#*a communication error has occurred*

[bixels]

y'know it's really considerate of nintendo to implement a play-timer in splatoon 3 to help you regulate how much you're gaming. every time i'm playing a ranked battle and see that "a communication error has occurred" message pop up, i feel at ease knowing nintendo is helping make sure i'm not having too much fun.

[xxbanditoxx]

Oh, Shiver won? Welp, I guess it's my time to quit Splatoon :)

[24-sourcandy-octopi]

I was just too good for them (is what I’ll keep telling myslef

[getthatsquid]

Bye y'all

[ericsdeadghost]

I love Nintendo servers

[fagdykevash]

along with saying "20 dollars a year" every time nso crashes i've started saying "30 million dollar debt" every time tumblr crashes. it's the little things tbh

[handweavers]

something that comes up for me over and over is a deep frustration with academics who write about and study craft but have little hands-on experience with working with that craft, because it leads to them making mistakes in their analysis and even labelling of objects and techniques incorrectly. i see this from something as simple as textiles on display in museums being labelled with techniques that are very obviously wrong (claiming something is knit when it's clearly crochet, woven when that technique could only be done as embroidery applied to cloth off-loom) to articles and books written about the history of various aspects of textiles making considerable errors when trying to describe basic aspects of textile craft-knowledge (ex. a book i read recently that tried to say that dyeing cotton is far easier than dyeing wool because cotton takes colour more easily than wool, and used that as part of an argument as to why cotton became so prominent in the industrial revolution, which is so blatantly incorrect to any dyer that it seriously harms the argument being made even if the overall point is ultimately correct)

the thing is that craft is a language, an embodied knowledge that crosses the boundaries of spoken communication into a physical understanding. craft has theory, but it is not theoretical: there is a necessary physicality to our work, to our knowledge, that cannot be substituted. two artisans who share a craft share a language, even if that language is not verbal. when you understand how a material functions and behaves without deliberate thought, when the material knowledge becomes instinct, when your hands know these things just as well if not better than your conscious mind does, new avenues of communication are opened. an embodied knowledge of a craft is its own language that is able to be communicated across time, and one easily misunderstood by those without that fluency. an academic whose knowledge is entirely theoretical may look at a piece of metalwork from the 3rd century and struggle to understand the function or intent of it, but if you were to show the same piece to a living blacksmith they would likely be able to tell you with startling accuracy what their ancient colleague was trying to do.

a more elaborate example: when i was in residence at a dye studio on bali, the dyer who mentored me showed me a bowl of shimmering grey mud, and explained in bahasa that they harvest the mud several feet under the roots of certain species of mangroves. once the mud is cleaned and strained, it's mixed with bran water and left to ferment for weeks to months.  he noted that the mud cannot be used until the fermentation process has left a glittering sheen to its surface. when layered over a fermented dye containing the flowers from a tree, the cloth turns grey, and repeated dippings in the flower-liquid and mud vats deepen this colour until it's a warm black. 

he didn't explain why this works, and he did not have to. his methods are different from mine, but the same chemical processes are occurring. tannins always turn grey when they interact with iron and they don't react to other additives the same way, so tannins (polyphenols) and iron must be fundamental parts of this process. many types of earthen clay contain a type of bacteria that creates biogenic iron as a byproduct, and mixing bran water with this mud would give the bacteria sugars to feast upon, multiplying, and producing more of this biogenic iron. when the iron content is high enough that the mud shimmers, applying this fermented mixture to cloth soaked in tannins would cause the iron to react with the tannin and finally, miraculously: a deep, living grey-black cloth.

in my dye studio i have dissolved iron sulphide ii in boiling water and submerged cloth soaked in tannin extract in this iron water, and watched it emerge, chemically altered, now deep and living grey-black just like the cloth my mentor on bali dyed. when i watched him dip cloth in this brown bath of fermented flower-water, and then into the shimmering mud and witness the cloth emerge this same shade of grey, i understand exactly what he was doing and why. embodied craft knowledge is its own language, and if you're going to dedicate your life to writing about a craft it would be of great benefit to actually "speak" that language, or you're likely to make serious errors.

