#and it's like???????? we're in the middle of a fucking pandemic and i was out of work fir mist of it. i c a n t do anything.

[n7punk]

i know i've kind of talked around this stuff for... fuck, three years now? but idk, now it's getting closer to "resolving," i kind of want to talk about it. journal, get it off my chest, idk

i haven't really been specific about my health issues much because 1) privacy and 2) very complicated feelings on it, but feelings are becoming less complicated, so... yeah. privacy is still really important to me, but i have too many feelings about this to keep feeling like i'm silencing myself for some hypothetical... i dont even know what

tbf, if it had turned out to be anything else, i probably wouldn't be comfortable even making a vent post about it now. but it turned out to be. annoyingly simple. i've also got other stuff, physical disabilities and such i've been more candid about but still want to keep the specifics of private, but this is... very different.

long story short, during the pandemic i started experiencing Symptoms. i'm honestly not sure if/how much i have talked about what was wrong with me, because i don't remember... entire years, much at all. i know ive described it as my brain being on fire, but it's more like it instantly melted down and i was left with the aftermath for hours/days/weeks at a time. it really fucked with me emotionally to be fighting through that on top of the direct effects of the Symptoms. and, well, the problem was my brain (probably) so that tracks.

it turns out it was migraines. migraines that shared many symptoms with seizures, brain tumors, or pressure on the brain stem, but yeah. "just" "migraines." and, actually, we don't know that! but migraine medication is helping, so it's probably that and this is where i am, finally waking up these last few months (this summer of updates could Not have happened if it weren't for my new medication) and feeling both very frustrated with what i lost and relieved to not always have to deal with suddenly being unable to understand a sentence anymore.

it's not like. fixed. my brain is still going to burn sometimes. It seems to come in waves, like two bad weeks and then two good ones. we're not done trying to treat it now we know some stuff it's responsive to, but its not like it used to be, wildfires raging all day and my head wavering on my shoulders as i struggled just to read messages from my friends. i literally had an emote i would use to communicate when i couldn't communicate that everybody who knows me understands. i haven't even twitched since starting my new meds! well, like, uncontrollably. trust me, that's progress. i literally had to get a bigger bed so i could be safe in the middle of it when the fits were especially bad and i got twitchy.

uh so that was more story than i planned. really i just wanted to finally talk about what i've been experiencing (at least for the first time that i remember). honestly writing was the only thing that kept me sane while i was trapped inside my own malfunctioning brain. i don't know why it was one of the easiest things for me, when i couldn't even understand a full two sentences being said to me i could still - usually - write (again: i literally couldn't talk for like three of the days when i was writing and updating catcher daily), but i'm so grateful for it. and everybody who told me my stories helped you, or that you looked forward to them, or even just that you enjoyed them: you helped me right back, because you told me there was one thing i could still do, from a capability standpoint to having the ability to make any impact on the world when i was trapped at home. so thank you.

okay i'm done now. just. had to get that out

#i dont like being negative and im very much one of those bare your own shit people because i dont want to bother anyone #and have been living on a razor edge where i certainly couldnt help anyone else with their weight #but like. we're getting towards the victory stage (as close to one as these kinds of things have) so im ready to finally say how bad it was #ive wanted to talk about it a lot but something was always stopping me #(partly some vague but panicked ''what if'' related to sharing too much) #im tired of being held back and choosing to hold back. i want to move on. as much as my body will let me #mylife

[kimberlyannharts]

So I may have been slightly hyped for this book the past few months

For the three of you who haven't heard about this, MMPR: The Return is a story set in the future of an alternate universe of the MMPRs; one where Jason, Zack, and Trini didn't give up their powers upon the eve of the Peace Conference, and thus the team stayed together even after high school. But fast forward twenty-two years later, and the team has broken up due to some sort of tragedy - we know from the Re-Imagine prologue in the 30 Year Anniversary book, Zordon and Alpha were destroyed by Zedd and Rita. But other stuff seems to have happened too. What is that stuff? I guess we're about to find out!

Oh, and I should mention this was written by the original Pink Ranger herself, Amy Jo Johnson. (and her partner, Matt Hotson.) That might be important to know.

It's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Return #1!

= Three pages in and Jason's already getting his ass kicked. You're forty-five years old, man, you should be at the club

= I know this was debated a bit when the book was announced - how it would line up with Thuy and JDF's passings, especially after coming off the heels of Once and Always, where the focal point was Trini's daughter taking up her powers after Trini's death. (For what it's worth, this book was first conceived pre-pandemic, long before OaA. Making comics takes a long time.) And while Tommy is still a bit up in the air (despite what we'll see in a few pages) Trini does seem to have definitively passed due to illness.

While I definitely get the frustration of Thuy's passing essentially sealing Trini's fate - especially in a comic book, where you don't have to worry about actor restrictions - I'm a little more generous towards it here because Amy and Thuy were close friends and she actually dealt with her death personally compared to how the OaA writers, well......didn't. And this issue is clearly paralleling Kimberly's motivations and feelings to Amy's real-life ones, so this just feels like another part of that.

(Also to contrast OaA's handling of Trini - a) her passing here isn't caused by a graphic onscreen explosion, proving the whole "well they HAD to show it onscreen for more impact!!!" was bullshit b) her friends AND THE WIDER COMMUNITY are actually grieving and talking about her impact on everyone as well as using the non-actor-restriction to SHOW it and c) The book actually gives her a JOB. TWO jobs!!!!!!! Yeah OaA why the fuck did you send ZACK to Congress WHEN IT CLEARLY SHOULD HAVE BEEN TRINI

also I like her middle-aged design. prettyyyyyy)

= onto lighter topics HEYYYY IT'S THESE GUYS!! Bulk and Skull are married and you just can't see the ring through Bulk's gloves, it's real and true

= speaking of which this whole flashback is adorable and nostalgic but I want to point out some background details

= Ernie is just trying to run a fucking business here

= go white boy go

= ZACK/KIM HAS FINALLY COME BACK TO ME MY FUCKING BELOVEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God, when WAS the last time they actually talked one-on-one in the main series

= FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

= so along with some other stuff I'm definitely taking this as foreshadowing that Trini wasn't cut off from Kim like the boys were. That's the power of WOMEN (and also if we get Aunt Trini flashbacks with Olivia I'll fucking CRYYYYYY)

= Absolutely obsessed with Billy's face here

= D:

= So besides the Trini stuff I want to the keep the Once and Always comparisons to a minimum but it's very funny how both storylines involve Billy using a company as a front for his embezzlement schemes. At least his telecom company PROBABLY isn't war profiteering

= also Alpha's rose <3

= so anyway Jason's gone rogue and was pretending he's the main character until he suddenly went missing, as shown in the first few pages. And Billy and Zack want to become Rangers again to try and find him.

= but the thing is guys, Kim has won the idgaf war. She's depressed, she's traumatized, she spent twenty-two years raising a child with Tommy's genes all by herself, she's tired. She does NOT want to be wrapped up in Jason's midlife crisis drama

= Zack getting so mad and wanting to risk it all for Jason hell yeah those are my Jason/Zack crumbs

= Mysterious shadowy figure watching the old people drama from a distance, you are just like me fr

= OLIVIA THAT'S FUCKING OLIVIAAAAAAAAAAAA and she already sounds so CUTE. If you go back to the diner scene you can see the phone constantly buzzing until Kim finally puts it away. She's like mom. mom. mom. MOM

= also just because the tragic Tomberly family storyline already makes me want to kms do you think that ring is kind of small and plain because Tommy and Kim were so young when they got married and it's all Tommy could afford. And Kim still wears it to this day. I want to die

= It's already been confirmed that Selena is indeed referring to Sylvia here, so I won't talk about that. What I DO want to talk about is Kim's casual momwear. Those sweatpants!!!!!!!!!!

