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divinerapturesys · 8 months

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Welcome to my Ted Talk about AsPD, or Antisocial Personality Disorder, which the internet likes to coin as sociopath 👌🏻 if you don’t like long infodumps about stigmatized mental disorders from someone who is diagnosed, move on.

Quick toxic rundown: People with AsPD are generally characterized as emotionless, violent, manipulative abusers who kill animals and like to make other people their bitches. The biggest pet peeve we have is the emotionless, sadistic and abusive generalization.

Personally, we are highly neurotic, with highs and lows of: depression, frantic drive, self abuse tactics, chronic fear, lapses of rejection, overwhelming over-analyzation, grey area thinking, false goods and false bads, ultimatums, obsessive compulsive behavior, harsh self demands, and irritability.

AsPD is a disorder that is caused primarily (according to current research) by trauma and abuse in childhood; most notably being emotional neglect and absent caregivers that cause a child to have emotional shutdowns and repression episodes in an attempt to self soothe. Primary caregivers who do not bond with their children are also a factor. Children learn how to behave from those around them. If a primary caregiver is emotionally distant and unavailable, children will learn that is normal behavior and that’s how people are. If a primary caregiver does not provide empathy and sympathy during moments of distress and fear, children will learn that aloofness and disregard of others feelings is normal behavior. If a primary caregiver does not keep a child safe, children will learn that they should not prioritize their own safety or the safety of others. You can find my follow up post regarding this here.

Neglected and abused children often act out trying to get attention and help, often acting out in bad ways because they lack the ability to articulate what they’re feeling and what is happening to them. The pipeline for AsPD typically is: Oppositional Defiance Disorder as a child, Conduct Disorder as a teen, AsPD as an adult. There are a lot of warning signs cueing that AsPD is becoming a risk for development, but often kids do not have a support system to help negate it as it’s their support system that is usually a factor in its creation.

Being AsPD is like being an emotional La Croix 70% of the time. If you’re depressed, then it’s like someone in the other room has depression and is telling you about it. The other 30% of the time, if you’re depressed, your brain doesn’t understand how to handle it so it’s an ultimatum between doing something drastic to remove the Trigger or ignoring and dissociating for days on end.

People with AsPD are very good at ignoring things. Honestly it’s problematic as fuck but it’s not hard to ignore major issues when you just, don’t care. It’s not in the terms of being cruel or making ourselves not care, but the fact that finding the emotional willpower is so far out of our feasible reach we don’t do it. This causes us to piss people off because we don’t have the capacity to care as much as they want us to, even if we can and do to an extent.

Think of it this way: empathy/sympathy is a deep tub of water that everyone has. They can easily fill their measuring cup for the needed amount of empathy without any issues and it’s easy for them. People with AsPD don’t have a tub of water. We have shallow skillet. When we try to dip our cup to fill it, we can’t, it always comes up short and it is difficult to get any water in it as there is no room for the cup to dive. Our ability to care is limited because we do not have the same emotional resources everyone else does.

❌ False Positives & False Negatives ❌

I operate on what I’ve learned are called false positives and false negatives. These are things that are trained into the brain from an early age based off of childhood trauma and other factors. False positives are a distorted version of why we do something to help ourself and for our own good, meanwhile a false negative is something we do because it’s a threat, or based out of fear.

❌ Some of my false positives:

- It is good to be afraid of nothing

- It is good to adapt to someone’s personality if they are stronger than you

- It is good to isolate yourself

- It is good to be a silver tongue because you can get into any place you want

- It is good to become a social chameleon and shape yourself to whatever those around you need/want most, because then you have no chance of being abandoned

❌ Some of my false negatives, which can explain the false positives as well as core beliefs:

- it is bad to be afraid, if I am afraid then I am vulnerable and it can be used against me

- It is bad to be emotional or show concern for others emotions because they do not care for mine

- It is bad to be able to be exploited, because I believe it is everywhere

- It is bad to allow myself to be bored, because boredom begets bad thoughts and no one can or wants to help me when I spiral

- It is bad to not shape yourself to the social circle, because people quickly grow tired of those who do not match them perfectly and being discarded means I failed

My core beliefs can be viewed as the root for the false positives and negatives, because they are based on the core of trauma, abuse and neglect. They come from patterns and instances that make someone with AsPD become the opposite of what they experienced:

- eat or be eaten

- If I don’t show that my bite is worse than my bark, I will be taken advantage of and I must remain on top because the ones on top are safe

- I must look out for myself because nobody will do it for me

- It doesn’t matter what happens to me, therefore it doesn’t matter what people think of me

- If I cannot do something well, then I should not do it at all

- If you are dependent on others for emotional and mental well being, you are weak, therefore I must isolate myself to avoid becoming codependent and a burden and useless

- If I can handle the stress of a situation better than everyone else, therefore I will keep the problem (financial, emotional, mental, etc) to myself to reduce chances of being abandoned due to failure of perfection

People with AsPD are hard to get along with. We often:

- are always anticipating a fight

- lack respect for authority

- ignore social structures to an extent

- tendency to lie if it’ll lessen punishment or if we feel the lie is more acceptable than our actions

- limit social support because it’s wrong to be dependent on others

- have an inflated view of our own importance — which turns into a self ridicule for believing someome like me could be found important to others —

- can be rude and inconsiderate of others feelings somewhat unintentionally

- are unable to read the correct social cues in relation to empathy towards people and animals

- am constantly confused by others dependence upon empathy and inability to make desicions from logic based standpoints

We can’t speak for everyone who has AsPD, nor are we saying that no one with AsPD is capable of being a murderer/abuser etc. but we are saying that y’all need to stop automatically classifying someone as a certain “type” as soon as you know about their disorder.

One last thing I do want to point out is that it is not uncommon for people with AsPD to derive some sort of enjoyment in causing harm, doing something illegal, hurting someone or animals, etc. This entirely stems from lack of environmental control as a child. Being able to control what happens to others or being able to control the things you say or do that hurts someone else is a hefty high to get addicted to; it soothes the underlying itch of not being able to control your own trauma and abuse, so in turn you push these behaviors onto others and enjoy it because it gives you a sense of power and control. Some people with AsPD do genuinely love hurting others, and some enjoy hurting others when they believe it’s deserved or their ire has been stoked. Some enjoy causing pain to those they think deserve it, and others don’t care who they hurt as long as they feel like they’re in control of the situation.

Hope this have some insight into AsPD 🤙🏻 if y’all have any questions, shoot.

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dailyadventureprompts · 10 months

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Monsters Reimagined: Bandits

As a game of heroic fantasy that centers so primarily on combat, D&D is more often than not a game about righteous violence, which is why I spend so much time thinking about the targets of that violence. Every piece of media made by humans is a thing created from conscious or unconscious design, it’s saying something whether or not its creators intended it to do so.

Tolkien made his characters peaceloving and pastoral, and coded his embodiment of evil as powerhungry, warlike, and industrial. When d&d directly cribbed from Tolkien's work it purposely changed those enemies to be primitive tribespeople who were resentful of the riches the “civilized” races possessed. Was this intentional? None can say, but as a text d&d says something decidedly different than Tolkien.

That's why today I want to talk about bandits, the historical concept of being an “outlaw”, and how media uses crime to “un-person” certain classes of people in order to give heroes a target to beat up.

Tldr: despite presenting bandits as a generic threat, most d&d scenarios never go into detail about what causes bandits to exist, merely presuming the existence of outlaws up to no good that the heroes should feel no qualms about slaughtering. If your story is going to stand up to the scrutiny of your players however, you need to be aware of WHY these individuals have been driven to banditry, rather than defaulting to “they broke the law so they deserve what’s coming to them.”

I got to thinking about writing this post when playing a modded version of fallout 4, an npc offhndedly mentioned to me that raiders (the postapoc bandit rebrand) were too lazy to do any farming and it was good that I’d offed them by the dozens so that they wouldn’t make trouble for those that did.

That gave me pause, fallout takes place in an irradiated wasteland where folks struggle to survive but this mod was specifically about rebuilding infrastructure like farms and ensuring people had enough to get by. Lack of resources to go around was a specific justification for why raiders existed in the first place, but as the setting became more arable the mod-author had to create an excuse why the bandit’s didn’t give up their violent ways and start a nice little coop, settling on them being inherently lazy , dumb, and psychopathic.

This is exactly how d&d has historically painted most of its “monstrous humanoid” enemies. Because the game is ostensibly about combat the authors need to give you reasons why a peaceful solution is impossible, why the orcs, goblins, gnolls (and yes, bandits), can’t just integrate with the local town or find a nice stretch of wilderness to build their own settlement on and manage in accordance with their needs. They go so far in this justification that they end up (accidently or not) recreating a lot of IRL arguments for persecution and genocide.

Bandits are interesting because much like cultists, it’s a descriptor that’s used to unperson groups of characters who would traditionally be inside the “not ontologically evil” bubble that’s applied to d&d’s protagonists. Break the law or worship the wrong god says d&d and you’re just as worth killing as the mindless minions of darkness, your only purpose to serve as a target of the protagonist’s righteous violence.

The way we get around this self-justification pitfall and get back to our cool fantasy action game is to relentlessly question authority, not only inside the game but the authors too. We have to interrogate anyone who'd show us evil and direct our outrage a certain way because if we don't we end up with crusades, pogroms, and Qanon.

With that ethical pill out of the way, I thought I’d dive into a listing of different historical groups that we might call “Bandits” at one time or another and what worldbuilding conceits their existence necessitates.

Brigands: By and large the most common sort of “bandit” you’re going to see are former soldiers left over from wars, often with a social gap between them and the people they’re raiding that prevents reintegration ( IE: They’re from a foreign land and can’t speak the local tongue, their side lost and now they’re considered outlaws, they’re mercenaries who have been stiffed on their contract). Justifying why brigands are out brigading is as easy as asking yourself “What were the most recent conflicts in this region and who was fighting them?”. There’s also something to say about how a life of trauma and violence can be hard to leave even after the battle is over, which is why you historically tend to see lots of gangs and paramilitary groups pop up in the wake of conflict.

Raiders: fundamentally the thing that has caused cultures to raid eachother since the dawn of time is sacristy. When the threat of starvation looms it’s far easier to justify potentially throwing your life away if it means securing enough food to last you and those close to you through the next year/season/day. Raider cultures develop in biomes that don’t support steady agriculture, or in times where famine, war, climate change, or disease make the harvests unreliable. They tend to target neighboring cultures that DO have reliable harvests which is why you frequently see raiders emerging from “the barbaric frontier” to raid “civilization” that just so happens to occupy the space of a reliably fertile river valley. When thinking about including raiders in your story, consider what environmental forces have caused this most recent and previous raids, as well as consider how frequent raiding has shaped the targeted society. Frequent attacks by raiders is how we get walled palaces and warrior classes after all, so this shit is important.

