#sorry if i get preachy

[kirbybecomesastarwarrior]

Hey… um, Lady Celestine? Hehe, I know we’ve met before but this time, I came for advice. How exactly do you deal with.. criticism? Like criticism for who you are? Or what you are? Sorry to bother you with this. - Magopon

Lady Celestine: You know dear, that whole situation of "being criticized for who you are?" that hogwash usually comes from people who don't even know who you are... Such a paradox.

That's the first thing you must remember my dear is: they don't know you...

@kirbyoctournament

[futuretrain]

the jokes and memes are very funny admittedly but i have honestly very little patience for people who don't use twitter on here and elsewhere going "well what's the big deal it's just another dumb social media platform going down we're not losing anything essential". we are. we are losing something, if not essential, then at least very, very close to it.

because twitter isn't just "that place where all the dumb discourse happens". it's a place where state agencies share vital information that saves people's lives. it's a place that gets news from breaking stories pretty much as soon as they're happening, often from many points of view simultaneously, often before *anywhere else*. it's a place that has organized, directed, and popularized social movements and protests.

we don't really have an alternative to a platform like that right now, and it will be a while before another emerges with a big enough reach to make it feasible to use it in a similar way. in the meantime, twitter has become a public tool that many people and organizations have relied on for years. right now, it's hosting evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity in multiple regions of the world - do you see tumblr or another website right now taking up that role?

so yes, while we're all laughing (and it is genuinely funny, even as a twt user who has relied on it to organize and share information about protests), don't minimize just how big of deal it is that a platform like twitter is probably going to be dead soon.

[antiendofictives]

hello! I'm a factive of kurt cobain. I've only recently began accepting the fact that I have a dissociative disorder (within the last year) but as far as I know I've existed for around five years.

I've never been around any sourcemates or even been able to find them so... here I am trying to reach out. If there's anyone who that description applies to... (ESPECIALLY dave...) reblog or comment and I'll reach out!

I'd be down to make friends with anyone who's a factive of a musician in general ouuuugh...

I don't know if calls are okay.. if not feel free to discard this :-]

i don't have much to add, just be safe people! I allow calls occasionally as long as you all make sure to be safe and careful! ^^

[wildflowercryptid]

something that's been weighing on my mind ever since learning about the situation with ezra / toonimal is seeing how these predators will take the active hostility that is frequently directed towards minors in online spaces to their advantage and use it to prey on vulnerable children. i think that we as adults in online fandom should probably come together and maybe rethink the language / manner we go about interacting with kids bc clearly the way things are rn is causing active harm.

like obviously, if you're an adult and aren't comfortable with minors interacting with you or your content, you should be allowed to set that boundary and should be vocal about it, ( especially if the content you create isn't safe for them to consume. ) but i don't think talking to them like they're a blight on all that is good and holy is the way to go about it. maybe just saying you're an 18 plus account will suffice, you don't have to tell them to fuck off.

[douwatahima]

idk i'm feeling kinda riled up today and i want to talk about why the fight for ofmd is so important to me.

so listen. i've been in fandoms for a loooooong time. i remember when the sheer idea of a show (that wasn't something like, say, queer as folk) having any sort of lgbt representation was a major rarity. the idea of a random character suddenly coming out in your favourite sci fi/fantasy/action show? no way in hell. and those of us in fandom kinda came to accept that. we were queering the hell out of everything we came across, don't get me wrong, but it was because the idea of a series suddenly having a character textually be queer was just…not a thing that happened most of the time.

then came the age of queerbaiting. as someone who was in the supernatural fandom from very early on, i remember how those first few seasons of the ~great destiel saga~ felt to watch. they actively hinted at and joked about their relationship! they acknowledged the elephant in the room! surely they wouldn't do that unless it meant something!!! but then of course came the years and years of the cast and crew sneering at the people who had the audacity to…listen to the words that came out of the character's mouths and have thoughts about them. and yeah, eventually (like a decade later) cas told dean he loved him, but even now the people who worked on the show seem reluctant to say that that was a romantic moment. and that's just one example that i'm more intimately familiar with! there are so many others! just straight up gaslighting queer fans so they can keep making money off of us with no intention of actually giving us what we want; all while acting like they were doing us a favour by doing anything at all.

and it sucked! it clearly sucked! but the more time went on the less surprising it became. because at the end of the day it came down to what it always comes down to; money. there's this idea (not just in media) that there are certain people who are the "default". people whose experiences are universal and easy to understand. white people. straight people. cis people. when it comes to media, stories about these people are seen as something anyone can watch and understand. but when you try to tell stories about people who fall outside of these categories? well, now you're making niche content that only people who fall into that niche will be able to identify with.

and look, i know i'm preaching to the choir here. this is tumblr. we all know there's a lot of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in the world. my point is that the narrative around queerbaiting from an industry standpoint seemed to be "yeah, we want the ad revenue from all of these lgbt people watching our shows, but if we commit to actually making any of our characters queer we're going to isolate our straight audience and lose most of our viewers". and there was never any concrete way to disprove that. so yeah. we would occasionally be blessed by a ~very special show~ that actually depicted queerness (usually about younger people coming out, or about the tragedies that can and have faced people in our community), but the idea of branching out beyond that seemed like a no go.

