i like school a lot, so i wish i wasn't feeling like this. Don't wanna go to any of my classes. Don't wanna get up. Do any work. kinda wish i could just go home but then i remember it's hard there too.
The only place i wanna be is the passenger seat of your car.
I decided to upgrade my pizza making again and bought a real authentic seasoned steel Detroit Pizza pan, and the thing came with two full pages of instructions. It’s like having a pet.
I put the instructions in a bag so they can stay with the pan, because one of the rules is “DO NOT use olive oil to grease the pan, canola or vegetable oil ONLY” and I will definitely forget to do that if I don’t see the instructions yelling at me every time I take the pan down to make pizza.
(The other important order is “Never, ever let it go anywhere near moisture or water” and like okay GREMLIN PAN calm down.)
There’s so many horror games about having to try to weed out and deal with inhuman imposters, but I want one where the script is flipped. You are something inhuman, you are an imposter, and if you want to survive you have to blend into a world that is trying to hunt you down and destroy you. You aren’t human, but you must masquerade as one and infiltrate their world, or you will die.
I actually think we need to start inverting more Horror premises/tropes.
Like “You have to venture into the scary insane asylum!” VS “You’re a patient who was admitted by force to an asylum, and you are very clearly in real danger, but everyone is pretending that you’re just deluded, and are essentially leaving you to die because they don’t really see you as a person.”
I feel like there’s a lot of Horror tropes built off of the fear of the other, when in reality it’s actually often the other who is in danger. Maybe we could start recognising that more.
Interesting how the first half of the post has picked up popularity while the second part, which perhaps clarifies the idea of the original post, hasn’t.
It’s been interesting to see what media people are recommending based on the first post alone. A lot of recommendations for games/franchises like World of Darkness, Carrion, Kill All Humans, Among Us, etc. It’s interesting because these are games that put you into the shoes of the violent other that has to infiltrate, without actually challenging the idea that the other is a threat. They actually parrot the ideas of the other as violent.
Funnily enough, the people recommending the comedy game Octodad understand the post much better than most of the people recommending horror media. A few mentions of Am I Nima, which isn’t finished yet but does look like it could be what I am describing, so brownie points to the people recommending that.
But everyone saying stuff like “This is just being Trans/Autistic/Etc” really gets it, like really really gets it. Horror always communicates the fears and anxieties of the people who create it, this post was basically: “What if instead of communicating the fearof the other, we communicated the fears of the others, which are actually vastly more legitimate than the dominant groups fear of the other. We should recognise that it is overwhelmingly the others who are the ones who actually suffer and die, all for the perceived "saftey” and “comfort” of the dominant group.“
This idea is about transphobia, it is about ableism, about anti-imigrant rhetoric and white supremacy, about queerphobia, it’s about all of it. It is horror from the perspective of minority groups. It is the twisting of a trope built upon reactionary fears and narratives in order to critique them, it is a direct allegory for all those experiences you are describing.
Overall, it’s just interesting to see who gets it and who doesn’t.
What I find fascinating is that in the 1990s, this was a media trope. Maybe not a common one but I can think of at least two shows where a protagonist was committed to an asylum – or were they? Were they insane or were they being imprisoned for being truthful? And the endgame was always yes…they were seeing the truth and were punished for it.
Riker in TNG and Buffy in BTVS are the ones I can name but there must be more. Perhaps "In The Mouth of Madness”? In any case, someone saw this and reacted, thirty years ago. Wild to feel like Riker in an asylum in 2026.
While my undergrad is roughly academically equal in rank to Michigan State University, it is true that I did not attend MSU and I know little of its customs. I didn’t actually mean to present myself as an alum when I bought a damn sweater at a thrift store; I just liked the logo and I knew my beloved, the Hodag, an alumnus of the MSU J-school, would be amused.
But it’s such a comfortable sweater and I look fucking great in it, and I can tell Hodag likes to see me in their school colors. So I have this sweater with an MSU logo and a SUPER COOL zipper sleeve pocket (see picture) and I wear it everywhere.
And recently someone passed me on the street and was like “EYYYYYY MSU! fuckin awesome!”
I have stolen Sparty valor.
Who are our rivals? I gotta go pick some fights to justify my awesome sweater.
Ahahahaha that is classic, thank you so much for sharing that with me :D Of course hodags don't like to cook, it must be very hard to turn on an oven when you're shaped that way....
