Humans love shiny things.
No, seriously, look around you next time you’re in a building and count the number of things that are shiny even thiugh they do not need to be shiny.
Humans are naturally attracted to any thing that shines, shimmers or glitters— I mean for fucks sake, we invented glitter. There are people right now who work in glitter factories and so whose sole job is to make shiny things for people to put nonshiny things so as to make them shiny.
We paint our nails and faces with glittery varnishes and shimmery powders. We use gloss on our lips to make them shinier. We shine our shoes to make ourselves look smart. We have been known to start fucking wars over who owns the bits of land with the shiny rocks in. Genocides have been commited and kingdoms toppled because one group had a lot of shiny metals and the other group wanted those shiny metals.
Why, then, do we all like shiny things so much?
Well, scientists now think that it’s probably because we evolved in a desert. If you’re living in a desert, then you’re going to need to be constantly be on the lookout for water, and water shines in the sun. So the best way to survive in a desert environment is to just chase after everything that shines because it might be water.
So now imagine how weird this would all be to a species who didn’t evolve in a desert.
Imagine aliens just being baffled by the human habit of wearing certain rocks— or even just pieces of glass or plastic cut to look like those rocks— just because we like the way they catch the light. Imagine aliens who come from worlds where there are a lot of shiny rocks bringing them back for their human friends to see and watching, puzzled, as said human friends start wearing the rocks around their necks, wrists, fingers or even (weirdly) stuck through special holes they make in their ears.
“Thank you so much! These are beautiful!”
“I literally just scooped up some of the gravel from the spaceport— how are you so amazed?”
Imagine caves on alien planets full of crystals and gems becoming huge tourist attractions for humans, and the aliens not understanding why because, on their planet, pretty much the only people who go to the caves are school groups and geologists. The caves are boring— why do the humans keep taking photos of a load of old rocks?
This is important.
Because my mother told me that all I needed to do was get drunk and lie back and let my husband have his fun. Because if I was drunk, I’d be more relaxed and it’d be over sooner
Because my sister told me that I was trapping my husband in an abusive marriage, and that one day he was going to leave me
Because both of them looked at me in disgust
Because my asexuality is considered to be as great a crime against my husband as a woman who has affairs and cheats on her husband
Because my cousin didn’t even try to understand, and just kept asking ‘but what about in five years? how will you feel then?’
Because I was so afraid of my body and so afraid of sex that I didn’t seek medical help for a legitimate question for over a year for fear of being labelled a deviant or something broken
Because I still ask myself at least once every day if my husband wouldn’t be better off without me
Because I still ask myself at least once every day if I’m broken
Because I still tell myself at least once every day that I’m pathetic and useless and an abnormality
Because I love my husband with every fiber of my being, but everywhere I turn I’m told I really don’t, because love = sex
I need A to stand for Asexual because nobody ever talked to me about asexuality even when I was an outpatient at the women’s hospital for 18 months, and everyone told me desire would come in time
I need A to stand for Asexual because we are literally invisible, and so unimportant that people assume we don’t even need representation, because everyone assumes our lives must be bland and unimportant and lacking in challenges or bigotry
For every asexual that wants a relationship, for every asexual that does not want a relationship, for every asexual who has not yet come to terms with their identity, for every asexual who was told we were abnormalities, for every asexual who was told we just weren’t doing sex right, that we needed a good fucking, that we needed to be drunk, that we needed to relax, that we needed to be raped
We need representation, and we need visibility
That is why the A needs to stand for Asexual, and never for Ally
I dont know if it has been done yet, but HIGH HIGH HIGGGGGHHH REC for "Somewhere a clock is Ticking" by seven league boots (memphis)!!!!!! like, omg, it was a klance fic that I hadnt even been looking for and got me back all the vld feels without all the problematically argument-forming portions of the recent seasons!!! peeps, please please read and support this wonderful author!!!
Somewhere a Clock is Ticking by seven league boots (memphis) (1/1 | 23,750 | Teen And Up)
This is a story about time travel, lost memories, growing up broken, ukulele lessons, peanut butter banana sandwiches, and a stuffed hippo named Patches.
This is also the story of how James Griffin saved the world, but couldn’t stop his parents from falling in love.
// blood and injury
(adam / shiro, hunk / shay)
REBLOG this to prove you are not a Muggle.
my reblog button fucked up and i almost had a heart attack
I did it in the first try.
OH YEAH
You know what kills me? Artificial flavors. The notion that somewhere, sometime, there was a rogue blue raspberry. I’ve never seen this fictitious blue raspberry. I have no idea what a blue raspberry should taste like. I know what blue raspberry candy tastes like.
How about apple? Watermelon? Grape? Grape flavored cough syrup? More like fake Concord grape abomination. Yet we accept that this is what they represent. No one believes that watermelon candy actually tastes like watermelon, but if you blindfolded someone and had them eat some, they’d say it was watermelon.
