#now that's growth meme

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

Oh we are so BACK

When I tell you I saw this and died. HELLO?????

I keep hiding my face lahshjsdhjgfsaf HE HAS NO RIGHT. NO RIGHT AT ALL BEING THAT SEXILY INTENSE AAAAAAAAAAA

Anyway, I should probably try to make some attempt at describing the event since. If I don't I'll just be barking/crying/hiding my face for the next twelve hours.

Basically--and I'm not sure this is going to be across the board, but it held true for Napoleon and Sebastian at least--each suitor has a birthday event this year instead of a separate story. Comte's won't be released until tomorrow, but they have posted a preview.

From what I gather, he talks a little bit about himself and reveals parts of his past that haven't come to light in the game yet. There wasn't really enough to convey a coherent narrative beyond attending a party, but the line displayed here does get across the larger theme:

Comte: (I don't need momentary pleasure or ephemeral affection any longer. Now that I know love, there's nothing but you.)

He talks about how the aristocracy have thrown parties and extravagant celebrations for his birthday for most of his life. But none of it has ever really made him happy, largely because he knows that they are attempts to strengthen and broadcast power relations within high society. While I don't think he means it's entirely devoid of well wishes, I do think he sees it as a nexus of influence--and thus, by nature, impersonal. And honestly, I don't think he's wrong about that; the higher the echelon in social standing, the more it requires performance to maintain the position.

That being said, there is a fascinating flashback where he remembers a pureblood telling him about how falling in love with a human is an experience of another caliber entirely. My understanding is that Comte was still a fairly young vampire at the time, so he didn't really understand what the person was getting at. It seems like the other pureblood was trying to convey the difference in feeling, perhaps the fact that humans are more grounded in accordance with how they live--the reality and necessity of change.

After reading this--and the recent 5th bday story--I can absolutely see how change is something Comte has a complicated relationship with. He's known a certain way of life for so long, has constructed a sensibility of distant, rational maturity. After all the heartbreak of his youth, and two very acute traumatic events in his life, I can see why he'd be so afraid of broaching any kind of proximity with another person. Because on some level it's so much easier not to put your feelings on the line, to never have to fear devastating loss. And that's to say nothing of the worry of being unable to measure up on behalf of another person, of letting them down.

I'm so excited to see the rest of the contents, but something about the preview made me equal parts giddy and enamored (all I do is kick my feet with excitement LOL). I think what gets to me with Comte is that he truly does love companionship as a place to rest, a place where he can be honest about himself and his feelings without fear of ridicule (and the same goes for MC). In a world increasingly obsessed with surface level performances of power, status, and emotion, it's hard not to feel his exhaustion to the core.

Also, because these lines at the end more or less destroyed me in the best possible way:

MC: ...The you who had nowhere to belong no longer exists. In much the same way...Abel, I belong to you. Comte: ... Comte: I wish I could say to myself all those years ago, the me who kept indulging in such paltry things. Comte: Until you meet MC, you will never know love... The warmth of MC in my arms filled me with such joy I was near tears. (I don't need momentary pleasure or ephemeral affection any longer. Now that I know love, there's nothing but you.) The moment my lips found hers, the sweetness lit a fire deep in my body. Comte: These cute lips that melt against mine, the heat of your skin, the love that envelops me in your embrace--always leaves me so deeply in love with you.

[xiaq]

Was just checking my book's reviews on Goodreads, as one does, and there was a relatively scathing review of Like Real People Do that actually made a lot of excellent points, highlighting things I'd do differently if I was writing it now.

But one point I found funny and would not change was something along the lines of "The Tumblr references were excruciating and made it read like 2015 fan fiction." Which, close, it was 2017 fanfic, but also I had the option to take out the Tumblr references and I didn't on purpose, even though it dates the book. Tumblr helped me write this book. We're paying homage to its origins. Will I do that for every book I publish? No. But the first one? That I only scrubbed and queried because my online friends told me it was good enough and I should try? Those we keep. Also, if you read a book and the dedication page says it's for fanfic writers, it's your own damn fault if you don't enjoy it because it reads like fic and has Tumblr references.

