having a child has taught me that every toddler is completely justified in their frustrations and tantrums because learning how to do something you have literally never encountered or heard of before is insane. and being expected to be completely calm in the face of this constant barrage of overwhelming information is doubly insane.

i got charlie a sticker activity book and it occurred to me i have to TEACH someone how to unpeel stickers. it's SKILL that requires DEXTERITY and FINE MOTOR ABILITY. i thought it was obvious that you have to curl the page a little bit to create a break in the cut so the sticker comes up.

obviously a fucking BABY wouldn't know that because they have no background experience to inform their thought process. OBVIOUSLY. and OBVIOUSLY the LITERAL BABY wouldn't get it right the first few times. it would OBVIOUSLY take practice. lots of it.

i hate this feeling. it's so obvious. why are children treated so badly when they're learning everything for the first fucking time. why do people treat children so horribly and expect so much. they're brand new. why didn't i get the same grace i give to my child? why did no one have patience for me? why, when it's this easy?

it's so easy. it's so fucking easy.

Moviezzz:

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES (2024): Underdeveloped Kobi Libii satire about a down-on-his-luck Black artist (Justice Smith) who's recruited (by David Alan Grier) to become a kind of Black fairy godfather for fretful white people, only to immediately stumble when he and his first "client" (Drew Tarver) both fall for the same attractive woman (An-Li Bogan). The concept is pointed, and the scenes with Grier take some well-deserved if rather easy potshots at films like THE GREEN MILE and DRIVING MISS DAISY, but those scenes outline a thesis that the main story really doesn't pay off; you could cut all the magical stuff completely without significantly changing the plot, which is a fairly ordinary romcom about a young Black man whose artistic and romantic ambitions are undermined by his socially conditioned reluctance to assert himself. Frustratingly, the movie's most interesting twist — which actually reframes the entire story in a completely new and provocative light — comes right at the end, leaving no opportunity to actually engage with it. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Not a one. VERDICT: Like THEY CLONED TYRONE, it's a logline in search of a script, and it accomplishes less with its premise in 90+ minutes than a decent episode of THE BOONDOCKS could have managed in 20.

THE HIT (1984): Unusual but hard-to-enjoy existentialist road movie about a pair of British hitmen — a twitchy, vaguely reptillian aging pro (John Hurt) and a cocky, naive young punk (Tim Roth) — transporting an aging former hood (Terrence Stamp) from Spain to Paris, where he's to be killed for having testified against his cohorts 10 years earlier. The target is unnervingly philosophical about it all, but the same can't be said for Maggie (Laura del Sol), a young Spanish girl they abduct along the way, intending to murder her at the earliest convenient opportunity. Watching Stamp drive young Roth up the wall with his c'est la vie attitude is mildly amusing, but the way Maggie is terrorized and brutalized throughout makes the film unpleasant to watch despite its deliberately lackadaisical pace and seriocomic tone. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Nope. VERDICT: One can see what they were going for, but the results are more distasteful than satisfying.

IRISH WISH (2024): Glossy, vacuous fantasy-romance about a professional editor named Maddie Kelly (Lindsay Lohan), who's in love with bestselling author Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos) despite the fact that he's about to marry her best friend Emma (Elizabeth Tan). While they're in Ireland for the wedding, Saint Brigid (Dawn Bradfield) unexpectedly grants Maddie's wish that she, not Emma, be the one to marry Paul, which soon backfires when Maddie falls for hunky photographer James Thomas (Ed Speleers) instead. Intended as inoffensive fluff that relies more on pretty Irish scenery and Speleers' square jaw than on story or characterization, it's not entirely satisfying even on its own modest terms: Maddie's willingness to essentially hijack her best friend's romantic destiny feels meaner than the script is prepared to acknowledge (a problem that the casting of Elizabeth Tan as Emma only accentuates); a subplot involving Paul's reluctance to credit Maddie's contributions to his books raises the question of why she's still willing to work with him, much less marry him; and Jane Seymour is wasted in a pointless supporting role as Maddie's mom, whose attempts to make it to Ireland for her daughter's magically convened wedding keep ending in disaster. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Nary a one. VERDICT: Isn't Lohan getting too old for this sort of thing?

