#[[ been seeing some misinformation going around ]]

[purrple-sectors]

I had this post on my drafts for months ngl and I think with everything that's happening (and to not let it rot on the drafts) it should be shared

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With the Lando hate train going on, and many other hate trains, I feel like there's some things that need to be said related to fandom and hate culture in general, this is not only about Lando and it applies to any driver

It's very valid to dislike, lose respect, and/or hate a driver to some degree, but death wishes, including wishing for a serious crash and general hate speech is NOT OKAY in any way

There's some very valid stuff to hate about a driver, but not all things they do are valid to hate, for instance many of their actions are reasonable and not properly wrong, I'm talking for example about when they complain on the radio when they're genuinely struggling with the car

It's okay for people to like a driver you dislike and it's okay for people to dislike a driver you like, don't harass fans for having opinions different than yours

Refrain from using isolated quotes or sentences from drivers to base all your mindless hating but also defending, context matters like the question they were answering, what they said before and/or after, try to understand the situation in a wilder angle before making assumptions and spreading misinformation

Avoid generalising actions, the drivers are human beings, and humans are very complex, only bc they did/said something shitty once, that doesn't mean all they do is always with malicious intent

I know we are on a time where media impressions are so absolutely central that it's normal to question the motives behind some statements, but that's doesn't mean they are all done with manipulative intent, yes we can never be sure but that also means that we aren't sure if it was truly a pr manipulative move

Try to not claim that you know for sure the true intentions of a driver when its not disclosed and the comment/action itself is very dubious and/or not very serious, you can guess it but you shouldn't go around saying that what you think is the factual truth, you don't know them personally and what is going on on their heads, a comment you may feel like it was made with ill intent, could have been done very innocently and naively. I'm not saying that it always happens however at least try to consider that it may be a possibility

Don't go overanalysing and dissecting a driver's every action and words with the purpose of only finding things to hate on them, not only is quite disrespectful it's frankly borderline obsessive and creepy

If you want to truly hate, there's specific places where you can do it, but don't let it bled to spaces like Twitter and Instagram comments, places where most drivers (like Lando) are very present and can see not only the hate directed to them but also the hate directed to other drivers. This also include spaces where drivers' close ones can see the hate, mentioning in particular Max F's twitch chat.

But be aware that if you're hating/speaking ill about a driver on a social media platform there may be people that can get uncomfortable with it and block you as they should. DO NOT make it personal or weoponize it, they have every right to block you if they feel uncomfortable and dont want to see your content

Lasty if you ever feel like your mental health is in stake bc of f1, turn it off and give it a break, your mental health shouldn't dependent on some drivers that don't even know you, its okay to feel this way but it's imo unfair to blame on a driver for their performance when theyre simply doing their job and doing their best

On a final note all the drivers have done something shitty and/or had shitty attitudes at some point but many people are clouded by judgement and mindless hate some drivers without acknowledging (and refusing to) that their faves also did things wrong, please avoid doing this, not only its very hypocritical but its quite a dangerous mentality of "My fave cant do any wrong" that can easily be translated to day to day life, try to be critical on serious situations, and hold ALL drivers accountable for things they said/done, not just the ones you personally feel to! You will come across as quite hypocritical if you just select a few drivers and not hold anything accountable to others (especially if they're your faves) and in the long run is not a very good look

To sum up just practice basic human decency, this is mostly my take of view so take it with a grain of salt if it pleases you so. This applies to any driver and I'll add more if I find other things to say. To any new fans out there the only thing I ask you is to try to educate yourself before jumping into any hate train, give yourself a chance to form an opinion and then see which part or side of the community you relate most, don't let others dictate your opinion.

[dustified]

just as a forewarning, the update is when you reblog your own posts, not when other people reblog your posts...

[celestial-kestrel]

It's that time of year again where Mari Lwyd starts to be talked about and shared around and an INCREDIBLY misleading post gets shared a lot. As someone who grew up with Mari Lwyd I wanted to clear some things up.

Also hello, if you are unaware who Mari Lwyd is. This is about the Welsh tradition of the horse skull who visits houses during the Christmas to New Years period in Wales asking for alcohol.

First off and probably the most important one:

Mari Lwyd is not a cryptid!

I can not emphasise this enough. She. Is. Not. A. Cryptid. There is no story or mystery about a ghost or zombie horse roaming the Welsh valleys. She's not even supposed to be a ghost or a zombie. It's just a horse skull on a stick with a guy under a sheet. She's a hobbyhorse and a folk character used to tell Welsh stories and keep songs alive. When people spread the misinformation that she's a cryptid, it's the equivalent of saying Kermit the Frog is a cryptid.

She is actually only one character in a wider cast of characters who go door to door or, in more modern times, pub to pub. The cast of characters can change town to town and village to village but there are some common ones I see time and time again. The Leader, the Merryman, The Jester and The Lady are just some I see regularly. Punch and Judy used to be more popular a few years ago but I haven't seen them in a while as their tradition has mostly fallen out of popularity. In most cases, almost the whole cast will be played by men. Even the characters are considered and referred to as female. Though this again depends and varies by which group is partaking in the Mari Lwyd tradition.

This point also goes onto my second point,

Mari Lwyd does not rap.

I think this comes from a very common misunderstanding of what rap is vs spoken word. Rap is a very specific style of music originating from the African American communities of the USA and has it's own structure and motifs unique to it. It's a lot more complex than people give it credit for as a style of music and just flippantly assign anything similar to it as being rap. If someone is talking fast or reciting poetry, it is not rap. Or anything that is an exchange of words between two people is not a rap battle. Mari Lwyd does not do rap, actually something that gets left out of these posts is the fact Mari Lwyd does not even speak. It's actually the Leader, who does all the speaking and song based banter between the house/pub owner for entry. Mari Lwyd just clicks her mouth, bites people and bobs her head around.

