#Make good use of your pain

[llfreude]

Life is like vibration of sound And man is but string work If a blow hits him too hard, He loses resonance, never to find it back again. Any sound of him will cause but displeasure And he will never unite to the well-adjusted choir Without ruining its harmony with dissonance

Quote from Müllner's theatre play Die Schuld (1813) Found in Ludwig van Beethoven's personal notes.

[petricorah]

scenes i loved from Real Enough to Get Me Through by @marriedzukka <333 [ids in alt]

[archiepelago]

alternate surface au inspired by a few ive seen around on tumblr :3

[flintbian]

There's a disabled angel in good omens 🥺

[thebirdandhersong]

???? something something deep discomfort with body image is it generational?????????

[littencloud9]

bsd fandom has always mischaracterised kunikida to hell and back but the fact that i am seeing SO MUCH hate for his character right after his 'death' is insane

[luck-of-the-drawings]

smth smth about 'the thing that the character did that you thought was rly rly funny in the moment is actually linked to a terrible trauma that lies within said character.' or wahtever.

[widowshill]

— And do you or do you not have difficulty remembering such simple instructions? — Only during thunderstorms, sir.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) / DARK SHADOWS (1966)

[pikasetism]

theyre playing splatoon

[sofoulandfairaday]

i can't decide which i like more:

the idea - very much canonical and in the author's original concept and view of magic - of the dark arts taking a toll on one's exterior and looks. tom riddle sacrificing his beauty willingly in the name of eternal life, black magic as something that innately corrupts. bellatrix escaping from azkaban with the barest vestiges of her ancient beauty. going from one of the most beautiful women in england to a shell of her former self and no amount of dark magic being able to fix it. and she just. doesn't care. goes from pretty, proud and vain in her youth, to the feverish, fanatical glow harry sees in the department if mysteries. finally she sheds the petal of the rose - look like the innocent flower, her master had once said - and only the thorns remain. the parallel with voldemort himself. the idea that they like each other better now, the only ones to like their respective new appearances better. bellatrix because she can taste the power radiating off him, because she knows how resentful he was of his old face. (oh, he's never said anything explicitly, he would rather be flayed alive than speak of his filthy muggle father to her, but she knew he didn't like himself, took no pride in his aesthetics, it was most unusual, really.) the dark lord because he's reminded of her sacrifice - she was the only one who didn't denounce him, who tried to find him - every time he looks at her. she gave up everything for him: her reputation, her family, her freedom, her health, her beauty, her youth.

or.

the horcruxes are an isolated case. not all prices to pay for power are physical. some dark magic sucks at your humanity, your emotional regulation, your empathy and gives back superficial little gifts. its roots are far from the deep anger, desperation to cling to life of an horcrux. these are ancient witches' remedies to be the most envied in the village. the idea that rotten cores hide behind the prettiest faces. and bellatrix was always vain, always took immense pride in her beauty, her black, pure features. when she escapes from azkaban she tries everything in her power to be herself once again. she still drips with obsession but gradually regains all of her beauty too. cruel people can still be beautiful. gorgeous people can still be inhuman. and yet there is something so human about a woman making her way through the ranks of a very militarised group and still caring so much about what she looks like, still having insecurities, being preoccupied with mundane things like age and decay - and hating it because he would hate it, he hates weakness, and still not being able to help herself. the dark lord was always a collector of shiny things, was he not?

[coquelicoq]

part of the process of learning to take responsibility for your actions is learning what things you can't take responsibility for. not just to protect you (e.g., from your own feelings of guilt; from people taking advantage of your willingness to take responsibility by attributing blame to you unfairly), but because to take responsibility is not just to say "it was my fault and i'm sorry" but to actually do things (to make amends and to mitigate and prevent future harm), and if you don't understand what to take responsibility for, you aren't going to understand how to take responsibility.

there is a lot that's outside of your control. people put a lot of emphasis on forgiveness in a way that i think is missing the point. being forgiven is not my priority. my priority is that i am doing what it is in my power to do. i can't control how that's received. i'd like it to be received well; i'm doing what i'm doing because i want to repair harm that i have caused to another person, so it matters to me if what i'm doing is actually achieving that goal or not. but there's only so much that i can do to achieve that goal, and if i'm doing it, and the harm is not repaired, that's okay. that's beyond my control. i have to make my peace with the fact that i've caused harm to another person that is not resolved, because i'm doing what i can and i have to continue living on this earth, and in continuing to live i'm going to be living with the fact of that unresolved harm. the most important thing at that point is for me to use my knowledge of the specific ways in which my actions harmed that person to change my behavior going forward to avoid causing that harm again, to the extent that that's within my power.

