I Dated Someone (who Turned Out To Have) A Very Loose Connection With Reality. For Example, He Regularly

I was walking on a rather remote beach when I came upon this Whip eel drying up in the sun. These are intertidal eels that can actually handle themselves out of water for a bit, but it’s not normal for them to be fully exposed in direct sunlight like this. The tide was at least six hours from coming in and I felt like this eel was in distress, so I made the decision to dig him out and return to the ocean. His body was too delicate to be simply pulled from the hole without injury, so I got to digging.

This endeavor took about 40 minutes as the eel was quite long and difficult to excavate. Also had to continually refill my temporary eel pond to keep him from drying out entirely while I worked.

If you are an eel aficionado like myself, please enjoy this silly little video of the relocation process set to some jaunty royalty-free disco music.

im a simple gal, u as someone not on the schizophrenic spectrum say schizo, i avoid the hell out of you

❤️❤️❤️

“I don’t know. Whenever we try to do stuff, me and Zoey, half the time she starts crying and freaking out, and she says it’s not my fault and she says she likes me, but…” Saintjohn Hadouken sighed through pinched lips, hard enough to make his cheeks puff, and shook his head, “...feels like I’m hurting her.”

Johnny Newsroom looked off into the distance and took a pensive pull of his vape. “She said she likes you?”

“Yeah. I just don’t know what’s going on.”

Johnny turned his head to look him in the eye. “Have you ever dated a trans gal before?”

Saintjohn shook his head. “I’m fuckin figuring out some shit about myself, bro.”

“It’s… she’s… let’s put it this way. Imagine if your dick looked like a scary clown.”

Saintjohn flinched. “I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna use my brain powers for evil.”

Johnny continued. “Imagine if every time you took off your pants, a fucked-up evil clown was staring back at you. Imagine trying to get close to someone while you’re like that. Imagine trying to have a sex life. Imagine just trying to love when you’ve got an evil clown under your pants.”

Saintjohn’s frown seemed to stretch beyond the limits of his face. “Can I stop imagining it now?”

Johnny took another pull from his vape. “I don’t think Zoey gets to stop. Everyone’s got a different relationship to their own body, I don’t know Zoey personally, but...” he trailed off, letting Saintjohn fill in the blanks for himself.

Saintjohn leaned against the side of the motorhome and sighed again. “So what am I supposed to do?”

“Do you love her?” Johnny asked.

A pause.

“She makes me happy. When she laughs at my dumbass jokes, I feel like I just cured cancer.”

Saintjohn smiled as soon as he started talking about her. Johnny knew that smile, he felt its residual warmth, the second-hand joy. He wanted the two of them to be happy. He wanted one good thing to happen in the middle of this disaster. The Midwest Autonomous Zone could burn to the ground all over again. As long as he helped two people fall in love, he would have no regrets.

“And, y’know, I wanna get all up in there,” Saintjohn said.

“Okay. Well. To answer your question. Be patient. Let her do things at her pace. Let her figure herself out. Give her space when she needs it, even if you never want to be away from her. If you mess up - and you probably will, we’re only human - swallow your pride, apologize, and try not to do it again. Trust that it will all work out.”

“That sounds really hard.”

Johnny gave him a wry smile. “That’s love.”

[later]

“I’m sorry,” Zoey sniffed, pulling away from Saintjohn, “I just can’t right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever…”

She buried her head in her hands. Her body shuddered with heavy breaths as she began to cry. Saintjohn looked at her. He considered putting a hand on her shoulder, then lowered his arm and simply sat next to her.

“It’s okay,” Saintjohn said, “I understand. You gotta deal with the evil clown.”

Zoey lifted her head. She was too surprised and confused to keep crying. “What?”

If you decide to read this, just remember you're not obliged to finish reading it. It's a hard read and stopping and watering the garden or making dinner or having a cup of tea and looking at plants are all good self care.

Quick notes below if you can't read the whole article.

The article expands on a story that became public mid 2024, but in short, Gaiman is alleged to be a serial sexual abuser.