I think Mari Lwyd is a really beautiful and unique part of Welsh culture. She's not actually as wildly celebrated as a lot of the posts make her out to be. Actually, I think most Welsh people themselves learn about Mari Lwyd through the internet as well. Her popularity is increasing thanks to the drive of local groups wanting to keep the traditions alive and a renewed desire to document Welsh traditions before they're gone. Which is why it's such a shame that she's turned into something she's not to earn horror points on the internet. I think this is why it bothers me so much to see the misunderstandings of the culture and the folk tradition. Mari Lwyd's origin is very hot debated as well as how long it's been going on for. But I think it's thanks to a lot of traditions like this that the Welsh language and our stories weren't lost forever. Welsh culture is recovering as is the language. But it's still in a very fragile place. I think it's why it's important to document and correct information when it's spread.

Anyway, if you want to see the tradition in action, here's a lovely video from the Cwmafan RFC going to one of the pubs for charity. It includes the song exchange with the pub owner for entry and the whole pub singing and joining in once Mari Lwyd and the rest are inside.

As well with another video from St Fagan's showcasing the more traditional and door to door form with the larger cast.

[autistichalsin]

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[alex51324]

Useful article from CNN on election-night misinformation.

Key takeaway is that pretty much whatever happens, Trump will claim it's evidence that the election is being rigged against him.

Some additional things to keep in mind--particularly if you haven't been through many of these before:

The winner may or may not be projected on election night. How long it takes depends on a bunch of factors, having to do with the logistics of ballot-counting and how the statistical analysis comes along. Getting a projected winner by midnight and the count taking several days are both well within the range of normal, and neither one suggests that anything nefarious is happening.

Counting of votes always continues for several days after the election, until every vote has been counted. This happens regardless of whether or not the media have "called" a winner, or a candidate has conceded.

Media outlets project election winners based on the data that has come in and their statistical models--they do not "declare" or "decide" who won. The major outlets are very motivated to avoid an incorrect projection*, so if they make a call, it's because they're really sure they have enough information to accurately predict the outcome of the final count.

Usually, when this happens, all of the major media outlets are making the same projection around the same time--within the same hour, at least, and often in the same 10 minutes or so. If there's an outlier, there's a good chance they're either guessing or propagandizing.

Candidates do not get to call the race in their own favor. There's a decent chance Trump will try, but also it's also normal and expected for both campaigns to talk like they're expecting to win; e.g. introducing their candidate as "the next President of the United States" when appearing before supporters at events. (My guess is that if he does try, the mainstream media outlets will simply sanewash it as typical election-night bravado, which is actually fine.)

The only thing that means anything, coming from a candidate/campaign, is a concession. This will often happen after the media has called the race for the other candidate; it usually isn't a surprise. A normal campaign will often go quiet--stop sending people to talk on TV, etc.--when they're getting ready to concede. (Trump arguably** still hasn't conceded 2020, so no one is particularly expecting him to concede any time this coming week.)

It's normal for the numbers to change a lot. There are always some surprises, but there are also standard patterns: results from the southeast usually come in a clump, and put a lot of electoral votes into the Republican column, early in the night. Democrats usually pick up the west coast states, which of course are the last to close their polls and start reporting results***. For the swing states, where we'll probably see a lot of reporting on very incomplete vote totals, results will start coming in first from the rural areas, which lean red; cities take longer to count their votes--because there are more of them--and lean blue.

The more uncertainty there is about the outcome, the more you'll hear about the evolving numbers--news networks have airtime to fill, and there's only so many ways you can say, "Still too close to call." Try not to obsess over these numbers; the news networks have people specially trained to analyze this exact kind of data, and if they can't say how it's going to turn out, you're not going to know, either.

If it ends up being too close to call for several days, there will probably be reporting on small, county-by-county vote dumps. It's important to realize that this is all still the original count of the votes, not a recount or "finding new votes." We only hear about it when the election is so close that these relatively small numbers of ballots are likely to affect the outcome, but it happens every single election. In 2020, Trump repeatedly claimed that ongoing counts were some how irregular, and sometimes demanded that counts be stopped when the current total showed him in the lead. This is, to be clear, nuts; the full & complete count of the votes always takes more than just the one day, and it's a bedrock principle of democracy that every valid ballot is counted.

(* Back in 2000, the Bush-Gore election with the whole Florida debacle, several major news outlets did project winners too soon, and then had to walk back their projections.

This definitely contributed to the chaos that night, and may have also contributed to the widespread perception that Bush was the "real" winner and Gore was dragging the country through multiple recounts, in those first few days when the initial count of wasn't even complete in some states.

As a result, responsible media outlets are much more cautious these days about election-night projections.)

(**On January 7, 2021 he made a statement that was taken as indicating his understanding that Biden had won, or at least that he knew he wouldn't be staying in office, but he never stopped saying he won.)

(***This often looks like the Republican being miles ahead, and then suddenly California reports in and they aren't anymore. Expect Trump to pretend that this is somehow shocking, even though the last time a Republican won California was 1988.

Similarly, he will also pretend to be surprised when, for instance, Philadelphia turns in their first big batch of results, and Harris's numbers jump up.)

[ms-demeanor]

Friends, I think we need to talk about Covid.

I want to get a few caveats out there before I start:

I am aware that there are people who need to exercise extreme caution about Covid; I live with someone who has two solid organ transplants and who is at the most immune compromised level of immune compromised. *I* have to be extremely cautious about covid.

Masking does prevent a certain level of transmission, and people who think they may have covid should mask and people who are concerned that they may be at high risk for covid should mask.

