#so will anyone actually vote or will I just be choosing by myself?

[thepavementsings-archive]

here for my favourite pastime: being irrationally angry about random tumblr posts

[millesbianforce]

there was a very aggressive anti-abortion demonstration at my school today. we are all going to die

[legally-a-bastard]

Your tags on the post telling Biden voters to keep Palestine out of their mouths are so incredibly rude; you're doing exactly what they said not to. Saying that they aren't looking at the bigger picture? Trying to explain how voting works like everyone but you is an idiot?

It's clear the genocide and brutalization of tens of thousands doesn't mean shit to you. How selfish can you be. If you don't care about Palestine, at least have the dignity to not go onto posts like that to tell everyone you think you're more important than them.

fun fact. When someone puts something in tags. You don’t have to read them. Anyways,

Is it selfish to care about every life, and not just one group? my brother in christ I wasnt explaining things like I thought they were stupid, because then I would have CALLED them stupid. I was making a point that yes, there are so many better fucking options and I fully support. but there are also risks to them and that THAT is why people struggle with this fucking decision. Because there’s fucking nuance.

You are painting an image of me in your head that makes you mad because you want people to be mad at. You want people you can point at and cry wolf when it’s nothing more than a dog.

Putting the rest under a read more because the people who don’t give a fuck and decide that they prefer being only reactive, don’t even have to bother reading what I’m saying, they can just go ahead and block me right goddamn now. Because I’m not here to appease people and I won’t pretend I am.

I do care about Palestine. An incredible amount, actually. And I also happen to care about the citizens of my own country and other countries alongside it. And I was sharing my thoughts on a matter that can have far larger consequences than we’re fucking considering.

You are the person who cannot see the bigger picture because you think that just because people are drowning in an ocean, we shouldn’t also try to prevent and help people who are drowning in what comparatively might be a kiddie pool.

They are all drowning regardless, and I am of the belief that harm of any kind, not just one specific situation, should not happen at all.

Also, if you read the tags so thoroughly like you think you did,

you would have seen the part that says you can just block & ignore me if you didn’t like what I was saying.

and if you take such large issue with what I say, then you should’ve taken your ass off anon because this could’ve been just between me and you. But now it’s gonna be between everyone who sees it, because while I know not to feed the trolls, this troll has made me think that maybe I need to directly fucking say what I think should be fucking said.

if you refuse to comprehend what I say that is on you. If you get mad because of that, it is on you. If you continue to respond only REACTIVELY and not PROACTIVELY, that. Is on. You.

[weebsinstash]

I'm on my betrayal loving bullshit again thinking of some shit like, the typical hero plot where one lies to an ally to intentionally mislead them and keep them away from danger, but it's hidden under the guise of, something that can be REALLY shitty on the surface, and I'm thinking about a yandere coming to "collect" you after revealing the truth and you're all "oh, ok, I understand! I'm still staying here and not coming back with you though :)"

Batman showing up at your apartment, "listen I know I started voicing complaints and even initiated the vote to kick you from the Justice League BUT it was all part of my contingency plan, there was a mole in the League connected to Darkseid and--" and you just hit him with "ok great thats awesome good for you um, I destroyed my costume and threw it in the garbage and I'm an alcoholic now and also thanks for making me realize how much I hate myself and how I never belonged anywhere, you can go now ok thanks byeeee :')" and here therein commences the mass surveillance on your phone/house/walking routes/internet use/the inside of your bedroom--

Same idea twice really but, Miguel coming back from those one ideas I had, "hey, I'm sorry I kicked you out of the Spider Society because you weren't trying to date anyone in your universe, also maybe we fooled around a little and had mutual feelings and I broke your heart by kicking you out and trying to get you to date in your own universe, but it turns out canon isn't real, so, 👉👈🥺❤️?" and here you are, "oh cool, I wish you happiness with whomever you choose :) I'm glad I'm 'allowed' to be single since, you know, you proved to me i dont belong anywhere :)"

Gojo "I'm sorry I bullied you and called you weak when you wanted to go up against this one curse but it was actually way stronger than you and you would have died if I hadn't talked you out of it" Satoru standing there with disbelief as he sees you've gotten rid of anything to do with Jujutsu Tech (uniform, equipment, or otherwise), "being a sorceror is stupid. You were right, I'm NOT cut out for it. I think I want to settle down. I'm gonna give Nanami a call"

You gotta take the character that's totally down bad for you and have them absolutely break your heart and then when they come back for you and reveal, actually, they may have had an extremely good reason for doing so and never wanted to anyways, you're just like "actually you know what? You opened up deeper psychological wounds inside of me and fundamentally damaged me and I don't think I can be the same person you remember me as anymore" and leaving them DESPERATE to keep you, any version of you, in their lives at all costs

