#Metaphors

[bingiessm]

KPOP DEMON HUNTERS (ramble)

As a metaphor for the current political climate…one that teaches that certain people are wrong for just being who they are and that they need to stay hidden and do their duty (be “good”), and where even those on their side tell them to stay quiet and cover up, lie even, to uphold a system that “works” but clearly doesn’t and is failing and coming apart at the seams because of that same repression and desire to “fix everything first” before we make any major changes to the world and let people just be people and a new generation saying “screw that I am who I am, this system sucks, and I’m creating something new” anyway…

So, like, yeah I enjoyed the movie.

(I have criticism of it too, mostly that it was too short, but I sure hope it gets a sequel (if the creators want that!))

[myfandomrealitea]

Honestly you people need to start thinking about fanfiction like a restaurant.

You do not have to order the salmon if you don't like salmon.

If I order the salmon, I am not forcing you to eat the salmon. Nor are you obligated to order it just because I am.

If we are going with the intention of sharing food, that's okay! I happen to like steak too. I don't need to order the salmon. I'm capable of going to the restaurant and not ordering the salmon. We can order the steak.

There is a whole menu of things you can have. The salmon is just an option. We can even find a restaurant that doesn't serve salmon at all.

Yes, I know some people are allergic to salmon. But I'm not going up to them and force-feeding it to them. The only way my salmon can hurt them is if they come to our table and take the salmon.

The only way you'll expose yourself to my salmon and the unpleasantness of eating it is if I tell you my dish has salmon in it and you insist on having a bite anyway.

You're midway through your meal and realize it has salmon in it? Okay. Lets send it back and order something else. Maybe you didn't see it in the ingredients list. Or maybe the chef didn't put it down.

Its really that simple.

[grison-in-space]

from the number of asinine complaints about how "voting is NOT a form of harm reduction" because harm reduction is for ADDICTS! ONLY! I'm seeing around... all coming from OP blogs I don't recognize and which otherwise don't have much presence... well, that coordination alongside the timing of US politics sure feels like the Russian troll bots agitating again. (Yes, they absolutely infested Tumblr; I think @ms-demeanor had a great post about what the bots looked and felt like somewhere that I will have to try and track down tomorrow.)

The thing is, if you actually do know harm reduction well, the complaint makes no sense. It's not as if the origin of harm reduction is a secret or especially hard to find out more about. I am not exactly an expert in the field: I have a educated layperson's interest in public health and infectious disease, I'm a queer feminist of a certain age and therefore have a certain degree of familiarity with AIDS-driven safer sex campaigns, and I'm interested in disability history and self advocacy (and I would in fact clarify harm reduction as a philosophy under this umbrella). So I have about twenty years of experience with harm reduction as a philosophy basically by existing in communities whose history is intertwined with harm reduction, which means I know it well from many different angles, and I know how the story of the philosophy is generally taught.

See, this is a story that starts, as so many stories do, in the 1980s with something monstrous President Reagan was doing. In this case, it was the AIDS epidemic, and Reagan refusing to devote any money or time to what eventually became called AIDS (rather than the original GRIDS, which came with its own baked in homophobia). Knowing themselves abandoned by society in this as in all things, and watching as friends and loved ones died in droves, queers and addicts are two communities who see that they are the only resources that they collectively have to save each other's lives. Queers know that sex, even casual sex, is an important part of people's lives and culture... and people aren't going to stop doing it even if there's a disease, so how can it happen safely? Condoms. Condoms every time, freely available, easy and shameless, shower them on people in the street if you have to. (And other things: this is the origin of the concept of "fluid bonding", for example... both of which were concepts that were immediately adopted in response to COVID, like outdoor socially distsnced greetings and masks and "bubbles." That wasn't an accident. Normalizing sexual health tests and seeing hard results on paper before sex was a thing, too.)

Addicts, too, knew that using was going to happen no matter how earnestly people tried to stop. If it was that easy, addiction wouldn't exist. So: how do you make using safer for longer? If you could stop someone getting HIV before they could bring themselves to get clean, that's a whole life right there. If you could stop someone overdosing once, twice, a dozen times, that's more time you're buying them to claw themselves out of addiction and into a better place. Addicts see, right, needle sharing is getting the diseases spread, so cut down on needle sharing. Well, needles aren't easy to get hold of. Their supply is controlled because people who aren't prescribed needles are theoretically junkies, so taking the needles away makes it harder to use, right— and no one is complicit, and also you see fewer discarded needles lying around where they're unsanitary and unsafe, right? Except that people want to do a buddy a good turn, so they share if there's no other option, and they'll keep a needle going until it's literally too blunt to keep using if need be. So fighting needle sharing means making it easier to get needles to shoot up with: finding a place to discard used ones and get as many fresh ones as you need to use safely!

