#and idk. this is potentially one of those things

[bimboficationblues]

2024 was a mixed bag. I spent a lot of it malding about my job, but fortunately I am no longer there and have a new one (family lawyer for DV survivors). Idk if I want to keep being a lawyer long term but rn I am making more money, doing more interesting (but potentially taxing) work, and hopefully it will level out to something either tolerable or useful.

long distance with my love is still sad, and we found that polyamory did not really alleviate those pressures, but we have taken some good steps towards a different approach, starting with a monogamy trial run. I found dating around mostly unpleasant despite some exciting possibilities throughout the year - very few people seem to really know what they want and act accordingly. ultimately poly started to feel like I was chasing after an ideal, and I do believe I’d enjoy that ideal. but when the process of pursuing it is so exhausting and unfun and crazy-making it just doesn’t seem worth it. the lesbian connections I found frequently ended because the other person started acting like an avoidant abject meow meow and I simply don’t have the patience.

as far as bringing the long distance to a close, I'm not sure how that’s gonna happen - I love Chicago and I don't want to leave my people. for the first time since maybe high school I do not feel fundamentally lonely and I think that's a feeling worth taking seriously. I've been really overjoyed by my various friendships, both near and far. but I miss my gf dearly. she has my heart. I don’t feel like I’ve ever loved or been loved like this. It’s a difficult situation.

I did get to travel a lot which was nice - this year in addition to regular Washington visits, including one to Olympic National Park, I also went to Barcelona, Toronto, Montreal, Cleveland, and Philadelphia. I am visiting my love's hometown currently and while I was kind of dreading it a bit it's turned out to be overall very pleasant and comforting and nice to see where she came from. Plus I did some visits to the family in SC.

speaking of which, I am feeling generally at ease with my parents. I feel like I've been able to accept that they are limited people, but not to such a degree that it makes being around them impossible, and they have also generally gotten cooler about a lot of things. we have a lot in common and it is generally fun to spend time with them despite their foibles. being able to do drugs together also helps. my dad turned 60 this year and my mom has been having health issues, which I do think has made entropy be on my mind a lot more to a troubling degree. dunno how I’ll handle that when it becomes a more pressing consideration but I guess that’s a problem for the future.

last January I made a conscious effort to approach my passions and hobbies more intentionally by making a daily schedule that roughly looked like this:

MONDAY - fiction reading; TUESDAY - history studies; WEDNESDAY - philosophy/political theory studies/writing; THURSDAY - working on music; FRIDAY - watching movies.

I also tried to get some daily activities going on top of all these - listening to at least one full album a day, regular walks, practicing guitar, yoga. keeping to this was inconsistent - sometimes I was locked in and sometimes I'd get derailed by other priorities (spending time with the love, seeing my lovely friends, getting stoned, travel). sometimes certain activities are just easier (reading comics is always fun and also minimally demanding of my energy, social media and doomscrolling is a tempting time-sink). I might try and revise this approach in some ways - I might want to take a harder tack with how much time I want to spend on each activity - but I do think that even just being deliberate and structured about how I spend my time made my mental state significantly stronger. so that is a positive development.

artistically I've made progress on the album, but I never feel like I have enough time to dedicate to it with work and everything else. but I also think my approach of trying to write all the songs first before recording them was the wrong one. so instead I think I'm going to start trying to get what I've roughly finished into a recorded form and in the process a stronger vision of the project will emerge which will help with future songs. this will require me to learn some new skills - I've always worked with a producer before - but that's not a bad thing. my friends and I are also doing a writing workshop so that will be nice to get feedback from people I love and trust.

social media has been real bad for me this past year in a kind of emotionally masochistic way - I found myself hatereading a lot more, which is bad. I’m hoping I can adjust that this year and stop getting brain damage from pissing myself off.

part of the reason for the above is that the political situation domestically and globally is dire and basically I just see cope or rationalization everywhere which, considering the urgency and scope and existential weight of what’s happening, is really infuriating to me. I feel like after a year of some of the most depraved inhuman butchery imaginable, as the ruling class takes refuge in obvious bad faith that is “all the more odious because it is less and less likely to deceive,” and with Hitleritis running rampant through civil society, we need a sober reflection on the challenge ahead of us as socialists. I do not want the ruling class to annihilate the rest of us with them or for capital to find new, intensified, and more insidious methods of shifting crisis around. this is partly why anti-intellectual, regressive forms of Marxism have been stuck in my craw lately, because it feels like psychological palliatives masquerading as politics. I’m not sure what the move is to really turn the tides of the war we are in, but doing away with self-deceiving political impulses seems like a start.

[kindaorangey]

did anyone else pick up on some Vibes between terry and soren this season.

