#or a systemic issue that needs addressing

[jellogram]

God I am so mentally exhausted by my coworkers this week. We had an entire meeting to talk about our feelings and a bunch of people want to have an anonymous way to report issues as if that's not going to immediately turn catty. And I was like "I feel like the need to say things anonymously is part of a deeper issue because that means there is a level of distrust or fear that shouldn't be there" and they're like but I am BRITISH and I have SOCIAL ANXIETY that makes it hard for me to speak up!!! and I'm like. trying not to rip out my hair

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[abyss55199794]

people on the internet need to accept that sometimes people will say weird or mean things that you disagree with and you will be happier not interacting with it

[llitchilitchi]

I get hating certain political systems and trying to abolish totalitarian regimes but at the same time many of them are so interwoven with our history and society they have become tropes and when I consume media with a setting where the monarchy is absolute and revered then I am playing my part and sucking that princeling off

[psychology-department]

Hey can we like leave Fictionkin, Fictives or Irls of problematic media alone

It is not an excuse to harass fictives or irls or fictionkin from anything the creator is making or has made, they cannot control their source or media. Just because our media has problematic creator make doesn't make us a bad person. An author's actions towards others doesn't define who we are. Leave us the fuck alone. Stop sending us death threats. Stop forcing names onto us. Fuck the creator. We are our own people with our own lives and we are not defined by how they wrote our kintypes to be.

[wiseabsol]

(Gets to the end of the most recent Worlds Beyond Number episode. Yells out loud.) FUCK!

[monstermoviedean]

at the end of my fucking rope with "conversations" about k12 chronic absenteeism.

[snow-system-wol]

A conversation after the lv89 trial. (And perhaps some things that have been left unaddressed since ARR)

Ao3

By the time they got back to the Annex, they were quite ready to lie down. S'ria was a bit dead on his feet, and G'raha – well, he was hardly as used to doing battle with gods and clearly suffered for it. S'ria was sure many of the others felt similar.

There were no words spoken as G'raha followed S'ria into his room, the implicit understanding that such a thing would be okay. G'raha was more than a little surprised when S'ria led him towards his bed – aside from the highly temperature-dependent choices in Garlemald, S'ria had seemed to often hate G'raha being near his bed. Back in Mor Dhona, they'd never so much as lounged on S'ria's bed, and now seemed like a time he'd be more uncomfortable than he'd been in the past.

But if cold was enough to override that fear, perhaps other concerns of comfort were as well – because S'ria bonelessly flopped onto the bed with a displeased grunt, stretching out on the soft mattress. He curled up a bit to make space, patting the spot next to him.

G'raha sat gently, sliding back until he could lean against the wall. He grabbed a pillow to tuck behind his back, sighing in relief at finally relaxing. S'ria inched closer and cautiously laid his head on G'raha's thigh, so slowly that G'raha felt that he'd jerk his head away if G'raha so much as moved. The moment passed without incident, S'ria settling in comfortably. G'raha's hand twitched at his side.

“You can touch, as long as you're careful.”

G'raha's fingers landed cautiously by S'ria's temple, brushing strands of hair out of the way. His hand migrated further into S'ria's hair, combing gently through it. A soft pleased sound escaped S'ria's throat and they both stayed like that, quiet and half-awake, for a long time.

S'ria eventually spoke up, tired but relatively focused. “She said that She wanted to ask me Her question again, after we fought… She didn't. I wonder if She just ran out of time, or if She…”. He shook his head. “I don't know.”

“If I may ask, what was the question she meant?”

“Back in Elpis, Venat and I had talked, but we got cut off… but she asked if my journey had been… good. If it had been worthwhile?”

G'raha sucked in a quick breath, fingers briefly pausing. “Did you have an answer ready, if She had asked you today?”

“It's not a difficult thing to answer. You can probably guess.” S'ria huffed out a strange noise that was close to a laugh. “Has it been good? Absolutely fucking not.”

