#but like. it's markedly less i think

[sillayangel]

im sure i gained most of my followers like. 5+ years ago at LEAST. wonder how many are even active anymore

#i definitely dont get the activity that i used to lol #NOT THAT I EVER GOT A HUGE AMOUNT LOL #but like. it's markedly less i think #but also tumblr gets considerably less activity in general nowadays #NOT THAT I RLY CARE LOL #just curiouse #cyan's

[clusterbuck]

.

#ok i promise i don’t mean this in a whiny way & i really do appreciate even a single person reading my fic #however. I Just Think It’s Funny ™️ #that’s everyone’s all wah wah shannon is being Erased and then when i actually write something about eddie’s thoughts about shannon it gets #markedly less engagement than anything else i write #and like. i know that the biggest voices talking about shannon erasure don’t follow me and i don’t expect them to read my fic or anything #but like. as much as everyone says you should write for yourself—and to a large extent i do—let’s not pretend we don’t post for engagement #in that way fic is an economy and if fic about shannon gets crickets then people aren’t going to write it either #which. again. would like to reiterate i do not mean this in a begging people to read my tiny shannon fic way just an observation #shush emma

[helaenahightower]

okay i watched the hotd ep 1 leak last night, slept on it, and just watched it again and i think i like it more than the got pilot

#i have nitpicks but no MAJOR complaints. overall very excited for the rest of the season #felt like it laid a solid foundation of who these characters are and where they're at emotionally to build off of #also the writing for the female characters felt markedly different to got in a good way even just in one episode #the sex scenes were also handled better i think. less shock value and more trying to say something about the characters involved #my biggest fear was them making daemon too likeable but that went away during his first scene with rhaenyra #he's a menace to society and matt smith did a great job. the twitter girlies will hate it though

[nunyabznsbabes]

Katniss is like Lucy Gray this, Katniss is like Sejanus that, and yes fine that's all good and true and lovely but Katniss Everdeen is also a direct parallel to Coriolanus Snow and people NEED to start talking about this because it's driving me crazy.

Think about it: they both grew up poor and deeply vulnerable, losing parents at a very young age, with a matriarchal adult (Katniss' mother and Coriolanus' Grandma'am) who fails to provide for them emotionally and physically. They intimately understand the threat of starvation, even developing with stunted growth because of it, and their narrations in the books share a fixation on food. Throughout their childhoods, both experienced constant fear and suffered a fundamental lack of control over their circumstances. Because of this, they're inherently suspicious of the people around them. They resent feeling indebted to others, especially those who have saved their lives. They're motivated almost entirely by family and deeply connected to their communities. Both are used and manipulated by the Capitol, both are forced to perform to survive and despise every inch of it, both are thrown into the Arena and made to kill. Both have a self-sacrificial, genuinely sweet sister figure acting as their conscience. Peeta and Lucy Gray - performers and love interests with a fundamental kindness and sense of hope about them - fulfill markedly similar roles in their narrative. Both contribute to the development of the future Hunger Games, Snow throughout tbosas and Katniss towards the end of Mockingjay.

It's easy to ignore these similarities because, as mirrors of each other, they are exact opposites. Katniss is from District 12, viewed and treated as less than human; Snow is the cream of the Capitol crop, given the privilege of a name with social weight, an ancestral home, and the opportunity of the Academy despite having no more money than a miner from 12. Katniss has no agency over her life, and responds by being kind whenever she's able, while Snow justifies horrendous evils in order to continue his quest for complete control. Katniss does everything she can to protect her family; Snow does everything he can to protect his family's image as an extension of his own ego. Katniss loves her District and connects with its inhabitants on a meaningful level, but Snow is indifferent at best to his peers - the apparent "superior people" - and only engages with his community for personal gain. Katniss emerges from the Arena horrified at herself and the system, but Snow takes his trauma and turns it into an excuse to perpetuate the violence with himself at the top. Katniss cares for Prim until her death and then snaps at the loss of her little sister, while Snow survives on Tigris' blood, sweat, and tears and then torments and abandons her, presumably because she calls him out on his insanity. Snow actively adds to and popularizes the Hunger Games because of his vendetta against the Districts following his childhood wartime trauma - Katniss briefly agrees to a new Hunger Games in the pursuit of vengeance, but later stops them from happening by killing Coin and choosing a life of peace and privacy. Snow is obsessed with revenge, but Katniss empathizes with the Capitolites and does what she can to keep them from suffering. He exists in a cruel system and selfishly upholds it; she exists in a cruel system and works to dismantle it for the good of her family and community, at great personal cost. And Peeta and Lucy Gray are incredibly similar, but Katniss and Peeta forge a relationship of genuine love and understanding that shines in comparison to Coriolanus' obsessive projection onto Lucy Gray.

So, yeah, Katniss is Lucy Gray haunting Coriolanus. But I bet you anything that eighty-something year old President Snow looks at her, the girl on fire, bright and young and brilliant, emerging from a childhood of starvation with a relentless hunger for success, a talented and charming performer helping her win the Games, and he sees the ghost of his own past. And that's why he's so afraid of her! Because if he sees himself in her, then he's up against his own cunning, his own talent for manipulation, his own charisma, his own genius. He's up against the version of himself that he once wished to be, with the nightmare army of his childhood at her back and her star-crossed lover at her side, spewing Sejanus' truths in his own voice. This isn't to say that Katniss ever achieved the level of power and agency that Coriolanus did during her time with the rebellion, but it is to say that Snow was taken down by what truly terrified him - his own morality, come to finish the job.

#the ballad of songbirds and snakes #tbosas #katniss everdeen #coriolanus snow #president snow #lucy gray baird #peeta mellark #everlark #tbosas meta #the hunger games #thg #snowbaird

[suzannahnatters]

all RIGHT:

Why You're Writing Medieval (and Medieval-Coded) Women Wrong: A RANT

(Or, For the Love of God, People, Stop Pretending Victorian Style Gender Roles Applied to All of History)

This is a problem I see alllll over the place - I'll be reading a medieval-coded book and the women will be told they aren't allowed to fight or learn or work, that they are only supposed to get married, keep house and have babies, &c &c.

