#and i dont think im even justified in any logical way

[cinderbagels]

Lmao did dropout just drop the very first episode of a food competition show on Yom Kippur of all days???

These guys sure have their timing right (derogatory)

[maybelacrimosa]

Fastpass spoilers

I think one of the largest issues I have with Lore Olympus is Rachel Smythes tendency to ignore her favourite characters wrong doings or to try 'justify' them with poorly executed retcons. In the latest chapter we get yet another "Zeus bad" retcon that somehow feels worse than the prior "Zeus bad" moments. Im not going to deny Zeus is a very VERY flawed person in LO, I am all for Hera divorcing him. But here she is trying to justify the Metis/Zeus plot point by saying "oh she was protecting her daughter all along by sleeping with someone who she met when he was underage!!!!" That feels really creepy? I dont think she really considers the implications of the things she writes and thats not a good thing. She cant even try argue "oh kronos time shenanigans make it ok" or whatever stupid logic she might use because she has established his time powers had run out from his fight with Ouranos at that point in the story.

Like lets take the catastrophe that was the Dio birth arc, she tries to retroactively justify Persephone being a terrible midwife who steals a baby without letting the father hold him by being like "oh actually he didnt care about the baby he chose to carry in his leg for about 10 years Persephone was in the right!!!" instead of having her ask to take custody or do anything other than demanding she be given the baby like a few minutes after Zeus finished giving birth.

Its not just Zeus either, she tries to justify Persephone invading Leuces home by being like "Oh Leuce never really got any texts shes delusional!!!!" ignoring the fact that Leuce thought the texts were valid enough to show to Persephone when mrs pink tyrant was being a home invader and neglecting the baby she just stole a couple of hours ago. Dio is treated like a purse dog and we get some off hand comment where Persephone blames the neglect (which was so bad the child got into TARTARUS) on the sitter she hired rather than being like "oh I should have made actual arrangements for Dio instead of giving myself a makeover". Theres also the way she tried to claim Thanatos was as much to blame for Hades' terrible parenting as Hades was by being like "well the abandoned child had an attitude can you blame Hades for not being a good dad?" Like yes. Yes we can blame Hades, he was an ADULT and Thanatos was a CHILD.

I guess the point Im making is, if she wants her characters to be morally grey, she needs to stop twisting the narrative into a gordian knot to justify every bad thing her favourites do whilst condemning other characters as being 'the worst' like hold them all to the same standard and actually let them develop instead of making excuses.

[stilljuststardust]

hii i would need some advice.

after finding out about manifesting it became tricky for me to care about the 3D, not only in the good way but also the bad. like - I dont do stuff because i tell myself that I have it anyways you know. im still taking the Basic care of myself but i stopped studying and doing anything, I kinda just bedrot because "i already have it all" why would i do anything. I dont know how to battle that and logically tell myself to do something.

thank you

Why manifestation doesn't mean nothing matters:

I went through the same thing and the truth was that I cared very much about the 3D I just was depressed and deeply nihilistic.

I want to address the beliefs you've stated about manifestation but I think you should focus on the underlying mental health issue. This has all the traits of a depressive episode and should be treated as such. I am addressing the manifestation aspect because clearly it has been fueling your episode and I hope that this will help change your perspective even a little.

"the 3D doesn't matter" is a really common phrase. When I first heard it I wasn't familiar with loa and it was instead something a friend kept repeating. It scared the shit out of me.

The phrase is meant to convey that circumstances zre never able to prevent your manifestation and that you get to determine what you want in your reality regardless of whether or not it has physically manifested yet.

What it accidentally ended up becoming was "nothing is real nothing matters" which if you have any kind of mental health issue is a deeply triggering phrase.

The 3D isn't worthless it just isn't a factor in whether or not you can manifest something. The 3D is real. The 3D is something that matters because it matters to you.

The 4D isn't some mystical far off land, it's literally just your thoughts, visualizations, and internal experiences, and I doubt that those are all in alignment with your goals right now. When I was depressed my inner monologue was less "my life is so great" and more "why aren't I doing more" so that feeling piled up on itself and bled into my 3D until I wasn't doing anything.

The 3D is malleable and you can manifest anything within it yes but why should that mean you can't care about it? If you're manifesting it's probably because you care about your life and want it to improve.

To be clear I don't believe that nothing matters but even if it didn't why should that mean we give up on the things that make us happy? Nothing matters so do whatever the fuck you want. This doesn't make you happy so why should you do it if suffering is also meaningless?

The underlying mental health issue:

Disclaimer: I'm not a professional anything I say about depression is from personal experience. Please seek professional guidance.

This has all of the common signs of a depressive episode. It seems to me that you have a serious underlying mental health struggle and you've been using "nothing matters" as a way to justify staying in it.

I would like to start with: there is nothing wrong with you and this is not your fault.

There definitely was a time I thought the same way because I was scared to try to get better. Starting recovery can be scary because often there is a backwards comfort in leaning into it because you're no longer putting pressure on yourself to "do better".

"Nothing matters so why should I try" isn't loa, it's nihilism, and a very common mantra for those suffering with depression. You're not alone in thinking it.

If you want my advice as someone who's been there:

Obviously no advice I give you is going to cure you but I can give you tools that helped me.

Meet yourself where you're at. Don't try to go from bed rotting today to climbing a mountain tomorrow. It's like how you can't jump from the first level to the boss fight of the video game. You don't need to have all of it under control your goal should start one step above where you're at. So instead of a whole list of things you need to catch up with just start with showering or your hygiene. Keep that as your only goal until it's become a normal part of your life again and implement new goals in a similar way.

Every video I ever watched on self improvement overwhelmed me with everything I wasn't doing. The weight of my expectations for myself was the heaviest part of my episodes. Eventually I committed to the idea that I had only one responsibility and it was showering, anything else is just a bonus. Be kind to yourself. If all you change is the way you talk to yourself about it you will feel better. It's easy to fall into cycles of beating yourself up for everything you wish you were doing but that isn't benefitting you in any way. Give yourself some compassion.

Links

Against nihilism - john green

How to handle the 3D when manifesting

Mental health subliminal

[magpod-confessions]

Honestly i wanna hear opinions on season 4, cus im gonna confess i could NOT finish it (didnt move on to season 5 either lol). Got to like ep 135 & i just couldnt tell any of the episodes apart it felt like such a drag; just a slog of misery with some offhand Important 5 Minutes once in a blue moon. I hate repetition & i got the sparknotes from fandom/wiki stuff so yeahhh i just stopped listening; i still love TMA & it��s story & characters, it’s just the execution that got to me RIP

Everything felt kinda forced to me ig? Like there was some shoe-horned “humans are more monstrous than the actual monster” that snuffed S1 Jon’s fun cockiness/jackassery just to make him ? The best one in the archive ??? & all of his wrongdoings are either off-screen or justified by him being tricked into becoming a literal monster against his will (who would STARVE w/o his ‘evil-doings’, which didnt even kill ppl). Also felt like everyone got needlessly dumbed down except for Martin (the Love Interest ofc, who got 180’d from his pre-established incompetency to be some mastermind in a playing field he should have REALLY been inept in) just so they’d be blind to Jon’s situation & be mean to him LMAO

They started trying to make Jon accountable for “choosing this” & i couldnt handle it, held no fucking water to me—the guy being explicitly puppetted & manipulated as the entire plot? That guy is expected to take responsibility here? Felt like some after-thought theme they threw on top of it all. Anyways uhh feel free comment either on what i said and/or your personal thoughts on the season, or nothing if ya got nothing lol