You should be vaccinated and boosted with the most recent vaccines that are available to you; covid is highly transmissible and very serious, you do not want to get covid and if you do get covid you don't want it to be severe and if you do get covid you don't want to give someone else covid and up-to-date vaccinations are the best way to reduce transmission and help to prevent severe cases of Covid.

We should be testing before going to any gatherings, and informing people if we test positive after gatherings, and testing if we suspect we have been exposed.

It is bullshit that there aren't good protections for workers who have covid; you should not be expected to go to work when you are testing positive

It is bullshit that people who are testing positive are not isolating for other reasons; if you have Covid you should not be going out and exposing other people to it even if you are experiencing mild symptoms or no symptoms.

We do need better ventilation systems for many kinds of spaces. Schools need better ventilation, restaurants need better ventilation, doctor's offices and hospitals and office buildings need better ventilation and better ventilation can reduce covid transmission.

I want to make it clear that Covid is real and there are real steps that individuals and systems can take to prevent transmission, and that there are systems that are exerting pressures that needlessly expose people to covid (the fact that you can lose your job if you don't come in when you're testing positive, mainly; also the fact that covid rapid tests should be ubiquitous and cheap/free and are not).

All of that being said: I'm seeing some posts circulating about how we're at an extremely high level of transmission and the REAL pandemic is being hidden from us and, friends, I'm pretty sure that is just incorrect and we're spreading misinformation.

I'm thinking of this video in particular, in which the claim is made that "your mystery illness is covid" in spite of negative tests. The guy in the video says that there's nothing else that millions of people could be getting a day, and that he predicted this because a wastewater spike in December meant that there was a huge spike in cases.

I've also seen people saying that deaths are where they were in 2021-2022, and that we're still at "a 9/11 a week" of excess deaths and friends, I'm not seeing great evidence for any of these claims.

I know that we (in the US, which is where the numbers I'm going to be citing are from) feel abandoned by the CDC and the fact that tracking cut off in May of 2023. But that only cut off for the federal tracking.

I live in LA county and LA county sure as shit is still tracking Covid.

If you want a clearer picture, you can see the daily case count over time compared to the daily death count:

Okay, you might say, but that's just LA.

Alright, so here's Detroit:

Right, but maybe that's CDC data and you don't trust the CDC at this point.

Okay, here's fatalities in New York tracked through New York's state data collection:

It's harder to toggle around the site for South Dakota, but you can compare their cases and hospitalizations and deaths for early 2022

To cases and hospitalizations and deaths from early 2024

And see that there's really no comparison.

Okay, you might say, but people are testing less. If they're testing less of course we're not seeing spikes, and they're testing less because fewer tests are available.

Alright, people are definitely testing less than they were in 2021 and 2022. Hospitalization for Covid is probably the most clear metric because you know those people have covid for sure, the couldn't not test for it.

Here are hospitalizations over time for LA:

Here are hospitalizations over time for New York:

As vaccination rates have gone up, cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have gone down. It IS clear that there are case spikes in the winter, when it is cold and people are indoors in poorly ventilated spaces and people are more susceptible to respiratory infections as a result of cold air weakening the protection offered by our mucous membranes, and that is something that we will have to take precautions about for the forseeable future, just as we should have always been taking similar precautions during flu season.

So I want to go point-by-point through some of the arguments made in that video because I'm seeing a bunch of people talking about how "THEY" don't want you to know about the virus surge and buds that is just straight up conspiracism.

So okay, first off, most of what that video is based on is spikes in wastewater data, not spikes in cases. This is because people don't trust CDC data on cases, but I'd say to maybe check out your regional data on cases. I don't actually trust the CDC that much, but I know people who do tracking of hospitalizations in LA county, I trust them a lot more. Wastewater data does correlate with increases in cases, but this "second largest spike of the entire pandemic" thing is misleading; wastewater reporting is pretty highly variable and you can't just accept that a large spike in covid in wastewater means that we're in just as bad a place in the pandemic as we were in 2022. We simply have not seen the surge of hospitalizations and deaths that we would expect to see in the weeks following that spike in wastewater data if wastewater data was reflective of community transmission.

The next claim is that "there is nothing else that is infecting millions of people a day" and covid isn't doing that either. The highest daily case rates were in January of 2021 and they were in the 865k a day range, which is ridiculously high but isn't millions of cases a day.

But what we can see is that when people are tested by their doctors for Covid, RSV, and the Flu, more tests are coming back positive for the Flu. Covid causes more hospitalizations than the other two illnesses, but to be honest what the people in the video are describing - lightheadedness, dizziness, exhaustion - just sound like pretty standard symptoms of everything from covid to the cold to allergies. There are lots of things your mystery illness could be.

The video goes on to talk about the fact that people aren't testing, and why their tests may be coming back negative and I'd like to point out that the same things are all true of Flu or RSV tests. People might be getting tested too early or too late; getting a negative test for the flu isn't a good reason to assume you've got covid, getting a negative test for covid isn't a good reason to assume you've got the flu, and testing for viruses as a whole is imperfect. There are hundreds of viruses that could be the common cold; there are multiple viruses that can cause bronchitis; there are multiple viruses that can cause pneumonia, and you're not going to test for all of these things the moment you start feeling sick.

He then recommends testing for multiple days if you have symptoms and haven't had a positive test (fine) and talks about the location of the tests (less fine). Don't use your rapid tests to swab your throat or cheek unless it specifically says that they are designed to do so. Test based on the instructions in the packet.

He points out that the tests probably still pick up on the virus because they're not testing for the spike protein, they're testing for the RNA (good info!)