If I point this out ppl will be like "yes but there was misogyny back then! women were treated terribly!" and OK. Stop right there.

By & large, what we as a culture think of as misogyny & patriarchy is the expression prevalent in Victorian times - not medieval. (And NO, this is not me blaming Victorians for their theme park version of "medieval history". This is me blaming 21st century people for being ignorant & refusing to do their homework).

Yes, there was misogyny in medieval times, but 1) in many ways it was actually markedly less severe than Victorian misogyny, tyvm - and 2) it was of a quite different type. (Disclaimer: I am speaking specifically of Frankish, Western European medieval women rather than those in other parts of the world. This applies to a lesser extent in Byzantium and I am still learning about women in the medieval Islamic world.)

So, here are the 2 vital things to remember about women when writing medieval or medieval-coded societies

FIRST. Where in Victorian times the primary axes of prejudice were gender and race - so that a male labourer had more rights than a female of the higher classes, and a middle class white man would be treated with more respect than an African or Indian dignitary - In medieval times, the primary axis of prejudice was, overwhelmingly, class. Thus, Frankish crusader knights arguably felt more solidarity with their Muslim opponents of knightly status, than they did their own peasants. Faith and age were also medieval axes of prejudice - children and young people were exploited ruthlessly, sent into war or marriage at 15 (boys) or 12 (girls). Gender was less important.

What this meant was that a medieval woman could expect - indeed demand - to be treated more or less the same way the men of her class were. Where no ancient legal obstacle existed, such as Salic law, a king's daughter could and did expect to rule, even after marriage.

Women of the knightly class could & did arm & fight - something that required a MASSIVE outlay of money, which was obviously at their discretion & disposal. See: Sichelgaita, Isabel de Conches, the unnamed women fighting in armour as knights during the Third Crusade, as recorded by Muslim chroniclers.

Tolkien's Eowyn is a great example of this medieval attitude to class trumping race: complaining that she's being told not to fight, she stresses her class: "I am of the house of Eorl & not a serving woman". She claims her rights, not as a woman, but as a member of the warrior class and the ruling family. Similarly in Renaissance Venice a doge protested the practice which saw 80% of noble women locked into convents for life: if these had been men they would have been "born to command & govern the world". Their class ought to have exempted them from discrimination on the basis of sex.

So, tip #1 for writing medieval women: remember that their class always outweighed their gender. They might be subordinate to the men within their own class, but not to those below.

SECOND. Whereas Victorians saw women's highest calling as marriage & children - the "angel in the house" ennobling & improving their men on a spiritual but rarely practical level - Medievals by contrast prized virginity/celibacy above marriage, seeing it as a way for women to transcend their sex. Often as nuns, saints, mystics; sometimes as warriors, queens, & ladies; always as businesswomen & merchants, women could & did forge their own paths in life

When Elizabeth I claimed to have "the heart & stomach of a king" & adopted the persona of the virgin queen, this was the norm she appealed to. Women could do things; they just had to prove they were Not Like Other Girls. By Elizabeth's time things were already changing: it was the Reformation that switched the ideal to marriage, & the Enlightenment that divorced femininity from reason, aggression & public life.

For more on this topic, read Katherine Hager's article "Endowed With Manly Courage: Medieval Perceptions of Women in Combat" on women who transcended gender to occupy a liminal space as warrior/virgin/saint.

So, tip #2: remember that for medieval women, wife and mother wasn't the ideal, virgin saint was the ideal. By proving yourself "not like other girls" you could gain significant autonomy & freedom.

Finally a bonus tip: if writing about medieval women, be sure to read writing on women's issues from the time so as to understand the terms in which these women spoke about & defended their ambitions. Start with Christine de Pisan.

I learned all this doing the reading for WATCHERS OF OUTREMER, my series of historical fantasy novels set in the medieval crusader states, which were dominated by strong medieval women! Book 5, THE HOUSE OF MOURNING (forthcoming 2023) will focus, to a greater extent than any other novel I've ever yet read or written, on the experience of women during the crusades - as warriors, captives, and political leaders. I can't wait to share it with you all!

#watchers of outremer #medieval history #the lady of kingdoms #the house of mourning #writing #writing fantasy #female characters #medieval women #eowyn #the lord of the rings #lotr #history #historical fiction #fantasy #writing tip #writing advice

[absolutely-esme]

What do you mean he's not eldritch?

What if all of the members of the Bat Family other than Tim Drake were secretly eldritch abominations?

They all work very hard at pretending to be human, and they've even gotten pretty good at passing. They can even mostly avoid the uncanny valley when in their civilian identities. There was a heck of a learning curve, but they've gotten things figured out for the most part.

Enter: Tim Drake

Weird, poorly socialized, probably autistic Tim Drake

The Bats think they've encountered a fellow eldritch being in disguise, and one that seems like he could use some help blending in. Naturally, they're quick to welcome him into their fold. Jason is delighted to take his turn at being a big brother mentor.

It takes a comedically long time for anyone to realize something's up because there is an absurd amount of overlap between stuff you need to know for masking and stuff you need to know to pass as human.

Meanwhile, Tim is amazed that the Bats have apparently decided he's cool enough to hang out with. It's like something out of his daydreams. They even have good advice for him on problems he hadn't known how to ask about. They are so patient and understanding about it, too. They never get annoyed with him for not already knowing. They also seem to be okay with the bits of weirdness he can't change.

Just weird kid Tim getting bundled into an incredibly helpful and supportive found family of eldritch entities. They're all going to get a good grade in human-ing, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.

...

I imagine the Bats are various different kinds of eldritch abominations because they're still adopted. They look wildly different when not in human form.

Bruce is a mass of... shadows? Smoke? Something dark and formless that shifts and flows in different ways depending on his mood.

Dick kind of looks like a pile of owls that is also somehow a single body.

Barbara is a spiral galaxy with stars that are also eyes somehow?

