there’s a lot of scummy shit going around in the car industry right now, but i think some of the most nauseating shit is car features requiring subscriptions.
cars are not fucking video games or streaming services. they are transportation devices. if the car has a self-tracking feature, or heated seats, or a HUD, then it is built into the car. there is NO REASON to put it behind a paywall lther than companies trying to suck their customer’s wallets dry.
it is becoming more and more clear that automotive companies are caring more about profit margins than they care about providing their customers with safe, comfortable vehicles. and their concerns about a “pleasant driving experience” died out long ago
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if you struggle with mental health, one piece of advice i would genuinely give you is learn to knit.
or crochet: something repetitive to do with your hands, assuming you're capable of it. if you're like me and learnt to knit as a kid but let it lie fallow for a long time, it may be that starting a large, simple project (for me it was a cloak, but a blanket could work too) gets you back into it. or maybe doing something smaller, idk. i personally found socks really hard for a while because they felt smaller than my cloak but weren't getting Done quick enough for me. as i've sped up i find it more interesting to knit socks.
regardless, a repetitive task is great for emotional regulation (also see: autistic stimming), and something that you can look at and go hey i've done something, unlike simply using a fidget toy, can also help to pick your mood up when the brain is being cruel.
it's also useful as a conversation starter or distracter if you don't know what to talk about. if you're wanting to talk to older people also you're more likely to reel them in with knitting (i work better with older people, and 99% of people who ask what i'm knitting are older than me). it also gives you the opportunity to not make eye contact because you're busy knitting, even if you're still carrying on a conversation. if you're absolutely stuck for conversation you can count your stitches and people might stop bothering you.
if you have trouble focusing without doing something with your hands, you can knit! i knit a lot in church, and it helps me to focus on what's being said.
i probably have more reasons you should pick up knitting, but i can't recall them right now, so yeah.
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god what really gets me about dead boy detectives and what i think i love so much about the show and the relationships in it is that like. the romantic and sexual relationships aren't portrayed as being more unique or important than the platonic relationships. they're all just RELATIONSHIPS.
charles and crystal's attraction to each other and eventual hookup isn't this big end-all be-all relationship that shatter charles and edwin's friendship and draws charles' attention away from edwin; it's just a THING that happens. they're just two people that care about each other and happen to also be attracted to each other, and a hook-up happens, then they decide that neither of them are in the right place for it and it's nothing awful. crystal kisses charles, but it isn't some big spectacle of her declaring her love for him; it's just her saying goodbye and that she cares about him, like her hugs with niko and jenny and her handshake with edwin.
edwin realizes he loves charles romantically and tells him, and charles says he doesn't really love edwin romantically BACK, but it's okay, because they still love each other so much in so many other ways that this one tiny difference could never change them—and it doesn't!! they're still just as close, still care for each other just as much, still SHOW that care for each other just as much. their relationship didn't completely end because edwin loved charles in a way charles couldn't reciprocate, but at the same time it isn't "solved" by edwin getting over it, because there's nothing TO solve. it's just another type of love, added to everything that already exists between them. and they have LITERALLY FOREVER to figure out what it means.
the relationships between edwin & niko, crystal & niko, and crystal & edwin aren't given any less weight for being solely platonic, just as charles & crystal's relationship and edwin's feelings for charles aren't given (that much) MORE weight for being romantic. crystal and charles' conflict in the closet is about EDWIN, about how they're BOTH his friend and BOTH want to get him back; it has very little to do with the feelings between THEM, romantic or otherwise. similarly, the weight of charles' and edwin's relationship isn't diminished in the LEAST by charles not reciprocating the romantic side of his feelings (or SAYING he doesn't reciprocate, at least—we can all argue about the legitimacy of that in the notes).
i'm sure there are more examples than this, as well as probably some examples that CONTRADICT this, but like... by and large, it feels like dead boy detectives is a show where all the relationships are given equal weight regardless of platonic, sexual, romantic, or familial status, and as someone on both the asexual and aromantic spectrums who has struggled time and time again with shows casting out the importance of all other relationships in favor of prioritizing romance, that is INCREDIBLY refreshing to see.
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wip wednesday (early cause im offline tmrw)
When the dust settles, Obi-Wan is surprised to find himself still standing.
It takes all of him, he thinks, the end of the war. It takes everything he has.
He used to wonder, in a distant, nebulous way, what it would feel like in the aftermath. How his life would return to the routines he held before Geonosis, if the cadence of Temple life would feel strange and unfamiliar to him after so long spent in the trenches. If he would miss the sound of his men behind and around him, the steady stream of words and laughter and presence of others, at all times, surrounding him.
