Latest Posts by abysskisser - Page 2

all i could think of when reading that section of The Unwanted Guest

“Medieval peasants couldn’t handle my Spotify playlist” but could YOU handle a medieval bard relaying the epic of Beowulf over the course of an hour? Humble yourself.

Deinonychus Takedown for animation practice

Someday your hands will be old and wrinkled, the skin spotted and bunching over your knuckles. And a child will watch you make something. It's a simple task, you'll have done it a thousand times before. But to that child, the smooth, confident way your hands move will seem like impossible magic. You have to keep living.

in almost every other children's book where the main heroine is swept away to a land of whimsy she's shown having a lovely time; braving dangers occasionally, trying to find her way home, sure, but ultimately delighting in the magic around her. meanwhile alice spends her entire time in wonderland like

So I am currently knitting the Magical Flying Husband a tube scarf. I like tube scarves, they are thick and warm and soft and flexible. And this one's coming out fairly prettily, too! But I have never made one before, and I am thinking, well, I made this one pretty wide--a solid eight inches across, because I want him to be able to wrap it across his head if necessary and those four-inch-wide trendy tube scarves can't even cover your ears right. So I think, I will Ask the Internet what their opinion is on the perfect length for a tube scarf, and I will make any necessary adjustments from there in light of the width.

And the first result is a useful forum post, and the second result is a useful-ish Reddit post, and the third response is a little spreadsheet, and the fourth response...

the fourth response is this

I would argue that this is not a scarf

Also I am concerned by the possibility that the smiling human head is there to entice actual mammals closer to the Tube

cloth fibers ranked by how much sense they make to me

wool. the most sensible and natural fiber. wool is hair from meaty, not very bright animals. I have hair, meat and did not excell in school, so I relate and understand this best

cotton. Cotton is made from plants, but don't be scared yet. these plants are basically small sheep for they are wooly and have hard seeds in them like how sheep are wooly and have hard bones inside them

silk. I was fairly terrorized as a child by caterpillars that made massive silk tents in mulberry trees. We came in into conflict because both of us liked to eat mulberries and climb mulberry trees and also because they liked falling out of the tree upon my person. this was distressing for me for various reasons primary amongst them was that I had been told by the wisdom of my peers that if one of them bit me I would die. anyway I believe that silk comes from caterpillars because I have seen it I have witnessed it I have lived it

linen. bizarre. have you watched videos of people turning flax into fibers? I have watched video after video of flax being transformed from plant to linen and none of it makes any sense. One moment, it's a plant and then if you comb it enough it becomes hair. utterly incomprehensibe witchcraft

PLASTIC? PLASTIC? PLAstic??????

spandex. incomprehensibe. uncontainable. might as well be string theory to me.

my watery friend... are you too brushed with the pattern of the dappled light...?

broooooo ahaha that's so epic. do you mind if i grow fond of you

If anyone is more interested in the work behind the Gävle goat there is apparently a documentary here, unfortunately mostly in swedish, but what I found most charming is that you can climb into the goat through a door in it's behind.

And if you ever wondered: yes, according to rumors a couple have fucked in the Gävle goat. In 1966 in fact, the first year it was up and before any kind of arson. I don't know why they threw that into the documentary but this goat has layers is all I'm saying.

i am actually insufferable once I get comfortable with someone

compilation

Hey just a reminder that thought crime doesn’t exist and pretending to have empathy is just as good as having it! You can be the world’s biggest dickhead in the privacy of your own mind and as long as you’re outwardly kind it literally Does Not Matter

i actually really needed to hear this. love this outlook, thank you.

what do you mean elon musk did a nazi salute on live tv at the united states presidential inauguration twice and is now erasing the evidence off the internet by replacing the footage with the crowd cheering instead?

would be a shame if people reblogged this, wouldn’t it?

so much of being an ok person is just 1) not panicking, 2) not taking things personally, and 3) not letting the vindictive gargoyle that lives in your head tell you what to do. this sucks because brains love doing those things

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

me whenm i am. Prougraming on my Computer

Queued right up for it

time to get a delicious tea drink from my favorite crone, boba yaga

I’m not naming names because I’m not trying to start anything but I’m seeing several mutuals claiming they always knew Gaiman was a bad egg and it was so obvious, as though they didn’t make me stand in line with them to get his signature and kept their signed copies of his books on a special shelf akin to a shrine.

And like, listen, you don’t need to pretend.

This isn’t the devil’s sacrament. You’re not tainted by association. You’re not morally bad for not immediately knowing when someone is being charming and persuasive to hide something they don’t want you to know.

Abusers don’t just groom their victims. They groom their witnesses too. You were never supposed to know something was wrong because it was intentionally hidden. It’s okay you didn’t know. You don’t need to act like you never liked him or his work. You don’t need to pretend. But you do need to stop being shitty to other people who also didn’t know because it reeks of victim blaming.

“Well I knew, so how come others didn’t?”

His victims were fans. Are you blaming them for not knowing?

Christ alive, I hope not.

35 Portland Row

just found out that if i stay in my room all the time my life will eventually shrink to the size of it and i will lose all memory of how to function as a person. shocked & upset

pretty much the only good thing about the paper of record anymore, the crossword

You can replace [ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY] with [SCROLLING] but watch out. This sucks bad 👍

(grabs you by the shoulders) you have to make room for new experiences in your life. you have to go through the unpleasant work of leaving your comfort zone, even if just for a few minutes at a time. because if you don't, your brain will trick you into stagnation. you will start to believe that the world can barely fit you in it. but that's not true. it's the opposite way around. you can fit the whole word inside of you. your task is only this: to welcome it with open arms

This is how a womb looks when a pregnant woman laughs

my little cousin confidently declared that mother nature had a counterpart named daddy electric and i feel like this concept needs to be explored