#( I CERTAINLY DON'T DESERVE /YOU/

[uncanny-tranny]

Honestly, there is a certain type of fetishizing of violence that occurs when you are the victim of abuse - wherein people talk directly to you about how much they fantasize about your abuser/s dying and being killed - "all abusers must be killed!" they say.

As a victim of prolonged abuse, I never felt cared for when people indulged that information to me. It often feels like my abuse is being exploited for others to enact their own violent fantasies and secret desires - my abuse means nothing to them in the same way that I didn't matter to my abusers. It's not support - it's just another cycle of violence.

I'm begging people to care more about victims and survivors than they do about retribution of abusers. Nowhere along the way should your focus on the abuser outweigh the people affected by their abuse. If you truly want to support abuse victims and survivors, start with us

[navree]

You keep saying refusing to vote for Biden on moral grounds because of Palestine is ineffective because Trump would be worse, but that really isn't the point. Largely (with the exception of a few extremists and a contingency of people who wouldn't have voted anyways) the philosophy of a movement that has people withhold their vote is to force a significant policy change that wouldn't have changed otherwise. Its a form of protest. I understand from your perspective, election-focused and pragmatic, it is a threat to whoever is running, but if Biden had wanted the votes being withheld he would have capitulated.

Not that this isn't a moot point since he's out, but whatever.

See, this is intensely fucking dumb.

"force a significant policy change" it would not. One, because Biden is the president of the United States, and Israel is not one of those states. Short of sending the CIA to, idk, assassinate Netanyahu in his bed, which most of these people would be against I think because of how much they bitch and moan about US foreign policy at any given opportunity, he cannot actually make an independent foreign power do what he wants and what is electorally convenient for him. Like, I'm very sure Biden would love it if Netanyahu and his partisans stopped acting like fucking freaks for five minutes, if only so that it would stop being a PR nightmare for him. But that's not happening, because he cannot control what Netanyahu does. He could vastly reduce the support the US is providing Israel, and in my view he should, but that's not going to stop what Netanyahu and the Israeli government is doing. Because, I hate to break it to you, but the reason they're carpetbombing Gaza is because they want to be carpetbombing Gaza, and even without US aid they will continue to do it, even it just means with older and less effective weapons. Ultimately, the change that leads to a ceasefire and an end to the war is going to come from the actual parties involved, not Joe Biden.

Two, you've already gotten the significant policy change. Biden has, on multiple occasions now, come out in favor a ceasefire. He has actively been working, along with the Qatari government, to try and broker some kind of peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, but those two keep on fucking it up because they're both run by bloodthirsty psychopaths who don't care one iota about the people they're meant to be governing and only on killing whoever they want. That's been open fact for months now. And it has meant fuckall. The people doing their moral purity about how they'd never vote for Biden were still doing it, just moving the goalposts on what they wanted. First it was ceasefire, then it was 'no ceasefire until [insert impossible demand here] is given', because moving goalposts is what these people do. It's the same mentality as people who saw that Biden was doing COVID stimulus, or cancelling student loans, or reclassifying marijuana, and decided that the issue now was that he wasn't doing enough of it. It's a movement that's been consistently comprised of dogs that caught the car, and are angry that they caught the car because now they can't complain, and they don't want to actually affect meaningful change, they just want to complain because that's easier. And if that's what these people have been doing for his entire presidency, why on Earth would any reasonable person suddenly believe it's different on this one specific issue?

Three, cool you're protesting, then what? Your protest is utterly unserious and completely meaningless if it's not going to have any tangible effects, so what's the next step? You've decided to make your moral purity stance an issue that the vast majority of you learned from infographics on Instagram rather than listening to the voices involved (which is why the red triangle brigade is still a thing on Twitter), so what happens now? No political party is ever going to capitulate entirely to it, because the constituency is just too small (that "uncommitted" gambit was only getting like 10% of the vote wherever it was happening, Biden won over it as a literal write-in candidate in at least one state), so other than the compromise that's already happening, the goalpost movers are gonna withhold their votes because blah blah blah my morals. And their next step is, what? Trump gets elected. And their movement, which has no thought or serious effort put behind it or any actual attempt to provide material aid to the people actually suffering, has helped put a man who is going to be far worse for it in power. The "significant policy change" is going to be that Trump gives Netanyahu whatever he wants and he proceeds to wipe Gaza off the map. The "significant policy change" is that President "Trump Heights" actively makes things worse for the people this protest is supposed to help, as a consequence of that very protest.

