#I had had a few months of exhaustion between January and March and in May that exhaustion was still sticking to me

[leciraofthewilderness]

So, despite some faults, I really enjoyed totk, and on its anniversary I want to say something about it. Other people have said similar things before but it’s really important to me and actually a big part of why the story of totk was meaningful to me, so I want to also say it:

Zelda needed to come back from draconification. The story needed that. It wasn’t lazy and just ignoring “consequences” because (imo) that was the *point*

The point is to feel like there are going to be terrible consequences and then say actually, no. You can come back from this, with the help of other people.

To me at least, that was the theme of the whole story.

If botw was about how the world goes on past loss and grief and starts to heal (how flowers grow in the ruins and the world can be beautiful again, be worth saving, even if it has changed)…then totk was about a more personal kind of healing.

The weight of the world should not be on your shoulders alone…you, alone, should not have to fix everything…you should not have to sacrifice yourself, but when you do, someone will be there to save you from it.

This turned into a really long ramble so:

You (Link) gained so much and now it’s gone. It feels like you’re back to where you started and yet you know you have to do it all again…you were weak and you failed and you’re weaker now…but

You go down to the surface. Monsters swarm across it once again. Other people are fighting them too though. You help, but it’s not just you…

You go to the Rito, the Gorons, the Zora, the Gerudo…just like with the divine beasts, there are friends who help you save each region. But this time, part of them comes along with you when you leave. It’s nice, you realize, the first time one of them protects you from a monster you weren’t prepared for. You’re still weaker than you were before, but someone has your back…

When you go up to the sky you see a strange new dragon there. There’s something about them that feels familiar. You try not to think about it.

You go down to the depths too. It’s terrifying at first. You hate it. You only want to get what you came for and get out of the dark….but slowly, the light grows. You get stronger. The dark feels like a challenge you can face (and someone has your back).

There are spirits down there. You don’t know when they’re from, but some part of you wonders…are these all the people you let die in the Calamity? (You help them find rest from their wandering. The weight on your shoulders feels a little less heavy).

There’s so much gloom. The first few times the sky turns red and hands chase you (a reminder of what you’ve lost, how you failed) you just run. Eventually though, you have to fight. It feels like the (second) worst day of your life again. But you manage to get free of the grasping gloom and stand and fight, as wild and desperate as it is. Beneath the manifestation of your worst fears, there’s another thing to fight, but this time it has a face (a voice in the back of your head says…you know this isn’t all on you and your failure…it’s really Ganon’s fault right?). You get through it.

At every turn in your travels, it seems like something reminds you of Zelda. Her passion, her curiosity, her kindness. You miss her.

At first, the tears you find reassure you. She may be in the past, but she’s safe. She’ll come back somehow…but then you hear the word draconification for the first time. You want to believe she wouldn’t do it but you know her and the fear sits cold inside you. (Zelda is a lot of things. She’s been allowed to be more of them, since she was freed from her hundred year battle, without her father holding her back. But deep down inside her, there’s a vein of self-sacrifice that still runs strong. It’s what saved the world before, after all).

She did it. She really did it. She’s gone from you (from Hyrule) forever, and it’s all your fault. If only you hadn’t failed so utterly in the battle (you can hardly even call it that) under the castle. If only you’d caught her. If only you hadn’t let the sword break. You should have protected her you should have been better it’s all your fault and now she has to live with the consequences, forever. Everything really is on you, you should have been better.

(Zelda POV: you couldn’t call upon Hylia’s power in time, you were too content to let it wither and fade away from you, ready to be free of it. You shouldn’t have. He got hurt, the sword got hurt, it’s your fault…Sonia and Rauru help you channel it again, Sonia helps you learn how to turn back time…but you don’t save her. She dies because you couldn’t save her. Rauru dies not long after. There is no one left to guide you, once again. You could spend years trying to figure it out on your own. But you did that last time. It didn’t work. Self-sacrifice, stepping in front of someone you love, that worked. (You do what you can, to call upon the sages, to help Link in the future, first). And then you swallow the stone. You’ve come a long way, in the past five years, allowing yourself to exist. But in the end, self-sacrifice worked last time. It’ll work this time too.)

You (Link) go down beneath the castle. You were supposed to bring the sages but you didn’t. It’s nice, for someone to have your back. But no one else should get hurt to fix your mistakes.

They follow you anyway. They fight with you, against the hordes, against the greatest enemies you defeated together, along the way. They’ll have your back, even if you don’t think you deserve it.

You fight Ganondorf, and then the demon king, in the hardest battle of your life. You think it’s over and then the demon king decides it’s better to lose himself completely than let you win. You’re exhausted and afraid of yet another battle, but up there in the sky, when you’re falling, the Light Dragon catches you (you wonder why she changed her path to catch you, you wonder if there’s still something of Zelda left in there to save). With her help, you win.

And then you’re in some other realm. The spirits of Sonia and Rauru are there. You remember how the two of them and Zelda channeled such incredible power together. You think about Recall. Turning something back to the memory of what it was before, like Sonia said. You stand with them and you allow yourself to hope. Maybe the Light Dragon can remember the form she took so long ago, the person that she was.

And then you’re falling, and Zelda is falling, but this time you catch her. You catch her. She’s back home with you, finally, finally.

And maybe, one mistake doesn’t have to be the end of the world. You don’t have to be perfect. Sometimes, someone else can stand with you, and it’ll all turn out alright. (You can put the weight of the world on your shoulders, you can sacrifice yourself, but someone will be there to catch you, someone will be there to pull you back to yourself, when all is said and done).

#loz #tears of the kingdom #Link #Zelda #I will say also that I think part of the reason totk is special to me is very personal #like when it came out I was still struggling with the worst burnout of my life #I had had a few months of exhaustion between January and March and in May that exhaustion was still sticking to me #it was hard to get out of bed hard to do anything I felt so tired that I almost felt sick but I wasn’t sick #and the thing is Zelda games are my biggest special interest #and having a new one to play like genuinely I’m not joking it gave me bsck so much energy #I was doing really badly but when totk came out I played it for an entire weekend straight basically #and like my mom came to visit me and help me out with basic life stuff #and like sit with me while I played just like enjoying being together #and that was really nice #over that summer and the fall after I started getting to know someone I work with better #largely over conversations about totk at first #and they’ve become a good friend #(and become someone that I feel safe to be fully myself around) #and so I just have this really strong personal connection to totk #like I will not claim to be impartial about it #there are definitely criticisms that I can acknowledge #in particular I don’t like that they un-amputeed Link let Link be disabled #and also ganondorf’s characterization was shallow and one dimensional #and I’m sure there’s other things I could think of #but the overall narrative #including Zelda becoming the light dragon and then turning back in the end #I really like that #it felt like a narrative of healing to me #and playing it at the time that I did felt really healing to me too

[kitekki-khaos]

A Year of Khaos: 2023 Review

Welp. 2023 is officially over and we're onto another year. I wanted to put together some kind of year in review thing and since I didn't get a chance to do it during my final stream of the year, I thought I'd just put it all together into a blog post. So here's an overall look at the year:

2023 was my "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" year in an attempt to really feel out what I wanted to do with streaming. So my plan was to pick a Thing for each month, really go all-in on it for the month, and make something focused around that by the end. Then change for the next month, rinse and repeat.

I've always been a Jack-of-all-Trades, which is as much a blessing as it is a curse. I CAN do just about anything if I decide I want to do it, but that also means there's no One Thing I'm really good at. The only One Thing I have is something that's borderline impossible to stream, which is writing. So... Project Year. Try everything, see what sticks.

So I present, the various skills I attempted to build throughout the year and the final product they produced:

Projects Completed:

January: Fashion Design - Ironmouse Outfit Contest Entry

(List continues under Read More)

February: Blender - New VNyan Throwables

March: Variety Streaming - Trying different Stream Categories

April: Game Development - Ludum Dare

May: Sewing - Summer Wardrobe

(horrible failure, just ended up making things in blender, instead)

June: Traditional Painting - Minis

July: Minecraft Redstone - Basics

August: Minecraft Map Building - Halloween Adventure Map

September: Stickermaking - Sticker Chat Banner

October: Dance / MMD - Halloween Transition & Halloween Stream

November: NaNoWriMo - WIP

December: Thankmas & 3-Year Debut Anniversary - Charity Streams and 3.0 Reveal

In addition to the projects I was working on throughout the year, I was also working on the 3.0 model at the same time. Throughout the entire year. Which, I came to realize was kind of a mistake trying to do both. I just barely got the model done in time because my time was so heavily split between so many things. Especially when you add that I was ALSO still editing videos for Youtube all the way until September. (which was a full 12-hour day, twice a week) So I was working on completely rebuilding my models from scratch in a program I was wildly unfamiliar with (blender), doing a new project every month, streaming 3x's a week (usually upwards of 6 hours), AND editing 12-hours a day twice a week to post 2 videos and 2 shorts every week.

It was... a lot.

Last year was a lot.

Too much. Even for me.

There were even a few more things on the list that I wanted to try out this year, but ended up not being able to figure out how to stream it. Baking, for example.

But I'm hoping to find something I can really focus on for the coming year and lessen at least some of my constant uncertainty about what I'm doing with life. And maybe ease up on the work, in general. If I was awake, I was working last year. I was so burnt out and exhausted by the time December rolled around, I had no energy left for my biggest event of the year. Honestly, I'm still exhausted. I wanted to get this post out ages ago but I just had no energy to write it.

I need to ease up a bit next year. Figure out what I actually want to do. But I feel like I have a slightly better handle. Maybe.

We'll see how it goes.

As a final note, here's a list of every game I played throughout 2023, which was honestly a lot. I try to finish as many games as I can, especially the horror games, with the exception of co-op games or sims. Some unfinished games (like Hollow Knight and A Hat in Time) I plan to finish at some point. Others, like Digimon Survive, I've decided to drop for good. Whereas yet others, I'll probably finish on my own as an off-stream game. (Slime Rancher 2 I'll probably play by myself but I've played through Ni no Kuni like 3 times in the past so I'm fine leaving that one where it was).

Games Played - 53 Total

( * - Finished / + - Co-Op/Sim )

My horror game backlog is massive so Indie Horror Nights are guaranteed to return in 2024. Obviously. Horror is kind of a thing. Variety Night is also guaranteed to return because I like having a day where I can just do what-the-fuck-ever.

However, I don't know if Project Night will be a set thing in the future. Additionally, I'm considering adding a fourth stream day but I haven't committed to the idea yet. I want to get back to fashion design but I don't think I'll be picking the seasonal collections back up for this year. Maybe just do themed outfit sets, instead. I may also try making them in blender instead of VRoid this year, as well.

There are a lot of decisions to be made about 2024 still.

I'm not sure what I want out of this coming year yet. But thank you to everyone who puts up with my perpetual indecisiveness, there will be more in the future.

Here's to a new year and new possibilities.

#new years #year in review #projects

[sovereign-spaw]

Thank you!!! @dekarios for the tag!!

Animals

Fafern Tiliqua rugosas, swans, gray wolves, albatrosses, deer, coyotes, butterflies, maggots

Odret Penguins, pigeons, turtles, tardigrades, spiders, moths, roaches, bloodhound

Duchess Nightingales, boars, lions, hyenas, killer whales, narwhals, squids

Colors

Fafern Blue, white, gold

Odret Black, purple, red

Duchess Blue, gold, red

Month

Fafern December, March

Odret August, May

Duchess July, January

Songs

Fafern Ghost in the rain, rises the moon, I think I love you, the horror and the wild, heart of stone, heart of steel, I am the winter, gales of song, blind and frozen, safe ship harbored, where is your rider, family jewels

Odret Ocean deep, beneath the brine, lend me your voice, buckled knees, nothing good, fragile things, dirty paws, the fire, pale white horse, this will end, le seine and I, never love an anchor

Duchess Farewell to the crown, tarviin vielä yhden yön aikaa, if I were, hello my old heart, thus always to tyrants, the call, the garden, tongues and teeth, feed me with your heart, everything at once, ship in a bottle, syntisten pöytä

Number

Fafern 43358

Odret 13433

Duchess 13324

Plants

Fafern Spruce, showy stonecrop, dahlia, blackberry

Odret Birch, heliotrope, daffodil, cranberries

Duchess Oak, nettle, dandelion, holly berry

Scents

Fafern Dirt, moss, clay

Odret Hyacinths, burned sugar, hint of sweetness

Duchess Smoke, copper, sulfur

Gemstone

Fafern Cerussite, sapphire, garnet

Odret Amethyst, kunzite, moonstone

Duchess Onyx, sunstone, moissanite

Time of day

Fafern The blue hour

Odret Dusk

Duchess Sunrise

Season

Fafern Fall

Odret Winter

Duchess Spring

Places

Fafern Caves, the small crevices between rocks, somewhere dark and cold, somewhere impenetrable, somewhere safe

Odret Somewhere lonesome yet not abandoned, warm and safe yet not home, somewhere he could feel her again, someplace where he could keep them safe

Duchess Beneath the open sky, boundless field filled with harebells, someplace that only she could find, with a path only he could follow

Food

Fafern Meat the slightly tastes of rot, served with tangy mushrooms and salt of her tears

Odret The same thing she tastes, but he craves for a berry pie made with fresh ingredients

Duchess Something quick to make and light as to make sure she can easily run, should the need arise

Drinks

Fafern Water that drips down the stalactites, better this than the poison that runs through the river

Odret He needs nothing, knowing that she has fresh water

Duchess Rich wine, it tastes awful, but satisfaction come from quenched thirst, it comes from knowing she’s taking something away from him

Element

Fafern Zirconium

Odret Hafnium

Duchess Carbon

Seasonings

Fafern Rosemary, ginger, dill

Odret Poppy seeds, cinnamon, nutmeg

Duchess Saffron, cayenne pepper, turmeric

Sky

Fafern A freezing, cloudless winter night, maybe there will be northern lights

Odret When both the sun and the moon are visible, with a few clouds in the sky

Duchess Dark, looming clouds rushing with the wind, it’ll rain soon

Weather

Fafern A winter day, but the weather is starting to warm up

Odret Cold spring day, few weeks after the last snow had melted

Duchess Stormy day when the wind blows and lightning strikes the ground

Magical powers

Fafern Ice so cold it’ll freeze any in an instant, and a gale so frigid none dare to harm those it chooses to shield

Odret A shadow that shrouds and hides all from prying eyes, let no one see the danger that approaches, or the help that is coming

Duchess A song so irresistible all will join hand in hand to dance to its tune till their shoes shred and they fall to the ground from exhaustion

Weapons

Fafern The very water that travels through everyone

Odret Shadows, and the scythe of a hooked horror

Duchess The lyre she plays can bring as much pain as it brings joy

Candy/Sweets

Fafern Black and red licorice, candied cherries

Odret Rock candy, sweethearts

Duchess Dark chocolate, sour lollipops

Method of long distance travel

Fafern Creating an ice horse and using that as a steed

Odret Walking

Duchess Charming someone into carrying her

Art style

Fafern Finger painted, reminiscent of cave art

Odret Rough, sharp lines, as if chiseled into stone

Duchess Flowing and free, as if drawn to the tune of a pleasant song

Fears

Fafern Being abandoned, being misunderstood. Afraid of not seeing him again, afraid of the day when it’ll be too late, yet too scared to go back and face the consequences of her own actions, fears they forgets once he’s endangered

Odret That he won’t see her again, of time running out, her reaction, the sun, dying again, wasting the chance he's been given

Duchess Of not being enough, being weak, his victory, failing, the contracts

Mythological creature

Fafern Tuonelan joutsen

Odret Iku-Tihku

Duchess Vörðr

Piece of stationery

Fafern Pinned bugs, magnets

Odret Chisels, ice picks

Duchess Notebooks, matches

Three emojis

Fafern ❄️🔥🕧

Odret 🩻🧊🔥

Duchess 🎶👁️😶

Celestial body

Fafern Wandering planet

Odret A comet

Duchess Pulsar planet

#fafern #odret #duchess #someone get fafern fresh food they've been in the Underdark for too long

[cheswirls]

the more i think abt it the more im realizing that im probably jus burnt out. like. ive written so much since school got out in may and now its been over a month easy and i rly havent taken any break at all?? and thats been fine and all bc i rly havent been able to write like this in such a long time. i stopped seriously doing anything in january last year and had my wrist surgery in may and went back to school at the end of july so like. giving myself a month to recoup from surgery shortens that window even less, i rly didnt write hardly anything all last year. the most was in april after i had that steroid shot but even then i think i tried to give my hand a break. and then between semesters i rly didnt do a whole lot writing-wise bc i was just exhausted Period. 

needless to say all of this is basically me proving that i havent had free time + energy + physical ability to write like this in so long and now all of it is catching up to me. like its not that im not having fun im jus Tired. im at the point where everything is so much work, and when i look back i feel like everything ive done is trash, and its rly taking a toll on me bc im not giving myself space to breathe. 

which is why i think i need to jus. stop. for a minute. i’d like to wrap up these few things that have been on hold for a while but i need a hard break for a minute. like its not that writing is stressful or anything rn its jus all ive been doing and even if im not consciously aware of it i am getting tired of it. which. id rather avoid at all costs tbh.

so um. this is longer than intended im jus rambling to myself at this point. i think after this week is finished im gonna unbox this display tablet ive had since march and work on artfight refs and do other things other than Write until july hits. and then see if things get better from there

#ngl i think i feel better and worse at this realization #but obv BETTER too like this explains a lot #and now ik how to (potentially) fix it so #im gonna count this as a good thing #personal

[compo67]

Updates: The Extended Edition

This year continues to feel so surreal.

