The Kierki

One of my fav slip slop scenes.

My favorite thing about the fic is how quickly it can transition between angst to comedy, but like in a way that seems natural and doesn’t downplay the serious bit. Look at these gay people, they’re funny and traumatized

me and my qpr partner are both aro, together for 2 years. they're on the spectrum and im bold stripe. some time ago they suggested to live together when they get promotion and they already know when this will happen, but it's not going to be soon. I agreed without taking a minute to think. but now I'm facing horrors beyond human comprehension thinking about it because I don't want to live together at all. being in a relationship in general is a little too much for me, but it's okay, don't focus on it, we're great together. It doesn't help matters that I live with my grandma who's really old and I want to spend as much time with her as possible. so, I don't want to live together because 1) "I'm too aro for this" roughly speaking 2) I want to spend time with my family while I can. occasionally my partner talks about living together, just a little bit, a tiny joke or something about what kind of dishes will we buy. and I'm lost, when and how should I say that I don't want to live together and not just now? I know I should just talk to them, it solves all the problems, but they have bpd and it will hurt their feelings almost certainly. can you/community help me find the nicest way to explain it without being too rude? I feel like my identity matters as long as it fits the general relationship pipeline dating->moving together->start a family. dating articles are evil place aggressively telling you that if you don't want to live together you will break up and you're a selfish person.

I'm gonna be honest: I can't engage with this one. my remaining grandmother has terminal cancer and my ex with bpd had a problem of threatening suicide or self harm when we had differences in relationship expectations. both are just... a little too up front in my trauma-active brain right now.

I’m on chapter 11 but I’m just here to haunt u on 2 diff platforms

baby carrots (good dipped in ranch)

Celery sticks (add some peanut butter or cream cheese for extra flavor and protein)

Broccoli (good with ranch, cheese, or salt/pepper/butter)

Canned peas (you can microwave in a microwave-safe bowl. Good with salt/pepper/butter)

Bell peppers (cut into strips, good with cream cheese)

Canned green beans (can be microwaved in microwave-safe bowl. Good with salt/pepper/butter)

Hummus (good with crackers or tortilla chips)

Salsa (good with tortilla chips)

Guacamole (good with tortilla chips)

Need it in something?

Can't see it:

Hummus

salsa

Guacamole

Can see but disguised flavor (can usually be found store bought or done at home and use different veggies):

Dressed up ramen - just toss in some random veggies in ramen of your choice. Pretty much everything I've tried goes fine with it.

Chicken pot pie

Vegetable soup (with so many together it's hard to taste any specific one!)

Chicken noodle soup

Sweet and sour pork (haven't tried it but chicken should be fine in place of pork)

Texture problems:

Need it soft:

Hummus

Salsa

Guacamole

Cooked carrots

Avocados

Beans (personally I prefer black beans and canned baked beans)

Peas (make sure to cook well, great value brand has the softest peas I've tried)

Cooked broccoli (note: it does smell bad while cooking)

Cooked asparagus (note: also smells bad while cooking)

Cooked zucchini and squash (good together but can be eaten separate)

You can also puree most vegetables and eat with a spoon or use them as a dip

Needs to be crunchy:

Raw carrots

Raw celery

Raw bell peppers

Salad (remember you can put whatever you want in it! Even if that means no lettuce)

Most veggies are okay raw, and are usually very crunchy

Veggies google says stay crunchy after lightly cooking:

Snap peas

Brussel sprouts

Cabbage

Water chestnut

Bamboo shoots

Broad texture tips:

You can change textures by eating raw, cooking, chopping, pureeing, etc

You can separate different textures to use in different ways (ie using broccoli tops in a soup and eating the bottoms raw)

I hope y'all are familiar with these in this day and age, especially my artists out there, because they're incredibly common.

About half an hour ago I posted a drawing and tagged it #artists on tumblr, and very quickly received this comment.