🗣️

Ehh disagree. S4 isnt my fav but I dont think its bad. S1 Jon to s4 jon feels like natural character progression to me. He starts as acting all high and mighty to try hide the fact he has no idea what hes doing and is terrified, and then experiences a lot of ppl dying that he feels is due to him and is his responsibility. At that point his thought pattern is 'I keep messing up and making mistakes and getting myself and everyone around me hurt, so other ppl surely know better'. Hes got a lot of black and white thinking around him, which has been consistent throughout his entire characterization

I dont think any characters were dumbed down either

Melanie was always angry, she only go worse bc she had smth making her think everything she did was justified and when that stopped she became avoidant and stopped lashing out. She was still angry, just managing it better

Basira has always been Daisys no1, the person to justify all of Daisys actions. She knows what daisy did and why its bad but she holds onto the idea that daisy is right in doing so. She blames jon for what he does bc logically she knows its wrong, hurting ppl who havent done anything is wrong, but still excuses daisy bc she needs to. Bc that was a fact of her life and it cannot be wrong. In the unknowning she focuses on facts to keep her grounded and to her 'Daisy is a good person' 'Hurting ppl is wrong' and 'If you hurt ppl you are a bad person' are all facts she needs in her life to stay grounded. How she justifies Daisys actions is by saying that the ppl who daisy hurt were worse and it ultimately helps more ppl to have them gone. Not only can she not do that with Jon, as she believes those he hurts are entirely innocent, she also doesnt care to. Shes not close with Jon and she doesnt have 'Jon is a good person' as a fact in her mind, so she doesnt need to work to excuse his actions. Its all or nothing with her, if you hurt and continue hurting ppl, no matter your reason, you need to stop and the only way you will stop is if you are gone. She also has a lot of black and white thinking, gotta love the autism podcast

Martin being a mastermind in s4 also makes sense bc him being stupid is an act. If ppl think your stupid theyll underestimate you and ultimately leave you alone. They wont scrutinize you, they wont attack every part of you, they will brush it off as just a typical normal thing. It will get you ignored and you cannot be hurt if nobody knows who you are or how to hurt you. Its a lonely miserable existence but its one martins used to. Martin rarely drops the mask of 'Sweet but stupid' bc he needs that to survive and tbh he probably learnt that from needing to survive his mom LOL. Martin just knows and picks the best method of getting ppl to like him, which for him is doing exactly what they want and keeping their expectations low so they wont hurt him as much when they mess up. Honestly in s5 I see him as hes finally got to a place where he doesnt care if everyone hates him, bc he has someone who does and thats all he needs. Hes survived the worst of it and he doesnt care anymore

Part of the reason everyone blames Jon is bc he is there and he is the one who is currently causing the most problems. Also they dont actually see the extent that Jon is manipulated. Elias talks and interacts with Jon differently to how he interacts with others. All of them met Jon when he was already at the institute, they meet him when it does actually look like he made his choice, entirely of his own free will. It doesnt help that daisy is there, someone who completed their transformation like Jon did and turned back on it, and she looks like shes managing well enough. She is surviving without feeding so why cant Jon do the same? Also basira does trust elias on some level. She trusts he knows more than she does and can be an asset if used correctly, which definitely doesnt help things. Also the idea of Elias is locked up, he cant affect Jon anymore so why is Jon still acting this way. Elias has very effectively vilified and isolated jon and jon doesnt fight back against it bc he believes it as well. Other ppl are normally right so why wouldnt everyone be right abt him?

Oh my god that was an essay and I absolutely missed sooo much stuff but idk take that - rosette

i literally have nothing to add . rosette sincerely you are insane and i love that . i honestly don't have a lot of s4 opinions that i could really put down , but i also disagree anon . s4 may not have been the best , but it certainly wasn't Bad or not enjoyable to listen to . coming from someone who has listened to the podcast twice now [ and who is planning on a third relisten ] , i really do enjoy s4 as a whole . martin's buildup and his manipulation of peter lukas is honestly one of my favourite parts , because it has been said that martin was originally going to be apart of the mother of puppets ! this shows that part of martin we didn't get to see but has been there . i got distracted and don't remember what else i was gonna type um . whoops - deceit

[brideofbriar]

since glomas is coming up id like to say somethings specifically abt rollo

him hating mages is not racist as mages may be low in population but they're not a minority group as they usually hold high places in the world. faes on the other hand are a minority as they're discriminated against. rollo hates magic nd its users, not faes.

but he is also implied to hate fae. by his logic a person js a sinner only if they activly use magic, which means he has nothing against faes that don't use magic. except faes need maic to live nd so far we havent gotten any info abt faes who dont use magic so this point is debatable.

the only reason why people think that he is racist becuz he is twisted from frollo, a racist priest who has committed ethnic cleansing nd becuz twisted wonderland's writing is twisted wonderland's writing (aka not the best).

he can get redeemed if he faces judgement, punishment nd consequences for his actions nd truly grows as a person. also he should learn that the death of his brother was no one's fault nd that he cant discriminate against people becuz of an accident nd that his trauma doesn't excuse his actions. but knowing twst this probs wont happen.

edit:: i forgot to add this but he wants to wipe magic out completely which means wiping out faes nd fairys but the way he is presented shows that he isnt thinking of the consequences of his actions nd only the "positive" outcome, which makes sense considering he is eighteen.

also another thing that confuses me is that his thinking is not explained well because why would a teenager's first thought after loosing his younger be to exterminate magic? that makes no sense unless it was to get rid of the self blame or influenced by a third party. maybe if we get chapters abt rsa nd nbc after b7 it could be expanded on.

also also, rollo himself is a mage that hates magic, which is similar to sebek who is a half fae that hates humans. not completely the same as faes r a minority nd mages arent but both half internal conflict abt who theyre which causes them to have negative feelings abt that part of them. (idk if i explained this well)

also also also, in twst there is this whole parallel between that characters nd the villians theyre based one. the villians r evil while the twst charas r js traumatised teens with reason behind their behaviour, with rollo's reason is that HE believes that wiping out magic is for the best. we dont know anything bout rollo's parents so they might not be around or maybe theyre the ones who put this idea in his head.

another thing that people tend to forget is that rollo is 18. he was younger than that when his brother died nd no one ever tried to tell him that his thoughts r bad. blaming him for his trauma induced thoughts that were never shut down is not rlly the best thing to do. do i realise he is fictional? yes. but this is something many teen go through including myself. not the attempted genocide but still.

again js like in nrc, no one in nbc ever picked up on his behaviour nd tried to talk to him or stop (at this point bruv js blame the adults). crowley never picked on the struggles of his students until they overblot and the head of nbc didnt pick up on rollo's behaviour.

does this mean he is a saint. nah literally the opposite. nd to prove that imma list down all the things he did.

attempted murder

tried to kill the prince of brair valley which could cause a war

discrimination

generally a bad person with a bad attitude (nd a bad haircut)

plotted against malleus simply because he is one of the strongest mages

endangered innocent students

arson

attempting to justify his actions

nd even after all of that he got no punishment. at least he shouldve been expelled. at worst? probably jail or a mental hospital.

does this mean u cant hate him? nope. does this mean u cant like him? also no. do as u like, im js trynna educate. plz dont try to kill me 🙏 nd for the love of god js stop arguing.

[shootingstarrfish]

THANK YOU FOR THE TAG MEL @melverie !!!!! <333

15 Questions Tag Game

01 - Are you named after anyone?

My grandma!

02 - When was the last time you cried?

...this morning in the car SHDJFJ i cry a lot anyway but i was thinking too deeply about Jack's Song by Cavetown this time HAHA

03 - Do you have kids?

Please gaze upon my darling children

04 - What sports do you play/have you played?

