#in that case i think the things i envision myself the most often and with the most desperation are the future

[butmakeitgayblog]

Loving all the #awtr synopses! Thank you for indulging us 🥰 Would you be able to share one of the 365 letters that Lexa wrote to Clarke in the care package? Maybe one of those letters that Clarke return to over and over again?

You are a glutton for punishment

I like you 😈

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My Dearest,

Each letter I start feels so awkward in the beginning. As though the blank page itself were mocking me. All bumbling sentences and half-formed thoughts vying for my attention, because how does one get to the point when there's so many things between us left to say? A lifetime worth of words live on the point of this pen, all yearning and jumbled in their haste to be written first. Each one wanting nothing more than to jump right into the thick of it; into the thick of being part of a lifetime with you.

And yet here I sit, struggling with exactly where to start.

I suppose I could begin with the most mundane part of this idea: the actual point of this letter. Forcing myself to tackle the 'why' of the whole reason you picked this one in particular sounds like the smart move here... Assuming, of course, you didn't tear through them all the first second you got... *wifely sigh* If that is the case, don't feel too bad. Your lack of patience is, bafflingly, one of the many things I love so fiercely about you.

You're 30 today.

30!

My wife is 30. I love hearing how that sounds. The thought alone makes my heart skip a beat. (In a decidedly joyous way, I assure you, as it so often does whenever you wander yourself across my mind.) You're 30 now. An honest God adult in every measure, and truthfully that blows my mind because I still vividly remember seeing you for the first time when we were only children. It was drizzling and you'd crashed into me on the playground while running, and I—

Well, you've heard this story enough times before, but my point remains.

You're sleeping peacefully as I write this. Safe and warm in my bed. Tucked to me so tight I can barely hold the pen well enough to get these words out, and yet all I can envision when I look over and see the youth of your face is who you will be when this letter reaches you.

Know, in every version of 'you' my brain tirelessly cooks up, you are as beautiful then as you are right now. If not more so.

I envision that same smile, with those lips that sweeten my dreams, nestled in the crest of newly discovered laugh lines. I see the kindness of your eyes in every universe, my love. The way those same stubborn and fierce blues that take my breath away hold a depth of wisdom far beyond your (30!!) years. You told me once how you hated your beauty mark as a kid, but my goodness, the things I do to wrap my lips around it. Believe it or not, I secretly have impeccable aim. Stop laughing, I do. It's just too tempting. I can't even begin to resist. And your chin! Your wonderul chin, that was surely made to hold my thumb so perfectly each time I kiss you. I imagine it's somewhat sharper now. More refined. More dignified.

Tell me, love. Does it hold another's thumb now?

It should. It deserves to be cherished.

I find myself so often in these quiet moments before sleep thinking of who you are - who you will be - at these stages of your life. And while I know in my heart I'll be right there with you when these times come, smiling and cheering you on along the way, for now, I am left woefully guessing.

I write this all to say: I hope you are happy. I hope you have a life filled with more love than you know what to do with. I hope it makes you feel even a tenth as timeless as your love made me feel. Being loved by you is a miraculous thing in that way.

It's funny, as I've written these letters, I already feel as though I've lived an entire lifetime with you. And even then, it's still not enough. In the earlier ones I worried so much, as I'm sure you remember (again, that's assuming you actually followed the directions for a change and didn't binge them all at once), but I find myself writing this one in particular entirely calm. Make no mistake, I still feel the urge to dote on you. To fuss at you as I do with questions of 'have you drank enough today? Eaten enough? Take a nap with me, dear. You never seem to get enough sleep.' I will always worry about these things no matter where we are in the universe. But understand, love, it's only because I wish to take care of you.

Not that you need it. You've never needed me to take care of you, but I'm so very grateful you let me try all the same.

You're gonna do great things, Griffin. I already know it, but for posterity's sake, I'll write it just to have one final 'told ya so' moment with you. I hope your life is so damn big now that you look back on the walls of this room that held our love in its sanctuary, and it impresses you how we managed to fit the both of us in here along with it. I hope with each dream you accomplish, it's replaced only by what great thing comes next for you. Because while the world is cold and terrifying and beats us down in so many ways, I know you, my darling girl. I know you're the one who can always best it.

I love you, Clarke. I've loved you since before I knew I could have you, and I'm going to love you long after I'm gone. I hope I made you know that in the time we had together, well enough to last this lifetime and into the next. I'll be here, love. Patiently waiting for you to crash into me again.

Wherever you are in this moment, know that I am so proud of the woman you've become. I want you to spend every last second of today celebrating the wonderful, stubborn, charming, passionate, fearless, tender person you are.

Don't ever let that fire inside of you die. I couldn't bear it. The world needs more people like you.

Lord knows I sure did.

Thank you for teaching me what selfless love is. Loving you made me a better person. And I'd like to think I played at least a little part in helping you become who you are too. So celebrate today. And every single day after. I mean it. You deserve it.

Until we meet again,

- Lexa

P.s. Have a whiskey sour for me 🖤

#anon #a walk to remember au #AWTR synopsis

[tantive404]

Recently, I came across these tweets, and I kind of can’t stop thinking about this.

I adore villain x heroine ships and dynamics, and frequently find myself pondering what it is I love so much about them. One thing I’ve come to notice is this very idea: the importance of the male villain’s desire for her… his near-obsession and the fact that he is threatened by her. And, as mentioned in those tweets, part of what makes that so special is the rarity of seeing men or male characters treat women as being so important, as being valid or worthy of consideration as a threat. To me, it can be almost empowering to explore such dynamics through fiction.

One of my favorite movies, of course, is Star Wars: A New Hope, and primarily because I’ve always been absolutely obsessed with whatever is going on with Leia and Vader and Tarkin there. It always draws me right in… the powerful Dark Lord near-obsessively chasing down this tiny defiant young princess, slaying so many soldiers and going through such effort, so adamant that she be brought to him alive.

And from there, she’s treated as a high-class prisoner, heavily guarded and locked up tight, interrogated ruthlessly… but resisting with all the strength and pride of a leader in an underdog rebel movement. She’s essentially the one who is the key to the entire story.

As for Tarkin, he spends much of his screen time dealing with Leia… focused on how best to break the rebel prisoner who holds such key information in this galaxy-spanning war. Most famously, of course, this is illustrated with the destruction of Alderaan… an entire planet wiped away as an act of spite and a means to manipulate the girl he regards as a critical enemy. He is rather creepy and demeaning to her, too, but this only serves to add to a complex power dynamic worth exploring….

Moreover, I imagine it is rare to see a powerful military man treating a nineteen-year-old young woman as a credible threat to his Empire, but in ANH, it’s very much the case. And with the villain/heroine subtext I rather enjoy envisioning from their little scenes together, it can be quite captivating and unique.

There are a lot of similarly enjoyable pairings in many mahou shoujo series— Usagi and Dimande in Sailor Moon, Ichigo and Kisshu in Tokyo Mew Mew, and all manner of Pretty Cure rarepairs— where young girls simply trying their best are the ultimate key to defeating evil and have an ongoing rivalry/love-hate relationship with the worst of monsters. The subtext in such dynamics is fun to explore just as it popular in fandom to do with many popular male superheroes and their archenemies— Batman and the Joker, for instance.

In fact, even when it comes to the most cliche and stereotypical damsel-in-distress stories, the inciting incident, the villain’s capture of the innocent girl, always comes from his inherent desire for her— whether it be her beauty or status, or some form of obstacle which she presents to his evil plan.

It’s so strange and fascinating to think that these sorts of dynamics, particularly when it comes to ship discourse in fandom, are often decried as “toxic” and “abusive”. It’s not as if there aren’t some very dangerous power dynamics at play— which only makes these relationships that much more fun to explore in fiction— but so too can they truly serve as a power fantasy for women and girls, who are so often told made to feel as if we aren’t important.

Sometimes I just need a villain to chase me across the galaxy and regard me as his “worthy foe”, you know? 🥺🥰

#villain x heroine #enemies to lovers #damsel in distress #terrible analysis by tantive #tarkin x leia #leia and vader #willeia #vaderleia #usagi x dimande #kisshigo #leia organa #darth vader #wilhuff tarkin #i am just having some thoughts ok #I love it when a plucky tiny girl is pursued by a creepy dangerous villain #it’s fun

[questing-wulfstan]

I think the original thesis was that one's art will inevitably lack the character and authenticity that compels and invests people if it's created precisely to cater to people's expectation, rather than what compels and invests the artist. Which I entirely agree with and genuinely see no legit counterargument to.

But that's what has somehow mutated into the 'you should make art for yourself and yourself alone, people's engagement is simply a nice bonus' thesis that regularly crosses my dash lately. And I get the sentiment behind it, I do !! Especially in a time, it seems, of people engaging less and less with fanworks. I however have much more reservations towards this statement, and would go as far as suggesting that it is counterproductive, in a time of people engaging less and less with fanworks.

Because, writing in this very case, but that goes for art in general, is meant to be shared. Art is about making connections, it’s a conversation. It’s saying ‘this is how I see the world, is this how you see it too ?’, and it expects a response. Stories were told long before they were written, and we started writing them to ensure they would be passed onto future generations, because we wanted to share them beyond our finitude. But to our peers that were there now, we kept telling stories because it’s not simply about transmission, it’s about reaction. Why would you tell the epics of great heroes if not to galvanise your audience ? Why would you elaborate horrors that chill your own bones if not to frighten your audience ? And why would you tell these stories if not to know whether they did galvanise or frighten your audience ? Why tell these stories if not for the comfort that your peers find courage, or fear in the same things that you do ?

Of course it’s an easy thing to overlook in our epoch where stories are most often recorded, in solitude, and then ‘consumed’ asynchronously, often also in solitude. Stories nowadays are written and read much more often than they are told and heard, and I see how we’ve come to disregard the need for response. However, something I have been formally taught as a librarian in that same epoch, is that people read because they seek something, and not for sole distraction. I believe people write for the same reason.

I can promise you as a writer that I make up stories for my own entertainment entirely. I wish you could see side by side the history of my first 5 years on AO3 and the monumental amount of potential fics I have elaborated in the same timespan. The act of writing was Difficult for me for various reasons during that time, so I never gave this myriad of stories a shape that allowed to share them on the internet. Because I was content enough vividly imagining these characters and situations; essentially, telling myself these stories. I believe other writers may need to tell themself their stories in a more tangible manner so they write them out, and then do so for themself solely.

However, if I have started to write regularly as of late, to compose and shape my stories into a form to convey to the best of my ability what my brain envisioned to a reader’s brain; if we writers put our stories out into the world for anyone to see, it’s because we want to share them, we want them read, we’re extending ourselves out to say ‘this is how I see the world too, this is how I feel too’. And we want to know that we aren’t alone in seeing the world as we do, in feeling as we do. We put our stories out instead of keeping them to ourselves because we want, and need response. As have all the storytellers that came before us.

So I honestly won’t suffer seeing another post on my dash telling writers that they need to write for themselves and disregard engagement because we do !! We write for ourselves !! But we share our writing publicly because we want, well, to *share* it. Because that’s an integral part of being human.

And if you are a reader who think that commenting on a fic is solely an ego boost for the writer and that a much-less-time-consuming kudos is ego boost enough, or that a story is between a writer and themself solely and that voicing your feelings about it is superfluous, I’m begging you to reconsider, your vision and what writers are truly offering.

