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colour dodge

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Kataang but im playing with blend modes 🌊☁️

(First week of school is done🌟)

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i'm reading this collection of essays about tenochtitlan and it is really very hard being a scholar of the Mexica. like. you are locked into defending against the worst most bullshit accusations imaginable of fantasy bloodshed as a justification for very real unimaginable bloodshed and conquest and destruction. on the other hand, they were an expansionist warring empire that murdered like a lot of people over the course of their conquest of the peninsula, and then built giant skull towers to display those conquests. it's a pickle

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so i wore a pride flag pin to work the other day and the kids were all interested (obviously) (find me a classroom of preschoolers who are not obsessed with rainbows) (i'll wait) so they crowded around to see.

"aww!" they said, "it's a flag!!"

but the thing is: they're little. a lot of them don't really have a handle on all their mouth sounds yet.

such as, notably, that tricky tricky "L" sound.

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Honestly, y'all, I'm begging you. Take the time to think and learn for yourself. Even if it's just something casual like knitting or cooking. Exercise your brain. It's important.

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Well, I have a dirty mind. 

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in third grade on the swing with my friend i announced “i figured it out” and my friend said “figured what out” and i said “the meaning of life!” and being third graders this was very exciting so she leaned in and i whispered in her ear “it’s to have fun” and i don’t remember her reaction but i remember how i felt and how i knew so clearly that was the answer. how my small mind was beaming and shimmering with this answer that makes me scoff today but i know that they were right. i was right

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Galladrabbles - Stargazing by Myles Smith:

I'm so early, but I saw the prompt while on a 3-hour bus ride, so I had the time to think. 100 words is crazy, but it's such a fun challenge! Hope y'all like this, it's super fluffy and self-indulgent. Thanks @galladrabbles and @runninonemptyy for the prompt <3

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Ian turns to face Mickey, sprawled beside him on the blanket.

“You ever thought, this is where we’d be?” He asks, smiling at the echoes from years before.

Mickey predictably snorts, amused.

“Yeah, Red”

“Bullshit!” Ian laughs.

Mickey smiles and slots their fingers together easily, “When you know, you know.”

Ian’s mouth opens to reply when a flash of black curls and tiny limbs hurls towards them and sprawls right over Mickey.

Ian gazes at his husband and daughter, happy and warm under the fading sun, and remembers. Those same blue eyes, they’ve been with him all along.

“I know.”

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I mean I get what you’re doing and the tragedy of it all, but as someone who has personally lost a great man that lit up everywhere he went, they’ll eventually find out, they’ll run into his family on the street and ask about that kind man, they’ll look him up on social media and find out that he’s gone, they’ll know, and they’ll mourn a little, because even if they never knew him very well, isn’t it always sad seeing the world lose some of its light?

No matter what you do don't think about the people at the edge of Bobby's life who no one will know to tell he's dead.

The cashier at the grocery store closest to the station, who has A shifts schedule basically memorized, wondering why no one is coming by to get food for family dinners anymore. The guy at the farmers market wondering where his regular with all the great recipes went. The neighbors he's never met faintly remembering the smell of bbqs on weekends and sounds of laughter coming from the backyard of a burned down house. The ex partners of firefighters never really belonging in the group but always remembering the kind captain with a welcoming smile and wonderful food who made them feel welcome in a group as tight knit as a fire house. The kids on class trips who may never know he's gone but finding pictures of them on a class trip years later wearing a too big jacket with the name Nash on it. The firefighters who transferred out of the 118 who hold kind words and good advice close to their heart. The dispatcher so used to the one voice of reason in the midst of the chaos that are calls for the 118, wondering where their team spirit went. People at his AA meetings, knowing they could always depend on Bobby, knowing he'd never pass judgement. Members of his church, who sat behind him for years sometimes seeing a familiar head and thinking it's him. It never is. The future captains of the 118 being held to a standard they can never achieve, because one man changed what leadership in the LAFD means. The legend of the 118 under Captain Nash haunting the department and the station. Robert Han who will grow up with a name that comes with a legacy he will never fully get. Just the impression of a hole someone left in his family.

Just don't think about it.

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anyway you should always remember that all those foreigners you see dying on the news are just as real people as you are who have just as much interiority as you do. there is nothing about you that makes you more important and it is by pure chance that you are not in their position. in fact, this holds for all of history. every person, no matter the horror of the fate that befell them, had just as much interiority as you do. i feel like some people haven't fully internalized this.

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when i think about what it means to be queer, i think about resting my head on my best friend's lap in the high school cafeteria when i was unbearably sick but had to come to school anyways because it was finals week, and i remember that a few weeks earlier he told me he might be bisexual because he thought me and Brendan Urie were really hot, and i remembering thinking this guy thinks i'm hot and here i am pale and sweaty, head in his lap in front of the whole school

when i think about being queer, i think about the time i had to present at the school science fair, and i started hyperventilating in my room looking at myself in the mirror wearing men's dress clothes; i think about my boyfriend at the time texting the head of the school's queer spectrum alliance club about it, and how 10 minutes later i had 12 different outfits from 12 different students to choose from to wear instead, no questions asked

when i think about being queer i think about getting so caught up in a make-out session in the woods with a friend that we lost track of time and i ended up being 10 minutes late to physics the day before our midterm and had to ask to borrow a pencil and paper to take notes. i got a 93 on that midterm btw

when i think about being queer i think about how i didn't want to watch a movie alone, and one 16 hour date and 5 years later, i'm engaged to one of the most incredible men i've ever met

when i think about being queer, i think about how in April of 2020, after being kicked out of my college dorms due to covid, i told my friend, a nonbinary lesbian married to a transgender man, that i couldn't handle getting misgendered at home anymore, in less than an hour i was in their car, on my way to the house they were living at, where they said i could stay as long as i needed

when i think about being queer, i think about how when that ended up not being true, when the owner of that house kicked me out, i texted my now and also then ex boyfriend, and again, in less than an hour, i was in a car, on my way to his house where i could stay as long as i needed.

when i think about being queer, i think about a few months later, sitting at his kitchen table, him calling me a motherfucker because i accidentally tugged too hard emptying his drains from top surgery. sorry about that, btw

when i think about being queer, i think about trying to give my fiance his first T shot and it turning into a multi day ordeal because the pharmacy gave him the wrong needles, but ultimately my sister in law was able to do it for him. i think about how for the past year i've driven him to Park West pharmacy, owned and operated by trans people, and they've given him his shot because he doesn't like doing it himself.

when i think about being queer, i think about the road trip i took a few years ago to visit my friends, and even though we're mostly all "queer content creators" to the outside world, we didn't end up creating any content at all; we hung out, i slept on their couches, they bought me food, we played games, and we were happy

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muscle memory kicking in

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🤭 I'm a girl but with a little 😏 extra something 😉

Can you guess what? 🤪