#this podcast makes me feel emotions that don't exist

[just-your-average-tangerine]

This is reviews and ratings for the narrative/ fiction podcasts I have/ am listening to. This is mostly for me but if you want to use this as a recommendation go for it but be warned I'm not talking about plot or giving a description, there's no mentions of potentially triggering material so do your own research first if that's something your concerned about.

Welcome to Night Vale

-Night Vale owns my entire ass, no one does it better. I've been listening since the beginning and while I do think the quality has dipped a bit in the last few years its still really good. 9/10

The Magnus Archives

-Nearly perfect. Holds up and even improves with subsequent listens. The final season drags a bit imo but worth it in the end. 9/10

Old Gods of Appalachia

-really good story, gives you a lot to keep track of character wise but is written well enough that its not too hard and you can still follow the story if you forget some. 8/10

Moonbase Theta Out

-I can't wait for this to be over. Unfortunately, the storyline has a chokehold on me, and i need to know how it ends. Otherwise, i wouldn't be listening anymore. While there are several pretty good voice actors, there's enough bad ones that it's hard to listen to. Took the idea that characters should be flawed a little too far and made nearly every character completely insufferable. Nearly everytime a character is being given critical and emotional information it cuts away, in what I assume is an attempt to save the audience from listening to the same information over and over again, but instead it deprives the audience that look at how the character reacts to the information, which could go a long way in making them seem more fleshed out, instead you only see them emote in angry outbursts or melodramatic soliloquies (which is not helped by the subpar acting). 2/10

Death By Dying

-pretty funny but I don't think there's been enough episodes to make a educated review or rating

Hello from the Hallowoods

- very good overall. Good story, heartfelt and well written. Percy's story hits close to home for me, which sometimes makes me mad because he comes across as very weak and insecure and it gets on my nerves. But honestly that's less of a problem with the Percy or the writing and more of a problem of him being one of the very very few trans masc characters in existence so its extra disappointing when i find him irritating. Polly owns my ass, I would die for him. 8/10

Where the Stars Fell

-I binge listened up to the current season which I feel wasn't the way to go but it's still pretty enjoyable. 6/10

Midnight Burger

-Very funny. I love the characters and their dynamic and just the idea of a time a space traveling diner, it's beautiful. The beginning of this new arc confused me a bit but it's starting to come together. 7/10

We Fix Space Junk

- Very funny but with the underlying terror of what's going on with automnicon. Looking forward to new episodes. 6/10

The Sheridan Tapes

-started really strong but has been spending too much time on the characters agnst and not enough time actually progressing the story. At this point I'm just looking forward to a conclusion. 4/10

Camp Here and There

- it was pretty good, nothing exceptional but not bad but then I took a single glance at what was going on in the fandom and it was so obnoxious that it immediately ruined it for me. I feel bad lowering the rating due to the fandom but like, yikes. 2/10

SCP Readings

-very entertaining, easy to follow even if you don't have any prior knowledge about scp, which I do not. 7/10

The Amelia Project

-I think I'm to early in this one to make a solid judgement but I enjoy it so far. Venerio haunts me.

[thenightfolknetwork]

So I used to have an ability where people would tell me things. Not with me asking mind you, just we'd start talking and they'd say things that they'd normally keep secret, or at least not tell a complete stranger. I'd try to warn people, or redirect the conversation if things got too personal, but it still kind of happened. A while ago though, I had something of a burnout, and my "gift" was probably part of it. And now it's gone. Is it weird that I kind of miss it? Even though it was a pain?

I don't think it's “weird” necessarily, reader – you'd grown used to existing in the world in a certain way and it makes sense that you would feel disconcerted when that way of being has been disrupted.

However, I wonder if it might not necessarily be the powers itself that you're missing, but rather the effect those powers had. Specifically, you've grown used to enjoying a remarkable level of intimacy with others without the usual hard work or reciprocation on your part.

Most people need a certain degree of emotional connection with other people in order to stay well. The quantity and quality of connection needed varies from person to person, with some people thriving on what others would find distressingly low levels of emotional engagement.

I wonder if you might have grown used to meeting your own needs in this regards through the use of your powers. That would explain your feelings of loss now, especially if you haven't got other avenues to meet those needs.

To be clear, I am not saying that as a judgement on you – this wasn't a power you asked for, nor one you could control. We have had letters from people in past who took a little too well to having this kind of control over people, and you don't strike me as one of them.

Besides, it is a wonderful feeling, to be trusted with someone's innermost thoughts and feelings. Growing close with others is a notoriously cyclical process – vulnerability is impossible without trust, and trust is impossible without vulnerability.

However, your powers meant you could skip straight to the part where other people are vulnerable with you, without sharing anything of yourself or building a connection with the people you're talking to. Without those powers, you're going to have to take the slow path.

Check in with your friends and loved ones, and try to be honest with them about your own emotions. Reach out to them when you're in need, and let them support you. In time, with a proper investment of effort and emotion, you will be able to build genuine connections with the people around you, replacing the easy hit you once got from your powers with something much more sustainable, and sustaining.

[For more creaturely advice, check out Monstrous Agonies on your podcast platform of choice, or visit monstrousproductions.org for more info]

[thevegetablewhichnoonedaresname]

I'm starting Mission to Zyxx Season 5 now, and I have feelings about that.

First, it generally scares me when people hype anything up at all because there is no guarantee that anyone values the exact same thing I do to the same degree. Even if I trust the creators of a thing to value something and try to do right by it, that doesn't always necessarily mean it will be successful, especially if that involves doing something wildly different than what made it good in the first place (I have been burned this way before). I guess I'm just hoping they continue the format of goofy improv shenanigans for the majority of it with something more planned and emotional in the finale if they want, like they've been doing all along. I'd think they would, and I've heard nothing bad about the ending, but I guess it still makes me nervous because I'm so close to the end and I want it so badly to stick the landing. I'm setting my expectations on the floor so I can be surprised instead of disappointed, but honestly, I don't need it to be better, I just need it to be on par with the rest.

Second, and more briefly, I'm happy it's (hopefully) ending before it has a chance to decline. I am so on board with that philosophy. But on the other hand, finishing a thing that I really, really like and knowing there's not another one out there gives me a special kind of heartache. Like, I know there will be other good media, and stuff that's good and unique in other ways, but I know for a fact that there are no other podcasts out there that have the same mix of a balance of off-the-wall improv and structured narrative, quality comedy, fantastical sci-fi setting and loveable characters, and high quality production. There are other things out there with many of those qualities, but nothing that checks every one of those boxes. It's a lightning-in-a-bottle thing that very much feels like the right people had to be in the right place at the right time to do it. Attempts to do it again would feel hollow because it had to be born out of necessity and passion and the talents of the people involved, so if you switch out the people it loses the reasons it's great, and if the same people tried to do it again it'd feel tired. That makes me so, so grateful it exists, but also so, so sad that it doesn't, and I'm 80% of the way done. When it's over, it's over.

Anyway. Now that that's all out there, I'm just gonna finish listening and have fun. Wish me luck.

