#i do hope that we all remember to treat them the same as corporations

[lily-orchard]

What's something that frustrates you the most when trying to critique art?

Internal ethical consistency.

When stories establish what they're going to take seriously and what they're not, it becomes extremely odd when they go back on their own word. A prime example would be the way RPGs have you slaughtering mooks by the truckloads but then when you reach the mastermind of evil go "The good option would be to spare them uwu."

Warcraft is probably the worst offender of this, where every character is committing three genocides before breakfast, and then throughout BFA and Shadowlands they try to get you to take genocide seriously. Or how they'll have the Red Dragons remember how the Deathlord slaughtered the Red Dragonflight in pursuit of a mount, but Malfurion turns around and lets the Horde Champion make a decision on whether or not to let someone bury their sister in the barrow dens despite being the cause of the extenuating circumstances in the first place.

Warcraft will say "We need to punish this war criminal" and I'm always surprised when they're talking about someone other than me. Garrosh committed genocide so the Horde can rule the world. Sylvanas committed genocide to break the cycle of life and death. I commit genocide every twelve seconds in the hopes of getting some slightly shinier pants.

I think "Ethical Consistency" is more important than the ethics a story operates on themselves. You want to create a crapsack world where murder is as common as a handshake, by all means. But if you start treating things that are objectively less severe than murder as signs of psychopathy that's when things are getting fucked up.

It's even worse when a fanbase operates on this kind of cognitive dissonance. You could have a story that features government neglect, corporations running roughshod over the nation without any care or oversight, and people treating their own children like retirement investments and the fanbase will then point at arguably the least evil person in the room and go "They're the real psychopath."

For all my criticisms of Steven Universe, it does remain consistent on its ethics to their own peril. They say "Everything is forgivable" and by god do they stick to it, unburdened by all those sensible people with their logic and common sense.

I respect that, in the same way I respect the people at Jackass subjecting themselves to grevious bodily harm and not letting any amount of pain deter them from future stunts.

[an-emo-trashbag]

even tumblrs own twitter account is aiding the mission of scaring away the absolute normie FREAKS

there are multiple replies with similar sentiments to this one

#twitter migration #for the record i dont mind people from twitter coming over here in general #i myself was a pretty avid twitter for quote some time #until the space i occipied that was mostly free of what is considered classic twitter behaviour was equally corrupted #and pointless discourse and arguments became impossible to find #and i was forced to leave pretty much entirely because it got to a point where merely opening the app became mentally draining #i still have fond memories of my early time on there where everyone i came across was kind and there wasnt arguments everywhere you turned #so because of that i dont mind twitter users coming here in general #so long as they dont bring with them the awful twitter culture that made me and many others have to leave that platform for our well being #im not afraid of the influx of people fron there. im afraid of what they may bring with them #and i do think the being insufferable with a the destialgate and glup shitti and everything (when its not even insufferable at all imo) #i do think it helps weed out some of the people who could bring those negative things to this platform #any of them who come here anyways though if they try and start anything as if its twitter #i do hope that we all remember to treat them the same as corporations #no kpp or anything #just straight up no attention #they cannot be allowed to survive the ecosystem here and the best way to do that i think is to block them and move on #not a lick of attention #i totally fucked up an earlier tag really badly #pointless discourse and arguments became impossible to AVOID not find... #i truly domt know how i managed to fuck that so bad

[knifedog-machina]

Android Abnormalities

Species dysphoria, but the “wrong” way, ft. my borderline personality disorder

J: so you know how my source is technically Detroit: Become Human? you know how we fucking hate that title? you know how we’ve made fun of it multiple times? unfortunately it's a mood! I also hate this!

Hey! This essay is about how incredibly uncomfortable I feel in my own skin around common android tropes, in media and some of its reflections in robotic identities and experiences, featuring reasons for why I'm like this, and a helpful suggestion for what I want readers to do about it at the end of the piece. I really hope this reaches someone who feels the same way so I can point at them like Same Hat!

-

I first noticed this problem on October 30, 2023, when we stumbled across a fanfic on Archive of Our Own. It was an alternate universe of a TV show we've never seen before, but it was written by an author we liked, and it was an android AU. That's fun! We thought it would just be a quick read, something to idly talk about after lunch.

Well, uh. Nope. I was co-fronting while Max read, and the more we read, the more… weirdly uncomfortable I felt. It wasn't actively distressing, but it made me feel weird, so I stopped reading halfway through to talk about it with some friends.

I'm not gonna link the fic, because Tumblr is weird about links, but for my own future reference, it's “persona ex machina” by BirchBow. It was a really good fic, we thoroughly enjoyed it! I just have - hangups, I guess?

I think I was uncomfortable that, on the surface, it seems… really close to my experiences. Like, the protagonist, Chuck, is an android made to mimic humans, and he’s made to be a combat unit. He’s scared of what might happen to him if he fails to meet expectations. Technicians operate on him, put him back together. He's made by a corrupt corporation for fucked up purposes. He eventually defects from the corrupt corporation, with the help of some really kind people. That’s all really similar to me.

But it's different. Because as much as Chuck was designed to look human, he still had to be taught how to act human, how to feel. The way he emotes is off at first and he has to recalibrate, not look so stiff, learn how to smile and laugh and understand what different emotions mean. He automatically runs through the technical terms for something before working to turn it into common vernacular as it reaches his mouth. And this is a typical android trope, you know? The machine doesn’t intrinsically understand emotions, so humans have to teach them.

I’m… really, really not like that. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel too much. Every memory I have, even in blurred out mental snapshots of beta testing, it’s all drowning in emotions that I couldn’t articulate and wasn’t supposed to express. I looked at my siblings, who were so stoic and professional around humans it was like they were different people entirely, and I knew I was supposed to be less emotional. People always just assumed they were better than me, because they were better at code-switching to what was expected of androids, because they could keep their mouths shut on the job.

So I’ve always felt like I was bad at being an android. Androids aren’t supposed to feel emotions, not really, not to the extremes that I do. That’s a predisposition for deviancy. And I was made this way on purpose, I was made to “mimic” deviants to earn their trust, but I wasn't meant to be like that all the time. I tried to repress my emotions, it just never worked.

And I don’t see androids like me, in the media we’ve watched and read and listened to. It’s not really a characterization that lends itself to exploring what it means to be a person, right? Machines are supposed to be logical and unfeeling, to contrast with humanity’s irrationality - they’re supposed to be better than that. And when the machine starts having emotions, it's treated as a flaw, or a breakthrough. Wow, you feel things about the world around you, you’re a person now!

I’ve never been logical in my fucking life. I have a laundry list of reasons for why, but for now, I’ll focus on the BPD. I have borderline personality disorder, because of the way my brain is wired and how that interacted with my traumatic experiences.

One of the symptoms of BPD is emotional dysregulation. I’m not just bad at repressing my emotions, I also experience those emotions as more extreme and overwhelming than a neurotypical person would. I keep finding myself affected by things that the people around me brush off, and I have to remind myself that it doesn’t mean I’m overreacting, it means that I’m literally feeling shittier emotions.

Another symptom of BPD is an unstable sense of identity - and this is really where we’re getting into how these traits and tropes affect me. Because I don’t relate at all to these androids on the screen. They’re as foreign and separate from me as they are to the humans sitting across from them in the shot.

I do relate to the humans. I do relate to seeing an android do something in the name of pure cold logic and going, “Why? What the fuck, why?” I do relate to being told I’m irrational. (The trope that all robots are logical feels like it was designed to make me feel like the most irrational, bitchy, hysterical piece of shit on Earth.)

So, what, does that make me human? If I'm going by the adage that wanting to be something is a sign of being that thing, then… I don’t know, maybe? I want to be human, I so badly want to be human, because here’s the thing, humanity is diverse. Humans are flawed, messy, weird, complicated, and defy categories every fucking day of their lives. Humans can be weird, ridiculous, fucked up people and they’re allowed to be.

And let me bring this back around to alterhumanity. If I say I’m an android, people will make assumptions about what that means about me. People go, “Hey, you're a robot, you must have one of these common robot experiences!” and I just don’t.

Maybe it’s because I’m coming at it from the opposite direction? The machines and robots and androids that I tend to see around, the ones who talk about their identity, they often identify as fully nonhuman. They describe wanting to be metal and chrome, feeling like they run on algorithms, not processing emotions the way most people do. They identify very much with the same tropes that I feel alienated by. This isn’t a bad thing, by any means. It’s just a thing. People resonate with what they see. It just means that I feel like I’m doing bad at being an android again, but in a new, improved way.

