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#but i just like how he debunked the ideas in a scientific way so that people can stop saying oh religion is a freak of nature

waterfall7290 · 1 month

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Understanding Jeremy: an empathetic and psychological analysis of Jeremy Wade Delle - and the people who loved him

PLEASE NOTE: This article is intended for people who already possess a general knowledge of Jeremy Delle’s life events. I wouldn’t recommend reading it before having learned about his life, because I will be jumping from one event to the other and it will be difficult to keep track of everything if you don’t know what I’m referring to. If you want to get a more-than-general idea of Jeremy’s life, you can visit jeremywadedelle.com.

I never met Jeremy nor am I a psychologist, yet I have studied psychology and I have learned in great detail all that was made public (and not) about Jeremy. This is basically a sum up of everything I have learned about his psychology and about his loved ones during my almost four years of researching and writing No more “Later Days”; other than the things I have learned in my own personal experiences with both adults and teenagers.

I will try to be as chronologically linear as possible, but since several topics are crisscrossed with each other (meaning multiple topics have multiple links to events from both Jeremy’s earlier and later years), this article will be divided in theme sections more than age/years sections.

For its writing, I consulted the following sources: a multitude of scientific articles and websites (only parts relating to Jeremy were quoted, although a link to the full article was always provided); jeremywadelle.com, ssheps.com, thejeremystory, the 1991 police report, screenshots I have gathered over the years with information and claims made by people who (supposedly) really met Jeremy - I use the term ‘supposedly’ a lot because everything about Jeremy is true until proven otherwise, which why I very warmingly invite anyone who actually knew Jeremy to contact me and help me confirming or debunking the info in my possession.

In addition, I have used the information Ash shared with me contained in the emails exchanged between him and Chris; plus a seven-pages-long September 1990 letter Jeremy wrote to Chris.

ABOUT THIS LETTER: the entire communication happened between Ash (admin of jeremywadedelle.com) and Chris from Austin. Chris came out of nowhere one day sharing information he had about Jeremy: he talked very in detail about him and his loved ones and he did it in a very transparent, not glorifying or victimizing way (usually, when people make up info about Jeremy, they have very black-and-white views of him and his loved ones); he also scanned a seven-pages-long letter Jeremy had supposedly written to him in September 1990 and explained its contents to Ash. Unfortunately, Chris disappeared before Ash could get a chance to talk to him on Google Meet. He never got explicit permission from him to share the new info and didn’t know how to feel about the truthfulness of the letter. Since I’m his moderator, he shared these contents with me to ask me for my opinion. To Ash, Chris' disappearance is really strange, which makes him doubt Chris was real. However, Chris knew many things about Jeremy and even knew the name of Jeremy’s sister, which is something only few people know. Still, why would he disappear into nothing just like that? Perhaps the topic was too hurtful. Or it could be that maybe Chris never really existed, but who in their right mind would come out of nowhere to produce a fake suicide letter and a fake seven-pages-long letter in order to fuel a very very niche topic that, after thirty years, almost nobody talks about anymore? I didn’t really know what to think of it until I decided to compare the writing on the infamous “Later Days” note Jeremy wrote to Lisa and the writing on both the suicide letter and the letter Jeremy had supposedly sent to Chris… and they matched. The way of writing certain letters is the same, the handwriting is the same. So the letter must be real. I would really like to share it, or at least share the most interesting parts of it (together with the handwriting comparison I made), but Ash made me promise not to do it because the letter is very personal and we never received explicit permission from Chris, while he did give me permission to share what Chris had told him via email. Perhaps one day we will receive permission to share the letter, or maybe Ash will simply decide to share it himself (which would be right, since he was the one the letter was scanned for). I hope so.

Until that day, here is the result of my extensive research on the Jeremy matter. Hopefully it will help people to look at the events from different perspectives and produce a less judgemental and black-or-white opinion of both Jeremy and his loved ones.

AN UNSTABLE FOUNDATION: JEREMY’S CHILDHOOD BETWEEN HOMES, SCHOOLS AND A SPLIT FAMILY

1975 - Jeremy was born and lived in house 1 with his parents Joseph and Wanda and his older sister for a few years before his parents separated when he was four (1979). According to thejeremystory and to Mr. Delle's statements from the 1991 police report, the divorce must not have been easy or peaceful.

From The Jeremy Story (‘1. Early Years’, section ‘1979’): “May 23 - Joseph files for divorce from Wanda, claiming conflict of personalities that prevents reconciliation”; From the 1991 police report (pages 15-16 of the PDF): “I advised Mr. Delle that I was going upstairs to confront Mrs. Crane, his ex-wife. He said that she would become hysterical and that I would not be able to control her, that if you looked up hysterics in the dictionary, that’s where she’d be. He said that he would tell her, but he did not want to have to deal with her at this time. [...]”

It is very likely both Jeremy and his older sister may have seen their parents argue multiple times. I wouldn't be surprised if after the divorce, both parents badmouthed the other parent in front of the children: this happens very frequently when a divorce isn't peaceful.

1979 - Joseph went to live in another house and remarried shortly after, only six months after divorcing Wanda. From an outside perspective, it could seem that Mr. Delle was very quick to rebuild another life and ‘forget’ about his previous one - at least that’s what it must have looked like in the eyes of his children, I believe.

From ssheps.com (‘Jeremy Wade Delle’, section ‘Robert B.’, ‘From Shelly:’): “All he [Jeremy] ever wanted was attention, as he didnt get much at home.", "His mom basically abandoned him and his dad was no Saint either. In fact he was too wrapped up into his new wife to notice what was going on with Jeremy.". From a comment a friend of Jeremy from Timberlawn left on Findagrave: “[...] you’re parents [...] were to busy with worrying about their own lives. [...] I hope your parents have become better people today and not so into themselves anymore.” They later corrected themselves: “I spoke in the wrong [...] I have carried the displeasure of how ya’ll acted as parents back then but [...] I know now that no matter how hard we try to keep our kids safe as parents that our kids will do what they want to do no matter what we do.” From the 1991 police report (page 23 of the PDF): “Mrs. B advised Delle had told students that his father did not pay attention to him." This last comment was doubted by me in this post. From the 1991 police report (page 25 of the PDF): “Mr. Delle also advised Jeremy had had problems dealing with the divorce of he and his wife and had sought counseling for depression.”

What are the psychological effects of a conflictual divorce on the children? Here’s what several studies found.

From https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/children-high-conflict-divorce-face-many-challenges: “[...] children may be battered and injured by factors that are directly or indirectly associated with the divorce: reduced parenting time with one or both parents; financial instability; relocation, which involves changing schools and losing friends; and the inconvenience of traveling between the parents’ homes. Both clinicians and forensic evaluators know that the single most important factor that harms children of divorce is continual conflict between the parents. Children are damaged when their parents fight in front of them, over them, and through them. [...] Many children of divorce have transitory symptoms, which may take the form of excessive worrying, sadness, anger, oppositional behavior, impaired social relationships, and compromised school performance. These symptoms may occur when the child initially learns his or her parents plan to divorce, when the parents argue excessively, when the parents separate, and when important changes occur in the child’s life, such as moving to a new neighborhood. The typical diagnosis is one of the adjustment disorders (eg, adjustment disorder with anxiety). [...] If the external stressors––especially, high conflict between the parents––continue for an extended period, the child’s symptoms may become internalized and develop into a more serious mental condition. Typically, the symptoms cluster to take the form of an anxiety disorder, a depressive disorder, or a somatic symptom disorder. [...] Regarding possible DSM-5 diagnoses, major depressive disorder and suicidality may develop in a child who grieves the loss of his previous family life or the loss of time with the noncustodial parent. If the child fears the loss of the custodial parent, he may develop separation anxiety disorder. [...] A serious consequence of high-conflict divorce is parental alienation, a mental condition in which a child closely allies with parent A and refuses to have a relationship with parent B without a good reason. [...] Parental alienation comes about as a result of 3 interacting and mutually reinforcing factors: Parental alienation usually occurs in the context of a high-conflict separation or divorce, although the seeds of parental alienation may have been sown when the family was still intact; Almost always, the preferred parent, also called the alienating parent, has indoctrinated or brainwashed the child to fear or dislike the rejected parent; Although clearly influenced by the alienating parent, the child adopts and internalizes the campaign to criticize, insult, and denigrate the alienated parent [...].”

From https://harbormentalhealth.com/2021/10/29/effects-of-divorce-on-childrens-mental-health/: “Some researchers suggest that the significant differences between children of divorced and non-divorced parents are not the result of separation or divorce per se, but a consequence of the reduced social support from parents and the children’s perception of the destructiveness of interparental conflict. Social support means having friends and other people, including family, to turn to in times of need or crisis to give you a broader focus and positive self-image. [...] many kids seem to bounce back. They get used to changes in their daily routines and they grow comfortable with their living arrangements. Others, however, never really seem to go back to “normal.” This small percentage of children may experience ongoing—possibly even lifelong—problems after their parents’ divorce. Emotional effects of divorce on children’s mental health: Divorce creates emotional turmoil for the entire family, but for kids, the situation can be quite scary, confusing, and frustrating: Young children often struggle to understand why they must go between two homes. They may worry that if their parents can stop loving one another that someday, their parents may stop loving them; Grade school children may worry that the divorce is their fault. They may fear they misbehaved or they may assume they did something wrong; Teenagers may become quite angry about divorce and the changes it creates. They may blame one parent for the dissolution of the marriage or they may resent one or both parents for the upheaval in the family. [...] Divorce usually means children lose daily contact with one parent—most often fathers. Decreased contact affects the parent-child bond and researchers have found many children feel less close to their fathers after divorce. One of the other effects of divorce on children’s mental health is a child’s relationship with the custodial parent—most often mothers. Primary caregivers often report higher levels of stress associated with single parenting. For some children, parental separation isn’t the hardest part. Instead, the accompanying stressors are what make divorce the most difficult. Changing schools, moving to a new home, and living with a single parent who feels a little more frazzled are just a few of the additional stressors that make divorce difficult. Financial hardships are also common following divorce. Many families have to move to smaller homes or change neighborhoods and they often have fewer material resources. [...] The addition of a stepparent and possibly several stepsiblings can be another big adjustment. And quite often both parents re-marry, which means many changes for kids. Mental Health Problems: Effects of divorce on children’s mental health may increase the risk for mental health problems in children and adolescents. [...] studies have also found depression and anxiety rates are higher in children from divorced parents. Behavior Problems: Children from divorced families may experience more externalizing problems, such as conduct disorders, delinquency, and impulsive behavior than kids from two-parent families. In addition to increased behavior problems, children may also experience more conflict with peers after a divorce. Poor Academic Performance: Children from divorced families don’t always perform as well academically and tend to have trouble with the school if the divorce was unexpected, whereas children from families where the divorce was likely didn’t have the same outcome. Risk-Taking Behaviors: Adolescents with divorced parents are more likely to engage in risky behavior, such as substance use and early sexual activity. According to research, in the United States, adolescents with divorced parents drink alcohol earlier and report higher alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, and drug use than their peers. Adolescents whose parents divorced when they were 5 years old or younger were at particularly high risk for becoming sexually active prior to the age of 16.

Separation from fathers has also been associated with higher numbers of sexual partners during adolescence.” From https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/fl-lf/divorce/2004_1/p3.html: “There was some evidence that changes in discipline as a result of divorce led boys, especially, to be less compliant with parental commands than children in intact families. Emery summarized that parents involved in conflict with each other are probably poorer models, are more inconsistent in their discipline, and place more stress on their children.”. From https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/fl-lf/divorce/2004_1/p2.html: “Jacobson (1978) [...] found that the greater the amount of time lost with the father since the marital separation, the greater the maladjustment of the child in areas such as aggression and learning disability. Peterson and Zill (1986) analyzed data from National Surveys of Children in the United States, gathering information about 2,301 children. [...] A child living with a parent of the opposite sex was especially prone to problem behaviour, according to Peterson and Zill. [...] Kelly and Wallerstein (1977) examined, in 60 divorcing families, the visiting patterns of children with their non-custodial parent. In general, younger children between the ages of two and eight saw their non-custodial parent more frequently than did older children. Half of the older children aged nine to ten experienced erratic or infrequent visiting or no visiting at all. The response of the older children to the divorce was anger. The authors concluded that infrequent visiting correlated with a destructive visiting pattern. [...] In a more recent book, Wallerstein concluded that the children of divorce suffer most in adulthood: The impact of divorce hits them most cruelly as they go in search of love, sexual intimacy and commitment. Their lack of inner images of a man and a woman in a stable relationship and their memories of their parents' failure to sustain the marriage badly hobbles their search, leading them to heartbreak and even despair (Wallerstein et al., 2000). [...] Other studies have indicated that wives who have divorced bear a greater economic burden. In general, they are worse off economically than their former husbands are (Espenshade, 1979).”

1980 - Jeremy, now five, moved to house 2 and began attending school 1 (Kindergarden).

1983 - Joseph divorced his second wife.

1984 - Wanda remarried, marrying Mr. Crane, when Jeremy was nine. They went to live with Jeremy and his sister in house 3. I do wonder if they lived alone or if the other children of Mr. Crane lived there as well, as it appears he had two other sons (one of them a teenager at the time) from a previous marriage. If they all did live together, Jeremy must have found it even harder to receive the attention he needed, but I am inclined to think Mr. Crane’s sons lived with their mother just like Jeremy and his sister lived with their mother after their parents’ divorce.

Anyway, Jeremy was now attending school 2 (elementary). If you are a child and you feel like your parents aren’t giving you enough attention and love at home, where are you going to look for those? Outside, naturally. However, if you are a child who really needs love and attention you’re probably going to get attached to anyone who shows even the minimal interest in you - the reason for which every abandonment you will then live, from that moment onwards, will hurt you more than the same thing happening to, say, someone who grew up in a stable and loving home instead.

This attachment theory was confirmed by Chris in one of the emails exchanged with Ash:

"Jeremy was a really, really, genuine and sweet person. He attached to people - probably a little too easily, too hard...and was like the most loyal of dogs (I don't mean that in a negative connotation whatsoever.) He was always down to do whatever the plan de jour was, he was just happy to be getting to spend time with "you." He wanted to make those around him happy by his wit, humor, antics, etc.”

1986 - Eleven-year-old Jeremy moved to house 4 and went back to attending school 1 (but now in elementary). That would mean changing four homes in seven years and three schools in six years, though the last three houses were only ten driving minutes from each other.

What are the psychological effects of frequent moving and changing schools on child development? Here’s what several studies found.

