The long version is that, to me, the most dangerous people to be around are those who react with violent self-castigation to even the slightest hint of criticism.
And they are made even more dangerous by the fact that they seem to think that the self-castigation is somehow a form of atonement. In reality, it just puts the emotional onus back on other person—likely someone who already did the brave thing of bringing up something that hurt them—and makes the hurt person now have to comfort them.
Obviously everyone does this to some degree once in a rare while, but once it becomes a pattern, you are no longer a safe person to be around.
Why? Because if you react violently to the knowledge that that you’ve done something hurtful to another person—even if that violence is turned toward yourself—no one can ever safely communicate to you that you are hurting them. You have created a scenario in which other people must constantly walk on eggshells and capitulate to your desires to avoid setting you off.
Interestingly, this is the one component of “Dump Your Puppygirl” that I thought was valuable. It gives a very realistic portrayal of a relationship in which the self-castigating partner slowly acquires complete emotional control over the relationship by being unable to handle any amount of critique.
In fact I thought this was done so well that it alarmed me how many people instantly saw themselves in that story’s puppygirl. Fuckin’ yikes. Work on yourselves.
(However, what that article did fundamentally wrong was to ascribe that behavior to transfemininity, and a particularly abject form of transfemininity at that. In reality, people from all walks of life do this. I’ve seen it in numerous cishet and cis gay folks as well as trans people.)
Some real irony in the fact that I’m saying this as a ventpost on tumblr, because the people who most need to hear it in my IRL life are also those least capable of hearing it.
I love lying to my landlord. “We’re currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease here” and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, I’m gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that I’m not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlord—I’m just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease I’ve ever signed. (Also, I’ve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether they’re corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their asset—the property—is a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time it’s sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goal—and because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent money—they’re almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, it’s actually in their best interest to give you a better price.
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an “AVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAY” sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says “First month free”? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says “call for availability”? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.
You have the least leverage if you’re a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that aren’t even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if you’ve already signed a lease and you’re in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so you’re stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if you’re a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and you’re being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, they’re also probably going to have to put in some work to “turn” the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, it’s still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. They’re probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know it’ll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if you’re a prospective new tenant—if they can’t get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, that’s $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and they’ll never get it back. It’s a perishable item about to spoil.
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number they’ll quote you for the rent—the sticker price that you’ve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, they’ve built some buffer into that number. There’s almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people don’t!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Don’t reply to their initial offer right away—unless there’s a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you aren’t desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when we’re talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when it’s time to send out renewal offers didn’t get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they could’ve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)
Here’s the tricky part. You need to write an email—always negotiate over email if you can, it’s too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isn’t in writing means nothing—which simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, you’d delete those other hoes’ numbers forever! Here’s the rough script I use every time:
“ Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I should’ve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number that’s higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; you’ve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and they’re likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firm—in which case, guess what? You still didn’t lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didn’t mention it above because I just couldn’t fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically “price firm :(”, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, “actually, nvm, how’s $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?”
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
i know the way people talk about their pets now is probably how we’ve been doing it for all of history. a cat owner in ancient rome saw their cat lounging on the dining pillows and commented “he thinks himself to be the senator claudius 🤣”
The first attested cat in Japan was given to a young 9th century emperor and his diary about it includes such gems as 'I affixed a bow about its neck, but it did not remain for long.", "The color of the fur is peerless. None could find the words to describe it, although one said it was reminiscent of the deepest ink.", "When it lies down, it curls in a circle like a coin. You cannot see its feet. It’s as if it were circular Bi disk." and "I am convinced it is superior to all other cats.” Basically posting about how his void is the best little void and so good at getting really round
*inserting new RAM into my 10 year old motherboard* "Shhh... hey, hey! It's okay girl. I didn't mean to startle you. I know it's been a little while. I've got a nice little treat for you here, okay? It's going to help you run smoother. There now, see? That wasn't so bad. I'm sorry girl. I didn't realize how much stress I've been putting you under, streaming Elden Ring with only 8 GB of memory... No wonder you're having trouble with Baldur's Gate 3. You've been doing so good though. I know you'll probably have to go soon, but we still got a few good years left. Hopefully this will help ease any pain you've been feeling. I'm going to put the cover back on the case now, okay? I love you."
I do think it's helpful to remember that most of the USA is way hotter than Europe and that's part of why we like big bevvy so much. We aren't just hedonists, we're also too fucking hot!!
