tag rambles

Once Upon a Time (cont.)…

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

enscenic:

… in the interests of not making the monster post of monsters, I’m going to limit the reblogging of these to however many times it takes to cover 100 tumblrs. CLICK HERE if you are, for some reason, interested in seeing #s 1 through 110.

111 – 120

@blnkstr – reblogs of hypno stuff

@topfonts – I have a confession to make. I have a small font obsession. (I once crashed the hard drive of my super cool windows 95 Gateway pc with 25 entire GBs of memory because I had too many fonts. Ah, the good old days…)

@spiralturquoise – Another hypno person who I am now privileged to have met in Real Life. They write most excellent smut, which you can find at mcstories.com!

@buzzfeed – Because funny.

@buzzfeedbooks – Because books.

@buzzfeedau – Because fandom.

@scifiscribbler – Here is a person from Hypbook, who I think many people follow for the image captions. I personally don’t really care for those, I followed him for commentary and reblogs of issues that matter to me. But if you like snippets of mind control stories attached to pics of mostly naked, big-busted women, you may like this tumblr.

@wildnutmeg – Another hypno person, and a friend of a friend of mine, who swears that we would get along like gangbusters, but somehow we never seem to have the time at events that we have in common to get to know each other. Someday…

@zanythoughts – I want to say something short but I can’t. I followed this tumblr because I made friends with its owner at MEEHU 2, and I heartily approve of everything it posts. BUT I could hate everything that got posted here and I’d still follow it, because it’s Zany. Because you understand where my head and heart are at most of the time, and we can talk about serious shit without it feeling like a terrible chore or battle. Because choking. Because bloody beautiful art. Because slapping. Because…

@hypnowish – Followed because I liked the idea implicit in the name. Sadly inactive now, and never really lived up to its potential when it was active.

121 – 132

@girl-intraining – Beautiful writing that explores BDSM in ways that are easily accessible to people with little or no experience. READ THIS POST to see what I mean.

@brin-bellway – Rebogs some gloriously beautiful imagery, also has really good taste in comic books.

@justfairythings – was inactive for quite some time, but recently has posted again.  Like most of the tumblrs I follow, really properly funny. (An example:  “Q – Loving your blog, especially the unicorns. Did you know that the unicorn is the national animal of Scotland? A – I am afraid of Scotland.”)

@nerdistindustries –  Because they speak my language.

@hypnosubdude – Someone I know in real life, who is awesome in a lot of ways, but for me none moreso than his incredible enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is always delightful for me to watch.

@shaman58 – A fellow writer of hypno-smut! Opinionated and creative and just plain interesting to follow.

@calamitybrain – POSSIBLY the name I wish I’d come up with first the most of all the possible names. Makes an AWESOME art project, for some definitions of art project. Another hypno person that I’ve gotten to meet and befriend in Real Life.

@nicolettecuddleston – fictional bimbo blog that I followed primarily because I liked the name. Inactive.

@ladyskyla-dreams – Someone from Hypbook that I have known in Real Life. Once upon a time we carpooled together to WEEHU 1 and she convinced me that the me in the rearview mirror was from an alternate dimension, and how could I be sure that the me I was seeing was ever actually me…

@taylorswift – my most problematic problematic fave. Not the world’s best anything, but I like her anyway.

@alternative-pinup – Very active tumblr that posts beauty that falls outside the glossy unreality promoted by fashion magazines and mass media. Lots of tattoos and retro looks.

@dancercoder – Look! Another adorable hypno person whom I know in Real Life! <waves enthusiastically> Someday a class I am teaching WON’T be scheduled against one of your dance classes. SOMEDAY.

“gloriously beautiful imagery, also has really good taste in comic books.“

This description of my blog feels very weird from the inside, but that just makes it more interesting to know what you think of when thinking of me.

(My ability to enjoy beautiful imagery is relatively limited, and I have possibly never read a comic book in my life. Comic cultural-osmosis stuff can be fun, though, and I have been known to watch video adaptations of Marvel stuff and of Red Panda Adventures comics.)