#writing #writeblr #fanfiction #fanfics #ao3 #the sandman #the gazette #kaamelott #tagging the fandoms I've written for or in the circle of which I've seen that thesis shared but certainly these posts originated and #have been shared widely outside of these fandoms #I would really like this to be seen #and discussed !! #of course this is pretty grandiloquent #and seemingly talking about Art™ #but this is entirely true if the way you relate to a story #and share the writer’s vision boils down to ‘yes I agree this is character A’s love language towards character B’ #and ‘I found my own pleasure in the way you’ve written these characters pleasuring each other’ #genuinely #... forgot a whole paragraph I had in mind about how fanfictions are in conversation with canon in the first place #oh well my point comes across well enough I believe

[starryflix]

An idea of the future

You know, the future has always quite scared me. I think because so much happened across the years it has become rather difficult to look out and plan ahead for a few years because I am so used to life throwing me a curveball every once so often. Now that I am 20 I think I finally am seeing something ahead of me that is somewhat steady. Steady and achievable.

I think the most interesting thing is that across the couple of months and the new environments I have found myself in people keep giving me the exact same idea as I personally have of my future. And it is rather interesting to see how close me and my best friend can get to each other's idea of the future without ever really talking about it in the first place. We tend to be on one line a lot regardless even if we haven't seen each other for a long while we still manage to have the same incentives and same ways of parroting.

It was good to talk to them about the future and ridiculously heartwarming and important to me to hear that they see themselves in my future as much as I see me in theirs. That hasn't always been the case for me and it was a silent reassurance that no matter what we will stay friends. Modern technology helps a lot but they also said that if I were to emigrate they'd send me letters with little trinkets they find everywhere that remind them of me and I'd send them back dried flowers and small stones found on a beach together with the letter.

I think that the one thing I have heard the most about what people envision me to do is to become a writer, and if that doesn't sustain me enough I'd have a teaching job on the side. They also all tell me I'd live in a small town, close to nature.

And I very much agree.

Me and my best friend tend to speak in colours and in nature scenes, people have certain feels and we communicate those by means of colours and scenes. I have synaesthesia when it comes to feelings and colours and by extent people have colours. Renn has always been ridiculously good at figuring out my feelings when I couldn't put them into words and described them as colours. I think it might partially be the fact we are both neurodivergent.

I am going off in many tangents, the tl;dr of this story is that while I have always been rather scared of making plans for the future or dreaming of a fantasy that is perhaps not within reach this is more and more seeming like a clear and achievable picture and I am just simply not used to that. Like I am not to so many things that maybe should feel normal. Although I think my entire generation is quite cautious when it comes to a future mainly because of all the ways the world has been going.

I think I'd like escaping to a small cottage on top of a cliffside, a small town not too far away and a lighthouse shining in the distance with a dog and two cats. Writing books, teaching kids and perhaps accidentally taking a few with problems under my wing. It seems like it is something I was always meant to do. So maybe.

One thing is abundantly getting clearer; I don't think I want to stay in the Netherlands. It's too busy here, too full, too crowded with the impending doom of rising sea levels on top of it. My dad told me not to be too pessimistic but I have trouble seeing my future in this rushed country with nearly 18 million people. It just doesn't suit me.

I hope my health issues just won't get in the way of being able to emigrate.

I'd likely end up in a Celtic country regardless, always had a weird affinity for them.

The scene I would be or would be living in would be described somewhere along these lines:

okay so, imagine a slightly unruly sea, it's windy but not cold, a morning fresh around dawn, too dark to actually be considered light but the stars have gone away. It's a somewhat secluded beach, small patch of meadow with deers on one side that changes slowly into dense woods and rocky and grey cliffs on the other side, the rocks the kind people climb on. The sand is leaning towards a white-ish colour and there's a very small pier where you can sit and stick your feet in the water. It's quite the way from the small town however the lighthouse is close by and the outline visible within the dark grey air. On top of the cliffs stands a small dark wooden cottage, cluttered with creative stuff and books everywhere, a half handwritten letter with some dried flowers on the desk. Paintings drying beside the kitchen sink. Besides the desk stands a shelf that displays a variety of mismatched trinkets; all send to me by best friend. There's an old wooden chair outside on the porch, a golden retriever dog and two cats lazing about. Dawn but one after a night fuelled with insomnia, a sleepy and calm morning.

#Felix' blog (a collection tag) #personal #thoughts #future

[lovemesomesurveys]

[joybucket @ bzoink]

What song do you want played at your wedding? 💒   I have no idea, it’s not something I’ve thought about. I can’t even envision myself getting married. 

List up to three things you own that have fringe on them.   I don’t think I own anything with fringe. 

What is one thing you've been waiting patiently for for quite some time?   Well, I’m very impatient so I’ve been impatiently waiting to get better. It has been several years, so I think I’m justified in this case.

When was the last time you sat in front of a bonfire? 🔥🪵   It’s been a long time.

If you could meet any American Idol contestant (from any season), which one would you choose to meet? 🎤   Hmm, I’d say Kelly Clarkson, David Archuleta, or Adam Lambert. 

If you could meet any American Idol judge (from any season), which one would you choose to meet?   I guess Paula Abdul. 

If you had to choose between competing on American Idol or on Fear Factor, which one would you choose, and why?   Most definitely neither. I have zero singing talent and I’m not going to eat bugs or any other disgusting thing or do something scary. 

Which name do you like best for a girl: Harmony or Harvest?   Harvest. I love the name Autumn and I think Harvest is pretty, too. 

What is your favorite type of oil?   Olive oil and sandwich oil. Have you ever been anointed with oil?   No.

Which do you like better: the smell of old books, or the smell of new books? I loveee the smell of old books.   

Which smell do you like better: the smell of old books, or the smell of gasoline? 📚 ⛽️   I like the smell of gasoline as well, but the smell of old books still wins.

When was the last time you had a deep conversation with someone?   My mom and I have those type of conversations quite often. 

When was the last time you played with sparklers? 🥢💥   I have no idea.

What are three of the most painful things you have ever stepped on?   Well, nothing since I’m a paraplegic and in a wheelchair. 

What is something you have recently realized?   I don’t know. There’s a lot I’ve realized for a long time and things continue to happen that only further support the realizations. What I do about them is the problem.

If you could study abroad for a year in a foreign country, which country do you think you would choose, and why?   I wouldn’t do that. I’m sure it would be an amazing experience, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable or safe doing that alone. 

What are three little things in life that you enjoy?   Books, coffee, Reese’s. 

If applicable, what song are you listening to right now?   I’m not.

When was the last time you wore your hair up in a bun?   Yesterday. My hair is now just barely long enough to put it up in a little bun, although strands of hair fall out in the back cause my hair is still so short. 

If you could choose three US states to visit, which three states would you pick? Hawaii, New York, and Alaska. 

Do you think you express yourself better in writing or out loud?   >> I definitely express myself better in writing because I have the space and time to get my words together. this does not mean I always succeed in expressing myself well even in writing, because words are a fuck <<< I’d definitely say the same thing. It’s also the fact I’m not directly talking to someone, so even if someone reads my writing, I’m not talking face to face. If I sound like a rambling idiot, I don’t know they think that. Cause I definitely can ramble on and not always make sense in my writing, but it’s okay. I feel much more comfortable trying to express myself and letting my thoughts out in the written form than verbally. 

What's the most amazing miracle you've ever witnessed? ✨   Life-threatening situations I had last year in the hospital that I miraculously, by the grace of God, survived. I’ve also witnessed His healing with things that once looked so hopeless without a good chance at all in healing. 

Do you enjoy being home alone?   I like having some time alone, but I like spending time with my brother and my mom. Or even if they’re in other rooms but they’re still here. For some reason I’ve been really feeling lonely lately. I think I have some dependency issues. 

What is the most magical thing you've ever experienced? ✨   >> how is this different from the question above the last question in any meaningful way <<< Yeah, this is like the miracle question. Well, except that I don’t believe in magic so I don’t attribute the miracles I’ve experience to that, I completely give credit to God. 

What was the last hot beverage you drank? ☕️   Coffee. 

What is your favorite season?   I love fall and winter. 

Do you think your hair looks better curly or straight?   I like it wavy or straight. 

Have you ever donated blood? 🩸   No.

Would you rather eat at the Hard Rock Cafe or the Rainforest Cafe?   I’ve only been to the Rainforest Cafe, which was cool but it’s definitely for the experience as I wasn’t that impressed with the food. I think that’s the whole thing, though with places with like that. I’d like to go to the Hard Rock Cafe, but it’s probably a similar experience. 

Are you a good swimmer? 🩱     >> I can't swim. <<<

Would you rather attend a yoga class or a Zumba class?   Neither.

Have you written anything down today? ✍️   Not handwritten, but I’ve done a lot of typing both on here and on my phone. 

What color is your camera case (if you have one)?   My camera is my phone, which has a clear case on it with Stranger Things stickers I put on there. The stickers are peeling off, though, and it looks all ugly right now so I need to get a new case. 

What do you consider ideal weather for spring?   I like rainy weather, but here our spring tends to be warm and  a little summer-y, which I don’t like. It reminds me that summer is right around the corner and our summers are miserably hot.

Have you experienced anything supernatural today? ✨   No.

What are three things you like that start with the same letter as your middle name?   I’m not sharing my middle name initial. Nice try.

What year did you join Facebook?   Back in 2008. Possibly late 2007.

Which do you use more: Facebook or Instagram?   Facebook. I barely use that anymore, though. I don’t spend much time on it. 

Would you say you've had a good week so far?   No.

What are three of your favorite ways to enjoy spring? 🌸   I don’t do anything.

Do you own a pair of pink pants? I have a pair of pink Barbie sweatpants. 

#personal #text #survey #surveys

[deflect-daily]

I’m an evolutionary dead-end #childfreebychoice

There were countless individuals before me who successfully reproduced and passed on their genetic material, generation after generation, from single-cell organism to homo sapiens, until this very point in the history of my personal phylogenetic tree. I am not pregnant, I never was and I never will be. I got sterilized on December 12th 2022 and it feels like a second birthday to me.

In the following text, I want to write down some of the thoughts and reflections I had about the topic of (not) having children and why I am convinced, that (female) sterilization is a political act of emancipation. Quoting the feminist movement during the 60s and 70s: “the personal is political”, I wish to give you some insights of the implication of this radical act of self-appropriation. After having undergone the procedure, I decided to write a text, that I would have enjoyed reading many years ago when I thought about sterilization the first time. 

In case some of you are triggered by this topic: This is my personal opinion, my personal choice for my body and my future. I am not saying, what i did is best for you or anyone else. It is important to me that everybody always has the freedom of choice. 

Yet, in my eyes, having children is a thing only for people who really want to become parents. And, even more importantly: People who decided to become parents should be aware of the scope of engagement, the responsibility and the severity that is connected to the act of bringing a person to life. This decision is always to be made consciously and carefully. 

Why I don't want to be a parent

Listing all the reasons against having kids and discussing them in detail would take too long and maybe also be too controversial. If you want to get inspired about some of the reasons, you can read "No kid - Quarante raisons de ne pas avoir d'enfant" by Corinne Maier. I share many of them, but my personal list exceeds 40 reasons by far ;)  

Just to make this clear: I never wanted kids. I, 34 years old today, identify as a cis woman but I never saw myself as a mother nor did I ever envision "having my own family" as a life goal.

All my friends know that I am not a huge fan of children. And, most importantly: I am not willing to invest the time and money into such a life-changing project. I have enough hobbies and interests to keep myself busy for at least 200 years. There's simply not enough space in my life for my own offspring.

