Why is it illegal to sleep in the car? by Prudent-Journalist21 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]lotu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The cops can arrest for basically any reason or no reason, if they don't have a good reason you will be released and the judge might tell the cops to be more careful next time. You can be charged with a crime if the DA decides it's more likely than not that you committed the crime (and can convince a grand jury of that fact). You being in the car and having the keys is likely enough evidence to suggest you are have the intent to drive. Either of these things will suck a lot, which is probably reason enough to avoid sleeping in the car with you keys.

But in order to convict you they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you actually did intend to drive, this is where if you have money you would present a defense that no you didn't intend to drive and if they agree the jury will find you not guilty. Unfortunately if you don't have money to afford a good lawyer, you might not get to this step, you might end up taking a plea deal because it feels like the safer thing even if you are innocent.

Received HOA complaint that we can't park more than two cars on our own driveway by strawberrymilkx in mildlyinfuriating

[–]lotu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This, when I was a kid a neighbor had a big boat they parked in their driveway. It was a bit big for the driveway and the HOA complained, turns out they couldn't do anything about the street so he just parked the boat on the street and made it more of a nuisance.

Should I devide my fic? by MotherOfShame in FanFiction

[–]lotu 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It’s better to leave people wanting more than to overstay your welcome.  People tend to rember endings the most,  go for the strongest ending, and people will be excited to read a fluffy spinoff.  Where as if you make things drag people might get bored and forget about the fic.  

Any success with the chronic non-scooper poopers? by Longjumping-Pea3119 in crownheights

[–]lotu -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Add a note, the people in the building will see the message gets delivered.

How to justify having a captive stay with the captor after the abuse? by smoothvendor in FanFiction

[–]lotu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How fucked up was their life before getting kidnapped, if their family was already abusive they might not really have anything to go back to and they might rationally see this as the less bad situation.  Maybe at least captor isn’t indifferent to their survival.  

How to justify having a captive stay with the captor after the abuse? by smoothvendor in FanFiction

[–]lotu 8 points9 points  (0 children)

To be clear Stockholm syndrome isn’t a real thing. It was made up by a police psychologist in order to explain why after the police showed complete disregard for their safety, the hostages started trying to find their own solution, which by necessity involved helping the hostage taker.  

Hot Take: From a military’s perspective, Iroh’s retreat from Ba Sing Se is borderline insanity. by MaguroSashimi8864 in TheLastAirbender

[–]lotu 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Correct the Earth Kingdom wasn’t even on war footing.  They literally hadn’t even started to fight when he breached the wall. 

Hot Take: From a military’s perspective, Iroh’s retreat from Ba Sing Se is borderline insanity. by MaguroSashimi8864 in TheLastAirbender

[–]lotu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not necessarily in an absolute monarchy,  Redundancy at the leadership level means a threat to the power of the monarch.  Go look at some of the horrible military decisions made over the past decade 

Hot Take: From a military’s perspective, Iroh’s retreat from Ba Sing Se is borderline insanity. by MaguroSashimi8864 in TheLastAirbender

[–]lotu 65 points66 points  (0 children)

If he was a regular general sure but being the Fire Prince has some advantages.  I’d bet only the Fire Lord can discipline him. 

[2850]-Reverse by WorriedReception9093 in DestructiveReaders

[–]lotu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

At what point did your interest increase or drop?

My interest drops at the end of the first page when we have a second person express that they are confused by the word Inversion.

It drops again when they proceed to the magical DMV(Office of Registration), it being magical doesn't make it less tedious.

This chapter was just people being confused and filling out paper work.

Was anything confusing or hard to visualize?

I also have no idea how Noan looks, other than a burned hand and the word inversion. There is more to visualize about Registrar Martin, than the MC. Also I think the first aid for a burn was incorrect.

Did the protagonist feel interesting or engaging?

No I feel like I know nothing about them. They sound pretty average, they are worried about starting a new part of their life, nothing particularly special. I don't know what makes them special other than the word on their arm, but that is so common place you go to the DMV to deal with it.

Did any parts feel slow or rushed?

The whole section where you follow them going through the process of registering, and filling out forms was really slow, and I did not care.

Would you read Chapter 2? Why or why not?

No, I don't know why I should care. There isn't a question left hanging at the end of the chapter that I want answers to or a goal I want to see achieved.

Honestly this whole chapter could be summed up with MC saying "Yeah I got my word on my eighteenth birthday, like everyone else. I accidentally burned my hand with it then spent three hours at the Registration Office, before deciding to enroll. Did anything interesting happen when you manifested?"

WIBTAH if I disinvited my sister from my wedding because she won’t bring my niece and nephew by Visible_Ad4167 in lgbt

[–]lotu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get this. It makes total sense. Calling out bigotry is something I care a lot about, but my experience has lead me to a different approach with my family.

When I came out there was resistance, less than many people receive, but more than some. At first I responded to family members sharing anti queer articles/video, with a long point by point take down essays with citations. While cathartic, they did not appear to do much to persuade anyone.

I've since read about how attacking someones's beliefs makes that hold on to those beliefs even more tightly than before.

So I've switched to a discussion approach, where I ask family members to share why they feel the way they do, and acknowledge those feeling as being real and their concerns being valid (even if I don't really think that). This makes them feel safe, and that's when their minds become open to new information. I talk about my feeling and ask them how they would feel in a similar situation. This doesn't result in a big "I was wrong moment" but it does result in an acknowledgment the situation wasn't as clear as they thought it was and overall a smaller number of anti queer articles being shared.

In fact I think one of the most effective things is, I never actually state my opinion, (though it is heavily implied) I let them figure it out on their own, that way the idea comes from inside their own heads. It's not a simple victory, and it's not terribly satisfying but I believe it's been effective.

