#ranty goodness

So here’s something that I really wish people would learn on a broad scale: YOUR OPINION DOESN’T MATTER.

I’m not saying that your personal opinion on anything is wrong (though that can happen), just that in the real world of getting-things-done, it usually doesn’t matter unless the opinion itself isn’t actionable without harm. And this goes for all opinions: yours, mine, your aunt Julie’s. Not one person’s opinion matters.

The only thing that matters are the practical results of the action of enforcing your opinion.

If your opinion is that abortion is wrong and your action to enforce your opinion is to make abortion illegal, then the practical result of that is not going to be fewer abortions, it will be more deaths as desperate people resort to dangerous illegal methods that by definition are not regulated or quality controlled. If you take that same opinion and instead your actions are to enforce comprehensive scientifically accurate sex education, affordable and widely available contraceptives for all genders, and affordable and widely available reproductive healthcare for all genders then the practical result will be fewer abortions. Because people will have an understanding of how getting pregnant happens and have the means to prevent that if it’s not something they want, thus substantially decreasing the actual cause of abortions: unplanned/unwanted pregnancies.

Notice how in both cases, the opinion is the same, the only difference is the action of enforcement.

Another case example. The opinion this time is that addiction to hard drugs is bad for people. Now you could enforce that by making hard drugs illegal and institute severe punishments for possession and use. However since this does nothing to address the cause of addiction, only punishes people after addiction has already occurred, it’s not going solve the problem of people getting addicted to hard drugs so there will be no appreciable reduction in addiction occurring. You could also enforce this opinion by legalizing all drugs, including the hard stuff. This introduces regulation, quality control, and erases the danger of arrest for the “crime” of seeking treatment for addiction. You could add affordable recovery clinics that offer safe, clean drugs as well as counseling and assistance programs for those who need them. That would get people out of the life situations that causes them to turn to drugs as a means of coping, thus reducing the occurrence of addiction.

Again, the only difference is the action of enforcement.

So it really doesn’t matter what your opinion on something is, if the practical results of your method of enforcement exacerbate rather than alleviate the situation then your actions are incorrect and you should correct them. And if you find that there’s no way to enforce your opinion without harming people then maybe consider that that opinion is, in and of itself, damaging and not worth holding on to.

It’s especially not cool when you’re telling someone not to critique where “delicate” creators might see it because you’re actually telling them not to critique at all (really, there’s no place where fandom content is posted and discussed that doesn’t have any chance of being found by the artists). And this is, to be blunt, objectively terrible and harmful to content creators.

There’s a long-ass explanation of why below the cut but the tl;dr version is this: if you take critique away from creators, you stunt their growth in their chosen medium because gaining an outside perspective is the only way to see certain flaws and therefore correct them and improve. Sugar-coated criticism isn’t helpful because it’s patronizing (not to say you should be an asshole about it but don’t pussyfoot around the point either) and can be easily misunderstood or justified by a delicate ego and therefore be ignored, again hobbling any progress. Similarly, “critique” that is just rudely stating an opinion without pointing out specific issues the creator could take action to correct isn’t critique, that’s just bitching and it’s rude, don’t do it (and creators, don’t listen to it).

People with chronic pain conditions get told they shouldn’t be taking pain medications because they might get addicted.

People with lifelong mental health issues get warned that the medications they’re taking could be addictive.

But no one’s worried about diabetics getting addicted to their insulin. No one’s worried about people with poor eyesight getting addicted to their glasses. No one’s worried about people who needed organ transplants getting addicted to their anti-rejection medications.

The problem isn’t the medications. The problem is stigma; that society has decided that some lifelong “addictions” are ok, and some aren’t.

I’m constantly told that I should just change my diet or get more exercise to treat my depression instead of taking medication but literally no one ever makes similar suggestions for getting rid of my glasses. And yet both are doing the exact same thing: using an artificial, man-made, scientifically backed corrective technology to allow me to function in day-to-day life.

I’m not addicted to my antidepressants any more than I’m addicted to my glasses. The only difference is that my glasses aren’t stigmatized and my medications are.

