Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
Not a sin- feeling sexual attraction, sex with consenting partners, masturbation, consuming pornographic media, having several sexual partners, sex before mariage. IT’S A SIN WHEN- the person projects lust onto an unwilling recipient person and does not take into account their wants or consent. Rape, harassment, sexual assault, catcalling, dick pics.
Gluttony
Not a sin- food, enjoying food, cooking, eating sweets, eating meat. In the larger sense, accumulating material things you enjoy, like books or collectibles or whatever. IT’S A SIN WHEN- It deprives other people of what they need.
Envy
Not a sin: Wanting things you see other people have, like money, power, fame. IT’S A SIN WHEN: This is how you define people, and stop respecting them as humans. It’s a sin when you use them for what they have and what they can bring you.
Greed
Not a sin: Wanting financial security, working hard for the things you want. IT’S A SIN WHEN: Your own financial growth depends on keeping other people impoverished and suffering.
Pride
Not a sin: Being proud of your accomplishments, liking your looks, dressing up IT’S A SIN WHEN: It stops you from accepting your faults and seeing how you can be wrong, not admitting that you can better yourself.
Wrath
Not a sin: Righteous anger at situations, being mistreated, seeing other people suffer, at the injustice of the world. Self-defense. Revolution. IT’S A SIN WHEN: Violence towards defenceless people, hitting your partner or your kids,. Violence fuelled by intolerance and bigotry.
Sloth
Not a sin: Resting. Sleeping. Taking a day or a year off. Being unproductive. Playing videogames. IT’S A SIN WHEN: You stay inactive when action is required. When people need you and you’d rather do nothing.
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT AND GIVES POWER BACK TO SO MANY PEOPLE
You’re angry about men dying in wars? Then protest against wars.
You’re angry about men dying on the job? Then demand safer working conditions.
You’re angry about most homeless people being men? Then demand that society help the poor so no one is homeless.
You’re angry about the number of men who commit suicide? Then protest against the belief that bullying is a natural fact of life. Demand that healthcare for disabled people be more accessible.
You’re angry about “ladies’ nights” at bars? Then demand that men stop lusting after drunk women. That’s literally the only reason why ladies’ nights exist.
You’re angry about circumcision? Then protest against the belief that children are the property of their parents instead of autonomous human beings.
You’re angry about men being the most common victims of violence? Then demand that people stop making fun of men for refusing to fight or for showing emotions other than anger.
You’re angry about men being labeled as dangerous? Then protest against racism, ableism, and homophobia. Men of color, disabled men, and gay men are labeled as dangerous on a regular basis and are frequently threatened because of it.
You’re angry about society not caring when a man is assaulted by a woman? Then demand that people stop making fun of boys for “fighting like a girl”, “losing to a girl”, or “getting beat up by a girl”.
You’re angry when women don’t trust men? Then tell society to stop blaming rape victims for trusting men too much.
You’re angry about society not caring when teenage boys are raped by grown women? Then tell other men to stop high-fiving each other and calling him “lucky”.
You’re angry about no one caring when men are raped in prison? Then protest against the belief that prisoners forfeit their basic human rights. Also demand an end to laws against victimless actions that put them in prison in the first place.
And guess what. You wouldn’t be alone, because those “evil social justice warriors” who you hate so much would 100% agree with you.
I was on the subway today, and when the train got delayed, this little kid was like, “fuck,” and a literal chorus of grown-ups went: “HEY.”
let him say fuck
I was at a crossing once and a kid’s dad said ‘and we have to wait for the green man’ and the 30 people on this crossing all stood waiting for the green man just to prove to this kid that that’s what you do. I’ve never seen anyone wait for the green man on this crossing before you just go when its clear. But Everyone Waited.
Corollary to “it takes a village” is that you’re gonna get a village whether you ask for it or not.
I’ll sometimes take a chance at pedestrian crossings if the road is clear, but am physically incapable of doing so if a child is waiting to cross too, even if the road is empty for a mile in either direction.
OH THIS IS A MOOD
I do not want to be the goon responsible for a little kid rushing out into moving traffic just because they saw the lady in the red coat do it. Lead by example. All humans understand this and the majority follow this. Because even if they aren’t aware of it, none of them want to be the example a kid thinks of before they get themselves killed.
I once crossed the street before the signal happened and a kid on the opposite side pointed at me and was like “HE CROSSED TOO EARLY” and his dad went “yes and that’s dangerous” and I looked the kid dead in the eye and went “I’ve been hit by a car three times, listen to your father”.
“Everyone thinks he’s mentally ill but he actually just has superpowers.”
Okay, but like, what if both? Can we get a superhero with a mental illness depicted in a nominally positive way? That’s not just a cheap plot twist? Is that really too much to ask?
And not the whole “I’m psychotic and I could lose control of my powers at any moment” shit. I’m sick of that.
How about “I’m psychotic, but my telepathy helps a lot. If I think I’m hallucinating, my friends can let me see what they see and hear what they hear to keep me grounded in reality.”
Or you know, maybe someone whose mental illness and superpowers are unrelated. A speedster with depression who knows they /could/ clean their apartment in under four seconds, but would rather just watch Netflix and eat chocolate. A super strong hero who also has ocd and keeps rearranging their furniture, and sure it’s physically easy, but it’s still a pain.
Like, literally just in the few minutes it took me to write this post, I probably already came up with a good 30 character concepts. It’s not that hard, as long as you like, you know, think of mentally ill people as people and not plot devices.