[msmargaretmurry]

[coffee cup] romance novels: when do they work for becs and when do they not!!!

oooh okay! so i often call myself a romance novel enjoyer but not a romance novel lover, because romance as a genre often involves things that are at odds with what i love most in fiction. which is fine! many people love those things, there is a reason the genre is like that! it just means that it's rarer for me personally to find a romance novel that works for me on every level. (the things i'm talking about are, i don't usually like alternating POVs between romantic leads, i usually prefer my romantic storylines to be involved with the plot but not the MAIN plot, and my favorite romantic relationships in fiction are ones where i don't know going in that they're going to get together. i LOVE catching a detail or an interaction or sensing some chemistry and going "oh?? are they--?? and then greedily gathering more details as i read to try and figure out what feelings are happening. obviously this cannot happen in a romance novel because you know the endgame from the start!)

so what DOES work for a romance novel for me? i'm sorry this got so fucking long and it's mostly complaining so we're putting it under a cut.

firstly it has to be well-written and well-edited. i'm sorry but a lot of romance is not well-edited and it's so distracting to me. i'll often let a little bit of sloppy writing slide if it's a story i feel feral about, but because romance as a genre isn't built to make me feral, i need the writing to be tight or i'll get so distracted by nit-picking. like, i really wanted to love a caribbean heiress in paris but the female lead "muttered under her breath" TWICE on the FIRST HALF-PAGE. this is a whole different conversation but i do place the blame for this on publishing houses who do not care if these books are well-edited because they think their audience has low standards.

secondly, i need things to happen for real reasons. i listen to the "fated mates" podcast a lot because i find the craft side of it all super interesting. the hosts, who really love romance novels (as opposed to me, a romance enjoyer but not lover), often talk about things in romance novels happening or existing for "romance reasons," which are reasons that aren't really justified by the story/plot but that the reader goes with anyway for the sake of the story. romance reasons are almost never enough for me. i need there to be real worldbuilding. if it's contemporary romance, i need it to jive with how things work in the real world. if it's historical romance, there are different rules, because historical romance can run the gamut from trying to actually be historically accurate to totally made-up societal rules in a historical setting. i will meet the book where it's at, but i need the internal world to make sense. no romance reasons.

thirdly, relatedly, i need the author to know their shit. if a character is an athlete, i need the details of that sport to be accurate. if your character works as a nonprofit, i need it to be clear that the author understands the basics of how a nonprofit works. if your character is involved in politics, do not make up how politics work to serve your story, because i will be too annoyed to enjoy it. i read a het hockey romance the other day where there was a rumor about a popular player retiring an the author had a reporter from the ASSOCIATED PRESS show up at the LOVE INTEREST'S HOUSE to try to get details about it and then MORE MEDIA OUTLETS SHOWED UP TO CAMP ON HER LAWN about it. none of that is how any of that works. i don't need every detail to be perfect. i just need things to feel real.

fourthly, relatedly, i need real stakes and believable conflict and deeply drawn characters. i won't love a book just because it contains a trope i like. i need the trope to work with the characters and within the emotional stakes of the story. i need my romantic leads to have something inside them then genuinely needs healing, and i need to believe that they are people who make each other better. (note that this is for romance novels. in other genres i love weird little freaks who make each other worse.) i know some people like very fluffy low-stakes romances and i support them but those are not for me. the stakes need to not just be about the romance; there needs to be other stuff doing on, both internally for the characters and externally in the world around them.

lastly, if it's het romance, it needs to not be fucking weird about gender in a getting off on traditional gender roles kind of way. i WILL be turned off if you keep telling me about your tiny dainty fragile heroine getting claimed by your big strong serious man hero. like i have enjoyed plenty of historical romances set in very gendered societies where gender roles play a huge part in characters' lives, but you can have gender in grand and delicious ways without making patriarchy the kink. if you are making patriarchy the kink then your book is not for me.

oh sorry two more things. i love it when a romance author tries something off-beat for the genre. very little romance feels truly fresh and new to me, so it's exciting when an author pulls that off. also: when a romance novel has sex scenes that are also character-driven, not always 100% perfect sex, and don't feel skippable. that's the good stuff.

sorry this mostly just turned into complaining about things that i don't like 😂 but it really is for me less about "these things work for me" and more about "these are the things that DON'T work for me and i kEEP RUNNING INTO THEM." here are some of my favorite romance novels: evvie drake starts over by linda holmes. the countess conspiracy by courtney milan. think of england by kj charles.

[liskantope]

I may as well share my semi-effortful (though rambly) comment on one of Ozy's recent posts criticizing Amanda Shrier on her recent anti-therapy-culture book, as I imagine more people might see or interact with it here than in that comments section. What I'm most interested in here is, what does it mean to experience the emotion of happiness?

I learned of Shrier's existence and her book from seeing her interviewed by Coleman Hughes on his podcast, and I thought throughout that interview Shrier sounded like she was made of good common sense (it helps that I'm already broadly in sympathy with wanting to push back against what we might call "very online therapy culture" which Ozy seems also to be in agreement with), with an exceptional moment here or there: for instance, at some point one of them (I think it was Coleman) seemed to imply that it's good when children are slightly scared of their parents. While there may be some empirical evidence somewhere that children who are slightly scared of their parents stay on the straight-and-narrow and have more positive life/career outcomes or something, this idea still massively creeps me out. But still, overall in conversation, Shrier comes across as reasonable. I think this sequence of posts tearing apart her parenting beliefs as expressed in her book (unless a bunch of these quotes are grossly taken out of context in some way I can't see) show that she's less reasonable "in writing" and that her more deliberate beliefs that she expresses in her work represent a pushback that is righteous initially but goes to an unfortunate far extreme in the other direction. The part of her interview that stuck in my mind the most, actually, was her line about "We used to ask kids such-and-such; now we ask them about their feelings all the time", which wasn't something that had occurred to me before but I was open to where she was coming from. So I find the response to it in the end of this article interesting. I don't say this with much confidence, but I tend to feel more like Shrier on the issue of how often we're actually feeling the emotion of happiness, although I don't think I'm clinically depressed or at all prone to it (although I have a rather negative outlook at the moment about my future prospects and the world in general which may prevent me from feeling much wholehearted happiness, but that goes for a lot of us. I think perhaps a majority of people relate more to Shrier here. Just yesterday or so, I saw a post from a Tumblr mutual saying they haven't had a single actually *pleasant* day in years like they used to in the 2010's, only "good given the worse background situation" days. This seems to relate to the same idea. Maybe due to recent shifts in world events most of us have moved in that direction? I don't know.) I would suggest actually from reading the end of this article that the difference might come not from psychological make-up but from a disagreement over the definition what it means to feel happiness, where Ozy's definition aligns more with what Shrier and I would call "feeling okay".

[gothicprep]

the worst part about the information-social media ecosystem rn is that we’ll have, like, people will support Thing. then you’ll have an anti-Thing market emerge. and then you have the anti-anti-Thing market. backlash to backlash, dust to dust.

the current thing with this is “wokeness���, a word I hate more than I hate ranch dressing. the problem with the anti-anti-woke guys is that they generally don’t acknowledge that socialists have been critiquing identity politics for decades before the first conservative ever uttered the word “woke”. and ignoring the criticisms of this from the left strikes me as not engaging with the skeptics’ strongest argument by pretending they don’t exist. I get that the socialists arguing this are generally smarter than Gary from Facebook, which makes them harder targets. either way. I just don’t like this very much. it’s shallow.

that preamble out of the way, I was watching YouTube video from someone on team anti-anti. I’m not sure why I keep doing this because I always get disappointed for the same reasons, but some may call it masochism and I dont appreciate being non-sexually kink shamed.

the person in the video brought up nerdy youtube film critics who were angry about the Star Wars sequel trilogy as a pet example, but I feel like this is a really weak point. the sequel trilogy is done now, and knowing how poorly it played out, we may have to admit that the bitter nerds who said that it starred a woman and two men of color as just a cyclical marketing decision might have seen something we did not. they did basically nothing with oscar isaac and john boyega which is so. imagine signing them to your movie and doing nothing with these amazing actors! felony! go to jail! at least boyega has the good sense to be openly critical of this. and as for rey, she doesn’t exactly have an arc.

