yr locked in a room alone with three adult men but you feel perfectly safe. who are they

I mean, I feel safe from them but I’m suddenly EXTREMELY worried about what shenanigans I’ve stumbled into

“These men mean me no harm”

“So you feel safe now?”

“Oh, absolutely not”

pls reblog to break containment and get a larger sample size

Cat: water form

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

A zeugma walked into a bar, my life and trouble.

Me getting up in the morning like 

Hittin’ the keyboard like

Friends comin’ online like

DID YOu SEE tHE THINGg MY GOD

This is and always will be my favorite Tumblr post of all time.

This is fascinating and I love the part with the mushrooms and the worms if this really works but my favorite part is that we spent decades like “oh no....oil is soaking into fur and feathers....if only we had something that could soak up all this oil”

Miniaturist Penny Thomson makes figures, dioramas and mechanical miniatures using card, paper pulp and wires.

This is an impressive mechanical owl

That post about 30 year old coming of age stories?

I’ve been thinking about it all morning. What would the plot points be for that? What makes a 30 year old coming of age story?

Old folks sound off in the comments

This article about a woman who went on a life changing lesbian cruise.

Rather than beginnings like teenage coming of age stories, a 30’s coming of age is about change.

The thing about turning 30 is that you know yourself better, and you are usually just starting to have the means to seek what you want. You have enough life experience to know what you like and don’t like. You may have a little disposable income, freedom from family, or finally be treating something like depression.

It isn’t like being a teenager where the coming of age is new experiences; it’s coming of age in knowing what you want and changing your circumstances. You look around and think, “I want and deserve better than this, and I can do it,” and you make the change.

Getting a new job. Going back to school. Dating someone new. Moving somewhere else. Going on a long trip. Trying a new hobby. Or even just dressing differently! There’s so many ways this coming of age can occur.

But there are layers to this. Unlike a teenage growing up story where you’re writing on a blank slate, a 30’s coming of age is turning the page. You might have to do something painful. Quit your job. Break up with someone. Say goodbye to your hometown. There’s change. And with that, comes apprehension for the future and grief over the past, but you work through that anyway to seek something better for yourself.

To quote the article above, one of my favorite quotes of all time: “There’s something so deliriously pleasurable in the idea of trusting myself enough to know exactly what I want.”

Oh and by the way. This doesn’t just have to be the plot of a book or fic. This can be your life, too. You can always do better.

Getting older isn’t bad. Turning 30 isn’t the end of your life. Things can be better once you know yourself more and know what you want. Embrace it.

I debated whether or not to put this in the tags or add it to the post, but you know what? Screw it.

I spent my entire life pursuing exactly one goal: I wanted to be a veterinarian.  That was my dream from when I was a very young person.  I wanted it so badly I couldn’t even imagine wanting anything else.  And I achieved that goal!  I went to vet school.  I became a veterinarian.  I joined a practice.  And I loved what I did!  Sure there were parts I didn’t like (…a LOT of parts I didn’t like), but it was my DREAM, right?  It was worth suffering a little to live it, wasn’t it?  Because I’d loved animals for as long as I could remember and when I was 11 years old someone told me that meant I should be a veterinarian and by GOLLY, that home ec teacher must have been right, right?

…I’m sure you can see where this is going.

At 11 years old, at 18 years old, at 22 years old, at 27 years old, at fucking 32 YEARS OLD, I wasn’t secure enough in myself, in who I was, in who I wanted to be to “come of age”.  To push back against what everyone else told me I was meant to do, even when a lot of it ended up being very bad.

So my body pushed back for me.

Three back injuries in five years meant that at 32 years old, my lifelong dream was no longer a viable choice for me.  I had to walk away.  I had to leave all of that behind and figure out how on Earth I was supposed to make a living when I was now in my mid-30s, I’d never wanted to do anything else with my life other than be a vet, I had a life and an apartment that I wouldn’t be able to afford for long with no income, I was ashamed as all get out to have to start over, and now I had severe chronic pain that seriously curtailed what my options even were.

And there were so so so few blueprints in media for me to even reference.  So few ‘coming of age’ stories where the person was coming of age at my age, after something beyond their control had torn their life apart.  So I wrote my own.

I wrote a ton of fanfiction that I didn’t realize at the time was what I needed to read.  Where someone who’d lived the life they thought they should be living had it suddenly uprooted, turned on its head, and had to forge a new path when they were long past the age when that should have been a thing.  (Yet another thing I have to thank you for, Hair.  *tips my hat*  ^_^)

And I DID find a new path.  And it’s not perfect.  It’s not my “dream”.  There are problems with it, too.  But overall, I’m much more settled in my skin now at 45-going-on-46-in-a-few-months than I was at 33.  And now I know that if something uproots my life again, I have a blueprint.  I’ve written it.  I’ve lived it.  And now I’ve learned to seek out stories written by others that explore it too.