Jason is a solid-looking mass of muscle with six strong legs, a thick coat of shaggy hair, a mouth that opens much further along his body than it seems like it should, and even more teeth than you'd expect a mouth that size to have.

Stephanie Brown is kind of like an incredibly dense storm system with purple glitter.

Cassandra is a silhouette through which undiscovered nebulae can be seen. What she is a silhouette of depends on her mood.

Tim, they have only ever seen in his meticulously well-crafted human form. He's really good at that part even if he needed some help with the behavioral bits.

Damian is half human. Talia saw a mass of living darkness trying really hard to pretend to be a man and decided she was into that.

...

Dick: So, eye contact is actually pretty simple once you have the formula figured out. You need to cycle between looking at the other person and looking at something else at the appropriate frequency. If you look at them too much it will come across as staring. If you look away for too long they'll think you're not paying attention to them. You'll need to experiment to figure out the appropriate frequency.

Tim: *frets*

Jason: You don't have to look straight at their eyes, just in the general direction of their face.

Tim: Oh! I can do that!

...

I think Eldritch Bruce having history with the league of assassins in a markedly less inentional way than Canon would be funny. Like, you'd think an encounter between an eldritch abomination and a cult would be deliberate on someone's part, but no.

Bruce was still young and unskilled at differentiating between normal and abnormal human behavior.

#dc #batman #batfam #found family #tim drake #jason todd #dick grayson #stephanie brown #eldritch au #Eldritch Jason Todd #Eldritch Dick Grayson #Eldritch Stephanie Brown #Eldritch Barbara Gordon #Eldritch Damian Al Ghul #Eldritch Bruce Wayne #Eldritch batfamily #what do you mean he's not eldritch au

[max1461]

I have the following Grand Theory of the Twenty-First Century that I would like to put forth. I don't know if it's true, but sometimes I think it's true.

Many of you will have heard of the Flynn effect. This is the observed effect that average performance on IQ tests has gone up since these tests started being administered. On a first glance, it appears that people all over the world have gotten measurably smarter in the past 100 years.

There are a variety of proposed explanations for this. Probably better childhood nutrition and the like has something to do with it. But another proposed explanation is this: IQ tests are known to be trainable. You can practice and get better at them. And you can practice the sorts of tasks that show up on an IQ and get better at those sorts of tasks, which might be why (IIRC?) standardized education seems to improve IQ scores. What sorts of tasks are on an IQ test? Abstract thinking tasks. Tasks related to abstract pattern recognition.

It has been proposed that people today live their lives in a world much more governed by these sorts of abstract tasks. We interface with bureaucracy and paperwork, we manipulate strange little symbols on a computer screen, we internalize the various abstractions we are (explicitly and implicitly) taught in school in order to receive the best grade. Where children 100 years ago were taught by their environment to do physical, concrete things, children today are taught by their environment to engage with abstract systems. And success at engagement with abstract systems is what determines success in life, which was much less true 100 years ago.

There are ways in which I think this is a good thing. Abstract systems have both many uses and many joys, which mathematicians have regaled us with since Euclid, and I think it's a good thing if people are more prepared to engage with abstraction these days. But it's probably not wholly a good thing. After all, there is also much utility and many joys in the physical and concrete, and I suspect that today we live in a world which prepares people markedly less well to succeed at the concrete. This is particularly troubling since many concrete activities make up the very most fundamental bedrock of the human condition (as it has hitherto existed).

In-person social relationships are of a concrete character. Leaving your house and doing shit is of a concrete character. Making and fixing things with your hands is concrete. Fucking is concrete.

I think it is possible, and potentially explanatory of some of the malaise I see among my peers, that we have grown up in a world which has taught us to shuffle symbols instead of to do things. People will blame this on their political opponents, leftists will attribute it to capitalism and rightists will attribute it to this or that form of effeminate progressive ideology, but (at the risk of being immediately dismissed by certain people) I want to suggest that, insofar as this is true at all, it might simply be best understood a consequence of industrial society itself. Abstract tasks simply get more useful and more in demand the greater the complexity of society grows and the more technology expands into our lives.

I don't want to present this sociological theory with too much confidence, and I am certainly not claiming we should burn down all the factories and go live in the woods or whatever. I'm just saying, uh... maybe this is something that's going on. I sometimes look around and think "this definitely might be something that's going on." And if it is going on, we should think about what its implications are.

#society

[hollow-keys]

War Games and Under the Red Hood being right next to each other makes me lose my shit. There is no gap between these stories and Judd Winick even wrote part of War Games but he doesn't seem to realise how wild it is to follow that up with UTRH.

War Games is about Batman trying to gain control of Gotham's gangs as harm reduction, not stopping their activities but monitoring and controlling them via his ally, Orpheus, who is propped up to lead all the gangs in a coalition. He is unable to do this and it all ends in disaster.

5 seconds later, Jason returns to Gotham and gains control of most of the gangs real quick and then takes out his competitors. He does what Bruce was unable to do and for the same reason, to reduce harm.

But Bruce's actions are framed as heroic and Jason's aren't. Judd Winick himself said "Along with handing out his own brand of justice, he does believe that crime can be controlled. Batman had said it makes you a crime lord. Jason doesn't think it makes him a crime lord at all. He thinks it makes him a much more effective Batman."

I must ask how is it that this makes Jason a crime lord but Bruce wasn't one when he was trying to control the Gotham gangs five seconds ago. How is Bruce on his high horse like "Jason is a crime lord in denial"? What was he five seconds ago then?

And yeah, Jason is more violent than Bruce was of course, but instead of trying to work with him and get him to his side/to be less violent like he did with the other gang leaders, he immediately goes on the offensive.

Then Bruce slits Jason's throat to save Joker right after firing Stephanie because "We don't use potentially lethal force." What Steph did was markedly less dangerous than slicing someone's throat. The hypocrisy of it all.

#jason todd #bruce wayne #war games #under the red hood #dc comics #meta #📨

[thejoyofseax]

Why We Can't Have Medieval Food

I noted in a previous post that I'd "expand on my thinking on efforts to reproduce period food and how we’re just never going to know if we have it right or not." Well, now I have 2am sleep?-never-heard-of-it insomnia, so let's go.

