#so i can go on about this forever

[inkskinned]

what is with men being mad any time a woman raises her voice where did that even come from. someone posted a video of a small electrical explosion, and the top comment was of course the woman screams. the second comment is women try not to scream challenge, level impossible. i had to go back and watch the video again. there is, somewhat fainty, a little gasp emitted off-camera, more of a yelp than a scream. it is mostly lost in the crack of the explosion. afterwards, you hear her voice, shaken, say, are you okay?

i am helping one of my friends train her voice pitch lower, because she wants to be taken seriously at work. she and i do each other's nails and talk about gender roles; and how - due to our appearance - neither of us have ever been able to be "hysterical" in public. we both appear young and sweet and feminine. she is cisgender, and cannot use her natural voice in her profession because people keep saying she appears to be "vapid". we both try to figure out if our purposeful voice lowering is technically sexist. is it promoting something when you are a victim to it?

a storm almost sends a pole through a car window. in the dashcam, you can hear the woman passenger say her partner's name twice, crying out in alarm. she sounds terrified. in the comments, she is lambasted for her lack of calm. how is that even fucking helping?

in high school, i taught myself to have a lower voice. i had been recorded when i was genuinely (and righteously) upset; and i hated how my voice sounded on the phone speakers when it was played back. i was defending my mom, and my voice cracked with emotion. it meant i was no longer winning the argument: i was just shrieking about it.

girls meet each other after a long summer and let out a little joyful scream. this usually stops around 12-14, because people will not tolerate this display of affection (as it has the effect of being passingly annoying). something about the fact that little girls can't ever even be annoying. we are trained to examine each part of our lives (even joy) for anything that could make us upsetting and disgusting. they act like teenage girls are breaking into houses and shrieking you awake at 3 in the morning. speaking as a public school educator: trust me, it's not that bad, you can just roll your eyes and move on. it does not compare to the ways boys end up being annoying: slurs in graffiti, purposefully mocking your body, following you after you said no. you know, just boy things.

there's another video of a man who is not allowed to yell in the house, so he snaps his fingers when he's excited about soccer. the comments are full of angry men, talking about how their brother is unfairly caged. let him express himself and this is terrible to do to someone. eventually the couple has to address it in a second video: they are married with a newborn baby. he was trying not to wake the infant up. there is no comment on the fact women are not allowed to yell indoors. or the fact that it could have been really alarming or triggering for his wife. sometimes i wonder if straight men even like women, if they even enjoy being in relationships with them.

for the longest time, i hated roller coasters because it always felt inappropriate and uncomfortable for me to scream. one of my friends called me on it, said it was unusual i'm so unwilling. i had to go to my therapist about it. i don't like to scream because i was not raised in a safe situation, and raising my voice would have brought unsafe attention towards me. even when i am supposed to scream, it feels shameful, guilty. i was not treated kindly, so i lack a basic form of self-protection. this is not a natural response. it is not good that in a situation of high adrenaline - i shut up about it.

something very bad is happening, i think. in between all the beauty standards and the stuff i've already discussed - this one feels new and cruel in a way i can't quite express. yes, it's scary and silencing. but there's something about how direct it is - that so many men agree with the sentiment that women should never yell, even in an emergency - it feels different.

is the word shriek gendered automatically? how about shrill or screech? in self defense class, one of the first things they tell you is to yell, as loud and as shrilly as you can. they say it will feel rude. most women will not do this. you need to practice overcoming the social pressure and just scream.

most women do not cry out, even when it's bad. we do not report it. we walk faster. we do not make a scene. what would be the point of doing anything else? no matter what we do, we don't get taken seriously. it is a joke to them. an instagram caption punchline. we have to present ourselves as silent, beautiful, captivating - "valuable."

a woman is outside watching her kids when someone throws a firecracker at them. she screams and runs towards her children. in the comments, grown men flock together in the thousands: god. women are so annoying.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 5: Flip Slip.

