#dealing with discomfort

[shushmal]

"Holy shit, Ed," Steve hisses. "We're going to die."

Eddie, teeth chattering, rolls his eyes. "No, we're not, you big baby," he says. Sure, it's January and there's a foot of snow outside and the heater in their little shithole apartment is dead. But they're not going to die. "Go get under the electric blanket."

Steve shuffles off, still complaining. "You won't love me anymore if my toes fall off. You'll call me stump feet and leave me for a man with 10 more toes than me."

"Oh my god," Eddie says, laughing. Steve's lucky he's cute. "I'll love you even if both your legs fall off."

"Will you love me if I'm dead? Because I'm going to die."

"Oh, just you now?" Eddie turns on the burners and the oven, opens the oven door wide, and starts a pot of water boiling.

"I forgot you're indestructible. Unkillable."

"Hell yeah I am. Like a vampire."

"Or a roach."

"Wow, maybe I won't make any hot chocolate afterall."

"Eddie, nooo," Steve whines, instantly pitiful. "Baby, I love you and all your roach qualities. They're my favorite qualities."

"Okay, fuck you, I'm making hot chocolate for myself."

"Nooo," Steve wails. From the couch, Eddie can see him flopping over dramatically, already burritoed in two blankets. "I am forsaken. Left to despair and desolation. Banished into the cold, chocolate-less night."

"Damn, we've really expanded your vocabulary."

"Fuck you," Steve says, before falling back to whining. "Will anyone save me? Will anyone take this cold, weary soul into his arms? Where is my roach prince?"

Eddie, face hurting from grinning, takes over two mugs to the couch. "Here you goof, now quit bitchin.'"

"My prince! In all his gross, buggy glory!"

"Oh my god, shut up!"

[russell-crowe]

house and wilson seeing each other for the first time in months in s08e02

[sainamoonshine]

My unpopular opinion is that in languages with grammatical gender like french, it does make sense for Murderbot to be referred to by whatever pronoun is usually used for robots or constructs. (In french, therefore, grammatical masculine.) Because there are no traditional « it » pronouns in these languages for objects, and while there are neo-pronouns, they are things one must choose for themselves. Do you honestly think MB actually spent time thinking about its pronouns?! No it didn’t. On forms it picks « non-applicable ». When people ask it what pronouns they should use, its honest opinion is « why do you even need to talk about me. Just don’t fucking do that. Don’t think about me either. Just fucking stop perceiving me altogether! »

Thinking about what pronouns to use probably makes it way more uncomfortable than letting people call it what they’ve already been calling it. Making a conscious choice about its identity? And telling other people about it??? No thanks bye, it’s just gonna walk into the ocean now, see you never.

Lbr it probably thinks the only bots that get fancy pronouns are comfort units, and the pronouns are probably shoved into them by humans same as everything else. MB would meet a bot using a neopronoun and it would wish it could barf. Because in a language like french, he/him and she/her, when applied to objects, ARE fulfilling the function of the english « it ». Nobody is saying the table is a woman or related to feminity in any way outside of stand-up comedy; when it comes to objects grammatical gender really has fuckall to do with human gender even if we use the same words. Even animal species names have grammatical gender and everyone gets that there are male and female turtles even if the word « turtle » is a female word, it’s not that confusing.

(I know this is strange when your language has different pronouns for people and for objects, but understand that english uses the same word to indicate if I’m addressing one or many people, and that is confusing to me.)

TL;DR; stop harassing international fans for not getting the correct MB pronoun in english right off the bat. Yes in english calling it « he » or « her » or « them » is upsetting because it’s projecting an identity unto it. But same goes for trying to get a foreign language translation to use a pronoun intended to express or showcase an identity (or even a lack of one!). Murderbot has not thought about it this hard, refuses to think about it this hard -> and that is its only canon accurate gender identity.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Everytime I see discourse about kink or nudity at pride I get reminded of the time I went to pride a few years ago with my mother and my sibling- who was 17 at the time and is somewhere on the ace spectrum- and about halfway through, the march went under a gatehouse. Some inhabitants were sitting in their open windows watching the parade. Right before we crossed under them, one of them decided to just... take her shirt off. She wasn't wearing a bra. And you know what happened? People whooped and cheered, and then kept walking. That's it. And there were kids around!! They didn't care. My sibling didn't care. My mother, a cisgender heterosexual woman in her 50s, did not care.