[feministdragon]

every once in a while a discussion flares up on tumblr:  separatism vs activism reading through the various arguments I find myself agreeing with both sides in a lot of places.   the activism side argues that without it, we wouldn’t have the right to vote, bank accounts, property ownership, financial independence, sexual harassment and abortion laws, a lot of practical structures that free women in concrete ways.  i completely agree with this. the separatism side argues that women need a space away from men to experience themselves as human beings, to experience freedom and to experience female solidarity, and to develop networks of mutual aid.  I also completely agree with this. and then everyone starts fighting, which i really don’t understand.   We need both!  Both is good!   There are more than enough women in the world to do all the projects!  We can have some women creating separatist spaces for women to take shelter in, and we can have some women banding together to create practical change that free women in the short term.   What is there to argue about? I mean, maybe the background of this is the whole lesbian vs straight women thing?   Which tbh i also don’t understand why we have to fight about this.  I’m a lesbian, and the majority of my friends and feminist collaborators are straight women.  just by looking at the women around me I’m very very aware of how being partnered with a woman saves me an incredible amount of bullshit in my life, and yet I’m equally aware of why women choose to be het-partnered. for example in our organization there’s one women whose job title includes the word ‘responsible’.  Her husband began a campaign to undermine her participation by telling her that because her job title said ‘responsible’ that when our organization ‘inevitably bankrupted’ she would be left holding the legal debt which then (his main point) would impact him.  So she was scared by him into wanting to leave her position, when we really don’t have anyone else who can fill that right now, and so it would have caused a huge strain on us, but also, she’s perfect for this position, it’s very good for her, and she likes the work.  We were able to show her that he was just fucking with her, that the legal responsiblity for the money actually lay with a different role in the org, but it was yet another example of how men could reach into our private business and stir us about, because of how women are so financialy and emotionaly bound up with their legal male partners. so, do I cut off my friendship with this woman just because her husband is a danger to us?  Obviously not, because her husband is even more of a danger to her, and I’m trying to support her until her children are old enough that she can safely choose to leave him.   Is it irritating that her husband can just reach through her and fuck with us like that?  Absolutely.  Am I angry that women are constantly misled into marriage and find out too late that they are trapped?  Of fucking course.   Do I then conclude that all straight women are bullshit?   Also of course not.   But am I going to be cautious about who joins the group in future, and only let in lesbians?   Also of course not.  Because every set of hands is valuable and necessary, and we do other things to protect ourselves (like not let any man have a position of power in the org).  so what I want to ask is,  what is the separatism/activism divide about? why are people making it a choice between the two things?  is the foundational problem just either-or thinking?    if you are separatist why do you side-eye male-involved women?   if you are a male-involved woman, why do you side-eye separatists?

(crossposted on the Cloven Hooves forum if you want to comment on it there)

[detectivehole]

if youre american; you gotta go vote and you have to vote for whoever the democratic party ends up tossing your way, this time. it takes only moments of your day and slivers of your effort, it does not impede your ability to preform additional political actions, neither does it somehow lessen the impact of those actions

it is a necessary step this election to try and reduce harm- the election will proceed with or without you, and you will live with the consequences of it regardless of your participation; are you going to lie down and take it, or exercise all avenues available to you? i will not pretend your vote is anything but a drop in leaky bucket but its something, and its free and its easy. "i could never bring myself to vote for such a monster!" you are right, hes a monster, and an idiot, and ill feel miserable checking the box, but if the only legitimate reason not to vote that you can provide for me is your own moral repulsion im afraid thats just not good enough

compromising your sense of right and wrong to a limited capacity is necessary to be both politically active and impactful, as well as to just be a functional human being, because how you feel in the face of greater issues like this is, frankly, immaterial. action is the only language that matters at this moment. moral purity is a myth and your ability to maintain any semblance of it is a privilege

the only two choices here are voting or not voting; not voting, when you know conservatives will be lining the fuck up this election is, genuinely, rolling over and conceding their victory. if you find yourself asking, "how could things get any worse!?" i very earnestly urge you think about Trump; what hes said, what hes been saying recently, how his congregation feels about him, and how he and the republicans stacked and manipulated the other branches of the government during his presidency- and research how exactly it still effects us today

things could get worse. ill admit were in for a "worse" next four years regardless, honestly, but theres no biting the bullet of crappy futures. theres no "getting it over with" here. 330 million+ people domestically (not even considering the global implications) are counting on each other. you have to choose the Better Shitty Future

you gotta do it. you dont have to like it, you dont have to be happy, you dont have to tell anyone who you voted for or even that you did it at all. but you have to go vote, and you should encourage others to do the same

i definitely understand why you feel like you just can't. that you could never do anything that might be taken as actual support for such a spineless, shitty party and genocide-mongering, incompetent man. i had come to the exact same conclusion myself, initially. honestly i'm not sure anyone with a brain could think less of you for it. but i've Thought about it, like i'm encouraging you to Think about it, and it's just not a game of support, it's about making sure one of them loses. the system is broken, but you're still inside- you can't leave, and no one's coming to save you, so you have to play. make peace with it

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for accidentally triggering someone's dysphoria? (Discussion of FTM dysphoria, anatomy, all that stuff, basically. Just in case).

