medusainthemarble

[medusainthemarble]

6:59 AM

by Shane Koyczan

I’ve been told that people in the army do more by 7:00 AM than I do in an entire day,

but if I wake at 6:59 AM and turn to you to trace the outline of your lips with mine, I will have done enough and killed no one in the process.

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My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."

He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."

He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"

I did.

"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."

It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.

So my dad and I agreed, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn't made you stronger than you were before, you're probably not done healing. You've got to give these things time to set.

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On the Martyrdom of Monsters

The most dangerous delusion of our time is that freedom is a natural condition, and that freedom springs harmoniously forth from society as surely as a seed sprouts from the earth.

Rights are inalienable and inviolable. Laws protect us from chaos and tyranny. The silence of furtive shushing and bitten tongues is peace. Protests are violent, and they are the symptoms of the sick societies of ill-behaved peoples.

To speak the name of the problem is to create the problem. To create the problem is to be the problem. To be the problem is to be evil. Evil, as in all other fairy tales, is a monster to be defeated.

Monsters are the Other. The Other, as we well know, is dangerous and unknowable. The Other is not welcome by our fire. The Other belongs in the darkness. The Other is of the darkness. The Other will bring the darkness here.

And so, when the Other has been successfully driven away from the fire, when the monster has been slain, when the problem is solved, when those who created the problem are gone, when those who named the problem are gone, when those who could not behave are gone, when those who protested are gone, we say: we have rights, we have laws, we have peace, and there was never blood in our streets.

So it goes: the new law is written in the blood of those who fought the old law. Those who write the new law are the same who wrote the old law. We thank the Author, not the Other.

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Salt of the Earth (1954), dir. Herbert J. Biberman

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Andrea Gibson

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The Daily Times, New Philadelphia, Ohio, July 9, 1924

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My favorite thing about online queer discourse is that it literally repeats every year but with a different identity and so many people just go along with it. It’s like watching a series of people literally never learn their lesson.

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Let's play Rock Paper Scissors!!! It's you up against the option with the most votes. Put in the tags whether you won, lost, or tied, but don't say anything about what you voted or what the current results are.

Ready? Now....

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Arm yourselves, sisters

reblog to give a lesbian a sword, a bi girl a dagger, and a trans girl a cool gun

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Gandalf, saying something in elvish:

Pippin, sighing: Yeah, yeah I know

Legolas: I didn't know that you can speak elvish.

Pippin: I can't. I just know "fool of a took" in every language he speaks.

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I’m writing a THESIS

Unable to focus on what I want to focus on

Perfectly capable of writing multiple paragraphs of insight into hypothetical, romantically tragic ships

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This is what led me to research Norwegian pancakes and realize that they’re technically crepes, but the Dutch pannenkoeken aren’t crepes or maybe they are---

english pancakes, for anyone interested:

they are similar but not identical to crepes. (a crepe is also a pancake. btw. i've had americans get annoyed when you point this out but a crepe is a type of pancake.)

scotch pancakes are more similar to american pancakes but in my experience are generally a teatime food rather than a breakfast food

welsh pancakes are also the chunky variety but i've never actually eaten them so idk how they compare

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my least rational fear is what if i end up being a pony in the mlp universe and i get the most revealing cutiemark like what if my cutiemark is the bisexual flag and i have to cover it up with makeup for years and pretend to be a blank flank to not get outed to my conservative pegasus father whos favorite newspaper is called "the right wing"

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Thinking on Andor:

The violence of Andor's protagonists appears like tropey "dark and gritty" on the surface level, but it's always characterized by struggle, by trying to resist pervasive and constant injustice. Like lungs hacking up water so as not to drown. And Andor never indulges in any smug cynicism about how it's lost, Andor tells you it's always worth fighting for one more breath, taking one more stroke toward the shore.

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I hope Nael knows their poem made me cry