My Life is like a Videogame

[clip from: TMA ep 111 Family business]

Gerry laughs, pleased, and asks, "You sure you don’t know her?" He sighs, sobers, and says, "Yeah. But deep down what she wanted wasn’t all that different from the ivory tower idiots she hated. Y’know, I think, secretly, she dreamed of starting a little mystic dynasty of her own." He grimaces. "With me."

Jon says a little eagerly, "Like the, the Lukases? Or the Fairchilds?" Gerry corrects, "Well, Fairchild’s just a name, they’re not really family." Then he does a finger gun and says, "The Lukases, though, yeah."

He turns away, pensive and frowning, and says, "Thing is, it’s harder than it looks. What’s out there… doesn’t care about blood." Jon, grinning a little, says, "Well, I-I mean, except for the vampires…" Gerry scowls, "Yeah, obviously except for the vampires." Jon looks abashed, and Gerry looks down sorrowfully to say, "But they care about your choices, your fears, not your parents." End VD]

[ID: A still of the scene where Gerry scowls and says "Yeah, obviously except for the vampires" to an embarrassed Jon. End ID]

I was expecting a like a Chart or two, maybe some written instructions. not Seventy Seven full color pages for One type of rose.

she has also made a website since the first post (link) the patterns are cheaper there and the payment is handled through PayPal (and I'm guessing she gets a Way bigger cut of the money than with her Etsy so maybe check out the site instead) of the Etsy listed above.

also quick faq below the cut bc idk, supporting small businesses ran by WOC is important and this lady is rad. I just genuinely love her products and want more people to know about them.

I'm just gonna slide this on in here for anyone that is interested in preserving old games. They take it very seriously too, they want an archive of every single game. Like, they have lists of every game ever released for a system, and once that system gets old enough, they add it to their archive and start collecting. Their latest addition was the Xbox 360, they opened that vault up in September 2022, and proudly announced they'd finished their collection of games for it back in April.

Also, while their game archives are almost entirely complete, they've got another project of archiving the manuals that came with those games, and that is... considerably less well filled out. Their collection of Xbox 360 manuals is especially rough, they've only gotten manuals for three games. So if you've got some Xbox 360 games kicking around, and the manual's still with them, please consider scanning them and submitting them to the site!

The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.

In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.

"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.

"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.

"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.

"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.

Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.

Just a wee lil rag

Basically, the entire premise of this feud is flawed. Anish Kapoor did not buy a color he bought a product. It was the company that made that products choice to sell it to him.

Nothing was stopping other people from making their own black paint. To me Stewart Semples reaction was an obvious bid for attention, which while understandable when success is measured in popularity, isn’t the hero move this post portrays it as. Especially in light of Semple continuing to profit and gain recognition off of this feud. His continued put downs of another artist in order to raise himself up are distasteful.

The hatred of Kapoor is also way overblown. I admit to disliking him somewhat by default based on the fact that he’s rich but I don’t think the fact that he wants his art to be called the called the name he gave it (cloudgate vs the bean) is unreasonable just silly. And while its true he did copyright its image the only instance I see of him going after anyone regarding it is when he sued the NRA (good for him) and won. Im aware he doesn’t really need me defending him and that is not my intent, I just cringe to see misinformation being spread for some sort of weird petty schadenfreude. Theres a lot of accusations of him being elitist or hating poor people in this post and maybe thats true (I dont know him, and to be honest I never heard of him before this post made him public enemy number 1) but I haven’t seen it come up elsewhere just from tumblr.

In regards to Semple…he’s not the “power to the people” hero tumblr seems to think he is and aparently doesn’t even pay his staff properly Source - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/artist-stuart-semple-in-row-with-assistants-who-say-they-weren-t-paid-9132088.html im not equipped to do a deep dive on him right now but I would advise against putting him on a pedestal like I see some of you doing.

There are not many of us in the world and interesting works of modern public art around the world, especially cloud gate but also his other mirror installations, that are freely available to the public. Should be something that remind us of the survival and success of members of our community, but instead have become a focal point of antisemitic rhetoric spread across wonder bread levels of colonial racism, that people are failing to critically analyse because they’re caught up in the communal joke.

He is not the only wealthy pompous artist, but he is likely the only one who’s name you know, alongside another wealthy pompous artist Stuart Semple who has managed to mythologise his character, and build his brand through the use of age old antisemitic and anti-indian rhetoric.

The Jew is rich and he is greedy, the Indian is a thief.

People are typically more complicated than simply good or bad, and I want people to recognise that he is disingenuously manipulating the facts, and his behaviour does not make him a hero of any kind. A feud requires tit for tat, when it’s one sided we call it obsession or harassment.

People in the comments who know very little about Anish Kapoor referring to him as a “conservative” and that people like Semple are an example of how to deal with “people like them” is extremely troubling. Kapoor is a lifelong campaigner for public education, he is a fierce critic of conservative politics both in Britain and in India. He is wealthy, but his wealth is not the product of failure to pay employees their contract wages unlike Semple.

I also want to draw attention to the fact that Kapoor’s installations are regularly the target of antisemitic graffiti.

The anti-kapoor mania you are seeing and (as a community) creating on Tumblr does nothing but add fuel.