#IT skill in demand

[chimerafeathers]

they started fighting over who gets the last malanga fritter at dinner. they're fine it's enrichment

my first piece of isat fanart: man i'm so grateful that i can simplify siffrin and mirabelle to cute lil triangles so i can draw minimal limbs since i only draw once every like 6 years or so ☺️

second piece: i need this to be so fucking convoluted. world's worst game of twister. ideally it should be nearly incomprehensible how their limbs are doing All That. bring me a character poser i Don't Know What I'm Doing

[eraserbread]

I would die for curse user! Nanami

you wonder if your friends can see the unease in your face. they're all laughing around you, smoking, drinking and being... friends. it's hard to pull yourself together enough to be here, but you try. they deserve the best, most social part of you.

but its so fucked because he's supposed to be here. nanami wasn't supposed to have run away like he did. and... it's all he did. he ran away in the middle of the night -- took his blade, left his clothes, and disappeared. in the wake, rumors spread like wildfire, your peers saying things like he finally snapped or he just moved to a different country. suguru suggested malaysia -- everyone called him an idiot.

since the night he left, he's been messaging you on an unknown number. little things like;

good morning. miss you.

or

still thinking about you. hello?

tonight it was:

in the city just for a night. i can't meet you on campus.

that's the message you glance down at as shoko hands her smoke over to you. you're left staring at the dimmed screen for a second, and all the attention falls off of satoru's stupid mission story and onto your awkward figure.

"you're good, right?"

no, you're not good -- you want to tell satoru. you want to see their face as you tell them nanami's been in constant contact. you wonder how they'd react. you wonder if they'd react.

as you open your mouth to respond, shoko taps into your side. "hey, you want my wrist to go limp, here?"

the five of you do this every other friday - get drinks and insane plates piled high with sushi at your favorite restaurant, and catch up. it's been easier to do it this way since graduating - most of you stayed on campus, but the few who didn't, you and suguru, didn't show up much at all.

"sorry." you pull a tight-lipped smile, taking it from her hands. she steps out of conversation for a moment, mentioning to haibara how 'if he doesn't take any missions, he won't make any money' or something of the sort. you weren't really listening.

nanami... all you can think about is nanami

nanami. nanaminanaminanaminanami....

"hey- you'll get ash in the food, come on,"

"this is like... the eighth time you disassociated tonight -- what is wrong?"

you don't tell them the truth. instead, you run away.

away from your loving, prying friends and into the arms of your empty apartment and the promise of your nanami. it was so cruel - this hold he has on you. everyone tells you he's a coward, or too unfit to handle his emotions. even the ones he loved just shrug him off, now.

but, not you. never you.

not even when he shows up at the apartment door you guided him to with a grey hoodie over his head.

"i don't expect you to understand." is the first thing he says to you in over a year. "but I would like to explain..."

"ke-kento..."

"let me in, please." then, he looks up at you and through the darkness you can see the small, smoldering fires in his eyes. they were always there, but brighter with age and angst. it's so hard not to cry.

"c'mon."

you're turned around, closing the door when his hands ball into fists at his side. you two's whirlwind high-school romance was long gone, now. all that's left standing in this tiny apartment is a shell of who once loved another.

"then, explain."

so, he wastes no time. if nanami was one thing, it was straight to the point. "I despise watching this society treat my friends as curse bait. none of us chose this."

"but, it's our duty-

"no. it's not." he finally pulls off his hood, still unable to look at you, but all you can look at is him. "our duty is to be human. to work until the day we die, yeah, but not die from our work." he's monotone and familiar, finally meeting your gaze so you can see all of him. shamelessly, you reach to flick the light switch on.

he cut his hair.

"I don't want to be a villain."

you don't even care that he's watching you comb over his body with your eyes. it seems as if this time out of sorcery aged him, but never in a bad way. short hair, mean eyes, strong jawline, and broad shoulders - all of it was new for you, but all of it is nanami.

all you can think to do is shake your head. it's something - some kind of answer.