“Oh but you’ll need stronger medication eventually! It’ll stop working!” And? I’ve had to increase the prescription on my glasses five times in as many years. No one seems worried about it whenever I mention it, in fact I get actively encouraged to get a higher prescription sooner when it comes to my glasses. All I have to do is mention the smallest issue with my vision and people immediately suggest “maybe you need stronger glasses.” But if I mention my depression is kicking my ass more than usual, oh no, suddenly it’s because I’m not getting enough sunshine and chocolate because prescriptions are the devil’s work.

“Pfftt, that’s completely different. You can get laser surgery for eyesight.” Yup and the exact second they come up with something like that to fix depression for 10+ years per treatment, you bet your ass I’m going to be the first fucker in line for it. The absence of a current (legit) “miracle” cure is no reason to not take advantage of what methods are available (or worse, fall back on medieval methods that have been proven not to be effective). No one’s saying we should stop going to see movies because holodecks don’t exist yet.

“No see glasses fix a physical problem, but since depression is mental that means it’s imaginary.” No. Depression is a physical problem (mental health issues are generally problems with physical parts of the brain not working correctly). There are physical parts of my brain that don’t work properly that cause the depression. The medication I take forces those parts of my brain to work the way they should, just like my glasses force my eyes to focus images at a different focal point so I can see clearly.

They are literally the Exact. Same. Thing. There is no difference between needing glasses or insulin or antidepressants or a wheelchair or an artificial limb or a service dog. A disability is a disability is a disability. Major, minor, doesn’t matter. We ALL use corrective tools and medications to get by and ALL of them are ok. NONE of them should carry any stigma whatsoever, no matter how long we need them for.

The tools are not the problem. The stigma is the problem.

The Ark’s “one child only” rule doesn’t work. Keeping the population at a stable level so you don’t have more people than resources and can continue on as a species is definitely important in an enclosed environment... and you definitely don’t do that by halving your population every generation. For the sake of argument, let’s say the stations started out with a total population of exactly 300 people, 150 with uteri and 150 with penises. If your rules say “one kid per couple” then the second generation will only have 150 people. Now cut it half again for the next generation, and again for the next, etc. You’d end up with a dwindling population on top of creating a genetic bottleneck that will cause lots of problems. You don’t keep the population stable by restricting the number of births per couple. You keep the population stable by making sure that the number of births is equal to the number of deaths. So instead of “one child for each couple” the rule should be “zero children for anybody unless someone else has died.”

The Ark’s “all crimes are punishable by death” rule doesn’t work either. You’re in an isolated environment, which means all of your resources are limited and must be carefully managed... including people. Aside from needing the genetic variation to keep the population viable in the long term, you need the bodies - eyes, hands, and minds - to keep the place functioning. You can’t afford to throw people out the airlock for minor offenses like taking one extra ration because you need those people to repair and maintain the station, to grow your food, to be your medical personnel, etc. It would be far more sensible to not have the death penalty at all. Restrict freedom and privileges all you want but don’t go throwing away valuable resources.

The exception to the above rule of “if you’re under 18, you’ll be thrown in jail until you are 18 and then thrown out the airlock” makes less than no sense. You know what those people in jail are doing? Wasting oxygen and food. You know what they could be doing? Literally anything else. Again, one of the resources that’s at a premium here is the people themselves, warm bodies that could be doing work to keep the place running. If the reason for the “all crimes are capital crimes” rule is to keep people from wasting resources, there is absolutely no reason to put some of the rule breakers in a position to do literally nothing but waste resources. If you’re going to space people for minor crimes, then you’d better have the fur to space all of them regardless of any other factors. If resources are at such a premium that taking an extra pudding cup is grounds for execution, the age of the offender shouldn’t have any bearing at all on the punishment. If there’s resources enough to waste on feeding people who are doing literally nothing to contribute to the station’s survival and are going to be killed anyway, then there’s resources to waste not killing people for tiny little mistakes.

that’s it. that’s all i want.