From https://achieveconcierge.com/how-does-frequently-moving-affect-children/: "Stability is the keyword here, meaning that kids will generally know what to expect from their day-to-day activities. It also means they feel secure in their relationships, health, and safety. [...] According to the Institute for Family Studies, stress due to repeated transitions can undermine a child’s sense of control over their life. Parents may also feel this and begin to suffer from mental health issues, affecting their ability to parent and instill a sense of security and trust in the child’s life. In turn, the child may develop their own emotional, social, and academic deficits. Children can also experience learned helplessness, meaning that, as a result of prior stressful experiences, they come to accept and remain passive in negative situations that they have the power to change. The implications of this on future decision-making can be detrimental. [...] Regardless of age, gender, and education level, the likelihood of reporting lower life satisfaction, psychological well-being, and quality social relationships during adulthood was higher in persons who frequently moved as a child. Researchers also discovered that introverts and those with neuroticism [Neuroticism is a core personality trait characterized by emotional instability, irritability, anxiety, self-doubt, depression, and other negative feelings] fared worse when it came to moving repeatedly. Persons who hold these personality traits tend to have a difficult time forming new relationships and managing stressful situations. [...] Moving is a stressful and burdensome process, and multiple relocations during early childhood and adolescence are associated with increased psychiatric visits and hospitalizations. Some children may become withdrawn and depressed." From https://www.jstor.org/stable/2673244: “Children who have moved an average or above-average number of times are not significantly harmed if they reside in families in which both biological parents are present; however, for children in other family structures, any move is associated with an adverse school life.” From https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/06/moving-well-being: “The researchers also looked to see if different personality types – extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism – affected frequent movers’ well-being. Among introverts, the more moves participants reported as children, the worse off they were as adults. This was in direct contrast to the findings among extraverts. “Moving a lot makes it difficult for people to maintain long-term close relationships,” said Oishi. “This might not be a serious problem for outgoing people who can make friends quickly and easily. Less outgoing people have a harder time making new friends.” From https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-98-6-980.pdf: “Previous research has shown that children who move frequently tend to do poorly in school and report more behavioral problems (Adam, 2004; Jelleyman & Spencer, 2008). Adolescents who moved frequently as children are more likely to smoke, consume alcohol, and attempt suicide (Dong et al., 2005).” From https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306460398000239: “Results showed highly significant positive relationships between moving and early initiation of illicit drugs including marijuana [...]. Relationships between moving and measures of alcohol use/problems (onset of first drink, onset of any alcohol-related problem) were either weak or nonsignificant. Important sex differences were found, with statistically significant relationships between moving and early drug use initiation and progression occurring primarily among males.”

Picture it: you’re a child who quickly learns that nothing is forever, because the two most important people in your life, your parents, divorce (badly). From that moment on, you move houses and schools several times, but you barely have the time to get accustomed to or feel safe in your new home, or to make friends at the new school, that out of nowhere you’re forced to move or change schools again. The internet doesn’t exist yet (or at least not as we know it) and the only ways you have to keep in contact with friends is either by letter or phone. You can meet each other, of course, but you’re both just children and you can’t hop on a bus by yourselves, so you strictly have to depend on your parents’ availability. In the meanwhile, you can send letters, which take days or weeks to arrive, or you can call, which is immediate, but then what? You’re not as hyper connected as we are today: in a certain sense, after the call ends, you’re on your own again and the other person stops existing until you call or receive a letter from them again.

But what if you’re lucky enough to find a friend you can keep, in spite of it all? What if you find someone who loves you for who you are and with whom you can be yourself; a best friend who probably feels like family, a sibling, that one stable presence in your life you so badly needed? Apparently, Jeremy was lucky enough to find one.

1987 - Jeremy began attending school 4 (middle school).

From jeremywadedelle.com (‘Early life’): “Sept 1987 – Mid 1988 - Jeremy starts grade 7 [...]. He fails grade 7 and has to repeat the school year."

A MAJOR TRAUMA: THE TRAGIC LOSS OF A BEST FRIEND

(around) 1988 - Jeremy's best friend Mike died, supposedly in a car accident. This left a great scar on him.

From Jeremy's September 1990 letter addressed to Chris: “It’s almost unreal how close I feel to you. I thought there could never be another Mike. You’re not really a Mike but you’re a good close friend. It’s been 2 ½ years since I’ve told a guy my age I care about him a lot.”

In one of the emails exchanged with Ash, Chris explained:

“Oh, and Mike - who he'd said that he didn't think there would ever be another of. That was his best friend (verified by his parents. Mike was a very real person) who had been killed in Mexico a couple of years earlier. Car accident I think, or maybe he got hit as a pedestrian? Again...it's been 30 yrs. But he talked a lot about the loss of Brian [Likely a typing mistake] and how close they'd been since kindergarten (I think). But that was a pretty rough blow to him.”

I supposed that Jeremy was indeed referring to Mike when he claimed that it had been 2 1/2 years since the last time he had told a guy his age how much he cared about him. This would mean that, given the letter was written in September 1990, if the person Jeremy was referring to was indeed this Mike, he must have died around the spring of 1988, exactly when Jeremy was attending seventh grade, which may be the reason why he failed it. Naturally these are only suppositions, but it is important to state that before Chris, nobody had ever mentioned Mike, though one person on ssheps.com had spread a similar rumor, more than ten years earlier:

From ssheps.com (‘Jeremy Wade Delle’, section ‘Mary N.’): "I live here in Richardson and I have had two daughters graduate and one there right now. I have heard from older mothers that have been around that the reason Jeremy was having problems is because he had a good friend who drowned in white rock lake one night while a group of friends including Jeremy were playing football on the banks. Supposedly Jeremy was dealing with the guilt of not being able to save him. I do not know how true this is but it might be something to look into."

I’m not inclined to believe rumors, but given Chris’ testament, I think there may be some form of truth behind it.

Take this new trauma and dump it on the shoulders of a pre-teen who has already gone through the traumatic instances I mentioned. His brain is still developing, therefore it’s lacking appropriate emotional and psychological resources to deal with all of this; he also grew up in a household in which, because of internal conflicts, his parents were unlikely able to teach or show him appropriate ways to deal with emotions and problems.

The thoughts and feelings that are going to arise in him as a result of this latest trauma are an unimaginable amount of grief followed by the overwhelming feeling that he will never be able to find anyone who will make him feel as safe and accepted as his best friend - his source of stability - did. He’s going to feel a huge void, a big missing part of him that he has no idea how to fill… not to mention an inconceivable amount of guilt if, perhaps, this best friend really did die in an accident where Jeremy was present but was unable to save him, like the rumor reported by Mary N. suggested.

And how do emotionally unskilled people fill voids? In what way can the brain develop as a consequence, in such a young and fragile age? Well, it’s not hard to imagine: there would very likely be behavioral issues, such as the development of a personality or mood disorder, perhaps. If there were several instances of being abruptly separated from loved ones who served as an important source of stability, the result would probably be the development (or most likely the accentuation) of some important form of fear of abandonment, which can manifest itself in being possessive of other people (namely the ones with which a closer bonds is formed, like a girlfriend) and in easily and excessively idealizing and attaching to new people; not to mention that one could very likely find quick, unhealthy and irresponsible ways to deal with the pain - like smoking, drinking alcohol or doing drugs. Jeremy indulged in all of these behaviors, behaviors which are very typical of a personality disorder he was rumored to have been suffering from, though there was never an official diagnosis: Borderline Personality Disorder. This disorder was long thought to be diagnosable only from eighteen years of age, though recent studies have shown it can start to manifest itself in people as young as eleven years old. I will describe BPD in detail when I will talk about Jeremy’s first relationship with Nancy when he was fourteen years old.

For now, I will limit myself to reporting what several studies found about the effects of bereavement on the psychology of children and teenagers:

From https://psykologisk.no/sp/2015/03/e5/: “Having relationships with and being attached to others is important for human beings, and young people, especially, invest a lot of energy in being included, and being part of a group (Coleman, 2011). During adolescence and through young adulthood there is a shift with decreasing parental support and increasing support from friends (Margolese, Markiewicz, & Doyle, 2005). The importance of friend relationships during adolescence and young adulthood would predict that losing a close friend at this age could be a life-changing experience (Balk, Zaengle, & Corr, 2011; Ringler & Hayden, 2000). Experiencing a loss could lead to growth and maturity, but may also interfere with normal developmental tasks and impede function (Doka, 2000; Neimeyer, Laurie, Mehta, Hardison, & Currier, 2008). Young girls have a closer relationship with their friends than boys do, with higher levels of both intimacy and peer support (Coleman, 2011; De Goede, Branje, & Meeus, 2009; Malone, 2012; Markiewicz, Lawford, Doyle, & Haggart, 2006), predicting stronger grief reactions in girls. [...] Previous studies have also found that for some the loss of a friend can result in more severe grief reactions than the loss of an extended family member (Holland & Neimeyer, 2011; Pfefferbaum et al., 2000; Servaty-Seib & Pistole, 2006–2007). [...] Bereavement following violent losses (accidents, homicide or suicide) increases the risk for complicated grief, thereby causing greater distress (e.g., Currier, Holland, & Neimeyer, 2006; Hardison et al., 2005; Lobb et al., 2010). [...] when comparing the scores of friends with those of close family members (bereaved parents and siblings) in our study, we found as high, and sometimes higher, scores in friends (Dyregrov, Dyregrov, & Kristensen, 2014). Among friends, 83% were in the risk zone for complicated grief [...]. In particular, friends had reactions like longing and not being able to accept the loss, and had high levels of intrusive thoughts and avoidance symptoms. Many reported feelings of unreality and experienced traumatic reminders. In addition, they reported feelings of depression and worry, and had relatively high scores on suicidal ideation.” From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8794619/: “Childhood bereavement is associated with a range of mental and behavioral health problems, including depression (Cerel et al., 2006), posttraumatic stress reactions (Keyes et al., 2014), substance use (Kaplow et al., 2010), suicide-related behaviors (Guldin et al., 2015; Hill et al., 2019), decreased academic performance (Oosterhoff et al., 2018), and impairments in developmental tasks (Brent et al., 2012). [...] Criteria for PGD [Prolonged Grief Disorder] as per the ICD-11 includes “persistent and pervasive longing for and/or persistent preoccupation with the deceased, accompanied by any of the 10 symptoms that indicate intense emotional pain (e.g., sadness, guilt, anger, denial, blame; difficulty accepting the death; feeling one has lost a part of one’s self; an inability to experience positive mood; emotional numbness; difficulty in engaging with social or other activities) for at least six months following bereavement” (WHO, 2018). [...] Intense emotional pain in youth may be motivated by frustration and anger about feeling deprived of the deceased person’s help in responding to their developmental needs [...]. [...] In older children and adolescents, separation distress may sometimes take the form of a wish to die or fantasies of dying (i.e., suicidal ideation). These wishes reflect an intense desire to be reunited with their loved one and, depending on their own spiritual beliefs, may serve, in their own mind, as a means of overcoming the painful physical separation from their loved one (Kaplow et al., 2012; Kentor & Kaplow, 2020).

Developmental slowing may appear in adolescence as the avoidance of forming age-appropriate future aspirations, such as career and family goals (Kaplow et al., 2012; Layne et al., 2017). [...] Both children and adolescents may express discontinuity in identity as shame or embarrassment surrounding the loss, as they may now feel different from others and subsequently self-conscious (e.g., I’m different from other kids because I don’t have a mother anymore); however, this manifestation may be more salient in older children and adolescents due to their increased prioritization of peers combined with the critical developmental task of identity development during this time (Brown & Larson, 2009; Kroger, 2006). Similarly, existential or identity distress can result in fears related to getting close to others or forming new relationships (e.g., I don’t want to feel the pain of losing someone ever again) (Saltzman et al., 2017). Loss-related existential or identity crises may also manifest in adolescents as extreme risk-taking or recklessness, tempting fate, indifference to one’s safety or well-being (‘‘I don’t care if I live or die’’), and feeling like life is meaningless (“its’s not worth trying” or “nothing really matters anymore”; Kaplow et al., 2012, 2013; Layne et al., 2017). [...] The nature of the relationship to the deceased is also important, as research shows relationships with the deceased that were close, supportive, and confiding are associated with an increased risk of maladaptive grief symptoms (Lobb et al., 2010). Additional research has found that adolescents who experienced the death of a friend had significantly higher maladaptive grief symptoms than those who experienced the death of a grandparent, and emotional closeness to the deceased was a positive predictor of maladaptive grief reactions regardless of the relationship to the person who died (Servaty-Seib & Pistole, 2007). [...] From https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1487&context=etd-project: “Children frequently feel guilty about the death of a loved one. While this can be attributed to the child's egocentrism, Krupnick (1984) points to these guilt feelings as a way for the individual to feel in control of the environment, as a way of denying or defending against the sense of being ineffectual, a state which can lead to depression and apathy, similar to Seligman's description of "learned helplessness" and resultant depression (Seligman et al, 1974). Another typical reaction of children is to fear further abandonment. Richter (1986) interviewed children who had experienced the death of a sibling. One 13-year-old boy remembered his fears of the time following his loss: "If someone went away, I always felt they wouldn't come back, i was afraid my mom would go away to work and never come home (p. 23)." [...] the death of a sibling, parent or other significant attachment figure has an impact on the child's ability to achieve certain developmental milestones, depending on the child's age at the time of the death. If the death occurs when the surviving child is in the middle childhood stage, the long-term effects will be in the area of competency and self-esteem, which will also affect the ability to form a sense of identity and intimate relationships. If the death occurs when the surviving child is in adolescence and working on issues of identity and intimacy, these will be the areas most affected as an adult.”

A DIFFICULT PERSONALITY: THE ‘BOY WHO CRIED WOLF’ AND PARENTS WHO (DIDN’T?) CARE

Image credit: Shayna Feinstein

In my post in which I analyzed Jeremy being bullied, I also introduced proof of him being a "pathological liar", as his father called him. For four years of researching Jeremy and his world, I had no idea what that meant until I experienced it myself.

So, I currently work with teenagers and one day I found out a lot of the things one teen had told me were lies. I was angry about it at first, until one of my colleagues explained the situation to me: this teen lived alone with their mother, who wouldn't pay much attention to them and basically let them do whatever they wanted. They had learned that in order to gain the attention of their mom, they would need to paint things bigger and more worrisome than they were: that's how they became a pathological liar.