The video then discusses something that I think is really key to this paranoia about the "mystery illnesses" - he talks about how covid changes and weakens your immune system (a statement that should come with many caveats about severity and vulnerability and that we are still researching that) and then says that it makes you more susceptible to strep or mono and that "things that used to clear in a day or two now hit you really hard."

And that's where I think this anxiety is coming from.

Strep throat lasts anywhere from three days to a week. A cold takes about a week to clear. The flu lasts about a week and can knock you on your ass with exhaustion for weeks depending on how bad you get it. Did you get a cough with your cold? Expect that to take anywhere from three to eight weeks to clear up.

I think that people are thinking "i got a bad virus and felt really sick for a week and haven't gotten my energy back" but that just sounds like a bad cold. That sounds like a potent allergy attack. That doesn't even sound like a bad flu (I got a bad flu in 2009 and thought i was going to straight-up die I had a fever of 103+ for three days and felt like shit for three days on either side of that and took six weeks to feel more like myself again).

Getting sick sucks. It really, really sucks. But if you're getting sick and you're testing for covid and it's coming back negative after you tested a few times, it's almost certainly not covid.

The video then says "until someone provides evidence that it's not covid, it should be assumed to be covid because we have record levels of covid it's that simple" but that's not simple. We don't have record levels of covid and he hasn't proved it. We have record high levels of wastewater reports of covid, which correlates with covid cases but the spike in wastewater noted in december didn't see a spike with a corresponding magnitude of cases in terms of either hospitalizations or deaths, which is what we'd have seen if we had actual record numbers of covid.

He says that if you want to ignore this, you'll get sick with covid, and that about 30-40% of the US just got sick with covid in the last four months (which is a RIDICULOUSLY unevidenced claim).

He says that we need to create a new normal that takes covid into account, which means masking more often and testing more often and making choices about risk-avoidant behaviors.

Now, I don't disagree with that last statement, but he prefaces the statement with "it doesn't necessarily mean lockdown" and that's where I think the alarmism and paranoia is really visible here. We are so, so far away from "lockdown" type levels that it's absurd to discuss lockdown here.

What I'm seeing right now is people who are chronically ill, people who are immune compromised, and people who are experiencing long covid (which may not be distinct from other post-viral syndromes from severe cases of flu, etc, but which may be more severe or more notable because of the prevalence of covid) are talking about feeling abandoned and attacked and left behind by society because covid is still out there, and still at extremely high levels.

I am seeing people who feel abandoned and attacked because the lgbtq+ events they are attending don't require masking. I am seeing people who are claiming that it is eugenicist that their schools don't have a negative test policy anymore.

And this comes together into two really disconcerting trends that I've been observing online for a while.

The claim that the pandemic is still as bad as it's ever been and in fact may be worse but we can't know that because "they" (the CDC, the government, capitalist institutions that want you back in the office, the university industrial complex that wants your dorm room dollars) are covering up the numbers and

Significant grievance at the fact that people are acting like number one is not true and are putting you at risk either out of thoughtlessness (because they don't realize they're putting you at risk) or malice (because they don't care if the sick die).

And those things are a recipe for disaster.

I think I've pretty robustly addressed point one; I don't think that there's good evidence that there's a secretly awful surge of covid that nobody is talking about. I think that there are some people who are being alarmist about covid who are basing all of their concern on wastewater numbers that have not held up as the harbinger of a massive wave of infections.

So let's talk about point number two and JK Rowling.

Barnes and Noble is not attacking you when it puts up a Hogwarts Castle display in the lobby. Your favorite youtuber isn't trying to hurt you when they offhandedly mention Harry Potter.

If you let every mention of Harry Potter or every person who enjoys that media franchise wound you, you are going to spend a lot of your time wounded.

People are not liking Harry Potter at you.

Okay.

People are also not not wearing masks at you.

You may be part of a minority group that experiences the potential for outsized harm as a result of majority groups engaging in perfectly reasonable behaviors.

There are kind, well-meaning, sensible people who go out every day and do something that may cause you harm and it's not because they want to hurt you or they don't care about whether you live or die, it is because they are making their own risk assessments based on their own lives and making the very reasonable assumption that people who are more concerned about covid than they are will take precautions to keep themselves safe.

We are not at a place in the pandemic where it is sensible to expect people with no symptoms of illness to mask in public as a matter of course or to present evidence of a recent negative test when entering a public building in their day-to-day life.

I think now is a really good time to sit down and ask yourself how you expect things to be with covid as an endemic part of our viral ecosystem. I think now is a good time to ask yourself what risk realistically looks like for you and for people who are unlike you. I think now is a good time to consider what would feel "safe" for you and how you could accomplish feeling safe as you navigate the world.

I'm probably going to continue masking in most indoor spaces for years. Maybe forever. There are accommodations that SHOULD be afforded to people who have to take more precautions than others (remote learning, remote visits, remote work, etc.), and we should demand those kinds of accommodations.

But it is going to poison you from the inside out if you are perpetually angry that people who don't have the same medical limitations as you are happy that they get to go shopping with their faces uncovered.

So now I want to talk to you about my father in law.

My father in law had a bone marrow transplant in 2015. That's the most immune compromised you can get without having your organs swapped out.

The care sheet for him after the transplant was a little overwhelming. The list of foods he couldn't eat was intimidating and the limitations on where he could go was depressing. It cautioned against going to large events, it recommended outdoor gatherings where possible but only if he could avoid sunlight and was somewhere with no history of valley fever. It said that he should wear masks indoors any time he was someplace with poor ventilation and that he should avoid contact with anyone who had an illness of any kind, taking special note to avoid children and anyone recently vaccinated for measles.