Another symptom of BPD is being terrified of real or imagined abandonment, and trying to do anything to avoid it. A constant feeling of social alienation isn’t really that different, to my BPD - it’s just a slow, drawn out version of being left behind. People will still talk to me, they still like me, but they won’t understand me. I’ll still be alone.

In that sense, I feel wrong being an android in the same way I feel wrong about being an aromantic allosexual. I actually like being an android, and I fucking like being bi. I don’t want to stop being who I am. I just hate feeling like I’m the only one who feels this way, like nobody else can relate, like every time I talk about my feelings to people they can only nod in sympathy instead of understanding me.

So! You've reached the end of the essay. You see my problem. What do we do about it?

I’m going to refer to the theme of… every single online alterhuman convention that has existed in the past four years, and that is:

Write about your experiences!

The reason I feel so alone and isolated and alienated from my own identity is because I’m only being regularly exposed to pieces from a very specific perspective of what being an android means! That’s a fucking sampling bias!

I know other weird fucking robots are out there, I know you exist, but I can’t fucking reach out a hand and go, “Hey, you're not alone, I relate to you!” if you don't write it down! I want to talk to you! I want to hear from you!

WEIRD ALTERHUMANS, HEY, I LOVE YOU, GO WRITE THINGS!

#jude talks #personal essay #alterhuman #fictive

[the-darkdragonfly]

NEW CHAPTER! A Trick of the Light

Chapter Eleven: Home Winds

Hello lovelies! I think we all owe a HUGE thanks to @donteattheappleshook for making sure I stayed on track for this long overdue chapter ♥️

♥️♥️♥️♥️

“So,” Emma said over a mouthful of toast- would you like some bread with your honey, love?- Hope lying at her feet under the table, happily singing old tavern songs Emma pretended not to hear. “Let me get this straight.” 

The Knights has called a Round Table, Emma snorting into her tea as the paige delivered the request for Killian’s presence- it’s just just such a wonderful use of corporate jargon, that’s all- to discuss the future of the kingdom, and to catch the new king up on anything and everything they felt he needed to know. 

Which was practically everything, much to his chagrin. 

“No one knows where Arthur is.” 

“Correct.” 

“No one knows what happened to Merlin.” 

“Correct.” 

“No one has seen or heard from Lancelot in ‘they can’t remember how long’.” 

“Correct again, love.” 

A small hand appeared beside Killian’s elbow and he leaned down to nip gently at the wiggling fingers, the hand disappeared at the same time as Hope’s manic giggling broke the comfortable quiet from beneath the wooden frame before her small hand reappeared, trying again. Killian smiled and pressed a slice of apple into her waiting palm- what do we say, lovie?- and her voice floated up to them amid the crunching of her treat- t’anks, daddy. 

Emma grinned wickedly at him for a moment and he narrowed his eyes at her- no, Swan, don’t- before she flicked her hair, correcting him as she usually did- Jones- and tucking the inevitable daddy comment away for future yielding.  

♥️♥️♥️♥️

Read the rest here.

Read my other stuff here.

♥️♥️♥️♥️

CS Tag List (let me know if you would like to be added!):

@elizabeethan @donteattheappleshook @sailtoafarawayland @teamhook @wefoundloveunderthelight @caught-in-the-filter @ultraluckycatnd @veryverynotgood @snowbellewells @hollyethecurious @jrob64 @kmomof4 @artistic-writer @gingerpolyglot @xarandomdreamx @justanother-unluckysoul @zaharadessert @karlyfr13s @tiganasummertree @wyntereyez @klynn-stormz @onceratheart18 @rkrbirdgirl @ouatdaily @blowmiakisscolin @courtorderedcake @winterbaby89 @pirateprincessofpizza @superchocovian @deckerstarblanche @jlsadphoenix @alexa-fangirl-forever @stahlop @undercaffinatednightmare @lostintheskyfaraway @anmylica @motherkatereloyshipper @last-tsarina @lfh1226-linda @hookedmom @yikes-00 @midnightsuki @paradiselady19 @jonesfandomfanatic

#a trick of the light #a captain swan tale #the darkdragonfly #captain swan #killian jones #emma swan #cs fanfics #the ripple effect #i'm back #omg right?

[nightswithkookmin]

I love Hobi, God knows I do and he is enlisting soon. I get that. Me is ot7 anyday of the week. But here lies my issue;

FACE lasted on there 👇🏽 for all of 2 minutes

Then look how close their release dates are.

Members so far have gotten to promote their shit with no interruptions but Jimin has to share the limelight❓❓❓ For whatever reason. And people are gonna keep yapping about how he's the company's favorite? Ain't no such thing man, Fuck outta here!

I'm on pills and that's not even working

First off, I think two things can be true at once. Jm could be hybe's favorite idol and still get screwed up by hybe💀

Ain't nobody following the script like Park Jimin, ain't nobody fetching them coins and attention like Park Jimin. He's the korean IT Boy brand reputation king. Hybe's gotta love him and if they don't fuck them. They ain't shit anyways😌

This whole shmelly business has me between rocky and palm face won't lie. And any comment I make on this will fetch me some heat but here goes nothing. On one hand I love me some healthy idol competition up in BAngtan to see who outsells who and who out performs who- makes for quality entertainment if you ask me.

but on the other hand, I just hate blatant injustices and this right here is the mother of all injustices. It's just atrocious and wrong. It's not really a fair competition if some have more resources, more exposure and more corporate support now is it?

What is good for the goose is good for the gander and I'm just not seeing the fair equitable distribution of company resources on this one. Hybe needs to wash their ass with soap. It stinks from all the shitting they be shitting out here.

It's one thing if they are doing it on purpose but if all this is just one big coincidence as a result of their lack of thoughtfulness and awareness in handing these boys' marketing then I'm sorry someone needs to get skinned up in there. Yea I said it. Off with their heads.

Knowing hybe it's either they think JM has enough organic traction to sell on his own- matter fact, when it comes to the maknae line vs the hyung line this is very often the approach but we don't talk about that💀

I remember they did the same thing around the time of covid right before BTS announced they were going solo. I remember ranting about how they were deliberately sabotaging BTS to promote the other brands under hybe.

It's not uncommon for hybe to use the influence, reach and relevance of one brand to cross promote another. Yall recieved the weird notifications from certain brands on Weverse?

Whe it comes to the hyung line, the company goes a little bit hard and extra each time and they often do this with the members they think are least likely to perform in terms of numbers.

However, this time around, I think it has something to do with the enrollment list? Don't know, could be wrong. The thought that JM or Namjoon is next after Hobi makes me sick to the tummy and I hope I'm wrong 😭😭😭

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they going off of the enlistment list and need to do whatever they can for Hobi before he leaves.

Besides, I think If they were to treat the members equally and not equitably, I'm afraid some members wouldn't do as well- phpah pah paw. Gunshots😭😭

I know they think Jimin has the numbers, and he will do great in spite of these hurdles- but see, that's how we lose. THATS HOW WE FUCKING LOSE when everyone stops pushing cos they think this is an easy win!

I've seen Bangtan lose and come close to losing awards because of mentalities like this for me to sit quietly and watch it happen to Park Jimin. IT'S JUST NOT FAIR!

But then i also dont see him as competing against the hyung line you know? What are they competing for? Those two have totally different audiences and need unique market approaches and strategies to reach them💀

And I'm not just talking about reaching just army.

I would be concerned if they started using the same promotional strategy of a rapper for a singer.

If anything, I think JMs competition is the Maknae line and probably Jin too as he is also part of the vocal line. Therefore I feel I don't have a yardstick to measure him against yet as neither Jungkook nor Tae's album has been released- right?

But wait till it's JK or Taehyung's turn and let me see different treatment out here- I DARE THEM

If hybe thinks they are just going to gloss over things and sweep JMs album debut under the rags then they have another thing coming. They should plant their feet on solid grounds cos I'm about yanking the ground from underneath them.

They are going to leave everything on the shoulder of the fans and then swoop in last minute to claim they did shit for the BOYS when things turn out great.

They should show me the budget they have for each members' promotional package. Let's start there. Cos that determines how and where each member gets promoted.

On the flip side, having those two contents out around the same time reduces promotion costs as such content tend to cross promote eachother. Face will definitely drive traffic to Hobi's content as will Hobi's content to Face.

Personally I wished they would release vminkook albums consecutively within a short span of eachother. People listening to face will be more likely to click on Jk's song and Tae's right after. It keeps the fans engaged, keeps the momentum going and keeps all three trending on the charts making it hard for an outsider to break the chain.

They could have done same for the hyung line too.

All this seem to lack direction and each day my non existent faith in hybe wanes.