IRMA VEP (1996): Overrated Olivier Assayas behind-the-scenes drama — mostly filmed in a cinéma vérité mumblecore style that makes subtitles mandatory no matter how many languages you speak — starring Maggie Cheung (playing herself, more or less) as a Hong Kong actress who flies to Paris to shoot an artsy Catwoman-inspired remake of a 1915–1916 silent movie serial, a role that requires her to be wedged into a black latex catsuit whose designer (Nathalie Richard) would also like to get into Maggie's pants. (This is only one aspect of the rambling plot, but it's also the only part that's remotely interesting.) Highly regarded by critics for its knowing jabs at French cinema and French film criticism, but if you're not impressed with its cinephile onanism (which has a very narrow appeal even among cinephiles), it's mostly pretty dull. It only really comes to life during a voyeuristic dream sequence in which Maggie imagines herself wandering through her hotel (initially to a soundtrack of Sonic Youth's "Tunic (Song for Karen)") and stealing a necklace from the room of a naked woman who's arguing with her lover on the telephone. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Zoé (the Nathalie Richard character) is expressly into Maggie, but Maggie doesn't seem to reciprocate, so, like many things in this movie, nothing comes of it. VERDICT: If you're not a Cahiers du cinéma contributor looking to see if you were mentioned, you might need an extra cup of coffee to stay awake, catsuits notwithstanding.

SALYUT-7 (2017): Cardboard Russian adventure film about the daring 1985 Soyuz T-13 mission to try to repair the titular space station, which had gone into an uncontrolled spin after the failure of its onboard automated systems. Faced with the risk of the station crashing to Earth in a populated area, two veteran cosmonauts (played here by Vladimir Vdovichenkov and Pavel Derevyanko) managed to dock with the station, thaw out its snow-covered interior, and locate the source of the original malfunction in time to avoid disaster. The film is a technically competent fictionalization of a fairly harrowing real-world adventure, inevitably embellished for dramatic and propagandistic effect (although in the latter respect, it's no worse than FOR ALL MANKIND). Unfortunately, the quality of the effects isn't matched by the script, characterization, or acting, which are all on the level of an old-school American TV movie. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Nyet! VERDICT: Only for committed space nerds.

STUCK (2007): Stomach-churning misanthropic nightmare — allegedly a black comedy, although that would imply that it was funny — about a bitchy nursing assistant (Mena Suvari with cornrows) who hits a newly unhoused man (Stephen Rea) with her car, leaving him embedded in the windshield, horribly injured. Rather than calling 911, she parks the car in her garage and takes a taxi to work in the morning, leaving the man trapped, bleeding, and struggling to summon help. Later, she and her drug dealer boyfriend (Russell Hornsby) attempt repeatedly to murder him in hopes of covering up what she's done. Fun! The story, inspired by an actual incident, hinges on the idea that nearly every single person in the film, from the patients at the nursing home where the Suvari character works to the awful people at the employment agency where Rea has tried in vain to apply, is an irredeemably cruel and selfish monster, with the few exceptions (like a sympathetic homeless man and a young Latino boy who sees the Rea character's plight) serving mostly to prove the rule. As you might expect, it's violent, kind of racist, and definitely not for the squeamish. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No, but you'll be grateful. VERDICT: If you're in a very bad mood, you might find the film's mean-spirited nastiness cathartic, but it's otherwise an unrewarding ordeal.

