#am ready for that conversation

[snekthedemonnoodle]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEVER ENDING SONG, THE FIRST SINGLE FROM FOUND HEAVEN AND ONE OF MY FAVORITE CONAN SONGS🫶 I LOVE U⭐️

[inkskinned]

there are a lot of posts out there that are positive and healthy coping mechanisms for handling the holidays. this is not one of them :)

i think there's like. going to be times in your life you will be stuck in a social situation that you cannot escape from gracefully. i do not know why the internet doesn't believe these times exist. it's not always just that your physical safety is at risk - sometimes it's legit like "i just don't currently have the energy or time to put in the effort of responding to this." sometimes it's a coworker you hate so much. sometimes it's just like, fine, you know? like you know you can handle your aunt when she's cheerily horrible, but if you actually set a boundary around her, it's going to be weeks of fallout with your father.

i don't know why people think the answer is always just "cut them out!" or "don't let them get away with that!" because ... the real world is tricky and complicated. i think kind of a lot of us have an internal "radiation poisoning" meter for certain people. like - i'm talking about the ones who are absolutely giving you gradual ick damage. like, you can handle them, but you'll be exhausted.

and yes. you absolutely should listen to your therapist and the good posts about handling others and set good boundaries and take care of yourself. prioritize peace.

HOWEVER :) ...... since im often in a situation with a Gradual Sense of Ick person i cannot just "cut out" of my life (without losing someone else precious to me) - i have sort of developed the most. maladaptive form of mischief possible. because like, if i'm going to have to listen to this shit again, i like to have a little bit of private fun with it.

now! again, i am physically safe, just mentally drained by this man. you should only do this with people you are not in danger with. which leads me to my suggestions for when your Unfortunate Acquaintance shows up and says oh everyone pay attention to me.

my favorite word is "maybe!" said as brightly and happily as possible. whenever the Horrible Person starts in on a topic you do not want to go further with, particularly if they make a claim that you know to be inaccurate, do not respond to it. you and i have both tried to actually argue with this person, and it hasn't gone well, because this person just wants the drama of an argument. however, "maybe!" gives them literally nothing to go on. it is incredibly disarming. they are used to people having some response. they know they can't prove what they're saying, and maybe! treats them like the child they are. it dismisses them in the politest way possible.

i like to say maybe! and then, in their stunned silence, immediately change the subject. this is because i have adhd and i will have something unrelated to talk about, but if you can't think of topics fast enough, i recommend just pointing to something and saying, "isn't that lovely?" because fuck you let's bring in some positivity.

by the way. that second trick - of pointing to something and stating an opinion about it? - that just works on its own, like, 70% of the time. i picked it up from teaching preschoolers. it's an intentional "redirect". it stops children crying and it also stops grown adults from finishing their explanation on why women belong in kitchens. dual wielding!

keep it silly for yourself. i absolutely do not care if people think i'm fucking stupid (it's more fun if they do) and as a result i will purposefully misunderstand things just to see how long it takes them to realize i've completely removed them from the subject at hand. when they say "women aren't funny" i get to be like. "which women." "all women." "all women in america?" "no in the world." "like the mole people? the people in the world?" "what? no. like, alive." "oh are we not counting the mole people?" "what the fuck are you talking about." "you don't believe in the mole people?"

similarly, i play a personal game called "one up me." my Evil Acquaintance literally knows this game exists (my family & friends caught onto it and now also play it) and it always fucking gets him. i don't know why. you have to be willing to be a little free-spirited on this one, though. the trick is that when they make one of those horrible little bigoted or annoying comments they are always making, you need to go one unit weirder. not more intense, mind you - just more weird. "you don't look good in that dress." "yeah, actually, my other dress was covered in squid ink due to a mishap at the soup store." "you shouldn't wear such revealing clothes." "wait, what? oh shit. sorry, your son tears off strips when no one is looking and eats them. i swear it was longer before we left the building."

the point of "one up me" is to completely upend this person's narrative. we both know this person likes setting up situations where you cannot "win" and then they really like telling other people how badly you handled it. in a usual situation, if you respond "please don't say something that rude", you're a bitch. but if you let it happen, you're letting yourself be debased. they are not usually expecting door number three: unflappably odd. because what are they going to say when they're telling everyone how badly you behaved? "she said my son eats her dresses" ".... okay?"

if you can, form an allyship with someone whomst you can tagteam with. where they can pick up on your weird "soup store" story and run with it.

the following phrase is amazing and can be deployed for any situation: "oh, be nice :) it's the holidays!" i do not know why this works as often as it does. i'll say it for the most random shit. i think this is bc most of the time these people know they're being impolite, they just like to fight.

godbless. when in doubt, remember that you could always start stealing their pens.

the whole point of this is - if you can't escape. maybe see how long you can just be. like. a horrible little menace.

