#it's natural to feel frustrated

[anarchonist]

That post about guilt and shame only being effective as deterrents but not in inspiring anyone to change their behavior in any meaningful way got me thinking about those other posts about progressive circles consisting way too much of people not with a desire to do something right but instead with a fear of doing something wrong, and...

Yeah. Those two are related. Guilt and shame are the weapons of the status quo, designed to instill in everyone with a conscience a fear of failure, of hurting others, of being a bad person. And it's pretty fucked up when people are being shamed for that, since, well, shame doesn't inspire any meaningful change. So the problem persists, deepens, even. Since by shaming someone for not getting over that shame, you've now discouraged them from thinking about that instilled shame and maybe finding a solution.

It's shame and guilt all the way down. Perhaps shame and guilt could be used against people who tend to shame and guilt others in order to shame and guilt them out of shaming and guilting others? I don't know. And that's a true shame.

[so-i-did-this-thing]

I saw your post about bugout bags and like ... bracketing the Gestapo Doorknock thing, when did the "correct" response to a natural disaster become to immediately flee and go into refugee mode? The negative fantasy here is heroically saving yourself while your idiot neighbors die, instead of making the kinds of community connections that people actually use to survive and respond to disasters.

I get what you are saying about community connections being the best path to resiliency, but you should very much flee from floods and wildfires when at risk, to name a few. Ideally while making sure your neighbors are also getting out of Dodge, all assuming there has been ample warning for this particular disaster. But sometimes, there are scenarios where you just have to go that very moment.

For all their talk of bugouts bags, I don't think the capital-P Preppers actually want to leave their home bunkers.

The same American Exceptionalism that causes people here to have Lone Wolf apocalypse fantasies also makes them think they can survive a hurricane in a coastal flood zone.

There is an element of humility required to leave one's home possibly permanently. But that's the key difference, here -- the Preppers aren't as interested in survival as they are in ushering in some kind of new World Order.

You see this type pop up every now and then as a hurricane sets its sights on a town -- the people who make it a big point to talk about what they'd do to a looter, should the Big One hit. These are folks who are not interested in becoming a refugee amd are fine with the risk of staying home, if it means they can shoot people from their little castles.

I also saw more mundane selfishness when I did hurricane rideouts for emergency operations in my old Florida city job -- part of our comms was to remind people that we could *not* send anyone out to help them peak-storm. Sometimes, fleeing (aka, saving yourself) is what keeps other people alive -- they don't have to risk their lives saving you because of your stubbornness.

So, I'm a bit skeptical of fleeing being a power fantasy. What's more likely to happen in a lot of natural disasters (especially those with lead times) is you either get renegade fools in clear danger refusing to leave, or uninformed folks not at risk who panic and think they need to evacuate when they should just hunker down. (And then there are the unfortunates who should evacuate and want to, but cannot because the system has failed them in some way.)

That said, for a longterm crisis, community absolutely is key. And even in a short-term crisis that requires an evacuation, one is presumably fleeing *to* some place that will have other refugees, and it's in one's best interests to build community even in these temporary conditions.

[ambrosia-vinca]

Am I tripping or are many people misreading Mary Kirby's answer re: Spite's confusion about the almost-kiss between Rook and Lucanis?

Spite doesn't think Lucanis should have kissed Rook in that moment. Spite is a demon of “Gleefully not giving people what they want.”

Rook wanted Lucanis to kiss them. Lucanis didn't kiss them.

Spite, as a demon of nope, then goes: Yes! Good! You denied them! Wait. Why are you sad?

[thetrialsandtribulationsofeb]

how to drive your fanbase to the point of insanity: tutorial by tim minear

step 1: write three beautiful main romantic couples that show true love and soulmate connection

step 2: write the same storylines for two of your other characters that are “just best friends”

step 3: constantly put those characters in bad or just boring relationships with other people, while their lives continue to be so tangled together that no other romantic relationship they have can compare to it

also, make it so two of your actual bffs on the show don’t have the same issues as these two characters (like weird arguments with married/divorced energy or their romantic partners feeling threatened by their friendship)

step 4: to shake things up, instead of making them canon, kill the most important and most beloved character on the show, so that even GA refuses to watch without him

step 5: ignore everything that happened

[starry-bi-sky]

yall ever think Shen Yuan went through like, internet withdrawal after being transmigrated into Shen Qingqiu? Like, he's canonically a NEET shut-in who did nothing but spend his time online, you can't tell me that for the first week or first few weeks of being SQQ he wasn't twitchy.

Like, reaching instinctively to his pockets for a phone that wasn't there, having an obsessive itch in the back of his mind that he should check and see if X or Y novel or webcomic has updated -- only to realize he can't anymore and being irritated by it. Wanting to go and see if there's new posts about this or that, but again realizing that he can't.

When he's bored or uncomfortable or just feels like wanting to escape he tries to go for his phone to distract himself, but oops! Not there anymore, and now he has to find a new and different way to distract himself from his feelings. And going through system notifications, quests, etc only does so much.

And there's that Tetris Effect too. SQQ makes a mistake while writing and instinctively goes to backspace on it except hey-ho that's not a keyboard and now he just dipped his pinkie into a bottle of ink or on a still-drying letter.

