#Mostly need to work on fundamentals rn

[prismaticutie]

I've been watching a lot of Omega Strikers guide videos lately and the one thing all of them have in common is that every single one of them highlights the importance of "just have fun".

That's something people say all the time, about any game. But there was one guide I watched yesterday, and in addition to giving that tip, also mentioned the importance of not being toxic and blaming your losses on your teammates.

This is genuinely the most helpful tip of all time. Like this guide really grilled into me just how horrible having that toxic mentality is. The full first minute of the video was dedicated to that. He also talked about how being toxic and playing w that mentality actively makes you worse at the game, period. Full stop. And he explained the reasoning for that as well.

I've heard this said and yeah I believe it as well, but this was the first time I'd ever had it thoroughly explained to me. It really put things into perspective for me.

Hoping I can improve at both Omega Strikers and Splatoon by keeping this in mind 👍

[sleepwalk-living]

~

[world-of-wales]

The Indian PM is asking for votes in the upcoming election by saying that voters shouldn't support the opposition leaders coz they eat........Non-vegetarian food.......

This isn't him relating environment problems and veganism/vegetarianism, but rather him campaigning that in a secular country only his party is the best because they follow the moral and vegetarian majority religion. Which is funny in itself since, except for North India, the rest of the Hindus in other parts consume all kinds of non vegetarian food items.

And to most people outside India, this vegetarian vs non-veg debate might seem foolish, but here it is proving to be the main election agenda now. A lot of people may think oh he's advocating for being vegetarian, that's great. But unfortunately not in this case coz his party which is filled with upper caste Hindus mostly use this argument of food choices to demonize minority communities in the country, they deny protein to poor children in the meals provided to them by the state in public schools, their supporters go and harass & have in many cases k-worded innocent people in name of 'Cow protection', force butchers who come from low income backgrounds to shut down their stores making them unable to earn even the meagre ammount that they do etc etc. So veg/non-veg in the case of Indian elections rn is so much more than just a debate on dietary choices.

So, no talks of education, health, economy, jobs etc this election season but rather cheap and completely nonsense topics during campaigning. And I wish I could call it satire, but unfortunately this is what the so-called largest democracy has come to.

This issue is just the tip of the iceberg of all the things that need to be changed in this country to take it back to where it was before this train wreck that the past decade has been and to start rebuilding it brick by brick.

The reason I'm posting this today is that, I want to request anyone who's eligible to vote in India to PLEASE GO VOTE! exercise ur right. Don't let anyone tell you that your voice doesn't matter coz it does. And it's never been more essential for you to make use of Article 326 and cast your vote. It is ur fundamental right.

I don't think there could be a more appropriate time to ask you for this, as it is the 133rd birth anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar today, the father of the Constitution. The man who fought all his life to make sure everyone in his country had democratic fundamental rights. He gave you that Constitution that protects you and your interests and rights. The tip of his pen changed the world you live in today for the better. So please don't let that the sacrifices made by him or of all those in the Constituent Assembly, of all those who came before you go to waste. They gave this country their all, so you could have all the freedoms that you do today. They gave you a constitution based on liberty, equality, fraternity, secularism, socio-economic democracy etc to protect you, the citizens. And now, as these rights slowly get encroached upon, it is more important than ever before for you to assert these rights.

Go read the election manifestos of the parties and learn about the candidates fighting elections from ur constituency. Please make an informed choice. Don't go and vote for people on the basis of religion, caste, etc. Go and vote for that person who actually talks about the on ground issues you face, who has plans to make ur life, and the society you live in better. Who promises to give you the basic rights that you deserve, someone who promises not to infringe upon the fundamental rights as enshrined in the constitution, the one who talks about creating better employment, creating a robust health system, making sure every child in this country has access to quality education, someone who wants to create a safe space for women not just out in the world but also in the private sphere, someone who promises to work towards dealing with the problems of inflation & other economic problems you face, someone who wants to work towards dealing with the vast enomic disparities that exist across the board. Someone who wants to work towards providing safeguards for the most vulnerable people and communities, etc etc.

Go on the website of the election commission, check out the dates of vote casting in your area, mark that date, wake up that morning take ur voter id card and please go push a button on the machine at the particular booth you fall under.

Don't let people tell you that you are young, you don't know what you need, you shouldn't be jumping into political discourse, don't let them discourage you from exercising the most important right the constitution has given you. TRUST ME, YOU DO KNOW WHAT YOU NEED, POLITICS AFFECTS YOU TOO, THE GOVERNMENT POLICIES AFFECT YOU TOO, SO YOUR VOICE IS JUST AS IMPORTANT IN THESE UPCOMING ELECTIONS AS THAT OF THE OTHERS!

YOUR VOTE MATTERS. IT'S NEVER MATTERED MORE!

[autogyne-redacted]

tbh, your recent post about transandrophobia synthesizes my thoughts about it very well, and im surprised you're getting backlash. the only additions i would make is that the gender/sex binary in the west was originally very explicitly a white supremacist creation, even down to the categories of male/female, and lionizing any aspect of that tends to get really racist really fast no matter how feminist or well intentioned. i guess you'd call me a trandandrobro bc i hang out in the tag and sometimes use the word for specific things (like when the lab threw out my cervical cancer test cells bc the cup was labelled M) but, i genuinely don't disagree with a single one of your points. i've been getting uncomfortable with the increasingly reactionary nature of the conversation on transandrophobia and i appreciate your take a lot.

Rambling about transandrophobia

Tbh It's been really surprising to see transandrophobia types interacting with that post all around.

And mostly it boils down to me having had windows into transandrophobia discourse that makes it seem bad*. And other ppl treating these aspects as exceptions to a discourse they see as basically good.

And I recognize that in part this is just how polarized internet discourses work. Like, if my windows into transandrophobia are largely when something egregious gets said and passed around in my circles, that's gonna give a way different impression then if ppl are part of the discourse and curating a slice they agree with.