the arrogance is not that different from a historian or anthropologist who tries to study a culture or people without understanding their written or spoken tongue, and then makes mistakes in their analysis because they are fundamentally disconnected from the way the people they are talking about communicate. the voyeuristic academic desire to observe and analyse the world at a distance, without participating in it. how often academics will write about social movements, political theory and philosophy and never actually get involved in any of these movements while they're happening. my issue with the way they interact with craft is less serious than the others i mentioned, but one that constantly bothers me when coming into contact with the divide between "those who make a living writing about a subject" and "those who make a living doing that subject"

[yandere-daydreams]

tw - implied non/con, extreme pet play, dehumanization, psychological/physical abuse, and unbalanced power dynamics.

commissioned piece. donate to palestinians in gaza here.

Sometimes, you really do think Suguru thinks of you as a pet.

It shouldn’t be as difficult to believe as it is. Of course you’d be less than human to him, less than equal to the god-like status he has among his followers. But, Suguru knows he’s not a god, and while you might not be the only person he claims to be superior to, you are the only one he keeps locked in a steel-barred dog crate padded only by thread-bare blankets and distant memories of what it felt like to sleep in a real bed. You’re special – albeit, not the kind of special you’d like to be. You can disregard most of his grandiose speeches about ‘complete non-sorcerer elimination’ and ‘killing off those worthless monkeys’ as the self-indulgent rambling of a deranged cult leader, but he doesn’t seem to be phoning it in when it comes to you.

He doesn’t talk to you. Communication occurs solely through blunt orders (come, sit, bark, etc.) or sweetened, syrupy baby-talk, cooed as his fingers card through your hair and pet down the length of your spine. You’re expected (something learned purely through trail and error, reward and punishment) to follow him around happily, to sit at his feet and clamber into his lap whenever his eyes find yours and he taps his thigh, that expectant smile already tugging at the corner of his lips. Depending on the day, you’re either coddled and adored like a beloved pet, allowed to walk on two legs rather than four and fed treats out of his open palm, or treated like a stray who’d wandered in off the street and refuses to leave. You do prefer the former to the latter, but it doesn’t really make that much of a difference, not if you’re being honest with yourself. Either way, you always seem to end up on your knees between his legs as he sits above you, a fist curled around your collar as he tells you to lick, puppy, lick.

Speaking of – you’re not allowed to wear clothes. You used to hate it, to steal his shirts and hide in closets, to do anything you could to salvage what little pride you had left, but it’s hard not to get used to something forced onto you so constantly. The only thing Suguru’s ever given you to wear is a simple, black, leather collar – studded with silver spikes and drawn tight enough to bite into your throat when he pulls on it, which he does often. You’re thankful he doesn’t make you wear those cutesy animal ear headbands or, god forbid, a tail, but not as thankful as you should be. As unbearable as it’d be, having him dress you up like a cat or a dog or some wide eyed, sexed-up rabbit would take the edge off. Like this, it’s harder to believe he thinks of you as an animal, as something cute and small and vulnerable that he can love and care for. It’s harder to deny that he knows you’re human – he just doesn’t see why that would ever mean you couldn’t also be his pet.

You think, when you’ve exhausted all other silver linings, that it’s (partially, at least) his excuse to keep you. You know what he does to people who aren’t like him, you’ve seen what he’s like at his worst, and you know that, if you weren’t his pet, you’d just be another non-sorcerer, another nuisance the world would be better off without. If you’re a pet, you can’t be a person, and if you’re not a person, it means he’s not going against his warped ideals when he pulls you close to his chest, when he ghosts his lips over the top of your head, when he fucks you so softly and so gently, you can almost believe he cares whether or not you enjoy it. Pets are supposed to be loved, and so he’s not doing anything wrong by loving you.

You know what would happen to you if you weren’t his pet, too, if he couldn’t make excuses for himself. You’ve seen how wide his smile can be when he comes home with blood on his clothes, how little effort it takes for him to hook his hands under your arms and carry you to his bed, already muttering about how perfect he’s going to make the world for his pretty, precious pet. You’re not allowed to leave his cramped apartment, but he talks about putting you on display for his acolytes as he ruts into you with an almost animalistic brutality, about showing all of those filthy, degenerative insects what a well-trained mutt looks like. You know that you should do more to fight back, that your humanity should be worth more to you than a few half-hearted escape attempts and the occasional pained whine, but you’ve seen see what he can do, heard about the dismembered bodies he leaves to rot in a ditch behind his temple, and—

And, no matter how much you hate him for it, no matter how much you hate yourself for it, it’s true.

