“The Perfect Heist Hack”

The funny thing about human beings is having such a clear, yet vague list of instructions of what you were meant to do. Okay, you are alive, and as a living thing you have the urge to perpetuate life. But there's no real pressure to have your own offspring, oh no. Some people have that urge, a pressing urge to personally breed that won't be satisfied any other way, but many can be happy without it.

Humans survive in colonies where each individual support each other, and if you're happy to just babysit your sister's kids every once in a while, you're fulfilling your duty to the clan and helping it survive, because human parents weren't meant to manage 100% alone. Whatever you can teach your niblings, you were meant to teach.

Look at your hands. Especially, look at your fingers. Every single one of them moves individually, to wherever you wish to place them. Nature does not put energy into things that aren't used or needed, you need to have ten digits to... Yes, what? A bear's paw is only one slab of meat and claws, designed to walk on and slap things to death. What do you have all these individual wigglers for?

You could hold a needle, and sew clothing. You could place them in different locations on a musical instrument. You can do that thing with your finger that makes the love of your life orgasm so hard they go blind for a few seconds. You could hold a brush and paint a picture of the land you call home, or write laws of a land that deserves to be called "home".

Your legs and feet, yes, they were made with only one task in mind. They were made for running. You were built to run. Many things in nature were built to run, really, but those things were made to run hard, and fast. You are not like them. You were built to run and never stop. Your run is slow, it is not agile, it is not even graceful, but it is unyielding. Nothing else on this planet is designed like that, and that is why your ancestors - and their loving aunts and uncles - survived through you, by being unstoppable.

If you look up any instruction manual online, on "how to survive an [animal] attack", it will tell you, do not run. You are not fast enough to escape them. You were not built to outrun things. You were built to chase things, and that is your key. Once you have chosen a target, death by you is inevitable.

Nature is no fairy godmother that hands out frivolous gifts. Nature is the hard-budget shift supervisor that gives you the exact tools - the only tools, but nothing but these tools - that you must use to survive. Your yearning for a community to provide for - a found family, if your biological one happened to be shit. Your hands, to make things with, and an abstract mind to create things to make. And an unstoppable determination to do things.

You were given nothing frivolous. Everything in your arsenal are tools that you not only can, but must use. Do your duty as a living thing.

When inventing a fantasy religion a lot of people a) make the mistake of assuming that everyone in fantasy world would worship the same gods and b) assume that polytheistic religions see all of their gods as morally good

Source 

A goblin and an elf have decided to defy tradition and get married. Their ceremony will be held in the magical forest in accordance with elven tradition.

hobbies include: close reading the Redwall series to answer my most burning questions. such as:

- can I replicate any of these delicious-sounding foodstuffs and would they in fact be delicious if I was able to

- corollary to the above: are we just supposed to read “oat cream” and “nut cheese” every time we see the words “cream” and “cheese”? I think so. bc if not, what tha hell are their livestock animals

- what is Society like? I don’t think we ever see a Mouse City or even Mouse Town though we do see castles and obviously an abbey. are we supposed to believe that most creatures are either in wandering bands or these societies based around a single structure (castle/abbey?)

- they appear to have an idea of what currency is (the bad guys always want treasure — maybe just to have, not to sell? but less ambiguous is some dialogue I just read, “acorn for your thoughts?” “you can have them for free”) but again, we never see anyone using money or making goods for the market. is this after the fall of Mouse Capitalism? are the bad guys (the idea of rat pirates gives me a headache, vis a vis the political/economic systems needed to power piracy) raiding preindustrial mouse societies for treasure/meat?

- corollary to the above: the abbey creatures have oats and wheat but we don’t see anybody farming or trading for farm goods on a large enough scale. is the abbey “orchard” really a like an indigenous forest farm of mixed foodstuffs? is that possible if you live in the same place the whole year or only if you travel each season? I have to do some googling

- both the lack of mixed-species families and the idea of mixed-species families give me a headache. has a squirrel never fallen for a handsome otter? what is the culture shock like if you marry into a subterranean mole family?

- this is the least “important” question but this read through I’ve been desperately trying to figure out What Size Everything Else Is. i’ve come to the conclusion that everything other than animals are at mouse scale, given that they can make seaworthy vessels their own size (a mouse sized vessel with real-world-sized waves seems impossible) and pick and eat apples and plums. but so far it seems like they’ve avoided mentioning how tall trees are — like a person compared to a tree or a mouse compared to a tree?

So many TV shows/movies depict the Epi Pen as a total solution for anaphylaxis...it's not. The Epi Pen gives you 30 minutes to get to a hospital where they can save your life. TV makes it look like you just have to use the Epi Pen and then the crisis is over. Do people without allergies or a loved one with allergies know that an Epi Pen only buys you time? The more I see this on TV the more I worry...

**Maybe you should reblog this because I'm actually worried that most people don't know.

“He kidnaps, she screams”: words associated with gender in Wikipedia plot descriptions

by variance_explained

Look, I’m not saying if Herman Melville was alive today he would totally have an A03/fanfiction.net account… but that’s exactly what I’m saying.

Still went a little over my time limit for this one, but getting faster I think.

Mistakes are a great way to learn

isn't it insane though how schizophrenic people are viewed as violent and dangerous by the majority of society when in reality schizophrenic people are nearly 14 times more likely to be on the receiving end of violence than to be the perpetrators...