coaxing my brain out from under the bed

feidlimid ~ any pronouns ~ dork dyke ~ 27

[shiverandqueeef]

if you aren't best friends with your lover and a little bit in love with all your friends than what's the fucking point

[faelapis]

sometimes i worry that *i'm* wrong and SU is bad/rushed/blah blah. then i remember whites fragile need to be perfect and ego defense of thinking she's fixing things. i remember how its perfectly mirrored by stevens need to fix others. how its both beautifully symbolic in CYM an made more explicit and heart-rending in future.

yeah that shit rules. white being reformed is great. its the ultimate rebuttal to the ideology that only good/useful/perfect people deserve to live- which is exactly the standard white held herself and everyone else to. it mirrors stevens arc of selfless heroism. it mirrors the toxic, insecure selflessness thats plagued everyone from pearl to jasper to rose about what it means to "deserve" to live it ties into "love like you" of how learning self-love is intertwined with loving others. it ties into how steven can't let go of his hero role until he's confronted by *literally* having his own mind in white's body, hating the idea of being like her yet ironically reacting exactly how she would - "this is someone bad for society, they should be shattered, this is what's best for everyone." trying to hurt her only hurting him. trying to help her helping all of gemkind - from the corrupted gems to dismantling a system that was held up by those exact ideals.

yeah no SU is fantastic. i'm so sad that its reputation is "oh well it wasn't that good, but it had some lgbt+ rep :)" which is just about the most condescending crap ever. i would gladly flip it. i think most cartoons that have come after SU haven't been that interesting, they've just been mostly generic stories with some lgbt+ rep.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with Steven Universe and it wasn't after they made the alien invasion plot explicit, the part where everyone says it 'gets good', like you have to wade through the earlier stuff like it's a fucking slog and not some of the best children's television out there. I fell in love with SU in episode 2, at this moment:

"Well done, Steven! You saved most of Beach City!"

Yeah sure, plenty of shows do a silly 'haha things got broke' bit, but this was different. This was bringing home something important that they'd been saying all episode.

This was the episode that introduced the thesis statement of the whole show, and they managed to keep that thesis statement clear throughout the entire thing, all the way to the end: "If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn't have hot dogs." Steven Universe is a show about how things are broken, and that's okay. Steven Universe is a show about how people are fucked up, and that's okay. It's not our job to be perfect or condemn everything that isn't; it's our job to say "okay, we've got this fucking mess here, and wallowing in blame and recrimination and shame and self-hatred isn't going to help. How do we move forward?" I had never, ever seen that message committed to in another children's show before Steven Universe, and it's one of the most important things you can tell any kid -- that the mess of their life is normal! That it's okay! We have stuff that sucks and we can move on with that!

Oh, sure, other shows will have a Very Special Episode every now and again where someone makes a bad mistake and has to be 'forgiven', or is unable to do something and has to live with it, or there's a tragedy or whatever. That's not what Steven Universe did. Steven Universe got comfortable with the mess on every level and kept coming back to it, both subtly and overtly. Steven can't save the moon goddess temple, Greg fakes a broken leg to be with his son and psychologically fucks up his magic powers and the other plot of the episode that's acting as a metaphor for the whole thing involves them literally fixing that problem by duct taping over it, the Gems don't know how to raise Steven and make him a false obstacle course to boost his confidence and he has to Uno Reverse their own trick on them and shoulder the responsibility of parenting them instead of the other way around. There's an entire episode that's just Peridot confirming that her people fucked up an area of the Earth so badly that nothing will ever grow there again and this isn't resolved by fixing it, but by other characters saying, "yeah, it's broken and it sucks and we can't stop that. How about we grow a garden literally anywhere else on the planet."