I rewatched the force awakens for the first time in a long time in a while a few months ago and, now that we’re out of the cultural moment it was released in, it feels very different. very 2015 pilled in the sense that it aged like milk that's been sitting in the fridge for 8 years and has begun to cultivate bacteria that no microbiologist has ever observed. and i don't think the bitter nerds were wrong to interpret kylo ren as a strawmen of, well, people like them who don't want people messing with a franchise they have a lot of emotional investment in. and while you can write this off as them saying "we don't want women to enjoy star wars", observing that these movies are ultimately products, disney aspires to have a larger net worth than god, and not trusting where they're going with this... it's not entirely unfair, even though there are very real problems of racism and misogyny in nerd circles.

sometimes when we defend stuff from the angle that representation is good, we inadvertently forget that the "you can be a jedi too, little girl or black child of unspecified gender" thing is mostly done with the intention of consumer outreach because we're biased in favor of rep. the bitter nerds are not, and it gives them shinigami eyes. pandering is a bit more obvious when you're not the one being catered to. or something. i also don't think this is exclusively right wing, it's just that a lot of lefties are more reluctant to say something. if you phrase yourself incorrectly, it looks REALLY sketchy, even if you frame it through the "ultimately, these are products" lens, and sometimes it's best to just not comment.

i saw critical drinker, who's one of the more annoying of these youtube film critic types, on a podcast semi recently, and when he drops the anti-woke kayfabe, you just see a frustrated guy who writes screenplays as a hobby and doesn't like how many female-led stories skimp on developing conflict, or the disappearance of the mentor/student dynamic in storytelling and why this is doesn't bode well for franchise reboots that are meant to pass the torch, how unearned that feels. and even though i think his videos are cringey as shit, they're coming from a real place of caring about stories and being frustrated that the biggest purveyors of them don't seem to care back. i'm sympathetic to this, even if i think "wokeness" is an intellectually lazy copout and the preferred method of delivery makes me want to get my eardrum pierced.

iunno. i think, maybe, if you want to talk about these guys, it would make for a better story if you talked to them. or at the very least, try to understand what the substantive meat of their problem is as a fly on the wall. even if you ultimately decide that they're being irrational, "irrational" is not synonymous with "random". that's an important thing not to lose sight of. and while i do believe a lot of the anti-woke stuff is irrational, i do think it's worth trying to make a real effort to figure out what's going on underneath it all. but thinking too much gives you wrinkles, or whatever malibu stacey said. oh well!

[nutria--oscura]

Y'ALL HAVE ME SO SCARED FOR THIS (@cookies-over-yonder @officialgleamstar y'all's posts have slain me) HERE WE GO

like, i'm crting and i haven't even stareted the ep yet wtf-

~spoilers for S2 ep35 under the cut~

preface: I AM SCARED I AM CLUTCHING NICK JR (mouse/rat soft toy) ON THE VERGE OF TEARS

THE PASTA PUNS IN THE INTRO

the sound effects low-key make me wanna throw up-

update: the sound effects make me high-key wanna throw up-

the intro is the high before the storm right? oh dear~

yesss, link is a spouse to his best friends <3

gosh I missed their voices so much <333 <- literally have 100+ episodes it can listen to whenever they want

freddie correcting beth's fact is literally my best friend and i on a daily basis (whos who? we take turns)

i could listen to an entire podcast of just freddie saying facts. like genuinly

HERMIE FACT??? SCAM CONJURED HIM INTO EXISTENCE AS A HIGHSCHOOLER??? MY POOR BOI-

TJ SHOT NICK'S ARM OFF WHAAAAAAA-

TERRY :) WHAT:)?

"your time studying the blade has served you well" what is hapening?

whAT IS HAPPENING????

Terry Jr's back <333

"i did not think that's how this fight was gonna go" same will- same

hey imps? what the fu-

NORMAL'S BACK BOIIIIIIII

ROLL ROLL ROLL ROLL NAT 1 HAH

SCARY AND TERRY JR <3

MEMORY TIME OH DEARRR

"in going from enemies to lovers so to speak"

all the fanfics were right- (nicky's reasoning, him attempting to reason with the others)

ron and nicky are such a vibe together honestly

OH NO- NICKY WAS SO REASONABLE TOO AND YET-

LARK AND SPARROW WITH CROSSBOWS TERRY WITH A SHOTGUN WHERE'S GRANT???

"and a badass fight ensues, but also sad"

oh there's grant

OH WE GOT THE WHOLE ASS SCENE OH SHIT-

TERRY SHOT NICKY, NICKY STABBED TERRY-

TERRY JR AND RON <33

terry's memory being ron forgiving him- (henry voice) oh gosh. oh geez-

"did you see what i did to like, my best friend" BEST F R I E N D

"you showed up, y'know?" what if i just combust?

Scary hugging Terry<333

THEY'RE ALL HUGGING

oh my heart

hey glenn, respectfully, fuck offffff

nicky having more emotional intelligence than glenn is so true-

OH HERE COMES THE GLENN AND NICKY AND TAYLOR SHIT-

"i have a memory that you weren't around for. which was the birth of your grandson" AHHHHHHH

"i always thought taylor came out real quiet. like a real stoic ninja." "nope. came out crying like a baby dude"

glenn... glENN. GLENN! NO. NOT INFRONT OF YOUR 3 DAY OLD GRANDSON

THE FANFICTIONS WERE SO RIGHT- (GLENN IN NICKY'S LIFE BEFORE THE FAITHFULL SOCCER TRIP)

brb cause im like actually crying cause of that scene-

ok... lets go... (screaming crying sobbing sliding down a wall)

JODIE VISITEDDDD

FUCKING TELL HIM NICKYYYY FUCKING TELL HIMMMM

"i remember when... was that you? yea, i remember when you were born." WHAT DO YOU MEAN WAS THAT YOU???? THAT WAS YOUR FUCKING SON

YES GLENN. REFLECT BITCH-

"i didn't see a lot of taylor's growing up, and that was- that was- we're cool now, right taylor?" "fuck yea dawgggg. well-" HERE IT COMES

I AM HEEDING THE WARNINGS

"if i'm gonna be honest dad, i've kinda been hoping and keeping an eye out for time travel magic so that we could go back in time and you could be there for me" imma go ahead an roll a d20 of psychic damage- ah, a nat20 damage, yea that seems about righ- HIS VOICE HOW IT WENT ALL SOFT AND QUIET AND SHY AND THE COMPLETE FUCKING OPPOSITE OF HOW HE IS USUALLY OH SHIT OH FUCK

NICKY ROLL PSYCHIC DAMAGE BOI-

"as a result i have developed a number of very bad habits, that i am told are very hard to break"

"it's too late"

"but you know if there is time travel magic, then y'know maybe- or if you find it, you can maybe, pick me up on the way back to the past" HIS VOICE, THE MAYBES-

"we're just 3 cool guys" "well-"

"i didn't even know where you were"

I'M SORRY- THREE (3) YEARS????

NICKY NO- DON'T-

more memories??? MORE MEMORIES??? OH NO-

OUCH OUCH OUCH O U C H-

HE'S DONE WITH KARATE- NO- NO NO NO N O

FUCKING HELL FUCK ME-

sorry, i have strong feeling w/ regards to parents not showing up to (sprots) stuff

~a pattern~

YES LINK, STARE DAGGERS INTO HIM, DEFEND YOUR QPR BESTIE

the- the fanfics were right (glenn keeping his distance not wanting to fuck nicky up but consequentially fucking nicky up)

"as you're saying this, without even wanting it to, tears are rolling down your cheeks. And in that moment, you and Taylor and Nick, all realise that there is no fixing this, that this is as good as it's going to get. That you are stuck with each other in the forms that you are now. You see daddymagic, that same daddymagic that exited Ron and Terry's body, emanate for their bodies like a fine mist coalesce into the air, and then zip into the jar and fill it up a little bit more, cause that's what your relationship is..." what if i- what if i lost it? right here right now?

gosh i DID NOT heed the warnings oh noooooooo

i'm sorry- the US MILITARY? oh fbi too

hahahahahahahah ha hah h a what? JODIE AND MORGAN ARE IN CUFFS-

GLENN LISTEN TO JODIE FFS

"i'd like to see you try" "hey is glenn immune to bullets?"