At the fundamental level, this is the idea that you can't step in the same river twice. You can put your foot down at the same point in space, and it'll go into water, but that's different water, and the bed of the river has inevitably changed, even a little, from the last time you did so.

Our ingredients have changed. This is not just because we can't get the fat from fat-tailed sheep in Ireland, or silphium at all anywhere, although both of those are true. But the aubergine you buy today is markedly different to the aubergine that was available even 40 years ago. You no longer need to salt aubergine slices and draw out the bitter fluids, which was necessary for pretty much all of the thing's existence before (except in those cultures that liked the bitter taste). The bitterness has been bred out of them. And the old bitter aubergine is gone. Possibly there are a few plants of it preserved in some archive garden, or a seed bank, or something, but I can't get to those.

We don't really have a good idea of the plant called worts in medieval English recipes. I mean, we know (or we're fairly sure) it was brassica oleracea. But that one species has cultivars as distinct as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan (list swiped from Wikipedia). And even within "cabbage" or "kale", you have literally dozens of varieties. If you plant the seeds from a brassica, unless you've been moderately careful with pollination, you won't get the same plant as the seeds are from. You can crossbreed brassicas just by planting them near each other and letting them flower. And of course there is no way to determine what varietal any medieval village had, a very high likelihood that it was different to the village next door, and an exceedingly high chance that that varietal no longer exists. Further, it only ever existed for a few tens of years - before it went on cross-breeding into something different. So our access to medieval worts (or indeed, cabbage, kale, etc) is just non-existant.

Some other species within the brassica genus are as varied. Brassica rapa includes oilseed rape, field mustard, turnip, Chinese cabbage, and pak choi.

We have an off-chance, as it happens, of getting almost the same kind of apple as some medieval varieties, because apples can only be reproduced for orchard use by grafting, which is essentially cloning. Identification through paintings, DNA analysis, and archaeobotany sometimes let us pin down exactly which apple was there. But the conditions under which we grow those apples are probably not the same as the medieval orchard. Were they thinned? When were they harvested? How were they stored? And apples are pretty much the best case.

Medieval wheat was practically a different plant. It was far pickier about where it would grow, and frequently produced 2-4 grains per stalk. A really good year had 6-8. In modern conditions, any wheat variety with less than 30 grains per stalk would be considered a flop.

Meats are worse. Selective breeding in the last century has absolutely and completely changed every single species of livestock, and if you follow that back another five centuries, some of them would be almost unrecognisable. Even our heritage breeds are mostly only about 200 years old.

Cheese, well. Cheese is dependent on very specific bacteria, and there are plenty of conditions where the resulting cheese is different depending on whether it was stored at the back or front of the cave. Yogurts, quarks, skyrs, etc, are also live cultures, and almost certainly vary massively. (I have a theory about British cheese here, too, which I'll expand on in a future post)

So, even before you go near the different cooking conditions (wood, burnables like camel and cow dung, smoke, the material and condition of cooking pots), we just can't say with any reliability that the food we're making now is anything like medieval people produced from the same recipe. We can't even say that with much reliability over a century.

Under very controlled conditions, you could make an argument for very specific dishes. If you track down a wild mountain sheep in Afghanistan, and use water from a local spring, and salt from some local salt mine, then you can make a case that you can produce something fairly close to the original ma wa milh, the water-and-salt stew that forms the most basic dish in Arabic cookery. But once you start introducing domestic livestock, vegetables, or even water from newer wells, you're now adrift.

It is possible that some dishes taste exactly the same, by coincidence. But we can't determine that. We can't compare the taste of a dish from five years ago, let alone five hundred, because we're only just getting to a state where we can "record" a taste accurately. Otherwise it's memory and chance.

We've got to be at peace with this. We can put in the best efforts we can, and produce things that are, in spirit, like the medieval dishes we're reading about. But that's as good as it gets.

#medieval cookery #medieval cooking #food history #historical cookery #historical cuisine #medieval arabic cookery #horticulture #genetics

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

If you were to compare the ground and whole bean versions, does grinding the beans yourself have a significant impact on the flavour, or does all that other stuff about the coffee (that I cannot remember but I'm sure that you, unpaid coffee intern, do) minimize the difference?

Does it have a significant impact on flavor? I think grinding your own coffee tastes slightly better, but I am super bougie. Like, I might be the world's bougiest unpaid intern/acting CEO.

That said, our ground coffee tastes (vastly) better than any ground coffee you can get in a grocery store, because our coffee is much fresher. It's not unusual for supermarket (or Starbucks etc) coffee to spend six months on a shelf after being ground, and that really hurts the flavor. Our coffee is much, much fresher--it's usually ground less than a week before it gets to you--so you don't get nearly as much flavor loss.

One of the surprises of Awesome Coffee is that it is, in fact, so very good. Like, it is markedly more enjoyable to drink every morning, and literally no one is paying me to say that. I think this fact is reflected in our extraordinarily low attrition rates--most subscription services lose 10-20 percent of customers per month. We lose less than 2%. It's just incredibly good coffee, doing important work in the world.

#coffee company #this coffee company is emotionally and physically exhausted after visiting hank #but also encouraged and hopeful and all that

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for getting 'harsh' with a friend because being 'nice' wasn't working?

I(23X) had a friend, F(29X), who was in every DnD game I played in and ran. I had thought we were close friends, but eventually noticed that there was a pattern of behaviors while playing DnD with them, both as a fellow player, and as a DM, that just didn't lend well to collaborative play, and made the game less fun for everyone else at the table. I attempted to gently and indirectly bring this up with them a few times, without being accusatory(they had told me they did better with indirect communication b/c direct communication made things feel worse, so I was trying to accommodate them). After multiple months, and multiple attempts at communicating indirectly with them with no visible changes to how they went about things I did attempt to gently, but directly, bring my concerns up with them. I, and others, were having a difficult time enjoying playing DnD with them because their playstyle wasn’t very inclusive of everyone else at the table, and made other players feel like side characters/unimportant to the story/unimportant to them in general.

