#it's my blog and I'll navel gaze if I want to

[max1461]

If tumblr goes down I'm gonna fuckin miss this place. But I don't want to get ahead of myself, that's not happening yet. By the way is there a way to back up the non-public parts of my blog, such as likes and messages and so on? I'd like to just back up the entire thing.

Oh and by the way I'm gonna be starting a "real" blog at some point, which is something I've wanted to do since before I started my tumblr. I'm probably gonna start three, actually: one for my research, one for my conlangs, and one for my misc. opinions which you might e.g. see in my #society or #navel gazing tags. I'll probably have much higher standards for posting on these things that I do here, and post more rarely, but I'll keep posting.

Not sure where I'm gonna make my penisposts though. That's a tough one.

[queerofthedagger]

Seeing good writers like you talk about that you hate your writing makes me feel awful ngl

Oof anon, you've got a lot to unpack there and while I'm generally going to assume good faith here, Imma start this off by saying that this is my blog, and you're very welcome (genuinely, not meant as snark) to block tags or unfollow me if things I say upset you this much.

Because the thing is, me whining in tags will not tell you the full story, and it's mostly for my own sake, and cuts the whole matter much shorter than it actually is. When I say "good god I hate everything I'm currently writing," I don't actually mean that my writing objectively sucks.

I know, rationally, that it doesn't. I know that I have a lot of room to grow and get better, but I also know that I've already learnt a lot and that I'm overall a decent writer. I know all that.

Writer's block is a little bitch, though. When I say 'God, I hate everything I'm currently writing,' what I actually mean is: my mental health has been a bitch and makes me struggle. Or, imposter syndrome is kicking my ass. Or, I'm stressed in X other areas of my life and it manifests in being too harsh on myself. Or, I'm currently about to make some developmental progress-jump in my writing skills, but I'm not quite there yet, so I can kind of see what I'd like to do better but can't quite execute it yet. Which are only the most likely four options, not accounting for various other things my brain gremlins could be doing. None of those are like, things I'll put in a tag ramble when I'm basically whining to myself because like, I know what I mean, and also, as much as I rationally know my writing isn't actually shit, sometimes it helps to be a dramatic lil bitch fainting over my couch about it until I get fed up with my own dramatics.

It's not a qualitative statement. But also, that aside, if I may give you one single piece of advice amongst all this navel-gazing: the best thing, and i mean the absolute best thing, you can do for yourself if you want to not hate your writing? Stop comparing yourself to other writers. I know that gets thrown around a lot, and I know it sounds so much easier than it is, but it also really is the only way to stop tearing yourself apart constantly (instead of, you know, every once in a while due to aforementioned possible other reasons). Like, ultimately, the only way to become better is to keep writing. It's never a completed process either. It's kind of nice, actually, even if it's also annoying as all fuck every once in a while.

[slickshoesareyoucrazy]

"...And I Turned Out Fine..."

PLEASE DO NOT REBLOG THIS

I know my personal experience isn't the same as everyone else's. I'm not a navel gazing dipshit. But I do want to talk about my own bias here, I guess, having to do with this phrase and phrases like it.

I've said something like this probably thousands of times in my life. It was always trying to dismiss my own true feelings of not being fine. Literally every time I said it, it wasn't true. Not that it was exactly a lie. It was more an argument to myself so I could move past something shitty like it wasn't shitty and it shouldn't bother me. Sometimes I even justified shitty things like they were good for me. In some ways, some of the shitty parts WERE good for me, in the long run, but that doesn't mean I don't still have real trauma from them that I try to invalidate for myself all the time.

I think we're all basically made up of our traumas and their coping mechanisms. Optimism is one of mine. Sometimes that's really great. It's almost always great for helping out OTHER people who are having a hard time seeing their way out of shit, or can't find anything positive to hold onto in a dark time. I can see it. I'll show them where it is. I can spin a lot of things into brighter light, when someone else is already seeing the dark. I'm thankful for that part of me and how it serves other people. I really am. But for myself? Optimism, while often still really effective, means I'm just denying it's dark.

I never shared this anecdote between J and me publicly on the older, more followed blogs, and I may have shared it privately with a couple of you already, but it's on my mind again today, so here it is. In writing.

Maybe a year or two before tumblr hit my radar (maybe 2014ish?), J and I had a date where our son stayed over with my parents (I've always had mixed feelings about having our son stay with my parents, but there really isn't anyone else we trust at all around here. Anyway, so J and I usually went to dinner somewhere and then came home and did kinky shit together and watched rated R shit on streaming we couldn't watch when our kid was home. But this particular evening, after doing kinky shit, we were both web surfing some and we ran across one of those What Kind of Dom/Sub Are You? online quizzes (50 Shades was at peak popularity there, I think). So for silliness, we both took it. (We were living D/s since early 2007 at that point; so before 50 Shades existed). My results were all over the place, 20% of four labels each and 10% each of two more. J joked that I couldn't be labeled. His results were something like 85% White Knight Dominant. I remember the explanation saying that these 'types' were really concerned with safety, and very protective, and were 'typically drawn to submissives who are abuse/trauma survivors.' I said, 'You must be atypical. Because that's not me,' laughing at how ridiculous that suggestion was for me (it's dead on accurate for J). And he said, seriously, and kind of sad, 'Peaches? That's totally you.'

