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#you don't have to 'earn' a right to live you just do
lena-in-a-red-dress · 8 hours
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Musician Age Gap AU Pt 12
Lena's entire body seems to buzz as they hover in the wings offstage, waiting for the cue to proceed. She bounces on the balls of her feet, fingers twisting together with uncharacteristic nerves, completely unlike the staid presence she'd run into under the National City arena.
"You okay?" she asks hesitantly.
"I've never shared new music live before," Lena confesses. "What if they hate it?"
"Nah," Kara dismisses. She smiles. "They'll love it, cuz its you."
If nothing else, the novelty-- the privilege-- of witnessing a live performance of a never-before-heard song would ease any negativity the song itself might earn down the line. Even Kara herself hasn't had a chance to hear it.
The nearest stagehand motions one minute to go. Finally, Lena stills, taking a moment to breathe deep.
"You've got this," Kara promises, before stepping away.
The lights dim, then go out entirely as the pre-show music quiets. In its place lifts a deafening roar from the crowd. Its so dark Kara doesn't see Lena move into position. One minute she's there, and the next an overhead spotlight snaps on to illuminate Lena centerstage, arm stretched high.
She waits for the din to just start to fall away, and then she's off without a single shred of her anxiety from just moments before. Her movements are strong and confident as she strides across the stage, playing to the crowd in just the right way to get them pumped and engaged for the next two hours.
Her first song is the same from the National City show, as is the second, and third. Kara doubts anything has changed, no doubt so rehearsed Lena could do it all in her sleep, singing included. But watching it again feels an all new experience.
It steals her breath away, and she only comes back to herself when Lena slows, reaching for a mic stand. This is it.
"I know you guys came here prepared to sing along with every word," Lena begins, even her speaking voice rich like velvet. "Which I'm sure you can sing better than I can at this point."
She earns a raucous burst of laughter, and prompts a giggle from Lena.
"But I'm afraid this next one is going to be all me... cuz I've a little something new for you tonight."
Kara thinks she might have lost her hearing, ears ringing in the answering explosion of cheers. Lena patiently waits for the opening to continue, grinning all the way.
"It's pretty self-explanatory once you hear it, but here's the thing: you know that ex who keeps reaching out? Believe it or not, I have one."
Another round of laughter, and a little bit of hollering.
"I thought I blocked him on everything, but I must have missed something, because guess what I got?" Lena pauses for comedic effect. "A cashapp payment for three dollars and thirty three cents."
Laughter fills the arena, and Lena joins with a delighted giggle. "The note of course asked me to call him, but... I don't know. What do you think?"
Cries of No! and Don't do it! echoed from various areas of the audience, and Lena nods.
"I think we're on the same page then. Three dollars and thirty three cents doesn't earn you a phone call..." Lena leans in close to the microphone. "But it might just earn you a song."
The audience laps it up, eliciting even more whooping cheers. Lena nods, half to herself, and half to the audience.
"Let's hit it!"
As soon as the music starts, Lena shifts effortlessly back into performance mode. Kara listens, bopping along to the bouncing beat and playful lyrics. Playful but scathing, it turns out, listing off all the reasons this mysterious ex will never see her again.
From her spot in the wings, Kara sees the crowd dancing, not singing but cheering and spinning and bouncing and absorbing it all with reckless abandon. She registers Lillian's approach beside her, but doesn't so much as glance at her. Whatever Lillian thought about Lena's plan, it was working. Tomorrow, all the world would care about is getting their ears on this new song-- and they would love it.
"You have no idea the bullet she just dodged for you."
Kara does look over at that. Her brow furrows sharply, and Lillian smirks as she watches her daughter perform.
"This time tomorrow, the world is going to be so busy sleuthing out which of her ex's this song is about, they won't even remember your name."
Onstage, Lena finishes her song with a boisterous laugh, letting the fresh cheers roll over her. Lillian turns to Kara, leaning in close.
"So when you ultimately decide this fantasy isn't for you, remember that a twenty four year old is the reason you'll still have a real life to go back to."
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Girly pop, you’re living in my head rent free with your fics.
Especially your most recent satosugu one, literally have been thinking about it nonstop trying to imagine how certain scenarios would work out.
Like what if reader got pregnant during her princess stage? What if she had tried to leave in part one during Satoru’s “cool downs”? Does Suguru even see her as a person anymore after part two? What if reader played along the entire time, just to attempt escape when their guard was both down! Ugh so many questions.
