#PAY UP AND THEN WE TALK...

[berylewiremelodium]

why do u refuse my afection ,,,, u dont eben pick up on skype anymore !!!!!! just because i crashed my bike tjrouh your wall ?...?

YOU MADE ME PAY FOR THE BIKE REPAIRS/??????

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[egophiliac]

LEON

LEON YOUR EYEBALLS

[deoidesign]

Ray of sunshine

(pre-launch page for their comic)

[zimt-deathnote]

"Trick or treat, motherfucker?"

[cobra-creampuff]

the fact that they made it illegal to make ads louder than programs on tv in 2010 but haven't updated it to apply the same regulation to streaming. who do i have to call.

[utilitycaster]

I'll be missing the live wrap-up but i wanted to say it's been disheartening but sadly unsurprising the way a lot of people who started with Campaign 3 talk about Marisha and Laura especially. It feels as though they see them as little more than vessels to provide Laudna and Imogen content. They get outright mad when people ask them questions in the AMA Firesides or 4SD about their jobs in Critical Role as a company, or other characters they've played, or their personal feelings about things they enjoy. A lot of them hate the Cobalt Soul despite Marisha explicitly and repeatedly saying it's incredibly meaningful to her, and are vocal about this, but will attack you if you say you're not a big fan of Laudna. Their approach to Keyleth feels like little more than a convenient opportunity for them to say "you can't ever criticize Marisha! Look at the harassment she received" but they'll then direct this claim towards anyone, even people who watched C1 live and experienced that in real-time and opposed it. They'll engage in harassment themselves and claim it's in defense of Marisha, then turn around and shit talk the Cobalt Soul and yell about how the Ashari are evil Ruidusborn haters and Beauyasha is boring.

And to be clear I have a longstanding and documented history of disliking obnoxiously parasocial behavior or invasive/repetitive/overly generic panel questions. I think, and I mean this genuinely, that it's completely fine and reasonable to be a CR fan who is here for characters only, and isn't interested in the cast. Indeed, I think a lot of early fans of the show were mostly here for the story of Vox Machina, and I respect the people who didn't connect to the Mighty Nein nor have an attachment to the cast and politely stepped away. I am not demanding everyone love every piece of merch nor every creative direction choice lest they disrespect Laura or Marisha; that is not how this works. But there's a difference between "I'm not really interested in anything but Keyleth, so I'm only tuning in to TLOVM chats!" vs this entitled distaste, verging on disgust, among a certain set of C3 fans when Marisha and Laura especially spend even a minute of their out-of-character time talking about anything other than Laudna and Imogen. If you do this, you cede the right to any "they're having fun/it's meaningful or comforting or makes them happy" defense (which, to be clear, I do not think is a valid argument with regards to the quality of a story, but which a lot of these people hypocritically invoke) or "if you dislike this female character or F/F ship you're a bigoted person," especially when you resent the actual real-world women behind your pretend characters for choosing to answer a question about anything other than what you personally care about.

And ultimately, I think that if you are dismissive and resentful towards the bulk of what the cast/company does (this includes when you turn this resentment towards fans for daring to ask questions about anything else, even in places that aren't at all C3-specific like panels or cast fireside AMAs, or places where the crew or the cast themselves are the ones actually choosing which questions are answered), it is childish and embarrassing to then act like you are being wronged and your opinions cruelly disregarded simply because something of which you only like one small facet fails to cater to you. You don't have to like it; but you showed up to part 3 of a trilogy and got mad that the creators sometimes talk about parts 1 and 2.

[wishchip106]

augh they’re literally a family 😭😭

DON’T TALK TO ME ✋😭🤚‼️‼️

missing the x-family like a mf rn 💔

cherik are their parents forreal….

i should just watch first class again

[lunar-wandering]

do y'all think Macaque is falling back into the role that Azure and the others put on him by remaining on the outskirts of the group because he thinks his input/presence is unwanted (and yeah his presence isn't really wanted by MK and the others BUT. something about the fact Macaque is placing himself at the edge of the group, the edge that Azure and the others pushed him to, doesn't really sit well)

[r0semultiverse]

Y’all are aware we probably have to keep it in the top 10 overall into at least the 19th right? One business day after initial intended marketed advertised release supposedly. Then we should be good unless Mark says otherwise.

