#idk i think making a second account removes it too far from myself. like if i cant take a mutual not caring what am i gonna do when-

[acourtofladydeath]

This is @born-to-riot but I’m on my phone so it won’t let me ask you with my account. But if you’re taking short requests can you please talk about the first time Eris lets Azriel have complete control of him (sexually and/or aftercare) like Eris is so in his head all the time I want to see some trust and just let him let go and azriel can help him do that idk (shadows as blindfolds and restraints and feeling Azriel’s scars on his skin are highly encouraged but not necessary) (also I haven’t requested a Drabble in a minute so idk if this counts) have fun :)

Alrighty, so I partially listened and partially did not. This is not sexually based aftercare, but Azriel is still taking care of Eris after something happens so I'M GONNA COUNT IT. Here's your drabble! (Which I managed to keep under 1K by 6 words and I'm very proud.)

Read "The Wall Comes Down" here on AO3, or below the cut.

TW: Mild descriptions of injuries from canon typical violence.

Azriel’s shadows were frantic as they pulled him faster and faster toward their mate. Hurry they practically yelled at him he needs us. One word kept coming through clearer than the rest, and each time he heard it, Azriel picked up his pace. Pain.

As he reached the hallway of Eris’s room, he began to see the trail of blood, leading from where he knew the Autumn Court dungeons lie, where Beron loved to take his sons. Barreling through the door, terrified about what he was about to see, Azriel tugged once more on the bond that had been silent for far too long. 

His breath stopped entirely as he took in his mate, beaten and broken, lying face down on the rug in front of the crackling fireplace, as if it had taken all of this strength just to make it into the room. “Eris…” Azriel’s voice broke as he spoke, rushing to turn his mate over. “Azriel, is that you?” Eris stirred as he was jostled, wincing in pain at the bruises and cuts littering his unclothed abdomen. The faint tinge of faebane around the edges of the wounds and the rag stained the same clutched in Eris’s hand told Azriel all he needed to know. 

Azriel went to reach for the cloth, but Eris pulled it away, inhaling sharply with the quick motion. “No, I can do it. I can take care of myself.” Eris rolled out of his mate’s arms, curling in on his body to try and protect himself from whatever he perceived would happen if he ever let anyone take care of himself. He couldn’t be weak, couldn’t ever show fault…not if he wanted to survive.

Eris tried to sit up, grinding his teeth together as he found the pain, pretending not to notice the shadows gathered around him, trying to ease his motions. Azriel sat back, present but silent, letting his mate work through this himself as much as he could bear. As Eris went to clean the next spot the pain was so intense he couldn’t choke down his sob fast enough. Azriel came up behind him, slowly and gently. “Please love, let me help you.” 

Letting out a shaking, teary breath Eris responded, “If I let you help, you’ll think I’m weak…they’ll all think I’m weak. I have to do this Azriel…” 

Azriel placed a hand around Eris’s still holding the rag, squeezing with tight reassurance. “But you are not alone, Eris, and you are not weak. Receiving help is not a weakness, it’s one of our greatest strengths. Please, let me take care of you. Let me in.” Taking several shaky breaths, Eris closed his eyes, leaning his head back to wrest on Azriel’s solid chest behind him. With each passing second, Azriel felt his mate relax into his arms, the adrenaline waning from his system as he finally started to allow himself to feel safe, to be cared for. 

Moments later, Eris removed his hand from Azriel’s, leaving the cloth behind. Turning his head into his mate’s leathers Eris nodded, a soft and tentative “okay,” slipping from his battered lips as he finally gave in and allowed someone to care for him. As he let that final protective wall drop between him and Azriel and gave this last piece of himself over. 

Azriel placed a soft kiss in Eris’s blood matted hair before he got to work, swiftly and surely cleaning the wounds. Eris barely made a sound, grunting softly at the particularly sensitive swipes of the cloth over his damaged body. But for the first time in all the years they’d been together, Eris allowed himself to give this last bit of him over to his mate. He let him help. 

Some time later, when the wounds were properly cleaned and Eris was finally beginning to heal, Azriel carried him to the washroom, gently placing him in the tub that was already full of hot, soapy water. Strand by strand, Azriel detangled and washed his mate's hair, brushing each long piece out and cleaning it to his mate’s satisfaction. Every time before this, Eris had allowed him to watch as he cleaned himself up after an evening with his father, and Azriel had paid special attention to how he washed his hair. 

This final part of his post-torture ritual seemed to be the final cleansing, a way to wash the sins of his father fully from his body before he allowed himself to sleep. Azriel had taken notes, praying to the Mother for the day that Eris would allow him to help. And now that that day had come, he was fully ready. His mate, breathing deeply in the tub, looked up at him as Azriel finished and placed the brush he’d been using on the edge of the tub. 

“You’ve been paying attention.” 

“It is my job, you know.” 

Eris winced slightly at that, and Azriel hastily added on.

“You are not a task Eris. Caring for you is not a burden. It’s a privilege. And I’m honored you let me close enough to let me help you.” He tacked on the finally aspect of that statement in his mind, but Eris heard it anyway. 

“Well, I’ll be checking your work Shadowsinger, but it seems as if you’ve done…adequately. For a first try that is.” 

Azriel’s heart swelled for in this banter, the love language that was uniquely their own, he heard the unsaid words. Thank you for waiting. Thank you for knowing. And thank you for helping. 

“As long as I get to keep trying,” Azriel said as he wrapped his mate in a towel, and helped him back to his bed where he’d rest while he recovered from the last of his wounds. But this time, he wouldn’t handle it alone. He’d rest safely held in his mate’s arms, cocooned within the fortress of his wings.

#LDdrabbles #LDasks #azris #azriel x eris vanserra #acotar fanfic #acotar #acosf #pro eris vanserra #azriel's shadows #ao3 writer #ao3fanfic #azris fanfic #azriel #azriel shadowsinger #acotar azriel

[alligatorjesie]

I’m a black woman & reylos like you have been sending me death threats for years. Telling me they want to lynch me for years. Calling me racial slurs for YEARS just because your ship & community is racist & I call it out. So honestly? I don’t feel sorry for you. I think you’re getting exactly what you deserve. How does it feel to get just a tiny fraction of what I get almost daily for the first time in your white life?

Reylos Like Me? Bitch, there ain't no reylos like me.

Anon... Man...

I’ll admit something here, I wish you guys would send me this shit using your real accounts every once in a while. I understand it’s hard to use your real face when you type out the words ‘You deserve those death threats you get’ and still feel like you’re on the moral high ground, but before you take one step further up that hill you've made into a mountain and trip on that stone then tumble backwards ass over teakettle into the fucking ditch you deserve to live in until forevermore, I want you to stop and think real hard for a second what you just typed out and why the fuck that shit is fucked beyond explanation.

I want you to consider the thought process of telling someone that you have received death threats yourself from people in a fandom, then continue with zero fucking awareness to tell a whole new person you've never fucking interacted with before and know fucking nothing about other than they're a reylo that they deserves death threats for... being a reylo?

Like telling that to someone else removes your old wounds or some fucking shit. Does telling me I deserve to die make you feel fucking better?

I don’t fucking know you since you're obviously too fucking cowardly to use your real account to say shit like you just fucking said, because you know it's wrong enough you 'ought not use your real account to say it but not enough to stop you from doing it.

I can only assume who you are because there’s only 3ish people like you I’ve come into contact with in the reylo fandom space with your tune. It’s a pretty small world here, I don’t know if you’ve noticed. The furry fandom is much larger and I’m fully aware of the problematic people in that fandom.

The first user liked to bring up race as an issue when it was never was an issue and blocked me instantly when I brought this up.

The second one, only after deciding I was racist because I had the fucking gull to talk about the very real and harsh reality of Police Brutally as a fucking American, took that information and somehow assumed I wanted them to die via cop?

Beats the shit out of me.

This is the same group that seamed to struggle with associations because they also kept conflating that mentioning nazis meant you were automatically Also talking about the holocaust? IDK. They’re fucking stupid children.

The 3rd one is Stitch and I sure as fuck hope that cunt ain’t sending me anons sayin’ I deserve fucking death threats, because that would be stupid of them on every fucking optic.

We’re just gonna hop over the whole assumption that I’m white because I present online as a fucking alligator so first off bitch as far as you know I’m fucking green and yellow, we ain’t got time for that shit right now, scolding for another day, Continuing:

We are gonna spend a moment on the incorrect assumption that I, A Furry, have in fact Not been receiving death threats since childhood.

Well let me set that record straight for you right now and tell you I Have, As A Furry, Been Told To Die A Lot In Fact.

And not just told, but attempts on furry lives has in fact been made.

I have been being told to die since I was 9.

I was 9 years old the first time someone online told me to go die in a fire because I was drawing myself as a cat.

No one is nice to furries. It’s literally an online joke. Furries are at the bottom of every internet culture tier.

So as someone who has also been dealing with death threats since a very young age unlike what you wrongly fucking assumed, you can and should understand my complete fucking befuddlement of this same person who took the time to sit down and dictate a message to me describing in graphic fucking detail the Absolutely Horrendous Things Said To Them As Death Threats then:

Made A Fucking Choice to Further Perpetuate It,

without a fucking HINT of irony.

You send me this anon telling I deserve death threats because I told someone who was harassing my friends in their own fandom spaces to leave that space if they were going to continue being assholes to my friends? That in your book is what deserves someone getting a death threat? You think I deserve to be told I should die because I told a harasser to fucking leave?

YOU, person who was also recited death threats for defending your own however fucking twisted idea of mortality, think it’s fine someone else gets them for essentially defending their friends from harassment via people like you?

Well that’s fucked up. I know a lot of reylos, being a reylo, and most of them just want to read smut and make art of the thing they love. We’re very insular. What we are not a fucking hive mentality so I just fucking don’t know were you got the idea that if one reylo acts like a fucking shithead then ALL the reylos most be equally shitheads.

Most reylos don’t speak for me. Quite a few very well know and popular reylos have blocked me because of the shit I say to antis in this fandom, not many of them want to read the word 'cunt ' that often in a day and I understand. Now if those reylos have that kind of reaction to me simply telling people off in graphic detail you can understand my disbelief when you tell me you've been given death threats by Multiple Reylos.

I just have a really fucking hard time believing you without some fucking proof.

Reylos are more chill than furries and I didn't fucking think that could happen. I've never met such a big group of genuinely sincere people in my fucking life and I've been in a lot of fandoms.

They spent 7 years just quietly dealing with death threats and harassment for guessing a ship correctly rather than fight back from you fucknuts. They're very pacifistic. Literally just here for the smut and the character development.

But just because a handful of fucking horrible human beings who just so happen to be reylos sent you death threats don’t suddenly make it alright for all reylos to receive death threats you daffy fucking cunt.

You've been getting death threats from reylos for years? I question the authenticity of that but fucking news flash chucklefuck, so have the reylos.

Oh yeah, there are bad actors in this fandom. Fuck me, I’m one of them. I’ll bet you good fucking money most of the reylos here fucking hate seeing my posts pop up if the zero interaction is any indicator.

‘There’s the fucking cunt of an alligator again making all the reylos look bad’ and you know, that’s fair. I ain’t the fucking belle of the reylo ball let me tell you that right now, But Goddammit, I just have a real hard time keeping my trap shut when people who hate this fandom rear their ugly fucking heads to pop into our space and tell us the thing we love is wrong for ‘X’ reason.

I get it, you’re black and offended by space nazis in the galaxy battles saga.

But we’ve had this conversation Many Fucking Times Now about the character of Ben Solo and how we’ve deduced he’s not a fucking nazi with all the context clues provided in the source material of the books, comics, and movies.

I can’t help you understand any more that we reylos hear your complaint.

We see it.

We're painfully aware of it.

We get why you’re mad, but every single fucking time we try to show you why you’re mad for the wrong reasons you wont fucking have it and I'm not gonna hold your hand and help dumb-dumb mcshitty-pants-head here understand how basic fucking plot structure and character drives works in a movie so fucking easy to follow literal children understand it better than you.

But you know what you can do if you flat fucking out refuse to be fucking civil in our fandom space?

You can fucking leave.

You ain't a fucking fan that's for sure. Not with the crazy fucking shit ya'll spout. So why the fuck you here? Fuckin' leave.

I can not make you understand any more that your continued harassment of people in this fandom over this tired and proven incorrect belief about a character that we care for deeply and have explained to you time and fucking time again isn’t a fucking nazi isn’t going to change hearts or minds in this fandom.

You are not helping your cause every time you post in the reylo tag with another Hot Take™ about Kylo Ren and why you think he’s a soulless monster. Just like you probably wouldn’t be making a lot of friends if you showed up at a Black Panther party and started going on about how you think Malcolm X is a domestic terrorist.

Wrong fucking place man.

You’re not saving us from a nazi character.

You’re not convincing us that Ben Solo doesn't deserve redemption.

You’re not teaching us the errors of our smooth brained ways because you think we're stupid fangirls who can’t tell reality from fucking fiction and might also accidentally become nazis by enjoying what is honestly the most fucking vanilla enemies to lovers trope on the fucking market rather than the truth which is we just really wanting to see the redeemed son of Leia Organa and Han Solo make hot fucking love to Rey from Jakku and watch them both grow old and happy together with dozens of kids.

Don't like that idea? Fuckin' Great My Cunt, Never go into reylo fandom tag again and you'll never fucking see it again.

It's just that fucking easy!

Listen, You don’t deserve death threats no one fucking does, but you should understand why the reylos get mad at you with your fucking constant harassment of a ship that just isn’t as problematic as you’d fucking wish it was.