LINK KING OF HELLL HEYYYYYYYYYY-

NORMAL NO. BESTIE I LOVE YOU HECK I AM YOU BUT FUCK NO-

"dude- both of us look at each other - fear, fear in taylor's eyes. like, what the fuck are we getting into? why did i open my mouth?" FEAR IN TAYLOR'S EYES??? FEAR????

I'M SORRY? THE CAGE????

FIGHT TO THE DEATH??? NOOOOOOOOOOO

In conclusion:

I am now obsessed with Taylor Swift (Freddie's version)

[welivetodream]

Crippling loneliness in the age of the internet:

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"

~Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart (1999)

Let me set the scene:

In a dark room, the only light is coming from the phone of a girl laying on the bed, as she mindlessly scrolls for hours on end. She is typing fast, she is running multiple apps in the background, she is listening to the latest hits while doing all of this, her earphones never leave her ears; even when she closes her eyes, she is still listening to a podcast. Despite all these activities happening around her. The girl looks bored and apathetic, her eyes are blank, no emotions, no thoughts. And for hours to come she stays in that state, waiting for something to happen, even if it doesn't, she doesn't care.

This could be the opening lines of a sci-fi novel but this is actually how I act when I am alone. This is how my life has become. And while people like to blame this on the internet that has made Gen Z mindless zombies; I think the only reason I haven't died is because of the internet. To normal people it's a curse that makes humanity fall to its lowest. To me it gave a purpose, a want and a direction to live for.

The Internet isn't the evil mastermind to me, it's a necessity that has kept me alive and not succumbing to the fact I have no one to talk with.

Internet to me isn't Instagram, Snapchat, Discord,Twi--X (someone stop Elon Musk from cooking), it's the "quirky" apps like Pinterest, Tumblr and Reddit as well as the depths of content that is YouTube. It's the places where I found "my" people who understood me, who accepted me, who appreciated me. Growing up I had no one to talk with, even my own family wasn't understanding, let alone my friends.

During my school life I had always been surrounded by friends or as I like to put it, people I can talk to and have lunch with during school hours. That's what it was, nothing more than that. My idea of friends was just different from others, I didn't want emotional connection or people to hang out with. I wanted friends who would listen to my ramblings and be able to debate and discuss things with.

I don't want to seem pretentious or snobbish and definitely not above others in any way. But....when I am surrounded by so many frustratingly stupid people, I don't have any other words to describe them than "not good enough for me". They may be wonderful people, who are warm and lively. I do not care about being around such people. I am someone that watches video essays on morality, ethics, philosophy and analysis of movies and TV, in comparison to the people I know I am just more perceptive and thoughtful and that alone makes me seem like a stranger to them (INTPs are weird in short form). My dad told me smart people have it hard to make friends because of this exact nature, I wouldn't call myself incredibly intelligent but I know I am far more capable in thinking than my classmates who watch reality TV shows and Tiktok dances. Sometimes I cannot even comprehend how people can even get satisfaction and happiness from something as simple as that and that's when I understand: it's okay to be different than that and it's okay that they are "normal".

I feel like I am Lain from "Serial Experiments Lain", as if my existence is given meaning by the internet and I was born from it. My lack of social interactions in person can be explained by that, but it's the thought of talking with other people that often scares me. I am used to being silent, so much so that even on the internet, I remain quiet, not interacting with people who might understand me. Being afraid of not being understood has stopped me from even trying to make connections when there's people ready to do that.

I don't even reply to comments on my posts, unless I have to and I don't talk with anyone on the internet itself. I just watch and be happy at other people's interactions and feel a sense of belonging.

For some days I decided to stop doing that, to stop the vow of silence. To let people approach me and approach others myself. I want to be friends and it's the only thing that I have ever considered as something I couldn't achieve.

Loneliness isn't as pretty as the movies and books tell you. It's more of a psychological thriller than a show like Euphoria and Skins where these stylised depictions make my depression and loneliness appear cool. It's cool to be alone, to have my own space and not cross boundaries but it's not cool to let the loneliness that shields me, devour me.

[starberrywander]

I recently figured out that my enneagram type is actually 9w1 and not 1w9. Idk how many of my followers actually care about the Enneagram but this is big news for me because I've been realizing so much stuff from this. It's so exciting!

I started looking into the enneagram as a writing tool, but the podcast I found to learn more about it is focused on personal growth so I've been learning so much more than I expected. One of the things it motivated me to do when I actually narrowed down what my type is and why, is start using a diary.

I'm mainly doing it to become more aware of my own thoughts and emotions. I'm only two days in and I accidentally started writing with the book upsidedown, so now the ribbon bookmark is facing up and I think that's funny. But anyway I wanted to share something I wrote today that just really hit me in the heart,

"I think my discontent with life comes from the fact that I've convinced myself that I want to achieve, but my actual fulfillment comes from being, from experiencing, from connecting. Contentment always feels so far out of reach because I've convinced myself that I am chasing after the completion of goals when I'm actually chasing a state of being."

And just. Wow. That's paraphrased because I don't have my diary with me right now but it made me realize something soo big. I've always been trapped in my imagination, thinking of all these things I wish I could experience but feeling incapable of creating the reality that would bring them to me. And as a result I get into cycles of feeling down and hopeless, sleeping until the emotion goes away, distracting myself with entertainment, remembering injustice and wanting to push back against it, then getting burnt out and depressed by my inability to change anything without sacrificing my connection to the people who are my anchors, and repeating the cycle.

And this time when the depression hit me I decided to just explore it. Write what I was feeling and everything that came to my mind without analyzing it and see where it went. And it just told me right away that I need to stop chasing goals. They aren't fulfilling me. They aren't helping me. They're just distractions and I need to practice just being. Just existing. I can't rely on the external to bring me contentment, that has to come from within. It is impossible to bend reality into perfection to make me happy, but it is possible to change my own patterns to become happier.

This is huge. And it will take time to break my habit of disconnecting. But now I actually am aware of it and of what's going on inside me and that's huge. I wanted to share because this means so much and I need to get it out there. I use my blog as a way of releasing my thoughts into the world and while it may not be as vulnerable as my actual diary this feels like exactly the right place to share this.

[skayafair]

Podcasts against gender stereotypes (yay!)

I made a post about the way gender essentially doesn't exist in Arcane, but I also wanted to say a few words about two podcasts I've been listening to lately.

In The Sheridan Tapes, I was struck by the way Bill Tyler and his partner, Robert Quincy, became the emotional and caring core of the searchers team. Sam Bailey was also allowed to be vulnerable, his "Heart" episode was soul-piercing, and his power relies mostly on intuition, on feelings. He literally needs an emotional connection for it to work in a certain way.

Kate Sheridan and Maria Sol, on the opposite, felt more like the action members of the team for the most of S2, very determined and tough when needed, holding themselves together at all times.

Things shifted to more neutral in S3 and 4, but S2 had me pleasantly surprised, because the traditional gender roles were sort of reversed but not driven to the extremes (like a lot of movies deal with 'tough women' nowadays). I'm agender so I like when gender stereotypes are treated as non-existent and the authors write people, not "men and women".

It's pretty much the same with Syntax Podcast. There's no clear devision gender roles wise, but I liked how Silas - not Lizzy or Alyx or even the most sociable of the group and the team leader Cassius - became 'the caring one' for the team: despite his stuck up attitude at first (or it just sounded that way to me in the beginning, I'm relistening and it feels way less so now), seemingly being more of an introvert and just 'on his own wavelength', it's Silas' trailer where everyone ends up gathering when they need support, Cass goes to him right away from the very beginning when they want to have some advice or just to discuss anything, any time a team member is having a hard time he makes sure to come up to them and give some reassurance or ask if they need help, and it was him who was making rounds to ensure everyone was ok when they were waiting out a siege. All this, considering that they have a leader, a medic and a security head on the team as well. So it wasn't strictly necessary, but he ended up taking this role all the same, just like he used to care about his mother's wellbeing since childhood after his father died.