(in related news, you guys should totally listen to the Red Panda Adventures radioplays, they’re clever and funny and well-plotted and the protagonist is occasionally uncomfortably attractive*)

*The Youtube mirror only goes up to season 4, so I couldn’t link straight to the 21:05 timestamp.

Tags:

#although if my tastes weren’t so narrow these days he’d be uncomfortably attractive more than occasionally #(I’m old enough and the show new enough that it would take some serious fucking with the timeline) #(you can’t just arrange for me to stumble across the right website at the right time) #((and of course in any case I wouldn’t want to destroy my own timeline in the bargain)) #(but I really wonder what (perpetually porn-starved) ten-year-old me would have thought of the Red Panda) #(I can partially extrapolate given what she thought of A Wrinkle in Time but that’s different) #(notably the sequels to A Wrinkle in Time are pretty much not kinky at all) #((which was very disappointing)) #(whereas RPA just. keeps. being like this) #((like not all the time but a lot of the time)) #reply via reblog #comic #Red Panda Adventures #tag rambles #(a tag ramble that has been percolating in my head for some time) #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw?

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~ Brin ~ 5 Comments

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Relatedly:

I’ve really been feeling my lack of networking lately.

  • I don’t know anyone in my neighbourhood, so I have nobody to team up with on Pokemon Go raids. (At my current strength (level 24, in an area where Geodudes and Machops pretty much never spawn outside events and I get a Dratini every couple of weeks), this effectively limits me to tier-1 raids unless I’m lucky enough to happen to show up at the same time as a stranger, and it’s impossible to *ever* do a tier-4 raid without a *minimum* of one other person, no matter how high-level you are.)
  • I don’t know any Canadians who both have TV service and would trust me with their TV-service login credentials. (We recently cancelled our TV service because we can’t afford it anymore, which means I can’t watch Daily Planet on TV. I can’t even pirate it, because it’s not popular enough for black-market providers to consider it worth stealing. Discovery Channel has an online streaming service, but you need TV-service login credentials for them to let you in.)
  • I don’t know anyone who I can both trust-trade my excess Amazon credits with and who wants to buy them. (Menial Internet labour for poor people, much like charity for poor people, usually fails to follow the “just give them money, rather than goods they’ll have to sell at a discount to buy the things they *actually* needed” guideline. They make excuses about how Amazon credit is basically the same thing as money because you can buy ~everything~ there, but in fact the list of things I want that Amazon has is fairly limited, and I end up getting credits (both USD credits and CAD credits) faster than I can spend them.)

This is clearly a problem (or a collection of related problems), but I don’t know what to do about it.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #rants #(sort of) #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #tag rambles #traditionally when you don’t have money you’re supposed to trade favours amongst your network of personal contacts to pick up the slack #but I don’t *have* a network strong enough to trade favours with #so when I can’t solve logistical problems with money they don’t get solved at all #and as my finances continue the slow deterioration they’ve been doing for half my life #I increasingly can’t solve logistical problems with money #my normal approach to friendship is #to stumble into relationships with people I don’t know well enough yet to know what terrible people they are #and about two years later I know enough of their terribleness that I can’t take it anymore and leave #occasionally I stumble into relationships with people who *don’t* turn out to be terrible but this happens too rarely to compose a network #(and besides even then I sometimes lose contact with them anyway) #I don’t know how to deliberately make friends #and I don’t know how to filter in advance so that a good fraction of new friends remain likeable after >2 years #and I *especially* don’t know how to do any of this in the Hard Mode of being poor #and therefore a noticeable portion of my motivation for befriending them being necessarily mercenary #(even when it’s a mutually-beneficial kind of mercenary I’m told people tend to find that sort of thing offputting) #(or they use it to take advantage of you) #(which is probably why the first group finds it offputting) #at least I’ll probably be strong enough to solo tier-2 raids before too long #that’s something #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Today’s answer to “am I ovulating, or am I sleep-deprived?” is “both”.

