some of you need to go outside and I dont mean that in a mean or condescending way I mean it in a “you would benefit from talking to real people face to face, and developing social skills” type way
genuinely tho. more and more frequently i interact with people online who shock me with how young they act for how old they are, because i associate that level of social and interpersonal inability with fucking. fourteen year olds. there is a noticeable deterioration of social skills and it’s annoying as someone who actually knows how to talk to people, because i find myself having to almost parent people basically my age into learning how to properly communicate. no, just saying insults and then adding /lh does not mean you’re friends with someone. you can’t just call someone a bitch or a whore or any type of slur and get surprised when they aren’t okay with that, because if you actually took a step outside you’d realize those are words that have a whole lot of weight behind them and online get thrown around by social infants with no clue how to properly talk to people.
people are always coming to tell me that i’m very nice or very welcoming, and i don’t know how to explain this to you, but it’s because i have actual social skills. i know how to be polite. i know how to listen to people. i know how to actually form healthy relationships with people who aren’t just words on a screen. and it’s come to my realization that not everyone does, which makes it extra exhausting to keep up conversations with literal adults who don’t even understand the basics of interpersonal communication.
this puts it into words well ty
tags from @/lemonberry-conda and they’re entirely correct
I do viscerally get the “this just does not come naturally to me so I am not even going to try (and make a virtue of not trying) but: there is value in learning and practicing social skills. There is value in trying to be kind, in trying to communicate and connect, in practicing empathy and compassion. And they all absolutely take practice! Watch, learn, listen, ask questions, treat them as knowledge worth learning and keeping and refining, and don’t give up if it doesn’t go perfectly all the time.
Someone once explained small talk to me as an exchange of acknowledgements - "you are a person” “Yes, and you are also a person”. And, like, there is a huge amount of value contained in that exchange, and in the cultural shorthand we use for it.
[Image one: A digital drawing of Jack Manifold and TommyInnit. There’s two panels separating the characters, and a used ashtray a the bottom. The smoke it creates billows behind the panels and then offscreen. Jack is in the first panel, hands under his armpits as if he’s hugging himself. His brows are slightly furrowed. He’s wearing a blue hoodie and denim jacket above a white sweater. The denim jacket has a fire pattern across the sleeves, a thunderbolt badge, and three flags patches, for L’Manberg, Manifold Land and Snowchester respectively. He also has glasses similar to 3D ones, but they have glasses chains with charms that resemble the L’Manberg flag. Meanwhile, Tommy is wearing his classic t-shirt under a black and orange sports jacket, which has Wilbur’s initials on it. It also has a L'Manberg patch on it. Tommy looks slightly worried, but his pose is laid back. Both of them have white in their hair, while Tommy has a giant bruise around his swollen eye.
Inage two: A digital drawing of Tubbo and Eret. There’s two panels, with smoke wafts behind them. Tubbo is looking to the side, face blank and body relaxed. There is a burn scar in the middle of his face. He’s wearing a unkempt white shirt, which isn’t tucked in properly. Above that, he’s got a denim jacket adorned with many badges, like the New L'Manberg flag, two hearts and a Pog 2020 badge. On top of this, he’s wearing a green puffer jacket, which has a snowchester flag on its sleeve. Meanwhile, Eret is stony faced, her eyes obscured by sunglasses. Her hair is tied up, the ponytail secured with a crown-shaped comb. She’s wearing a plain black sweater with a dark brown skirt. However, she’s also got a red cape on, with fur for its trim. It’s connected by two chains, which both end in X symbols. In her hand, she holds Wilbur’s L’Manberg jacket.
Image three: A digital drawing of Fundy and Nihachu. There’s two panels separating them, and a cloud of smoke ghosting behind them. Fundy has his fist clenched, but his face is smooth. He’s wearing his usual outfit, but with the addition of a few accessories. There is a fish-shaped badge on his jacket, and a locket around his next. Plus, he has Wilbur’s gloves and beanie on. Niki is crossing her arms, looking vaguely upset. She’s wearing a blue sweater with a grey line across it, with a dark grey shawl above it. It’s fastened together by a large raining cloud brooch. She also has two cat ears attached to her hair, and a daisy charm tied around her belt. Her hair is cut short, dyed three different colours. The front sections are dyed a light blonde, while the back is half pink, half dark brown.]
many black women in the lesbian community have stated this but non black people continued to use the term until a lot of people will refuse to admit it is aave, and i do not aappericate people coming into my ask and trying to start a fight over this especially if you are not black.