I admit that I use my happiness and security and accomplishments to justify my trauma and abusive past. I said, 'I did this, so my mom didn't really hurt me...' 'J says I'm a good mom, so I must not have been affected by that event...' 'What do I have to complain about in my life now? I turned out fine...' But the truth is all that hurt is still there, and that's why it comes out in the fiction. Because that's the place it's the safest to let it out still. Going to repost the first thing I wrote here with the no reblog control now that I can do that because all that's on my mind again today too.

[garaksapprentice]

New Year, (some) new Goals

This post was originally published on my blog here.

An Unnecessarily In-Depth Explanation of How I Set Yearly Goals

It's a new year, which means that for me, it's time for a new set of annual goals. (These are NOT resolutions. Resolutions are fuzzy and vague, usually cliché things like "lose weight" or "be happier" or "achieve world peace". Goals are things that you can actually aim at, and with enough practice, hit.)

I started formally setting and tracking yearly targets a few years ago, and while I won't call it the cure to all that ails me, it's certainly been a helpful practice. And hey, 'tis the season for everyone's "how I set goals" posts, so who am I to rock the boat?

The TL;DR

I usually start this process sometime in December, whenever the urge to wrap up the current year and look towards the new one starts to itch me. (Incidentally, this is almost the exact same process I use when doing monthly goals, just with less introspection/review.)

It goes something like this:

Review the areas of my life and how things went over the last year.

Review last year's goals - what I hit, what I didn't, what needed changing part way through the year when it became apparent I'd picked an over-ambitious target/something I didn't actually care about, that kind of thing.

Do a brain dump of all the things I want to do next year. Delegate them by life area.

Refine the brain dump over a few days, until I have a reasonable number of targets to aim for over the coming year.

Break those targets down into the things I'll need to do to actually reach the goal I'm aiming for.

Review Last Year

I'll be honest, sometimes I do this after I've worked out the shiny new goals for next year. But I always try to do some form of yearly review, even if it's just a short, half-assed version of the "ideal".

I currently use a (heavily simplified) version of the practice laid out in Alex Vermeer's 8,760 Hours Guide for this step. Finding Alex's guide to use as a springboard was extremely helpful for me. I'd tried doing yearly reviews before, but they never really "stuck" or felt like they were worth the time. For whatever reason, 8,760 Hours was the guide that worked for me.

That being said, I've modified the review framework (usually by removing things) every year I've used it. Alex's guide is super in-depth - he takes a full week to do his review, and he goes hard. While I like to think I'm that kind of person, I'm really not. Some of the review questions and Life Areas Alex uses aren't applicable to me, so I removed or combined things where it made sense. While I love complexity (the PKM scene is like pseudo-academic catnip to my dopamine receptors), at the end of the day I need simplicity - something that both On The Ball Me and Off With The Fairies Me can do.

In the (checks notes) four years I've been using his guide as a framework, I've reduced Alex's twelve life areas down to eight. I've also removed, modified, and combined a LOT of the questions in each Deep Dive. (I removed two more while I was doing this year's review, in fact.) My ultimate goal is to get it down to where I can complete the entire review in about a day, while still feeling like I got my money's worth from the time spent navel-gazing instead of eating gingerbread and knitting.

Brain Dump

Reviewing one's past actions is great and helpful and definitely a path to world peace or Ultimate Effectiveness or whatever, but for me, the brain dump is where the rubber hits the road. I always start my longer-term planning with a list of things I want to do, whether it's for the year or the month. It's essentially a real-life version of "What could happen next?", the question I ask myself whenever I'm running out of plot in my fiction work.

This question is designed to be a free-for-all. I don't let little things like the space-time continuum get in the way at first - it's just one big bullet list of things I've been dying to get to, things that have been bugging me that I want to fix, and usually a few things I feel obliged to add (because I know they're important, but I'm not really enthused about them). Most of the time I've got the first list version finished in ten to fifteen minutes.

(Sometimes there's one specific pile of stuff that's bugging me, making it hard to focus on grander things. (Usually it's the fact that the WIP pile has blown out again, or the house has reached an ill-defined but completely unacceptable level of disrepute. This year it was both.) When that happens, I brain dump all that first, in a separate list. That usually shuts up the brain weasels, and frees up enough mental RAM to get the bigger picture/longer term stuff down.)

Refine the Brain Dump

Once I've got everything down, I keep the list open on my computer and let it percolate for a few days. This lets my subconscious chew on it while I add, remove, and change things. This year's brain dump list ended up with 22 items. That's a typical number for me (the most I've had is 25, the least is 19.) Some are pretty modest, but most are things that will take a fair chunk of the year and my dedication to accomplish (as befits yearly goals).

I also work out which buckets/life areas things fit into - there's usually clear distinctions for most goals (writing, fibre arts, health and fitness etc). If there's lots of goals in one or two areas, and only a couple in others, then that's a pretty good clue about what my next year is going to focus on.

Next comes the hard part - triage.