I did make sure to stress that 1) I didn’t think any of what they were doing was malicious, I didn’t think it was intentional, but either way it still hurt people, and I would appreciate it if they worked on those things and grew as a player. And 2) I didn’t expect immediate change or perfection, I know growing and implementing positive change is a continual process and takes time. I was willing to wait and let things take time. They requested bringing a couple of other friends(28M & 30F), we’ll call them ‘D’ and ‘V’, in on it, and asking them their thoughts and opinions. They did their best to mediate, and agreed that F needed to change how they approached play at the table, and D started DMing a game with both of us(and some other players as well), in order to be able to see first hand if the things F was doing were actually an issue.

F did not take the request for growth and change well, and became very upset with me about it on multiple occasions during discussions F started. I never saw improvement, and in fact noticed that they seemed to get markedly worse in the areas I asked them to work on. When I pointed this out after a DnD session that D was DMing where they seemed to act very petty and passive aggressive towards me the entire time, and asked why they behaved the way they did, F did not respond and instead blocked me on all social media, but has told other people that I was ‘harsh’ and ‘emotionally abusive’(I never said anything cruel, and the harshest I got was when I stopped cushioning my requests in order to coddle their feelings and just bluntly stated that I needed them to work on their selfish and hurtful behavior towards me and others.) F then went crying to D about how I was attacking them out of nowhere and not giving them adequate time to improve. (Added context here being they had messaged me the night before the DnD session in question to talk about things more, and had agreed to continue that conversation later when it got too late at night to continue, so they had known we were going to keep talking and had agreed to it.) D then asked me and my partner, W(24X), if we’d noticed any issues with how F was playing. W had been listening in on the DnD sessions and had a list of things F had done specifically to spite me, and when they pointed it out D agreed that it was a pretty big issue and started noticing it in the sessions afterwards. Things blew up when D decided to confront F about how they were treating me, F accused me of emotional abuse, and quit the DnD campaign D was running after accusing both him and V of being inherently biased from the start. (Both D & V had privately admitted to me that they’d actually been harsher on me than on F up until that point, because F had been misconstruing the situation to them and making me out to be much crueler and harsher than I ever actually was, which they realized after a different friend, C(19F), confronted F about the situation and saw F blatantly lie to her face about things they knew I had not said or done.)

I lost a couple of other friends because they'd only heard F's side of the story and think that I was a huge and cruel asshole who's willing to treat their friends cruelly over something that is 'just a game'. I personally don't think I did anything cruel, but just in case... AITA?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[meowzfordayz]

on the phone during (; — kokushibo, muzan

Author’s Note: no normal thoughts allowed! 😤 Only 😏 thoughts! 😂

on the phone during (; — kokushibo, muzan

Kokushibo x Reader, Muzan x Reader

Word Count: ~900

CW:  18+NSFW, degrading language, Fem!Reader, implied bondage, overstimulation, squirting

Emergency Request Fulfilled: I was wondering if you write for Muzan and Kokushibo. It might be crazy, but it could be funny. The reader is Sanemi’s sister. Maybe some headcanons of Muzan and Koku making love with the reader, while she’s in the middle of a call with their brother? They try to stay focused but our evil pals make it hard👀❤️

~faqs~

Immediate disclaimer that these headcanons are going to be #short bc they’re for an emergency request

(I specify in my faqs that the trade off for emergency requests being prioritized is that they’re also consequently ~shorter)

Anywho, onto the spice 😌

Update 1: jk, it’s mostly crack oops 😅

Update 2: jk, I got carried away writing Muzan’s 🥵

KOKUSHIBO

—Alright, so I just read a bit of Kokushibo’s backstory on wiki (which is what I often do when writing for unfamiliar-to-me/new characters #don’t mind me being an anime only gal)

—And DAMN

—I knew it was tragic, but like *le sigh* 💔

—I digress 😶

If you were on the phone w/ someone Kokushibo might deem ~competition, then he’d def be cocky and sly and merciless #riperoni your pussy as hell 😎

But since it’s Sanemi aka your brother?

Kokushibo’s mostly embarrassed 😖

“Hang up! Hang! Up!” he hisses into your ear, thrusts stuttering at the sound of Sanemi’s irritated grumble crackling through your phone, “Why did you even pick up?????” 😭

“No, Sanemi,” you grin faintly, biting at your tongue to suppress a breathy whine, “I’m not busy.”

“You’re having sex,” Sanemi scoffs plainly, markedly unimpressed, “Is this payback for when you walked in on me and-”

“YOU TOLD ME YOU’D BE OUT FOR THE NIGHT.” 😡

“Plans change. Sorry our house was closer.”

“Sorry you couldn’t wait to get your dick wet,” you snap, “Sorry you couldn’t text me a heads up so I could stay the fuck away!”

“WELL YOU GOT YOUR REVENGE, SO END THE FUCKING CALL.”

“Why didn’t you end it when you realized what was going on?” you smirk

“Because I wasn’t 100% confident,” he growls, tacking on darkly, “Until you confirmed my suspicions, of course,” scowling to himself, “And I’m trying to be less of an asshole and not just randomly hang up on you.”

Meanwhile, poor Kokushibo’s cock is slowly but surely softening, his hands splayed awkwardly on your ass 🫠

“Aww Sanemi, that’s actually really thoughtful of-” 🥺

*Sanemi randomly hangs up on you* 😞

“Are you satisfied?” Kokushibo pouts immediately, chest pressing hot against your back as he leans over you, practically batting your phone out of your hand, “I need help.”

Giggling, you roll your hips backward, chin turning to peer at him, “Thanks for your patience.” 😇

“Don’t thank me yet,” he mutters, watching the arch of your spine, thumbs digging into the plush of your sides, quickly recovering from his momentary loss of arousal, voice lowering smoothly, “You’re going to help me, hm?”

“Am I?” you hum nonchalantly, clenching your walls around him, laughing at his unabashed groan

“You certainly are,” he murmurs, always so poised before the storm

You know you won’t be answering any more calls when he pushes your face into the mattress, other hand slipping between your thighs

“That’s right sweetheart, you’re going to help me cum with those pretty, needy orgasms of yours.”

