(uni building voice) would you still love me if i was an incomprehensible maze? 🥺

the answer is no. by the way

This was originally posted in the lava lamps subreddit. The artist who made it thrifted all of the parts. It is hanging in one of his local bars.

ID. photo of a chandelier with lava lamps in various colors instead of light bulbs. End ID.

The cousin of "he would not say that:" he would not keep saying that. It was a one off funny line for one particular situation. Every memorable line does not need to become a running gag.

weird take about fiction: sometimes, actions that would be abusive in real life, hit different in a story. and sometimes i see people react very very strongly to those actions, and i totally get it, because like, that can be extremely triggering and ymmv on whether its handled well or not, but it always makes me a bit. hm.

like, i think the most obvious one is slapping/hitting. in real life, there is basically no situation where that is acceptable, unless you're actively defending yourself/someone else. but fiction is inherently larger than life, its about how it feels, subjectively, over what actually happens, literally. sometimes a character who has never before been violent will hit someone, and it's intended as like, an indicator of how fucked up everything is. that shit is going down. or, a character will trash a room, throwing things and destroying everything in their path. and then its never mentioned again, everything just continues as if they HADNT destroyed their own and other people's property in a frankly terrifying display, because it was just a cathartic moment to represent the storm of emotions the person was feeling. and when i see people like 'this character is an abuser, the story needs to address this,' i think maybe its actually okay for fictional characters to do shitty things and not have it framed as shitty, by the story itself or even on any sort of meta level, with the intended audience reaction. sometimes the point is just to resonate with your emotions, not to dissect the literal sequence of events.

like obviously ive been on the 'you can portray whatever you want in fiction, its all a pretend game' train forever. but i think the important thing to me here is that, you can also defend bad things in fiction. not just 'they did everything wrong and i love that,' but even 'they were 100% justified when they did [thing that would be extremely bad irl].' cause its like, ok, they did do that, but like it was the only way to tell the story well. dont worry about it.

all this is true and to it i would add in certain genres, elements of that genre are exaggerated in the way that musicals use non-diagetic singing; when the emotion crests, a character sings in a musical, is the famous way to explain why characters tend to burst into song there. except in, say, a martial arts movie for example, instead the characters fight, because that is the thing which is the narrative focus and emotional core of the genre.

in real life, when you get really mad at someone, it is universally unacceptable to settle that heated argument via roundhouse kicking them in the head, of course. but we understand that the universe of a martial arts movie is heightened specifically in relation to its use of one-on-one fighting and to not treat it as directly analogous to what it means to physically fight someone in real life, much as we understand 'how do they all know the words?' is not a good way to think about a musical. you understand the rules of the fictional universe treat these actions differently to both real life and also to stories in other genres much of the time, right? you know that fights in martial arts movies follow different rules because they are not just literal fights, but emotional storytelling devices that represent something else as well. it not only hits different compared to real life, but also to, say, a rom-com!

freeze frame. yeah, thats me. you might be wondering if thats me. yeah its me. ok thanks. unfreezes frame

Best Celestial Events 2026 (x)

my yearly struggle

here is my gift-buying advice,. it NEVER steers me wrong. i got it from an episode of News Radio where andy dick buys Bill Gates a ball of twine. if you have someone to buy a ift for who doesnt need anything and hasnt ASKED for anything:

SUMMARY: buy them something they havent thought of themselves, wont buy for themselves, but have a pre-existing use case for. you will look like a genius and get lots and lots of thank yous. keep it small and inexpensive and easy to throw away/store/hide in case they politely do not like it. that's my method and it has never failed me since ive started doing it

POV: You're the defense attorney and the prosecution just pulled this move

Harlequin Duck (Histrionicus histrionicus), male, family Anatidae, order Anseriformes, Toronto, ONT, Canada

Photograph by Todd Clustivik

Dodge timing? Horrible

Comedic timing? Fantastic

it's hot enough to fly an egg out there

Me: "Oh, haha, they typed FLY an egg, what a funny little typo."

Video: *plays*

Me:

It recently came up in conversation with my toddler that some birds can talk, and this has caused her great concern.