and then along came our flag means death. a show about pirates that also talked about toxic masculinity and had characters who were casually queer in every different variety and also featured people with different body types who came from different cultures and who were all treated with kindness and grace. a show that didn't necessarily market itself specifically as ~a queer show~ (which, was probably in part due to trying to bury the lead which sucks, but the point still stands) but rather a fun show anyone could watch. that wasn't specifically about coming out or tragedy but was more so about joy, and community, and love. and here's the thing. here's the wild as fuck thing that happened. this show? it didn't lose all of its viewers when those last two episodes of season 1 aired and it confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that ed and stede were in love. the opposite happened. this show fucking soared into the stratosphere.

i remember the first time i saw those parrot analytics charts showing that ofmd was the most in demand new series; out performing marvel even. i was so overcome i legit broke down in tears. because it turns out all of those times i had been told to sit back and accept the scraps i was given because that was all my community was profitable enough to get, those people were wrong. we could've had this the whole time! WE COULD'VE HAD THIS THE WHOLE TIME!!! and as the weeks progressed and ofmd remained at the top of every chart, as the show continued to succeed, i felt such an immense amount of joy! those people were wrong! we can just have this and it'll do well!!!

and yeah, apparently that wasn't enough to convince the powers that be. they spent forever deciding whether to renew it and when they finally did the budget was cut nearly in half and the people at max decided they needed to oversee the show a lot more. all of this sucks. but the thing is they made season 2 and they fucking did it again! the show got even better critics scores than last time! the show was doing numbers better than season 3 of succession! the merch, only released in october, became some of the best selling merch of 2023 on the max shop! by max's own admission season 2 was one of the biggest hits of the year for them!!! like, what more is there? the show is a success!!!

so yeah. i'm not going to accept the fucking stupid excuses max gives as to why they cancelled it. saying that it didn't have the numbers (it did), or that they didn't know how to market violence (they do), or that it didn't have awards buzz (it has literally been nominated for awards and there's still active fyc ads the company itself made) just doesn't cut it. there was no reason to cancel it other than the idea that diverse media "doesn't sell". and max, by airing this show you have shown me that that fucking isn't true. it's never been true. so i'm going to keep fighting for this one until someone picks it up or until i'm old and grey because it isn't just about ofmd. it's about the belief that our stories, the stories of people who aren't "the default" are worth telling. by every metric they are worth telling. and that is something that i know is worth fighting for.

[thewomanwholaughed]

25. your character!

Just because you have several blogs doesn't mean you can just keep using them to shoot asks >:c 25. Your Character!

I already posted a huge discussion/warning on my blog about Joker as a character. So to those who read it, this might be a bit rehashed content.

Read more for length!

Joker is not a good person, I don't want her to be a good person. While I do enjoy occasionally giving her a little bit of a softer side. And we have seen Joker being capable of being gentle or soft in the comics, it's a rare thing. Reserved for specific individuals or circumstances.

Joker as a character has always been tied to the 'One bad day' concept. And I get it, I bet plenty of people get it. Maybe not as extreme, but certainly people make jokes like: one day I'm going to just set my workplace on fire. Or something to that effect. And Joker's various origins also bring up scrutiny. Desperation. Being ostracized. Regardless of opinions on the Joker movie: it's all about a very sad person who needs help and doesn't get it because of society.

Now, who is intimately familiar with such a concept? LGBTQA+ people. People with disabilities.

Even if you ignore some of the blatantly queer subtext of Joker as a character in some comics and the whole relationship with Batman (I am not a jokebats shipper btw); Joker is the perfect template for a person of the LGBTQA+ community or who is disabled. Who has been pushed too far by a society that doesn't care, that ostracizes, that doesn't offer support, etc etc.

Those people either die or struggle. They might make it, thanks to community or determination. But they experience horrible treatment and frequently endure more than just one bad day.

So as a Trans person who is disabled, it just made sense to me to make Joker blatantly queer and disabled; and proud of it. As evident by the trans-flag rose on her suit and the prominent use of cane and to a lesser degree her wheelchair, with frequent mentions of those tools.

Because I know how my communities are treated. How my people, my friends, my kin are treated. So why wouldn't one just snap and decide: You know what? Fuck you all.

That still doesn't make Joker a good person. And I am not trying to portray her as being in the right for her emotions. She is still someone who crossed too many lines. She's not a literal social justice warrior; she's a murderer.

It's just that the connection between abuse by society and becoming someone like Joker makes so much sense if you're part of a community that is constantly beaten down!

And then I'm using this particular angle because my Joker also happens to be a Woman of Color, who lost all melanin because of her little acid bath. Because I come from a mixed family and have seen society's actions and abuse towards my family, and me.

It's the combination of knowing what people like me, in my community, in my family face and being the perfect example of someone who society beats down till breaking. And my desire for more villains who are unapologetically evil/villains and belong to a minority group.

