#we just have incompatible needs

[dvasva]

i find it hilarious how yall are so eager for asexual relationships in dragon age but sebastian vael asks for a sexless marriage and yall go 'ew, prude'

[plounce]

my emoooootional issues and my physical iiiintimacy issuuuues

[icewindandboringhorror]

"We can get through this by working together, reach out to your friends, community is all we have, a social network will be your security in the world, now is the time to lean on others!"

I do agree, and it's scientifically sound (pretty sure there is data about how people with better social networks live longer and etc) but also....augh..... what about the severe social issues, difficulty to leave the house, physical issues which lead to like zero socialization energy a majority of the time, etc. etc. Social support can be a replacement for structural support, but.. I guess I just wish it didn't have to be. Community is extremely difficult to build, even moreso if you're someone who has issues with social cues or group conversations or even just being around others in the first place. And blah, nuance, of course I'm just complaining or maybe being too negative or maybe misunderstanding, but, I hardly have the energy to brush my hair once every 2 months.. how am I supposed to maintain a wide social network and be active in a Community and Join Groups lol... sometimes it kind of feels like "er.. well if thats my only option then...... ruh roh". It's overwhelming

[nobodybetterlookatme]

nah cuz I would pass away if someone asked me if I was into them 😭 but CONGRATS ON GETTING THE DATE!! I hate to say we told you so, but we definitely told you so 😌💅

Bro I literally short circuited lmaoooo like it was not cute and I almost died fr. But yeah, date secured ahskaksk y'all were right 😭 it still feels so surreal lmao I'm still vibrating about it

[aeide-thea]

sometimes it really is just like. is this all there is. feeling oversensitive & undersocialized—too sensitive to socialize—forever, bc you never got enough ~affirmation~ growing up (poor, pathetic baby; how long will you persist in singing the same self-pitying song…), & so never developed the proper emotional cushioning against the heartache & the thousand natural shocks, &c, &c, &c, &c, &c…

[gaphic]

strategizing like a 4-star general on how to explain to oleg why adina's sexy dance class makes me uncomfortable without making it seem like i'm weird about sexy dancing

[brittlebutch]

actually, having a kind of revelatory moment here of if HRT was something i have been considering for this long, but has remained inaccessible to me, then that means i Do actually have opinions about my appearance/presentation, so just because i can't take That Particular step doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of other avenues i could be pursuing (ie, clothing/accessories/etc.) that i just haven't let myself up until this point. like i don't have to shove it All aside just because there's one thing i can't get -- I'd probably still wind up a lot happier if I took those other steps I've spent all these years ignoring

[itspileofgoodthings]

but on a more serious note, I do hate when any adaptation--but especially this one!--decides to change the nature of specific uncomfortable or antagonistic character interactions to something softer or sweeter, or even just decided to give two characters that don't get along or interact much at all A Moment™. That really is not always the right call!

[angeltism]

EEEEEEH honestly during the time we were mutuals we interacted like a maximum of . two times. perhaps even just once. which is a bit crazy considering all of this now. i was just scared of trying to keep interacting honestly HSJAHDJSHD but if you dont feel like dating after i reveal myself that is completely absolutely alright! i would appreciate having you as a friend just as much! its whatever you prefer and whatever you feel more comfortable with :3

- 💌 anon

oooh well . still honestly I bet uur kewl <3 and yayaya !! thank uu for being understanding , I very much appreciate it . to be faaair , I do . kinda . have a soft spot for uu , y'know ? so even if it isn't immediately . . . the idea isn't something I'm opposed to ^_^

[milfbrainrot]

I feel like talla just doesn't have any flaws and that's my biggest issue with how she's written

[arolesbianism]

I am fighting for my life with assetstudio rn bestie please just let me look at the new dupe icons I can't keep doing this

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

hi! can i ask what's ur opinion on giving pets away? not necessarily because u can't afford to care for em anymore but maybe incompatibility of personalities or maybe lifestyles. is it wrong to give ur pet for adoption if u know someone who's better suited for keeping a pet, like emotionally?

