I cannot describe to you my reaction when he told me that story. It’s been 10 years and I’m still stunned.

There should absolutely be prostate cancer awareness!

I completely agree! Words have power!

If I see that sort of thing, I try and correct it. Gently. It never feels good when you get hit with a generalization meant for someone else, but especially when you dislike that generalization, too.

I still argue, especially when my ADHD meds wear off, and my impulse control goes out the window, but we can all at least try to be better to one another.

A male friend of mine who confides in me was complaining to me about how there are these ‘feminists’ talking about ‘toxic masculinity.’ Apparently he viewed some video where a guy was intentionally conflating masculinity with toxic masculinity. I didn’t know that at the time, I was just shocked, because he’s the biggest victim of toxic masculinity I know. When I said that, he asked me to explain, and I pointed to the fact that his father burned his sketchbooks (this was the 70s) because art is “for girls.” Which is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

When I explained that toxic masculinity is that, the emphasis to conform to some harmful version of masculinity, he turned on a dime so fast in rage at the asshole who conflated the two.

The thing that hurts my feelings most is when men are taught to forward toxic masculinity that harms them. When they’re forged into links in a chain that they would never wield if they knew better.

Well, no. I make sure to always emphasize men’s mental health, and I especially love talking about it in the context of Klingons. But… I can’t make every month mental health awareness month.

I got to be honest, that really bums me out.

I’m a person with C-PTSD who volunteers with local veterans. I really hammered home mental health awareness month. I mean, I talk about it all the time, but NAMI does some cool stuff during May. I even recall seeing some busses that had NAMI wraps on them talking about it in May!

Eta: I said elsewhere, and I’m saying it again (hope it sinks in), next May I’ll try and generate content and memes and stuff. Hearing that some of you didn’t see or hear anything during May has really had a massive dampening effect on my day. Ya’ll deserve outreach, same as everyone in my meatspace.

Of course it was. There’s a subsection of people who want to divide the folks who believe in things like men’s mental health, and also pride. You can do both. You should do both. Trying to move mental health month to overlap with pride is agitprop. Trying to make this a pride versus men issue, or a mental health versus men’s mental health issue, is coordinated nonsense. Don’t let them do that to you.

Advocate for mental health, and men’s mental health, every day. Celebrate mental health month, and include your male friends, like I do. But don’t let someone try and define men’s mental health specifically to overlap with something else, something that right-wing, manosphere assholes will tell you is bad.

Edited to add: I think part of the problem is that folks don’t seem to keep these things in their calendars or in their minds, and just react to ‘whatever month’ when they see image macros. Next year I’ll try and post memes about mental health awareness month during May. I’m not as good at advocating online as I am in person- I usually use the internet to unwind and shitpost and pick fights when my meds wear off. I’ll try and do better.

If ya’ll aren’t emphasizing men’s mental health, which is friggin epidemic, during the mental health month, it’s being done wrong.

Totally bad faith. Mental health awareness month is May. It’s non-gendered but it’s been May since 1949.

Source: NAMI. The National Alliance on Mental Health. I support them financially.

??? Mental Health Awareness Month is May. It’s super easy to remember because of the alliteration.

This joke is made all the better by the character’s name being Dr. Kalgary.

It’s just flickering static. You’re not missing out. :)

I don’t know why others don’t but I’ll say why I do, which is that I noticed people were remembering my username whether I had an image or not, so why not have an image? And it was early days, still is, so I figured… may as well be the first static.

Oh my God! I also lived an entire life in a dream!

I was really lucky, because I lived to an old age, and then my husband died, and I was able to really come to peace with my life and have a healthy relationship with my grown children and my grandchildren before I woke up.

I guess what I did differently is I had closure, and peace. And it took a week for the reality to sink back in, and for this life to become the real one, but I always felt… that life had its chance, ended. This one needs my very different attention. I’d hate to do this one wrong because I was still living in the last one.

I’m so glad you found someone real to love. I feel like we should start a lived-a-life-in-a-dream support group. It would’ve been really nice to have someone who understood then, at the beginning!

Love… and… PEACE!!!

I was going to say, “pecking order.”

I wish we could trade. I’d give you some CHA if it meant I could stop injuring myself.

I need to start teaching “Charisma for the Neurologically Atypical” classes.

Oooh, thank you for reminding me that game exists. I still haven’t played it, and so many people have told me it’s good!

There are over 1,000 pokemon. I think it’s a Tolkien situation- where famously, you can’t write fantasy without using ingredients that Tolkien created, because if you do, obviously it’s from Tolkien, and if you didn’t, the reader is asking why not? That kinda deal.

If you set out to create a game involving collecting, or even looking at and cataloguing, a bunch of different fantasy creatures, you’re going to have some that are at least a little similar to pokemon. The electibuzz/grizzbolt example you gave is a fantastic one. You’re claiming it’s stolen, but that there is a cat creature with a single lightning bolt in it’s belly. Versus a… monkeything? Covered in them. My point here being, even if they didn’t steal (which, I’m sure they did, there are other, better examples) at a certain point you have to accept that with 1,000 pokemon, there’s going to be overlap, so you either need to just be up front about the stealing, or you need to spend 5x the amount of development time making sure none of your creatures have overlap.

Personally, Pokemon has been around for more than 25 years. Even if they released a million games a year, they shouldn’t get to gatekeep ‘all creature-collection simulators that you use balls for and that you can ride like a dragon.’ Fuck that. They got infinite money back on their initial investment, and they shouldn’t be allowed to just own the ideas. This is the kind of bullshit that makes me (a lifelong pokemon fan) want to never, ever, ever give them money again.