#How many people don't see others as human beings but as a means to an end for their vices and pleasures and comforts. At the other's expens

[osakanone]

Writer here.

Actually to hell with this false equivalence and the advice.

Advice is a form of social nostalgia. We learn something, but we remove the bad parts to help us remember the thing. We simplify it down.

When we pass it on, we conveniently forget to put the shitty parts back on, because that's how memory works and its part of how we value advice appropriateness of past experiences.

We do this even when someone's situation and context is totally unlike our own and we do so with confidence until we learn not to.

The big lesson?

Life doesn't generalize. Neither does context.

Experience does not generalize. That's literally how and why people are different from one another. We get to know people unlike ourselves so we can see differing contexts, so we know when our experiences do not generalize. So we can see beyond ourselves.

Some people desperately want to think all of life generalizes, but that's the same mentality which produces people who think they can personal choices their way out of any imaginable problem.

As an example, a thousand Signalis like tragedies doesn't prepare someone for a dead spouse.

A million Disco Elysiums cannot undo decades of catastrophic self-hatred.

Its not like a fire-drill where after doing it enough you go into autopilot with some kind of readiness and automaticity even if it claims to sell you that fantasy.

It can put tools in your hand, but only if your context is close enough that the tools are actionable and useful.

If the realization is not useful, you can't act on it.

Sometimes it is, sometimes its not, often because minor contextural factors will intervene.

What if you have a lot of complex feelings about both a dead spouse and your concept of gender and its all too muddled to process in Signalis and it messes with your ability to process your grief?

What if you have a lot of complex feelings about an alcoholic parent and Harry makes you forgive things you shouldn't forgive?

People are influenced by media, and they do do things like this.

Sometimes instinctively, they even know they shouldn't and will drop something.

Like don't get me wrong, advice is helpful sometimes but its ultimately still advice in the form of roleplay with number of players zero.

The real thing is not an abstraction.

Sometimes what people actually need isn't piles and piles of tools, but distance. To know things can be different, or just not to think about what's happening so they can get things done that will help their situation. To know there is something worth working towards. That it isn't going to rain forever.

Sometimes what people want is catharsis or just relief or to feel seen rather than to learn or be told something or shown a different way to think or be given actionable tools.

They just want to escape so there's a reward to getting things done that let them continue to exist. A carrot on the end of a stick so things feel worth doing.

Sometimes people aren't willing to suffer to get there because they're already so depleted, and get those lessons because they just want a carrot to only be a carrot.

You might say that unreasonable or unrealistic or even childish but many people don't get a controlled environment in their heads to begin with (and potentially not even one in their lives) so your bit about a controlled sandbox doesn't generalize either.

The sheer distance of how far away two human contexts can even be is beyond imagination in its nuanced emergent subtleties.

Nothing in our evolution has prepared us for the era we live in.

Lots of people as a defense mechanism will struggle to connect with others who have difficult experiences as a means of limiting the incoming pain as they're already saturated.

That's not going to help someone connect to a story or care enough to complete it.

Fiction can be useful to bridge those gaps or even bring people closer, but it won't make people whole again, especially if they don't even know what being whole is or if they don't have space to walk.

Remember Maslow's higherarchy?

Think of where you have to be for personal growth to happen.

Lots of people begin from below the ground up, not even knowing what experiences they didn't get to have or what lessons they weren't taught as children, assuming they were even taught any.

The context where your advice genuinely helps?

Not everybody is there.

Please remember this.

Take care.

whenever people say they can't watch/play/read anything slightly upsetting or scary or challenging because it's... upsetting or scary or challenging all i can think of is this lol

[marshemillow]

I know I'm just preaching to the choir at this point, but I absolutely HATE how cancel culture has completely spiraled out of control.

Sorry to fucking break it to you, but nobody takes your callout posts seriously anymore because you've collectively decided that;

"This person is against harassment" "This person ships gross ships" "This person said something off-color on twitter when they were 13" and "This person is a current threat to real children"

Are all on the same level of bad. You really think anyone is going to care about your opinion on the "pedophile" you found this week when your definition of "pedophile" is so broad it could include anyone at any time??

I'm also sick of hearing about all the real predators that flew under the radar harming real children for YEARS just because they said all the right key words and started the right harassment campaigns against the right people, basically clearing them of all suspicion, so shipping gross ships is actually punished way more harshly than being a real child rapist, not that anyone would think otherwise anyway with how many times a callout post goes on and on about how bad some person is because they ship gross ships and have a secret AO3 account where they write stories about abuse and old DeviantArt drawings of zadr from when they were 7, and then right at the end they tack on "oh and also they raped an 11-year-old" as if it's only barely relevant extra information and not what should be THE MAIN POINT OF THE GODDAMN POST!!! Like nobody's going to read that far to get to the real point so the post overall was meaningless!!!

