#is this preachy?

[vaticinatrix]

in light of sam's recent announcement, i have something i'd like to say;

if you're able to safely, and have access to it

GET YOUR FUCKING HPV VACCINE

the hpv vaccine is a highly effective, extremely safe, LIFESAVING cancer prevention medicine. i don't care what your mom's facebook friends said. 90% of HPV related cancers, like what sam had, can be prevented with the HPV vaccine. this includes other forms of cancer like anal, penile, and cervical cancer, the last of which is highly highly highly aggressive. please get the vaccine.

[some-assholes-familiar]

Can we talk about the fact that so many people in older generations kind of have this habit of just expecting children to magically manifest the skills they themselves were taught how to do? and then shaming them for not knowing how to do the same things they should have been teaching their children?

Like, as I’m entering the adult world I’m learning more and more about necessary faulting skills I should have but don’t because no one ever taught me, and when I ask for help or don’t know how to do something like, say, oiling my car or navigating university systems (seriously, I still barely understand what the hell the credit system is) i just get a bunch of the older adults in my life laughing at how our generation doesn’t even know how to do the basics.

And it’s like, yeah, we’ve got google to help us in a pinch theoretically, but my little brother doesn’t know how to scrub a pan (despite literally teaching himself how to cook and make paper sculptures on his own) and he just gets called stupid for not doing it right when no one ever taught him what the hell brushes he was supposed to use.

There’s this whole game of parents telling their children to do a task they’ve spent years doing every day as second nature, because they’ve forgotten that they had to learn how to do it in the first place.

It’s like yelling at a baby for not being able to walk. Sure almost everyone we know does it every day without thinking, but none of that changes the fact that right now, the baby doesn’t know how!

I don’t know, I’ve been sitting on this thought for a while, but the amount of frustration I get from encountering a new problem I’ve never seen before, and asking someone for help only for them to either a) do it for me or b) tell me to figure it out on my own and then get angry when I don’t do it their way… it weighs on you. Especially when you know this is a skill that will help you and are more than willing to learn.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just one more thing for me to get pissed at boomers at. They complain so much about kids not knowing how to do stuff for themselves into adulthood when they were the ones who never bothered to teach them how.

[murmurlilies]

amidst the flood of excited screaming over the sudden tonal shift in episode 11 of Dungeon Meshi, I have seen a few anime-only viewers who are a bit... put off by it?? some feeling that they were lied to, or accusing the story of abandoning its premise and feel-good vibes.

all I can say to those people without spoiling things is this: TRUST THE PROCESS. this tonal shift didn't come out of nowhere, and it wasn't put in merely for shock value. Dungeon Meshi is a carefully crafted work with themes that carry from its opening moments all the way through to its conclusion. as the story unfolds, those themes are expanded upon and explored in truly remarkable and unexpected ways. it is, when viewed in its entirety, one of the most cohesive and beautifully told narratives in the anime/manga space.

as for those feel-good vibes?? they never truly leave, in fact imho they only grow stronger as the story progresses in spite of its increasingly dark moments. and there WILL be dark moments. man oh man, y'all have seen NOTHING yet. but again: TRUST THE PROCESS. believe in these characters, in their tenacity, in their love for each other. no matter how dire things get, believe that there will always be a warm campfire and a delicious meal waiting for them at the end.

[pseudophan]

i know this is tumblr and all and liam payne might not have been The Best Person but do you think maybe this isn't the best occasion for the fuckass destiel meme? you know damn well this is gonna hurt for a lot of one direction fans regardless of their opinion on him as a person, like this is nowhere near the same as an old evil politician dying. come on

[potatoes-tomatoes]

I’ve had this exchange in my head far longer than I’d like to admit

[hedgehog-moss]

