#especially if they have rules and requirements

[clavalee]

I have a story regarding this actually

Yesterday after the Pledge Of Allegiance, the new teacher for the video production class at my school said, "Okay, a lot of you aren't standing and I just won't have that in my classroom. Tomorrow, everyone is going to stand."

This wasn't especially surprising considering a lot of other stuff he had said in the few weeks he's been at the school, but it was weird.

So today, those of us that didn't want to stand, just like yesterday, didn't stand. He said to us, "You know what the Pledge is, right? [in the most condescending voice you can imagine from a presumably-midwestern, nasally, cranky, 60-something]. You have to stand." So I spoke up—since he was being rude and condescending to my friend—and said, "literally no we don't. It's within our rights to not stand." He says, "okay, well, I'm the teacher, and it is a rule that I can require you to stand." "Is it?"

This bitch rolls his eyes at me and says, "okay, we're going to have a talk later, right now we're supposed to be having a moment of silence."

He literally never had a talk with me about it beyond that.

TL;DR: Don't stand for the Pledge. Your teachers can't do shit if you don't.

dear usamerican high schoolers looking for a way to resist fascism: sit through the pledge of allegiance.

no getting up. no looking at the flag.

everyone will be looking at you. you'll be sweating like a fucking hippopotamus. your teacher will sternly tell you to get up. you'll feel stupid and that maybe its not worth it because you're just a kid in a classroom. but I'm here to remind you that there are no real life consequences to detention. there are however real life consequences to resisting a thoughtless performance of nationalism.

[the-cosmic-cauldron]

Your sun sign can reveal why you start to dislike a job and eventually want to leave. It can highlight what’s missing in your work environment and why it no longer fulfills you. Let’s dive into it.

Fire Suns (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius)

Fire suns dislike jobs that become boring and predictable. Nothing frustrates them more than routine and monotony—it drives them bonkers. They also struggle with rigid work environments, especially those with excessive rules, administrative tasks, or restrictions that limit their creativity and freedom. Fire suns thrive when they can do things their own way, so jobs that require them to conform too much feel suffocating.

They also dislike jobs where they have little power or autonomy. Constantly answering to higher-ups in a strict hierarchy frustrates them. Fire suns don’t enjoy detail-oriented or highly organized work; they prefer flexibility and spontaneity. They also crave social interaction at work. If they don’t have a strong team or coworkers they enjoy talking to, they lose interest.

Lastly, they need excitement and variety in their daily tasks. A job that feels too monotonous, uneventful, or lacking in stimulating experiences won’t hold their attention for long. Fire suns need a job where each day brings something new and engaging—something worth talking about at the end of the day.

Earth Suns (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn)

Earth suns are quick to leave a job if their salary isn’t increasing or if they aren’t being promoted. Financial stability and growth are major motivators for them. They also prefer professional work environments. A lack of professionalism—whether due to disorganization, unmotivated coworkers, or a workplace that feels too casual—can push them to leave.

Earth suns dislike being surrounded by people who don’t take work seriously. They need coworkers who are reliable and competent. They also prefer jobs with clear structures, step-by-step procedures, and well-defined rules. Creativity-heavy roles can feel overwhelming or unnecessary to them.

Additionally, earth suns dislike chaotic, action-packed jobs with constant stimulation or unpredictability. They prefer calm, structured, and steady work environments. If a job doesn’t offer opportunities for growth, whether financially or positionally, they won’t stick around.

They also value benefits. A job with poor benefits or an unstable income—such as contract work, fluctuating pay, or seasonal jobs—won’t appeal to them. Earth suns want consistent pay and a solid work-life balance that allows them to maintain the lifestyle they desire.

Air Suns (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius)

Air suns will leave a job quickly if it requires too much physical labor. Repetitive, monotonous work also drives them away. They crave novelty and dislike seeing the same faces and performing the same tasks every day. A job that lacks variety or intellectual stimulation will bore them.

They need mental challenges, opportunities for problem-solving, and engaging conversations. If a job feels too easy or stagnant, an air sun will quickly lose interest. They also value workplace mobility—if they don’t see a path for promotion or advancement, they’ll move on.

Air suns prefer innovative workplaces that stay updated with modern trends and technology. Old-school, outdated work environments frustrate them. They also want to have fun at work. If they can’t laugh, socialize, or make friends, they won’t feel motivated to stay.

Lastly, air suns need to see a future in their work. If they can’t envision themselves growing within a company, they’ll leave. A job that feels like a dead end, with no future prospects or potential for change, won’t hold their interest for long.

Water Suns (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces)

Water suns are most likely to leave a job if it feels emotionally unfulfilling. If they constantly feel drained, stressed, or uninspired, they won’t stay. They need to feel comfortable and at home in their work environment. If they feel like an outsider, are ostracized, bullied, or disrespected, they’ll want to leave.

