You can tell when someone’s frame of reference for “normal people” is more “people at the church sponsored ice cream social” and less “people on the bus”
the people in the notes saying “people on the bus aren’t normal” are the people this post is talking about.
I took the bus for three years when I lived in Honolulu and haven’t lived anywhere with even usable public transit since, but in those three years I had dozens of utterly bizarre experiences that were also Perfectly Normal. This is because the human condition is vast and also Very fucking Weird.
Kid one the bus next to me whose backpack starts moving and it turns out he’s got three chickens and a painted turtle he caught in there? This is Perfectly Normal. Humans have been catching small game and transporting it home in whatever they had since we invented bags to put chickens and turtles in.
I traded him three king-size snickers bars I had on me for the turtle because I vaguely remembered that many freshwater turtles were toxic to eat (incorrectly, as it turns out, but this was when I still had a Nokia Brick that lived a blissful, internet-free existence), and didn’t want him accidentally poisoning his family, but didn’t want to just. Steal his hard-won turtle. This is Perfectly Normal. Humans have been cautious about poisons, looking out for strangers kids and bartering shit since before we were technically humans, probably.
Having acquired a turtle, I now needed to transport the turtle to the on-campus pond that effectively served as an Invasive Freshwater Turtle Containment Zone, but did not have a bag that could adequately contain him so I had to sit the rest of that bus ride, at the station and all through the next bus ride holding the turtle like the world’s angriest hamburger. Multiple people were curious about and delighted with the turtle. This is Perfectly Normal. Humans love an animal, especially one that is capable of appearing grumpy, and hands are for holding things.
By the time I got back to Campus, the anthropology and child psychology building that the Invasive Turtle Containment Pond was in had closed, so I had to figure out how to climb the tree over the wall and get down off the roof while holding The World’s Angriest And Sharpest Hamburger. I eventually ended up having to briefly shove the turtle into by bra to get up to the initial branch and off the roof without breaking an ankle. This is Perfectly Normal. Humans are, as a species, a bunch of barely-evolved arboreal frugivores and really good at Tree Physics, and I don’t know a single titty-having bitch out there that hasn’t used their bra as Emergency Pockets at least once, if not daily.
I released the turtle into the Turtle Containment Pond and then had to solve the problem of getting back OUT of the locked building, but Nokia Brick never loses a signal or drops a call (including that time I accidentally dropped it off a 13-story building in the middle of a call to my parents and the damn thing BOUNCED but kept the line open. I miss that phone every day.) and while campus security has been carefully trained to not let people IN to places without proper ID and a call to someone inside, they assume that if you got locked in somewhere, that you got in by legitimate means and not Lemur Shenanigans, so i just called them, apologized that I’d been working late with headphones on and didn’t realize I’d been locked in. This is Perfectly Normal, people have been lying to cops since laws were invented, and will continue to do so because all cops are bastards.
Anyway, everyone should have access to good public transportation because freedom of movement is a human right and meeting a broad spectrum of humanity is good for your mental health and spiritual welfare.
This wild ride of a story made me smile so I’m reblogging in hopes it makes others smile as well.
One of the joys of a role switch AU, is like - as an example - watching IDAU Will trying to provide IDAU Hannibal something that canon Will would have wanted, but that IDAU Hannibal does not necessarily want or need.
And vice versa, obviously.
You can have an alternate version of Will who has chosen, all on his own, to define himself in large part on his active ability to do harm to others. BUT having already embraced that part of himself does not mean that IDAU Will wants anyone else in his life to even know about his “true self.” He doesn’t want to be Seen or accepted or understood or any of the things canon Hannibal is after, but those are things IDAU Hannibal wants to give him because they are things both versions of Hannibal want for themselves.
will graham is really just drifting before hannibal huh. doesn’t really know who he is. is starting to lose track of where he is. he collects strays to try and fill something. everyone knows he’s a little neurotic and will plays into that because it keeps people out. loneliness is his only constant companion. reflects everyone except himself because he knows something in that self is rotten. he’s published a monograph on insect behavior and tries to be good with his lecturing job but everyone knows him for the weird freak disorder he has. he’s bored. he’s trying to be good. keeps himself busy with his strays and and his lures and his boat engines. problems he can control and things that can’t look at him. he’s starved. it’s perfect
if vampires existed in real life i think there would be shady companies advertising “organic blood” sourced from “willing donors” who are coincidentally all poor people being paid like $5 per blood donation. and like haughty vegan vampires who only drink a synthetic blood drink thats brewed in a way thats actively worse for the enviroment. and radical traditionalist vampires who go on tiktok and claim that true alpha chads have to drain and kill people and anyone who leaves their victims alive is a liberal cuck. enter the world of hypothetical insufferable vampire politics with me.
The explicitly pornographic ads paired with porn bans to appeal to advertisers is really aggravating, but I also want to take a moment to complain about really disgusting ads. Cartoon person with disturbingly photorealistic boils and shit, getting giant worms pulled out of their bodies, body horror shit like that. What the fuck is this supposed to be advertising? Why would you show this? Why can’t I block it? It always pops up when I’m trying to eat, too. Why is this allowed? Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you FUCK YOU
I’ve been getting a lot of these over the last few days and I’m sick of it.
“if being hard on yourself was going to work it would have worked by now” okay well being soft on myself isn’t working either so what the fuck is left. medium? I gotta be medium with myself? I gotta ask the fucking ghosts for help? is that it?
I used to work with preschoolers and as a consequence watch parents work with their preschoolers so I kind of in my head often compare it to that.
You can’t let a preschooler wander off into traffic naked even though many of them would very much like to do that. At the same time though you also shouldn’t yell at them for struggling when they can’t figure out how to tie a knot because that’s a hard task and they’re like three.
No you can’t go out in the rain without a coat on. I know you don’t like sleeves but you don’t want to get cold and wet either do you? But you do want to walk to church and see your friends. Sometimes we’ve gotta do things we don’t like to avoid things we’d like even worse. But you get to see your friends once we get there.
And sometimes you’ve gotta talk to yourself like you’re a preschooler. And it weirdly works.
I know you don’t like doing the dishes but you like having dishes to eat off of, right? Yeah I know it’s upsetting but we’ll make a nice cup of tea and have a cookie afterwards. Oh I know it’s hard. It’s okay to cry. Let it out and then we can finish the dishes and get a cookie.