During the acute phase of the pandemic, Palmer who was in the process of divorcing Gaiman, befriended a homeless and vulnerable woman, Pavlovich, and offered her a job in being nanny to her and Gaiman's son (shared custody split between two homes). Gaiman could easily have afforded to pay an experienced nanny but somehow ended up having this vulnerable woman, Pavlovich, come play nanny at his as well. Palmer allegedly told him to leave Pavlovich alone, but Gaiman allegedly did not, and allegedly sexually assaulted/raped her repeatedly throughout the time she was their son's nanny. A lot of terrible abuse is detailed, including under-the-covers sexual activity with the lights on in a hotel room with his under-10yo son metres away looking at his tablet.

Payment for the nannying was... spotty at best.

Eventually Pavlovich told Palmer about Gaiman's behaviour. Palmer tried to help Pavlovich during her (very understandable) mental health crisis as a result but was not very effective. Eventually Pavlovich told the police about the alleged assaults and rape. The police said they'd need Palmer to verify her parts of the story, Pavlovich was convinced she would, but Palmer didn't.

Pavlovich is now doing much better far away from the two of them.

Palmer lost everything in the divorce (an outcome she was probably hoping to avoid by keeping her mouth shut) and now lives with her parents. I'm not sure what the custody agreement is for their kid but hopefully it's not 100% with Gaiman.

Gaiman has been doing fine.

The article attempts at various times to blame Gaiman's behaviour on the abuse he probably experienced as a child from Scientology/Dianetics, that he's never talked about but which may have informed some of the child abuse in The Ocean At The End Of The Lane.

Vulture

There Is No Safe Word

How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.

TW: rape, sexual assault, child abuse

Archived version here, in case you hit the pay wall:

https://archive.is/HJtxW

Literally sobbing. A judge, a US judge defended us. A judge brought up intersex people, using the term intersex, to *defend* us by not allowing our erasure. I'm having a lot of feelings right now

Since this blew up considerably, if you would like to help a disabled intersex person afford their medications and transportation to appointments, please consider sending a dollar or two via cashapp to $ElJay777 🥰 Absolutely no pressure, no guilt trips here. Just if you have it to spare and would like to help. Truly inspiring and encouranging to see this post reach so many and have so much love shown, thank you all so much for seeing us and supporting us. It really makes a difference ❤️

She was a sweet cat who didn't really like guests, but tolerated me.

Today I said goodbye to my beautiful cat. Eve was 18 years old and had thyroid disease, kidney disease and a heart murmur, all of this combined (even with attempting to treat the thyroid disease with medication) led to extreme nausea for her so she stopped eating. We tried everything, including different types of food and appetite increasing/nausea reducing medication, and nothing was successful.

For the first time since the late 1990s, we're without a furry friend in the house, which makes this loss even harder.

So let me tell you the story of how she ended up in our lives. We were having a new year's eve party, as you do, and some friends went outside to have a smoke. They came back inside with a kitten, "Is this yours?" they asked. "I guess it is for tonight," I replied, and took the kitten and put her in my bedroom. Our existing cats instantly hated the intruder. We put up signs around the neighbourhood and no one claimed her. So we had a new cat.

Over time the existing cats decided that she wasn't the absolute worst. The older of the two cats taught her how to hunt and catch mice and the mouse terror was born. Apparently mice were a lot of fun to play with, they made the best toys, had to be sung the song of her people, and we'd often just find scraps of mice about the house during a mouse plague. One night she caught 4, each of them smaller and smaller.

She had two litters of kittens before we managed to get her desexed.

After we moved house she spent a period being very scared of everything, but eventually settled down. Sky growls (thunder) and the vacuum cleaner were terrifying for ever, but sneezes and soft-drink bottles opening gradually were less of a threat.

She spent the last of her years lounging on my work laptop, in her comfortable cat bed, on my bed, or on me or my husband while we were in bed. She was never really a lap cat, but happy to curl up asleep on my thigh while I slept on my side or on my husband's bum while he read social media on his phone in bed.

Here she is guarding me from things coming in through the bedroom door.

And my very last photo of her.

May the rainbow road lead you to fields of mice you can play with my beautiful kitty.

There really isn't that tight a correlation between egg size and adult size. I mean we're not expecting something big, but some of the biggest of these came out of mid to small eggs. It's so cool!

Bugs & Bunnies

Me too!

Endou Yuu versus the cosmic unknown 

Wow

icarus laughed as he fell