He curled up into a tighter ball, head still on G'raha's leg. “It's been so painful. But worthwhile? I would not have met you, first off. Nor Alisaie and Alphinaud, nor all the rest of the Scions. And The Twelve know how many people live that would have been dead without the Scions… I wish with all my heart that things could've been easier, and it's hard to imagine shaking off the awful feeling that hangs over me, but… I'd do it all again, if I had the choice.” 

G'raha resumed petting his hair, but didn't speak for some time longer. 

“Ah, I… I see. Thank you for answering.” G'raha's voice was distinctly choked up.

“Was that a bad answer?”

“No… it was not.”

There were often moments that S'ria struggled to read other people, especially without Menphina's help, but he could accept not fully understanding G'raha's reaction as long as it was an okay one.

They both relaxed for a long while, nearly silent except for birdsong and distant voices. 

Eventually, it did occur to S'ria that he had something he'd like to ask of his own. 

“I don't want to make you feel doubt or anything, but can I ask a question?”

“By all means?”

He paused, trying to formulate an acceptable way to phrase it. “Are you scared? Of what comes next, or of whether we'll fail?”

G'raha laughed, a small humorless thing. “Who would not be? I am only a man, of course I am afraid. Of faltering, of losing you, of meeting my own end  – just because I have the resolve to try does not mean I am without doubt.” He sighed. “And what of yourself? I would not presume to think you immune to such things.”

S'ria shook his head, ruffling his hair where his head rested on G'raha's leg. “No, I'm terrified. One mistake will cost us the world, and I am on… some damn wobbly legs, mentally speaking. I don't want to fail. That’s the part that scares me, not so much the idea of dying.”

“Dying…doesn't scare you?”

There was an implicit question there, one S'ria recognized and wanted to quickly ward off. “No, I – I want to live. And even when that's difficult, I want to want to live. I'm not…giving up, don't worry.” S'ria took a few slow breaths. “It just feels different when everything is at stake – somehow natural, if I'm meant to be playing a role. It would not be me dying out there, but rather the Warrior of Light. Does that make sense? Inevitable… It isn't like it'd be the first time.”

G'raha's hand had stilled completely, legs tense under S'ria's weight. “Pardon? ”

S'ria cautiously pulled himself upright, G'raha's hand losing contact with him. “To what part?”

G'raha closed his eyes, inhaling sharply. “Absolutely every godsdamned – no, I – it wouldn't be the first time?”

S'ria understood he'd misstepped, even if unclear on the exact directions, but he did hold one small regret – or rather, a realization.

“...Ah. Nobody knew.” And perhaps he would prefer not to have brought this up, upon remembering that. Dredging up something wholly unnecessary that was clearly upsetting G'raha.

S'ria made a kind of helpless gesture. “It was years ago, when I wasn't so close with the other Scions, not long before I first met you. Ultima – and then Lahabrea. My heart stopped beating. And then it restarted, and I was none the worse for wear, really. I was fine, and wasn't all that comfortable being medically checked over by any of them – so I didn't feel the need to say that it'd happened.”

“Ria...you truly don't see anything wrong with that, do you?”

He risked a glance at G'raha's face. “You're angry.”

“Yes. Not at you so much, but… at the way the Scions were before I had met them. I had read numerous accounts about your victories against the Garlean Empire in the early days, and – none of those ever spoke about you like you were a person and I had thought that – I had hoped the impression it gave of the Scions was wrong.”

S'ria laid his hand over where G'raha's had curled into a fist. “I wasn't entirely unaware or unbothered. Why do you think I spent such long stretches staying with the expedition when there was no new progress instead of returning to the Rising Stones?” He offered G'raha a small smile. “That, and the company was agreeable – once you got used to me being there. And you always asked me to help, never just telling me what my role was to be. I won't lie, I needed it at the time.”

A hint of color found its way into G'raha's face. “Surely I was not… that nervous around you at first, was I?” G'raha shook his head. “On second thought, do not answer that. I am…just glad that I could help, even if I did not quite realize at the time. If I may ask – if you were unhappy being with the Scions, why did you stay?”

