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intersex-questions · 8 months

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this is going to be a very long-winded ask but I've been questioning something for a long amount of time:

i had my voice drop significantly around the time most guys in school did too, around 12-14. i found old recordings of me talking and singing and its a completely different voice, more high pitched. as far as i can remember, i didnt have clitomegaly but it was larger and genuienly like a small penis. i also had a lot of body hair but no facial hair afaik, and super oily skin and acne that wasnt caused by what i ate . i had super heavy painful periods though that sometimes left me unable to function at all and brought me into the ER once and got me declared anemic, just to elaborate on how bad it was.

i spoke in past tense because i'm transitioning and have been getting testosterone every 3 months for 2 years now. i did notice i responded really fast to the first dose already, i almost immediately grew facial hair before my second dose and had my voice drop even more, outside of the usual clinical curve of change. while i know it depends on the person, it was very fast. i also cant shake that it might be PCOS since i wouldnt know if there is a spectrum to hyperandrogenism that would leave you still having heavy periods while also experiencing those changes. i haven't had my period ever since starting testosterone so i wouldnt know what would still be visible down there if i'd have a gynecologist take a look at it.

i know youre not a professional, but do you know off the top if there are any intersex conditions that.. well.. would describe what i could probably look into that couldve been there already pre-transition or at least could list off some intersex conditions that dont involve having internal testes or "hidden male sex characteristics" since i have had ultrasounds in my lower abdominal area a few times and i wouldve probably been told about it.

Thank you so much for sending this in. First off, I completely understand your struggle with questioning being intersex after starting testosterone. I didn't start to question my past experiences with my sex and sex characteristics until after I had started testosterone. This made figuring out if I was intersex even more difficult. Especially because, even if I was intersex, my outward intersex symptoms became "normal" for any FTM/trans+ person on testosterone.

What you describes already sounds like hyperandrogenism. Hyperandrogenism is, in and of itself, an inherently intersex experience. You do not need a specific diagnosis that has hyperandrogenism as a "symptom" nor do you need to have diagnosed hyperandrogenism in order to say you have it. Even if you are now on testosterone HRT, which makes hyperandrogenism seem more typical/"normal" for your body, that doesn't negate that it would be something your body still inherently has.

Also, I'm unsure if you mean, "I'm getting my testosterone prescription filled up every three months and am taking it for a different period of time" or, "I'm taking an injection or other form of testosterone every three months, and only every three months". If it's the latter/the second one, it very very much only further makes it seem as if you have hyperandrogenism or a variation in how your body processes testosterone. Your responses on testosterone are not typical for perisex individuals. Also, if you are on it that often because of a doctor recommendation and not a personal choice, that makes hyperandrogenism and even stronger likelihood because T is often taken less often or in lower doses for those who have hyperandrogenism but are trans+.

Also, I would like to say, it isn't entirely uncommon for intersex people who have something like internal testes to just...not be told about it. Even if the doctor(s) know. This is something often kept hidden from intersex people and many doctors will proceed to "treat" the patient (almost always unnecessarily) for their internal testes without explaining why they are doing that. I'm not saying that this is your experience, and many doctors would tell a patient, but it's important to just keep in mind that, unfortunately, doctors can suck.

Moving on from what you've described that seem like strong signs of hyperandrogenism, the fact that your genitalia are at all ambiguous also means that the intersex label is open for you to use. No one needs a specific diagnosis or anything like that to be welcome to use the label. The clitoris and penis are often more similar than people think. One way to imagine it is that the clitoris and penis are on a sliding scale, like in a character creation model, where you maybe slide the hair from long to short, or the body type from smaller to larger. The clitoris often does look much more like a penis when clitoromegaly is present. Having an ambiguous erectile structure is inherently intersex. Your genitalia might not be able to be classified as a clitoris or a penis, or you might not be comfortable as classifying it as exclusively either of those, or either of those at all. Having ambiguous genitalia is also a sign of hyperandrogenism in general, and/or it can be something that someone is just born into. In some cases for people, their clitoromegaly isn't developed until they grow older and their hyperandrogenism becomes present, as hyperandrogenism can be very late in presentation.

If you want specific diagnosed things that might be what you have, the most likely candidates to me are PCOS, like you said, or NCAH. However, it's important to note that bodies are medically messy. They can't always easily fall into categories. Despite the "C" standing for cystic in PCOS, people can have PCOS without cysts. You could have something like NCAH and endometriosis. Or you could have no specifically diagnosed intersex variation, but also experience certain things that cause painful periods. The most likely causes for your period pains are probably PCOS or endometriosis. Dysmenorrhea is also just a general term for abnormally or life-impacting painful periods.

Also, it's common for hyperandrogenism to stop or lessen periods. Same with testosterone HRT. But neither of those inherently stop them from happening. Some people on testosterone HRT can be on it for years at a high dose and still get periods.

So, basically, it sounds definite to me that you have hyperandrogenism and clitormegaly/ambiguous genitalia. You also have had abnormal/painful experiences with your periods, which is often comorbid with intersex variations.

You can definitely be intersex without any "hidden" things inside your body. You can also be intersex without a specific diagnosis. You know your body best, and in a case like yours, it is up to your self-determination if you label as or consider yourself intersex. You have a place in this community and in this experience no matter what. I wish you love on your intersex journey 💛💜💛!

(I hope I managed to hit all the points you brought up for the most part--sometimes I accidentally gloss over things while reading. You can always send in another ask if I missed something!)

#asks #Anonymous #hyperandrogenism #ambiguous genitalia #clitoromegaly #maybe i should make an intersex while on hrt tag?#i shall consider it #advice #questions #hrt while intersex #t while intersex

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milkolya · 7 months

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i feel like oversharing on this fine friday morning abt whats going on in my life. if you read this, thank you 💖 i know we tumblr gays are all going Through It at any given moment, and the solidarity has always helped me cope

(TW suicide) (with details)

last week my grandfather on my mothers side killed himself by jumping out the 12th story window of their apartment building in russia. he'd been fighting esophageal cancer for approximately 4 years. he was 70 years old. he definitely had some issues, some trauma or mental health struggles, you know, SOMETHING, that led him to excessive drinking and smoking for the vast majority of his life. like, he wouldnt have had cancer if he actually took care of himself you know? its his vices / coping mechanisms that caused it. and once he started getting treated, he didnt have it in him to change his lifestyle to make the treatments worth anything.... he continued on drinking and smoking and eating sugar by the spoon (another cause of the cancer is poor diet) and even insisted that he would die if he gave up any of those things. id get in trouble if i used the "alcoholic" word around my family but they were watering down his wine behind his back when my parents visited in 2021. like come on. and even at 70, he still outlived all of his siblings, all of which died from alcoholism related causes afaik. he just... he was clearly suffering, and in classic russian fashion, he kept everything bottled up forever, never made any effort to get better, and one day when sitting down to do his bills he decided you know what, i dont want to do this anymore.

thats what happens when you dont address problems!!!!

obviously its heartbreaking but its also incredibly frustrating for me. i was super suicidal as a teenager and my mother did NOT take it seriously, she told me that it was "normal" and everyone experiences it (including her). now in retrospect i understand that she was trying to help me and comfort me, that that thought must have helped her, but like. its not normal... and its pretty fucked up that ive been suicidal, my mother has been suicidal, and now my grandpa (her dad) killed himself. he fucking killed himself!!!! what the fuck!! and i continue to be the ONLY PERSON in my ENTIRE FAMILY who tries to seek help through medication and therapy and just like, at least fucking acknowledge that we have hereditary fucking issues in the form of trauma and mental illness.... its just a mess.

