#prediction is that itll be easy

[its-arson-time]

chem final today

[lime-bucket]

Realized i made a mistake with my eve post cuz despite my complaints that she will be made into a one note female character...i kind of had the same one note predictions of her on my mind so lets rewrite that!

HH Eve would prolly hate the sinners though not to the degree of desiring to slaughter them like adam.

no its the kinda hate u choose to have fr someone so u wont think how ur actions were similar to them if thats makes sense lol.

& u know how how theres this misogynistic believe that it was entirely eves fault that humanity was doomed to live on earth? Yeah she would try to distance herself from her past & only be presented as the peak image of the pious winner in heaven.

BUT dont mention cain or what happened to abel in her presense

Though if it was up to me i would make eves arc abt her facade crumbling when she hears a sinner,sir pentious,was accepted to heaven,& itll further tears down when shell discover that lilith was just chilling in heaven fr 7 yrs.

this revelation will be shocking not only becuz why tf adam made a deal w/ his first wife but also how seemingly easy that a demon could enter heaven.

& that will shake eve worlds becuz what if this means that all this time,a certain son of hers could have been forgiven & enter paradise but the fucking incompetant angels had never entertained the idea?they just let her think all these centuries that he & other hell sinnera were a lost cause??😨😓

yeah eve gonna have a few words w/ sera abt that

[someoneinjersey]

ok that game tonight was awesome, i thought for sure we'd lose but we won spectacularly. it looked like JH didn't get as much ice time, maybe to go easy on his old injury ooooorrrr maybe for the chirp the other night. still gets me. but what a win, it was so important, we need to keep winning to have a shot at the playoffs. i really don't think we'll make it this year but man i'm still rooting for my boys anyway. also, yanno, fuck the flyers, as always.

i managed to shower, do some laundry, some dishes, and make TWO batches of soup today -- butternut squash and then broccoli cheddar which we ate for dinner in bread bowls. i was like wow now we'll have soup for days! and then i remembered ill eat soup for every meal and snack until its gone because soup is the perfect food. So itll probably be gone by tuesday at the latest. i gotta get back to eating better so i might go to walmart and use some of whats left of my monthly "healthy food" stipend i get with my insurance to grab some salad stuff again. gotta hard boil some eggs too, maybe grab some chick peas and maybe a couple other vegetables to roast. get that fiber up, clog that toilet more.

bizzy will be 7 months old next week and shes almost full grown cat sized. still small but now shes looking more and more like a cat rather than a kitten. shes also now spending time alone as opposed to needing to be with one of us 24/7 which has us both like MY BABYYYYYY. larry's changing a bit too, like requesting more affection at least from me. so there are times i'm lounging in the living room watching youtube or playing xbox and i have deano larry and bizzy all on me in different places. furniture upon furniture.

picked up my book again. i needed a long break because id read two books so quickly and intensely, kinda burnt myself out. its getting more interesting, supposedly its really sad, but i still sit here going through the pages trying to predict what's going to happen besides gayness. always gayness, god bless tj klune. up next are two sort of self help books i'm hyped about (especially "adult children of immature parents" because uuuuhhhhh YEAH)

[abstractfairy]

i like to organize my writing by having one note with everything related to a topic / goal — well, ideally goal for reasons that probably deserve their own posts

i love having this organization and this garden of ideas that GROWS on its own. sure i might be wrong about something today, but if i pay attention to it for a year or more i'll Definitely have it fixed sooner or later

social media does not help with this long content—as in the post is written over the span of several years with beliefs and predictions being tested and validated or corrected

and maybe social media doesn't help with this because people also don't really care about it. i don't want to know your personal history about the thing, i want to know your best advice about it. maybe this is best kept as a for the artists eyes only kinda thing

but yeah, people vastly underestimate hoe important and powerful it is to take notes. not for your teacher or your boss or some other bullshit authority figure. but for you and your friends. here's how i think about things and here are my experiences related to it.

(i can also rant about how people who focus on academic studies in favour of their direct experiences are also fools in another way. but itll take effort to write that *and* suck out the negativity)

when you're a pro in something its actually surprisingly hard to remember the basics in a way thats easy to explain to others. and if you can actually do so,,, its kindaa~ boring. so EVEN IF you're a beginner at something you should take notes so you can help guide yourself and others. and maybe you should be the one writing because you'll be viscerally aware of which parts are hard and confusing for beginners

take notes and share em y'all

[mbabol]

hwwow knight 2

yerm. still getting lost

OH YEAH I FOUND THE DREAMS ? AND NOW FORGOTTEN CROSSROADS IS INFECTED CROSSROADS

ITS SO YUCKY i dont love how it throbs. i know its a gameplay mechanic to level up the easy zone to slightly harder and more rewarding mobs but i am fascinated by how this answers my question of how come the dreamers said the infection is respreading when it looks like its already out and about. well. now i know what it Really looks like when theres shit about

is the infection going to keep spreading...? i found a moss knight that died from infection.......

