#i don't like talking about politics on here since the internet is forever and i dont agree with a lot of the shit i said a few years ago

[garak]

if i say "i'm not voting for biden if he continues to bankroll genocide" and biden loses the election to someone "worse" (by dem standards) because he didn't get enough votes it will not be my fault. he's the one who kept giving money to israel. that was an action that he took of his own free will full well knowing it would jeopardize the votes of large swathes of the population. that loss is not on me or you or anyone else who exercises their right to vote for a candidate that they believe will be better for the country than him. that loss is on biden and his own policies and decisions that he made while in office. do not let the spineless sniveling centrist sycophants of the democratic party ever convince you otherwise

[jewelleria]

I don’t usually talk about politics on here, if ever. But it’s been almost six months since the conflict in the Middle East flared up again, and I’m finally ready to start. Here are some of my thoughts.

I say ‘flared up’ because this has happened before and it’ll happen again. Because, even though what's currently going on is absolutely unprecedented, those of us who live in this part of the world are used to it. Let that sink in: we are used to this. And we shouldn’t have to be. 

But I use that term for another reason: I don't want to accidentally call it the wrong thing lest I come under fire for being a genocidal maniac or a terrorist or a propaganda machine, etc., etc.—so let’s just call it ‘the war’ or ‘the conflict.’ Because that’s what it is. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on, who you love, or who you hate. 

This post will, in all likelihood, sit in my drafts forever. If it does get posted, it certainly won’t be on my main, because I'm scared of being harassed (spoiler: she posted it on her main). I hate admitting that, but honestly? I’m fucking terrified. 

I also feel like in order for anything I say on here (i.e. the hellscape of the internet) to be taken seriously, I have to somehow prove that a) I’m “educated” enough to talk about the conflict, and b) that my opinion lines up with what has been deemed the correct one. So, tedious and unnecessary though it is, I will tell you about my experience, because I have a feeling most of the people reading this post are not nearly as close to what’s happening as I am.

How do I explain where I live without actually explaining where I live? How do I say “I live in the Red Zone of international conflicts” without saying what I actually think? How do I convey the fear that grips me when I try to decide between saying “I live in Palestine” and “I live in Israel”? I don't really know. But I do know that names are important. I also know that, due to the various clickbaity monikers ascribed to the conflict, it would probably just be easier to point to a map. 

I haven't always lived in the Middle East. I've lived in various places along America’s east coast, and traveled all over the world. But in short, I now live somewhere inside the crudely-drawn purple circle. 

If you know anything about these borders you probably blanched a bit in sympathy, or maybe condolence. But in truth, it’s a shockingly normal existence. I don't feel like I've lived through the shifting of international relations or a war or anything. I just kind of feel like I did when COVID hit, that dull sameness as I wondered if this would be the only world-altering event to shape my life, or if there would be more. 

I've been told that, in order for my brain to process all the horrific details of the past six months, there needs to be some element of cognitive dissonance—that falling into a sort of dissociative mindset is the only way to not go insane under the weight of it all. I think in some ways that’s true. I have been terrifyingly close to bus stop shootings when my commute wasn’t over; I have felt my apartment building shake with the reverberations of a missile strike; I have spent hours in underground shelters waiting for air raid sirens to stop. 

But. I have also gone grocery shopping, and skipped class, and stayed up too late watching TV, and fed the cats on the street corner, and cried over a boy, and got myself AirPods just because, and taken out the trash, and done laundry on a delicate cycle, and bought overpriced lattes one too many days a week. I have looked at pretty things and taken out my phone because, despite it all, I still think that life is too short not to freeze the small moments. 

So I'd say, all things considered, I live an incredibly privileged life—compared, of course, to those suffering in Gaza—one filled with sunsets and over-sweetened knafeh and every different color of sand. One that allows me to throw myself into a fandom-induced hyperfixation (or, alternatively, escape method) as I sit on the couch and crack open my laptop to write the next chapter of the fic I'm working on. 

But there are bits of not-normalness that wheedle their way through the cracks. I pretend these moments are avoidable, even if they’re not. 

They look like this: reading the news and seeing another idiotic, careless choice on Netanyahu’s part and groaning into my morning coffee. Watching Palestinian and Jewish children’s needless suffering posted on Instagram reels and feeling helpless. Opening my Tumblr DMs to find a message telling me to exterminate myself for reblogging a post that only seems like it’s about the war if you squint and tilt your head sideways. 

These moments look like all the tiny ways I am reminded that I'm living in a post-October seventh world, where hearing a car backfire makes me jump out of my skin and the sound of a suitcase on pavement makes me look up at the sky and search for the war planes. They look like the heavy grief that is, and also isn’t, mine. 

Here's the thing, though. I know you’re wondering when the ball will drop and my true opinion will be revealed. I know you’re waiting for me to reveal what demographic I'm a part of so that you, dear reader, can neatly slap a label on my head and sort me into some oversimplified category that lets you continue to think you understand this war. 

No one wants to sit and ruminate on the difficult questions, the ones that make you wonder if maybe you’ve been tinkered with by the propaganda machine, if you might need to go back on what you’ve said or change your mind. We all strive for our perception of complicated issues to be a comfortable one.

But I know that no matter what I do, there will always be assumptions. So, while I shudder to reveal this information online, I think that maybe my most significant contribution to this meta-discussion spanning every facet of the internet is this: 

I am a Jew. 

Or, alternatively, I am: Jewish, יהודית, يَهُودِيٌّ, etc. Point is, I come from Jews. And, like any given person, I am a product of generation after generation of love. 

I'm not going to take time to explain my heritage to you, or to prove that before all the expulsions and pogroms, there was an origin point. If you don’t believe that, perhaps it’s less of a factual problem and more of an ‘I don’t give weight to the beliefs of indigenous people’ problem. But, in case you want to spend time uselessly refuting this tiny point in a larger argument, you can inspect the photos below (it’s just a small chunk of my DNA test results). Alternatively, you can remember that interrogating someone in an attempt to make their indigeneity match your arbitrary criteria is generally not seen as good manners. 

Now, let’s go back to thathateful message (read: poorly disguised death threat) I received in my Tumblr DMs. I think it was like two or three weeks ago. I had recently gained a new follower whose blog’s primary focus was the fandom I contribute to, so I followed them back. I saw in my notes that they were going through my posts and liking them—as one does when gaining a new mutual. Yippee! 

Then they sent me this: 

I tried to explain that hate speech is not a way to go about participating in political discourse, but the person had already blocked me immediately after sending that message. Then, assured by the fact that I surely would never see them complaining about me on their blog (because, as I said, they blocked me), they posted a shouting rant accusing me of sympathizing with colonizing settlers and declaring me a “racist Zionist fuck.” Oh, the wonders of incognito tabs.

Where this person drew these conclusions after reading my (reblogged) post about antisemitism…. I'm not actually sure. But I greatly sympathize with them, and hope that they weren’t too personally offended by my desire to not die. 

For a while I contemplated this experience in my righteous anger, and tried to figure out a way to message this person. I wanted to explain that a) seeing a post about being Jewish and choosing to harass the creator about Israel is literally the definition of antisemitism and b) that sending a hateful DM and refusing to be held accountable is just childish and immature. But I gave up soon after—because, honestly, I knew it wasn’t worth my effort or energy. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to change their mind. 

But I still remember staring at that rather unfortunate meme, accompanied by an all-caps message demanding for me to Free Palestine, and thinking: the post didn’t even have any buzzwords. I remember the swoop of dread and guilt and fear. I remember wondering why this kind of antisemitism felt worse, in that moment, than the kind that leaves bodies in its wake. 

I remember thinking, I don’t have the power to free anyone.

I remember thinking, I’m so fucking tired. 

And before you tell me that this conflict isn’t about religion—let me ask you some questions. Why is it that Israel is even called Israel? (Here’s why.) Why do Jews even want it? (Here’s why.) But also, if you actually read the charters of Islamist terrorist organizations like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah (among others), they equate the modern state of Israel with the Jewish people, and they use the two entities interchangeably. So of course this conflict is religious. It’s never been anything but that.

But I do wonder, when faced with those who deny this fact: how do I prove, through an endless slew of what-about-isms and victim blaming, that I too am hurting? How do I show that empathy is dialectical, that I can care deeply for Palestinians and Gazans while also grieving my own people? 

There's this thing that humans do, when we’re frustrated about politics and need to howl our opinions about it into the void until we feel better. We find like-minded souls, usually our friends and neighbors, and fret about the state of the world to each other until we’ve gone around in a satisfactory amount of circles. But these conversations never truly accomplish anything. They’re just a substitute, a stand-in catharsis, for what we really wish we could do: find someone who embodies the spirit of every Jew-hating internet troll, every ignorant justifier of terrorism, and scream ourselves hoarse at them until we change their mind.

But, of course, minds cannot be changed when they are determined to live in a state of irrational dislike. In Judaism, this way of thinking has a name: שנאת חינם (sinat hinam), or baseless hatred. It's a parasite with no definite cure, and it makes people bend over backwards to justify things like the massacre on October seventh, simply because the blame always needs to be placed on the Jews. 

So when a Jew is faced with this unsolvable problem, there is only one response to be had, only one feeling to be felt: anger. And we are angry. Carrying around rage with nowhere to put it is exhausting. It's like a weight at the base of our neck that pushes down on our spine, bending it until we will inevitably snap under the pressure. I’m still waiting to break, even now.

I wish I could explain to someone who needs to hear it that terrorism against Israelis happens every single day here, and that we are never more than one degree of separation away from the brutal slaughter of a friend, lover, parent, sibling. I wish it would be enough to say that the majority of Israelis (which includes Arab-Israeli citizens who have the exact same rights as Jewish-Israelis) wish for peace every day without ever having seen what it looks like. 

I wish I could show the world that Israel was founded as a socialist state, that it was built on communal values and born from a cluster of kibbutzim (small farming communities based on collective responsibility), and that what it is now isn’t what its people stand for. 

I wish the world could open their eyes to what we Israelis have seen since the beginning: that Hamas is the enemy, Hamas is the one starving Palestinians and denying them aid, Hamas is the one who keeps rejecting ceasefire terms and denying their citizens basic human rights. Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, not Israel. Hamas is responsible for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And Hamas are the ones who are more determined to murder Jews—over and over and over again, in the most animalistic ways possible—than to look inwards and see the suffering they’ve inflicted on their own people. I wish it was easier to see that.

But the wishing, the asking how can people be so blind, is never enough. I can never just say, I promise I don't want war. 

When I bear witness to this baseless hatred, I think of the victims of October seventh. I think of the women and girls who were raped and then murdered, forever unable to tell their stories. I think of the hostages, trapped underneath Gaza in dark tunnels, wondering if anyone will come for them. I think of Ori Ansbacher, of Ezra Schwartz, of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali, of Lucy, Rina, and Maia Dee, of the Paley boys, of Ari Fuld and of Nachshon Wachsman. I think of all the innocent blood spilled because of terror-fueled hatred and the virus of antisemitism. I think of all the thousands of people who were brutally murdered in Israel, Jews and Muslims and Christians and humans, who will never see peace.

My ties to this land are knotted a thousand times over. Even when I leave, a part of me is left behind, waiting for me to claim it when I return. But when I see the grit it takes to live through this pain, when I see the suffering that paints the world the color of blood, I look to the heavens and I wonder why. 

