Posts made by Aria

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Aria

When I got married, that's how it was.

Number of friend complaints: 0
Number of family complaints: fucking. endless.

Friends make it great. Friends are who are there to help you through it and make it worthwhile. But I swear to god family decides to make it all about them. Esp. extended family. His aunt practically managed to single-handedly ruin the entire thing........and I never even met her UNTIL THAT DAY.

So yeah. I wish you all the luck in the world surviving them.

Ohhh, I knew it was coming. Completely knew it was coming, but wasn't expecting it quite this quickly. And it especially irritates me coming from that aunt, because.... 95% of the time, she's one of my favorite relatives and definitely my favorite aunt. The other 5% of the time, she is SUPER JUDGY MC-JUDGERPANTS SNOTTY and makes a lot of incredibly unwelcome comments about my life. I mean, I'm sure I'd find those sorts of comments irritating regardless of who they came from, but in her case.....

She has four kids. Here's the rundown of how their respective marriages went:

• Her oldest son got married less than a year out of high school to a woman who immediately quit her job the day after the wedding to be a "stay-at-home mom". I should note that they had no children, and when they did have children, visits to her house involved her thrusting her children at me to watch so she could go play World of Warcraft, despite the fact that we were visiting from 700+ miles away and I told her that I was great with kids 3+, but had no idea how to care for infants. She once dyed her son's hair black because she was home that day and decided she was bored. He was four. My cousin insisted on sharing custody with this woman when they got divorced -- against the advice of the judge and social services. He pursued her for another two years.
• Her second son married a stripper he got pregnant. After he passed away, she proceeded to have her third kid by a third father who had a horrible drug problem, drop out of nursing school to go back to stripping, and at one point had all of her children taken away by the state. She eventually got them back, cancelled 90% of her daughter's state mandated mental health visits, and unsurprisingly (but heart-breakingly, horrifically) said cousin's daughter ended up committing suicide. At 12.
• Her third son married his fourth? fifth? fiancee (I stopped keeping track of the ridiculous Facebook announcements for girls he broke up with 3-6 months later) after he knocked that one up. This is the cousin I mentioned earlier in this thread who named his kid after a Pokemon, for fuck's sake. He also got fired from his job at Tim Horton's for making gross sex comments at one of his female co-workers.
• Her daughter, who much to my shock and horror, looks up to me. But given her elder siblings, maybe I shouldn't be surprised that she seems to think I'm a Responsible Adult with My Shit Together. She's a national merit scholar and the only one of those kids worth a damn. Still in college, she is way too young to be married, and I have been telling her since she was 12 that regardless of how much her mom tells her she just looooooooooves grandbabies, I expect her to graduate.

Looking at that trainwreck, I really feel like the new rule here should be, "Nope. Sorry. You don't get to judge my life choices."

So @insomniac7809 and I, after almost 11 years together, have finally decided to get hitched. Thus far we have:

-Picked a venue (not halfway in-between all our relatives, but at a place that reduces travel time by 3+ hours for all our relatives in the Midwest, and which ADDS 3+ hours of travel for.... the bride and groom and almost all our friends)

-Set a date (on a Saturday, near no major holidays or other people's celebrations!)

-Ordered a prospective wedding dress

And I already have family members complaining about things they don't like. How about you fuck off, Aunt Karen?

@jinshei Laundromat?

Whoever is eating tuna at their desk instead of in one of the three lunch rooms on our floor or the building-wide cafeteria can go right to hell. I don't expect 800 people in my location to cater to my food allergy, but you could at least have some basic office etiquette and confine your smelly lunch to an area I can opt not to be at.

@coin said in Good TV:

@aria said in Good TV:

@coin Yeah, I give a lot of credit to Penn Badgley for responding to people that liked is portrayal of Joe with basically what amounts to "He killed four people. What else is there to say?" when a lot of actors would probably just enjoy the attention.

Penn was good casting for multiple reasons, first and foremost his usual calm and collected manner of facing inappropriate fans, and second, the whole thematic Gossip Girl connection which had me rollin'.

I think I may be the only person on the planet who didn't watch that show, though I considered it after hearing that. Does it hold up, do you think? I already know THE BIG SURPRISE ENDING that supposedly made no sense.

@coin Yeah, I give a lot of credit to Penn Badgley for responding to people that liked is portrayal of Joe with basically what amounts to "He killed four people. What else is there to say?" when a lot of actors would probably just enjoy the attention.

@highfalutin said in Good TV:

@aria said in Good TV:

I just finished it. Having read the novel when it was released, I.... have complicated feelings about the show. I mean, I loved it. I really loved it. But the book made me deeply uncomfortable with its fascinating portrayal of the narrator and how truly disturbed and delusional he was. The show made me deeply uncomfortable with myself, because despite knowing from the very beginning -- even without being familiar with the book, so no spoilers -- that he's a fucking psycho stalker, I actually really liked him and was kind of rooting for him at the end?

