not exclusively shit, because they still include spring days and new flowers and people taking care of each other.

And it was just… a really helpful perspective to get. You can survive it, you can become strong enough to live to 103 despite everything, you can become a source of strength and joy for everyone around you.

Wei Wuxian | The Untamed

@carelessflower

me

Excluding the crucial fact that office jobs pay you an income….if staying home to raise children and do chores and bake bread was really so much easier and more joyful than working in an office on some objective level, why aren’t men doing it? Why aren’t they chomping at the bit to be ~leisurely house husbands~ to a working wife? Why aren’t they stepping up to depend solely on someone else’s income in exchange for round-the-clock domestic labor, if it’s really as blissful and their propaganda suggests? Curious.

Feeling rough lately.

-

He steps in and I feel myself lifted off the ground. The room spins, and I have to lock my arms around Gale’s neck to brace myself. He’s laughing, happy.

-

“Take her out,” says my mother. Haymitch and Peeta literally carry me from the room while I shout obscenities at her. They pin me down on a bed in one of the extra bedrooms until I stop fighting.

-

My mother gives me a cup of chamomile tea with a dose of sleep syrup, and my eyelids begin to droop immediately. She wraps my bad foot, and Peeta volunteers to get me to bed. I start out by leaning on his shoulder, but I’m so wobbly he just scoops me up and carries me upstairs. He tucks me in and says good night but I catch his hand and hold him there.

-

Each afternoon he carries me downstairs for a change of scenery and I unnerve everyone by turning on the television.

-

Over his shoulder, I see my mother and Prim clutching each other in the doorway.

[…]

My knees give way and he’s holding me up. As the alcohol overcomes my mind, I hear the glass bottle shatter on the floor. This seems appropriate since I have obviously lost my grip on everything.

When I wake up, I barely get to the toilet before the white liquor makes its reappearance.

[…]

I turn on the shower and stand under the warm rain for a minute before I realize I’m still in my underclothes. My mother must have just stripped off my filthy outer ones and tucked me in bed.

-

“It’s not him, Katniss! It’s a mutt!” Finnick shouts at me. “Come on!” He moves me along, half dragging, half carrying me, until I can process what he said.

-

I know it’s stopped when I feel Peeta’s hands on me, feel myself lifted from the ground and out of the jungle. But I stay eyes squeezed shut, hands over my ears, muscles too rigid to release. Peeta holds me on his lap, speaking soothing words, rocking me gently. It takes a long time before I begin to relax the iron grip on my body. And when I do, the trembling begins.

“It’s all right, Katniss,” he whispers.”

-

“We’re to get to the airstrip. Immediately,” Boggs says, lifting me to my feet with one hand. “There’s a problem.”

-

Boggs quickly examines my face, then scoops me up and jogs for the runway. Halfway there, I puke on his bulletproof vest. It’s hard to tell because he’s short of breath, but I think he sighs.

-

The others are shouting at me, but I can’t seem to respond. Strong arms lift me as I blast the head off a mutt whose claws have just grazed my ankle. I’m slammed into the ladder. Hands shoved against the rungs. Ordered to climb. My wooden, puppet limbs obey.

-

I transform into a wild animal, kicking, clawing, biting, doing whatever I can to free myself from this web of hands as the crowd pushes in. The guards lift me up above the fray, where I continue to thrash as I’m conveyed over the crush of people.

-

Home? What’s he talking about? My home’s gone. And even if it were possible to go to this imaginary place, I am too weak to move. Strangers appear. Rehydrate and feed me. Bathe and clothe me. One lifts me like a rag doll and carries me up to the roof, onto a hovercraft, and fastens me into a seat. Haymitch and Plutarch sit across from me. In a few moments, we’re airborne.

-

“She’s dead.” I clutch my middle to dull the pain. Sink down on my heels, rocking the pillow, crying. “She’s dead, you stupid cat. She’s dead.” A new sound, part crying, part singing, comes out of my body, giving voice to my despair. Buttercup begins to wail as well. No matter what I do, he won’t go. He circles me, just out of reach, as wave after wave of sobs racks my body, until eventually I fall unconscious.