It was, in short, pretty much what someone immune compromised would need to do to try to avoid a viral infection. Sensible. Reasonable. Wash your hands and social distance; wear masks in sensitive contexts and don't spend time in enclosed places with people who have a communicable illness.

This is what life was always going to be like for people who are severely immune compromised, and it was always going to be incumbent upon the person with the illness to figure out how to operate in a society that is not built with them in mind.

It is not the job of every parent I encounter to tell me whether their child has been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months. That isn't something that people need to do as part of their everyday life. However it IS my responsibility to check with the parents I'm hanging out with whether their children have been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months so I know if it's safe for my immune compromised spouse to be around them.

If you want an environment in which you feel safe from covid, at this point in the pandemic (when the virus is endemic and not spreading rapidly as far as we can see from case counts) it is your responsibility to take the steps necessary to make you feel safe. Some of those steps will involve advocating for safety improvements in public spaces (again, indoor ventilation needs to be better and I'm personally pretty extreme about vaccination requirements; these are things we should be discussing in our school board meetings and at our workplaces), some of those steps will involve advocating for worker protections, guaranteed sick time, and the right to healthcare. But some of the things you're going to need to do to feel safe are going to come down to you.

If you are concerned about communicable diseases you have to be realistic about the fact that our society doesn't go out of its way to prevent communicable diseases - norovirus among food service workers pre-pandemic is pretty clear evidence of that. You are going to have to be proactive about your safety rather than expecting the world to act like Covid is at 2021-2022 levels when it is measurably not.

[reasonsforhope]

Given the misinformation that's been going around and will be going around, thought this might be helpful to some people

For a lot of reasons, I'm very good at this/at searching, to the point where I have worked as a professional fact-checker for two different publishers. So, here goes:

My Article Fact-Checking Protocol

Thorough Version

Read the full article. Keep an eye out for emotionally loaded words, and all-or-nothing language

Keep an eye out or anything that sounds too good to be true, and in contrast, anything that sounds so awful it must be true

Run the website/source through the amazing Media Bias/Fact Check. They'll tell you about a publication's bias and history of accuracy

Go to the website's home page and read through the headlines. Look at what topics they cover/prioritize, sensationalist headlines, and whether they're framing anything in a way that feels odd/off to you

Do a search related to the topic. This can be keywords, a question, or even just copy-paste the article title (Recommended: use DuckDuckGo so the results don't change based on what Google thinks they can sell you)

If multiple highly credible sources that say the same thing pop up, and there's no major societal biases that might affect the coverage of the topic in those sources (e.g. anything related to the Israel-Palestine conflict/Palestinian genocide, no matter which side), then I'm done!

If there are major societal biases, or I can't get a consensus of sufficiently credible sources, then I do some combination of:

(1) search the topic again + the words "controversy" and/or "fake"

(2) search the opposite of the topic, or do some sort of other filtered search

(3) look up a sufficiently credible news outlet with the opposite point of view of my source, and see what they have to say

(4) if it's a big enough topic, start by looking up 2 of the top national papers and 1 major paper for your region (I usually do the ones in the US, because that's where I am In the US: the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the NY Times)

Adjust "news" to "relevant type of source, e.g. tech, environmental" as relevant for all of the above options

If no red flags come up, and it's a topic I understand enough to smell huge bullshit,

Then I'm usually done!

If there are red flags, or I actually need a certain amount of detail/understanding, then it gets more complicated, but that would be a whole other thing to break down and such

or

tl;dr

Quick Version

Read the full article. Keep an eye out for emotionally loaded words, and all-or-nothing language

Keep an eye out or anything that sounds too good to be true, and in contrast, anything that sounds so awful it must be true.

If I don't know the website:

Run the website/source through the amazing Media Bias/Fact Check. They'll tell you about a publication's bias and history of accuracy

If I trust the source, but something else pinged my radar:

Do a quick web search to verify anything that sounds suspicious or too good/bad to be true (Recommended: use DuckDuckGo)

[drawing-prompt-s]

Notice:

Hello, as some of you may be coming here with the belief that I am the same admin that runs @/Writing-Prompt-s please know that is incorrect! I am NOT! We share a similar name because he started it years ago, but I have been running it solo for almost 8 years now and have nothing to do with his other blog(s) or whatever it going down. Thank you!

Also I don't scrape(?) my prompts from Reddit or any other site - they're all submitted by other users who follow this blog and I just pick some to post (that's why you can find posts on here where I remind others to send them in). Occasionally I may make my own if I have an idea! But that's a misconception I keep seeing that I wanted to add this about.

Further explanation/information under the cut about who runs this blog:

While the/an admin of Writing-prompt-s did start this blog years ago, he then left it to idle and focused on his original blog. I saw this and reached out, again years ago, asking to run it - to which I was promoted to admin. I have been running Drawing-prompt-s solo for about 7 or 8 years now.

Until yesterday (08.06.24) I had no idea anything was even going on with his blog. I have nothing to do with it, I barely even see anything from it aside from the rare prompt come up on my dash nowadays. I only found out when I went to Q a bunch of posts up and found a slew of hate mail ranging from calling me a zionist, threatening violence, and telling me to kill myself. And one of my followers having sent an anon informing me that one of those posts had incorrectly stated he ran this blog as well - that user has since recognized that this is not the case, and various others have pointed it out.

I had a pinned post about this before and when I left for a few hours and came back it was gone. I am working under the assumption right now this is just the fault of Tumblr, though I am tentative about that. So if you see this posted again that is why, and if you see this exact post made again then just be aware it is becuase I am saving a copy of this message and each time the post is removed I will be reposting it, as i am saving this elsewhere so I do not have to rewrite it each time.

I do not want argument under this - I have caught up on everything going on, I have seen the post saying he runs this one, etc. All I wanted for this blog is to post prompts, share art, and encourage others to follow their passion for creation. And occasionally to drop cute cat pictures of my little gremlins.

