#OH ALMOST FORGOT

[obstinaterixatrix]

I recently got my first office job where I am interacting with my coworkers regularly. do you have any evil conversation skills that you think i should learn first

1. Figure out the easiest/most comfortable ways to say the whole spectrum of soft no’s to hard no’s from a scale of ‘genuine regret (invites future attempts if scheduling allows)’ to ‘polite deferral (respectful and evasive, somewhat firm)’ to ‘stone-cold shut down (professional Fuck You)’; you gotta know them all and you gotta be able to deploy them as needed. or at the very least, you gotta know how to give yourself time so you don’t automatically say ‘yes’ when you don’t want to.

2. The easiest way to make a good impression on people is to balance being useful and making others feel useful, which means offering some of the specific knowledge/insight you have and also asking for/acknowledging the knowledge/insight of others. offering/asking can be a weird balance, sometimes for some people in some contexts it comes pretty naturally, other times I find myself parsing out one (1) resource bit by bit to gauge whether someone’s actually looking for it or if it’s received in a lukewarm way. If ‘useful’ can’t really be a selling point at the moment (e.g. starting with zero experience rather than having an established knowledge base in a new environment) then you can always swap out ‘useful’ for ‘interesting’. know a charm point you have that can hook other people’s interest, know how to find and highlight other people’s charm points. If you want a mutual relationship it’s better to make an effort to share equally (for some people that means intentionally holding back, for other people that means intentionally speaking more), but if you’re just trying to coast it’s usually easiest to keep turning the conversation back on them and track topics the other person can get chatty about (pets, kids, shows, how they’re doing, etc).

hang on those are too reasonable and not evil but I’ve typed it all out so I’m not deleting. so, there’s a bunch of worksheets about ‘rules for fighting fair’ and if you ever meet a coworker you fucking hate then you wanna take those rules and do the opposite of all of them in order to have an on-purpose bad faith conversation and to make it as miserable for everyone as possible

1. If the coworker you hate is trying to talk about one specific problem, disagree with whatever their definition is and refuse to compromise

2. Bring in as many stupid tangential asides as possible so their original point gets buried

3. If you want to be legit evil, always imply or directly state that whatever they’re going through is a personal problem and a Skill Issue

4. Always find a way to vaguely disagree with your coworker. If they have a good point, say ‘Well, no, it’s actually like [basically rephrasing their point]’; you can either be subtle about this (negging) or blatant about this (The Mansplainer)

5. There’s a limit to how disrespectful anyone can be as a new employee. Find that limit and keep just short of it.

6. Always deflect and blame someone else, or if there isn’t someone to blame, have different excuses at the ready for anything that anyone might take issue with.

to some, evil communication skills is to win. but I think the most successful (insufferable) application is when the point is to make everyone as miserable as possible. I’m not trapped here with you, You’re Trapped Here With Me. also I wouldn’t actually recommend doing many of these things if you want functional working relationships. but it’s good to keep in mind if you’re ready to go nuclear! but more seriously, I do think these are important evil communication skills to learn because if you recognize someone using them against you, it gives you the chance to make strategies based on their behavior. 1. If someone is disagreeing with you any time you try to express a problem, shut down the conversation and reengage with a mediator that will be fair to you; 2. if stupid tangents keep showing up, it’s up to you to be the terrier with its teeth sunk into the mailman’s leg; etc. anyway this has gone too long and someone else should probably be giving more legit advice

[foggythefandomgremlin]

Just realized that I spent almost two hours just staring at the ceiling and thinking about a FavreMySabre au

[f0rtuned]

hi ok yay!

so we’d like a springtrap centered stimboard, ofc, with gear, old tech, and fidget stims! only preference is no food stims, especially icing. thank you!

-🪑 collective

Springtrap stimboard for 🪑 collective!

reblogs>>>likes

[onlythebravest]

Niall's instagram story, Oct 15 2023

[scrambled-eggnog]

I actually don’t have any finished art of my ocs right now :[ I’ll post more doodles of them when I have the time to draw

[desertsquiet]

Album of the year

1973

Runners up:

Winner: GP - Gram Parsons

[heyjadesprite]

oh my fuck wait. do i have a crush ON SOMEOEN

[kir8s-moved]

☕️ promare

die

[kuro-misaki]

i had a weird dream, aang katara and sokka were fighting zuko in my backyard

then something i don't remember happened that stopped the fight and made them cooperate, then zuko invited them to his house cuz he wanted to show them he wasn't the monster they thought he was

but while in there he suddenly had some royalty business to attend to so he went away and meanwhile for some reason aang and sokka disappeared and katara was the only one there and she went to investigate the house to try and find dirt on zuko and she found something so damn good she took it and decided to leave before zuko came back, i don't remember what was the so important thing she found

then zuko came back and katara was gone and he started crying cuz he wanted the gang to like him

[neverheardnothing]

new frog species makes the sound “peee peee peee”

i’ve found nato’s favorite animal on this earth.