I (23M) am an artist (I guess, I just can draw lol), and principally draw my OCs. A lot of my OCs are transmasc, as I myself am, and sometimes tag drawings of them with the "transmasc" tag. One of these was a drawing that featured a certain character naked. He has long hair, and is pre-OP in everything (most actually never-OP because he's a shapeshifter and can have any body parts at will, so he did choose to have a not-flat chest and a vagina yet is still a guy. That's partly me projecting I'm fine with my genitals [not really my chest], and partly just wanting to show transmasc people are diverse and regardless of what they do or don't do with their bodies they're still men, in case anyone wonders why. I have many guys with many different presentations).

The next day I get a DM from someone basically saying that it is really inconsiderate and rude of me to tag as "transmasc" a character that could easily pass off as a girl in another circumstance and that I ruined his night by triggering his dysphoria, and that I should just fuck off (paraphrasing). I couldn't reply anything because he blocked me. I mean, at least he will not see my art anymore, but was I in the wrong? I didn't meant to trigger his or anyone's dysphoria, that's the least thing I want to do. Should I just stop tagging my transmasc OCs with that tag, at least the ones who clearly don't "pass"? I'm okay if I end up being voted as the asshole, and see what I can do (most probably not tagging them with the trans tag anymore), as I don't want to make other trans people's life harder than it can already be.

What are these acronyms?

[fuckterfs-deactivated20221212]

Hello fellow tumblrinas of all genders or lack thereof, unless I messed something up with the post scheduling today is the third of june.

It is not often that I make serious posts myself, if something is serious and important I usually don't have the necessary know-how nor the time to make my own posts and just reblog posts about those topics, like recently the palestinian genocide or the fact that deserts shouldn't be turned into green forests or lawns, or anything to do with USanian politics. Some of you may have seen one or two of my posts about german politics such as the new Selbstbestimmungsgesetz that will allow trans people like me to change their legal name and gender without a million gates to get past first.

All this to say, this post is not about the most important thing in the world, but it is about something I know about and that is important to me.

About sixteen, soon seventeen years ago, VALVe released a class-based team shooter with a cartoony style that they not much later made free to play. Anyone, so long as they have a steam account, can download this game named Team Fortress 2, and start playing. In it, you can buy clothes, weapon skins, weapon sidegrades and silly dances for real money, and making any purchase enables voice chat and normal chat as well as fundamental game mechanics like calling for a medic. The nine classes are interesting to play and play against, and along with the unlockable sidegrade weapons this game provides lots of variety when it comes to play styles.

But in its current state I can't recommend you to try it.

There are two(ish) ways to play the main game modes:

Casual matchmaking, which is free, the option at the top of the menu and managed by VALVe on their game servers as well as "protected by VAC"

(competitive matchmaking, which if I recall correctly costs money and is mainly people who are pretty good at the game and not those playing for the first time)

Community servers, which are further down the list of ways to play and only accessible through a very unintuitive community server browser, they are usually moderated by real human moderators using a functional anti cheat

(there's also "Training" but it's not against other real players and tbh sucks)

If you start up the game you're most definitely going to start queueing into a casual match, let's say Capture the Flag, because it's on top of the list of gamemodes, but it doesn't really matter what game mode you choose.

And maybe half the time you're going to join a Double Cross match full of other players from all over the world, containing queer people, actual racists, trolls, and one or two people only typing in Cyrillic. These games are fun, you'll learn stuff about the game, about the classes, about how annoying snipers and spies can be, about how much fun it is to airblast an enemy into the abyss, about good spots to put a sentry and about bad spots to do so.

The rest of the time you will join a 2fort match where most people are named something like ESCAPETHEMATRIX, and you will learn about how free to play players can still hear their distorted voice chat music on loop, about how it feels to get headshot by a slow moving sniper who doesn't even look at you every time you leave spawn, about getting vote kicked by five bots and not being able to do anything about it.

Sometimes you're lucky. Sometimes the real players outnumber the bots and you can vote them out one by one.

But until that is done, unless that is done, the game is unplayable.

There are many problems with TF2. Two years ago, during the first #SAVETF2 event a lot of those problems were voiced. But that was part of the reason that attempt failed. There was too much focus on updates lacking content, weapon balance being less than perfect in some places, free to plays not being able to use core features of the game, so that most important problem, the bot crisis, hasn't been in focus enough. It's okay that the game is not getting update-sized updates like Minecraft or Fortnite are. It's okay that some unlockable weapons are pretty much always better than stock. Those are imperfections, but they don't make the game unplayable. Maybe the problem started with the name.

#FIXTF2

That's the name this time. And it's true, TF2 doesn't need saving, it's already broken. We demand that VALVe fix the biggest issue with TF2.

We want a functional anti cheat.

VAC aka VALVe Anti Cheat is supposed to prevent cheaters and bots from ruining the game. It has not done that for many years, and is, according to people with more technical knowledge than me, merely a suggestion, and not a real anti cheat software. Community servers have found ways to eliminate cheating and bots entirely in their games, without the funding of a billions-of-dollars company that makes a lot of money off of TF2.

