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aroaceleovaldez · 1 year

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Okay these tags on this post reminded me of a HoO/TOA thing that I complain about a lot but I don’t think i’ve ever elaborated on here:

[Image ID: Tags from @fr0zenpepsi reading - “#and jason fUCKING DIES before he even get fixed like #you dont know how excited i was when the diorama thing was mentioned like #make him artistic too!! make him be into architecture too! #and he plays lacrosse???? #like his character has sooo much potential yet hes just a boring white guy :< #thats prolly why his death is pretty lame #it meant a lot to the plot but like do we even know who we lost?? #more than half of the fandom doesnt even like him bc hes just so plain :/ #also hazel is a queen and i love her shes literally the best” /end ID.]

One of the big issues I take with both HoO and TOA is that literally every death in both series feels cheap because death has lost consequence. For the majority of HoO it’s at least somewhat still of a risk, but even things like Tartarus feel extremely lackluster when we actually encounter them - Tartarus especially after we saw how much it affected Nico, but then Percy and Annabeth’s plot armor kind of negates all of the threat and it feels like they don’t actually experience much more than their usual threats down there or that it has any lasting effect on them. And after Leo’s “death” we’re basically solidified into “Death has no consequence” because we just finished a series with at least SIX INSTANCES of major or minor protagonist-aligned characters notably directly cheating or miraculously avoiding death (Jason, Hazel, Gwen, Frank, Jason again, Leo), not including also miscellaneous minor antagonists. Which is aggravating because you can make a “Hey, these characters can’t die!” plot work, especially if that’s the root problem they’re trying to solve! It does work in TLH and SoN! And we’ve even seen it before in Battle of the Labyrinth when Percy fights his half-brother!

But HoO basically nullifies all consequence the characters face from MoA onwards and post-BoO “death” carries no weight, because by this point we have so many excuses to get around it or avoid it or come back from it that who cares! And this continues to be a thing post-TOA! Even just in the plot summary of Chalice Of The Gods we’re introduced to YET ANOTHER “Cheat death!” item! And I’d bet we’re gonna get one in TSATS too cause we’re almost guaranteed to see Damasen again, and the like one singular myth that exists referencing Damasen also specifically mentions an herb called “the flower of Zeus” that can revive things from the dead.

And it’s extra annoying because in TOA we keep getting character deaths shoved in our faces and told we should care about them, but either they’re characters we have little to no emotional connection to (such as, like, All Of Camp Jupiter in Tyrant’s Tomb when the camp is threatened and we’re told we should care, but we’ve barely seen the camp at all besides beginning of Son of Neptune and beginning of Mark of Athena, and the only living characters we get to actually see in Camp Jupiter from before TOA are Gwen, Dakota, Don the Faun, and our HoO protagonists.)

And Jason’s death is particularly annoying because a.) He’s essentially cheated death twice already [Piper bringing him back from either death or near-death when he accidentally witnessed Hera’s true form, and then his whole spear injury that was slowly killing him but was healed with [checks notes] the power of friendship], and b.) the scene DIRECTLY PARALLELS HIS FIGHT WITH MIDAS. Which, you know, he WON. VERY EASILY. And you can’t even argue “oh but this time Piper and Apollo were right there so he couldn’t have done the same thing!” because PIPER AND LEO WERE THERE WITH MIDAS. Heck, so was Lit! Who also survives and comes back in TOA! So not only is there no excuse for Jason to have not somehow miraculously avoided death (alongside every other TOA character, basically), but he SHOULDN’T HAVE DIED IN THE FIRST PLACE because THAT’S NOT A FIGHT HE SHOULD HAVE LOST! Him losing that fight is directly contrary to what we know about his character! And “he shouldn’t have lost that fight and died” doesn’t feel tragic here, it’s just aggravating! It’s just bad writing! And there’s no way around it because nobody cares about characters dying by that point in the series anyways because it doesn’t mean anything! We’ve had too much random death fodder in HoO (like the Hunters) directly alongside characters experiencing little to no consequence when they should from their experiences (Percy & Annabeth in Tartarus, literally every character nearly dying, etc.). The only characters we do see experience any kind of lasting consequences from near-death experiences are Hazel having blackouts in Son of Neptune (which are magically erased by Mark of Athena) and Nico being heavily implied to be permanently physically disabled after Tartarus (which is half-ignored when not plot relevant in TOA and completely ignored in the short story Un Natale Mezzosangue, which gives me reason to suspect it will also be ignored in TSATS). Not to mention Frank’s curse is also randomly erased in Tyrant’s Tomb, which is extra stupid because by following the logic of that scene his curse should have been lost back in Son of Neptune when he freed Thanatos, because he was using his curse for the same exact reasons with the same exact mindset. He literally did his character arc twice. Whatever.

HoO and TOA are just such a mess writing-wise of Rick trying to haphazardly incorporate as many myths as he can with zero attempts at cohesiveness that it doesn’t make any sense (I invite you all to read just the Team Statue chapters of BoO and take a moment to process how absolutely nonsensical it is) and he fails to consider the consequences of including certain myths, both in terms of how their aspects will impact the larger plot and also the historical context behind those myths and if how they’re being applied is offensive.

TL:DR: Jason’s death is stupid from literally every angle and HoO and TOA have a problem with literally any kind of narrative consequence.

#riordanverse #pjo #hoo #heroes of olympus #toa #trials of apollo #jason grace #meta #long post #fr0zenpepsi#sorry to hijack your tags lmao #i just have a lot of thoughts on why Jason's death is lame and i 100% agree with you the fact that we barely *know* Jason is part of it #ergo the same problem in Tyrant's Tomb when we're literally just told we should be sad about all these background death fodder romans #but we've only seen Camp Jupiter like twice up until that point so there's literally no reason for us to be emotionally attached to anything #like. oh nooo CJ's in trouble.... why do we care?#CHB we care about because it's a major setting we see often and we've developed a connection to #if we had another series focusing on just the romans then it'd probably be different and we'd care a *lot* about CJ #but we. don't. so we don't. and putting CJ in any kind of peril is meaningless #not that the peril TOA puts on CHB is actually anything at all either. in Hidden Oracle it's at most the same peril as the desert in TTC #and it gets nullified extremely quickly with even less tragedy. its downright humorous actually. which is almost worse #and then same thing in ToN when the demigods fighting in the building are literally being treated like theyre on a field trip #this is supposed to be the BIG FINAL BATTLE and the forces of CHB are... a bunch of 12 year olds playing?#honestly HoO and TOA almost feel like Rick got scared of actually having CHB be threatened and so turns to humor instead #and so every fight that happens there post-first series feels like it's not being taken seriously #or that it's extremely rushed. or both. and fights involving the majority of camp doesnt actually put the campers in danger #like okay Camp Jupiter gets a zombie apocalypse and tons of death.#CHB? the kids go on a field trip to beat up the Tri's lackeys and nobody gets even seriously injured #besides the characters who arent campers or like. our protagonists get a little thrown around but thats it.

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cogbreath · 4 months

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i waint to hea r your bbt things

sheldon is also not the only one whos autistic imo. im not certain of who i all headcanon as such, but i feel its a fitting one for amy and bernadette actually. i think a lot of the problems with the way sheldon's autism is written is the fact that other characters don't *respect* him about it. like his needs and behaviors are often belittled or treated as nonsensical. overall i think everyone should be much kinder and understanding about it towards him seeing as they are literally his friends and all.

also probably a nitpicky thing and a matter of my own autistic sensory preferences but i feel it makes more sense for sheldon to NOT wear his sleeves rolled up for sensory reasons. whatever though im allowed to project. also i think they missed an opportunity to explore his interest in vexillology more? like there was maybe 1 or 2 episodes i remember about it but if youve ever met a vexillology enjoyer you know its a common topic they gush about.

speaking of gushing i think the dynamic between sheldon and amy would be like. two autistic best friends who love to infodump at eachother and do parallel activities. at most maybe they have some sort of queerplatonic thing going on? but im not actually super versed in what that means despite being aromantic myself xP

oh anothet thing that bothers me is how the female characters are written as not getting any of the geeky stuff??? it's stupid. like, yeah penny isnt a nerd, but she's an aspiring actress i think she would know what a star trek is. -_- honestly like, all of them would understand a lot of those things and are probably into similar stuff. bbt seems to think that like, these are Guy interests that all women dont understand or get when in reality like, dc comics n shit like that, literally your average person can follow along so i hate that they make the women seem as if they don't understand star wars references.

obviously this is probably one of the most common complaints about the show but id love to have made a lot of the pop culture references controlled and niche. we dont need a reference every other 5 minutes, id like to define each character's interests in a more sensicle way outside of just "haha guys look theres nerd stuff on tv hahah did you guys get that reference"?