Because I want representation all over. I want the representation to be as normal as any other form. I want just as many disabled heroes as I want villains. They're not heroes or villains because of their disability. It's just part of them and irrelevant to them being who they are.

And I get that people find that uncomfortable. That people find Joker an uncomfortable character.

I respect that! I absolutely do! But I feel Joker is a great canvas to make my point.

So Joker does take Estrogen. Joker does have low spoons sometimes. Joker does use coconut oil for her hair.

That's not what makes her a villain, a criminal, a psychopath and a murderer.

It's the chemical warfare on Gotham, the shooting of civilians, and the destruction of property that makes her all those things.

I love Joker, because she's the canvas I chose to make a statement with.

[leslie057]

the choice to be hospitable, sacrificial, and encouraging to others when you yourself feel tired, upset, and stressed is the BEST choice you can make in the history of choices ever by the way

[bookish-bi-mormon]

I found today's Sunday School discussion to be very ... frightening, to be honest.

We were talking about revelation, and the teacher asked us to share revelation we'd received, and ways that we personally feel revelation.

I was the only person who shared specific events and sensations that I believe to be God's way of communicating with me. Everyone else stayed on the path of "If it's good I know it's from God."

And I don't want to dismiss the more mundane promptings and inspiration that many people experience. It is true that sometimes you will feel like saying or doing something, and not know it's from God at all in the moment. It's only through hindsight that you see His hand. That's fine.

But it really seemed like almost none of them had experienced a moment of prayer or study that had led to a direct message from the Holy Ghost. I don't hear words, but on my mission I figured out where in my body the feeling comes. I know not everyone has a physical sensation, I had a friend who said that when he prays for answers he usually gets pictures in his mind. But I think it's important to learn to distinguish it, so that you're not relying solely on doing "good."

I don't know, I think that taking for granted that what you think is "good" is from God is what leads to lots of issues in the church. This is how we get people who are focused on obedience and on doing "good" things rather than having personal conversations with God. This is how we get a whole church who thinks that Homophobia must be right, because they were taught that only straight marriage is "good" and apparently have never thought to ask, or didn't know how to recognize the answer if it came.

President Nelson said that we need to learn how to receive personal revelation. Personally, I think this is where Seer Stones, Divining Rods, Card Divination, and other forms of folk magic that the early church used can really come in handy. I do tarot readings when I really want answers to questions, and it helps guide my conversations with my Heavenly Family. Flipping your scriptures open to a random page after specific question can help to.

People are all going to have different ways they connect with The Divine, but if you are a member of a church that boasts ongoing revelation, and you have never sought out to personally Know, not just logically but spiritually as well... I don't know, I guess I urge you to do that. Find out what the Holy Ghost feels like to you. Please.

[axolotlclown]

Would you happen to have some studies to back up the "more than one coffee means you're addicted" thing, please? Pretty sure I've seen that disproven as a lens to understand addiction through at all

~ 🪴

Hey! So sorry I never saw this anon. It never appeared in my notifs and I'm really bad about checking my askbox.

You have asked a question that falls in line with a field I am very passionate about! I found some interesting articles in my school library. I'm going to go ahead and write this response, but I'm still waiting on access to a few journals. I'll have to convert those ones to PDFs as they are likely behind paywalls.

Anyway, here's my long post where I intend to rant about a lot of different barely related topics. Caffeine addiction is one of those really controversial but historically significant subjects in psychology!

So let me start off with how to read and break down a journal. It's one of those things where if you don't go to college and specifically major in a research related field, no one ever teaches you how to do it. That sucks.

So when you're looking at a journal, the first thing you want to do is background check the author. What school did they go to? What degrees do they have? (For research, they should have a Ph.D. no matter what.) What is their current place of employment?

Often companies, or other private businesses, will commission someone to do some research and fudge the results to make that company look better. We saw this recently in regards to gender affirming care. The United States House of Representatives had proposed legislation to restrict gender affirming care for transgender youth. The Republican sponsor of the bill had presented a single piece of research that he claimed was significant. The research found that transition regret rates were somewhere in the 30% range. (I don't remember exactly and I know that I could quickly look it up, but I just spent the past two hours reading addiction research. I'll find it tomorrow.) Upon looking into the author and the sponsors of this research, psychologists found that the journal the congressman presented was commissioned by a conversation therapy center in Florida. The research held obvious bias, poor peer review, and inconclusive results. The bill didn't pass. I'm not sure they even voted on it, actually.

Anyway, this is why we need to be critical of the research we read. Chocolate, wine, caffeine, gender dysphoria, and autism are notorious subjects that require more scrutiny before reading.

So, caffeine addiction. This is a subject that more than one field is interested in. Before you read an article, you need to be sure what question you are asking. Psychologists are concerned with a more scientific or factual approach. In this context, a psychologist would be researching the concrete effects of caffeine on mood, sleep, and other psychological disorders. Sociologists are more concerned with the overall social consequences of caffeine addiction. They would be asking how mood and sleep affected family, work, and personal welfare. For your question, we're going to look into the psychological aspect. Also, I'm studying psychology, not sociology, so I would feel like an idiot answering those types of questions.

