A Fools Guide To Not Wanting To Die Anymore

I feel like you’ll appreciate this photo I took several years ago when I was in school of a raven getting spooked by something in the bushes

dealing with the worst case scenario

your condom breaks

you feel a lump on your breast

your friends are ignoring you

you’re stranded on an island 

you got rejected by a crush

you get into a car accident

you got stung by a bee/wasp

you got fired from your job

you’re in an earthquake

your tattoo gets infected

your house is on fire

you’re lost in the woods

you get arrested abroad

you get robbed

your partner cheated on you

you’re on a ship that’s sinking

you fall into ice

you’re stuck in an elevator

you hit a deer with your car

you have food poisoning

your pet passed away

you fall off of a horse

you or your friend has alcohol poisoning

you have toxic shock syndrome

your house has a gas leak

Rama and Sita never overhear the dhobi before her pregnancy comes to term

1. Most of Kaikeyi’s power died with Dasharatha and his love with her, but still she has enough influence to overhear the rumors that spread through the city–and, more importantly, to ensure that the wells and taverns that Rama visits in disguise do not mention them. 

Let him confront those ugly truths once his wife delivers Ayodhya its heirs and if he should object, then let him consider: she has done him so many offenses already; what is one more?

2. The child – no, children, and fine sons, too!–are born, and Kaikeyi lets it be known that to challenge their legitimacy would be to deprive Rama of the heirs he loves so well. For a time, it works: Ayodhya loves Rama enough to allow him his happiness.

But all too well she knows it will not last. Did she love him, too, and still prove the cause of fourteen years’ unhappiness? So too will they turn on him, and his blameless queen; unless Kaikeyi can seek to do otherwise. 

3. Crowds always need a scapegoat, and too well Kaikeyi knows one that will suffice. Public opinion has forgiven only because of Rama’s request; and so it is all to easy to sow a word here, a suggestion there, that all the rage and mistrust they feel towards Sita ought to be directed towards the real instigator of mischief, who lives in the palace still, having escaped any punishment for her crimes. 

It works; of course it does. Kaikeyi has lived in Ayodhya for almost forty years, and knows it like the palm of her hand; and just as in the palm of her hand, she can read the signs of her downfall in the crowds’ angry faces. 

4. Before Rama must answer that he allows the criminal responsible for his father’s death to live simply because she is his stepmother, Kaikeyi volunteers herself to return to Kekaya. Too long she has lived apart from her mountains, she says wistfully; and her brother longs for her company. 

She will listen to no protests, not from Rama, nor her fellow wives–and Ayodhya, pleased with itself, forgets its complaints against its queen entirely. 

5. The night before she is to leave, Bharat comes to her for the first time in fifteen years. He knows, of course; any son of hers must. She managed to teach him at least that much. 

“If you expect me to forgive you, simply for what you did for bhabhi-”

“I did nothing but act according to my own nature,” Kaikeyi interrupts coldly. As much as she longs for Bharat’s return, she does not want it to be under such terms. “Manipulation is my only skill; surely I must use it to relieve my own boredom.”

“You’ll never change,” he declares, and still his voice is thick with anger. But he touches her feet before he goes, and in the morning, stands on the stairs and watches Kaikeyi’s departing palanquin until it fades out of view. 

domestication syndrome is one of the coolest findings from recent genetics

😂😂😂

But also, why would you send "good"?

There are so many unintended consequences to well-intentioned actions. It feels like a game you can’t win.

G for Krishna?

Grass

His mother despairs of the stains it leaves on his clothes, but Krishna knows there is no more wonderful smell in the world, nothing better to feel against his fingertips.

Gentle

Calves’ hearts are won by kindness rather than cruelty, and so are those of men: ministers exclaim at his skill at diplomacy, and Krishna thinks that it is only common sense.

Guile

Red-blooded warriors may mock his cunning and cowardice, calling him Ranchod; but if one man more will survive for it, he cannot bring himself to mind.

Guide

He leads the way for Arjuna, for Yudhisthira, for Parikshit after him–and there are none to lead the way for him. 

Green

Yellow is the color he loves best, but when he closes his eyes, it is green he sees: the grasslands of Vrindavan, open to him once more.

“Besides, anyone can feel the way they want to, correct? You don’t have to worry about it at all. Okay?”

So, I started watching the kids’ show “Just Add Magic” on Amazon Video last night. Something about it is so compelling.

It’s very much a kids’ show.

Three 7th graders acquire a magic cookbook. Shenanigans ensue. (There’s also a kid with a “food bike” until he can get a food truck, and he doesn’t need magic to cook awesome things.)

In the background, there are all sorts of adults having their own problems, a plot with a spell-trapped grandma that’s a metaphor for living with a senile relative, and a guest appearance by Mira Furlan (who played Delenn in Babylon 5 and basically plays Delenn in this show too).

Is anyone else watching this? Or am I the odd adult out?

tropes i will never get tired of

fake dating

omniscient narrator who immediately contradicts the characters (“This is fine,” she said. It was, in no way, shape, or form, fine.)

deadpan jokes while swordfighting

the “I FUCKING LOVE MY WIFE” guy

oblivious pining that slowly escalates until A is going on page rants about how pretty B’s eyes are but still doesn’t seem to recognize they’re in love

Strong Leader Type having to physically fall down in order for the other characters to see how exhausted they are

funny villains who talk and make jokes with their heroes while they’re fighting them

the villains presented as the protagonists

*increasingly pulls out bigger and bigger weapons from more unlikely places*

“I said all of your weapons” *pulls out more*

“ALL OF THEM” *pulls out one last tiny dagger*

traumatized character using humor to cover up ptsd

characters going out for a break at a restaurant/movie/whatever and something bad happening

using the “*gasp* what’s that over there???” trick to avert the enemy’s attention and it working

a villain’s weakness being something totally random and nonsensical

a hero duo arguing over who’s the sidekick while fighting a villain

“don’t be silly, we don’t need [important thing]”  “you lost it, didn’t you?”  “yeah”

“what’s the one thing I told you not to do tonight?”  “raise the dead”   “and what did you do?”  “raised the dead”

“I think that went pretty well” *explosion in the distance*