*Distressed Nerd Sounds*

Dasha | she/they | I have an art Instagram!

[witless-winion1]

this fanfic shit is easy

[cuppydogshane]

all the rights that come with marriage you should be able to have without marriage btw. you should be able to designate a person who can visit you in the hospital regardless of your relationship to that person.

[hyperlexichypatia]

People in the notes are saying "You can!" referring just to the hospital visitation part, and sure (depending). But people should have access to ALL of the benefits of marriage without needing to be married.

You should be able to add anyone you want on your health insurance plan.

You should be able to sponsor the visa of anyone you choose to move to your home country.

You should be able to name anyone you choose as the legal-from-birth legal coparent of any child you give birth to.

You should be able to apply for student aid on your own at any age.

And yes, yes, ideally healthcare and college should be free, international migration should be unrestricted, and the entire concept of legal parenthood should be rewritten from the ground up. But right now we're talking about marriage benefits.

[captain-price-returns]

[aquaflv]

really recommend getting a partner with a different religion than you and very little knowledge of your religion because the opportunities for explaining things to each other are just exquisite

[aquaflv]

yesterday she told me some story about the Buddha's wife and child and I was like. Wait. He fucked? And she was like yeah of course he fucked, why wouldn't he, he was the most attractive and loveable and and wise and etc. person who ever lived. why would he not fuck.

[aquaflv]

this morning she looked perplexed in the kitchen at me and said "did Jesus not fuck?"

[sun-dari]

whenever i buy an article of clothing on top of regular buyer's remorse i experience extra special Sewist's Shame. like i'm cheating on the cut of linen that's been in my stash for two years with the new dress

[captain-price-returns]

Arrest everyone involved.

[captain-price-returns]

Money saved: maybe a couple million dollars.

People killed: around three quarters of a million.

[yamelcakes]

world’s most evil man and I’m not being hyperbolic

[chau-draws]

REGULAR YAOI ISN’T ENOUGH!!! I NEED THEM TO SPIRITUALLY MERGE AT A COSMIC LEVEL!!!!!!!!!

[moghedien]

it is so funny when you realize that by drow standards, especially drow noble house and ESPECIALLY Baenre standards, Minthara is the woke liberal

She is willing to work with men in leadership positions even post-mind control and she will actually compliment and admire their tyrannical prowess

She will argue that the refugees in Baldur’s Gate should be enslaved because it’s practical and better for them that way, not because they’re weak lesser races that deserve to be subjugated

Like she probably gets called a libtard at Spider Thanksgiving every year while all her relatives are trying to poison each other

[baldurdashe]

I apologize, I needed to draw an image to this.

[houndsofbalthazar]

it’s unlikely I’ll die on my hill because I have created a mott & bailey castle up here which is difficult to assault unless you have sophisticated siege equipment

[vacationtown]

It's talked a lot about KDJ's low self-esteem. How he doesn't think he's worth anything, how he can't accept that people care about him, how he's always putting himself down. And that's, well, undoubtedly true.

But.

I feel like there's another side to this coin that doesn't get acknowledged or noticed much—his supreme self-importance masked as self-deprecation. He genuinely believes that only he can save YJH, that only he can understand YJH, that his death is the grand, necessary price for everyone else's happiness. He frames it as self-sacrifice, but underneath it, there's this unshakeable fucking belief that he's the only one who can carry the weight in that "messiah complex dressed up in self-loathing" way. He sees himself as the protagonist of YJH's story in his own head and I don't think he even realizes that's what he's doing. And I think people ignore this because it complicates the "poor sad boy KDJ" narrative that's so popular. It's easier to infantilize him and treat him like a victim of circumstance who just can't help but sacrifice himself, than to acknowledge that he's actively making choices. And some of those choices are rooted in a deeply held belief that he knows better than everyone else. He's not just doing what needs to be done, he's doing what he thinks needs to be done, and he doesn't really care what anyone else thinks about it.

It's also not that he doesn't know people care about him. He does, he's not actually that oblivious. The text shows him understanding that his party wants him around and that they'd miss him terribly if he was gone, but he waves it off because acknowledging it would mean actually having to face the consequences of his choices. It's easier to keep the pity party going than to actually sit with the fact that people love him and he's hurting them a lot. He's dense about some things, yes, but he's not fucking blind. He just chooses to ignore it because looking at it directly would mean he'd have to stop running away.