Slavers: Just like raiding, most cultures have engaged in slavery at one point or another, which is a matter I get into here. While raiders taking captives is not uncommon, actively attacking people for slaves is something that starts occurring once you have a built up slave market, necessitating the existence of at least one or more hierarchical societies that need more disposable workers than then their lower class is capable of providing. The roman legion and its constant campaigns was the apparatus by which the imperium fed its insatiable need for cheap slave labor. Subsistence raiders generally don’t take slaves en masse unless they know somewhere to sell them, because if you’re having trouble feeding your own people you’re not going to capture more ( this is what d&d gets wrong about monstrous humanoids most of the time).

Tax Farmers: special mention to this underused classic, where gangs of toughs would bid to see who could collect money for government officials, and then proceed to ransack the realm looking to squeeze as much money out of the people as possible. This tends to happen in areas where the state apparatus is stretched too thin or is too lighthanded to have established enduring means of funding. Tax farmers are a great one-two punch for campaigns where you want your party to be set up against a corrupt authority: our heroes defeat the marauding bandits and then oh-no, turns out they were not only sanctioned by the government but backed by an influential political figure who you’ve just punched in the coinpurse. If tax farming exists it means the government is strong enough to need a yearly budget but not so established (at least in the local region) that it’s developed a reliably peaceful method of maintaining it.

Robber Baron: Though the term is now synonymous with ruthless industrialists, it originated from the practice of shortmidned petty gentry (barons and knights and counts and the like) going out to extort and even rob THEIR OWN LANDS out of a desire for personal enrichment/boredom. Schemes can range from using their troops to shake down those who pass through their domain to outright murdering their own peasants for sport because you haven’t gotten to fight in a war for a while. Just as any greed or violence minded noble can be a robber baron so it doesn’t take that much of a storytelling leap but I encourage you to channel all your landlord hate into this one.

Rebels: More than just simple outlaws, rebels have a particular cause they’re a part of (just or otherwise) that puts them at odds with the reigning authority. They could violently support a disfavoured political faction, be acting out against a law they think is unjust, or hoping to break away from the authority entirely. Though attacks against those figures of authority are to be expected, it’s all too common for rebels to go onto praying on common folk for the sake of the cause. To make a group of rebels worth having in your campaign pinpoint an issue that two groups of people with their own distinct interests could disagree on, and then ratchet up the tension. Rebels have to be able to beleive in a cause, so they have to have an argument that supports them.

Remnants: Like a hybrid of brigands, rebels, and taxfarmers, Remnants represent a previously legitimate system of authority that has since been replaced but not yet fully disappeared. This can happen either because the local authority has been replaced by something new (feudal nobles left out after a monarchy toppling revolution) or because it has faded entirely ( Colonial forces of an empire left to their own devices after the empire collapses). Remnants often sat at the top of social structures that had endured for generations and so still hold onto the ghost of power ( and the violence it can command) and the traditions that support it. Think about big changes that have happened in your world of late, are the remnants looking to overturn it? Win new privilege for themselves? Go overlooked by their new overlords?

Art

#monsters reimagined #bandits #dnd #dungeons and dragons #d&d #ttprg #pathfinder #heavy topics #monsters reimagined

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cameronspecial · 8 months

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can i request rafe x fwb reader where reader finds out hes dating sofia and she goes to confront him that he didnt even have the decency to let her know their arrangement was over and he says "who said it was over?''

The Lies You Tell The Other Woman

Pairing: Rafe Cameron x Reader

Warnings: Mentions of Sex

Pronouns: She/Her

Word Count: 0.6K

Y/N never thought she would be the type of girl to engage in sexual relations with Rafe Cameron, but at last, she found herself in need of some sexual release one day and he just so happened to need some too. It had led to either of them just saying a word and the other would come over to help satisfy the need. It’s not that guys don’t find interest in Y/N; it’s just that every guy interested was about as smart as a brick. The more intellectual guys were either taken, intimidated by her or too caught up in their work to ask her out. Rafe may not have been smart in the way that she wanted, but he was resourceful, always thinking ahead and pretty. It really was the best of both worlds. She thought she and Rafe had an agreement. They both wouldn’t see other people, but they weren’t dating. Not having strings attached to their sex meant that she could focus on school, yet still have mind-blowing sex. She was surprised when she learned that she was actually the other girl instead of the only girl.

“Did you hear that Rafe is dating Sofia from the club?” a random Kook whispers to her girlfriend. The other girl nods, “Yes! I saw them together at his party last week. They disappeared together a few minutes in.” Upon overhearing the conversation between the couple, Y/N’s blood boiled. She couldn’t believe he lied about only having sex with her but also about his relationship status. He made her a tool for his infidelity, which she despised because cheating was the cause of her parents' divorce.

——

Her arrival at Tannyhill came not long after her eavesdropping. Rafe opens the door with a smirk on his face, thinking he is about to get lucky. “You never told me you were dating Sofia,” she states in a calm but annoyed tone as she enters the house. Rafe closes the door and chases after her, “So what if I am?” She spins around to face him with fury in her eyes. “So what if you are? I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t be seeing other people let alone dating,” she argues.

“Darling, it’s not my fault you made those assumptions.”

“It’s not my fault that you didn’t tell me. Not only did you lead me to believe you weren’t sleeping with anyone else but you made me think you were single.”

“What I do with you has nothing to do with Sofia.”

This time he steps closer to the girl with a longing look in his eyes that he tries to mask with lust. Truth is Rafe doesn’t know why he started dating Sofia when all he wanted was Y/N. Maybe because it hurt him when Y/N left the first time they had sex, saying it would be great if they could continue this with no strings attached, so he found a way to hurt her. Maybe it was because he wanted to be something more than just a sexual release for the girl he had been pining for since freshman year of high school. Y/N shakes her head, “This has everything to do with Sofia. You made me the other woman, Rafe. My parents got a divorce because my dad cheated. I know how Sofia would feel if she found out about us. So this is over.” At the last sentence, Y/N motioned between her and Rafe.

A dark look crosses his eyes at the possibility of losing the one person he wants most in the world and his panic is trying to creep through. He pushes those fears aside, stepping closer to her so she can feel his breath on her face as she looks up at him. All he is thinking about is how he is going to keep what is his. His chest presses against hers as he looks down at her. “Who said it is over? It’s only over when I say it is.”

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howlsofbloodhounds · 16 days

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I’ve been thinking about ways Killer might’ve been instrumental in furthering Nightmare’s goals of widespread negativity, and I think he probably encouraged Nightmare to engage a lot more with mortals in Universes that aren’t aware of the Multiverse as a whole.

Universes that don’t know either Killer’s or Nightmare’s reputations or faces, but also don’t know anything about the Star Sanses, or Dream or Ink.

Reminding Nightmare that human mortals have their uses, and their souls are often stronger than most of monsterkind, reminding the Boss that cases like himself, Dream, Ink, Error, and even Killer are basically outliers. Not typically considered the norm.

I think Killer probably came up with the idea of creating cells inside those universes, secretly training and manipulating both human and monster agents to serve Nightmare’s goals, regardless if any of them are fully aware of that or not. Targeting any dumb or desperate fool, especially those who have any political power or authority over a certain place like a country or an army.

Encouraging wars, gang wars, revolts, territory spats, and acts of mass terror in these universes that could give Nightmare all the negativity he needs without anyone being all the wiser.

With everyone being too busy pointing guns and fingers at eachother to notice that they’re being used for something bigger. And Killer will keep the guns of war going by discretely turning everyone against their own groups, spreading rumors and propaganda.

Assuming Killer targets people who aren’t exactly important to that universe’s script, he may even be able to evade Ink’s attention for some time.

So while the Star Sanses might think that Nightmare only has himself, Killer, and possibly also Horror, Dust, and Cross/XChara doing his bidding.

He actually secretly has both deals & agreements with certain Multiverse-Aware universes—supply Nightmare and his Gang with resources & they’ll leave you alone—but thanks to Killer’s idea, he also has billions of regular Joes working for him and they aren’t even aware of it.

And, of course, Killer would be the one out recruiting people. And I think that the information about the operative cells would likely stay classified strictly between Nightmare and Killer, even if Horror and Dust are very likely suspicious.

But if any of them try to confront Killer about it he of course plays the fool, acting loud and annoying so all they’ll want by the end of the questioning is for him to just shut up and go away and they’ll completely forget what they were even asking in the first place.

(Not Dust though. Cuz while I get the vibes that Horror and Cross just wouldn’t want to deal with Killer, I think the similarities Dust sees between Killer and the anomaly only prompts Dust to pay closer attention to Killer’s actions and less his words.)

I think Nightmare’s Gang can be pretty cool if the rest of the Multiverse sees them as mostly a group of ragtag criminals causing mayhem and negativity wherever they go, but it’s just a front for a more numbered, highly structured and functioning organization with bigger, long term plans.

You could walk past a member of Nightmare’s organization and you wouldn’t even know it. The member themself may not even be fully aware of what they involved themself in.

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m4ctavish · 2 years

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ghost — the apprentice.

masterlist.

pairing : simon “ghost” riley and gn!reader

desc : i can’t think of a funny description so, in short, ghost takes reader under his wing and teaches them a thing or two from his personal handbook. (“i’m reader and this is ghost and you’re watching jackass.” queue homemade c4 blowing up in the background)

a/n : ghost has reader on one of those kiddy leashes with like, a cat on it or smth.

simon “ghost” riley :

ghost really has to see something in you in order for him to even consider taking you under his wing. you’d have to show him that you’re worth him taking extra time out of his day to teach you something that you may just forget within the day

he can be a bit of an intimidating teacher. he’ll often quiz you on things he’s gone over with you within the past week or so, so you can either cover them again or figure out what you need to improve on.

there’s a variety of things he may go over depending on where your curiosity lies. guerilla warfare, hand to hand, knife efficiency, etc.

knife efficiency would likely be the one he’s the most serious about— he kind of has to be. all it takes is your target turning around and reacting before you do. perhaps you’re already efficient with a knife but there’s always room for improvement and ghost offers a plethora of information one normally wouldn’t know. he’s circling you like a hawk the entire time you go through the forms he taught you, stepping in with an occasional but jarring, “wrong.” every now and then. he’d then move to correct either your posture or the way you’re holding your blade. on another hand, if the two of you are doing a spar session for him to get a hands on assessment of your skill, he’ll be taking it as seriously as he does in the field. about maybe 30 seconds in, you’ll end up with a knife pressed up against your ribs, “you’re dead. stop being so open unless you want to get yourself killed.” or to your throat, “dead again. fix it.” he understands that sometimes mistakes happen. it’s just human nature. but he wants you to be able to minimize those chances so you don’t end up with a gun pressed to your head when you failed an otherwise safe takedown.

hand to hand is essentially the same. he’ll go through some forms with you, as well as a few moves. some are meant for immobilizing, others with the intent of knocking someone out cold. he’ll give you a demonstration on a training dummy beforehand, making sure to explain thoroughly what exactly you’re aiming for as well as the amount of force that should be behind your hit. adding on to that, he’d single out all of the weak points on the human body and what it’d take to cause some damage. (leaves you a bit concerned about how he knows all of this but maybe you don’t want to know..)

guerilla warfare and learning to make do with limited resources would likely be the most enjoyable/fun. it’s almost like an arts and crafts class except your crafts teacher is a decorated war veteran who kills people for a living. he’d give you a demonstration beforehand, listing off what you may need given what you have around you, then he’d give you instructions for whatever it is you’ll be putting together and see how quickly you can assemble it. (maybe if you’re lucky, he’ll take you out to a clearing and let you try out your freshly assembled trip mine or smoke grenade. just to see how effective it is.)

make him proud in the field; put your new knowledge to use. show him that everything he told you and showed you didn’t just vanish from your mind overnight.

the two of you make one hell of a team on stealth missions. rest easy knowing that he’s got your back the entire time, even if he’s not in your line of sight. (“coming up on your six.” or “on you, mate.”)

once everything is clear and you’re sitting on the helo after exfil, he’ll give you an affirming pat on the shoulder and a nod of his head. (“did good. keep it up.”)

#simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley x you #simon riley x you #simon riley x reader #call of duty x reader #ghost x reader #ghost x you

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drdemonprince · 3 months

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Keep Unnecessary Meetings to a Minimum

“Don’t attend unnecessary meetings,” advises Jersey, an Autistic activist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jersey has been on the front lines of numerous pro-Palestinian actions in the past several months, serving as a medic during the #BlocktheBoat action to delay the shipment of munitions to Israel, shutting down the Oakland Federal Building, and blocking the Bay Bridge, an action for which he was arrested and charged with false imprisonment (among other laughable charges) by the San Franciso District Attorney. Since the siege on Gaza began in October of last year, Jersey has been living and breathing for the Palestinian cause. Yet even he has limits.

“Tell [fellow organizers] that your capacity for meeting, especially in real life, is low,” he says. Instead of having to speak at length with organizers about your interest in getting involved, see if you can articulate your own role within the movement. That way, you won’t have to be “managed” as much.

“For example, if you’re a photographer, tell people that and then demonstrate that you can show up relatively independently, take great photos, and then show them with the group,” he says. Once you have proven yourself to be reliable and competent, you can skip meetings without facing as much criticism.

Many organizing spaces are oriented around neuro-conformist standards of what socializing and planning for an event must look like. Non-Autistic people generally process new information socially as part of an ongoing dialogue, whereas many Autistics prefer receiving all the relevant facts in a single, linear document they can read and process on their own. Many activists also enter a movement with intense emotional needs, and wish for others to bear witness to their suffering and share how they are feeling too. This means that those of us who find socializing and emotional processing to be draining will have to advocate for ourselves.

“We can remind organizations to be intentional about what does and does not have to be a meeting,” says Aeryn, another organizer. “Sometimes all you really need is an online survey, a memo, or a thread where people can ask questions online.”

If you can, tell meeting organizers that you are unavailable to meet often, but that you will listen to meeting recordings or read the agenda on your own time, and then communicate through email or private message to indicate that you have. Depending on how much you trust an organization and its leadership, you can either explain directly that you cannot process information in real-time easily because of your disability, or you can simply say you’re busy with school, work, or family obligations.

Operating independently may require being strategic in the roles you take on within an organization. Jersey says: “If you’ve never done security but want to do security, you will have to do a lot of training and meeting with people. But if you’re already a trained medic and have some type of credential… you can probably just tap into a medic chat and sign up for events as they arise.” This, in fact, is what he’s done.

Of course, it will be sometimes be necessary to get to know other members of your organization of choice, express your own perspectives to the group, and receive updates through some form of meeting. However, there are still many accommodations you can request to make those meetings more accessible:

Push for Accessible Meetings

When an activist movement is new or its resources are limited, its meetings may tend to be urgent, somewhat disorganized affairs, rife with lots of thinking out loud and amorphous brainstorming and possessing little in the way of an agenda.

Autistic people typically find it very hard to contribute to such meetings, because the flow of conversation is unpredictable and confusing, and most of us struggle with knowing when it’s appropriate to jump in and offer a comment. The constant flux in conversation topics is exhausting for us to keep up with, as are all the social and emotional undercurrents bubbling beneath what’s actually being said.

After the meeting is over, we may have almost no recollection of what was shared, because we were putting so much energy into masking and wearing our “listening faces.” Critiques and questions may occur to us hours after the discussion has ended, after we’ve had some time alone to digest and reflect. Even if we are physically present within a space, we are pervasively excluded when meetings are conducted in such an unstructured, overwhelming way.

Thankfully, all of this can be avoided. Here are some of the accommodations that organizing meetings should provide in order to maximize their accessibility — not just for the sake of Autistics, but for anyone who struggles to process verbal information quickly and form their own immediate verbal responses to it on the fly:

The full essay and toolkit of resources is free to read (or have narrated to you!) at drdevonprice.substack.com

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paloma-ascends-into-hellfire · 3 months

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eating disorder harm reduction

no one ever compiled this so that it what we are doing today. for people with eds and people whose loved ones do. please note: i’m not a doctor. this is a compilation of things from books and ed resource sites.

for people whose loved ones have an eating disorder:

try to make sure they know these things.

try not to force them to eat, they might feel uncomfortable eating in front of people. also, risk of refeeding syndrome.

if their life is in danger and you are seeking help for them, consult the person beforehand to make sure they will be safe and give them a heads-up so that they aren’t startled (especially if they’re neurodivergent! giving them notice will aid control!)

offer them ways of controlling things aside from food - practice consent, include them in conversations, don’t talk about them behind their back, compliment their makeup or hair.

be patient. the person may be irritable from lack of sleep, feelings of depression, worthlessness, etc., or malnutrition.

keep in mind that you can’t tell if someone has an eating disorder by looking at them. people of all weights do - only 17% of anorexics are underweight - and also, men and non binary people can also have eds.

general:

drink lots of water, especially if you’re drinking lots of caffeine.

drink some electrolytes at least once a week - gatorade, electrolyte tablets, coconut water, doesn’t matter, just get it into your system.

if you are getting dizzy or flushed and can feel your heart beating, quick carbs will raise your blood sugar - sweets, bread, fruit, juice, non diet soda, whatever. keep snacks around pls.

your brain uses 400-500 calories daily. eat more than this.

take your supplements!

you still need protein, have an egg or something.

don’t take adderal or insulin unless you are actually diabetic or neurodivergent, because you are raising the price by buying them and denying access to those who need it.

throw a towel over the mirror. it’s not worth it if it’ll cause you anxiety.

try to limit disordered behaviours like body checking, purging, and weigh ins.

practice good dental hygiene.

put your scale somewhere where you have to actively look for it to weigh yourself.

avoid social media and for your sake don’t go on pro ed tiktok or tumblr or twitter or insta.

get a buddy who also struggles with the same thing if possible to support each other.

get regular medical check ups (if you can afford it)

practice things within your control - makeup, hair, clothing, etc.

push your rules - eat 5 minutes before your time, or 50 calories over your limit.

for people with restrictive disorders (e.g. anorexia):

do weight and resistance training at least twice a week to prevent musculoskeletal conditions such as osteoporosis.

don’t drink on an empty stomach.

try to put gaps between fasting periods.

don’t fast for more than 72 hours.

wear lots of layers to keep warm.

eat an extra 100-200 calories on your period if you menstruate.

have a metabolism day.

take care of your hair.

as horrifying as this is to many people, please go to the hospital if you’re experiencing heart problems or if you’re passing out for more than 30 seconds.

for people with purging disorders (e.g. bulimia):

if you would like to purge, wait 15 minutes first.

after purging: drink lots of water - the emptiness you feel is dehydration. don’t brush your teeth but rinse your mouth out, preferably with an alkaline mouthwash or baking soda mixed into water. do something you want to do, like reading a book or watching a show. don’t smoke. don’t have anything acidic. eat a banana or some chocolate or a rice cake to keep your blood sugar levels in check.

if you vomit blood or your vomit looks like coffee grounds, this is a sign of internal bleeding. you could be drowning in your own blood from a hole in your esophagus, essentially. go to the hospital or call 911/999/the emergency number in your area.

stay safe everyone. i hope this helps. also, i do not use these tags - i have them blocked - but i am using them so that people on these tags will find this because they need it most.

#ed harm reduction #harm reduction #ed recovery #pro recovery #notpro4n4 #tw eating disorders #tw ed not ed sheeren #pro a4a #ana trigger #ana rant #tw anorexia #tw bulimia #anamia #⭐️ving #edhr

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misserabella · 1 year

Text

stray. pt.4

joel miller! x fem! reader

< previous chapter next chapter >

summary; after saving Joel and Ellie from the brink of death, you get caught with having to live with two more strays.., and you don't do strays.

REMINDER: english is not my mother language so i apologize if there are some mistakes <3 !¡either ways, i hope y'all like it. <3

REPOSTS AND COMMENTS ARE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!<3

warnings; eventual +18 content! MINORS DONT INTERACT IN THE CHAPTERS WHERE IT IS IMPLIED IN THE WARNINGS and smut, mentions of death, possible deaths, blood, fighting, angst, fluff..

warnings for chapter 4; as always reader being a bad bitch, guns, blood, fighting, clickers, wounds, weapons, threats, torture, murder, deaths, s3xual @ssault (no r@pe) , mentions of r@pe, tension, arguing, cursing, anxiety, angst angst angst, loss, mourning, ptsd…

Please, under no circumstances, repost my work on any other sites. I do not consent to anyone taking my work and posting it as their own.

“You’re not going.”

“But why?!” Ellie whines, shaking her hands. Exasperated.

“ ‘Cause you’d get me killed, brat.” you were packing on Larry’s house. You had a mission on the nearest city, a dirty job, but a good job. “Have you forgotten that you’re the most wanted kid in the entire world right now?” you ask her and she closes her mouth on a thin line. “Right.”

You roll your eyes, getting your water bottles and food to put them inside.

“It’s too dangerous even for you, y/n.” Larry says, sighing, tired. You two had been arguing about it for hours now.

“Larry. I’ve already tell you. If I get that motor for Maria she has promised to send us weekly food and resources. That could really help us out here, even more after this season…” you repeat, over and over again. He knows it’s a good deal. A deal you cannot pass on.

“But those men…” he tries, he really tries, but you are stubborn.

“Those men are nothing. I can take them.” you respond, and he doesn’t seem happy.

“No. Joel is going with you.” you look at him with a horrified look in your face. “Will you go with her. Joel?”

“No.”

“Sure.”

You look at him and he simply shrugs.

“FEDRA will be there.” you point out.

“I can use a cap.” you scoff.

“As if a cap would help you.”

“Believe me, they probably won’t even notice me. They’re mostly looking for Ellie, not me.” you sigh and Larry smiles, content. You hate him.

