#grousing

[maleficentmrsofallevil]

"Entitled" BJD collector, me

I've got an axe to grind due to a large order I have with a company. Thanks to a lovely bonus, I was able to pay off my layaway early. Re-reviewed my order, and realized I forgot to order bags (I hate those enormous boxes BJDs come in, and if they have any fancy print on them, I can't recycle them). Quick email to the company - Hey, I forgot to order bags. So sorry. Can I add a couple bags to my order? (it's a BIG order)

Doll company snaps back: "If you wanted bags, you should have ordered them when you ordered your dolls."

Oooooo-kay.

Less than 24 hours later: "The optional hands you ordered aren't the same color as the doll. Seeking your kind understanding."

I ordered the hands at the same time I ordered the doll.

I pointed out to the company that when I make a mistake, you snap at me. When YOU make a mistake, I'm supposed to be understanding. I'm pretty sure my email flew right over their heads, but that could also be a translation thing.

I'm done ordering from that company, but it made me realize that I am becoming an "entitled" collector.

It made me realize that this is a luxury hobby, but this is not a rich person's hobby. Rich people - truly wealthy people - expect to be catered to. They expect to get exactly what they want, exactly when they want it. Truly wealthy rich people would not put up with half the shit BJD collectors do. They would not accept dolls that arrive with imperfections, scratches, mis-matching resin, blushing that's already starting to peel, and 3-6 month wait times in which you hope you get what you paid for. They would not put up with poor to nonexistent customer service, not answering your questions for days to weeks at a time, and all the crazy shit that happens with shipping and delivery.

But if the rest of us acted like that as doll collectors, we would be acting "entitled." Emailing a company and asking them to make a certain type of doll is "rude." Asking when your doll is estimated to ship is "annoying." Asking for resin samples is "a waste of time." Expecting after sales service (repair/replacement parts) is "unreasonable." You pay what they tell you to pay. You get what you get. And you better fucking LIKE it, or ELSE. No returns. No cancellations. No refunds.

Tell me what other business operates this way?

My order was as much as a used car cost in my younger days. To me, that is a LOT of money to get jerked around and snapped at by a doll company.

I don't know, man. Folks who make the same complaints I do get told, "Maybe this isn't the hobby for you."

Maybe not.

[prawnlegs]

strongest potions for my bastard of a shoulder please, I really hoped to have this page fully inked before the end of the month but chronic pain makes fools of us all

[ntrlily]

hm just a personal opinion but i feel like probably "trans au" as a fic site tag should not be merged with the general "trans" tag. feel like that is maybe something more specific than tagging that there's generally transgender things going on in a fanfiction. but what do i know.

[cephalopodinspace]

"This sounds like it was written by AI" actually, the AI text sounds like it was written by us. Mimicry is its intended function. AI, much like humans, can produce language that sounds "normal" as well as language that sounds weird or incorrect, whether that's for deliberate reasons or undeliberate ones. The fact that AI can produce weird art does not mean that all weird art is AI-generated. The fact that AI can produce bad art does not mean that all bad art is AI-generated. The desire to avoid engaging with AI content is reasonable, but don't let it limit your understanding of the scope of human creative ability--and especially don't let it make you be rude to real human artists and writers whose creative processes and goals are not immediately obvious to you.

[geeoharee]

If I'm slightly incoherent today, that's because my upstairs neighbour's baby is screaming. It has been screaming pretty much every day for the last year or so

Yeah this is presumably harder for the neighbour to deal with but, and this is key, it's THEIR kid. I just fucking moved here and they do not put 'you will have to endure screaming' on the tenancy agreement.

Famously, the point of babies screaming is to get your attention! It's an evolutionary advantage for it to be impossible to ignore! Congratulations baby you are very fucking evolved

[monsterkissed]

you can get away with a Lot of just overt transphobia in ostensibly trans-posi spaces if you just say you're specifically talking about non-binary people and idk that seems like an Issue

just straight-up undisguised stuff about it being delusional or a childish phase or that we're lying about needing better rights or that we're predatory grifters or literal attack helicopter crap or basically whatever you want so long as you remember to replace the words "trans people" with "they/thems" or "people with names like leaf or squash or railroad lmao"

[elfdragon12]

Getting super tired of day shift coworkers taking my equipment and not returning it. My lead does not appreciate it when I have to call him and go "uh, hey, I'm missing [equipment] and need a replacement".

[lifeattomsdiner]

As if I needed another reason to despise Twitter, every single notification I’ve gotten for weeks now has been “hey didja see this tweet?  hey didja see this tweet?  hey didja--” die.