But speaking of reylos sending you death threats;

You point me in the direction of these reylos and I will fucking personally chew them three new assholes. That shit ain’t fucking alright man. No one should be fucking telling you to go kill yourself and if someone I know says shit like that you’ll bet your sweet fucking ass I’ll be the first fucking cunt in line to tell that stupid fucking bitch right the fuck off.

I don’t want them in my fucking fandom and I'll fucking tell them to leave just like I tell you stupid fucks. Just like I don’t want nazis in the furry fandom.

And you know what we tell nazis trying to get into the furry fandom? We tell them to fuck off too.

I don’t like that you were told you should die. That shit is fucked up.

But my horrible fucking anon, you should do the most fucking basic courtesy as a fucking human being who has gone through that yourself and understand why it’s not alright to wish death on others.

You should take a break from tumblr, light up a fat fucking doobie, put on some Radiohead Kid A, and do some internal reflection on why the fuck you think someone you've maybe only interacted with once before deserves death threats while also reflecting on why you might be getting so many yourself.

If you’re so ready to tell ME I deserve to die, then you’ve likely told other this too.

You get out of life what you put in. If you’re an asshole and you put that out there, assholes will find you. God knows that’s true, look at us two giant fucking assholes now. I put my whole huge asshole out there and now I get at least 5 asks a day that are either some fun variation of ‘go kill yourself’ or ‘you like fucking nazis you whore’ to the person who was once chlorine bombed by a nazi at a furcon.

Do you not want to receive death threats? Maybe don’t send them yourself.

God knows I don’t send death threats, yet I still get plenty of them just for being a cunt for rightful reasons.

But I’ll tell you what I’ll never fucking do is send you a death threat.

You can be an asshole, fine man that’s your fucking right. God fucking knows I can and fucking will call you everything from a rotten jizz sock or a bloated condom filled with piss, and on a good day I may also describe in detail how hard and raw I love to fuck both your parents that anyone who screws them after can just shove their whole leg up in there and they wouldn't feel a goddamn thing, but stop for one fucking second the next time you type out the words ‘you deserve death threats’ and consider this simple fact of life:

You get back what you put in.

#Anti Talk #reylo #furry fandom #death threats #I feel like I should update the banner #after all that was kinda a death affirming threat. #We'll see if they continue to be a cunt.

[aj-moment]

So in case you weren't aware, Overwatch 2 is about to come out, and Overwatch 1's servers are down for matinence ATM (though they will be going back up soon? IDK I don't really follow it). A lot of people are saying it's a dead game now, and rightfully so.

Now Overwatch is an easy target. An incredibly easy one. Blizzard being blizzard, the obvious brownie points forced diversity, and just general cringe corporate bullshit plastered all over it. But I played it religiously for a year or so in 8th grade (I was a 13 year old white boy I was basically obligated to), so in this reminder of the errors of my youth, I want to reminisce a little on overwatch. Think to myself, maybe the game is actually good and HAHAHAHAHA no. It's not. This is a rant about why overwatch is terrible from someone who consistently played it when I was a kid.

It's not even remotely an exaggeration to say that overwatch was the single most miserable casual experience I have ever had the misfortune of subjecting myself too. The biggest offender here is by far the balance patches. If you're not aware, after about a year or so of its life (around when I started playing) Overwatch started hyperfocussing on its esports scene. And what this lead to is a huge influx of patches that probably made the game more balanced, but failed to take into account that some people actually wanted to have fun with the game. And these weren't just small changes either, there's a reason like half of all overwatch channels were entirely dedicated to patch notes. It was a regular occurrence for a patch to just, massively change how an entire character works on a fundamental level overnight. By far the worst of these changes was when they basically took away roadhog's one shot potential in favor of making him fit into the dive meta at the time more (which actually made him worse ironically) when the one shots were literally the entire reason to play as him. They just made the character more generic, and straight up less fun so he could potentially be "meta." And it just straight up sucks when your favorite character suddenly plays nothing like they used to. That was actually exactly the tipping point for me, when my most played character, Mercy, got massively reworked, and even though she got better (actually broke the game and was stupid OP from what I know), the fact that I just didn't have the same character I had always played anymore, she was removed from the game in favor of this better version essentially, sucked massively and was the reason I stopped playing.

Then there's the ranking system. Dear God. So most online games have some sort of rank they give you as a general idea of how good you are. I'm sure I don't need to explain this to anyone with any experience with online multilayer games. And just like the balance patches, the ranking system of overwatch focuses on the top like, 5% of players who are super dedicated to the game, and leaves the casual players with a frustrating an unsatisfying experience in almost every way. How it worked is first, you played 10 placement matches which would determine your rank. That part was fair. Now when I did my placement matches, I was really bad at the game. I ended up being put in the lowest rank (bronze) which iirc consisted of less than 10% of the player base. So I was at the literal bottom of the barrel. After playing a few matches in ranked and doing poorly in general, I decided I wasn't ready yet and went back to free play to hopefully improve, which i did. And eventually, I decided to go back to ranked. Well, the ranked mode works on a season model, and it had been several seasons since I played ranked iirc, and what that meant was I had 10 more placement matches to get through because rank resets every season. But, it's not a true reset. Your rank one season is based on your rank from the last seasons, including the placement matches. Now on this second set of placement matches I did really well. I had improved a lot, it'd been a few months, and I ended up winning almost all of them, 8 or 9 to be specific. And all of that? Across 10 games doing really well, and essentially proving I wasn't in the bottom of the pack anymore? That earned me almost exactly 100 rank points. The average you get for winning a game is about 50. All those placement matches did was put me right back where I was before when i lost almost every match. And the games weren't short either, completing all 10 took a good 2-3 hours iirc, so all that time I spent on it? It did absolutely nothing. Had I just kept my rank from previous seasons I would be gained around 4x as many rank points as I did in the placement matches. All it did for me as a casual player was waste my time. And I don't think I ever touched the normal game modes ever again after that point.

I say normal game modes for a reason though, because there was actually something I enjoyed about the game, and even to this day I'll defend. The arcade. The arcade was where all the wacky shit went. The stuff that would never be a good idea for normal gameplay. Especially where I spent time in the game was thr custom battles, where you could turn everything up to 11 and have the most chaotic game ever. This was the only reason I ever player for more than like 2-3 months. Because this was the only part of the game that was actually fun, and not some tryhard bait marketable esports monolith. And that honestly just says a lot about what the actual game overwatch is like. The only reason I enjoyed the game was because it let you play in ways they never intended you to.

I don't think anyone who follows me would be even remotely interested in overwatch, but if you are, just don't. Any joy you can potentially squeeze out of it will be gone in no time. The game is designed in a fundamentally anti-fun way. Just play splatoon and move on with your life.

#long post

[vriendenboekjes]

sweet teeth

#my writing #words #hi there posting again because i got self conscious and deleted the previous one #this time im posting my poetry for real. if ppl dont like it thats on them. or something. #idk i think making a second account removes it too far from myself. like if i cant take a mutual not caring what am i gonna do when- #-strangers leave nasty comments or something. time to get out of my shell (for real this time lol) #guess my 2021 project is working on my appreciation for works;literature;poetry and acknowledging my own passion- #-and skill level. i can only improve and there's no shame in posting things that aren't perfect. or you know. bad #(that's what i tell myself at least) nevertheless i hope some people like this <3 #🌬️

[bettsfic]

hi, i was reading your years in review and i noticed that you quit a job of many years to go your own way. i was wondering if you would mind talking about this decision/if you struggled with it? idk i've always told myself that i wouldn't let the idea of a "career" get in the way of what i want (e.g. writing) and that one day (shortly after 30?) i would just quit whatever job i had and go my own way, but as that deadline comes up i find it harder to imagine how i could just uproot myself...

yes, i very much did struggle with the decision to quit (what i thought was) my very stable and lucrative career in finance to get an MFA in creative writing. it’s a bit of a long story so i’m putting it under a cut.

warning for suicidality and sexual assault.

i used to believe i grew up poor, but it was the 90s so poverty looked very different. my dad didn’t work for a long time, and so we only had one income, and we lived in an apartment that was kind of a lowkey hoarder home. as a kid, all i knew was that i didn’t get to have toys, or my own space, and i wasn’t allowed to have friends over. the concept of an allowance was totally alien to me. but it also wasn’t like i ever went hungry. the food we had wasn’t particularly healthy but it was always there.

i didn’t really realize how much that instability affected me until much later, when i noticed other people hadn’t lived their entire lives aware of and obsessed with money. i used to compulsively count the change in my piggy bank and beg my mom to take it so she could pay her taxes (i didn’t know what taxes meant, i just assumed they were the reason we couldn’t afford nice things). 

my safe haven was always my grandparents’ house, which was clean and had semi-healthy food and the door was always open. my grandpa was a high school chemistry teacher. my grandma worked at a bank. growing up, i had no idea what she did at the bank, just that it sponsored all the fun things we did, like going to amusement parks and baseball games. my parents never took my sister and i on vacation, but every year, my grandma would drive us to visit our family in missouri, which, even though it only cost the gas to get there, seemed like a wild indulgence to me.

i started working at 16 so i could have my own money. by 17 i was working illegally full-time and getting paid under the table. then i bought my own car, and shortly after i turned 18 i got my own apartment. even though i could pay my bills, i was still terrified about money. i thought about it all the time. i checked my bank account multiple times a day. i was a cashier at a restaurant and i would often open my drawer and just stare at the money or count it when i was bored.

but i hated working at the restaurant, and one day i thought to myself, how can i keep the money part of this job but lose the food part? then i remembered my grandma’s career at the bank (from which by then she’d retired), and that afternoon i sat down and applied to be a teller at the very same bank. obviously the bank was very large and it wasn’t like my grandma was in management. she worked in ATM operations. nobody on my hiring committee knew who she was, and honestly i have no idea how i got the job.

i stayed a teller through college, working 25ish hours a week. it didn’t pay very well and i was still nervous about money, so i picked up a job altering bridal gowns on evenings and weekends, and also an admin job at my university. so i was working 60ish hours a week, plus going to school full-time and trying to keep up my 4.0. in retrospect, i can’t remember how necessary all this was. i know i was living in an apartment whose rent was higher than i could afford, and i lived with my boyfriend who was struggling to find a job. anyway, it was definitely the lowest time of my life, and i was so exhausted that every day i hoped something horrible would happen to me so i could be hospitalized and rest. 

then something horrible did happen. my dad died. and even though everyone in my life was telling me to please dear god take a break, i did not. 

i got promoted to business finance, which paid what seemed at the time to be an ungodly amount of money. i was still part-time and finishing up my undergrad degree. once i graduated, i got promoted to full-time. for the first couple years, i really did try to be a banker. i was good at my job only insofar as someone who is left-handed can write with their right hand if forced for long enough. it felt very much like i was in the wrong place, but by that point i had so much unchecked trauma that i had convinced myself the highest human ideal was misery and deprivation. i wish i was kidding. i was the definition of ascetic and martyred myself. i didn’t believe happiness existed. work was all that mattered to me.

then i bought a house. so at this point, i had student loans, a car loan, a mortgage, and credit card debt. after my dad’s death, my mom had to file for bankruptcy because of all the medical bills. she abandoned her house. by this point i was 23, single, in six figures of debt with no familial support net, but i was making decent money at the bank, so it wasn’t like i was drowning. in fact i was doing pretty well. the bank was a rock in my very turbulent life. i got a lot of vacation time that allowed me to travel a bit. i had insurance and a matching 401(k). it was really a decent job.

but the bank was also in many ways an abusive relationship. i don’t mean that metaphorically. i had bosses who manipulated me, insulted me, humiliated me in front of other people. i had one boss who went so far as to look at my checking account and ridicule my purchases. i didn’t have any idea what it meant to stand up for myself or say no. in fact i wasn’t allowed to say no. my job at the bank involved solving other people’s problems. i could never say “i can’t solve that problem.” i could only say “i’ll figure it out.”

i had convinced myself working at the bank was a stable career because it was boring and i hated it. but actually it wasn’t stable at all. after 2008, there were mass layoffs and restructures every year while the bank tried to recover from the recession. i worked for a sales team, and so my job was dependent entirely on whether or not the salespeople did their jobs well. if they didn’t make goal, they’d get fired. if they got fired, i’d get fired. 

i started trying to date again and was sexually assaulted. after that i really struggled at work because i was dissociating a lot and couldn’t focus. my team, despite my having worked there for years, instead of being concerned for me decided to start complaining about me to my boss. finally i had to tell a coworker what happened and that i wasn’t doing very well. my team started being a little nicer to me but ultimately they didn’t care about me, they cared about how effective i was at my job. my boss didn’t want to fire me, so instead i was pushed onto another team.

that move came with a raise. then that team was dismantled and i was pushed onto another team. that was a demotion, but i got to keep my raise from the previous move. by then, i was working from home, and even though i was more comfortable i was also very isolated and miserable. my “fulfillment through deprivation” attitude was destroying me. i wasn’t eating well or taking care of myself. i was isolated and lonely. i still didn’t believe happiness was real and i constantly thought about killing myself. 

but i had started writing fanfiction, and even though i didn’t think i was any good at it, i was beginning to see a way out. i was beginning to learn how to dream, and want things, and give myself the things i wanted. i just couldn’t imagine leaving the bank, or selling my house, or moving out of my hometown. all of that seemed impossible to me.

