Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

thesecondsealwrites:

chronicpainhawke:

ok but have you considered iron bull rounding a corner and throwing a snowball thinkin it’s like dorian or the inquisitor or krem he’s gonna hit but he hits vivienne in the face instead
his high pitched scream can be heard for miles

“Why’s the Iron Bull running?”

“I don’t know, your worship. But if you ever see Bull running away from something, it’s best to just fall in beside him and run in the same direction.”

warden-alistair:

if you ever feel like you’re doing badly at dragon age the first time I ever played I gave morrigan two swords and alistair just had a shield

Currently doing my very first playthrough (my roommate @lathori just got Inquisition on her new PS4) and the Inquisition hasn’t even moved to Skyhold yet, and somehow I have been attacked by an inordinate number of bears. I’m not kidding, these bears did a better job of annihilating my party than any demon we’ve faced, I got down to a sole survivor twice in two minutes of the same attack. Almost every time I leave Haven this happens. Not one bear, not two bears, but SEVEN BEARS all told, I swear to god I’m more paranoid about these fucking bears than anything else, it’s a goddamn relief when I see a rift instead.

geeky-jez:

notthatkindofwolf:

grandenchanterfiona:

beautifultoastdream:

siawrites:

lokiloo:

grandenchanterfiona:

fuck-arl-eamon:

grandenchanterfiona:

Speaking of Shakespeare:

So, Shakespeare’s impact on modern culture is felt by basically everyone. 

Even if you’ve never seen ‘Romeo And Juliet’ performed, you’ve probably seen a tv episode using it’s general plot. 

Or seen West Side Story. 

So, how does that work for Thedas, where, as far as we know, Shakespeare doesn’t exist? 

Does he exist and we’ve just not heard of him? 

Or are his works just…not there?

Maybe he has a Thedosian equivalent? I wouldn’t really think that Shakespeare himself would be included in Thedas, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that there’s probably a really popular playwright somewhere around. Or maybe even…a popular author…who publishes several books…that are well known in many countries…oh my god.

HOLY SHIT.

Nah, because Shakespeare was a bit if a hack who wrote for money, his works were basically just dick jokes…that even royalty loved…whose works were given too much importance…After the fact….oh no

1000 years later:  “There is no way the Viscount of Kirkwall could have written the Tale of The Champion and The Tale of The Inquisition and everything else that’s been attributed to him as well as fought alongside all those people!  One person is not that talented!  Not to mention, where would he find the time?  And that crossbow?  Such technology was clearly not possible in 9:30 to 9:50 Dragon.  Simply preposterous!”

An excerpt from The Tethras Cipher, by Valmont Sinthorpe (Lowis & Blackmont, Year 35 Empire Age):

… which brings us at last to the body of evidence which is often overlooked by critics of this theory. I speak, of course, of the works themselves.

Consider the Tethras heroes. A ragged, worn-out guardsman. A romantic, valiant lady knight. A humorous, unsuitable rogue raised to Champion. And, perhaps most notorious of all, the Herald of Andraste–depicted by Tethras not as a religious reformer or a controversial political figure, but as a confused elf who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and once put a dead body in a box on trial.

What do these characters have in common? Little to nothing. If they were indeed the product of one author, as the Tethras purists insist, then Tethras himself would have evidenced a precocity and life-experience far removed from the biography we have already examined. It strains credulity to believe that the filthy, hard-bitten world of Donnan Brenkovic could have come from the imagination of a Merchant’s Guild princeling, or that the undying passion of Swords and Shields (recently voted the Dragon Age’s most influential work of literature by the prestigious Chanter University staff) was produced by a man who, according to contemporary accounts, considered phallic objects the height of humor.

However, the texts themselves do betray one unifying principle: the fallibility of authority. It is here that the true nature of the so-called “Tethras canon” becomes apparent.

Tethras was, no doubt, an author. As his best-authenticated work, The Tale of the Champion was very likely a product of his pen, and his presence in Kirkwall from 9:31-9:37 Dragon is attested by Merchant’s Guilt records. But his other works betray the stamp of different personalities, all united under the Tethras name by a single goal: to subvert the prevailing social order and undermine the existing political structure via exquisitely-calculated metaphorical deconstruction.

It is a fact that there was, indeed, at least one other rising author in Kirkwall during the crucial period. Someone whose works must have been immensely popular, judging by the number of fragments which have been found (see J. Lowry Hammertong, Cri de Coeur: A Philological Examination of Kirkwall Manuscript B, University of Orzammar Press, 27 Empire), and who abruptly vanishes from the historical record after 9:37 Dragon. Is the so-called “Mage for Justice” truly the voice of Varric Tethras? Or was he one of many? These are questions the academic establishment refuses to answer …

This is beautiful.

I am so glad that I have seen with my own eyes, a parody of anti-stratfordians with Varric Tethras as Shakespeare. 

@mythalll

*SLAMS REBLOG*

I get to enjoy my love of Shakespeare AND my obsession with Dragon Age?! I feel like this post was made for me. 

slackeremeritus:

glumshoe:

bigwordsandsharpedges:

keyhollow:

glumshoe:

When my godsister and I were kids, her parents got this wolf-shaped cookie jar that howled whenever the lid was opened to prevent her sneaking her hand in and stealing cookies.