"and i hope you don't see me as changed... i'm still yours." he gets shy just like he always did, drifting off in volume as he licks your romantic ego.

every cell in your body is screaming to let him in. the want is clawing at your morals, peddling over all of the grief and sorrow and confusion nanami's leaving caused you all. it was so sudden, and he was one of the strongest.

it feels wrong to admit just how healthier he feels when you finally hug him again. there are muscles under your fingertips -- hardened skin and bone you have to dig into to feel the familiarity. you're breathing in his city-tinged, warm colongned musk, breath shuddering and breaking all over his shoulder. he touches you, too. just above your hips, lightly, like he's wary of scaring you off.

a year isn't too long, but it's just long enough for kento to feel unsure about himself.

it didn't matter if he was a dead-man walking, sentenced to execution by a society he once treasured. there's something about you that makes him want to risk it all.

so, he does - elbow-deep in your sweet spirit.

[autball]

A child is having outbursts at school, or at home, or wherever else, on a pretty regular basis. And at some point, someone suggests that they need to learn better coping skills.

They suggest therapy, or maybe there’s even a special program at school. Because yes, better coping skills/self-regulation skills/frustration tolerance really would solve everything, wouldn’t it?

Well those are fine skills to have, to be sure, but more often than not, it’s not what that child (or adult) needs most. What they really need is someone to figure out what’s stressing them out so much and then do something about THAT.

Because it’s not actually weird to be distressed over distressing things. Maybe *you* don’t understand what’s so distressing about school or the grocery store or that new person in the house, but that doesn’t mean *their* distress isn’t legit.

People reeaalllly like to suggest better coping skills for autistic, ADHD, and otherwise ND folks. (Since we already have a diagnosis, it’s that much easier to locate the problem in US.) And what they’re really saying with this an awful lot of the time is, “Can you please stop being so distressed by distressing things because it’s making a lot of work for us and we’re not about to change anything for you.”

So before you put someone in some sort of therapy that will teach them that they’re wrong to be upset about the things that upset them and how to get better at pretending to be okay, maybe consider that you might be expecting them to “cope” with more than they can reasonably be expected to.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Re: more eat the rich

It comes down, I think, to a particular moral framework that TA seems to ascribe to. JK Rowling is another good example. There's a name for it.. it might be Calvinist?

Basically: The problem isn't having rich people, it's having the *wrong* rich people. You're not a part of an exploitative system that concentrates wealth, you're a *bad rich person*.

The same lens is used for everything else. Nothing is actually systemic. The *system* can't be questioned, only individual actors within the system can be called out as bad at fulfilling their role.

If you use this lens to examine other points in ML that seem weird, I think you'll find they suddenly seem more coherent.

Now- this approach is patently wrong on it's face, but that never stopped people from believing in anything, ever.

(Post that spawned this ask)

The word you're looking for is probably "neoliberalism" and I've noticed it, too! I haven't mentioned it because JK Rowling and her works have become such an upsetting topic for many fans and former fans, but Miraculous absolutely matches Harry Potter's concerning messaging about people being the issue, not the system. The system is inherently good and should not be questioned. I hated that as a kid because I was an avid reader and this wasn't how this kind of story was supposed to go! Why wasn't anything being fixed? Why weren't the inequalities being address? Why weren't the slaves being set free? What is this mess? Don't show me a broken system if you're not going to fix it!!!

If anyone is curious about this world view, I'll give you a video essay on the topic of why Harry Potter is just like that. It's about JK Rowling's political views and how it's reflected in her books which does indeed match Miraculous with things like systems being inherently good and people falling into the categories of "good" and "bad" based on their world view or "team alignment" instead of their actions. The last one really shows up in Miraculous as you can see with the redemption nonsense. Nathalie is inherently good so we welcome her to the good side with no effort required. Chloe is inherently bad so redemption is impossible. Marinette is inherently good so her being mean to Kagami is no big deal. Chloe is inherently bad so her being mean to Marinette in similar ways is horrifically wrong. Really depressing way to view the world.

There are other similarities, too. I'm going to have the video start at the part where it really dives into the neoliberalism stuff, but I encourage you to rewind to the start and watch the hour before that part as it's still relevant to this discussion. Pretend it's about Miraculous and you'll be shocked how many matches there are! It's honestly kind of fun. Like there's a section that talks about time travel and how it was solved by just removing time travel from the universe in an incredibly forced manner and a section that talks about the house elves thing that you could easily port over when talking about the Kwamis. I think about the Kwamis' being slaves a lot. It's a lot more subtle than HP, but it's still there with things like Su-Han talking about how it's bad that Plagg is out of the box since he's supposed to be locked away forever apparently. A line that's played like a joke not an indication that a freedom movement is needed. Nooroo is the only Kwami whose enslavement is a problem because he has a bad master. The other kwamis being slaves is fine for some reason...