This is going to be controversial, but I support making that choice.

There’s a lot of rhetoric lately around how it’s evil and unethical to rehome your pet if you don’t “need to.” And what that does is prioritize human ideology over the actual animal’s well-being.

Pets that aren’t a good match for your home or pets that aren’t really wanted anymore frequently have lower welfare! When caring for an animal becomes a burden or is forced, people end up resenting them, and that means the animal often doesn’t get all of its needs fulfilled. Even if you’re still feeding it and providing appropriate vet care, how likely are you to provide affection or enrichment to an animal you’re tired of being stuck with?

Lifestyle and personality really matter to making sure a pet is a good fit for a home. A dog that alert-barks at every leaf that moves is probably a bad fit for someone who has a chronic migraine syndrome, and they might not know that until the dog has been in the home for weeks and started to open up. A really feisty kitten that requires a ton of play might not do best in the home of someone older who wanted a quiet lap cat. And while you can you do your best to plan to find a compatible animal, you won’t always know ahead of time what issues might arise.

“Forever home” rhetoric is really, really popular and I think it’s very unfair to the animals it is supposed to support. It started with the backlash of seeing animals abandoned inappropriately, and has been heavily reinforced in the public mind because it’s so frequently used to drive fundraising and support for legislation. The whole “forever home” concept communicates to people that getting an animal is an immutable commitment and that if you can’t keep an animal, it is a personal moral failing. It frames human priorities (we think people who get rid of animals are Evil and Bad and should be shunned) as more important than actual welfare needs for individual animals (are they getting the care they need where they are).

Obviously, I don’t support people dumping animals or just getting fad pets they’ll discard immediately, but there’s so many alternate situations that can arise. Even if it’s just “they got a pet and didn’t know what caring for it would take and didn’t want to care for it so they brought it back, how awful” like… okay, I’d like the person to have done more research before they got a pet, but isn’t it better that the animal now has a second chance to go to better home? Knowing what a commitment requires theoretically can be very different than having to actually follow through regularly, and I’d rather see someone maturely acknowledge that having an animal isn’t a good fit than keep it anyway!!

If animals being happy and with all their biological, veterinary, and social needs fulfilled is actually the goal, we need to prioritize their welfare over human opinion. I’d much rather see an animal rehomed responsibly to somewhere it will thrive and be welcomed than see people keep animals they can’t/don’t want to care for out of guilt or shame. 

[mourning-again-in-america]

look if you're going to cite a category theorist did you have to pick the one I have twitter beef with

[prokopetz]

I think a lot of folks in indie RPG spaces misunderstand what's going on when people who've only ever played Dungeons & Dragons claim that indie RPGs are categorically "too complicated". Yes, it's sometimes the case that they're making the unjustified assumption that all games are as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons and shying away from the possibility of having to brave a steep learning cure a second time, but that's not the whole picture.

A big part of it is that there's a substantial chunk of the D&D fandom – not a majority by any means, but certainly a very significant minority – who are into D&D because they like its vibes or they enjoy its default setting or whatever, but they have no interest in actually playing the kind of game that D&D is... so they don't.

Oh, they'll show up at your table, and if you're very lucky they might even provide their own character sheet (though whether it adheres to the character creation guidelines is anyone's guess!), but their actual engagement with the process of play consists of dicking around until the GM tells them to roll some dice, then reporting what number they rolled and letting the GM figure out what that means.

Basically, they're putting the GM in the position of acting as their personal assistant, onto whom they can offload any parts of the process of play that they're not interested in – and for some players, that's essentially everything except the physical act of rolling the dice, made possible by the fact most of D&D's mechanics are either GM-facing or amenable to being treated as such.*

Now, let's take this player and present them with a game whose design is informed by a culture of play where mechanics are strongly player facing, often to the extent that the GM doesn't need to familiarise themselves with the players' character sheets and never rolls any dice, and... well, you can see where the wires get crossed, right?