They also crave appreciation. Water suns tend to give a lot to their job—whether through their effort, empathy, or dedication—so a lack of positive feedback or recognition will make them feel undervalued. They need to feel that their contributions matter.

Interpersonal relationships play a huge role in their job satisfaction. If they experience tension with coworkers, bosses, or even customers, it can push them to leave. Conflict and negativity in the workplace deeply affect their emotional well-being.

Work-life balance is another major factor. Water suns need time to recharge, spend time with family, and nurture personal relationships. If their job takes up too much of their time and leaves them emotionally depleted, they won’t hesitate to leave.

Lastly, they need creative freedom. Too many rigid rules or a lack of personal expression can make them feel stifled. Water suns thrive in roles that allow them to infuse their personal touch and creativity into their work. If they feel like just another cog in the machine, they won’t stick around for long.

[starmocha]

Okay but hear me out…a play date for all the LADS kiddos? I wanna see Sylus’ little birdie play with Zayne’s lil snowdrop or Xavier’s lil starlight 🥺 Maybe she can be besties with Raf’s lil coral too? 🥺👉🏼👈🏼

I always imagined these guys have their own MCs who are friends with each other so it would be cute if we get to see the kids play together 🥺

(I have a huge soft spot for Lil birdie so i want to see her more hopefully in the future 🥹🫶🏼)

SQUEALING. omg I'm so glad you mentioned how they have their own MC, because sometimes I do want the kiddos to play together, but then I'm like wait a minute....unless...?

and psst....Caleb's boy....little pilot 🥹

Xav's daughter is the youngest at 2, so Lil Birdie takes her big sis role very seriously (even though she's only one year older lol) and because she's actually a lonely little rich girl sometimes because of her parents' jobs :(

Little Snowdrop would be the eldest and he would also be hyper conscious about taking care of everyone. he may or may not be carrying around a tin can with cute band-aids for his friends

Snowdrop also requires payment in the form of sweets it's tough making a living in this economy his mom limits his sweets intake and Zayne gets scolded if he sneaks around her rule 💀

omg I haven't decided how I want Raf's kid's personality to be yet. I was leaning on the super sweet side, but now I'm wondering if I should make him sassy like his dad as well lol. That's kind of why I haven't been able to get the first story out yet because I'm such a coward about writing Raf and lowkey Xav too.... 😔

Little Starlight is spoiled sweet by everyone especially her father.... she's definitely a little more girlie than Birdie is, but she's also a feisty little miss who uses her cuteness to her advantage

Little Pilot is also younger at 2, so maybe that's why he's a little more reckless lol. He is fearless and adventurous and loves getting into dangerous situations. I am in the process of writing his first story rn and all I am saying is carbon copy of Caleb. like 100%. His eyes as well. 100% CALEB. MC's genes didn't even try lol.

[keferon]

Not sure if fandom events are your thing, but the Secret Solenoid event is open for sign-ups. It’s a Secret Santa-type gift exchange, and I think it would be awesome to have some keferon magic over there.

You got me curious at first but then I looked at their rules and

Ah hell no

If they can't handle me at my worst (weird rough sketches) they don't deserve me at my best (weird rough sketches)

Jokes aside. Don't take me seriously here please. I don't do polished art. I do fast and rough and sketchy and simple art and I'm proud of it being that way. I hope you'll have fun drawing/writing those neat and polished pieces for each other👍

[philosophicalparadox]

Similarly, literary analysis is a skill. It takes practice. And some of that practice inherently involves you being wrong or skewed. Bias is everywhere, but sometimes your bias informs your interpretation/perception in a way that’s just too far away from the reality — and with analysis, there is a kind of reality.

Which is precisely why literary analysis requires you to read a lot. It’s about pattern recognition, not opinion; literary analysis is more science than art, as the name implies, and while its rules aren’t fully understood, they nonetheless exist.

I see posts quite often in my neck of the woods (anime/manga) that neglects these rules while trying to understand the material through a heavily biased lens. This is usually because people neglect the most important rule: Culture Comes First. You can’t analyze the “data” in a piece of literature if you don’t understand what the “study” is — you have to weigh, by necessity, the cultural context of the work you’re looking at, because the patterns and themes that you are analyzing are not necessarily universal, and can vary from culture to culture. No surprise then that way too often I see people analyzing Japanese media through an American, usually, lens. Which has its merits, especially when you’re discussing popular media that reaches many people, or things that are shared, but nonetheless is a skewed perception that misses a lot of context giving patterns.

I also too often see analysis done as if it’s a journalist opinion piece, which to be fair, there is language in common between them, because again, biases must be recognized in any sort of qualitative study, but it fundamentally is not.