“People who don’t have kids are egocentric and self-centered”

Provided that one has access to affordable contraceptives, the choice of having kids or not immediately becomes one that has to be actively made. And, from that point on, it always becomes an egocentric choice. Often, people who voluntarily decide against reproduction, are seen as antisocial and egoistic, demonstrating a lack of solidarity because they do not provide the future generation, future working forces, future tax-payers, future pension-payers. You probably already see where this is going... The personal and societal reasons, most people name for having children are egocentric as well: "I want to leave some traces here on planet earth", "I don't want to be alone when I'm older", "I want to pass on my values/genes/beliefs". Having kids because there’s a need for human beings to care for you when you’re retired, financially and physically, is also quite self-centered... isn’t it? 

Or, a very common phrase is "it is just part of life" - which shows, if anything, a lack of reflection. Life is so full of incredible things. Having kids is just one of them. "It has always been like that" is also not a valid argument. Period. If you disagree, then please think about what that means for suppression of minorities, women and POC, the exploitation of nature, the burning of fossil fuels and so on and so forth... Can we please move on? 

The fallacy of the "mother instinct" and the ideal of a "good mother"

The so called "mother instinct" which is the idea that woman just have an internal drive to care for others, especially children, is a social construct that bares no scientific background but can be very useful when one aims to naturalize the societal inequality of women and men. There is no scientific evidence, that women just generally care more than men, but, if we all believe, that women have a natural, inherent drive to care for children, it is way easier to make them stay at home with the kids, give up a career and accept to be underpaid or not paid at all. 

The idea of a "good mother" with all the associated concepts and expectations has been used for centuries to establish and solidify patriarchal structures within society. There is this idea of this strong bond between a mother and her kids that is unique and indispensable and especially important during the first three years of life. If the mother is not (sufficiently) around during this time, the child will suffer great psychological damage that can never be fully healed. Of course, the mother cannot be replaced by any other person, neither father, grandparents or other family members, friends or other loving kin. So, if the mother’s not available to the child for whatever reason, the child will be broken for the rest of it’s life and the mother’s to blame. 

I guess, I don’t have to tell you, that there is no scientific evidence for this bullsh*t either and that we, as a society should drop these misconceptions rather sooner than later. 

Enforcing the duty not just to bear children, but also to devote their lives to the upbringing of their kids, exerts an enormous pressure on women. Womanhood has long been and still is directly connected to motherhood. Only those women who bear children and care for them are real women and thus, only those who make their children the utmost priority, are good mothers, good women. 

Sarah Diel describes the background of these ideas and the associated suppression of women very well in her book "Die Uhr, die nicht tickt" which I strongly recommend. 

Care for others is independent of the bloodline. If one feels the need to care for others, this does not necessarily mean that the beings cared for are one's own offspring. Donna Harraway says it in perfect terms: "Make kin, not babies!". Care, intimacy and responsibility for others are incredibly important, but can be shared between all humans and even across species, not just between mothers and their kids.

“But isn't there an alternative?” - Some words on contraception

Let's get everyone on the same page: Contraception is still a problem with a variety of unsatisfactory solutions and eventually, still a women’s.

Even though, there is a promising idea for men on the rise, called RISUG (Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance), it seems like there's no real interest taken in developing the product by pharmaceutical companies. The first time this popped up on screens dates back to more than a decade ago and there has still no real progress been made. The research on RISUG or “vasalgel” was mostly done by the Parsemus Foundation who now seems to have sold the idea to a private company. On their website, they claim, that the product will be on the market, “as soon as clinical studies and regulatory approvals are completed”. Whatever that means... The only thing I know, is that I am not willing to wait for this it to arrive on the market.

So, to put this prospect aside, when we discuss solutions to the contraception problem, we basically have the following options with their corresponding PIs (PI = pearl index):

Condoms; PI of 18-21

Hormonal contraception (pills, rings, patches, implants, injections, IUDs, you name it); PI varying from 0.05 to 9, depending on the method

Heavy metals (copper IUDs); PI of 0.8

Some unsafe alternatives like spermicide creams or gels, withdrawal and "fertility awareness methods" that in my opinion do not really count as contraceptives due to very high pearl indices of >18

Vasectomy (male sterilization; PI 0.1) and female sterilization (tubal ligation; PI 0.5)

(I took the PI values from here)

The only options here, that can be used by men are condoms and vasectomy. Hormonal contraceptives have a looooooooong list of side effects that are not just diverse but also in parts severe, the most dangerous being the increased risk of blood clots (elevated risk of thromboses, strokes, pulmonary emboli and heart attacks) and cancer (breast and cervical cancer). And not to be forgotten: The adverse effects on the psyche like mood swings, depression and decreased libido. 

Hormonal contraception and copper IUDs have the huge advantage of being extremely safe and also reversible. For anyone, who is not sure about whether they wanna have children or not, this is the way to go - in monogamous and/or tested environments - until better options are available. Quick reminder on the side: Condoms are still the only contraceptive option around that also protects against (some, not all) STDs... 

Whoever is willing to have a permanent solution: sterilization is the only option.

Female sterilization is actually the method of contraception mostly used worldwide with high prevalence in Asia, Latin and North America. Around the world 219 million women are sterilized whereas only 16 million men underwent vasectomy (source). The usage of the different methods of contraception by continent can be seen here:

Figure 1: Contraceptive prevalence among married or in-union women aged 15 to 49 by method and region, 1990 and 2011. Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affair (2013), Trends in Contraceptive Methods Used Worldwide. Population facts No. 2013/9. 

Why this digression on contraception? Because the number of suitable options is limited. I was on hormonal contraceptives for roughly 10 years. I was one of the lucky ones who experienced only mild side effects. But still, at one point, I decided that I want to get off the hormonal treatment and got a copper IUD. Since then, I enjoy the physical and mental benefits of a natural menstrual cycle. I am again a lucky one to have only mild discomfort during my period and I do not suffer from conditions like e.g. PCOS or endometriosis. Overall, my reproductive organs do fine. And yet, getting the IUD installed was one of the most painful things ever. Not so much because of the rather intense pain, but more because of the quality of the pain. It felt like some part of me, deep within my guts, that was not supposed to be touched by anything ever, was hurt. Ugh. 

Never again. 

I was looking for a better option. Yes, vasectomy is a way smaller intervention than a tubal ligation, which is always performed under general anesthesia, but for various reasons, that I also discussed thoroughly with my partner, I wanted a  permanent solution for myself.

And I was incredibly lucky. I found great support not just from my friends and my gynecologist, but there’s also an information center in the city I live in, where I was given all the necessary information and direct contact to doctors that do tubal ligations. I expected the process to be extremely tough because I had listened to the story of a lady, aged 29, who had fought six months to get the procedure done. I was scared. But the path unfolded surprisingly smooth and a few months after my first visit at the information center, I got sterilized. 

“But what if you change your mind?”

This is what people always said to me, when I was telling them, that I do not intend to have children: "Wait until you're older!" "I thought the same, when I was your age" "I'm sure you'll change your mind".

The comments became less as i grew older, especially after turning 30, but still, occasionally, I got to hear the same old phrases. 

As if it was impossible to be certain of whether you want to have a family or not in your 20s. As if women are not capable of taking this decision on the basis of emotional and/or rational reasons until they passed a certain age - that is, of course, defined by society. 

Society claims, that at a certain moment in life *flick*, like magic, a woman’s kid-switch is engaged in the brain, that sets off the internal clock which will take away the steering wheel of rationality. And everyone knows that this is going to happen, except the woman herself.

Young women, even kids, that talk about their wish to have a family one day are never treated as their wishes were irrational or will fade "once they get older". 

I personally made the experience, that the older I got, the stronger I was convinced that I won’t have children. Of course, I had moments of insecurity that this might change one day. But this is normal and happens with many more or less important life choices like getting tattooed, signing up for a school or university, moving to another city or breaking up with a partner. Doubts are normal. 

I will have to live with the consequences of my decisions. And so do you with yours. 

That being said, there is also no guarantee that mothers do change their mind and regret their decision. An article by Orna Donath went viral a few years ago, because she interviewed several Israeli mothers who got interviewed on #regrettingmotherhood. This is not representative. But this might be an under-reported problem. Further research is needed.

A final statement

I am incredibly happy that I had the possibility to get the surgery done. I am thankful to life in a part of the world where various options for contraception are available and affordable. I am thankful for the people around me, who supported me in the process. I am grateful for the people who did the operation, so that everything was safe and without complications. And last, but by far not least, I am proud of my body that it handled everything so well. I feel incredibly strong, empowered and self-conscious and I am looking forward to deepen the relationship with both my body, my femininity and my sexuality, knowing that I never have to bother my body with contraceptives again.

Recommended to read:

No kid - Quarante raisons de ne pas avoir d'enfant by Corinne Maier

Die Uhr die nicht tickt by Sara Diehl

Kunskapens frukt (Engl: Fruit of knowledge, germ: Der Ursprung der Welt) by Liv Strömquist

Schwangerwerdenkönnen by Antje Schrupp

Abolish the family. A manifesto for care and liberation by Sophie Lewis

Recommended to watch:

A documentation about young women and their journey to getting sterilized in Germany 

Recommended to listen to:

The interview with Milena, mentioned above, who fought six months to get sterilized in Switzerland at age 29

Recommended to follow:

@tiffany.jmarie on instagram

For support and further information: 

https://www.selbstbestimmt-steril.de/

#childfreebychoice

[hxdrostorm]

@masterofthehighgroud​ has sent: 1 | 5 | 7 mun questions

Lets get some NaCl-y on Munday! [Accepting]

1. What’s the worst role playing experience you’ve had?

// Fanfiction writer meets RPer, and it doesn’t go well more news at 11.

I know, it’s easy to assume that RP is basically for everyone and anyone. However, what people don’t realise is that, RP requires a type of flexibility and its own writing style. Otherwise, you end up god modding on top of giving, very little for the RPer to work with. That’s why I say how, I most likely wouldn’t do well as a fanfiction writer. Yet, I’m more than capable of putting out long responses for my replies. Meanwhile, I’ve come across phenomenal writers, but they weren’t exactly good RPers.

Anyway, I’ve had to deal with people trying to force me to write my muses a certain way, because said partner wanted something specific. And although the ideas were cool... They just didn’t fit my portrayal, and I would often find myself in a position of being like ‘well then, what’s the point of approaching me to RP with anyway?’. Just let me write my muse, the way I envision them, thank u.

5. Have you ever had to block someone or cut off contact with them?

// Oh absolutely, for both of them! Especially when it comes to blocking, because I love pre-emptively blocking anyone that rubs me in the wrong way.

7. Things that you will not tolerate?

// Vagueposting. You might think you’re being sneaky about it, that no one will notice who you may be referring to (or even the person you’re vagueing about, won’t notice.). However, that’s not the case, at all. Not only are you risking of blowing a small situation way out of proportion, because shit spreads like wildfire around here (from my experience, all it takes is one lil post for things to get out of control, it’s THAT easy). It’s a sign of immaturity.

Seriously, just keep it to yourself, or in a private chat with your friends. Don’t publicize it, on your blog where anyone can see and react to. I’ll not entertain anyone, who does this shit.

