#on failure

[akindplace]

I made a new post on my other blog, where I post longer texts, this one being about redefining what it means to be successful, and to say some comforting words to those that are feeling a bit lost and worried about the future, just as I am. If you want to read it, I’ll share the link below:

[the-jovian-plutonian-effect]

sloppjockey / charles bukowski / robert frost / ? / mary oliver / sylvia plath / quicksilvercat on DA / royal blood / magaret atwood / daylyte04 on DA

[atmosphereofglass]

— Anne Carson, Red Doc>

[beemintty]

thoughts about failure and god:

sometimes i think i fail as a christian

fail god

sometimes i think i fail as a person

fail as a good person

sometimes i think i fail myself

fail my dreams

but i told a friend once that “failure” is just another word for “not yet”

the only way we fail is if we give up

people rarely get it right the first or the second or maybe even the third time

but i think

even if i sin

even if i make mistakes

even if i am not good sometimes

even if i “fail”

if god can still love me just because i keep going

then i guess so can i

[politicalblade]

They’re scared because they know that the public is with Luigi.

They’re violating his rights because they need to maintain capitalism.

Keep talking about Luigi.

[homunculus-argument]

This counts as vent art.

[thankstothe]

folk hero really

[blueskittlesart]

knowledge long forgotten

got really into reading item descriptions on this playthrough. anyway did you know the silent princess is one of the only raw materials with a cooking effect to not explicitly list that effect in its description

[aroaceleovaldez]

one of my favorite subtle implications in the series is that it seems the Titan Army was fully banking on Percy being the host of Kronos. Why else would they make their main base a cruise ship if their primary enemy is a son of Poseidon? Named after Andromeda, the wife of Perseus? Why would they work on Oceanus specifically being free so much? Side notably with other children of Poseidon? Why plant Zeus and Hades' items of power on Percy when Luke already had them? Why only Zeus and Hades' items, not Poseidon's? Well because they really need Percy as Kronos' host, that's why. (and Poseidon siding with them because of that would be a bonus as well)

I like to imagine Luke's cabin on the Princess Andromeda is fully decked out with like "WELCOME PERCY" and sea-themed sheets and everything and he hates it so much cause it's a constant reminder he failed and he was Kronos' second choice. Also then he gets his super special pegasus not even exactly stolen by Percy, but the pegasus willingly defects to be Percy's personal steed instead, which must just be insult to injury. Luke has immense one-sided beef with Percy and Percy has no idea.

[takemeinyrarmy]

it is very cool how before AI nobody cheated at school, people weren't paranoid and getting all their info from whatever unchecked source online, nobody was lonely and trying to fill that with whatever fictional romance or companionship, artists never lost their jobs, there was no global warming or data centers the internet was just floating around on the air don't worry about it..... anyways so sad how AI ruined everything LET'S GET MORE REACTIONARY NOWWWWWWW

[borderlinerotica]

i want to give you everything you’ve ever had to argue for, i want all i need, i don’t think anyone would ever do the same thing for me and im coming to terms with it, maybe ill be alone, maybe, ill be okay with it. that’s what i have to come to terms with, that one day, ill accept it. and live my life alone. they say your lover was transcribed for you in the stars but i feel like mine collapsed in onto itself, or maybe i did that, or we both did. that’s how i feel.

maybe i’ll let go of it all, the way i come to terms with it is not dealing with any of it, it’d be easier if i just gave up on it all. so much easier, then why do i find it so hard. to do it? the final act? i want to create greatness, somehow somewhere, if greatness is a noun or if greatness is a feeling i can make somebody feel, or myself. i want to feel great, like i’ve accomplished something further than what ive placed onto myself, but i keep failing and i can’t do it, trying, anymore. i try to convince myself that failure is a regular part of your life but it consumes mine

how am i always failing? is it predetermined for me? i do everything right, always, i think about doing everything right and i think about the thinking, so how come i fail everytime? how come every time i try i fail and fall

