whenever I confess to people that i feel like I am just roleplaying as a normal person they’re always like noooo you don’t strike me as someone who’s roleplaying as a normal person at all!!! :) and every time internally im like well yes that’s because I am excellent at it
if you’re looking for a simple way to help out amidst everything right now, consider looking up your local food bank and sending them $10, even $5. with SNAP pausing in just a few days, folks who are food insecure will need support now more than ever
i had a nap dream that i got a phalloplasty and the results were so incredible that somehow it got out that i had the most beautiful penis in the world (whatever that would mean) and actors started hiring me to be their penis double in films (as if there are a ton of penis closeups in hollywood) and i made a decent living doing it but it was in all my contracts not to say anything so no one knew it wasn’t the actors’ real penises. but then after a few years a journalist noticed and compared all the shots and realized they were all the same penis so she found me and wrote an article for vanity fair. i was thrust into the spotlight and didn’t know how to handle the attention. i got invited to talk about it on a talk show and the host introduced me like “you know his penis…now meet the man!”
i can tell i’m sleep deprived bc i just made myself cry about tutankhamun and i have, like, negative interest in the kid
have now made the rest of the discord cry about this little boy who had multi-coloured ducks sewn onto a tunic that he loved so much he wore it to a Very Important Event because he was EIGHT and have you SEEN my DUCKS
sorry no i’m not done i’m gonna make you all cry some more i’m bringing you down with me
there was once a little boy.
he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.
somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.
the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?
he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.
as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.
he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.
and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.
there was once a little boy.
yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real
but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.
tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child
his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.
but he had brightly coloured little ducks on his favourite shirt, and he kept it.
and he did not just keep the duckie shirt either
tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.
and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.
but he was a little boy who thought ducks were just the best
WITH PLEASURE
(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)
Ok but this is how to teach history. This is how you get people to pay attention, to care. Find something small and make it personal, then zoom out to the wider context. History is best taught as a story, with people who lived their lives in ways that came together to create something remarkable that we still talk about today, but who were still just human at the end of the day. They kissed, argued, cried, and dreamed just like we do. And sometimes they really liked ducks.
With the holidays here, thought this is worth sharing
This website is still here and some of the asks are heartbreaking. Like “Jamie wants a new pair of jeans because he’s never had new clothes before”. Or “Kayla wants a bag with her name on it for when she moves foster homes again.”
A lot of these kids ask for brand name clothing and it sounds pretentious but having one nice new fashionable piece of clothing means a lot when all your previous clothes have come out of black trash bags from charities.
Btw, you can filter wishes based on gender, age, price, etc to help you find the perfect wish for you. This charity is LGBTQ-affirming (unlike a lot of religion-based charities that are unfortunately homophobic), so you can even look for nonbinary kids to donate to.
Also, I would really encourage people to be open to granting wishes made by older foster kids (14+) or young adults who aged out of the system and still lack family support. They’re so often forgotten.
If you don’t have a lot of money but still want to help give a kid a nice Christmas, there are lots of wishes that are $24 for stocking stuffers as well, or $15 for a sqishmallow!
I do not understand how “no one deserves to lose their human rights based on who they voted for” is becoming a fringe opinion in leftist spaces. So is “children do not deserve to suffer and starve and die for their parent’s choices full stop” somehow. Something something not wanting to remove the boot but become it…
I bring a sort of “maybe don’t repeat rhetoric that Republicans use to justify the horrific mistreatment of the children of immigrants” vibe to the party a weirdly large amount of progressive seem to have a problem with.
It looks like losing SNAP is making MAGA types do a heel turn and start saying they regret voting for Trump and our job is to absolutely 100% never in a million years be a condescending asshole telling them we have no sympathy, won’t extend a hand, and that they deserve it.
If you do this to people who are trying to deprogram or actually are deprograming you’re part of the problem. If leaving the cult gets them treated like this then why would anyone ever leave the cult? From a harm reduction standpoint every person who turns their back on Trump is a win. Don’t ruin that.