MUZAN

—I did my best to write Muzan ~not entirely toxic, but like, well, it’s Muzan lmao 🥴

Needless to say, Muzan and Sanemi do not get along 😬

But, again, since Sanemi’s your brother (vs a potential/past lover), I don’t think Muzan would be particularly fond of you talking on the phone w/ Sanemi during sex 🤨

Perhaps a case of butt dialing would be more likely?

Or maaaybe

Sanemi’s calling you repeatedly (for stupid, sibling shit lol)

But you’re in no position to answer 🫢

No position to answer = tied spread eagle to the bedframe w/ a vibrator held firmly—by Muzan, obvi—against your clit, bedsheets already damp from your sweat and earlier orgasms

And eventually, Muzan loses his patience 🙃

Sure, he could just relocate your phone

Or break it

Or put it on Do Not Disturb

But he already dislikes Sanemi, so he might as well put him in his place (???)

—Muzan, Do Not Disturb really would’ve solved the prob, but #you do you 🤠

Still holding the vibrator against your clit, Muzan reaches for your phone 😵‍💫

“Hello Sanemi, most people give up calling after their second attempt.”

Your head lifts when Muzan says Sanemi, both intrigued and flustered, but before you can voice your confusion, Muzan pinches your thigh Pay no attention here, focus on cumming for me

“Why the fuck did you pick up?” Sanemi snarls

“Because your sister’s occupied.”

“The hell does that mean?”

Smirking, Muzan glances nonchalantly at your trembling form, your orgasm steadily building as your shiny, swollen clit makes a mess of the vibrator

“Do you really want to know?” Muzan drawls, mouthing a command to you

Cum

Your silent orgasm spills over as Sanemi promptly hangs up (no doubt red in the face), Muzan’s smugness permeating through the bedroom at your open mouth and dazed expression, tears pricking the corners of your eyes from the overstimulation

Bc Muzan’s still holding the vibrator against your clit

“Keep going,” he murmurs, fixated on the pleasure-pain writhing through your body, soft ropes taut as you try (and fail) to escape from the vibrator’s pressure, your strangled wail music to his ears, “That’s it darling, just like that,” his stare fully darkened and in control as you convulse, finally squirting with a overwhelmed scream

Taking pity on you, he sets the vibrator aside, rubbing greedily at your shaking legs, your skin smeared and glistening as he roughly thrusts two fingers into your pussy, relishing the wet, sloppy noise of your essence

“What a filthy cunt,” Muzan grins, “So beautifully wrecked.”

Dw! 😃

You have a safe word in case you actually feel wrecked, and Muzan respects your boundaries 🫡

After all, he needs to gain your trust before he can push them 😃

—WOWIE I did not mean to get so intense for Muzan 🫣

#headcanons #modern au #demon slayer smut #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #kokushibo kny #kokushibo demon slayer #kokushibo x reader #muzan kny #muzan demon slayer #muzan x reader

[anistarrose]

I think when a lot of queer people who aspire to marriage, and remember (rightly) fighting for the right to marriage, see queer people who don't want marriage, talking about not entering or even reforming or abolishing marriage, there's an assumption I can't fault anyone for having — because it's an assumption borne of trauma — that queers who aren't big on marriage are inadvertently or purposefully going to either foolishly deprive themselves of rights, or dangerously deprive everyone of the rights associated with marriage. But that's markedly untrue. We only want rights to stop being locked behind marriages. We want an end to discrimination against the unmarried.

We want a multitude of rights for polyamorous relationships. We want ways to fully recognize and extend rights to non-romantic and/or non-sexual unions, including but not limited to QPRs, in a setting distinct from the one that (modern) history has spent so long conflating with romance and sex in a way that makes many of us so deeply uncomfortable. And many of us are also disabled queers who are furious about marriage stripping the disabled of all benefits.

We want options to co-parent, and retain legal rights to see children, that extends to more than two people, and by necessity, to non-biological parents (which, by the way, hasn't always automatically followed from same-gender marriage equality even in places where said equality nominally exists. Our struggles are not as different as you think). We would like for (found or biological) family members and siblings to co-habitate as equal members of a household, perhaps even with pooled finances or engaging in aforementioned co-parenting, without anyone trying to fit the dynamic into a "marriage-shaped box" and assume it's incestuous. We want options to leave either marriages, or alternative agreements, that are less onerous than divorce proceedings have historically been.

I can't speak for every person who does not want to marry, but on average, spurning marriage is not a choice we make lightly. We are deeply, deeply aware of the benefits that only marriage can currently provide. And we do not take that information lightly. We demand better.

Now, talking about the benefits of marriage in respective countries' current legal frameworks, so that all people can make choices from an informed place, is all well and good — but is not an appropriate response to someone saying they are uncomfortable with marriage. There are people for whom entering a marriage, with all its associated norms, expectations, and baggage, would feel like a betrayal of one's self and authenticity that would shake them to their core — and every day, I struggle to unpack if I'm one of them or not. If I want to marry for tax benefits, or not. If that's worth the risk of losing disability benefits, in the (very plausible) possibility that I have to apply for them later in life. If that's worth the emotional burden of having to explain over and over, to both well-meaning and deeply conservative family members, that this relationship is not one of romance or sex. (Because, god, trying just to explain aromanticism or asexuality in a world that broadly thinks they're "fake" is emotional labor enough.)

Marriage is a fundamental alteration to who I am, to what rights an ableist government grants me, and to how I am perceived. I don't criticize the institution just because I enjoy a "free spirit" aesthetic or think the wedding industry is annoying, or whatever.