and of course my mother and grandmothers top concern is What If Hes Not In Heaven. cause suicide is a sin. cause thats what we should be focused on ?!?!? sigkapfilwkflamcnwgkqj . it makes me want to scream.

ive just been surrounded by suicide my whole goddamn life and i wish it would end. my close friend attempted when i was 15 and i had no fucking clue what to do. multiple others i was close to at school were struggling with similar thoughts and urges, including myself. we were all desperately trying to hold eachother together, you know? far too much to handle for a bunch of kids. and then i went to uni, and my new friends there had similar issues, and in 2nd year, one of them did kill themself. they took their fathers gun and they shot themself in the head. and did my mother help me feel better? only until i mentioned suicide. once that was out there, there was ZERO sympathy, just judgement, and dismissal of their struggles. which really, really hurt me. because they were trans, and they couldnt handle how harsh this world is towards us, and obviously i really related to that sentiment.

like, i understand my grandpa too. i dont... i dont blame him personally? i dont even really blame my mother personally, when it comes to these kinds of issues. sometimes i will get mad at her about specific interactions but at the end of the day its russian society that made both of them this way. its so deeply ingrained. i just wish i could have helped my grandpa and i wish i could help my mama now but i cant. i can barely help myself.

and ive had to take time off work because i cant fucking focus and i just keep crying all the time and my brain is a foggy mess. and i dont know how to keep going. when will i feel better? i need to get back to work. will i be able to do that??

when my friend died... well, i call them my friend, but we were not close or anything. they were one of my good friend's roommates. we did talk occasionally and were on friendly terms. it just feels wrong to say "acquaintance" or something like that. i didnt process their death in a very timely manner. its weird but common, i think. about 2 years after it happened i started getting triggered by any content with suicide by gun. surprisingly common in media lol. folks love to hold a gun to their head on tv!! (side note: first movie i ever watched with my now fiancee, it was get out and when the guy shoots himself suddenly at the end i had a full blown fucking meltdown lmaooooooo so embarrassing it was like our 3rd date and the night of our first kiss)

idk why it took 2 years for that to start happening, i guess that was just my processing time. and then it took another two years or so to sort that out in therapy and im finally okay again and i can watch stuff with guns and suicide and not freak out. but now im scared of how this thing with my grandpa is going to affect me and how long thats going to last. i just want some peace and quiet :(

if u read all that, thank u. maybe give this a like to let me know. ive been deleting my vent posts a lot lately so idk if i will keep this up. my friends have been lovely and supportive, theres just not much anyone can really say to make it better. so it feels more comfortable to do a massive vent post like this thats optional to engage with. and ive always aired out my personal business on here so it feels right hehe.

#the trauma of Being Russian #akkfkskgkshgj

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night-creeps · 4 months

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I think the worst thing about the trans legislation changes Smith is proposing is that the trans healthcare system in Alberta is already fucking nonexistant. Afaik there is only 1 transgender care clinic in the province that provides for children, this is a team of psychiatrists and psychologists that provide a diagnosis of being transgender to be able to qualify for any trans healthcare and a team of endocrinologists that provide a prescription to hormone replacement therapy.

Currently under the law there is nothing stopped a kid under the age of 17 from getting top surgery, other than parental consent and a diagnosis. But no kid under 17 is getting these surgeries. You wanna know why?

When I came out as trans at about 16 years old, my therapist put in a referral to the clinic and told me I would hear from them. I brought it up occasionally, asking if she had heard anything. Then a year later I ask again and she says she had forgotten to send her certification to them and that the referral never actually got sent. She sends it for real this time, but then one of the handful of psychologists was stepping down so the wait time was going to be extended. I got my GP to send another referall to the other clinic (at the time there two). About 9 months later I get an 'unofficial' meeting with the psychologist who was stepping down because my psychiatrist was friends with them. Nearly 2 years after starting this process I was finally seeing someone! Not much came of it. Since it was unofficial nothing really happened, I was supposed to see him again but never did. About 6 months after that I finally got a call from the other clinic. They scheduled me an appointment with an endocrinologist for 3 months later. So. 2 and a half years after starting the process I was finally started on HRT. 8 months after that I graduated school and got to meet with more psychologists. I finally got put on a wait list for top surgery. For those few months though I was terrified I would have to start the whole process again once I turned 18. Thankfully that wasn't the case. So I was going to get a call to schedule a consult 6-9 months after that. A year later I call them and ask if there's any update. I get told the wait time is now 12-18 months. A little over 18 months after being put on the waitlist I finally schedule a consult with a plastic surgeon. Where I am told it is another 12-16 month wait until I can get surgery done.

I started this process at 16. I am currently fucking 20 years old. ITS BEEN FOUR YEARS. To get top surgery before 17 a kid would have to come out as trans at 12 and start the process immediately. Even if they have an accepting family, they might not have a therapist or psychologist willing to refer them. Most family doctors wouldn't refer them either. And unless they live in Edmonton or Calgary, if their parents can't take time off work to take them to their appointments they won't be starting this process at all.

There are 2 plastic surgeons offices in the entire province doing gender affirming care, and a shortage of anesthesiologists to boot so even if there were more surgeons there's still a shortage of OR's. And bottom surgery is not done in province, period.

Unless you come from a rich and supportive family who can fly you to a specialist out of province, there is an almost 0% chance that someone under the age of 17 is even getting gender affirming surgeries done. All it's doing is meaning that the waiting process can only start at 17. That's not even mentioning all the horrifying and queerphobic rules being put in place in regards to name and pronoun usage in school, or being able to learn about queer content at all.

#trans rights #alberta #trans youth #save trans kids

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ilsanslut · 6 months

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hello mx. vampiie! i love your works a lot, tysm for always feeding us with good content ♡ and i hope you're having a good day today! hydration check and meal check ✨

i just wanted to drop by and say this and leave it up to your decision on how to proceed. i myself used to use and create c.ai bots but i have since stopped for now. i respect your dedication making the character bots, and maybe you're not aware of this, but there is a huge possibility that their dataset foundation is curated by scraping a lot of people's writing without permission and credit.

src // youtu.be/b843dkGnGVk

afaik, character.ai themselves have not made any clarifications or publications, but i doubt they would say anything if they did use the same dataset, because it wouldn't reflect good on themselves.

anyway, i really hate to be that person but i just wanted to let you know. i chose not to support or promote them in any way because i myself am a writer and the thought that me and my friends' work are posssibly being scraped without my permission to be used to train ais makes me uncomfortable. sorry for rambling and thanks for listening! congrats on graduating nursing school and i hope you'll have a relaxing personal time this holiday season!! ♡

hello, anon. thank you for bringing this to my attention and thank you for the well wishes, i hope the same for you! enjoy the holidays, lovely! this post is kind of long, so i put it beneath a cut.

i think it's crazy how developed ai has become in recent years. it's literally been like a year and a few months and we've seen how advanced it's become with both photo ai generators and sites like chatgpt for writing. to be honest, it's alarming and it's disheartening to see how fast it's developing while being built, nearly entirely, on stolen works.

since i am a writer and an artist, i feel a certain type of way about ai, but to be honest, i'm in a very grey area. as far as artwork goes, i REFUSE to acknowledge artists who use it and denounce its use entirely since, in my opinion, it's appalling to take someone's passion projects and extort it for your own gain. i'm also a little biased towards the artwork side of ai since a few of my friends are well-known/popular artists on twitter and other socials and have had instances where their own artwork was stolen and fed to ai generators.