My scam radar went off immediately, due to the generic blog name and lack of any emotion in the comment, but I decided it might be an entertaining venture so I dmed them. They asked for a drawing "of these", and sent me a random selfie. I got the details and told them it would be $15, and they promptly offered me $300. At this point I know it's a scam, but I play along for funsies and give them my paypal. Shortly, they send me this image for "confirmation" (I blocked out my email)

And they began to insist that I checked my email. I looked in my spam folder and found the following email.

This is fake. This is not a thing. And the "you're to refund the $200.00 back" is the scam. They send vaguely official-looking emails at you to "prove" that they sent you the money, then have you send them $200 (or however much the scam is for). Then, surprise surprise, you're out $200.

I continued to play along for a bit, and in the second email "Paypal" told me that I had to refund the $200 before they could "credit the $300 to my account", along with these lovely threats.

- victim posts an item for sale on craigslist or w/e

- scammer contacts asking if a check is ok

- scammer then asks if they can write a check for more than the agreed-upon price and for the seller to give them the overage back as cash, often with some excuse about it being an out-of-state bank, they don't have a card and need some cash for something else, or whatever.

- scammer gives check, gets cash and item, and bounces

- guess what the check does, too

So you build your protagonist. She has no personality traits beyond being decently strong-willed, so that her quirks and interesting traits absolutely can’t get in the way of the audience’s projection onto her. She is dainty, birdlike, beautiful despite her protestations that she is ugly–yet she can still hold her own against significantly taller and stronger combatants. She is the perfect mask for the bashful, insecure tweens you are marketing to to wear while they read.

You think, as you draft your novel, that you need to add something that appeals to the basest nature of teenagers, something this government does that will be perversely appealing to them. The Hunger Games’ titular games were the main draw of the books, despite the hatred its characters hold for the event. So the government forces everyone into Harry Potter houses. 

So the government makes everyone choose their faction, their single personality trait. Teenagers and tweens are basic–they likely identify by one distinct personality trait or career aspiration, and they’ll thus be enchanted by this system. For years, Tumblr and Twitter bios will include Erudite or Dauntless alongside Aquarius and Ravenclaw and INTJ. Congratulations, you just made having more than one personality trait anathema to your worldbuilding. 

Your readers and thus your protagonist are naturally drawn to the faction that you have made RIDICULOUSLY cooler and better than the others: Dauntless. The faction where they play dangerous games of Capture the Flag and don’t work and act remarkably like teenagers with a budget. You add an attractive, tall man to help and hinder the protagonist. He is brooding and handsome; he doesn’t need to be anything else. 

The villains appear soon afterward. They are your tried and true dystopian government: polished, sleek, intelligent, headed by a woman for some reason. They fight the protagonists, they carry out their evil, Machiavellian, stupid plan. You finish the novel with duct tape and fanservice, action sequences and skin and just enough glue and spit to seal the terrible, hollow world you have made shut just long enough to put it on the shelf. 

And you have just destroyed YA dystopian literature. Because you have boiled it down to its bare essentials. A sleek, futuristic government borrowing its aesthetic from modern minimalism and wealth forces the population to participate in a perversely cool-to-read-about system like the Hunger Games or the factions, and one brave, slender, pretty, hollow main character is the only one brave–no, special enough to stand against it. 

but divergent was clumsy make-believe the whole way through. it aped the forms and functions of dystopian lit but the writer didn’t actually have any real, passionate, sincere anger to put on the page. she didn’t know what it was talking about, so she didn’t have anything worth listening to.

You contrast that with how the marketing for the Hunger Games films directly contradicts the messaging of the text, and how Divergent seems ready-made for the big screen, and it becomes really apparent why the genre folded in on itself. Capitalism tried to recuperate dystopian fiction criticizing capitalism, and in doing so, butchered the genre.

do not crash out

your feelings are NOT valid

do not send that text

don't kill yourself. lock in