Tags:

#*flop* #*muffled ”ugggghhh”* #I am so fucking tired #in my case I don’t think this is an Amenta-induced problem #(that would be the part of me that cringed when Mom said my hair gets a red tint to it in the summer) #I am fortunate enough to have an incredibly incompetent reproductive drive #like #from what I’ve been able to figure out #this feeling (or the ovulatory component of it rather) was ~supposed~ to be about wanting babies #but that was multiple rounds of intra-brain Telephone ago #and by the time it actually becomes a quale it’s mangled enough to have completely lost sight of its evolutionary purpose #(which suits me just fine thank you) #(at least compared to the alternatives) #(*knocks on wood*) #tag rambles #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw? #oh look an original post

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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sinesalvatorem:

brin-bellway:

If anyone’s wondering who Jesse Bering is and why he’s related to that quote from yesterday:

A few years ago I was listening to Science for the People (as I used to do), and they had an interview with Jesse Bering about his then-recent book Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us. He was going on about how men’s sexualities are narrow and stable while women’s sexualities are broad and fluid, a spectrum with exclusive paraphiles at one end and @sinesalvatorem at the other.

And this felt really familiar, and at first I wasn’t sure why. And then I realised:

This was not the first time that I had been accused of having an extreme male brain.

I should start compiling a list of times I’m used as an example of an extreme version of a feminine mental trait, since it’s strangely frequent and cool.

I thought you might appreciate that. :)

Didn’t know it was strangely frequent, though.

Tags:

#and it’s interesting in a different way when *I* make a good example of a *masculine* trait #I used to know some people who would often point out #that any test of Real Womanhood *intended* to exclude trans women inevitably ends up excluding some cis women too #there are no places where you can draw a neat line #off the top of my head I can think of four Real Womanhood tests that I fail #(I’m autistic and paraphilic and non-dysmenorrheic and I never get catcalled) #((that last one especially feels like tempting fate to say it out loud)) #((but if I start getting catcalled tonight my past selves will still have been women)) #((so the point would remain)) #tag rambles #reply via reblog #gender

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

New DW episode tonight.

Place your bets on whether the Resistance will realise the need for frequent shadow-testing.

Tags:

#after last week’s stupidity my hopes are not high #in their defence it’s currently not clear if the Resistance even has access to enough background knowledge to figure this out #the Doctor’s alpha-timeline self #–and therefore all of his forks from that point on– #know about shadow-testing #but it’s not clear if he’s told anyone else #(I’m thinking the answer re: the Resistance is either ”no” or ”they find out partway through the episode”) #(and that the regeneration scene that’s going around in gifsets takes place in a shadow-world) #(leaning toward ”find out partway through” on the grounds that) #(IIRC) #(none of the characters have made *any* use of the information from the Extremis recording yet) #(all of their dealings with the Monks would have gone the same way if they’d never heard of them before) #(so I’m hoping the writers will realise they haven’t actually fired that proverbial rifle yet) #((but they might not because on the surface it *looks* fired already)) #((just in ways that didn’t actually affect the plot)) #tag rambles #Doctor Who #negativity tw #oh look an original post #reactionblogging #(sort of) #The Pyramid at the End of the World #The Lie of the Land #dw spoilers #(…I just realised I forgot to spoiler-tag my reaction post last week) #(oops) #(too late now I suppose)

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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(probably qualifies as a sequel to this post)

(I might be missing something here, but I’m pretty sure this is at the very least mostly correct:)

Every problem Team TARDIS is currently facing can be traced back, directly or indirectly (sometimes both), to failure to bring their own spacesuits. To assuming that clean, breathable air would be available when they had zero reason to think that (in the case of Chasm Forge) or less than zero reason to think that (in the case of an apocalyptically-fatal-biohazard lab with a known internal breach).

I think they’re teaching a very valuable lesson here: remember, kids, protective gear is not a joke, wear your fucking hazard suits, just fucking do it already.