then i had to go to a business conference where my team had a retirement party for one of my coworkers. she’d done what i was doing for 45 years. by that point i was at the 9 year mark. i’d spent my entire adult life at the bank. and i realized: the bank benefited from my fear and passivity, and nothing in my life was going to change unless i was willing to make sacrifices. 

but i still wasn’t entirely convinced. and then came the day i had to physically hold onto my desk to keep me from killing myself. i didn’t end up trying it, because i had another realization: this was a life or death situation now. if i kept working at the bank, i knew i would die. i knew eventually i would get low enough to do it. i didn’t actually want to die; i wanted an escape and didn’t know what else to do. suddenly i was off the hook. my options were not “financial stability or imminent poverty” but “live or die.” 

those were the big epiphanies i had, but the process of actually leaving the bank was a slow one. i wrote a bit about it here. i got into an MFA program basically by telling myself repeatedly i would figure out the money stuff later. when it came time to quit the bank, my boss convinced me to stay on working part-time, with the assumption i would move back to full-time once i’d graduated. i agreed to it, because just trying to quit was enough to convince me i could, and that better things were ahead of me. for a year and a half, i stayed on working two days a week while doing my MFA, which involved both coursework and teaching, and it felt a bit like it did during undergrad, having too many jobs and no time to breathe or think or feel anything.

between my first and second year, i had a looooong overdue mental breakdown. there were a lot of causes, but one of them was spreading myself too thin. shortly after, i quit for good. by then it didn’t feel like a big deal at all, i was so far removed from the work and my team and so focused on my degree. one day i turned on my work laptop and the next day i didn’t. i shipped it back to HQ and it was over.

then i graduated from the MFA and suddenly had to face the consequences of this life i’d chosen. my school kept me on as an adjunct, but it felt like being a ghost. i no longer had the community of my cohort. i had no health insurance. i was given my teaching schedule and a contract to sign, that’s it. there was no guarantee i would be getting classes the following semester, and after a year, that was what happened. i remember sitting in my favorite coffee shop trying not to cry when i got the email that said the department had nothing for me to teach the following semester.

i really wasn’t the same after the breakdown. i went from “i can do anything i put my mind to no matter how hard it is or how much it hurts” to “i have to step carefully, and treat myself gently.” i hadn’t fully realized that yet, though, so i tried to get a Real Job. i got the first and only job i applied to, because i am bad at nearly everything but somehow i’m exceptional in interviews. it wasn’t a bank but it offered the same sort of benefits package. it was a full-time salaried position at a non-profit. if i had found it earlier, i think it would have been my dream job. it was the kind of work you throw yourself into because you care so much about doing good. 

i lasted a month. during the first week something happened that triggered me in a way i’m very rarely triggered. i realized i needed disability accommodations, but i needed to go to a doctor to get an assessment and i had to be on the team 60 days in order to get insurance. i thought i could white-knuckle it, and i could, sort of, but every minute i was at work, it felt like i was forced away from the thing i should have been doing. i was constantly trying to write a few paragraphs here and there on my phone when no one was looking. i had to find excuses to take breaks and go to my car and breathe. at one point i told a volunteer i was an english instructor, and she looked at me very confused, and i realized i’d said it in present tense, like it was part of who i was and not a job i did for a while. then finally, my breaking point was an after-hours function. when i left i saw a field full of fireflies and thought about how, if i’d just stayed home, i could have sat outside and enjoyed them all evening, not just a glance at them on the way to my car. i liked the job but it was making me miss all the things i’d learned to love about being alive.

i quit the next day. i’d sold my house by then (which was its own feat) and moved in with my grandma, which hadn’t been a possibility until my grandpa passed away the previous spring. i paid off my car. i figured out finally that i would probably never be able to work full-time again unless it was teaching, and that the downside to this life would be accepting fear and instability, only being able to look ahead one semester at a time. staying open to the opportunities that arise. being a little selfish. 

i wrote a bit more about the financial realities of the writing life here. i can’t tell you what you should do, because the path i took definitely isn’t the path for everyone, but i do believe we all owe it to ourselves to pursue our best and happiest lives, because we only get one, and there’s no reason not to live it the way you want to. 

#writing advice #the writing life #Anonymous

[palmett-hoes]

Hi, I really loved your post with the monsters as Birds of Prey! Was wondering if you had any thoughts on the Foxes as Marvel or Mcu characters? I feel like I could see Dan as Carol Danvers and Andrew for sure is Jessica Jones, idk about the rest.

oh wow old post!!

haha unfortunately i’m not really a comics person so i don’t feel like i can really give the best analysis possible, but i have seen most of the mcu movies and bits and pieces of the netflix show so i’ll try my best. also im using dc characters too bc i want to

1. Dan: I think your instinct with Dan as Captain Marvel is spot-on (at least uhhh,, based on the movie lol sorry comics ppl). Her direct, forceful powers and fighting style are definitely reminiscent of dan’s no-nonsense leadership approach. similarly the themes of overcoming sexism and acceling in a male-dominated industry in the captain marvel movie is pretty much the same as dan’s story establishing herself as the first female exy captain (tho sports is way more valid than the military). plus there’s a lot of emphasis on love and friendship between women that dan is ALL about. also lashana lynch would be a god tier dan wilds fc. Dan could also def have that lawful good Okoye from Black Panther energy. Loyal, disciplined, no-nonsense leader. no powers except discipline. no hair. also danai gurira in 2012 with the dreads and the sword and the cape on TWD was definitely part of my middle school sexual awakening

2. Kevin: Aquaman. this is based pretty much exclusively on the fact that jason momoa is my #1 kevin fc and also that Pasifika kevin is phenomenal and mandatory, actually. otherwise i think he has a decent amount of stick-up-the-ass cyclops energy. or dick grayson nightwing energy but i don’t have any evidence for why. kinda looks like him tho

3. Andrew: andrew gets the most characters bc he’s my favorite. i think ur jessica jones instincts are absolutely correct, both in her storyline (i only watched the first season) and her powers. i’ve seen some powers au and the tendency seems to be giving andrew like,, psychic powers or the like, and i don’t really agree. andrew is a very direct character. he’s pragmatic, he confronts problems head on, and he doesn’t muck about in details. to me this really translates best into physical powers like super strength that help u big punch straight thru all ur problems. also i def think andrew would be not just a solo hero but a mercenary (or a detective) because he’s not altruistic enough to be a standard vigilante. he doesn’t care enough about other people to hang out on rooftops all night waiting for Crime to occur. there’s a price for that.  which brings us to the NEXT andrew hero: deadpool. maybe in personality more of a drugged andrew but the superpowered mercenary is really a perfect fit for andrew. also, healing powers have a decidedly tragic poetry to them on andrew. already he’s self-destructive, if he had a healing factor his concern for his own well-being would be so beyond rock bottom it’d be in the earth’s core. even worse when you remember that with a healing factor, as opposed to indestructibility, you still feel all the pain. which brings us to Wolverine and X-23, who have the same thematic points as deadpool but are much more of a personality match and they have knife hands, which i really think andrew would appreciate. ending that sadness train and onto another tho, andrew’s aesthetic and Vibes fit the Winter Soldier just SO well (just that movie tho, not really civil war or anything past that) and a reinterpretation of the captain america story using the twinyards would be incredibly interesting. and finally, one last hero that would work really well for andrew: rogue, only remove the angst around not being able to touch people, andrew would love that. one touch and their comatose? baller. don't fucking touch him.

4. Matt: Shazam. I didn’t see the shazam movie but my dad and brother did and they said it was very funny and all the trailors looked like it had a lot of fun himbo energy and i really think that fits. in terms of matching himbo disaster energy i think i’ve heard good things about comics hawkeye (not mcu). thor?

5. Aaron: Mr. Fantastic. now this might be a stretch but aaron is a character who uses a skin-deep veneer of anger to cover the fact that he’s actually quite pliant and bends to other people’s wills. and he’s a doctor or w/e. he could alse be like,, antman. he’s smart right? hank pym not paul rudd. katelyn can be wasp

6. Seth: Arm Fall Off Boy. no i will not elaborate.             ..... ugh fine, but i'm using my favorite piece of superhero media of all time: x-men evolution, the one where they're all teenagers in public high school. seth can be lance alvers/avalanche who’s a bit of a jerk and has a lot of issues with authority and has a rivalry with cyclops very reminiscent of seth with kevin, but still there’s the recurring theme that he’s lashing out because of low self-esteem and a bad situation and he’s a surprisingly sympathetic character who i’m very fond of. his power is earthquakes but i think the name makes that pretty self-explanatory

7. Allison: Iron Man. cocky, bitchy, and rich rich rich. sounds like allison to me. then to elevate it a level higher: emma frost, rich bitch extraordinaire. also if allison had telepathic powers she would be unstoppable. plus one more bitchy, morally-gray blonde (but chaotic this time): Harley Quinn

8. Nicky: Okay so I do wanna give a quick shout-out to Northstar, the first openly gay comicbook superhero, who’s a speedster which I’d actually say fits Nicky pretty well. However, if i had to choose a superhero to represent nicky in presence and powers it would have to be Jubilee from x-men (... from what i’ve heard lol. i’ve never actually consumed any of her Media hahaha anyway) she’s a joyful, energetic presence and her powers are setting off fireworks which i think is a good balance of nicky being a supportive cousin-parent AND a chaotic train wreck garbage trash man. also gonna throw in johnny storm for a cheap 'flaming' joke

9. Renee: Thunder/Blackbird from Black Lightning bc she’s a fufkin lesbian lol. (i don’t watch the show but i do follow nafessa williams’s tag). now the fr ones i’m gonna do together because to me they have the same Vibes so i chose them for the same reasons. Wonder Woman and Storm who to me have the same  reserved, impartial, regal energy. honestly ethereal and somewhat otherwordly, and quite literally goddesses. also op as hell.  black widow and her “red in my leger” looking for redemption story also fits thematically.

10. Neil: okay lazy answer first: the flash or quicksilver. get it? because they run fast? and neil run too? yea i like to think i've proven myself to be better than such a surface level interpretation but worth the mention ig. so for srs now, mystique and her shape changing powers would be an interesting interpretation of neil's identity issues, but i wanna push it a step further. nightcrawler would actually be possibly the MOST interesting hero to apply to neil 1. because powers still very movement go fast place to place 2. because of the thematic focus on neil's unusual looks and the lengths he goes to hide them, very much in line with the way nightcrawler will use a hologram-projector in order to look human, yet in both cases it's only a surface-level illusion, and 3. his parentage. here, mary would be mystique, which i also think works very well considering mary seemed to be the far more effective chameleon on the run than neil, and also fits with her place as a morally grey character, as mystique herself is often a villain or an antagonist, with her own agenda and shadowy motives. then nathan matches well with nightcrawler's father: azazel, a literal demon, and also where kurt gets his appearance. it's a shockingly coherent narrative between the three of them. then, to also give neil some powers that aren't contingent on his fucked up geneology and rather on his own merit and abilities, Black Canary and her sonic voice parallel the way that neil began to anchor his identity and take ownership over himself through his voice and his sick roasts

and 1 extra, wymack: batman, on account of his altruism, his dedication to second chances, and his many, many adopted children

---

anon, ik it's been a sec since you sent this, so i hope it gets back to you. i had a fun time with it and it prompted like,,, 7 different au s that i'll never write

#Anonymous #txt #the foxes #im talkin #my posts

[dyalinohera]

An Open letter to Quippy.

Through the various relationships in my life, I have learned a lot about trauma through learning everything I could about various mental issues because the after-effects of my own personal trauma were preventing me from living life normally. I was lucky enough to have family members, be blood or found (or a little of both), who have always tried to help me and love me very much. 

Recently in my life, I lost a good friend to a misunderstanding during a PTSD episode and their partner took that opportunity to swoop in, gaslight myself and another good friend of mine. Before this moment, I only knew a few things about this partner. ONE. My friend.... Let's call them Q.... was not having sex with this person but they were in a romantic relationship. TWO. They sometimes had fights and Q admitted so to me. Three. About a week or so prior their partner admitted that they were being abusive towards Q in various ways. No details. 

After having been subjected to a gaslighting attempt, my other friend P actually crying, and then Q threatening to kill themselves... Well. I blocked them both and ran for the hills. I did have a private private server with Q and I could have reached out to them at a later date, but I could smell the badnews rolling off of F (the partner). 

About a month or so after this event I received a message from Q (on Christmas day like a wonderful puzzle to work over) and I discovered something horrible. Abuse victims will mirror the abuser's maladaptive control techniques and further become entrenched in the Abuser's guiles. 

Below is that message. I have removed any names pertaining to those whom I have dubbed 'P', 'Q', and 'F' from this message. Any text prefaced with ( and ends in ) are my own comments on what did and did not happen while pointing out each tactic used to try to scare, confuse, and manipulate me in some way. 

I am not a healthcare professional of any kind. I can’t diagnose disorders. I simply have learned how to identify abusive tactics from the counseling I have received for PTSD. 

And finally, before we break down this wonderful message, I would like to dedicate this to those who are being gaslighted right now and I pray this essay finds you somehow.

                                         Making It Clear That If Any Distress Comes To Any Other Parties Because Of This Message Then It Will Be Because You Dragged Them Into This. You Will Shoulder That Blame, Not Us. Remember How You Thought We Should Have More Control Over When And Where We Have A Crisis? Practice What You Tried To Preach With Your Reactions To This Message.

(This right here is an excellent show of blame-shifting, gaslighting, and emotional manipulation to throw their victim off and start questioning themselves.) 

