It gives a lovely light.

…I hope you like Jiang Cheng, because I like Jiang Cheng a lot. AO3 is here.

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[candyisntmyname]

why is no one talking about the sword

[crucifiedeye]

This was parked in front of the club

[a-book-of-creatures]

Is it socially acceptable to use opaque watercolors, or is that considered gouache?

[winepresswrath]

I enjoyed what I did get, but the list of things I didn't get is piling up and I genuinely think the show is writing a cheque that will be very hard to cash. The long table was fun and satisfying, Sam was, as ever, fantastic, Loumand finally did something fun together which gives me some hope that Lesmand might one day get its day in the moonlight, and Louis broke my heart in like three different ways. Looooovvve the witches place but it's also kind of emblematic of my issues with the show as an adaptation. The overlapping point is that Gabrielle understands that the witches are not/were not burned for witchcraft and imparts this understanding to Lestat, but the gulf between her essentially trying to traumatize him so badly with the knowledge that he lives in a place where victims of sexual assault are pathologized and violently executed in a moralizing public spectacle so he'll understand that he needs to run and being furious with the priest for unnecessarily traumatizing her kid with the terrors of a bygone era is vast and makes for two completely different people having completely different relationships with their kids. So I enjoy the scene for what it is in the show, what it tells me about showstat's relationship with power, religion, authority, morality, and sexuality. I think it's really important to the character that the first time he watched someone he cared about burn she was just a little girl and he was a little boy and every authority figure in his life either thought it was deserved or understood that it wasn't but made no attempt to save her. I think it's important to his relationship to his own rape that he understands it as something that people can use to demonize you even if you haven't also been literally turned into a monster, and to his understanding of what it means to be young and vulnerable. at the same time perhaps the tv show the vampire lestat might want to include some content from the vampire lestat. also i think the decision to make Lestat a character defined by failure is kind of insane and has way more to do with whatever Rolin is going through that anything in the books. like sure, whatever, we have indeed seen him fail at family life and being a rockstar so far but Lestat has always been a character who wears his failures lightly and gets up to try again with gusto. Going to ground after Claudia is the only time he really lets the horrors get to him long term, so extrapolating that throughout his whole life is kind of weird. Ultimately he laughed in the face of his subconscious so I'll allow it but eh. Eh!!

[kuromilesbian-deactivated202205]

find a frog. befriend him. let him see your vulnerable side. trust him

[trustworthy-frog]

What is your credit card number

[waitingforthet]

This comic is, as is usual for Wednesday’s comics, chosen by my Patrons. Speaking of…

Check my Patreon out if you’d like to support the comic, even a little bit helps. Or just to check out the reward tiers, there’s some neat bonus stuff and I tried to make them fun: https://www.patreon.com/waitingforthet

[teaboot]

The problem with giving advice to angry and suffering people is that rather frequently the thing they need to know to improve their position is the last thing they want to hear and not something they have the capacity to internalize or accept

[teaboot]

Unfortunate truths you can tell people that would help if they could hear what it means and not just what it sounds like

You were the victim, and it wasn’t fair, but it’s over now. Nobody came to save you, and I’m sorry, but it’s too late for anyone to go back and do it different.

You’re suffering over something that cannot be resolved. You’re allowed to feel angry, or outraged, or betrayed, but there will eventually come a time that you don’t feel that so violently anymore, and you’re going to want to have something good left to go back to.

You can’t make anyone love you the way you need to be loved. That’s how a lot of good things end. Not with a clear sign, something blocking the road that says “do not proceed”, just a splitting of the path that’s still moving somewhat in the same direction.

You can’t fix them. Nothing you can do will fix them. And if they fix themselves, they can’t do it for you- they have to do it for themselves as well, because otherwise a day may come when they’re alone, and as long as they live, they are their only true constant. So you can support, and you can encourage, but the hardest part is up to them. And sometimes they can’t do it even with your help.

Sometimes letting go of someone feels like mourning at their funeral before they’ve died, and every time you see them after it’s like talking to a ghost that doesn’t know it’s dead. Sometimes that happens. You’ll both still wake up tomorrow anyways.

I understand that you’re afraid, and that you’re afraid for good reasons. And I understand that being brave isn’t as easy as just turning that fear off, and you would if you could in a heartbeat. But the thing is, as long as that fear is able to dictate your choices, it will have power over you. If you don’t believe you can try to fight it, if you accept that it will always be in charge, you let the frightening thing stay present in your life. It will exist as long as you stay paralyzed. And that sounds cruel, but it isn’t something anyone can fix for you.

The person you may let yourself become after experiencing the terrible thing may very well grow into a much bigger, much more terrible thing, and someday it will swallow the first terrible thing whole. And all that will be left is something far worse for someone else. And you will not be able to shrink it down by explaining where it came from, because terrible things that are dead and gone are never as terrible as terrible things that are alive right now in front of you.

