Magica Riot: Full Bloom is my second queer Portland magical girl novel and a big emotional gay adventure. And it begins arriving this weekend in print & ebook formats.
I'm building a trans-centric queer magical girl universe here, and I'd love for you to read it.
I am begging you. Please learn about stress/discomfort tolerance. Practice raising it. You need this to survive. If someone online can ruin your day with a throwaway comment, you desperately need to understand discomfort tolerance and consciously, systematically build that shit.
Also! Stress tolerance is such an important skill that having a learning disability in that area is a major symptom of a whole lot of other disabilities/mental illnesses! Struggling with it is a huge part of life! It sucks!
Am I saying everyone with misophonia needs to listen to chewing noises all day? No. But you need to find ways to tolerate it enough that you don't treat others like shit if they make a mouth noise near you.
No, you don't have to read the fic with your trigger tags. But you do need to be able to handle scrolling past the tags without being upset.
It is hard! But not having it also makes you so so so easy to manipulate. That grandma is racist AF because her mom raised her to be uncomfortable around black people and she never fought that discomfort. Trans people make so many cis people uncomfortable and that discomfort turns into bigotry real fast.
Letting your discomfort dictate your actions and beliefs about things is a great way to become a terrible person. Learn. Discomfort. Tolerance.
negative self talk IS unproductive and painful for you and often those around you. but like every other post that talks about this is like “yeah it makes you an exhausting and burdensome person to be around and if you don’t stop now everyone in your life will abandon you. Also I personally hate you for it”. and it’s like hey hi hello. basically the theme of all my negative self talk is that I’m an exhausting and burdensome person to be around and that everyone in my life will soon abandon and hate me. so like haha what’re we doing here? are you going to provide any actionable advice for how to get out of this habit, or just tell me that I’m Doing Bad And Wrong And Must Suffer For It?
Anyway. If you struggle with negative self-talk I feel for you. It’s hellish, and it’s not something that can just be bludgeoned out of someone by telling them it sucks. We know! I’m not out of the weeds just yet by a long shot, but here’s some of the stuff that’s been helpful for me:
This is far from a comprehensive list but this post is getting long—feel free to add on if you have any tactics that have worked especially well for you!
Basically, it boils down to this:
What all this adds up to is that even leaving the moral dimension of the act aside, from a purely pragmatic perspective, reblogging that callout post accusing a random trans woman you've never heard of of being a dogfucker or what-have-you is an action which, in a worst-case scenario, will contribute to ruining an innocent person's life, and in a best-case scenario, is likely to accomplish nothing whatsoever.
Folks often justify reblogging callout posts without performing due diligence under the rubric of "better safe than sorry", but any realistic assessment of the likely outcomes will tell you that the true "better safe than sorry" course of action is to keep your damn mouth shut!
"But I thought we were supposed to always believe allegations of sexual misconduct" well, the thing is, "false allegations of sexual misconduct are rare" and "false allegations of sexual misconduct disproportionately target specific visible minorities" are both true statements. There's no algorithm for being a good person – you really do have to think this shit through every single time it comes up.
so a very long time ago, my dad worked with an arson investigator
this guy was often one of the first people on the scene following a suspected arson, once emergency services had done what they needed to do. at times, there were also civilians on the periphery. often, they were freaking out, and understandably so; their home or workplace had just, quite literally, gone up in smoke
this investigator wouldn’t try to calm them down. he wouldn’t comfort them or be a shoulder to cry on.
instead, he’d walk up to the person most visibly losing their shit, hand them a fire extinguisher, and say “hey, can you keep an eye out for any other fires, and if you see one, can you put it out with this?”
