vamplor

Latest Posts by vamplor

Geological horror. You find a geode and crack it open and the crystal lining its walls is human blood that can't be genetically matched to anyone. You find a human skeleton but every one of the bones is made from rock, a rock that you know can't be whittled into those shapes. You find layers of clay and loam that sport ancient fossils at the top and the still-rotting corpses of modern animals at the bottom.

Roasted chicken, ginger, daikon, shiitake mushroom soup with lime, cilantro, broccoli sprouts, and rice noodles

smacked right in the mouth

I don't think it's a radical ideal for the want of Hawai'i to become their own independent country. It should have never been taken over by the US in the first place. For a country whose entire foundation is based upon "separation from a colonial country" it's laughable that they made an entire population that was self governed into a state. It's insulting. It's already blatantly obvious that this whole country was based on lies and blood, and it only continues to perpetuate that. I'm shocked that the Hawai'ian sovereignty movement isn't mainstream even though they have been fighting for it since 1997. Fuck the American government.

"you are addicted to screens" no no you see i am actually addicted to my friends. unfortunately they live in there

Fucked up how society can be like "okay, go to school" for 12-17 years and then be like "okay enough to that :)". Leads to really dangerous sad fucked up disease called Grad Student. Can progress even more dangerous into PhD Student. Very comorbid with Debt due to Costs Money and Doesn't Make Money. Very scary, these things.

goodbye 2023👋hello 𓏏𓉔𓇋𓋴 𓇌𓅂𓄿𓂋 𓇋 𓅃𓇋𓃭𓃭 𓎼𓅂𓏏 𓄿 𓅓𓅲𓅓𓅓𓇌 𓃀𓅱𓇌𓆑𓂋𓇋𓅂𓈖𓂧 𓅓𓄿𓇌𓃀𓅂 𓉔𓅲𓋴𓃀𓄿𓈖𓂧 𓇋𓆑 𓉔𓅂𓂕𓋴 𓎢𓅱𓅱𓃭 𓅃𓇋𓏏𓉔 𓏏𓉔𓄿𓏏

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Dulce María Loynaz, tr. by James O’Connor, from Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems

[Text ID: “Your hands have a strange clarity. Have you been walking among the stars?”]

Talking with someone about something serious and typing "Olay" instead of "Olay".

"if you see someone shoplifting, no you didn't" no but like. i really didn't. i have never in my life seen someone shoplifting because i'm not watching anyone else in the grocery store..? how are y'all noticing things like that. my only goals are enter the store, survive, exit the store

i love shakespeare academics. i fucking love them. there’s this one guy who wrote an essay about how claudius is actually possibly innocent, or at least didn’t kill the king by putting poison in his ear, and the ghost was in part a hallucination (it’s a really interesting essay with many good points and i’m using it in my final synthesis for this class) but. BUT. some guy read it on a train. and he lost it.

this guy literally said this essay drove him to “insanity”. he went off the fucking rails about it so much so that he wrote a book over the course of EIGHTEEN YEARS about what ACTUALLY happened in hamlet and dedicated it to the guy who wrote the essay as a big “fuck you”. and that exchange between them is literally inescapable when reading about the play today. here’s an excerpt from the beginning:

this is like. the equivalent of someone making a well-thought out discourse post and then out of nowehere someone reblogging it with thousands of words of pure furious rambling about why op is wrong YEARS LATER. this bullshit started a hundred years ago, literally in the middle of the first world fucking war, and i STILL cannot escape it while reading a book on hamlet published in fucking 2000 because it’s so iconic. and i love it.

man this has been said before by cleverer folks than me, but sometimes you have to sit down and let the sheer size and age of the storytelling tradition just completely overwhelm you, ja feel?

like— think for a second about how mind-bogglingly incredible it is that we know who osiris is? that somebody just made him up one day, and told stories about him to their kids, and literally thousands and thousands of years later we are still able to go “there was a god whose brother cut him into pieces”, it’s so arbitrary, it’s so incredible

that in talking about scheherazade and her husband, you are doing something that someone in every single generation has done since it was written— you are telling stories that have lasted an impossible amount of time 

can you conceive of telling a story, and then traveling into the future and hearing that same story told— with alterations, and through media that you could not possibly conceive of, but your story— in the year 3214?

the fact that we! as a species! have been telling the same damn stories for so long— the fact that we’ve seen homer’s troy and chaucer’s troy and shakespeare’s troy and troy with fucking brad pitt because we never fucking stop telling stories! never ever ever!