“If you die I’m leaving you behind.” you warn him and he nods.

“I hoped you would.”

What was that supposed to mean?

“Here.” Larry gives him a knife already sharpened and ready to cut. “You have a gun, am I right?” Joel nods and pats his back. “Okay. This mission needs to be quick. You get in there at night. Put them down slowly, no struggling and no shooting unless is necessary. We don’t want them to notice you’re there. You get the motor and you run, I’ll have Blair waiting for you with a car ready to get you back home, alright?”

“I still find it unfair. So he can go and I can’t?” Ellie whines and you give her a look that makes her cross her arms and huff, sitting back on Larry’s dinning table and taking a bite of his ham sandwich.

“Okay. I’m ready.” you say, hiding the last of your daggers on your ankles and wrists.

Joel takes his back and you two leave the house after having said your goodbyes. You had promised Lizzy to come back soon, in the mean time, she’ll have Ellie, since she’ll be staying with Larry.

You don’t talk to him, you hate it when people mess with your plans or things. You worked better off alone.

He followed you out of town and through the gates, the beep of the alarm on your backs letting you know it was newly locked.

Joel got on your left, and just tagged along. “We need to go up north a little bit and go right on the woods. Then we’ll get to the city. The most dangerous zone is a couple of km from here. There have been spotted various clickers.”

“Is there a way to avoid them?” he inquired.

“Sadly no. The safest way is right now completely occupied by a rebellion against FEDRA. They are really aggressive and don’t like outsiders.” you said.

“Tell me about it…” he muttered, remembering the first time Ellie and him were attacked while trying to get though one of those cities by car. “Well, it just means we’ll have to be more careful.”

“Just keep your eyes open and don’t stand on my way.”

He cocked his gun in a swift move.

“Copy that.”

“You got it?” you whispered, his arms extended and eyes focused on a stray infected on your way. You had walked around 2km and reached the dangerous and restricted zone. In a blink the infected was down. Shot straight to the head.

“I got it.”

Joel and you hadn’t talked much, only when necessary. It was normal. This silence in between the two of you. He didn’t know how to talk to you. You didn’t know either. Did you even want to?

He was a good fighter, not like you had suspected of their almost death the first time you had met him. He had a great stance, great aim. Maybe the fear of Ellie getting hurt had gotten the best of him. But that had been a mistake that could have cost him everything. Although you could understand.

“Let’s go.” he said, going to take a step forward, but before he could, you were dragging him backwards and in a quick movement pressing him against the wall. The building was cold and dark, creaks could be heard every now and then, and the paper of the walls was falling apart. Some bits stuck to his jacket. “What-“

You pressed a hand to his mouth, your eyes never meeting his but the door next to the both of you. Joel’s eyes did the same, and his chest got stuck in a new breath when he finally heard it. You were tightly pressed against him, trying to not be seen. The big heavy steps came closer, the sound of rotten flesh shifting with every thud. The bloater came into your point of view and you gritted your teeth.

Motherfuckers. You hated them. Every and each one of them. More than any type of infected. It had been a long time since you had seen one. A year to be exact. You knew it wasn’t the same bloater that had tore apart Laura. It couldn’t be. But you felt your blood rush, boil, the need to destroy him just like he had destroyed your most important person in the world.

But with that rage came too the fear. The panic. Your body froze, and your limbs shook. The images of that ominous day coming to your mind like flowing acid water that left you with a knot on your throat.

Joel placed a hand over yours when he felt them tense against his chest. You looked at him due to the recent touch, his eyes stare into yours. Soft brown and caramel touch. ‘Breathe’, you could read on them. ‘I’ll kill them. All of them.’ he could read on yours, your mind strong against your body, who seemed to be about to fall apart.

That silence again. A full out loud conversation made just with stares.

‘It’s not worth it.’ he shook his head, pointing out the obvious danger. Where a bloater goes a million clickers could appear.

You let go of his mouth when you could no longer hear it. It had gotten lost in the building once again, away from you. His hand was still on yours, his heartbeat bellow your palm. He was alive. He was here. You were not alone. This was not the past. Laura was dead. Joel was alive.

You got away from him as if he was burning and you were gasoline, about to combust.

He was alive. You were not alone.

That made your blood run cold, freeze in your veins and make you ache. Bitter and sweet, like lemonade on a fresh cut.

“Let’s go.” you said, and he looked at you, when you were about to walk away taking you from your hand and making you stop.

“Let’s go through the fire scape.” he pointed at the windows, where you could see the steps and stairs.

“It could fall apart. The erosion could have bitten it apart.” you said, and he pursed his lips, thinking.

“Could be. But if we continue we’ll meet the bloater again.” he argued and you rolled your eyes.

“Then we’ll kill it.” you said, and he gave you an stern look.

“It’s a suicide. We’re only two and with mere guns. We won’t be able to take it down.” you fight against his grip, as if you could prove a point, make him believe you were strong enough to take it alone. “y/n.” he said your name, and your body froze. “You’re still hurt. We can’t take the risk.” he said, and for once, you listened, ‘cause you muscles lost their tension and your skin softened under his touch. “Let’s try the fire scape.” you looked at him for what it seemed to be hours.

Follow me. Trust me. I’m here.

Your throat was aching to say fight more, stubborn as always. But you knew he was speaking the truth, and you had to take it even if it hurt your heart. Even if you couldn’t get your vengeance today.

“Fine. But if you fall it’s all your fault.” you said and he scoffed, letting you go as he walked towards the window that led to the fire scape and opened it. “You go first. I don’t have to die too for your stupidity.” you pointed out, crossing your arms over your chest.

“As you wish.” he shrugged and stepped outside, the fire scape not making even a sound. It was perfectly stable. “Told you so.” he smiled, cockily. You rolled your eyes.

“Shut up and move.” you said as you crossed the window to the other side and followed him.

The night quickly fell on your shoulders, and the city welcomed you with the remains of its busting energy. There were only a few people left on the streets, probably late workers getting ready to get home after an exhausting day.

You gave him a nod towards a hidden alley and he followed you with now his gun on hand. You managed to slowly open the door to the building where the motor was supposed to be stored, using a clip that has been seating on your hair. Joel was impressed, but again, this was a really hard world, and you learned things to adapt to it.

You slowly creaked open the door, gun looking right, then left. Clear.

Joel closed it behind his back when you waved your hand, stepping in. You cocked your head towards the right and started walking. The hallways were dark, dusty and old with multiple doors that you passed by as quickly and as carefully as you could, checking then one by one.

It was not long before you found the motor, after five minutes of searching room by room. It was in what it seemed to be an storage/meeting room, a really big one, with tables and a couple of sofas on the left. There were guns and bookcases and…

Next thing you knew, there was an arm around your neck. You choked, fighting the person that had attacked you. You heard Joel grunting at your back.

“Got him!” a male voice said, and you groaned as they dragged you further into the room, a girl snatched your gun away from you with a kick.

“Not as pretty as the one I’ve got.” the male at your back laughed, and your wrists were grabbed with his free and big hand, fingers digging on your skin and bruising it up. Your tries to kick him again were in vain, because in just a matter of seconds you were on the floor, his body pressing against you and making it hard to breath. The arm that surrounded your neck had retracted, his hand pushing your face against the floor. “Such a pretty little thing…” he smiled, and your heart jumped, a moan of pain leaving your lips when he tugged on your hair, bringing your face closer to him.

Joel was at your right, in the same position as you, fighting the buffer man on top of him.

“Don’t touch her!” he said, but he got kicked on the face by a blonde hair, breaking up his lip with her combat boot. Joel hissed and she laughed.

“You really thought it could be that easy? Get in here and walk right out?” she scoffed, taking a step closer to you and kneeling just the slightest to catch your face in between his fingers, fiercely digging her nails on your skin. “Who do you work for?” she asked, and you simply spat on her face, making her close her eyes and fall silent for a couple of seconds before she smirked, looking at you with malice in her eyes.

“Bob.” he simply said, and you had to watch as the man on top of Joel took his head and bashed it against the floor, making a breech open on his forehead.

“No!” you screamed, but you got silenced with a punch so strong that made your ears ring.

“Hey! Don’t touch her face! I want her all pretty for me later.” the man pinning you to the floor said, and the girl stood up, a golf stick now shinning brightly in between her hands.

“You bitch…” you said, and she smiled.

“Better watch what you say… Wouldn’t want your boyfriend here to pay for it, right?” she teased, and swung at his ribs, making his face contort in pain and a groan leave his lips. “Who. do. you. work. for?” she asks, Joel this time, and he doesn’t answer. “Fine.” she swung again, but this time he hit his head, blood pouring on his skin.

“Get off me! Get the fuck off me!!!!” you screamed at the guy pinning you down, fighting him off as she got Joel’s ribs, making him scream in pain. “Fuck!!!!!”

“I love the tough ones. Always the ones that cry the hardest on bed.” he said, and once again banged your head against the floor. “Should I make it quick?” he said, and Joel glared at him. “Maybe I could even do it right here, in front of your little friend. I bet he would love that, huh?” he said with a smirk, and you felt your skin crawl when his tongue met your neck, sucking there ‘till you hissed.

“I’ll fucking kill-“

Your eyes widened when Joel was cut off by another swing to the head.

You screamed when he slumped against the floor, blood dripping onto the floor from the wound on his forehead, which got bigger. “You’re gonna fucking die!” your gaze was strong, your words directed to the girl that now walked towards you with an amused smirk on her face. “Fucking bitch, I’m gonna-“

But you moaned in pain when she kicked you on your side, three times, making you curl on yourself and knocking the air out of your lungs.

“What did you say? You ‘want me to kill him’?” she mocked you, cocking her head, stepping back towards Joel.

“Finish him off, already, Jade. We’ve got things to do.” the brunette girl that had kicked your gun away and now stood guarding the door said, making the blonde roll her eyes.

“You’re always so fucking boring, Ray. You never let me have fun.” she pouted.

“Joel, wake up.” you said, fighting to get away, trying to make him come back to you and live. “ WAKE THE FUCK UP!” you screamed, your breathing ragged.

Your blood was rushing through your veins, burning you from the inside out. Your whole body trembled and shook.

“Yeah. That’s right. Watch the little rat die. I promise you will be right behind, pretty girl.” the boy on your back said, whispering and kissing your ear. You felt the urge to vomit. “But we’ll have a little bit of fun before though, what do you think, hm?” your eyes landed on the gun scattered just a couple inches away from you. “I promise I’ll be good to you…” he said, one of his hands now leaving your head and pulling aside the neck of your shirt to reveal more skin, his hips grinding against your ass.

Big fucking mistake.

“I won’t.” you spat and with a quick movement for your leg you rolled on yourself, hit his legs that straddled you. He lose balance, falling at your right. With a quick swift of your hand you had your dagger in hand the one that had been hiding on the ankles of your pant and that now you dug on the neck of the asshole that had been touching you just mere seconds ago.