I couldn’t wrap my head around why they got that cookie jar in the first place. Sneaking just wasn’t her style. It was my style - I’d wait for the perfect opportunity to strike, create a diversion, plot three excuses in case I got caught, and attempt to calculate the maximum number of cookies I could steal at one time without rousing suspicion and where I could store them safely until I was ready to eat them.

My godsister, on the other hand, was the sort to walk up to the cookie jar, shove her hand in, and stuff her face while staring at you defiantly, as if challenging you to stop her. What are you going to do? The cookies are already in her mouth. They’re hers now. She’s won.

I guess it’s no surprise that she became a pro kickboxer and Muay Thai champion.

Holy shit

how do you know the jar wasn’t meant to stop you instead of her?

‘Cause I never got caught.

Rogue approach vs. tank approach.

buckyballbearing:

draconiclullaby:

buckyballbearing:

draconiclullaby:

buckyballbearing:

Oh hey bc I’m sick and I don’t see this around a lot, let’s talk boarding school AUs! Because yeah, college AUs are good start, but there’s a few fun details that make boarding schools stand out:

• First of all, everything you read in fanfic about situational gayness is true. I’m serious. When you’re set up to live, work, and play at school (and usually with strict controls preventing you from leaving campus) you start to seek affection wherever you can find it. One of the reasons I didn’t realize I was bi for years was how completely normal it was for people to cuddle regardless of gender or sexual preference. Packs of completely straight-identified dudes and even dating het couples would curl up and do homework on the regular. Imagine how confusing it would be for your OTP if they first met bc they were cuddling in a puppy pile along with tons of other potential partners.
  
• Not all boarding schools are for the rich. Some are reform schools. Some are organized around a specific topic, like science or the arts. Some exist simply because students are spread out too far to commute back and forth. My school was sponsored by the government, so the most I had to do was pay for supplies and a train ticket up there once a quarter. (Yes, just like Hogwarts.)
  
• The true enemy is the staff. Not that bullying doesn’t still exist, but when you live together 24/7, a funny thing happens. You might not always like each other, but you quickly start to realize you have a common enemy - the adults in charge of this zoo. And when you have a common enemy, it’s easier to get along. 99% of our teenage spite was redirected from each other to the security guards who prevented us from innocently taking each other’s clothes off in the bushes, which meant we didn’t beat the shit out of each other so much.
  
• Related, everyone becomes an exhibitionist. Similar to the confusing lines around being gay/straight/whatever, when you’re trapped at school you have no place to go to get it on. So when people do become involved, they either have to find a super secret hiding place (like a jammed elevator) or get used to banging next to three or four other couples at the one makeout spot with low visibility. (Which may change weekly, given the aforementioned staff. I remember one time watching a lazy security guard mount a giant headlight assembly on a pole, stand back, and sweep the high beam back and forth over a hillside. Half-naked couples scattered like rabbits.)
• You will probably almost kill yourselves once a semester, but it will be okay as long as no one notices. Unless you’re at one of the mythical rich kid schools where idk, everyone has their own helicopter, you pretty much have to invent your own fun. My school had restrictions around tvs and video games because blah blah “being healthy”, so we also spent a lot of time outside trying to figure out what the fuck to do. Protip to staff: this is actually way less healthy than video games and computers, because bored teens can and will fucking destroy themselves by accident. Example: one trend we came up with was human versions of all board games, not just chess. This sounds kind of adorable and innocent, until the incident where we attempted Human Jenga. Protip to everyone else: DO NOT PLAY HUMAN JENGA. Even if you’re being very careful about stacking people, eventually the sheer weight of the stack will start to smother the people down below even if you thought their chest was clear. And if they can’t breathe, they can’t let you know they are dying. We almost lost the bottom row over that. (No staff ever found out.)
• Prank wars are real, and they get out of hand. Again, when well-meaning adults force you to make your own fun: fun is prone to escalate. Food fights become whole dorm events; nerds get revenge by fucking with goddamn everyone. One time some friends and I got access to a guy’s computer, put a back door in it, took control of his machine remotely and convinced him he’d created an emergent AI. Another time I got line of sight to a window in a rival dorm and took down their computer every time someone started a paper. In retrospect these are all extremely dick moves but uh I was not always aligned good in high school.

That’s all I can think of for now - go forward and sin with pride!

You learn how to sneak around really well…. 

Shit yeah that is also true

My roommate had a boyfriend who learned how to climb gutter pipes for illicit visits at night

Also we played Assassins a lot on campus which required both stealth and intense paranoid

You were assigned a target name and snuck around school with a plastic knife at all times ready to stab them

Jeez! I learned how to be invisible and literally hide in front of the dorm counselors faces. It was so wild. One evening after lights-out I snuck down to a friends room and was literally 3 feet away from the door when the dorm counselor came in. All they needed to do was glance to the right. 

Another time I was sneaking to my girlfriend’s room after lights-out. My dorm counselor (different one from previous story) was still awake and her office was still wide open. She was sitting in a chair watching TV. Did I mention the chair was facing the door? So, I recalled all the stories about no sudden movements blend into the background etc. I creeped by pretty as you please without her even noticing that I was there. 

 A friend of mine became the equivalent of a mob boss. She had people who owed/did favors for her and she monopolized the ramen and soda industry within the dorms. 

Also, one never stops jumping at the sound of jingling keys…..

