no thoughts only glitter

queer white mid-30s somethingoranother (they/them), canadian, chronically debauched. small angry enjolras by packets-of-tea. bisexual rallying cry by lordbyronsbloomers.

[maudit]

[profeminist]

RIP Marjane Satrapi, author of the amazing graphic novels Persepolis about living during the fundamentalist revolution in Iran in the 70’s and 80’s. She also created the animated movie based on the graphic novels, which is where these gifs come from.

Gifset source

[missbliss12]

Reblogging in honor of Marjane Satrapi, one of THE great graphic novelists. Her comic Persepolis was a crucial text for shaping my belief that comics can deeply explore identity, culture, politics, and history.

[lesmiserabelles]

djavan van de fliert as enjolras / west end live 2024

[wheelie-sick]

sometimes people experiencing psychosis and/or mania will come up to you on the street and talk in confusing or upsetting ways. your job is to either have a regular human-to-human conversation with that person or politely leave. your job is not to call 911. do not call 911. you might kill that person if you call 911.

[wheelie-sick]

I don't even have the energy to screenshot and respond to your tags- what the actual fuck is wrong with you? "the cops are scared and rightfully so" "mental health calls are the scariest for cops" OH so this isn't about the safety of psychotic & manic people this is about piggy feelings?

and no, actually, this is not USA specific and no, actually, people from other countries should not ignore this post. police violence and sanism weren't invented in the US and they are certainly not unique to here. if you (or anyone) thinks that this bullshit doesn't happen elsewhere then you are not listening.

[headspace-hotel]

cops r Some Guy with a Gun

do we want Some Guy with a Gun in this situation? answer is usually "NO"

[uncivilliberties]

This is legitimately useful reframing. A while ago I started replacing the word "cop" in my vocabulary with "a man with a gun." It really puts things into perspective.

This homeless person is making me uncomfortable. Should I call [a man with a gun]?

My neighbor is having a loud party. Should I get [a man with a gun] involved?

There are some teenagers skateboarding. Do you think [a man with a gun] would get rid of them for me?

It makes it very clear what you're saying. I can call a man with a gun to threaten or hurt someone mildly inconveniencing me. You're not calling the cops, you're calling A MAN WITH A GUN into a situation that does not warrant a firearm handled by a volatile lunatic who will not be held accountable for his actions.

[headspace-hotel]

^ ^ ^

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

[mxnrique]

HAPPY PRIDE

[revizyonist]

med people are so annoying "This family's 8 year old child who was about to go through a major surgery and kept crying that she was hungry so they pitied her and gave her food, she then had a heart attack in the surgery. They're so stupid 😒" girl they didn't know that could happen or why it happens. it takes so little time to explain to them that will happen instead of telling them "no food" with no explanation 10 times

[revizyonist]

"Before surgery, your body’s reflexes that protect your airway are relaxed by anesthesia. If there’s food or liquid in your stomach, it will near certainly come back up and go into your lungs, which can cause choking, a severe lung / heart infection or even a heart attack. That’s called aspiration, and it is life-threatening. It's hard, but it's only a single day to prevent near certain death. Not eating or drinking beforehand massively lowers the risk and helps prevent these life threatening situations under anesthesia." <- TIP: patients have brains which allows them to receive information just like you

[ancelineonline]

I have four kids. I’ve had one or another of them need some kind of surgical procedure that requires anesthesia four or five times over the past 15 years.

This Tumblr post is the first time someone has explained to me *why* I couldn’t feed them before those instances.

I’m not stupid. I understood that just fine. Hell, my kids would have understood that just fine. But no one bothered to tell us.

[bowditch]

i did know this before having kids (i have six). we have a kid that's needed multiple procedures requiring anesthesia. and every single time, i am asked multiple times if i'm sure he was not given any food or water after a certain point.

every single time i have had to say, "i understand that if he had food or water, he could aspirate it into his lungs under anesthesia. i am not lying to you." THEN someone would make a little note and i would stop being repeatedly asked.

not a single time was that risk explained to me. the only reason it came up was because i already knew. i still don't understand why it isn't standard pre-op counseling or pre-op check information, when me as a parent acknowledging the actual risk also put THE MEDICAL STAFF at ease because i conveyed that i had informed understanding as reason to not lie about giving my kid food.

"maybe some people will get nervous and refuse surgery" okay so they need more counseling about risks and anxiety, not less information in a way that actually does endanger their child or themselves!

[arctic-turtle-cassiopeia]

Reblogging to save a life and teach medical professionals basic communication skills

[piierogis]

this post, circa 1832, colorized

[weaponizedducks]

dw guys the people are literally gonna rise. they will come when we call trusttt

[emilyaxford]

Anthony Head: Buffy and Ted Lasso actor dies at 72

The 72-year-old British actor also had roles in shows including Merlin and Little Britain.

:((((((((((

[thegaymertrainer]

Ribbon dancing I was not aware of your evolution 🤯

[plantnerderyallday]

I see this, and I see where gymnastics was like 50 years ago, and I really wonder what in the world gymnastics will look like in 50 years.