He let out a scream that soon turned into a gurgling mess of blood and gasps that couldn’t fill his lungs.

“Axel!” Ray was quick to react, gun and hand and finger pulling the trigger to shoot at you, but you dodged it by rolling on the floor.

Her body was the next one to hit the floor, your dagger perfectly placed in between her two eyebrows. She was lying in a pool of her own blood by the time you got to your gun, but you groaned when one of the last two standing shoot at it and pushed it away from your reach.

You stood up as quickly as you could dodging multiple of missed bullets. You went straight to the guy, that had been pinning Joel to the floor and that now stood on his feet, your legs aching at the effort.

“Finish that rat off!” he screamed at his blonde friend as he recharged his gun. He groaned and struggled with you as you fought for his gun once once you’ve taken a hold on it —a little trick you had learned years ago— twisting it to dodge a new bullet. He almost had it, though you were quicker than him and, once your eyes had found it lying in the floor not far away from you, you took ahold on a bat with nails that you supposed they had used to beat the shit out of others like you. It was the divine intervention that you needed.

At this point blood was decorating your skin in little freckles. A painting of death and revenge in the hands of the wrong artist. You were still thirsty for it, you were on the hunt for more. You couldn’t see, only red and the ghost of his bodies. Rage was taking ahold on you. Mind was turning blank.

Your veins screamed for death.

The nails dug on the side of his face as you swung, his eyes rolling back as his jaw falling slack. You could see some of them sticking through his cheek and onto his mouth.

You were sure to have hit the brain once he had fallen on his knees as you pulled from it, brain matter decorating your shoes. You took his gun, and with a quick twist of your body, you shot the last girl standing —which was the one who had been beating Joel with a golf stick— on the stomach before she could give him the final blow.

“Fucking bitch!” she groaned in pain, hands falling to the bleeding hole on his body.

You shot her again, this time to both his legs, making her fall, the golf stick clinking onto the floor. You were going to shoot again, somewhere that would hurt but not kill her yet, but the gun had ran out of bullets. You clicked your tongue and threw it aside, making a dent on the wall at your right.

You almost felt the need to laugh when you saw her crawling her way to the emergency door in the room, away from you and Joel’s semi-unconscious body, who slowly came back to his senses.

Your steps were the only sound filling the room as you approached her, her heavy breathing and pants adding to the melody of an incoming death.

You were gonna bash her fucking skull in.

When you got to her, you kicked her hard on the stomach, winning new stains on your dusty jeans. Maybe you’d leave them. Maybe you’d grow fond of them. Let’s see how many more you’d get after you were done with her.

You were breathing hard, your chest heaving with every puff of air you could get, though no oxygen seemed to be enough for your body, for your dizzy and gone mind.

Not again. Not again. Not again.

The scream that she left when you kicked her once again could made anyone shiver, but not you.

I’ll kill them. All of them.

She was finally on her back, bleeding out on your feet. And if you were someone else, you would have felt mercy. But you were just you.

So you rose the bat and swung, blood splattering all over your face and clothes when you did it again, and again, and again…

Your arms hurt, your lungs burned, your body shook…

She was already dead. But it was not enough.

No. Not this time. This time I’ll be strong enough. This time I won’t be left alone. This time he won’t die. Joel won’t die. Not him. Not again. Not like Laura did. He won’t…

And suddenly you could breath, strong arms surrounding you from the back and stopping you with force. You fought back his grip, his hushing, his soft voice promising that you were okay. That he was okay.

He could see it in your eyes. That fear. The same fear that he had fought for decades. The same demons.

He had seen them take a hold on you while you fought, he had seen you lost yourself on the blood.

“It’s okay.” he muttered, and you hands let go of the bat, your eyes fixed on the corpse in front of you, completely unrecognizable, your crimson hands, your messy clothes… “y/n.” he called out your name and your eyes swelled with tears that you fought to not let show… Your palms burned due to the friction of the wood, blisters rising up on the skin.

His eyes found yours when he turned you around and away from the bodies that you had left behind, trying to get you to focus on him.

He too had been through this. Through this rage, through this mourning and need for blood.

“I’m here.” he said, and just in case, repeated his words, slower, softer. “I’m here.” you slowly let him bring you into his arms, your cheek pressed against his heart, where you made sure that it was true. He was here. He was okay. He was alive. You were not alone.

And Joel made as if he had not noticed the way your hands had clutched and fisted his shirt, tugging him closer.

The look that Blair has given you when you had taken the motor back to the car was…, well it was an understatement.

She tried to make your eyes meet hers, gaze digging holes on your body. But you were too gone to say something. Too deep inside your head to be able to speak. You were staring at the nothingness, at the blood on your hands.

You didn’t recall the way back to the town, nor how you had ended up on the back along with Joel, who silently looked at you and made sure you were okay. You had always been silent, but this time it was different. You were as still as a corpse, your eyes lost and hands trembling every now and then. He didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what was the right thing to do, the right thing to bring you back to the present, ‘cause it was obvious you were caught in between it and the so painful past that you always avoided.

The doors made a beep that let the car in as they opened and closed shut behind it, securing you inside. You were back home. You were safe. But were you? Was the person on your left safe for you?

Joel’s face was a mess. Busted lip, a cut on his right cheek that had already stopped bleeding, swelling eye, bleeding forehead… He had cuts all over his arm, the same arms in which you had been in between just a mere hours ago. The same arms that had made sure to stop you from falling apart.

“What the hell happened?!!” Larry was quick to approach the two of you in the middle of the night, being drawn by the noise of the car, flashlight on hand. Ellie was right behind, fully awake. It seems that she hadn’t been able to sleep at all, not when you and Joel weren’t around, when she wasn’t ‘safe’.

Ellie froze when she looked at you, Larry with eyes shot open. You were bathed in blood, new deaths weighing your body.

You didn’t look at them.

Joel explained, explained that you and him had been caught with your guards down, that the mission had went wrong before you had fixed it. Before you had killed all that people…

Larry took your face between his hands and you looked at him. His eyes were concerned, his hands inspecting for new wounds, for danger. You were okay. It wasn’t your blood. Then, he hugged you. He hugged you so hard you almost couldn’t breath. You were like a ghost in between his arms. Lifeless, lost. You mind had too much to think about, your mouth too little to say.

Ellie didn’t move. She couldn’t. Didn’t know how to react, how to move or talk. She could breath when Larry had promised that you were okay, that everything was okay. But her hands were shaking, and a pang of pain crossed your chest in fear that it was because of you. Was she scared? Had you finally become the same monster that had killed your family…, your friends?

The apartment was too cold. So cold you were freezing under your sticky clothes. Larry had made sure the three of you were back inside, secured, still shaken up by the thought that he could have almost lost you, lost a daughter.

That was when you started to move. Your feet unable to stop.

You didn’t know where you were going until your hands were on the handle to Laura’s door, didn’t even realized you had finally opened it after a year of solitude —or ignoring it was even there— too fearful to try and step inside.

Ellie, Larry and Joel were looking at you. Frozen in place, unable to move or speak as you closed the door at your back and buried yourself on your best friend for the longest time after her death.

It smell so much like her it made your eyes water. Her paintings and sketches all over the walls. Polaroids decorating the empty spaces, photos pf the two of you when everything was perfect —as perfect as it could be in a world like this—. Books left unfinished where left at the feet of her bed, her night table still had her favorite one left open on her favorite page. Alice in wonderland.

Your heart plummeted with your body on her bed, on her unmade bed that felt like giving her a hug, like having her close. That smelled like the stupid citrus stupid shampoo he used for her curly hair…

Your hands tugged on one of her pillows, your body curling around it trying to find her. Trying to find her warmth, her own beating heart. But you only could feel your own, your own shattering one.

You were staining the sheets with blood. Destroying that already broken place that you had been to scared to walk into. But you couldn’t care less. ‘Cause maybe that’s what would make you finally clean them up and put them inside her wardrobe, which peeked open at your right. Maybe…, this new blood could make you move on, even if it hurt.

You closed your eyes, ignoring the stickiness of your body, the weight of your drenched clothes, and cried. Cried in the silence that she had left behind, cried in the fear that had caved in you today after years of fearless guts.

For the first time in a year you had been scared. Scared of this world. Scared of a new death. Scared of your heart breaking again.

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rebeccathenaturalist · 1 year

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What Are Mosquitoes Good For?

Originally posted at my blog at https://rebeccalexa.com/what-are-mosquitoes-good-for/

Now that the weather has cooled down over much of the United States, insects have died back or gone into hibernation for the winter. So you may be tempted to be glad that the mosquitoes have disappeared for the time being. Maybe you even wish they wouldn’t come back next year! After all, they’re just mosquitoes, which annoy us and spread diseases, right? What are mosquitoes good for, anyway?

Much to the surprise of a lot of people, they actually have some pretty important ecological functions, and your local ecosystem would likely suffer if the mosquitoes were all exterminated. So today, I am going to be a mosquito apologist.

What Are Mosquitoes Good For? Food!

You may have seen hundreds or even thousands of mosquito larvae swimming in a pond or other fresh water. Perhaps you thought every single one of them came to find you after they became adults! They certainly are prolific; some species can lay as many as 300 eggs at once.

But this isn’t just because they want to have more young to annoy you, generation after generation. Rather, it’s because a lot of mosquitoes end up eaten before they even get a chance to reproduce. As eggs and larvae, they’re food for fish, amphibians, and aquatic insects and other arthropods. Once they take to the wing, birds and bats become major predators, as do adult dragonflies and other winged insects, plus spiders that catch them in their webs. While a single bat might not actually eat 1000 mosquitoes in a night, all those various predators do take a significant chunk out of the mosquito population.

Platanthera obtusata is just one of many orchids that rely on mosquitoes for pollination.

What Are Mosquitoes Good For? Pollination!

Believe it or not, most mosquitoes aren’t out for your blood! The majority of mosquito species are entirely vegetarian; it’s only a few in which the females seek out blood to help produce eggs. Most mosquitoes drink nectar or plant sap, and in the pursuit of the former they play a vital role in pollinating the flowers they visit. Goldenrod and orchids are just two examples of groups of plants pollinated by mosquitoes. And while mosquitoes might drive Alaskans buggy, they are vital for pollination during the short Arctic summer.

What Are Mosquitoes Good For? Keeping Things in Check!

Mosquito larvae spend anywhere from a few days to a few weeks in the water where they hatched. They feed on a variety of bacteria, algae, and other microorganisms. Because they have a lot of growing to do, and need to prepare for their final molt to adult form, they have to eat a lot! That means they help keep their prey species’ populations in check. An overgrowth of algae, for example, can reduce the amount of sunlight that submerged plants have access to, and as the algae dies it increases the amount of nitrogen in the water. By constantly grazing on algae, mosquito larvae are helping to prevent these sorts of ecological imbalances.

What If We Made Mosquitoes Go Extinct?

