queer-ecopunk:

So, I’m trans. And several years ago, I was at my great grandfather’s funeral. 17, newly on T, barely out to anyone other than my close friends and family. And I’m standing there at the refreshment’s table, surrounded by strangers and members of my family’s church, when George walks up to me.

This man is ancient, bent like a finger and frail. Tufts of white hair surround his wrinkled face. Like always, he’s wearing thick glasses, massive hearing aids, and his veteran’s hat. George was my first introduction to the concept of war, when he told me as a child why he was missing two fingers on his hand. He’s been a fixture at church since I can remember. I’ve only ever seen him at there or in uniform at parades, the rest of his time spent in a nursing home somewhere. He picks up a deviled egg and says, in his quiet voice,

“You know, before your grandfather died, he told me that now he had 3 grandsons.”

I’m frozen in place. I don’t know what to say to that, if I should say anything at all. This is not a conversation I expected to have, especially not with this man. But he continues.

“I didn’t know what he meant! So he explained it to me.”

And I can imagine it. My great grandfather, uninformed and opinionated but supportive, explaining to his friend the news he barely understood himself over after-service coffee and cookies. His eldest grandchild was now a boy.

“And, you know, I didn’t know what to think.”

Here, George looks me up and down. This 90-something year old war veteran, who knew me mostly as the little girl playing in the church kitchen with his wife, processing what my great grandfather had really meant. It feels like a long pause, even thought it probably passed in a second.

“But you look good. So, eh!”

And then he smiled, shrugged, and walked away without another word. If I was fine, if I was happier, then that’s all that mattered.

George passed away this week, at the age of 99. This memory has been bouncing around in my head for a while, but I wasn’t sure if or how I should share it. It was a conversation that meant very little, but also meant the world. It was scary, and funny, and the moment when I realized that sometimes the people you least expect will accept you. Sometimes, even if they don’t fully understand, even if they barely know you, someone will choose to support you. And that will always matter.

(via sugared-violets)

jerseymuppet:

jerseymuppet:

jerseymuppet:

my chemical romance is the funniest and weirdest band ever. They’re all fucking losers who would genuinely rather play dnd than hook up with groupies. The singer used to work at Cartoon Network. The bassist is on the fbi watchlist for crimes against disney. One guitarist is a guitar god but he also used to keep a little action figure of spiderman in his pocket all the time, the other is like a little lap dog of a man, but he’s also on the fbi watchlist for death threats against a us president. They refused to be on the twilight soundtrack, one of the most popular franchises at the time but then they preformed on yo gabba gabba and re-recorded one of their songs in simlish.

Oh I didn’t forget. Make no mistake I did not forget the fact that Stephanie Meyer, nyt’s bestselling author of thee Twilight series who, upon looking at the weirdest greasiest human alive said oh my god I need to make this man* a creepy ass abusive predator. And I did not forget Gerard was so offended and upset that they wrote a whole ass diss track about it and went on a rant on Twitter that ended with them talking about getting that philharmonic cheddar. I can never forget.

The philharmonic cheddar. For proof and prosperity!

(via sugared-violets)

tuulikki:

velvet4510:

To anyone who believes fairy tale romances never happen in real life, may I remind you that JRR and Edith Tolkien met and experienced a forbidden love in their youth, and then were separated for five whole years because of his guardian’s rules that he could not date till he was 21, and she got engaged to someone else only because she assumed he’d forgotten her and lost hope that she could ever be with him, but then on his 21st birthday, he wrote her a letter saying he still loved her and wanted to marry her, she responded basically saying ‘if I’d known you hadn’t left me on the shelf, I would never have said yes to anyone else,’ then a week later she greeted him at the train station and then immediately dumped her fiancé, and they got married and she converted to his religion and danced for him in a flowering field far away from the trenches into which he was drafted, which left such an impression that he crafted an entire story about the most beautiful maiden in the world who danced in the woods and made enormous sacrifices to be with the man she loved, and they had four kids and remained faithful to each other and blissfully grew old together and their gravestones are now marked with the names of that same fictional couple that he created, who broke every rule and overcame every possible obstacle to be together and get a happy ending, who only did all that because he based it all on their own real love story.