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 4.5)

[tennant-davids]

DOCTOR WHO Series 2 / Series 4 / 60th Anniversary

[gatoiberico]

parfait pals

[torosdottir]

the fact that ur childhood affects ur brain for the rest of ur life is sooooo fucking embarassing. yeah i have all these things wrong with me and i feel kind of bad and weird all the time. why? oh umm well my mummy and daddy were mean to me when i was 5. no yeah i know. yeah and im still living like this. yeah. cringe 😬

[egophiliac]

I love the idea of teenage Malleus hating his new baby brother Silver but slowly falling for him

words cannot express how much I adore that Mal's reaction to seeing a human baby for the first time was "the fuck is this. why does it look like that. gross." (then he immediately got stuck on babysitting duty and the rest is history)

I am SUCH a sucker for that trope of "non-humans being fascinated by normal human behavior", so between that and all the delicious angst going on I was eating VERY well. >:) Malleus being so impressed that two-year-old Silver can walk, because it took him twenty years to stand on two legs! Lilia barging in on the Zigvolts at 2 AM being like "he won't stop crying what do I do"! Lilia trying to feed Silver rats and Malleus being like "...please just stick with what the books say to feed it"! it is all so. chef's kiss.

[ricky-mortis]

Ok but Agent Curt Mega with long hair though?

[hellenhighwater]

Have you taken any pottery classes or were you entirely self taught? I REALLY want to get into it but classes are quite expensive

I took some sculpting in undergrad, but it was in the context of casting and mold-making, not ceramics. So I'm fairly comfortable with clay as a medium but not so much with clay as an end product--not being able to do armatures and having to think about firing is weird. (If I had the opportunity to do bronze casting again, though, I would, no hesitation.) That puts me in the minority of my current pottery peers, who are largely self-taught or only learned in our studio.

I do pottery now at a co-op studio space, and technically that means that I'm taking classes there--but the classes are more like guided lab time? There's not really assignments or anything, and there's only a couple other people who sculpt, none of whom are in my class. Mostly the class just means that the person in charge demonstrates a technique or two once a week and then lets us do our thing.

Personally I think that shared studio space is the absolute best way to go. You spend less in startup costs (kilns are EXPENSIVE, running kilns is expensive, glaze is expensive) and it plugs you directly in to a group of fellow artists who can help and support you at whatever skill level you're at. Yes, classes are expensive--my class is $250 per season. But for me that includes lab space, 50 lbs of clay per season, almost all of the glaze I use, kiln time, and other people doing all the maintenance and kiln loading/unloading etc. Very much money well spent.

Artist-run shared spaces are often not turning a profit on anything with studio fees, just covering operations costs, so while it's pricey, it generally is just...what it costs to do that hobby. And it is sooooo much easier to be motivated when you're going to what is, basically, Grown-Up Art Club.

But if costs are prohibitive for you to do pottery via classes, and you want to learn to sculpt, then get some polymer clay and see what you can do. It's a different game than actual clay, but form is form, and the medium is secondary to figuring out how to translate an idea into reality.

Polymer clay is relatively affordable and doesn't require nearly the infrastructure of ceramics. If you can't spend the money on classes or a shared studio, then polymer clay is a great way to develop technique and an eye so that when you're in a position to spend the money, you already have the skills to make it worth what you're spending.

[turtleblogatlast]

Don’t think I ever quite said what my LGBTQ+ headcanons are for the boys, so these are my current thoughts! Always changing of course but this is what I feel most strongly right now.

