#but not at all in the same degree

[skruffie]

three years ago today (dec 3rd) I went back to the Seattle office for the first and last time since the pandemic to turn in my telework equipment. Barely anyone was there because... pandemic, so when I came into the office I wasn't sure where the motion detectors were and it was pitch black. Eventually the IT guy was there and he got the lights on, and the sun was starting to rise.

I had this rather uh, intense emotional reaction to going back to my cubicle that is a bit hard to describe because internally it felt like I was getting triggered by something, and I'm still resistant to describing it as being exactly that, but it wasn't pandemic stress that was triggered. It was remembering how overwhelmed I was with the work prior to the pandemic, including the beginnings of what would later become weekly panic attacks. I got really sad looking at the calendar I had up where I had begun crossing out each month in anticipation of when I'd get promoted and was forced to pause in March 2020. It was a lot.

The office manager was there at some point and I got closure on the office plants. She'd gathered them all in one location and kept them alive.

Eventually my supervisor came too and we organized some of the last paperwork that had been sent from the regional office I'd been working at, and around the late morning she was like "I guess this is it!" and gave me a container of stuffed cabbage rolls she'd made herself. This gesture was really bizarre to me and I didn't know how to feel, because up until that point all of the work I had done and my accomplishments and milestones had gone completely unacknowledged. I had taken on (my idea) paying the concrete goods vouchers for our office "temporarily" for the two-three weeks we were meant to be shut down and still doing it up until a month before I quit. When the daycares were shutting down, all the foster kids that had been in part-time daycare were getting their payment codes updated to full time so the daycares could still receive money even if the children weren't going. I spent two days converting over 300 codes manually. When the eviction moratorium was about to expire I emailed my supervisor like "hey, what's the protocol for this when we're going to be getting requests to pay rent for families that are waiting for their kids to come home" and found out within days, after my email was sent up to the CFO, that nobody in headquarters thought to consider that.

The regular feedback I got was that I was very good at customer service, but I just needed to make the payments and not try to undermine the authority of the social workers in their cases. I will never forget my first supervisor, after listening to me detail how I helped a social worker map out how a kid was getting from county to county using our transportation service "You think too much like a social worker" as a criticism. Years later I've had social workers say I was their favorite fiduciary and I was like HUH?? Asking them why, because in my head I was always late on payments and responding to emails, and they were like "You actually took the time to listen and help us with the complicated payment and placement problems."

That job torpedoed my physical and mental health, both of which only really started to bounce back within the last couple years. The stress of that job had me calling crisis lines during panic attacks not because I was suicidal but because I just needed somebody to talk to. I contemplated taking up smoking. The physical toll it took on me left me with PMDD-type/inflammatory physical symptoms on a monthly basis for years that is re-triggered by extreme stress; debilitating enough to where I tested multiple times for COVID when I felt sick.

Three years on I'm doing much better. 🖕

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[aroaceleovaldez]

Nico referring to his mom as "Mama" implies he most likely at least used to refer to Hades as "Papa" and i 100% headcanon he still does but mostly in the manner of him having the entire Underworld wrapped around his finger for being the baby of the family

[fear-no-mort]

shoutout to rick prime knowing evil morty for like 5 minutes at most and IMMEDIATELY dropping the whole “i don’t need a sidekick” thing for basically single-handedly proving that there is not one rick in the whole world that is immune to morty and every conceivable version of rick really adores this kid more than anything in the whole universe

[fluentisonus]

working in a factory has you thinking so much about the insane chain of labor & transport that goes into making literally anything

[thedolsideblog]

This is Aiden, my angel tf dol pc :) i internationally challenged myself by making them the complete opposite of blythe personality and gameplay wise; instead of a straightforward hopeless romantic scrapper, Aiden is a manipulative do gooder icon who, buried beneath layers and layers of walls, finds the idea of a significant other nice.

more info under the cut :)

aiden is everywhere. a model, a masseuse, a famous seller, and overall Good Person on the surface. this is all to help maintain the image they want to project to other people.

their goal is to gain enough power and live comfortably. maaaaybe topple bailey over, but thats an idea theyre workshopping right now.

while blythe finish things with his fist, aiden uses their words and their skills. sweet talking and navigating people with ease, making them submit down to their will. most adults are not immune to them. (yes, they are a hard top vengeful sadist.)

they carry a strap on around. i dont think i need to elaborate on this :)

control is a big theme with aiden; they like having control, and that extents to their partners as well. outside of the game's meta, aiden can and will manipulate the situation where they have control. the idea of having control over their partner is nice to aiden. (i havent romanced anyone yet in aidens file, but sydney is probably the most compelling to aiden character wise.)

theyre 179 cm tall, and theyre. flat. this has been subject to bullying, but some good ol rumor spreading and spanking put an end to that swiftly. yay!

aiden has high willpower, tending, housekeeping and dancing. amazing at lying. not that athletic but just enough to run away swiftly.

usually aiden is cool and collected, but their stress builds up over time. eventually they burst into a fit of angry rants, before calming down and going back their usual self. theyre more crass when angry.

aiden is someone blythe can call as an actual "friend". aiden usually "hire" blythe to do some dirty work, reasoning it with "here, some money for the one". and blythe, being the ill person he is, usually agrees. hes also the one who listens to aiden's angry rants. think of him being the straight man for aiden, funnily enough. he's weirdly more sane than aiden in some places. they are not attracted to each other at ALL. like genuinely. they can see each other naked and not feel anything. though i will say their older versions (assuming blythe never met the one) get along more closely.

as a li?....omg good luck....its kinda the same process with whitney but instead of enduring bullying youre just subjected to "subtle" nudges here and there to submit yourself to aiden. before you know it youre collared and half naked, sleeping on their lap 😭😭

[superbat-lmao]

Damian Wayne stuck in a time loop.

