A Friend Of Mine With A Passion For Folklore And Small Presses Recently Introduced Me To Inhabit Media,

apparently, people in the US do not use the word ‘cupboard’

this is terrifying and beautiful

Crystal clear ice of the frozen Baikal Lake

I was pretty excited to capture this video of a bird of prey (some type of hawk, I believe) taking off one early morning. Pardon the quality, but I still think it’s cool.

This is super cute but like...cartography??? Why is one of Catra’s productive hobbies map-making? I don’t get it

(I love how the list says ‘Kissing Adora’ multiple times though)

Important Lectures

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So I feel more or less the same way about Medusa and I wrote a little snippet reframing Medusa’s story. Athena didn’t turn her into a gorgon to punish her for defiling the temple. She did it to protect Medusa. Feedback would be appreciated!

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His eyes sparkled green in the light. Her tears blurred the sight. It hurt. It hurt.

When he was done, Medusa still lay crumpled on the floor. She was silent now, but her face was wet with tears, and her thighs were slick with blood. He surveyed her with disinterest. “Maybe I’ll see you again, pretty. Or maybe not.”

And like the sea breeze, he was gone, as though he had never been.

Medusa sobbed once, loud and broken. She struggled to get up. The pain was too great to stand, but she pulled herself into a kneeling position. There was a strange silence in her mind, as pain and rage warred with disbelief. Rage won out.

Her voice was hoarse as she let out a ragged cry. She raised her fists and slammed them into the stone. The anger still burned within her, so she did it again. Tears ran down her cheeks. She felt useless and small. She had been nothing but a toy to him. How dare he?

“Athena,” she whispered. “Goddess, my goddess. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She bowed her head and wept.

“Do not apologize, my child.”

Medusa looked up so fast the room spun. She focused on the figure standing in front of her. A woman, with a terrible, fearless kind of beauty, wearing a sword at her hip and a shield on her back. Athena knelt before Medusa and took her face in her hands. “You have done nothing wrong,” she said, lowly, fiercely. “I would have my vengeance upon Poseidon and the other gods for every woman they have hurt, but even I cannot challenge them so.”

Medusa drank in every word. “What am I to do, goddess? I can’t…I can’t bear to endure this again.”

Athena’s face was thoughtful, inscrutable. “The temple has been defiled. You cannot return to your old life.” Medusa bowed her head in sorrow.

Athena continued. “The punishment of Poseidon is beyond me. However, I can grant you a gift. I can give you the power to protect yourself and others. Your rage makes you strong. I can make you my weapon against every man who would bring a woman low. But the price will be high. Are you willing to pay it?”

Medusa hesitated, looking up. The eyes of mortal and goddess met in perfect understanding. Every woman, no matter how high or low, knew the sense of helplessness and rage that men engendered. Medusa would give anything to fight it. Her face hardened with resolve.

“Yes,” Medusa said, and her voice grew stronger. “I would pay any price. Never again.”

Athena’s face bore a sad kind of pride. “Never again,” she agreed.

She rose to her feet, and placed her hand on Medusa’s head.

“I gift you with the power to wreak vengeance. You will stop any man dead in his tracks. I name you Medusa, protectress of women, and executioner of justice.”

And as she lifted her hand from Medusa’s brow, Medusa began to change. Her beautiful red hair, the envy of Athens, morphed into dozens of wriggling snakes. Her nails grew into sharp metal claws.

Athena stepped back. “Rise, my daughter.”

And Medusa rose. She looked up. Her eyes were yellow, and slit like a snake’s. Her lips were red as blood.

“It will be a lonely path that you walk, Medusa. To the west, there is an island called Sarpedon. Make it your sanctuary. Remember that I am proud of you, and be brave, my child.”

She bent and kissed Medusa’s brow…and then she was gone.

There’s evidence that Medusa was actually worshiped in Ancient times as more or less the Patron Goddess of Rape Survivors and a protector of women and I vote we Reclaim The Fuck out of her story.