#ooc / #thank you for the ask! #Would you like some salt in your tea? #masterofthehighgroud

[yihrae]

The following reflection is taken from my assignment for AI & Humanity. These reflections were on two public lectures. The first was about Botdistrikt, a UX focused chatbot platform that focuses on the easy development of chatbots. The second was on a lecture titled "Modelling Ethics In Digital Environments" which essentially discussed some of the ethical setbacks scientists faced when they try and model certain environments.

For the QnA with BotDistrikt, I found the most fascinating part was when the speaker discussed about how Botdistrikt came to be. They started out as a simple bus uncle chatbot. Which is crazy because I know of some friends that use this exact chatbot to find the timings of the buses - I suppose this is testament to how small Singapore is… They evolved from there when they realized there was actually a need for high quality chatbots and expanded into Botdistrikt. This kind of reminds me of when mathematicians originally invented imaginary numbers for a very niche purpose of finding the square root of negative one but later realised that it had profound applications within physics. Or perhaps a more relevant example was when deep learning software that was originally used to differentiate between different types of bread in a Japanese bakery turned out to have applications in cancer cell detection. I suppose that the take away here is: often the things you construct or the skills you develop may not always be employed in the exact manner you had envisioned them. But that's not always a bad thing! It's important to stay adaptable and to practice the different ways in which you can apply the skills you've learnt across multiple domains. For me personally, I hope that whatever I'm learning now; the technical side of developing chatbots as well as the sociological side of implementing them, can be useful in (hopefully!) pleasantly surprising ways in the future.

I had a talk with Dean Elvin Lim the other day, and he was talking about the different waves of technology. The first wave was Nvidia's focus on hardware development and now we are in the second wave of A.I. and deep learning and what not. He encouraged me to think about what exactly the third wave would be, and how can I equip myself with the skills to be sufficiently prepared for when such a wave might strike. Truly quite an intriguing question!

Also, I find it quite funny they work with both Mcdonald's and HPB.

For the public lecture, my greatest takeaways were actually during the QnA segment. This was the question about organizations staying independent from government intervention. Tom discussed how it is problematic that a lot of researchers work for money. A lot of the work that needs to be done might not necessarily pay well, so what happens is that it ends up getting offloaded to volunteer organizations. These are obviously non-profit and as such the volunteers or the organization's main interest may not actually lie within some of the work they are made to do. This struck me because it really did get me thinking about money. Particularly in the context of this lecture - you want to be ethical but you also want to make profit. In some cases it might not be so difficult. For example, if the area you're interested in modelling also happens to be an area that can be redeveloped for some type of financial gain, then there's an overlap in interests and you can have the best of both worlds. But in a lot of cases, sometimes where the money lies may not be the best for the environment or the most ethical in general. The part about volunteer organizations really struck a chord with me because I had recently quit my own volunteering. I used to volunteer at Youth Corps Singapore at a branch called "Community Peer Supporters", but I quit after becoming a leader there and realising how inefficient the system was at a higher level. Sometimes I wonder: if I was being paid, would I still have quit? Probably not! I am very broke after all my concerts and all that. So in a lot of ways it really makes me wonder about how exactly can we popularize work that needs to be done yet might not make a lot of money. I suppose in some ways lots of government intervention and a less-laissez-faire market might not be so bad after all!

[nellfy-in-thestarhut]

This October, I quit a job that stressed the ever living hell out of me for two years. I was supposed to make three years on Christmas, but I lost my patience with the place and walked out once my shift was done. I didn't even bother packing it nicely. I just put my ID in a folded piece of paper with "Don't expect to see me tomorrow" written on the front.

I turned that paper right on in to my former boss and got the hell out of there. That next morning, I was called back in to talk to the HR lady to have a discussion about what happened. The HR lady is nice, but to the point where it starts to feel like you're talking to a wall nice.

I explained my last straw and why it became the straw on the stack. It became kind of frustrating. The whole time, she was also telling me that everyone was shocked and they all missed me. She said she thinks I have fallen victim to burn out because I'm working two jobs, and of course, I was bound to get tired.

Here is the thing about the second job (job B). I have been there since I was a teen volunteer. They hired me after a year because I liked being around, and they needed an employee. I actually find joy in working there, and they will pry that job from my cold, dead hands. If I had to quit that job, I would still come back to help them in any way I could because they have been with me through a large part of my life and supported me. I will support them until my last breath. I had Job B way longer than job A, and it will forever stay that way.

NEVER in my entire time at job B, have I ever felt:

Disrespected by my coworks (which happened often at job A)

Questioned on everything I know I was supposed to do

Unheard during meetings

Left out on things I needed to know

Like I was being tricked or put in a position where I was stuck in a lose-lose situation

Like my personal life was constantly on hold and that my life revolved around meeting numbers on a chart.

Like I was a child or to stupid

And they actually stand up for their employees! I have never been mistreated at my second job the way that my main job had.

I felt so distressed at Job A that I couldn't even recognize myself. I found that I have never felt more anger in my life than the anger i had in that job. I wanted to be mean, I wanted to make a fuse and mess things up.

Most of all, job A MADE ME WANT TO HURT PEOPLE.

It made me want to punch people's teeth out and Guage out their eyes with rusty ice picks before funneling salt into the open wound. It made me want to stomp on them and tear them to shreds.

I didn't want to be like that. I didn't want to be so rough and mean. I didn't like that envisioning people getting harmed made me feel good and better.

The environment started to change me for the worst and, in some cases, physically ill. It was only recently that the company made lunches and breaks a bit more clear, so most of my time in one of the most understaffed departments I didn't even have enough time to sit for a few minutes to eat a simple sandwich and if I had brought food from home I wouldn't have a second to atleast get a few bites in before someone made a fuss about 'no one being available'.

(Screw the supervisor who made me get back on the floor after one minute of the break. I specifically told everyone that I needed to eat, or I might actually pass out. I had just recovered from being sick but still feeling lingering effects.)

That job has actually caused me to be sick as well because half of the staff in the other departments didn't believe in covid and exposed a bunch of other people to it, but I digress.

The Hr lady asked that we meet back up in a week to further discuss my decision. I wasn't able to join them for that meeting because I was actually doing better at job B, and I managed to find another possible job that same week. I was able to go back after a little while, BUT THE ONES I NEEDED TO SPEAK TO WEREN’T THERE.

I came back the next day even earlier, and they still did not show. I managed to find my former boss and told him that I wasn't coming back and that he could toss my ID. I told him that I would tell the HR representative, but she was not there, and I wasn't going to come back another day to set the record straight. Screw that.

You can get an idea how strained my old department was because in my two years working there, I was already a senior agent. The only reason I was a senior agent was because no one else stuck around long enough. In those two years, I had taught several other people how to do things in my department, and they did amazing, but they all left after being in the department for a little while. It got so bad that instead of hiring new people to come work, they got people from other departments to do part time with us. This upset everyone in our department because the part-timers had biases. They wouldn't help us cover all the stops. They only wanted to help the departments that they also work with, and when we actually needed them the most, they would be nowhere in sight. We, the full timers, were left to scramble while also picking up after them. We have complained and made awareness of the problems many, MANY times, but nothing was ever done to fix these consistent streams of issues.

For example, my department had severe communication problems. We got most of our information on a whatsapp group chat, but we weren't allowed to be on our phones while we were working. We managed to do the job via word of mouth, but that doesn't work when everyone is all over the place in different directions. We also continuously got in trouble for not answering messages while we had our hands full. So to combat this, they brought in walky talkys. We were all okay to try this but the issue that arose was that we couldn't access them because they were locked in the office after everyday and no one was available to open the door in the morning so we could get to them.

We were locked out of our supposed solution. They stopped using them for a while, and when the present HR agent came in, they were reinstated.

I watched the company repeat solutions that didn't work the first time.

All the while, our complaint box was being filled to the brink when we couldn't actually do anything to fix the old problems or the new problems. We got complained on for:

Being on our phones

Not answering the messages on the phones

Being to fast

Not giving quality care

Being to slow

Not looking neat after harsh winds, hot temperatures, or getting caught in the rain. We were not provided with anything to protect us from any of that. We had to pay for company hats and couldn't wear our own, they didn't even provide raincoats and we couldn't bring our own, they bought one big, dispenser bottle of SPF and that was it, it was communal.

I had a fanny pack to hold my phone and wallet so I didn't have to take everything out my pockets to put them back in while going through security, I was told I wasn't allowed to have it and had to leave it behind.

not taking a tampon out of my pocket while going through security. A lot of the security agents understand and let me keep it there after I told them it was for hygiene purposes, but the hard ass that day got mad at me and told me to show her what it was and didn't look at what I was showing her for five minutes and when she looked told me to put it back in my pocket. I was embarrassed, humiliated, and several minutes late to help with a task

being late in the previous point. Many of my coworkers were mad at me for the tardiness but begrudgingly forgave me for this situation.

going the extra mile at the job

not going the extra mile

Being caught in the break room eating on the break that I specifically told everyone I was going on to eat.

My boss getting an email from security stating that they have trouble with us 'cooperating' with them. We followed every rule they magically presented every time. Things that weren't an issue before suddenly became a problem, and vise verse.

Talking back harshly to what i thought was an unnecessarily rude comment on me and my personal life. None of the staff in the departments we worked with knew how to mind their own damned business, but when I snapped back, I somehow crossed a line.

Not being seen. They said I was really good at hiding, but I literally just kept moving. To the point that no one could recall seeing me go anywhere.

For being in the restroom for too long. They timed me in the restroom, and it seemed that they forgot that I, a female, had a period and that it is different for each person. They wanted us to announce what type of pause we needed. I refuse, and still do, to tell people what goes on in there or answer calls in there. I find it super fucking rude for anyone if I were to talk to anyone while taking a shit or if someone picked up my call while they were doing their bathroom business.

Feeling tired after they suddenly changed my 9 o'clock shift to 8 one week, and they switched it back to the 9 the next. It's not like the continuous switching ruined my sleep cycle or anything/sarc.

I think you all get the hint. So we have these complaints, customers, internal drama, and understaffedness. Then add on communication issues, a management that didn't do anything to fix the problem and still have to come home and handle personal issues.

We are left with a pile of shit. It didn't help that I was the youngest one in my department, and everyone else were older folks with children. They talked to me like I was dumb and didn't know how to do my job. I had to keep reminding them that I was not their fucking child to be talking to me so rudely and that I was a whole ass adult that can cuss and fight. They left me to handle delays and late night issues because they used their kids as an excuse to leave ahead of everyone else. I usually wouldn't mind staying behind if you were handling school-aged children, but RARA YOU SON WAS 20. I learned to never stick around because if I did, they would all ditch me to handle everything myself. If it was anyone else, they'd have at least two people stay who mutually agreed to stay.

The last straw was when I was going through security with a customer, and I was going through the normal script on what to do and the officer asked me really loudly and condensing 'if I worked there [in security]' several times infront of the passengers.

No other officers previously found an issue with the script I carefully made throughout my whole two years there. I have even had some thank me for being prepared when arriving because it makes the process faster. I didn't understand why they had to yell at me, make my job harder, and embarrass me in front of customers who then sent a complaint after I left. Why couldn't she have pulled me to the side and explained the issue?

I would have gladly changed up the script a bit if it was that big of a problem. I get it. That place is hell, but why go out of your way to do that. Not only did she spring that up on me out of nowhere, but she has also made the passenger aware that there is trouble. My job was to make sure that they went through without trouble and that they were as comfortable as they could be while traveling through. It is the basics of hospitality to handle the customer first and handle any miniscule issue afterward. If it was a huge problem, then there is nothing I could get mad at, but I was simply going through the script the same way I always have.

