#they aren't actually my aunts

[dapperceature]

Man I miss my epic gay aunts

I haven't seen them since my conservative grandpa's funeral

[vcrnons]

VERNON ending fairies. ↳ happy birthday to the face card that never declines.

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

I always thought that handcuffs were kinda stupid. As a little kid I would watch movies where the bad guys were hauled away in cuffs and I'd always think "alright, I guess that's inconvenient for them?" but I never really understood why they didn't just... take them off and escape

This curiosity heightened when I saw that my aunt had real metal handcuffs that locked with a real key and I quickly, before any adult could see what I was doing, shackled both my wrists with the cuffs as tight as they could go.

And when I say tight, I mean tight. I had reaaaaal skinny wrists and I was a child wearing adult handcuffs, so you'd think the cuffs would be loose but nope. Those things weren't circular anymore, they'd folded in so much that they looked more like the shape a cat's pupils turn when they're mad.

And what they don't tell you about real handcuffs? Those suckers are sharp. The inside edges are almost bladed, I guess to discourage exactly what I was trying to do but that certainly didn't stop my curious lil neurodivergent brain, oh no no.

Anyway, after about five minutes of pulling, straining, huffing and puffing, I finally went to find the adult with the key.

I was so disappointed.

And so, so hopelessly confused.

Course, no one questioned why I had locked my aunt's handcuffs and why I needed them unlocked. And, of course, I didn't communicate my confusion in any way.

So it wasn't until way later in life, when I had quickly shimmied out of one of those indestructible water park wristbands and saw the horrified eyes of my friends watching me with morbid glee, that I discovered that, apparently, most people can't dislocate their thumbs at will.

The moral of the story here is that neurodivergent children have no concept of typical versus atypical and that I cannot be contained by your petty mortal means.

[earlycuntsets]

marilyn manson hating mcr like it's his job

radio host: uh. are you still fighting with my chemical romance?

mm: I never was fighting with them. but we did a show with them and um. what was it? like norway. and one of the guys - the guitar player came up and he's a dwarf. legally. there's a law against dwarves. and he came up to my chest bone- cuz i'm like 700 feet tall and he's like 2 feet tall. and uh, he said to me: "i'd really like to apologize for things" I said it's a good thing. cuz I would have beat him down like a bitch. but um. I never tried to instigate something with them. to me its.. i'm not trying to complain. everyone was like "did you write that song about my chemical romance?" i'm like no.. yknow so it was something to press or instigate. but to me, my chemical romance.. it's just kinda. not something I like. I don't care and I told him i'm like "yeah I have no problem with you but I don't like you"

unknown radio show- mm interview

kerrang# 1164

nme 06/2007

spin 12/2005

[beeceit]

the worst part about getting into fandoms with a strong found family focus is the proship arguments going from "these are fictional characters and not real people, dldr" (fair enough, blocked bc I don't wanna see that stuff, but respectable. just tag your stuff and live your life, peace) to "adopted family isn't really family. if they aren't biologically related they aren't really family so there's nothing weird about shipping them and you're a prude. it doesn't matter if they canonically consider each other siblings/parent and child/etc if they don't share blood. adoption doesn't make you actually siblings/parent and child etc. legally being family doesn't matter if there's no biological relation" (KILLING YOU WITH HAMMERS KILLING YOU WITH HAMMERS KILLING YOU WITH HAMMERS KILLING YOU WITH HAMMERS KILLING Y)

[rutadales]

I would rather spend time with any hick I grew up with who is genuinely accepting and understanding of queers but uses faggot bc he doesnt actually understand the weight behind slurs than a leftist who absolutely does but decides it's okay for people you don't like

[llumimoon]

ouggh. add another "npc relationship that would be really cool to see but that we probably wont get" to the list !!! anyways im thinking abt Hero Oak and Grant Wilson and fucking weeping

[schwazombie]

Where can I get the Eccentric European Wine-Aunt certification ^^?