You just write so good! It leaves such a haunting impression!
Hope you write a part three ❤️ also thank you to the person that commissioned this fic.
ahhh thank you!!! as of now i have no intention of writing a part three or expanding further on a fourteen-thousand word project in general, but i will say that in an alternative timeline where the reader hadn't stayed until things were the absolute worst they could possibly get, things would've largely been the same - just messier. any relationship with gojo and geto is going to involve some kind of unhealthy, obsessive, codependent dynamic that will inevitably lead to full-blow kidnapping, but staying for as long as the reader did gave them time to secure a house, set-up a playroom, fetishize the reader's general helplessness, etc. suguru would've lashed out the second you tried to leave at any point, but without prior intent, you likely would've been stuck in that crate right away and kept as a puppy while they finalized their plans, eventually letting you ""graduate"" to princess after you've been sufficiently worn down.
and for what it's worth, i genuinely don't think any amount of good behavior would be enough to earn geto's full trust. gojo would probably let his guard down eventually (not that he ever had it up very high around you), but geto can't let the leash loose enough to ever have to confront the thought of you getting away, let alone deliberately leaving them. your someone he's decided he deserves to have full and unadulterated control over, and you contradicting that is always either going to be evidence of just how unable to care for yourself you really are, or unimaginable to the point of total, physical rejection. honestly, it's less that he doesn't trust you, and more that he couldn't possibly imagine a world wherein you would ever do anything worthwhile with that trust.
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pynkhues · 22 hours
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https://x.com/snow_droplet/status/1836806686041944275
lots of people see this scene (louis reading madame bovary) as a one more confirmation of louis = housewife = mother. just as the yellow painting depicting mother and child. why do you think he relates to these works so much? and what do you think it says about writers' intent wrt his character?
Mm, I can see the thought process, but having read Madame Bovary a number of years ago, I'm a little surprised at the interpretation of Louis as Emma, who cheats because she finds monogomy boring, provincial life even more so, and dislikes motherhood - three things that I'd associate a lot more with Lestat than I would with Louis given a) Antoinette, and the fact that Louis never cheated on Lestat given he only had sex with Jonah when the relationship was opened up, b) Lestat spent most of his mortal life trying to escape the French countryside when Louis has only ever lived in cities, and c) his Whole Deal with Claudia.
I do think that it's worth noting too that the copy of Madame Bovary Louis' reading is actually Lestat's, not Louis':
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It also shows I think a real sense of taking Louis' self-assessment when he's at one of his lowest points of depression across the course of the series, as an actual representation of himself? Claudia calling Louis a housewife was pretty specifically about trying to emasculate him into action, and we're sitting with Louis here where he does feel emasculated. Louis does find purpose through work - he's an ambitious man and a capitalist from the moment we meet him - and him being forced out of the upper echelon of earning capacity due to his race is both, of course, racist, but I think also is something he does find emasculating.
Louis always took his role as provider seriously with the du Lac's, I think both as eldest son and patriarch (and I kinda touched on it in my post about Grace, but the show flirts a little with gothic themes of a perverted family structure there in that Louis is both father and brother to Grace and Paul, and son and husband to Florence), and I think even having the illusion that he was providing for at least Claudia, if not Lestat (who of course is cashed-up from Magnus), was still a crucial part of his identity. It's why it's easy for him to fall into a (again, perverted) version of that role with Armand.
That's even without getting into the Capitalism of it all, haha. I actually forgot this and just caught it again on my (very slow) re-watch, but The Azaelia isn't Louis' only business at the time when it starts getting targeted. He's invested in, at the very least, grocery stores and millineries, which Lestat points out to him when Louis' making his No Whites Allowed sign:
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This - - again - - is emasculating. Grocery stores and hat makers are very specifically pink-collar industries, and Louis' been making a fortune not off women's quote-unquote 'interests', he's been making it off women's bodies. And again, one day, I'm going to write my Louis-is-a-misogynyst post, but for now, my point is that it's the insult of this that fuels Louis' (rightful!) anger, not his relation to it.
The painting I do think is a bit different, but that's kind of harder to talk about given visual art is so subjective (and honestly I know less about it / can speak to it less). I do think it's significant though that the artist is a Black man, and someone who's still pretty up and coming. The maternal side there I can see, but I don't think it's as absolute as others, just personally.
