hmm. had an actual conversation with nightmare coworker today that seemed mutually productive. she apologized for saying some bullshit that hurt my feelings and i clarified that my intentions are to help not to undermine her, and we both agreed that there's no competition against each other and that it's the lack of growth in our role that's the problem. it was...productive.
and further cementing for me that it is time to begin making my Exit. i will be sending out my resume to a few places this weekend.
i'm still processing the conversation, and am struggling to place myself in where i am responsible to better my behavior. because i genuinely don't want to be an ass, even though i really don't like this lady and will jump for joy the day i never have to see her again. she stated that she knows my intentions aren't to hurt her, and that she thinks i'm very kind. i apologized for if my behavior came off as undermining her, and said that my intentions are only to better my own growth—and that i know she's trying to succeed too. i validated her feelings, and complemented the effort she is putting in.
where i'm struggling with is: am i in the wrong/causing harm and needing to change if the issue is that her feelings are incongruent with what she knows of my intentions? her feelings are her responsibility (WOW i almost typed "her feelings are my responsibility". i feel like that's a freudian slip) and she states that she knows i don't mean to hurt her. i'm going to try to be more clear in wording my intentions with her (she feels like me trying to take work off her plate is to undermine her. when really, i'm caught up and see her getting overwhelmed, and i want to help and also have something to do since i'm bored).
but i'm really struggling to look at my role in this and pass judgement on myself. i can and want to do better, and i don't think i did anything wrong, but i'm always so hesitant to say it's not my fault or i didn't do something bad. like i can't trust my judgement on that. my intentions were good, her bad feelings are ones caused by her insecurities, which she more or less has expressed to be aware that they are not true—the hurtful thing she said to me, she acknowledged was said out of hurt and not what she actually thinks. so, is it fair to say i'm not the bad guy? i'm not in the wrong? i know good intentions that still result in harm don't absolve anyone, but when the things that are clashing are insufficient communication and reactive insecurities... i'm not a monster, am i?
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"I know JK Rowing is a terrible person but her books are so good-"
You sure about that?
I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.
Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?
And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?
Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.
Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?
Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.
Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.
"But the characters are so good!"
Are you kidding me?
Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")
"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"
Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.
I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.
Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.
The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!
But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.
Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.
If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.
Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.
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「 RP MEME : CARING FOR SICK MUSES . 」
@skilledsenses asked: ‘ you look miserable. ’ ( ranpo for nikolai - )
The cheery facade the jester ne'er drops is nowhere to be found when he teleports away from the gruesome scene of the murder and appears in an enclosed alleyway at the edge of his ability; though the clown's appearance may imply the murder has moved along with him to the new location as his blood seeps into the whites of his clothes and he wonders whether the official he's just killed has felt any sort of solace after inflicting the injuries Nikolai has allowed them to before giving out their last, suffering breath.
It isn't a fatal injury for him anymore, not after the killer clown has taken the antidote for the poison that has oh so accidentally slipped into his blood vessels when the victim has gnawed at his skin in their desperation to live, but Nikolai's body continues to remain ill at ease, still displaying tell-tale signs of having been poisoned even after its fight against the deadly poison has been won. It's when he uses his cloak to spawn a napkin and bring it upwards to wipe the blood from his face (both his own, caused by a severe nosebleed; and the victim's, caused by their... rather gross death) that a familiar voice rings in his ears and Nikolai half-attempts to remember if hallucinations were due as a side-effect of the poison; only for heterochromatic eyes to glance in the direction of the sound and fall onto his (favorite!) detective.
Gently erasing the stains of blood from his visage while idly staring at Ranpo, an eerie smile blooms from the spots where the drops of blood used to be and it soon shifts into a loud burst of laughter as Nikolai remains entirely nonchalant about the acute loss of blood and the way in which the sharp movements of his laughter only further cause him harm. ❛ Ahahaha!! What an amusing twist of fate! ❜ A downside of his ability is not being able to perceive the world beyond its 30 meter border until after the transfer has been completed, which is why he tends to teleport to nearer places and blend within the crowds after most heists or murders - yet this wasn't a possibility with his current state of being in mind, and therefore it seems he ought to improvise and deal with the cards at hand. Perhaps it isn't such a bad thing though, to have come across the other in this dire state of affairs, and indirectly offer him a new angle to consider his psyche from.
