#obviously ymmv

[transhuman-priestess]

I know it’s TDOV and being hidden isn’t great but I also feel the need to say that like, the best, most fulfilling years of my life as a trans person were between 2011 and 2015, before the “trans tipping point.”

I know my experiences aren’t universal but after that I ended up getting misgendered more and more, directly in proportion to how visible trans folks were as a cohort.

Like, honestly, being visible hasn’t really helped me at all so I’m never really that jazzed about TDOV.

[houseofwolvess]

i keep seeing posts about ppl's *eyelashes* thickening after starting testosterone, and like. how did i not hear about that before

[comfort-questing]

crow's personal ranking of idioms about dead-ness, for whump purposes

"half dead." basic and classic, and can be used both actually and figuratively ("you look half dead" ie. we all know you didn't sleep last night). 6/10, not bad, points deducted for the frequency of figurative use where nothing actually happened to a character and they just need a nap

"more dead than alive." now we are committing to at least 51% dead, which is promising. I have never heard this used figuratively in a narrative so if someone says it about a character, they mean it. they looked, and dead was the predominant impression. good whump should be expected hereabouts. 8/10.

"dead on their feet." usually used for exhaustion, but honestly, a peak descriptor of exhaustion. 7/10 for that reason alone. we've all been there.

"all but dead." ...does anyone ever say this, or did I just come up with it? -/10 since I don't feel ethical rating it if I'm the only one who uses it

"threshold of death/on death's door/brink of death/verge of death" - dated but also, classic. a solid option overall, implying suspense, uncertainty of outcome. 5/10, nothing special but no complaints really

"looking like death" - equally appropriate for emotional or physical whump, but needs more detail to follow up so we know which one is meant. 4/10 in the abstract, due to ambiguity

"inches from death." have hated this one ever since I was a small crow, because it's usually used for narrow escapes - nearly stabbed, nearly crushed by a falling object, nearly bitten by the monster. emphasizes spatial arrangements to the detriment of actual effects. 2/10 since it can be used for whump, just rarely is

"dying" as an adjective describing a character. is it foreshadowing? is it a medical descriptor? it's probably foreshadowing, or else we're going to have a magical healing deus ex machina. either way, not a thing this crow is super into... 1/10, I'm sure it has potential though.

"left for dead" mmmmmmph... this one is underrated... implying either ruthless, targeted brutality, or perhaps callous abandonment by someone. either way, whump is inevitable to follow. 10/10. whumptober knew what they were doing picking that prompt, and every year I try to find a way to live up to its promise.

"deathly cold/deathly still" ... never out of place or out of style, a clear statement that something is very wrong, a sign of escalation of the situation. equally excellent for finding a teammate in a dungeon, or for checking in worriedly on a sick character in the middle of the night. next-level whump, and especially great for terrifying caretakers. 11/10.

[mumblesplash]

Guess I have no choice but to send you this

Plus my convo with writing-biting when i sent this to it

LMAOOO T scruffing them like disobedient kittens is canon probably that's so good

[snow-system-wol]

Interconnected chaos map: for if you are really determined to never use an aetheryte

(or if you want to know aetheryte proximity to zone links)

[calamitys-child]

Update on "how do I get my regular dose of proprioceptive and impact input the adhd is becoming utterly unmanageable without it": turns out if you ask enough people this you will absolutely find a guy who knows a guy who really loves pole fitness, rock climbing, rollerskating, trampolining, skateboarding, etc etc and they're without fail absolutely DELIGHTED to have a new recruit on hand. Jump high go fast be strong swing on things wear big protective gear and land hard on floor in safe bouncy manner. Does anybody want to play games with me I've discovered playing games

[c-ptsdrecovery]

A lot of us have trouble with self-care because we were taught by early caregivers never to put our own self-interest first.

Here’s the thing: in a perfect society, people would look out for each other, right? Because each person deserves to have people looking out for them. But sometimes there isn’t another person who can take care of you.

You are the person with the primary responsibility of looking out for you. 

Little kids’ parents have that primary responsibility, but when the kid reaches a certain age, they are the one with that primary responsibility.

Yes, you have some level of obligation to take care of friends and family and the needy, but the one person everyone can agree that you definitely have the responsibility to take care of is you. 

