there’s a particular sadness to seeing someone join a chatroom, watching them become a regular poster in the meme channel, and… their taste is memes is utterly bland. four panel comic slop, banal observational humor, last year’s lowest common denominator tweets. it’s as if they haven’t spent ten years marinating in the bogs of the internet with an insatiable appetite for novelty developing a palate for the perplexing and inscrutable it’s a shame there’s no polite way to say “you post like garlic is too spicy for you”
unfathomable entity from beyond time and space that extrudes tentacles into this feeble world, disrupting the fabric of reality and birth anomalies which lure hapless humans into investigating, only for them to be enveloped and wrenched out of this universe entirely. why? for fun, relaxation, a bit of a challenge — it’s like fishing to them. sometimes they throw you back
honestly nothing more acutely distressing than people demonstrating they care & think about me. because even those tiny acts feel like something i’ll never be able to repay i’ve asked nothing of you and i’m nonetheless further indebted #maybe the only way to avoid draining people is to stop interacting
sometimes in the wonky hours of the morning when i cant sleep or jolt awake, i get ideas for posts and i still dont have tumblr on my phone, so i write them down in a lil notes channel remembered i put one there last night, went to get it, and realized i hadn’t cleared them out in weeks, so if you’re wondering at the string of posts, well
you know, despite people’s initial skepticism, three months in i think we can say that wildbow has done a fine job of juggling seek’s two perspective characters
(re: The wonders of RSS) the only real problem with syndication feeds is that people have forgotten about them
if there’s one thing i’d want to tell people besides just spreading awareness, it’s that the standard is pretty simple. i put off added a feed to my site for over a year because i thought it would be hard work, but if you have familiarity programming, then spitting out conforming xml is not much trouble at all.
i tend to dance around using the acronym “RSS” though. it’s how most people refer to xml syndication feeds, so arguably it’s in a bit of xerox situation, but RSS 2.0 is a legacy standard with ambiguities and shortcomings, and in most meaningful respects, it’s been superceded by the atom standard. i personally provide atom and not RSS 2.0; any feed reader these days is going to support both
there’s also even nicher stuff like JSON Feed, which i provide mainly because my site generation feeds use it as a convenient intermediate form for converting to proper atom – it’s a profoundly simply standard, like json itself.
honestly getting skeptical and just a little bit tired of all the posts telling people not to be self-deprecating. as if the people you’re talking to aren’t doing this as a way to anxiously preempt criticism. are you actually helping, or adding one more social stricture to be insecure about violating, another brick in the wall of self-censorship that got them to this point in the first place? self-deprecation is what happens when acting earnest and confidence gets you judged. you don’t want to be cringe, do you? now self-deprecation is cringe, but this doesn’t cancel out, it compounds.
maybe that friend who never texts first just stays quiet because they don’t know what it is you really like and err on the side of not being a bother go tell your friends what you appreciate in them. let them know how they make you happy
concept: a world where there are dozens of planes, all defined as heavens or hells based on their proximity to the godhead. heavenly planes have exponentially more abundant resources due the energy of divine light, while hellish planes are exponentially scarce, at least in part due to the heavens soaking up all the divinity. the direction in which souls reincarnate is based on a sort of ‘buoyancy’ based on how blessed or cursed they are. rich and magically powerful people reincarnate in higher heavens, the cursed and poor reincarnate lower. in fact, the hells are so bereft of magical energy that their magical ecosystems are entirely based on devouring the souls as they reincarnate - a man condemned to the deepest hells is a whalefall in miniature planar crossings are known though uncommon, and gateways require a rare alignments. angelic beings can hardly endure the arid austerity of even mortal realms, and are quick to depart once their mission is complete, often leaving flourishing in their wake - but a demon who climbs higher? a creature adapted to make do with little to nothing is all the more formidable with new power at its fingertips. it goes without saying that angels fall, and heavens with them - and yet, for all the blood shed in demonic conquest and revolution, the hierarchy never seems to change.