Forgive me for making yet another post about the French Revolution but one small detail that makes me laugh is when, as things started to go seriously wrong, one of Louis XVI's advisers tried to persuade him & Marie-Antoinette to get away from Paris and wait for things to calm down (the idea was "if you lay low and wait, the newly-created National Assembly will vote something stupid and lose popular support" which was a solid plan honestly.) But he was also like "whatever you do, DO NOT go East or South or people will think you'll get help from other monarchies to restore your power and that won't calm things down"

So the King was advised to flee to Normandy, which... is just a short ferry ride away from another monarchy. But that's completely different since it's England. To be fair to the English, the French monarchy had basically bankrupted itself a few years back to send millions in support of the American revolutionaries because it would be a shame not to take advantage of "perhaps the best opportunity for centuries to come to put England in its place" (actual quote by France's minister of Foreign Affairs in 1777)

—still I love the realistic approach of the King's adviser telling him, Sire you can't go near any of our borders rn, it'll escalate the situation, Parisians will know you're trying to get another country to help. Obviously you can go set up camp right across the sea from England though, that's fine since everyone knows the English wouldn't piss on us if we were on fire¹

¹ Perfidious Albion was like "aw no France is in turmoil and possibly weakened :) a shame :)" exactly like France re: them at the start of the US independence war ² they also thought well these backward french are finally following our glorious example and entering civilisation (parliamentary monarchy) ³ and only when the Girondins started being like "let's spread the French Revolution to the whole universe!!! or at least Belgium" did England finally decide "it's been a while since we last declared war on France actually" (but it was too late for Louis XVI) ⁴ That's not how footnotes work sorry. Trying to make my post look fancier

[idolomantises]

when developing Lili's job as a sex worker, I had a comic planned where Sera and Lili do talk about her job and Sera offers to "save" Lili, but Lili tells her she doesn't want to be saved and doesn't want her job to be viewed as this burden that ruined her life. She likes it, and thats all there is to it.

But, as someone who is not a sex worker himself (despite doing some research and even asking sex workers for feedback), I felt like it came off too preachy and soapbox-y. I also notice that whenever the topic of sex work gets mentioned in my work, a lot people get really upset at the topic. I'll never forget being told that Sera and Lili's relationship was "less wholesome" after finding out that Lili is a sex worker. And the last thing I want is for my reply section to turn into a warzone.

At the same time, I still want to represent sex work as a normal thing. Not just for hell denizens but in general. The fact that sex work is still a poorly represented profession in media, and that I have people assume Lili was "forced" to do her job because that's just assumed at this point is disappointing. I hope the dialogue can make it clear that its normal, and its fine. And please stop saying "poor Sera" she literally summoned Lili, she knows what she got into.

[yb-cringe]

i think whats always made me the most emotional about qsmp characters and players alike leaving is that it feels so much more. personal. a bit more gutting when it comes to the way qsmp functions.

the reason this server was made in the first place was to make connections between players that CANT happen anywhere else. or rather, are very difficult to maintain.

it's hard to consistently stay in contact with people who don't speak the same language as you. qsmp made a point to force those people to interact and everything else was just.. trying to soften the harder edges of communicating that don't happen elsewhere.

and its simultaneously beautiful and horribly horribly painful. because the world outside of qsmp isn't very accommodating. and often, as these are content creators with Lives, they don't have time to really maintain every friendship they ever make.

It's why maxo and jaiden and richas and pomme and dapper etc-- its why every death or absence from the server is so gutting. because you know when they leave, that this just /cant/ happen again.

i'm not saying this to be. doomposty. i know that's kinda what it sounds like. i think pepito said it great already; that new memories can be made and we can love the old ones.

i think what im getting at is that clawing back to a time that's passed won't make us happy, it won't take us back there. you gotta just keep moving forward. qsmp is changing a lot. it wont ever be like it was last year. that doesn't mean it can't be good later.

we're going to lose creators and characters and things that remind us VERY heavily of the times where we had friends that we drifted from or lost because of one thing or another.

but you gotta remember there will be more people who you will love too. new people, who won't fill that space but occupy something new because fun fact you don't ever run out of space for that sort of thing.

be sad theyre gone be happy they're doing well remember the memories fondly but keep moving. unfortunately a lot of qsmp has ended up being about letting things go.

its like the. 'its going to be okay. but its going to be different.' and. skdfjds idk i hope thats a hopeful enough note to make things better.