The first triage step is trying to narrow my "I definitely want to do this thing" choices down as much as possible. This is hard. Everything on the big list is shiny and new and feels so important and urgent right now. That's why I keep the list open after I've made it - looking at it frequently, but not necessarily actively engaging with it, helps my subconscious start to pick favourites. Even so, I'm doing well if I've narrowed the list by half after the first pass.

The second triage step is working out how many of my goals are process-oriented, and how many are product-focused. Process goals involve doing a thing on a regular basis, or for a certain amount of time, every {time period}. Weave for 2.5 hours a week, go hiking twice a month, that sort of thing. They're heavily focused on small, consistent efforts over time, and they're intended to last the entire year.

Product goals require me to do/make a thing, or achieve a benchmark. They're things like "sew X new items for my wardrobe", "finish revising novel Y", "compete in/attend X event". Once that thing or benchmark has been reached, that goal is finished and I don't have to worry about it any more. While I still have to put in time and effort to get to the finish line, it can be much more focused than with a process goal - if I want, I can spend three straight days sewing a shirt, and then not think about my wardrobe goal for six months.

It's both very important and extremely tricky to get the balance of Process to Product right. Human brains LOVE habitual activity and consistency, but they can only deal with so much of it being piled into them at once. (This goes doubly if you're neurodivergent.) I've learned to tilt the balance pretty heavily towards Product when I'm writing my final list.

I try to only have one new process-oriented goal to focus on, at most. Any more than that, and I'm less likely to hit what I was aiming for. (Many of my process goals carry over in some form from year to year. For instance, I always have a word count goal, and some form of fibre-related goal.)

An example: last year, three of my goals were writing related - establish a consistent writing routine, publish at least one blog post a month, and finish revising a novel. The first two were process goals, the last one product-focused.

While I made good progress on all of them, and was happy to declare success based on the spirit of the exercise, I didn't hit any going by the letter of it. Sure, I published 14 blog posts last year - two more than the target! - but there were three months when I posted zero. And while I made my yearly word count target, my consistency was, uh, not great.

Break down the targets you're aiming for

Which brings me to my next tactic. When possible, have more than one way to measure a goal's success.

This is especially important for process goals, which by their nature are easier to 'fail' week to week. Having multiple success conditions gives you greater leeway for when Life Happens At You. Nothing is more demoralising than something happening early in the year, that throws you off your so-far perfect streak, with no way to fix it.

How does this work in practice? I take the weekly or monthly goal that I'm aiming for, multiply that number out to a year, and use that as my secondary aiming point. So "weave 2.5 hours per week" becomes both "weave for at least 130 hours over the year" and "weave 10 hours and 50 minutes every month". If (when) I don't hit 2.5 hours one week, it isn't as big a deal - I can look at how many minutes I was short, and roll that into the weeks left in the current month.

This approach saved my bacon several times last year. I had a couple of big, multi-day conferences and camps that sucked a lot of time and brainpower out of my usual schedule. If I'd just been measuring weekly adherence, I would have "failed" in April and May when I simply didn't have the energy to do that much weaving on top of all the conference prep. But because I was measuring monthly as well as yearly, I simply rolled the two weeks I took off into the weeks before and after the events, and still hit my monthly weaving target.

It can help to think about what the actual point of the goal you're making is, too. For me, the ultimate goal of "establish a consistent writing routine" isn't to have a consistent routine - it's to write more words. I really had no idea what that looked like in January last year. So I decided that "consistent" writing was 30 minutes a day, three days a week. AND I set a year-long word count target of 75,000 words. (I beat the 75k goal by 48 words, but my consistency still sucks.)

Same with blogging. The point behind "publish a blog post a month" is partly to have a consistent output, but it's also to write more words. So as well as the one-a-month goal, I also set a year target of 12 posts, total. Did I post to the blog every single month? Nope. Did I post twelve or more times in the year? Yep! Was that more than I would have posted without having a goal to aim for? Absolutely!

Last, but definitely not least, is to update your approach as the year progresses. Whatever I pick as my 'yearly goals' right now don't have to be the things I work on all year. Life gets in the way, my needs change, I have more or less (usually less) time and energy available than I thought I would.

So I give my "final" goal list (and attached success metrics) a going-over in March to see how it's shaping up. Depending on the year, I'll give it another interrogation in June or July, and adjust or drop goals as needed. Remember, your goals serve YOU, not the other way around.

Last year I started January with nine goals - I had three life areas, and three goals in each area. It turns out that's too many for me to focus on over a year. In March, I dropped one of those goals, and by May, I'd dropped a second. (Both of the dropped items were process goals - things I wanted to do every day or week. They were also, not coincidentally, things I'd added out of a sense of obligation more than actual excitement.)

The Final List

No talk of goal setting would be complete if I didn't share my final list. (I'm also doing the Habitica's New Year's Resolutions set of Challenges again this year, and the first one involves sharing your goals on social media.)