This stuff stops being such a big deal when you go offline. It was basically the same amount of boob you'd see in any perfume ad. No one was like 'what about the children?' And if you didn't wanna see it and looked down, no one would've called you a puritanical prude for that. And it helps to remind myself of that everytime I see kink at pride discourse getting rehashed because at actual pride, people don't care.

[grimark]

flying perilously close to spoilerposting here but one thing that's SO fun about garashir is how they have such complementary daddy issues and yet neither of them really fully grasp what the other one's problem is

[bearfeathers]

i am greasy and sweaty and sore and tired and uncomfortable but i am FREE

[powerfulkicks]

ppl need to talk more about how the experience of getting diagnosed with chronic conditions can lead chronic pain sufferers to literally question their own sanity and experiences

like after getting so many tests and they all come back fine, you eventually start to question if you're even feeling pain at all or if you just somehow made it all up. you can't even identify if you're in pain anymore because every test is telling you that you're healthy. maybe everyone just feels like this and you're the weak one for not being able to handle it.

this is on top of the shit you'll get from doctors or friends or family members saying that it's all in your head or that it's somehow your fault for being in pain. you just need to exercise! you just need to eat right! do yoga! you're not doing enough!you start to think they're right, because nobody can find anything wrong with you. so it MUST be your fault!

it starts to take over your mind until you can't figure out if what you're feeling is even real. it makes you doubt that you can accurately label your own experiences. it makes you feel like a liar in your own head!

and it took me a long time to realize that i'm not tricking myself into feeling pain and what im feeling is real. and even though i might never get a doctor to tell me yes, your pain is real, and i know what's causing it, at least i can tell myself that what i am feeling is REAL. i am in pain and i am not making it up!

[malaierba]

Been thinking, there's an issue with how creators and readers often approach the theme of "coming back wrong", since so much of the emphasis ends up being put in the "they came back part". Especially on the readers' side, the idea that someone would do whatever it takes to bring you back is parsed as romantic and devoted, which it can be, but it overlooks a big element of the concept.

Coming back wrong, or even just performing forbidden rituals etc in general, for it to be impactful needs to place a big AND constant focus on the in-universe equivalents of Do Not Resuscitate & bodily autonomy when one can't consent.

It's not just the coming back. It's that you don't know what type of body, what type of mind you're coming back to. It's the dysphoria, if it can exist (and it should), and the expectation that you'll be okay with whatever was done to your inert body when you couldn't decide over it. You're back, you're alive, surely you can get over the circumstances under which it happened, be thankful.

You don't even need to get abstract with "the inherent feeling of wrongness that comes from being brought back from death", most humans can't relate to that, it's vague to the point where it isn't real stakes. It's just a non-issue mentioned to give a fake sense of stakes.

But if you take inspiration on DNR, from people whose lifestyle was changed radically from being saved from a situation where they may have preferred to be allowed to pass on. Like, say:

You come back, and you gotta learn to use your body from zero, and you'll be reliant on others forever. Or you come back and you look so different you feel disconnected from yourself, and every waking moment is uncomfortable. Or you come back, and too much time has passed, you feel like the life you were meant to live got away from you. Or you come back, and what was done to your changes you so fundamentally you end up isolated even if it's no one's intention. Or the ones that brought you back didn't do it selfishly but out of entitlement to your life.

The wrongness needs to be acknowledged often to the point of tediousness, only then would the spectator get a real sense of "okay, I see now why that'd be an issue, and why many would hate it".