To:[Redacted] [Also referred to as "recipient" or simply "you"— as the term will only be used to refer to the recipient for the purposes of this message. Only exception to this being quotes taken directly from the recipient's own messages.] From: [Redacted] [also referred to as "system" or "us/we" for the purposes of this message]

(This Legal jargon is used to make the sender feel more secure and righteous in their anger, which is very much from being scared, pulling power away from the intended recipient.)

This Notice Was Written After The Messages You Decided To Delete Before We Saw Them, Which Leaves Us Only To Assume That They Were Harassing In Nature. That Is Why This Message Is Being Sent. We Wish To State Our Intent In No Uncertain Terms In Order To Avoid Any Possible Misunderstandings. You Will Receive No Further Communication From The System Unless It Is In Order To Inform You Of Actions Being Taken Against You.

Due to the fact that you were intent on:

Blaming the system for being in crisis

Expecting a person/system who had been sent into crisis by an attack to be the one to carry full responsibility even when unaware of key information and still being actively attacked.

(I never did any of these things. What I did was say that a public chat server in discord with people who are emotionally sensitives, me included, was not the correct action and upon them threatening to take their own life, I was sent into a state of fear and reacted with aggression. Was this a smart thing for me to do? I have no idea but it was what I did.)

 Refusing to re-read the very exchange you were attacking the system over in order to see that the system had not been given the information you were insistent they had been given and were attacking them over.

“I am not text shuffling for exact proof. They made it clear that it was affecting them negatively.” "The moment they spoke up about internalizing the guilt is the moment it should of stopped." “[Redacted] said. That they felt it was their fault.” "They said they felt it was their fault."

(I had two chats going on with the poor P who was watching this System go into a severe PTSD episode and lash out at everything around them. I got confused in my panic HOWEVER I was correct in saying that this system was not right in going into that chat and doing that, not because it hurt someone else, though it is apart of it, but because it is a dangerous state to be in. Please note that the text Q is quoting is from my chat with F. Q is F’s mouthpiece now.)

Refusing to acknowledge that you were wrong even after discovering that the information you were attacking the system for ignoring was actually sent to your private messages, not the chat where the system could see said information.

“Okay. They didn’t say what I thought they did. That was in my DMs." "But. I am not gonna talk more of this.”

(Again. This is an attempt to gaslight and invalidate my views and what I did.)

Being a hypocrite by expecting the system to flawlessly read someone while in a blended and unstable state while you, yourself, still drunk dialed the system twice on 08/02/2020 after you had been explicitly told not to do so on 07/24/2020 due to the fact that being drunk dialed causes the system distress.

(I got drunk and sad. I am prone to doing this when upset and I am working on it. HOWEVER. I didn’t say anything on these calls. I only said hi and looked tired. After that, the system did not talk to me for quite some time afterward, but I gave them space and I never made this mistake again. People. If someone keeps bringing this sort of thing up when you have been trying, get away from them. This is a clear sign of abusive tactics. I’ll also go even further in saying that I didn’t even imply that is what SHOULD have happened. I said that was not right. I even told F that Q needed to go to a professional, they are at serious risk and needed help. All I got was excuses. In situations where someone is going through suicidal episodes you have to do everything in your power to get immediate help.) 

Ignoring the fact that both times the system was asked if they were okay they told you they weren't yet you still attacked them under false pretenses.

(I was confused and scared at the time due to ya know, someone I care for greatly threatening to kill themselves. SO. Idk)

 Acting like you have any idea just how far the system has come from the state they started in a decade and a half ago. You have neither room nor right to even dream of attempting to invalidate anyone's progress. Much less that of those who have survived what you never could have.

(I never did any such thing. I tried to empathize and place myself in their shoes to better understand their struggle because I know what it means to be different with different needs and so forth. I am a compassionate person.)

 Attempting to validate your stance after your argument fell apart by claiming you were thinking of leaving anyway. People do not get excited about an increase in activity from those they wish to distance from.

(There were various languages that the system was using that were bothering me but I didn’t say anything because I really cared for them. There was also was a revelation that their romantic partner was abusive and it was brought forth in the public chat. Please keep in mind I was mainly talking to their partner in the end and I decided that for my safety to leave and block both Q and F)

Doing all of this after misleading the system into believing that you were understanding of how difficult it could be for someone to live in a head with people who actively want to kill the body they're in.

(I am still understanding of it. My issue was and will always be the fact that there was a refusal to look at the problem, what they had done, step back, and get help. Because the only thing that was made clear by this message even being sent to me is that I made the right choice to block both Q and F.)

Proving that you need to stay the hell away from abuse survivors because abuse survivors have been blamed for the side effects of survival enough by people like you.

(I never ever blamed abuse survivors for their problems. The system’s abuse is valid, HOWEVER, these past abuses and the unique cognitive issues that come from that trauma does not exempt you from accountability from your actions in or out of high-stress phases. It is up to the individual to find and attempt to get better and stronger from these issues and find solutions that are unique to their situation.)

Any future attempt from the recipient to contact or otherwise interfere with [redacted] or any of said system's alters will be viewed as a hostile act w/ intent to cause further distress and/or harm. Any such attempts will also be viewed as harassment and shall be dealt with via whatever practical — and, when applicable, legal — means deemed necessary. Drunken episodes are not exempt from this and will also be treated as harassing contact. (<Oh my god they really are trying to hammer home I am some form of ‘evil’ just because I was sad and got on camera for a couple of seconds.) 

Just remember, we apologized to the one we inadvertently caused distress to. You were far too weak to be able to do so. We even left you unblocked following the incident to give you a chance but all you did was send us messages you obviously thought better of before they got to our machine. Thank you for confirming that we really will be better without you in our lives because we don't need people who can't face their own shortcomings involved with our system. If you cause any member of this system further distress — in any form — then we swear to you that we will use whatever tools we must to contend with you. 

(Again, more blame-shifting, bringing up that they apologized without addressing the times I have apologized for the various stupid things I did while dealing with amygdala hijacks and so forth. I’ve been in intense therapy for PTSD and underwent EMDR which entails going over trauma memories in hopes to desensitize the brain so that the fight and flight response isn’t triggered so often. AKA. I have literally gone over very traumatic events, in detail, while doing this therapy. I am an abuse survivor, but Q is very clearly still the victim of current abuse.) 

We only hope someone returns the favor to you when your depression is at its very worst.

The account this notice has been sent from will not be signed into again after sending this message on 12/25/2020. Any responses to this notice will go unrecognized.

(And the final last message shows how angry they are at me for leaving a group chat and blocking them. This is from a fear response. A lot of people think that Amygdala is responsible for aggression responses. However, it deals with fear. Aggression and anger is a response to fear. Thus, those who tend to use these abusive tactics are fundamentally scared of not being in control of you. PTSD episodes are called Amygdala Hijack and I am willing to bet Q sent this to me during one.)

Now. For the messages that I had deleted. 

It is hard for me to process my emotions. I tend to get bogged in how to say things in my head but when I try to speak or write it all comes out wrong. The original messages were wordy and confusing and… not very good. So here and now, on this space that you the reader walk on, I would like to formally give those messages to Q in simple and clear terms. 

Quippy, 

I love you. 

And I miss you. 

Please don’t die. 

#tw: gaslighting #tw: DID #TW: PTSD #gaslighting #DID #PTSD #abusive techniques #Abuse victims #abuse Survivors #Please keep in mind that this is meant only as a tool #to identify gaslighting

[aahsoka]

So having been on tiktok for a bit I wanna talk a little about it.

What I like

It’s actually rather entertaining to scroll through up to 30 second videos one after the other. Sometimes the humor falls flat or it’s not your taste, but the algorithim is quite good at recommending the kind of content you will like.

I joined right when there was a big trend going around about sharing your culture, and soon after a Blackout trend where non-Black creators stopped posting for a day & spread/supported videos by Black creators. So I ended up with a fairly diverse fyp or “for you page”. It also quickly gathered that I am bisexual, so I get plenty of lgbt+ content. There’s some art mixed in there, some cosplay, some historical costuming/seamstresses, lots of avatar jokes lately, musical theatre content, fashion, girls in bikinis on rollerskates (in outer space), commentary on political issues, body positivity, all the kinds of stuff I like. To get a feed that caters to your interests you just have to watch & like videos you’re interested in & eventually it gets a feel for what you’ll watch and what you won’t.

Theres a trend where people say which ‘side’ of tiktok they’re on and I get ‘science side of tumblr’ flashbacks but I’ve mostly avoided the “straight” and conservative sides of tiktok. I would be considered a part of “woke”, “alt” (as in alternative) and lgbt+ tiktok (there are separate ones for each letter of the acronym). Possibly also “theatre” and “cosplay” tiktok. These categories are nebulous and you’re usually part of multiple communities; its just as arbitray as ‘science side of tumblr’ was.

The format reminds me of snapchat a little, and I love to talk to myself on video & post dumb thirst traps for my friends (none of which I’m attracted to so idk what my goal is there) and make stupid jokes. So this app is kinda perfect for my attention seeking side & hyperactive tendencies. Its very easy to consume on a short attention span, though not as easy as vine was.

Being in quarantine, its a way for a lot of people to engage in hobbies that involve community. Cosplay is pretty popular, as its a fun way to show off a costume & dress up & have fun without having to attend a convention. I enjoy the way lip synced audios can be used to emulate the character someone is dressed as; that’s something you couldn’t really do unless you were really good at impressions. Its a nice succinct way to show the process of creating a cosplay as well.

Those who enjoy theatre, but cannot perform in shows at this time, are able to create mini-monologues & sketches as well as sing parts of their favorite songs. Its an avenue through which to perform without putting anyone at risk of the virus. It’s also an easy way to show off your talents without having to go through the audition process & actually get cast in a show as a prominent enough role that someone will notice it.

It’s a convenient format for discourse and educational videos. Nice, short, easily digestible tidbits that stay in your mind. This extremely catchy song, for example: “Black neighborhoods are overpoliced, so of course they have higher rates of crime, and white perpetrators are undercharged, so of course they have lower rates of crime. And all of those stupid stats you keep using are operating off a small sample size. So, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up”.

As well as other videos where people take the time to explain historical events, satirize racist arguments to demonstrate why they are wrong, talk about prevalent tropes in movies, teach a few signs in ASL, share facts about their culture, etc, etc. I have found there are quite a lot of people there from unique and fairly unknown cultures and backgrounds- and this is a place where they’re able to share their culture & existence with people all over the world. There are a thousand different viewpoints. Their videos are doing far more for diverse representation than any other platform, I’d argue, as everyone is extremely visible on the app. (‘Their’ as in the creators, not the app itself).

I also have enjoyed coming across new artists on the app. It’s really fun to watch the process they go through, as most art videos deal with the whole creation of a piece. It’s inspiring. I have also come across a painter who’s work I’m in love with, and a woman who makes and sells the CUTEST ceramic mugs, and I need to purchase some stuff from them both.

Now onto the bad:

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t have much in the way of a filtering or warning system. I talked about that tiktok of the kids coming across human remains? That was just on people’s fyp. Just popped up. No warning. No reason for it to still be up. Traumatizing.

You can click on a video and say ‘not interested’ (I do this to literally every video I get where some girl is thirsting after kylo ren 🤮..... like I want the star wars videos just not THOSE videos). However, it doesn’t seem to know exactly why you weren’t interested, because I still get those videos from time to time. There’s no content filter where I can blacklist the kylo ren or any other hashtag.

There’s some very shitty content. There are racist conservatives. Misogynistic teen white boys. Really weird thirst traps. Videos where people lip sync to something with a straight face and tag it with #acting. Harmful body image trends. I thankfully stay very clear of this, but this kind of content makes me worry for the minors on the app. The one’s who don’t have enough of a concept of self yet to realize they don’t need to be able to do the newest pointless beauty trend to be beautiful, to realize it’s ok for them to be gay, to realize how predatory some adults can be, etc etc.

It is extremely easy to come across minors on the app who don’t look like teens. One time I went to a girl’s page and it said she was FIFTEEN. I’m usually good at guessing ages but something about this app messes that up. I wish there was a way to separate people under 18 and adults. Where I don’t have minor’s thirst traps popping up on my fyp. Where pedophiles don’t get a chance to curate that fyp intentionally. If anyone reading this has kids, I highly recommend they make their tiktok private or only viewable to friends.

Just like any site, there are plenty of bigots. Lots of racist comments. Plenty of transphobia. Any hatred you’ve seen elsewhere, of course it exists on tiktok. I have actually zero clue if you can report people & if it works. Most people seem to send a video commentary to their haters or duet a video of a racist pointing out their racism. I’ve heard of creators blocking people, however. I remember a tiktok of a Black woman who’s video somehow went fairly viral in Poland and now she gets a lot of racist comments from this large group of random racisf Polish followers she has and its extremely time consuming to block them all, as there’s no mass block feature.

The rumors about what works with the algorithm and doesn’t abound. I’ve heard well lit videos get more views. Many people suspect they have been shadowbanned for speaking out about current events. TikTok will remove the audio from videos sometimes if they deem it controversial enough. Most of us know they were criticized recently for intentionally keeping Black creator’s videos from being seen (a catalyst for the Blackout, actually). Or you may also recall when it was criticized for widely removing lgbt+ content. Those creators are fighting to be seen the same amount as straight cis white creators are allowed to be seen with no effort.

The effects some trends could have on teen girls. So many of them are already so uncomfortable in their own skin simply because of societal standards, but the absolutely meaningless challenges people come up with on tiktok make it so much worse. One trend was based around whether your finger touched your lips when you put it in your nose. Or if you could get your clasped hands around the back of your legs and over your butt (if they get passed, you have a flat ass, if they get stuck, its big). These completely arbitrary signifiers of the things you need to have in order to be pretty, are far more ridiculous that anything I have seen yet in my life. I worry about little girls taking these ideas to heart. There is a very kind body positive community on the app & I hope more people can find that.

