'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
I don't remember if I ever told either of my parents that I hated them. I'm betting I didn't, because I was very invested in being a Good Kid.
That was so me! I was fairly convinced that making my dad in any way disappointed was the WORST THING I could ever possibly do. And a pit of shame might open under my feet or something. Shit, I should call or something.
That was so me! I was fairly convinced that making my dad in any way disappointed was the WORST THING I could ever possibly do. And a pit of shame might open under my feet or something. Shit, I should call or something.
Ugh, the fear of making them disappointed, the pit of shame under your feet. Yep, I am very familiar with those feelings.
There are times I am amazed that I am able to function. But I suppose that my particular issues ensure I function, even when I shouldn't.
My sister said "I hate you." I just tried to keep all the plates in the air or retreated to my books. I too cannot stand being around people who are angry, and I only seem to be able to get angry at other drivers.
Ugh, the fear of making them disappointed, the pit of shame under your feet.
Some of the things Jake has said to me over the years? I couldn't ever imagine saying them to my parents when I was a kid, even angry. There were lines I did *not* cross, and a kind of person I did not want to be in their eyes. It's baffling to see how untrue that is for a lot of kids today.
And it's not that I was forbidden from expressing my feelings at all. But saying "I'm mad about this" and saying "I fucking hate you both" are two different things.
I don't think it's a kids-today thing, or at least not entirely so: my step-sis was entirely capable of yelling "I hate you" and slamming the door. For me, it was totally a trauma thing -- after my mom's leaving + mental illness + death, I didn't exactly blame myself, but I externalized it as some kind of wackassed sacred duty that I had to OMG protect Dad from any further emotional stresses.
President Obama is here in town and paid cash for a to-go order of 5 chili dogs, 4 regular dogs and a cheeseburger at the Varsity. Apparently no one explained to him the importance of onion rings and a frosted orange.
TV Tropes is in the news.
Over at the Mary Sue, Aja Romano has a terrific piece about the redoubtable culture site TV Tropes’ decision to delete all of its content related to rape and sexual assault on the grounds that it was making it more difficult for the site to retain advertisers. She writes:
Today when you access any of these pages, you’re informed, “We do not want a page on this topic. It does not meet our content policy.”…This problem wasn’t a new one; in January, the Rape Trope index was locked due to Google threatening to block the site’s ad revenue for explicit content. This led to complaints about vanishing hentai tropes, with some users commenting that “creepy content and creepy examples” needed to go, and others questioning whether “creepy content” applied to rape tropes. At that point a user-led effort was made to rename all of the Rape Tropes so that they sounded less rapey (seriously), which rapidly turned into an admin mandate to go through all the renamed tropes and excise all creepiness.
But despite this frantic renaming/excision, either Google brought down the content policy hammer or the admins simply decided it wasn’t a battle worth fighting. When Fast Eddie noted the deletion of the trope page, he added, “There is no explanation needed beyond the fact that the topic is a pain in the ass to keep clean and it endangers the wiki’s revenues. We just won’t have articles about rape. Super easy. No big loss.”
Can I confess to some Schadenfreude that they're suddenly not the bastion of endlessly absorbing fun and geek free expression? Please please please?
Can I confess to some Schadenfreude that they're suddenly not the bastion of endlessly absorbing fun and geek free expression? Please please please?
Yes. Especially since I've been telling myself that I'm not allowed to make snarky comments about "Fast Eddie" anywhere.
Just want you all to know, I'm here, and I'm listening, and I'm nodding like a bobble-head at a lot of these posts.
About my own childhood, I'm not quite ready to post. One of my mother's and my last conversations (Jesus, just the beginning of this month) was about how the rest of the family didn't think she and I were very close. And then we shared that "but we know better" smile. And I can't continue this line of thought, or I'll wind up bawling at work.
Suffice it to say that there are very good reasons that I do not want children of my own, but I am willing to help take care of a family-sized number of my friends/chosen family. Close friendship and mutual assistance are exhausting in a very different way, but the notion of being responsible for someone's welfare the way my mother was responsible for mine in my early life simply terrifies me.