I wish I had the ability

to do what?

Yeah

*feels both “I am so bored & understimulated I want to do EVERYTHING!” and “I am so exhausted & overwhelmed I can’t do ANYTHING” at the same time*

Having just finished my first year of my screenwriting masters program, i wanna share this thing that I was told at the very start of the year that I have not been able to stop thinking about

they got all 28 of us screenwriters in a room on like the second day and straight up told us—

“you will suffer for your entire career if you make this into a competition.” 

they told us that, while we might like the write similar things, like in the same genre, or same settings—we’d never be in competition, simply because we were all different people.

from our big differences in life experience and in personality, down to our smaller differences in story preferences and writing style, it all made everything we all did unique.

and while we were all one of a million people trying to achieve the same goal of making writing a career—individually we were the only ones who could tell our stories. 

You are the only one who can write like you, who can draw like you, who can cosplay like you, who can sing like you, who can make art like you. Don’t ruin the love you have for your craft by comparing yourself to others, by putting yourself in competition with them just because you want to be “the best”.

And finally, here’s the tough love part that we all got reminded of constantly—

The moment you decide you are better than everyone, is the moment you fail. Because you will have closed yourself off to valuable critique. You will have inflated your ego so big that the second you get rejected you’ll spiral. You will have become so high and mighty that one day you’ll look around and realize you have pushed all of your peers, and your entire support system, away. 

There literally is no “best”. There is only growing with others as artists, supporting your peers, and telling your story in the way only you can. That’s how you succeed.  

You know what? This actually isn’t funny at all because this really does happen. Baby boomers can’t afford to retire; that’s a big part of why millennials can’t find jobs in their fields. And if they lose their jobs (which can mean a variety of things, including their companies finding an excuse to fire them so they don’t have to pay anything for their retirement, which happened to my uncle and 5 people he worked with over one year), they aren’t as desirable because they’re retirement-age. The world has changed a lot since they got jobs they thought were supposed to be secure, and now their old strategies that used to work for finding a job don’t work anymore and they don’t know what does work. So a lot are desperate; I recently talked to a woman who had to be in at least her mid-60s who was begging on a street corner because she was replaced by a younger person and lost her job of 18 years, and it’s not the first time I’ve heard a story like that. A lot of people who were never rich to begin with lost a lot in the 2008 financial crisis and never fully recovered. Baby boomers didn’t all just magically become financially secure as they got older.

This generation war bullshit is 100% manufactured to keep our anger misdirected. It’s not baby boomers screwing over millennials. It’s rich capitalists of every living generation screwing over baby boomers, their parents, gen x-ers, millennials, and gen z-ers all at once and all in different ways. And if we collectively realize that we’re not enemies and that we actually have a common cause with common enemies, it’ll be really bad for the people doing this to us, which is why they’re pushing the generation war thing so hard.

^ wisdom on Tumblr. That’s rare.

Yep.

This generation war bullshit is 100% manufactured to keep our anger misdirected. It’s not baby boomers screwing over millennials. It’s rich capitalists of every living generation screwing over baby boomers, their parents, gen x-ers, millennials, and gen z-ers all at once and all in different ways.

Bolding and underlining the really important bits.

You heard of divide and conquer used in imperialistic wars, now get ready for D&C used against your own peoole.

ICE has been ordered to release children but they're the ones who get to decide if they release their parents as well or if they're just throwing these kids out, so please at the very least sign this petition

PS. this isn't a change.org petition either, so it is worth signing!

The mashup you never thought would work

Congratu-fucking-lations.

I would pay so much to have this as a ringtone I’m not even joking.

Why?????

The face I made while listening to this was so visceral I had to draw it before reblogging it

This is the Lucky Ace. Reblog to recieve a wad of cash that is oddly specific to your current needs.

I reblogged this shit two days ago y’all… what kinda sorcery is this. Oddly specific too …. I’ll take it tho 🤯

I think I did it wrong

Uh I reblogged this like 3 days ago and I start my new job on Monday??? Like idk how you accidentally find a job but I did.

I need to get paid asap so pls ace help

I GOT PAID I GOT PAID!!!!!! MUCH MORE THAN I EXPECTED AAAAAAAAAAAA THANK YOU ACE

I legit have a specific amount i want in my head rn it better come true 😭

I ALSO HAVE A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF MONEY I WOULD LIKE TO ACQUIRE, PLEASE HELP

This has worked before, so why not again?