Creators like Megascatterbomb have made efforts against the bot problem, compiling lists of bot accounts and publishing them, and while VALVe profits off the bot hosters, these bot hosters have harassed, doxxed and even framed him at local authorities for domestic terrorism. This man wanted to help keep his favorite game playable and instead he got investigated by the police for allegedly planning to bomb a university.

How do I know that VALVe profits off of those bot hosters? Well the bots use voice and text chat, meaning they have to have made a purchase for each account.

Some of you reading this might already know about all of this, some of you might have made your own post today, but others may not even know TF2 exists or thought the problems got solved two years ago because VALVe made one (1) twitter post.

If you haven't already, please sign the petition at https://save.tf/ , maybe get more info at https://fixtf2.tf/ where you can also find links to more informative youtube videos. The petition will be delivered to VALVe HQ along with the tens, possibly even hundreds of thousands of names belonging to people who signed.

Thank you for reading. It would be nice if you reblogged this, the only way we can get TF2 fixed and stop it from being abandoned is if lots of people know about this.

[llesbianwrites]

save me peer input peer input save me. more info about each wip under the cut!!

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE WIP - the way of all flesh.

not to be reductive but i'm going to be reductive. i have a very vague outline (characters, basic idea of plot points, etc) but nothing super developed. the whole idea is to have a group of little freaks trying to find proof of a cure and the inherent struggling that comes with trying to survive in a dying world.

MECHA WIP - the patron saint of touch.

shamelessly copy pasting the few sentences i already have but -> pacific rim-esque mecha wip but instead of drifting with a living person you synch with all the previous pilots of your mech. also you don't stop after you get out of the robot they're stuck in your head. you are not told this before you do it. is this anything.

CYBERPUNK WIP - simulacrum.

started off as an if i wanted to make (what!!) but i fear that may be a lil too ambitious. basically what if the city you were living in was alive, and had a heart, and what if you communed with it when you were a child. what if it started to wake up and mess w/ the manmade tech baked into its skin. what if it started talking to you.

PIRATE WIP - warmth twice removed.

so basically every. waves hand. xx years a passage opens up that allows vessels into a freaky-scary ocean that ALLEGEDLY holds the gift of eternal life. or at least thats what everyone assumes. only one crew has ever made it close enough to know and they disappeared. it's also home to, you guessed it, freaky-scary monsters that WILL kill your ass and sink your boat. follows a crew as they try to find TREASURE!! and not get their asses killed

VAMPIRE WIP - varicose.

pov you're a vampire that was turned bc your maker saw, more than anything, how little you wanted to live. and he thought it'd be funny to force you to do it anyway. this is the strangest relationship of your life until you meet a monster hunter turned emergency room doc. something something they have to work together bc idk. there's a rogue vampire or something. just trust and believe it's going to be homoerotic and weird

FREAKASS CITY POPULATION THIS WIP - the altar of haven.

follows a group of climbers as they try to make it to haven's altar, a near mythical place on top of THEE tallest mountain in the world. there's a whole religion based on the idea that god resides at the peak and those who reach it will be blessed. everyone's got their own reason for being on the mountain (none of them are good) and the only thing they want more than to get to the top is to NOT tell ANYONE why they're there. surely this will end well!

ok heartfelt time. if you got to here thank you for reading all of these!! and hopefully voting! i really wanna do something for nano this year (i will not be doing it on the website however - independent tracker yay) but i cannot get myself to commit to a wip for longer than a week. i'm hoping the external. pressure? validation? idk but whatever it is fingers crossed it gets me to focus on something long enough to actually write it!

[ochrearia]

Hey so it seems like it's not just me who's scared of talking to mutuals even though realistically we shouldn't be afraid but yknow. Nervous. Says the idiot with social anxiety LMFAO

Ah whatever here's my point. I'm going. To run a poll with some dialogue options and since it's anonymous voting you won't have to worry about any eyes actually being on you, only I have to worry about that (and I've been dealing with such things for over a decade so I can handle putting myself on the spot for this) and you can choose one and I'll after a little bit reblog this post with answers to every/all of the options voted for. So we can have a little conversation without you having to feel out of your comfort zone. Especially if it's the first time we've spoken :o and if it really does help you can come into the comments and continue the conversation!!!! Yea

I have no idea if anyone's gonna do this and if it flops we can ignore it but I wanna do something niceys. The minute I see everyone around me having social anxiety my own social anxiety kills itself in favor of trying to help everyone elsedsfdgfhg

This is very silly and I'm hesitant but Im PRESSING POST BEFORE I CAN WIMP OUT

[togglesbloggle]

I was tagged by @wellmetmat in @perdvivly's ask meme that's going around- thanks for the interest! A few questions, they shall be answered. I won't tag anyone else for now, but anyone who sees this should absolutely respond if they're so inclined.

1. What virtue do you most often see in other people that you feel comparatively deficient in?

Easy one for me: diligence. Consistency, commitment, patient sustained focus on moderate challenges. Being there not on day 1 but on day 1000.