Buy a house

Publish at least one blog post a month/12 blog posts in the year

Maintain daily streak on 4TheWords/write 75k new fiction and 15k non-fiction

Maintain a 5:1 spinning:weaving ratio (ie spend 5 hours spinning for every 1 hour of weaving)

Get - and then keep - the WIP pile below 10

Make at least three new items for my wardrobe (socks don't count)

Attend HEMA training at least four times a month during terms

Take the younger kid (and thus me) roller skating at least 6 times

If we're lucky (or unlucky if you dislike this sort of talk) I'll do a check-in around mid-year to see how I've been doing. If we're less lucky, I'll do a year-end wrap-up thingummy to close out the year.

Either way, hopefully this extremely long and somewhat rambling break-down of my goal-setting is useful to y'all.

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

Don’t mind me today.

I’m getting my thoughts in order because stuff at work is going really well and I think we might be hiring another developer soon and I want to be able to explain what the hell it is I do and why I do it.

I’ve still got imposter syndrome going strong, but I’m also good and fast at what I do and have a lot of internal tooling that anyone who’s going to have to use it is going to have to understand some of the basic assumptions I’ve made in the code.

And while I think it’s very readable, it’s also entirely possible that they won’t have the experience that I have that makes me think that, or that it just really isn’t.

But our client portal is linked very closely with an API running in an instance of vogon, so if we want to add new features to that, clean up the portal in the future, they’ll either need to understand how I and vogon work, or I’ll have to make every change to that personally.

And what’s the point of striving for maintainable code if it’s inaccessible to everyone but you?

[creekfiend]

I feel like lately I've been posting a lot about stuff I am Working On re: socializing and also re: trauma and I want to be clear because I think a lot of navel gazing traumablogging can end up being weird and like, This Is Or Should Be Aspirational:

I'm not telling anybody how to be or how to run their lives when I describe things I'm trying to do or trying to be more aware of in mine.

You do you. Genuinely I don't know most of you (there's over 10k blogs following me, however many of those are active real people I dunno but it's inarguable that the percentage that are people I Know Personally is low) I'm not invested in or judging how any of the rest of the internet is approaching stuff like this. If the approach a stranger takes to online interaction causes me significant enough distress I'll block them. My block list isn't like, a List Of Objectively Bad People Who Do Bad Things.

For example, I right now in my life am at a point where it really behooves me to take a step back from a lot of activist stuff. Obviously if everyone did that there would be no activist stuff, lol.

Right now I'm in a place where I find I need to SERIOUSLY carefully monitor what types of interactions I allow in my life because my nervous system is so shot to fucking hell that a basic argument online can actually mean I become so deeply upset for so long that I'm like, not able to function or eat and have to take a lot of medication to offset my nervous system physically going haywire. It's really bad. I don't talk about it a lot because like, it feels weird and self centered and exaggerate-y to tall about being upset by arguments or disagreements. Lame! Either "well duh no one likes arguments/conflict" or "oh boo hoo baby can't even tolerate online disagreement". Like no. It genuinely will fuck up my actual nervous system, which is already so fucked that getting MORE fucked means I have to take heart pills for my heart.

That my cardiologist gave me.

For my heart.

Like I feel like sometimes we (me too!!!!!) forget we are all dealing with inhabiting our own bodies and reacting to our own experiences. And I know i have a lot of overlap with a lot of other gay traumatized chronically ill weirdos. But that doesn't mean I'm the boss of you. I'm so whatever the opposite of the boss of you is. I'm just some guy.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

I turned 20 a few months ago and recently have been given the "you will be married 2 years into your career & then children" talk. My mother didn't complete her associate's training because she was pregnant with my brother at 25. I don't want to go down the same path as her, I plan on being childfree. However she insists that my role as a woman is just to serve my husband that they will choose for me. My family has already started looking for grooms for my cousins who are my age. They are very very serious about this as it is my "dharm"/duty as a Hindu woman. Anytime I talk about not wanting kids or being married so quickly, it is dismissed as if I'm joking. It makes me angry that this role is assigned to me & none of my other achievements (top of my class in university, getting an internship, etc) matter to them because of what a god expects of me. I haven't "come out" as atheist bc I feel like that admission + the refusal to an arrange marriage will result in being disowned. I've been trying to convince them but I fear I'll have to cut them off (or vice-versa) in a few years.

(pt 2) (Sorry for filling up your inbox!)

I just wanted to thank you despite all of that. Your blog has definitely made me less afraid of the future and my aspirations. I felt alot of relief when I discovered this place a year ago and I really cannot thank you enough. Your courage inspires me more than I can express. I hope you're well and have a happy holiday season 🌻

Damn. I'm so sorry this is happening to you. It's totally unfair. And it's got to be devastating to be seen that way by your own family, where your accomplishments, your talents are ignored, in preference to seeing you as simply acting out a role they've cast you in.

I hope that whatever you do and decide, you will be true to yourself. It may be difficult, and it's possible you won't get your preferred result, but you can't give up your life and your happiness to make someone else happy.

It's not "selfish" to pursue your own goals and dreams, your own life. It is selfish to ask someone to give up theirs for tradition, superstition or guilt.

If you haven't already, I recommend working to get yourself into a position where you can be fairly independent, so that you're not beholden to them. You can establish your boundaries, and make clear how things are going to be, and stand your ground. It's then up to them to accept it and be part of your life, or not accept it and be kept at arm's length. If they change their minds, your door remains open. It's then their choice.

