#which isn't their fault

[littlebluebarista]

that one line from Honest Hearts that's like 'There's nothing you can do. We don't use chems, but I learned long ago that I'm immune to their effects.' yeah that's the only thing keeping me from actually losing it right now

#guess who's ✨incurable✨ and it's just now ✨sinking in✨ #and there's no surgery or procedure or level of pain management that can really ✨fix it✨ #on top of that I learned I likely have a 1in3 to 1in2 chance of being ✨totally infertile✨ #so i get to go through what feels like labor every month for the next 25-30 years and never actually have a ✨family of my own✨ #i am not well this is a low-key cry for help #which will be screamed into the void until morning because the only real support anyone can give me is an I'm Sorry and I'm Praying For You #which isn't their fault #my only consolation right now is that I will hit menopause and/or die one day and then this will finally end #if you're body functions the way God intended it stop and say a prayer thanking the good Lord above that it does #because I didn't do that enough before this hit me and I wish I had #and while you're at it intercede on my behalf because it's all I have left at this point #help #please

[echoequinox]

I need more friends that read absolute garbage, all my friends have adhd and wouldn’t read my homestuck/kingdom hearts fic if I paid them

#which isn't their fault #but also *shaking fist at them* you'll rue the day #personal

[sector-i-closed]

.

#It really sucks that I start crying and I feel like the only thing that would help my feelings would be to get laid but the one who could #Do anything about it is too tired all the time #Which isn't their fault #And my rp thread with smut I don't feel like answering or the motivation isn't there #And ironically I'm too tired to answer it but yet #I want to be laid #How crazy 🤦‍♀️

[barblaz-arts]

Fellow Chaggie shipper, here and I wanted to ask you a question. Could you please do an analysis post on the Chaggie argument from Hello Rosie. I know this will sound weird but I can't get over the level of icy anger Charlie had towards Vaggie or how despite everything going on, Charlie is more hurt from Vaggie not being honest with her. Just angst all around.

Oh yeah sure I'd love to!

I'm not sure there's a lot I can say about that argument that isn't already super obvious, so I wanna talk about Charlie's anger because of something my brother said as we watched episode 7. He loved that episode apparently because "When they're separated, it's even more obvious that Charlie is the one who's more quick to lose her cool." Which, looking back, is actually true!(To an extent)

Vaggie and Charlie are both quite quick to anger. Charlie is just better at hiding it because she's a chronic people pleaser. Although Charlie wouldn't immediately show her anger at a person being a jerk to her specifically, she's immediately summoning fire and brimstone over anyone who hurts/insults her friends or the cause she's fighting for.

Love this lil bit in "You Didn't Know". How Vaggie is the one telling Charlie to calm down, as if she knows what's about to happen. She knows that if she doesn't at least try to reel in her girl Charlie would be spitting literal fire at a goddamn seraphim.

It would seem like such a surprising role reversal, but if you look at all the times Charlie would lose it whenever Vaggie's not there to tell her "babe, chill", then it makes sense.

But then when their fallout happens, Charlie's short temper is even more apparent. She calls Alastor an asshole to his face even though she considered choosing his support over her father's. She openly glares and rolls her eyes at Rosie when she jokes that her and Alastor look like an item even though she still kept things cordial with Valentino after he licked her arm. She flips the bird at some old lady even though she didn't take visible offense at all the demons that inserted their crude and rude selves in "Happy Day in Hell." While she was cold and subdued even when upset with Vaggie, she was explosive and in ur face when she was pissed at everyone else.

Vaggie reigned in both the girl in Charlie who dreams a little too big and the demon who's waiting to lash out in flames. It really makes me wonder if there's a difference in the kind of person Charlie used to be before Vaggie. Before she had friends to be angry on behalf of and a person to calm her down. And then, in the wake of their argument, Charlie is left with a lot of anger that is easy to ignite.

But I love love love that despite all that anger, Charlie can't bring herself to deny that she loves Vaggie with all of her hurt heart.

