#we're on the profit side of things

[fjordfolk]

I know you said awhile back that Luna was a little bit different after surgery. She’s always been my favorite of the gang (maybe because I started following you way back in 2016, when she was a puppy), do you still think it’s affected her? Your post about her coat brought it to mind

2020 was a really rough year for Luna. Between the initial slip that uncovered her PL issues and the 2nd surgery being pushed back due to covid, she spent most of the year under some form of pain management and rehab. I really can't find a better word for it than traumatization. Habits she picked up during this will reappear from time to time, she refuses and panics on a lot of types of flooring. I don't think she'll ever be completely rid of that. And it aged her - she went from being an active and cheerful youngster to a wary couch potato in just a few months.

You know what's really helped, though? This thing:

Since Melis came along, Luna has been doing much better. She communicates clearer, she's less hesitant, she's more active and runs (!) like she hasn't in years. I don't think she'll fully get over the floor issues, but between the Great Slip and Melis coming home, Luna had to be carried through the hallway to the bedroom - she wouldn't even set foot there. Now she puts herself to bed every night and walks out on her own every morning.

She's not 100% back to exactly how she was before, but she's a lot closer now to the dog she would've been if the knees hadn't caused problems. And although little sisters can be real pests sometimes, she's a very happy dog.

[moiraimyths]

Before we call anon rude because let’s see it from their perspective, imagine getting an entire feast to eat. That can be pretty hard to start with so much that’s going on, but if they start with one thing they know they’ll like (aka one character they like) that can be the start for them leaping to other characters to finish the story and the bigger story. I struggle the same way to start book series if I don’t have at least one character that drives me to read it, it’s all about what can be the hook to push them through. Sounds like the anon is neurodivergent (just a guess) so they might genuinely not see it as rude and see it as a solution to even play the game to start with.

Btw absolutely adore the game, the complex and rich characters making them all so unique is amazing. The art is so pleasing to the eyes I love it!! I’m waiting for it all to get out at once so I don’t get too impatient. Shae however interests me the most, which routes will have the most lore for them? Will there be routes that give more lore in general based on decisions you make or do they all share the same amount? (I mean general lore not just Shae lore)

Apologies; we are not trying to accuse any asker of being rude! We are simply explaining our perspective as the developers / are trying to broadly encourage folks to dip their toes into other areas of the story outside of the main route(s) they're interested in, especially considering some routes will be made available sooner than others, and these other routes will likely contain additional scenes/lore of everyone's fave(s) regardless! We want to give each main cast member an equal amount of love (and lore) regardless of their overall popularity, so our goal is not to tut-tut anyone for having strong preferences for one character over the others, but rather to explain that you may be surprised by how much *more* you learn about your preferred characters in the other routes. That's all!

For Shae... Well, they were a foot soldier for one of the worst periods of the War. Lore wise, any other story that touches on the War will likely have content relevant to them and their experiences. ^^

[moe-broey]

Random small talk event at the yard sard set-up, very nice lady, but ESP when asking "Oh are you still in school? ☺️" I literally never know how to say "Oh I graduated a long time ago. Yeah. I mostly do art now" and she says "Oh to sell?" and so far I'm having a reasonable and effective small talk conversation, when I hit that pitfall and lock up and I worry I'm becoming unfriendly bc I locked up. Because I REALLY don't know how to say, "Nah, I kind of do fuck all. I'm 25 and I do fuck all. For nothing." Like I can see the conversation tree in real time and I know that's the worst dialogue option. And there are no other dialogue options there's just Press B to get the fuck outta there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'M SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Welcome to my Tuesday morning PSA about plastics!

So--I was walking along the Bolstadt beach approach sidewalk here in Long Beach, WA yesterday afternoon, and I started seeing these little orange pellets on the ground that looked a little bit like salmon roe (but probably weren't). So I picked one up, and it was most definitely rubber. I went around picking up every one I could find, and while I didn't keep exact count I probably amassed 50-60 of them. I took this picture before depositing them in the nearest trash can.

These are airsoft gun pellets, and you can buy them in big jars containing thousands of them. That means that someone who decided that the beach was a great place to shoot their airsoft guns could easily litter the place with countless little bits of plastic rubber in less than an hour. We already have a huge problem here with people leaving trash, including tiny bits of plastic, all over the beach (you should see the gigantic mess after 4th of July fireworks when thousands of people come in from out of town, blow things up, and then leave again without picking up after themselves.)

But these airsoft pellets have a particularly nasty side effect. You know how my first thought was "wow, those look kind of like salmon roe?" Well, we have a number of opportunistic omnivore birds like crows, ravens, and several species of gull that commonly scavenge on the beach, especially along the approaches because people often feed them there. If I can catch the resemblance of an orange airsoft pellet to a fish egg, then chances are there are wildlife that will assume they're edible.