And the consistent overall harassment of any attempt to talk about transmisogyny and constant bad faith engagements (eg attacks on agab and cagab language, cafab attempts to ID as trans women and as direct targets of transmisogyny) mean few of us are still in a position to assume good faith with internet strangers we run into who identify with a discourse that very much seems to have a massive transmisogyny problem.

.

My slightly more extended position on transandrophobia, since I've been thinking about it the past few days is:

1) I'm broadly supportive of ppl talking about their experiences and trying to find common ground even around shared ~privilege~, so long as it's done with a commitment to broader, collective liberation. (Eg cis men getting together from a feminist perspective to talk about patriarchy = good, cis men doing so with no specific opposition to normative masculinity = fashy).

2) the general attitude I've seen from transandrophobia world is to say: this has nothing to do with anyone other than trans mascs ppl other than trans mascs aren't welcome as part of this discourse: it's by us for us. Intentionally creating an insulated discourse especially around a point of (partial) privilege has a terrible track record. But regardless of relative positionality insulated discourses are just going to be more limited. They can create theory that's empowering for the creator group but it's probably not gonna get much mileage beyond and it's easy for it to be actively harmful.

3) I've thought for ages that trans masc experience seems ~under theorized~ and that transphobia is rly under theorized too. And it'd be really cool to see this addressed in a way that isn't rife with transmisogyny. It does seem like transandrophobia discourse is addressing a real hole, it's just doing in a way that rly sketches me out.

4) really I think gender discourse overall is just not in a great place rn. It was 1990 when Judith Butler questioned whether it makes sense for women to be the sole/primary subject of feminism, and we had major interventions that I'd say reached a peak in the early to mid 2010's (criticisms of white feminism, of cis feminism, intersectionality becoming a dominant framework).

There's a strong tendency to say that we're basically in a post gender world, or that race is just a more fundamental framework (which I strongly disagree with)** and I do think we really need a rebuilt gender theory that has teeth to it. Trying to build theory around transmisogyny I've found it necessary to do a lot of general theory building around gender. How normative masculinity and femininity work, how gender is policed. I don't think we're gonna be able to make a clean break from identity politics until we can have a strong theory framework that lets us talk about this shit from outside identity politics.

5) this is v rambly but I'm inclined to engage with transandrophobia discourse a little more than lots of my circles in part because I really want there to be more good theory building going on around gender, from different positions and across positions. One day, maybe.

*full of transmisogyny/denials of transmisogyny, trans masc exceptionalism and a failure to recognize and be in solidarity around shared issues with trans fems and cis men.

**getting back to the part of your ask about the history of gender and white supremacy, there's a huge entanglement between gender and race, gender and civilization. Normative gender differentiation has been a classic way the civilized set themselves apart from those they deem savage.

Broad claims like the one you make in your ask anon get messy tho. Like, a largely binary model of gender is older than history but you can also talk about the modern binary having really only come about over the past couple centuries (and obviously it's heavily contested and changing rn). Similarly you could say the modern concept of whiteness came about through the trans Atlantic slave trade (and then has been constantly shifting and getting redefined ever since) but there's obviously much older histories it's building off of.

I'm realizing now that maybe you meant the binary divide between sex vs gender as opposed to the male vs female binary but I can't tell which. Either way, my position here is mostly that it's really really messy to make big historical claims. It's such a high level view you can tell a lot of different stories with the available historical evidence. Ideas about gender and race have a heavily entangled history tho and it's certainly gonna go poorly if you treat either as natural.

[running-with-the-feels]

What happened to Hanzo’s mom? What was she like?

thank you so much for asking!!!!!

I go back and forth on it, but rn My hc is

Her name was Eiko and she was a blacksmith with the Shirai Ryu as well as a very skilled warrior. Even after she and Kaede left the clan to raise their family (and due to some ideological differences between Kaede and the grandmaster) she would run missions for them when needed.

The missions were never anything super dangerous, mostly reconnaissance and sabotage bc she had people she wanted to get back to, but she used to be very good at assassinations

She died while on what should have been a very routine mission when Hanzo was 12 and his younger siblings, twins Hana and Ryuji, were 5, and Kade never forgave the clan for asking her to go

Eiko was a very blunt woman, she said what she meant and meant what she said and didn't see much of an issue with that philosophy. Occasionally her words came off rather harsh but she didn't see much issue with that either

She was a master of the rope dart, which Hanzo learned to honor her

Could not cook to save her life, not even slightly.

She told the best stories tho, to the point where the other kids in town would bother her at work to get her to tell them stories. It got Hanzo a lot of street cred amongst his peers bc she was his mom and she was Cool

despite her bluntness, she was fundamentally kind. If you needed help, she would give it, end of. She wasn't always nice, but she was kind.

Hanzo was a mama's boy, he thought she was the coolest thing ever and wanted to be just like her when he grew up, even training to be a blacksmith

Eiko had her hair cut short to make it easier to manage in the forge, only long enough to tie it back into a ponytail

she also loved the colour green, it was her favorite and all her clothes had green in them.

Despite the fact that Kaede never really wanted to connect with his Ainu heritage, or pass it on to their kids, Eiko learned what she could from an ainu woman they lived near and made sure to pass those traditions on to Hanzo as well as she could. The woman, Chika, also babysat Hanzo and his siblings and passed lessons down that way

The biggest fight Eiko and Kaede ever had was over whether or not to give Hana Shinue (traditional Ainu tattoos) and Eiko only relented because they didn't know anyone who could actually do them

As per her wishes and Shirai Ryu custom, Eiko was cremated upon her death and her ashes were given to her husband and children

When he left, the urn with his mother's ashes and a few clothes were all Hanzo took with him, and he refuses to regret it even if he feels a bit guilty over taking her from them. In his mind, they got to keep her clothes and jewelry and pictures and the home she had lived in, so it was only fair that he got to keep this

Hanzo's rope dart was also made by her hand, she had forged it for herself but left it with the Shirai Ryu when she and Kaede left, with it being gifted to Hanzo by the grandmaster as a welcome present

lemme know if y'all wanna hear more about Hanzo's family

[turnupthestrobe]

feels weird to post something personal especially since i'm just doing halloween stuff rn and don't do personal posts in general but this is something i wrote and have been sharing

Apologies in advance for sharing a long, personal post on social media, but I’ve been trying to figure out how to share some of this for a while, and Rosh Hashanah felt like an appropriate moment to do that, separate from the political implications that even just acknowledging my Judaism carries these days (for the record, I am wholeheartedly pro-Palestine and have no personal or spiritual connection whatsoever with Israel).