I ask God: is it worth all this? He doesn't answer. So I am the one, in the end, to answer my own question. I say, it has to be. 

Feel free to send any genuine, respectful, and clarifying questions you may have to my inbox!

EDIT: just coming on here to say that I'm really touched & grateful for the love on this post. When I wrote it, I felt hopeless; I logged off of Tumblr for Shabbat, dreading the moment I would turn off my phone to find more hate in my inbox. Granted, I did find some, and responding to it was exhausting, but it wasn’t all hate. I read every kind reblog and comment, and the love was so much louder. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 🤍

Source Reading

The Whispered in Gaza Project by The Center for Peace Communications

Why Jews Cannot Stop Shaking Right Now by Dara Horn

Hamas Kidnapped My Father for Refusing to Be Their Puppet by Ala Mohammed Mushtaha

I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy by Rachel Goldberg

The Struggle for Black Freedom Has Nothing to Do with Israel by Coleman Hughes

Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values by The New York Times Editorial Board

There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive by Peter Beinart

The Long Wait of the Hostages’ Families by Ruth Margalit

“By Any Means Necessary”: Hamas, Iran, and the Left by Armin Navabi

When People Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them by Bari Weiss

Hunger in Gaza: Blame Hamas, Not Israel by Yvette Miller

Benjamin Netanyahu Is Israel’s Worst Prime Minister Ever by Anshel Pfeffer

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas by Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins

The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology by Bruce Hoffman

The Wisdom of Hamas by Matti Friedman

How the UN Discriminates Against Israel by Dina Rovner

This Muslim Israeli Woman Is the Future of the Middle East by The Free Press

Why Are Feminists Silent on Rape and Murder? by Bari Weiss

[matan4il]

Idk if you know who Noah Schnapp is but I feel so sad for him. He seems like a sweet kid and The internet has been sending him death threats and trying to get him fired because he’s pro Israel/anti Hamas. Noah is gay and Jewish the two groups Hamas hates the most of course he’s not gonna support them

Hi Nonnie!

I do know who Noah is. I think he seems like a nice guy, I was really happy for him when he was able to come out as gay, and get such a positive reaction, first from his family, then from the public.

He visited Israel back in July, almost 3 months before Oct 7, and already he was getting attacked simply for that. I think it's SICK in the worst way possible, that Jewish people are getting harassed for even simply visiting their ancestral land, and it's the kind of racism we wouldn't see turned on ANY other marginalized group in the US. Kids of Mexican descent don't get attacked simply for visiting Mexico, African Americans don't get vilified for visting Africa, no matter what people think of these countries. It's anti-Jewish racism to do this to Jews, and it should be loudly called out and condemned. Noah was brave to post about this visit, he was brave to explicitly say he had never felt as alive as he did visiting his ancestral land, and getting to know fellow young Jews here, but he shouldn't have to be.

By now, however, as the attacks on him intensified since Hamas' massacre, and Noah's continued support for Israel, of native Jewish rights in our land, and calling out Hamas for being the vile organization they are (you're right, it is vile to Jews AND to gay people. In fact, it's an organization that should be vile to ANYONE who claims to care about human rights), he's deleted most of his posts from his visit here on his IG, only one remains, and he removed the caption for that one, which is that one that IIRC said he's never felt more alive. Now there's no caption, and it's still apparently taking a lot out of him to simply keep it up on his account.

He did try to backtrack, IDK to what a degree he might have been pressured to. He's certainly not the first Jewish celeb I've seen having to do that, and later admitting they were motivated by fear and harssment. The "kind" anti-Israel crowd is definitely implying Noah is only doing it due to Stranger Things' new season which is about to be released. I'm afraid whatever the reason, he's about to find out that if the antisemites can't tokenize you to use you against other Jews, then you're forever a "bad Jew," and nothing you say will ever change that. On the way, I guess he'll disappoint many Jewish followers, who looked up to him when he was one of the few celebs, even more so one of a handful of young celebs, to stand by Israel. The anti-Israel crowd claims to be persecuted, silenced and bullied, but as far as I can tell, especially with young people like him, they're the ones doing the persecuting, silencing and bullying. I'm really saddened that he felt he had to backtrack his support of Israel, to a great degree because it tells me just how severe the attack and pressure on him must be, and I just don't want any Jew to suffer.

But this actually brings me to another, maybe more important point: just because celebrities have a bigger stage than the rest of us, it doesn't mean they know more about politics than others. If Noah, as a Jew, could safely speak about his experiences as a young Jewish man, I think that would be fantastic, just like I think it's great whenever a queer celeb comes out of their own accord and shares some of their experiences. It's a really sad thing to realize that in 2024, it's safer to talk about being gay, and to speak up for gay rights, than to be Jewish and speak against antisemitism, or about Jewish experiences, or for Jewish rights. But beyond sharing personal experiences, celebrities don't understand a conflict as complex as the Israeli-Arab one, and with as much history as this one has, more than the average Tiktoker. Neither one is an authority, and neither one should be who people go to for their political views. The fact that people look at Tiktokers as any kind of authority, or have expectations from celebs regarding political views and bully them for the "wrong" ones (based on what Tiktokers said) is a part of what has gone horribly wrong with modern society.

The internet was supposed to help us fight misinformation through the availability of facts. Instead, we see repeatedly how what is true falls prey to what is viral.

Sending big hugs, and I hope you're doing good! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[kuebiko-writing]

The time my sister and I "reinvented" ttrpgs

The story starts with my siblings and I being homeschooled. With creative parents and no internet access--and I do mean that--our imaginations grew to epic proportions. As kids we had lots of picture books and one of our favorites was an illustrated book about the lives of people back in the day. For example, we would point at an illustration of a woman selling bread in a market and make an entire story out of it.

At some point my sister and I realized we could just use words alone, and from there we'd go on to start making stories and characters and asking "what would this character do in this situation?" and "what happened when he rang the doorbell?" and so forth. We'd piggyback off of each other's ideas and work together to tell the story. We named it the "Talking Game", and we still call it that today. It's like a ttrpg campaign where two Game Masters control the story together and play the characters against each other with no rules, dice or stats.

It really took off when I started reading Bereft by Ren Tachiba on Wattpad. I was so inspired by it that I even used the name Anzel from the second book in the series for once of my characters. That's how our story called The Secret of The Seven Realms was created. My sister and I would spend hours building the world and characters. Our parents would complain because we kept them awake at night with all our talking. It's still our most beloved game to this day.

For anyone wondering, it's a high fantasy story set in realms, the most prominent being the realm of Astartia and the realm of Sonasis, who have a friends/enemies relationship with each other. The story actually starts on earth, where a teenage boy with a speech impediment named Despite, later renamed to Lexicon, meets his long-lost father, who whisks him away to the realm of Astartia. (Don't judge the weird names, we were just kids lol) His father, Asher Heartstone is cold and demands a lot from his son, who is tasked with studying magic and learning how to navigate enemies and the strange politics of the realms which consisted of things like a very fancy magic-showdown in an arena.

We developed iconic characters like my sister's character, Hercules Sonasis, an arrogant realm prince who loves to be the center of attention, is addicted to human-world coffee and wears platform boots because he hates to be seen as short. One of my own characters I came to love is Anzel Heartstone, Lexicon's uncle. A High Fae who was cast out of his own kingdom and reinvented himself as a Sanatrix (a healer). Most of his time is spent in his garden or workshop or in the forest foraging for mushrooms. He has a talent for making magic tapestries out of people's hair and spends far too much time stealing snippets of his nephew's hair.

The Secret of The Seven Realms is at least six years old now!

Currently, my sister @bennydelune and I are playing a story called A Pact of Blood (placeholder title) about two Houses that stand in conflict with each other until an old enemy rises from the ashes, forcing them to either unite, or fall into desolation. In this evening's session, Lord Thorne and Lord Bastien of House of Lightshard and House of Nightwing have been accused of murder and imprisoned by Merlin, the prince who is about to inherit the throne. Lord Bastien's son goes to the palace to see him, only to find the two Lords locked in the dungeon under the influence of a powerful illusion that keeps them placid. The session ended with the arrival of the villain and Lord Bastien's wife, who was thought to be dead for years.

I'm so excited to see where it goes from here! I'm having so much fun with it and it got so cool with new plot twists and juicy backstories that I want to make it a novel. If you've read this far, then that's probably what I'm going to be posting about from now on. I've been wanting to write a novel since forever, and this gives me a really good foundation to write something awesome!

Anyway, that's how we sort of reinvented ttrpgs. 😅 I was so happy when I discovered they were actually a thing! I think I'd love to be a DM/GM someday.

[themurderofcrowscollective]

HEY GUYS!! Hi, yes, you may know us as the Graveyard system or you don't, but now's not the time to get into that. I want to talk about the upcoming danger that is KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act that hasn't yet been voted for as of today (9/27/2023), and speak out for people who aren't just part of the LGBTQIA+ community but also have mental illnesses like we do. We have undiagnosed D.I.D (Dissociative Identity Disorder), ADHD and Autism but we can't currently get our diagnosis because it'll keep us tied to our mentally and verbally abusive parents who are far right cultists who follow Donald Trump's word like he's the fucking Messiah forever, and online is where we can truly be who we are. We have to live in a house and go through constant brainwashing, gaslighting and manipulation into believing what our biological father preaches day in and day out, and our only escape is the internet. Now, I want you to take this in consideration that if KOSA is passed and approved, it won't just be us who will have no place to escape to, it'll be hundreds of others like us. I hate to admit it openly but for the past 4 years since our last attempt, we've been stuck thinking about ending our own life before things get bad but it wasn't our bio parents or our 'faith in the Lord' that kept us alive, it was our friends we met through the internet who understood what we were going through. It is a miracle we still have friends and loved ones who keeps us alive, but if the government fucking takes them away from us and outs us to our parents that we have D.I.D, we're FUCKED. Please, I know a lot of people will say 'change.org doesn't do anything' but understand this: We cannot hold a job without our parents rearing their heads and suggesting we pay for all the fucking bills, especially not in the town we live in, so what do you think would happen if we decide to go vote against this? I can only imagine the worst because in this household, our opinion isn't valued or even listened to, what our father believes is what he thinks we believe, but he doesn't know our political standing and different faith, and we'd rather keep it that way until we're able to leave. So the only way I can do my part is spreading the message, sharing this petition and hoping to the gods above that this post gets someone's attention who can do more than us. https://chng.it/nrfrtWWD8T Here's the link, don't let this bill pass and if you have better ways of stopping this, ACT ON IT. Call your representatives, sign any petition you can, or else there's a high chance that teens who are in dire need of help won't find it online.

[spaceorphan18]

HELLO AND WELCOME TO MY BLOG!!

Since there's been a huge influx of new people I thought I'd do an official welcome page! Hi, I'm SO (or you can call me Pam). :)

I'm terrible at 'about me's -- I'm old enough to remember all of the 90s, live in a place that looks like your hand, and run a bookstore for a living (which is not as glamorous as it sounds, but yes I get a really good deal on books).

I'm super into media and literary analysis and if you're looking for a place to find all my writing : YOU CAN MY MASTER LIST OF WRITING HERE (I'll try to get this updated soon, it's somewhat out of date.)