[thenonbinarydetective]

Things batfam stans need to leave behind in 2023:

Jason's Lazarus pit rage

Thinking Tim's parents were horribly abusive and hated him

Only caring about Stephanie in terms of her relationship to another person (ex: Tim's bestie/ex/gf or Cass' gf/bestie)

Treating Jason or Stephanie like they're stupid

Feral Demon Child Damian

Permanent sunshine boy Dick Grayson

Any "[blank] was the real violent Robin" discourse

Really just any reducing or sectioning of certain traits to certain batfam members and not allowing other characters to exhibit those same traits (ex: see sunshine Dick Grayson)

But also stealing traits from other characters and projecting them onto someone else (ex: Jason getting Dick's personality in fics. He is not the same type of big brother Dick is canonically)

Purposefully mischaracterizing characters for angst (ex: Dick sent Tim to Arkham, my beloathed. also again see Tim's parents)

Trying really hard to nuclearize the family. They are an unconventional family for many reasons, and that's why they're interesting.

"Alfred solos the batfam"

Making Duke "the normal one" and completely forgetting to give him an actual personality.

Cass using sign language because she can read body language (note: does not apply to YJ Cass who has damaged vocal chords)

Cass being used as a prop for her brothers

Tim being weak, woobified baby

Feel free to add on ~~

Don't send hate over these things because idgaf, they are harmful mischaracterizations, and many are built on total ignorance and often racism, classism, ableism, and sexism.

[vaguely-concerned]

I'm playing through Dragon Age 2 again and I just can't get over how... idk how to say it exactly, but the way you feel, in every moment of this game, how much Varric loves Hawke. It feels entwined with everything, it breathes through every part of the narrative, it blooms diegetigally through the integration of story and gameplay, makes you a co-conspirator in that love in a way maybe only a video game could.

It's in the way I don't think this story is a defense of Hawke only -- or even primarily -- directed at Cassandra, but at Hawke themselves. Beneath everything else going on there's the quiet, utterly unshakable refutation of Hawke's worst fears: Did you think you mattered, Hawke? Did you think anything you ever did mattered? . . . You're a failure, and your family died knowing it. Rising through the story as Varric tells it there's a fiercely tender voice saying: Yes, you did matter. In tragedy or in triumph, for better or for worse, in love or in hate, you always mattered. The ultimate tragedy of Hawke is always right there in the open before the story even starts letting you in on telling it; they couldn't fix anything. They couldn't stop the downward spiral Kirkwall was set on -- the real truth is that no one person ever could. And yet the point of DA2 is that it matters that they tried, and it matters that there were people who loved and were loved along the way, however badly it all failed in the end. Hawke is the Bioware protagonist who succeeds the least, and they're the character who matters the most, to me. (This is also why the Absolution reveal did not shake me in the least haha, my love for Hawke has nothing at all to do with whether they succeeded or failed at anything.)

What Varric is saying, in the only way he seems to be able to say the really real things -- through stories -- is so simple and so fundamental. You were here, and I loved you. There's the emotional heart of it, at the end of it all, that love and grief and recognition. It's so dizzyingly intimate. There's so much distancing, layers upon layers of obfuscation, to be able to say it. It drives me insane!!!! It makes me feel the same way that 'Poem' by Langston Hughes does:

I loved my friend.  He went away from me.  There's nothing more to say.  The poem ends,  Soft as it began,— I loved my friend. 

He loved his friend. They went away from him. What more is there to say. (Many, many, many things, when you're a compulsive liar and storyteller, but hey sometimes you have to deploy a whole armada of lies to tell one simple truth, I understand, I'm a writer too lol)

[theminecraftbee]

hermit horror week day 4: season 7 or taken over

Xisuma slowly blinks at the console logs for the server again. He's very tired; he's been collecting blackstone again, and it's very tiring, collecting blackstone. He's been building a lot of pretty houses, and stocking a lot of shops, and he hasn't had time to look at the console much recently. He probably shouldn't be now, because he's tired, and tired people make mistakes.

He makes a lot of mistakes; he's silly like that. A big derp. It's why he has to be careful, since he's been tired so much lately. He definitely shouldn't have the console open.