It's maddening that there are people in free, secular communities within free, secular countries that are roleplaying as "oppressed" or "victims" over minor inconveniences, politicians they don't like who they can vote out, and statistics that don't support what they're claiming. They have no recognition for how lucky they are, no empathy for those who don't have what they take for granted.

Meanwhile, there are things like this going on that are regarded as completely normal, that their navel gazing completely blinds them to, let alone have any resilience to deal with if they were ever subjected to it. And you're not even claiming to be a victim, nor exhibiting a victim mindset. You're angry, and you should be. Hang onto that, in a productive way, but don't let it consume you. Let it be fuel, not who you are.

Because who you are sounds pretty great. Independent, certain of what she wants, but in unfortunate circumstances. It's the circumstances which need to change, not you. It might not be easy, but you're worth it, and it'll be worth it.

Stay true to yourself, and look after yourself.

[gffa]

I understand where you're coming from, not wanting to support Riot by watching their show but like... you said in a reply to someone that you already ARE watching it. You've already given them monetary support. I don't understand why you've done that but are still reluctant to even read fic or engage w the fandom. There is no harm in writing/reading fic or engaging w fan content if you've already watched the show. If you've watched it through pirating, then my point still stands. Riot doesn't get money through fan content. Plus, Star Wars isn't free from massive criticism either (George Lucas is far from a saint), but you've watched & bought SW content & actively engage w the fandom. You don't have to deprive yourself of something you said you've been enjoying just bc the producers are assholes

To be fair, I wasn't fully aware of Riot's shit until after I'd gotten halfway through it, and now I'm navel gazing about whether or not to engage with it further. And maybe that navel-gazing is just a way to continue forward with the show while making an effort to not ignore Riot's workplace. Maybe it's giving myself time to process the idea of stepping away before I either do or don't. Maybe it's a chance to talk with other people who've gone through the same process and give them a chance to say what they've decided they want and bounce feelings off each other. (I say "maybe" because I haven't fully pinned down my motivations on this yet.) (As a note, I'm somewhat in the loop of video game news, enough to know that a lot of the studios are awful, like, I'm going to have to through all of this again if that Ubisoft SW game comes out. But not so in the loop that I immediately recognized Riot's name or that Arcane was a Riot property until I saw discussion of it elsewhere. I've never played any Riot game, so far as I'm aware.) And this is a further complicated topic, because, no, fannish engagement doesn't give Riot money, but it often does drive people to the source material, which is what gives them money. Because that's precisely how I started watching it, I saw there was discussion and interesting looking gifsets and fanart/fic and so I got curious and went to check it out! You're right that other things I watch/engage with aren't free from criticism (and I've criticized Star Wars fairly often!), but each circumstance is one you have to take on a case by case basis. I've done my navel-gazing for Star Wars, now it's time to do my navel gazing for Arcane and how I want to proceed. Likely, I will end up forging ahead because I enjoyed the show, but I'll do so knowing that I gave it thought and that I intend to criticize Riot and their abusive workplace and that I talked it over with some others and sorted out my feelings. (And, yes, this was more navel-gazing and talking through my feelings and thoughts, sorry not sorry to dump it on my blog like this. 😂)  (This response was meant in a thoughtful, laid back sort of way, apologies if it didn’t come across that way, btw.)

[songbirdspells]

Not that anyone asked, here's a navel gazing post (though what is a personal blog if not for self indulgent navel gazing?).

Basically I'm still here. Still worshipping the Theoi, still being a witch.

But I burned out. I never once stopped to truly rest and now I'm looking at a few years, minimum, to recover at least some of the damage that trying to push past my exhaustion did to me.

So, I have a growing library of books and references and a list of posts I do want to put together because I'm nothing if not a ho for references and knowledge posts but I don't know when I'll be able to do the longer posts again (if ever).

So until then, it'll be meme posts and art posts. Sorry and thanks.

[sleeplessandstubborn]

just saw that you're reading Davet & Lhomme's new book. Can you you give us a recap/ best of when you're done pleeeeaase? (I promise to repay in hearts and virtual hugs!) Tbh i was going to buy it, but I stumbled upon a promotional interview and honestly, it sounds very underwhelming... (even as a subscriber to this blog I acknowledge that there are some things to criticize about Macron, but former rivals ranting that his intelligence / philosophical prowess is overstated is just not juicy enough to plow through 600 pages, nevermind spending €25 lol)

Yep I actually finished the thing a few days ago and all the new facts I learned from it was this:

On the other hand, it's true I read more about Macron than I should so... maybe I'm not the best judge about finding new things in this book. The main problem is that the authors are trying to sell, not a view of the ups and downs of a presidency that it's legitimate to criticise, even harshly, from certain points of view (I find difficult to justify EM's pandering to the hunting lobby, e.g.), but a sort of psychological analys of his personality as if the rants of (mostly, but not only) people who don't have a favourable view of him because of several reasons could be accurate.

Then there are several concerns about them from the point of view of their ethics as journalists. E.g. that huge list of people who didn't want to talk to them that they included at the end of the book. It's a weird way to protect your sources, as crossing the names of those who talked openly and those who refused can lead you to them. And among these names are not only allies but also opponents and most of the candidates for next elections.