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randomnameless · 3 months
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Thinking about muhritocracy again or as our Supreme Leader puts it, "rising and falling by your own merit" -
Isn't Cyril basically the poster child of this ideal sucking?
Both in Almyra and during his spiritual retreat in House Goneril, Cyril mentions that he had to "work hard", it's implied he had to work hard to earn whatever keep he could have (food, but even then that was not common).
Cyril embracing muhritocracy also wants to work "real hard" to repay Rhea, otherwise he feels like he cannot remain in Garreg Mach.
We know the Nabs would never kick him out for this reason (hell Hilda was enrolled and Manu is still a teacher) and both Seteth and Rhea (the latter only did so off-screen and it's basically mentionned in his S support with Billy bcs Rhea can't have screentime I guess) tell him that while repaying a debt is admirable, he needs to start on living now.
Aka, Cyril is allowed to "exist" and "live" even without overworking himself to the bone to have the "right to exist".
Now, FE Fodlan being what it is, the angle of GM being a safehaven/place where old people, children and basically people who cannot "rise due to their own merits" live is completely ignored bar that off-handed comment in Cyril's support with Claude that Rhea basically wants to make a place for people without status/who are vulnerable.
And that place is Garreg Mach.
CS introduces the Abyss that is basically GM+Asylum for people seeking it, even if Aelfric paints it with a Rhea BaD veneer, it's here to offer a shelter to those who are "persecuted" on the "surface" like Dagdans and Almyrans, the poor, the sick, etc etc - basically a "place for those who have nowhere to go".
Constance's family was demoted to nothing by Ionius because they failed to defend Adrestia against Dagda? Her house "fell" by its own "lack of muhrit"... so GM offers her a place to be, even if she (her house, but Adrestia always deals with Houses and not with people!) failed once.
Tldr : GM is the place that completely pissed on Muhritocracy, and where people who have no "muhrit"/status are supported/receive help by the Church.
Cyril works very hard to "earn" the right to remain in GM, but he has yet to understand (only with his supports with the Nabateans!) that he doesn't need to "earn" any right to be and live in Garreg Mach, it's just that kind of place.
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lightbulb-warning · 1 month
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so has anyone figured out WHY there is the Need To Share our Artworks™ or is it just the vibes and our Soul apparently
#ive been running on “two cakes. u aren't BOTHERING people by putting art on their feed they can scroll past it/if they dont they get ”cake“”#and we love “cake”#“cake” is picture on the internet in this case#like okay the contracts and transaction format is a me problem!! i need to get rid of the “utilitarian brain worms” bc they're boring#this is supposed to be a hobby and the “get a good grade in hobby” wolf in the brain is just crying bc that's how they understand the world#the “get a good grade in x” wolf has valid pain but needs to stop controlling my life because they don't need to earn “enough value to live”#ect ect ect#and the life of minmaxxed utility is a life of trying to appeal to a “correct” that doesn't exist yaddi yadda = boring#i love you wolf. also shut up. affectionate. concerned. you get it#ok so we remove tangible purpose from act of experience art because THAT'S not “the point”#because “the point” is the joy killer eccetera ecc#but then what? “here check out this labor of love. i drew this fucker 15 times. no there's no story* there it's just a guy”#*story in this case being an emotional engagement/a situation/a context in which to ponder/other#so it's just a Draw. no further analysis. what do others Get from that?#i know i deeply enjoy art because im a fan of the process of People Making Stuff. i love when there was nothing but now there's something!!!#THAT'S what's it all about!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to me!!!! right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#so it stands to reason that creation is purpose enough?? to be experienced???? to be known????????#idk!!#this is a nothing burger of a thought people have always liked picture on the internet stfu maiora there doesn't need to be a reason#this is just the brainworms talking!!! because god forbid “something not have a purpose”??? blegh!!!!!!!!#sounds like unhealthy rationalizing instead of letting things be out of The Fear™!!sounds like depraving urself from joy bc of BRAINWORMS!!!#so like!!!!! picture on the internet doesn't NEED inherent value. creation is enough!! (plus there's the Attachment to Character. also.)#but then why are YOU *points at you* here? gen q!!#i made an image you like and now you are reading my word babble in some tags!!! what's THAT all about???????????#it's INTERESTING!! do you see what im trying to get at??#is it empathy??? person made something other saw something other made- other2other connection???? intrigue????????#.......all this is probably explained in some book or yt essay somewhere. oh well.#in the meantime thank you for your time! we can pretend we were stuck in an elevator together and then i started rambling#i hope you have a great rest of your day thanks for stopping by!! <3#maiora garrulates
