Schoko

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
darktwistedgenderplural
matsuhannah

This is an appreciation post for the fanfic authors who aren’t included on rec lists

For the fanfic authors who don’t get art of their fics

For the fanfic authors who can’t get to 1000/500/100 hits

For the fanfic authors who don’t get comments/reviews

For the fanfic authors who write for small fandoms

For the fanfic authors who write rarepairs or gen fics

For the fanfic authors who get hate for the ships/characters/fandoms they write

For the fanfic authors who write in English despite it not being their first language

For the fanfic authors who don’t write in English

For the fanfic authors who don’t think anyone reads or likes their work

For the fanfic authors who aren’t big name fans

For the fanfic authors who don’t get requests in their inboxes

For the fanfic authors who can’t write stories that are more than a thousand words

For the fanfic authors who only write one ship

For the fanfic authors who are just starting

For the fanfic authors who have been writing fic for years

For the fanfic authors who use fanfic to practice writing

For the fanfic authors who write self-insert fics

For the fanfic authors who write about their OCs

For the fanfic authors who write to vent or cope

For the fanfic authors who are just waiting for their big break

Keep creating, I love you ❤️

the-dashing-mx-ollandre
argentconflagration

when the subject of "why do people believe things that are seriously wrong and harmful" comes up it feels like you kinda hear one of two perspectives:

"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"

or

"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"

and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:

  • they want to believe stuff that makes them feel smart and cool and like they've figured everything out (you also do this)
  • they want to believe stuff that makes them feel like their emotions are justified and grounded in reality, and that the people they want to hurt deserve to be hurt (you also do this)
  • they form conclusions before they've processed all the relevant information, and cling to that first impression even when new info comes to light (you also do this)
  • they pick up beliefs from the people around them because they want to be liked and fit in, not because the beliefs are good or true (you also do this)
  • they come up with reasons that the stuff that benefits them (and the people they like and identify with) is actually overwhelmingly best for everyone and obviously the right thing to do (you also do this)
  • they pay more attention to stuff that supports what they already believe and avoid looking in places that might show them otherwise (you also do this)
  • they listen to people who talk like 'one of them' and ignore others (you also do this)
  • they come up with reasons to dismiss people with conflicting viewpoints as obviously in bad faith or ignorant or a shill or evil (you also do this)
  • they fail to take their own beliefs seriously sometimes, and take their beliefs way too seriously other times, in a selective way that lets them do the things they already wanted to do (you also do this)
  • the very ways they construct the ideas of 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' and 'belief' and 'understanding' are biased so that what they don't want to believe comes under lots of scrutiny and what they do want to believe receives less (you also do this)

you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:

  • natural environment (they would have been exposed to different information than you regardless of their choices)
  • being in the right place at the right time (your particular profile of flaws and virtues happened to be what was needed to lead you to the right conclusions, they had the opposite experience)
  • random luck (you doubled down on what felt right to believe but wasn't, but it turned out to be inconsequential, or even right for different reasons, while they doubled down on what turned out to be a horrible mistake distorting their entire worldview)
  • you do less of the things in the previous list, and over time the difference between you and them adds up

and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.

i know you're doing your best. we're all doing our best.

the-dashing-mx-ollandre
headspace-hotel

I love seeing "self-care" posts that are full of great ideas like drinking water and eating food and generally meeting your bodily needs, and they also say something like "go to bed at 9:00 pm"

headspace-hotel

My life experiences have shown me that if I feel like going to bed before 11:00 pm, this means one of a few things:

  • I'm getting the flu
  • I'm off my meds
  • I'm about to have a total mental breakdown from stress and exhaustion
screechingcollectivechorus

Right but these are all times when you're doing it as a natural response to other stressors. Go to bed at 9pm to take care of yourself, when you're not at your worst. Then you might not have that break down or at least you'll have the energy to handle it better

headspace-hotel

You're missing what I'm trying to say here.

If I went to bed at 9pm it would accomplish nothing but giving me a miserable 4 hours of lying in bed vibrating with restlessness.

headspace-hotel

As a child and a young teenager I had persistent, incurable insomnia. I would lie in bed every night for hours unable to sleep and it was awful. I also woke up in the middle of the night sometimes multiple times.