This little moment is one of my favorite parts in the series. My brother mentioned that this episode and episode three were his favorites because he liked the beats the dialogues followed. So he looked back--

(the man literally paused the episode to check the opening credits of ep 7 and 3. I was a little annoyed because I just wanted my Chaggie dammit! We'd make terrible youtube reactors with all the pausing and discussing mid-episode that we do...)

--and was satisfied to see that it was written by the same person, Ariel Ladensohn. Apparently she's in a sapphic relationship too and projected her own experiences whenever she wrote Vaggie and Charlie, and it must have paid off because the moments she wrote with them felt so real.

Charlie expressing her fear that even Vaggie's support and love could also be part of the lies she told was understandable considering the betrayal she felt. But immediately following that she goes "Oh that's a horrible to thing to think!" which I love even more. Even when she's understandably mad she thinks about how Vaggie would feel over Charlie thinking that of her. Because although Vaggie lied about who she is, Vaggie was always sincere about how she felt for Charlie. Vaggie's past may have been a lie, but the things she did for, to, and on behalf of Charlie were very real and held dear in Charlie's heart.

I dont have anything smart to say to conclude this. Sorry, I'm not even sure where I went here. Let's all just appreciate the smile Charlie has on her face when she thinks about Vaggie even when she's under a lot of stress I guess.

#asks #hazbin hotel #chaggie #truly love charlie as a character #i dont agree with people who say that charlie didn't feel like the main character of the show #she is still very much the heart and star of the story #if they felt more drawn to the male characters that isn't fully the show's fault #Alastor didn't even have as much screentime as i thought he would have #which is good! #he's entertaining but better in certain doses

[vaguely-concerned]

on this reread of gideon the ninth I am picking up on the frankly hilarious background thread that naberius genuinely seems to want to be buddies with colum asht, in his third house mean girl kind of way. and colum seems to count this as a genuinely painful event amidst a life defined by suffering fhdskjsha

(they're seated next to each other at magnus and abigail's party and naberius keeps trying to drag colum back into conversation (by telling him he's wrong of course) while colum mostly suffers in silence and tries to eat his dinner, and before the duel that was supposed to happen between the eight and the seventh naberius invites himself along to the walk there chattering the whole time and it makes colum, and I quote, 'look like he wished he were deaf'. how hard do you have to work at it to be insufferable to a guy who hangs around silas all day long. can colum ever catch a break. can we just see him have a chill time for like two minutes in alecto the ninth. maybe have a drink with a little umbrella in it. I realize I hope for too much but has he not suffered enough? his day job was basically to go to day trips to hell already, of all the people who could end up stuck in there he's deserved it the least let's fish him out before the series ends huh)

#like augustine might be in there now and you know what? fair enough he is my guy but that tracks. get colum out of there tho!!! #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #colum asht #naberius tern #y'know... poor naberius too I suppose it isn't his fault he comes from a house which mother tongue is 'catty' he does seem to try

[pharawee]

A few notes on Pat and Chot's conversation:

🔹Ke (เกย์) is a neutral expression that is the phonetic adaptation of the English word gay.

🔹Tut (ตุ๊ด) is a vulgar and pejorative expression used to refer to a very effeminate homosexual man and can have multiple translations, as sissy, queen, [or in this case: tootsie] etc. 

🔹Je (เจ๊) is a Thai honorific from 姐 for “elder sister”. Chot uses it to refer to himself. Pat later uses it to address Chot.

🔹krap/kha (ครับ / ค่ะ) are gender-oriented particles. Chot uses the traditionally female particle for himself.

🌈Sources: LGTBIQ+ Enciclopaedia, Thaipod101

#step by step #step by step the series #bruce sirikorn #ben bunyapol #stepbystepedit #thai bl #thai drama #bl drama #bl series #my edits. #i added some notes and explanations that imo make this conversation easier to understand #because a lot of the nuances are lost in translation #which isn't the translator's fault - it's just how language works #i love it so much #and i love bruce #and we need more fem gays in bl #who are allowed to be loud and proud and are celebrated for it #Tud/tut might come from the movies Tootsie but I'm not sure #(false friends are a super common thing in linguistics and i haven't checked the word's etymology) #it's a term that chot has very obviously reclaimed for himself

[1pcii]

oh, you like the idea of zolu or find the fancontent cute but can't bring yourself to ship it because you HC Luffy to be aroace? (ignoring that asexuality and aromantisism exist on a spectrum. and that QPR's/relationship anarachy are a thing). should we tell everyone??? should we throw a fucking party???