Since birds don't chew their food, they probably won't notice that the taste or texture is wrong--it'll just go down the hatch. And since they can't digest the pellets, there's a good chance they might just build up in the bird's digestive system, especially if the bird eats a large number of them--say, fifty or sixty of them dropped on the ground along the same fifty foot stretch of sidewalk. The bird might die of starvation if there's not enough capacity for food in their stomach--or they might just die painfully of an impacted gut, and no way to get help for it. If the pellets end up washed into the ocean, you get the same issue with fish and other marine wildlife eating them, and then of course the pellets eventually breaking up into microplastic particles.

You can get biodegradable airsoft pellets; they appear to mainly be gray or white in color rather than bright screaming orange and green. But "biodegradable" doesn't mean "instantly dissolves the next time it rains." An Amazon listing for Aim Green biodegradable airsoft pellets advertise them as "Our biodegradable BBs are engineered to degrade only with long-term exposure to water and sun and will degrade 180 days after being used." That's half a year for them to be eaten by wildlife.

I don't know, y'all. That handful of carelessly dropped rubber pellets just encapsulates how much people don't factor in the rest of nature when making decisions, even on something that is purely for entertainment like an airsoft gun. We could have had a lot of the same technological advances we have today, but with much less environmental impact, if we had considered the long-term effects on both other people and other living beings, as well as our habitats. We could have found ways from the beginning to make these things in ways that benefited us but also mitigated any harm as much as possible. Instead we're now having to reverse-engineer things we've been using for decades, and sometimes--like the "biodegradable" airsoft pellets--they still have a significant negative impact.

But--at least there are people trying to do things better, thinking ahead instead of just on immediate profit. We're stuck in a heck of a mess here, figuratively and literally, and changing an entire system can't be done in a day. Maybe we can at least keep pushing for a cultural shift that emphasizes planning far into the future--if not the often-cited "seven generations ahead", then at least throughout the potential lifespan of a given product.

[sarah-yyy]

Jie jie, what is The Double about?

hahahahahaha i was waiting for someone to ask!! mr r has bailed on me at work again and bossman has the man flu so it's just. me at the office today. working my ass off for partners who are trying to Kill Me™.

what: period cdrama // completed // 40 eps, roughly 45 mins each where: youku (standard disclaimer that i don’t watch with subs so i don’t speak to the quality of eng subs) // i think viki is picking this up?

this is xue fangfei. daughter of a small town magistrate. married a poor scholar for love against the wishes of her dad. this turns out to be a bad, bad, bad decision because he ends up burying her alive in the mountains sometime post-marriage. :)

this all happens in like ep 1, we're just getting started.

xff ends up being rescued by jiang li, who is the prime minister's kinda-sorta-exiled daughter. jl has been stuck in a kinda-sorta-nunnery in the mountains for the past 10 years because of her evil stepmother.

i'll skip past all the other bits because there is a bit of a backstory about what happened to jl, but long story short!! jl dies (kinda-sorta-because of xff). xff decides to get justice for both herself and jl. her plan is:

1. become jiang li 2. go back to the capital 3. ?????? 4. profit make everyone pay

this is xiao heng a.k.a. su-guogong (the translation is duke su but it sounds weird to me so i'm going to stick with su-guogong). he chances upon xff while he's trying to catch a criminal.

xff, who is in the process of executing her Escape Plan, decides eh, any way to escape will do and lets s-gg arrest her to take her back to the capital for interrogation.

(yes, this is wang xingyue who played zhang zhe in kunning palace. yes he looks a++++++ in this show. i am obsessed.)

side bar, counsels, for a bit of very important information -

su-guogong recognises xue fangfei!! he knows 100% that she is not jiang li and that she is going to cause some chaos. he is Committed™ to watching this drama play out.

ANYWAY. this is the loose premise of the show. it's been fun to watch, and i'm enjoying this a lot!! why should you watch the show?

wang xingyue looks so good in this!! the fans? the capes?? i am obsessed!! everyone in the costumes department deserves a raise.

the story moves quickly and doesn't really drag on. so far, it's been nothing complicated and interesting to watch - i wouldn't say this is a plot-heavy show, just a v good 宅斗 for now, but i'm only like 10 eps in.

the torture my ex-husband who murdered me by showing up in front of him and saying all the right things to remind him of me and the fact that he killed me is so good - normally when this happens, the person looks nothing like their former self, but!! xff's looks haven't changed!! so she's just out here going - hi i am jiang li now and oh btw do you know how cold it is in the mountains where you killed me :)

look i'm......intrigued by this whole shen yurong (ex-husband) and the zhang-gongzhu storyline. i want to see how this whole thing plays out!!

eta: quick post-watch thoughts (may contain spoilers)

a v enjoyable drama!! this is a 爽剧 for reals, like all the plot points get wrapped up and we get a few cute snippets into their happily ever after!! i'm a bit :/ about the way the last few scenes were done in ep 40 (the side character deaths??? extremely unnecessary 🙄🤬 actually the whole war scene was unnecessary but i'm not complaining too much because it gave us That Scene), tbh the whole thing looked more OE leaning BE than HE to me, so the 番外 was quite important to me!! glad we got that!!

shen yurong and zhang-gongzhu both turned out to be so much more interesting than i thought!! a+++ villains, v well-written, and both actors played them beautifully 👏🏼

still an 8.5/10 rec tbh, started strong and held my interest the entire way through

[pandemic-info]

"Any chance we're wrong about Covid?"