January: I started working on my kid's book, doing thumbnails, storyboards, and pencils. My beta K and I finished and published our Lobster fic. My family decided to start hospice for my grandma and I became a hospice nurse and primary point of contact. I made meals in the morning and family friends kept us fed in the evenings. I was also still working throughout this.

February: We had some good days with my grandma, but the decline was obvious. I continued to manage everything about hospice and learned basic nursing skills/tasks. We got my grandma her first covid vaccine, a huge relief to everyone. During my shifts, I became a vaccine hunter for the Chicago group. From Feb to March, I helped 30+ people secure vaccine appointments. I worked on book outlines and the cover. I was still working.

March: Everyone in our household got their first vaccine. We all had to drive 1 hour each way to get them, and get them in shifts in case anyone had side effects. I finally went on leave from work. My mom threw out her back, my sister and I powered through 3 days with just the two of us. Some of the most painful hospice moments happened. We had two good days before the beginning of the end. Memita passed on the 24th, 15 minutes after I left for my second vaccine dose. The social worker said some people hang on to wait for family to arrive, some people hang on for some people to leave. I didn't think it would be me. But that was so like my grandma to spare me from additional trauma. My mom was there with her. Beta K helped me research funeral homes and I managed it from there. I don't remember the first few days, I just know I was exhausted and the grief hit hard.

April: I went back to work in the second week. I could not financially afford to take more time off work. I thought I needed to get back to my routine so I could move on. Mid-April, I physically hit a wall and spent the majority of the time bed/recliner bound. I slowly started to get back to my doctors' offices now that I had my second vaccine. I started working on the book again. I was still working, often having to strap myself into my office chair because I could not physically hold myself up. I had more and more MCAD flare ups with allergies and flushing. Taking 2x the amount of anti-histamines I'm used to really took a lot of getting used to.

May: One of my doctors encouraged me to take a break from work. I insisted that I needed the routine and the money. I also dove into working on the book, because I missed deadlines from March to April and my publisher wasn't giving me any leeway with the deadline to go to print. I had to complete one spread (2 full color pages) every two days--hand drawn and painted. I also had to scan these images in a very careful order, plus do background washes. I worked on pages during calls, on my breaks, and with any free/spare time I had. I was still working. I had doctors appointments every Monday for the whole month, with ones in between, plus massages and acupuncture treatments. My first liver MRI of the year came back stable, which is neutral news. Not any better, not any worse. My birthday was at the end of the month and I took the weekend off from the book. It was one of the most difficult birthdays I've had because it was my first without my grandma. I went to a bookstore, the Bahai temple, and the library that day.

June: I finished the book. I feel simultaneously proud and resentful of it. I just wanted it to be done. I started experiencing rapid cycling manic-depressive behavior. Mid-June, I realized, one day, that I hadn't showered in 4 days, hadn't slept more than a handful of hours, and felt like I could still keep working without breaks. I finally saw my psychiatrist and I started mood stabilizers. I bought a car so I could get to and from appointments or to the library. I refocused on work. I started watching the C-drama, The Untamed, with my friends. Things were okay.

July: Actually, a decent month. More appointments. Still working.

August: New RA symptoms show up and the flare to end all flares begins, though I don't know it at the time. Rheumatologist tells me I'm doing myself harm by using a patchwork approach. Inflammation markers are super high and I need to start a new long-term medication instead of doing bursts of prednisone here and there. Publisher asks for edits to pages they previously approved AND would take a substantial amount of time to do. Still working, trying to pick up more hours to make up for the income I lost in the beginning of the year. Finished The Untamed, loved it. I made chocolate chip cookies, the first thing I baked since last year. Drove to South Bend, IN, where I met someone we I would come to refer to later as Theater Douchebag. (Yep.) But. I had a nice weekend at the time. Hit an emotional wall Labor Day Weekend with more rapid cycling, but managed to house sit for the gals and work through it that weekend. Still working. I call a graduate school I'm interested in on a whim, just to ask more questions about their Health Communication program. I dream about starting in January 2022 or August 2022. The program advisor offers me admission on the spot without even having applied. I dance and scream for joy--and I accept. I take only one class because it's all I can afford, my parents and a friend pay 50%. I start school and love the class, all the way to the end in October. I thrive in school and it gives me something to look forward to in between work and appointments.

September: Therapist suggested an intensive outpatient program (IOP). I say I'll think about it. Still working. More appointments and treatments, lots of driving. Booster shot, phew. Start making arrangements to try RA medication Remicade via infusion. More RA symptoms pop up. Not sleeping well because can't afford out of pocket CPAP supplies but insurance won't cover them because I'm noncompliant--because I don't have supplies. Finally see a doctor who gave me supplies from their office so I can prove compliance by November. My grandpa visits from California. Three weeks later, he dies suddenly. I still think I can call him at his assisted living facility or send him a care package. We weren't super close, but having just seen him (and how hard he hugged me) made it so much heavier. I help my aunt through that with arrangements and grief support. Still working until mid-September, when work makes changes and doesn't offer promotions to part-timers. My therapist assures me that she'll take care of all the paperwork and I decide: fuck this, I'm going on leave. I exhaust my PTO (not that I had much anyway, because I had to call off for flares so much) and FMLA is unpaid and short-term disability only pays 60%. I crowdfund via friends and family for $1,000 to get me through October and November. Medical bills start to pile up as claims get processed. I start IOP and learn a lot.

October: IOP is wonderful. I connect with my case manager and professor. School is a lifeline and keeps me focused. I start to dip back into writing and fandom. I reread pages of comments in my AO3 inbox. I start watching Word of Honor with the gals. I develop new routines and habits. Mid-October, short-term disability stops paying me because they need more paperwork, but don't actually tell me they need more paperwork until November. More medical bills. Increasingly bed/recliner and home bound from flares. I do well with the first Remicade infusion, which lasts 4 hours. The week after, the flare intensifies and I spend all week in bed. I was thankful for IOP being virtual. Second Remicade infusion causes anaphylaxis. I thought I was going to die at the clinic. They stabilize me without an epi-pen, so after 1 hour of observation + 2 bags of saline, I go home. My heart takes a hit, my autonomic system is thrown off, and the inflammation feels worse. My family members take shifts staying with me for 48 hours after, in case I continue to have a reaction or heart issues. Failure of this treatment really gets to me and I admit to my rheum that I'm ready to stop working for a while, either through long-term disability or SSDI. She's 100% supportive and I start researching my options. I write a bit. I watch new movies and read books. IOP ends and I feel so much better. The improvement is great. I don't feel rushed or pushed out of the nest and I don't have to go back to work until December. Halloween is difficult, first one without my grandma. I don't make an altar this year. I get my flu shot. I visit my oncologist and pass my yearly cancer check with flying colors; in 2 years I'll be able to graduate to appointments every 2 years instead of every 1.

November: Still not paid from STD. Generous folks get me through with finances for monthly bills, medical bills, and insurance premiums. I shakily start a new routine without IOP. On a good pain day, I take myself to a nearby art exhibit. I start knitting again to feel connected to my grandma. I help my mom host a dinner party. I'm still mostly house bound, but my mood about it improves. I keep researching SSDI and grad school for next semester. And then, my momma T dies suddenly. She was a second mom to me. I fly down to TN to be with her family (my family) and attend her funeral services. It is a difficult trip in every way possible, from the flights (being alone and disabled on a flight is awful) to the stay to the grief, and with the risk of Covid. I go because I will always regret it if I don't go. I spend 30 hours there and fly back.

I've stayed with my friends since I got back from TN. I go back home tomorrow, now that I have a negative PCR test.

My rheum and I decided to try Orencia next. I'm still gathering information about it before I actually take it. Rheum says to expect to feel flu-like sick for the first few doses.

My second liver MRI for the year is this Saturday. I don't have to travel into the city this time, which is a big relief. I get to have it done local. Let's hope for good techs. I'm going to treat myself to some nice yarn afterwards (cause it's close to the yarn store).

Got some more year-end appointments coming up, including a meeting with my hEDS doctor and endo. Need to schedule some PT for my left knee, which has early arthritis. I keep going to massages and acupuncture for any relief.

I'm back to writing. Little by little. My hands hurt a lot. Knitting helps keep the dexterity, but that too, requires frequent breaks.

Editing is easier, so I'm doing that more this week.

I've stayed with my friends for 6 days to quarantine and recover from my trip. It's been wonderful. They love me so much, I hope they know how much I love them. We're still working our way through Word of Honor.

I got my first covid test this past Monday. Made it this far not to need one, I am so grateful. Even more grateful that it comes back negative.

I want to focus on settling back in at home this weekend. Take it easy. Watch movies with my sister. Write. Drink cocoa. Put up my Christmas tree because dammit, I need some cheer.

I'm still a hockey fan. Lord, can I talk about hockey.

I took so many notes in IOP, and I'm so glad I did.

Pretty sure I got an A in my grad school class. One class down! I've tried to do grad school twice before and had catastrophic health events that forced me to withdraw/drop out (2013, cancer and 2018, liver disease). I'm not sure I can continue next semester (financially and unsure if I will apply for SSDI), but at least I started and finished one class.

I'm still working through grief. Still trying to accept my health issues and disability. But the mood stabilizer works, IOP was great, and I don't feel so overwhelmed.

So there y'all have it. An overview of what my life has been like in 2021. It's been a lot. I also like to document these things here and read through them in the future, to see how much I've accomplished. These entries are useful in a lot of ways. I think they bring you and I closer, and I get to really think about what has been going on. It's nice to feel connected to my emotions again, even the yucky and uncomfortable ones.

Okay, I'm off to edit a bit more before a break.

Thank you, y'all, for being here and being so kind. Thank you for welcoming me back. Thank you for simply existing. I can't tell you how much I love and appreciate y'all. This fandom is truly life-changing. <3

-Cal

#compo67 #authorial rambles #pls do not reblog #mental health #chronic illnesses #grief #long post is long #cal updates

[mary-is-writing]

(The banner is by @ecwrenn)

Hi there!! I read about this activity proposed by @ecwrenn and I thought about giving it a try. A Year of Writing is basically a newsletter to sumarize the writing you did throughout 2021, as a way of closing the year.

I don't have the greatest memory so it took me a little bit more than I thought to remember all I did this year, so I got my summary done by quarters.

It's under the cut, but before that I wanna say that I'm super glad I got into writeblr because I've met a lot of cool people who bright my day just by seeing them in my dash (I'm sorry I don't talk a lot on discord tho Dx). Even if my following is small I'm happy each one of you is here, and to know there's people who like and show interest in my writing has been a boost to my confidence.

Anyways, thanks!! It's been a good year. Now for real, here's my year of writing:

~ January - April ~

It was on February this year when I decided to change my blog to go into writeblr and I did the post that's pinned on my page.

Around that time I was writing the third act of The Monsters Only We See, as well as the outline for Where Camellias Blossom. After the many troubles a single plot hole on TMOWS story gave me, I finally reached the point where I could finish the second act and go fully onto the third. It was very exciting because I felt I was getting closer and closer to the end of the 1st draft after having to take a big detour to fix the plot hole.

Seeing that I was near the end of writing, I thought it was time to start prepping for another wip and I picked WCB. I had already wrote around 45 pages, but decided I wanted to take a step back and do the outline. And... Well I already new that the story in my head was long and I wasn't gonna be able to fit everything in one book, but the more I wrote the more I realized this needed to be a trilogy. After fixing stuff here and there post-writing, I managed to structure the whole plot on 3 books.

Then I got excited and also plotted a spin off. So the whole series has 4 books now I guess. Oh well.

On March I pushed myself and wrote 80 pages on 10 days or so for a contest and I was very proud of myself. I didn't won and, looking back, I get why: the stories there weren't that good. Still, I was happy to get them out of my brain and into words, and it was a good writing exercise. I'll never repeat what I did to make it to the deadline tho, that left me exhausted mentally and creatively.

It was during this time where I also did a bunch of posts about TMOWS and WCB, a new post a week for like 2-3 months. I thought about keep doing it but my writing speed is simplu not enough for it, and having to do weekly posts kinda stressed me out. So, even tjos I wanna keep doing posts like those, I think I'll avoid the weekly release format for now.

Ah, and on February, my comic celebrated its first anniversary!!! owo)/

~ May - August ~

Okay so one of the most important things of this year happened between this months because I finished the first draft for TMOWS!! I was so, so happy when I did, and ever since then I've been working on editing it. After the 2nd draft was done, I gave it to my first betaa readers and 2-3 said good things about it and also gave me insight of elements to change for the 3rd one.

Not a lot else happened here, I was mostly working on this wip and progressing on my comic, but also enjoying summer vacation and watching the Tokyo Olympics. I probably got a few new wip ideas but I'm too lazy to check them out and see which ones xd

~ September - December ~

So now, finishing the year I managed to do a 3rd draft for TMOWS. However, I think it's better to consider it a 2.1 version of the 2nd one, since the changes were minimal. I also submitted it for a contest and I'm expecting news about it for next year :D

But obviously, the most inportant here was Nanowrimo 2021!! Tho I didn't finish it I managed to reach almost 20K on WCB, so I'm calling that a win. I also realized a few errors on my outline that need to be fixed, so I'd been working on them as I write and thinking about how I'm gonna pace the first book, considering that many things and characters need to be introduced here and I want to make it as smooth as possible, without info dumps. It's gonna be tricky but, hopefully, I can do it.

(Maybe I can do a little bit of info dump and get away with it, who knows, we'll see.)

And I did the 100th page of my comic a few days ago, too! I believe it's already scheduled on Tapas for next year to be published.

~ Next year plans ~

A friend encouraged me to translate my works myself and tho I still feel intimidated by the task, I think I'll do it. So based on this, I want to open a BetaBooks account next year to get feedback on the translations I do, but also on the book in general (this won't happen if I get to win the contest tho)

I definitely want to find a way to publish TMOWS at some point next year, wether it is traditional route (via the contest) or indie route.

Maybe do something with Patreon, too? I saw somebody on Tumblr talking about using it as a platform to release book chapters and at the end give the e-book, but Idk if it'll work for me. And since my book releases aren't exactly gonna be regular, asking for a monthly payment seems like too much. We'll see, but I do wanna give it another look to see how I'll use it.

Of course, I'm gonna keep writing WCB and, hopefully, can also get a good progress on That One Wip I have in the back waiting for me. But next year's Nano is gonna be WCB again for sure, and it'll keep being that until I finish the trilogy I guess.

Thank you for a great year, and see you in the next one with more writing and more wips!!!

#ayearofwriting #writing #writers #writeblr #writers stuff #writing stuff #I wrote this ahead of time and still forgot about it Dx

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of Jani Lane who Died: August 11, 2011 in Woodland Hills, California

Jani Lane (born John Kennedy Oswald; February 1, 1964 – August 11, 2011) was an American recording artist and the lead vocalist, frontman, lyricist and main songwriter for the glam metal band Warrant. From Hollywood, California, the band experienced success from 1989 to 1996 with five albums reaching international sales of over 10 million. Lane left Warrant in 2004 and again in 2008 after a brief reunion. Lane also released a solo album, Back Down to One, in 2003, and the album Love the Sin, Hate the Sinner with a new group, Saints of the Underground, in 2008. Lane contributed lead vocals and songwriting to various projects throughout his career.

Lane was born John Kennedy Oswald (later changed to John Patrick Oswald), on February 1, 1964 in Akron, Ohio to Robert and Eileen Oswald. He was raised in Brimfield with four older siblings: sisters Marcine Williams, Michelle Robinson and Victoria Ley, plus older brother Eric, already an accomplished guitarist. With sisters Micki and Vicky and brother Eric harmonizing and playing guitar, Lane taught himself to play drums, guitar and piano by ear by age five. He grew up listening to Cleveland rock station WMMS (100.7 FM "The Buzzard") and was introduced to a variety of music by his older siblings.

With connections from siblings Eric and Vicky in and around the music scene (and with his parents' help), Lane made a name for himself at a very young age. He played drums under the pseudonym "Mitch Dynamite" in clubs by age 11 and with a local band "Pokerface." By that time, his siblings had left for college or marriage, although Vicky was still active in the entertainment industry in northeast Ohio and southwest Florida. Due to Vicky's numerous connections, Lane was able to network with industry execs in pursuit of his dream. Lane graduated from Field High School, in Mogadore, Ohio, a nearby city to Brimfield in 1982.

Lane is credited as the vocalist/drummer on Warrant's Latest and Greatest CD. Throughout his career, Lane would sometimes play drums/acoustic guitar and piano with his band and played the drums in various formats and gigs with other musicians.

