#that stuff shouldn't ever be gatekept i think

[mangowithanh]

i find it funny that i can cook very elaborate and specific recipes with lots of ingredients and spices and stuff i need to cook separately and add later (so with plenty of room to fuck it up) and having them turn out awesome as fuck. like "even my brother whose love language is insulting everything i do (in a sibling way) compliments it" good,

But.

Don't hand me a box of "instant" or "3 step" or "minute" anything because i Will find a way to Fuck It Up, somehow.

i have made tamales de elote from scratch going as far as to separate the leaf from the cobs and grind the corn kennels with a hand mill myself. they were absolutely bussin'. i have also burnt and overcooked instant noodles, and undercooked the cheese sauce for boxed mac n cheese. i have made cookies and some nice ass fried bollitos from scratch, they were awesome. but i once tried to make cake from a box mix and for some reason it tasted like cardboard (my grandma used the same brand once and it turned out great idk what i did wrong).

like what in the monkey paw genie wish fairy godmother curse ass shit is that. why

[anendoandfriendo]

We don't quite talk like our old man yet, but it seems like we're getting there!! And we're still under 30!!: A vent about identities, DNIs, and the attitudes these pairings indicate.

How many times are we gonna have to tell folks that identities do not have a DNI? If you can't screenshot them and can't reblog them, where does that fucking leave you?

"Oh well, ACTUALLY I said that they can identify with the term I just want them not in my notifications and stuff" that's just gonna leave people blocking your ass and THEN reblogging anyways, because you lack the critical thinking skills to understand that community resources should not be gatekept. Flags, especially when accompanied with actual terms to go with them, are community resources.

"People can make their own —" not always. Not in a way that's distinguishable. It takes up hours and hours and hours of time to make a good flag, from start to finish, time that lots of folks spend at work and then most of the time, they'll be too exhausted to do anything else once they get home. Some folks are also neurodivergent in a way that literally doesn't let them. It shouldn't take either of these statements for you to not be a jackass.

This is usually what we mean when we say to curate your own experiences.

Example: if we block someone but we have a term/flag they like, we fully expect, at some point, that the flag we made will go beyond our own circles. It's out of our own fucking hands once we do, because even if we do block a shitton of folks we don't like, now people can reblog that reblog. Etc.

A giant DNI banner will literally make folks who use that identity feel unsafe. If we may take a second to say it how one of our better folks likely would have said it:

News flash for you, if you say "well, GOOD" then it's not the endogenics and such who have to go and relearn what abuse is. You're literally taking an abuser/punishment mindset at that point, and if existence is a crime to you, maybe you should apply your standards to yourself and go force yourselves into fusion (even if you don't want it — because clearly functional multiplicity is impossible, because only trauma-origin systems exist because and they are ALWAYS mired in misery and despair when they first form and trauma is the exact same thing for everyone and everyone interprets events that happen to themselves in the exact same way).

News flash for you, if you say "well, GOOD" then it's not the anti-antis and such who have to go and relearn what abuse is. You're literally taking an abuser/punishment mindset at that point, and if a thought crime is a crime to you, maybe apply that same standard to your violent thoughts too (even if that means you would end up harming yourself — because clearly every thought that has ever crossed a person's mind has lead to them acting on it, clearly every time someone plays HALO they become a mass shooter and clearly, clearly Homura in Madoka Magica is an evil vile abuserperson because of how she became the devil and was very very obsessive over Kaname Madoka and so you too will become an evil vile abuser who obsessed over people, and every time someone punches someone in the Dragon Ball franchise that means the watcher walks out of the house and hits someone because Vegeta told them to do it).

Hopefully the absurdity of the above "because" statements show just how few skills you have when or actually comes to thinking for yourselves, because this is exactly what you all sound like, and paired with the DNIs, it's just ridiculous.

Stop making excuses and start tailoring your experiences better.

