rockelope

[rockelope]

tiktok is such an awful app, it's almost designed to feed you misinformation and expose you to insane discourse. unlike beloved tumblr, the app that feeds me misinformation and exposes me to insane discourse

[rockelope]

[rockelope]

[rockelope]

i think this is probably true of every office, but there's a middle aged woman working in business who doesn't hold any particular place in the chain of command but is Sovereign. i was running support and she has access to more secure network drives than i do. im pretty sure she has an admin account. i was having trouble with my parking pass and my boss just said to talk to kristen- one day later i had parking in any garage on campus. she's not even in charge of parking in our building

[rockelope]

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

[rockelope]

I’m in my first ever semester of community college, I was super nervous the first day but seeing your quote helped me calm down. Thanks for being quotable I guess

I'm glad I was there.

[rockelope]

The Animorphs series explores these ideas as well

Symbiosis isn't just mutualism. Parasitism is symbiosis. It's uncomfortable to confront parasitic relationships if you want to see your human ideas of good and bad reflected in Nature.

But gazing into something huge and utterly Other, being uncomfortable means you're engaging your mind with it. "Uncomfortable" is actually a whole spectrum of emotions that become a vivid and satisfying rainbow.

There was a post a while back with some artwork of Dendrogaster, a crustacean that parasitizes starfish, and its body is like this branching fractal of fleshy lobes made to fit inside the body of the starfish mirroring its structure, and I was absolutely horrified to look at this, and this horror was the same emotion as a strangely visceral wave of sympathy for this parasite.

Creative works about parasites often invoke the horror of bodily invasion, which is visceral and strong for me, but this artwork inverted that horror, instead showing the horror of being made so perfectly for fitting within someone else that you lose everything you are and become unrecognizable.

I also think of the post about the cowbird chick. It's awful that the bird pushes its siblings out of the nest as it grows, and the mama feeds it because she instinctively must feed her chick, but the cowbird is just a baby. Was it wrong for him to hatch, to be alive, to be hungry, to be a baby and to need love?

Symbiosis is intensely beautiful, and sometimes it's beautiful because it's grotesque and terrible. Of course, the symbiosis between two organisms isn't an allegory for a relationship, it just is a relationship, but looking at the way organisms become entwined feels like you're seeing things that, if words described them, would also be human experiences.

Being invaded by a parasite is a horror of powerlessness and loss of autonomy, but being a parasite is also defined by powerlessness. In many cases, the parasite will die without the host, but the host can live without the parasite. I wonder why it is expected to sympathize with one and not the other.

Your immune system fights against internal parasites like a tapeworm...Imagine being a tapeworm. The body of your host is your universe. Do you find your world to be kind? Benevolent? Does your god love you?

Sometimes people call disabled people "parasites." When I think about my future sometimes I'm uncertain and afraid.

But when a rare non-photosynthetic orchid blooms in the forest, this is not the forest's weakness and failure, but its crowning glory.

#animorphs #parasite #host

[rockelope]

Hello, I saw your article entitled "WHY DEFEND FREEDOM OF ICKY SPEECH?" And I'd like to ask... Are you normalizing lolicon now? It's not just a made-up story where there's inappropriate content with children, where it's portrayed as something terrible. It's portrayed as something normal and sexy😦

This article?

As I point out in the article, I'd not actually read any lolicon, and 16 years later, I still haven't. As I say in it:

Still, you seem to want lolicon banned, and people prosecuted for owning it, and I don't. You ask, What makes it worth defending? and the only answer I can give is this: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.

Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.

[rockelope]

Ok now do NYT columnists

[rockelope]

Thinking about the time the last guy I was seeing told me he got upset thinking about the fact that I had sex with my exes.

Like....

Sir????

I have, indeed, had a full life before meeting you.

[rockelope]

Me: I’m scared I might secretly be an awful person and I’m just fooling everyone into thinking I’m good.

Therapist: the fact that you care so deeply about being a bad person is proof that you’re actually good. Bad people don’t mind being bad.

Me: oH NO, I have fooled her too,

[rockelope]

[rockelope]

Okay, so... I was in this thrift store. I was browsing the used books sections. And something caught my attention because the author's name on the spine was "Katherine Applegate". It was book #2 of the "Making Waves" series, a YA romance book series.

And I was like... is it the same Katherine Applegate? K.A. Applegate?? THAT one???

I read the copyright page. It was dedicated to Michael. Yep, it's her all right.

I loved Animorphs as a kid. I haven't read every book by the same author(s), but I least had an awareness of them. We've all heard of Ever World, and Remnants, and The One and Only Ivan. I even vaguely heard something about some pre-animorphs book about basketball.

I NEVER heard of Making Waves. It's a series with at least 11 books that's APPARENTLY been around since 2001? Has anyone heard of this?? Was it dropped into the past via time travel??

[rockelope]

[rockelope]

The clover has finally grown enough for her to munch on again

[rockelope]

I like the expression new-fangled. I don't know what it means for something to be fangled, but I sure as hell know it was recent

[rockelope]

Jesus, after coming back from the dead: hey guys it’s me Jesus, just look at the scars on my hands

Thomas, a known freak: show us the feet as well please