You can argue you didn't succeed to interview his close friends because they were told to keep their mouths closed. But when Mélenchon, Bertrand, Hidalgo or Le Pen refuse to take part in your anti Macron book too then it's time to ask yourself why. One of their previous, not presidential bashing works, was criticised by some of the people who was interviewed because of the manipulation of what they had said.

I've never seen something like that, it's falling very low. It's like after their book about Hollande most of the political class that still want to have a future has learned to avoid them. Well, not Hollande himself. He talked to them again and again the result is awkward and embarrassing for him.

Then the general impression I got was that the book told more (and not particularly good) from the people interviewed than about Macron himself. They appear as a bunch of navel gazing snobs still in denial about the situation of traditional political parties.

My advice to you would be to pick the book from the library instead of spending your money on it; it sells well enough so one copy less won't be a difference.

I'll try to review and give more details one of these days (I'm behind in everything, lol).

[tothedarkdarkseas]

Wanted to ask something you've never been asked yet. Why do you write the stuff that you write? I know that you've said before, "I don't want my stuff to be seen as just smut or Gorillaz fanfic." I figure you have a reason, like an emotional feeling that writing expresses.

I'm sorry for the delay answering this (and the even longer delay on the AJJ question in my ask box-- I am so sorry to that anon, it's gonna be a tough one!) and hope you'll forgive it as, believe it or not, I've actually been writing the past few nights in the timeslot I often use to answer asks. Still a good ways off from finishing but I've met some short-term goals! A lot of navel-gazing rambles below:

Honestly, this is a difficult question to answer because I don't really know where writing fits in my life or how significant it will ever be outside of this blog. Right off the bat, I think it makes me sound like a complete tool to say it's "not just Gorillaz fanfic" when it quite literally is, haha. I don't have any illusions that writing fanfic is a lofty thing by nature, even if fanfiction across the ages has every ability to be "as good" as original literature-- this isn't a denial that fanfiction of a literary caliber exists, but I don't indulge in wishful thinking that my fanfic belongs in league with those. I do care, that much is certain. For all my failings, all my embarrassments and learning stumbles and clunk, I'll at least respect my efforts enough to say that I cared very much about every story as it was being written, regardless of how much I liked it thereafter. The simplest answer then would be that I wrote what I did because I cared about the potential in the characters, I cared for the versions of the two that had taken shape like real people in my imagination. And perhaps even more, if I was going to do something that others would see, if I was going to be open to judgment, I cared about putting in as much effort as I possibly could. By no stretch does that mean any resulting story was as good as it could have been, but... it was as good as I was capable of at that time. (I won't harp on this note much further as I know it's uncomfortable, I know it is offputting and rude to put others in the position of watching you criticize yourself, but I want it to be understood that I'm not trying to involve anyone else in that sort of talk. It really is just an unbiased observational l thing to me and something necessary for improvement, I think, just speaking candidly about these thoughts without so much emotional weight on them. But as a last thought: "trying" is a unique conundrum, as it is mortifying to feel you've failed on something you sincerely tried on, but I would have felt ashamed and hyper-critical to share something I hadn't tried on.)

I would have said in the past that I didn't write to work out any personal problems or to self-insert or chase fantasies, as that was never the motivation in exploring these characters, and their unsatisfactory endings would make that wish fulfillment or fantasy pretty grim. Being challenged so much to finish this WIP, though... I don't know if I can say I'm totally divorced from it on like, a non-literal level. I definitely don't consider Stu to be "like me" here, but I do think certain aspects of him are... informed, y'know, informed by things that I'm empathetic to. The fact that it's turned into this bizarre plotless mountain of avoidant behaviours that I cower at and avoid, and the fact that writing about a guy with depression became a lot more draining during the pandemic, is probably not much of a coincidence.

To an extent, I do just want stories that are interesting to me, that touch on human drama and keep a heavy hand of realism on the edges of the scene. That would probably be the most flattering thing to say. I don't think that entirely covers the nuance of actually writing, as in the process and the toll vs reward which massively fluctuates from person to person. Honestly, I don't know sometimes why I do it when I've struggled quite a lot, and I've certainly had some ungraceful private reactions to sensible advice that I shouldn't do a hobby I'm not enjoying enough; I've taken some offense to those well-meaning suggestions (even though I would most likely give the same advice to someone else) and to me, that says that there is some ego tied up in it, even if it's a seesaw that tilts up before tilting back the other way and giving that ego a beating. Writing has at times made me feel quite good, and it has at times made me feel like a failure. It has made me feel like I've got something of value to show and to prop some amount of self-worth up with, and it has made me feel like I've publicly embarrassed myself, which is the absolute center point of my anxiety, personally. I think that I've stuck with it, in the admittedly minimal way I've stuck with it compared to others with more prolific libraries, because those positive feelings are worth feeling worse sometimes. Up to a limit, at least. I do see myself in Stu in that way. I haven't quite met the wall with that yet, and I hope that I don't-- it would be my preference, if I could move freely with no other factors muddying the map, to keep writing as long as someone cares. I don't take for granted that I'm very lucky to have that now and that I may not always, so right now I feel more attuned to the sense of failure for not finishing the story and squandering that time and good will, rather than focusing on the failure to meet an idealistic standard.