There’s also that thing where they steal your data. Like most apps. But apparently they got a lot more invasive than usual, so I would look into it before making an account; if you want to do that.

I think the apps users can be great & its a pretty intuitive set up. It certainly deserves its popularity solely as a creative form of social media. That being said, its owners are so so insidious & do the worst things. Just like all other social media, its controlled by the worst kind of people. Who can never figure out how to effectively get rid of nazis or keep kids safe from adult content.

These are my less serious gripes with the app:

1) Lip syncing

When people lip sync and don’t do any kind of skit, joke, etc, just look as if they’re saying what someone else said; I hate that. I have to go back and find the original tiktok so I can like it instead. You literally did nothing interesting by ripping off someones audio and moving your lips along to it. So many people on this app are creative and so many others lack any semblance of creativity.

Also people are too easily impressed by lip syncing to kinda-fast songs. I lip synced to like....10 seconds of the devil went down to georgia and two people praised my lip syncing abilities. Like, I can also sing and talk fast, out loud, isn’t that more impressive? more skillful? The fiddle playing in that song is impressive, not the fact I can lip sync ‘the devil went down to georgia, he was lookin for a soul to steal, he was in a bind, cause he was way behind.’ Have you ever seen someone play Johnny’s fiddle solo????? It’s insane!!!

Rather than see someone lip sync to the verse in Stressed Out 2x faster than normal (which is, extremely simple and the song was overplayed and ingrained into our collective consciousness) and go WOW what about someone.....doing the verse out loud. You can litterally just mouth random words and look like you’re saying the right ones. It’s driving me crazy lmao. I’m set to become a God of tiktok because I have a repertoire of fast songs and rap verses memorized. It’s not even an uncommon skill to speak or sing quickly, people literally make rap music for a living! Listen to it maybe.

2) “Acting”

I am begging you to stop making me sit through those horrible POVs. I cannot take another girl not quite fake crying towards the camera as she lip syncs the words from a song that apply to the random situation she decided she was in. I cannot take another boy who thinks its sexy to stare into a camera and smirk in every single situation he creates.

Back to lip syncing, making facial expressions along to words isn’t really acting. Try saying the words out loud perhaps? The inflection you use with your lines is a pretty big part of acting. Like you can lip sync all you want, just stop tagging it with #acting.

3) Comedic timing, or lack thereof

You don’t need the entire intro to sit there looking at the camera waiting until the first line starts and you can lip sync to the part that’s the joke. You could cut off at least 15 seconds. Brevity is the soul of wit.

When your joke involves both reading text on screen and listening to the song for the punchline, if it isn’t done prefectly, its so difficult to follow. I can’t read a paragraph in 5 seconds. Paraphrase.

4) self deprecating artist audio

the audio thats like ‘this wont get views’ ‘I suck’ ‘you probably won’t see this anyway’ LOVE YOURSELF

It sucks when people dont enagage with your art but it sucks worse when your value in yourself and you art is based solely on receiving that validation. Please find a healthy medium.

Also you’re asking for pity, and you don’t want that. You want people who genuinely love your art for what it is.

5) editing videos is really hard how do you make such cool & smooth transitions????

please help me I don’t understand

Finally

here’s my account if you’re interested

#this long ass opinion article no one asked for #tiktok #social media #jordan talks #long post /

[stfudiscoinfernoed]

idk if u can even answer this but; is jkr a terf? like do you think she’s specifically a terf as opposed to a regular old transphobe? she seems to use feminism to excuse or justify her hatred, but i hesitate to call her a terf bc i worry about that word being used to describe things that aren’t Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism.

The semantics are “is she a terf or does she just support terfs,” but really her support really indicts her. JKR is a terf. I understand being hesitant to use that because it is often overused or used on people who are transmisogynists or transpobes but not radfems.

I’ll be taking her easy that she wrote and posted on her site called “J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues“ as evidence. I’m linking it so you can read the whole thing, but its an archive link so it shouldn’t give her hits or anything. I’ll put the analysis under a cut because it will be quite long.

JKR name drops three women in this article. The first is Maya Forstater. Forstater got fired for transphobic tweets, stating that “men cannot change into women” and implying women and girls will be harmed if trans women, calling them “male,” allowed into women’s changing rooms, prisons, etc. She went to court to try and say dismissing her over her beliefs was discriminatory and is attempting to get gender critical beliefs protected under the Equality Act 2010.

The second woman is Magdalen Berns, who JKR describes as an “immensely brave young feminist and lesbian.” Berns was a self described terf who called trans women “blackface actors” and endorsed the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Soros is funding the trans movement. Berns is likely the most vocally anti-trans of the women listed.

The third woman is Lisa Littman and JKR specifically mentions her theory of Rapid Offset Gender Dsyphoria, in which groups of adolescents seem to spontaneously come out as trans with no prior indications that they may have been trans or had gender dsyphoria. It’s important to note that the data to back up ROGD was collected from parents, not the youth in question, and from the websites 4thwavenow, transgender trend, and youthtranscriticalprofessionals, all gender critical or anti-trans websites.

All these women, including JKR, are heavily invested in criticizing the trans movement as going too far and harming women and girls as a result, though, with the exception of Berns, they may provide lip service to supporting trans people. This lip service is entirely disingenuous because it always requires trans people to transition in a fashion that makes them indistinguishable from cis people while also requiring them to allow themselves to be put in a separate category from cis people of the same gender.

Here are some select quotes from JKR’s essay:

Implying the trans movement enables predators and policing what counts as a legitimate transition: “The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law.”

Predators part 2: “But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.”

Equating inclusive language intended not to misgender people to violent slurs: “Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.”

Implying trans men and afab nb people are just mentally ill women attempting to escape the horrors of womanhood: “The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”

part 2: “The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.”

Her particular emphasis on males invading women’s spaces and how trans activism is encouraging young girls to transition is all classic terf talking points.There is way more in her essay than these quotes, but I’d be quoting the whole essay if took every example of transphobia and fear-mongering.

[xuune]

some thoughts on s7

this ended up me kind of rambling about my thoughts and feelings on s7 that are all over the place, so please bear with me if these thoughts don’t seem too well organized or anything: 

now, before i even actually saw the season, i was just snooping around here on tumblr to see what ppl’s reactions were, and i kind of let it get to the better of me. some people were just over dramatizing what was happening in s7, and their negativity on the season made me believe that i would wholeheartedly dislike the season. i saw all the posts with people going on about how if youre still watching the show, you should immediately drop it (and it was mainly centered around few central complaints going around right now, pretty sure you can figure that out on your own on what that was). it was understandable on where the frustration was stemming from. i only got 3 hours of sleep because of what people were saying despite not even seeing the season for myself and seeing how events would ultimately play out. but like they would always say, you shouldn’t let other people’s judgement affect you, and it really shouldn’t be the determining factor on how you view things or how your opinions are formed. 

when i watched the season, my general reaction to it was that its “ok”, i didn’t think it was entirely and absolutely terrible. i already know how a lot of us didn’t like the way a few characters got treated. i mainly thought that the animation looked nicer and improved in some of the action scenes. the writing was kind of “meh” for me when it came to whatever certain plot points that got introduced or continued. watching it on my own actually removed any thoughts of me disliking/hating the season entirely. 

even though i say this, the things i mention here are mainly about some issues that kept being brought up by people and circled around ever since s7 got released. 

in terms of character development? besides what we’ve been given for hunk, which has been awesome so far (i dont really feel like i have much to go in depth with for this, its already self explanatory in the season itself), i guess its going somewhere. i’ve got some hope, but it’s not on the level where its overwhelmingly high and optimistic. everyone’s been talking about the lack of actual lance development, how he’s constantly being reduced to being the “dumb” one, but we actually see him take initiative when needed. lance has been shown to stepping up and taking his role into account when handed the opportunity to do so, and it was multiple times when lance was given the re-established position of keith’s right-hand man. despite whatever remarks keith made on lance, whether or not they were supposed to come off as teasing/joking for the audience, keith does still seem to believe in lance’s capabilities. if he didn’t, keith wouldn’t have trusted lance the task on leading their team on their mission(s). lance actually got scenes where he could shine off as being portrayed more than what he’s constantly being insulted as. there are still some scenes of them showing mutual trust and respect for each other, especially with lance voting for keith during “the feud” and the reasoning he gave. but yeah, some parts it did seem like keith was kind of ooc in certain episodes when comparing his personality back to s3. who knows why keith gave the reasoning he did when he voted for lance. EDIT: acoolemocucumber’s post makes a good note on pointing out how during the voting section, keith is actually the first one to start writing. it’s later revealed that he chose lance on first pick. lance was the second to finish. even though he was peeking over at hunk and pidge to see who they chose, he instead decides to choose keith. keith choosing lance as a first choice without pure hesitance is amazing to see, and it really shows he trusts and respects lance a lot despite the reasoning he gave. then again, actions speak louder than words and countless times keith has shown to be that kind of guy by relaying a lot of important tasks to lance throughout this season. 

i’ll do say that i enjoyed most of the scenes they shared when they had to take a leading initiative with each other though. that was pretty nice to see again, and it felt like a decade since i ever saw that kind of dynamic from those two. 

there were a lot of action packed scenes, and i watched through those entirely to see if there’s any important plot detail to know, or make note of, while watching the ep to make sure i wouldnt be lost with whats happening so far. some people found it boring, some people found the fight scenes amazing and stunning. certain scenes had me really amazed on how well it was animated, some other scenes not so much in terms of repetition, and thats kind of bound to happen if we’re provided an arc where its continuing to keep the tense vibes on the recurring events with the current situation of the season. 

this is just merely my take on it, (my memory’s not the best with how much information im recalling from those 13 episodes) but it kind of felt lackluster with how the paladins barely got any kind of break where they could seriously spend one episode on unwinding, having in-depth conversations one on one, and not be so worried about the galra all the time. sure, there’s a few scenes like that in a few episodes, but it didn’t seem enough to make it feel like it balanced out whatever conflicts or character issues were newly or constantly introduced. 

ive read posts already about how some people had liked the season a lot, loved the actions scenes and all. but to me, some conflicts that took place seemed out of place or just didn’t really align well (idk how else to phrase it) especially with adam’s death, and i had minor mixed feelings about ep “the journey within”. 

about adam, it just seemed out of place and rushed for them to introduce shiro’s s/o only for them to take him away. we don’t get to see how fleshed out adam could’ve been, and i’ve already seen the frustration/rage people had with adam being killed off when considering how the creators told the viewers that they were gonna get to see adam, but weren’t told how long we’ll see him (plus the entire thing abt lgbt rep that was promised?). the thing with adam left me on a weird note, mainly because if you were just given no other info besides the info from the season, you wouldn’t even be given too explicit information about the relationship shiro had with adam. from there, it felt like there was no point in adding adam into the story if the viewers aren’t given clear information on what kind of bond shiro and adam had besides adam saying that they’ve been through a lot together (or whatever he said, idr it too much) and the “how important am i to you” line for lgbt rep points. its just pretty vague “””representation””” thats just leaving the audience to make the most out of what they’re given. we’re only given confirmation that they used to be fiancés from what they said in panels/interviews, but never in the show. im not sure what to really think about that, my mind’s just kind of in the void when i think about it. but this part i structured kind of badly and i apologize for that, but hopefully those of you can get what im saying. 

as for “the journey within”, it was reasonable for the way characters acted; theyre all tired, frustrated, and losing hope and were floating in space waiting for nothing but at least something to happen. keith snaps, gets irritated at everyone, lance is also the one to lash back out at keith saying keith ran away, giving the audience a big sign that lance was hurt by keith’s disappearance/leave from the team. but for keith to quickly later on go take everything back in just a few minutes seemed really awkward for me. its a kids show and all, but i just kind of didn’t like how that one section of that episode was written ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ just a feeling i had with it. however, i did love how hunk took a lot of the initiative during the episode, it’s showing his growth of actually him continuing to fully accept his role as a paladin and determined to not back down regardless of his own cowardice that could prevent him from doing so at any time.  

and there’s the thing about k/acx: ive already seen a bunch of people going somewhere along the lines of disbelief, anger, frustration on how keith is getting het endgame but when i saw the episodes, his interactions with acxa didn’t even seem borderline romantic to me at all? to me, i merely saw 2 characters actually getting on better terms with each other and returning the favor. the two no longer see each other as enemies but allies now. keith only went back to save acxa because it seemed like he believed that he felt in debt to acxa for trying to save his team. ezor and zethrid merely poked fun at acxa, but if you consider previous seasons where acxa and keith interacted, the two just continued to return the favor of owing whatever debt they had for each other. it didn’t seem like there was any romantic tension intended in any of the scenes where they interacted. we already know acxa betrayed ezor and zethrid by switching sides, and if you were betrayed you’re bound to make at least a  remark on whoever betrayed you either way. in this case, ezor and zethrid found it reasonable to make a comment on acxa’s alliance with keith, hence how they teased acxa possibly crushing on keith (whether or not thats actually confirmed, its just left ambiguous and up for interpretation at that point). there’s the parallel with how they animated the shot between keith and acxa talking to each other, but neither did that one seem romantic to me? i hope im not the only one who thought that? the other scene people talked about was when acxa is in the same scene where keith was present when he visits his dad’s grave with krolia. i dont get why some people were upset about that either. even though its at the last ep of s7, there’s nothing to imply that keith invited acxa to go visit his dad’s grave with him or anything if you consider their placement in the scene. if keith did care about acxa’s presence being there when he visited the grave, wouldn’t he at least acknowledge acxa’s presence by showing obvious attention to her, or have her close to where him and krolia were? she remains distant but respectful of keith in the scene. i dont see where these scenes would imply keith automatically finds a romantic interest in acxa. acxa to keith? maybe, we don’t entirely know. keith to acxa? i dont see it being implied anywhere at all. not to mention keith’s “can’t we just fight” statement right after ezor and zethrid teased acxa about having a romantic interest in keith. again, its just my take on what’s being presented and my own thoughts on how people are viewing it. 