When it comes down to it, you’d rather be his pet than be nothing at all.

[blueybre]

Chris Hatch's Community Time Mod fix

IMPORTANT: I got informed that Community Time, both Chris Hatch’s version as well as crammyboy’s original, is not functional on the Sims 2 Legacy Collection (the recent re-release), and that includes my fix, too. Until we know what has changed in the re-release to break the mod’s routine, I endorse using Lazy Duchess’ TimeSync as an alternative - that mod does work with Legacy, and comes with the extra feature of syncing seasons between lots, too.

Please continue reading only if you are playing on versions other than Legacy.

This post is about Chris Hatch's version of the popular Community Time Project mod for Sims 2, which prevents an immediate return of a Sim to their home lot after a travel. It's a great idea and I use this mod ever since I started using mods in my game.

However, it has a known but so far unfixed issue. If the player ever closes the text box that shows the remaining time until the Sim's return, or if the player closes their game while a Sim is off-world and later reloads the lot, then the mod will throw an "Undefined Transition" error.

CTP also fails to calculate the time correctly if a Sim is away for longer than 72 hours, and instead flows over to zero.

I have prepared a little fix for these two issues which I deemed not large enough to upload to MTS, but it's a critical fix for CTP users nonetheless.

Note that, unless CTP is re-written from scratch, travel times longer than seven days (168 hours) will still slow over to zero, because the Token - Community Time does not keep track of larger time units than the current Day of Week at departure.

While I was at it, I also solved the conflict between CTP and @lazyduchess' Playable Nannies mod.

Make sure the fix loads after CJH_CommTime(StandAlone), and also after ld_scheduler_car_semiglobals if you have it.

DOWNLOAD

EDIT (2023-11-23): I was made aware that, if you did not have Playable Nannies, or No Driving Without A Licence by @picknmixsims, errors would occur. I have thus added an extra resource that by itself does nothing but extend a constant table so those errors won't happen anymore. The file is updated, please re-download if you don't have one of these mods.

[butchdarling]

[ID: A digital drawing of a Parallel Canon Inkling from Splatoon 3: Side Order. They are shown from the shoulders up staring ominously at the viewer with blank eyes. They are drawn in harsh lighting in white with black shadows and a pink glitch effect. The background is black with text to the right reading "A communication error has occurred. / Reconfiguration failed." There is faint garbled text above and below it. "vivalch" is signed above the inkling's head. End ID]

[mariacallous]

At a Trump administration cabinet meeting on Wednesday, unelected South African centibillionaire Elon Musk joked about how his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “accidentally canceled” Ebola prevention. He assured the room that DOGE had “fixed” the issue. In reality, as an Ebola outbreak continues in Uganda, the aid response from the United States has been severely curtailed by the destruction of the country’s largest foreign aid arm—and other lifesaving humanitarian programs are also still broken, including AIDS and famine work.

Over the past month, DOGE has overseen the dismantling of USAID, first placing on administrative leave and then laying off the vast majority of its workers, and freezing funding for contractors implementing its programs. The State Department developed emergency humanitarian waivers intended to keep lifesaving work going—but current and former USAID workers and other public health experts have told WIRED that the waivers are useless.

“The waiver is a myth” says Asia Russell, the executive director of the international HIV advocacy group Health GAP.

Current and former USAID workers and other Ebola experts do not believe these issues are corrected, with Ebola-response teams having been dismantled and payments to partner organizations delayed, as first reported by The Washington Post. “The entire Global Health team has been gutted,” one current worker (who spoke under condition of anonymity for fear of retribution) tells WIRED. “So the response would be minimal.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head up Ebola prevention within the US, with USAID supporting efforts abroad. On January 27, the CDC was ordered to cease communications with the World Health Organization, the United Nations agency devoted to responding to public health crises.

