Folks have got to understand that they probably aren’t messed up by some Secret Big Trauma that they just can’t remember; but rather by a million tiny microtraumas that they do mostly remember but don’t even register as traumatic because nobody actually understood that these things would cause trauma, much less stack on each other over the years.
Whether you’re carrying one big rock or a big ol’ bucket of sand, it’s going to weigh on you just as much.
This is why psychologists have started taking more of an interest in CPTSD in the last 10-15 years. What most people know as PTSD is a response to a single, intensely traumatic event (or even a series of events). However, CPTSD (chronic post-traumatic stress disorder) is caused by living for years in a situation where your nervous system cannot catch a break. Even if nothing huge ever happened to you, you always had to be on guard for a thousand little things that could and did happen.
After years and years of this, your nervous system gets “stuck” in an activated threat response. It never really lets you rest, and if this started when you were a kid, you may not develop a lot of neural pathways that you should have, because your brain was too focused on keeping you safe to bother with little things like “genuine human connection” and “interpersonal attachment.”
No lie, Complex PTSD/CPTSD is HUGE.
If you are disabled, if you are queer, if you are chronically ill, if you are the survivor of a toxic but not abusive relationship, if you grew up or lived under the threat of harm but no “actual” harm (or “very little” harm) was done, you may have CPTSD that isn’t getting caught because CPTSD looks different from PTSD.
Scott Pilgrim is, I think, the best example I can think of for establishing a setting’s Nonsense Limit.
The setting’s Nonsense Limit isn’t quite “How high-fantasy is this”. It’s mostly a question of presentation, to what degree does the audience feel that they know the rules the world operates by, such that they are primed to accept a random new element being introduced.
A setting with a Nonsense Limit of 0 is, like, an everyday story. Something larger than life, but theoretically taking place in our world, like your standard spy thriller action movie has a limit of 1.
Some sort of hidden world urban fantasy with wizards and stuff operating in secret has a nonsense limit around 3 or 4. A Superhero setting, presenting an alternate version of our world, is a 5 or 6. High fantasy comes in around a 7 or so, “Oh yeah, Wizards exist and they can do crazy stuff” is pretty commonly accepted.
Scott Pilgrim comes in at a 10.
If you read the Scott Pilgrim book, it starts off looking like a purely mundane slice of life. The first hint at the fantastical is Ramona appearing repeatedly in Scott’s Dreams, and then later showing up in real life.
When we finally get an explanation, it’s this:
Apparently Subspace Highways are a thing? And they go through people’s heads? And Ramona treats this like it’s obscure, but not secret knowledge. Ramona doesn’t think she’s doing anything weird here.
At this point, it’s not clear if Scott is accepting Ramona’s explanation or not, things kind of move on as mundane as ever until their Date, when Ramona takes Scott through subspace, and he doesn’t act like his world was just blown open or anything, although I guess that could have been a metaphor.
there’s a couple other moments, but everything with Ramona could be a metaphor, or Scott not recognizing what’s going on. Maybe Ramona is uniquely fantastical in this otherwise normal world.
And then, this happens
Suddenly, a fantastical element (A shitty local indie band finishing their set with a song that knocks out most of the audience) is introduced unrelated to Ramona, and undeniably literal. We see the crowd knocked out by Crash and The Boys.
but the story doesn’t linger on the implications of that, the whole point of that sequence is to raise the Nonsense Level, such that you accept it when This happens
Matthew Patel comes flying down onto the stage, Scott, who until this point is presented as a terrible person and a loser, but otherwise is extremely ordinary, proceeds to flawlessly block and counter him before doing a 64-hit air juggle combo.
Scott’s friends treat this like Scott is showing off a mildly interesting party trick, like being really good at darts.
The establish that Scott is the “Best Fighter in the Province”, not only are street-fighter battles a thing, Scott is Very Good at it, but they’re so unimportant that being the best fighter in the province doesn’t make Scott NOT a loser.
So when Matthew Patel shows off his magic powers and then explodes into a pile of coins, we’ve established “Oh, this is how silly the setting gets”.
It’s not about establishing the RULES of the setting so much as it is about establishing a lack of rules. Scott’s skill at street-fighter battles doesn’t translate to any sort of social prestige. Ramona can access Subspace Highways and she uses it to do a basic delivery job. It doesn’t make sense and it’s clear that it’s not supposed to.
So later on, when Todd Ingram starts throwing around telekinesis, and the explanation we’re given is “He’s a Vegan” , you’re already so primed by the mixture of weirdness and mundanity that rather than trying to incorporate this new knowledge into any sort of coherent setting ruleset, you just go “Ah, yeah, Vegans”.
god I really wish people weren’t so fucking judgmental and cruel towards diabetic people who still eat a lot of sugar. partially because it’s not their business, and because how much they clearly don’t understand how diabetes works.
In case you didn’t know, diabetes is when, for whatever reason, your body doesn’t have enough insulin. Both types of diabetes can be caused by many things- genetics are the largest deciding factor, but it can also be influenced by things like autoimmune and diseases stress (and things that cause stress, like poverty or being a minority). It is a myth that you can give yourself diabetes by eating sugar, and a myth that you can stop it by dieting.
Type 1 happens when your body can’t make enough/any insulin, and type two happens when your cells become insulin resistant and there isn’t enough going around.
But what is insulin, and what does it do? Insulin is a hormone your body produces to aid in absorbing glucose (sugar) in your blood, allowing it to enter your cells and provide energy needed to live. This means that when there is no insulin, or insulin resistance is high enough, your cells can’t absorb glucose. This is essentially the same as starving, because your cells aren’t getting any energy. This causes not just a blood glucose to rise (which itself can cause damage to your body), but also makes you body slam the hunger button and craving for sugar- because it wants energy as fast as possible. Going through this repeatedly (a constant occurrence for many diabetics) is also super stressful on the body, and prompts it to want to gain weight as a survival strategy against starving.
