#but it also makes me terribly hungry

[greypetrel]

ACBA, part 1.

Assigned Candy by Aisling (@dungeons-and-dragon-age I laughed so hard at this.)

There were some requests for OCs and I'll oblige…

Under the cut for lenght, but still. (Again if you're a mutual send words and you'll have your OCs some candies assigned to)

@dungeons-and-dragon-age: Lay, I will do the ones I'm most familiar with for now!

Adriel: A lemon hard candy. It's sour, you can't eat it quick because it's hard to crack, you have to keep it there… But oh damn, sweetened lemon? Yes, acquire the taste and go on.

Liam: Rum and Raisin ritter sport chocolate. It's wholesome and will get you going if your pressure gets low, it's warm and homey. Yes raisins aren't everyone's taste, but with rum they just taste so good!

June: Frizzy Pazzy. (Crazy Fizz?) This I have a hard time remembering the name in English. It's one of those envelopes that contains grains that just… Fizz when you eat them. They're sour and you can't eat too much at once because they will explode. But it's one of the funniest candies around and it's science.

Ari: 90% chocolate. It's dark and slightly bitter, most people won't approach because they'll think it's too bitter… It's actually the one chocolate that will be the most beneficial, won't hurt your teeth, once you get used to the bitterness you won't go back to milk chocolate.

@shivunin I hope I got them right!

Arianwen: after longs consideration and at least a whole day spent with Aisling following Wen around squinting, very very deep in thought Vampire teeth gummies. Aisling will tell you that she can't pinpoint it, but she thought of those and can't find anything that fits better. It seems fierce and not friendly but if you taste it it's really sweet. Add a Zevran in the background because I have the feeling that this scene would be funnier with him around to assist.

Maria: I think she would be a little indecisive. Chocolate, but flavoured either with chilli, or with salt. Some unusual combination that you won't often find or go for… But it's peculiar, it's surprisingly delicious, and you will remember forever of the time you ate it. (if we can space to cakes, the answer will be clearer: "A red velvet cupcake. Come on it looks just like her dress! With the lace!")

Elowen: Strawberries dunk in chocolate. Fruity and tangy, very sweet, but countered by the hard and the warmth of the chocolate. Something unassuming that you have to cook at home… But oh damn they're good. (it's meant as a compliment, Aisling would like Elowen a lot)

Emmaera: Parma Violet. I wanted something flowery for her, possibly with lavender. I admit my personal lack: I just hate lavender as a flavour in food and I don't know any lavender flavoured sweets... And none I found had a story as the Parma Violet has. It's a typical candy from where my family comes from: it's balmy and it's very flowery, violet are known for their calming properties as well, and as an essence it has a long story that goes back to the Duchess Maria Luigia d'Austria, very well-loved in the town and who loved the Violets so much she made it the trendiest perfume... That eventually slipped in the kitchen and in candies.

Salshira: Cinnamon candies. I have a precise brand in mind, the Leone pills. They're… VERY intense in flavour. But if they're your jam and the flavour isn't too much? They'll go down one after the other in quick sequence, they're warm and cozy.

@ndostairlyrium you're here too.

Elanor: Confetti. Those you find at weddings. It's something you don't find every day and it has a level of formality and noblety… They're the harder candies to eat, tackle them too quickly and they'll crack your tooth. But give them patience, wait a little and oh damn, they're SWEET and homey and really the bombonniere is already empty? :(

Kerry: See I was about to assign him the Frizzy Pazzy and not June. But then I thought better and thought that for Kerry, the Frizzy Pazzy lack a level of sweetness and homeyness that Kerry has. I'd say candied orange peels dunk in chocolate (again, coming from Aisling that's the ultimate compliment, anything citrus assigned must be worn with pride.). It's homey, they're not the prettiest candy on the market, not the one you'll link with something refined… And yet. And yet! Instant love they're tangy and sweet and fresh and sour and they'll just make you smile and taste like Christmas.