[chrisscrossart]

I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween! And I figured since it’s a holiday and I’ll probably be wasted later I thought I’d throw together an NSFW twitter for whatever junk I can’t post here. I’ll throw more stuff on there later or something but I just threw up one simple Billy thing for now.

[thaknows]

She’s totally living on his dime - her ‘career’ hasn’t even started properly yet & shes now 30. She won’t even earn anything from her single as she didn’t write/produce it etc. She hasn’t done anything really since her Voice days & still wears the same high st clothes that she’s worn for years. She’s more like a paid companion than partner. He showed previous gf’s off loud & proud but he seems to hide Frenchy away.

Yeah exactly everyone with 2 eyes and a brain can see this lol What bothers me most is the ppl acting like she is some kind of saint and putting on a pedestal attacking everyone who criticise a bit I mean I think they annoy me more than herself tbh

[tenlittleroosters]

"What would you do for a Klondike bar" Ray Narvaez Jr.

[quillswift]

I heard there was backlash after season six.What did it contain?I also first saw Cas on a YouTube video.

Yes, that’s right. There was an angry/concerned buzz after Season 6. Basically people took to writing letters and sending emails, and generally made their feelings known on the internet. The Save Castiel campaign and Letters to Cas (which ended up in a book given to Misha!) were two notable movements to come out of that during the hiatus.

Many fans reacted negatively to the S6 storyline and the Godstiel/evil!Cas situation we were left with – only natural, seeing that a beloved character had apparently just been destroyed for no reason. But the backlash also related to showrunner shenanigans – SG and co. really did not endear themselves to fandom with the way they handled things.

Castiel’s fate and Misha’s future on the show has always hung in the balance, so imagine the fan tension as his S6 arc headed towards a possibly disastrous close and articles like this were circulating. And yes, I believe that the blind item referred to Castiel. As far as I’m aware it was never recalled and confirmed, which fits with a last minute change in decision that I am pretty damn sure was only due to the overwhelming fan outcry. Also, this notes both that the original plan was for Castiel to die in Season 6 before the producers revised their position, and that Misha got word, from Warner Bros., of the flood of feedback.

At a con, James Marsters (famously of Buffy, played a witch in Season 7) brought up Castiel as “a character that recently they’d moved beyond, and they may have need for another supernatural character that might come in to help them every once in awhile…It depends on if the ‘writers,’ actually, feel like they need another supernatural character that does that. Uh, they might have eliminated Castiel because they ‘didn’t’ need that.” And did you know that 6x20 showing Castiel’s perspective – Raphael’s threat, Castiel’s thought process - only came to be because of Ben Edlund and Misha intervening to say, hey, shouldn’t Castiel get a word in? That otherwise we would have gotten a completely inappropriate ‘Ruby’ ending for this character? I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.

In short: Cas was always meant to be dead as a doornail dead, dead and in disgrace, and he was only revived by a miracle.

I actually didn’t think that Season 6’s ending necessarily meant that Cas would simply be assassinated. I wasn’t happy about how things went down, but there were still a dozen places they could have taken Godstiel, ways they could have redeemed the characters (I say ‘the characters’ and not ‘Castiel’ by design). Normally if you go against the Word of God Winchester on this show, you’re destined for a quick death. But it was hard to believe they could throw such an amazing character away.

Fans held their breath waiting for news from the CW UpFronts, prior to the S6 finale – essentially the official press release for the next season. The description is always vague and same-ish, but it would have an updated actor listing. There wasn’t exactly an expectation that Misha would be a regular again, but his being so would reassure fans that he would at least be a presence in Season 7. Sure enough, the release came out with “stars…Misha Collins as Castiel”.

Well, it turns out that they lied. And further, they lied consciously, so that fans would not be put off from watching the finale. Within hours of the finale airing, an article was released saying that he wasn’t in fact coming back as a regular. You’ll also see that SG pretty much confirms that Cas is a goner by ‘everyone weaves in and out of the story with the exception of Sam and Dean’, while at the same time dangling the prospect of a possible return in fans’ faces. (A lot of people say that ‘dead is not dead’ on SPN, but who actually comes back in any significant capacity once they’ve properly died?) There is also the misleading – if not blatantly untruthful – “very pivotal moment in Cas’ development…that’s what we’ll be exploring next season”.

I’ll just link my post here, too, with several links to interviews which rubbed salt into the wound and seemed to get worse and worse in terms of describing Castiel’s role.  And that’s not even mentioning the – once again – utterly misleading description for 7x02.

Yes, reasonable coyness is to be expected when it comes to shows. Of course showrunners don’t want to spoil upcoming episodes and plot twists. But there’s a line between playfulness & leaving open possibilities and disrespecting your audience, and I think repeatedly lying about a specific thing because you obviously fear that your decision will be so widely unpopular and unacceptable that people will tune out if they only knew the truth – I think that crosses the line.

Given all of that, I would have been surprised if there hadn’t been a backlash. For some of us this has turned into a ‘careful what you wish for’ situation, but I think it’s inarguable that the campaigns achieved what they set out to in the broadest sense. That is, Cas is still on the show.