Then, around the time I was 15-16 or so, I started staying up later (going to bed around 12:30) and my insomnia magically disappeared. I started falling asleep within 15 minutes of getting in bed.

headspace-hotel

image

This is soooo true. Sometimes you need the Comfy Time, not sleeping just resting and making space for calm. I love taking some time for the Comfy Time it's so blissful

My sleeping cycle could probably be healthier than it is But people also naturally have different sleeping cycle and going to bed at 9 would not benefit my life And I think I'm not doing too badly because when I have no responsibilities whatsover my sleep cycle doesn't change much
the-dashing-mx-ollandre
penrosesun

You know, it occurs to me that the known internet phenomenon of Reddit “am I the asshole?” posts having completely misleading headers is actually a really great example of a far less known but far more common practice of extreme journalistic spin in cases where there are large monetary incentives to diminish the story in question.

Like, if you see a Reddit post titled “Am I the asshole for buying my wife a new dress?”, the post is pretty much always something totally deranged like: “I (48) really dislike the way my wife (20) dresses, because I think it’s too revealing and makes her look slutty, which was fine when we started dating five years ago, but it makes me feel like she’s going to cheat on me now that we’re married. I’ve politely asked her to get new clothes multiple times, and every time she refused because she said she liked her clothes, and didn’t want to waste money buying new ones. Yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore so I threw out a bunch of her old dresses and bought her a new one that was more modest looking. She started crying because one of the dresses I threw out had been left to her by her mom who died when she was a teen, but I couldn’t have known that it had sentimental value. She said that I should have asked, but obviously if I asked she’d have just told me not to throw out any of her clothes, including the ones that weren’t sentimental. Also, the more modest dress I bought was pretty expensive, and she never thanked me for it. Am I the asshole here, or is she being unreasonable?”

Similarly, whenever you see a headline like “Woman Wins Millions From McDonald’s Because Her Hot Coffee Was Too Hot”, if you dig a bit, you’ll almost always quickly find out that what actually happened was: A 79-year-old ordered coffee which, unbeknownst to her, was being served extremely dangerously hot, because McDonald’s was trying to have coffee that stayed warm over a long commute without spending any extra money on cups with better insulation. The coffee spilled on the old woman’s lap, giving her severe third degree burns over a huge portion of her body, including her genitals. She got to a hospital and they managed to save her life with skin grafting, but she became disabled from the accident, and her genitals and thighs were permanently disfigured. She tried to settle with McDonald’s for her medical costs, and McDonald’s refused to cover any portion of her medical expenses at all, and so she sued. At trial, the jury discovered that this same exact thing had happened seven hundred times before, and McDonald’s had still decided not to change their policy because paying out individual suits was cheaper than moderately reducing their coffee profits. As a result, the jury awarded punitive damages designed to penalize McDonald’s two days worth of their coffee profits, in addition to the woman’s medical costs.

I think it’s largely the same phenomenon, but I know a lot of people who are familiar with the first case, but don’t know to look for the second. If you see some totally outrageous “how could a person ever sue over this stupid thing?” case, you should immediately be incredibly suspicious that that’s all that actually happened, because a lot of the time, it absolutely isn’t. The people who have the most incentive to make their opponent look not only wrong, but completely crazy for having any sort of grievance at all, are often the actually unreasonable ones. 

Anyway this is all to say that if I see ANY of y’all automatically siding with McDonald’s over the recent case where 4-year-old girl was severely burned by their chicken nuggets because “hurr durr dumb kid didn’t know that chicken nuggets were hot, people sue over anything lol”, I will grab that McBoot you’re licking and shove it all the way up your McFuckingAss.

the-dashing-mx-ollandre
vickyvicarious

The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it; I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, for, though the moonlight was behind them, they threw no shadow on the floor.

I love that even in this moment Jonathan latches on to small but significant details, like his own footprints in the dust. He doesn't specifically say the ladies aren't leaving footprints, but I absolutely bet they aren't which is why he emphasizes it looking unchanged.

It's extra sad/creepy, because the proliferation of dust/seemingly abandoned room with no footprints or sign of use is a huge part of why he felt so much safer in here last night. And yet the opposite is true. Vampires don't cast a shadow or reflection, they don't leave traces as they pass. And so all the signs he took as showing other living soul had been here in a long time were true... but only for living souls. And he's the only one of those in this castle.

the-dashing-mx-ollandre
citizen-zero

I know the “You never love” / “Yes, I too can love” lines were some source of titillation last year and I didn’t really understand what exactly the sisters and Dracula meant by it, but on second read I think I understand now.

