#i mean i believe that it is certainly a thing that people do

[yawping-poets-society]

we don't talk enough about cameron's first real scene, where he talks to neil outside his dorm before todd arrives. in case anyone doesn't know what i'm referring to, here's the dialogue from the scene:

Cameron: Hey, Neil, study group tonight?

Neil: Yeah, sure.

Cameron: Business as usual, huh? [turns to leave, then] Hey, I heard you got the new kid. Looks like a stiff. [laughs at his own joke] [Todd enters] Oops. [Cameron leaves]

so let's talk about it!!

cameron opens with the study group question. this is pretty straightforward to me-he knows he's none of the poets' favorite, and certainly not charlie's. neil is his foremost supporter, pretty much the only one who sticks up for him, so this makes sense. he's checking with neil, his 'in' to the group, to make sure he can hang with these guys. he wants to be part of their circle so badly, and that's pretty clear from the get-go.

and then he hits us with this whole "stiff" business. this is a major thing i've seen people use to justify their hate of cameron and i really struggle with that.

because, well...this is SO undeniably awkward. neil tells todd just a moment later not to mind cameron because he was "born with his foot in his mouth." so off the bat, that's not something you say about someone who's consistently rude or who you don't like. that's neil sticking up for cameron. he's saying, sorry todd, he means well, or at least, he doesn't have any ill intentions. cameron's just not got the best grasp of social cues, that's how he is. this is a pretty valid explanation in and of itself, but if you'll walk with me a little further, i've got a deeper theory about why cameron makes this comment.

more than just it being awkward, this casual friendliness, haha, new kid, a mild insult said with much bravado...this isn't really cameron as we see him for the rest of the movie. though he does remain relatively awkward, it doesn't really match his character of being cautious and trying to not stand out, to fit into the group (as we see in his first line). so how to explain this action (because i don't believe the explanation is just: cameron is being an asshole/being awkward)?

to me? this is what cameron thought charlie would say. isn't that almost exactly how charlie always talks about cameron, after all? for a great example, see later in the same scene:

Charlie, about Cameron: What's his specialty, bootlicking?

so maybe cameron believes that this is how friends treat each other. or at least, how they talk about other people to entertain their friends. charlie, while not a stellar student and clearly not liked by the administration, is the class clown, which makes him popular with students at welton. thus, cameron is probably jealous of charlie. he probably wishes he was more like charlie-confident, funny, well-liked, etc. and again, he clearly wants to be friends with neil, and part of their larger group, very, very badly. all of this to say:

i don't think cameron meant what he said about todd.

he's trying to get a laugh out of neil. so what does he do? he does what he thinks charlie-neil's funny best friend-would do. it's not a nice thing to say, but to me, it really just reads as someone who is trying to guess what the appropriate, funny thing to say in a situation is, but doesn't actually know. cameron might not have even really thought the 'stiff' joke was funny. but he thought neil would find it funny, which is really the whole point. cameron is, at the most fundamental level, an unpopular kid who wishes he was well-liked, and is fumbling around blindly trying to find his way there.

[sl-walker]

Help a starving artist

Or, at least, one who is trying quite hard not to.

As people relatively close to me know, I lost my job last July. It was a shitty situation all around, but I survived on savings and unemployment. But frankly, having been a toilet scrubber for most of my life, I never had a huge amount of savings and now unemployment has run out; did last month, in fact. I've sent out well over a thousand applications. I've rejiggered my resume, asked people for letters of recommendation, wrote too many cover letters, etc. I was hired for a job in early January and did my drug test two weeks ago, but I still haven't heard back from that employer, so I'm now staring down the barrel of ah, as if I somehow forgot what terror and poverty felt like again. Delightful. 0/10, would not recommend, though honestly, a lot of people I know already know the feeling.

What can you do?