Greg, being the "papa bear", also never shows any callousness despite serving in the military for the most of his life. In fact, his supernatural experience story is concentrated on moral support of his fallen comerades families. Moreover, although he tries to act tough like his place in the team demands, he's still allowed to show vulnerability and takes the chance. Same with J - military experience and no toxic masculinity whatsoever (I mean yes there were a few jokes but he was lightheartedly picking on Alyx and paid for this right away XD).

The girls are never damsels in distress and do a lot for the team.

(I don't mention enbies since I'm not aware if we even have any stereotypes going on for us, assigned gender at birth aside? Anyway, there's none of that bullshit either.)

Well, I may mention Greg being "papa bear" and June behaving like a mother hen but these traits aren't toxic, at least in their case. They feel very nice, and actually these two (I'm in denial S3 ending-wise, I have a fix it au in my mind OKAY) act pretty similarly in their care for the team, although they do it in different ways. Plus, I don't mind gender existing at all, only the expectations related to it being perceived as mandatory.

Everyone is written just as people, and they don't shy away from things that traditionally may be attributed to the opposite gender. I love to see - well, technically, hear - this. Please, more.

As a side note: I'd love not to pay attention to such things in general because to me people are just people as is, but in the society I live in every day gender stereotypes are still shoved in everyone's faces. In my country visibly not conforming to them is edging on committing a crime now. Plus gender socialization is still a thing, sadly, so toxic masculinity and femininity still exist and show up often enough, so I have to consider this as well. All this makes pieces of media like Arcane, TST or Syntax all the more enjoyable as they show the world the way I see it and would like it to be in reality.

[istherewifiinhell]

hand on rbing prev post as circling back around on sts thought apparently gave me enough to say it needed to escape the tags and be its own post. um! the emh from voy: my wife is a bitch and i love her so much

i think the emh is like. the exact definition of "the soul first shows itself by a gnashing of teeth" as its all well add good to appreciate the aliveness of nice and polite data who follows all the rules and is like. even MORE real than a flesh and blood person.

(in sense of his tangibility... his mechanical complexity and physical and mental competencies. are MORE than that of a traditionally recognized person. you know? not that that is an accurate summation of how the show acts about him. the only person who thinks that is julian bashir lmao. more often its like the. oh you disrespect him? well disrespect THIS! [he does a feat unmatched by any of the biological life forms around him] which... isnt exactly useful as principled, ideological and philosophic statement, about who gains the right of person-hood. OR RATHER! it is literally and precisely that, its conclusions sucks shit)

[Cam K podcast voice] when someone reaches for abstractions to doubt data's existent, the show throws materialist egg on their face.

The lynchpin in the proof of Data artificiality. Is that he has a PHYSICAL SWITCH, that can turn him OFF. This counters his otherwise uninterrupted verisimilitude of humanity. He looks like a toy. A thing. (Teenage wifi would like to point out if i had a big enough rock i could also turn riker off, but alas)

BUT the thing about the Doc, is that this guy ISNT "REAL". Getting shut down is not grand solemn act to the doc. It happens to him. ALOT. "Computer: End Program"... Hes so much more dependent on those around him. He isnt nearly the same as them. AND HES AN ANNOYING LITTLE BITCH about it. please turn him off when you done! please turn him ON to tell him things, and u could visit sometime... Turn your emergency holographic medical channel! cause this is a SENIOR STAFF MEETING. and hes the God Damn CMO.

AND. its not just mistreatment he gets (RIGHTFULLY!) angry about. Its that (as joelle correctly pointed out, ofc) when confused, or when things are wrong, when he has no control, he default right to agression! He is not a sad kicked puppy that goes 'oh' and 'i do not understand the meaning of ur behaviour' like data does. (again that sounds like data slander its NOT! i love data and wish ppl would stop laughing at him for having questions)

Whereas the biggest actual impediment of data's full recognition of personhood is his feelings, and suppose lack there of. He doesn't react to social stimulus the way people expect him too. If you try to goad him into a response he might say he 'is not capable of experiencing emotions such as you do' cause hes lacking the magic part in his brain that will do that. (to which... every neurodivergent person ever said: data, bestie, baby girl, they say that about a lot of people. you have clearly expressed internal experiences that are just... you baselines for emotion)

But to compare. When people say the doc isnt acting socially normal, which is an assholish thing to do, btw. HES READY TO BE AN ASSHOLE RIGHT BACK. His is INFACT, gnashing those holographic teeth! I don't think anyone has ever accused the doc of a LACK OF FEELING. Like, he has horrible beside manner, he "isn't programed for small talk"... but thats cause he's RUDE! He's too obviously prideful, snide, needling and just general, self involved for it to not seem like a DELIBERATE CHOICE that he is making.

And even when these traits are regarded to simple programing (which makes them... less real? 🤨) Examine the moments that are definitively about him claiming autonomy, engaging in recreation and becoming more self actualized. And find that a lot of them are angled to make him LESS likable. His hobbies, which he WILL speak about, AT LENGTH, include being a tropy writer, a photographer who makes hour long presentations, and a uncompromising operatic tenor diva.

(love when opera singer is used as insult, media wise, oh noooo ur TOO good at singing. your voice is TOO powerful, ur vocal control and ability to perform complex pieces in multiple languages is TOO impressive. lol. mr picardo ur so cool and u looked good doing it. frankly)

In the moments that serve to mark specific advancement in control he gains over himself, he gets to make himself MORE OBNOXIOUS! You do not, infact, get to recognize a someones full personhood without running the risk that you, specifically, might not like them! As a person!

And in dramtic turns. His true psyche breaking, foundation shaking experiences are acted to hell! It's uncomfortable to behold someone so emotional. Confusion and denial not expressed quietly, but belligerently. Meeting of sadness fear that can only be expressed as anger. Unlike the picturesq Adam and Eve figures from the end of R.U.R. (spoilers? i suppose). His awareness of the true personal impact and price of mortality is not signaled by a noble self-sacrifice, gentle weeping and pleading to not have someone taken away. It's a choice he made to save a close friend, instead of a distant coworker, when forced to choose between the two.

And then, his complete and total inability to comprehend, internalized and accept that fact. A person would be dead, truly and utterly gone from this world. Cause he wanted to save his friend instead. And the only way to ingrate this horrible fact of reality, the capital A, Absurd, was to do it as any human might.

Have a very public and loud mental breakdown, spend prolonged period of in which you cannot be left alone because your darkest thoughts will loop forever into themselves as you become more and more upset, and yet, neither can you simply avoid thinking about it, has the only way to come to terms with it is though a mire subjects that cause revulsion. The desert of thought the mind shrink from, and the truth that lies in it. Which. Is very inconvenient for all your friends who would really just rather be having a normal one.

In conclusion? The doc shows autonomy and sentience by being loud, opinionated and embarrassing. Rude, precocious, and easily offended. Self obsessed, high-mined, and anguished. Dependent, vulnerable and inconvenient. Which is to say he possible the most real anyone could ever be. That he has a much of a soul as any of us. That he is a bitch and i love him SO MUCH.

