#way to tell on yourself!

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

i do find it doubtful when people purport to believe in affirmative action but then cannot understand why women may be invested in continuing to develop, for example, to be topical, women’s chess leagues and women’s video game tournaments, and to prioritize women in these leagues, for reasons that have nothing to do with insinuating women are dumber than men. because when you are arguing women’s chess leagues should not exist at all and then claiming - on your own! nobody once said that but you - that their existence is because of a belief in women’s intellectual inferiority, you either don’t understand the point of affirmative action or you’re one hell of a hypocrite.

[haunted-xander]

Well, I guess you didn't have much of a choice either

[originalartblog]

Don't forget to eat to keep the demons at bay

[saturngalore]

jesus please take away curseforge from simmers i beg

[lexosaurus]

Companies nowadays are getting SO comfortable asking for our social security numbers.

Like why tf does Optimum need my social to install wifi? They're just an internet provider, they don't need my social. I don't care that the last people living at my location didn't pay their bill, there are a dozen other ways to prove that I'm not them without me handing over my social.

Anyway, hot tip, legally you can refuse to give your social security in unnecessary cases like this. If a company needs to prove that you are who you say you are, they have alternative ways to do so.

[tippenfunkaport]

That viral post that's going around about how people who write "book quality" mlm fic are too "normal" to publish and have real jobs so only "weird" people publish their "shitty" fanfic is so completely out of touch with reality and I am giving a massive side eye to everyone reblogging it.

Not only is it completely, easily verifiably untrue (you cannot enter any professional writing space without tripping over a dozen grizzled scifi writers who got their start by filing off the serial numbers and publishing their Star Trek fanfic even going back decades ago??? it's a whole thing?? plus how can you look at the mlm category on Amazon right now and say with a straight face that people aren't publishing shitty Spirk and Stucky fanfic??? Oh, honey...) it's also the perfect example of this kind of sneering elitism that true artists would never sully themselves by seeking profit, they do it only for the purity of the thing that always somehow leads back to, "no one should be paid to make art, actually."

The only reason you're seeing more published fanfic right now has nothing to do with the idealistic purity of your hypothetical government employee written smut of the past vs the debased scribbles of those awful straights of today and everything to do with the fact that a) self-publishing has created a voracious readership that wants a ton of content so it's become a viable, flexible income stream for many, especially disabled people b) anyone can publish now with self-publishing tools so there are less gatekeepers and c) lockdown got a lot of people into fandom and therefore writing who never tried it before.

And if you really think there's no "shitty" published mlm and no "book-quality" m/f writing out there that started as fanfic, then you are clearly not a reader so why are you even talking about this?

[bigothteddies]

oh and btw, that 39 year old telling you how mature you are for your age is a manipulation tactic. It’s not a compliment.

[hyunpic]

HWANG HYUNJIN

WKOREA & VERSACE 2024

[lbhslefttiddie]

youve heard of sex flowers get ready for the flower that makes you into a celestial shoujo herione complete with particle effects you cannot turn the fuck off and creates a wifebeam so powerful it can incapacitate and maim and keeps making you burst into tears and fall on your ass which makes the wifebeam More Powerful and you also cannot turn this off either. and is also still, sort of, a sex flower

from one of my favorite fanfictions, Celestial Afterglow by elanor_pam, a fic that defies description in the best possible way

[jedi-starbird]

No one ever tells Obi-Wan that he is his Master's padawan.

Of course, for most people who had known Qui-Gon Jinn, telling someone else they resembled the the man would in fact be a thinly veiled insult. But still, Obi-Wan feels the absence of comparisons almost as strongly as he feels the absence of his Master.

There is no one for Obi-Wan to push against now, no strong presence at his side, ready to grab him by scruff and pull him back from another reckless stunt. It's an odd feeling. He has been set loose against his wishes. There is no one to his left and Anakin at his heels, but Anakin had needed, still needs, a strong, gentle figure for his prickly but sensitive heart. For even their worst bickering could not hold a candle to the scathing remarks he and Qui-Gon had shot at each other and Obi-Wan knows he cannot push and needle Anakin in the same way.

When Qui-Gon had been alive they had been an amusing, mirrored pair, the maverick and his rule-following padawan. Opposites clashing against each other, yet working together to complete the most difficult missions. Few saw that Qui-Gon's impertinence had indeed rubbed off on his padawan, cultivated from that small, angry initiate, because the only way to rebel against the rule-breaker had been to parrot the Council fastidiously. No one would ever get to see that again. Obi-Wan is one half of a mirrored pair trying to complete a routine on his own. What once was an impish, teasing compliance is now a betrayal of all his Master's values.