Why would Nikolai be standing here, as viciously injured as he is, despite being easily able to dodge or block any incoming attacks he wishes to, from the brilliant detective's perspective?
Ranpo's remark almost incites a second fit of laughter from the jester, one that Nikolai only abstains from out of pity for his poor, mishandled and abused body (after all - he can't afford to die just yet, now can he?) and instead opts for a slightly less ostentatious show and a calmer (though still unnervingly upbeat) tonality. Is he really as fine as he makes himself out to be, or are his injuries (internal and external) far more painful than he allows them to appear? ❛ Is that any way to talk to someone who's bleeding out in front of you, Ranpo-kun~? What if those were the last words I ever heard, hm~~? ❜
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monster terrorizing everything until reader pops up, monster horny and everything unable to shake reader off, he gives up and says "ALRIGHT FINE" and fucks you... Then he get obsessed and takes you away to be his personal toy 🤷🏻♀️
"you should be more scared," Your lover growls, his hands easily wrapping around your thighs, almost encircling them completely, his sharp claws dimpling your flesh. His eyes glow red, and his hungry gaze eats you up.
You spread your legs further apart and reach down to pull your panties to the side showing off your sweet little human cunt to him.
"scared you aren't going to make me cum maybe," you tease. his nostrils flare as he catches the smell of your wet pussy on the wind.
"You're not going to goad me into fucking you. I have nothing to prove, I'd sooner kill you for being a brat than make you cum," he snarls.
"then I'll be a good girl for you," you purr. He growls, but you can see his cock twitch as you start rubbing yourself. He can't hold himself back much longer. his instincts conflicted from wanting to gut you and wanting to fuck you.
"you're a strange human, no sense of self-preservation," he chides, but he gives in and slots his big cock against your pussy, thrusting back and forth grinding his hard length back and forth against your clit, he clamps your thighs down around his dick fucking the fat of your legs groaning in pleasure at the sensation. It's not exactly what you were begging for but you aren't complaining, the heat of his big cock rutting against your clit feels good too.
"Moan for me whore, you wanted it fucking acting like it," he snaps, then has to keep himself quiet so he can hear the pretty cries of pleasure you let out. Maybe humans aren't so bad to keep around after all, if you're going to moan and cum for him like this.
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"your pet doesn't love you; it just has learned that it will get treats if it acts a certain way. it can't understand you."
in between humans, i don't always speak the language either. love has always been hard for me. i don't trust it. i can't read it easily on people's faces - i'm usually trying to read past it; to the "other parts", the ones that make sense to me.
but my mom always offers me food as soon as i get through the door. my brother calls me at weird hours, just to be talking. my sister has a nightmare; asks me to please drive safe in the morning. i throw my friends random parties, just to celebrate something. she drives 45 minutes to spend 3 hours with me. amelia holds my hand while we both cross the street.
no, my dog and i don't have the same language. so what? this is not the same thing as communication. my dog is a good study in how trauma can heal - a rescue from the racetrack; i've been watching his personality develop slowly. in the last year, he's gotten so comfortable with me that he'll ask me to sit down on the grass so he can use my body as a seat. (it's important to note: he is huge. he squishes me. i don't complain. i find it lovely.)
love for us is also just endorphins and behavioral response. i'm a poet, the number of sad men that have tried to "teach me" how stupid it is to be a hopeless romantic is ... not a low one. i cannot count how many times someone has argued - it's all chemical stimulus - as if the fact of it makes it less magical. we're just electrical signals reading the universe! that's fucked up. that's so beautiful.