[goth-queen]

[kosmogrl]

I love coming to my senses like you know what.. I should’ve been meaner

[minmos]

i hope tumblr users never stop talking about punk music i think we deserve this

[catchymemes]

[makahitaki]

[aquilacalvitium]

[dragonagepolls]

If you had to fight against one of the DA2 companions, who would you pick?

Fenris

Aveline

Anders

Merrill

Isabela

Varric

Bethany

Carver

Sebastian

Remaining time: 3 days 18 hours

[sunlight-shunlight]

it's wild bc by most standards of fiction tastes/things i'm creatively interested in making, i'm actually quite wimpy and soft? i don't really like tragedies or very grimdark stuff, bc i feel like i need a bit of morale boost at times, ahaha. if it doesn't have a semi-upbeat ending i get Sad. and i can feel that way by reading the news anytime, so i do try to avoid that currently.

but ohhhh my god. the Escapism™️ in veilguard was like. fascinatingly fucked up, so i can't look away from it. vividly detailed and unsettling self-portrait of canadian liberals. i was trying to figure out what the thought process could be, behind taking a well known, popular, semi-dark fantasy setting and turning it cozy. and i think it's something like this:

to begin with, the real world is very stressful and scary, for almost everyone who's not a billionaire at the moment.

for someone who's not very historically/politically aware and not reading about the reasons behind events or possible outcomes afterwards, or doing anything in their own community, this feels powerless and incomprehensible. why IS anyone voting for trump? he's literally orange and evil? ice agents are basically orcs, what kind of person could ever do horrible things like that? how could people deny vaccines or end up in conspiracy theories?? the republicans did WHAT? it's literally illegal!!! how did they do something when it's illegal?? why are people racist - that's literally wrong and bad, and bad people do that?? how many bad people ARE there in the world? etc.

therefore, any piece of fiction that deals with similar topics (authoritarian governments, bigotry, class differences, oppression, war, etc) is inherently reminiscent of the real world. but since the real world is incomprehensible and scary, the fiction becomes so as well.

i, personally, might find it cool and refreshing to play as a (pre-white guilt retcons) elf in dragon age, and get my character to succeed while fending off fantasy racism - in a way that's semi-realistic, but detached enough from reality that it's not viscerally upsetting to me as a person. but to someone who finds the very Concept of racism incomprehensible and scary, that's not the case! same goes for anything - fighting an oppressive government, playing as a scrappy underdog character who doesn't have a silver spoon in their mouth, having other types of bigotry in fiction, etc.

so to them, even the idea of experiencing a fictionalized version of these problems is unsettling - bc they have no idea how these problems are solved, or what factors create them. so the idea of struggling against them for a purpose, and feeling vindicated and enjoying that in a fictional context, is incomprehensible. from their perspective, even depicting these topics as antagonistic forces becomes endorsement. oh my god, you WANT to see elves getting called slurs? are you a racist?? you WANT to see authoritarian governments and a rigid class system? are you some kind of conservative who hates poor people? etc.

and, meanwhile the real world gets more and more upsetting. so the outlet they have is creating escapism within the fictional setting, by fixing it. without anything scary or violent or gross happening, bc there's too much scary and violent and gross stuff already in the real world. the setting just Gets Better and Becomes Nicer, somehow. and now the fictional setting no longer upsets them, and everything seems fine!

people are nice! they vote for good candidates! democracy works! they're getting over the racism - and only REALLY bad people are racist, so you know exactly who they are, and there aren't that many of them. phew! what a relief! tyranny rarely has willing followers. only Bad People go to prison, forever.

and anyone criticizing any element of this, must, of course, be a racist or a conservative, or perhaps a russian bot, bc who else would want to see such terrible things depicted? better block any critics and start up a panel on writing about imperialism :)

[sunlight-shunlight]

@dreamingofthewild @acquired-elfroot @icharchivist i am adding your tags to a collage and shaking hands with them 🫡

[sunlight-shunlight]

i also wanted to add one final element of the Escapism™️ in veilguard. it is not escapism in "society is good and people are nice and things are calm!" type of way. nor is it escapism in a "things start out bad, but through perseverance and empathy, people make it better and find solutions!" type of way. these are fantasies of either living in a better world, or being able to seize control and create a better world, in a way that most people can't achieve in their normal lives.

in my opinion, veilguard's escapism is that of escaping responsibility, stress, or discomfort from world events, even as they have a terrible impact on other people.

for a comparison, let's look at the previous 3 games.

in dao, you are in the middle of the fereldan blight, and everywhere you go, you see people who've been displaced or affected by it. you have the option to interact with them in different ways; some are bandits out of desperation, some are asking you for money, some will give you quests that you can accept or decline to help them. either way, it's inescapable. you have to see these people and interact with them, and know that this is the effect that the blight and the civil war are having on the people.