After high school, Lane joined the band Cyren, featuring vocalist Skip Hammonds, guitarist John Weakland, bassist Don Hoover (and later Rusty Fohner) with Lane on drums and vocals. Many of Cyren's shows opened for a popular local band called Risque'. When their bassist, Al Collins, noticed Lane's vocal talents, he convinced Lane to form a new band they eventually called Dorian Gray. The new band also included Steven Chamberlin on drums and Dave Chamberlin on lead guitar. Dorian Gray was designed to have Lane as the lead vocalist and to perform original material, but Lane wasn't ready to be the lead singer and quickly returned to the drum kit. Billy Denmead was hired as lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist. After only a few shows, Collins left the band, vowing to put a band together when Lane was ready to be a lead vocalist.

Lane moved to Florida in 1983 with Dorian Gray. He eventually formed Plain Jane with Collins and Chamberlin, adopting the stage name "Jani Lane" (Chamberlin would also soon rechristen himself Steven Sweet). He took the name "Jani" from his German grandparents, who spelled his name "Jani" and pronounced it "Yay-nee."

Lane began vocal training with vocal coach/trainer Ron Feldmann, who introduced him to Creative Engineering, Inc. in Orlando. Lane worked there as a programmer of the animatronic character Dook LaRue, the drummer for The Rock-afire Explosion. His vocal debut was at The Station in Fern Park, Florida.

Lane, Collins, and Chamberlin recorded the first Plain Jane four-track demos at their rented house in Winter Park, Florida. Although reluctant to leave Florida, they rented a trailer in the spring of 1984 and moved to California with hopes of landing a record deal. They were broke by the time they landed at the Hollywood Bowl Motel and resorted to making sandwiches with mustard packets while taking turns calling their parents for cash.

Struggling to make ends meet as a musician, Lane resorted to working in a pornographic video warehouse. The band, along with a new road crew and a few girlfriends, pooled their wages and lived in a two-bedroom condominium rented by new Plain Jane guitarist Paul Noble. At one time there were 13 people living in the crowded space.

By 1985, Plain Jane had become a regular feature on the Los Angeles club circuit and opened many shows for a band called Warrant. Plain Jane's bassist and guitarist both left the band on the same day Warrant's singer and drummer quit. Erik Turner, who had founded Warrant in July 1984, was impressed by Plain Jane's songwriting and vocal performance and invited Lane and Sweet to jam with his band at Hollywood's db Sound in September 1986.

After generating notoriety on the club circuit, Warrant began to attract the attention of record labels. Following an abortive deal with A&M Records over a contribution to the soundtrack for the motion picture Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, the band signed with Columbia Records. The Columbia deal came via the partnering of Warrant and manager Tom Hulett, known for working with The Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, The Moody Blues and others. Hulett became Lane's mentor and friend until Hulett's death from cancer in 1993.

As lead vocalist with Warrant, Lane wrote all of the material for the band's 1989 debut double platinum album, Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich, including four Top 40 hit singles: "Down Boys", "Sometimes She Cries", "Big Talk" and the No. 2 Billboard Hot 100 hit "Heaven." The album peaked at no. 10 on The Billboard 200. Lane also wrote four Top 40 hit singles ("Cherry Pie," "I Saw Red," "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Blind Faith") for the second album, the 1990 double platinum Cherry Pie, which peaked at no. 7 on the Billboard 200. Lane also co-wrote and performed with Warrant the song "The Power" in the 1992 movie Gladiator. In 1992, Warrant released Dog Eat Dog, their gold third album, which peaked at no. 25 on the Billboard 200.

Lane left Warrant in March 1993 to pursue a solo career. He returned six months later, helping the band secure a new record with Tom Lipsky of CMC International. Warrant recorded Ultraphobic in 1995, Belly to Belly in 1996, Greatest & Latest in 1999 and a cover album, Under the Influence, in 2001.

Due to personal and business disagreements, Lane left Warrant again in 2004. In January 2008, the band's agent, The William Morris Agency, issued a new photograph of the band with Lane prominently featured, confirming his return to the band. It was the first time that all original members had been in the band since 1993. The band's first show with all original members was in May 2008 in Nashville, Tennessee. Warrant performed a series of shows during the summer of 2008, but by September, the band and Lane agreed to move forward separately due to "too much water under the bridge." Warrant and Lane both continued to perform Lane's compositions live and Lane continued to write for himself and other artists.

Lane became involved in acting in the early 1990s. He made a brief appearance in Caged Fear and appeared in High Strung in 1991.

In 1993, Lane started working on his first solo project. Titled "Jabberwocky," the album represented a significant musical departure from previous work. Between 1997 and 2000, demos of Lane's solo material began surfacing on the Internet, with some bids on eBay reaching an estimated $100 per copy. In 2002, Lane decided to postpone the "Jabberwocky" project and released a new project as his debut solo album. The "Jabberwocky" project remained unreleased.

Lane's official debut solo album, Back Down to One, was released on June 17, 2003 through Z Records and in the U.S. in 2006 on Immortal/Sidewinder Records. It carried a "power pop" sound more closely aligned with the sound of Warrant than "Jabberwocky." Shortly after the album's release, Lane was admitted to a rehabilitation center for alcohol and drug-related exhaustion.

In the fall of 2004, Lane contributed lead vocals for the first ever theme song to a novel, Billy McCarthy's "The Devil of Shakespeare," along with James Young from Styx, Ron Flynt of 20/20 and Chip Z'Nuff of Enuff Z'Nuff.

Lane contributed vocals on the track "Bastille Day" and "2112 Overture/Temples of Syrinx" for the Magna Carta 2005 Rush tribute album "Subdivisions."

Lane had success with the "VH1 Classic Metal Mania: Stripped" discs, where the acoustic version of "I Saw Red" was included on disc 1, a new acoustic swinging version of "Cherry Pie" featured on disc 2, and a new acoustic version of "Heaven" featured on disc 3.

In 2005, Lane became a fan favorite on the popular VH1 series Celebrity Fit Club 2. His problems with alcohol were highlighted and many viewers supported his efforts at recovery.

With the reissue and U.S. release of "Back Down to One" in 2006, Lane attempted to restart his version of Warrant. Although "Back Down to One" was credited as a solo release, Lane assembled a new touring band called "Jani Lane's Warrant." The band's first shows in Michigan were stopped by legal action from former bandmates objecting to his use of the Warrant logo on his posters. Lane subsequently continued touring without the Warrant name and logo.

Lane lent his vocals to numerous tribute CDs during the 2000s. In 2007, he released a solo cover album titled "Photograph," featuring a collection of his tribute contributions.

Keri Kelli and Lane wrote a song for Alice Cooper titled "The One That Got Away." It was recorded by Cooper on his 2008 record Along Came a Spider. Lane also finished work on a side project, Saints of the Underground, which included Kelli and Bobby Blotzer and Robbie Crane, (both from Ratt). Their album, Love the Sin, Hate the Sinner, was released on April 22, 2008 by Warrior Records, and was mixed by producer/engineer Andy Johns, who'd worked with The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. The album featured additional bass work by Chuck Wright (Quiet Riot, House of Lords). The band was originally called "Angel City Outlaws" when they posted their first two promo singles, "Bruised" and "Exit."

In summer 2010, Lane toured with Great White, filling in for singer Jack Russell, who was recuperating from surgery after suffering internal complications.

On August 11, 2011, the Los Angeles Police Department and local news stations announced that Lane was found dead of acute alcohol poisoning at a Comfort Inn hotel in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 47. Lane was pronounced dead by fire department personnel who responded to a call shortly before 5:30 p.m.

#August 11 #2011 #R.I.P. #Jani Lane #Warrant

[crazy-loca-blog]

Personal thoughts on… 2020 releases (Part I)

Note: As the title says, these are just personal opinions on Choices books and chapters. Of course, you may agree or disagree with them, I only use this platform to express my thoughts on what I read every week.

So, I did this in 2019 and I had a blast doing it (you can see Part I, Part II, Part III and the Seasonal Books reviews), so I thought about repeating the experience because… why not? Of course, I had planned to post this during the holidays but my job barely let me some free time to eat and sleep. Better later than never, I guess.

In 2019, we read over 30 books and it was the busiest year for Pixelberry in terms of releases so far. During 2020, things changed A LOT. We didn’t have as many releases and the stories seemed to have a new focus, especially the romance ones. We said “goodbye” to the wedding books and welcomed some 30 diamond scenes that were at a whole new level. We also had many hiatuses and some books were so long that it seemed like we spent the whole year reading them.

This will be a three-part post and I will include current releases and books that were released during 2019 but were finished in 2020. The list is organized in alphabetical order, and it doesn’t include the VIP Books (as I’ll talk about them in a fourth post). The only books I will be skipping will be Desire & Decorum: First Winter and Bloodbound: Dark Solstice, as they’re seasonal books that I fully covered in the 2019 review.

America's Most Eligible: Wedding Edition (September 18, 2019 - January 22, 2020):  As a person who really enjoyed the first AME book, I already thought it was unnecessary to have a second book. I mean… reality shows are repetitive, so why would we have two books that were exactly the same? Little did I know this series was so popular that we ended up having a third book with a wedding after dating our LI for like two months (because we did need another one last wedding book, right?). There were too many things that didn’t make sense to me. My MC never had a good relationship with Slater, so having him as part of my wedding party was annoying, I would have preferred to have Teagan on my side. Also, despite the fact that we finally got to know Ivy’s background and why she was so evil throughout the series, competing against her (and Vince) all over again was exhausting… I would have definitely preferred a normal wedding diary show or something like that. And last but not least, the fact that Jen was working on the show while being a competitor was so… I don’t think this is actually possible in a real TV show. But the award to the weirdest moment goes to what happened to those people who left their LI’s at the altar and married Bianca or Slater instead. Yeah, because after that super heartbreaking moment, Jen takes the MC, Adam, Derek and Mackenzie to the producer's room to watch some “never seen before” footage about their friendship throughout the series…. because of course… there is nothing weird about seeing your ex there, right after dumping them in the middle of the wedding. This series was good enough to deserve a way more decent ending. Baby Bump, Book 1 (December 9, 2019 - March 16, 2020): My overall impression about this book is “meh”. Even though a lot of people complained about how the pregnancy was shown, I think the writers did a pretty decent job. The experience is different for every woman, so I think that criticizing the focus the writers decided to give to our MC’s experience is just pointless and saying “it’s not realistic” is a little unfair. The same thing applies to the baby. A lot of people complained saying that the baby was “too big”. Guess what guys… that isn’t the actual baby, that’s just the cover of the book… if you buy the “baby basket”, you’ll get the right baby size throughout the story. As a personal opinion, I think the story has some good things (I really like the fact that it shows how hard is for pregnant women to get and to keep a job, even though the fact that the MC hid her pregnancy is very unprofessional, to say the least) but there are some things that make me feel uncomfortable. First of all… our gang. I like the characters as individuals, but when I look at them as a gang, the only thing that Luisa, Myles and Clint have in common is the MC… I don’t know what they’d talk about if they were in a room without her. There is also this very personal POV on dating Myles… I mean… maybe it’s just me, but it is kind of uncomfortable to see Myles dating a pregnant woman who actually got pregnant after a one night stand with the other guy in our gang (or with the only guy in the gang, if your Myles is a female). Baby Bump, Book 2 (November 20, 2020 - present): Well, if you collected every single piece of the blanket in Baby Bump Book 1, you already had little glimpses about this book. Our very pregnant woman not only discovered that she’s having twins, but she also has some new duties at the city hall. And even though there are some things about this book that still don’t convince me, I can see the efforts to make some improvements in the story. The fact that the plot is not only focused on the MC and her pregnancy, but also on Clint’s family issues, Myles’ reelection and the park not only are introducing us to new characters, but they’re also giving us plenty of material to make the story more dynamic and not only focused on one topic. I also like how the writers have been managing Cassandra’s arc of redemption. Despite her being the antagonist in the first book, you can tell she’s grown a lot as a character, to the point that she is willing to help our MC not because of her reputation, but because she genuinely seems to care. I don’t know if I expect a big plot twist coming in the next few chapters (and if it does, I guess it will be related to the MC’s health and the babies delivered earlier than expected) but even if it doesn’t, I can already tell this book is better than the first one. Blades Of Light And Shadow, Book 1 (January 29, 2020 - June 3, 2020): There is no doubt (at least not for me) that this was the best new release of 2020. We had been waiting for a new adventure book for a really long time, and PB delivered. Not only we had this super wide range of MCs to choose from, we had a book where our choices actually mattered. Because yes, you can buy every single diamond scene in this story and still, if you don’t make the right choices at the right moments, you won’t get all the skills at the end of it. And that’s probably what seduces me the most about this book. The characters in our gang are also very well written. Each one of them has a very different personality, they all have these very different backgrounds and burdens, but they still complement each other perfectly when it comes to work as a team. Now if I have to be completely honest about the plot, it took me a while to get into it, but I want to think it’s because I’m not very familiar with this type of stories, because it’s very clear that there aren’t any writing problems in it. However, if I have to criticize one thing, it has to be some people’s reaction: because yes, it seems like some people didn’t get the memo that this wasn’t a romance book and I must admit it disappointed me a little to see that most of the discussions were focused in the romance part instead of talking about the adventure itself. Bloodbound, Book 3 (November 9, 2019 - March 28, 2020): Last year, I already mentioned how happy I was with this book, especially because most of the times, the third book in a series is not as popular as the previous ones. We sometimes have that problem of writers dragging plots because they have nothing new to add and us, the readers, struggling to finish the story (because of course, after reading 2 books, no one gives up on reading the third one). Well, I still think this book is nothing but impressive. As a person who’s not into vampires at all, I can safely say this is the book that I enjoyed the most in the series. Even though I didn’t feel huge changes in our LIs, I loved the evolution of our MC when compared to the first book (her character development itself deserves a whole post) and even though there were some things that seemed predictable, there were some others that were completely unexpected. If I had to change something, I’d say we deserved two endings, the one that we had and a darker one, I think PB truly missed an opportunity there. But overall, I think the story came full circle. This is definitely one of my favorite releases in 2020. Distant Shores (April 3, 2020 - July 17, 2020): This book gives me all the “Nighbound” vibes. That is, it is a good story, it is well written, the plot is attractive and overall it was well received by the fandom; however, that’s not enough for it to get a second book (or in PB’s words, “it’s not as popular and profitable as we think”). I personally enjoyed the story, but I didn’t fall in love with it. My biggest complaint is that I kept constantly waiting for some HUGE plot twist, I did need that “I didn’t see that coming” moment to blow our minds… but that never happened and I ended up feeling that PB wasted a story that could have shown us one adventure after another and turned it into something “plain”. Also, even though we had a badass MC, three awesome LIs and an amazing crew, by the time I pressed the “End book” button, I felt I had more questions than answers… and I absolutely hate it when that happens. We never got a chance to know anything about Robert’s story, his background and how he managed to survive and go back and forth between the past and the present. Or we never knew what made him and our MC so special and why the compass helped them to time travel. I can definitely see the potential for a second (and even a third) book, it’s sad to know it won’t be happening.

#playchoices #choices stories you play #americas most eligible #americas most eligible 3 #americas most eligible 2 #ame #baby bump #baby bump 2 #babu #blades of light and shadow #blades #bolas #BloodBound #bloodbound 3 #Distant Shores

[newstfionline]

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Happiness Report: World shows resilience in face of COVID-19 (AP) The coronavirus brought a year of fear and anxiety, loneliness and lockdown, and illness and death, but an annual report on happiness around the world released Friday suggests the pandemic has not crushed people’s spirits. The editors of the 2021 World Happiness Report found that while emotions changed as the pandemic set in, longer-term satisfaction with life was less affected. “What we have found is that when people take the long view, they’ve shown a lot of resilience in this past year,” Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the report’s co-author, said from New York.

The Pandemic Stalls Growth in the Global Middle Class, Pushes Poverty Up Sharply (Pew Research Center) The COVID-19 pandemic is having a deep effect on the global economy. In January 2020, as reports of the novel coronavirus were emerging, the World Bank forecasted that the global economy would expand by 2.5% that year. In January 2021, with the pandemic still holding much of the world in its grip, the World Bank estimated that the global economy contracted by 4.3% in 2020, a turnabout of 6.8 percentage points. The economic downturn is likely to have diminished living standards around the world, pushing millions out of the global middle class and swelling the ranks of the poor. A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that the global middle class encompassed 54 million fewer people in 2020 than the number projected prior to the onset of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of poor is estimated to have been 131 million higher because of the recession.

Fallout from riot, virus leaves toxic mood on Capitol Hill (AP) The mood is so bad at the U.S. Capitol that a Democratic congressman recently let an elevator pass him by rather than ride with Republican colleagues who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election. Republicans say it’s Democrats who just need to get over it—move on from the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, end the COVID-19 restrictions and make an effort to reach across the aisle toward bipartisanship. Not yet 100 days into the new Congress, the legislative branch has become an increasingly toxic and unsettled place, with lawmakers frustrated by the work-from-home limits imposed by the virus and suspicious of each other after the horrific riot over Trump’s presidency. Particularly in the House, which remains partly shuttered by the pandemic and where lawmakers heard gunshots ring out during the siege, trust is low, settled facts about the Jan. 6 riot are apparently up for debate and wary, exhausted lawmakers are unsure how or when the “People’s House” will return to normal.