also another problem is the way howard behaves. like some episodes his behavior is like, sexual harassment at times, which is met with a laugh track every time. not cool, and unnecessary, should be written to be more respectful. and then of course id like to make him have a better view of his mother, the dynamic in the show is one based off of antisemitic stereotypes about jewish mothers, and thats shitty. i wont retcon it to be a perfect mother/son relationship, like they would definitely still bicker, but i want to potray his mother as more than nagging and obsessive, like perhaps she does care too much and doesn't always treat him as an adult at times, but i dont find a lot of the overall nastiness that happens in the show between them to be funny or interesting.

raj is a pretty okay character imho, but definitely needs to be written more respectfully. He is a major example of the trope of characters of colour being sidelined. like the fact he was the ONLY character to be single in the end of the series? its kinda fucked up lol. obviously as mentioned before i think raj x howard should be the canon outcome. howeber both of them are bisexual, they both are potrayed as having interest in women; but i also think their interest in eachother is serious, or at least should be written as such. its also probably likely that the way he's written in terms of his culture should be improved but i havent gotten around to that just yet. i also think his anxiety issues should have been written with more respect, like the fact he was physically unable to talk to girls i think shouldnt have been an issue he had with *just* women. it seems they were trying to potray him as having selective mutism? but obviously thats not a thing that ONLY happens when one is a around ppl they r attracted to.

bernadette im actually rlly excited to write better because she reminds me of myself at times. i will dial her mischievous nature and her interest in microbiology up to 10. i will make her infodump about prions just i do.

also imho leonard is transmasc. i dont have any like, "evidence" or theory for why i think that other than just he feels that way to me. not that we even need justifications for transgender headcanons around these parts though.

also wil wheaton will NOT be existing anymore as a character in the narrative due to the fact he blocked me on tumblr for some dumbass shit. LOL.

uh i didnt expect to actually have all that much to say about this show... LOL.. enjoy my rambling!

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glitterfiasco · 6 months

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i found this ramble in my drafts from february and it makes some reference to dated news but I wanna post it anyway bc nothing has changed about the issue itself

it really baffles me how dndbeyond does cosmetics.

there's a whole host of currently existing options - varying theme colours, pretty artwork to make your background, cool frames for your character profile! i play with all of these on my character sheets, and they're funky, really help you personalise your sheets and connect them to your characters!!

the main problem? the *only* way you can get a majority of the cosmetics is through pre-ordering books. now, pre-order bonuses are a good marketing strategy, sure, and with pre-order bonuses comes the nececcity for those bonuses to be exclusive. but when those cosmetics are a big majority of those that exist? you have a problem.

on a whole, of course i dislike the overall sentiment behind Cynthia Williams' notion that dnd is 'under monetized' - and the whole money-hungry mess that things have seemed with wotc lately. yet, i think in this specific matter i actually agree that it's a shame players don't have many options to spend money on the game. but...maybe let's give them some reasonable ones?

i am a DM, and have, as per Williams' observations, probably spent more on the game than the average non-DM. wotc can care about that discrepancy, but i really dont. what i do care about is that i am also a player and i *want* to be able to also spend on player things - like making my sheets look cool! and i actively cannot! in fact, the cosmetics i do own are primarily from pre-ordered books (some kindly gifted!) that i had interest in because i was a DM! it's not worth as a player it to pre-order a book you won't use for only the pre-order bonuses, and though a DM can awkwardly share those bonuses with their players, currently the only primary way players can get cosmetics is the few unpredictable monthly reward of a subscription. and we'll get back to those.

another downside to the pre-order bonus model? how fucking specific those cosmetics are - and i move to focus primarily on the frames here. they're of course themed to the books, but so often in a way that makes me wonder how few characters these would really fit the sheets of.

here are some frames from the Tasha's and Ravenlost pre-orders. the art is nice enough but...who wants these? i dont want these.

to get back to the subscriber frames, one might expect these to offer the more universal range of options. there are a couple nice vague frames, but the very few options are, once again, largely very specific, as season-themed frames. the subscriber frames include such all-applicable options as these.

you'll also notice a trend of heavily obscuring the character portrait itself (most obvious with my first two examples, and i promise there are other similar instances). overall it's just...frustrating that it's so difficult to find a frame that actually fits a character, nor obscures them beyond readability.

for so long, I've been baffled at the lack of a cosmetics shop where one can buy generic and specific frames for pocket change. It seems so obvious, and hardly outside dndbeyond's current setup. give me leafy frames for naturey characters, music note frames for musicians! frames themed after signature spells - magic missile, mage hand, crown of stars. frames designed after the types of damage, after different subclasses, after different weapons! frames with varying levels of complexity - both simple designs that can just match a character's colour scheme, and detailed animated frames!

when we got these frames, and I was estatic! It really seemed like a step in the right direction with simple, useable, non-obscuring frames. they're great!

but since, though frames have gotten a little better in readability and specificity, we see no indication towards any change. occasionally, a book like the wildemount book will have some lovely generic frames, but then then the subscriber rewards are right back to weird and specific. can only keep fingers crossed, i suppose.

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cyberdragoninfinity · 1 year

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hi yeah i have a little more i want to add on to the Duel Links AI Characters thing. This kinda blurs the line between Headcanon and Theory tho

A really weird thing that is either brilliant subtext or me just reading in to things too hard is the progression of the AI Duelists. Not like, the release of duel worlds and stuff, or powercreep, or anything like that. I mean theres two real, defined types of AIs in Duel Links.

If you look at a lot of the DM characters... theyre fairly flat. Like yeah I know thats also true of Téa/Anzu and Mai and stuff in the show, but it applies to pretty much the entire starting roster. The most odd yet obvious example of this is, oddly enough, Yami Yugi. My mans got Nothing. Hardly shows up in events, any place he would its usually Yugi(DM) instead, and he had very few gate interactions.

Now, think about that from a lore perspective. Yami Yugi is the whole fuckin' point of this. This is the AI Kaiba set out and tried to make, wanted to fill the gay ass void in his heart see again, and he's so... bland. Uninteresting. Why?

Turns out, its because of that very reason. He was the First, of course hes gonna be worse than the others. As time went on, Kaiba got better at making the AIs. And at first, it really was him making the AIs. Let me explain.

Again, looking at the earlier characters again, something becomes obvious. These characters are bland because theyre almost... missing something. If you look at everything they say, everything they do, something clicks. Its all stuff Kaiba either heard about secondhand, or was physically present for. He made the best approximation he could, on his own, but theyre just that: approximations. Easy best example is the first ever event character, Yami Bakura. A fascinating character in Duel Links lore, simply because he's the first Self Aware AI. A big question that comes out of this is Why, and the answer I believe is rlly cool: hes not Yami Bakura. Not even close. Like yeah obviously hes an AI clone, but thats not even what I mean. Kaiba knows so little about Bakura that he couldnt even make a complete personality. He just put a kinda mischevious personality in a Bakura Costume, gave it an interest in occult and Tabletop RPG games, and told it to do its best.

But this is Seto Fucking Kaiba. He doesnt settle for that. So, he got to work on a new, better system. A System that lets him use [insert bullshit explanation here, I like "uses the collective memories of players"] to truly copy people down to their very souls. And the first few times, it goes well. It really is an exact replica... and maybe, maybe thats an issue.

Pegasus J. Crawford has been dead for years at that point, but his impact on the game and large presence make it almost obvious in hindsight. If it were anyone but Seto Kaiba, this might have been the cue to say "hey maybe this is a little fucked up and I need more control over who gets added."

However, Seto 'As the owner of a major corporation I have to do that everyday' Kaiba dont roll like that, so he just leaves the Soul Printer on to do whatever the fuck it wants, and... yeah. After that point, every other AI, along with the duel worlds, is a result of the soul printer. Maybe he should have at least limited the scope to this dimension and the egyptian afterlife tho.

Theres also an argument that its not that the soul printer wasnt ready, its that he needed a playerbase to steal the brain power off of to run said soul printer, so he whipped up the first few to get started.

...sorry i forgot just how much brain rot this game caused me and ur earlier posts got me going again ;-;

OOOHOHOHOHOO THIS IS SUPERRR SUPER GOOD STUFF and I definitely think this is picking at what's really under the hood here. Transcend Game was all about Kaiba using people's (many of which being CHILDREN'S) brainwaves to create images and experiences, so it really would not be out of his ballpark to get the system running and just leave it to do its thing while he goes off and obsesses over shit like Why Isn't The Atem AI Right. It's Not Perfect. Why Isn't It Perfect.

and now you've got the AIs themselves producing 'brainwaves' and feeding memories into the system, and that's popping More AIs into the world in turn (i.e. Yuto's and Yuya's memories being the catalyst for Shay showing up, etc.) and they're...uh. starting to get self aware!!!! SO THAT'S FUN. It's like an ouroboros feedback loop of fake memories creating fake memories creating copies of what was once someone's memories.