I also write fic! : My Ao3 Page Yes, I have a lot of WiPs, yes they are all being worked on. ;)

IF YOU ARE HERE FOR THE BRIDGERTON!

Pretty solidly a Pen and Colin girly, but I like most of the characters on the show, and am pretty respectful of all other ships

General tag is : bridgerton and Meta tag is : polination

IF YOU'RE HERE FOR THE X-MEN

Rogue has been my girl since I was a child and I am 100% here for all the Rogue and Gambit. I'm a really huge fan of X-Men in general, as well as the greater Marvel universe. I also really enjoy the MCU (even if it is in a questionable state at the moment).

General Tag : xmen, Meta Tag : Marvel Meta, MCU Tag : mcu,

Also check out The Rogue and Gambit Project where I'm talking about Rogue and Gambit's 30 year comics relationship.

IF YOU'RE HERE FOR THE GLEE

That probably means you've been here a while, and I'm so sorry I changed all the decorations on you. Please know that Klaine will forever have my heart. And I'm still reblogging plenty of Glee related things.

Tags:

Celebrity Kindred Spirit - Chris Colfer related things

DC Appreciation Hour - Darren Criss related things

That’s How S.O. Sees it - My tag for general meta-y thoughts

Glee - general tag

(plus see the main master list of writing for ALL the rest of it)

IF YOU'RE HERE BECAUSE I DRAGGED YOU ONTO A PODCAST ALMOST A DECADE AGO...

That's your own damn fault for befriending me and now you're stuck with your life choices, get used to it.

I'm pretty multi fandom these days and in addition to the above, will discuss non stop The Office, Parks and Rec, Lost, Legend of Zelda, and all things Tolkien, as well as whatever else suits my fancy. I do try to tag things in a general fashion so it's easy to black list anything you don't want to see.

I also have a tag for writing advice I've collected over the years : S.O. Writes

As well as a book blog where you can check out what I'm reading : SBC Bookclub

My Ask Box is always open, but don't be an asshat on the internet, you'll either be deleted or ignored. I do try to respond to everything I get as long as you're polite!

Come say hi! I'm pretty friendly and I do love chatting with everyone!! Thanks for coming to my blog!!

[megatownac]

The queue is empty, and it's been a little over four years since that happened. The last time, it's because I was on a two-week trip to Japan. This time, it's because I've quit playing New Horizons.

I stopped playing on September 22, on Ankha's birthday, because I wanted to celebrate that one last time before I put the game down. Since then, I've regained half an hour each day by not playing, and another twenty minutes by not queueing up posts after I got through my backlog on October 1. So it's been about 23 days of having an extra 50 minutes.

I'd been playing for nearly a year for no reason other than to keep getting fuel for posts. It wasn't fun on its own anymore.

I started this blog in September 2013, 10 years and 1 month ago. Since then, I've written over 22,000 posts in just about 3700 days.

When I started this blog, the Animal Crossing world was a lot more active. I made friends with people like @toysleaf and @vivinzenz. I would visit people's towns, and they would visit mine. As years went on, that faded. The blog got a little bit bigger. Just barely, barely big enough that I had to get cautious about what I wrote. I cut out all swearing and off-color jokes. I stopped asking people for things. I made sure never to reveal my political leanings, or my thoughts on current events. It wasn't my place, I thought, and was grateful that nobody asked me to weigh in. I eventually became isolated in my little world, not reblogging anything from anybody, ever, and hoping that maybe eventually some silly joke I made would get viral enough to���

To what, exactly? It's not like I ever made money doing this, and I'd all but given up on making friends. I was just doing it out of habit, out of a drive to see if I could get my follower count to go up. It didn't. I hit the 1500-follower mark back in 2016 or 2017 and never got higher than 1595. My silly jokes, my constant barrage of snarky comments about my day-to-day life, simply weren't popular with some imaginary mainstream Animal Crossing tumblr fandom that stopped existing well before New Horizons came out.

There's still an Animal Crossing fandom out here, of course. Just not one that follows blogs like mine. Do something impressive: create some art, or crochet something, or even design a cool home. Things I was not doing. Things I did not want to do.

I'd like to get back to enjoying Animal Crossing. To playing the game for fun. To playing it with other people, and making friends. But that won't happen right now. It can't.

Remember, I've been doing this for over 10 years. I was in my late twenties when I STARTED this blog, and I knew very well that I was one of the oldest people on Tumblr posting Animal Crossing content. My forties are not far off. I'm old. I feel out of place and weird posting my silly little jokes here when I know that most of the people reading them, and there aren't many who do, are probably quite a bit younger than I am. It's a kid's game, and that's fine. But I'm not a kid, and I'm not posting anything truly creative. Just blogging. Just starting up my game each morning to run around and gather fossils and hit rocks and talk to any islanders I see and snapping dozens of screenshots so I can post them on Tumblr at a rate of 4 or more posts each day.

This isn't goodbye forever. I'm just going on break for now. When something changes, I'll be back.

In the meantime, my main blog, @ratralsis, was active before this one started and is still active. I'm going to try to write there a little more often now that I'm not posting here each day, but we'll see, I guess.

As for here, I don't know what I might be posting here in the next few months. Maybe nothing. Maybe I'll start reblogging things again for the first time in, what, six years? Seven years? I don't know. A long time.

I'm not saying I will. Just that I maybe will. Maybe I won't!

Either way, take care of yourself, and remember that I'm still around and, one way or another, will continue writing on the internet until I am physically unable. I've been doing so since 2001 or so and have never stopped. I've been Ratralsis since 2002 and I needed a name to write on a friend's website (the website is long gone now). As far as I know, I'm either the only Ratralsis out there or the other people with that name don't show up on Google, so, as of today, at least, if you see a Ratralsis out there complaining about Best Buy on Twitter or leaving comments on YouTube videos or posting in the forums on Flight Rising, that's me.

That's all for now.

[szczekaczz]

heavier vent lol

i deliberately don't talk about politics here because i have other better places for that so forgive me for this one time. inhale

i hate russia and it's politics and it's politicians and everything it stands for. i hate living next to it, i hate waking up and fearing "today is the day they come for us" everyday. because poland is as much a ""historical part of russia"" as ukraine is. i will never forget what the red army for to my family once they entered poland and don't get me started on the whole western "umm akshually 🤓☝️ red army only targeted and killed the nazis so i guess your family must've been nazis as well" bullshit i see on the internet, they were living the middle of the fucking nowhere. it was a "village" made of what, ten houses in the middle of the forest, they were fucking farmers who had literally nothing in common with the politics and these fuckers still destroyed their whole lives, burned down all their houses and crops and animals alive, tortured them, raped every single girl and woman who didn't manage to hide fast and good enough. and the generational trauma never went away, to this day my family says in the most casual tone that, quote, "if the russians were to invade poland we would instantly feed the poison to our children and then stab ourselves in our hearts with the knives". i'd want to believe that anything may change in the russia in the near future but honestly i have no hope left. i love my homeland and my shithole i was raised in and i hate wondering when will i be forced to leave it forever with my whole being. i hate wondering how would i manage to evacuate and take care of my family abroad since i'm the only one who knows english and they don't know any other language. i know there are good russians and everything but it doesn't change my despise for their country. and i hate this weird admiration for russia i've been seeing in some western online spaces lately? culture and arts and language is one thing, i have no problem with it, there are some things i like too, but to actually side with their politics and say russia is actually one of the good guys?

i know the reality and the world itself isn't black and white. that everything is complicated and requires looking at it from as many sides as possible. this post is just my personal venting about things that are very often on my mind these days. also this isn't an invitation to talk about russia or the west. i still don't feel ready to discuss this with people outside from the former soviet bloc. talking about politics also requires a very thoughtful and precise language, and i'm still not sure with my english language skills in that regard. i think i will be able to do it in the future, but today is not that day. please respect this

[desolationlesbian]

There's a dichotomy I struggle to articulate and might not actually exist, but feels like it exists, between like..."the internet of real life" and "the internet that is mostly disinterested in real life." There is a half of the internet where the default is to post under your real name and photo, and mainly about things like news, politics, your job, your family, etc. There is a different half of the internet who use pseudonyms and rarely if ever talk about any of those things, instead focusing in on hobbies and entertainment and art. Maybe "real life" is not a good word, since hobbies and entertainment are certainly things that are part of your real life, and I am sure there are a lot of blurred lines and crossover here. It just seems to me that "journalist whose internet use consists of using twitter under her byline and posting personal essays and quips" and "guy whose internet use consists of anonymously posting about building model airplanes with fellow enthusiasts on a model airplane forum, without telling those people anything else about him as a human" are using the internet in a distinctly different way that will shape very different relationships with it.

I say this because as a person whose internet use primarily consists of the latter, hearing people from the former group talk universally about the deleterious effects of social media sometimes sounds like it's coming from a space alien. Like, I saw this article in The Atlantic this morning, whose thesis appears to be that the earliest internet social spaces were for managing and deepening relationships you already had in real life, and the reason Facebook and Twitter got out of control is because they became public spaces where your posts are seen not by friends and family but thousands of strangers.

That just...isn't true! It's objectively false! It's so obviously false that I'm shocked it was published. The earliest internet social spaces were forums, IRC channels, and chatrooms, all of which had the key features of interacting pseudo-anonymously with people you have never met before in real life and almost certainly never would, and who you wouldn't realize was that person even if you did meet them on the street. In many ways connecting with strangers was the whole point of the old internet. People have been connecting online with far-afield weirdos since the internet existed. That is not the problem that plagues facebook, twitter, or instagram, or if it is it's not a new one.

If anything, the problem with sites like facebook and twitter seem to be that they want to be everything to everyone at all times forever and immediately connected to your identifiable real-life life.

All of the sites I tend to associate with relatively "healthier" internet use--forums, tumblr, discord--seem to share two key features:

No expectation of the use of any real-life identifiable characteristics

Rather than a universal town square, there is a division into smaller, focused, easier-to-moderate communities based on niche areas of interest (forums in general, sideblogs, servers) where groups of users police themselves via distributed moderation powers among them or small-community social norms

These features seem to be noticeably absent from, or at least not encouraged in the same way, from the big "internet of real life" sites. This is because the way they make money--eating your attention and selling personalized ad data--are fundamentally opposed to both those features. They don't want to be the place where people who like model airplanes go to talk about building model airplanes and then leave; they want to be your everything, and for everyone. They do not want you to be anonymous because they cannot sell your data if they do not know who you are. There are exceptions to this--Facebook as community moderated groups, Twitter doesn't force you to be identifiable--but this seems to be the general trend. The specific form of mental everything-all-the-time exhaustion and misery, impossible-to-moderate nightmares, and paranoia and alienation resulting from the commodification of ourselves as personal brands that we now associate with social media use, all seem to be downstream of this.

That is not to say that the older, unreal-life version of engaging with the internet is always healthy, and doesn't have its own problems. It does however feel sustainable, and way less exhausting, and like it has the potential for a healthy relationship with it, in a way that the big sites currently don't. Yet if you asked the big pundit-y class about How We Fix Social Media, it seems to me that they are unaware this method even exists! I think that is sad, and concerning for the future of the net.