[renegadecreation]

rewatching m:i4 and reveling in how Benji is so far from the "tech guy who gets tech more than he gets people" stereotype. telling Ethan they can access the server in Dubai from the outside which sounds homicidally absurd until you realize he grabbed the climbing gloves from the tech cache earlier. consistently reassuring Brandt that he'll catch him when he jumps in Mumbai. offhandedly complimenting Ethan on the plane he found for them! sure he starts out awkward but he's so warm and friendly and it's easy to see how he becomes the heart of the series. Simon Pegg thank you for your service 🫡

and yeah, yeah, i know he keeps volunteering Ethan to do crazy stunts all the time but like. after the high of picking exactly the right equipment for your inhumanly competent work hero to complete a task before you even knew said task existed, who could blame him? i bet they test equipment together and it's a nightmare for everyone else involved

[lazzarella]

Totally normal about EarthMix dancing all up on each other wearing the wedding suits in the Ossan's Love OST vid, what are you saying about? 🫠

[sorrbet]

Thinking about modern band Au Laios. I feel that Laios compared to the others like Falin and Marcille who I think would be in their own possibly with other members like Izutsumi. He’d be something like idk more on the lines of Liana Flores or Mitski in a sense having more lullaby type of singing preferring not to join Flain and Marcille as they’re the types to deal with large groups instead staying to his own playing the synth making music on his own in his dump of an apartment he and Falin live in while she goes to college or something.

Chilchuck would probably be in a similar vain as a half foot being more sensitive to loud noise so he probably while working with Laios one day hears him singing a soft melody and joins him as he at one point also did music in an underground group playing the acoustic guitar and electric guitar.

[faggotisaacfloofs]

hello everyone be so fucking proud of me!!!

I had two infuriating AAC glitches in a row while trying to convey a stressful thing to my caregiver today

After the first one, I stopped, closed my eyes, and took 5 deep breaths, relaxed my muscles, and then started typing again, ver, very intentionally and slowly.

And then the second glitch happened.

and i managed to freeze instead of hitting my ipad. And took a few breaths totally frozen with hands up. then made the sign to caregiver to move the ipad away from me so I wouldn't break it

And then i took more deep breaths, and flapped my arms as hard as my joints can stand, and took more deep breaths. And got out my phone instead to text my caregiver because my phone doesn't glitch like that, and told them what happened and finished making the plan for next week.

And then i remembered that if i stop using the touch screen and type with my Bluetooth keyboard, my ipad doesn't glitch. So I grabbed that and then could type into my ipad while not being close enough to smash the ipad if something went wrong. And it worked.

I had TWO ipad glitches deleting what I was trying to say less than 30 seconds apart. But I didn't break or throw or hit my ipad!!!! I didn't smash my keyboard or hit my head or anything. I breathed and I tried my strategies of time, waiting for the wave to pass, and that let me remember other options for communication exist.

I still feel like I'm on the verge of a meltdown, but the point is that i did not immediately have a meltdown from this or break anything, and that is very hard skill i have been working so much on for a very long time.

please clap!!!

[bemusedlybespectacled]

I volunteer with an organization of very high needs disabled people and I have to say, they delight in using AI to put stories together. It even inspires them to make their own edits and additions, though many struggle with typing or verbal skills. I don't want to tell anyone how to feel but it seems like weird ideological purity policing to exclude them from a social event where they might connect to people and find community.

So my first question is: why AI specifically? Why not literally any other method of writing? If they're capable of doing edits/additions, then why can't they first write the story out using speech-to-text, or an AAC device, or dictate it to someone else, and then edit/add to it later?

