Shout out to all the Black ppl that can no longer participate directly in the fandom they love because of the stresses of racism 👍🏾 you contain multitudes of value and I'm sorry that the color of your skin and the power of your voice makes people not want to acknowledge that.
One of them is because it’s a movie about a co-ed, full-contact sport where the most legendary player is a woman. And a young boy is seen idolizing that woman so much it’s a defining part of his character, but no one ever gives him grief or says he should look up to a boy.
Sure they’re all animals but I still appreciate the message.
I think the biggest thing mascot horror things need to get a grip on is the reasonable balance of cute/creepy. The mascot in question needs to be cute enough to realistically be for children but scary enough to actually make for effective horror. Most games always lean too far in either direction and idk maybe it's just me but immersion with these kinds of games are important for me to actually find enjoyment in them.
do you guys remember when it came out that there was targeted sexual abuse & forced labor of transmasc & other queer perceived-female people at an ICE facility, and like it was very specifically "transmascs getting both sexually harassed, told to wear makeup, actively assaulted to make them act more feminine, while also being forced to do grueling manual labor & being directly told this was a result of them "wanting to be a man""? do you remember when that came out and then it was crickets from the community it feels like.
And now we have the community panicking about “ICE targeting trans people” and it’s like… they already did, you just didn’t care when it was happening to trans men of colour.
At the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center in Basile, detainees say they were forced into hard labor – and sexually assaulted and stalked
“I was treated worse than an animal,” said Mario Garcia-Valenzuela, one of the detainees. “We don’t deserve to be treated like this.”
Garcia-Valenzuela, a trans man detained at SLIPC, has alleged that, as part of the unsanctioned work program, [assistant warden] Reyes forced him to move heavy cabinets and cinder blocks, and to clean using industrial-strength chemicals without gloves or protective gear. When Garcia-Valenzuela complained of injuries from the work program, he said, Reyes and his associates forcefully stripped him naked and mocked him.
Kenia Campos-Flores, who is trans and non-binary, told the Guardian that they suffered from persistent migraines and chest pain after exposure to cleaning chemicals they were made to use during unofficial, overnight work shifts. Campos-Flores also alleged in a complaint they were persistently sexually harassed by Reyes, who entered their dorm and stole possessions including their boxers.
Another trans detainee, Monica Renteria-Gonzalez, complained that a stripper chemical he was told to use to clean the facility floors seeped through his fabric shoes and burned the skin of his feet. On more than one occasion, while Renteria-Gonzalez was bent over cleaning, he said, Reyes came up from behind and inappropriately touched him. The assistant warden also told Renteria-Gonzalez he was watching the detainee through security cameras, including while he was showering.
A fourth detainee, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, is a cisgender, queer woman who said that Reyes forced her to perform oral sex on him on a “near daily basis” between February and May 2024, threatening to kill her if she refused, according to her complaint.
Doe, who was deported to the Dominican Republic in January this year, has chosen not to share her name or speak publicly because she fears that Reyes will make good on his threat to find and harm her, her lawyer said. [...]
“This was a sadistic late-night work program,” said Sarah Decker, a senior staff attorney with RFK Human Rights. “It was designed to target vulnerable trans men or masculine-presenting LGBTQ people, who [Reyes] coerced into participating.”
A cis woman was also involved in the sexual violence:
Twice, Renteria-Gonzalez said, Reyes came up behind him and touched him inappropriately. Another SLIPC officer, according to Renteria-Gonzalez, began to sexually harass him as well, sending him explicit notes and showing him pornographic images of herself.
This article includes more from each victim, but I want to highlight this part as well:
Garcia-Valenzuela had fled to the US in 2014 from Mexico, where he was tortured by members of a drug cartel. “I have no choice, that’s why I’m fighting,” he said. “Because I know that as soon as they deport me, I’m going to be handed over to the cartels and I’m going to be tortured and killed – ripped into pieces.”
But in SLIPC he faced a new kind of horror. He alleged that on more than one occasion he was told to move heavy metal filing cabinets back and forth across a room. When he struggled to lift the furniture, Reyes would taunt him, he said, saying: “If you think you are a man, I’m going to treat you like a man.”
In the spring of 2024, Garcia-Valenzuela reported sexual harassment on the basis of his gender, in accordance with Prea. He said he felt targeted due to his gender identity and wanted the fact he is transgender removed from his file, as a measure of protection. But an [ICE] officer responded that “even if we take off your transgender marker, there is no hiding that you are transgender”, noting Garcia-Valenzuela’s physical appearance, he said. To Garcia-Valenzuela’s knowledge, no follow-up investigation into Reyes was conducted.