(disclaimer that this post looks like it has History behind it [by which i mean i assume a previous post prompted it] but we haven't seen any context if it exists, sorry if i miss the mark with my comment due to that)
no cause i speak as a european, big beverages started making SO much more sense now that like. well one, shit's getting warmer bc of climate change, and two, our own heat tolerance is getting worse, in no small part because of the meds we're on. and, honestly dude, even if it WAS just hedonism, i basically always end up wanting more beverage when i finish mine, even in large sizes, so like. i'm with y'all on this one, big beverages fuck
For real!! It's all "why do you need a drink that big" but when it's 95F/35C and cloudless sometimes you just gotta replace your blood with two liters of cherry coke.
Yeah and I think where it really succeeds vs. modern anime wifey fantasy shit is that Jucika really is just a character super comfortable with being sexual, likes looking sexy and even has no shame in using it to get her way:
….But at the same time, she doesn’t tolerate being objectified against her wishes:
….And the comic takes her side in both cases, whereas I’ve seen countless modern narratives in which this same character would have only been framed as like a Slutty ™ Bitch ™ or full blown villain.
One of the things I also really like about this comic, besides what’s already been stated, is that the humor isn’t always about her being sexy. Sometimes it’s just about other goofy things in her life!
Someday your hands will be old and wrinkled, the skin spotted and bunching over your knuckles. And a child will watch you make something. It's a simple task, you'll have done it a thousand times before. But to that child, the smooth, confident way your hands move will seem like impossible magic. You have to keep living.
“transition poses some ethical questions. Such as, from what age should you be allowed to irreversibly change your body.“
This of course completely ignores the fact that puberty makes irreversible changes to your body. But let us just rephrase the question: “from what age do you gain bodily autonomy?” Now it gets very easy to answer: From the moment you’re fucking born.
This is all completely true and correct, of course, but on the topic of changes that irreversibly change a child’s body, prithee, go and talk to a fucking ballet dancer.
If you start ballet at 16, you are too old to ever expect to be able to do it seriously. If you start at 12 you’re too old. If you want to do ballet as a serious thing, as a career, you need to start at like eight years old or even younger, because your bones and joints need to be trained while they’re still flexible in order for you to be able to perform many of the required motions and stances of ballet. In particular, you need to be able to perform turnout of the hips, but all of your joints in your legs and feet will be affected, and this irreversibly changes your body.
And yet! Nobody talks about this as a negative thing! Little girls say they want to be ballet dancers, and if their parents have enough money, that’s what they get to be! Does it cause problems in later life? Yeah, sometimes! Often, even! But nobody talks about that because it’s a thing for cis people to do and so naturally it’s all fine!
I was a ballet dancer (among other styles of dance) for 10-11 years, starting at age 6-7ish. I loved it, but not enough to make a career out of it. Dance was just a way to exercise is a fun way.
By the time I was done dancing at age 18, I had been through physical therapy for 3 separate issues caused by ballet. The worst one was because of how my hips and muscles developed and it cause discomfort in my knees so bad that I couldn’t walk very far without pain, much less climb stairs. One time at a pt session, a neighboring patient, who was elderly, said I was “too young to be here”. I was in middle school so I rolled my eyes. It was/is funny to me.
I am 23 now, and I still get stiff in some places, and I’m sure it is related to dancing as a kid. I snap, crackle, and pop like Rice Krispies.
I have no regrets because ballet and was a big part of my life. I just know that it will have long term effects on my body and there is nothing I can do to change it.
I didn’t know that ballet would affect me physically the way it did, but I still did it. If somebody wants to transition and goes in knowing and wanting the changes they will experience, then they should be allowed to do it.
so many misguided metaphors around violence and desire. if the open maw of a panting beast fills you with the want to be devoured, that does not make you prey. while the rabbit trembles in fear, its deepest desire is to run. evolution demands it. in fact, the desire to be eaten does not make you any small animal at all.
Saying this with all the love in my heart, "Trans" is not a magical title that erases all social biases and discriminations you hold in your mind the moment you transition.
You have to actually ACTIVELY unlearn all that shit. You can actually be trans AND hold TERF and racist beliefs, it is in fact very easy.
Read studies and essays, Engage with the works of other minorities, Don't think you're just better by virtue of losing *some* privilege.
When you manage a fabric store in a midwest town, you see this played out in real time. Young women coming in during that first year of marriage - when their husbands go to dental college - pert, bubbling with creative plans. Then, four years on, you help them shift to the reality of balancing budget with creativity - and they learn the value of that inexpensive flatfold table that they used to badmouth - to make that 2nd & 3rd baby their own quilts. And they're exhausted. And they're scared. And they are 1000 miles away from family.