"CDC was given an exemption to coordinate with WHO and other external partners to conduct public health outbreak and emergency response," CDC spokesperson Melissa Dibble told WIRED in response to questions about how the Ebola outbreak was impacted by the Trump administration changes. It is unclear when the exemption was granted.

Craig Spencer, a public health professor at Brown University and epidemiologist who survived Ebola after contracting it treating patients in Guinea in 2014, says Musk’s claims about fixing the issue are wrong. He points to the stark difference between the US response to a Marburg virus outbreak in Rwanda last year and the current outbreak in Uganda as evidence that things have stopped working properly. The US responded promptly to the Marburg eruption, he says, and helped contain the disease’s spread; this time around, Spencer says, Ugandan health workers struggled to get in touch with the CDC in a timely manner. While the WHO was able to step in, Spencer worries about future incidents without robust US global public health funding and infrastructure: “Outbreaks will be worse on the ground, and get bigger quicker.”

“The US funding freeze has affected key outbreak response capacities,” says World Health Organization spokesperson Alexander Nyka. The absence of USAID’s Outbreak Response Team is especially keenly felt; WHO describes its services as a “game changer.” According to WHO, the US previously provided around 20 to 40 percent of funding for sudden infectious disease outbreaks.

“Uganda’s Ebola outbreak occurred on the same day as the foreign aid freeze. Despite that, the waiver for assistance in addressing the outbreak was quickly reinstated,” the State Department told WIRED in a statement. “This is a process. If errors are made, they will be flagged and corrected as needed, while striving to do what’s best for the American people.”

Other lifesaving USAID programs ostensibly granted humanitarian waivers have encountered similar issues. Earlier this month, WIRED reported that the food aid and famine prevention program FEWS NET remains inactive, despite having received a waiver, with many of the workers who had implemented the program furloughed or laid off. This is still true today. “We have not yet been able to resume any activities,” says Payal Chandiramani, a spokesperson for Chemonics, the international firm implementing a large portion of the program.

Meanwhile, lifesaving AIDS and HIV programs are also not resumed. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is one of USAID’s most high-profile success stories, credited with saving over 26 million lives since former President George W. Bush founded the program in 2003. Around the same time Musk was joking about his USAID blunders with Trump officials, PEPFAR’s supporters gathered for a protest in Washington, DC, to draw attention to the impact of losing these programs. Despite receiving a waiver, PEPFAR has not been able to resume its work, along with other stymied AIDS-related programs, with funding and staffing cuts hampering the program. “The waivers have not been working,” says Emory Babcock, a former USAID contractor working on PEPFAR laid off at the beginning of DOGE’s cuts.

On the same day as Musk’s comments, the Trump administration terminated over 10,000 global health grants from USAID and the State Department, killing a variety of services that had been granted a lifesaving waiver.

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, a nonprofit that often receives funding from USAID and works with PEPFAR, got notice on Wednesday that three of its project agreements with USAID had been terminated, despite previously receiving approval to resume activities under the PEPFAR waiver. The programs support over 350,000 patients in Lesotho, Eswatini, and Tanzania, including 10,000 children. “There’s nothing left,” says Russell. “The collateral damage is piles of bodies.”

Even though a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze foreign aid funds to temporarily fulfill outstanding bills and payments owed to contractors around the world, the Supreme Court stayed the order on Wednesday night, which means aid groups—including those working on infectious disease prevention in Africa—continue to go unpaid for services rendered, in some cases preventing any further lifesaving work.

Meanwhile, a new, deadly hemorrhagic fever has emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the past five weeks, with over 60 people already dead, and the number of people falling sick still rising. Although it causes a violent, rapid cascade of symptoms, including vomiting blood, it is not Ebola, nor Marburg, but instead appears to be an unknown disease. A USAID worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity tells WIRED: “We have nobody on the ground to monitor this.”

[brucewaynehater101]

How the Bats argue against Jason's murder in fics

Now, Jason's murders vary in fics on a spectrum. There's murderous killing even common goons up to only those folks who are repeat, violent offenders that are not able to be contained/do their time (whether due to a corrupt system or them escaping).

We are gonna chat about the second one [in simple terms, Jason being particular and only killing the really evil bastards].