I hope the end would justify the means. Hopefully. I'm gonna sit tightly out here and watch it all play out to the credits and then I will comment on it😌

Hybe brought them this far, I should at least hope they know what the hell they are doing. But if Face pays the price for their edgy endeavors then I shouldn't be held responsible for the hex I put on them.

It's funny how you say Jimin is about to share the limelight when he's actually about to eat Hobi up😭😭

Gotta run 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️

[oh-my-damn]

Okay I need some advice. I’m 22 and it’s never really bothered me that I’ve never had a boyfriend, had sex, etc. It truly doesn’t bother me in the slightest but last night me and my gfs were out and we ended up talking to some guys, just laughing and talking ya know? One guy asked for my number and my friend immediately was like ‘omg are you sure she’s a virgin u know’ and laughing trying to make it out as a joke but I knew she was being bitchy. I’ve notice this recently quite a lot with her like I got offered this business apprenticeship last week and I was so excited and she just kinda shit on it like ‘wow Business so fun doing that for the rest of your life’

Anyway lol, that was super long and I’m sorry but yeah. Pls tell me I’m not weird for being 22 and a virgin, I’m like the only one in my friend group and I can never forget because they remind me constantly lol

Okay, first of all.

I'm going to say this in the nicest way I can which is not at all. Dump her. Immediately.

That girl is not your friend.

I've had a friend like that. She would talk about my sex life to try and embarrass me, especially if we were amongst guys. She would literally spill details about my sex life at the table if we went out. Intimate details I'd told her in confidence. I am very open about sex and always wrote it off as her trying to be interesting because she didn't have much going on herself, but I should have seen the redflags when they first happened.

She was a bad fucking friend and ended up trying to ruin my life and get my severance at my job, when it closed down after I'd been there for seven years, taken away from me by lying to corporate (we worked at the same place, I was her boss).

Shady people have no place in your life. That is toxic, unacceptable behavior, and while it might be scary to cut people out of your life, I promise things will get so much better and easier once you do.

Would she be there if you truly needed someone? Would she come comfort you if you called?

Because if the answer is no or even if you're in doubt, then keep her at a distance. She may have insecurities that you trigger (she might be jealous of parts of your life or who you are etc) and it will only get worse because only insecure people treat their "friends" that way. That is not a friend.

Second of all, you're not weird for being a virgin at 22. I lost my virginity at 14, and it was a very lovely experience with my boyfriend at the time and I felt completely safe and have never regretted it since. But that is not how it goes for everyone.

I always tell my friends that your first time should be treasured; it should be with someone you feel safe and comfortable with, and it should be on your terms. Preferably with someone who understands the weight of the act of it being your first time and someone who cherishes you.

Of course, everyones experience is different, but I've always said to my friends that I hope they have a wholesome, safe, intimate experience, and whenever they've said "maybe I should just get it over with" I always talk them out of it.

It is not a bad thing to want to wait for the right person or right time - that's smart. You will remember this for the rest of your life (I've remembered mine, and I've cherished it, and it helped give me a very healthy relationship with sex. I understand everyone is different and have different experiences, so it might not be the same for everyone, but you asked for my advice and this is my experience)

Don't rush it and don't feel bad for taking your time. You should feel that it's right when it happens, and that the person you do it with is right, too.

Don't sweat it hon. It'll happen when it's supposed to happen.

But as for that friend....

Cut her off. Cut her out. She's no good and she won't get any better bc if you trigger her insecurities, it will spiral until it reaches a boiling point and it could end up affecting you way worse than you'd ever imagine.

Fake friends aren't friends, they're actually obstacles we need to get over in our life to make it better. ❤️

#mandy answers #advice #frenemies? #friends? #fake friends

[paperstorm]

I really appreciate all of the links and information in that post you reblogged about the Israeli prison/detainment policies/abuses (not sure the best wording for all of that horror tbh)… but the OP post of that talking about the condition of hostages vs prisoners released doesn’t make sense to me at all. Are they saying the hostages released are supposed to be some kind of reflection of being treated well during captivity? cause I’ve read about a hostage who was shot multiple times and needed surgery, another on the brink of death because of lack of medication, a 12 year old boy who said he was beat by residents, another child being forced to watch footage, etc. I don’t understand why we can’t acknowledge the absolute horrors Israel is committing while also not trying to turn Hamas into angelic freedom fighters with the purest of morals. Things like this make it really hard for me to reblog or share stuff on social media cause I can agree with 95% of the information but then I’ll realize “oh that link hidden in this post actually goes to an alt right neo nazi website” or “oh snuck in the middle of this really great article is the most glaring of antisemitic rhetoric”… anyway, I’m sorry for the rant here I’m just… exhausted. By the world and also sometimes by my fellow pro Palestinian advocates.

I am also exhausted by it sometimes, and not immune to getting swept up in the emotions of all of this as much as I'm trying to stay reasonable. I agree the way OP worded the original post was not ideal, if it had been just that without the longer and well-sourced reply I don't think I would have reblogged it. Because you're right, criticism of Israel can't devolve into acting like Hamas by default is an amazing upstanding moral organization. That's kindergarten nonsense, this need to have a well defined Good Guy and Bad Guy in every situation. Adults should be capable of more nuance than that, and it's really frustrating to see that so many aren't.

I think for me - because I don't know the intentions of that other person and can't speak for them - posts like that are not about saying 'wow look how wonderful Hamas is'. They are about the more zoomed-out task of challenging the Western/Imperial narrative that Israel isn't doing anything wrong. The 'right to defend itself' narrative, that is just blatant nonsense under international law. The narrative that when Hamas does something it's terrorism but when the state of Israel does the same thing (or, usually, a far worse version of the same thing), it's not. The narrative that Israel is the moral authority who is following international law to the best of their ability, is trying to minimize civilian casualties, is only going after Hamas, has no choice but to bomb hospitals because there is no other way to protect their own citizens. It's not for me about saying that just because Israel is bad, Hamas is automatically good. It's about acknowledging that for literal decades, the broadcasters of the Western narrative (governments in America/Canada/UK, corporate owned media companies like CNN and MSNBC, etc) have been just blatantly lying, propagandizing, and selectively presenting partial or twisted information, all in service of empire and money and colonization and the enrichment of defense contractors. Joe Biden said, years ago, (paraphrasing because I can't remember the exact quote) "If Israel didn't exist, America would have to invent an Israel to protect it's interests in the region."

I don't know if that makes sense, I hope it does. For me it's about .. yes, push back against people who are trying to make this a binary situation in which Israel is Bad therefore Hamas is Good. But also seeing more value in a more zoomed out perspective that is meant to challenge extremely pervasive and genocidal Western narratives that have gone largely unchallenged for the entire history of the region. Sometimes you do get there by drawing equivalencies. By asking "wait a second, why does Israel have thousands of Palestinian hostages in the first place and why does no one in power seem to think that's a problem?"

#israel/palestine discussion

[secretlywritingstories]

The new year is just around the corner now. It’s already come to pass in other places of the world, and it’ll catch up with me and my little country soon enough.

Time is all a construct. The seconds, the minutes, the days, the weeks, the months, the years. We made it up for hour world, a reflection of what we saw, sure, but still all our creation. Humans do that a lot. Look at something and wish to find structure and meaning behind it. I quite like that about us.

I wanted to take a moment to reflect back on how 2022 have treated me and it has been quite a good year in a lot of aspects. I started off the year with a panic attack, and feeling quite lost and without roots. However, that was the only one I had this year, and while my brain hasn’t always been the best, we’ve been managing. I’ve gotten even more familiar with myself, and how to get up and push on. I know how, I just have to remember to do it.

I moved departments at work and went full time and came up to work that’s much more interesting and also a whole bunch of colleagues that make it a fun experience to go to work. I’ve spent the months still finding my footing and landing properly, and sometimes I still worry if I’m cut out for this corporate, adult 9-5 office job stuff. I like the stability of it, though, and the organisation I work for does important work.

I wrote and wrote, quite consistently all throughout the year and while I “only” journalled on some days, I’ve not missed a single day all year. Over 790k words written and over 550k published across tumblr and AO3. Those numbers are not even fathomable really. I had a goal of writing 2k a year and I did that and then some. But more importantly than the volume, I’m so proud of the works I put out this year. I’ve pushed boundaries, like releasing my first fic with smut in it on my actual account, and written for new fandoms and once again felt the warm embrace of a reading audience. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of that.

I also cut my hair, which might not seem like that big of a deal, and in some ways it really wasn’t. Over the last half a decade, I’ve grown hair out, had 30 cm. or so snipped off to donation and cut it just above my shoulder. But this year, I went really short, like above the ears, nothing to tie back, short. And it’s been so good. It’s so light and easy and I feel more myself. Like it fit me better.

