One Thing About An Austen Heroine She Will NEVER Think Ough Maybe I Led That Horrible Man On You Will

Women want me, fish fear me. Mermaids are conflicted

KING

Important rules/tips I've learned as an adult that helped with anxiety

If people are mad at you, it's their responsibility to tell you, not your responsibility to guess

If they're mad at you in secret anyways, they're the ones in the wrong, not you

If people don't like what you're doing, it's their responsibility to tell you

If they say it's fine when it's really not, they're the ones in the wrong, not you

People are allowed to be wrong about you

If they are wrong about you, wait for them to bring it up, because if you try to, you will inevitably overcorrect

Some people are committed to misunderstanding you. You will not win arguments against them. Yes, even if you explain your point of view. They do not care. Drop it

The worst thing that will happen from a first-time offense is being told not to do it again. Maybe with a replacement if you broke something

You can improve relationships and gauge willingness to talk to you by giving compliments. It's like a daily log-in bonus and nobody thinks twice about it

Most things are better after you sleep on them

Most things are better after you have a meal

Most things are better after you shower

Your brain makes up consequences that are irrational. If the worst DOES come to pass and someone acts like they do in your head, they are overreacting, and you are entitled to say "what the fuck"

If your chest hurts after you feel like you've made a social error, that's called rejection-sensitive dysphoria. It means your anxiety is so bad that it's causing you physical pain, which is a good indicator that you're overreacting. Tense yourself, hold it for 20 seconds, let it go, then find a distraction

If you're suddenly angry at someone after you feel like you made a social error, that's also rejection-sensitive dysphoria. You are going to feel annoyed about it for awhile, but being genuinely pissed off is your anxiety trying to find something to blame to take the responsibility off your shoulders, and getting scared because it can't justify itself. Deep breaths, ask yourself how much you ACTUALLY want to be angry at that person, then find a distraction

"Sour grapes" is more healthy for you than stewing. Deciding you don't like someone who's perpetually annoyed with you, won't talk to you, etc. makes letting go of anxiety over them easier

If people don't like you, they will find reasons to be annoyed with you when they otherwise wouldn't. If people do like you, they will find reasons NOT to be annoyed with you when they otherwise would. People do not ping-pong between the two

You DO have to make a conscious choice not to think about something. If you're having trouble circling back to it, say out loud that you're done thinking about it and why. Then find a distraction

When you're upset, part of you is going to want to make false bids for attention (suddenly texting differently, heavy sighs, etc. but when someone asks you about it, you tell them it's nothing). Do not listen to it. You gain nothing from it except more misery

People like to help people they care about. It makes them feel good about themselves

If you think you're insufferable for needing help, see above. Yes, really. They get a serotonin kick from it

If you think you're insufferable for mannerisms you have, you either have to consciously choose not to do them, or accept that they're part of the package that comes with you. Being apologetic about existing does nothing except make you more miserable

If you do things you don't like when you feel meh about it, it makes it easier to do them when you hate it

If you avoid things you don't like when you feel meh about it, it reinforces and magnifies how bad it feels when you hate it

Seriously. Read those last two points again. If you can make yourself make a phone call when you've got nothing to lose, you will slowly lose that panic you get when you have to make a phone call you haven't prepared for. You do have to CONSCIOUSLY take that step

Hobbies that make you care for something get rid of that nagging feeling that you're not doing enough. Go grow some rosemary

If you don't engage with your hobbies regularly, you will feel miserable, and anxiety will spike

Hobbies are things that give you a bit of happiness. They do not have to be organized or named to do that. Go be creative in something. Play with coins. Make up lists. Start a new WIP

No one cares what you look like

If people point out things they don't like about how you look unprompted, they are being rude. You are entitled to say "what the fuck"

People who like you will find you pretty to some degree. Minor things about your appearance go completely unnoticed. Literally, scars and dots and blemishes do not register to someone who likes your company

You looking at yourself in the mirror is 10x more closely than anyone is going to look at you

If you're anxious about your body type, and you're creatively inclined, make/write an oc with that same shape. Give them nice things and make other characters love them. Put them on adventures. You'll start to see yourself in the mirror more kindly

You care about wording and perfect lines/colors way more than anyone who views your work ever will

Sometimes when you're upset, you're going to feel like not eating. Do not do that. Not eating makes you more miserable

Same with things you normally enjoy. Denying yourself helps no one. You are punishing yourself for being sad. Stop it

Both of these will take conscious decision to break the habit of. Make yourself do it anyways, and it will slowly get easier

And again, to reiterate: If someone is mad at you, it is THEIR responsibility to tell you, not your responsibility to guess

being weird and full of love can save you

and it might save those around you, too

So You Wanna 'Revive' Your Show

Hi Tim. This took me like ten minutes because I actually have two brain cells to rub together. <3

Give the 911 call center more to do. Linda and Sue especially in my opinion.

Go back to what made the show great in the first place which was the core characters becoming/being a family.

Mix up the dynamics. Remember Chim and Bobby's friendship in season one? Hen and Athena's bestieism? Bring that back along with some lesser seen dynamics. I want more of Chim and Karen's friendship. Have Maddie and Bobby work together on something. Pair Athena and Eddie together and have Athena realize just how like her husband Eddie is (and maybe in doing so they help each other get perspective on other things).

Give Bobby a promotion and have him deal with that (although so soon after he quit being an advisor and was clearly enjoying being captain might not work but something to consider).

Have Athena retire and become a private investigator.

More fun filler episodes. A bottle episode where they have a boring day at the station. An episode made up entirely of B shift or the non-firefam members of A shift like SG-1's The Other Guys. An episode entirely from Jee-Yun's point of view showing a young child's perspective of crazy silly adult drama. Boys Night Out/Girls Night Out a la Leverage. "Alternate universe" episodes like Bones' season four finale and Castle's Blue Butterfly episode.