when it comes to writing, on the other hand, i feel i'm a little looser on my bias. now, i'm not talking about using ai to write the ENTIRETY of your fic, chapters, book, whatever—but if you use it in a resourceful sense, there are some benefits. when you find yourself in a tough situation as to how to progress a story, seeking a blurb from a generator could aid greatly in that. also, if you're not too confident in the way your sentence sounds, maybe use a paraphrasing site to rewrite your sentence until you're satisfied. with those benefits said, that's as far as i go with leniency on ai in writing. any further usage beyond a last resort resource is denounced by me.

truthfully, i believe that on both ends of the spectrum, ai will NEVER be able to replicate the passion, hard work, sweat, and tears that go into some of these works, and it's deplorable that it's come as far as it has. unfortunately, as things progress, i only see ai becoming more of an issue.

as far as creating bots on c.ai though, i had an *idea* that these bots were being used to train ai, but only on the c.ai website itself. though, in hindsight, it was very naive of me to believe that they were ONLY being used to train the bots on the c.ai website alone. truthfully, i want to wait for more information on the c.ai involvement to come up before making any decisions, but if i'm honest, when it comes to c.ai, i don't really care. a lot of my bots are used to feed my own delusions and be horny with fictional characters, (i go outside i swear) and if c.ai wants to steal my messages of big daddy true form sukuna blowing my little twink's back out to feed a silly little generator, then i guess they can go right on ahead. 💀

to bring this response to a close, at the end of the day, i know myself and the passion i have for both artwork and writing, and i'll be damned if let a series of 1's and 0's ruin that for me. as unfortunate as it is, ai usage is a reality that a lot of us will have to come to terms with soon if a change isn't made in the near future. as far as myself is concerned, i'll continue to write on both tumblr and c.ai and ride my little delulu wave until shit hits the fan.

however, i would love to thank you one last time anon for bringing this to my attention, and i hope you enjoy your holidays and have a merry christmas, and many blessings in the new year to come. ♡

#vampiiespeakz #vampiiesthoughtz

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hyperzstellar · 3 years

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hi please infodump about technology and old web stuff ty

OIGHFJFF hello!!! I'm... I don't know what to say I feel like I've got to sort of like. be given something to talk about but I guess I can start off by how I initially got interested in these things! this post will be very long and I've tried to format it the best I can BUT here it is:

so to start off things my mom always noted about me that I was naturally inclined towards computers. I kind of learned how to type from a very young age too because she had me by her old pc (it was a win 95 plus) and had word open and just told me to write things. it was fun and epic as fuck but FROM WHAT I'VE BEEN TOLD. I kind of just left it open one day and it was open for daaays so the computer just... overheated to death though. this sound (skip to 0:36) is super nostalgic to me. makes me go back to when we didn't even have internet and we got internet connectivity by like... 2009 AFAIK. yahoo messenger and windows live messenger were still a thing!!! before the former shut down and the latter was (don't remember this clearly) integrated with Skype technologies around the time Microsoft bought out Skype and then it was done for after a year or so of this happening.

but fast forward to about 2012-2013. you're me and you're 10 years old, and you find a LOT of content about old pcs. mainly how they looked and sounded like, as well as people absolutely going batshit on command prompt and deleting everything (these are called destruction videos). sort of everything led to another and I found a channel that exists up to this day that was focused around viruses! and even until now I'm still very interested in them. my primary interest in computers (and extending to phones as well) is how the insides work. it's super interesting to be picking apart the 'brain' of a machine you basically feed it commands to execute... and of course the process is literally done in the blink of an eye. nothing we would ever properly notice (unless for x y z reasons your machine is slowing down)

moving on from this talk I'd like to talk about a really famous and notorious virus, the loveletter worm! also commonly called ILOVEYOU, it was written in visual basic script (vbs) and caused a lot of destruction. its primary way of appealing and spreading quick is because of its nature, like it kind of takes advantage of the user emotionally (social engineering) like. oh you got a love letter! (except it's a worm!)

how do you not know that? windows automatically hides file extensions unless a user disables the option from file explorer (I can't. remember it entirely rn I'm not even on pc but this is a thing, in older windows versions it was in folder options), so an unsuspecting user wouldn't know this is a vbs file and instead would think it's a text file, as it appeared to be when you'd download it from Microsoft Outlook.

what loveletter would do -and made it one of the most destructive viruses with over a million computers infected and probably I think billions in damage- was when executed, it would overwrite all files with a copy of itself. so like... you would lose important data (didn't overwrite .exes afaik, just images and text files etc), which at the time was a Very Bad Thing. still is if you get a nasty ransomware. it was also very simple code wise if I remember correctly, which was a reason why there were so many variants of this.

overall I feel like old school viruses have more personality to them. like there was only one recent virus that did have attributes (mostly destructive ones but there were also annoying but harmless viruses) pertaining to old school viruses BUT as of late, especially with how bitcoin has become very lucrative and mainstream like an 'untapped' gold mine (bitcoin farmers die challenge), most viruses fall under the ransomware category, where all your files (not critical ones) are encrypted and under X amount of time you'll need to pay Y amount of btc to a specific wallet, unless you wanna lose your files. one in specific was so bad (I think it was wannacry? I cannot remember for the life of me) that Microsoft, a few years prior to ending Windows XP updates as it'd reached end of service, put out an update/security patch for said operating system. that's obviously like... big news, but also shows the magnitude of the problem.

um that's all I had to say personally!!! if you do want to check out videos not only about viruses and stuff but also computers in general I would suggest Enderman (has really cool experiments like installing windows on a RAM (that later cannot be booted from because... it gets wiped after a shutdown)), Flytech Videos (I suggest the Microsoft edge protocol series, as well as the fork bomb + regedit vid where they delete each major directory at the time and see the results) and all time favorite, and the channel that jump started my interest when I was in elementary school, danooct1 :)

thanks for asking and I hope this was cohesive!!

#one day I'd like to talk about how Vista wasn't bad just Microsoft fucked the OS over but there's also a good video on that #also everything leading up to the metallica dmca claim (baby steps of online piracy!!!)#thanks anon ifjfjg I feel very self conscious I hope this is okay... I'm by no means an expert (yet. I want to school for comp sci.) but #a lover of the object and subject is all I am #asks #answered #anonymous #long post

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ghostlysoupcan · 3 years

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Advice for the wayward cheater

I want to give tips and info on just some of the things I used to cheat online classes in Highschool. This may be slightly out of date by two years but there are some tips as well that could be useful for the more modern stuff out there.

Remember that cheating is a victimless crime. should you want to learn and do it legit? yes. but sometimes school classes are hard as shit and im not blaming anybody who takes this route or needs to because they have other stuff going on. so. lets get to it. under a readmore bc its long.

1. Try to avoid looking this stuff up on a school computer. i know this seems odd but school computers often have trackers and it’ll make it easier for you to get caught this way. personally i didnt have a problem with this presumably bc my teachers didnt give a shit but ITS A VALID WORRY and therefor you should focus on looking the answers up on your phone or a personal computer if you work from there. school computers are fucking snitches. ALSO DO NOT TALK ABOUT CHEATING OUT LOUD BECAUSE THEY HAVE MICROPHONES. this may seem paranoid but schools and the like are shady as FUCK and its better to be safe than sorry. cover your mic up too. some shit will still bleed through but its better than nothing.

2. Brainly, Quizlet, ANY manner of answer site is a godsend. if you can find a whole sheet of answers for your subject and they match you’re pretty much set for life. HOWEVER. before you go onto these, i recommend ublock origin, and sometimes youll have to use that or get crafty in order to remove those little blocks that tell you to register or that you get ‘three free answers a day.’ you could also try turning off javascript, but i havent tried that.