[evilwizard]

I do want to say, my views on AI “art” have changed somewhat. It was wrong of me to claim that it’s not wrong to use it in shitposts… there definitely is some degree of something problematic there.

Personally I feel like it’s one of those problems that’s best solved via lawmaking—specifically, AI generations shouldn’t be copywrite-able, and AI companies should be fined for art theft and “plagiarism”… even though it’s not directly plagiarism in the current legal sense. We definitely need ethical philosophers and lawmakers to spend some time defining exactly what is going on here.

But for civilians, using AI art is bad in the same nebulous sense that buying clothes from H&M or ordering stuff on Amazon is bad… it’s a very spread out, far away kind of badness, which makes it hard to quantify. And there’s no denying that in certain contexts, when applied in certain ways (with actual editing and artistic skill), AI can be a really interesting tool for artists and writers. Which again runs into the copywrite-ability thing. How much distance must be placed between the artist and the AI-generated inspiration in order to allow the artist to say “this work is fully mine?”

I can’t claim to know the answers to these issues. But I will say two things:

Ignoring AI shit isn’t going to make it go away. Our tumblr philosophy is wildly unpopular in the real world and most other places on the internet, and those who do start using AI are unfortunately gonna have a big leg up on those who don’t, especially as it gets better and better at avoiding human detection.

Treating AI as a fundamental, ontological evil is going to prevent us from having these deep conversations which are necessary for us—as a part of society—to figure out the ways to censure AI that are actually helpful to artists. We need strong unions making permanent deals now, we need laws in place that regulate AI use and the replacement of humans, and we need to get this technology out of the hands of huge megacorporations who want nothing more than to profit off our suffering.

I’ve seen the research. I knew AI was going to big years ago, and right now I know that it’s just going to get bigger. Nearly every job is in danger. We need to interact with this issue—sooner rather than later—or we risk losing all of our futures. And unfortunately, just as with many other things under capitalism, for the time being I think we have to allow some concessions. The issue is not 100% black or white. Certainly a dark, stormy grey of some sort.

But please don’t attack middle-aged cat-owners playing around with AI filters. Start a dialogue about the spectrum of morality present in every use of AI—from the good (recognizing cancer cells years in advance, finding awesome new metamaterials) to the bad (megacorporations replacing workers and stealing from artists) to the kinda ambiguous (shitposts, app filter that makes your dog look like a 16th century British royal for some reason).

And if you disagree with me, please don’t be hateful about it. I fully recognize that my current views might be wrong. I’m not a paragon of moral philosophy or anything. I’m just doing my best to live my life in a way that improves the world instead of detracting from it. That’s all any of us can do, in my opinion.

[valtsv]

i think the most important thing i've learned from years of working to recover from trauma and break the cycles of abuse i was both a victim and perpetrator of is that i can't change that i was hurt or that i hurt other people in the past, but i can use that to empower myself to learn from those experiences in order to do better in the present and future. obviously it would have been better if none of it had ever happened, but instead of hand-wringing over what-ifs and if-onlys, i accept that it's done and can't be changed, but i still can. i don't have to let myself be defined by my regrets.

[fluo-skeletons]

it's been 9 years i think we can all collectively agree now that Flowey has never been a master of psychological manipulation.

No shame to him, he's a kid who's been recently awakened from death and probably became very socially detached thanks to the nature of resets,

but you can't tell me that Papyrus didn't/wouldn't have caught on if he had been planning to take the souls at the end of true pacifist. Flowey is not a good liar. In any case, this does lead to monsters being freed, so was Papyrus really wrong to play along?