#to claim “gay marriage is assimilationist” is of course bullshit and ahistorical #but to claim “gay marriage is the last marriage reform we need” is even more bullshit. in the vein of “fuck you; i got mine” #amatonormativity #marriage #there's also something idk if i'm that qualified to articulate as a culturally christian person (even if nonreligious) #but concepts of marriage (or lack thereof) vary across the globe and across cultures #yet legal marriage - which crosses borders via presence in immigration law (in addition to obvious colonialism) #can impose extremely eurocentric norms onto countless people #which is a strong argument for separating spiritual/religious marriage from legal benefits tbh #they're *supposedly* separated in the US but you know obergerfell wouldn't have taken until 2015 if that was fully true

[bomberqueen17]

*vibrating slightly in place*

So ok. When I was in kindergarten, my classroom was arranged so that four desks were linked together, so we were in little groups. I used to regularly vibrate my desk and the three it was attached to, with three other children in them, across several feet of floor space, until the linked desks ran into the teacher's desk, which was larger and did not move with the force of my vibrations. I was a good student, but hard to control, and markedly uneven in my ability to like. Do anything. "Well," my mom said once, upon beholding my entire spectrum of a report card, "we'd just hate to be bored."

When I graduated with my bachelor's degree, seventeen years later, my mom said "I never thought you could do it," and when I, shocked, said "what?" she said "well what with your ADHD and all," and I said "my what?" and she said "well, i never wanted to shake your confidence, and I thought once they put a label on you it'd be over, but you super have like, turbo ADHD. Why, what do you think your deal is?" She said it nicely and not in those words at all, but it was the first time I'd ever really realized that I wasn't just mildly eccentric, I did seem to actually have something wrong with me.

I've been trying to get a diagnosis ever since. I've never been able to. I had no health insurance at all for a huge chunk of my twenties, which put a damper on things. One doctor told me "you'd know if you had that" and when I was like "I... do" she was like "no i mean. you'd already be being treated." Which shows a wild and totally unwarranted optimism in our medical system, but she was a resident. The doctor overseeing her care of me suggested I try taking fish oil capsules. To "rebuild my brain tissue".

I did. It didn't help. I still buy them but mostly I use them now to get my cat to take pills.

Eventually in my 30s my doctors started sort of believing me maybe, or at least realizing they couldn't really brush me off (I have gotten... less easily-cowed as I've aged) but they were all like "oh, I can't evaluate that. You'll have to research and find a place that can do a neuropsych eval for you. Insurance doesn't cover those. So good luck. Have some antidepressants in the meantime."

I slid into my 40s, still undiagnosed. I read as many self-help books on the topic as I could find, did all the checklists I found. They all said "girl you super have like turbo ADHD." I tried meditation. I tried divination. I tried bullet journaling, which was hilarious. I tried yoga.

I actually damaged myself doing yoga and am banned from yoga, but at least I'm in physical therapy now. (Word to the wise: if you have really really flexible hip joints, don't fucking do yoga. "Usually I don't have to tell people not to get into that position," said my bemused physical therapist. "Oh," I said, blissfully bepretzeled. "It feels super good." "Mm," she said, "you've torn your labrum. Stop doing that." Now I do really, really boring stretches that don't feel nearly as good, but I also can walk without limping, so. Like. We take the good with the bad I guess.)

Anyway. My PCP in January was like "wait you didn't follow my super vague directions to go see 'the guys downstairs' and see if they can squeeze you into their eleven-month waiting period to get an evaluation that i cannot mention without saying it's several thousand dollars and your insurance surely won't cover it? you must not want this diagnosis very badly!" (At no point has anyone ever given me a phone number for 'the guys downstairs'. I still don't know what she meant by any of those directions. This PCP and I technically speak the same language but I've never understood a single thing she has told me and I don't think she understands a word I say in return, everything I tell her seems to be such a shock to her. You blame antidepressants for your weight gain? I've never heard of that. Ma'am please look up what the incredibly common side effects of antidepressants are.)

I called around but noplace both took my insurance and was accepting new patients. Finally I gave up. Then my Dude went on our insurance company's website and took over the search. He found that there's some kind of concierge service thing, which the insurance company normally charges $450/mo for but our plan includes it, because it's pretty well-hidden on the website and most people aren't ever going to find it anyway. So he said, you know what, I am going to instigate a query on this.

They took two weeks but eventually came back with a list of 13 places, most of them not remotely local. Ten of them were red X's, disqualified for varying reasons-- one because the phone number didn't work, another because it's a seven-hour drive away and doesn't do telehealth. One was in New Jersey. None of them were the local places I had already called.

Two of them were valid, but the insurance wouldn't cover the evaluation for various reasons.

One of them was fully covered, the insurance company said. So I went there.

Their website said "no you're not we can't see you". But Dude was like, call them on the phone. Surely, surely, the concierge service couldn't have lied??? Bet, I said, and called them and left a message, and said to him, if they call me back I will eat a hat.

But they did. They called me back. "Our insurance checker widget is down," they said. "But we do take your insurance! We can see you. We just don't know how much it will cost."

Ominous.

But. They could see me later in the week, via a telehealth appointment.

So I signed up.

The appointment was this morning. I turned up. Their insurance checker thingy still wasn't working so they couldn't be sure how much the appointment would cost me. I at this point don't care, and gave them my HSA credit card, and said do what you will.

I waited 45 minutes and then texted the number they'd texted me from with the confirmation, and a moment later the guy showed up. "Whoops," he said, "that system isn't working quite right either!"

He talked to me for like. Three minutes, and was like "yeah that sounds. Pretty textbook. I'm going to prescribe you stimulants." He then proceeded to take a very basic medical history, and I recognized all the questions because I have researched stimulant medication for ADHD so much. And he was like "We're going to start with Adderall, check at your pharmacy in like an hour." And then he gave me extremely useful and detailed instructions on how to take it, when to take it, what side effects to worry about, what to expect, what to note down in case it might mean a problem, and how to be safe about it. (He asked me three times if I'd ever been suicidal, and it had also been in the online pre-screening. I am aware that can be a rare but very serious side effect of stimulants!)

And then I went to Rite-Aid and I now have 16 pills in my possession, and i am going to wait until tomorrow morning to start taking them, and I am already scheduled for my follow-up in 15 days.

I have absolutely no idea how much any of that is going to cost, but for the record the pills were eleven dollars.