Ah, excellent question, dear tumblr user just-some-questions. You see it isn't something that you actively get, it's bestowed upon you. One gathers the pieces bit by bit: eccentricity may be inborn or learned; you may be born European or, like me, run away to Europe (which added extra eccentricity!); you may drink wine; you may or may not have biological niblings. And then one day your sibling makes a joke about how you could most easily be found at church by locating the communion wine (which, in their opinion, you would be drinking straight from the bottle), and then a friend sends you a picture of a candle with a bigass label that says 'the Wine Aunt' and is described as smelling like family gossip and bad decisions. You have made it. You are, to someone, somewhere, the Eccentric European Wine-Aunt

[camembertlythere]

Now that my grandma is gone, it turns out I actually kind of fucking hate that side of my family too! Garbage on both sides boss!

[regular-lord-reckoner]

aaaand home again!

good trip!

happy to be back!

do still feel like i'm in a moving vehicle but that'll pass

g'night!!

[figofswords]

u mentioned septimus heap in the tags of a rb and it unlocked a hidden vault in my brain of binging the entire series in middle school and being unable to get any of my friends to read it ur the first person ive seen talk about it since. king shit only

there is still a little corner of my brain that is septimus heap shaped and i'm pretty sure it controls a lot of how i approach writing fantasy. it's just so funky. here's some art i did of it last year for your viewing pleasure: https://at.tumblr.com/figofswords/youre-telling-me-these-three-kids-are-gonna-be/byyo3ejbqxrp

[blujayonthewing]

so I've got a bunch of short little unconnected vignettes I've written about a few of my OCs, and a few of them I like and kinda wanna share but the thing is I'm not... actually sure what to do with them ? like, logistically? one of my friends will sometimes write little snippets about his paladin and post them to the facebook group for that dnd campaign (which, sidebar, is my favorite thing I get SO HYPED every single time and I wish more of my friends did that) BUT... I got people not on facebook who know about my blorbos and maybe 👉👈 they also would wanna see my lil written snippets about them 👉👈 but I guess I'm a little on the fence about posting very short bits of out of context writing to my art blog...? but then again I'm probably overthinking it 🤔

[that-was-anticlimactic]

i feel like i’ve learned so much about ferrets, the human neck, and rabbit hutches while doing research for my gothic lit senior seminar project. hm.

[emdotcom]

The little hater fanclub is fucking expanding, hell yeah

[james-stark-the-writer]

writing annotations for sources is one of the most annoying things ever and i just spent the last hour writing 15 annotations and now my hands hurt like hell and i wanna end it all bc i literally turned the assignment in with 1 minute remaining (and several annotations had to be compromised to get it in so i'm also sad i turned in subpar work, even if it's better than no work at all) and i still had work to do for a few of them, and a few typos slipped past and i even got 2 citations wrong.

[sophiamcdougall]

I am never going to complain about Greek Duolingo again

I mean, I am. But still.

So, as some of you know, my family has been coming to this tiny Greek seaside village for several years. Just over a week ago I came out here with my mum, under the impression that early September, after the height of the summer heat, would be a good time to have a holiday. ANYWAY Storm Daniel had other ideas about that. Locally things are improving (I'm actually really pissed off about the disaster-porn tone of most English-language media coverage, but that's another post). The power is back on, there's running water most of the time, and though the latter is not drinkable, a truck from the government came and handled out free bottled water yesterday. But we are currently kind of stuck. Can't do tourist things. Can't go home. There aren't any local flights out until Saturday and the road to Thessaloniki is still closed.

So this evening, feeling kind of aimless and depressed, I go down to the nearest beach with a couple of binbags and start cleaning up in an effort to at least do something positive. I always try to do this at least once out here and obviously, after the storm, there's a lot more plastic and rubbish than usual.

At some point I find this large, round bit of metal - some kind of machinery part, I think -- that's too big for the bag, so I take it to the bins on its own, leaving the rubbish bag on the beach. And when I come back for it, something among the stones beside it moves.

Specifically, it pulls its head sharply inside its shell

So, meanwhile I've been trying to learn some Greek with the help of Duolingo.