[todaysbird]

the white-tailed ptarmigan, also known as the snow quail, is a mountainous-dwelling bird and the smallest member of the grouse family. they are found at high altitudes in the continental united states, canada, and alaska. they have distinct ‘cryptic’ plumage, meaning that their plumage differs drastically throughout the year; during warm summers, they are speckled brown and black, going through an intermediary mottled phase before fully molting into their snow-white winter plumage. they primarily feed on insects and plant matter. their eggs are laid in a simple depression in the ground; the chicks are precocial and leave the nest soon after hatching.

[cuntyvicodin]

can you believe that this is the man almost every character on the show wanted to fuck at some point

[cephalopodinspace]

I'm sorry but I can't stop thinking about how bad A Dowry of Blood is.

Like, the main character has one character trait, which is that she's morally righteous, which makes her commit vengeance murders. So in the beginning of the book, after becoming a vampire, she vengefully murders the men who killed her family, and she understands that as a good thing that gives her catharsis. That's a solid character-establishing moment. And then in the middle of the book, she mentions that she vengefully murders abusers in her free time, which is very heroic of her. And finally, in the climax, she vengefully murders Dracula for abusing her and her partners, freeing them to live their lives and be happy together.

Note that her murder of Dracula is not meaningfully different from the previous murders she committed in any way. In the beginning, she is specifically characterized as someone who believes vengeful murder is a good thing; and in the end, she still believes that, and it seems like it is a good thing. It's like the author thought giving her a character arc would introduce too much moral ambiguity or something, and because of that deliberately designed the story to lack any elements of character growth or thematic conflict whatsoever.

[carp0nastick]

A Conundrum

I have a serious problem.  When I sit down to work on a piece I have been writing, I often re-read a little of what came before.  Before I realize it, I’m off in this world that is enthralling to me.  Because it’s custom catered to my own interests.  When I get to the end of what’s written, I sit back and I’m like “Oh man I can’t wait for the next part… aw shit.”

[herpsandbirds]

Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), male courtship display, family Phasianidae, order Galliformes, Wyoming, USA

photograph by Alan D. Wilson

[nepeteaa]

Sprucie Saturday!

[monsterkissed]

if your first response to any discussion at all about inclusion in the lgbtq or queer communities and how it's good and vital for our safety and political action is "yeah everyone is included except maps and paedos and zoophiles! i gotta bring them up bc obviously the community is constantly being overrun with sexual predators sneaking in all the time but they're totally not welcome! but the threat of them being allowed in is so real and it definitely happens all the time because we're so accepting and it's so bad!"

then i really hope some conservative podcaster or skeevy "news" site writer or whatever is at least paying you to do all that great PR for them

[geeoharee]

So I watched s1 of The Good Place like years ago, quite soon after it came out, and I was like ‘okay! Cool, but I’m done with you, I don’t see three more seasons worth in that.’

This week I just got in one of my moods and binge-watched the next three seasons and the last episode left such a bad taste in my mouth that I now think I was right all along quite frankly

I had a whole rant in here but fundamentally, it’s ‘Redemption Arcs: The Show!’ and I’m not about that, and also it got half its good ideas from the Screwtape Letters (inevitable; you can’t mention the devil in a comedy without borrowing tons of stuff from Screwtape, see also Paradise Lost) and the other half from Bedazzled. I love Bedazzled. Bedazzled had the guts to stick the landing, thank you very much. God laughing in Satan’s face feels true to me in a way “and they all lived happily ever after” never will.

(and then they killed themselves! whee, we trivialised the role passive-suicidal-ideation-as-relief plays in the life of a suffering person. I said I wasn’t gonna rant about this but it turns out I was wrong!)

Some really good one-liners though. Like Tahani walking down the corridor and there’s a door that says ‘Prince William, Prince Harry, and Prince’. That was fun. Also the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where they acknowledge they’ve brought Janet back from being enslaved to a bunch of humans so she can be enslaved to a bunch of humans.

Oh, you know what? Let’s bypass stuff I’ve rec’d a million times about angels and devils, let’s have ‘stories about the inner life of a female servant AI’! Becky Chambers’s second book is terrific on this subject, I cried when she said she couldn’t cope with being in a humanoid body because she could only see in one direction. And I’m just relistening to Wolf 359 again because Hera deserves *everything*.

Did they even NOTICE that when they complained the “world is too complicated, making it impossible not to sin” the things they deducted points for were exclusively the results of capitalism? “sorry it’s just too complicated uwu, surely there is nothing to be done about this.”

Actually the whole show is a waste of like 12 hours that can be summed up in the song ‘Love’s Not A Competition (But I’m Winning)’.

Edit: LOL I DIDN’T EVEN WATCH THE LAST EPISODE. I stopped at episode 12 cos I just figured it was done. You know what? You may not be done, show, but I am! Goodbye! (I only opened this edit to say ‘Jason Mantzoukas is very good and I would not like to have reviewed this show without mentioning him.’ Turns out they fuck up his character in episode 13. Naturally.)