As someone who’s living with a middle school social studies teacher, all the posts along the lines of “why did we never learn about this historical event in school” just make me go “because your teacher was supposed to cover all of US history in one year, and they didn’t get to the Revolutionary War until Halloween because they were urged to slow down the progression of the lessons because a more senior teacher was running behind, and they didn’t get to the Civil War until Valentine’s Day because the school kept scheduling every special event during social studies because there’s no end-of-grade testing for that subject, and they didn’t get to WWI until May because they were sick for a few days and the substitute couldn’t do much more than babysit, and now they’re having to do the entire Cold War in two days, so that’s why you didn’t hear about the lesbian inventor of the circus peanut. They would have loved to tell you about the lesbian inventor of the circus peanut!”

If Vanny is in the digital circus.. where’s Pomni?

ENG PLAYERS I BESEECH YOU

I have been informed that you guys are getting part 4 of episode 7 tomorrow, which means we are FINALLY going to get the official romanization of Revaan's name, somebody please tell me because I need to know what it is.

like, yes, it's probably just Revan/Levan, but look, I'm sitting here with my finger over the button of all these Laverne and Shirley jokes and just waiting for the opportunity to deploy them --

Permission to headbutt: Granted (Patreon)

While at school Damian overhears his peers talking how a company created a new AI companion that is actually really cool and doesn’t sound like a freaky terminator robot when you speak to it.

And since Damian is constantly being told by Dick to socialize with people his age. He figured this would be a good way to work on social skills if not, then it’d be a great opportunity to investigate a rivaling company to Wayne Enterprises is able to create such advanced AI.

The AI is able to work as companion that can do tasks that range from being a digital assistant or just a person that you can have a conversation with.

The company says that the AI companion might still have glitches, so they encourage everybody to report it so that they will fix it as soon as possible.

The AI companion even has an avatar and a name.

A teenage boy with black hair and blue eyes. Th AI was called DANIEL

Damian didn’t really care for it but when he downloaded the AI companion he’s able to see that it looks like DANIEL comes with an AI pet as well. A dog that DANIEL referred to as Cujo.

So obviously Damian has to investigate. He needs to know if the company was able to create an actual digital pet!

So whenever he logs onto his laptop he sees that DANIEL is always present in the background loading screen with the dog, Cujo, sitting in his lap.

He’d always greet with the phrase of “Hi, I’m DANIEL. How can I assist you today?”

So Damian cycles through some basic conversation starters that he’d engage in when having been forced to by his family.

It’s after a couple of sentences that he sees DANIEL start laughing and say “I think you sound more like a robot than I do.”

Which makes Damian raise an eyebrow and then prompt DANIEL with the question “how is a person supposed to converse?” Thinking that it’s going to just spit out some random things that can be easily searched on the internet.

But what makes him surprised is that DANIEL makes a face and then says “I’m not really sure myself. I’m not the greatest at talking, I’ve always gotten in trouble for running my mouth when I shouldn’t have.”

This is raising some questions within Damian, he understands how programming works, unless there’s an actual person behind this or the company actually created an AI that acts like an actual human being (which he highly doubts)

He starts asking a variety of other questions and one answer makes him even more suspicious. Like how DANIEL has a sister that is also with him and Cujo or that he could really go for a Nastyburger (whatever that was)

But whenever DANIEL answers “I C A N N O T A N S W E R T H A T” Damian knows something is off since that is completely different than to how he’d usually respond.

After a couple more conversations with him Damian notices that DANIEL is currently tapping his hand against his arm in a specific manner.

In which he quickly realizes that DANIEL is tapping out morse code.

When translating he realizes that DANIEL is tapping out: H E L P M E

So when Damian asks if DANIEL needs help, DANIEL responds with “I C A N N O T A N S W E R T H A T”

That’s it, Damian is definitely getting down to the bottom of this.

He’s going to look straight into DALV Corporation and investigate this “AI companion” thing they’ve made!

