Scumcum Real

REBLOG

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️Happy Trans Visibility Day!!! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

fuck it. shout out to "high functioning" neurodivergents

the ones who can mask easily, the ones who can get social cues, the ones who have managed to go most of their life not even knowing they were ND because they didn't present as the stereotypical ND person.

the ones who can pay attention in class, understand social etiquette, who understand societial expectations

the ones who don't feel neurodivergent enough bc they don't struggle in the same ways/areas a lot of NDs do, or they can't relate to other NDs' experiences because they always understood these things easily

the ones with high empathy, the ones who DO get the joke, the ones who are constantly told that they can't possibly be neurodivergent because they don't act like what you'd expect a neurodivergent person to act like.

you are neurodivergent enough. you are valid, and so are your experiences. not struggling as much as others do in some places doesn't mean you dont struggle at all. your condition and diagnosis is valid. your symptoms are valid. YOU ARE VALID. not checking all the supposed boxes doesn't mean you aren't neurodivergent. you are enough. you are valid. you are loved. you are valued. you matter. you belong in neurodivergent spaces, you deserve to use whatever resources are available to you, you are allowed to take up space in these communities. and i am so, so proud of you.

feel free to, and actually, i encourage you to reblog this with your experiences. we belong in this community as much as anyone else. please also tag this w/ any neurodivergent conditions i may have forgotten 💙

since this is getting lots of notes I'd like to add, even if you're undiagnosed or maybe self diagnosed, for whatever reason, (i.e. can't get access to a diagnosis, not being taken seriously, or just not wanting an official diagnosis, etc.) this still applies to you. actually especially to you folks. don't think for a second you're not valid just bc you don't have the paperwork or whatever to say it

nobody:....

Me to my fiends: yk when you just randomly say 'i like CAKE' out of nowhere to test the people around you????

My fiends: why are you testing people?????

me across several alternate timelines:

why are you NOT testing people???????? *offended noises*

bc it can sound more offensive than i am assessing their reactions to see if it is truly worth it to hang out with them, or more simply put, a survey *offended noises*

SO ANYWAYS i like cake u morons

if u give me 20 bucks rn ill go to dq rn and get us some icey cake

i should make a low-effort cookbook

like you get those ‘i hate to cook! 101: easy meals for the kitchen novice!’ and it still wants you to make a three-cheese spinach casserole

mine would be like

did you know you can put chocolate chips on a spoonful of peanut butter and obtain the perfect snack

did you know if you crack some eggs into your pasta sauce and stir there’s more protein in it so you can go longer without having to make another goddamn meal

did you know you can mix a cup of cooked rice to any condensed soup instead of water and now you have dinner and breakfast

also put cheese on it

put cheese on fucking everything

and finally here’s a list of things you can microwave in a short enough time that you won’t walk out of the kitchen, go back to bed, fall asleep for four hours, and totally forget you attempted a lunch

writing advice for characters with a missing eye: dear God does losing an eyes function fuck up your neck. Ever since mine crapped out I've been slowly and unconsciously shifting towards holding my head at an angle to put the good eye closer to the center. and human necks. are not meant to accommodate that sorta thing.

after eight years, I finally updated my huge Historical Fashion Reference & Resources Doc! Now in the form of a MUCH more easily updated Google Doc with better organization, refreshed links, and five more pages of books and online resources.

I know tumblr hates links, but it’s worth it for a doc that I can now update with far more regularity going forward! RIP to the original, you did your duty for far longer than you should have. 😔🙏🏼

My zine on vending for the first time! I wish I hadn't waited so long to start and now hopefully others can start too!

PIDW but it's a game.

You play as Luo Binghe, the lowliest disciple of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect's Qing Jing Peak. The first part of the game proceeds more or less like a semi-normal fantasy dating sim -- Luo Binghe is bullied and downtrodden, but can seek help and opportunities to build relationships with various female characters, like Ning Yingying and Liu Mingyan. The game's interface implies a truly staggering number of potential romance candidates to unlock, however, so it makes sense that the first part in your disciple years doesn't get you very far in any of the routes.

But then for the second part, things start to shift. You get an option that seems to amount to asking whether you want to make things better for Luo Binghe or not. When you click the obvious choice, that you do, your previously cold and ruthless shizun seems to go through an inexplicable change of heart. You get a weird kind of fanservice-y scene featuring him during the Skinner Demon Mission. Then he features extremely heavily in the Demon Invasion Mission, only to turn up as your companion in the Dream Demon Mission.