[fuctacles]

That deal with the devil/fae post where they want the summoner's first born in exchange, and the summoner goes "ok when do we start" BUT STEDDIE WITH STEVIE

She hasn't given up on that 6 nuggets dream but it's became quadruple hard now that she's transitioning, both because of dating and the technical stuff. So she figures, I'll ask a magical being for the right plumbing and it'll all be smooth(er) sailing from there.

Eddie the Banished is the demon, and he's like "of course sweetheart, but I get dibs on the first off spring".

And Stevie gets all red and stuttery at first but she is desperate and she figures, the sooner the better, and since he's already here and offering, she asks "Would you want to do all six?"

[violet-viriditas]

A lot of heated policy discussion actually comes down to (1) differences in what we think the law should do and (2) whether the law is actually an effective mechanism to do whatever that is.

But we as a society don’t want to acknowledge that there even are different philosophies of law so guess we will just all keep talking past each other

[sadclowncentral]

I haven't heared the door knobs and fascism thing before, can you elaborate?

gladly! i was referencing one of the aphorisms by Theodor W. Adorno, Do Not Knock, one of my favourite philosophical texts, certainly top 5.

I would summarise it for you, but it's quite a short text and i am not embarrassing myself by trying to summarise Adorno, so I have transcribed it for you under the cut:

60. Do Not Knock

Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men. It expels from movements all hesitation, deliberation, civility. It subjects them to the implacable, as it were ahistorical demands of objects, Thus the ability is lost, for example, to close a door quietly and discreetly, yet firmly. Those of cars and refrigerators have to be slammed, others have the tendency to snap shut by themselves, imposing on those entering the bad manners of not looking behind them, not shielding the interior of the house which receives them. The new human type cannot be properly understood without awareness of what the is continuously exposed to from the world of things about him, even in his most secret innervations.

What does it mean for the subject that there are no more casements windows to open, but only sliding frames to shove, not gentle latches but turnable handles, no forecourt, no doorstep before the street, no wall around the garden? And which diver is not tempted, merely but the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street pedestrians, children and cyclists? The movements machines demand of their users already have the violent, hard-hitting, unresting jerkiness of Fascist maltreatment.

Not least to blame for the withering of experience is the fact that things, under the law of pure functionality, assume a form that limits contact with them to mere operation, and tolerates no surplus, either in freedom of conduct or in autonomy of things, which would survive as the core of experience, because it is not consumed by the moment of action.

[silverhalla]

Back at it again with another theory: What if Lucanis’ betrayal wasn’t a betrayal at all?

(obviously, spoilers below the cut)

During The Wigmaker Job, we have some dialogue between Illario and Lucanis about their position within both the Crows and the Dellamorte family. Illario wants Caterina to step down so he can take the coveted First Talon spot. Lucanis reassures him that his time is coming, to which Illario makes a snide comment about whether his cousin would ever go against their grandmother’s wishes. When they continue the conversation after the job, Illario states that Lucanis is the potential heir, that he’s her favorite, and that he’s unlikely to say no to her. Lucanis doesn’t argue, only insists that he doesn’t want to be First Talon, and that he hopes she’ll see reason before that. It’s mentioned again in Eight Little Talons - Caterina favors Lucanis. It’s well-known enough among the Crows that Viago and Teia discuss it in front of her (not on purpose, but she doesn’t deny it). He’s her prodigy through and through.

In the opening scene for the Lucanis quest in Veilguard, Caterina is poised, as you’d expect of the First Talon. She’s certain that the body they buried wasn’t her grandson, that it had been altered with blood magic. She doesn’t pose it as a theory, though: she poses it as a fact. It could, of course, merely be her confidence, but there’s another very unusual aspect to the scene – everyone else discusses how Lucanis was clearly betrayed, that someone must have sold him out in order for the Venatori to capture him. Caterina is the only one in that room who never speaks on it. She doesn’t ask for justice, doesn’t mention vengeance, never acknowledges that her grandson was sold out by someone he trusted – perhaps because he wasn’t. 

What if, when Caterina comes to him with a plan, with an impossible request, he’s still her favorite prodigal grandchild, and he still does whatever she asks? She’s had him tortured before as a child, has tortured and starved and beaten him herself before, because it makes him stronger and more resistant to it in the future. He says in The Wigmaker Job that he used to hate her for it, but now he understands. He justifies it. All Crows justify it, because they have to - if they don’t, then the cruelty wasn’t for survival’s sake, and their suffering meant nothing. Perhaps he doesn’t even question it. When Caterina tells him that she has a job for him, he takes it. 