You don’t stop needing stories that reflect your life once you’re over 18.

You just need them to be shaped a little differently.

Oh hello, may I add?

I wanted to be a nanny. I looked after small children when I was only a slightly bigger small child than them, and I loved it. As I got older, I still loved looking after small children. When I was at school, I had the babysitting for teachers thing so sewn up at school that the teachers all used to plan their evenings out based on when I would be available to babysit for them.

BUT! I was at a Very Good School. And I was Clever! Clever girls from Very Good Schools do not become nannies and work as servants household staff for other people, they go to Good Universities and have Important Careers and EMPLOY servants household staff.

And this was the thing that was impressed upon me, quietly, politely, but firmly, and repeatedly by my teachers, my fellow pupils, and even my family.

(Here is the bit which is likely to out my job somewhat, but fuck it) My grandma told me, when I was little and told her I wanted to look after children, about a special school for nannies, where they train The Best Nannies, and I knew then that was what I wanted to do. But Clever Girls from Very Good Schools do not even go to special nanny schools, even when they train The Best Nannies. (Less clever girls might go, because they weren’t going to go to university and have Important Careers, so they might as well have a nice job for a while before they get married and have their own children.)

So I went to a Good University, and I did a very Respectable degree, and it was all… OK. I really liked my subject (and I still do) and I met fabulous people (who I still like), and I found out a lot about myself, including the facts that I have a whacking great set of learning disabilities my Very Good School had completely failed to identify, and a whacking great set of mental health issues, probably in part due to the learning disabilities, and a number of other things which meant that I was not going to be going down the, uh, straight path.

And also there was a massive global financial crash just after I graduated, and the world generally started going to hell in a handcart and nothing was as I had been told it would be.

So after being unemployed for a long time (see previous comments re: mental health and neurodivergency), I did a bunch of office temping and thought fuck it this is really boring and I started looking after small children.

And I really loved it. Even though I hadn’t done it for ages and I had grown up a lot since I had done it, and it was a lot more regulated and government inspected than it had been.

So I did another qualification in it, which I really loved. (The learning bit, college I studied at was Not Friendly to my specific job role, but I did it!) By this time I was actually in my actual 30s, and The World Had Changed.

And it became clear that if I wanted to carry on looking after small children I would probably have to do another degree. By this time, the special school for nannies, where they train The Best Nannies, was offering a degree in small children. And they were still training The Best Nannies, only now those nannies could go and do a lot of other things too because they had degrees!

So, after much discussion with my mother, who had by now resigned herself to the fact that a) I really liked looking after small children, b) I was not going to have an Important Career doing anything else, and c) I was not going to be giving her grandchildren anytime soon (or probably ever, biologically) I applied to go the the special school for nannies where they train The Best Nannies.

And I got in!

And it was amazing! I had the best time, even with a massive global pandemic and further global catastrophes. And I turned out to have even more health issues except that these ones were physical but fuck it, I kept going!

And now I am nearly not in my 30s anymore, and I have graduated from the special nanny school and I spend all day looking after small children and it is the best thing I have ever done. Even when it’s cold and we have to go to the park because swings!

And while part of me wishes I had gone straight to nanny school from actual school because I wasted a lot of time and energy I didn’t have trying to please people who did fuck all to help me and in fact cause me a lot of harm, I also… don’t regret most of it? Like , I did a lot of boring stuff but it wasn’t… bad? I met good people and bad people, and some really fucking annoying people, but that’s just how people be.

Coming of age stories as a teenager are about external experiences, about the world changing and opening up to you. The experiences you have change who you are as a person and

Coming of age in your 30s are about closing your world back down again. And not in a bad way, more like… streamlining. It’s all internal. You learn to stop doing things for the sake of other people (in general, obvious you’re still gonna do specific things for people when needed) or because of what society expects you to do.

And it’s not just in your 30s. It can happen when you’re any age, because this kind of stuff can take time for people to come to terms with, and it’s surprisingly scary to realise that you’ve spent years doing stuff you didn’t really enjoy or want to do.

We’ve all been training to think of that as a waste (of time, energy, whatever) when really it’s all contributed to us each becoming who we are.

Anyway, rant over. This stuff takes time, and the time it takes you to reach that point is all part of it. ❤️✌️🖖

Coming of age in your late 30s can also look like this.