I could really use a miracle. So why not

im super broke let’s see some magic people.

This user is anti-TERF, reblog if your blog is against trans exclusionary radfems

none of these people would be having breakdowns in quarantine if we hadn’t started cutting the arts out of schools

Trump will deliver killing blow to the USPS

The USPS is about to declare bankruptcy. It’s at the center of the longstanding plans for disaster recover and has been since the Cold War. It’s the only institution that could (for example) deliver covid meds to every home in America in one day.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/national-emergency-library/#going-postal

But Congress has decided not to bail out the postal service, despite Art 1, Sec 8 of the US Constitution: “To establish Post Offices and post Roads.”

Maybe it’s because without a USPS we couldn’t have a postal vote in 2020?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/27/just-asking-questions/#save-usps

The proximate cause of the post office’s bankruptcy is the pandemic, but that is merely the finishing blow. The USPS was murdered in 2006, when Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/04/will-the-united-states-post-office-become-a-victim-of-covid19.html

The Act gave the USPS a mere 10 years to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years.” That is, to set aside cash to pay medical bills for future employees who hadn’t been born yet.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-6407

The Act gave the USPS a mere 10 years to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years.” That is, to set aside cash to pay medical bills for future employees who hadn’t been born yet.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-6407

The USPS’s murder is straight out of the neoliberal playbook: “1 Defund, 2 claim crisis, 3 call for privatizatization, 4 profit!”

As Lambert Strether points out, it was a bipartisan act of murder, cosponored by the “centrist” Democrat Henry Waxman.

Killing the USPS looms large in the Trump admin’s (nonmetaphorical, actual) privatization playbook, “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations”:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Government-Reform-and-Reorg-Plan.pdf

The proposals are for USPS to become a Wework clone or franchisee, but not to become a publicly owned bank - a common line of business for other nations’ postal services, natural based on the amounts of cash they handle.

The USPS is the nation’s second largest employer of veterans, with 630,000 employees. Trump is about to allow it to collapse so that UPS, Fedex and other private firms can skim off the most profitable parts of its business and leave rural Americans totally isolated.

The loss of the USPS would mean the loss of the last truly universal federal program in America and would unduly hammer the people whom Trump claims to love – veterans and rural voters.

https://twitter.com/lildipshit3/status/1248741868440940544

I read a diary at Daily Kos which suggested that if half the households in America bought 2 sheets of Forever Stamps, for about 16 bucks, it would provide enough funding to keep the USPS alive. How fucked up is this? We’re trying to save the fucking Postal Service, which is in the fucking CONSTITUTION, from Republican sabatoge. There is no such thing as a moderate, or patriotic, Republican. They are anti-American Fascists.

don’t miss the fact that this is coinciding exactly with the push to increase mail-in voting, which would seriously jeopardize Trump’s reelection. you can’t have mail-in ballots if there’s no postal service, right?

Americans, please text USPS to 50409 and ResistBot will send a message to your senators and congressperson telling them to save the Post Office.

i did it yesterday and it couldn’t have been easier. my senators are both pieces of shit, but that doesn’t mean i’m not going to give them an earful about this.

How do you protect yourself from being stalked online by your parents?

I often get messages from teens living with their abusive parents telling me about how terrifying it is for them to even look at my blog in case their parent finds out. I was a teenager before social networking on the internet. Honestly, when I was a teenager there was barely an internet yet. So, I don’t know how people protect themselves but I feel like probably there are ways. If you know please do share! A lot of people would find it helpful.

Advice for keeping your phone safe in toxic environments:

Keep things in google apps

Use the internet on apps that aren’t Safari

Inform your friends and if you want to be really sneaky use code when texting

Awesome info. Thank you!

There are more responses too that I can’t reblog. Check out the notes to see them.

I was in this situation a while ago, another thing to do is you can make second accounts on your social media and block your parents account so they don’t find it

For social media, I either go by a different name/photo w/e and block my family or I just make a second account and block them all again.

And I’ve always had a password on everything, so they can’t go through it and I won’t let them.

no one is coming after me but still reblogging because other people definitely need this info

Thank you! Yes. Please, everyone boost. So many need this info.

Fake/second accounts are great for this, as long as you still use your other accounts for safe messages and websites, etc so they don’t get suspicious when they check it. Also, only deleting the parts of your search history that your parents would object to is less suspect than deleting the whole thing.