I started playing basketball when I was about 10, but I haven't played since I was about 17? Not for any particular reason, I just haven't found anywhere I can play at (haven't looked much either LOL) this is making me wanna look into it again though :,D

Briefly played softball for about a year in high school, it was fun! I also enjoy cycling but I dont do that a whole lot. Did a bit of boxing during the singular year I had a gym membership, and learnt that I hate arm exercises with a passion but I love getting to kick things :D I'm also a freak, a weirdo even, who likes running hahaha

This is making me sound fit but unfortunately I spend 90% of my free time drawing fictional men so I don't do a whole lot of sport... ever......

05 - Do you use sarcasm?

NOT REALLY but people seem to think so sometimes? I don't know why lol

06 - What is the first thing you notice about people?

I dont, Im really unobservant HAHAH

The exception would be if someone has a really striking or unique feature

07 - What's your eye color?

Dark brown

08 - Scary movies or happy endings?

Happy endings, I'm a baby i can't do scary movies :,))

09 - Any talents?

At last I can talk about my one true hidden talent, doing a Mort impression

Is it a good impression? I have no idea, but I can do it

10 - Where were you born?

Oman! The only country in the world that starts with the letter O!

11 - What are your hobbies?

Drawing, shockingly, is the main one, but I also enjoy animation and clay sculpting! I recently got into plush making, I really wanna learn how to sew properly so I can make Belphie's big human world outfit jacket for myself lol

I needle felt and crochet sometimes but those are really time consuming and take forever so Im never patient enough to pick them up for long lol

At this stage I would also consider my general zine shenanigans to be a hobby too, I can't get enough of these silly things

12 - Do you have any pets?

Okay I'm gonna talk about them fr now so meet Pepper and Chilli <3333

This is Pepper, shes my darling little angel who could do no wrong, she's graceful and beautiful and way too smart for her own good and I love her so much <333

And this is Pepper's son, Chilli, whom you could never tell was her son if you weren't told cause he's nothing like her. He's very clumsy and not very smart but he's very cute and handsome so it makes up for it and I love him very much too <33

Not a single thought behind those eyes

13 - How tall are you?

Like 176 cm? Which I think is around 5'9 or so?

14 - Favourite subject in school?

If we ignore art LOL I enjoyed english quite a bit! I know apparently the big draw of math is that there's only ever 1 answer but I'm not a logic brained person so I don't like that very much. I'm a certified bullshitter, I like being able to say whatever I want as long as I can justify it

15 - Dream job?

To draw anime boys all day...

If I was to be realistic though I think a job where I can use art and be creative but in a way that doesn't take the fun out of regular art would be ideal? I don't know what that looks like though

Or something with animals

***

I shall tag @aspiringtrashpanda, @kawree and @featheredcrowbones no pressure ofc lol

[ms-all-sunday]

curious about your thoughts on eugenics re:wci

i think you were opening something bigger than you realized because the way eugenics is treated in wci is why i think wci is objectively the weakest part of op. i have gone on record saying i dont like how judge is handled but i would like how judge is handled significantly better if the way the narrative about the eugenics wasn't so contradictory.

as it stands now i think the fact nobody aknowledges as i put it "the fact going against eugenics isnt determined by the way that you were born" in regards to the poison narrative (as i mentioned before, the fact sora takes poison to stop eugenics from happening but it's used later to justify why sanji is nice, leading the audience to believe that was biologically determined. which is eugenics) means that the logic behind eugenics but not the appearance of eugenics gets validated.

it's a really shallow narrative in a way that reads as out of character for oda a guy who can generally handle nuance incredibly well. as to why this is i have no idea the mystery of wci will remain unsolved until the end of time i think.

this logic negatively affects everything in wci in regards to the vinsmokes because I'm assuming here, the intent is that the vinsmokes arent emotionless and judge is a bad scientist (men when you tell them anger is an emotion🤬) but absolutely none of that is acknowledged within the actual narrative to detrimental affects to everybody involved but most egregiously reiju and sanjis relationship and them individually.

wci makes me feel like im going insane in this regard because lets start out with the obvious. reiju should've left and not sanji, by her own logic that should be true. reiju decided sanji had emotions and therefore he should leave, but crucially, she had emotions. she should leave.

"oh but reiju wasnt abused and favoured because she had powers" alright lets accept that that's true.

is reiju even supposed to be an abuse victim?

because she is and i dont think anybody would deny that. she consistently favours men in her life over herself despite being more capable and intelligent than sanji is. she thinks she's a worthless monster because of how men have treated her in her life. her narrative is almost exclusively a tragedy of how she consistently favours most notably sanji over herself. and if she favours men over herself and they dont care about her why would they care if she left?

maybe because shes an abuse victim and percieves it like she's crucial to them because of conditioning, if she was really an objective logic monster by her own reasoning she would've left with sanji because she would've realized they dont give a damn about her.

and oda knows what sexism is. he's familiar. i can't imagine he'd write something like this on accident.

the only logic in which the narrative presented works is if you take everything at face value, which as we've discussed isn't even right- it's like an ouroboros of not making any damn sense on so many layers its so fucking frustrating and i have no idea what oda is doing with any of it

and dont even get me started on the "evil sanji is a switch you can get flipped on" stuff. thats so fucking painfully stupid, that's not how eugenics work, that's not how anything works. that's not how the experience of being an abuse victim works (sanji very obviously has internalized judges ideology and the idea theres a switch you can flip on to turn him evil is so stupid sanji is already "evil" in this exact way to some degree. hes got internalized bullshit he externalizes constantly) none of that is grounded in reality and it's not even a coherent argument even related to eugenics anymore it might as well be magic, because it's nothing.

if i had to guess what went wrong here is that judge and the concept of eugenics got wapoled (protraying something as bad but not having any coherent argument against it, something in earlier chapters oda does quite often. wapol a prime example) but oda had more or less grown out of that since post timeskip so what the fuck!

thesis: reiju is the first badly written woman oda has ever put to page and abuse victim switch you can flip on is so comically terrible it makes me want to put my head in a meat grinder.

[tadpolesonalgae]

Okie i'll copy you for a bit a do the quote for each comment thing so i dont get lost hehe

I don’t know? I think to us as readers of the series I kind of agree, but then he cooperated with the alliance, and also I’m on the side that if anyone should be able to see through his mask it should be the IC since hello Rhysand? UTM? CoN???? The idea of a mask/persona???

honestly this is one of the million problems with acotar because yeah when i say the ic has no way of knowing that eris isn't all bad i mean sjm keeps writing the story like that but you're right it doesn't make any sense. i mean even apart from eris doing literally what rhys has been doing since forever, how am i suppose to believe that mor knows all truth or whatever her powers even are and that rhys is a mind reader, and azriel and amren are supposed to be able to read people so well, that azriel's shadows see things that others don't but they still think eris is as bad as beron. that and both eris and mor kinda have made it seem like there's something else there (i genuinely think sjm planned on making mor and eris mates or something but then people started calling her out on having no diversity and she made mor gay out of nowhere). im also pretty sure its common knowledge in the ic that yes eris dumped her over the border without any other help which sucks but he didn't actually hurt her (that was kier) and one look at the autumn court would be enough to tell them that mor would have been hurt even worse if beron had seen her so how did they not put 2 and 2 together. i guess he still hurt her enough and as her friends they probably wont ever forgive him but it doesnt make sense logically for them to still think eris is the same as beron

This might sound hypercritical or conflictive but I’m not writing/don’t want to write Mor to be a bitch? I like Mor and while it might add to the angst and drama to have her be cruel to reader I just wouldn’t be able to commit to it 😭 In my mind it was Mor acting on the hurt reader has caused her and while it was unnecessary, emotions should be let out?

im sorry to say but mor was in fact a bitch but i get what you're saying like she's justified in her anger (in a way) but yeah trying to make someone who just attempted suicide feel bad about themselves is beyond bitchy. but im saying this as someone who doesn't really like mor most times (to me there's no depth to her character tbh like she was just there as the obligatory female friend for feyre, if you compare how developed cass and az are to mor... yeah she just falls flat idk if its bc cass and az will become the main characters in their books and mor might not get one or if its just not so great writing coming from miss maas once more)

