#shouting in the void

[saintajax]

Blade’s babying of you is a very steep downward hill btw it starts off with him making sure you eat or are mission ready, and then the next thing you know you’re in his bed with him until you’re so used to his heartbeat you can’t sleep without it

[little-paper-man]

눈_눈 pain and suffering - bad luck streak did not, in fact, end.

went to get my root canals done this morning at the free dental clinic (an hour drive to which already sucks but fine) and because of my stupid combo of small mouth+big teeth they couldn't get good enough x-rays in order to safely do them so they did a pulpotomy on them instead and referred me to a root canal specialist at a different dental place with better equipment.... that's NOT free and will cost $750 per root canal and I need 3 done T~T

Everything Sucks~! Eveeerythinnng Suuucks~!

(If you're wondering how bad the small mouth+big teeth combo is, even my body said 'yeah you got no room for wisdom teeth so you don't get any')

[theladyro]

I know not a lot of people will read this, but I have to rant somewhere, so let it be here. I am SO tired of people equaling AI to like ChatGPT and picture generative services and condemning them all at once. You do realize that AI is much more? Advanced spell and grammar check. Speech to text services. Image recognition programs that help scan and convert old books and manuscripts into searchable text. That's just from the top of my head. You do realize how much potential there is for increasing accessibility of information? For disability aids? Saying that all AI is bad is like saying that money is bad. They both are just instruments. What you use them for - that is what matters. (And yeah, sure, I'd like to live in the world where money doesn't exist, I was raised believing in communism after all, but we have what we have. And it's the whole other discussion)

[genethefairfolk]

*wakes up in a cold sweat* people writing a book together are DRAFT COMPATIBLE

[thisismenow3]

Ever scroll past a post and catch a stray as it reads you for filth?

maybe filth ain’t the right word, but then again this about to be some catholic ramblings. Post I saw in question was talking about how forgiveness for someone who already feels bad about what they’ve done can be a punishment since they feel in their bones they HAVE to be punished. And it felt off.

My immediate thought was “ha, I know from experience it ain’t the forgiveness that gets that kind of person, the forgiveness is just salt in the wound. The wound is that you can’t forgive yourself until you feel punished enough and that happens regardless of the person accepting your act(s) of contrition or not.” Bruuuuuuuuuuuuu! The fucking strange combo of epiphany and misery and scrambling to not feel like this still applies to my own psyche was intense. There’s got to be a word for it. Probably is one in German. I’ve been at a stage in life for long enough now to wonder if the Catholic upbringing I had was really the source of this pathway in my brain. Cause I didn’t grow up in a region with many Catholics, past an early age didn’t associate with many, and my mom did a lot better than the tripe you see of American Catholic guilt. Her relying on guilt when she did honestly didn’t seem to far off the mark for most parents trying to get their kids to see making things right as a responsibility. And I don’t know other people’s minds on this but it doesn’t seem like the bit of guilt she pointed out did it all or started it. Maybe there is something to the people who say that guilt based anything in parenting is a poisoned apple like spanking in a way.

But it seems like some kids internalize things as their fault that ain’t at an early age, and those are the kids and teens and adults I’ve met who also thought this way. Who, when they internally came around to realizing their wrongs done, just self castigate in their head over and over and are upset with themselves long past the wronged party regardless of if it was made right or not.

I try to just tell my kid that it’s easy to say sorry and that there are always ways to make things right. So as long as you do those two things you’re good to go. When I have moments like the “oh no this ain’t still a problem fuck I’ve been better I can be rational and good without being extreme in how I view myself and internal self talk and setting overblown benchmarks for proving my contrition,” I realize we never truly get past things. Just like we have never truly “learned” in an over and done way. We will always have times when we go “well shit, I guess I forgot about this and had to learn it again, even tho I still kind of academically knew it.” Being a parent means having this all the time “you can’t beat yourself up cause you didn’t do perfectly. What do we say?””dont let perfect get in the way of being better” (crap, I need to apply this in my own damn head for ___ situation!!!)