THE KEYS ARE TOO REAL

captofthesswolfstar:

marauders4evr:

Every now and then, the Marauders fandom gets upset that James was chosen to be a Head Boy when he wasn’t a Prefect.

But of course he was.

It started in the autumn of his fifth year. The fifteen-year-old marched through the corridors, feeling rather important, a badge pinned to his robes.

Filch caught him within the first five minutes. To be fair, James hadn’t tried to run. (If he had, he would have gotten away). He had no reason to. Still, the caretaker grumbled threats of torture as he dragged the Chaser to Professor McGonagall’s office.

“Pretending to be a Prefect,” Filch snarled.

“I’m not pretending you old—” James eventually broke off as he realized that there was no use shouting at the lump of clay that was the caretaker. And so, he turned to Professor McGonagall and said, “I’m a temporary Prefect for the night.”

“Are you?” she asked, with a flicker of amusement. “I don’t seem to recall appointing you as such.”

“You know, Sirius’ brother told me something interesting the other day,” James said. “Did you know that if you looked at the night sky, you could see a star that represents them both? Isn’t that strange. Look for yourself, Professor.”

And she glanced out the window and saw the stars in question. Right next to the nearly full moon. Her face gave away nothing, but she curtly dismissed the caretaker, who seemed surprised if not furious.

“Surely you want me to stay to deliver the punishment?” Filch asked.

“There will be no punishment,” Professor McGonagall said curtly. “You caught a Prefect out of bed. That’s not exactly against the rules, is it?”

James could have hugged her.

As soon as the caretaker was gone, she pushed the tin of biscuits towards James. It didn’t even need saying at this point. He grinned and took his favorite kind. She always had them.

“I didn’t even think…” she whispered. “It’s not full for another three days.”

“I know,” said James. “But he’s really sick this time.”

“He should have told me,” she said. “I would have given him the time off.”

“Yeah, well,” James shrugged. “You know Remus.”

She smiled; she did indeed.

“Did he brief you on your responsibilities?” the professor asked.

“If by ‘briefed’ you mean ‘went into a three-hour lecture on what I should or should not do’ then yeah.”

“You know that I can’t make this official,” Professor McGonagall said. “People would talk.”

“Nah, I know,” James said. 

“You can’t brag about this.”

“I know.”

“You can’t abuse your privileges.”

“I know.”

“Take another biscuit.”

He grinned and did so.

“I believe you have work to do,” she said.

James gave her a mock salute and marched away. He performed Remus’ duties all night, never once abusing the power, knowing that doing so would tarnish Remus’ reputation. He performed them the next two nights as well and told a very skeptical Professor McGonagall that he was sick on the night of the full moon. (”Oh dear,” she said. “I hope your illness stagnates.”)

Truth be told, James was a Prefect almost as much as Remus was.

They were some of the only times in his term at Hogwarts that he solemnly swore that he wasn’t up to no good.

IM MAKING THIS CANON! I declare it canon!!! So be it!!! @asktheboywholived

copperbadge:

@whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome said: 

I would like some Socialist!Steve Rogers making fox news/drumpf’s head explode by calling them on their shit on a national stage.

“Now, you all know, Captain America kept out of the presidential race – great guy, tremendous guy, how can you not love Captain America? – but I feel sure if he allowed himself to be political, he’d be for making America great again. The values of the forties, when we worked hard and fought for what we believed in, when people knew where they belonged – I think if he could speak publicly he’d say, good job, President Trump. Because he represents the people, too, and the people elected me – by a giant landslide, an enormous record-breaking – “ 

***

Steve had thought, long and hard, considering the talk shows, the various social media platforms, and the other methods of publicity available to him. He finally decided on YouTube, though he did let them film him on something slightly better than a phone video camera. 

He talked to the organizers; he asked them if they were sure; and when the time came, during the protest rally, he walked up to the podium in jeans and a #RESIST t-shirt, and he could tell for a minute nobody knew who he was. 

“Good morning,” he said, using the smile and the voice he’d practiced selling bonds, seventy years ago. “My name is Steve Rogers. I came to march with you today.” 

A ripple went through the crowd.

“My mother and father were immigrants. My mother was a single working mother. As a child I saw Pinkertons trying to break the unions, breaking strikes with bats and brass knuckles. I heard my friends’ parents tell stories about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire where people died because there was no federal safety regulation, because they were disposable – women, immigrants, Jews. I was born in the last Gilded Age, and I lived through every hungry year of the Depression that it led to,” he said, voice gaining momentum. “My ma died because she couldn’t afford treatment. Because it was a doctor for her or a doctor for me but not both.”

There was a roar from the crowd. 

“And I saw Americans thrown into camps, and I saw “colored” drinking fountains, and I saw Americans who had to join separate regiments to defend freedom because of the color of their skin, so I know what the values of the 1940s were!” he yelled. “Don’t you tell me people knew their place! Don’t you tell me they weren’t shoved into place by Pinkertons and cops because I saw it happen! I didn’t survive 1940 to see it come round again!” 

He glanced to the side, wondering if he’d gone too far, but the woman who’d told him it was okay to speak was grinning and gesturing for him to continue.

“So the President can be very clear about where Captain America stands,” Steve continued, “I’d like him to know that I am a lefty socialist anti-racist son of immigrants and I’m here today for open borders, socialized healthcare, equality in justice, and the death of fascism. You’re right about one thing – I am a tremendous man, and I am allowing myself to be political.” 