It's a skill I greatly admire in others, and I'm often drawn to those who can practice it successfully and consistently. The virtue of diligence has a way of making the world around oneself a dramatically better place, so being attracted to such people really works out well for me in the long run. Good parenting is perhaps one of the ur-examples here; the stakes of consistency get about as high as they reasonably can, and the rewards are just as clear. I've heard parents say that it's a time of very long days and very short years, and I often strive to give my days and my years the same quality- with not as much success as I'd like.

2. Show us an object in your daily life that you have an emotional attachment to - tell us a little bit about it if you want! (a favourite mug perhaps? socks with a cute pattern? dealers choice)

I actually live more-or-less surrounded by little curios that meet this description, so I had a lot to choose from. It's a lifestyle, or at least a method of interior decorating, that makes me really happy. I grabbed these three more or less at random. From left to right:

Every geologist has a collection of boring-looking rocks with cool science attached; this is the star of my collection. It's a microbialite, meaning roughly that it's a 'fossil' of an ancient microbial mat. This one is from the Buck Reef Chert in South Africa, basically a piece of flint. It's 3.42 billion years old, from the Paleoarchean. It's nearly seven times older than multicellular life, and even predates oxygenic photosynthesis (which is the pattern where plants or green algae uptake CO2 and release oxygen); the organisms that created this fossil breathed iron instead. So it's the sort of organism that was common in the shallower waters of Earth's oceans back in the most primordial ecosystems we have a record of. A relic from an alien world, older than a full third of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. I find it very beautiful to be biologically related to it, and to be part of the same uninterrupted organic chemical reaction.

In the middle is my orchestrator badge for a university class which conducts an elaborate simulation of the papal election of 1492 and its aftermath, run by a professor in the history department- this is last year's. You may recognize 1492 in the Italian peninsula as 'interesting times'. It's taken for class credit, but the heart of it is a LARP that plays out over the course of about two and a half weeks, with full costuming and set-dressing. Every student is assigned a particular period character; most are voting cardinals, some are monarchs ruling over France or Spain and trying to get a favorable pope for themselves, a few are invented minor roles like vote counters that wouldn't have been recorded by history (so that clever cardinals can bribe them, among other things; we have rules for how much the vote-takers can cheat). After suitable prep, we let them loose, and watch the poor bastards chase incentive gradients far enough to burn Europe to the ground. I myself pretend to be a mere orchestrator for the first three days of the simulation, and act mostly as a custodian for the monarchs, but then I dramatically reveal myself to actually be Sultan Bayezid II, of the Ottoman Empire, and then proceed to menace Europe with my impossible wealth, vast armies, and advanced technologies. It is, without fail, a delight.

The right is a watch given to me as a birthday gift some years ago by my dear sister, one of the marvelous transparent ones where you can see finely made gears and springs all working. It's effective for being taken seriously in Europe; combined with brown leather shoes and a thoughtful choice of shirt, it's enough to elevate you above the 'slobby American tourist' first impressions. The watch's finest hour was when I wore it to the front row of the Penn and Teller production of Shakespeare's Tempest. The show was full of stage magic to supplement the play itself, because of course it was, and this watch was irresistible to them during the audience-participation bits. Ariel the wind spirit made a great show of stealing it off my wrist, and of disappearing it and so on multiple times.

3. If you could choose, what level of fame would you want? How many people would you want to recognise you?

There's a level of demifame that I think is just right: enough respect within a widely-spread subculture to earn a comfortable income from fans, and relative anonymity outside it. Jo Walton is at about that sweet spot, for a concrete example. In practice, I think this translates to a few tens of thousands of people around the world that would recognize you, but the key is that they're not randomly selected: they're the people that you share that subculture with, so there's a baseline of mutual regard and shared values even when you're greeted out of nowhere by a stranger in a strange city.

4. Where do you feel language is least adequate to capture, communicate, or express your experience?

What a mean question to ask by text! Ha.

There's a set of experiences you can reach, which I happened to find both through scientific literacy and mindfulness meditation, involving the conditionality and contingencies of personal identity. You may have felt it a little bit when I was talking about my favorite rock, just now; you might not have. I have a powerful and sustained sense of myself as an expression of natural processes, or perhaps of the role of consciousness in illuminating the full depth of that process. It's quite comforting, I suppose, though even that's not a particularly apt description really. I think I called it being 'deep okay' a while back, though I don't recall where; I don’t think I came up with that label myself though. It was here!

5. If you had to come up with a question with the following criteria:

a) it should disuade knee-jerk reaction answers (i.e. it shouldn't be something people are likely to have spent a lot of time considering before)

b) it shouldn't be too specialised (the audience should be general, don't ask about people's top 3 byzantine spice merchants opperating between 754AD-816AD)

c) it shouldn't be needlessly emotionally charged or divisive

d) it should be a question you expect people to have lots of varied opinions about

What would your question be?

What are the kinds of magic you most wish for, or the laws of reality that you most wish could be overcome? What would this allow you to become?