Coming up with ideas/a plot is creative and requires skill, but it's a different kind of creativity and skill than actually writing it down/connecting those dots. Like, James Patterson doesn't write most of his books; he writes out long outlines for a ghostwriter to work off of, then makes notes or changes to the draft before sending it back to the ghostwriter. It would be unfair to say that he doesn't have any skills at all, but it would also be unfair to say that he wrote all of his books himself when they were actually mostly written by someone else. A lot of the time, movies will have separate credits for the person who came up with the idea and the person who actually wrote the screenplay, because they are separate things requiring different skills.

NaNoWriMo, as a concept, is about practicing the latter skill. You're presumed to have already learned how to come up with ideas – otherwise, what would you work on for a month? The actual work of crafting enough sentences that your story becomes a full text and not an outline is really fucking hard, and that's why so many writers get stalled at the ideas stage and never actually write anything. If you don't have those skills to start, that's okay, because most people don't! The whole point is to practice them over the month! And even if you never hit 50k (I haven't!), you can at least say that you practiced that skill. Even if you only wrote ten words a day because that's literally the most you can do, writing ten words every day for thirty days is still a huge accomplishment!

To use the marathon metaphor from the originating post: both driving a car and running a marathon are skills, but they are not the same skill. If you can't run a marathon – if you are just trying to get to the point where you can walk briskly for five miles without tasting blood when you breathe – reaching that goal is still an accomplishment, even if you're not full on running a marathon. If you are just starting to learn how to drive without having a panic attack, being able to do that is also an accomplishment, even if it's not the same thing as winning the Indy500. Modest goals are still goals and achieving them is a thing to be celebrated.

But I don't think it's ideological purity to say that there's a difference between achieving a very modest goal because the "full thing" is just not feasible for whatever reason, and achieving a totally different goal entirely. "I finally drove to the store and back all by myself!" is genuinely great, but not something you'd necessarily work on in your running group.

[simspaghetti]

Maggie loves her expanded garden in the new house

She's got a few skill achievements, and her green thumb has even been noticed by the restaurant, who have made quite an unusual request...

☑️ Heir completes a skill challenge +1 (x2)

Current Gen3 Points: 22.5

[ninetwelves]

OK BUT CAN SOMEONE DRAW DEVILS MINION AS AN ENTIRE COMIC LIKE THERES ALREADY ONE BUT I MEAN W ASSAD AND LUKE IM SO SERIOUS

[lord-squiggletits]

Honestly it annoys me that pride, ambition, and generally having a big ego are always villainous/evil-coded personality traits because personally I think if you genuinely are a prodigy at what you do you are 100% within your rights, perhaps even deserving, of flaunting your skills and being proud of the fact you can do something that only a small fraction of other people can do. Is it even ego at that point if you genuinely are as good at your field/skill as you say you are? Are people not aware that becoming a prodigy at something is something that takes lifelong sacrifice and practice sometimes to the point of giving up on having a normal life, relationships, etc even potentially destroying your own health???? God I fucking hate how pride in your own skills and ambition are so villain coded all the time. As if it's evil to want to be good at something and be recognized for what you rightfully earned

[carlyraejepsans]

nothing more infuriating than strangling the little goblin in your brain that wants to be an asshole and making an effort to respond politely to smth that annoyed you and then immediately being accused of snarking.

[fujii-draws]

So a comment under one of pmd2’s ost songs may or may have not rewired my brain a bit to assign certain instruments to a certain three.

[anxietyfrappuccino]

why does no one care to help me manage my adhd? why does everyone insist i can do things just because it's possible? what if it's not possible? what if it could have been better and fulfilling instead of half-baked and disappointing?

at the end of the day, when i fail at succeding and meeting standards, they'll blame me for not trying hard enough when it was them who never even tried to help me help myself... no matter how many times i asked. when i eventually cry about it, they come back to me later to ask if i'm feeling better so that they can go back to ignoring the issue without guilt.

what is so hard about caring? what is so hard about believing in my struggle?

i want to want to give up, but i can't. i want to give up because none of this makes sense, and i'm shit at it, but i can't because it won't make sense either way.

life, i don't know how to fit into it, but i'm here. i have to figure it out little by little. even if that unfortunately means disappointing everyone and myself. even if it means getting looked down for being something they don't want to understand.

[kg-clark-inthedark]

just sent an email asking for a 33% raise at work so if one of y’all could come over and beat my ass until they reply that’d be a huge help