3. How to search for the sites above! Google has a search feature where you can put things in quotations, you can search for the exact wording plop a question like “rate of financial decline 1950″ and oftentimes youll find it if you copy and paste the question! this is what primarily got me through highschool

Similarly, if you find a site that you just cant get an answer from and its clogging results, you can do -site (ex. -pinterest) and itl remove it from your results.

4. The searching up answers things has flaws, though. sometimes, you just cant find that math result or you’re dealing with GRAPHS. for this! i highly recommend photomath, its a secure app (afaik) that can recognize equations and you can hold your phone up to the screen to scan them and oftentimes get an answer. just make sure what info you’re inputting looks right. or if you’re lucky, you can find the graft via reverse google search or looking up the question itself if its not just “solve the graph” nonsense

5. Screenshot your correct answers! if you have a test you just cant pass and the above doesnt work and you’re allowed multiple tries, screenshot what answers you know to be right because oftentimes theyll show you your mistakes. multiple choice is very useful in this regard. use this to your advantage! the site my school used, a plus, is very recommended for this

5. Inspect element! you can indeed use inspect element to find the answer/answer key for a question using inspect element for some cases, like ed///men//tum. id suggest looking up if this can work with your schools’ site.

6. If all else fails, just fuckin guess. Sometimes you cant find an answer or cant retry something, in that case, if its multiple choice you can just take a guess at it. with four answers, you have a 25 percent chance of being right, with 2, 50 percent. if you know that c and d are wrong, you can go with your gut.

Ok now for some tips that might be useful to avoid detection.

A. Some shit uses eye/movement tracking. it fucking sucks like you’d expect. now i am not sure how they can get away with this if some people work on personal computers but if you at all can id recommend using one without a webcam, or if it has one, cover it up. if questioned, you can say that your webcam is broken if you’re working on a personal computer or nonexistant, although id recommend the former because idk if they can check that.

B. Wear tinted glasses so that they dont see your eyes moving. they cant force you to take them off, due to the fact some of them are perscription. this varies because idk how many people have tinted glasses.

C. SIMILARLY TRY TO LOOK UP WAYS TO BLOCK REGULAR GLASSES GLARE BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN CAUGHT THIS WAY BY TEACHERS PHYSICALLY WALKING BY ME EVEN IF MY BACK IS NOT TO THEM. not a good idea to have them look at your glasses while youve got your head craned down and they see that you’re on another site entirely or using brainly. they can absolutely see the reflection off your glasses.

D. For the above, if you cant physically avoid having teachers look at your screen, wait until they walk past you or look away, then ALT+ TAB. this varies on macs and you might need to change a setting to let you do that or look up the versions of the keys there but alt tabbing is the fastest way bc simply put you just cant click home fast enough. WORK IN ANOTHER WINDOW AND HAVE YOUR CHEAT WINDOW BEHIND THAT. its faster than clicking off.

F. Take advantage of the fact that schools do not control your social life. you could presumably ask other people in your school for answers, or start up a cheating circle. this comes with its own risks like snitches or getting caught so beware for this one, but if you can share answers among yourselves you’re not only giving yourself an advantage but others too. make sure you dont collab on a school site though or message eachother on school email. instead, get their phone number and call or text them or try asking for their social media.

G. Build a faraday cage for your macbook if you’re not using it. idk it just seems like a good idea in general because i hate tracking and school tracking and the idea of being tracked via gps is skeevy as fuck. might as well, and theyre cheap to make.

H. Get creative! actively ask yourself how to give yourself an advantage in a situation and search for ways to get past shit. if you have enough tech knowhow you can do practically anything.

This is all i have for now, addons are appreciated for people who know more about this than I do but this is just what i’ve figured out from my days of going to school. school’s fucking hard and neurodivergent people oftentimes have problems focusing or wanting to do the work and if it helps them at all to be able to cheat and just get past it then I hope its useful.

#cheating #online learning #cheating tips #avoiding getting caught #school advice #info posts

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lostinthewinterwood · 4 years

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Purimgifts 2020

Hey there friend! So sorry I took so long on this; school just started again and I’ve been a little busy.

I’m not going to go too in-depth here; if you want to see my other recent exchange ramblings look here or here.

But here’s a few general notes:

DNWs:

Heavy angst; hurt no comfort; graphic depictions of deliberate and methodical self-harm*; graphic depictions of suicide; heavy gender dysphoria; grimdark; complete downer endings; character bashing; incest; cringe comedy; a/b/o; mpreg; issuefic; fic that’s exclusively focused on non-canonical ships.

*I don’t include things like, say, punching a wall in a fit of emotion under this. however, something like cutting would not be appreciated.

ALSO. I dnw’d Major Character Death, but if the character is dead in canon and they’re a major character in the story you want to write, referencing the canon events is 100% fine. The same holds true for my dnw of Rape/Noncon, but please don’t put too much focus on this one—just, you know, ignoring things that happened isn’t necessary.

Likes:

· Family

o Supportive families!

o Family of choice!

o Found family!

· Secret/hidden identities

· Non-sexualized crossdressing

o Crossdressing for disguise

o Just for fun/because they like to

· The previous two combined!

· Character studies

· What-ifs

· Exploring the canon in new and interesting ways

o Especially things left unexplored by the canon itself

Brief notes on the different requested canons:

Tortall

These books were hugely influential on me as a kid—and they still are, really (see: my Thing for gender disguises) and I love them, I love the world, if you want to see me going off about the Tempests and Slaughter characters see my links above. I love them all, though.

I haven’t read the story about the Shang Unicorn, I don’t think (or if I have it was so long ago that I’ve forgotten it entirely) but afaik I’ve read all the published novels, as well as A Spy’s Guide.

Valdemar

…okay so. Getting this out in front: feel free to write me fic about whatever part you want; the request is for Valdemar as a whole, after all, and I love the setting enough that I’ll just ask that if you want to write a fic in one of the eras I haven’t read, please keep it in the Valdemar universe? (That being said I do sometimes read fic for things I’ve not read at all, so go where you want here.)

Anyway: I’ve read a somewhat random assortment of the short stories, and I have not read the following: Mage Wars, the second two books of Mage Winds (I have read Winds of Fate), Mage Storms, and the Owl- trilogy. I’ve not read By The Sword, and have read only part of Vows and Honor.

I’m pretty sure I’ve read everything else in the main timeline, though!

But—the world, I love it more than any one character, I think. I really like the system for the Heralds, and how we see it evolve over time; I’m also pretty fond of the Family Spies series and how it shows not-Heralds interacting with this world that is so often centered on the Heralds.

The Dragon Prince

This show is good, and I have seen it all! Through season 3, that is. Which is all that’s currently out. Anyway, I love the characters and I like its focus on the cyclical nature of war and violence; how one thing leads to another leads to another leads to a war that no one actually wants, but there’s honor and vengeance and the adults in charge can’t just stop, not now. And then of course there’s the kids, defying that cycle.

Frozen

Frozen 2 brings in a lot of really interesting worldbuilding to the world it’s set in; in general I like the focus on families and the difficulties that external forces impose on them, and then working through all that to be a family again. The original film hits that beat, too—I mean it’s kind of what the whole movie’s about—and returning to that as a base for fic would be interesting too, I think.

Tangled

Full disclosure: when I was about 12 or 13, I’d seen this movie enough times that I could recite it start to finish from memory. (I can no longer do that; we tragically lost our DVD of it a few years ago.)