US schools prepare summer of learning to help kids catch up (AP) After a dreary year spent largely at home in front of the computer, many U.S. children could be looking at summer school—and that’s just what many parents want. Although the last place most kids want to spend summer is in a classroom, experts say that after a year of interrupted study, it’s crucial to do at least some sort of learning over the break, even if it’s not in school and is incorporated into traditional camp offerings. Several governors, including in California, Kansas and Virginia, are pushing for more summer learning. And some states are considering extending their 2021-22 academic year or starting the fall semester early. Many cities, meanwhile, are talking about beefing up their summer school programs, including Los Angeles, Hartford, Connecticut and Atlanta—the latter of which considered making summer school compulsory before settling for strongly recommending that kids who are struggling take part.

Forecast for spring: Nasty drought worsens for much of US (AP) With nearly two-thirds of the United States abnormally dry or worse, the government’s spring forecast offers little hope for relief, especially in the West where a devastating megadrought has taken root and worsened. Weather service and agriculture officials warned of possible water use cutbacks in California and the Southwest, increased wildfires, low levels in key reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell and damage to wheat crops. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s official spring outlook Thursday sees an expanding drought with a drier than normal April, May and June for a large swath of the country from Louisiana to Oregon. including some areas hardest hit by the most severe drought. And nearly all of the continental United States is looking at warmer than normal spring, except for tiny parts of the Pacific Northwest and southeast Alaska, which makes drought worse.

‘Tough’ U.S.-China talks signal rocky start to relations under Biden (Reuters) U.S. and Chinese officials concluded on Friday what Washington called “tough and direct” talks in Alaska, which laid bare the depth of tensions between the world’s two largest economies at the outset of the Biden administration. The two days of meetings, the first high-level in-person talks since President Joe Biden took office, wrapped up after a rare and fiery kickoff on Thursday when the two sides publicly skewered each others’ policies in front of TV cameras. The talks appeared to yield no diplomatic breakthroughs—as expected—but the bitter rivalry on display suggested the two countries had little common ground to reset relations that have sunk to the lowest level in decades. The run-up to the discussions in Anchorage, which followed visits by U.S. officials to allies Japan and South Korea, was marked by a flurry of moves by Washington that showed it was taking a firm stance, as well as by blunt talk from Beijing warning the United States to discard illusions that it would compromise.

Volcano Erupts In Southwestern Iceland After Thousands Of Earthquakes (NPR) A volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland erupted Friday evening, producing a river of lava that could be seen from the capital, Reykjavik, 20 miles away. The eruption took place about three miles inland from the coast and poses little threat to residents. They were advised to stay indoors with windows closed against any gases that are released. This is the first eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula in nearly 800 years, the Associated Press reported. Thousands of earthquakes took place in the weeks leading up to the eruption, the meteorological office reported. Earlier this week, swarms of earthquakes rattled the peninsula, with over 3,000 quakes on Sunday alone. Scientists attributed the earthquakes to magma intrusions, molten rock movement about a kilometer below the earth’s crust.

A New Year in Iran, but the country’s crises remain the same (AP) The Persian New Year, Nowruz, begins on the first day of spring and celebrates all things new. But as families across Iran hurried to greet the fresh start—eating copious crisp herbs, scrubbing their homes and buying new clothes—it was clear just how little the country had changed. A year into the coronavirus pandemic that has devastated Iran, killing over 61,500 people—the highest death toll in the Middle East—the nation is far from out of the woods. And although Iranians had welcomed the election of President Joe Biden with a profound sigh of relief after the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign, the sanctions that have throttled the country for three years remain in place. “I was counting down the seconds to see the end of this year,” said Hashem Sanjar, a 33-year-old food delivery worker with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. “But I worry about next year.”

2 journalists detained as Myanmar junta clamps down on press (AP) Two more journalists were detained in Myanmar on Friday, part of the junta’s intensifying efforts to choke off information about resistance to last month’s coup. Mizzima News reported that one of its former reporters, Than Htike Aung, and Aung Thura, a journalist from the BBC’s Burmese-language service, were detained by men who appeared to be plainclothes security agents outside a court in the capital of Naypyitaw. The journalists were covering legal proceedings against Win Htein, a detained senior official from the National League for Democracy, the party that ran the country before the takeover. The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy after five decades of military rule. In the face of persistent strikes and protests against the takeover, the junta has responded with an increasingly violent crackdown and efforts to severely limit the information reaching the outside world. Security forces have fired on crowds, killing hundreds, internet access has been severely restricted, private newspapers have been barred from publishing, and protesters, journalists and politicians have been arrested in large numbers.

Spectators from abroad to be barred from Tokyo Olympics (AP) At last it’s official after countless unsourced news reports and rumors: spectators from abroad will be barred from the postponed Tokyo Olympics when they open in four months. Officials said the risk was too great to admit ticket holders from overseas during a pandemic. The Japanese public has also opposed fans from abroad. Several surveys have shown that up to 80% oppose holding the Olympics, and a similar percentage opposed fans from overseas attending.

‘You can’t escape the smell’: mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia (The Guardian) Drought, fire, the Covid-19 pestilence and an all-consuming plague of mice. Rural New South Wales has faced just about every biblical challenge nature has to offer in the last few years, but now it is praying for another—an almighty flood to drown the mice in their burrows and cleanse the blighted land of the rodents. Or some very heavy rain, at least. It seems everyone in the rural towns of north-west NSW and southern Queensland has their own mouse war story. In posts online, they detail waking up to mouse droppings on their pillows or watching the ground move at night as hundreds of thousands of rodents flee from torchlight beams. After years of drought, rural NSW and parts of Queensland enjoyed a bumper crop due to the recent wet season. But this influx of new produce and grains has led to an explosion in the mouse population. Locals say they started noticing the swarms up north in October and the wave of rodents has been spreading south ever since, growing to biblical proportions.

#headlines #news

[draechaeli]

Weather, Mountains, and Distance in China as Applied to the Módào Zǔshī Universe

I am a Foreign Teacher living in China and have been doing so for the last eight school years. For five and a half years I lived in Shandong Province, the same province as LanlingJin and I was a three and a half hour drive north of LanlingJin; a two to three-hour drive east and a bit south of LaolingQin; and a five to six-hour drive east and a bit north of QingheNie. For the last two and a half years I have lived in Jiangsu Province (barely) just two and a bit hours southwest of LanlingJin. But Jiangsu is the province of GusuLan and I am six hours north and a bit west of them; and not that anyone cares about MolingSu, but I’m four hours north and bit west of them. I have also travelled to every province, region, and territory that China says is China and most of those in January and February during Spring Festival Holiday. So from this experience I am going to discuss Chinese weather and a few other things that relate to the MDZS universe.

This ended up being way longer than I thought it was going to be. It was written to be read straight through. But as I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that cares and it goes through my thought process on the topic I have labelled each section so you can scroll down until you see the subheading you are interested in.

My Introduction to MDZS

My friend, told me about MDZS and the Untamed like 1 November 2019. I was at first skeptical as I have seen lots of Chinese shows playing in bars, at restaurants, or on long bus trips (the latter being where I’ve sort of had to see entire episodes and films) and generally Chinese TV shows are low on plot and have the same set character archetypes (not the point of this post so feel free to disagree, but I’m not here to argue). So honestly I was skeptical, but November is National Novel Writing Month, so even if I wanted to I hadn’t had the time. I also knew that I was going to be seeing said friend in Cambodia during Spring Festival Holiday and we would watch it then. Prior to going to Cambodia, I travelled with my Chinese friend Dean for eight days, but then he had to return home to spend Spring Festival with his family and I continued in my travelling.

I told Dean about how my friend was going to make me watch the Untamed and how it was based on a book and how it despite restrictions is still pretty gay. Dean didn’t believe me, but a couple days at home with nothing to do and plenty of wifi, and he had watched the Untamed before I could even meet up with my other friend!

Cloud Recesses in the Untamed - Mountains and Canal Cities

So that first scene where you see Cloud Recesses, I was like: oh I know those mountains! And my friend said that most of the places were really in China and sent me this map. As I continued watching well I was mostly caught up in the story but the snow kept bothering me, but there was never snow that stayed on the ground in the Untamed so I forgot it quickly. At a later rewatch I thought the Cloud Recesses mountains looked a lot like the mountains at ZhangJiaJie (the floating mountains that were the model for Avatar) in Hunan further west of where GusuLan is situated. According to the Untamed Wikipedia page the filming was done in Hengdian World Studios and Guizhou (also pretty far west). I am however a fan of climbing mountains and have climbed a lot of mountains in China, so I could be remembering mountains wrong.

Where the questions came up was fanfiction. And I have never stopped reading a fic because they talked about a lot more snow then I had ever seen in the particular area of China. And Cloud Recesses having towering mountains as they depict from afar in both the live action and the donghua. When I’m watching the mountain is a back drop, but often fics make the mountains or snow part of the plot and it’s too late because I already think of Gusu being Suzhou a very famous canal city south of me and we get like once a year two cm of snow that lasts maybe two hours. And the translator’s note at the end of Refinement Part 1 says that Cloud Recesses got its name from a phrase of Jia Dao’s poem, not the height of the mountains.

In general, I know that a lot of English fic writers just didn’t know the weather in China or perhaps hadn’t seen the map that showed you where everything in China was situated. And were using context clues like the disciples of YunmengJiang laying topless on floorboards in the summer heat in the extras from the book or the snow seen in both the Untamed and MDZS the donghua. And I had brushed it off as artistic license the height of the mountain of Cloud Recesses bugged me and made me do research for my own personal piece of mind.

I will admit I have not been to Suzhou, I skipped it when I was being a tourist in Jiangsu Province as the internet said it was a big tourist spot and could be very crowded, so I chose to go to a different canal town. Then I moved to Xuzhou in Jiangsu. And in Chinese the biggest thing is said first so I would have to say in Chinese when asked where I was moving to or later where I lived: Jiangsu, Xuzhou. The other thing I didn’t know despite having studied Chinese in college, that I learned from Dean when I complained about this problem is that all Yu (Yu, Yue, Yun, Yuan) and Xu (Xu, Xue, Xun, Xuan) no matter the tone are pronounced with a umlaut on the u so: Yü, Yüe, Yün, Yüan, Xü, Xüe, Xün, and Xüan. So, despite the fact that I pronouncing (disregarding tone for the following examples, and written by use of correlating English words and names) Xuzhou as Shoe-joe every Chinese person thought I said Suzhou (which I would say as Sue-joe). So, I heard a lot of: “Suzhou?! It’s so beautiful! And with all the water!” never anything about mountains.

Now, Guilin, Guangxi is a city that is absolutely gorgeous and has a lot of mountains, there is one called the Solitary Beauty Peak (152m), which is literally a vaguely rectangular mountain, with very sheer faces (and steep stairs carved in to get to the top), in the middle of a very flat expanse (behind the yellow building in the picture - January 2014).

Which means that similar mountains could be in Suzhou. And Gusu was named after Gusu Mountain so I did an exhaustive search with multiple map apps, google, and baidu to find the mountains in Suzhou and their heights. In the end the mountains in Suzhou are not very tall.

 Practical Experience with Snowfall in China

My first year in China my city got snow in December, maybe about 10 cms, but it was cold enough that it didn’t melt; and so we had snow for pretty much the whole winter with a sprinkling of a couple more cms added here and there. That year, I went to the Great Wall in the winter and signed up to go to Mutianyu a section of the wall pretty far from Beijing (north of all places in MDZS), but we couldn’t get to it due to snow, so we went to another section, Juyongguan, which wasn’t snowed out and it didn’t have too much snow on it maybe just a couple cms of snow built up in corners of steps and the like. That was the last time we really got snow that stayed. A few years later we got maybe a few cms but not a lot of snow. When I went to Sichuan (in 2014; where MeishanYu is) I remember leaving the Chengdu airport in a car and looking out the window to see snow dusted palm trees, something I had thought I really wouldn’t have ever seen, but that was probably the most snow that I had seen for that trip. The 12th edition of the China Lonely Planet book does state that the canals of Suzhou are very beautiful covered in snow in December. But based on how I’ve seen less snow further north than Suzhou makes me wonder how consistent it is.

Temperatures on Mountain Tops in China

I went to Ürümqi, Xinjiang the very tail end of June in 2019. July is the hottest time in Xinjiang and the temperature while I was there was generally about 30-45°C. One day I went to Tian Chi a lake in the Heavens Mountain (Tianshan) range, the lake is below the Peak of God (Bogeda Feng) that according to my Lonely Planet is a 5445m peak. Which now that I’m looking at the book, I know I hadn’t before going to Ürümqi, because the book says to bring warm clothing and I hadn’t. I took a tour bus up to the lake (I think that is the most common option. And around the lake it didn’t feel as hot as it was down in Ürümqi and when I went to take the cable car most of the way up Bogeda Feng, I remember seeing winter jackets for rent. At that moment I thought it was strange and pointless in the warmest time for the area despite that it was definitely getting chilly enough that I put on the light jacket (that prior to that point was mainly for sun protection) on. When I got out of the cable car near the top it was definitely cold. Many of the other hikers were in winter jackets and as you climbed up to the peak your breath definitely misted like it was winter! But that is the only time that has happened to me climbing mountains in China. I climbed Huangshan a mountain in Anhui, west and a bit south of Gusu. It has an elevation of 1873m and I climbed it in May, and there was no discernible temperature difference between the top and the bottom of the mountain.

The Yangtze River – divider of whether your home is heated or not

The Yangtze River is what China uses as a divider of north and south China. In the present day this is seen as whether or not your home gets central heating in the winter. When I lived in Shandong province (north of the Yangtze), the central heating was turned on 1 November and turned off the 1 March (I think, I’m remembering that correctly). Each province decides how cold it is and for how long and has different rules for central heating. No matter what you don’t have control over the temperature of the central heating, and everyone has to survive with an AC/Heating mounted wall unit, and/or portable heaters.

Jiangsu is a province that the Yangtze cuts through, which means you might get central heating. I moved to Xuzhou, which is spitting distance to Shandong province, in May (I got transferred to cover a sick teacher). So I was put up in the teacher’s housing on the college campus, and it did have central heating, the flat also had screened in windows above the doors that didn’t have glass and therefore would be open year-round. When I said I wanted to stay in the city and teach for the next year I got an off-campus flat in a community maybe 1.5 kms down the road—no central heating. Fall 2019 my community was offered central heating, we would have had to pay to get it installed, and it would only be installed if enough people said yes because it would be done for the whole community at that point. If we got the central heating it would have only been turned on December-February, and as the Spring Festival break at the school was an entire month it wasn’t worth it. And that time I went to Sichuan (everyone says south, but I think it has a bit of the Yangtze in it) all the restaurants were open fronted with no solid doors at all. Though the AC/Heating mounted wall unit in my hotel room (a small hotel outside of the city proper with a squat toilet in the bathroom (I’ve only seen squat toilets in two Chinese hotels)) was the best heater ever. My hotel room was so much warmer than any flat I’ve had in China, because even if it was a cheap hotel the AC/Heating mounted wall units needed to work well in Sichuan because it was the only source of heat.

 MDZS Cities on the Yangtze and Old Names for the River

So west to east the cities that are close/on the Yangtze are: Meishan - north, Kuizhou - north bank, Yiling - north bank, Baling - south bank, Yunmeng - north, Moling south (the Yangtze goes through Nanjing so maybe it has bank space), and Gusu - south (possibly in the delta).

According to the Yangtze Wikipedia Page, which I have kept open in a tab in Firefox for reference since I started writing fic—People in Ancient China didn’t realise that the river was a single river and therefore each section of the river, had its own name and was thought to be its own river (the following is mostly just copied from Wikipedia).

For Meishan, Kuizhou, and Yiling, the river through Sichuan and Chongqing Municipality was known as the Chuan Jiang (川江; Chuān Jiāng) or "Sichuan River." The Wikipedia page specifically states that Yichang modern day Yiling as the last/most eastern city to call the Yangtze thus.

In Hubei, this would be Yunmeng and Yiling, but Yiling followed the pattern of the places further west. And I’m going to assume Baling despite being in Hunan; the river is also called the Jing Jiang (荆江; Jīngjiāng) or the "Jing River" after Jingzhou.

In Anhui (which has no sects), the river takes on the local name Wan Jiang after the shorthand name for Anhui, wǎn (皖).

For Gusu and Moling, it was the Yangzi Jiang (揚子江; 扬子江; Yángzǐjiāng) or the "Yangzi River," from which the English name Yangtze is derived, is the local name for the Lower Yangtze in the region of Yangzhou. The name likely comes from an ancient ferry crossing called Yangzi or Yangzijin (揚子 / 揚子津; Yángzǐ / Yángzǐjīn). Europeans who arrived in the Yangtze River Delta region applied this local name to the whole river.

The dividing site between upstream and midstream is considered to be at Yichang (Yiling) and that between midstream and downstream at Hukou (Jiujiang).

