#we do it different etc

[lamentablequeen]

i need to be picked up and put in my home biome right the fuck now

[idolomantises]

I'm ngl i kinda wish people wouldn't look at a character I create, see that they're mean, and then immediately assume by default they're actually super tragic and a sad woobie. And I'm not even saying this to be like "people need to appreciate 2-dimensional villains!" because I don't agree with those people either.

It's like if a character is a jerk, it either needs to be justified with a sad backstory, or they need to be a saturday morning cartoon villain. it can't just be a part of their personality.

[bongosinferno]

A devastating and confusing thing about the Fallout setting, when you explore the pre-war aspects, is what the creators think about pre-war America. In the first games we only get hints of the pre-war world, but they seem to be some sort of wild fascist nation invading Canada. In Fallout 1, the first thing we're introduced to of the pre-war society is seeing a soldier shoot civilians and laughing.

Now, for the first 2 games and New Vegas we don't really know much. What we know is that there's a fascist military group known as the enclave who were a sort of US deep state even before the war, and that the government teamed up with corporate interests to preform vaguely MKULTRA-ish experiments with the Vaults. Basically, the government was an extreme version of the 50s American jingoism and McCarthyism.

This is well and dandy, I guess issues come up more when we get to the later games, especially 4, where it seems like none of this extreme plotting and societal civil unrest which would exist is seen. The society as presented in 4 also seems quite progressive, gay people are featured in the opening, and none of the baggage of say, civil rights not existing are included. Now on a baseline, I don't want settings to be more conservative, homophobic and sexist etc., but it becomes a very confusing setting when it's displayed both as this jingoist extreme thing with fascist tendencies aswell as a progressive place where everyone is seemingly equal. If you're focusing on the 50s as your setting, and American nationalism in the 50s, then you can't have McCarthyism spoofs and anti-communism as a societal paranoia norm while also general equality is the norm without misunderstanding why McCarthyism and nationalist jingoism is bad. A massive harm done in anti-communist paranoia is how it degrades and vilifies any progressive movements (women's rights, civil rights, homosexuality) as being morally un-American and therefore connected to communism. To ignore this just makes any critique of MacCarthyism and jingoism weird!

Basically, pre-war America in Fallout 4 becomes this both sides thing where America is both pure and equal and white fences in every instance that we see as the player (the intro), while also supposedly being this dystopic MacCarthyist hellscape that's broadcasting gladly about their war crimes in Canada, and wants to root out communism. I guess the only fix for this issue without getting into the fine print like they had to do is just not to focus too much on the pre-war world.

[inkskinned]

you wanted to be a good friend, because you loved your friends, but the truth was that everyone else somehow had a pamphlet on being normal that you never received. most of the time you learn by trial-and-error. you are terrified of the next big mistake you make, because it seems like the rules are completely arbitrary.

you've learned to keep the prickly parts of your personality in a stormcloud under your bed - as if they're a second version of you; one that will make your friends hate you. it feels feral, burning, ugly.

instead, you have assembled habits based on the statistical likelihood of pleasing others. you're a good listener, which is to say - if you do speak up, you might end up saying the wrong thing and scaring off someone, but people tend to like someone-who-listens. or you've got no true desires or goals, because people like it when you're passive, mutable. you're "not easy to fluster" which is to say - your emotions are fundamentally uninteresting to others around you; so you've learned to control them to a degree that you can no longer really feel them happening.

you have long suspected something is wrong with you, but most of the time, googling doesn't help. you are so-used to helping-yourself, alone and with no handbook. the reek of your real self feels more like a horrible joke - you wake up, and, despite all your preparations, suddenly the whole house is full of smoke. the real you is someone waiting to ruin your other-life, the one where you're normal and happy. the real-self is unpredictable, angry.

your real self snarls when people infantilize the whole situation. because if you were really suffering, everyone seems to think you'd be completely unable to cope. but you already learned the rules, so you do know how to cope, and you have fucking been coping. it's not black-and-white. it's not that you are healed during the other times - it's just that you're able to fucking try. and honestly, whenever you show symptoms, it's a really fucking bad sign.