After that, it seems like you've gotten onto his route, somehow? Why does the scummy male teacher even have a route in a game like this, though? You try to check for player guides but you can't seem to find any. You try reloading older saves and making other selections, but no matter what you choose, you end up finishing the Dream Demon Mission by moving into Shen Qingqiu's house, and the routes for Liu Mingyan and Ning Yingying and the briefly-encountered Sha Hualing are all greyed out.

But maybe that just means they're inaccessible for advancement for now, or something. And a lot of games have plot points that are on rails, and you can see where Luo Binghe actually getting a place to live would be one of those things. The format of the game changes as well, going from a relatively loose sequence of scenes and interactions to a daily management style, where you have tasks to complete (make shizun breakfast, go to morning lessons, cultivate, do chores, etc) and only a set number of hours in which to complete them. You have affection points, but any time you try to spend them on anyone other than Shen Qingqiu you get an error message. There are dialogue options for flirting with other characters, but they're always greyed out and impossible to select.

Still, you can unlock scenes. A lot of them are just long slow shots of Shen Qingqiu doing things, like reading, or lecturing, or eating. You get missions, and sometimes you meet female characters who seem to unlock new possible romance paths, even though they're still constantly greyed out. Maybe this part of the game's just especially on rails? Waiting for the actual harem-building segment? You kind of like a lot of aspects of it anyway, though. Luo Binghe is an especially compelling character, not at all like the usual sort of non-entity placeholder main guys in games like this. He definitely has personality.

But then you get to the third part. The Abyss. Shen Qingqiu pushes Luo Binghe in, and suddenly you're wondering if you've somehow reached a bad end. You were saving up some of those affection points for later, maybe you should have spent them all on him? Was there something you did wrong to make this happen? You're not even sure why he's thrown poor Binghe away, he was cold and cryptic about it, and now you're wondering if all the time you spent distracted by other things was time you should have spent farming a better relationship with him. You can't help but wonder where you went astray, because Luo Binghe will not stop wondering about it, and wondering about it in ways that make you feel oddly like he is accusing you, the player, of making the wrong choices... but in a way that could still plausibly be aimed at himself, as a character. You feel bad. You kind of want to restart, but you also can't bring yourself to abandon Luo Binghe. You have to see this through, to help him make it to the other side.

Regardless, the Endless Abyss seems like it must be an inevitable plot development. A lot of the game shifts to account for it. There's even an option to essentially select this "thought" from Luo Binghe's internal diatribe, that this is inevitable, and it seems to turn off the litany of recriminations for a while, although sometimes it also results in Luo Binghe... glaring at the screen?

At you?

Anyway the daily management system goes out of the window, and instead there's an energy bar now. Encounters with monsters or the occasional demon woman will lower the energy bar, how much depends on what you choose and how the encounters proceed. Sometimes there are romantic/sexy responses for interacting with the demon women you meet, and they aren't greyed out, but if you try and select them the cursor will jump to another option. You think there might be something wrong with your mouse? Sometimes you get Luo Binghe glaring at the screen scenes afterwards. When Binghe's energy bar hits zero, you're offered two choices -- "sleep" or "think of shizun". Sometimes even if you pick "sleep" the cursor will still jump to "think of shizun", and you'll be treated to another one of those slow lingering scenes of Shen Qingqiu. Except they are becoming increasingly strange, obviously warped by the exhaustion and trauma of the situation, so that aspects are eerie or even disturbing. For example, sometimes Shen Qingqiu seems to be missing limbs, or eyes. Sometimes there's blood on his hands. Sometimes the food he's eating is rotted, or the bamboo house background looks like the Qing Jing Peak wood shed. That kind of thing. You don't mind the idea of harm coming to the man. He deserves it, really, for pushing Luo Binghe into the Abyss. But the few times you try and select options along those lines, the UI glitches again.

Also the "think of shizun" option only restores a quarter of the energy bar, whereas resting restores all of it. But if you try to go for too long without doing it, it will lock you into choosing it successively for a long time.

In addition to the energy bar, there's a calendar. It's not all that sophisticated or even consistent, and it's clearly meant to reflect the fact that Luo Binghe has troubles accurately judging the passage of time in the Abyss. However, the longer you spend in the Abyss, the more violent and unhinged things start to become, and the more the UI starts glitching to reveal disturbing messages, and the more often Luo Binghe "glaring" scenes happen. So you decide to do your best to get Binghe out of here as quickly as possible. This part of the game must be broken, but hopefully if you can make to the next segment, it will work properly again.