Winter Weather in Terms of Whether or Not Long Underwear Should be Worn in Various MDZS Cities

Another way to think of it is in terms of long underwear. I wore long underwear in my city in Shandong province, the pants, and a long undershirt. Typically, three layers on top when indoors, maybe with a fourth sweater when the room I was in wasn’t heated and thick socks over regular ones. In Xuzhou I wore maybe the long underwear bottoms but not the top because my classroom actually has a heater in it, but I usually wore a sweater. When I visited Xi’an, Shaanxi (YueyangChang and 2hrs west of QishanWen), Nanjing, Jiangsu (MolingSu), and when I went to Chengdu, Sichuan (1.5 hours north of Meishan) I wore long underwear (though it was particularly cold that year in Chengdu). When I went to Hangzhou, Zhejiang (south of TingshanHe; Tingshan is hard to pinpoint), Changsha, Hunan (2 hours south of BalingOuyang), and Wuhan, Hubei (3 hrs north of BalingOuyang and 1.25 hours south of YunmengJiang) I had long underwear with me but didn’t necessarily wear it. I do remember in Wuhan this tree that had little pink blooms on it at the end of January. I didn’t have long underwear with me when I went to Chongqing, I could have sworn I actually went to Kuizhou Ancient City (or another Ancient City/Street) but I can’t find pictures from it. The city I visited before Chongqing, I visited an ancient city so I could be mixing these up. But I remember it being Chongqing and getting a foot massage in an open-air shop in an ancient street and being covered in blankets because it was pretty chilly.  

Comparative Temperatures based on their North Parallels

I live in Maine in the US, so a place with lots of snow. When I first came to China my family and I were looking at the map and thought that Maine and my city in Shandong looked to be in a line so the weather would be similar—it wasn’t, but it is a good theory; and something I spent a lot of time thinking might be sound as Maine and Shandong province aren’t on the same parallels so I thought there was still a chance that it would correlate elsewhere. The two most northern sects QingheNie at 37°04’ and LaolingQin 37°26’, according to Wikipedia, which continues to tell me that other notable places on the 37th parallel. The  37th parallel separates out Utah, Colorado, and Kansas on the north side from Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma on the South. It also passes through the Mediterranean Sea; the Aegean Sea; the Caspian Sea; the Sea of Japan; the Yellow Sea; just south of Antequera, Spain; the island of Sicily, Italy; the island of  Honshū, Japan; Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan/India; and through Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and South Korea.

I just moved to Zhengzhou, Henan (34°45′50″N), when I asked about the weather I was told it was comparable to Washington DC (38°54′17″N). I keep getting told that Zhengzhou is the centre of China and it is kind of the centre of where all the sects are: north 1.5 hours from YingchuanWang and 5.5 hours from YunmengJiang; south 3.5 hours from QingheNie; and east 6 hours from YueyangChan.

Conclusion for Winter Weather in Gusu and Summary of Chinese Summers

So, based on my experiences, any of the mountains in Suzhou just wouldn’t have a discernible temperature difference from the top of the mountain and the bottom of the mountain. And despite “Snow-covered views of the pretty canal towns of Suzhou in winter” I would assume that it doesn’t actually get that much snow.

So enough about how cold and snowy China is, summer-wise it is generally too, too hot. For the level of cold in the winter, I would have assumed there would be milder summers but where I have lived and visited that has not been the case. When I asked the teacher I was replacing in Shandong about the weather of the city I was told that it went from ‘freezing your pants off to fucking hot’ and it was true one day you’d be wearing a jacket and maybe for a week you’d be in jeans and a tee and then you’d be sweating while wearing the least amount of clothing possible. I’ve definitely seen 30°C days in May.

Rundown of the Climate, Average Temperatures, Rainfall, and Humidity for all MDZS Cities

So you don’t have to here is what Wikipedia says about the climate of the cities of the  different areas so you don’t have to look it up yourselves (pretty much copy and pasted):

Baling – (is present day Yueyang different characters and city from the YueyangChang Sect seat). The average high for the year is 21°C/69.7°F and the low 14.9°C/58.8°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of 2.7°C/36.7°F and an average high of 8.1°C/46.6°F. July is the hottest month with an average low of 26.6°C/79.9°F and an average high of 32.2°C/90°F. Average humidity ranges from 73% in December to 79% in June (with a yearly average of 77%). The most average rainfall is in June, the rain heavy months being April-July, compared to the remaining months March and August also have a lot of rain.

Gusu - has a four-season humid subtropical climate with hot, humid summers and cool, cloudy, damp winters with occasional snowfall (Köppen climate classification Cfa). North-westerly winds blowing from Siberia during winter can cause temperatures to fall below freezing at night, while southerly or south-westerly winds during the summer can push temperatures above 35 °C (95 °F). The average high for the year is 19.9°C/67.8°F and the low 12.5°C/54.5°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of 0.5°C/32.9°F and an average high of 7.7°C/45.9°F. July is the hottest month (by 0.1°C over August) with an average low of 24.8°C/76.6°F and an average high of 31.6°C/88.9°F. Average humidity ranges from 65% in November to 77% in July (with a yearly average of 71%). The most average rainfall is in September, the rain heavy months being June-September, April (102.3 mm) and May (114.5) are petty rainy too, May is still 14mm less rain then July (the lowest of the high rain months).

Kuizhou - has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), bordering on a monsoonal humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cwa) and for most of the year experiences very high relative humidity, with all months above 75%. Known as one of the "Three Furnaces" of the Yangtze river, its summers are long and among the hottest and most humid in China, with highs of 33 to 34 °C (91 to 93 °F) in July and August in the urban area.Winters are short and somewhat mild, but damp and overcast. The city's location in the Sichuan Basin causes it to have one of the lowest annual sunshine totals nationally. With over 100 days of fog per year, is known as the "Fog City" The average high for the year is 22.1°C/71.8°F and the low 15.8°C/60.4°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of 6.2°C/43.2°F and an average high of 10.3°C/50.5°F. August is the hottest month (by 0.2°C over July) with an average low of 24.7°C/76.5°F and an average high of 33.2°C/91.8°F. The most average rainfall is in June, the rain heavy months being June and July, but May and August are petty rainy too.

Lanling - has a monsoon-influenced climate with generous summer precipitation, cold, dry winters, and hot, humid summers. Under the Köppen climate classification, it is in the transition from the humid subtropical zone (Cwa) to the humid continental zone (Dwa), though favouring the former. More than half of the annual precipitation of 833 mm (32.8 in) falls in July and August alone, and the frost-free period is above 200 days. The average high for the year is 19.1°C/66.3°F and the low 9.5°C/49.1°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of -4.3°C/24.3°F and an average high of 4.4°C/39.9°F. July is the hottest month (by 0.7°C over August) with an average low of 23°C/73.4°F and an average high of 30.7°C/87.3°F

Laoling - The average high for the year is 19.3°C/66.7°F and the low 9.4°C/48.9°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of -5.6°C/21.9°F and an average high of 3.4°C/38.1°F. June is the hottest month with an average low of 20.2°C/68.4°F and an average high of 32.1°C/89.8°F. Average humidity ranges from 52% in March to 78% in August (with a yearly average of 63%). The most average rainfall is in July, the rain heavy months being July and August by quite a margin. July has on average 90 mm more rain then June (the month with the third highest rainfall).

Meishan - The average high for the year is 21.3°C/70.3°F and the low 14.3°C/57.7°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of 4.1°C/39.4°F and an average high of 10.1°C/50.2°F. July is the hottest month (though the record high temperature was in August) with an average low of 22.9°C/73.2°F and an average high of 30.7°C/86.5°F. Average humidity ranges from 74% in May to 84% in January, August, October, and December (with a yearly average of 81%). The most average rainfall is in August, the rain heavy months being July and August, June (144 mm) and September (130.4) are petty rainy too, June is still 87mm less rainy then July (the lowest of the high rain months) and September gets 42.5mm more rain than the 5th rainiest month—May.

Moling - has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) and is influenced by the East Asian monsoon. The four seasons are distinct, with damp conditions seen throughout the year, very hot and muggy summers, cold, damp winters, and in between, spring and autumn are of reasonable length. Known as one of the "Three Furnaces" along the Yangtze River for the perennially high temperatures in the summertime. However, the time from mid-June to the end of July is the plum blossom blooming season in which the meiyu (rainy season of East Asia; literally "plum rain") occurs, during which the city experiences a period of mild rain as well as dampness. Typhoons are uncommon but possible in the late stages of summer and early part of autumn. The annual mean temperature is around 15.91 °C (60.6 °F), with the monthly 24-hour average temperature ranging from 2.7 °C (36.9 °F) in January to 28.1 °C (82.6 °F) in July. Extremes since 1951 have ranged from −14.0 °C (7 °F) on 6 January 1955 to 40.7 °C (105 °F) on 22 August 1959. The average high for the year is 20.6°C/69.1°F and the low 12.1°C/53.8°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of -0.7°C/30.7°F and an average high of 7.2°C/45°F. July is the hottest month with an average low of 24.9°C/76.8°F and an average high of 32.2°C/90°F. On average precipitation falls 115 days out of the year, and the average annual rainfall is 1,090 mm (43 in). The most average rainfall is in July, the rain heavy months being June through August. August (143.5mm) is the least rainy of the three and still gets on average 52.8 mm more rain then May the 4th rainiest month. July has the most days of rain (12.3), but both March (only 80.4mm) and August have the second most days of rain (11.8).With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 37 percent in March to 52 percent in August, the city receives 1,926 hours of bright sunshine annually. Average humidity ranges from 71% in April and May to 80% in July and August (with a yearly average of 75%).

Qinghe - has a continental, monsoon-influenced semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk), characterised by hot, humid summers due to the East Asian monsoon, and generally cold, windy, very dry winters that reflect the influence of the vast Siberian anticyclone. Spring can bear witness to sandstorms blowing in from the Mongolian steppe, accompanied by rapidly warming, but generally dry, conditions. Autumn is similar to spring in temperature and lack of rainfall. The annual rainfall, more than half of which falls in July and August alone, is highly variable and not reliable. The average high for the year is 19.6°C/67.2°F and the low 8.8°C/47.9°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of -6.1°C/21°F and an average high of 3.9°C/39°F. June is the hottest month with an average low of 20.2°C/68.4°F and an average high of 32.1°C/89.8°F

Qishan - The average high for the year is 18.5°C/65.3°F and the low 9°C/48.1°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of -3.5°C/25.7°F and an average high of 5.1°C/41.2°F. July is the hottest month with an average low of 21.1°C/70°F and an average high of 30.9°C/87.6°F. The record high temperature from (1971-2000) in January was 20.7°C/69.3°F which is the lowest of the record highs. The highest was in August at 41.6°C/106.9°F. The most average rainfall is in August but had the most days of rain in September (the rain heavy months being June-September).

Tingshan - The average high for the year is 20.5°C/68.9 °F and the low 13.1°C/55.6°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of 0.9°C/33.6°F and an average high of 7.5°C/45.5°F. July is the hottest month with an average low of 25.3°C/77.5°F and an average high of 32.6°C/90.7°F. Average humidity ranges from 75% in April and May to 82% in September (with a yearly average of 78%). The most average rainfall is in June, the rain heavy months being June-August, March (121.2 mm), May (113.4mm), and September ( 109mm) are petty rainy too, March still has 34.2 mm less rain then August (the lowest of the high rain months). March also has the most days of rain (15.2), followed by June (14.8), then April and July (13.7).

Yiling - has a four-season, monsoon-influenced, humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cwa), with cool, damp and generally overcast winters, and hot, humid summers. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from 5.0 °C (41.0 °F) in January to 27.7 °C (81.9 °F) in July, while the annual mean is 17.08 °C (62.7 °F). The average high for the year is 21.6°C/70.9°F and the low 13.7°C/56.6°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of 2.2°C/36°F and an average high of 8.8°C/47.8°F. July is the hottest month with an average low of 24.3°C/75.7.°F and an average high of 32.3°C/90.1°F. Close to 70% of the annual precipitation of 1,160 mm (46 in) occurs from May to September. The most average rainfall is in July, the rain heavy months being June-August; May (124.4mm), and September (115.3mm) are petty rainy too, May still has17.8 mm less rain then June (the lowest of the high rain months). July has the most days of rain (15.1), followed by June (14.1), then May (13.5).With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 24% in January to 49% in August, the city receives 1,568 hours of bright sunshine annually, and summer is the sunniest season. Average humidity ranges from 73% in February, March, April and December to 80% in July (with a yearly average of 75%).

Yingchuan - has a monsoon-influenced humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cwa), with four distinct seasons. Winters are cool and dry, summers hot and humid, spring begins early and is warm, and autumn is mild and provides a reasonable transition. Rain mainly falls from May to September, as more than 70% of the annual precipitation occurs then. The city has an annual mean temperature of at 14.5 °C (58.1 °F), and its highest average monthly temperature is 27.1 °C (80.8 °F) in July and the lowest is 0.7 °C (33.3 °F) in January. Just over 700 millimetres (28 in) of precipitation falls each year, and there is on average 217 frost-free days and 2280 hours of sunshine per year. The average high for the year is 20.2°C/68.4°F and the low 9.7°C/49.5°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of -3.6°C/25.5°F and an average high of 6.1°C/43°F. July is the hottest month (by 0.2°C over June) with an average low of 23.1°C/73.6°F and an average high of 32°C/89.6°F. The most average rainfall is in July, the rain heavy months being July and August; June (83.5mm) is petty rainy too, but June still has 38.2mm less rain then August (the lowest of the high rain months). July has the most days of rain (11.7), followed by August (10.6), then June (8.4).

Yueyang - has a temperate climate that is influenced by the East Asian monsoon, classified under the Köppen climate classification as situated on the borderline between a semi-arid climate (BSk) and humid subtropical climate (Cwa). The Wei River valley is characterised by hot, humid summers, cold, dry winters, and dry springs and autumns. Most of the annual precipitation is delivered from July (on average has the most rain) to late October with September having the most days of rain. Snow occasionally falls in winter but rarely settles for long. Dust storms often occur during March and April as the city rapidly warms up. Summer months also experience frequent but short thunderstorms. The average high for the year is 19.5°C/67.1°F and the low 9.7°C/49.5°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of -3.3°C/26.1°F and an average high of 5.1°C/41.2°F. July is the hottest month with an average low of 22.3°C/72.1°F and an average high of 32.4°C/90.3°F. Average humidity ranges from 61% in June to 77% in September (with a yearly average of 68%)

Yunmeng - The average high for the year is 21.1°C/70°F and the low 12.8°C/55.1°F.  January being the coldest month with an average low of 0.2°C/32.4°F and an average high of 3.9°C/39°F. July is the hottest month (by 0.2°C over August) with an average low of 25.2°C/77.4°F and an average high of 32.2°C/90°F. Average humidity ranges from 75% in December to 83% in July (with a yearly average of 79%)

Dafan Mountain and Phoenix Mountian

That being said, I was trying to find Dafan Mountain on a map for a fanfic I was writing. I have a Chinese copy of MDZS and I was originally having trouble finding the characters used for Dafan Mountain. When I did, Baidu was not at all helpful every webpage was for MDZS and/or CQL. So I asked Dean who replied that he didn’t know, as the places in the book are all made up, at which time I sent him a copy of the map that my other friend had shown me with the actual names of the present day cities for the five main sects. And I did a search for “where is Dafan mountain” which worked for things like: “where is Moling”, for the Dafan search the results were things like which chapter/episode is Dafan or ‘where was Wen Ning before Dafan?’ My confusion came from the fact that the town below Dafan is called Buddha’s Feet—and I have been there. In Chongqing there is a district called Dazu (大足), Buddha’s Feet which had Buddhist cave paintings so there are also mountains. Edit: I went back and looked for pictures, it’s not actually very mountain-y and is named for some giant footprints.

It took longer to find, because as I had learned there is just too many ways that you could write Buddha’s Feet in Chinese and have it interpreted as Buddha’s Feet. In the book it is called 佛脚镇 (Fójiǎo Zhèn) or Buddha’s Foot town, which isn’t a real place in China according to Baidu. So for my own fic purposes I decided that it was going to be in Chongqing. And then later, when I was actually putting together a map on Google I double checked for places like Dafan and found one. 大梵山 Dafan Shan (same characters and everything) is a 207m mountain in South Korea called Keun Beom San (?) 큰범산.

Phoenix Mountain was another one that I had a hard time looking for in the book as there are multiple ways to say Phoenix in Chinese and it is generally a compound word including Feng (风) which usually means wind and the name of the mountain in Chinese is 百风山 (Bǎifèng shān) and could also be translated as the Hundred Wind Mountain. And all though it sounds like a very good mountain name ‘phoenix’ or ‘wind’-wise there is no such mountain that I could find.

My Own Map Making Explained

Before I made my own map I looked for other maps online, ones that talked about the smaller sects. For the purposes of my fic I needed to know where the YueyangChang clan was situated, and where Xue Yang would be, or coming from, or going to. I found this map online. It is a very good map but it uses the present day name instead of the book names so I got super confused. For example that map has a Liyang, Leling, and Yueling, none of which I could find on the MDZS wiki as being connected to a sect.