It's a valid question many people earnestly think about — even the very cautious.

'it becomes important to ask: "what does the data actually say?"'

Quoting a few good answers from a thread:

"Covid left me disabled in 2020. I know with 100% certainty that I am not wrong about Covid. I live with the proof every minute of every day for the rest of my life."

"The insurance companies and government statisticians care, or rather they have taken an objective interest." > https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01074597 > https://insurancenewsnet.com/innarticle/insurance-industry-coalition-forms-non-profit-to-study-excess-mortality

"There are parallels between how governments are responding to COVID-19 and how they responded to tobacco back in the day. “it would be a mistake to assume governments would automatically protect people from a public health threat in the face of more immediate economic considerations…there would be resistance to change that might be costly until evidence to justify it was overwhelming.”" > https://johnsnowproject.org/insights/merchants-of-doubt/

"I suspect most of us entertain this thought from time to time, especially when it’s this absurdly difficult and lonely to maintain a Covid Conscious lifestyle. But it’s important to remember that history is littered with people making terrible choices en masse: with handling past pandemics, the holocaust, slavery, witch burnings, etc. Hell pretty much everyone used to smoke and putting lead in everything was A-ok. Just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t mean they’re right. So it becomes important to ask what does the data actually say? The research and the statistical data on this subject paint an ugly but fairly quantifiable picture by which we can gauge our understanding of the situation and our choices in response to it. Read the science. Look at the data on things like Long Covid. There are also many of us who have already had our health absolutely ravaged by this virus or lost loved ones to it etc., and everyone in that position has first hand evidence for how dangerous this virus is. It’s tremendously difficult to swim against the current like we are and self-doubt is natural in those conditions, but that’s when seeking out factual information on the subject is the best course of action."

"But what it all comes back to for me is - say we're wrong, and covid is a big nothingburger and lockdowns are the root of all evil. Ok, well, what I'm doing is acting on the best information available to me at this time to protect my family. I can't regret that. I will always be able to look my kids in the eye and say "I did my best with what I had."" ... So if we're wrong - well, we wore masks, changed our social habits, reduced our consumerism and our contribution to the destruction of our planet, and reduced how often we got sick. None of those things are bad. If they're wrong, they and their kids are screwed. I'd rather err on the side of caution.

[the-modern-typewriter]

Hi! Can you do a villain x villain?

"Is that a wedding ring?" It came out, just the teensiest bit, strangled.

"Last bit of your outfit for tonight. Put it on."

The protagonist stared at the villain for a moment, searching for the trap. It probably wouldn't actually kill them, but with them it was impossible to be entirely sure. The other's expression gave away nothing. They weren't even looking back - more preoccupied with tapping away at something on their phone.

"Uh..."

They got an eyebrow raise in response. A delicate warning.

So, the protagonist padded over to the small black box sitting open on their kitchen table. It was next to the villain. Close enough that they couldn't keep the table between the two of them, at least not without making a thing about it.

The villain smelled like their expensive soap. Spicy. Warm.

The protagonist swallowed, heart stuttering.

"Funny sort of proposal," the protagonist managed. "Even for you."

"No one's threatened by newlyweds. It's the perfect cover."

Right. Of course it wasn't an actual proposal. That would be...well. Probably apocalyptic, but the protagonist's stomach did give a stupid little squeeze at the thought. The bastard no doubt knew.

The ring fit perfectly.

When they glanced at the villain again, the other's gaze was already on them, assessing. It lit the protagonist up, like their every nerve ending was mapped out on some special spectrum that only the other villain could see.

The protagonist exhaled a shaky breath. "You're going to owe me big time for this."

"You'll get your share of the profits. You always do, don't you?"

They had worked together on a number of big jobs over the years. The other villain always had the most insane and most lucrative plans. Brilliant.

The protagonist was pretty sure they'd been in love with the bastard from nearly the moment they met.

The villain held out a hand. A matching ring sparkled in the evening light.

When the protagonist stared at them, helplessly, dumbly, the villain clicked their tongue.

"Oh." The protagonist took the offered hand, and the villain promptly reeled them in, so they stood between the villain's legs. They could feel the heat of them radiating from their skin, they were so close.

The protagonist felt a little dizzy.