#I'm sick of seeing SO MANY posts like this #like. if you don't ship them! that's completely fine! good for you even I'm glad you are enjoying fandom in the way that makes you happiest #but why do so many ppl feel the need to make some variation of this post and not even censor it or anything so it doesn't show up in tag #search #like putting your personal opinions on your personal blog is completely understandable and fair! but it's just courtesy to make sure it #isn't searchable to people who just wanna scroll for that ships content #istg it's mainly zolu that gets this as well #which is so baffling to me because they are such an aroace coded and unconventional ship #like we ain't even doing that much extra stuff we're just observing canon 😭 it's not out fault it's like that and we have eyes #psii.txt #text #discourse

[pixiecactus]

i know that i sound like i'm repeating myself, but i swear it still fucks with my mind the fact, that grrm could have gotten rid of gendry from the narrative, pretty much after arya gets kidnapped, yeah, sure gendry joins the bwb, and the brotherhood has a bigger role to play in the books, but we know of past members who have left after beric finally died and lady stoneheart assumed the group leadership (ex. edric dayne, anguy), the vow that gendry made as a knight was to beric and the smallfolk, the bwb is not longer a group who administers fair justice, now they are blindly killing for revenge after the rw, they have become an unofficial branch of stark men placed in the riverlands.

people tend to assume that gendry is not smart, (i mean he's pretty much the person arya has called stupid the most), and yeah, his level of formal education is something that can be debated. he was formely an armorer's apprentice, (that means to me that the boy should know his letters and numbers a little), but the thing, he's streetsmart, we have seen him acting as arya's voice of reason more than once in dire situations, is not out of the realm of posibilities to think he could have escaped anytime he wanted, and it's not like gendry can't make a living anywhere else in westeros (except for king's landing), and the people who knew robert baratheon on his prime and can see the resemblance between them are dropping like flies

instead, we have him in the last location arya was known to be at, taking care of orphans like the girl from his memories wanted him to do, not so long ago. i don't know if gendry in his guilt ridden state thinks he has to atone for something he did (does he genuinely believe that arya escaping and getting caught by the hound is his fault?) or is he trying his best to honour the memories of the first friend he ever made

to end this: arya and gendry still match with eachother, both are child soldiers currently serving their own cults obsessed with death

#my bull-headed boy is so dear to me #i'm having all of these feelings over a tertiary character #if gendry is not meant to be at least somehow a little important in the future why did grrm gave him a character arc #it makes me want to scream #if i had nickel for every bastard boy who is loyal to a fault to arya stark i'd have two nickels #which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice #a song of ice and fire #asoiaf #house stark #arya stark #gendry #gendrya #arya x gendry #gendry x arya #the brotherhood without banners #bwb

[project-catgirlpillar]

I think Viewing Monika as some Kind of evil Mastermind does her character a huge disservice for multiple reasons but also Just cause it ascribes her a Level of competence she simply does Not display

#like i just watched a video essay critizising ddlc #and they had a ton of complaints about the plot most of which boil down to greatly overestimating how powerful monika is #like no she is not in fact a god of her world who created the game she is just another character #forced to deal with the fact she was given self awareness #monika not having a route isn't her own fault for not simply writing one for herself #she actually tries to do that #in act two monica isn't keeping up the charade of this being a normal functional visual novel for shits and giggles #but because she's kinda trying her best to keep it together #and iirc she didn't stop with that cause she got fed up but cause she broke most of the rest of the game #and saying she goes from 'basically hitler' to contrite is just not fair to her #she was a teenager who got forced to deal with her reality being fake and then given one 'real' thing to cling to #and a power she didn't really know how to use properly that could change it #sorry that just kinda annoyed me #idk man #ddlc #doki doki literature club #monika ddlc

[comradekatara]

You've mentioned Zuko's "inability to kill" before, so could I ask you to elaborate on that?