WHY THE FUCK IS THAT SO GOD DAMN HARD

why the actual fuck does everyone act like this is such an extraordinary fucking request?

i don’t give a shit about promotion because that just means changing the job i’m doing and i don’t fucking want that, i want to do THE SAME JOB basically forever. raises are good but as long as i’m meeting that “able to feed myself without having to check my bank account first” quota, i’m happy.

i don’t give a shit about holidays. pros of hiring an atheist. you need me to work a holiday? no problem, i will be there, BECAUSE TO ME IT’S JUST FUCKING THURSDAY it’s not even a special god damn request, you’re literally asking me if i’m ok with coming in to work on a workday. give me my weekends off and a sensible amount of vacation days and i’m good. if you’re not going to give me insurance then pay me enough so i can afford premiums myself.

i’m honestly incredibly easy to please as an employee: give me a place to sit and work, show me how it needs to get done, tell me who to talk to if i come across something i don’t know how to handle, and then leave me alone to fucking do it. it will get done before i clock out.

i show up early to make sure i’m not late clocking in and not wasting working hours getting myself set up for the day, i set alarms to make sure i clock in and out from shifts and breaks on time. if i can eat at my desk i will work through my lunch, i really don’t care as long as i’m getting enough calories to keep my brain working, i’m honestly more interested in getting my work done than spending an hour being bored with nothing to do.

i’m literally the perfect office employee.

My roommate thinks I’m nuts because I never have followers if I can help it (I even make Serana leave for as long as possible during Dawnguard and when I can’t make her leave, I go into the console and type tcl so she can’t fucking move). But I really can’t stand followers at all because I’m a stealthy player - pretty much every character I make turns into a sniper (lots of sneaking + lots of archery) - and followers fuck it up every single time. I’ll be sneaking along, none of the enemies noticing I’m there, and the second an enemy comes within two god damn miles of me, my follower jumps up and screams CHARGE and runs right over to them, alerting every other enemy in a fifty mile radius as well as getting in the way of every single shot I try to make.

Who the fuck programmed this shit? Is there a mod for this? Because jfc this is utterly ridiculous; when I have to reload a save for the fifteenth fucking time because I accidentally killed a quest-necessary-but-not-unkillable-for-god-knows-what-reason follower who just had to run in front of my shot to attack a troll with their butter knife, or when I resort to intentionally shooting unkillable followers so they will stay the fuck out of my way, someone has very obviously failed to program their shit properly.

It’s gotten to the point that I enjoy killing them as just punishment for not staying the fuck out of my way. Before I figured out that you could make housecarls leave and stay at home, I would kill every single one of them just to get them out of my way. My entire play style revolves around the idiom “If you heard my shot, I missed.” but having some asshole break cover and run right in screaming like an angry bear to block a battleaxe with his face kinda ruins that.

I don’t know if every spoonie has this problem but I do and I’m gonna rant about it. Y’all can join in if you like.

So, the spoon theory has been a remarkably helpful analogy, both for explaining my disability to abled people and understanding it better myself, but it’s also allowed me to add another, related, analogy that I find really helpful.

Sporks.

If spoons are the energy I have to do things then sporks are the fucking fake spurts of energy I get that make me think I’m ok to do stuff when I’m actually not.

This happened to me today. I was feeling especially spoonless because of the weather (seriously, clouds, either rain or fuck off, stop hanging around and fucking up the barometric pressure and ruining my week). I drag myself out of bed and manage to make myself eat something and have some tea, figure I’ll kill time with minecraft or something and reserve the few spoons I have for eating and hugging my dog. An hour or so later, I’m feeling a lot better. I think “Ok, I must have just needed food.” and feel like I actually have a couple extra spoons now. So I get up and start trying to get shit done. I did a water change for my big fish tank (that’s where you take some of the old water out of the tank and replace it with fresh water to keep the fish healthy, it involves a lot of hauling buckets of water around the house)... and I only barely finished it. By the time I emptied the last bucket of water into the tank and turned the filter back on, my back was screaming, my right shoulder was numb, my right hand refused to work anymore, and I had to lock my knees to stay standing.

I thought I had spoons to get shit done but nope, they were fucking sporks. I got fooled into doing more than I should have and now I’m worse off and have fewer spoons than before. I’m probably still going to be fucked up tomorrow all because of the god damn sporks.