i find it hard to believe that in the spectrum of evolution we are the only species to feel like this - we already know that dogs and cats also have endorphins. why wouldn't they experience joy? love? companionship? in what world is it a new thing that i had to earn it? in every relationship, both individuals have to work to learn the language. i had to teach my dog what trust is. it's okay that it took time for him to learn it.
in the human world, when i love someone, it's hard for me to speak it. i write them poems or make them food or give them a cool rock i found on the beach.
i don't know how to tell goblin i love him, so i tell him through treats. through a new collar, fancy mattresses, a little bow on his leash. i tell him with long walks and petting him and sitting down on the wet ground so my 70 pound sharp noodle of a dog can prance on my thigh bones and take an awkward - if loving - seat.
"you taught your dog to love you" is kind of a cruel way to reframe what actually happened: i loved him so loudly, it skipped over language and species. the two of us just saying - oh! i have figured out a way to tell you that you make me happy.
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thinking about how much crowley and aziraphale have been getting slammed for their poor communication and on the one hand... absolutely, i agree 100%. they have so much work to do in that department, they are always missing each other when it comes to seeing what they each want from the other and expressing it clearly. but on the other hand... like... encompassing six thousand years into a conversation? six thousand years of knowing each other. six thousand years of gravitating toward one another
like... the bit that really gets me, in crowley's confession, is - "...and we've spent our existence pretending that we aren't. i mean, the last few years, not really" - this implication that like... at least on crowley's part... since they saved the world together he's allowed himself to be more open in how he feels about aziraphale. that in his mind he's already long since chosen Their Side, they've chosen their side in their behavior towards each other, and they've talked about... our car, our shop, but even before that...
we see in the minisodes, the way they already act. they're a pair that shows rather than tells all the time and it's so abundantly clear that everyone around them can see it, is constantly asking about it, assuming it, reading it on them like they're an open book - with everyone but each other.
but like how do you put into clumsy human words how much love you feel for someone who stood next to you while you created the stars? who helped you create them? how do you say openly how you feel to the one person who understands you and your nature better than anyone else, who indulges your every whim because they want to see you happy while everyone else says you were built wrong, you're too indulgent, you're too soft but you're perfect for him, specifically, because you stood at the beginning of the universe together?
like how are they supposed to talk about that? especially when it's so forbidden to talk about that?
there are so few words that truly feel like they properly encompass what love truly and genuinely means? what loving someone TRULY means? how it's giving up your onliness and entrusting yourself into the hands of another, now you're not just you, now you're you but the world is brighter and sharper and more beautiful because of another? how we're all stuck on a spinning rock in the middle of space in the middle of the universe in the middle of the galaxy in the middle of eternity just little grains of sand and then there's another little grain of sand in the scheme of things, but it's the most important one ever created because of how happy it makes you?
but multiply that by six thousand years
so like of course you fucking cry and you stare at each other with tears in your eyes like you're absolutely ESSENTIAL to one another. but like how do you make it work in words when you don't know if there are even words for the prospect of existing without one another? and you have this absolutely incandescent and fragile thing between you that everyone understands to exist, you understand it to exist too, and sometimes it is scary as fuck to admit that you need someone. it is terrifying and uncomfortable and vulnerable and we're just people who live maybe 100 years on this earth? a blink of an eye compared to six thousand years of shared existence?
like...? truthfully i don't think i could talk about it easily either because oh my god that's fucking terrifying. that six thousand years of your comfortable and beloved shared existence could go up in smoke with one misplaced word. like no fucking WONDER he can't get the words out. and no fucking wonder, it's easier to couch things in terms like group and team and everything when you're on the verge of falling apart into a million pieces because the other half of your soul wants to leave you behind. it's easier to say come with me, work with me, be my second in command, than to admit he's first in your heart and mind every second of every day since you saw him bringing light at the beginning of the universe???
just... you know? they need a fucking break. they need a vacation. they need a cottage in the south fucking downs
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