#I'm listening to dont right now

[intheconfessiondial]

12 Months of 12 - September

[lunarharp]

if i just told you i love you would this world change

[saturncoyote]

here's my toxic Rain World opinion

I think people should put more focus on on-string iterators, but not in the way you think

I see you people, don't think i don't notice ya'll Every time i go in the RW iterator tag i see them, iterator puppets with defined abs and big thighs, and i'm like, yeah sure alright, get it girl ! But are you just ignoring the city-sized sentient computer that's sitting RIGHT THERE ????

You telling me that Rain World so benevolently handed you this massive robot that you can, quite literally, get INSIDE OF, and you decide to thirst over the funny dude little weird guy inside of it ? Come on now

Where's the love for big fucking chunky computers ?? For oversized machines ? Robots so fucking big you can't even fathom their size ?????

[vampirehizzies]

hannah: they played what does the fox say at my prom!

me: aw, nice. I was 6.

hannah:

me:

hannah: 👵👵👵

me: 👼👼👼

[silverselfshippingchaos]

if i had a nickel for every time i liked a young cool y.akuza dude that had dyed hair...

i'd have three nickels.

[milfbrainrot]

i feel like i type so much more than is reasonable when i do talk to people but i also don't get to socialize a ton so i just have soooo many words in me and if i'm like, tired or short on time, it is so much harder to restrain to the already-pushing-it point i can sometimes manage ;-;

[red-moon-at-night]

One thing I want to say about the Vengeance Saga, is the instrumentation was so, so good. It's probably the most video game-y sounding saga yet, especially Charybdis and Six Hundred Strike. Which fits well with how video game-y and anime the plot got.

But also Charybdis in particular is incredibly synth-y and giving me Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds soundtrack vibes. Very otherworldly.

Absolutely loved the strings in I'm Not Sorry For Loving You as well. The minor key slide (reminiscent of the strings in Puppeter), not just at the end of the song but building up from the beginning, lingering in the background... chills. Isn't Penelope's instrument the viola? If there was indeed viola in that track it would fit so well.

[criitterbug]

you get lost in the ocean

[daddy-ul]

I had asked James to write a bit about what 72 Seasons meant to him. But even before we received that, Lars shared that James did say one thing he thought was particularly interesting, which was “prisoner of childhood.” So Lars was the guy who distilled a lot of what James had to say into a phrase that became extremely powerful for us creatively. It was a brilliant synthesis of all the ideas behind 72 Seasons in three words.

-David Turner about the concept art and design of 72 Seasons

[biillys]

yo merry christmas i'm thinking about christmas at the hargrove-mayfield's house throughout the years

wanna think about their first christmas together as a family, maybe before neil and susan even got married, or maybe just after. wanna think about what susan got billy for that first december 25th that they knew each other and what neil bought for max. did neil just pass that duty off to susan and stick his name on the from: section of the gift tag or did he put effort in and actually go to the shops and try and find something, specifically for his new step-daughter.

wanna think about the following few christmas' in california where billy never heard from his mom, never even got a fucking christmas card, but max heard from her dad; spending the time between christmas breakfast and christmas lunch on the phone, thanking him for the present he sent in the mail. wanna think about susan listening in, hearing her ex sounding distant and barely focused, agreeing with everything their daughter says, and biting her tongue; half relieved max hasn't picked up on the fact that sam's handwriting and her own is exactly the same, and half mad that sam's willing to take the credit without even blinking.

wanna think about their last christmas in california where they don't even realise it's their last one there; billy hitting his stride in being the worlds moodiest and most hard done by teenager, max following quick in his footsteps. wanna think about how all the gifts hand-picked by susan would be too lame and embarrassing to be thankful for, both kids screwing their nose up at most presents. maybe billy and max exchanging small gifts that christmas becos they haven't been at each others throats all year, only some, and susan thought it would be nice.