= It would be really funny if Kim just. immediately slammed the door shut

#text #mmpr #mmpr comic #comic recap #TR 01

[joepringle]

Ever since Dad turned 40, he rarely spends time with his family. Mam blames herself for his dramatic change of lifestyle. Getting a gym membership from her as a present for his 40th birthday, along with her blatant, drunken remark at his birthday party, about the middle-aged paunch he was developing, really sent him over the edge. Since when, he rarely comes out of that gym he built in the garage during the pandemic.

He missed my high-school graduation; he said he had to lift heavy, that day, and that he'd make it up to me. Yeah, like half a morning out fishing on the lake was gonna fix that one. Why not the whole day to rekindle that bond we used to have? Oh yeah, he had to get home to lift.

He preferred to workout alone, by himself, in his personal space. The gyms re-opened after the pandemic subsided, but by this time Dad was absolutely huge, and he couldn't bare to interact with anyone at the gym. He started wearing shirts with captions on them such as: "I'm Not Here To Talk", and "Don't Ask Me For a Spot". Eventually it was the one with the to-the-point slogan: "FUCK OFF!" that had his membership terminated. He'd developed a bad attitude at this point, so he was no longer welcome at the gym.

I asked him, once, if he was using steroids, and he told me to shut up and mind my own business. The mood swings were the last straw for my Mam, and she left with my kid sister to stay at my gran's. Dad didn't object; they hadn't been sleeping in the same room in months. Dad actually set up a cot in the garage, so as to waste as little time as possible getting back to the weights. His job had been dissolved during the pandemic, and the government payments only stretched so far. Dad was dipping into life savings at this point.

Mam kept hassling me to move in with them at gran's. Dad just didn't seem to care at this point. He had become the biggest, most muscular man I'd ever seen. But he didn't seem to notice. I googled a term called "bigorexia", and I didn't like what I discovered.

I'm putting off college for a year or so. I just got a job at the local supermarket, to help with the bills. The phone got cut off last week. Dad didn't seem to notice, or care. I love my Dad. This is madness, what we've become. We're not a family any more. It's not like it used to be.

But I have to keep an eye on him.

#ai muscle #muscular man #muscle man #muscular men #extremely muscled men #ai hunk #ai hunks #ai digital art #ai generated #bodybuilder #bodybuilders #bodybuilding #clothed bodybuilder

[reimeichan]

How did you all figure out you were a system? -🪭

It depends on who you're asking.

For Purple, she was always open to the idea that the world had a lot of unexplainable phenomena that our current knowledge of science and stuff may not be able to address. When we were 12, she was looking online for ways to flesh out OCs, and one of the suggestions was to talk to said OC as if you were giving them an interview. So she asked said "OC" some questions and had him answer them. "What's your favorite color?" she asked. "Gray," I said. "No, that's wrong! I made you, I know your favorite color is green! I put it down on your character sheet!" she said back. I shrugged, and, confused, replied back, "It's definitely gray, I don't know what to tell you." And in that moment she knew she shared a brain with another entity, though she dared not label her experiences as DID at the time.

For Green, in high school he had joined a new online community who noted how his personality would occasionally just *drastically* shift. This personality shift was due to him and Purple switching at the time, and Purple, already in the know, would end up telling this new community how they likely had some sort of "multiple personality" thing going on but would never presume for it to be DID without a proper diagnosis. Those words alone were enough for Green to realize that Purple truly was a separate identity from him, and though he was shocked at first, he and Purple really leaned into the "multiple personalities", even giving themselves different halves of our online username at the time.

For me... well, I'm a fusion of a few parts. One part of me, the Gray that Purple met and mistook for an OC, knew around the same time as her. I was in denial for much longer, but constant pestering from her made me finally accept that she and I were at least separate consciousnesses within the same brain.

Another part of me was blissfully unaware until we nearly died in 2020. I won't go into detail how it happened, but it was sudden and out of nowhere, and though nobody was too greatly injured, the shock was enough for me to fully dissociate away from the situation. However, we still needed someone to actually be in the body and move it around, so out of desperation our gatekeeper (the "mistaken for OC Gray") pushed out the first alter he could find... and that happened to be Rouge, our sexual alter. Let me just paint the picture here real quick: I've told everyone around me that I'm asexual, somewhat sex-repulsed, and had no plans to ever be sexual with anyone. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I'm on Tinder witht the sluttiest profile I can muster up, swiping right on anyone and everyone who I even remotely may be interested in a one-night hookup. All because I nearly died. I woke up in the morning to hundreds of matches and even a planned fuckdate. All of this, might I remind you all of the timing, in the middle of a pandemic that we at the time did not have a vaccine for yet. Horrified by what I found in the morning, I canceled the fuckdate, deleted my account, and uninstalled the app.

And though that was still not enough for me to accept I have DID, that sure did open some doors.

Then, in 2022, my then-partner and I had a long talk. They were getting tired of my memory issues and no amount of writing things down seemed to be enough for them. I seemed to have incredibly inconsistent and even contradictory boundaries that they couldn't keep track of. I blamed everything on my ADHD, of course. I didn't have amnesia, other than what I assumed were short term memory issues to the point I may have missed something they said 5 minutes ago. "Oh, sorry, I was spacing out," I would say. Eventually she got so fed up that she said, "you never space out when we're having fun conversations! it's only when you're stressed out because I'm pointing out things you've done badly that you tend to space out!"

And I went. Oh. Fuck.

That's not spacing out.

Slapped in the face with the reality that I wasn't simply "spacing out" from ADHD unfocus but due to some kind of dissociation, and given the ultimatum that if I didn't change then they would break up with me, I was forced to sit on those feelings and really dig into why I was so dissociative, so forgetful, and so inconsistent. And I knew the reason, I did, but I couldn't get myself to admit to it. God, it couldn't be me. I tried so hard to convince myself that the disorder I had on-and-off considered my entire life didn't apply to me, that maybe I was misunderstanding the diagnostic criteria, or I was misinterpreting my symptoms, or that I somehow had convinced myself I had these symptoms because I wanted them to feel... special? Validated? I don't know.

I found myself a therapist who had a long history of working with dissociative and trauma clients. She helped me unravel a lot of those feelings of shame and denial. She used a few different tools to eventually diagnose me with DID. She validated my experiences, and helped me through so much initial stabilization that I'm so very grateful for her help those first 10 months.

So, yeah. That's how we found out we have DID.

#did #dissociative identity disorder #actually did #actuallydid #did osdd #osddid #cdd #personal #by gray #about green #about purple #we've been meaning to write this for a long time #so thank you for the ask #the-bumblebee-system #the bumblebee system

[meerawrites]

why do you like the vampire chronicles?

- a fellow fan

Ooh boy, this will probably be an essay blog post at some point, but, I shall endeavour to give the TLDR version to the best of my present ability. None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are and memory is a monster.

Do not ask me to recall my age, I am 20 now, though I often feel like Louis and Lestat, inhuman and haven't been human for 200 years. Plus the pandemic destroyed my sense of time.

Before the pandemic, a dear friend of mine introduced me to gothic literary vampires, I had just read Shelley's Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray of my own accord, and he cast me as Mina Murray-Harker in his production of Dracula (1897) opposite one of my best friends as Lucy Westenra himself as Jonathan and one of our aspiring villain actors as Count Dracula himself. I then got hooked on Dracula (the 1897 novel) and following that I wanted more vampires. We watched the 1994 IWTV Neil Jordan film together and I immediately took Lestat as my pathetic bi meow meow. I read the 1976 novel not that far after and started role-playing and cosplaying Lestat as soon as I understood him enough to make him my bi pathetic meow meow. I wouldn't pick up the chronicles again until catholic school and the move to Canada.

When I was in middle school I was a constant victim of bullying, mostly by the white rich kids for being brown, and vaguely gothic in inclinations and "witchy" and "other." My dad was also emotionally overbearing and expected a lot at an early age from me. He has since gotten better and I'm no longer anyone's victim, but, it's worthwhile to note I was victimized (past tense) for a long time. I've also had my fair share of misogyny + anti brown racism flung at me, and I am bi and genderqueer. For the record I forgive my middle school bullies, we were simply kids who didn't know better. Now, do better. I've also been the victim of emotional abuse and gaslighting, while it never escalated to physical that sort of violence even if emotional violence sticks with you. But as mentioned, victimized, in past tense.