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spending my whole life trying and trying and trying and trying to be good enough for people who don't give a fuck about me
#im so tired living seems pointless why am i doing this what is the reason#the firm i work at is going thru a merger so it's releasing all the interns except 2#i went into her office and said that id like to stay here bc my dad said so bc i got in cause he was friends with the head#and she said ill think about it based on performance ive not decided yet#and this other guy he went in to tell her that cool he'll leave and she told him that she was hoping that he'd stay#he literally does nothing but play games on his phone he doesn't work at all#i have no idea what he has that i don't#but just. im stuck like this forever right never ever good enough for people i like or care about#not for parents they have a diff fav child not for ex gf not for bestie who has a boyfriend much better at loving her than me#not for that one guy who rejected me in interview bc i don't read the newspaper and didn't know the date of the finance act#im so fucking sick of this i never even wanted to this fuckinh course and obviously even my best isn't enough and ofc im not good enough#for anyone in this field and ill just struggle and struggle and struggle all my life just to earn some fucking money so i can live away#from my sociopathic parents#and the worst part is that i can't stop feeling like maybe it IS me yk maybe i am the problem maybe im not trying hard enough#but how else am i supposed to handle this i prioritize my studies and lose all my friends i prioritise my friends and fail in d#exams#and the trauma keeps on coming every fucking day bc sociopathic parents but i jsut push it down and say not rn i will cry at night anx then#never cry#i wish someone would just tell me that idk you're wrong you're not made for this you really do have some mental illness and you're really#trying your best and do something that's easy and that you love doing#oh god this is now a ventpost#mes
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horce-divorce · 6 months
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Find jobs that work remotely online
lmfao i literally already do that, you jackanapes. i'm a freelance transcriptionist and I have been for YEARS!!!!! i'm GOOD at it, too! having a remote job doesn't mean there's any work in the queue, and it certainly doesn't mean they're PAYING me to do it. a few years ago (like 2016-2018) it was actually possible for me to work from home and earn, like, almost minimum wage. but at least it was consistent. Like, if you knew when the peak times to avoid were, you could always snag work from the queue. I earned anywhere between $8-15 an hour doing that for a few years, and I still never broke more than about $2,000 per year.
the thing about this one is, it's like, the PERFECT setup, in theory. i can come and go as I please, no minimum or maximum amount of work, my insanely fast typing skills ensured I could actually pick files worth my time (my average is 130wpm but I've hit 200. if you even care). being able to stop in the middle of a file and walk away when I was having symptoms, or even just when it was pissing me off, is IDEAL. as long it's done correctly and submitted on time, it doesn't matter what your workflow looks like. i LOVE!!!!! this. yes, please, for the love of god leave me alone and let me do my thing. i work SO much better this way.
as of the last few years, companies like Rev.com have done nothing in the intervening time but increasingly replace their skilled workers (me) with AI auto-captions and having us proofread those instead, all while jacking up their prices for consumers and paying us less and less per file. plus, there's more competition than ever since the pandemic hit, and everyone and their brother think they can just pick up a job like transcription as a side gig or whatever. anyway, since they started becoming worse, I've barely managed to keep up $10 an hour, and there's barely any work in the queue. I check constantly. I'm lucky if i can make a few dollars per week doing that now.
but hey, I actually never gave up. you know what else is a "work remotely online" job? running your own art business. which i also do. I may be conventionally unemployed, but I DO still have multiple jobs! and you people see that and go, "no, that doesn't count. what if you just had MORE jobs? surely this would fix all of your problems?" wow, genius, fucking sensational, THAT WOULD HAVE NEVER OCCURRED TO ME WITHOUT YOUR SAGE WISDOM, ANON. WOW.
YES, I also do market research panels and all that garbage. YES, i have done data entry. I did sigtrack for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, reading people's handwriting is a lot harder for me than parsing speech. I even did Amazon Mechanical Turk back in the day, holy shit, do not do that, 0/10. Any of those shit articles from the penny hoarder youre about to send me? I've done it, and possibly still do from time to time!