"You'll need to be quicker on the upkeep, lover, if we're going to pull this off," the other villain murmured. They squeezed the protagonist's fingers hard enough to hurt. "If anyone suspects anything, we're done for. Breathe."

The protagonist breathed out, slow, steadying.

"And sit," the villain said.

The other chair was on the other side of the table. Did the villain mean -?

Another impatient tongue-click.

The protagonist sat themselves on the villain's lap. They felt hyperaware of every inch of contact between them. "This is - um -"

"Uncomfortable?" The villain's smile was wicked. "You don't want to be my false lover, baby?"

The protagonist gritted their teeth, refusing to give the villain the sadistic delight of seeing them flush. "You're a bit like a cat, is all," the protagonist said. "Never sure, if I touch you, if you're going to be sweet or if you're going to claw my hand off."

"More fun that way," the villain purred.

Well, it certainly kept things interesting. There was probably something wrong with the protagonist.

Still studying them, the villain brought the protagonist's hand up to their lips, pressing a kiss to their knuckles.

The reaction was instant and visceral.

The protagonist closed their eyes. They felt hot and flustered all over.

Why were they so incapable of being cool and intimidating around the one person they wanted to be cool for?

The villain chuckled. "Yeah, I think you're going to do just fine. If you pass out, it won't be terror. Will it, love?"

"That's why you wanted me for this collab? My-" They stopped short of saying feelings for you. Ludicrous thing to admit aloud, even if they both knew. Especially them.

"One of them."

"The other being my sparkling competence, naturally."

"Naturally."

The villain's hands rose, moving to fix the protagonist's tie with one hand. They knotted it just a fraction too tight, even as their movements stayed leisurely. The protagonist could feel it when they swallowed.

The protagonist kept waiting for their body to relax. To not be on edge just sharing the same air space.

It didn't happen.

The villain was smiling. They gave the tie a little tug, so their lips could brush along the protagonist's jaw line.

"Exposure therapy?" the protagonist asked. "So I'm more natural later?"

"Mm." There was a hum of approval in the other villain's voice. It shouldn't have meant as much as it did.

"Am I allowed to touch you?"

"You can always try it and see how sweet I am."

"You're impossible." It came out a huff, but not without affection. Never. They tentatively settled their hands on the other villain's shoulders.

"Of course you can touch me," the villain said. "You're my beloved spouse. We're besotted. Disgustingly affectionate. No one wants to look at us for longer than three seconds before they want to puke rainbows."

"This is your version of puking rainbows?"

The villain gave the tie a sharp tug for that.

The protagonist had to laugh and, with the laugh, some of the tension faded from them. "Don't worry, I'll teach you."

"Will you."

"Mm. You say nice things and call each other by saccharine nicknames."

"Gross."

The protagonist grinned. "Your idea, boss."

The villain was quiet for a beat, settling back in their chair, considering the protagonist again for a beat. Musing.

"We should go," the protagonist said. "We'll be late."

"Late is believable. We're newlyweds. Easily distracted."

The villain was, admittedly, very distracting beneath them. But that was hardly the point.

The villain was still staring.

"You picked the clothes," the protagonist said. "You can't tell me to change."

"I don't want you to change. Not ever."

The protagonist's throat tightened, mouth dry. "There we go," they said softly. "Puking rainbows."

The evening was going to be exquisitely unbearable.

[transingthoseformers]

Lately, I've been trying to nail down the dynamics I like best for MegOp, and I've settled on at least one-

Megatron had plenty of on the fly, basically zero communication hookups during his gladiator days, where horny mechs would stand around looking sexy in the washracks and someone just groped you to initiate something (broken servo if you're rejected), but he's never started anything that needs a real conversation. His plan for seducing Optimus Prime post-war is:

- Be in sexy situations

- Optimus will simply stick his spike in me no conversation needed bc my panels are hip height and I'm attractive

- ????

- Profit

Meanwhile, Optimus Prime is a Normal person, who believes in wacky, outlandish, utopian things like bodily autonomy, and communicating his desires honestly. So when Megatron keeps comm.ing him about how he's been "stuck in a wall" or "needs help stretching" or "could really use a massage" Optimus mostly interprets these things as Megatron either choosing to spend time with him (romantically?), or, more importantly, being more vulnerable with him and "learning to ask for help", which he is wildly touched by. So, like a person interacting with a maybe dateable coworker, and not a porno actor.

Needless to say, Megatron is furious.

"I went through the trouble of positioning my aft so that it was sticking out of the wall PERFECTLY and he just- pulled me out of it! He didn't even feel me up while doing it!! The NERVE, Soundwave!!! It's like he's not even interested."

Optimus, earlier, 3 seconds after making sure Megatron was fine after the wall: "Do you want to refuel together later? I'd like to talk to you more often, but we're always so busy. We really should make more time for it."