I told my mother, who also works in the shops after security, that I was going to leave that day without a job. She has been in that place for way longer than me and has two jobs in the same building. I had to remind her that I was not her and that I didn't have her patience to stay in that place. I felt so embarrassed and full of dread. All of that because i did my job the way the officer didn't like. I told the HR lady that I shouldn't have to feel dread or face embarrassment when I am doing something as simple as my own job. I felt so unheard.

All of this happened, and I still had to go home and face the personal management of the family's judgment. Good God. I am so glad I left that place, but at home, I was nagged till high heavens to go back.

I admit I did jump the gun, but I don't regret it. It was not like I was fully unemployed. I had another source of income, and although it doesn't pay as much as Job A, I sure do feel a lot better in life. I even have a new second job and a day off. I have less money, but good God, was it worth it.

So, to anyone reading this. You deserve decency at your place of work. You deserve to have basic respect and be treated like a person while you make a living.

#nellfy yells at the wall #yes i have issues #and yes i have told my therapist about it #that job made me schedule my first appointment there in two years #i cant say i regret going back to therapy. #good lord miss k doesnt get paid enough to handle my emotional messes #dont mind this #sorry. i vented #tw vent #vent post

[lavienbleuuu]

You’re not meant to have it all figured out.

I sometimes feel like I can sit and write forever about absolutely nothing. I can talk forever about nonsense, things that don’t really matter, but only matter so much. I often ask myself why I like writing so much, and it’s usually this love for the ability to put your thoughts out there, and share a certain message with people, that you think is so important. And I believe, it makes me happiest when I’m able to feel as if I’m working towards reaching my full potential in the sense of the creativity of my mind, and passion inside my soul.

Do what you love, and really commit to it, even if you’re not so sure about it.

And what I enjoy so much is that I don’t know whether I’m even good at it or not, but maybe that’s the beauty of it. I find most interest in my life whenever I hop on journeys and paths in which I don’t know where they’ll be taking me.

One of content creators, Matt D’avella, talks about how one’s life depends on the number of risks they take, and that essentially affects how boring or interesting it is. That, if your life feels so boring, maybe it’s because you stay too much inside your comfort zones, in the boxes that people put you in. But he also touches on the idea that you need to take strategic risks, because your life is at stake. Meaning that, you shouldn’t really have a “YOLO” mentality, but also do “YOLO” things.

So, what if it doesn’t make sense to people why you’re doing it. So, what if you’re not that good at it. If you stop now then you’ll never really know how potentially well you could have been at it, so why not try and be good — as long as you’re enjoying it.

Consequences of failure

We have become so afraid of failure, that it almost limits us from living the life we truly want. But so, what if you fail? Really sit back and think about the worst-case scenario in your leap of faith, is it really all that bad?

Whenever I have a race, I always get unconsciously super nervous, but I have learned a greatly effective way in dealing with it, that I also began using in real life situations.

I start to think about what I’m really afraid of, and I envision the worst-case scenarios in my head, and how I would react to them. After a while of doing this, I became almost immune to my nervousness. The worst-case scenario almost became a friend, and I wasn’t so afraid of it after all. I noticed how I’m not really the main character. That, things are actually happening to everyone, and everyone is dealing with them. So, what makes me so different? In accepting that you’re not alone, you become far more confident within yourself and any situation at hand.

Situations and things, life and its great mystery

You can sit there for hours, days, years, questioning why this specific thing happened, and if only it hadn’t‎, or did, then how differently your life would have been. But questioning won’t really change anything, except for make you more stressed out. The thoughts of what could’ve been will trouble your days and maybe even haunt you forever.

It can be a real struggle, to move on, and try to learn from the whole situation. It takes lots of time to even realize that it was such a small little bump in the grand scheme of things, that it really wasn’t as big of a deal you though it was, in that moment. How does one truly find it though? That certainty in knowing that you will get over this, that it did happen for a reason, that you will move on to bigger things. How do you, in that moment, guarantee so much control in your mind, in knowing that everything is and will be okay?

People have their different ways of responding to things, for some it’s meditating, for others it’s journaling, or music, or exercise; But we all know that, in that moment, in the depth of despair, in the heat of it all, your mind cannot comprehend a single thought at once.

“Your anger is the part of you that knows your mistreatment and abuse are unacceptable. Your anger knows you deserve to be treated well, and with kindness. Your anger is a part of you that loves you.” — Lyndsey Gallant

Becoming okay with anything and everything

The truth lies not in your good days only, but in practicing your response to everything within day-to-day life. This means finding true meaning, and value in creating peace within yourself. In accepting your situation as is, and loving it for what it is, because everything that you have been through, every stage that life put you through, has shaped who you are.

The way to practice it is by practicing being alone and enjoying it. Being okay with sitting with your thoughts, for long periods of time. Accepting who you are fully, and truly fall in love with your life.

“You’re not stuck. You’re just committed to certain patterns of behavior because they helped you in the past. Now those behaviors have become more harmful than helpful. The reason why you can’t move forward is because you keep applying old formula to a new level in your life. Change the formula to get a different result.” — Emily Maroutian

Stop longing for the perfect life, because life isn’t meant to be perfect!

You won’t get anything out of a happy, fulfilling life. Even though we all aspire for that, if we were to have it, we would still complain. It is in our human nature, to not be fully satisfied with anything. In truly understanding that, you’re able to balance your state of emotions. Learning how to not get too ecstatic on the highs, nor too frustrated at the lows, because you have faith that there will always be a hint of suffering within every state of joy. Eventually, you’ll find stability, a homeostasis between all emotions.

It seems as if we all have hope for a certain life, and maybe this is truer for teenagers. But, at that stage in life, maybe in the stage of “I think I know it all but really I have no idea what it all is”, we have so much hope. Hope for a better life, for individuality, for independence, a life without one controlling, but us. And what’s funny is that, when we do have that, we always tend to reminisce the days when we didn’t. And this goes back to saying that we will never be fully satisfied. So, why worry about it in the first place? Maybe the perfect life is just the one we’re living in, the things that happen are meant for us and only us, because there’s no other way it could’ve been.

Be grateful for all the pain and suffering you went through.

Pain builds character. Pain makes us stronger. It defines us. Truly, makes us who we are. One can never go through the highs, feeling as good as they do, without having been through the lowest of lows. And with time, we only learn more and more how to deal with things.

Learn to be okay with everything… that nothing can really bother you. Not everything happens for a reason, but everything does happen for a reason. That doesn’t mean that we can sit there, do nothing, and say that everything happens for a reason. But rather, live life, thoroughly, with all that we can do, and all that we’re capable of doing, and when things happen, move on, because they were meant to happen, to teach you a lesson. Sit with your pain, and let it be. Let it open new doors in your life and help you create wonderful attributes in you that you never knew were possible.

I feel the pain.

But I transform it.

Into colors

Into poems

Into prayers

Into songs

Into dance

Into a portal

To return

Home. — note to self

[crazyblondelife]

Holiday Style...Winter Layering

Lately, I’ve been feeling pulled to be more creative in my life…with my home and wardrobe as well as the food that I make. This also spills over into relationships…how can I imagine them to be better, different, or sometimes…over? What can I give of myself that I have been holding back and what relationships matter most?

The question becomes - How am I expressing myself in this world? Does this expression come from an authentic place, or from a place of fear and not enoughness. This has strongly influenced me over the past several weeks and I plan to elaborate on this question because it seems very important!

The woods beside our home have always fascinated me (stay with me here). They are a little pocket of the wild inside the confinement of an old suburban neighborhood. They have never been built on and at night, it sounds as if we live deep inside the forest, when in reality, we live 2 minutes from our downtown.

Just recently, as the weather has gotten colder and I’ve taken fewer walks with Amos, I’ve begun to take him out and let him run free…supervised of course. He normally stays pretty close by…sniffing and doing all the doggy things and while he’s sniffing, I look around. I look up at the sky and down at the leaves on the ground. There are so many birds as well as other creatures that I can’t see but I know they’re there and I wonder if they’re watching me!

I had the idea to take these pictures in my woods the other day and the phrase that I kept thinking about was “reality winks” (from the poem in last weeks post). Miracles occur when reality winks and the woods seem to be a perfect place for reality to wink…full of wonder and possibility. I wanted to wear something that felt just a little unexpected and contrasting for these pictures and I think I nailed it.

I’m wearing a suit and sweater from Cabi that I purchased last season and loved but haven’t worn often. I added my Prada Chelsea boots and a long black coat from Zara. I’m really in love with this outfit as it feels festive but also unexpected. As is often the case, it came to me suddenly as I was holding the coat thinking “what would be just a little out of the box to wear with this?”

I’m consciously trying to curate my life. To envision what I want my days, weeks and years to look like and slowing down to take the time to imagine and then act.

I have a “uniform” that I could pick out with my eyes closed but I don’t want to do that anymore. I have certain foods that I reach for almost daily and I also don’t want to do that anymore. Why, when there are so many other options everywhere would I keep going back to the familiar?

I’ve also been choosing some new items for our home that really reflect more the way I want it to feel as our family all come together in this big, old, quirky house. I’m rethinking how I want to spend my days…how important is social media and could I fit in another workout because it’s the best thing for me. Do I want to watch Netflix, or would I rather sit outside by the fire? Should we have takeout, or could I put something in the slow cooker in the morning?

Living intentionally and purposefully choosing to bring beauty into the every day is important and so many people have few options about this, and even if they did, they wouldn’t understand how because they weren’t brought up with any kind of beauty. The truth is, there is beauty everywhere, but you have to look for it, and/or create it. It could simply be putting your coffee into a mug instead of a paper cup, or really noticing and being grateful for a beautiful tree.

Elevating the everyday, so that our lives are also elevated takes a little more effort but is so worth it. Our days and our memories are made in the small moments, so why not make those moments as special as possible. I hope you’ll consider this as we enter into the holiday season. It’s so difficult to slow down when there is so much to accomplish, but at least, in your mind, decide what is most important and as you go about your day, make your decisions based on what is important to you and create a holiday full of beautiful memories! You may just look back and see that in fact…reality winked!

I’ll be updating the holiday gift guides tonight so be sure to check back for new items that you’ll love for yourself and others! I hope you’re having the best weekend!

#Living with intention #Holiday Style #fashion #holiday fashion

[maxblog16]

Hey! It’s me, Maxim Aleiya Batan, you can call me Max. I was born on May 14, 2006 in Tuguegarao City. I lived in Illuru Norte, Rizal Cagayan but currently reside at Reyes St. Ugac Norte for my studies. My parents are Raquel Batan and Arthur Luis Batan. They can be a little nosy and overprotective at times, but I still love them. After all, without them I wouldn't be alive. I also have a brother, my best friend, Cyrus Arth Batan. He is the eldest.

A little more information about myself is that I enjoy sunset walks on the beach, red roses by the armful, and traveling to different countries.

Just kidding! I’m not a fan of those things but traveling to different countries is most likely one of my goals. More seriously, I love interacting and socializing with others, as well as making new friends all the time. I would call myself a benevolent person, often I help my friends. Also I always look at the positive side of things in terms of work performance, which enables me to strive to have a better future in life.

Thinking about my future makes me feel both frightened and intrigued. On the one hand, I have many plans and goals that I want to reach. In ten years, I envision myself having some good credentials (a degree), working for a prestigious organization, spending time with my family, and contributing to my community and the environment. I'll make every effort, during the future, to carry out all of my goals. I'll do everything in my best to be an essential asset to the organization I work for. Like any other young person, I want prosperity and happiness for my family, including my parents, siblings, and myself.