All cuz SOMEBODY wanted to be king of a virtual reality even though he has more money than god and better things he could be doing 🙄

#THIS IS SUCH COOL STUFF THANK YOU FOR SHARING. I LOVE SEEING PEOPLE'S DL LORE TAKES #CUZ AGAIN. THERE ISNT REALLY ONE CONSISTENT ARCHIVE OF ALL THE LORE and it's a shame. this shit rules #asks #ask-maxie-boy #ygo posting #duel links madness

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chaos-in-one · 3 months

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Hello!! I came back to see if you had seen the ask and saw that you've answered it, I'll try to get my thoughts to make sense, if you have any questions I'm very happy to answer (sidenote I'm sorry if you can't understand any part of this, my first language is not English)

Firstly, Hellenic polytheism, the religion that ancient greece followed, is a semi open *religion*, this doesn't mean that greek culture is "open"

Greek people find it weird when non Greeks use our culture (the only time we don't is marrying into a greek family, which you are not)

The reason that this isn't widespread is because most greek people are on the brink of homelessness and don't have the time to tell people, especially people on the internet (most greek people who have an issue with it dont even know English((70% of greek people))so they *couldn't* tell you)

Also, your name being specifically from greek mythology is the problem

New greek names come from all over the world (example being Γιώργος which is taken from George or Γιάννης which is taken from John)

Mythological greek names are purely greek, which greek people find it weird when non Greeks just decide to use greek names out of nowhere (liking the name and/or the meaning isn't a solid reason)

all the greek people I know agree with this, which is a lot of people because I live in Greece

As someone who's born and raised in Greece, it makes us uncomfortable

While it isnt "closed culture", greek people don't like it when non Greeks use our names if they aren't given them by a greek person

Also, this point doesn't have anything to do with this mostly but we don't appreciate that you listen to an someone who, to your knowledge, is not greek and hasnt spoken to any people without much hesitation (I'm sorry if I'm misinterpreting)

Alright I think I understand. Partially anyways. Because it's not out of nowhere that people started using Greek mythological names so I don't really get that point. It's largely because many parts of Greek culture have been pretty widespread. Partially because in the past Greece colonized many other countries, and therefore spread a lot of Greek religion and culture to other places. That's not the case anymore so it's mainly older Greek names, such as mythological names, that are now more widespread.

Also not really getting the point about homelessness and non-english speaking rates? The homelessness rates are very high in Greece but it's not the majority of Greece like you are stating, and Greece has from what I can find, over half of the country speaks english. So I do kind of get why there would be less Greeks speaking on it because of that, but I still am confused as to why I'm not finding *anything* on it anywhere. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want the opinion of more than one person and I'm not finding anything at all.

Also I'm not listening to non Greek people about it. I'm sharing my confusion on the subject with them, because this is the first and only place I've heard of this.

Again though, if you have name suggestions go right ahead. Because if it is really a problem, which from what you're saying it seems to be, I'll change my name. But it took a very long time for me to find a name I felt comfortable with and I have yet to find any other name that fits me, so it's not going to be an immediate switch.

#ask #asks

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my-shields-are-down · 2 years

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What's ur thoughts on the break up? Should Tim have broken it off?

Personally if Tim did break up with Ashley then he'd have to face his feelings for Lucy and I dont think he's ready to just yet.

Thanks for the question! People might be surprised by my answer - especially since I have been anti-Ashley (I call her Voldie in most other places, but not today) for awhile now.

I have mixed feelings about “the break up”. Turns out I have quite a lot of thoughts on this (and some tangents), so this might be long.

First, on the surface the manner in which Ashley broke up with Tim was harsh - a total dick move. She couldn’t wait until he was coherent, she had to dump & dash the instant he was opened his eyes? She couldn’t wait until he was clear of anesthesia? Completely heartless. Rude.

And yet, on another hand, she had an epiphany at some point that a life with Tim where he stays in his job and doesn’t retire is not a life she can lead - so she swiftly takes action and goes. I am all about action, deciding or recognizing what works or doesn’t, what you want and going after that?! Fuck yeah, I support that big time. That said, I would have waited - because that was the more compassionate, empathetic way to do it. The way Ashley has been written, neither of those two things would be considered her top qualities. Lucy? Yes, definitely. Ashley? Not so much.

I think there were clues from the beginning of the episode that this could happen.

1) Tim mentions being on Whole 30 - it was Ashley’s idea in reaction to her dad having some health issues. Ashley and her Dad are wickedly close - I bet she is freaking out that his health could be at risk- so she’s desperately trying to control her life. Tim is part of that world - so he gets controlled to.

2) Ashley got WAY too excited about the possibility of Tim retiring. I felt like she was on a game show and the host had just said, “if he retires, tell her what she’s won Bob!” For a first time conversation on the topic she just barreled through all the possibilities and benefits like it was a done deal. Which made me think that she’s had this conversation with her Dad on more than one occasion and Dad regrets not taking advantage sooner - or he says he does.

She then brushes off Tim’s idea of traveling to see a MLB game in every stadium - which first, I raised my hand and volunteered to go with him, and second I think she does that all the time with Tim. The few scenes we saw her in were about Tim changing to meet her wants and needs instead of them growing together in a new direction.

3) Neither Tim nor Ashley asked any questions about the surgery. Granted because of their jobs as first responders, they’ve have some trauma training and advanced first aid classes. But this is major surgery, major not because of method - the fact they can do a minimally invasive procedure is fantastic, but major because the spine is involved. Like the brain, there’s so much unknown about the spine and the nervous system and LUCY is the only one who asks about the dangers involved the surgery. No one asks about side effects, or lasting damage, recovery times, PT, pain management, etc etc. I get being shocked, but this is why you take someone with you to ask questions while you sit there and freak out about knives being near your spine.

4) Ashley just stood there. She wasn’t holding his hand, or sitting next to Tim in the bed providing comfort and care before during or after the doctor’s visit. She was facing him like an adversary as opposed to sitting next to him as a partner or team member. Without knowing how she and Tim interact when alone, I read this as she was starting to distance herself from him. With him, but not.

She’s not overtly affectionate, she’s very reserved, hesitant almost and I think insecure. She rarely looks Tim in the eye for any extended period of time, and she’s not aware or open to Tim. I don’t think she loves Tim as he is. I think she loves the version of Tim that she’s created in her head, if he changes x, y, z then he’ll be perfect. A confident person loves and accepts themselves, I don’t think Ashley does. She kept looking to Tim for validation, that’s not confidence.

I said it in another post, but I think Ashley’s relationship with her Dad really shapes her relationship with Tim. She’s the apple of Jerry’s eye. I am sure Jerry doted on her and always let her have her way. So she manhandles her relationship with Tim to recreate that type of relationship where she’s the focus, and she controls everything.

Because things with her most important male (Jerry) are taking some hits because of his health, Ashley’s relationship with a Tim is receiving the backlash of that. She’s going to want Tim to provide her with a life that gives HER happiness - a lifeguard in Bali, living with Tim off his free money. When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she bailed and ran.

I don’t think Lucy ever really entered into Ashley’s mind about the break up other than as a passing thought that Tim has a large cop family to support him.

===

I think if we had waited for Tim to break up with Ashley, we would have been waiting a long time. Tim liked Ashley. He cared about her. I think he was stung when she left him - more proof he’s unlovable, that people who love him, leave him. She was safe. Tim knew what to expect in his relationship with Ashley.

Being in a relationship with Lucy is wholly overwhelming for Tim. Like space, it’s undiscovered territory. He’s been in love - but Isobel didn’t know him as well as Lucy does. He has female friends - but he does not long for Angela like he longs for Lucy. I believe Tim doesn’t think Lucy likes him likes him or more importantly doesn’t think she loves him loves him. Yes, she’s attracted to him and yes, she willingly invited Tim into her home for a night of sexual pleasure. But she said it was biology. He doesn’t yet know it wasn’t just that for her.

IMO Tim never would have broken up with Ashley unless Lucy broke up with Chris and she told Tim that it wasn’t pretend for her. That she loves him and wants to be with him. Lucy, however, is waiting for Tim to do the same thing. She’s waiting for Tim to say he wants her, that he desires her, that he loves her. They are both waiting for the other to make the first move.

Right now, Tim’s overwhelmed with feelings. Feelings about Ashley and their break up. Feelings about Lucy. Feelings about her spending the night in the hospital with him. Feelings about surgery, retirement, marriage, babies, his sister, selling his childhood home, his dad dying, etc. He’s got more feelings on top of feelings, intertwined with other feelings that he doesn’t know which way is up. Before he can do anything, he has to untangle them all, acknowledge and name them and accept and process them. I bet he deals with Lucy first because SHE is the most important thing to him.