Over the past few years I have had to deal with a number of physical and mental health issues and that has been a really dominant theme in my life and also a big part of my self-identity, in large part because I’ve mostly had to deal with all these things alone, without much of support system or community, which is itself a byproduct of some of the things I’ve been working on. I have this whole story and reconciling what went on before I tried to kill myself at the beginning of 2022 with the recovery that has occurred after has been an ongoing process. 

This is all a roundabout way of, first off, apologizing to anyone who’s had to deal with me as a “sick person,” whether it’s been me talking about my issues too much or being unreliable because of these things, or pretty much any of my behavior prior to early 2022- there was a long period of time I was taking medications that were having an adverse affect of my mental health, and that, along with undiagnosed health issues, was sort of my whole life since I became an adult, and realistically probably before that as well.  Part of this is that I don’t always know what I can or should share with people or what I can ask from them so sometimes I either set more boundaries than I need to or conversely try to force closeness when I should be reading the signals that this isn’t wanted or welcome. I have always struggled with forming and maintaining close relationships with other people and in retrospect I am mortified with some of the ways this difficulty has manifested over the years. 

Second, and more important, I wanted to share that I’ve been doing the work to shift my mentality away from being a sick and disabled person and regretting all the time I lost while I was figuring that out to being more present and finding an identity for myself outside of being sick, anxious and depressed. For the first time ever I’m figuring out who I am independently of my “problems” and also learning how to be a functioning adult human without using illness as crutch to fall back on. By virtue of living with some of these things for so long I’ve become very defensive and self-involved about a lot of things, and part of my recovery has been learning how to be more open and less self-centered and also trying to understand how much space I deserve to take up in this world. Before I would have said none of very little. Now, maybe a little bit more?

In 2022, I chose to live even though I wanted, on a deep and fundamental level, to die. Now, two years later, I’m reaffirming my commitment to being alive and starting to think about what it might be like to not only be alive, but also be healthy and, hopefully in the long run, happy. Thanks to those of you who have stuck by throughout all of this. You are small in number but great in patience, generosity and understanding. I have no idea why anyone would put up with me. I don’t even put up with my own bullshit- if I weren’t me I would have written myself off years ago. So thank you and just know I’ve really been doing the work these past few years and continue to be committed to figuring out all the things I fucked up for so long. 

[cabeswaterdrowned]

need to know about any and all aftg fics you’ve got in the works please and thank you

because I’m not hyperfixating on it rn / have been kind of taking a break from this fandom I haven’t been actively working on or thinking about either of these since like, fall 2023. But:

•Kevin wip. — what I wrote so far is kind of a Drabble but it’s mostly pre canon focused on his grief over Kayleigh, also there’s some pre canon Kandrew in there.

•wanna be the power ballad that (lifts you up and holds you down) — the first chapter of this is on my ao3 (nazyalenskys) and it was originally meant to be 3 chapters but I never finished the second.. I posted it in 2022 so if I ever finish like I said will probably rewrite the one that’s published. But it was kind of a response fic to one of my favorite kandrew fics which I will link later, but the premise of that is essentially the Moriyamas freak Kevin out before his first pro game and a sort of Kandrew comfort sex hook up takes place with Neil’s consent, and I wanted to write a Kandreil navigating the aftermath of that type of scenario. The chapter I wrote was mostly a lot of Andrew introspection and a convo between him and Neil about it, the second chapter I started but didn’t get too far with was going to be entirely an Andrew and Betsy session, and the third was going to be him going to visit Kevin for the first time after this happened. So set of for post canon Kandreil but I was going to focus mostly on Andrew’s feelings and the Kandrew side of it (Kandrew is my favorite Aftg ship if you didn’t know, I love Andreil a lot too they’re definitely my favorite canon mlm ship in any media and I love their arc but Kandrew was what I generally went for when it came to exploring dynamics, they compel me for a lot of the same reasons Adansey do in terms of the divorced energy and the class divide and the fundamental miscommunication that’s interesting rather than annoying, and two chars with control issues as trauma responses having symptoms at each other, and characters desiring autonomy but also being codependently devoted to each other in ways that contradict that… yeah (I totally get the Ronsey-Kandrew and Adansey-Kevneil parallels that are commonly talked about but like. Kandrew-Adansey is real 2 me). • this isn’t really a wip but I did want to mention that I actually first wrote fanfiction on a different ao3 account and started during quarantine, and Aftg was my quarantine hyperfixation (with Community and Legacies which I also wrote for) so I wrote quite a bit at that time that’s floating around but most of it I’m content to never continue with, but there is One I might go back to at some point and it’s this Renee centric fic with some Renee x Dan called Sweet Fascination that was originally meant to be the first in a series about Renee in high school. At some point I might rewrite and repost that fic on my current acc and continue that as a kind of series of introspective one shots. Ty! (Send me a title of a WIP and I’ll tell you something about it)

[rollercoasterwords]

i'm currently rereading thtf rn, and in one of the author's notes at the end of the chapter you said that you think voldemort wasn't a good villain. i agree with you on that 100%, and i'd really like to hear all your thoughts on why you think that way.

fun question!!! i am happy 2 discuss w the caveat of course that this is all my subjective opinion etc etc

i feel like the reasons i don't think voldemort is a "good" villain (in terms of storytelling) can sort of be broken into 2 main things