Most of the strands in Senior High School are indeed the best, and each student has their own choice on what they want to pursue depending on their career. In pursuing my goals in life, I could say that STEM is the best choice for me because learning about the world around you, coming up with creative solutions to practical problems, and contributing to some of the nation's most significant discoveries and advancements are all benefits of studying and working in STEM strands. Although, most Strands are somehow the same as how educators teach us. Every student has different intelligences.

I've always wanted to help others because it's my passion to care for those who are ill or injured, which is why I chose to study medicine in college. The potential of the reward in the future should motivate me despite the difficulties. A career in medicine offers the exceptional chance to assist people via commitment and communication. The opportunity to interact with patients and engage in problem-solving is what forces me to be flexible on a case-by-case basis. However, these difficulties help me develop into a student of medicine, constantly seeking to improve and be the good doctor I can be in the future.

[opalesense]

How would the genshin Bois, zhongli, childe, diluc and kaeya react to a fem traveller stuck in a wall after a harsh battle, they'll help her get out right?...right?

a sight to behold

zhongli, childe, diluc, kaeya & f!reader (NSFW-ish)

1.9k words • ~13 min. read

warnings: just a lot of teasing & dirty thoughts

notes: i was practically rubbing my hands together with evil intentions when i saw this request but i’ll spare the graphic details for another time, otherwise this will be extremely long!! also i wrote them separately here BUT i wouldn’t be opposed if someone requested them to be grouped together instead... anyway, i hope you enjoy this!! >:)

THE WIDELY FEARED PRIMO GEOVISHAP was certainly a sight to behold from above. You quickly understood why so many people often avoided interacting with this beast – it was intimidating even while it slept soundly, its loud snores echoing throughout the cavern despite being so far down. As you stood on the platform above its sleeping form, you studied its details, noticing the element it possessed and strategizing your combat plan quickly, thankful that you could manipulate an element that targetted its weakness. Once you made up your mind, you let out a huff as you took a leap of faith down, letting your glider save you at the last second before you could actually make contact with the ground.

 Your companion followed behind swiftly, the two of you moving gently around the walls of the cavern, careful not to wake the beast from its slumber. In a low whisper, you began to describe your strategy to your partner, but alas, the beast suddenly awoke and interrupted your planning with a ear splitting roar.

 Without a second thought, the two of you dashed to the creature, loosely following the details of the plan you had based on what you were able to say before you got interrupted. The battle was fine at first, but you soon realized how out of sync the two of you became as the fight progressed. Your elemental reactions were getting poorly timed, and it was difficult to keep an eye on each other’s movements with the beast constantly thrashing about and blocking communication.

 In normal circumstances, the two of you excelled in combat together without needing any other support. Maybe it was bad luck, or maybe you bit off more than you could chew this time, but you noticed you were getting knocked around easier than usual. Things were obviously not going your way and you had to think of a solution fast.

 But before you knew it, your distraction with your own thoughts got the best of you. One single swipe of the geovishap’s tail sent you flying across the cavern towards the opposite wall then tumbling on the ragged, rocky edges of floor, certainly leaving cuts and bruises for later. To make matters worse, one more aggressive roar from the beast shook the walls of cavern enough to send chunks of rock tumbling down towards your injured body. Unable to form coherent thoughts, you knew you didn’t have the strength to escape the avalanche. Instead, all you could do was lay there, helpless and bracing for impact, praying to the Archons that you can be saved.

zhongli

 Zhongli made quick work of the beast, using his shield to deliver an extremely effective counter attack and finishing it once and for all. The creature wailed in pain in its dying moments before disintegrating into dust. He expected to see your face on the other side but alas, you were nowhere to be seen.

 “[Y/N]?” his face tensed as he tried to think of where you could have disappeared to. As his eyes darted around the cavern, he immediately noticed a tiny speck of color amongst the rocks on the wall that resembled your clothing. He quickly sprinted towards you, lifting some of the boulders off of you effortlessly using his geo manipulation.

 He began to subconsciously slow down once he saw the way you were displayed in front of him. Your legs were propped up slightly from the rocks underneath you that caved in from the impact. The way your hips curved up caused your skirt to fold back onto you, leaving you completely exposed under his gaze.

 Ungodly thoughts began to race across Zhongli’s mind. He couldn’t help but slowly undress you in his mind, thinking about all the things he could do to you in this moment of vulnerability.

You poor thing... If only we were not in such a potential dire circumstance of life or death, what would stop me from keeping these rocks on top of you, grabbing those hips, and pressing myself against you? It would be the perfect opportunity to keep you still while I have my way with you... Perhaps I should check to see if you’re okay first, and maybe I can trap you with these rocks myself instead. Certainly I could even lift you in a better position for a better fit...

“Stay with me, [Y/N],” Zhongli snapped out of his fantasy and continued to lift the boulders off of you, wondering if he should really go through with his urges. “You will be okay...”

childe

 Childe had noticed you fly across the cavern in the corner of his eye, and watching you land on the floor at such a fierce impact only fueled him to keep fighting. In a fit of a rage and frustration, he summoned his dual blades and quickly turned the tides of the battle towards his favor. He didn’t even need to watch the beast die to know it was dead within seconds, and after his final blow he quickly dashed towards where you landed only to find out you had been crushed by more rocks.

 He let out another yell of frustration, grabbing the boulders one by one and pushing them off of you. “[Y/N]? Can you hear me?”

 “I’m fine, just get these off of me!” you managed to call out from underneath the pile. Relieved that you were alive and well, he managed to push most of the boulders off but hesitated once he got a good look at the way you were laid out in front of him.

 With your legs dangling off the edge of the pile, your ass was comedically exposed towards him, the rest of your upper half still trapped within the remains of the avalanche. Funnily enough, the hem of your skirt had even got trapped above your hips that you were completely exposed, causing Childe to grin evilly.

 “Well, well, well,” he slowly walked over to you and placed a gloved hand on your bare cheek, still slightly out of breath from the heavy lifting. He gave a gentle squeeze, eliciting a gasp from you. “Is this my reward for helping you? If so, I’ll gladly take it now...”

 “Did you forget that I’m stuck? What if I’m badly injured?!”

 “In that case, I’m sure I can make all the pain go away and replace it with pleasure instead,” he gave one final squeeze and chuckled before walking away to grab another boulder. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding... But once you’re out, don’t expect all this help to come for free, you know.”

diluc

 Diluc watched you tumble across the floor with panicked eyes, immediately worrying about your safety but not letting that distract him from the task at hand. In the heat of the moment under the influence of rage and anxiety, he summoned his pyro manipulation to set his claymore ablaze and deliver multiple final blows to the creature, smashing its figure into bits. The beast cried in its final moments and when he was sure it was dead, he dropped his sword as he sprinted towards you.

 Pure panic settled in once he saw you had been crushed underneath the pile of rocks. He pushed himself to run faster, feeling tears form in the corners of his eyes but ignoring it. He didn’t want to lose you – not this easily.

 “[Y/N]!” he called out once he reached the site, “Can you hear me?”

 “I’m here, Diluc. I’m fine,” you reassured him. He deeply sighed in relief as he began to push the boulders off of you. Thank Barbatos you were alive and well! He shook the thought of you being fatally injured away from the forefront of his mind to focus on getting you out of this mess, using his strength to his advantage. But after a few rocks were pushed off of you, his eyes widened at the sight of you, a sight he will never forget.

 While your legs and upper body were still trapped underneath the pile, the first thing Diluc revealed was your ass, exposed by your skirt that was coincidentally trapped above your hips. Your thighs were pinned together, rubbing gently as you squirmed in the rubbish, trying to wiggle your way out. Or at least, he wanted to believe you were wiggling for the sole purpose of getting out, and not to tease him.

 With a nervous gulp, he averted his eyes away from you and resumed his work on the boulders. His mind couldn’t help but drift away into sinful corners, though. He envisioned the way he could firmly grab your thighs, pull down your underwear and...

 “Don’t scare me like that again,” he took a more lighthearted tone to cover up his urges, “I thought you were surely dead.”

kaeya

 After briefly witnessing you get thrown across the cavern, Kaeya managed to finally stab the beast in such a precise weakness point, making it wail in pain until it slowly withered away in its dying moments. He took no time at all to rush over to you, sprinting faster once he saw that you had been crushed by an avalanche.

 “[Y/N], talk to me,” he subtly asked for reassurance that you were still alive as he began to analyze the situation and pinpoint exactly where you were in all this rubbish.

 “I’m okay,” you weakly muttered with a grin, glad that he had come to your rescue, “Just a little bruised, that’s all.”

 Following the trail of your voice, he put his mind to work. He started to strategically push certain rocks so that others would naturally fall off of you without him needing to lift too much. After awhile, he began to spot one of your arms, then your other arm, and with each rock tumbling down he soon revealed the full picture.

 Or at least, a fraction of the full picture.

 He was relieved to see that you had wrapped your arms around your head for protection before the crash, avoiding what would have been an extremely dangerous injury. With your entire body from the chest down still trapped, you felt the need to stretch out your arms in the newly freed space and take a deep breath, glad to finally have some fresh air. “Good morning,” you joked on your bed of rocks.

 Even though he certainly felt some relief, he couldn’t fight the urge to tease you as he cooed over the sight of you so helpless underneath him. With an evil smirk, he pulled out one of the rocks that was supporting your neck, leaving your head hanging off the edge and eliciting a gasp from you. Before you could protest, he propped himself up against the wall with one arm, his body hovering over you and his crotch just inches away from your face.

 “Look at that pretty mouth of yours... You tempt me even in the most dire situations, sweetheart,” he let his free hand run slender fingers across your scalp, slowly massaging you. “Now that I think about it, I do deserve a prize for saving you, don’t I?”

 “Quit running your mouth and just help me get out of here,” you scolded him jokingly. He laughed and shook his head dismissively as he walked away to get back to work, fighting that strong urge to use your throat in such a vulnerable state.

 “If you say so, sweetheart. Maybe some other time.”

#zhongli #childe #ajax #tartaglia #diluc #kaeya #zhongli x reader #childe x reader #ajax x reader #tartaglia x reader #diluc x reader #kaeya x reader #genshin impact #genshin impact smut #genshin impact x reader #mine #bang

[raewritesthingss]

Belong to Me

Rating: Mature

Word count: 2269

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Mando knew that he had fucked up. You were always so talkative and loud as you moved about the Crest. But not today. No. Today you were silent. There was little noise and it made him uneasy. Before you’d started working with him, he enjoyed the silence and in the first few weeks of having you aboard, he missed it. That wasn’t the case now. He’d grown used to your rambling and how you’d speak in a little baby voice to Grogu. He liked how you’d narrate whatever you were doing throughout the day, even when you were by yourself. The sound of your voice brought him comfort. A sense of normalcy for the first time in a long time. It seemed like there was little that could upset you. You went with the flow of life and found the bright side of it all. At least that’s what Mando thought.

It was like any other day. You loaded up your pack with snacks and a few small toys for the baby and headed out with Mando and the Child to see what quarries were available for him. The three of you made your way towards the Cantina where Karga was waiting, there were a few patrons waiting around that quickly moved out of the way the moment they noticed a Mandalorian coming their way. That was the nice thing about traveling with Mando, no one bothered you.