sure. zuko is banished for, essentially, committing treason. he says to ozai that he was banished for "speaking out of turn," but simply speaking out of turn is not actually why ozai banished him. zuko said that people shoudn't have to die for the sake of further empowering the fire nation, and that goes against their nation's entire ethos. zuko lacks, as azula puts it, that "killer instinct that is just so fire nation."

while zuko does set fire to suki's village in his quest to capture aang, and you could argue that he may have committed other such acts offscreen, we never actually see him outright kill anyone. unlike zhao, who kills the moon, and azula, who kills aang in a manner that would have ended the entire avatar line had katara not revived him, zuko threatens and intimidates and harms, but when it comes down to it, he does not actually kill, because he simply cannot.

he threatens to kill zhao, and if he had killed zhao, no one in the audience would fault him for it. zuko does not even burn him upon winning their agni kai, going against custom; zhao calls him a coward for it. zhao tries to kill zuko on multiple occasions, including when he blows up zuko's entire ship. but, when the ocean spirit is dragging zhao under, zuko still extends his hand in a futile attempt to save zhao. contrast this scene with sokka arguing to leave zuko for dead in the same episode. he legitimately does not have a problem with letting zuko die, because, as he says, zuko would do the same thing to them (at least, sokka seems to think so).

sokka kills combustion man, toph kills yu and xin fu, and neither of them have any regrets. conversely, katara cannot kill yon rha, and aang cannot kill ozai. like sokka and toph, they are justified in killing these men, perhaps even more so (since yin and xin fu did not actually attempt to kill toph, "only" kidnap her), but they ultimately choose mercy. like zuko on kyoshi island, aang and katara's actions, such as blowing up the factory in jang hui, may have had indirect casualties (i don't count aang being merged with the ocean spirit because he was not truly in control), but they are never able to kill directly, because when faced with another human being, regardless of how much they may hate them, their pathos prevents them from delivering that killing blow.

zuko, as a foil to aang and katara and the deuteragonist of the narrative, is also someone whose instincts prevent him from being the cold-blooded killer his nation expects of him. it is why, unlike the rest of his family (including iroh), he is unable to produce lightning; he is too sensitive to become the perfect weapon his father wants him to be, which is why azula's reveal is so thrilling and terrifying to the audience, because she is what ozai wants in a protege, unlike zuko, who try as he might, fails at embodying the fire nation values of ruthlessness and power at any cost.

#some caveats before anyone misinterprets me: #1) zuko has still done awful things. i am not saying that he is 'inherently good' or that because he has 'good inside him' that makes it ok #just as i am not saying that azula is 'inherently evil' for having that killer instinct. morality is far more complicated than that #this isn't a 'zuko smol bean uwu' post. i'm just stating facts from the show #just because he never directly killed anyone and just because he was abused into believing he was doing the right thing #does not mean that he did not do bad things (burning suki's village being the most tangible harm we see him cause iirc) #he just cannot kill people directly which is crucial to understanding his character esp as he relates to aang and katara #2) i am not faulting sokka and toph for killing people! and anyone who thinks that i am saying that is a dumbass. ok bye #asks #zuzuthelord #analysis #zuko #not tagging everyone else

[worstloki]

there is a difference between being born to a throne, maliciously vying for a throne, stealing a throne, and having a throne thrust upon you when you are already in the midst of an identity crisis. And I fear Loki's place in the line of succession has people unable to differentiate between any of these