With that, I managed to add the final, missing piece to understanding the Jeremy puzzle. Jeremy had made several comments to his friends about his parents not paying attention to him: his father had remarried and lived in another home for ten years - he clearly had built another life in which Jeremy may have not been involved much. His mother, on the other hand, had in all probability to work twice as hard while she was single in order to provide a home and food for her two children. She must have had a lot to worry about and probably didn’t give Jeremy the amount of attention he so badly needed, which is a difficult thing to do when you yourself need to rebuild your life from scratch. Jeremy was also the youngest in the family, his sister was older when their parents divorced so she was probably better mentally equipped to cope with, or at least to understand, the events. It also seems his sister was doing better at school than him (she was also a cheerleader, for a short while) and it could be that she received more attention than Jeremy. Jeremy did, in fact, "blame his problems on his parents and his older sister"; but I’ll include some considerations Chris made in one of his emails exchanged with Ash, so that you can get another point of view since, until now, all we knew was what Jeremy had told people:

"Another thing that I read that I really don't like because I don't think it is accurate, and this has been being said since around the time of his death. The thing about his not receiving enough love at home. I knew both of his parents back then. His dad more than his mom. He was definitely cared for. Was he a needy kid/teen? Apparently more than realized. Was he not given or shown love and support? Not even close. Often people can say that they love us, and try for all they know what to do, in attempts to show us. That doesn't mean it is the "right way" or most well received way for the individual. I think that his parents were doing everything that they could to pick up after their divorce, start anew with new partners, while trying to co-parent their kids pragmatically. Did [Jeremy's sister] get more attention from his mom than he did? Yeah I'd say so. I think that his dad was sort of at a loss as to what to do, so befriending him to try and understand him was the route he took. Sometimes kids need a parent more than a best bud. This was the late 80's and our society was not as used to wide scale divorce as we are currently. I remember the mid-life crisis divorce trend hitting big around 1984/85/86. [...] We as a culture were still navigating widespread single parenting, and were not yet fully aware of how much of a task it is/was. No, I don't think he was lacking love or emotional support at home. I just don't think that it was what he needed for his particular wants from a parent, whether that was consciously or sub-consciously such”.

There is one thing that I feel the need to point out about Chris’s point of view: he had met Jeremy’s parents but he did not know how they would act behind closed doors, when he wasn’t around; and there's no real way to tell given everyone gives their own version and we wouldn’t get a clear view out of Jeremy even if we could: he was a teenager and a pathological liar who tended to paint things bigger than they were… so who knows? I guess the truth is in the middle and it’s similar to what Chris said: there are different ways of showing and interpreting love, different love languages, and they don’t always get recognized, understood and appreciated. No doubt Jeremy’s parents loved him, but maybe they and Jeremy shared a different love language.

Let's now try to understand how it feels to be around a pathological liar: if somebody constantly lies about themselves and their life, so much that you can't really tell whether they are telling the truth or just painting things bigger or making them up... how much can you really say you know about them? How can you really get close, so close that you can effectively help, to someone who never lets you see who they really are or how they really are feeling? Because you see, Jeremy's problem wasn't only the lies, it was also the fact that he was a boy and boys and men are expected to be strong and never cry, never show any ‘weak’ emotion, never show any sign of vulnerability because otherwise they’re going to be labeled as weak. Consider also that Jeremy was living in one of the least progressive states - Texas - in years in which nobody would really say how they felt out of fear of being seen as crazy; and remember that looking for a therapist wasn’t even the first option given that in the United States even calling an ambulance costs lots of money.

What you're going to obtain as a result of all of these factors is someone who bottles everything up, using any sort of quick, cheap and unhealthy thing - alcohol, smoke, drugs - in order to cope, until they eventually explode because they have very poor emotional regulation skills. You're going to have a kid who is unpredictable and indulges in dangerous, self-destructive behavior, both because they don't know any better and because they grew up learning that they need to be dramatic (and lie) in order to obtain attention.

But let’s switch perspectives: imagine that you’re the parent of such a child, a child who is always being ‘dramatic’, and imagine that some kids from some psychiatric hospital (who carry the stigma of being ‘not normal’ and unreliable) call you and tell you that your kid (who, again, you know very well to be dramatic) said some worrying things and mentioned suicide... would you believe them? Because I have got to be honest with you: once I understood Jeremy's ‘boy who cried wolf’ tendency, I finally understood that his mother did not pay attention to the warning of his friends not because she didn't care, but rather because she thought Jeremy was acting out for attention, like he often would. I can’t even imagine the trauma of finding out that, this time, the threat was real, and living with the remorse that you should have somehow been able to distinguish this real threat from all the other 'just for attention' ones. Plus, today it is known that behind someone who constantly tries to draw the attention of others, there is a request for help (when there aren't certain personality disorders like narcissistic and histrionic), but can you really expect a parent living in a psychology-ignorant society to know this?

What about Jeremy’s father, then, did he care? Well, he ran out of all his insurance’s money (and it must have been a lot) in order to allow Jeremy to stay six months in Timberlawn to get better; and when Jeremy got out Joseph looked for another therapist. Also, when Jeremy was arrested for theft at Richardson High School, Joseph asked the police to report his son’s theft to the juvenile system, so he could receive proper help. This doesn’t look like a father who didn’t care about his son, does it? Someone who didn't care wouldn't have spent a dime on Jeremy. What it looks like, is that Joseph was simply desperate, much like Wanda: they didn't know what to do with their erratic, incorrigible son anymore, their resources and knowledge were very limited because they lived in a time where the Internet didn't exist so they had very limited options or solutions - in other words, they knew what was in their immediate surroundings; if there were other solutions, they couldn’t know about them.

Connected to this is Joseph and Wanda's reaction when learning about Jeremy's death: Wanda became "hysterical", Joseph was described by the policeman filing the report as showing “no emotion, remorse or anything else, concerning the death of his son". What I personally believe is that Wanda was “hysterical” also because she understood this time Jeremy’s threat was real and she didn’t listen; while Joseph, on the other hand, it took me a lot of time, study and pondering to understand that maybe he was acting ‘uncaring’ because… he had expected Jeremy’s suicide to happen.

Think about it: the last straw was him asking the police to have his son’s theft reported to the juvenile system - a desperate request from a desperate father who had run out of solutions. His son had already attempted suicide, but after Timberlawn he was acting even worse and it seemed like he was never going to get better. In fact, his only aspirations at age sixteen were to get a car and a girl pregnant and he didn’t want to stay off of drugs nor stay out of trouble. In my eyes, Joseph was acting ‘uncaring’ because he had expected and feared something so terrible would happen, but he had run out of solutions so he felt like it was only going to be a matter of time - he felt helpless. And when the day finally came that Jeremy did kill himself, I think the first thought that went through his mind was: “It happened.”

So no. It is easy to point fingers and blame Jeremy’s parents, but from all the sources I could gather and the pondering I did, I believe his parents did try, until the very end, at the best of their knowledge and abilities, but were left feeling helpless seeing that no matter what they did or how much money they spent on him, Jeremy was resisting every treatment.

It goes without saying that those parents are grieving for Jeremy until this day, just like his poor sister is. “No day shall erase you from the memory of time”.

LOVE ON THE BORDER LINE: LOVING SOMEONE WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO LOVE

Image credit: waterfall7290. This was one of my first Jeremy drawings, made in 2020, and I guarantee you it’s only a matter of time before another Tumblr content-stealing website comes along and republishes it elsewhere without my consent. Oh well.

March 1990 - Jeremy met his first love, Nancy. First loves are known to be the ones you never forget about, because it is the first time you’re having such strong feelings for someone, someone you don’t really know and that you idealize because you’re young and naive. Later in life, after many ‘life lessons’, you eventually learn not to idealize people and that it takes time to form a strong bond. However, when you’re just a teenager and especially when you’re in such desperate need for love, you don’t do that. And you don’t do that if you have Borderline Personality Disorder.

ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a long-term mental health disorder which commenced to be widely studied in the 1980s. Because of the severity of its symptoms, it requires the attention of very skilled and highly trained mental health professionals. This condition is considered one of the most stigmatized and challenging to treat, reason why not many therapists feel comfortable working with it or even diagnosing it (source). This is also due to the fact that it is common among borderline patients to display manipulative behaviors which could result in the loss of their therapist's license (source). Borderline Personality Disorder is characterized by rather intense and sudden mood swings, impulsivity, a pattern of unstable relationships, intense episodes of anger, depression and anxiety lasting from a few hours to days. Individuals suffering from BPD also possess an unstable image of oneself, extreme fear of abandonment and a tendency to dramatically shift their opinion of people by either idealizing or demonizing them (commonly referred to as "black and white thinking") (source). Additionally, they often turn to substance abuse, self-harm and reckless and impulsive behavior (e.g. shopping spree, reckless driving...) in an attempt to ease their intense emotions or, on the contrary, to try to feel any kind of emotion, since they go through chronic feelings of emptiness and dissociation, too. It is estimated that 50 to 80% of individuals suffering from BPD self-harm and that up to 10% manage to commit suicide (source). The intensity and presence of the symptoms varies from patient to patient. BPD has a genetic predisposition. Environmental factors that have been identified as contributing to the development of borderline personality disorder include primarily childhood maltreatment (physical, sexual, or neglect), found in up to 70% of people with BPD, as well as maternal separation, poor maternal attachment, inappropriate family boundaries, parental substance abuse, and serious parental psychopathology (source). For a long time, it was believed that BPD could not be diagnosed before the age of eighteen years old, because several of its symptoms (e.g. impulsivity, anger outbursts, intense emotions, identity disturbance…) can be mistaken for normal changes in the body and mind happening during adolescence. However, in later years, numerous researches have shown that BPD can indeed start to manifest itself in adolescence (as young as eleven years old): “Using the same Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth version (DSM-V) criteria as in adults, borderline personality disorder (BPD) in adolescents is defined as a 1-year pattern of immature personality development with disturbances in at least five of the following domains: efforts to avoid abandonment, unstable interpersonal relationships, identity disturbance, impulsivity, suicidal and self-mutilating behaviors, affective instability, chronic feelings of emptiness, inappropriate intense anger, and stress-related paranoid ideation. BPD can be reliably diagnosed in adolescents as young as 11 years. The available epidemiological studies suggest that the prevalence of BPD in the general population of adolescents is around 3%. The clinical prevalence of BPD ranges from 11% in adolescents consulting at an outpatient clinic to 78% in suicidal adolescents attending an emergency department.” (source)

Now, I’m no psychologist or such, but we could find some similarities between Jeremy’s reported behavior and the symptoms here described: Efforts to avoid abandonment: threatening suicide twice (both episodes in July 1990) in order to convince Nancy to get back with him; offering Michelle to raise a child that wasn’t even his so he could still be involved with her. In addition to this, the September 1990 letter addressed to Chris shows a really insecure and ‘clingy’ Jeremy writing 4/7 pages of affection and appreciation for his friend! Unstable interpersonal relationships: the tormented relationships both with Nancy and Michelle and his incapability of setting and respecting boundaries, like not accepting the breakups and insisting on contacting and expressing love and longing for both. A core symptom of BPD is also the idealization/demonization of people, which he did with both ex-girlfriends: Nancy was idealized as she was seen as the love of his life (the ring he wanted her to have on the last day) although they had known each other for less than two weeks before dating and they had dated for only a month; while Michelle went from being idealized to demonized the moment she broke up with Jeremy (he accused her of being partially to blame for his suicide). Identity disturbance: identity disturbance is a term used to describe incoherence or inconsistency in a person's sense of identity. This could mean that a person's goals, beliefs and actions are constantly changing - like Jeremy lying about himself and his life or Jeremy admitting (in the September 1990 letter to Chris) to getting his arm tattoo and pretending to be affiliated with the Confederate Hammerskins only to impress Chris. Impulsivity: lying, making threatening comments about the Math teacher, stealing a stereo, stealing money from the basketball game, stealing the ring and the gun, stealing his parent’s car multiple times to go visit friends as far as Austin... impulsivity basically means getting in potentially risky/dangerous situations without thinking of the consequences first. Suicidal and self-mutilating behaviors: this one is obvious, but self-mutilating/self-harming behaviors can also include abusing substances (which Jeremy was known for); exercising to the point of collapse or injury; getting into fights in which one is likely to be hurt; having unsafe sex; denying oneself a necessity as a punishment; stopping medication or starving with intent to cause harm; deliberate recklessness (e.g. risk-taking with cars and trains). (source, source) Now I don’t know if Jeremy had any self-inflicted wounds on his body, but I believe he did show signs of the other self-harming behaviors which I have written in bold: he was found to be twelve pounds lighter when he died (which means in some way he had denied himself the necessity to eat) and he “did not want to stay clean” from drugs (which was necessary for his well-being). He was also reckless (see: impulsivity). Chronic feelings of emptiness: emptiness can be ‘fought’ by indulging in unhealthy behaviors like doing impulsive and risky things like stealing a car, lying about one’s life, abusing substances… the riskier the behavior, the more alive one feels (thanks to an adrenaline rush). Affective instability/Inappropriate intense anger: affective instability is a term used to indicate rapid emotional shifts, usually towards a negative emotion such as depression, anxiety or anger. Several people described Jeremy as a kid with anger problems. Stress-related paranoid ideation: Jeremy telling Ryan that “for some unknown reason people were trying to track him down, and someone was going to kill him”, so that’s why he needed a gun. I may be stretching things here, or maybe I am not. There’s no way to know if Jeremy really had BPD (and maybe some other comorbid disorder like Bipolar Disorder), but I’ve always been inclined to think he did fit several of its symptoms.

Back to Jeremy's love life: why is love so important in our society? Because it is the foundation for building a second home, a second family. Ever since we’re children, our society brainwashes us into believing love is magically going to solve all of our problems: think of all the fables and stories that tell about a prince saving a princess and finding love and a happy ever after; think of all the cartoons, especially Disney, every one of us grew up with - love is always the goal, love is the magic force that saves. And that task of solving problems and providing happiness is always assigned to women, who are seen as the embodiment of unconditional love and family. Girls grow up with the idea that a boy is going to protect them and boys grow up with the idea that a girl is going to cure their issues with the magical power of love. Everyone falls for this stereotype, but those who didn’t feel loved enough by their first family tend to believe in this more strongly than those who grew up in a loving home.

Now when Jeremy found Nancy, he thought he had found the cure for all of his sadness and issues. He was missing his first family, so he felt the need to create another one, one in which he would actually experience undivided love and attention, and idealized this to be possible with Nancy. Unfortunately, the problem was that Jeremy was incapable of healthily manage a relationship, both because he had never witnessed what healthy love was (given his parents had had a messy divorce) and also because he was so young and inexperienced and going through adolescence, a time of life where a million changes are happening both on the inside and on the outside and it is difficult to navigate through them, especially if you lack emotional regulation skills and the help of a proper therapist (namely a cognitive-behavioral one which is so common today but which was so uncommon at the time).