You can subscribe to my Substack as a paid subscriber. Not only do you get my hopefully entertaining writing in your inbox -- which is free to everyone anyway -- you also get to request things if you're a paid subscriber. If it's monthly, every three months you can request a sketch or a specific comic review or even a fanfic review for yourself or someone else (within reason, like under 10K words). If it's as a founding member, you can request something every single month in the same vein. (Believe me, you're getting a bargain on those requests.)

You can commission me for art. I'm a decent artist. My rate is $25 an hour and I am not swift at it, but I am pretty damn okay and certainly cheaper than a professional artist. To give you a rough idea, that half-body pic I did of Guy was about ten hours, where the one I did of Ted was more like 15. A really good portrait sketch is probably about an hour. The more detailed, the more time.

I might be talked into writing commissions, depending on the writing. You can absolutely talk to me about hiring me if you want me to write your cover letters, because it's a hateful task, but I'm not too bad at it.

I can design letterheads like a boss. I was a printer for over sixteen years.

If you just want to throw money at me, I mean-- who turns that down? (Though I tend to prefer to do something for it, which is probably more evidence than anyone actually needs for what kind of childhood I had. HA!) But my paypal is:

paypal.me/steelandfic

Current utility bills under the cut. Like-- that's not counting groceries, pet food, the roof over my head, the filling in my tooth that I'm waiting for the bill for or anything else. That's just utilities.

And if you can't do anything else, please consider signal-boosting? Thanks.

[utilitycaster]

beau's backstory arc really does take 2 episodes and its not even motivated by beau. its nott why we even go up there. beau, like laudna does not desire to solve anything in her backstory. but unlike laudna she does have current goals (learning to people, learning to monk, impressing her teacher, her spy gig, just learning in general) and future goals (cobalt soul, mage rangling, kid having).

Correct...I'm not sure why you mentioned this? Like, I said as much as well, and that's not a problem because Beau has goals and interests, and she could have still had a meaningful story without visiting her family (though it certainly adds a lot).

With that said however this does feel kind of inadvertently an opportunity to point out the care with which Matt treated character backstory in the Mighty Nein vs. the lack thereof with Bells Hells. Beau said she was taken to the Cobalt Soul and her father paid someone off. She was on the run from her home with no reason to return and plenty of reasons to stay away.

In the Mighty Nein's story, not only is she carefully brought back to her home by a thoughtful interweaving of her and Nott's stories; Matt also looked at her cobalt soul backstory, said "does this match up with the Cobalt Soul as it exists in the world," came to a conclusion of "no, this isn't how the institution generally works," and had Dairon look into it, leading to a very satisfactory conclusion that happened without Beau's involvement but still meant a lot to her! Hell, you could even call it a consequence; Beau complaining about it all the time eventually got through to someone!

For Bells Hells, it was always just "YOUR abilities are ALSO kinda tied to the moon and/or you need THIS macguffin." The shards were nice but like...it felt this was a golden opportunity for Fearne and Ashton to serve as heirs to the titans in a re-binding or proper banishment of Predathos but in the end they were just essentially a variation on Cool Magic Items. Neither of them even did anything significantly Titan-related in the end; the But The Titans refrain meant jack shit. And you know, I felt that Imogen, Laudna, and Ashton's complaints about the gods rang hollow...but what if they hadn't? My argument was always "this doesn't match up with what we know of the gods from all other lore" but I think what is notable is that I wasn't proven right...but I wasn't even proven wrong. What if the gods had addressed this? What if Imogen being a Ruidusborn DID mean she was either beyond the reach of the gods/could not be heard or that they felt it was better she suffered? What if the gods feared what the Hishari had done in terms of resurrecting the titans? What if Ashton were textually unable to spend time in temples, rather than this just being theorized by people desperate to prove the gods were bad?

The problem is that, on some level, improv was barely happening. Matt didn't say Yes And or No Actually, he just sort of barrelled on with his original plans and world without addressing any of the things his players brought up (again, lack of consequences, good or bad) and so we have no real answers, Bells Hells do look like selfish jackasses because in the absence of new information I'm continuing to believe the old, certainly when the characters were so unkind in the end, and everything feels flat, unexplored, and dull as compared to the lively and rewarding and meaningful stories of Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein.