So what are mosquitoes good for? Quite a lot, apparently! However, there’s no denying some species have also caused us a lot of grief. There have been calls to exterminate all mosquitoes, or at least every species that could ostensibly cause us problems through disease transmission. And to be sure, I don’t want to see people dying of malaria or West Nile virus, especially as these diseases often hit disadvantaged populations harder, with fewer resources for treatment. But it’s something where we need to weigh the consequences carefully.

What would happen if there were suddenly no more mosquitoes? Sure, the animals that prey on them could potentially find other sorts of food, but there would be an upset in the food web as the predators put more pressure on remaining prey species, which could lead to some of those species become locally endangered or even extirpated. Or the predators might drop in number as they failed to find enough food. Either way, getting rid of all the mosquitoes would have a negative impact on the food web.

Finally, and possibly most importantly–we may not fully understand the ecological roles mosquitoes have. As I wrote recently, ecosystems are incredibly complex networks of relationships among thousands of species, and for centuries we have been eradicating entire species without any thought as to what long-term effects their loss might have on their native ecosystems.

However, that brings up another point: the fact that there are invasive mosquitoes. Invasive species wreak havoc on ecosystems they’re introduced to, and it just so happens that one of the most notorious disease-spreading mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti, is invasive across much of the tropics, as well as subtropical and temperate areas worldwide. Spread through the slave trade, this mosquito is a prime vector for yellow fever, dengue fever, Zika, and several other pathogenic diseases affecting humans. Its cousin, Aedes albopictus, is also a disease vector and is more cold-hardy, meaning it could spread even further.

What’s the answer? Well, historically people just drained wetlands, much to the devastation of the native ecosystems there. More recently, the widespread and indiscriminate use of pesticides like DDT also knocked back mosquito populations (at least temporarily), but also killed off many other animals both directly and indirectly, to include nearly wiping out multiple raptor species due to eggshell thinning. Moreover, mosquitoes have developed resistance to pesticides, making them a less useful tool overall.

More recent innovations to control specific invasive mosquitoes hold some promise. A. aegypti, for example, has been genetically modified in labs to create a strain known as OX513A. Not only do the offspring die before they can reproduce, even if a OX513A breeds with a wild mosquito, but the offspring also apparently lack resistance to some pesticides. Biological control using Wolbachia bacteria inhibits A. aegypti‘s reproduction, and also makes them unable to carry certain diseases such as Zika and dengue fever.

So it would appear that the fight to control invasive species also has the bonus effect of stopping the mosquitoes most likely to give the rest a bad name.

Did you enjoy this post? Consider taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes, checking out my other articles, or picking up a paperback or ebook I’ve written! You can even buy me a coffee here!

#mosquito #mosquitoes #insects #invertebrates #arthropods #wildlife #wild animals #animals #entomology #biology #ecology #invasive species #nature #natural history #bugs #long post #environment #environmentalism #conservation

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spocktheestallion · 1 year

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why joel was right to save ellie bc i have a lot of opinions and by god i’m gonna share em

so since the show has premiered i’ve seen this debate flare up again and a lot of people saying joel “robbed the world of a cure” when he saved ellie but lets be real, the fireflies were never gonna make that cure.

first off in the original game the hospital and operating room were FILTHY. and yes in the remaster they retconned it to be clean but that just seems silly to me. the fireflies had so little infrastructure that they were wiped out by ONE angry old man in a single night, where are they getting hospital cleaning crews? where are they getting the supplies to properly and i mean PROPERLY sanitize a working OR? more importantly WHO were the medical staff? what were their qualifications? to pull off what they wanted they would’ve needed a team of brilliant scientists specializing in different specific fields and i doubt any of them had been to med school recently. the outbreak was over 20 years old by that point, and medicine is a continually evolving field. those licenses were EXPIRED and even if they had experience during the pandemic it likely would’ve been in field medicine, which is not the same as epidemiology or neuroscience or any of the things they would’ve needed specializing in to get a cure. also the fact that they were saying “we’re gonna make a vaccine!” was another red flag, bc fungal infections aren’t even treated w vaccines. it just goes to show they didn’t know what they were doing. they were just reckless and desperate and ellie would’ve died needlessly.

secondly killing ellie especially right off the bat would make NO sense. what if they find out later on they need a live subject or more samples or whatever? well too late your only subject is dead. why wouldn’t they do blood tests? imaging? or if the cordyceps is only in the brain you can still do a biopsy without killing the person. again, these people didn’t know what they were doing. they were grasping at straws and even if they had gone through with their original plan they probably wouldn’t have been able to synthesize a cure anyway. the sample would’ve expired or been contaminated in the dirty hospital or they would’ve fucked up their sample through ignorance. the whole rushing straight to pulling ellie’s brain out was ridiculous. they would’ve killed a kid needlessly without a second thought.

which brings me to my next point. the fireflies aren’t exactly cut and dry good guys either. i may be reaching w this and i need to rewatch the premiere episode to confirm this but they don’t seem all that picky about their targets and civilians seem to get caught up in them a little too easy. the fireflies aren’t super concerned about human life if it gets in the way of their cause, i mean they were recruiting young kids and giving them weapons just like fedra did. there’s a reason tommy left them high and dry. they’re extremists and they don’t care who they hurt or exploit so long as it serves their cause. they aren’t philanthropists and they FOR SURE would not have been giving out that cure out of the goodness of their hearts. they would’ve gatekept it to themselves and they absolutely would’ve used it as a recruiting tool or political bargaining chip.

but more importantly even in the very unlikely situation they COULD make a successful cure AND mass produce it AND move it cross country which they clearly don’t have the resources for, there’s no way fedra would’ve let them get away with it. their fascist control is all justified in the name of preventing infection, if the disease is no longer a threat that’s a massive blow to fedra’s power. they might’ve been chasing around fireflies for setting off a few car bombs or whatever but if you think fedra isn’t going full extermination mode if they find out the fireflies have a cure you’re kidding yourself. and we’ve clearly established the fireflies would be crushed if they had fedras full attention given that they were pretty much eradicated by one guy in a single night.

and if we’ve learned anything from our own covid pandemic, it’s that if you want to effectively immunize a whole population it needs to be WIDESPREAD. you can’t just treat a few people and call it a day, EVERYONE needs to take the cure or the disease is going to survive and mutate until it can come back in a treatment-resistant variant again and again and again. and after a 20 year outbreak the kind of infrastructure you need to make that happens is gone. it just doesn’t exist anymore. fedra is probably the only group with the level of organization and infrastructure anywhere CLOSE to being able to achieve that kind of feat and i doubt even they could, and even if they could they wouldn’t.

so the fireflies were NEVER gonna be able to make a cure in the first place, they were NEVER gonna be able to mass produce and distribute it, they were NEVER going to be handing it out to anyone they weren’t tight with, and even if they had been well equipped philanthropists who could make a cure and were actually giving it out freely fedra would’ve crushed them immediately.

and i’ve also seen people argue that either way it should’ve been ellie’s choice but i disagree. ellie was a traumatized CHILD with severe survivors guilt. she was not mature enough or in the right headspace to make that kind of decision. JOEL was the closest thing to a legal guardian she had, and it was HIS responsibility to protect her until she was old enough to make decisions like that for herself AND HE DID. a kid should not be allowed to make that choice even if they want to because they’re a KID. also the fireflies weren’t gonna let joel live anyway, i’m pretty sure they were planning to kill him even if he complied.

and ultimately it’s not like joel was considering all this when he made his choice, he saved ellie because he LOVED her. like i’m sure he picked up on some red flags and knew things were sketch and realized the fireflies would probably fail and she’d die for nothing but more than anything he went back bc that was HIS BABY and he wasn’t letting desperate assholes sacrifice her for their cause. “save who you can save” remember? maybe you can’t single handedly change the world or make some miracle cure but you can do what you can for the people you love and maybe that’s enough. maybe you can never make the world go back to the way it was and maybe you SHOULDN’T but you can take it as it is one step at a time and you can do it with the family you’ve made. i think that’s a much better takeaway and i don’t like how the “joel was selfish and did the objectively bad and wrong thing” narrative in tlou2 minimizes that.

#the last of us #tlou #tlou hbo #joel tlou #tlou series #tlou part 2 #joel and ellie #joel miller #ellie williams

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macgyvermedical · 2 months

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What is phage therapy? I heard the word somewhere and now it’s stuck in my head but I don’t know what it is. Thanks 🙌

Phage therapy is the therapeutic use of viruses to kill bacteria.

Viruses are semi-living things that use other cells to reproduce. They do this by injecting DNA or RNA into the cell, letting the cell make copies of the genetic material, manufacture proteins, assemble new viruses, and then those new viruses burst out of the cell. In the process of reproducing, the cell is killed.

We typically think of viruses that replicate in human tissue, like influenza or SARS-CoV-2. But as it turns out, where there is a cell, including a plant cell or a bacterial cell, there is a virus that wants to kill it to make baby viruses.

Theoretically, then, if someone has a bacterial infection, we can find the extremely specific virus that kills only the bacteria that are causing the infection, infect the person with that virus, let that virus replicate and kill a bunch of the bacterial cells without harming the human cells, and voila, no more infection. Once the virus runs out of bacterial cells it can't replicate any more and it dies off.

And when I say "theoretically" I mean we have absolutely, definitely done this. Like a lot. And while phage therapy is extremely difficult to do good clinical trials with, as far as we can tell it's been pretty effective, and has few side effects that we know about.

So why don't we use phage therapy all the time?

Well, probably because of how specific the phages are. The phage that kills one kind of staph probably won't work on another kind of staph. So you need giant libraries of phages in order for them to really be useful to a large number of people.

Also, there's politics:

See, depending on what you consider the start of the antibiotic age, phage therapy and antibiotic therapy kind of came into being around the same time. By the start of WWII we had a couple of each worldwide.

Then the war happened and the Iron Curtain came into being. On the Western side resources were funneled into the mass production of a new antibiotic called penicillin, and on the Eastern side, resources were funneled into further developing phage therapy.

Throughout the Cold War this pattern would continue, with the Soviet Union eventually using both antibiotics and phages, and the West using only antibiotics (honestly, it's probably capitalism's fault- making money from phages is extremely difficult because they can't be mass produced like antibiotics can). When the Soviet Union fell apart, the research on phage therapy largely disappeared with it.

The West, now saddled with the burden of antibiotic resistance after decades of overprescription and use in agriculture, is trying to rebuild some of the knowledge that was lost with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, there have only been a handful of people who have been treated with phage therapy in the West. This is because the way phages work makes them extremely difficult to do high quality studies on, which makes them impossible to get FDA approval for in the US. Another factor standing in the way of approval is that they tend to change over time as the bacteria they replicate in evolve. So there are potential approval problems if we approve one type of phage but not the type it becomes in a few years.

So if something needs to change itself to work, how do you monitor to make sure that the changes aren't something dangerous? Do you have to repeatedly apply for approval? It just has all kinds of legal and policy issues.

