Engaging with fiction in good faith allows you to build empathy by experiencing things through the eyes of other people

and refusing to engage with certain fiction because of a hard line moral stance against The Wrong Kind Of Fiction just makes you a less empathetic person over all.

The thing is, I engage with a lot of fiction that I would object to in real life. Sometimes I also run into fiction that I'm not particularly happy or comfortable with, but because the story is compelling, engaging, genuine and earnest and presented in a vulnerable, earnest, human way, my surface level distaste is overridden by my connection with a stranger who I've been given the opportunity to know.

I just read a comic by a gay man that has heavy drug use, written in a way that has an intimate knowledge of the kind of life and culture a lot of gay men run into, full of casual sex and hard drugs and sudden death and violence. The protagonist isn't a bad person, but he's also not the best person, but you root for him all the way through. And then he has a really bad trip and dies.

I don't feel particularly comfortable with any of that, but I was engaged all the way through. And by simplistic metrics many people might not consider it "good gay rep" or whatever because it involves a gay man doing all the hard drugs, being promiscuous and then dying, but it was written authentically, by a gay man who clearly has had experience with these things, and encourages you the reader to seek help and provides resources if you've experienced something similar.

I do not accept the idea that you should always have a moral stance on the fiction you consume. You don't have to make excuses, or have caveats, to justify the "problematic fiction" you've engaged with, maybe even enjoyed. Because a lot of fiction, particularly indie fiction, is a conversation between a creator revealing something honest and vulnerable, and a reader learning about the lives of others and experiences they will never have.

And it is a silly exercise to try to give that sort of conversation a (very ironically named) Common Sense Media review because it's got violence and drugs and kinky sex or whatever.

It is easy to stick to fiction you're comfortable with. I've done it, I do it. But in my experience, allowing yourself to engage with other people's stories, comfortable or not, is healthy for you as a human being in learning empathy and compassion for other human beings. Try reading some books in the local library, or do what I did and buy a bunch of indie comics and books from a convention full of indie creators (easy) and actually read them (Dark Souls Hard Mode).

And who knows, maybe you'll find something that'll change your life, or help you grow as a person. Or maybe you'll find a cool new thing you like.

While the CDC has given up on providing any guidance on risk control measures for covid, The People's CDC is filling the gap and continuing to track and update guidance as the situation evolves. Here's where you can download their Safer In-person Gatherings Toolkit:

Here's an extremely detailed guide on what to do if you have covid that includes how long to isolate for, how to set up your house with hepa filters and ventilation, what supplies to have on hand, when to go to the hospital, and guidelines on how to pace from the MEAction Network in the event you end up with long covid:

The work these guys are doing is amazing. They're still tracking wastewater data too so you can still figure out transmission levels in your area and not just the hospitalization levels. Check them out!

The funniest thing you could do in any new outer space adventure / exploration media is have someone invite the ship's medic to the bridge and they'd be like "fuck no, I'm the main doctor for a whole crew, come see me if you break an arm or something, good luck exploring the surface of the Planet Made of Angry Poison Gas Clouds, With Teeth, Who Love the Flavor of Human Flesh or whatever the fuck it is, adios, see you in the canteen maybe, maybe not I'm fuckin busy." And you just barely ever see that character again.

happy pride month

a thrilling saga

ice boy

Commission for @/h_stoutenburg on twitter.

Idk I’m just curious. Please reblog if you want

This afternoon a federal judge in Florida issued an injunction on the enforcement of the state's ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors. And while the order is limited to a small number of plaintiffs seeking hormone treatments on behalf of their children, it's a scathing indictment of the statute's constitutionality, as well as the cruelty of the politicians who advocated for it.

"The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real," writes US District Judge Robert Hinkle, hinting at the "unspoken suggestion running just below the surface in some of the proceedings that led to adoption of the statute and rules at issue—and just below the surface in the testimony of some of the defense experts—is that transgender identity is not real, that it is made up."

But you don't get to ban something, particularly gender-based medical care, based on barely concealed bigotry.

"Any proponent of the challenged statute and rules should put up or shut up: do you acknowledge that there are individuals with actual gender identities opposite their natal sex, or do you not? Dog whistles ought not be tolerated," the court bristles.

kudos to the women bikers

I want this to be an actual poll, so I'm gonna need a REALLY big sample size, so do ANYTHING you can to get this around! Reblog it! Kung-pow-penis me, if you have to! Wreck my notifications! Just do ANYTHING!

October is ADHD awareness month! 🎉

The memory issues ADHD causes are some of the scarier and more frustrating parts of living with it - so here’s a set of reaction doodles that all my fellow ADHD peeps are welcome to use whenever anybody decides to comment on your forgetfulness ^ 

Ｊせんせは　よくあそんでくれますでち

Master J often plays with Kofu

How the Grim Reaper sends dogs to the afterlife in The Sims 3

"I think I've been shadowbanned:(("

Buddy I've been on this site nine wretched years and I've never gotten more than 17 notes on a post. And I love it here. Get on my level

the whole trend where people refer to “furries” and actually mean a more specific (gay or trans or autistic or whatever) demographic is not new and is, in fact, extremely well trodden territory by internet tough guys. the point is to make the furries who get defensive over it sound ridiculous by defending something as silly as being a furry. it gives people plausible deniability by using an already misunderstood or outright maligned subculture as a smokescreen for their typically more specific disgust. you can win any argument and get people on your side if you imply they fuck animals.

this is a very familiar tactic to me as a jew. people have learned that outright saying jews are to blame for all the world’s problems is usually unwise so they say “they” or “illuminati” or whatever instead. this isn’t meant to say anti furry sentiment is the same as antisemitism, rather to help people think about why exactly people might suddenly be calling furries uniquely sexually depraved on the anniversary of an infamous post where a trans woman made a furry joke that some weirdo blew up over.