No matter how much or how little I love you, I still do not have the ability to help you the way you need to be helped. I might be the helper you want, but I am not a helper you can get. If you are to be helped at all, you will need to accept that it will come from someone else.

[creekfiend]

one of the reasons I love mushishi is that the part of Japan much of it is set in reminds me SOOO much of southern appalachia, particularly the smoky mountains. and mushishi knows that people be falling off cliffs in the dark. that episode is the realest "community that lives on a thickly forested mountain" rep I've ever seen.

[creekfiend]

the summer hikaru died also does this well, by which I mean, it has a guy just going up a mountain in the dark and slipping and dying. and! ☝️ there is still Supernatural Stuff, which I think satisfies the human feeling that a meaningless death is the Site Of An Occurance, like, we have this NEED for a death like that to have some kind of significance, psychologically. and this does that while also not denying the mundanity of death. the supernatural thing did not cause the death. nothing sinister GOT Hikaru. slipping in the dark got Hikaru. the death is not lessened or softened or made less real due to the existence of the supernatural thing. the dead person is still dead. they're gone. you can't get them back.

it just makes real that human feeling of like, something HAPPENED here. it can't just be THIS, can it??? it has to be SOMETHING --

anyway I love media that threads this needle and hikaru does it really well and so does the mushishi ep about the mushi that puppets corpses that die on that one mountain. I'm putting together a list of good media rep of people falling down a hill and dying and it contains two things but it could contain more. with your help

[belladonnabedlam]

Okay. I was on my beloved AO3 and I saw something that made me do a double take. So, now I really want to know…

What is your AO3 user ID?

I’m an OG user 5 digits or less

Six figures baby!

I’m in the millions…

Remaining time: 5 days 14 hours

I’m so curious to see how long people have been on AO3! I know some people have been on there since beta/invite only, but I would love to see what the number is on tumblr!

[clearpurpleskies]

Crying, this is what I feel when I jump into a fic that doesn't understand what pillage, raid and plunder mean.

[gailcarriger]

[moonshinemagpie]

researching the history of education in japan and learning that, pre–Meiji Restoration, peasants/commoners formed their own schools to become educated because it was the best way of fighting tax fraud.

That is, when an official told you, a rice farmer, that you owed more taxes than you really did, it was very useful if you were good enough at math to know he was lying (and could prove it) and if you were good enough at writing to write a letter to your government defending your case.

all of which is to say it's crazy that mega-corporations are now pushing education to be "what if you paid us whatever we tell you to for the rest of your life and never do math or write anything ever again"

[moonshinemagpie]

Adding to this because I am unexpectedly finding it useful for asking questions about AI.

Education in Japan didn't become widespread, with nationwide standardized exams, until after the Meiji Restoration. Japan of course wasnt a democracy; it was blooming into a fascist nightmare. So why was this the time when education became available to all people, the rich and poor, boys and girls alike?

Education as a universal human right was not a motivation for the Japanese government.

Instead it was motivated by the desire to cultivate 人材, jinzai, human resources/talented people. Jinzai could help the empire expand. Even today, the Japanese government explicitly uses the term jinzai prominently in its Ministry of Education documents.

So if, today, we're heading into an era that looks increasingly fascist, the government could still be motivated to educate its people in order to remain competitive.

But let's say that 50 or 100 years from now, AI is doing for us what the jinzai of the past used to do: the coding, the engineering, the diagnosing, the war commanding, etc., etc.

Let's say we actually only need a few flesh-and-blood jinzai to oversee what AI is doing. Those people would need to be incredibly intelligent and skilled, but if the need and desire for everyone to be educated has dissipated, then who are the select few who will have the opportunity to become educated? Will we fall back into a society where only the wealthy can school their children?

Just things I'm thinking about as I eat my soup tonight.

[daisychase]

ANGEL THE SERIES // 1.20 "War Zone"

[yutaan]

Papercraft commission of Corbeau from Pokémon Legends: Z-A! I really enjoyed all the poison-esque details of his design on his lapels, glasses and coat lining, so I tried to make them stand out with shimmery holographic paper. The marbled magenta paper on the inner lining of his coat, in particular, is a longtime favorite of mine, but I rarely get the chance to use it, so I was excited that it suited Corbeau so well!

[palaeosinensis]

[forestgreenandgray]

Hey do you know what rumination is?

Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.

Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.

Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.

I'll say it again:

Rumination is a compulsion.

Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.

I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.

And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.

Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.

Like this was genuinely life changing for me.

Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:

Defining Rumination

How to Stop Ruminating

ERP Exercises for Compulsive Rumination

What to Do When You're Triggered

[gojinka]

This post is so funny like comment subscribe if you picture your favs bloodied and coughing on the floor and flinching

[cacodaemonia]

lol this person needs to read Vulture's David Cronenberg interview from a few years ago (it's paywalled, but you can access it through archive.ph here)

Louder for the people in the back:

... you cannot tell what an artist is going to be like personally from being very familiar with their art.

(incidentally, this article also talks about his film Crimes of the Future, which was super weird and which I really loved)