[centrally-unplanned]

Alright, last Current Events Drama post, is not a super valuable activity after all. I have seen a lot of Discourse that goes like "I may oppose these efforts but man the PR strategy of this Musk thing is pretty genius, they have a whole generation of people thinking USAID was funding the Liberal Media now". And they certainly aren't without agency, I agree there is an intentional PR strategy going on. In particular it is not just the creation of narrative, but the creation of momentum - every day is a new discovery, a new victory, a sense of progress.

But this isn't really that hard when your supporters are just really stupid? Like you can make shit up for these people! They don't care, they don't have that instinct that goes "okay hold up I'm going to need to see some sources here". The current Admin didn't make that happen, that is a deep, structural change around the internet flattening hierarchies and all that shit. When you know your audience wants results and also you can just invent results out of thin air then, idk, is this that hard? How could you not deliver that?

It is funny because the actual playbook here isn't even their invention, it is the same as the 2010's "Woke Boom". That entire model was that deep, slow, technical solutions to structural inequalities achieved via grinding electoral politics is boring. That shit is for fucking losers. I am not gonna have a role in that all! So instead we will achieve social change via randomly harassing my progressive coworkers for their black comedy tweets about AIDS until they get fired and have a nervous breakdown. Obviously - just like with the current right, don't be tricked! - there was another side of this movement that was much more serious, a huge side actually (we are just focusing right now). But for so many that serious side was window dressing, the real mush was that you got to feel like you were a part of something, doing something, and at a certain point they started running the show. This playbook being reversed really isn't that impressive (and also, in a sense, inevitable)

I will give the Social Justice aggros though that they had some standards - passing around photoshopped tweets was uncommon. Most of them did actually believe in this model for change (and so invented insane ideologies to justify it, but w/e). That isn't really as true on the right - I should partially walk back my statement above, a lot of these people aren't that gullible? They are just apathetic. So many people retweeting stuff about how The Deep State funnels millions to Politico don't really even care, for them it is a game. It is funny to own the libs. They laugh off your attempts at calling them out for accuracy - you care about that? What a cuck you are.

Which makes it particularly sad when you see the earnest ones, the ones writing essays about the implications of what USAID propping up the New York Times means for our political future. Nothing worse than being a true believer in a church where not only the leaders but also your fellow congregants know it is bullshit.

It reminds me of the Gamestop Meme Stock Crash and its slow, agonizing burn (a not unrelated event!). A bunch of people on the rise of the stock created the idea that buying Gamestop could Stick It To The Man, you could short squeeze the hedge funds, diamond-hands-hold that yield, bring Wall St to its knees - to the moon, baby. And some people bought it! And then the wheel turned, the crash happened, and most of the people posting those memes sold their stock and dipped so fast they had disappeared from the subreddits before they could even begin to say "bro, you thought I was serious?". Leaving a stalwart few holding the bag, spinning epicycles of conspiracy theories to justify why they had it to begin with. Which happens on autopilot a this point. You don't really need any PR strategy to make this happen.

[alexa-yukiyu]

Cursed Endearment ft Sukuna and Gojo

A/N I like this one better than the last one but I ‘m still not sure if it’s a cook. It might be guys, I think I likey this one; let me know what you guys think

Reader here is replaced by Dokucha which stands for reader in japanese for the enjoyment of both reader and oc character readers!

It had taken but a small moment of weakness—a shock from a mission he had received, catching the teen off guard—for the King of Curses to take his chance and take possession of his host's body.

Sukuna laughed with sick glee, standing at the top of a building as he looked down on the people of the Sendai Prefect. His mind was already relishing all the plans and fun he could carry about with his newfound freedom. That is, until he heard the tale-tell sign of footsteps behind him. Turning around with excitement akin to that of a child, he came face to face with an actual child.