I think when they say “love,” it’s a euphemism for getting possessive. Staking a claim on an individual. It’s not romantic or even platonic love, it’s the sense of entitlement you might feel over something you want badly. It’s like when you really really really want the corner piece of a birthday cake and you call dibs on it and get unreasonably upset if someone else steals it. It’s like Agamemnon and Achilles fighting over Briseis. It’s not romance, it’s ownership.

So the impression I’m getting is that Dracula warned the sisters to stay away from Jonathan and they didn’t take him seriously because he doesn’t do this basically ever, the whole keeping a human victim prisoner and toying with them for an extended period of time for the pure fun of it—hence why they say “you never love.” This is new behavior, which honestly makes Dracula scarier. A predator breaking from his established pattern is unpredictable and therefore harder to defend against.

I agree with this post in that I also think Dracula was planning to just use Jonathan’s legal services and then kill him. Remember, he was originally expecting it to be Mr. Hawkins who came out to meet him, an old man he could use at his convenience and then dispose of when he no longer needed him. He wasn’t expecting to get young, earnest, fresh-faced Jonathan, someone so much more inexperienced, someone who hasn’t yet been corrupted jaded by the world. Dracula preys on youth and innocence, if the sisters and [redacted] are anything to judge by. On top of that, Jonathan is smart enough to keep it interesting—he not only recognizes that he’s a prisoner of something inhuman, he recognizes that he can’t confront him directly for a variety of reasons. I have to imagine Dracula likes that. He likes that he gets to play this game with his new toy, seeing how much he can take before he cracks.

So the sisters don’t initially take him seriously because this isn’t something they’ve seen from him, or rather, they seem to have forgotten that he got like this with them, too. Dracula normally only keeps them around until he’s gotten what he wants, and then he kills then; he doesn’t hold onto them for weeks on end just to drag it out and have his sadistic fun with them.

So yeah, Dracula “loves” Jonathan, just like you’d love a new novelty item and then discard it when it loses its appeal.

the-dashing-mx-ollandre
wynought

i think dracula never meant for jonathan to be alive longer than today's entry. sure, he wanted to keep jonathan around for a few days to toy with him - which is why dracula barely bothered to hide his true nature (the calèche ride and being the driver, the lack of servants, the unnatural strength, not hiding that he doesn't eat or drink, the reverse sleep schedule, the pushing of jonathan's boundaries). jonathan was meant to pick up on all of that, he was meant to realise that dracula was not only a dangerous man, but something supernatural preying on him.

then, after playing with his food for a few days, dracula would have killed him and moved on. he drags out the legal matters until today, but seems to have resolved all of them by now. talking about obtaining the services of multiple other solicitors is both something you would ask to tie up any legal loose ends, and to implicitly threaten your current solicitor - the last veiled threat, before putting everything out in the open.

after finishing this conversation, dracula suddenly stands up and asks about jonathan's correspondence. this is the point where he tells asks jonathan to stay for a whole month longer. i believe, this was dracula purely acting on impulse. he has had so much fun playing with jonathan, he doesn't want to end it here.

it is only now that he provides jonathan with the means to contact the outside world, so that nobody comes looking for him too soon. if dracula had planned on jonathan's stay extending for that long, why not ask him to write back home on the first or second day, when jonathan's suspicions might not have been raised as high and the chance for hidden messages was much lower (dracula is arrogant enough to believe that he would catch any attempt of jonathan's to communicate the situation, but he is also good enough at what he does that he would have minimized any potential risk to himself).

my biggest piece of evidence is that, before going to post the letters, dracula finally gives jonathan the warning to "not by any chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle". this is, of course, because of [redacted for spoilers]. up until this point, however, dracula didn't care if [redacted] happened to jonathan.

today is the day that dracula decided that jonathan is his, and his alone.

the-dashing-mx-ollandre
cryptobranchid

i think one of the funniest things ever is how many rock and metal bands are just four or five identical white dudes with long brown hair parted in the middle. like they’ve gotta be cranking these dudes out in a factory at this point. they don’t even have to be in the same genre, you can find them anywhere. they’re like some kind of metal fungus.

cryptobranchid

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these are all different bands

cryptobranchid

image

i would love to argue with this but you will never fucking believe what i look like