Life is strange

[saintajax]

Honeycrisp apples i love u with all my soul

[bardofavon]

not to be controversial bc I know this is like…not in line with shifting opinions on fanfic comment culture but if there’s a glaring typo in my work I will NOT be offended by pointing it out. if ao3 fucks up the formatting…I will also not be offended by having this pointed out…

‘looking forward to the next update’ and ‘I hope you update soon!’ are different vibes than a demand, and should be read in good faith because a reader is finding their way to tell you how much they love it. I will not be mad at this.

‘I don’t usually like this ship but this fic made me feel something’ is also incredibly high praise. I’m not going to get mad at this.

even ‘I love this fic but I’m curious about why you made [x] choice’ is just another way a reader is engaging in and putting thought into your work.

I just feel like a lot of authors take any comment that’s not perfectly articulated glowing praise in the exact manner they’re hoping to receive it in bad faith.

fic engagement has been dropping across the board over the last several years, and yes it’s frustrating but it isn’t as though I can’t see how it happens. comment anxiety can be a real thing. the last thing anyone wants to do is offend an author they love, and that means sometimes people default to silence.

idk where I’m going with this I guess aside from saying unless a comment is outright attacking me I’m never going to get mad at it, and I think a lot of authors should feel the same way. ESPECIALLY TYPOS PLZ GOD POINT OUT MY TYPOS.

[genethefairfolk]

man i wish there was a "voiced by mark hamill" bracket somewhere it could be fun

[thisismenow3]

Gonna be a long 8+ years (however long Trump lives)

"For Goldman Sachs, Intuit, Toyota and PhRMA, this marks the first time in at least a decade that they are supporting an inauguration fund." For the people who imagine Trump is different than Republican and that republican is different than conservative, even if that were true does this mean nothing to the dictator? Nobody rules alone. Then you factor in that republican policy is just anti democracy in every avenue (in work places, in homes, in cultural norms and associations) as well as plutocracy and... Tell me again how he may do some fasc shit but Luigi means he'll give us healthcare? He's not a details guy even when he deigns to "form the concepts of a plan." Hence why he just rubber stamps things that aint the justice department or international fuckery. If we want to get out from under Republican trifecta we need to make fighting corporations, infiltrating them and pushing dems left and infiltrating them top priority. And now also probably other actions. Congrats "we need revolution" people, youve made anything but that impossible hail mary way harder and longer term to reach. Harm reduction and actual long term strategy and organizing have got to stop being treated as poison by those who want to change shit for the better.

[friendly-jester]

chappell roan being told by a photographer to "shut the fuck up" and then her turning around and telling him to "shut the fuck up" is iconic. nothing but respect for my queen.

[macksartblock]

Anyway really enjoying the underworld saga

[thisismenow3]

I can’t stop thinking about my wife or my son reading this. My wife who always works to make the world better, my son who more than refusing to believe just can’t comprehend a world where taking care of people to this level doesn’t happen. It’s like… we should strive for self betterment for ourselves, but part of why “do it for ___” exists is that sometimes what actually motivates us to do it is other people we love. And with certain things like taking care of people, we should strive to do it for moral reasons. But if we can’t, just do it cause you can’t NOT do it for your wife or kid. And then make a habit of helping people. And then the world is so much better and it’s because you helped someone else’s “world” be better. Man, dad brain feels today. This was good

I AM ABSOLUTELY LOSING MY MIND AFTER READING THIS PLEASE READ IT

[bertie-w-wooster]

:((

[saintajax]

I’m so serious when I say I need to make kaminari choke on my dick

[thisismenow3]

It’s a bit like saying “(blank) will end bullying!” And it’s just… no. Bullying in some form will always exist. Toxic gender ideals will always exist in some form. A lot of people don’t get that EAIAC for conservatives has a related phenomenon; they actually like the act of hating so “stopping” something will never be enough. What I mean is that societal change has been more and more conservative the last 40 years when it comes to masculinity in male dominated spaces. And in “family friendly” spaces. That’s culture war. And what do conservatives say they hate? The culture wars. But non conservatives giving up on culture wars “cause ughh, I’m done with this constant fighting” miss the point. The fighting doesn’t stop. Y’all just give up ground. You don’t call out people like in OP’s example because it will change them, you do it because it’s right. And you do it because if done enough there eventually will be a situation where tides within a group change. Whether it’s a group you’re connected to or not doesn’t matter. Sometimes most people ina group are casually, cognitive dissonance racist and really would like an opportunity to put Nathaniel in his place and tell him to shut the fuck up or marry a gay dude since he talks about them so much for Christ’s sake. In the mean time having this mind set helps police your own groups the way toxic masculine driven groups are already doing; cause plenty of liberal and lefty people with any amount of privilege want to backslide the second things get hard and most people on social settings just “want to keep it moving” and not actually have to stand up for anything. That’s how people who ain’t that toxic become more. It was easier to keep going along with the person who is near the “top” of the hierarchy even if they weren’t at the top because that person is belligerent. If there’s no one fulfilling that role for anti toxic masculinity, etc, then we will continue to see conservatives win the culture wars. And winning the culture wars has been how they’ve won at government the last 45 years. Cause even when they’re not in power the narrative is based around things exactly the way they want with few exceptions