Anyway, if that's still not good enough for you, presumably you know a company that hires remotely that you can refer me to? Why don't you hire me yourself, if you're so concerned? You got a podcast or something that needs captions? Hmu anon! That's literally what I do!!! My rate is $1.25 per audio minute!!!! I'll wait!!!!! :)))))))
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sherlock-is-ace · 1 year
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fox-bright · 4 months
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hi any life advice for 21yo
Don't date thirty-year-olds until you are at least 25.
Having a glass of water for every glass of alcohol will give you a 50% reduction in hangover viciousness.
Bad people will use your willingness to be quiet as a weapon against you. If someone's being awful to you and trusting you'll be quiet to keep from making waves, surprise them.
There is no physical object in the world that is worth as much as your honor.
Honor is not the same as dignity. Retaining one sometimes means leaving the other aside.
Don't have any sex you don't want to have; have as much as you want of the sex that you do, whether that's a lot, a little, or none at all. Nothing you can do to your own body is immoral, unless you're doing it as an act of self-punishment.
Food is morally neutral. You do not have to earn the right to eat calories. Fat and sugar keep your brain from eating itself.
Learning to sit still and breathe--in, in, in, hold, hold, hold, out, out, out, out, out, out--can give you five feet of clear space around yourself in a maelstrom.
Find out how to make three good meals: A comfort meal you can make for just yourself relatively easily, a fancy meal you can use to wow a date, and a meal you can feed a bunch of people. All the other cooking can come later, but you can build a community on those three meals.
If you ever get to the point that things are so bleak you can see no other way forward but to die, make any other choice. If that means leaving everything you own and being a beach bum, or quitting your career, or taking up or leaving a religion, or deciding to bicycle across the country, so be it; living means more chances, dying means everything stops and you don't get to see any more interesting things. As you have not yet seen all the things that can interest you, it is better to live.
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mcalhenwrites · 27 days
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I'm not going to pretend it doesn't make me angry that I spend months and years trying to peddle my work to make ends meet, that I spend so much time mentioning my books and comms and everything, and people ignore that consisently... But the moment I finally break under the hopelessness - when it's obvious that it's fucking futile, that almost no one deems my work good enough to share with anyone else - suddenly they're concerned and scolding me. I'm working several jobs, bathing, generally keeping things clean, and I do this with several health problems including chronic pain. I found out that one of my cysts is growing and I may need to have it surgically removed. Which means potentially missing work to recover. Which means more money I lose. I spend so much time crawling out of the hole and it goes ignored, but the moment I just give up bc I don't have any strength left, suddenly that's my fault and I'm mentally sick. And that kind of makes me wish my entire situation upon people, and when they whine that it's hard, well fuck you, you thought I could ace it so surely you can, babe! I hate being angry about this, but it's just so exhausting to tell people who accuse me of not trying that I HAVE I HAVE SO FUCKING HARD AND YOU DID NOT PAY ATTENTION THEN Or you know you're attempting to gaslight me by claiming I didn't try despite that I obviously have worked my ass off trying, and that's so much fucking worse
#mcalhen personal#and I'm not saying I'm not mentally ill but ffs stop using it as a weapon to discredit people when they have the solutions right there#feels like people hate my writing and me and that's why I didn't go “I got the job” bc friends who never support me would be like#“I'M SO HAPPY FOR YOU CONGRATS” cool I'm not I spend an entire day usually recovering from very calm shifts at a job I like#but the moment I publish a book it's not congrats it's I don't know this guy I don't know Cal and I'm gonna pretend I never saw anything#I don't even hate my goddamn job even tho it can be stressful but it's the easiest thing for mostly just 2 days a week#but it is not sustainable and I cannot survive on this and disability would be invasive as hell and y'all don't know shit about how they#treat disabled people in this country but goddamn I have watched that shit unfold with my autistic brother who can't work#and I can never help him at this rate#bc I can't help myself#I can't help anyone#and saying that is a big fucking issue with people who think if they say 'it gets better keep going' I'll magically unfuck my life#as if I haven't spent the entirety of my life trying to unfuck things#as if I didn't give myself an education in spite of my family#y'all never been threatened with physical violence bc you weren't supposed to ask for school supplies and it fucking SHOWS#I have learned so many things on my own time out of sheer desire to better myself and my situation#but at a point where nothing works out and each day is just filled with more bad news#at what point am I actually allowed to give up?#or am I supposed to just keep this up until I die with 40 more years of collected bullshit pain#bc if you want me to live like this for 40 years then... you never cared at all#and what's so stupid is that I really want to earn my living by doing the work#I work on my art and writing but let's just admit that it's pathetic already#no mental health services or pills will erase that I'm a pathetic garbage can of uselessness#also I realize no one owes me anything like boosting my work or w/e#but also don't ask me to turn rotten ingredients into a feast and say I'm not trying when I can't fucking do it
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irisbaggins · 28 days
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Guess what, I've worked what probably amounts to half of my total hours, in one fucking month. My store is resting on my shoulders, it seems, and boy do I feel that. I have not had a moment's rest since my vacation, and uh, it's probably not sustainable? Maybe?