do you think spinner ants would be way more equipped to cope with the overwhelming deluge of information symptomatic of the modern internet age, given how hard they lean into the whole extended mind thing
…actually imagining noubugs in the information age is really transfixing me rn >neverending mantis flame wars >chorus-roach posters that chatter verging on spam turning every other thread into 1000 post monstrocities that belong in Forum Games or Forum Roleplay >euvespid hacker that pwns the server and proceeds to do nothing but seamlessly upgrade to the bleeding edge version of bugforo >therid dramafrog that keeps leaking dms and spinning up rumor mill whisper networks >rime-scorpion that comes online every eighteen weeks or so and posts nonstop for a few days >gestaltee bee account that has like 20k posts bc every worker in the hive uses the same login. signs every message with the cheerleader queen’s current slogan, even when it really fucks with the tone of the message >reaver ant troll on the 11th alt account now >deepkin (centipede) lurkers that seem to be currently viewing every thread. sometimes you see an anonymous post, but if you try to reply, it’s gone by the time you refresh. rarely, if you ask a question you’ll get a deeply insightful 20 paragraph private message from a throwaway account made with a vpn. it will never reply >sorrowmoth that drenches every post in apologies and preemptive clarifications. they’ve memorized every rule and the defensively explanations about why they aren’t in violation of rule 7b is raising a lot of questions answered in their post. every one of their messages gets reported (by themselves). >weevil that refuses to get a computer and sends letters to the site owner’s P.O. box >spinner ant mod team that has to deal with all this shit
You know, when i read “redooms your yuri” in the tags I thought you’d like. Bring Tessa back to life to kill her again for good this time, but this is much, MUCH worse on the BEST way possible.
The love was there but it was also dead from the start, and J’s decision at the end is both tragic but also 100% justified. Tessa is dead, long live Juzi
people pleasers are really fucked when someone asks questions like “what’s up” wdym what’s the correct answer here. how do i get a good grade in this interaction
infodumping at length about whatever’s on my mind does not seem to be the right answer which makes the question of where to draw the line pretty hard to judge. what’s the subtext here. what information are they actually requesting. giving a vague non commital answer also does not seem to be the right one but it does seem safest
thinking about how one of my headmates introduced herself as “the funny one” and proceeded to never make another joke, thereby making it the funniest thing ever she said.
i was only able to stop myself from instinctively siding with the imperial hegemony in my setting when i changed the worldbuilding to be like “what if they outlawed necromancy & other crooked arts”
very stupid idea occurred to me while drafting another post antichrysalis says this day is going to be awful antichangelings. unlike their vampiric counterparts, they have a chaotic excess of emotions. in order to vent them, they capture ponies and transform them into archetypes and strawmen to be the object of their current dominant emotion. an angry antichangeling turns you into an obnoxious karen about to be owned; a sad antichangeling turns you into a hospital; and, of course, a yearning antichangeling turns you into a cute mare and sweeps you into a date that melts your heart
editor’s note: i have NO IDEA what “hospital” was a typo for
there’s a great classic fic that interprets changelings as decidedly fae creatures - and there’s something about the theater of antichangelings that would make them fit as another fae court rivaling the changelings, seelie and unseelie
we all love creatures that can only survive by killing people — but the reason is so often just consumption. vampires drink blood, ghouls eat the whole body, and then there’s all sorts of dark demonic beings that power up from sacrifice i feel like more variety is possible what about a haunted creature that swells with cursed energy that erodes their mind and body, and it can only be released by channeling it into violent spells targeting human souls? (this kills the human) what about an alien bug queen, constantly producing new eggs, who needs to lay them in live hosts so her parasitoid young can gestate? (granted, this toes the line of the consumption i was complaining about, but she’s not the one eating you :3) what about a psychic entity whose presence floods the minds of those around them. she doesn’t do anything so crass as siphoning their emotions or draining their psyches, but she does dwell there, the way arboreal creatures dwell in trees. sometimes, though, there’s a mind with latent psychic potential, enough to recognize her — heck, sometimes, just lingering in a mind long enough will ‘spark’ its psychic potential. when that happens, she has to kill them. to even be aware of her, to know her, blurs the lines between you, erodes her identity — it’s a mercy for the both of you, really.
