percy’s view of himself: i’m so stupid and ugly and useless. i’m such a lame demigod

literally everyone else’s view of percy:

one of the hardest parts about being a demigod that isn't talked about enough is learning how to blend in with mortals. yeah, you look the part. but can you act the part? case in point in cotg when percy reveals he has to consciously swim slower when around mortals. but what about annabeth who has to physically retrain herself from engaging in a fist fight bc she knows she can clock them easily and can't afford to get expelled again. or grover who carries iron pills because he can't just chomp on a soda can during gym class. the implications of demigods actively downplaying their god given abilities so they can remain hidden is a concept worth exploring.

The last time we were on a long flight, my wife and I invented a game we call "Little Guy."

You start a game of Little Guy by saying, "I'm gonna hand you a little guy." The little guy is some kind of baby animal you are imagining. "Oh," she might say in response, "Okay," and hold out her hands for it. I will then mime handing her the animal. This provides some clues as to the little guy's size, weight, and general ungainliness.

She then gets to ask questions about what kind of little guy this is, BUT NO QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS ACTUAL APPEARANCE OR SPECIES ARE ALLOWED. Qualitative questions, or questions about his behavior, are the only ones permitted. She can ask "Is he soft?" or "Does he seem nervous about being held?" or "If I put him in the bathtub, does he seem okay with that?" or "Would he like a lil grape?" or "Is he the sort of little fellow who would wear a vest in a children's book?" but not "Does he have fur," "Is he a reptile," "Is he from Asia," etc. Some questions are in a grey area so you have to follow your heart, but the point is not to identify the animal as fast as possible: the point is to guess the animal purely based on vibes + how he would act if he were in your living room right now.

And I'm not limited to yes or no answers! If she asks, "Would it feel appropriate to see this little guy in a propeller hat?" I can reply, "Oh no, he has a gravity to him. A bowler hat would be a more appropriate hat." Or if she asks, "Does this little guy have protagonist energy?" I can say something like, "he probably wouldn't be the main character in a children's cartoon. He'd probably be the main character's ditzy best friend who's always eating sandwiches, or something."

We're big Twenty Questions to kill time in a waiting room people, but Little Guy is more about the journey than the destination. It's got a different kind of sauce that's nice if "killing time" and "lowering anxiety" need to happen hand in hand.

The last time we were on a long flight, my wife and I invented a game we call "Little Guy."

You start a game of Little Guy by saying, "I'm gonna hand you a little guy." The little guy is some kind of baby animal you are imagining. "Oh," she might say in response, "Okay," and hold out her hands for it. I will then mime handing her the animal. This provides some clues as to the little guy's size, weight, and general ungainliness.

She then gets to ask questions about what kind of little guy this is, BUT NO QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS ACTUAL APPEARANCE OR SPECIES ARE ALLOWED. Qualitative questions, or questions about his behavior, are the only ones permitted. She can ask "Is he soft?" or "Does he seem nervous about being held?" or "If I put him in the bathtub, does he seem okay with that?" or "Would he like a lil grape?" or "Is he the sort of little fellow who would wear a vest in a children's book?" but not "Does he have fur," "Is he a reptile," "Is he from Asia," etc. Some questions are in a grey area so you have to follow your heart, but the point is not to identify the animal as fast as possible: the point is to guess the animal purely based on vibes + how he would act if he were in your living room right now.

And I'm not limited to yes or no answers! If she asks, "Would it feel appropriate to see this little guy in a propeller hat?" I can reply, "Oh no, he has a gravity to him. A bowler hat would be a more appropriate hat." Or if she asks, "Does this little guy have protagonist energy?" I can say something like, "he probably wouldn't be the main character in a children's cartoon. He'd probably be the main character's ditzy best friend who's always eating sandwiches, or something."

We're big Twenty Questions to kill time in a waiting room people, but Little Guy is more about the journey than the destination. It's got a different kind of sauce that's nice if "killing time" and "lowering anxiety" need to happen hand in hand.

these tags made me laugh

[ID: A simplistic multi-panel comic of the characters from Sanders Sides, told through screenshots of a Tumblr post.

