Waking Up On A Thursday Be Like

100 Reasons NOT To Kill Yourself

1. We would miss you. 2. It’s not worth the regret. Either by yourself if you failed or just simply left scars, or the regret everyone else feels by not doing enough to help you. 3. It does get better. Believe it or not it will eventually get better. Sometimes you have to go through the storm to get to the rainbow. 4. There’s so much you would miss out on doing. 5. There is always a reason to live. It might not be clear right now, but it is always there. 6. So many people care, and it would hurt them if you hurt yourself. 7. You ARE worth it. Don’t let anyone, especially yourself, tell you otherwise. 8. You are amazing. 9. A time will come, once you’ve battled the toughest times of your life and are in ease once again, where you will be so glad that you decided to keep on living. You will emerge stronger from this all, and won’t regret your choice to carry on with life. Because things always get better. 10. What about all the things you’ve always wanted to do? What about the things you’ve planned, but never got around to doing? You can’t do them when you’re dead. 11. I love you. Even if only one person loves you, that’s still a reason to stay alive. 12. You won’t be able to listen to music if you die. 13. Killing yourself is never worth it. You’ll hurt both yourself and all the people you care about. 14. There are so many people that would miss you, including me. 15. You’re preventing a future generation, YOUR KIDS, from even being born. 16. How do you think your family would feel? Would it improve their lives if you died? 17. You’re gorgeous, amazing, and to someone you are perfect. 18. Think about your favourite music artist, you’ll never hear their voice again… 19. You’ll never have the feeling of walking into a warm building on a cold day 20. Listening to incredibly loud music 21. Being alive is just really good. 22. Not being alive is really bad. 23. Finding your soulmate. 24. Red pandas 25. Going to diners at three in the morning. 26. Really soft pillows. 27. Eating pizza in New York City. 28. Proving people wrong with your success. 29. Watching the jerks that doubted you fail at life. 30. Seeing someone trip over a garbage can. 31. Being able to help other people. 32. Bonfires. 33. Sitting on rooftops. 34. Seeing every single country in the world. 35. Going on roadtrips. 36. You might win the lottery someday. 37. Listening to music on a record player. 38. Going to the top of the Eiffel Tower. 39. Taking really cool pictures. 40. Literally meeting thousands of new people. 41. Hearing crazy stories. 42. Telling crazy stories. 43. Eating ice cream on a hot day. 44. More Harry Potter books could come out, you never know. 45. Travelling to another planet someday. 46. Having an underwater house. 47. Randomly running into your hero on the street. 48. Having your own room at a fancy hotel. 49. Trampolines. 50. Think about your favourite movie, you’ll never watch it again. 51. Think about the feeling of laughing out loud in a public place because your best friend has just sent you an inside joke, 52. Your survival will make the world better, even if it’s for just one person or 20 or 100 or more. 53. People do care. 54. Treehouses 55. Hanging out with your soul mate in a treehouse 55. Snorting when you laugh and not caring who sees 56. I don’t even know you and I love you. 57. I don’t even know you and I care about you. 58. Because nobody is going to be like you ever, so embrace your uniqueness! 59. You won’t be here to experience the first cat world emperor. 60. WHAT ABOUT FOOD?! YOU’LL MISS CHOCOLATE AND ALL THE OTHER NOM THINGS! 61. Starbucks. 62. Hugs. 63. Stargazing. 64. You have a purpose, and it’s up to you to find out what it is. 65. You’ve changed somebody’s life. 66. Now you could change the world. 67. You will meet the person that’s perfect for you. 68. No matter how much or how little, you have your life ahead of you. 69. You have the chance to save somebody’s life. 70. If you end your life, you’re stopping yourself from achieving great things. 71. Making snow angels. 72. Making snowmen. 73. Snowball fights. 74. Life is what you make of it. 75. Everybody has a talent. 76. Laughing until you cry. 77. Having the ability to be sad means you have the ability to be happy. 78. The world would not be the same if you didn’t exist. 79. Its possible to turn frowns, upside down 80. Be yourself, don’t take anyone’s shit, and never let them take you alive. 81. Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary. Be your own hero. 82. Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections. 83. One day your smile will be real. 84. Having a really hot, relaxing bath after a stressful day. 85. Lying on grass and laughing at the clouds. 86. Getting completely smashed with your best friends. 87. Eating crazy food. 88. Staying up all night watching your favourite films with a loved one. 89. Sleeping in all day. 90. Creating something you’re proud of. 91. You can look back on yourself 70 years later and being proud you didn’t commit 92. Being able to meet your Internet friends. 93. Tea / Coffee / Hot Chocolate 94. Sherlock season three. 95. Cuddling under the stars. 96. Being stupid in public because you just can. 97. If you are reading this then you are alive! Is there any more reason to smile? 98. being able to hug that one person you havent seen in years 99. People care enough about you and your future to come up with 100 reasons for you not to do this. 100. But, the final and most important one is, just, being able to experience life. Because even if your life doesn’t seem so great right now, literally anything could happen