[curioussubjects]

in which i revisit black market and it's worse somehow

for reasons even i find elusive, i read the transcript for rdm's podcast episode on "black market" (i know i know), but i really do appreciate the spirit behind this particular pod episode. i just. it's just. y'all....you cannot make this stuff up:

"there is no socioeconomic structure beyond the Rag Tag Fleet. There's no government. There's no social system. There's no nothing. Other than these particular ships. Isn't everything black market? Isn't everything to be bartered?" there's so much going on here. like. what do you mean there's no government or social system. the fleet literally has an executive and legislative branch. the executive literally has an enforcement arm through the military. ron please. 😭😭 the idea there's no social system is also bizarre when there's no indication the colonial social system wasn't reproduced down to caprican hegemony. also love the implication that the presence of a barter system nearly if not completely equates to the existence of a black market. that's. that-. hm. what i do think is interesting here though is that a black market existing isn't actually, imo, a foregone conclusion. that it exists at all suggests: 1. there seems to be no enforcement of the rule of law, 2. no regulation of trade, and 3. the government isn't adequately meeting the needs of the fleet with supply distribution.

sometimes i remember rdm has a polisci degree and i want to jump into a river.

but anyway, some of this stuff is discussed in the writer's room and all i can think about is how in the world did anybody think a topic this huge could fit into one standard episode of television. a lot of the bulk could be done in one episode, but you'd be returning to this as subplots and background commentary in future episodes.

"I was really disappointed in the show and myself and what we had done and didn't feel like the episode really had anything going for it." yeah man no fucking shit. you can't build a story out of vibes alone 😭

"You never quite get at the satisfaction of truly having gone through a plot that you had no idea where it was gonna go and you're shocked where it ended up. And you're not really sitting back and going, "My God. Lee Adama is nothing like I thought he was." It just doesn't- it falls in between. It's classically standing on the two chairs and falling in between both of them." the problem you're having is that you never connect what's going on with the black market plot with what's going on with lee. there's no line there beyond right place right time. clearly there's an ethical issue here in that lee is complicit with the black market. THAT'S what's interesting. our ethical center character, who values justice and the law is complicit in something that is happening outside of legal purview and also harms and exploits people. and then culminates with lee doing some light extrajudicial killing. but we never sit with any of it. much less see it play out in future episodes.

which is why this following bit kills me : "Tigh and Ellen and Ellen's involvement in the black market and she's getting things for Tigh, who is a senior officer in Galactica. There's a whiff of corruption here and what does it mean? We're not gonna- we don't take the easy way out. Tigh isn't shocked at what his wife is doing and promises never to do it again. He understands what she's doing. There is an implication that, "Who knows what else Ellen Tigh is doing with Commander Fisk?" I'm not sure that's a picture I want in my mind, but, ok. And Lee is also a bit dirty in this scene. Lee is also engaged in things that are probably not that above-board. There's an implication that Lee helped get the medicine for the little girl and probably went outside official channels. And it's a personal, emotional, confrontation with people with conflicted and conflicting motivations." THAT'S THE EPISODE! RIGHT THERE! YOU HAD IT!

the episode is about ethics, a government failing its people, and complacency. you want an episode of television without having to make a mini arc out of it? those are your themes.

then there's the clusterfuck that is the gianne/shevon/dee portion of the episode, which makes no gd sense AND HERE'S WHY LMAO: "It's not really getting to a place where we're explaining, or at least hinting, or making you think about what is the nature of the relationship between Dualla and Lee. Why is Lee interested in her and vice versa? What does it mean to him as a character? We had conversations in the writers' room that dealt with things like, "Well, Lee's got the girl he left behind on Caprica, he's seeing the prostitute, and then there's Dualla." So there's the classic- there's three women in Lee's life. One dead, two not. What does Dualla represent in that? What is- what is Dualla to Lee in juxtaposition to the dead woman and to the hooker with the little girl? Is she the hope? Is she the future? Is she something more realistic? Is the hooker the hope? There's a lot of ways you can just sit and talk about it endlessly about what it all represents, and it was all fascinating conversation. Unfortunately it just doesn't quite sync-in to what we have. You don't ever- you never quite get to a place where you're rooting for Lee and Dualla. I think that's might be the central problem with it. You're never quite rooting for her."

truly mysterious why this doesn't work rdm. boggles the mind.

he offers no explanation as to why it doesn't work, btw, it's all just "???"

we're not rooting for dee because lee doesn't actually want her. just like he didn't actually want gianne.

meanwhile shevon is the epitome of lee playing it safe. he's obviously lonely and in need of talking to someone, and having emotional and physical intimacy. he wants it without the possibility of being too vulnerable or hurting someone else when he runs. through shevon we understand some of the reasons why lee left gianne. through his relationship with shevon and gianne, we can begin to see what might underlie lee's budding relationship with dee.

and then perhaps we remember lee's behavior during the miniseries. and then maybe we watch scar next and a couple more things become clear.

we're not rooting for dee because we're rooting for someone else entirely. (kara. it's kara.)

i am in the tantrum hole.

"we're playing that Zarek needs to tell Lee about Phelan and about this ship out there where you can get anything you want that's the hub or the nexus of the black market. And yet everybody else seems to know about it. It's clearly the place where all this activity is going, but somehow Lee needs to be told by Zarek that it even exists, which tends to undercut Lee's role as an investigator and the procedural aspect starts to feel a bit weak because you feel like he should've- Lee should've known all that on his own and again, it's an element that doesn't work"

OR it could be something about complacency, a failure in governance, and how out much the Galactica is actually a bubble. very interesting concept for lee who feels disconnected after RS2.

it's not that lee's obliviousness doesn't work, it's that he has the privilege of not needing to think about it. he could even already be seeing shevon and thinking it's all above board like it was back in the colonies, not realizing there's a criminal enterprise going on that is exploiting desperate people.

what happens when lee does learn about how bad it is out there in the fleet?

that's your episode set up.

"When Lee shoots him, you should feel that he shoots him because, "Oh my God! I'm realizing that he is like Bill Duke and oh! Woah! I'm like shocked. And that's- I don't know how I feel about Lee, but I'm really surprised because he's more like Bill Duke than I thought." I don't think the show really says that. I don't think we've accomplished that mission. And that should have been the mission here, is if you're going to predicate a whole show on this concept, about this central confrontation it should pay off that idea." that should not have been the mission there omfg. lee shoots this man because he's doing fucked up shit. the shocking moment isn't that lee is like the bad guy, the shocking thing is that mr. articles of colonization did an extrajudicial killing. he executed a man without due process.

the question here is: is lee more like his father and laura roslin than he'd like to admit? if so, what is he going to do about it?

and btw, is lee like his father completely ties back to a possible reason why he runs from gianne: he saw himself marrying a woman he got pregnant, thus repeating the story of his parents. and it doesn't need to be 1:1 exactly, but there are too many similarities for his comfort. so he runs.

and another theme: lee doing what he knows is the right thing to do vs. lee doing what he thinks is the Right thing to do. and to what extent does lee hide behind duty because he's scared of going after what he wants. (and oh look at that we're back to kara)

this scene is interesting because lee does something he felt in the moment to be right (and he does it on impulse, which is another bit of tension with his character in other episodes), but he also acted against his ethical code. what are the effects of that? how does lee grapple with that? WE JUST DON'T KNOW

i am still in the tantrum hole.

"I think if I had to sum up what's wrong with this episode in my opinion, it's that this time we went for a much more tv, conventional tale and execution." narrator: that's not what was wrong with the episode. "So again it's a grab bag of things we're trying to do." narrator: that's more like it.

incredible podcast though it's like 10/10 reflection 0/10 insight. showrunner of all time this guy.

[landwriter]

For the fic ask: 1, 6 and 13 if you haven't answered them already! For Oaths, my most beloved fic with the best setting and premise and gorgeous writing ✨ thank you!

Ahhh you're making me blush!! Thank you Haz!

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way? 'This way' could have a lot of connotations here, i.e. 'insane', 'with too much apple research', 'given to sporadic bouts of verse' -- but I think the answer for all of them is sort of the same:

I got brainworms over Tam Lin + Dreamling, which were blessedly contagious and caught by @that-banhus, who did And Ask Not Leave Of Any (read it! it's SO good!!). Those brainworms plus that Brand New To Fandom Energy plus having just (entirely unintentionally) been in that part of the world a couple months prior, and listened to approximately 20 hours of the Stories of Scotland podcast whilst driving around said part of the world -- including a history of Border Reivers -- left me frankly no other choice but to be super extra about it all and decide to myself that I would try and do a Tam Lin x historic Borders retelling that was Poetic And True And Beautiful. By then I was already innoculated with the gateway drug of Middle English from works like @moorishflower's gorgeous Maybe sprout wings, so I had also become aware that a) I loved stories that borrowed from older language, and b) there's actually fabulous dictionaries out there that will let you find said words and when they're from and how they were used. Which is to say: when I started Oaths, I don't think I was capable of writing in any other way.