[…]

Because hours later, when I come to in my bed, he’s there in the moonlight. Crouched beside me, yellow eyes alert, guarding me from the night.

-

mother suzanne really sat us down and said "there is literally nothing but yourself stopping you from overthrowing the government"

vaginal infections, utis, and extreme ph imbalances are no fucking joke. please wash your goddamn hands before you stick your fingers in someone

if i pick up the vibe that i’m gonna fuck someone, i’m like “be right back :)” and i go and i wash my hands. if i can’t do it at that moment, then i’m not putting my fingers in them because i have no fucking idea what their body may or may not be sensitive to and i certainly would not have been keeping track of everything i have or haven’t touched since the last time i washed them.

just because your hands aren’t visibly dirty doesn’t mean the bacteria you carry around from touching your phone, random objects, other people, and yourself won’t be 100% passed to that other person and upset their reproductive ecosystem of bacteria. be conscious of others. wash your fucking hands

Certified Sex Ed Post!

i love the headcanon that when katniss gets mad at peeta, like really huffy or maybe he’s being a pest (because he is sooo annoying to her sometimes 😭) and she’s just sick and tired of his crap, she goes to stomp on his foot, but instead she miscalculates and ends up stomping on his prosthetic instead. which is capitol made and much stronger than her real foot and in the end it’s her who’s hopping up and down in pain and peeta’s just like “darling, i can’t say you didn’t bring that one on yourself.”

Mark Vomit (2020)

you may also know Mark Vomit from such hits as "You Are Not Immune To Propaganda" (featuring Garfield)

one of the guys in the kitchen at work got called irritating and replied “I am not irritating. You just find me irritating. There are many people who love me.” I think we should all adopt his attitude

you will NEVER be able to convince me jem and will weren't also in love with each other. i literally do not care. don't try.

will's first word in the clockwork angel was jem. will and tessa's son was named after him. so was jem and tessa's daughter. will put his hands on fire to save what little was left of jem's medicine.

they never held each other back, but rather made the other try harder. live.

Cassie would have made herongraystairs canon if she wasn't a fucking coward and I will die on this hill

when you show up to the insane parabatai competition but will “jem is my great sin” herondale and jem “my will, my rebellion, mine forever” carstairs are already there

Wow. Howmany books currently banned in the US?

evil

People really hate thinking huh

Illiteracy is becoming rampant. Reminds me of the fact that a lot of children aren't taught how to sound out letters and are instead taught whole words from the beginning. They memorize it like it's a hieroglyphic instead of learning how to actually read and then picking up more advanced tricks on top of that foundational skill.

- George Orwell, 1984

The example in that screenshot is also just. Worse. Like, let's do a comparison here, and bearing in mind that I have not read Gatsby:

And the 1984 quote above is worth pointing out as well, not necessarily for the Newspeak comparison (Newspeak is an in-universe modified English deliberately constructed to restrict the articulation of ideas, a good IRL comparison would be censoring discussion of/references to LGBT+ topics, whereas with this BS it's hard to say whether the continued erosion of literacy is the secret true goal of this or just a side effect)

But because it's another example of how word choice matters and helps make a point. Notice how, when explaining the supposed benefits of Newspeak, the speaker barely uses Newspeak at all? And how this entire quote would become cumbersome and unwieldy if "translated" into Newspeak and probably wouldn't get all of its ideas across the same way? Notice, in other words, how the architects of Newspeak don't use it themselves and using Newspeak would make it impossible to properly describe it?

Requested by anon

Example 1: Giving a character gifts even if you've maxed out their friendship score because you're pretending you're dating them.

Example 2: Wearing armor you don't like because another character gifted it to you, and you're pretending that you're begrudgingly accepting their shitty gift because you don't want to make them feel bad.

🦉

My partner critiques my fics in memes, I felt this on a very personal level.