[pretoriafics]

Russian Roulette - Pt. 2

In this series, you will find Alternative Universe, Soulmate plot, Angst, Fluff. In this chapter, you will find: You met the creepy man from the black car, finally! But things began to get weird for you. Word count: 1.560 Pairings: Reader x Derek Original characters of this chapter: Bennie, your host mom; A weird ginger lady Warnings: English is not my main language <3 Yeah, it was based on Russian Roulette by Rihanna Russian Roulette series: Chapter One | Chapter Three RUSSIAN ROULETTE MASTERLIST TEEN WOLF MASTERLIST

You were without a sign of clues.

Well, you were pretty sure that the creepy guy who was talking with Scott and Stiles that day at the school had the answers you were asking for. However, you don't even know his name, and do this question to Scott and Stiles wasn't a viable option. They will never tell you anything about it. You have just one choice: To stay alert and watch things as close as you can.

But, you know, sometimes things happen funnily. The universe has a weird sense of humor.

You were driving through the city in the afternoon, going to get the girls from ballet, and thinking about a plan or something that you could do. Beacon Hills was a tiny city, so if you find out the name of that guy, you could look for a few pieces of information about him. Actually, you were so absorbed in your own thoughts that you just didn't saw the traffic lights become red. The car in front of you stopped, but you didn't stop the car. In fact, when you saw the red light, your eyes got wider and you stepped into the car brake. The loud sound of the tire sliding in the asphalt echoed through the entire street, and your car crashed in the back of the car in front of you.

God, you were so fucked up! You had just screwed the car of your host family! Sebastian and Barbara will be so upset with you!

Immediately, you come out of the car with your face red with anxiety and anger. How could you be so inattentive? But when you saw a man coming out of the car, the color of your face changed from red to white in fear.

You'd just hitten in a black car. A Camaro, you thought without sure. The man was that creepy guy, who you saw talking with Scott and Stiles. Oh, God. You felt your stomach fell in fear, and you froze. He will take a gun to point of you, you are pretty sure about it!

But instead of it, he just looked at you, watching you attentively. His face still looks serious.

"You okay?"

Well, at least he is a polite criminal. Which market does he work at? Is he a drug dealer? A killer? Or he's some kind of... pimp? But why Scott and Stiles would get into a deal or something like that with a pimp?

He doesn't sound like a pimp for you. Actually, he seems like a killer. Maybe he is a killer and a drug dealer...

You breathe in deeply and finally replies him.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry! I don't have so much time with a driver's license. You okay?"

"I noticed that." His eyes become narrowed, and he gave you a discreet smile "Don't worry about me, I'm okay."

He looks at the damage done, and you follow his gaze. Fortunately, you stepped into the car brake soon enough to get just a little smash on both cars. Of course, your low speed helped to minimize the damage.

"Oh, God." You complain, letting out a long sigh. "Wait."

You went back to your car and took a pen and a post-it from the glove compartment. You weren't giving him your phone number just for being fair with him about the accident. It was just an excuse to, finally, find out his name. Quickly, you wrote your name with your phone number and gave the post-it for him.

"Could you give me your phone number? I'll fix your car, don't worry." He told you the numbers, slowly, and you could make the one million dollar question. "Okay. What's your name?"

"Derek Hale."

Oh my gosh, now you know his name! You would finally find out what the heck is going on.

"Alright. I'll send you a message to talk about the car. And sorry!"

Well, you were a lucky Au Pair. Your host family didn't get angry with you. Actually, they were happy you were okay and said that you don't have to worry about the car fix costs. It was great because 200 dollars per week as a salary really wasn't too much money. They just asked you to be careful while driving.

After taking a look at the girls, you ran to your room on the second floor, the last room in the corridor. Quickly, you took the laptop and begun to search on the internet about Derek. You found a piece of news, who was talking about a fire in a house. Reading that news, you found out that it was his house. Almost everybody died, except for Derek and his uncle, Peter, who is actually hospitalized in a clinic, with his whole body burnt.

Well... Maybe you were being unfair to him. It is such a sad history! But you need to continue your search. You need to prove yourself he isn't a criminal or some sort of it because, in the end, you need to protect your boys.

The next day, you were at a restaurant, lunching with Barbara, your host mom, and boss. You call her lovingly Bennie, and she was born and raised in Beacon Hills. If there's one that probably would know about Derek, that person would be her.

"So, Bennie... What about the car fixing?"

"Oh, dear, don't worry about that." She looks at you with a soft smile. "I'd talked with Hale about it. Everything is solved."

"Uh, really? That's great! And what do you know about him?"

Barbara was more than a boss. She was your friend, your second mom. And, sometimes, like every mom, she had the power to let you embarrassed. She was doing it right now, looking at you suggestively.

"Oh, you're interested in him? Why you didn't tell me before? I would talk with him about you! I don't judge you, I mean, all that bad boy kind... Wow! Don't lose this opportunity, girl!"

Bennie has the amazingly cringe-worthy manner ever: she loves to show you a few guys, telling you to call them to date. It wasn't being different now that you're asking her questions about Hale.

"Gosh, Bennie!" You laugh "Luckily Sebastian is not here."

"Well, I met Derek's mom once. He reminds me of her... You know, with all of that 'sweet' personality." Bennie gave a soft smile for you. "But she was a good person. Her name was Talia. Derek was out of the town since a few time ago but seems he came back. I didn't know about it." Bennie narrowed her eyes and gave you a large smile "And you know what? I think Talia would love to meet you!"

"Jesus Christ, Bennie, stop!" You hide your face with one of your hands, blushing while Bennie laughs about your reaction.

"You!"

A female voice came out of nowhere. A ginger woman, with a red dress, approaches you and Bennie. She seems so... Impressed. And she was looking at you.

"Can I help you?" You said, confused.

"I know what are you looking for, (Y/N)."

You froze. How did she know about your name? You had never, ever seen that woman in your entire life.

"...I'm sorry, I don't know-"

"Look for Haytham." She took a pen from her bag and wrote an address on a napkin from the table. A cold shiver ran down your spine when you noticed that her eyes were so empty and distant as a dead body's eyes. "He's a priest. But look at me, child: You are in a decisive moment of your life. You have two paths to choose from. If you continue to look for answers, you will know the truth and the truth is not what you're expecting. This truth will change your life forever, and your life will become a truly Russian roulette, girl. But if you give up on the call of Selene, and give up on your search, your life will be peaceful, but you will spend the entire life knowing that you lost something and you will never know what it is. You will look for something for the rest of your life that you know it's yours, but you will never find it. The choice is yours."

At this moment, you were so terrified, that you have cringed in the chair. Bennie was equally scared, and she was already looking around for some help. Everyone was looking at the table you were on.

Suddenly, after look at you with her dead eyes, the woman fell to the floor, unconscious. Bennie got up from the chair while everybody was looking at the woman, terrified and worried. Bennie instructed you.

"Call an ambulance!"

Terrified and with your hands shaking, you followed her ask while Bennie was watching the lady. As a doctor, Bennie could give her first aid until the ambulance comes in. But when Bennie took the woman's wrist, she contracted her lips in anxiety. Immediately, Bennie put her hands in the woman's chest and...

Oh, Gosh, she was trying to resuscitate the woman.

Bennie was doing a few chest compressions on the woman, which is obviously wasn't a good sign. After a few trying, Bennie shakes her head negatively. Nervous, you asked for her.

"She will be okay?"

Bennie contracts her lips.

"No, (Y/N). She's dead."

[xxisxxisxxis]

Gateway Drug | Part Ninety-Three [PT. 1]

Words: 3k

Warning(s): explicit language, drug abuse

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NIKKI

1987

I throw another drink back not long after yelling obscurities at Viv as she stomped out of VIP to leave and go home, between more lines of blow, a trip to the bathroom to get a fix and some drinks, we decide to take the party to Steven's new place. 

"You guys just can't be too loud, though, got it?" He says as sternly as he can as we get inside and he fumbles for his key. 

"Alright, alright, alright," I mumble, stepping inside, grabbing his bottle of Jack off the counter before getting comfortable on the floor by the window. 

We all talk--as best we can--for a little while, Steven and the boys making some calls to get some dealers here, and the only thing on my mind is getting a potent fix, until I hear something...very faint, very familiar...very, very, familiar...I furrow my brows to focus more, ignoring the guys' laughter and voices, my eyes training on the wall opposite of me. 

My subconscious puts it together before my conscious does, like smelling a blanket from a childhood home and immediately being taken back before your brain can quite grasp the feeling. 

Multiple memories shrouding that sound of Vivian that only she can really pull off. 

It doesn't take rocket science equation solving skills to put together why I'm currently hearing her soft, pretty moans carry on next door. 

I'm pretty sure more members of Guns, aside from Steven, are staying here right now. 

Apparently Stevie hears it not long after and slips into the next suite, where the sound is coming from, that's connected to his suite. 

I don't hear it anymore after he gets back in here. 

"Dealer's coming or what?" I ask Steven, my high starting to get blowed from the fact that my wife is next door on her back for someone who isn't me. 

I'd be jealous if I weren't numb to it by now.

"They're all tied up, man." Steven tells me and I groan, thinking for a second. 

An idea comes to mind that makes me want to bang my head against the wall, but I'm desperate and left with no option at this point. 

"I know a guy," I mumble, dragging myself up to the phone in the little kitchen area, reluctantly dialing a number I never wanted to dial again. 

It rings once...twice...three times… 

"Hello?" He answers and I roll my eyes. 

"'Sup man, it's Nikki." I reply, trying to put on my best "friendly" voice, even though it's making my blood boil that the bastard I could see myself killing is ultimately the one that's gonna be able to save the day. 

"Hey, dude." He replies. 

"Me and a few buddies of mine are out here at the Franklin Plaza Suites and need a few things." I rub the back of my neck. 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah." 

It's quiet, and he reluctantly breathes out. 

"I'll see what I can do." I can hear the satisfaction in his voice that I'm having to call him. 

Within the next forty minutes there's more people here than I'm comfortable with, groupies, and hangerson, and other drug adoring morons, and then my saving grace comes through the door once Steven lets him in. 

Slash is already slipping into a Jack induced stupor. Sally came in a few minutes ago screaming at all of us guys for leaving her at the Cat House. 

We didn't even realize we'd forgotten her. 

She's in the bathroom, probably keeping herself in there to keep from starting an argument with Slash in front of everyone. 

Robbin's on the phone with Laurie.

Apparently it's just in men's nature to get fucked up, call our wives, and profess our undying love for them despite the fact we cheat on them nearly every time we hangout with our friends. 

I wonder what would happen if I went in there on her and Duff right now. 

What would she say? 

Probably nothing. 

She'd just look at the floor and try not to cry, probably. 

What would I do? 

I know that I know what's going on between them, but if I actually walked in and saw them together, caught in the act…

I'd either be a pussy and cry over it, or kill them both--him first and make her watch, and then just slowly torture her or something. God, I'm fucked up. Even though I'm pretty sure being married to me is torture enough to her. 

I know it's torture to me, too. 

"Here dude," Sparkie hands me a syringe and a spoon, and I look at him, too out of focus to concentrate on getting it right. 

"Fix me." I say to him and he scoffs. 

"Okay, dude." He starts getting it ready and I look at that wall again. Staring at it, taking a sip of my drink. 

Fucking Vivian. 

Of course. Her. Of all the women I've hooked up with and dated in my life, she--the most harmless, at least in my dumbfuck mind when I first met her--is the one to screw me over like this. 

And I've let her. 