I currently have a 33-day streak and... I have questions. Shouldn't I be able to use the past or future tenses by now? Shouldn't I be able to say "x is like y"? I can't do those things. But one thing I absolutely can say all day long is έχω μια χελώνα : I have a turtle.

This is far from the limit of Duolingo Greek's turtle-related content. "An obsession with turtles" is my mother's characterisation. I can inform you that the turtle is not a bird, and, improbably, that the turtle is drinking milk. I can introduce you to a turtle in company with a horse and an elephant. As far as Duolingo is concerned, it really is turtles all the way down.

Now this, you may be able to see, is not a turtle. It has claws rather than flippers. It is a tortoise. I know there are wild tortoises in Greece: my aunt once rescued a pair of them shagging in the middle of the road -- but that was up in the mountains. I've even seen one myself, but it was also on a road and very dead.

I am 95% certain they don't belong on beaches. There's nothing for it to eat, except, unfortunately, a lot of plastic. Even if it gets off the beach it will immediately find itself on a road where it could get hit by a car. I'm pretty sure it must have been washed down by the floodwater and has been just sitting there, dazed, ever since.

Now obviously the first thing I want to do on encountering this unusual animal is to go and tell my mummy, so I do. The tortoise immediately brightens her day. She agrees that the tortoise is not happy on the beach and needs to be taken somewhere safe. it gets surprisingly wriggly when picked up so we put it in a carrier bag with some grapes and cucumber and go looking for somewhere to rehome it.

We find a path leading up between the houses towards a likely-looking field, but before we get very far a dog in a yard goes berserk and a man's head pops over a fence and demands to know what we're doing. He does this in English, as evidently we're just that obviously tourists.

"I found a tortoise on the beach!" I explain. "We want to find somewhere to put it."

"A what," he asks.

"It's like a, you know," I begin and then to my astonishment I find myself saying... "μια χελώνα"

"Oh! A turtle!" he says.

"But from the land. δεν είναι χελώνα", [it is not a turtle,] I say, as I am worried he will tell me to put it back near the sea where I found it. As it turns out it actually IS a χελώνα, Greek does not distinguish between turtles and tortoises, but I don't know that; I can't even name the days of the week or identify any colours other than pink yet, give me a break.

The man's entire demeanour changes and thaws. He does not worry about my turtle-that-is-not-a-turtle conundrum. He knows where οι χελώνες come from and where η χελώνα μας belongs. He leads us through a gate into a courtyard area.

"[somethingsomething] μια χελώνα," he explains to the assembled onlookers, of whom there are, suddenly, a surprising number.

"ΜΙΑ ΧΕΛΩΝΑ!!!" crows the throng of delighted small children, who are, suddenly, everywhere.

"μια χελώνα!" I agree, accepting that at least for current purposes, that is what it is.

"Μπορούμε να δούμε τη χελώνα σας; [can we see your turtle?]" asks an adorable little girl, shyly, and I understand??

The children fucking love looking at the χελώνα and showing it to them is kind of magical?

I finally put the tortoise down on the grass of this wild area off to the side of the courtyard, and marvel aloud that it is weird that I barely know any Greek except how to say μια χελώνα.

"I think she will soon run off," a kind lady called Aspasia assures me, seeing I remain slightly anxious about its fate. "I don't know why I'm saying 'she'. I suppose because χελώνα is feminine in Greek."

"Yes! I know that!" I exclaim, thrilled.

"Well done!" she says. And also she asks if we are OK for drinking water after the storm and if we need any help with anything and is just generally incredibly lovely and now we know more of the neighbours!

So "μια χελώνα" has just become, by a long way, my most-used and most understood and all-around most conversationally successful phrase in Greek. So I guess I have to admit I was wrong to doubt Duolingo's wisdom: it is correct to be obsessed with turtles. And I concede that prior to learning how to count to ten or to distinguish right from left, the simple ability to yell the word TURTLE over and over again is, it turns out, a crucial element of the responsible traveller's social skills.

(I am pretty fluent in Italian and turtles haven't come up in conversation even once?)