This distinction matters. When I opened my school's EBSCOHost database, I simply typed in "caffeine addiction" to start. I was bombarded with sociological articles and journals about the affects of caffeine addiction on productivity at work and on mood. Strange overlap with psychology. Two problems: some of the top articles had researchers with ties to coffee companies, and all "caffeine addicts" were self-reported. For the latter, this meant that there was no standard for how much caffeine was consumed. Rather than being a concrete article about caffeine consumption, it was more of a survey of public opinion. You want to avoid those unless you specifically want to know about the public opinion. Even psychologists run surveys all the time (they're cheap and easy), but people often lie on surveys, even if they're anonymous.

So I typed in more specific key words and came up with these articles. I'll talk about some without leaving a link, but that's because I had to request the PDFs for sharing. I'll come back to this post and link them. (Let me know if the ones I do link are broken.)

Okay, so I'm going to start off with a journal that interested me, personally. This study actually observed the effects of caffeine on psychiatric patients. This is an important reminder that different drugs influence different brains. Someone with ADHD experiences caffeine differently for a neurotypical person. Caffeine is a stimulant, and ADHD medications are stimulants. Cool. What about other disorders?

Here's the Sparknotes of the study, "Caffeine intoxication was more prevalent in psychiatric patients than in healthy subjects. The amount of caffeine intake was shown to be associated positively with the severity of pathology and inversely with sleep quality."

The study goes more into depth about the different psychological disorders that different patients had. There were 401 patients participating in this study (150 healthy individuals). Overall, continuous caffeine intake showed a decline in sleep quality and a general increase in severity of other mental illnesses.

So what causes that? What is caffeine? Here's an article that looks into studies about caffeine consumption and performance, as well as what the causes of an addiction could be and what constitutes an addiction. This is one I recommend giving a read, as it helps to illuminate a common problem with researching intoxicants.

Here's the big take away: "Although caffeine is widely perceived to have beneficial psychostimulant effects, appropriately controlled studies show that its apparent beneficial effects on performance and mood are almost wholly attributed to reversal of the withdrawal effects that occur after fairly short periods of abstinence (e.g. overnight)."

In habitual coffee users, the increase of mood and performance after consumption of caffeine is caused by the removal of withdrawal symptoms. Grouchy mood and lack of coordination are symptoms of caffeine withdrawal. Where one may perceive positive reinforcement for initial consumption, for habitual consumers, withdrawal symptoms become a negative reinforcement.

So, for people that drink coffee everyday, it's less about getting the positive effects of caffeine, but rather avoiding the negative effects of withdrawal. This can be classified as an addiction. There is now a reliance on this substance.

Something this article also points out is that caffeine is not just found in coffee. It's found in chocolate and most medications these days as well. Therefore, complete stone cold abstinence from caffeine can be next to impossible, making control groups difficult to find. This leads to the varying research and controversy between psychologists.

Okay, but coffee can't be as bad as alcohol or anything right? Caffeine is practically harmless! Let's take a look into an article discussing the health impacts of caffeine. (I'll provide the full text to this one tomorrow.)

In Dr. Saimaiti's article titled, "Dietary Sources, Health Benefits, and Risks of Caffeine," she explores the benefits of occasional consumption of caffeine and weighs them against habitual overconsumption of caffeine.

While occasional consumption can actually improve mood and cognitive ability, these benefits are lost with daily consumption.

Few people drink their coffee black. For those that put creamer, milk (especially oat), or straight sugar or syrups in their coffees daily, they may be overconsuming sugar. This is especially hard on an empty stomach. This is part of the reason you "crash" later in the day. The sugar raises your blood sugar. For most healthy people, this may not be the biggest deal in the world. For others, it could be a key factor in developing diabetes later in life. In general, don't drink coffee on an empty stomach. Have it with a meal. It's also easier on your liver.

Speaking of liver, what does your body do with the caffeine after you drink it? Caffeine follows the same principle as alcohol. Occasional consumption of red wine can help thin your blood and lower your hemoglobin (something that women may be more concerned about as they get older). However, daily consumption of wine can cause stress on the liver and potentially lead to dementia later in life (I say potentially because there has been a correlation, but no solid research as to why. While correlation does not always mean causation, it's important to acknowledge them in the meantime.)

Caffeine behaves in the same way. Continuous consumption of caffeine can put some real stress on your liver over time.

Caffeine is dangerous for those with cardiovascular problems. While this seems like a "duh!" point, many people don't know that they may be prone to cardiovascular issues until an event happens. This sounds like fear mongering, but it's something to take into account.

The article discusses pregnant women as well, but I would hope that's intuitive? Maybe not? If you're pregnant you should avoid intoxication in all forms.

I'll drop this quote from the conclusion of the article for now (I felt weird quoting text that you can't access yet, so I'll come back with more quotes when I can give you the PDF): "the long-term or over-consumption of caffeine can lead to addiction, insomnia, migraine, and other side effects."

The point is, caffeine consumption can be more dangerous to some than others in general, but excessive consumption with lack of knowledge can lead to long-term damage to one's health.

Okay, that study talks about a relatively small niche. Let's get broad. Let's talk about sleep and cognitive performance. (Another study I'll have the PDF for tomorrow.)