we never stop caring about stories, or returning to the same stories, or putting our own spins on stories. we never stop talking about the characters as if they were real, or asking what happened next, or asking to hear it again.

generation after generation, they never ever ever stop mattering to us.

me at any given time: can we just buckle down and focus on the task at hand please???

my brain:

my brain: ……….ranibow sprimkle……………

Anytime I see someone complain about leftists who use too much “jargon” I instantly dismiss whatever else that person is about to say. Babygirl sometimes you are going to have to learn words to talk about economic theory.

i'm begging you guys to start pirating shit from streaming platforms. there are so many websites where you can stream that shit for free, here's a quick HOW TO:

1) Search for: watch TITLE OF WORK free online

2) Scroll to the bottom of results. Click any of the "Complaint" links

3) You will be taken to a long list of links that were removed for copyright infringement. Use the 'find' function to search for the name of the show/movie you were originally searching for. You will get something like this (specifics removed because if you love an illegal streaming site you don't post its url on social media)

4) each of these links is to a website where you can stream shit for free. go to the individual websites and search for your show/movie. you might have to copy-paste a few before you find exactly what you're looking, but the whole process only takes a minute. the speed/quality is usually the same as on netflix/whatever, and they even have subtitles! (make sure to use an adblocker though, these sites are funded by annoying popups)

In conclusion, if you do this often enough you will start recognizing the most dependable websites, and you can just bookmark those instead. (note: this is completely separate from torrenting, which is also a beautiful thing but requires different software and a vpn)

you can also download the media in question (look for a "download" button built into the video window, or use a browser extension such as Video DownloadHelper.)

i know we’re both just messing around pretending to be whole but look at me. if the train was coming would you move. if the ground was falling from under your feet would you even notice or would it just be another tuesday for you. if somebody stabbed you could it hurt worse than you already do. what i’m saying is that i love you but i think we both drive over the speed limit when it’s raining. what i’m saying is that i want to hold your hand and i understand about how you sometimes have to sit down in the shower. what i’m saying is that i’m here for you and if the train comes please move.

there are a lot of posts out there that are positive and healthy coping mechanisms for handling the holidays. this is not one of them :)

i think there's like. going to be times in your life you will be stuck in a social situation that you cannot escape from gracefully. i do not know why the internet doesn't believe these times exist. it's not always just that your physical safety is at risk - sometimes it's legit like "i just don't currently have the energy or time to put in the effort of responding to this." sometimes it's a coworker you hate so much. sometimes it's just like, fine, you know? like you know you can handle your aunt when she's cheerily horrible, but if you actually set a boundary around her, it's going to be weeks of fallout with your father.

i don't know why people think the answer is always just "cut them out!" or "don't let them get away with that!" because ... the real world is tricky and complicated. i think kind of a lot of us have an internal "radiation poisoning" meter for certain people. like - i'm talking about the ones who are absolutely giving you gradual ick damage. like, you can handle them, but you'll be exhausted.

and yes. you absolutely should listen to your therapist and the good posts about handling others and set good boundaries and take care of yourself. prioritize peace.

HOWEVER :) ...... since im often in a situation with a Gradual Sense of Ick person i cannot just "cut out" of my life (without losing someone else precious to me) - i have sort of developed the most. maladaptive form of mischief possible. because like, if i'm going to have to listen to this shit again, i like to have a little bit of private fun with it.

now! again, i am physically safe, just mentally drained by this man. you should only do this with people you are not in danger with. which leads me to my suggestions for when your Unfortunate Acquaintance shows up and says oh everyone pay attention to me.

my favorite word is "maybe!" said as brightly and happily as possible. whenever the Horrible Person starts in on a topic you do not want to go further with, particularly if they make a claim that you know to be inaccurate, do not respond to it. you and i have both tried to actually argue with this person, and it hasn't gone well, because this person just wants the drama of an argument. however, "maybe!" gives them literally nothing to go on. it is incredibly disarming. they are used to people having some response. they know they can't prove what they're saying, and maybe! treats them like the child they are. it dismisses them in the politest way possible.

i like to say maybe! and then, in their stunned silence, immediately change the subject. this is because i have adhd and i will have something unrelated to talk about, but if you can't think of topics fast enough, i recommend just pointing to something and saying, "isn't that lovely?" because fuck you let's bring in some positivity.

by the way. that second trick - of pointing to something and stating an opinion about it? - that just works on its own, like, 70% of the time. i picked it up from teaching preschoolers. it's an intentional "redirect". it stops children crying and it also stops grown adults from finishing their explanation on why women belong in kitchens. dual wielding!