Anyway. Guess who's going to be travelling for hours on end and then arrive just a day before a mandatory University lecture? It's me!
#text_loke#i'm also curious what my boss is going to say when he gets back. and looks at my nightmare hours#because uh. i've worked. wayyyy too much these last few months#and i am. halfway. tempted to make a little bit of a racket to the higher ups to argue my way for a higher percentage position#because i have not worked 20% in a WHILE. gimme my 40% because i for damn sure have earned it#i also. somehow. need to squeeze in the time to read the books for my Masters. because uh. i'm also doing that#can you tell i'm living by a thread rn? my sister legit just moved out yesterday and i have NOT had time to process that#i still don't have time! i won't have time!#so i shall grin and bear it as i always do!#ahjshdd legit tho. yesterday i had barely had anything to eat due to my schedule being PACKED#i woke up after five hours of sleep finished the postbox for my sister RAN out the door for Uni at 11. and when done at Uni went work#my coworker thought me insane yesterday for bouncing on my feet with barely any food in my body. or sleep#however. it's just how i am. i can just. grin and go on with my day and function when my body is Barely Responding#i will just. not be quite intelligent because my brain is Slow#also. i was NOT happy being one hour extra at work today. like it WAS worth it and i did it freely#but also i wanted to go home. but. closing shift needed my help and i had to make sure everything was ok before i left#however. i have. so much bullshit i must do tomorrow. fuck#anyway. if y'all are curious as to where i've been these last few months. my answer is dying (work and uni). i am perished#i have barely any time for myself anymore. i'm not mad about it or anything. not even like. burnt out (knock on wood)#however. i do feel the toll. i do wish i could just. do fun things again. hopefully when uni properly starts and i go to my ACTUAL CONTRACT#i can then finally relax. right now however. not so much#hopefully they won't need me next week tho. because i cannot. at all#anyway. if i didn't already know i was a workaholic i sure do now!
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discoreptile · 8 months
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Shellycoat
#heyo again posting in the ol tags#At a moral quandary but I guess I'll update yous on my life while I think of a way to sound it out#I am currently single. This is a big deal for me because I am coming to terms with my status as a serial monogamist#I think my ex has been not single longer than I have so I'm not feeling guilty about it. Just feels weird being single is all.#I'm doing the whole dating thing again. Have been on 2. First one I stayed at her spare room and freaking cried. Haven't spoken to her sinc#Second one I stayed in her spare room and she stayed with her roommate. Both times I didn't want things to go physical. Both over now.#The second one I was more optimistic for tho.Prominent thing was that she wanted me to date her and others. So I'm not exclusive with anyon#And I still maintain that. Doesn't feel good bc when I go on a date with one it feels like I'm cheating on the others.#But i have such low confidence that I don't want to turn anyone down or keep anyone waiting for me to ask them out. So idk what I'm doing#anyway. moral quandary. I just realized I can't actually talk about it. But I have to choose advancing my own career at the cost of my sou#it would be really nice to get some big £$£$ but I'd have to sort of betray new boss a little. Who has already given me permission to do so#it doesn't feel right. Shellycoat here is from new project. Ugh I dunno. I think I'm going o have to sell out just a little.#Bein single again shows me how behind I am for my age. Still can't drive still living with my best pal. Probably goin bald soon#then again I've been saying that for years now. Maybe I have a few years left of it. But yeah. I don't earn very much rn. When I get those#questionaires I'm often in the lowest bracket so i'm like “I am among the poorest of ppl then??” One lady stopped talking to me when I#told her I rented a flat. Which implies a lot of men my age own property already. But did they get them with their morals intact or did the#have to do a bit of backstabbing on the way? Anyway. I guess I'm happy that I'm not just whining about my love life.Maybe being single is o#still wanting to get out there. Maybe I'll make another post about that or whenever I'm not single lol
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beggars-opera · 2 months
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On the road leading into the center of Concord, Massachusetts, there sits a house.