We aren't trying to sound like your awful abusive socially backwards grandmother or whoever the equivalent is when we say that, either. Part of growing up and maturing to the point you can use a website like this is, literally, learning the skills to curate your spaces. We keep saying it over and over because it's just that important.

That also goes for university, the workplace, hobby clubs, an email address, and even your own neighborhood. Sometimes, there are folks who literally will not leave you alone unless you lock the door. Sometimes you'll run into a really bad trigger at the grocery store, and you either have to leave or find a way to cope with it, even if it makes you stand out.

Consider something like:

Your room(s) = your blog(s)

Locking the door = blocking someone

Headphones on = muting someone or someone's post

Leaving the grocery store = taking a hiatus for yourself

Standing out to cope = making your own vent/priv. side blog (gotta make sure to import any locked doors, bringing in any headphones and hardware to your room you might need too)

We don't know what else to tell you: we know we've complained before about it, but we don't think we've complained about it in-depth. Hopefully this post fixes that, but we can't do anything else for you if you're unwilling to look at yourselves and try to understand how this kind of mindset is bad.

Oh, and, folks: feel free to reblog this one. We have anons off on this account and always have. We'll literally just block any assholes we see and move on.

[ndragoon]

So basically what I'm seeing about Elden Ring is that it's basically just Dark Souls 3 part 2, but full of the same exact open world things that are great because they are in ER, but were bad enough in every other open world game to denounce them as awful games.

Not to mention that they basically took out every basic feature they could manage while still keeping it strictly playable. Like...you know we have stuff like quest lists and pages listing collectibles *for a reason*, right? Back when I was a kid, if you stopped playing a game, that was it. You had to restart because you were in the middle of nowhere with literally no way to remind you what you needed to do. If you didn't want to restart then you just played a different game. That was the only two options you had unless you had absolutely amazing memory.

Now, we're being told to take notes and do all of that manually because apparently "reminder lists" have moved into the "only for casual losers" list of features. And think about it. Just sit and think about it for a moment. How many people are going to keep all of their notes coherent and clear enough that they can be referenced in a week? How many people will keep their notes organized and accessible in a month? What if you want to play in a year and deep cleaned since then, throwing out the notes because you forgot what the notes were even for? Are we going to be expected to make our own archives for games now that we don't have things like quest lists or collectible lists in-game?

Like, I know I'm harping about that part a lot, but it's an important feature to a lot of people. Those like me, with auditory processing issues and memory issues, can't just write down what we think we heard and reference it later, because we can miss something important or hear it wrong. And because we have no way to reference ANYTHING besides what we just heard that one and only time, that's basically the end. If you can't figure out where to go, you either quit and find something that you can deal with or you spend 10x the time to figure out what you need to do by just brute forcing everything.

And, yeah, I know this is going to get a lot of "well, why don't you just go play something else you can actually handle, you casual?" so I'd like to point at the damage to gaming that we suffered since roughly Dark Souls 2, when people realized it was A Thing that was going to stick around. How it's almost impossible to play anything anymore that wasn't obviously tainted by Dark Souls in some way. People shouldn't be forced to play empty-minded idle phone games to pass the time just because a collection of *literally*five games basically ruined gaming as a whole unless you are a hardcore uber tryhard you just shouldn't be allowed to play games, apparently.

It just really sucks that gaming is basically become the most gatekept hobby ever specifically because a small handful of people want to be elitist over it, whether in skill or money.

Sorry for the long rant, sorry if you legit like it for real reasons. But I'm just tired of my one hobby I have left being slowly taken away because everything has to be turbo hardcore flawless 250% effort at all times.

[somethingmissingthiswaycomes]

Like im a bit confused about this bi lesbian discource, but the thing that trios me up about accepting it is that when you start accepting bi lesbians as a thing it just muddles up the Lesbian label as sometimes including men when it really shouldn't? Like when i say I'm a lesbian i don't want people to think i might also like men, because i don't and that's just not what lesbian means?? I really don't want to come off as rude I'm just honestly confused and want to know what you think

I don’t think you sound rude. I get it! A lot of queer and lesbian history has been kind of smoothed over so the term “lesbian” seems... kinda like the most exclusionary one in the LGBT+ community? But it’s not !