OH YEAH I FOUGHT THE BROKEN VESSEL LMAOOOOO

firstable it shouldnt have been that hard when all its moves were so predictable. i think the hardest thing was the orange thingies movement i had to learn how they moved

secondable wuhwoh. story implications. love how it looked like me to really hammer it home. this is what vessels are.....they hold the infection (?) and if they Break the infection breaks loose and also takes their will ? whats up with that. i know its like coreopsis but its also More. what is the end goal? coreopsis end goal is reproduction of itself. is this supposed to be similar? but then why make them aggro. doesnt serve a purpose. maybe itll get explained maybe it wont but its something i ponder...

so were supposed to compare broken vessel to ourselves. and wonder if were another vessel thats coming down. but why? are we really? if we were thatd be good but the other benevolent chars are suspicious of us. every char we meet is essentially projecting different goals to us (funny, bc we the players are also using ghost that way - *hammer hits me over the head*) and its obscuring the real goal ghost has.

i think ghost has to be good. theyre too likeable and kind to random strangers. but also not necessarily free of culpability! i still dont know.

which leads us to . OK MORE STUFF HAPPENED IN BETWEEN BUT RN I FOUND ONE OF THE DREAMERS???? AND I USED THE DREAM NAIL AND EVERYTHING BUT ITS GIVING ME THE CHOICE TO HIT DREAMER IN THE DREAM SND I DONT WANNA. ARE THERE MULTIPLE ENDINGS ? IS THIS A REAL CHOICE IM BEING GIVEN OR DO I HAVE TO ATTACK? I DONT WANNA THEYRE PROTECTING THE VESSEL

im in deepnest btw. scarymode. im sick of scarymodes. i want more greenpath zones >:( enough variations of zombiebug

OH ONE GOOD THING ABT DEEPNEST IS I GOT THE BEST CHARM IN THE GAME WHICH GIVES ME LITTLE SPIDER PETS. I HAVE THREE SPIDER BABIES. AND THEY ATTACK TOO

um what else has happened. uh lots of inchresting mobs. ive been reading some of the beast entries and one of the early deepnest mobs has a strange entry? its super passive and easy to beat but the entry says it unnerves the hunter and it doesnt

[moistkaibagge127]

If whatever reason someone had to clone me and find someone who looks exactly like me cuz I was in a semi permanent state of unconciousness, and that person needed to take my identity for a bit....

How mean do you think they would think they needed to be to act like me????

How fucked up do others think I am??

Am I incredibley predictable so itll be easy??

Would anyone know and how long would it take??

i'm so tired but i need...

Answers...

[valdrift]

been playing hyper light drifter with a friend lately and this game stresses me out so much (in a good way) it makes my stomach hurt

[miiilowo]

DAMIEN LAVEY HAS ADHD AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

this started out as a headcanon because i noticed some similarities between how he and i act. but the more i play the games the more shit crops up. heres my evidence, in no particular order. also spoilers for both games i guess

-he doesnt have object permanence

.(if you dont know, people w adhd struggle with object permanence. it isnt like 'the door closed! the rest of the house isnt there anymore! i forgot about it!' but more like 'i left this important item in a drawer and it will never cross my mind until im moving house and find it')

- run on sentences

lots of us, myself included, struggle with having run on sentences all the time. apparently it has something to do with impulsivity and making careless mistakes, but those kinda go hand in hand anyway. i talk to this mf in game a LOT and the amount of times he just goes 'and' instead of making a new sentence is uncountable

- infodumping (what im currently subjecting you to)

damien has stuff he likes. stuff he likes a lot, especially compared to other characters. ive had a good handful of interactions with him where he tells me about a topic he likes for. quite a few paragraphs

- hyperfixations

THIS MOTHERFUCKER IS HYPERFIXATED ON DOLPHINS AND NOBODY CAN TELL ME OTHERWISE GODDAMNIT. in monster camp, theres an event where he brings up watching dolphin documentaries, and invites other people to watch them with him. he also says hes gonna make dolphin shaped cookies. and thats the type of stuff i do when im hyperfixated on something-Ill consume content of it, try to get other people to enjoy it with me, and surround myself with that thing in any way possible, even if it means making dolphin shaped cookies.