It resets when someone dies, and since Damian is the youngest, it doesn’t matter how rocky his relationship is with the bat-siblings, each and everyone one of them sacrifices themselves for him.

And Damian is pissed off because he doesn’t understand why.

Grayson is obvious, he has made it clear that he feels affection for Damian and has made the most effort into integrating him into the family. Of course he would die for his little brother. And at first, Damian believes he finds this outcome to be the least acceptable.

There is also his Father, again, a logical expression of love. Damian can understand why his Father would die for him, even if he doesn’t want him to. Even if, in the first few loops, he wishes that anyone else would die instead. At least it’s a type of parental relationship he can understand in the abstract, even if it surprises him to see its true about himself. That even though he has several older brothers and is unsure of his place by his Father’s side, the man would do anything to protect him. It reminds him of his Mother, even though he’s sure if she were here she’d find a way for the both of them to live.

Brown is the first one to surprise him. They had worked together when Grayson was Batman and he recognized her competence, but he thought that’s all it was. A working relationship between professionals. A mutal, if grudging respect. He is shocked when she dies, how he had no clue she would go that far for him. How he refuses to let it happen again.

If Brown was a surprise, Cain was a shock. Damian thought of her as nigh invincible, unable to be touched. It was clear she was the best of all of them, that she had seen the hit miles ahead of him, had maybe even seen him brace for it. But she had chosen to let herself go down. He feels every bit his age as he begins to wonder if he’s even more powerless to stop this than he thought if his most competent sister chose to let herself fall.

Thomas was confusing. He was new, newer than Damian and not quite sure of himself. They rarely saw each other aside from school due to the mismatch in schedules. Thomas gave him a wide berth, respecting Damian’s space in a way his other siblings failed to do or intentionally disregarded. Damian didn’t think much of him. Couldn’t understand how Thomas hadn’t even paused, had taken the hit as if it was an unquestionable law of the universe. As if they were really brothers and not strangers. It was a sentiment Damian didn’t know how to return.

Todd was the worst. He had seen him, briefly, before he had come to Gotham from the league. His Mother spoke of him rarely, but with pride. He was skilled, if untamed. He avoided the manor and his brothers and their Father. The only one he usually sought was Pennyworth. That is why Todd was the worst. Because he avoided all of them. Because this family had already allowed him to die before and he had come back wrong. A painful reminder that their family has failed. And he fought so hard to remind them all of that failure, every way he chose to keep fighting to live, to prioritize his own life over their Father’s morality. Only to throw it away for Damian. To force him to watch how his brother’s second death shattered their Father and Pennyworth and Grayson in a way that Damian didn’t think they’d survive a second time.

Drake is incomprehensible. Antithetical. A cosmic error. Impossible. There is no love between them, no grudging respect, nothing. Damian can’t stand to look at the person who he feels is a disgrace to the costume Damian now wears. He is the one who dies for Damian the most. The one he can’t possibly understand. The brother he has the least time to question, who gives him the least answers as to his motivations. Who will both die for Damian and refuse to utter a word to him in the same loop. It is madness. Damian needs to prove himself above this embarrassment, and yet Drake chooses to be beneath him. To die for him. It is in spite of Damian’s skill that Drake dies, and Damian hates him for it.

[cybertron-after-dark]

Being constantly surrounded by the presence of a loving God sounds great until you realize you never know when his freaky fuckin eyes are gonna show up to check on you.

And man. They do it a LOT.

[crrows]

daytrip to a chikubushima

[aho-dapa]

Side note, because I'm watching a video essay that's pretty much saying everything I've been thinking about about,

With sjm's writing, what separates it from a typical romantasy not to take seriously is that post ACOTAR, the author suddenly says to take it seriously.

Feyre's Calanmai Hall scene isn't about Feyre not wanting Tamlin's advances, but that she does, she's just doing the typical romantasy protag thing of rejecting what you really desire. Think about how this contrasts with Rhysand's scenes utm, she doesn't want them and its not given enough detail, but this changes after Feyre and Rhysand get together. For example, the CoN scene. The fucking mid air thing. The telepathy sexting that can happen at anytime without true consequence. Very exhibition. Much voyeur.

This is literally sjm's fantasies played out through Feyre and Rhysand, and even through Feyre and Tamlin.

Despite how much I like Tamlin, he only really became a truly nuanced character in hindsight for me because of sjm's unintentional manipulations of her own narrative. In ACOTAR, he's also built around Feyre the same way most characters are in the first book.