Making free needles available to junkies and free condoms for the bathhouses was not a popular solution with politicians, for perhaps obvious reasons. Nor was routine testing of the blood supply, because that cost money too. But these things work to stop the spread of disease. Thus the principle of harm reduction: policy interventions in response to communities that frequently engage in risky behavior should focus on whatever reduces aggregate harm by reducing the risk rather than by trying to reduce the behavior. The homos and junkies say look, all your societal judgement in the world hasn't stopped us being homos and junkies yet. You ain't going to look after us? We'll look after our own. And this is the form that takes. Not increasing the pressure to act like people who aren't is, but making it safer to be the people we are while we try to be the happiest versions of ourselves. Even if that means being morally complicit in a whole lot of casual sex and drug abuse.

The thing is, harm reduction is a philosophy rooted in the defiance of people who knew that their society thought they deserved to die painfully, young, invisible and alone. This is not the kind of thing that people come up with and get mad if you adapt it and share it, especially if you tell the story of where it came from. And importantly, harm reduction is not purely the child of addiction: that philosophy, from the get go, was cooked up to apply both to substance abuse and casual sex. It didn't just spread from addiction care; it was born straddling addiction care and queer & feminist health care.

So it doesn't make sense to see actual activists who know harm reduction well complaining that this is a term exhibiting semantic drift when we talk about voting as harm reduction. It's actually a good metaphor: you're reducing the overall risk of the worst case scenario metaphors by voting Democrat, at least until future votes can install a system where multiple parties can flourish on the political scheme. (Democrats and Republicans are essentially coalitions of a pack of arguing factions anyway, and those factions are essentially what would be classed elsewhere as a party in its own right; the US essentially just lumps political granularity rather than splitting it in our political system.) And anyone who understands harm reduction itself knows that.

So it's this wildly inorganic complaint being voiced repeatedly by different sources. Sounds like a pretty good flag for a potential psyop to me.

If you want to learn more about harm reduction and its history, especially from an addiction perspective, I cannot recommend Maia Szalavitz's Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction (2022) highly enough. Szalavitz has a history of addiction of her own as well as being a clear and accessible writer with an excellent grasp of neuroscience and history. I have a lot of respect for her work.

[feelingthedisaster]

The King's Men's plot structure is genius.

TKM has been critized a lot for not following the conventional plot structure, because it doesnt end inmediatly at the resolution of the climax, like they taught us in class. But it actually has a reason behind it and it think that is what makes AFTG unique and Nora Sakavic an amazing writer. I'll explain.

So, we all know AFTG has a lot of chess metaphors, however i think it doesnt contain the metaphors, it is the metaphor. Each character represents a piece of the board (Riko king, Kevin queen, Neil pawn, Andrew knight, etc) and exy is the chess, but but but, a chess game not only involves the pieces, the game cannot exist without someone playing, the chess masters (which would be Kengo, Ichiriu, Nathan and all the mafia stuff).

So, AFTG is divided into two plots happening at the same time: what happens on the chess board (exy season) and what happens outside it (the mafia mess).

Of couse, the climax has to be about the outside out, because who cares which one of pieces move in which way if the players are pointing guns at eachother under the board? The guns are more more important. So who cares? The pieces on the board care, the ones that are being played with. And who is the narrator? The character that represents the pawn, the less important figure of the entire room.

Yeah, the 'outside of the board' plot is over half way into the book, but it doesnt matter because that happens outside the board, the chess game has not ended yet. The pawn cannot go back to rest in the box until the game is over, until the king dies. The book cannot be over until the chess game our protagonist is a piece of ends. The books have to end with the king's (Riko) death and that is exactly what happens.

If this isnt excellent writing and one of the best examples of know the rules so you can break them, i dont what is.

[todays-xkcd]

IMO the thymus is one of the coolest organs and we should really use it in metaphors more.