Anyway I'm glad you've been enjoying reading! My fiction and fanfic output is less than it used to be so I'm attempting to compensate by amusing people more :D
Welcome to Radio Free Monday for the week of March 9, 2026. RFM posts links to peoples’ personal fundraisers asking for community assistance, on Tumblr, Dreamwidth, and the Fediverse.
==== Ways to give ====
Tumblr user Moogle is raising funds for housing, after being kicked out by their abusive family in January. Their friend, Tumblr user thecottageinthedark, is helping with fundraising. Read more, reblog, and support the fundraiser here.
Tumblr user Terrie02 is sharing ways to support the community of Columbia Heights in Minneapolis MN USA. They’re paying rent for families, helping get them food, and helping them get safe transportation. Read more, reblog, and support the fundraiser here.
=======================
This has been Radio Free Monday. Submit items for my attention through this link (use English for your submission-text, please. If necessary, use Google Translate.)
what are five things you can’t see? can you breathe in and out really really quickly for me? what are your biggest fears and what are the fastest ways they might occur? slouch in your chair put your hands on your head and picture yourself using your psychic powers to kill everyone. shoot the nearest dog.
There’s a post – it’s a funny post so I didn’t want to tack this on as a reblog but I will link here and reblog it later – which cracks wise about the idea of ungrounding exercises. It opens with “what are five things you can’t see”.
It is genuinely fun surrealism, this is not in any way me mad at that post. But it did make me consider talking about grounding exercises because the five-four-three-two-one exercise genuinely is deeply ungrounding to me.
I don’t get panic attacks or spiraling/racing thoughts and I’ve developed my own techniques for dealing with anxiety down the years, so it’s not really a tool I need. But when I heard about it for the first time, I pictured trying to use it and immediately my heart rate rose.
Because there’s too much to remember! I know that’s not the point but the idea of trying to pass the countdown test filled me with horror. You have to remember which number is associated with which sense. You have to remember all five senses, come to that. You have to remember what you’ve already named, you have to remember where in the countdown you are, all while also trying to keep in your mind what you’re panicking about while not panicking further because whether or not it’s worth the reaction you’re having, whatever it is it’s still an issue that will need to be dealt with.
You don’t actually have to do any of that. The point is to distract yourself and also reassert a relationship to the real, mundane world happening around you using physical sensation. I fully understand the theory. Which sense you’re trying to experience five of versus which you experience one of isn’t actually relevant. If you only name four things you see instead of five and one of those is also something you name as a thing you smell, or if you use the sense of taste for two separate categories, it doesn’t matter, nobody is keeping count but you. You don’t actually have to keep the issue in mind, now’s the time for damage control and not mental landscaping.
But uh. See, despite thumbing my nose at many sets of formal instructions over my lifetime, in this case I’m never going to internalize the irrelevance of doing it ‘right’ because….well, because I’m me. It’s irrational but so are our fucked up limbic systems that make us think the best reaction to perceived threat is hyperventilating. So for me, someone with slightly flighty object permanence and bad short term memory, it’s like being told that in order to save myself from imminent drowning, I have to pass an algebra test. Why go down humiliating myself trying to solve for X? I’ll just drown, thanks. (“I would rather die a watery death than do math” was kind of the theme of my high school years.)
Anyway. This isn’t to say the exercise doesn’t work, just that not every grounding exercise will work for everyone. Well, and that the kind of person to stress over this one is also the kind of person who might feel like a failure when it doesn’t work, so this is me speaking to them so they know that it’s okay to just pass this one on by. It’s not for us, my comrades.
I Published My First Book! Threads of the Wyrd, first story of the Cycle
Its been a long time in the making. The world and this plot have been rattling around in my brain for most of my life now, but it was only in 2020 that I finally put word to page and wrote the first chapter.
Back then, my mother - an avid reader for her entire life - had recently been diagnosed with cancer, which would eventually take her life. In those dark days, this story kept me focused and drove me onward. I had hoped to be able to hand her the first copy, but that was one dream that would not come true.
Years have passed since then and at long last the first book of the Cycleverse is ready and available. More are on the way - sequels to this book, along with other stories to explore the world that I have crafted.
Alric Lightsworn is a mage in training – heir to the magical traditions of his people, the fiery Hydrisians of the cold north. His path to glory is assured – until he is afflicted with the curse of the werewolf.
His brother, Bjorn, refuses to let him flee alone and so the two turn their backs on the only home they have ever known. Those that the brothers meet along the way are as strange to them as they are to the strangers.
Mila Numitorii finds herself in a distant, foreign land and tasked to bring two fugitives to the jarl’s justice. Intelligent, diligent, and perceptive, she makes for a formidable hunter - but can she bring herself to finish the pursuit?