It's just, earlier Impulse had a question, since his moss farm kept lagging, and Xisuma thought it would be easy enough to try to find the root cause of. And he did find the root cause of it--Impulse's farm is too fast and his storage simply doesn't keep up with the amount of moss--but there's... some other things...

He blinks again at the dates on the server files. The last edited dates. Slowly, he clicks again on his own player data, and tries to make sense of what he's reading. Files like this, they aren't really meant to be that human-readable. It's--well, it is mostly json, so it's mostly human-readable, actually, but a lot of it is still encrypted, for player safety, which would. Maybe explain what he's looking at? He thinks? He's--well, he does have root access, is the thing, because he's the admin, but he still shouldn't be able to look at any player willy-nilly.

He's a little too much of a derp to be trusted with that. He probably shouldn't even be looking at his data! It's just. That last edited date. Xisuma doesn't edit his own player data. That way lies madness. He's, uh, pretty sure he knows some people who went a little mad doing that. So the fact of the matter is--well, it's not the only file that's been edited recently, he tells himself. Just because it's a lot of memory files that seem to have been edited, as well as access permissions--that's... normal enough for a new season, right?

He's...

He doesn't notice his other self walk up behind him.

"Oh, hey Xisuma. You finished gathering materials for our next build, then?" Evil Xisuma says. All of Xisuma's hairs stand on end.

"I mean, I've gathered enough to get started," Xisuma says.

"Pity. I was really hoping you'd manage to get everything. I thought maybe we'd finish today, but I guess we can't now."

"I--you're right. I'm really sorry."

"No, no, don't worry, don't worry, my friend," Evil Xisuma says. "We probably couldn't have finished today anyway, even if you said you'd try for it."

Xisuma's heart is in his throat. "Sorry, my head's just been. You know how I am. Silly me, forgetting things."

Evil Xisuma shakes his head. "It's awfully lucky I came back this season. Think of all the important things you'd be forgetting without reminders!"

Xisuma looks down and away.

"Gosh, and now you're... playing around in the admin console?"

"Oh!" Xisuma says. "It's, er, nothing really big..."

"Can I see it?"

He barely resists the urge to close out of his player data and hide that's what he'd been looking at. He doesn't know why he wants to hide it. It's not like--well, if Evil Xisuma got mad about it, it would be... right, wouldn't it? Because, well, Xisuma knows full well he shouldn't be looking at or editing his own player data. Editing your own data is the way to madness, and Xisuma, well, he's been so tired lately. He could easily accidentally hit a button. He could easily accidentally hit delete. He has root access, after all.

His heart is in his throat again. He shuffles his feet. "Sure," he says, finally. "I, er, I promise, I wasn't doing anything. I just noticed the last edited date on, uh, files that aren't automatically created by the system? And I thought, gosh, that's weird. I'd only been in there to check on Impulse, really, after he'd had some lag issues. I was just finishing up. It's nothing--the date's weird, though, right? That's all I was noticing."

He watches Evil Xisuma's fingers scroll through all of Xisuma's data. It's not quite fast enough that Xisuma isn't sure he's reading it, and suddenly, Xisuma feels very small.

Finally, Evil Xisuma hands Xisuma's tablet with the admin console open back to him. Xisuma looks down, and Evil Xisuma has closed out of the player data again.

"You just forgot the last maintenance date," Evil Xisuma says.

"Really?" Xisuma says.

"Oh, yeah, for sure. You're so tired lately. You silly derp. You've just been forgetting things easily. You should really get more rest!"

"Oh, but then we won't finish our projects," Xisuma says.

"I guess we wouldn't," Evil Xisuma says back.

"It's just--it's. Most of the time, access permission for player memories isn't edited during maintenance, and I just--I don't remember putting your name down?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

Xisuma tries to think.

"I don't know," he says finally, small, unable to meaningfully articulate anything about what's wrong with it. "I guess it only makes sense, if I'm forgetting things so easily."

