And somehow still keep singing

Some clever subtitle I'm too tired for this

[river-of-wine]

Wake Up Dead Man does an excellent job at every turn of displaying the misogyny of the Catholic Church and I really can’t stop thinking about it.

The first thing we learn about Martha is that she runs EVERYTHING, and she truly does, down to feeding Wicks. She keeps the church running smoothly, she keeps Wicks alive and presentable for his entitled, hateful sermons. The church only functions with Martha there to make it so, and yet, only Father Jud seems to recognise how much she does for the church itself.

Simone funds everything. Out of the very few regulars that Wicks has whittled his congregation down to, Simone is the only person we hear of making such substantial donations, giving the church all of her savings for the promise of healing that Wicks cons her into believing that he can provide. Simone is seemingly the only person willing to give enough money to keep the church alive.

Vera raised Wicks’ heir for him, did exactly what her father wanted, and is given absolutely nothing in return by any of the three men she has devoted her life to. Cy is thrown at her, given no choice but to raise him, a boy who she first believes to be her brother who she later finds out has no connection to her at all. Motherhood is forced upon Vera no matter what affect it may have on her life. Vera’s life has always been used by the men around her as a tool for their own gain, yet even she knows she has not done enough to earn her father’s approval, only pleased with her, never proud.

And Grace, that poor girl, has been characterised as a greed driven beast who desecrated a church in a fit of shrieking demonic rage, shown against a blood red night sky. Grace, who was, in reality, a young single mother shunned by her small town, by her father who was no doubt turning her own son against her, who had her only chance to escape her prison of judgement stolen from her.

Her existence is what actually motivates Wicks’ sermons as a whole, the memory of “the harlot whore” ultimately the root of what drives him, raised on hatred and judgement that he inflicts upon anyone he can rather than the kindness and understanding he ought to practice and preach, the utter opposite of Father Jud. Arms up instead of out. Even somebody like Doctor Nat is only driven by his growing hatred of women after his wife left him.

Misogyny is so woven throughout the church that I think it makes it all the more powerful for Jud to rename the church after Grace. Perpetual Grace, not Fortitude against the twisted retelling of her existence, but preserving the one thing she was never afforded. It is only the women who find happiness in the end. Vera is free of Wicks, her father, Cy, all of the men who took her life and used it for themselves. Simone plays her cello again. Martha finds forgiveness, she finally lets go of the hatred that drove her entire life. Grace is given redemption and honour. Those poor girls

[lostinhistory]

Wake up babe, new octopus just dropped

He's such a little guy!

[labmousegirl]

one of the things that makes autism a disability (and why some of us choose to label it as such rather than an “alternate neurotype”) is the stress. 

part of autism is just being incredibly stressed. overstimulation? stress. holding a conversation? stress. something happening to our schedule? stress. people talk about how often autism is recognized and diagnosed via our stress responses (like meltdowns) because it is just so common to see autistic people stressed because of lack of accommodations to how our brains work.

and this matters because stress kills. stress causes a lot of health issues, or it can trigger pre-existing ones by making certain chronic conditions flare up. i once had a psychiatrist very unhelpfully tell me i “just need to manage my stress” when the stress i was describing was things i could not avoid in neurotypical society and can’t “just get over”. i can do “self care” all i like but i cannot at the very base level change the way my brain inputs information and reacts accordingly.

[roach-works]

i only learned this year that loud noises aren’t physically painful for other people. i have lived 34 years in a world in which my friends and family regularly physically hurt me at random just by shouting, and i thought everyone else just thought i was kind of a wimp for not dealing with the pain as well as they did.

like. loud noises physically hurt. it’s like a static shock from my ears to my spine that doesn’t stop until the volume goes back down. i thought we all agreed that ‘that’s too loud!’ and covering our ears meant ‘ouch!’. turns out i’ve been dealing with a stressor almost no one else has, my whole life, alone.

autistic people have to keep functioning through debilitating levels of stress that no one else in their life acknowledges or helps them with. it’s no wonder that their most visible ‘tells’ are breakdowns. 

[jedthewolfdog]

the more i learn about the ties between stress and nervous system disregulation and "mental illness" and physical health issues and what things outside talk therapy are therapeutic the more im like. damn many early cultures & indigenous societies had this shit figured out and the modern world is absolutely one big wellbeing shredder

to really boil it down to essentials like ...

childhood trauma is overwhelmingly common

childhood trauma creates long term stress which leads to nervous system disregulation [same source]

nervous system disregulation leads to inflammation in the brain

inflammation in the brain leads to "mental illnesses" like schizophrenia, major depression, and ptsd

these things contribute to stress, ensuring the stress stays chronic as well as the nervous system disregulation, which leads to physical illness and premature death

and then you look at like ...

