#frustration

[generalluxun]

The fact that TA is still, as of yesterday, out there with abuse apologia on twitter is more disheartening than anything in the show so far.

You can come up with excuses for stuff in the narrative. Something can be lost in translation or editing. Someone well intentioned can make a mistake via ignorance on a subject. Something that seems good on paper can just not work out. These things happen.

Having someone out there still vehemently denying anything but an extremely narrow and conservative vision of child abuse *counts* as child abuse, how do you defend that? How do you hold out hope for the future of the series?

Maybe it's time to finally write that letter to Zag, politely, and ask him what his stance on child abuse is. Just, to find out if this is one man's crusade, or something baked into studio culture.

It's just a weird mix of depressing and, as a parent, infuriating.

[chaosgremlin46]

How I feel when I miss IMPORTANT holidays.

[tightsweatyclothes]

The chains holding her may be long, but their presence is all that matters. Her life is defined by their constant presence, weighing at her wrists, clinging to her throat, pulling at her ankles, defining the space she can exist in. Other locks keep the hood and gag fastened to her head, keep the ballet boots on her feet, keep the suit stuck to her body. Her bed, her phone, the keys to the chains and locks are at the other end of the room, and even when the chain is taut, she may not get at them. When he is in a good mood, she gets a bucket which she may use once a day, and when he is in a bad mood, the bucket moves out of reach, or else is moved just far enough for her to drink her own stale urine from it with her head bowed, not far enough for her to relieve herself into. At night, she curls up with the single pillow she is allowed, trying to sleep even as drops of sweat tickle her all over under the suit, and saliva trickles out of her gagged mouth. And if he decides to make sleep impossible by turning the hot and bright spotlights on the whole area, or by leaving the window to the gardens open so that a host of mosquitoes whine constantly by her ear, that is entirely up to him. Even this window is out of her view, so that she may never see out of the room, and may only watch the slow rays of the sun with deep longing as they slant across the room.

[feral-ballad]

You call me the wrong name / I would rather be beast than yearning.

Alison Kronstadt, Bred In Captivity

[drferox]

So I have been massively burnt out this year, partly due to illness and separation stress, but I have been trying to do all the self-care things that I encourage people to do when you’re trying to make a brain be well, and one of those is writing fiction.

Just short fiction, because my brain balks at the idea of picking up the really big, long neglected projects. But short fiction is still fiction and if I write enough of it, then maybe I’ll build up enough momentum to pick up the bigger projects again.

So I thought that maybe if I can write enough fiction, because there’s a bit of horror flavour running though these pieces, I could narrate them for YouTube and work on the momentum for yet another project that fell by the wayside between the MS, relationship breakdown and single parenting.

Which is why I searched for ‘how to run a scary stories YouTube channel’.

And boy oh boy did that induce some rage.

I genuinely hold the art of writing in high regard, and I recognise that it’s a learned skill and difficult to do. All creative pastimes are. But there are a bunch of ‘entrepreneurs’, and I use the term with a great deal of sarcasm, that have decided to use A-Bloody-I for every single part of telling a story, except one. And for that single piece that they do not outsource to a computer program, they simply copy what has worked for other people.

There are videos providing instructions for people about how to use A-Bloody-I to:

Generate a YouTube channel name, banner and profile picture

Generate a story of the desired word length

Generate a fake voice to narrate that story

Generate a background image and thumbnail

At which point why did they even bother? They don’t even listen to the story that they generate before uploading. I know it’s all about the dream of money, they think 5 minutes of work every day will earn them an income, but what they have generated is soulless garbage.

The results have all the dressings of a horror story, but they don’t have the body of one.

It is like fae realm food- looks a little too good and all the reflections are wrong if you look too close, but it won’t satisfy the way the real thing does. You can’t really live off it.

But the more I know to look for it, the more of it I find. Particularly with fake voices, that seem to have trouble with words like vague or Dalek for some reason.

My main solace here is that these ‘entrepreneurs’ seem to be employing the same strategy in their own niche, flooding themselves with endless AI generated content coming from the same one idea, so at least they get to create their own hell I suppose.

