nonbinary-alien25

[nonbinary-alien25]

i freaking love beebo, it's silly and i would buy one in a heartbeat

[nonbinary-alien25]

one of the best tips for Real Life that I’ve ever picked up is to always highball your estimate whenever someone asks you “when can you get this done by” by about 25% (if you can get away with it). that way, if it ends up being harder than you thought, you’ve got extra time to figure things out and if you were right about how much time it takes then you get to look like an absolute genius instead of just a simply competent person.

what you may not have realized is that I learned this crucial piece of life advice from an episode of Star Trek where Scotty is telling Geordi that whenever he told Kirk something on the Enterprise was at full capacity, it was always only ever a notch or so below full capacity so that Scotty looked like the god of all engineers when he was able to magically hack the warp drive to run a little beyond what he’d told everyone else was “full capacity” and honestly that one throwaway gag from Star Trek has changed my life.

[nonbinary-alien25]

[nonbinary-alien25]

There’s that post that’s like ‘everyone should get into a tiny niche fandom at least once’ fully agree, that was really fun -- but I would like to add that everyone should get into a fandom where their opinions run counter to major fanon because it really teaches you about sticking to your guns and trusting your interpretation of the text without having to rely on peer validation

because WHAT are people talking about sometimes

[nonbinary-alien25]

[nonbinary-alien25]

SAM’S VALENTINE’S DAY COUNTDOWN ↳ 2. SARA & AVA (Legends of Tomorrow)

No matter where I go or when I am, I will never be lost because I have you. You are my North Star. You are my guiding light, and wherever you lead me, that’s my home.

[nonbinary-alien25]

it looks like I'm going to have to get into screenwriting and film production or something if my dream of there being more lesbian romcoms featuring women who look like real dykes is to be. i love romcoms, i wish there were more lesbian romcoms.

[nonbinary-alien25]

happy lesbian visibility week

[nonbinary-alien25]

last year i was eating in a fancy, large restaurant when i began to hear a rumble and the distant sound of people chanting ‘potassium, potassium’ and suddenly hundreds of people dressed as bananas flood this restaurant chanting potassium over and over and we were trapped there for a very long time because the bananas would not leave and they were everywhere

i wasn’t joking

[nonbinary-alien25]

true romance

[nonbinary-alien25]

Name a better feeling than getting the first comment on a fic you were uncertain about and knowing that at least one person liked the tiny piece of your brain that you put on the internet

[nonbinary-alien25]

i know you guys are all super into reclaiming slurs and stuff, but you can’t just go around calling random people faggots.

[nonbinary-alien25]

I wonder: Do Americans know about american school buses? Not their existence in general, but how they're seen overseas.

Over here, they're one of the symbols of America, on par with the Statue of Liberty, the flag, the Eagle, and well ahead of any chain restaurant you can name. People won't know any US states, but they will know these vehicles.

The thing is, here in Germany, we don't have dedicated school buses. The general idea is that kids go to school on their own. When that's not practical, they're expected to use (and given free tickets for) public transit. Public transit is designed around this requirement; there are many places where there is a bus, and anyone can get on it, but the route and timetable really only makes sense for school children. In case a dedicated school bus is really needed, that's generally subcontracted out, and the lines either use something like a Sprinter Van for smaller routes, or a normal city or interurban bus (often a used one that's a bit older). School trips are normal public transit, or a rented bus, typically a coach or regional bus.

It's not a perfect system, in the past couple of years there's been an epidemic of people bringing their kids to school in their cars instead of letting them walk, which is less than ideal. It is what it is. But building a dedicated network of public transit lines only for students, and building dedicated vehicles only for that, has never occurred to anyone here.

Of course we know about these buses, from movies and such, but they're as foreign here as cacti or pick-up trucks (actually we're seeing more and more of these here) or yellow cabs (all europeans will assume all cabs in the US are yellow until they actually visit).

You do see these buses here at times, because people still generally like the idea of the US, even if they have a lot of issues with a lot of details, and so folks bring them over, along with stretch limos and stuff (also not really a thing here). And of course, if someone goes to all that trouble, they don't do it to haul school kids, they rent it out for city tours or as a party bus or whatever.

So you see these yellow things as a symbol of faraway places, scenic vistas, some vague undefined idea of freedom that doesn't necessarily hold up to any contact with reality, and it's just a huge part of the whole US aesthetic.

And then you go to a student exchange with the US, and you finally get the chance: You yourself get to ride in one of these iconic chrome yellow buses! It looks just like in the movies! You get in, you drive in them a little…

…and you realise they're shit. Just the worst buses in the western world. Terrible suspension. Uncomfortable seats with weirdly high backs (so they don't have to put seatbelts in, they just restrict how far kids can fly in an accident). Everything made out of the cheapest materials. Turns out the reason why the US uses school buses like that instead of normal modern city buses, which the US has, is to save money and because they just hate kids.

And then it hits you why US Americans say "as American as apple pie", a dish that is made and enjoyed literally anywhere in the world, instead of "as American as yellow school buses". Of course the Americans already knew all this. They got tortured by these things forever. It would never occur to them to see this as a symbol of America, it's just a normal part of life for them. It's a symbol of school and school life and sometimes normalcy, and tells us that these actors getting out of it are supposed to be teenagers, nothing more.

But most people in Europe have, of course, never ridden on these buses. So when they see them in movies and TV, that's a giant big yellow signifier that we're not in Hessen or Wallonia or wherever anymore. A symbol of a different world, one that may be at most a once-in-a-lifetime-experience for most people, just like a picture of a tropical beach, Incan Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or Hildesheim (there's no reason to go there twice). And I think Americans don't know that, and that's fascinating.

[nonbinary-alien25]

Fanfic writers are like crows. If you give them treats (comments) they will bring you shiny things (fanfic)

[nonbinary-alien25]

when is comes to asexuality and aromanticism you have to be okay with contradiction. one ace person will say asexuality is about not experiencing attraction, another will say it’s about not caring to act on attraction, another will say it’s not experiencing arousal. one aromantic will consider themself queer, one won’t. two people with seemingly identical experiences will use two different labels. aro people will be in romantic relationships, ace people will have sex. you get it.

[nonbinary-alien25]

Bit telling that for years and years evangelical religious extremists have been allowed on university campuses with their bullhorns and horrific imagery where they harass students into physical altercations and when students complain to the university’s administration they just shrug their shoulders citing freedom of speech but when those same tuition-paying students start protesting against war and genocide they call SWAT

[nonbinary-alien25]

So we all know that Tumblr is US-centric. But to what degree? (and can we skew the results of this poll by posting it at a time where they should be asleep?)

Reblog to increase sample size!