1: voldemort as a character

so by this i mean, without looking at the broader story or wizarding society + how voldemort's character functions like...narratively within the story, just looking at the character itself. characterwise i think voldemort is just....pretty flat.

like, from the way dumbledore describes voldemort as a child, we're basically supposed to view him as a character who has always been fundamentally evil, like he was "born bad." sure, there's some gesturing towards society with the tragic backstory w his parents, growing up in an orphanage, hating his dad, etc. but none of that is fully fleshed out in a way that indicates voldemort might have been good if his circumstances had been different; instead, it's mostly just used to explain why he hates muggles so much. but he's portrayed as sadistic and manipulative from the time he's a child, a kid who has always wanted power and just continues to seek power his entire life. this is just....a boring character, in my opinion. tautological evil doesn't really give us anything to think about, anything to question, anything to pull from the story and relate to real life--because in real life, people aren't just born evil, y'know?

and obviously people can say "oh well it's a kids' story of course it's gonna be simple and black + white when it comes to good + evil!" but honestly i just don't buy that argument. i've encountered plenty of kids' media that is not so boring and black + white with its portrayals of good vs evil (animorphs comes immediately to mind). so! to me it still just feels like a flat + boring character.

2: voldemort as a figural evil

a lot of what i have to say here can be summed up in this quote from harry potter and the leaky genre:

"And herein lies the true fantasy in Harry Potter: that systemic dysfunction can be destroyed because it has been artificially projected onto, and reduced to, one locus: the person of Voldemort."

rao talks about this in his essay very succintly, but basically--in the harry potter universe + the overarching narrative of the story, voldemort functions as a figural symbol onto which all of the systemic issues of wizarding society can be projected + neatly defeated in one fell swoop. throughout the series, we see an abundance of systemic flaws + oppression in the wizarding world, all of which are deeply ingrained and none of which can be boiled down to one single person's individual intent. and yet, voldemort becomes the symbol for Everything That's Wrong, and we are led to believe that if harry potter can just triumph over Evil, then everything will be fixed.

essentially, voldemort becomes a political sleight of hand. our eyes are drawn away from the systemic issues that need to be uprooted and overhauled, and we're so busy watching harry potter embark on his quest to defeat The Bad Guy that by the time the dust settles we're supposed to be satisfied with our nice little happy ending, rather than questioning why harry potter would become a wizard cop working for the ministry of magic when that institution was shown to be fundamentally flawed throughout the course of the series.

this representation of evil is very much rooted in jkr's conservative politics + worldview, and it's something that you'll find throughout a lot of political rhetoric--the idea that there is a specific outside figure or group who is the Source of Evil and a Threat to Good (read: our pre-existing institutions + society), and so we need to focus all our energy on destroying The Bad Guy rather than taking a look at our own flawed institutions and overturning existing oppressive structures. all in all, it's a type of evil/villainy that i do not find compelling in storytelling and that i think is actively bad because of the political narrative it perpetuates. and so that's what i'm getting at when i say that i don't think voldemort is a "good" villain!

[ragesin]

outlines of au verses i need to flesh out more ft. other interests outside of nnt. his canon largely remains the same but it's often so far back in his past it's not often relevant to current events.

hsr - a divergence of the division impact verse. keeps his criminal roots and was picked up by elio and sam after the planet he was living on with a underwent a stellaron disaster that led to his halovian partner - the most recent elizabeth incarnation - becoming an emanator of the abundance and being separated. his memory's spotty from the time spent dying repeatedly on end in the vacuum of space after merlin's spell partially succeeded and he's not a fan of fate at all, but he still puts stock into prophecies, especially if it guarantees an end to his curse and his father. he gets placed on the express a few months prior to the trailblazer joining and keeps an eye on them, subtly ensuring the script stays on track.

kh - the demons (specifically meliodas) adopted kairi after she got blasted there following the fall of radiant garden who is like a brother/father figure to her. she has a lot of light but she isn't a goddess and feels weirdly fundamental, which is strange and worth keeping an eye on but she never did age much through the 150 or so years she spent there, aging only about 2 years at a crawl (universal time zones, it's out of sync with the rest and time is much faster in this world, not that the demons outside of dk know this) until she was swept out of the demon realm to destiny islands. the king had gowther install a failsafe that would lock her memories, rendering specific details meaningless and blurring them until she came in contact with meliodas or zeldris again. meliodas and kairi eventually run into each again when kairi starts traveling around kh3/post kh3 .

ff - sexy concept: meliodas as diabolos. well, depending on the game his summonable incarnation can be a dragonoid like a bahamut but most of the time he's the demon diabolos. something something chaos originating from the void like cloud of darkness so he's tangentially always been a voidsent. he has his humanoid form but he also has the eldritch demon of darkness, dream walking, nightmares and "granting wishes". it's specifically remake/rebirth rn since i'm playing through it and he hangs with johnny after meeting the guy on his way out from midgar. he sighs as his friend is conned into getting the rundown shack but he helps with it. he can "join" the party after the costa del sol quests.

zelda - mel reacquired his demon king power some time after most of the sins had passed away, but did not take on the title itself and decided to watch the events of the world unfold from the background. he was taken aback when he returned from the sealed off demon realm one day to find the world had undergone an extinction level event. the other realms were mostly intact but now there were some beings about calling themselves deities and reconstructing the dead, fractured world anew. he watched them work, calling themselves 'goddesses'. he watched them leave, never truly deigning to return to the "hyrule" they built. he watched another entity "hylia" guard the will the previous three left behind. he watched others, self appointed demon kings, surged out of the demon realm to seek that will and subsequently fail. it was not his quarrel, so he watches lets the fools reap what they sow when destruction finds them in the end. he watches and watches and watches history unfold. he has all the time in the world. at least the show bores him only sometimes.

