ChaoticNPC

Just a background character trying his best.

[hexadonis]

‘what, rationally, was my best course of action? kill them all.’

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

note to self: stop comparing yourself to people who have had completely different circumstances than you. stop comparing yourself in general.

[parkayquarts]

hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS

[parkayquarts]

somewhere out there is a guy who meticulously takes screenshots of every individual frame of his favorite tv shows and then painstakingly etches each one onto a roll of film which he puts into his old timey projector and recreates the footage as a silent film with his own lavishly hand-lettered dialogue cards and original score that he plays on his upright piano and charges audiences one shiny penny a play. at last, big media has finally outsmarted ol' Zachary Zoetrope

[theheroheart]

PSA for everyone who doesn't know, explained simply

this is NOT because of blocking screenshots, it's because of HOW streaming sites use your computer's hardware to optimise performance, which means the thing rendering the video and the thing capturing your screen aren't the SAME thing. so they can't talk together.

you can fix this by going to your browser settings, searching for "hardware acceleration", and turning that off.

[team-thickness12]

This also fixes screen sharing to other screens. It has been GODSEND

[lucarleigho]

type this in the toolbar to find this setting in firefox: about:preferences#searchResults

[mctreeleth]

ol' Zachary Zoetrope is back in business!

[fagcrisis]

i wld be fucked if i lived in a non literate culture that relied heavily on oral storytelling and songs and stuff bc ive never been able to listen to a concept album and know what it was about without looking up the lyrics. like id be sitting in the hall of some guy and the bard would be like this is what beowulf did and i just literally would not learn anything. id occasionally catch bits and id keep asking the people sitting around me what ended up happening with grendel and grendel is fully dead at that point were way past grendel were at old man beowulf now but i have no idea bc i have ye olde auditory processing disorder

[crunchymayo]

Lord, grant me the strength to throw away this box that i'll never use, the courage to throw away this box that i'll never use, and the wisdom to throw away this box that i'll never use

[daveedmee]

explosion at health potion factory 0 dead 0 injured

[abouquetofdaylillies-deactivate]

Pre-menstrual depression is always depicted as like "He He! I had a box of icecream bars and cried while watching the Titanic!" But in reality, it's more like, "I'm standing the edge of an abyss. There is nothing good inside of me, I'm filled with rage and desperation."

It's crazy that being told how to deal with that is never a part of anyone's menstrual sex education.

[headspace-hotel]

This has already been said in the notes, but if PMS causes extreme depression and even suicidal ideation, that is in fact something that most people do not experience and it can be treated

Like for the majority it really is "oh i'm hungrier and moodier than usual"

^this should be a part of sex education so the point still stands

[godesssiri]

I went to my doctor after I was walking to work one morning and saw a bus coming and actually took a step to throw myself in front of it before I pulled myself together. Later that day I started bleeding and was literally like someone flipped a switch and I didn't feel suicidal anymore. Which made me feel like I was loosing my mind because who goes from 'I want to throw myself in front of a bus' to 'I'm perfectly fine' just like that? I did some research, I went to the doctor and described my feelings, he looked me in the eye and gently asked what I thought it was, I said I'd read about PMDD and I thought it might be that, he said 'I think so too' and wrote a prescription.

If, before you get your period, you feel furiously angry, suicidal, irritated by every tiny thing to the point you want to murder someone, stuck in a black hole you'll never escape from. If you are experiencing extreme emotions for what seems like no good reason, especially if you get your period and those extreme emotions just go away. You're probably not just PMSing , you may have PMS's feral big sister PMDD and it's treatable.

Also this is something that can develop as you get older. So if you used to get normal PMS but what I wrote above sounds more like your norm now then don't just write it off as regular PMS.

[chaoticneutralnpc]

Also it’s not just mental health symptoms - if you get debilitating fatigue a few days/weeks every month, that can also be PMDD.