If I did what Vince does to Sharise and have that whole, "no hanging out with your boy friends without me" rule, this wouldn't even be an issue. 

That's the problem. Somewhere along the way I loosened her leash a little too much and now she's chewed her way through it entirely. 

"You look like you're in hell, you know," Sparkie tells me, fixing the tourniquet around my arm… "But that's okay, you're about to be in heaven in just a few seconds." He assures me. 

I know he's right. I just need to hang on to that. 

In just a few seconds, I'll be--

I hear Vivian, again, and I reach around my neck and grab onto her cross I've been wearing for weeks, now, squeezing it at the sting of the needle going into my skin. 

I feel him shoot me up, my mind waiting to chase and catch the high that I just know is about to come. 

My fingers slip from the crucifix, and I feel myself fall back before a weightless feeling washes over me.

Present

I keep rereading the damn paper, repeatedly, trying my hardest not to throw a fit...

Nikki Sixx and his wife, Vivian, recently confirmed that she is indeed pregnant issuing a simple and straightforward,"Yes, it's true," statement earlier this week through Nikki's manager, and--as speculated--her pregnancy is not with Nikki. Many fans and some friends of the couple are blown out of the water by this sudden turn of events, others who are familiar with the rockstar and his band but never really paid much attention to his personal relationships, are now curious as to who exactly Vivian Sixx is. Well, in an open letter, rumored to be intended for print in Rolling Stone, a few anonymous former roadies of Mötley Crüe--who partook on their Girls, Girls, Girls, tour in 1987--are here to introduce who they saw behind the scenes of flashing cameras and public sweet moments with husband Nikki. 

"This is a letter to Mötley Crüe fans, we're a mere handful of people out of the many who witnessed monstrosities behind the scenes while on tour with the Crüe since Summer of 1987, none of which were caused by the band or any members, themselves, but one woman in particular. We had no reason to really bring any of this up, but in light of recent news, we are disheartened and angered of the betrayal against one of the four men who gave us an opportunity to live several months in our lives that will forever impact us in the best way known, and provide heartwarming memories by the dozen. This is not an attack on Nikki Sixx, especially given his past struggles with opioid addiction, alcoholism, as well as his abusive wife. The first time we met Vivian, she was polite and friendly, but very assertive. It was obvious it would be her way or no way,  and often times she and Nikki would go back and forth with who was running things. It was obvious Nikki was unwell at times, whether it'd be hungover, sick from withdrawal or simply tired from a show the night before. Vivian would choose these times when he was at his most exhausted to pick fights with him. He'd tell her to go away or 'f**k off,' and she'd continue to verbally and mentally beat him down more than he clearly already was. When Rolling Stone came to interview the band shortly after the wild rumor Vanity started publicly, we were told Vivian had tried to physically attack the reporter working on the story, simply because he made the comment that Pepsi wasn't good for her. Small things like that would often set her off, leaving security, managers, and band members to try to dodge fists while pulling her off of her unsuspecting victim, who was typically Nikki. Many times we'd hear them arguing in the hotel rooms, dressing rooms, bathrooms, tour bus, etc., usually followed by sounds of what we can only describe as 'pitchy, hungry, pornstar moans' on her part--clearly using her body to get back in his good graces after wearing him down. After their fights, Nikki would always have a bottle of alcohol on hand, some kind of drug, and would keep to himself. Our comradery with him soon began to dwindle with each month because it was obvious she was beginning to suck the life out of him. He was more introverted overtime, and higher more often than he was at the beginning of the tour. It really got bad when Guns N' Roses came on tour for a month, because Vivian's attacks on him and the other members of Mötley Crüe, began to pop off as randomly and explosively as fireworks. We'd witness some foul exchange (brought on by Vivian)  between her and Nikki backstage, either verbal or physical, nearly every night. People can talk down on the Crüe for being bad boys, but they've shown everybody that's helped them on tour, gratitude. All the wives and girlfriends that would come on that we'd offer food and drinks to would always express gratitude with a smile and a warm heart, but Vivian would always stay silent and cold towards us. She's a trashy, bitchy, whiney, hateful, spiteful, conniving, plotting python that now has her cold-blooded grasp around not only Nikki's neck, but also Duff's. Her game is to find the most well rounded guys while maintaining under her guise that she's a kind, Christianly woman, and see how far she can push them until they work themselves to death, literally, with trying to please her. We aren't surprised that she's pregnant, she probably video taped herself conceiving the damn thing and sent it to Nikki. We hope she did so it can be practice  for her inevitable low-budget porn career when she runs out of rockstars to f**k and kill, as we've mentioned, she already sounds like one in the throws of passion. Anyway, Nikki, we're hoping you decide to kick her aside and start fresh. Duff, get a paternity test, dude. Crüe fans, don't let that red-headed bitch fool you."

"Who the hell is Page Six to give these bastards a platform in the first place, Doc?!" I snap.

"Nikki, I am handling it, I'm on it--"

"--You tell the L.A. Times and Rolling fucking Stone if they take this shit and run with it, too, I'm personally coming to their offices and fucking them up. Not the publications themselves, but the people trying to put this out there in print, individually." I hiss.

"Nikki, just--" 

"--And who the hell--what roadies did this?!" 

"I don't know, Nikki, but I'm trying my hardest to get it cleaned up." He assures me. 

"'She's a trashy, bitchy, whiney, hateful, spiteful, conniving, plotting python that now has her cold-blooded grasp around not only Nikki's neck, but also Duff's. Her game is to find the most well rounded guys while maintaining under her guise that she's a kind, Christianly woman, and see how far she can push them until they work themselves to death, literally, with trying to please her'?!" I read that snippet, just so he can be reminded how fucked this is, trying my hardest not to start pitching a fucking fit. 

"Fucking AJaxx isn't even cleaning this up! Press mongrels are gonna be humping these bastards legs for giving them sales for the next nine months!" I outburst. 

"Sixx, don't worry about it, alright? It won't go past this shitty Page Six story, okay?" 

"It's fucking horse shit." I ignore him, trying to keep my cool. "Fuck." I kick at the leg of the table, running a hand through my hair.

"I guess one decently positive thing is that Viv doesn't know about this," he says next and I shake my head a little, feeling a migraine starting to come on, strong. 

I was tempted then to check myself out of rehab and 'handle' it myself, but decided it wouldn't be worth it. I hoped it would go away and it would all blow over eventually.

"Vivian, don't listen to any of it, alright? Me and you and everyone on that tour know damn well it wasn't just you being a bitch and us being the innocent victims." I say through the phone as Viv tries to calm down, her breathing shaky and ragged from crying so much. 

"I know that but the fans and other people don't know that." She says to me, her voice quiet and tired. "I'm so embarrassed, Nikki." She adds. "I'm already embarrassed that everybody knows I cheated on you but now this whole thing…" she trails off and I feel guilt tug at my heart. 

I don't know what the fuck to say. 

I'm used to criticism from the press, but none of them have tore into me or any of the guys--except Vince after the Razzle accident--so personally and extensively as they're tearing at her. 

Calling me a devil worshipper and saying my music is shitty gets annoying and frustrating and even infuriating at times, but attacking my wife and calling her a low budget porn star and telling me to kick her aside? 

Fuck that. 

"I'm sorry, Viv. I really am." I assure her, honestly, closing my eyes when I hear her stifle a little sob out. "Where are you at right now?" I ask. 

"Duff wanted me to meet his family." She tells me. "I'll be back Saturday." 

I'm relieved she actually has a reason for not being here, but I'm also hurt that she didn't give me a heads up. But I don't want to talk about it right now. I think she's been punished enough today. 

"Okay...you didn't show yesterday and I was just worried." I admit. 

"I know, it was just a spur of the moment thing. He asked me last week and I didn't think it'd be an issue." 

"Oh." 

I glance around and let out a breath. 

"I, um, I'm gonna go. I got a group thing with the guys at 3:00." I tell her. 

"Okay." 

"Are you gonna be okay or do I need to break out and kick someone's ass?" I ask her, half-joking, and she laughs, making me smile. 

"I'll be okay." She tells me. 

"I'll see you next week, Sixx." 

I can practically hear the smile in her voice when she says, "see you next week." 

We hang up and I rub my lips together, taking a few deep breaths before heading to where me and the guys meet with Amber three times a week now. 

Tommy and Vince are waiting for me, and I plop down beside them, leaning forward, elbows on my knees, hands running over my face…

"Psst," Tommy nudges me and I look at him as Vince gets up to grab a cup of coffee. 

"What?" I ask him, and he puts his finger over his mouth. 

"You seen the shit they're on Vivian for?" He whispers and I furrow my brows, looking around. 

"The room is empty except us, dude, why are you--"

"--Shh," he says. 

"Why are you whispering?" I finish my sentence. 

"Because they probably have this motherfucker bugged out the ass." He replies, glancing around again. "I'm thinking of breaking outta here, man." He whispers very, very quietly. 

"You do know we're not being held here by legal obligation, right? They won't chase us down and have the cops on us if we just check ourselves out." I point out and he furrows his brows a little. 

"Oh." 

"Why do you wanna 'break out'?" I ask. 

"I miss Heather and my dogs and I wanna be able to be there Viv, dude. She fucking needs us right now and we're, like, over an hour away--disconnected from shit. I mean we wouldn't even know what the fuck was going on in the world if Doc wasn't keeping us in the loop, ya know?" 

I think about it for a second. 

"We're over a month into our three month stay, dude." I state. "We can't just throw in the towel, now." 

"I don't mean ditch it and stay gone. I just mean check out for a few days, go back home, see what all is going on and come back." He shrugs. 

It seems oddly appealing. 

Way too appealing, actually. 

"I don't know, Tommy…" I rub the back of my neck.

"I already talked to Vince about it and he's down."

"Of course he is." 

"And we wouldn't be doing it tomorrow or anything. I'm thinking next week." 

"Does Doc know?" I ask. 

"Fuck Doc." He scoffs. 

"Agreed." I nod, chuckling. 

"So, you in or not, man?" 

"Just for a few days?" 

"Just for a few days." 

"Then we're all coming back in?" 

"Like we never left to begin with." 

"No drugs, no parties, not even alcohol." 

"Just spending time with our families and then back to the grindstone." He states. 

"...I'm in."

 ...You know when you're on a shitty diet, eating boring, tasteless, "healthy" food, and then decide you've been stuck to your diet long enough that you can have one slice of cake because you're disciplined enough to control yourself? And now, two years later, you're still telling yourself you'll get back on your diet because after that slice of cake you just said, "fuck it," and never thought about forcing yourself to eat lettuce again? Let's just say leaving rehab prematurely works the same damn way.

[gascon-en-exil]

A Game of Thrones 10th Anniversary Season Ranking: Part 2

Link to Part 1

Time for the bottom half of the list. The four seasons here will surprise no one, but the order might.

#5 Season 6

You can tell what I most what to talk about here...but there's an order to these things.