That isn’t to say that analysis that missed the mark doesn’t have merit; there’s a reason my literature classes always had us exchange and share our papers after grading. Different people have different strengths in pattern recognition, and what is noticed by one can be missed by another. It’s like peer review. In fact it IS peer review.

But gods does it IRK me when I see people who do the whole “my interpretation is the only right one” with analysis specifically, because, no, honey. That’s not how that works. Literary analysis isn’t just a fancy term your English teacher threw at you for fun. It has actual metrics. There are meanings behind the words Trope, Motif and Theme. I mean, there’s something to be said about an analysis that has good metrics and is widely agreed upon, because typically (though not always, courtesy cultural bias above) that means it’s “passed review” so to speak, but if you’re standing in a crowd shouting that you’re right and everyone else is wrong, odds are pretty good that you’re the wrong one. Or at least that you’re missing something on purpose.

Not “Only my reading of canon is correct” or “Interpretations are subjective and all valid” but a secret third thing, “More than one interpretation can be valid but there’s a reason your English teacher had you cite quotes and examples in your papers, you have to have a strong argument that your interpretation is actually supported by the text or it is just wrong and I’m fine with telling you it’s wrong, actually.”

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I love tornado survival guides. "Shelter in a basement or interior room without any windows. But if you're in a mobile home, just fucking die I guess lol"

[squarebracket-trickster]

Maybe I could just [square bracket trick] these revisions and leave them for future me...

Future me is gonna be so mad hehe

[sugarandspite05]

oh my god this. theres been a pleathora of times where i imagine myself in a beard/lavender relationship, which is a tad bit insane. its not to hide any sexual or romantic orientation, but the lack of it. like this is how much pressure society puts on us to date?? id thrive being single, having my own home, etc... theres nothing wrong with it, of course, many aro people marry and date, but just having to rule that in as an option in the first place, especially in a financial sense, its just disheartening tbh. like wow, being "alone" for the rest of your life is treated as an endless persecution. god forbid people having fulfilling lives with lifelong friends.

but then again, thats difficult. its hard with new people. romantic love is top priority before anything else. and you're painted as unrealistic or insane if you tell your friend that theyre neglecting you and your friendship because theyre spending time with their partner. its seen as so damn weird, asking your friend to spend more time with you because youre feeling neglected and unvalued, which is literally just the facts, though. society sees that as some ulterior motive, like you want to sabotage their relationship because youre jealous of their love, want their partner for yourself, or youre LONELY BEING SINGLE AND ONLY PROJECTING-

sigh.

thankfully, i havent experienced this firsthand, only minute cases. but idk. if someone gets pissy over you communicating that you feel unprioritized, cut them tf out. a friendship is also a relationship that requires the same level of care and attention as any other type of relationship. point blank.

being on the aro spectrum would be a lot easier if being single wasn’t made to feel like a literal death sentence

[racke7]

Spent a bit of time today tracking down the actual how-it-works of sleep in pokemon.

Basically, the wikis are all very unhelpful about what exactly constitutes as a "turn".

Turn 1:

Pokemon 1 uses Spore

Pokemon 2 is fast asleep

Turn 2:

Pokemon 1 does X

Pokemon 2 is fast asleep

My question was simply, if Pokemon 2 can wake up on Turn 2, or if it needs to wait until Turn 3 to wake up (barring things like Early Bird).

I feel like some people gave contradictory advice, so I decided to check some pokemon-showdowns, because apparently they SHOW the "turns spent sleeping"-count.

So I tried to track down a few fights where sleep was used. Quickly got annoyed (again) at how awkward Pokemon Showdown is to navigate, but finally managed to find recs of the appropriate generation.

Got suspicious after a while of not finding any sleep-moves, and checked the actual rule-sets and-... And sleep is banned pretty much everywhere. And where it isn't outright banned, it has some ridiculous gentlemen-rule about "only effecting a single pokemon at once".

What the fuck.

I suddenly understand why people think that these ruleset-creators are butt-hurt crybabies. Holy shit.

If sleep is such a dominating force, start running with insomnia, or worry-seed, or magic-bounce, or chesto-berries. I feel like the game gives you a lot of options to choose from.

[datastate]

i don't mean this to brag or anything silly like that bc. that is weird to do! but i seriously do think at this point i've thought more abt the intricacies of asunaro than anyone else - barring nankidai, of course, but even so... that's primarily a matter of how long yttd existed in his head. whereas i was only introduced to it abt 3 years ago... otherwise. well. hey mister nankidai would you like to collaborate. hey,

[lesbianwyllravengard]

Going back into my cave after this but Wyllstarion x The Princess Diaries au. Wyll as Mia, Astarion as Nicholas, Tav as Andrew. You understand.

[stabyou]

been having so much fun making jewelry lately. i have so many pieces now that i can't feasibly wear all the things i've made in any kind of timely manner. got bracelets coming out of my ears

[itstimeforstarwars]

Getting distracted from the main plot of three jedi to focus on the history of bacta.