Tags:

#this post brought to you by #a person who wears surgical masks while on airplanes and when going outside during high-pollen times #(works too) #(only partially in the case of the airplane) #(but buying myself a few days’ delay by contracting the passenger’s cold indirectly through my family was very valuable) #(I needed those few days and was very glad to get them) #hazard gear: fuck yeah #oh look an original post #reactionblogging #Doctor Who #everyone in this episode was incredibly stupid but we can learn from their mistakes #(there were other things wrong with this episode too) #(including lessons they tried to teach that you absolutely *should not* learn) #((like ”consent is only consent if you’re doing it for stupid shortsighted reasons”)) #(but I’m focusing on this problem right now) #negativity tw #illness tw #tag rambles

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

I wasn’t sure, at first, why I was thinking about it today in particular, but then I realised that–depending on whether I’m remembering the context right–it may very well have been six years ago precisely. It’s probably close, at any rate.

After all this time, (in something like irony), I still remember her telling me it was unreasonable to expect people to remember something I’d said last week.

(It hadn’t even been last week. It was yesterday. Part of the same ongoing conversation.)

She didn’t frame it as her having a bad memory–that would have been something else entirely–but as *my*…my arrogance in thinking that somebody might bother to remember things I’d said from one day to the next, my unrealistic demand for any continuity in my social relationships.

(I’d been hanging out with that group for over four months. (If I’m remembering the timing right. Dates are not my strong suit memory-wise. Perhaps people weren’t hers, but that isn’t what she said.))

I don’t know whether I still believe she’s right. I don’t want to believe it. Maybe I just *fear* that she’s right.

But I *still* feel surprised whenever people reference things I said earlier, whenever anyone outside my immediate family gives enough of a shit about me to remember me from one day to the next.

(And when they don’t–when they ask me the same questions over and over, when they tell me (after *two years*!) that I’m not worth arguing with because they only argue with people they know–I sigh, and I wonder if perhaps it is what I deserve.)

—

It occurs to me that possibly this is some sort of divide between people who think of people on the Internet as interchangeable NPCs and people who don’t. Both of the most egregious instances *were* on the Internet, after all.

It’s a slightly different flavour of horrible than how I was originally thinking of it. Instead of the reliability of “*all* of your friends think of you as an interchangeable NPC”, it’s “a significant percentage of your friends think of you as an interchangeable NPC, but you don’t know how large a percentage and you mostly don’t know which ones”.

(And it still means that in day-to-day social interactions, I generally don’t get to trust that people have any idea what I’m talking about without providing full context every time.

…I think I’m beginning to realise how much that’s been eating away at me, and how much it’s part of the appeal of rationalist Tumblr: I can’t trust people to understand references to things *I* said, but there *do* exist previous statements and conversations that I can reference and safely predict that people will understand.)

Tags:

#oh look an original post #vagueblogging #(sort of) #the more I think about it the more reasons I think of for why I’d be thinking about this *now* #Alison said recently it was a shame that more people didn’t come with manuals on their socialising needs and preferences #and I thought ”do I even *know* my socialising needs and preferences #let alone well enough to write a man page?” #I guess here’s part of an answer #(don’t get me wrong I suck at relationship object permanence) #(but that just means I mostly don’t tend to think about people when they’re not around) #(if reminded of their existence I generally remember a fair bit about them) #I’m worried about insulting people who can’t keep Internet people straight in their heads #but otoh the more likely someone is to be targeted by that the less likely they are to care about my opinion #so maybe it works out? #if you do have a bad memory for such things I’m not gonna hate you for it #unless you frame it as [me not being worth remembering] rather than [you not being good at remembering things] #tag rambles #I feel like this probably deserves some additional warning tag but I’m not sure what

Recommendation Spotlight: Too Like the Lightning

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://parhelioncomic.com/2017/04/17/recommendation-spotlight-too-like-the-lightning/}}

orbispelagium:

parhelioncomic:

Wrote up a recommendation of Too Like the Lightning!

If you like Parhelion, then please, by Christ, read this. (It’s not a webcomic, it’s a book that costs money and stuff, but holy shit.)

Here’s an overview that doubles as a capsule review of the thing I need to make fanart for.