However, it wasn't the child itself that excited him but his host's reaction to the child; based on Yuji's desperate screaming, he was quick to gather that the child in front of him was the brat's younger sibling.

"Ji?" the child called, confused, a grin growing on their young face as they realized who it was.

"Ji!" The cheered, running to the pinkenette's arms, giggling as the latter easily took hold of him

"I found you, Ji!" they exclaimed, cupping Itadori's face, pausing at his appearance. Their eyes stared at the small eyes popping below his own. Itadori had always told them that despite their age, they were unusually sharp, something that was becoming apparent as they stilled, gaping at the person holding them.

"You're not Ji…." They muttered, flinching at the grin that grew on the thing's face at the statement

"Ha, you're not as stupid as the brat, aren't you? You might just be quite useful if only to keep him in check. You can't believe the tantrum he is throwing up there right now," Sukuna gleefully stated, giving his temple a tap

"Ji is up there?" They questioned, looking up

"I've got him on a leash; you see, your brother thought he could do it to me, keep me locked up, so it was about time I returned the favor."

"Ji did that? But b-but that's so mean!" they cried out, seemingly aghast that their brother had done such a thing

His response was cut off as the both of them snapped their heads at the sound of a war cry and what looked to be a sorcerer heading the way and recklessly sending an attack their way.

"I see some things haven't changed even a thousand years later; still don't care who you take down in the process of getting rid of me; and yet you have the nerve to talk about me?" He called with a scoff as he easily blocked the attack sent towards him and, by proxy, to the small child on his hands

"I was about to start having fun; don't interrupt me," he growled, cracking his fingers as he prepared his own attack, only to raise a brow as the sorcerer dropped to the ground, soon after his cursed energy had suddenly disappeared

"Well, you really are something, aren't you; why did you hide this one from me, brat?" Sukuna questioned, turning his attention to Dokucha once again as he asked his host and let out a few snickers at the loud protests that came from the teen.

"Don't be mean to Ji either," they pouted, ignoring the tsked sound that escaped the curse at their words.

"What did you do to him?" he questioned, gesturing to the slumped body of the sorcerer a few feet away

"Gogo said to keep to keep it a secret, so don't tell anyone, kay?" they hissed, putting a finger on their lips

"Who the hell Is Gogo?" he snarled.

"Umm, he's Gogo! He's Ji's teacher, he's really funny!" they beamed.

"That cocky bastard huh? To think he had you under his sleeve, too, so what did you do?"

"I made his magic go poof! Mr. Gogo said I can make magic go poof and also crank it up!"

"HAHAHAHA, what are the chances that technique would be passed down even after all this time; this certainly makes things more fun," he cackled.

"Ne, Ne. What's your name?"

"Me? I am Sukuna, the king of curses; you better engrave that name into your skull, little brat."

"Kuna?" they questioned, tracing the markings on his face, and surprisingly, the cursed allowed it, glancing at Dokucha as their fleeting touch glided along his face

"I like your tattoos, Kuna," they mumbled.

"Do ya?"

"Mmhm, they're cool. I want to have some too! "

"Don't go influencing my little spark," a voice called out

"So you finally caught up," Sukuna spat out, a disgusted scowl growing on his face as he took it in the white-haired intruder

"Save yourself the trouble and go back quietly; we both know how it's going to end," Gojo piped up with an easygoing smile on his face as he leisurely approached the curse.

Sukuna was a lot of things; however, naive was not one of them; cocky as he was, he knew that with the fraction of power he possessed at the moment, he didn't stand a chance against the sorc

"Hey lil' Brat," he called dismissively, continuing as the child gave a little hum

"I will see you real soon; you and me, we're going to have lots of fun," He called with a grin growing on his face, a nasty glint growing on his eye as he spoke

"You're going to leave?"