Thankfully, Tim is much more adept at dealing with them now. He’s strengthened his emotional intelligence muscle (thank you Lucy), but he’s not a talker - unless he talks to Lucy. He’s an avoider - and he’s going to avoid Lucy because it hurts him not being able to fully connect like he wants to. As he realizes how in deep the connection is with her, I don’t think he’ll be able to do it half way. Unless, there’s an imminent threat to losing her, I don’t think he’s going to be able to let her back in not all the way- his struggle with wanting to be near Lucy vs letting her in all the way, will play out on Tim’s super expressive face.

Tim is in feelings overload- so I expect Tim to revert back to TO Tim or try to at least. I loved that version of him. I’ve loved Tim since day one. He was in self-preservation mode. A hard shell and big time walls preventing people from seeing the anguish and heartbreak over losing his wife. Imagine it - you are married and one day your spouse disappears. Gone. How would YOU handle that? What would YOU be like in the world? Would you put up walls so you could cope? Or would all your emotions be on display 24x7? Or somewhere in between? Tim likely will distance himself emotionally with extreme professionalism as a way to keep his feelings hidden and in check. Without Ashley he now has no protection from Lucy, his feelings are going to be more obviously on display. He will probably make some bad decisions along the way. Until he opens back up and let’s Lucy back in.

Anyway… my 25 cents on the topic.

#askandrea #chenford #tim bradford #lucy chen #the rookie #i love them #tim x lucy #breaking up is hard to do #ashley mcgrady #i'm in chenford withdrawal

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sometimes-men-need-help-too · 2 years

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Hey, what do you think about this one:

https://khanbika.tumblr.com/post/693576051182419968/unpopular-opinion-but-i-genuinely-dont

It's short, so I'll post it for everyone else to see:

Unpopular opinion, but I genuinely don't understand the "Men are inherently privileged in this society". Like, who's the first to die in wars? Who's always expected to sacrifice themselves and not expect any help? Who's seen as inherently dangerous and violent and thus experience police bias? Who's sexual violence victims are always overlooked and hardly every get any justice? Who's expected to be feminist for equal rights BUT pay for the woman they're not even dating yet? Ik last one isn't a huge deal, I'm saying that it's about always placing the financial burden on a man as if a woman is his child or something.

You may go on about how these issues are invented by men, but if you're a man or society forces you to be one, it doesn't help you anyhow or chanhe the situation. You have to sacrifice yourself, you have to go to the army, you will be ignored as a sa or violence victim. You can be a dead ass 'smash the patriarchy' dude but this won't save you from all of these issues. So where is the inherent privilege? I agree that male privileges do exist, but there are also disadvantages and pretty serious ones. How the fuck are we supposed to ignore all this?

- Like, who's the first to die in wars?

Let us by way of conclusion repeat the two major findings. The first is the fact that in ongoing wars which occur most often in developing countries, men die more frequently than women in direct armed conflicts, while more women than men die in post-conflict situations of the indirect causes of war. The other finding is the fact that we in general know very little about the conflict related mortality of both women and men in contemporary wars. Both findings hamper policy planning for military and humanitarian assistance. We have no good data on the causes of death in modern wars. Are male casualties a result of deadly wounds or of the lack of medical care or of other war related diseases? What are the causes of female deaths in post-conflict situations?

There really isn’t a good source out there that specifically says who dies more. The numbers you see are just totals of everyone who died.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.613.9724&rep=rep1&type=pdf

- Who's always expected to sacrifice themselves and not expect any help?

As a society, we tend to not care as much when it comes to the well being of men. We see what women go through as more tragic and more deserving of attention and resources when we should be paying attention to both. This is what is referred to as male disposability.

For example, cancer.

The 2nd deadliest cancer for women is breast cancer. The 2nd for men is prostate cancer.

nearly 10,000 men in the United States are diagnosed with testicular cancer each year. But you wouldn’t know it, from the cancer research funding. The National Cancer Institute spends twice as much funding research on breast cancer than it does on prostate cancer; the National Institutes of health spends almost three times more ($700 million, to prostate cancer’s $250 million).

It’s just in the US that prostate cancer gets lesser funding. The UK only has £12m that goes towards it while breast cancer gets £23m.

Oftentimes when you hear about cancer and you hear about fundraisers and such, it’s about breast cancer. Shining a light on it isn’t a bad thing, but we shouldn’t overlook what prostate cancer does to men.

ttps://www.cancerresearchuk.org/funding-for-researchers/facts-and-figures-about-our-research-funding-0

https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/prostate-cancer-research-funding-breast-cancer

Another example is homelessness. In Portland Oregon back in 2015, Mayor Charlie Hales said he wants to declare a housing emergency next month with the hope of providing shelter for all homeless women by year's end.

At that time, the percentage of adult women who were homeless was 30% while 58% of adult men were homeless.

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/toolkit/article/562207

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2015/09/portland_housing_emergency_to.html#:~:text=Portland%20Mayor%20Charlie%20Hales%20on%20Wednesday%20said%20he,homeless%20women%20by%20the%20end%20of%20the%20year.

- Who's sexual violence victims are always overlooked and hardly every get any justice?

Oftentimes, this goes unreported and not taken into account. That’s why we see low numbers. There’s this huge stigma that both men and women (some, not all of course) are at fault for. It’s seen as offensive to some that you would even mention it because they think it happens so little and your focus should be on the female victims.

Human trafficking is one such example.

Now, mounting evidence, along with the accounts of front-line psychologists and social workers, show that men and boys make up a significant proportion of victims of trafficking, validating Procopio's realization. A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2012 estimated that men accounted for 25 percent of trafficking victims globally. Further, the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons estimated that 27 percent of all victims detected globally were children and that of those, one in three victims were boys.

In addition, staff at the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline identified more than 24,000 cases of human trafficking in the United States from 2012 to September 2016. Of those, 13 percent—or more than 3,000—were men.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/04/sex-trafficking

Internationally, there has been a greater response to male victims of sex trafficking, especially in Asia and the Middle East where the crime is much more rampant. Service providers in the UAE recently opened the first center for male victims of human trafficking in Abu Dhabi and anti-trafficking organizations focusing solely on men such as Urban Light are common in Southeast Asia. In general, there are more foreign organizations working with male victims of sex trafficking because of the high rates of HIV / AIDS in Asia and the global south. Treatment for HIV / AIDS is often part of the rehabilitation and recovery services offered for male victims of sex trafficking. Even in developed countries, there has been a concern for male victims of sex trafficking. For example, in the United Kingdom there is growing awareness of the number of male victims after a report by the Salvation Army stated that 41 percent of human trafficking victims in the United Kingdom were men. Regardless of location or gender, what it really comes down to is that all victims of sex trafficking need a safe place for recovery and rehabilitation.

https://humantraffickingsearch.org/invisible-men-male-victims-of-sex-trafficking/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/300796/percentage-of-trafficking-victims-worldwide-by-gender-and-age/

That graph on Statista shows an increase in male victims from 2004 to 2018, although there was a 1% decrease from 2016-2018

Granted yes, women make up a large number of victims. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize that it happens to both. I don’t think a lot of people realize that boys are victims as well. You just don’t think about it. You hear human trafficking and you think of women and girls. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to sound like we shouldn’t have any focus on women and girls, we just need to think about both. We should help both. We should give attention towards both.

- Who's seen as inherently dangerous and violent and thus experience police bias?

For all young men, regardless of skin color, police violence was also a leading cause of death between 2013 and 2018. Overall, women are about 20 times less likely to be killed by police than men.

The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1821204116

https://www.gilmorehealth.com/men-are-20-times-more-likely-than-women-to-be-killed-by-the-police-regardless-of-race/

- Who's expected to be feminist for equal rights BUT pay for the woman they're not even dating yet?

In a survey on love and finances conducted by Money and SurveyMonkey, 78% of respondents said they think men should pay on the first date. Out of the 4,447 participants, 20 percent disagreed, while 2 percent declined to answer.

Overall, women were slightly less united on the matter. While 85% of men agreed that their wallets should be on the line, only 72% of women said so. This trend held steady with every group except for divorcees, where women slightly edged out the men in answering “yes.”

The gender gap was widest among single people who have never been married: A full third of single women said men shouldn't be expected to foot the bill on the first outing. Also, a quarter of all millennials responded “no” when asked if they thought, in general, men should pay.

The survey does not account for regional disparities or the broad spectrum of relationships outside of the heterosexual. But for now, it appears men are still largely expected to pony up on the first date. So how much will this tradition cost them?

When asked how much was appropriate to spend on a first date, 41% of respondents answered $25 to $49. But many male respondents claimed to be bigger spenders: 43% of men said they expected to shell out between $50 and $99 on a first date.