[minsungincorrectquotes]

Minho, frustrated: You know what, fuck this, I deserve nice things Minho: *picks up Jisung* Minho: I'm taking him as compensation

[autball]

A kind of subset of self-regulation skills (which I posted about yesterday) is frustration tolerance. It’s another popular recommendation for ND kids that *sounds* like a very worthwhile goal. If your kid is frustrated and acting out all the time, getting them to tolerate frustration better sure seems like it would solve a lot of problems.

Here’s the thing about that: you don’t get better at feeling frustrated by spending more time being frustrated. You just get more fucking frustrated. And just like with the attempts to “teach” self-regulation skills, all you’re gonna get is someone who gets better at *pretending* not to be frustrated OR someone who lashes out more because you won’t stop frustrating the shit out of them.

Being “easily frustrated” is a problem, yes. But what you’re really looking for isn’t frustration tolerance, it’s frustration *management.* And that is a team effort, not solely the responsibility of the person who’s always feeling frustrated.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Welcome to NY I guess.

[adorkastock]

DO THE THING

This was an outtake but I love it. I bet someone could definitely make use of it!

[tightsweatyclothes]

For fidgeting while she was supposed to be kneeling perfectly still at her indoors water bowl, she has a long afternoon playing "catch" in the hot sun ahead of her. She whimpers as her owner prepares to take her out on the short leash.

When she returns soaking in her own sweat, the bowl of fresh water tempts her, but she may only drink the collected bodily fluids from the rubber suits of the rest of the "household": their sweat, their urine, stinking from being in the waterproof suits for so long.

She watches from her outdoors cage as they enter the shade of her house, watches as they strip down, empty their suits of the stinky fluids, go to bathe, twitching with frustration in the sweltering sun, unable to open the unlocked cage door with her stumpy limbs.

After her usual intake of fluids, a new bowl of fresh water is left in the cage: she is to stare at it, immobile, until the evening, unable to drink a single drop, listening as they lounge around the house in light clothes, as they drink slowly from cans dripping with condensation. They sit around her cage, use it as a table for their snacks and refreshments, and she stays still, staring at the bowl of clear and cool water she without being able to taste even a single drop.

[kibervetka]

I already think it’s clear that I really love China and dragons~

[mtvscreengrabs]

Frustration - Soft Cell (1981 / video from 1983)

[thebibliosphere]

I'm so annoyed. I got exposed to unexpected strobe lighting on the weekend, and my eyes still feel wonky. I know it's the migraine continuing; the pain is just silent. But god damn, that doesn't make it any less frustrating. Why the hell is strobe lighting everywhere now?

It's in movies, games, TikTok filters, social events. Like, does no one care that they're endangering people? For me, it's just a pesky migraine that lingers for several days, but this shit could outright kill someone with a seizure disorder. And it's just like... no one cares.

[likesdoodling]

Annatar during chapter 39 of The Harrowing by Chthonion~

And then doodles with some of my favourite bits from the afore mentioned chapter -

I've been meaning to do stuff from this chapter since it came out cause it is amazing- (in a 'wanting to suffocate Annatar with hugs and cups of tea, and the collateral sufferers too- like getting Maedhros back to Fingon for recuperation' kind of a way) - at revealing just how messed up Annatar's mindset is. I definitely recommend the Maedhros pov as well- the amount of '... I don't think I even want to unpack that statement' and 'seriously. We have gone over this. At least three times. In the last twenty minutes. Why do you not get it??' that goes through his head during that conversation is just- Amazin~

:D

This fic is really cool and I highly recommend it to anyone even vaguely into lotr or the Silmarillion.

:D

@chthonion

>:D

[bloodmoonsbloodbank]

I’m actually gonna lose it I was in the middle of reading something and Oakley was looking very cute so I HAD to take some pictures of her come back and what I was read was GONE I left for a few seconds omfg I was INVESTED too I hate my life

Anyways Oakley being a cutie patootie