[recovering-vamp]

dating sim (VN or CYOA... hmmm) with a mostly/exclusively fat character cast... with lots of cool gender + poly inclusive... this would be nice. mayhaps time to put my RenPy or Twine love to use... idk what sort of thing. just. might be nice to stretch the coding muscles again.

[maideninorange]

⭐️ for the To Be series 👀

Anything I want, you say? The To Be (One With the Garden) series of mine they are referring to is...a lot. It's intended to be very open-ended, with a lot of things never being outright stated, and if you read any given fic with a given assumption about Olimar's unfortunate situation, said fic(s) can easily be made more or less horrifying. Add in the fact that neither Olimar nor the Pikmin are always entirely what you'd call a very reliable narrator (no matter how much the former likes to think he is, for the most part), especially as time goes on, and well...things can get tricky, to put it mildly.

As a result, it can be kinda hard to talk about this series, because I don't want people to take my own reading as fact on too many things. It's more fun seeing what kind of interpretations people come to on their own, at least, in my opinion as the author of these four things.

So hm...What to talk about, what to talk about...Do I point out that one bit where I fucked up how much oxygen is in the Earth's atmosphere that's been driving me a little crazy? It's 21% not 70%...Wait! This is probably going to be one of the only times I get to share some language factoids about the Pikminish language I've imagined the characters speaking that I have been writing with in mind! Check what I wrote in Discord convos... remove parts that are kinda spoilery to that huge knife twist in the "back half" I've been planning since the beginning...Place cut for my non-Pikmin followers and here!

Generally speaking, Pikminish outright lacks pronouns. Where pronouns would be in English is generally something most would understand in context. It is generally assumed that plural takes precedent, unless stated to be otherwise (so the word that would most closely resemble "I" and "you" when one must state the topic would most literally translate as "this one" and "that one"). Referring to a third person is referenced through hand gestures like pointing, or through the use of titles (like "Leader", that is ever present). The thing about the Pikmin, you see, is that referring to the group is taken to be the norm due to their odd eusocial structure (For those not familiar with it, eusociality refers to the sort of social structure things like ant nests and bee hives have, although the version in "To Be" is more a cliffnotes version). This is why the default pronoun for the Pikmin is "We" in these fics with "I" being emphasized, due to the fact that they find it unnatural to refers to themselves as individuals. There's, unfortunately, no real way to communicate this in English, but if you are familiar with languages like Japanese, it's kinda like that except Worse.

Adding onto this is the fact that the Pikmin, lacking a social concept of gender, naturally lack a language feature for gender. This is why they refer to Olimar with they/them pronouns, which is something I've mentioned before I think. However, something I haven't mentioned is that I tend to think of Hocotatian as a language with quite a few similarities to Pikminish, one feature of such being that it is similarly context based, although Hocotatian is more just average pronoun avoidant as opposed to outright lacking in pronouns. This is why Olimar never so much as remarks on it when he probably would've otherwise: gender in Hocotatian is typically conveyed through gendered nouns applied to people (think "salesman" or "actress"). As the situation he's found himself in is one in which use of nouns that would be gendered in Hocotatian are few and far between, it's not something he ever really has any opportunity to pick up on, and so it goes unremarked upon. Naturally, English, being a very pronoun heavy language, this kinda makes conveying that specific detail nigh-impossible outside of something like this. Curse you English, you broken broken language.

I like to imagine Pikminish as one of those languages where common words tend to translate to something flowery in another. Not bad for a language where sentences tend to be fast and words are stuffed with as much information as they can be! (Never know when predators might be on the prowl, after all.) This ties into the very musical way I like to imagine them talking, but you already know that, and this thingy is for things I can't convey in fic.

Word order is more than likely SOV in both Pikminish and Hocotatian. (Subject -> Object -> Verb order for those unaware). It's a very common order for words to flow in general out in the real word though, right next to SVO. I just thought this detail was interesting. (English is SVO, so this would've been impossible for me to convey). I like to imagine Pikminish as having pitch accent as well, due to a lack of varied sounds to create various different combinations of words with.

I would've killed to explain any of this in fic, but as you can kinda observe, Olimar is not a language nerd (and therefore would have no reason to take note of any of these things...Though I imagine his notes would've been very extensive if he was lol), and the Pikmin sure as hell aren't. So unfortunately, a lot of this had to go unexplained, even though I was writing these fics with that in mind.

Sorry if this isn't the most interesting director's commentary, but I really wanted to get this bit out there somewhere considering I couldn't write any exposition on it in naturally. But I had fun writing this out, so I hope that counts for something!

[birdpal]

it remains just so incredible to me that there are literally laws locked behind paywalls in the US

like the law is fully in effect and enforceable but you have to pay sometimes hundreds of dollars to even know what it is