[presiding]

you'll never guess which level we're up to in this dishonored 2 rewrite

[happy74827]

You ever just revisit your old fics (which unfortunately are public to the world) and you want to delete it so bad because it’s just painful to glance at, but at the same time, you know someone out there is emotionally attached to that fic and you just don’t have the heart to rip that away from them.

The true pain of a writer.

[if-mirrormine]

Asking around my fave IFs for this question 😭🙏🤭

"What is one thing ROs want to hear, need to hear, and dread to hear from the MC?"

want // need // dread

grayson: i have always loved you // you did everything you could // i could never love you

kennedy: i need you in my life // you deserve everything good thats happened to you // i wish we never met

alex: you're the only one for me // none of it was your fault // i regret our relationship

[aceofstars16]

I need to get ready for bed but I’m just sitting here thinking about the things I want to write and draw but just…time…🤪

[seventh-district]

why have i suddenly been gripped with the desire to get back into fishkeeping

[rainswings]

.

[shivunin]

Hello Mo!

For the OC Emoji ask…

😨 FEARFUL: for Emmaera

🥞 PANCAKE for Salshira

🌱 SEEDLING for Maria

✂️ SCISSORS for Elowen

Hey, Arja! Thanks for the ask c:

(OC Emoji Ask List)

😨 FEARFUL - when scared, do they go into "flight" or "fight"?

Oooh, depends on the situation! When startled, Emma defaults to fight, but when faced with slow-creeping dread, she tends to bolt.

🥞 PANCAKE - what is their comfort breakfast?

Scones and jam or maple glaze. Salshira has a sweet tooth and really good, flaky scones balance heavy and light breakfasts for her. She loves maple in general and is happy to cover lots of things in maple syrup (but especially scones).

🌱 SEEDLING - what is their most vivid memory from childhood?

Sitting on her father's lap while he read to her. When she was very little, it felt like the biggest thing in the world just to turn the pages for him.

✂️ SCISSORS - what is the "last straw" for them to cut someone out of their life? how easily do they let go of people?

Oooooh so this is an interesting one because Elowen is a lot more prone to assuming that she has been cut out of someone's life than she is likely to set that boundary herself. I think it would have to be something pretty clear-cut, like supporting the purge of an alienage or the annulment of a Circle. She's sensitive to feeling like she's being manipulated or used, so that would do it, too. She agonizes over letting people go, and it would be hard for her to decide to do it even if there was a pressing and obvious reason for it.

[nando161mando]

"Things are great now! Why aren't you praising me you stupid poors?"

[beginneryoutubeadvice]

How To Grow!!

[obscurevideogames]

Tumblr’s Core Prodct Stratgy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on trying to keep our sinking ship afloat for as long as possible. This means desperately trying to copy every new fly-by-night social media app that some multi-billionaire sh*t out during their daily Peloton routine. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. If you find the things we say here worrisome, please understand that is our exact intention. You've outgrown our target demographic. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

The Diagnosis

It's lookin' pretty bad y'all!

After somehow losing hundreds of thousands of users during the great pr0n purge of 2018, we started to wonder if anything could be done to get back to where we were. We even brought in a management consultant who charged us a ridiculous amount of money. It would make you sick if you knew how much, but we got a few nice meals out of it at least. Anyhow, we handed this guy the app, and HE HAD NO IDEA HOW TO USE IT! It was f*cking hilarious! But suddenly it all clicked -- our users are a bunch of stupid idiots who can't even do basic arithmetic. I mean, they spend all day looking at their phones, so what do you expect?

Tumblr’s best feature is its unique content and vibrant communities. But who cares, right? We're just as happy getting traffic from people sh*t-posting memes, vague-booking, giving out-of-context hot takes to news events, and spewing whatever random thought is in their head at the moment. Plus that stuff doesn't p*ss off Apple.

To keep this thing going we need new people. And by "people" we mean teenagers, like we used to have back in the good ol' days. Unfortunately we're all in our 40s now, so we have no idea what they want. But teenagers are so cool! Imagine if they talked to us like we're one of them? We're getting hard just thinking about it.

Our Guidng Principls

To make Tumblr cool again, we must address these huge glaring issues.