"Exactly! Gosh, we make a good team," Evil Xisuma says, and he smiles at Xisuma. Xisuma crookedly smiles back.

"Yeah, we do," Xisuma agrees.

"Don't pull that out again unless I say so, okay?"

"Okay," Xisuma agrees automatically, and then he knows he will not. It makes sense. If he was upsetting himself over nothing like this, why, imagine what he'd do if he could open it whenever? He'd just constantly be upsetting himself!

"Now, my friend, let's return to building the Evil Empire."

"Let's!" agrees Xisuma, and just like that, the entire encounter slips from his mind.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

when you mentioned in your tags that there was hardly any laughingstock i didn't believe you at first, but holy shit ur right. YOU AND @krasytoonz MADE ME INTO A LAUGHINGSTOCK BELIEVER. I WILL PAY TRIBUTE TO THESE SKRUNGLY FUCKERS SOON, MARK MY WORDS *shakes fist into the void*

no yeah Seriously though its just us out here, fighting for our lives in the fucking Trenches. in ten years someone is gonna use the word 'laughingstock' casually in conversation and im gonna have War Flashbacks

[crunchworldsupreme]

FinFin has been thinking thoughts [Audio recommended]

[tennessoui]

so i've been thinking about this premise for so long but it wasn't working for obikin (which of course i took as a challenge) and i think i finally got it where i want it so

au where 35 yo obi-wan is a music sensation across the world but he's recently divorced and going on tour again after releasing a very cutting, personal, and well-received album

and 19 yo anakin joins his tour with his very small band of two other people (ahsoka, padmé) to be his opening act - they have a small but loyal following, a pretty big social media presence, and there are even people who ship anakin and padmé which you know means these are die-hard fans

anakin has definitely looked up to obi-wan and his music for a good portion of his life and he's like. beyond excited that he's going to tour with The Obi-Wan Kenobi - this is big, not just for his music career but also for himself and the little boy he was listening to obi-wan's music for the first time!!

i'm just imagining like....obi-wan and anakin meeting after a few days of rehearsal for opening night, and it's not the most auspicious start because obi-wan's going through like 20 different emotions at any given moment (he's on tour, he's divorced, he's tired, he loves the music, he can't be the person he was in his twenties when he was first on tour but that's a whole different matter, he has all the media training and charismatic instinct to cover up these less than savory emotions with flirtatious empty words) and anakin is just like. sorta starstruck sorta shy sorta eager sorta awkward so:

"i'm uh, i'm a singer it's nice to meet you. hi yeah. hello. i'm on tour. as well. with you. actually." "ah no, are you one of my backing vocal artists? we can't have that - you're much too gorgeous and my ego is much too dependent on the audience focusing on me." "um 😳"

so it's a relationship that begins with a lot of flirting and being flustered and progresses through moments of vulnerability and honest emotion which turns into mutual affection which turns into anakin's celebrity crush becoming very real....meanwhile obi-wan googled anakin and the opening band after the first show/introduction and finds all the stuff about him and padmé being together and that's. that's fine. young love. how sweet. any sort of disappointment obi-wan feels is because he's recently divorced and bitter about it and he's going to have to spend at least half his tour watching the lovebirds snuggling up together.

and even when all the misunderstandings about relationship statuses have been addressed and the pretense has fallen away to leave just attraction, both have to think about their careers - it's all well and good for obi-wan to date someone sixteen years his junior, post divorce, but that's an image he's never wanted to deal with or be associated with. and this is the biggest shot of anakin's career - his best chance to make it in the music industry. in the words of his bandmate, is he really, honestly thinking about risking it for a chance to sleep with The Obi-Wan Kenobi?

but what his bandmate doesn't seem to really understand is that for anakin, obi-wan hasn't been The Obi-Wan Kenobi in a long time. he's just been obi-wan. and that makes a world of difference.

[littlest-bugz]

he lives rent free in my head,,,,,,