These people clearly need to go back to grade school to read the boy who cried wolf, because it's clear that they think just slamming the PEDO button over and over and over again will always have the same reaction every time, and when it doesn't, they think it means everyone else must be a pedo or pedo-apologist when the callout posters actually just created a reason why they can't be trusted, and don't think I didn't notice how many of these people who are canceled are queer or jewish, trans people are targets I swear like 1/3rd of the time!!! Why are so many cancelled people trans when they make up less than 2% of the overall population?? If you think it's because trans people are predators, then you clearly have worse problems than whoever you're falsely accusing.

It's obviously just a tactic people use to be able to ruin the life of anyone they want as an act of petty revenge and NOT because they're interested in protecting anyone. These are often good innocent people who sometimes end up committing suicide because of how badly their reputation was ruined by allegations that weren't even true.

And that's not even the worst part; Which is that the more you falsely accuse people who are innocent, the less people who have real allegations are believed, the more abusers can get away with abusing.

And that's not even getting into people who are called transphobic because they talk about intersexism, trans men who are slammed for being men, bisexual people who are slammed for having "straight-passing privilage", asians who are victims of horrific racist harassment campaigns even by people who aren't white, and many many other examples, ending in entire communities that are easily groomed into extremist ideologies because they don't have the tools to see through their bullshit thanks to all the bad faith discourse saying shit that's actually nonsense but laiden with guilt, so you HAVE to agree if you don't want to be cancelled yourself, and in turn of course, that leads to even more people who will never admit when they're wrong because "admitting you're wrong" is the same thing as accepting whatever punishment the witch hunters have planned for you on top of losing your humanity because you have to be perfect all the time always and if you make one single mistake you're a monster who deserves to die.

It's so fucking horrific, and it needs to stop.

[uncanny-tranny]

Sometimes, I'm sad about the hobbies I have abandoned or have been too intimidated to pick up. But... what good is it, to just beat myself up over that? My bass is sitting in the corner, patiently waiting, and so is everything else. My life isn't over, and I've got nothing to answer to. I'm wading through a sea of time, and I'll pick up the seashells that interest me, and it's okay to put one back in the sand. The current's waves will bring it back to me if that is to be destiny. I can not hate myself into productivity, so I must swim on.

I think the same can apply to anybody. It's okay if you have dropped something, such as a hobby or passion. Human beings are like that sometimes, it isn't reasonable for you to beat yourself into submission. You, too, can not hate yourself into being a well-rounded person. You must cultivate it like you would a garden - with patience, time, and care.

[undead-moth]

I know I've been on about this for a while now and I'm being a hater but you're telling me SydCarmy was "always meant to be platonic" even though there are two seasons of writing making use of tried-and-true explicitly romantic tropes, themes and writing signals, and SydLuca is going to be romantic because...he was nice to her on screen for a few minutes?

I don't even care if people ship SydLuca, or if they just prefer it, but you can't honestly tell me that you believe Carmy was always meant to be a friend but Luca is an obvious love interest.

Just because Syd and Carmy haven't kissed or confessed their love to each other doesn't mean that isn't very obviously the direction this show is going. The Bear has already shown you who is endgame. It has shown you every episode of the show so far.

Honestly I really don't think The Bear fanbase understands this show or cares about these characters or the story being told here, which is unfortunate because this show is shockingly well-written in comparison to most shows right now, and we should be so grateful for it but all we're doing is complaining that the writers led us on by not making a ship canon fast enough. It's just. Sad.

[starsintheskyandtheeye]

"So why the fluff piece," Jimmy asked, leaning up against the shelves by Lois's desk. Since ghosts didn't show up well on camera Perry had him working with Cat on a high society wedding over making the article look like a product of cheap ghost hunting. This was the first time he'd seen Lois, or Clark, since before they'd gone back to what was apparently ghost central station.

"You mean instead of talking about the near literal war going on between LexCorp and half a dozen religions? Or those religions spinning desperately with the fact that ghosts are real and don't want to talk to them? Or something about the scientific discoveries that lead to this mess, or the ones since? Or literally anything other than a fluffy morality piece," Lois answered, spinning slowly in her chair as she did, to stare pointedly at her partner. "I don't know Jimmy, why don't you ask Clark."

Clark smiled beatifically at his partner's sore loser behavior and it showed in his voice as he spoke directly to Jimmy. "Those are the headlines topics in all the other big papers right now, yes. But do you know why those are the big topics?" Clark saw Jimmy's confused look, and Lois's eye roll, and said, "Wait, I'll rephrase, do you know why all the other papers are reporting on the fallout from the news?"

