#is not our problem

[radlymona]

This is coming off convos on radblr around how historically blue collar trade work is now becoming more respected in society because it’s overwhelmingly dominated by men while women are more likely to go on to do tertiary studies. Part of this is this idea that going to uni is now an expensive waste because you spend a massive amount of money to go into debt, only to get stuck with a salary less than non-uni qualified trade jobs.

And this is kind of ridiculous because it takes many years working in a trade to achieve a comparable salary to that of a bachelor needed job. Apprentices aren’t paid the same as tradies working decades in the field who run their own business and have stable clients/works. Moreover, most trades still require vocationary certificates, so it’s not like tradies are leaving by high school and then immediately earning top salaries without any further certification. This discourse is just a myth to downplay the success of women in tertiary education and their entry into white collar work en masse despite the many barriers

[my-castles-crumbling]

Me at age 13, exhausted at school after staying up all night to read fanfic: I can’t wait until I’m an adult and I can stay up reading without any consequences!

Me, an adult, exhausted at work after staying up all night reading fanfic: Fuck.

[nando161mando]

[obsidianpegasus]

Reading my own fanfiction is basically just a rollercoaster of emotional whiplash.

20% of the time: “Hold on. I wrote this? This is fire. This is emotionally devastating in the best way. This scene is dripping with tension. I’m a literary perfectionist. Someone give me a book deal.”

80% of the time: “Straight to jail. Immediate prison. Why is everyone’s breath hitching?. I used the word ‘gaze’ three times in one paragraph like I was possessed. Did I think 'his eyes darkened' was profound? Why is everyone clenching their jaws? Why is someone whispering 'their name like a prayer' again?? No one talks like this. What is this dialogue. Why are there so many weird metaphors and em-dashes…”

[theaftersundown]

a constant problem

[the-bar-sinister]

"How can you stand the fact that gross, disgusting fiction about (x topic) exists??"

It's simple, I know how to be polite and ignore fiction I'm not interested in, and I don't base my concept of morality on what I personally consider to be icky or distasteful.

[goldenjetpack]

[nonegenderleftpain]

If you say that religion must be studied in the context of how it is practiced, let me tell you as a practicing Jew that it is not widely practiced to believe in hell, and definitely not to teach children about it. Yes, Gehenna is mentioned in Talmud, and there is a lot of discussion about what that means that isn't for goyim to interpret for us. We do not have hellish iconography, we do not discuss it in sermons. Judaism is about doing right by people in the here and now, and the afterlife - good or bad - isn't really part of that. Because some small sects do interpret Gehenna as literal and not metaphorical does not mean that Judaism as a whole is practiced that way. The belief in hell is exceptional, in Judaism, not one of the primary, de-facto ways our religion is practiced.

my most antitheist opinion is that hell is like. a cartoonishly evil thing to believe in and insanely abusive to teach children about

[stinkybrowndogs]

I mean I get that’s it’s not the only contributing factor, but I’m curious exactly how much of the shelter dog over-population problem is actually due to poor dog ownership/management vs the housing crisis and economical stress. I’d be willing to bet by investing in social programs that give people the resources they need to care for their pets (cough cough affordable and free housing cough cough) that the amount of pets in shelters would dramatically drop. We can all sit here pointing fingers and screaming at each other until we are blue in the face, but if the owners basic needs are not being met, how can we hold them to a basic standard for their pets?

[wrenmkingsley]

;_;

[blood-is-the-life]

Tumblr user, look at me. Your problems with organized religion are not solved by harassing random religious people on the internet.

[ange1sdontcry]

bath like this is all I ever needed

[sunderwight]

Shen Qingqiu gets hit by a rare wife plot.

And it actually is a rare one because Airplane didn't even write this one down! He toyed with the idea before ultimately dismissing it as being too controversial for the tastes of his readers, and adapting only a few of the same elements for a subsequent chapter of PIDW.

But apparently the System can pull inspiration even from the author's thoughts, especially when there's nothing to contradict the concept and even a few threads of it still to be found in the original, and somehow Shen Qingqiu runs afoul of this previously-unwritten plot bunny.

The core concept was a cuck scenario, of all things. One of the Luo Binghe's wives gets afflicted by a poison that can only be cured by dual cultivation, but specifically can't be cured by by dual cultivation with anyone who has mastery over demonic qi. Something something conflicting energies, something bullshit something. Peerless Cucumber would have ripped the chapter to shreds if it had actually made it to publication, not just for the insult of implying that Luo Binghe should let one of his wives sleep with someone else, but also because why would Luo Binghe -- able to use both kinds of cultivation -- somehow not be able to keep his demonic energies from influencing the situation just in this one case?