S6 actually has a bunch of great ideas, but they drown beneath the most slapdash plotting and character work the show has seen yet in order to set the stage for the narrower conflicts of the last two seasons. It's notorious for bringing back characters who haven't been seen in a season or longer only to kill them off (Balon Greyjoy, Osha, Hodor, the Blackfish, Rickon, Walder Frey) or awkwardly graft them back into the main plot (Sandor Clegane, Bran). There are plot threads that ought to be compelling but are too rushed in execution, like the siege of Riverrun, Littlefinger's hand in the Battle of the Bastards, or Daenerys's time back among the Dothraki and then finally getting the hell out of Meereen. Arya hits on the only interesting part of her two-season sojourn in Braavos - a stage play, of all things - only for it to stumble at the end with a disappointing offscreen death and some incomprehensible philosophy ahead of the start of her murder tour of Westeros. There's also so much cutting off the branches, enough to be conspicuous; the final shot of Daenerys leading an armada of about half the remaining cast she assembled partially offscreen says that better than anything else. Well, not anything....

Highlight: Without exaggeration, the opening of S6E10 is easily my favorite sequence in all of GoT. The staging, the music, the mounting suspense even as it becomes increasingly obvious what's about to happen, the twisted religious references particularly in Cersei's mock confession to Unella, Tommen throwing himself out a window because he can't deal with the reality of how terrible his mother is, how Cersei gives absolutely no fucks whatsoever about murdering hundreds of people at once in a calculated act of vengeance largely prompted by her own poorly thought out actions - I love it all. It's the single most masterfully-executed act of villainy in the whole show - Daenerys torching King's Landing probably has a higher body count, but the presentation there is all muddled - and if I had any doubts about Cersei being my favorite multi-season major character they were silenced in this moment. The explosion of the Sept doesn't sit perfectly with me, because I liked the Tyrells and because of what I said about deaths like theirs and Renly's in the previous post under S2, but I think that unease only cements the strength of this sequence. It's an overused phrase in fandom these days, but GoT at its best is all about moral greyness that gives its audience room for multilayered reactions. Cersei nuking the Sept and making herself the sole power in King's Landing, which in a sense is just a more overt example of the kind of character/plot consolidation elsewhere represented by Daenerys's armada, is one of those events that's impossible to approach from a single angle if you care about any of the characters involved. And hey, it's not in the books (yet, presumably), so unlike Ned's death or the Red Wedding the GoT showrunners can take the credit for realizing this one.

Favorite death: Even leaving aside the Sept and related deaths there's a lot of good ones to choose from in S6. Ramsey is cathartic but too gory for me, Osha's was a clever callback but a little delayed, it's hard to pin down specific deaths when Daenerys incinerates the khals, and Arya only gets half credit for Walder Frey and his sons when she saves the rest of the house for the opening of S7. I'm thinking Hodor, not so much because I enjoy his character or the manner of his death but because it's a clever bit of playing with language (that must have been hell to render in other languages for dubbing) wrapped up in some entertainingly murky consent issues and some closed time loop weirdness. It's all very...extra? Is that the word for it?

Least favorite death: Offscreen deaths continue to be mostly letdowns, in this case Blackfish and the Waif. Way to botch the ending of Arya's already near-pointless Braavos arc, guys. Speaking of Arya, this spot goes to Lady Crane, whom the Waif somehow kills with a stool or something. It's a dumb way to send off an entertaining minor character.

#6 Season 8

I swear that I'm not putting S8 this high solely because of Jonmund kind of sort of happening. I've never been very interested in either of them and the sex would be far too bear-on-otter to suit my pornographic preferences, but even so the choice to close out the series with them is hilarious.

I really don't need to elaborate on why S8 is down here; everyone who's ever watched the show has done as much in the nearly two years since it wrapped up. I do however need to explain why I've ranked not one but two seasons below it. My biggest argument here is that I don't believe it's fair to critique S8 for problems it inherited from earlier seasons. A non-comprehensive list:

Mad Queen Daenerys: unevenly built up beginning from S1 and continuing in some form through every following season

The questionable racial optics of Dany's army: also seeded as early as S1 and solidified by S3 with the Slaver's Bay arc

Cersei only succeeding because she makes stupid decisions and then lucks out until she doesn't: apparent from S1, directly lampshaded by Tywin in S3, fully on display with the Faith Militant arc of S5-6

Jaime not getting a redemption arc or falling in love with Brienne: evident with his repeated returns to Cersei throughout the show as one of the most consistent elements of his character, particularly in S4 and during the siege of Riverrun in S6

Tyrion grabbing the idiot ball/becoming a flat audience surrogate mouthpiece: started in S5 around the time the showrunners ran out of book material for him and wanted to make him more of a PoV character and his arc less of a downward spiral, although I've seen arguments that changes from the books involving his Tysha story and Shae set him on this trajectory even earlier

The hardening of Sansa's character: began in earnest in S4 and never let up from there

The strange ordering of antagonists: set down by S7's equally strange plot structure - the Night King had to come first with that setup

CleganeBowl and the dumber twists: from what I've heard the whole thing of writing around fans on the internet guessing plot twists started pretty much when the book content ended, so S5-6 maybe?

Yes, there's plenty to criticize about S8 on its own merits...but just as much that was merely the writers doing what they could at that point with deeply flawed material.

Highlight: This may sound cheesy, but the better parts of S8 are almost all the cinematic ones, whether that's E2 being a bottle episode with tons of poignant character send-offs before the big battle, a handful of deaths with actual satisfying weight like Jorah's and Theon's, and an epilogue that incorporates both closure for individuals and the broader uncertainty of messy socio-political systems that GoT has always been known for before working its way back to the Starks at the very end for some tidy bookending. Even imperfect moments like the Lannister twins' death and the resolution of Sansa's character felt weighty and appropriate based on what had come before.

Favorite death: Forget about the audio commentary attempting to flatten Cersei's character; Cersei and Jaime Lannister have an excellent end. Cersei especially, as the scenes of her stumbling her way down into the catacombs as the Red Keep crashes down around her really show off how her world is abruptly falling apart and how she retreats into her own self-interest at the end in spite of her demise being at least partially of her own doing. There's some stupid moments associated with these scenes, like Jaime dueling Euron to the death and CleganeBowl, but I can excuse those when the twins end up dying exactly where you'd expect them to: in each other's arms, in a ruined monument to their family's grand ambitions that, like Casterly Rock itself, was taken from another family.

Least favorite death: Quite a few dumb ones in S8 have become forever infamous. Missandei sticks out, and for me Varys too just as much because of how the writing pushes him to do the dumbest thing he could possibly do purely for the sake of killing him off ten minutes into the penultimate episode. But no one belongs here more than Daenerys Targaryen, killed at the height of a rushed and uncertain villain reveal by a man who takes advantage of their romantic history (who is also her family, because Targaryens) to stab her in a moment of vulnerability - pretty much only because another man tells him that Daenerys is the final boss. Narratively speaking that might be the case, but even so this is the end result of multiple seasons of middling-to-bad buildup. Not even Drogon burning the symbolism can salvage that. Also Fire Emblem: Three Houses did this scene and did it better.

#7 Season 5

...Yeah, we're going to have to go there.

Sansa's rape is not a plot point that personally touches me much. It's terribly framed in the moment and the followup in later seasons is inconsistent at best, but it's not a kind of trauma I can relate to. On the other hand, in the very same episode Loras is tried and imprisoned for homosexuality, and Margery faces the same punishment for lying for her brother. That hits much closer to home, not just for the homophobia but also for the culture war undertones of the not!French Tyrells persecuted by a not!Anglo fanatic who later reveals himself to be the in-universe equivalent of a Protestant. The trial is just one part of Cersei's shortsighted scheming, just as Sansa being married off to Ramsey is part of Littlefinger's, and both of them get their comeuppance in the end...but it's unsettling all the same. I especially hate what the Faith Militant arc does to King's Landing in S5, swiftly converting it from my favorite setting in GoT to a tense theocratic nightmare that only remains interesting to me because Cersei is consistently awesome. What's more, pretty much everything about S5 that isn't viscerally uncomfortable is dragged out and dull instead: the Dorne arc, Daenerys's second season in Meereen, Arya in Braavos, Stannis and co. at Castle Black. The most any of these storylines can hope for is some kind of bombastic finale, and while several of them deliver it's not enough to make up for what comes before, or how disappointing everything here builds from S4. S4 has Oberyn, S5 has the Sand Snakes - I think that sums up the contrast well.

Highlight: S5 does get stronger near the end. As much as his character annoys me I did like the High Sparrow revealing his pseudo-Protestant bent to Cersei just before he imprisons her, and there's a cathartic rawness to Cersei's walk of atonement where you can both feel her pain and humiliation and understand that she's getting exactly what she deserves (and this is what leads into the climax of S6, so it deserves points just for that). The swiftness of Stannis's fall renders his death and that of his family a bit hollow, but it's brutal and final and fittingly ignominious for a character with such grand ambitions but so little relevance to the larger story. The fighting pits of Meereen sequence is cinematic if nothing else, and even the resolution to the Dorne arc salvages the whole thing a tiny bit by playing into the retributive cycles of vengeance idea (and Myrcella knows about the twincest and doesn't care, aww - no idea why that stuck with me, but it's cute all the same). Oh, and Hardhome...it's alright. Not great, not crap, but alright.

Favorite death: I don't know why, but Theon tossing Myranda to her death is always funny to me. Maybe because it's so unexpected?

Least favorite death: Arya's execution of Meryn Trant is meant to be another one of the season's big finale moments, but the scene is graphic and goes on forever and I can't help but be grossed out. This is different from, say, Shireen's death, which is supposed to be painful to witness.

#8 Season 7

I can't tell if S7's low ranking is as self-explanatory as S8's or not. At least one recent retrospective on GoT's ruined legacy I've come across outright asserts that S7 is judged less harshly in light of how bad S8 was. If it were not immediately obvious by where I've placed each of them, I don't share that opinion.

Because S7 is just a mess, and the drop-off in quality is so much more painful here than it is anywhere else in the series except maybe from S4 to S5 (and that's more about S4 being as good as it is). The pacing ramps up to uncomfortable levels to match the shortened seasons, the structure pivots awkwardly halfway through from Daenerys vs. Cersei to Jon/Dany caring about ice zombies, said pivot relies largely on characters (mostly Tyrion) making a series of catastrophically stupid tactical decisions, and very few of the smaller set pieces land with any real impact as the show's focus narrows to its endgame conflict. As with S6 there are still some good ideas, but they're botched in execution. The conflict between Sansa and Arya matches their characters, but the leadup to that conflict ending with Littlefinger's execution is missing some key steps. Daenerys's diverse armada pitted against Cersei weaponizing the xenophobia of the people of King's Landing could have been interesting, but there's little room to explore that when Cersei keeps winning only because Tyrion has such a firm grip on the idiot ball and when Euron gets so much screentime he barely warrants. Speaking of Tyrion's idiot ball, does anyone like the heist film-esque ice zombie retrieval plotline? Its stupidity is matched only by its utter futility, because Cersei isn't trustworthy and nobody seems to ever get that.

And how could I forget Sam's shit montage? Sums up S7 perfectly, really. To think that that is part of the only extended length of time the show ever spends in the Reach....

Highlight: A handful of character moments save this season from being irredeemable garbage. As you can guess from my screencap choice, Olenna's final scene is one of them, even if Highgarden itself is given insultingly short shrift. S7 also manages what I thought was previously impossible in that it makes me care somewhat about Ellaria Sand, courtesy of the awful death Cersei plans for her and her remaining daughter. The other Sand Snakes are killed with their own weapons, which shows off Euron's demented creativity if nothing else. I like the entertainingly twisted choice to cut the Jon/Dany sex scene with the reveal that they're related. And, uh...the Jonmund ship tease kind of makes the zombie retrieval team bearable? I'm really grasping at straws here.

