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SPOILERS the best part of the Superman movie was when Lex was walking towards the fortress of solitude and it just opened for him without explanation and my best friend turned to me in the cinema and whispered "he's already pregnant"

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you’re in her dms I’m at the lowest point of my life

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“superman is woke!!” yeah no shit hes literally been fighting an evil rich guy. do better

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Ive already made this post 3 times but the cutest thing ever is adding mutuals on instagram and seeing how normal everyone is

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People have been nagging me to share “the curry story” on here for ages, so alright, I’ll do it. (If you’re Indian and reading this, I am so sorry).

I swear to god, everything I am about to say in this story is true.

When I was eleven, I moved to a small town in rural England and acquired a new best friend at school. Her at that point seemingly-very-normal-parents- nice suburban house, three kids, trampoline in the backyard- invited me over for dinner, and said they were making curry and rhubarb crumble.

“Curry and rhubarb crumble”. Never in the history of mankind have words been so untrue.

The “curry” consisted of, I swear I am not making this up, a vague mixture of * deep breath, oatmeal, tofu sausages, corn, tomato juice, chopped onions, raisins, “leftover broccoli leaves”, kale, and scrambled eggs. The only spice in it was the tiniest smidgen of turmeric. All these ingredients were vaguely stirred together, undercooked, and stuck under a broiler for ten minutes. 

They gave me a massive portion. I somehow, I still don’t know how, was polite enough to finish it.

“I’m done,” I said.

“No,” said her father. “In this house, we LICK our plates clean.”

He did. They didn’t make me hold it up and lick it like they all did, but they did make me clean the plate with a piece of bread and my fork until they were satisfied.

Desert came. The rhubarb crumble was entirely unsweetened. Not so much as a raisin. I can’t remember what the crumble part was, because my mind is still haunted by the memory of being forced to eat an entire bowl of unsweetened rhubarb. You know in old Looney Tunes when characters would be tricked into eating allum and their heads would shrink? That’s what eating it felt like. They made me clean my bowl of that too, and wouldn’t let me leave the table until I finished. 

The next time, (I was in middle school and as yet too polite to turn down my best friend’s parents) they made “spaghetti and meatballs and salad”. The spaghetti was utterly plain and so undercooked it was crunchy, the “meatballs” consisted of a single large orb of some grey material i have yet to identify, and the salad was, i shit you not, limp boiled lettuce. Crunchy spaghetti, unidentified lumpy grey stuff, and boiled lettuce.

The fascinating thing is that, while yes, these people were obviously health nuts, it was so much more than that. They were health nuts who also cooked like aliens who had never seen human food before. Or like small children making “potions”. One of the more edible things they served to me once was a dessert they made up which consisted of halved apples rolled in cornflour with some milk poured on top. One time, they were convinced to make pizza as a treat. They decided to put an onion on it. Fair and fine, you’d think. Not in that house. They just cut the onion in half once, and stuck each unchopped half facedown on one side of the pizza.

Speaking of onions, one time, my friend decided to make a banana and yoghurt smoothie. Her dad came in, said it wasn’t healthy enough, and made her add an onion to it.

They had a homemade cereal I thankfully was able to opt out of trying which 100% looked like the contents of a vacuum bag. I still have no idea what it contained.

Amazingly, it was by no means just me who experienced this. It was a small town, and every girl in it my age had a selection of horror stories about being invited to dinner at this friend’s house in the exact same ritualistic horror-film fashion. We used to sit around comparing them at sleepovers. Age did not exempt you. One time, this friend’s six year old brother had a friend over for dinner at the same time, poor soul. His mom arrived to pick him up, and wasn’t allowed to take him home until he finished whatever crime against cooking was on the menu that night. 

Every story was the same. The ritual that never varied. Every time, these people would make a huge fanfare out of inviting you over for dinner, act all hospitable and excited, set the table, and then serve you a massive helping of the worst food in the world, and make you clean your plate of it, desert included. Who the hell forces you to finish your DESERT?

It’s a mystery to me. They clearly had SOME degree of self-awareness, because after I came to my senses and started coming up with excuses to avoid eating at their house they would tease me saying things like “ohoho, you don’t like LIKE our food do you”. If they had been a bit more fun and less generally puritanical sort of people, I could totally believe this was a family trolling activity where they secretly schemed to come up with the worst possible dishes, secretly filmed themselves forcing people to eat them and watched it and laughed afterwards, I could believe it.

All I’m saying is I’m pretty sure they weren’t aliens, but the more I type this out, the more tempted I am to believe it. Fuck it, maybe they WERE aliens.

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Autism and NT concepts in children’s literature

I work in a public library and there are times a book comes through circulation that is so awesome I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.