Tags:

#I’ve been wanting to read this but haha what is free time #(hell I’m supposed to be working on my term paper right now) #(sometimes I hate when my brain is like ”no we have to write This Specific Thing Right Now”) #(anyway) #I binged the author’s entire blog archive a little while ago and it was fantastic #(though I feel a little…I don’t know if ”unnerved” is the right word) #(about how she is clearly capable of extracting much more pleasure from food than I can) #(I *can* enjoy food but I can’t get *fifty euros worth* of enjoyment out of a meal) #(but I mean that’s also interesting in itself) #(she’s got all this great history-blogging and scattered through) #(are also these occasional hints of different qualia) #basically what I’m saying is that ”written by the same person who writes Ex Urbe” #is enough on its own to make me want to read this series #the OP is just ganache on the cake #(I do not like icing) #tag rambles #Terra Ignota #recs #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

~ Brin ~ 5 Comments

I watched the first issue (both parts) of Season 12 of the Red Panda Adventures yesterday! I did say something about maybe doing more reaction-blogging, so:

God, I’d forgotten just how bad I am at stories with pictures, especially stories with pictures and words, and especially especially moving pictures. (It could be worse: they could be moving photographs rather than drawings.)

Pictures are so complicated; even if I can take my time, I usually miss a bunch of stuff*, and it only gets worse if it’s time-limited. It probably doesn’t help that I’m used to Red Panda episodes being purely audio: I suspect it strengthens my tendency to treat videos as basically audioplays, just with minor visual enhancement (getting the broad strokes of the imagery and missing all of the details).

(This is one of the reasons I have a lot of trouble with any webcomic** more complicated than XKCD, the other reason being that even steady webcomics update so slowly that by the time they reach the end of a plot thread, you’ve forgotten what the beginning was. When you combine these two effects, you tend to end up with climactic moments relying on minor details that I haven’t seen in ten months and also didn’t even notice at the time. I’m sure there must be people webcomics work for, but they really do not mesh well with my brain.)

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I did have fun. I just had to strike a compromise between “overwhelmed by quantity of sensory input” and “not getting the full effect of the story”, and I’m a bit out of practice at that.

Maybe I should try watching these episodes multiple times, shifting my focus on rewatches. They’re short enough that it wouldn’t take ages: I could probably even do two watches of an issue consecutively without burnout. (Even without soaking in Everything, watching videos gets mentally taxing after a while. One standard-length TV episode (~45 min) is somewhere around my limit.)

—

*Fun fact: image descriptions have a curb-cut effect. I’m (effectively) not blind, but I often find I understand an image (especially a comic) a lot better after I’ve read an image description, because the description pointed out important bits that I didn’t notice. (I wonder if I should try described video sometime.)

**I haven’t really tried non-web comics.

Tags:

#Red Panda Adventures #(okay so this was more about my relationship with video-based media in general than about RPA specifically but still) #oh look an original post #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #I was researching video conferencing recently for a school assignment #and the supporters praise it for conveying zillions of microexpressions and whatnot #which to me seems like a *downside* #video chats immerse you in so much input that your brain *has* to dump most of it #but you have limited control over which parts get dumped #and your conversational partner doesn’t know what made the cut and what didn’t #ideally you want to prevent people from sending messages you’re not going to receive #so that they *know* you don’t know it #(and if your partner is better at processing large quantities of real-time information than you are) #(they have an advantage over you) #(which they might exploit) #tag rambles #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #reactionblogging

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sinesalvatorem:

eternalfarnham:

equestrianrepublican:

8foldhero:

infinityhype:

shirtblr:

Shirt Neutrality by Wingfeather (on tees here)

@shapedforfighting

i need the true neutral one omfg

Chaotic Good.

…leave the gun, take the cannoli?

I need these on my body

Tags:

#alignments #clothing #yeah pretty much #(I tend to show up on alignment tests as neutral-edging-towards-lawful neutral-edging-towards-good) #(I suspect this is somewhat actually meaningful) #(because my brain looks at that result and goes) #(”well it’s just telling us what we want to hear”) #(”obviously everyone *wants* to think of themselves like that”) #(even though it is demonstrably not true that everyone wants to think of themselves like that) #((I don’t know about Evil but I’ve met quite a few people who like the idea of being Chaotic)) #(so the fact that I parse my alignment as ”telling me what I want to hear” itself provides information about me) #anyway these are neat designs