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It is a plain, colonial-style house, of which there are many along this road. It has sea green and buff paint, a historical plaque, and one of the most multi-layered stories I have ever encountered to showcase that history is continuous, complicated, and most importantly, fragmentary, unless you know where to look.
So, where to start? The plaque.
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There's some usual information here: Benjamin Barron built the house in 1716, and years later it was a "witness house" to the start of the American Revolution. And then, something unusual: a note about an enslaved man named John Jack whose epitaph is "world famous."
Where is this epitaph? Right around the corner in the town center.
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It reads:
God wills us free; man wills us slaves. I will as God wills; God’s will be done. Here lies the body of JOHN JACK a native of Africa who died March 1773 aged about 60 years Tho’ born in a land of slavery, He was born free. Tho’ he lived in a land of liberty, He lived a slave. Till by his honest, tho’ stolen labors, He acquired the source of slavery, Which gave him his freedom; Tho’ not long before Death, the grand tyrant Gave him his final emancipation, And set him on a footing with kings. Tho’ a slave to vice, He practised those virtues Without which kings are but slaves.
We don't know precisely when the man first known only as Jack was purchased by Benjamin Barron. We do know that he, along with an enslaved woman named Violet, were listed in Barron's estate upon his death in 1754. Assuming his gravestone is accurate, at that time Jack would have been about 40 and had apparently learned the shoemaking trade from his enslaver. With his "honest, though stolen labors" he was then able to earn enough money to eventually purchase his freedom from the remaining Barron family and change his name to John, keeping Jack as a last name rather than using his enslaver's.
John Jack died, poor but free, in 1773, just two years before the Revolutionary War started. Presumably as part of setting up his own estate, he became a client of local lawyer Daniel Bliss, brother-in-law to the minister, William Emerson. Bliss and Emerson were in a massive family feud that spilled into the rest of the town, as Bliss was notoriously loyal to the crown, eventually letting British soldiers stay in his home and giving them information about Patriot activities.
Daniel Bliss also had abolitionist leanings. And after hearing John's story, he was angry.
Here was a man who had been kidnapped from his home country, dragged across the ocean, and treated as an animal for decades. Countless others were being brutalized in the same way, in the same town that claimed to love liberty and freedom. Reverend Emerson railed against the British government from the pulpit, and he himself was an enslaver.
It wouldn't do. John Jack deserved so much more. So, when he died, Bliss personally paid for a large gravestone and wrote its epitaph to blast the town's hypocrisy from the top of Burial Hill. When the British soldiers trudged through the cemetery on April 19th, 1775, they were so struck that they wrote the words down and published them in the British newspapers, and that hypocrisy passed around Europe as well. And the stone is still there today.
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You know whose stone doesn't survive in the burial ground?
Benjamin Barron's.
Or any of his family that I know of. Which is absolutely astonishing, because this story is about to get even more complicated.
Benjamin Barron was a middle-class shoemaker in a suburb that wouldn't become famous until decades after his death. He lived a simple life only made possible by chattel slavery, and he will never show up in a U.S. history textbook.
But he had a wife, and a family. His widow, Betty Barron, from whom John purchased his freedom, whose name does not appear on her home's plaque or anywhere else in town, does appear either by name or in passing in every single one of those textbooks.
Terrible colonial spelling of all names in their marriage record aside, you may have heard her maiden name before:
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Betty Parris was born into a slaveholding family in 1683, in a time when it was fairly common for not only Black, but also Indigenous people to be enslaved. It was also a time of war, religious extremism, and severe paranoia in a pre-scientific frontier. And so it was that at the age of nine, Betty pointed a finger at the Arawak woman enslaved in her Salem home, named Titibe, and accused her of witchcraft.
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Yes, that Betty Parris.
Her accusations may have started the Salem Witch trials, but unlike her peers, she did not stay in the action for long. As a minor, she was not allowed to testify at court, and as the minister's daughter, she was too high-profile to be allowed near the courtroom circus. Betty's parents sent her to live with relatives during the proceedings, at which point her "bewitchment" was cured, though we're still unsure if she had psychosomatic problems solved by being away from stress, if she stopped because the public stopped listening, or if she stopped because she no longer had adults prompting her.