[annabelle--cane]

I think a lot of people spent their childhoods being very deliberately forced out of their comfort zones by parents / teachers / whomever in a way that was just deeply unpleasant and degrading and so, when they reach young adulthood and are finally allowed real control over their lives, become set on only doing things they know they're comfortable with forever. that's a really important thing to be able to do, especially if you're so used to having your boundaries routinely ignored that you aren't even certain what you like vs what you can bear, so I absolutely see why a person would have a negative reaction to being told that discomfort is good: it can very easily sound like being told that all that work they've been doing to prioritze their needs for the first time ever is Bad and Selfish, actually. and to that I will say two things:

one: as long as you aren't hurting or, like, being a dick to anyone, just staying in your comfort zone isn't an immoral action. if you just want to read one type of book (or just fanfiction), or just eat one type of food, or just watch one type of movie, or not go to new types of social events, you aren't being a bad person for that, and if people say that, they are soundly wrong and just trying to get a self-righteousness kick.

two: trying new things because you want to expand yourself feels a hell of a lot different than trying new things because you're being forced to. you'll feel better about trying new foods if you know you have a back up familiar one in case you can't stomach the new one, it's easier to read new books if you can experiment with audio versions or reading it in little five-page chunks by yourself, you can breathe a lot easier going somewhere new if you aren't chained there for three hours because your parent is your ride home, etc.

tl;dr: new things are good. I get why you might not want to try new things, and that's fine, but it's also more comfortable to try new things as an adult with your own agency so, yeah, what have you got to lose by trying a weird old art film?

[chaoticneutralnpc]

one thing I’ll add: the secret hack for learning to do new things when you weren’t allowed to have boundaries as a kid is 1) always give yourself an out, and 2) practice using them LIBERALLY.

Trying a new food? You can stop at a single bite. Bored at the cinema? You can walk out mid-movie. Really want to go to a friend’s party but you’re also exhausted? You can plan on just going for 30 minutes, and you can leave even sooner if that ends up being too long.

The more you practice using outs liberally, the more you reinforce to your body that you are capable of protecting yourself.

I only started being able to go to weekly activites consistently once I started giving myself an out at every step. i.e:

- I’ve gotten ready and then not left the house

- I’ve driven there and then driven straight back

- I’ve left halfway through lessons

- I’ve modified or plain skipped the exercises that were flaring my POTS, or making me feel dysphoric, or that I just didn’t feel like doing that day.

The result? I’ve attended the most sessions out of any weekly hobby I’ve tried to do for the past several years. And it’s actually getting a little easier every week.

[jeyneofpoole]

chivalry’s shadow.

[vronoch]

lord golden, buckkeep’s most controversial aristocrat 💛🫶

[chaoticneutralnpc]

The thing that really gets me about the medical emphasis on weight loss is that it goes against standard medical practice.

Medical care is often prioritised based on how quickly the condition will directly kill you. One of the reasons why illnesses like POTS or ME/CFS are so difficult to get treated compared to illnesses like diabetes or cancer is that even though they all absolutely *decimate* your QoL, POTS and ME/CFS will not directly kill you if left untreated.

Gaining weight will put increasing stress on your body that will decrease your QoL, and will steadily increase the risk of developing conditions that will kill you, but in itself does not kill you.

Losing weight DIRECTLY kills you. Like, your body starts breaking down muscles to survive, including very important muscles like your heart. Eating disorders have one of the highest mortality rates out of *any* mental health condition for a reason.

So it’s insane to me that in public health messaging *losing weight* is the one that is treated as a universally healthy option, especially considering how many people have eating disorders.

[moniquill]

Hot take: there is no valid reason that official government ID should have either a sec or gender marker on it. First name, last name, dob + up to date image will suffice. Address, if relevant.

[just-existing-as-you-do-blog]

It could be important in an medical situation in which you are unconscious and need emergency surgery because of anesthesia. But otherwise I agree.

[moniquill]

No, it would not be important in that case because anesthesia is not different based on binary sex assignment as reported on a license, but rather on physical size (observed) and hormonal makeup (observed through blood test)

There's not Man Anesthesia and Woman Anesthesia.

There is however 'uses cannabis' anesthesia and 'does not use cannabis' anesthesia!

[just-existing-as-you-do-blog]

Female people tend to need more anesthesia is what I am implying. I don't think the government needs records of people's sexes, but hospitals do need to be able to tell at a glance sometimes. My mother is a labor and delivery nurse and she said that if a transmasc person doesn't look visibly pregnant and has a seizure, doctors will assume epilepsy before preaclampsia.

Like I am down for keeping sex off of ID's but maybe there should be a medical card in someone's wallet instead or something.

