that’s nice I guess. Is that the real ellen let’s go check?
that’s the only two posts on this blog. It’s at least a year old. It doesn’t update ever. They’ve been following me for a year, and just now decided to communicate only these two lines.
I fear for my life.
lets have a little fun today lets give a little love away are words that are going to haunt me forever. this is my roanoke.
This sounds like a bot….but what caused it to suddenly activate after a year? What kind of monarch project activation code….??
It was nice knowing you guys….
Hey guys just here to say my Ellen tickets came in the mail!! Can’t wait to be a guest on t he show on MARCH 22, 2019. Remeber to follow ellen on twitter.
headcanon: there’s a daycare in at least one of the regions where instead of being used for breeding it’s Pokemon’s old friends senior dog sanctuary, where stray/lost elderly Pokemon can spend the rest of their lives at!
Definitely. ❤
Old Friends Senior Pokemon Sanctuary is where I would want to work 😀
[Picture of a sleepy battle-scarred gyrados sunbathing] Mr. Johannsen loves his sunshine!
[Adorable old lady comment] He’s a handsome soldier
I know I’ve made a lot of posts recently about disturbing dynamics on this website but I really feel that I’ve narrowed down three big factors that have corrupted the way we interact, and can lead to anything from ineffective annoying conversations, to actual abuse. those factors are:
-pain and trauma being reconceptualized as currency for credibility or social capital (and how this takes away from genuine interaction and replaces it with performativity)
-pain and trauma being reconceptualized as a bargaining chip to get one out of accountability (ditto with what I said in the parenthesis in the first one)
-the above two factors leading to a normalization invasiveness on a level that would otherwise be disturbing / being encouraged to disclose painfully private information.
for a lot of bloggers who talk about marginalization and social issues, whether you have a “discourse sideblog” or a Serious Leftist Blog or a fandom blog, patterns have come up on here that over time have encouraged people to play up their already present fatigue and anger, because they’ll be awarded with popularity and credibility for making public displays out of very personal pain. with frequency over time, these displays become less about genuine sharing and helping situations, and more about subconscious (or conscious depending on the blogger) manipulation in a way: “what will I get from sharing this”. whether or not that manipulation is intentional, when this stuff is normalized people start to do it almost mindlessly, and it compromises any chance for compassion and trust and genuineness.
when we discuss oppression and power, we are often already bitter and tired from whatever contexts we have. and that comes out normally in justifiable situations – the bitterness in and of itself isn’t what I’m criticizing. this isn’t gonna turn into some “we have to be graceful and tone police ourselves for the comfort of people who hurt us” post. the problem I’m putting my finger on is when, on top of our original bitterness and tiredness that we already have to shoulder, marginalized people are also being egged on to perform MORE of it as a show of “look at how mean and jaded I am, that makes me more credible and likable than you because I act more visibly mean and jaded at all times”. it’s also the invasiveness. it’s also the detachment from reality. it’s a lot and I’m just gonna try and list a few examples I’ve seen in the past couple of months that have not changed or gotten much better from the way things were on here in 2014 or 2012:
-I’ve seen popular bloggers respond one way to another adult with genuinely abusive politics, and then turn around and respond the exact same way to a 13 year old with a silly question that seemed obvious/embarrassing. and then act confused when told that there should have been a difference in their responses for it to remain appropriate.
-I know people who feel uncomfortable posting on here when they’re genuinely hurting and in need of support, but who have learned to almost nonchalantly pull out a laundry list of grotesquely detailed stories of trauma in order to prove a point in a stupid argument, because they’ve been taught that’s necessary in order for them to be listened to.
-at one point I was convinced that if I ever decided to have patience with someone who asked an ignorant question, or stick it out through the conversation to try to change someone’s mind, it wouldn’t be half as radical as just throwing out some over the top “go fuck yourself in the ass” and making 6 posts about how I blocked them and “did you SEE that idiot??? they must hate everyone in group x”. and honestly that’s. ridiculous and is only “effective” if we just wanna stay in an insular little circle laughing at everyone without a gender studies degree. like again, it’s normal to be bitter and tired and choose not to deal with someone, or deal with someone unkindly if they aren’t listening or are evoking oppressive rhetoric, but the idea that I feel like some of us have learned that we ALWAYS have to interact like that in order to prove your politics are radical (it truly is our version of 3dgy blogging lmao) is exhausting.
-I’ve seen people who have suggested that they are trying to heal mentally or emotionally in some way, and have been accused of selling out. like somehow “not everyone can achieve recovery” turned into “anyone who talks about recovery for their own self is a sellout” – I had to leave certain mental health related blogging circles because of this.
-re: pain/trauma being used as bargaining tool for getting let off the hook for genuinely abusive interactions: again referring to some mental health related activist communities, in some circles, “don’t associate mentally ill people as being inherently abusive” somehow turned into “if someone is mentally ill they can never be called on abusive or even slightly harmful interactions.” similarly, this has happened in other “leftist” conversations along identity politics lines of “well, seeing as I have this marginalized experience, I can’t be touched with critique”. this is defensiveness taken too far and stagnates our ability to grow and actually promote healthy treatment of others (something we all claim we are trying to do)
-things that have been encouraged by self proclaimed activists include: publicizing your mental health record and whether or not you have been raped, or whether or not you have a confusing relationship with sex, or whether or not you have been a victim of familial abuse, seems just as par for the course in some circles as publicizing your astrological sign. obviously choosing to share this is an option, but I and others have been pressured before to include such information beyond reason in order to be granted access to a discussion or to have a set of ideas/concerns listened to.