Here’s a post I made sharing a couple twitter threads a while back on how radfems and political lesbians have influenced that history. You can also search “bi lesbian” on my blog and find a lot of stuff I’ve reblogged recently for some better explanations than I can give on why bi lesbianism is super chill.

So like

my take on this particular issue?

On the lesbian label getting “muddled up”?

(Inserted later: I’m sleepy af so prepare for some rambly bullshit.)

You gotta look at everything else going on with queer terms. Anyone from pansexual to aspec have adopted the term “gay” to describe their attractions, despite “gay,” when you say it on its own, meaning homosexual. Then there’s aspec, which is shorthand for ace and aro spectrums, which is often often shorthanded as just ace or aro. I’m demisexual, but I tend to identify strongly as asexual despite the “muddled” nature of my attractions. 

That’s not an argument or an explanation per say, but it’s worth asking why “lesbian” has to be so uniquely gatekept next to every other LGBT+ label.

Another anecdote. My stepmother once dated another woman, whom she cared for deeply and has fond feelings for to this day. But she also very much hesitates to call herself bisexual. She’s not, as far as I can tell, technically attracted to other women. But she would never say that her past wlw relationship was lesser than any relationship she’s had with a man, and I would assume she felt romantically and sexually attracted to this one woman in particular at least. I’ve heard her try to explain this a few times before, and she always sounds vaguely defensive. She’s straight... but like... 

When I spoke to her about it, I suggested she was pansexual. But I don’t think that’s right, and she didn’t seem comfortable with the label anyway. I won’t put this on her as a personal label, but how she described her feelings could, from my understanding, fall under what we’d call bi het or bi straight. Basically the opposite of bi lesbian.

Yes, she could also call herself “heteroflexible,” but not everyone is comfortable with that label. I wouldn’t be, personally. Feels... casual.

And, more to the point, she is not comfortable calling herself bisexual. Now, she’s married. And she’s not in the queer community, or otherwise LGBT+. She’s okay sitting in her fuzzy heterosexual box (as far as I know). But that’s not how it is for everyone, especially lesbians who look around them and see lesbianism treated so exclusively in this day and age. Maybe something a tad more specific would suffice for them? 

You simply cannot gatekeep stuff like this. Historically, lesbians have been gay and bi. Factually, there are people for whom the lesbian/homosexual and bi (or pan) labels don’t feel comfortable without some kind of qualifier - namely, each other. (Or, in some cases, terms that put them on the ace and/or aro spectrums.)

Not to mention people who use the split attraction model. If you want to exclude a woman who’s bisexual and homoromantic or vice versa from calling herself a lesbian, log off now.

I do understand the discomfort. I was very uncomfortable when I first heard the term, because the only context under which I’d ever heard the word lesbian was in reference to a homosexual binary woman. Thankfully, I have the most wonderfully kind and thoughtful partner whose acceptance made me think twice about denying it. I’d suggest reading more about bi lesbian experiences and explanations, since they’re all a little different. (It’s a bit of an umbrella.)

To reassure you, I’d like to go back to that first point. When I say “gay person,” I doubt you wonder what the person’s sexuality is. I mean gay. Like homosexual. Like, “He wouldn’t be into you, honey. He’s gay.”

But I’m still gonna go around talking about how fuckn gay I am as a demigynobisexual panromantic genderfluid man for my demipanromantic asexual agender girlfriend, and no one can stop me.

If a man doesn’t sigh and give up at, “She wouldn’t be into you, honey. She’s a lesbian,” that’s a him problem, not a bi lesbian problem. 

Apologies for the rambles. I shall now off to bed. I appreciate the good faith ask on the subject, and I hope this helps despite the way it’s written due to sleepies. <3