[vermillioncrown]

I agree totally with ships needing internal logic most of my actual crackships are of the never interacted in this huge cast, nice surface level contrasts, but enough fundamental similarities to function well presumably and then if the muses concur writing the proof from there. I was mostly trying to widen the suspect pool as felt the suggested set was too narrow. So two suggestions and a reasonable retraction. (Given Cissie went civvie by choice.)

you're not wrong. i think most ppl just keep it at the "never interacted but seems like they will mesh" and never examine will they mesh beyond just personality

like, even if two characters never interact in canon, given that there is sufficient what-if for them to do so, i'll abide by it. idk maybe i'm not explaining myself properly...

the suspect pool is sorta unbounded? again, i look at it as (roughly speaking)

would this character like korvin upon first meeting? does korvin like them?

when do they meet, under what circumstances?

do they keep meeting? if yes, why?

how does their mutual impressions change?

sometimes, enough no's despite personalities meshing or yes's otherwise will mean that under these conditions, they'll never get together (in an au of this au fic, maybe lol)

and unbounded is that ^those questions cannot be answered rn. undefined.

=

crackship fics work when the central conceit is the crackship, and the fic is the support for how it happens.

if the central conceit of a fic is not the crackship, then it's difficult for that ship to fall out as a result of the narrative

[phoebehalliwell]

I mean, if you want gossip, welcome to my tale of questionable decisions! Let me set the scene for you. The relevant players are me, my female friend, and a guy who we've both been befriending. (The setting, mostly irrelevant but must be added to emphasize the Questionable Decisions of this tale is a church group. As in we're all in the same church group. What the fuck at me) Anyways, friend has gotten some flirty signals from guy and is interested but not willing to do anything unless he's explicitly into her.

Meanwhile, I end up becoming closer friends with this guy bc we went to an arcade a weekend night, accidentally had too much, and then had a full on breakdown on how my ex bf almost definitely sexually assaulted me. The guy (nice guy not ex bf, he has no more relevance to this story besides my ~trauma~) ends up hanging out with me a few more days, in part bc I am Not Handling this well. (ha ha, i'm repressing it atm again, this seems like a better idea!) We end up being better friends tho, and I find out that he is into my friend which great!

Issue is that my hormones are fucking stupid as hell and I. haven't even kissed anyone since said ex bf and guy friend is nice to me and I am reasonably sure won't be weird about it. So basically: we ended up making out on my couch. for a while. Additional context: I outright told him beforehand that I didn't want a relationship with him and this would be a one-time thing that I would almost definitely never bring up again. Which: not wrong. He's a great friend and I like hanging out with him but we're fundamentally incompatible and I'm just not into him that way. (Seriously, the entire thought process on my end is that he has proven multiple times that he won't hurt me, will stop if I ask, and is chill enough that it won't need to become a thing.)

He had to leave after a while, because y'know time and I basically talked him into asking out my friend. So please, imagine this scenario. Me and him, having just spent two hours making out on my couch with the full understanding this was a one-time thing, now standing on my porch at midnight as I try to talk him into asking her out while he expresses doubt that she's into him. I've done it tho and he's gonna ask her out tomorrow. This is the current situation as of fifteen minutes ago.

My expectation is frankly that while we may talk about it in the future, bc he is currently only person alive who knows about my trauma, it will never happen again. (Like I said: I'm really not into him like that.) Admittedly, not totally sure on what'll happen with him and her but a legit possibility that they end up going out (and he's already promised me to not tell anyone about it, which he won't bc of who he is as a person) and it going well. Honestly, idk if I really need advice bc I do legitimately think that this will work out fine for everyone but may I get an f in the chat for what the fuck was I thinking. Any advice about the situation will be gladly accepted tho! (Also anything about dealing with said trauma bc like I said. I am. not handling it v well oof.)

The most ironic thing about fucking all this is that I am normally the most drama-free, chill person ever and never get into trouble and then I did this. To repeat: what the fuck at me!

legendary behavior on your part honestly like. like?? idk i'm with you i think this could turn out fine maybe. like obvs there are good odds it doesn't but like. ❤️❤️❤️❤️. like aint nobody gotta know like first off i totally believe in like the principle of making out with your friends. granted i rarely do it for like two hours with the homies but like making out for two hours with someone that you're into is also like not that weird of a thing either imo like making out with someone at the club!! you guys are both just there it's both just vibes like!! idk it's normal!!! i feel sooo hashtag phoebecoded rn i do feel like this is incredibly dumb advice but im also hashtag team you. i think this is gna be fine. but also yeah like really don't let her know. like. that's just business between y'alls just silly haha business and it's like if you get it you get it but if you don't it's really confusing and hurtful bc it's harder to get it if you already like the guy you get what i'm saying. but yeah. hope things work out for your friend and homeboy. homeboy sounds chill. also they're both so relatable for refusing to do anything until they know for sure it's reciprocated the amount of the times i have had to hold my homies at gunpoint (and vice versa!) to ask out the guy who clearly likes them... well it's a modern (?? or not idk i'm not old) rite of passage. wishing u all luck. keep me posted im nosy owo.

[travel-nurse]

The Role Of Travel Nurses in Rural Healthcare

Rural communities across the United States faces a fundamental challenge: ensuring access to quality health care. These areas are facing an acute shortage of qualified nurses, leaving hospitals and clinics struggling to meet the needs of their patients. 

This is where travel nurses emerge as important people in bridging the gap and providing needed care. So today through this article we are going to learn the role of travel nurses in rural healthcare in the USA. Let’s set go!

They fulfill the requirements & demand

Travel Nurses are RNs who choose to complete temporary assignments in the healthcare sector across the country. Unlike those who get permanent positions in hospitals and clinics, they work as a travel nurse who can travel and work with flexibility. These wanderlust nurses coupled with their skillsets and experience, make them perfectly suited to address the staffing shortages in rural settings. 