Keep Buck single for a while and give him a safe haven baby. Another way to bond with Hen and Karen over adoption, another way to bond with his sister, and another way to bond with Bobby by making him a grandfather. And oh, hey, Eddie, you want to help me coparent?

Maybe stop having all of Eddie's important shit happen offscreen, I don't know if there's BTS beef or what but grow the fuck up and keep it out of the script. Professionalism, heard of it?

Make Buddie canon. Yes my bias is showing but it's what a large percentage of your audience and media reporters have been clambering after for years. Put guns to heads if you must. Jesus. You want to revitalize the show that's literally the number one way to do it. You dumbasses.

Okay I always said I didn't want it and I still don't but fine. fine! do a musical episode! if that's the price of Bobby's life I'll fucking pay it!!!

Maybe relearn the concept of arcs that last an entire season and not just two-three episodes.

Michael and David have a destination wedding and every single firefam member encounters some kind of emergency, either life-threatening or comedy-of-errors, that means they all show up looking like they got run over by trucks.

RASHOMON EPISODE. For either dramatic or comedic effect. Or both.

Everyone loved the heist episodes like The Taking of Dispatch 9-1-1 and Ocean's 9-1-1. Like come on you fuckwit let the show be fun again.

Actually commit to giving any of the main characters a pet. I know everyone wants Buck but it could be Athena and Bobby, Hen and Karen, Maddie and Chim... personally I would love to see Eddie get hit by the Cat Distribution System.

Firefighters do charity drives all the time, go to schools to do talks about fire safety - show the team interacting with the local community more. Show the parents interacting with their kids' schools or the parents of their friends' kids a bit more. I want to see Eddie and Karen fight the PTA.

It's not hard. That's what gets me. You don't actually worry about the show becoming stagnant. You just wanted to do a really big shocking holy shit episode that everyone would be talking about, forgetting that truly good shows earn those. Shit shows that pull that kind of nonsense lose their audience and get cancelled. You did it because you're a mediocre, boring, never-quite-popular-enough egotist with an inferiority complex who was luckily born with a dick so you fell upward your entire career, and you orgasm to other people's pain.

And for once in my life? I hope cast/crew do know my tumblr. I hope they are on here. I hope they fucking read this, and I hope they print it out and tape it to your office door and every other door on set they can manage like Martin fucking Luther. I want you to go to bed at night knowing you are despised and that a starving barely-breaking-even idiot who wrote a stripper!Buck fanfic knows more about television writing and comes up with better ideas than you do.

To quote David Lynch, fix your heart or die.

Please tell me that y'all won't go back to tiktok once Trump gets whatever nefarious concessions he wants from the company and "saves" it. Like, you all NEED to stay gone. Stay on Xiaohongshu or move to other platforms or create a new one or whatever, but don't go back to whatever Trump-appeasement monstrosity TikTok is about to become. Don't do it.

please learn how to code

like, if you're bored today, and not doing anything,

learn a little bit of coding please

Just read another post saying that kids shouldn’t learn algebra because they don’t need it and –

I mean, even if we pretend that the process of working your way through a mathematical proof and learning to apply seemingly abstract formulas to the actual work and going back and spotting errors and doing that kind of detail work is absolutely useless to the vast majority of us in our real lives (spoiler alert: IT NOT), you guys do realize that we are not in fact living in some kind of Brave New World dystopia where we are all put in color-coded jumpsuits once we emerge from our test tubes and only the children bred for high IQs are allowed to become scientists while the rest of us shovel shit, right?  We are all the same teeming mass of potential at eleven years old, and the only way to see which direction that potential is going to go is to feed the young brain a little of everything and see what it latches on to.

And also, ALSO, ALSO: 

Do you fucking get why minorities and women are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields?  Do you?  DO YOU?  IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE OFTEN DENIED A QUALITY EDUCATION IN SUBJECTS LIKE FUCKING ALGEBRA.  Because they’re not going into STEM fields anyway, so they don’t need it.  Because they’re not going to college, so they don’t need it. Because they’re only going to get married and have children, because they’re only going to be blue-collar laborers, because they’re only going to go to jail.  So they don’t need algebra, because they won’t use it.

Because in the absence of color-coded jumpsuits, we go with other arbitrary labels to choose who our scientists and mathematicians will be.  And I don’t think I need to fucking tell you what they are.

Mathematics is the language of the universe.  It is literally everything we are.  It is how we find our place in the spinning galaxy, our relationship to the sun and the moon and our fellow planets.  It is the smallest chemical reaction in the infinite cells of your body.  It is music, it is architecture.  It is how you know that if you set the cruise control to 80, you’ll be home in two hours (barring traffic).  It is the precise curve of your shirt collar and the humming electronics that allow us to speak to one another no matter where we are.

And you need this.  You do.  Because if you don’t have it, your ability to converse with the whole of creation is limited to “Hello,” “Thank you,” and “Bathroom?”

STOP LETTING PEOPLE TAKE THIS FROM YOU.  This is your birthright as much as it is anyone’s.  Seize that shit with both hands. 

Every student deserves a quality mathematical education that will take them as far as they can go.  We shouldn’t be eliminating algebra.  We should be expanding it!  We need to make sure every kid out there is getting the best damn math classes we can give them.  To teach them not to be afraid of numbers.  To teach them to be excited about it.  To show them the beauty!  Because what algebra can do, and where it can take you?  That’s the stars, man.  That’s the fucking future.

Better algebra.  More passionate algebra.  More enjoyable algebra.

Not less algebra, and definitely not no algebra.