"Ohhhhhh," Jimmy said, understanding. "Very clever CK. We've got the only published interview with an actual ghost, and they're all focusing on boring old humans.

"Still though, why the general fluff instead of a specific point?"

"Do you know how hard it is to interview a teenager," Lois answered, annoyed at the memory. "Much less a dead one," she said, a little more subdued. "We were originally going to focus more on Phantom's life and death, or the nature of the afterlife, or on how exactly the crossing over happened."

"So why didn't you? Those both sound like your usual stuff."

"Like she said, evidently the teenage ability to avoid the subject remains after death," Clark said, remembering the way the kid had managed to politely, firmly, and slightly desperately changed the subject every other time they asked a question. He hadn't heard someone change the subject that many times in one sentence since he'd asked Bruce how Selina was doing on her trip to Themyscira.

"And, much as I hate to pin my name to anything sweet and fluffy," Lois said, "It's the right article to write right now. Public opinion is fickle, showing people the humanity of these guys important. You've seen how much emphasis LexCorp is putting on the dangerous aspect and those mad scientists having so much of their work focused on studying them like animals."

"This changes the tone," Clark said, picking up the thread where Lois lost it to future story threads. "People will read it because it's the first ever verifiable interview with a ghost. And while they're reading it they'll see something a lot calmer than anything else being published right now. A story about a different culture, and a very relatable person on the face of it.

"It makes sense," Jimmy acknowledges, "but I'd hate to be in between Lois and her next story. Especially if she goes after Luthor like I heard Perry talking about." Lois focused on Jimmy at that, with a hint of the look that made him so concerned for her next story subject.

"Did Perry okay me to write another piece directly about Luthor?"

"Not sure, I just heard him saying something about the Ghost Investigation Ward with your name, his, and 'inevitable.'"

Lois's grin was downright predatory. Jimmy winced a bit and looked to Clark to support. Clark was smiling softly at his partner as she whipped her chair back to her desk to begin typing.

"Oh that reminds me Jimmy, did you get those pictures of LexCorp's water treatment facilities? Perry's busy and I think he'll be okay with it if I pick one to go with my article about lead pipes in Metropolis."

"Yeah CK, I got them like you asked, a couple where the sign is front and center and a couple where it's mostly pipes with a few branded junction box type things. I'd go with the pipes, it looks technical and gets your message across more subtly."

Clark grinned a smaller version of Lois's scary smile. He thought a moment then told Jimmy. "You should go with Lois next time. You're the best photographer I know. I'm sure you can get something usable, or at least interesting from the ghosts."

"Just Lois? Not you both?"

"Probably not no. Superman was there last time, and said that he'd be working a lot in Metropolis soon," Clark coughed a bit then said, "Apparently he went with us to take a look at what LexCorp was doing. We found some leads so I'm going to be staying here to report any developments as they happen."

"I can't decide if you're a great guy for giving Lois all the scoops on literal ghosts or a very smart guy for finding a way to keep all the scoops on what our own literal alien celebrity is doing."

"He's a menace and I'm so glad you're finally noticing Olsen," Lois chimed in without looking up.

"Oh definitely a great guy," Clark said. "Just a simple farm boy right here."

Respect for the Dead

By Lois Lane and Clark Kent

1,436 words

By now most of the world has been shaken by the news.

Ghosts are real! And ghosts are in danger! The original publication written by Lois Lane can be found here but we are not here to follow that well trodden avenue of discussion.

Here at the Daily Planet we have elected to focus on speaking to the ghosts themselves, rather than debate their existence alongside our fellow papers. During the hunt for the new source of Kryptonite that sparked this discovery Lois Lane made contact with one Danny Phantom. Originally he chose to anonymous but since the outpouring of support from much of the world he has since chosen to come forward publicly.

Given that the ghostly teenager is operating as a hero similar to our own Superman much of his personal history could not be shared. What was safe to share however was very different from what this reporting team had been expecting.

We had gone in prepared to hear the story of what caused a ghost that looks like a schoolboy to lead a life of ghostly vigilantism.

What we got was sweetly sarcastic individual giving us amusing anecdotes of his start as a hero, descriptions of the stranger habits he's gained since his death, and many many tips on how to politely interact with a ghost. At our confusion (who knew there were so many different types of ghost!) Phantom went on to explain and correct several common misconceptions about ghosts. So without further ado; here are the highlights of that discussion.

We begin with what was given to us as the number one rule of human/ghost etiquette. Never ask the individual, be they glowing werewolf, ghostly lunch-lady, or undead rock star, about the circumstances of their death.

It seems simple does it not? A matter of everyday politeness, and yet that is the number one reason for communication breakdowns between ectoplasmic entities and still living humans. Fortunately for the health of the interview this reporting team did not make that mistake. Phantom did not explain the nature of the offense but did not need to. It was clear that the, until then, friendly conversation would have ended abruptly if we had gone any farther down that path.