Aderyn, druid of the misty Fells. The woods have long been her home, a cozy place far from the worries of the world. But danger finds its way to even the most secluded lands and soon her path will diverge.
Julian. Nimble thief, favored of the spirits of the wind. A burned home behind him and the open road ahead. He’s made it this far by himself, but how long can his luck truly last?
The Hydrisians speak of fate and the wyrd. The path ahead and the step taken. None can see the tapestry until it comes together. None of these five would notice their fates converging ever closer together, tied up in the Threads of the Wyrd.
ALT
I offered some advice on the publishing of this and then offered to reblog the sales post when it went live, and several messages went astray so I didn’t get to at the time – I haven’t read the book yet but I love to help promote indy authors, so go and take a look and buy it if you like the look of it!
Me, flooring the gas on the yacht towards Brazil: You’ll never take me alive!
Hakim, in the prow of a speedboat with a megaphone: But I have your mushroom pizza!
[Description: A screengrab of my Domino’s Pizza delivery tracker, showing my food is out for delivery. I initially screengrabbed it because beneath the progress bar is the faintly ominous legend “Hakim is in your neighborhood” letting me know that my food will be delivered soon. Below that, however, is a map showing where Hakim is; this should be a map of downtown Chicago but instead shows Hakim located on the equator, off the African coast in the South Atlantic. The pointer indicates he is six minutes away from me.]
Throwback to the time Hakim crossed the South Atlantic to bring me a mushroom pizza.
What a lot of people outside of Chicago may not realize is that The Beans are a native species to this region and right now is baby season! What you’re seeing there is probably just an instance of a young mature The Bean being kept in a secure enclosure, probably due to some kind of injury that’s being rehabbed.
In urban Chicago around this time of year if you want to go The Bean spotting you mostly just need to keep an eye out around downtown drugstores for formations like this.
I took this picture myself in a Walgreens. As you can see we have a nice healthy-looking family group consisting of a parent The Bean, several juveniles who will often stay with the parent for several years, and some newborns this year who naturally group up protectively near any large sign reading “Chicago”.
The Beans are usually extremely docile and can even be kept as pets once the juveniles separate from their family group, since they are low-maintenance and require only a small flat area such as a desk or bookshelf on which to recline. Fun fact, a group of The Beans such as pictured above is known as a Tchochki!
Are adult The Beans usually around the size of the one in the above photo? The most famous one I know of is about three humans tall. Is that a genetic rarity, or is it more like lobsters?
There’s a lot of debate in TheBean Biology circles about the massive The Bean residing in Millennium Park. It’s not known why this The Bean chose the park or why it has grown to such gargantuan size. I’m not an expert, I just live here, but I tend to agree with the newer theory that they can regularly grow to massive sizes in the wild, but we only tend to encounter smaller ones because such huge sizes generally only occur in deep freshwater lakes.
It’s certainly very unusual to see a The Bean of that size on land. Such a privilege to live in a place where they feel safe enough to take up residence alongside humans.
For legal reasons, Gerald is indeed now a military in the eyes of the government, but since they don't have tax allocations for military spending and both words start with M, he has been allowed to keep the M on his driver's license, passport, national health card, etc. It'll be fascinating to see what happens when Serafina reaches her majority...
I haven't been writing much in the past two months simply because life's been hectic and sometimes taking a little break can be rejuvenating, but I'm starting to put aside time to work on the new Shivadh novel so here's a little clip from that, introducing a character we've only seen in short-story flashbacks before.
Because of some changes I'm making in the upcoming story (I may be shifting the central love interest), this might be highly altered the next time anyone sees it, so it's kind of fun to share something that may not end up in the final book.
[[MORE]]
Even after a few years of marriage they were still learning each others' quirks, an adventure Eddie hoped would last the rest of their lives. So it was surprising and delightful to leave breakfast with Gregory one morning and turn just in time to see him light up like a child, a huge grin breaking over his face as he called, "Aunt Gianna!"
"Aunt...?" Eddie wondered to himself, as Gregory hurried up to a strikingly beautiful older woman standing in the corridor. She opened her arms, the designer scarf over her shoulders spreading like wings, and engulfed him in a hug. She left lipstick on his cheek when she kissed him, then scrubbed it away with a handkerchief.
"Eddie!" Gregory called, so Eddie came forward, also smiling, ready to meet this mysterious aunt. He knew Gregory had no living aunts on his mother's side, and he'd been pretty sure Michaelis didn't have any sisters, but with Michaelis you never knew.