Being experience and expertise in rural areas

Rural hospitals often need more resources compared to urban hospitals in terms of salaries and benefits. The benefits can make it challenging to attract and retain permanent staff in the healthcare sector. Travel nurses often come equipped with specialized training and extensive experience in various areas, such as critical care, emergency medicine, and pediatrics. They bring valuable experience to rural areas and ensure that the patient can receive high-quality medical and patient care even in unprivileged areas. 

Beyond fill the gap

The impact of travel nurses is extending each day, they are much in demand in the US healthcare sector, mostly in the rural areas. Their presence in the rural areas is not just the fill the gap but beyond, let’s learn how: 

Boost morale and knowledge sharing: Collaborating with local staff and communicate with them, travel nurses can share their knowledge and best practices with other staff members also educate people. They also help to fostering a positive learning environment and uplifting the team's overall morale.

Contribute to the local economy: Being a temporary residents, the travel nurses can contribute to the local economy by renting housing, shopping at local stores, and engaging with small businesses easily in the rural areas.

Promote health and wellness: Many travel nurses actively participate in community outreach programs, educating residents about preventive healthcare and promoting healthy living practices, this way they can help residence to gain knowledge about their health.

Challenged they face along with the opportunity they 

As travel nurses are the crucial in rural healthcare but coming with opportunities, challenges are always on the way. They have to pass their knowledge to other nurses and healthcare professional to ensure the smooth process going forward. The short term training required careful planning and coordination. However, these challenges are far outweighed by the opportunities travel nurses present.

Wrapping up 

Travel nurses are the backbone of rural healthcare, ensuring that patients in underserved communities have access to the care they deserve. Their flexibility, diverse skillsets, and willingness to serve in remote locations make them invaluable assets in the fight for equitable access to healthcare across the nation. By acknowledging their contributions and fostering supportive work environments, we can further leverage the potential of travel nurses to strengthen the future of rural healthcare.

If you are the one who is seeking for the job as a travel nurse- MedCadre travel nurse staffing agency can help you. We have a list of 1000+ jobs as a travel nurse in the USA. You just need to drop us your CV so we can check your profile, along with your requirement, so we can help to find the right travel nurse job that matches your requirements perfectly.

[emeto-secret-agent]

Not a request but what do you think of a Swap AU where Florian is a mostly healthy prince while Celia is a still talented but sickly maid whose constantly rushing to the latrines but Florian keeps her around out of concern and to help her support her mother? What would that be like and how much would this affect "canon" dynamics?

Oh. My. God. Anon, you’re a genius.

First of all a productive Florian getting stuff done? Unbelievable. Unheard of. The shock of the court.

Okay but seriously, he’d be so much more productive, but not in paperwork, more like, getting more involved in the kingdom’s matters in a way that he can’t do now from behind his desk. Going a lot more out, attending balls and meetings even outside his country, would significantly affect his confidence. In our current dynamic (henceforth og timeline) a lot of Florian’s personality is dependent on his fear of losing control and becoming a failure, but these wouldn't matter right now. He’d be so much more confident and arrogant this way, as we take away his need to be humble about his position, his responsibilities, and overall about his life. He’d get a lot more physical too (not burdened with sickness that much) and Florian’s focus would move from the pace of diplomacy into warfare. Of course, this wouldn’t make him a blood-lusted king, but if negotiation isn’t working, he wouldn’t be afraid to solve it with violence. I think he’d be more of a knight-king, than the soft, diplomatic one that he’s going to turn into in the og timeline.

And Celia? Gosh, she’d be such an awkward, flustered mess all the time. That calm composition that she always wears would disappear so fast when she has to excuse herself to the chambers all the time while she tries to nurse others. She’s so lucky that she’s still talented, otherwise who’d trust a maid who can’t stay healthy for her own good? She’d be so much more submissive too, letting the sicknesses treat her like a sadist lover, and even enjoying it. I can see her turning fundamentally more sexual, leaning into the pathetic but hot maid of the prince category. Celia also would have to be more grateful to Florian, since she wouldn’t see him that often, but he still keeps her in his favor. Of course, this would mean more sexual composition for the prince, who gets a fast liking to this pathetic and ‘easy’ lover situationship they get going.

At first, they would be a perfect match, the more confident and controlling Florian, and the submissive but sensual Celia, who gets to have a kinky lover, and also financial help for her mother. But this is all they could have got. Without Florian actually depending on her, and developing *that* deep of a connection, they would never break out of the lover situation and would just become a famous king and maid lover situation in history. Florian would get married and he’d find an excellent husband for Celia too, but it would be an open secret, that Celia’s kids were never her husbands.

I think they would be quite happy like this for a while. Florian gets his emotional and sexual needs fulfilled, while Celia and her mother get a stable life in the court, and the king himself fulfills her sexual fantasies. That is while Florian is alive. I said that he’d like to go to war, didn’t I? So yeah, that man would get himself killed in a battle that is for sure. If they’re lucky, he has legitimate children from the queen, and Celia’s bastard kids wouldn’t want to fight for the throne. If they’re not, well… Celia’s only option is to go to her husband’s land (that is if he didn’t also die in the battle) and pray, that the nobles don’t kill her children in a fight for the throne.

Sooo yea. I love this dynamic though, so thank you Anon for making me think about this! It's such an exciting concept, and I love thinking about Florian’s and Celia’s personalities in a bit different way.

If I had time, I’d say that feel free to send in requests with this Swap AU but sadly I’m glad I can stay alive next to uni rn,,, So maybe someday! I’ll get to go back to writing and we’ll explore more of this too~

[spidine]

Honestly torn up on which of the Skill pitches I like most. There are a lot I like about each but then there also the gripes. Lemme get into them

I also really wish the skills weren’t so utility focused. I don’t think the game needs anymore utility. I’d rather have fun skills to train that are useless than really useful skills that are boring to train (and potentially make so much utility that they make other skills more boring). But I think the osrs team knows this and will balance around it best they can.