“think of mentally ill people as people and not plot devices” Yes please!
Back in early high school, I knew a girl - we were kinda friends by virtue of having multiple friends in common, but in hindsight, she never much liked me - who had this purebred dog. I’d met him at her place, and he wasn’t desexed, which was pretty unusual in my experience, so it stuck in the memory. And one day, as we were walking across the playground, this girl - I’ll call her Felice - said to me, “Hey, so we’re going to start using my dog as a stud.” And I’m like, Oh? And she’s like, “Yeah, we’ve been talking to breeders, we’re going to get to see his puppies and everything,” and I made interested noises because that actually sounded pretty interesting, and she went on a little bit more about how it would all work -
And then, out of nowhere, she swapped this sly look with another girl, burst out laughing and exclaimed, “God, you’re so gullible. I literally just made that up. You’ll believe anything!”
And I was just. Dumbfounded. Because I was standing there, staring at them, and they were laughing like I was an idiot, like they’d pulled this massive trick on me, and all I could think, apart from why the fuck they felt moved to do this in the first place, was that neither of them knew what gullible means. Like, literally nothing in that story was implausible! I knew she had an undesexed, male, purebred dog! It made total sense that he be used for a stud! And it wasn’t like I was getting this information from a second party - the person who actually owned the dog was telling me herself! And I felt so immensely frustrated, because they both walked off before I could figure out how to articulate that gullible means taking something unlikely or impossible at face value, whereas Felice had told me a very plausible lie, and while the end result in both cases is that the believer is tricked, the difference was that I wasn’t actually being stupid. Rather, Felice had manipulated the fact that she occupied a position of relative social trust - meaning, I didn’t have any reason to expect her to lie to me - to try and make me feel stupid.
Which, thinking back, was kind of par for the course with Felice. On another occasion, as our group was walking from Point A to Point B, I felt a tugging jostle on my school bag. I didn’t turn around, because I knew my friends were behind me, and my bag was often half-zipped - I figured someone was just shoving something back in that had fallen out, or had grabbed it in passing as they horsed around. Instead, Felice steps up beside me, grinning, and hands me my wallet, which she’d just pulled out, and tells me how oblivious I was for not noticing that she’d been rifling my bag, and how I ought to pay more attention. This was not done playfully: the clear intent, again, was to make me feel stupid for trusting that my friends - which, in that context, included her - weren’t going to fuck with me. As before, I couldn’t explain this to her, and she walked on, pleased with herself, before I could try.
The worst time, though, was when I came back from the canteen at lunch one day, and Felice, again backed up by another girl, told me that my dad had showed up on campus looking for me. By this time, you’d think I’d have cottoned on to her particular way of fucking with me, but I hadn’t, and my dad worked close enough to the school that he really could’ve stopped in. So I believed her, a strange little lurch in my stomach that I couldn’t quite place, and asked where he was. She said he’d gone looking for me elsewhere, at another building where we sometimes sat, and so I hurried off to look for him, feeling more and more anxious as I wondered why he might be there.
I was halfway across campus before I let myself remember that my mother was in hospital.
I felt physically sick. My pulse went through the roof; I couldn’t think of a reason why my dad would be at school looking for me that didn’t mean something terrible had happened to my mother, that her surgery had gone wrong, that she was sick or hurt or dying. And when my dad wasn’t where she’d said he would be, I hurried back to Felice - who was now sitting with half our mutual group of friends - only to be met with laughter. She called me gullible again, and that time, I snapped. I chased her down and punched her, and the friends who’d only just arrived, who didn’t know what had happened or why I was reacting like that, instantly took her side. Noises were made about telling the rest of our friends what I’d done, and I didn’t want them to hear Felice’s version first, so I ran off to the library, where I knew they were, to tell them first.
I walked into the library. I found our other friends. I was shaky and red-faced, and they asked me what had happened. I told them what Felice had done, that I’d hit her for it, that my mother was in hospital for an operation - something I’d mentioned in passing over the previous week; multiple people nodded in recognition - and how I’d thought Felice’s lie meant that something bad had happened. And then I burst into tears, something I almost never did, because it wasn’t until I said it out loud that I realised how genuinely frightened I’d been. I sat down at the table and cried, and a girl - I’ll call her Laurel - who I’d never really been close to - who was, in fact, much better friends with Felice than with me - put her arm around my shoulders and hugged me, volubly furious on my behalf.
And then the other girls showed up, and Laurel said, with that particular vicious sincerity that only twelve-year-olds can really muster, “Prepare to die, Felice,” and I almost wanted to laugh, but didn’t. A girl who was a close friend, who’d come in with Felice, took her side, outraged that I’d punched someone, until Laurel spoke up about my mother being in hospital, and everyone went really quiet. Which was when I remembered, also belatedly, that Laurel’s own mother was dead; had died of cancer several years previously, which explained why she of all people was so angry. I have a vivid memory of the look on Felice’s face, how she tried to play it off - she said she hadn’t known about my mother, I pointed out that I’d mentioned it multiple times at lunch that week, and she lost all high ground with everyone.
Felice never played a trick on me again.
Eighteen years later, I still think about these incidents, not because I’m bearing some outdated grudge, but because they’re a good example of three important principles: one, that even with seemingly benign pranks, there’s a difference between acting with friendly or malicious intent; two, that ignorance of context can have a profound effect on the outcome regardless of what you meant; and three, that getting hurt by people who abuse your trust doesn’t make you gullible - it means you’re being betrayed.
And I feel like this is information worth sharing.