So what happens when you have all these emotional regulation problems, huge expectations, a huge need for love and a huge fear of abandonment? You cling onto the other person. You become very jealous because you’re afraid of losing them and you constantly project your fears onto this person, becoming possessive and suffocating - toxic, in other words.

And what can the person you’re with, which is your opposite, do? They leave you. They probably won’t even try to work through the issues because at such a young age, let’s be honest, the majority of teenagers want to have a good time, not to have someone who drags them down. Plus, it’s really of no point to try to work through said issues if the person you’re with doesn’t want to solve them, probably makes you feel smothered and unsafe and doesn’t even look like the kind of person you could ever build something with (Jeremy really had no aspirations, while Nancy had many).

From the 1991 police report (page 20 of the PDF): “Nancy advised they dated from that time until sometime in the middle of April at which time she broke off the relationship with Delle due to him being possessive and his problems with drugs and depression."

Let’s switch sides again now and let’s try to put ourselves in Jeremy’s shoes: how are you going to react knowing that after having lost half of your family, friends through the years, your beloved best friend… now even the person you thought you had a future with, the ‘love of your life’, left you? You will probably think life is an unending source of pain in which everything you love eventually leaves you. Maybe you even blame yourself for it: “Everything I love leaves me so it must be my fault, I ruin everything”. Thoughts of this kind can lead to desperation, desperation which can exacerbate into extreme behaviors if you don’t receive any (professional) help or are incapable of both processing and expressing your emotions in a healthy way.

April 1990: Jeremy attempted suicide, two days after breaking up with Nancy.

His parents came together and decided to put Jeremy in what was thought to be the best hospital in Texas at the time, in an attempt to give him the help he needed: Timberlawn psychiatric hospital in Dallas. Jeremy spent six months of his life there, having the chance to come home for a brief time thanks to occasional passes.

In Jeremy’s September 1990 letter addressed to Chris, Jeremy claimed to have made some friends in Timberlawn who helped him, Chris being the most important one, who was like a “big fucking brother” to him. He also stated:

“I’m glad I got engaged with therapy and treatment, it’s made my time [in the program] shorter. [...] Now that I look at it running was stupid and didn’t solve anything so I’m not doing it cause it makes me feel like a complete dumbass, and that’s something I don’t want to feel like or be remembered as, cause I’m not.”

July 1990: Jeremy met Michelle at Timberlawn. Michelle was as troubled as Jeremy was, if not more: apparently she had been subjected to some important traumas during her childhood, which had made her into a very troubled and unstable person. At Timberlawn, she and Jeremy found each other and felt like they could understand each other, the ‘rejects’ of society who could build a happy future together.

Nevertheless, Jeremy was still longing for Nancy and when he got a pass to come home from Timberlawn in July 1990, he drove to her residence one night and did something very manipulative and toxic: he stated that he had a gun and that he wanted to kill himself. He had tried to do the same thing earlier that month when he had met Nancy again at the summer retreat sponsored by Casa View Baptist Church: he had climbed on a rock and had threatened suicide. Such manipulative and toxic behavior is unfortunately very typical of people who have serious disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder, for example. However, it is important to know that the majority of the people who do these things don’t usually do it out of malice, which means with the intent of hurting the other person - on the contrary, they often do it because life has no meaning to them and they’re desperate: they cannot accept the idea that the person who means everything to them doesn’t want them anymore and they don’t know any better way of gaining their attention, so they use suicide as a last resort. Still, malice or not, such behavior is very toxic and manipulative and should not be excused.

Now, try to put yourselves in Nancy’s shoes: even if she did not want to be in a relationship with Jeremy anymore, why do you think she never cut ties with him? She certainly wasn’t indifferent to him, in the sense that she cared about him, but I truly believe the thing that stopped her from cutting all ties was guilt and fear - fear that if she left, Jeremy would kill himself and she’d have to live with remorse. So she stayed, and Jeremy never really moved on from their breakup, because he could call her anytime he wanted and she’d always answer… and I can empathize with that choice, if that was really what made Nancy stay. Many people believe that if two people stay friends after a breakup, maybe the dumped one will suffer less… but they won’t. They will actually suffer more because they will keep hanging on to the hope that maybe, maybe one day they’ll get back together with their loved one - which is what, to my understanding, Jeremy hoped for until the very end.

Let’s go back to Michelle. It is not known if Jeremy met Michelle before or after these incidents. I am inclined to believe they may have met later, or maybe Jeremy already knew her but got interested in her following these events. This would make sense and it could be seen as a desperate attempt of his to find a replacement for Nancy. In my opinion, if he really had been in love with Michelle, he would have stopped calling Nancy; yet he didn’t, he kept calling her until the very end, so that’s why I believe Michelle was really a desperate lifeline to him. This makes even more sense if you consider that Jeremy did seem like the type of boy who would fall for basically anyone, as if he was constantly trying to fill a void. Surely that’s a normal thing at his age, but I have noticed a pattern which I want to report here:

From the September 7, 2021 email ‘RE: RE: I need your help with the story’ Ash exchanged with me: “Just be sure to convey that Lisa was just a crush of his...not a real deal first love or so. He was very committed to Nancy and Michelle at the time. But he could not decide. And he was always looking to score something "better", so to speak. In this regard he was the typical teen boy. He wanted to make love with Lisa. He was very focused on blondes with big ... you know. As I said, very blunt. It is apparent from his notes and what Lisa told me, which is why she turned him down.”; From the 1991 police report (page 30 of the PDF): “1/15/91 I received two letters [...] Jeremy Delle addressed to a Ladanda [...]. These notes talk about [...] his feelings for Ladanda."; From the suicide letter Jeremy sent to his friend Chris from Austin’s family and which was posted on jeremywadedelle.com (‘Later Life’, section ‘January 1991’): “[Censored, presumably the name of Chris’ sister]: “you are very very pretty. I hope you make some guy happy. You’re parents too.[...]”.

Anyway, Jeremy was released from Timberlawn in October 1990, while Michelle was re-admitted into Timberlawn. This makes you understand that the poor girl was really having a hard time, so it should come to no surprise that if someone as balanced as Nancy wasn’t capable of handling a relationship with Jeremy, neither could a girl who kept being re-admitted into psychiatric hospitals. Michelle couldn’t handle being with someone who was pressuring her to have a family with him and possibly get married… while being only sixteen and having been dating for only a couple of months! It is very normal to idealize people during adolescence, but all that running and pressuring to build a family together when they barely knew each other was over the top and it’s actually something that’s very common in people with, again, Borderline Personality Disorder.

Adding to this, Jeremy was a pathological liar, and usually pathological liars get to a point where they can’t really differentiate the truth from when they’re lying because that is a mechanism their brain has learned not only to gain the attention of people, but also to build a different reality than the one the person is actually living in. I guess you could define it as some form of dissociation: you dissociate from your real life and live into a fantasy, a fantasy you really, really want to believe, to the point you lose yourself in it. And that’s what Jeremy did when he was going around showing people pictures of a baby which wasn’t even his: he desperately wanted to believe he had a second family - so desperate, that when Michelle told him she thought she was pregnant but not of him, he offered to raise the baby, even if it wasn’t his. He wanted to have a second family so badly because he wanted to find love, but a love which wouldn’t divorce, wouldn’t die or wouldn’t leave him: he wanted a forever happy ever after; he wanted certainty and safety, above all.

So when Michelle rejected him, he demonized her, saying she was (part of) the reason why he would later kill himself. Obviously, it wasn’t Michelle’s fault: if Jeremy had been doing better and he and Michelle had broken up, he wouldn’t have killed himself - instead, he killed himself because he had a lot of problems and traumas weighing on him… so it was not because of how Michelle may have acted.

I don’t know how Michelle is doing today, but I know she’s had a very troubled life and while I don’t think the death of Jeremy is what caused her adult problems, I believe it’s part of it and I feel sorry for her because she had no fault over what happened; just like the Delle family had no real fault: they all did the best they could with the best of the knowledge and abilities they had at the time.

LIFE AT RICHARDSON HIGH: THE HOSPITAL STIGMA, FEELINGS OF INADEQUACY, BULLYING AND ALIENATION

October 1990 - Jeremy was released from Timberlawn. He was a broken, lost and depressed fifteen-year-old with several traumas weighing on his shoulders and with very low self-confidence and self-esteem. He had a great need for love and attention which stemmed from his parents' divorce and the fact that, in his eyes, they weren’t giving him enough of any of the two. He was looking for someone - anyone - who could love him and stay with him forever… but his family was split and the friends he had made during the years had lasted only a short time, because he had changed schools and addresses multiple times and now he was alone in a new city, new school, with no friend by his side.

The friend he cared about the most, Chris, was 200 miles away in Austin. His forever best friend, Mike, the first and real family he felt like he had, had died in a tragic accident a few years earlier. On top of all that, both his girlfriends had broken up with him, making him feel like he wasn’t worthy of being loved. And if he wasn’t worthy of being loved, he could never have his own family.

Was it even worth trying to build a bond with someone anymore, given life had taught him no bond ever lasted? On one hand, it really seemed like he wasn’t destined to find a loving and stable figure, and on the other hand, it seemed like he didn’t deserve to find any. Deep down, it is likely Jeremy felt like he wasn’t good enough to be loved (he couldn’t have a healthy relationship even if he wanted to, as his behavior was a big issue) and like he was too broken to get his life together. But he tried to fight this feeling.

After coming out of the hospital, he went to live with his father, who had been a kind of estranged figure all of his life - maybe not estranged but one with whom he surely had much less contact. He probably didn’t know how to act and neither did his father, much like Chris suggested. Jeremy must have also felt rejected by his own mother, whom he felt ‘didn’t want him anymore’. Ash suggested that Jeremy’s behavior with the anger outbursts, the drug problems and the ‘drama’ must have been very hard on his sister and his mother, so maybe that’s why Wanda sent him to live with his father. Who knows. In any case, he was undoubtedly closer to his mother (having lived with her all his life) and mothers are generally more emotionally available than fathers, in the sense that it is easier for a son to open up about his feelings to his mother than to his father, especially one that hadn’t been much present in his life.

As a result of all this, Jeremy acted up and was ‘dramatic’, he told a lot of lies because he had developed like that, he had learned that he needed to make others worry in order to make them notice him. But this backfired because it got him into trouble and arose conflicts with his parents, making him feel worse and worse. On top of all that was also his addiction to substances, which made him feel better temporarily but once the effect ended, he would feel those ugly emotions again so he would go look for those substances again - he was trapped in a never-ending cycle of unhealthy dependency which he could not (or did not want to) stop.

Richardson was his fifth home (six, if you also count the residence at Timberlawn) in ten years and Richardson High was his seventh (or a little less, the exact number is uncertain) school. All his life had lacked certainty and stability and now he was also carrying the stigma of being the ‘crazy' kid, the ‘not normal' kid, the ‘something is wrong with him’ kid because he had spent six months of his life in a psychiatric hospital. Most of his new schoolmates were richer kids and they all looked like they had their life together, while he did not, not in the slightest. He felt pressured to play a role, he had to make up stories about himself and look cooler than he actually was even if in all probability, in my opinion Jeremy felt like the exact opposite. But no one wants to be your friend if you’re a loser.

So he acted up in class. He made up grandiose, sometimes blatantly false stories in order to make people like him. Some did (Lisa and Ryan, for example), but the majority was indifferent to him while others started to bully him… to the point of throwing stuff at him when the teacher wasn’t looking? Who knows. But there were surely people making fun of him, alienating him even further and making him feel even more like he wasn’t worthy of being loved. Jeremy reacted both with depression and anger to this, depression when he was feeling like he had no control over his own life, and anger when he wanted to have control over his own life, but he felt like the circumstances and the people around him wouldn't let him. He was described as a very angry child.

Then Jeremy did some stupid teenage stuff that anyone could have done - stole some money from a basketball game, kept questionable things in his locker that looked satanic while the Satanic Panic hysteria was going around, said some bad things about two teachers he didn’t like. While for a lot of people that would have been considered normal teenage behavior, Jeremy was targeted from the moment he stepped foot in the school because he came from a psychiatric hospital and was therefore judged dangerous. Therefore, the moment he made some mistakes the school went after him.

December 1990 - Jeremy was put in In School Suspension. The problem was that he was kept there for a longer time than other kids (one month, of which two weeks of school time). For context: the general time spent in ISS is a couple of days, the maximum is 10 days but only if something really really bad was done, like beating someone up or something. Certainly not for smoking (the initial reason for which he was put in ISS) or stealing some money, or having some questionable but not dangerous stuff in a locker, or making some bad comments about some teachers (the reason for which his stay in ISS was extended).

What I'm trying to say is that I believe the school would have treated the situation differently, in a lighter way, had it been another kid; but because Jeremy came from a mental hospital, he was treated like a problem child from the moment he stepped foot in his new school. ISS was like isolation and the last thing Jeremy needed was to be separated from everyone else almost as soon as he had arrived because, I believe, that’s what confirmed to him, more than anything else, that nobody really wanted him around and that no matter how much he tried, he was never going to get better, life was never going to get better, because everything had kept going steadily worse and there was no sign that it could ever get better.

And that’s when, surely after some major breakdown, Jeremy finally felt a weight off his chest. He felt consolation in the thought that he did have a choice after all, that there was something he could do to feel like he had any power over his life; there was a way to stop suffering. And that would be dying.

January 8, 1991 - Jeremy went to school and he looked really happy, he hugged people, because he felt relieved in knowing all of his pain was soon going to be over. But he had no intention of leaving without a fight, I believe. He didn’t want to leave silently, because otherwise people wouldn’t have remembered him. Otherwise, everyone would have forgotten him just like they had forgotten him while he was alive.

Why did he choose Barnett’s class? I have no idea. Several students claimed Barnett was a really great teacher, so maybe Jeremy did it because he felt ‘safe’ in her class. Other people said that the kids in the English class were the ones who bullied Jeremy, so maybe he felt like giving them a lesson. Someone else (not from that class) said those same kids never bullied Jeremy. Therefore… who knows. Who knows why he chose that particular class. Maybe there’s no real reason, maybe it was simply the first class that came to his mind.

What matters, I believe, is why he decided to do it - like I said, I believe he wanted people to notice him and to remember him forever, but he didn’t want to physically hurt anyone because, I believe, there was no malice in him. Jeremy had a golden heart, he loved people (his own way), more than he loved himself - that’s what I understood about him. I’m pointing this out because I am really sick and tired of people associating him to those school shooter monsters who instead took lives with them. Jeremy could have killed someone that day but he didn’t, I think that’s a very important distinction that needs to be made. Still, it goes without saying that even if he didn’t hurt anyone physically that day, he did psychologically. It’s not only the people who witnessed his death who will have to live with that trauma forever, it’s also his family and friends.