also, while other characters have things they like, nobody so far (that ive noticed) likes something as much as he likes knives and fire. and ON that dolphin thing, in the first game, his death is predicted as including an 'unusual amount of bottlenose dolphins'. so. idk he probably wanted to see them and did something stupid to get to them

id also like to note his obsession with how much he hates the sun and wants to eradicate it. not sure what youd call that but it sure is something

- RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria)

damiens whole thing is that hes this toxic masculinity riddled asshole, but that personality is kinda put up as a facade. while that definitely is part of how he is genuinely, he DOES intensify it to please other people-And when thats challenged, or he shows his soft side in any way (that he tries very violently to hide) he gets super defensive. it basically plagues him and he thinks about it way more than he should, so much so that itll trigger a route where hes trying to prove how cool he is-after the other characters call him soft for liking dolphins and wanting a non-violent comic for once.

he cant even enjoy his interest in drag and makeup without feeling like he has to defend himself or be intense about it sometimes. (moss mann also says he makes flower crowns when nobodys looking, but its moss mann, so take that with a grain of salt, i guess)

hes also pretty intensely focused on trying to prove himself as a master survivalist, which is based off of the fact hes sheltered. he does not want people to perceive him that way, evidently

-impulsivity/recklessness

i dont have to explain this one. its damien

-his hatred for math

this experience might not be universal, but for me personally, adhd makes it SUPER fucking hard to do math. im bad at keeping track of things and remembering them, and paying attention without getting distracted, and he seems to have that same issue

- he interrupts people. thats it thats the whole bulletpoint

MISC

unfortunately the whole fidgeting/moving around thing is hard to prove because of the games style. he does enjoy sports and is pretty competitive, though, and i know my adhd fucks with how competitive i am (again, might not be universal, but i have that issue)

A lot of stuff im looking at also says that easy anger and irritability are things people with adhd can struggle with (i can back that up w personal experience) and damien DEFINITELY HAS ANGER AND IRRITABILITY ISSUES

anyway. thats just about everything i can remember right now. this is mostly based off of the second game because ive been playing that one more and its fresher in my mind. if u have any other evidence, give it to me, i will HAPPILY take it. anyways this image is relevant again

EDIT: adding this persons tags because . yeah

[taketheringtolohac]

sometimes you decide youre gonna cosplay to procrastinate finals and you spend hours drafting what the cosplay will look like despite you never really cosplaying before and also not having much experience in garment making

[perenlop]

peach and onion for asha!

🍑 [PEACH] How do they show their kindness? How kind are they truly?

i would say that asha is... not the Most kind pokemon at first? not like shes outright cruel or anything but she's more of a loner and doesn't really do anything for other people at first because she doesn't see the point in it if she doesn't get anything accomplished for herself. in fact, that's gonna be something she improves at throughout the story. once she does though, they just like quality time.

🧅 [ONION] What is surefire to make your OC cry? Who knows of this information?

it's a bit of a spoiler but itll be a while before i post this at all so ill go ahead and say, it's revealed in the first arc anyways and is easy to predict. it's the reminder that asha technically shouldn't exist and that she's considered a paradox that causes more damage than good by a good amount of characters. it's usually the frustration of this and all the trouble it causes + self esteem issues that just pushes her over the edge. of the characters i've posted, her parents and skylar know this.

[angelofarts]

For the writer asks: 1, 2, 3, 9 & 10, please. 😁

Hi Mac! Sorry I forgot about this but I'm here now

1. A typical me fic is usually an AU of some kind. If it's a multichap itll probably have magic or fantasy, if it's a one shot it's less predictable but I would have almost definitely wrote it for one of my friends

2. None that immediately come to mind...

Oh wait yes! Roommates friends to lovers, mostly because of the vine

3. Anything involving abuse is totally off the table, which is why pirates is so difficult because I really have to toe that line

9. Split between pirates and TUIO. Pirates has a loyal following and I'm balancing a lot of plot points and reveals, but TUIO was very very emotional I had to be very vulnerable when I wrote it, which wasnt easy for me to do

10. Any of the one shots I've written for my friends (including your present from this morning). I love writing for my friends, it makes the whole process easy and fun

[dahniwitchoflight]

man, a lot been happening on the internet lately, talking about content creators and parasocial relationships being a big topic recently

I almost don’t wanna post anything about it, cuz I’m not sure how to avoid any sort of stirring of the pot, but there’s an angle to this situation that I think a lot of people are confused about, and that’s “where does the fault lie when a person gets hurt in a parasocial relationship?”