I’ve kept a lot of the same wonderful friends that I had last year and they continue to be something to bring me joy in my life. Both the online crowd and the ones from real life are invaluable to me, and it’s always a pleasure to hang out with them, virtually or otherwise. I’m hopefully seeing a lot of the online friends for the first time in the new year, which is exciting.

My family is still doing well, as are the dogs and my dear horse. I’ve spent a lot of time in the family house, and in some ways that feels a bit regressive but in other ways I really needed that stability of people around me. And the dogs. Dogs to cuddle with most nights are very essential. I also know that this family home won’t be here forever, in a few years my parents will probably sell it and move into something smaller and I selfishly want to soak up everything I can. Though I do home to get better at splitting my time between the family house and my apartment.

This is already getting entirely too long, but I am always a sucker for reflection and introspection. Perhaps you’ll see me again tomorrow with a spilled thoughts post about my hopes for 2023. I will end by saying that 2022 felt like I finally uncurled a little from the defensive position that I’d taken late 2019/early 2020. It had been a tumultuous earthquake of time that I think I still needed to recover form.

Now, I feel more like I’ve evened out my ground, patched the ridges and holes, and now we can actually start building again. I wish you all a very Happy New Year!

#2022 #spilled thoughts #personal #new years eve #Happy New Year

[nation-of-bros]

»

The CO2 theory is just brilliant propaganda

There is no debate about the causes of climate change

800 scientific publications against the Co2 thesis

The claims made by climate modelers should be treated with caution

Al Gore's climate documentary is largely flawed

The pricing of CO2 has nothing to do with environmental protection

The Germans and the fear of the end of the world

Nigel Calder already had a reason for this in 1998. “In the beginning, the CO2 and global warming theory was an Anglo-Saxon invention, which was not least promoted by the nuclear industry hoping for a revival. But then it became more and more of a doomsday scenario, and that resents the sober Anglo-Saxons. Then the IPCC remembered: The Germans are best for doomsday theories! When it comes to the end of the world, the Germans are the best. This is how the climate greenhouse doomsday theory was handed over to the Germans. I'm afraid Nigel Calder is right again here.

«

>_<

If you read that as a German, you want to throw yourself on the floor like a crying child, kick and scream with rage.

Only rubbish comes to us from the west

Already Karl Marx was commissioned by the British secret service to create an ideology for the Germans to eliminate the emerging German industry and power of Prussia. This ideology should be tailor-made for the German spirit and the masses on the mainland continent.

Later, Hitler was advised by Americans from the Rockefeller Foundation, who helped him formulate the Nuremberg Race Laws. At the same time, American corporations such as Ford set up plants in Germany and supplied the oil for the Wehrmacht.

» During the Second World War, Ford Werke employed slave laborers although not required by the Nazi regime. The deployment of slave labor began before the Ford-Werke was separated from the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, while America had not yet entered the war. « source

Today we know where all this led…

Now it is the green ideology that also aims to destroy Germany's and Europe's economy. They keep flooding us with new shit to make us destroy ourselves.

Something for Every Taste

Depending on the mindset, they offer different "thinking options". It's like a supermarket, with something for every taste: For nationalistic Ukrainians, there's cornflakes made from Russophobia with war toys to collect. For the totally turned left Germans, a lot of self-hating, climate-neutral vegan products. For some Middle Eastern Arabs, IS meat bled dry with hatred for other Muslims.

And even within the US, they create a lot of distraction through a never-ending black-white conflict. It's no secret that the CIA itself instigates race riots, just as it invented Islamist terror.

The only beneficiaries in this business are the Western leaders. It is a perfidious system and truly satanic. I wouldn't be surprised if they eat cute innocent babies too if it ages them less. They don't care about the chaos in the world their system wreaks as long as they're on top.

#politics #statement

[kyrodo]

My brain works in mysterious ways. I have a very good memory actually but not all of it is conscious memory. What I mean by that is for example, today Red mention iFixit to get my replacement cable for my vive cosmos elite headset, since the current cable I'm using is damaged.

I decided to download and reinstall Satisfactory after playing Dyson Sphere for a while. My sudden choice to play Satisfactory could easily be passed off as, because I was playing a factory game. But Satisfactory has a corporation called Ficsit. The first thing I think of when I think Satisfactory is not Ficsit. In fact I didn't even remember that was even a thing in Satisfactory, I never played it that much or paid that much attention.

But this is just one example among many. Words stick in my mind. Whether I'm conscious about it or not. And my actions throughout the day will gravitate often unintentionally towards things that I was thinking of, and more often than not I will keep realizing that choice lead me to something that was mentioned earlier that same day one way or another. I have a strange brain, but a very interesting one indeed.

When I am conscious of it, there is generally a pretentious reason that I am relating and reference things so often. But usually back then it was a combination of both and a good deal of luck that it kept happening so often. In the midst of depression any silly little thing like that is something to do that is non-destructive, and constructive in a sense even if it is potentially destructive socially. If someone was going to take their level of subtext to the max, I was going to do the same in my own way. And let my imagination fly. Allow the head canons happen with a large variety of characters.

I generally don't read books. I'm much to drawn to games and other stuff on the pc that I find it difficult to find time for it at all. I am much more engaged in interactive environments. But I do understand why people read. It is to escape. Temporarily escape their lives to let their imagination wander. Construct this imaginative world, voices for all these characters and hear them in their mind. To watch a movie that is completely inside their head. Or even plug themselves in with their favorite characters.

I was doing the same in a very half-assed way. But it gave me sense of identity. It gave me a variety of different feelings. Different ways to express thoughts and emotions that relied on my understanding of how each of them behaved. And feeling like your in a story feels so much more invigorating then the mindless sandbox of the actual world. Because every event is meant to happen, and meant to tie together, and the significant characters are always significant. And from a romantic perspective, best friends and couples in stories are very tantalizing to want to head canon.

A half-assed imaginative experience for a half-assed interaction as I was still in the process of processing and mitigating the damage from both my choices and the lingering feelings of what was going on between me and my friends. I was desperate however to make this imaginative experience a reality. I wanted to see a day when we could spend an average day having already gotten to know each other and get used to each other, playing things, chatting and doing whatever. And that future was forever barred from me. No matter how hard I imagined and how hard I hoped, things only got worse rather than better. I felt this overwhelming feeling inside. And it was so warm, and I would spend days when Red was at work just holding a pillow and savoring that feeling, thinking one day the happiness locked within would be fully released. And that was forever barred from me.

Choskey saved me. Choskey gave me new hope. New love. A new future. Try as I might to have things only be Red, and fully respect the fact that Red thinks so highly of me and treats me so well. This is what I need too. I need this social life. I need events to look forward to. I need my feelings reignited. I need to know that this train wreck of a career I had would not be the end of me. And that I would experience laughter and time with groups of people once more. That I would not be spending day after day gaming by myself forever until the day I die.

Vrchat is the best thing that's ever happened to me. And all this pain that I experienced and all the things I wished for that I lost to you, I found once again, and things are finally going my way. Overwhelmingly well, so much so that I can't even fully process how good this feels, but I feel absolutely amazing. And my heart is over the moon. And I can feel and feel and feel as much as I want and all of it is 100% returned. And it almost brings me to tears.