re: this posttrue commitment to the bit will only be achieved when all the sins are horny wrath is a brat, gluttony is prey, greed is a paypig, pride is a good little pet, envy is hotter than you and knows it, sloth is a doting mommy with the most pillowy breasts
thought i was cooking up an interesting political thought experiment with today’s brainstorming, something to probe the edges of ethical intuitions then i realized i had basically recreated the politics of skyrim
concept: breathstealer. like a vampire, but feeds on people’s voices. the louder the better, the less voluntary the better. talking to them is little more than crumbs, better than nothing, but frustrating. yelps of surprise and distress, though? screams of pain? that’s the good stuff. dying breaths are special — most people die with a whimper, but it’s still the best thing a breathstealer could consume, containing everything their victim could have ever given them (if you survive an encounter with a breathstealer, you’ll find you’ve lost your voice, and it’ll be a while before it’s back) …this does imply there’s a room for highly skilled breathstealer comedians and sex workers (laughs and moans get pretty loud, after all!) which isn’t exactly where i meant to go with this, but it’s interesting enough i’m not complaining
serial killer with a subby ghost girl gf who possesses the victims to assist with capture. she of course feeds (and kinks) off the despair and pain as her killer pursues and methodically kills her, over and over
this is yuri to be clear
didn’t gender the killer to make the pronouns parse better
i think among the reasons i’m an endlessly patient people pleaser is that if someone sets a boundary or rule, or worse, tells me i’ve done something wrong, it’s like a knife driven into my heart, i feel rage enough to punch a wall, i’ll quite likely spiral with anxiety for the rest of the day, and i’ll say “i understand, thanks for letting me know” and i think if i had to be on the giving end of that with any regularity my heart would wither and fail me
jesin00 reblogged
Ok, but you do mean that “thanks” sincerely, right? Because it’s better to know. Finding out about a boundary you violated once, twice, or a dozen times sucks, for sure. But it gives you a chance to fix things. Compare it to finding out that someone you care about has been quietly enduring your presence while you made their life worse, multiple times a day, every day, for 5 months. Sometimes it’s better to let people know.
it’s probably not the correct answer, but my immediate thought upon hearing “do you mean that thanks” is “huh?” what else am i going to say, “i don’t care lol”? what else am i going to do afterward — not comply with their request? when someone voices a preference like this, the thing to do is acknowledge it politely and give them reasonable consideration going forward. how i feel about it isn’t something i even compute and while fixing things and doing better is is nice, i want to have never broken them. if i’ve fucked something up then it’s going to haunt me indefinitely and lastly, it’s easy to say it’s better to speak up than to endure, but the calculus is not simple. how much endurance actually offsets the costs of voicing a complaint? i think most would underestimate how numerous and trivial the things i refuse to complain about are — things as minor and omnipresent as saying “lol” or “ok” bother me enough to provoke genuine frustration, and i don’t think i can reasonably request people avoid basic vocabulary because i interpret it differently. and then, assuming i did, what if they wished to respect it but keep forgetting and slipping up? what if they don’t bother or argue with it? now the reality of the choice is reframed: endure something small indefinitely, or endure something moderate for the possibility of less of the small thing, married to a possibility of worse outcomes. and worse, what if i’m wrong about what’s bothering me? there have been a few cases of someone doing something in a way i don’t like, and i repeatedly muse to myself about how much i’d prefer it if they did it differently. then, by sheer chance, they or someone else happens to do the thing i thought i wanted, and i find i don’t care for it either. i can only conclude there’s no pleasing me. now imagine if i had told someone to change how they interact with me, and then they gracefully comply only for me to say “actually i don’t like that either” so yeah. i’m sure plenty of people wouldn’t be pleased by knowing how much i’m not telling them, but i think there should be solace in the fact that it’s not them. i endure everything
Absolutely gutting to listen to a banger of a song, go track down the band, and find out that it’s their only good song across three albums.
i see this sentiment often and it’s foreign to me. i can’t recall ever listening to band where i don’t enjoy songs from the same album, at least, if not the whole discography. but i guess i listen to albums near-exclusively, so i dont hear banger songs - if the album as a whole doesn’t come together, i just forget about it still, i wonder if it’s that i listen to genres where there’s not dramatic variance in appeal between an artists songs, or the things i care about in songs don’t vary. i suppose i’m also just a forgiving listener in general. one good song and ten decent ones is an album i’ll still probably come back to
game dev is wild because i spent hours last night trying to get a fireball spell working and this morning i knocked out a time travel spell like it was nothing