To those who have been here for years and know who I am, know I am not that same person, I say thank you for sticking around - and to those correcting the misinformation, thank you again. I appriciate it <3

Yours sincerely,

a very confused chick in her early 20s who had no idea anything was even going down.

-- Prompt Prophet

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Is anyone gonna explain to people that ‘proship’ does not actually mean ‘problematic shipping’ or ‘problematic ship’ or are we just going to let this misinformation spread some more?

It means pro-shipping. The prefix pro, meaning ‘supporting.’ In favor of shipping.

It only became a defined position after anti-shippers who initially identified themselves as anti-a specific ship started harassing creators they didn’t like, doxxing them, and trying to get them fired from their irl jobs for shipping reasons around 2014-2016.

So people who had been in fandom for long enough to know where that kind of rhetoric leads (ffnet purges, LJ strikethru, as well as the direct harms caused by doxxing) observed this increasing trend of harassment and rallied to say ‘oh you lot are anti-shipping, as in opposed to certain ships? Well in that case, we are pro-shipping, because we follow the adage of ship and let ship.’

Before that point, it was just basic fandom etiquette to not bother people who ship stuff you don’t like, and to understand that if something squicks you out, it’s not the fault of the people who made it.

If someone says they are pro-ship, it means fuck all about what they actually enjoy in fiction.

It just means they’re opposed to harassing creators for making content that doesn’t cause tangible harm to real people. A better way to understand the ideological position is being anti-harassment and anti-censorship.

I have a lot of ships I find disgusting blacklisted so I don’t have to see them. But I am not interested in forcing people to comply with what I think is gross. That’s what it means.

Curate your online experience, and understand that your disgust response is not a defensible moral indicator or a justification to harass, deplatform, and dox fan writers.

[12percentspider]

Info time: Diabetes and related issues [this is long but I highly suggest reading]

Do you ever see something and you go "that doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about diabetes to dispute it"? Well, I can help you there. I can help you know enough about diabetes to dispute it if need be. Especially because well, there are seemingly a lot of scams going around where people claim to be diabetic [in my experience it's maybe 3 scammers that just remake] and the information is not very correct in most cases. Not to mention this type of scam pisses me off because I am in fact diabetic, and not only are people preying off of others' lack of information about the chronic condition, but it's also trivializing a serious lifelong condition that can be fatal. If you have now or have lost a loved one to diabetes complications, you are already aware of how dangerous it can be as well as how dangerous misinformation is as well.

What is diabetes? Diabetes is a chronic condition related to the endocrine system- the pancreas specifically. However, if complications get serious enough other parts of the body will be affected. In type 2 diabetes, the body's cells have become resistant to insulin, which is a hormone produced by the pancreas that allows cells to use glucose from the blood- your body's energy it needs to function. When someone is 'type 2', the food that person is eating is not able to fuel them, regardless of caloric content. Glucose is commonly called "blood sugar". It's a type of sugar that is processed and then transported via the circulatory system to your cells where it's needed. With type 1 diabetes (which used to be called "juvenile diabetes"), the pancreas does not produce any/enough insulin for some reason or another, generally because of autoimmune or other damage. [For me personally, I was diagnosed as an adult and had to have it confirmed as type 1 due to the presence of autoimmune antibodies, also apparently my pancreas hadn't quite given up at that point.] As we've seen before, insulin allows your body to use the food you are putting into it. As a double whammy, you can have type 1 with resistance, so not only is your body not producing any/enough insulin, what's there can't be used properly. [RIP Spider who has this] So to explain the effects, think about what happens when you're literally starving. Now imagine that's happening no matter how much you eat. Your body may go into starvation mode and store fat. This can be misleading, which when combined with fatphobia has people concluding that "well, you have diabetes because you're fat, duh". Heck, I have/had diabetic relatives who believed that eating too many carbs will automatically cause the condition because that's what everyone is told/assumes. Eventually, you'd starve and your body would start deteriorating as so. HOWEVER because you would have so much glucose that just sits there because it can't be used, your kidneys are going to work overtime to try and correct this- and they can't do it alone. Your liver can also suffer severe damage. That's not to mention a whole host of other complications that can occur.

So what about it? Well, obviously there are treatments. Insulin injections have existed since the 1920s. There are also medications that can help your body actually use the insulin it's being provided, be it naturally or artificially. So yes, people with diabetes are dependent on prescriptions to survive. My grandma lost a sister in childhood due to insulin treatments apparently not being available in the extremely rural area they were living in at the time. More recently, the israeli occupation has banned insulin from being distributed to Palestinians. [Insulin has also been used historically in psychiatric hospitals to force low blood sugar in psychiatric patients, but that's a whole other rabbithole about psychiatric abuse.] There are resources for the US and beyond if you or someone you know and/or love are in dire straits financially and need help with insulin or other diabetes medications/ related medical help. That's only one aspect of treatment, though. Because pain, stress, hormone changes, other medical issues, and plenty of other factors can raise your blood sugar to dangerous levels, other kinds of treatment to manage other factors may be necessary.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get to specifics. So the most common problem you're going to see mentioned is high blood sugar. We've already covered what the effects are, but what is considered high? For the most part, "high" is 200 milligrams per deciliter. My CGM (continuous glucose monitor) lists "high" as anything 181 or higher but stops giving an exact number after 350. This is why I had a good laugh that time I saw a scammer using an image of a meter reading glucose in the 120s- that's good blood sugar. If you're going to get even more specific you want your pre-breakfast blood sugar to be 80-130. So when you see an accompanying image reading in the 500s, that's extremely dangerous. That's "you're in danger of going into a coma" dangerous.