"Don't worry; like I said, I will be back real soon, and it will be to stay. I like ya, so I will allow you to walk with me after I wipe out these maggots," he called as he retreated into his domain, causing Yuji's subconscious to come back, only for it to quickly fade as his body slumped to the ground, Dokucha jumping out of his arms with a squeak

"Ji?" they called once they had gathered their bearings and approached the fallen sorcerer

"Ji?" they repeated, shaking his body

"Don't worry, little Spark," Gojo called as he approached the child

"Gogo? Is Jiji alright?" they tearfully called

"Yeah, he's just catching up with some beauty sleep," he smiled, growing into a grin as the child gestured for him to pick him, happily obliging as he did

"M' sorry, Gogo; I told kuna our secret," They cried as they hid their face in the crook of his neck, tightly hugging him.

"Hmm, don't worry," he assured them, patting their head dismissively

"He would have heard of you from Itadori eventually, so it was bound to happen. I'm not surprised he had a soft spot for you; you're quite the talented cutie," He responded as he dug his fingers into their stomach playfully, following them as they squirmed around, trying to escape the small attack.

"You're not mad?" they asked as their giggles subsided; backing away from their hiding spot to look into the man's covered eyes.

"No, but make sure not to tell anyone else, m'kay?"

"Okay"

"Pinky promised?" he suggested, pulling out his finger and offering it to the kid.

"Pinky promise!" Dokucha confirmed, watching their much smaller finger around his

"Now then, let's get your brother back to school," he merrily stated, easily hauling Yuji's body over his shoulder and balancing the kid in his other arm.

"How about we stop for some sweets on the way?"

"Yay! You're the best Gogo!" they cheered, bouncing in his arms with excitement

Let me know what you guys think! I ‘m not sure if there was enough interactions 🤔

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Starting a reread of Pride and Prejudice and keeping an eye out for some things that have been mentioned by the Austen fandom:

1) The Bennets do not seem so notably wealthy – by gentry standards – as has been suggested by parts of the fandom, nor does Mr. Bennet in particular seem so blameable in not having saved a more substantial inheritance for his daughters.

The Bennets have two thousand a year for 7 people. This is, IIRC, a little over twice per person what the Dashwoods have in Sense & Sensibility (500 pounds a year for four people), and the Dashwoods are very much at the low end of the gentry. It’s about half what is considered a notably rich member of the gentry in this book or others (five thousand a year, like Mr. Bingley has, or four thousand a year which is, I think, what Henry Crawford has).

Also, it seems like Mr. Bennet is impeded in his management of the estate by Mrs. Bennet, from this line from Mr. Bennet (when Mrs. Bennet is urging him to use the pretext of the horses being needed for the farm to not send Jane to Netherfield in the carriage, so she will be obliged to stay overnight if it rains): “They [the horses] are wanted in the farm much oftener than I can get them.” Combined with the early narratorial statement that the solace of Mrs. Bennet’s life is “visiting and news”, this suggests conflicts between her using the horses for visiting purposes and the needs of the horses for the farm. (Though I wouldn’t have expected carriage-horses to overlap with farm work much.)

Mr. Bennet feels less like someone who is by inclination negligent, and more like someone who has, over 20+ years, grown tired of re-fighting the same battles over and over with his wife (who is incapable of absorbing any idea that is counter to her own inclinations), and largely given up. He baits his wife, but he does do some necessary things promptly: after insisting to his wife that he will not visit Mr. Bingley, he is in fact “among the earliest” to do so.

I see Mr. Bennet not as an unsympathetic character, but as the “failure state” of both Elizabeth and, in a lesser way, Darcy: this is who you become if you have no one close to you whom you respect as a peer. (Darcy wouldn’t be as openly mocking, but his interactions with Miss Bingley when Elizabeth is at Netherfield – brief and curt – give a flavour of what he’s like around someone he’s close to who is bothering him.) Elizabeth likes her father; he visits her regularly after her marriage and there’s no indication either her or Darcy mind; but his life isn’t the future we want for Elizabeth. Nor is it the future he wants for Elizabeth, as we see with his response to both Mr. Collins’ proposal and Elizabeth’s telling him of her engagement to Darcy.