If they’re being sneaky and checking things while you’re not around, make sure to log out of all social media after using it and try to have a slightly different password for each one.

Let your friends and other people know so that they don’t accidentally send unsafe messages to your main account.

(Stay safe,guys.Reblog to help each other out.)

I just discovered Hide It Pro. It looks like an audio manager but it’s actually a secret vault where you can store apps your abusive parents will lose their minds over. Anyone ever use this?

I have like 5 active followers but in case anyone ever needs this

A search engine/ browser that my parents literally NEVER CHECK is called puffin- it seems like nobody knows about it but it’s pretty standard and similar to google chrome. It lets you use everything in desktop mode, only it no longer works for iOS devices. Android users, however, are in the clear.

Hide It Pro is AMAZING, if you’re on the fence about getting it please do.

First of all, sharing to save a life yo.

Secondly, this might seem counterproductive, but it seems like an appropriate time to raise awareness of Noonlight for more extreme cases of abusive parents. It’s an app that can alert a list of people of your choosing when you are in danger, or summon the police in an emergency. Works at home, school, work, or anywhere in-between.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.safetrekapp.safetrek

I’ll always signal boost this stuff until it’s no longer needed.

thank you guys

also of you need to store things on notes you dont want your parents finding, search calculator diary into the appstore or google play and theres a tonne of secret diary things disguised as calculators which only open if a code is typed in, do even of they do check it they probably womt be able to do anything with it

my new favourite thing is italian regional presidents and mayors absolutely LOSING IT at people violating quarantine. here’s a eng subtitled compilation for y’all. (the president of campania region; the mayor of messina; the mayor of bari; the mayor of gualdo tadino; the mayor of tutolo.)

I’d like to introduce everyone to my new theme song

fuckin MOOD

I love the contrast between the lyrics and the melody this is art

pfffffffft nooooo I didn’t just learn this song on ukulele… at midnight…

Lyrics: 

I’ve tried, tried, tried And I’ve tried even more  I’ve Cried, Cried, Cried And I can’t recall what for I’ve pressed, I’ve pushed, I’ve yelled, I’ve begged In hope of some success  But the inevitable fact is that It never will impress 

I’ve no more fucks to give,   My fucks have runneth dry,  I’ve tried to go fuck shopping  But there’s no fucks left to buy  I’ve no more fucks to give,  Though more fucks I’ve tried to get,  I’m over my fuck budget and I’m now in fucking debt 

I strive, strive, strive  To get everything done  I’ve played by all the rules But I’ve very rarely won, I’ve smiled, I’ve charmed, I’ve wooed I’ve laughed, Alas to no avail I’ve run round like a moron, To unequivocally fail!

I’ve no more fucks to give, My fuck fuse has just blown, I’ve been hunting for my fucks all day, But they’ve upped and fucked off home, I’ve no more fucks to give, My fuck rations are depleted, I’ve rallied my fuck army but It’s been fucking defeated! 

The effort has just not been worth The time or the expense I’ve exhausted all my energy  For minimal recompense The complete lack of acknowledgement  Has now begun to gall And I’ve come to realise that I  Don’t give a fuck at all!

I’ve no more fucks to give, My fucks have flown away, My fucks are now so fucked off They’ve refused to fucking stay! I’ve no more fucks to give, My fucks have gone insane They’ve come back round and passed me While they’re fucking off again!

I’ve no more fucks to give, My fucks have all dissolved, I’ve planned many projects But my fucks won’t be involved! I’ve no more fucks to give, My fucks have all been spent, They’ve fucked off from the building And I don’t know where they went! 

I’ve no more fucks to give,  I’ve no more fucks to give,  I’ve no more fucks,  I’ve no more fucks,  I’ve no more fucks to give!

Good news folks it’s on Spotify!!!

im going to be reblogging this every few hours to make sure every single one of my followers gets to see this epic post

OMG SOMEONE ADDED THE LYRICS

This song makes me so happy.

Good Morning

I wrote this comic while it was raining. 

if a teenager is at your door and they are wearing a costume!! please give them candy!! they are still in it for the halloween spirit and it honestly no different from a little kid in a costume. they are just as excited and happy as all the other lil tykes and dont you dare tell them they are “too old for trick-or-treating” because that will literally break their hearts and that’s not cool.