What I ended up doing is writing the names of the cities into Pleco, a Chinese-English dictionary app, so if I type in yueyang the first three are: Yuèyáng (岳阳) a prefecture-level city in Hunan; yuèyáng (越洋) a verb meaning cross the ocean; and yuè yáng (栎阳) a place in Shaanxi Province. I took the place names and searched for them in my Chinese copy of the book and hit on 栎阳. Then I put it in Baidu, Baidu Maps, and Apple Maps to see where it would turn up—it turned up in Xi’an. Well, Liyang from that second map is also 栎阳. And when I look at the map apps with pinyin the section of Xi’an in question is also labelled as Liyang.

Leling was harder—or easier I guess it depends on how you look at it. I ended up looking it up straight from the second map Pleco suggested 乐陵 the county level city in Dezhou, which I found in the book 乐陵秦—LaolingQin. This I don’t understand at all 乐 is lè or yuè and yet we call them LaolingQin. So there you have it. Edit: while writing the weather section (which I did after this though it comes first in the post) I A. realised I’d been writing Yaoling instead of Laoling and B. that the Laoling County-level City Wikipedia page said that Laoling often gets mispronounced as Leling because the character 乐 is only ever elsewhere lè or yuè.

Tingshan was the last one that gave me problems. It is written 亭山 and there are actually a couple mountains called Tingshan, with the same characters one near Qufu in Shandong province, and two in Zhejiang province one north of Hangzhou and the other sort of south of Hangzhou, in Shaoxing (the one that comes up the most often in Baidu searches). Then I found a Chinese site discussing the ancient city of Tingshan City which is “In today's Zhejiang Deqing County East 24 Li (1 Li = 0.5 km)” so I put Deqing county on my map and then realised that the same site says that Tingshan is also 200 paces southwest of the county and then mentions a Wuxing ji (吴兴记) but I could find a Wuxing District (吴兴区) of Huzhou City the same city as Deqing county. Wuxing was north east of Deqing and that was when I realised that the two possible dots of Tingshan on my map were close to the dot of Yueling on the second map I had found. And I found a Yueling (越岭) in Huzhou and it was southwest of Wuxing (not sure about 200 paces or not), so I differed to the wisdom of that second map.

I have made my own map with the labels of all places I could find on a map. I labelled them with the sect names or if they had no sect associated with them just the city name. Sadly Baixue Temple, Phoenix Mountain, Dust Creek Mountain, Mo Village, and Dafan Mountain/Buddha’s Feet (though my map does include Dazu in Chongqing, as a point of interest) could not be found and added to the map. And of course we have no clue where Sect leader Yao came from and I kind of wish we could send him back off into the nothing, but he is there to add strife I suppose.

River Travel- Lotus Pier wasn’t the closest Sect to Yiling

I got to a part in my own fic where I needed them to take a bout between Yiling and Yunmeng and realised that while Yiling is on the Yangtze, Yunmeng is not and instead is on a tributary of the Yangtze. I did a cursory search for ancient river boat speeds and found an archaeological paper that tested seven ancient boats one of which was a Singapore Sampan it wasn’t very fast. So I just decided to write it off as cultivating boats get people there faster.

Even though I had already wrote the boat scene of my fic when I was looking at my map I noticed Google’s measuring tool. So for fun, I used the Google Maps measuring tool to measure river distance between Yiling and Yunmeng after I put all the city markers on. Yiling is on the Yangtze and Yunmeng has a couple Yangtze tributaries that run through it that meet up in the Wuhan area. The Yangtze dips south after Yiling and then goes back up to Wuhan. Yiling to Yunmeng is 444 km by river if you leave the Yangtze by Jingzhou and travel through Chang Lake (I cheated and connected to Hanshui River with what looks like a manmade river, maybe, it is very straight and appears to cut through the lake) then it is a lot of small rivers to get to Yunmeng. I thought maybe even though the Yangtze goes further south and Wuhan is further east than Yunmeng since it is a bigger river it might still be shorter. However, 397 km east of Yiling following the Yangtze in Baling! I remember in CQL Sect Leader Yao suggests Lotus Pier after the second siege of the Burial Mounds (I might be remembering wrong), but well he appears friendly with Ouyang, and they are a smaller sect.

Conclusion

So, while the sects live in actual places, today they are generally just districts in larger cities, because the urbanisation of China has resulted in many villages becoming districts of bigger cities. And while some of the places in the book are made up (Yunping City being another one that I cannot find anywhere) they are reasonably named that they are not far outside of the realm of possibility. Also China is a large country that discourages people from moving around, as you always have to return to the place of your birth (or your parents’ birth) to get paperwork and the like for visas, etc. Therefore, I believe perhaps inside China the knowledge of where these places are or the height of their mountains or their amount of snow is not something that is thought about by people as much as I think of these things.

#mdzs #cql #the untamed #china #weather #maps #mountains #yangtze river #mo dao zu shi #cloud recesses #geography

[fy-nghariad-fy-emrys]

Hi, I want to talk about something that's been happening to me.

I had the contraceptive implant put in last February. February 26th 2019 to be exact.

I got it put in because there aren't a lot of options for big girls, and I'd heard horror stories about the pill and the shot. I was scared at the idea of the coil and told that I probably wouldn't be allowed it as I hadn't had any children yet.

So, that left the implant.

The following two months were great. My March period was better than it had been for years, and April was slightly lighter, but longer, which wasn't out of the ordinary.

Then May came.

Endless blood that never stopped. I think that endless blood stopped somewhere around October, November 2019.

I'd been told that might happen. That I'd just need to wait it out. That I couldnt get an appointment to get the implant out, but I just needed to wait a little bit longer. Then I'd see.

November 2019-January 2020, no period came. I'm told this is completely normal for the implant.

February 2020 was one of the worst, heaviest periods of my life.

Since February, I've been... uncomfortable.

Pain during and after sex. Things not feeling quite right.

From April, I started getting intermenstrual bleeding. Sex became more painful.

Sometimes, I'd bleed after sex, and the bleed might last days.

Due to COVID, I didn't feel I could approach a doctor. So I sat on this feeling, and waited until doctor's might see people again.

In the meantime, I was getting cramps and pains, my periods feeling iffy and the bleeding between periods heavier.

Finally, in July, I had a smear test. Negative but HPV positive, come back in a year to check for abormal cells.

In September, I spoke with my doctor about the problems I'd been having. She was great, but seemed distant, like she wasn't taking in what I was saying. She asked me questions, made some notes. Referred me to a gynaecologist.

I eagerly waited my letter.

Finally, I'm going to be fixed I thought. The pain is going to stop and they're going to tell me what's wrong and fix me.

At this point, I feel like I thought wrong.

I had my appointment today. Just a little after 9. I sat in the busy waiting room, watching people go in. Some came back, some didn't.

Finally, it was me. They weighed me, measured me, scribbled a few notes and then I met my doctor.

She was a great doctor, but challenged me on everything I said. "Your doctor said you weren't having bleeding after sex" she said, but I'd definitely said this to my doctor. She eyed me, unsure, like I was lying the entire time.

"I want to do an examination" she explained, and I had to get my kit off. She put the speculum inside me to get a good look, and I was in agony. It shouldn't hurt this much, I thought, but just got a small "well done" from a nurse. The doctor muttered something to the nurse, and they did a further investigation.

"Where does it hurt?" The doctor asked, and I tried to explain the best I can.

She disappeared after that and I dressed myself.

Eventually, after a long 10 minutes, she returned.

She looked at me, sceptical again.

"The pain isn't where you think it is" she said. She told me that despite the fact I feel absolute agony at my cervix, she's decided it's nothing to do with that. The pain is on the outside, she explained, it's not where you think it is.

She hands me a box with 3 plastic cylinders inside, explaining that these should take care of my problem. All the problems are that I don't use lube, the doctor explained, and that foreplay needs to happen during sex.

She didn't listen to a word of my reply.

Months of pain and bleeding and crying during or after sex, not having sex and still hurting... and I've been told using what is essentially 3 plastic dildos of different sizes with some lube is what I was missing.

I feel like my issue hasn't been taken seriously. I feel like I've essentially been told I don't know my own body. My partner and I have stopped having sex, not because I'm not wet enough, but because even with lube it feels like I'm being stabbed inside... but it's okay, because if I use these plastic things it'll all go away.

I understand the doctor knows what she's talking about as she's studied for so long, but I felt like I wasn't being listened to, taken seriously or even cared about. I'm upset that the pain, which I feel is at the top of my vagina, arguably near my cervix, is so intense I have to stop having sex, I've been told is actually not there. I'm just saying it's there, it's actually on the outside.

She told me to try another sex postion, as if we haven't exhausted everything. On top is painful. Behind is painful. Underneath is extremely uncomfortable no matter which way we are. But, it's okay, cause if I use these plastic things, I'll not suffer again.

I just feel as though I have been fobbed off as they can't feel anything wrong. I feel like because they can't see a polyp or tumour, they're assuming everything is okay, but they're putting it all down to me not having good enough sex, apparently.

I'm literally so upset.

No explanation for the inter period bleeding, no explanation for the cramping or the bleeding after sex.

I just feel like the entire time I was there, I wasn't taken seriously.

[truecrimesposts]

The Milwaukee Cannibal

Timeline of events

1960′s

May 21, 1960: Jeffery Lionel Dahmer was born in Milwaukee’s Evangelical Deaconess Hospital to his parents Lionel and Joyce after a very difficult pregnancy. According to Lionel, Joyce experienced random bouts of paralysis during the pregnancy, and doctors were unable to find any reason for this. To try and treat this and mostly to calm her during, she was given “injections of barbiturates and morphine, which would finally relax her.” She would apparently also be given phenobarbital. 

We know now that the “Use of barbiturates during pregnancy has been associated with a higher incidence of fetal abnormalities. Neonatal barbiturate withdrawal symptoms have been reported in infants whose mothers took barbiturates during pregnancy,” but we don't know for sure if this applied to Jeffrey.

1962: The family made the decision to move to Ames, Iowa in 1962 so that Lionel could work on his Chemistry Ph.D.

1964: After their young son complained of extreme pain, Lionel and Joyce took Jeffrey to the hospital, were he was diagnosed with a brutal double hernia in his scrotum. Even after the surgery corrected the issue, Lionel would claim that this experience was what initially triggered the change in Jeffrey’s personality, apparently making him become much more shy and withdrawn. Psychologists believe that there is a possibility that this could actually have influenced his feelings of sexual inadequacy and insecurity in later life.

November 1966: When Joyce fell pregnant with her second child David, the family decided to move home in an attempt to find the perfect spot to raise their two children. This led to several moved throughout Ohio during the following year. This was not an easy time for the family, Joyce was struggling with another very difficult pregnancy, and young Jeffrey, who was now in the 1st grade, was starting to feel neglected, especially after David was born on December 18th.

Of course feeling neglected when a new baby comes along is a fairly common thing, but unlike most children, Jeffrey would not get over this feeling, instead it would get worse. Lionel describes his son at this time as extremely shy and withdrawn, even going as far as t say that he was terrified of new people and situations.

1968: After the family moved to Bath Ohio, Jeffrey experienced a new and particularly heinous kind of trauma. According to Lionel, Jeffrey was molested by a boy in the neighbourhood, however Jeffrey never once admitted to even remembering this.

It seems likely that Jeffrey repressed this memory, especially since his personality ticks pretty much every box when it comes to the traits that come with childhood memory repression:

Strong reactions to certain places people and situations.

Difficulty controlling emotions.

Difficulty keeping a job.

Struggling with a sense of abandonment.

Immaturity.

Tendency to self sabotage.

Impulsive.

Emotionally exhausted.

Anxiety.

Trouble with anger management.

1970′s

Late 1970: Over the last few years, Joyce had, according to Lionel, been taking drugs in order to try and deal with the extreme anxiety that she was facing on a near daily basis, but they didn't really work, and in the late 1970′s she was actually institutionalised twice for ‘psychiatric problems’. Since the family were so busy trying to take care of Joyce and raise their very young son, Jeffrey reportedly did not have a stabilising influence, or much emotional support.

This combined with the fact that he had grown tired of not fitting in led Jeffrey to build himself a reputation as somewhat of a clown, and a misfit. His behaviour at that time is very similar to that of fellow serial killer and cannibal Arthur Shawcross, he would drink heavily at just 10 years old and was always pulling ‘pranks’. Jeffreys pranks including randomly shouting, bleating like a sheep, and most memorably, faking epileptic fits.

June 4, 1978: By the time that Jeffrey had graduated from high school, his parents were going through a very difficult divorce and due to the fact that he was now legally an adult, he was actually living by himself in the home while his parents and brother lived elsewhere. Jeffrey had less emotional support than ever before and all the freedom in the world.

June 18, 1978: 19 year old Steven Mark Hicks was hitchhiking when Jeffrey drove by him and stopped, suggesting that he come back to his home for a few beers. Hicks agreed and the two went back to the house and began to drink, everything was going fine, until Hicks tried to leave. It is believed that Jeffreys crippling fears of abandonment kicked in and he flipped. He grabbed a barbell and began to club and then strangle Hicks with the weapon. According to Dahmer, over the next few weeks (!) Jeffrey stripped the flesh from the bones using acid (like he apparently had to a whole host of animals previously) smashed the bones and disposed of the remains in his back yard.

Dahmer would later claim that he had killed Hicks because he didn't wat him to leave. This reasoning would later be corroborated by at least one survivor of Jeffreys attack, claiming that Jeffreys entire personality changed when he mentioned wanting to leave. This reasoning isn't difficult to believe when you consider the lack of parental support, tendency to move, and I believe most noticeably his memory repression

After his high school graduation Dahmer enrolled in Ohio State University but he stayed only one term before dropping out.

December 24, 1978: Lionel remarried.

December 29, 1978: Jeffrey was trained as an army medic and shipped of to Baumholder Germany. This happened not long after the Vietnam war, and morale and discipline was at an all time low within the armed forces at the time, and drug and alcohol abuse amongst the soldiers was rife.

Dahmer’s reputation changed once he joined the army, he was no longer known as a clown an a prankster, but as an aggressive drunk. 

(Interesting side note, after his arrest police actually looked into murders in the area were he was stationed to see if he was active while he was there, and there did appear to be a serial killer in Baumholder at the time, but it is not believed to be Jeffrey since it was young women being killed, and as far as is known, Jeffrey only killed men.)

1980′s

March 26, 1981: When Jeffreys drinking reached the level were he was no longer able to do his job, he was discharged from the army and sent back to the US. When he got back, he slept on the beach in Florida for a few months before returning to Ohio.

October 7, 1981: Dahmer was arrested for a drunk and disorderly and resisting arrest and paid a small fine. 

August 7, 1982: Dahmer was arrested again for another drunk and disorderly. He dropped his pants in public. By this point in his life Jeffrey had moved in with his grandma, who was apparently the only person in his family who actually showed Jeffrey any affection.

September 8, 1986: By this time, Jeffrey had gone off the rails, and was getting himself into trouble pretty often. He was arrested once again for exposing himself to a group of children in Milwaukee. There are two different accounts of what happened at that time, (he was either urinating or masturbating).

Dahmer was also now frequenting gay bars and bath houses often, and actually got himself banned from one bath house, for drugging at least 4 men. No official charges were filed against him, but one of his victims was hospitalised for about a week.

September 15, 1987: According to Jeffrey, he woke up in a hotel room to find the dead body of 24 year old Steven W. Tuomi. He transported the corpse to his grandmothers home in a large suitcase, disposing of the body pretty much as he had Steven Hicks.

Nine years passed between the murders of Hicks and Tuomi, which is pretty unusual for a serial killer to do. He spent years before this second murder working his way up to it, learning how to pick up men, how to drug them, and how much. We still don't know for sure whether or not Jeffrey actually remembers the murder or not. It is possible that he was just too drunk to remember, or that, like he had for earlier trauma, he repressed the memory. I personally find it like likely that the latter is true to be honest, as it seems strange to me that he would admit to all his other crimes and not this one. Also, Jeffrey would later say that he didn't actually enjoy the killings, and that there were a necessary evil in order for him to get the bodies.

January 1988: Jeffrey offered 14 year old James Doxtator some money if he agreed to pose nude for some photos. After James agreed Jeffrey took the teenager back to his grandmothers house. After raping James (Dahmer described it as sex but James was still a child so it was actually rape) Dahmer drugged and then strangled the boy. By now his method of disposal, acid and crushing bones was well practiced.

March 24, 1988: 25 year old Richard Guerrero also came back to Jeffreys grandmothers house, once again for nude photos, and once again after sex, he drugged and strangled the young man.

September 25, 1988: Jeffrey finally moved into his own place, which is where the pace of his crimes really picked up, since he no longer felt he needed to be careful, he once again had all the freedom that he wanted.

Once he moved in, he met a 13 year old boy, who was once again offered money to pose nude for him. Jeffrey drugged the boy sing coffee and fondled him, but luckily the young boy escaped.

January 1989: Jeffrey was arrested and this time charged with 2nd degree sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes.

March 25: Dahmer met Anthony Sears, 24, at a club, and like he had previously he drugged and murdered him after sex. After Dahmers arrest, Sear’s skull was recovered from Dahmer’s apartment. He had painted the skull.

May 23rd: Jeffrey was sentenced to 5 years and three years, for his attack on that 13 year old boy, but he only served 10 months before he was out on a probationary period of 5 years.