Think of it like a logic puzzle. Every person deserves to have somebody taking care of them. You are in a situation where nobody else is going to take care of you or nobody else can take care of you. You still deserve to have somebody taking care of you, and you are the person with the primary responsibility to do that. 

Yes, there are times when we don’t put ourselves first, for whatever reason, but for a lot of us, we have abandoned ourselves and have stopped fulfilling that responsibility to care for ourselves. You are as deserving of care as anybody else, and you are your primary caregiver: if you don’t do it, who will?

[spaceshipkat]

also i fully acknowledge i have some prior trauma with men being angry at me for things outside my control (it’s why i’ll shut down the instant im yelled at, doesn’t matter by who) but i can genuinely not understand why people like the overbearing, paternalistic, angry male love interest. it’s the least sexy thing a man can be imo

[clevercrumbish]

If I can speak candidly for a moment, it's extremely obvious that opposition to intergenerational or even inter-age-group friendships is a primarily childish take not just because it signifies a lack of understanding of important experiences for their development as a well-rounded person and an unhealthy paranoia about predation but also because it betrays a lack of experience with observing what happens when somebody who does only have friends their own age reaches the point of a commonly age-keyed negative life experience.

Like yeah dog, sure, a 40 year old being friends with a 25 year old is sus. Come back to me when your last remaining grandparent is helpless or senile or slowly dying and dealing with that consumes your parents' entire life and you realise that everyone they can talk to is statistically having the exact same experience and that collectively none of them are doing okay about it because they can't escape this grim ass topic. Then think about how it is for the grandparent too and go and fucking talk to someone you weren't born within three minutes of.

[agnesandhilda]

fascinating that isagi can (and often does) notice the ways he and kaiser operate similarly but gets mortally offended if anyone else comments on it

[eatyoursparkout]

hello! this ask is prompted by a recent reblog of yours about rubber preservation. I'd love to hear your thoughts relating to TFs and preservation and plastics. what should folks know? any best practices for storage? do you think there's another way manufacturers could produce them to make them more hardy? etc etc. thanks :)

Sure! I'm not a conservator by trade (and even within conservation plastics are still somewhat of a new and niche thing), but I can offer some general advice.

The tl;dr is that like 90% of other materials your best bet is to keep them clean, out of strong light, in an environment that isn't too hot or too cold, and to avoid temperature/relative humidity (RH) fluctuations as much as possible. And above all, make sure that they're well-ventilated.

The tl;dr tl;dr is that plastics just suck.

More detail under the cut! (...Lots of detail. Sorry.)

There's 2 main problems with plastics.

The first is that a lot of them are just kind of inherently unstable. Unlike a nice chemically stable material like glass, they want to deteriorate when exposed to things like....oxygen. Rip. And once damage has set in, it's basically impossible to reverse/treat.

The second is that there's really no regulations or standards when it comes to the manufacture of plastics. There's a bazillion different types, and even if you're able to identify the specific kind via chemical test (and this often damages the object in question) it's almost impossible to know what other kinds of additives went into the plastic soup that created the thing in front of you. This also makes it really hard to develop a standardized approach to caring for and treating plastics, because two things can react wildly differently even if they appear virtually the same.

That means that when it comes to plastics, preventative conservation is the name of the game. You want to mitigate the effects of the agents of deterioration on the object as much as possible. And in the meantime, make peace with the fact that nothing can be preserved indefinitely :')

TFwiki has an article talking about the common types of plastic used in TF figures, which is neat and useful. Gonna hazard a guess that most figures are predominantly ABS, which is great because it's a fairly sturdy hard plastic that probably won't show effects for a while. I'd be statistically more concerned about figures with squishy, rubbery bits (looking with apprehension at my Kingdom line BW figures).

So! While the ideal environment for plastics is cold, dark, dry and oxygen-free (lol), when it comes to personal collections you can obviously only take reasonable measures. They're in our homes, not a vault. The main things you want to keep in mind:

Light fades and discolours plastic over time, and can eventually cause certain kinds to become brittle. The more lux that your figures are exposed to, the faster that's going to happen. So while it's not reasonable for your house to maintain museum-level lighting or shell out for fancy UV filtered cases, I'd keep your displays out of direct sunlight at minimum.