And people I guess are thinking this is some sort of case of power dynamic’s, but I think thinking of it in these terms is incorrect to be perfectly honest

does a content creator seem to have a lot of sway over someone who’s fallen into a parasocial relationship with them? sure it can seem that way

but is that the content creator’s fault? No, as bad as that sounds to the tumblr crowd

this is NOT the power dynamic between an abusive father and their child, or a skeezy boss and their secretary, or any other real abusive power dynamic where the victim faces some sort of real consequence for not being compliant with the abuser’s wishes

this is the dynamic between a casino and someone with a gambling addiction.

can you argue that the gambling addiction/parasocial relationship wouldn’t exist without the casino/creator existing? sure you can

can you argue that it’s within the interests of the casino/content creator to get customers and fans? absolutely

but can you also say that the problem in the situation here is inherent to the person with the actual addiction problem here? someone who gets too invested in the scenario through their own desires and or addiction problems? That many people can go to a casino or be a fan of a person in a perfectly reasonable healthy amount and never get hurt or encounter any issues? Yeah

Even if you dislike the casino/creator and have hard feelings for putting you into a situation where you believed you were gonna win it all, even though the odds of that happening were never in your favor, and rightfully feel you’ve been victimized by them, the casino/creator existing and doing there thing I really don’t believe is the thing at fault here

I think there’s something to the idea that people who are vulnerable to addictions like gambling and thinking that theyll win the jackpot of millions against impossible odds is not too dissimilar from a singular fan of some content creator thinking, this is it, I’m the one theyll fall in love with over everyone else, against all the odds itll be me

and also whatever prevents them from realizing that the consequences of losing would apply to them as well, other people in the casino might lose all their savings, but it wont happen to me. Other people might get lost in the fantasy and then end up being dumped, but it wont be me

I think the brain juice would see these as very similar situations, and this addiction angle I think explains a lot for how people get into parasocial relationships in the first place and why they feel like it’s so hard to get out 

but people are still free to believe that casino’s/content creators are morally corrupt institutions, just from their nature of the fact that their livelihood depends on people and fans crowding to their type of entertainment

At the end of the day, they cannot control what their fans are going to do, they can’t read the minds of anyone who chooses to come to their establishment, they can’t know at a glance or through conversation who’s going to get addicted and who isn’t, they can only see warnings signs after the fact and then damage control, it’s just a messy reality of life that it happens

There are best practices to prevent these types of things sure but those don’t catch every case and inevitably there are going to be people who fall through the cracks anyway

the correct approach here is to mitigate the addiction problem. that’s the real thing at fault here, not any one person

so to answer the question, where does the fault lie when someone gets hurt in a parasocial relationship?

you might be a victim yes, but not a victim of the casino, as much as it can feel like that, your a victim of an unfortunate affliction

people can be dismissive and yell all they want about alcoholics being drunks, or gamblers having no spine and should just be able to not go to a casino, or people who are overinvested fans should just be able to stop back and not care about a creator so much, but I understand that it’s not that easy

but it still doesn’t make it the fault of whatever you got addicted to, It doesn’t make it anyone’s fault, and the casino/creator has less power over an addicted individual than you think, short of banning them entirely, there isn’t much they can do from their end to mitigate an individual’s behavior, I think that is something some people need to hear, I hope people don’t think I’m callous or believe that people weren’t genuinely hurt by the events that happened to them or something

but the fix to this problem doesn’t lie on the casino’s/creator’s end, it lies in mitigating the addictive disorder in the individual’s in particular’s end

this is purely speaking from someone who runs a blog and has thoughts for a fandom that once upon a time a lot of people seem really invested in, (not so much nowadays lol) 

I cannot control anyone of you, I don’t know any one of you, no matter how much I might try or get close or how close any person out there gets to me, I still can’t predict when I might encounter someone who seems overly starstruck, and in no way do I have the ability to navigate those kinds of relationships properly. I simply do not have that sort of therapeutic training and I think it’s a little bit unreasonable for people to expect that from me, despite how charismatic or not I seem like

I just have indeed had instances where another person got really overinvested in “Dahni Witch of Light”  and wanted to be in my inner circle of socialness and friends and might have been hurt when I declined that, but at the same time, I can’t do anything about that  (thankfully I’m not any sort of real popular LOL and it’s only really happened like once or twice, that I know of, since they made their feelings clear to me in private, but that’s still one or two people that might have gotten hurt)

So what does this all have to do with stuff?