People can look at a blog without logging in. How is that fair to all the poor schlubs who had to fill out forms to get an account? Also we haven't figured out a way to force ads onto the personalized pages yet. But we swear that's not the main reason.

People can see content they are looking for or linked to. People can keep up with blogs they follow. But the problem with this is, people don't know what they want. We know what they want! We're smart. We wrote this damn site, remember?

Promote posts that incite pointless conversations. Posts that are guaranteed to bait every troll into responding. Isn't that why all your Magat relatives love Facebook so much? We can do that!

P*ss off your content creators in every way possible (see #2).

Create algorithms that throw an unending barrage of irrelevant content in your face. Have you seen Instagram lately? We could do that so easy!!!

The app is slow. The website is slow. Obviously this is because of GIFs. Facebook and Instagram don't allow them, so why should we?

Conclusion

Our mission changes on a day-to-day basis. Right now we're super jealous of all the attention that new Threads thing is getting. We're still not sure what it is, but we're gonna download it after work.

[professionalfobtrash]

ah so we’ve passed that milestone eh? smth smth chronically online, which one was it tho lets see

hmmm

ah

well

[just-antithings]

Anti-ism is psuedoscience and a moral panic rolled into one

One of the most dangerous things about therapyspeak leaving the intended audience is that now antis feel fully qualified to tell survivors how they should and should not be coping, even to the point of attempting to override/contradict the advice of certified therapists.

I've had antis tell me the fiction I enjoy writing is retraumatizing myself, that I am doing harm by writing it; when I responded that actually, my therapist signed off on the stories I wrote (even when I mentioned the specific phrase "consensual nonconsent"), they said that my therapist doesn't know what she's talking about since she sanctioned my coping mechanism and explicitly labels her practice as kink-positive. Antis are attempting to make me, a survivor with mental illness that could ultimately be fatal if I leave a psychologist's care, disregard the advice of the medical professional supervising me when they have no certification at all. This could, if I were a more vulnerable person, be dangerous for not only my trust in my therapist, but it could sabotage my treatment as well.

They are using what amounts to little more than memes, based on misinformation, that use a few intelligent-sounding phrases that very rarely apply the way they think they do, as a wedge to attempt to assert themselves as authorities who can, with certainty, dictate the appropriate course of treatment for a total stranger, including telling them to disregard the therapies administered by a trained professional.

In other words? Antis are frighteningly similar to anti-vaxxers, who took medical terminology they didn't understand, applied it to shaky cause-effect logic models, started a moral panic, used statements generated by that moral panic as a citogenesis-fueled proof their initial starting of the moral panic was justified, damaged the doctor-patient relationship of millions of total strangers, jeopardized the healthcare of those strangers who now believed their doctor to be incompetent for following accepted medical best practice, and fomented dangerous fringe political ideologies that coupled themselves to other conspiracies based on rejecting commonly-acknowledged practices.

"Vaccines cause autism! Narrative therapy that implements any form of controversial kink causes retraumatization of the writer, reader, or both, and starts the writer on an inescapable slippery slope to becoming an abuser themself! It's better to be dead than autistic! It's better to suffer feelings of shame and/or isolation in silence than it is to use fiction to put a voice to your feelings! Your child is vaccine-damaged from thimerosal and is getting sick from virus-shedding! Your fiction caused me to groom myself and you're a porn-addicted monster for not facing your trauma the proper way! Your doctor doesn't know what's good for you, I do! Only I understand how your body/mind work and what treatment is appropriate for you! Your doctor has been manipulated by Big Pharma/kink supporters! The empirical-study-informed best practices for pediatrics/psychology are what's wrong, not me, whose research is carefully informed by TikTok videos and Twitter posts carefully formulated to cause amygdalar growth to keep me afraid so I will continue to engage with fear-mongering content that causes my politics to shift towards the alt-right, who coincidentally also push narratives based in fear, not in medicine! I am being perfectly logical here!"

Antis fundamentally reject empirical medicine just the way anti-vaxxers do. They just seem to get a free pass on it since it's "only" mental healthcare they are sabotaging, and few people acknowledge it as something as legitimate and lifesaving as other medical care.