Renteria-Gonzalez’s complaints were dismissed as well, Renteria-Gonzalez said.
To repeat what was said above: we have the community panicking about “ICE targeting trans people” and it’s like… they already did, you just didn’t care when it was happening to trans men (and nonbinary people and queer women) of colour.
Herding sheep, looking after kids, and playing healer in videogames: every day you're surprised of the sheer innovative genius of how they'll find the most inconvenient goddamn places just outside your reach to get hurt or put themselves in lethal danger.
ra ra rasputin is objectively the funniest song ever written it's like "rasputin was an advisor to the romanovs and honestly he was a bit of a power-hungry conman (oof)... but you're not here for a history lesson! you want to know how much he fucked, don't you? well i'll tell you: he fucked. he fucked often and severely."
this shit owns it's just a number go up idle game except the idle mechanic comes from you writing JavaScript to automate tasks it seems like the end goal of the game is to perfectly optimize against this little arbitrary system they've created. There's not any plot to speak of so far but even though nothing is happening people send you messages through the computer telling you to trust no one as they all have ulterior motives. Very relatable.
Enforcing the idea that nonbinary people are cisgender women wearing jeans is directly harmful not only in that it's invalidating to nonbinary people afab but because it makes people who were amab think they can't be nonbinary at all, or at least not in the same way as people afab. Which is so fucking disheartening to see. This is not to deny the unique challenges of transfeminized nonbinary people but to draw attention to them; this phenomenon is an effect of transmisogyny
broooo did you seriously disturb my eternal rest & bring me back to this mortal coil just because my ancient enemy the eternal night has returned? after i sealed it away and everything? which one of you tampered with my binding runes 🙄
where's my useless apprentice i TOLD him it was going to be the duty of the next generation to not repeat the mistakes of those before them and to make this world bet- oh my apprentice goes by her now? you're telling me she's right in front of me! my dear i'm so sorry i didn't know. you look so much more happier and more confident than the bumbling, shy apprentice i once knew. im so proud of you. were you the one who tampered with my fucking runes
Once you start noticing how the incapacity to handle discomfort affects how people live their lives it's actually pretty shocking how it ruins pretty much every conceivable aspect of existence. Interpersonal relationships, romantic and platonic. Career and education opportunities. Your politics Your willingness to go anywhere. The kind of food you eat. The kind of art you expose yourself to and your ability to read it. It's never just one thing, it touches everything, and once you notice it it's like suddenly being able to see germs or something. Just this horrific catastrophe people look at you askance for screaming about. As I grow older and see what became of my friends and peers who could not learn to handle discomfort, the more I'm like. This is a genuine societal issue
When you can't handle discomfort, eventually discomfort itself starts to feel like you're under attack. Your body enters flight or fight mode, and your amygdala starts screaming at you that you are In Danger even when the "danger" in question is like, making an unpleasant phone call or like, you're reading a book about something gross.
Your ability to make frank assessments about your situation becomes compromised, because, well, when you're under attack who's going to stay still and go "Let me think this through?" Of course you're going to panic. The phone call isn't just unpleasant, it's potentially life-ruining. Someone is going to think you're dumb and that's going to be TRUE and then I guess you die or something except dying would be better. The book isn't just gross, it's actively coming for you, tainting your mind with the memory of its contents, it has RUINED you.
Obviously, you want to try avoiding danger whenever possible. So you create a world in which you avoid all dangerous things. Traveling? Well that's scary, what if you get robbed or lost? Better to avoid it (plus there are so many things to read, rules to remember, forms to fill out... it's just too much, it makes you uncomfortable, which means YOU'RE IN DANGER, what if you FORGET SOMETHING CRITICAL? Better to avoid). A new job? Well what if it's worse than your current one? You at least know the rules here. The unknown is so much more uncomfortable, which is DANGEROUS, so better to stay where you are. A dark-skinned foreigner? Do they even speak English? You don't know how you'd communicate. They don't know the laws here, surely? Plus what if other people think you're racist? It's so uncomfortable which means THEY ARE A DANGER. Best to avoid at all costs, keeping your bag clutched tightly to your chest. Vaccines? You don't really know what's in them. The explanations have a lot of words you don't understand,you said something that was kind of rude? UNCOMFORTABLE. THIS PERSON IS ATTACKING YOU. FIGHT OR FLIGHT. Someone says you were incorrect about something? DANGER. Someone says you reacted impulsively and seem to have misconstrued someone's words as a personal attack? YET ANOTHER ATTACK.