because the symptoms you have are ugly and unmanageable for others. your symptoms aren't waifish white girl things. they're annoying and complicated. they will be the subject of so many pretentious instagram reels. if they cared about you, they'd just show up on time. you care, a lot, so deeply it burns you. you like to picture a world where the comments read if they loved you, they'd never need glasses to see. but since that's a rule you've seen repeated - "one must never be late or you are a bad friend" - you constantly worry about being late and leave agonizingly early. there are no words for how you feel when you're still late; no matter how hard you were trying.

so you have to make up for it. you have to make up for that little horrible real you that you keep locked in a cabinet. you are bad at answering emails so every project you make has to be perfect. you are weird and sensitive so you have to learn to be funny and interesting. you are an inconvenience to others, so you become as smooth as possible, buffing out all the rough parts.

all this. all this. so people can pass their hands over you and just tell you just the once -how good you are. you're a good friend. you're loveable.

[cheriboms]

need i say more 🕴

[genericaces]

more rambling about a s5 au: lindsey comes back for a redemption arc to act as legal counsel for angel's team. this ostensibly gives gunn a reason to opt out of the lawyer operation, but he does it anyway because he doesn't trust lindsey not to fuck them over.

lindsey acts as a moral foil to gunn, who comes to believe his necessary contribution to the team (since he's no longer their only lawyer) is being the defender of the group's principles while working at w&h. they frequently butt heads while working on a case, but eventually develop a begrudging respect of each other's respective strengths.

this hostile-to-friendly-rivalry arc is tested when it comes out that w&h was responsible for some demon problem that's been plaguing gunn's home community. gunn has, unbeknownst to himself, been somehow contributing to it while working at w&h; lindsey knowingly contributed to it when he was last working there as a lawyer. lindsey is forced to confront who he was, while gunn is forced to confront who he’s becoming.

since he was involved in the project, lindsey uses his insider knowledge to help come up with a plan to fix the problem. they execute it, something goes wrong, and lindsey risks his life to ensure the plan goes off successfully. he expects congratulations and a pat on the back from gunn, but gunn isn't interested in absolving lindsey's sins (or his own), and their warming relationship freezes over.

at some point, gunn lets himself get taken by the senior partners in an effort to deal with his guilt over various lapses in judgment/perceived moral failures. during their rescue mission to the holding dimension, lindsey stays behind in gunn's place so he can escape, assuring gunn that he's the lawyer the team needs right now. their mutual arcs culminate in lindsey rejecting the idea that redemption is done for recognition, and gunn rejecting the idea that guilt/self-punishment is inherently redemptive.

eventually after being busted out by illyria, lindsey is there to empathize with gunn about losing parts of yourself (body, mind, and/or soul) to w&h, relationships to power when you've grown up without it, and what it means to live with the consequences of your actions. both of them reflect on the nature of redemption/forgiveness/intent as they grapple with how to own up to an appropriate share of the blame.

[communistkenobi]

does anyone have reading recommendations that clarify the difference between liberalism and fascism? I’m having trouble distinguishing what is just like normal levels of imperial/colonial violence conducted by a liberal state and what pushes it over the edge into a fascist state. Is fascism simply mature liberalism? Is it liberalism in crisis? Can we only make historical, reactive judgements about what is fascist, which is to say, can we only know if fascism occurred after it has come and gone? I take the general point that calling all liberal states fascist can let them off the hook for types of violence considered normal or “just doing business,” invisibilising the daily violences they conduct as part of the regular maintenance of a liberal capitalist state. People are calling the US fascist for its direct participation in and funding of the genocide in Palestine - a diagnosis I don't disagree with, but if that’s the case, where do you draw the distinction between the US being merely a liberal state with aggressive global imperial ambitions and the US being a fully fascist state? Perhaps more bluntly, what’s the difference between a liberal drone strike and a fascist one? I’m struggling to understand the value of the fascist label, because everything it describes (ultranationalism, a theory of racial and cultural degeneracy/decline, paranoia about an imminent external threat expressed as violence against internal populations deemed to have insufficient loyalty to the country, a turn towards a mythologised tradition of the past, imperial expansion, genocidal projects against minority populations, etc etc) just seems to me like a description of United States in general lol

[awkward-teabag]

Love (cannot emphasis how much sarcasm there is in that word) that an official Canadian government response to high cellphone rates is to switch carriers.