of course, there was no actual risk of another fire. he wouldn’t be on the scene investigating if there was even a chance that the fire wasn’t completely put out. but the bystander didn’t need to know that
because that person, without fail, would immediately pull it together, take the fire extinguisher, and stand guard. they were, at least temporarily, calm enough for this investigator to do this job
my dad has told me the parable of the fire extinguisher a hundred times, and i think about it a lot. i think about what it says about people and crises. i think about what it says about the grounding power of having a purpose. and i think about the importance of letting someone help me through something, even if that help is just going to be another casserole to throw into the freezer, because useless or not, that fire extinguisher might be the only thing holding them together
there are many things tumblr as a whole has to learn but one of them is “someone can reblog a post without them endorsing every action the op has ever taken, we are not beholden to do background checks on the producers of every shitpost on the internet”
a mutual made this point and a prominent youtuber tried to dox her
Did I just employ the "Treat Them Like You are A Kindergarten Teacher Again" method with my insurance company today? I surely did. Did it work? Probably better than intended because I made an actual doctor feel contrite.
So, my insurance has been trying to not cover my SNRI because it is new on the market and no generic available yet, so pricey.
I apply for a refill and the request gets locked for review. Again. For the 3rd time.
This time I call and immediately ask to speak to the actual doctor making these clinical decisions. Very politely. Must be a slow day because they allow it.
ME: [Teacher voice] I'm calling in regards to the SNRI you have placed a lock on. Why was this decision made?
DOC: Well, there are dozens of other medications on the market in that tier, and far cheaper for you and [insurer]. We have sent a request to your doctor to consider alternatives.
ME: I am aware of that. So, can you do me a HUGE favor and look up my prescription history really quickly and tell me how many SSRIs and SNRIs were only filled once in 2022 for me, showing they were poorly tolerated?
DOC: It looks like eight.
ME: Great job! Now, can you please look at my genetic test for psychiatric drug tolerance and tell me how many medications are listed in the safe category?
DOC: Two.
ME: Awesome! Now, can you tell me what type that other drug is that I'm not taking?
DOC: Yeah, totally, it's an MAOI.
ME: That's correct, you're really knowledgeable! Should I be taking something as dangerous as an MAOI with my other medications, or even just in general?
DOC: It's contraindicated for sure.
ME: It is! So true! So, last question since you've been incredibly smart and helpful. Is it less expensive for [insurer] to pay out for the medication knowing they already get a huge manufacturer discount anyway, or is it more expensive for them to pay for me to need potentially long-term inpatient psychiatric care?
DOC: I'll clear the code, ma'am and flag it as medically necessary. I'm sorry about this.
ME: I appreciate you SO MUCH. You have a great day now.
WALGREENS PHARMACY TECH WITH 5 NOSE RINGS AND PURPLE HAIR STARING AT ME: ........... OKAY! It'll be ready in five minutes. You wanna come work here?
Kill them with kindness
BUT KILL THEM
You're mommy's little noob aren't you? You love being level one. You love using starting equipment for mommy don't you? It's okay. You don't need any XP, just let mommy handle any combat encounters for you. You'll be mommy's special little noob forever~
I know at least one of you is actually going to be turned on by this but I don't care anymore. Whatever. Fucking whatever. Jerk off to noob porn I guess. Sure. Whatever
This tweet gave me the stupidest idea, so here’s Krusie being dumb and stupid
At over 700 feet long and with a dead weight tonnage of 26,000, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest freighter of the Great Lakes in the 1960’s and 70’s. However the Edmund Fitzgerald would go down in history as a doomed ship, its fate foreshadowed when it took three blows to break a champagne bottle on her bow at her christening. From 1958 to 1975 the Edmund Fitzgerald hauled talconite ore from mines in Duluth, Minnesota to iron and steel mills in Detroit, Toledo, Buffalo, and other Great Lakes ports.
