#I know i don't actually want to

[myrskytuuli]

The promised military post.

Last weekend I spent three days doing a military introduction course for women hosted by the National Defence Training Association of Finland. The aim of the course was to give an overview of what military service is like in practice, for women who are on the fence whether to apply for military service or not. Since my biological clock is ticking, and I have a friend currently doing her military service, I got reccommended this course, which I galdly took in order to put to rest whether I should still quickly shoehorn myself to apply for the women’s voluntarily service or not, before I age out. 

(note that politically I still believe that mandatory service should be upheld for both sexes. Even after chosing not to serve my time, I do politically belive that someone should show up at my door and force me and every other woman in Finland to do some kind of crisis training service akin to what men have to do. but I digress.)

Great course. 100% reccomend MPK courses for anyone who is interested. Absolute kudos to everyone involved in creating and running it. Got exactly the experience I was looking for, and very amazing experiences and skills to go with it. They gave you a intense, full-packed, cut-through of the entire first three months (alokasaika) of the army experience. Obvioulsy in order to actually become somehow good at all of the things we went through, you would need the three months of repetition you get with actual service, but we compared notes with my friend and we did pretty much try everything you do during alokasaika.

Foot drills. making your bed. Taking care of your equipment. military rank and discpline. how to clean and oil your AR. Survival skills. Setting up a camp. how to handle a grenade. How to handle a shoulder-fired missile. How to use and set up military communication equipment. How to move with an AR. How to move in a formation. How to basically move as a soldier without fucking everything up. How to do basic emergency care on battle wounds. How to crawl to foxhole without killing yourself. How to spot an enemy from foliage. How to shield yourself from artillery. How to crawl without fucking over your AR. (How to create a parasocial relationship with your AR who is also your wife) how to shoot your AR without your shitty breathing technique getting in the way of your shot. etc. If that sounds like a lot- It’s because it was. we had a minute timetable and the only breaks were to eat and the couple minutes to drink water from time to time. The weather was abominable, so we were doing all of this while most of the time it was either raining sleet or hailing.

I really liked it. I love new experiences and this definitely was one. most of the skills were appliable to a life outside of military too. Outdoor survival, emergency care, how to use a compass, etc. not going to lie, learning how to use several different pretty gnarly weapons was cool too. Obviously I’m not good at any of them, but I have the knowhow in how to use an AR, grenade and an anti-tank missile. Not saying I would hit anything, but I know how to get all of them to work. And now I know intimately all the ways I’m very bad at shooting an automatic rifle. It’s hard you guys. (I don’t have the upper-body strenght)

Not a big fan of the army base life. Fuck foot drills, I understand why they exists, but fuck them. The same thing with all the army base decorum. as a teacher I genuinely do understand why you need to keep big masses on tight lines when moving from place A to B, but doing foot drills at 6 in the morning is just...well it just is. Doing foot drills 6 in the morning for a several months? Yeah, not sure if I have the headspace. Lot of things were annoying, and I would be lying if I said they weren’t a big reason for my decision to not apply. I can imagine that things that are kind of annoying now would become big fucking breaking points when you do them for a year. Like keeping count of all of your zippers being closed and your collar turned 24/7. But the real issue was that I simply do not have the physical stamina. If I wanted to keep up, I would have to not only keep up, but be better than the 18 year old men who I would be surrounded by and who would set the pace, and sister I was already struggling with the young girls. Yes, obviously, if I was very motivated I could spend the summer getting into shape before stepping into service next year, but I do not have the motivation to put mysefl through an extreme fitness glow up. And I’m still not sure if that would help at all with my knees, which were the real breaking point for me several times while crawling on the frozen ground.

So, I’ve given up the idea of doing a year of service. Maybe, if i was 7 years younger, I would have the fitness and the joints to do it. If I could travel back in time, I would probably tell myself who has just returned back from London to spend a year doing the service, because there are genuinely so many usefull skills you can pick up, but not now. I’m looking forwards to starting a new life in a new city with hopefully new academic ambitions and I don’t want to postpone those plans.

Anyway, super happy I went. Absolutely drained when I got out. (Three days non-stop physical activities, sleeping on frozen ground, doing those physical activities ankle-deep in snow, getting woken up for emergency drills when you sleep, you know, draining stuff) Had to really properly recover afterwards and caught a flu from being soaked most of the weekend, but you know, fun. I had fun. There is genuinely a part of me that is now very sad that I’m not doing the full service. the camradery of our group was amazing, and you do miss it. There were so many skills I would want to be actually good at. And you know. I wouldn’t want to be useless in a case of invasion. But for now, I have to be realistic and try to live my life and realise that I probably wouldn’t make it to the end of the service anyway, and even if I did, it would probably be like trade school where I would have been better off doing something else with the time anyway.

[egophiliac]

bring back zooterkins, the best 17th-century swear word

I don't normally do Just Characters Swearing, but. ...this kind of wrote itself and then wouldn't leave my head. it comes from both a piece of character-writing advice that has always stuck with me, and also my conviction that Leona is 1000% funnier as a character if his dialogue has to stay G-rated. let Kalim say fuck, but don't let Leona say bastard.

(I'm sorry)

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

Yeah, I don't know about you, Fidds, but I'd fold at this 🙏

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First!!

[bean-spring]

Hot take and not to be a killjoy or the shipping police but people treating Viktor or Jinx's aroace headcanons as if they were canon is not the revolutionary take people think it is.

Headcanons are always all right but we have to acknowledge that they are somehow damaging when they apply to stereotypes. It might not be the case for everyone but most of the time people unconsciously assume that disability/mental illness=asexuality. These headcanons erase the freedom of attraction from people who are already seen as unable to have sexual/romantic experiences/desires, when it's completely untrue and harmful.