What we were encouraged (and warned) to talk to a ghost about was their obsession. As Phantom explained, "It's what drives a ghost, why we are still here, or why we formed at all."

When asked about his own obsession Phantom laughed a bit and said, "I'm a bit young for a ghost, so I don't really have one yet, I bounce around a lot. My doctor, he's a yeti, says it's normal for me though! The options are all over the place though. I know one ghost that haunts the high school to prevent bullying, a really nice guy. Another just wants to have her music heard by the world. Unfortunately her music brainwashes people to love her so we aren't super close. Or another that is all about granting wishes, but not in a singing blue genie way, in a fairy tale way, it's a mess whenever she gets over here."

That seems to be a common theme in ghostly/human interaction. Ghosts largely mean no harm but the pursuit of their own obsessions can have devastating effects on any that stand between them and their goal. Something to keep in mind if you're ordering pizza when the Box Ghost is at large.

Hoping it wouldn't cross into the realm of ghostly faux pas we went on to ask how old Phantom is. Once again Phantom seemed somewhat awkward although no more than what seemed to be his baseline when talking to (self claimed) famous reporters, saying only, "Time works differently in the realms. It can be really weird sometimes, you'll be talking to someone that looks like a toddler only to learn that they were last in a human world during the 1400s or something."

As Phantom continued to share however, the everlasting aspect seemed to be the least interesting part of the Infinite Realms, or the Ghost Zone as the Doctors Fenton, previously mentioned as ghostly experts here, call the place where the vast majority of ghosts dwell.

Ghostly yetis practicing medicine, while certainly not the least of the inhabitants were just the start. Phantom went on to share with us a sampling of the being he has encountered in his travels, medieval women moonlighting as temperamental dragons, the very concept of time, a warden of any ghosts that cross his path, and of course the ubiquitous creepy toddler so often featured on the silver screen.

According to Phantom up until extremely recently (whether by ghostly or human terms we were unable to determine) the Infinite Realms was closed off from our own home except for the occasional haunting. Which was explained to us by the telling of what was, to Phantom, a very funny joke about pop culture influencing ghost culture as people died and brought it over with them. From this we can glean several things. That the realms of the living and the dead have never been so far apart as it would have seemed to the living. That the near future will hold many changes as major religions, governments, and the common people hear what the dead have to say as they weigh in on what respect for the dead really means. And that while many things do translate, ghostly humor is not one of them.

Although of course that may be that, despite his real age being possibly many times our own - combined, Phantom is still eternally a teenager. And a teenagers jokes are often incomprehensible to any who do not share that state.

When asked about the sudden ghostly interest in our own living Earth Phantom had this to say, "Lots of ghosts want to go to the lands of the living. Especially anyone that used to be alive themselves. And anyone that didn't is curious what the fuss is about. Earth is so different from the ghost zone but it's still where a lot of us came from. If someone gets a chance to hop through the portal they'll go, to see how things have changed, or to keep things from changing, or just to stretch their obsessions. Really it's a chance to go home, just for a little while," he said, reminding us that for all they look like aliens ghosts are just as human as you or I.

With a few caveats.

The portal Phantom spoke of is an invention by the Doctors Fenton, Ectobiologists. Up until recently Jack and Maddie Fenton had been the worlds foremost ghostly experts, building a portal to the "Ghost Zone" in order to study what up until recently had been considered to be a non-sentient classification of emotional ectoplasmic imprintation.

We spoke to the researchers after our interview with Phantom, at his request. Despite the recent evidence come to light the couple remain the foremost (living) human scientists in the field. When asked about the setback to their work they had this to say, "We were devastated of course. To learn that we won't be able to study spooks -" Jack Fenton broke off there, at an extremely well executed elbow jab from Maddie Fenton who then said. "We got an extreme tunnel vision, a hazard of obsessive science. We were told we were wrong about the existence of ghosts for so long that we forgot to check that we were correct about their nature. We look forward to pivoting to ghostly anthropology and human/ghost interaction technology."

Ultimately we did not learn any groundbreaking secrets, but then if a ghost willing to go on record ( a written record at least, our recorded transcript of the conversation was near unusable due to static) you sit down and listen. We can never anticipate what a reader will take from an article but if we could make a suggestion? In this reporting teams opinion, the balance of ghost and human realms is not unlike the inversion of a mirror. We are reflections of one another. Opposite, yes, and dangerous to one another for it, but ultimately we are all the same. After all what is a ghost but emotion and ectoplasm (according to current science)? And for all that we try to rise above it, what is a human but emotion and flesh?

Fin.

Coming Soon!