IF that isn’t enough:

Depression Hotline: 1-630-482-9696 Suicide Hotline: 1-800-784-8433 LifeLine: 1-800-273-8255 Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386 Sexuality Support: 1-800-246-7743 Eating Disorders Hotline: 1-847-831-3438 Rape and Sexual Assault: 1-800-656-4673 Grief Support: 1-650-321-5272 Runaway: 1-800-843-5200, 1-800-843-5678, 1-800-621-4000 Exhale: After Abortion Hotline/Pro-Voice: 1-866-4394253 Child Abuse: 1-800-422-4453 UK Helplines: Samaritans (for any problem): 08457909090 e-mail jo@samaritans.org Childline (for anyone under 18 with any problem): 08001111 Mind infoline (mental health information): 0300 123 3393 e-mail: info@mind.org.uk Mind legal advice (for people who need mental-health related legal advice): 0300 466 6463 legal@mind.org.uk b-eat eating disorder support: 0845 634 14 14 (only open Mon-Fri 10.30am-8.30pm and Saturday 1pm-4.30pm) e-mail: help@b-eat.co.uk b-eat youthline (for under 25’s with eating disorders): 08456347650 (open Mon-Fri 4.30pm - 8.30pm, Saturday 1pm-4.30pm) Cruse Bereavement Care: 08444779400 e-mail: helpline@cruse.org.uk Frank (information and advice on drugs): 0800776600 Drinkline: 0800 9178282 Rape Crisis England & Wales: 0808 802 9999 1(open 2 - 2.30pm 7 - 9.30pm) e-mail info@rapecrisis.org.uk Rape Crisis Scotland: 08088 01 03 02 every day, 6pm to midnight India Self Harm Hotline: 00 08001006614 India Suicide Helpline: 022-27546669 Kids Help Phone (Canada): 1-800-668-6868, Free and available 24/7 suicide hotlines; Argentina: 54-0223-493-0430 Australia: 13-11-14 Austria: 01-713-3374 Barbados: 429-9999 Belgium: 106 Botswana: 391-1270 Brazil: 21-233-9191 China: 852-2382-0000 (Hong Kong: 2389-2222) Costa Rica: 606-253-5439 Croatia: 01-4833-888 Cyprus: 357-77-77-72-67 Czech Republic: 222-580-697, 476-701-908 Denmark: 70-201-201 Egypt: 762-1602 Estonia: 6-558-088 Finland: 040-5032199 France: 01-45-39-4000 Germany: 0800-181-0721 Greece: 1018 Guatemala: 502-234-1239 Holland: 0900-0767 Honduras: 504-237-3623 Hungary: 06-80-820-111 Iceland: 44-0-8457-90-90-90 Ireland: 1800-247-100 Israel: 09-8892333 Italy: 06-705-4444 Japan: 3-5286-9090 Latvia: 6722-2922, 2772-2292 Malaysia: 03-756-8144 (Singapore: 1-800-221-4444) Mexico: 525-510-2550 Netherlands: 0900-0767 New Zealand: 4-473-9739 New Guinea: 675-326-0011 Nicaragua: 505-268-6171 Norway: 47-815-33-300 Philippines: 02-896-9191 Poland: 52-70-000 Portugal: 239-72-10-10 Russia: 8-20-222-82-10 Serbia: 21-6623-393 Spain: 91-459-00-50 South Africa: 0861-322-322 South Korea: 2-715-8600 Sweden: 031-711-2400 Switzerland: 143 Taiwan: 0800-788-995 Thailand: 02-249-9977 Trinidad and Tobago: 868-645-2800 Ukraine: 0487-327715 Uruguay: 095 73 8483 You will be missing out on every single wonderful thing yet to happen to you.