Listen. To. Black. Lesbian. Women.
when they tell you something aave, black off. It’s a simple as that. Let black women, and the black community have their own terms stop trying to steal their stuff.
this is all im going to say about the submission I just got (not even going to publish it)
Watch nonblack girls ignore this and continue to call themselves wlw
“During the Harlem Renaissance (1919–1939), “woman-loving woman” was a term used solely by and for women within the black community. The term was used by Ruth Ellis to describe women who engaged in same-sex sexual relations (Welbon 1999). It implied a particular intersectional identity of race, gender, sexuality, and often class, due to the systemic impact of racism that produced wealth inequality, wherein the woman-loving woman’s identity as a black, often working class, woman of non-normative sexuality located her at the lowest position of almost all social hierarchies in the United States. As such, each layer of the woman-loving woman’s intersectional identity was and is highly contested within the nation’s societal structures.”
when my brain can’t focus on creating things, I can at least make studies. So here’ some, based on paintings by Albert Bierstadt and Edward Theodore Compton. It was pretty fun and I should do more, especially since I wanna get more comfortable with digital painting
The hit anime FMA(B) is really something, huh (I’m really swinging at a nest here omfg)
HI YES I LOVE YOU AND YOUR SICK AS HELL RANT
Reminder! Edward literally tells Miles, an Ishvalan man, to his face, “I think people should ignore race and just relate to each other as individuals.”, or essentially that he ‘‘doesn’t see race” and is being portrayed by the narrative as correct, or at the very least the narrative never actually confronts that that’s a horrifically naive viewpoint and let’s him continue believing that for the rest of the series.
if you don’t have @ least one collection of specific items i literally have nothing more to say to you. we will never relate to each other. however, you cool ass motherfuckers who do collect @ least one type of thing, reblog this post and say what that thing is. i’ll go first: clown dolls and good luck charms
As a child were you the “I’m an alien and I don’t understand human things” neurodivergent or the “I’m not supposed to be here I’m actually supposed to get whisked away to another world where I’m the chosen one” neurodivergent
Okay, I can’t stop thinking about something ending-related. I don’t know this for certain, but based on previous statements and such, it feels like the writers were alwaysaiming for a bittersweet ending. Like, no matter what else happened or how the story evolved, come hell (lol) or high water, that ending couldn’t just be happy. For reasons. I guess.
Now, I don’t mind a bittersweet ending … if it makes sense for the ending to be bittersweet.
I critique stories for a living. I’m literally taking a break from the developmental edit of someone’s novel to write this post. And the persistent thought that bugs me about the Rory setup is that it is so artificial. Time travel is a pain in the narrative ass. Time travel suddenly introduced in the sixth season of a show that has never touched on time travel? As an editor, I probably would’ve pointed out that time travel for the purpose of angst, especially time travel without rules that make sense (“I don’t know anything about time travel! Except I do know you have to take the most painful path!”), seemingly introduced as a final ploy to make that bittersweet ending work … well, to me, it breaks the narrative contract they established with the audience. Your audience is going to be confused. An editor’s job is to alert the writer to any potential confusion so it can be fixed before the story goes to print, etc. Confused audiences get mad, annoyed, frustrated. They feel hurt. They put down the book and don’t pick it up again. Usually, writers don’t want that. But they’re so close to their work that they need a completely outside perspective to say, “Hey, I’m not sure you realize this, but…”
I mean, I keep referring to Rory as “deus ex daughter” because in literary terms, she is a blatant deus ex machina. Rory is the god in the machine of the Bittersweet Ending.
Now, I loved a lot of S6. I did. My overall feeling about the season is not negative. But … I can’t stop thinking about why the things I didn’t like REALLY didn’t work for me.