With him scrambling to fix his reputation and learn how to be a peak lord, I think his abrupt cold-turkey from all things internet would just be another straw on the camel's back that he promptly Ignores until it goes away on its own after he acclimates to his new surroundings.

[theatrekidenergy]

Jack Abbot has a very specific type of AuDHD I cannot for the life of me put my finger on, but damn it it is there.

-> More explanation in the tags.

[mariocki]

Gareth Thomas returns - still running a car hire service, now inexplicably called Tom Lewis - in Public Eye: The Bankrupt (6.1, Thames, 1972)

[nnoragamis]

people who complain about the length of skip beat are cowards tbh. personally i would read 1000+ chapters of kyoko mogami being an insanecrazygirl forever and ever. because i have Taste.

[cautiouslyyyoptimistic]

Still think about Mo Xuanyu from time to time. Like what the fuck. What a nothing burger. You learn little rumors here and there about him. That he's gay, mentally ill, harassed fellow disciples, had incestuous feelings for his brother, and was kicked out of his community because of it, ect.

And you think "wow, this novel about how bad rumors and mob mentality is is so interesting! Everyone has a different truer side to them that is hidden by public perception! Can't wait to learn the twist about the mentally ill incest pervert gay man who's body the protag is occupying! I bet it's a classic case of the guy being found out or thought of as gay, and then gross rumors like incest that caused him to be kicked out of his community was added on later. because historically queer people were oppressed and ostracized because they were seen as obscene, incestuous, pedophile perverts, ect by homophobes. Wait, what's that? We learn jack shit about him? All the rumors are never confirmed or denied 100 percent? Most likely everything we know about him is true? No canon typical empathy flashbacks? He's just... Not a character we need to think about?"

It makes me insane. Welcome to mdzs, we have gay people like wangxian and uhhhh *looks at smudged hand* More Xanax.

[lemongogo]

is this the part where i say i like jaymel . bc i do

[xjustkay]

do you ever think about how kevin's injury messed up more than just his exy playing for a while? like yeah obviously that's what he was most concerned and upset about for his own reasons, but as someone who's broken their wrist and been in a cast for it multiple times, i know that shit is so annoying lmao; having to shower with a plastic bag over the cast and extending your arm out of the water weirdly just to make sure it doesn't get wet, accidentally whacking it on things because maneuvering is hard when you're operating on instinct to use a hand you can't right now, it not feeling secure to do really anything with that hand because you don't have proper grasp and balance in it with it plastered up like that -and that's all just a simple broken wrist.

this boy's hand was shattered, he had to have surgery and do probably pretty extensive physical therapy. doctors told him he'd likely never use his hand again and yeah kevin heard and focused on "you'll never play exy with your dominant hand again" which came with its own internal stuff but on top of that he was a student still, just a kid really with a whole lot of life still to [in theory] live and things to do day to day. and he had a hand he probably couldn't even lift his textbooks with for a while there, or that would have muscle spasms and shake through holding a fork to eat the day after a long physical therapy session, or that would be particularly tense and sore on a random cold rainy day even months after he was released from pt appointments etc. etc. and i just know that made things worse for him to feel potentially inadequate in more than just the sport he was never supposed to feel that way in too

[coquelicoq]

what is bothering me about the title of goblin is of course the order of the adjectives. the lonely and great god. this sounds unnatural in english, i'm not sure if it's because of syllable count or because of the meaning/type of the adjectives, but it should be the other way around. the great and lonely god. the once and future king. you could get away with putting lonely before great if they were separated by a comma instead of "and", thus making "lonely" seem to be modifying "great god" rather than both lonely and great modifying god in an equivalent way, but there's an "and" in there so never mind. i plugged the korean title into google translate and i see that they've just kept the order that the adjectives were in in korean, which is disappointing because if that weren't the case it would allow me to believe that they had done it on purpose for some effect, like to really call attention to the fact of his loneliness through unnatural phrasing that makes it impossible for you to not spend time thinking about the word "lonely". but no it's just that they translated it and then no one was like hey this sounds kinda funky. ah well.

[lemongogo]

oo u want 2 draw soo bad..

[ghosts-and-blue-sweaters]

Shep & Eve from this book are killing me.

[specialagentartemis]

The end of a fandom fixation is such a bittersweet feeling. It’s like a fever breaking; you were in the throes of it for a year, two years, however many, it’s all you think about, you want to discuss it and create for it and relate everything back to it, it’s the constant running background noise of your brain. And then something happens or maybe nothing happens. And one day you realize that you don’t really care like that anymore. You don’t feel the desire to check the Tumblr tag or keep up with the AO3 tag and the fan conversations spinning ideas about it don’t give you the urge to join in. You sit down to your fanfic WIPs and don’t really see the point. You’re looking forward to the next installment but don’t feel the need to Do Fandom about it. It’s gone from your Fandom back to a thing you just like.

[birdmenmanga]

saw one of my con friends post a cease and desist in 3 languages on twitter because someone colored and reposted one of their artworks and all I could think was petit bourgeois behavior... I fear I need to get a real job I can't stay like this anymore. this + the reaction to the gh*bl* trend I think is really bringing out the worst of the online freelance artists...