1990

May 29: Dahmer met 33 year old Ricky Beeks at a club, and used his usual MO of bribing, drugging and strangling. However this time Jeffrey had sex after he was dead, instead of before. Once again, Jeffrey had painted the mans skull, which was recovered after his arrest.

June 1990: 28 year old Edward W Smith was killed in the same way as Dahmer's previous victims, but this time Dahmer did one thing different. Jeffrey took photos of the dismemberment process.

September 2: Something changed before the murder of 24 year old Ernest Miller, causing Jeffrey to be even more gruesome than he had been previously. Instead of drugging and strangling Ernest like he had his previous victims, he drugged him and cut his throat. Once again taking pictures of the body, Jeffrey dismembered the body, putting the biceps in the freezer, and once again painting his skull.

September 24: David C Thomas was the first time that Jeffrey killed somebody without sex being involved.  It is believed that David wanted to leave before having sex with Dahmer, since Dahmer was known to kill his victims in order to make sure that they couldn't leave.

1991

March 7: Curtis Straughter was 18 years old when he was murdered, with Jeffrey this time using a different sequence of events. Previously he had had sex with his victims then drugged and killed them, and at least once he had drugged and killed them and then had sex, but this time he drugged Curtis before raping and murdering him. It is likely that this change was due to the fact that Jeffreys last victim had wanted to leave prior to sex.

April 7: Errol Lindsey, 19, last seen alive. Dahmer met him on the street and offered him money to come home with him. He drugged Lindsey, strangled him and had sex with the body. The unpainted skull was recovered from Dahmer's apartment.          

May 17: 14 year old Konerak Sinthasomphone was pickes up by Dahmer outside of the mall, he went with Jeffrey under the promise of money for nude pictures. After drugging the boy Jeffrey apparently felt pretty comfortable, ince he left the home to go out for a beer. The boy managed to escape, naked, and the neighbours called the police. Somehow however Jeffrey managed to convince the police that responded that he and the teenager were simply lovers who had had a fight (I don't know how they could be so stupid, this is a drugged child and a 30 year old with a pretty lengthy criminal record, including the sexual assault of a minor?! Like how do you just let that be?!) and the police actually RETURNED the poor boy to the sick serial killer. Dahmer strangled the 14 year old as soon as the police were gone, had sex with the body and then took pictures like he had previously. Konerak’s skull was also recovered from the apartment. 

Once people actually discovered what had happened the officers involved received mild disciplinary action (which is nowhere near enough) and the department was sued.

May 24: Deaf and mute 31 year old Tony Hughes had reportedly known Dahmer for about 2 years when Dahmer, by writing on paper, offered the man $50 to come and pose nude for him. Hughes was drugged and murdered without sex. Once again Hughes skull was found in Jeffreys apartment.

June 30: Matt turner was killed by Jeffrey after a gay pride parade. After cutting the body up the head was put in the freezer and the rest was put into a barrel of acid.

July 6: 23 year old Jeremiah Weinberger travelled with Dahmer from Chicago to Milwaukee where he then stayed overnight. Like the previous cases, everything was fine until Jeremiah decided that he wanted to leave, at which point Dahmer drugged, killed and disposed of the young mans body. 

July 15: Jeffrey was fired from the Ambrosia Chocolate Co. for bad attendance. 

On this same day Oliver Lacy, 23, was killed by Dahmer. Jeffrey had sex with the body before dismembering it, at which point he put his head In the fridge and heart in the freezer “to eat later”.

July 16: Joseph Bradehoft, 25, met Jeffrey at a bus stop, where Dahmer offered him money to pose for nude pictures. After sex, Dahmer drugged him and strangled him with a strap. He dismembered the body and, as before, put the head in the freezer and the body in the acid barrel.

July 22, 1991: Shortly after midnight, Tracy Edwards, 32, escaped from Dahmer with one hand in a handcuff and flagged down a police car. He lead the cops back to Dahmer's apartment. They found photos of dismembered victims and body parts in the refrigerator and freezer. Shortly, the sight of crews in biohazard protection suits taking evidence out of Dahmer's apartment was televised all over the world. The suits were necessary because of the smell of decay in the apartment and because of the acid in the          barrel.

Caught red-handed, with overwhelming physical evidence against him, it's not surprising that Jeffrey confessed. His dry, unemotional descriptions of murdering a dozen and a half young men belied the reality of brutality and sadism that was revealed in Tracy Edwards' testimony.

It's possible that the sameness of the descriptions (Offers of money to pose, drugs to knock them out) was not entirely accurate. Tracy Edwards claimed he was not offered money, that he only went to Dahmer's apartment for some beers before going out again. He may have been covering up his own indiscretion, or Dahmer may have lied about the ways he lured people back to his         apartment in order to make them seem less like innocent victims.          

Edwards was drugged, but did not lose consciousness. This raises the possibility that the sedatives Dahmer gave victims were intended only to weaken them, while leaving them aware of what was being done to them. Dahmer had certainly had enough practice by then to have a good idea what dose was needed to knock a man out. Dahmer may have enjoyed taunting the victims about their fate and killing them, slowly, much more than he let on later.          

Dahmer also claimed that he needed to drink heavily in order to be able to face killing people, but we know that he was a hard-core alcoholic for much of his life. For him, making excuses for drinking was normal and can not be regarded as      likely to be honest.

1992

January 14: Dahmer entered a plea of guilty but insane in 15 of the 17 murders he claimed to have committed.

February 15: By 10-2 majority vote, a jury found Dahmer to be sane in each murder. Testimony from defense and prosecution experts took weeks and was extremely gruesome. One expert testified that Dahmer periodically removed body parts of his victims from the freezer and ate them. Another testified that this was a lie Dahmer told to make himself seem insane. The jury deliberated slightly more than ten hours.

February 17: Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms. At the sentencing, Dahmer read a prepared statement in which he expressed sorrow for the pain he had caused.

"I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness and now I have some peace. I know now how much harm I have caused. I tried to do the best I could after the arrest to make amends."

"I now know I will be in prison the rest of my life. I know that I will have to turn to God to help me get through each day. I should have stayed with God. I tried and failed and created a holocaust. Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins."

He later pled guilty to aggravated murder in Ohio, in the death of his first victim, Steven Hicks. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

November 28, 1994: Dahmer murdered in prison. Dahmer and two other inmates were assigned to clean the staff bathroom of the Columbia Correctional Institute gymnasium in Portage, Wisconsin. Guards left them alone to do their work for about twenty minutes, starting at around 7:50 a.m. When Dahmer was discovered, he was unconscious and his head and face were bloody. He died on the way to the hospital from multiple skull fractures and brain trauma.                  

A bloody broom handle was found near Dahmer, but a broom is probably not sturdy enough to inflict the damage that killed him. Reports in December indicated that he was struck with a steel bar stolen from the prison weight room.  

One of the other two inmates in the area with Dahmer was also attacked. Jesse Anderson, 37, was pronounced dead in the hospital at 10:04 a.m. on November 30. Anderson was convicted of stabbing and beating his wife to death in 1992. He was serving a life term.                        

The third inmate in the work party is twenty-five-year-old Christopher Scarver, a convicted murderer reportedly taking anti-psychotic medication. Scarver murdered a coworker when he was angry at his boss. The boss got away. Scarver claimed his boss was a racist and there has been speculation that Scarver, who is black, wanted revenge for the wrongs Dahmer and Anderson (both white) had done to black people. The majority of Dahmer's victims were black. Anderson tried to blame two fictitious black men for murdering his wife during a mugging. It's been pointed out that a desire for publicity or status may have also been a motive.                        

Dahmer was attacked the previous July, also. A convicted drug dealer tried to cut his throat with a razor blade attached to a toothbrush handle, making a crude straight razor, but the weapon fell apart. Dahmer, received minimal injuries.         

Scarver is said to have delusions that he is Christ. He has been in psychiatrict observation and treatment several times, with diagnoses of bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia. He was found guilty of the murder, though, and sent to prison. A jury apparently did not believe he was insane.

#true facts #true crime #true #crime / law / justice #major crimes #murder #murderer #Murderpedia #serial killer #killer #the milwaukee cannibal #milwaukee #cannibalism #jeffrey dahmer #dahmer #timeline #criminal justice

[mimmerr]

Key workers, militant cowards, vital frontline staff: how the country viewed teachers during the pandemic.

It is obvious to say that the pandemic has been a difficult time for the public sector. First and formally, frontline NHS and care home staff have dealt with the horrifying human effects of the pandemic; a day does not pass without a bleak photo of a hospital ward or an interview with an exhausted team member. And we are blessed to have these people persevere all day, all night, to keep our loved ones alive.The pandemic has also brought to light other key workers on which our country depends: supermarket staff, refuse collectors and transport workers. Yet I would not say I hear these places of employment discussed with as much frequency and vitriol as schools and teachers are. I have probably lost some support with that last sentence. Here’s another teacher again, moaning about how hard everything is. I implore you to step back with me and unpick how you’ve come to that conclusion and then consider how I have reached mine.

March 2020, the pandemic has reached its first wave. After weeks of parents refusing to send their children to school, in addition to union and expert pressure, schools shut to all children except the vulnerable and those of key workers. Headlines reflect the resistance to do, using words like ‘forced’ and ‘Now it’s the schools’. Others comment on the government’s lack of support and guidance for leaders. However, community spirit is strong. People clap for the NHS every Thursday and we are reminded of both the fragility of life and what it means to be human: arguing with your family about one left sock on the floor and so on. The education sector is thanked repeatedly by the Prime Minister, Education secretary and companies (in the form of discounts etc) for their services.

June arrives. A selection of year groups are invited back to school. Unions, heads and councils argue with the decision and some parents do not send their children back at all. The Daily Mail’s headline reads, ‘Let Our Teachers Be Heroes’ and describes the unions as ‘militant’, espousing a dichotomy between unions and teachers. 

Whereas in reality, the union is made of and led by teachers. Secondly, the use of ‘heroes’ to describe those returning to school acknowledges that there is some danger to heroically overcome. Moreover, an unwillingness to return to a class of children from different households, who are unable to socially distance, is the antithesis of heroic: it’s cowardly or selfish. 

Skip forward to September, schools are open to all.  A piece of normality is back, albeit covered in antibacterial spray, hand soap and wrapped in a bubble. School communities on the whole, although wary, are prepared and delighted.

Unfortunately a few months later, cases rise and everything begins to shut down again: pubs, leisure centres and non-essential shops. Schools are open but many partially shut, sending home year group or class bubbles in response to positive test results. There are calls for school closures before Christmas so staff and children are not told to self-isolate over Christmas, which at this point allows for household mixing. This does not materialise and for many staff it does not matter; those in tier 4 were now unable to mix households over the Christmas period.

New Year arrives and the peak is dangerously rising. Schools shut for two weeks in highly affected areas. Those in less affected areas go back in January to be told the next day they shut for the half term. This is where perhaps the biggest shift in narrative occurs. It is at this point that seemingly, every morning, on every TV and radio show, there is a debate between whether schools should open or shut. Often, one voice is of a stressed parent, quite rightly concerned about their child’s education, which has already been affected so much by this pandemic. The other voice is of a staff member or another parent’s, who worries about them or their child catching the virus or transmitting it to a more vulnerable family member. There are complaints about individual school practices such as unclear and inconsistent messaging regarding home learning and closure. I cannot and do not wish to spend my time defending ineffective school leadership. However, I would stress that some schools were told overnight to prepare for remote learning the next day and secondly, that schools who were aware of a fortnightly lockdown were told during their annual leave and had to prepare accordingly. There are definitely other jobs where there’s an expectation that work may affect annual leave but certainly not many. I’d also like to highlight that in all places of work, there will be ineffective management, but this is rarely applicable to other similar establishments. To put it crudely, we can accept that one bad experience with a doctor does not necessarily mean the whole practice is terrible and by extension, the NHS. One school’s poor management of remote learning does not mean all remote learning is poor and consequently, schools should stay open.

At this time and throughout the pandemic, there are inputs from the media, government and OFSTED, reiterating that schools are the best place for children and that school closures should be used as a last resort. This argument is obviously true. I doubt you will find a teacher that will suggest otherwise. However, the argument is also reliant on emotional response rather than conscious, encompassing reasoning. We know that schools can have hundreds of people inside from many different households. We know that younger pupils and those with SEND may not be able to socially distance or follow extra hygiene practices effectively. We know as teachers, that we usually have to work closely with children to read their work and teach them new skills. We now know that for some teachers the infection rate for COVID is 333% higher than the general population. Arguing for school closure is not cowardly, selfish disobedience, it’s self and community defense against a deadly virus. This cannot be pitted against children’s education and well being because it is also incredibly important yet is somehow footnoted. 

In recent weeks, the narrative has again shifted, mirroring the one of the first lockdown: one of community spirit and support. The education secretary advised parents to complain to OFSTED should they have concerns regarding home learning. In response, parents sent over five thousand emails of thanks and praise for teacher’s hard work. 

Evidence of school infections linking to community infection is growing supporting the previous concerns over school reopening and lessening room for debate on whether schools are safe. Consequently, there are hopes for teachers to be vaccinated in the second phase of rollout. 

We came together to thank teachers alongside other key workers but it wasn’t long until they were blamed, rather than COVID, for school closures. When people are scared and worried, it can be all too easy to find someone to blame, rather than see them as a person with the same fears and anxieties. We must empathise with each other. To parents, I would say to not see unions or their members as the reason for closure, see them as people who want to keep teachers and children safe. We are also someone’s children. I would implore teachers to do everything they can to support parents struggling with home learning at home and to make sure learning is accessible as possible: they are not to blame for gaps in their children’s learning - they are not teachers. And together, we must not forget that school staff are on the front line, with many giving their lives as a result of being in school. Let’s put an end to oppositional vitriol. We want children back in school but let’s all now agree that can only happen if school staff are protected.

#education

[aleximedicusa]

claps hands. i can’t sleep, so am i gonna set down a whole timeline of important events in lewis’ life? yes. it’s only up until 1832 so far, as that’s just as far as i’ve plotted out specific events within the novel, and there’s a bit of a gap between 1829 and 1832 because i still need to figure out notable things that happen then. 

c. 1821.  late summer: lewis moves from pwllheli to london to begin his medical studies. he’s quickly disillusioned by anti-welsh sentiment and the general issues of medical study at this time. he also faces financial difficulties that make him unable to afford the rising prices of anatomical subjects he needs for courses, which leads to him resorting on one occasion to robbing a grave himself and narrowly avoiding arrest. 

1825.  may: lewis attempts the examination for his license from the college of surgeons and fails, due to the subpar education available in london at the time. devastated and humiliated, he plans on spending the rest of the summer throwing himself into further study so he can attempt the exam again as soon as possible, but he ends up overworking himself to illness.  june: seeing how overworked lewis is, his friend john and john’s wife katherine insist that he spend a few months at their country home to convalesce. lewis grudgingly agrees, but as he is not much of an outdoorsman, he ends up spending most of his days inside while john goes off riding and hunting.  july: katherine, in an attempt to get lewis out in the fresh air a bit, suggests that he pay a visit to the local nobleman, a comte peter luminuex d’arces. lewis agrees, not expecting to like the man, but finds that they get along quite well, and he spends the majority of the day with the comte. throughout the rest of the summer, he goes to spend time with peter as often as he can, and he starts getting Complicated Feelings he doesn’t quite know how to address.  september: lewis returns to london, after a heartfelt goodbye with peter. back in london, he meets hippolyte barthélemy, a visiting french surgeon of some renown, and lewis seizes on the chance to get a french anatomist’s perspective on the plight in england regarding dissection. hippolyte takes a liking to lewis and agrees to aid how he can with pushing for laws to change. 

1826. may: lewis passes the examination and can now practice as a surgeon. as soon as possible, he returns to the country to stay with peter for a few months before starting his practice officially.  june: finally, finally, these two idiots confess after a year’s worth of pining, and they officially become lovers.  september: lewis returns to london to begin setting up his practice. he finds himself still frustrated with the lack of access to bodies, as it not only harms the education of students but the further study of established surgeons. he starts testing the waters of becoming a bit more vocal and active in the discussions happening in the medical community. 

1827.  march: lewis decides to spend some time in paris to better understand the way that their system of anatomy laws function. he convinces peter to come with him, as there can hardly be any objection to a welshman bringing along his french-speaking friend to act as a translator and travelling companion.  august: lewis and peter return to england — lewis to london, peter to suffolk. this goodbye is extra painful, since they had a whole five months in paris living together. september: emboldened by his experiences in paris, lewis begins really pushing in earnest with the other members of the medical community to try and bring about legal change. he fully becomes the shouty man we all know and love.  december: peter surprises lewis by showing up in london for christmas. not really an important point, just a nice one.

1828. may: lewis is called upon to give testimony for the select committee on anatomy.  august: lewis and hippolyte (mostly hippolyte) organise some sort of... ball or large social event for both prominent surgeons / physicians / anatomists and members of general high society, in an attempt to drum up support for their cause and bridge the gap of understanding between the public and the medical profession.  november: the burke and hare story breaks in edinburgh. burke and hare, two irish immigrants, are caught for the murder of a woman named margaret docherty, and it later comes to light that they have killed sixteen people to sell to dr. knox. 