Anyway, as you can infer from that, I’ve seen it many times, and I never did get tired of it. Mostly I just love all the characters, and their relationships, and I’d say more here but I really don’t know what else to say.

Star Wars

I love the saga overall; I will say that it is my opinion that there was quite a lot of Nonsense™ in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker both, and I care least about, like, canonical consistency there—which isn’t to say don’t draw from them! Just. They’re probably least favorite for me.

Obviously I didn’t request this, but if you want to draw on The Clone Wars for your fic go right ahead! Drawing some stuff from Rebels would be all right, as well, but I haven’t seen past the end of season 2 of that show and haven’t been completely spoiled for the later seasons; please don’t spoil them in the fics!

Thank you so much for writing for me! And again I’m sorry it took me this long to get around to writing this.

#purimgifts #purimgifts 2020 #exchange letters #purimgifts letter #requested: tortall #requested: valdemar #requested: the dragon prince #requested: frozen #requested: tangled #requested: star wars

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imrainai · 7 years

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[OOC Message log, imrainai & trashrightsactivist]

These are really old. Like, last in-universe year old. But some people wanted to see them, so here they are.

Summer, 3422

imrainai: Could I read the sideblog? You have a lot of really interesting things to say, and I'd like to read them. If you're ok with it. ^_^'

Trashrightsactivist: I would trust a promise from you, you seem trustworthy. So I will add you if you promise me that you understand how serious it could be if someone like tidalwave got hold of information that could tell her who I am in real life - I could quite easily die - and also promise you won't mention any of that info anywhere public. Is that okay?

Imrainai: Yeah, I promise. I definitely don't want anything bad to happen to you.

Trashrightsactivist: cool, adding you in a sec

Weeks Later

imrainai: ruby? are you ok? just laying low for a bit? You're safe, right?

Trashrightsactivist: yes. i am very sad and angry about things. but safe.

Imrainai: <3 please stay safe ok

Trashrightsactivist: i'll do my best. you too

Later

Imrainai: I think the internet's gonna cut out in a bit, so just wanted to tell you again to stay safe and take care of yourself. you're a good internet friend, OK, so make sure you're still here when I get back

Imrainai: taz liked your story about the aliens btw. I had to modify it some because I don't want him telling his teachers he's getting red-positive propaganda at home, it was about criminals and poor people. but the basic moral was intact, and he seemed to agree with it.

I just... be careful, OK, the world needs all the good people it can get

Trashrightsactivist: thank you. and I'm glad he liked the story, it's about the downtrodden whatever colour their hair is so yeah

Weeks Later

imrainai sent a post caste flexibility meme!

Imrainai: tag, you're privately it

Imrainai: also the internet's back and your blog is not back, are you still there

Trashrightsactivist: I will post caste meme soon. I have a secret new blog.

Trashrightsactivist: as in - the blog is not a secret but the fact that it's me is a secret

Trashrightsactivist: what i learned from tryna fill out the meme is mostly that i would be a sucky purple :P

Imrainai: ohhh, ok

Imrainai: also same

Imrainai: but I also feel like I'd feel like that no matter what I was. probably everything looks easier than it is from the outside

Trashrightsactivist: well you're like coping and looking after a baby so you must be doing something right! But probably true

Imrainai: at least if i were YELLOW i could ADVANCE in the LIBRARY SYSTEM

Imrainai: but yeah I guess Ves is more important anyway, so I can't be, like, totally failing at life in general

Trashrightsactivist: yeah that's one of the dumb things about the caste system tbh - as a purple its super hard to get anywhere really successful unless you got this one specific skillset of 'run a business'

Imrainai: well you can only run certain kinds of businesses, is the thing. like, I can't start an editing service or watch other people's kids or something

Trashrightsactivist: which is sooo dumb

Imrainai: I do not think I could, like, successfully run a restaurant or a furniture company or make clothes

Imrainai: there are lots of options, so you'd think ONE of them would work, but so far nah

Imrainai: ............I should probably not actually be complaining about my life circumstances to you, that seems rather inconsiderate

Trashrightsactivist: hmm - idk if homeschooling is a thing in Voa. If I was the kinda oddball economics green i mighta been in another life I would suggest you might be able to set up a purple-for-purple homeschooling group and argue the income as being purple either on the basis of it being like house spousing or like consultation (in that being your caste *is* the qualifying factor for a purple-for-purple homeschool)

Trashrightsactivist: and nah, it's fine - it's actually helpful to give me different things to think about tbh

Trashrightsactivist: you could apply the same argument to a daycare specifically meant to socialise purple kids in a purple environment. But idk your employment law well enough you'd need to get a solicitor to advise on it.

Imrainai: Homeschooling is a thing, but I think if you make money at it it stops being homeschooling

Imrainai: I dunno, maybe one of the librarians can help me figure it out tho

Imrainai: they're good about stuff like that

Trashrightsactivist: yeah, I mean at minimum they can probably help you find and understand the books with the law stuff in

Imrainai: Liet's orange and I could maybe finagle something around that, but she's old enough that asking her to actually work is not really.... fair to her, so

Imrainai: and yeah

Trashrightsactivist: what is it you actually do rn if you don't mind me asking? or are you at home with the kid?

Imrainai: oh! no, I work two jobs

Imrainai: I do cleaning at a nursing home and I shelve books at the library

Imrainai: And my second cousin is living here too, she works in a warehouse and sometimes watches the baby

Trashrightsactivist: ahh, right. I was confused for a bit cause i remember a post about the 1st one and i thought you were a care worker and was like 'that's purple?'

Trashrightsactivist: is that liet? the orange person?

Imrainai: Liet's my great-great-grandmother, I am am sort of EFFECTIVELY her caretaker but she's family so I don't get paid for that

Imrainai: and I do look after the old people at the nursing home, but that is not actually my job, it is just... a thing that happens when I am in close proximity to people who need things

Trashrightsactivist: really should be crossover work

Trashrightsactivist: you know one of those jobs thats two castes

Trashrightsactivist: if orange-grandma lives with you it miight be doable to do the daycare and have it that like, she owns it officially and employs you, but again you'd need to check out the legalities

Imrainai: I mean in THEORY there is a simple dividing line between "care worker" and "cleaning lady" but with elderly people the line is not always actually clear

Trashrightsactivist: yeah thats why it should be crossover

Trashrightsactivist: are you any good with numbers and people management?

Imrainai: And yeah, maaaaybe, but if anyone ever investigated it I think it would rapidly become obvious that Liet wasn't really... doing anything

Imrainai: I've never really tried those things?

Imrainai: I don't think I'm awful with numbers

Imrainai: Though I never got past algebra in school

Trashrightsactivist: I imagine you gotta have people skills to a degree cause like - you're really nice, and dealing with the old ppl probably requires like, being nice but firm

Trashrightsactivist: wouldn't require algebra just finance - you could build up to a small cleaning business?

Imrainai: Oh, I hadn't thought about that, but I guess there's no reason that should be illegal

Imrainai: I do all the budgeting here, I can handle money OK

Trashrightsactivist: yeah well afaik that is entirely a purple thing to be doing, it's cleaning and it's business

Imrainai: That makes sense

Trashrightsactivist: and your library connections and self-starter attitude will mean you can pick up the extra knowledge you'd need

Imrainai: I don't know if I'd actually make more money than just working at the nursing home, but I can look into it

Trashrightsactivist: probly need some seed money i guess

Imrainai: ...yeah, you need some to get started I think

Trashrightsactivist: yeah it would at least have more potential to grow, is what i was thinking

Imrainai: but not THAT much for a cleaning business, you don't need an office or anything for that really

Imrainai: I bet you could do it with just a web page actually

Imrainai: not that I know how to make a decent website

Trashrightsactivist: yeah you probably wouldn't make more to start with but could eventually - if you read the books and stuff and came up with a good business model you could probably pitch it to people to get a small investment for like, a website and some supplies, maybe a vehicle

Trashrightsactivist: tell the nursing home they can hire you as a contractor through your business, but if you've got other work you have more leverage to get better pay there

Imrainai: That's an interesting idea... I dunno if they'd go for it, but at least this is something to look into. It's good to have options.

