Okay I’m sorry to complain some more but today was an absolute nightmare. 

Two weeks ago there was a flood in my apartment because a pipe in the wall burst (it’s a very old building). I was told the floor would need to be ripped up and replaced, but there wouldn’t be further demolition, and I could go back to living there after one month when the repairs (handled by my landlord’s insurance) were done. Also, there didn’t seem to be any damage to my furniture, so that was good.

But now things have changed. The demolition/repair crew has finished assessing the damage, and they now think that repairs may last through September. They will be not only ripping up all of the floor, they will be taking out most of the walls, most of the kitchen, and ripping out all the tile in the bathroom, and who even knows what else. They have to demolish pretty much everything but the ceiling and windows. 

I’ve been over there to see it and it’s truly horrifying. I know the demolition has to happen for the repairs to go forward, but it just looks awful! When I’m standing in my apartment I can see through the floorboards into the unit below. Most of the floor has been ripped up and there is debris everywhere. Parts of the walls have caved in or buckled. It was honestly really upsetting to see it like that because this was my home for the past year and I loved living there. The interior was beautiful, and now it’s been totally destroyed.

I also found out today that the flood soaked the walls up to six feet high just from absorption from the floor, and that made me wonder if water got soaked up by my couch or the feet of my bed and got into my mattress. If the feet of a table got wet, it wouldn’t really matter, because wood can dry out more easily. But if my couch or mattress got wet then they could get moldy, and right now I have no way of telling if that has happened. So now I have to think about getting rid of my couch AND bed (my two largest and most expensive pieces of furniture) and getting new ones.

ALSO my landlord has terminated my lease. I’m not upset at her for doing that. Once I found out the repairs would last through September it didn’t surprise me that she’d terminate it. There’s a clause in the lease for cancelling it if there is catastrophic damage to the unit that renders it uninhabitable, which is exactly what has happened. This is just extremely stressful because two weeks ago I was happily living in my apartment thinking everything was fine, getting ready to renew my lease because I loved living there. And now I have to find a new place to live. 

AND because demolition has to go forward as soon as possible, I need to pack all my things and get them out of the apartment and into a storage unit by Sunday, and it’s just the WORST timing, because I start my new job on Tuesday. I’m literally so stressed out.

Oh no… If Harry fails the red encyclopedia check on Kimball, and simply comes up with ‘Hey aren’t Seolites all good at pinball?’

Oh man. So. That stereotype is likely why a junior officer Kim was put on the pinball squad in the first place.

It’s crazy how much racism is presented in fridge logic form. It hits so hard. The shit this man puts up with every day of his life. I just wanna hug him.

Fun fact: look up Seolite in fayde. I’ve been breaking my own heart all morning lol. I was trying to figure out if there were inconsistencies in Kim’s telling of his own background. I keep getting a Feeling about it. He says his grandparents are from Seol, but that both his parents are half Seolite, also his father wasn’t in the picture, but *also* that his parents were killed in the revolution…so he didn’t know his mother either? And he says he’s only a quarter Seolite, but with two half parents, is that correct? In his position, I think I’d tell half-truths as well, or whatever I needed to say to get racists off my ass. It is canon that Kim messes with racists by playing into stereotypes, and bless him for it because he’s so damn funny about it.

genuinely so angry and scared im shaking. how many other times this week this month this year have i been exposed without knowing it. do people even tell each other anymore. it’s just so grim. it’s so fucking grim

truly lmao 2024 lambda literary award finalist wynnstannery

Not going to actually tag this with his name, this is mostly for y'all following me and for my own piece of mind, but:

I cannot express how horrified I was when I watched Harris's video. How I felt like somebody had doused me in cold water, how reality slapped me in the face. I had, in my relief of finally submitting my thesis, forgotten plagiarists existed. Specifically, people who hunt down Bachelor papers to use because they're made by students, because we're oftentimes not actively looking up the topic of our thesis anymore. I spent a ridiculous amount of time googling my own topic to check if something may have happened, paranoid it might have happened. And, in hindsight, I know why I did it, even if back then it may have felt irrational; because I fought tooth and nail to finish that paper, to write it and submit it and pass it. I poured blood, sweat, and tears into it, and the possibility of somebody just stealing that felt infuriating. They just took the easy road whilst I laboured to get it done despite everything trying to stop me. That idea infuriated me, and it still does. I still feel that rage at the mere thought.

I just. I cannot understand anyone who thinks plagiarism "isn't a big deal". I don't understand the people defending this asshole for doing what he did, for telling us all that our feelings don't matter, that our work doesn't matter. I just. I feel so angry about all of this.

I also find it both ridiculously funny and blood-boiling infuriating that Norway is still having its own plagiarism scandals. Some of our elected officials are still being called out for it (one of them in our fucking education department!!), and still denying it! I cannot escape this shit, of being told that our concerns don't matter! Plagiarism is theft! What's so hard to understand about that?!

How dare they make me so angry that I don't even want to post the Tensaki fic I was so excited to start. I'm shaking. AhhhHHHHHHHH

𓅻

^ how i feel (i’m the fish)

Once again thinking about how I am always cleaning up after and taking care of everyone and just once would like to either be cared for or at least just left the fuck alone

PSA: Don't do this. Don't be an asshole. Be better than this.

went to Target to get a Sector 17 compact ver. and was excited to see so many in stock until I grabbed one and realized someone had slit open EVERY SINGLE ONE and stolen the photocards out of them. I told an employee and he said it happened within an hour of him putting them out this morning.

not only are you absolutely ruining this for everyone else who wanted an album, but you're also hurting svt's sales by making the albums unsellable, all over a small piece of paper with a boy's face on it. DON'T DO THIS. BE BETTER THAN THIS.