***

Yet another leak out of the White House today concerning the behavior of the president. Sources say last night President Trump was treated in the Residence for a broken hand, which the White House official statement says is a stress fracture from signing paperwork. Our source states that the President overturned furniture, threatened Secret Service agents, and broke his hand punching a wall. All this after witnessing the mega-viral BE POLITICAL youtube video recorded by Steve Rogers, Manhattan’s own Captain America, at a protest rally yesterday afternoon…

words-writ-in-starlight:

naamahdarling:

naamahdarling:

lireecrirerever:

8prometheus8:

feministingforchange:

apersnicketylemon:

anti-feminism-pro-cats:

apersnicketylemon:

The real irony of the people who make jokes about being triggered is that they tend to idolize the military/veterans as if combat related PTSD isn’t a real thing that also has triggers. Y’all make fun of the people you call hero’s when you’re making fun of the teenagers with PTSD from non-combat related issues, you can’t separate the two.

Most of the people making fun of triggers are making fun of all the bullshit “”“triggers”“”, as in the people calling a mild uncomfortable feelings triggers.

The problem with making fun of a trigger is you genuinely do not know whether they are ‘mildly uncomfortable’ or if that is a thing that is genuinely causing severe anxiety, depressive episodes, or stress responses. Most of the “““““bullshit”““““ triggers I’ve seen being made fun of are actual trauma survivors who have their trauma associated with something unusual or strange. Because the thing that triggers their PTSD or panic is odd, people, not unlike yourself, are writing them off as “whiny babies” or “triggered sjws” or call their trigger bullshit because they cannot understand the association.

For examples: Sirens are one of my triggers. When I hear sirens I get an immediate panic response. This was due to being in an active war zone as a child (The response is significantly worse if it is an air raid siren or sounds too similar to an air raid siren.). If you didn’t know I was in an active war zone though, it might seem silly to see an adult panic and attempt to get to a safe place because an ambulance, fire truck, or police car went past them.

I have a manager who is triggered by the presence of police. Specifically police, other uniforms are fine (i.e. security in the mall does not set off her panic response). Her trigger is severe, if a police officer talks to her, she starts panicking and sobbing and cannot control it. This is because when she was young, two police officers threatened her repeatedly and psychologically abused her for 6 hours while they tried to find out where her brother was (yes, this was illegal. Her parents were not home at the time, and were unaware she was alone as the brother in question was meant to be watching her). If you didn’t know that story though, it might seem silly to see an adult woman burst into tears and have a panic attack because a cop said ‘hi’ to her.

I have seen posts by an abuse survivor talking about how the sound of a garage door triggered them, due to abuse by a parent. They associated that sound with the abuser returning home and the abuse beginning. The sound became a trigger because their mind associated it to that. I saw another post by a rape survivor talking about how she was triggered by the sight of eggs because she made eggs for her rapist after he’d raped her. Her mind associated eggs with the trauma due to the two being connected at least in her mind.

Brains are weird. Trauma doesn’t make sense. The point is, YOU do not know if someone is ““““bullshitting”“““ or not. You do not know how someones trauma associated itself with something odd, which is something trauma really does all the time and making fun of trauma survivors because you don’t understand the association between their trauma and the item that triggers their ptsd or anxiety is absolutely wrong and absolutely hypocritical if you think any other form of trigger is acceptable or okay. You don’t get to decide other peoples trauma triggers. They didn’t even get to decide them, and to tell someone that you’re okay to make fun of them because what upsets them doesn’t make sense to you is absolutely not okay.

I should note too: Phobia’s are real triggers too. People have panic attacks when exposed to their phobia’s in the wrong way. I need certain pictures tagged because I am absolutely terrified of heights, which is a pretty common phobia. People can have serious phobia’s to everything and anything though, and there are things I am not afraid of that others are that may seem strange to me, but to them are very real and very frightening. Just because it seems odd to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t still real to the person experiencing it.

This post needs a zillion more notes. As a Complex PTSD sufferer I truly hope that people will someday stop policing others’ triggers and health problems as if they have a single clue. 

Just BACK OFF and let people LIVE.

And PTSD has ALWAYS had odd triggers, this isn’t just a modern thing. My grandmother couldn’t do anything with the reservoir on the back of a toilet because when she was nine, she was gangraped. When her attackers were in their stupor, she took all of their guns and put them in the reservoir of their toilet, and ran through the street naked until someone helped her. Having to put the weapons she KNEW they were going to use on her behind the toilet stuck in her mind, that was what became a trigger for her brain- along with being unable to go outside in her bare feet ever again. 

One of my closest friends is triggered by someone touching his hair, because one of his stepfathers swung him around by his hair and smashed him into things. Now any time someone touches his hair, he gets so badly panicked he just vomits on the spot. 

And then you have people with conventional ptsd triggers like me- it’s hard for me to see blood and violence in certain contexts. Oddly, it’s fine in video games, but in movies or TV shows- ESPECIALLY if it’s suicide- it triggers me. Because through my suicide prevention work, I’ve WITNESSED suicides, so as a result it triggers my ptsd. 