1829.  january: lewis goes to edinburgh for the execution of burke. he is horrified and repulsed by what knox and connor have done as anatomists, buying murdered bodies, and he and connor have a fight about that.  february: lewis returns to england and goes to peter’s home. he’s exhausted and upset, having endured mobs, infuriated by the burke and hare case, shouting at and even attacking the anatomists. 

1830.  month unknown: lewis ‘proposes’ to peter. although they can’t marry officially and can’t wear rings when someone could see them, they agree to consider each other husbands. 

1832.  august: the anatomy act finally passes. 

#( * reference. ) #obviously he's more than open to plotting after 1832 #he's just kinda vibing after that #at some point in the 1840s he does leave london to live with peter more permanently in the country because the separation is too much

[lonelyhearteds-a]

hi . 

okay , ive literally been sitting on this for actual months now because i realize there are more important things going on in the world right now , but im at my own personal breaking point and i’ve realized that i need a space to get everything off my chest and this is as good as it gets since i can’t afford therapy so ,, here goes nothing . 

tl;dr.  tw : drugs , mentions of suicide , overall negativity

so , we’re gonna ignore january and february issues because honestly .... i don’t recognize those months as canon . anyways , i’ve been off of tumblr since the pandemic started in america in march . i lost my job , and i’ve had to use my personal time in order to keep getting something in my bank account , but i was making that + unemployment for a few weeks . everything was fine , truthfully and utterly i was making enough just off of unemployment despite the fact it took 3 weeks to even be processed . then everything hit the fan and it flew everywhere . my mom relapsed in mid-april and she relapsed hard , but me pretending it’s just her illnesses went about my business and decided to ignore it until it exploded in my face . i’m not going into too much detail about it , but with everything she’s done since april we’ve now got a really broken and fractured relationship . it’s taken me nearly fourteen years to realize the amount of sheer trauma she’s put me through ; mentally , physically and emotionally . then , we were almost evicted because she didn’t pay rent for two months - so i had to use my entire stimulus check just to catch up on rent and the mortgage payments . then , i went back to work in may just to process shipping orders . again , was fine for the most part , however i wasn’t making as much and what i had saved my mom found a way to guilt me to spend it . this went on all of may , living paycheck to paycheck . june week one came along and my mom overdosed . this was one of the worst experiences of my life ; it was re-opening week ( apparently clothing is essential during a pandemic )  , my mom was acting like she had no common sense ( destroying the house , not feeing the animals , not taking care of herself , LOSING MY CAT , locking the dogs in the car in 100 degree heat , calling me names i dont even want to repeat .. amongst other situations ), and i didn’t eat . for a week . i was sick to my stomach with stress and exhaustion , living off of literally 5 hours of sleep between friday and thursday when i finally got help from my family after begging them to help me send her to a psych ward for two weeks . she called me every single day and we’d argue every single day . when she was released , it was as if nothing’s changed . she said she was gonna change , but she hasn’t . she walks around with a rain cloud above her head and if i don’t give her money , she guilts me into doing it . so on so fourth . we argue almost everyday about something , whether it’s money or my attitude somehow making her life worse . i asked her one day if she’s ever going to be happy and she flat out told me no . there’s so much more going on with her but if i posted it all i might as well write a book . i’ve never wanted to kill myself more than i do everyday so far this month .

now , july , i’ve recognized i can’t keep living like this . my company has filed for bankruptcy and is closing more than 1200 stores and we don’t know which ones are closing and which ones are remaining opened yet , but if my store closes i have no money to fall back on until i find a new job . i have no money for groceries or pet food , and i don’t have enough to pay all of the bills . my mom over drafted one of my accounts and now i have to pay that back with my next paycheck which means i’m losing $110 automatically when i get paid next .

i’m honestly just exhausted ? like . i’m twenty-three years old and i literally have no will to live because of this woman and the shit she’s put me through . i was not planning on making it to my birthday this year and i was definitely not planning on making it to august . i don’t know . to be frank , i don’t have the energy to care about anything anymore and my anxiety keeps telling my some of my closest friends are over me when there’s no reason for me to even believe that . i’m seeing them all next year at different times and i know they’re excited to see me but i sat here the other day just questioning if that’s even real . i don’t have any friends in the town i live in ; i don’t go out and do things because of corona and if i do , my mom forces herself along . if i buy myself something i have to buy her something or it turns into an argument and an all around guilt trip . 

i’m trying so hard to save enough so i can move out , but .. it’s almost impossible at this point . and i don’t know what to do . i work full time ; there is no reason i should have to consider getting another part time job just to survive . i shouldn’t have had to to parent my parent and sacrifice so much of my life . i shouldn’t be this mentally fucked up , but here i am , once again , crying over spilled tea .

anyways , if you read all the way through , i don’t know when i’m returning to tumblr , but when i do i am still going to be moving blogs . nonetheless , i’m on d*scord ( ♡ kezrah fan club president ♡#9812 ) and i’ve been doing more rp things on there if anyone wants to talk or do things again ( im always game for a welcomed distraction , even if it takes me a minute to reply ) ; i still , for the most part , have the same muses that are listed on my page . love u all loads nd loads .

#tldr #long post tw #overall negativity tw #idk what else to tag

[longitud-de-onda]

{un veneno} january: captivate

pairing; javier peña x female reader summary; the year is 1980. javier peña has been at the embassy in bogotá for a year when he meets you, fresh out of college and brand new to the country. rating; nc-17 warnings; smoking, masturbation word count; 2.4k a/n; so this is a passion project of mine, it will be 12 chapters, full of fluff, smut, warm tropical nights, and later on, a lot of angst. bonus; there’s a playlist for the series! check it out here on spotify or message me for apple music

un veneno masterlist

“Quero um–no, fuck–un paquete de cigarros?” you said to the shop attendant. Spanish was no easy task. It was a dumb decision to come here without any knowledge of the language, but you had assumed some university-level Portuguese would help. Apparently not, because the man behind the counter shot you a confused look as he pulled a pack from the shelves behind them. He understood, that was clear, but you didn’t know the words.

“Ella quiere unas Pielrojas porfa, con filtro,” said a voice behind you, “No esos malditos y caros Marlboros. Bueno, que sean dos y yo pago.”

“Señor Peña, ¿cómo vas?” the shopkeeper said, and you turned to look at this ‘Señor Peña.’

He was a bit taller than you, and more than a bit older. Tanned skin, tight pants, a pink shirt. A large pair of orange-tinted sunglasses masked his eyes.

“Muy bién, Roberto, ¿y cómo va tu esposa?” He said, and the shopkeeper laughed. You only caught a few words of the exchange and were unsure if you were getting your cigarettes.

You flew into Bogotá the day before and had just gotten settled at the hostel you’d be staying in for the next couple of weeks. It had been a solid three days since you’d had a smoke and you wanted to go to the park nearby and relax.

The man turned to you and began to speak with a rough but refreshingly familiar American accent, tinged with the light musicality of the Southern states, “I’m sorry ma’am for the interruption, but Roberto here was going to try to sell you the Marlboros, which are much to overpriced, and I couldn’t let a pretty little thing like you get ripped off like that.”

“Thank you? But I can handle myself,” you said.

“Obviously not, you sound like you’re confusing Portuguese for Spanish, which just won’t cut it here,” he said, turning to pay for the two boxes that Roberto placed on the counter.

He tossed you one pack, which you fumbled with, clutching it against your stomach to ensure it didn’t fall. He laughed.

“That right there’s a pack of Pielroja, it’s loosely packed, so I hope you don’t mind, but it’s cheaper, local, and ten times better,” he said.

“Thanks,” you said. As interesting as the guy was, you really wanted to leave for the park. Colombia wasn’t your first rodeo, but somehow every new country was exhausting between the 24th and 32nd hour marks.

“You’re welcome,” he said as you brushed by him and walked out the door.

Outside the shop, you paused to fish your lighter out of your bag.

“So what’s an American girl doing in Bogotá all alone?” The man was back, standing in front of you.

“You just don’t stop, do you?”

“Not really, no,” he grinned, leaning back against the building.

You opened the pack of cigarettes he bought you, lit one, and drew it to your lips.

“So, do you like it?” he was messing around with his own box and pulled out one. He held it out to you, silently asking for you to light it. You complied.

You weren’t sure if he was talking about cigarettes or Bogotá. “It’s nice. So far,” you said, exhaling smoke.

He laughed again, this time bringing a smile to your face. He had a nice laugh.

“You never answered me, what are you doing here?”

“Teaching English at an elementary school nearby, I start next week,” you said.

His eyebrows shot up, “How old are you? 20?”

“22.”

“What kind of 22-year-old wants to be a schoolteacher?” he said.

“Me, apparently,” you said, “But it’s not my career or anything. Graduated last May, I’ve been traveling and teaching English, got a gig here, whole school year, pays pretty well, I’m excited.”

“You’re crazy,” he said, “22, fresh out of college, your only experience out of the states was probably in Europe, and you’re gonna teach kids? In Colombia?”

“What’s wrong with a bit of crazy?” you said.

“What’s your name?” he asked, ignoring your question.

“Y/N.”

“Y/N,” he said. You liked how he said your name. “I’m Javier.”

“Nice to meet you,” you said, staring at him propped up against the building.

The top two buttons of his shirt were open, and a thin sheen of sweat lay over his chest and face. Something about the look with the broad mustache made him appear like he was stuck in ‘73. His smile was one of those that reached the eyes and spilled into those around him.

You exhaled carefully.

“So, what are you doing in Colombia?” you asked.

“I work for the American embassy,” he said. There was a pause as he waited for the impressed look on your face that never came.

“What is this then, a welcome package?” you asked, chuckling to yourself.

“It could be,” he pushed himself off the wall and took another drag, “But then again, you’re only 22.”

“What does that have to—oh.” You found yourself laughing again. Javier was the sort of guy that you’d probably slap in the face back in the USA. But here, with the cloud cover doing nothing to mask the heat and humidity, the smell of papaya and passion fruit wafting through the air, you were only amused.

“See you around, Y/N,” Javier said, and he walked down the sidewalk before turning a corner and disappearing.

Five days of getting to know hundreds of students in different classes during the first week of school, all while trying to develop lesson plans, left you lying in your hostel bed on a Friday night. You were alone in the room, the rest of the residents out partying, as per usual for a hostel in the middle of a city.

You would have loved to be out too, Colombian Rock and rum thrumming through your body, dancing with someone, going home with someone.

But you had spent too much energy this week and partying would have to wait. You had a year left in Bogotá, at least another 50 Friday nights. Lesson planning would let up once you got into a rhythm. And figured out a living situation.

One of the other teachers had offered her spare bedroom during February and a bit of March, but her daughter would be back in town after that, and you’d lose the space. The wait until you got your own space in February felt far away. March even further. But planning for that needed to happen sooner rather than later. The hostel bed was killing you, and you hated the drunk guys coming and going.

At least you knew you’d be alone for another hour. No one dared come back before midnight; if you were caught calling it an early night it was certain fodder for shame the next morning. At least, that was the way your roommates worked.

Still, to be safe, you closed the curtain, encapsulating yourself on your bed in the darkness. You closed your eyes and slipped one hand down your stomach, dipping under the waistband of your pants and into your underwear.

As your fingers brushed over your clit, you let out a small gasp, your free hand fisting into the sheets. The last time you had been touched was over a month ago, back during the cold December winter weather in Brussels. You worked your hand across your slit, telling yourself this had to be a one-time thing. You would go out, find a good hookup this week.

Your brain was overworking, shuddering in pleasure, and the man from last week flickered across your vision: Javier.

You imagined his chest, the open shirt leaving a trail right down his chest, glowing in the sun. You slipped a finger inside, gasping at the sensation.

He would probably take you to bed if you played your cards right. If you found him again. He seemed to have that kind of character. You remembered his last words to you, suggestive and sensual.

He was older, probably by a lot. You shouldn’t be thinking about him, but you wanted him to hold you in his arms, kiss your neck. You imagined how he’d taste, probably like cigarettes and whiskey.

The thought of his hands snaking down your waist, pulling you closer almost sent you over and you moved your fingers faster. His smile, snarky and self-obsessed as it was, had worked its way into your brain, and you wondered where he was now.

Did he remember you? Had he laid in bed like you were now, getting himself off to your name? And that image, flooding into your brain, as unrealistic as it was, caused you to almost scream out loud, your whole body spasming.

Finally relaxed, your body almost limp on the bed, you became aware of the layer of sweat that now covered your body, and made up your mind to take a shower. As soon as you recover. That was the best orgasm you had had in months. But where had those thoughts come from?

You had only seen Javier that one time, right outside the corner store, then tried and failed to shove him out of your mind. In the few minutes you had known him, you had decided he was an asshole who didn’t deserve your time, but the sort of asshole you could see yourself becoming good friends with.

If he was years younger, you could have imagined traveling with him, continuing your round-the-world travels with Javier would have been amazing. You had seen so many things during your six months in Europe and met so many people. Many of the backpackers at the youth hostels you stayed at traveled with others. Mostly, they were single, their companions just good fun and friendship for the journey.

You had long since imagined meeting someone on the road like they did, someone that would sweep you off your feet and set aside a year of their life to spend with you, hopping from country to country, odd job to odd job.

Javier’s shit-eating grin and verbal wit would stick in your mind long after you left Colombia. And here you were, getting off to him.

If he lived in Bogotá? Worked at the embassy, probably lived nearby? You’d probably see him again. And you’d have to look at him in the eye, the only thing running through your mind the memory of tonight.

You wanted to see him again. Wanted to have lunch and smoke with him. Wanted him to show you around. But after what you just did, you didn’t know if that was possible.

Sex was no stranger to you, the one night stands being a common figure in your life throughout college, but even you wouldn’t go for someone as old as him. You had standards. A guy his age was reserved for friendship. At least, that’s what you told yourself. Until now.

“God, I’m fucked,” you breathed out, sitting up and gathering your shower stuff before heading to the bathroom.

Javier had returned to the corner store every day for the past two weeks, hoping to catch a glimpse of you again. He was back today, 15:30, hopefully after school got out, he imagined, eyes scanning the store as he lingered by the refrigerators full of six-packs.

The bell rang as someone walked in and he looked up. You stood there, exhausted from a day of child-wrangling and his eyes lit up.

All you wanted was a bottle of something and a shitty candy bar. You were roaming the aisles, trying to settle between the foreign brands of chocolate when Javier approached.

“Y/N,” he said, causing you to startle as you looked up. A deep red blush began to blossom across your cheeks as you took him in. He was even better in person.

“Javier, what a coincidence, running into you here again,” that was a lie. You walked past four other stores just to come here, hoping he would be nearby.

“Yeah... a coincidence,” he said, reaching down to grab a candy bar. “This one’s the best, that is, if you like milk chocolate.”

“So two weeks later and all you’re still giving me local product recommendations? You should write for the newspaper,” you laughed, signaling you didn’t want the chocolate when he tried to hand it to you, “But you’d be wrong, because the only good chocolate is dark chocolate.”

“You like that bitter shit?” he said, still holding the bar in his hands.

You reached down for something that said 85% and figured that would be dark enough for you.

“Gross,” he said.

“You can leave,” you said.

You didn’t want him to leave.

“Do you want to go for a coffee?” he said. “You look exhausted.”

“Real good way to charm a woman,” it should have stung, but when Javier said it, you smiled.

“That, um, sounded bad, didn’t it?” his brow was furrowed and his smile was gone.

“Yeah, it did,” you kept smiling, hoping he would light up again. You wanted his excited face burnt into your memory. “So, what’s the best café around here?”

“Are you some kind of heathen who takes their coffee with no sugar or milk to go with your raw chocolate beans? If so, I have no suggestions because that’s disgusting.”

You laughed, loudly, with your whole body, “Unfortunately for you, I do. But if you give me a good café con leche I’ll drink it.”

“Good, because you’re not going to get away with that bar of chocolate and coffee with no add-ins.”

“I worry you have a sweet tooth and can’t appreciate good flavors,” you said. It was so easy to talk with him. He knew exactly what to say to keep you smiling as he leaned against the display like he owned the place.

“I don’t have a sweet tooth, you just like your food to hurt you,” he said, “Let’s go, there’s a good café down the block.”

He reached out to grab your hand and you almost lost it. His palm was soft and his grip firm.

Javier led you to the register where he flung his arm around your shoulders, “Roberto, te acuerdas de Y/N, ¿verdad?”

Roberto chuckled, ringing up your two chocolate bars, “Por supuesto.”

He leaned towards you and said, in broken English, “Careful. Señor Peña is crazy man, yes? He is flirt but he doesn’t mean it.”

Javier laughed, “No somos una pareja, Roberto, somos amigos. Solo amigos.”

You understood that part. You were friends. You grinned. After just ten minutes of talking over two weeks, Javier thought of you as a friend.

next: february: blossom

taglist; @pascalisthepunkest​ @turquiosenights (tumblr isn’t letting me tag so idk if these show up in your notifs)

#javier peña #javier pena #javier peña x reader #javier pena x reader #un veneno fic #camila writes #rated e #under 5 #reader #fluff #pedro fics #narcos fics #javi x reader