2) I’m noticing the connections between Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s early conversations more this time. For example, on one evening at Netherfield they debate whether a plable temper (Bingley’s) isca good bad thing, with Elizabeth saying that being easily convinced by your friends of matters of no great import, based on your affection for them, is amiable. In a later conversation at Netherfield, Darcy says (in comment on his non-mockable faults): “My temper I dare not vouch for. – It is I believe too little yielding – certainly too little for the convenience of the world…My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them.” This feels like a response to what Elizabeth was saying earlier, meaning their conversation (in contrast to Miss Bingley’s mix of flattering him and twitting him about Elizabeth, it is one where he’s being argued with; he seems to prefer that) has stuck in his head.

On a funnier note, the earlier conversation had Darcy condemning humblebrags (“Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast”), but I suspect that he’s engaging in it here, and actually prides himself on his resoluteness.

3) While Miss Bingley isn’t a villainness, she’s certainly an unpleasant person. She’s mean, she’s two-faced (mocking her “friend’s” relatives behind her back while her “friend” is sick, though being usually kind and courteous to her face), and she doesn’t have enough sense or perception to pick up on when her flattery towards Darcy and her insults towards Elizabeth are annoying Darcy.

4) Elizabeth gives very little indication of being a bookworm (nor a tomboy), in contrast to some characterizations. Even in the scene where her reading is mentioned, she is in fact largely ignoring the book in favour of paying attention to the conversation at the card table; she picked up the book more out of prudence (the card game is gambling and she guesses they are betting too much for her means) than intrinsic interest. In two other scenes at Netherfield – during the few times she is not tending to Jane – she is doing needlework. Her muddy walk to Netherfield is inspired by affection for Jane and desire not to use the carriage needlessly, not by a love of muddy walks.

5) Despite some posts I’ve seen on use of Lizzy vs Eliza as nicknames for Elizabeth Bennet (Lizzie is more common), both Charlotte Lucas and Miss Bingley do refer to her as Eliza at some points.

[measureyourlifeincake]

was talking to a customer about possibly getting a cookie we were selling and she was like "well it's a holiday so i feel like it's a cheat day :)" and i didn't know how to tell her that i neither believe in jesus nor dieting as a concept

[wildsaltair]

Ranting in the tags isn’t enough so I’m going to say one more time that just because Maximus isn’t morally gray doesn’t mean he isn’t complex

[rivilu]

One side effect of the autistic sense of justice for me is going insane over justice and vengeance as concepts in themselves whenever applicable in media.

Which unfortunately means that thinking about justice dragon age for too long (especially with the post inq takes on spirits) makes me want to rip my hair out.

[atopvisenyashill]

my hot take of the day is that clearly the people who swallow the in universe targ & valyrian exceptionalism are being completely taken in by the exact system that george is trying to critique but also i think the people who over correct into this idea that not a single targaryen is worthy of like, our empathy or sorrow or are rightfully chafing against the structures put in place by valyrians, first men, and andals alike are also being incredibly 2d in their analysis. i feel like this happens most often when people try to make the case that andals are somehow oppressed in westerosi society on a cultural level simply bc valyrian supremacy trumps andal culture. i think this is incredibly silly to say or posit as the truth in universe because there is in fact some oppression of culture in westeros but it’s not the andals lol!!! it’s the first men, the dornish, the rhoynar/greenblood orphans, and the ironborn. there Is some level of,,,, idk bigotry/xenophobia towards valyrians but only valyrians who don’t worship the faith - people like larra rogare, who still follow valyrian gods, do face this bigotry because they’re Too Foreign, the same way someone like thoros, melisandre, taena, etc who are essosi but not from a still heavy valyrian-based society like volantis and lys, and that’s definitely important to the conversation, because it shows the Dominant Culture is in fact the Andal culture when it comes to westeros and that’s like,,, fine, and even more interesting to me to see how andals, who have been the dominant force on westeros for thousands of years, interact with valyrians, who clearly want to keep ideas of valyrian supremacy alive somehow and essentially try to get the other dominant force in westeros to buy in (which they do!). like, are these two at odds sometimes? yes! but i don’t think it’s correct to say that the andals face ~prejudice for being andals or followers of the faith either!