Azriel calling Mor out??? After some of the things he’s said to reader????

i feel like this could be a good turning point though. like imagine azriel heard it and calls her out and has to admit not only to himself but out loud about all the shitty uncalles for comments he's thrown reader's way but even while admitting to it, deciding that he wants to be better to her and calling out mor on her bullshit is one way of doing it. also calling out mor is especially significant because of the whole he was in love with her for 500 years (i refuse to go with sjm's shitty ass "he loved her for 500 years and one day just stopped" bullshit - if she was a decent writer who cared a little more about character growth and plot instead of superficial romance tropes and smut she would write a whole book for azriel with no love interest but of him finding his own way and letting go of his love for mor that lasted for 500 fucking years before ever thinking of making him fall for someone else anyway i digress)

That would be so ooc of reader but I think it would be funny (in theory) for reader to suddenly do a 180° and act with them how she does around Eris and snap something smart and sassy back 😭🤭

i hope the ic gets to see her being herself with eris though and realize they really dont know shit about her

But then also idk how much the ‘thinking loudly’ was amplified by Rhys and Feyre’s bond, so whether it would even apply to reader in that way?

honestly sjm refuses to explain anyone's powers or even how magic works atp so who knows

also i saw another ask of you going in on cc and i would like to join a little. i have to start by saying i havent read the books bc i didn't do anything wrong but from the bits I've seen her writing really has been going downhill and it shows the most in the cc books. i never thought she was an amazing writer tbh like acotar reads to me like a teenager book almost but with smut so it's supposed to be ya and if it wasnt for fanfic i wouldn't be here or even remember the books. i read the first one and already had to skim through some of it but then the 2nd one was a bit more promising, unfortunately the 3rd book was going downhill by the chapter, i dont even like to talk about acosf because how is that supposed to be a book about healing when everyone that's supposed to love nesta treats her like shit and most of it is just smut that does nothing at all for the plot. so im not surprised that not only has cc been having a lot of these critics but also that sjm doubled down on the smut in that book. i also heard some of the characters are kind of copy paste from acotar but again i havent read the books. i honestly dont even know if i'll read any other acotar book because they keep getting worse and whether elain ends up with az or lucien or az with gwyn or elain, i dont think sjm will be able to pull a good book out of it when there's this big mess between all of the characters i mentioned plus her insistence on making the ic act like assholes to each other, creating a found family to make it shitty is just dumb in my opinion, but i know for a fact im not gonna read any of the other sjm series (even though tog is supposed to be the best one) and even if i did i wouldnt touch the modern fantasy if it was the last book on earth tbh. technology ends up taking a lot of the magic out of fantasy and obviously im reading fantasy because i like magical aspects. one of the reasons the later books fell off for me too tbh, she started modernizing things too much (like leggings and cans of soup?? when there are no factories or anything?) like the spring court had so many fun magic things and then velaris was a city with clubs, the moonstone palace and the hewn city felt more magical at times than the court of dreams.

i also agree that one of the biggest problems with the later books is the amount of smut. i like smut as much as the next person and dont mind reading pwp but in fanfictions not in books i pay for and that are written by professional authors. sjm tries less and less to write good characters and to keep up a plot because she knows her fantasy books were one of the first of the "spicy fantasy romance" to become popular and she's not losing that place and smut sells so who cares about a good story? definitely not her.

and with the bryce thing you're absolutely right, from what i've read she acts like a petulant selfish child most of the time and correct me if i'm wrong but she's not supposed to be like 19 like feyre so she's a grown ass woman. and yeah i definitely think sjm made her plus size because again she got called out for having no diversity in her books but treats it really weirdly. im someone who may not be plus size but pretty close to it and the way sjm writes bryce definitely gives me weird vibes. what i've seen most and even some people talk about is that a lot of characters keep mentioning how they're attracted to bryce, like sjm doesnt expect us ymto believe bryce is really hot by the descriptions she's made unless she keeps reminding us that people wanna fuck her. idk it may just be a bit of my trauma reading into it

im sorry if this ran too long im a bit drunk apologies - 🧶

Warnings: CC spoilers!, plus a little more slander, please consider looking away if you like the series! 🧡💛

‘when i say the ic has no way of knowing that eris isn't all bad i mean sjm keeps writing the story like that’

Right? Please miss Maas I want everyone to get along and be happy, let the drama between Eris and Mor be solved so that everyone can be happy and peaceful 😭

‘how am i suppose to believe that mor knows all truth or whatever her powers even are and that rhys is a mind reader, and azriel and amren are supposed to be able to read people so well, that azriel's shadows see things that others don't but they still think eris is as bad as beron.’

Also we’re kind of kept in the dark about specifics too? Mor’s just said to have ‘truth’ but what does that mean!! Can she force people to tell the truth? Can she see things in their true form?? Has she come out of the cave and seen the sun and the shadows it casts???? (Plato’s cave reference 😎)

Like I can understand to a degree why Rhys doesn’t look into people’s minds and appreciate that part of his character—that while he is morally greyish he has his own rules if that makes sense? He has his own perception of right and wrong which makes him interesting? But I might be confusing canon with fanon here 🫣

And yes I can see how miss Maas has written the IC to be flawed and Eris even says how Rhys is blinded by his love for his family so he has trouble seeing truths or discrepancies in those around him?

‘(i genuinely think sjm planned on making mor and eris mates or something but then people started calling her out on having no diversity and she made mor gay out of nowhere).’

Haha I hadn’t thought of it like that!

I’m still unsure what I’d choose between no representation vs. bad representation? On one hand it’s kind of disheartening/irritating to see sexuality used as such a cheap plot point? Unless miss Maas expands on it properly it’ll feel kind of useless to me? But then on the other hand representation is representation, like at least it’s becoming more prevalent in general media? I think another angle is some of the issues with acotar wouldn’t be as problematic as they are if the book series wasn’t so popular? But because it’s liked by so many people it’s also under much more intensive scrutiny when I don’t know if Miss Maas even planned for it to be taken so seriously as it is in some places? Not that the analysis is a bad thing, though, it’s interesting to see different things pointed out if I’d missed them the first time? (Particularly with Emerie and her descriptions of beauty? I hadn’t noticed it in the first read through but then saw some other people pointing it out, as well as other things?)

‘but he didn't actually hurt her (that was kier) and one look at the autumn court would be enough to tell them that mor would have been hurt even worse if beron had seen her so how did they not put 2 and 2 together.’

I suppose while Eris didn’t hurt her, Mor was in an extremely vulnerable position and the with Eris already being from the autumn court it would be easy to make the assumption that he would have inherited the beliefs in his father? Also with the saying of ‘if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem’—I think that’s contextual, but for the sake of the point it’s making, I’m using it here—Eris didn’t do anything to help Mor that we know of, and also according to Mor’s narrative Eris said some cruel things, but then on the other hand since Eris hasn’t done or said anything exactly to contradict what Mor’s said so I’m not going to blame the IC for being protective and standing with her on what was likely an extremely traumatising moment for her? Honestly I guess it would be kind of weird and shitty if they doubted her to be honest 😭

‘im sorry to say but mor was in fact a bitch but i get what you're saying like she's justified in her anger (in a way)’

I expressed myself wrong, sorry 😭

Mor definitely said something bad, but I’m not going to write her in cbmthy to continue making horrid comments like that when nobody else is around, it was kind of a one-off thing so hopefully she won’t be a bitch in the rest of the story, just temporarily 🤭🧡💛

‘yeah trying to make someone who just attempted suicide feel bad about themselves is beyond bitchy.’