Ankh: Pocket Coffee. A sweet shell of chocolate that will melt in your mouth and explode in coffee. It's sweet, but it will most definitely give you a burst of energy to get through the day. It's the mix between sweetness and energy that's it, the one thing that will keep you going when you'd just want to lie down and sleep. You can rely on your pocket coffee in a rainy day.

Shaan: Ricola. Herbal candies that… That you have to like or to wait until the flavour grows on you. But! They'll save you from a throatache or if your voice is low. Can't lose a work day because you're sick with those!

[goldkirk]

.

[quirkle2]

i wish i wouldn't do this to myself. why do i buy games on steam and then not play them for a while and then hate them and request a refund way outside of the refund time window

[newtness532]

i am feeling so tired

[gxlden-angels]

Hello! I apologize if this is a nosy question, but what is the silly feelings wheel app you were talking about in a previous post? My therapist and I have been working on identifying feelings but I still very much rely on a list of feeling words to have any idea what I’m feeling, so it could be a helpful resource. No worries if you don’t want to share, just thought I would ask :)

It's called How We Feel! I'm not sure if it's available on all devices yet, but it's on ios and the google play store for sure.

I've been using it for about a year. It's more of a chart than a wheel but people usually recognize the wheel better so that's what I call it. When you first start it has a 10-part tutorial about emotional acceptance and regulation, then it has suggestions for each category of emotion. You can access both at any time tho after those first 10 days.

It has a share option so you can have friends, which has been great for me cause it prompts me to check on friends and them to do the same for me. It allows you to just respond with a little emoji in like a "I'm here for you" little notification to your friend, or you can reach out to your friend on your own. Its really helped me cause I'm bad at reaching out when I need support so to me and I'm bad about taking on other's problems even when I can't handle it so being able to send a little emoji instead to make sure my friends know I'm there if they need me and them doing the same has been great

[floral-hex]

I’m about a week and a half into starting Remeron and my main side effect so far is I’m just so dang sleepy all of the time.

[spellmage]

coming back from hibernation already i missed this webbed site too much

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

trying to find words to describe a certain kind of Tired so you can pay attention to what brings it on, and what kind of rest and/or self-care you need to address it, can be really annoying because sometimes addressing it means completely taking a break from Thinking the Thoughts at Things. guess what process requires thinking thoughts at to quantify. >:T

[sludgeguzzler]

damn i feel miserable/scared/lonely/gay time to paint my nails

[thesunshinydays]

i wish i could just give one really loud, endlessly loud scream once a day whenever i wanted wherever i wanted with no consequences i think it would vastly improve my quality of life

[genekies]

screaming, tearing my hair out, sobbing face down on my bed

[rickyrainfrog]

had so much cleaning energy this morning and then i stopped to eat lunch and now its all gone and im crashing from exhaustion adhd when i get youuuu

[phoebespenglers]

well i think i know why this is happening to me now.

[boomerang109]

im not strong enough for this

[ohnoitstbskyen]

re: Somerton

Not for nothing, but I think we should remember that James Somerton's fans and subscribers are normal people, just like you. They are people who received his output in good faith, and extended to him a normal amount of grace and benefit of the doubt, which he took advantage of.

I don't think it's helpful to respond to the exposé on Somerton with sentiments along the lines of "wow, how could anyone ever think THIS GUY'S videos were any good, ha ha ha, how did he ever get subscribers?" because 1) you have the substantial benefit of hindsight and a disengaged outsider perspective, and 2) it's a rhetoric that creates a divide between you (refined, savvy, smart, sophisticated) and Somerton's audience (gullible, unrefined, easily taken advantage of, terrible taste), which is a false divide, with a false sense of security.

Somerton's success happened because he stole good writing. He found interesting, insightful, in-depth work done by other people, applied the one skill he actually has which is marketing, and re-packaged it as his own. He targeted a market which is starving for the exact kind of writing he was stealing, and pushed his audience to disengage from sources that conflicted with him.

Hbomberguy makes this point in his exposé video: good queer writing is hard to find and incredibly easy to lose. The writers Somerton stole from were often poor or precarious, writing freelance work for small circles under shitty conditions, without the means or the reach or the privileges necessary to find bigger markets. And, as Hbomb demonstrated, when people did discover Somerton's plagiarism, he used his substantial audience to hound them away and dissuade anyone else from trying to hold him accountable.

