idk who needs to hear this rn but suffering is not noble. take the tylenol
One time when I was younger I was refusing to take headache medicine and my mom said “the person who invented that medicine is probably so sad you won’t let them help you” and now every time I find myself denying medicine I just imagine the saddest scientist making those big wet eyes like “why won’t you let me help” and whoop then I take the medicine
Tumblr is unique bc like. It’s collaborative shitposting and you can’t opt in or out. You can just say something about your day then an evil wizard shows up to turn your post into something humorous
Every other site is just one and done, but here a post is a welcome mat to be funnier than you
You work as tech support for ancient supernatural beings who are trying to adapt to the modern world. It’s a frustrating - and at times dangerous - job, but at least your clients pay well.
“My Great Destroyer, Consumer of Lands, Harbinger of the Deep Seas,” you say trying to keep the exasperation from your voice, “you need to be connected to the internet to see your email.”
“{}@&_@&%(#(&@__!*_”
“Yes. Can you move the mouse to the lower right side of the screen? There should be some little bars that will tell you if you are connected to the wi-fi.”
“&%)!^*^$%^!_%_$}{|”
“No my Great and Terrible the wi-fi is not a rival god from the desert lands, it’s just the technology that let’s you see your email.”
“!*&){}|@*#”
“Good, that means you are connected to the internet. Now if you can open your browser, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or even Microsoft Edge.”
“!@^&)(&@!&&&@}|”
You mute yourself so you can swear. “Yes, you can use Internet Explorer to access your AOL email account. If I may offer a suggestion?”
“$%^&*@”
“It will be easier in the long run, I promise. But Microsoft stopped supporting Internet Explorer a long time ago, and AOL is barely a company anymore. If you will let me walk you through some steps we can get you a modern web browser and a brand new email-”
“&^$}”
“Yes, with all of your old email.”
—-
Five hours of your life later, you’ve got the deep sea eldritch god set up with Firefox and a new email with forwarding from it’s old email. Just when you start to think that this job isn’t remotely worth it, a small crab-like creature crawls across your desk. (you can’t in good conscious call it a crab because it somehow has both too many eyes, legs, and pincers, and not enough of the same. yet your brain interprets the being as “crab”)
It’s about the size of a coffee mug and it holds something up for you, shaking one of it’s many claws at you.
You take the small thing, and crab scuttles away to where ever it came from.
The small thing in your palm seems to be a tiny treasure chest, the kind of thing that you’d put in a goldfish bowl. It feels wet and the kind of slimy something gets from being covered in seaweed.
You put it down on your desk just in time for it to rapidly expand, cracking a support on your desk and covering you in sea water.
Before you can get mad about it the chest opens revealing a small horde of gold, jewels, and a bottle of what you have to assume is pirate rum.
“Oh! Cool!” one of your coworkers say as they pop their head up over the cubicle wall. “I wish I got pirate booty once in a while.”
“Why, what did Thyrien, Emissary of the Sun, give you for helping them recover their steam library?” you ask.
“A sense of peace and calm about my life and place in the world.”
“Oh sounds nice.”
“It is. They also gave me this ceremonial headdress.” You coworker disappears for a moment and puts on a giant headdress that appears to be made from gold and platinum and has several truly giant diamonds all over it.
“Wow,” you say.
“Yeah, I’m thinking I should wear this to the next company mixer.”
Well, fuck me sideways. Connections have been made.
My girlfriend has this specific gesture she does sometimes, a very particular way of turning her wrist around and locking her fingers in one specific grip. Fast or slow, the angle of her wrist and the rhythm of the movement are always exactly the same, and at this point I’ve learned to recognize the motion well enough that she could do it with her back towards me and I know she’s doing it.
The first time I saw her do it I thought she was putting something into her pocket, but once I noticed her making it more often I started making connections. I saw her doing it unconsciously when some situation in the house is getting tense - not during the casual sparring arguments with my other housemates, but the serious fights where shit is about to actually get fucking real - and I figured that it’s a nervous thing, she doesn’t like where this is going and it’s scaring her. So that became my cue that it’s time to back down.
I don’t know when she noticed that I noticed her doing it. We’ve never talked about it, but at some point she started doing it on purpose, as her way of telling me that I should stop causing problems. Rotating her hand slowly means she’s seeing a problem brewing and it’s better that I watch myself before I start escalating it, and a quick flick and snap means whatever I was just about to say or do, I should cut that shit out right this fucking second. It works for some reason, so I’ve respected that.
My girlfriend does some volunteering favors for the neighbors here sometimes. Today she asked if I wanted to come along to walk this one old couple’s dog, and I was feeling up for it so I went along. My father was terrified of dogs so I’m not familiar with them, but her family has always had them.
So we were walking, talking about something else, enjoying the nice weather for once, when my girlfriend saw another dog walker approaching. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but the other dog walker started pulling the dog back with this roller leash thing whatever the fuck they’re called. And then the old couples’ dog started growling.
With the familiarity of someone who’s been handling dogs all her life my girlfriend grabbed the little fucker’s leash, wrapping it around the width of her palm and gripping it to pull the dog closer a second before it could bolt to attack. A move she’s probably done countless times in her life, that she could do in her sleep, by instinct, without ever even thinking about it. A gesture I’ve learned to fucking spot from across the room from the corner of my eye. That exact same fucking twirl and grip. I have no idea if she noticed me noticing it or making the connection.
She’s fucking learned to pull my fucking leash back when I’m about to start shit.