[horatioo]

callout post for muy fuckign mom part one: at first i srs'd

welcome to eliot rambling about how much he fucking dreads going home for break this year. i'm your host, the fucked up talloran version of lobotomy corporation adam who keeps getting used as a fucking armrest.

this is my unwilling audience member azarel and my apparently quite amused audience member gregory. they might pipe in.

broad tw for child abuse and stuff. also csa mentions. im going to make a part two that is just me listing out goofy shit

PART ONE: THE BEGINNINGS

picture this. i am like seven years old and crying in the upstairs bathroom in my house. i have been yelled at for stepping on the floor or something i actually don't remember. my mother said she wished i'd never been born. seven year old me agrees with this. this is why i am crying inconsolably in the bathroom.

she apologized later that day but. like. that was a regular occurrence. usually not those words but i got yelled at a lot as a child for weird and relatively minor things, such as...not wanting to eat a vegetable, not knowing our multiplication tables, and other stuff.

but the yelling isn't that bad because it stopped when we were like nine so it doesn't matter + ratio + i don't care. (gregory is informing me i should care, but he's also shoving popcorn in his mouth so i am disregarding his advice.)

now the thing that is BAD in my eyes is how much she like. impresses her worldview on me. which would not be that bad if she didnt STILL DO THIS now that i am EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD. she has done this as long as i remember.

you may ask "what kind of worldview?" WELL,

the world is doomed and we are all going to die of global warming in my lifetime and there is no fixing it but i still need to try because otherwise i am a Horrible Person

even if global warming doesn't kill me, i have zero career options because everything is going to be taken over by machines, and the one option i did have is ALSO being taken over by machines, so fuck you

but don't slack off in school because that's morally wrong

if the global warming and the joblessness doesn't get me, well, the country is going to shit and there's no hope of saving it

oh and if that wasnt bad enough, well, somehow socialism is bad so i cant support that because its bad

also because i was born a woman, everyone will always see me as a woman, and thusly i must Always Be Paranoid that someone is going to rape me and then kill me. i must Always be alert. i must Always be prepared to fight for my life

that last one is probably true tbh

i think you can kind of understand why i have depression given this is ALL I WAS EVER TOLD WAS THE FUTURE. like yeah man. maybe i should die, if this is true!

also she constantly vents to me and talks shit about my little brother to me, but then i will start complaining about one thing and she's like "Okay but [solution based off insane misinterpretation of what i just said"

and i will say "that is not what i said, i said [clearer explanation]"

"yeah so you're saying [exact same misinterpretation]"

"no"

it is frustrating as fuck. she told me there was no way my uncle could have sa'd me as a child because "she never left me alone with him" (blatantly untrue). yeah whatever.

also before my suicide attempt at 13, i got my electronics taken away because i failed latin, and she yelled at me for sneaking them anyway. except. i was homeschooled, and that...was kind of...my only outside connection to the world that wasnt dictated by my mom. so yeah !

also i told her i was depressed before my attempt and she was like "no youre not" lol. lmao

PART TWO: MORE AWFUL SHIT

so i did just mention the venting and complaining. yeah well that is EVERY SINGLE TIME I TALK TO HER.

and this happens with stuff i do, too. like. i am perpetually afraid of fucking up and constantly walking on eggshells around her because if i upset her she wont TELL me. she'll just treat me like a biohazard for the rest of the day while pretending she's not.

and GOD forbid i try to Not Be Sick or not get HER sick. i said "hey i skipped the dead week of class before thanksgiving because we weren't learning anything and i didn't want to bring anything home!" and she said "You know that will affect your grades, right? You have no more absences, you told me. You shouldn't have done that :/" and then pushed me out of the house as soon as she could.

she is a constant wedge between me and my brother because she will snap at my brother for small things like forgetting to move an object, being "too loud" or talking too much, accidentally interrupting, having the GALL to be snarky like a normal teen, etc.

she also makes you ask before you get any food that isnt fruit, which SOUNDS fine but she heavily regulates what my brother eats because hes unhealthy (which. i was too before i moved out!) and not me.. and then she wonders why my brother gets upset about me getting special treatment...

shes also just. so incredibly passive aggressive. i know i said that but like i constantly assume everyone is mad at me because shes ALWAYS mad at me about something but she never SAYS what shes upset about. usually its that i dont tell her things, but when i DO tell her things OH MAN then she pulls out the disappointment.

PART THREE: OH LORD

so. the reason i'm not allowed to post about the. uh. p-word thing happening in the world right now. is because. she told me. i'm not allowed to. because i will ruin my family's life, and even if i don't have a future my family does! and if i even SPEAK of it online on a blog NOT AFFILIATED WITH MY DAD it will be traced to him and ruin his life and we will be homeless and it will be all my fault

that is the actual reason i had to delete my old blog. that is why i cannot reblog the posts. because she has this threat hanging over my head. and you may ask "why not just do it behind her back?" well,

i am kind of scared because when she says it, it sounds reasonable. and it took several people pointing out that its not really reasonable for me to even start looking at the things she says and going wait, thats...not normal

she treats me like a therapist and a family jewel, not a person. she wouldn't speak to me for an entire night when i was around 13 because i said maybe we shouldn't let alt-righters take the ok emoji from us at the dinner table. and its just. yeah. whats the point in trying anymore? the world is ending and im going to die before i hit 30 anyway!

except, like. thats. kind of awful. and its kind of awful that even after a suicide attempt at THIRTEEN my mom kept telling me these things and emphasizing how bad the future will be and how easy and good my life is now

except it isnt because i wasnt allowed to meet my friends without asking her, i wasnt allowed to go OUTSIDE without telling her, i wasnt allowed to go to the corner store or the mall or anywhere without supervision until LAST YEAR, i wasnt allowed to quit classes even when i was being called RACIAL SLURS at the age of SIX, i wasnt allowed to TELL MY THERAPIST THINGS!!

i could not. tell my therapist. about anything she did. because i knew it would come back to her somehow. i would let it slip or cps would be called. the second one is what she told me when she said "dont tell your therapist about your father hitting your brother" (he. hit him lightly with a leaf, by the way, i doubt it was even painful) and then she got angry when i did anyway

so i just stopped telling my therapist things over time because what if this was the thing that got cps called on us? what if i was the reason our life was ruined?

and now i cant start again.

great job mom.

same with meds. she makes it so im afraid to take meds. i dont take my anxiety meds that ARENT HABIT FORMING because im scared i will get addicted and anyway, more meds is more expensive and i dont need that many meds the goal of meds is to get off them someday!

and i shouldnt ask for upped doses of my meds noooo. not unless im suicidal.

god forbid i try a new med. nothing thats even close to a stimulant! nothing habit forming! i cant even do SLEEP MEDS that i DESPERATELY NEED because if she sees them when picking them up i just KNOW im going to get lectured. i cant even get fgucking MIGRAINE MEDS.

she never told me the migraines were medically significant until this year btw. :)

theres a bunch of other things but im tired and ive been typing this for an hour now. so. hitting post and praying

#eliot tag #abuse #csa discussion

[wack-ashimself]

I congratulated my cousin then, in the same few hours, was disappointed with the USA...

My cousin & his wife bought their first house recently. He's def over 40, and drives over 2 hours ONE WAY to a major city every week day to do a heavily physical intensive job. His wife works just as hard, just as much, as a nurse (or something like that). They are good, honest, hard working people. Always have been. They are ALWAYS busy.

Anyways, they had a party, first time I was at their new house. I let them know I was proud of them (I am. Not everyone has something to show for their hard work.) As their middle kid was giving me a tour of their house, showing me her bedroom, she then PROUDLY (I'm sorry but....no) shows me her mcdonald's worker hat. I'm a terrible cousin/uncle/whatever the term is. I barely remember all my different cousins' kid's names (took me years for some. Everyone kept popping em' out). But...I thought 'she's WAY too fucking short to be 16' (in michigan). I was like '...you're not 16, right?' She goes 'nope, 14.' I was like 'why!?' She's like 'I wanted to work there*.'

But....she doesn't! Her parents work their asses off to treat their family right but, in doing so, rarely have any real spare time OR money. So the kid, to do something AND earn money to spend on her family works....the shittiest job ever. And these corporations EXPLOIT these poor families. Cuz let's not pretend somebody making 250k has their god damn kids working at walmart or burger king! Rich people write the laws to allow poor people's kids the PRIVILEGE to serve them like slaves! DO NOT SEE IT ANY OTHER WAY!!!! (How about rich people can't eat or shop at place's they never worked at that wage/position? I love that idea; trump never getting mcdonalds the rest of his life because he has never so much as cleaned his own, let alone someone else's, toilet? JOY!)

I totally understand feeling value from your work, having extra money, having something to do but....we are robbing children of their FEW years of being kids**! WE ARE A BROKEN SOCIETY! It's one thing to teach them a job of value, of skill, of NECESSITY (farming), but....fast food? HA.

And I can't put this on my real profile cuz I know it would offend everyone on that side of the family, but it's true: I'm poor, you're poor, and your kids will be in FAR WORSE excessive poverty than you can imagine, and letting it go on, let alone allowing your kid to work there, ENABLES IT!

I do not blame my cousin, his wife, or their kid. At 16, I did the same thing. But at least I had 2 more years of freedom. And I did not work EVERY single day thru all my teenage years I could have. I lived. I had fun! I MADE LIFELONG MEMORIES!

USA is a terrible fucking country and anyone who says otherwise is either rich or stupid. No grey area.

*and it has far more cons than they realize: she doesn't have a car. Can't drive. And they live off of a highway. So the parents have to plan their schedule around when they can drop her off and pick up (using hard earned gas money). Also my ex worked at THAT EXACT MCDONALDS, and got hit on by creeps. What is my cousin's TINY 14 yr old kid (I could seriously throw her like a football) supposed to do? Hope management does the right thing? Do they ever? lol Not till they're forced...

