it’s completely acceptable to stay alive for tiny reasons. because you want to hear your favorite song one more time. because your dog will miss you if you leave. because the moon is just too pretty to never see again. because you haven’t seen the next season of a really good tv show. because you want to see the christmas lights this year. if you’re alive, you’re doing enough. if you’re surviving, i’m proud of you.
10 year old me: who are you
me now: im you but im allowed to say fuck
i want dogs to be allowed at more places and i want children under 6 to not be
yeah cool and make young parents, almost always mothers, never leave the house again and socially isolate and publically embarrass em cuz they can’t afford babysitters for years, cool idea. at what point as a culture have we decided to hate on kids collectively. is it since the invention of refined sugars, I wouldn’t surprised if there was a connection.
And then be surprised when the children have zero social skills because they’ve been told they’re not welcome on account of Not Being Real People But Dogs Are Totally Ok.
…wow the comments on this are fucking scary. How many of the people going ‘yes ban kids from public spaces’ are also feeling disrespected by baby boomers?
Do you fuckers not understand that Children. Are. People.
I’m conflicted about this, and I think it’s because the children that are most disruptive are the offspring of people who do not believe Children Are People, and that is the whole source of the problem.
I absolutely think that’s true. We need to allow for the fact that kids are adults in training and will often require our patience and leniency. BUT they respond much better to being treated with respect than, by default, as a nuisance.
Kids in adult spaces are in a very difficult position. They are in a place where they can’t play freely, because it might disrupt the peace- so it’s up to adults who require them to behave with more control to include them and offer them something in exchange. Like, shit, it’s not fun when you’re five and there’s a family dinner and all the adults are talking about adult stuff you don’t understand, no one wants to talk to you because they’re not interested in the things that fascinate you, but you’re also expected to sit quietly and politely for as long as the adults need you to. And follow certain rules you might not even know exist yet. And not interrupt the conversation because whatever you say is not as important as whatever adults have to say, for some reason.
People often don’t realise how much self-control they actually demand from children. There was this excellent post once about how yes, you CAN take walks with your toddler, if you just account for the fact that they take smaller strides and walk slower than you. Scale down the experience. Make it inclusive. Make it enjoyable for everyone. Kids are People, and Kids are Not As Experienced Or Capable As You.
And also chill with the reactions to kids existing- soooo many people get all annoyed if they just hear a child’s voice. But if an adult says something a little louder, or does something clumsy, it’s no big deal. Every time I take an airplane and there’s a little kid, their babbling and whimpering and, yes, even crying is way less annoying than the exasperated sighs and demands to ‘shut that kid up!’ from entitled adults around me. Like, ok, the baby’s a baby, what’s your excuse for being rude and disruptive?
Whenever I see a child at a restaurant being ignored by their parents I try to engage the child in peek-a-boo or waving or just smiling. I know how bad social anxiety is, and I want to do my best to make sure no one else is forced into it – by making sure that being in public is a desired thing for the child. It has the side effect of reducing crying and yelling, because the child is too entranced to think of crying.
Ultimately, I wish children were treated like dogs, in that people look forward to seeing them and interacting with them, even complimenting them. And that dogs were treated more like children, with owners watching out for them and there not being regulations treating them as pariahs to be hidden or shunned.
This whole hating on children trend is so ugly
FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT holy crap
Even if you don’t like kids, be nice to them, treat them with dignity. They did nothing to you, especially not purposefully. A child won’t understand why an adult is being mean to them, but the psychological and emotional toll will be very real for them.
and thank you @roachpatrol for recommending calibre!
in order to get our recent barnes & noble purchases onto my laptop, seebs had to go through an absurd series of contortions, including resurrecting a first-gen nook with its lithium battery swollen and about to burst, because it’s the only device we had that could transfer files to a computer.
we won’t be buying from b&n anymore. i don’t know why they’ve made it impossible to download your purchases onto something with an accessible file system – mumble mumble piracy mumble copyright idk? – but the idea that i am forbidden to access a book that i paid money for is offensive.
kindle is just as bad or worse, of course. but many small online booksellers offer epubs and pdf’s for download in a totally normal way, and audible offers epubs alongside audio files for a lot of books, so it’s not like i’ll be out of reading material.
anyway! thanks to my wizard princess’s cleverness and heroism, i am finally able to read the ancilary books while knitting. i am making seebs many socks to thank them. ❤
fantasy book with witches and wizards and magical people but all magic has a price, like
main character, in awe and slightly terrified: what did you have to give up to be able to control storms with your mind?
powerful enchanter, fighting back tears as they pull down the hood of their cloak to reveal a knotted oily mess: my beautiful luscious hair….no matter how many times i wash or brush it, it always looks like this
main character: [horrified gasp]
fortune teller: and speak up when asking your question, these are my cards so they share my partially-deafness
other character, sympathetically: oh, had to trade good hearing for seeing the future?
fortune teller: no, asshole, i was born with it. i got seeing the future for trading in my ability to wink
there’s a legend in this fantasy land about a powerful enchanter who traded their ovaries for the power to create earthquakes. the grumpy semi-sentient force of nature who negotiates these magic deals had thought it was pretty great one, sure to make the recipient of the deal regret making it soon enough (after all, the point is having to suffer a bit in exchange for magic, because life sucks even in magical fantasy kingdoms)
however, soon afterwards, the Grumpy Semi-Sentient Force of Nature realized the enchanter had been ecstatic to be rid of periods and didn’t care about not having biological children. the GSSFN felt somewhat cheated by this and ever since has had a strict no-trading-internal-organs policy
“fucking humans messing with the system,” it was quoted as saying
actually, cheating the Grumpy Semi-Sentient Force of Nature out of the suffering it hopes to inflict with the magic deals is a time honored tradition in Magical Fantasy Kingdom, which is primarily made up of sassy little shits. most of the kingdom’s mythology is made up of trickster figures
there’s the legend of the smooth-talking thief who managed, by describing a certain talent of hers as “the ability to form small growths out of her skin and then reabsorb them” with enough quick confusing descriptions to trade the ability to get pimples for the power to become invisible
there’s the boy who brought the GSSFN a bucketful of cold, liquid silver in exchange for the power to cure a certain sickness, only for the GSSFN to realize once the sun had come up that the bucket contained only water reflecting moonlight
there’s the monarch who offered to trade in their power to destroy people with only their words for the seemingly much less valuable power to turn one grain of rice into two grains — only for the GSSFN to realize later it had gotten the ruler’s cutting sarcasm in payment for a power that could end a famine
every year the Grumpy Semi-Sentient Force of Nature gets visits from tens of jewish witches and wizards solemnly offering to give up eating all foods that come from pigs or eating meat at the same time as dairy in exchange for the powers they want
“DO YOU THINK YOU’RE FUCKING CLEVER” says the GSSFN, who has frankly had enough of this shit
Then there was the time someone traded the rights to their firstborn child for the ability to breathe both air and water (even salt water!). The GSSFN thought about this for a moment – did this go against the no-organs rule or not? – then agreed.
“Ha, sucker! You already got my ovaries, so good luck getting a kid out of me!”
“I KNEW YOU LOOKED FAMILI– wait. Wait. You got… earthquakes last time, right? I’m remember that right?”
*smug nod*
“What the hell does that have to do with being able to breath underwater??”
“Underwater. Earthquakes.”
“I HATE HUMANS.”
Thus, the no-trading-more-than-once rule was adopted and GSSFN started Marking those who traded.
I presume that there’s a subclause to that rule that states that one cannot acquire the ability to remove the Mark.
i really appreciate everyone lawyering the fuck out of this