I'm not sure whether that says more about the incredibly fucked up idea of 'romance' we have portrayed in media or about me, but either way, I'm sitting here pretty skeeved out by having thought to myself, "Aww, Joe. You'd be such a great guy if you weren't a violent lunatic." And this is from someone who reacts with an instinctive, visceral anger to the slightest hint of Nice Guy (tm) bullshit after horrible real life experiences growing up.

Man, exactly this. All of it. When I got a pleasant stomach flutter as Joe was running at a full pelt for Beck's place (accompanied by a straight up grin when he tried to do that romantic "stone tapping on the window" and it broke instead) I was so sickened by my own reactions I almost turned it off.

I found myself rooting for him consistently, and that's insane. I don't know if the credit goes to the actor who portrayed him or the story - probably a combination of the two - but they did a hell of a job. I deeply enjoyed the show. I just don't know what to think about how I responded to the "protagonist."

I honestly feel like a fair portion of that was the actor? I mean, in the novel they do a much better job of portraying just how angry and disgusted he is. Don't get me wrong -- Peach is horrible and her arrogant, classist crap is a big part of it. In the show, it makes you feel bad for Joe; in the novel a lot of it is countered by his internal rage centered on how very little he thinks of them, how he -- the poor, uneducated, working class white man who is just smart and well read -- is so much better than them, and it just sort of clicks in your brain. Like, "Ohh. OHH. He's that guy, the ill-adjusted, socially isolated 'intellectual' white boy that thinks he deserves whatever he wants because he's absorbed this narrative and he's just angry he isn't getting what he's owed and congratulating himself for being such a 'gentleman'." And having existed in the super misogynistic circle that was 90s gaming culture, I was all "I know this guy. I know twenty of these guys and it's terrifying."

The show trades a lot on Penn Badgley's charm and good looks, but if there's one thing that I give it credit for, it's being very keenly aware of that. If you read any of the interviews or tweets or whatever he's made about his views on the show, how looks and charm and whiteness and maleness are so valued in our culture that we skew towards giving Joe the benefit of the doubt even though we know he's a murderer, it's brilliant. It becomes a different kind of horror, one that's as much a send-up of our culture and our complicity in these stories, in the idea of Beck as some sort of prize that Joe's supposed to win for doing everything 'right', a horror with ourselves and our reactions.

I love it. I love it so much. SO MUCH.

A++. Would buy again.

ETA: Having started watching this right after finishing the Ted Bundy tapes -- like, Netflix was all, "Hey, you apparently like shows about violent lunatics that murder women (which I am mentally questioning even as I type this, like maybe I should just go watch Fuller House or something for awhile), you should watch You! You'll like it!", things got.... weird. Like at one point I was examining my reactions to Joe and kind of went "*Ohh, fuck. This is how Bundy got married while he was literally on trial for raping and murdering a twelve year old girl, isn't it?!?!", and it's a whole..... thing to sudden feel a wash of sympathy and pity for Carol Ann Boone.

@highfalutin said in Good TV:

You on Netflix was kind of excellent. Super uncomfortable in the best way to be uncomfortable.

I just finished it. Having read the novel when it was released, I.... have complicated feelings about the show. I mean, I loved it. I really loved it. But the book made me deeply uncomfortable with its fascinating portrayal of the narrator and how truly disturbed and delusional he was. The show made me deeply uncomfortable with myself, because despite knowing from the very beginning -- even without being familiar with the book, so no spoilers -- that he's a fucking psycho stalker, I actually really liked him and was kind of rooting for him at the end?

I'm not sure whether that says more about the incredibly fucked up idea of 'romance' we have portrayed in media or about me, but either way, I'm sitting here pretty skeeved out by having thought to myself, "Aww, Joe. You'd be such a great guy if you weren't a violent lunatic." And this is from someone who reacts with an instinctive, visceral anger to the slightest hint of Nice Guy (tm) bullshit after horrible real life experiences growing up.

The barista in my building knows I'm super sick but too swamped to miss work, so she ran a lemonade through the steamer to heat it up, tossed in two mint tea bags, and handed me a fistful of honey packets.

you, Doreen.

@silverfox said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

But the opposite parents are just as bad. The ones that blame their nine-year-old for having poor time management and trying to get out of work.

I'm pretty sure that's just called "being nine years old".

I have been horribly sick for days, and my dog has been at the foot of the bed watching me the entire time. At present, he's curled up there using a pile of blanket to prop his head up, but apparently the state of constant vigilance has exhausted the poor watchdog. His eyes have drifted closed and he's now dozing, but his ears and eyelids twitch every time I cough. He is SUCH A GOOD BOY.

@macha said in Good Music:

@aria I don't go to events anymore or anything, but I do remember that one couple that their clothes when they took the crown had actual SWASTIKAS on the fabric. Holy dramabomb (and rightly so)

They stepped down and left their Kingdom in the hands of what was effectively a regent shortly thereafter. They tried the public non-apology apology first and it didn't work out.