Favorite death: It's more about her final dialogue with Jaime than her actual death, but again I'm going to have to highlight Olenna Tyrell here for lack of better options. She drops the bombshell about Joffrey that the audience figured out almost as soon as it happened but still, makes it plain what I've been saying about how Jaime's arc has never really been about redemption, and is just about the only person to ever call Cersei out for that whole mass murder thing. There's a reason "I want her to know it was me" became a meme format.

Least favorite death: There aren't any glaringly bad deaths in S7, just mediocre or unremarkable ones. I still think the decision to have Arya finish off House Frey in the season's opening rather than along with their father at the end of S6 was a strange one that doesn't add much of dramatic value.

[transmalewife]

hey, I don't even know how to respond to this, because uh. i am one of those mythical non-usamericans. i’m so non american that i had to google what irt means and i still don’t know. i’ve made my own posts criticizing this attitude many many times, and im telling you as a polish person that the article kinda sucks. not only because the examples given are imo bad, but also because australia is also kind of the problem though to a much lesser degree than the us or the uk. the internet, international culture and art all centered around english speakers. I am talking to you in your native tongue, easily, because I was lucky enough to go to a good school that started teaching me english since i was 8. many people have to learn it on their own, spending money on courses, to have any hope of getting a higher paying job even in their own country.

When i went to visit the uk on a school trip when i was 11, kids there didn't even know poland existed, despite me hearing their parents screaming blind drunk in my streets every day as they traveled here for their stag parties bc cheap beer. this is a us vs not us thing but its also a anglo vs non anglo thing. a western eu vs eastern eu. an australia, north america and europe vs everywhere else thing.

That said. I agree with the points you made (especially farenheit that ones fucking infuriating. And the points the article made, I just dont love how it made them. like, yeah, you don't need to know every detail of an american politician's life, but you should know who they are. the solution isn't to go 'I'm only gonna care about my country forever' it's to learn more about more countries' politics. I know poland isn't exactly the most important country, but you should know the names of people in other countries that make decisions that may influence you. Poland may not be that important, but since the war started next door you may take an interest in who's running what country in eastern europe. in late 2020 we had our biggest protest movement since the 80s, because our goverment restricted abortion even further, and I wish more people in other countries knew and cared, because what we had before was worse than what the most strict states in the us now introduced. on demand until 6 weeks would be a dream and a lifesaver to so many people here. instead women here are forced to carry to term fetuses with birth defects so severe they will die the instant they're born.

but I'm getting of track, the point is i dont like how the solution presented by this author is we should only care about our country, when i think it's we should care about more countries than the us. including probably mostly about our own, because that's where we have a chance to influence things the most, but also you know. remember that other people exist, and if for example your currency is several times stronger than theirs, you may be able to help them quite a bit.

the other thing i mentioned is this

like i don't think the problem with these is that they're american. these are bullshit insignificant discourse that, were the author not on an algorithm run website, and one that only allows the types of bullshit that can be said in 280 characters, they would be able to unfollow or block and create a less infuriating, and less american also, experience.

these are my original tags for context btw:

So yeah, I agree with everything you said, and with the overall point of the article, I've even made it myself many, many times before. This is not at all an attempt to argue with you, I'm just able to better express what bothered me about the article when it's not 2 am anymore. It's also just very funny to me that you were so eager to defend non-USamericans (good) that you didn't even even consider that I might be one of them (bad, but understandable mistake to make, that only proves the overall point of the discussion. since the internet is so us centric its easy to assume everyone on it is american)

I Should Be Able to Mute America

wake up cunts new nobel prize for journalism just dropped

[kane-and-griffin]

dear kabby mom, how do I make my broken heart stop hurting? I fell in love with a girl who I thought was falling back for me too....but now I don't think so anymore. this sucks.

Oh, my sweetsad baby.  

It does suck. 

It absolutely sucks. 

There is nothing I can say that will makethat not true.  There is nothing anyonecan say or do that will make it suck any less except time.

 And I know that’s not the answer you want tohear, that’s not the answer anyone wants to hear, because it doesn’t fixanything right now.  It doesn’t save youfrom having to go through the thing you have to go through right now.  It doesn’t make any of the things that hurtright now any less painful to know that in ten years (or five years) (or sixmonths) this will all feel different. It’s the truest thing that I have to tell you, but I also know thatit is in some degree useless to you right now.

You say thatyou think she doesn’t have feelings for you. Have you talked to her?  Have youdone the excruciating and mortifying and emotionally naked thingwhere you open up your heart to someone without any idea what will happennext?  Maybe you don’t need to ask; maybeyou know already.  Maybe she likessomeone else.  Maybe her feelings aboutyou are platonic and she’s made that clear. But if there’s gray area – if there’s a piece of your heart or mind that’sstill whispering, “But maybe, but maybe …” – maybe with a little time,maybe she’ll change her mind, maybe she’ll see you differently in a year, maybeit won’t work out with the girl she’s dating now – then it might be helpful tosay it out loud, to stop the “But Maybe” train in its tracks before it derails you.  Sometimes you can’t let go andput it behind you until you’ve heard the real “No.”  Until the bubble has been burst.  I don’t know your situation, but I know morethan once in my life that’s been true for me. I knew I’d hold onto unreasonably stubborn optimism, willfullymisinterpreting whatever they said as a “sign,” until I finally got up thecourage to just say it out loud, get my heart smashed into a hundred tiny pieces, pick them up, and keep walking.  It was miserable but it was also the only way forward. 

And you, baby, need to figure out what youneed to move forward.

You’re feeling big things right now, and you need to use whateverhealthy outlets are available to you to start processing them.  Cry to your friends.  Write, draw, sing.  Make sad playlists, watch sad movies.  Swap stories with the peoplein your life about their heartbreaks, to remind yourself that you’re notexperiencing this alone.  Eat goodchocolate.  Go for walks.  Breathe fresh air.  Stay busy. Spend time with as many good dogs and adorable non-annoying children asyou can find.  Dogs and children do notlet you get away with wallowing.  They will absolutely force you to remember that you are alive.

What youabsolutely must under no circumstances do is let heartbreak feed intoobsession.  Don’t check her social mediaa hundred times a day to think about all the other people she might choose whenshe didn’t choose you, or how much fun she’s having doing things you wish shewas doing with you instead, but isn’t.  Don’t useher to process the emotions you need to process, even if she’s yourfriend.  Do not make her responsible foryour broken heart.  Do not punish her, orany future person she dates, for the fact that she didn’t choose you.  If you need to vent these feelings do them quietlyand privately with your closest most trustworthy friends.  Never publicly, and never to her.  Do not vagueblog or subtweet in a forum whereshe might see it, and know, and feel terrible. You have every right to process every inch of the feelings that you’refeeling but you owe it to her to make sure you do it in a respectful way. 

She has not done anything wrong. 

No one here has done anything wrong.  

The first timeI realized I had feelings for someone who didn’t have them back I wastwelve.  The first time I told someone Ihad feelings for them and they didn’t say it back to me, I was twenty.  The most recent time was just last year.  

Once I showedup at a girl’s house for a brunch date and her drunken hookup from the night before answered the door, but I was too polite to bolt so we just satthere eating our eggs and pretending it wasn’t awkward and I was just there because the girl and I were just friends.

Once in highschool I told the tall beautiful blonde star of the basketball team who satnext to me in algebra and with whom I had been silently smitten all year thatshe had beautiful eyes, and when she gave me a weird look I got up and ran outof the room and pretended like I just needed to get something from mylocker.  

Once I didn’trealize that the date I was on wasn’t a date and that the girl was straightuntil I tried to kiss her, at which point she backed away in horror and neithershe nor her friends ever spoke to me again. She lives in my city now and once six years ago we were at a partytogether and even though at that point it had been close to a decade since theincident, she still never came anywhere near me.

I’ve hadfriendships end over this.  I’ve hadfriendships grow ten times as strong over this. I’m thirty-five and I’ve been in the place you’re currently in moretimes than I can count, and the only thing I can tell you from where I’msitting right now which might be in any way helpful is that the thing you areexperiencing is universal. 

Everyone thatyou know has been through this at least once. Some people have been on both sides of it.  All of us have been there.  All of us have been there.  Everyone you love and admire, everyone youthink is tough and strong, everyone you think never lets their feelings get tothem or who you’ve never seen cry, everyone who’s in a relationship of whichyou’re secretly envious because you assume the fact that they’re happy nowmeans they’ve never known what it’s like to be unhappy.  All of us. All of us.  We’re all right herewith you.  And what that means is that weall survived it. 

And you will too.  I promise, baby.  You will too. You’re experiencing one of those things that poets write about.  You’ll listen to melancholy love songs andwatch sad movies differently from now on. You know a thing now about your heart that you didn’t know before, andit’s beautiful and terrible and there will be times that you will probably wishfor it to disappear.

But please don’t.  

Let me tellyou why.

When I was akid, I was quiet and awkward and introverted and shy, and kept everythinginside.  I began to come out of my shella little bit in high school, but I didn’t really blossom until college, when Ifinally found my people, and suddenly it was like I was Dorothy moving from ablack-and-white world to a Technicolor one. I was in love with everything and everyone.  I was in love with the pretentious gayphilosophy major who lived downstairs and I was in love with the blondesorority girl down the hall who is now a major writer for Buzzfeed and I was inlove with anyone who would stay up with me until the sun rose, sitting in thedorm lounge and talking about books.  Ihad this big colorful soft squishy heart that I’d kept hidden my whole life and I justwanted to give it to someone, but every experience was new, so I gave it toeveryone, and because it was all new to me, I had no defense mechanisms to protect myself or avoid getting hurt.  I was forever falling forpeople who didn’t want me back and breaking my own heart and crying and feelingdevastated and writing terrible poetry and being afraid I’d never feel anythingever again.  But hearts are elastic, they bounce back when we let them, they’re made for love and if you just give them alittle time they’ll heal and move on to somebody else.

Then when Iwas twenty-four, my mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness, andI shut down.

The only way Icould cope with the panic and the grief was to force myself not to feelit.  I knew my mother was not fine, but Itold myself over and over that she would be. I knew that I was not fine, but I told myself over and over that Iwas.  Sometimes when I was alone at nightI would feel it, this huge dark cloud thing hovering over me, and I would feelmyself, very firmly, very carefully, shoving it back down into a box andlocking it up.  It was an almost physicalsensation.  I can remember it vividly.  It was spectacularly unhealthy, but it wasalso the only way I could survive. 

Shedied when I was twenty-seven, and my clearest memory of that day, and of theperiod immediately after, was that I felt nothing.  I cried when I got the phone call from mydad, because of the shock.  I didn’t cryagain – about her, or about anything – for years.  I went from being someone who would burst into tears at, like, a Verizon commercial about grandparents, to someone who didn’t cry at her own mother’s funeral.  Some switch had flipped inside me, and it waslike the part of me that could feel things was just gone.  I lost three grandparents in the years aftermy mom died, and I sang at all their funerals, and I felt nothing.  I knew that I loved them, and I knew that this thing that was happening was sad, but I felt it in this very muffled, dim, distant, far-off way where ifyou had asked me if I was okay I would have told you that I was fine and Iwould have believed that to be perfectly true.