it doesn't do anyone - you or the people you have harmed - any good for you to assign responsibility to yourself for things that you can't control. if you're going to attempt the active work of repair and change you have to first identify what it's possible to repair and change. you can't actually repair a relationship all by yourself! you can only change your own behavior. you can only offer amends to the other person that they may or may not find sufficient. not to go all serenity prayer on you but guilt for the sake of guilt just makes you feel way more powerful than you actually are (because you think that everything happened because of you) and at the same time completely incapable of exercising your power (because you don't understand what your power actually is). to effect change you have to focus on the things you can actually change. focusing on the things you can't change is a problem not just because it's taking your focus away from the things you can change, but because it means you don't actually understand the sphere of your own influence. you're operating under what is essentially a self-centered worldview in which you could make everything better, you could prevent all harm, if only you were trying harder, if only you were a better person. who does that serve? it doesn't reflect reality. it makes you hate yourself and feel sorry for yourself at the same time, and it doesn't actually improve things for the people you harmed. it doesn't help keep you from harming people in the future, because you don't understand the territory and the limits of the causal relationship between your actions and other people's reactions to them.

you can only do what you can do. what you can't do, you can't do, and you can't take responsibility for doing, either in the past or present. after you realize that there is harm to repair the next step in the process of repair is to ask yourself what your responsibility is for the past and what your agency is going forward. everything else will follow from that. you simply cannot skip that step.

[kinthulou]

Disability in TTRPG: Nerf Your Rests

So I love to think about how to represent disability in my ttrpg, yeah? As a disabled person, this is super important to me. And I may have just figured out how to nerf long rests (via D&D 5e mechanics) in a way that's entirely representative of my actual lived experience with chronic pain and fatigue. Folk are welcome to use this in their own games, as a way of explaining their own disability to others, or to adapt to other systems or to their own experiences. But for now, I present to you: the Chronic Pain & Fatigue Long Rest. Per standard long rest rules, taking a long rest replenishes the following: 1. Hit Points 2. Hit Dice 3. Spell Slots Choose two. If you choose to replenish Hit Points, you may only do so by rolling whatever Hit Dice remain from your day's pool. You will always replenish Hit Points first, and replenish Hit Dice second. If you have one or more levels of exhaustion, you may either: 1. Choose one from the replenishment list and remove a level of exhaustion. or 2. Choose two from the replenishment list as usual, and keep the level of exhaustion. Optional, but related rule: You have resistance to healing magic and items, and only regain half the HP you would otherwise be granted by the spell or item. You may be thinking, "Why would I use these rules? They seem complicated and risky?" Well, yes, but also they can provide an approach to gameplay that's all about clever resource management, and also a lot of people actually live like this every day and maybe we'd like to be able to engage with said clever resource management in a way that's fun for once. Maybe we need a safe and controlled way to practice asking for the accommodations we need, or to gently teach our friends how crucial those accommodations actually are. And maybe some of us just really like our characters to be disabled like we are, so we can still explore the fantasy of going forth and exploring dungeons and fighting dragons and completing adventures in a way that feels genuine to ourselves? Idk, man (gender neutral). Do with it what you will. But I'mma be out here nerfing some long rests.

(As always, please work with your game master on any nerfs. They need to know you want to do this, and need a chance to warn you if the game they have planned might not jive with these mechanics, or to help you change things to fit what you both want out of the game.) (Also, if you're not playing a caster, replace Spell Slots with some other resource replenished on a long rest. Or something else! Get creative with it!)

[aozui]

a new pseudo………………..thinking

[remnri]

made a little thing for my journal

[zhongrin]

it's hackathon week next week and there are so many things i need to do (passport renewal, accommodation stuff, dental appointments, packing for flight, chores, etc), so i apologize if i'm kind of inactive or off in this blog or discord!!

[shimmershy]

Here's a little snippet of some out-of-context scenario I wrote about Chara while trying to deal with my own feelings.

Chara recoiled at the memory. Why did they say that? It hadn't even sounded like them, or at least the perfect, well-behaved, never-troubled version of themself that they let other people see. They hated the Dreemurrs. They decided right then and there. Their "new family" was corrupting them, taking what little good they had in them. They never would have lashed out like that with...before they fell. They never would have let anyone see them like that. They squeezed their eyes shut against the rush of their thoughts. Now the Dreemurrs could see what they really were: selfish, and evil, and ugly. Did they even deserve to be here at all?