Its getting close to Halloween again so I just thought I’d reblog this again

And if “don’t be rude to teenagers over a stupid jawbreaker” isn’t enough for you, consider 

And those are just things I can think of off the top of my head. 

and even if it is just a bored 16/17 year old out trying to see what free shit they can get. is it really gonna kill you to give them a fun sized milky way from the multipack you bought at poundland? That thing didn’t even cost you 5p, just give the kid the sugar, say “nice costume”, and let it go.

There are worse things a teenager could be doing on Halloween instead of trick-or-treating.

It’s been kind if an unspoken rule in my college town that if college students show up at your door in costume you give them candy because they’re also out to have fun and it’s way nicer for the students to trick or treat instead of going out and getting drunk. It’s also a way for the people who don’t want to party and don’t want to drink to have fun so like, we need to stop getting angry at people older than 6 wanting to dress up and get candy.

Heck, we even offer the parents a bit of candy too! It’s all good fun~!

If ya’ll are someone who is all “IT’S HALLOWEEN” since August and then complain about teenagers Trick or Treating then you don’t deserve Halloween at all.

Just for reference, I had my heart fucking broke when I was told I couldn’t go trick or treating anymore. I love dressing up and I didnt feel like I could anymore because I couldn’t go out and show it off while getting candy.

Let people have fun okay? Halloween is a holiday for all. No age limits

I never got to go trick-or-treating as a child because I came from a crazily religious household. I would give my left arm (and I happen to be left-handed) to have that experience now without somebody telling me I'm too old

The Witch Ball

This is a rewrite of one of my first posts.

One of my favorite ways of warding the home is with a traditional glass witch ball. There are many kinds of witch balls, but here I am referring to the blown glass variety. Many witches will fill an empty Christmas ornament with herbs or nails or something and use it as a spell. Very crafty. But my preferred variety of witch ball is the blown glass sort with threads of glass in the middle.

These were traditionally made by glassblowers as a way of ending their work day. They were historically made from scraps of glass, which is why so many of them are multicolored. They’re simple blown glass balls with threads of glass in the center, made by sticking metal objects (such as knitting needles) in the still-molten glass ball. The witch ball is placed near a window or a door, usually on a cord made of knotted rope or leather. The wise homemaker cleans her witch ball regularly, as this cleans it of dark spirits.

The witch ball may be descended from glass fishing floats, which are often sold in seaside tourist towns as decorative gifts. The first glass witch balls were most likely developed in England in the 17th or 18th Century and were inspired by these glass buoys.

According to popular belief, the witch ball represents the witch who has been tried and hanged. A witch ball will float in water, like a witch thrown in a body of water during a trial. It was believed that witches were rejected by bodies of water because they were too impure. By this logic, witches, like the glass fishing floats of yore, were unable to sink. Glass fishing floats, and later witch balls, were tied up in nets or left to dangle from ropes, not unlike a witch sentenced to die at the gallows. For these reasons, the witch ball serves as a symbolic warning to all witches who dare enter one’s home.

The ball’s inner threads work by means of fascination. Witches and dark spirits are drawn into the ball because they cannot resist playing with its threads. They are entranced (or “fascinated”) by them. They wind themselves through the ball’s threads until the ball is cleaned by its owner. When the owner cleans it and wipes away the dust, she also wipes it free of evil spirits. Many other spirit traps work by a similar principle - the witch bottle, the dream catcher, even a handful of rice thrown toward a malevolent entity - they all work by fascination.

Many older witch balls have a mirror glaze. Some believe the large gazing balls that decorate gardens throughout the country may have their origin in the smaller, more magical witch ball. The mirror glaze is yet another fascinating thing about the witch ball.

No matter their origin or how they work, the witch ball is at the very least a delightful and rustic objet d’art. I find witch balls to be very effective, however. They can last for generations and are, in my opinion, one of the most aesthetic ways to ward a home.

happy independence day let’s impeach the president 

The only 4th of july post i care about

I can top it: yesterday, NPR made a series of tweets that Trump supporters called “propaganda” and “trash words” to insult Trump and push NPR’s agenda.

NPR was tweeting the Declaration of Independence.

And that, folks, describes about 75% of Trump’s voter base.

Some exammples of the Trump followers vs NPR thing

So they are admitting Trump is a dictator?

Some Trump supporters thought NPR tweeted ‘propaganda.’ It was the Declaration of Independence.

This is still funny.