Keep an eye out for top ten tips on ghostly interaction and interviews with the Justice League on diplomatic efforts with GHOSTLY ROYALTY!!

[fallloverfic]

I've seen some very odd takes about certain language used in the scene where Mizrak rebukes Olrox at the end of Castlevania: Nocturne, which I think might be due to lack of knowledge about the historical context of certain things.

CW: historical racism against First Nation groups

I know reading academic articles isn't for everyone, but I have to wonder if a lot of people in the Castlevania: Nocturne fandom have not watched things like, say, Disney's 1995 animated Pocahontas, which, for all its many, many flaws, features the song, Savages. I'm not going to quote it in full here, you can find the song lyrics elsewhere (though the European colonizers do use the lines "vermin" and "barely even human", among other epithets). It's not a great song for a lot of reasons (among them being it tries to "both sides" things). But to look at the scene in CN where Mizrak, a Christian working in a European Christian church with at least some Europeans, calls Olrox, a First Nation man, an animal without the understanding of how Christian European colonizers (typically as part of or at least backed by some Christian churches) have viewed First Nation peoples and treated them, and certain epithets used for them, and how European Christian dehumanization of "new world" groups and non-Christians generally worked/works?

Well.

[sskk-manifesto]

\\

[takeiteasyonmeimstilllearning]

so help me God, if I see another blog about tiktok being banned I'm gonna (remembering manslaughter is a not polite thing to do) probably go on ao3 and read my blorbos fics then go finish my own fiction until I've finished every last mother fuckin word.

[haru-chi]

I'm sorry if I had worried anyone yesterday ... I didn't mean to ...

I think I even kinda regret having worried my sister because I asked for little help which she couldn't do so got worried ...

I then called my friend after that which was very late at night 3AM .... she got also worried cuz I never ever did that ...

I hate this .... I really do .... because I do know none can help me in this, it's my own battle so why worry them

Wanted to vent here for a bit and I'm sorry if made someone worry ...

[vorefessions]

minor anon again, just wanted to follow up because i feel like it'd be good for you to see.

i really appreciate the advice! the only thing i'm really stuck on is how to find others without going out and posting about it; do you have any advice for that? if not, that's okay too!

thank you for being kind to me, by the way. i was anxious about sending that ask, but i'm really glad i went through with it.

🍂

I thiiiiiiink the best way to go about it would be to find peers around your age who do publicly post and ask if they want to only speak to you privately about this sort of stuff. I don't like that they're basically putting their necks out there (and I genuinely wish there was a safer place to explore their interests away from adults), and that doesn't mean you should too- just use that as a baseboard to jump and form connections. Just be ready to accept any "no"s, and if the connection does not work out or if you feel unsafe, never hesitate to walk away.

This is also going to be an incredibly long answer, but please read through all of it. I'm telling you everything I wish I knew when I was a minor interacting with the vore community.

Keep your boundaries firm, and stick to them if they ever get breached. Boundaries (to a reasonable extent) are not a request and they should not be treated as one; they are a demand that needs to be respected and whatever consequences come from breaking them need to be followed through. You do need to be mindful of this however, and make sure that you aren't fostering unhealthy relationships through this or that the other person is trying to under the guise of their own boundaries. It should never include:

Forcing you to do anything you do not consent to or expressed not liking

Ignore uncomfortable/hurt/violated/etc feelings

Pressure you to weaken your boundaries for their interests/kink/etc. This one is especially important to look out for, sometimes people might initially accept your "no" but continue to pressure you in other ways to get you to give into their demands. This gets around their cognitive dissonance of wanting to do something with you, but not wanting to feel like they explicitly violated your consent when you said no. Make no mistake, this is still a violation if they have to whittle you down to say yes. These people are especially troublesome to talk to, and if you encounter someone like this, I genuinely advise to avoid them if a conversation about their behavior doesn't work. Sometimes it's learned behavior from when they were abused too, but if they refuse to acknowledge it or try to do better, or make you feel bad for wanting your consent being respected, THAT IS DANGEROUS. Walk away.

Repress talk about those feelings. If they react in a way that hurts you when you talk about your emotions, you need to have a serious conversation about how that hurts them and you. Open communication with something as important, vulnerable and intimate as this topic is extremely important, even if this is nonsexual it still needs to be treated as kink. It can have the same psychological damage for boundary and personal violations as abuse through sexual kink. So if something happens, say something, and stay in touch with your feelings. They're sometimes misguided, but they are never incorrect if something makes you feel any particular way. At the same time, listen to the other person if they feel like something is wrong and evaluate their feelings and actions.

