#‘it was traumatic!!’

[evilyn-is-gay]

Me because some of my favorite SAMS creators have the most incorrect opinions (I hate the characters they’re defending):

[soracities]

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

[ifriqiyyah]

"unlikable protagonist" and it's just a woman who's a regular human being with flaws

[scribefindegil]

being a writer leads to a genuinely helpful but also very stupid kind of mindfulness where you'll be having a sobbing breakdown or the worst anxiety attack of your life and think "okay, I really need to pay attention to how this feels. so I can incorporate it into my fanfiction."

[inkskinned]

my brother got covid because he's a college professor and there's not much he can do to mitigate exposure when he has 200+ students per lecture. he's got a baby at home, so he does his best, but.

the governmental website for covid information is now propaganda. not a joke, not hyperbole, not an exaggeration: it's genuinely the definition of propaganda. this is biased misinformation determined to push a political stance. it is being hosted on a government server. it looks like something you'd find in a "top 10 weird internet conspiracy stories (and their origins)" youtube video.

my brother called me when he saw it. he had me type it into google. for a second i legitimately thought that i had typed something wrong. we have both taught college: we have both said "a .gov site is usually a reliable resource." i just stared at my phone for a long, long time.

i thought about how when i was a kid, conspiracy theories were mostly fun and a little spooky. unserious. i remember reading some long, complicated website about how avril lavigne is dead. how bigfoot is real. it used to be funny-and-a-joke.

over seven million people (globally) have died from covid. america has the highest death rate with over 1.2 million people.

the thing is - every time a person dies from something like a mass shooting or poverty or treatable illness - we are told don't make it political. we are told it's just something that can happen. we are told it's sad but what can you do!

the president of the united states is using a government website to try to erase the very-real deaths that he personally caused due to a complete mismanagement of the pandemic. the president of the united states is using a government server to host propaganda, undermine science and medicine, and encourage distrust amongst his followers.

nothing is going to happen. nobody's gonna, like, do anything about it. it's a thursday today, and we are just going to move on from this like we have been moving on from everything else.

yesterday my brother was outside walking his dog, mask included. a guy in a truck pulls up and shouts something about covid and whatever the fuck else. my brother has a good sense of humor, described it to me as enthusiastic! i hadn't ever been catcalled before, this was new and therefore thrilling! i do see why you hate it, though. like. i have actual covid, does he want me to cough on him?

my brother doesn't get extra time off work anymore, because the cdc practically doesn't exist. my brother said i'm not exposing 200 students to covid. his boss shrugged and said: who cares? they're going to get it eventually anyway. like it isn't a pandemic.

like it's just a fucking thursday, and who cares about it.

[panoo]

lol

i have no idea what completely random interest i gonna draw after this

[doc-anders]

Hood: “How was I supposed to know that 8-year-old girl wasn’t the Riddler?! It was dark! THEY HAVE THE SAME BUILD.”

[mumblingsage]

I'm wondering if, as a society who cares about vulnerable people, we could stop saying "traumatize" when we truly mean "upset"?

I am sick of hearing sad books or movies "traumatize" their readers. I simply do not believe that happens. A traumatic experience might be adjacent to books (I have vivid memories of books I was reading around certain experiences and even how the contents of those books affected my processing of the experiences). But it's not caused by the book. And, y'know. The weather is Christofascist Censorship Attempts outside.

Meanwhile from the other side I continue to be surprised at just how badly people fail to understand trauma and traumatic experiences in general. Watering down the term isn't helping. Find other hyperbole to express that The Bridge to Terebithia gutted you, chewed on your heartstrings, and made you cry your first pair of contact lenses right out of your preteen eyes.

(ETA here although it's impossible to edit reblogs: over the months since this post really took off, there has been valuable discussion in the comments. I stand by the passion with which I wrote this post and with the general message, but not all the exact wording. I talk more about the way I'd re-write this post in a response here, replying to an addition that added a ton of useful context [other additions touched on similar themes, but that person had it all together in one reblog]. With that said, I am muting this post.)

[chloesimaginationthings]

Oswald is traumatized from FNAF into the pit,,

[balrogballs]

What’s your core memory of watching the Lord of the Rings films for the first time because I will never forget how my extremely South Asian dad — during the emotionally climatic scene where Arwen is riding to the Havens and sees a vision of her son — paused, pointed, and said “Mashallah, Sister Arwen has accepted the hijab, alhamdulillah, praise be to god” and giggled for a good five minutes 😭

last time i shared this in a uni tolkien club someone called him a misogynistic fundamentalist because irl tolkien clubs are fucking deranged so please let me clarify that he was, in fact, joking.

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

enough mpreg. give him mpostpartum depression

[anexperimentallife]

[skyrigel]

“That ship is toxic ! They're so unhealthy—”

[hivnegative]

I don't have a morning routine. I wake up on straight survival mode.

[supertaliart]

I realized my WIP currently has “someone will die/of fun” energy but it’s more like: