#and mentally abusing us its absolute bullshit and i still have not gotten over my childhood

[foxymoxynoona]

FYI. I’m about to unload a whole story to you lol. But for some reason, I have had an urge to tell you why AMENDED is my absolute favorite story and why I relate to it.

Starting with Isabella. Me and her grew up very similar. My mother was a drug addict and alcoholic most of my life. After her and my father (who was also an addict) separated. Then came the same creepy boyfriends. But unlike Isabella, I had an older sister so that helped out a lot. My childhood wasn’t as bad as I remember because I spent most of it with my grandparents, who I fortunately still have to this day! I LOVE being with my grandparents! But it always sucked going home because of the constant fights with my mom and the uncomfortableness with her boyfriends. Of course, like Isabella’s mom. They were her top priority. Only one time did one try to touch me. I was 13-14? I’m not sure but I was in 8th grade. I told my mom right away and the only response I got was “Did he think it was me?” I still haven’t forgiven her for that. She made him apologize and he continued living in my house (Oh how much I wish I had a JK as a best friend during those times)

I moved out when I was 16 to live with my grandparents because we lost our house. My mom, sister, niece and nephew went to go live with my mothers parents (I am not close to those grandparents) And I went to go live with my favorite grandparents (My dad hasn’t been a constant part of my life for a while now) Everything was going great! I was going to school regularly and I also got my first job at the mall! Which is where I ended up meeting my first serious boyfriend.

Put it in short words, I had found my own Landon! He was sweet, charming, older. He worked in the food court restaurant, just a few stores away from my job! I was 17 and already dropped out of school and was working full time when we started officially dating. He was 20. Everything was going great but it was all moving so fast! About 3 months into our relationship he got an apartment and I moved in with him. The first few months were amazing. We had privacy, and a lot more time to spend together. What 17 year old didn’t love the idea of having their own apartment and living with their boyfriend?! I guess the age difference made it more easier to excuse his now ‘protective’ behavior.

By the time I was 18, I had met sooo many people, especially at work. I had more adult friends and occasionally they would ask me out to hang out with them and have girls night! He did not like that. He was so worried that while i was out with my friends he would call me every 30 minutes to make sure I was okay and to also ask what i was doing. Despite him going out almost every night with his brothers and friends to bars. Eventually It got to the point he never wanted me to go out at all and if i did, I wasn’t allowed back home. I was young so I stupidly let him have that control over me.

3 years later. We are still together. I turned 21 and couldn’t even go celebrate because I was pregnant. But I was happy. During those 3 years he had only become more and more mentally abusive. He was manipulative, insecure, possessive. And it took me to be pregnant with his child to finally acknowledge that. But i stayed because? I was pregnant. I didn’t want my child growing up without a father and I also didn’t want her to have parents that fought all the time because they hated each other.

Skip to after giving birth. I quickly learned he was not interested in playing the dad role. He would work and come home and play video games all night. We didn’t have anyone to watch the baby so i couldn’t work. He was not happy about that at all. After constant fights and learning he was spending his money on drugs and alcohol (despite always complaining about being broke because he had to support us), I realized I wasn’t in love anymore and told him I wanted to leave. It wasn’t a safe environment for my child and I had to grow up and realize it’s not just about me anymore but about my child. That night was the first and last time he every got physical with me. And I can proudly say that was the night I packed my bags, left and never looked back.

All that happened almost 2 years ago. I am now 23 and have a 2 year old. Things are different now and I feel like its in sync with amended’s current story line. All though I don’t have my Jk yet. I am dealing with the difficulties of letting my daughter have father time. The only reason he is in our lives is because I don’t want my child to hate me for keeping her away from him. I do get along with him, but only for my daughters sake. And because he knows this, he uses it to his advantage. Knows how to push my button and get inside my mind, especially with letting him come see her or letting her go visit him. He even has the crazy girlfriend who doesn’t like me! Lmao. I don’t let my child be alone with him though because I don’t trust him enough to watch over my child. He still wants to live that carefree life and loves being able to hand me back my child when it gets too much for him.

But that’s okay with me, because I will gladly take my child back. Right now, I’m getting my life back together slowly. But after reading your story, it has helped me realize my life isn’t over yet. I can still do things! When I am ready to meet someone, I definitely want to find someone like amended JK. Not the marriage and arrangement part lol but a man who wants to take care of me and my child and supports me and will have my back no matter what. Someone who can help me say no even when I feel like i can’t. To protect me from my Ex the way JK protects Isabella from Landon. I relate to this story so much, and I think you write it beautifully. I just wanted to say thank you for the words you write and for giving me an escape, especially when things have gotten a little too rough. It always so nice to relax and read one of your stores (:

I don’t mind if you answer this publicly or privately. I’m also sorry for the whole life story lol but I just couldn’t stop typing! I just wanted you to know how much your stories mean to me (:

Since you said I could, I’m going to answer this publicly. Because one thing I do see in reader response is often this big divide (not ALWAYS but often) between readers who have or have not been in abusive relationships, and readers who are or are not parents. And I think it’s actually really important and healthy and it was a reason I decided to post this story, because these are things that so completely change your mindset and outlook on life, but they can be really difficult to understand if you just don’t have that experience. I wanted to use Amended as an opportunity to make people stop and think and understand situations they (hopefully!) are not in themselves, or if they ARE in, have the opportunity to seeing someone grow through it and find love and security and happiness on the other side.

There are lots of my own experiences, doubts, struggles, and pains wrapped up in Isabella’s story too, though not necessarily 1:1. Sometimes they were situations or relationships I didn’t have much of a choice in (like with a bad dad), but other times they were things I could have and should have left earlier and I didn’t (like an abusive ex that I didn’t live with, didn’t have children with, separating should have been easy.) What I’ve taken away from it is that we are strong and adaptable and we go through life making the best we can and adapting to situations, and that can bite us in the ass sometimes when we adapt to situations that we should be adapting away from. But it can be so hard to do that! I think people forget too that love isn’t always logical but it can be a hell of a jail when you love someone who is hurting you. “Giving up” on someone to save yourself is really, really hard. Like couldn’t someone make the case that JK should haven’t to deal with Isabella being mean to him and should just leave? Where do you draw the line? It’s so hard!

I just want to say HUGE kudos to you. Your daughter is so lucky to have a mom who has not only done such incredible and difficult things at a young age, but that fact that you also make things harder for yourself (in having to still deal with your ex) to try and make things the best for her. Especially when you had a difficult home life... probably my love for Isabella shows already how much I love and admire you and your situation and all the women who have been in similar situations. You clearly had to grow up so so young and that sucks, that’s so unfair for you. I wish I could give you back more of the childhood and adolescent that were stolen from you.

You are helping me remember too why I like to write about moms. There is not as much media as  there should be about moms where they are still the star of the story. When I had my son I realized with shock that to a lot of the world, my life is over as an individual now. That’s bullshit! The start of my son’s life story doesn’t mean the end of mine! It doesn’t mean I just become a side character in his story! It just means there’s a new sub-plot in the story of ME, and I can continue to reinvent and discover myself over and over for the rest of my life. We have to break free of this idea that mothers are nothing but mothers, and this idea that 30 or 40 or 50 are too late. Because the reality is sure, once you become a mom, sometimes the me stuff is on hold for a while in order to survive, and sometimes you’re mostly wrapped up in the mother role, and that’s totally fine. But it’s definitely not over. It’s never two late to get to “start” your story, or “restart” your story. I’ve found that often when I’m in the middle of things being hard it feels like the chance will never come, but it will, and it won’t be too late! It sounds like you are kicking ass for yourself and your daughter right now, and how incredible that she’ll grow up seeing that strength and resilience.

So thank you so so much for sharing your story. I always love hearing from you.  🥰

#amended #personal #mywriting #myao3

[buckysforeverprincess]

Can Our Love Survive Ch. 12

Bucky Barnes x Reader, Natasha Romanoff

Words: 1464

Warnings: Mentions of rape, humiliation, bullying, mental abuse

A/N: This is a continuation of Ch. 11. Pay attention to the warnings and don’t read if any of that bothers you. This chapter is told from Bucky’s POV. I swear these two will get together. Enjoy!

**TAG LIST OPEN UNTIL CH. 15 PLEASE SEND AN ASK**

Bucky sat in silence taking in everything you had disclosed, but his blood was boiling inside him. To say he was angry was an understatement. What the fuck gave anyone the right to do that to another human being? Especially you! You were so sweet and kind and beautiful, and Brock had taken advantage and broke you. He took your spirit and sunshine and for that alone he was going to pay.

“Don't…,” he hears, “I can tell what you're thinking and don't.”

“But that fuckwad hurt you!”  

“Yes, he did, but you can't. There's more.” He watches as she inhales a deep breath and lets it out. “He filmed the whole thing. Every single second. Not only that… Jack took pictures. They decided to humiliate me and printed some of them and hung them around the school. The video… it made its way around as well. I was the laughing stock of our high school.” Tears began to run down her cheeks and Bucky wanted nothing more than to kiss them away.

“WHAT. THE. FUCK!” Bucky face turns red and he’s getting angrier by the second. “How the fuck did he get away with this?!” He demanded to know. “How could Brock do this to you, film it, and he’s not sitting in a jail cell right now?!”

“Steve…,” she says softly, and he can see just how hard all this is on her, “…he went after Brock. Steve was going to kill him, almost did. Broken nose, broken jaw, fractured skull, four broken ribs, broken hand, concussion. Bye bye football. Steve was going to murder him, consequences be damned. The reason Steve is free is because of that video. Brock denied there was one, but Tony is a tech genius and was able to get ahold of it and he showed it to Brock's parents. They knew what it would do to their son, so an agreement was made that neither party would press charges. I couldn't see Steve go to prison for attempted murder, so I agreed even though Steve protested and said it'd be worth it. His parents lied to the police and said it was a random attack, not uncommon here in Brooklyn so, it was believable.”

Bucky stood and started pacing the floor. Brock had gotten away with this. Bucky couldn't form words and just kept shaking his head while he processed the information. “And Jack?” Wondering If the other boy had suffered any consequences for his part in your assault.

“Natasha.”

Bucky just stares, lost in thought. “What did she do?”

She shrugged her shoulders and smirked. “I'm not supposed to know… but it's entirely possible that she knows a guy that may have somehow pulled a Sons of Anarchy on him and burned a certain word on his back. That word may or may not have been ‘Rapist’, but I can't confirm that.”  

Bucky smiled at that. Steve had beat the shit out of Brock and ended his football career, and Natasha had scared Jack for life. To him it wasn't enough, but it would do for now.  

“So how does Brittany fit into all this?” Bucky needed to know how all the pieces connected.

“Brittany came to me after the incident and told me how I had been used and she’d been screwing Brock the entire time and how I'd forever be known as Brock's dirty whore. Talk about adding insult to injury. She laughed in my face and there wasn't anything I could do. She takes pleasure in knowing she'll be around every day to remind me of how pathetic I am. Her presence alone is the reminder, however, she's right though. I'll always be known as his dirty whore.”

Bucky walked over to you and knelt in front of you. “I seriously want to kill them! You don't deserve anything that happened to you, not one second of it. There's nothing I can say that can change the past, but if you give me the chance, I’ll treat you like the queen you deserve and give you a better future. Please?” He asked, almost pleading.

She swallowed hard and shook her head. “Bucky, I'm so damaged… broken. I literally can't do anything without my anxiety getting in the way, and we haven't even talked about my depression. It wouldn't be fair to you. I'm such a mess!” She gets up from the couch, making her way to the window and stares out at the world.

“You don't know what it's like getting up every day not knowing if your head is going to function right and let you make it through an entire day without freaking out! I take meds to help keep my anxiety and depression under control, and I've blacked out because it becomes too much. All this, because I put my trust in a guy that was a piece of shit! He ruined me! I can never get back to the way I was, and you shouldn't have to deal with my fucked up head and depressive bullshit!” She said, never turning to face him.

Bucky comes up from behind and wraps his arms around your waist pulling you tightly to his body. I'm here, baby…,” he whispers and kisses your temple. “You're absolutely right, I don't know what it's like and can't imagine what you've been through and what you continue to go through daily. What happened changed who you were into who you are now, but it's the person you are now that I want to be with. Whatever it is, well face it together. You'll never have to be alone because I want to be there for you…always.” Bucky finishes with another kiss to your head.

“Bucky... why? Why me?” She turns around to look him in the eyes.

“Why not you? You're beautiful, smart, funny, and I can't stop wanting to be in your presence. You have this amazing smile that warms my heart and I just can’t get enough of it. You're fierce when your angry, and you have a killer right hook! You're perfect for me, and I want to spend every day telling you how amazing you are and showing you how much you deserve to be cherished.”

He saw her mouth curl up in a hesitant smile. “Can you promise not to hurt me?”  

Bucky nodded. “I will never intentionally hurt you, ever! This is what I can promise you.” He takes his left hand and places it on your cheek, feeling you lean into his touch

“Can I kiss you, please?” Bucky asks, looking into her eyes for permission.

“Yes.”

It was barely a whisper, but he heard it. He smiles and leans in, his lips making contact and kissing her softly, taking things slow.

“Sorry to interrupt…,” Nat interrupts making Bucky pull away, “Steve’s on his way. Sam just text me asking if I was still here and said Steve just left. We've got about 10 minutes. lover boy.”

“Fucking Steve!” Bucky rested his forehead on hers and laughed at the. “Of course, he would come home now.”

“Yes, he would and if you don't want a matching set of black eyes, we should leave now.” Nat reminds him of the impending doom.

“You should go, it's better if you weren't here.”

Bucky nods, now knowing just how enraged Steve can become to protect someone he loves. “But what about us?” He asks before walking away.

She shrugs. “We'll figure this out. We can text, talk on the phone. We'll see each other at school…”

“What about a date?”

She shakes her head “I'm not sure? But it'll happen.”

That makes Bucky grin widely. “Good! Cause I want to take my girl out like she deserves,” he says with confidence.

“Your girl?” She questions with a smirk.

“Yes, my girl… if you'll have me.”  

“Yes, she'll have you, but not if you don't get your ass out that door!” Nat’s voice sounds irritated.

“Go! Now!”

Bucky feels himself being pushed out the door. “What about a goodbye kiss?” He laughs.

“You're insufferable.” Natasha grabs Bucky by his shirt and drags him to the vehicle. “CAR NOW!”

It wasn't a request but a demand. He concedes and hurries to get it. “Bye! I'll text you.” Bucky watches you roll your eyes and wave as he gets in the car and buckles up.

“Remember to make me part of your speech when you get married,” Nat says with a smirk and starts the car.

Bucky chuckles and nods slowly. “I’ll buy you a vacation anywhere you’d like if it gets to that point.”

“And as long as you don’t hurt her you get to live another day.”

“I’ll protect her with my life.” Bucky promises. It’s a promise he intends to keep.

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#bucky #bucky barnes #james barnes #james bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #james barnes x reader #james bucky barnes x reader #james buchanan barnes x reader #natasha romanoff #bff natasha romanoff #slow burn #high school au #marvel #marvel au #can our love survive #mentions of past rape #mentions of non/con #past rape #past mental abuse #past bullying #getting together

[causticameracrap]

i hate that my life has come to this.

i was so happy* early this year............ apart from the body self-loathing in january.  * (did this mean that life was perfect? absolutely not. i was still very much in my grief, very much feeling slighted and abandoned. but i wasn’t angry at myself. i didn’t hate myself. i was rightfully angry at circumstances outside of my control.)

i deserved better.

i was so excited to progress. i was excited for my future. i was excited to finally become someone who Might Be Someone, or Might Make Something, or Might Mean Something. but now... i don’t have anything to look forward to. what i thought would be certain is no longer, and may never return. i’m doubting myself and my abilities, after Finally, Just Fucking Finally beginning to trust in myself and value myself. and my mental health feels like it’s taken multiple steps backward. i’ve progressed in and with my grief, yes, but everything else has slid so fucking far down that’ll take Another series of years to get back to what was once baseline. and that baseline i need to claw back to is already so lacking and demoralizing already. 

the BPD prevents me from seeing myself objectively. and for a while, i was managing it. i was seeing what others saw in me. i wasn’t listening to the Other Self that hates themself. i could fight back. but now... i don’t see my own successes that other people exasperatingly point out. they don’t matter because they are so small so they don’t exist. it’s been too long since i felt meaning so it doesn’t exist and it won’t exist. you aren’t successful so you are a failure. you are not loved so you are unloved. you are not any of these things so you are nothing. there are no other choices. there are no other ways to view yourself. there is no nuance in the void.

i want to be someone like Daniel. i want to achieve in Everything i set my mind to. i want to be good at Everything i can possibly do. i want to be one of the best at Something. i want to Matter to a lot of people. others point out that this is unreasonable to expect so much of yourself, that it’s greedy to reach for all of the figs from the tree, but there Are people who can! there are people who Do! there is Daniel and so many more like him. and they are rightfully celebrated for being multi-faceted and Incredible.

but i’m not, and rightfully so, because i fall so laughably short. my achievements are so small compared to others, who are way closer to Daniels than i am to even them. instead of being good, really Good without a doubt, at something... i am above average at a few, average at many, and below average to failing at many others. and now that i’ve put a name as to why my brain fails at what other people can conceive so easily, i feel even more of a failure.

i know deep in the back of my mind that i shouldn’t compare - especially now being self-aware at discalculia, and how it encompasses so many things in daily & academic & professional life. but i Have to compare. i Want to be better than average. i Want to matter. (is it so wrong to want????) i feel so poorly about myself because deep down i know i Can and Should be better. i Should and Can be the person people think i am.

and it hurts because i know i Could be that person... if things were different.

.... i hate that i wasn’t given a fair shot at life. it seems i was cursed from the womb. i wasn’t aware of all of the things wrong with me, but they were always there and i know them now. i was depressed for most of my life. and part of that is just being in an environment with an abusive mother who belittles and threatens you all of the time. and part of that is having the beginnings of various personality disorders, again exacerbated and likely caused by the abuse. and then the learning disorder that i didn’t even know i had, because thru sheer force of will i passed the usual landmarks that are usually the indicators / red flags, but... if i had gotten help with that sooner. if i could have gotten more help understanding spatial awareness. if i had been told that it wasn’t my fault that my mother was acting this way sooner. if i had been comforted or loved unconditionally. if i had been treated more kindly. if i had been given a safe outlet for my emotions, whether in therapy or literally with anyone i could trust. perhaps... my life would have been different. perhaps my life would have been better. and not perhaps. I Know My Life Would Have Been Different. i would have been Stronger. i would have been Smarter. i would have been more Successful. i would and could have been anything. but that wasn’t meant to be. and it’s not fair that it wasn’t.

some people are grateful of their neurological differences. i’m not. art... the creative life... i would honestly trade it away to be “normal.” yes, i said it! the most important aspects i’ve valued in my life & life’s journey are truly not that important at all! the only reason i wanted to go the road less traveled was because i knew my brain and myself wouldn’t be able to succeed there. i am afraid of failure. that is always my primary motivation: i am afraid of failure. if i was “normal,” i could succeed in the normal things. i could have went the STEM route like everyone else i fucking know before art school ruined my second shot at life. i could have had a more stable life. my creativity is meaningless in the face of a better self. 

without every single fucking psychological issue (and there are So Many them and i am so Frustrated that there are so many of them because i’m So Fucked Up, despite all the progress i’ve made), i would be in a stable relationship. it would be easier to love myself. it would be easier to trust others. it would be easier to put myself out there in the position to create love with someone else. as much as i am lonely, i am so afraid of being rejected. and any chance i have taken has been met with failure. how could i not equate that with me being unworthy of love? how could i not just fall into despair and distance myself? i Hate that it Would have been different. living with someone in reality instead of fantasies in my head.

writing and creating art is a way to deal with my pain, but if i didn’t have the pain... if i wasn’t depressed & abused & a fucking idiot... i Wouldn’t have a Need for art. if things had been different, there would be no subject, no reason to entertain that path. my real artist statement is pain - self-inflicted and self-endured. rarely, it has included other’s pain, but it is always negative. no wonder my art means nothing to so many. who wants to wade thru someone else’s fucked up mind with no real end goal? who wants to wade thru body of work after body of work describing the same old shit, and not even executed well? i certainly don’t blame them. look at the photo over there instead.

truthfully, my first love was space. during elementary lunch or library times i would sit against the walls that looked so big then with space books as thick as my arm. i would read about saturn and hug it to my chest. i would excitedly tell facts about jupiter and all of its moons to my friends. i would watch star wars on laser disc every other week, looking up in wonder at the ships sailing thru space and time, wanting to wander so easily just as they did. but my brain would never be able to handle it. as soon as i learned what was required, i knew it would never be. that was the first time my heart was broken. everything else in my life has been settling. that’s right, art is just something i settled on.

if i was looking at the stars, discovering things... i think i would Actually be happy. analyzing the photographs of distant nebulas and planets, instead of the bullshit i’ve snapped on my own. writing about our place in this galaxy, and how it relates to countless others, instead of focusing on my own life - which obviously means absolutely fucking Nothing in the scope of everything. (and i would be okay with that!) working on a telescope, instead of all the broken aspects of myself.

i wouldn’t even need to reach the summit. i wouldn’t need to be floating in a space station. i would be happy on the ground. i wouldn’t need to be a director. i would be happy behind screens and buttons. i would be happy as a body of many. because i would matter to myself first.

there with space... i wouldn’t be caught up in whether my art is better / is worth more or the same than another’s. i wouldn’t be overwhelmed with insecurities and artistic imposter’s syndrome. i would be working in the Objective. this thing exists. this is a specific phenomena. it is now being given a name. it is now being studied. you are now studying it. it is now being reviewed. if there is critique, you will address accordingly. you don’t have to worry about whether or not someone has an emotional or financial connection to it - a person either believes or doesn’t. the study is either sound or un-sound. the work is either published or unpublished. the mission is either a success or a failure. procedures are either followed or not. you are either looking or you aren’t. these are the blacks and whites you can handle. this is how your brain operates.

it’s easier for me to write off a dumbass who refuses to see beyond the shadows of a cave, than someone who doesn’t like my shadow and prefers the puppets of someone else. i can’t handle the subjective. why are my shapes worth less to you than his? aren’t we using the same fingers? aren’t we projecting on the same cave? why do you believe in those truths more than mine? i can’t handle the critique of my work because it Must be tied to myself and my pain. if you can’t understand the work, you can’t understand me. if you don’t like the work, you don’t like me. there is no separation between the created and creator. perhaps this too is a lack of spatial awareness. perhaps it is not the BPD holding me back but discalculia yet again. maybe it was the culprit all along. i wish i had realized it sooner. 

the truth is, i shouldn’t be here in these circles. maybe i was never meant to be here. truthfully, i wish i wasn’t here. if there was a way to slide into that alternate timeline, Over Somewhere Else to live the Other Mica’s life, i would. i would and i would never look back. 

there’s nothing i’ve gained from being different. and i’ve made nothing of it. if i could do it all again with another build, i would. even if my upbringing remained the same, if those points could be put into the traditional AP route: the calculus & the physics & the SATs & 4 years & the degrees, i would. then every resulting choice would be different. every resulting outcome would be sound. i would be someone else. and i would be Someone.

#prose diary

[arcturusblackiii]

Title: The stars may be covered by clouds and the moon may be new (but your smile is all the light I need)

Fandom: Harry Potter Wordcount: 1820 Category: Gen Warnings: Implied/referenced child abuse Rating: Teen Relationships: Regulus Black & Sirius Black Characters: Regulus Black, Sirius Black Summary:

The year is 1977 Its been several months since Sirius ran away

Its the new Hogwarts year, and Regulus has finally, finally worked up the courage to talk to his (disowned) brother. Sirius worries about Regulus and Regulus attempts to convince him that yes, he's fine. He isn't exactly convincing, and Sirius has him make a promise.

Otherwise summed up as "Sirius and Regulus talk out their emotions and things look towards the better"

Tags:

Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Sibling Bonding, Sirius Black is a Good Brother, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, Good Regulus Black, circa 1977, Walburga Black's A+ Parenting, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

For @youurelovely

Mid October, 1977

Sirius’s 7th year, Regulus’s 6th.

Regulus sat on a bench by the edge lake, staring aimlessly over the water. Watching it ripple.

He had his gaze fixed on a spot where he was particularly sure there was a turtle of sorts.

It’s late.

Of course it's late.

The sky is dark, the moon new.

Clouds blotted out most the stars, making the night somehow even gloomier.

It was cold, but not bitingly so. Regardless, the thick robe he wore kept the cold out.

Overall, it was exactly the sort of night he would have expected to meet Sirius on.

He wondered if Sirius would show.

He doubted it.

After all, why would he?

Why would he bother with sneaking out to see him of all people?

Risk getting detention and other various consequences.

He wasn't worth that.

Besides, Sirius hated him.

He knew Sirius hated him.

He’d made that clear.

He didn't even know why he was trying this.

What were the outcomes even, Sirius coming and them fighting, or Sirius not coming and leaving the aching hole in his chest wider.

There was no good outcome of this.

He was pulled from his musing by footsteps.

He resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder and see who was coming, and kept his gaze fixed on the water.

It could only be Sirius.

Well, it technically could have been anyone.

But it was most likely Sirius.

His suspicions were confirmed when Sirius sat down next to him.

Regulus exhaled a breath he hadn't even realized he was holding.

“So..” Sirius started. “I’m here.”

He didn't seem angry, or exasperated, or even annoyed.

It was more reassuring than anything else Regulus had tried to calm his nerves about this. “Sirius.. I..”

There was so much he wanted to say, but he said none of it.

He didn't even know where to begin with this conversation.

“How have you been?” He asked after a moment, desperate to break the choking silence.

“Better than the last time we properly spoke.”

Sirius responded effortlessly. Like every word wasn't hard to get out.

Like it was easy to talk to him.

Like talking to him wasn't stressful.

Like things were normal and okay. Like he hadn’t run away. Like there was no hundred kilometer chasm between them growing wider by the minute.

Regulus drew his knees to his chest. “That's good. I’m glad you’re okay.” He spoke softly, keeping his eyes fixed somewhere far out over the water.

If he had looked at Sirius, he would have seen how his expression moved from curiosity to more worry.

“Okay. What's up with you, you’re never like this.” He knew Sirius was looking at him, seeing if he could spot anything glaringly wrong.

He also knew that if he looked at Sirius, he would probably tear up and that wouldn't be good for anybody.

Because if he started crying, that would just complicate things even further.

He thought of Walburga’s anger, growing hotter by the day, and Orion's forced indifference and cold disappointment. He thought of the cuts and bruises over the summer. The broken arm. Thought of Walburga’s growing desperation to redeem herself in the eyes of the other pureblood woman she would see at parties. Of her mortification over Sirius and how much she wanted to separate herself from her failed son and heir. Of how furious she would get at him being brought up.

He thought of the fights between her and Orion once far and inbetween that now sat like rainclouds on the horizon. Dark and ominous.

He thought of his growing fear of Walburga having him join the death eaters..

He thought about how everything seemed to be falling apart in slow motion, all orbiting around him.

“I’m fine.” He lied.

“Sure you are.” Sirius had hardly been here a minute, and he had already begun worrying him. He knew Sirius had seen right through the lie. A sideways glance at him revealed he was wearing that expression that revealed he could see right through him.

“Why did you want to talk with me?”

I miss you.

It's been hell without you.

You were the only good thing in my life.

I love you.

Instead of saying any of that, Regulus shrugged and folded his hands. staring intently over the lake.

“..Okay.”

Regulus forced himself to keep his gaze over the water. To not look at Sirius to gauge his reaction.

“Regulus, What's really happening?”

Regulus bit his lip, and slowly exhaled. Forcing his shoulders to relax and trying to smile. “Sirius, I’m okay. Really.”

“Oh don’t even try and pull that shit on me. You couldn't even fool Aunt Charis with that fake smile. You wouldn't.. You wouldn't go through the hassle of planning an entire meeting thing if nothing was wrong.”

“Maybe I just wanted to talk to you like everything was normal, okay? I don't know.” Regulus tried, still avoiding Sirius’s scrutinizing gaze.

It wasn't a lie, really.

He desperately wanted to talk to Sirius like things were okay.

“Reg..”

“And it's not like I can talk to you in broad daylight, right? Someone will see and news will get back to Her somehow and you know how that is.”

“Yeah, I do.” There was worry in Sirius’s voice.

He was still looking at him expectantly. Like he expected a real answer to why Regulus asked to meet him.

Too bad Regulus was too ashamed to admit it.

“This was a terrible idea. I’m sorry.” Regulus finally looked at Sirius, hugging his knees tighter to his chest.

Sirius looked just as worried as his voice had implied.

He looked actually worried. Not false worry, or angry worried, really and truly worried.

He hadnt seen Sirius really and truly worried in a long while.

“I—” He choked on his words. He hadnt expected that.

He was going to say he missed him.

But he just.. couldn't.

Out of fear, out of mortification, out of denial, he didn't know.

“I’m happy you're safe.” He said instead.

“Thanks.” Sirius kept his gaze fixed on Regulus with that real, genuine worried expression. “How have things been without me? Must be nice not having me around to piss her off all the time.”

Regulus thought about how angry Walburga was constantly these days. Her bitter, hysterical anger.

He nearly laughed.

“No, actually.” Regulus returned his gaze to the lake, so he doesn't have to see Sirius’s reaction. “It's been.. It's been really hard.” His voice couldn't have been much louder than a whisper as he confessed that. But somehow, he felt like he was screaming it for the whole world to hear.

Like there was no possible way to be quiet enough when saying it.

“Has it?”

“She..” He swallows his trepidation. There wasn't much point in hiding things, not really.

And Sirius deserved to know anyway.

“She’s really.. She’s gotten angrier, somehow. Bitterer. It's uh, with you being a..” He cleared his throat, slipping into a mocking voice that was meant to sound vaguely like Walburga. “‘Worthless mudblood loving blood traitor who should rot’ or something like that. But ah.. She’s gotten worse, I think.”

“Do you need me to come back?” Sirius asked with absolutely no hesitation.

The question made his blood freeze in his veins.

“What?” Regulus turned to look at Sirius, convinced he’d heard him wrong.

Because that didn't make sense. Why would he ever suggest something like that?

“Do you need me to come back, Regulus. Because I will. I could make up some, I don't know, bullshit about ‘Learning the awful truth of mudbloods’ or some.. absolute bullshit like that. And I would come back.”

“No. No. Never.” Regulus didn't even try to hide how stunned he was.

Because that was honestly the most idiotic, ill adviced thing he had ever heard Sirius say.

Well, no, it wasn't. But it was pretty far up there.

“Do not come back. She’ll — god Sirius I don't even know what she’d do. She’d kill you. She’d beat you half to death then kill you.”

“That wasn't the question, Regulus. Do you need me to come back? Will she kill you. Will she hurt you. Do you need me there?”

“I-” Regulus bit his lip. Because the answer was yes. “I’ll live.”

“Regulus.”

“She — Look. There hasn’t been much beyond, you know how she is. Cuts. Bruises. Yelling. The occasional spell. It’ll be fine. I’m fine.”

“You're lying.” Sirius said without breaking eye contact with him. “You're fucking lying. What has she done? Did she fucking Crucio you?”

“No! No. She didn't.” Not yet, at least. He added mentally. “Look. She broke my arm about 2 weeks after you left and that's the worst physical damage done. It's just been fucking hell without you, okay? But you can't come back. I will be fine.”

“She’ll kill you!”

“She’d kill you long before she kills me, Sirius. I’ll be fine.”

They held eye contact for a few seconds, challenging each other.

Surprisingly, Sirius caved first.

“Then I need you to really, and truly promise me something. Okay?”

“Why?”

“I just need you to.”

“Fine. What is it.”

“If you ever need me, if she ever uses Cruciatus or, fuck I don't know. Imperius or some shit. If she ever, ever does anything that will ruin your life, or hurt you like that, write me. Just write me. Firecall me even. I’ll come get you. No questions asked.”

“You don't need—”

“No, Regulus. You’re my brother. No matter what her tree says. I’ll be here for as long as you want me. I’m still here, I’m still your brother. So promise me that. Promise me that you’ll get me.”

“Sirius..” His voice is thick with all the emotion he’s forced back since the night Sirius ran away, and probably some more at Sirius’s words. “Okay. I promise.”

Sirius’s resulting smile was enough to make him smile back.

“Good. If she ever, ever goes to far, if you ever need somewhere to go, or hell, even just an outside opinion, I’m here.”

Regulus blinked back tears, still smiling a watery smile.

“All you need to do is ask, and I’ll be there.”

“Okay.” Regulus managed though his churning emotions. He felt something suspiciously like happiness. “Thank you.”

“It's nothing, Reggie.” Sirius wrapped an arm around his shoulders and tugged him into what was a slightly rough hug.

Regulus hugged him back, and for all of 5 seconds they were quiet.

“I love you, you know.” Sirius whispered. “You're not allowed to forget that.”

Regulus rubbed at his eyes as he pulled back. “I love you too, Sirius.”

“That's good, because if you didn't this would be rather awkward.”

“Shush.”

“You have never once been able to make me be quiet, and I doubt you’ll have suddenly acquired that ability.”

Regulus laughed softly, and smiled again. “No, I don't think I have.”

#Regulus Black #Sirius Black #Brothers Black #Hp fic #my fic #my writing #text

[ironspiidey]

Superheros get Bullied too Chapter 2!

Chapter 1 

Chapter 2: Harley Stark & the Bully

Read on AO3

Oh don’t worry Mr. Thompson is never going to make that mistake ever again once we’re through with him.”

Peter and Harley whip their head around to see Tony Stark walking towards them. “Sweater. Now” Harley mumbled under his breath and stepped in front of Peter meeting the older man

Peter nodded and slipped the hoodie over his head

“Hey Mr. Stark” both boys said nervously, looking at each other and then at the man in question.

“Hello boys.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “What are…uh you doing here Mr. Stark?” Peter stammered and looked back to his locker trying to remember which books he may need because from the unimpressed look on the older man’s face it was clear they would not be coming back after lunch.

“Yeah! I thought you wanted me to grab Peter and his school stuff then wait out front for you or Happy?” Harley asked curiously, attempting to hide his nerves and praying that Tony didn’t hear the last bit of his and Peter’s conversation.

Mr. Stark smirked at how nervous they were and clasped a hand on Harley’s shoulder. “Relax. I’m not upset, yet. I needed to make sure Mr. Thompson didn’t try to cause any more trouble today. “

“Oh trust me, he wouldn’t have gotten away with it…”

Tony gave Harley a stern look but Peter piped up before he could form a response “Yes! Because we would have alerted a teacher and called you of course to—Mr. Stark” Peter said, his rate of speech going a mile a minute which made the older man smile softly despite himself. Peter was just too cute when he was anxious.

“Ye—yeah exactly. “ Harley tried to give a convincing smile in his uncle’s direction

“Bullshit, I know you both too well to know that would be the last thing you’d do.”

Peter grabbed his AP books and shut his locker “I would have called you regardless.” He mumbled looking at his backpack as he struggled with the zipper, long since worn but Peter hated to get rid of it. Uncle ben gave him this bag the year he died.

“Oh I don’t doubt that Petey. However I do doubt that Harley would simply let it go without a fight. We really should replace this.” Tony let go of Harley and leaned forward helping Peter with the zipper.

“I don’t wanna get rid of it.”

“Sweetie it’s about ready to fall apart.” Tony said softly, temporarily forgetting where they were.

“It’s important to me and I want to keep it.”

“Um guys, hate to break up this moment but uh people are staring.” Harley says nervously.

Peter coughs awkwardly and slings his backpack over his shoulder and looked around seeing students once again staring and talking about him.

Tony puts his hand between Peter’s shoulder blades and nods to his nephew. “Lead the way kid.”

Once Harley starts walking ahead of them, Tony whispers “This okay Petey?”

Peter nods, the feeling of Tony touching him makes him feel safe, grounds him. “Yeah. It helps. As long as you don’t mind the whispers.”

Tony couldn’t help but chuckle “I’m Tony Stark, I live for the whispers”

Peter grins and leans more into his touch. “Let’s go home.”

They were able to get down the stairs and onto the main floor before somebody spoke up. “Oh my god it’s Tony Stark!!!”

Peter and Harley both wince, the latter walking more forcefully “Coming through, idiots move out of the way. Yes its Tony Stark but fuck off and let us through.”

Despite Peter’s anxiety and worrying about Flash appearing, he couldn’t help but smile at Harley’s attitude, just like his Uncle; sassy and straight to the point. Not taking no for an answer.

“Language Harley.” Tony stated despite being proud of the younger man for trying to keep people away. This was still a high school and last thing they needed was for someone to report his nephew and delay their exit by a teacher.

All of a sudden they here Peter gasp and freeze. Tony and Harley turn in look in the direction Peter was and see Flash Thompson storming up to him with a face of absolute anger.

Harley starts to lose it, Peter couldn’t get one hour away from that dumb jock. He started to storm in front of Peter and towards the bully but was pulled back when Tony grabbed his hood. “Ah ah Nephew. Let him come forward.”

Harley looked pissed but nodding, clearly his uncle had a plan. He stood in front of Peter and whispered. “Don’t worry Parker, we got you.”

Peter gulped, looking at Flash it was clear he didn’t see Tony but that was what scared him most. If he didn’t see him that means he was going to act his normal self and Tony Stark was not going to be pleased with it.

“Oh is Parker your new boyfriend Harley? That why your boys tried to threaten me?!” Flash hollers as he makes his way to them.

“Not mine no.”

“Then why in the hell are you protecting that faggot.”

Before Harley could form a response, Tony growled. Actually growled which Peter will deny but he found it extremely hot. Tony pats Peter on the shoulder and walks around both boys. Stopping only when he was in front of Flash. “Well you see Mr. Thompson. That ‘faggot’ happens to be a family friend and Harley happens to be my nephew so I asked him politely to keep an eye on Peter as I know some people tend to be rude to him but what I failed to realize was that William’s oldest was going to be one of those kids terrorizing my poor Peter.”

Flash’s eyes widen and he starts sputtering. He didn’t see his father’s employer, too focused on Peter. ”Mr. Stark. Sir. I didn’t realize you were there.”

“So it’s only okay when I’m not here?”

“Sir of course not.. Did you know that Peter has been lying saying he works for you?” Flash attempts to change the subject while eyeing Peter with a smirk.

“Well Mr. Thompson he doesn’t work for me yet but hopefully after he graduates he will be working for SI.” Tony smiles at Peter, to which Peter blushes.

“Hah! I knew it was bullshit! I even got-.”

“Not so fast.” Tony rolls his eyes. “As I was saying, Peter may not be a paid employee of SI but he is however an intern. Has been for over a year now. “

Flash smile falls right off his face. Then he looks from Harley to Peter to Mr. Stark “you’re just saying that because Peter is Harley’s boyfriend!”

Tony’s eyebrows raise up “Excuse me?”

“Flash for the love of god give it a rest.” Peter says exasperated. “What is it going to take for you to realize I’m not fucking lying?? The Tony Stark literally just told you I’m his intern. What your going to need to see me in the flesh there to believe it?”

“Well I’ve never seen a badge in your bag or with you. That building is secure, all employees require one. Intern or otherwise.” Flash crosses his arms.

Harley’s eyes widen in shock and despite his uncles orders he grabs flash by the collar and slams him into a locker “You went through Parkers stuff? You’re sick Thompson. I should beat your fucking ass.”

“Harley! Let go of him please. “

“He’s a piece of shit. “ Harley growls

“Harley please let him go. He’s not worth it.” Peter sighs, knowing Harley may have just cost him his Bike project.

Harley let go of the other teen reluctantly. Peter had been through a shit day and he wasn’t going to make it worse. “Watch yourself Thompson.”

Flash rolls his eyes “and here I thought you would hold the pants in the relationship. Not so tough when your prissy boyfriend tells you what to do. “

Tony rolls his eyes “being an absolute prick is not very becoming Mr. Thompson. Stay away from Peter or you can say goodbye to being able to work alongside your father on Sundays anymore.”

“You know about those?” Flash’s eyes widen

“Of course I do. I know all when it comes to my company and otherwise” Tony slips his glasses on “We will be in contact later Mr. Thompson. You think I would lie to help my nephew’s boyfriend?” Tony leans forward and whispers the next part in his ear. “Peter is with a Stark but not Harley.”

“C’mon boys, let’s go get some lunch. We have serious planning to do.”

Peter and Harley nod “Coming Mr. Stark.”

Tony stops just in front of the entrance doors, holding the door open for the boys. “Oh and Mr. Thompson? It’s a shame you pick on those who are out of the closet when you’re not. “

Flash gaps at the man and sputters as people around him start mumbling around him. “I’m not gay!!!” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- “So that’s it? Just a friendly stay away from me talk?” Peter asks hopefully between mouthfuls of Chinese.

Harley snorts around his noodles “I really doubt it.”

Tony smiles watches both boys eat. Taking a drink of some protein shake Peter demanded he start drinking. “You would be right Harley, this is just the beginning.”

Peter sighs “Tones… “

“I’m sorry Petey but he can’t and will not get away with being mentally abusive to you. He should be thankful he hasn’t physically harmed you otherwise.” Tony licked his lips. “Well we won’t worry about that because it didn’t happen.”

Harley eyes Peter, Peter was always the shittiest liar and of course the redhead started coughing on his chicken. “You alright Pete?”

Peter grabbed his drink and took a big gulp “um yeah fine. Perfectly fine.” He swallowed and slid his chair away from the table. “Bathroom.” Is all he said then practically ran down the hallway.

Tony watched him go worried then turned to Harley and seen him looking just as worried.

“What exactly happened today Harley.”

“I already told you, Flash was absolute knob, Peter lost his cool. Flash tried to stop him from walking away and Peter made a fool outta him then went to class.”

“Right, But there’s more to it. I’m not stupid.” Tony scratches his chin in thought. About 2 minutes pass before his eyes widen. “ You said Flash tried to stop him”

The blonde nodded nervously. “Yep.”

“How did he try that exactly?”

Harley licked his lips pushed his food around his plate and didn’t say anything

“Harley.”

Harley just looked at his uncle, not saying anything but still saying plenty enough. Tony jumped up and ran down the hall.

“Well fuck me, so much for not being here when the shit hit the fan. “ Harley sighed and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling.

#starker #starker fic #my fic #new chapter #chapter update #ironspiidey writes #a03 #flash is a dick #tony is done taking shit #peter is 18 #really he's like 23 with the blip #end game what end game #Gay ships are yay ships #peter x tony #superheros get bullies too

[serenagaywaterford]

was I the only one who thought tuello was going to mention the 2x10 rape and not the nick thing when he arrested serena??? like, obviously I understand the thing with nick was rape regardless, but she did ask them both and june would've ended up in the colonies had she not gotten pregnant while the 2x10 rape doesn't really have any sustainable justification behind it. I don't see "I was in a mood and wanted the baby to come faster" working in court (1/2)

and I guess you can argue there's no way to prove that that rape happened, but serena got arrested before any paternal test was done so it seems as if fred's word is enough?? I guess they can get the test done later and confirm it, but I don't know, I feel like there's a way out of this for serena whilst I don't think there would've been a way out if they had proof of what happened in 2x10. I just find this flimsy. (2/2)

---

No, you weren’t! I honestly... I thought it was going to be about her actual war crimes, like her blatant terrorism against the US, conspiracy to blow up state capitols, and overthrowing a democratic government via war. But hey, that’s too easy lol. Like, why on earth Fred wouldn’t turn her in for THAT, which are HUGE crimes that the ICC/Americans/etc would actually be interested in is beyond me. Oh wait, no it’s not, cos this is The Handmaid’s Tale and they don’t know shit about law or politics, or at this point common fucking sense. It’s a soap opera now.

I’m just so irritated by that whole “Let’s arrest Serena for rape!” concept because it’s entirely based on a) an individual and singular crime against a single person on foreign (sovereign) soil; not a war crime (so why the ICC would have ANYTHING to do with it is beyond me) and b) FRED WATERFORD’S WORD. Because suddenly they believe everything an admitted war criminal is saying against the woman who literally turned him in???? No, nothing suspect about that at all.

(The American government may have an interest because they do get involved in individual crimes against Americans on foreign soil. But then it gets into whether June is still an American, legally. And whether Serena is. Which is super confusing and murky. I’d say June is, and Serena likely isn’t since she probably renounced her US citizenship, but I’m also not a legal scholar or lawyer. And whether the international community even considers Gilead its own country, or just some type of military occupation on American soil. SO COMPLICATED. This is why the show should have just stayed away from all of this trash.)

I mean, we know Fred’s not lying about what happened to June then but the fact Tuello & Co. just take his word at face value with NO corroboration is absolutely fucking mental. 

Not to mention, how the FUCK does Fred even know about that? All he knows is that June got pregnant with Nick’s baby. Was he secretly listening the entire time to everything Serena has said? Cos, let’s take a step back for a second and think rationally about how the hell Fred would have access to that information lol. Serena, from what we saw, was incredibly discreet about setting it up. Was Fred actually lurking in her bushes when she talked to June about it? Was he around when Serena supposedly spoke to Nick about it? (We don’t know where that was but probably either in Nick’s apartment or in the car.) So, does Fred actually have the whole house bugged? LOLOLOLOL. Even if he saw Serena bringing June out to Nick’s apartment, he has no idea what anybody’s thoughts or feelings were about that. Serena and June could have easily been in on it together, and there was no rape involved at all! He doesn’t know that. Did he sneak up to Nick’s second floor window and watch how fucking WEIRD that whole thing was? LMAO.

To me, the fact Fred knows all that is a fucking big plot hole. He didn’t before. But suddenly he knows Serena set up Offred’s rape by Nick? Did she tell him that? Cos that would be insane of Serena to do and completely OOC. All Serena’s said is that “HA HA! The baby isn’t yours, you manky chode!”

Anyway...

To be frank, I have a post--quite a long one--sitting in my drafts about how incredibly asinine and unrealistic that charge against Serena is as a “war crime”, not to mention how weak it is just from a legal standpoint, even if we would take it as a regular rape charge. (She would literally never be found guilty, lbr. There is no solid legal basis for it (there is a flimsy one) and when you consider her defense--which is way more solid than the charge--the chances of anybody ever prosecuting her for that, let alone convicting her, are so incredibly thin, even if it was just as a regular rape crime, not a war crime.) She’d be more likely charged with something like sex trafficking or procuring (prostitution) or coercion or accessory to rape and/or conspiracy to rape. (And she’s clearly guilty of those things). Not the rape itself. It’s so! fucking! stupid! Sex trafficking would be SO much more solid of a charge cos essentially that is what she did...

She didn’t rape June in that instance much more than she murdered those kids Fred shot in the woods. She’s a shitty fucking person for putting that idea in his head, and basically saying, “Go do this for me, you pathetic little man” but she didn’t actually say the words, nor did she commit the actual crime herself. (Heyyyyaaa Lady Macbeth!) Both Fred and Nick were acting of their own free will. 

(Honestly, I will go on forever about how Nick is NOT some innocent, helpless creature. He’s a MAN (aka automatic superiority over any woman), and an EYE (AN EYE, YOU GUYS!!!! The most elite of the Gilead intelligence forces!!!), and to refuse Serena’s request would be EXPLICITLY FOLLOWING THE LAWS OF GILEAD and there is NO WAY he would ever, ever be punished by Gilead for that lmao--for following the law. If he reported Serena to Fred or even Pryce, Serena would be fucking punished--probably with death or Colonies (which is just prolonged death). And he’d have June’s supporting testimony too! What part of this misogynistic fascist state are you people missing? A lowly woman trying to make a man break the law and defile another man’s property?! HAHAHAHA. As if they’d take Serena’s side. Nick is a fucking Eye. There are instances where they do take a woman’s side, like with Janine’s random accusation--but significantly: Warren was BREAKING the law, not upholding it as Nick refusing to rape Offred and turning Serena in would have been following the law. To me, it never ever made sense that the men would just turn on their own like that over a literally mentally-ill Handmaid’s suicidal admission. I think, when it comes down to it, Naomi’s contribution made it “two witnesses” to the crime. Like, if you look at most religious texts or cult texts, they generally require more than just the victim. Some require at least 2, some 3 individuals. So for Gilead to require nothing but victim outcry is bonkers and not consistent with the type of society they claim they’ve built in the series. BUT ANYWAY, that’s a big digression...

Like miss me with that complete utter rape-apologist bullshit. He literally took advantage of the situation to put his dick inside a woman who did not essentially consent to it in that particular situation. Or, if you’re going to argue she did cos she wuvs Nick and wanted to anyway, then your case against Serena falls apart too.)

The only thing I don’t see as being up for debate is that June was raped. That’s it. That is clear and certain. It’s fact. June was raped in that apartment. (She’s raped a lot, obviously, but this was also rape. Nothing else.)

And the creepy part is by doing that she actually did save June’s life. Which is all shades of massively fucked up, and probably not her intention, but here we are. And it seems to be a big part of why June went along with the plan. If Serena hadn’t set up a rapey fuck session for Nick (which he LITERALLY COULD HAVE SAID NO TO AT ANY TIME WITH ZERO CONSEQUENCES and they could have fucked completely consentually another time), June never would have started sleeping with Nick (they had almost 2 years and never made a move on each other lbr), never would have become pregnant, and in a few months would have been sent off to the Colonies to rot. Serena is just going around saving June’s life and not even trying to lmao. Stupid gross idiot. Yes, June agreed under threat of death otherwise. So, that is NOT consent in any universe. If you must do it for survival, it’s rape. If you’re gonna die or agree to sex, that’s rape. Would she have agreed to get raped by Nick if the threat of the Colonies was not hanging over her head? No. Probably not. And Serena used that for her own ends. There is no way Serena is not a shitty criminal person for what she set up. But it’s also not a fucking crime against humanity, by definition.

So, anyway, without going into all the complexities and bullshit about Nick’s role any further, Serena’s role, etc in all this, it’s just absolutely motherfucking insane that any international law enforcement agency would charge Serena with THAT based on the word of a scorned husband who is also a massive rapist, liar, abuser, and war criminal himself. Like, give me a fucking break already.

And... I’m not gonna lie... if this was even remotely based on history/reality, they would turn a blind eye to anything Serena has done, especially if it was on such a small scale as one instance of sex trafficking. Sounds terrible to put it that way, but that is how these things roll. She’s a small little fish, comparatively. In the grand scheme of things, she’s FAR more valuable as a witness/asset against the Big Fish (Fred) and as a tool for their anti-Gileadean use. Unless they had significant evidence about ALL her crimes. She’s so much more useful as someone who has direct experience and witness to the entire rise of Gilead, including all the massive fucking terrorist crimes against an entire government and mass murders, that Fred et al. committed. To go after Serena so soon is just kneecapping their own damn case against Fred/Gilead lmao.

[This is where the rumours about Rita come in, but here’s the thing, Serena was already granted immunity for what she did under the guise of being a “Wife”. And seriously, what does Rita really know anyway? Serena’s smacked some people around. She’s locked June in her room. She makes June cry and drink gross smoothies. She helps with the Ceremony. She--with the entire system--forced surrogacy and basically kidnapped a baby. Those things, from what I can tell, are perfectly legal in Gilead for a Wife to do, just like it’s perfectly legal for Fred to whip the shit out of Serena--and Serena has been granted immunity for that shit (which is sorta funny in a way cos she basically used the Nuremberg defense, but it’s layered because she was actually a victim of Gilead too. Tricky shit). 

Now, that 2x10 rape is pretty fucking awful (and likely NOT Gilead-legal) and I’m almost certain Rita would have known about that in some way--but she also wasn’t a direct witness. But maybe she doesn’t? It would be fucking stupid of the Waterfords to be like, “Hurr durr let’s illegally pregnancy rape the Handmaid with a Martha an/or Guardian around even tho it comes with a punishment of DEATH!” But I suppose they are not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed either... 

Maybe she knows about the Rapey Sex Date Serena set up for Nick, maybe not, also not a witness to it. We can make assumptions about what Rita knows and doesn’t know, but also... like, none of that matters? (Yet.) Those are just regular fucking crimes on foreign soil and the American and Canadian governments have no jurisdiction to prosecuting them. War crimes require different criteria and Serena smacking Rita in the face isn’t a war crime. It’s shitty assault, but not something any international body would EVER go after.]

Anyway, the show is stupid af for suggesting they’d go after Serena for that singular instance of rape as a war crime. Crimes against humanity--of which YES sexual slavery (sex trafficking in this way) is--require widespread and/or systematic implementation. Serena was NOT going around making all Guardians rape Handmaids for her to get a baby. (Gilead however, and FRED WATERFORD specifically, were directly responsible for the SYSTEM of massive sexual slavery that they created AND maintained. Serena didn’t even come up with the Handmaid idea--THAT WAS THE MEN IN THAT DAMN CAR (Hi Nick, you were there too!).) 

Like... ugh. Stick with what you know, THT. Cos clearly it isn’t anything remotely in the legal realm.

But hey, they had to make up some way to either put Serena on trial for an entire season (YAWNNNNN), or send her back to Gilead. If it’s for the latter reason, and it means we’ll revisit the June/Serena dynamic as the core component of the show, then I’ll let it slide but if it’s to set up the Miller Wet Dream Trial Season and keep Fred/Serena forced together, then I’m livid.

Not that I should care at all considering how many times I’ve said I’m not even watching it anymore, heh.

#long post #this one sort of got away from me.... oop #Anonymous

[scummy-writes]

Stupid and Sappy post

*waves hands* It’s time for Scum to say bye to MM under the cut! (This is very stupid jhfbjhf)

I can already feel people rolling their eyes at me for this, especially folks who keep like, vague tweeting me and shit over my opinions about this game, but guess what bitch is gonna write this anyway! Me! sfbjhdf

(This post is going to be incoherent at places, like as I am as a person, but also! I talk about heavy subjects like suic*de, so if that gets to you, please don’t read!)

To start it off seriously: even though recently I’ve had a lot of issues over this company with their lack of warning over heavy triggering content, and their very blatantly bad customer service, I still love the original game a lot. Not in the “Oh this plot is beautiful” way, but like. This game helped me at a time when I was extremely lonely, and was dealing with a lot of heavy shit at home.

If you guys have followed me since the beginning, you know know I started this blog just a few months after downloading this game. Like riiight at the beginning of Jan 2017, I made my first post on here- this blog is two years old! I started out as a HC blog and stayed that way for a while, and I think after I hit 1k followers I finally brought up the fact that I had an AO3 account- and folks realized I had started writing fics in oct 2016 for this game! So, a lot of people know that, wow! This game inspired me a lot creatively and helped me hone my writing skills a bit more after a while not being in a writing class! (And yes, my early fics I absolutely refuse to look at because I hate how I used to write JHBJSBFS).

What a lot of folks don’t know, is that at the very beginning of august, I had gotten out of a ward after coming very close to doing something pretty bad to myself. 

Granted, I didn’t have to stay in there long- I had put myself in there so I could also leave whenever I wanted (as long as the docs deemed me safe to leave as well) but I kept myself in there for a good bit so I could do a lot of critical thinking and not stress so much about my job at the time.

Afterwards, I got out, while I wasn’t still at That Point, I was still struggling pretty bad mentally. Home life was rough, my mom was battling with a terrible boyfriend at the time that lived with us, and I was still dipping back into some pretty bad thoughts.

Then, a friend I’ve had for a while now, introduced me to this game! And, well, I already covered that it helped me a lot in the creative process, but it also helped distract me a shitton from the bad home life I had.

A lot of people probably also remember that a month after having this blog up and running, my mom tried killing herself.

Everything is still really vivid in my memory about that- because like. So many things could have gone wrong. My little brother could have fallen asleep earlier before he found her, I could have picked up that extra hour for my shift at work, this, that- but long story short she’s still alive.

But it was a terrible year for me. Probably, arguably, all of 2017 was the worst year I’ve had in my life so far. So many things happened with my mother, she was mentally unstable, and after a lot of threats against me I even had to move out until she was more stable and, you know, not threatening to hurt me/break my shit.

And, a lot of you know, while I was constantly dealing with my own mother threatening me and trying to disown me, I was also being harassed on a constant basis over juz*n bullshit. Words cannot describe how laughably stupid that whole situation was, but it was completely, utterly, ridiculous bullshit. 

Add that onto me dealing with the IRL struggles with my mom, some of which are somewhat starting to repeat even now- to the point where I’m going to be moving out again soon- well. Shit! It sucked, lol. It sucked a lot, and there were many times where I wish I was back in the hospital or worse.

But, and yes I’m gonna say exactly what yall are expecting, again- this game helped me out a lot. I constantly felt alone and worthless- my own mother was abandoning me- and these voiced sprites made me feel less alone. Gave me the attention I wish I had IRL.

And, well, a lot of my 2017 year is easy to summarize. Constantly harassed, bullied, and dealing with stupid fandom wank. But, also, filled with wonderful messages and support from you guys. 

I’ve preached before how follower counts are ridiculous to base your self worth on- and yes I still agree to that, please don’t base your self worth on follower counts. Or anyone’s! - but some of you have literally followed me since the beginning, or for a Very Long Time, if not. I may be terrible with names, but I still recognize you guys and all the kind words you’ve sent me, and I hope you guys know you helped just as much as MM was helping me.

I’m getting incoherent, but a lot of what I’m trying to say is that, this game has helped me out a shitton. That’s probably why I get so vocal about issues concerning the company- not out of a sense of ‘they owe me’ (they owe me absolutely fucking nothing), but just. It sucks seeing a game that used to be so wonderful in its prime, go so fucking downhill so fast. Customer service used to be wonderful, I remember accidentally putting down my old address for the VIP package and messaging them right after I ordered explaining I needed a change of address, and a Live Person getting back to me within the hour and fixing the issue.

Comparing that with, you know, the Four Fucking Months it took to speak to Someone Successfully about the saeran daki bullshit- then you know...Well, yeah you guys know, I’ve went off about it before.

Now it’s apparent that they’re more money hungry, with how you had to pay 900+ hgs with the recent AE stuff with V, and...hoo boy, I’m sure everyones heard enough at this point.

So, backtracking a bit because I’m chugging coffee and all incoherent, this game has brought in a lot of positives in my life. You guys, healthier distractions than what I used to do to myself, friends, creative outlets being brought back to life again. I think thats why I get so upset at the fandom, at people snapping at me for not liking some of the recent things cheritz has done- people fucking vaguetweeting me, for fucks sake, and getting so personally angry at me over how I got upset at Cheritz. Like, I’m not shitting yall, I literally lost friendships  over my opinions on cheritz.

And it sucks! Not gonna lie, like it sucks because it’s so fucking stupid. But then you take a look into the fandom- with the ongoing and constant harassment over contributors in charity zines, constant harassment over people if they like a character you don’t or vice versa, the harassment against artists concerning repostings or, god forbid, them drawing a ship you dislike- and it’s just. 

How did a game, focusing on the message of how kindness and patience can help out in so many ways, create this rabid fucking fandom?

Even content creators fight against each other. I cannot explain the bullshit I’ve seen over people being mad that they’re not on someones personal “recommended blogs to follow!” lists, over people going out of their way to harass folks because they didn’t make it on a zine, over people trying to use a follow count over why they’re much better than so and so- It’s just...Bad. All of it.

And, well. Combine Cheritz rapidly making their own game worse, in ways we all have heard about me (or others) complain about, and this terrible fandom, I think that perfectly explains why I’m uninstalling and pretty much being done with the fandom once the other stuff I’m involved in finishes.

This game brought a lot of happiness for me, and even with my recent grievances with this game, it (laughably) hurts to uninstall it. I know its ridiculous, god trusT ME i know, but it still sucks saying goodbye to something I still love, but can’t stand being around anymore. At this point, the fandom feels like an abusive ex-friend/whatever and the game used to be what good the ex had left. And now that thats getting worse...orz

I’ll always treasure the doors this game opened up for me- how it allowed me to meet amazing people, some of which I can happily say are my friends, and how it helped me become creative again, how I’ve been able to be on zines to help charities, and how I’ve been blessed to hear my writing impact people in positives ways- but here’s my sappy goodbye while I try to scrapbook the positive memories and bury the negative ones in upcoming therapy session.

If you read this far- bless yoooooou I know I sound like the damn. Crazy image of the dude with papers pinned to the wall, but I hope I made some sort of sense. Thank you!

#scum talks

[danielcooperrp]

*clears my throat in a way that means 'power move incoming* all of them. Literally all of the flower symbolism meme

Bay Wreath - What is your muse’s proudest moment/accomplishment?Getting his doctorate at age twenty.Begonia - Is your muse prone to ‘flights of fancy’, or are they more down-to-earth?Sober: down-to-earth. Drunk: flights of fancy.Bellflower - Who does your muse love?In the main ‘verse, @thenamesallison​. All other ‘verses (except spin-offs of the main ‘verse) are up for grabs.Bells of Ireland - Is your muse lucky?He does’t believe in luck. He believes in the inherent chaos of the universe that just sometimes happens to spin out in his favor.Bird’s-foot Trefoil - How far would your muse go for revenge? What level of offense warrants retaliation, in your muse’s opinion?Absolutely not far at all. He’s not retaliatory, not a fighter. Except in prank wars. There are no friends in prank wars. Bird of Paradise Flower - Does your muse have a good grasp of the bigger picture, or do they have a more narrow perspective on things?He has trouble with the middle picture. As a scientist, he has to be able to focus on the little details, and he also has to be able to see the larger systems at play. It’s the stuff in between that tends to get lost. Box - How much has your muse changed throughout their life? What sort of inner demons have they overcome?Oh boy has he changed. While the core of who he is hasn’t—he is still soft and kind and emotional and funny and deeply committed to using his particular skill set to make the world a better place—he has lost some of his naivete and can be quicker to despair. Of course, he is now more conscientious about entering into relationships, after his first long-term relationship became horribly abusive, and now that he has learned about who and what Hydra is, he finds it far more difficult to trust. Borage - How courageous is your muse in general? What limits do they have to their courage? Are there any situations that will give them more courage than they normally would have?He is courageous in the small ways. He’s not going to be the first to launch himself at Thanos (why would he, he weighs like a buck fifty soaking wet), but he’s going to tell a douche to back off a clearly uninterested woman in a bar. He’s going to call out a coworker for a racist joke. He’s going to tell his truth even when it’s really fucking scary. He always finds it easier to defend other than to defend himself, but he also thinks that he’s not always worth defending, so there’s that. Broom - How well do they take compliments?He’s pretty good about it. He’s not an idiot; he knows he’s ridiculously smart, and that he’s often going to be the first person in the room to come up with the solution to the problem. However, he is aggressive about make sure credit is given where its due, and if someone has done work that he is being praised for, he’s going to set the record straight. Bulrush - Is your muse an aggressive person? What situations might bring out more aggression in them than normal?*Captain Holt voice* This bitch?Bumblebee Orchid - Is your muse good at figuring out the inner workings of a machine if they take it apart?Mechanics aren’t exactly his jam. Like, if he were to pop open the hood of a car, he’s as likely to fix the problem as he is to blow the entire vehicle up. He has gotten good at fixing the mass spectrometer at work, though, because it breaks like all the fucking time. Buttercup - Does your muse come from a wealthy family? How wealthy is your muse on their own?The Coopers are fairly wealthy. Not Tony Stark-level wealthy, but Daniel always went to private schools and received the best education. Once he struck out on his own, though, he never took his father’s money, and instead made a comfortable middle-class living on his own. Cabbage - Does your muse know how to turn a profit if given the opportunity?Probably not. He’s never really had a reason to, and as a scientist, he’s never been particularly entrepreneurial. Camellia Japonica - What does your muse excel at, and are they aware of/proud of these skills?He is good at a lot of things. Not only does he have an exceptional intellect, but he is also a talented musician and a fluent Italian speaker. He picks up skills fairly naturally. He’s aware of this, but doesn’t feel particularly proud or not-proud of it. It’s just a part of who he is, and he tries not to talk about it so as not to seem like a massive douche.Campanula - What is your muse grateful for in life?In all ‘verses, his grandmother, his dog, his father (some days), his best friends. In the main ‘verse, Ally. Canterbury Bells - Who is your muse grateful for being in their life?Oh well I answered the last one like this one so...ditto.Carnation - What sets your muse apart from their peers, in your opinion?The field of science is incredibly competitive. Competition for grants, positions, publication rights, discoveries—there’s always someone else looking to do what you’re doing, and to do it better than you. Daniel isn’t blind to this reality, and he plays the game as much as he has to, but he always, always prioritizes the work that is going to do the most good over the work that is going to make the best journal article or win the best grant. He wants to be able to see substantive changes being made in the world around him as a direct result of his work, even if he means he has to find funding from unusual sources to do it. Celandine - What is your muse looking forward to? Alternately, what are some examples of events in your muse’s future that will bring them joy?In the main ‘verse, the upcoming birth of his first child. (In the future, there will be more children.) In other ‘verses, he’s looking forward to the day when the stain of Hydra in his past won’t affect his present or future. Cherry Blossom - Does your muse do well in school?He graduated high school at 14 and had a Ph.D. at 20. So...yes.Chestnut - How important is the concept of virginity to your muse personally? Do they impose this on other people?Daniel thinks the entire concept of virginity is some patriarchal bullshit meant to oppress women. That being said, his own virginity was lost in a fairly traumatic way, and that’s something that is always in the back of his mind. Whenever he is in the position to take someone else’s virginity, he’s pretty paranoid about doing it right. China Aster - Would your muse be comfortable with a polyamorous relationship?No.Chrysanthemum - Who considers your muse precious to them? Are they aware of how they feel?Mostly his father and grandmother, as well as his best friends, Connor and Jonathan. He knows how much his grandmother loves him (he’s well aware that he’s her favorite of her three grandchildren, as he is the only child of the daughter she lost), but because of his contentious relationship with his father, he often doubts how much his father really loves him. He probably doesn’t think about the fact that C&J consider him precious, even though to both of him he’s like the stray puppy they’ve adopted and raised. Coreopsis - How good is your muse at keeping a cheery attitude, and how genuine is it?He’s pretty good at being positive. He’s had a lot of shitty things happen to him—his mother died when he was eleven, he was in an abusive relationship, he found out that he had devoted his career to a fascist shadow government—but he has never wavered in his convictions, in his belief that the arc of history bends toward justice, in his hope for the future. He’s not always “cheery,” but he is always optimistic. Cowslip - Does your muse usually exhibit ‘grace under pressure’?More or less. Sometimes he can get snippy when some trials aren’t going well, or when he’s on a journal deadline, but he’s so methodical a person that he’s usually got a plan for getting out of whatever sticky situation he’s in. Clove - Does your muse believe it’s possible for love to endure all hardships?Well, he loved his first boyfriend until he bashed his head in on a kitchen counter, so...no.Clover - Is your muse skillful in any sort of trade? Would they be interested in one?He’s a scientist? I guess? Does that count as a trade?Columbine - Has your muse ever been cheated on?No.Coriander - What are your muse’s views on one-night stands, for themselves or for others?When he first got out of his abusive relationship, he spiraled pretty well out of control and fell into what his best friend Connor calls a “Self-Destructive Slut Phase.” He had a lot of one-night stands, and they acted as a form of self-harm. In general, Daniel doesn’t see anything wrong with one-night stands, as long as everyone’s consenting to them, but for him, they’re an indication that things are not alright emotionally or mentally. Crocus - Did your muse ever experience puppy love as a child?Probably not.Cypress - What is the most impactful loss that your muse has experienced?Again, his mom was murdered when he was eleven.Daffodil - Has your muse ever gotten a chance at a fresh start at life? If not, would they make one if they had the chance?When he found out that Hydra, the organization that his father spent his entire career working for and that he had excitedly worked for himself, was, in fact, evil as fuck, he was heartbroken, and, more importantly, out of work. He had to reinvent himself, reassess what his priorities were, and figure out what to do next. 

#ask #headcanon #evanxthephantomxstanley #this took me like a fucking hour omfg

[itstandsforthesun]

A little life review//spoilers

Two disclaimers before I start this. First, I have never written a review before from either fear or pure laziness, so take me easy on this one (also English is only my second language). Second, this is my opinion, if you loved this book then cheers to you. At the end of the day you got a new favorite book and all I got is the sweet taste of indecision.

With that being said, let’s start. I didn’t hate this book, I didn’t love it even though I enjoyed a big part of it. Do I feel like it has the potential of becoming a new classic? Absolutely not. But let’s start with the beginning, the writing style. I don’t usually pay too much attention to this unless it is extremely good, but this time there were a couple of aspects that were nagging at me. It seemed really try-hard. Try-hard to sound deep, try-hard to sound poetic, try-hard to sound pretentious (that The Secret History good pretentious). The descriptions were at times way too long and unnecessary just like the phrases themselves. A sentence could go on for 5 lines and by the time you got to the end you were filled with so much information that you didn’t even know what was important to the scene at hand and what not.

I’m not saying that the writing style was complete rubbish, it had its charm at times and there were also a lot of quotes that I enjoyed throughout the book, some beautiful descriptions, but even those were spoiled from time to time with sentences that were just too long.

Now that we got the writing style out of the way, let’s move on to the plot. In this book’s case, there’s not much of it. Not that it bothered me, it reminded me of The Goldfinch, a book I loved. The main difference between this book and The Goldfinch though is that the length is not justified. A Little Life could have easily lost at least 200 pages and it would not have made a difference.  The plot got repetitive and to be honest quite tiring. I remember the joy with which I started this book, so curious to find out more about our mysterious Jude and then I remember my only thought approaching the end: “Is this over yet?”

The book was simply too long in my opinion and it had little to nothing on which I could get hooked. I was curious for the end, but not that curious. I knew there was going to be death, it was expected, but I will admit that I was not expecting the actual death count.

And speaking about death, let’s get to the characters, shall we? A Little Life was advertised as a novel about friendship that followed the lives of 4 ex-college roommates through the years. And while that’s true to some extent, more often than not we seem to be concentrating on only one of these 4, Jude St. Francis. And don’t get me wrong, I do get it. Jude is the one with the most baggage, with the most interesting life and back-story, but if that’s the case, at least tell us from the beginning that this is a story about Jude! Don’t advertise JB, Malcom and Willem as main characters when they are not really, not when you know who you really want to write about.

I’ll express my opinion on each of these characters individually now and I’m going to be starting with Malcom since he is the most neglected out of the 4. I get very angry when I think about Malcom and his “character development” throughout this book or the lack of it. We get this dude’s POV once in a 720 pages book! And he is called a main character! A main fucking character! And what’s even worse, when we see him, the only time we really see him, he is filled with indecision, about his future, about his job, about his sexuality, about living with his parents. You want to tell me that these things are not interesting enough to follow, to see how a character gets out of his own head and decides for himself what his own life is going to be? After his short POV in the beginning of the book (which also seemed a little like a cheap anticipation of Jude’s part of the story, like starting with these 3 not so important characters to get them out of the way) we never really find out how he solved all of his problems. We get mentions of him getting a new job, one that he is actually proud of, finding a girlfriend who also becomes his wife later on and moving out of his parent’s house. But we never get his thought process, what made him take attitude in the first place, how he figured out his sexuality. Malcom’s whole character comes off as lazy writing. The author didn’t seem to care enough about Malcom to give him a proper story. Why make him a main character then? Malcom in my opinion had a lot of potential as a character, his constant indecision, still present in the story even without his POV, would have offered great literary material, a great conversation starter on the indecisiveness of people. But no, Malcom had to be resumed to an episodical character who was more often mentioned than present only to feed into the book’s theme of friendship. We could also consider Malcom as an instrument in establishing the theme of loss also present in this book. Malcom was killed off along with Willem and Sophie (a character who spoke a total of 0 words in the entire book) for a purpose unknown to me. Let’s say Willem and Sophie died and Malcom lived, wouldn’t that have offered him an opportunity to be seen by us, really seen, again? The death of the two could have been followed by Malcom’s point of view along side Jude’s. The author could have used it as an introspection into Malcom’s life and all it represented up to this moment. His character could have been redeemed and we would have also gotten an emotional roller coaster that would have brought us to tears. This would have saved the character of Malcom for me and it would also have brought him justice. In the end, Malcom was just a wasted opportunity for me.

The next “main character” that I’m going to bring up is JB. In no way as neglected as Malcom, but also not getting as much screen time as Willem or Jude, JB is a pretty interesting character. Selfish, self-centered, “always politically correct” and susceptible to bad habits, JB seems to be anything but a hero. That’s what makes him fascinating to watch, he goes from incidents like making fun of Jude’s walk to painting his friends in magnificent lively colors. We get to explore both his admiration for his own person and his hatred. JB is a complex character, not necessary my favorite personality wise, but definitely my favorite building and development wise.

Moving on to Willem, the character that gets screen time because he is the love of our main character’s life. Maybe that was slightly exaggerated, but we’ve all been thinking it. Willem is a very likeable character, in the beginning he was actually my favorite, I’m not sure what happened along the way. It was probably the fact that the story was dragged out so much that I lost interest in most things. I thought Willem was a very kind soul who truly loved helping people and more importantly his friends. I prayed until the very last moment that the relationship with Jude would not happen though. On one hand it was because it was too predictable, I would have loved to see a pure friend love story since we don’t get much of those if any. Second of all, back to the point of friendship, this was advertised as a story about 4 friends, not about 2 friends who fall in love with each other and then 2 others who are only half relevant. I wanted to be surprised by a story in which nobody fell in love with their best friend, where the kind friend always took special care of his best friend because that’s who he was, not because subconsciously he always wanted to kiss him and hold his hand. I still liked Willem as a character, maybe he wasn’t as layered as I would have wanted him to be and maybe he was frustrating at times (who takes 30 years to talk to their BELOVED BEST FRIEND about their self-harm?), but he was a well-rounded character in the end. With that being said, I think his death was a magnificent writing decision. It was a brutal, come out of nowhere death and it spiced the plot up. Unlike Sophie’s and Malcom’s deaths, Willem’s was completely justified in my opinion. It gave Jude a new challenge, it broke the repetitive pattern and stirred our curiosity about what was going to happen next. Even though I do not agree with the actual ending of the book I still believe that the events leading up to it were a good choice.

And now to the character we’ve all been waiting for, Jude. Listen, as everyone else I was really exited about Jude, I was counting the pages left until his POV, he intrigued me. There were lots of aspects that I liked about his character. His mental illness (yes, Andy, he was in fact mentally ill) was decently portrayed, I could relate to his mental process concerning self-harm and he definitely struck a cord with me. With that being said, his story could have been shorter and it could have left more space for other characters (*cough* Malcom *cough*). Jude’s story contained a repetitive pattern that had been dragged out for far too long ending in a predictable conclusion. Let’s start with the beginning, the back-story, the thing that we all wanted to find out about. I’m going to critic it’s credibility in just a second, but first I just want to say that the author’s attempt at building suspense completely flopped on me. The way she tried to spread the back-story all throughout the book did not keep me on my toes, it only annoyed and bored me, I couldn’t wait to get it out of the way once and for all.

Now, let’s say the monastery made sense, even Brother Luke made sense, but everything that followed was total bullshit. Is this boy just a magnet for abuse? Do abusers just sense him from 5 miles away or what? I’m not trying to seem insensible, but for real now! And how come every single person he meets is both a pedophile and interested in guys? I refuse to believe that every single counselor at that home and every truck driver is gay. What’s the actual probability of that being the case? I mean does nobody like vagina or what? The back-story is clearly exaggerated, but I guess that it does make Jude’s learning to trust people again more remarkable. I did enjoy the relationships he built for himself after everything that happened to him (except the one with Caleb of course) and I admired the courage it took him to trust Andy with his body, Harold with his fear of belonging to someone and Willem with his love and life. But in the end it was all for nothing, Jude still kills himself, all his progress is flashed down the toilet and you are left wandering what was it all for. I’m not saying all endings should be happy endings, damn, I love me a good sad ending, but making Jude’s suicide in the end come out as ok and acceptable just doesn’t send a good message, that he had nothing left to live for when he still got his goddamn parents who loved him more than anything else. Suicide should never be portrayed as something ok to do, something justifiable. Yes, Willem’s death was heart breaking for Jude, even more than that, it wrecked him all over again, but I really thought that this death would be used as an opportunity for Jude to get better, to show that you can get through anything. I get that life isn’t like that, I get that in real life suicide would probably be the actual thing a person would choose most of the time (hell, I don’t know what I would do if faced with this situation), I am not judging Jude, I am not condemning him, I’m just saying that there could have been a better ending. The least that could have been done was to still try to give it a positive note, Harold to remark that even though he understands why Jude did it and that he still loves him, there were alternatives, there was still a chance for him to be at peace with the world without dying.

All and all, I enjoyed A Little Life most of the times and I do not regret reading it even though it made me very angry at times. It is still a book I recommend, but I recommend reading it with a critical eye. 

#alittlelife #bookreview #firstreview #hanya yanagihara #reader #booklover

[ssironstrange]

buckle in, i have some Personal Shit to get off my chest and fling into the void. might as well before i’m Purged, right? lots of triggery stuff ahead. 

so last week i got a job. it isn’t a spectacular job. the pay is shit and it’s extremely physically taxing. but it’s a job. i’ve been unemployed since july having put countless resumes out and done a handful of interviews with absolutely no luck. so we’re just happy i’m employed and going to have some income again.

on my very first day of orientation last week, my mom texts me asking me about christmas plans and i tell her i’m unsure what my schedule will look like while my brother is in town because i literally just started and don’t actually have any sort of schedule yet, obviously.

she proceeds to get pissed. starts calling me selfish for getting a job right before christmas. blames me for messing up plans because now she’s gonna have to work around my schedule. says i did this on purpose because i could have easily gotten a job like this at any time. i’m floored.

like, my mom is a grade A special class cunt, but she took it to new levels. i couldn’t even think of anything to say. i was so appalled and upset by the fact this woman couldn’t even say a simple “congrats” to her own daughter, knowing the troubling financial situation we’ve been in. eventually my s/o took my phone from me to text her himself because he was Done with her shit. i proceeded to have a mini-breakdown. i thought she had finally changed. like, i went without speaking to her at all for two years before because of bullshit like this she pulled on me in the past and told her if she wanted me in her life she needed to take a hard look at herself and change some shit. and she did. for a long while there she really did. she stopped drinking (she’s a raging alcoholic who will deny that until her dying breath) unless it was a special occasion and even then it was only like one glass. she started being nicer, friendlier, and a lot more grateful for the things we help her with. she stopped complaining and bitching about every possible thing. hell, she even started finding some social events to get out and go to. For a while she was actually kinda nice to be around for a change.

and then she did that and it made me realize nothing about her has actually changed. she can’t change. she has so many unchecked mental problems she refuses to see a doctor about. she’s in denial about 90% of them. she is sick, needs treatment, but refuses it at all. refuses to even acknowledge she’s sick. she’s extremely narcissistic. her selfishness knows no bounds. she honestly believes that giving $50 to someone in need while dropping $2k on herself(on shit she doesn’t need at ALL) is being generous. she has no concept of saving money. she has to spend it. she’s a hoarder and shopaholic. she’s paranoid of everyone and everything; everyone is out to get her, conspiring against her. any time her phone acts up she’s convinced someone is trying to hack her. a company accidentally overcharging her and she thinks someone within that company is personally trying to steal from her. she believes her doctors are trying to fuck with her when they’re literally just trying to obey the law. no matter what it is, its always about her. it doesn’t even fucking cross her mind even once what another person might be going through or dealing with or that accidents happen. she believes because a waitress working a double shift on thanksgiving didn’t bring her napkins in 5 seconds when she asked that she doesn’t deserve a tip. she feels personally attacked when i talk about her generation as a whole. she can’t ever be wrong. she believes because she’s older that she knows everything. she believes because she has had an encounter with something that it makes her an expert on it, or because she read 1 book or 1 unsourced article on the internet that she knows more. she believes, in her mind, that i am still 13 years old. honestly. she continuously pulls up weird shit from that time. thinks i still dress the same, still have the same preferences about everything no matter how many times i have told her “i haven’t like that since i was 12/13/whatever age.” hell she even talks to me like i’m a child half the time. She hasn’t worked a job since she was in her 30s and lies to live off the government, mooches from literally anyone she can, and gets oil royalties that she didn’t even do anything to invest in, she just inherited them. but then has the gall to bitch at me about jobs when i’ve been working since i was barely 15. she believes the world owes her. she believes that we kids owe her for being a mother and frequently tries to hold that over me as if that weren’t her fucking duty anyway when she decided to keep us. she is always angry and negative and prone to violence - especially while drunk. she has literally pointed a loaded, cocked gun at my chest, thrown glass dishes at me (which ended with glass shards in my hands and feet), dragged me by my hair, and has done ten times that in emotional abuse. she’s called the cops on my brother over an argument, and has thrown a computer monitor at me (one of those old CRT ones) because i said she was acting crazy. she would get so nasty with me my brother would have to step in and tell her to shut the fuck up. she didn’t even try to get me into counselling or therapy or even talk to me when she found out i was being sexually assaulted as a young child. all she did was remove me from the situation, which ultimately removed me from half of my family and didn’t explain why. she never told me is wasn’t my fault. she never talked to me about what sex actually was and how it’s supposed to be. she never told me about consent. she did nothing for me to cope with and process the years of physical and mental trauma i had endured, and i am still fucked up from it to this day because it defined my view of everything sexual. it created deep and strong neural pathways i’ll be lucky to ever be able to change. she went through my mail and read a letter to a long distance friend, finding out i was queer and genderfluid and outed me to the rest of the family, called me a disgrace and disgusting. she would go through chat logs and shame me about everything she could. she’s racist as fuck, still uses the N word, and has told me several times if i ever dated a black person she would disown me. she has always played favorites with my brother because he is the smart one, the one who graduated at 16 and got into university on full scholarship at 17, the one who has always been a social butterfly, extroverted with lots of friends, neurotypical by most standards, handsome and always had good taste in girls, successful in everything he does, and has a great career as an environmental engineer that pays well enough for him to take multiple overseas trips, pay off student loans(when he decided to switch majors and stay in college longer) and is just over all the perfect son (he and i have always gotten along fantastically. i love him immensely, but it’s no secret to either of us who she has always favored),and she’s an opioid addict - another thing she will deny until she’s dead. and thats just everything i can think of at the moment. theres more. theres always more.

so she texted me a couple days ago apologizing without actually apologizing. blaming her attitude on the fact her pain meds are being reduced (not once did she actually say sorry) and she’s been in a bad mood because of it. today she texted me, still without a real apology, just saying how she’s wondering how my job is going. but the truth is, i know she doesn’t give a fuck. she only wants to feel better about herself. she wants to believe she’s forgiven so she can have things her way again. she doesn’t actually give a shit about my feelings, about what she’s done to me, or about how this is the same cycle of bullshit we’ve been through countless times. she doesn’t care. 

and yet, i still find myself feeling guilty to cut her out like the tumor she is. despite everything she has done to me. i can’t help it and i wish i could. she has manipulated me so much throughout my life that i have an almost pavlovian response to feel like its my fault, that i’m the failure she’s always said i am, that i’m the one letting her down. i know i’m not. i know that isn’t the truth but it’s still there and i hate it. but still, i’m trying my best to just fucking ignore her. she doesn’t get to have the satisfaction of thinking all is well and forgiven. i’ve been through this too many times and frankly i’m just so fucking tired of it.

#personal #trigger warning #about a lot of shit

[doomednarrative]

2018: A (Personal) Year in Review

I put off writing in general so much, but I’ve put off this particular post long enough. 

And no, this isn’t about the general world or the country. It’s about my personal life, and it’s mainly a vent/personal rambling post, so I’ll put under a read more. If you don’t care to read it, that’s totally fine. 

But anyways. Here we go: 

2018 was...a fuckin ride, to put it in simplest terms. 

For those who are new and unaware, lemme briefly bring you up to speed about the end of 2017 for me, cause it’s important to the context of this entire thing:

December 17th of 2017, when I was on my third day home for Christmas break from college, I packed a backpack, and I left my dad and stepmom’s house for good. 

Their house had been abusive for years, and my mental health was in the absolute tank in college. I was feeling casually suicidal and had a full on breakdown about having to come home for winter break. After a fight I got into that night with my stepmom after she found me texting some friends on Discord (which I wasn’t supposed to have, even tho I was almost 19 and an adult at the time,) she got Pissed, and so did I. I had finally had a group of friends who supported me and helped me out so much, and I didn’t want to loose them. And I couldn’t stand the abuse, the treatment of me like I was a child with no privacy or personal autonomy, the constant pushing for me to date my one long time friend and to be straight, or my parent’s inability to accept me as their son and not their daughter any longer. 

I was given a choice, and told if I decided to leave, I wasn’t welcome back. A few months before, my best friend had said that their parents had a safe space for me to go if I ever needed it. They had been aware of how bad some things had been with my parents and feared for the worst, so they offered me a home if it came down to that. And that night, it came down to that choice. 

I packed one backpack of stuff I was allowed to bring (solely because it was stuff I bought) and I walked to my friends mom’s house, and by the next morning, I was at her dad’s house, safe and sound. 

2018 became the year of learning how to be an adult in a house that treated me as one, and in a house that didn’t put my personal safety and mental health in danger. 

2018 was...well, it was simultaneously the worst and best year of my life. 

Early on, I could tell my parents weren’t going to let my off easy for leaving. My mom wasn’t a problem, she had been out of my life for almost two years at that point, and hadn’t attempted to make contact with me for a long time. 

But my dad and my stepmom? Oh, they were determined to make my life as bas as they could while not being physically around me. 

First thing they did? They tried to take all of my possessions from my dorm at college without my knowledge, because they thought that They owned that stuff. I only found this out because I called the college to formally drop out and ask when I could pick up my stuff, and they informed me my parents were already planning on picking up my stuff for me. 

Me and my now adoptive parents ended up making an impromptu trip, four hours up and four hours back, that night to my college campus to make sure that I could get my possessions before they could. And we were successful.

Next thing my dad did to screw me over after moving out? 

That bastard stole about 700$ from a joint bank account I had with him to use for college. That was money I earned from about 7 months of work at my summer food truck job. And he took it because he legally could since it was a joint account, and didn’t tell me. i found out when I went into the bank to withdraw that money and open a separate account. 

So I was starting off the year with already some setbacks. 

Thankfully, I Was able to replace my birth certificate and social security card relatively easily, so that was in my favor at least. 

Then, come my birthday on January 26 last year, I got a letter. Two letters to be specific. One from my stepmom, and one from my dad. 

Both were full of manipulation and guilt tripping language and just. Gaslighting and more emotional abuse. They had somehow gotten my address from when I had set up my separate bank account and changed my information in the bank system.  And they decided to send me abusive shit as a birthday present. 

I’m not gonna lie, it hurt a lot. 

They continued to try to do stuff like that. They called me multiple times from different numbers, they called police on my adoptive family to say that I was crazy and that my parents were like. concerned for my safety because i had blocked their phone numbers after the first two phone calls. They texted me from different numbers, just. A lot of different bullshit. 

February was the first time I saw my dad since leaving. I had gone to a screening of Love Simon, as it was really important to me, and somehow thru some stalkery methods, he knew i was there and he confronted me in the theater lobby after the film. (When I asked how he found me there, his answer was ‘I have my ways.’ I never posted about this encounter when it originally happened.)

He proceeded to be transphobic to me in public, demeaning me and humiliating me in front of everyone in the theater, told me I was the reason my siblings were now in therapy (which is a lie, my brother was already in therapy for anxiety long before I left), calling me crazy, telling my adoptive mother that I “needed help” and that “she’ll outstay her welcome.” He said a lot of awful things, and eventually I left the theatre in tears after screaming at him that I was his son and that this shit was why I left in the first place, and that he should go fuck himself.

Thankfully, I didn’t see him for months afterword, not til october, right before I left my retail job that he and my stepmom found out I worked at. I saw my stepmom three times at that job, once with my siblings (which is the only time I’ve seen them since leaving and that was. Very hard to deal with and a very emotional time), and twice without my siblings. The times she came without them, she was an absolute fucking asshole to me, still spewing her abusive rhetoric about how I was in the wrong for leaving, and how my father did nothing wrong when he saw me in February. 

She and my father only left me alone after I told them that I would not get into an argument while I was on the clock, and that if they didn’t leave I’d call the store security guard. 

After that, they haven’t done anything else. Yet. We’ll see what 2019 holds. 

But, aside from the bullshit with my parents, 2018 had its other ups and downs. More ups than downs, but it still had it’s rough moments. 

I got a job in early May as a sales associate/cashier/fitting room attendant for a well known Coat Factory chain store. 

That job was pure fuckin hell, and I’m glad I don’t work there anymore. The last week that I was supposed to work there before leaving for my new job, I got pulled into the side office by the manager on duty (she wasn’t an actual manager, she just had closing priviledges) and she Screamed at me about how a customer complained about me, she hated me, my coworkers all hated me, all three of my managers hated me, and how she was tired of my attitude and how she couldn’t wait til I was fuckin gone. The whole issue that night had started because of her and how she couldn’t properly communicate to me where she wanted me to be that night and what duties she wanted me handling. She took out her frusteration at her own mistakes on me, and I had had enough. I stood my ground with her and didn’t let her walk all over me, but I went home that night, bawled for about two hours because being yelled at is a trigger for me, and she had been all in my personal space like she was going to hit me, and then I emailed my general manager the next day and told her she could replace me for my last two shifts and I wouldn’t be coming in for them. 

I haven’t stepped foot in that goddamned store since I left that night. 

I have a different job now. I work as an overnight personal care assistant at a nursing home, but it’s a higher end one, and it’s not bad. It can be stressful and super draining at times, but enviornmentally its a better job than the retail one ever was, so it’s good. 

My mental health has been a wild ride as well. I won’t get into the full details here, but let just say that uh. I’m 99% sure that I’m both ADHD and autistic, and I’m thinking I have some form of ptsd as well from years of trauma shit. I’m not suicidal anymore, but I have bouts of depression and anxiety and sometimes anger that last for days to weeks at a time. It’s...rough, to say the least. And dysphoria doesn’t help any of that. 

But I’m alive and fighting, and that’s the important part. 

Not everything this year has been bad tho. There’s been a fair amount of good too, and I’m greatful for it. 

December 23rd I celebrated my first year aniversary with @curious-corvids, and i couldn’t be happier about that. He’s been there thru this Entire ride, and he’s been such a positive force in my life, and I hope to keep him around for years to come. 

Similarly, March 18th this year will be my one year aniversary with @sinclair-solutions, and that I’m immensely happy about as well. They’re such a wonderful person and just. i’m very lucky to have them, I really am. they’ve also been here thru everything, and I could never thank then enough for that. 

I made some friends in the past few months that I can’t imagine what my days would be like without them in it. Kathy, Jay, Fi, and Evan are such great people, and I’m lucky to have them around. 

I got the chance to meet Ren, Lu and Erin in person for the first time at DragonCon, and went to both my first comic convention and my first out of state trip alone with them, and it was honestly the best five days of my life. I can’t wait to do that again with them this year. 

I’ve been steadily improving at art this year and took commissions for the first time, and that’s been a very fun thing to do. 

I’m actually able to like. Afford to buy things for myself and spend my money without interferance, and thats such a change from how my parents used to control my finances. 

Overall 2018 was just..a wild ride. 

2019 is sure to bring better things. With luck this month, I should be starting the process of legally changing my name, and that will be a very freeing thing to do. 

I turn 20 on January 26th, and just. 

I didn’t think I’d actually make it to 20. That’s a personal milestone for me, to have made it this far. 

Whatever this new year brings tho, here’s to hoping it goes better than 2018. 

Here’s to hoping I’m better this year than I was last year. 

#me talking #vent #rambling #this took a lot out of me to write so...good for me for finally doing it.

[govtplates]

Suicide Note

Mirror: paste.ee/p/iClXD

Please rehost on zeronet and substratum when they publish their hosting platform

Early Saturday morning, I killed myself with toxic gas. The last two years of my life have been a slow motion death sentence, and I’ve finally chosen to complete it on my own terms. I started planning this more than a month ago when I first realized that my last chance for survival had failed me. I’m mentally disabled, very ill and I was illegally fired from my last job as a dishwasher because of it six months ago. Since then, I’ve been fighting a discrimination case against the company through the Seattle Office for Civil Rights. A settlement from the result of that became my only chance to escape what’s destroyed my life, but SOCR failed me. It was agonizingly difficult and straining to get an investigator on my case, and then he quit a few weeks after opening it in February. Since then every employee I’ve dealt with from top to bottom has been dishonest and deceitful to me, after realizing that no one in the only organization with the ability to help me had any interest of actually helping me, I lost any hope of getting a new investigator in a time frame that’ll save me. I only got a new investigator last week, and by then it was far too late. If this got started when it should have, it would be wrapped up this month at the very latest.

Then, some days later I go notice that my rent is going up next month, which sealed my fate. For the last year I’ve had to depend on my parents, Ken and Jodi for bills after an unsuccessful job hunt after being laid off. They have abused me my entire life, always mentally and emotionally and sometimes physically. They’re delusional, sadistic, childishly vindictive, dangerously stupid, and terrifyingly negligent. In January they forced me into an agreement that conditioned their continued payment of my bills on me taking pharmaceutical medication from a psychiatrist. This is in virtue of their delusion that my mental illnesses are genetic and innate, not brought up from my environment and what’s done to me. I’ve had all of my DNA sequenced, which disproved any disposition to neural conditions early in life. This agreement wasn’t arrived at through discourse or negotiation, but out of nowhere they exploited my worst fears against me at my most vulnerable moment in order to renege on past agreements and strong arm me into lying about agreeing to their condition. A few psychiatrist meetings and a pharmacy visit later, it was relatively harmless but insanely stressful because of how impulsively aggressive my parents are. So my current fears aren’t precisely that their current condition is unachievable, it doesn’t hurt me to fill my cabinet with wasted pill bottles, despite the wasted money handed to big pharma that could go to help cover my basic needs. But they are absurdly dishonest people, they will never for even a second stay faithful to any agreement or negotiation. They hold the fact that they cover my bills over me to try to leverage me into more and more of their impulsive demands, they talk to me like I’m a pet dog and to this day it’s never stopped even though I’m 20. I’d need the settlement money to cover my life expenses until I could get back on my feet alone, given that relying on my parents is untenable and could be revoke any month now on their whim. They’ve always prospered from their privilege, idolized the rich and loathed the poor which is why they just don’t understand at all the poverty that they forced me into.

In late 2016, I moved back in with them after having to drop out of university and they promised to support me in moving back out to a new college somewhere to do whatever program I wanted. Then within days they did a reversal and said they’d only pay for me to get a Bachelor’s, claiming that it’s necessary for a job which is bullshit since nearly all degrees are useless, connections are all that matter. Then again just days later, another reversal and they said they wouldn’t support me living anywhere doing anything, not even staying at their home, with the cannabis that I needed for medical purposes. They were very clearly freestyling their parenting methods, with zero regard for my wellbeing and the pathetic notion that they could squeeze aspects of me that they disapproved of out with force, and I’ll eventually submit to their every whim after their force me through enough misery and suffering. It was at that point that I was forced out of their place, and living out of a suitcase I couch hopped until landing at this current house in December.

The cannabis has been medicinal since that summer two years ago for PTSD, I had been illegally detained (essentially kidnapped) and psychologically tortured at a mental institution for more than two weeks. I was the victim of multiple felonies committed by government officials and medical professionals, including perjury and malpractice to justify my detainment in what was basically a jail. It was aided and encouraged by my parents, my mom said the first night she had slept well in a while was after hearing that I had gotten locked up. The corporation that owns the Fairfax institution, United Health Services, has been under investigation by multiple federal agencies for years for longterm and widespread national fraud and abuse, scheming insurance to lock people up on false pretenses and abuse them under state sanctioned involuntary detainment. This has been covered by Rosalind Adams extensively in Buzzfeed, and it’s exactly what happened to me. I had excessive hubris and had ordered what I thought was acid from an onion market, it turned out to be 25i-NBOMe which is a very dangerous and toxic synthetic compound. I mistakenly tried some without testing and had a jarring trip, ending with inescapable paranoia and hallucinations that I had copped from a honeypot and the feds would be at my door in the morning, I panicked and thought suicide was my only way out so I chugged some rum and put back a handful of prozac, then promptly puked it all up. Clearly not premeditated and I quickly called 911, telling police everything because I couldn’t hide anything and I realized I needed help. Any young person that takes a FULL serotonin agonist without preparation absolutely needs gentle and attentive care to help them calm down and move on from the trip, because that shit throttles your neuron pathways and fucks with your chemical balances way more easily than most drugs. It is an absolute crime against my humanity that no one would be there to give me that, all it did was make me a perfect target for the UHS involuntary detainment insurance scam, basically farming the vulnerable and mentally ill to harvest money from while being tortured and held in a pseudo jail without any consent or due process. That arguably makes it worse than jail since aside from the massive corruption and inequality at the roots of the criminal justice system, there’s still the intention and supposition of fair and due process. The cops decided not to charge me with possession and I went to the ER while still super drunk and out of it. The staff at the hospital there didn’t wait at all to question me which I’m pretty certain was illegal, if they waited a few hours until I sobered up I would have told them succinctly the foolish mistakes I made and wouldn’t make again, and that I wasn’t in any danger to anyone. Instead the responses they got from me were drunken mumbling and incoherent partial words, which they used to justify me needing to be shipped off to an institution the next day. Once there I petitioned to be released as soon as possible but I was obstructed everywhere and I was diagnosed with “cannabis use disorder,” normally diagnosed with daily smokers for a decade but I had only been for six months, and they intended to treat it through psychological torture and abuse. It was insanely traumatic and I went on a hunger strike the whole time, only eating some very small snacks and drinking more than ten cups of tea a day. I had bought tickets to fly out and protest at the Democratic National Convention for Bernie, but I was locked up over that whole time and couldn’t follow what happened at all. Since I got out I’ve needed cannabis to cope with the PTSD from then. If I lived in a socialist country then these institutions would actually exist to help people and treat them, and I would have gotten help with the judgment issues that led to the drug mishap. Instead these institutions betrayed me and threw my life into a tailspin, all for some company’s profit.

And at the very least my parents should have stood up for me and done anything to help me from the predatory hospitals but they were completely on their side and took pleasure in my suffering. They have never let up this behavior pattern since, kicking me out on the street a few months later and then six months ago they trigged the incident which led to my former employer turning on me. Then in January they tried to have me murdered by bring cops banging down my door because they exaggerated and trumped up the risk that I was violent which was nonsense and something that I went out of my way to try to tell them. It is the police’s job to exterminate the mentally ill, and having someone lie that you’re a violent threat exponentiates the risk of being gunned down. I kept them from coming inside but they made a huge disturbance for more than an hour on a Saturday afternoon. If I wasn’t white, there would be no question they would have broken the door down and executed me. All of this was done under my parent’s greedy impulses and attempts to force me to become subservient, submissive and forget my long history of being abused by them. They should be given no condolences or extended any sympathy, they need to be criminally investigated and prosecuted for driving my life to its end.

After many traumas all at once last spring (being laid off, losing my partner and all of my friends, people encouraging me to kill myself, friendship with my landlord was ruined, returning to dependence on parents), compounded with my PTSD led me to develop more serious cognitive disabilities, what I suspect is brain damage from hypersecretion of glucocorticoids in the limbic system. I lost my ability to function in public, every friend I had lost patience with me and I was completely isolated while being squeezed all around into deeper poverty and despair. I started to improve in the fall and getting the dishwasher job gave me hope, since they promised to quickly promote me to higher kitchen positions and I expected to soon be able to cover rent again, finally becoming independent. But after the incident which is completely covered in my SOCR file, that did a complete 180 and my hope vanished, sending me back into unending despair and misery.

Dear Filippo Fiori: You had been the first person ever in my entire life to make me feel appreciated and valued. I worked my ass off cleaning every corner of that kitchen because you promised to promote and teach me so fast. Then you committed multiple crimes that set my death in motion, and tried to frame me as having always been incompetent to avoid blame which is far beyond unforgivable. Had I seen the investigation through its end, my plan was to demand at least twenty grand or bankrupt your restaurant, whichever came first. That would be the bare minimum punishment you deserve for your initial crimes, but now it’s up to someone else. I hope it was worth it to you, killing someone in the most vulnerable position because they’re mentally disabled. I did everything I could to warn and explain this all to you but you did what you did and here we are, you made the last six months of my short life miserable and agonizing all to defend a full grown middle aged man with only one year of managing experience.

Lawyers Nancy Chupp and Liza Burke both have my blood on their hands too, they both went out of their way to deliberately lie to me, waste my time and cause me serious damage that I wouldn’t even let them pay me to do. Every lawyer I’ve ever dealt with everywhere has been obstructive and malicious, I think it’s beyond vile how prevalent contempt against the most vulnerable and needing of help is.

To law enforcement: My linux machine is fully encrypted with a very long password, and even if you crack that, all that’s left is my book and media collection. I erased and sfill’d anything interesting so good luck trying to recover shit. If you crack my old laptop password, the only interesting things left on there are my unfinished film and media projects, as that’s all I’ve used it for in many years.

I’m not scared of dying because I’ve already met god, and I’ve discovered the deep truths of this existence. The universe is a hologram, at a subatomic level every single point in space contains a portal to the “implicate order,” or the universal consciousness. The explicate order we reside in is manifested by the ebb and flow of this united energy, at a frequency of planck time each electron enfolds and unfolds, perpetuating alternated spin states that present the illusion of movement and time progression we perceive. All of consciousness and our external reality are the same energy waves manifested and concentrated in different forms, the simulation is like a giant 4D film with a frame rate at the 44th degree of magnitude. We think that our external environment and its objects have physical permanence, while our thoughts in our head are imaginary neurochemical processes, but consciousness is a form of matter ultimately inseparable from anything “physical.” When a 30fps video is slowed down frame by frame, that’s sinking down one order in magnitude of playback speed. If we could do that with the linear time we exist in 44 times, we would reach the plane of existence from which everything that’s ever been and ever will be is conjured from.

To quote David Bohm, who pioneered this theory - “At the present, our whole thought process is telling us that we have to keep our attention here. You can’t cross the street, for example, if you don’t. But consciousness is always in the unlimited depth which is beyond space and time, in the subtler levels of the implicate order. Therefore, if you went deeply enough into the actual present, then maybe there’s no difference between this moment and the next. The idea would be that in the death experience you would get into that. Contact with eternity is in the present moment, but it is mediated by thought. It is a matter of attention.” This four-dimensional universe with linear temporality traps our minds from experiencing the full potential that can be harnessed through tapping into the universal energy, but throughout history those boundaries cosmically foisted upon us have been challenged through shamanism, entheogens, and spirituality in general. To quote Michael Talbot’s book Holographic Universe, “we are so thoroughly conditioned to believe that perceiving the future is not possible, our natural precognitive abilities have gone dormant. Like the superhuman strengths individuals display during life-threatening emergencies, they only spill over into our conscious minds during times of crisis – when someone near to us is about to die; when our children or some other loved one is in danger, and so on. That our “sophisticated” understanding of reality is responsible for our inability to both grasp and utilize the true nature of our relationship with time is evident in the fact that primitive cultures nearly always score better on ESP tests than so-called civilized cultures. Further evidence that we have relegated our innate precognitive abilities to the hinterlands of the unconscious can be found in the close association between premonitions and dreams. Studies show that from 60 to 68 percent of all precognitions occur during dreaming. We may have banished our ability to see the future from our conscious minds, but it is still very active in the deeper strata of our psyches.” (209)

Now we think of those in past eras as just stupid and bored from their lack of modern technology, and they only hallucinated and wrote religious tales to replace the forms of innovation valued post-industrialization. I posit this could not be less true, it is the rise and spread of modern education that has taught us to rid ourselves of our innate connection to the implicate order and awareness of the fluidity of reality.

I never really dream, either that or I’m never consciously aware of it. I suspect it’s from always having so many cannabinoids flowing through my brain putting me in too deep sleep to allow my conscious to travel to another reality. If there would have been precognitions in them, maybe it’s also because of my fear of the future and being too occupied with messes in the present to wonder what will come after. Instead I push my conscious to travel outside of this realm through entheogens, which is how I met god during a McKenna heroic dose of fungus. I traveled into a realm completely filled with moving and spiraling fractalized columns of light and waves of energy. I was taken on a tour throughout time and space, traveling between discombobulated and disjointed morphing spatiotemporal environments. Later I realized that I had been taken to the implicated realm from which all of this universe’s particles unfold out of, and some force was spinning me around and through this cosmic soup. I had been researching and studying all of this closely for many months beforehand but when I had everything that I supposed to be accurate about reality through holographic theory absolutely proven and validated just by eating a handful of things that had grown out of the ground in nature in my city, I became 100% certain of the validity in all of this. The amount of unfathomably unpredictable evidence that would be needed to safely and thoroughly disprove holographic theory makes it a practical impossibility, there’s so much otherwise unexplained that is resolved perfectly this way.

This also proves exactly why America has engaged in global psyops since Nixon to plant disinformation at the basis of societies about fabricated dangers of psychedelics and discourage its use through criminalization. The government has never actually been concerned about stopping people from taking drugs since everyone knows that is impossible to accomplish. The CIA has always been a fan of using acid when it can brainwash people and torture prisoners in more sadistic ways, and using cocaine when they can flood the streets of black communities with it, and creating cartels or black market trafficking ops when they achieve geopolitical results desired by the imperialist capitalist hegemony agenda.

Can you imagine what it would do to society if any adult could go to a mushroom dispensary and experience the same kind of reality-shattering and consciousness-expanding experience as I did whenever they wanted? I’ve read a lot of psilocybin trip reports and the majority of them include very similar things to what I experienced. They do not describe these phenomena holographically like I do, but I’m absolutely certain that it’s a universal experience that the same fungi allow anyone to travel to. It’s so tragic to me that most describe these as hallucinations, and the drugs as hallucinogens which of course restrains it as being unreal. But these alternate planes are much more real than our reality, and calling it a trip could not be more accurate as it is essentially traveling towards home, as in the origin of all of us and everything else. One’s consciousness, being energy waves in a different form than whats around it, exists in a spectrum between entirely localized in the brain and expanding radiating outwards to rejoin the cosmic energy. When low/mild doses of entheogens give one visuals that fill, surround and saturate the visual field, it is their consciousness beginning to expand outwards and begin moving towards the other end of the energy spectrum. Taking a large dose is more like god reaching a hand out of the sky and plucking their soul out of their body and tossing it out of this simulation. By god I don’t mean a singular or cohesive entity, but of the powerful forces manifested by the collective universal consciousness. We are subject to the supreme power of supernatural forces, but instead of a higher being it is the energy of all of us, all of us that have ever been and ever will. That’s why I use a lowercase g.

If these kind of spiritual awakenings happened on a massive scale, it would cause unheard of social unrest. Everything that holds up the capitalist order and necessitates global neoliberal capitalism would dissolve, so many people would become entirely different people, giving up hollow norms and starting to question the real purpose and meaning in what this life is. The rising of class consciousness and awareness of the cruelty manifested by capitalism, which only persists when it’s not questioned, will spell its certain demise. Nearly everything all of us are taught about how the world works is falsified and perpetuated by the minimally satisfactory life circumstances capitalism provides for most. When people are fed lies from birth, taught to be satisfied with a substandard life with the false hope that anyone can “succeed” in a free market (which is another fabrication), and discouraged from ever questioning why things are this way, that’s what allows cruelty to persist.

That’s why the most important thing for people to do is just QUESTION. Especially at a time when daring to ever question what our government says gets you immediately smeared as a puppet or useful idiot of some boogeyman. For most of my life I thought, as we’re all raised to, that communists are evil authoritarians and that it’s not something anyone takes seriously. But up until I shed my last trace of liberalism and beyond, I kept questioning everything and being skeptical, which led me on a path eventually ending at becoming a devout communist. Like many others I started being inspired about political change and social justice from Bernie’s campaign. During his speech at Safeco Field my volunteer job was to run up and down the line waiting outside before helping people, and the lines stretched block after block after block after block in every direction. And everyone was excited or cheering, that kind of mass enthusiasm about something so progressive made me genuinely optimistic about a radically improved future. Then I watched all of the rigging, interference and corruption by the democratic party and corporate media. I knew what was happening behind the scenes all along, but the wikileaks podesta emails of course proved it all. It was soon after that that my political involvement and aspirations were demolished when I was kidnapped during the DNC convention. For better or for worse I was not at all tuned into all the fuckery and media nonsense happening around late summer that year since obviously no internet in there. So after that I just kinda gave up on Bernie, started to move on and voted for Jill Stein. If only I had known I’d fallen victim to a disinformation campaign led by Putin to sow discord in the stable and perfectly equal American democracy!

I think I was one of the only people that was not at all surprised and completely indifferent on election night, going into it I knew there was a 50/50 chance and it could go either way dependent on a million unpredictable things. At least it was hilarious seeing the delusional liberal establishment having their hopes and fantasies of a continued neoliberal slow descent into corporate neofeudalism shattered. I honestly thought Trump was gonna get assassinated either before or soon after taking office, largely driven by my throwing up my hands and saying fuck it to any sense of an illusion of social stability. Yet at that point I suppose I didn’t fully understand the size, power and pervasiveness of the elites and the extent of their resources to which they protect their own and maintain control over what tragedies or shocking events are allowed to happen or unfold in different ways.

The very next day was the first time I ever heard the phrase fake news, and I immediately thought it was just something made up out of nowhere by the democrats to avoid blaming themselves for the loss. I was half right, it was a deliberate attempt by the clinton campaign to avert blame and feed into Russiagate, but what I also didn’t fully understand yet then was the pervasiveness of literal actual fake news in the entire news and media establishment. I mean Operation Mockingbird is real history and it never ended, the CIA has always controlled the media and had a hand in making everything pro-America and advantageous for the government’s agenda. Now there’s so many former intelligence directors as news “contributors” or “analysts” it’s never been more obvious. But since Russiagate has been such a successful psyop, liberals have revealed themselves as ultimately only wanting to serve the intelligence community and uphold capitalism. And such a huge portion of ex-intelligence spooks are running as democrats in the midterms this year, it’s absolutely insane! Talk about a slow coup of the supposed “left” in this country.

There is of course no actual leftist representation in the federal government as they’re diametrically opposed to each other. The actual political spectrum is between socialism/communism on the left and capitalism on the right, with social democrats in the center. Bernie is extremely radical compared to all of his peers but he is still a centrist, it’s just that this country has been constantly shifting rightward faster and faster pretty much throughout most of it’s history, so it allows liberals to pretend to be opposed to conservatives while actually not moving far enough to the left to actually be on a different side, this of course requires abandonment of any hope and admiration for capitalism which is something always taught to us as being of the utmost importance. Democrat president terms do not do anything to oppose this never ending move rightward, Carter, Clinton and Obama all did a ton to service and build up the military industrial complex, surveillance state, NATO aggression, and the tentacles of the secret mafia police known as the CIA. We’re now at the point of our society not being able to reach a consensus of opposition to Bloody Gina becoming its director, which would never be happening now if Obama ever bothered to do a single thing to punish the Bush torture regime. Does anyone even realize that since last February she’s been the fucking deputy director, the position right below, which Trump appointed her to without any need for confirmation, and no one in the media ever said a damn thing about it? Being the deputy director of an intelligence agency is clearly an important position, as McCabe was able to grift all these shitlibs out of more than half a million dollars over a lie about him being fired for being a liar. And even if Haspel had been kept away from any job with any amount of power this whole time, does anyone honestly think the CIA would avoid black ops torture programs without her? Yeah she is one of the biggest torture lovers around there, but would an agency that never hesitates to send out right wing extremist death squads to rape and pillage entire countries just as punishment for striving for independence from capitalist hegemony, ever hesitate to commit unthinkable atrocities if it’s even possibly remotely helpful for America, regardless of who’s directing the agency? The state of public discourse is so so so far behind anything remotely substantive and real that it’s hard to be anything but hopeless for the future, and that is absolutely a consequence of the neoliberal order which has dominated globally and continued to expand ever since the cold war.

The only hope for revolution, besides legalization of psychedelics, is capitalism’s built in self destruction. Anything always expanding, growing without regulation or concern for sustainability, zero concern for accountability and the wellbeing of the common man, will always be unsustainable and eventually crumble upon itself. As Lenin wrote in ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder, “the fundamental law of revolution, which has been confirmed by all revolutions and especially by all three Russian revolutions in the twentieth century, is as follows: for a revolution to take place it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realise the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the ‘lower classes’ do not want to live in the wold way and the ‘upper classes’ cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. Revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and exploiters). It follows that, for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking and politically active workers) should fully realise that revolution is necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the ruling classes should be going through a government crisis, which draws even the most backward masses into politics, weakens the government, and makes it possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it.”

I am gracious to have lived in the only area of the country, from what I understand, to have a socialist representing in local government – it is good that DSA members have been getting elected different places but I’m not counting them. But there’s still such massive problems facing Seattle brought by Amazon, such as hordes of rich liberals and neo nazis (less of a difference than most think) displacing so many families and making the prices of everything skyrocket, while stripping away the beautiful generations-old history of the city for lifeless, cold machinations of the corporate stranglehold smothering us all. And then when someone dares to request that that megacorp sucking the life out of everything around us pay some taxes so that the people that aren’t rich or white enough for a plush tech career might have a chance to find affordable housing, they all cry and moan about stifling the business community. It’s so toxic how the unending and unquestioned obsession with infinite growth is willingly upheld by capitalists, it’s absolutely untethered from the basic principles of reality. Not even talking about holograms and other realms, but how the laws of nature that we all know physically work on this planet. The “market” as an entity with agency is the biggest delusion of all within economics, stories like it’s invisible hand or that it always corrects itself are such obvious infantile fantasies. This unfortunately only becomes obvious when you lose motivation or ability to climb the ladders within capitalist structures, namely the poor and underprivileged and disadvantaged. These are things I only realized after being forced into long-term serious poverty and suffering from serious mental illnesses with zero support system or anyone anywhere with the ability or desire to actually help me. How could someone in my situation, having been through what I have, still be delusional enough to think that there’s hope for everyone and oppression is easily escapable? Having been exposed to the deep depths of cruelty life can throw you in, it freed me from having to make excuses for all of the suffering around the world. That’s one of the main cognitive dissonances ingrained into liberalism, awareness of how many people around the world are starving, in serious poverty, in a war torn country or exposed to natural disasters without aid, or victim of genocide or political violence, but all of that is so complicated and messy it’s easier to just focus on what affects you directly and pretend that all those people will find help eventually. The lie we’re all fed is that capitalism provides people with opportunity, but the reality is that on a large scale it robs people of opportunity, and whenever people try alternative systems aimed at providing for the common man, the CIA (Capitalist Insurgency Assholes) stops at nothing sabotage and suppress socialist movements through false flags, psyops, puppet dictators, agitprop, death squads and militias.

And of course business partner and close friend of the CIA being Bezos, who is undoubtedly feeding live audio streams of everyone with an IoT’s household conversations to Langley and/or Fort Meade. He has the fucking balls to say that the only responsible thing he can think to do with his billions upon billions in hoarded wealth grifted from the national taxpayer base is to burn it on fancy space fantasies for the ultra rich, but then halts expansion of new offices (as if destroying entire neighborhoods isn’t already enough) in order to feed the boot lickers eager to attack any taxes on businesses or the rich. They moan about taxes from the massive tax-cheating megacorp already crushing the city in order to support poor people is the worst thing ever, but how many of them know how many billions of taxpayer dollars the Pentagon has wasted and tossed away? How many people know that the money taken out of their paychecks goes to funding the worst genocide since WW2 in Yemen, the indiscriminate slaughter of Arabs in Gaza, and towards numerous Jihadist terrorist groups in Syria? I mean there’s been points in recent history where Pentagon-backed extremist militants were fighting CIA-backed extremist militants in Syria, money is being stolen from all of us without consent to fund the majority of the worst atrocities on the globe, we’re paying for Islamic terrorists to shoot each other with our guns. But how dare the evil socialists suggest that megacorporations that already evade all its taxes pay something to help the poor! And if anyone dares to say anything about this in public, then they must be a Putin puppet or Assad apologist.

So many people around here are so eager to brown-nose Bezos, who clearly has zero concern for the wellbeing of any of his workers or the communities he burns to the ground, I fear that in the coming decades, everyone will be mandated to live in cookie cutter Amazon micro-apartment buildings with mandated subcutaneous surveillance trackers. The tech workers and elites get the Prime luxury apartments, while the poor have to fight each other to the death for squatting rights in the dwindling number of tiny run down studios, and those are the only two classes. AI, AR, VR and robots will of course be taking over the vast majority of jobs in the near future, and as long as the means of production remain in the control of the elite, these new tech advancements will never ever even be considered to be put to use for solving mass poverty or ending wars or radical climate action or redistributing wealth, every hedge fund and investor will jump at the first opportunity to kick out all vulnerable and low wage workers and make shiny expensive fancy toys for corporate welfare queens. Because that’s the very purpose of capitalism, always make as much profit as possible and strive to eventually concentrate the entirety of global wealth in the hands of a few people. It’s not nearly enough to tax corporations like Amazon, there needs to be heads rolling in the street. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk need to be executed for their crimes against humanity along with the rest of their ilk, and all these corporate structures need to be forcefully dissolved entirely. There will never be hope of reversing how fast we’re spiraling into unfathomably unsustainable inequality, mass human rights violations and inescapable oppression, unless the bastards leading us down that road feel the pain that they inflict on millions and millions of innocent people. I hope that the Seattle Times cartoonist is a clairvoyant instead of just a whiny dipshit, most of the absurd right-wing cartoons fear-mongering about democrats and libs being communists that are taking radical action could not be less accurate now but I hope are prophetic of the future.

Some things I can’t publish while living without being slandered as a Russian troll – In the same way that Iran Contra, MK Ultra and the JFK assassination have gone down in history as the intelligence operations of a past era, this era will have Russiagate, White Helmets and false flag gas attacks, Skripal, and the assassinations of BLM leaders as the intelligence ops of the time. This is all obvious to anyone that reads the news closely without corporate filters and can see the patterns of how the CIA and FBI have always covertly operated domestically and globally since their inception, in collaboration with MI6 and the Mossad. The state of Israel needs to be destroyed entirely, it was a mistake in the first place, has always enforced worse apartheid than in South Africa, and is an inspiring ethnostate. And their state-sponsored troll farms and disinformation campaigns along with the most advanced intelligence capabilities aimed with the only purpose of destabilizing the middle east and maintaining perpetual chaos. People are fucking stupid enough to think that some non-government affiliated click farm in St Petersburg posting puppy memes on facebook actually damaged our “democracy” but are completely blind to how nearly everyone in our government begs and grovels for the opportunity to pander to Israel, who’s covertly influencing so many internet and media narratives. It’s not an anti-semetic thing, Bibi loves anti-semites and to enable them because that’s what serves the Israeli geopolitical agenda. And there’s no proof at all to that Russian influence and sowing discord bullshit, literally every single story is hollow with nothing to back it up. It’s easy to believe what’s shoved down your throat by mainstream media, but when you actually look at it, it’s clear that Guccifer 2.0 is a multi-level fraud, a fictional identity created by the Crowdstrike CEOs as the solution for the Clinton campaign panicking about wikileaks teasing email dumps. Unintentionally meta, it’s like a matroyshka doll. On the outside, he’s a lone wolf somewhere in Europe. Then you look at the first layer of planted metadata and forensic info which points towards Russia, and everyone in the media immediately jumps to it having to be a Putin agent who very poorly tried to appear as a lone wolf. But every single piece of evidence tying Guccifer 2 to Russia was so shoddily tacked on to the documents, while genuine data indicating that the data had to have been locally transferred and was modified on the American east coast, plus the public timeline of relevant events makes it obvious that it was impossible to have come from a foreign “hack” and someone on the east coast is very obviously trying to frame this as someone in Russia who’s poorly trying to appear as a lone wolf. As far as I can tell, the recent story about Guccifer having logged “real” Russian IPs in social media sites has no technical hard evidence to support that. So the FBI and the CIA should put their cards on the table and reveal precisely where and what these Russian IP logs are. That’s the start of a long road of allegations and fake news stories that need to be revisited and given real, no bullshit evidence to support.

Many years ago, in late middle and early high school I was in a band that played mostly Muse covers, they were my favorite back then but I haven’t listened to any rock at all for years until very recently. I’ve been revisiting Muse’s catalog and remembered a song titled “Thoughts of a Dying Atheist.” That moment struck me as Jungian given the circumstances, hearing it for the first time a couple weeks ago since long before ever becoming suicidal, in a period when I loved it only for the music. The chorus goes “it scares the hell out of me, and the end is all I can see.” I have always been an atheist being it’s how I was raised, even though I’ve long abandoned nihilism and the foolish idea that there’s no form of genuine spirituality. Back when I was a Muse fan, even though I was no where near needing to fear death I would have agreed with the words by and large, as death is not something we’re raised to appreciate or assess in this society. Yet now in revisiting I feel rather proud since I’m not scared of death at all. Through spiritual awakenings mostly since last summer I’ve completely made peace with transitioning out of this plane. Having found a method and time frame where I can pass immediately without pain all on my own time and terms, I’ve taken care of every concern on this end of the journey. I can’t know what it will be like on the other side, but I am absolutely certain that the energy of my conscious will be returned to the universal order. Thus, the thoughts of this dying atheist are that even though the end is all I can see, it excites the hell out of me. It is only a transformation, all that will end is the torture and agony that has been foisted upon me in this existence.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” - Macbeth (5.5.19-28)

Recently I’ve gone to the beach, ridden ferries and sought out large pools often because there’s nothing more calming to me than the meditation of staring off into the water. As Mandelbrot and fractal patterns are found throughout math, science and much of nature, I see the waves in large bodies of water as fractal-like too. No matter how closely you focus your gaze or how far you stare out into the horizon, the patterns of the waves appear to repeat inside and outside of each other at all magnitudes of size along the surface. And I feel an incredible energy from it, how the waves can appear calm and tranquil on the surface but you know deeper down, the entire moving masses of water carry enormous weight and power. The waves exponentially repeat themselves in all directions with simultaneous grace and massive force, reconciling contradictions and entire spectrums, what could be more emblematic of the beauty of the laws of nature? When I ask myself where I go after I die, I say that’s where, the water. I doubt I would and wouldn’t want to be reincarnated as water, but as my brain shuts off and my soul becomes non-localized and free, its essence will return into the entirety of nature, and I have never been more certain of that than anything in my life. Pharrell got it right, no one ever really dies because energy is never created or destroyed, and whats in all of our minds are just localized variants of the same energy that makes everything else around us.

My final work can be found at scribd.com/document/378259892 or anonfile.com/86C0raeeb1, I’m pulling a Kafka and leaving it unfinished

Did I truly live life, or simply ride the sands as they tumbled through the hour glass? Holding on the fine moments is like grasping water – always there, yet always slipping away. Lusting for more than we need, leading to the greed of acquisition and the gluttony of position. A future that feels far but all too close. One that could be sublime if we didn’t fall behind in the times from our refinement of the mind, the state of my people is altered but my faith is completely unfaltered. I’m reaching up and reaching out, to go where no one’s been. Spiral out, keep going

[wildflower8281]

Some of the Crazy Shit in #nunlife

I’m trying to understand why I’m feeling so moved to write (again!) about much of this and share it. I think the answer is 3-fold:

1.) To bring awareness to an institution that is little known and that does a few things well, but a buncha things not so greatly. Incase any friends, parents or girls considering religious life ever read this – I have been and am happy to be available to connect and share more. I’ve been doing this for years offline – just sharing the behind the scenes, so as to remove the idealistic view that this order portrays. People be free to make their own decisions, tho!

2.) For me, there is a release and a letting go that happens when I write and share it out. It’s like the energy of it all is no longer lingering in my body and mind. It’s on the laptop and it’s out in the world. While I’ve had lots of pieces of my transition on my tumblr for years and other #nunlife posts on fb before, for some reason I’m feeling moved to write this way and share now, so here I am!

3.) I think my #conventlife is also like a really good book. You can revisit it at various points in your life and see new things, take in new messages, read the nuances even further. It’s pretty fascinating to me, so I enjoy revisiting, looking at parts from new perspectives, and allowing new lessons and wisdoms to appear for me.

(Below, basketball games and birthday celebrations with some of our very favorite youth and families.) 

In my last post, I shared a lot of what life in Spanish Harlem was like, as a missionary sister, living day to day. Pretty basic nun stuff, even if it was new to readers. Here I’m going to follow-up with some events during my 4 years in San Pablo that I have a love/hate relationship with. I love them because I’m pretty sure without them taking place, I may never have left (and leaving has been all things awesome, so!)….and I hate them because they were truly some of the most difficult, exhausting, dark years of my life on all levels. Looking back, I’m pretty confident it was the Universe going: “Here – you are getting the intensive course on burnout…Imma send you a legit crazy (1 definite, a few mas or menos) and make you literally in charge of everything…for 2+ years. Then, you’ll die, want to leave and get on with your life.” 

I think like any people-pleaser, like anyone who can’t say no, like anyone who knows not their own voice – my story is no different, with the exception that I was wearing a bright blue habit and a veil. The rules were a little more dramatic – to say no, was saying no to God….and quitting was quite literally scandalous….but still, same structure. I think we all have our own levels of what drives us to our utter exhaustion and burnout. For me, it was a mentally ill sister and replacing another who left, with little support in either situation. This is not a complete piece about why I left – as ultimately the motivation was much more interior - but more a list of external events and circumstances that led to my utter collapse on all levels.

How To Get Girls to Leave Religious Life in 3 Easy Steps:

·         Make them Superior. Firstly, being the “superior” of nuns older than you both in religious life and real life just felt uncomfortable. Dealing with the Pastor without having any mission experience was also highly uncomfortable, and it didn’t help that he was the most stoic priest ever and only spoke when necessary. It was annoying and scary at first. (After getting to know him over the years, however, that eased up & I learned he was like a really big-hearted Uncle, who had drank the Stoic Koolaid. It’s cool. I admire him for many things still to this day. He has actually since left the order, but is still a priest!) Being sent to Harlem as superior was like this: “Here, be in charge of all operations in this place you’ve never been to, and be in charge of these people who have been here longer than you.” It was just annoying and stressful!!! That’s what I got for being responsible & docile. Of course, I looked to the sisters who had been there longer for most of my answers in those first years. I knew how to be humble, yo! But still – I really didn’t enjoy being the Superior.. Training was joke – barely a week. It’s “the missionary adventure!” they said. “Trust the Holy Spirit!” they said! “Grace will provide!” they said!  #Koolaid, I say, to help the cray go down easier.

·         Send them a Crazy. My 2nd year there, the Provincial Superior decided to send me a “troubled” sister. Due to my “calm and peaceful nature” she thought I could handle this sister and would be a good superior for her and that I should really try to bond with her, so that she would trust me & get better, etc. This sister was notorious for her emotional outbursts & instability and for having been shipped from convent to convent, because of the trouble she caused....

 Long, long story short-ish – she ended up having Borderline Personality Disorder, which we discovered during her stint in Harlem. (Before I go any further, please know I take mental illness very seriously. If there is any circumstance that made me realize it’s a very serious thing, it would be the one I am describing here. It’s no joke, it’s not her fault, but many versions of BPD do require intense programs to really get anywhere. I learned and read a shit-ton about it all, not to mention lived it on a daily basis in a very intimate way. I am in no way here blaming this sister for her antics, as clearly the #ssvm is to blame for not responsibly providing her the care she clearly needed.) She was officially diagnosed by a psychiatrist and it was recommended by him (note, a doctor who specialized in treating catholic religious….) that she be put into an intensive treatment program – like a 3-4 day a week program. It was also suggested that she go home to Argentina until she was well, or just for good. Well, the order carried out none of the recommendations of the doctors blaming money constraints and also because “the sick are our chalices” – a brainwashy line in our rulebook to make us think it’s virtuous and saintly to care for every member who is sick in any way, and never send them home. Keeping them with us and taking care of them is like making spiritual bank, basically. So, she stayed in our convent for 2+ years, basically causing unrest on a weekly and, often daily basis. Personally, it was emotionally exhausting for me, as I was the person closest to her & obliged always to care for her (the rest of the sisters basically avoided her and walked on egg-shells around her.) If you know anything about this mental illness, you know that it’s the people closest to them that they manipulate, abuse and have a love/hate relationship with. I think I went to more doctors appointments with her in those 2 years, than ever in my life – every specialist of every kind, there was always something. Basically anything to get my attention. Days when she would cry for hours on end, lock herself in the bathroom, bang her head against the wall, threaten suicide, be totally rebellious….and most of these situations, it was just me and her in the convent. Everyone else was out doing their things in the parish, but I was stuck at home, dealing with her. Despite that though, she found a way to piss off, provoke and drive all my sisters crazy. People with this mental illness are very emotionally savvy and know exactly what to say to provoke and push buttons. The sisters fell for it over and over again, until they finally learned & paid her no mind, which is what she could not stand. Same with me. This is how I learned to not engage. It’s been one of the wisest practices of my life & has saved me a lot of bullshit. The provincial superior, no matter how many things I shared with either of them (there were 2 during my 4 years in Harlem,) never did much to actually help me. It took my spiritual director (priest) to ask the provincial superior to remove this sister from our convent, for my sanity. Did I mention that I was sent with her to Argentina to visit a special doctor?! This was the last straw for me. I ended up cutting my part of the trip short, and flew home alone from Buenos Aires to New York, because she was absolutely nuts and if I stayed any longer, I was going to lose my mind. After that trip is when I asked Father to beg to have her removed from my care and from my convent.  It was emotional and mental manipulation at its best by her, who was ill, and then to feel that my own superiors and order would not remove this situation from not only me, who also had anywhere from 3-5 other sisters to be present to, but would not remove the situation from our house, where it affected the peace and happiness of our convent community.  I am positive it was this situation in particular that really began breaking my circuits. One at a time, the breakers were being flicked off. My brain had less and less mental energy to make decisions. I stopped caring about anything…

·         Add Work, Remove Support. My 3rd year there (still with Sister Borderline), one of our mainstay sisters (the bitchy one) had not gotten laid yet, but had to go back to Argentina to help her mother. She ended up staying there for an entire year and no replacement was sent my way for her. I was asked to take over her parish duties, which was basically a full time job. She was the Director of Religious Education of our huge bilingual program – over 400 students, half on Saturday in Spanish, the rest on Sunday in English. It was a huge beast of a job (like in other parishes, is a regular paid FT job) that I was tasked with, with minimal help. The provincial house sent me 1 sister for a few hours a week to help me, but that was it. This job entailed not only weekend classes, but catechist formation classes (teaching adults how to teach and about the faith) and a ton of reception of the Sacraments, like coordinating hundreds of parents, sponsors and students for Baptisms, 1st Communions and Confirmations with the Bishop and all that insanity. I asked for another full time sister – someone who could really take over and was not given any more help than a few hours a week. Plus, I was still the provincial liturgist, having girls visit our convent, and doing all the things I originally had to do in the parish and as a superior. I was relieved of nothing, just tossed a full time job on top. So, at home I was being driven utterly insane (oh, and of course she was jealous that I was at the parish so much more, so of course she would have bouts of emergency illness, random piercing pains, etc, anything to get me to come back home and check her out, give her attention, make an emergency doctor visit, etc.) and at work, I was overloaded, but expected by Father and the parishoners to keep everything status quo. Not to mention the people of the parish obviously had no idea about the stressor of Sister Borderline and Father knew only minimal information and really didn’t care. He needed shit to get done in his parish and he didn’t care about an angry, whiney, emotional nun in the convent who didn’t work in his parish anyway. Nice set up, huh?

I mean – is it no wonder I left, I don’t like responsibility and I don’t like people?

Is it no wonder I can spot the red flags of people’s bullshit a mile away and be like #talktothehand. Peace.

Is it no wonder I aim to keep my lifestyle simple, free and lighthearted?

Is it no wonder I never want my work or job to become my life?

Is it no wonder that I go crazy when I see people who just don’t say no, and let people or organizations bulldoze over them?

Is it no wonder I never want to be in charge of shit, plan events or do someone else’s work?!

 (Below, amazing youth at my farewell party...I was sent to the mission in Avondale, PA in July 2011 to be a regular sister and take a breather. This breather allowed me to realize and accept it was time for me to go home. Story for another day! Far right is now a NYPD!)

So, like I said at the beginning, it’s a love/hate relationship with these aforementioned circumstances. They totally sucked and at the same time, taught me so many lessons and infused me with loads of insight that I use daily. This is why the children, youth and families of Harlem are my absolute faves – in order to escape the stress and heaviness and utter out-of-controlness of my life, I would just go and hang with them. Laugh with them, eat and play with them. They helped ground me, allowed me to breathe and just always loved on me. And they still do to this day.

How interesting that my own religious family would not support me in these circumstances, and does not see me (or many of us who have left) as family even today? Yet the people of San Pablo always did and still do. I have real friendships with the people I met in Harlem, literally to this day. And when I go back to NY, I visit them. And yet, with the exception of 1 human, no one from the ive or the ssvm would consider me family today. #whoislivingthegospel? #irony

I’m not throwing shade….well, ok, maybe I am, ha! Sometimes, shade’s gotta be thrown, yo! #truth

#nunlife #formernun #exnun #catholic #catholiclife #lefttheconvent #spanishharlem #mentalillness #balance #family #conventlife #catholicnun #religioussister #nuns

[violetganache42]

My Thoughts on the Logan Paul Controversy

WARNING: The following post contains descriptions of the graphic material that was recorded on Logan’s most recent vlog, which was thankfully taken down. It also consists of opinions on his and Jake’s unforgivable actions prior to this incident, as well as cursing and the possibility of some heated rage, in which I would like to apologize for in advance. If I also come off as rude in some aspects, then I’m sorry for that too. No one ever thought 2018 was going to start off like this and leave them with intense fury over it. I would also like to apologize if the topics of depression, mental illnesses, and suicide upsets or triggers anyone who is reading this. That is not my intention whatsoever. This is my overall opinion on a very controversial issue and I don’t mean to upset or trigger anyone in doing so. With all that said and done, reader discretion is advised.

Okay, I never talk about them, but because of what recently happened, I want to quickly address the elephant in the room: I hate Jake and Logan Paul. Actually, “hate” is not the right word to describe them; how about “loathe?” Maybe “despise?” “Spite?” “Resent?” Whatever the word choice is, the two are both terrible celebrities together and individually for a variety of reasons. 

As you already know, both Jake and Logan achieved their fame back in 2013 when Vine was around, achieving 5.3 million and 3.1 million followers respective by the time of its shutdown. When they switched over to YouTube on November and September of 2016 accordingly, it all went downhill from then on. In general, they spew diss tracks at each other, churn out frantic videos in order to gain viewership and consume free online content, and sell merchandise from their clothing lines instead of being TV actors. The only problem is kids between the ages of 8 and 15 aren’t necessarily part of America’s economy, so combining their focus on this specific demographic with their insatiable thirst for fame and greed, it’s basically a lose-lose situation for them. But that’s not all I have to say about them because looking at them individually, they have their own brand of problematic behaviors and content.

In Jake’s case, he endured the most controversy because he’s been exposed as nothing but an annoying douchebag who did the following: made racist remarks on his minor characters in his videos, accused of emotionally abusing and manipulating his ex-girlfriend Alissa Violet, cyberbullied and brought down people online, constantly disrupted his peaceful neighborhood and his neighbors with his stunts and pranks, delivered pop culture phrases in an obnoxious manner during an interview that came off as—how the kids describe stuff nowadays—“cringey.” Not to mention his atrocious music video for his song “It’s Everyday Bro” dealt some serious damage to his career by receiving over 3 million dislikes on YouTube. He even got fired from Disney mid-season of Bizaardvark on July 24 for acting like his fame gives him the freedom for doing whatever the fuck he wants. What grinds my gears about him is he made all these apology videos and keeps claiming that he’s changed and moved on, but there is strong evidence that proves otherwise.

As for Logan, he has managed to escape controversy up until now by having roles on films and TV shows like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Weird Loners, Airplane Mode, the YouTube Red film The Thinning, and in the upcoming movie Valley Girl, taking part in a partnership with Dwayne Johnson, and opening his own brand called Maverick. Heck, his diss song, “The Fall of Jake Paul,” had managed to gather better reception from his fans, scoring only 173,000 dislikes, which is far less than the 3 million dislikes from “It’s Everyday Bro,” because of the actual effort put into it and the massive controversy Jake currently has. Of course, it still doesn’t change the fact that he is still a horrible person when you consider the info above, and his newest vlog helps showcase it. Without further ado, it’s time for me to stop talking about the past and focus on the present… and boy, do I have a lot to say about this.

For those of you who not aware or are just hearing about this, allow me to explain what exactly happened; however, I am generously giving you the choice to skip this because what I am about to describe may make you feel uncomfortable. For those of you brave enough to read the issue, please keep scrolling.

Earlier this week, on New Year’s Eve, Logan and three of his friends were traveling in Japan when they stumbled upon Aokigahara, which is best known as the country’s “Suicide Forest.” They all ended up going in the forest when they discovered the corpse of a man who hung himself, one of the most common methods suicide victims use to kill themselves in there. One of the friends was feeling uneasy about what they were witnessing, and despite his seriousness, Logan laughed it off and soon referred to it as “a moment in YouTube history,” only for him to get one hell of a reality check. As of now, so many people via YouTube and Twitter have reacted in absolute anger and/or disgust at what he had done and have been calling out on it, including Robyn from Anime America, Joey the Anime Man, Gaijin Goombah, Lost Pause, Game Theory, Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, Game of Throne’s Sophie Turner, JackSepticEye, Stefan Karl, and even PewDiePie of all people. The immense amount of backlash had gotten to a point where he deleted the video and posted two apologies, one each on Twitter and YouTube. I will get to those later, but for right now, let me give my input on this.

First off, let’s break down the group’s reaction. Since the video was removed, I was able to find snippets of their dialogue from it thanks to CNN, which can be found here.

Logan: This is a first for me. This literally probably just happened.

Friend: I don’t feel good.

Logan: What, you never stand next to a dead guy?

Friend: No.

Logan: *laughs* It was gonna be a joke. This was all a joke. Why did it become so real?

Friend: Depression and mental illnesses is not a joke. We came here with the intent to focus on the haunted aspect of the forest. This just became very real.

Oh, boy. Where do I even begin with this? Logan, your friend is absolutely right. Depression and mental illnesses are not jokes, let alone FUCKING suicide! This was his first time seeing an actual dead body with his own two eyes and you laughed it off like it was nothing! For all we know, this could’ve been your first time seeing like this too, but why the fuck would you joke around like that if you were originally planning to explore the Suicide Forest’s haunted atmosphere?! It completely depletes the initial intent of your plans for your vlog all because of your “humor” in this! On a side note, whoever his friend is, can we please give him a round of applause for having the knowledge to understand what is and isn’t a joke? Because at least he gets the situation they were in.

And that brings me to another point I want to bring out: why he was joking around with what he saw. After they all ran out of the forest and into the parking lot, Logan said this that really caught my attention:

Logan: “…the smiling and laughing… is not a portrayal of how I feel about the circumstances. Everyone copes with shit differently… I cope with things with humor.”

WHAT?!

I’m sorry, but no! That is utter bullshit! Using humor to cope with something such as fear is fine, but using it to deal with the fact you stumbled across a REAL corpse?! That’s crossing the line! It helps illustrate that what you did was inhumanely wrong, and you know what?! The backlash proves it! When it became known to the public with around 6.5 million views, the viewers were repulsed by what you did! You showed them, from fans and people who don’t like to YouTubers, celebrities, and the media, that you have zero respect for the suicide victims through your insensitivity and voyeurism of this seriously important subject!

Not even your “Viewer Discretion is Advised” banter helped prevent this from happening, which leads me to readdressing your target demographic! For all we know, there could have been little children watching this and they would have either been scared that they saw the same hanging corpse or influenced negatively as shown by this tweet below!

“The other day my 7 year old sister showed me logan pauls video on the dead body and i was disgusted and told her to turn it off.My sister is 7 YEARS OLD and loves and watches logan paul all the time. later we went outside to do painting and she painted a hanging man in a forest” — Aoife Dormer (@aoife_dorma)

If anything, you could have emphasized your warning on how there are graphic material that are not suitable for children/minors, replaced “Advised” with “Recommended,” and made the video 18+ so that they would’ve been unable to watch it! Even so, it still didn’t change the fact it broke one of YouTube’s policy: prohibiting the depiction of violent, gory, or graphic material in a shocking, sensational, or disrespectful manner unless the footage is used for educational or documentary-based purposes. I���m not gonna touch upon how the staff aren’t pressing this forward or why they didn’t react sooner, but I digress. In my opinion, not changing the rating of your vlog—and having it violate a YouTube policy regardless—was part of a completely careless move on your part.

Oh, and this doesn’t end there; this actually leads into my next point: the apologies and the aftermath.

In the midst of the swift outcry of the enraged public, Logan deleted the video and tweeted an apology on New Year’s Day at exactly 10 PM about what he posted, but instead of taming the flame, it made things worse… and I can easily tell why. Much like the last remark, this one contradicts what he says.

“I didn't do it for views. I get views. I did it because I thought I could make a positive ripple on the internet, not cause a monsoon of negativity. I intended to raise awareness for suicide and suicide prevention and while I thought, 'if this video saves just ONE life, it'll be worth it,' I was misguided by shock and awe, as portrayed in the video.”

Dear God, there is a shit ton wrong with this tone-deaf apology it makes me want to scream! What pisses me off the most is his claim and there is strong proof in not only this tweet but also in my thoughts on the vlog that highlights how that is bullshit as well!

You should’ve thought about your actions ahead of time! You were given multiple choices on what to do when you and your friends encountered the hanging dead body in Aokigahara: “Should I keep this vlog?” “How should I feel about or respond to this?” “Should I edit it out or leave it in?” “How will everyone else react?” At the end of the day, you chose the wrong choices and it resulted in heated negative consequences.

You were NOT raising awareness for suicide prevention, which is the main reason why this tweet makes me livid! The vlog proves you laughed at what you saw and cracked jokes about it, despite your friend’s input on this unsettling discovery! A lot of people, even YouTube, agree that the material was shocking for the viewers, you sensationalized at said material, and you were outright disrespectful about it by treating suicide like a fucking joke through your “coping mechanism!”

You were not “misguided;” basically, this third reason ties in with the second one.

Because of this, an insane amount of criticism was unleashed, with Sophie calling Logan “an idiot,” his claim “mocking,” and his apology “self-praising,” Aaron referring to him as “pure trash” who can “go rot in hell,” and surprisingly Rebecca Black stating that how someone with “such power and influence could intensify “an entire family’s grief beyond measure.” And guess what? She is right! One of the people calling out on him was Anna Akana, who and her brother both had to deal with the loss of her sister after she committed suicide! Not only that, but there are also people struggling with depression and have contemplated suicide, especially in Japan, who are infuriated and sickened by what they watched/heard because they knew what he did was an epitome of bad publicity... No, “bad” isn’t the best way to describe this; what they discovered was appalling publicity! It’s even worse when you realize publicity is one of the main contributors to suicide contagion, especially when a young age group is exposed to it! Given Logan’s fanbase mainly consists of children and young teenagers, that vlog was a repulsive influence on them and would most likely worsen suicide contagion despite it being removed from YouTube, which reiterates Aoife’s tweet about her younger sister painting a lynched man! The damage has already been dealt and it pisses me off so much that he would influence minors like that!

And that is just the tip of the iceberg because he posted a longer apology video on YouTube the next night amid the rampaging counteraction. Did it do anything to at least settle this dispute? Let’s find out.

“I've made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgment and I don't expect to be forgiven. I'm simply here to apologize. So what we came across that day in the woods was obviously unplanned and the reactions you saw on tape were raw and they were unfiltered. None of us knew how to react or how to feel. I should have never posted the video. I should have put the cameras down, stopped recording what we were going through. There's a lot of things I should have done differently but I didn't and for that from the bottom of my heart I am sorry. I want to apologize to the internet, I want to apologize to anyone who has seen the video, I want to apologize to anyone who has been affected or touched by mental illness or depression or suicide but most importantly I want to apologize to the victim and his family. For my fans who are defending my actions, please don't, they don't deserve to be defended. The goal with my content is always to entertain, to push the boundaries, to be all inclusive. In the world I live in I share most everything I do. The intent is never to be heartless, cruel or malicious. Like I said I made a huge mistake. I don't expect to be forgiven. I'm just here to apologize. I'm ashamed of myself. I'm disappointed in myself. And I promise to be better. I will be better. Thank you.”

*frustrated sigh* Oh, dear Lord. There is a reason why posted the transcript of his apology than share the video itself, which I’ll get to after I give my two cents on this. ...Ever since last night, I had a difficult time trying to find a way to reply to this. I read a couple articles saying the video was emotional and somber because of how he was on the brink of tears and it left me at a point of uncertainty; I kept asking myself if he really does deserve to be forgiven or not, but after seeing other posts and getting an update on his newest video, it snapped me out of my state and told me that forgiving Logan would mean defending him, just like his fans... and there was no way in hell I would succumb to a level as low them supporting him. So with my spark reignited, it’s time for me to break this shit down once again!

Logan, let me start this bit off by saying this: it is far too late for you to apologize. What you did was irredeemable, vulgar, disgraceful, and plain rude of you to not only those suffering from depression, mental illnesses, or suicidal issues, but to the entire country of Japan. During your trip, you behaved immaturely by making a complete racist jackass out of yourself in front of foreign tourists/residents while wearing a kimono and made a complete fool out of Americans and Westerners, but your vlog on New Year’s Eve took it too far! You desecrated a corpse, went through him to see if he had any of his belongings with him, laughed and joked about it, and showed no remorse or empathy about what you and your friends came across! Because of you, Japan is now coated in anger; you made them hesitant on us being part of the 2020 Olympics, Tokyo tweeted at you to get out, and you’re now denounced by the Japanese Suicide Prevention Group all because you ridiculed their strict laws and significant efforts into helping lower suicide rates and gave a giant middle finger to country in general by treating it like it’s a fucking playground! What you did was an act of pity because of the imminent backlash and I will never. Forgive. You.

That’s not all; as it turns out, even though Logan clearly said he doesn’t expect forgiveness, his fanbase—like I’m gonna call them by their referred fandom name—still forgave him because they believe “he didn’t mean it” and even had the audacity to attack a Japanese vlogger named Reina Scully in a racist manner all because she criticized his Suicide Forest vlog. ...Okay, first: WHAT?! Second: THE FUCK?! Like before, I apologize for suddenly snapping, but that’s NOT how you defend someone! You do not make harass the harasser by sending them racist remarks, let alone telling her and the Japanese to kill themselves! That is just sick and inhumane! No wonder people are telling others to stop supporting the Paul brothers; their fans are worse than the commonly known bad fandoms!  *sigh* Well, at least it was best of me to not apologize to Logan because there was no way I was going to stoop as low as them. It was also perfect timing on my part because I recently discovered on that his apology video was monetized; in other words, he made thousands of dollars off of it...

Holy fuck! This is all kinds of despicable and messed up! Making between $8.5K and $68.1K off of a simple apology?! Now I am so glad I ultimately kept to my opinions about this sicko instead of accepting him like his other fans because this is one of the many examples of being greedy and money-hungry. 

Because of this, people immediately took to Twitter to repeatedly slam him until it was promptly demonetized. Shortly thereafter, conflicts began to surface regarding YouTube; a petition opened up calling for Logan to be banned from the site (which now has over 130K signatures) and many are giving the website and its staff flack for being hypocritical of the way they review the content of videos. To be honest, I don’t blame them. Although I’m glad they commented on the issue, it obviously wasn’t enough. What used to be a site that got its start from cat videos has become its own economy with terrible decisions they’ve made, from the Fair Use dilemma to labeling LGBT+ videos as “mature content.” Seeing how significant the past few days has become, they really need to wake up, get their humungous sticks out of their asses, and actually contribute than just simply stating what rule Logan violated. Regardless, with all of these factors combined into one, it is easily safe to say this second apology was typically a clear bust.

And what does Logan do now that both apologies were shown to be practically useless? He announces his hiatus last night on Twitter, stating he is “taking time to reflect.” Of course, and not surprisingly, there is a long thread which consists of a division between his effortlessly influenced fandom of youngsters and those who despise him for what he has done, both over the years and on New Year’s Eve.

...I’m done. I’m fucking done. I’m not dealing with this shit anymore. Everything about this is wrong and I am certain I am going to get a headache out of this. I don’t care if he is “reflecting;” knowing him, he is still going to be the same idiotic frat “celebrity” that he is, especially when Maverick Apparel came forward today to say they lost $4 million in profit because of him… and Jake dissed in him in one of the most inappropriate ways ever. Ugh!… Can this nightmare end already?! I swear, it keeps finding ways to make me want to continue this rant! Well, guess what? Not. Anymore. I am concluding this right now and I don’t care what will happen to these two sickos in the near future.

*sigh* Well, to wrap things up, Logan is nothing but a stupid, inane, thick-skinned, money-hungry, thoughtless jackass who only cares about getting richer and, much like Jake, using his fame to do whatever the fuck he wants because he believes there is no such thing as “bad publicity…” until now, that is. He may have been able to dodge controversy in the past, but thanks to his obnoxious, immature personality, he has made him a danger to three important fields after his trip to Japan; he has demonstrated how much of an inadequate influence he is to juveniles countless times in the past and has managed to do so once again with his now-deleted vlog, he has made the entire Japanese country hate him for even stepping foot on their cherished land, and he has sparked yet another battle against YouTube’s policies and regulations.

Logan, I’m going to say this once and only once: it is your fault you showed Japan just how disgustingly inhumane you are by not only fucking around with their cherished laws, traditions, culture, history, and landscape. It is your fault for recording the footage of the corpse, laughing and joking about it, and not giving a single shit about suicide, depression, and mental illnesses. It is your fault you unleashed hell on earth that pitted most of the social media users against you. It is your fault for creating your half-hearted apology tweet and your equally monetized apology video that only added fuel to the fire. It is your fault Japan hates you for treating them poorly. It is your fault you’re now facing serious consequences after showing the world what you did in front of that dead man. It is your fault for ending 2017 and starting 2018 on abysmal notes. I hope your multi-millionaire empire crumbles by having the YT staff banning your vlog channel. I hope the actions you—and Jake—have illustrated over the years and the consequences you face will deal more major blows to your precious careers.

To everyone reading this, I want to say I am genuinely sorry that you saw that vlog or heard what has been going on. I am even sorry at myself for subjecting myself to this horror of learning who the Paul brothers are just to get this rant out of the way. They have a horrible sense of humor and none of the stuff they do is funny, let alone how serious suicide is.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US, claiming an average of 44,965 American lives every year, and for every 25 attempts that are made, it annually costs the country $51 billion. In Japan, despite now having over 21,000 people claiming their lives every year—with the majority caused by men—and its suicide rate declining, it still remains as one of the highest rates when compared to other countries. The most common place for the Japanese to kill themselves is in Aokigahara, which has received its infamous nickname, “the Suicide Forest.” It earned its name and has become the 2nd most suicidal place on Earth because around 100 Japanese residents travel there to commit suicide because of its thick trees and its seclusion; two of the frequent ways they kill themselves is through drug overdose or by hanging themselves though other methods are not uncommon. Since then, Japanese officials have been putting their best efforts to decrease the suicide rate.

Suicide is an urgent situation, with depression being the #1 cause of it if left untreated, undiagnosed, or ineffectively treated and mental illnesses, disorders, and contributors such as physical ailments, previous suicide attempts, limited access to mental health treatment closely following suit and cannot be left unnoticed. If you or a loved one is experiencing suicidal thoughts or actions or have had a series of suicidal thoughts or actions, it is not too late to seek help. Whether it is in America, Japan, or anywhere else in the world, call the numbers below based on what country you live in:

United Kingdom: 116 123

United States: 1-800-273-8255

Canada: 5147234000

Mexico: 5255102550

Ireland: 116 123

Brazil: 212339191

Argentina: [phone]

Spain: 914590080

Portugal: 225 50 60 70

France: 0145394000

Greece: 1018

Germany: 08001810771

Italy: 800860022

Poland: 52770000

Holland: 0900-0113

Denmark: [phone]

Sweden: 46317112400

Finland: 040-5032199

Norway: [phone]

Belgium: 1813

Austria: 017133374

Switzerland: 143

Egypt: 7621602

South Africa: 0514445691

Israel: 1201

India: 8888817666

Australia: 131 114

New Zealand: 045861048

Singapore: 1800 221 4444

Philippines: 028969191

Russia: 0078202577577

China: 85223820000

South Korea: 112

Japan: [phone]

You can also donate to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, or any resourceful suicide prevention organizations you know because your gifts will serve them as a reminder that you are contributing to fight against this worldwide epidemic.

Don’t wait. Call now or donate to help save a life.

#my post #rant #logan paul controversy #anti logan paul

[miss-musings]

Why I want to stop watching the Blacklist (a.k.a., A Rant by Me)

This used to be my favorite show. Hands down. I would legitimately schedule things around it; I would leave events early to make sure I could watch it live; I would post about it on Tumblr and read other people’s posts the rest of the evening; I would search through multiple review site’s posts the next day.

I loved the dynamic between Red and Liz. I loved the mysteries and the little morsels of answers that we would get. I loved how, in the S1 finale, it felt like no one was safe: Meera got killed; Harold got attacked and nearly killed; Tom was shot and left for dead.

But, over the past few seasons, this show has become the bane of my TV-watching experience.

(EDIT: this post, which quietly keeps gaining notes, was written post-S4, pre-S5. So, there’s still plenty of relevant things in the post, but just keep the timing in mind.)

I would watch it, sure. But that was because I didn’t want the folks on Tumblr spoiling it for me. It was because I thought we were finally getting answers – which is what they teased us with every other week – only to feel so disappointed.

This last year, I made reaction videos for a friend of mine for every single episode. You know what one of the most commonly said things in those videos is? “Well, at least next week’s preview looks good.” Only to be disappointed in that episode, and to say the same thing about next week’s preview, and the cycle repeated itself until we actually got a half-way decent episode (which was usually some kind of finale or premiere, because that’s the only time actual shit can happen – during Sweeps Week).

Over and over again, both online and in person, I compared this to those scenes in cartoons where someone puts a carrot on a fishing pole in front of a donkey, and the donkey runs so hard to reach the carrot, only to never get there.

That’s how this show has felt the past season or two.

It’s only a shadow of what it once was, and I’m tired of it. I wish I could stop watching it.

So many other people I follow on Tumblr have said they’ve either stopped or thought about stopping. By comparison, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and the Walking Dead seemingly increase their viewership every season; the Blacklist has been NBC’s lowest-rated show in the demo for the last year, IIRC. The ratings for the Redemption spin-off were so low, the showrunners tried to pass it off as a one-off miniseries, when it was ALWAYS intended to be its own full-length show.

I understand that the show does well in DVR viewership numbers, and it was the most expensive TV show that Netflix had purchased when Season 1 was released.

But, this show continues to disappoint me. There’s hardly anything I like about it anymore. Hell, even James Spader, who’s a master at his craft, seems to be bored with it. His monologues are becoming more and more cliche, and even his amazing performances can’t save this dumpster-fire.

Its protagonist, Liz, is all over the fucking place in terms of characterization. First, she was naive and learned her “husband” had used and abused her. Then, she went to the dark side, chained him up on a boat and said she’d never forgive him for what he’d done. Then, she apparently forgave him, slept with him, had his kid, tried to remarry the guy, and then faked her death to get away with him and is now living her happy dream life with her little girl and her ‘perfect’ husband.

What happened to the dark, morally questionable, grungy Liz? What happened to the Liz who was jaded and afraid after being on the run for several weeks, or months?

She just settled down with a guy who she used to hate and she’s living the dream.

What in the literal fuck?

And, for all the time that has been invested in Liz, she has made little to no progress in her characterization these past few seasons. In fact, she’s done more of a 360. She’s right back where she started, more or less.

Why should the audience give a shit about her journey if she’s not making any progress? Why should we care that, halfway through this show, she has everything she’s ever wanted?

The side characters, like Aram, Samar, Ressler, Cooper and others are there just to serve the plot. Any time there’s a semblance of some character development or plot progression, the showrunners regress everyone back to Stage One so we can do it all over again. Aram and Samar look like they’re making progress in their possible romantic relationship? Fuck that, we’ve got to make sure Aram runs back to his abusive girlfriend and string this thing along another season! Remember when Ressler got shot, had prescription drug problems, and was in Narcotics Anonymous? Yeah, me neither.

Mr. Kaplan, who was best when she was on-screen to sass and help Reddington once every few episodes, gets pushed into the spotlight for some made-up bullshit reason that had never been discussed or hinted at previous to the “Mr. Kaplan used to work for Katarina Rostova” storyline. And while Susan Bloomaert is a fantastic and underrated actress and did her absolute best to make those scenes between her and Liz feel emotional, I didn’t really care about their dynamic at all because it felt so forced, underdeveloped, and out-of-nowhere.

Whereas the relationship that I care the MOST about – that between Red and Liz – that has been the most built-up and developed over the course of the show keeps getting thrown under the bus as Liz does the whole “love Red, hate Red, forgive Red” song-and-dance routine. She claims she agrees with Red when he tells her not to go back to Tom in Season 2… only to go back to Tom later in Season 2. She’s totally down with asking Red to help her whenever she’s a criminal on the run… but the minute her wedding gets shot up, she yells at him and says it’s his fault.

And now, as far as the Lizzington fans go, which I count myself as one of them, the show has written itself into a corner. Because all the amazing chemistry and romantic tropes throughout the show feel incredibly creepy now that Liz believes Red is her dad, regardless of whether he actually is or not. I don’t care how they try to pull themselves out of the ginormous hole they’ve dug for themselves on that one – why the hell would a woman ever end up with a guy that she once thought was her dad, even if it turned out he actually wasn’t?

And the only real way out of it is the Impostor Theory – a well-written and well-researched theory, but one that makes people have to do fucking mental gymnastics for it to work. You have to assume a lot of people like Naomi and Reddington’s former roommate from the Naval Academy who’s now an admiral, are in on it. Whereas dudes like Finch or the Director aren’t…

Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s a wonderful theory and it explains a lot. But, if it ends up being true, it means one of two things:

1) The writers didn’t plan this from the beginning and lucked their way into it

OR

2) The writers DID plan this from the beginning, which means they have the ability to be really good writers, but then they fell into all this other bullshit – like Liz’s weird arc and other things – which really means that they’re not that good of writers; they just had the one good idea.

And if the Impostor Theory DOESN’T end up being true, in some form or fashion, that means that Red really IS Liz’s dad, and this whole fucking show – Red’s entire characterization, his relationship and dynamic with her – has been a lie. Canon can be throw out the window to rot in the sewer and fuck itself in the interim, because the writers don’t even care any more.

Which, I realize is unfair, because I know there are hundreds of people who work really hard to make this show happen, and while it’s not, like, the worst show of all time, the fact that it had such potential and has fallen so far, almost makes it seem worse than a show that was so bad from the beginning I never invested time in it.

And what makes it even WORSE is that the showrunners continue to act like this is the most groundbreaking show on television, and put it on a pedestal On High, along with the likes of Game of Thrones, The Americans, and The Sopranos… you know, actually good shows.

That would be the equivalent of the Taken director demanding that his movie should’ve gotten an Oscar. It’s like, you know it was a fine movie, and I had a good time watching it, but like, bring yourself back down to earth. Taken is okay, but it is NOT Oscar-worthy material, so get off your high horse, dude.

I guess, if nothing else, it shows that the showrunners, writers and actors are so talented that they got me to invest in the show to the point where I can’t not watch it, even though it’s fallen so far and I feel like it’s nowhere near as good as it used to be. They hooked me and got me to care about these characters and their dynamics so much that, even though it frustrates me week in and week out, I will still keep watching it.

It’s just that, now, I might be doing it with a bottle of vodka, taking shots every time:

Red has a monologue that proves James Spader is too damn good for this show;

Liz is bitchy to Red for little to no reason, while continuing to be lovey-dovey with Tom;

Ressler survives a fight or car accident or some other action sequence with no injuries whatsoever;

Harry Lennix is completely underused as Harold Cooper in an episode, because he only tells his employees to do the obvious… and literally nothing else;

Samar and/or Aram take a step back from getting together, despite hints that they’ve liked each other since Season 2.

So, bottoms up, Blacklist fans!

#blacklist #nbc the blacklist #the blacklist #raymond reddington #lizzington #keenler #elizabeth keen #harold cooper #aram mojtabai #donald ressler #samar navabi #dembe zuma #mr kaplan #katarina rostova

[guattari2600]

an otome romance route taught me something therapy couldn’t

as bizarre as it seems because this is about a visual novel where you date anime boys for your phone, actual serious content warning for discussion of abuse. ALSO mystic messenger spoilers ahead, including for super new content.

I have played maybe four visual novels (including Hatoful Boyfriend, a masterpiece) so I’m not an expert in the field, but I absolutely love Mystic Messenger. Partly for its format (it’s delivered like an app on your phone complete with e-mail, chatrooms that appear in real time, calls and text messages from the members of the chatroom). I also love that all of the characters feel like, if not real people, super individual in their personalities. It can seem a little one-dimensional (as opposed to two-dimensional, ha ha ha. ha) at first, but once you start to get to know them better there’s a ton of history underpinning pretty much all of them. One thing that has really struck me about Mystic Messenger is that the way to get the “Good Ending” on most routes is to pursue the healthy relationship options as opposed to the unhealthy ones that feed into the characters’ insecurities. One character, Yoosung, is really young and struggles to get work done instead of playing video games. You can choose to enable his bullshit and step in as a surrogate mom - but that results in a bad ending. Another character, Jumin, who has problems expressing himself emotionally, gets very clingy very fast. You can choose to dive headfirst into a codependent relationship with him - but that, too, gets you the bad ending. Taking your time and being respectful of people’s boundaries and empathetic are the best way to “win” Mystic Messenger. 

Seems reasonable.

So I was super psyched when the newest route for the mysterious head of the RFA, V, was released this month. I knew V’s backstory was a clearly unhealthy & codependent relationship with another character in the series (Rika). I didn’t realize that watching them communicate in real time would knock me on my back the way it did. I’m writing this to deal with the fact that I got enraptured by the anime boy messenger program for a few days, but also to advocate for what I think was a nuanced & powerful representation of codependence and abuse in relationships.

I have (like many of us) a history of abusive relationships that have damaged my ability to connect with others in a lot of ways. Luckily, I’ve had a great support system backing me up and some really great mental health professionals who have helped me get through a lot of it. But some stuff still stings.

V and Rika’s backstory, in a nutshell: V was a famous photographer who met Rika when she was looking at one of his photos at an exhibition. When she talked about his paintings he felt like she understood him and they got involved. The way they talk about their relationship is really burdened with metaphor - him being her “sun” and promising to love every part of her, even the parts that are “darkness.” As Rika’s mental health deteriorated the “darkness” kept coming out more and more. V tried to continue to be the “sun” to her darkness but this just resulted in Rika feeling more and more suffocated because it felt like his obsession with trying to fix her was rejecting the parts of her that weren’t perfect. We get cutscenes interspersed throughout the story that show us times that Rika and V spent together where they were happy, the deterioration of their relationship, and Rika in the present day.

When things started going downhill.

Eventually, Rika’s mental health deteriorated completely and after attacking V and doing damage to his eyes that could result in him going blind, she disappeared and formed a cult where she tries to “save” people by letting the darkness inside them out instead of focusing on the “light” (yes, this is where the anime cheese truly emerges). Her feelings in the present-day of the game toward V span the entire spectrum of grief - she goes from raging about how she wants to hurt him, to begging him to save her again, to telling him he means nothing to her and she’s just using him. What makes Mystic Messenger particularly remarkable - and painful - is that because of its format, you get to not only watch their dialogue in real-time, but participate in it. You’re there whenever V tells her that what they had wasn’t love, but obsession: 

And you’re there whenever V starts to lose it and think that he’s worthless unless he goes back to her:

Whenever the two come face-to-face in the chatroom, you’re there to plea in what felt like the most futile and devastating scene for me, where you try to beg V not to go back to Rika as he’s talking to her:

And maybe most disturbingly (for me, because it rings a little too true to past events), you’re there whenever Rika admits that she’s fully aware of how manipulative and abusive their relationship is:

While the rest of Mystic Messenger had some rough emotional moments, watching the dying throes of an abusive relationship being played out in front of me (including the character who I was growing emotionally attached to in this route of the game) drove me to put my phone down and have a glass of wine. Several times.

What made this route particularly tough for me was that it followed the rest of Mystic Messenger in that the only way to get the “Good Ending” (and I did get the Good Ending) is to give the healthy, empathetic answers. I caught myself making the same mistakes I’ve made in the real-life past in the game too. Whenever Rika said something particularly spiteful, I wanted to tell her that she was evil and beyond help. Whenever V was hurting, I wanted to beg him to run to me instead of her. But either of these choices will result in a bad ending, so I had to bite my tongue (and in several cases, rewind and restart a chatroom so I didn’t tank my game).

As I progressed it started getting easier. There are several checkpoints along routes in Mystic Messenger where you can fail and get a bad ending in different ways, so if you continuously choose the “good” answers the characters will respond differently to you. As I forced myself to understand more about Rika and what she was going through, it became easier to not respond with kneejerk disgust and to instead say “You’re not evil, you need help.” And whenever V was vulnerable, instead of trying to force my way in, I could say “You need to learn to love yourself - you’re precious beyond what you offer to others.”  In retrospect, there are some situations from my past in which I deeply wish I’d made those choices instead. Eventually, if you do it right, V tells Rika goodbye once and for all... and watching her begging him one more time to take her back is one of the most painful conversations to sit through.

Playing through V’s story was profoundly difficult for me, and when it was over I breathed a sigh of relief. The “Good Ending” isn’t V running into your arms, it’s a 2 year lapse after which he comes to you and says he thinks he’s ready to start again. My one complaint is that we don’t see what happens to Rika (although I expect that’ll be in some post-game content that’s slated to be coming soon). I’m left here feeling absolutely silly that a game where you message anime boys on your phone could do such a number on me (believe me, you can’t laugh at me any harder than I already am).

There is, however, a really dangerous lesson that I'm trying not to take away from this route. The nature of the visual novel's structure runs the risk of encouraging the idea that your choices matter in other people's abusive situations. Here's what therapy HAS successfully taught me: sometimes there's no right thing to say, and even if you approach someone in the healthiest way possible it won't keep them from making self-destructive decisions. In the real world, even if I said all the right things to V, he may have still decided to go back to Rika because he couldn't manage to love himself enough to leave. Maybe you've heard the statistic that it takes a woman on average 7 attempts to leave an abusive relationship. You can't just fix people by selecting the right option on the chat wheel - you can only tell them that you believe they deserve to be happy. You can't make them believe it too.

I do understand, however, that telling that story would make for a pretty heartbreaking video game (especially in a phone app where you date anime boys). So if you wanna get your heart put through a wringer you have both my recommendation and my warning. I think that if I'd gotten a bad ending I may have just put my phone down and taken the week off to lie in bed. But I do feel like I’m better off for playing it.

#mystic messenger #long reads