Side note, this is neither arguing for or against Jason's methods. This addresses how Jason may relinquish killing in fics in a more realistic manner than simply because he was told to or he wants to make amends

I've seen the Bats arguing shit like:

"Murder is wrong"

"This is not how we operate"

"We are not judge, jury, and executioner"

"This makes you a villain/evil/a murderer"

These arguments, frankly, are shit. This should not convince Jason to stop. Red Hood is killing from a logical-based moral standpoint (by neutralizing the threat permanently, he is saving inevitable future victims). Jason believes his option is frowned upon, but ultimately the right path. It's a "I'm doing what's necessary even if it damns me" mindset.

Arguing it's wrong will simply make him scoff or laugh. He knows the Bats don't like it, and he know they find it morally reprehensible. He still finds his actions to be necessary.

Jason isn't a child that needs to be told "right" and "wrong." He simply has a different moral code. Instead, these arguments in a fic serve as a reflection on the Bat that makes those statements.

This is not a diss to anyone's religion, but a similar comparison is to folks who base their moral code on holy texts and then try to tell other people what's "right" or "wrong" based on what their scripture says. If the other person doesn't have the same religion, you simply can not make moral arguments based on texts they don't believe in... Cause that writing has no weight to them. You would need to argue why something is "wrong" without resorting to: because [] says so.

By only declaring it as wrong, all that Bat is doing is showcasing their inability to communicate/be morally flexible. They are showing an unwillingness to acknowledge Jason's points or try to engage in counterpoints to convince him. These arguments usually predate the Bats trying to force Jason to stop killing instead of allowing him to make the choice for himself.

That is a perfectly fantastic fic idea to explore, but this wouldn't persuade Jason to change his ways. In fact, it may make him dig his heels into his methods more.

For arguments to sway Jason's opinion on how to pursue justice:

There is no oversight for Jason's murders

Cops enforce with killing (regardless of how you feel about the truth of this statement, Jason would hate this comparison)

Killing takes away chances for reformation

The threat of death causes false confessions/fear-based responses

Unclear standards on killing leads to innocents fearing Red Hood and not feeling safe

Escalation can occur (especially in fucking Gotham) when people feel their lives are threatened

Killing takes a mental strain and is thus harmful to Jason

Death is permanent and they can't suffer

There is no remedy for human error if they are dead

I'm sure there's more, but these are starting points to stop Jason's murders or ween him off of it [such as requiring Babs or Tim or Dick or Steph or the Outlaws or fucking Alfred to double check Jason's work before the execution].

Once again, I am not claiming any of these reasons are "correct" or that Jason's way is "incorrect." This is how a certain dynamic may be influenced by various conversation paths

[blushcoloreddreams]

3 philosophical arguments against abortion

1. The argument of doubt (In dubio pro vita)

There are situations in which doubt is a type of certainty. For example, if the subject is in doubt whether or not to get married one day before the wedding, this doubt is a strong indication that he should not get married. If the subject is in doubt whether or not he loves a person, it is because, at least at that moment, he does not yet love, since love is a firm decision. There are situations where "I don't know" is a no. The case of abortion must be included here.

There is no scientific consensus on the emergence of human life. If there is no consensus, there is doubt. Since there is doubt whether or not the fetus is human life in the scientific community, there is a 50% chance that it is human life, according to the scientific debate itself. Therefore, no one in their right mind would do something that "may" kill a person.

If they give you a drink and say: "you have a 50% chance of dying if you drink it", would you drink it? This argument is what I call the "skeptical argument" and it is quite strong, as it morally obliges even those who are on the fence to take a stand. When it comes to human life, the wall is not an option.

2 . The argument of personal identity

This argument is superior to the previous one, as it touches on metaphysical issues. Human life is a continuous process that, to be defined as such, does not depend on stages and apexes. The life of a 30-year-old man at the peak of his physical and mental fitness is no more life than the life of a 3-month-old baby. Just as the life of a 3-month-old baby is no more life than the life of a 3-month-old fetus which, in turn, is no more life than the life of a 3-week-old fetus. Living condition does not define life.