You can headcanon Viktor and Jinx as aroace, but I have seen people changing their minds once Viktor is no longer disabled (s2 with all of his other forms) and Jinx is no longer as mentally ill (alternate universe Powder). And it speaks wonders of how people see these characters.

"I never thought about Jinx being able to feel romantic/sexual attraction until s2!" To believe she's actually only capable of that when she's not "damaged" is incredibly disturbing. Especially since Jinx has always had a bit of a flirty personality too.

"I've always seen Viktor as asexual, I don't know why!" That's fine. You can headcanon him as ace. But I believe there is a reason behind it, most of the time, if for some inexplicable reason the "vibes" of the disabled character are making you think he's ace.

I say all of this being aroaspec myself, by the way. Headcanon all you want but going to people's posts commenting how "it's weird for you that they have romantic/sexual plots when they're clearly aroace" is not a win at all. It's a headcanon, after all, and it should be treated as such, and that's fine. But it also is damaging to spread stereotypes like these.

Of course the disabled character is asexual. Of course the mentally ill character is aromantic. It's not as revolutionary as you might think, tbh.

Fandom is not activism and it's all right to have any headcanons you want BUT some of them are filled with damaging stuff and perhaps we should look into ourselves more before treating these assumptions as something canon.

[uncanny-tranny]

Fat people deserve mobility aids, too. No matter if it's connected to their fatness or not, because having a mobility issue that is connected to one's fatness won't change that they're still fat and still have the issue at hand. Fat people don't deserve to "tough it out" because fatness should be this divine punishment doled out to those who "deserve" it. Fat disabled people deserve to have the peace of mind that they can exist in whatever way is most comfortable and accessible to them

[abellarts]

[ID in alt]

jon should have been able to sock him at least once before s5

[akanemnon]

Shouldn't there be a minotaur in the labyrinth? Who put this goat here? This is not accurate to the mythology! /j

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[swordsonnet]

i'm sorry but i don't think we should call this the "autism website" when there's still posts with tons of notes mocking people who:

struggle with social skills / have anxiety around social settings

are unemployed / unable to work certain jobs

have intense or "age-inappropriate" interests

haven't had certain life experiences that are deemed universal/essential

struggle with personal hygiene

don't have any friends or dating experience

don't go outside much or at all

take things literally / don't get sarcasm/jokes

have unusual ways of speaking

generally aren't "normal"

[thereallycoolmonsterithoughtup]

kabru and mithrun's fun succubus adventure

[artkaninchenbau]

People keep on asking for more Baby Robin and Papadile so here is more Baby Robin and Papadile. Now never ask anything from me ever again

[egophiliac]

WAIT when did he get FANGS

[canisalbus]

I love the duo, both the historical setting and modern AU. Does Vasco ever go to confession while Machete is running it, just to 'confess' to something they did before as a way to tease?

[thecryptidzenith]

When Schrodinger was talking about the cat in box that's both alive and dead, he was talking about Kalina. She's a goddess's familiar, she's a plague, she worked for Fantasy MI6, she died, she came back, she got rage stared, she snapped her own neck, she came back as the companion for a god borne from a Fantasy Mormon child's misplaced belief. She's alive and dead, good and evil. She worked tirelessly for 800 years towards one goal and then fucking abandoned it (maybe.) Her goddess thinks she can fix her. Her goddess's wife always hated her. She is everyone's problem at all times and holy shit is she a Problem. What a fucking legend.

[bixels]

In the past, people in the Animal Crossing community would make fun of Tom Nook as a sleazy landlord. Since then, he's really rehabilitated his image as this 'heart of gold' businessman (he's the one who puts bells and furniture in trees for you to find! he adopted orphans! he donates to charity!), but New Horizons genuinely paints the most devious version of him.

He's successfully privatized settler colonialism: you pay HIM to move to a "deserted island" (which apparently the oceans in the AC world are just full of) and start a colony that he is directly invested in. At best he's running a weird vacation package scam (you arrive on the island with no money and in debt for "using his services"). At worst, he's using you to set up company towns. For god's sake, he literally has his own fake currency that he forces you to use to pay off your debt. But don't worry, he's repackaged it in a way that definitely doesn't sound like an MLM scam: the Nook Mileage Program!

You're no longer just his tenant or his temporary part-timer, you're his business lackey. The entire tutorial section of the game has you spending actual weeks running around completing tasks and doing hard labor to set up his colony. You're even tasked with preparing his properties and finding buyers for them. No, you aren't a tenant anymore. You work for the landlord. You are directly responsible for finding tenants for him. And he doesn't even fucking pay you. Not for setting up town hall and museum, or his nephew's shop –– which is the ONLY store on the entire island that sells necessities –– or bringing KK Slider to town, or helping populate his town. Not a single cent. No, actually, you have to pay HIM to BUY infrastructure like bridges and stairs and park benches. And all the while, he's telling you're the "resident representative"; you get to call the shots! That the reward is the community's progress. That what you're doing is in everyone's best interest (but most importantly, his).

Since NH's release, people have done a lot of legwork to say that Tom Nook isn't a capitalist while the game shows him at his very worst. He owns the only general store in town. You're forced to use a phone that he modified and branded as his own. Buy Nook-branded furniture and merchandise at the self-serve kiosk in the town hall, a governmental building! There's no conflict of interest here!

But hey, if you're tired of being the landlord/business mogul's goon, you can also find work as a deluxe resort home designer for a company that also pays you in their special company currency that can only be used to buy their products instead of a real salary! Because that's what the Animal Crossing franchise needs! More vacation homes!!!