I moved to Canada and suffered the indignity of the Catholic school system. I quit after a year and after their queerphobia made international news. But not before a brief run as a spiteful bi as fuck atheist and picking up The Vampire Lestat, finally.

Before the pandemic, I felt like Louis de Pointe du Lac and Mona Mayfair, during the pandemic and in catholic school I felt like Nicolas de Lenfent, following the pandemic and up til the present I aspire to be something of a Lestat de Lioncourt and Rowan Mayfair meaning less cynical, unlearning my shame, confident, clever at least intellectually but foolishly in love with the beauty of humanity. Now, we're here.

IWTV 1994 lost in adaptation

Vampire Reviews: IWTV 1994 ft @elisaintime

What Constitutes Evil?

Vampire Reviews: The Vampire Chronicles ft @elisaintime

Vampire Reviews: The Vampire Lestat ft @elisaintime

Late Interview with the Vampire author Anne Rice remembered by trans woman she helped come out.

Tagging: @covenofthearticulate, @monstersinthecosmos, @elisaintime & @the-brat-prince-1760, @dontbesylly & @i-want-my-iwtv (no pressure to reply, I just thought y'all would appreciate this story).

#anonynous #meera answers #answered #anne rice #vampire chronicles #the vampire lestat #bisexual #queer #lgbtq+ #dracula 1897 #dracula daily #re: dracula #dracula (novel) #dracula (1897) #vampires #lestat de lioncourt #nicolas de lenfent #rowan mayfair #mona mayfair #louis de pointe du lac #vc books #monstrous other #iwtv 1994 #queue are more than what people see #abuse mention cw #gaslighting cw #religion cw #long post tw #overbearing parents #long post

[inzaghisgirlfriend]

Rewatch!

Step into a time machine with me, if you will, and let it whisk us back to March of 2021.

Simpler times, then, n'est ce pas? We're but a year into a global pandemic, and I am clinging by a thread to my sanity and, without knowing it, mere weeks away from my first covid vaccine and the freedom and return to normalcy it will immediately and entirely provide* (spoiler, this did not pan out 100%).

I have joined twitter, as one does, out of desperation, because tumblr is a dumpster fire everyone is fleeing from for a site that isn't being ruined by a poorly-effectuated rebranding, unchecked hate, weird algorithm issues, and corporate nickel and diming. Funny how those things come full circles sometimes...

There, as here, I am following a lovely person who makes exceptional gifsets and has extraordinary taste in television (ifykyk). Her timeline has begun to fill with odd gifs of besuited and beautiful Korean people and otherwise context-free shouts into the void like "sexy lawyers" and "murder hornets!!"

Understand that, while it seems insane now that I've watched roughly 40 and would have to physically restrain myself from doing something embarrassing should I meet the man, there was once a time in my life when I had never watched a Korean drama nor even heard of Song Joong Ki.

As time goes by, though, my terror and confusion on twitter give way instead to a persistent feeling of intrigue and envy.

Because I realize there is a lot of shouting. And amongst other people with exceptional taste. I have been trapped in my house with the same people and walls and 8 meals and 23 minute walk around the block I'd seen and done and lived for the last year. So the appeal of disappearing through the tv to a place with hot people dressed up nice in a place I'd never thought much about before grew and grew. Even if there's trained murder hornets there.

So I open a shady-ass site with a seriously committed ad server Netflix on my phone and curl up and watch, stunned, the absolute best fucking 20 minutes of any TV intro I've ever fucking seen.

We're now nearly 3 years beyond that point, and I've met exceptionally interesting and funny and brilliant people and seen the most gorgeous gifsets and fanart you can imagine and read a ridiculous amount of fanfic (and written perhaps a little here and there, give or take 750,000 words) and headcanoned every possible scenario you can imagine and even flew to the other side of the world and stood in the middle of Seoul, not only amidst the pigeons of 'Geumga Plaza', but also between the parted legs of a building-high cutout of Song Joong Ki.

But I've never, ever rewatched the show in its entirety from start to finish.

So, with that in mind, away we go. A second time.

#vincenzo #vincenzo rewatch

[winglesshopeful]

Not to diminish anyone's actual 9/11 related trauma, but the way this fucking hell country treats this event compared to other, comparitively more deadly and ongoing crises really really pisses me the fuck off.

Every news outlet and wannabe fasc- i mean, patriot bleats out the "never forget" line, but like, people are still actively dying from COVID and its related complications, but when it comes to that little chesnut, everyone wants to pretend the pandemic is over.

I was like, freshly five years old and more concerned with a video game crocodile at the time of 9/11, but here we are in the middle of a pandemic that's still killing people, still making more variants, and yet me and my partner often feel like the only ones in this entire fucking world still concerned about it sometimes. We wade through crowds of unmasked mouth-breathers, flinching at every cough or sneeze, get verbally abused or condescended to about wearing masks as the entire world attempts to gaslight us about the nature of COVID and try to convince us that WE'RE the crazy ones.

Though i guess it's a bit more difficult to cultivate an us-vs-them fascist/imperial/nationalist ideology by caring about your fellow man, vaccinating, masking and avoiding crowds than it is by shoving an attack by foreign (read: brown) extremists down the throats of a populace increasingly too young to even remember it lol

#september 11 #wish we could have this energy abt the jan 6th insurrection attempt as well but that was white nationalists so that's forgettable apparently #not to mention there's been a good few 9/11s worth of covid casualties by now but people are all too eager to cultivate new strains #like the Plague Rats they are because 'muh freedoms' #9/11 #covid 19 #covid

[justmybeautifulthings]

as requested, a list of highly very oddly specific AOTV predictions that wont happen:

hes trying to install LED lights on an object people really wouldnt

"Im in Payno" joke when hes feeling sad

welcome to my crib tour of his stash of random mancave expenses stored in a hoarderly fashion (think life sized superheroes, the forrest gump braces, tiny toy cars, unopened 3d printer, designer chair shaped like a dog, some very shiny unidentifiable object too large to fit anywhere in the middle of the room on the floor)

he pets a horse

he has friendly chitchat with the delivery person bc they know him bc he orders his coffee (bonus: throwing a fit bc his starbucks is taking too long just before)

hes recording a song but hasnt written the lyrics yet and hes singing "ya no wha a mean" as a placeholder

cinematographic subtle shade (like paralleling some [within fandom] iconic footage but no words used or context given and it actually is on purpose but well never know that for sure)

he's got a strand of niall's blonde hair framed

wears yellow and says "I look like a banana"

for whatever reason hes trying to glue something together and it doesnt work as hes not using the right glue and nobodys telling him

hes claiming he does know how to cut a tomato by now but then doesnt show any proof

shoutout lighthouses

an ad for barneys beanery in the middle

he makes an analogy that one direction is like a burger and then goes on a long ramble that hes the bun oh no wait hes the burger harry is the lettuce oh no wait harry is the bun niall is the tomatoes liam is the gerkin zayn is the sauce no wait harry is the sauce no wait he is the sauce no wait-

footage of him making a business call of placing an order for a ridiculous amount of black pants

A look into his closet and there will be some comment you can take as having a double meaning and it will make me feel bad for responding the way i will (bonus shows off the grease jacket he still has)

a total of 28 subtle dick jokes can you spot them all?

recorded zoom meetings during the pandemic with cliff barking in the background with dramatic music when hes like i need to take 5 guys this pandemic is getting to me

he reveals the weird hobbies he got into during the pandemic like everyone else

he makes nice comments about his own eyelashes like multiple times throughout unprompted

continuous zoom ins on unhinged signs in the crowd, if we list them all together the first letter of each sign will make a sentence but itll spell out "h a h a y o u f i g u r e d i t o u t"

every scene he wears the same pants but a size smaller till we notice (possibly related to the order of black pants this was not on purpose)

reveals his favorite color dramatically

drinks red wine and then trashes it but later in another fragment hes just drinking it like normal

hes watching some pawn shop /auction tv show screaming at it like as if hes bidding along

hes playing minecraft, there will be carrots in his hotbar also his hotbar will be a mess also hell get thrown of the mountain by a goat

silk pjs

he lights something on fire by accident

some kinda quick bambambambam pic collage edit thing that just like has a lot a lot a lot of unseens but it goes so fucking quick like youre like WAIT WHAT SHIT HOLD UP and ok ok unhinged then there are shirtless pics in between

home video of cutting his own hair (LHL around the euros)

covers sweet caroline while showing footage of football fans and his crowd back and forth

keeps confessing his deep love for his fans (will happen) but laying flat on the floor bawling making whiney noises completely unintelligible

there will be enough onions

AND THIS IS WHY WE'RE FRIENDS.