I’ve read all the anecdotes about both Dan Avidan and Vinny Vinesauce, read all the docs, see all these people’s point of view, and yeah it sucks that they got hurt by the circumstances, but all that stuff meant to paint these people in a bad light? did more to me to paint them in a really good light

I saw nothing but people making sure they had the comfort and consent of everything they were involved in, doing best practices when it comes to relationships, talking about their feelings, about their expectations and also doing what they can to protect themselves and their privacy

again the worst things I saw about either of them, is danny building up the fantasy of being with a rockstar a bit too much, egging on any potential parasocial relationship issues that might have already existed, and vinny giving someone HPV (which, is debunked in of itself because that’s not how HPV works in men, even outside of vinny that’s just not how it works.)

the rest of all the stuff I saw esp in the vinny doc, was people not even accusing vinny of saying or doing anything wrong either, but miles and miles of “I assumed he was thinking x” or ”I assumed he was feeling y” and no attempts to communicate with him about any issues they had with him, because they felt awkward doing so, and instead let it fester inside them until they got hurt by it

this is not sexual assault, their mild discomfort about stuff never even happened over sexual topics, just bland things like him over-venting to them sometimes or having lowkey mental issues like being paranoid a little, this is not even being intentionally hurt by someone,  this is being bad at communicating with your partner and letting yourself endure a relationship you weren’t actually happy with, because you didn’t want to get dumped by the person you were invested in

and if you feel like you can’t honestly communicate with your partner, not because of anything they did to you, but because of your own internal conflict over how famous he is, and feeling like you’re forced to endure things you aren’t vibing with in a personal relationship

(mind you, I mean the things they said they endured in the doc which was, they didn’t like when vinny would get ranty about his friends or previous sexual encounters he had that went bad or they got weirded out because they thought he was too paranoid about stuff when they were together....which... okay so like tell him you don’t want to hear about that stuff? communicate your problems to your partner? end of story? you never even attempted that, you never even gave examples of things you thought he would do to you other than dump you if you spoke up...... which, I’m sorry, but that’s not some sort of consequence a victim faces from their abuser.... so you can’t even say he would have had a bad reaction, especially when you give examples of him doing exactly the opposite, apologizing for things that made other people uncomfortable WHEN theyve actually communicated to him that they were uncomfortable with it)

 -Those are signs that you are too overinvested and too parasocially invested with a person to have an honest relationship with them

like, heck these things aren’t even unique to partnerships, you should be able to communicate when anyone around you is making you uncomfortable, even friends, but if you can’t and the only reason you can’t is because of a parasocial investment in that person, that’s not healthy on your end

Danny sure seems to have been a little bit at fault for building up the fantasy of catching feelings for a famous dude when he intended one night stands, is that the best way to have navigated the situation? No probably not, but to a person who doesn’t have a parasocial relationship with him, this behavior would just be disappointing when the fantasy fizzled out, it’s not inherently harmful

after that point, if after the fact a person who had any sort of interaction with them felt hurt by the experience, there honestly is not much more a content creator could have done to mitigate that, in fact Vinesauce I think seems at least more aware of the parasocial thing and tried more strongly to vet the people he was with to not be those kind of people, but again people aren’t mind readers and nothing will ever be foolproof like that, and I guess some people even took him trying to vet that kind of behavior as hurtful in and of itself, (they took him venting about previous parasocial relationships he had and how paranoid and upsetting they were to him, and took it as some sort of threat against them personally, like they were trying to mindgame what exactly he was telling them, assuming he was saying something else that he wasn’t, which, is assumptions that live entirely in their own minds) but I’m just sitting here like, what else could they have done?

I get that people who had sexual relationships with these people could come away feeling really awful about it, feeling manipulated or duped in some way, but what else could have been done to prevent that from happening other than the people in question just, never interacting with anyone? Which is not a realistic solution, and doesn’t fix the problem of the victim in question moving on and getting starstruck by someone else and having it happen it all over again

If these people want to make friends, want to make relationships with anyone, want to have casual sex, want to have any sort of human connection, there unfortunately gonna have to sort the people they encounter into two different groups, people who have parasocial relationships with them and people who don’t, (and this is NOT people are fans of them and people who are not, you can be a fan and not get caught into the parasocial thing) and it is impossible to get this correct in every single individual social experience that theyre gonna have with every single individual human being, regardless if it’s a sexual relationship or not

in conclusion, I really do hope the people who were hurt by all this can truly heal and move on eventually from this, in no way am I trying to lessen their experiences, but I really don’t think other people deserved to be hung from the gallows over this, it’s no one person’s fault, neither the fan’s or the content creator’s, it’s just a messy interpersonal situation