[orchideae]

A little unpopular opinion on something I've seen happen more commonly throughout November/December and wanted to address quickly for my own blog: Please never hesitate to reblog anything from me. You see me reblogging a sentence starter list that you like? Go for it and reblog it from me directly without any pressure on you whatsoever to send anything into me before doing so. You like a GIF-set or musing that I reblogged? Nab it from me, it'll brighten my day to see that we share an interest in something. I like to see interaction between me and anyone who follows me. I like to see that little activity notification light up.

Honestly, it simply reminds me that we're all part of a community, and more specifically, a fandom that consists of characters and nations that we all came to love and then share that amongst ourselves. And honestly, seeing a reblog happen shortly after me but it's from the source, creates (in my opinion) an odd sense of chosen disconnect between people that can feel awkward, it's as if we're walking on eggshells as to not rub each other the wrong way. But what's wrong about going 'Hey, I see what you reblogged, I like it too!', it even gives you potential common ground to start a conversation. We're a community, and I don't know about you, but I like seeing people interact with each other beyond merely threads and notes. It's the little things that matter, after all.

[here-there-were-dragons]

my mother is absolutely convinced of some nonsense conspiracy theory that (in her words) "originally humanity lived in peaceful all-woman societies of goddess worshippers who took care of eachother and lived in harmony, while males were roving loners that had no society and never cooperated. that changed when the men banded together and overthrew the peaceful woman-dominated societies, and enslaved us all." and, according to her, this is proof that a woman-dominated world would be innately more peaceful, and that men are innately violent and evil and should be either barred from holding any legal power or leadership roles or at least should be (again in her words) "gelded like bulls" to remove their testosterone before even being considered for such a thing.

she also evidently believes that the problem with all religions today is primarily that they aren't "goddess worshippers", because she seems to think goddess religions are inherently peaceful and pure too and seems to be especially obsessed with "Isis" in particular. the very very few times she's openly considered it unambiguously bad for some population or another to have been exterminated (she's got a bad case of devil's advocating genocide brain), she's gone out of her way to make up some crap about how said people were a peaceful society of goddess-worshippers, almost always of isis. delusions of isis-worship seem to be the only thing that ever causes her to consider any arab or middle-eastern culture, society, or ethnicity to be relatively uncomplicatedly undeserving of extermination, in fact, because every fucking time she doesn't immediately start devils-advocating it and making remarks about how "the rest of the world should box them in and let them blow eachother up" it's when she's whinging on about how whatever specific micro-ethnicity she's thinking about are or were traditional persecuted isis-worshippers.

the sole major exception to her weird fixation on isis worship justifying worthiness of life is the whole israel thing going on, in which she has consistently made very obvious that literally the only reason she's against the genocide of palestine is because it gives her an excuse to even more openly hate jewish people than she already did. and honestly i'm not sure even that's true because i think she's made some offhand remarks about palestinians having probably been peaceful isis worshipers before the jews infected them with christianity or something anyway.

so for the last, however fucking long it's been i've been constantly having to listen to her go off about how this behavior is in the jew's blood or whatever and that they literally invented all genocide because somehow the concept didn't exist before them and wouldn't have ever been invented by the rest of humanity without those jewish aliens dropping it in i fucking guess apparently and she furthermore goes on about how every single genocide and mass-oppression movement in history is directly inspired by them, ESPECIALLY the nazis, and THEN i have to listen to her rant about how, basically, wwii was something they entirely brought on themselves by "dominating the economy and treating everyone not them like shit" and the nazis were just "using their own tactics back at them". and then she goes on a rant about how the people the original jews exterminated back in the day (aka the first ever genocide, which they invented, because jews invented genocide and hate according to her) in the middle east region were peaceful matriarchal isis-worshipers.