And you have your staff play with their kids while you hold them in the tiny restroom as they come completely undone because they just found out that their golden boy husband is having an affair with the someone he's been doing residency with for the past three years.
He confessed that he'd rather be with the other woman but she's of a different faith and it's more important to have kids than to be happy. And no. No he will not grant her a divorce. And he will not stop seeing the other woman - because he's a man. It's his right.
TRUE story.
Also - She was NOT THE ONLY ONE to fall to pieces in our store for similar reasons.
I loath the ideology of "tradwives". It is a false doctrine preach by Patriarchy not a divine being.
This is 100% what happened to the host mom I've been au-pairing for. And to many other moms my friends have been au-pairing for.
Married out of college, 4 kids, he spent 15 years building up his career while she took care of the house and the kids. When he was earning $600k a year suddenly he started to pull away - she wasn't as pretty anymore, the kids were loud, the house was a mess... She wasn't good enough anymore. He got himself a flat. He got her me and my precedessors to help with the kids. No, they can't divorce, that would make him pay her money for the kids and he didn't like that. Every once in a while a bill would be unpaid. My weekly checks would bounce. We lived in a $1,5mil house around DC and our gas or water was turned off more than once.
Somehow he was always out of money.
By accident she learned from a friend of a friend that he was actually seeing a young lady lawyer for a few years now. It wasn't her, it wasn't lost interest. He was just a piece of shit.
Thankfully, she had family that took no shit and they stood behind her and borrowed her money for lawyers to force the divorce now that she had proof of him cheating. She's spent tens of thousands to get there while he was resisting every step of the way - because without divorce he wouldn't have to pay her alimony, he could just throw scraps whenever he wanted and still pretend to be a good dad.
She's spent tens of thousands and two years to free herself from this man, and when she could finally go to work (thank fuck she finished college) she was earning $25k a year.
She only managed to get away with the support of her parents and family. Through the au-pair grapevine I've known other families like that. Too many. Lady down the street tried to commit suicide when same happened to her - she was from Taiwan and had no support to get free. And people around scorned her for being "dramatic" - women who held on to their places with their fingertips talked shit about her, because their own husbands would never...! Right?
This? This is the kind of shit that first wave feminists and suffragettes were fighting against. Hell, even into second-wave feminism.
This? Is why conservatives want to take away no-fault divorce--because if some dude says no to a divorce and you don't have any (IRON-TIGHT) evidence of cheating? Then you're stuck in that situation and he doesn't have to pay a drop toward you and your kids. He can go get a flat, fuck his mistress, and you will starve with your kids until you can get some kind of proof of him cheating and a judge who likes you.
Now imagine all of this horror movie shit, AND you can't open a bank account without this piece of shit opening it with you. That was what women dealt with until about the 70s when we were finally allowed to open bank accounts with a man's signature.
That is what conservatives and fundies want to take you back to. When this shit was just the fucking norm.
There are old white guys still alive who remember who damn nice it was when a woman couldn't open a bank account without a man's signature and his dad could go live a double life with a mistress with zero repercussions and oh how they slather and drool for those times. And how they have waxed poetic about these halcyon days to their desperate daddy-issues sons now eager to please and without the social skills or emotional maturity to understand the fucked up nature of it all.
I'm willing to bet there's like 2 or 3 Tradhusbands(tm) out there for every Tradwife you see, they just haven't found someone they can sink their claws into. Which should maybe terrify you. This Tradwife(tm) movement should really be considered a canary in the coal mine.
Recently managed to activate the most amazing infodump trap card.
I was driving through Vermont with a friend, and we pulled over at a tiny shop offering Maple Items. We were on the state highway, not the interstate, so "pulling over" meant "squeezing my tiny car into a parking bay the size of a broad highway shoulder."
As we got out of the car, an older woman emerged from behind the building where she had been pruning her roses. She introduced herself as Tammy.
Her shop offered the promised variety of Maple, but also a number of small antiques and a plethora of dog figurines, plaques, and clearly-hand-stitched garden flags.
A huge purple ribbon hung on the wall behind the register, along with many pictures of small dogs. This was no county fair ribbon. It was the size of my torso. The material had the soft sheen of actual silk.
As I placed my purchases on the counter, I asked, "Do you... Breed dogs?"
Yes. She does. She has bred Yorkies for the last 40 years. Her mother bred Yorkies before her. The purple ribbon was from her national championship winning Yorkie.