What if the contract has a caveat? Sure, Calivan must die by his hand by the end of it, a little treat for a job well done, but what if his primary mission is reconnaissance, is discovery? The Venatori are using blood magic to torture and corrupt prisoners. It would behoove the Crows to find out what it entails and how to resist it, before it’s turned back on them. It would have to be someone so deeply, unabashedly loyal to her that when she asked them to infiltrate a Venatori prison, expecting torture at best, their own death at worst, they’d take the job anyway, no questions asked - someone Caterina can trust, certainly, but also someone who has never once said no to her.

And Lucanis has always been a loyal grandson. 

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Collection of edits from this comic with Disco Elysium dialogue.

[kinokoshoujoart]

the coolest kids in forgotten valley!!☆

(…it seems there may have been a stretch of time where rock and lumina were the only kids in forgotten valley…🥲)

poseref

[blorb-el]

so apparently. dc editorial/carmine infantino decided bruce wayne was gay. in the early 1970s. and then every single bronze age writer proceeded to ignore it. no one actually followed through. if elliot s! maggin's recollection from 40 years later is accurate.

“No you don’t understand, Elliot,” Archie interrupted me. “This morning Bruce Wayne was a millionaire playboy who wasn’t gay, but now he is gay.” “Really?” I said. “Yeah,” Julie said. “So from now on Bruce Wayne is gay, until further notice.”

[teratophilex]

So like when are we ready to address that Izutsumi is technically a zoophile

[emixion]

The way this fandom completely ignores the themes of privilege and classism in this show and mistreats the main character and catalyst to the entire plot in favor of her narrative foil who represents the oppressive system they live in and the irony of its inherent flaws, proving the point of the show’s entire message about bias should frankly be studied.

[calciumcryptid]

It boggles my mind that people treat Vegas being into BDSM as a sign of him being a red flag when it is one of the healthiest aspects of his character.

[monsterfuckermilligan]

i have a theory that the baby!jack fanaticism in the fandom partly comes from the fact that on june 26th, 2017 (less than two months after jack was introduced as a character) the us supreme court ruled that queer couples were allowed to adopt in all 50 states. so naturally, as kelly died giving birth to jack, dean was in the midst of his widower arc, and the fandom thought that jack was going to be a baby, we had a wave of romanticization of infant adoption for destiel.

[starstruckspocks]

jon?

Something is different, but he cannot be quite sure what, exactly.

Everything is… more linear than it was Before. He still Knows, quite in a way like he did Before, but it is finite, clear, manmade. It does not come from fear, but curiosity. A wide web of knowledge, rattling around in the dark of him, and what even is dark to a thing that cannot perceive it? A lack, perhaps, an unbeing, a noticable absence where there should be merely an ordinary kind of nothing.

He has a voice. And there is something he desperately, desperately needs to say, but there are no words that are his own, and every sentence he speaks he borrows, and they are each one of them painted with fear and confusion and loneliness and huntedness and a watchful eye.

He is also not alone, never alone. There are voices all around him, nice ones, chatting, making tea, fighting, changing, and only some voices stay the same, have been the same since… well, since when? Since when has he been… like this? It gets hard to think like this, sometimes – to assign a point in time to a moment and to file them away together. A collection of information, disorganised, lost, confused, perhaps deliberately so. It feels achingly familiar.

And sometimes, he hears something like himself speak in a different voice, even when he does not talk. And even though the words are borrowed too, taken from throats and fingers to be forgotten, they feel like coming home, simply because they were said in that soft, cruel tone. A familiar melody, slipping through wires and speakers and programmes like it was made for this, but it wasn’t, was it? It might’ve been.

And this brings him comfort, of course it does, except he must be trapped, right? Because why can he not say his own words, when he has so many of them? He is not lonely, but he is alone with the thoughts he cannot voice, the words that have no mouth, the things that cannot be said. It hasn't always been like that, has it?

Something is different Now from how it was Before, at least. He Knows everything, but he knows nothing of truth, and knows nothing at all, but the difference to What Was seems clear, in a clumsy, calculated way. Something is hiding, quite badly, behind a blurred vision that he does not have, behind lines of numbers and letters, running for its life through old wires. He knows it lingers, he knows it is there. He just cannot make it out quite yet.

[who-is-page]

"You can't have [experience] because you don't identify as [label]!!!" how do I explain to people that experiences exist outside of and prior to the formation of specific language to talk about them

"You can't have [experience] because you don't think of it through [framework/explanation/etc]!!!" how do I explain to people that experiences exist outside of and prior to any formal cosmology, hypotheses, or explanation assigned to them

[igayorhm]

Realizing Fyodor has orchestrated all of this to not only obtain the tri-polar singularity but also to probably get Atsushi alone with no one to get in his way has got me shook.