Following the witch hysteria, the Parrises moved several times as her infamous father struggled to hold down a job and deal with his family's reputation. Eventually they landed in Concord, where Betty met Benjamin and married him at the age of 26, presumably having had no more encounters with Satan in the preceding seventeen years. She lived an undocumented life and died, obscure and forgotten, in 1760, just five years before the Stamp Act crisis plunged America into a revolution, a living bridge between the old world and the new.
I often wonder how much Betty's story followed her throughout her life. People must have talked. Did they whisper in the town square, "Do you know what she did when she was a girl?" Did John Jack hear the stories of how she had previously treated the enslaved people in her life? Did that hasten his desperation to get out? And what of Daniel Bliss; did he know this history as well, seeing the double indignity of it all? Did he stop and think about how much in the world had changed in less than a century since his neighbor was born?
We'll never know.
All that's left is a gravestone, and a house with an insufficient plaque.
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AITA for getting upset when my mom insists on clipping my nails?
I (adult male) still live with my mother because of finances/personal situations that make me unable to earn my own living. For the most part, this is fine. However, there's one thing that bugs me: she insists on trimming my nails for me.
I know it sounds weird, and it is. She's been trimming my nails since I was little, and I've always hated it. But now I'm an adult, and I don't need her to trim my nails for me, but every two weeks or so, she insists on doing it anyway. I'll admit that I have coordination issues that make things like that difficult for me to accomplish on my own, and hygiene isn't my strong suit either. But I don't need (or want) her to keep trimming my nails for me. How do I tell her to stop?
I've tried to explain it to her, but it's like I'm speaking another language or something. I've tried more direct methods, like pulling my hand away when she tries to bring out the clippers, but then she just says I'm being childish and it'll be over faster if I just let her do it, and that her dogs (she has two, they both hate me) are more well-behaved than I am. And then she trims my nails anyway, no matter how many times I tell her I hate it!
So yesterday, I finally got fed up. And right as she grabbed my hand and tried to come in with the clippers, I pulled my hand away and jabbed her with my quills! And then I curled up in a ball, so she couldn't get to my paws at all. She tried to reach for my paws, but I just poked her again.
My mom got annoyed, and said we'll have to try again tomorrow since clearly I'm in a bad mood. She seemed upset, and I feel a little bad for poking her so much since usually we have a good relationship. So tumblr, am I the asshole?
Pic of me so you can see that I'm a grown man that doesn't need his nails trimmed!
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What are these acronyms?
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#so I'm losing one of my sources of income at the end of the month cause the barn has to downsize and move to a smaller property#it wasn't a huge amount of money to earn in a month but it gave me a little breathing room on top of my other small but larger pay check#and i'm losing it right as student loan payments are starting up.#I was going to dump all of that into that which was going to cover the expense plus extra#and I would have the money from the other barn I could use to live and save some since I basically have no living expenses rn#since i'm living with my parents and I don't have to panic about money while I give myself one last push to get a job in animation#before I try and do something else cause I have been in a holding/transitional pattern for like a year and a half#and I don't really want to remain in there for much longer cause my mental health is kinda getting worse the longer it goes on#and the more I'm stuck in this house with my parents as well as the pain in my hands and wrists increasing#I just feel trapped and this makes it worse because I have like 100 left over after paying for the student loans and general expenses#so I'm undoubtedly going to use some of that for like basic shit#but if I want to save at all even like 50 a month so I can get out of here i'm just going to not be able to do things and enjoy life#like I already have a fair amount saved but I don't really want to dip into it at all#and I brought up trying to find another barn to work at to my dad but he shut it down really quickly like#'now you can use the extra time to work on finding an animation job' which like thanks#but I have little breathing room with the money i'm earning#and I feel like shit and that I'm trapped with no way out cause working on anything rn feels like a herculean task
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wilwheaton · 1 year
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The GOP wonders why young people (and others) don't want to vote for them. Some wise scribe assembled this list.
1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.
2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.
3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.
4.) You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.
5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.
6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.
7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day
8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.
9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.
10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.
11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.
12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.
13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.
14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.
15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors.
16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age.
17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed.
18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your “legitimate” appointments consist of people like THIS (sub-thread refuting CJ Roberts criticisms of people attacking SCOTUS' legitimacy).
19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.
20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:—Universal background checks—An assault weapons ban—The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act—The ERA & Equality Act—The Climate Action Now Act—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act—SCOTUS expansion.
21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.
22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.
Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/e8DBZLH
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