How I Play and Interpret Kenku

How I Play and Interpret Kenku

The kenku in the Dungeons and Dragons game are fun and interesting. I’ve put a lot of thought in to how the kenku curse manifests and how I play the details of how it works. I haven’t done a lot of research into the background of the characters, this is all personal headcanon. I understand the kenku’s curse not to just be on their ability to literally speak, but to clearly or intentionally…

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I accept that

I love science fiction and fantasy.

I’ve always chosen science fiction and fantasy first when I had a choice about what literature I read, and growing up almost all of the characters I identified with were in some kind of speculative setting. An obvious consequence of that is identifying with a fair number of nonhumans.

Here’s the complicated part. I’ve spoken before on the dangers of writing asexual and aromantic characters as “less human” because of these orientations, and I’ve warned against using sexual and romantic relationships as shortcuts to “humanize” characters whose humanity is in doubt. But unless misleading messages come with the stories, I’m more than okay with aliens, robots, fey creatures, and monsters being written as ace or aro. In fact, I want to see it there, because those are the genres I read.

It can become a problem when, under the blanket of science fiction and fantasy, we offer ace and/or aro characters who are simply naturally ace or aro because of their nonhuman status and use that quality to distinguish themselves from humans. You see it a lot when aliens who don’t have sexual reproduction or don’t form similar social relationships will laugh at and condescend to humans over what’s assumed to be a universal urge among them. This is an issue because

a) it suggests there are no asexual or aromantic humans;

b) it implies that a person who identifies with asexuality or aromanticism believes themself superior;

c) it creates a misleading connection between sexual and/or romantic attraction and “really” being human, having emotions, being functional, and having meaningful relationships;

d) it encourages a tendency to see humans without these qualities as more alien/less human or perhaps potentially evil. (How often do you see a SF villain scoffing at “human love” and have them not only be portrayed as robotic or  hateful because they don’t do love, but also be defeated by something related to love?)

I want SF/Fantasy to continue including ace and aro characters, and I’m not offended if they’re sometimes nonhumans, even if that’s how that whole race is and even if they sometimes react with bafflement toward some humans’ relationships. (I sure do.) I will happily take that representation. I want to see perspectives I relate to, even if they come from a robot or an alien or a mystical creature. And I think, if done right, nonhuman ace and aro characters can still get those orientations on the radar for fans who may not have been looking for such things, even if they might have initially questioned and rejected the validity of human characters being ace or aro.

However, when I say “if done right,” I mean they need to avoid these tropes:

Writing robots or aliens to “really understand” humanity by learning to love/having a romantic relationship or sexual experience

Writing nonhuman creatures to “become” more human through the act of falling in love or having sex

Portraying sex, sexual attraction, love, or romantic attraction as the major defining factor of who is human

Writing sex, sexual attraction, love, or romantic attraction as the central explanation in a human character explaining to nonhumans what makes humans human

Creating situations where a character’s humanity is in doubt and it is “proved” or “disproved” through a test that incorporates sex, sexual attraction, love, or romantic attraction (e.g., “if he’s a lizard person, he won’t be able to show love! Oops he failed the test, we found him out!”)

Assigning any nonhumans a lack of understanding about this specific aspect of so-called human relationships and associating this with innocence, superiority complexes, or evil

Having aliens or other nonhumans able to engage in or enjoy virtually every other human experience EXCEPT love or sex, which is on some pedestal they just can’t reach or comprehend

Inventing nonhuman societies that pair-bond or mate in very similar ways to “typical” humans, but having their ways portrayed as more hygienic or less messy than humans’, yet have them still somehow baffled by minor differences in how humans do it

Having alien societies that are as diverse as human societies in most ways EXCEPT that they have only One Way of mating/dating/reproducing, and humans’ heterosexual two-person pairing is presented as the “human” equivalent that they find disgusting

Having nonhumans all be gay, all be polyamorous, or all be asexual, but “learn” from humans that monogamous heterosexuality both exists and is better

Creating characters in the nonhuman world that don’t have physical sex/gender or only have one sex/gender, and never experience love or romantic relationships–portrayed as a Direct Consequence of their gender situation (while having an ace and aro sexless species is fine, just don’t portray it as if lol obvi the reason they wouldn’t have relationships is they don’t have boys and girls lol)