[hinamie]

congrats on your recovery n all yuuji but unfortunately for you I thought the scars were cool >:/

[bloodcoloredglasses]

you're right, introject doesn't grammar quite the same. i guess the best i can say is that I still use kin to say the same things and I find the fact that introject doesn't say it as explicitly to be an oversight in the language and I'm glad to have kin as a verb to fill that niche. i use kin both as an active "i am introjecting this" at the moment of introjection and also as a way to say "i continue to be an introject of this character, i continue to identify as this character"

I do say "I introjected Valentino" to mean "I continue to be an introject of Valentino, I continue to identify as him," it's just implied rather than explicitly stated. But it is still understood as that even though the word doesn't grammar exactly the same. Kin as a verb has all those usages that are clear in context for me and which all work similarly to the concept of introjecting and being an introject. It sucks that introject doesnt do that in the present tense because being an introject and identifying as Valentino is something I am still doing.

It might be useful to explain all my usages of kin as a verb?? (or at least all the ones I can think of, there are prolly more) and also potential grammatical usages that I don't use:

I kin Valentino: I am Valentino. I identify as Valentino. I am an introject of Valentino. I am Valentino kin.

I am kinning Valentino: I am in the process of becoming Valentino. My brain may be sniffing him out as a potential fictotype/kintype or perhaps I have already taken up residence and am currently putting all the trauma on the right shelves. The introjection is in process. I am currently introjecting him.

***I might/could kin Valentino***: I have identified Valentino as a potential kintype/fictotype and need to sniff him more to determine whether the kintype/fictotype will stick. If an alter doesn't yet have a fictotype at this point, it is often hard for them to speak and be identified. Introjecting a character like this helps them to be identified and heard by the rest of the system. **(Important note!!!: This is my biggest use case for kin as a verb because this just straight up does not work afaik for using kin as a noun, because "I might be x kin" doesn't make sense as you are not x kin at this point.)**

I kinned Valentino: not a use case for me. Kinning is something you start and never stop. To say I kinned him past tense would imply that I no longer kin him.

I know that using kin as a verb is a red flag, so I make it easy for people who are worried about that to kinfirm me: saying I'm fictive not rp in my bio, basically using a lot of fictive language because that hasn't been infiltrated by kff and just generally making it clear when I speak that I am literally Valentino. I think most people who know about kff and know that kin as a verb is a red flag will put green flags like this up. Green flags are more reliable anyways, because people can have seen the use of kin as a noun and still be kff, but if you talk about your kintype identifying as them, then that pretty conclusively proves you are kin real.

I don't think that my use of kin as a verb is applicable to everyone's kin experiences, but me and the rest of my system find it applicable to ours and so we use it that way.

(sidenote: no third party introjected valentino. I did. I introjected valentino and became him. There is no host.)

( @a-dragons-journal sorry to ping you idk if it gives you a notif from just reblogging like this but this is also in reply to you ^^')

edit: idk if there's a kin as a noun version of "I am kinning valentino" either and i use that a lot. so. yeah thats important too. i done forgot. imagine some asterisks up there

When i use kin as a verb i use it in the same way i use introject as a verb and it's just weird and upsetting when ppl insist kin can never be both an action and an identity. I can say I introjected Valentino and nobody says shit but then I say I kin Valentino and suddenly it's a big problem of language misuse and implying that kin is not an identity?? Is my fictive identity somehow not real if it has an element of action to it? It happened in the back of my brain while I wasn't looking, but it was nevertheless an action, and we experience our kin identities in the same way. Why the hell do people accept system experiences so easily but then purity test the exact same experience if framed as kin

[turtleblogatlast]

I think a lot about Leo’s tendency to push his way into the spotlight despite clearly being a natural in the shadows. Hell, you could argue that his worst moments are when he’s forcing himself onstage, and his best are when he does things no one notices until it’s already been done.

[fizpup]

valentine, you're a horse ❤️

[arsenicflame]

It's a time-honoured tradition- every time Sam comes across Izzy (and Ed) in their travels, he asks Izzy to marry him. And every time, Izzy turns him down.

At this point, Sam is asking more for the sake of it than any belief Izzy will ever say yes, a remnant of childhood dedication touched with 30 years of heartbreak and regret- though even now, a small part of him still holds out hope. Sam's promises have only got more extravagant over the years, from a job as his first mate, to a captaincy, a fleet at his command, a whole fucking island if that's what Izzy wants- but he knows it isn't though, not really. If Izzy was ever going to agree to marry him, to leave his life and go with Sam, it wouldn't be for anything Sam could offer him. Izzy never did care for flashy shows of wealth, for a ship or to be captain. The only thing that ever mattered to him was loyalty given, and loyalty shown in return. 

It all comes to a head after Stede left and came back, after Izzy lost a toe, lost his leg. Sam hasn't seen him since before things with Ed started to really slide off the rails, before stress permanently set into the lines of Izzy’s face. So, when he sees a dishevelled man with a hoof for a leg in a no-name port, he doesn't even consider the idea that he might know him. It's only when he turns towards him, and Sam catches a glance at those oh too familiar tattoos, he realises this is Izzy, his Izzy, that stands before him.

Knowing Izzy's discomfort with pity, he doesn't treat him any differently than he would in years gone by, positioning himself in Izzy's line of sight before approaching and sweeping him up into a bone crushing hug. 

“Israel-goddamn-Hands!” he exclaims, as Izzy grumbles back a begrudging “Samuel-fucking-Bellamy”, a tradition almost as old as their friendship itself. Izzy might not hug him back, but he can’t keep the corner of his mouth from twitching, just for a second.

