Burned-Out Millennials

 This article talks about a lot of things I keep trying to point out: that life has gotten harder and more miserable and THAT is why people are breaking down. 

Older folks criticize Millennials without realizing younger people don't have the advantages older people grew up with.  Like two parents, let alone an extended family.  Like a church or other spiritual community.  Like clubs, hobbies, and the time to have those things.  Like a reliable job or benefits.  Like childhood friends, neighbors, and other long-term relationships.  Like downtime. 

People are more mobile, more isolated, less physically and mentally healthy, less secure, and more exhausted.  Because duh, when you hack away the support system and surround people with a constant barrage of noise and demand, they will break down.  And it's not their fault, they are not weak or lazy, you have just built a shitty society that breaks people.  

Mental Load

This cartoon illustrates the burden of mental load.  It's closely related to the concept of emotional labor, and is a leading reason why people -- especially women -- are exhausted so often.

My partner and I divided the workload based on ability and interest.  We share tasks that we both love or both hate.  But most of it is divided because we prefer and are good at different tasks.  That means my partner does the vast majority of the organizing and I do all the vermin control.  It works for us.  Because if we tried to assign those tasks based on crotch shape, it would be an absolute disaster, and we are not idiots.

Now, it doesn't have to be exactly equal in type.  Our balance has shifted back and forth over the years, depending on who was making more of the income.  But the people in a relationship should each be contributing approximately equal effort and receiving approximately equal benefit.  If it's too uneven, that's not stable, and tends to break down over time. 

So think about the balance in your relationships, and for the love of fuck, express your appreciation for whoever does the "thankless" tasks. There is absolutely no reason why they should be thankless.  You are capable of saying "Thank you for doing the dishes" or giving your partner a smooch or whatever other form of appreciation they value.

Snowflake Challenge Day 6: Fannish Wishlist

Day 6

In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your wish-list if you feel comfortable doing so. Maybe someone will grant a wish. Check out other people's posts. Maybe you will grant a wish. If any wishes are granted, we'd love it if you link them to this post.


My Wishes

* Fanart of any of my writing. I have a list of favorite photogenic scenes from my most popular fanfic series Love Is For Children. Everything else is fair game too. While I love great art, quality is not a concern; folks are welcome to use my work for practice projects too. I link all of it to the work that inspired it. (AO3 has a dedicated function for that, if you're drawing LIFC. DW just gets regular links.)

* If you prefer writing to art, fanfic of my work is also welcome.

* Any of my lyrical poetry set to music and/or sung. I don't have them all gathered in one spot, but the Six Poems of the Fall from A Conflagration of Dragons have some options. "The Janardanakavita" is for singing. "The Chant of the Return of Sebak," "the chain of cicada shells," and "The Harrowing of Hildeburh" are meant to be declaimed rather than sung, if anyone's into that. "The Nesting Urge of Aluzza" could go either way. Hunting around, I found a few miscellaneous ones: "The Bonecage," "Fiorenza and the Sea," "Still Growing Strong," "Let's Make Lemonade," "We're All Mad," and "Light the Match."

* Fanfic of someone making Kylo Ren go clean his room because he is acting like a pouty teenager instead of a respectable martial artist.  Wish granted by meridian_rose 

* We watched Into the Spider-Verse recently, and I loved the storyline despite the eye-searing artwork. I would like to see fanfic of Miles Morales and his uncle actually having to work through the horrible relationship tangle instead of following the standard Spider-Man plot. Write fresh or recommend something already written, I'm not picky.

* Stuff you made. It's fun having little bits of things from my friends -- music, books, fibercrafts, artist trading cards, etc. It doesn't have to be big or fancy.

* So I have this thing about encouraging people to do heroic stuff in everyday life. By heroic I mean skills and virtues, not deeds of derring-do. Pick any item from "How to Be a Hero in Real Life," "Become Like a Comic Book Superhero," "25 Virtues Found in the Best of Men," "How to Make Your Home Town More Like Bluehill," or any similar list of emergency skills or world repair. Learn it or do it, and that counts. The world needs more heroes, superpowers not required. Oddly enough, I have found that writing about heroes and healthy societies is a lot more effective than picketing or writing letters. I'm a practical activist; I do what works. And I want to live in a world where, when a hero says "I just did what anyone would have done," it's generally true.


Wishes Granted

For analise010:
I just updated my DW profile for Snowflake.
My transformative works policy is here. Other people who wanted the TWP: wenchpixie, kaixo, paradoxial, silveradept 

For independence1776:
Sustainability resources for beginners.

For evilinsanemonkey:
See allbingo to find writing prompts.

For kurgaya:
Active DW communities include allbingo and crowdfunding. Other people who wanted this: isabellerecs

For mythicmistress:
Resources on how to deal with writer's block.

For ruuger:
Fainting(ish) men.

For marginaliana:
How to care less about what other people think.

For spikedluv:
How to be kind to each other. Other people who wanted this: cornerofmadness, silveradept, skytintedwater 

For flamingsword:
Writing about nonmale, nonwhite, and/or nonbinary characters.

For snake_socks:
Crossovers.

For teigh_corvus:
Art-friendly inspiration communities include allbingo and crowdfunding.

For implicated2:
A variety of things.

For 22degreehalo:
Asexual, aromantic, etc. characters.  Other people who wanted this: venusinthenight, marzipan77 

For smilebackwards:
Talk about writing.

For paradoxial:
Torn World is a shared world that lends itself well to collaboration.

For skytintedwater:
World peace.  Some assembly required.

Sustainability for Beginners

This fulfills a snowflake_challenge wish from independence1776. I thought other folks might enjoy it.