There is no stage where human life reaches its peak. There is only a single stage that has its initial burst in conception and its end in death. Personal identity is not acquired with an ID or a birth certificate. Personal identity is acquired the moment a person comes out of nothing and comes into existence.

Whether it is the human existence of the king of England or the existence of a 20-day embryo in the womb of a woman from an underdeveloped country, it is the existence of a human person in the same way. Existence is the only truly democratic thing, as it makes queens and faminshed people participate in the same category.

3. Being is previous to knowing

The most widespread thesis among those who are in favor of abortion is that the fetus should be considered "human life" only when the central nervous system is formed, there around 3 months. The error in this definition lies in the submission of being to knowledge - a basic metaphysical error. For someone to know, they must first exist.

Having knowledge or having brain activity in perfect formation is not enough to define someone as a "human being", if that were the case, people with dementia or with compromised mental activity would be less human than a mentally healthy person.

Today, you should no longer call a "person WITH a disability" a "disabled person", and I completely agree! After all, disability happens IN THE PERSON, but IT IS NOT THE PERSON!

Likewise, the faculty of knowing and mental/brain activities occur in the person's BEING, but they are not essential criteria to define this being. Thus, a 30-day-old embryo has as much being as an astrophysics genius. Let us not exchange the tree of life for the tree of knowledge again!

[destinationtoast]

Toastystats data dump: size of all fandom tags on AO3 (Feb 2025)

I told someone over in the fandom data projects community that I'd share data on the size of fandom tags on AO3; then it occurred to me that perhaps other folks might also want this spreadsheet.

(It sometimes takes a sec for the data to load in Google Sheets, because there's a lot of data. If anyone can't get it to load lmk, and I can share CSV files instead.)

Here's a graph of how many fandom tags are in each of the media categories that AO3 uses:

A few notes about this data below the cut:

This data comes from the category lists on AO3, e.g., the list of Anime & Manga fandoms. Sometimes those numbers don't quite match what's on the actual Works page for a tag (e.g., The X-Files Works page says the fandom has 27,303 works as I'm typing this up, but the TV Shows category page says The X-Files has 27,355 works. (I suspect the larger number may include drafts and/or some deleted works, but I don't know for sure.)

The spreadsheet contains one list of all the tags together (sorted by size) plus lists for each of the different categories (in separate spreadsheet tabs).

The categories overlap -- e.g., the fandom tag "Star Wars - All Media Types" appears in Movies, TV Shows, Books & Literature, Cartoons & Comics & Graphic Novels, Other Media, and Video Games.

The data also includes stats on category size -- i.e., the number of fandom tags in each category. (Used to make the above graph)

This data includes restricted works as well as public works (unlike a lot of my fandom stats).

Uncategorized Fandoms (often typos or errors, or other things that will eventually end up wrangled into a bigger fandom) are not included above, as there are no sizes for those and a lot of them will disappear once wranglers handle them. But you can browse the current list in this spreadsheet.

There may be errors! Please let me know if you find anything that's obviously just wrong.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Razi's Guide to Challenging Coercive Control in Society and Your Personal Life

Part 1 - A Functionalist Perspective on Self-Creating Morality

I'll be blunt. The only person free from the risk of being abusive are those who were never alive at all. There is no easy solution to being a good and just person, and no matter what arena of our lives we interrogate, there will be actions we have taken or deeds endorsed that were unacceptable, likely even in the moment.

The truth is, there is no specific set of instructions I could give you to earn you such an outcome. But why should we refuse to try?

Many of us have learned to internalize fear of failure, especially fear of moral failure, as a fear of excommunication from the social fabric of survival. This combines poorly with a world in which the only person who is successfully non-coercive in their navigation of the world is the person who is unafraid of being told they HAVE exerted inappropriate pressure or coercion, and who is unafraid of the trial and error involved in learning the balance of people they love or live with. You have to fail morality with an open and curious mind in order to have even a hope of succeeding in morality. A connundrum for many a nervous system even when the brain sees true.