It was really just this like, perfect storm of thirst for research, existing knowledge, energy and time, and some slightly unhinged convictions about making it Feel Real. Wiser people than me have advised that it's generally helpful to not be precious about ideas, but the fact I was just hopelessly, helplessly fuckin' precious about it undeniably shaped how I wrote Oaths.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics? Oh thank god, I've answered that above, I think, so this doesn't have to be TOO long hahaha. Just the sheer level of madness, geographic and historic detail, verse, etc. Also maybe something that's not in any of my other fics: describing my absolutely gut-aching love for land. One of my favourite compliments is that it's got a sense of place as a story, because it does, and I want it to be FELT. I want to evoke emotions not just from relationship angst or tender friendships, but from descriptions of landscape and how we move among it. I want everyone else to feel BODIED by a sunrise or a walk in the woods in early spring. I'm insane about it, in truth. There's lines in Chapter 2 taken directly from my journal when I was traveling in Scotland earlier that summer hahaha.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading? While I don't listen to music while writing, I actually DID make a playlist (first and only time I've done so) for the mood of it; it's a lot of folk song, ballad, and oral histories from both English and Scottish sides of the borders. I would also be remiss not to mention @mathomhouse-e's INCREDIBLE and beautiful Oaths playlist. There's some songs on there I think I listened to like 20 times in a row while editing scenes!

(behind-the-scenes fic asks)

[threewaywithdelusion]

Nos Armários dos Vestiários: Roy Kent

This is a transcription/translation of the podcast Nos Armários dos Vestiários, episode 4: A Base de Tudo. (Note: I have no translation skills besides speaking both English and Portuguese. This is a very rough translation and I have paraphrased in some places, but the message has remained the same).

This episode talks about youth academies (idk the proper term, feel free to tell me) and it made me think of Roy. The podcast is about Brazilian football, so I'm sure there are some major cultural differences, but given that locker rooms around the world are fairly similar (and given that players play for clubs outside their own countries), I think it's still valuable knowledge

Interview:

Douglas Braga (who went to the youth academy for Botafogo, a Brazilian club): I can't talk about now, I can only speak about my own time, but there was no such thing as a person who determined how things in the housing would work. It was like this: you were in there, your bed is this one, your closet is this one, and you look after yourself. There was a guy who did security for the place but no one you could go to and say "listen, this is happening. What should we do about this?" That didn't exist. You had to look after yourself and make your own relationships in that place. And then you start seeing survival of the fittest, the rule of man. The stereotypical man, the angry man, he gets to rule. This is going to seem strange, but it's not different from what you see in a police movie about people in prison. A stronger man will arrive, who has more contacts, who's played for longer, and he dominates. He dominates in the sense of saying "go buy this for me. Do this for me." It's like this. "Oh, you're younger. You have to do this. You have to clean this."

You grow up with the idea that this is normal and natural.

You have to show your testosterone to everyone. That's what counts and that's what gives you credit to be places. Because it's not just about making friendships off the pitch. This goes onto the pitch. If you're a guy who doesn't participate in the same things, the ball won't reach you on the pitch. There are ways you go about excluding that guy and if you can't get the ball on the pitch, you aren't seen. So, you don't really have a choice. Either you play the game, literally, or you're out. And not out just in the "we don't like you, stay isolated" way. It's "we don't like you and if you're a striker, the ball won't reach you."

Joanna (podcast host): A highly competitive environment doesn't open space for a lot of types of emotions.

Douglas: The years I played... we lived with two models of emotions. As if there were no other feelings. There was the euphoria of masculinity and a few rare times when you could be frustrated by loss. I talk about frustration about loss because everyone lived far from home, so some news always arrived saying you lost someone from home. It was a moment where you were looked at with kindness because you were crying. For just a few moments, because the next day you had to go out and play. Outside of this, I don't remember a single moment -- and that's given that people had smaller groups of more intimate friends -- I don't remember a single moment of sentiment where someone said they were sad about missing home. Because the idea that's created is that talking about all this is showing some kind of weakness.

Joanna: Football configures itself in this way, with this exercise of self-affirmation, of needing to be manly, needing to be strong. There isn't space for anything else. From Douglas's story we can tell that if you express any sort of weakness, like any feeling, you can compromise your dream. A dream that doesn't only belong to the boy who is there, but also to a family who many times rests all its hopes on this boy.

[itsalwayssunnyindesertbluffs]

Pinned Post

Hello there friends, this is Kevin of Desert Bluffs fame. There's a few of me here, but don't be shy. We only bite sometimes. :)

I'm part of a plural system and heavily fragmented, so expect a few of us to post here. There's also Kasper who likes to post too and I let him because his vibes match mine and also I'm dating him that's also a factor. But it's also dating in the sense that I ripped his heart out and ate it that one time :)

Emojis showing who's who below

😀- Central Kevin that the others broke off from, represents as much of the totality of Kevin that can exist. He/It/Eld pronouns

🪳- Fragment representing the parts of that Strex added or reinforced, very into bugs, sometimes uses the nickname Kevie. It/Bug/Joy pronouns

⛅- Fragment representing the parts that Strex tried to suppress, goes by K, doesn't talk as much as the other two. He/Sun pronouns

☀️- Fragment representing all of our connection to the smiling god. Goes by Solar. Prefers to only be referred to in conjunction with the other Kevin's and as such uses plural they/them pronouns. Occasionally you may see other Kevins referring to it with it/its and sun/suns pronouns, but no one else is allowed to do that.

🦗- Kasper, very off canon, he'll definitely post about it. Thrives off of attention. Will probably reblog posts about divinity, machines and divine machinery as well as OSHA violations. He/It/Bug pronouns.

A bit extra below the cut

We're very different from canon. Things for me tend to line up until about episode 70 and then goes completely off the rails. Desert Bluffs Too didn't really exist. Eventually I went back to Night Vale. Kasper is completely different. He's not even from the future. Posts we make will probably reflect that.

A lot of the tags I use are self explanatory. A few that might not be are listed below.

#speaking with my dearest double - anything I reblog from Cecil's blog

#believe in a smiling god - suns, teeth, light and other imagery I associate with the smiling god

#dripping flesh into the maw of a god - posts about flesh, cannibalism, food and anything related to hunger and consumption

#bound in metal and flesh - relationship tag for me and Kasper

#joycore - happy colorful things, but also sometimes in an unreality sense

#emotions I don't remember - things that hit me in the emotions, but they're not emotions I'm allowed to feel anymore

Don't talk to me about Charles. I respect that the version of him that shows up in the podcast is great. My version of him wasn't, and I'm going to leave it at that.

This blog is a pro Smiling God, anti StrexCorp space, and we talk about both frequently.

