Poems in Estonian, other mostly in English
737 posts
Kriimuline-blog - Luulud - Tumblr Blog
The Importance of Mary Sue
When I was in Ninth Grade, I won a thing.
That thing, in particular, was a thirty dollar Barnes & Noble gift certificate. I was still too young for a part-time job, so I didn’t have this kind of spending cash on me, ever. I felt like a god.
Drunk with power, I fancy-stepped my way to my local B&N. I was ready to choose new books based solely on the most important of qualities…BADASS COVER ART. I walked away with a handful of paperbacks, most of which were horrible (I’m looking at you, Man-Kzin Wars III) or simply forgettable.
One book did not disappoint. I fell down the rabbit hole into a series that proved to be as badass as the cover art promised (Again, Man-Kzin Wars III, way to drop the ball on that one). With more than a dozen books in the series, I devoured them. I bought cassette tapes of ballads sung by bards in the stories. And the characters. Oh, the characters. I loved them. Gryphons, mages, but most importantly, lots of women. Different kinds of women. So many amazing women. I looked up to them, wrote bad fiction that lifted entire portions of dialogue and character descriptions, dreamed of writing something that the author would include in an anthology.
This year I decided in a fit of nostalgia to revisit the books I loved so damn much. I wanted to reconnect with my old friends…
…and I found myself facing Mary Sues. Lots of them. Perfect, perfect, perfect. A fantasy world full of Anakin Skywalkers and Nancy Drews and Wesley Crushers. I felt crushed. I had remembered such complex, deep characters and didn’t see those women in front of me at all anymore. Where were those strong women who kept me safe through the worst four years of my life?
Which led me to an important realization as I soldiered on through book after book. That’s why I needed them. Because they were Mary Sues. These books were not written to draw my attention to all the ugly bumps and whiskers of the real world. They were somewhere to hide. I was painfully aware that I was being judged by my peers and adults and found lacking. I was a fuckup. And sometimes a fuckup needs to feel like a Mary Sue. As an adult, these characters felt a little thin because they lacked the real world knowledge I, as an adult, had learned and earned. But that’s the thing…these books weren’t FOR this current version of myself. Who I am now doesn’t need a flawless hero because I’m comfortable with the idea that valuable people are also flawed.
There is a reason that most fanfiction authors, specifically girls, start with a Mary Sue. It’s because girls are taught that they are never enough. You can’t be too loud, too quiet, too smart, too stupid. You can’t ask too many questions or know too many answers. No one is flocking to you for advice. Then something wonderful happens. The girl who was told she’s stupid finds out that she can be a better wizard than Albus Dumbledore. And that is something very important. Terrible at sports? You’re a warrior who does backflips and Legolas thinks you’re THE BEST. No friends? You get a standing ovation from Han Solo and the entire Rebel Alliance when you crash-land safely on Hoth after blowing up the Super Double Death Star. It’s all about you. Everyone in your favorite universe is TOTALLY ALL ABOUT YOU.
I started writing fanfiction the way most girls did, by re-inventing themselves.
Mary Sues exist because children who are told they’re nothing want to be everything.
As a girl, being “selfish” was the worst thing you could be. Now you live in Narnia and Prince Caspian just proposed marriage to you. Why? Your SELF is what saved everyone from that sea serpent. Plus your hair looks totally great braided like that.
In time, hopefully, these hardworking fanfiction authors realize that it’s okay to be somewhere in the middle and their characters adjust to respond to that. As people grow and learn, characters grow and learn. Turns out your Elven Mage is more interesting if he isn’t also the best swordsman in the kingdom. Not everyone needs to be hopelessly in love with your Queen for her to be a great ruler. There are all kinds of ways for people to start owning who they are, and embracing the things that make them so beautifully weird and complicated.
Personally, though, I think it’s a lot more fun learning how to trust yourself and others if you all happen to be riding dragons.
This explains a lot about my lack of asking for help when I clearly need it
Almost 200 killed and over 700 injured today after Israel’s attacks in Lebanon. Nearly 400 air strikes in only a few hours with more expected to come.