"How could Qui-Gon raise such a model Jedi?" He hears them say, "It's admirable that Master Kenobi was appointed to the Council despite his Master's maverick ways."

Padawan Kenobi would have yelled and kicked and screamed. Master Kenobi is serene. It should feel like an achievement. It feels like a disappointment.

Sometimes, Obi-Wan looks at the shape of the man he has moulded himself into, and aches to be his Master's padawan.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

last of us tv adaption decided to make a Gay Romance For The Ages out of a Gay Pettiness Subplot and i respect that sm 💘but PLEASE recognize both r valid

[mamanbou]

i joke about ociel thinking he's his dad's age a lot but like really he does. something so heartbreaking about the fact that whenever ciel references his own age it's like he's making an inside joke- dryly reminding the dinner party in book of murder that children have early bedtimes, for example. as if his age is a mere technicality, it's inaccurate on some level but is still a loophole he can exploit when convenient. Feigned innocence.

Because in kuro youth primarily functions as an axis of powerlessness. Ciel can't act his age or he's delegitimized. It's just another wall he's built between his persona and his actual self. To be Earl Ciel Phantomhive The Queen's Guard Dog he buries his age, his name, his illnesses........ idk it just always gets me that he isn't only borrowing from his brother, but his father as well. Anybody but himself. He really believes it, too, that any lie can become the truth with enough dedication and hard work.. He's so good at deluding himself. But he's not a grizzled 34 year old detective :( hes just a baby :(

[thespiritssaidso]

okay but like

when the therapist (in s2 e2: 65 Million Years Off) starts grilling Henry instead of Shawn? And he's pointing out his flaws? And when Henry starts getting super defensive and practically yells at the therapist to leave, because he doesn't want someone to tell him he's a bad parent?

yeah, i think about that a lot

[jemmo]

Making sense of love for love's sake: the game

Despite all the things i absolutely adore about how the plot unravels and expands in love by love's sake, upon first watch, there's some things i couldn't piece together, which @lurkingshan echoes in their post:

'The way the author was messing with Myungha and forcing cruel choices on him really does not track with a desire to help him find happiness.'

And to preface, this is not something i fully get yet either. I think i'll need a good month and a sizeable reading list of relevant resources to understand just what/who this author/sunbae is and what his role is and how he is associated with myungha. But as always with the best shows for meta (aka bad buddy), as a plot unfolds, you can always find a better understanding by looking backwards and re-contextualising what you've already seen. so i watched ep 1, specifically the scene between myungha and his sunbae at the bar. And i will talk about how everything said in this scene has a whole new meaning now we know the full story, but for now i wanna focus on that question that they keep coming back to; "Then... will you change it for him?".

When you watch the show for the first time, your brain follows the simplest, most obvious version of the story you're being told, one where myungha has been pulled into the world of his sunbae's novel that's being turned into a game and given the opportunity to fix the thing he didn't like about it; making yeowoon happy, and thus you just think the rules of the game are imposed by the author, and so when these cruel choices first come up, you see them as the difficult roadblocks that are nevertheless necessary to any kind of game, forcing the player to make an impossible choice so that the game can continue in a certain direction and its only after that you learn whether it was the right choice or not, or there is no right choice, it simply changes the game you are playing.

And when its revealed what this game actually is, at first i tried to interpret these cruel choices, namely the choice between yeonwoon and myungha's grandma, and at best i could come up with the concept of this being a choice between staying stuck to the past aka choosing his grandma, even though he knows that choice doesn't mean she's safe bc he knows the future where he loses here, its an inevitability, but thats the small happiness he knew before it was taken away and thus that happiness is known and safe, theres no risk, versus choosing to pursue a new happiness, a love of yeowoon and thus himself, which he doesn't know, he hasn't experienced yet, and could be risky. Its a happiness that isn't guaranteed like his grandma, but its a happiness that looks to the future and has hope in it that he can find a new happiness to pursue despite what has happened in his past.

And that fits nice, okayish. But then i watched ep 1 and heard that question "Then... will you change it for him?" And watching through the rest of the eps, we come back to this scene at the bar and each time we get a new run up to the author asking this question, either new dialogue is added or we hear a different piece of the conversation entirely. It starts at the beginning of ep 1 as:

"Because Cha Yeowoon is the only one who's miserable." "It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile."

Then a bit later in ep 1 we go back and its expanded.

"It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile." "Why? Do you think you'd write it differently?" "Yes, definately. Someone like Cha Yeowoon, or someone like me with an awful life, can also be happy."

And then all the way on in ep 6, we get this new dialogue.

"I don't like talking about destiny." "Why?" "Because it means everything is predestined." "Then do you not believe in fate?" "Fate and destiny are the same. My grandma likes to say that. She said life is like a written book, and how you'll live and die are written in it. (...)I don't like things like this. Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." "Really? Then Myungha..."