In Dr. Gottselig's article titled, "Random Number Generation During Sleep Deprivation: Effects of Caffeine on Response Maintenance and Stereotypy," she looks at the effects caffeine has on cognitive performance during sleep deprivation.

The conclusions of this research makes a very important point: "caffeine preserves simple aspects of cognitive performance during sleep deprivation, whereas caffeine may not prevent detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on some complex cognitive functions."

This article particularly found that while small cognitive functions such as motor ability improved with caffeine, complex cognitive functions such as problem solving and memory declined.

While a college student could read this and understand that pulling an all nighter and drinking 10 Red Bulls probably won't help them pass their test, there's something much more to be said about these findings.

One sleep deprived night won't kill you, and certainly drinking a cup of coffee to get you through the day won't either. But caffeine cannot prevent the damage that regular sleep deprivation does. Sleep deprivation leads to memory loss, worsening symptoms of depression/anxiety/ADHD, increased chances of developing dementia early (this one is real), and a decline in overall cognitive ability.

Rough. But it is a trap. If you have insomnia, caffeine may feel like your only choice to be somewhat functioning throughout the day. Caffeine promotes symptoms of insomnia. It's a vicious cycle if you can't afford proper treatment, and one, that I hope, that will be addressed with time.

So if you have the ability, it's better to prioritize a good night's sleep. I'll come back to this.

For now, why is caffeine addiction so controversial then? Well, it may not be for long. While there was a push to add "caffeine" to the list of diagnosable addiction in the DSM since the 1980's, the inconsistent and inconclusive research has led to a standstill. As we say with Dr. Jame's article, it is difficult to get a control group for caffeine. However, as research for alcohol and marijuana progresses, our knowledge of how to properly study intoxicants does as well.

The long-term health side effects of caffeine are still being studied as well. While this aspect isn't unique to caffeine at all (marijuana, for example, is just now getting approved for research, where before it was illegal), it's still worth acknowledging what we do know, for now at least.

So, coming back to the DSM. There's a new one coming out pretty soon. It's the talk of the town among psychologists right now. Everyone is arguing about what should be in the DSM-6. It'll be crazy when it does come out. Autism, OCD, Gender Dysphoria, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Facial Dysmorphia are just a few examples of disorders that will likely be completely recategorized.

(Unrelated, but Autism Spectrum Disorder is a big one because a lot of psychologists are arguing that it shouldn't be classified as a disorder at all. The reason being is that Autism is so common, that psychologists are theorizing that the majority of the population falls on the spectrum somewhere. Either way, the diagnosis is about to completely change because of this fact.) (Well, all of them are big ones. I could make a whole separate post about it.)

Anyway, the push to make caffeine diagnosable is becoming a promising endeavor as research continues to come out.

One psychiatrist pushing for this is Ronald Griffiths. In his opinion piece, Griffiths recalls his patients experiencing caffeine withdrawal symptoms that led to a decline in the quality of life. One of his patients was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed to stop drinking coffee immediately. This patient struggled with severe withdrawal symptoms that were difficult to manage while on cancer treatment.

Griffiths explains how difficult it was to treat this patient because it wasn't something he could easily diagnose with the DSM-5, something insurance companies use to decide whether they're going to pay for care or not. Add on the bills for cancer treatment, and you rapidly have a distressing situation on your hands.

Joseph DeRupo, spokesman for the National Coffee Association in the U.S. as quoted in this article states, "What we have here is really the opinion of one scientist who is a lone voice against the accepted view of the scientific community."

Lone voice? In barely an hour I was able to find 5 credible articles, all backed by credible researchers, supporting the understanding that American society consumes too much caffeine. You can take a General Psych class in college and the textbook would spend half a chapter going over caffeine addiction and the controversial research around it. Coffee companies piss me off. And most companies use slave labor to harvest their beans and lobby to prevent legislation to prevent it. Guillotine.

Griffiths also claims that "[e]ven people who consume as little as 100 milligrams of caffeine a day—the equivalent of one small cup of coffee—can become physically dependent."

So this ask is pretty old, but I'm guessing it was in response to me saying that you should only drink one cup of a random beverage a day and the rest be water. This keeps you hydrated and helps cut out where the majority of your sugar intake is. I called it the "desert beverage" and that "coffee counts."

It really does. In the morning, one feels tired, foggy, and grouchy. "Don't talk to me until I've had my morning coffee." They would make their coffee out of habit, barely minding the taste of it—drinking to medicate the headache they've already caused.

Life is worth celebrating, and if we can find little things in our day to celebrate, we should! When coffee becomes a habit, it's just a habit. That's sad.

I worked as a barista for a while at a coffee shop that hired people with intellectual disabilities. That experience is what made me switch my major to psychology in the first place. But I saw the joys coffee could bring, and the damage it can do, too. I had a coworker who would come in and throw a tantrum if we didn't immediately stop what we were doing and make him a coffee—and again in two hours before the end of his shift. It's upsetting.