And this is why it confuses the fuck out of me when people bitch about Steven Universe being 'problematic' because things suck. Yeah! That's the entire fucking point of the show! Things are allowed to suck and be broken. "Ooooh it's nazi apologism because he forgave a warlord and she didn't get murdered onscreen or whatever" he didn't forgive her! He convinced her to stop warlording and has an uneasy alliance with her! She's fixing what she broke as best she can, just like every single other character in the show! Her perfectionism and purity and total inability to live with broken things and messy truths and people who are different, sometimes in harmful ways, was the entire problem that the whole show was about! And Steven beat it! Insistence that the Bad Guys get punished or removed and the Pure Good Guys get a clean ending with no moral quandaries is the audience taking Evil White Diamond's position. It's literally being the villain of the show.

[alma-de-naturaleza]

[stumblngrumbl]

wth

"tens of thousands"

these ones are likely Mobula Munkiana

up to about 1.1m width

The largest school of rays ever caught on film

Tens of thousands of mobula rays come together off the coast of Baja California in a brilliant display of their massive numbers underwater.

[aphractal2]

physical manifestations of health bar?

[headspace-hotel]

what does this shit even mean...

[headspace-hotel]

Like how do I know if something is affecting my "performance." How do I know what kind of discomfort is "mild" and what is "severe." genuinely it makes no sense.

[headspace-hotel]

"very distressed, can't concentrate" at 8 and "worst fear you can imagine" at 10 is an INSANE jump.

I don't think the people that write these bullshit scales have any experience with the upper end of the scale. It doesn't really scale numerically cause you can be partially "shut down" or numb or kind of detached from the situation once you get to middle-high levels of distress.

And the idea of trying to imagine in your head how distressing something would be makes no sense to me.

Like if I tried to put "getting a blood test" on this scale, I wouldn't know where to put it. If I try to imagine doing it, I can't imagine the distress or what it would be like.

[brisingr-sword]

the scale is very much about whether someone can be a “functioning” member of society when experiencing it. the top is so crunched because like, capitalism doesn’t care what differing levels of anxiety correlates to being unproductive, they just care about fixing or socially erasing the unproductive. but that doesn’t help the experiences of mentally or chronically ill people to actually be seen and helped

[headspace-hotel]

Yeah. It's all about "functioning" and the thing is, you can lock down really hard into survival mode and continue to "function" through very, very extreme levels of distress, to the point where you can do what's expected of you while being not super aware of your surroundings

[beaindulgent]

no idea if it would be helpful to you, but here's the thing i built to help me process emotions (including anxiety). it's based strongly off the work of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's theory of constructed emotions

still very much a work in progress, but if it helps you out more than a damn scale, cool :)

[headspace-hotel]

Oh that is one of the best charts I have seen

[three-crows-in-a-suit-of-armor]

tfw you have to read the entirety of The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green for AP Literature & Composition and school starts the day after tomorrow

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

don't worry i can summarize it for you: Humans are worth the trouble.

[forever-flying-silver]

I feel like your teacher should give you a pass for getting the literal Tumblr Intern himself to summarize his own book for you

[thewrithingsouth]

i can tell when the edible starts to work when i start z-targeting shit irl

[thewrithingsouth]

iu'm doing this shit when i run into my cat in the hallway

[teathattast]

[thewarmvoid]

we must love one another more than they hate us.

I see no way else to survive this. If we do not love one another more than we hate them, what they’ve done and are continuing to do to us, they will outlive us. We must outlive our enemies. We outlive them by actively loving one another more than they could ever actively hate + seek to destroy us. We must love one another more than they hate us.

[thewarmvoid]

solidarity is not transaction, it is a vow & this is what I mean by “loving” one another. not a romantic, sexual or even familial love. it is a love defined by a vow to fight for freedom, an understanding that our freedom depends on one anothers. my freedom depends on yours and yours depends on mine.

[notvoid]

[roguerobi]

Okay so my favorite thing about this that kinda gets lost in translation is that the word ガーリックトースト is read as “gaarikku tousuto” which means the final お is just an extension of the last sound

TL;DR In English this tweet would just be

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA GARLIC TOASTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

[razielim]

Salem Brought a Guillotine To Oppose New Data Center. Company Reps Left, Feeling “Unsafe”.