Switch it to what? We basically have three companies since one was allowed to eat the forth (with the government saying it wasn't anti-competition and the company eating the other pinky promising they wouldn't jack rates up). Even the smaller companies have to rent infrastructure from the Big Three so there's only so much they can do if that rent costs an arm and a leg.

And that's not touching on how many "small companies" are actually just subsidiaries of the Big Three. You may save $5 but you're still with Telus/Rogers/Bell.

Or that the actual small companies tend to have shit coverage because they don't have the infrastructure available to them and are prevented from getting it. Or their traffic is throttled in favour of the Big Three's customers. Or both.

Or that they're extremely regional thus aren't an option for a huge chunk of Canada's population.

We have no true options and the government has shown time and again that they're fine with monopolies, in multiple industries, and don't care when said monopolies jack up prices to make shareholders and the c-suite more money at the expense of everyone else. At most there will be a verbal slap on the wrist and a giftcard for $25 that people have to register for, for a decade and a half of price gouging.

It's not talked a whole lot about outside the country from what I've seen and heard but Canada is a country of monopolies. A handful of companies own nearly everything, every province has a family or two that owns a hell of a lot (Nova Scotia is basically owned by one family at this point), and our government ignores it. Even the branch that is supposed to be against monopolies is fine with mergers and takeovers in most cases.

Because, you know, the company said it totally wouldn't use consumers' lack of options to increase prices.

[ruvviks]

PLEASE DO NOT TAG AS YOUR OWN OC OR PAIRING.

Nathan and Ruben share a bond more powerful than most; mutual understanding through past experiences no one should ever have to go through, and through past actions so horrible they cannot be spoken of. Their grief and the blood on their hands binds them to the STEM technology they created, which has alienated them from the rest of the world— but they give each other the comfort they have both longed for so desperately for years, and that is all they need. They are each other's counterpart; you cannot imagine one without the other, like two sides of the same coin. Through their pain, their grief, their desire, and their regret, they have become one.

anna akhmatova, the guest // bones; equinox // 'i won't become' by kim jakobsson // agustín gómez-arcos, the carnivorous lamb // by oxy // achilles come down; gang of youths // czeslaw milosz, from 'new and collected poems: 1931-2001' // 'extended ambience portrait from a resonant biostructure' and 'migraine tenfold times ten' by daniel vega // a little death; the neighbourhood // marina tsvetaeva, from 'poem of the end' // by drummnist // katie maria, winter // 'nocturne in black and gold the falling rocket' by james abbott mcneill whistler // micah nemerever, these violent delights // body language; we are fury // 'the penitent' by emil melmoth // chelsea dingman, from 'of those who can't afford to be gentle'

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@lestatlioncunt, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[oatbugs]

i should have never dated an iranian person like i told myself i would never do it bc it would be too much intensity all in one place and i was RIGHT now that i've experienced it (smn who can engage in poetry in a similar way, talk in the same language, making all the cultural stuff gay and hot, etc) i feel like without those aspects things will just be missing Something like from now on . idk . let's drink black tea w saffron and then make out . i've never celebrated the solar new year or leapt over a fire the wednesday before or read romantic hafez poetry w someone who loves me romantically and now i crave it . so much

[voidedjuice]

I'll never get the hate for the concept of more abyssal hunter events. They've literally had two, spaced a year apart (UT ans SN)

compared to the horses who've had like 5 events and counting, but who receive none of the grumbling when they come up, I just can't understand

[fisheito]

Bottom yakumo fics i rotate thru bc the tag is playing games with me

EIDEN:

(Sequel) https://archiveofourown.org/works/49270402

(locked) https://archiveofourown.org/works/37453975

(locked) https://archiveofourown.org/works/48090496

KUYA (some dubcon+yaku whump):

ASTER:

QUINCY:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/54831790

EDMOND: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52916077

NOT EXPLICITLY BOTTOM, BUT FITS THE SUBBY ~FEELING~

https://archiveofourown.org/works/37413112

(locked) https://archiveofourown.org/works/49106176

https://archiveofourown.org/works/50601046/chapters/128881948#workskin

[inkskinned]

im gonna start a fight; and, at the same time, i need you to take this in the most good-faith way possible, but:

videos that involve body-checking and intentionally (and uncritically) show a mealplan of an unhealthy number of calories are just a revamped version of pro-ana food diaries.