Panel 1: Janus, dressed in a suit, sits at the prosecution desk from Selfishness vs. Selflessness. The screenshot, a post from @/crustaceousfaggot reads "Is lying ever ethically correct" Panel 2: Extremely simple renditions of Roman, Thomas, and Virgil in their courtroom attire sit on one side of a desk, while Patton, looking worried, sits on the other side. The screenshot is of Tumblr poll results, reading "Yes - 97.6% / No - 2.4%". Panel 3: Logan, sitting in a chair, squints at the scene from a distance. Panel 4: Logan sits in the back of audience seating, surrounded by chairs as well as text reading [chairs]. He speaks with a speech bubble with Tumblr tags in it, reading "#who voted no? immanuel kant isnt going to fuck you" Panel 5: Patton sits in a folding chair leaning forward to hold his head in his hands, in the pose of the Shinji chair meme.

End ID]

"For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.

The second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms. Yes, nearly every population-level study finds that fat people have worse cardiovascular health than thin people. But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people."

A surprising article to find on the Huffington post. I think, especially towards the end, there's still a saturation of healthism and diet talk (just of the "clean eating" variety), but the information about weight discrimination is absolutely on point, especially within the medical field ignoring decades of research.

Not only do we know that weight loss isn't sustainable or possible, we also know that weight discrimination kills, in a myriad of ways. If you actually care about "health" then start unlearning your weight bias NOW and realize that fat people are just people who are a different shape.

And this article doesn't even touch on "the obesity paradox"(the fact that fat people survive heart attacks and injuries BETTER THAN thin people) or the fact that dieting, especially "yo-yo dieting," is a better predictor for heart disease than weight, and that many of the fat people who have cardiovascular diseases have a long history of dieting that (understandably) didn't work.

encouraged to rb but fatphobes will just be blocked.

I absolutely rushed to draw this as soon as I saw this post by the lovely @rosekasa

kris and noelle discuss critically acclaimed fps game half dead 2, their missing siblings, and obscure human musicians like claude debussy

learning that people want you in their lives is a skill you can develop if it does not come naturally

omg everybody stop and look at this. so incredibly done <3

I may have hyper focused too close to the sun…

Time taken:122 hours and 15 minutes

Eyes shut, barely still aware of what he was doing, Virgil nuzzled further into the blankets. He yawned slightly. Someone gently ruffled his hair. Then, perfectly comfortable and perfectly exhausted, he fell

down

down

down

swiftly, but so gently he didn't notice

into sleep.

the story of kfc fucks me up man. the colonel founded this gas station that expanded to restaurant, the chicken at the restaurant gets popular, makes KFC, it gets big and he sells it to a corporation for a lot of money. realizes he got sorta scammed out of the true worth of kfc so tries to get more money and they refuse and the courts side against him. then he starts a new chicken restaurant claiming the corporate people were not making chicken to his standards and kfc sued him because kfc owned the colonel's likeness and the courts agreed. a corporation owned this man's name and appearance. he wasnt allowed to use either, thus legally erasing his reputation making it harder for him to get taken seriously in any food venture. the man, to the day he died, was going into kfc's and throwing fits because the food had fallen into such bad shape he hated it was associated with him. and it's like, whether he's a bad man or a good man or whatever, a corporation owned his identity, stopped him from using his reputation and identity in other businesses, and refused to acknowledge his outrage that they changed his recipes and still attributed it to him. this is literally the obnoxious plot of a jay and silent bob movie, but it was this dude's real life. what the fuck.

RENEE RAPP

Saturday Night Live — 49x09 (January 20, 2024)

via @indiarosecrawford

𝑓ₒᵣ ⲕᵢ𝑛𝑔 ₐ𝑛𝑑 𝑐ₒ𝑡𝑡ₐ𝑔ₑ