I do remember the joys, too. Our manager would show us a new niche coffee drink from a random country. We would make cubanos like they would in Haiti and talk about the different names they had in different countries around the world. It ruled.

I don't drink coffee every day anymore. But it's always a wonderful thing when I do. You don't need to have an "excuse" to drink a cup of coffee—you don't need to celebrate anything at all. Coffee, tea, wine, soda, and juice should be celebrated as they are. Drinking them out of habit destroys joy. Intentional habits create stable foundations in life. Unintentional habits create monotony and boredom.

Anyway, the sleep thing I said I'd come back to. So if you're having trouble sleeping, here's the hot tip: avoid screens 30 minutes before going to bed. That sounds easy, but how many of us scroll our phones, watch TV, or play a video game right before bed? It's not worth it.

Instead, do something away from your phone that you enjoy. I like to read, but you can draw, journal, listen to some music, practice an instrument, or write something. Doesn't matter, just don't use your phone or laptop. Set a 30 minute timer for time.

If you're still struggling to sleep, you may find meditation useful. Meditation uses techniques that make your brain send beta waves which relaxes you and is the first step to falling asleep. But! If you try to learn some meditation, you'll have to commit to practicing it every night for it to be useful. It's a skill that requires practice.

Anyway, I could make a whole separate post about evening/morning/afternoon routines as that is another one of my passions, but yeah.

TLDR; An occasional cup of coffee is actually great and wonderful, but you really shouldn't drink it every day, especially more than once a day.

PS. I love Red Bull cream sodas more than the God that created them, I swear, but I only drink maybe one or two energy drinks a year. Energy drinks will dissolve your liver faster than hydrochloric acid can. An alcoholic drinking 5 packs of beers a day will look at your liver and be impressed. Also the Panera lemonade should be illegal. That shit is CRAZY. That bitch had more caffeine than a Bang energy drink. It literally killed a man. Wild.

[sherlock-is-ace]

i love the impossible planet / the satan pit so much because they touched on religion and still kept it respectful of. Like yes the reason humans (and in this case other species) created religion is to explain things they couldn't understand, that includes an alien beast stuck in the heart of a planet. Also yeah the devil may very well be just an idea.

As a religious person I'm always annoyed when the conclusion of stuff like this is "so religion is stupid and you're smarter if you're atheist". But doctor who celebrates humanity in all it's glory, that includes religion :')

[feluka]

I think there's a difference between thinking that people in general are evil until proven other and thinking celebrities, who are a special kind of out of touch, self-centered rich person, are evil until proven otherwise

that's fair enough. i think for me it's not that i see it as *unreasonable* to expect them to be evil, it's that i (naively and optimistically) would *love to* believe that people in power can be my allies and that i can be safe with them, and i feel sad when knocked back into reality.

[applestorms]

been reading through some of the author commentary from the patreon post archive for HS^2 stuff & writing notes on certain quotes from it and i think i've come up with (slightly) more distinct reasons for why the epilogues/homestuck^2 feel so off and/or frustrating to me. not gonna post the full thing + i'm only about halfway through reading it all, but here's a few points (warning this one gets kinda political):

It’s possible “Ultimate” Dirk’s presence was suppressing other splinters of himself from manifesting.

Wait, so... Ult. Dirk is just suppressing the other splinters? But I thought the entire point was that he subsumed all the other splinters to become one Ultimate Self? Weird, but I guess that plays more into the narrative powers side of things that they put a lot of emphasis on. That, or the creators don't have a very clear idea of what actually makes an Ultimate Self, which would. also work lmfao

Unlike the other victors of the game, Jane threw herself into the world the kids made together. She grew up preparing to take over a major company, and has the confidence to show for it.

Gonna get more into two ideas here in a bit related to this quote, the first being HS^2's Trump Era politics & the second being Jane more specifically. Here's the first connection:

I don’t know if you noticed, but everything is terrible right now. And I don’t mean just in Homestuck’s dumb fake earth. I mean in our dumb real earth. Our planet is burning and folks go to bed hungry just so twelve guys can have more money than Croesus could have ever dreamed of. The concept of “truth” is at its most tenuous – political divisions involve contradictory interpretations of basic facts. I’ve been playing a lot of Death Stranding recently. Basically any media that you’re making in 2019 has to either address what’s going on around us or come off sanitized, sterilized, with its head in the sand. Kojima offers a simple power fantasy: Through Norman Reedus’s sweaty, urine-filled labor, the things that divide us can be banished. America can be unified again.

HS^2 is kind of agonizingly pessimistic when it comes to its (not at all subtle) political messaging, which I suppose you can in part attribute to a Trump-era leftist/liberal culture, but I personally also attribute to a specific flavor of white person existential pessimism. What frustrates me about HS^2's politics in particular though is just how much it talks down to the reader, acting like their (frankly, imo, pretty fuckin basic) reflections on the flaws of capitalism, gender constructs, and contemporary American politics are these revolutionary ideas that nobody other than them truly understands. It's really aggravating to read, honestly, and reminds me a lot of the perspective reflected on in this video by F.D Signifier about Bo Burnham's Inside & white performative liberalism, though in this context the creators are much more insufferable about it than Burnham ever was. (This is NOT to say every creator working on HS^2 was white or even ascribes/d to these kinds of politics, but that's one of the voices that I feel comes through the strongest.)