It's not about me only being concerned with being "election focused" or some cold hearted bitch. It's about me, as a person who thinks what Israel has been doing since the start is godawful and deeply horrendous, realizing that this entire "protest" is not only asinine but will result in deeply negative consequences and very real harm for the people this protest is purported to be for, and being sickened by that. I live in the real world, and in the real world action speaks far louder than intent. I don't have to acknowledge that the protest wants this or that outcome or what the hypothetical impossible asks that are never going to be answered are, because I understand that they will not matter. What matters is what you get out of your protest, what gains are received, how that protest actually affects change, not the change it gives wishy washy lip service to.

[skrunksthatwunk]

love like you / maternal pang

bonus under cut:

the first stephanie + the maternal pang tone destroyer i couldn't include bc it's a serious comic

[littlefankingdom]

The irony of people being baffled by DC having Bruce being abusive and nobody never addressed it again or it's excused extremely easily, because they can't understand that morality is subjective, and people don't all agree about what is abusive and what isn't (in art school, one of my teacher was a comics writer and he defended hitting children as not being abusive. He is far from the only one), than turning around and writing posts and fics where the batfam say and do stuffs that my family did, were abusive and I'm still healing from that, but painting it as normal and with no effects.

I'm not saying what Bruce is doing sometimes isn't abusive, I'm saying "we don't live in a world where everyone is on the same page about what is abuse"

[noirandchocolate]

The Yiga Clan isn’t a cult in my honest opinion.

They’re more like a crime syndicate.

If a crime syndicate was also an oppressed minority group subjected to a genocide in the distant past and continued marginalization in the present as they’re forced to lurk at the edges of and mostly outside society to eke out a living through theft and violence while the “good” members of the same minority who accepted the harsh terms of cultural genocide at the hands of the very people they served get to stand next to every other race that reviles them and call them “evil” and “traitors” because they seek justice against the divine-right monarchy that betrayed them first and have forsworn the goddess who never once deigned to help them.

They're not monsters to be mowed down, they're people. People who engage in genuine and understandable strife against authority figures who uphold systems of inequality.

...

Anyway, that's what I think.

(Edit: For even more of me rambling, see the notes.)

[ninamodaffari]

-

[icannotgetoverbirds]

Share to save a dandruff-haver's sanity

i am making this post because all my life i have been told my dandruff was my fault for not washing my hair correctly and shamed for having "poor hygiene" as a result - this is probably where the bfrbs started tbh.

SO. There are two main types of dandruff!

Dry scalp flakes: these are white and itty bitty! you can probably solve this with a good hair and skincare routine. HOWEVER unless they are bothering you it is absolutely not necessary for any kind of health reason (afaik! disclaimer! i am not a doctor! this is not actionable medical advice nor should you take me anywhere near as seriously as a dermatologist). IS NOT CAUSED BY POOR HYGIENE.

Fungal dandruff: Bigger, yellowish, possibly oily/greasy flakes! Caused by your genetics going Oops All Yeast! Generally requires a prescription antifungal treatment from a dermatologist! ALSO NOT CAUSED BY POOR HYGIENE.

Either way, if you have dandruff, a dermatologist is the one you want to consult if it's bothering you! and frankly, even if it was a hygiene issue, nobody deserves to be shamed for that!!!!! especially considering that there are plenty of people who struggle to shower regularly due to circumstances beyond their control!

AND FOR CHRIST'S SAKE STOP SHAMING PEOPLE WITH DANDRUFF!!!!

[sortanonymous]

I kinda got a fic involving one of these two to focus on (spoiler alert: it's the cooler one, and I don't mean the one HAL tried to make look cooler), but I'll just drop a meme like this and maybe save any possible rant for another day. Or hopefully someone else will beat me to that.

[cosmic-walkers]

you know, thomas basically prepped gregory to be the type of man he absolutely despised, and always sought to find other sons elsewhere. thomas hated men who had things handed to him, he loathed that nobility and this idea that they didn't have to work for what they got. yet, he turned gregory into that. he put gregory through Cambridge, rather than put in in an apprenticeship (and i mean, he did put him in some apprenticeships, but gregory being sent to Cambridge was a huge social thing as well), he brought him up to literally be a gentleman, arranged a marriage between him and Elizabeth seymour so that the cromwell family could be connected to royalty, and even allowed him to stay with norfolk over the summer, his "enemies" (which is why IMO there was merit to dorthea believing thomas betrayed wosley, but that's for another post!).