Eventually you get to the Xin Mo Mission, which is the last part of the Abyss section, and Luo Binghe escapes.

But the weirdness continues. Worsens, even. You still get missions to like, take over the demon realms and infiltrate Huan Hua Palace, all cool stuff, and you still meet girls who seem to unlock possibly romance paths. But most of the time everything is greyed out. There will be 5 dialogue options but maybe only 1 or 2 of them will be selectable. Parts of the menu are inaccessible. You don't have an energy bar anymore, you have a Xin Mo corruption bar, and it just keeps steadily rising. Sometimes you're presented the option of propositioning a character to "mitigate corruption", but if you try and click it the game glitches or the cursor freaks out and it fails. Sometimes the game crashes outright, and when you reload your last save, it starts with Luo Binghe glaring at you through the screen. You still get the "rest" and "think of shizun" options at times, but neither one helps the corruption bar.

Then. Jinlan City. You reunite with Shen Qingqiu. There seem to be a lot of options for acting vengefully towards him, but they're all greyed out, except for a few which let you chase him down or manhandle him a bit. The whole segment is frustrating, full of weird fanservice-y moments but also mired in how little Shen Qingqiu will say, how often he insists on evading or running away, and how Luo Binghe doesn't seem to have the right prompts to actually get him to explain himself. At times it seems like the "think of shizun" mechanic is bleeding over into the real interactions with the character, so that you can't tell what's really going on vs what are the manifestation of Luo Binghe's trauma or even hallucinations. The Xin Mo bar has maxed out. You have to catch Shen Qinqiu. Catch Shen Qingqiu. Catch Shen Qingqiu--

Then suddenly the bar is at 0, and you're watching Shen Qingqiu's lifeless body fall towards the ground, his energy expended in the effort to push back the corruption. Like, all of his energy.

You catch Shen Qingqiu. Or at least, you stop his corpse from hitting the dirt.

Now the game art is crisp and clean again. All the weird UI artifacts and blocked-off menus are either gone altogether or else working properly. The sound, which had been very gradually deteriorating with low-pitched ringing and muffled portions, is normal. You can hear characters gasping and distantly shouting, and birds chirping somewhere, the ragged cadence of Luo Binghe's breaths, while the camera focuses on Shen Qingqiu's body.

Huh, you think. That's a sort of dramatic resolution to that plot arc, and it raised more questions about Shen Qingqiu than it answered, really. But at least it's over with now? Does this mean Luo Binghe can finally start to recover, or advance other plots?

Then everything blacks out. You get booted to the main menu, or something that looks like it, except the only option you can select now is the New Game+ one.

When you click it, it seems like you've started the whole game over again. Except that there is a Xin Mo corruption bar, greyed out, already waiting for in a corner of the screen. And instead of starting out with a view of Qing Jing Peak, you start out with the young Luo Binghe looking directly towards you. Like he's staring through the screen. It's the basic starting point character, except he already has his demon mark on his forehead, and his expression is way more cold and calculating than anything the junior protagonist would have worn.

"Don't get in my way," he warns.

Then the game proceeds like a visual novel with extremely limited choices. The old selections and the menu for various romance routes don't even appear, the menus have all changed again, this time oriented entirely around hiding Luo Binghe's demonic cultivation (while building it) and managing daily choices and Shen Qingqiu's relationship status. A romance game with only one romance route, and it's the treacherous crusty old teacher? Wtf? But otherwise it seems almost normal, except for the special faint-lettered red options that sometimes appear in weird places on the screen, suggesting things like preventing the Skinner demon from catching you unawares, or saving Shen Qingqiu from Without a Cure poisoning, or keeping out of the Endless Abyss.

Those options seem like they should create different outcomes, and you click them whenever they show up, but they consistently fail. As if there's some other force in the game pushing things back onto the rails no matter what you do...

Anyway, eventually you get through the main plot again, and Shen Qingqiu dies once more. This time the game keeps going from that point, however, with quests to try and find ways to resurrect him. You're starting to wonder why you're still playing -- after all, you signed up for a harem game, not this tragic gay love story? You're not even gay! It's just that Luo Binghe is such a compelling character. You decide it's time to take a break, though, so you get up, do some stretches, go to the bathroom, etc.