Insulin pricing? How come I'm seeing people saying they need $300? In the US, pricing cap was set to $35 somewhat recently. What this means is that per insulin pen (as far as I've experienced, the above-linked resource post should have links with better clarification) it's $35. Can't be more than that for one pen. How many doses that provides is very up in the air. It absolutely varies from person to person. I have relatives with type 2 that have to inject a dose of very long-acting insulin weekly, one has gone back and forth with daily doses on top of that. I'm type 1 and have to take one dose of long-acting nightly with injections of a short-acting insulin before every meal, with the exact dosage amounts varying per meal. Insulin is measured in units (there's probably an actual mL amount, both of mine are 100 units per mL with a 3mL pen). How many units someone needs is determined with their medical provider (or care team? When I went to 'diabetes education' after diagnosis I was set up with a "care team").

Edited:

["...pharmacies can refuse to split boxes of insulin pens depending on company/store policy. so if someone lost their insulin and needed to get a replacement because insurance wont pay for more, the pharmacy could make them get a full box of three or five pens."]

via: anon ask (thank you much!!!) So it turns out that yes, with $35 being a cap it would very much likely be for EACH pen, with 3 being $105 in this case and 5 being $175.

But at any rate, if someone is in an emergency situation in the US should be able to get an insulin pen for $35 pretty much when they get to a pharmacy [again, from edit: no, not every pharmacy]. Yes, I get that this can be difficult in some situations, but that's outside the concept of insulin prices.

If someone's blood sugar is over 500 though, they almost certainly need a hospital more than they need an insulin pen. Yes, alright, the actual real single mother on twitter who was the source of the profile images/meter images that whatever the current url for vero-og has stolen and been using for months... that was actually months ago and I'm sure she doesn't need to be told to go to the hospital right now. [That said, if you get an ask from someone and the url is a variation off of 'vero-og' that is a confirmed scammer.] And then on top of that, yes, why would you block people that can get you free or discounted insulin? If someone was offering to save your life for free or find you what you need for far less than what you were expecting to spend, why wouldn't you take it? Unless what you're actually after is money.

SO TO RECAP: Insulin does not cost $300, $350, $370, whatever someone is sending you an ask about. In the US, it is federally capped at $35 per pen, with further resources available, as well as further resources being available internationally. If you need help, please be honest about it. I promise there are people who care, you don't have to try and explain yourself- but it absolutely does not cost that much and if it did, there are ways to lower the cost by quite a bit if there aren't resources to make it free. Diabetes is a lifelong chronic condition that is not caused by "being fat" or "eating too much", it is caused by your body not functioning right and your body can starve no matter how much food you eat. Unfortunately, people have been lying on this site for months if not years claiming to have type 1 with an insulin emergency. These people cannot possibly have diabetes, or they would be well aware that they do not need hundreds of dollars to get their insulin. They are counting on you not knowing this so you will donate to them. The 'vero-og' scammer had been harassing someone who donated and threatening them with the intention of bullying more money out of the donor.

[bella-goths-wife]

Yandere Vs reaction to pet reader accidentally killing someone out of anger

Warnings: toxic relationships, mentions of drug use, SA mentions, Valentino, death, description of wounds, forced affection, forced father-daughter relationship, workplace bullying, grooming mentioned, guilt

You were used to your coworkers being assholes to you

You were a fellow working soul yet you were treated nicer and given many more privileges then them, of course they weren’t going to like you

Everyone referred to you as a lost puppy or as a pet

They didn’t even know your name, but know one really knew your name in fairness

They sneered when they saw you enter a room, and if the Vs weren’t accompanying you then they would get physical by tripping you or shoving you around

Angel dust does his best to defend you when he sees this happen, but angel rarely has time to think nevermind look after you

But the rumours were the parts that upset you the most, to here small parts of your life become exaggerated and spread around

They’d also dump their workload on you so you had to do even more stuff while also balancing three very obsessed bosses

But something pushed you over the edge today, something that angered you so much that your power spun out of control

You’d had a certain guy around the tower spread vicious rumours about you lately and you could always hear the whispers following you because of them

“I heard she killed her friends”

“I heard she was a whore who overdosed with her junkie boyfriend”

“I heard that she only gets good treatment because she’s fucking one of the bosses, or all of them by the looks of her”

Many misinformation or misunderstandings spread around by this man would end up being whispered near you

So one day when you were in voxs office alone and this guy walked in, you knew something bad was going to happen

He made a few smart ass comments about your rumoured past but you just rolled your eyes and ignored him

But he pushed it to far when he uttered the words “they really groomed you into their perfect little pet huh?”

You shot him a glare as you questioned what he meant by that

He then went on a long rant about how it wasn’t fair that you got better treatment all because you were willing to throw away your dignity for their enjoyment

With every word he uttered about the luck you supposedly had caused rage to spark in your chest

The cherry on top was when he said “I wonder what your mother would think if she found out what a fucking whore you are and how she must have fucked you up real bad for you to have this little self respect”

One minute he’s standing over you and smirking at you, the next he’s crumpled on the floor covering his ears and screaming in agony

You couldn’t stop using your ability to create loud and excruciating noises directly in his ears, it’s like you’d been completely taken over by the anger you felt

You saw blood pouring out of his ears like a fountain and you couldn’t help but smile and increasing the volume, until he stopped moving except for a few twitches and you saw what looked like brain matter leak from his ears

You had killed him

You just stood in shock and stared at his body while processing this information that you’d killed a man in cold blood

And the Vs saw it all happen from the open door

Vox:

Vox almost felt like a proud dad as he watched you kill someone purposefully for the first time

He came up and patted you on the shoulder with a wide smile, as if you’d just passed some sort of test