Hard agree, I might even have to say it was a little uncalled for 🫣😳🫢

‘to me there's no depth to her character tbh like she was just there as the obligatory female friend for feyre, if you compare how developed cass and az are to mor...’

I think in the books/canon she’s a bit contradictory? Maybe? With how harsh she is with Nesta and how gentle she is with Feyre? I can understand it I suppose, thinking of it through Mor’s perception, but it does sometimes feel like Mor was added just to be the one to add drama to the books? There might be something to say about how Mor and Amren are written as female characters as opposed to the batboys who we’re supposed to like and are romantic interests? Fanon Mor though 🧡💛🫂😭

‘like imagine azriel heard it and calls her out and has to admit not only to himself but out loud about all the shitty uncalles for comments he's thrown reader's way’

Okay so this is something I (maybe unnecessarily? I’m genuinely not sure) want to stretch out for a bit and give it time so it doesn’t magically disappear? With Azriel facing some of the things he’s said to reader and why they were so hurtful to her? I think him knowing she tried to kill herself will speed things up, but only to a certain degree since there’s still a lot they don’t know about one another?

‘i refuse to go with sjm's shitty ass "he loved her for 500 years and one day just stopped" bullshit’

I guess one might be able to argue he was naturally coming out of it already but it there’s no evidence to really support that? I guess it would be difficult to implement it though due to the nature of where the story started and who it follows, but it would have made more sense in my opinion if we somehow got to see Az beginning to lose feelings for Mor, but because that would require something to be set before Feyre came along I guess it would be impossible 😭

‘i hope the ic gets to see her being herself with eris though and realize they really dont know shit about her’

They probably will, however reader is the one who intentionally or not does change how she acts around people? To a certain extent reader does try to act more ‘appropriately’ around them? Like she would never speak to Rhys the way she speaks sometimes to Eris 😭 Though I can imagine it might be funny if she accidentally did and then slapped her hand over her mouth because she hadn’t meant to 😭

‘i never thought she was an amazing writer tbh like acotar reads to me like a teenager book almost but with smut’

I was wondering, did you know anything about acotar before you started reading it? I went in blind since a friend recommended it to me, so I had no idea about how popular it was or anything, but I can see how if someone had heard how hyped up people were about it and then read it, it might fall flat and be super disappointing?

‘but also that sjm doubled down on the smut in that book.’

I know I feel quite strongly that Bryce and Hunt didn’t really have that much of an emotional connection compared to their physical one? Though to be fair I also love seeing emotional vulnerability so maybe it was just a difference in taste? If you’re someone who liked that kind of lust-fuelled romance that’s fine, but personally it wasn’t my cup of tea :/

It also felt like when Bryce and Hunt introduced that ‘no sex’ rule (I think maybe in CC2) it was Miss Maas realising she hadn’t built up and kind of tension between them and had jumped into sex way too quickly and so was trying to dial it back which irritated me? I skipped over I think all of the sex scenes in CC2 because I just wanted them to hurry along and get back to the plot? Also I feel like Miss Maas was trying to make them kind of freaky to appeal to the smutty side, like with the dry humping, the electricity (I think a vibrator might have also been used but I skimmed the scenes so I can’t remember) it was just too much for me when I wanted to read about what was happening and wasn’t interested in their relationship at all 😭

‘i honestly dont even know if i'll read any other acotar book because they keep getting worse’

I know I won’t be reading another CC book and will just wait for someone to very kindly write a summary for it, but I’m desperately hoping she won’t mess up another acotar book 😭

If she does though, isn’t it such a relief we have fanfiction? 😭

‘like the spring court had so many fun magic things and then velaris was a city with clubs, the moonstone palace and the hewn city felt more magical at times than the court of dreams.’

I absolutely adore that factor in fantasy books! I particularly like Holly Black’s version of fae, where they live off the land more and are much more tricky to deal with? More folklore-esque, and I wish we saw more of that kind of thing in acotar 😭 I agree the Spring Court with the will-o-wisps was so lovely—To Old Gods is one of my favourite pieces in that aspect and I want to write and read more of that kind of ancient/slightly mythical/sometimes eldritchy magic 😭

‘i also agree that one of the biggest problems with the later books is the amount of smut. i like smut as much as the next person and dont mind reading pwp but in fanfictions not in books i pay for and that are written by professional authors.’

I used to enjoy reading smut in books (I only started reading regularly and realising I enjoyed it in the past four years) because it was new and exciting but I think now if it’s in professionally written books I absolutely adore it and author has nailed emotional connection? And yes, pwp in fanfiction? Great! Love it! But the amount of smut in CC was unbelievable and I suppose that might be how you feel about acosf? I have to admit I liked it but I think it’s heavily to do with enjoying the characters 😭 Bryce and Hunt in CC? I don’t want to read about that, please spare my eyes 😭😞

‘so who cares about a good story? definitely not her.’

I think I disagree with you here? Maybe? I can’t remember the CC books in particularly great detail? 😭 I think actually for the most part I did find the plot parts a little slow, and Bryce and Hunt made it worse for me, however I loved the ending to CC2, and I enjoyed the asteri story but I think the power levels got out of control? (Don’t even get me started on how Bryce literally doesn’t earn her magic, it infuriates me so much!!! Feyre, Aelin, and Nesta all went through some kind of training and Bryce literally just touches a stone then inherits starlight and has the audacity to say she worked for it? Babes, no.)

And actually with miss Maas being lazy in writing—her using a pill so that Bryce can understand the acotar world was so obviously a deus ex machina. It was so cheap and basic there wasn’t a single amount of thought that went into it.

‘and correct me if i'm wrong but she's not supposed to be like 19 like feyre so she's a grown ass woman.’

Yup. She’s twenty-three 😐

‘what i've seen most and even some people talk about is that a lot of characters keep mentioning how they're attracted to bryce, like sjm doesnt expect us ymto believe bryce is really hot by the descriptions she's made unless she keeps reminding us that people wanna fuck her.’

Honestly that wasn’t that big of an issue for me? Like I get it’s fantasy so I can excuse every love interest and even some who aren’t being attracted to the fmc, but I did definitely have an issue with how lust-fuelled and physical it was 😶‍🌫️

Like with Feyre and Tarquin it’s made clear they’re both attractive/beautiful people but I got the impression that ultimately they liked (?) one another for who they were? To an extent they had a kind of understanding and felt more honest?

‘idk it may just be a bit of my trauma reading into it’

Not sure how much it will help but I’m sending you internet hugs :/ 🫂🫂🫂

‘im sorry if this ran too long im a bit drunk apologies - 🧶’

Haha, don’t apologise it was fun getting to discus all these things with you!! 🧡💛

[pommunist]

i hope i dont sound like i am immediately picking apart what you said because i basically agree with 99% of it i just wanted to add a couple of thoughts i had (this got so much longer than i intended i am so sorry)

I don’t like how he said to be mindful about the intentions of people who raised the question, because a lot of them had genuine concern about it being a possibility and this could have been a very serious and dangerous thing if it had been true.

i fully agree with what you said here - however i feel like the death threats/harassment he was getting kinda justifies what he was saying to an extent. in his position, i doubt he is looking at each and every account to figure out whether the individual was coming from a place of concern or was adding onto the harassment. i don't think outright dismissing things like this is a good idea so to speak, but to me it does make sense, from his pov, to tell people to be mindful. many of those people were coming from a place of concern, but i can see how some of it could have came off as less than such in addition to the threats he was getting even though they were mostly separate situations. if this hadn't been the case it would have rubbed me more in the wrong way, but i can understand why he would say it in this scenario even if its like :/.

however this is something i would encourage of everyone - he is not wrong to basically be saying check the source of where you are getting your information from. i would say 90% of the people talking about it were acting in good faith, but that is not always the case, and people acting in bad faith can still have good points that should be taken seriously. it is just something that i think everyone should take note of - in any situation everyone is going to have bias and if you're going to take someones words as fact you should recognize that. that goes for quackity's words too. he is obviously biased in one way in this situation which doesnt mean he is lying in every word he says, but take that into account when looking at what he says. same goes for the admins who speak out you know?