But if Pearl Jam didn’t write the song, only a selected number of people would have known and remembered him. I think Jeremy will forever be remembered until the song is remembered. Unfortunately, the song pushed a narrative that many people still believe to be accurate even to this day. In addition, the song made all the wrong kinds of people know about the incident and act nasty about it: some acted like vultures around Jeremy and his loved ones and inflicted even deeper traumas by calling Jeremy’s family and invading their privacy and grief, asking them very inappropriate questions or making very inappropriate and outright insane demands, like having Jeremy’s bloody sweatshirt… or so I was told. But given the things I have seen ever since I have known the True Crime Community (for which it will be very clear, at this point, that I feel a deep, burning hate), I have no doubt things like these really happened.

CONCLUSION

Image credit: Scott Snyder, Jock - from the comic book: “Wytchers - Vol 1″

I guess what I really want people to ponder upon, is that from my understanding, mistakes were surely made but all of Jeremy’s friends and family tried, at the best of their knowledge and abilities, to help him… but he was a very difficult and unstable person to deal with, there’s no doubt about that. I see people say: “I wish I had been his friend, so I could have helped him” all the time. I used to say the same things, until I wrote the trilogy No more “Later Days” and dived deep in basically all the things you have read in this article and I understood that, at some point, anyone would have easily felt frustrated at trying to help a kid who kept getting in trouble and who looked like he didn’t want to get better. And all of the people who make these comments seem not to take into consideration that you can’t spend your entire life and time helping someone, someone so difficult and stubborn, because everyone has their places to be, things to do, family and friends to see… etcetera. Jeremy needed a lot of help and attention, more than was available at the time in a place like Texas and more than his family and friends were capable of giving him. Surely, some things could have happened differently, some different choices could have been made. But you must not forget that nobody really had the intention of causing harm to Jeremy (well, except for his bullies of course) - everyone tried to do what was the best, the rest was… a very unfortunate chain of consequences.

I do wonder if, had he been born later, he could have had some more concrete chances to save himself. I like to think he could have, but it still would have been a very very very complicated situation. He would have had the internet where he could have searched for solutions and talked to people who were going through the same about his feelings, feelings that he kept bottled up. I know the internet is what saved me when I was a teenager, and I know I’m not the only one… otherwise I believe I would have ended up like Jeremy. I guess this is what keeps me going and do what I do, both on the internet and in real life. I’m a survivor, so I try to teach what I’ve learned to other people so that hopefully, I can make them into survivors as well. I do it for Jeremy and I do it for myself, I do it for all those who didn’t make it.

I couldn’t save Jeremy because I wasn’t there when it happened, but maybe, maybe I can help building a future in which stories like Jeremy’s never happen again. And you, if you’re reading - you can and should do the same. For you. For me. For Jeremy. For everyone.

If you have taken the time to read all of this - congratulations! You must be someone who is really interested in Jeremy. I hope I helped in making people ponder upon and understand what it took me four years and a trilogy to understand.

If you have read this and actually knew Jeremy, because you’re either a friend or a family member… what do you think? Have I managed to portray an accurate image of him and you? Are my sources accurate? I would love to hear your opinion and criticism, in case you have any. The same goes for anyone else who read, obviously. I’m always open to constructive feedback.

If you’d like to contact me, my email is waterfall7290 + @ + google mail domain.

Thank you for reading this far.

Always,

Waterfall

#jeremy delle #jeremy wade delle #why did jeremy delle kill himself #jeremy delle parents #jeremy wade delle sister #jeremy delle nancy #jeremy delle michelle #was jeremy wade delle bullied #jeremy pearl jam #1991 #bullied #didyouknow #psychology #jeremy delle psychology

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sakebytheriver · 7 months

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Your tags on that zodiac post reminded me that while yeah, my experience is that astrology girlies are usually white women, I have absolutely run into white women and WOC alike who argued that criticizing astrology being used for serious things like job interviews and as physiognomy is racism bc the ancestors of non-white nations practiced astrology 😭

Oh god no 😭😭😭😭

The queers are not surviving the cult boom this generation's going through 😪

Girlies, is it progressive to defend a pseudoscience that's used to discriminate against people for being born in the wrong month just because it's been in the cultures of brown people?

Like the only time I've ever taken a step back and looked at zodiacs in a progressive political lense was when I was in the talking stages with an Indian guy and he asked the cliche what's your sign kind of opener and when I gave my response of like "this is my sign but I don't believe in this stuff" he responded like "yeah i dont really buy into it either but it's a big thing in my country and the Hindu religion" and I kinda took a step back for a second and had a moment of 'is he gonna get offended if i argue against this' before I said something like "even still that doesn't make it real" and he was like "yeah i completely agree" and we moved on to a different topic

And like I do think sometimes there is a white liberal "afraid to tell the poc they're wrong for fear of looking racist" kind of energy towards astrology and especially the American liberal attitude towards it, but ultimately there will be things fully entrenched within a culture of color that is harmful, because even if they've been colonized and subjugated they're still human beings who will make mistakes and missteps along the way and in the case of India in particular they actually teach astrology in universities and treats it as if it's a real science on a national level, which I hope you can all obviously see as extremely harmful to the people living there

Just because astrology has been adopted by people of color and has become entrenched within those cultures does not make it any more valid than the Christianity American queers love to denounce so much

It's just so funny to me when people who claim to want to go against the idea that you have to live your life a certain way and have a certain set of beliefs and have to be born a certain way to be "right" would fully let themselves be suckered into something that is exactly what they say they're against, placing people into boxes and assigning them attributes based solely on the position of the stars on the day they were born, like how is that any different than looking at a person of color and assigning them a personality based solely on the color of their skin?

Astrology is a pseudoscience that has been debunked over and over and over and over and over again, we have more proof that astrology is fake than we have ever had proof that astrology does anything at all except offer another way to discriminate against people, it is no different from phrenology and if you rightfully denounce phrenology as the racist pseudosciene it is then you should also have no issue denouncing astrology, neither are based in scientific fact and are instead weapons used to hurt people, if you think that being into astrology is somehow for queers and poc you're a dumbass that needs to read some actual scientific articles

#ignore me #anon #answered #personal #anonymous #astrology

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bluejay73-yt-va · 2 years

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We Need to Talk about Modern Science

Before we get on with the meat of this post let me preface this by saying that overall, Science is good and we should listen to most scientist. Global warming is real, vaccines work, there are more than two genders, the Earth is round, all that good stuff. This is post is not an invitation to try and debunk modern scientific facts or bring any of your antivaxxer/flat-earther/transphobic/etc. BS into the conversation.

Alright, are we all good? Have you read that opening bit and let it sink in? You’re not just gonna rush down to the notes and start all kinds of nonsense? Good.

So, the thing we need to talk about is about how modern science is deeply rooted in white imperialism, and while it is slowly shaking off these roots, they are still very much present.

Let’s start with the obvious first, and that is the whole Science VS Religion thing. I feel the need to be up front with the fact that I am a very religious person, and I have also been a very religious person. I was raised Catholic, but currently I am practicing both Paganism as well as the Bahá'í faith. That second one is of important value because as a Bahá'í, we believe in the balance between science and faith, and how the two are inherently linked due to the nature of both to explain the natural world around us. As our understanding of Science grows, so too does our understanding of Faith and vice versa. To give an example of religion influencing science, the values of various religions teach us how to conduct Science ethically and responsibly. Now in the other way, a real life example would be how the Catholic Church over the years has changed and updated their beliefs and practices based on new scientific research and studies, with a more recent example being Pope Francis’ encyclical on ecology and climate change, and how he urges Catholics to be active in the preservation of the natural world.

However, as most of you probably know, the idea of Religion and Science mixing like this isn’t the most popular way to look at things these days, you are either a scientific person or a religious person, and that’s mostly due to the us vs them mentality and black and white way of thinking that plagues modern day society, especially on social media. Both sides of this argument tend to fall short of having an overall positive impact on the world, for very different reasons.

Having a purely Religious view of things leads to a blatant disregard of scientific facts in favor of years of stagnant and outdated tradition, whereas having a purely Scientific view of things leads to an equally close-minded view that disregards anything that can’t be scientifically proven under a very specific set of circumstances.

Now let’s talk about that very specific set of circumstances a bit. Most people have learned the Scientific Method in school, and that’s what everyone in any scientific field uses nowadays. However, what you may not know is that before imperialism, many different cultures had their own ways of scientifically analyzing the world around them, most of which have been lost due to imperialism. The scientific method we use today is only regarded as “the only way to do things” due to imperialism.

But moving on from the Scientific Method, let’s talk about the imperialism side of this issue a bit more. One of the main methods that Imperialism has always invoked has been science. The natives won’t let you onto sacred grounds due to spiritual presences? Trample those grounds anyways to “prove” that those important cultural spirits don’t exist. The natives won’t adhere to your western binary view of gender? Force them to, and disregard any other form of gender expression as “not based in REAL biology.” The natives are using their resources to worship their gods instead of giving them to you? Tear down their monuments and “prove” that their gods are not real. The natives are warning you about a dangerous creature that guards an area rich in important resources? Go in there and shoot the thing, then bring back its corpse to “prove” that it’s just a regular animal.

I could honestly go on and on with this list of examples but I think by now you get the point. And honestly this is a problem that exists to this day. The insistence of people to find “scientific explanations” for different spiritual phenomena of cultural importance is an idea that you still people discussing to this day and I don’t think I need to explain any further how that notion is deeply rooted in imperialism.

Not everything can be explained with science, that is a fact. And an even more important fact is that there are plenty of things that SHOULDN’T be explained with science, because that notion that you should try to explain certain things with science completely erases that thing’s important cultural and spiritual significance.

And on a related not, there are things that you shouldn’t try to understand if you are not from a specific culture. I understand that curiosity, a desire for knowledge, and a desire to be included are very strong urges, but not everything is for you. Trying to force certain cultural aspects of other cultures to fit into your way of understanding things is wrong, disrespectful, and very imperialistic. And look, I know that that can be a hard thing for some people to wrap their heads around, but I can say from my own experience as a white person who has done a lot of volunteer work with Native Americans, that once you accept the fact that not everything is for you to understand, you will be much happier and be able to have a healthier relationship with people of other cultures.

So maybe the next time you’re looking up videos about cryptids, and you come across something about W*ndigos or the Fae, or Golems, or Yokai, (I could continue on but you get the point) you’ll take a step back and acknowledge that these (along with many other) sacred ideas are not cryptids or new species waiting to be discovered. They are living breathing parts of different cultures that are being disrespected and bastardized.

As a side note to end this section, I think it’s strangely paradoxical that there’s been such a push for environmental preservation by the scientific community, yet at the same time a lot of aspects of different cultures that tend to be disregarded as non-scientific have to do with nature and the protection of nature.

The last thing I kind of want to touch on is just how cruel the scientific community can be towards religious practices, especially those related to self-care. Often times you’ll hear scientists say things like, “Oh, well prayer can help people feel better, but there’s no real scientific explanation and it’s probably just the placebo effect.” or “Anyone who does a tarot reading for you is just scamming you.” (I could honestly make a whole post about how not enough people really understand the point of Tarot and that it’s not at all what it is portrayed as in pop culture and is not at all what a lot of people who do it for money claim it to be but it is also not at all what science people who try to debunk it think it is either, but that is not this post.)

These remarks from people in the scientific community that disregard the spiritual needs of people, and try to diminish the importance of spiritual health (which from my own personal experiences is just as important as mental health and physical health to a lot of people of various different belief systems) are needlessly cruel and demeaning.

When someone prays to whatever gods/spirits they believe in, they are trying to find solace and peace from literally the highest power(s) they know. When someone meditates it is more about way more than just the scientifically-backed benefits to meditation. (The same goes for the spiritual aspects of Yoga btw, and really any kind of practice that started out spiritual but has since been scientifically proven to have actual health benefits.)

To use personal examples from my own practices; Crystals, Tarot, Spirit Communion, Moon Rituals, they all mean so much more to me than just the physical/mental benefits. They are deeply connected to my spiritual health, my connections to my ancestral cultures, my ties to nature, and just who I am as a person.

How cruel of you to take something that important to someone and diminish it as “fake” or as a placebo.

Yes, I understand that there will always be people who will attempt to use these things to scam gullible people, and that is not right. But that doesn’t mean that these things have no value what so ever. You just cannot calculate that value with science, nor should you try to calculate that value with science.

I have always loved science, and I don’t want anyone to think that I hate it, but the modern scientific community really needs to reevaluate and have an open discussion about its roots in white imperialism.

To conclude, with a quote from Shakespeare, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, than are dreamt of in your Philosophy.”

I do also want to add that I can only really speak for my own personal experiences as a White, Pagan and Bahá'í person. Yes I have many friends and connections of people in other cultures whom I have discussed these topics with before, but that should not be taken as fact as I can only present them from a second-hand perspective. If you are of a different cultural/religious/spiritual background PLEASE do feel inclined to leave your own perspectives on the issue.

For everyone else, I am more than happy to have a civil discussion about this topic in good faith (which I know is a lot to ask on this hellsite) but any malicious or disrespectful comments will be ignored.

#science #religion #intersectionality #imperialism discussion #racism discussion #genocide mention

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edelweissacermacrophyllum · 1 year

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Go tell that fox

Deuteronomy 15-16:20, Psalm 44:1-12,, Luke 13:31-14:14

I wonder a lot about the context of the bible. At least while I was growing up I treated it as its own thing, a standalone work that was true on its own authority, or on God's. And of course we talked about context to explain away some of the more difficult commands or just the ones that were culturally morally unacceptable.

The idea that something can be true without anything backing it up isn't unheard of among rationalists, but I think axioms are usually shorter than a book length work. I also don't think they're supposed to lead to contradictions.

And so we're left with the messy job of sorting out from context which parts of the bible we can treat as cultural and which parts we have to take as God breathed. Or not. I learned about the historical contextualization of the bible in a secular setting so they treated it all as the former. I am comforted in the existence of passages like this Deuteronomy one which affirms again the practice of forgiving loans every seven years. This may be present in other cultures of that era but I haven't heard of it.

The strategy I'm hinting at, and I think I've mentioned before, is similar to that of DNA analysis, where we line up all the cultural histories in parallel and compare them. With all similarities it is most likely that they had a common source but it is in the differences that historians thrive. Our question, then, is whether God's chosen people are actually different enough from their neighbours that there could be said to have been a significant outside influence on their culture.

Of course, I'm not a historian, and this practice of cultural comparison and parsimony probably is either a whole field in and of itself or has been debunked as an impossible or impractical way of dealing with things.