none of these things should seem normal or healthy. I’ve gotten caught up in some of those mentalities multiple times and am still struggling to stay away from them. obviously in some conversations, a little indication that you aren’t a preachy outsider can be good, but rhetoric that tries to narrow down who we should listen to to “only people who have this identity and experienced this exact thing at 8 am on a tuesday and are willing to yell it into a megaphone” will not accomplish anything except for telling strangers on the internet that they are morally deplorable and unreliable if they do not allow you to invade their space and their private life.
and the consequence of this is that even though we become used to talking about personal grief in a detached, non-genuine way, when we have to engage with the complexities of people’s realities, including their grief and suffering, on a real level, we flounder. pain should never be reduced to a bargaining token the way it has been on here. a lot of us have enough anger and fatigue already, we don’t need to be egged on by peers to constantly flaunt it as a show even when we aren’t actively feeling it, or be pushed to the point where we feel foolish or less credible or relatable for wanting to heal even a bit. I’m first and foremost sad that this is some young people’s first exposure to communities and dialogues that are supposed to be overcoming some form of liberation.
all of these issues made more complex by a mix of ages and experiences and blogging styles, sometimes that complexity is dangerous (re: the age thing, like imagine growing into politics and adult social friendships on this forum. there are young teenagers whose primary source of growing into those things is here.) and sometimes it’s just annoying, but either way it’s beyond time to try to address and change some of these behaviors on a large scale. I’ve seen some individual bloggers come to similar realizations and grow and change, and those are the mutuals and friends that I’ve kept on here.
and maybe it’s a losing battle, and maybe a website where social capital / notes is a central feature will always create disconnect and divisiveness, like I know this could never be the Perfect Safe Revolutionary Space for holding conversations, but still I want to see more people realizing that some of the shit on here is not exactly something we want to be getting used to especially if we ever want to advertise leftist blogging spheres here as moral examples.
I can see that I’m going to have to do better, though, so let’s try these:
In some versions of the game, members of the thief class have a special ability that lets them accurately identify the number and type of creatures in a room by listening at the door. A wise thief, however, supplements this ability with the use of a small brass cone with a metal screen over the end – not because it grants a bonus to the roll, but to ward off ear seekers, a species of insect that lives in door lock mechanisms and burrows into your brain via your ear canal when you listen at the keyhole.
Explorers of the Lower Planes may at times find themselves set upon by screaming, disembodied human heads with great bat-wings where their ears should be. Though their bite is fearsome, their deadliest weapon is, in fact, their kiss. Unless cured through powerful magic, the victim of a kiss becomes progressively dumber over the next few days; once the curse has run its course, the victim’s head sprouts wings, detaches, and flies away.
One published setting takes place in a city whose caretakers, a mysterious order of flying blue monks, communicate via illusory rebuses. The gamemaster is advised against simply describing the content of their dialogue, and is instead encouraged to present the players with actual rebuses to solve. For GMs who lack the knack for quickly coming up with rebuses, the text instead suggests conveying their dialogue via a quick game of charades.
Another published setting, while otherwise adhering to the mould of traditional high fantasy, introduces dinosaur-people from another dimension as playable races. Their voices are too high-pitched for humans to hear, and lacking the ability to produce facial expressions, they instead express emotions via scent. Curiously, one race of dinosaur people qualify for the paladin class, which the setting otherwise restricts to humans.
D&D typically awards treasure for successfully completing encounters via dice rolls on large lookup tables. In several iterations of the game, in addition to gold coins and magic swords and other fantasy staples, these treasure tables notably include a giant mechanical lobster. Requiring two people to operate, this lobster is highly resilient, deadly in combat and capable of self-contained underwater travel. Owing to how treasures are generated, the lobster can at least theoretically appear as a reward for any encounter, with anything, anywhere.
Now, which – if any – of those do you think I just made up?
Well, I know the heads are real, and pretty sure the lobster is, too. (Google confirms)
Ear-seekers, vargouilles, dabus, saurials, and the Apparatus of Kwalish. He didn’t make any of those up.
Quite so. Let’s try a few harder ones, then:
The monster manual for one version of the game contains an entry for “Fungus”, which – as expected – presents several varieties of fungal beasties. However, it prefaces this with a meandering lecture about the biology and lifecycle of ordinary mushrooms, including a “Combat” subheader that remarks on the dangers of improperly stored rations.
In addition to the expected swords and axes, the weaponry chapter of the game’s first edition provides stats, illustrations and price lists for a bewildering variety of obscure polearms, including the bardiche, bec de corbin, fauchard, glaive, glaive-guisarme, guisarme, guisarme-voulge, halberd, lucern hammer, military fork, partisan, ranseur, spetum, and the enigmatically named Bohemian ear-spoon.
Early versions of the game justified the total absence of female dwarves in first-party material by suggesting that dwarves reproduce via spores.
In lieu of the resurrection spells accessible to high-level clerics, high-level druids have access to magical reincarnation, which conjures the deceased’s spirit into a newly created adult body of a randomly selected species. While the standard races – human, elf, etc. – are represented on the species lookup table, it also includes such entries as “wolf”, “owl” and “badger”.
Prior to the game’s third edition, dolphins were listed without comment as Lawful Good.
No tricks this time – one of these actually is bullshit. But which one?
Looks like everything except the dwarf spores checks out. I figured it was either that one or the dolphins, but lo and behold, dolphins are actually Lawful Good.
i'm very gay. i'd like a few dollars. 