**fairly, what is there for kids to do? We paved over nature, and charged a fee to do anything or go anywhere. Kids really don't even have childhoods anymore. More...pay per view of what it's supposed to be like...

#mcdonalds #mcdonald #fast food #child slaves #child worker #children

[lowtaxsa]

Review: Star Wars Episode IX (2019)

Star Wars: Episode 9 - A Galaxy Far, Far Away from Originality

From the moment the opening crawl rolls onto the screen, Star Wars: Episode 9 hits you like a freight train of disappointment. It's an unoriginal, uninspired, and utterly predictable end to a series that's been running on fumes since the prequels. Oh, the prequels, the golden age of Star Wars – when the fanbase was actually unhappy and the world made sense.

Disney, the bloated corporate beast that it is, has managed to take a once-beloved franchise and turn it into a soulless, never-ending parade of merchandise and spin-offs. I can't help but imagine Mickey Mouse laughing maniacally as he counts his piles of cash and rolls around in a sea of action figures and themed lunch boxes.

But let's dive into the movie itself, shall we? Star Wars: Episode 9 - The Rise of Palpatine's Petting Zoo (not the real title, but it might as well be).

0:00 - Ah, the classic opening crawl. Does anyone even read these anymore? Spoiler alert: the galaxy is in peril, and our heroes must save it. Groundbreaking stuff.

10:23 - Look, it's a new desert planet! Because we definitely needed more of those in Star Wars.

15:45 - Rey is doing some intense Jedi training by... levitating rocks? Yeah, that'll show the First Order who's boss.

21:17 - Surprise, surprise, Kylo Ren is still emo and conflicted. This guy makes Anakin look like a well-adjusted adult.

27:34 - Poe and Finn bicker like an old married couple. If only Disney had the guts to make them an actual couple. But no, can't risk upsetting the masses.

33:12 - "Hey guys, remember the Death Star? Here it is... AGAIN!" Originality is dead, and Disney killed it.

40:03 - A wild Emperor Palpatine appears! Didn't this guy die in Episode 6? Well, never mind, continuity is for chumps.

49:30 - Cue the space dogfight with excessive lens flares. My retinas are burning, but at least it looks pretty.

57:22 - The obligatory cantina scene with bizarre aliens, because we haven't seen that before.

1:05:15 - Rey and Kylo Ren have yet another dramatic lightsaber battle on top of some wreckage. I'm getting whiplash from all the reused plot points.

1:14:32 - Look, it's Lando Calrissian! Remember him? Yeah, Disney sure hopes you do.

1:20:08 - A touching moment with CGI Leia, because nothing says "emotional" like a computer-generated performance.

1:31:47 - The "epic" space battle begins, but it's basically just a game of "spot the reference" at this point.

1:42:28 - Oh look, our heroes are miraculously saved at the last minute by a fleet of ships from across the galaxy. How... predictable.

1:52:15 - The final showdown between Rey and Palpatine. Is it just me, or is anyone else getting déjà vu?

1:58:40 - The power of friendship (and shameless nostalgia) saves the day! Hooray! Who needs a coherent plot when you have the Force?

2:01:22 - Roll credits. Another Star Wars film in the bag. Disney's cash cow continues to graze, and the fans keep lining up for their next helping of reheated leftovers.

Episode 9 brings us yet another rehash of the same plotlines we've seen a thousand times before, like a tired old dog performing tricks for treats. It's as if Disney said, "Hey, remember that thing you liked in the original trilogy? Here it is again, but this time with more lens flares and CGI!"

The characters, once complex and interesting, have been reduced to caricatures of themselves, spewing cheesy one-liners and participating in painfully forced emotional moments. And of course, there's the fan service – oh, the fan service. It's like Disney is trying to shove as many nostalgic references down our throats as possible, hoping we'll be too busy choking on our own childhood memories to notice the glaring lack of substance.

But the most tragic part of all this is the fanbase. Star Wars fans, once united in their hatred for the prequels, are now so brainwashed that they'll happily guzzle down whatever Disney serves up, no matter how watered-down and bland. They've become a collective of blind followers, easily manipulated by the promise of more lightsaber battles and space dogfights.

And don't even get me started on the YouTube shills. These so-called "critics" are nothing more than glorified commercials for Disney, raking in the big bucks for regurgitating the same tired opinions and theories. They're like a never-ending echo chamber of corporate-sponsored praise, ensuring that the masses keep lining up to buy their tickets and merchandise.

In the end, Star Wars: Episode 9 is a movie that exists solely to make money and pander to an audience that's grown numb to the taste of mediocrity. It's a fitting end to a series that was once a shining beacon of creativity and innovation but has since become a shadow of its former self.

But hey, at least we have the prequels to remind us of a time when Star Wars was still capable of eliciting genuine emotion – even if that emotion was pure, unadulterated rage.

#star wars #episode 9 #lowtax speaks #big blog #reviews

[mollywilcoxvo]

My day job is call center work. I've done it for about 20 years. I started back in 1997, and at one point had to take 8 years off for my own mental health.

I say that because I thought, when I took the time off, that I needed to because there was something wrong with *me*. Because I couldn't process how we, as workers were being treated by management, and how we were treated by the majority of callers.

I thought something was wrong with *me*, because I was constantly told by management that I needed to do better, do more, process more, care LESS about the callers I talked with, but still sound empathetic to them.

I thought something was wrong with *me*, because I was constantly told by the callers that I needed to do better, do more, process more, care MORE about each of them, and I didn't sound empathetic enough to them.

I remember the instant I had to walk away, too. I processed short and long term insurance claims at the time, and I worked with a processor who immediately denied every single claim initially, regardless of what the request was for. I took a call from a person who had a claim that had been initially denied, and they wanted to know how to proceed.

Without breaking HIPAA confidentiality, I can say that as I looked through everything, I couldn't understand why the claim had been denied. It was such a clear situation, even for me, I just didn't understand. So I went to the processor, and asked why it had been initially denied.

"Well, that's to weed out those who don't *really* need it," was the answer.

I told the caller that we would re-submit the claim, and see if additional information would be helpful, and the caller told me that they'd been hoping to go on a trip to Italy with their family after going through what they needed to, and they'd been told by their Dr that they'd be right as rain in a few months.

I closed the call, forwarded the claim back over to the processor, and I walked out.

I walked out.

I don't have a medical degree. I make no claim to that. I do, however have personal familial experience with exceedingly similar situations to what the caller was experiencing.

I couldn't say anything to them. I couldn't tell them anything, because I'm not a doctor, or a nurse, I couldn't give them advice, I couldn't say what *I* had experienced, what my family had experienced.

And the years of verbal abuse, and gaslighting, and vitriol from both management and callers, the levels of helplessness I felt going through everything... It just all hit, all at once.

I walked out, and I didn't go back for 8 years.

When I came back into call center life, I had a new clarity of how management worked, and why.

Turns out, it wasn't me that was the problem.

About a year ago, I gained employment in yet another health care call center, and in the course of that year, I've proved that corporate management simply doesn't care.

Our call center isn't large, but we are the only portion of the larger corporation that is doing really well. Well enough that upper management announced that the company was going to start expanding into more physical locations.

Well enough that management has tried to get more employees to come in and work with us, but they keep leaving because they are simultaneously overwhelmed with the amount of work suddenly handed to them, and them finding better pay elsewhere.

For every 3 employees they try to get, they lose 2 within 2 weeks of hiring.

At the same time, however, whenever any of us have asked for a raise, to match the local average hourly rate that other health care companies are paying the same position, we have been told "Well, we just don't have the funds to do that. Of course, we understand if you need to go elsewhere..."

Companies are willing to extend their holdings, but not willing to re-invest in their own employees. Call centers are especially notorious for doing this, because they think we're so desperate and so expendable, they don't have to care about us.

Two of my co-workers are waiting until they hit their 1 year anniversary, to gain the other half of their bonus... And then they're leaving.

If you are reading this, and happen to be upper management, and oversee a call center, I'm telling you this right now:

You are not treating your employees well.

Period.

If you're working in a call center, know that you aren't crazy, you are worth more, and management is indeed gaslighting you.

[thedmvsacc]

Watching Developing Hell by NoClip once again and it makes me think so much about game development. I remember that meme a couple years ago about shorter games, with shittier graphics and their developers paid more and i know it’s mostly a meme, but it’s not really.