and then she starts making comments about arabs being backwards and palestinians either being mysogynist muslims that should be boxed in to blow eachother up with everyone else or secret peaceful isis worshippers corrupted by men's cruel hand, sometimes in the same sentence, entirely dependent on which group she's more in the mood to hate at the time.

it's exhausting. beyond exhausting. her sole purpose in existence seems to be to have the singularly most exhausting set of politics physically possible to fit into one person.

just, sometimes i think, if there really is anything at all to the incredibly stupid and inexplicably popular idea that anyone or anything has a Purpose tm to exist for, i feel like my mother's purpose is to be walking proof to me of a Type Of Guy That Is Real, cause i sure as fuck would have trouble inventing this mess if it wasn't standing right in front of me spewing confusingly bipartisan hate. all of her thoughts and opinions are these long winding nonsense chains that feel like if that man carrying thing sketch about the friend with confusing politics was a person. on meth.

[loumauve]

I snapped today at work, and by snapped I mean I politely commented on a help desk ticket by summing up an mess of an (type of) issue that's come up for at least the fourth time in the 2+ months I've been managing user accounts, and asked the person responsible to fix it (himself for once) because last time I fixed his mess-up it took me two whole days to work out the details with at least four other colleagues from different departments and I really don't want to do it again. there's other shit that needs doing, I've been working 10+ hour days for most of this week already, so I need to cut down not add on more.

(good thing tho - at least we managed to fix the issue where the dataset of a newer employee got mixed up with another one of the same name and therefore wasn't able to apply for any of the access/accounts she needed. technically not entirely my area but it does impact us not being allowed to create an account for her so I figured I might as well track that issue down. took three days and at least three other people, but hey - it should all work out now. yay for that)

[asofterepilogue]

I think it's fine if people don't want to post about palestine on tumblr. it's not like that's the pinnacle of activism, and not posting on tunglr dot com doesn't equal not caring or never talking about it anywhere or not doing anything else.

but I do think it's interesting that so many of the people I've seen ignore the genocide in palestine on here were posting about ukraine not so long ago. clearly then they wanted to talk about war and politics on tumblr. which doesn't necessarily mean they don't care about palestine, of course. but it sure is interesting.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Processing some things

Also the fact that he's crouching with his hands on his knees is so cute to me for some reason?? He does this in another episode too - the one where Chakotay finds a symbol on an unknown planet...it's just so adorable to me. He could just lean down but no. Also of course his fingers are spread again - GOTTA utilize the whole hand whenever you do ANYTHING (if you're Tuvok)

[mako-island-moon-pool]

I really do deserve a fucking apology for all the times my friends and family valued strangers on the internet and their opinions more than me

How am I supposed to be just fine with being ignored for years and years or bullied for openly liking what I like, only for those same fucking people to then turn around YEARS LATER, AFTER THE DAMAGE WAS ALREADY DONE, and be like "actually this is cool, so glad I found it" while still ignoring me. Why am I not allowed to be fucking pissed about it? Why is it considered ""gatekeepy"" when I get upset someone who deliberately ignored me for years and insulted the shit I enjoy when I asked them to get into it cuz I thought they'd like it suddenly finds interest in it because it got popular online, not because I'd been begging them to give it a chance and to listen to me for years???? Why is that not allowed????? THAT'S SUCH AN ASSHOLE MOVE, WHY IS IT 'NOT OKAY' TO BE MAD? WHY DON'T THEY GROW A SPINE AND APOLOGIZE FOR DISMISSING ME FIRST? HOW ABOUT THAT?????