keep it silly for yourself. i absolutely do not care if people think i'm fucking stupid (it's more fun if they do) and as a result i will purposefully misunderstand things just to see how long it takes them to realize i've completely removed them from the subject at hand. when they say "women aren't funny" i get to be like. "which women." "all women." "all women in america?" "no in the world." "like the mole people? the people in the world?" "what? no. like, alive." "oh are we not counting the mole people?" "what the fuck are you talking about." "you don't believe in the mole people?"

similarly, i play a personal game called "one up me." my Evil Acquaintance literally knows this game exists (my family & friends caught onto it and now also play it) and it always fucking gets him. i don't know why. you have to be willing to be a little free-spirited on this one, though. the trick is that when they make one of those horrible little bigoted or annoying comments they are always making, you need to go one unit weirder. not more intense, mind you - just more weird. "you don't look good in that dress." "yeah, actually, my other dress was covered in squid ink due to a mishap at the soup store." "you shouldn't wear such revealing clothes." "wait, what? oh shit. sorry, your son tears off strips when no one is looking and eats them. i swear it was longer before we left the building."

the point of "one up me" is to completely upend this person's narrative. we both know this person likes setting up situations where you cannot "win" and then they really like telling other people how badly you handled it. in a usual situation, if you respond "please don't say something that rude", you're a bitch. but if you let it happen, you're letting yourself be debased. they are not usually expecting door number three: unflappably odd. because what are they going to say when they're telling everyone how badly you behaved? "she said my son eats her dresses" ".... okay?"

if you can, form an allyship with someone whomst you can tagteam with. where they can pick up on your weird "soup store" story and run with it.

the following phrase is amazing and can be deployed for any situation: "oh, be nice :) it's the holidays!" i do not know why this works as often as it does. i'll say it for the most random shit. i think this is bc most of the time these people know they're being impolite, they just like to fight.

godbless. when in doubt, remember that you could always start stealing their pens.

the whole point of this is - if you can't escape. maybe see how long you can just be. like. a horrible little menace.

I am extremely not going to dignify that 'walkable cities ARE ableist actually' post which has crossed my dash with a reblog, but four things to keep in mind:

'Walkable cities' is almost always a shorthand for 'cities which deprioritise cars as a mode of transport and make it possible and enjoyable to travel by other modes instead', rather than a call for everybody to walk and only walk everywhere all of the time. We live in a golden age of micromobility options, for starters. And when most people do not need to use cars, it will be much easier for people who do.

Advocacy for walkable cities and active transport often does slide right into ableism and fatphobia and this needs to be directly challenged whenever it appears (as someone who has been a cycle commuter my whole adult life and overweight for all but five minutes of my whole adult life, if I never hear "if everybody cycled we would solve the '''obesity epidemic'''!!!" again...)

AT THE SAME TIME, while this will change in degree from place to place, the Venn diagram between 'people who advocate for walkable cities' and 'people who advocate for accessible cities' has a significant degree of overlap. There's probably at least one car-centric conservative out there who genuinely advocates for accessibility by the law of averages, but it's neither a coherent nor common position. Walkability IS a form of accessibility. It is not accessibility for everybody but no single kind of accessibility is, which is why we need cities with MULTIPLE kinds.

Therefore, as with goddamn near everything in life, if you actually want to see more accessible cities...advocate for more accessible cities, and what that means for you. Going 'but there are some people who will always need cars therefore walkable cities is ableist' does exactly nothing except turn people off the idea of change. Say what you want to see. Be specific. Imagine better futures. TL;DR - cui bono when we lock ourselves into "cars vs walkability"? you guessed it - people who benefit from the (observably harmful) car-prioritising status quo. so is this assertion always a cynical psy-op? No. Does it function as one in practice? fuck yes. be smarter.

tumblr is gonna make more money off blaze, checkmarks, crabs, and shoelaces than it has under verizon and yahoo combined all because the users here have a sense of humour incomprehensible to most of civilisation. this website would spit on you before it'll buy something from an ad but by GOD does it know how to spend money on bullshit

Snowy days bring me so much happiness❄️🤍

As a reminder: libraries, museums, zoos, etc are NOT brand accounts! As an example, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Tumblr is very cool & they support ocean conservation and education! I believe the National Archives and Smithsonian Libraries are also around here somewhere. Support public institutions!

speakng from a place of privilege (favorite character who is alive),

‘don’t you want your favourite character to be happy???’ no? i want my favourite character to be interesting. i want me to be happy. which sometimes involves my favourite character being in exquisite agony