wanna think about their first christmas in hawkins, with things still so messy and uncomfortable and rough, but somehow settling into it like it's their new normal. wanna think about it being cold as fuck, none of them prepared for hawkins winters, and everyone walking on eggshells around each other and pretending it's fine. wanna think about max growing up and officially moving into her teenage years and billy counting down the days until he leaves them, adulthood so close yet still so fucking far. wanna think about them all sitting down for christmas dinner and billy barely being acknowledged, things still so tense even though it's been almost two months since everything went to shit, and max forcing out answers every time susan tries to keep the conversation flowing, her doing her best to carry the christmas spirit.

wanna think about a world where there's no living nightmares, no government conspiracies, and no death, but billy still spirals out of control anyway, feeling trapped and cornered in an unfamiliar town with unfamiliar people, his only solution to lash out and fight, anger and violence and distrust being all he knows. wanna think about max coming to the realisation that there's bigger monsters than her asshole step-brother, that maybe billy isn't the start of everyone's problems, just always somehow the end of them. want her to trace the line back to the source and realise neither of them ever stood a fucking chance.

wanna think about a christmas where billy's eighteen and max is fifteen, and they still live on cherry lane, and neil still fucking sucks, and susan still fucking tries, and everything's still awkward, the four of them never quite becoming the family unit their parents try to pretend them to be, but maybe billy and max get along these days, in a way they never could when they were younger, them going from being against each other to realising it's team up or be picked apart.

max gives him a present she saved up for for months, maybe as they're all going to bed, and billy raises an eyebrow at her before sighing and unwrapping it, still too fucking stubborn to be able to say thank you, but somehow brave enough to reach a hand into his room and grab out a present he got for her, and it's unwrapped cos he hasn't wrapped a present since his mom left, so max does her little sister duty and tells him she loves the wrapping and effort he put into it, before actually looking at what he got her, and he walks into his room and closes the door before she can even acknowledge it for the gift it is.

wanna think about billy eventually moving out, but not making it far; too fucking broke to live out his dreams of going home. wanna think about neil clapping him on the back on moving day and telling him he's done good, that this is what growing up is. graduating school, getting a job, moving out, providing for yourself. that's what makes a man. that it was rough there for a while, and he was worried, but he's glad to see his son's shaped up and straightened out finally, thanks to his solid parenting. wanna think about billy having no idea how to react, thinking that's the closest he'll ever get to his dad saying he's proud of him. wanna think about max helping him move and helping him chose a couch, claiming it has to be comfortable enough to sleep on when she crashes there on school breaks. want billy to tell her to get fucked, but buy the couch she picked out anyway.

wanna think about his first christmas out of home, and how how he probably feels indifferent about it at best, and pain about it at worst. christmas was never like the movies growing up, no matter how much susan tried, so it's not like being alone and having no decorations or presents is going to hurt, but he has enough memories of his mum, and a few moments over the years from when max and susan tried, and there's such a build up and fucking atmosphere about it all in hawkins that he can't escape it even if he tried, and he's starting to realise maybe he's really fucking lonely.

wanna think about neil calling him up and billy answering, cos now that they don't live in the same house and billy's finally taking responsibility for his own life, neil's like a whole new person. he wants to do father-son shit like talk about cars, offer advice about fixing the kitchen sink, tell him when to hire someone to fix something and when you should be able to fix something yourself, wants to watch sports games and crack open a beer on a saturday afternoon, and billy makes up reasons to say no most of the time, but sometimes he caves and says yes, cos there's a small part of him that's always wanted this. wanna think about neil calling and asking billy when he's coming over for christmas, saying that susan's cooking his favourite. wanna think about billy not even knowing what his favourite is, but saying he'll be at breakfast by 7:30am before he can stop himself.

wanna think about billy staying 'til afternoon and max raising an eyebrow at him, muttering don't you have a home to go to? while they clean up after lunch, but then neil offers him a beer, so he ignores her, and listens when his dad says he's welcome to stay for dinner, too. wanna think about billy and max smoking a joint out the back while their parents end the day with a christmas movie, and max turns to him and asks him what neil's deal is these days, and billy shrugs her off, too stubborn to look at it all too closely.