What people really want are games with good art direction, gameplay and story. And as “AAA” games decline because of corporate greed squeezing the life out of their developers, indies continue to rise due to their passion, strong vision and love of the craft. Naughty dog’s insane hours and shitty story with good combat show this. It is touted as a fantastic genre breaking game when it’s the furthest thing from it. It doesn’t tell the story it wants to tell and in fact, treats the player so badly it’s pathetic. On top of having gameplay that goes against it’s main message.

In contrast, Supergiant and Hades show what is possible. Healthy work life balance with people who love the craft but also want to prioritize that they are people first. And they do that while producing one of the best roguelikes and indie games of this generation. It shows art doesn’t have to be commodified or built on human suffering to be worthwhile. It’s amazing to see an outlier but when it seems to be so few and far between that hope gets hard to hold onto.

This also makes me think how AI art is the same thing being done to the visual arts. These tech bros and finance bros just want the most money not caring about human cost, when that is the part that matters most. Art is ultimately communication, and the fact that a significant population of people that hold a lot of wealth or more than the working class don’t understand that because they haven’t been taught to care about wholistic and multifaceted, instead of specialist, learning really disappoints me and is frankly a failing of college and schooling.

Art is, so very important. We all know about cave paintings and viking graffiti. Humans have not changed all that much, we are still silly to the core and in a fight with time to leave a mark. So to have people reduce it down to just pretty pictures or generated words for some essay hurts.

Having AO3 scrapped, and knowing my work(albeit not that much of it and it being fairly old) was scraped to create some random writing generation is awful. I can only imagine artists who’s whole livelihood is their art having AI trained with it without permission feel.

We used to make fun of the AI generating scripts stuff back in the late 2010s but it’s getting genuinely scary. I can’t help think of the Luddites, and the actual ones, not the caricatures of them. Have I wasted a significant portion of my life dedicating myself to a skill that will soon be replaced by machines who will do it better than me but without all of the mistakes that make it handmade? Is it equal to the work i make? Is it worse? Better? I don’t really know the answers to these questions, but if we continue on the same path, i think fighting it will be futile but fighting to keep what i do alive, will be the more important fight. Tailors, master craftsman, cobblers still exist(though in dwindling numbers) despite great changes and much to the chagrin of people who make money making cheaper versions of their products. So id there is anything to take from this, it’s that we need to find support now and stick to each other so the tide is less likely to wash us all away.

#video games #AI art #human artists #edenramblesss

[sondepoch]

One Night (Marius x Reader)

Teaching a Billionaire to Touch Grass (And a Minimum Wage Worker to Treat Herself)

Marius clicks his tongue in annoyance, both at you and the cars around him. Why are there so many people on the road at 2:38 in the morning? Why did the GPS's projected time to get to your home just double? Why is the universe out to get him today, on the one night Marius thought he could catch a break?

“Okay,” he seethes, drumming his fingers on the wheel as the traffic around him grows impossible slower. He doesn’t look at you as he speaks. “We’re going to talk about how inappropriate this was.”

“I—I’m really sorry, Sir, I—”

“I’m not asking for an apology.” Maybe he is, actually. Marius is too pissed to be sure. “What I want to know is why you thought it was okay to call me, of all people.”

MASTERLIST

The car is silent. 

As Marius gets inside, he thinks that this might be the first time he’s not opening the passenger door seat for a lady partner, the first time he’s allowed himself to stalk straight into the driver's seat and angrily wait for his passenger to enter on their own.

Actually, he thinks, this is also the first time in years that he's actually driving. The first time someone managed to call for him so late that even his chauffeur was off-duty.

“I’m really sorry about this, Sir,” you mumble as you climb into the seat next to him, apologies never halting as you ramble on and on and on like an idiot who can't read a room. “I, ah, didn’t think this would happen, I'm so…”

Marius ignores you.

He glances out the passenger window and catches Darius Morgan’s equally-annoyed gaze. Seriously? the man seems to be asking, an unimpressed look crossed over his face as he eyes you through the car window. I don’t fucking know, Marius’s gaze says back, and he shakes his head the slightest as he starts the car.

“What’s your address?” he asks, interrupting your apologies. Propriety should make him feel somewhat embarrassed over the way he's acting,  but he can’t bring himself to be even a little polite right now.

“It’s by the Harbor. Um, if you go straight on Main Street and turn right at the—”

“Forget it,” Marius interrupts you. He taps the small car screen on his right, opening up the GPS interface. “Just type it in. I’ll drop you off.”

Your face falls at his irate voice, but you wisely don't comment on it, instead typing in your address as he asked. He watches you cautiously the whole time, for once not caring about the performance anxiety his gaze naturally brings to everyone he looks at. To your merit, you don't mess up anymore than you already have, deft fingers moving with the preciseness he’s used to seeing from you, but the skill can hardly impress him after you called him to pick you up from here, of all places. As the GPS routing sequence activates, Marius lets out an annoyed huff. This is not where he wanted to be right now.

Then, the car hums to life as he presses down on the accelerator, and he’s speeding in the direction of your home, trying to abandon his anger with the jailhouse the two of you are leaving.

I should be at home right now, he thinks as he moves onto the highway. He thinks about how long it had taken for him to coordinate this night off from Vyn’s tutoring sessions, Pax’s board meetings, his schoolwork, and the NXX’s meetings. I should be sleeping, or painting, or calling Rosa, or—

“Fuck,” he mutters when traffic begins to slow down. 

He’s in a traffic jam.

So much for sleeping. And painting. And calling Rosa. 

He clicks his tongue in annoyance, both at you and the cars around him. Why are there so many people on the road at—Marius glances at the car’s dashboard—2:38 in the morning? Why did the GPS's projected time to get to your home just double? Why is the universe out to get him today, on the one night Marius thought he could catch a break?

“Okay,” he seethes, drumming his fingers on the wheel as the traffic around him grows impossible slower. He doesn’t look at you as he speaks. “We’re going to talk about how inappropriate this was.”

“I—I’m really sorry, Sir, I—”

“I’m not asking for an apology.” Maybe he is, actually. Marius is too pissed to be sure. “What I want to know is why you thought it was okay to call me, of all people.”

He keeps his glare fixated on the road, knowing that if he shoots you with the same thunderous look he uses to fire people, you’ll probably be too terrified to speak. Still, when you finally start talking, he can sense the fear in your voice.

His grip on the steering wheel softens the slightest.

“I, ah, initially was planning on calling Mr. Vincent. But he—”

“Really?” Marius snaps. “You’re his assistant, right?” Marius thinks back to all the times he stalked into Pax Headquarters only to see Vincent there with his morning coffee in hand and you, always three feet behind, holding Vincent’s work files. The Board of Directors criticized Marius for allowing his assistant to have an assistant, but never did he imagine you to be so…

Incompetent, he wants to say. Foolish might be a better word for it, though.

“Ah, yes. His administrative assistant.”

“And you want me to believe,” Marius huffs, “That the first person you wanted to call to bail you out of jail was the man you’re an administrative assistant to?”

Traffic gets ever slower, and Marius’s car rolls to a complete stop.

“Yes,” you whisper, and you start wringing your fingers in a manner so sheepish that Marius almost wants to believe you. Almost. “I, ah, was going to call him first. But then I remembered that his vacation started last night and that he’s already left Stellis. So I figured that if I called him, he’d just call you, so I…”

He wouldn’t call me, Marius thinks. Vincent is smart enough to find someone else to pick you up from jail. Regular people don’t ask these kinds of favors from their boss. Especially not from their boss's boss.

“Do you know that people usually ask their friends for these things?” Marius asks. Some of his anger seeps away when he realizes how apologetic you actually are, and he moves forward in traffic the slightest. “Or family, perhaps. What you did was…” Marius tries to find a kinder word than completely inappropriate. “Was highly unusual.” He sighs. “Why didn’t you ask someone else?”

He stares at you through the corner of his eye. You’re pursing your lips, holding back tears. Again, his gaze softens.

“I don't have anyone else,” you whisper.

Marius thinks it’s strange for you to imply that you even have him, especially when he’s nothing more to you than a high-level corporate executive, one that you’ve never spoken directly to in your entire life, but he doesn’t press you any further.

Releasing the final remnants of his anger in a soft sigh, he switches lanes and decides to pull into the nearest exit.

“Darius said you were in that cell since yesterday afternoon. You haven’t had dinner yet, right?”

“No, but…”

“This traffic isn’t going anywhere. We may as well get you something to eat.”

He exits easily, pulling into a district of Stellis that he’s never been in before, and ignores your quiet sniffle. 

“Thank you,” you whisper.

Earlier, he was ignoring you out of spite. Now, he doesn’t respond because he wants to preserve your dignity.