He is built to fit into Feyre, he's meant to parallel her acceptance of her own desires, her own beast through him, because submitting to him is submitting to herself. That's why Feyre's themes get mixed up post ACOTAR, she loses that beast like quality to become a star to suit Rhysand. And sjm brings that back in ACOWAR with the Mirror (although it doesn't hit like it once would have because instead to fitting Rhysand to Feyre, sjm wrote Feyre to fit Rhysand).

The thing that's frustrating is that sjm is the one that is saying these are just not her fantasies on page, she's the one that brought mental health into it, brought up abuse and neglect, and handled it all so poorly.

It's this thing where sjm still wants to have the upturned-nose high ground in her books, she wants to be right, she doesn't want Feyre to be questioned or truly be in the wrong because Feyre is her fantasy. sjm likely writes Tamlin to not like human slavery, not want to be like his father, and with a self sacrificing personality while keeping his beast like qualities for the steamy parts. Because he's written to have that middle ground most people looking for that fantasy can still enjoy while not being too disturbing for our modern sensibilities.

That's why some people not looking for this find Tamlin and Rhysand's actions strange and gross, but people who already indulge in those fantasies were okay with it. And there's even people who think that ACOTAR is too vanilla (me). Anyway.

Basically, ACOTAR is not meant to be taken seriously, its literally another romance book with a fancy (?) cover. Post ACOTAR is not tho, so sjm makes a big deal about taking it seriously because she wants that middle ground with Rhysand when honestly, Rhysand could have been a dark romance ML and no one would have batted an eye. But that wouldn't work for the precedent sjm established with the middle ground, she needs that 'he's feral and sexy and toes the consent line but it's fine because xyz' in her books, and that's why the fandom is so divided. We can't decide whether or not to take it seriously or not because sjm switched up.

Her fault as a writer is that she didn't do this well at all.

I mean, this is also coming from the same woman that briefly had another one of her characters entertain their sovereign right to colonization in goodwill, so. This woman should never have been taken seriously. Unfortunately, she insists upon herself. So in order to actually discuss these books, we have to take her silliness seriously.

(Which is why I stopped because it's an endless cycle of saying sjm wrote something silly and because she's saying it's serious, now we gotta be serious about bat birthing or whatever)

Never forget how I saw a bat get birthed just to actualize how stupid the *gets shot*

[puppppppppy]

learning abt friendship decay and "not reaching out to your friends for months at a time unprompted is not neurotypical behaviour" has me feeling a certain way

[aroaceleovaldez]

the dynamic of demigods thinking which other demigod is the most powerful is always amusing to me because. like, we know the big 3 kids are all the most powerful. That's just a fact of their universe. And then we know nearly every character views Percy as the strongest demigod, and most people are very rightfully intimidated by him.

and you look at the powers of the Big 3 kids and there's Percy, but then you realize Nico is just kind of objectively more powerful than him but simply chooses to hang out in Percy's shadow like he's Percy's scary dog privileges. Like, the two of them are pretty equally capable of causing multiple different apocalypses. Nico just also has like four different instakill powers and it's not like he doesn't use them. He very much uses them! Not infrequently, even! And they don't seem to take a significant amount of energy from him! And other demigods are pretty intimidated by both of them! But Nico makes a conscious point to keep his cards close to his chest and not let on exactly how dangerous and scary he can be if he wants to. People are already scared enough of him without knowing anything about him and he doesn't like that. Percy doesn't think about that nearly as much, and so usually just goes in guns blazing and that's part of why he's considered a wildcard. And then Nico himself puts Percy on a pedestal, so those who do know more about Nico's abilities then presume Nico knows something they don't about Percy that implies Percy is even stronger than him.

And even on a meta level Nico's narrative role requires him to be functionally more powerful than Percy, because he very often serves the purpose of getting Percy out of situations he can't handle on his own. That's just part of his function as a character! But also narratively he can't overshadow Percy so he just takes a backseat of his own accord and that's very amusing to me.

[rustedleopard]

I feel like if Chujin was still alive during the events of Undertale Yellow, his and Clover's relationship would be incredibly rocky. Pacifist!Clover could bring him around to tolerating them (after all, they have that sort of effect on everyone), but it would be more in a "this human is the only 'good' human" manner than a "maybe I should reevaluate my opinions on humans overall because you can't judge an entire group based off (very biased) stories and one bad experience." Even then, that opinion would be subject to change should Clover ever get frustrated or behave "too aggressively" or act in any manner that isn't perfectly docile. If Clover ends up attacking a monster then it's "humans are just as horrible as they were in the war stories, I should've known better" regardless of the circumstances that could've pushed Clover to fight. Suffocating expectations and endless demands for patience when he wouldn't ask the same of a fellow monster.

And heaven forbid he ever meet Clover on a No Mercy Run...

[conceptofjoy]

[paulic]

the love was there I think, until the end even

[feelingthedisaster]

Wymack: Part of me wants to ask. The other part says knowing will be more disturbing than everything I could ever imagine