Salem's city council voted unanimously to pursue a data center moratorium after residents - and a guillotine - pushed back on a $5.1 billion

Innovation happens every goddamn beautiful day in this country.

[wheelie-sick]

for the lovely lovely deafies out there who want to get involved in direct action you absolutely 100% cannot ever bring a hearing aid or cochlear implant with bluetooth to any direct action. bluetooth devices all carry a unique signal that can be used to identify you if it's picked up at a direct action. go with a [more] hearing buddy and communicate in sign language. if you don't mutually know a sign language then come up with gestures. do not risk your freedom because you want to have your hearing aid/cochlear implant at the action. it's not worth it.

[wheelie-sick]

flock cameras are also now tracking bluetooth device signatures when you pass them. if you drive past a flock camera with your bluetooth-enabled hearing aid or cochlear implant, the flock camera knows you passed through

[thewolfwaitsbelow]

Wait I just realized this is gonna apply to all cgms and most if not all insulin pumps. They’re all Bluetooth devices, it’s essential to how they work

[ailithnight]

I did not think it possible, but I have just developed even more hatred, derision, and contempt for the perpetual surveillance state.

[hurricane2wit]

[fuckyeahladybug]

Open Thread: Wattpad Refugees

With the recent rumblings about censorship and work deletions on Wattpad, many users are considering posting to AO3 for the first time. If that describes you, you may have questions.

This post is a collection of resources you can use to start finding the answers to these questions. If you don’t find what you’re looking for at the links below or you have something more specific to ask, please feel welcome to post questions in the reblogs and comments here.

If you’re an AO3 pro answering questions in these notes, be kind. We were all new once, and other fans helped us then. It’s time to pay it forward.

Resources (under the cut)

How does AO3 work? What is and isn’t allowed?

My first recommendation for new users is always to skim the Terms of Service FAQ. It explains what AO3 allows and why in plain, straightforward terms. AO3 does not allow placeholder works, commercial content such as commissions links, or “work search” posts.

How can I change the look of the site?

The appearance of AO3 is very customizable! If you just want a basic dark mode, scroll down to the bottom of any page and click “Reversi” under the Customize menu. For more advanced customizations, I can’t recommend @ao3commentoftheday enough. They have so many gorgeous tutorials for everything from site skins to making the site’s content filters do whatever you want.

Wattpad users may especially appreciate the Floating Comment Box extension, which makes commenting on AO3 work slightly more like Wattpad.

How does AO3 search work?

This handy guide by @backofthebookshelf covers the basics. Here is a cheatsheet with more advanced searching tricks.

I’m ready to post my own works. How do I add [specific thing]?

With a little bit of HTML, you can do some incredibly neat things in an AO3 work. Here’s the website running Doom. Here is a very comprehensive guide to Limited HTML on AO3. It may look intimidating at first, but you can get a lot done by copying and pasting and paying attention to the results. As a fun bonus, check out the rest of the series, which includes step by step instructions for making your fic look like text messages on a phone screen, newspaper articles, sticky notes, and more.

Why is Wattpad doing this now? Have similar things happened before?

Fandom creatives have been outrunning purges and legal threats for a long time. Here is a comprehensive timeline of fandom purges and legal actions taken against fanworks, from 1977 to the present day. Here is another timeline written by @olderthannetfic, with associated commentary from other fans.

Purges on LiveJournal and other sites circa 2007 influenced the founding of AO3. You can read in detail about the circumstances of its founding and the construction of the policies it abides by today here.

If you read this far, I’m proud of you. Migrating to a new site is always hard, and there’s so much grief when archives purge content without warning. Welcome to AO3. We’re glad to have you. 🤝

[olderthannetfic]

It's not the first site to turn on fandom, and it won't be the last.