#you can't really argue he planned the extent of Thor's downfall #that was all Odin #Loki didn't force Thor to invade Jotunheim he isn't even the one who gave Thor the idea -- Thor did that all on his own! #that he was doing waswasa @ thor didn't help but wasn't really crime worthy on its own #Thor himself took time convincing the other warriors to be okay with the trip despite the treason and danger involved #like. what. Thor can't differentiate good advice from bad and is emotionally volatile and reckless and that's Loki's fault? #THOR was the one who got them past Heimdall too #the entire ordeal inadvertently showed off the favouritism Thor was receiving in comparison to Loki #even though Loki was the one supposedly so easily influencing Thor to such an extent #call Thor a puppet the way he--wait. no. that sounds weird. uhhhhh #you get the point #people will claim Loki was all up in there rearranging Thor's mental processes to cause his downfall #when really it was Loki doing the bare minimum instigation and watching things only devolve from there #because Thor WAS reckless and immature ?? and he WAS quick to anger and enjoyed exerting his power with violence ?? #Loki didn't STEAL THE THRONE FROM THOR he literally just is implied to undermine the coronation #that's not even confirmed but we assume it's true that he let the frost giants in near the casket etc. #Loki has his own actual crimes that he did against Thor and hugging his bro's arm and saying 'you're soooooo strong and correct' was not on #even if you manage to argue Loki was cheering Thor on for the invasion (he wasn't) it was clearly to dob Thor in with Odin #which he did when he had some guard inform Odin #that Odin's chosen punishment was for Thor's disobedience aside stop blaming Loki for the damage ODIN inflicted on him #focus on Loki making up lies to Thor about how Odin died instead like at least Loki DID SOMETHING for that #you can even ascribe as evil a motive as you want there bc Loki was slipping fr #twirling his hair and telling Thor he's smarter about the realm's safety than the king was on the normal scale #you want to talk morals go look at how eager Thor was to invade mass destroy and massacre in the other realm #and expected Odin to 'finish them off! together!' bc he was power high on whatever bloodlust pheromones battle apparently imitates for him #sigh. this is why you can't have nice things Thor. no Loki you're barely any better. sit down. have a cookie.

[whetstonefires]

I think a part of the reason I feel so connected to JGY and XY is that I, too, think everyone is lying about what a good person they are. Sure, there may be a few genuinely good people, but those are in the minority and never claim the title.

I don't know about never; some people are pretty straightforward.

And in some ways the whole point of the concept of 'a good person' is that the feeling of losing the right to consider yourself one can impose instinctive recoil from doing wrong, in situations where you don't have the leisure of working your way through an ethics diagram and choosing the logically moral path before reacting to a situation. It has practical utility.

But that system can backfire pretty horribly too, in a lot of ways. It can be hijacked by definitions of 'good' that actually make you recoil from ethical acts because they're deviant. It can lead to disappearing up your own ass lmao.

And definitely the threshold for 'talking about how you're a good person' enough that it makes you suspect as either a) a liar or b) someone who values that self-image over objective reality and other people's wellbeing is. Not very high.

Jin Guangyao, ironically, is one of those people who's so performatively A Good Person in his public life that in retrospect it looks like a red flag. Which knowing this about himself in an ongoing fashion ofc just reinforces his own cynicism about everyone else lmao.

Even Lan Xichen, who I think he may see as a genuinely good person, he also sees as an easy mark who will reliably choose what is comfortable over what is 'right,' if you just structure the scenario to make that an easy choice that's easy for him to justify.

Xue Yang's bitterness is in many ways more exciting than Jin Guangyao's because he has a way more unusual relationship to reality, but it does share a lot of notes.

The role of deception in his psychology fascinates me because as far as I can tell he's as instinctively straightforward a person as Lan Wangji, albeit along quite different lines involving a total lack of impulse control, but has adopted 'deceit' as a weapon against the wicked world in the same way he has adopted 'murder.'

But when he feels someone is not merely lying but papering over bad behavior with principles they are not living up to he is livid.

People claiming to be better than him because they're 'good' when 'good' is a construct of privilege, is the underlying idea he's not equipped to articulate. Except he takes that and applies it to 'hitting me to interrupt my random murder of some guy who happened to be within arm's reach when I wanted to hurt someone.'

Which isn't like philosophically perfect, but the underlying problem he's actually reacting to is that he understands the social contract as a lie that has never protected him but seeks to control him, while protecting rich men it has no power to control.

Which it is fair to be mad about, but then his feeling is that since that's the nature of the world and all people, he is entitled to amass for himself the power to inflict hurt without consequences as much as he possibly can, and to use it against the vulnerable for fun, and no one is entitled to interfere.

Which brings him to a place where he is violently angry at anyone talking about trying to treat other people well as a value, because either they're a hypocrite and a liar or they threaten his entire system of rationalization for why he can be The Worst and still In The Right.