So lets be clear, the question of how to observe your own use and wielding of coercion and control is essential for EVERYONE, no matter who you are, what your values, or how your history has played out. Thinking otherwise is its own risk factor when assessing risks for abuse. Specifically, behaviors of and exertion of overcontrol actually often raises the risk measure of an abuse victim's safety assessment (in this case referring to The Danger Assessment commonly utilized in domestic violence safety assessment, linked below) more than a physical assault would, as it is historically a higher predictor of who will harm or kill a victim when they attempt to differentiate within the relationship or leave it.

So what are the foundations of coercive control? Well, interestingly enough, researchers have been working to answer this question for a while! There are a lot of really useful and in depth conversations about this, but here's a succinct introduction to it. **a reminder, this is about how to interrogate YOUR OWN behavior for patterns of coercion and control more effectively. The information contained in this post is NOT an effective way of identifying abusive/coercive thoughts and behaviors in others, although ultimately the better you understand your own risks and maladaptive behavior patterns, the easier it is to cultivate relationships with healthy and adaptive boundaries for all parties.

*these screenshots are cited from an article about self-reported abusive and coercive behaviors during perceived in-group conversations such as on estranged parent web forums and represents an effective intro summary of patterns of coercive/abusive relationships in many mixed-hierarchy relationship dynamics from other existing research:

The important thing about realizing we all carry at least SOME of these coercive/abusive beliefs is that we must allow the inevitability of that reality undermine the shame and fear society encourages us to feel about the possibility of committing a moral failure, and sppecifically doing so while being able to maintain the somewhat contradictory side-by-side reality that these moral failings, every time they occur, must be treated as if you have done serious harm which must be REPAIRED. Specifically, we must set aside the idea of self-flagellation/punishment as "repair" and we must stop seeing apologies as a performance of remorse and contrition. Apologies are an opportunity to communicate to a person that you respect and hear their feelings, and that you will continue to act with love to the best of your ability. People rarely feel displays of guilt make good apologies. They often feel like an apology has been properly made when they feel their experience of distress was recognized and given genuine kindness.

So rather than looking at this list and justifying the ones that hit a little too close to home, the experiment for this week, the last week of 2024, is to actually ask the question "what if believing this really does hurt me and others?" What would it mean to you, in the life you have led, to consider the possibility that these beliefs are themselves abusive/coercive, and that when you act on them, so are you. If you have decided to come along with me on this long-term self-study, perhaps you'll journal along with me (in public or in private) on that question.

For now, I'll get the ball rolling. One of the dysfunctional beliefs that resonated the most for me is:

Emotions cause actions. When I feel something, I can't not act on it, or at least it would be wrong not to.

I have spent many sections of my life in abusive relationships, and the idea of not acting on the feeling of hurt or emotional lashing out sits VERY poorly with me both in concept and in practice. I genuinely do believe that such emotions ARE wrong not to "act" on, but I have come to understand that to "act upon" an emotion like that must often be an internal or curated affair. For example, there are times that my wife says things that feel hurtful, and because of how I experience them, I can struggle at times to "remember" that my interpretation is not the only available one. It is rare, when I do remember this, for a thing my wife said to be INAPPROPRIATE, even when it is hurtful. And I have realized that how I talk to her about the hurt feelings from appropriate statements must look very different from a talk about the rare INAPPROPRIATE and hurtful comment. Critically, being clear with each other about these two types of conversations means we are better equipped to treat things that were both hurtful and inappropriate with real seriousness, without detracting from or sacrificing our ability to discuss more complicated navigations of hurtful but appropriate episodes/statements. Example: sometimes my wife lets me know she's feeling overextended physically and like she can't keep up on her own and can't get help. This is ALWAYS a hurtful conversation for me because I am aware of the truth of what she says and we are BOTH aware that truth is largely beyond my control. My wife, in these moments, is asking me to sit with her in love with the knowledge that she is hurting as an outcome of trying to do an entire household's physical labor alone and that she fundamentally cannot expect help from me even though we both wish that were not so. She is not asking any ACTION of me. She is not asking CHANGE. She is not asking for APOLOGY. She's not even asking for GRATITUDE. But she *is* asking TO BE SEEN BY HER PARTNER IN HER WHOLENESS. In the same example, there have been a time here or there when, whether in response to defensiveness from me, or overwhelm in other areas of life, she has expressed this need to be seen in ways that were truly unkind or inappropriate. When these occurred, it was entirely necessary for her and I to sit down and talk through why/how that could not repeat, but importantly, it happened AFTER she and I got through a conversation about her feelings. It did ME (let alone her) no good to challenge how she expressed a reasonable feeling in an unreasonable way in the moment. And in fact, taking the time to make sure she felt fully heard is often integral to her ability to hear me in turn. I like to call this the assumption of good faith. I know that my wife loves me and that I love her. I am allowed and in fact will require healthy boundaries to maintain this love in a healthy way. And healthy boundaries are best discussed with unconditional regard for all parties involved, which means that while some boundaries may not change based on someone's feelings about it, but those feelings may indicate certain needs that would - if met - better facilitate the outcomes you want. This is NOT abuse apologia, and inherently does not accept that certain boundaries (such as hitting or restraining another person) can be safely crossed. It does however name that many boundaries may require mutual agreement on how they can effectively manifest/be maintained.