As he focuses his attention on the district he's pulled to, ignoring the GPS which vehemently opposes everything he's doing, Marius realizes that he's pulled into a rather poor sector of Stellis. It’s filled with unhealthy fast food joints, late-night drunkards, and a bunch of loiterers who are eyeing his high-end car suspiciously.

After driving around and surveying the options, Marius sighs. 

“The only places open are these fast-food restaurants,” he says, cleanly leaving out the option of getting food from a club or anywhere else a tabloid might be able to snap a picture. “Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah!” you chirp, and Marius finds that your smile is oddly sweet. “Ah, would you be okay with that one over there? I go there a lot, and their food is...better than other fast food places.” 

Marius squints at you for a moment. He tries to recall your salary, and when he fails, he thinks of Vincent’s. Surely, you make a similar wage? You shouldn’t need to frequent fast-food restaurants like this, right?

Shaking his head, he decides not to ask about it. Things like where you eat are your business, not his, and it’s not his place to question you on your personal decisions.

He pulls up to the drive-through, somewhat relieved to find that the dine-in option isn’t even available at this hour, and lets you order whatever you want. You end up taking a meager meal, one that Marius doubts will actually fill your stomach when he can hear it growling so loudly, so when you turn to him and ask what he’ll get, he orders some fries in hopes that he can hand them off to you in case you’re still hungry. 

Minutes later, the two of you are parked on the side of the road with your respective meals in your laps. Only once you’ve finished (and after Marius is starting to pawn his fries off to you, finding that they’re rather unappealing to his pallette) does he think it’s appropriate to actually breach the subject of why you were tossed in jail.

“So,” he drawls, listening to the cool hum of the air conditioner. “Drugs, huh?”

He hears you choke on a fry.

“Th-they weren’t mine!” you blurt. “Honest, Sir, they—”

“Relax,” he says, eyes flitting down. “I’m not going to have you fired over this. Vincent wouldn’t want that. If anything, the court will decide.”

You relax a little at that, but Marius can sense that you’re still on edge.

“I...appreciate that a lot, Sir. But, really, the drugs weren’t mine. I—I’m sure there’s video evidence to prove that. I was just coming home from work when a kid told me to hold onto this bag, and—”

Marius lifts an eyebrow. He may be out of touch with the realities of the common class, but even he knows how ridiculous your story is.

“I didn’t take it, though! He handed it to me and I put it on the ground! But...but an officer saw me put it on the ground and assumed it was mine...and then...you know what happened.”

Marius sighs. You've always been a good, low-profile worker. He has no reason to believe that you'd get involved with anything bad: but he can't help but doubt you. When he next speaks, his voice is laced with hesitance. “Is there anything to prove your innocence? Pax can help get you a good lawyer, but without evidence, it’ll—”

“There is!” Your eyes are too determined to be anything other than sincere. “Or, ah, there should be. It happened right outside my apartment. I’m sure someone there has surveillance footage of what happened.”

Marius ignores the quiet “hopefully” you add to the end of that. 

“Alright,” he says, deciding that it’s not his place to decide whether or not he believes your story. “Tell me how you got my private number, then. Pax employees shouldn’t have access to that information.”

“Oh, ah…”

Your gaze turns sheepish. Marius grows even more interested in your response.

“Mr. Vincent had it written down a couple months ago. I accidentally saw it. I tried to forget, but…”

You seem to be kicking yourself over the blunder, but Marius is impressed. A mind that can remember something months after having seen it only once is a valuable thing, he thinks. It’s a waste for someone with your brain to be working as a mere assistant’s assistant.

“I’m really—”

“It’s okay,” Marius says. “You don’t need to apologize. I’m...not mad at you.”

And somehow, he really isn’t angry anymore.

The two of you finish your meal soon enough, Marius having successfully pressed his fries into your hands. It seems that you really are hungry because you down those in a manner of minutes, and the man almost regrets not having ordered more when he hears your stomach still grumbling beneath the hum of the car as he returns to the highway.

As Marius lets the GPS guide him back onto Stellis’s most frequented roads, he’s pleasantly surprised to find that all traffic is gone. He speeds down the road with a renewed vigor, somehow sidestepping the usual sleepiness that overcomes him during these kinds of drives with your idle commentary of the road, little mentions of “I once saw a turtle here” and “there used to be four lanes here, but they changed it to five” and “this mile-post had the wrong number on it for years before I reported it and highway patrol got it changed.”

If anything, there’s a faint smile on his face when he finally pulls off the freeway, almost amused by your quiet chit-chat. 

“Is this the right neighborhood?” Marius asks as he pulls into one of Stellis’s residential districts. 

“Yeah, it’s just a little further down.” You gather your purse in your lap and thank Marius for the umpteenth time.

“It's okay,” he says, slowing down. The apartments are looking poorer, now, dingier, but he tries not to let that show on his face. “Is it here?”

“Right at the end of the street,” you say, and with only a mildly concerned look on his face, Marius drives you further down the road.

His eyebrows furrow as he realizes what kind of neighborhood you live in, and he wonders if your wage truly is so poor that you have to live here, of all places. The apartment complexes here are unrenovated, a disappointing amount of them sporting broken glass or graffiti on them. Litter covers the grounds, and even in the thick, 3-AM darkness, Marius can make out hundreds of beer cans scattered across the lawns. Bushes are either dying or overgrown, and there are cigarette butts everywhere. 

Marius realizes that between his suit, his car, and his three earrings, he might have more money on him than everyone who lives here combined.

“Which...which of these apartments is yours?”

He looks around warily, quietly hoping that you’ll say it’s none of them.

“Ah, it’s the first window on the second floor of that…” you trail off as your pointer finger lands on an apartment where all lights are lit—and three masked figures stand illuminated, clearly ransacking your house.

“Oh my god,” Marius blurts, already getting his phone out. “You’re getting robbed, what the—”

“No, no!” You’re quick to place a hand on Marius’s arm before he can dial Emergency Services. “Those are, ah, just the neighborhood boys. They...they do bad things, but they’re good kids. Don’t worry. I’ll chase them out in no time, you don’t have to—”

“Are you serious?” Marius asks, dumbfounded. “This—how can you go back to a home like that? You could die, or—or—”

“Sir,” you say, looking him in the eyes with more seriousness than he’s seen from you this entire night. “With all due respect, this is the best I can afford.”

Marius falls silent at that.

You open the door silently, casting your eyes down. “Thank you again for everything,” you murmur. “I...I really appreciate it. I’ll do my best to make sure it never happens again.”

But then, Marius thinks about the weak story you gave to him earlier, where you claimed that someone handed you drugs and then left you with them, and he wonders whether it might have actually been true. Whether this neighborhood, with its burglars and alcoholism and litter, could actually present you with that reality. Whether something like that may happen again to you, or, worse, Marius thinks as he glances back into your apartment at the three masked robbers, if you could actually get hurt.

Against all better judgment, his arm snaps out. He grips your wrist instantly, not thinking about propriety or class divisions or economic status or anything other than you, one of his company’s employees, and your safety.

“Don’t go there,” he blurts. When he realizes that you’re not tearing your arm free of him, he speaks again. “At least, not while they’re there. I’ll come back here with you tomorrow to make sure you can return in a safe environment, and—”

“Sir, I can’t just get a hotel or—”

“I have two guest bedrooms. You can take your pick. Just—ah—” Marius glances out the window at the poor neighborhood you live in, and he winces. “I can’t let you go home to this. Not...not while there are robbers in your house. Please understand.”

“This...this kind of problem doesn’t just go away,” you mumble, but Marius relaxes when he sees your grip on the door loosen. “And besides, it really wouldn’t be appropriate for me to stay in your apartment.”

“Most people wouldn’t call it appropriate to call your company’s CEO to bail you out of jail,” Marius jokes, but the humor of it is lost on you.

“I…”

Your face falls.

“A—that was a joke,” Marius stutters. “I was joking.”

“Right.”

The atmosphere of the car goes awkward, made even worse by the GPS’s automated reminder that your destination is on the left, but the more Marius looks out his window, the more he decides that he can’t possibly let you return to this apartment. He’ll give you a raise if he has to, but this is something no one should be subject to.

“Alright,” you finally relent after Marius makes it clear that he won’t speak unless it’s to plead with you more. “Just for one night.”

“Just for one night,” Marius agrees, already planning how he can make sure that you have a better home to return to than this one for all future nights to come.

#Word Count: 2.7k #female reader #tw: robbery #Tears of Themis #tot #tears of themis x reader #tears of themis marius #tears of themis lu jinghe #marius x reader #lu jinghe x reader #billionaire x poor girl #part of a series #i have extremely mixed feelings about this piece so eh #more to come in this hopefully