My mom, who has fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis, and I lost our house and we still haven’t been able to get anything done with a replacement as we don’t have enough money. Any donations are so appreciated even just sharing is so very appreciated.
youve been fooled………………by the april fools beeper……………..it was a fully grown bird the entire time…..no egg………………it tells u it hopes u hav a good april 1st
As someone who took etiquette lessons, politeness is an incredibly effective tool for disarming bigots. You can either force them to reconsider their words/actions by directly and calmly confronting their behavior (by using the rules of society in your favor), or you can dip entirely while they appear to be in the wrong.
Both options are great.
Because the thing is, when bigots pick fights, they are 100% counting on you to get louder than them. Or meaner. They want you to react emotionally and provide fodder for their ‘You’re Too Emotionally Immature To Understand’ cannon.
What they aren’t expecting you to do is say one of the following phrases in a polite, concerned tone:
Are you okay?
That’s not the kind of language I was raised to use with others.
Do you need a moment to think on why that wasn’t acceptable?
This is no way to engage in intelligent conversation. Please try that again in a kinder tone if you’d like this to continue. (I really like this one because it lets you turn their public-shame rhetoric around)
For those of you who’d are spiteful and/or dealing with Fundamentalists/Evangelicals/generally shitty Christians:
What’s happening in your life to cause you this much anger? I can’t imagine hurting so badly that I need to hurt other people.
Who taught you it was acceptable to treat other people this way? Certainly not the Jesus I remember.
Whatever happened to 'judge not lest ye be judged’?
If I talked like that in front of my parents or grandparents I would be ashamed.
I think there’s something you need to pray on before we try and have this conversation.
And my all time favorite:
“It sounds to me like there are some seriously dark and angry forces at work in your heart.”
(Nothing stops a Christian bigot in their tracks faster than implying the Devil is causing their bigotry. But you MUST be calm, polite, and gentle with your tone and wording. It is absolutely fair to twist the rules and play them at their own game, but you gotta play hard.)
TLDR: It’s much faster to use etiquette, politeness, and rhetoric reversal when eviscerating idiots online and in person, because they aren’t expecting you to weaponize their behaviors back in their direction. Don’t get angry, get spitefully polite! :)
Random writing thought: the best stories are often the ones that only you could have written — but also the ones that you could only write at this one moment.
I couldn’t write All the Birds in the Sky from scratch now if I tried. But the me of 2013 couldn’t have written The Prodigal Mother either.
When people ask if I’d change anything about a book I’ve already written, I want to explain to them that I’m not the person who wrote that book any longer, and even if I tried right now I’d write a different one. Everything you make as a writer* is a combination of what you want to say and who you are at the time you are telling that story.
Harry meets Peter at four and a half (four and three-quarters, Harry insists, because adults always tell him he’ll understand things when he’s older, but he’s old enough for it to be annoying). Harry’s playing in the sandbox at Oscorp’s daycare (kinetic sand, actually, because what’s the point in being a cutting-edge, fortune 500 company if you don’t have the newest stuff) and Gregory Haskins stomps on his sand castle. Harry’s eyes fill with tears of frustration as Gregory laughs and steals the Tonka truck out of the sand, but before he gets the chance to wail, Peter is there.
Peter has a mop of soft, chestnut curls, and kind, brown eyes. He has dimples in his cheeks when he smiles, every so gently, like Harry is a baby deer he’s afraid of spooking, and Harry blinks at him, surprised.
***
Or, Harry and Peter, over the years. MCU with Harry Osborn
Seriously? What the hell was that? Because putting a collar on someone was supposed to make them manageable or something? Sure thing.
Or: “Mated Betas are Better Betas”
Again with the control issues. But then again betas were by far the most common classification type, so Stiles assumed that was mainly posted to keep things kind of even.
His least favorite was definitely: “Keep Omegas Pure - Report Uncollared Unmated Alphas Always”
Just wow.
Stiles attended all the home economics classes, like a good omega, and took all his pills, like a good omega, and outwardly submitted to authority, like a good omega, but he didn’t buy into the whole structure dynamic thing. He just didn’t.
“You’re not putting that up your butt,” Scott told him flatly and Stiles couldn’t stop the pissed off whine he made, but his friend continued. “Stiles, you can’t put that up your butt, you know that. Your butt won’t be ready for anything to go in it until-”
“Okay, okay!” he said, flailing his hands to stop his friend’s lecture. “Message received, no butt stuff until I’m pounced on by some freaking animal in the forest and ravished to within an inch of my life. Got it. Thanks, Scotty, I mean heaven forbid I actually try to take control of my life and give myself a fighting chance or anything.”
“Not all alphas are animals,” Scott said quietly.
Maybe he was right, but Stiles wasn’t holding his breath.
Body Fonts: Adobe Caslon Pro, Permanent Marker, FELL Great Primer, Special Elite, Eurostile, Times New Roman, Kirana Script, Sun Valley, Dark Twenty, Please Write Me A Song
Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy never intended to blow up their life’s work, but that’s rather what they’ve gone and done. Now they’re trapped 200 years in the past, with a broken Time Turner, a missing snuff box, a handful of overly-eligible daughters, and a House-elf in a cable knit cardigan. It will require the combined power of their keen intellects to get them home, if they’d stop arguing long enough to use them. As it turns out, history is just one damned accident after another.