And the worst part is that it's not these players' fault – not really. Heck, it's not even a problem with D&D as a system. The problem is D&D's marketing-decreed position as a universal entry-level game means that neither the text nor the culture of play are ever allowed to admit that it might be a bad fit for any player, so total disengagement from the processes of play has to be framed as a personal preference and not a sign of basic incompatibility between the kind of game a player wants to be playing and the kind of game they're actually playing.

(Of course, from the GM's perspective, having even one player who expects you to do all the work represents a huge increase to the GM's workload, let alone a whole group full of them – but we can't admit that, either, so we're left with a culture of play whose received wisdom holds that it's just normal for GMs to be constantly riding the ragged edge of creative burnout. Fun!)

* Which, to be clear, is not a flaw in itself; a rules-heavy game ideally needs a mechanism for introducing its processes of play gradually.

[drdemonprince]

The conversations about accountability & apologies that we've been having in social justice circles these last few years have basically trained everybody to fawn.

We've been telling people that if they are accused of any wrongdoing or of hurting anybody's feelings, it is their obligation to apologize immediately, and never to hedge, disagree, or to explain their rationale what they've done.

In their apology, we expect them to articulate every single thing that they have done that was damaging in the strongest language possible and to declare outright that they have harmed someone, often multiple groups of people, even if they are not sure of the impact (or could not even possibly be sure).

If a person's apology is anything but immediate and entirely self-excoriating, we accuse the person of downplaying the damage they have done, failing to be accountable, and manipulating others.

In this way, we've made it impossible for a person to ever take their own side lest that be taken itself as a form of wrongdoing. We have trained our fellow social-justice-minded people to believe that if they do anything but worsen the case against themselves, they are being irresponsible.

I say we, in all of this, because I have partaken in all of this rhetoric, made these kinds of criticism, given accused people this type of advice.

And I have followed it myself, often to a damaging effect.

I have taken responsibility for problems in which I truly did not believe I played a part, I've overstated the damage that I've done so as not to risk understating it, I've ascribed malice to my intentions when I knew it wasn't there, I've agreed with people's most negative, bad-faith narratives about conflicts involving me that they were not even present for, offered up information about myself that was not a third party's business in the name of transparency, apologized for things I haven't done -- and in doing all of this, I have denied my loved ones the opportunity to really hear me about what I was going through and my motivations when I was in conflict with them, things that any true friend or close associate would obviously want to hear about if they cared about me.

This aim of giving the perfect apology and taking perfect accountability has been nothing but an isolating force in my life, because it has barred me from openly entering into necessary conflict with people when our needs were incompatible or they had hurt me just as much as I'd hurt them. The fear of being a manipulative, unaccountable DARVO-er has led me to roll onto my back and expose my belly, falling over myself with panicked apologies and the most unflattering information possible cast in the least explicable light, almost outright begging for others to become angrier at me and believing that it was only way I could ever possibly be accepted back.

We've drilled into people that the way to be good and responsible is to allow people to view us as negatively as possible, to even arm others with information that will confirm that point of view, and to never insert our own perspective or needs on the matter at all.

And yeah, there are a lot of shitty people out there who dodge accountability easily because their power ensconces them from any consequences. but the primary problem with that was never that they wrote a shitty notesapp apology that used the unforgivable phrase "I am sorry if you felt XYZ." The real problem was that there was no community that held enough influence to hold them to account, and for their victims there weren't ever adequate supports or protections.

instead of addressing any of that in a remotely systematic way, we have taken to picking apart every accused person's every word and deed for evidence of inner moral failure and created a culture in which we think we can determine a person's safety by how artfully they put words together when they are under threat. and what do you know, plenty of bad faith actors and conflict avoidant cowards and people who just dont understand what they are even being accused of can do that just fine.

[graevs666]

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