“At a certain point, it felt like there was no choice. And then everything happened with the banquet, and – suddenly a few of them were like family to me. Even if I remained the Warrior of Light outside of the Scions, I was actually S'ria within our group.” S'ria let a small smile slip onto his face. “And then it didn't really matter so much the way things used to be or the expectations placed on me, it just became another part of my life.”

G'raha sighed, a deeply exhausted thing. “I…will not press this matter anymore right now, much as I would like to. No, far more important is just for me to say – S'ria or Warrior of Light, there is no heroic role that would make your death inevitable." He looked up to meet S'ria's eyes. "Please just, leave the title behind here in Sharlayan – let it just be S'ria with us in Ultima Thule – a man, not a martyr.”

S'ria's hand tightened over G'raha's. “I… Raha, I don't know what to respond to that.”

“Then you do not need to.” G'raha shuffled closer, cautiously leaning into S'ria's side when he didn't move away. “I simply wanted you to hear it.”

S'ria wrapped his arm around G'raha, comfortably pressed together. “And I'll try to keep it in mind.”

[fizzarollispisscorner]

People say they want to see characters with PTSD and trauma, but then complain that characters are "OOC" or "whiny uwu soft babs" when they realistically depict being traumatized.

[moe-broey]

The Maine shooter has been found dead, btw. In case anyone was wondering.

[tenmyoujump]

gifted kid discourse is probably one of the worst things to happen ever

[a-book-of-creatures]

Tumblr being tumblr, this post is overly reductive for the sake of being funny, so a bit of context. It’s kind of depressing too.

Ken Rex McElroy was, according to Wikipedia, accused of “assault, child molestation, statutory rape, arson, animal cruelty, hog and cattle rustling, and burglary”, but never convicted. When he was shot by persons unknown, “there were 46 potential witnesses to the shooting, including Trena McElroy, who was in the truck with her husband when he was shot. Nobody called for an ambulance. Only Trena claimed to identify a gunman; every other witness was either unable to name an assailant or claimed not to have seen who fired the fatal shots. The DA declined to press charges, and an extensive federal investigation did not lead to any charges either. Missouri-based journalist Steve Booher described the attitude of some townspeople as "he needed killing."”

According to this article by Jakob Prater, “[t]he killing was covered by the news for weeks, and the reputation it developed killed the town. There used to be gas stations, a grocery store, even a high school but now all that remains is Good Time Charley’s, a great grill and bar that I recommend.”

The 2000 murder of Wendy Gillenwater isn’t unsolved. She was beaten to death by Greg Dragoo, her boyfriend. The body could only be identified by her ring.

The 2004 murder of Bobbie Joe Stinnett isn’t unsolved. She was strangled by Lisa Montgomery. Stinnett was eight months pregnant at the time and Montgomery cut the baby out of her. The baby survived.

Branson Perry (Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s cousin) disappeared in 2001. In 2003 “Jack Wayne Rogers, a 59-year-old Presbyterian minister and Boy Scout leader… was arrested on charges of first-degree assault and practicing medicine without a license after removing a trans woman's genitals in a makeshift gender reassignment surgery at a hotel in Columbia.” He was suspected of involvement in the case but this suspicion has since been dropped. Perry’s whereabouts remain unknown.

Prater’s article ends on a hopeful note.

In the case of Montgomery’s crime, they learned their lesson. The people of Skidmore did all the things they didn’t do before. They talked about what happened. They called the police, and the police got an amber alert. They did what they didn’t do for Gillenwater or Perry. They took the event seriously, and the baby was found.

Now, it seems they will let the proper authorities know, and they won’t just use it for gossip and rumors. They will no longer hold mysterious town meetings or whisper about when someone is in trouble or doing something they shouldn't.

Annual pumpkin-related festivals happen in lots of other places too. Happy October.