And who's to say this all wasn't Papyrus simply playing into whatever would set Flowey on the path he takes in true pacifist, trusting that the human and him would work it out? Flowey can have his power display and then realise what really matters. sometimes you gotta work through your problems the hard way

local kid with zero issues of abandonment/isolation whatsoever

[volcanocraft]

Your Gem as an unlabelled bi/gay non-op transman who uses she/her has overridden my previous headcanons and rewired my brain. Quite possibly the most correct take I've ever seen.

I really appreciate you saying this :’) she is so dear to me. I love your turiagirl headcanons as I think gem would definitely be mspec and I haven’t heard of the label before… it’s always fun finding out the new ways people are able to label complex gender attraction!

I’ve been thinking about bi gay gem for the past couple of days too. I just think she is able to represent a facet of masculinity I can relate to heavily because of her unconventional expression of her gender. Unlabelled because she doesn’t think too hard about it but able to identify herself in the flux that is masc while also using conventionally fem constructs because she just likes them … AOUHH thank you for making my day 💖

[kindlythevoid]

It’s really beautiful how Tolkien takes the time to honor the dead. After Gandalf’s death, they take the time in Lothlorien to deal with their grief and sing their laments, but as there is no body, that’s all they can do.

But when Boromir dies, even when Aragorn has to make the decision to either pursue Frodo or Merry and Pippin, and both are rapidly growing farther from the three left, they take the time to honor their friend. They don’t leave immediately, even though efficiency would dictate otherwise. No, instead they take the time to decide how to “bury” him (quotations only because it’s not burying in the strictest sense of the word, but rather reverently dealing with Boromir’s body). And then they gather trophies of his last stand and arrange them in the boat with him, taking time to “[comb] his long dark hair and [array] it upon his shoulders.”

How many times have other adventurers dedicated valuable time to honor the bodies of fallen companions, specifically to this extent? More often than not, they have to leave them behind, or only take the time to fold their arms or close their eyes.

Occasionally, they’ll build a pyre or bury them or whatnot, but it’s always after the battle that they set aside a significant chunk of time, or they live up to the term of fantasy (which isn’t a bad thing!) and there is no time wasted in building a cairn or burial or what-have-you.

My point is that time is spent, time that could be used for more “productive” things, such as, I don’t know, pursuing Merry and Pippin whose lives are at stake. And it isn’t framed as a bad thing, because it isn’t! Each life is precious, even when only the body is left. And they take the, well, the time to acknowledge this, in a reasonable and conservative way. (And when I say conservative, I mean that they pick the burial most fitting for their running clock, balancing both their need for a grieving period as well as the haste that the hobbits will require.)

I can’t speak to the rest of the deaths in the books as I haven’t caught up and refreshed my memory, but I will touch on another death, this time in the movie, that shares the same theme.

Theodred.

While he certainly hasn’t been totally forgotten by the fandom, I believe it is fair to say that he gets less discussion. Which is fair, considering he gets almost no active dialogue that I can remember and he is unconscious for most, if not all, of his screen time (and book time) before dying shortly after.

And one could say it’s because he’s a prince, one could say it’s because he was the heir, etc., etc. But it honestly makes no sense to dedicate all that time to preparing and putting on a large funeral when Saruman is right at Rohan’s door and there are so many bigger and more impactful decisions to be making now that Theoden has his mind back.

But, again, it isn’t criticized in the movie. It isn’t treated as the wrong decision. The people, included Theoden, needed time to mourn and Theodred deserved to be honored, even in death, even as the great forces of orcs and Uruk-hai were marching across Rohan.

Time is valuable, time is precious, and it should be wasted, especially when you’re trying your hardest to make sure you and yours survive. But time is meaningless if you don’t use it to live and subsequently honor those who have lived.

