#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.

[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?

[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.

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[lemongogo]

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

[deoidesign]

THEYRE NOT gonna reprint the books...

they're reprinting the damaged ones but apparently it's TOTALLY matte so. whatever... sorry if the texture being a bit different is bothersome...

[bookwyrminspiration]

me, of my own free will, clocking into the kotlc tag every morning to see what we’re arguing about this time

[uncanny-tranny]

The whole "humans are inherently awful and bad!" spiel is so tiring to me as a survivor of abuse because it comes off as abuse apologia. If humans are inherently awful, then why should it matter if you're abused - that's what humans do best! Like, genuinely, I think this mindset can harm abuse victims/survivors because they're being inundated with this idea that, well, how bad can their abuser be? All humans are horrific, why complain, why escape, and why try to resist it?

I really wish people would critically analyze where these ideas come from and where these lines of thinking can lead. Maybe it's a matter that I'm looking too deep into, but this very bleak ideology is not going to help in the long run, I think, and some of the first people who are going to be crushed by it are the people who are vulnerable or who are put in vulnerable positions in society.

[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.

[otter-pup]

so I have already been pretty quiet on here recently but uh. i kind of genuinely need to take a step back from sexual stuff for a while - nothing happened, i just think it is maybe a bit unhealthy how much of my time is taken up by Being Horny and Getting Off. like as much as those r both normal I do them too often, like. genuinely. idk when I’ll start being active again but thank u for understanding

[bitchthefuck1]

you know what, I actually will talk about this because it's bothering me. The issue with focussing so heavily on syd and carmy's potential for a romantic relationship isn't that there's something inherently unintellectual about romance or whatever, it's that a lot of people seem incapable of doing that without immediately flattening the story and ignoring or intentionally misreading any and all nuance for the sake of that romance. Every scene suddenly becomes about how it impacts their relationship, every analysis is done through a romantic lens, every frame or line of dialogue becomes about finding some easter egg or hint that "proves" these people should start dating. Their dynamic is absolutely a fundamental part of this show, but if you can only see it as a will-they-won't-they, you miss so much of what the story is actually trying to say with these two.

There are good versions of this story where their relationship is romantic and there are good versions of this story where it isn't, but as soon as you decide them being together is "the point," you lose the ability to actually judge the story for what it is, not what you want it to be.

[puppyeared]

I made a lmk oc

[skunkes]

why doesn't talon like looking young?

dis was gonna be in the little lore write up but i still have to iron out many details surrounding it ➡️ connecting to my general vampire lore....anyway the answer is abuse at the hands of higher rank vampires and mortal men who sought out young "boys" just like him + also he already hated that he would never get to age bc people would treat him weird even before all that (as in, they'd just treat him like he was stupid because he looks so young)

[bonefall]

wait, why can’t a decent amount of the members in proto-thunderclan not hunt?

A lot of them have serious physical disabilities! It's enough that it poses a logistical problem, which they are committed to overcoming together.

Thunder Storm's three legs makes him slower than his companions. He's ferociously powerful, but like a male lion, he has to rely on his "lionesses" to slow a large animal.

Bright Storm has asthma from her heroics trying to save SkyClan cats from a fire. She's taking that from Gray Wing, who is famously the first major death now. Like her son, she has a difficult time with chasing prey.

Bumble is dyspraxic. She's a terrible hunter and fighter and struggles with self-worth because OTHERS used it to dehumanize her, and continues to, even after an entire society forms out of love of her.

Sunlit Frost has permanent nerve damage in his arm from the fire, and ends up working so hard that it makes his disability worse. A bite on the good paw from Snake becomes infected after he refuses to sit out from digging graves after the First Battle; I am planning a chunky B-plot about Sunlit coming to terms with the fact he has to retire early.

That's FOUR major members of a small group with physical disabilities that make hunting hard or impossible. They have a lot of logistical problems that I will actually be exploring solutions to.

[mightydyke]

Watched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind a few nights ago and I loved it so much. Obsessed with all the metaphors and the symbolism. When Kushana said she wanted to destroy the toxic jungle in order for humans to rule the world again, but we know or can guess that humans trying to gain too much power is probably the exact reason why the toxic jungle is so dangerous. And then we learn that the jungle itself isn't toxic, it's just the soil and water that has been poisoned by human activity!! And the fact that the forest actually purifies the water! And of course Nausicaä discovers this by going into the jungle and learning about it. She's a hero because she studies ecology.

I also loved the theme of the danger of violence, and also Nausicaä trying so hard to stay as pacifist as is feasible even when violence is so tempting. During the battle in the castle in the Valley of the Wind when Tolmekian soldiers are invading, Nausicaä fights them off but she's blocked by Yupa and her sword goes through his arm. My friend was like "surely if he's a master swordsman he knows not to block with his arm?" but I was like "No it shows the damage of violence and how war hurts everyone!!" Another moment that seemed really key to me was when the Tolmekian airship was getting attacked and Nausicaä goes to steal a gunship. Kushana sees her and smiles because she thinks Nausicaä is going to use this ship for battle, that she's been seduced by violence, but then Nausicaä uses that ship to save Kushana! She transforms this weapon into a vehicle of peace, when using it for violence would be so easy, she chooses a different path and that scares Kushana more than anything, which is why she tries to take back control using her gun in the toxic jungle, even though Nausicaä knows that this is only going to cause more suffering. Of course there's the ending where she stops the stampeding Ohm not by force but by empathy, taking the pain of the baby Ohm onto herself when she goes into the acid lake trying to save it, and her dress is stained from it's blood, symbolically allowing its suffering to change her so she can understand it, bringing peace by sacrificing herself, not the Ohm (honestly you could read Nausicaä as a sort of Christ-figure but that's a whole other post). For me, a big thing that really resonated with me and drove in the idea of choosing peace over violence even when it's really hard was every time that Nausicaä cried. Every time she cried I felt like I understood the frustration and feelings of powerlessness so vividly. When she tells Yupa she's going to cut off the water to her underground plants so that they die, just like how the jungle is going to die, because the Tolmekians are stronger and forcing them to go along with the plan, and I could *feel* the anger that everything she'd worked so hard for would be destroyed because she wasn't powerful enough to stop it. And this feeling of helplessness is so similar to when she tried to hide a baby Ohm but it was killed by her own people and her own father. And when she learned of Pejite's plan to use the Ohm to destroy the valley of the wind and she just cant convince these people not to murder her valley. And when she sees the baby Ohm and how much it's been injured and she says something like "I'm so sorry for what we did to you" whilst crying... I felt that so much. And all the time it's because she realises the value in all life, and she can't convince people who see life as worthless compared to their greed, but because she knows life is so valuable she can't respond with violence, but her path of always valuing life works in the end! She doesn't need any weapons when she has compassion and ecology.

[lemongogo]

oo u want 2 draw soo bad..