Every once in a while I get a strange sense of vertigo when realizing the scale of human history and how different it was and how small my scope of experience is. It gets worse when I realize that human civilization has only been around for the last few thousand and what with one thing and another we are unlikely to be around for the next few thousand. That sort of scale has me doubting a lot of the significance of things in general and of my specific religious beliefs in particular.

In the grand scheme of things, nothing is significant, so it's a good thing we don't live there. It's a good thing that the God that we know doesn't seem to live there either. The bible is not mostly about massive scale God things, but about God scaling themselves down to our level and hanging out.

I take comfort in the fact that most of our intuition about the big and small scale stuff is, in physics at least, dead wrong. Not that I take comfort in my own ignorance, but that I can be justified in focusing more on people and neighbourhoord level stuff, from a theological perspective and a scientific one.

I love what Jesus says in this passage when the Pharisees warn him, either because they care about him or just want him gone, that Herod is coming for him: 'You tell that fox that I will continue to heal for three days and then I will come to Jerusalem. You can kill me there.' He's accusing Herod of getting the plot wrong, I guess.

#bible in a year #History #parsimony #scale

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that-next-level · 1 year

Text

Cancer cure?

youtube

This is very emotional stuff. After watching this and having debates with people on the internet and irl about what it means I more clearly than ever see how people WANT to be sheep, to not do the research, to not hear out the stories, to NOT spend their time on difficult matters, but to simply be right for themselves on their views based on nothing.

And they WILL still have a firm opinion about it. They will say it's impossible to cure cancer, despite not understanding cancer. Even if they've informed themselves 0 about the biochemical OR the legal aspect of it all. This actually is the way it is in most important topics really...

There's so much proof that big pharma tried to supress this man and then steal from him, so much proof they spent over 6 million on legal fees from government money to silence his research, proof he treated the sister of the chairmen of elon and cured her, then proof for false promises given to him as compensation. So much proof, yet it remains hidden in plain sight because doctors are the EASIEST to dismiss everything that is not official or written in a 30-year old textbook. Our doctors most of all are the sheep, and they are mindlessly catering to the needs of the puppeteers by not curing ilnesses but suppressing symptoms and playing a show for population control. They simply don't care about revolutionary ideas, they care about their bank accounts.

Of course big Pharma wanted to steal this and discredid the author, like they have with a lot of revolutionary drugs. Thats easy to do for them. But not this peptide serum, too cheap to produce but having the cure to the MOST deadly decease on Earth. That's a different ball game, even big Pharma is small here. The decease that the people behind the scenes put all of their effort into spreading and use as a weapon? Nah, just doesnt fit the plan to cure this, then you need to create something deadlier and they already did so well by making the lie that you can cure this thing by killing yourself slowly. It's one of their best work!

It is easier to just use the power of brainwashing over the already blind people and tell them this is no cure, the man is a scammer, there is no proof. When there is legitimate proof out there and hundreds of clinical trials and real people's stories wanting to come out.

Crazy how such a thing is kept under the rug with no one despite a few people talking about it... literally i see tiktoks about laundry detergent with more views than anything related to this man's name.

You would think it's safest for him to be killed so his work doesnt continue? But actually killing this man would bring too much attention to such a touchy topic. Some people might actually poke around. After all- EVERYONE is looking for this cure. So they hide it in plain sight. Calling him a quack and a scammer, barrying him in legalities, hiding his research, even propaganda campaigns on faceboook and flagging every content related to his name as 'misinformation '

I dont know for sure if this peptide string is the cure for cancer but based on everything you can see about how much they've supressed him and all the tearing stories I am very inclined to believe it.

After all, nature always creates a cure. And the cure is always within the healthy individual. It makes perfect sense. I haven't seen one person scientifically debunk his finding. Peptides ARE already used in a similiar way in cosmetics. But this is different... Even with snakes poison, the antidote is in the sake.

Impossible they say... What is impossible is after so much research and so much money being thrown in these cancer fighting institutions, no alternative methods have been created or even tried? It's still the most logical thing to just try to kill the cancer AND your health with radiation. Is that why NO DOCTOR diagnosed with camcer ever is so brave or stupid to go into radiation therapy themselves?

And there actually are such treatmeants that saved people and destroyed their cancer without any damage to the person?at least hundreds. So many stories that want to be told. And no one talks about it? Why?

Maybe because the sponsors of the cancer institutes do feed themselves off of the existence of cancer, maybe if there is a simple cure people will start poking at what exactly creates it, WHO creates it and then the world just wouldnt work like it does now. at all.

But who would dare poke around there? Not many people, so nothing to worry about really... carry on.

I've seen many times in my life how incompetent practicing doctors are, how they dont care for a cure, how sure of their old-ass incomplete and unobjective knowledge they are. They have no independant thought, and people look to them for the answer. So it's fine. Nothing will change. World keeps spinning, world order still the same.

But i lost my father somewhere in the stupidity of this system.... the one thing i definitely knew throughout the whole process of fighting with it was that the doctors i met, they NEVER had an independent thought and that they had no logical medical thought or care about their treatment or patient. It infruriates me that this is the way it is. My independent research gave me more knowledge and understanding than they had, having practiced their whole life. Practiced taking people's money that is.

A few lucky thinking rational people cured themselves with Brazinskys antineoplastons it looks like. Im very happy for them. and then they went away to live anew, but the ones who trust in the hands of "the system" even just a little- died a tragic death.

Well at least i have my lesson- first hand knowledge, DO NOT TRUST ALWAYS THINK, ALWAYS OPPOSE.

Hope this keeps me above water long enough so i can enjoy my time here🙏

#Youtube

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entoman-created-by-the-tallgreys · 2 years

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I don't know what anything is anymore ?

Maybe everything is just too confusing.

What is good what is bad and what is good ?

. . .

Good is helping others okay you go around the back alley and you help a mass murderer buried bodies and cover up the evidence you did a good deed.

. . .

What is good God is love and light okay therefore under a light bulb you see a pedophile raping a kid now obviously the pedophile love the kid and it's under a white bulb or under the sun you got love and you got light.

. . .

He said I'm going to twisting these things around this post is definitely getting reported but you know how I'm twisting these words around because there's really no makes no real difference it really doesn't make a difference at all it doesn't really effing matter.

. . .

Am I saying the guy who killed him who murdered a whole bunch of people was good I don't really know anymore I don't know if I can be fixed ?!

I definitely know the pedophile is an extremely bad thing.

. . .

What is Goodwill kindness okay she go around at you going to feel somewhere where there's a bunch of rocks and you start putting flowers at those rocks of dead Rotting organic meat in the ground.

I mean a graveyard.

. . .

What is Goodwill what is light what does it mean to be a good person apparently it's to be loyal to your country great Fyk'ing Propaganda.

. . .

True Goodwill is being servitude to be a servant that's what it means to be good to be serving as someone more powerful than you always more powerful than you that's what it means to be a good person and obedient and happy slave.

Honestly I don't know what anything is I'm scared I'm lost and I'm very confused I don't want to do it only know the law is always there to Beat over your head to not do anything else.

. . .

I don't like going to churches or other people's religions, these people immediately want to tell you their spiritually unscientific ideas, When I Say unscientific it doesn't mean there isn't spiritual scientific, and especially don't want to go to the psychiatrist because they've been to funk so effing deep he's been all the way to the very end all the way to the back all the way through psychiatry has been debunked so many times to a bullet counts as a debunking effort 3 to 4 million Dylan Mini Guns have literally unloaded all their ammunition on psychiatry and all of its entirety of that DMS

. . .

I really don't know what evil is either I have no idea what it was evil is ?

I don't know what makes you a good person what makes you a bad person

! FYK ! - WHAT ?! JUST MAKE'S U A PERSON !!!!!

I don't want to do I don't know what to do anywhere I just lost a very lost and confused person with knowledge and information that nobody can trust.

#Im Lost #Confused #Wtf #Lost

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hatteymcstache · 3 years

Text

Another callout post in the air.

I've been told about this post going around when someone was asking me if I was okay; so I've given into a lot of thought and I'm here explain. again. I will not display this person's name because I know the toxic part of my community will go ballistic and I hate that so much. Please don't.

The callout post in question:

Firstly, those who have tried went from being calm to immediately hostile when I tried to explain myself in dms. And the very rare few who reached out to me apologized for jumping to conclusions. You on the other hand, never tried reaching out to me once. If it's a confrontation in the discord server, then I'm not active in it and most likely forget. If it's a personal dm, I didn't get anything recent from you at all.

1. I did not defend C0nji. yes I do look at the whole anti/proshipping issue on both sides, doesn't mean I condone malicious creepy intent and doxxing/death threats. I'm just saying this artist is not a despicable person as far as I know, nor did they go out of their way of legitimately hurting others. With that being said, their whole idea of 'fiction doesn't affect reality' is very shallow-minded and gross considering how much it has put minors in danger, and they should learn to think about it but that's their choice, and problem. I'm not here to babysit.

2. The same claim I already debunked many times but will say again: I carelessly copy pasted old info and had no idea that word was still there but I removed the term 'Asperger's' and have stopped using it since, I was made aware of this years ago already. At the time I wasn't aware that in a deep negative history, and I've been around a few autistic mutuals who used that term as a scientific term.

3. Another of the same claim: Yes I do see Chihiro as a boy (or sometimes non-binary) cause as a trans man, it brings me comfort to see guys in a skirt with confidence. I'm not the most feminine guy but i'd like to have the freedom to explore without being misgendered. And if people do not like trans Sakura that's understandable, I just want to shed some light where trans woman can look buff, especially those who are as athletic as Sakura. The trans post you showed is meant to be a body positive for pre-op and post-op trans folk but you decided to flip it around and call it something else.

4. Me being genuinely upset of people making claims towards me doesn't automatically mean I've brushed off every transfem's concerns. Some of them who came forward to me, the conversations went from civil to being aggressive because they wouldn't listen or even consider my explanation that my intentions weren't malicious at all. Then the only trans woman who was civil came to me with fair criticism, told me I should be more specific with my content warnings when it comes to drawing pre-op bodies cause it would cause dysphoria for certain trans people, especially to trans women. That was where I listened and assured to be more cautious with how I portray my work.

5. The rest about me woobifying Taka and Gundham which I've addressed many times; characters dressing up in oversized sweaters or acting childlike/naïve doesn't automatically make them incapable or infant. That is never what I intend. And Gundham 'not knowing what sex is'- yes I know he's a breeder, human intercourse is a similar but different thing. He's asking Mondo in his own way because he has lacked connection with people for a long time; that's how I'm portraying, this also has been implied many times in his free time events and with how he talks to people. This is something where I relate to Gundham cause all I had was my art and imagination as a kid, so learning to interact with others is overwhelming.

I also don't understand that apparently Gundham needing people like Taka and Mondo (as dad-like figures) is so terrible- I'll say this now that yes I do portray Gundham as someone who is headstrong but he can feel very lonesome, he just doesn't how to express it. It's okay to need someone who truly accepts you or is that so wrong? Also it was never portrayed that Gundham or Taka need to reply on someone 24/7. so I really don't understand that argument you're trying to make. To me, It just sounds like autistic people shouldn't rely or need anyone at all cause it's offensive. If that's not what you mean I'm sorry, but that's what I'm perceiving cause all your statements are vague.

I not only do research but have talked to autistic mutuals/followers when developing my character Timmy; a lot of the valid criticism comes from how I should write his symptoms, showing both his mature and child-like sides etc, they even share their own experiences so I can illustrate them in a realistic and positive light. The way he's portrayed and capable of many things has made him relatable to a lot of people, which is something I'm trying to strive for; especially when some autistic people (who shared their experiences in my dms) behave like Timmy get ridiculed for ''''acting like 9 year olds'''' in my comment section which is something I never condone in my community I even made a comic post regarding that ableism.

No one is ever obligated to agree with the way I portray my stories and opinions; if someone doesn't like what I'm doing they are free to unfollow, block me and look for any other artist that does a better job in their art. My biggest issue with callout posts like this, is that people have different opinions of what makes a character a good or bad rep. It's very subjective and it depends on every person. Half of them including you do not like my representation, meanwhile the other half does enjoy my work, even find comfort in it. I'm not here to please every single person who didn't get everything they need from my work, I'm one man.

But the most painful part is not debunking these claims over and over; it's when my followers believe them right away without even asking me if they were true. It always leaves me unsurprised but disappointed. And yeah I'm not a good person, yes people tend to get scared of me that's fair, but I'm not as despicable as so many of these callout posts claim. I have talked to certain followers who have the decency to ask me what's going on; followers who actually listened to my explanation, and I listened to them back when they have questions. You don't even have to agree or like me after my explanation, just have the courtesy to ask before jumping to conclusions.

So yeah, the callout post is vague, and blown a lot of things I drew out of proportion and turned them into malicious intent which was never my approach. I was going to personally dm you about this but you have lost it the moment you made an 'awareness' post instead that does more damage than good. Feel free to keep your post up, feel free to think what you will. I just want to say all this to people who are genuinely confused. Whatever you plan to do, go ahead. I'm exhausted and have more in life to worry about. Unless followers genuinely want to ask questions to know more, this will be last time I confront the same. claims.

#christ.

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susiephone · 4 years

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“I’d love to stop watching TV, but you cancelled school!”

aka, YouTube series to binge when you’re stuck indoors and you’d like to learn a little something.

ART!

Lindsay Ellis’ entire YouTube channel. It’s like film school for people who can’t afford film school.

Here she is teaching you about film theory... via the Transformers movies.

Here she is talking about the ways the potrayals of various characters have changed and developed over the years.

It’s Lit! A series hosted by Lindsay Ellis in collaboration with PBS, about reading, writing, and the publishing industry.

Brows Held High. Half comedy reviews, half artistic and political analysis of “highbrow” films -- often both at once.

Also he has talked about Shakespeare a LOT. Like, so much, you guys.

ThugNotes. Advertised as “classic literature, original gangster.” Sparky Sweets, PhD, summarizes and analyzes some books you may have heard of.

Terrible Writing Advice. Teaching you how to write by telling you how not to write.

Maven of the Eventide. A very nerdy goth lady reviews vampire-focused content, and has thus talked quite a lot about the history of the vampire genre and how it’s developed over the centuries. It’s so awesome. She also has really cute kids who show up sometimes!

SCIENCE!

Sexplanations. One very smart lady answers all your sex ed questions. Yes, even that one.

Tibees. A PhD student explains physics and math... in the style of Bob Ross, baking videos, and shitposts.

Cool Worlds. Videos about astronomy and space and other planets, for when you want to think about how small you are.

Minute Physics. Complicated scientific ideas, in short, easy to digest videos.

SciShow: Hank Green and friends tackle serious scientific queries, like, “Why don’t we just throw trash into volcanoes?”