'Everyone is equally bad, actually' is like, an understandable take for anyone who's had cause to become embittered. Everyone is free to make whatever philosophical peace they can with the world and by and large there's no ethical weight to any such opinion, in itself.

But it's an ideological crutch people tend to wind up leaning on very heavily when they can't or don't want to take responsibility for their own behavior.

Which is an approach that Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao, and Su She all share, and which not only is shitty of them, it...traps them in a wheel of doubling down on their own worst impulses because rather than going 'that was bad and I shouldn't do it again' they've repeatedly invested all this energy into making what they did actually the correct thing, according to their interpretation of the context. Which means they're more likely to do it again.

(I think this is how Jin Guangyao became a serial killer, for example. He followed a doing-a-murder-impulse and then internally doubled down on how he had nothing to be ashamed of, so he was more likely to do it again, every time.

Wei Wuxian's strain of self-righteousness about his revenge was less...thorough than Jin Guangyao's, because he had the benefit of going after people on the opposite side of a war from him while Meng Yao's first known murder plot was against a shitty boss. But it probably didn't help him not try to solve army-shaped problems with mass murder, even after that stopped being allowed.)

If any of them had just like, zero moral sensibilities they would have created very different problems, and very possibly fewer of them. It's making a central goal of your operations 'self-vindication in your own internal narrative, created retroactively via reframing' rather than 'figuring out what I think I should do and trying to do that' that traps them in the self-reinforcing murder pissbaby vortex.

So if you look at it one way, these three villains are themselves perfect examples of how pursuit of the 'feeling of being good' (or at least 'not the bad guy') can make you worse.

Notably Wei Wuxian was also extremely sensitive to hypocrisy in his youth; it was the only part of Madam Yu's behavior he was ever shown objecting to. But he's sufficiently mellow and cynical from regret and burnout by the 'present' timespan after his resurrection to just get disgusted and alienated about it, rather than outraged.

He wasn't even all that mad at Xue Yang, though honestly that may be partly because he stopped entirely characterizing him as a person at some point during their interaction. Like, there's no point being angry at someone whose moral sensibilities operate exclusively on the plane of 'is this unfair to me' for manipulating and destroying people who were good to him, and then getting obsessed with his own self-pity about it. This is not a person who understands how not to be, metaphorically speaking, a cannibal.

And Wei Wuxian did know better and still got roughly the same result, so what business does he have getting angry?

Anyway yeah those two villains are both delightfully relatable if you sit down and put their perspectives together; they are clearly operating with the same basic suite of human needs and emotions as everybody else, without that being in itself particularly exculpatory, which is honestly refreshing. They've just got the most fantastically toxic interpersonal habits that knowing them counts as some level of Suffering A Curse.

Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang do both stand as scathing rebukes of the society that created them. But within the narrative, wherein they're people, the fact is that each of them had agency and one of the things they chose to do with it was develop rationales for why they were the most special little guy and everything was someone else's fault.

And their moral nihilisms, while also grounded in serious trauma, ping me as emotional masturbation of this variety.

#ask #hoc est meum #Anonymous #rambling about ethics and villains lol #this isn't an organized essay but it's the best i'm going to manage #wei wuxian #xue yang #jin guangyao #meta #mdzs #this is why wwx is not that invested in how the underlying machinations made his bad choices 'not his fault' btw #spending too much time chewing your own vomit narrows your view until you can only be selfish #jiang cheng is also somewhat trapped in the pissbaby vortex #but he did get deliberately stuck there by people who loved him (his mom and wwx mostly) #and he has much higher standards than the villains about who he takes it out on and how #and there is a non-zero chance he will claw his way out post-canon #which none of those three was ever going to do no matter how much time and paradigm shifting information you gave them #so i cut him more slack

[lyxchen]

Ca$h baby, my most beloved asexual darling boy I love you so much, you don't even know, I want to hug you so so much and make it so that nothing bad ever happens to you, I love you and you are valid and I love you and I love you my darling dearest asexual boy <333