[stil-lindigo]

the candle.

a comic about rediscovering passion and recovering from burnout.

creative notes:

[saltywatercrocodile]

Quick (Informal) PSA For Therian Minors

I see a lot of minors in the community who seem very...comfortable, I guess, with sharing personal information and photos on here and other sites, and I just wanted to speak my piece about it.

Something I remembered from another post that I wanna steal because I love the wording: before you share something on the internet, think what could someone who wanted to hurt me do with this information? Not trying to be condescending, I'm an adult and I think that exact sentence in my head before I post/comment/DM anything related to myself.

Just saw a post where a well-meaning therian minor linked their Youtube channel, which has videos of them irl (wearing a mask, but still) doing quads outside and at an indoor non-chain business with the name/logo of the building clearly visible.

I cannot emphasize how much I was taught to be extremely careful about posting any irl images as a kid/teen, as people can infer your location from very minor details, MUCH LESS VIDEOS OF MY WHOLE BODY IN AN EASILY GOOGLE-ABLE LOCATION. What happens if someone with malicious intent sees that video, which is public on youtube? What will you do when someone attempts to blackmail or doxx you? Not only would this would-be criminal know where you are, they can also see how old you are and exactly what you look like. Terrifying.

(I understand we're in a culture of many people posting videos of themselves online, but (in my opinion) it's just not safe to be uploading public content that's advertising "Hi I'm bodily a child/teenager and this is what I look like and this is close to where I live and I'm also a therian who's probably hiding this account from my parents")

This individual is essentially just trusting that no one on the entirety of Youtube will just google the name of the indoor facility (along with any other location-identifying posts they may make) and either threaten them via doxxing or just straight up threaten their life/safety.

I knew someone in school who got too comfortable in an in-game chat, and was lulled into a false friendship and tricked into mentioning his address. Then he was threatened and told to send them money or they would physically find him. Thankfully he felt safe enough to tell his parents, who knew how to stop the situation. I know a lot of us aren't out to our family, and I dread to think what would have happened if the boy I knew hadn't felt safe enough to explain the situation to his parents.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TLDR; before you post personal info/photos, think of the absolute worst evil that someone could do to you with that information. I know it's a bummer, but doxxing/blackmail happens more than you think, and even if your posts only seem to get low notes/likes/whatever, they can theoretically be seen by ANYONE, including people who want to hurt you.

(also I don't mean to call out or harass anyone, I'm not trying to be mean, I just wanted to use an example bc it's what inspired me to make this post and also I wanted to outline why real behaviours I'm seeing can be dangerous, rather than just making up hypotheticals)

[lirotation]

Ascended Astarion x Female Tav, one shot exercise.

I don't do Ascended Astarion stuff usually, but I was exchanging emails with my friend, and he said, "I'm sure you let Astarion ascend since you were so in love with him you'd want to do anything to make him happy."

Ummm, end of friendship, hahahaha. No, I was so surprised he would think that. Ascended Astarion is a glaring relationship red flag. If there's one piece of advice I can offer to younger women, it's this: never allow your partner to have complete control over you. Always nurture your own freedom and power.

Keep pursuing your career aspirations. Maintain close ties with family and friends who support you. Develop your own interests and skills. Make sure you can simply get up and leave and that you can support yourself if you do need to leave.

I'm not suggesting you take a cynical or suspicious view of relationships. But entering any partnership as equals, with your own solid ground to stand on, is key. The joy of intimacy relies on mutual care, respect and consent between free individuals.

If you find yourself yielding your autonomy or goals to maintain a relationship, or walking on eggshells to avoid angering someone, those are major red flags. Have the courage to reevaluate any bond that becomes more confining than uplifting.

No matter how tempting the fantasy, an unequal power dynamic will likely turn unhealthy over time. I am sure in the game, Ascended Astarion really loved Tav, but the heart is a fickle thing, and eternity is simply too long.

I used a base from talented SeraphicMayin on Deviantart as reference. Link below.