SOMETIME IN THE LAST WEEK MY SCHOOL PUT UP A LARGE BANNER DEDICATED TO THE :-) EMOTICON
Classes we should be adding to med school/nursing school curriculum
-your patient lives in their body and probably knows more about it than you do 101
-your patient was not born yesterday and should be spoken to like a competent adult 101
-your patient does not make 6 figures and should be told if something you are doing is going to cost them thousands of dollars BEFORE you do it, not after. 101
-its not that hard to read a patient's chart so that they don't have to catch you up on their entire life since birth every time they see you 101
-the patient doesn't care that you "don't have much time" to talk to them because it is their life and health on the line and that should be your priority 101
-its not that fucking hard to communicate with your team about your schedule 101
every day i have to wake up in a world where i was never given a rusted key by a fox that opens the door in my home that's always been locked, or inherited a sword made entirely of starlight from a distant relative, or been the subject of a prophecy that i will return magic to these shores, and honestly it's a huge fuckign bummer
“While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien’s) where it doesn’t belong, Brancher sees it differently: “I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien’s text in order to do that. It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.” Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they’re looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have long-standing and complex relationships with each other. It’s a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It’s benefits with friendship.”
— Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via francescacoppa)
Someone put it into words. I gotta sit down
One of the most important things I’ve learned as a Real Adult™ is the importance of a job half done.
Today I did a load of dishes, wiped off my stove, and swept the kitchen floor. Did I do the best job, or finish every dish? No! My stove still has that caked on caramel that I need to bust out an SOS pad to take care of, one of our big pots is still sitting in the sink, and somehow a kitty kibble unearthed itself while I was wiping down the stove (?? how??).. but the kitchen looks a LOT better. It’s once again an inhabitable, usable space.
Parents, bosses, teachers, even my own self, harp upon absolute perfect completion of a task as the be all and end all of a job well done, but god damn, my kitchen isn’t terrible because I took the time to improve it. Little steps, especially when you’re struggling, are important. They mean a LOT. They are a sign that you won, if only in that brief moment, and they make getting all the other stuff done so much easier later on down the road.
“Our own culture has so much stuff that pottery has lost much of its former importance, but it is still one of the few universal possessions. Perhaps many thousands of years from now, when our culture has been buried by some apocalypse or other, archaeologists will start to dig up our remains and name us the Mug community, MC for short: we were a people who liked our ceramics to be brightly colored, large enough to accommodate high volumes of comforting caffeinated drinks and above all dishwasher-proof.” – Bee Wilson, Consider the Fork (Basic Books 2013): 10.
tbh the ‘anything is better than nothing’ mindset has been invaluable to me, especially as a disabled person. like. half-assing things is the number one reason anything gets done for me.
run the dishwasher even if it’s not full. brush your teeth even if you aren’t going to floss. put away a single piece of clutter to make your space more livable. change your shirt and keep wearing the same pair of pants. eat a snack if you can’t make a meal.
it sucks to not be able to get stuff done as well as you’d like. i get that so much. but you have permission to half-ass stuff as much as you need. literally anything is better than nothing.
killing the baby for sport
GET YELLED AT
photos by carl bergstrom
The reason fat cadavers are not accepted for medical programmes is that you need to cut through every layer of fat carefully. Which takes time, and lab sessions are inherentely limited in that. It's better for med students to spend that time looking at what organs actually look like in bodies. This isn't fatphobia, it's just .. the way dissecting bodies works? In the same way surgeries on fat people take longer because there's just physically more tissue. The alternative would be to force the med students who get fatter cadavers to do more lab sessions at weird times outside of the usual schedules. Or force them to stay over the holidays. Or not let them get enough time to do the lab work they need to. Which imo would be a bit fucked up especially when med school is already so difficult and time-consuming.
It’s fatphobia. Fat bodies absolutely need to be studied. To ignore an entire demographic of oppressed individuals in the medical field for the sake of convenience(?!) is violence. Did you even read the article? They called working on fat cadavers “unpleasant.” It’s fatphobia and it’s unacceptable.
friendly reminder you dont need a diagnosis to be in disability spaces, as an example im in constant pain and fatigue, have migraines every week and my joints hurts to a point I can't write, but since familiar gaslighting/medical trauma and the fact that im an indigenous, brown skin fat man a diagnosis is fucking hard (but im in my way! :)) , but i still deserve a safe space to talk about my experiences and to feel valuable and supported.
never feel like youre interrupting someone's space or that you shouldn't be here cause you dont have a diagnosis, disabilities existed before diagnosis
Ancestor to the modern pet peeve, it is believed that the wild peeve was driven to extinction in the seventeenth century.