You can find my dearest double Cecil on his own blog @voiceless-host

[bramblingastrology]

Sade Sati Saturn - Saturn Contacting your Natal Moon

I want to talk for a moment about Sade Sati Saturn - what it is, and why you should care. In short, it is the period of time, covering 3 signs, of Saturn approaching, contacting, and separating from your natal moon. This is a concept that is more prominent in Vedic Astrology, but I've also heard it mentioned off-hand by Western Astrologers such as Chris Brennan (if you haven't heard his podcasts/youtube, The Astrology Podcast, and you're still a student of astrology, you should definitely check it out, it has been pretty formative in my learning). BUT I do have a small disclaimer below before I get into this:

My writing on this stems from my reflection and contemplation of my Sade Sati period of my life, my knowledge of Saturn, Moon, Signs, and Houses and their dignities and significations, and compiling those into my personal understanding of how I think Sade Sati works, but note I am a student of Western Astrology and am pulling my knowledge from specifically Western Astrology! If anyone has more specific experience with Sade Sati in Vedic Astrology and wants to correct me, feel free to comment or shoot me a message and I'll reconstruct both my understanding and this post~

What makes Sade Sati a major concept is that Saturn is seen as inimical to the Moon in particular, and thus when Saturn contacts your moon, it can be a time of lessons that are particularly difficult for the native to learn. This will, for better or for worse, demand restructuring of how you emotionally react under stress. Saturn is a rather karmic planet of outcomes (reap-what-you-sow) and cycles. This can be a rather formative experience in stress response where you can either gain positive or toxic patterns of behavior. It will also uncover what cycles(toxic or positive) you may have already formed related to your moon sign and emotional processing. Sade Sati may also uncover what health conditions you tend to manifest under stress. You'll want to think about how toxic expression of your moon sign may attract/manifest other external problems (enemies, problems at school, or work, or family, or friends, etc - depending on what tends to manifest with your moon sign), and how healthier expression can mitigate these.

Since Sade Sati is considered to occur over 3 signs, your moon sign and the signs coming before and after, you'll need to consider the dignity of all three signs in determining the themes and lessons of your Sade Sati.

For example, a Capricorn or Aquarius has Saturn as classical rulers, and so Sade Sati Saturn in those signs is not going to be as subjectively difficult as for those with Leo or Cancer, where Saturn is in its detriment. Saturn is exalted in Libra while in Fall in Aries, so Libra will find it not as hard as an Aries will. The other signs in-between will be generally somewhere in-between in terms of difficulty, save for Scorpio, where the Moon is in its Fall, and so is in a weaker position, making Sade Sati harder.

You will want to look at sign themes and house themes, and recognize that these are areas that will need re-examining and constructive restructuring with how you manage stress in these areas. You'll want to use this time to think about your patterns/cycles of behavior/stress response/emotional expression, and strive to either restructure existing patterns to something healthier, or to intentionally try to form new healthy patterns, so you don't end up forming/being trapped in a toxic cycle. You will need to think about how your toxicity will manifest external problems, and how to do constructive manifestation instead. You also will need to look at what parts of the body and health the sign rules, for you may develop stress-related issues in those areas. The health will matter for the Moon sign itself in particular, because of the Moon being assigned to Lot of Fortune, which has to do with physical health and well-being.

Now, this isn't to say nothing good will come out of your Sade Sati if you're a Leo, Cancer, or Scorpio Moon! Sade Sati needs to be treated almost like a mini emotional Saturn-return. Where instead of consequences on how productive and structured you've built your life so far, it's more on how you structure your emotional expression and processing, your cycles of behavior, as well as how you attend to your physical health, and how to constructively deal with stress. If you can identify that these areas needs restructuring, and identify toxic expressions of your moon sign and managing need new ways of expressing and coping, and do it constructively, and to not manifest problems with your toxicity, then you'll get a lot of growth out of your Sade Sati.

A lot of people's first Sade Sati will occur when they are children, and do not have the wisdom to realize how and where to restructure their reactions to stress. This means it can be a rather formative experience in stress response where you can either gain positive or toxic patterns of behavior. If you're a parent, you should think about how to support your child going through Sade Sati at this time, especially if you're in the role of being the provider of structure and discipline, as that makes YOU one of the expressions of THEIR Saturn in their chart. And you'll want to give a positive manifestation of restructuring and constructive coping, rather than negative.

If you want an example of how this played out in my life, with both sign and house themes, as well as how things externally manifested from the toxic cycle I formed, and my reflections on it after my recent Progressed Lunar Return (gave me the ability to critically reflect on my toxic emotional cycles), read below the cut!

So my moon is in Leo in my 9th house, and I had Saturn making its exact contact to my moon when I was 13 years old. This was a very stressful and difficult year of my life, I and only recently realized that this aligned with Sade Sati, hence my motivation to make this post.

Saturn has a particularly hard time in Leo in particular, due to being in its detriment, and so tends to have more negative manifestations of its expression. Saturn passing through Leo will bring a lot of restrictions and lessons that Leo will chafe against, and will become very corrosive, controlling, and their usual optimism will suffer as a result. Leo is the sign ruler of the 5th house and likes to be creative, and so the native may find that their creative expression is now restricted or limited or requires restructuring. Leo rules the stomach and heart, and so the stress surrounding Sade Sati is more likely to manifest in one of those two organs.

The 9th house is a house of far travel, different cultures, higher learning, philosophy and spirituality, and Saturn moving through the 9th house may indicate having to move for work (but in a negative way, like you're required to do it), or clashes involving travel or other cultures, and will require a restructuring of how you learn, how you interact with people different from you (including re-examining your privilege), and re-examining your philosophy and spirituality.

How this specifically manifested in my life is that earlier in that school year, my family moved to a different state for my step-father's work (So Saturn-Father-9th-Travel), to a town with a very different demography and culture than what we all grew up in. I had never had problems with bullying before, due to having a stable friend group and not needing to make new friends, but now being the new kid and not fitting in, not knowing how to interact with people very different from me, I was bullied relentlessly and I was threatened with my life. I changed my behavior to be more abrasive and aggressive to better deflect the threats I was getting. Rather than my usual quirky and outgoing emotional expression, I became severely pessimistic and withdrawn, and lost a lot of my confidence during this time. I became a good deal more corrosive and controlling starting at this time as well. I was actually called out by teachers for basically having bad vibes. I was given detention over these bad vibes and no I wish I was kidding.

I was so stressed that I developed a heart condition (went away several years later after we moved away and I moved out and got my stress under control). This school didn't have an orchestra, and we were low income so we couldn't afford my instrument, and so I decided to take up a new creative hobby: drawing, which is a hobby I still have to this day. During this time was when I got passingly into Wicca, which got me talking to my Oma about the occult, which coincidentally got me into Astrology, which I am still into all these years later. In the end, we moved out of that town only after 9 months of living there, but those themes and changes I made to my emotional processing haunted me for a decade and a half after.

So themes of Leo's Moons self confidence and outward and creative emotional expression became challenged and restricted, and coping ended up bringing out toxic expression (abrasiveness, being controlling, etc), as well as heart problems. My Sade Sati uncovered, for better or for worse, toxic cycles of behavior that can typify Leo Moons if they are not able to regulate themselves. This resulted in manifestation of external problems related to my education (9th house) and enemies (a toxic saturn leo signification). Short-term physical problems associated with Leo (a transient heart condition) manifested from the stress. Difficulties with long travel and culture changes were evident (9th House), as well as rethinking my spirituality (part of the thread that got me into astrology which still remains an interest today). Creativity was restructured, into what my current hobby still is today.

So while not all was bad (I am still really into drawing and astrology so some of the restructuring ended up scaffolding who I am today), you can guess that more or less I "failed" my Sade Sati otherwise, since, being only 13, and with NOT emotionally well adjusted parents, I did not know how to deal with this kind of period of prolonged stress, and there wasn't many positive lessons that I could gain from it at the time. My recent Progressed Lunar Return did end up giving me the tools I needed to healthily cope with stressful things emotionally, and equipped me with the emotional health, understanding, and hindsight I need to change toxic cycles to more enlightened healthy cycles. So not all is lost, but it has been a heavy formative experience when it comes to stress-response in my life.

Now, I'm sure it didn't help that this was very close to my Saturn Opposition as well, which is a time of finding out whether what you've been doing so far in your life is working or not, and trying to balance what needs to change with how and where you inherently structure yourself and look for structure. But Saturn aspects to Natal Saturn are an entirely separate conversation!