On November 9th, 1975, the Edmund Fitzgerald set off on a run from Superior, Wisconsin to a steel mill in Detroit. The next day the Edmund Fitzgerald was caught in one of the worst storms in Great Lakes history, with waves over 35 feet high and hurricane force winds. At 3:30 PM the Fitzgerald reported that it had sustained topside damage and was heading for safe port in Whitefish Bay, Canada. 40 minutes later the Fitzgerald requested radar assistance from a nearby ship, the Anderson, as she had lost radar capability. By 6:00 PM the Fitzgerald reported,“"I have a bad list, lost both radars. And am taking heavy seas over the deck. One of the worst seas I’ve ever been in.“ The Anderson continued to guide the Fitzgerald into Whitefish Bay, until it was itself struck by a large wave and force to seek safe harbor. At 7:00 PM the Fitzgerald made sent its last radio signal reporting, "we are holding our own.” By 7:30 the Fitzgerald had disappeared from radar screens and no longer responded to radio calls.
The Edmund Fitzgerald took all 29 crew with her, leaving nothing behind but an oil slick and some assorted pieces of wreckage. Four days later the wreck was located 530 ft below Lake Superior. She was only 15 Nautical Miles from Whitefish Bay and safety. Over the coming decades the wreck has been studied and surveyed, with numerous theories offered as to the reason for its sinking. The most prominent feature of the wreck is the fact that it had been ripped in half, either before of after its sinking. It is often suggested that the Fitzgerald was overloaded, causing large waves to create stress fractures on the Fitzgerald’s hull. Numerous other factors are to blame for the Fitzgerald’s sinking. Most recently, the prominent theory is that a series of 3 rogue waves slammed into the stern of the Fitz driving her bow into the bottom of Lake Superior at a depth of 500 feet.
After the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald the Mariners Church in Detroit started the tradition of wringing its bells 29 times, in honor of the 29 dead crewmen. After Gordon Lightfoot, who memorialized the tragic loss of life and the ship with the sea-shanty masterpiece "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" passed in 2023, the bell was rang 30 times to honor his devotion to the crew and their families.
wake up, put on ambient music, start autopiloting to work. it’s crucial that you’re not a person, you’re a conduit that transforms the morning light into walking, if you try to think it’s all over
get to work, have a coffee. you can now be a person but take your personhood lightly. browse tumblr, check emails but do not open any that might bother or interest you. gently think about your past or future. do not dare consider the problem at hand
have a second cup of coffee, switch to house music. you may now brush against the problem in your mind but do not look at a paper or a code editor or a graph. treat the problem like a deer that might startle if you step on a branc
prepare a cold glass of water but don’t have any yet. switch to techno. attack the problem viciously. if you’ve prepared correctly you should only need to do the first minute of work as a human before you’re seized by the divine. this state is called “doing engineering”. it is a potent but fragile state that will last until someone annoys you or you have to pee
having friends is important because otherwise you’ll stay convinced your parents are normal
This might be unpopular but I’m not going to use simpler vocabulary in my writing if it’s out of character for the narrator. If my POV character is a botanist, he’s going to call a plant by its name. If you don’t know what it is you can either Google it or move on just knowing it’s a plant of some sort.
I don’t like this trend of readers being angry that not everything is 100% understandable for them. I want my characters to be believable as people and sometimes people use words people outside of their field will not understand. That’s not a bad thing.
You don’t have to understand every word to get the gist of what’s happening. I’m not going to slow down an action scene to describe every weapon because someone might not know them by name. They can just assume it’s a weapon because that makes sense in the context of the scene.
I just had a debate with myself over using the word mezzanine, wondering if I should describe it instead. Ultimately I decided the character would call it a mezzanine, and therefore readers could look up a new word if they didn't know.
It's how I learned words like myriad as a seven year old reading Lord of the Rings for the first time, why would I steal that experiance from someone else by simplifying language?
I don't know about y'all, but books are how i know my vocabulary in the first place
sometimes i remember that all of star trek tos was filmed and released before the moon landing and get emotional
The last first run episode of Star Trek: The Original Series on TV (NBC) was "Turnabout Intruder," which aired on Tuesday, June 3, 1969.
The first astronauts on the moon (Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin), occurred on July 20, 1969.
I remember our family going outside, with binoculars, to look up at the moon. Of course we couldn't see the astronauts, but I thought of them as I looked at the moon .