A wild peeve. (1702)
Yeah, but you still know it better than anyone else. Not listening your body, just doing what everybody else kills you - slowly or not so slowly. And then you wish doctors would know how to help and they just don't believe you because "not typical" and "probably side effect". You are alone with body you don't understand and noone other unterstands either and what the hell are you supposed to do?!
I know people mean well when they say it but hearing the phrase “you know your body best” as someone with chronic illness is so funny, like man no I don’t I ain’t got no clue what that fucker’s planning and I’m scared to find out
generally speaking when it comes to mental and physical health, if you're asked "do you struggle with this" and your answer is "no, Because I Have A System," then your answer is actually yes
I would like to see more people talk about how jobs treat disabled employees.
I used to prep, wash dishes, and cook at mellow mushroom. I had chronic pain that wasn't NEARLY as bad as it is today, but it was still very debilitating. I told my employer "i cannot stand more than 4 to 6 hours. I CANNOT do shifts longer than this due to my illness." And even though i made my boundaries VERY clear, everyday i worked it was 8 hours at the least and 10 or 12 at the most. I would go up to my manager and say "look i really need to leave, my shift is over, my chronic pain is killing me." And he'd say "we really need to here, you HAVE to push through." And so i did, and after one, ONE month of that job my crps got incredibly worse to the point where i could no longer walk my dog around the block which was .5 miles. I quit, and that was FOUR years ago, and ever since that day I HAVE BEEN BEDRIDDEN AND HAVE TO USE A WHEELCHAIR. It is my biggest regret in life.
My best friend who has seen my whole journey has recently developed undiagnosed chronic pain, and she is in the EXACT same scenario i was 4 years ago. Busting her ass at a pizza place with extreme pain that hurts her so much she tells me "im in so much pain i don't even feel like a person." She doesn't feel LUCID. And her manager and coworkers are saying the same thing "if you don't help us you will let us down, we'll be in the shit."
That job thats hurting you isn't fucking worth it. I promise you no money is worth losing all your physical abilities and never getting them back. Your coworkers and boss do not give a shit about you, so don't you dare suffer for them. They will never understand your struggle and they will never try. They truly think being understaffed is worse than whatever pain you experience. They would rather you permanently damage yourself than inconvenience them. FUCK THEM. DON'T FUCKING DO IT!
.:Goddess of Spring:.
Just a safety reminder to NEVER try shrooms or LSD if your family has any history of schizoaffective disorders.
“When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.
They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”
So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?
It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.
This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.
These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”
Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”
The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.
The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.
In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”
- Naomi Klein
I feel like people forget that ADHD is also poor emotional regulation with mood swings. Like, it can get very bad
ADHD jokes are always the "haha I forgor" or about the hyperfixations what about the less pleasant symptoms like rejection sensitive dysphoria or VERY angry mood that you feel like ur going to lose it
wait, it's an interesting challenge. I mean I am the best person for me, as I understand goodness. But there are of course other opinions.
I am fearless, point out problems where I see them and autorithy makes me extra ready to fight against it. It does not intimidate me, it gives me the feeling I am doing the right hing, because I don't have to worry about hurting those who are already in bad place.
Of course it may be seen and described as me being quarrelsome, does not seek compromise, does not care about other people feelings (who may be around and excepect polite quiet conversation, not yelling) and is generally nonpleasant person.
I think life must be enjoyable, full of emotions, mistakes, triumphs, deeds, efforts, edgewalking and if this life is short, so what. At least it is full lived. So I don't sterilize my pets, my cat used to go outside (until he got so stressed fighting other cats all the time that he started losing his hair - then I decided that ok, he does not enjoy it, life outside hurts him), my dog runs without leash in nature, I smoke, I tried to kill myself few times, neither of my kids is planned by their fathers, I have no savings and I don't even have to say why all this is bad in the minds of many many people. Yes, if I get extra money, I give about 10% of it to other people who needs it more than I do. Because in the end my money would still be gone, now at least someone poorer than me also got some.
I am a warrior. Well, and if you think fighting is evil, if you are pacifist for example, I am bad person.
Be honest, are you a bad person in any kind of way? I've been finding out about gross stuff that a bunch of blogs I really liked did and I feel icky :(
yeah in most ways. Good luck out there