So. I don't know why the last decade of my life has been spent being told that a comprehensive and unattainably expensive neuropsychological evaluation was my only option. Maybe this place is a disreputable pill mill or whatever. But. I am going to get to try to medicate this disorder that has warped my entire life to this point, and I am going to try to see if I can't have some more control over my life, and if it doesn't work then at least I will know, instead of on my deathbed being like "i wonder if i'd ever tried amphetamines maybe I'd have been able to finish a project ever in my life, guess we'll never know".

Which was what I was starting to genuinely think was going to happen.

Literally though why can't a primary care doctor just refer you to a psychiatrist who can then decide whether you need an assessment or whether your condition is likely to respond well to a basic diagnosis?? I get needing the whole nine yards if you're not sure what's wrong with this kid and you don't want to give them the wrong thing-- like I know misdiagnosing a bipolar sufferer with depression can give you really bad outcomes, for example-- but-- I don't know? I don't know.

I just want to be able to start and finish projects. What I'd really love is to be able to make to-do lists meaningfully, as that is an ability I did used to have and now absolutely don't. I legit cannot make a to-do list in any meaningful or useful way.

So we'll see. I'm going to keep a journal and the real test of whether the pills work is to see whether I can actually keep the journal.

But I need to find some kind of edible hat, at some point, just to keep my word.

#about the author #actually adhd

[hyumjim]

Audiobooks add a whole other dimension to this conversation because like I won’t tell people who listened to the audiobook that they didn’t read the book even if they… well technically they didn’t read it. But anyway, generally it’s considered to be the same as reading but like, on a material level it’s really not, for one thing there’s the simple fact that one of these things requires the skill of literacy and the other does not. (Listening requires the skill of sustaining attention, so it’s not like it’s inherently less valuable I guess, but it is markedly different.)

But perhaps more importantly, I think that something is always lost in the narration vs reading it for yourself. For example I once listened to Levar Burton’s reading of Kelly Link’s short story “The Specialist’s Hat,” and I enjoyed it, and therefore I am familiar with the story probably as much as most people who have read it. But I just recently saw a post where someone pointed out that in this story about identical twin girls, Link describes one twin’s eyes as “grey” and the other twin’s eyes as “gray.” And I was floored by that because I think it’s brilliant— this person was using this story as an example of how gray and grey actually have two separate connotations, and Link very deftly uses it to connote that the two characters have distinct moods even as they are physically identical. And this beautiful nuance of writing is something I missed out on altogether because I listened to it and didn’t read it. It’s something that there is just no way to convey through audio.

There are also a lot of books that I’ve read that would be basically unlistenable in audio format— I’m thinking of Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” just because I’m finishing up that one right now, but another obvious example is “House of Leaves.” Basically this applies to anything that’s even a little bit of an experiment in form… but I digress…

I guess as a writer and a reader and enjoyer of language it’s just a bit sad to think that people are listening to audiobooks on 2x speed just so they can meet some imagined quota, when the experience of actually reading words is just… so much more enjoyable and enriching, in my opinion. Yes it takes longer, but that’s okay. Reading isn’t something you do absentmindedly while you’re doing something else. It’s something you have to take time out of your day to do. And sometimes you don’t have time to do it. And that’s okay! You can read a little bit and not a lot. It’s not a race.

[roachleakage]

It's been my observation that when a lot of people think of cults, they imagine something temporary. A founder starts something, people join up, a few decades to by, the founder dies, the group falls apart.

In practice, this is often not the case. Cults can survive the death of their leaders, and depending on the circumstances, can even be made (at least temporarily) stronger for it. They often last long enough to form splinter groups, sometimes with new members of the community stepping up to take the leader's place, sometimes not. And then those groups can last another few decades before splintering off again, restarting the cycle and keeping the horrors alive for another generation. Sometimes they don't need to splinter, because they've picked up enough momentum to be self-perpetuating, a successive series of replacement leaders keeping the momentum going.

Cults can go back centuries. And this is something that is so, so important for people to understand, because often when they hear that you were the victim of cult abuse they assume that you were inducted into it - and of course, that does happen and is no less horrible, but it's a markedly different experience from being raised in it from the time of your birth.

Being taught nothing, nothing, outside of what the cult teaches and the bare minimum needed to survive.

Internalizing, as a child with no independent access to information, the message that you need the cult and would be irrevocably doomed without it.

The horrifying trauma, when you finally discover (if you finally discover) that it's all bunk, of realizing that your entire life up to this point has been built on a lie. The years you spent being miserable, being terrified, doing your best not to fall from the cult's graces, were all for nothing. Wondering what you could have been and done during that time, and knowing that it was stolen from you and you will never get it back.

Literally not knowing anyone outside the cult, and having to find your own way despite the fact that your parents deliberately never taught you how. Having to completely rebuild yourself as a person, because who you were before this point was a creature built to serve, not to think or make choices or grow in new directions. Having to accept that a world you were taught to fear and despise is the only place where you really belong, and adjust to living in it and not shrinking fearfully from every stranger who crosses your path.

And when you try to talk about what happened to you, no one understands. They can only imagine a childhood like their own, born and raised with the freedom to choose, and they act as if you somehow chose, as if the people who indoctrinated you presented your infantile self with two equally well-argued possibilities and then simply urged you to pick one in specific. They see the cult from the outside, and of course it's ridiculous, of course it's horrible, why would anyone willingly submit to that?

No one does. Cults don't run on willing converts, they run on deception and coercion. Imagine that all that started before you were old enough to walk, and was the only life you knew for the first twenty years. I didn't choose to be a cult member, my mom quite literally picked it out for me.

I did get out, eventually. It wasn't a matter of being smart enough; it was a combination of luck, unmonitored Internet access, and some of the very traits my parents drilled into me backfiring on them hilariously. Not everyone is as lucky as I was. Not everyone has the means and the incentive to find their way out. My parents were born into the cult and they will die in it.

That might be what hurts the worst - losing the people who were my whole world as a child, because they're too afraid to consider that they might have been wrong.

#cults #cult abuse #ex cult #cult survivor #trauma #religious abuse