#sonne rants

[sonneillonv]

Listen. I just spent an hour and 15 minutes arguing with someone online who could not comprehend this, so I need to make a PSA:

ALL INSURANCE COMPANIES IN THE USA, IN ALL STATES, HAVE AT LEAST 60 DAYS TO RUN YOUR MOTOR VEHICLE REPORT (MVR) AFTER BINDING A POLICY WITH YOU. THEY CAN THEN ADJUST YOUR RATES, WITHIN THAT TIME PERIOD, BASED ON ANY NEW OR EXPANDED INFORMATION THEY UNCOVER. YOU CANNOT COUNT ON KEEPING THAT GREAT NEW RATE YOU GOT UNTIL 60 DAYS HAVE PASSED OR THE MVR HAS BEEN RUN.

So if you don’t report an accident? They can find it and surcharge your policy for it. If you report an accident as less serious than it was? They can find it and surcharge your policy for it. If you didn’t mean to report it incorrectly but you accidentally did because you’re not a fucking insurance expert? No static, but they can find it and surcharge your policy for it.

My solution to this is, whenever I contact a company to get a quote, I always call them on the phone so I can talk to a human being, and I ask that human being to go ahead and run the MVR at the quote stage. Typically they do this for me when I ask them to. That way, I can be reasonably sure the rate they’re quoting is the one I’ll get.

- Also -

Insurance rates fluctuate constantly in the background, kind of like gas prices but on a longer timeline. They will only CHANGE at renewal, but the fact that companies are constantly filing for rate changes based on other economic factors means your premium could go up, go down, or stay the same at any renewal. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t change your coverage. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t get any accidents or tickets. There are other factors that drive insurance premiums besides what you personally have done, and rates can change based on those other factors.

For instance: One of the industries that’s currently getting a ton of flak for using ‘inflation’ as an excuse to jack up their prices and throw money at their shareholders is the rental car industry. Insurance pays for rental cars. So if they jack up their prices, and we have to pay their prices (because the government hasn’t intervened and told them to stop fucking price hiking), then our premiums go up. The money has to come from somewhere, and premiums only come from one place - customers.

Another for instance: One of the industries that has increased their prices significantly lately due to COVID is the medical care industry. I absolutely believe nurses deserve massive pay raises after what we’ve put them through, I’m just pointing out that when they get massive pay raises, that raises the cost of medical care. Insurance pays for medical care. So when that price goes up, we need something to pay it with, and that ‘something’ is ‘premiums’.

I’m not currently discussing with anybody whether insurance is a giant scam or whether you should be legally required to have it or whether the pooled risk model is wonderful or terrible, because right now, none of that shit really matters. You ARE required to have insurance to drive a car, and these factors ARE influencing prices. Until that changes, all your objections are completely theoretical. The math is factual, and the math is what is affecting the cost of insurance, which affects all of our lives.

- sincerely, someone who has to explain this to people fifty times a day and really wishes I could have a different conversation once in a while.

[sonneka]

People defending hinanami over komahina because the last one is over sexualized...?? Like...?? Please, differentiate fandom from canon. In canon, komahina was never sexualized, but hinanami’s first interaction was “hinata staring at nanami’s boobs” and you can’t tell me otherwise.

[sonneillonv]

Personal rant.

I work for a major insurance company as a chat service agent. Every day I have the exact same conversation fifty times. I understand everyone hates price increases and everyone needs a break desperately because there haven’t exactly been any corresponding wage increases. But they don’t come to me asking “how can I get my rates down?” they come to me asking WHY. And I know it’s not their intention but I’m starting to feel like I’m in the goddamn twilight zone. like the Pandemic only happened to me, and nobody else. Sometimes people even accuse me of LYING when I explain for the fiftieth-fucking-time. They say I’m a liar and a cheat because insurance got more expensive at the same time that literally everything else also got more expensive. And I just feel like I live in a completely different reality than these people.

My supervisor tells me I really shouldn’t make, “Millions of people are dead or permanently disabled,” part of my explanation, but my sanity is getting thinner and thinner and I’m starting to want to shake people and scream it at them. MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE DEAD OR PERMANENTLY DISABLED. That includes people who mine metal! People who smelt metal! People who ship metal! People who manufacture parts! People who ship parts! People who install parts! So the cost of parts has gone up!