Ratchet and Soundwave are getting wildly different answers when they ask their respective friend about how the progress of this relationship is going.

ghhGHJH YES

PROFIT or so he thinks

Megatron I swear to God, you're in for a situation

hdhdhh sorry I'm choking on my ramen at "stuck in a wall"

Optimus is here acting like a genuinely good person, and Megatron's so frustrated with it

And Optimus is exactly giving him a time of day to chat too

I need Ratchet and Soundwave to talk about the different sides of this and Realize

[girlcoil]

how do you cope with grief?

connection and community

get more sober

cry

let go of what you lost within, dont live in two different worlds; dont go back to the past, nostalgia wont support you

take breaks, do some drugs (but only sometimes), escape in the little ways

come back to reality

have some rituals to do, every day

connection and community.

cry some more

(if you have no friends you should still try to find some, be it online or in the real world, it might be awkward or messy but just be upfront about what you struggle with and tell them youre branching out and trying to have some good times

branch out, do things youve never done before, go places youve never been before, places or experiences, where you can make some new memories, bring some new friends

cry

acknowledge how what you lost changed you, acknowledge what it meant to you when you did have it

let go

go through this for a while until your life grows around the grief, always move forwards.

it doesnt go away.

it can get smoothed out, so you get hung up on it less, but you have to move forwards.

life can change very quickly, you turn a corner and everything is different, you could become an entirely different person in just a few weeks of practicing a new perspective on life

what you think is what you live; what you believe is who you are; you can only change if you allow yourself to.

make new dreams, have dreams at night, remember to! have some during the day but not too many

rinse and repeat

???

profit heal

still struggling? live for others. living for others and not yourself sucks, but trust me, we'll get through this, you must work towards mending your wounds, but in the meantime some purpose cant hurt if youre running on fumes.

you will die i promise, just keep going, dont stop yet, things might get a lot better, theyre gonna get worse at first but then theyll get better, trust me on that, im an oracle, clairvoyant af, i cant tell you what it is for various reasons, but we're gonna get through this together and out the other side

i love you

do not join a cult in desperation for connection, this will not help

Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.

-Laozi

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

Taking a break from squeeing over all this juicy stuff on my dash for a moment, I have to say that what both Saint & YinWar are doing here is really important for the creative side of QL.

Let's be clear, most media executives are not creative people. They may have some business acumen (though most I think fake it quite a bit), but a vast number are incapable of understanding what it feels like to be creative, or how to connect with the people (us) who engage with creative material in any kind of passionate way.

Which is why they so often make decisions like "this college BL was cheap to make and did well - let's make 20 more". It's why they keep adapting books that fit pre-established norms while ignoring the vast number of QL books in other genres. It's why they so often will only take a "risk" once it's already been proven profitable by some smaller more independent enterprise. It's why they are chomping at the bit to replace writers with AI (I hate calling it that, it's not remotely intelligent), because they truly don't see the difference between an algorithm and a human being. Both can produce "content" and that's what they care about.

Now I'm sure that part of YinWar making Jack and Joker is because they want to play in something cool & fun (get it boys!), but also they're no dummies. Partner in Crime was a test, and they saw how the people reacted.

Same with Saint. Each series pushes the QL bubble open a little bit wider, because he understands that despite what most executives think, we as viewers are not a mindless monolith that you can endlessly feed the same content to.

And vitally, what they get and most executives don't, is the FANDOM of it all. They know we want to pour over gifs & photos, and swoon over this sexy moment, and talk about that cool bit of action. We want to be fed.

We're not subtle about what we like. If you take the time to actually pay attention to us

The ironic thing is that I think both of these productions are going to do very well, and then more executives will jump on the genre bandwagon and recycle ideas, without understanding just what it is that makes us so feral for these particular properties.

But in the meantime, I am grateful for creative people who fight to make their own content. How much more colorless our world would be without them.

[distort-opia]

What kind of non lethal crimes do you think Joker would pivot to in a relationship with Bruce? I'm thinking about your REMS characterization. Also thinking about a line from Joker in the last chapter, about not throwing his career down the shitter and killing to defend himself. What would a career look like for him being with Bruce? Surely he would still be incredibly silly about them, with varying levels of violence that *just* teeters the edge. Love your work!

Glad you like my work, thank you! Hmm, what I had in mind when writing that in REMS (or for a sequel) was Joker's penchant for... well, breaking people and exposing hypocrisy, but minus the murder. With his love of drama and performance sprinkled on top, of course; as you say, he'd never stop being silly.

He usually kills indiscriminately, yes, because he considers himself as just playing into the cruel meaninglessness of the world. But the reason why Joker fixated on Batman, and why his M.O. includes using a gas that basically forces people to see the world like he does right before they die, is Joker's need to prove a point. He wants people to admit that there's no order to life and that tragedy can strike at any time; he wants Gotham to realize how arbitrary rules are, and Batman happens to be the perfect embodiment of that.