---

Actually I lied I'm tagging @ritterum @femmenietzsche @eka-mark if they haven't been already.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I am one of those weirdo lurkers on your blog who is so paranoid about being known for reading what you post that (sometimes I agree sometimes I don't) that I don't follow but just search up your blog every couple of days. I just wanna get something off my chest. Sorry that this will probably sound incoherent and is done suddenly...

....but as an American who can check off multiple boxes in the oppression Olympics if I choose to do so, I hate that I'm expected to care about each and every "new" or trendy activism going on. I hate that "caring" about real political issues and causes is a trend! A real activist is in it for life or until they see the change they wanna see. But because of social media...everyone is an "activist" for a cause until it dies down. Remember Ukraine? I'm pretty sure they are still fighting but suddenly I hear NOTHING about it to the point I have to routinely look it up see if it's still going on. I wonder if the news still even report about it.

I'm not good at articulating myself but to be blunt, I can't make myself care about every single current and horrific events all over the world. It's not for the lack of trying either! I tried! I really did try because I thought, at the time, as an American who is of a racial minority and a lesbian who also has the additional privilege of being from a loving middle-class family, I have to fight for everyone less fortunate than I from circumstances I have no control over. I did not make these people suffer. I did not put terrible government officials in office (I was a too young to vote at the time). I was either a twinkle in my parents' eyes or a child when a lot of things that are causing problems today, started!

I learned the hard way that living like that will lead you to doing no good for the people suffering and you just tire yourself out into a person who now struggles with empathy because I think I broke a part of my brain trying to be a savior or something...and for what? I am not an activist. I do not have the strength or the knowledge or the mental fortitude to be one. The most I can do is try to make the local area, the city, and the state I live in a habitable state for myself, my loved ones, and others who live here as well.

What's funny is that I was not, and probably never will be, well-versed in politics and economics because I can admit that certain things don't wrap around my head (I like to think I know enough to recognize when my rights get violated). But because I check off on XYZ I'm expected to know and have a very strong "well-informed" political stance. I feel like to be well-informed on politics, you need to be reading up on everything for months to even form a single solid thought or opinion based on fact and not random short videos you found while scrolling in the bathroom.

No one can, or should be expected to, care about every horrible thing happening in the world. That's the path to madness and hopelessness. Which is exactly what the modern activist class wants. They want you so demoralized and so angry about everything that you'll latch onto anyone with a solution regardless of what the solution demands from you. They want you to gleefully give up your rights for a false safety that was never necessary in the first place. As you said, all anyone can do is to try and improve their own lives and the lives of the people directly around them. Picking up a piece of trash from your local park does more to actually improve life any any three astroturfed protests or government welfare program.

[copperbadge]

Okay, it may be obvious by now that I'm ALREADY doing a re-read of your Askazer-Shivadlakia books (I really want it to be Ashkazer because it's how my brain first read it, but alas....)

On to Infinite Jes--when I read it the first time, I saw Noah calling Jes "Boss" because they work together. Now I realize it is, or could be, a gender-neutral word for parent.

If they didn't work together, would this still be what Noah called Jes?

As a parent myself, I think "boss" is a pretty reductive word, so I'm curious about what it means to Noah and Jes.

LOL, hey, I've re-read them a handful of times, no reason anyone else shouldn't. :D

Essentially I think of Boss as a term of endearment -- you might say "she's my boss" or "he's the boss" but you don't generally call someone just "boss" to their face, unless you have some other kind of relationship to them as well. It's a very casual thing to do, at least to my mind.

I have the process of all this written out somewhere but I think it's in bits and pieces scattered across last March or April. To summarize, I did a survey where I asked, essentially, if you're a nonbinary parent or the child of one, what parental term do you use? and I got a lot of specific terms, but also general discussion -- for example, some kids use the term of the parent's assigned-gender-at-birth, and others use a term that most fits the parent's "role" (ie, a nonbinary person who leans more masculine might be "dad" regardless of their gender identity/AGAB). Above a certain age it seems like most kids use the parent's name, but it's by no means universal.

None of the specific terms resonated for me with Jes and Noah's relationship. Some I didn't like the sound of, others just didn't feel quite accurate, especially for use by a child on the cusp of adulthood. Noah's old enough not to use a gendered term, but "parent" in direct address felt too formal, and something like "rent" or "renny" felt disrespectful in this context (to be clear I think these are fine objectively, and I'm not here to say what you should or shouldn't call a parent, but for this specific relationship it felt wrong). I felt weird making up a gender-neutral Shivadh term for parent, since then I'd have to do at least a brief exposition dump about what the term was and what it meant.

The only thing that did resonate was the idea of Jes and Noah figuring out a term together. Jes has always given Noah a lot of well-supported autonomy, so it made sense that once he was old enough, he'd have a full vote in what he was going to call them. Boss was convenient as it was evident Noah was eventually going to be working with them on the podcast, and it was catchier to my ear (and thus Noah's) than some other terms.

Within their relationship, it acknowledges that Jes has the ultimate authority as parent, but also that they aren't actually in an employer-employee situation, that there's a deeper bond between them and a more comprehensive expectation of care from Jes. It says "I know the buck stops with you, but you have a duty to look out for me and treat me like a person."