And it takes forever to get those parts because the people who ship them places are FUCKING DEAD! And that means reimbursement for rental vehicles has skyrocketed because of all those extra days!

Also, nurses are dead! Doctors are dead! Medical techs are dead! Or permanently disabled! Or they burnt out because of how amazingly shitty our treatment of them has been and they left the industry! Or they switched to Travel Nursing jobs that pay three times as much! (Which they emphatically deserve btw) So medical costs have, you guessed it, GONE UP! These are just three things (parts, rental vehicles, medical care) your insurance directly pays for, so please look me in the eye and YOU TELL ME WHY THE PRICE HAS GONE UP!?!?!?!

(By the way, this isn’t even including any of the inside-information I have about some of the absolutely batshit crazy stuff that’s going on in the industry right now. I can’t tell y’all about it either, even without naming my employer, so I need y’all to just trust me that it is batshit insane. There is shit going on right now that people haven’t seen since the Great Depression.)

I’m burning out. I have so much stress sometimes I go to sleep crying because I don’t WANT to go to sleep because then it will be tomorrow and I’ll have to work again. I legitimately never imagined that just talking to people could be so grinding or make me so miserable. And before y’all come at me, you should know that I’m usually successful in helping people get their rates down. Sometimes I’ve been able to help to, like, a life-changing degree. And I always try, every single time, with every trick I have. Most people are there for it - they let me help them, they thank me for helping them. Some people are angry and lash out at me, or they write me off because they don’t believe I have any intention of helping them.

And while I understand why they’re angry, I cannot pretend that it isn’t getting to me. Because even if I’m making an individual difference, this is a band-aid. This is LESS than a band-aid. I’m not fixing anything. I’m just floating the problem out further and further in the hopes that people will be able to jump whatever gap remains, and that not too many will crash to their doom.

[sonneillonv]

Okay! So I binge-watched A League Of Their Own and my opinions are thus (spoiler warning):

I don’t really like Greta and Carson. Like... I don’t much like either of them as people AND I don’t really like them as a couple. Absolutely no interest whatsoever in watching them make out and go through drama. No stakes whatsoever for me when Charlie came home - it was just another drop in the drama bucket. Here we go again 🙄. Charlie seems sweet, I guess we’ll see his true colors now that he Knows. But frankly, I think both of them act like assholes to others and to each other, and I honestly have a really hard time buying that they’re in love because it doesn’t feel like love to me. It feels like someone desperately painting love on a false front, hoping that’ll turn a cut-out into a real building. I can’t get into it. Like when Greta told Carson not to always come to her with her problems, and Carson was like “??? I’m just trying to TALK to you?” I just. Noped the fuck out. There’s nothing wrong with having a just-physical relationship if that’s what two (or more) people want, but you have to discuss that. It has to be okay all around. I think Greta spends the whole season taking ruthless advantage of Carson, taking exactly what she wants from her and slapping down what Carson wants, giving her just enough little bits of sweetness so she doesn’t wiggle off the hook entirely. Carson had more chemistry with Max, tbh, and I’m not quite sure I ship them...? Because there’s that whole ‘invisible white privilege’ thing going on...? But I definitely like their potential more than I like Greta and Carson’s actuality.

I am REALLY fucking invested in what Clance and Guy are going through. That sweet baby boy better come back alive and intact from this war or I s2g I’m gonna set a few tumblr posts on fire. And Clance had better get her comics out there. She is WAY too good to keep her drawings on the kitchen table, and now that she’s moving into more ‘real’ work (like, it can still be superheroes but it will resonate more with folks if it’s about real issues) I seriously think she has nowhere to go but up. I hope to god she and Max can work it out, because I do NOT want to lose Clance to homophobia, I love her so much.

Maxine Chapman has never done a goddamn thing wrong IN HER LIFE and yet she goes around apologizing to people all the time, and it pisses me off. That thing with Bert? Are you SHITTING me? He shows up to her home where she never invited him, where her best friend lives to whom she is not out yet, and hands her that suit and has the unmitigated GALL to be pissed at her because she’s not ready to be out and proud like him. And then SHE apologizes to HIM? Oh fuck no. He could have gotten her fucking lobotomized with that shit, he should have been apologizing to HER. Like, I am not exaggerating, we literally have dialogue in the show about how one family found out their daughter was a lesbian and ‘had her put away’. Max has every reason to be completely terrified of what would happen to her as a black butch lesbian in 1943, and Bert has no right whatsoever to make assumptions about whether she should be Out and how that will affect her. I am so angry about how that scene was handled. How do you walk into a baby queer’s house with a gnc gift and NOT see the terror on her face and see her frantically trying to explain your visit to her housemate who is eying you like you’re the one who handed Eve an apple and recognize that you fucked up.