Edit: Re-watched that whole video and he really does get at the exact idea I'm thinking of. However, I would add that the thing that makes HS^2 feel especially insufferable to me is the fact that it doesn't feel like the authors are engaging in their politics as genuinely or personally as Burnham does. Where Burnham's look into these issues is self-reflective, the existential dread coming from the ways in which he himself plays a part in perpetuation of systems of oppression, I feel like HS^2's creators were unwilling to look at the ways in which they themselves might've benefited from the same kinds of privileges. It's just- it's egotistical, honestly! And it's a vibe that I get from a lot of heavily queer, young, white fandom spaces, which presume that because of their own experiences with queer and trans-based bigotry they understand everything and don't have to examine their own biases or any other nuances to their social position/the privileges they might personally have & continue to benefit from. I don't know- Homestuck was never going to be a good medium for examining the nuances of race and privilege, that was determined by the very first page or whenever Hussie decided non-canon races were a thing, but that doesn't make it any less agonizing to watch such a ham-fisted, pompous attempt at "social commentary." Ugh.

I guess I can understand the desire to get HS^2's politics to be more up to date and with it, again considering what the Trump-era American political landscape looked like (and what HS proper looked like, let's be real), but the way they approach this just makes the authors seem that much more immature to me. I hesitate to even call this political commentary, it's just pointing out that things are bad and then complaining about it. There's no hope here and it shows, and I personally have very little patience when it comes to that kind of perspective. I don't want to be too harsh to the creators or completely undermine the ways they might've faced structural social challenges (yes, trans people have it fucking bad right now! And there was absolutely some bigoted shit directed at the creators that was more reprehensible than anything here, I was there when this shit was coming out, I saw it all too (alongside the genuinely good criticism that they wrote off just as easily, but I digress)), but this shit is just bad, I'm sorry.

Privilege, safety, and inherited wealth do funny things to the brain. People justify to themselves why they have what they have. If you have enough for long enough, you start to convince yourself you deserve it. Jane won the game, lost very little, and as god of a new world decided to dominate its markets as a corporate mogul. Her conception of what was possible with her capability and god-like reason was shaded, limited by the world she grew up in. She is not a goddess of fantasy, a semi-mythical trickster creature like Jasprose, or a meta-aware marionette master like Dirk. She saw a new world and chose, simply, to replicate the power structures of the 21st-century America she was raised in. Boardrooms, power pantsuits, formality and professionalism.

(Longer quote here justifying the horror they did to Jane's character but let's add one more before I elaborate further)

But in the end, isn’t that what every story is? Trying to untie knots that you put in the rope yourself?

This quote is very telling and gets at my issue with the Jane quote from above, really one of my main issues with the all post-canon shit just in general: when the authors were creating a bunch of problems and inserting them into the story, something that is (typically) necessary for any kind of meaningful storytelling, they went about the process of introducing that conflict totally wrong.

In the original story of HS, problems for the characters primarily originated from Sburb, which acts as both the game they're playing and, as is demonstrated throughout Act 1, the world itself. Problems in the story thus often feel at least kind of true to life because they either originate directly from the game & its constructs (which the characters have no control over, parallel to how you can't usually control the world irl) or individuals responding to those circumstances w/ their own set of unique characteristics (Vriska being an active character and creating villains to become a hero but also Rose deciding she has to go through with a suicide mission in response to the game/Doc Scratch and Dave in turn responding to her actions, etc. etc.).

This is not necessarily true for all of the story or every single plot point/character arc, but I think it generally follows, and so for as meta as HS gets, it never really felt to me like you could see the hand of the author when it comes to how major plot elements are introduced, outside of a few very overt examples. Problems are able to crop up fairly naturally through characters responding in what they think to be natural/rational ways to their circumstances, but may or may not be due to the limitations on their understanding. The situation and environment of Sburb and the world of HS itself may be absurd and stupid and crazy and very obviously created by an author, but the characters typically feel consistent and true to themselves as people in how they respond to the absurdity and confusion of their world. It's one of the reasons why I think HS is so appealing as a coming of age story actually, since stepping into adulthood (or even just your teenage years) does often feel like entering a world that is crazy and cruel and unknowable with all of these malicious, far-away forces that know way more than you could ever possibly understand controlling every detail of the world around you and deciding your fate before you even get the chance to know it's coming. These are kids, they really don't have a lot of power even once they ascend to godhood in comparison to the forces they're dealing with, and the story & world reflects that.

The problem w/ HS^2 & the Epilogues is that the authors don't have the same game construct to work with, barely have a world at all to begin with actually, and so they instead twist pretty much every single character into the worst possible versions of themselves in order to try and recreate the same HS absurdity. But it just doesn't work, because there is no real explanation for why every character is suddenly at their lowest point and acting like a fucking idiot all the time other than "ooo adulthood makes everyone worse!" and vague gestures to capitalism and privilege (or what I would call structural ignorance, though I don't think they ever call it that), so the story just comes across as incredibly cruel and uncaring and unabashedly pessimistic in a way that's just miserable to read.