#oddly specific all of those voices predictions #all of those voices #all of those voices predictions #all of these will happen #no they won't #BUT YES.

[bigskydreaming]

Bit of a vent post, bit of a housekeeping post, bit of a 'so that's what's been happening in Kalen-land' post:

So I have officially done everything that can be done to prepare for our relocation to a different site while they do construction on this one for the next year, which should be....any day now. Since it was originally supposed to happen on October 2nd, lol. Oh, bureaucracy.

If I wrote a memoir of the last two years specifically, 'Oh, Bureaucracy' would be the title, actually. So obviously its no secret that Moukie & I have been struggling for a long time, even after my surgery back in December 2021. But pretty much all of that has to do with our struggles to hack through bureaucracy to secure some actual stability and longterm living situation, since....oh, January 2022. We've finally secured a five year lease to stay in this place (with the exception of the next year, at a different site during construction, as I mentioned), but like....we only JUST got that agreement officially in writing, signed & notarized & all that...last week.

After being told it was basically a done deal but they couldn't finalize anything or put anything in writing until the building sold and the property changed hands and one city service took over oversight of this particular property from another one....pretty much every month since November of last year. They changed dates and timelines on us so many times it was like every three week we'd have a completely new timeline we were looking at for when we could expect to have everything finalized or for the relocation to happen, etc. Most recently, we were told with complete certainty that everyone HAD to be out October 2nd, that construction would be starting immediately after that, nobody would be allowed to stay in the building.

October 31st, and we're still here, lol.

So that's been a fun non-stop rollercoaster ride of stress, lol. The problem, of course, is that before my surgery (12/2021), I'd quite literally been homeless for at least the five years prior to that. Fortunately I never quite made it to the point of having to sleep outside, though there were plenty of times it got close, and spent most of that time living out of cheap motels & extended stay housing while working towards getting enough money together for my surgery, but as far as any landlord or potential renter is concerned, I was for all intents & purposes homeless during that time, and that's....not great when trying to secure housing in the middle of a pandemic right after basically starting your life over from scratch after the surgery to fix the problem that basically derailed your entire life, lol. Not to mention my credit score was practically nonexistent, all my credit cards were maxed out to pay for the surgery & insurance, my driver's license had been expired for years due to not being even able to drive while I had my issues w/my jaw & everything related to that, and getting it back was easier said than done because I'd had like, two unpaid parking tickets at the time of my medical issues beginning & they kinda completely dropped out of sight, out of mind, only to multiply w/fees that were fucking ridiculous to contemplate & going down to the DMV or traffic court to try and argue them down, while my medical issues were still ongoing, was a nonstarter due to how little travel I was capable of in that state....

LOL. Not a great starting point when rebooting for Kalen 2.0 - and of course I'm not going to get into why we had to use my ID & everything for renting & all that, instead of Moukie's, just trust that there were Reasons.

And of course there are programs to help people out with these kinds of circumstances, which is basically what we've been doing since January 2022....navigating that labyrinth of red tape, because actually ACCESSING those programs, proving eligibility, meeting all requirements, keeping consistent with all requirements throughout the months of waiting on a verdict from higher-ups your file's been passed up the chain to....MUCH easier said than done. The hoops are just. The stuff of legends. Especially when you're still having trouble consistently staying stocked on the meds you need to be productive & functional, or even just keeping your phone active. Oof. All of that was very Not Fun.

Which segues into a bit of that venting I was talking about, because over & over the past couple years we've had well-meaning (and not so well-meaning & largely just obnoxious) people asking us in response to our donation posts like, well why don't we just move to a cheaper city? LOL. I just. I wish people would stop to think that maybe if there's such an obvious solution that someone hasn't availed themselves to yet, there's probably a REASON for that.

We actually had several. For starters, there's the fact that I still have stuff related to my jaw to deal with....I still have no teeth, lol, and haven't really been able to even START getting the bone grafts I need to be able to get implants at some point, so I'm not stuck with dentures for the next fifty years....and it took me literal years to find dentists familiar with my situation, willing to work with me on payment plans & longterm strategizing, etc.....not that easy to just start over with all of that in another, smaller city. Not to mention if I do have any problems with my prosthetic, LA's one of the only places that has ANY surgeons that deal with this specific kind of jaw replacement surgery, so I'd always have to come back here for any further medical related stuff.

But then there's additionally the fact that all those programs meant to help people like us who are literally trying to restart their lives after medical issues, homelessness, etc.....they're pretty much all specific to their own city. They're all contingent on each individual city's resources, services, populations and a million other details.....so moving to a different city basically means having to start all over again with applying to THAT city's housing aid programs & navigating THAT city's bureaucracy from its beginning & forfeiting however much time or progress you've put in already in the city you're currently in. And frankly, most cities don't HAVE as good of aid programs as LA does....its just...it takes fucking forever to actually make full USE of such programs, as evident from the fact that after almost two years, we're only FINALLY to the point where one of those programs has been able to actionably help us secure longterm housing.

(And also there's the fact that when we don't even have enough money for groceries, how cheap do people thinking picking up and moving to another city actually IS? Like. You need starter money to even GET there & get on your feet or you wind up in an even worse situation than we were in).

But honestly, we didn't have it so bad, we have been able to stay housed & working various odd jobs for the past two years....its just been long, and stressful, never actually knowing when or even IF we'd get to the point where we stopped worrying about being kicked out at any given moment, and there were times that looking for housing or trying to deal with bureaucratic red tape was the equivalent of a full time job, in terms of hours required.

All of which is to say....be aware when assuming the worst of various donation posts & their posters, that except in the case of actual scammers, no matter what you may think of how a particular donation request was worded or described their situation, its almost always VASTLY more complicated than can be summed up in a couple of easy to read paragraphs that might actually get people to help. I promise you, if super obvious solutions seem evident to you, they've occurred to the people living with that situation 24/7, and there's a reason that they haven't tried that solution or maybe they even did & for whatever reason it didn't actually work out.

And that said, all of this is also to say just....thank you again for everyone who's helped us out over the years. I know it often seems unending or like we're never getting our acts together, lol, but trust me, it feels that way to us too, times a million, and like....we're working on it. Its just. Much easier said than done. For every hurdle cleared, there's usually another one waiting to pop up like a fucking whack-a-mole game from Hell. Since January 2022 we've been consistently working towards a longterm, stable housing situation and this is it, this is what we were working towards.....we've been fully approved for relocation to the other site for the next year & then returning to this one after construction/renovation, w/a lease agreement for the next five years.....and that's the dream, honestly.

Genuine stability, not having to worry about whether we'll have to move at any given moment, actual housing security....allowing us to FINALLY focus on building our lives back up, instead of constantly grinding just to keep a roof over our head & make sure nobody's about to kick us out....and having the room to breathe & for the first time in literal years (in my case, almost seven at this point) actually prioritize something OTHER than figuring out where we stand on paperwork, filing, tracking down various liaisons to bug them yet again about an accurate timeline for when we'd be notified of whether or not we'd been approved for this program or that one, when we'd actually be relocating, when we had to make x payment by to ensure we didn't lose our qualified status, etc.