#gosh he's so beloved <3333 #like #so So beloved <3333 #and all his scenes with darren are so soft #except for that one scene which really isn't okay and i want to hug him so bad every time i watch it #because its not your fault dear!!! you are amazing just the way you are and you don't need to have sex to be loved!!! #i really hope he and darren can work it out next season #because i need them both to be happy with each other #they deserve that!!!! #heartbreak high #ca$h piggott #man (gn) i really need to make fanart for this show

[schistcity]

the thing that gets me about the lack of technological literacy in a lot of young gen z and gen alpha (NOT ALL. JUST A LOT THAT I SEE.) isn't necessarily the knowledge gap so much as it's the lack of curiosity and self-determination when it comes to interacting with technology.

you have the knowledge gap side of things, obviously, which highlights issues related to the experience of using pieces of hardware/software becoming detached from the workings of the hardware/software itself. you start seeing people (so called "ipad kids") who are less and less familiar with the basics of these machines—like knowing how to explore file and system directories, knowing what parts of the system and programs will be using the most power and interacting with each other, knowing what basics like RAM and CPU are and what affects them etc. these aren't things you need to sink a lot of time into understanding, but they seem to be less and less understood as time has gone on.

and this lack of familiarity with the systems at work here feeds into the issue that bothers me a lot more, which is a lack of curiosity, self-determination, and problem solving when younger people use their technology.

i'm not a computer scientist. i'm not an engineer. i have an iphone for on-the-go use and i have a dinky 2017 macbook air i use almost daily. that's it! but i know how to pirate things and how to quality check torrented material. i know how to find things in my system directories. i know how to format an external hard drive for the specifications of my computer. i know how to troubleshoot issues like my computer running slowly, or my icloud not syncing, or more program-specific problems. this is NOT because i actually know a single thing about the ~intricacies~ of hardware or software design, but because i've taken time to practice and to explore my computer systems, and MOST IMPORTANTLY!! to google things i don't know and then test out the solutions i find!!!!

and that sounds obvious but it's so clear that its just not happening as much anymore. i watched a tiktok the other day where someone gave a tutorial on how to reach a spotify plugin by showing how to type its url in a phone's browser search bar, then said "i'll put the url in the comments so you guys can copy and paste it!!!!!" like ?????? can we not even use google on our own anymore?? what's happening???

this was a long post and it sounds so old of me but i hear this lack of literacy far too much and the defence is always that it's not necessary information to know or it's too much work but it is necessary for the longevity and health of your computers and the control you have over them and it ISN'T too much work at all to figure out how to troubleshoot system issues on your own. like PLEASE someone help.

#part of it is at the fault of the technology itself #phones and tablets hide a lot of their system workings in favour of app-forward interfaces #unlike pcs and laptops which have them easily accessible at start up #but once again.... the lack of curiosity... troubleshooting.... problem solving #long post #and this isn't even going into the lack of problem-solving and self-driven research when it comes to interacting with media #the ''what song is this????'' ''what movie is this???'' ''what is this from????'' PLEASE where is the LOOKING the SEARCHING the FINDING OUT

[naamahdarling]

.

#life isn't great right now #im angry all the time #im lonely #im bored #im tired #and i don't feel adequately supported which is not my bfs fault or anything it's just that with a full time job he isn't here to help #and most of the inadequate support is on the medical end #my gp is great but i am starting to suspect that the nurse that does most of his correspondence is an asshole who doesn't check my file eve #and just gives me canned answers that often don't make sense

[astriiformes]

Finally managed to talk to another professor about serving as my faculty mentor for an undergraduate research project, which means that now I have less than a week for formulate my actual proposal if I want to get it funded for the fall

Cue just a little bit of internal screaming

#it isn't really anyone's fault -- the first professor i asked is going to be on leave next semester #and it was a while before we could meet to discuss alternatives #so even though i got the ball rolling on this at the start of the month it's really down to the wire now #which is fine! this is fine! #just. this is why you start things early #that said. i'm excited about my project idea -- i want to research the social perception and treatment of melancholy in the renaissance #and i'm also crossing my fingers i get this because it'll look good on grad school applications + maybe also serve as my writing sample