It’s only when the dust settles, when the first grains of sand whip through the arid desert air to sting his eyes, that he realizes that every time he ever allowed himself to think about the end of the war, he’d always assumed that they would win. He had never truly thought they would be defeated. That the Jedi Order, the Temple itself, so strongly entrenched in the galaxy and in Coruscant and in Obi-Wan’s world view, were capable of falling.
He had cautioned others against the same assumptions the moment he heard them. He had warned his own padawan to not look too far into the future, to not plan too much for the war’s end. He had told many people—clones, civilians, holonet reporters, other Jedi—that it was dangerous to think of the war as something they would inevitably win. Nothing was inevitable, especially not victory.
But he realizes now, only now, only as he traverses the desert on the back of a stolen eopie, wearing robes still smelling so strongly of volcanic sulfur that his eyes are stinging with reactionary tears, that he’d thought. He’d always thought.
He’d never really considered…this.
This aftermath, where he is still standing on shaking legs and everything that he has ever cared for in the world has become ash, has become the dust settling around him.
Everything he has ever known and loved and fought for has slipped through his fingers. When the dust settles, when he looks down at his hands, he expects to find them empty.
Instead, there is a baby in his arms.
And he knows—he knows intimately how much damage these hands are capable of. What hurt these hands can inflict even on those he loves. Loved.
He knows, as the homestead rises up in the fading light of the two suns, that these hands should not cradle this baby. Not the son of the man he has murdered. Not his brother’s son. Not his padawan’s. Not Anakin’s.
He knows the babe is safest here on this farm in the care of this couple. He knows he must leave the child with them, to raise and love a thousand times better than he is capable of. He has tried before. He has failed one Skywalker already.
He knows.
And he can’t. He cannot let him go.
While the Galactic empire rises on one side of the galaxy, the dust settles on the other and Obi-Wan Kenobi looks down at the babe in his hands and realizes that he cannot let him go.
Not another Skywalker.
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Sketchpage of my characters <33
I closed my eyes couple days ago and half-slept under the cloudy weather. It's the first time in years I get brave enough to draw my oc's in a scene right after I experience it.. I sleep immediately at night (no complaints, I am indescribably grateful I don't experience insomnia), but I miss the time before I snooze where I dive into my headworld..
I've been doing so many things in-between working split shifts that I've given myself possibly another ibs episode, resulting in taking the day off yesterday.
I felt ok by noon so "I'll draw for 2 hrs" became 7 ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
I'll do my best to take it easy for the next few weeks u u
^^^love how I wrote so and as soon as I recover I want to go back to doing a billion things!!
Since you're here, here's the full page~
It was super fun to draw and I am extremely shy about it but also super proud and I worked hard!!
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Hello!
If you're not too busy, would you mind listing some of the things you think count as death flags for Mr. Spender?
There's the obvious fact that he's the "old" mentor to group of young protagonists, but what else do you think would count?
OHH BOY ok so I'd think I'm a crackpot for this but since we're talking about Zack "Foreshadowing" Morrison. I have some thoughts
No harm in leading with the (chronologically) first thing that jumped out at me:
This one IMMEDIATELY made me antsy whenever I came back to it after my initial read, and considering Zack has referred to it on twitter in the past as one of their favorite jokes it's definitely not been forgotten about.
Second, the sheer amounts of near-misses, jokey or not, of Spender narrowly avoiding specifically lightning
Again, not much, but it's weird that it happened thrice, latter two of which had real gravitas rather than an one-off joke.
And third, Spender himself. He's repeatedly shown himself to be kind of a self sacrificing idiot, as well as prideful to a fault. Granted, it's both him and Mina trying to take on all the responsibility of saving Mayview and its inhabitants from their fate..
But Spender is exactly that right measure of doesn't-value-himself-enough (chest footprint aftercare or lack thereof), having an obscene amount of power (enables his loner act + pride) and poor judgement that has the capacity to put him at great risk. And it has!
Spender has not only shown low enough self-esteem to view himself as the de-facto scapegoat for the safety of the town, but also prideful enough to make very bad calls that end up in people, often himself, hurt (COUGH FORGE INCIDENT COUGH)
This is all conjecture, but it's definitely enough to make me worried about him :') Even if all this doesn't mean he'll necessarily die he's definitely getting (even more) seriously injured at some point. I love the guy but he's so far doing a horrible job of convincing me he wants to live bad enough to circumvent at least that
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