In my junior year I became fast friends with a guy named Joe. We talked about our lives and ideas and so many other things - he told me I could tell him anything. I told him about how deeply I mourned my grandmother’s death. We hung out at school, I beat him at chess, we texted late at night. I was so glad we were friends. I even offered to start carpooling, to drive him home when I found out he waited at school for two hours for someone to pick him up, and his house was barely out of my way.

Then...I don’t really know what happened. Everyone was convinced he had a major crush on me. We were a pretty small school, so gossip got around fast. Everyone kept asking me what I was gonna do when he asked me to prom. I assured them all that Joe and I were just friends and that I didn’t like him that way and I didn’t want to date him. A week later, he just kind of...stopped. He stopped talking to me. He stopped answering my texts. He didn’t sit near me in classes anymore. I still drove him home. He didn’t even say hello. He just sat in my car and stared at his phone. 

At the end of the year, I found out he was dating one of my friends. I didn’t care, but I wished that he would tell me straight why we weren’t friends anymore. 

I told my uncle that summer how I’d lost a friend that I cared so much for and he’d never even told me to my face. My uncle wasn’t sympathetic at all. He told me I didn’t know what it was like to be rejected, how badly it hurt. He said that Joe was justified.

I did know how it felt to be rejected. Joe rejected me, my friendship. I never saw him again.

Then came my first semester of university. I quickly met a boy named Nathan. Nathan was nice and good at the piano and thought I was smart and we got on pretty well. But I figured out pretty quickly that he liked me as more than a friend. So one night I asked him if he wanted to ask me out, if he liked me. He looked a bit awkward, but he said yes.

And I told him I wanted to be friends, but I wasn’t interested in dating. I was very clear. I said I didn’t want to lead him on. I wasn’t going to date him. He nodded and smiled and said okay, and I smiled back.

We continued to hang out every so often. When we sat next to each other on benches or couches he would slowly inch towards me as we were talking and our legs would be pressing together, and I would readjust and scoot away until I was nearly falling off the bench. I asked him to stop doing that.

One day he was dead set on a picnic early dinner in the university gardens. I told him it was a terrible idea - the mosquitoes would eat us alive. He persisted, and we went. We left ten minutes later because I was right about the bugs. Instead we just kind of wandered around campus. He pressed in close to my side and I uncomfortably realized it was kind of like a date. He told me I was pretty and that talking to me felt like talking to someone who knew everything. He looked at me with something like awe and I felt uncomfortable but told him thank you anyway. He walked me back to my dorm and made a beeline for the piano in the lobby.

He played a song for me while I sat on the chair behind him, unsure of what to do or look at or say. He got up from the bench and shuffled his feet a bit and asked me to be his girlfriend.

And I told him no. Exactly as I said before. He said “Why!” I said that I’d already told him I didn’t want to date him. He said that he thought if I experienced him taking me on a date I’d change my mind. And, well, I didn’t. After a bit more of this back and forth I told him sorry but no and he left. He was crying. I wasn’t happy. I wished he’d have just listened to me when I said I wasn’t interested, when I asked him to give me more space. 

I see him around campus sometimes. We don’t talk anymore. I wish that Joe and Nathan and all the others like them could just have been my friend. I wish they valued me, my company and my friendship, over my potential as a girlfriend. 

thoughts on the friendzone

[TRADUCCIÓN ESPAÑOLA] (thanks a ton, krissyraawr!)

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when i was 5 years old my best friend was a boy named kyle who didn’t know how to knock on doors so he made dinosaur noises outside my window to wake me up in the summer until i demonstrated how to ball his fists and slam them against my doors.  we collected caterpillars in my trailer park and built them houses while we traded pokemon cards.  he wasn’t the only one.  there was ben, and mitch, and noah–but kyle’s the only one who hurt me, because when he tried to kiss me and i asked him why, he told me “because you’re a girl and i’m a boy, shouldn’t we like each other?”

i missed him so much and i wondered why he couldn’t just be my friend like he always was

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I just saw a post where someone replied “that’s rough buddy” in reference to a character’s love problems and I think it’s hilarious that we all know exactly what’s being referenced here

I think the meanest thing i can say about obi-wan kenobi is that he’s deeply, truly, fundamentally British.