I thought I was going to be a writer.

I really did.

I thought I was.

I tried.

I even got published (once).

And I got into rooms with some famous people who talked to me, a lot. And told me a lot of things that I was shocked they said to my face.

But no one wanted what I had to write. And no one wanted to hear what the famous people had told me. And I couldn’t figure out how to share my own writing.

Also? I was sick. I was so sick. I had been sick for a very long time. I got sick in college and I just…I kept being sick. Physically. Mentally. I couldnt seem to stop being sick. I got well physically but then the illnesses kept playing wackamole on me.

So I had to stop. I really had to. Because I couldnt get well trying to pursue much work

And I was very lucky. My mom supported me getting well even though it made her crazy. She indulged me doing things that made me happy even if it cost us and she got me medical treatment for my body but most importantly? She got me mental health treatment.

So much mental health treatment. Medication. But also? Therapy. Therapists, yes. But at one point? Treatment was all I was doing. I did it like it was my full time job ten years ago. A week of in patient then nearly a full year of partial hospitalization, 5 days a week, 8-5.

Coming of age doesn’t always look like spending a year just doing mental health work and then having that lead directly into your career but it did for me. Because it worked, damnit. I started to get better mentally and then physically. And I found that hey, I actually like doing stuff to make myself to feel better. Also? It’s interesting. It’s fascinating. Therapy and how it works is saving me but also it’s just fucking neat.

It takes awhile and I crawl out of the dark, bit by bit, inch by inch, month by month, until I find myself okay enough to give working a try again and I try to put that English degree I was going to be a writer with to use. Only I get into the schools and instantly find that I don’t act like a teacher. I act like a therapist and a social worker.

And so off I go to grad school to learn how to be a social worker, to treat people who are in the dark and to keep myself out of it, by doing the same thing every day for others that I am trying to do for myself, because an unused blade rusts. And now I’m a few months away from my clinical licensure. But I started in the dark, in the pits of depression and mental illness and now I’m thirty something and there is no part of my life I love more than my work, nothing that holds me together better.

But I didn’t know that when I was 18 and first fell into the hole. I couldn’t. Because you have to live life forward and it only makes sense backwards.

I mean shit, I thought I was straight at 18 and didn’t come out until I was 29 because I didn’t know. I didnt realize and understand.

Coming of age in your late 20s and 30s and I’m hoping 40s (cuz fuck I want kids and a partner and am hoping that will be my 40s coming of age story) is realizing that everything is constantly changing and you always have new things to discover and you cant know until you get there. You just cant.

The hard part, for me anyway, is remembering that there is just no fucking way to ever know. Monkey brain just wants to make patterns. But everything past this moment? Is completely unknown and always will be.

I know it’s scary for young people to hear but there’s no age at which you are just Set and you suddenly Know Who You Are Forever. There are, I’m sure, coming of age stories in our 40’s. There are coming of age stories in our 50’s, though those tend to be called “mid-life crisis” and frequently aren’t pretty because people have spent a lot of time convincing themselves to pursue a very particular kind of life, and they’re miserable. There are coming of age stories in 60’s and 70’s and 80’s because we are all just people, and people are constantly changing and growing.

That last post really hits home for me. I think of myself starting law school at 31, a decade older than some of my classmates (though younger than some as I went to a fairly diverse law school). And thinking of the 43 year old me who is now trying to recreate myself professionally because it turns out that while I love law and the study of it, I did not love being a lawyer. My health can’t keep up with the stress and demands of that particular job.

I also think of my dad, who decided in is early 50s to give up drugs and alcohol and move back to his home town to live with my grandmother and look after her. He found a job he loved that allowed him to travel some while still giving him plenty of time to be home with grandma and his dog. He and I found time to patch up the worst holes in our relationship and get to know each other better. I wish I could have seen what his 70s would have brought him, but sadly he passed away in his 60s.

Our lives are a steady stream of different coming of age stories. Each just as important and arduous as the previous. There is no one true blueprint to this thing called life after all and we are all constantly exploring both who we are and what we want. Both things change and shift as we grow and age. And sometimes the things we thought we wanted turn out to be not quite the right thing for us after all. So we pivot and keep searching. The best thing we can do for ourselves is give ourselves grace and room to grow and learn.

Not to be always doing this on posts, but so many things remind me of beautiful short stories I love that are criminally under-read. And this David Aloi story, about an elderly gay man who has lived through so many lovers and change and finds new, strange, precious moments of connection on an all gay cruise, is about this very thing: The Immortal