I believe the correct thing to do is spread awareness about the warnings signs that you might be falling into a parasocial relationship, more effort needs to be put into what this looks like, what it feels like, how to avoid it, how to mitigate it, and how to regulate the very real feelings of love and affection someone might have for a person they see all the time in media but don’t have a real connection with, with the understanding of yeah, if you really can’t enter a casino without losing your life savings, a very real conversation needs to be had if you should even be entering these casino’s/watching their content at all

[sanstropfremir]

was surprised wjsn joined queendom 2 because monsta x declined kingdom and they're both under starship. guess they mended their relationship with mnet..

watched the whole episode and i think the voting is the same as kingdom? (i didn't actually pay attn to the voting parts of kingdom and wont for this show either lol its just whoever has the largest fandom in the end.) the winner for queendom 2 will have a special mnet comeback special show. and those who place last twice in a row will be eliminated from the show, so i guess that's something new :/ praying for my girl hyolyn.

i dont think the two hours are worth it though, skipped through lots of the episode because i hate how mnet edits. its definitely focused largely on interactions and drama. but i would recommend skipping to hyolyn's part at the end where they show her prepping her stage. was surprised she went to go purchase the stage props herself.

if queendom 2 is structured the same as kindgom, then the next round will be switching songs. is there a pair you would like to see? im hoping for hyolyn + brave girls (og summer queens vs. new summer queens) and would love to see hyolyn bring in the rest of sistar lol though i know that wont happen. viviz said they wanted to trade songs with hyolyn and im like... yikes but okay idt they have the vocals or stage presence enough to pull off a sistar/hyolyn song. itll be interesting to see hyolyn do a concept like theirs but idk. im hoping for hyolyn + bgs or hyolyn + wjsn (ex starship vs current starship).

alksdj i'm not sure it was totally a starship thing, i think it was that mx just didn't want to. they probably wanted to prep everything that they needed to before shownu enlisted and didn't feel like they needed to subject themselves to that process.

yea the voting structure is the same as kingdom, with the edition of live audience voting and also they put a cap on the total points (for at least the first round) which eliminates some of the huge disparity in points from kingdom. i am also praying for my girl because she has the lowest streaming numbers, but i think it's possible that the self evals and maaaaaybe the audience voting may save her from placing totally last. also the stipulation that you have to place last twice may not even happen, since there were constant changeups in the rankings last year and there is a possibility it could end up being three different groups. she and brave girls are still at the most risk though.

i skimmed through the episode last night while i was eating dinner and yea the two hours was way too long, especially when half of it was just the introductions, but yea i loved hyolyn's section! it's so clear that she has a really good and well formed concept and she knew how to execute it. a lot of the stuff they showed her doing (going to get props, talking to the choreographer/director(?)) is very similar to how a designer does initial shopping and planning.

hm, honestly i don't know enough of anyone's discography other than hyolyn's and brave girls' to make an accurate prediction of what i would want to see, but yes i would love to see an og v new summer queens. i think wjsn and hyolyn could also be interesting, because wjsn has a pretty strong conceptual base, but i don't know really any of their discog other than easy. however, i would NOT like hyolyn and viviz to switch, because although hyolyn would absolutely make any of their songs interesting, my soul would leave my body if i have to watch viviz stumble their way vocally through a sistar song. they just do not have the skills to give hyolyn's (and sistar's) songs what they deserve. what i actually think will happen is that hyolyn might go for doing a kepler song just to prove that she can do a younger gen concept, but i fear what that means for what kepler is going to do.

[harringtown]

be honest what did you think of the nancy steve revival this season 😬

ok so im only two and a half episodes in so i will give proper Thots later but right now i only kinda have predictions?

i think the revival could do a few different ways (which we probably wont know until july anyways cuz of the 2 part thing but whatever) and thatll kinda make it for me? like to me steves arc is about learning what unconditional love is, whether thats platonic or romantic or both, and i think nancys arc is about learning to make her own choices/direct her own future. if the two of them get pulled back together because its the easy, natural, oh-we-want-to-break-up-jonathan-and-nancy-so-fuck-everybodys-development path, i think itll be a disservice to their characters, and jonathans. but if we go a different way, where steves arc Isnt centered on like. getting nancy to ‘love him again’ and her arc isn’t centered on being ‘worn down’ and its genuinely this ‘hey, we were dumb kids who didnt know who we were but now we do, i think we could give this another shot’ i think it could be cool. do i think theyre endgame? honestly no clue. i just want steves arc to be about realizing hes worthwhile to others and not Just nancy wheeler.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Charlie Stross on how we'll screw up the "re-opening"

I don't read Charlie Stross's nonfic for rosy optimism: I come to him for clear-eyed extrapolations that are as pitiless as they are rigorous. His latest -- on the lifting of the lockdown -- does not disappoint.