Well it turns out that in his specific case it's because sex gets him too worked up to keep things strictly separate, and the degree of control required to treat the affliction whilst dual cultivating is extensive enough that even a little slip-up would be fatal.

Of course, in the actual chapter of PIDW, this same plot device was altered and used to create a harem orgy where Luo Binghe oversaw several of his wives "treating" one another's "afflictions", but Shen Qingqiu just had to go and get a fatal of dose of the more severe version (he didn't realize the risk, because again, this version didn't even make it into the novel).

Anyway, of course this ends up with Shen Qingqiu trying to figure out another way to cheat death, while Luo Binghe goes through the five stages of grief before accepting that he's just going to have to let someone else fuck his husband. This leads to an argument because of course Shen Qingqiu's not going to cheat on Luo Binghe, and he's especially not going to force one of his martial siblings to sleep with him, come on now, and Luo Binghe trying not to cry tears of blood while bringing himself to explain that a fair few of Shen Qingqiu's sect siblings would be happy volunteers for this task.

Shen Qingqiu's just like, well of course you think that, for some bizarre reason you think everyone wants to sleep with me. Bias is what it is. Really it's flattering Binghe but obviously every other person we know is straight, that's just statistics, and everyone in the entire cultivation world knows that Qi Qingqi would sooner chew glass than have sex with a man!

Luo Binghe, weeping now: Shizun please. This is serious. I need you speak words that make sense in the order you're saying them.

They argue, they reach an impasse, the clock is ticking. So Luo Binghe reluctantly turns to the most reliable source of information (outside of himself) on Manipulating Shen Qingqiu to Do Things That Are in His Own Best Interests -- Shang Qinghua.

At first Shang Qinghua is like, well I'm flattered Junshang but I don't think I could shoulder the baggage of fucking Cucumber-bro for you. But then Luo Binghe is like no I need someone who is way hotter and more capable than you, if Shizun is going to fuck someone else at my behest they're going to be TOP TIER so that when I fuck him better afterwards he's really impressed with me. Liu Qingge, obviously.

Not Yue Qingyuan, Shang Qinghua asks? (He'd take the insult a little more personally but honestly he's just relieved that he's not being asked to navigate this social minefield.)

No, Luo Binghe says. He's not 100% sure he could beat Yue Qingyuan in a fight even to this day, which in his mind also translates to not being 100% sure he could do sex better than him either, so Yue Qingyuan is an emergency last resort. He's way more likely to cry on Shizun too and Shen Qingqiu is into that shit, it's too risky.

Alright, says Shang Qinghua, and he thinks about it, and then he comes up with the beautifully simple solution:

Luo Binghe has to fuck Liu Qingge first.

Because of course the crux of the issue is that even with permission, Shen Qingqiu doesn't want to cheat on Luo Binghe. But in the twisted annals of his mind, Luo Binghe himself is still entitled to a harem, even if Luo Binghe is also happily monogamous in this life. So if he shacks up with Liu Qingge first then Liu Qingge essentially joins Luo Binghe's harem, at which point if Shen Qingqiu sleeps with him it's not an affair, it's the gay version of those fanservice-y 3P scenes that the wives in PIDW did. Shang Qinghua translates the concept as best as he can to Luo Binghe, who -- though slightly dubious -- must accept that so far Shang Qinghua's wisdom hasn't steered him wrong with regards to his shizun's eccentricities.

Luo Binghe's mission: seduce Liu Qingge, or at least convince him to have sex, or possibly to lie and (convincingly!) tell Shen Qingqiu that they had sex. That last one is the longest shot so he's probably going to have to just fuck him (Luo Binghe still underestimates how willing his husband is to believe that just about anyone would have sex with him).

Shang Qinghua's mission: convince Shen Qingqiu that he owes his husband steamy threeway gay sex or something so that this plan he pulled out of his ass doesn't backfire and get him killed.

[theaftersundown]

how it feels to enjoy storytelling but can't physically put the words down

[abigbagofnope]

Star Trek has two favourite disasters, the holo deck malfunction and the transporter malfunction. Every version of Star Trek has one or the other, probably both, multiple times.

The beauty of Our Man Bashir is that it provides us with both of these disasters, at the the same time, and the leads are about to be hella gay about it.