And great that he’s saying that there has been some restructuring made within the team, and hopefully these changes will only leave the studios with competent people who are good intentioned towards everyone involved. I won’t like though, I fail to see how asking for everyone’s feedback and taking it into account to make these changes wasn’t an option. Also the fact that this restructuring ended up causing them to massively letting go of all the twitter teams as well as some other admins is still an issue.

this is a double edged sword imo - im gonna take it in two parts. he says that the restructuring is good and full of people who are good intentioned, but there really is no way to know that? i am under the assumption that he thought the first set of people were good and they weren't, and im not saying we can't trust these people/his judgement, but there truly is no way to know until things progress. id like to trust that the new management is good, but im wary just because of everything and it is hard to put trust into the new managment without seeing anything come out of it. i know these things take time, but its hard to blindly trust that these guys are good when there is nothing to prove it.

on the twitter admins/other admins, as much as i do not agree with it, it does make sense. it sucks and i hate that it happened, but it was pretty clear that financially keeping the same amount of admins on the team wasn't going to work. removing the twitter admins seems like a logical choice (i loved what they did. i wish they weren't removed. but in the grand scheme of things it does make sense to let them go first because even if it sucks the life and some of the fun out of it, their jobs were not essential to keeping the server running) but the way it was gone about was so... not it. the way they were all informed of how they were fired was just not good. point blank not good. i dont know if there was a way to keep them on while being able to pay them, im inclined to believe at the moment he probably wasn't lying and there wasn't, but it doesnt change the fact that that situation was not handled well. they could have let them go with more communication to the situation. thats what bothers me the most.

Meanwhile people will discuss these topics that are so far removed from the main issue and focus less on what the admins went through.

THIS!!! i do understand why people have brought talks about lore and stuff into this conversation - it highlights what the admins went through using tangible examples lol, but part of me wishes they hadn't because exactly as you said. people focus on these issues and not the other ones! it happened at the start of this too, where people focus on the lore/story related problems (which isn't a wrong thing to point out) but in doing so kinda push away the other issues even if that isnt the intent. sharing these stories was not to complain about pushing x creators lore to the front and holding y creator's back but to highlight some of the conditions and i wish that didn't get misconstrued as much as i feel like it has.

Hey anon ! sorry if i took so long to answer but I’ve wanted to take the time to answer everyone of your point !

-I can also see where he was coming from, and I also don’t doubt that there were bad intentioned people in the lot (thinking of a particular group of people, i think you can guess who 🟩). It’s just that it paints people who have genuine criticism/concern as just being haters, and it’s not the first time he used the "things said by people with bad intentions" point so I’m kinda over it

-YES to everything you said about researching information !!!! Jumping to conclusions or blindly believing any piece of info you see is literally doing for harm than good for anyone involved, always always try to find sources source, fact check and look from an unbiased POV the things you see. Will never forget when the union released their first statement and I saw people either saying that they were a fake account trying to smear the reputation project or that quackity was going to jail, I was like « oh my, we are cooked » 😭

-Also agree with your next point, but as you said we don’t know who these people are (and I don’t necessarily think we should know btw), so we can only hope that they will be competent and caring people who will run the studio in accordance with the law and with better work ethics.

-On the twitter admins getting fired well first we can agree that the way it was done is fucked up. And I understand the difficulty of the financial aspect (to an extent, don’t ask me details about finance, idk shit about money numbers lmao), but it’s giving « Your work was very needed and appreciated while it was free, but now that we may have to pay you we can actually do without it, bye guys ». Especially ehhhh about it since multiple Twitter admins have expressed that getting paid wasn’t an issue, the working conditions were. Though to be fair idk exactly how volunteer work is regulated in every country the admins were from so this may have played a part in their firing.

-And finally yes, the distracting from what matters. Like fans can discuss whatever they want obviously, my argument is more about Q here, like dude are you really sure the main point of contention here is to debate whether or not you were overly interfering in other ccs lore ??? Don’t get me wrong, great that you’re saying it wasn’t the case but the main point of everything was missed by a mile.

Also don’t worry your ask didnt came across as you picking apart what I had said but even if it was, as long as you’re not rude i dont mind people coming to my askbox like « tumblr user pommunist you are wrong about everything and let me tell you why »

[harpulator]

i kinda fucking hate 1.20

(image from the minecraft wiki)

Cherry blossom forests do not work at ALL for minecraft, and make the game look like half the textures were swapped for a 2015 kawaii texture pack. The color palette for this biome compared to the rest of minecraft clash so hard it's distracting, like an anime fan has a field day in aseprite. this looks bad.

I absolutely refuse to call this update "one point twenty", because it's NOT, it's update 3.0. updates went 1.8, 1.9, 1.1, 1.11, 1.12, that's not how decimals work. if we *were* at 1.9, the next logical step is 2.0, but for some reason nobody called it that. im no mathematician, but 1.20 is equal to 1.2.

Pottery feels like a mod. Not a good one, either. not even for minecraft mod standards. "oh you like creating things? create a pot!" why on earth would I build something small and lifelike with powers-worth of less combinations than if you were to build a house, or a castle, or whatever because it's minecraft. this feature doesn't tie into anything else, this is completely self contained and adds nothing except bloat to the game. why anyone would bother to do this in survival is beyond me.

I've been dying to rant about this one! Archaeology breaks minecraft's world building outright, and destroys any lore building to now. Minecraft has always had magic and occult themes; enchanting tools and items, pillagers and woodland mansions, potion brewing and witches, zombies and skeletons and giant spiders, the stronghold, the end portal (and igniting it via enemies' eyes), and now we have the most normal form of human science. if it was astronomy or botony or chemistry (alchemy would be sick but that's not a modern human science) then MAYBE but it ISN'T. it's fucking rocks. god knows they aren't gonna do anything creative like you find an ancient artifact or something, you just dust off "suspicious sand" and get in return just completely random and useless shit. If you're late game enough to start adventuring around in search of suspicious sand, why on EARTH would you need ANY of this?

now, to further this fruitless endeavor of adding more stuff from real life to make minecraft more "realistic" or whatever, why would they backpedal SO HARD to add the sniffer? An entirely fictional creature in an update with otherwise exclusively real life additions, there's no theme here. From what i've seen of the sniffer, it looks like a fine mob that actually has something worth adding to minecraft, it just digs around and has fun and acts like a big wacky turtle. love it. A+. why the fuck does it not spawn naturally. the only reason archaeology is useful to any degree to to spawn sniffers, and sniffers dont serve any functional purpose other than to rizzen up your base with ancient plants. why not just make sniffers dig up food for themselves, and then you can tame them to start digging up plants? having sniffers wander around would make the game way cooler, but instead they had to use them to justify a completely useless unrelated system to exist. god that pisses me off.

I had to get this out of my system, but I would like to use this blog for shit im doing in addition to long posts like these about whatever laith is thinking at 11 am on a sunday. I dont like limiting myself to just the funnies and having a shit ton of side blogs is annoying, so if you didnt like this change of form i am not sorry and I will be doing more. ok bye gang

[softness-and-shattering]

And recognising that some jokes enforce the status quo means recognising that jokes arent harmless. Like suicide jokes, one occasionally can be funny or cathartic, but making them constantly changes how you think and hurts you.