So I think that a Joker who won't murder anymore would basically create situations in which people's darkest sides are exposed, to various degrees of seriousness and violence. And not only that-- he would do things that would expose the ridiculousness and heinousness of the world people live in. Capitalism and its self-cannibalizing focus on profit, the skewed interests of the government, the suffering of the poor... Joker's already done this sort of thing, it's not much of a stretch. For example, seeing how many people we're being hurt as a result of superhero fights, one time Joker promised to pay the medical bills of each Gothamite that posted a video on the DC equivalent of Facebook... but only if they shouted the word "Balyushka" and then did something ridiculous to make him laugh:

Batman: Gotham Nights #6 ("Balyushka!")

And he keeps his word! But of course, this creates utter chaos, because people are doing fucking crazy shit to get that money. And the thing is, he doesn't do this just for funsies. He has a point, and Bruce can't help but admit it:

Batman: Gotham Nights #6 ("Balyushka!")

Joker exposed the problems that Batman could not tackle with fists, and then Bruce listened. He actually used his money and influence to help.

Ironically, again, it's not the first time Joker did something that made Bruce go "Hmm, maybe I should look into the systemic corruption":

Batman: Gotham Nights #4 ("The Dragnet")

I won't go into too much detail, but Joker paid Harleen Quinzell's tuition without much prompting, he went and helped (in his own way) a child who wrote to him and was clearly being abused... it's about the cases he can empathize with. And they're all connected to his own life-ruining trauma. Red Hood fell into the vat most of all because of poverty. Because he had no choice except to turn to crime-- otherwise him and his family would not have had food to put on the table. So of course he hates the society he lives in, one that had no safety nets or mercy for people like him who were drowning.

This is a very long-winded way to say that I imagine a non-lethal Joker being a mix of this and... stupid ass pranks on a massive scale, because let's be honest, he wouldn't give them up. He just wouldn't kill people at the end (because it'd make his boyfriend sad).

fanfic writer ask game - director's commentary

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Hiii how would you respond to the ""argument"" that some people make that: when the Berlin Wall fell, which way did people go? impling that those on the communist side were eager to go over to the capitalist one. Thx

West Germany had been bribing people with gifts and money to cross even before the Wall fell. The first impressions of West Germany were very good indeed, but by the time you were able to see past them, it was much more difficult to go back if you were a member of the majority of people who didn't find success and wealth on the other side. And once the Wall fell, the path back was cut off permanently. The capitalists made sure to excise every remnant of socialism with top-down neoliberal economic reforms while people were still high from the end of travel restrictions and an influx of shiny consumer goods. The people were told they'd be given democracy and they thought that meant they would get the chance to reform socialism, but instead the West pumped their billions into the pro-Western "Alliance for Germany" led by the CDU, organizing under the banner of "nie wieder Sozialismus", and the communists were suppressed in Germany once again, with the major leaders of the SED imprisoned. Poverty, unemployment, homelessness, depression and suicide all rose in East Germany just like in every case of Eastern Bloc countries subject to "economic shock therapy", and it was never the result of popular democratic decision-making. German reunification was a case of the Western capitalists seizing control of the East for their own profit at the expense of the people's wellbeing. They were effectively punishing the East for daring to have been socialist in the first place, to the point where East Germany is still poorer than West Germany despite reunification.

That's why people might have felt the desire to move west, but most people stayed in their hometowns for the same reasons anyone would. The majority of the older generations in the East still have a positive view of the Communist period (dubbed "Ostalgie" by the West, to imply that it's all just nostalgia and never a sober comparison), and Die Linke, the direct descendant of the SED, still gets a bigger share of the votes in the East than in the West. If we're supposed to believe that people who lived through this period all know better than to support socialism and that only privileged Westerners who were never there could ever think communism is a good thing, then surely the opposite should be true and Die Linke should be more popular in the big Western cities full of liberal arts majors and transgender baristas, right?

[stickthisbig]

I've started conducting job interviews at work now? It's terrifying but it turns out I'm really good at it? So if interviewing is daunting, here is my advice from the other side of the table. It turned out to be very long, so here's a cut.

When you apply:

Oh my god please spell check your resume, I beg of you.

Gimmicks absolutely will not help you. You will get so much farther with a resume that is neatly formatted and a cover letter that is straight to the point.

Make sure you count all your experience!! Internships and fellowships count as experience!! The computer system will reject you and I'll never see it in the first place!!

After you've gotten the interview:

If you're trying to get a job in a field you've never worked in (as most of the people I interview are), break down your former employment or experience into the skills you used and keep that information at hand. You used to work in food service? You have experience in delivering an experience at a high quality with basically no margin for error, and you work well under pressure. You were a telemarketer? You have experience at following a workflow and deescalating conflict.