So yeah no shit diabetic people often crave sugar and are often fat- their body is desperately trying to make sure they survive ✌️
non diabetics super encouraged to read and rb btw just please don’t derail or be disrespectful
Honestly being overworked makes people unobservant and passive and it literally kills people every day. People don’t seem to realize that an overworked nurse might not notice your sepsis symptoms and a tired truck driver might not notice your car when he’s merging into the lane. Failing to protect worker’s rights impacts nearly everyone
THIS. I want workers to be treated well for their own sake, but I NEED workers to be treated well for MY sake. We have got to stop glorifying eroding margin into the negative zones.
favorite underrated fact about Adrien that the fandom sleeps on is that he knows Morse code. like he just knows Morse code to a practically professional level. can we talk about this. there is no way that Gabriel forced his son to take Morse code lessons. That is absolutely 100% a “Adrien was lonely and bored alone in his room at age 12 so he went on the internet and decided to intensively teach himself a telecommunication method out of boredom” situation. I feel like this fact has impacted my impression on his character far more than I’ve ever admitted
We have GOT to stop being assholes to people with receding and balding hairlines. There’s not a single person that it can’t affect. It affects trans men, particularly on hormones, it affects trans women, particularly those not on hormones, it affects people with endocrine issues, something that’s becoming more prevalent and common, and it can affect people without a particular cause, including cis women. It’s a normal part of being human and we NEED to stop dehumanizing and humiliating ppl for it
My bf started losing his hair in his early 20s and the effect it’s had on him is devastating.
He’s an actor and he was dropped by his agent after he stopped hiding his hair loss. The roles he was cast in narrowed and shifted from more heroic characters to villains, and eventually he became so miserable about it that he stopped going to auditions altogether.
He used to enjoy dyeing his hair bright colours, and he lost that means of self expression. It alienated him from his own appearance, which knocked him back in coming out and exploring his queerness. The way he talks about it often feels dysmorphic. He says shaving makes him feel like he’s “rotting” - like he’s “scraping the mold off [his] head”.
I’ve seen drunk people and teenagers yell at him in the street and mock his baldness. I’ve seen people come up to him and slap his head or touch it without asking for permission. I’ve witnessed this behaviour from other trans people and women who I know would absolutely kick off if he took such a degrading or entitled attitude towards a part of their body, but seem to think it’s OK to do it to him.
Since going bald people perceive him as more masculine. He feels people are more suspicious of him. Women are less likely to approach him. Folks are quicker to put him in a box or misread his behaviour as aggressive or threatening, when the reality is that he’s neurodivergent and can’t conform to rigid social norms.
Baldness is a heavily gendered characteristic. If someone is conventionally masculine enough and/or is protected by other intersecting powers and privileges (eg wealth) then baldness can reinforce their maleness and the harm to their social standing is minimised. But if their performance of maleness is complicated by something like queerness or disability, it creates a dissonance. They have what is perceived as a hypermasculine trait standing in sharp contrast with their refusal/failure to perform normative, idealised masculinity.
And that’s how baldness is typically read - as failure. Especially when it exists outside of wealthy, successful, heterosexual masculinity but tbh even there too - just look at all the jokes about Jeff Bezos’ baldness or Elon Musk getting hair plugs. It’s similar to insulting Trump over his weight. Like yeah fuck those guys but all you’re really doing is revealing to the fat and bald people in your life that you think their bodies are deserving of mockery.
And God help you if you’re a bald woman. All women with receding hairlines are at a huge risk from transmisogyny.
Sorry for the essay. Baldness is absolutely a body neutrality issue. It’s an ageism issue, and a trans issue, and I WISH there was a broader recognition of this.
The fact that Microsoft Word has to be a subscription is upsetting. I already paid for it why do I have to pay again
Yes please be mad about it, genuinely- You used to be able to purchase a single disk to install it and use it forever after that initial purchase of one key. It sickens me to see all this stuff which used to be a one time purchase be shunted under a subscription now.
THIS
“Why is pirating going back up?!”
This. This is why. People don’t mind paying a high price for software if it’s only the once, or every 4-5 years.
But having to pay a high price regularly? Especially in the cases where you lose access to your own work if you don’t?
That’s why people are pirating software.
It’s possible to buy a non-subscription version of Word; Microsoft just intentionally makes it very difficult to find (and also expensive).
However, I know a guy who knows a guy website: MS Office Pro for $50. If the link starts going to a Page Not Found, just search the site; they usually have some form of this sale available.
Worth noting: while $50 is still more money than $yo-ho-ho, that money is a great way to make VERY clear to Microsoft that we DO want one-time-purchase products, not subscriptions.
My laptop just died. If it can’t be fixed and I need to replace it, this post is gonna be a real life saver, because my family has been sharing an old version of Word that came with a limited number of lifetime licenses, and we’re fresh out.
Get LibreOffice. It’s fully compatible with MS Office, but it’s free and open source. You’re welcome. :-)
ok that’s great but we shouldn’t HAVE TO. we shouldn’t HAVE to switch to open-source. yes, it’s a solution - but it does not solve the problem of subscription-only software licensing being so fucking pervasive.
to any teenagers reading this i just wanna say that you’re right. homework is bullshit, not accepting late work is bullshit, tardies are bullshit, having to ask to use the goddamn bathroom is bullshit. any adult who tells you differently is either lying or doesnt remember how much it sucked
you know what im actually just gonna block anyone who whines in the tags about how it’s actually totally reasonable to tell kids they aren’t allowed to take a piss