Eventually you lose yourself and become this. I don't even know. This totally reactive thing, unable to think analytically about anything (which is uncomfortable and a danger), unable to assess harms, unable to encounter anything new without having a meltdown. And none of it is a real escape because, well, you've created a life defined entirely by aversion to discomfort, which is the most uncomfortable life you can possibly imagine. Of course such people end up falling into fascist ideas about Why Your Life Sucks. When you build a life around trying to maintain as comfortable an equilibrium as possible, you cauterize the parts of you capable of growth, expansion, creativity, learning; at the same time, the knowledge of your own stuntedness is haunting so best not to think about that either. The world becomes this horrifying mirror maze where the only way to survive without offing yourself is by projecting your flaws onto others, bitterly externalizing your self-hatred (who could live like this and NOT hate themselves) just to avoid turning it inward. You end up living like a hollowed-out sea urchin
A lot of people I've met seem to think that mental healthiness is characterized by a lack of discomfort whatsoever, and are therefore justified in building a life where all discomforts can be avoided. On the one hand, I completely understand the impulse. Lord knows I have had colossally shitty times and wished I could just retreat into bed and fall asleep for as long as needed for everything to blow over. But like. You also have to understand that that's a fantasy, not a solution. When you have grown up living a crap life with nothing but discomfort, the ability to avoid it feels like exercising autonomy. But you really do have to be careful about making this your life ethos. I know so many people who have lapsed into total learned helplessness, so consumed by discomfort (mentally catastrophized into dangers) re: looking dumb, looking rude, looking X, looking Y that they just. Idk. Don't do anything except be bitter. You don't have to be that way. The solution isn't "tough it out" because that's also just a manifestation of your inability to handle discomfort. I also hesitate to say the solution is to focus on how much better your life will be when you do X and Y, because the entire point of the inability to handle discomfort is that it constantly manifests in precluding the possibility of even wanting X and Y in the first place since to want it and not be able to do it IS in itself another source of discomfort.
Idk what the solution is, exactly. I just think it's important to understand that sometimes things can feel awful and still not necessarily harm you
Genuine question here: what the fuck does 'handle discomfort' mean if it isn't toughing it out? It's discomfort; you're inherently not going to be comfortable with it and you're attempting to not avoid it unless there's a reason beyond the discomfort itself, so 'endure it' seems like the only option?
I make a distinction between "enduring/tolerating discomfort" and "toughing it out" for a few, entirely connotative reasons:
1) I don't adore the use of the phrase "toughing it out" because it isn't as though failure to do so is because someone's a huge weenie or anything. The dividing line between the capacity to handle discomfort vs incapacity has less to do with toughness as it does being armed with effective coping skills and willingness to engage in controlled exposure
2) Oftentimes, "toughing it out" IS a failure to tolerate discomfort. There's a sort of hypermasculine posturing that you see across genders where their inability to deal with discomfort manifests in very ostentatious displays of machismo to deny they feel ANY discomfort at all. It's the same underlying psychological problems, but their brains are stuck in "Fight" mode constantly. You see this a lot with super aggro people, people who can't have civil disagreements without screaming, people who think any display of vulnerability is gay or soy or whatever. If you say you're dealing with something difficult, it's met with sneering disdain and loud dismissal about your softness. It, too, comes from an inability to deal with the discomfort! (Especially the inability to deal with being perceived as uncomfortable)
I tried to be pretty neutral about my wording about this because this manifests in both anxiety/shying away AND being constantly in-your-face and combative, but I think most people on this site kind of default to thinking I'm talking about the former situation and the need to "toughen up" in that respect. But really, this shows up in a lot of different ways, and for a lot of people "toughening up" in response to discomfort is the exact problem they have to combat
wow i wonder if that 300 year gap could be explained by any outside factors…….whoa! for some reason it lines up with the timeline of britain’s invasion and subsequent colonization of ireland! wild, huh? i wonder if the two are connected in some way? i guess the world will never know….
Me, tears streaming down my face, sobbing, as I stare at the stars: it’s just so beautiful
The medieval peasant I went back in time to give a bag of Doritos to, concerned: what terrible and powerful sorcerers they must have in your age, to be able to veil the vault of heaven itself from view, as you say
Me, sniffling: I didn’t realize, I can’t, it’s so much, I, I… are the chips good, at least?
Medieval peasant, trying to make me feel better: they’re… magical, strange traveler
Some time ago, I dreamt that an Italian man turned into a cat had to prove he wasn’t a regular cat by cooking a pot of tomato sauce in front of baffled residents of the house. He struggled, due to cats not having opposable thumbs, and the verdict was that the sauce sucked but it was indeed weird a cat cooked anything at all