spending time in green spaces like forests and blue spaces like oceans and rivers are both therapeutic

singing (especially group singing) boosts your immune system, mood, and regulates your nervous system

exercise regulates your nervous system and alleviates "mental illness" symptoms

playing is therapeutic and integrates your emotions and identity even in the face of trauma

and its like. oh okay. as modern cultures we barely have time for and are discouraged from participating in all the things we evolved to thrive with while constantly heaping on the amount of stress we can possibly fit in our day to day lives

and its like well no wonder people love concerts and karaoke and national parks and sports and going to the beach and playing games. these things Literally make us healthier

but also we need to make these things more regular parts of our lives if we're gonna have the endurance to fight rising global capitalism, fascism, and genocide

so my tips for Surviving All This Shit:

go to the park or be around a body of water at least once a week. schedule a time & make it part of your routine

exercise for 20-30 minutes most days, whether its walking around your neighborhood, playing a sport, lifting weights while you watch tv, swimming, etc

sing with your friends. go to local concerts. sing to your pets. sing at religious services. join a choir

play a game at least once a week. obv my recommendation is ttrpgs (anything but d&d 5e, i beg), but this also includes any video game that's not online competitive games against strangers. playing video games for 30 minutes a day but not over 3 hours a day is literally healthy for you

stop looking at traumatic news if youre not going to do anything about it. if you read a news article and then go volunteer, get involved in a community, donate money, or engage in activism, that's awesome!! keep it up. if you read the news regularly and it makes you upset and scared and depressed and then youre too overwhelmed to do anything about it Please Stop For Real you're both not helping the situation and also actively literally killing yourself. find one topic to engage with, find a way to make a difference for that topic, and delete the news app from your phone im being so real right now

read nonfiction by indigenous authors! this is just a general tip but also like. open your mind to other ways of society operating. it was not always like this and does not have to stay this way. if you see a recommendation post on here seriously look at the recs and try to get one from your library. there's a rec list of indigenous nonfiction here and another rec list here for some options that could be good to start with (both very north america focused). you can also search "indigenous nonfiction" in the tumblr search to see what others are reading. i'm currently making my way through braiding sweetgrass and indigenous economics is next on my list

like. we can and will survive this but it's going to be a much harder and longer fight if we're all riddled with so much stress that our bodies and minds break apart. go look at a tree 👍 play a game 👍 sing with your friends 👍 it could literally change your life & the world

[northstareclipse]

Springing off of my addiction post once more, I am also skeptical at best of 12-step programs, because their framework has just never remotely aligned with my actual experience.

The substance I was addicted to was heroin. While I was actively addicted, it absolutely came before everything else. My life shrank around it. I kept using despite very real, very obvious negative consequences. If you’re looking for something that fits the “compulsion + harm + loss of control” model, that was it.

But what’s always sat strangely with me is what happened when that context changed.

Once my abusive relationship ended and I was no longer in an environment where it was readily available, it was shockingly easy to stop. I’m not saying it was physically comfortable. My body was pretty pissed off for a while. But psychologically, it just didn’t have the same hold anymore. I wasn’t spending my days white-knuckling cravings or constantly thinking about it. It dropped out of my life in a way that, according to the 12-step model, is not really supposed to happen.

And that’s where my issue with that framework starts.

Because 12-step ideology tends to assume that if you have ever had that kind of relationship with one substance, it reveals something fundamental and permanent about you. That you now have a generalized “addictive nature” that will attach itself to other substances or behaviors if you’re not constantly managing it. That you are, in some essential way, always on the verge of transferring that pattern onto something else.

And that just hasn’t been true for me.

I was a near-daily cannabis user for years. When it started consistently making me feel physically uncomfortable instead of good, I stopped. No drawn-out battle, no existential crisis, just “this isn’t giving me what I liked about it anymore” and I moved on.

I drink occasionally, in social or celebratory contexts, and I genuinely find alcohol kind of boring outside of that. It doesn’t have much pull for me.

I tried gambling once, got annoyed at how tedious and overstimulating it felt, and left the casino in under an hour. I have not felt remotely compelled to revisit that experience.

I use the internet a lot, and I play a handful of video games, but I can also go on a camping trip with no signal and be completely fine, unless you want to try and find something pathological about nature photography, in which case you can blow it out your ass. If anything, I generally enjoy the change of pace. There’s no sense of panic or withdrawal or “I need to get back to my computer/consoles immediately.”

So when I hear the idea that addiction is this broad, transferable trait that will latch onto anything with quick reward or low friction, I just don’t see it reflected in my own life.

What does make sense, looking back, is context.

When I was using heroin, I was in an abusive relationship. My environment was unstable, stressful, and honestly pretty bleak. The substance didn’t just exist in a vacuum. It fit into a specific set of conditions where it functioned as relief, escape, and regulation.

When those conditions changed, the behavior changed with them.

That doesn’t mean there was no dependency. There obviously was. It doesn’t mean there were no consequences. There very much were. My grades suffered. I dropped out of college. I lost my apartment because staying out of withdrawal and numbing out from the abuse felt more important than paying rent.

But it does suggest that what we call “addiction” might not always be this permanent, identity-level trait that needs to be managed forever. Sometimes it looks a lot more like a relationship between a person, a substance, and a specific environment.

