Cruelty Is So Easy. Youre Not Special For Choosing It

Something that literally changed my life was working with a friend on a coding thing. He was helping me create an auto rig script and was trying to explain something to me but his words were just turning into static in my brain. I was tired and confused and there was so many new concepts happening.

I could feel myself working toward a crying meltdown and was getting preemptively ashamed of what was about to happen when he said, “Hey, are you someone who benefits from breaks?”

It broke me.

Did I benefit from breaks? I didn’t know. I’d never taken them.

When a problem frustrated or upset me I just gritted my teeth and plowed through the emotional distress because eventually if you batter and flail at something long enough you figure it out. So what if you get bruised on the way.

I viscerally remembered in that moment being forced to sit at the table late into the night with my dad screaming at me, trying to understand math. I remembered taking that with me into adulthood and having breakdowns every week trying to understand coding. I could have taken a break? Would it help? I didn’t know! I’d never taken one!

“Yes,” I told him. We paused our call. I ate lunch. I focused on other stuff for half an hour. I came back in a significantly better state of mind, and the thing he’d been trying to explain had been gently cooking in the back of my head and seemed easier to understand.

Now when I find myself gritting my teeth at problems I can hear his gentle voice asking if I benefit from breaks. Yes, dear god, yes why did I never get taught breaks? Why was the only way I knew to keep suffering until something worked?

I was relating to this same friend recently my roadtrip to the redwoods with my wife. “We stopped every hour or so to get out and stretch our legs and switch drivers. It was really nice. When I was a kid we’d just drive twelve hours straight and not stop for anything, just gas. We’d eat in the car and power through.”

He gave a wry smile, immediately connecting the mindset of my parents on a road trip to what they’d instilled in me about brute forcing through discomfort. “Do you benefit from breaks?” he echoed, drawing my attention to it, making me smile with the same sad acknowledgement.

Take breaks. You’re allowed. You don’t have to slam into problems over and over and over, let yourself rest. It will get easier. Take. Breaks.

This came across my youtube and I think it fits Secily, end of thought process.

My nook's cramps have worsened since the murder of my matesprit. Corporate is doing nothing, and my boss says that my detective skills, however brilliant, have no place near this investigation. I have always been a woman who puts her job before her personal life, but what about personal death? My obsession with my job nearly cost me my kismesissitude, and now my obsession with my matesprit's death may cost me my job. I failed my matesprit in life, I will do her justice in death. Who am I? I'm Secily Iopara, and this is my story...

Man accidentally reinvents Bionicle.

I think it needs to become common knowledge that "inability to read social cues" can show up as overcompensating.

You don't know how much misbehaviour is allowed, so you become the perfect child who never tests rules.

You don't know if someone is irritated with you, so you'll be extra generous and self-effacing.

You don't know how much is expected of you at work so you'll kill yourself in a minimum-wage job and not notice that nobody else is working like this.

"Hardworking and quiet" should be as much of an autism red flag as "ignores rules and doesn't know when to stop talking". Or why don't we just start using words to communicate so i can stop tracking everybody's eyebrow twitches, that would be great.

THIS 👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻

butch women are very, very attractive. without examples of straight guys acknowledging this truth, boy me always felt like i was creeping on lesbians for feeling this way. gender going not-boy helps, but only somewhat. i don't know where i'm going with this but i guess my point is big agree. encourage butch appreciation, whatever form it takes.

i do think there should be more stories and shows and stuff about guys falling in love with butch women actually, i think that’d be a good thing. and not ‘this is as butch as twitter can handle’, i mean butch as can fucking be without apology, and making those boys weak in the knees about it. i think it’s great actually to have f/m romances that exist to break gender norms, too. i think it sucks that the only mainstream het romances that exist are either about women who are already feminine or with women who are just a little too scarily masculine and have to be fixed into being girlier. that’s shit.

decided to go through with deleting it just now

Bionicle sketches

(Only have two more left to draw)

Ey so what was your thesis about Bionicle as a meta-narrative/story-about-stories? I´m a huge fan of meta-ficiton/meta-narratives and never thought of the series that way so your take regarding it got me really interested.