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2020/04/itll-all-be-over-by-christmas.html

Charlie predicts that social pressures will result in a lifting of lockdown at the start of the summer, followed 4 weeks later by a massive surge in cases. The first lockdown came to an unprepared world. The second wave will come to an exhausted world.

Medical staff will still be ill - in great numbers - and burned out. The recent grads pressed into service will not be joined by another cohort of soon-to-graduate, because their educations have halted.

Steve Mnuchin's $120/week "bridge liquidity" will not stabilize society.

https://twitter.com/PaulLidicul/status/1250809586359156738

Restaurateurs who re-open and then re-close will give up the ship in droves, shuttering forever.

There will be sustained cycle of weeks of civil unrest, punctuated by 4-6 week lockdowns, for months.

When Trump's great re-opening implodes he will LOSE HIS SHIT. Maybe so badly that McConnell gins up a second impeachment, hoping to salvage the 2020 election.

Stross: "By September there's going to be social unrest just about everywhere that hasn't nailed down a massive social spending/social security project on a scale that makes the New Deal look restrained and conservative."

Charlie also points out that though Boris Johnson is out of the hospital, he's nowhere to be seen and is presumably hors de combat, but still (seemingly) committed to hard Brexit on Jan 31, which will shrink the UK economy another 8% overnight.

Unless Trump stages a peoples' stimulus (not a banker's bailout), Stross holds out little hope: "we might find a simple/effective treatment. Or vaccine development is ridiculously easy. Or the 50% of asymptomatic carriers mean pandemic is more advanced than we realize."

In case any of those sound likely to you, here's Charlie again: "these are all straw-clutching exercises. In all probability, they're not going to eventuate."

Yeah.

My take: this is the "if we screw it all up" scenario, and yeah, Trump's good at screwing it up. But there are new political forces awake and moving today, thanks to the pandemic's acelleration of processes that were only bearable because they were so slow.

Every system sustains itself -- until it doesn't. The inability of neoliberalism, extraction, austerity and plutocracy to prevent the coronacrisis has done so much to discredit it, and open the space for alternatives. More than ever, the future is ours to seize.

[painfog]

Hey so I saw you mention top surgery and was curious. I was supposed to be having top surgery this summer but that’s postponed. I was curious how that went with chronic pain? I’m scared about the surgical binder with my fibro and back pain. Any advice or info would be greatly appreciated!! (You can answer privately if you prefer)

ive actually been meaning to write up a big post on this pretty much since i had top surgery but still haven't got around to it yet so I'm happy to talk about it lol. ill go over stuff now n still aim to do a more in depth post later when im on my laptop (but writing this now bc i tend to forget everything haha). ill stick to the more fibro / chronic illness specific stuff & stuff i wasnt expecting rather than rehashing everything. apologies im on mobile so i cant put this under a cut

firstly, im sorry ur surgery got postponed! i know that must be gutting, so i hope it gets rescheduled asap & the time until then passes easily for u ❤️

I had double incision with free nipple grafts on the 4th of september 2019 with Mr Miles Berry at the london wellbeck hospital. i think he did an amazing job and can't recommend him enough for his work! i think the last pics i took of my chest were for tdov, and ill rb them after i post this for reference. i didnt have drains at any point of the surgery

for ppl with fibro, i was told that the pain after surgery either tends to trigger a flareup, or be really easily manageable, and it's hard to predict which it will be beforehand. its best to prepare for a flareup and be pleasently surprised if u dont get one. for me, i had a flareup that sucked but wasnt too bad as far as flareups go

you'll probably get given painkillers. take them regularly. it's easier to treat pain preemptively. if u don't get given them (no idea how it works outside of the uk) id say def get codine and paracetamol. u can't take ibuprofen for a while

i woke up from aneasthetic freezing cold + in a lot of pain. apparently most ppl dont need the full dose of morphine, but i did. after that it was a bit better. i was just So Goddamn Hungry literally it's all i was talking about

that night in hospital was probably one of the most uncomfortable in my life. you have to sleep sitting up for like blood reasons, so my back pain was quite bad bc of it. moving around a bit and adjusting pillows helped. if u have anything that normally helps ur back pain bring it with u to the hospital, & dont be afraid to ask the nurses for help with it (even if they can just adjust ur pillows for u). i couldnt rly sleep much but distraction helps. bring ur phone + headphones. i did a few ask memes when i couldnt sleep