The unreliable narrator aspect is a big thing here too. The narration tries to frame his actions as selfless, but he's also the one 'creating' the story. His way of doing that fools many readers (and himself, because he lies even to himself) by making him seem like the tragic hero who has no choice, while the story literally gives us more than enough context to know that he does have choices—mf just doesn't like the alternatives. Choosing to sacrifice himself as problem-solving is easier than trusting other people to handle things. He tells himself it's because he's worthless, but I think part of him actually believes the opposite—that he's the only one who can fix everything, and everyone else just doesn't realize it. KDJ is not a victim of fate, he's a victim of his own refusal to let go. Doomed by the narrative? More like doomed by himself, smh.

[vacationtown]

It's kinda insane to me how nobody talks about how freaked out YJH had every right to be about KDJ??

Like. Imagine you've been stuck in a loop—nothing changes if you don't change anything, you're exhausted, you're mentally falling apart but you have to appear in control because if you don't, everything falls apart. And then this random guy who's never been in any of your previous cycles shows up out of nowhere. He knows things about you that you've never told anyone, he's messing up the events in ways you can't predict, he makes you feel uncertain and anxious when you're already barely holding it together, he's playing you like a puppet, pulling strings you didn't even fucking know existed. You can't figure out what he wants, because he's not like the others who just want power or survival, he's doing something else entirely, and you can't tell if he's trying to save you or destroy you.

KDJ wasn't just some helpful stranger or a damn saint saviour. He was a variable. An unpredictable, terrifying variable that showed up and immediately started rearranging everything YJH had learned to rely on. And mind you, the guy was already on the edge, already so fragile underneath all that tough exterior bullshit. That was a "this person is either a threat or a god, and neither option is good" kinda situation for him. And people have the audacity to paint YJH as some red flag toxic abusive motherfucker for being suspicious and overly aggressive to him??? He had every damn right to be. KDJ was being very cruel at times, not maliciously, but extremely carelessly. He was so focused on his own plan that he forgot YJH was a person, not a character, and he treated him like a puzzle to solve instead of a person with his own fears and needs.

I've noticed some people only realize this on their second or third read (god forbid for this to even happen), and I do think the more you read the novel, the more you see just how much YJH was right to be fucking scared of KDJ and justified in not trusting him. I just wish more people actually thought about it a bit longer than a second.

[brackishwaterr]

now that you mention it, it’s dawned on me suddenly and for no obvious reason that i can’t go on living as i am

[elcorhamletlive]

Not to be a bitch but sometimes people engage with fiction in the most boring way possible, and nowhere is this clearer than in videogames. Like what you mean you hate a character just because they were kind of abrasive when speaking to the player character? "They were mean to me" and it didn't occur to you to wonder why? Like, what might their attitude toward you reveal about the world? About the social dynamics within it? About their own perspectives and backgrounds and personalities? Does it even occur you to ask? Would you only have liked them if they bowed to your presence and talked about how great you are? Like I'm sorry but you're so boring. How boring fiction would be if it cathered to you

[primaius]

[04k96]

[redstonedust]

learning languages is fun because in some areas youll be like "oh wow theres one word for this thing thats covered by 20 different words in english? thats so easy and convinient!" and then in other areas you'll be like "what the fuck do you mean you use different numbers depending on what kind of object youre counting. im going to kill myself."

[bdalak]

the more i talk w/ leftist friends the more i start to realize that they think culture is only defined by food or "traditional" (i.e. "ethnic") garb and nothing else

mentioned how white americans do in fact have a common culture and they genuinely thought i was joking. culture isnt something only granted to the Cool People of Color. just feels like among progressive groups there's this dichotomy created in which only the virtuous oppressed minorities have culture and anyone who is privileged some sort of void cultureless being

[pigeonsplease]

When I visited Chicago, the very first thing to weird me out from the airport was… how almost everywhere had revolving doors.

I’m Australian. Sure, we do have those doors, but the vast majority of places in Sydney are automatic sliding doors or old-fashioned manual push/pulls because we don’t need to block out the cold and wind the same way here.

So every day I experienced a culture clash with something as basic as what doors were normal for me.

Americans who say they don’t have a culture are plagued with defaultism beyond belief. Culture isn’t just made up of costumes and language and the largest stuff, it’s constructed of a billion small things you do every day that you never even consider could be different because that’s just “normal” to your daily life. No one has no culture just because they’re not adhering to the biggest markers they can consciously recognise.

[the-library-alcove]

Yes, I have these saved for exactly this reason.

[alistair-button]

Everything you need in one spot

[i-m-snek]