and with a/l, it leaves me on a bad note with how its progressing if its really getting the sealed deal endgame. like most people have been saying, it would be good for them to be endgame if they were only written better. am i entirely convinced theyre endgame? not really because there’s that small chance where vld pulls a 180 and the show creators stay true to their words on lance not being a rebound, lance being someone’s first choice, lance getting what he needs, not what he wants. what’s being given/presented so far is just bad writing with how allura suddenly reciprocates feelings for lance out of nowhere despite showing consistent disinterest in lance’s advances in previous seasons. s4 and onward we see her seeing lance more than just an annoying flirt, and the two become better friends who could genuinely talk to each other without having allura annoyed with lance’s flirtatious antics, and without lance being reduced to a constant flirt. during allura’s interest in lotor, we’re yet again presented how allura doesn’t return feelings for lance, especially during the scene when the mice told her about lance’s feelings for her back in s6. she seems rather disappointed, pitiful, or uncomfortable with knowing how lance genuinely liked her when she liked lotor during that time. later on, allura’s been out of her previous love interest with lotor, and hasn’t shown returned much of the same interest in lance. sure, she hugged lance and he returned the hug, but that only seemed necessary in the moment for when allura had felt betrayed by someone she wholeheartedly trusted and fell in love with. she needed comfort from someone and the person she spoke to was lance who was able to lend her some comforting words. but that was about it. i’d like to say that considering that this is a kids show, it does give a bad incentive for children to develop on believing that if they continue to force their feelings onto someone else, the person they’re interested in will eventually like them back out of the blue, which is the worst course of action to take despite being rejected countless times (and its kind of being shown with what a/l has right now). to take this kind of scenario and to fix/put it with good writing would to just properly depict lance accepting rejection and allura staying true to her previous feelings on not reciprocating his feelings. in a general sense, we all know that we can’t always get what we want, and that’s an important moral that always gets taught over and over again even if youre a child or an adult. rejection and acceptance of the rejection is something that can be taught here through the romantic subplot they’ve been having. just deciding that they should become endgame out of nowhere would leave the writing very dull. having allura get out of her previous love interest with lotor only to quickly move onto lance just doesn’t leave off on a good note. it just reduces lance to a rebound and that’s about it. 

the writing for me wasn’t really that breathtaking, overwhelming, or emotional or anything when it came to new plot points being presented (you know, all the fight scenes, galaxy garrison, that stuff). again, a lot of things seemed pretty rushed, i had mixed feelings for some but not all episodes. it was nice to see mostly everyone united back with their families and characters developing new motives for what they believe in doing. yet, the writing kind of just wasn’t on the level of where it actually gets me really interested and invested into the storyline like how it had back in s1 to early s3. i’ll still mention how the writing did it’s part in presenting development for hunk, though. i enjoyed that a lot.  

some parts of the writing were questionable, some parts of the season were enjoyable, but it wasn’t entirely overwhelmingly disappointing for me. the season was on the bare minimum on having the writing go “decent”, but again it felt pretty “meh” and this is just my own feelings on it. people have their own opinions, frustrations, concerns, questions, some people loved it, some people severely hated it or just felt extremely disappointed. 

the season has its peaks and lows, some pros and cons, but whatever you take from it is what you believe. 

i’ll still keep watching the show to see how it ends, that’s for sure. 

#voltron #vld #voltron spoilers #voltron s7 spoilers

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Hi!! So this is an honest question so i hope it doesnt come off as rude or anything- but doesn't the thought that everything you post here can be reblogged make you more reserved or anything? Idk how to explain it but whenever i wanna post something here i think about doing it for a super long time to be sure i want it to possibly be on the internet forever- but i see you're comfortable with sharing pretty personal stuff so i was just wondering if it affected you any way or maybe it was just me?

lmaooo it’s cool!!! there’s an unending AMA going on here and off the top of my head i can’t think of anything off-limits to ask about

it’s definitely not just you!! out of the ppl i know off the top of my head i’m probably really far and away doing the Most airing my bullshit. if you ultimately don’t like the idea of stuff just kinda sitting around to be seen by Anyone, that’s valid and there’s no problem with feeling like that makes you wanna Not Post some stuff

like this is especially true for young teens on the soche media…hell i just entirely threw out the blog i’d had from like 14 -18, and not because i was particularly embarrassed or anything, it just felt mostly obsolete. you can become someone so different in even one year and that’s fine and you might not want Old Venting and the like just sitting around out there. it’s definitely okay to be real private about that kinda stuff

i know sometimes ppl having sorta Compromises where maybe they’ll create a second blog / account specifically for talking abt personal stuff, and then only maybe allow friends (or nobody) to access it; or people will just tag everything with Delete Later and then go back and delete it later so it’s not out there forever, or just because they find it embarrassing soon afterwards lol

for my part, there’s definitely multiple reasons i pretty much don’t care

1. i never used to Vent post back in the early days. but one of my earliest examples maybe was this sudden essay i dumped on my blog when i was 16? 17? abt how unhappy i was at home. it took me till i was 18 to really start to realize that what i’d always lived with was literally abuse, and it was things like The Sudden Venting Essay that really helped me put it all into words and be able to organize my thoughts enough to write about it and realize that there was a lottttt of shit i was rly miserable about2. ever since then really i’ve found that when i write about something, whether messaging it to someone or just posting it in general, a ton of times it helps me kinda make connections or figure something out or just feel like i have a better grasp on an idea.3. even after i started maybe doing the occasional venting post, for a long time i was really hesitant about it, but this was mostly b/c i felt like i didn’t have ~real~ enough problems and/or nobody would really care. as for the former, well yesterday i was saying how i still have this underlying feeling that i’m an imposter / don’t count / not REALLY as ___ as other people or whatever, so i’m still working on that, but it definitely doesn’t upset me as much as it might back in the day. re: the latter—tbh i dont care if nobody cares. i write abt personal shit b/c i care. my entire blog is About and Because i care, and if other people care, great, if they don’t, ok.4. a lot of this is about having compassion for myself. i don’t look down on other people for making personal posts, so i don’t look down on myself, either. 5. more self-compassion: there’s probably olden text posts from the early days of this blog that don’t even sound like me coz my Outer Demeanor has changed a lot these past 5 or 2 or 1 yrs. but even if i stumbled across some Old Post of mine and was like “lmfao whats up w THIS loser” it’s like….well, i’m sympathetic to my Earlier Selves. this applies to like, me never deleting Late Night Sad Posts or whatever (even tho nowadays they’re never exactly like i’m upset, maybe just Melancholy or in a mood to talk abt something saddish) coz i’m like, well, even though rn i don’t feel like i Need this post, back then i did feel like venting to feel better! and that’s fine. i don’t find that embarrassing. it’s like if you’re thirsty on one day and you drink some water and at some random point during the next evening when you’re not thirsty you think back on that time you were drinking water and you’re like “wow, embarrassing.” well clearly its not a perfect analogy but the point is sometimes you might feel you need to talk, and sometimes you don’t, and both times are ok. its not an embarrassment to have been upset6. this blog is the most personal thing in the world for me lmao its my Main social media presence, goes back five yrs, and for like. well the whole five years its been what keeps me from being way more isolated than i am. irl friends have been long distance this whole time (save a couple exceptions) and mostly my way to talk to ppl has been on here. this was especially important when i was at my parents house for a couple yrs. it was fairly awful and being able to be in touch w ppl and being able to SAY it was awful was clearly important, and i became more inclined to write abt shit rather than hold myself back b/c my being able to say anything was important7. i still talk about things b/c being able to say anything here to people in the outside world is important8. i can’t be like “i cant talk abt this b/c its not important/interesting enough” coz if i did i wouldn’t talk abt anything. i just write b/c i have things to say, and this is my pointless blog9. i don’t expect i’ll ever become Well Known in any circles. for me the more likely concern is kinda disappearing either due to dying or incarceration or some other shit scenario. the times i talk on here are good b/c that hasnt happened yet and i have the option10. even if i did become well known, i don’t really care.11. also for uh…all the times i was living in my parents house thru my life i was really really isolated. for eons i was used to nobody knowing shit abt me and keeping p much all my thoughts to myself. nowadays this blog is what lets me be able to sorta Known and Seen and able to get in touch w ppl if we wanna. basically, there’s nothing TOO personal. i’m not even trying to push myself to “overshare” coz like i said, p much nothing is offlimits. i’ve just had a lifetimes worth of being very invisible and unknown to anyone12. actually i can still be very cagey abt myself in person. learning to be more open On Here is a bit helpful for that. 13. idk that anyone else would give a shit about old vent posts from me either. when i talk abt me im talking abt *me*, its really not even vaguely interesting when removed even one degree from that specific context. 14. maybe there’s the chance some shit will happen to be Relatable to other ppl and somehow helpful to them15. for example, a lot of how i realized i was actually experiencing abuse for real was thru anecdotal / qualitative posts abt it. sometimes there’s shit you think is Just You only b/c nobody else who it applies to is talking about it yknow16. maybe making it seem less a big deal to talk abt your bullshit if i unapologetically talk abt my bullshit17. i remember my younger self feeling like i didnt ~deserve~ to talk abt my own thoughts & feelings the way other ppl did coz mine weren’t as good, so i kinda do it for them / in celebration of no longer feeling that way18. i actually like to talk. i just usually can’t. irl i very very very very rarely talk at length about myself, i don’t talk much at all. for me this is where i get to talk19. hmm i may have skipped or forgotten something obvious but hey. for now, there’s this. no-limits milo they call me

#long post ///

[aquarianlights]

So, uh. . .does anyone have any idea what happens to our social media accounts and accounts on other sites/apps if net neutrality is abolished and the vast majority of us cannot pay for internet anymore, making it really boring and not worth it for the top 1% to pay for it? I mean, not just Tumblr. Tumblr, FB, Kik, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Spotify, Pandora, Kindle, Various E-Mails, Netflix, Fetlife, . . .Uh, that’s all I can think of. What happens to our accounts? Do they get closed after a certain time? And, if they do, can we re-open them like FB allows us to do (as of right now; Idk how it’ll change if the bill passes, god forbid)? Or will they reassign our usernames to someone else???

Snagging the usernames edmdma and CollarAKit have pretty much defined me. That’s what I have as my username pretty much everywhere.

And I don’t want to fucking lose my tumblr. . .there’s so much I have to fucking save to a flash drive before I get forcibly removed from the internet due to not wanting to risk financial collapse when I am so close to that already and have been there quite a bit as of these most recent years.But I have so much to save. . .I have had this blog since...around maybe 2011-ish, maybe really late 2010. I have been on this godforsaken site for probably somewhere around 7 fucking years. I’ve been estimating about 5, but no. . .It’s over that. By a long shot.

Yeah, I have a lot of important stuff I wanna save tagged to easily find it (Echo, selfies with friends, pictures of stuff/places I have taken, etc. . .), but things like my reference posts are not. . .not that easy to save. . .I will have to c/p the whole page to Paint and crop it. AND THEN save it. That’s way too much work. . .I don’t want to abandon my blog, not because I can’t live without it, but because of the fact there are too many posts there for me to go through in this short amount of time....... And it will kill me to erase 7 fucking years of nonstop progress. To erase all the evidence that I have come from nothing (a very literal, red-coloured “in-the-negatives” type of nothingness value) and become this fucking wonderful human being and am truly being the best self I can be.

This site fucking taught me how to love myself. How to not be toxic to people anymore. I learned that my mental disorders are REASONS for my actions, NOT excuses. And that it was not okay to do them to anyone under any circumstances and then just shrug and say “I have x mental disorder. Not my fault.” I have learned how to adult properly and how to become autonomous. I have had my life saved over and over by people talking to me when I’m down, shooting me positive messages and positive vibes, telling me something to take my mind off of it, being offered endless lists of resources for everything imaginable, and some people who knew my address at the time calling 911 on me to literally save my life after I had overdosed or had my dad’s gun to my head or slit my wrists a little too deep in the “right” direction or had a noose around my throat or ran my car into a guardrail. . .Things like that. . .

I don’t call 911 when I feel all my limbs go heavy from the overdose and my vision would slowly go blurry and then start closing in around the corners down to tunnel vision, then getting even blurrier in the middle. . and then total darkness. All the while, you listen to your hearing fade until it’s just randomized mumbles that you can’t understand, then to the point of jibberish that sounds like they are in The Sims. . .and then, finally, your hearing just cuts out altogether and you suddenly realize what it is like being deaf and blind. And then you try to speak. . .to beg for help. . .It’s like sleep paralysis: You think you’re speaking/screaming aloud, but you’re barely speaking a whisper, if anything. No one notices. No one can hear you. And that’s when the respiratory depression gets so bad and burns so much that it feels like the there are a million bees injecting molten fire into your chest and straight, sharp points drilling into your heart. It’s unreal and it’s so hard to not reach out for help at the very last second on that part. The respiratory depression. With all the 100+ suicide attempts I have had in my life. . .I can tell you it’s the same with p much every medication. Benzos seem to be the only exception to this rule. It’s scary af, though. Don’t do it!!! But if I hadn’t have caved and written something on tumblr every time I attempted and was at wits end and didn’t know what to do. . .I wouldn’t be alive today. With all those attempts on my record, I would have wound up dead pretty early on. . .as my first attempt was at the age of 13. I think. 12 or 13. I can’t remember that far back. . .yikes.