And according to this:

Chivalry dictates that on a “date,” the man pays, whereas egalitarian ideals suggest that gender should not determine who pays. We examined the extent to which people embrace or reject these competing notions. Unmarried heterosexual participants (N = 17,607) reported their behaviors and attitudes regarding who does and who should pay for dates on a survey posted on NBCNews.com. Although most men (74%) and women (83%) report that both members of the couple contribute to dating expenses after dating for 6 months, most men (84%) and women (58%) reported that men still pay more expenses. Many women (39%) wished men would reject their offers to pay and 44% of women were bothered when men expected women to help pay. Many women, however, were bothered when men won’t accept their money (40%). Nearly two thirds of men (64%) believed that women should contribute and nearly half of men (44%) said they would stop dating a woman who never pays. Nevertheless, the majority of men said they feel guilty when accepting women’s money (76%). These data illustrate how many people are resisting or conforming to traditional gender norms in one telling aspect of dating that historically was related to the male’s displaying benevolent sexism, dominance, and ability to fulfill breadwinner role during courtship.

https://money.com/valentines-day-men-pay-first-date/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244015613107

The answer as to who should pay really depends on the person. A common reason you’ll hear why men should is that they need to make a good first impression, it’s being a gentleman or if he asked, he should pay. Something along those lines. I think regardless of who asks, the first date should be split. That’s just my opinion.

This whole idea of men being “privileged” has done harm. It’s the only problem that has people not seeing that men have their own issues too, but it doesn’t help. It’s pretty hard to see it when you’re constantly being fed this idea that men are always benefiting in society (especially the more narrow you go with sexuality, race, etc.).

Some people might still see them as privileged while having their own issues. Others, the more extreme type, don’t see them as having problems. It seems impossible to them.

And that, everyone, is a huge problem

#mens rights #anti misandry #misandry #male privilege #double standards

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aspd-culture · 1 year

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is it an aspd thing to feel like any and all anger towards my exceptions must be buried because i dont trust myself to know when its actaully "right" and i dont want to hurt them? i dont know how to cope with it i feel like i want to scream at them more and more and i dont want to ruin it

Oh look, apparently someone managed to take my life and submit it into an ask on my blog again. /lh

Big yes, that is definitely an ASPD thing. We are *constantly* being told that are anger is overblown, aggressive, etc etc so it becomes very hard for many of us to recognize when our anger is legitimate vs when we are dealing with a symptom flare. I struggle with this myself all the time, and it's the worst when my Exceptions are involved because my emotions with them can sometimes be much more extreme than with other people because ASPD comes from attachment issues that lead to distrust. Since Exceptions are people we are the most vulnerable around, as well as the most socially involved/close with, that can often trigger our ASPD to push them out of our lives as a way of protecting ourselves.

But no matter what, whether it comes from symptoms or from a "genuine" place, your feelings are real and valid. Even if they pass or change quickly, you still felt them and that made them real. Do your best not to let anyone try and convince you that you aren't allowed to be angry just because you have ASPD (and that includes your Exceptions and even yourself). I have made that mistake before, and it lead to years of my life spent in an abusive relationship because I just kept telling myself and hearing from the abuser that I was just overreacting and I would feel fine by tomorrow or in a couple hours. That ended up only being true sometimes because I was gaslit into believing it, so much so that I started gaslighting myself for him.

Sometimes, the best way to deal with things like this for people with ASPD is to take the true emotions out of it and quantify it into a more visual thing. When you're calm, come up with some kind of chart system. It can be simple or complex, whatever works for you, but make sure to put it in a place where no one is going to risk seeing it but you, so that you can be entirely honest. Please note, your mileage may vary with this, but looking at things this way has helped me immensely with understanding what are symptom flares vs actually needing to remove someone from my life. I did this even before I knew I had ASPD after realizing I let an abuser overstay his welcome by years because of my symptoms, and it's not done me wrong yet.

The information you want on this chart is going to require you to recognize when you get angry (regardless of if it is symptom related or not) and when you are hurt. You're going to chart every time the person in question does or says something that causes you to feel that way, as well as a place to make notes on whether or not they apologized unprompted and if they actually changed the behavior, and chart separately when you feel angry for reasons you can't fully explain or that weren't caused by something you believe to be rational to be angry about.

If you find out that you're spending a majority of your time feeling angry, but rarely hurt, especially without a known cause or one you consider rational, you may be experiencing a symptom flare. I would not leave a non-abusive partner in that situation until the flare passes and you can better reflect.

If you find that you are spending the majority of your time being angry about things you consider rational and/or hurt by something this person said or did, especially if they didn't apologize *and* work to change it, then in my opinion that's when you should consider removing this person from your life. Don't worry too much about "ruining" the relationship if this is the case. At the end of the day, a relationship only is worth keeping if it adds more to your life then it takes away by a relatively strong margin, at least in my opinion.

The third option, which is always nice to see when it happens (more often than I care to admit), is that this chart shows that you aren't actually spending as much of your time hurt or angry as you think you are, which is normal with ASPD. Many, but not all, pwASPD experience some degree of emotional blunting when it comes to positive emotions like happiness and contentedness on top of dealing with stronger reactions to frustration, anger, etc. so even if you're only feeling angry once in a week, it may be the strongest emotion you felt that week and you might become convinced that you felt that way for much longer than you did in the moment.

This also happens because pwASPD experience black and white/all or nothing thinking. Therefore, sometimes when someone we care about makes us upset, we can only see them as out to hurt us. The chart may help you target when that's what's going on which, at least for me, helps me relax and see the person in a more realistic light.

As I mentioned, this won't work for everyone, but I do it and it helps me, so I hope it can help you as well.

#aspd-culture-is #aspd culture is #aspd culture #actually antisocial #actually aspd #antisocial personality disorder #aspd #aspd awareness #aspd traits #anons welcome

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battleangel · 8 months

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And still I see no changes...

Late-stage capitalism depends on women producing the next generation of laborers whether they want to or not...

Corporate greed -- as evidenced by fast fashion like SHEIN, Fashion Nova, Romwe, Forever 21, the film industry with the continued strike aimed to replace all but the biggest stars and virtually all background and supporting actors despite the unions totally reasonable demands for a living wage & AI protections so that their image & likeness cant be scanned & used in perpetuity by studios with their forced consent in exchange for being cast in the production, fast food companies like McDonalds continuing with deforestation practices & the destruction of rainforests & ecosystems, all of the environmental waste produced by Amazon warehouses, chemical & environmental pollution by Fortune 500 companies in the constant pursuit of ever more profit, overextracting natural resources from the planet and raping the earth, the extinction of tens of thousands of unique species with the non-stop intent of further expansion, further development, further cutting down of trees, razing of forests, landfills at total capacity with overflow killing wildlife in the oceans with a majority of waste taking thousands of years to decompose, a finite resource -- Mother Earth -- endlessly pillaged & raped by big pharma, big agriculture, big chemical manufacturing companies, big box retail like Amazon & Walmart, fast fashion like SHEIN & Forever 21, admitted alien existence by former CIA director which also includes not yet admitted to government experimentation with alien technology & weaponry that led to a bomb cloud many reported seeing in NYC that happened the same exact day as the "Canadian wildfire smoke" filling the skies of the east coast, yet all the videos on social media were of the smoke, none were of the fires, and reports that claimed 100 wildfires started simultaneously in Canada made no sense -- the alien bomb testing led to record toxicity levels in the air and non-stop unprecedented extreme humidity that has not relented since the "wildfire smoke" aka the testing of the alien bomb in NYC -- yet the worlds elite in industry (Elons, Bezos, etc) & the actual power brokers in politics behind the scenes of the political figureheads that are all selected ahead of time, every election is fake & the outcome is predetermined, all US presidents share royal lineage dating back to British kings, they are all reptilians picked ahead of time by the kingmakers as charismatic frontmen that are then controlled behind the scenes & told what to do, all politicians get along with each other behind the scenes, the 2 party system is a complete sham, its heel vs face in wrestling -- its all a cheap gimmick to divide the audience and to keep the money flowing in via donations over "hot button" issues that are red meat to their respective partys bases but there are always predictable, planned & scripted mostly incremental changes that shift back and forth with very few actual "watershed" moments by design so that both parties can constantly fundraise over whatever the contrived forced issue is of the day with no true actual change, its why Obama deported more undocumented immigrants than Trump, there is no actual "red vs blue", nor actual material difference between the two main parties, its why theres never any true substantive change regardless of who is in power, and a true changemaker and revolutionary like Cornel West never even gets heard from.

If its a "democracy", why are Cornel West, Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Communist Party of the USA, the Socialist Party -- why arent they allowed to be on the Presidential debate stage unless a totally fake & arbitrary threshold of votes is reached -- because they dont want the American public on a mainstream stage to actually hear cogent and cohesive and compelling and persuasive and intelligent arguments for the abolition of the police, Supreme Court, military, prison system, free college education, universal healthcare, workers uniting & pooling their incomes & distributing them evenly amongst themselves aka true socialism so they can stop being exploited by their corporate overlords slaving away at their salaried jobs many without overtime once they are in a "leadership" position working thousands of hours for free.