Taming has very strong appeal, a persistent animal companion would be a very cool system with a ton of upsides. Problem is all the potential headaches; having the right pet for a given activity, in game area becoming twice as crowded from people having companions. Like if they found a way to make it so having a pet isn’t totally meta defining and the game screen doesn’t get overloaded with player companions I could see myself voting for this one but rn it mostly seems like a lot of work for a few new tools.

Sailing obviously just…. Has so much being promised with it, like brand new in engine mechanics and zones. Mostly this one tempts me cause I wanna go to cool new places in the game world. The biggest horror is adding a moving vehicle to the game engine, and I don’t think players will like the reality of what that would look like in game because every dumb ass content creator’s mind has been running wild with this. I’m sure it’ll be better than bone voyage sailing but this seems like it would take the longest of any skill to make, and most of that work would hardly even be the skill itself. The jagex pitch just mentions “activities at sea” which are too vague for me, I know they gotta keep it top level at this stage but I need someone to walk through an actual gameplay loop so I know what’s in mind. To me finding new fishing spots isn’t sailing, it’s fishing on a boat, and fighting sea monsters is combat on a boat.

I think this sketch on the pitch gives me the most hope for what it could be. Like Sailing itself could be interactive and challenging like in Sea of Thieves, and through that sort of performance reaching a destination despite all the obstacles getting experience would make sense and feel rewarding. Also pirate content is fun.

Shamanism feels really compelling to me. As a skiller who wants to see more growth in the field ai think totems could work well in place of skilling prayers since they’d have no associated stats and would work off set durations. They could also have the added limitation of only working as long as you stay in the area they’re placed. But that’s conjecture since they haven’t decided on what totems do yet. I think the spirit world stuff sounds cool but otherwise the means of training could use more work. Also the Augment system would be a real non-starter I think. Like if it’s straight up wow style enchanting that’s an AWFUL idea, gear should be quickly recognizable and adding extra layers of buffing and imbuing gear is anti-fun. The only thing that would make like Augmenting is if it fundamentally changed the piece of gear, including visuals, but then that doesn’t seem like a specific skill would be needed to do that.

This stage is largely about the fantasy of the skills with more details later. So right now based on that I think I like sailing best with shamanisn close second and taming a further back third.

BUT

Here’s my bold idea….

Combine Taming and Shaman.

Hear me out.

While companions everywhere could be a pain in the overworld, what if you had a pet intended to help you traverse the spirit world. Instead of a tamed companion you could attune to a spirit guide, which would be a helpful companion in the spirit world. And doing certain tasks with the spirit guide could yield shaman xp.

THINK ABOUT IT.

[theimaginatrix27]

I just posted a fanfic I've been letting stew in my mind for a decade and a half, because getting the beginning just right was way harder than I thought, but I've actually gotten somewhere with it, and am glad I finally have something to show for my claims of writerly aspirations.

I do not have a chapter buffer. I wrote three chapters in NaNoWriMo and then decided I was posting on Christmas, and did it, with some polish.

This fic is long. I wrote up a list of all the planned books in the series, and there are like, eleven of them. I have no idea at this point how long any of them will be. I do not know what a year's worth of chapters is even going to look like.

I often come up against the type of "writer's block" where I don't know quite how to continue the story because I know where we're going but there's a connecty bit I need to pace the story out or it'll feel wrong. Either that or I don't know how to continue the story because I changed part of it in the previous book or earlier chapters, and now I have to rewrite those bits to get an idea of what hasn't been covered yet at the point where I was at before making the change. (That's where my original novel series is at rn and I've been stuck on how to deal with that for over a year now. So I have not been writing it.)

With this fic project, though, I've at least decided I won't be changing anything fundamentally once it's been posted publicly, and I'm kind of hoping doing this will train me into pushing on with things.

I literally can't do a buffer right now though unless inspiration strikes. I'm trying to do what another favourite fic author does and post about 1k words per day on a forum thread for the purposes of beta-ing and keeping myself on-schedule. So far, it's worked, but also nobody has commented on the thread and I'm a little sad about that, but it's only been a week since that went up.

My fanfic has no comments yet on AO3 either, though, and it's been up for two. Maybe it's just too early in the story for anyone to have thoughts on it?

Anyways, my point was that I really don't have the patience for chapter buffers unless it's original and not about to be posted anywhere. Once I finish a fic chapter I want to post it, because I was writing a fic for a while where I could go more than a year without updating, and any completed chapter was a victory. It's ... still ongoing, but mostly because I've started editing it now, and then been procrastinating on that, but the edit has meant I can't continue the story until the more polished earlier sections catch up to the bits I'm happy enough with to leave alone.

And please don't tell me to stick to one project until it's done, all my projects are too long for that to be a viable approach for me and I have so many stories... And I write scenes out of chronological order when they're vivid in my mind and I don't want to lose them, but of course without the connective tissue I can't post anything for those stories...

Derin, you once said that posting consistently in a web series is very important for the growth of audience. But how do you keep yourself motivated to create stories on schedule? Whenever I try to do it, I just lose motivation and get stressed out or bored with my project

My answer is to have a big buffer. I aim to have a buffer of at least one year's worth of chapters. That way, I can take a month or two off every now and then to avoid burnout. It is also far, far less stressful. Not having a buffer is the most stressful thing a writer can do, do not do that.

So far as long-term sticking to projects goes, there's a few skills involved here and all of them involve a lot of practice. The first thing is what I call the Shiny New Fruit problem. This is something you see pretty much every newbie writer doing -- they get a great idea for a story, they know how it's gonna start, they have a cool premise and a twist that's gonna BLOW EVERYONE'S MIND, it'll be great! They start writing! Their first chapter is cool and unique and full of promise, and they get great feedback, and they move onto the second chapter and it's also great, and...

