#navigating hostility

[himmurf]

Can I get some comfort? I posted this to a local queer Facebook group to derision from an admin and a user. They act like I am a traitor to the community for even consider doing this for my safety in a private sector of my life...

For those people who need to hear it, there is nothing wrong with going back into the closet for your own safety. You aren't less queer because you can't be queer publicly. You aren't less trans because you have to act like you're not trans.

If you need to start going by your old pronouns or quietly go back into the closet to be safe - you are allowed to do that. Please do that if it means you're alive.

Your safety is important.

You are important.

And if you know someone who has to do this, don't push them. Don't out them. Follow their lead. People's safety is more important that grandstanding.

[star--nymph]

Vivienne's fear being 'becoming irrelevant' isn't something that's linked explicitly to her pride, no matter what Solas says about her (and the irony of Mr.Pride himself saying that should not be lost on you), it reveals what and who Vivienne truly is.

She's a survivalist.

Because we don't spend as much time in the Free Marches or Orlesian circles, we don't get to experience what being a mage is in these cultures. In Ferelden and Kirkwall, a mage is a lesser being without freedom no matter what they do--but in the Free Marches and Orlais specifically, mages are commodities that are given freedom so long as they play an entertaining enough role. They can explore the world if they have a noble patron, if they catch the right person's eye. They are, in a way, two sides of the same coin--refusing mages agency and forcing them to relay on higher powers. Vivienne lucked out, as sad as it is, when Bastion fell in love with her; she found someone who was contrarian enough to recognize her as a full person and also someone with power that could help her rise through the ranks. This is not to say that Vivienne on her own wasn't an exceedingly talented and intelligent individual--by nineteen she was already the youngest full fledged mage in Circle history and she was skilled enough to make herself an enchanter. But, I can not emphasize this enough, none of that matters if she didn't also play the Game and impress enough people.

Vivienne could have been the most brilliant mage in the history of Thedas and it means nothing if she was overlooked by nobility.

So when Bastion made her his mistress, she gained not just a lover but also a means to an end. Now she can use her magic to protect herself. Now she can roam where she wants and not be question for it because she's Madame Vivienne. Now, she can walk into the Orlasian court and belong there.

And what happens? Celene notices her and makes her the Court Enchanter, a position that has always been the equivalent of a jester. Vivienne took that title, ignored that it was essentially a glorified insult to who she is, and made it a position of power. She made the Court Enchanter into an advisor, a political rank. She had done the impossible and made mages an actual political entity in the Orlasian Court, something that wasn't seen outside of Tervinter (not counting what players can do under very specific conditions if they made mages in DAO and DA2).

All that, however, only continues as long as the court recognizes her as something worth their attention. Vivienne needs to maintain her act as Madame De Fer, The Lady of Iron, the Court Enchanter, The Jewel of the High Court, because the second she just becomes Vivienne, it's over for her. The assassins coming raining in, her name gets devoured by rumors and gossip, and she'll be found dead at bottom of the stair case with a dagger in her back if she's lucky.

So of course when the Circles fall apart during the Rebellion, she clings to that Loyalist Mages to maintain that structure--of course she moves her pieces to the Inquisition, knowing that if the Circle DOES fall, she at least as another place for herself and mages latch onto--of course when she hears that Celene replaced her with a new Court Enchanter that appeared out of no where, she grows to resent Morrigan.

Like, Morrigan literally pops up out of thin air, makes herself invaluable to Celene, and then plants herself in the place Vivienne had to claw her way up to and create so she could survive. Would you not be resentful when your life's work is usurped by some random witch of the wilds because she happened to charm the Empress? Everything Vivienne strived for all whisked away because the court find a gem who glimmers ever so slightly more than Vivienne.

So yes, Vivienne fears becoming irrelevant because the world has made it so that irrelevance for an Orlesian mage means death.

[ganymedesclock]

Any genre of game can have a disabled protagonist if you aren't a coward / willing to put the work in, but I'm currently batting around the concept of specifically point-and-click puzzle adventure games with a highly disabled protagonist.

Often, the pace of such games tends sedate and contemplative. Your character is seldom in a hurry; they are mostly faced by trying to figure out how to accomplish a particular task, and if a deadline is imposed, it's an extra thing to juggle.

This could be an interesting presumption to incorporate from a watsonian lens, through the viewpoint of a protagonist who may have limited mobility, pain and/or fatigue that make hurrying punitively inaccessible. It'd let the player familiarize themselves with early puzzles if the first thing they have to figure out how to do is say, get their player character out of bed in an environment where they don't have their usual fallbacks.

(also if this is also a walking adventure, it'd let you dodge accusations of the insurmountable waist-high fence- your intrepid hero MIGHT be able to climb over those bricks if they didn't have two bad hips and a walker to worry about!)

[peachphernalia]

click for higher quality

do you ever see yourself ?