Not to be insufferably Millennial Musical Theatre Kid on main, but like.

Rent (the musical) sure does hit different when you’re in your 30s and the average cost of rent in your state 2 years and a housing crisis ago was already more than your entire monthly paycheck after taxes and healthcare premiums is right the fuck now and your goddamn ex-hippie sellout petit-bourgeois bosses think the amount they’re paying you is like, pretty fair? Like it’s better than market rate and you’re being kinda unreasonable about it? And you have a sudden epiphany listening to music in your car like, you know, actually, I think they didn’t dunk on Benny *enough*.

I had another pain management setup appointment this morning, this time with a physical therapist, and she was asking me about my flare ups and everything and i came to the realizations that 1) theres always a bit of a leadup to the flare, where i'll have a couple days where i feel like shit and my joints feel hot and weak but its also nowhere near the pain levels of an actual flare up. And 2) i am in fact in a pre-flare up right now :/

All this to say that im warping another belt but im not trying backstrap again right now because i can already tell im going to feel like death tomorrow

when u ask for an understudy rehearsal bcs u feel unprepared (bcs u haven't gotten to run any of ur shit on stage at all) so they give u an understudy SHOW instead <3

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awesome so today we (my colleague besties and me) were potentially exposed to covid by two different people we spent the morning with because nobody gives a fuck anymore and we’re all going to get sick and die. awesome! i love being alive in fall 2023 when nobody gives a single shit about covid anymore and this nightmare country has apparently decided to move on even though the danger has not subsided and arguably has increased and we no longer have access to resources or information to keep ourselves and each other safe. fuck the world

We watched The Devil in Ohio in its entirety yesterday because that's the kind of thing we have time for these days, and I think I completely broke my Netflix profile by telling it we didn't like it. I never, ever give streaming services more data than they are already mining just from tracking the things I'm watching, so it's a testament to how much we didn't like it that I actually clicked the thumbs down.

We were watching it as a kind of endearingly over-earnest bit of nonsense with some vaguely interesting stuff going on, and we were having a decent time (though neither of us were engaged with it enough that we didn't get up and do chores without pausing it). But then the ending...

Literally the only way the ending doesn't send me into apoplectic rage is if we're meant to understand that the protagonists' nuclear family is also a cult with the father as leader, and I AM HERE FOR THAT INTERPRETATION (let me show you my vast array of non-fiction about cults and the many forms they take), but that feels like an oppositional reading that is too smart for the piece.

It's possible I could have been persuaded to give it that much credit, but nope, not after reading more. In googling to try to get to the bottom of how someone gets to act as both executive producer and writer on the adaptation of their first novel*, I came across an article claiming that the novel/series was "based on true events'', citing the author's hearing second hand about the experiences of an anonymous source** and "research" that included Gone Girl, that noted non-fiction account of a cult survivor.

Presumably "based on true events" here means that cults exist and sometimes people leave them.

Of course, the fact that the big bad in the story was specifically a satanic cult*** had pretty well convinced me that the writer of this thing had never heard of Steve Hassan, Rick Ross, or Janja Lalich...which would be more forgivable if the main character weren't a trauma psychologist who presumably would at least do a quick look round to see if there is any scholarship on how to help people who have escaped from cults.

JEEBUS.

*A first novel which I, as someone who goes directly to the horror section in bookstores and occasionally attends a sf/fantasy/horror literary conference, had never heard of. WHERE DID THIS COME FROM, AND WHO DOES THE WRITER KNOW??

** Obviously obviously obviously this is EXACTLY the sort of story that would be sourced anonymously. I am not doubting the existence of people who escape horrific abuse and don't want their business publicized to the world. But before we go making "true story" claims, I'm going to need some more substantial evidence of corroborating research than a couple pieces of fiction, a recovered memory testimonial, and one legitimate documentary about a not-even-remotely-related cult. (Holy Hell is an incredible doc if you have the stomach for it [trigger warning for sexual abuse if you do look for it], but N O T H I N G about it has to do with Devil in Ohio, to the point where I honestly think the writer may have just claimed she watched it because it sounds like it should be about Christian theology in some way.)

*** Heads up for those who don't spend 90% of their free time reading about cults, satanic cults are...pretty fucking rare, compared to Christian cults and capitalist cults and white nationalist cults and extraterrestrial cults and cults that spring up around random people with malignant narcissism. But what isn't rare is people weaponizing the specter of satanic cults against marginalized people, so this is a particularly fucked up time to have the (rural isolationist terrorist) cult be ~~spooky satanists~~. Hat tip I guess for at least having them use some of the trappings of Christian religiosity?

Also, HEY, remember that time they tried to do a Heathers series where all the awful popular characters were people of marginalized identities, and the kids they were picking on were white? There's a whiff or two of that going on here, too, for all its attempts to be Inclusive(TM).

The conundrum of wanting to assign a character with no canon birthdate a birthday in your fanfic based on their personality and the stereotypical zodiac signs BUT your story is set at a given time of year and it’s inconvenient for their birthday to happen in it