A lesson I am choosing to take in from this exercise is the lesson that it can be emotionally easy to match energies when I feel someone is pressuring or aggressing me, but I know that my intellectual preference, and the choice I would least regret after the fact, would be to de-escalate that feeling rather than add to it. Because of my abuse history I often struggle to differentiate between "holding a boundary firmly" and "being mean", which can mean BOTH that I fail to adequately hold or communicate boundaries AND that I am prone to lashing out if I "bottle up" a boundary for too long and genuinely say something unkind an inappropriate. And while I may feel justified in my feelings, that can never translate to justifying inappropriate behaviors that stem from those feelings.

As 2025 dawns, what lessons are you taking into the year for yourself?

[bellisima-writes]

July Fanfiction Round Up

I posted here about wanting to start publishing a monthly round up of what I've been reading. I'm in the middle of writing my own fanfic, so my reading has been dreadfully slow. But I still did get a few goodies in that I wanted to share:

Lesser known fiction (a shout out to some of the newer writers in our community!):

My Heart Was Always Yours by @addledmongoose - M 144K

This was a lovely "they never met" story that I thoroughly enjoyed. Aziraphale and Crowley are their usual selves but have no knowledge of the other on Earth. They are both individually tasked, by their respective sides, with stealing Raphael's trumpet from an auction in NY in order to kick off Armageddon. They form an arrangement to pretend to be a married couple in order to steal the trumpet, all the while believing the other to be human.

This work is original and engaging and the author's ability to describe action in such clear ways makes it so easy to lose yourself in the story. The shining star of this was the relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale, which is relatively angst-free by post S2 fic standards. It was a breath of fresh air to see them simply falling for each other in the sweetest ways possible, without needing to hide or pretend.

If you want a plotty and fully flushed out "let's save the world" story without all the angst and weight of the Final 15, then this is the perfect choice.

Well known fiction (stuff most of you have read but I am still catching up on):

Trial & Error by @fellshish - E 15K

I know almost everyone on my side of this site has already read this, so I'll keep it brief. This post season 2 story of Crowley being put on trial for seducing Aziraphale was such a treat.

The author's consistent ability to capture the humor of the source material while also hitting all the right emotional notes is unparalleled, and I've unofficially deemed them "mic dropping closing line" champion of GO fic authors.

They've written so many other wonderful works, some I've read and some I'm saving for when I need a giggle, so if you haven't yet read any of their works, definitely check them out!

Classic fiction (reserved for older pre and post season 1 works only):

Strange Flesh and All That by FortinbrasFTW - E 7K

This fic, published in 2014 and set in the Book Omens (!!!!) universe, was something really special. It’s a beautifully written, E-rated first-time story that occurs during an evening in which Aziraphale and Crowley watch Shakespeare in Love in Crowley's flat.

It's beautifully written and really captures the awe and surprise of these two characters discovering their bodies and what they are capable of for the first time. These are the Book Omens versions of these characters, so the words "I love you" are never uttered, but the journey on which they travel towards discovering their passion for each other is dripping with it. It's a very sweet story and one I am so happy I stumbled upon. I definitely plan to check out more pre S1 works in the future.

Hopefully will have more than just three next month, but we'll see. Time is at a premium nowadays!