"Come meet Gianna Portofino," Gregory said. "She was one of my mother's best friends."
"Ah!" Eddie said, offering his hand. Aunt by choice, not by blood. Instead of shaking his hand, she hugged him. Thrilled, he hugged back. "Always nice to meet another mysterious family member," he said.
"None more mysterious," Gianna assured him. "Oh, delightful, I came here to meet you."
"Me?" Eddie asked.
"Yes! I'm so sorry I wasn't at the wedding, darling, but fate intervened," she told Gregory. "As soon as I could, I untangled myself so I could come and give my blessing. My goodness, you're bigger in person," she told Eddie.
"I get that a lot," he said.
"I can only imagine. Now, I think I am missing a few people still," she said, turning back to Gregory. "Where's this little Princeps I hear about, and the infants?"
"Your own fault. I should bar you from seeing them," Gregory said, laughing. "It's one of Joan's school mornings, so she's off already, but you can come and meet the twins. They'll be rude," he added. "Have you seen Father yet?"
"No, dear, I only just arrived. You know how much I like to catch him off-guard." Gianna took Gregory's elbow, so Eddie trailed along after, placidly ready to show off his children as usual. "I hear he has a new amore."
"Yes," Gregory said, a little caution in his tone now. "Did he tell you that, or...?"
"No, I haven't been exactly...easily reachable. And your father was always a private man, as private as one can be as the public face of a country."
"Aunt Gia..."
"Gregory. I loved your mother dearly, but it's been a decade. He has a right to new love, and frankly I'd despaired of him ever managing it. I'm sure it will be awkward but we're all adults. And a little awkwardness is good for Imp, keeps him on his toes."
Eddie debated texting Michaelis a warning, since it appeared seeing Gianna was likely to be a shock. Still, as much as this was his family now, it still wasn't his place to interfere in the delicate relationships between the various royals. Instead he texted Alanna.
Aunt Gianna has descended, he said. Greg's about to show off the twins. Give me all the tea you can. Should we warn Michaelis?
I AM SWEARING, Alanna replied, as Gregory showed Gianna into the royal apartments. He should know, I'll handle it.
What a lot of people outside of Chicago may not realize is that The Beans are a native species to this region and right now is baby season! What you’re seeing there is probably just an instance of a young mature The Bean being kept in a secure enclosure, probably due to some kind of injury that’s being rehabbed.
In urban Chicago around this time of year if you want to go The Bean spotting you mostly just need to keep an eye out around downtown drugstores for formations like this.
I took this picture myself in a Walgreens. As you can see we have a nice healthy-looking family group consisting of a parent The Bean, several juveniles who will often stay with the parent for several years, and some newborns this year who naturally group up protectively near any large sign reading “Chicago”.
The Beans are usually extremely docile and can even be kept as pets once the juveniles separate from their family group, since they are low-maintenance and require only a small flat area such as a desk or bookshelf on which to recline. Fun fact, a group of The Beans such as pictured above is known as a Tchochki!
Do you guys remember when we thought 2016 was going to be one of the weirdest years of our lives? It’s fucking wild to me how it turned out to be just the opening scroll text of our Star Wars of weirdness.
Well, this post from March of 2020 has aged in fascinating ways.
I was innocently buying a soda and a Kit Kat bar from a snack shop recently when the cashier said, “Oh, a Kit Kat! That’s what I named my cat!” and then launched into An Monologue.
Nobody was behind me in line, which seemed to be a good reason for her to treat me to a five minute retelling of the identification, rescue, and argument over initial custody of Kit Kat, who was so small they thought when they first heard him crying for help that he was a bird and not a kitten in a tree, and is now fifteen pounds of “pure, sculpted lardass”.
And I didn’t mind, precisely, I wasn’t bored or anything, but around the time she was bringing me up to speed on Kit Kat’s current status it occurred to me that this woman is a cashier in a store that primarily sells candy bars and beverages. People must buy Kit Kat bars from her multiple times a day. Does she do this every time there’s nobody in line behind the purchaser? Did I just have that I Own Several Cats And Will Enjoy Your Cat Stories look about me? Was it the first time it occurred to her that she sold the brand of candy bar she named her cat after? Was she new to the job of selling Kit Kat bars?
The idea that every time she sees a Kit Kat bar she is gripped by the urge, Manchurian Candidate style, to retell the story of Kit Kat the Cat, elevates her from a friendly cashier to a deep enigma. Truly there is no knowing the mind of another.
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