HISTORY!

Ruining History. Shane Madej infodumps about salacious periods in history that were left out of the books. People have always been weird, y’all.

On that note: Puppet History! It’s a new one, but it’s a lot like Ruining History, but with puppets and songs, too.

BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime. If I get mysteriously murdered with no leads, Ryan and Shane are the only people allowed to talk about it.

Also Supernatural often has some interesting historical tidbits.

MISCELLANEOUS CRAP!

Adam Ruins Everything. One very earnest, very nerdy man annoys his friends and family by debunking common misconceptions about everything from chemistry to the TSA to the funeral industry.

Last Week Tonight. Comedy news program hosted by a sad British man in America. Depending on the episode, you might see him get in a jockstrap-related feud with Russel Crowe, troll the FCC with robocalls, or interview Edward Snowden. Constantly wastes HBO’s money on stupid shit. Always funny, always informative, and he hates Trump SO. GODDAMN. MUCH.

Defunctland. Our host Kevin gives us the rundown on theme park attractions, and sometimes whole parks, that don’t exist anymore -- how they were developed, and why they ultimately shut down.

He also has a side-series about kids’ TV shows that don’t exist anymore.

And a miniseries about the works of Jim Henson.

Daily Moth. American news given in ASL, with full English transcripts.

Ali Abdaal. A Cambridge grad talks about life has a junior doctor, and how to study and work more effectively.

Feel free to add!

#corona virus #self quarantine #covid19 #quarantine #self isolation

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mediocrevideopodcast · 4 years

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Cuddles - All Turtles

Request: Hi I really like you writes! keep up the good work, I was wondering if you could do a rottmnt cuddle Imagines? If that's fine?

Pairing: All Turtles! (Non-Poly)

Content: Fluffy as FUCK. Brush your teeth after you read this, cause it’s sweet as hell.

Raphael:

He loves to cuddle! But...he’s nervous. He doesn’t want to prick you with one of his spikes, or...worse. With his brothers, it’s different! They’ve got hard shells and plastrons, but you’re so... squishy! What if he hurts you?

He gets so happy about casual touch. Putting you on his shoulders? Throwing his arm around your shoulders? Affectionate hair ruffle? He’s the physical embodiment of :)

If you want full cuddles, though, you’re gonna have to be the one to initiate it the first few times. He’s just too nervous, otherwise.

Rest your head on his plastron when you’re watching a movie and he’ll melt.

Seeing how your arms maneuver around his spikes to embrace him, how gingerly you hold him...Maybe it’s possible. Maybe you two can cuddle without getting any boo boos.

He can’t really lay on his back because of his spikes. He’ll either get stuck that way when his spikes inevitably get embedded into the material, or he’ll shred up whatever he’s laying on.

(He’s banned from the beanbag chairs.)

He wants to be the little spoon so bad, but it’s physically impossible. He’s forever bound to big spoon duty. He’s okay with that, though.

(One time you showed up wrapped in mattress foam and bubble wrap to try and be the big spoon. It's a very fond memory, even if you were padded too stiffly to actually hold him.)

He likes to rest his head in your lap. Run your nails along his head or shell and he’ll be asleep in no time.

He won’t lay on your stomach or chest though. He really wants to, but he’s afraid he’ll crush you. There’s no debate with that topic, unfortunately.

He’s such a good big spoon!! He’s so strong, and he cradles you like you’re the entire world. Because you are!

He likes to rest one hand on your stomach and tangle his other hand with yours. It’s so cool to look down and see how his spikes cradle you. Almost as though you were a treasure encased in barbed wire, protected from the outside world.

You always feel so safe when you cuddle. I mean, it’s hard not to when you’re cocooned in 1000lbs of muscle and spikes!

His hold is firm, but noticeably gentle.

He runs pretty warm, compared to the rest of the turtles. Great in the winter time, not so great in the summer.

He traces little doodles on the back of your hand. You can never tell what they are, though. And he won’t tell you what they are, if you ask.

(They’re dogs.)

He’s not coldblooded, due to the way he was mutated. As such, he doesn’t really have any issues regulating his body temperature. He does find himself seeking out heat sources, however! Donnie calls it a vestigial response. Raph absolutely does not care about no scientific names or explanations: he just knows that he likes to sit under the heat lamp in the morning.

Prepare to be his next heat lamp.

If you come over in the mornings, prepare to be greeted with a very sleepy Raph the instant your feet hit the lair concrete.

He’s never on his phone when you cuddle.

He is a talker, though. He doesn’t quite whisper, but he definitely invokes the gentle voice.

He falls asleep very quickly if he doesn’t keep himself talking. Your presence is just so calming to him, he can’t help it!

He’s a very deep breather, and it’s really calming to listen to!

Unfortunately, he starts to snore about 15 minutes after he falls asleep. And he’s loud.

You’ll get used to it, eventually.

Donatello

He doesn’t sleep consistently, so full cuddle sessions are far and few between.

He read that fake rumor that Albert Einstein only slept for five hours a year: while it’s since been debunked, it’s stuck with him. He started training himself when he was little to power nap instead, and now it’s hard for him to get out of the habit.

But..you’re a good motivator.

He’s a little nervous around the concept of cuddling, at first. He’s very touch-starved, and once you warm him up to the idea, it’ll be hard to pull him off you! But he’s incredibly nervous about it at first.

It’s...intimate, you know? He’s vulnerable, and that freaks him out.

His shell is super sensitive. Partially because it’s soft, but wearing his battle shell all the time has removed a lot of stimuli that would have made it less sensitive.

He reflexively rolls his shoulders when you run your hands along his exposed shell. At least, for the first few times. If you do it enough, it’ll quickly become a way for him to relax.

Likes to pull you to his chest and hold you like that. He usually has your head under his chin so he can scroll through his phone while you cuddle. He doesn’t move his arms much though, so it’s okay.

(He also likes it when you’re facing him so he can steal glances at you once you fall asleep. He thinks you’re even prettier when you’re completely relaxed.)

You’ll rarely see it for yourself, but his eyes get all soft while you’re cuddling together. The quietest, calmest smile graces his features when you’re in his arms.

However, you do notice how all the tension fades from his body, and how his breathing seems to slow down.

He’ll run his free hand along your back every now and then, pressing a quiet kiss to the top of your head.

He runs fairly cold, which is awesome in the summertime. He always lets you borrow his hoodies when you cuddle. If you ask nicely, he’ll let you keep ‘em, just so long as he has one or two in the closet.

His bed has super soft blankets, and they’re so nice to curl up in. You’ll probably stay there for a little while after he gets up, honestly.

He’s not a talker, surprisingly. Every now and then he’ll pull his arm back to show you some meme on his phone, but that’s about it. He’ll listen to you though! He actually really likes it when you mutter about whatever's on your mind while you cuddle.

King of “Uh huh,” “Wow,” “Mmhm,” and “Damn that’s crazy.”

He really is listening, though. He just likes to tease you a little bit.

His grip is either iron-tight or loose as hell.

On bad days he’ll curl up as the little spoon, and not even the gods could convince him to let go of you.

It takes him a while to warm up to the idea of being a little spoon. Both because his shell is hyper-sensitive, but it also kind of erodes that “bad boy” persona he’s got going on.

Once he’s more comfortable with it, he’s about 50/50 on it. He’s more likely to indulge himself on bad days, but it honestly just depends on his mood.

If you pull him away from work, you can bet that he’ll pull you to his chest while he’s sitting on the bed. He’ll lean forward to rest his chin on your shoulder as he explains his latest breakthrough. He shakes a little bit when he’s excited, and you can feel it as he holds you.

He panics a little bit when he’s on his back, but he really likes it when you lay on his plastron, so...Chair cuddles!

He likes to have you in his lap while he works.

He also likes to kick his legs up onto your lap when watching TV. If you guys have the couch to yourselves, he’ll also lay all the way on your lap. If anyone sees you guys, or if anyone comments on it he’ll just hit ‘em with a very snarky quip.

“Okay, and? At least I actually have a partner :)”

You don’t know how he said “:)” outloud.

Leonardo

He thinks he’s so smooth, but honestly? He’s such a dork.

He’s huge on touch. But cuddling? It’s a whole ‘nother ball game. He loves it a lot, but...he’s so vulnerable! It’s so intimate to him. He’s not adverse to it in the slightest; in fact, it’s the exact opposite! He’s super excited when the topic comes up.

You can tell that the idea of fully cuddling affects him more than he lets on, because he won’t stop talking when you bring up the subject for the first time. He rambles when he’s nervous.

(He talks with his hands a lot, and it’s really cute how he rambles and rubs the back of his neck.)

He’s actually a great cuddler, though.

Big spoon? Hell yeah. Little spoon? Awesome. Horrific entanglement of limbs that would put eldritch horrors to shame? Sweet! He’s just happy to be close to you.

He can go 50/50 on having his phone with him. If he does, he’s usually either watching memes with you or playing a mobile game.

(Kind of unrelated, but he was very excited about that weird, Subway Surfers revival that happened earlier this year. It was all he played for a while, and now you have the tune lodged in your brain forever.)

He’ll talk for a little while if he doesn’t have his phone, before you settle into a comfortable silence.

He’s either ranting about something shitty that happened that day, or shitposting. There’s no inbetween.

“If I shot someone from Texas while I was on the moon, would that fall under Texas’ jurisdiction or the moon’s?”

He also likes to trace little patterns on your hands, if he has access to them that day! You can usually tell what they are. Other times, it just seems like he’s finding an excuse to hold your hand. It’s really cute.

(If you ask him what he’s drawing, he’ll say he’s reading your palms before dropping a sweet little line about how he’s in your future.)

(He does NOT know how to read palms but it’s the thought that counts <3)

Not ashamed about cuddling in public. Hell, if you’re fine with it, he’s more than happy to cuddle during movie night. In fact, it’s kind of a source of pride for him!

He looks so cocky about it that Donatello has to make a physical effort to NOT hit him.

Please run your palms over his shell, he’ll melt.

If he’s the big spoon, squeeze his biceps. He might not say it out loud, but he’s melting internally. It sticks in his head for at least a few weeks afterwards. Ego Boost 100

If you’re ticklish, prepare yourself for tickles. He strikes without a pattern, and without warning. He doesn’t always do it, though. Maybe about one in ten times. He just likes to hear you laugh :)

He’s very nice to cuddle with overall. He’s the best cuddler in the lair, hands down.

Michelangelo

Literally the only one in the lair who isn’t embarrassed when you bring up the topic.

He’s been WAITING for this moment, actually.

Doesn’t care about whether he’s the big or little spoon.

He’s super talkative when he cuddles, it’s cute. He usually likes to spend this time talking about one another’s day. He’s a great listener too!

He’s always 100% engaged in what you have to say.

He has trouble settling down outside of his normal schedule, so it’s rare that he’ll fall asleep while cuddling.

If you’re in a position that gives his arms a lot of mobility, he’ll draw on you. Not just tracing patterns, but he’ll actually bring out his markers and draw on your arms, back, or just any exposed piece of skin.

He always manages to find the prettiest colors to compliment your skin tone. You never want to wash it off, honestly.

He HAS to keep himself busy with something, or else he’ll explode. At least, that’s how he describes it. If you try and get him to lay down and fall asleep...well, he’ll try! But he’ll be squirming the whole time.

It’s best to throw on a Jupiter Jim movie if you want him to stay still.

He likes to tangle his legs with yours while you cuddle. Whether he’s taller or shorter than you, he WILL find a way.

He’s the lightest out of all the turtles, so there’s a possibility of letting him (partially) lay on you without shattering your sternum! Congratulations!

(He’s around 525 lbs. He’s only half of what Raph weighs, but he still has to be careful about how he lays on you. It’s crazy to think that you’re so small compared to him.)

His hands are so cold, and he’ll absolutely use that to his advantage. If he gets bored, or if he just wants to make you laugh, he’ll grab your waist with his cold fucking hands. Hope you’re a northerner <3

He also likes to tickle you, way more than Leo.

Don’t try and tickle him though, he HATES it. He’s absolutely the type of person to just Scream if you try.

Like I said, he gets bored really quickly. He also just likes to make you laugh.

If you’re cuddling in bed though, like right before he falls asleep? It’s so nice.

He’ll still tangle his legs with yours, but he moves so much slower. He loves to let his hands lazily roam across your form as he pulls you closer to him, savoring the comfort and heat that you bring. If he talks, it’s in drowsy whispers that only you two can hear.

#rottmnt x reader #rottmnt imagine #rottmnt Donatello x reader #rottmnt raphael x reader #rottmnt leonardo x reader #rottmnt michelangelo x reader #tmnt imagine #TMNT x reader #tmnt leo x reader #tmnt raph x reader #tmnt donatello x reader #tmnt raphael x reader #tmnt donnie x reader #tmnt mikey x reader #rottmnt mikey x reader #rottmnt donnie x reader #rottmnt leo x reader #rottmnt raoh x reader #now THIS was pog to write. over 2k words babie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

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Conspiracy fantasy

When we talk about conspiratorialism, we tend to focus (naturally) on the content of the conspiracy. Not only are those stories entertainingly outlandish — they’re also the point of contact between conspiracists and the world.

If your mom is shouting about “Hollywood pedos,” it’s natural that you’ll end up discussing the relationship of this belief to observable reality. But while the content of conspiratorial beliefs gets lots of attention, we tend to neglect the significance of those beliefs.

To the extent that we consider why the beliefs exist and proliferate, the discussion rarely gets further than “irrational people have irrational beliefs.” This is a mistake. The stories we tell one another are a kind of Ouija board, with all our fingertips on the planchette.

The messages it spells out don’t describe external reality but they do reveal our internal, unspoken anxieties and aspirations.This is why we should read science fiction: not because it predicts the future, but because it diagnoses the present.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/26/meaningful-zombies/#oracles

Sf is an ever-mutating ecosystem of fears and hopes, and readers apply selective pressure to those organisms, extinguishing the ones that don’t capture the zeitgeist and elevating the ones that do, a co-evolution of our fantasies and our narratives.

http://locusmag.com/Features/2007/07/cory-doctorow-progressive-apocalypse.html

This is why Alternate Reality Games are so central to their players’ lives. They’re a form of narrative co-creation, with the players throwing out theories and the game-masters actually changing the story to incorporate the best of them.

ARGs are an environment where your coolest and most deliciously scary ideas become reality. It’s a powerful way to galvanize collective action.

As anthropologist Biella Coleman writes in Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy, it’s the organizing principal behind Anonymous.