Having nonhuman characters fall in love with human characters and having the experience attached to a moral of This Is What Life Is Supposed To Be About

Having a nonhuman defeated because they Don’t Have Love (and therefore cannot comprehend the deepest and most strength-inspiring emotion in the universe, which can always be defeated by a protagonist who Has Love)

So, while it’s sometimes aggravating to have to find representation in nonhuman characters whose aro or ace status is portrayed as integral to their nonhumanness, I would rather have that than not see my orientations in SF at all. I have also seen plenty of aliens whose romantic and sexual habits are similar to non-ace and non-aro humans’ without the story suggesting those elements of their lives are uniquely human, so I’d like to see some ace/aro humans and nonhumans who just happen to be so. It isn’t automatically insulting to our orientations if a nonhuman character is ace/aro, but I’d like authors to think about how they’re portraying those qualities and whether they are sending negative messages about real ace/aro people through their inclusion in fiction. I’d also like to ask authors to seriously consider why they’re making the choice to attach those qualities to their nonhumans, and if “to make them distinct from humans” and “to make them more alien” and “to make them seem oblivious or innocent or empty or robotic” comes up, do some serious questioning and at least consider including counterexamples.

You can actually move away from and avoid cementing negative messages much more easily if there is more than one ace/aro character in your story. Maybe one of your nonhumans is just like that and you don’t want to change them? Well, great. But maybe have another character from that race, or a human, also be ace or aro and not be like that, or have the nonhuman character say or do something that confirms ace and aro status aren’t uniquely alien.

I say all this because I DO NOT WANT people thinking nonhuman characters can’t have sexual diversity, up to and including asexuality and aromanticism. I want to see them! I just don’t want to feel like my orientations are considered science fiction themselves, or that the only place I can see people like me are in books about things that aren’t possible or are definitively inhuman.

no fucking way

Ok but, imagine a xenofiction story where the main characters are "feral" domestic animals (that have run away from home to live in the wild for some reason), but instead of romanticizing their experience (demonizing captivity in the process) they show all the shit they have to deal with because they are not animals designed to live "free" and how there is no place for them in the nature anymore.

Or I don't know if there is already a story like that, btw.

The fundamental dilemma of trying to avoid humanocentric writing in fantasy and sci-fi settings is that, while the old Humans Are Special trope is undeniably humanocentric, so is the opposite.

If your non-human species are good at exactly the set of things that humans are good at, and they have their own stuff going on besides, they’re effectively “human+”. You’re still positioning humans as the baseline against which all others are measured.

Paradoxically, non-humanocentric writing demands that humans be special in some respects, since the alternative is treating humanity’s exact set of capabilities and aptitudes as the bar you need to be taller than in order to ride. The trick is that you have to make humans special without making them Special - and that’s not an easy trick to pull off!

man imagine aliens w no concept of interspecies cooperation or pets

‘commander the scan of this shelter reveals three primary lifeforms’

‘excellent. elaborate please’

‘all mammals. two quadrupeds, one feline and one canine, as well as one biped sapien. they appear to be… relaxing and eating in a shared space’

‘what the fuck’

*raises hand* I think it depends on the Pokemon in question?

Like, if it’s a mainline-game mon of questionable sapience then FUCK NO THAT IS MADE OF DISGUSTING but a lot of the anime mons and all of the Mystery Dungeon mons are of human-level intelligence and able to give consent, so I don’t have any issues if it’s one of them? (PMD2 protagonist/PMD2 partner is cute as hell, for example, and that’s human-turned-into-a-Pokemon/sapient Pokemon)

It’s not any weirder than interspecies relationships between humans and other sci-fi/fantasy races like, I dunno, half the pairings in Mass Effect or Ruto crushing on Ocarina Link.

That said I haven’t seen the Lucario movie so I don’t know if Lucario is intelligent enough to not be squicky, so carry on.

Watching lion xenofiction and, why the most are literally copycats of the other? There's a lot of interesting things on lions life just to make the same thing over and over. And some of the "realistic behaviour" is not really realistic, is just a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes.

Just, Holy hell, i heard the entire story of the Mapogo lions coalition and why anybody writtes an story based on it? It's perfect, is HOLY SHIT like a xenofiction story actually happened. These lion coalitions have a LOT of potential to writte an story about it.