wanna think about billy pulling some money out of his wallet cos he has some now, and he didn't have time to get a present, too busy working overtime, but he has cash, so that'll do. wanna think about max handing him a new zippo, then somehow unearthing a whole-ass wrapped present, and when he opens it, it's a set of cheap fake glass cups, becos billy doesn't have any yet and every time she comes over she has to drink something either directly from the bottle in the fridge or remember her own drink bottle, and it's a housewarming gift, asshole, and this isn't my house, billy thinks, this isn't my fucking home, but it's also all he's got, so he finds a place for them in the cupboard above the sink, and max hunts them down the next time she's over first thing.

wanna think about christmas' in their future, when max moves out, when they're in their 20's and 30's, maybe billy keeps coming home, finding an uneasy peace with his dad reserved for special occasions only, the only few times of the year he's willing to lie to himself and pretend things were never as bad as his memories made them out to be, or maybe everything eventually crumbles, and billy finally gets to put some real distance between them, and finally then, he can breathe and stop pretending.

maybe max continues going, her seeing her mom try and so she puts in the effort to try as well, and maybe that works for a while, maybe even a lifetime, but maybe it doesn't, and by the time both her and billy are closer to 30 than 20, the only family they see on christmas is each other, and billy never wraps her presents, and max only gets him practical things, and they drink and bitch most of the time, but it's so much easier to exist in each others space when they don't have to act and pretend and play parts.

[doveotion]

genuinely didn't think I'd make it to 18 let alone 22 so now I'm looking around like..... Now What

[beeseverywhen]

"All political parties face a trade-off under a first-past-the-post electoral system. Governing depends on attracting a broad coalition of voters, inevitably involving compromises that leave a party’s base disgruntled.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that as we move closer to a general election, the discontent from the anti-Labour left who claim there is little to distinguish Keir Starmer from Rishi Sunak in the battle for the premiership is only getting noisier."

"The argument is threefold: there’s no meaningful difference between the Conservatives and Labour; Starmer supposedly can’t be trusted because he has dropped pledges he made in the 2020 leadership election to shift his party towards the centre; finally, the “Tories are toast” and Labour can’t lose, so disgruntled left voters can safely vote for other parties, such as the Greens.

With Labour so far ahead in the polls, the urge to debunk these sentiments may seem like an expression of paranoia. But all three aspects of this narrative are comprehensively wrong, including the reassurance that it is safe for anyone who would prefer a Labour government to vote for another party in Labour-Tory contests."

"But what this underplays is the number of Labour-Tory marginals where a relatively small vote for other left candidates could cost Labour a win. James Kanagasooriam, of the polling company Focaldata, has written about the “sandcastle” nature of Labour’s likely majority; his forecast is that there will be many more marginal seats in the 2024 parliament compared with 2019. If more than predicted numbers of those who voted Green in the locals decide they can afford to do so in the general election because Labour is so far ahead in national polls, that will boost the Conservatives.

Next up is the idea that Starmer’s dropping of some of his leadership pledges makes him dangerously untrustworthy. But this is the product of a system in which the tiny unrepresentative slice of the electorate that is a party membership pick their leader before voters choose their prime minister. Anyone hoping to be PM would have to shift position between a leadership selection and a general election: a Labour leader’s most important job is to connect with potential voters, not to coddle members with the comfort blanket of a policy platform such as the “free broadband for all” 2019 pledge that was roundly rejected.

Liz Truss provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country without a general election. For Starmer to have stuck to his 2020 leadership election pledges, instead of spending the past four years understanding voters, would have been fundamentally anti-democratic.

The most egregious aspect of the anti-Labour left argument is there isn’t much to choose between Starmer and Sunak. Yes, Labour’s “Ming vase” election strategy has seen it take a much more cautious fiscal approach than many of us would like: it has effectively adopted the Tory macroeconomic worldview and with it a set of spending constraints that no one sensible thinks either party could stick to in the wake of the election.

That is frustrating for anyone hoping this election campaign may illuminate some of the tough trade-offs facing Britain; but it would have been incredibly risky for one side to go it alone on this. The alternative is Labour walking into the trap and handing the Conservatives a “Labour tax bombshell” election campaign.