I had this experience as a teenage girl, in a way I honestly suspect mightve tipped over into clinical paranoia but we cant diagnose these things in hindsight. Everyone in their various protective ways said "you are female, men are dangerous". "Men only want one thing. Cover up, dont walk alone at night even just down the street.". I became wary of my teachers. I thought any man walking down the street behind me was likely to rape or murder me. I became uncomfortable around family members who have never shown a single red flag. I also didnt have any guy friends. I got into womens venting facebook groups and I thought I was being careful, I thought I was being a good feminist. I thought everyone lived this way because thats what people kept saying.

Thats not healthy precaution. Thats not reasonable wariness. It was abject terror. And it was leagues out of proportion with any kind of helpful guardedness. Panic works in very specific situations, and long term living your life is not one of those situations. Long term anger and bitterness doesnt serve you well, even if its justified. Maybe especially if its justified.

The goal always has to be healing. Accurate threat assessment and logical steps taken toward safety with a couple backup plans. Im not saying get into a car with a guy you just met, or meet someone from the internet far away from other people. Im not saying love your oppressor. Just that once you add up all men and all cishets and all abled people and all white people etc etc thats most of the worlds population, and if you refuse to engage with them ir cannot civilly engage with them, youre cutting yourself off from multitudes of opportunities, and many many good people who are doing the work, who's hearts are in the right place, who can help you, who you can even befriend or love if that happens to be. You go out and you take and reasonable precautions, you trust your mind and your gut, and at the end of the day you go home to your ease and safety.

It is not justice or activism to be terrified. It is not ignoring or allowing oppression, to work towards healing from your trauma. If anything, healing is the best way to personally fight oppression. "Dont let them get to you" but with actual coping strategies instead of repression.

Anger is part of the process. Make bitter jokes. But make it part of the process of healing, not of everyday wallowing. And of course when its ongoing its going to be painful. Pain, like fear, is a warning of danger. Just make sure your logically verifying who specifically is a danger what circumstances are a danger, and what is only fear and bitterness holding you down.

i see "men bad" jokes as very similar to suicide jokes. like making them every once in a while isn't the worst thing, but if you Keep making them constantly. it DOES shape how you start thinking and you WILL become a more unpleasant and bitter person and also make people around you uncomfortable. and sometimes you just gotta choose to not make or engage with certain jokes, even if they are amusing to you, because its just not who you wanna be

[ooglywooglies]

i have to make a separate post because the tags were getting too long

but yes all my vampire characters are thin, i even struggle to justify to myself xanthes huge bazoongas because in the lore nyesaya cant justify having a lot of fat on their body because of how infrequently they eat. i had to do a bunch of lizard and deer blood math to come up with a somewhat reasonable metabolism to keep them from having to kill too often.

there are not many vampires running around in universe because theyre fairly weak and its 100% legal to kill them basically at any time for any reason by exploiting a revenge law that exists in order to justify another law that allows vampires to kill and eat 1 human every month or so (im stuck between 1 and 3 months because 3 is really stretching that metabolism problem thin but 1 still feels way too frequent for what a law would allow) they can only do it past 10 pm and when they kill someone they have to report it so it can go on a publicly available list so their loved ones can know who did it. you dont have to verify a relationship to a person on this list to kill a vampire, you just have to be able to name someone on the list when you do, probably, i havent really thought of a consequence for not doing that, there probably arent even any consequences.

(wow alex do you have much of a bias here - LOOK IM TRYING TO MAKE IT BALANCED, OF COURSE HUMANS WOULD SYSTEMICALLY OPPRESS VAMPIRES - i always get nervous people are gonna be like hey this feels similar to real life oppression are you trying to say vampires in your universe are analogous to human minorities in real life? and i mean, i get why youd say that, real life human minorities are oppressed because the majority thinks of them as a threat, vampires are oppressed because THEY ARE a threat. i dont think that means im SAYING human minorities are a threat. i just kind of wanted to draw the logical conclusion of what would happen if a sentient creature like this lived in a world like ours. human minorities still exist in my universe and are still oppressed, theyre probably even compared to vampires IN UNIVERSE. and its like, yeah i have sympathy for the vampires a few of them are main characters, i talk about their oppression more than the real life human minority group characters because idk, im a real life human minority myself and i sort of find my own oppression tiresome and uninteresting at this point. at least in the context of my fantasy story. maybe its comforting to me to explore this through the lens of a fictional alien species, my point is please dont take this in bad faith please i promise i think about the implications and i promise thats not where im going with this im just autistic about biology and politics and magical realism.)

anyway in order to not HAVE to eat super often ive been working on developing ways to slow down their metabolism. its not completely perfect and ive had to throw in some "fine whatever its magic" to cover the cracks but i initially based their metabolism on komodo dragons since theyre a similar size. thats where the lizard and deer blood math comes in, deer i think have a similar amount of blood to humans it was like 10 pints or something. this was so long ago ive lost all my sources, and so if a komodo dragon is good off of like an entire deer for like a month, thats where i got that estimate from. so they have some reptile-like traits like, they dont regulate their own body heat, for the most part. they sleep a LOT like 20 hours a day most of the time, they get tired really really easily, and they brumate in the winter

im not sure if brumate is the right word, thats the reptile word for hibernate but theyre not reptiles, theyre not mammals either

they were sort of just sprung into existence by a human hating food chain based goddess so you cant really classify them taxonomically. its one of those situations that sort of frustrates me because yeah magic does exist in this universe and you cant explain everything in a grounded way

sidebar the magic is very magic and not logic but one thing i like about it is its basically an invisible gas (its also a form of life but thats not really important) so the way its "wielded" is you can basically just form a connection between yourself and anyone else via the invisible magic gas thats constantly touching everyone. telepathy is something that happens a lot in universe especially with vampires because its how they conduct their religion and its like certain beings can just beam sounds and images directly into your brain, especially while you sleep via the connection of these magic particles

preddy cool

[madeintimeland]

everything passes and impermanence is one of my greatest fears i cant seem to appreciate the moment enough but i still look back on good times and appreciate they happened and feel some shred of the same joy i did so why the fuck am i even worrying about any of it all when i am the sole proprietor of meaning in my life and no matter how deeply these thoughts take root i still find joy and want to do things i enjoy. the only true meaningless thing is the baseless thoughts my brain conjectures up. and i will say all of this but not take any of it to heart some part of me feels like its words in a debate and not a true ideological belief or something i have to act upon to make my life better and incorporate purpose and intent to my actions. my deepest core being feels impermeable but theres no knot that cant be untied or at least cut out and discarded. from this end it's so calcified it feels like the most solid immovable stone but perhaps it's just so crusted over from a lack of maintenance i cant even tell what's within. i dont even know what im talking about anymore. im dead sober btw that's the worst part i still feel scared to smoke weed again because if i did these thoughts would be ten times harder to fight off and not succumb to. wish i could acclimate myself to it like i did last time weed brought upon derealization existentialism etc but perhaps it's just not time yet. yet the desire remains. and look at that. desire. a fuel for meaning and purpose. it means something and i argue directly at it that it doesn't exist. so what is it all for except to torture my own undeserving self when i will never deserve anything until i discard the idea that i dont. it's all perspective and even the worst most corrupt evil people in the world find a way to believe they're in the right but i have the grace of being emotionally aware of other people enough that i know i want to act in a manner that upholds peace and goodness and maybe my own logic justifying my desire to be alive is in a way more valid than a violent bigot's. i have to hold a sense of validity to myself or else this argument falls apart because i will keep digging into why each person's individual perspective on things cant be argued against because inside of each person's mind is their own reasoning and beliefs and in this random twisted universe theres barely any universal truth. public opinion and consistent belief from multiple people is something i hold onto because it speaks that the aberrations in those beliefs are perhaps not "right" and even regardless i have my own free will to decide for myself and even more so affiliate with people who feel the same way and avoid those who dont. which holds true for anything i mean ideology interests personality etc whatever that's life you surround yourself with others you agree with. i want to be developed enough to try and hear others out to further develop those beliefs for myself and i think that places me in a higher moral position than others who hate senselessly and act without consideration towards others and i cant handle the idea that believing myself to be more moral than others is wrong It has to be or I'm gonna go fucking insane right here right now

[farther-then-a-feather]

I. Do not wish to post this on my main blog, and it is not poetry, however

Stories that are about people and their actual struggles, about growing as a person, about finding out who you want to be as a person

Are sometimes hard to watch when you dont have direction. Of course that is part of why i love them so much but I cant get over

The way Id want to be in 10 years is dead. And that is. Not what i want to be thinking, but I am long past where i expected to live to, and while i try and try to plan and functiin and do the day to day and be there for and with the people i care about I just

Im so tired, and if I am this tried now when will I not be tired? If I can barely get out of bed and do the most basic of self maintenance how do i expect myself to find stable job?