[chaoticneutralnpc]

Is it female people that need more anaesthesia, or is it people with high levels of oestrogen?*

Medically transitioning means changing your sex. Some people are born with different combinations of sex traits, and even cis people commonly may have traits changes (e.g. a hysterectomy). So ar best, AGAB tells you nothing useful, and at worst it causes medical professionals to make harmful assumptions

E.g. dietary guidelines ask for sex because high levels of testosterone increase your metabolism, and .: calorie requirements. So if trans men on testosterone and trans women on oestrogen use their AGAB, they will be given incorrect information.

I an not a doctor or nurse, and I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of preeclampsia. So worst-case scenario: assuming it acutely renders a trans man unable to communicate, he has not previously notified the doctors he is pregnant and he has no one to advocate for him who can notify the doctors he is pregnant - would the emergency team trying to stabilise him even think to stop to check his ID?

Alternatively, what about doctors/nurses wasting time investigating preeclampsia for a cis woman who’s had a hysterectomy?

I think your mum made a good observation, but the answer is actually that medicine needs to move away from sex. Intake forms don’t need to ask whether you’re male or female, they should ask whether you’re got a uterus and/or are capable of getting pregnant.

*(coincidentally I actually did try to look up a similar question the other day! (Do cis women have different pain tolerance and/or reaction to pain meds) There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer - most of the papers I found were still just about determining whether there *is* a difference - but so far the main theorised reasons for differences were centred around mechanisms in which oestrogen could modulate nocioception.)

[mousidy]

"sex is real" is a very funny thing to say to a group of people who very famously change their sex on purpose

[mousidy]

in abandoning discussion of the nuances of sex in trans discourse, we've ironically let bioessentialist, binaristic thinking fester and rot out our communities

we've stopped actually challenging the binary, we just slapped "amab" and "afab" over "male" and "female," and we treat transition itself like a mere act of dressup. we let blatant transphobia run rampant all the time as long as people call each other "amab" and "afab" instead of misgendering them directly

"afab bodies," "amab energy," "afab only housing," "amab behavior" THIS IS TRANSPHOBIA. YOU ARE MAKING ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT PEOPLE'S BEHAVIORS AND BODIES BASED ON THEIR ASSIGNED SEX. THE WORD FOR THAT IS TRANSPHOBIA

sex does not determine your behaviors. sex is not a binary. sex can be changed, and IS changed by medical transition, INCLUDING hrt

is it even a "trans" community if we don't hold these things to be true? how can a community of trans people who bind each other to their agabs like the rest of the world does be called a trans community? come the fuck on

[blood-to-rust]

and same thing with tme and tma its all just bullshit asking people about their crotches to AGAIN perpetuate fucking transphobia

[chaoticneutralnpc]

“Although sex has traditionally been described as a pair of binary categories, we are coming to understand that sex classifications may be less distinct. Here, we use the term sex to mean the classification into a group with a shared set of anatomical and physiological traits”

- Literally a biology textbook (Campbell’s biology ANZ version, vol 11, pg 300)

in other words: if anyone wants to fuckin argue about “biology”, tell them to piss off.

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

I get heavily overwhelmed clothing shopping but I also get overwhelmed by like. Seams. So I do have to try things on in person.

And growing up we lived an hour plus from shopping and had not a lot of money — our shopping trips tended to be “until the clothing requirements are met”. And honestly there’s a point of exhaustion and misery where I’ll lie to myself and say requirements are met by a piece of clothing so I can leave.

Also my mom noticed this and took advantage of it — and even into adulthood would push me into overwhelm so that I’d be more biddable about choosing clothing. She explained this one weird trick to get her daughter to buy socks to my spouse, who was like “hey what the fuck?” and then repeated it to me when I was not overwhelmed. “Oh!” I thought, “that explains things!” and then donated about 65% of my wardrobe that I hated but felt guilty about not wearing.

Also I stopped clothes shopping with my mom.

Anyway! Here’s my tip for clothes shopping with like significant overwhelm issues and sensory issues and a human body and probably some trauma don’t worry about it.

Sit outside the store, think about the clothing item you’d like to buy. Set minimum standards for the item: comfort, price, appearance, quality. (Don’t sacrifice on comfort! Do prepare a generous fallback for the other options.) Set a timer for a short period of time: I usually do twenty minutes. Walk into the store, navigate directly to the appropriate area, identify several items that meet the minimum standards*. Try those items on, pick the most comfortable one.

*if there are no items that meet minimum standards leave the store, armed with additional knowledge, and either go to a different store OR stand outside and recalibrate standards. Do not recalibrate inside the store.