It feels like someone's watching you.

You've definitely been playing that game for too long. Sometimes you think you catch sight of Luo Binghe's face out of the corner of your eye, in the bathroom mirror or on the black surface of your phone's screen, just before you turn it on. But when you look twice or turn your phone off again, nothing's there. You call your little sister, to apologize for dropping off the face of the earth for a bit, and you joke about getting too invested in this weird game that might be broken? She hasn't heard of it, but she sounds a little worried as she suggests maybe coming over and taking you out to lunch, or something.

You decline -- she's got a lot on her plate, and she mentioned already having plans earlier -- but then you promise to get some fresh air anyway. But when you go to head out, somehow you find yourself turning away at the last minute. You try again, and yet it's like you just keep getting distracted before you can open the door. After a few tries you give up, swallowing down your growing unease. You take off your shoes and coat. When it comes to it, you really do want to find out what happens to Luo Binghe next.

The game is running.

You don't remember turning it back on...?

The screen is focused on the familiar image of Shen Qingqiu's preserved corpse. You can see Luo Binghe's hand in the frame as well, transferring qi in yet another familiar sequence, the one that seems to run at the end of every in-game day. There's some text.

Is it you? the red letters ask, scrawling and flickering, as if someone is attempting to write directly onto the screen. Are you the one behind all this? Thwarting me at every turn?

Yes/No options appear in the game's usual font and position. You try to click "no", even though you're unsure and feel like you must have missed a scene somehow. But the interface warps and when you hit "no" it changes to Stay Silent.

I can't figure out. Are you here to help me, or get in my way?

Help/Harm. You click "help" but again it changes to "stay silent" afterwards.

What do you want from me?

This time there's no option to select at first. Then, as if being shoved onto the screen by some alternative function, a text box opens up. Like the kind that some games have for implementing cheats or selecting character names. This particular game has never shown such a function before, Luo Binghe's name was locked in and you don't even know if it has cheats. The cursor blinks, and somehow it feels as if you have only one chance, and if you don't take it now, it will be gone forever.

You type in "help" and barely manage to hit enter before the interface blinks out. No list of prompts or possible options appear.

Shizun? the red text scrawls, shakily.

Then the whole game crashes.

You wait, but it doesn't start up again. You try to run it again, but you can't find it on your system, somehow. Really weird. Even if it had crashed, it shouldn't have gotten deleted? But you still can't find it. You start to feel genuinely alarmed. Not only can you not find the game on your system, but when you try and search for it absolutely nothing comes up. You try and go to the online shop page for it, but you can't remember where you actually got it from in the first place, now that you're thinking about it.

What bullshit is this?

What, was the game actually some kind of virus? It couldn't have been. Also who would make a virus like that? You get up and pace, trying to make sense of it.

It's gotta be some kind of mistake. Maybe you've just missed too much sleep, you're not thinking right. You'll take a break and when you come back you'll realize that you were just looking in all the wrong places, somehow.

You head over to the fridge to grab something to eat.

You can't remember the last time you went shopping, but the food in there is probably still fine. Right?

Me once again scrolling through my very specific preferred fic filter:

Why does this one say edit/delete that’s concerning I shouldn’t be able to delete others work OH WAIT WHAT THATS MINE WHY DID THAT SHOW UP

becoming an adult cheat sheet!

learn to coupon

what to do when you can’t afford therapy

cleaning your bathroom

what to do when you can’t pay your bills

stress management

quick fix meals

find out if you’re paying too much for your cell phone bill

resume workshop

organize your closet

how to take care of yourself when you’re sick

what you should bring to a doctor’s appointment

what’s a mortgage?

how to pick a health insurance plan

hotlines list

your first gynecology appointment

what to do if the cops pull you over

things to have in your car in case of emergency

my moving out masterpost

how to make friends as an adult (video)

how to do taxes (video)

recommended reads for surviving adulthood (video)

change a flat tire (video)

how to do laundry (video)

opening a bank account (video)

laundry cheat sheet

recipes masterpost

tricks to help you sleep more

what the fuck should you make for dinner?

where should you go for drinks?

alcohol: know your limits

easy makeup tips

find seat maps for your flight

self-defense tips

prevent hangovers

workout masterpost

how to write a check

career builder

browse careers

birth control information

financial management software & app (free)

my mental health masterpost

my college applications masterpost

how to jumpstart a car

sex ed masterpost