At least AO3 makes it easy to find things, no matter how old or obscure.

Check out the fandom index by media type and try going directly to your fandom's tag or a ship or another tag and using the sidebar filters. AO3 does have a search box and even an advanced search, but those are less of a default compared to Wattpad and other sites.

[headspace-hotel]

Wtf happening with wattpad?

[madam-melon-meow]

@headspace-hotel they updated their policies and changed what content is permissible. You can find the entire update here:

Wattpad Policies

my friend @orangestorapples made a pretty decent summary, see below

They no longer allow works:

- Created primarily for sexual arousal

- Exploitative or harmful

- Intended to shock, glorify harm, or promote hate

For their updated sexual content policies, they do not allow:

- Pornographic content (created primarily for sexual arousal)

- Any sexual content involving minors.

- Sexual exploitation, coercion, or non-consensual acts that are glorified

- Sexual roleplay, solicitation, or messaging

- Illegal sex acts in violation of applicable local and international laws, including but not limited to, bestiality, necrophilia, incest, or child sexual exploitation and abuse material

For their updated violent content policies, they do not allow:

- Content created primarily to shock or glorify harm

- Gratuitous or prolonged violence that doesn't support the broader narrative

For their updated Self-Harm and Suicide content policies, they allow:

- General, non-graphic references

- Stories that explore self-harm or suicide in a responsible, story-driven way

- Recovery, survival, or awareness-focused narratives

And do not allow:

- Graphic depictions

- Content that encourages, instructs, or glorifies self-harm or suicide

For their updated Real-World Harm and Extremism content policies, they do not allow:

- Glorification or support of real-world violence, hate groups, or extremist ideologies

- Content that promotes or imitates real-world harmful acts or actionable plans/steps on how to commit violent acts, illegal acts, or organize real-world violent crimes

For their updated Self-Expression and Sensitive Topics content policies, they allow:

- Survival stories that offer a sense of hope or support

- Could contain graphic descriptions

- Stories referencing or describing sensitive topics, in a non-glorifying way

And do not allow:

- Content that normalizes or glorifies harmful behavior

- Content where harmful acts are presented as desirable or rewarding

[headspace-hotel]

This legitimately sound like some kind of amish christian romance publishing imprint or something

[headspace-hotel]

"not evoke sexual arousal" is obviously very bad because a major purpose of art is to evoke feelings, and "Horny" is one of the major human feelings, so it's unnecessarily restrictive to art.

but most of these are just so incredibly subjective. Whether or not violence, suicide, sexual content "supports the broader narrative" assumes that these things aren't artistically valuable in of themselves.

What does it mean to "glorify" something? Can the character have positive feelings at all? What if the character is a perpetrator?

It really comes down to "whether or not it makes the censor uncomfortable" which of course will depend on what is culturally acceptable to the censor and what complexities they are able to think about

[mesimees]

AM radio is like literal magic. There is music all around us that we can't hear, and to hear it you just have to tap a crystal (diode) to the earth and listen to it with another magic rock (magnet) and a tin can. You dont even need electricity to make it work because this music around us is literally all the power you need. Oh and at night when the sun has set, the light of the day gets replaced by MORE music because the signals can travel further at night. This is magic. If you even care.

[skarchomp]

i wonder if it’s time for a cultural reappraisal of rob liefeld’s art. maybe we were all just too quick to judge a guy for daring to have a unique stylized take that focused on exaggeration and action. *actually looks at some of his art again* jesus CHRIST never mind

[iridescentoracle]

#this is me once every like six months. he really was that bad.

[dollsahoy]

[myidiocyiscontagious]

[bimmyjimmy]

Bim stance

[backgroundmoose]

[bimmyjimmy]

take him and photoshop him

[colorsofthestorm]

Bimmy can't sleep. Can he sleep in your bed tonight?

[dogpuppy]