UH.....ANYWAYS...... I don’t want to lose my friends, my coping mechanisms, my resources, and all my pictures and refs. It may just kill me. I may just have to kill myself. I will no longer be able to implement healthy coping mechs or contact my support system. How do I get from there to..... yeah.

I refuse to give up my url here. I refuse to give up my blog here. So. . .I NEED to know before this has a chance to pass...... Will it affect our usernames/blogs/accounts in any way? I can’t seem to find any info on this particular topic!

Also, I damn well know Verizon and other major mobile companies are going to be the ones in control. I have Verizon. I have a plan with them and I won’t be switching to another company at least for another few months, if not 6 months to a year. Verizon has complete control over me if this passes and my information gathering and studying for no reason.

So I NEED TO ASK THIS, TOO: Will this bill passing affect things that don’t use wifi? Like. . .I’m asking about texting and calling and voicemail in particular. I guess the camera, too. So. . .literally just those four things.

So: 1) What happens to all of our accounts/usernames/things on that account when we are forced off the internet via Big Brother? 2) Will the bill passing affect things that don’t use wifi (texting on the standard app that comes with the phone, selfie and backwards camera, voicemail, and phone calls---that’s it. Four things.)???

#personal #net neutrality

[biosex-bisexuality-blog]

@azzythedreemurr this post ended up super fucking long. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and your post inspired me to actually write it all out, since I get the feeling that you might actually listen. 

I wanted it to be its own post so it’ll show up in tags and whatnot, and I’m going to put a 'keep reading’ here so that people can skip it faster, if they want. 

I implore you {and anyone else reading} to read everything I have to say and really give it thought before responding. Some of it will likely trigger a negative response, I know because I’ve been in your position before and I would immediately dismiss anything that went against what I believed. Please read this with an open mind. As I say at the end of this, I’m seriously trying to present a compromise and a way to move forward so that both sides get what they want and can move on from this nonsense.

{This is the post I’m responding to, for anyone who wants to read from the source. I’ve copied most of it here but for transparency's sake I’ll link to it.}

Realizing that theres a clear line between Gender and Sex is super important, and i plead that you re-educate yourself on this matter.

If you're not one of the ones denying biology, you aren’t the problem. I don't give a fuck about people identifying as whatever gender they want. I think it's stupid, since gender isn't real, but as long as you're not coming at me and telling me I should identify with a gender (like telling me I should call myself cis instead of just woman. I don't identify as a woman, I just am one by nature.) we don’t have an issue.

There are, however, people hell bent on removing all distinctions between sex and gender. That is what I was referring to.

IDK what exactly you want me to ‘re-educate’ myself on, since it seems we’re in agreement.

What Im saying, is that people who transition from amab to female [...]

You can't transition from male to female. You can't change your biology. You can alter the appearance of your biology through hormones and surgery, but trans males will always be male. 

Gender, as we’ve established, is separate from sex. They can call themselves trans women, I don't care. But they'll always be trans women, not women. Words mean something. And the word woman is already defined as adult human female. We need to keep language like that intact, otherwise women don’t have a unifying word to talk about our specifically FEMALE issues. 

IDK if you’ve noticed but, radical feminists in general use ‘female’ now to talk about female specific issues, out of respect for the people who identify as some other gender and view ‘woman’ as something gendered. We’re working for liberation of ALL females, even those we don’t necessarily agree with. Expecting us to also give up ‘female’ as a way to refer to our biology is way out of line. It’s effectively silencing us about the collective experience of being female. And no, ‘uterus bearer’ or ‘menstruator’ or any other words that have been thought up to replace it don’t work. None of those words takes into account the collective experience of having a female body. 

Female is a holistic term, and that is important to keep intact for us.

that date women are equal to women who date women. [...]

They are equal, obviously, as humans we should respect each other and treat each other as equals.

Because they’re both women who date women.

They’re not both women who date women, though. Trans women who date women are trans women who date women.

Trans woman is defined as someone male who identifies as the gender identity referred to as “woman.”

Women are adult human females.

Neither of these definitions require anyone to agree on what ‘feeling like a woman’ means.

The trans woman gets to say she’s a trans woman, and women get to keep the word that refers to their biology. Win win, in my book.

I’m of the opinion that differences should be celebrated, not suppressed. Differences between trans women and women need to be talked about, and not denied. Biological differences are important. As has been established, we agree on that.

An example of what happens when we don’t talk about differences in biology is this new trend of trans women claiming they have periods. If they are having intense stomach pains, they need to see a doctor. That is not a period, because they don’t have the biology required to have a period, but it could very well be an indication of something seriously wrong. Or it could be gas lol.

And there’s also trans women saying that peeing blood is the same as a period, but peeing blood is NOT normal, and it is certainly NOT the same as when women bleed. I thought we had gotten past males thinking that women bleed from the same place they pee out of, but I guess not! ;)

Second of all, No shit gender is a social construct. Gender is more fake than a terf saying “I support trans people”. I identify as agender myself, so we should both know how fucking stupid gender is as a concept in whole.

Good, we’re still on the same page about gender being objectively fake. The difference is that your side is expecting me to treat it as something real. You’re not doing that, that’s great, but you need to understand that trans activism has become obsessed with forcing everyone to center themselves around ‘gender.’ If you’re serious about not seeing gender as a real thing, and in fact seeing it as stupid, you should be using your time to talk to the trans activists who basically worship gender. Not arguing with the people who agree with you more than you think.  

I advise you stop using "terf." It's become nothing more than a silencing tactic because, in my experience, everyone who uses it has a different reason behind it. It doesn't tell me anything as you what you think I'm saying or believe.

Also? You saying that gender and sex are different would get you called a terf by some trans activists. Just a heads up.

Could you elaborate on what you mean when you call me a terf? I genuinely want to know, because if you’re assuming something incorrect about me I’d like the chance to correct it.

Finally: “we realized that none of this trans bullshit actually holds up against critical examination.” Define “None of this trans bullshit” [...]

What I mean by trans bullshit is:

The denial of biological sex. You’ve said you recognize a difference between gender and sex, and you find that distinction important, but your buddies don't anymore. That's a problem.

Insistence on ‘brain sex’ despite all the evidence against it.

Forced assignment of non trans people with the word ‘cis.’ I don’t identify as a gender, I am a woman because I’m an adult human female. I don’t need a word forced on me that means ‘not trans’ or ‘not nonbinary.’

The concept of ‘cis privilege.’ I’ve read through those lists, and as someone who doesn’t conform to the expectations of my sex I don’t actually have most of them. And, most of the ones I’ve seen aren’t actually privileges for women. Being seen as a woman? How is that a privilege?

Forcing everyone to define their sexuality to be based on gender instead of sex.

Bullying lesbians, and bi women who don’t want to date males, into including trans women in their dating pool.

Bullying gay men, and bi men who don’t want to date females, into including trans men in their dating pool. This happens far less, but it’s important to mention.

Bullying straight people, and bi people who only want to date the opposite sex, into dating people of the same sex just because they identify as the gender associated with the opposite sex. Again, happens far less but important to mention here.

Colonizing lesbianism and allowing males to call themselves lesbian, even though a lesbian is a female homosexual.

Changing the definitions of words that we need to remain the same so we can talk about issues and oppression effectively. Words that indicate biological sex, words to talk about sexuality based on biological sex, even the words referring to female biology are being altered (front hole?? Really??)

Lobbying for laws that change protections based on sex into protections based on gender. I don’t mind laws that protect gender identity, I think there should be legal recourse for someone who has been treated unfairly by the government due to their gender identity. Just like I believe in having people protected from being treated unfairly for their religious beliefs. Those laws would also protect people who don’t conform to the expectations of their sex. It’s beneficial to everyone. The issue is that, so far, trans activists haven’t been trying to get new laws created, they’ve been trying to get current laws protecting women changed.

Denial of wrongdoing by trans women. I get that trans activists want to protect trans women, but it’s gone way too far. They’re now defending and denying trans women raping females, and are guilting people out of talking about abuse they’ve experienced at the hands of trans women. It’s alarming how many stories there are about trans women behaving in a very much male way and their victims being silenced and convinced they need to not talk about it in order to protect the trans community.

Denial of the proven fact that trans women commit violence at a similar rate to males as a whole.

The insistence on using ‘correct’ pronouns for abusers and rapists. A person using ‘he’ to describe their trans woman abuser should not be punished or ‘called out.’ Victims have the right to talk about their abuser however they damn well please. This is sometimes excused because it ‘hurts trans women and tells them that we will only respect their gender identity under certain circumstance.’ Yeah, the circumstances of not being a fucking rapist or abuser???

The expectation by trans women of being included in every female space. Females need space away from males. Trans women can, and do, make their own spaces for their own needs. Women should get the same respect. Why is it that trans people get space away from ‘cis’ people, but females don’t get space away from males?

The lgbT community centering everything they do around gender. I dunno about you and your local pride center, but mine has 4 different programs exclusively centered around trans and nonbinary people. Two for youth and two for adults. They have one for adult women, and that program is open to anyone who identifies as a woman. There’s one for adult men, and again it’s for anyone identifying as a man. There are none for girls or boys. And then there are a few that are for the whole community. If we tried to organize something for ‘females’ and one for ‘males’ the backlash would be intense, and it would likely be shut down before it even began. Even if we made it clear that ALL females, regardless of gender identity, and ALL males, regardless of gender identity, were welcome to their respective programs. 

I can provide sources for these if you want, but I didn’t want to make this post longer than it is. I have posts that detail these saved elsewhere, so I can get them for you.

Again, if you personally are not doing these things that’s great. However, the other people who use ‘terf’ and attack radical feminists are doing them. Ignoring that doesn’t help anyone.

because the way you said that, gives me a feeling that you mean “Trans woman dating woman is hurting lesbians uwuwuwu”

I don’t think trans women dating women is hurting lesbians. I think trans women calling themselves lesbians is hurting lesbians.

Lesbian means, as I said earlier, female homosexual. This is an important word to keep so that we can talk about how they are oppressed specifically because they experience the intersection of:

misogyny (which is defined as prejudice against females, NOT anyone who “identifies as woman” because ‘gyn’ refers to female biology) and

homophobia (which is prejudice against same sex attracted people).

Trans women who are exclusively attracted to females are heterosexual. To be clear, I don’t expect them to call themselves straight, especially if they’re stealth. But they need to come up with a different word to use to mean ‘trans woman attracted to females’, because lesbian is taken. It is appropriation for them to use the word lesbian when they don’t fit the definition of it. Lesbian means female homosexual, and since a trans woman’s sex is male she can’t be a female homosexual. Pretty simple, I think.

And, if they’re open to people of both sexes, they should be calling themselves bisexual. If they only want to date woman identified people, that’s cool. But they’re still bisexual because bisexual means being attracted to both males and females.

There are trans people who are exclusively attracted to one sex. They are also being hurt in this campaign to get sexuality to refer to gender. They deserve to be respected in their sexuality, and currently they are not. They are being silenced right alongside non trans homosexuals.

Respecting differences of opinion and belief: 

As long as we’re on the same page about gender and sex being different, I don’t think there should be any issue. Me not believing in gender doesn’t mean that I can’t respect someone’s beliefs about gender. I don’t believe in Christianity, or any religion, and I don’t go around harassing Christians, or other religious people. As long as they just live their lives and leave me out of it, we don’t have an issue. The only time I have a problem with them is when they try to change laws that affect me or come at me and try to convert me to their beliefs. Or if they insist on me referring to myself with some word that specifically means I’m not of their faith. I’m an atheist, that indicates a disbelief in any religion. I don’t need to be assigned a word that means ‘not Christian’ or ‘not Jewish’ or ‘not Muslim.’

It’s the same for trans activists. I don’t misgender anyone, I don’t go out of my way to trigger actual disphoria or even social disphoria. I’ll use the names they choose, I won’t ask what their ‘real name’ is because I find that insulting to them and just plain unnecessary. I’ll use their pronouns, assuming I understand HOW to use them since some of them use odd sets. And if I don’t know how to use them, I’ll just use their name (or ‘they’) the whole time I speak about them.  

Tbh, I respect trans people in general more than I respect Christians in general. I know you might not believe that, but it’s the truth. 

The issues arise when they do the things I listed in the trans bullshit part of this post. If they didn’t do that shit, I would be perfectly content with a live and let live attitude towards them.

Moving forward:

There is a lot of work to be done to erase the damage that’s been caused by trans activists insisting that biological sex isn’t real. I think that trans activists who, like yourself, recognize the important distinction between gender and sex can work with the radical feminists who, like myself, respect gender identity. We could potentially come up with a solution that works for both sides. The LGBT communities in other parts of the world don’t have these kinds of conflicts, and I would like to follow their lead and end this insane war. But that’s only going to happen if we start working together.

Especially those of us who are visibly sex stereotype non conforming. We have a lot of the same experiences, and we should be working together and talking about them together instead of dividing ourselves based on what ‘gender’ we do or don’t identify with. Trans women should be working with other males who don’t conform to sex stereotypes, regardless of if they identify as trans or nonbinary. Trans men should be working with other females who don’t conform, too.