and we see how in many instances, he subconsciously loathed gregory. this is also why he is closer to cristophe. cristophe is everything thomas wanted in a son - someone who was like him, someone who had a rougher start in life, someone who fought for what they wanted, etc. i mean, in the books, cristophe even sleeps in thomas's room with him. in contrast to the one scene where we see gregory in thomas's room, Gregory is fully dressed, and he is almost a stranger in his sleeping father's presence.

it's also why he warmed up so closely to jenneke. it's like thomas mentally punishes gregory for not struggling the way *he* did, or the way cristophe did, or the way perhaps jenneke did when she grew up without a father for some time.

thomas had this need to climb higher, and to find his way in noble society but didn't want to fully commit on his own. so he used gregory. and naturally, that would be okay, but more and more, he started to loathe him because again, Gregory subconsciously reminded him of the men he hated and detested and Gregory, really couldn't do anything to fix that.

[amidnightqueery]

I don't hate my job or anything, but man, being a float educator is so fucking thankless

[leelreallylikespersona]

I'm going to be burned at the stakes but I don't care I love putting Yaldabaoth and Satanael in domestic situations

Mementos is their giant-ass home actually and it occasionally detaches from the real world and they have peace

They have a normal room where they play normal games instead of god games that would potentially end humanity. They have normal conversations about the weather outside

"How's the weather today?"

"Humid nothingness today."

"Gross."

They do normal things like laundry. Except Yaldy doesn't have clothes he just cuts new pieces of sheet metal to attach to himself

[patiann345]

Watching the situation with EA doing a fuckton of updates in a like. 5 days because their latest pack broke TS4 in.. A HUGE VARIETY OF WAYS from player to player. Jesus christ man. and then some of you guys still wanna pay for new packs?? What??? I can't make anyone buy or not buy anything but... C'mon, put your money to better use! Half of that content should've been base-game anyway, but instead gets cut up and sold across multiple packs to milk money out of people,, and it clearly works because I'm seeing people nab packs during the sale even while the game is in an unplayable state for a lot of players.

It's so sad because I was kinda excited for the 10-year anniversary next month. But seeing the state it's in rn, how frustrated people are seeing their game break down and (god forbid) their saves get completely wiped, seeing the very convenient sale for packs go up right as the community sends in complaints that the game won't load properly or they can't use CAS or this and that etc etc,,,

I'm never paying for another pack again. I feel crap that I ever did in the first place. If it ain't 100% off, I'm not getting it.

[viillette]

it's so crazy how few historical fiction novels are like sharon kay penman's. the way that they're built out of the skeleton of the historical record seems so obvious, but there's so few people who are actually willing to commit to it in the way that she did. it seems like so often that's just a starting point which gets reformed to fit a coherent narrative, but she makes no real attempt to do that. there's themes and foils and patterns, but first and foremost it is a reconstruction. you can't really know what someone who lived that long ago was like, only what they did, and you can feel how she takes these isolated, dramatic events and builds a whole life around them. the books are nothing more than an answer to the question 'what might someone have been like, what could the history between these people have been, to possibly explain something like this?' the ability to string together a handful of facts and events from medieval chronicles to create people that feel so real, and psychology and relationships that develop so naturally that these distant, seemingly impenetrable choices suddenly feel so immediate and clear is just beyond belief. you know this probably wasn't actually how things happened, but it doesn't matter because it was something like this. the particulars are less important the crushing awareness that at one point all of this made sense. there was a time when all of this was right now. the world is unrecognizable and exactly the same. that's something which sounds very simple but is incredibly difficult to accomplish.

you come to know these people so well, their loves and hatreds and ambitions and failures, and those things are rarely resolved in the end. you know them from the time that they're children, you watch each one of them die, and none of it means anything in particular except that they were a human being. things which seem like they must be building to some tragic fallout end in anticlimax. things which seem utterly inconsequential in the moment manifest again decades later in cataclysmic disaster. and then you see it all play out again from the beginning with their children, and their children's children. all these uncanny echoes, this endlessly unfolding palimpsest of lives, each laid over the triumphs and mistakes of those who came before. i've never read anything so epic with so much mastery over the micro and macro levels of history. it's the minute, seemingly inconsequential everyday details, which build into a lifetime, which builds into generation of lives, which builds into the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires. it's the merciless endlessly turning wheel of fortune that replays the same songs in different keys again and again for all time. a person is both an individual with free will, and the prisoner of their blood and circumstances. somehow everything has infinite weight, is tied to everything that has come before and will come after, is the culmination of someone's entire existence—their pains and joys and fears and hopes—and yet is simultaneously completely meaningless, just one more victim of fate in an endless procession of lives and choices. the whole impotent tragedy of humanity is laid out in front of you and it's so repulsive and beautiful. it's deep love and unfathomable, senseless horror briefly and miraculously reverberating in a vacuum, an absurd aberration fading into silence.

if it's not obvious these books have made me cry like 10 different times

[theheadlessgroom]

@beatingheart-bride

With books in arms and sweets in hands, the couple soon departed from the bookstore, the elderly proprietor cheerfully bidding them goodbye as they stepped back out onto the street, which had proceeded to come a little more alive, more couples walking to and fro, in and out of shops, the streets alive with the chatter of friends, the laughter of children, and the jubilant music from the nearby restaurants.