and yeah, i know there's arguments. i address some of them under the cut. but at the end of the day, we're just coming back to romanticizing mental illness; we've just found a better platform for it.

this is already something we've done. we knew it was wrong and tried to stop it. and tbh. it just wasn't enough.

there are people who argue "well, what if you have an eating disorder, you can't help it if you don't eat!" except that as someone with an ED; we are not infants. we know what we're doing. part of having an ED is that you are like, maybe too self-aware. even if we can't help our own food choices, we don't need to fucking romanticize the disorder - something we've been warning you about since 2013. there are hours of setup, filming, and editing that go into these videos. they do not happen to fall into place randomly. there is a reason they are pieced together to be beautiful, bright, inspiring.

there's this woman who pretty much only posts daily plans under a normal amount of calories, and everyone defends her saying but it's better than nothing! and i'm like. except she opens those with images of her showing off her body and provides no context in the video or caption that suggests that she believes what she's doing is unhealthy. she has hundreds of thousands of followers on a platform designed for young kids and teens. i refuse to believe that by accident her content just happens to be cheery advice on "healthy" versions of starving.

for any other symptom of mental illness, we would be incredibly enraged by this kind of placid acceptance of a "tips and tricks" fast-start guide. imagine if people posted pink & pretty videos saying "best places to cut yourself" as if it was a fucking storytime. we, as a society, are so fucking fatphobic that we would rather accept blatantly harmful displays of self harm than admit that we are obsessed with a hyper-thin body type.

i am not suggesting someone never talks about their disorder. i talk about mine. actually, it's a plot point in my book.

here's the difference: i recognize it's a fucking mental illness. i am very careful to never mention a specific weight, eating pattern, or calorie plan. i always make sure to position it as something that ruined my fucking life. i do not put cheery music in the background and hearts and sparkles over my worst moments. i do not film it in bright light. i do not start each passage with an image of a thin body followed by "here's how to look like her."

eating disorders should not be framed as aspirational. and the problem is that society worships the "after" image, so long as you don't get too sick. there is a reason so many people who quit being "influencers" will later admit - i wasn't eating well that whole time; an obsession with food was completely destroying my life.

we let any uncredited, uncertified person write the most backwards, fucked up shit about how to get the body you desire! because the underlying, secret belief is: well, at least they're thin! and the real thing that fucking gets me each time - they make fucking money off of it. their irresponsibility and societal harm literally pays off for them.

"why do you care so much." "don't like it don't look." "so what if people experiment with new ways of thinking of food?"

thank you for asking. we're about to get extremely personal. it's because when i was 18 i discovered "thinspiration"/"thinspo." and it absolutely influenced, shaped, and codified my pre-existing eating disorder. i went from having some troubling habits and traits to being incredibly unwell within what felt like a matter of days. there were actual pages designed to train me on how to have an ED correctly. it was all so suddenly easy. i was sick; and the nature of the illness meant - i wanted to be sicker.

it takes an average of 7 years for a person to fully recover. i know this personally - even now, 10 years from the worst of it, i still fucking struggle. i am so much happier now and i eat what i want and i literally don't think about food at all (19 year old me would shudder) and yet - i still fucking know the calories of plain toast with butter.

an eating disorder is one of the deadliest types of mental illness. over 1 in 4 people with an ED will attempt suicide.

and i'm sorry. i just do not see the exchange rate of "high rate of engagement" versus "the value of a human life."

[16ozicedcoffee]

les mis fic writers who write really really great stories about the amis where political organizing is one of/the main plot (especially stories that feature such realistic organizing experiences) i want to give you all a kiss!!!!! many kisses!!!!!!

[vaxxman]

I have so much brainrot about Medic's wife, specifically the design from the comic doodles that Makani drew, I'm so ready to draw a whole comic about her, man I love hallucinating.

[casiavium]

love how ghiralink can range from they are deeply in love with each other (obvious to everyone but them) but won't even consider holding hands in public to actively trying to kill each other while saying some of the most romantic shit you've ever heard. In the same fanfic even