Quite quickly, they run out of "great chapters". Most of the time, the start of your story is low hanging fruit, so far as writing goes -- it's where you get to introduce all your cool concepts and you're not weighed down by anything established yet and all the Cool Stuff That's Gonna Happen is still in the future, it's your perfect imagined version of it and not the (usually worse) version that ends up on the page. Then you run out of low hanging fruit, and it gets slower and harder, and you have to do a lot more actual work and it doesn't feel so new and exciting any more, and a newbie writer thinks, "oh, this isn't as fun, the story feels more boring to write, that part didn't come out as well as I'd hoped -- this story must be bad". And sometimes they might give up right away. Or instead they might continue... but they're distracted, because solving the issue of how to get those two guys out of prison in chapter 6 just gave them the BEST idea for a different story, it's gonna be so much better, the characters are great and they can already feel the words pouring out of them and...

So they run off to pick the low-hanging fruit for their new story, and before they know it, they have nine unfinished stories on their hard drive and not a completed story to their name.

Every writer will get distracted and enthused about new ideas for projects. This isn't a newbie problem. The newbie problem is letting them tempt you away from the viable projects you're already working on so that nothing gets done. My solution to this is very simple -- I am not allowed to write my future projects until I finish my current one. This way, all that enthusiasm for the future project is transmuted into motivation for the current one -- I can write that cool story about a bug alien who adopts and astronaut but first I have to push through the slow part of this story and get this story finished. This has always worked really well for me.

The second reason that you might lose motivation for a story you're working on is that the story is indeed bad, or at least, the version of it incubating in your mind isn't ready yet. The problem with this is that every story feels bad when you're bored or frustrated with it, and it takes a lot of practice to tell the difference between a genuine dud idea and one that your brain is lying to you about because it wants to play computer games instead. My advice on these is to push through anyway -- it almost certainly isn't a dud idea, and if it is, you'll learn way more by completing it than abandoning it.

The third reason is burnout. Now, it's important to note that everyone is bored and frustrated with their stories sometimes. I got sick of writing space intrigue and took a month off to play Subnautica (I could afford to do this with no stress because of my massive chapter buffer), then came back when I felt like it -- that isn't burnout. I've procrastinated for weeks before because I'm up to a really complicated scene with a lot of emotional beats and new information and it's hard to write so I don't wanna -- that isn't burnout. Burnout is what you get when you don't manage these things properly for way too long and grind your brain to paste. I have a lot of tips for avoiding burnout, but they'd take a long time to explain, so all I'll say here is that learning to recognise and avoid burnout is a skill that you will gain with experience.

The fourth reason that people get bored and frustrated is that writing is a skill, and it's a lot harder to do than it looks. Writing when you're not in Full Inspiration Mode is exhausting. It's difficult. It almost always looked worse on the page than you expected; your favourite authors do so much better than this, why doesn't your work look like theirs? It's just words! You know words!

This one trips a lot of newbies up, because in Full Inspiration Mode, writing is easy. someone can have five chapters pour out of them in that mode, and then look at their page two days later and go, "huh, writing is so much harder today". then they'll call that "writer's block" (that is NOT writer's block) and decide to write again when they "feel inspired".

Do not do this. It's a trap. If you only write when you're inspired, you will not succeed as a writer. Take advantage of your periods of inspiration, obviously, but writers must learn to forge ahead without them, because they're going to get fewer and smaller as the low hanging fruit all get picked and you simply will not keep up with a schedule relying on them, whether it's a web serial update schedule or a deadline given to you by a publisher or simply the desire to have a manuscript ready to pitch to an agent before you die of old age. The world is full of people who are "writing a book" and have been doing so for thirty years with almost no progress. If you want to finish, you need to write when it's a bit tricky, when it's a bit boring, when you're not inspired at all and aren't entirely certain where things are going. Fortunately this, like everything else here, is a skill that is honed with practice.

So, yeah. That's my advice. Have a chapter buffer, the bigger the better. Make sure that your writing pace is faster than your publication pace. Avoid these quitting/stopping pitfalls. That's pretty much it.

[bbmyungho]

s. coups as your boyfriend

confession

he feels like he's gonna throw up ong

he's pretty shy and timid at first but when he realizes you aren't like,,, repulsed or turning him down or whatever he instantly gains so much confidence

tries to act like he wasn't just quivering in his boots lmao

already has like your first three dates planned out in his head before you even finish accepting he's so ready

dates, skinship, etc.

mostly just cute, low effort dates

it's not that you're not worth the effort, it's that jeonghan's rubbed off on him too much and now he's fundamentally much lazier and laidback than he used to be

i think to him, a date's a date either way; he's a simple guy with simple needs and you are the need y'know

of course he'll treat you out on occasion or plan something really elaborate for you, but for the most part, i think it'll be more casual

i think he really loves skinship but is really uncomfortable showing it, at least at first

he likes to rub your head or shoulders, cuddle you, etc etc

he just likes to take care of you in every way he can possibly think of, even in the small physical shows of affection he makes

he's constantly thinking about your comfort and how he can make you feel less tense

i don't think you two talk much tho

like, you talk about your days and all that small casual stuff, but a lot of the times, words aren't needed

you just work together, like two sides of the same coin

you're always free to vent to each other or go off on a tangent on the rare occasion that you feel the need, but i think your relationship would ideally be based in a more quiet and comforting sense than a constant communication and exploration one

the type of bf to tie your shoes for you or like put his jacket down so you don’t have to sit in the grass or walk in a puddle </3 (this thought is literally what made me write this rn)

he’s literally your biggest fan and you are his :(

arguments

what can i say, he’s a leo

plus we just know already that cheol is NOT averse to some controversy

he’s very stubborn, opinionated, and has a pretty good amount of pride in him

i think that he’s the type to like walk out and go to the dorms

he’ll come back and work it out later ofc but like in the moment he feels scattered and he doesn’t want to say something the wrong way and unintentionally hurt you

he does feel sorry whenever you two argue (like more than the average person y’know) tho, so i imagine he’ll be very touchy and comforting after arguments to try and make up for it

overall rating: 10/fucking 10, PLS, PLS GIVE ME A CHANCE (no but fr he’s just a really loving and comforting boyfriend and he has so much love to give)