You made yourself comfortable, ordering a drink for yourself and some food for Grogu. You let Mando handle business on his own usually, it was never your scene. You enjoyed taking care of the Crest and the baby, but nothing that involved the violence of your boss’s work. You set the small, metal ball in front of the baby to play with while you both waited for his food to arrive. He was content with making it float in front of his face and gave you his signature toothy grin as he did. It made you happy to see him this way. No fear, just the happiness of an innocent child. A small bowl of bone broth and a drink was placed down in front of you. You carefully switched out the toy for the food and sipped on your drink as you watched the Child gulp down his food, dripping it onto his little clothes that you’d have to wash later. It didn’t matter, he was happy. When another glass was placed in front of you, you glanced up at the bartender.

“Oh? I didn’t order this one,” you muttered and slid it back. The bartender nodded towards a booth near the back where a man was sitting sipping on his own drink. The man smiled at you but there was no kindness behind it. It was the kind of smile a predator gives its prey before it attacks. You returned his smile with one of your own, though less enthusiastic.

“No, thank you. I’m fine with just this.” you responded kindly, raising your own drink. The bartender nodded and picked the glass up before making his way back to the front of the catina. Mando’s helmet turned towards you and watched you carefully but he said nothing. You could see his hand gripping the edge of the table harder than usual.

The child let out a small cough that brought you out of your thoughts and you turned to him to wipe the broth that was dribbling off his chin and onto his clothes. You smiled at him as he tried turning his face away from the cloth. Karga was late again as per usual. He never was one to care much for arriving on time, a fact that continuously pissed Mando off. Mando had one way of doing this: his way and Karga seemed to enjoy getting in the way of that constantly. You on the other hand didn’t mind. It wasn’t often that you were able to leave the Crest and sit down for a meal. It made your life feel a bit more normal, especially given what your job was. Running around the galaxy so your boss could chase down bounties while you watched his son that had tons of people wanting him dead wasn’t exactly the way you envisioned your life. This was nice though. It made you feel like the three of you were a family. Almost.

“He’s late.” Mando’s gruff voice spoke. You could tell he was on edge. You’d learned quickly how to tell what kind of mood he was in despite how seldom he said anything.

“I’m sure he’ll be here soon. Besides, look how happy he is,” you gestured towards the Child who was now playing with the small spoon that came with his meal. Mando let out a breath that could’ve been interpreted as a laugh. His posture relaxed slightly but only for a few moments before you saw him stiffen up, his gaze set behind you. You turned in your chair only to come face to face with the man who’d bought you the drink. His eyes stayed on you, completely ignoring the man covered head to toe in beskar that could easily snap his neck and be gone before anyone noticed.

“You rejected me”, the man said, an air of superiority laced in his voice. Great. A grade A asshole.

“Well, you see I already have one of my own. And while I appreciate the gesture, I’m not interested. “ Your voice was firm but still polite. You’d always prided yourself in remaining calm and collected, even in uncomfortable situations.

The man chuckled and leaned down, throwing an arm over the back of your chair. You could smell his breath and it reeked of alcohol and cheap death sticks, “Why? Cause of this guy? Darlin’ you can’t even see his face. Bet he doesn’t even have a dick under all that shit. He can’t give you what you need, a woman like you needs a real man with a nice, big co-”, he didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence before Mando had his hand wrapped around his throat and his back shoved into the nearest wall. You could hear the man gasping for air as Mando’s grip tightened. The Child giggled as he watched, thinking it was some sort of game.

“Mando!”, you shouted. His helmet whipped around to look at you, “Enough.”, you stood up quickly, throwing down more credits than necessary and picked up the baby before making your way out of the cantina. You didn’t bother to see if Mando was following you. You didn’t care at that point. You’d told Mando before to stop fighting your own battles for you. You grew up taking care of yourself, never having anyone to look after you. It wasn’t the first time a man had invaded your personal space and attempted to make you uncomfortable and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. You didn’t need saving.

By the time you made it back to the Crest, most of your anger had faded and turned into sadness. Did Mando not think you were capable of handling yourself? Did he think you were weak? You placed the baby in the crib and shut it, making sure he was asleep before sitting down on one of the crates. The sound of metal clanging against metal alerted you, letting you know that he was back. He walked up the ramp, stopping just inside to shut it before turning his body towards yours. You stared at each other for a few long moments until you got up and made your way up to the cockpit without a word to set the coordinates for the next stop. It wasn’t long before he came up behind you and sat in the pilot’s chair. Mando never started conversations, you were always the one to initiate things but today wasn’t going to be like that. You had nothing to say to him. The silence went on for two hours before he finally broke.

“You’re upset.” his voice faltered for a moment.

You snorted and crossed your arms and turned your chair towards him, “Well I guess nothing gets past you then, huh?”. His hands tightened around the controls and he let out a sigh.

“I was only trying to-”

“No”, you cut him off quickly, “You don’t think I can do anything myself. You think I’m some weak, little girl that needs your protection but I’m not. I’m not the kid Mando, I’m a grown woman.”

Within seconds he’d switched on the autopilot and had you yanked up from your chair and backed into the wall, much like the man from earlier. His hands rested on either side of your face while his face was only inches from yours.

“Trust me, I know you’re no little girl,” his voice was low and rough and heat shot straight through you at the sound of it. You wondered what it would sound like if he was saying other things.

“I didn’t need you to do that back in the cantina, I can handle myself,” your voice came out soft and weak, nowhere near the level of confidence you were trying to give off. His helmet tilted to the side as his left hand came up to rest up your cheek. He slowly rubbed his thumb across your face. The gentleness of it all shocked you. This was a man who had killed hundreds with the same hands he used to touch you so softly now. You sucked in a breath and let your eyes shut, not wanting this moment to end ever.

“I know you can. Doesn’t mean I’m ok with someone touching what belongs to me and you belong to me”

“I don’t belong to anyone”, you both knew you were lying.

He let out a laugh and moved his hands down to the waistband of your pants, “We’ll see”. You didn’t have time to respond before he’d yanked your pants down, bringing your underwear with them. Your hands moved up to his chest but he grabbed both your wrists in one hand and held them tightly while using his other to work on his belt. He tossed it to the side and then pulled his pants down just enough to let his cock out. You gasped when you finally saw it. He was bigger than any man you’d ever seen. It terrified you but you wanted it so bad. He let go of your wrists and moved your hand down to wrap around him, moving your hand up and down slowly. The groan he let out was sinful and you could feel yourself growing wetter by the second. His free hand moved between your legs and he pushed two thick fingers inside you. Your eyes rolled back instantly as you whimpered.

“You get this wet for someone you don’t belong to?” he asked, pumping his fingers in and out of you at an agonizingly slow pace. Your mouth opened to respond but nothing came out as he pressed his thumb against your clit, rubbing quick circles, “You don’t have anything to say? That’s a first.” his voice was somehow deeper, his breathing becoming more labored with each passing second.

He pulled his fingers out slowly, causing you to let out a whine. You moved your own hand down but he slapped it away and positioned himself at your entrance. His hand moved to your chin, tilting your head up to look at him. He said nothing but you knew he was asking for your permission. He had to know that you wanted this. That you needed this as much as he did. You nodded and almost missed the small sigh of relief he let out. The feeling of him pushing into you was indescribable. The stretch was both painful and full of pleasure. You don’t know how you’d gone this long without it.

“Fucking tight,” he grunted and pulled back again only to slam into you seconds later. The pace he set was brutal. You could barely keep up. Your entire brain went to mush in that moment. The noises coming out of you would have embarrassed you in any other situation if it weren’t for the fact that you couldn’t think straight enough to care. Or the fact that Mando was encouraging you. You couldn’t register much of what he said but you were able to catch a few small phrases.

“Good girl.”

“That’s it baby, just like that.”

“Sound so pretty”

“Mine.”

You could feel yourself getting close to your climax and you knew he was close to his. His thrusts were becoming sloppier. His helmet rested on your shoulder. His hand moved down to play with your clit and your legs began to shake. You were so close. His pace quickened, hitting you right where you needed it most and you felt your orgasm take over your whole body. Black spots danced around in your vision. You felt something warm seep inside of you and barely registered the sound of Mando moaning and grunting against you.

You lifted your head after what felt like hours to find that you’d put all of your weight on him. He held you up without any effort though.

“I am yours. But that means that you’re mine,” you said softly.

He reached a hand up to brush a stray piece of hair out of your face, “I’ve been yours from the moment you set foot on this ship sweet girl,” he whispered before pulling you into his chest and wrapped his arms around you tightly.

#din x y/n #din djarin x y/n #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #din x reader #din djarin #the mandalorian x y/n #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #the mandolarian #mando x y/n #mando x you #mando x reader #smut #din djarin smut #mando smut #din djarin fanfiction #din djarin fanfic #din djarin oneshot #mando oneshot #the mandalorian oneshot

[thedeadhandofseldon]

The Anti-Mercer Effect

On the Accessibility of D&D, Why Unprepared Casters is so Fun, and Why Haley Whipjack is possibly the greatest DM of our generation.

(Apologies to my mutuals who aren’t in this fandom for the length of this, but as you all know I have never in my life shut up about anything so… we’ll call it even for the number of posts about Destiel I see every day.

To fellow UC fans - I haven’t listened to arc 4 yet, I started drafting this in early August, and I promise I will write a nice post about how great Gus the Bard is once I get the chance to listen to more of his DMing).

Structure - Or, “This is not the finale, there will be more podding cast”

So, first of all, let’s just talk about how Unprepared Casters works. Because it’s kind of unusual! Most of the other big-name D&D podcasts favor this long, grand arcs; UC has about 10 hours of podcast per each arc. And that’s a major strength in a lot of ways: it makes it really accessible to new listeners, because you can just start with the current arc and understand what’s going on!

And by starting new arcs every six or seven episodes, they can explore lots of ways to play D&D! Classic dungeon delve arc! Heist arc! Epic heroes save the world arc! Sportsball arc! They can touch on all sorts of things!

And while I’m talking about that: Dragons in Dungeons, the first arc, makes it incredibly accessible as a show - because it lets the unfamiliar listener get a sense of what D&D actually is. (It’s about telling stories and making your friends feel heroic and laugh and cry, for the record). If I had to pick a way to introduce someone to the game without actually playing it with them, that arc would definitely be it.

And I’d be remise not to note one very important thing: Haley Whipjack and Gus the Bard are just very funny, very charismatic people. Look. Episode 0s tend to be about 50%(?) those two just talking to each other about their own podcast. It shouldn’t work. And yet it DOES, its one of my favorite parts, because Haley and Gus are just cool.

And a side note that doesn’t fit anywhere else: I throw my soul at him! I throw a scone at him - that’s it, that’s the vibe. The whole podcast alternates between laughing with your friends and brooding alone in a dark tavern corner - but the laughs never forced and the dark corner is never too dark for too long.

Whipjack the Great - Or, the DM is Also a Player!

I think Haley Whipjack is one of the greatest Dungeon Masters alive. The plots and characters! The mechanical shenanigans! The descriptions!

Actually, let’s start there: with the descriptions. (Both Haley and Gus do this really fucking well). As we know, Episode 0 of each arc sees the DM reading a description - of a small town, or the Up North, or the recent history of a great party. And Haley always strikes this tricky balance - one I think a lot of us who DM struggle with - between giving too much description and  worldbuilding, and not telling us anything at all. She describes people and events in just enough detail to imagine them, but never so much they seem static and unreal - just clear enough to envision, but with enough vagueness left to let your imagination begin to run wild.