I loved the emotional growth we saw in Lucifer and Chloe facilitated by the question of parenting and parental love. I did. And I would have loved to see a lot of those notes hit not with an angel kid out of nowhere … but with the daughter already in the picture. Especially because it would have circumvented the icky idea that a child has to be one’s flesh and blood to induce such feelings. I also understand that coronavirus and Scarlett’s age and schedule made this difficult. But I just can’t swallow that the only way to wrap up the story of this show–a show about found family, non-traditional family, friendship, connection, FREE WILL, love in all its many shapes and forms and colors … was to introduce a brand new character via a device (time travel) that fails to make sense almost every time it’s used, no matter the medium. (And then had only that brand new character be there when her mother died. Don’t even get me started. Ugh.)
If time travel was always going to be on the table, couldn’t we have found a more plausible way to use it with the characters we already knew, loved, and had spent four or five seasons with? A time-travelling older Trixie, say? If you’re going to use the impossible device, just … twist it another way to make it work.
Okay. Okay. So, leaving Trixie aside for now just like the show did, let’s say we leave everything about the season the same, even Rory. Do you know what ending makes more narrative sense?
Future Rory sacrificing herself by NOT forcing Lucifer to make a cruel and impossible “choice” so the baby that might have been her grows up with a family that loves her. Chloe’s already pregnant. That’s not going to be undone. And this nonsense of a “closed time loop” falls apart if you side-eye it for even a few seconds. The Rory who came from the future never exists except in the memories of those she met when she came back from that future. Chloe and Lucifer lose that daughter even as they gain the new one whose existence is not a tool of unrelenting fate because wow this show has always been about free will what the heck happened there yikes. And a choice made under the duress Chloe and Lucifer were under, forced out of them, and forcing them to “choose” a life apart for *handwave* Reasons has nothing to do with free will. A “choice” made at gunpoint is not a real choice. Future Rory basically bullied them into ensuring she got to exist–something, quite frankly, neither her parents would have done.
Instead, how much more appropriately bittersweet is it if Chloe and Lucifer lose that child while gaining one who, because of that angry time-travelling version, will never suffer as she did.
Also as an editor: the groundwork for my version is already laid, by the way. It should have been Rory learning about the importance of free will over fate. The importance of personal sacrifice. The importance of not thinking your young self knows best … because experience and therapy will help rid you of that self-centered world view. That’s the contract the writers made with us with this show. And Chloe and Lucifer have already BEEN THERE AND DONE THAT. (See: the end of S4.)
Furthermore, this season finally HAD Chloe and Lucifer DEAL WITH the only thing that actually would have contributed to a narrative, characterization-based reason for Lucifer to disappear: His history of running and his putting Chloe on a pedestal. Once they really talked that out, his “disappearance” became a Rory-induced trauma of inexplicable fate that flies in the face of all the progress Lucifer made over six seasons. (I would rather have had more of that and less of mysterious disappearing oh no plot.)
And I’m sorry, the “Once you get to Hell you’re going to work 24/7” excuse given for why Lucifer won’t be around and why he can’t make time for Chloe until she’s DEAD(????!???) is … it’s lame. If AMENADIEL AS GOD can make time for his kid’s birthday party, I refuse to believe Lucifer can’t work out some Hell/Earth-work/life balance. Never mind that in the show about partnerships, the Bittersweet Ending just … destroyed it. Chloe was planning on being God’s consultant; she could have helped Lucifer solve Hell’s Trauma Mysteries (it’s what she did with Jimmy, setting up that yeah, Lucifer could do it alone like he accidentally did with Lee, but doing it with HIS TRUTHSEEKING PARTNER would be more effective). Just as Lucifer could have continued helping HER solve some of the problems within “that corrupt little organization” of hers.
tl;dr: I think the writers fixated so completely on their version of Bittersweet that they missed all the foreshadowing, groundwork, and clues that were right there, already built into the story, poised for a different kind of ending than the one they once imagined. That’s why so many parts of it feel almost-but-not-quite right and why these aspects are so off-putting. That’s why it’s just not … organic. It’s something squeezed into a box it grew out of ages ago.
Ironically, certain elements of this season involved the writers insisting on the FATE they decided long ago instead of letting the story and the characters have the FREE WILL to choose a different, more fitting, more organic ending–one that had long-since evolved past that original flavor of Bittersweet.
This is a much more coherent explanation of some of my major issues with this season yep.
![[queer theremin music]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/923bf1bb14ca9f49a84ff131090f0d3b/1570b275e7c79a09-34/s30x30u_c1/580f52a0ca14e0ec0f56444e05e1e9c08f7c9cd2.png){kind=small}