Sorry for the rambles. Stream of consciousness stuff. I hope that you'll read this as honesty and candor because I respect and appreciate you being here with me, and not feel too disappointed in the unflattering bits. I really... I do think it's important to see those unflattering parts sometimes. To put bookends on this, if writing-- and specifically writing what I have for this fandom-- has taught me anything, I think it means something to see the whole picture, even if you like the cover shot more.

[fandomshatewomen]

Aaa I'll try to remember what I wrote. I think the gist of it was: "I really don't like how the DCEU fandom is absolutely unable to accept any criticism whatsoever about the movies, and they keep excusing any flaws and dismissing valid criticism. There was a post (that I can't find now) that brought up how the DCEU hasn't been doing a particularly good job in writing their female characters (in regards to the lack of character development Lois, Katana, Martha etc...) and it was a valid argument"

(2/3) valid argument. But instead of having a discussion about it the replies was just filled with people claiming there's nothing wrong with the writing and the whole "you're just on the bandwagon DC hate" "you just didn't understand the movie" thing. I see this type of reaction not just on Tumblr but also on YouTube and Twitter, regarding any sort of criticism towards the DCEU and I feel like the fandom is too caught up on "proving" their movies are good that they don't realize they can enjoy

(3/3) the movies and still be critical of it. Shouldn't we be asking for better content if what we're given can be improved? Instead of already accepting it as perfection? I wanted to make a post about my disappointment in the treatment of Katana and Mercy, two Asian women who should've had larger roles and better characterization but were instead left in the background, but I can't because of the atmosphere the fandom has created, and it really frustrates me.

that’s sucky that that was the reaction. not totally unexpected tbth because fandom/comics is often a very navel gazing place but still people could also not suck :-/

fwiw my rec is always to find your group of friends in whatever fandom and stick that that, and often good people know other good people, and you can branch out like that and eventually develop a pretty solid network. because those conversations are important (hello blog! lol...) and should be had.

-mod y

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

Fun side effect of running a framework where every file that is included is included inside a function call:

PHP garbage collects after a function is complete. All variables instantiated inside the function are removed from memory unless they are explicitly declared global or are passed back via the return.

That means it’s really easy to avoid name conflicts without having to rely on namespaces, which means all of my variable names only really have to worry about stating exactly what they do.

The only variable that messes that standard up is the very generic $data, which is used by the function to declare the given options as variables inside the function call (so that I don’t have to call $data[’id’], I can just call $id).

But honestly, I shouldn’t really be using $data inside code anyway, it’s useless for telling you what it’s for.

Another exception I’ve been giving into lately is using single letter abbreviations for instantiated database table objects based on the name of the table. For example: a database object for accessing the ‘data’ table would be $d (which is generic because it’s designed to be a generic data store sub-indexed by data type).

I am only justifying it because my average file length has dropped from 100+ lines to around 25-40 so you can see the instantiation of the database handler and how it is used without having to scroll at most zoom levels.

It’s also a lot faster to write $d->getRecords($search); and makes keeping track of the different mutations of the objects when I do things like $dm = $d->meta_link($m, [’key_field’ => ‘data_meta_name’, ‘value_field’ => ‘data_meta_content’]); which is how I’m currently handling meta joins.

But the alternative is: $db_data = new db_handler(’data’); $db_data_meta = new db_handler(’data_meta’); $db_data_with_meta = $db_data->meta_link($db_data_meta, [...]); which... oomph.

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

Look, I love PHP, it’s my favorite part of my job.

But it’s just a scripting language. Making full applications out of it (as we developers regularly do) is not something supported by the fundamental design choices of the language.

PHP does not have persistence and entirely serverside, so it’s super great for one off requests like building a webpage and dealing with form data sent to the server, but for anything more complicated than that you’re going to have to rely heavily on client-side JavaScript. All the advancements that JavaScript has had in the last few years have been because it’s started being used serverside, and because browsers are not in the habit of dropping support for legacy code (unless you’re owned by Google) the browser supported version of the language has to be very very loose.

One of the real reasons I wanted to finally move my work computer to linux was because I wanted to finally get into C and C based languages with something more than a passing effort, and the build tools on linux are far easier to set up than consumer versions of windows (or at least they look that way from the documentation).

I think C is a goal because I really want to mod old rogue-likes, and I think Java (which is at least C based) is a goal because (like PHP) huge parts of the tech industry still run on Java and probably will until they absolutely can’t any longer.

I don’t think I really want to try my hand at assembly, but I do own TIS-100 and am fascinated by emulation, so maybe I’ll be dealing with jumps and pointers sooner than I think.

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

So I was talking to an old co-worker about how to approach PHP sessions (and how to keep users from taking over other users’ sessions) and I realized that he and I have a very similar bad habit of using $_SESSION as a shortcut for declaring variables as global because it’s a super global array that is essentially useless in a secure application.

So that this isn’t entirely gibberish to people who don’t PHP, $_GET, $_POST, and $_SESSION are all “user input” super global arrays, meaning they are available to all code no matter how it is nested or constructed.