Esther’s okay, I guess. Once again, she strikes me as a little bit of a jerk and I’m just not sure I actually like her with Max. Maybe it has less to do with her and more to do with how mad I am that Max keeps apologizing for shit that isn’t her fault. It makes me think Esther might take advantage of that or something, even without meaning to. She’s presented as someone who had to fight her way to where she is now, and it makes me wonder if she won’t reflexively try to keep Max down a little bit just so she can feel secure that she’s not about to be shown up.

Lupe, Jess, and Esti are my faves right now, in terms of friendship and family dynamics. I might have a little bit of a crush on Jess, also? But I honestly think I liked Carson best during that very brief honeymoon period when she and Lupe were perfectly in sync and playing ruthless baseball and finishing each other’s sentences and mirroring each other’s signs. As soon as Carson turned against Lupe I was like “oh so the farm girl goes IN the trash, got it”. Lupe and Jess trying to co-parent Esti despite Jess not speaking her language and them not really being a couple is the most wonderful hilarious thing I saw on this show, and Esti’s fierce love and loyalty toward Jess even though they communicate almost entirely through gestures is just *chef’s kiss*. And poor Esti, god, when she made that comment about how she feels like a ghost because she can’t talk to anyone, my heart fucking broke. But even then, Jess is right there proving that love isn’t what you say, it’s what you do, and you can tell if someone loves you by their actions. Jess never treats Esti like a ghost. When she runs off to the bus station, Jess is the first to notice she’s disappeared and to CARE about what her absence means. I honestly feel less charitable toward the rest of the team partially BECAUSE they ignore Esti so much. That little girl is freshly sixteen in ep08 and Jess is the ONLY one actively taking care of her??? TF is wrong with y’all? That is a whole baby trying to make it in a foreign country where she doesn’t even speak the language! Huddle up on her, damn.

So anyway, those are my thoughts on season 1, do with them what you will.

[sonneka]

Worst part of a heavy hyperfixation is the feeling of loneliness. Nobody else is as obssessed as you are. You have to pretend you don't want to scream, not talk, nonstop about these two characters you love so much that you want to peel your skin off.

[sonneillonv]

Normally it doesn’t happen so often but today I’m gonna vent a little because today is the day for customers either vastly over-analyzing our very simple questions OR insisting on believing they are special snowflakes.

When we ask why you’re canceling your policy, and the option “Leaving for another company” is there?

That includes ALL REASONS you are leaving for another company. You don’t say “none of these apply” and then come tell me “The price is too high so I’m switching companies”. That’s “Leaving for another company”. You don’t tell me “I’m joining someone else’s policy”, that’s “Leaving for another company” because you are leaving for another company. I understand you think your situation is unique and special, and I understand some people are incapable of believing we only mean what we actually say. But if you are no longer being insured by us, and you are being insured by someone else, it’s “Leaving for another company”. For fuck’s sake, please just pick the right option so I don’t have to talk you through the dozen reasons you think YOUR “Leaving for another company” isn’t actually “leaving for another company”.

It is.

And I’m not amused.

[sonneillonv]

Fuck it, I have strong opinions on this so I’m gonna say it louder and if you disagree frankly you’re wrong.

Sympathy For the Devil must be dirt cheap to license. I've never heard another song be used in so many trailers and movies.

Unfortunately, the effect is now that if I hear Sympathy for the Devil in your movie or trailer, I will immediately assume your sound engineers were phoning it in. The only movie to actually use it well was "Fallen" (1998) everybody else since then is lazy af

[sonneillonv]

Look I’m not trying to rain on anybody’s parade or anything. Y’all can have fun however you want, spend your time however you want.

But these ‘solo journaling rpgs’... they’re not freaking RPGs. They’re writing exercises. They’re prompts. And I’m frankly sick and tired of seeing them in Tabletop RPG bundles. Call me a cranky old witch if you want, but that’s my opinion and I’m aggravated and sticking to it.