He stole queer writing by marginalized people, about experiences and perspectives that people are desperate to hear more about, and even if his delivery and aesthetics were naff, his words resonated with people because the original writers who actually wrote them poured their goddamn hearts and souls into it.

Somerton also maintained a consistent narrative of persecution and marginalization about himself. He took the plain truth, which is that queer people and perspectives are discriminated against, and worked that into a story about himself as a lone, brave truth-teller, daring to voice an authentic queer perspective, constantly beset by bigots and adversaries who sought to tear him down. As @aranock, who works with some of the people he targeted, writes in this post, Somerton weaponized whatever casual bias and bigotry he could find in his audience to reinforce his me vs them narrative (usually misogyny and various forms of transphobia), which is what grifters do. They find a vulnerable thread in a community and pull on it. And while you may not have the particular vulnerability that he exploited, you do have vulnerabilities, and they can be exploited too.

People felt compelled to support him, even if his work was sometimes shoddy, because he presented himself as a vulnerable, marginalized person in need of help, he pulled on that vulnerable thread.

Again, he has a degree in marketing, and just like propaganda, nobody is immune to marketing.

YouTube as a system is set up to push for more, constantly more. More content, more videos, more output, more more more more, and part of Somerton and Illuminaughty's success was their ability to push out large amounts of content to the hungry algorithm, even if it was of inferior quality. The algorithm rewarded their volume of output with more eyeballs and attention, and therefore more opportunities to find people who were vulnerable to their grift.

It is a system which quite literally rewards the exact kind of plagiarism that they do, because watch-time and engagement are easily measurable metrics for a corporation, and academic rigor is not. There is pressure to deliver, and a lot of rewards to gain from cutting corners to do it.

Somerton and Illuminaughty and Internet Historian are extreme and very obvious cases, so blatant that you can make a four hour video essay exposing what they've done, but the vast majority of this kind of plagiarism isn't going to be obvious - sometimes it might not even be obvious to the people who are doing it. Casual plagiarism is endemic to the modern internet, and most people don't get educated on what the exact boundaries are between proper sourcing and quoting vs plagiarizing. We had an entire course module at my university aimed at teaching students the exact differences and definitions, and people still made good faith mistakes in their essays and papers that they had to learn to correct during their education.

All of this to say: it is extremely easy in hindsight to call Somerton's work shitty and shoddy, his aesthetics flat and uninspired, and to imagine that as a sophisticated person with good taste and critical faculties, you would never be taken in by this kind of grifter. It is extremely easy to distance yourself from the people he preyed on, and imagine that you will never have to worry about your fave doing your dirty like that.

But part of the point of Hbomberguy's video is that plagiarism is extremely easy to get away with, and often difficult for the average person to spot and call out, and with the rise of AI tools blurring the lines even further, it is not going to get any easier.

So I think we should resist the temptation to think of Somerton's audience as people with bad taste and poor faculties. We should resist the temptation to distance ourselves from the perfectly normal people he preyed on. Many times in your life, a modestly clever man with a marketing degree has fooled you too.

On a personal note, by the same token, I am resisting the temptation to assume that I am too good to be vulnerable to the systemic pressures that produced Somerton and Illuminaughty. No, I've never made a video by word-for-word reciting someone else's work, but I know for a fact that I could do a better job of double-checking my work and citing my sources. I feel the exact same pressure to get a video out as fast as possible, I have the exact same rewards dangled in front of me by YouTube as a platform, and I can't pretend it doesn't affect my work. To me, Hbomb's video felt like a wake-up call to do better.

[fingertipsmp3]

Girl help I’m going out to eat with my family tomorrow and the only good thing this restaurant serves is the carvery but you have to physically go up some stairs to get the carvery and then carry your very full plate back down the said stairs and I can’t do that because my knee injury is such that it does not allow me to climb stairs while carrying anything, especially a fairly heavy and big plate, and I don’t want to eat subpar food or fall down stairs in a public place