From a commitment to scrap the Rwanda plan to making clear that in an ideal world Labour would discard the two-child benefit cap, there are plenty of reasons that it is preposterous to think that a Starmer government would make the same trade-offs as successive Conservative governments that have financed billions of pounds worth of tax cuts for more affluent families by cutting tax credits and benefits for low-income parents. The six pledges Starmer launched two weeks ago may be incremental, but Labour needs voters to believe they are deliverable, and they are indicative of a very different set of priorities than those that animate Sunak."

"Starmer is not without weaknesses, as shown by the days he took to clarify an interview last October in which he gave the impression he thought Israel had the right to withhold power and food from Gaza. But there is no doubt whatsoever he would make a vastly more compassionate and competent prime minister than Sunak. To encourage people to put that outcome at risk by casting a protest vote against a Labour government that does not yet exist is perhaps the ultimate form of luxury belief campaigning."

[shayberri789]

I'm a little hurt by some of my irl friends and have two courses of actions, but which will both have similar outcomes

Basically, I have three creative irl friends. Every time they share their writings with me (be it fics, poems, stories or creative non fic), I ALWAYS read it as soon as I'm able and give feedback + healthy amount of gushing.

But whenever I write something I am proud of and I share it with them, none of them acknowledge it. Its like they don't see the link you know. And its fine because I just say "I wrote a thing" and give a link. I'm explicitly asking for feedback or validation. I can't be upset because they're not mind readers

But sometimes I explicitly DO ask them "hey did you see what I wrote?" "Hey, what do you think of this?" And i get half assed responses at best. "Oh its good" "uh ill read it when I get home *never hears about it again*". And that's a little more frustrating.

Earlier today I needed to put together a portfolio, and asked my two best friends to please read through it, because it was important and I needed their input on (1) thing, and I needed it *before the end of the day*. It was three pages of easy reading. Its not like I was asking for concrit or editing or something time consuming.

One of them skimmed it and gave me feedback. The other one is adhd and forgot. Said she'd read it later when I reminded her. When I reminded her again, she said she forgot and had made plans, can she do it in the morning?

And normally I'd say that's fine! Because I don't expect immediacy from my friends online, esp for favours. But I had a deadline, and this was the third time this particular friend has done this. There's only so many times I want to poke someone to read my shit before I start feeling like I'm bragging/attention seeker/being entitled and demanding. So I just went and asked someone else.

I know I'm valid to feel hurt about this, and frustrated. I also know that my friends don't mean to make me feel like this, or forget. I know they want to support me. But I'm also tired of getting burned so I'm just going to fucking stop trying to share my writing with them because instead of validation I'm getting pain.

My two options are either a) telling my friends that actually their silence and forgetfulness hurt me or b) just lettint it go

Either way, I'm not reaching out again. B) seems like the option less likely to hurt my friends/make them feel bad, so I'm leaning to that. If the roles were reversed, I'd rather option A), because when people tell me these things I do genuinely try to do better in the future, and I know my friends would feel the same. But I've also lost faith in their ability to do so in this area. Idk what I should do

[omg-ame-chan]

person in the room next door is starting to piss me off fuck you learn how to use headphones

[an-assortment-of-forks]

there are doctors there are hospitals there are specialists there is medicine there are systems in place so people do not have to suffer and be tortured under their own chronic pain daily and yet. they're all fucking inaccessible to the people who need it most!!! to what I would argue is most disabled people!! I'm so fucking done with the medical system.

[thetangibleghost]

Today, Beck's been saying that I ruined everything, I was supposed to be the happy one. Friday and him both say the at I ruin things pretty frequently but this one hurts a bit. He's saying it in context to one of the collective delusions, but my brain just keeps applying it to everything. I just feel like that happens a lot. I'm supposed to be the happy one, I'm supposed to be the happiest in the room. Not like, in the moment but in a general sense. I feel like I've failed people by having trauma. Friday calls me a ruiner all the time. I ruin people and places and ideas and things. I ruin the vibes. I don't want to be like this. I don't want to be like anything. I'm gonna sit in the sun tomorrow and see if that helps. I love having emo songs Bob as my pfp. Light of my life in moments like this fr. It's just funny being all depressed and then seeing my pfp pic and reading it in his voice. Good stuff.