Does any horror story about small towns capture the vibe more horrifyingly than this paragraph on Wikipedia

This small farming community is known for its mob killing, its unsolved murders, its unsolved disappearances, and the annual pumpkin festival

[emergencyplumbingil]

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[gyudons]

despicable

updates as of 22 oct

Travis Dermott knew that he would draw attention with his actions in the Coyotes’ home opener against the Anaheim Ducks at Mullett Arena on Saturday. The Arizona defenseman just hoped that the spotlight might shine on the issue that he was addressing, not on him.

“You don’t really want to go against rules that are put in place by your employer, but there’s some people who took some positive things from it,” Dermott said. “That’s kind of what I’m looking to impact.

“You want to have everyone feel included and that’s something that I have felt passionate about for a long time in my career. It’s not like I just just jumped on this train. It’s something that I’ve felt has been lacking in the hockey community for a while. I feel like we need supporters of a movement like this; to have everyone feel included and really to beat home the idea that hockey is for everyone.”

“I won’t lie,” said Dermott, who is playing on a one-year, two-way contract. “From the outside, it’s easy to see that I’m putting my career on the line for something. I definitely went through some emotional ups and downs that night, not regretting anything by any means, but I’d love to have maybe done a couple of steps a little different by making sure that everyone was aware of what was going on before I did it.

“I don’t want to put my teammates or my coaches or my GMs or the equipment managers in any kind of bad light when it’s their job to kind of look out for something like this happening. It was definitely something that I did just by myself and was prepared to kind of deal with whatever repercussions the league decides to push towards that. I’m not going to back off and say that this battle is won, but we’re going to find better ways to do it.”

As Dermott noted, LGBTQ+ inclusion is an issue that he has supported for a long time. Without getting into specifics, Dermott said the issue is personal for him because it impacts people close to him.

“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t shed tears about this on multiple occasions,” he said. “So yeah, it’s something I’m definitely very passionate about.

“I’ve met a lot of people that from the outside, it looks like they have everything going right in their life and they have a smile on their face every time they talk to you. But sometimes when we get closer to people and get comfortable enough for them to open up to you, you can see that there’s some pretty dark stuff happening to some good people. It doesn’t take too many times encountering something like that for it to really change someone.

“I’ve been blessed to have some of those opportunities put in front of me to really change my view of what being a good person means; what being a good father and a good example and role model means going forward. You really see how people are hurting and it’s because of a system that maybe no one’s intentionally trying to be malicious about, but until you’ve really had that first-person experience seeing people hurting from it right in front of you, it’s tough to kind of take steps.”

It would be a surprise if the league handed down any sort of punishment. The optics alone would add to the public relations damage that the original ban created. Even so, Dermott reiterated his desire to bring the entire franchise into the fold before he takes similar actions in the future, but he also made it clear that he will not be silenced on the topic.

“It’s not like I’m shutting up and going away,” he said. “I know more questions are going to be coming. We’re just going to be as prepared as we can be to just spread love. That’s the thing. It’s gay pride that we’re talking about, but it could be men’s health. It could be any war. It’s just wanting world peace. Everyone’s got to love each other a little bit more.

“Like my parents said growing up, ‘How awesome would it be to be the guy that people look up to?’ That’s what really hit home when I was a kid, especially from my mom. You want to grow up and be that guy. You want to be the guy that’s having the impact on kids like NHL players had on you. If they had been racist or bigoted, that’s going to have an effect on you.

“With how many eyes are on us, especially with the young kids coming up in the new generation, you want to put as much positive love into their brain as you can. You want them to see that it’s not just being taught or coming from maybe their parents at home. They need to see it in the public eye for it to really make an effect.”

[noxiousdaemon]

Capitalism encourages this behavior from big companies at its core. A good solution is a universal basic income, so people aren't held hostage by large companies and their jobs threatened at even the thought of unionizing.

Additionally, labor laws in the US where I live are extra shit, and corporations lobby politicians to get these kind of laws implemented.

HR: if they work 40 hours a week u have to give them benefits

Big company: hmm okay. They shall work 39

[pritchardautobody]

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