[the---hermit]

i am sadly one of those people who are super insicure of themselves after any social interaction, I go over and over again in my head and feel irrationally bad bc my brain tells me I was awkward, and probably came off as weird and so on. But you know what brain? I had the social interaction. I did it. I spoke out loud to people and had a conversation instead of freezing and feeling unable to talk. So fuck it if I came off as weird and awkward, I am weird and awkward and it's okay, because I did something that just a few years ago would have been even more of a struggle, and even earlier than that it would have been close to impossible.

[hayatheauthor]

Sometimes i want to marry outside my culture then i think of how ill have to explain my sisters will steal his shoes on our wedding and he has to pay them to get it back

[notbecauseofvictories]

hello! longtime follower and current 1L - am starting the rounds of the law firms and there's always the "so what practice area are you interested in?" bit. i was curious what that is for you + what you do/don't like about it? iirc, you mentioned something abt being in-house, healthcare related, regulatory side of things? i'm interested in regulatory stuff but not sure if that takes the shape of litigation or an explicitly regulatory-focused practice. found your blog back in the star wars days, then got into silmarillion and the silt verses after seeing your posts abt it haha - hope you're doing well and staying warm!

Congrats! 1L summer is a fun, anxiety-ridden time that mostly involves telling people over and over, who you are and what you're interested in---which can be tricky if you're not sure what you're interested in.

Personally, I went in knowing that I liked healthcare (the field I worked in prior to law school) and that wanted to stay healthcare-adjacent.....but not much else.

I learned I was not destined for litigation pretty much the first time my Legal Writing professor handed back our appellate briefs. (Mine did not have the grade I wanted at the top.) This was compounded by our final project, where we presented in front of real live attorneys and I was a nervous, sweaty wreck. After that, I decided that becoming Atticus Finch was not in my future.

But there are still lots of other kinds of law to practice! I live in the healthcare regulatory space---and I work for a pretty under-resourced company, which means I have lots of contact with other areas like R&D, clinical research, data privacy, marketing and adtech, direct patient care, healthcare compliance, and negotiating between various international laws. Not to mention my scope is always expanding, which is...challenging, but I'm also the kind of person who enjoys spending a weekend reading about Brazilian law.

(One of my guiding stars through the whole law school/job search process was "I don't want to be bored." I am never, ever bored.)

And this wasn't even my first stop! When I was in law school, I spent my semesters interning/clerking at firms, consulting boutiques and government agencies; policy-focused clinics and hospitals and giant corporate behemoths. I've said before that observing all these different settings was valuable, that it gave me a better understanding of myself, how I work, and the kind of work I was looking for. While I won't ever claim that every experience I had was amazing (it was not) it did give me the opportunity to explore, in a way that most adult professionals simply can't.

I mean---look. If you're committed to the brass ring of OCR and a high-profile law firm, then you might have to make this decision now. (Or at least come up with a good answer for interviewers...) But I highly encourage you and everyone choosing that path to keep the other doors open, just a crack. There are interesting things that sneak through when you aren't looking.

[faunandfloraas]

Clicking on any video with lee know in it and seeing 400 million "Wow his visual is no joke. He is most visual member. Do you guys even know he is conventionally attractive? Because he is visually conventional attractive. It's time for his kdrama. He is kdrama visual. He should be acting in kdrama bc he is conventionally attractive." Girl be quiet

[sleepyvib-es]

idk man the thing about the series post pjo is that it wants you to be aware of all the fucked up traumatic childhoods and systematic abuse all the characters experience but it doesn't want you to be too aware to the point that you're hung up on it and are calling for fundamental changes to the system.

if you dare call out all these issues the response you usually get is "these books are for kids :) what did you expect" "what you want out of it won't happen because this is children's media" .. but like dude look at all the heavy topics we're dealing with here lol. my bad for wanting all these issues acknowledged to the point where there's genuine resolve for these characters

[bmpmp3]

finding out ur coworker is way older than you thought and having to very quickly reorient how you talk to them