Knowing all this has always made this bit of Beren’s song instantly reduce me to tears:

Though all to ruin fell the world

and were dissolved and backward hurled

unmade into the old abyss,

yet were its making good, for this—

the dawn, the dusk, the earth, the sea—

that Lúthien on a time should be!

Tolkien straight up wrote a poem that said “the world could end, but it wouldn’t have all been pointless, because she was in this world, however briefly, and that justified all the rest.” Kills me.

Who can outdo Wife Guy Tolkien? Dude was writing elaborate AUs where his wife is an impossibly beautiful magic-wielding immortal elf princess who fights Satan and wins to rescue her human boyfriend from Satan’s doom fortress. Flawless.

(via asinglemagpie)

librarykris:

wymanthewalrus:

marinella-ela:

@vancekilo how does it feel being the most correct person to ever comment on a post

*scritch scritch scritch scritch*

(via heatherwitch)

torturedpoetemotions:

torturedpoetemotions:

The thing is, until you get past the mindset of “justice=punishment” you will never be able to create lasting change. We have actual proof that punitive justice creates more crime and makes criminals more violent. We have actual proof that rehabilitation reduces crime and recidivism. But some of y'all are so stuck on this idea that the wrongdoer must be punished for justice to be done that you will choose sating your need for revenge over actually moving toward a better world every time. And that’s sad!

Everyone in the notes saying punishment doesn’t undo the bad thing: exactly! Punishment does not create or preserve healing, prevention, protection, fairness, or goodness. The only thing punishment does is satisfy a sadistic public desire for revenge and give us the illusion of control.

(via shelbybunny)

concerningwolves:

goldensunset:

advice i think we should tell children is that when adults say stuff like ‘now that i’m an adult i get really excited about stuff like coffee tables and bathrooms and rugs etc’ they don’t mean ‘and now i don’t care about blorbo and squimbus from my childhood tv shows anymore’ bc your average adult still loves all the same pop culture stuff they always did; they just have a greater appreciation for the mundane as well. growing up just means you can enjoy life twice as much now. you can get really excited about a new stuffed animal AND about a new kitchen sponge. peace and love

You get bigger so you can store even MORE love and appreciation for the world inside of you

(via otherfireangel)

inkskinned:

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you’re just supposed to … know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you’d been doing the right thing. she’d asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren’t supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don’t, but then you’re too serious. you’re not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you’re too quiet. you aren’t supposed to get passionate about things, but then you’re shy, boring. you aren’t supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you’re not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is “selfish” and what is “charity,” you give yourself over, fully. you’d rather be empty and over-generous - you’d rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you’re mean. since you don’t know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what’s happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don’t fuck up. they’re all testing you, always. they’re tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn’t get to attend - everyone else just… figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you’ve been playing catch-up. you’ve been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they’re telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you’ve totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you’re doing, and you automatically say i’m good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you’re piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is… just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you’re cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it’s working!

aren’t you happy yet?

(via shadowswhitehog)

o-kurwa:

(Source: x.com, via ultimiavlad)

entities-of-posts:

jewishdainix:

waterlogged-detective:

jacobtheloofah:

medicinemane:

possumcollege:

hasufin:

samiholloway:

tastefullyoffensive:

I fell down these stairs just looking at this picture

Cursed artifact: Stairs of Discontinuity.

Exposure has a 90% chance of causing a concussion, but a 10% chance of spontaneously increasing your parkour skill

Yes! New installment of Stairs that Want You Dead!

This is dazzle camouflage, they’ve literally dazzled these stairs (the point of which was to make it hard to tell things like how far away a boat is, which maybe is not a good trait for stairs)

side note but apparently dazzle camouflage is as old as world war 1, and theres a painting of a ship with dazzle camo from fucking 1915

this feels like some sort of ai generated goof but no this is real

@capn-twitchery

@entities-of-posts

The Spiral

(via thunderheadfred)

cemeterything:

forgissimus:

androidboy:

literally my favorite type of tweet

oh my god i have some of these saved 1 sec

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(via bella-foreva)