If they feel like they're being pressured to do something they don't want to, or if they feel uncomfortable or have a problem, have an open conversation. Encourage them to voice these feelings, and for you to do the same- but make sure to not put blame into this. It's not you vs them, it's both of you vs the problem (to a reasonable extent, if they're harming you and not owning up to it or taking accountability then they are making it a you vs them problem). Sometimes mistakes happen! It's okay, it's a lesson to learn for the future and everyone needs to be more god damn kinder to themselves about it. We'd have a lot less problems in the world if we took shame out of the equation of holding accountability for our mistakes.

Lastly, you should trust your feelings about other people. If something feels wrong or off, do not ignore that. Sometimes it's just anxiety (I'm agoraphobic, so I get this constantly.. it's exhausting to work through if the feelings are based in reality or not lol), but other times there might be something legitimately setting off alarm bells in your head in someone's behavior and may need closer examination or a talk. If you need to, do research on how to formulate healthy relationships and boundaries. If you've been abused before, whether by people in this community or by outside sources, I genuinely recommend thera//min/trees' Youtube channel for any advice (breaking up his name because I do NOT want this ask to pop up if people google his name). He covers a whole range of abuse, abuse tactics, and how to recover when you get out of an abusive situation from other people- along with what you should do if you accidentally pick up any of their harmful behaviors.

Gonna also keep it real with you here, I have legitimate trust, behavioral, and boundary issues from how many times people have violated me in this community when I was a minor. Fuck, even as an adult too because of how I was set up as a child to be exploited far into adulthood by other adults and people I thought I could trust but ignored the alarm bells of. They normalized extremely harmful behaviors and how I view other people that I'm still actively working through and desperately have been needing therapy for. I've been afraid to be close with people in fear of what was done to me in the sfw kink community, and it sometimes keeps me up at night with how this cycle keeps perpetuating on Voreblr. If I can prevent this cycle from happening again in at least one other person with this post, I'd be more than happy to write a million more essays about it.

If you got this far: thank you, genuinely, for reading it all.

[usagifuyusummer]

Is this what you meant @jjimene123, on the Timmy Turner and Pink Diamond parallels lmao?

Been thinking abt this quote from end of an era!! It makes me THINK

[earlgreytea68]

Okay. It's time for an AI rant.

My nephew is 13 years old. Whenever he writes a paper for school, I check it over and fix all of his mistakes for him. He said to me, "Maybe I'll proofread your paper for you in exchange," meaning one of the scholarly articles I write for work. I said, "Cool," and gave him the file. And he said, "Well, this is full of errors! See, you always say you have a lot to correct on my stuff, and look at all the stuff you got wrong!" And I said, surprised, "What? Where?" Because I'm sure there are typos in the draft I sent him, but not, like, that many.

And then he pointed to the screen and said, "Look at all the blue and red lines you have."

And I said, "Yeah, but those are wrong. Like, those are blue and red lines I'm ignoring because the computer is wrong." And then I paused and added, "You know you can't proofread a paper by just looking at the red and blue lines, right?" And he gave me the blankest look, because that clearly is EXACTLY what he thinks. And it became even clearer suddenly why, whenever I correct something on his paper, his immediate reaction is, "It didn't have a blue or red line."

There's a very good reason for that: THAT'S BECAUSE THE COMPUTER ISN'T SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IT WAS WRONG.

I am so tired of being sold the idea that computers are better than humans and so we should just outsource everything to them, which is clearly the lesson my nephew is absorbing in U.S. middle school. COMPUTERS ARE NOT BETTER THAN HUMANS. Like, maybe they are better at humans at crawling through rubble to find people trapped inside. They are also better at preserving things in a searchable format. Things like that. Very limited circumstances.

I don't want to sound alarmist but everything I hear about people using generative AI freaks me out. It's not just that I'm freaked out by people being like, "I use it to write novels!" (Although I don't see how they do, I have tried to have it write fiction for me and the output was truly terrible.) But I recognize my bias around creative writing and so no one needs to credit my views on artificial writing. But! Other things are alarming, too! "I use it to brainstorm x, y, or z." But...why? Why not just...use your own brain...to...brain...storm? The computer doesn't even have a brain to brainstorm with! And you might be like, "But it comes up with things that my brain would never think of!" So would other people! You could also brainstorm with other people! Or even through Google to see what other people have thought before you (not AI). Please don't belittle the wonder of thinking.

I just feel like the marketing around generative AI boils down to "Wouldn't it be easier not to use your own brain to think about things?" Everyone. No. It would not be. Please just trust me on this. I'm not just an old person who is out of touch with technology or something. I promise. USE YOUR BRAINS. IT WILL BE OKAY.

[boyapologist]

the worse part about believing men deserve rights is that you can't never say that in front of a man because some of them have zero nuance and it just opens a door for them to say something like "feminists are all gross" in front of you thinking you will agree

[saja-star]

I've had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people's lives, and how eerie it is that it's vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it's a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.