True reproductive justice & freedom with a realization that women are dehumanized & tyrannized by the "motherhood is martyrdom" societal mandate that demands that women sacrifice & sublimate their entire identities on the altar of being a "selfless mother" and giving women control over their bodily autonomy, reproductive choices, careers, sexual health, incomes, mental & physical health, physical appearance and control over their lives as anti-abortion legislation takes all of this agency away and demands that a pregnant woman become a mindless husk & soulless incubator ready to reproduce via forced birth endless bodies for the corporate capitalist machine & system, thats all "pro-life" is, its reducing women to their occupied uteruses and forcing them to birth more bodies in service of late stage capitalism.

Why dont we have funerals as a society for miscarried and aborted fetuses? because we intrinsically know as a society that an unborn fetus doesnt have a fully developed consciousness, personality, soul expression, thoughts, emotions, experiences, philosophies -- it is fetal tissue, it is not a sentient, thinking, emoting human being but the woman gestating it is -- so why is the woman reduced to nothing but a gestational carrier and why is the fetus elevated to mattering more than the woman carrying it, when thousands of toddlers are waiting to be adopted in the foster system, when children born to women who didnt want them who then express the trauma of enduring forced birth as neglect, abuse & physical abandonment -- how is any of that "pro-life"?

When states that have anti-abortion laws have significantly higher poverty & crime rates, how is that "pro-life"? Whats "pro-life" about punishing women who dont want to be mothers and forcing them to give birth?

Condoms break, people forget to take birth control, guys refuse to wear condoms because they want to "feel everything" or they "dont like them", women are socialized to be docile & polite and are socially conditioned to struggle to say "no" to men especially in intimate encounters, women are groomed & socially engineered to be pleasing and agreeable towards men even in sexual situations when they shouldnt be -- smile, look pretty, be attractive, be quiet, be sexy and hope he likes you and wants to be with you, that is the social messaging in pop culture movies, media, music, books -- the man leads, the woman coquettishly follows -- where is the confident, emphatic, full-chested "no" in that when women are trained above all else to be liked? This leads to a lot of unwanted sex, regrettable sex, unenjoyable sex, forced sex, "I would rather go home but I dont want to be rude" sex, "He said he didnt want a blow job, I guess I have to fuck him" sex, spousal rape, date rape, acquaintance rape, "He said its too late to change my mind now" rape, drunken rape, high rape, "I just wanted him to like me" rape "I wanted to do stuff but not sex" rape -- why should women be forced to give birth in any of these situations?

Why should women be forced to give birth at all?

If men gave birth, not women -- do you really think there would be anti-abortion legislation?

Prescription medication making birth control ineffective happens, not taking Plan B in time for it to work happens, people drink & use psychedlics, hormone rushes happen, abuse happens, coercion happens, pressure happens, rape happens, assault happens, molestation happens, incest happens, depression happens, suicidal ideation happens, mentors, coaches, teachers, professors & youth leaders abusing & exploiting their authority via sexual force & assaults happens, autoimmune disease diagnoses happen, layoffs happen, reduction in force happens, firing happens, unemployment happens, houseleness happens, evictions happens, car & furniture reposessions happen, infidelities happen, breakups happen, STIs happen, heartbreak happens, malignant narcissists and dark empaths as toxic & abusive partners happen.

The feminization of poverty already ensures that women are overrepresented in low wage jobs & service industries while being underpaid vs men in white collar corporate jobs while also taking years off from their careers to raise their children and care for aging parents while men do not typically take more than a week or two off when children are born so women work less years in their careers than men for less pay and are overrepresented in low wage jobs yet this society wants to layer forced births on top of all of this already existing gender inequality.

Giving a newborn baby up for adoption after carrying it for 9+ months and birthing it is often traumatic -- it is up to the woman if she wants to endure that experience, it should never be forced on her, paid maternity leave and universal childcare are unavailable so a woman who gives birth is forced to take 60% pay on either a short or long term disability leave (losing almost half of her income), use up her PTO vacation and sick days for the year or, since women are so overrepresented in low wage jobs, if they are in the retail & food service industries or if they are temporary employees in corporate positions they have no benefits and no paid time off so she is forced to take an unpaid leave which she cannot afford with how minimal her salary already is and then once the forced birth happens, daycare is $1k+ a month, more than rent in many places, not all states have daycares that are operated out of individuals homes for cheaper rates and everyone does not have parents that can watch their newborns but now if she goes back to work, daycare may be more than her rent and not leave her with any money to survive -- who thinks about these women?

There are untold circumstances and reasons why a woman can experience an unplanned & unwanted pregnancy and want to terminate, some women may be antinatalist like me and believe that it is an immoral and philosophical wrong to reproduce and to continue the immeasurable & irrevocable damage and harm humanity has done to Earth, its ecosystems, natural resources, rainforests, oceans, wildlife, ozone layer, climate and believe it is wrong to contribute to our current & continuing overpopulation -- no sentient, thinking, feeling human being should be forced to birth a non-sentient fetus for any reason -- we already have global overpopulation, why would we as a society add to our overpopulation human beings that are not wanted by their expectant mothers by force?

How can any good come out of coercion, control, forced birth and trauma?

What kind of social, emotional, mental and psychological harm do we do as a society to these women who, for a plethora of reasons, want to terminate their pregnancies and then certain states say no, youre not allowed to, you have to birth this unborn fetus.

The planet is not a resource that is infinitely renewable. We as humans, due to endless corporate greed, pursuit of profits and endless expansion, a blind unthinking need for more more more, are already trying to colonize Mars via Elon Musk -- isnt the destruction of one planet enough?

We are literally the Borg.

Go look up how many tens of thousands of species are already permanently extinct, how many elephants have been killed for the ivory trade, how many Amazon rainforests have been razed so McDonalds can raise and slaughter more cows for their Big Macs, how many landfills are filled with Amazon waste -- why do we need delivery in an hour?

How much food do we waste, do we throw away unused from our refrigerators, do we throw away uneaten in restaurants while children are food insecure and hungry and millions starve to death?

How much waste, how much misplaced hate, how much injustice, how many wars, how much corporate greed, how much control, how many genocides, how many natural disasters, how many more degrees can global temperatures rise, how much air pollution, how many synthetic chemicals and drugs and artificial preservatives, how many medications to make us sick and kill us, how many fake political movements, how many Proud Boys, how many Dont Tread on Mes, how many Make America Great Agains -- America was never great, how many victors rewriting history, how much propaganda, how much fake news, how much exploitation, how many overcrowded prisons with inhumane conditions without heat in the winter, AC in the summer & insect infestations yet you want to sit there and tweet about Trumps mugshot...

How many unarmed black men have to die at the hands of white cops, how many Amadou Diallous, how many Rodney Kings, how many Trayveon Martins, how many black while eating a bag of skittles, how many George Floyds, how many Ahmad Arberys, how many Philando Castilles, how many January 6th insurrections, how many overnight deaths in prisons, how many Sandra Blands because they stopped at a red light, how many Breonna Taylors for the crime of being asleep in their own beds, how many hands up dont shoot, how many I dont want to die, how many I dont have a gun Im just removing my license Officer, how many I thought it was a gun not a wallet, how many put your hands on the steering wheel before I blow your fucking head off, how many unreported crimes, how many unsolved murders, how many botched cases, how many its just another dead black man who gives a fuck, how many unredacted body wearing camera footage -- I thought the body wearing camera was supposed to bring transparency, why are you blurring the footage out, how many racist pigs, how many hooded klansmen hiding behind a badge a shield and a gun, to protect defend serve and kill as many innocent black people as possible, no need for an autopsy no need for an investigation its just another dead black man.

The only good nigger is a dead nigger so dont make me pull my cop trigger

Rat-tat tat tat tat, thats the way it is

And still I see no changes, all I see is racist faces, misplaced hate makes disgrace to races

We under, I wonder what it takes to make this one better place, lets erase the wasted

It aint a secret, dont conceal the fact, the penitentiarys packed and its filled with blacks

And still I see no changes, can't a brother get a little peace?

There's war in the streets and war in the Middle East

Instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me

Don't let 'em jack you up, back you up

Crack you up and pimps smack you up

You gotta learn to hold ya own

They get jealous when they see ya with ya mobile phone

But tell the cops, they can't touch this

I don't trust this, when they try to rush, I bust this

🧿how many, how much until we say, enough is enough? 🧿

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mosephf · 8 months

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I want to say a word or two on executive dysfunction, accepting yourself, and finding what works even if it feels weird. See below.

I am a graduate student, and I also have ADHD. I'm very high functioning (though I know that's an outdated term) and I'm best in a classroom environment, which is the only reason I made it as far as I have with schooling according to the woman who diagnosed me. Basically, my baseline intelligence and mental acuity are high enough that high school and university were possible for me despite the huge gap between those and my actual processing speed. Then everything changed when the fire nation attacked.