Last week I came across this lovely children’s picture book called Why Johnny Doesn’t Flap: NT is OK! by Clay Morton, Gail Morton, and illustrated by Alex Merry. (Pardon the library barcode covering part of the title here.)

[Pictures of the front and back covers of the picture book. The back cover summary says: “My friend Johnny is different from me. We have fun together, but sometimes he acts pretty strangely. He is never exactly on time, he can;t seem to strict to a routine, he stares right into your eyes, and he often says puzzling things. Johnny is neurotypical. I like Johnny and I think being NT is OK.”]

The fact that I was seeing the term “NT” on the cover of a children’s book was enough to pique my interest. Upon further inspection, I discovered that the book is really quite lovely!

[Two page spread reads: “We have a lot of fun together, but sometimes he acts pretty strangely. Mom says it is because he is NT, or neurotypical. He doesn’t have autism, so his brain works differently from mine, but that’s OK.”]

It flips the typical “little Timmy has a special friend” narrative on its head. Instead, the narrator is an autistic boy who has an NT friend who he sometimes struggles to understand. 

[Two page spread reads: It can be pretty interesting being friends with a kid who is NT. He has a lot of quirks that can be very frustrating until you get used to them. Mom says that everyone’s brain is different and different isn’t always wrong.”]

The book uses simple terms to describe a perspective not usually seen in any literature, let alone lit intended for children.

[Two page spread reads: “When something exciting happens, Johnny doesn’t respond like you would expect. He doesn’t flap his arms or jump up and down. He just moves the sides of his mouth up and slightly widens his eyes. Maybe he doesn’t know much about how to express emotions.”]

I think ultimately this flipping of the narrative is more effective in getting the message across that kids with autism are just like everyone else but with unique needs. 

[Two page spread reads: “Johnny never has a meltdown when disasters happen, like a fire drill or art class being canceled. He is afraid of what people might think. It seems like he is bottling his feelings up, but he just has his own way of dealing with things, and that’s OK.”]

And this book is something autistic kids don’t usually have– it’s a book from their perspective! And it’s a non-offensive, matter-of-fact perspective, which is all the rarer.

[Two pages spread reads: “When he talks to you, Johnny looks directly into your eyes, which can make you pretty uncomfortable. He doesn’t mean any harm, though. That’s just the way he is, and that’s OK.”]

It talks about things that autistic people experience and can relate to.

[Page reads: “I like Johnny. I think that being NT is OK.”]

How awesome is that?

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A fun but admittedly petty thing I do is when I see a post on social media where someone is saying “God bless Trump!! Pray for Trump!!”and suchlike, I comment, “Amen! Psalm 109:8-17!” And depending on the platform I’ll get likes/hearts/prayer hands emojis etc. but I’ve been doing this for months and so far no one has actually read the verse, I don’t think. Lol.

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How much discourse do you think there is in the kpop demon hunters universe over Huntrix's breakup? I assume half the fans are analyzing every second of footage from the last three years looking for signs of tension and arguing about the whose fault it was and half the fans are posting that it's actually kind of fucked up to ruin the Idol Awards with a fake onstage breakup just to build up to dropping a new song, even if it is kind of a banger

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An important thing I’m learning with teaching Ollie commands and requests is that brains not wired for human language need very distinct word with minimal overlap, or at least gestures attached to differentiate them, because I just asked him if he was “doing better” and ruined his entire day because “D-n-ER” are the noises I make for “food time now” (dinner) and it is two hours from food time 😭

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it takes a village to destroy a baby (powerful baby)

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it's okay if you as a lesbian want to fuck the straight blonde popstar but you can't be pretending she's a lesbian too girl at least make it a lesbian corruption kink or some shit

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There was a character in a book I read once who was described as "handsomely fat" and that phrase is stuck in my brain forever. The author really was like "no shut up, they're charismatic, they're good-looking, they're handsomely fat. not just handsome AND fat; them being fat is directly contributing to their good looks. you agree." and they were RIGHT

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was waiting on an emergency plumber, decided to smoke by my car instead of stare at my fucked up kitchen. he pulled up next to me, leaned out the window and goes "i'm assuming you're the client" like yeah buddy, read that one right

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Cop shows are cringe and they're NOT the same as detective shows and people should stop conflating them. I didn't come here to watch half an hour of police propaganda, I just wanna see an eccentric little weirdo use logic to solve a fun riddle and then he gathers all the suspects in a room and explains his thinking as he accuses the culprit

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"on god's green earth" is way too fun to say even when you don't believe in god and know most of it is blue, actually

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Bruce: Can we come and stay over at your place tonight?

Dick: Sure, but what's wrong with the manor?

Bruce: Well, it's apparently haunted and Jason and Damian don't actually know how to perform an exorcism, so they're just violently throwing salt at the ghosts and yelling "DO WE LOOK LIKE A FUCKING HOTEL TO YOU!?"