$_GET & $_POST are directly user accessible, as they are intended to store user navigation and form variables respectively (but developers sometimes abuse both for other purposes). So they are usually treated with a lot of suspicion by developers. Most users are good faith, but there’s a lot of money in breaking websites, so you have to make sure what you are working with is in the form you’re expecting it to be and not dangerous to perform whatever operation or storage with.

$_SESSION is not usually directly user accessible, but it is designed to allow applications to have some persistent variables between discrete requests. If you haven’t heard me say it before, PHP is a stateless programming language. Every page you visit, every action you take, is a new PHP process that has no access to information about any previous processes. Because this persistence isn’t the normal behavior, you also have to treat it with some suspicion and ensure it is what you expect it to be. Add to that the complication that in some situations you can actually store these variables in the cookies saved on the client machines (which of course means users can edit them), and it’s easy to see why you might want to put it entirely to the side if you have something else to rely on, like a database.

So, long story short, in my current development projects. All I use sessions for is linking activity up with the database, ensuring a user can’t resume the same session from a different device, and seeing if a particular session has logged in/been active in the activity window, and for the application to notify itself that it needs to notify the user of something.

Which means there’s this superglobal sitting there mostly empty. So on application start I dump a bunch of variables from the database into it that I will probably need to access over and over from various parts of the application.

This is a bad habit because it’s not what $_SESSION is for, and because it breaks the idea that my framework minimizes the amount of total work done by ensuring that no work that isn’t immediately used is done in any particular request, but it’s how my terrible boss who “taught” me PHP used it and I never really got out of the habit.

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

When I was in my first few years of college, my good friend and I came across a fantastic Latin word, Manustuprare - meaning to defile with one's hand. I've mentioned it before, but it's one of the roots of the word masturbation.

Together we created the Manustuprare School of Art. The idea being that the whole point wasn't to worry about it being for anything, worth anything, just to do it. To make art because it was what we wanted to do. I've always felt like I walked away from that somewhere in the last few years. Not the least of which because I'm not really in contact with that friend anymore.

But the other day when I was modifying a model file for one of our bigger clients, I realized that I still find myself pulled towards that ideal. I very frequently want to make things, not because I will make the best thing, but because I want to have made the thing. I desire that creation for no other reason than because the creation itself is satisfying.

Part of that desire to create necessitates simplicity. At this point I'm talking specifically about software design. Being able to turn the project to meet any future needs means that every part of it needs to be simple, so it can be reused as needed or modified if necessary. Granular modularity is the end goal.

The client asked me to add in a form element to control something on a report that's generated for them. When I built the form originally, the model iterated through an array of form elements to flip a value to true or false based on what it found in there. Basically, if any of the values in the loop were true, it fliped the value of this value to true and we displayed a bit of text in the report summary, otherwise it was false and we displayed a different bit of text. Very simple.

I chose to do this serverside, rather than wasting client processing cycles so we stored this boolean value in the database with everything else in the report. So when the client asked how hard it would be to for us to make that value togglable directly on the form, I realized that all it would take is an extra form input, and a three line addition to the existing model file. Storage was already happening, so I just had to set the value to the user input at the end of the existing model and everything was done. I didn't even have to remove my code iterating through the array because we were counting other values and doing a few other record keeping things inside that same loop.

This anecdote doesn't seem masturbatory on its face, me taking the time to tell you this very boring story about boolean variables might though. But the reason I could make this change for the client in a span of ten minutes is that I made a masturbatory choice about four years ago to save the design concepts of a project my boss told me to scrap. I didn't do it because I knew enough about design to foresee it solving problems like this easily, I did it because I thought it was elegant, because it was pretty. Because it took the principles of poetry, an efficiency of effort, and applied it to my working life.

The ultimate expression of this is my ridiculous media server project. The original idea was to write some software my dad would use, that my wife could use. But the reality is, neither of them utilize anything I've written, not really. My dad's needs are all met by the dlna server running underneath it, and my software is basically just a fancy web interface to tell him some system information and give him a handy button to restart the server.

But I use it, and I keep working on it because I want to use it. I've written file explorers, complex database classes to handle database joins, visualizer code, optimized database schemas, and endless hours of work in this thing that has no real need to exist. There are plenty of server media players that I could install that do all the same things, but none of them have the joy of building them, of solving my own problems.

We live in a weird world. Capitalism is dying. It's strangling itself, and I don't think anyone will be able to deny that for much longer. Every software business seems to be moving towards a truly brutal hybridization of software as a service packed to the brim with telemetry that used to only be the realm of adware (also known as freemium software). But how useful is software if you have no control over it?

I used to think that our Manustuprare was a self indulgent kind of philosophy. I do this because it feels good. But it feels good because it fulfills a need. Creation provides. It means that where I can, I fulfill my own needs so that I don't have to rely on others to fulfill them for me. This leaves them more room to support others who need it, and leaves me more room to support anyone who needs what I can offer. It's the only reason to create anything. I don't create it for money. I don't create it for fame. I create it because I want to create it, because something told me I needed it, and if I needed it you might too.

There is no future in individualism, but there are always individuals in a community.