We’re gonna take down Forge. I’m gonna show Marlamin and the Elk tribe they were fools to let me go.
I love that they love each other. I love that Ed knows it’s gonna be painful for her to go see her ex and face another round of rejection and loss of family. I love that he waits for her outside, patiently, and has a song ready to cheer her up. I love that I actually believe they care about one another deeply and that the move takes the time to show their friendship.
sometimes i see a post that has inaccurate information about libraries and sometimes i contemplate correcting them but then i don’t
actually this is a specific post i’ve seen circulating on my dash for a few months. i’m not blaming anyone for reblogging it but i think a lot of people don’t know enough about what a library is
getting a card is great, don’t get me wrong. but not using it isn’t good. yes, we can run reports that say how many cards were made in a year and we report it to our board (which the mayor is part of and the mayor has a big say in our budget – see the cuts to nyc library funding by eric adams). but it’s bad if no one is using the cards. we do track circulation (items that are checked in/out, are lost or go missing, etc.), and if no one is taking out items that looks bad for our acquisitions budget. is there a manga series you like that’s 1000 issues long and still ongoing? if our budget gets cut we might not buy new books in the series. if you don’t use the ebook services we provide (libby, overdrive, etc.) those go away. if you don’t come to programs, program budgets get cut. if you. don’t keep track of what’s going on in your library, things you do not want to happen might happen anyway. go to the library. get to know the librarians, because if something comes up they will tell you about it. they might tell you that they’re holding a board meeting because a book was challenged by another patron. go to that board meeting to object to the challenge. and if you can’t physically go, get it in writing. e-mail the director – you can find their email on the library website or somewhere on the internet. public librarians work for the public – our info is out there. the director will read the email at the board meeting.
being an active member of the library is so much more than getting a card. not every library is great at outreach (my library is working on it, but we’re a small town, too), so sometimes you need to go to the website or call the library and ask. we’re more than happy to help. we want people in the library. it’s how we justify our existence, especially now when the far right really hates us and thinks we’re all pedophile indoctrinating children and will do anything to defund us. bigots are loud – you have to be louder.
we all agree that book bans are bad and libraries closing are bad. but you have the power to stop it. and yeah, budgets are sometimes cut because there’s nothing else the library can do, but showing you actually want the library and the resource it provides to be around is important. i cannot overstate how much your voice matters. it matters over the staff, honestly, and i have a literal degree in library science. so i’m using my grad school knowledge to tell you to actually use and advocate for your public library
I think we need to get serious about nuclear family abolition instead of the childfree meme culture of “we don’t want your snot-nosed gremlins.” I love kids. I love their joy, the insight of not yet being acclimated to capitalism and social norms. I had a certain naive wisdom as a kid, making crowns out of dandelions without knowing they were weeds. When my mom tried to explain gender reassignment surgery to me, expecting me to be repulsed, I instead blurted out “cool!”.
But despite my love for children and sentimentality for my own childhood, I don’t want to “have kids,” as it’s conventionally understood to mean, nor do most of my age peers. The expectation of children to be the property and sole responsibility of two parents (or as patriarchy would insist, one mother) is a cruel and unrealistic in any historical moment but especially the present. It is cruel, not just to people who don’t want to be parents or shoehorned into heterosexual norms, but traumatic to the child. Surely we should know this better than anyone, and come up with a more mature response than just hating kids. There is a stark difference between this response and the queer legacy of mutual aid to support kids neglected by the nuclear family (the House Mothers of the ballroom community come to mind).
My issue with the childfree movement, as it exists online, is that it centers individual choice rather than a structural reevaluation of the family as we know it. We are told that queer life is purposeless and lonely, and that’s without a genetic lineage we have no future. These arguments are in fact indictments of a system that has failed to produce collective visions of purpose, social fulfillment and futurity. None of us should be obligated to “have kids,” nor tone down our culture or activism in their entirety to be “family friendly.” But weshould be driven by a desire to support those most disenfranchised by family norms instead of just hating them.
came back wrong but its from the perspective of the person who came back
Seeing pictures of yourself -the real you, the one people miss, the one people look for in your eyes- is like staring into a foggy mirror. The parts are there, you think, but the details are lost.
Someone who loves you makes you breakfast. You thank him and eat it despite the fact the eggs are too crisp on the sides and missing much needed salt. He says its how you like it, but that just makes your frustrations boil.
How I used to like it, you want to say, how I used to be.