Organ Meanings [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[A graph is shown with X and Y-axis without arrow or ticks. To the left of the Y-axis and below the X-axis there are labels with an arrow pointing up from the top of the Y-axis label and an arrow pointing right above the X-axis label, just beneath the x-axis.] Y-axis: How well I understand what it means when used in metaphors X-axis: How well I understand its actual biological function

[On the graph is a scatter plot with 13 labels. Each label is written inside a line that goes just around the words. There are most in the top right corner, but they are spread all over the graph. Here in approximate reading order from top left with indicating of where on the graph the words are located:] [Top left:] Appendix [Top middle:] Nerves Spine [Top right:] Heart Bones Stomach [Center left:] Liver Spleen [Center right:] Lungs [Bottom left:] Thymus Pineal gland [Bottom middle:] Kidneys [Bottom right:] Tongue

[gummmy]

“I gave you everything”

[antlerisms]

butch4butch but we’re two stags in the forest that can’t kiss because our antlers are in the way so it looks like we’re fighting

[aventurineswife]

The Language of Flowers

Tags: Sunday x Reader, Aventurine x Reader, Jing Yuan x Reader, Blade x Reader, Fluff & Angst, Romance, Introspection, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Symbolism, Metaphors, Emotional Depth, Established Relationship/Developing Relationship, Soft & Subtle Gestures of Affection.

Warnings: Mentions of Trauma, Survivor’s Guilt, Internal Conflict, Moral Dilemmas, Philosophical Themes, Themes of Immortality & Loss, Mild Manipulation, Mentions of Violence, Combat References, Yearning, Emotional Suppression.

Tagslist: @smoochi-modest, @themiddletenmasibling

The clematis flower sat between Sunday’s fingers, its violet petals softly brushing against his glove as he studied it in quiet contemplation. You watched as his eyes traced the delicate veins running through each petal, the navy-blue pupils reflecting something distant—something that lingered between the past and the present.

"You brought me clematis," he mused, voice gentle as ever. "A flower that speaks of resilience and artifice. Do you believe me to be a man of deception or of ingenuity?"

You hesitated before answering, sensing the weight in his question. "Neither," you admitted. "Or perhaps both. The way you see the world, Sunday… it's different. You find beauty where others see illusions, and yet you fear the dreams you once nurtured. I suppose this flower reminds me of you—always reaching, always entwining with something just out of grasp."

Sunday’s wings fluttered, an unspoken emotion stirring behind his composed mask. "I have spent so long questioning whether my dreams were worth the cost," he murmured. "But you…" His fingers curled slightly around the stem. "You offer me a kindness I do not know if I deserve."

You reached for his hand, your warmth seeping through the fabric of his gloves. "And yet, you accept it," you said softly. "That’s a start, isn’t it?"

For the first time in a long while, Sunday smiled—not for the world, not for an ideal, but for himself.

Aventurine twirled the clematis flower between his fingers, his usual smirk playing on his lips. "So, let me get this straight," he drawled, leaning back against the lavish lounge seat, "you’re giving me a flower that symbolizes both ingenuity and trickery? Darling, I’m flattered. Truly."

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t help the small smile tugging at your lips. "I just thought it suited you. The way you weave your words, how you always seem to be three steps ahead of everyone else… It reminded me of you."

His eyes glinted as he leaned forward, closing the space between you. "And here I was thinking you liked me for my winning personality," he teased, plucking the flower from your grasp and tucking it into the lapel of his blazer. "But I suppose I'll take what I can get."

You crossed your arms, feigning exasperation. "Must everything be a game with you?"

His expression shifted, just for a moment—a flicker of something unspoken beneath the bravado. "Life is a gamble," he murmured. "And the trick is knowing which bets are worth the risk."

His fingers brushed against yours, lingering just long enough to send a thrill through your veins.

"And you," he whispered, voice quieter, more sincere, "are the one bet I don’t mind losing."

Jing Yuan’s eyes traced the clematis flower nestled in his palm, its delicate form a stark contrast to the battle-worn hands that held it. The gentle rise and fall of Snowmoon’s slumbering breaths filled the quiet garden as you sat beside him, watching his contemplative expression.

"A flower of mental strength and artifice," he mused, tilting the stem slightly as though testing its resilience. "You must think rather highly of me."

You chuckled, tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear. "More like I know you, Jing Yuan. You carry the weight of the Xianzhou with such ease, making it look effortless—even when I know it isn’t."

A slow, knowing smile curved his lips. "Ah, so I am a performer now, am I?"

"In a way," you admitted. "But there’s an artistry in what you do—maintaining peace, guiding your people… it’s not deception, but it requires a certain kind of ingenuity, don’t you think?"

Jing Yuan hummed, turning the flower between his fingers before tucking it carefully into the folds of his coat. "Then I accept this gift," he said, "as a reminder that even a man of strategy must appreciate the beauty of unpredictability."