H O W ? ? ?
“Hey, Menah-Tal, I got some candy in a package from home. Do you want to try some?”
Menah-Tal took the bright yellow wrapped candy from Brett. He started to put it in his mouth before Brett stopped him.
“Unwrap it first. There’s a joke on here too - eh, it wouldn’t make sense.”
Menah-Tal gingerly “unwrapped” the candy and took the sticky substance out. These humans. How do they tell what is edible and what isn’t? Menah-Tal watched wistfully as Brett put the tasty-looking wrapper in garbage receptacle. Menah-Tal put the candy in his mouth and sucked on it thoughtfully.
“What is this supposed to taste like on your world, Brett?”
“Banana.”
“Ah.” Menah-Tal continued to suck sagely. “So that’s what ‘banana’ tastes like.”
“Well, it doesn’t actually taste like banana.”
Menah-Tal blinked his three eyes slowly. Why. Why is everything so complicated.
“We had a banana crisis back in the fifties. The banana flavor you’re tasting is modeled after an extinct variety. The only kind we have now doesn’t taste much like that at all.”
Menah-Tal struggled to open his mouth now that the candy had cemented itself around his teeth.
“So your kind has a sweet substance that they eat for enjoyment that is flavored to taste like an extinct fruit?”
Brett shrugged.
“Yup.”
Menah-Tal licked his finger.
“Sounds about right.”
Correction: Name one hero who was always happy.
As much as I love ‘Earth is space Australia’, I love ‘Earth is Space Australia and the aliens haven’t figured it out yet!’ far more. ‘Cause lets face it, humans have a great ability to go on and on about minor inconveniences while at the same time severely underplaying the big ones. So aliens get the impression that humans are incredibly weak because we spend a day in bed from a headache, or gripe for an hour about a paper cut and then turn around and walk on a broken leg or consider a gushing head wound nothing to worry about.
so I want aliens to get the impression that earth is a perfectly normal place to live, a couple of dangerous fauna, maybe some troubling weather patterns but nothing too terrifying. Then an earthling makes an offhand comment about earthquakes (and the alien’s think that they are joking because the earth’s crust? moving? Ridiculous!) But another chimes in and they think that it’s just a normal thing? That happens sometimes? and then they start talking about tornadoes and what is this?
And the weather has nothing on the animals! The aliens are used to some large toothy predators, maybe a couple of little poisonous skittering things. But large orange felines that are capable of blending effortlessly into their environment? Rodents capable of chewing through metal? Small fish that climb into your reproductive organs and cannot be removed?????? That is horrifying. Even the most innocuous of their tiny insects is capable of carrying horrendous diseases.
Like I just want aliens standing there staring in horror as a group of earthlings casual discuss their near death escapes as though they are completely normal and nothing to worry about and slowly come to the dawning realisation that these people are insane.
It’s kind of amusing to hear all this talk about humans being an apex predator species - I mean, I love it, but technically, by our own standards of rating predators, we aren’t, because we still have animals around on Earth that will munch us down if push comes to shove. We’re not like bears or wolves or any of the really big members of the big cat family - yes, we can and do hunt, but as often as not we foraged.
Heck, we still do that in many ways, even in the urban environments we have made for ourselves. We are the species that will stare you in the eye as we steal the food off your plate, then add insult to injury by checking to make sure it’s clean enough, get everywhere we’re not supposed to because we are cunning little buggers that are hard to keep out, will hoard shiny things even though we know they aren’t useful because they are shiny, okay, and then we’ll go and do something adorable so that you love us anyway, at least until you notice that we’ve just scuttled off with half your wiring because we needed it for something important.
Humans aren’t the wolves or tigers or bears of the universe.
We’re the raccoons.
Alien: You’re telling me that in times of great distress humans have been known to suddenly gain the strength necessary to lift objects more than a dozen times their own weight?!
Human: Yeah, it’s called “hysterical strength” and it usually happens in life-or-death situations, like when someone gets stuck under a car or something and someone lifts the car to get them out. We can’t really test it though, ‘cause it only happens spontaneously.
Alien: Humans have the ability to tap into untold strength and power and you don’t even know how you do it?
Human: Pretty much, yeah. We think it has something to do with temporary analgesia, so we just don’t feel the pain we should when we pick up a 3000-pound car.
Alien: YOUR PAIN RESPONSE JUST SHUTS OFF?
Human: Yeah, it’s like an adrenaline thing? Do you not have that?
Alien: Fuck you and your entire species of tiny juggernauts.
YES.
I dearly wish that people would view their bodies as they view flowers…
Veins everywhere?
gorgeous~
Skin patches? Birthmarks?
hella rad~
Scars? Stretch marks?
beautiful~
Freckles? Moles? Acne scars?
heckie yeah~
Large? Curvy?
lovely~
Small? Thin?
charming~
Missing a few pieces?
handsome as ever~
Feel like you just look weird?
you’re fantastic looking~