Imrainai: Thanks :)

Trashrightsactivist: I mean. In a sane world you could learn more about the library while you stack shelves and work your way up to librarian but we don't live in a sane world

Trashrightsactivist: np :) I better get back to work but good luck if you decide to try it

Trashrightsactivist: oh secret new me is truth-from-ashes btw. Trusting you to keep that sceret.

Trashrightsactivist: ttyl

Weeks Later

Imrainai: Wanted to thank you for the idea to start a business. Liet's going to be starting up after-school tutoring really soon, and apparently it's absolutely legal for me to volunteer at her business and for her to then put that money towards food and rent. I'll get to make money while spending time with my family and helping Taz and his classmates with their homework. :D

Days Later

Imrainai: ruby did you hear about the thing

Imrainai: the orvara thing

Imrainai: you're not in orvara are you

Days later

Imrainai: please don't be in orvara

Later

Trashrightsactivist: I'm not there. I'm sorry if my absence from the online was worrying- reds everywhere are panicky right now and that's been my focus.

Imrainai: no no it's ok! just wanted to make sure you weren't. uh. actually dead

Imrainai: be safe

Imrainai: or as safe as possible I guess

Trashrightsactivist: You too. I don't know what's going to happen now but it's not going to be good and it's not going to just be us that suffers for it in the end.

Fall, 3422

Imrainai: ruby are you still alive and kicking and there and stuff

Several weeks later

Imrainai: rubyyyyyyy

#ooc #they didn't actually know each other that long #but that summer was an eventful season

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 7 years

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a road map to what we know and what we are trying to learn about Trump-Russia

Trump and Russia is just a rat king of a story.

It’s hard to grasp how fucked up it is, because it is fucked up in so many ways. If it all blurs together, it’s harder to understand the facts of the case, to hear when it really is getting more serious, or to see how it connects with the other awful things that are happening. And because it’s so complicated, it’s easy to believe everything you read because so much of what we know is so bonkers that you don’t trust the smell test, or to reject everything out of hand because it’s all so implausible.

That doesn’t do any good. You can, and you have to, think critically about this story. This post is intended to be a tool to help you put things into context, so you can absorb new stories as they happen.

Main types of Trump-Russia stories:

Financial

Personal

Compromised Trump associates

Election 2016

Obstruction

Changes to US foreign policy toward Russia

1. Finance:

They really did get Capone on tax evasion.

It’s almost a joke, right? Al Capone, Scarface, actual OG of the Chicago mafia, locked up for paperwork. But it’s not some random technicality. Capone didn’t lie on his taxes just to pay less in taxes, he lied on his taxes because his income was illegal. If he admitted how much money he was making, it could’ve been used to help prove the bad things he was doing to get it.

That is why Trump’s finances are important to the various Russian interference investigations. The theory, and it’s pretty strong, is that there’s a paper trail connecting Donald Trump and his family to various players in Moscow. The connections themselves may or many not be illegal on their own. But the real issue is that if Russian power players invested in Donald Trump, they did so for a reason.

Various strands of this thread include:

loans Trump has gotten from Deutsche Bank, a European bank with links to Russia;

loans Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner has gotten from VEB, a financial firm which handles transactions for the Russian government;

shady financial transactions at the Bank of Cyprus.

2. Personal:

Ways Trump specifically is vulnerable to influence by Putin and his people, such as:

his ideological admiration for Putin’s strongman style government;

blackmail (AKA kompromat). This can be legal trouble or personal embarrassment. If a financial story suggests he can be implicated in money laundering, say. Or, and you’ve probably heard about this one, the supposed pee-pee tape;

-Trump’s general weakness, which makes him putty in the large, manly hands of trained spies.

3. Compromised Trump associates:

Since entering political life less than two years ago, Trump has managed to hire an awful lot of people with unusual relationships to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, such as:

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn

Former campaign chair Paul Manafort

Campaign foreign affairs adviser Carter Page

Also, a lot of powerful Republicans, whether or not they have their own connections with Russia, are in a politically compromising position because they’ve known that Trump’s ties to Russia are a national security threat but have stuck with him anyway.

Pence knew that Flynn was compromised, covered it up, and is still lying about it.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, AFAIK, wasn’t in the web until he met with spymaster/former ambassador Kislyak several times during the campaign, then lied about it at his confirmation hearings.

House Republican leadership are on tape laughing about Russia’s influence on Trump.

4. Election 2016:

Okay. Pause. This is intense and abstract and kind of existentially terrifying. Look away from the screen and relax your eyes for a few seconds.

You back? You with me? Alright.

There’s an honestly startling solid consensus on some aspects of the Russian election meddling. There’s no argument that Russian operatives enacted a massive disinformation and harassment campaign online, stole communications from various political groups and released the emails they stole from the DNC and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, and that they specifically intended to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump. They also stole documents and released documents from various Democratic congressional candidates. It’s still worth trying to understand those parts of the story, but they’re less likely to be news.

Most news revolves around one of two major open questions.

What else did Russian operatives do? We know from a lot of expert testimony, strong reporting, and courageous whistleblowing that Russian hackers had some success breaking into the voter rolls in at least 21 states. We do not have any evidence that they successfully altered the voting rolls or that they actually changed the tallies of votes that have been cast. That may be because it didn’t happen, or because nobody has actually tried to find out if it happened.

What, if any, help did they have from Americans? We know that during the campaign, Trump advisers claimed to be in touch with Wikileaks. We know that at least one right-wing activist was in touch with Michael Flynn while attempting to help people he believed to be Russian operatives.

Those two stories aren’t necessarily the same thing. You can imagine a situation where the tech guys are good enough that they don’t need any help at all. Or you can imagine a situation where there are lots of Republican traitors who want to sell themselves to a white nationalist big daddy like Putin but for whatever reason they aren’t efficiently used. What we do know suggests that both of those things happened to some extent, but most developments in this story come from one angle or the other, so it’s worth being able to put them in context.

Those are the things that we’re aware we don’t know. There are also unknown unknowns – questions that we don’t know enough to be asking yet. Don’t drive yourself up a wall dwelling on that, just be aware that we might get a curveball.

5. Obstruction:

Trump and his people have pulled lots of unethical and some most likely illegal crap to keep the public from learning more about all this.

Remember, we don’t know why Trump might try to cover this stuff up. He sure is acting guilty of some degree of participation in Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But it’s entirely possible that he’s trying to hide other sleazy behavior, or even that his all-consuming narcissism forces him to try and squash any suggestion that he couldn’t have legitimately won an election on his own (especially since deep down even he must know that’s true).

Still, it does look pretty bad. Developing obstruction stories include:

potential obstruction of justice in having fired former FBI Director James Comey;

refusal to comply with congressional oversight;

disinformation coming out of the White House on a massive scale;

demonization of the “fake news,” which has a tendency to spike around the time a credible news outlet publishes a Russ-a-lago story.

6. Foreign Policy:

You can get into the weeds with this if you want but mostly what you need to know is that American foreign policy has swiftly started catering to Russian interests.