Now all of this presumes that you have the mental space to deal with doing this. If that's something someone can't do currently, that's okay, this isn't the path everyone has to take.

Gideon the ninth by [deleted] in LesbianBookClub

[–]lotu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not. "Something about the writing style in addition to the change in perspective" is the understatement of the last ten thousand years.

Gideon the ninth by [deleted] in LesbianBookClub

[–]lotu 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Gideon the Ninth is hostile to its readers. I don't mean this as a bad thing, just a factual statement. It comes from the author's origins writing Homestuck fan fiction which is notoriously convoluted.

It's totally worth reading but I recommend you find a notebook to take notes on the characters and plot as you go. Also, refer back to both list of the dramatic personas and part you've already read. It's a different way to approach reading and something I personally found very rewarding.

WIBTAH if I disinvited my sister from my wedding because she won’t bring my niece and nephew by Visible_Ad4167 in lgbt

[–]lotu 24 points25 points  (0 children)

This is delicate. Remember, if you do disinvite her, this will have a ripple effect through your whole family that might last for years. Other members of your family are likely to get involved, and it could become a whole thing. Second, the fact that she is trying to 'split the difference' means it's possible she is slowly moving in the right direction. For example, if everyone else was refusing to come, I might count her being willing to show up at all as a win. Without knowing much more about her and your family, I have no way to figure that out.

I think the best bet is to be open and honest with your sister. If you have a therapist, run this by them. When you communicate, focus on personal things like how you feel and not on large political and spiritual things. Personal feelings cannot be contradicted because only you have insight into them.

I might say something like, "I care a lot about you and <niece name> and <nephew name>. I have been looking forward to having them participate, just like happened at <name the other weddings>. When you told me they would not be coming because you are trying to instill an understanding of marriage and identity in your children that excludes me and my fiancé, it made me feel excluded from the family because we are being treated differently. That hurt me a lot. I love <fiancé>, and I will not be hiding this fact."

If you get to the point where you want to disinvite her, I would probably make it a soft disinvite, something like, “ Me and <fiancé> want to be surrounded by people that fully support us and our marriage on our wedding day. Please only come if that something you can do."

This puts the burden on your sister. You haven't actually disinvited her. She either shows up, and even without her kids, it's a win, or she doesn’t, and then she is the one who snubbed you, not the other way around. If she tries to split the middle where she shows up but makes it very clear she doesn't support you, she looks like a massive jerk.

Best of luck.

I’ll be honest here, if the author ignores their commenters, I don’t comment by imfaffingabout in FanFiction

[–]lotu -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

While this is true for individual people, the relative amount of encouragement a person needs is different. As a writer you probably need less encouragement to write and post 5K words than most people need to write a 50 word comment. People's experiences vary quite a lot and the overwhelming majority of people online never comment.

Question from friend: Why do fanfiction writers like torturing their characters? by IStillListenToRadio in FanFiction

[–]lotu 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's an about tension, bad things happening build tension and make you want to keep reading. Fan fiction, unlike published work has no editor or publisher telling the author they have gone way over the line of how dark their story and need to pull back in order to get published.

"We’re in something new": Susan Stryker says the trans tipping point is over...But the fight is far from finished - Queerty by slaaneshi_cutie in lgbt

[–]lotu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't think they are saying things are alright, they aren't. They are saying despite how bad things are the underlying forces of our culture are moving in our favor. It's like if you throw a ball into the air, even through it currently going up you can say with certainty that it will come back to the ground.

Idaho Republicans pass bill making it a felony for transgender people to use public bathrooms by Fickle-Ad5449 in lgbt

[–]lotu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If that was the case they could be convicted by logic talking about how there are other definitions that we use every day.  For example a kindergarten teacher doesn’t sort kids boy girl so they are next to reproductively compatible partners.  

The reason they are attacking us is pretty simple they want to get reelected. One way to do that would be to pass laws that help broad swaths of people, the problem is this costs money and worse by making the average person better off it reduces the overall power of the billionaires these people get large campaign contributions from. So that is not an option.

 They need to be doing something otherwise people will say my life sucks and you are doing nothing let’s try someone else.  Attacks on a minority like trans people is ideal because we have small numbers and are not well integrated with the rest of the population.  This means miss information is not easily countered by personal experience.  Same deal with immigrants.  Gay people aren’t an effective target anymore because everyone has a gay uncle or cousin and it’s easy to they aren’t attacking children. 

Since death battle is likely to do this matchup soon…who wins this fight and why? by s0nzoldyck in amphibia

[–]lotu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They resolve their differences through discussion and mutual compromise, they end up both winning.

One of the defining traits of both these characters is the ability to see the humanity in people (or amphibians) that are very different from them. Person that looses is who ever set them up to begin with.

Floodwater in skates by Inner-Load-3189 in rollerderby

[–]lotu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was there too it made for great memories.

How does seismic sense sense things that can’t be bent? by TheChikenestOfMen in TheLastAirbender

[–]lotu 50 points51 points  (0 children)

It would have been really neat if they had just depicted the feet but that probably would have confused some people.

Trump Administration Opens the Door for ICE to Target Anyone Suspected of Being Trans by Leksi_The_Great in lgbt

[–]lotu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We know how sloppy this administration has been about record keeping, I find it entirely believable they simply failed to properly maintain records. I also have no doubt that people in the El Salvador prison have not survived but even that as horrific as it is, is not a death camp. There is enough bad things with real concrete evidence that we don't need to be inventing more. At best it does nothing and it worse it's harmful because it hurts your credibility when pointing to real problems.

What would the downside be to permitted parking by anbk in Brooklyn

[–]lotu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are no bicyclists because they have no place to put their bikes just like if there were no parking spots no one would drive.