the allergy i am seeing grow up around small talk in any form is troubling to me. do you know how to make friends with people in your physical environment? it typically starts with small talk. do you want to live in community? small talk. do you want to have the type of relationship with your neighbors where you can run over and borrow a battery for your smoke detector when it starts beeping at 10pm? small talk!! do you want leeway from your coworkers when you fuck up something small? you gotta be able to build a relationship and that's small talk, baybeee.
"but i don't need friends and i don't care about community!" okay, lone ranger, what about the people in your community who need you? "but i have social anxiety!" me too, bud! we simply must soldier on. making up lists of questions to ask people helps. and people are predisposed to be generous, i've found. even if you make some kind of mistake, what is this but the natural give and take of human interaction? nobody is perfect.
you were not put on this earth to live by yourself and then die. you need people and people need you. treat those around you with curiosity and generousness of spirit and you will gain so much goodwill in return.
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Also increasingly aware that a LOT of people "manage" getting through the 40+ hour work week by sleeping less than is healthy and relying on stimulants like coffee and energy drinks to keep them going.
For people who are unwilling or unable to do this...work really does just dominate your life. Like we really should not have to rely on unhealthy practices just to have a social life or keep on top of housework or whatever.
I know I post about this a lot but I'm so TIRED all the time and it's just so depressing that this is how we're expected to spend the one life we have.
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Yall wanna hear a kinda funny, kinda sad story about my grandmother and hetero-normativity?
Ok, so... when my grandmother was in her 50s (I was an infant), she met a woman at the Unitarian Church. And, as can happen when you meet your soul mate, this event made it impossible for her to deny parts of herself that she had fiercely hidden her whole life.
All the drama- their affair being found out, the divorce with my grandfather, the court battle over who got the house, happened while I was a baby. Even in my earliest memories, it's just Mama Jo and Oma, and my grandfather lived elsewhere (first his own apartment, then a nursing home, then with us.)
But here's the thing- no one ever explained any of this to me. No one ever sat down and was like "hey, Rosie, so do you know what a lesbian is?" It was the 90s. It was Texas. I think my mom was still kinda processing all this, and just assumed that like... I was gonna figure it out. Don't mention it, let it just be normal. Like I think my mom thought that if she explained the situation, she would be making it weird? I dunno.
But like. In the 90s, in all the movies I had seen and books I had read, do you know how many same sex couples I had seen? Like. 0. Do you know how many "platonic best friend/roommates" I had seen? A lot. I had no context, is what I'm saying.
I literally thought this was a Golden Girls, roommates, besties situation until I was like...I dunno, 11? 12?
It was actually their parrot, an African Grey named Spike, imitating my grandmothers voice saying "Johanna, honey, it's getting late", that triggered the MIND BLOWN moment as I realized that *there's only one master bedroom and it only has 1 waterbed* when all the pieces finally clicked.
Anyway. I think it's a real important thing for kids to know queer people exist, for a lot of reasons, but also because kids can be clueless and it's embarrassing to have your grandmother be outted by a parrot because everyone just thought you'd figure it out on your own.
Anyway, here is my grandma and her wife, my Oma, after they moved to Albuquerque to be artsy gay cowboys and live their best life. They helped run a "Lesbian Dude Ranch" out there (basically just with funding and financial support. As Oma has explained "traditionally, most lesbians don't have a lot of money" so they wrote the checks and let the younger ladies actually run the ranch.)
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losing my actual mind rn
i had this interaction in the dropout discord (i am the first and third person). short. simple. i only got the first year bc of a discount + a gift card i had, so i was planning on using this person's suggestion.
then, i got this.
oh my god!! how nice!! how sweet!!! how thoughtful!! i gave them my email and they sent over a subscription, i thanked them profusely. i was very grateful, very touched.
hours and hours later i was still thinking about it and i recalled how, in the email id gotten about it, it said "tao yang sent you a subscription" and id seen that and thought "oh haha like the tao yang" and then moved on
but now, thinking back, i was like.... theres no way, so i googled tao yang.
......
TAO YANG BOUGHT ME A FUCKING ANNUAL DROPOUT SUBSCRIPTION
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kamala khan would have the most horrendous ao3 author's notes known to man
"hey guys sorry the update is late i switched places with an avenger (ajdgrhsh literally crying) and a really cool space scientist lady and then got into a fight and some alien dudes wrecked my house and then I met Nick fury and I was literal space it was crazy and I had to help save the universe and saw said scientist lady give up her life to save all of us... anyways hope you like the new fic, branching out with an arranged marriage au for this one!!!"
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Playfighting
Imagine, Maddie Fenton having a video chat with Batman or Bruce Wayne her close childhood friend, talking about different ways to help their ghost situation, his children also in the room with them, trying their best to stay awake due to the lack of sleep and exhaustion, caused by the ghosts.
When Danny just pops out of nowhere with his black hair and blue eyes, that made every children of Batman think, if Maddie and Bruce were really just a Childhood friends(Which they are).
"Hello, Mother I am bored, and I want to do something productive but not that productive." Danny stated, while looming behind Maddie who just sighed in stress.
"Go play with your little sister" Maddie exclaimed, and went back to talking with Batman.
Danny let out a soft okay, before disappearing out of the video call.
not even a minute later, a loud bang echoed throughout Maddie's house making all the batkids alert asking what's wrong and if Maddie was alright, Maddie ignored the noise and reassured with a gentle smile that she was fine, before going back into a conversation with Batman.
Talking about perfect timing, here comes Danny and Dani strangling and roundhousing eachother to death, The batkids (except Damian, who was staring at the two trying to figure out who will win) are concerned to an extreme level because why are two 'civillian' kids trying to kill eachother?
meanwhile Batman and Maddie just continued their conversation, like it was just a normal everyday occurrence.
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