If you want more info, there is a book called The Perfect Predator by Steffanie Strathdee. The author ended up saving her husband's life using phage therapy after he ended up with a life-threatening multidrug resistant infection.

If you want something shorter than a book, I highly recommend this video by Patrick Kelly.

#whump reference #writing reference #phage therapy

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multiplicity-positivity · 7 months

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Helping Persecutors and Violent Headmates (While Protecting Your System)!

Hello! This post will mostly contain information that we’ve repeated in past responses to asks. We wanted to have a post separate from ask responses with tips, resources, and advice on helping violent headmates while protecting yourself and your system. So here we are! In a question-answer format because that seems to work well for us.

This post got ridiculously long! In order to spare those who aren’t interested in this post, we are putting it under a cut.

Disclaimer: we are just one system, speaking from our own past experiences and what we’ve learned through our own research and therapy. This post shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all for learning how to deal with difficult headmates. Every system is different, so what’s worked for us may not work for you. If you or your system is in danger, please contact a therapist, mental health professional, or your local crisis response unit.

Trigger Warning: This post mentions trauma, abuse, suicide, homicide, involuntary isolation or “jailing” headmates, and other potentially triggering topics!

What is a persecutor?

A persecutor is a system member who regularly causes intentional harm to themself, their system’s body, or their headmates. A headmate who causes harm occasionally isn’t necessarily a system persecutor. You can learn more about persecutors through Pluralpedia (<- link).

Why is my headmate angry, mean, spiteful, or violent all the time?

There could be many reasons why a headmate is regularly hateful or violent. Some common reasons might be:

- They are traumatized and are either acting out past traumas, processing their trauma in unhealthy ways by taking out their negative emotions on others, or formed to fill the role of a past abuser.

- They have unmet needs which cause them to often feel angry, upset, and unfulfilled. They may have trouble understanding their needs or effectively communicating their needs to the rest of their system.

- They never learned how to properly regulate their emotions, process painful memories, and respond to their emotions in healthy ways. Emotional regulation is a skill that must be practiced - people don’t just automatically know how to regulate their emotions when first encountering them.

And more. Every headmate is different, so there may be some unique reason why your system has a headmate who regularly incites violence, causes drama and internal strife, and otherwise lashes out at the rest of their system.

How can I help my angry, mean, or hateful headmates?

There’s lots of things you can do to help your headmate! Try to choose things that sound helpful for your specific situation. Some options for things you can do to help your headmate are:

Talk to them!

Try asking your headmate if there’s anything they want to talk about. Let them know what kind of effect their actions have had on the rest of your system. There’s a lot of questions you might ask that might help you and your headmate find common ground. Here are some examples (text copied from previous response):

- What does treating the rest of us unkindly achieve for you?

- Sometimes people act harsh or mean because they’re afraid. Is there something that’s scaring you?

- What are your needs? Do you feel like they’re not being met?

- Why don’t you want to work together so the whole system can feel safe? Is there something hindering you in our system? Can we work together to figure something out that works for everyone?

- Sometimes it’s necessary to do things you don’t want to do if it will help the system and benefit us all. Is there anything you would be willing to try and do differently?

When having these conversations with your headmate, please try to be gentle and to approach them from a place of kindness. Acting accusatory or growing heated may cause them to get defensive, so it’s important to try and handle these conversations in a calm state of mind, if possible. Your headmate might be unwilling to have a conversation with you initially, but with time and diligence, maybe they’ll come around!

Provide an outlet!

If a headmate is dealing with lots of painful emotions and doesn’t have a proper way to vent or express themself, they may end up taking their emotions out on other members of their system. So having a notebook, journal, sketchbook, blog, or digital space that’s just for them could be immensely healing and beneficial! This outlet should belong solely to this headmate and no one else - it’s important for the rest of your system to respect your headmate’s right to privacy. If they feel like they have an outlet for their emotions that’s truly their own, it might help them feel less inclined to lash out at other system members.

You can also help them release energy in nonviolent ways by getting a stress ball or punching bag, finding some sort of physical activity that they might enjoy, or helping them create a playlist of energetic or cathartic music to listen to. Get creative and collaborate with your system to figure out what outlets will work best for your headmate!

Encourage them to come to therapy!

If your system is in therapy, it would be a great idea to gently encourage this headmate to attend a session in the future. You can talk to them about what therapy is like beforehand, and ask your therapist for advice on how best to connect with this headmate. Maybe you could ask your headmate to write a letter to your therapist, or to write down a list of questions for your therapist, if that might be easier for them than actually showing up to a session! Your headmate might be unwilling to participate or try and connect with your therapist, but it’s worth a shot to at least offer them the opportunity to do so, and to remind them that they can change their mind and come to therapy at any time.

Help them feel loved and included!

It would probably be a great idea to go out of your way to make sure your headmate can see that their system loves them and wants to take care of them, regardless of their behavior! It may be hard for your whole system to get on the same page here, but even if just one or two headmates can commit to showing your violent headmate they care, it’s possible to make a difference! You can try and accomplish this by:

- Trying to include this headmate in internal discussions and conversations/asking their opinion before doing things that will affect the body or the whole system

- Paying attention to what this headmate likes and getting them small gifts occasionally

- Letting this headmate know when you see something positive that made you think of them

- Compliment them! Tell them you love them! Remind them that they are a cherished member of your system just the way they are!

Teach your whole system grounding techniques and emotional regulation!

Even if this headmate has no interest in learning new things or having positive interactions with the rest of your system, if the rest of y’all commit to learning grounding techniques and picking up emotional regulation skills, some of that information may rub off on this headmate. If your system is in therapy, it would be a great idea to ask your therapist about developing coping techniques for grounding and emotional regulation. We can also recommend the DBT Skills Workbook (<- Amazon link), which has been very helpful for our own system!

How can I protect myself and my system when my headmate is acting dangerous?

Acting nice and showing compassion won’t always be enough to protect yourself and your system. While your headmate may have good intentions, be reacting due to trauma or overwhelming emotions, or may not understand the full extent of how their actions affect others, that doesn’t mean you have to let them treat you and your system poorly! When your headmate is lashing out at you or someone else in your system, here are some things you can do to protect yourself.

- Communicate with your headmate and let them know how their actions are affecting your system. They may genuinely be unaware of the impact their actions are having on your system. They may have trouble recognizing others’ feelings or empathizing. So having some conversations with them about their actions may be useful!

- Set boundaries and enforce them. The goal is never to control headmates, cut off their agency, or make them feel powerless, no matter how much harm they cause! Doing this can usually cause resentment to build, and can make things more challenging for your system in the long run. We’ll include some articles here, here, and here on setting boundaries and how to enforce them in healthy ways. We’d encourage you to take a look if your system is struggling with setting and enforcing boundaries! The articles linked are for setting boundaries with other people (children, friends, etc.) but much of the advice listed can be beneficial for systems, too!

- Limit access to potentially harmful items. Harm reduction is always the goal here! So if you need to limit your system’s access to potentially harmful or dangerous items (ie, sharp objects, prescription medications, firearms, etc.), we’d encourage you to do that. This way, even if your headmate has the intention to cause physical harm, their efforts may be thwarted due to having limited access to dangerous items. Your system may need to learn how to work around not using these items, or ensure that only one headmate has the ability to access these items when needed.

- Set up a safety plan. Have a conversation with your system to try and figure out warning signs, potential negative triggers, and how to center and ensure your system’s safety in various situations. At what point should you ask someone outside for help? At what point should you have an intervention inside where multiple members voice their concerns with your headmate? At what point should you reach out to a crisis center or go to the emergency room? Every system is different, so talk to your headmates and work together to establish a safety plan that works best for y’all - and don’t be afraid to put your plan into action when the time comes!

In all this, please let your violent headmate know that you need to center your whole system’s safety and well-being. While they may not like some of the decisions your system makes, it’s so important to make sure that your physical safety is not compromised!

When should my system lock up or “jail” my headmate?

Personally, we feel like locking up or “jailing” a headmate functions as an attempt to control a headmate, forcibly taking away their agency and ultimately causing pain and resentment to build up inside. We will NEVER advocate for isolating a particular headmate, and believe that there are always other, better options to utilize instead of potentially traumatizing your headmate by cutting them off from the world and their system.

However, every system is different. If your system has exhausted all other options, use your own discretion when it comes to purposefully isolating violent headmates. Understand though that we will never promote this method, and we truly do feel like it may end up causing more harm than good to the affected headmate and the rest of your system.

What should I do if my headmate threatens serious harm, to take our life, or take the life of someone we know?

Seek outside help. This absolutely is the time to put your safety plan into action and also reach out to someone outside your system for help. This can be a therapist, a trusted friend or loved one, or even a suicide prevention lifeline. We do not recommend dialing 911 or contacting the police, as police are generally known to escalate overwhelming situations and put vulnerable people directly in harm’s way.

It should not be just on you to protect your system or loved ones from a headmate that actively intends to cause long lasting harm to your body or to someone else. Please, if your headmate is making violent, suicidal, or homicidal threats, don’t delay and don’t try to handle this on your own. Get help soon!

We are always available to help find a local crisis stabilization hotline, regardless of your country. So if you’re having trouble figuring out who to call, reach out via DMs and we can help!

Wrapping Up

We know this post got very long, but it’s still not an exhaustive guide on everything you can do to help yourself and your headmates when dealing with angry, hateful, or violent system members. Remember, not everything we’ve said here will be useful for every system! So take what works best for you and create your own plan for helping and connecting with your troubled headmates.

We hope something here will be useful to some of y’all! We’re sorry about the lengthy nature of this post, but if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading! We’re wishing y’all the very best, and hope that soon you can make some progress towards positive change with the persecutors and angry, hateful, or violent headmates in your system. Please try to take care of each other to the best of your abilities, and have a wonderful day!

#persecutor #system persecutor #violence #trauma #suicide #homicide #abuse #long post #system communication

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lucascsinclairs · 1 year

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I got an ask about my gif making process, and my reply started getting way too long so I figured I'd make an updated gif tutorial/a rundown of what my giffing process looks like today. I hope this is helpful!

The anon mentioned how they really want to start making gif posts but they don't know how to, and I really was in that same spot three years ago, seeing all the pretty gifs people were making and wanting to do the same thing but just not knowing how.

I taught myself to make gifs from many different tutorials I found on here, and now years later my method is a mix-match of all of them. In this post I’ll go through my personal process but first I will link some great resource blogs that have more in-depth tutorials and resources on all different aspects of gif-making.

Both @usergif and @completeresources have great organized tutorial pages that I check all the time for different techniques. They’re so helpful! For beginners I’d recommend *these * *tutorials* for example.

For a walkthrough of my giffing process, keep reading!

First steps

Alright, let's start with the basics: I make my gifs on Photoshop and I currently have the 2023 version, so keep that in mind when looking at the screenshots I included, since there can me small differences between versions.