[thechekhov]

Dungeon Meshi Quick Reacts: CH45

Slumber party!

Fair, but consider: She deserves a little murder. As a treat.

Kabru be like "IS THAT MY BACKSTORY???"

That sure is....a ship. With no one on it.

Ah, shit the Americans are here.

Two things: Toshiro being tended to like a pretty pretty princess is hilarious.

And also, the fact that they think the elves can kill Falin......... hmmm.... Pressing X to doubt.

............... oh. Laios. 😂

But also like. How was he MEANT to keep it silent? Put a little something in it? I thought since it was a magic bell you could code it to only ring when it's shaken with INTENT?

Fancy ass house.

Also, Namari...........are you hitting that yet? Both of that?

Oh, it's backstory time.

Okay one: that's fucking tragic, it sounds like the Elves are just forcing the dungeons closed with no regard for how the ecosystem compensates and what people suffer by being in close proximity......

And another thing: Kabru. Kabru, isn't that what YOU'RE after? Having all the power?

Why is this so much like that one meme where the girls at the party are looking at you.

It's the same picture.

Kabru that's. That's maybe not the way to go about it. you're going to give them MORE reasons to go in.

Nevermind the governor not being into this 'good boy, now sign' talk, Toshiro's kinda right. Ya fucked up Kabru.

No matter how far Laios runs, he cannot escape other people trying to tell him how to live his life. Poor guy. But at the same time...

Is this real? Or a red herring?

Laios' father and mother seemed to be living relatively pious lives. They clearly had a good house, but it didn't seem like they were extremely rich. Then again, perhaps he's just a cousin of royalty? Is that why his parents wanted him to have children?

They want to.... halt the growth of the dungeon? Is this another part of the natural ecosystem of things? Dungeons growing seems to point even more towards the idea that it's a gigantic, fleshpit-like creature instead of simply a construct.

Then again, constructs CAN be creatures. Like the golems.

Elves not understanding how old humans are continues to be hilarious because like.

As humans, we HAVE this same concept of variant aging. Like. Dogs. We understand that dogs live less than us, and mature a lot slower. But this is.... COMMON KNOWLEDGE. Most people do not make it into adulthood without understanding that dogs mature within 1-2 years of their birth.

The fact that elves, a species with FAR more time on their hands, who have lived alongside other races for AGES....... have STILL not got the general concept of aging down....means their education is atrocious. Or they're all not paying attention.

.......this. THIS is the most fascinating concept in this chapter.

The fallen.... turned into MONSTERS.

We know that dying inside the dungeon doesn't mean permanent death. But dying above-ground does.

We know that dying in the dungeon doesn't mean your body turns into a monster (aside from ghosts and ghouls?) ..... but dying aboveground.... DOES......?

WHAT'S THE TRUTH.

👁👁

Hm.

If Kabru and Laios fused, they could almost make one functioning human being.

Senshi just beginning to speak in the middle of his own internal monologue is so real.

...... what's going on there with the expression, buddy?

Bread.......are they STILL carrying around flour with them?! How are they getting bread?!

Also, it's awesome that the eggs are canonically hard to crack, because it makes sense that they don't break during their many fighting events.

Izutsumi really said ◉_◉

Don't tell me Laios, who is sensitive to ghosts has ALSO been seeing things?

Not gonna lie, that's highkey terrifying.

Props to that ghost that's been following Laios around, not ever giving up hope that it can bother him into acknowledging it.

And also - hey, it already saved them once! that means it's probably not evil!

That, or it's the king of the bloody dungeon. Wouldn't that be something!

[temtamtom]

⚔️?

⚔️ A nation in a historical uniform

What's the opposite of a "happy camper"? Here's Romano in a (Light) Voltigeur uniform during the Napoleonic Wars.

Tfw your new boss is one of Napoleon's cronies, and now you're getting dragged around Europe to fight their wars.

I feel like the 1800s were certainly an interesting time for Romano and his personal growth (in my headcanons). There's a lot I'd love to properly explore some day.

This was quite challenging but I had a lot of fun drawing it in the end! Thank you for the ask ❤️

Less Meme-y version under "read more"