And I, for one, definitely can not WAIT to give more of a shit about the absolute stupidest shit imaginable instead of like....warily checking the hall to see if new eviction notices popped up overnight. LMAO.

Anyway. Like I said, we finally have our agreement in writing, we know where we're relocating to, and as soon as that actually happens - which they keep insisting should be any day now, sigh - we'll finally be in a much better place. As part of the relocation program we landed in, our rent at the other site is covered during the year this site is under construction, so already just from that alone we'll be much better off financially.

Moukie's been sending around a donation post this month, and we'll probably keep it circulating up until the day the movers arrive and they finally pull the trigger on us leaving this site, because for the last three months they've been insisting that October 2nd was absolutely going to be our last day here, and we planned around that timetable....meaning that since October 2nd came and went with us still here, our only jobs at the moment are whatever freelance ones we can scrounge up, since the new place is far enough away a commute to & from a workplace around HERE wouldn't be viable, so I can't even go look for a new one to replace the last one until we're actually in the area we'll be spending next year in, lol. So in the meanwhile we've basically been surviving off donations since freelance work is painfully dry at the moment, and as it is, the company Moukie does editing work for still hasn't paid them for their last job yet, which was back in September, I believe? Its ridiculous, but it is what it is.

So yeah, we'll keep that post circulating a bit longer til we're out of here for good, basically just for food money until we're settled in the new place & can grab a new 9-5 and I would say something about that damn patreon I'm always claiming I'll make except I am a Proven Liar Not To Be Trusted On That Subject at this point, but hey, once we're in the new place, maybe that will finally change.

That's basically everything I set out to ramble about, I think, so....I'm done. Wait. Lemme check - yeah, no, that's it, I'm good. I've said it before but it'll never stop being true: we would not have survived if it weren't for the kindness of strangers & the help of mutuals & followers & we really are so much more appreciative of it than I can ever adequately express. I know that can come across as lip service, but genuinely, people here have done more for us and to help us and to see us succeed than our families ever did and we've been reduced to ugly-crying more than once as a result. Its gotten bad, guys. Like. When I go all out, it's not a pretty sight. I've got that pale Irish skin that gets all splotchy when I'm emotional, my nose gets all stopped up, I make scrunchy faces like a baby that KNOWS its not as pretty as its parents keep trying to pretend and is out to prove it....its a whole mess.

And on that note - and imagery - I'm officially done here. Thanks for reading!

[thelador-s-mclargehuge]

Episode 5

Before we get to The Mantis Lords, there isn't a lot to go into but I think this is the funniest episode I'd done so far. Editing is still a little jank but I was still in the Early Stages of figuring shit out, and I was writing, getting the game footage, doing voice direction, and editing these videos AND trying to keep on a 'one video every two weeks' timeline Needless to say. Extremely not sustainable and the editing kinda suffered from it. But that said. Ultimately I'm still pretty proud of how it turned out, timing jank or no. But the Mantis Lords themselves I'm reeally proud of. They may be my favorite characters to write, as you can see going forward I just keep putting them in episodes because I really like them. So I assume everyone reading this is, like, familiar with the Mantis Lords from the game. Needless to say I had to give them... uh... any level of character so that they could interact with things. This was around the time that Live Action CW Power Puff Girls Where They're 20 And Upset About It, was making the waves in the Complaining About Cartoons circut.

Y'all remember this.

Just an absolute bad idea from all angles. The Cartoon Grognard Complainers had several years to bitch about the Powerpuff Girls Reboot where bubbles twerks. And with this on the horizon, and the script leaking from it. Everyone was having a field day with it because... ...I mean it was gonna be real bad. I sound like I'm decrying the grognards, but that's because, as a grognard, it's my sworn duty to decry my own actions. The leaked script was charitably not very good. But the studio was thanking it's lucky stars for The Pandemic because they could just say "We're reworking it" and then quietly move it from the shelf to the trash, and no one needs to think about it again.

But being in the middle of this discourse I was thinking to myself Making the PPGs 20 somethings who are struggling to find their way through life is kinda passé. Boring shit. Seen it a million times. A child could come up with that, and has!

So... what if they were in their mid forties and struggling to run a country? Now THAT has some legs!

And that's how we get Rial, Sarose, and Gelnin!

Rial being the buttercup, Sarose being the blossom, and Gelnin being bubbles.

This also let me give each of them a sort of Domain that they oversee. Rial being the tactical and military strategist (With longstanding connections to their neighbors and allies Deepnest) Sarose being essentially the Overseer, the Leader Leader for when a quick decisions needs to get made, and someone to guide the general direction of policy. And Gelnin is in charge of the nitty-gritty of the economics and infrastructure, something she is incredibly passionate about, to the point of boring everyone to tears. (This also let me envision an episode of PPG where the professor buys Blossom a copy of TTD, that she gets bored of relatively quickly, leaving bubbles to give it a try and she becomes completely addicted.)

Thankfully I've found everyone else loves these mantis lords as much as I do. I think they're good characters, and at least the people commenting on my videos seem to agree. And yeah, they are fun as fuck to write. The line from this episode "My beautiful, wonderful sisters, I am moments away from rejoining the battle ON HIS SIDE!" is one of my favorite lines I ever done which is why it's in all of the promotional material. I just think it's really funny.

#hkr-bts #hollow knight #youtube #content creation #behind the scenes #funny #hollow knight resurrected #Mantis Lords #PPG live action #powerpuff girls #Youtube

[maarigolds]

If I wanted to feel less worried about a renewal what facts are looking good for Lockwood and Co? Things in their favor?

Ok look I'm definitely the wrong person to ask this to because I'm usually a staunch pessimist but-

There are a few things that do give me hope*:

*and when I say a few I actually mean here's 1k word essay bc I'm slowly going crazy. You're welcome.

The numbers are not fantastic, but they're not bad either. I feel like we keep on saying that we need more views (and we do. we always do.) but the situation is really not that terrible. We're somewhere in the middle, actually. The show is not super popular online, so it feels like people didn't watch it, but they did, they're just not talking about online as much as I wish they would. Also, as we've already said many times, there are quite a few netflix shows that have a similar budget to l&co that have been renewed for a second season despite having lower views (locke&key, winx, warrior nun).

The show is British. I know that this might sound weird as a reason why it should be renewed, but hear me out: the show is definitely targeted towards brits and all the press they did was in the uk. That's the main audience netflix is interested in, and the show has done pretty damn good over there. The numbers are lower in other countries because netflix didn't fucking promote the show anywhere else- but that's a story for another day.

Joe Cornish is planning to only do 3 seasons. The story is already there, it fits neatly into a three seasons run, and netflix knows this. It's not like Joe is setting up a high budget show that, if people like, could take 7 seasons and 12 years to make (like sense8 was, for example). Plans have been made already to make three seasons, and that means that, when netflix greenlit the first season, they already knew how much the whole thing would cost. it's a much safer bet for them. It was the same thing for Locke&key, and they got the three seasons they wanted.

The pandemic is pretty much over (it's really not, but as far as netflix is concerned it is). Netflix has cancelled a shitload of stuff lately, we know this, much more than other streaming platforms did. However, one of the reasons why that happened, was the pandemic. All production was stopped and that meant that either shows couldn't physically be made, or that it took so long for them to come back that people had lost interest. Luckily that's not the case anymore, so maybe the number of cancelled shows will go down in the next year.

The production is shared with Joe Cornish's company, complete fiction. That always helps. Also its called complete fiction so fucKING COMPLETE THE SHOW YOU COWARDS

The reviews are good. Not that it matters all that much with netflix, but surely it's a positive.

I really really want it so bad. Please.

Ok I'm done cause I have to go to class in like 15 minutes so yeah

Keep streaming the show in the background. Tell everyone about it (but don't be obnoxious cause that never works). Make art and videos and gifs and fanfics and analysis and anything you feel like doing. Because every little thing helps 💙🖤🧡

#just so you know i'm writing this to feed my own self delusion too #lmao 🥲🥲🥲 #lockwood and co #lockwood & co #ask #anon

[sanguinarysanguinity]

People I Wanna Know Better

tagged by @beanarie, thank you!