While I’m thinking about arc 3’s party, let’s talk about a really bold move she made in that arc: letting the players have ongoing control of their history. Loser Lars! She didn’t try to spell out every detail of this high-level party’s history, or restrict their past to only what she decided to allow - she gave them the broad outlines, and let them embellish it. And that made for a much more alive story than any attempt to create it by herself would have - but I think it takes a lot of courage to let your players have that agency. Most Dungeon Masters (myself included) tend to struggle with being control freaks.

And the plots! Yeah, arc one is built of classic tropes - but she actually uses them, she doesn’t get caught up in subverting everything or laughing at the cliches. And it’s fun! In arc 3, there really isn’t a straight line for the players to follow, either - which makes the game much more interesting and much trickier to run. And her NPCs are fantastic and I will talk about them in the next section.

Above all, though, I think what is really impressive is how Haley balances mechanics, and rules as written, with the narrative and rule of cool - and puts both rules and story in the service of playing a fun game. And the secret to that? She’s the DM, but the DM is a player, and the DM is clearly having fun. Hope Lovejoy mechanically shouldn’t get that spellslot back, but she does, and it’s fun. The changeling merchant in Thymore doesn’t really make some Grand Artistic Narrative better, but wow is it fun. And she never tries to force it one way or the other - the story might be more dramatic if Annie didn’t manage to banish the demon from the vault, but it’s a lot cooler and a lot more fun for the players if Annie gets to be a badass instead - and the rules and the dice say that Annie managed it.

Settings feel like places, NPCs feel like people, and the narrative plot feels like a real villainous plot.

Anyway. I could go on about the various ways in which Whipjack is awesome for quite a while - she’s right, first place in D&D is when your friends laugh and super first place is when they cry - but I’m going to stop here and just. Make another post about it some other time. For now, for the record I hold her opinions about the game in higher esteem than I do several official sourcebooks; that is all.

Characters - Or, Bombyx Mori Is Not an Asshole, And That Matters

Okay, I said I would talk about characters! And I will!

Just a general place to start: the party! All of the first three parties are interesting to me, because they all care about each other. Not even necessarily in a Found Family Trope sort of way, though often that too. But they generally aren’t assholes to each other. The players create characters that actually work together, that are interesting; even when there’s internal divisions like SK-73 v. Sir Mr. Person, they aren’t just unpleasant and antagonistic all the time. Listening to the podcast, we’re “with” these people for a couple hours - and it isn’t unpleasant. That matters a lot. (To take a counter-example: I love Critical Role, but the episode when Vox Machina pranked Scanlan after he died and was resurrected wasn’t fun to listen to, it was just uncomfortable and angering and vaguely cruel).

All of the PCs are amazing, and the players in each arc did a great job. If you disagree with me about that, well, you have the right to be incorrect and I am sorry for your loss. Annie Wintersummer, for one example: tragic and sad and I want to give her a hug, but also Fuck Yeah Wintersummer, and also her familiar Charles the Owl is the cutest and funniest and I love him. And we understand what’s going on with Annie, she isn’t some infinite pool of hidden depths because this arc is 7 episodes and we don’t have time for that, but she also has enough complexity to be interesting. Same with Fey Moss: yeah, a lot of her is a silly pun about fame that carries into how she behaves, but a lot of how she behaves is also down to some good classic half-elven angst about parenthood and wanting to be known and seen and important. (Side note: if your half-elf character doesn’t have angst, well, that’s impressive and also I don’t think I believe you).

There are multiple lesbian cat-people in a 4-person party and they both have requited romantic interests who aren’t each other. This is the future liberals want and I am glad for it.

Sir Mister Person, the human fighter! Thavius, the edge lord! Even when a character is “simple,” they’re interesting, because of how they’re played as people and not action-figures. And that matters a lot.

In the same way: the NPCs. There really aren’t a lot of them! And some of them come from Patreon submissions, so uh good work gang, you’re part of the awesomeness and I’m proud of you! The point being, the NPCs work because enough of them are interesting to matter. It’s not just a servant who opens Count Michael’s door, it’s a character with a name (Oleandra!) and a personality and history. They’re interesting. Penny Lovejoy didn’t need to be interesting, the merchant outside the Laughing Mausoleum didn’t need to be interesting, but they ARE! And Haley and Gus EXCEL at making the NPCs matter, not just to the story but to us as viewers. I agree with Sir Mister Person, actually, I would die for the princesses of the kingdom. I actually care about Gem Lovejoy of all people - that wouldn’t happen in an ordinary campaign! That’s the thing that makes Unprepared Casters spectacular - and, frankly, it’s especially impressive because D&D does not tend to be good at making a lot of interesting compared to a lot of other sorts of stories.

And, just as an exemplar of all this: Bombyx Mori. Immortal, reincarnating(?), and described as the incarnation of the player’s ADHD. I expected to hate Bombyx, because as the mom friend both in and out of my friend-group’s campaigns, the chaos-causer is always exhausting to me. And yeah, Bombyx causes problems on purpose! But! She is not an asshole.

And that’s important. Bombyx goes and sits with the queen and comforts her. Bombyx gives Annie emotional support. Bombyx isn’t just a vehicle to jerk around the DM and other players; Bombyx really is a character we can care about. To compare with another case - in the first couple episodes of The Adventure Zone, the PCs are just dicks. Funny, but dicks. Bombyx holds out an arm “covered in larva” to shake with a count, and robs him of magical items, but she also cares about her friends and other people! She uses a powerful magical gem to save her fertilizer guy from death! Yeah, Bombyx is ridiculous, but she’s not just an asshole the party has to keep around for plot reasons; you can see why her party would keep her around. And one layer of meta up, she’s the perfect example of how to make a chaotic character like that while still being fun for everyone you’re playing with, which is often not the case. And I love her.

The Anti-Mercer Effect - Or, “I think we proved it can be fun, you can have a good time with your friends. And it doesn’t have to be scary, you can just work with what you know”

The Mercer Effect basically constitutes this: Matthew Mercer, Dungeon Master of Critical Role, is incredible (as are all of his players). They’re all professional story-tellers in a way, remember, and so Critical Role treats D&D like a narrative art-form, and it’s inspiring. Seeing that on Critical Role sets impossible standards - and people go into their own home games imagining that their campaigns will be like Critical Role, and the burden of that expectation tends to fall disproportionately on the DM. And the end result, I think, of the Mercer Effect is that we get discouraged or intimidated, because our game isn’t “as good as” theirs. (And I should note - Matt certainly doesn’t want that to be our reaction).

So the Anti-Mercer Effect is two things: it’s D&D treated like a game, and it’s inspiring but not intimidating. And Unprepared Casters manages both of those really freaking well. Because they play it like a game! A UC arc looks just like a good campaign in anyone’s home game. They have the vibes of 20-somethings and college students playing D&D for fun because that’s who they are (as a 20-something college student who plays a lot of D&D, watching it felt like watching my friends play an especially good campaign). They’re trying to tell a good story, sure, and they always do. But first and foremost, they’re trying to have fun, and it shows, and I love the UC cast for it.

And that’s the other half of it: it’s inspiring! It’s approachable; you can see that Haley and Gus put plenty of work into preparing the game but it also doesn’t make you feel like you need hundreds of pages of worldbuilding to run a game. Sometimes a cleric makes Haley cry and she gives them back a spell-slot from their deity! That’s fantastic! It’s just inspiring - listening to this over the summer, when my last campaign had fallen apart under the strain of graduation, is why I decided to plan and run my new one!

That quote from Haley Whipjack that I used as the title for this section? That’s the whole core of this idea, and really, I think, the core of the podcast.

The Mercer Effect is when you go “that’s really cool, I could never do that.” But Unprepared Casters makes you look at D&D and go “wow, that looks really fun. I bet I can do that!” And I love the show for it.

And I bet a lot of you do too.

#unprepared casters #bombyx mori #haley whipjack #long post #this is really rough but I don't have time to keep working on it and it's already a month later than intended

[cthonicsyzygies]

I'm going to try something new this year where I do a write-up of every book I read, movie I watch, and game I play, just to keep myself conscious. The first few are going to be weird; media that I was already in the process of reading or playing or whatever, so the perspective is a bit odd. One foot in the past, one foot in the future. But what isn't like that? It will also all be viewed through the fever I have.

Besides this one, I'll be posting them all to tumblr and patreon; however, since this one is about a fanfiction, I'm going to play it very safe and only post it to tumblr.

Let me tell you about Godfeels.

Godfeels is a Homestuck fanfiction. I won't bore you with all sorts of "but it's so much more than fanfic," rhetoric, because, well, it absolutely is, but it also shouldn't have to be. There's been a lot of talk of IP Law this January, as I believe there is every January, what with Winnie the Pooh entering the public domain and Disney owning, you know, half of our culture. These laws stifle creativity; people who can spin wonderful tales but envision them with characters who already exist cannot make so much of a cent off of these tales, leaving them to toil away at the value extraction farms of retail and offices and service and mining and medicine and more in order to simply live; if they can still spend their scant energy left on writing, they may even run the risk of being sued into oblivion by vampiric authors whose deaths have been fairly celebrated on the internet.

Godfeels is a homestuck fanfiction that has created people. I don't mean fictional characters, though it has also done that, having a minimum of 6 OCs that readers have become deeply invested in. I mean people. Godfeels has inspired the self-bits of multiple plural systems to cohere into entire persons modeled after characters created by or presented in the fiction. In particular of course, these derive from those 6 OCs, or characters who were once in Homestuck. How does the personhood of the Nepeta Leijon who resides in my head interact with copyright law? 

Let me tell you about plurality.

Sometimes, a person is simply a person. They have one body and one mind and that mind keeps a generally sequential idea of itself regardless of mood swings, mind altering substances, or presenting a different face. This is the dominant mode of thinking about the self held by our culture, and so it is at least apparently the case for the majority of persons in our lives.

Sometimes, there is more happening. Sometimes one body contains two, three, sixty-seven, three hundred, one-point-five, or even NaN persons. The reasons for this are so varied that sometimes there may not even be a reason. This state of being has been pathologized by the dominant modes of thinking which rule our world into what you are likely to know as DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), formerly known as MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder). There is a nasty history around these terms, but right now the commonly accepted medicalized name is DID. The most commonly utilized non-medicalized term is Plurality. Not all Plurality is DID, and not even all medicalized plurality is DID – there is also OSDD-II. In any case, plurality is real, and so are each of those people regardless of how many other people they share a body with. There are people who can explain all of this better than I can.

Let me tell you again about Godfeels.

Godfeels is about the first character of Homestuck, John Egbert, first realizing that he has depression, and then realizing that she is a girl, and then realizing that she has become a few people. Also, she is a God, as are all of her friends and family. She also has Borderline Personality Disorder. Gods often create apocalypses.

The Epilogue of the 8th chapter of the first part of the third Godfeels released on Tuesday, January 4th. It tidied up a lot of things and set the stage for the second part of the third Godfeels. It is very good, but to say much about why it is good would be to spoil much of the fun. What I can share in my review is that iit is a rumination on what it is to be a story told by someone, and what it is to no longer be the character, i mean person, you originally were. Anyone who is trans, plural, or has simply ever gotten older (that is to say, everyone) should have some understanding of these ideas, or should likely develop such an understanding for their own well-being and health

May I suggest you read Godfeels?

#Godfeels #Review I guess #fanfic #homestuck #reader response #plurality #recommendation