We and every other job WILL be asking you about a. conflict management and deescalation (have examples for how you resolve conflict with coworkers, clients, and bosses) b. personal time management (how you stay organized and on schedule) c. what you do when you realize you can't handle a problem by yourself d. your strengths and weaknesses (see below) Just go on and have an answer ready. You will be asked. There will be questions you're not prepared for. Be prepared for these.

Do a little googling about the company/organization. What will become extremely clear to you immediately is whether they're going to care about you caring about the mission. Some businesses don't. Every non-profit and every government agency does. If they seem like they care, you should pretend to care.

Ask all your questions of the person who is scheduling the interview. I don't recommend trying to figure out who will be your boss and contacting them. Everybody's very busy all the time, none of us are hiring specialists, and we're using the HR staff to act as our buffer. You will look like a nuisance, not a go-getter.

Do look at a map and figure out where you're going. It's vastly preferable to call an hour ahead and say you're unsure where to go than call ten minutes late and say you're lost.

When you walk into the office:

I personally don't give a fast fuck if you come empty handed, but some interviewers HATE that, so definitely bring a notebook and a pen. It's no longer necessary to bring paper copies of your resume. If you're going to interview a lot, may I recommend dropping five or ten bucks on a sketchbook at Michaels or similar? It looks polished and also you can actually use it for things. If you need to write notes to help you remember anything from above, it's okay to write them down. Anybody who would ding you for that isn't someone you need to work for.

If you don't know what to wear: black or khaki pants, nice shirt. Preferably a blazer, but that's optional at entry level imho. Lately I'm finding that the men's sections in thrift stores have better selections? If you've got big hips, you can slit the sides of a men's dress shirt up to your waistline and tuck it in. If you have to come in jeans, wear a belt. If you only have a t-shirt, make sure it's clean and tuck it in. You don't have to prove to me you have money to get this job; you just have to prove to me that you are taking this opportunity seriously by presenting yourself neatly, because you will be expected to be dressed neatly at work.

My sibling in Christ beloved child of God, be polite to every fucking person you see. Oh my god I cannot stress to you how polite you need to be. I cannot believe that this is a thing I have to say, but I sure do! If it's close between you and another person, that snippy comment you made on the elevator WILL lose you that job. Ditto for if they walk you around to meet people. Just be THE politest motherfucker.

When you walk into the room:

When you sit down, what you are looking at is one person who is running the interview, twoish people who are related to your job, and sometimes also someone from HR, unless HR does all the interviewing. One of these people wants to be your hype man. If it's my office, it's me, I'm hype man. I want to have a dialogue with you to see how prepared you are and how good of a communicator you are. I want this interview to go fast and seamless. I'm in your corner. Don't play to the guy who's actively staring off into space. Focus on the interviewer who's most focused on you.

NEVER downplay your own experience. Getting a job you're underqualified for is a problem for future you. If you only have internships, or you only have retail, or you only have food service, or you only have work study, fuck it. You walk in there and act like you've been the goddamn president. The question of your qualifications and the question of your experience are separate. Never act like your experience doesn't count because it's in a "lesser" field.

EVERY. TIME. you are asked about your weaknesses, explain how you have used them for growth. Do not wait to be asked, just slap it in there. One of my biggest weaknesses is giving up control, so I've made a conscious effort to involve other people earlier in the process. If you're not fuckin working on your weaknesses, just try to imagine what would be a good idea. Or maybe work on them? I'm not your dad.

What I am looking for is your ability to answer my questions in a complete and concise way. If you can't give me a specific example, I want you to be able to reflect on your previous work and say "When it comes to X, my experience doing Y is relevant in this way." I am asking you for a synthesis. Most of what I need you to do in this position, I know you've never done. If there is something where I specifically need you to have done X as a professional qualification, there is nothing else you could say that would be right, so you have nothing to lose.

Keep some question in your back pocket for when they ask "do you have any questions for us." It is a hundred percent okay for this to be a softball question, but it's also okay to ask something more probing. You can ask how they handle training, town and gown relations, what the possibilities for employee development are, whether they've done any diversity initiatives, if there's a good work-life balance, what the previous person in the position is doing now, what their strategic planning is like, whatever, just something to prove you're engaged. Do not ask about leave, and do not ask a gimmicky question you saw on the internet. If you can't think of anything, just fuckin ask them how they like working there. That's perfectly fine.

This isn't the time to bring up ADA accommodations. The person who can approve that for you is almost certainly not in the room, and you put us in a super weird position. I am saying this as a person who receives ADA accommodations from my employer and did not disclose my disability when I was hired, as is my legal right. Don't bring it up until you think it would actively prevent you from fulfilling a job requirement or accessing the office. In the before times I had a dude once who called me asking if the building was accessible, because he just wasn't going to interview if it wasn't, and I was just like "...that's fair, my man, but you can come on down."