Last song?

David Coffin's recording of "Rolling Down to Old Maui", one of my favorite sea shanties, and my favorite shanty-singer. I really like the venue space he recorded this one in, with the sea visible in the picture window behind him. This song is an out-take from a 90-minute concert he did to an empty hall during the pandemic, and I enjoy the intimacy of it.

Favorite color?

Forest green.

Currently watching?

We're between seasons on Orphan Black, MASH, and White Collar (in each case waiting for the next DVD set from the library), and are halfway through the latest season of What We Do in the Shadows.

Last movie?

Random Harvest, a 1950s black and white love story about an amnesiac WWI vet, which we very much enjoyed.

Currently we're in the middle of Barry Lyndon, which we're watching over three nights, because I don't know how the fuck people find the time to watch a three hour movie all in one sitting. I'm enjoying it because it overlaps, time-period-wise, with some of my fandoms, but I have the impression Grrlpup is a little bored by it.

Sweet/spicy/savory?

Spicy and savory, I suppose; sweet seldom does much for me.

Relationship status?

Married, thirty years last month. Best decision that the little baby dyke that I was ever made. :-)

Current obsessions?

*laughs* As if we're not an tumblr, land of Show Me Your Obsessions!

Last thing you googled?

Lyrics for various songs in the Boat Song Tournament.

tagging @sanspatronymic, @educatedinyellow, @verecunda, @archaeos

#query memeage #tag game

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/21/2023

despite two sections clocking in at one sentence each, i had a lot of thoughts about a video game so this one is the normal creeping-up-on-2k-words length

listening

brian david gilbert's rgss must be presented without comment.

-

reading

earlier last year a regional gas station chain offered a whopping twenty five cents off per gallon. many terms and conditions applied. the one that made me scoff and delete the app right there at the pump was that location data had to be on at all times. not just when you were using the app or in a geofenced area around the gas stations, all the time. i hate people knowing where i am. i despise my data being sold. do not advertise to me. fuck off.

last year this made me briefly wonder about the loyalty programs i have with the regional supermarket chains, big y and stop & shop. i don't even want to think about whatever instacart was collecting on me much earlier in the pandemic. unfortunately i can choose not to drive as much but i really should not eat less and i do love a loss leader sale. and then i had to move again and forgot about it. earlier this week my favorite data scientists at The Markup dropped a...upsetting article on kroger's data practices, which can include in-store tracking, biometrics, facial recognition, and when shopping on kroger.com: "Third-party trackers send your product page views, search terms, and items that you have added to your shopping cart to Meta, Google, Bing, Pinterest, and Snapchat." did you know they have their own spinoff data company? for why, you might ask?

Experts told The Markup that companies that sell products in grocery stores don’t have much visibility into what happens after their items are placed on shelves. These brands want granular shopping data that only supermarkets have in order to gauge the success of the brands’ products. In recent years, this data has become harder to come by and therefore more valuable. 

i try very hard not to be be doom and gloom about tech bc reporting already tends toward the hysteric, and usually there is stuff i can do or a different option i can take to avoid a package of my data being sold and linked to other packages of my data. however, it is unrealistic to leave my phone at home and pay with cash, and financially i can't afford to opt out of these loyalty programs. sucks! sucks real bad! The Markup articles are pretty good at making the american senate take notice, but they are very slow and do not always fully understand tech abuses, bc their average age is sixty fuckin three.

-

watching

im ticking along in adventure time, in the middle of season six, the last real long season before we get down to twenty and fourteen episode seasons. there has been an amusing string of episodes where finn and jake aren't present or are only present briefly. this show will wander off to tell the most heartrending story about a character you will never see again, and this episode will stick with you for ten years.

ive also been looking at the fandom (i know) wiki page for each episode, bc why not, and it is a very funny fan wiki. a great deal of emphasis on animation errors with the caveats that maybe the miscolored arm of a princess in episode whatever actually means there's two princesses of that kingdom and we're only seeing the second one for the first time now. whenever the show references a classic work, the note in the wiki has the tone of "ugh this weird old thing why is my show making a joke about it". if an episode won an emmy (this show won fifteen emmys btw) it is usually the very last thing on the page bc that's not lore or errors or connections to other episodes why should you care??? either a very specific type of guy or a bunch of young teens wrote this. probably a bunch of young teens that grew up to be a very specific type of guy.

-

playing

thank u for all ur open world rpg recs, i think horizon zero dawn is the closest thing to what i want but i will probably end up playing Prey first (which has exactly one of the many qualities i want and is not open world even a little bit) bc it is a game i actually own. but im here to say i know im having a depressive episode when im listening to a lot of mother mother and playing f/allout 4. anyway we're back at it again in far harbor, which at least contains the most interesting storytelling in the game. can we all say hello to andre, bethesda's eleventh first gay character?

coming up on this drive-in theater with an incongruous neon heart looming out of the mist and spooky music plus screams from the horror movie trailer that's been playing on loop since the bombs dropped is SO fun. nothing on the mainland is quite this atmospheric. the fog really does heighten the fun of exploration. i know dead money did it first and better but this is less dire than dead money. usually.

also i forgot they're showing a western staring Legally Not Lee van Cleef if u switch the reels. this is not even getting into the delightful enemy encounter at this location bc i have a different location i want to talk about

GOD the MS Azalea (the one screenshot that isn't mine and is from the wiki) is so fun to run around. a rusted out, ripped in half cargo ship with five different sections (guardpost, top of ship, shipping container apartments on top of ship, inner sheltered harbor within ship and floating kitchen/pool table parlor, floating bar and clinic lashed to ship entered by swimming or elevator down from the top of the ship, sheltered harbor between two halves of the broken ship. each of these sections uses vertical space in interesting ways bc the ship is so fucking big. there is a straight up House underneath that boat. and everything feels very lived in, there's clutter and signs of life everywhere. these guys are just vibing with their little stores and their little apartments. a smarter game or a game with more time would have leaned into "you were sent to kill these guys by the townsfolk bc they felt threatened by an unaffiliated settlement" but alas. the trappers on the boat are just xp.

it is very funny that the lighthouse on the south end of the island refuses to load in properly, no matter where i am

this dlc, more than anything else in the game, actually does feel like my choices matter. i do the missions for the mariner and the barricade physically changes. i do enough fairly complex quest chains for enough of the town and they decide they like me enough to go build settlements. seeing the settlement fog condensers off in the distance from across the island feels very different from the mainland, where generally your settlement's buildings don't pop in until you're pretty fucking close.

i really don't care about how big the map is, i want the main game to be this dense and this bold in telling a stories, start to finish, that feel very interconnected and grounded to its location. i am feeling a little conflicted with my playtime, bc i gotta lotta fucking bones to pick with this game, but i am having fun with this dlc. part of it is "what if fallout/the rest of the game was good" and part of it is the depression making any scrap of delight feel weird. so it goes. february will end eventually.

-

making

did my taxes.

#i feel like this one does not particularly invite commentary or discussion but that's the way the week rolls sometimes #tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

[persephone-is-here-omg]

Went no contact with my aunt E, and her daughters N and C. My only regret is that I didn't get to beat their asses before I did.

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a person given to physical violence, hell in a lot of cases I'll bite my tongue to avoid a fight. But I have my fucking limits, and that day I reached mine.

So, yes. I did come close to kicking their teeth off because if there's one thing I don't tolerate is people talking shit about my mom when I know she's right. If the criticism is valid? Go ahead. Thing is, I know for a fact my aunt and her daughters are wrong.

This is a situation that has its roots in decades of unresolved issues. But it all came to a head when my cousin N decided she was going to introduce her boyfriend to the extended family. This, after she told multiple people that she didn't really have anything to share with us and that she didn't even want to wish our grandma a Happy New Year. Which is fine, there's been a lot less conflict since her, her mother and sister decided they were everyone's victims and the family wasn't catering to them as they felt entitle to. That's cool, but why the hypocrisy.