If at any time the alarm goes off, get up and exit the store. Check in with yourself after five-ten minutes outside about your ability to go back in. If you can’t: hey you have valuable market data! If you can: set the timer. Put five minutes less on the timer. Back inside.

If you find an appropriate purchase item within the set time, check the timer. If there’s more than like, seven minutes, you can do a quick comparison shop in the rest of the section, or go get baseline data for another clothing item you’ll need later. Otherwise, go check out.

[inkskinned]

no, i understand the only way out is through, i know this and i am very familiar with the concept and i have forced myself through and through and through and through, like an arrow to an apple; like a bird to the air. i push myself through mesh and sieve and stormdrain.

i am saying this thing is like stone to me. i am saying i have taken a pickaxe and a plow and a chisel and a spoon to it and i have made no dent or scratch in the surface. i have pushed and pushed, sisyphus beside me, and still my skin gave before the stone could.

i am telling you if there is a passage i do not see or some kind of clever way to thwart this enemy i'll take it. i've been up down and sideways of it, i've whispered to it and cajoled it and sang to it. i have tended to it like a kitten and i've kicked it to the curb. i have exhausted all available avenues and approaches as are available to me. i'll do whatever stupid fetch quest or answer the riddles three. i am standing here and every part of my body hurts and the stone is unmoved. please. if you know how to resolve this, i'm begging you.

and still, you say. the only way out is through.

[artbyblastweave]

I've had the thought a couple times while going through the modern era batman comics that even for someone operating at peak physical ability with nearly unlimited material resources, it's a bit ridiculous that bruce wayne's able to keep his alter ego a secret, especially given how many times he's had to do basically a quick change in public. It also kind of beggars belief that someone would be able to go ~20 years taking significant physical trauma basically every single night.

It occurred to me that a much more feasible schema for a batman-like vigilante would be a network of multiple batmen acting simultaneously who use a system of dead drops to coordinate the distribution of missions and such. This would allow each member of the group to pitch in when they can but not force anyone to risk compromising their secret identity, as well as giving the members the ability to retire after a couple years or if grievously injured.

All this to say, has someone else had this idea before? I figure I can't be the first one to have this thought, and I'd be really interested to see some kind of comic or superhero media which dives into the logistics of how to make a part-time vigilante crime fighter seem somewhat feasible.

There's a bunch of examples of this general idea on the TV Tropes page for Collective Identity.

Two Face actually floats this as a theory as to how Batman operates in the episode Almost Got 'Im of Batman: The Animated Series, although no one takes him seriously; from the same continuity, the twist of Batman: Mystery of The Batwoman is that "Batwoman" is actually three seperate women operating in concert to wage war on the mob.

For non-Batman heroes, this was The Joker's gimmick in the Tangent Universe (Earth-10 in the DC cosmology) where the character was three women time-sharing the same superheroic identity for basically the reasons you describe. Mysterio's gimmick in Hickman's Ultimate Spider-Man is eventually revealed to be that there's actually five of them swapping out the costume and pulling in new blood as they're killed or aged out (and that they are, in fact, actually an antihero instead of the crime boss they present themselves to be.) There was also a period where Deadpool was franchising his likeness to other mercenaries (although part of the gag there was that a majority of them couldn't plausibly pass as him.) You could also arguably cram The Phantom into this category, part of the premise there being that every time the current Phantom is killed or forced to retire, he's replaced by his heir quickly enough to create the impression that it's been the same unkillable guy operating for hundreds of years.

The thing you can probably guess from the specific examples I've provided is that it seems fairly rare for this to be played as anything other than a late-stage twist about a "character's" identity, or for the logistics of the thing to really strongly take center stage over the course of the story. So you might be onto something with this.

[chaoticneutralnpc]

The reason it's rare is probably the same reason that we still credit every single creative choice in movies to directors when they were made by 100s of people.

Why we still give awards to individual scientists for "scientific breakthroughs" when they were the face of the last drop in the bucket that caused it to overflowed into something new.

Why we always celebrate single heroic acts of bravery and kindness rather than boring, mundane actions that are required to create the systems that save untold amounts of lives.

Superhero stories are the EPITOME of this - there is one single person who has the power to cause untold destruction, and they can only be stopped by the actions of another single powerful individual. The only conception of collaboration are through "teams" of equally powerful individuals.

In short: omfg this is a FANTASTIC idea!!

[ghw-archive]

light of Aurora, Anastasia Trusova, acrylic, 2021