Now, to be 'fair', the piece being referenced was a bit of woven trim based on an actual historical pattern accurate to the time period of their clothes/persona, all of which long predates the Nazi party, and is complex enough that it takes of weaver of demonstrable skill to make it. That said, YOU STILL DON'T WEAR THAT SHIT, let alone when representing the populace. The SCA even has pretty explicit rules against offensiveness and obtrusive modernity in both names and arms that the College of Heralds pretty heavily regulates, to the point that I've seen a local Baron -- who had no idea that part of his name that he'd been using for twenty years -- could be connected to a relatively obscure group associated with the IRA. I didn't either, until another Herald from Ireland pointed it out. That name was quickly shot down with profuse apologies from the user, who literally had no idea and meant no harm, and edited to a degree that it was similar enough to what he'd been using without crossing that line. Even then, he cleared it with that same herald just to be sure and was generally mortified about causing entirely unintentional, even potential, offense.

That couple very much should've known better, and probably did know better, and my guess is that they were testing how far they could push things despite the weaver having been warned many times that making the trim was a bad idea. To the point that general usage of that trim in the past in skill competitions has been a gentleman's agreement of 'make maybe a snippet of it with the not-swastika part to prove you can do the technique, write about its historical usage, and then swiftly apply said technique to making a not-offensive pattern that you don't have historical reference on but can now submit in competition and everyone gets what you're doing and why'. Or at least that's generally what with do with that pattern in my area, which may not be the case on the other side of the country.

It's really not that hard to not be a massive hateful jerk about it, but people intent on being hateful jerks WILL try to hide behind the shield of "But but history!!!" to cover their tracks when they get called on it. Screw them.

@paris said in Good Music:

@aria Yeah, as a pagan, I've noticed the rise in racism amongst asatruar as well. I will look up bands, though, and thank you!

I'm in the SCA with a Norse persona, and it's something I find incredibly infuriating on multiple levels -- not the least of which because there's been a few high profile issues within the group that have, blissfully, been met with a fairly large and collective "YOU FUCK RIGHT OFF" from other members. But it's by no means universal enough to stop them from continually trying, which is more than a little ironic given the actual history of Norse cultures interacting with other ethnic groups, including very brown ones. (Basically, they were happy to interact with you and incorporate whatever cool stuff you had as long as you were willing to give them shiny shit. The Norse were pretty shameless capitalists. This is a gross over simplification, but generally if silver was on the table, they'd play ball.)

@paris Soooo......

Check out:

Scandinavian Folk Metal
Heilung (as mentioned)
Wardruna (you may know them from the Vikings TV show)
Faun (some of their stuff, not all)
Skald

Of those, Wardruna is by far my favorite. Take care with this genre and it's overlap with Viking metal, where you tend to run into a lot of supremely racist fuckheads, which violently angers my Norse-loving little heart.

Mongolian Folk Metal
Tengger Calvary
Altan Urag (they were discovered through a friend who has a Master's in languages from the region)
Nine Treasures

@admiral said in Good Music:

Mongolian and Scandinavian folk metal is my jam. I have a whole playlist made up of it. Probably my most played. Though lately I keep listening to the song Monkey Boy by Kontrust. It isn't even a good song but damn is it stuck in my head.

currently has Heilung on YouTube

@paris said in Good Music:

Hanggai - The Vast Grassland

The singer is the big guy with the mohawk. Very atmospheric.

If you're into atmospheric folk rock/metal, I will happily recommend, like, half a dozen Scandinavian and Mongolian bands to you, babe.

The day a couple announces their engagement, offering the future bride unsolicited diet advice of how she should do keto and "just not eat carbs".

Fuck off, Mom.

So apparently, one of the people on my team during my internal internship was fired while I was on PTO. My favorite coworker, in fact, and I'm pretty upset about it.

My boss also told me that while we're now at-headcount instead of over headcount for the role I've been filling, she also doesn't think that the workload would be manageable without backfilling the position, given that even with an extra person, the department was busy enough to need an intern. So there's no guarantee, not even close, but she's going to be talking to her boss about staffing and seeing if they can keep the extra position.

Guys. I've been applying for a promotion for two years. If I don't get one, I probably won't even be able to get a cost of living increase next year. This is the best shot I've had at getting something.

Why does it have to feel horrible? <facedesk>

@tiredewok If you live near a Wegman's, check out their loose tea section. I say this as someone whose boyfriend worked at Teavana for several years and literally has hundreds of dollars of tea sitting around her house.

@mietze said in RL things I love:

TFW your 17 year old asks if we can do a family dinner out and then all go run around to all the geeky stores at the mall together for their birthday (while they spend their own money not yours) with all their sibs and hang out after the little goes to bed to play a round of betrayal legacy. Def worth dumping all the online schedule for. It's making me teary eyed actually.

Tackle that kid and squeeze all the goodness and love out of them while you can! And if they get embarrassed by you having all the feels at them, good. Embarrassing your teenager until they fling a three syllable "Mo-ooo-om!" at you is your job as their mother.