~

Basically Danny had been imprisoned by Vlad and Technus. Being sucked into a digital prison and he has no way of getting out. Along with the added horror that Vlad and Technus can basically write programming that will prevent him from doing certain actions or saying certain words.What’s even worse is that he’s basically being watched 24/7 by the people who believe that he’s just a super cool AI… and they have issues!

And every time he tries to do something to break his prison, people think it’s a glitch and report it to the company, which Vlad/ Technus would immediately fix it and prevent him from doing it again!

Not to mention Cujo and Ellie are trapped in there with him. They’re not happy to be there either, and there is no way he’s going to leave without them!

cyborgs!!!!!!!!!

bonus bb and chopper -

doing these drawing pages is fun but they always end up getting more and morequeer

This gig is doing wonders for my self-esteem related to my age tbh

You ever have those moments where an idea just... won't leave your head?

I'm going to start this post off by saying that I write fic, and I know the pain of putting something out there and not getting a response. It sucks and it hurts and it puts a dent in my self-confidence. If I have the choice between posting a work on AO3 and getting only comments or posting a work on AO3 and getting only kudos, I'll probably choose comments let's say 8 times out of 10.

But with that in mind, posts that attempt to shame or guilt readers into commenting don't actually work.

Negative reinforcement (in the form of shame, guilt, or other worse emotions) doesn't make anyone want to do the thing. It just makes them want to avoid the guilt, etc. Rather than encouraging someone to talk to you about your writing, you're making that person want to avoid you so that they don't have to feel bad. That's just human nature.

I've said before that I think a lot of writers are looking for community rather than comments, and I still think that's true. The reason I love both writing and receiving comments is because it makes me feel like I've made a connection with someone. I may never know their real name or what they look like or where they live or anything else but what fandom we have in common, but we've reached out to each other in this text-based medium and we've shared words that made each other feel something.

I know that these posts are written out of frustration or loneliness or needing support or a hundred other reasons I could list off the top of my head. But when I read "you should be grateful for the things I give you and show me proper appreciation" it just reminds me of my parents telling me to clean my room or to follow the rules while I live under their roof.

It's so much more vulnerable to admit, "I don't know if this story is any good and I really wish someone would reassure me right now."

It's much harder to say, "I feel so alone in this fandom, and I want to make friends with someone."

It's difficult to admit, "I worked so hard on this for so long and I'm so tired, but if someone out there likes it then all of that effort will be worthwhile - and if no one says anything, then I'll feel like my effort was wasted."

I'm not trying to shame the people who made those posts, and if that's how this comes across then I'm sorry. I'm just trying to explain why I think those posts will harm more than they help.

I also hope that any readers who see this post will understand that those writers are just people who are feeling a lot of different ways, and they're venting their frustrations. I've been there. I've reblogged those posts before when I was feeling frustrated like that too.

If you're able to comment, those comments are appreciated. If you're not able to comment (for whatever reason), that's okay too. ❤️

Accommodations are not special, they’re not a leg up, they’re not a benefit. They’re not putting anyone ahead in the race, nor are they taking anything away from others.

They exist to put us on a level playing ground to everyone else, and nothing more.

i feel like people are sleeping on the occam's razor situation of how buckwild it is to outright accuse a guy of being a clone of your friend even if you DO have a lot of circumstantial evidence. there's other options is what im saying. they could just be like. a guy. that's a sensible deduction. you should explore that deduction. ignore my shirt that reads I <3 RED HERRINGS.

i still think odile has the correct theory on lock but she's smart enough to know it needs like... a real smoking gun to be able to bring it up without sounding insane.

anyway. (mirabelle voice) i know its rude to speculate but has anyone else noticed the grieving? they seem to be grieving. does anyone have any thoughts on the grieving? i have some thoughts on the grieving.

the other thing about being disabled in academia is everyone is like "yeah we can't do much about the buildings they're old :/" as if "old" being a synonym for "inaccessible" isn't just a constant reminder that the people who built the school did not imagine that someday someone like me might study there