[alt ver. with different colors under the cut and ramble in tags]

[dream by joku]

[bogos-bint3d]

Messin around w/ perseverance stuff

[snugglesquiggle]

the juzi novice considers the possibility that nuzi works so much easier, so much more naturally on every level, and thinks this is an obstacle to shipping them, or worse, denies it.

the juzi adept understands this fact is double-edged, a key ingredient in the explosive chemistry, the faultline on which things can break

because it's not toxic yuri if no one gets hurt

[devilsskettle]

forgot how annoying it is to live in the college part of the city when all the students are back. it does settle down once the semester gets started but jesus

[captainsaku]

If your system makes me motion sick after turning off and tweaking all the camera settings I could find, it's a bad system.

[velvetjune]

One thing I hope control 2 does is lean even more into different mediums of art. The side missions for the jukebox or shum arcade machines are good for fighting practice and mods, but I wish they incorporated the altered item more, like how the ashtray maze replicates a specific aesthetic for a shifting hotel or all of langston’s runaways change their surroundings. Maybe make the arcade game all pixelated or add more music. Remedy has only gotten better and better with experimenting in their games, so I trust whatever they’ll come up with Control 2

[caguaydreams]

Hm... never trust how you feel about your life past 9pm or however that goes and stuff, but sometimes I do be pondering what I do on the regular and it gets to me, the silliest things

[lotus-tower]

It’s been very weird feeling the differences between Twitter and tumblr as platforms in the past year

[coweggomelet]

retail jobs are so fucking hostile to autistic people

like there's the obvious of all the sensory issues with the overhead music and the chatter of customers and the beeping of the registers and people's shoes and the crinkling and whatever other noises that the products themselves make when people pick them up and the lights and customers moving and whatever uniform you have to wear and sometimes multiple people are talking to you at once and you have to figure out how to listen to and understand both of them at the same time or everybody gets frustrated with you.

and everybody expects eye contact, most coworkers included, and i can't always do that so i have to either pretend to make eye contact, do very little of it, or do it none at all and for most of those it makes me seem weird.

and there's the masking, like even when i'm not fully masking because i'm already mentally exhausted i'm always doing it a little bit which takes a toll. and sometimes, because i've been masking less around my friends, i stop masking in public and all of a sudden forget how to Properly interact with other humans and start stammering or forget what i was saying or have no idea how to finish my train of thought and i seem weird.

and i have scripts i follow and programs my brain runs for how i interact with customers and coworkers in specific situations and those serve me really well but if i get interrupted in the middle of one, because customers often don't give a shit cause they don't see me as a person (which is a whole other thing with how so many customers view retail workers), my brain often short circuits and i get the forgetting how to interact Properly buff.

and how allistic people communicate is so wildly different to how autistic people in general communicate and they never consider different ways of doing that so we misunderstand each other constantly which always leads to them getting frustrated with me. or i get in trouble for doing something that no one ever told me i'm not supposed to do, they just assumed i'd know or instinctually figure it out.

and some of these things don't happen as often as it feels like they do, there's just so many things happening it feels like a lot cause it's so overwhelming. like the amount of times i almost have a meltdown at my retail job is insane. or i have to let them out in pieces so i have tiny outbursts i hide from coworkers and customers.

and then i have to be a functional person??? i have to go home and do chores? and go back to the retail job the next day without proper rest time? or go to my full time job for the next week where i'm required to be an Extra functional person? it's fucking exhausting

[melodyofthevoid]

Edit: Staff has since turned off replies. I think that's a pretty good indicator on how this is going.

A new way to navigate Tumblr

If you use Tumblr on a web browser, you might have noticed us testing a brand new navigation on your dashboard in the last month. Now, after some extensive tweaks, we’ve begun rolling out this new dashboard navigation to everyone using a web browser. Welcome to the new world. It’s very like the old world, just in a different layout.

Why are we doing this? We want it to be as easy as possible for everyone to understand and explore what’s happening on Tumblr—newbies and seasoned travelers alike.

Labels over icons: When adding something new to Tumblr in the past, we’d simply add a new icon to our navigation with little further explanation. Turns out no one likes to press a button when they don’t know what it does. So now, where there’s space, the navigation includes text labels. Since adding these, we’ve noticed more of you venturing to previously unexplored corners of Tumblr. Intrepid!

What’s already been fixed? Thanks to feedback from folks during the testing phase, we’ve been able to make some improvements right out of the gate. Those include returning settings subpages (Account, Dashboard, etc.) to the right of the settings page instead of having them in an expandable item in the navigation on the left; fixing some issues with messaging windows on smaller screens; and streamlining the Account section to make it easier to get to your blogs.

What’s next? We’re looking into making a collapsible version of this navigation and improving the use of screen space for those of you with enormous screens. We’re also working on improving access to your account and sideblogs.

That’s all for now, folks. For questions and suggestions, contact Support using the “Feedback” category. Please select the “Report a bug or crash” category on the support form for technical issues. And keep an eye out for more updates here on @changes.

[neverendingford]

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[thinkingonscripture]

Be Wise as Serpents and Innocent as Doves

Jesus told His disciples, “I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16). There are times when Christians will find themselves in the midst of a pack of wolves, which is a dangerous situation. When this happens, they should maintain purity in their intentions while being shrewd in their conduct to avoid unwarranted harm.[1] Doves are…

[roleshirked]

often involves saving myself or a large amount of people from some insurmountable threat

*"stress dream" = dreams you get when under large amounts of stress or anxiety irl, that may or may not relate to your current situation irl.