(If Sam holds Izzy a little tighter and a little longer than usual, well. That's his business)

By the time Sam lets go, most of the crew has appeared in the town square, drawn in by the commotion. They may have given Izzy his leg and welcomed him as one of them, but still there’s an underlying tension, with nobody quite ready to set aside everything that happened before the Kraken. Seeing him cosying up to an unknown man sets everyone on edge, unsure whether to come to their first mate’s aid, or to assume that they've been betrayed once again.

When Ed sees that the yelling was Sam, his hand goes tense where it's held in Stede's. He knows the routine, has seen it more times than he can count, but as he watches them part he realises that this is the first time in a long time he's unsure of what Izzy's response will be.

Knowing that something’s different, knowing that Izzy's feeling vulnerable already, Sam doesn't go for the same flashy proposal he’s been giving for years. He doesn't promise Izzy the world, he doesn't cause a scene (or, any more of a scene than he already has, anyway). He looks at the fractured man in front of him, takes his face in his hands, and says the exact same thing to him he said when they were little more than boys. “Israel, I have to ask you. I know what you'll say, but I have to try. Come with me. Marry me and sail away with me. I'll keep you safe”

And Izzy… hesitates. He glances over at Ed, at Stede, and says to Sam “...We’re staying in port for a week. Ask me again then”

That's the moment Sam knows there is something deeply, horribly, wrong. He's not just looking at an Izzy who got seriously injured in a fight and is struggling to cope, this is something so much bigger than that- and that Ed has something to do with it. Izzy wouldn't even be considering leaving if he didn't. Whether it was negligence or something more sinister, Sam doesn't yet know, but he intends to find out.

[akkivee]

we seem to be framing the true hypnosis mic as the end all be all, where we use the mic to unite japan under the winner’s vision, makes me think of how the second guidebook expressly said that the affects on those who are hit by the true hypnosis mic are unknown and probably vary

and that doesn’t seem like something you should be using on the nation tbh lmao

[underyourbedtoday]

Captain John Price as your emotionally-unavailable-but-weirdly-devoted-to-you-but-not-enough boyfriend that feels more like a situationship than a relationship because he never placed you high enough

Anyway I think I might write this

[tenwhiteandalusians]

so no one was going to tell me if i got literally one episode further tenax drops that he’s the one who saved scorpus from his mom’s pimp AND that he’s intimately familiar with scorpus’ dick when he was younger. guys. guys.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Those Beyond The Wall

sequel/companion to The Space Between Worlds, set a decade later

character-focused sci-fi set in an area divided in two, the rich protected city on one side and everyone else in the post-apocalyptic desert

follows a woman who works under the Emperor in Ashtown, keeping the peace

when mangled bodies start showing up with seemingly no murderer, she’s tasked with finding the cause, and finds out that it’s the result of corruption spanning both cities and multiple worlds

explores oppression and messy revolution, police violence and apartheid

bi & polyamorous MC

[sukibenders]

The way people are becoming anti-children nowadays is really sad. And I'm not talking about people not wanting to have kids of their own, that's fine and something that shouldn't be shamed nor up to someone else to debate. No, I'm talking about the people who adamantly hate these little humans for simply existing, wanting to ban them from spaces due to them having emotional reactions that they are still learning to understand (you know, the kind of lessons that everyone had to learn and figure out at one point). It's gotten to the point where I've even seen these types of people genuinely support children being harmed and deny their hurt under the consensus of "Well then maybe they shouldn't be there," in your average public space. Like, imagine thinking hating on children, people who need assistance and guidance, is something to be proud of.

[longagoitwastuesday]

I keep thinking that this Gojo is just like Sukuna. I truly don't see much of a difference between them beyond the human/curse point of view

[hawkinslibrary]

Stranger_Things time to hit rewind. we're taking a look back on our time in Hawkins #strangerthingsday

upsidedownpictures have you seen Will Byers?

[thisisadonaldduckblognow]

bangs pots and pans

raph was never any less suited to leadership than leo

raph was never any less suited to leadership than leo

raph was N E V E R any less suited to leadership than leo

idk how many times i can say it before it sinks in that in rise there was never once any point where that was the point being made

if you just like leo’s character better than you like raph’s, that’s fine! if you just like it better when leo is leader, that’s fine! i have no issue!

but we need to stop trying to circle that leadership change back to somehow being about better or worse or ~more cut out for it~ because it sucks to throw the great job raph did through the series under the bus in order to prop up leo’s good qualities. 

they’re both great leaders. they both have strong suits and weak suits in the role, they both have growth and development when they’re in that role. they BOTH make on-screen mistakes in that role and aren’t very good at it at first! not getting a more in-depth explanation about it in the movie or series stinks and it’s very interesting to explore, but seriously. 

[ahalliance]

qantoine’s coping mechanism to feeling left behind being both self-isolating and becoming possesive of those he cares for is so juicy as a concept . like yeah you go you funky creachure, manifest those complicated and sometimes contradictory emotions