For another kind of parent-child relationship I would probably choose something different, but Boss feels to me like it suits them in the way they have of like -- obviously being a loving family, but also being very Shivadh in their trolling of each other. I think even if they didn't work together, they'd probably both find "boss" pretty apt.

But also, you know, I really think it does depend on the parent and child, so I could see how you wouldn't want your kid to call you that, which is perfectly legit. Boss is definitely not some platonic ideal, it's just what Noah and Jes cobbled together without much in the way of a handbook for this kind of thing.

Anyway if you use any term for anything long enough it starts to sound natural to your ear, and that idea is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting for "boss" -- by the time I was done with the book it sounded as natural to me as "mom" or "dad". So it could be I'm just more acclimated to it. :D

[mihai-florescu]

Hiiii could i ask about what exactly happened between leo and izumi? I've read checkmate, but I don't quite get it about how it's izumi's fault why leo started to lock himself up and all that stuff, especially when leoizu started talking during the performance. It's a bit confusing, but from what I understood, leo crumbled because of knowing the fact that he's been used and not loved, and chess breaking up from the inside. Thank you!!

Hii I'll start by saying that this is what I've made sense of this plotline for myself based on what i've read but I am welcome to other interpretations or insights or anything from anyone, it's also likely i could be forgetting things etc so if you have different views I'm curious to listen🫶 i totally welcome the possibility that i could be interpreting or piecing things together wrong (i'm mainly going off of checkmate, hortor night halloween, and next door) so, yeah, putting the disclaimer out there.

Let's see...

Things start going downhill since Leo realizes his music is seen as a weapon and chooses to act accordingly, and to make himself into one too. There's a response to rejection and to a world that doesn't think and feel like he did. But Leo loves bringing joy to people and doesn't actually like destroying others, so the pressure adds up. That's not what breaks him quite yet though (we'll return to that). He has Izumi he's vowed to fight for, a lifeline. But Izumi is driven by his pride and that gets bruised the more they fight, the more opponents' resentment follows them. They were doomed since the moment they started fighting through the dreamfes system. Making enemies out of fellow students when the system is based on student votes is bound for failure, let alone the mental turmoil being constantly surrounded by hatred and fighting brings.

So... Izumi and Leo are on edge more and more, sinking further with every battle. They already struggle with not really understanding or getting through to one another, or to interpret each other. Izumi believes Leo's breaking point came from being hated by others, and that he caused it alone by bringing the sensitive, trusting Leo to fight with him against the other students (taking advantage of Leo, even though Leo himself offered it. And he's not as blameless or stupid as one would think...). He never shows Leo gratitude or love anymore, is always unhappy and the 2 start arguing more seriously, their mental states plummeting the more they struggle, knowing it's futile. So when Leo breaks, Izumi can't help but blame his actions, his ambitions, him using Leo, him and his pride.

On the other hand, we only get Leo's pov in the Next Door monologue, where he reveals what broke him was using his genius songs as weapons and thus drowning out every other individual song that wasn't as skilled but could've been loved by someone. And at some point he starts doing it knowingly, in a way selling out. The unbearable atmosphere of wanting to win that sucks all joy out of music. While Knights is getting resented, Leo uses his composing of songs for others as weapons, drowning out their own voices and creating more destruction. So... it's still his love for people that breaks him in the end, in my opinion, just not what we originally thought through Izumi's view, or at least not fully that.

Leo's breakdown comes with a musical slump. And having tied so much of his worth to his songs, it takes the biggest toll on him. But... I really think it's a combination of everything. Leo's surprisingly self loathing the more you read stories with him so I don't fully believe his monologue in Next Door where he says it's all his fault, especially considering the state he was in during those chapters. I don't believe any of the characters when they say it's all their fault, too many little things were at play and piling up into tragedy, and none of them are really...reliable narrators. They're all in terrible headspaces when they thinks about what happened. But that's also why I feel like I myself could still be interpreting things wrong and welcome new insights and views.

Also... imo Izumi doesn't quite realise how much he cared for Leo until he's out of the picture, broken down, and they can't get back what they had. Ah i got side tracked. What was the question again. Did i even answer the question at all. All these guys are self loathing unreliable narrators...

[gentil-minou]

hi! I hope you’re doing ok! I’ve never written an ask before so I have no idea how to do this, but you’re one of the only people I follow who is posting about Palestine, so I wanted to ask. And as a brown person I’m really worried rn.

Elections are next year and I’ve seen so many saying that people should vote for Biden because he’s at least better than Trump which is… I don’t know what to say, but it’s completely absurd. This is going to be my first time voting and all I get from people is the same “lesser of two evils” rhetoric. It’s genuinely disheartening to see that these are the only options that are shown to people. I was wondering about what you think of what’s happening, and whether voting third party seems possible

I’m sorry if this was rude to ask you, but thanks for taking the time to read this!

It's not rude, I'm glad I made you feel safe enough to ask this!

I only have one answer for you: Do not let anyone tell you who to vote for or make you feel like an evil person if you choose not to vote for the person they want you to.