When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"

When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...

"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.

"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"

Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."

People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn't it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don't even notice when they're gone? Isn't it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn't it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don't you want to commune with it?

[uncle-fruity]

I actually think y'all need to fix the way you talk about cis men too. I don't think we will ever be able to support marginalized men if we can't support the emotions of all men in general. If we can't see that men have a place in progressive spaces and opinions that are not just valid but valuable to our cause, then we will never be on the path to true equality.

And, like, that isn't to say that you should ignore or misrepresent oppressive systems or that we shouldn't point out how cis het rich white able-bodied men benefit from being cis het rich white able-bodied men. That isn't to say that when a man is disrespecting you or trying to downplay your struggles or trying to leverage his privileges & power over you that you shouldn't call him out and fight back. That isn't to say that we need to make *more* space for men than we do other people in our communities or that men should be allowed to talk over people -- being part of the discussion doesn't mean they are the only people at the table who matter. But it does matter that they're at the table in general and that they aren't treated like an enemy or an enemy-in-waiting by default.

But I do think it's a mistake to be mean or cruel to just any random cis man because you THINK he should be able to take it. As if an individual's hurt feelings is going to change the men who actually hurt you. As if all men need to be punished for what other men do. Generalizing about all men is always going to backfire on the most vulnerable among them.

I just don't see how it benefits anyone to write cis men off entirely. I understand feelings of trauma, of bitterness, of anger towards the system that values rich white men more than anyone else; I have those feelings too. But unless you're specifically railing against the men who created these conditions & uphold them, you're really just firing at people who "look" like the enemy with no critical thought or compassion.

I have seen the ways y'all talk about & generalize men. I have seen the things y'all insist are jokes or "not that serious" or whatever. It's not cute and it's not funny and it's not helping most of the time. I've seen some of the best male allies I have ever had in my life sink into deep depression and guilt spirals because of the way they're treated by certain "progressive" groups -- men who are the least threatening people I've ever met who feel like they need to police their every action and supress every complex/"negative" emotion to make sure everyone else is comfortable, to make sure no one saw them as a predator. I have seen men straight up just take domestic abuse from their partners because they think they "can't" be abused as men or that they're obligated to put their partner's needs over theirs, or even that they deserve emotional abuse because they want to be good men who listen to the women in their lives & get taken advantage of for attempting to radically do so.

These guys are not your enemies, but they are getting hit in the crossfire. Just like queer men get hit in the crossfire. Just like black men. Just like disabled men. Just like poor men. And, to be honest, a lot of y'all can't really tell the difference between a man and an oppressor to begin with. If you think there is no difference, or that all men are oppressors and all nonmen are victims, then I'm sorry to say you don't understand oppression as well as you need to to get a handle on how to fight it. Truth is, men suffer a lot under patriarchy. And, truth is, a LOT of men have been trying to talk about it in good faith, but most of y'all have no interest in hearing & learning about it because you perceive your own pain as more painful and you believe that all men deserve the pain they get for the actions of the loudest & meanest among them. And some of you think it's on men to fix their "own" problems without seeing how plenty of nonmen also perpetuate patriarchal ideology & won't take any personal responsibility. Not to mention that regardless of whose fault it is (I'd argue that we're all complicit to some degree), men need help and we need to help them. We do actually need to care about their feelings. It will make our whole community and our whole movement stronger.

And I gotta say that it makes all the arguments that are foundational to feminism sound hollow and cheap and hypocritical when you don't extend the same Basic Respect that all people deserve to men. I think it perpetuates the divide between men and everyone else. It worsens their isolation. It reinforces the idea that men need to be logical and emotionless. It's like everyone agrees that men need to engage with their emotions and consider their role in the patriarchy and then turning around and bullying them the moment their emotions aren't the "right ones." And yeah... I just don't think that men deserve extra nastiness or that they shouldn't feel bad when people make fun of them because "if they're offended then they're obviously misogynists"... can the rest of y'all not hear how manipulative and abusive that sounds?

I notice sometimes in queer and feminist spaces the idea of "this group is generally given more leniency and privileges in wider society; it's okay for us to be critical or even a little nasty to them because anywhere else they'd be praised". and that's understandable, i think. when you have real issues with men and how men act, it's ok to express that and to mock mens behavior. cis men who are generally praised and celebrated in society should be able to take some mean jokes or criticisms and accept they're not always going to be lauded.

but since queer and feminist spaces are generally more accepting of trans people and the wider society is not, this is also projected on to trans men. "trans men are men" was an affirming statement to our validity, but that was interpreted as "since trans men are men, and men are celebrated by society, I get to be a little nasty to them because the rest of society worships men. they can take it."