So, in the latest family function that took place my mom called my cousin to the side and called her out on her hypocritical behavior. My mother did not scream to her, and didn't start a scene. My cousin N, however, has always had a flair for the theatrics and immediately started screaming and shouting like a banshee. Came storming in saying she was leaving, that my mom had "disrespected" her, that she "knows herself, and she is leaving". She called my mother a flurry of colorful names, including "ungrateful". My sister and I heard, and we had enough. Let me just say they both were LUCKY my dad was there and bear hugged me, because her boyfriend would not only have had to pay for her plane ticket to Spain, he would have had to pay for a whole new set of teeth (or two).

Since that moment, I've gone no contact with them. Now, I am aware that none of that makes me look good. I am not interested in looking good, either. But if we're going to talk about ungrateful or bullying, I have so many instances where they're the ungrateful bullies.

For example, N had Hepatitis B. At the time, she was living rent free at our grandmother's house. If you hear her and her mother tell the story, everyone at my grandma's was going to let her die and no one gave a fuck. In their version, my grandma even said that she was most likely pregnant. However, the reality is that she wouldn't have even been tested for Hep B if one of my aunt's (who's a nurse) had not insisted and taken her to the hospital, she wouldn't have been admitted without that aunt, either. However, that aunt has a job that she couldn't miss and responsibilities. N's father has lived in that same town for years, he didn't go to see her even once during the whole ordeal. However, the bad ones are the ones that took her to hospital and did what they could.

Another example, E moved to that same town and stayed there for about 4 years after her daughter C had an "accident" that left her with a permanent leg injury. E did this to be able to take care of her daughter. Once C was recovered enough she moved into a smaller house where neither her mother nor sister fit in. So E and N had to rent an apartment. When 2020 rolled around, another one of my aunts went like "hey, we're in the middle of this pandemic thing. you guys should move in with me because you have no income" So they moved into this other aunt's house, lived there for almost 3 years rent free, not even had to buy their own food, no utilities. E, N and C however, claim no one ever helped them and E and N were basically homeless. Mind you this aunt that took them in even took over several major medical expenses from E.

One more example. E is a teen mom, had her oldest C, around the time she was 17/18yo. The only reason she was able to graduate high school was my mom. My mom at 14yo put up with abuse from her baby daddy's family to care of her fucking child. But this is, also, something that in their heads never happened. E, in fact, has spent almost 50 years trying to ingratiate herself with her baby daddy's family even though they mistreated her and her family. When she moved from the town, following them, they said "she doesn't need to learn anything. just send her to clean houses" Because they see cleaning houses as a lowly job, and they always have seen her as lowly and undeserving of respect.

This is just examples of their ungratefulness, this isn't even diving in their abuse and disrespect of multiple family members. Like, I have so many fucking more stories that don't even involve me or anything they've done to me especifically.

#family #no contact #toxic relationship #toxic people #fuck them

[silverfoxlou]

FAITH IN THE FUTURE

Superstar idol, indie acolyte, festival boss - Louis Tomlinson has been a lot of things over the course of his time in the spotlifht, but as he prepares to release his second solo album 'Faith In The Future' this November, he's set to surprise the world all over again.

"Tiktok is probably telling the kids what to drink these days. I just still drink me vodka Red Bell, you know what I mean?" For an artist who found fame as part of one of the biggest boy bands of all time, Louis Tomlinson is remarkably down to earth.

Sipping on a Stella, he sits down with Dork on one of RMT's August strike days - which he's 100% here for, btw. We're pulling a lot of strings for this. Frantically organising our shoot and interview in the space of about 48 hours, Louis takes it all in his stride, plopping down in the evening for a a supremely relaxed chat after a cig and a beer.

He's about four shows off finishing his first solo world tour (another sell-out under his belt), which actually began in 2020. Maginingt o squeeze in a couple of dates before the pandemic hit, it was the energy of those initial gigs that sparked the inspiration for his forthcoming second album 'Faith In The Future', arriving in November.

For the first five years of his career, the cycle of touring and recording and touring and recording was ll Louis knew. Then being the last of his of ex-bandmates to relaese a solo album, taking his time creating music to actually hit the road with, meant he was a decade into being a musician before toured alone.

"It was a long, long time for to wonder what it might be like," he says. "And also, there was a fear in the back of my mind that, because I've experienced touring at such a high level with the band, in amazing, massive fucking venues, I didn't really know what my tour was going to look like or feel like or even sound like in terms of energy in the room and fans singing back."

He needn't have worried. Never disappointing, his Louies showed up in droves. "It's blown all my expectations. I've felt fucking blessed this whole tour, like every place I've gone and I'm not just being dramatic; it's been fucking amazing everywhere." A proper World Tour, he's played to more than 500,000 people across 80 shows over the last year. Getting back on the horse and smashing arenas quickly became his life again.

"That obviously gives me a lot of pride, especially going places like Australia. It's a long fucking way from Donny, you know?" he laughs. "So to play sold-out shows over there, it's fucking mind-blowing, really. Every single night, it doesn't really matter how my day's going; after the first song, I just get slapped in the face with the energy of the crowd and the adrenaline that then feeds me."

It's a tale as old as time at this point, provided your calendar only starts in early 2020. Artist plans a tour, pandemic hits, doesn't happen. Except Louis found himself in limbo. Caught between feeling the highs of his first solo shows at the start of the year, then crashing into the isolation of what followed, he wrote 'Faith In The Future' imagining what the tour would be like when it went ahead. The process saw him moving away from the intimacy and emotional weight of 'Walls' and creating something more uplifting.

"Originally, in my master plan that I had in my head, I was going to on a year's worth of touring," he explains. "That was going to feed me full of experience that I could then go on to write about. It didn't. I almost ended up in kind of a middle ground where I was lucky enough to get a taste of what the shows would feel like, so that was part experience and part imagination going into the this next record."

When reflecting on his debut, he found that there weren't enough uptempo numbers for a live show. 'Walls' was Louis telling his story so far - effectively twelve ballads detailing the love and loss that was recent memory at the time. That's not to say he isn't proud of his debut. I twas a necessary step in his career that cemented the vision he had for his own sound after spending years finding his feet in the public eye post-One-Direction.

But with the heavy stuff out of the way ("I don't like people feeling sorry for me. That's not the way I carry myself in life in general,: he says of his first album), Louis landed on the phrase 'Faith In The Future' in early 2021, setting about making a record based on hope, and more importantly, bangers.

"I had the title for the album before I'd written any songs for this record. I was 99% sure I wanted to call the album 'Faith In The Future', then COVID happened, and that was, like, weirdly appropriate. I feel like people needed that kind of hopeful sentiment."

He tweeted out the phrase and found legions of fans naturally gravitating towards it, which sealed the deal. Fast forward to September 2022, and he was putting it out online again. This time , it was in tandem with an album announcement and introductory single 'Bigger Than Me', which takes the balladry of 'Walls', puts a positive spin on it, and blows it up big enough to match the arenas he's filling.

"That was definitely the first moment where I had a song that I felt represented the ambition and the statement of intent,: he says of the track. "It's got one of those big choruses, and I think my vocal shines off it. Out of everything on the album, it was pretty clear what the first thing was going to be. I think I would have struggled to pick another first track. It just felt so appropriate."

He notes that writing 'Bigger Than Me' gave him more confidence in writing the rest of the record, and doing it in a way that finally felt like he was making something that aligned with his personal tastes. At the very beginning of his solo venture, he'd played with dance-pop on collaborations with Steve Aoki ('Just Hold On'), and Beebe Rexha and Digital Farm animals ('Back To You'). Then he'd sacked it off and run in the other direction on 'Walls', choosing a sound indebted to the early 2000s indie rock he grew up on. 'Faith In The Future' is where he finds a happy medium, spurred on by an interest in Stuart Price's work on Australian trio DMA's last record, 'The Glow'.