So, there’s a bunch of facets to this.

Basically, Bionicle characters know they are in a story. This doesn’t mean that they know they’re fictional characters or that there’s an audience of humans watching, but their universe designates people as heroes, villains, and bystanders/victims. The universe runs on story logic, almost to the same extent as Discworld, though with superhero comics and hero mythologies rather than high fantasy and fairy tales. The “genre savvy” characters are of a more subtle type as well. The heroes go into a situation with an expectation of how it will end, because they have some idea what their destiny is, and heroes are always expected to win, right? But they are still often surprised by the outcome, because the story they were told is only a fraction of a more complex reality.

Let’s start with the first obvious storyteller: Vakama

The backstory, as first told to us by Vakama invokes mythic tropes such as creation stories, Cain and Abel style brotherly betrayals, and heroes who arrive from a distant land. Despite the fact that the characters are clearly some sort of robots or cyborgs, we’re immediately told that their setting runs on the logic of magic and myth. So Vakama and the other Turaga, as the storytellers, give the heroes and the audience an idea of how this world works and how things will turn out. This mythic story also represents the power of stories to persist and carry meaning through time, shaping thought and belief, even after the original facts have been long forgotten.

But then Vakama pulls out the rug from under us with the reveal of Metru Nui. Suddenly the story shifts from fantasy to scifi, from humble villages in harmony with their environment to a futuristic dystopia. This time the heroes are not beloved figures of myth, but vigilantes pitted against a corrupt police state. Again, Vakama is telling the story though, and he holds control over how his audience perceives the events and characters. And yet again, he is leaving something out- the Visorak and Hordika. Initially, he intended to keep that secret. It didn’t fit the story he was trying to tell. He had a perfect character arc laid out for himself in Legends of Metru Nui in his journey from a shy, anxious mask maker into a confident hero and leader. That was all anyone needed to know, right?

The Hordika represent yet another genre shift, this time into noir/horror. The heroes do not act heroically. They do not look heroic. Their character development is often negative. They are implied to be an aberration at even the cosmic level, since the Great Temple, and implicitly Mata Nui himself, rejects them. They find out that their selection as Toa came about thanks to Makuta himself. The story has gone horribly wrong, and the heroes know it. But nevertheless, the Toa resolve their differences, teamwork saves the day yet again, the prophecy is fulfilled For That Is The Way Of The Bionicle.

Vakama has very little to do in the legends arc. Because he’s been established by now as a less than reliable expositor, it is the always truthful Nokama who drops the reveal instead: Mata Nui is dying.

Vakama’s stepping down from his storytelling role allows for the gradual reveal of another storyteller: Makuta Teridax.

Chronologically, Makuta’s first real foray into weaving the narrative around others happened in Time Trap. He constructs his own elaborate narrative around Vakama in order to manipulate his mind and behaviour. But Vakama fails to play his part as the protagonist correctly, causing Teridax’s constructed narrative to fall apart.

By the time we become aware of his role in the ignition arc, Teridax has improved his technique as a puppet master/ storyteller considerably. Almost every conflict the heroes face has been orchestrated by him, pitting minor villain groups against the heroes to give them the victories that their story requires. Teridax seems aware that heroes have to ‘win’ because Destiny demands it, so he lets them, but it’s all in service of his own ultimate victory. Instead of the ‘cross-wired’ and unpredictable Vakama, Teridax targets the dutiful but socially isolated and secretive Matoro, who he basically grooms to be the perfect little sacrifice. Matoro performs his role perfectly, and gives the heroes an apparent bittersweet victory while allowing Teridax to put the final stages of his plan in motion.

I literally had my pussy sewn shut I deserve k cup tits as compensation