Brains are strange and unpredictable in what they associate a situation to, and what becomes a symbol of trauma. But it’s not anyone’s job to gatekeep the subject, because it does absolutely no one any good. When someone says something triggers them, you need to respect it. And you also need to respect that triggers can generate different responses. My grandmother would get quiet and skittish when triggers. My friend vomits when triggered. I get enraged and frustrated when triggered- an unconventional response to a conventional trigger.

Some people cope so well that they only get ‘uncomfortable’. I’ve even seen one person who would get a ‘high’ because their body would try to release a shitload of dopamine in response to it, and then they’d crash. Shit’s weird, and all you can do is respect what someone says about their own boundaries.

Also, there’s a common misconception that trigger warnings are always about avoiding the trigger. That’s just not the case. A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare. I’ve heard it compared to the fact that people can get used to and tune out a noise like a smoke detector beeping if it happens in a regular and predictable way. But random, unpredictable beeps cause immense psychological distress to almost anyone if you are forced to listen to them long enough. Letting people know a trigger is coming often helps mitigate the reaction.

This is such excellent commentary.

Two things to add.  Perhaps @anti-feminism-pro-cats might appreciate this specific thing.

I was once asked to please tag cats.  And I was like “Oookay, bud, I’ll try, but like, ¾ of my life IS cats, so I can’t promise anything…?”  Because that just seemed really weird to me.

And then, even though they didn’t have to, they actually wrote back and said, basically, “Hey, the reason I’m asking is because I had to witness people torturing cats in a situation I couldn’t escape, and now I just … can’t.” 

Oh shit.

So I said “Hey, holy fuck, I’m sorry. Do you need me to tag all cats, or just housecats? What about cartoon cats?  I just want to help you out, friend.”

And again, even though they didn’t have to, they came back and said “Cartoon cats aren’t too bad, but what I really can’t handle is seeing kittens.”

Fucking … fuck.

And I’m not gonna lie, that fucking hurt and chilled me to read.  Just … the story there.  I don’t want to know it.  It makes me sick just imagining it.  So I now tag for cats.

It’d be easy to say “It’s stupid to be triggered by kittens.”

But, uhh, I really don’t think that situation is “stupid” at all.  I think it’s fucking tragic.  And that person had the guts to ask, knowing that they might get made fun of for it, and then they were even kind enough to explain, and I’m grateful to them because it taught me something I intellectually but did not yet viscerally understand.

A healthy person, or even just someone with different triggers, can’t understand the significance behind triggers.  And triggers can be really fucking weird or even seemingly inappropriate.

So I got to make a choice.  I could say “If you can’t handle cats, seriously, I’m not the blog for you.”  Understandable, I suppose.  Or I could say “JFC that sucks, and the rest of the goddamn internet is flooded with untagged cats.  Maybe … maybe I can do this one thing so that they will feel safe reading my blog? Maybe I have the power to actually … help a little?”

And obviously, I made the latter choice.

Here’s another thing.

Recovery is a process, and eventually a lot of people move away from needing trigger warnings.  They are a helpful tool to protect yourself during a certain stage of healing.  That healing might take a really long time, and it might never be complete … or … it might only be necessary for a few months or years.

So you aren’t “coddling” people by tagging for [x thing you think shouldn’t be a trigger], you’re enabling them to engage on their terms.  Engaging on your own terms is literally the only way to make progress, therapeutically, so asserting that trigger warnings hinder progress is just not factually a correct statement at all.

You personally may choose not to tag for anything, and that’s fine.  You are absolutely allowed to run your personal space however you want, and people shouldn’t bug you about it.

But what you don’t get to do is decide what a “stupid” trigger is (hint: there isn’t one, there’s only fucked up situations that leave fucked up scars) and whether or not someone is experiencing severe or mild discomfort.  You can’t know that.  Their reaction isn’t even a good guide to how they are feeling inside.  They may seem only mildly uncomfortable.  You don’t see them losing their shit later because something hit them way worse than they thought it would, and they thought they were okay at the time but … hahaha, nope.

I guess … a lot of people seem to think that there’s this whole category of “special snowflake” people wandering around saying “I know how to get sympathy and validation: I’ll ask a total stranger to tag for cookware because I’m ‘triggered’ by spatulas!”  Just as if that’s liable to elicit the kind of validation truly lonely and desperate people need.

Or maybe … maybe they think there’s all these people who are so unacquainted with “real” pain or fear that they think their mildly uncomfortable feelings about Furbys compare to, and this is so often the example used and I think that is so wrong, combat vets who can’t handle fireworks.

What it comes down to, it seems like, is trying to extrapolate a story from the trigger so that you can say “Stop crying, you don’t have it that bad!”  Which is ridiculous.  As someone above pointed out, triggers can seem nonsensical even within the context of the instigating trauma. I remember the eggs post.  The things that stick with you about trauma are not always just the things you expect.  You can’t actually guess anything about a trauma from a seemingly inexplicable trigger beyond “Wow, fear of paintbrushes, plastic cups, and raisins … I bet that’s a story.”

And if that story that they imagine doesn’t match what they think is a “valid” trauma narrative, then they feel justified in dismissing it.  Completely missing the fact that there’s no such thing as a “valid” or “invalid” trauma narrative, because trauma is a really strange and subjective thing.  Also completely missing the fact that it’s not okay to try to make that judgment to begin with.