Yes, Jane grew up privileged, it makes sense that she would be sympathetic to capitalism and try to recreate the same social structures that fucked people up on the original Earth- but that is not nearly enough justification for why she has suddenly gone full fascist dictator endorsing troll eugenics and trying to murder people, and it doesn't even work well as social commentary cause it's so extreme right from the start that it couldn't possibly reflect real life issues or the development of actual fascist/bigoted ideas. Yes, Trump's ties to the alt-right are fucking terrifying and conservative politics in general in the U.S. nowadays are incredibly fucked, but there's still logical people and seemingly rational explanations being utilized to justify the bullshit that many people genuinely believe in and HS^2 fails to meaningfully reflect or comment on any of those, at least from what I can tell. Everyone is consistent with how they are terrible, I'll give them that, for Dirk and Jane and everyone else the flaws that are being emphasized are ones that are generally kind of consistent with canon, but I simply cannot get behind why they suddenly decided to be the worst possible versions of themselves other than that the authors realize they needed plot and decided that the best way to make Candy and Meat the Bad Timelines:tm: was to spontaneously make everyone as insufferable as possible.

I think a part of the problem is the time skip, honestly. And the fact that Earth C as a location itself is surprisingly underutilized when it comes to creating problems for the characters. The characters are gods ruling over a world where they can be dictator of the globe at the end of a single election. Without the game and the lack of distinct outside villains, there is nothing stopping them from having full agency over everything other than each other, so in order to create plot, instead of going through the effort to create a world or social structure they just made everyone worse and called it a day. It's like the epitome of white liberalism's inability to understand bad systems vs. bad individuals- there are no real systems here, nothing that actually functions past a name, so everyone is just fucking terrible.

(Honestly, I think the fact that there are no overt outside villains could've been a good way of transitioning to the fact that these characters aren't kids anymore- if Dirk and Jane didn't have to be transformed into fucking caricatures of themselves in order to do it. Really the problem is that so many of the characters that used to add interesting nuance to the social conflict are fucking dead now. RIP trolls.)

Since this is turning out to be the political astronaut ramble I guess I'll just keep going for a bit: one of the most meaningful insights a professor has ever given to me came is the idea that we "haven't earned our pessimism yet," as the younger generations, or haven't faced The Shit directly or long enough to justify having as little hope as we do. Many of us have looked at the problem and given up before even trying to solve it, and are, in fact, not really justified in making such a decision.

For me, there's an additional layer to that idea as well: one of the ideas that Beauvoir talks about in her feminist philosophy is that of agency, wherein social privilege allows for certain groups to decide which meaning-creating projects they want to or to not take on where others are not allowed to make the same choice. If you sit in any kind of position of social privilege, that historical role has continually been the one to not only benefit from the rules, but make them in the first place. This kind of pessimism is thus not just unearned, not just frustrating to listen to, but actively harmful to the creation of meaningful change. Who really benefits from inaction? From a lack of change to the status quo? And who are the privileged to make decisions about whether or not we're allowed to fight for this shit in the first place?

[charlataninred]

I. Have no idea how to talk to Lambert

[scholarhect]

i will never outgrow responding to people in confusing ways but it will be ok because people are patient :)

[reikunrei]

it really honestly cracks me up that even when this idea of moral grayness is stated Explicitly on screen time and again, people still don’t take it to heart and actually apply it to all of the characters. yes, even our “big bad.” like, y’all didn’t realize that was the core theme of the show in season 1? and season 2? are you for real? “i’m the monster” “no you’re not. you saved me.” like that wasn’t clear enough for you? to see this little girl do bad things like kill people and call herself the monster right after doing something to help someone she just met? the fact that she opened this gate and let out this monster that killed and kidnapped people all across town and that is a Bad Thing, but she’s not a bad person for it? that wasn’t clear enough for you? and now they have to say it On Screen in the Fucking Script that there are no monsters and no superheroes, nothing is ever that black and white, and you’re STILL not??? listening??????? bye

[championofravens]

I learned a really important lesson from my English teacher in high school at a very important time in my life where I was coming into some new Big opinions about the world but I was also a hormonal child prone to bursting into tears and bouts of rage. Twice she consoled me outside her classroom as I struggled to handle the rude and aggressive way my peers combatted me on my opinions. She was always kind, always gentle, never blaming or accusatory.

"They're not allowed to question me like that!" I'd wail. And she would patiently say "But they are. People are allowed to say whatever they want to you. You can only control how you respond yourself."

We had debate groups while studying Puritan literature. A student once shouted at me for believing in God, hurling the Holocaust in my face to try and shame me for being a faithful Jew. My teacher stepped in fast but she didn't stop the discussion. She admonished the boy and made him sit silent. She wiped my eyes and told me to breathe before answering.

She didn't care if my answer was "Its none of your business why I have faith". She didn't care if it was a ten minute rant about my personal journey to believing. That wasn't the point. The point was to teach me to respond to conflict and bullshit, to recognize I can't control others but I can control my feelings and choose to handle situations maturely.