It wasterrible.

Grief made mysister more emotional – she cried a lot, she was more demonstrative, she wantedto process her feelings out loud – but it shut me down completely.  And it took that big sparkly heart full oflove for everybody with it.  I tried,every once in awhile, half-heartedly, to go out on an internet date, but I feltnothing.  I didn’t know then what “demisexual”meant, and that I’m simply not wired to sit across the table in a bar from atotal stranger and feel the things you’re supposed to feel in that situation; Ineed that emotional connection before any of the other stuff happens.  But I wasn’t able to form that emotionalconnection.  From time to time I mightfeel a fleeting spark of a wistful crush on the cute divorced older lady poetin my writing group, or develop complicated feelings for one of the revolvingdoor of tortured, dramatic, toxic artistic men that seem to be foreverpopulating my life, but it wasn’t the same. I spent ten years convinced that I was broken; that my mom’s death meantthat the part of me that knew how to feel things was dead too.  I would, at that moment, have givenabsolutely anything to be that heartbroken twenty-year-old sobbing over beingrejected by a pretty straight girl, because at least that Claire could feelthings.

It took me ten years for the switch to flip back on, for me to catch feelings for someone and then get my heart broken again, not that long ago, and it was so disorienting to be feeling things again after all that time, but I was really grateful too.  Because it meant that I wasn’t dead inside.  I was a person who could feel things again.

I’m tellingyou all of this because right now you are heartbroken, and in the depths ofyour pain you feel like this is a terrible thing to be, and you want to make itstop.  And I am here to tell you, yourheart will heal, because that is what hearts do when we give them permission;but in the midst of your heartbreak, remember to be grateful for the capacityto be heartbroken.  For the fact that youhave a breakable heart.  For the factthat you are the kind of person who loves big, even when you aren’t sure theother person is going to love you back. That’s the best kind of person to be.

You’re goingto be okay, cupcake.  I promise.  

[cthulhu-with-a-fez]

Um. Okay so. I don't know if you remember when Dishonored first came out, but the previews were going for what felt like a good half a year before. It was the link in every banner, every recommended advertisement across the internet. The exact same trailer was at the start of every single youtube video. Long story short, I have never actually been able to bring myself to play it, just because their advertising was so aggressive that it actively turned me off and stressed me out.

p.2: They managed to make me sick of the game a solid month before the game even came out. But all of your posts have been so cool and so interesting, I’m almost starting to want to try it? But any time I look at it, I just get this feeling of… I don’t know, oppressive weight. I guess what I’m saying is, if I was going to start fresh with this game, and never have seen a single ad for it, what would you say about it to recommend it?

you’re the second person to tell me that dishonored’s aggressive advertising turned them off of the game, actually - i somehow managed to miss ALL of that. like dead serious i didn’t even know dishonored existed at all until last summer, and then only by virtue of vague news-by-osmosis about it getting a sequel.

so i guess by virtue of my extreme ignorance and/or conveniently bad (good??) timing i actually do have a fresh perspective to give you!

(just a quick note: i didn’t actually play it myself, i watched cryaotic’s let’s play, but he played it pretty much the same way i would have done. also better people than me have written way better meta about ALL OF THE BELOW, i’m sure…)

so the thing about dishonored.

honestly i could ramble on for like a solid hour listing off all the things i, personally, liked about it, going anywhere from the scenery to the mechanics, but i guess i’ll start out with the heart of it all.

dishonored is a story about the balance between vengeance and justice, and the difference between forgiveness and mercy, and it’s ultimately a story about What You Are In The Dark. and depending on the choices you make, and the kind of protagonist you are, the game CHANGES to fit that. there are actual consequences to your choices and your morality, which means that your choices matter. and that’s the blessing of the medium, i guess - the happy ending you can get is made all the better by knowing you worked for it, and the darkest one delivers its own sort of retribution because you brought it down on your own self. this also means that it has remarkable replay value - between detailed level design that offers innumerable paths through any given area and the changes in the narrative itself depending on your choices, there’s so much content to be had.

the game’s exploration of mercy as separate from forgiveness ties in with Good Is Not Nice and A Fate Worse Than Death a lot, too, which is fascinating - the kind of poetic reprisal you can take against your targets really brings into question whether just out-and-out killing someone is better or worse than making them suffer according to their crimes. there’s a confrontation about three-quarters through the game that really highlights the mercy vs. forgiveness thing to absolutely extraordinary effect that i won’t give you the details of because spoilers, but it left me absolutely shook. like, the most shook i’ve been since the true-pacifist ending of undertale. the flooded district arc is a doozy, let me tell you.

asides from the mechanics of the game - both narratively and physically (ie what you can actually do as corvo) - my favorite part has got to be the worldbuilding, hands down. it’s well worth your time to listen in on the ambient npc conversation, it says a lot. it really gives the game a sense of… i don’t know if there’s an actual term for this or not, but. broader horizons, i guess? like, dunwall has more in it than just you and your story. npcs don’t feel deliberately placed, like they’re just sitting there waiting for you to come along and do things. the world has depth to it, there’s stuff happening that has fuck-all to do with you going on, and i really like that.

and even moreso than the npc conversations, it’s REALLY WORTH IT to look for the collectible documents. they add so much more depth to the world than just the conversations. letters, ledgers, literature - it all adds up to marvelous effect. and one of my favorite things about it is, like. you can tell just as much about dunwall and the people living in it by how something’s written as you can through what’s written. you can peel back the in-universe author bias to get a look at the various prejudices and agendas and whatnot, and it adds a surprisingly nuanced and realistic-feeling sub-narrative about the racism and classism and various flavors of imperialist xenophobia in the world of dishonored. 

it isn’t even treated as an actual plot element that gets attention called to it, because dishonored isn’t a Story About That. all that stuff is just kind of there to be picked up on if you’re paying attention and it adds so much subtle context and depth to both corvo’s role in the story and the political landscape in dunwall tower before the events of the game, between the documents and how the various characters treat him, and i’m just gonna stop myself right here because i could talk about this one specific thing forever. (ask cassiansfuzzyjacket, she can confirm.) 

and from a purely visual aspect, i absolutely loved the scenery. the level design is super detailed, there’s so many different ways in and out of places, and there’s so many places that have nothing really to do with the plot they just make the world feel like a world, and despite dunwall being full of rats and also plague and decrepitude it’s still beautiful. like seriously the scenery is so nice. the character models sit… a little closer to the uncanny valley than i would like, but honestly you get used to it after a bit. and just… honestly the whole aesthetic of the game is really unique?? i’ve heard the world of dishonored described as a fantasy world in the beginning of its industrial revolution, and that’s a pretty apt way of putting it. it’s got this really neat not-quite-steampunk vibe about it that i found really appealing, and the alleys were satisfyingly grungy, and there were posters and stuff pasted to the walls, and just overall i really enjoyed the Look of the game in general.

so i guess in summary:

i love dishonored because it’s a story that confronts morality, choice, and agency in a way where your choices actually matter, set in a world that lends immersion by the sense that it’s bigger than just you and your story, that also has really nice scenery.

also because i’m a massive sap and anything with a tragic warrior x diplomat OTP where the warrior is also a scruffy, protective father-figure was bound to absolutely destroy me from the get-go because I Have A Type but i figured that was a little more personal-preference than you’re looking for.

basically if you think you might like a gaslamp-fantasy political thriller about a scruffy, lethal dad bent on poetic justice, then dishonored is absolutely the game for you. 

i hope this was a satisfying answer - sorry it’s so late! (if you ever do get into it please feel free to hit me up because i am always up for yelling about this game)

[korsfinder-blog]

Online Dating: A Precautionary Tale For a while, I was certain I would be alone forever. I joked someday I would be surrounded by cats, knitting sweaters long into eternity. Looking for someone special was impossible. Sure, I came into contact with people via my jobs and school, but aside from the typical salutations, I didn't spend time getting to know anyone well. As a business professional continuing education, I hardly knew who I was, much less have time to get to know another. Essentially, I was single and loving it, for I had no other choice. Nor did I have time to think of how lonely I was. With two full time jobs and a full course load, I saw myself as a dull, dull girl. All work and no play. Men were interested, but I had little time to maintain a relationship with them. A date here and a date there really didn't amount to the commitment I so desired. The next semester, I decided to take things slow. I had the two jobs, both part time instead of full time. I wish I could say this was of my own choosing, however the failing economy did me a favor. My full course load was much easier to juggle since my jobs allowed me more free time. The free time was a blessing and a curse. Now able to finish my coursework in a timely manner, I had this creeping feeling. Somewhere between slowing down and opening my mind, I realized something was missing. Though surrounded by people day in, day out, I suddenly realized I was almost 30 and had no one special in my life. I doubted myself. Seriously dating another was an ancient memory. By occupying all my time, I had pushed away any prospects for a meaningful relationship. Some were understanding, some not so much. At this time, I decided I needed to put myself out there. With the many venues for dating available, I decided to try online dating. This was not my cup of tea, I met some interesting characters... let me emphasize interesting. There was the sex fiend. I never met him in person, or had an actual conversation on the phone. His explicit IMs were enough to send me running!! How did looking for love turn up this sex crazed maniac? Did I misrepresent myself? In fact, I did not. I double checked and had a friend peruse my profile just to make sure. The next person was not much better. I had moved from a man lost in promiscuity to a man just plain lost!! This man was cordial, polite, attractive, educated, and gainfully employed. He really seemed like the total package... the key word here "seemed". As we went from email, to IM, to actual phone calls, I wondered why someone this magnificent was still single. We met in person, had a great dinner, and had an overall great time. On my way home, he called no less than six times. Clingy. Before I could even call him back, he had left a few choice words for me on my voicemail. By this time, I was getting pretty discouraged with my selections. Then I met the clincher, this man was all of the above. The Deranged Sex Fiend. He was nice to talk to and was not outright inappropriate as the man I previously mentioned. We made our way up the ladder to talking on the phone. He was pretty complimentary, attractive, attentive. Though we spoke often, I was not quite ready to meet him and he didn't press the issue. I was satisfied with this slow progression. There was some promise there of a possible meaningful relationship. That is until his wonderful, loving wife gave me a call. I had no clue he was married. I apologized and reassured this poor lady only to be informed I was one of many. As if that wasn't a slap in the face, she went on to tell me a few were minors. A few?? Minors?? I never imagined I would be duped by a sexual predator! The entire fiasco really scarred me. I partially blamed the dating site for not investigating these people further. The drama of online dating was too much for me. My coworkers knew of my recent slew of wayward online exploits. One lady even went as far as to set me up on a blind date. I wasn't even feeling worthy of a date at this point. Don't get me wrong, I had no problem making friends on my own, but unfortunately, I attract the crazies. I assumed this would be the same way. The man was a perfect gentleman. We hit it off. He too, had met some interesting people in his time. We could have made a contest out of our crazy date chronicles. Needless to say, internet dating was not for him either. We had a nice courtship. We layed our intentions out from the beginning. As it turns out, we had many similarities in what we wanted in the future. Time went on and we grew closer. Eventually, this amazing man asked me to marry him. Now, many moons later, we are the happiest we have ever been. We still laugh about our strange suitors. Who knows, one day we may share those stories with our grandkids. As it stands, I don't own a single cat, and I don't knit. This one is forever.