Starting grad school was my first real experience with executive dysfunction to the point of it being debilitating. I had experienced it before, but brute force was always enough to get me through, and the burnout would always come after a deadline. Having to focus and be engaged and forward thinking everyday, doing work that requires much more planning and engagement, and commuting for 3 hours a day started to physically exhaust me, as it does with every grad student. Other stressers like the starvation wage that grad students are paid (and then we're told it's generous and you can find other work), COVID-19, family drama, all came together to produce a perfect storm of executive dysfunction.

One major symptom for me is showering. I shower maybe... once a week? That wouldn't be an issue for some people, but the key is that I always shower a good two days after I probably should. At least. It has a major effect on my life. My fiance is sensitive and finds me being stinky not the most enjoyable (fair), I don't like feeling like I smell at work, and my skin and hair have been suffering. Yet I can't shower more often. I tried to make it work, doing small rinses at night or getting up earlier, but these fixes never really worked.

I was forcing myself to conform to "normal" showering habits: morning or night showerer. What I had forgotten was the time when I was most consistent showering was when I snuck it in between other tasks. During my prior life as a nanny, I would do a quick work out and then quickly shower while the baby was napping (kid would sleep for at least 2 hours, what a God-send). So... maybe midday showering, despite it being less common, could be the solution?

Last night I felt gross, but as usual came home, cooked dinner and ate. Then when my fiance got up to do the dishes and clean the kitchen as he always does, I got up and showered. It felt AMAZING. I was washing off the day. I wasn't going to go to sleep with soaked hair. I woke up the next morning with my alarm and got to spend some time drinking coffee and resting instead of laying in bed until the last possible second because I know I have to shower but I can't and if I'm late, then I dont have to. And suddenly it clicked.

When you are struggling to build habits with ADHD or battling with executive dysfunction from any number of neurodivergencies, find what works for you, not what works for most. Trying to conform to what others do will not help. Keep trying new things, and eventually you'll find a solution for you. Showering in the middle of the day is pretty mild. But other methods of selfcare like "I can only feed myself if I pretend to feed this plushy" or "I can't brush my teeth with mint toothpaste because it's a sensory nightmare, I just use water because something is better than nothing" or "I have to work on my dissertation at 2 in the morning because that's when my brain works, so I build the rest of my schedule around that" that might seem more "unusual" (and these are still mild) should also be acceptable. If it works, DO IT.

There's my rant. Find your midday showers. Have a good day, everybody!

#adhd #executive dysfunction #self care #mo rants

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blueiight · 1 year

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hmm im not sure the show wouldn't go the romance route with claudia and madeleine even if she's 30-ish. they're clearly fine going into some unsavory and problematic territory w. the romances. there's going to be major consent issues around louis/armand from the mind control and violation of louis' autonomy in making madeleine. idk if they would view an uncomfortable claudia romance as that far off and would possibly work to parallel the two troubling relationships.

just like i dont think they made armand older for any moral reasons i think its just really hard to have an actor play the same age across many years when they're suppose to be 18 vs an actor who's in their 30s. i also think thats why louis and lestat are in their 30s and not 20s and the armand adjustment happened accordingly.

u make really good points, especially with the violation of louis's autonomy [& even tce, louis's emotional co-dependency on claudia] being a parallel/anti-parallel of sorts to yet another older person with overarching complex feelings toward claudia. i think why armand & claudia especially were aged up had a lot more to do w child labor laws being more clearly defined than they were 20-30 years ago than the ethics of problematic fiction [lawl] and the showrunners fit their character arcs into real-world constraints really well. [especially what we see of claudia's character arc so far. im sooo excited for amc armand's backstory] one of my other anons quoted the producer as saying

O’Byrne doesn’t expect her age, gender or race to differ from the books. “As written, Madeleine is Madeleine." “We've got some great stuff that I think will heighten the Madeleine character and make her particularly compelling given the time period that we're looking at."

i do think like my other anon said that the most certain change we have on her so far is situating madeline's character motivations in her time. a motive for madeline's obsession outside of losing her child was never rly given, but situating her within the historical context of ww2 & the war, genocide/s occuring in europe at the time, possibly even losing her family from such events... we have a character here, and a [possibly] formidable tragedy in the pursuit of immortality

#yn.#yn answers #iwtv #claudia #louis de pointe du lac #armand #madeleine

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missingn000 · 2 years

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hi, it's messeduplittlebastard from your frequent commentors back on ao3! i havent really asked you anything over on tumblr, but i'm curious if you dont mind answering. what are five characters in jjk you think arent fleshed out enough, even though they have the potential for so much more? unrelated to tpg, just curious! <3 thanks lol

HI OMG GOOD TO SEE YOU HERE!! this is such a fun question. unsurprisingly my reply got long so answers below cut!

okay. first up. TOGE. i love him to pieces, but we know shockingly little about him. no backstory. not a single line of inner monologue/thoughts in the WHOLE series. while it's definitely fun to write him because you can do so much interpretation as to his thoughts and personality, it would be really cool to have at least some background on his past and how that crazy lil mind of his works. also, where the fuck is he? i only half-heartedly keep up with the manga based on spoilers i see online, but fuck, even panda got to come back. toge is a fan-favorite, come on gege. i am annoyed as hell. give me back my boy!!!!!!!

second!! KAMO! yes, i know he is technically back for the moment, but i think he had a lot more potential than just throwing him in another fight scene. i think he could've been a really great character foil for megumi, and yet...well. they barely interacted. to me, he was definitely the most interesting of the kyoto kids, other than mai. he was vying to be a clan head and learning of his past beyond a mommy issues flashback could've shed light on how the other major clans operate. sigh

third: SHOKO!!! my beloved, my wife, my everything. we know so little about her, and even in gojo's past arc she barely got any screentime and was mostly sidelined to stsg. i think she has such a unique perspective on jujutsu society, and her isolation could offer some insights on the many ways this horrible world treats their most important members. how does she cope, beyond drinking and smoking? i want to see her emotions, i want people to stop reducing her to a character that just smokes and is tired of stsg's bullshit. i think she could've also been a great character complement to nanami, which i--clearly have feelings about and am acting upon. yeah.

fourth: YUKI. this one i am genuinely annoyed about. she's the only woman special grade and we don't even know her technique. she hasn't been in a fight scene, and even when she did finally arrive she was here for maybe like what, 3 chapters? before she got stuck in a tree to #$%@ choso. i'm so interested in hearing more about her research to eradicate cursed energy and her personality/backstory as a whole. her one conversation with getou was so interesting, and i want to hear more of her opinions on non-sorcerers and the trajectory of the world. clearly i had feelings about this too. yuki my queen

last, and definitely least: naoya. now, i absolutely do not mean this in a "he was great and i wanted more of him!!1!1!" way, but rather, i think he had so much more potential either as a villain or a character with insane development than...whatever the fuck he is now. i knew he was going to come back as a curse, but...idk. to me, he represents everything wrong with jujutsu society. exploring his character really could've shed light on how things got this bad, and how he was raised. the thing is, people forget frankenstein is the one who created the monster, and i feel that way about him. jj society failed him as much as it failed others. do i think he deserved his fate? absolutely i do. but i wish more had happened before that, or, if his character arc was going to go in a different way, that could've been interesting too. anyway

thanks again for asking this, and i hope you like the new chapter today!! i always love your comments btw, but you know that. still, i'll say it again❤️️

#this was awesome to think abt omg #thank you for asking!!!

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thetaekookcloset · 2 years

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A lot of people seem to think tae is the reckless one in the relationship, in terms of “exposing” them and really wanting people to know theyre an item but i disagree with that. I dont really think they want people to know theyre in a relationship for obvious reasons: lgbt is not accepted in korea, especially because they havent enlisted yet. There are LGBT koreans, but most of them come out after enlistment. I feel that tae is aware that the general public will be oblivious and wont suspect a thing until it explicitly comes from their mouth or that there is “undeniable proof”. I think what really triggers taehyung is the aspect of the company putting extreme and unnecessary restrictions on them. I also think the bad blood between tae and the company is not just because of taekook, but how they treated him early on. I would assume the reason why jungkook has ill feelings towards the company is for similar reasons. There has been many times when both parties slipped up, so to speak, and u can tell it was pretty unintentional too. There are plenty of instances where tae has an “oh shit” moment because he thinks he revealed too much. I think there is just so much closeting you can do to a person, which is why we see a lot of slips up between them.

I agree with a lot of what you've said here. I don't really think they want people to know about them, per se, and I definitely don't think that anything either of them do is intended to reveal themselves or anything like that. I think it's sort of nuanced. Like you said, most people aren't going to assume anything. A lot of people have blinders on when it comes to non-heteronormative relationships anyway. So unless and until Taehyung and Jungkook were to come out and explicitly state that they're in a romantic relationship, the vast majority of people will never think that's the case.