There are really two main ways to start out the giffing process on Photoshop. You can take consequent screenshots of the scene you want to gif and then use ‘Scripts’ and ‘Load Files into Stack’ to load them into Photoshop. I used to use this method before, and my previous giffing tutorial explains all the steps for it, as do the gif tutorials I linked.

But these days I use the other method, which involves making a shorter clip of the scene you want to gif and then using 'File' > ‘Import’ > ‘Video Frames to Layers’ to import the clip into Photoshop.

The difference between the two methods isn’t really that big, just up to personal preference and what fits your workflow best. I think the reason why I switched over was just cause I found it annoying dealing with all the screenshots.

My current process starts with opening a clip I want to gif with ‘Video Frames to Layers’. In the window that opens, I use the little arrows to select the exact shot I want to use. Here it's good to include a couple frames from before and after the exact shot you want to gif. That way you can make sure to get the whole shot included.

When the frames load up, this is what my set up view looks like. It might look different depending on the version of Photoshop, and also depending on your personal customizations, but this is what my workspace looks like. In order to get this view, make sure you have 'Timeline' selected from the 'Window' menu from the top bar.

Real quick to help make the tutorial more clear even if you’re not that familiar with Photoshop yet, the three main views I’ll be talking about are the frames, the layers and then the adjustments. Frames are the little film-reel-looking horizontal row on the bottom, and the layers are the vertical stacked row on the right. I have the adjustments on the right above the layers.

To start off, we’ll be working with frames. Since I selected some extra buffer frames from the clip in the import phase, now I'll first delete those frames that I don’t need by selecting a frame and then clicking the little trash can icon under the row of frames. When you are left with the shots you want to use, go to the menu of the three little lines on the top right of the frames view and pick ‘Select All Frames’.

Now that they’re all selected, you can set the frame delay. This basically just means how “quick” your gif will be. There are different preferences to this, but generally you’d want to pick a delay from 0.05 to maybe 0.1 for really short gifs that you need to be slower. My go-to is a frame delay of 0.07.

Whichever number you go with, you’ll chance it by clicking the tiny downward arrow on one of the frames (with all the frames selected). From the window, pick ‘Other’ and then type in your number.

Resizing and cropping

After this it’s time to resize and crop your gif. Here there are again some different methods you can use, in my previous tutorial I used the Crop tool and then resized the image. But these days I do this in a different way. Again, what way you use is all up to preference.

So what I do is make sure that all the frames are selected, and then from the menu I pick ‘Copy Frames’. After copying the frames, I make a whole new file from ‘File’ and ‘New’. This will be the canvas where I’ll make the final product of the gif, making it the exact size I want the gif to be. I prefer this method because with it you can alter the cropped area easier to see what looks best. Also this way if you’ve initially loaded a lot of unnecessary frames that you deleted previously, this way only the layers that are left transfer over and it’s less bloated in the layers panel.

In the "New Document' window pick your gif size (keep in mind the Tumblr dimensions of 540 pixels wide for big, all-across gifs, and 268 pixels wide for side-by-side gifs). With today’s gif I went with the dimensions of 540x450.

When the new file opens up, select ‘Create Video Timeline’, then from the bottom left corner click ‘Convert to Frame Animation’ and then from the three-line menu select ‘Paste Frames’. After your frames load in, you can delete the first blank frame.

Now you will resize and crop your gif. Make sure to select all frames again and then press CTRL/Command + T to activate the Transform tool. Use the guide lines that appeared to drag and resize the gif to fit your canvas. Play the gif by clicking the play button under the frame row to test how it moves within the canvas and move it around until it looks right. You can also go and change the canvas size from ‘Image’ and ‘Canvas Size’ if you want to.

At this point my gif looks like this:

When you’re happy with the cropping, it’s time to start adjusting the gif!

Lighting

For coloring and lighting the gif, we’ll move over to the right to the Layers panel. Make sure you have the top layer selected. We will be using Adjustment Layers to change the appearance of the gif, and they will change the layers below them, so this way we make sure the changes apply to all layers.

There really are so many ways you can edit and adjust your gifs, these are just the methods I use the most. So, open up the Adjustments view and let’s get started!

(side note: Lighting dark scenes is a whole different topic, so for this basic tutorial I picked a well-lit shot so we won’t have to worry about all of that when lighting it.)

I usually start with the Curves layer. Pick the bottom eyedropper tool on the left, with the white tip. With this, click on the brightest part of the gif to set the white point. This is especially useful with gifs that have some kind of a color tint (for example the green hue in the Hawkins Lab flashback scenes). By picking the white point, it will adjust not only the lighting but also the hues of the gif.

After picking the initial white point, you can go in and adjust. From the RGB dropdown menu, pick the individual color channel (Red, Green, Blue) and drag and adjust the curve until the colors and lighting look good to you. Here again, it’s all up to your personal preference. I personally prefer coloring that is more on the warmer side, so in this phase I usually strengthen the reds in the gif and tone down the greens. Remember, this is just the first phase of coloring, it doesn’t have to look perfect right away.

Next, go back to Adjustments and make another Curves layer on top of the first one. This time pick the top eyedropper tool with the black tip. Then click on the darkest part of the gif to set the black point. I don’t always do this, especially with dark scenes, but in neutral lighting like this, it can help with the contrast and make the coloring more vivid. Here you can once again adjust the RGB curves individually until you’re happy with the result. Oh but don’t think we’re done with the Curves layers just yet! After the white point and black point layers, I usually open a third Curves adjustment layer for lighting the gif. Here I usually stick to the overall curve, not going into the individual color channel ones. I drag and adjust the curve to make the lighting of the gif look good. And here’s what my gif looks like with all the Curves layers:

The brightness is starting to look pretty good now, but I’ll just add a couple more adjustment layers that I usually use. Again, this is just my process, all the layers aren't always essential and their usefulness really varies depending on the specific shot you’re working with. My advice, especially when starting out with adjustment layers, is to try out different adjustments to see what they do and how they make the gif look. If it looks bad, no worries, just CTRL/Command+Z it away!

So at this point I usually apply a Levels layer to brighten a little and then to deepen the shadows a bit to up the contrast. Then a Brightness/Contrast layer and maybe an Exposure layer to help do the same thing. I find that by using the different tools and making small adjustments in each one, it makes the lighting look nice. After these layers, here’s what the gif looks like:

Coloring

Now it’s time for the actual coloring! My favorite part! There are a billion different ways to color a gif and a billion different styles to go for. Here I’ll be doing a pretty neutral, natural coloring, but I also love my exaggerated, color-themed sets. Let me know if you’d like to hear my tips for those in another post!

With my workflow, I usually begin coloring with a Selective Color adjustment layer. And on there, I tend to always go straight for the Yellow view. There my go-to is to drag down the Cyan slider, since like I mentioned, I usually go for a warm-toned look. Here again my advice is to just mess around with the different sliders, see what they do, test them out to find a coloring you like. You can do the same thing with the Hue and Saturation layer, picking different colors in the gif and adjusting them to how you want them to look. The shot we’re working with doesn’t need a ton of color manipulation, so I won’t be doing too much with these layers, but they allow you to make some really cool colorful stuff!

The Color Balance adjustment is up next, and it’s great at unifying the colors and also making the color shades look nicer after lighting. Especially with dark gifs, brightening a scene can make the darks look a bit muddy, so editing the Shadows of Color Balance can help with that.

And lastly when I’m done with all the coloring layers, I apply a Vibrance layer on top, usually to up the Vibrance and Saturation, since I love my bright saturated colors. This shot is pretty bright on its own so I won’t have to tweak it a lot.

Once I’ve got all the adjustment layers in place, I’ll usually group all of them together. You can do this by selecting all the adjustment layers and then pressing CTRL/Command+G to put them into a group folder. I like to have it organized like that and it also makes it easier to look between the original gif and the adjusted one by toggling the little eye icon on the left of the folder. This way you can check if there’s something you still want to change, or if you want to tone down some adjustments. With today’s gif I went and lightened the shadows a little. But after that I was happy with the coloring, and the gif looked like this:

Sharpening

It’s almost time to export the final product! But before that I'll sharpen the gif. I know many people like to sharpen their gifs before coloring them, that’s a pretty common way to do it. This is just the order I learned to do this in. I think it’s fun to sharpen last so that it’s kind of like a final polish to the gif!

To prep the gif for sharpening, go to the bottom left of the frames and select ‘Convert to video timeline’. Now go back to the right and select all the layers in the layers view, the adjustment layers and all. Then with all of them selected, right-click to open a menu and from it, pick ‘Convert to Smart Object’. Now your layers are all in one object.

From the top row menu, pick ‘Filter’ then ‘Sharpen’ and ‘Smart Sharpen’. In the window that opens, pick these settings:

Then repeat the same thing, with the Smart Object still selected but now apply these settings:

(I have made these steps into an action, so I can do it with a simple click)

Exporting

With the sharpening done, our gif is ready!

To export it, go to ‘File’ and ‘Export’ and ‘Save for Web (Legacy).

A window opens up showing you the export settings. The first thing I do in this window is check the size of the gif, which can be found in the bottom left under the preview image. The Tumblr gif size limit is 10MB, so you need to stay below that. If the gif is bigger, I go back and make it shorter by deleting frames from the start or end of the gif. There are other ways to reduce the file size, but this is usually what I do. With today’s gif the size is around 5MB so we’re all good!

If you want to preview the gif in a moving form, click ‘Preview’ from under the file size, and it will open in your browser.

On the right of the preview image in the Export window you can see a bunch of different settings. In the screenshot you can see the settings I use, you can test them out and then tweak them to your liking. I usually keep them the same, though sometimes if there’s some pixelation in areas of the gif I test switching out ‘Adaptive’ to ‘Selective’ or ‘Diffusion’ to ‘Pattern’. But these are the settings I use in 99% of my gifs, and what I have found give the nicest end result for me.

When you’re all set with the settings you can save your gif into its folder and then you’re all done!

So there we have it! A basic rundown of my giffing process. I tried to keep it as clear and informative as possible, but I know I can get rambly so I hope this was helpful! For more details and tips, please refer to the tutorials I linked. There really are so many useful tutorials on here to learn from.

Lastly I'll add that making gifs is a creative art form and a skill like any other. You aren't going to be perfect at it on your first try, it takes practice and trial and error. When I look back on my first gifs I can see a hundred things that I would fix now that I have more experience. And the same will for sure be the case if I look at my current posts a couple years from now.

Figuring things out, learning what you like to gif and developing your style is what I find the most fun about the whole gif making process. I've been making them for three years now and I can say that I've developed a style that feels my own. And I swear, every time I see someone leave a tag to my post saying that they like my coloring and the style of my gifs, it always makes me so happy.

If you're thinking of starting to make gifs, I say go for it, give it a go, and have fun with it! 💛

#kaisa talks #tutorial #gif tutorial #gif resources #answered #this turned into a mile-long post #but i hope it can be helpful!#long post

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