And while we don't hear the author ask the same question, I feel like him getting cut off like that insinuates that the conversation leads to that same ending point. All that is to say, every time we hear this question being asked, its like we learn more and more about what this whole thing is, what the game is, what myungha is saying he will do by agreeing to do what the author asks. And every time, we see myungha being more defiant against the idea of yeowoon being resigned to his miserable ending. He starts off thinking that kind of life is destined, and while it's miserable, its not something he can fight. Then he says he'd want to write the story differently, bc yeowoon, or even him, could be happy. He challenges the idea that yeowoon, and thus himself, is fated to be miserable, and opens up the possibility for happiness for them both, but doesn't yet have the means or resolve to do it, its like he knows its possible on a fundamental level, but doesn't see it as something he can actually achieve. But then we circle back to the idea of destiny and books, both of which came up in the previous quote, and seems incredibly pertinent seen as this whole thing is about a novel this author has written. Myungha talks about how he hates the idea that life is a book where everything written is predestined to happen, from the moment you live to the moment you die. He says "Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." That vile way of life he described before that he said was destined, he is now saying it can be changed, and that possibility is now something he's holding onto, its what he sees hope in so that he can keep trying, bc now he finally is trying, he has the resolve, he's trying to realise this thing, this impossibility of rewriting the life he thought was destined through the way he loves yeowoon.

And coming back to those cruel choices, given this fresh context, it made me think. bc this isn't actually a game that myungha has been put into where the rules are dictated by an author completely separate from him. He said himself, he'd rewrite it, he'd change things for yeowoon. And when you start to think of it less as him fighting against a rigid, removed system and more like him being a character in a story he is trying to rewrite himself, that has both the author and his own limitations, or just his own if you're in the school of thought that the author is some figment or part of myungha himself or his conciousness, then you can start to see where these cruel choices might come from. They could be myungha, the author making edits to this new story, imposing his own doubts and limitations on himself. When he says he has to pick between Yeowoon and his grandma, what if that's the new author myungha seeing this story unfold and thinking no this isn't right, he can't have it all, i'm not deserving of this much happiness.

And what makes me like this idea even more is that when we get that second choice between ending after 14 days or getting 100 days back at the cost of resetting Yeowoon's affection to 0, that whole conversation happens in what I think the bar actually is which is this frozen moment in time where myungha is in the water with this extension of a voice in his head that is talking through these things. That conversation in itself needs its own post, but when you look at it both as a decision to break up or not or a decision to hold onto life or not, you can see how the author is just this soundboard relaying the decisions myungha is going through in his head. The author's voice is his own, weighing up his decisions. And if he is the author here, it only reinforces that the person making the rules of this game is him. You can even extend it further to the idea of the debuffs, where he puts in place this thing that makes it so he causes harm to yeowoon when he's around, and its only by garnering affection that he can prevent it. He gives himself a reason from the get go to stay away from yeowoon and reason it as him doing it for yeowoon's safety, when in fact the only way to make yeowoon safe is to increase his affection, which he can only do by being near him. Its a system that at first gives myungha a reason to stay away aka not like himself, but ultimately says the only way you're going to make yeowoon like you, or the only way you can like yourself, is if you accept risk. And that in itself screams to me of a myungha writing in these game systems that are trying to encourage his own-self love while falling at the hurdle of his own lack of self-worth.

The idea is still messy in my head even for me, but i just really like the idea that myungha could be trying to fix this thing both as a character and game master, and that both these versions of him have these flaws that manifest in their different ways to cause the events we see. It kinda is the definition of being your own worst enemy, the idea that in order to work towards loving yourself, the biggest obstacle you have to encounter is yourself, bc we are the ones holding ourselves back, making all these rules that make it harder to like ourselves and pursue our own happiness. The voices in our head telling us that we aren't good enough and aren't deserving are our own, and while the things that happen to us can inform what they say, we're the one's reinforcing those words. And what this show teaches us is that, if we're the one holding that pen all along, we can choose to change what those words are. If we make the rules, you don't have to create a game with concrete ultimatums, you can create a game where rules don't control you. Instead, you make the decisions, and you can make the ones that make you happy.

[bitchthefuck1]

Still thinking about this by the way

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Something something about the alien hand call in 7x05 and Buck being the one being strangled.

Something something about Buck grappling with this new part of himself and coming out to people. Something something about the ‘fear’ of being judged or treated differently having him in a stranglehold because it’s still new to him and he doesn’t have it figured out himself yet.

Something something about being in 2 minds about telling people, about revealing himself - because the alien hand syndrome in this call occurs when the brains two lobes are separated - the connection severed - the brain is split in two