See, we were talking about how movies are pretend and how in real life, animals don’t talk. I mentioned that there are some birds who talk a little bit, but not like the animals in movies, and she just looked at me like “???”

So I informed her that some kinds of parrots can copy sounds that people make, and can learn how to say words. I thought this would give her a giggle, as fun new facts often do, but she was just deeply perplexed and a little worried about this.

“Birds can talk?” “Do they ask questions?” “What do they say?” Why do they talk?” “Do chickens talk?” “What about Blue Jays?” “Why do some birds talk?” “How do they talk?” “Birds TALK???”

We showed her a video of a parrot doing the “Hello, pretty bird, give a kiss” thing, and she was dead silent the whole time, hugging her comfort pillow with her knees to her chest. We asked if she wanted us to turn it off, and she shook her head. But we also asked if she wanted to see another one, and she shook her head even harder.

I don’t know why it has distressed her so greatly to learn that some birds can mimic human speech; but then again, I don’t know why it doesn’t distress the rest of us more to know that some birds can mimic human speech.

I keep thinking about that post that’s like “The first person to hear a parrot talk was probably Not Okay.” Because that’s exactly what happened. She had never been introduced to the concept, and her entire worldview got SHOOK.

Part of why Ravens are considered Spooky Bad Things We Associate With The Faeries is because they can and do mimic human speech - but much, much better than a parrot. With a parrot, you can tell something is off about the sound. You can tell it doesn’t belong to a human. Ravens don’t sound like that, no, cause they’re overacheivers. (And passerines). They sound EXACTLY like the voice of whoever they are mimicking.

But more importantly they love the sound of human laughter. No one knows why. But it is totally, 100% possible, and it happens to this day, to walk along the paths in the Black Forest and suddenly hear a strange kind of giggling sound, or maybe even a very clear, definitely human sounding “hello?” “Hiiiii!” Or “let’s go!”.

However, it takes a lot of practice for them to copy sounds as perfectly as they do, so you’re equally likely to hear something that definitely sounds human-like, but the words make no sense and the sound is unlike any language you know.

Ravens at the Tower of London do this all the time. Theyre pretty sociable with humans though, so they do it quite openly. I have seen videos of people, mostly Americans, look absolutely spooked out of their skins when a big ol’ raven (mind ye, these are birds that are 2 feet tall with a 5 foot wingspan) comes waltzing up on the deck and starts talking to them.

And ravens, especially the ones there that have been bred and raised by humans for centuries, don’t just imitate - they have one of the same language processing genes we do, and they understand the way a toddler might that things, places, and individuals have names, and can string together basic sentences much like an african grey.

I know because I used to work with one, Darlene, who knew, quite well, what she wanted and how to ask for it. If you were preparing her breakfast, she would hop on up and investigate. She used to be an illegal pet, and had been taught “manners”. That is to say, if she went for something and you told her, sternly, “mind your manners missy!” She would stop, look at you, perhaps for up to a minute, and then point with her beak to what she wanted. If that did not work, she would ask, in plain English, “grape?” Or “Darl have grape?” And lord help you if you gave her anything less than what she asked for. She would throw it at you, and try to bite you, sometimes while saying “No!” In the same tone as I imagine she was reprimanded in her home.

So yeah. Parrots arent the only ones.

WHAT

Was anyone gonna tell me that ravens can talk or was I meant to read about it on a tumblr post?!

Talking Ravens has been a trope in fantasy for so long that people forgot that it is based in fact.

a lot of you really need to internalize that acting avoidant isn't cute at all and that it will cost you experiences and life outcomes if you don't change course

this video is genuinely incredible - the framing, the sunset, the single street light, the sound of traffic and cicadas in the background, the video of the sign capture imperfectly by (presumably) a phone camera. it’s a work of art and a perfect encapsulation of 21st century america

having anti role models is a beautiful thing. it's not easy to live up to someone else's behavior but it is easy to lasso yourself into behaving right when you realize you're reminding yourself of the worst person youve ever met in your entire life