but the rest of society doesn't have that same level of trans acceptance. they don't see trans men as men, they see trans men as mentally ill, broken, mutilated women. so it's absolutely aggravating when we turn to queer and feminist spaces for solidarity, we face the same reactive nastiness cis men get and are told "come on, trans men are men. you are celebrated in society. you can take it." and when we look at the rest of society there's no celebration. there's only more nastiness and cruelty. so how can we "take it" when we have no community that accepts us and treats us without mockery? we don't have the shelter of acceptance that cis men have in the status quo, and sometimes we can't find a small umbrella of acceptance in queer communities either.

to be honest, I think a lot of people view trans men as a safe punching bag to vent their frustrations with men. you can mistreat a trans man and he's probably not going to fight you back since he's already so beat down. you can feel like you put a man in his place, you can feel like you're resisting the patriarchy. but all you did was act cruel to a marginalized person. and you know if you treated a cis man like that you might be putting yourself in danger, cos he might not take it lying down and he might not care as much about your wellbeing!

trans men are men, but trans men are not cis men. cis men are lauded and celebrated in society as long as they conform to the gender roles that were placed on them at birth. and this privilege is extremely conditional and not equally spread between men of different sexualities, races, ethnicities, ability, age, etc; trans men and intersex men are thrown to the side completely. I understand needing to vent about men. trans men do it too. but a persistent attitude of resentment and cruelty towards all men, including trans men, is not activism. all you do is push marginalized men out of the only communities they belong

[teaandspite]

The Great Goodreads Diss List (Part 1)

Context: For many years now, I have been collecting funny lines from Goodreads reviews to share with my coworkers. (I do collection development, reader's advisory, and weeding at a public library, so I read a LOT of reviews)

Are some of these, perhaps, rather mean? Yes, but they are also very funny, and come from a place of honest frustration. In the tradition of Bargepole threads and lists everywhere, names and titles have been censored.

"First, I want to say that I understand how hard it is to write a book and how amazing it is when it is actually published. Congrats to the author for that accomplishment. That said--"

"Warning: This review will be lengthy due to pure hatred."

"I found myself feeling really, really annoyed with the world that this book is allowed to exist. We live in a universe where the passenger pigeon is extinct but this book goes along merrily being read by unsuspecting lovers of words and ideas and stories? It just seems like too much, you know?"

"Don't do it. Don't spring the cash for the hardcover. Instead, eat an entire bag of Twizzlers, spend some money you don't have at a high-end department store, look up on Facebook the shady college boyfriend that made you cry, research the current value of your home or 401K and then read all about how the big hedge fund managers are faring during the economic crisis. You'll feel about the same stomach pain if you waste your time reading this book."

"This wretched novel begins with the mugging of an old lady and it appears I may be in the process of repeating that loathsome crime as [author] was 78 when she wrote it. It is not nice to put the boot into such a poor defenseless old creature lying there with only a damehood, a Booker Prize and a few million quid. It’s a nasty job but somebody has to do it."

"I think this is the way dead people would write, if they could."

"I am considering setting up SPABB: Society for the Protection of Accurate Book Blurb. This blurb appears to have been written by someone from the publishers who met [the author] the night before, got very drunk, lost his notes and then constructed something in a fug of hangover the next morning."

"I congratulate [the author] on the early half of his book, which was thoroughly fun and made me laugh and think. I congratulate [the author] on the second half of his book, for finishing it. It reads like that was difficult."

"…a woman whose taste in contemporary literature has roughly the same batting average as a pitcher in the National League."

"The author is a pompous windbag."

"Recommends it for: No one. Recommended to me by: A friend who apparently wished to cause me great suffering."

"Makes me wonder: is it possible to obtain similes at a volume discount?"

"The repeated phrases made me want to mail a thesaurus to the author."

"I'm disappointed in myself for finishing this book."

"if the author described [character's] eyes as "obsidian" one more time I was tempted to write her and ask if her thesaurus broke."

"They say that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would, if given infinite time, eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. [This book], on the other hand, would probably take the average monkey just under two hours."

"I can't imagine what the author had to do to get this nadir of Western literature printed on innocent trees, but he does seem to know a LOT about being well-connected in New York."

"This book is so bad it is almost worth reading just to make you appreciate the other books you are reading."

"Reads like it was written by a brilliant author, the night before it was due."

"raises interesting questions, like: can a book be so bad as to constitute an act of terrorism"

"has this author ever spoken to a human woman"

"This acorn has fallen so far from the tree that it can’t even see the forest."

"I’m guessing they are touted as ‘beach reads’ because no one will care if they get dropped into the ocean."

"This book begins with all the energy of a hand vacuum near the end of its battery life, and the pace doesn't quicken much from there."

"At least everybody’s eyes stayed the same color this time around.”

Part 2

Part 3