How it all fits (maybe):

On top of all the complicated subplots, it’s tricky to read about a Trump-Russia development because you have to do two important things at once: a) put the story in context with what you already know and b) remember that most of the people involved only had some of that context, and that nobody could predict how it would all work out.

Those things are important for your own understanding as this story unfolds. They’re also important to help you sidestep the strawman deflections. The issue is about what happened, not whether it was a perfect execution of Dr. Evil’s Master Plan.

youtube

Here’s a possibility. Again, this is something that strikes me as plausible, not an expert analysis or anything.

The Russian power elite is dominated by old-school KGB guys and oligarchs. (Their money in politics problem is exponentially worse than ours, and ours is bad.) Imagine you’re someone operating in that power structure and think about Donald Trump before he came down that escalator two years ago, say, as of his 2013 Miss America pageant in Moscow, or his 2005 loan from the Russia-linked Deutsche Bank. From their perspective, he is an American oligarch, so cultivating some sort of relationship with him would pay off. At the very least, his real estate empire is going to be useful as a place to stash their money. And once you invest in an asset, you want to get as much out of it as possible. So you have Trump who’s deft with the media and who has this racist hostility toward Obama, who Putin dislikes. If you egg him on to become a political nuisance: good. If you egg him on and he decides to run for office: better, because he has a bigger megaphone. But if you can actually get him into office: best.

At the same time as the American division is cultivating that relationship with Trump, the cyber division is developing its capabilities, and the European division is flexing its muscles with interventions into the elections of neighboring countries. All it takes is one apocalyptically-inclined influence to see how it can all fit together……

This story isn’t necessarily complex because it’s some top-down fourteen-dimensional chess strategy. It’s possible that it’s complicated because it was always an open-ended scheme to milk this tool for all he was worth, and it had been chugging along and picking up steam for years before the White House became the target.

Or, in TV Tropes terms, the story of Putin’s Puppet might well be less Batman Gambit and more Gone Horribly Right.

The important point here is, we don’t know. You don’t need to get too wrapped up in speculation or mind-reading. Just check your sources and get what you can out of the facts as they’re responsibly reported, and that’ll let you hear if/when there’s more you can do.

#donald trump #trump russia #election 2016

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obdurare-archive-blog · 7 years

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ooc shoutout;; I'm gonna get back to the good times here shortly after I post this, but if you're wondering who I'm giving a shoutout to, that'd be every last one of you following me, and every last one of my mutuals. But Amanda, you might be asking, why? Why give us a shoutout for doing the things we do here in this fine rp community? Because I'm going to tell you a story, kids. About why I'm slow and drag my feet even though everything I have is quality, and why I probably seem more standoffish in messenger and on discord than I do in posts and tags. And how I'm trying to Be Better About It. So I migrated almost exclusively over from Dreamwidth. For those that might not know, Dreamwidth is a platform similar to Livejournal that is a "safer" environment for fandom. I say "safer", because the truth is, it's...Not. How is different, but it's not a great place to rp. I have too many friends that have similar problems with approaching people and initiating that it can't just be me. It’s some serious overshare here but. I especially feel like addressing everyone at once is better than trying to do it one at a time, because I’d get nervous about it that way and. Well. This way you know what absolute admiration I have for each and every one of you.

Anyway, dwrp is an animal not entirely unlike this one, in set up: We do memes; there are communities for it. There are games. People have psls (personal story lines), and museboxes (kind of like personal sandboxes to play in). There are fandoms, originals, and everything in between. But holy shit is the difference between the two real. In dwrp, there's a certain constant oppressive force, and a big silent emphasis on groupthink. For example, here I can be a free agent, not affiliated with anyone, and therefore have every opportunity to play with all of you. It's very freeing. There, if you're not in a game, you won't even get replies on memes. The big social media preference there is Plurk, and if you're not in a game, people that were good friends while you were in a game will pretty much stop talking to you. I know, that sounds self-pitying and hokey, but hand over heart, it's the truth. I dropped my games because of school, and my friends list dropped like you wouldn't believe. There's also the oppressive presence of a community called Wankgate. Now don't get me wrong: Wankgate has outed some really terrible people lurking in rp. But for the most part it's really destructive. The whole time you rp on dw, you look over your shoulder, hoping you haven't attracted their attention. I've seen people literally have a breakdown over getting namedropped on WG. That's how bad it is. You get namedropped? You're a pariah. I've seen WG destroy people who were getting so much better on getting handles on their mental health. Completely destroys progress, because your character made a comment to another one some person doesn't like. And because it's anonymous, it gets dogpiled. It's some scary shit. AFAIK I've never been namedropped there, and I don't read it, but I don't care if they do or not anyway, because... Imagine my surprise at a community that actually wants to do things with Hector. That anyone would want to ship things with this human trashpile. I struggled for years trying to find any kind of anything at all over there. Couldn't stick to a game, because it was damned near impossible. He was a joke, throwaway character to a lot of people, so that's how he got treated, and I could build very little in the way of cr (character relationships) to keep him in a place. Trying to plot would lead to nothing. God forbid I do a "Shipping Who We're Logged In As" meme on plurk. If I hear ew gross he's old one more time, I swear I think I'd lose it. Like, there's tons more to it, about all of his cr being pretty women, but if he ever acknowledged that they were pretty, I'd get mortified plurks at me like OH MY GOD THAT'S SO FUNNY!!!! and...Anyway. Point to that being, if it seems like I'm dragging feet over things that are shippy, or you think he should flirt more...I'm working on it. There's an actual hesitation there, because 1. I wouldn't want anyone to be uncomfortable, I realize Hector's an acquired taste that way, and 2. I have literally never had the opportunity for the above. I'm working on it. I'm trying to find his flirty voice. I think I'm doing better! So please be patient. So, now that I said I'd keep this short and didn't, and overshared with you all? Let me just say that I have never met a warmer, welcoming group of people. I know tumblr rp has its problems. This shit about female characters can go fuck itself. I love lady characters. Bring me your lady characters. I'm getting better, and this idiot will flirt with them because sure why not. But you guys keep on being awesome, and realize it's not you, it's me. I'm still trying to tone down my !!!!!!! at all of you, because I'm literally having so much fun? If I weren't running a game on dw I'd leave it completely for you guys, even though I got some shit when I said I was going to try this out ages ago (when I first made this tumblr). You guys are really 100x more creative here. You don't have what dw has to hold it back, and you do whatever you want and I love it. You're my found people. I know some people have expressed concerns to me about maybe being too !!!!! at me and no bbs. No. You guys are all perfect angels and I love you.

#[and also that you're all lovely and deserve smooches]#[and being here has done wonders for them]#[hesitant to post this but]#[i just want you guys to understand i have left dw with some Issues]#[like i'm almost]#[so here's some overshare!]#i got you blue | ooc

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wildestthicket · 6 years

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She came into my work the other day, which isn’t like. Impossible. I work at a specialty store that people come into every day and she just happened to show up when I was working. I didn’t know she was back in town, she didn’t know I worked there.

My brain was so jarred that it spat out someone who didn’t know her or recognize her, and she pretended not to recognize us either. I went to the back and had a meltdown after she left.

She messaged me on facebook about a week after it happened to apologize since ‘I’ had asked her never to contact ‘me’ again. She wanted to check to see what she should do so I felt safe at work to the point of offering to get someone I didn’t know come in and get stuff for her so I wouldn’t have to see her again.

I just want to tell her what happened and why shit fell apart the way it did so I’m going to write it down here to sort it out for myself at least and so I don’t message her on an impulse because this all feels too much like fate.