If your vision for the deradicalization of right-wing men begins and ends with "other men telling them that that's gross and to stop it" then I'm sorry, you do not understand how masculinity works.

"Men who hold patriarchal status" and "men who are feminists" are two groups who overlap less than you want them to. I'm sorry. That's not solely because men are so happy with patriarchal status that they don't want to risk it by policing misogyny/queerphobia/racism, It's because being misogynistic, queerphobic, and racist, end expressing other forms of toxic masculinity(and often abusively so) are part of how people establish and maintain patriarchal status. The men who have the ability to stop this via nothing but peer pressure are the very people who are doing it. That's by design. And engaging in feminist intervention is, in and of itself, usually the abrupt end of that status and its associated power to persuade misogynistic men.

Like, I have worked in blue collar jobs as a notably queer person. It was pretty much a constant deluge of verbal abuse. In my experience, most blue collar work environments are exploitative, abusive, and bigoted, and very gleefully so. On the occasions I have spoken up about someone saying something that was super fucking out of line (asking me which of the girls walking by was hottest. We were installing a portable classroom at a middle school), believe it or not, they completely failed to be shamed! Because nobody else on the crew gave a fuck. *I* was the weird one. They ghosted me. A full blown company ghosted me. I suddenly didn't have a job anymore because they just straightforwardly stopped telling me where the next job site was.

Like, this doesn't mean that it's your job to do it, but this vision you have of these big groups of men where everyone is on the fence and there is precisely one shit stirrer who can be shut down by a brave feminist man who can single handedly set the example for all these other guys...you are high. You are describing an "everybody clapped" level absurd scenario. Most of these truly virulent misogynistic guys either have zero friends, because, you know, our society is atomized to fuck, or they are in a group where the feminist guy is actually the weirdo who can be shut down and ostracized much, much easier than the misogynists, because there is no such thing as a man misogynists respect who stands up for women.

You might be saying "well, we're talking about longstanding personal relationships, actually. Like, they need to have to want to spend time with you and then, as a side effect, you can mind control them out of being a threat to us."

Problem with that being:

1: Many feminist men also have no friends, see the atomized society above.

2: Feminist men already stopped hanging out with men who make rape jokes because why the fuck would we want to spend time with them.

3: That isn't just because we respect women so hard. We are in many cases talking about men who are also deeply queerphobic, heirarchical, violent and abusive to other men. What initially drew me to feminism and women was a lack of heirarchical squabbling and constant bullying, and the ability to be openly queer. A lot of men who came to feminism did so because they knew that the patriarchy was not a place they would find success or acceptance. These are not the men who are gonna be able to change right wing minds.

4. Men do not view themselves as a monolith. There is no universal brotherhood of men. The actual meaning of the term "Fragile masculinity" is that men are constantly expected to prove that they are deserving of the status of being a member of their own gender. There are large swathes of men--including most of the men who you'd look to as examples of good, feminist men who you want to undertake this project--who are considered failed men, sissies, f****ts, soyboys, ect. They are. Not. Going. To. Convince. These. Men. Of. Jack. Shit. Much less successfully *shame* them. Jesus.

I know all of this sucks. I know it would be cool to be able to just point at a group and have them be responsible for the work. But nah. It's gonna have to be a societal project, one that will probably outlast all of us. Sorry. The thing you want these men to do is, absolutely, the morally correct thing to do. But presuming that it would be effective is, and once again I am so sorry about this, just ignorance of how these social groups function.