His gaze softened as he looked at you, the warmth in his expression melting away the distance between you. "And," he added, voice lower, "as a reminder that even the dozing general must stay awake for the things that truly matter."

Blade’s fingers hovered over the clematis flower you had placed before him, the deep violet petals stark against the cold surface of the table. His red eyes flickered toward you, unreadable.

"You think this suits me?" he asked, voice devoid of mockery, yet tinged with something akin to disbelief.

You nodded. "The flower represents mental strength and ingenuity. Both things you have, whether you believe it or not."

Blade exhaled slowly, picking up the flower with deliberate care. "Strength," he murmured. "And deception. I have known both intimately."

You reached across the table, resting your hand over his. "Not deception," you corrected. "Artifice. The ability to create something from nothing—to survive, even when the universe has tried to erase you."

His grip on the flower tightened slightly. "I am not whole," he admitted, a rare confession from a man who had long since discarded the need for such vulnerabilities.

"You don’t have to be," you whispered. "Even a clematis vine blooms with fractured stems."

Blade stared at you for a long moment, then, slowly, he brought the flower to his chest, resting it against his heart.

"Then perhaps," he said at last, "I can learn to bloom again, too."

[Navigation]

[pratchettquotes]

Mort thought that history was thrashing around like a steel hawser with the tension off, twanging backwards and forwards across reality in great destructive sweeps.

History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned so many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always--eventually--manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they're changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.

Terry Pratchett, Mort

[quasi-normalcy]

Headcanon that this is how the Tellarites think about it.

(Excerpted from Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 1980)

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

Boy, Tolkien really knew how to write water metaphors to capture large movements of people. The Dike at Helm's Deep is boiling with swarming companies of orcs who advance like the tide, flowing forward, being pushed back, and flowing forward again to reach a higher point each time. The riders of Rohan pour slowly but surely onto the Pelennor Fields like rising waters from a breached dam. The leading edge of Éomer's charging cavalry line roars like a breaker foaming toward the shore. It’s all so great.

Not for nothing, but this is another place where PJ really captured something of Tolkien's words in his films through just the visual imagery. There is absolutely something distinctively liquid about the way that Éomer, Gandalf and crew pour over that ridge line and down into Helm’s Deep in Two Towers, and you can totally see the wave-like nature of the cavalry charge outside Minas Tirith later on. It's easy to directly replicate words like dialogue and basic physical characteristics and plot points in an adaptation, but to evoke the same metaphors and capture the implied imagery as well? That's next level.

[emeraldhazeart]

Y'know, the more I've written, the more I've come to realise:

Writing oneshots is a bit like running a race. You prepare, you set off, maybe it all goes smoothly or maybe you hit a bump or two, and then you cross the finish line.

Comments on oneshots are like people waiting at the finish line for you and congratulating you on having made it. They might point out something you did well in the race, or they might just cheer with you that you did it.

Writing multichapter fics is like running a marathon.

You still prepare, you still set off with the same excitement (and potentially trepidation), you still hit bumps and potholes as you go. But overall, it's a much longer, harder journey. Maybe you have to stop and take a break, maybe even multiple times. You definitely have to pace yourself, or you'll burn out and never finish.

Comments on a longfic are like people cheering you on as you go. They're the spectators watching from the sidelines as you hit each checkpoint (chapter). They're the ones cheering you on as you run the race, encouraging you to keep going all the way to the end.

As yes, they will eventually cheer and celebrate with you when you eventually cross the finish line. But they're the ones who've shared the journey with you, in spirit if not in body.

Maybe you recognise the same voices cheering you on at each checkpoint, maybe you only hear a voice once. Maybe you just see the same person in the crowd, encouraging you to keep going.

Every one of them can be the reason you keep pushing on to the end, even when running gets tough.

Thank you, commenters. Never underestimate how much your support helps us keep running.

[marlynnofmany]

This is a post about generative AI

“I’m loving the new Food Generator! You just tell it what you want to eat, and it appears right there on the table! Never mind the fact that the machine gets its ingredients by teleporting them out of other people's fridges, and it has an exhaust pipe belching diesel from the back of the house, and sometimes it puts glass in the food. I can make pizza with any topping I want, and the number of dishes I have to clean is way down!”

[nemfrog]

The Mirror of Life. 1847. Cover.

Internet Archive

[depraveddame]

Me apparently 😫 I’m trying to write a quick and dirty zaundads one shot why am I LIKE THIS