A lot of people seem unwilling, for some reason totally alien to me, to make that empathetic leap and say “Okay.  I don’t need to know more.  I believe you.”  They want to police other people’s experiences.  And that’s just one of the worst impulses of humanity.  It’s really nasty, and it gets applied in so many horrible ways to mental illness of all kinds.  It needs to stop.

Ultimately, it costs you nothing to be cool about it.  It costs you nothing to take what people say at face value, or to believe strangers and not comment on their mental health issues.  It costs you nothing to say nothing, even if you don’t believe them.  Because you are inevitably going to be wrong, and why risk making yourself look like a clueless, deliberately oafish asshole?

I’m really confused as to why this is an issue, except certain segments of the online community take great pleasure in being critical of other people’s attempts to cope, because they have invested a lot of their self-image in being “smart” and “discerning” and “no-nonsense” and “not gonna be fooled” … and they really enjoy tearing down people who are saying “these things are unfair” or “these things are hard for me.”

“You aren’t really hurt/traumatized/oppressed!” is a truly unpleasantly common thing to hear these people say.  Often they will even say it outright.  Other times, it comes across indirectly.

It’s not at all surprising for anti-feminists to also be anti-trigger-warning, and I think this is probably why.  I know it was the case for me for a very long time.  Then I kind of … grew up, I guess?  Enough bad shit happened to me and to people I know that I acquired sympathy.  And realized that, actually, my own traumas have left me with some pretty weird issues, things that make me uncomfortable but which other people are unlikely to consider inherently threatening.  So I had no room to judge.

It’s sad, because it’s actually a whole lot less effort to believe people when they talk about their experiences than it is to sit there, smoldering with disdain and resentment over the person who really can’t abide milk, of all things, and asks that it be tagged for.

If you’re angry about trigger warnings and are lashing out about it, just … go ask a mutual friend for a hug or something.  Go do something self-affirming.  Because the trigger warning thing is not about you or for you.  You might as well spend your energy doing something nice for yourself.  You’re lucky not to have to wrestle with a fear you very well know is ridiculous.  Enjoy that and move on.  Don’t waste your time thinking about how many people are wrong to feel the way they feel.  Just let it go.

I also want to emphasize something said above:

A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare.

This is huge.

I can engage with my triggers.

I can do it voluntarily on my own terms, and the effects can, depending on circumstance, be pretty minimal.

I can do it with warning on someone else’s terms, and depending on circumstance I can be mostly okay to messed up but still mostly functional.

Or I can do it without warning at all, and depending on circumstance, fall apart a little, or a lot.

If given control of the situation, I can get away with a “yuck” feeling and then move on.  If not, I may need medication to bring me down.  It can fuck me up for a couple of days if I was not allowed to choose when/how/whether to engage.  If I am, hey, wow, look at that, I’m mostly all right.

This is not evidence that it’s not that bad.  Like with a lot of illness, disability, and mental health stuff, just because I can do it sometimes doesn’t mean it’s okay all the time.

This is how these things work. Period.  This is actually what recovery from trauma looks like, this is how it works, this is what you have to accept if you want to accept that any trauma at all is valid.

It really is a useless endeavor to try to draw conclusions about someone’s trauma from whether or not they ask for, use, or need trigger warnings.

And tbh, even if they come right out and say “I don’t have PTSD, I just hate seeing pictures of dogs, I’m so triggered lol”, that’s them being horrendously disrespectful of mentally ill people.  It’s not an excuse to then be even more disrespectful by using that to draw conclusions that allow you to dismiss the very concept of trigger warnings as stupid.

There are people who fake entire illnesses, okay?  Who lie about having cancer or whatever.  But we don’t take those people as evidence that people who have, you know, actual cancer must be lying and pretending to be special snowflakes.

And, just for the record, sometimes people can’t move past a trigger.

I have fairly bad PTSD about dentists. Nothing helps. I don’t look to get trigger warnings because it doesn’t help. I can barely walk into a dentist’s office–I’m 19 and my mom still has to hold my hand and probably always will. I never make my own appointments, someone else has to do it. I can barely speak in a dentist’s chair, and I get flashbacks from the lights.

I’ve been working on getting past this for 12 years, I’ve tried every technique in the book to get through an appointment without this stuff including all available forms of sedation, and I’ve literally reached the point where my therapist went “Yeah, you might want to just get drunk afterward” when I told her that’s what I was going to do.

So… barring a miracle, this is as good as it’s going to get. That’s a trigger I’m never going to get rid of. If trigger warnings helped, I’d need them for the rest of my life. And it’s not because I or anyone else in that position is weak. It’s just because some wounds heal, and others still leave you limping.

supervillainesses:

halbarry:

going to college/university in gotham city would be so wild???

• a student who forgets to sort out their accommodation until the last minute and ends up moving into mr freeze’s hideout because everywhere else in town is full. still beats dorms i guess.
  
• the welcome assembly is 6 hours long and most of it is what to do if you encounter the joker or batman or some other hero or villain and how the police are essentially useless.
• non-gothamite students being freaked out over why the gothamite students aren’t panicking when their campus coffee shop gets held up by harley quinn and poison ivy.
• city-wide catastrophes are not an excuse for getting out of finals week.
  