the first week from surgery was rly tough, the first few days especially. this was bc i still had to sleep elevated for a few days and i couldnt get comfortable. i was too exhausted to do anything but couldn't sleep and it rly started to get me down. then i got some sleeping tablets (just nytol) and that helped so much. i literally cannot recommend it enough bc the not sleeping properly made everything hard (and like esp because with fibro the whole pain/fatigue/depression cycle is so real). once i started sleeping better recovery became a lot easier, and the tablets made the awkward sleeping positions more manageable. if i had to give only one bit of advice this would be it

on that note, ik everyone says this but do get a V pillow. it helps u adjust to sleeping on ur back and if u sleep on ur side normally it means u can like lean slightly sideways on it which makes it sm easier. also this isn't even top related but they make good back pillows when ur watching stuff in bed even now

get urself some video games (if ur into them) and easy entertainment shows lined up for when u wanna have them. recovering from major surgery makes ur fatigue even more pronounced so ur not going to be able to do all that much, but having light entertainment ready to go stops u getting as bored. its also a good excuse to finally play/watch the things you've been meaning to for a while

go outside when u can. if u have a garden just walk around it. it helps with a lot of stuff, and idk about u but i always forget how much it does. even just helping u sleep better if u get trapped in a fibro fatigued-but-can't-sleep cycle. and it goes so far helping u feel human in the first week

the first week is rly hard for a lot of ppl - its frustrating to have all that pain and exhaustion and not being able to wash or change the binder, and with the swelling and bandages under the binder it doesn't really feel like there's much change, which all sort of adds together. i keep going on about this week bc it helps to mentally prepare for it - there's no need to dread it, you just need to remind urself how worth it itll all be and that the rest of recovery is a lot better than the first part, and in time it won't have seemed that bad. big picture stuff

when u get the chest reveal, everything's better. i didnt stop smiling. and when u put the post op binder on afterwards, without all the bandaging, u like feel for the first time how much flatter u are??? and its amazing. even with the swelling. and then u get to shower and u feel human again and its great. (ik some ppl have their post ops/chest reveals much earlier than a week, but 5 days to a week is pretty standard in the uk. mine was 6 days i think)

more post op binder stuff: i got given 2. the first one i woke up in after the surgery and wasn't allowed to take off until my post op, and the second one i got given at my post op to change into after i showered. After that i alternated every few days. whatever u get given, if u get less than 2 i recommend getting another one so u can alternate them (if u want help sourcing them hmu. ive also still got mine i need to give away)

the post op binders were actually a lot easier to wear full time than normal binders. they were like more stretchy, and stretchy the full way round (bc they dont have the compression bit at the front). i used to sleep in my normal binder every time i slept with my ex, and that hurt like a motherfuck sometimes. the post op binder was much kinder to my ribs

i had to wear the post op binder full time, taking it off like once a day to shower n let my chest breathe (and massage my scars once i started that). some surgeons arent that strict abt wearing it that long, but it really helps swelling, & bc i didnt have drains it was rly important to stop fluid buildup. ik quite a few guys in my trans groups who stopped wearing their binder fairly early and then got quite a lot of swelling so i didn't want to risk it & i wore it for the full 6 weeks. at some point (icr when but maybe at 6 weeks? bc my post op was at 8 weeks bc he was on holiday) i didnt wear it during the day and only wore it at night

all in all the binder didnt bother me that much. it was more comfortable than my regular binders and i just kinda got on with it. it was annoying tho and i was glad when i could stop wearing it. for me the most annoying part was that it was a full length binder (i always wore half length before) and the riding up at the hips was rly irritating. i actually quite liked sleeping with it tho it was a pretty nice pressure stim ahah

some post op binders r more comfortable than others. if u have to buy ur own, i rly suggest going with a proper surgical one (they arent too hard to find second hand for free or cheap, again im happy to help here) bc they're kinder to chronic pain. i know that having a comfortable post op binder made it all a lot easier for me. there are also lots of alternatives w lots of price ranges tho, so that's not ur only option

ok i think thats everything right now! sorry its so long, but let me know if u have any questions!!

finally: before i got top ppl told me that its honestly life changing, and i didnt realise how true that would be. literally every single aspect of my life is at least partially better because of it, and most of them drastically so. I'm really excited for you to get that for yourself, and im wishing u all the best for it 💕