High temperatures can increase the rate of oxidation, and low ones can encourage shrinkage and brittleness. Either one can do damage over time, but what's worse is fluctuations in temp that force the material to weather one extreme to the other. If you've got your figures in a storage unit or something, a climate controlled one would be ideal, or at least insulating the box so that they're kept at a more stable temp. In the home, I'd keep them away from any vents/heaters.

As far as humidity goes, it's less damaging to plastics than a lot of other materials, but you still want to avoid any large fluctuations that will cause the material to expand and shrink (and eventually crack). Wherever you're storing your figures, try to make sure it's somewhere <65% RH (this is a high cutoff compared to most materials, so your home is probably fine unless you live somewhere humid without A/C).

Pollutants are a big one for plastics. Dust can cause microabrasions and damage over time, so keeping your figures clean is a good idea. I'd use a soft brush to avoid scratching your figures, or a lightly moist swab of some kind. Don't risk any kind of chemical cleaners, bleach, vinegar, etc. and I'd even avoid compressed air to be safe. If you want to be really careful about it, wash your hands before handling your figures. Humans carry all kinds of oil and dirt on their fingers- that's why museum professionals are often wearing gloves.

And then there's the problem of off-gassing...

Plastics can unfortunately give off vapours that can negatively affect other plastics in their vicinity. The especially bad ones are called malignant plastics (evil, scary), but it's hard to ID them until they start falling apart or damaging the things around them. Best course of action is to reduce contact between different figures (pose them together, but maybe don't leave someone's hand on someone else's shoulder for five years), and make sure that there's good ventilation.

If you're going to box up figures, don't be like me and store them in your parents' basement for years in an airtight container :') Go for a more pourous material like archival grade corrugated board, and use something as a buffer between figures like polyethylene bags/sheeting so that they're not touching (there's pros and cons to sealing each individual figure in a polyethylene bag- it'll be trapped with its own gases which could speed up deterioration, but the microclimate will keep it from affecting other figures around it).

And if you have boxed figures.... either commit to leaving them boxed forever or crack those bad boys open. My partner opened up their Pacific Rim figures after several years of them stewing in their own vapours and sadly they ended up falling apart in their hands. Thanks NECA.

As for manufacturing, you'd have to ask a chemist! I'm not sure exactly what it is that turns certain plastics to gunk and causes others to shatter, but I'm sure standardizing the way we make them would go a long way. Unfortunately, the stuff that's going to better for the planet in the long run (biodegradable) is also going to deteriorate quicker by design, so that's a whole other issue.

Anyway! That's a lot of info, but I hope it was an interesting and/or helpful introduction to plastic care lol. If you're interested in more thorough reading, I'll direct you to the CCI's handy dandy free online resource. They're an invaluable resource for all kinds of materials care.

[lifebloodblue]

We all know that Spock found some way to get Kirk out of the Nexus even though it was never explicitly stated in canon just like we all know that Kirk and Spock were in love with each other even though it was also never explicitly stated in canon

[chesthighwater]

the original thief games are on sale for 97 CENTS on steam ❗❗❗

thief gold is 97 cents! the metal age is 97 cents! deadly shadows is 98 cents for me for some reason BUT STILL THIS IS CRIMINALLY CHEAP. that is less than a pack of gum nowadays!!!

go buy thief do it now

and get tfix for thief gold, t2fix for metal age, and sneaky upgrade for deadly shadows. AND GO EXPERIENCE THE BEST STEALTH GAME EVER MADE

[transrevolutions]

a key thing to understand about how laws "regulating" cop/government behavior work is that "[xyz thing] is illegal for them to do" doesn't mean they aren't going to do it, all it means is that maybe if you're lucky you can try suing them later.

[rabbitindisguise]

my therapist gave me this exercise where instead of undercutting postive thoughts with "but [negative thing here]" I need to undercut negative thoughts with "but [positive thing here]" and she prefaced this with "I know this is gonna sound stupid but trust me, it can work" so I can't even be mad that something that sounds so trivial actually helps a Lot

[dionysus-complex]

"is $65k a year rich" my spouse and I have a combined income that's very close to that number and we live in a studio apartment