"With the first album, I was so particular about every specific sound, especially what I didn't like. So, for example, because I'd done the song with Steve Aoki - which, again, was a great launch to my career, but musically never felt that true to me - I was like, well, I'm just going to kind of deviate from those sounds and go all-in on the guitars with as much authenticity, musically, as possible. It wasn't until I heard the latest DMA's album where they managed to use all these really interesting dance sounds, but in a very authentic, unique way. I think it gave me food for thought going into this album."

Remaining authentic has clearly been a huge part of this process for Lois. Tracks like opener 'The Greatest' and 'Bigger Than Me' are expansive and wide open, while 'Written All Over Your Face' melodically pulls from indie floor fillers akin to early Arctic Monkeys singles. Then he dials it right back to the conversational intimacy of 'That's The Way Love Goes' on the closer.

Seeming slightly disgruntled with previous writing sessions, he set out to work with more artists who aligned with his currently philosophy on songwriting. Those being Hurts' frontman Theo Hutchcraft, Courteneers' bassist Joe Cross, indie-pop songwriter Nico Rebscher (Who gets a special shoutout for being a "good boozer"), and the 1975 and Wolfe Alice producer Mike Crossey. He wanted to keep the writing team smaller this time around because he'd worked with "about a hundred different fucking people" on 'Walls', making it harder to maintain the sonic continuity he's achieved on 'Faith In The Future'.

"What's been slightly different about the writing process this time is that I tried to work with less professional songwriters and more artists, because there's a different level of care and love for the music you're doing. And that's not undermining an other session I've been in. It's just sometimes when you go into these sessions with certain professional songwriters, they're looking for singles, you know? And sometimes that comes across in the writing as well. If you want to have authenticity, and you want the music to have a soul to it, you can't really be going in whit that kind of intention because it kind of dumbs down the reason that you're writing, and it becomes something else. Do you know what I mean?"

At heart, Louis has and will probably always be A Normal Bloke. Despite the dizzying heights of fame he's reached over the years, his feet have always been on solid, Northern ground. What Sam Fender is to Newcastle, what Adele is to Tottenham, that's what Louis Tomlinson is to Doncaster. He rarely discusses his fame in song, if at all. In fact, he hasn't really addressed it since 'Perfect' In his One Direction days. Instead - and especially on 'Faith In The Future' - he favors songwriting that resembles pub chatter and inherently human topics. From one of the tracks borrowing its title from Pulp (yep, that'd be 'Common People') to the fact that he consistently pronounces another tracks as "art a' me system" (that's 'Out Of My System' for any non-Yorkshire-dwellers), he's remained proud of his roots and finally, properly, getting the chance to shout about it.

"Even conceptually, and with the topics that we speak about, I think it's a better representation of who I am as a person, this record. And those things are important to me. It's also, as a songwriter, where I feel most comfortable - writing about these kinds of really normal things. It's something that I'm definitely conscious of. It was a deliberate choice."

It's refreshing to see a star of his scale consistently in touch with his working-class beginnings and conscious of the changing landscape across the industry. Of course, Louis is an anomaly in that he's probably set for life off the back of selling millions of records in his early 20s, but he's always got those in mind who don't have that luxury. In 2021, he put on his first Away From Home festival, for which tickets were completely free, at Crystal Palace Bowl when the live music circuit was getting back up and running post-pandemic.

"This is not me pointing fingers, but I don't see enough of that in the industry to be fair," he says of the decision to make it free. "That's something that I think is important to me, definitely, everyone being represented. It's something that I'm very conscious of across everything I do - prices for merch, ticket prices, etc. etc. It's something that is very, very important to me because I know myself, if I hadn't got into this, I don't know, some people are charging like 400 quid a ticket or summat daft. I wouldn't be able to afford that. So it's important that this is representative. And also, when you put your tickets at that price, you create a certain type of audience. It's good to have everyone in the room, I think."

Nowadays, Louis is redefining what success means to him. While he admits he felt the pressure when venturing out solo, he knows he wasn't alone in that. These days, he's less focused on scoring a Number 1 record (although it's pretty certain his fans could get him that), and more invested in creating moments with the fans that are exclusive to them, hence why his first world tour has been such a turning point.

"I'm sure other people can relate to, you know, your previous experiences. They're relevant when you're speculating what the next stage of your career might look like. I think we all [the One Direction boys] will have had a similar feeling going into that first record. But for me, it was an especially long time. It's been seven years now since the band, and I think I've just got a different understanding of what the word successful means to me. this tour definitely has taught me that. It's only really me and the fans that have got me to where I am here in my solo career."

He describes touring as black and white, with none of the nuances he has to deal with in the rest of the music industry. It's the one thing that's barely changed over his career, the simple exchange of getting a ticket and seeing your favorite artist. It means the world to his fans, and it turn, it means the world to him.

"My biggest aim since I started my solo career, because it was my favourite shit in the band, was can I create something where it gives me the ability to tour for the next 10 years? So I've got one year down. If I could do another nine, I'll be happy."

We ask, rather cheekily, if the general public - because we all know what they're like, don't we, Dear Reader? - might be surprised to see that Louis is still selling out venues as big as Wembley Arena on his solo tour. Testament to his personality, he actually agrees that it's a good point, but he's used to people underestimating him by now.

"I think that's a frustration I've found across my career to date. But you know, there's a little thing that me and the fans say together, and ti's that they never see us coming. It doesn't matter how many times we fucking do what we do, they never see us coming. But you know what, I like it that way. I like catching people by surprise."

Louis Tomlinson's album 'Faith In The Future' is out 11th November.

#dork #louis press

[hogcranker1984]

I was going to make a joke about how "math is inherently ableist" because we're sitting in our algebra II class with a fucking migraine but then it made me think.

While the subject of math itself isn't ableist, because it's a fucking construct that is learnt, a lot of the times how teachers teach math in classrooms is VERY ableist.

from my own personal experience many teachers are extremely dismissive of core problems within conventional lesson structures (large amounts of homework, spoon-feeding information expecting people to memorize, which isn't even proper learning in the first place, putting the blame on students for not getting their work done when the work is extremely exhausting and mundane, especially for those with neurodivergencies, among other systemic problems)

I know I'm just stating the obvious at this point, but math is a subject that is so fucking behind in comparison to other classes. it is laughable how behind my math classes are in terms of constructive lesson structure that actually helps me to learn something.

the pure audacity of this dismissiveness is that it implies that my dysfunction is my fault. when for years and years I'd have near-daily anxiety attacks about assignments I never had the energy to complete. like, i'm sorry??? but I shouldn't have to go through that fucking mental torture just to learn about fucking variables. I still fucking struggle with this and it has taken months to try and work to get SOMETHING. just ANYTHING changed about how the subject is taught to me and NOTHING has happened yet.

while I might be impatient it is just so fucking stupid that it's taken me from 3rd grade, switching to a new district in the 6th grade, to my fucking Junior Year in High School for this problem to be (at least somewhat) addressed.

it would have happened so much fucking sooner if my case worker didn't dismiss how I felt as just simple disorganization when I wasn't even properly taught how to keep myself organized in the first place and made me feel as if it was my goddamn fault for my disability.

along with that, the impact of the pandemic has caused a very large gap of learning (which we experience ourselves, we are behind in algebra and are struggling to keep up with current lesson plans) that is just NOT being addressed in a lot of classrooms.

So many teachers now who are teaching late gen z and early gen alpha completely place the blame on the students when they should be placing the blame on the school system itself (this is not to discredit teachers who DO point out problems in the school system, I just find it disheartening and very disappointing that teachers think they have the right to blame LITERAL CHILDREN for the faults of a 100+ year old education system)

I would have provided some evidence but I am very exhausted and I don't have the time right now, I'm in the middle of my algebra class and I'd rather NOT get caught right now

#anton speaks #ill provide links to articles and video essays that have influenced my ways of thinking #but again not right now #my head is killing me #yeah