When that’s the case, then a framework that assumes universality - “if this happened once, it will always be waiting to happen again, with anything” - is going to miss a lot of variation.

I’m not saying 12-step programs can’t help people. Clearly they can, or they likely wouldn’t exist in the way they do. But I do think they’re often treated as the model of addiction rather than a model that fits some people and not others, and when your experience doesn’t match that model, many people who swear by them will assume that you are misunderstanding yourself, in denial, or “not taking it seriously enough.” This paternalistic attitude only serves to make me even more skeptical of the framework.

For me, what mattered wasn’t declaring myself permanently “addictive” or treating every pleasurable behavior as a potential threat.

What mattered was getting out of the environment where that pattern made sense in the first place.

Rat Park, people. Stop forgetting about Rat Park.

[hug-your-face]

“addiction” might not always be this permanent, identity-level trait... Sometimes it looks a lot more like a relationship between a person, a substance, and a specific environment.

I have helped change more individual behavior by changing the environment around them than I have by working on their behavior.

[ode-on-a-grecian-butt]

art by Curtis Lanaghan

[hotcrossedfangs]

[shounenchild]

my favorite part of this whole thing tbh

[asneakyfox]

one of my favorite bits in lord of the rings is something the movies didn't really try to do because it's entirely internal, but sam's carrying the ring and it starts trying to do its work on him, so he's having these intrusive visions of himself marching at the head of a vast and terrible army, and he just starts laughing because, me? samwise gamgee? sam gamgee the general sam gamgee the dark lord are you for real? man i just want to go home and do some gardening. and the ring gets frustrated and it starts trying to figure out other stuff that would actually tempt sam and it's finally like, okay, but hear me out: imagine if you could have...A REALLY REALLY BIG GARDEN

[asneakyfox]

and then he's like, i don't know that sounds like a lot more work than a regular garden actually. why don't we just get on with finding mister frodo

[not100bees]

The thing about Miss Piggy is that she kind of has a Roger Rabbit comedy superpower where she wins nearly any conceivable fight she's in. But unlike other characters of which that's true, like say, Bugs Bunny, who tend to win because they make the opponent play the game with their rules, Miss Piggy wins because the joke is that she can beat the shit out of literally anybody.

[wolfythewitch]

all all all

[autisticlittleguy]

So, unlike Eridians, we discovered fire very early on and so our civilization kinda grew up with combustion right? We've had thousands of years to normalize it and get comfortable with the idea of using it casually for warmth or cooking etc.

In contrast, Eridians had to discover fire in a lab since their atmosphere doesnt have O2 like ours. So they dont have, like, an entire culture normalizing fire.

> Be me. Rocky the Eridian cosmonaut

> Tell Grace about Eridian space elevator design made out of Xenonite. Grace very impressed, says humans only dream about making space elevator.

> Odd? Ask Human friend Grace how humans got into space. Expecting some high tech solution since science humans clearly know more physics.

> Grace explains Humans strapped other Humans on top of Fire-Explodatron-9000 machines made out of weak human metal, basically Eridian cardboard, then shot them into orbit. Grace say the fire it makes is quite pretty to look at

[buttpoems]

[keydekyie]

"It would have been easier if you'd just said yes."

original

[thistoowillpasss]

[thistoowillpasss]

[thistoowillpasss]

[thistoowillpasss]

[kittykittyredcat]

[somepomegranatetea]

she's platonic about it but in my opinion, stratt 100% treats grace as her dead wife. she keeps a tacky fox trinket in her coat pocket. there's a framed photo of him in her study . he's grinning goofily in it (bc he's a dork). new guy like: is that her husband? / no, dumbass, it's dr. ryland grace, 1/3 of the hail mary mission. / oh, fuck. were they... ? / yeah, it's unclear. black-and-white montages of grace messing around in high-level meetings play every time stratt contemplates committing more environmental crimes. she looks up at the night sky and vaguely wonders if he's enjoying his space ramen. that's her dead wife. she killed him.

[brothermouse-skeleton]

Stratt is the funniest bitch in the project on purpose. When she makes a joke she 100% meant to do that and she knows that it's the funniest shit ever, even if everyone is too intimidated to laugh.

Grace is the funniest bitch in the project by accident. He's used to being around kids so he's forgotten that filters are a thing and just says the first, dumbest joke that pops into his head. He has no control over it. Nobody makes him feel bad about it because they're afraid of what Stratt will do if they hurt his feelings.

Rocky is the funniest bitch on the Hail Mary because he's been alone in space for years and has probably gone insane, sane, and then insane again. He's 10-20% worried that Grace is just a vivid hallucination and treats him accordingly.

[reallyveryfishy]

book Rocky is so hilarious because he is 100% done with grace’s shit all the time and yet he loves him so much

Like Rocky going “we’re always going to use earth units. Because your STUPID little brain can’t convert quick enough. So I taught myself the conversions in one minute just out of convenience. Because I love talking to you. Stupid.”