You may be expecting that the infodump was going to be about Yorkies.
It was not.
It was about 40 years of drama in the Yorkie breeding community. Where – you must understand – the judging at shows is often about who you're in with, not about the dogs. This is especially true when Tammy's opponents win anything.
And Tammy's mother! Well. Phyllis has been on the Yorkie scene since Yorkies were invented. Because of this, many women of equally venerable age hold deep grudges against Phyllis. The sort of grudges that result in episodes of Midsommar Murders.
This led to deep injustices against Phyllis on the part of judges and prevented her dogs from winning so often she retired from the scene. Judging is all about who you're friends with, after all.
After 20 years in hiding, Phyllis – the One True Queen of Yorkie Breeding – hatched a plot. She may have been out of the show circuit, but she was still breeding dogs. She entered an absolutely perfect bitch in the national competition, but sent her with a handler rather than go in person.
None of the usurpers knew who this dog belonged to, and in dog-breeding circles this Does Not Happen. This could have resulted in further injustices, but Phyllis was crafty. She knew this tournament was being judged by a man from the UK, who knew naught of the drama in the US Yorkie Empire.
With these advantages – and being the best dog there – Phyllis's bitch won the highest honor at the show.
Incensed by this insult to their ill-gotten supremacy, the other owners descended on the handler after the show, demanding to know for whom he was working.
"Phyllis," said he.
The name of the overthrown queen evoked horror in the usurpers.
"PHYLLIS!? She's still ALIVE!???"
Yes, Phyllis yet lived, and this bitch – the dog, not the woman – went on to mother Tammy's current dogs. One of whom, Lucy-Fur, is the reincarnation of Tammy's sister (also Lucy). This is certain for two reasons.
Firstly, Sister Lucy absolutely went straight to Hell upon her death, and Lucy-Fur the dog is positively as evil as Sister Lucy was.
Secondly, Sister Lucy always said when she died she wanted to come back as one of Phyllis's dogs because "mom treated the dogs better than us."
I do tend to be suspicious of art that really lauds and worships the idea of being an artist. Like yes, art is cool, I think it's valuable, there's a reason I make it. But let's not get overly self congratulatory here
I think it's okay to love what you do, and even celebrate that. But there's a line that gets crossed sometimes where the art goes... "unlike all of those stupid people, who just dont get it." And it's like... hey... who are you making this for, exactly?
I see so many arguments over what is and isn't "good queer representation" that really just boil down to "y'all are actually arguing over matters of taste and genre preference, which is incredibly subjective and personal."
Worldbuilding where being queer is normalized and queerphobia has no impact on the plot? THAT'S FINE. Worldbuilding that includes queerphobia and tackles the effects of it as part of the story? THAT'S ALSO FINE.
Low-stakes queer romcom where the characters are fluffy and cute? THAT'S COOL. Messy queer drama with toxic people who fuck each other over and clash repeatedly? THAT'S ALSO COOL.
Stories that center the characters' queerness, show a trans character's transition, and are about the queerness as much as the rest of the plot? AWESOME. Stories where the characters' queerness isn't treated as a big deal, and have trans characters whose transition happened before the story entirely? ALSO AWESOME.
You may PREFER one thing or another, but it is actually good to have all these things. It's about variety. It's about queer characters being allowed to exist without censorship. It's about queer artists getting to make things without being told we're a "niche issue" or "adult content." It's about having as many goddamn cakes as the bakery can produce.
At the end of the day, I'd prefer a media landscape with fifty pieces of problematic queer representation over a media landscape with one single piece of queer representation that's trying (and usually failing) to be 100% perfect for everything and everyone.
Slight correction to a lot of the comments--it's not "Baking guy plays piano too," it's "Piano guy bakes too"
Inspired by the entertainers of Bermuda’s “golden age”, composer and pianist Dylan Hollis is hard at work on what he does best — creating mu
I was trying to track down a non-soundcloud version of Chords of Humanity, the song he wrote that when he was 17 was used by Doctors Without Borders, and instead found that it was used in a Fallout New Vegas mod that he may also have made at 17?
A Large Expansive Quest Mod has the courier travelling across Post-Apocalyptic America. To reunite the Rockwell People with their Superstruc
which is a sequel to another mod that's also credited to a Dylan Hollis, which I'm not necessarily assuming is him. Could have been a different Dylan Hollis who happened to have found the song by searching his name--oh, wait, there's a video of game play (with the song as background), and there's a tiny bit of voice acting...yeah, that's him.