After the interview:

I fully don't care about a thank you note; I'm unlikely to see it anyway. Some people do. You may send one (1) and ONLY ONE thank you note; generally it should just go to the person who scheduled your interview. Do not, and this is so important, do not email again. I know it is the fucking worst how employers get away with ghosting people but my friend you and I cannot change that. (We do send notices to people who get interviews but don't get the job; people who don't get interviews are informed by the computer system.)

It's gonna be okay. I'm not trying to trick you; I want this to go smoothly, and I want you to demonstrate that you understand how you would use what you've already done to do what I need you to do. I don't want this to be awkward any more than you do. Actually, I want this not to be awkward more than you do, because I have to do this several more times.

[hexastitchimera]

To be more nuanced, I say this because I just realized how much judgement people have cast my way for experiences that I have not only lived through and can recite back in perfect detail each time, but have a SIGNIFICANT amount of evidence + witnesses (including police reports for the traumatic times) that were there for it.

Then, I also realized that those who downplay experiences are:

Often of a highly privileged background (regardless of current social status) who never encountered that experience in their own lives due to the safety net that said privileges provide.

Those who HAVE lived through as much, but are in severe denial, especially if it means admitting that they need help and support.

Those who would better profit off of you staying silent about your experiences than you speaking about them.

The last one in particular is ever prevalent in our online spaces, and tends to be the most hostile due to potential, even significant losses (especially financial & egotistical; war and economy go hand in hand).

So when I say "We need to stop assuming," I don't mean it in the sense that you should believe everyone at face value, and never trust your gut if what someone's saying makes you feel something.

I mean it in the sense that, if someone tells you that they lived through hell and back, or that they experienced something strange and unusual that they're unsure about, don't immediately assume ulterior motives and lying for whatever's sake.

Sit with them. Hear them out. See their side of the story.

If someone isn't making a sales pitch to you, listen.

You might be humbled at least, empowered at best.

Can we finally do away with assumptions on others (end post here)

[apas-95]

abt the 'exit strategy for capitalism' thing obviously the natural advantages of socialist states will lead to their uncontested military and economical dominance in the coming decades, at which point they'll have both means and motive to buy out bourgeois interests and their 'possessions' and transition the economical system while there's no easy way for imperial core states to outright end these trends, their policies obviously do affect the economical development of socialist states and there's probably enough variance to shift the timetable on all this happening by a couple years, so y'know exert whatever influence you have on the particular flavor of capitalism that's in vogue if done well (and what I'm seeing rn actually gives me hope for that) the capitalists at no point have an incentive to burn the whole thing down out of spite bc they keep earning right until they don't, you know how the saying abt ropes and hangings goes (and if done poorly and they cling to and suck dry the last scraps of the world's economy they control at least everywhere else should be out of reach by then) and my main concern with a revolution is actually that one will 100% get accused of having foreign backing, at which point you just needlessly raise the odds of some general deciding he (or she #imwithher) might as well let those nukes fly (even if they're losing, especially if they're losing) But it's all w/e, I could be convinced either way, this all just makes a lot more sense to me than a succesful imperial core revolution that doesn't end with the northern hemisphere irradiated

fundamentally the notion of a peaceful transition out of capitalism is simply not in agreement with reality. no class has ever abandoned the world stage without fighting to maintain itself, and the imperial core is already both undertaking massive violence and war against the sections of the global south it already has under its heel, and preparing for high-intensity conflict against the communists that have slipped its shackles. there is no point where the bourgeoisie would simply peacefully allow themselves to be stripped of power.

the point of nukes is exactly *why* there has to be revolution within the imperial core, rather than having the rest of the world do the job for them - there is precisely one place the US has no nuclear deterrent against, which is itself. if the thing we're supposed to fear is that both 'the US military's high command, likely facing severe mutiny, rather than ordering a negotiated surrender during civil war, decides to nuke themselves' as well as 'the US strategic missile forces, upon receiving the order to nuke themselves, carry it out', then so be it - such a fundamental strategic insanity would be just as likely to start a nuclear exchange even if there weren't a revolution - which brings us to the final point.

world war is on the horizon. the economic reasons for world war remain as they did a century and a half ago. the world has been fully carved up, and the profits are drying out. the imperialist blocks, principally the US and EU, are driven to compete against each other for their holdings, first peacefully, then through proxy war, and finally through direct conflict. as it was a hundred years ago, the buildup of war is accepted on all sides with the target of the socialist bloc and the potential for its pillaging, but (as has already started breaking out among larger and larger regional powers) any conflict of this sort would manifest as general war and looting, as desperate, recession-wracked imperialists take opportunity as it presents itself. in inter-imperialist war the most ruthless techniques are used, and a nuclear exchange would not be off the table -- and, fundamentally, the conditions that lead to world war are the same that lead to instability, insurrection, and revolution within individual countries.

war is, at this juncture, an inevitability. the only question is whether revolutionary war will win out over unjust war, will convert the war between nations to a war between classes. we are against war, but we are not afraid of it.