You grip your butter knife harder and light catches the polished metal. The glimpse you catch of yourself in the cutlery looks nothing like the photo on the mantle.
neocities guide - why you should build your own html website
do you miss the charm of the 90s/00s web where sites had actual personality instead of the same minimalistic theme? are you feeling drained by social media and the constant corporate monopoly of your data and time? do you want to be excited about the internet again?
try neocities!!
what is neocities?
neocities is a free hosting website that lets you build your own html website from scratch, with total creative control. in their own words:
“we are tired of living in an online world where people are isolated from each other on boring, generic social networks that don’t let us truly express ourselves. it’s time we took back our personalities from these sterilized, lifeless, monetized, data mined, monitored addiction machines and let our creativity flourish again.”
why should I make my own website?
web3 has been overtaken by capitalism & conformity. websites that once were meant to be fun online social spaces now exist solely to steal your data and sell you things. it sucks!!
building a personal site is a great way to express yourself and take control of your online experience.
what would I even put on a website?
the best part about making your own site is that you can do literally whatever the hell you want! focus on a specific subject or make it a wild collection of all your interests. share your art! make a shrine for one of your interests! post a picture of every bird you see when you step outside! make a collection of your favorite blinkies! the world is your oyster !!
i want everyone to make a neocities site because it’s fun af and i love seeing everyone’s weird personal sites that they made outside of the control of capitalism :)
Brb replacing “I should” with “I have the option/opportunity to” in my internal monologue re: beating myself up over shit that needs doing. Let’s see if that works.
It actually really did help and I did the laundry and cat boxes. Guess I’ll keep trying that one.
THE UNEXPECTED SEQUEL:
“I should go do something useful.”
The flat statement offers no direction; it does not lead to action, only self-recrimination.
The implied judgment of yourself as not currently being “useful” is toxic. It tells you that you are being bad and lazy.
My mom died in 2006, but sometimes it’s like I hear her voice…..
“Useful” is ill-defined and an easily-moved goalpost.
The idea of people needing to be “useful” is the voice of oppression. Lots of -isms hide there. Including (Tim Curry voice) capitalism.
No really, literally this is the voice of everyone who has ever guilt-tripped or browbeaten you for not meeting their standards. Every parent, every boss, every teacher, every gatekeeper. It is the voice that harmed them so much they had to pass it on rather than reckon with it.
“What could I do to help myself out later?”
Is a dialogue you can engage with. Open-ended.
Properly frames any action as being helpful to yourself. It is a kindness. Kindness is important.
Sets you up to appreciate what you did later on when you say “Dang, that folded towel was real nice, made me feel real good pulling it out of the laundry closet. Thanks, past me!” Reinforcement!!!
Doesn’t put you on the spot right now. You could just as easily ask “What can I do an hour from now to help myself out later?” as “What can I do now?” You can give yourself that beautiful airlock time to mentally prepare.
Being helpful, even slightly, even to no-one but yourself, is better for the spirit than being “useful”. Capitalism doesn’t give a shit about helpful. It wants to use you, and it teaches you that if you are not being useful, you are by necessity, useless. Our culture, based on capitalism, implants this toxic mindset in us in myriad ways, and we carry it into our private lives where it does not belong and we weaponize it against ourselves. Never think that your value is determined by usefulness. Even when you can’t do anything, you aren’t useless. The concept of usefulness/uselessness is an idea that means a lot when applied to objects. It has zero meaning when applied to human beings. Expunge it from your vocabulary. Do not use it for yourself, or for others. Ever.
Fuck capitalism. Be a comrade to yourself.
Don’t be my mom. (Dead but also a bitch.)
Third revelation:
“I have to [blank].”
Not as good as:
“It is important that I [blank].”
“I have the opportunity to [blank]” sometimes isn’t enough for tasks I truly hate and WILL avoid. How to overcome that? Certainly not by making it seem even worse by turning it into something I don’t have a choice about!
I don’t like scooping the cat litter or taking out the trash or brushing my teeth, but it is important that I do. “Have to” is not as helpful to me because it just says I have an obligation. Even if that is true, which it often is, I hate that phrase. “Have to.” Ugh.
“It is important” reminds me of why I am doing it. So my cats have a clean potty. So my kitchen isn’t stinky. So I get a good grade in Teeth.
I thought of this today and came to look and update this post. Now I see a couple people have mentioned something like this in comments. And a lot of folks are talking about the “shoulds” and their therapists and their personal growth or resolutions and it is so validating for me to see that.
I don’t check notes ever, I had no idea this got so many of them. I’m very glad it did and I hope it continues to do so.
For everyone making the change, I’m proud of you.
For everyone who tried and kind of lapsed, here’s your reminder: you can always dust yourself off and go back to applying this as best you can.
ALT