Sustainability tips for beginners:

http://www.globalstewards.org/sustainable-lifestyle.htm

https://stylecaster.com/20-easy-ways-for-beginners-to-help-the-environment/

https://medium.com/wondr-blog/sustainability-in-your-day-to-day-life-a-beginners-guide-to-sustainable-living-8ce2697f680b


Calculate your environmental footprint to learn where you could make changes:

https://www.footprintcalculator.org/

http://ecologicalfootprint.com/



http://www.myfootprint.org/

http://superheroyou.com/15-ways-to-reduce-your-environmental-footprint/


Capsule wardrobes exist in many variations. The core idea is to assemble a small set of clothes that suit all your needs, thus saving you a ton of space and money while reducing the resources you soak up. Even if you don't go all the way, this is a super useful technique for packing your luggage.

https://www.whowhatwear.com/how-to-capsule-wardrobe

http://www.theviviennefiles.com/2016/01/a-whatevers-clean-13-for-all-occasions.html/
http://www.theviviennefiles.com/2015/06/a-whatevers-clean-13-template-for-you.html/

http://www.theviviennefiles.com/a-common-wardrobe/

http://www.theviviennefiles.com/four-by-four-wardrobes/
http://www.theviviennefiles.com/2015/06/another-template-for-4-by-4-capsule.html

http://www.theviviennefiles.com/2017/07/planning-your-complete-wardrobe-1.html/

https://www.whowhatwear.com/how-to-five-piece-french-wardrobe


Sustainable travel:

https://www.eesi.org/topics/public-transit-walking-biking/description

https://www.moneytalksnews.com/slideshows/the-30-cities-with-the-best-public-transit/?all

https://www.walkscore.com/cities-and-neighborhoods/

https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a23676188/best-bike-cities-2018/

https://www.wikihow.com/Reduce-Your-Dependence-on-a-Car

How to Deal with Writer's Block

This is a wish from mythicmistress in snowflake_challenge.  I thought other folks might find it helpful too.


Ways to deal with writer's block:

https://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Writer%27s-Block

https://www.wikihow.com/Get-Over-Writer%27s-Block

https://www.wikihow.com/Get-Your-Writing-Mojo-Back

https://www.wikihow.com/Stay-Inspired-(for-Writers-and-Artists)

https://goinswriter.com/how-to-overcome-writers-block/

https://www.thestorytellingnonprofit.com/blog/25-ways-to-overcome-writers-block/


I don't get the usual uninspired kind of writer's block; I always have ideas out the wazoo. The two obstacles I sometimes encounter are:

* I'm stuck on writing because the story/poem is missing a critical piece. I have learned to set it aside and work on something else, because that thing is going nowhere until I find the missing piece. Usually it takes a few hours or days, but I have some pieces that simmered for decades before getting finished.

* I feel like crap and I'm on a deadline, usually for nonfiction. Write a paragraph, go read fanfic or do something else pleasant to generate energy, write another paragraph. Or just a line if that's all I can manage. It is possible to level-grind through a whole article this way and produce something good.

Fainting(ish) Men

ruuger asked for fanfic of fainting men for snowflake_challenge.

The ones I can think of off the top of my head are 1) male-male and 2) mostly original characters. But I do love fainting or near-fainting men, so I'll give you what I've got:

Impromptu superpower kinkplay leading to a very pleasant, extremely disconcerting sensory overload and more-or-less fainting:
"The Sharpest Dose of Reality"

Hardcore superpower kinkplay that goes very wrong at the end, and this does NOT get blown off, but actually dealt with:
"Something Dark in Me"
"When We Feel Flayed"
"Willing to Share in the Scary Stuff"

One asshole bully + one broken piece of adaptive equipment + one superpower migraine = one incapacitated supervillain leaning on his cop friend:
"The Gossamer Threads of Trust"

Not quite fainting, but I've got some Avengers fanfic of characters falling asleep or otherwise conking out and needing to be carried. In some cases, I'm linking to the relevant scenes, so use the chapter links if you want to read the whole fic.

"Splash" and "Coming Around" are the before-and-after parts of Hulk transforming into Bruce Banner.

"No Winter Lasts Forever" begins with the capture of the Winter Soldier using heavy-duty tranquilizers.

Bucky carrying Clint at the end of "Coming in from the Cold: Friday: Bug Hunt."

How to Care Less About What People Think

marginaliana wished for this in snowflake_challenge.

Caring less about what other people think has two aspects, thinking better of yourself and worrying less about others. The first is relatively safe. The second is riskier. First, the moment you assert boundaries, everyone who enjoyed treating you as a doormat will object, sometimes violently. Second, if you take it too far, you can turn into a jerk, which is rarely the goal. With that in mind ...

( Read more... )

Resources on Kindness

spikedluv wishes for people to be kind to each other.  Here are some resources in support of that:

http://www.wisdomcommons.org/virtues/82-kindness

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pieces-mind/201712/the-importance-kindness

https://www.randomactsofkindness.org/the-science-of-kindness

https://www.wikihow.com/Be-Kind

https://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Kind-Person

https://www.wikihow.com/Be-Friendly-and-Kind

https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-a-random-act-of-kindness

https://www.bradaronson.com/acts-of-kindness/

http://www.virtuesforlife.com/100-ways-to-be-kinder/

Nonmale, Nonwhite, Nonbinary Characters

flamingsword wished for more stories about nonmale, nonwhite, and/or nonbinary characters.

*dump giant box of stuff on desk*

( Read more... )

Cascadian Earthquake

Here's a video about a Cascadian earthquake scenario.  That's nowhere near the real worst-case scenario, which would strike at night during peak tourist season, but it's plenty bad enough.

How to Feel Less Shame

Another snowflake_challenge wish was for ways to reduce feeling shame over liking things.

( Read more... )

Peacemongering 101

skytintedwater wished for world peace in snowflake_challenge. Follow the steps...

( Read more... )