• the black market is incredibly easy to access in gotham and ends up getting used by students wanting to make a quick buck by writing other people’s essays or stealing answers off tests. beware ex-psychology professors who do not take kindly to cheaters.
• not being sure whether the sound you’re hearing is an explosion somewhere in town or just your neighbor’s music at 3AM. 
• did you just see nightwing pass by your window or are you hallucinating from lack of sleep? 
• riddler crashes the university’s servers, causing untold fear and panic to the students who had left their essays to the very last minute to turn in.
• iceberg lounge is to be avoided, the drinks are so damn expensive and the nightlife is usually lousy unless batman’s doing a raid on the place.  
• any drunk student could easily be taken in as a new batman villain. one minute you’re at a fancy dress party having a good time, the next thing you know you’re waking up in a jail cell with a suspicious, batarang shaped scar and the tabloids calling you Donkey Girl. 
• every student thinks they can be robin within the first two weeks of moving to gotham. this usually does not end well. 
• seeing two-face chilling at mcdonald’s on your friend’s snapchat story and not even being surprised at this point. 
• no need to set an alarm for a 14 minute nap, batgirl will probably come crashing through your window anyway. 
• most people want to bang either someone from the batfam or the rogues gallery. some have even attempted it.
• fear toxin is put in the vents one time but almost no one is affected. everybody is already terrified for exams. 
• most dorm rooms have an “adopt me batman” sign hanging from the windows, or variations of that (”adopt me catwoman” is a pretty popular one too)

• Getting a new professor or a class being canceled because the professor decided to put on a costume and rob a bank under a gimmicky name

officialbabet:

How about instead of Montparnasse or Javert or whoever being the villain in your les mis fic, you just embrace the fact that nobody in les mis is meant to be a villain, but instead act the way they do because of the society that surrounds them.

unicorniolerdo:

the reason that rey’s hair is down is because she no longer needs to be recognized by her family since she found it

thank you for your time

naamahdarling:

bisexualbaker:

As I am sure any cat owner will be able to tell you, someone else putting you in a box is entirely different from getting into a box yourself.

This is the most brilliant, concise, cute, and disarming response to the “but laaaaaaaabels are baaaaaaad” argument that gets used against people trying to self-identify as something as a way of making sure their boundaries are understood and respected.

whatwecanfic:

gallifreyburning:

Hey gang, are you ready to make a phone call or two today?

Right now, top Republicans AND Democrats (can you believe it?!) are calling for investigations into the Trump administration’s ties to Russia. Please take a second to call your reps and express your support for an investigation - ESPECIALLY if you have a Republican rep! If the impeachment train is going to gain any momentum anytime soon, THIS IS THE MOMENT. Please give the train a push, by calling and registering your support for an independent, bipartisan investigation!

Here’s an easy script to use when you call, if you aren’t sure what to say (via 5calls.org). If you end up leaving a voicemail, please leave your full street address to ensure your call is tallied:

Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent from [CITY, ZIP].

I’m calling to express my support for a comprehensive and independent investigation of the Trump administration’s ties to Russia, including testimony from former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

Thank you for your hard work answering the phones.

Here’s a quick way to find your representatives’ number:

https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Just to be very clear, colluding with a foreign government to undermine American Democracy is treason. This is not a partisan issue, nor is it a crime for which the proper response is you lose your job and that’s it.

Two additional numbers to call:

The House Oversight Committee: (202) 225-5074
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Chair: (202) 225-7751

Script: Hi, my name is… and I am a constituent from… I am calling to ask that the committee immediately insist on an investigation of President Trump’s ties to Russia both during and after his campaign – by an independent Special Prosecutor or independent commission, and not overseen by Jeff Sessions. I also ask that Chairman Chaffetz demand the release of the President’s tax returns to ascertain the extent of his financial ties to Russia. Our democracy is on the line. It is time to put partisan games aside and take a stand for America. In light of Michael Flynn’s resignation and new evidence of ties between the Trump campaign and Russian agents, anything less than an immediate independent investigation is unacceptable.

cardassian-andorian:

anyway i love the fact that the rest of rogue one is like “grr murder revenge we are here to kick some empire ass” and then they’re like “hey goggles boy what’s ur deal” and bodhi goes “i’m gonna be brave and listen to my heart” and like. all the Grisly Rebels visibly melt a lil.

slyrider:

homeworldlapis:

to add to this “humans are weird” thing
did you know that humans are the only species on earth with the ability to throw things with any significant degree of accuracy and force (apes can throw with about the force of a human ten year old, but cant lock their wrists well enough for accuracy)

and we just never really think about it bc its so easy and simple to us that pretty much all of our sports are based around the concept of throwing things accurately

so
what if the concept of projectile weapons takes most species FOREVER to get the hang of, or even come up with in the first place.
a human goes onto a ship and throws some trash into the nearest reclaimer, shouts “kobe!” and all the other aliens on board absolutely LOSE THEIR MINDS

@words-writ-in-starlight

thehobbutts:

thehobbutts:

audreyjensensgirl:

thehobbutts:

i used to think green apple was a flavor invented by the candy industry like blue raspberry bc i had never seen a green apple before I just thought all apples were red and long story short when i realized i was red green colorblind it really fucked me up

there’s also yellow apples

now yall are just fuckin lying to me

i just assumed that everyone just ate apples if they were in the mood for a surprise i dunno

kayytx:

kayytx:

kayytx:

concept: jack and bitty get engaged, and shitty and tater fight for the privilege to be jack’s best man the way phoebe and rachel battled it out over who would be monica’s maid of honor

they’re tied after five rounds of questions, so ransom and holster decide on a sudden death round to see who’s willing to sacrifice the most for jack.