In high school I became the host again (afaik iv, Fe, and Sly showed up intermittently when they needed to, as you do) and met her. Long story short she was my best friend and I was completely in love with her. We had a lot of the same interests, she introduced me to books and music that are still important to all of us. Most of my world had her somewhere in it. It was like that for two years and I know there were problems, things weren’t perfect. There was the self professed ‘native american fetish’ of hers and other stuff I can’t call to mind right now. I didn’t have the guts to bring it up and chance losing the most important person to me right then.

And for once the person who was the most important to me seemed to really care about me too? We talked constantly and. Yeah. I don’t know. Two years of having someone I could tell anything and feel like just maybe it was mutual. I got a notebook that I was determined to use as the notebook to plan my novel, which she’d listened to me blab about for hours on end. She wrote something for me in the back of it and made me promise not to read it until I had filled the book.

Then she graduated and I had my back surgery. I’m not sure at which point I went dormant, but it was somewhere in the first two months. It was too painful, and I was horrified that in my eyes I had elected to ruin my body. Eli became host because he was made for handling pain and we still aren’t sure if our brain copied my pertinent personality traits onto him, if we were similar to start with since we were two versions of the same kid but with different jobs, or if we had a drastic personality change that everyone around us chalked up to growing up and going through intensive surgery.

Either way, I went away. In my place was someone who knew who Kelowna was, but didn’t have any emotional attachment to her whatsoever and was terrified and disgusted by himself over how little he cared. But he couldn’t have. He also couldn’t have known. I used to hate Eli so much over letting her go and not trying harder to hold on to that relationship, but how could he have?

For a while he kept texting her, he went up to visit her a couple times after she moved away. I think I showed up at one point during the second trip. There’s an entire page of a sketchbook we bought on that trip filled with the words ‘MAKE IT WORTH IT’. There was this feeling that Eli had of going through the motions while we were around her.

At some point after that second (I think there were two? I honestly can’t remember) trip communication started to drop off. I think that was when I stopped fronting altogether because I thought we might never be able to transition because of our back surgery. The next bits are blurry for me. At some point during grade 12, after not having talked to her for a few months, Eli got a new follower who started to interact with a lot of his transition related posts. Their url kind of implied that either they were trans too or at least were trans centric, he didn’t think much of it. He liked the attention, like any of us would. There’s one specific post we remember where this follower said something like ‘oooh can you make me coffee in that outfit?’ and another where they called Eli handsome in one of his shirtless binder pictures for a review of it so we decided to check out their blog to determine if this was a creep or someone we wanted to maybe be friends with.

We scrolled for a little while, it looked like a diary blog and an account of her wife’s transition. Then at the very bottom of the blog there was an apology post addressing Eli (or me, I only chose the name Keirren because when we sorted system stuff out, Eli was the one doing it and the name was effectively his at that point. I chose Eli when I figured out I was trans, but Keirren was the first name I chose for myself online so I went with that one in the end) by name. I can’t remember the exact contents of the post, that memory is Eli’s, but the gist of it was that she felt at fault for letting the relationship fall apart. Eli knew that he was the one who ghosted, but at that point had no idea why he’d done it.

He exited the tab and decided to just not address it. School was too stressful to bother with much else, our Nanny had just died (which made iv go dormant for a while, also cutting off even more of our emotional range) and our parents’ abusive behavior was at its worst then.

A couple weeks later he decided it was best to just say something instead of beating around the bush, and went to find the apology post so he could reference specific bits of stuff to make sure he got everything. The post had been deleted. He figured that the apology (that he didn’t really think was necessary, in fact he thought he should be the one apologizing) was retracted, that she didn’t want to get back in contact with us again.

That was that. For a while. She kept interacting with him through that blog, and had no identifying information that would have tipped us off to it being her on it if we hadn’t seen that post.

There were a few instances of him checking the blog to see if she had made another post at us and the two of them vaguing back and forth.

Eli felt. Skeeved out. But he didn’t know how to go about addressing any of it because there was this big fucking hole in his memory, or reasoning, or something, about why he’d just let go of someone who had been so important to ‘him’. He graduated, took a gap year, and at some point during that, she texted us.

We had no idea she still had our number, and she sent us a shitload of texts. I don’t remember the contents of any of it, all I know is that it ended in Eli telling her to fuck off and never contact us again. Partly because he was scared of sounding like he was making excused or a bad person for not knowing why he did what he did, partly because he was understandably angry and freaked out.

I think it was a few months after that that Eli finally gained an inkling of what was going on with our brain, that there was an ‘us’ instead of a ‘him’. At that point it was just Fever and iv. Then we went to university.

Cue one of the worst mental breakdowns Eli has ever had, bad enough that he got sucked inworld after a hospitalization and I got spat back out to the front for the first time in... Three years? Maybe a little less, but this was the first time I was solidly present for more than a handful of hours in at least two years. At least that.

The last two years while we were away at school and trying to survive halfway across the country aren’t. Super relevant to this so I’ll give some highlights.

Eli told his partner about all of the above. We figured out that it was me who was friends with Kelowna, mostly since I missed her so fucking much and kept wanting to get back in contact with her. I became a member of the main fronting group after pulling some really horrible shit and consequently patching things up with the people I hurt. I grew up a lot, and I’m so fucking happy I got to where I am.

There were a couple times that our paranoia got so bad that we thought we saw her around the city we were in even though that was nearly impossible.

During a visit home with Eli’s partner (wait shit, this particular instance would have been before they moved with us. Okay so this was with Eli’s partner, but just before they moved with us) we put all of the stuff of Kelowna’s we still had in a bag, drove down to where her parents lived in the middle of the night, and chucked it over the fence. Eli wanted closure, I knew all I would ever do with that stuff was use it to cling on to memories and a relationship that would never go back to how it was before.

So for the time between my re-emergence and now, I’ve grown up a lot, but I still spend a significant amount of time thinking about her. About what could have happened differently. Wanting to tell her what happened. Sometimes knowing it’s just out of my need/want for closure over the whole situation, and other times self righteously going ‘She deserves to know after what I did to her!’. I’m not sure how true either of those things are.

I’m either a holder for all of our feelings and memories of her, or I just plain old fucking miss her because she was my best friend. Maybe I’m bitter because I want my life back still. Because I didn’t get to grow up and I probably never will. All I ever wanted was to prove that I could make it out of high school and survive out from under my parents’ thumb and not give up or kill myself and that didn’t happen. Maybe I’m projecting. I didn’t kill myself, but a lot of me still feels like I gave up. I don’t know. i have a lot of shit to sort out and this tangent is getting out of hand.

About half a year ago, we moved back here to get our shit in order. We got a job, we got on assistance, we figured out a living situation for the time being.

And then she walked into our job about a month ago.

Then she messaged us about two weeks ago.

And all of this, all six years of this condensed down into rapid flashbacks and memories I wish I’d never tried to push away coming back to me, came bubbling back up.

I miss her so much.

I know it’s the stupidest thing but the messages sent us just sound like she’s grown and changed a lot.

I still want to tell her and I have no idea what to do.

So I spent an hour writing all of this so I wouldn’t message her and so I could get all of this sorted out in order in my head and I think I have things as in order as I’ve had them in a while

And now I have no idea what to do with all of it.

Like, great, I have a chronological account of what happened how I remember it happening, but where do i go now? At this point I’m just writing this to keep myself from switching back to the Facebook tab I have open where I have her message up and talking to her.

So. Yeah. That’s been my month.

#kelowna #keirren shut up

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