I'm sure they know that, at least at this point, and while I think it's impossible for us to know how much that may or may not bother them, it has to be part of their understanding of their situation (if they are together -- or really, even if they're not; it's still something they would rely on for the protection of any relationships they might have outside the group too).

Being closeted is hard, though, and I think there's room for anyone to feel conflicting feelings about it. You can rely on the benefits of secrecy and still resent the need for it, and sometimes those internal conflicts can result in actions or behaviors that don't always seem to line up with each other, motivation-wise.

I also do think there’s an element of openness to them and their relationship recently (as far back as 2020, but especially so these last few months -- maybe because they knew this break was coming up?) that’s new. I think it’s possible that there’s a degree of feeling there that if people who are supportive put it together, it’s not a big deal, since that’s hardly the same thing as truly being out, you know? And it’s seemed for a long time as though they like it when people like them together.

As far as tensions between Taekook and the company go, I definitely do think that the brunt of their resentment has come from their being separated a lot over the years. I think that because we can see them reacting poorly to it in clips, the entire May 2020 V Live exists, and since they've been separated less over the last couple of years, they seem more at ease and happy. If there are any conflicts between them and the company outside of that, though, I can't really see what they are.

Maybe I've missed some details, that's completely possible, especially since I confess that the BTS/HYBE relationship isn't particularly interesting to me, but if some of the slip-ups you're referring to are about the two of them expressing any kind of unhappiness with Big Hit, other than the separation issue, I'd be interested to hear about them.

#ask #taekook

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uselessheretic · 2 years

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Lmao "how dare you not make fanworks of this canon bland wholesome couple with no conflict between them and no major personal flaws, you must be ableist" or the other acussation which is that you hate bald men (??? These people are shipping Lucius and his dumb sideburns and Izzy who's also not what you'd call traditionally hot??? Why would they balk at bald????). Lucius/Pete is just boring for the popular fic tropes. Like I have yet to see one person say they dislike them in canon! But there's what's good and enjoyable to see on screen as a background pairing, and there's what's going to get its claws deep enough into the brains of people who do transformative fandom to compell them to write fic about it. These two do not provide the correct brainworms.

Izzy is sort of catnip for fanfic writers which I called as soon as the oooh daddy Thing happened. He's a mess and so are all of his possible relationships (also kinky on main without wanting to be kinky on main) but at the same time if you go the "if you touch him right he melts" or "if someone railed him he'd calm down" route it's also believable, bc he's a mess, so you dont have to commit to a 60K angst fest to fix his life or make it worse either. Fandom bicycle pathetic little meow meow.

It's also why so much Blackbonnet content is about their reunion when it's not pure fluff or a pwp, it's the closest bit of relationship drama that has to be resolved (even if you flatten them into uwu cinnamon roll non-pirates and thus ignore any other issues they'd need to work on to make their relationship not implode, you still have this fight to resolve! If you dont do that both of them have so much shit to work on to survive past the honeymoon phase and get better as people together that you do probably need like 70K of fic, maybe a series. This is why they're the central relationship in canon lol. Given the Steddyhands fic Ive read it seems to me to have hit bc if you put Izzy in that mix it's so volatile they HAVE to talk shit out they cant just ignore their problems for 48 chapters without Izzy leaving or dying of stress??)

Cant comment on how the actors being hot factors here bc im too ace to tell when none of them are like. Hollywood Hot/a model?? They're too normal people I could see on the street in real life to like. Rank.

it's just silly because this keeps popping up about the canon pairings as if izzy's going to steal their spot and it's like?? that is not a threat?? i'm trying to not be too heavy on ship hate or whatever but iont even like Lucius/Pete as a pair, but ik they're gonna stay canon and i hope they do bc lots of people enjoy them! but otherwise fandom's just a lil sandbox for me to play in and i wanna see izzy kiss ppl.

i think the "this is problematic" discourse is funny though because i think people are struggling to find a way to make it more woke when both ships are literally white m/m with not much else. you can't even argue a problematic age gap since izzy and pete's actors are only 4 years apart. (lucius confirmed for on a dilf hunt btw) so you just get stuck with "conventionally attractive" which i stg is discourse that only ever happens around white men. (tbf i think people are super out of pocket when they say a poc isn't conventionally attractive. like someone said taika was unconventionally attractive once and like dude. taika is hot in a very like traditionally handsome way??)

and then it's odd because i feel like it's like?? kinda an appropriation of the language used when talking about the racial biases people have against characters of color in fandom. it is an issue when character of color are sidelined or erased in favor of white characters. or sometimes people just? erase canon aspects of characters/pairings to make them flatter than they actually are. like people call jim/olu a fluffy low stress ship, but they're not? their meet cute is a murder and they have ups and downs with separations and communication issues. i do legit think if they were two skinny white cis men that people would be more on them with writing angst and other drama, but :/

either way that concept's being stretched too far where people keep talking about ships where izzy usually just replaces another white guy so what does it matter. even if people wanted the pair to breakup in canon and be replaced with izzy it like... doesn't matter? representation isn't being lost? who cares lol.

i think maybe people just need to work on their propaganda or smth tbh like i didn't find con oneil hot at first and im p sure i got brainwashed into being super into him by fandom. maybe people need to stop complaining about pete being bald and just start talking about wanting to slap him on his bald ass head while topping him and get the tumblr girlies in on the action

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single-malt-scotch · 1 year

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me and my controversial topics will stay under the cut lol.

i know i blabbed lightly of this probably but obviously one of the things that put me off from mcyt for a few years was when the "rpf is bad" opinion started circling the internet more frequently, in tumblr's 2014-2016 toxic callout culture era. i think that era shifted YT fandoms as a whole and turned loads of ppl to presenting creators with their "characters" specifically (like i recall this early on w markiplier and jacksepticeye) and clarifying it often. but i find this all very amusing when 80% of the ppl dont actually play characters at all, and ppl are either just writing "rpf" or theyre just turned a creator into their own OCs. i think its sometimes just a way to not associate with the idea of rpf even if its like, right there.

like, the problem i think is that the majority of fans, namely the young teens that are the main audience, are very consumed by purity culture and being free of problematic interests in such a black and white way. i get it, i understand why you dont want to be associated with rpf. when i think of weird and uncomfortable rpf i think of.... fan fiction of the Beatles, or something. a band or a movie actor is someone we can easily define as "not a character" but... when it comes to mcyt, its a little more grey, because i know some of them goof around in games and do bits and exaggerate themselves.

and yet i still think its counter productive to get caught up in these woes, and to deny what exactly it means for something to be rpf, or have rpf elements. ironically i think the indulgence people have with making them characters worsens the parasocial/obsessive/skewed lens people have on creators these days. how? well its bc of how ppl get super attached to characters... comfort characters, kinning, etc. i love characters just an intensely, but when you apply this to a youtuber who like, doesnt actually play a character? even tho you wanna act like they do? .....there can definitely be issues in that and its def what makes me not get into the fandom as it is. you elevate them with your view of them as a character by being able to indulge in them way further bc they are kind of "yours" now. but also theyre not really.

but specifically back to the rpf vs not rpf topic- basically what i really intend to say is that like. there is harm in becoming too concerned over what youre writing bc you can fall into that mindset of being far too aware in a way thats just gonna make you feel terrible all the time (i experienced this myself when i was like 15 on tumblr and wanted to avoid any potential of touching something "problematic"). this post isnt to declare you are writing rpf, or you arent, or whatever the"rules" are about when it is or isnt, but just that theres always time to just accept shit as it is when the blurry lines arent actually doing any harm in this case. and that even trying to force yourself into the seemingly right direction doesnt exactly solve all the other problems either.

cuz i did all the things ppl would wanna call me out for and i dont care at this point. i wrote fan fiction where the guys where more characters than themselves, in a fantasy world for the server. but i also wrote fan fiction that was irl and based during minecon! and it was smut. and all i can say to that now is...ok. im not even gonna sit around and vehemently condemn it either? even if i never plan to do it again. cuz i dont see the need to punish my past self, nor do i see the reason to continue questioning the nuances of where the line between hard rpf and hard fiction lies with this bc its a never ending conversation. its just not worth my time to worry anymore. i know how to not be weird about it, i know my boundaries between creator and fan, i dont even get near the extent that some people do... i feel like im aware enough to feel like im not causing harm/can make logical choices when issues arise. i was a niave teenager before, and wrote such things with little thought, and had a much less healthy mindset about it! but the way the internet laid on the pressure of these strict definitions was the moment i felt shame, and as if i couldnt ever redeem myself from actions i understand far better now. its really not worth the stress and heartache to get so caught up in it.

#oops long post #you can rb to respond i just wanted this under a cut

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