I Am Russian And I Am Scared. Contemplating Dropping Out Of University And Running Away From The Country

Why hasn’t this been done before?

I desperately wish people would start actually reading the AO3's TOS before confidently making 'user guides' to the AO3 that are just blatantly, flatly wrong.

Yes the AO3 has banned content. They do not allow anything that's illegal under US law - though US law, importantly, does not ban fictional depictions of things - and they do not allow any commercial content. That includes your ko-fi link, or mentions that you do fic commissions. If you do post fic commissions to AO3 and want to mention the commissioner, the fic is a 'request' from the commissioner. This protects the AO3 and you from copyright law.

No the AO3 is not 'a creative fanfiction archive'. It is a fandom archive. Your meta, insights, and theories are absolutely welcome and encouraged there. AO3 also encourages you to post other types of fanworks, like fan videos, podfics, and art, but unfortunately isn't able to natively host those like it does text, so fic has kind of become what it's known for. That absolutely does not mean that other types of fanwork aren't allowed, or are discouraged by the site culture! Anybody who tells you otherwise is just plain wrong!

Big Warning

If you see a police car or a cop with a speaker looking thing on it, FUCKING RUN. It’s known as an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), a device that, when activated, can permanently damage your hearing and cause serious harm. If you’re too close, you’ll be left in a lot of pain and squirming on the ground permanently deaf. Ear plugs do not work. Unless you have one of those shooting range headphones, you do not stand a chance against them. Again, if you see them pull up, RUN. This is what they look like.

Stay safe.

I think toy doctors are so nice actually like i remember being a little heartbroken kid when one of my beloved stuffed animals got old and torn up and my mom just threw him out. And i know what it would have meant to me, to have someone lovingly stitch him back up instead so i could love him just a little longer. And I’m really glad there are little kids out there who get to see pictures of their stuffed animals and dolls with little fake hospital beds and casts as they “rest & heal” before returning to them good as new. Like what a sweet thing to do with your life.

Pretty!!

📷

I actually don't know much about you do I just did my best!

The other day, me and a few others were talking to a teenage cousin of ours who had just entered the work force full-time. Incidentally, he had also just come back from his week of vacation. He was incredibly upset and near tears, saying that it is terrible how he has to spend every day working and his only "life" gets to happen in his designated 1-2 weeks off per year, and, in his words, "then you die."

A lot of the people listening in started laughing at him and saying that he needs to "grow up and get used to it." How brainwashed do you have to be to say these things, especially to a kid in distress? And especially when the kid is right? He is absolutely, 100% right.

We have so much evidence that this set up is not healthy physically or psychologically. We could absolutely find better ways to ensure things get done without making people feel like overused machines. Everything we do as humans should be about making our lives happier and easier so that we can enjoy this precious little time we have. Everything we do now is instead about making the select few happier while everyone else suffers.

Don't "grow up and get used to it." Keep that youthful feeling of injustice when you realize how unfair it all is. This is not natural. People made society this way and we can unmake it.

Please make art. You don't have to bare your soul or make a masterpiece, you can be silly and you can be derivative if you want. You don't even have to show it to anyone. Just please make something, it's so good for you

I really don’t like how society demonizes crying. You’re seen as weak or manipulative if you shed any tears at all about anything. People look down upon you if you cry, or think you’re “faking for attention.” Even in the media, a character learning not to cry is considered good character development, and a character who does frequently cry is portrayed as weak or cowardly. 

The truth is, crying is one of the healthiest coping mechanisms humans have for stress. It’s been scientifically proven that the chemical composition of emotional tears (compared to basal and irritant tears) purges stress hormones from the body and produces a relaxing effect at a biological level. It’s also nonviolent (more than can be said for the more socially acceptable anger response). Humans evolved to cry for a reason. 

If one isn’t allowed to cry (if they would be shamed/abused for it), the stress hormones will build up and cause illness later on. They will have to force themselves to cry because their first instinct will be to repress the tears. They wouldn’t be able to cry in front of people anymore, either. 

Go ahead and cry if you need to, for whatever reason. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. 

Fun History Fact: The overwhelming majority of cowboys in the U.S. were Indigenous, Black, and/or Mexican persons. The omnipresent white cowboy is a Hollywood studio concoction meant to uphold the mythology of white masculinity.

from one chronically anxious person to another: the world is not going to go up in flames. What happens will be more slow, more bureaucratic, more boring. There is no catastrophe to end all catastrophes, no rapture, no sudden end. You can't give into the call of the void, because there is no void. So you just have to do the work to make tomorrow a better place, anyway. Because that's how it gets better.