Find the commonalities, and celebrate and respect the differences. It’s a simple thing that has been warped by this shit.

I’ve posted a lot of angry things to this blog, but I genuinely don’t want to be angry about this anymore. I don’t want to fight, I don’t want this hatred, I don’t want this community to be eating each other alive because I think it only benefits conservatives and bigots. We’re giving all our attention to this bullshit when we could be working for the protection and happiness of all of us.

I’m tired. I want to work with people who are just as tired to end this.

This is an olive branch. Take it or leave it. 

#long post #reply #biological sex #trans #trans activism #gender #gender critical #radical feminism #homosexual #homophobia #homosexuality #bisexual #bi #bisexuality #bi community #heterosexual #trans women #trans males #trans men #trans females #non binary #nonbinary #sexuality #lgbt #lgb #radical feminist #olive branch #compromise #gnc #sex sterotypes

[starseedsrise]

Will Kundalini Awaken If You Consume Animals?

Will it stunt the access to higher consciousness, dimensions, and ascension process?

Here I have compiled very interesting and insightful perspectives:

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• We know that Native American tribes have and most indigenous tribe are paleo based. The natives which I’ve heard from my historical backtracking, always give gratitude and honor for the life they consume but I think it was mainly in times of scarcity. As you may remember in school or researched, before take over by Columbus there was an incredible abundance of cattle which were all slaughtered even for fun by the Columbus crew :(

Jason Lamonte: honor and love, thank the spirit of anything you consume or inhale for allowing you to take in its energy to heal yourself with, so you may better aid in healing others with the same energy. Any “toxins” or “poisons” even radiation can be transmuted through spirit alchemy. Free the soul of the animal you consume if you do eat meat, make an affirmation prior and bless the animal for giving its life, and make a pact that it’s spirit and soul is liberated from the lower planes upon your consumption of it. :) Do as thou wilt

Noah Gambescia: Vegetarianism/veganism isnt a prerequisite for ascension, growth or enlightenment. It does help the process but isnt an absolute prerequisite That being said its encouraged to stop or reduce red meat and pork, the least damaging meats are chicken and fish

Stanislav Daganov: Noah, what’s the big difference between mammals and birds?

Noah Gambescia: I had a hard time believing it at first but I’ve been told more than once by higher dimensional beings that small birds and fish dont actually have souls. Like they have a consciousness, naturally, but not an individual self-aware fractal of God source that has its own identity and memories of past lives. For instance a chicken or salmon will not reincarnate after death, they are extensions of nature, living beings but not avatars inhabited by a soul and higher self.

Mammals however have souls, so pork and cows and such. As far as small birds and fish are concerned, no individual souls, theyre essentially biological robots

So while its better to eat no meat altogether, at least with chicken and seafood youre not eating a fellow soul which is essentially spiritual cannibalism. Beware of GMO poultry and seafood

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• I have felt like this as well, This is what it seems to be like with pidgeons and fishbin my current resonating perception. But idk.

Dån Trîfan: I had my experience 2 weeks after quitting meat for the first time. I’m sure it had a lot to do with it. Haven’t touched flesh since.

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Gabriel Grey: I’ve tried to give up meat but it makes me really weak/sick feeling after awhile. I still consume poultry/fish, and have drastically cut back on red meats and pork. I never noticed a difference in spirituality/kundalini based off of my diet, but everybody works alittle differently

• We must take into account always, the biochemical individual metabolic types we have, ethnic primal pattern dieting (see Paul Chek’s data) we may need to cycle on having meat sometimes.

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Clayton Masterson: Eating animals with highly developed emotional systems will indeed slow down spiritual progress. Fish and eggs seem to be fine, but make sure the eggs are cage free, and free range if possible.

Well as there is no way to measure spirit period, I would say no, there is no really objective criteria, but it has been my personal experience and that of many others which seems to verify it. From my experience it has to do with the suffering of the animal that one takes on into ones own spirit when consuming most animal flesh.

I would say that this does not apply to traditional hunting and gathering people as they live in harmony with their ecology, and they are part of a single unit.

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Mark Amaru Pinkham: A vegetarian diet has been promoted by the ancients because it is the most “sattvic” and readily assists transformation. Such a diet assists the seeker from becoming too rajasic - too worldly and aggressive - and it also moves and awakens energy, including the Kundalini. However, many Enlightened Ones have reached their goal with a diet that includes meat. If you live in a northern, cold climate, consuming meat might become essential to stay warm and healthy. But such a diet will not prevent Kundalini awakening or the process of alchemical transformation.

• Sattvic diet is meant to include food and eating habit that is “pure, essential, natural, vital, energy-containing, clean, conscious, true, honest, wise”.[2][3]

Sattvic diet is a regimen that places emphasis on seasonal foods, fruits, dairy products, nuts, seeds, oils, ripe vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and non-meat based proteins.[4] Some Sattvic diet suggestions, such as its relative emphasis on dairy products, is controversial.[5]

Sattvic diet is sometimes referred to as yogic diet in modern literature. In ancient and medieval era Yoga literature, the concept discussed is Mitahara, which literally means “moderation in eating”.[4][6] (Wikipedia)

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• Yes, I believe it is all about balance. Awakenings, enlightened ones (lol) have reached their goals via balance. Adaptation, being truly in tune, not identified with the lower attachments to satisfy pleasure, not emanating from an imbalance such as emotional eating. Love this info on the Ayurvedic perspective. I also live in a colder climate perhaps meat is a staple right now for maintenance in this environment. The Eskimo’s thrive off tons of meat and animal fats. (My own consumption is relatively small when it comes to meats. As a bodybuilder I typically get my protein source from eggs and whey proteins, hydrolized/isolates. A bodybuilding diet style will help anyone become refined and tuned into what their body really needs and when it needs it. Moreover, sungazing + sleeping on the Earth will tune on faster :)

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Here are awesome words from internationally renowned expert in corrective & high performance exercise kinesiology, holistic Health coach Paul Chek:

I became a vegetarian for the second time a few years ago when my soul guided me to remove all fish, meat, and eggs from my diet. I was guided to eat that way for exactly one year to the day.

This process helped me:

1. Deeply clean myself 2. Develop greater intuitive clarity 3. Evolve in my practices as a shaman 4. Practice what I preach, let go of any dogma, and trust that my soul only knows Love and Truth. 5. Study the effects of a vegetarian diet on my body and mind, and how that diet affected workouts like heavy weight training and rock lifting. I learned so much about myself:

I had to eat a significantly increased amount of beans and legumes. My body also wanted a lot of nuts that previously gave me intolerance reactions. I noticed that when I was a vegetarian, I could eat many things that I couldn’t eat while also eating meat.

I found it MUCH harder to keep muscle mass on. Hard workouts took a noticeably longer time for me to recover from (remember, this is me, and shouldn’t be misread to indicate that all vegetarians will have this response). The harder I trained, the more careful I had to be to get plant foods with high protein and fat content in them or I could watch myself disappearing!

My sex drive diminished significantly, particularly in the last several months of the one-year stint.

6. Cultivate a greater empathy and compassion for others. My feeling nature seemed to be more feminine in general.

The Macrobiotic Diet I have studied the printed works of Annemarie Colbin, author of Food and Healing, The Book Of Whole Meals and others. I have also studied the works of Michio Kushi, on of the pioneers of macrobiotic dieting in the US. Both of them have excellent information to offer that I’ve included as part of my basic HLC training after exploring them in my own life. This way of eating would be more akin to what Bill Wolcott refers to as a carb type.

After I was most recently a vegetarian, my soul guided me to add eggs and fish to my diet. At this time, I followed the macrobiotic approach as a general theme for six months. Then my soul directed me back to eating meats that worked well for me on an as needed basis.

I found that my recovery from exercise, and my general capacity to handle stress improved. By now, my body really needed the extra nutrients available on a macrobiotic approach that were hard to get with a strict vegetarian approach. Again, this is my individual experience and not a suggestion that everyone will respond this way. That said, my observations about myself fit the pattern I see in my patients.

Metabolic Typing Paul eating according to his Metabolic Type.I studied Bill Wolcott’s version of metabolic typing (MT) for several years on my own and in my clinical practice. I also studied many other MT pioneers’ work to explore the differences, and there are a number of them.

In the Wolcott system, I tested out to be a strong protein type, with sympathetic dominance. I ate that way for a long time, but found that I started to have symptoms of excessive protein in my diet, such as aching in my joints, decreased digestive ability, slowing of bowel transit and retention times, craving sweets, etc.

I had to move to eating more as a mixed type to balance.

Then I found that even that was too much flesh food on some days, and I began eating as a carb type. My body seemed to want/need something from each of the MT diet types at different times of the day, week, or month depending on internal and external environmental factors.

So where does that leave me?

No Rules and Inner Guidance or “Flex-a-tarian” Dieting In synthesis, my whole approach boils down to meeting your individual needs.

This requires that you have access to your instincts, intellect, imagination, and intuition. If you don’t, you’re more likely to follow diet dogmas and end up needing the help of a Chek HLC Practitioner – someone with adequate experience and an open-minded approach to help you balance and heal.

What is Flex-a-tarian Dieting? 1. Genetic Individuality

Each person has genetic individuality. Your genetic needs are greatly influenced by your parents’ genes. Your genetic origins can range from desert dwelling people where there is often little big game to eat and high plant consumption is the norm, to Eskimos who eat 90% of their diet as flesh and fat. Each of us can fall anywhere on that scale.

You may have one parent that does well on very little meat, and another whose roots are Scandinavian where long winters and a frozen ground meant meat was essential for survival and therefore programmed into their genes. And any individual may emulate one parent more strongly in their dietary needs, or express any variation within the range of their ancestry.

2. Stress Factors

Stress of any physical, emotional or mental nature can significantly change an individual’s dietary needs. If your dietary pattern is too fixed, you can eat yourself deeper into a potential illness/disease state. If you are in touch with your instincts and not stuck in a diet dogma, you’ll adapt naturally to dietary changes.

If you take most any vegetarian into a gym, start loading them and increasing the rate of protein destruction, they are very likely to crave meat because meat is a high protein/fat source that supports most people’s genetic needs easily. Weston A. Price showed clearly in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration that there were no “healthy vegetarian tribes to be found in the world”. Whenever he found one that seemed pretty healthy, there were healthier meat eating tribes nearby.

In his excellent book, Metabolic Man: Ten Thousand Years from Eden (The Long Search for a Personal Nutrition From our Forest Origins to the Supermarkets of Today) Charles Heizer Wharton offers an analysis of the efficiency of gatherers vs. hunters for meeting their needs. He shows that hunting for meat is more efficient and therefore, more likely to support life.

3. Individualized Eating

We all have an obligation to ourselves, to each other, and to the planet.

If we aren’t wise enough to teach our younger generations about life, how it works, and what we must do to support Mother Nature so she can continue to support us in our own growth and development, then our problems are sure to escalate.

After 30 years of committed study in the profession of Holistic Health, I’ve come to the conclusion that eating with the conscious intention of feeding your body what legitimate organic plant and/or flesh foods it needs is what it takes to be healthy.

Only healthy people can make healthy decisions as a general rule. Only healthy people are open minded enough to keep themselves healthy and not participate in dogmas that may sound good, but really just suppress our natural instincts and don’t actually create health.

FOR ME, it all boils down to this.

If I am to be part of the healing process, to be sensitive to what is needed by both humanity and by Mother Nature, and feel safe that I can trust my instincts, I must be healthy.

If I am to have enough life-force energy to actively create my dreams and share my wisdom with those that may benefit from it, I can’t afford to save a chicken or a cow if it means that my own health will suffer.

If I continue to be a vegetarian when my body tells me to do otherwise, how long will it be before I don’t have the energy to even ring the bell of animal abuse, recycling, water consciousness, or food awareness? While I’m saving a few chickens and cows, I risk diminished health and vitality, and therefore available energy to be the change.

I love all life in nature. I love all animals.

I also love myself enough to know that nature designed each and all to participate in a natural balancing act called “Life”.

Eat to Balance Your Body-Mind So there it is.

I have no diet dogma.

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My foundational principle is to learn to feel what your body needs and feed it wisely.

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This is exactly what I teach in my book How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy! my ebook The Last 4 Doctors You’ll Ever Need, as well as my Primal Pattern Eating audio program.

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Eating as a vegan, vegetarian, meat eater, or “flex-a-tarian” are all legitimate approaches to balancing the human body-mind. No one approach should be worshiped. No one approach should be seen as better or worse than the other unless it is evaluated against your overall level of well-being, or lack thereof. If we are to leave the world a little better for our children than it was when we got here, it is high time that we all stop reading magazines, books on diet dogma, and listening to people selling snake oil, get-slim-quick pills on TV and start cultivating a loving, open-minded relationship with ourselves.

With that objective managed, we will naturally find that our relationships and our contributions to the world reflect our level of sound health in sound actions for the betterment of all.

I hope this helps you to navigate your way to a healthy diet for you. I welcome your questions, comments and experiences, so please share them in the comments section below.

Love and chi, Paul Chek

(http://chekinstitute.com/blog/what-diet-is-right-for-you/)

Bottom line: All about balance. Water/blood is our transporter conductor of life force. Lymphatic system The harmonic resonance creates geometry at the cellular level which is order. Opposite of chaos/dis-ease Maintaining proper ph and balanced alkaline levels have been said to heal all sorts of disease. Alkaline foods are electric/life force. A toaster is electric too but it sends static instead of life force due to it drawing it’s source from DC/direct current.

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