When i was younge ri wanted to move out at 16. It hs been 4 years since that goal but it feels like so much just. Getting methaphorically beaten down in how much i cant follow through

Because. I know I have a lot of time ahead of me, and I know it will likely get better in a theoretical sense, but often it just doesnt seen worth it, why am i putting myself throught this? I dont enjoy life i just. I wish i did i try so much, i go outside, i

I dont know what to do, my home life took a turn for the worse a few years ago after an incident

And I feel like i need to explain myself and ny situation, to justify how i feel, to have a reason for being so tired and dyfunctional

But I know, Its not that. Because I hit 15 andIjust. I lost any idea of purpose or. J ust. I had a huge depressive episode, there are several months of it I barely even remember

And it wasnt over something huge, it wasnt a life changibg event outaide of my control. It was a pile up of stress due to expectations and how easily i could logic myself out of doing what i actually want

Because I dont tell people what i want to do. At this point i dont think there is anything I truly want to do outside of decompose slowly in the mud. Preferebly cold and wet so i suffocate ina terrible manner to feel the adrenaline of it all

And its not good and its not reasonable but the mix of stress and hormones and then jsut. My own week willedness. I just. I dont stant my ground. And very few people who know me would ever sya that about me but I jsut. I dont say no, I jsut dont say yes because ill fail at doing more then half of anything

and i thought for the longest time that i didnt feel guilt, but it was jsut because almost all i felt Was guilt. For not being good enough, for not caring enough, for not doing enough, for not being Able to make myself more even when i know logically i should be able to

And i can rationalise my way out of anything and everyone close to me would be able to answer what. y goals are because i have plans. im decent at making plans

but i dont really want to follow thru with them. they are just me, grasping at straws trying my best and failing over and over again and

And I try so hard to build support networks, to make friends, i care so much about my friends but they jsut keep moving away and i keep failing at properly keeping the friendships as strong long distance and i just dont know what to do anymore

i jsut want someone to stay, to care for me and

[psychabolition]

@schizoprophecy

I'm critiquing the biomedical model here (=>which says that mental illness is the same as physical illness - thats why words like symptom and illness are used in clinical psychology) which is a specific framework that is used in psychology to think about mental distress/neurodiversity.

Not only has the biomedical never been proven to be true (=the chemical imbalance theory has been disproven several times for example), the model in itself is not logically coherent.

Your 'mental illness' can never "cause" anything because its solely a descriptive label (every psychologist will admit this !! - all diagnoses are just a list of descriptions of specific behaviors/experiences/ways of thinking), its never the reason for anything. I think we need to avoid the circular logic of "well i do x because i have y condition (which was diagnosed based on clinician observations of x) and my brain is simply broken in a way requiring me to submit to expert clinical management and surveillance". I think its highly misleading to talk about symptoms of an illness since saying 'I am suicidal because Im depressed' is the same as saying 'Im suicidal because Im suicidal'(remember: its only a descriptive label!!) - it doesnt explain anything. I think its really unhelpful and also simply not scientifically backed up to think about any experiences/struggles/distress that we have no matter how unusual/painful/norm deviation as an 'illness' of our minds/brains.

The biomedical model makes sense when you think about what we know happens societally to people who are labelled as mentally ill - it depoliticizes any and all suffering/mental distress caused by societal problems by blaming them on our brains/mind and telling us that we are at fault for responsible for our mental distress/pain and that we need to solve it for ourselves and work on feeling better on our own without any societal/communal change occuring.

It also justifies violence - like lets say we use the framework of the biomedical model to think about mental distress/suffering and say that (for example) a drug addicts brain/mind is at fault for their suffering and that this person needs to be saved from their own brain/mind that is making them think/feel/do things that are wrong and ill -namely taking drugs. This leads to psychologists doing everything to make them stop using drugs no matter how much autonomy they need to take away from the person to get them to stop using (isolating them, punishing them, shaming them, body strips, locking them up,...). If we dont see drug addiction as an illness but as a way of numbing pain/suffering we can actually start asking what is causing the suffering - is it homelessness?/social ostracization?/abuse?/patriarchal violence/... . And then the solution would be to try to built a better world with each other for each other so no one wants/needs to numb themselves every day anymore. Also mental illness labels are isolating and stigmatizing since we are told we and our experiences are inherently different from others and that only a qualified professional can help us - all while telling our friends who are not labelled as mentally ill that it could be dangerous not to call the cops on us since we might kill ourselves if they dont (all while institutionalizion increases the risk of suicide).

Now - since nothing is ever caused by a label that we get because we deviate from the norm (norm deviation includes suffering more extremely in our current society than others do) - our queerness can not be caused by our mental illness either. I'd even go a step further and say that all queerness is a deviation from neuronormativity(=whats societally deemed normal to think/feel/do bases on your assigned gender/age/socioeconomic status/...). And since neurodivergency is defined as "deviation from neuronormativity" I think that theres no clear line between what counts as neurodivergent and what counts as queer. I think its always wrong to call any experience/behavior/thoughts/mental distress 'ill/dysfunctional or crazy'. What is queerness if not a deviation from societal norms on how we're supposed to think/feel/act? What is neurodivergency, if not the same?

What if I told you that theres no progressive way to say that your or anyone elses queerness is a result of a mental disorder

[thickest-slimiest-malware]

vent

cw internalised ableism/suicide

i burnt out doing "the basic ammount of work everyone does" for like a week, maybe two. i burnt out and now i cant do anything and i feel ultra useless and am beating myself up. logically i know its the disability but in terms of feelinngs.. how could i possibly explain that to a "normal" hard working person. i feel like i will never pull my own weight and people will always be angry at me when they learn how little i do and that im getting away with it. i feel like a parasite. i know theres no way for me to be as useful as id like to be, useful enough to justify all the resources im sucking up. i know im supposed to be glad i have the opportunity to live despite needing to "borrow" so much from other people but i feel like all the cool people i think of, whose opinion i really want for some reason, will always be shocked by how useless i am. and recently i feel like thats just everyone. i know im only talking to a very small number of people on this earth and im projecting those people onto everyone but it feels like anyine i will ever meet will be shocked and dissapointed by how useless i am. i feel really bad for existing. if suicide was painless and risk free i wouldve done it already. i thought about killing myself and researched how i can do that for a bunch of days in a row. part of me doesnt want me to kill myself and yet another part of me feels like its the right thing to do. and i think logically i should be angry that everyone doesnt have the opportunity to be a bit useless and that most people are so overworked and struggling but instead im angry at myself, because i get to have a huge disability rent in poland that is almost half a minimum wage, that my parents are not planning to kick me out any time soon, that we have a garden with living trees and there are nice things in the house like paintings my mom painted and that even though i usually dont put any effort into cooking, i get to have filling meals every day that dont require any effort at all like cereal and cups of yoghurt. i mean if i say it out loud it starts sounding silly "how dare i have nice things" but i really dont think i dont deserve any of it.