I-like-purple-more-than-spoiler - Eris

Use the website versions of apps like instagram on incognito using VPN. It sucks, and sometimes there are restrictions, but it’ll never be detected. If your parents are/have access to the internet service providers, they can see your history whether you’re on incognito or not, which is why I use VPN.

Public Libraries. Make use of them. They usually have free internet and you can pretend you have school stuff.

I dropped small hints about my situation to get sympathy points. It’s underhanded and makes you feel like shit but it makes people want to help and could potentially get you food or places to stay. I got kicked out of my house for a few days and I would have starved if not for the rapport I built with a small restaurant owner and the library workers.

Always keep your phone fully charged and on silent.

Thrift stores have a whole lot of really cheap stuff, especially clothes, which really helps save money.

hey so protip if you have abusive parents and need to get around the house as quietly as possible, stay close to furniture and other heavy stuff because the floor is settled there and it’s less likely to creak

Fight-or-Flirt Response

(based off of this meme)

YOO WHAT I MEAN THEY ARE KINDA RIGHT

Once again randomly remembered this story about a couple who had a small parrot - pretty sure it was a budgie - who didn't talk but learned to communicate with people in its own way. Once it figured out that people always turn to check their phones when the notification sound comes on, it started making the text message notification sound to request human attention. The parrot also liked to follow people to the door whenever guests were leaving, and would use its wings to pantomime the motions of a person putting their coat on. A very clever, charming bird.

And every once in a while it just randomly hated some people. Not for any real reason, or even reason to suspect bad vibes, but by deciding "fuck this person in particular" for shits and giggles alone. And one time when the owners had invited a new friend to their home, the bird decided that it Did Not Like Her.

So in the middle of polite conversation, the bird - who was free to roam around the apartment at the time - hopped onto the living room coffee table, right in front of the unwanted guest. And in that moment, the owners put two and two together and understood that whatever mischief the bird had decided to do, it was now too late to stop it.

But instead of unleashing the absolute hell that even the tiniest displeased parrot could be capable of, the little budgie made its little "may I have your attention please" cell phone notification sound, and once the guest was focused on the bird, looked at her dead in the eye while doing the putting-my-coat-on wing motion.

The guest did not recognise the pantomime for what it was, but she was nonetheless delighted that the parrot would do a little wing-roll dance for her. And the host couple were at first too stunned and then too polite to tell her how impressive that gesture truly was. Their bird had shown both remarkable restraint and cleverness by using its entire vocabulary of human communication just to say

"I have an important announcement: I think you should leave."

I think some people forget that some literature and some media is meant to be deeply uncomfortable and unsettling. It's meant to make you have a very visceral reaction to it. If you genuinely can't handle these stories then you are under no obligation to consume them but acting as if they have no purpose or as if people don't have a right to tell these stories, stories that often relate to the darkest or most disturbing parts of life, then you should do some introspection.

*Steph is crying after a breakup*

Cass: There there, Steph.

Steph, still crying: Thanks, but how did you get into my room?

Cass: Great question—

—

Damian: It’s time to turn this into a real business.

Tim: What do you mean? Like, carry a briefcase, and wear a tie, and pay taxes?

Cass: Wait, have you not been paying your taxes?

Duke: I handle our accounting.

—

Tim: Just say when.

Damian: When.

Tim: I-

Tim: Now or later?

Damian: Oh.

—

Damian: What’s it like being tall?

Damian: Is it nice?

Damian: Can you reach comfortably for the cupboards?

Jason: We live in constant fear of the short ones who, in my experience, will climb 4 chairs, 2 boxes, a small coffee table and 6 oddly placed stools to get what they want.

Cass: It was one time!

—

Tim, shooing Jason away: Can you go be depressed over there? You’re bumming out my whole area.

—

Dick: Why did you leave Wrestlemania on for the cats?

Damian: They need to learn how to protect us.

—

Tim: My level of gay has reached “sighing deeply whenever anything extremely heterosexual happens near me”.

Childhood can be scary.

A collection of some of my hand-drawn horror looping animations!

Absolutely insane lines to just drop in the middle of an academic text btw. Feeling so normal about this.

[ A Critical History of English Literature, Vol. 1, Prof. David Daiches, first published in 1960 ]

I turned on closed captions for the Swedish Chef and I just started weeping with laughter.