Vote, definitely vote!!! Especially in local elections, those are the best ways to get people you want in power and they are in charge of a lot of important changes.

As for the presidential elections, I've had so many people I thought I admired or at least felt comfortable around attack me for my choice not to vote for Biden. I've had people claim I was spreading "pro-Trump propaganda" (which is just ridiculously bad faith in all ways), tell me that I—a queer POC—am anti-LGBTQ, and tell me I'll be deported.

They do this all while ignoring and invalidating the very real anger and hurt the Muslim and Brown populations of the US are dealing with, all because their comfort is being threatened. And instead of pressuring the party that's doing that harm and try to listen to why we feel so betrayed by Biden, they double down and attack us. In fact, they are showing their true colors. They, like Biden, only ever pretended to care about us. So I am going to vote for people who actually do care about me, even if they say I'm going to "waste my vote"

Here's the thing; as long as you vote for who you feel the most supported by, as long as you go into that voting booth and step out feeling good about your vote, then you are not wasting it.

Putting this under a read more cause it's getting long

Personally, I'm voting third party. I've had my eye on the Socialist Party but am also keeping an eye out for the others and whether or not they stand out to me

At this point, unless the DNC decides to put another candidate forward, which they most definitely won't, the Democratic party has lost me forever. I'm lucky that my Dem representative has at least shown they're on the right side of history, but I don't think I will ever vote for the Dem party again. I've forced myself to do it for the last decade and I've been disappointed or betrayed every time, so no more.

I agree this two party system is a joke and we are all being made to be a part of it when no other democratic nation has something like this. Even other countries say our "progressive" party is just centrist. And that just doesn't reflect my values.

Liberals and "vote blue no matter who" are going to tell you that you're wasting your vote by voting third party, but in actuality they are the ones supporting a flawed system that only benefits itself, not the people. The more people who vote third party, the more the dems will be pressured to put forth progressive candidates like AOC or Rashida who are actually on the left. By voting third party, you are saying you won't stand by a broken system any longer

does this mean Republicans might win and we get another trump administration? Yes, probably, but here's the thing: when you look at the last 3 years, and I mean really look at it, have things improved all that much under biden? I, as a queer poc can't say that it has. Both are evil, one just pretends not to be. At this point I see no difference between Trump and Biden. Both don't give a shit about me.

The lesser of 2 evils is still evil, why vote for them? Why would I vote for either of them?

Why would I reward anyone who support genocide and cheers for it? Both Trump and Biden openly do. Their only difference is Biden is a better actor.

If my people were the ones being slaughtered (and they were. For a long long time they were), would I be okay with sitting back and letting these parties walk all over me? No, I don't think I would be.

The fact of the matter is that change does not come fast or easy. These things take time and pressure and a refusal to give in. Voting for Biden after all the horrible things he's done the past couple years is just rewarding a system that is fundamentally broken. You can keep trying to chug along on a broken wheel hurtling you towards doom, or you can take the time to force it to change.

I do believe the younger vote has a big chance to change things, to pressure our government to actually support its people, not just the white ones with money.

Ultimately you get to decide who to vote for. Use your right to vote, don't ignore it and don't waste it by voting for someone you don't actually believe in.

[vermillioncourt-if]

I'm sorry shen not trying to start a fight on your page. This is simply my opinion so take it with a pinch of salt.

That anon saying it's ignorance for the people who voted in the poll to give their opinion! And because they didn't choose what this anon wanted they are considered ignorant? That's a bit mean spirited.

Anons reasoning could then apply to literally every other person who voted here. Because what if the people who voted don't want a male or one of the other female characters they like being a Dom because of personal reasons and that's why they voted the way they voted? Are you then saying that reasoning is less valid because it's not the female character you like?

What if the RO they personally identify with is not tht specific character you liked.. that makes them ignorant for not voting for what you personally would have liked? Myself especially as a MLM player. What if my favorite character was made a Dom and I didn't want that either??

I think the whole point of a poll is to take the opinion of the majority and see what the opinions actually are. Shen sure as fuck didn't mean to offend anyone by answering Sarah's ask and Sarah didn't mean to offend anyone by asking it but again your logic is kinda flawed.

I'm sorry if this actually offends anyone but if there are any aspects of ANY IF that is triggering to ANYONE. then maybe they should find an IF that caters to them and won't cause any unnecessary trauma. I know Shen would never want that and I also hope this page won't fall into the toxic mentality IF readers put pressure on Authors into giving into readers even if that isn't what they envisioned for their IF characters.

I myself asked about changing the age rating for the twin blog and if people vote for it to stay 17+ I will accept it because it's not just about what I want. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Sorry shen if this is a bit of a shitty rant. I wouldn't want to upset you. ♥️

It's fine, please don't worry about it! ❤️

I really was just trying to put feelers out to see what the general opinion/preference is with the poll. I certainly did not intend to start this back and forth.

That said, this is the last post/ask I'll answer regarding the poll. If you guys feel the need to discuss, feel free to privately amongst yourselves.

Thanks! ❤️