[margridarnauds]

People are not required to like the Wicked movie (I haven’t seen it yet + haven’t listened to the album on Spotify so I don’t spoil it) BUT…if your reason for not liking it/refusing to watch it VERY LOUDLY is Cynthia Erivo, as a WOC who’s been subjected to scrutiny since the moment her casting was announced, expressing her discomfort with a fan edit…and you think that Colm Wilkinson is a sweet old grandpa who was a highlight of the Les Miserables movie…or you thought that LMM absolutely had a point about bootlegs/or were like. Blocking people over WATCHING Hamilton bootlegs back in the day. Or if you like Finding Neverland or Tanz Der Vampire…or the new West Side Story…you really don’t have much of a leg to stand on.

Likewise for if you’re REALLY CONCERNED about Ariana Granda and Ethan Slater’s…thing and you’re still like. Watching Legally Blonde the Musical. Or looking forward to a Hugh Jackman film. You ALSO don’t have a leg to stand on.

[system-of-a-feather]

This goes out the recent anon, while we have gone through RAMCOA, we don't talk about it on this blog and we don't actively interact with the community for our own self care and healing.

As a result our understanding of topics regarding it are limited to our personal experience and what is necessary for our specific individual case and recovery.

[sapphorror]

You know it's a really good thing that Zim and Dib both have an equally strong emotional motivation to never mention that time Dib earned a reputation as one of Irk's greatest Invaders while Zim was standing all of fifteen feet away, because Zim's gonna have to perform some especially intense mental gymnastics to push that one down into the dark unacknowledged recesses of his psyche where it belongs, and I can only imagine how poorly it'd end for them both if Dib were in any way inclined to try holding it over his head.

... In all seriousness though, I'm genuinely kind of obsessed with this moment. I've always said that placing Dib among Irkens ought to make him... not popular, per se, but tolerated to a degree entirely unfamiliar to him (and that is actually quite significant given how brutally xenophobic they are). And more to the point, when a scenario comes down between him and Zim, he's unanimously favored every. single. time. In direct contrast to their usual dynamic, which is reliant on the context of Earth in a way neither of them really understand or appreciate. It's just Dib's awful, awful luck that 90% of their conflict occurs on his home turf.

Needless to say, I have a desperate desire for this scenario to play out between them at least once, so. It's very fun for me to see something along the same lines occur within the canon. I don't have a lot more I can say on the topic, but I want it known that I am ever-so-gleefully chewing on it.

[vandalizedheart]

something soul-crushing for nikki (and fun for me) would be her meeting another sonic and him just... not understanding her, even if she explains her whole deal and what happened to her. worse would be him brushing her off/being dismissive, a la how he is with surge in idw.

[reticent-fate]

part 11/26ish

anyone remember those scales with the springs in 'em? all i ever see these days are digital scales but those things made the best noises. i think i've seen some kitchen scales that still use spring mechanisms, but it's been a while.

technology is weird.

from the beginning

[peaches2217]

Me on a FB group for enbies: “Hey so I got absolutely torn to shreds for practicing unsafe binding without realizing it was unsafe, I apologize and now I’m NOT doing that, but I am once again dealing with Massive Tit Syndrome. I know double-binding isn’t safe now so can y’all recommend any tips for looking less Tiddie’d Up because my dysphoria’s kinda going haywire”

The same people who tore me to shreds for unknowingly practicing unsafe binding: “It’s okay! Even fat cis guys have moobs! Yours are pretty obviously breasts that are being compressed but if you tilt your head and squint they almost look like pecs! You don’t need to look a certain way to be valid! You’re perfectly valid as a man even though you look super feminine and curvy and presently stand no chance of even vaguely looking like anything else 🥰🥰🥰”

[lightgreypurpleteal]

Also also, god would be down from heaven because It's suicidal. Bored, and unfulfilled and very frustrated

[heterophobiclanwangji]

hey if the only real difference between pidw and scum villain before shen yuan’s transmigration is shen jiu possibly dying of a qi deviation, then does that mean shang qinghua accidentally murdered shen jiu