Truthfully, Susannah seldom gave much thought to any future in which she'd be a wife and mother. Until meeting Philippe, that sort of notion felt far more like a pipe dream than anything else, unable to envision anyone being eager to make her their bride, let alone mother of their children, but ever since falling love, she'd found that had changed quite a lot, and thus, she found herself daydreaming more about what was to come.

Would they have nights like this in California? Walking the streets together after dinner, their children running ahead of them, giggling up a storm as they enjoyed everything the world had to offer? Would the little ones play in the grass, gathering flowers and begging their parents for sweets from the nearby vendors? Would she and Philippe put them on their shoulders, and let them see the world from a whole new vantage point, and make them feel like they could touch the stars, the way her father did? She liked to think so.

A gentle smile crossed Susannah's face, and she couldn't help but lay her head against Philippe's shoulder, the way so many other ladies did with their gentlemen, feeling more content than she had felt in a very, very long time.

[circulars-singlet]

what’s the most surprising or hard to adjust to thing related to systemhood for the systems you’ve met? doesn’t have to be a specific to each one, just in general

That's honestly hard to answer. Currently there's nothing that's hard to adjust to. I take everything kind of in stride. I guess I was surprised by how often my one friend switches but that's more so because I'm used to my partner who takes a day or more to switch. Never more than twice a day much less than ten times a day. Finding out a person is a system really doesn't change anything for me. At this point I assume that everyone I meet has their own brand of mental fuckery going on and so treat them as I would literally anyone else. Does it give me more context? Yeah for sure. Bitch about your shitty childhood to me, I'm all ears. Really it's such a non issue.

There were two key moments for me while dating Circ though. Actually I think that might have been what you were asking.

The first one was the fucking systemhood in the first place.

We were roommates in college and best friends, but it still took almost two years before they told me about having DID. They also told me with a mutual friend in the room who already knew for support. Honestly, my first thought was fucking "sounds fake but okay." They way they described it was so fucking wild to me and definitely didn't sound like a real thing. I froze for a second because I didn't know what to say. I remember thinking, fuck how do I respond to this? Should I console them? Should I say it's not a big deal? I don't want them to think I don't care about them though. I don't want them to feel like I'm belittling them. How do I not hurt their feelings? All that came out apparently was "oh cool." That apparently went over well so I was so fucking relieved that I said the right thing. The next steps were easy though. I listened. They told me about their experiences. The best part of this though is that my partner said they were """"""fully integrated"""""" (despite still fucking switching lmao). And guess what? I was fucking disappointed because I DIDN'T GET TO MEET ANYONE ELSE! I was so bummed out. And guess how much of this I told my partner at the time? None of it. That was shit they did NOT need to hear. It was my job to process that and figure my shit out. I didn't want them to experience any of that negativity. So I guess that was my biggest adjustment? Just, "fuck my crush just told me they have this mental shit that sounds so stupid, guess I'll continue to love them and support them in anyway possible I guess."

The second one was about interjects. I'd say this happened like 3 or 4 years into our relationship.

I had obviously been learning about DID and listening to my partner talk about DID things. And one of those things they mentioned was what interjects were. Which, again, sounded fake as hell and stupid as fuck. I shrugged it off because people be weird like that, until my partner told me they split an interject. One from a book we've both read. So I quickly had to start adjusting real fast. I asked a ton of questions and listened a whole bunch. We worked through trauma shit. And I got over myself.

It's not my place to judge someone's mental state. It's not my place to figure out if it's real or fake or just pretend. How would that help anyone, really? It's my job to figure out my shit and be a positive support to the person who trusted me with a vulnerable confession.

Everyone deserves love and respect <3

Mush

[david-watts]

gonna have to be honest here this site has been a little bit of a landmine recently for me because there are just. so many jokes that either are directly making fun of biden's stutter or have roots in making fun of his stutter. I don't think I ought to have to play a game of 'is this user going to mock me for having a stutter or is that just reserved for the evil old white bloke' as often as I have lately. get better material