[the-jovian-plutonian-effect]

they don't know i know this trick:

backslides and makes mistakes and breaks my ankles in holes i didnt see, stumbles down cliffs, gets consumed by the ocean that is the pit of my soul that pressurizes me until i am nothing but an open wound inside a wound inside one big scar

watches as nothing but sheer impulse grabs hold of me, iron clad grip, and then try to convince myself those few seconds dont define me for the rest of my life

mistakes are human, if flaws are human, i am the more human than most

[noperopesaredope]

I wish we had more female characters like Eleanor Shellstrop. One of the most unlikable people you've ever met. Read a Buzzfeed article on most rude things you can do on a daily basis and decided to use that as a list of goals. Makes everyone's day worse just by being there. Dropped a margarita mix on the ground and tried to pick it up, only to get hit by a row of shopping carts which pushed her into the road where she was hit by a boner pill delivery truck, killing her instantly. Cannot keep a romantic partner despite being bisexual. Had a terrible childhood but will die before she gets therapy. Best employee at a scam company. Just the worst but also can't help but root for her to improve.

Absolute loser. Girl-failure. Bad at almost everything. Literally perfect female character.

[liones-s]

a big lesson for me was learning that most things are not as fragile as I’d believed. missing a class, or turning in a bad assignment, won’t instantly destroy your professor’s opinion of you. accidentally saying something harsh won’t make your friend want to end the friendship. it takes work to repair these things - it takes effort and research and sometimes a sincere apology - but you can do that because they’re not irreparably broken. what you’ve worked to build, in academia and in relationships and in life, is stronger and more enduring that your mind may teach you to believe. don’t let imagined fragility lead you to giving up

[specialagentartemis]

My feelings about queernormative worlds in SFF is that I can often enjoy it, but I rarely believe it.

Almost everything surrounding gender, sex, and sexuality, and all the different social norms and expectations that different cultures build up around them, derive ultimately from the various realities of sexual activity and pregnancy: who can have it, who can’t, for how long, who does have it, who doesn’t, and what that means for society. I’m not being bioessentialist here, because human bodies are all quite different and different cultures develop different ways to react to that, and rates of and reactions to fertility can be different, and what different sexual and gender roles mean in different cultures and who can and can’t embody them can get extremely different. (Hell, how pregnancy itself even works can be different depending on where you live, what your lifestyle is like, and what your diet consists of!) But like, the reason gender even matters, historically, has been because of reproduction. And the reason reproduction matters, in agricultural societies anyway, has very often been because of property ownership and the need to work on farms.

So I’m totally here for queernormative worlds. But to interest me you have to answer the questions of: okay, but how does your culture work though, and how is kinship structured, and how is reproduction seen, and how is property inheritance understood, and how does gender fit into all this, for me to feel like you’ve actually tried. (And don’t say that there ARE no norms, so no one falls outside of them. There’s no culture where that’s true.)

Sci-fi worlds can get away with this easier than fantasy worlds, imo. Partially because they can posit that it is our future but we’ve gone through all of the Social Justice Struggles already and solved them, but also because technology can really alter all of these topics. The Vorkosigan Saga, for instance, makes it clear that Beta Colony is as gender-egalitarian and free-love as it is because of contraception and uterine replicators, which FULLY decouple “the ability to have children” from “the need for anyone to be pregnant.” This is huge, and the Vorkosigan Saga treats it as appropriately so! Ancillary Justice is another one that thinks a lot about how the genderless culture that decenters romance as a core social organizing principle works. But I read so many low-ish-tech fantasy worlds that are happily queernormative and gender doesn’t matter and they just feel shallow. I don’t believe this world. I don’t dislike it, exactly, I just don’t believe it, I don’t believe people would be like this because you’ve put no effort into imagining a world that works like this makes any sense.

Which is totally fine for people’s D&D games and cute oneshot comics and personal works and such, but when you want me to take your worldbuilding seriously, you’re going to have to convince me! And a lot of it is not convincing.