Anon Ops begin life as victory announcement videos. If the vision of success captures enough Anons, they execute the op.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-anonymous-ghost-in-the-machine

In other words, the degree to which a shared fantasy of victory compels its audience predicts whether the audience realizes its fantasy. Long before the alt-right, Anons were memeing ideas into existence (no coincidence, as both were incubated on 4chan).

On the Conspiracy Games and Counter-Games podcast, three left academics — Max Haiven, AT Kingsmith, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou — analyze “conspiracy fantasies” (as opposed to conspiracies, e.g. the Big Lie behind the Iraq War) for what they reveal about late capitalism’s anxieties.

As leftists, they naturally focus on the relationship between material conditions and people’s behaviors and beliefs. This is an important part of the discourse on conspiratorialism that’s often missing from liberal and right-wing analysis.

Conspiracists aren’t just “irrational” nor are they just “racist.” They may be both of those things, but unless you look at material conditions, then the surges and retreats of conspiracism are mysterious phenomena, strange tides raised by unseen forces.

A decade ago, then-PM David Cameron — the architect of a brutal, authoritarian austerity — dismissed the Hackney Riots as “criminality pure and simple,” and demanded a ban on discussion of the relationship between austerity and unrest.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2011/aug/09/david-cameron-riots-criminality-video

But without that discussion, there’s no explanation. Even if you believe that “criminality” is a thing that is latent within some or all of us, what explains a rise or fall in that criminality? Is it like pollen that alights upon some of us, turning us bad? Or the full moon?

Likewise the “conspiracists are just racists” or “they’re just deranged.” Without looking at the material world, there’s no explanation for why that racism suddenly became more (or less) important to how conspiracists live their lives.

We can’t talk about conspiratorialism without talking about material considerations, and we have to talk about the form and substance of the conspiratorial belief. The ARG-like structure of Qanon is a hugely important part of its popularity:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#adrian-hon

Memeing things into existence in a game-like way is hugely compelling. You can tell when a D&D game is hopping when the players and the DM start co-creating the story, with the DM slyly altering the dungeon and the NPCs to match the players’ super-cool theories.

A recent episode of the CGACG podcast present a mind-blowing analysis of the interplay of the material conditions, mythology and structure of Qanon. It’s a two-part interview with Wu Ming 1:

https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-1?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks

https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-2?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks

Wu Ming 1 is part of Bologna’s Wu Ming Collective, the successor to the 1990s Luther Bissett net-art collective. Bissett did many wild, weird things,including publishing “Q,” an internationally bestselling conspiratorial novel in 1999 (!!)

https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/what-is-the-wu-ming-foundation/

The plot of “Q” involves a high-level government official, privy to top-secret info about a state conspiracy. It closely mirrors Qanon beliefs, right down to a call for a Jan 6 uprising (!!!!). The major difference is that “Q” is set during the Protestant Reformation.

In the interview, Wu Ming 1 talks about the proliferation of conspiratorial, ARG-like 4chan hoaxes that predated Qanon, and hypothesizes that the original Q posts were plagiarized from the novel.

The strange experience of seeing a novel turn into a cult prompted Ming 1 to write “La Q di Qomplotto” (“The Q in Qonspiracy”), a book that defines and analyzes “conspiracy fantasies.”

https://edizionialegre.it/product/la-q-di-qomplotto/

Ming 1’s interview digs into this in some depth, including setting out criterial for distinguishing conspiracies from fantasies (for example, a conspiracy doesn’t go on forever, while a fantasy can imagine the Knights Templar running the world for centuries).

I was taken by Ming 1’s discussion of the role that “enchantment” plays in conspiratorialism — the feeling of being in a magical and wondrous (if also anxious and terrible) place. He says this is why “debunkers” fail — they’re like people who spoil a magic trick.

Ming 1 and the hosts talk about replacing the enchantment of conspiratorialism with a counter-enchantment, grounded not in the conspiratorialist’s oversimplification and essentialism, but in the wonder of reality.

Ming 1 analogizes his “counter-enchantment” to the “double-wow” method of Penn and Teller: first they blow you away with a trick, and then they blow you away with the cleverness by which it was accomplished.

He describes how the Luther Bissett collective performed a double-wow during Italy’s Satanic Panic, creating a hoax satanic heavy metal cult and a counter-cult, promulgating stories of their pitched battles, then revealing how they’d faked the whole thing.

The action was taken in solidarity with actual Bolognese heavy metal fans who’d been framed for imaginary Satanic “crimes.” Luther Bissett wanted to demonstrate how a panic could be created from nothing, to reveal the method behind the real hoax with a fake hoax.

The double-wow method reminds me of Richard Dawkins’ manuever in “The Magic of Reality,” his excellent children’s book about the virtues of the scientific world, revealing how the numinous wonder of faith is nothing compared to the wonder of science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_of_Reality

The idea that conspiratorialism is a leading indicator of capitalism’s anxieties is a powerful one, and it ties into other compelling accounts of conspiracy, like Anna Merlan’s REPUBLIC OF LIES, which discusses the importance of trauma to conspiratorial belief.

Like Ming 1, Merlan stresses the kernel of truth underpinning conspiracy fantasies — the real aerospace coverups that make UFO conspiracies plausible, the real pharmaceutical conspiracies to cover up harms from drugs that underpin anti-vax.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

In the podcast, Ming 1 and the hosts stress the importance of identifying and addressing the kernel of truth and the trauma it produces in any counter-conspiratorial work — that is, a successful counter-enchantment must address the material conditions behind the fantasy.

I really like this approach because of its empathy — its attempt to connect with the conditions that produce behaviors and beliefs, not to be confused with sympathy, which might excuse their toxic and hateful nature.

It reminds me a lot of Oh No Ross and Carrie, whose hosts have spent years joining cults and religions and digging into fringe practices and beliefs in an effort to understand them; they laugh a lot, but never AT their subjects.

https://ohnopodcast.com/

But Ming 1 brings something new to this discussion: an analysis of the role that novels have played in conspiracy fantasy formation: not just the plagiarizing of “Q” to make Qanon, but things like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion plagiarizing Dumas.

The interview also brought to mind Edward Snowden’s recent inaugural blog-post, “Conspiracy: Theory and Practice,” which seeks to separate conspiracy practice (e.g. the NSA spying on everyone) from theories (what Ming 1 calls “fantasies”).

https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt1

Snowden connects the feeling of powerlessness to the urge to explain the world through conspiracies, relating this to his experience of revealing one of the world’s most far-reaching real conspiracies, and then becoming the subject of innumerable conspiracy fantasies.

Snowden’s perspective is one that has heretofore been missing from conspiracy discourse — the perspective of someone who has been part of a real conspiracy and then the central subject of a constellation of bizarre and widespread conspiratorial beliefs.

These different works, focusing as they do on the character of conspiratorial beliefs, the nature of conspiratorial practice, and material conditions of conspiracists, comprise a richer analysis of our screwed-up discourse than, say, theories about “online radicalization.”

As I wrote in my 2020 book “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism,” the “online radicalization” narrative requires that you accept Big Tech’s unsupported marketing claims about its power to bypass our critical thoughts at face value.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

Claims to be able to control our minds — whether made by Rasputin, Mesmer, pick-up artists, MK-ULTRA or NLP enthusiasts — always turn out to be cons (though sometimes the con artists are also conning themselves).

But there’s a much more plausible, less controversial set of powers that Big Tech possesses. By spying on us all the time, it can help scammers target people who are ready to hear conspiratorial explanations.

By monopolizing our discourse, it allows SEO scammers to create default answers to our questions. By locking us in, it can keep us using a platform even if the discourse there makes us angry and anxious.

And by corrupting our political process, it creates “kernels of truth” for conspiratorial beliefs.

As with Scooby Doo, the monster turns out to be a familiar villain in a fright mask: a monopolist whose abuses and impunity create the anxiety that make conspiracy plausible.

#pluralistic

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Do you have an estimation how much racism or xenophobia Yusuf would have encountered traveling with Nicolo across Europe up to the modern ages? This is a very vague ask, forgive me. I wonder how much the concept of racism has changed over time. I have the vague impression that pre-modern European societies were always more diverse than one might assume nowadays, but I have little factual historic knowledge. I also wonder how much xenophobia Nicolo would have encountered.

And you would be correct! Because the “medieval ages were all lily-white and anyone placing POC in them is Wrong” is yet again, surprise surprise, another total lie that is a product of right-wing reactionary revisionism and not based on actual historical evidence. A couple years ago, I wrote a very lengthy post about historical people of color in Europe, starting from the Roman era and going down to about the 19th century (everything prior to the 20th century, basically). Obviously, it only discussed each example briefly, but there’s definitely more than enough there to debunk any idea that medieval Europe was monochromatically white. Iberia, Sicily, and other “crossroad” kingdoms had the most visibly and long-term settled diverse populations, but major cities such as London were ethnically diverse from their founding (which if you know anything about the Romans, truly, is obvious). There is extensive evidence for Africans and Muslims traveling to, if perhaps not settling in, early medieval Ireland and Britain (though sometimes they did do this, as there is a record of at least one African abbot of an English religious house). I also have this list of readings on the golden age of medieval Africa, including the richest king of all time and the various powerful empires that existed particularly in West Africa.

As noted in the Historical People of Color post, the crusades themselves, despite their obvious violence and bloodshed, were vehicles for cross-cultural exchange, which resulted in both Islamic ideas traveling to the west and western ideas traveling to the Islamic world. Medieval Christians were fascinated by “Saracens” as much as they were frightened by them, and there was a flourishing genre of “Saracen romances,” such as Parzival (one of the most popular romances of German medieval literature,which features the half-Muslim hero Feirefiz) and The King of Tars. These romances obviously display complicated attitudes about race and religion; the Saracen heroes are usually depicted as having to forsake their mistaken beliefs (usually some jumbled combination of paganistic polytheism rather than actual Islam) to complete their moral and emotional journey, and in King of Tars specifically, that results in an actual physical transformation for the Muslim sultan, the Christian princess’ husband, from black-skinned to white-skinned as a symbol of his newly gained virtue. Obviously there is an element of colorism at play; I wouldn’t call it racism because racism as a scientific term and “biological” concept was invented in the 19th century when, yet again, the West was busy concocting “impartial” reasons for its colonialism and “civilization” of supposedly inferior people. In the Saracen romances, however, the Saracen characters are not unsympathetic (if misguided), and the star-crossed lovers trope between Christian princesses and gallant Muslim warriors is played pretty much as you would expect it to go (with the implication that we’re supposed to root for him converting to Christianity so they can be together). As long as religious identity is correct, skin color doesn’t really matter or is at least less important, is viewed as mutable and changeable, and not the only marker of a person’s identity.

So in that sense, Yusuf and Nicolo would not be unfamiliar as characters in their very own star-crossed Saracen romance, and since we’ve already discussed the bonds between knights and how deeply romantic and emotional friendships were often the case even between men who WEREN’T lovers, it’s entirely possible that people would have understood them in that context. It also depends on how much time they spent in medieval Europe (as in DVLA, I have them traveling across the Eastern world for several hundred years after the crusades and not getting back to Europe until the Renaissance, when ideas and attitudes toward race and religion were once more undergoing huge transformation). Obviously, yes, there would be an element of xenophobia throughout history, and England (aha, hello Ancestors of Brexit) has in fact pretty much always been known for hating foreigners. But these weren’t necessarily foreigners of color; white Europeans from France, Italy, the Low Countries, Flanders, Bohemia, etc could all be viewed suspiciously by the English, especially post-Henry VIII and the religious break from Rome. (But this was, again, also the case before that happened, because apparently the English just suck like that.) This plays into the fact that as has been pointed out before, racism in Europe is cultured along very different lines from how it is in America, and takes into account geographical, cultural, religious, and other factors, as well as simply skin color. (Though colorism is usually also unfortunately part of it pretty much everywhere, since the ideal medieval woman was often thought to be blonde and blue-eyed, and fair coloring has always been positively correlated with morality -- just look at “Dark Magic” and “Black Magic” and all those other fantasy tropes of the villain being Dark.)

So basically, Yusuf and Nicolo would probably have been equally mistrusted in, say, 16th-century England (such as when they go there in the attempt to rescue Andy and Quynh in DVLA). They’re sodomites, for a start (this is right about when male homosexuality starts to enter the books as a capital crime), and Nicolo is Italian and therefore deeply suspicious as a possible papal agent. Yusuf might have actually made out better in that case, because Elizabethan England had fairly friendly diplomatic relations with the Ottoman and Persian empires (this is written about in the Historical People of Color post) and there was even an idea of Protestant England and Muslim North Africa allying together to attack their mutual enemy, Catholic Spain. Othello is obviously a product of this cultural context, with its dashing but doomed and tragic Moorish captain (see once again: the character himself is not unsympathetic, and is misled by the evil Iago). So many Elizabethan Englishmen settled in Muslim societies that there were attempted royal incentives to lure them back, and Yusuf would probably have been an exotic curiosity more than an existential danger. (As noted, they would almost certainly hate Nicolo more.)

In places such as Constantinople, where I had them live for a while in chapter 4, Nicolo would also be the more obviously mistrusted party. In a Greek Orthodox city that had substantial and long-term populations of Muslims and Jews, a Latin Catholic would be more the Enemy, because... well, sometimes we hate the people who are almost like us more than we hate the people who are obviously very different and therefore cannot be compared. Emperor Alexios Komnenos of Byzantium helped launch the First Crusade, at least in part in hopes of getting formerly Byzantine lands back from the Turks, but very quickly realized that he couldn’t control the crusaders and things went sour long before the trauma of 1204 and the sack of Constantinople; relations between Latin and Greek Christians had been at the brink of outright hostility for most of the crusades (though of course hostility was not the only experience between them). The Byzantine emperors were used to diplomacy and negotiation and trade agreements with their counterparts in the Islamic world, all of which was viewed as “consorting with the enemy” by the West. Besides, the Great Schism in 1054 had already broken the Western and Eastern churches apart after centuries of bitter theological disputes (these arguments may look like the most mind-bogglingly boring and tiny and insignificant details ever, but the battle over defining heresy and orthodoxy RAGED almost from the founding of Christianity in the first century). Edited to add further discussion on the nuances and complexities of the Eastern-Western Christian relationship.

So yes. As ever, the reception that they would have encountered is complicated, and it would not be immediately analogous to modern racism and Islamophobia. It would also be intensely mediated by their cultural, chronological, and geographic location, where sometimes Nicolo would (paradoxically) be MORE mistrusted by other white Christian Europeans. Not to say that Yusuf wouldn’t have encountered prejudice too, because he would, but not quite in the same ways as he would now, or that we would expect.

Thanks for the question!

#history #medieval history #history of racism #joe x nicky #sunrise-on-callisto #ask #the old guard meta

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