#is hard sometimes

[embervoices]

Yeeeaaaaaaaah.

I mean, I'm reasonably certain the desired response is sympathy, but for all that most of us desire human connection, not all our attempts are equally skilled at actually acquiring it.

I find so, so many people who are so depressed and isolated, they don't have anything else TO talk about - and the only way to fix it is for them to have more human connection. But that connection would first have to endure them being isolated and depressed.

The obvious solution is "get a therapist" and that, too, is a good but not always accessible answer. I wish I knew the solution. We have created a world that handily isolates people even often when they're surrounded by fellow humans, and now we have multiple forms of difficult-to-break feedback loops like this to contend with.

*sigh*

there are no hard rules for human interaction but honestly i think everyone online would benefit hugely from operating under the assumption that, unless you have been given a specific reason to think otherwise in discrete instances, internet strangers do not want to be approached with:

your trauma, illnesses, or deep-rooted self worth issues

any come-ons or sexual content

over-familiar playful rudeness

information about your dnd characters/ocs

disagreements with their harmless subjective opinions

if it is your first time speaking with someone i can not highly enough recommend that these do not be your opening topics

[anartificialsatellite]

The older I get the more I admire people who are earnestly, genuinely into whatever their thing is. I know it sounds like an annoying cliche but unless you're being cruel or hurtful there is really no need to be normal about things. The dude with the bad fake accent at the renaissance faire is having the time of his life. The people having photoshoots with their fashion dolls are loving it. The old lady with a yard unreasonably full of tacky ass lawn ornaments is having a blast, HOA be damned.

Don't waste your time being too cool to have fun, y'know?

[dovesick]

endless night

[inkskinned]

she's singing in another room and my dog is asleep at my feet. my grandma asked me why i haven't found a man yet and i laughed. oh, you know. i like my house clean.

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would know someone for only 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.

it's worth it for this moment, i think. my lover is still humming the same song she's been singing for four days straight and i don't want to kill her for it. her guitar is beside my bed. her toothbrush is in my bathroom. in a few moments i will make us lunch. we are lucky enough to have found each other. it is lucky enough to be in love.

[captainjonnitkessler]

The second you start talking about some mysterious "they" that are controlling society in some fashion, you are engaging in dangerous conspiratorial thinking even if you're being woke about it. "They" did not institute the 40 hour work week specifically so you would be too tired to revolt. "They" did not invent the sleek minimalist aesthetic in order to crush the spirit of art in the common people. "They" are not pushing mediocre media into the mainstream in order to poison people's critical thinking skills.

Your best case scenario after that is you talk to someone who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about and you get embarrassed because you can't answer basic questions about your own ideology because you never learned anything past "the ruling class/capitalists/politicians are making things bad and if we got rid of them the bad things would all go away!"

Your worst case scenario is obviously the woo-to-fascist pipeline and you end up believing Jews are poisoning American food supplies with GMOs in order to turn us all into beta cucks, so like . . . maybe just stop blaming "them" before you fall down that route.

Obligatory round of disclaimers: Yes, sometimes people do bad things. Be specific about exactly who is doing what instead of ascribing it to some vague group of shadowy elites. Yes, sometimes things in society are bad. Learn to identify the root causes of complex social issues instead of assuming that they're actually extremely simple to fix and we're just not doing it because of some vague group of shadowy elites. Yes, minimalism isn't for everyone. Learn that some people don't share your tastes and get the fuck over it for the love of god.

[platoapproved]

louis + cruelty

[great-and-small]

Bird identification is so fucked up in a really fun way you can’t understand until you get into it. For example, there is a type of goose called the cackling goose that looks exactly like a Canada goose except smaller and “cuter”. The cackling goose is way, way, more rare in most places than its relatively common cousin, so it’s on tons of birders life lists. Everyone wants to see a cackling (look in any bird ID group to see lots of hopeful people posting petite Canada geese). The two species regularly commingle, so sometimes a flock of those common parking lot birds will have the equivalent of a Pokémon shiny just hanging out in the middle of them.

How ridiculous and fun is that? I can never look at a big group of Canada geese without scrutinizing their ranks for an adorable little extremely rare cutie pie cackling goose. It reminds me a bit of mushroom harvesting minus the risk of death if you get it wrong

[chloesimaginationthings]

The REAL lore from the FNAF survival logbook,,

[curioscurio]

I'm rewatching Steven Universe and I will never forgive Fandom for what it did to her

[daftpatience]

haruhi is forever in my heart a sort of boy thingy

[fixyourwritinghabits]

I think the thing that's been bothering me about the "is it okay to use ChatGPT to plot/make characters/etc" is that at the end of the day, these are not tools that are helping your writing, they are shortcuts that are undercutting it.

These things are supposed to be hard, because you need to learn how to do them.

And listen, I know this sucks. I've got to knock off 4k of words from my current novel to make it more sellable, which seems like a completely arbitrary thing to do, but things like printing costs absolutely do factor into traditional publishing. It took me five drafts to figure out a completely obvious in hindsight plot point that explains why a character does what he does. It takes a few tries to pull together a detailed outline into a workable story, and it always will.

I would have loved to figure this all out way earlier, but I had to learn how to spot the gaps in my writing before I could fix them. Generative AI isn't ever going to bridge the gap between sitting down and learning how to work things out, because if you don't do that, you never will become a more competent writer. If that wasn't part of the point, none of us would be doing this in the first place.

[mythicalcoolkid]

You don't wish your disability was worse or more visible, you wish your disability was taken seriously. Please stop confusing the two, I guarantee you would not get the support you need JUST by being more severe or more visible. Please listen to visibly disabled people when we tell you it isn't better on our side

[bluegiragi]

mask off.

early access + nsfw on patreon

[hinamie]

corvidae

[demigods-posts]

imagine percy swimming to the bottom of the ocean. not to save a group of sea creatures. not to show off his skillset. and not to prance around as the sea god's favorite son. but to join the ocean in all that it is. laying in the soft sand and watching the fish swim by. the lobsters making space for him as he rests his head against a patch of seaweed. him laughing at the irony. imagine percy making small talk with all the different sea creatures and assigning them names. him actually running into a whale he named phillip who's on his way to propose to his boyfriend. and percy wishing him good luck and offering his blessing on their union. imagine percy making small talk with the starfish about his favorite dinosaur. and explaining to the collective group what a dinosaur is and why they don't need to worry about them reaching the bottom of the ocean. just. percy immersiving himself in all that's aquatic because it's where he can be his most self.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

How much longer 'til your luck runs out?

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