tater promises to give up his basically-a-part-time position as host of falcstv for three months, and stop roping jack into unplanned appearances for one whole season.

shitty immediately goes into the bathroom and shaves off his ‘stache.

shitty wins.

holster: okay shitty, you’re jack’s best man. you win
tater: no!! i’m take bullet for zimmboni. i’m DIE FOR ZIMMBONI. i should win. i’m be best man.
ransom: dude. look at shitty. look at that hairless face. there’s already been a death in this room today. shitty wins.

stillthewordgirl:

pragneto:

oodlenoodleroodle:

madeofpatterns:

lizardywizard:

rewby:

hey so i know that dismissing all the “this is just like when ___ happened in ___ book/movie/tv show” posts as “white privileged liberalism” is real popular right now but like

a lot of autistic ppl process real life events through fiction

and comparisons are the only way we can understand the severity of something

(heck my four year old brother is autistic and he only speaks referentially he literally can’t understand something you’re saying unless someone has said it in a tv show)

so like when i say “oh this is just like when umbridge took over at hogwarts” what i mean is “this is a funny thing to say, yes, but im also contextualizing my experience in a way that means i can understand fully the emotions and social context involved because i’m autistic and don’t understand these things like allistics do”

(allistics are welcome and encouraged to reblog)

Not just autistic people but anyone with brainweirds around empathy, too.

Or even just… that’s really, really common for everyone?

To a significant extent, that’s *why fiction is a thing*. 

And… sacred texts are also centered around stories, and people reference the all the time in dangerous situations. 

It’s not trivializing and it’s not privilege, it’s… being human and using stories to understand things. 

Also, Umbridge is one of the most terrifying villains ever.

Also the narrative can be used to know what to do when the situation is happening. Did Umbridge just get elected president of your country? Oh shit that’s bad right? What should we do? Well, what did the characters you love do in that situation? Did they wait and see? Or did they form a club that met regularly where they taught each other how to fight the forces of evil? Did they quit school with a bang creating as much havoc and trouble for the evil forces as they could when they left? 

This is such a great post and I wish it had been around weeks ago.

That last quote is one of my favorites.

milesphoenix:

a-terror-of-shadow-and-flame:

lastwaterbender:

I like in the Fellowship of the Rings where they are standing outside the big ass door with the riddle “Speak friend and enter” thing. 

And then they’re like, what’s friend in elvish and Legolas just stands there and says nothing.

Frodo: *looks at Gandalf*

Everyone else: *looks at Legolas*

Legolas: [internally] fuck you, in Eregion they spoke a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT kind of elvish, I grew up with like ten different dialects of silvan, this word is pronounced differently in every one of them, this sindarin and my sindarin probably wouldn’t even be a little bit compatible, who fucking knows the door might want it in Quenya, you know what it’s probably in Khuzdul, that’s the kind of language you’d want a password to be in, the one nobody knows, fuck they’re all looking at me I don’t know this there are dozens of different languages spoken by elves you stupid fucks

Legolas: [externally] silence

Gandalf: “…Mellon”

Everyone: *thinks Legolas is stupid*

This is officially one of my favorite tumblr posts.

queercuddleslut:

aviself:

*gently headbutts u in the shoulder to show affection*

*absentmindedly pats your entire face to acknowledge affection received*

kinkstertime:

srahpls:

nudityandnerdery:

johnkatier:

dude god could come down from heaven with a million angels and tell me that gif is pronounced “jif” and i still wouldn’t fucking do it

I’d just shrug and say, “Okay, thanks, Jod, I’ll keep that in mind.”

#THIS IS THE HILL I WILL DIE ON (x)

I WILL FACE JOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL

anarcho-dragonitism:

anarcho-dragonitism:

can we stop saying that words like dumb and stupid are ableist slurs or ableist language please I’m autistic and that’s just… not what the fuck a slur is bye

A slur is when a word’s principal colloquial usage is intended to target a certain group in a violent manner and stupid and dumb are used in relation to disability like 0.1% of the time. It’s almost always referring to people who say shit completely out of their lane and realm of expertise and it’s actually useful language. It’s like, I’ve been called disgusting for being gay b4 but disgusting is mainly intended to refer to other stuff and it’s not homophobic to use it in a context that has nothing to do with gay ppl. Tired of seeing ppl getting hassled over insulting an idea using the only language that can describe the negative quality of the idea. Like, guys. R***rded is a slur. Stupid and dumb are not damn slurs.

I’m Autistic and Schizophrenic and I think both ND and NT ppl should reblog this if they want

rainbowbarnacle:

fawnmother:

the-cuddly-punk:

neenya:

doubleohmogar:

franerys:

katiebpeters:

chloereneeeee:

How many altos does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None, they can’t get that high.

How many sopranos does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

One, she holds it up and waits for the world to revolve around her.

How many singers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Two. An alto to actually do it and a soprano to stand by and ask “isn’t that a little high for you?”

u wanna fucking go

here for this fight

How do you know a soprano is at your door?

She can’t find the key and doesn’t know where to come in

Originally posted by penultimxte