in da2, it's similar - despite the 5th blight being remarkably short, localized, and well managed, you STILL have to reckon with the enormous social impact it has. fereldan refugees flood into kirkwall and get treated terribly, hawke themselves loses a sibling in lothering, etc.

in dai, again, you cannot miss the impact that the rifts and fighting are having on the population. as much as we joke about the hinterlands being an endless well of quests, i think it's actually really interesting that you can spend so much time just doing stuff like getting food and blankets for refugees, and speaking to npcs like mother giselle, who will constantly tell you about what effect the chaos is having on the average person trying to live their life in thedas.

the effect of this, imo, is multiple things. firstly, it makes the setting feel "real" outside of the scope of your party. you might be 4 heavily armed lethal freaks roaming the countryside, but for the most part, people in the setting are just... average, and a whole societal fabric exists outside of you and your world-saving quest. secondly, it creates a sense of empathy and responsibility towards the world that your character inhabits.

you see the effect that these huge events are having, on people that are completely helpless to stop them, or even your own pc. and then, you're given the ability to actually affect the events, in the way a random farmer or chantry sister or blacksmith or whatever can't. and then you're asked "what do you do with this power, and what responsibility do you feel towards the broader society that your character exists in?". and the answer can be "my character is going to be really niceys and feed and clothe every struggling refugee they see!" or it can be "my character seizes power for their own ends and never lets go!" or something in between, which is neat! dragon age has never been a "cozy" style escapism where the world is already in a calm and peaceful state, but escapism as a power fantasy of "what if i HAD the ability to help people and make the world a better place" has always been a strong thread running through it, if you want to play that way. you have the option to play your character as power hungry or callous, or as a real softie - for instance, in dai, despite the destruction of haven being a fixed event, they can have different feelings about it. they can be blase and unaffected, or they can feel guilty and upset and wish they'd done something more to prevent it.

in veilguard, let's look at the fucking lighthouse lmao.

the lighthouse was originally built as solas' safehouse/hub for his rebellion. it held hundreds of freed slaves and rebel agents at the very least, and is linked to the eluvian network running across thedas - thus, it must have been used to move people away from danger, send aid to places that need it, offer shelter to the displaced, etc. neat!

in veilguard, you see the Most catastrophic world situation so far, affecting most of southern thedas. there are two concurrent blights, the venatori, and the antaam, all running around at once, and the offscreen letters paint a terrible picture of entire countries being blighted and decimated in numbers, with only small numbers of survivors collecting in individual cities.

you.... never actually see a single refugee fleeing north, let alone have any quests to interact with them. watsonianly, this implies a truly horrific death toll, to the point where people can't even escape - but more likely, the writers just didn't think about it <3 yay <3 they're sooo antifascist <3

you also never have the option to use your eluvian network or the lighthouse to help people with any of this - your companions WILL take a nice little camping trip to ferelden, as it's being overrun by darkspawn and major cities are being destroyed! but they won't take any humanitarian aid, or help people escape through the eluvians, or anything like that. they're having fun! they need that camping trip for stress relief. saving the world needs self care too <3 rip to the dying fereldan population, but it's not about them <3

the two blights and offscreen mass deaths never like, inconvenience you. it doesn't affect starbucks your ability to find coffee or nice food ingredients. it doesn't create a mass influx of refugees. it doesn't ever create a situation where your character might feel guilt. it's sad what's happening, but it's not YOUR fault (even though it sort of is, bc rook allowed this to happen by interfering with solas and then locking him into a jail). and since it's not your fault, you don't have any responsibility to try and do anything about it. and that's optimistic! bc what REALLY matters most in times of unrest and chaos and horrible violence, is that you, personally, can go to the market and buy bread and take naps.

and that's what escapism is, as written by weekes and epler. terrible things are happening to other people, but luckily, they aren't you, and you don't know them personally! so you're still fine. and that's what matters.

also people can be in eternal torture confinement, but they were literally mean a few times. so it's deserved and no one ever worries about it, bc omelas is a utopia...

[sunlight-shunlight]

i will add this banter here bc i really didn't have to write all that. it was just literally in the game. rip to all those people dying of blight in ferelden who could be rescued with the eluvians and sheltered in the lighthouse, but, have you considered: stealing solas' house and then renting it out as an expensive airbnb 😔

[bleedthebeat]

“supporting neil gaiman isn’t as bad as supporting jk rowling because he isn’t using his money to hurt trans people and he doesn’t seem bigoted!” is a real take i’ve seen and i am going to blow a gasket. “he doesn’t seem bigoted” He raped and trafficked women. Paying for his works and engaging in fandom for them is giving him money and good publicity that he uses to curry good favor with the masses and silence his victims in ongoing legal battles. You are enabling a rapist and abuser.

[bleedthebeat]

just because he is not funding legislature to harm victims of sexual assault and trafficking en masse does not mean that there is no one harmed by him gaining publicity and money. show some compassion to the women he has hurt and disengage with his works. “just pirating” and “just writing/reading fanfic” is still engaging, especially if you are posting publicly about them. move on.