He wrapped his arm around your shoulders and rambled on about how you could improve and what you did well, almost like a performance review for a singers night show

What had been a world changing and traumatic experience for you, was purely just entertainment for him

He couldn’t understand your shell shocked expression, you had killed this man while smiling so why were you overreacting so much

But he still walked you back to your room and cleaned the blood off of your body and sitting you on your bed

He went on a long rant about how you shouldn’t feel bad about your murder, he was provoking you and it was clearly all his fault

He said that he understood why you did what you did, and that he was proud of you for your decision

“I started out like you, but you’ll improve over time and get used to it” he had said with a wide grin “soon enough you’ll be just like me”

And the fact that you were seen as in any way comparable to Vox only sent a chill down your spine and doubled your guilt

After that day, you noticed people were much nicer to you and Vox only gave you a ‘told you so’ look

But since becoming aware of the harassment you were subjected to, he did give voxtech employees a strict warning and he broke a few bones to get his point across

He couldn’t have something like a little murder bring his favourite girl down, even if it did prepare you to become his heir one day

Velvette:

Velvette doesn’t really understand the big deal

Your in hell, you fraternise with murderers and worse on a daily basis

You live in a tower filled with the worst of the worst kind of criminals

So why are you overreacting so much over a little murder that could easily be sorted out

She does scold you slightly on doing your own dirty work and doing it on the expensive carpeting

She explained that if you really want someone dead then you should just tell one of them and they’d have their security deal with it

But she did express some pride for you efficient killing and you experiencing your first purposeful murder

She does nothing to comfort you at all, you should be over it already is her thought process

But she does kill more people around you in her own sick away to reassure you that murdering people is okay in her books, she only makes you want to peel your own skin off though because every sight of blood just makes you think about the fact you ended a man’s afterlife

She also makes an example of the man you killed to her employee, harass her pet and her pet will bite back

She makes a few more private examples or your bullies, but she’ll wait until the rumours of the event hits you before she explains

Valentino:

This entire situation is just a joke to this man

His little princesa bites as much as she can bark, and he’s meant to take that seriously?

He does much worse stuff then murder every day and you don’t see him she’ll shocked and crying on the floor do you?

He will actively crack jokes about one of the most traumatic things you’ve ever done in front of you

Every time he does and you get a guilty or shocked expression, he bursts out laughing at the ridiculousness of your reaction

But he would clean up the body for you

He’d either just dump it into the cannibal colonies or he’d just get his workers to get rid of it and clean up the office

But he’d definitely keep a body part of a piece of jewellery from your victims body to taunt you with when he’s bored

He also gave a few extremely rough video sessions to some of the people from him workers that contributed to your harassment

He can’t have his little musical toy become too tired to sing him a soothing tune to calm his ever present temper

Sorry this was so small, work exhausted me today :(

Tag list so far:

@buttercupfangirl @repostingmyfavs @lilyalone @the-faceless-bride

[intheholler]

re: hurricane helene hey, y'all. so... immense survivor's guilt, subsequent depression and an overall helpless malaise has made my presence on tumblr here weaker during this horrific time. but there's nothing like some good ol appalachian rage to light a fire under the proverbial ass so i'm back to push back on some of the bullshit i keep seeing get spread about what's happening in the aftermath of hurricane helene, and in western north carolina especially. 

appalachia has always been low hanging fruit for the rest of the nation, and now that disaster has struck and we are even more vulnerable than we have been in a long, long time, bad actors are using us as a way to further their political bullshit and conspiracies.

please use some of the cited-information below the cut to push back on and educate any family members, friends or otherwise when you see them spreading misinformation. now is your chance to help appalachia, no matter where you are in the united states. myths, rumors and other flavors of horseshit regarding hurricane helene debunked under the cut. please reblog.

Let me just get my heart out of the way before we get into the nitty gritty, cause I got things to say. #1: "Why should we help these people? They get these storms there all the time. They didn't move away or do anything to prepare for this, and now it's our responsibility?"

These storms are not at all commonplace. For much of this area, especially WNC, this level of flooding and damage--spanning an area the size of Belgium between NC and TN--is largely unprecedented. Growing up, we get told our mountains protect us, that they shield us from the really bad, and that's because historically, they have. Hurricanes blow through, and they bring with them hella wind and rain, but nothing like this.

We do not have the infrastructure for this, physical or otherwise. So many of our homes, businesses and everything in between have been standing for more than a century, unkept and brittle. Dams are breaking or near breaking because they are not meant to hold this kind of water. Our roads tend to follow creeks and rivers and thereby have been completely washed out. Keep in mind that in the individual hollers, and in most of these small mountain towns, we only got one road. You go up holler one way, and you don't come out the other side of it; you leave the way you came because it's the only path to take.

We are not built for this. We were not ready for this. We could not have prepared for this. And even if by some miracle we all received some premonition about this disaster, telling us to "just move" is NEVER the answer to vulnerable people living in volatile environments, especially ones as impoverished as Appalachia. Fuck you.

#2 "Appalachians are lazy and just want handouts, anyway."

First off--which one is it? Are we poor, pitiful fodder for concern trolls who deserve more than we're getting, or are we lazy, needy, greedy people who deserve to rot? Can't have both.

Second off--we been hearing that about us since the dawn of time. Wasn't true then, ain't true now.

Appalachia has been verifiably exploited as long as there have been people to exploit, but that is a topic long since discussed here.

We don't WANT anything. We NEED it. Alongside the aid coming in through donations, official search and rescue and organized volunteer services, much of the boots on the ground are Appalachians themselves!! We take care of our own, and it's always been that way.

They got people on foot hiking up into the hollers to bring supplies to cut-off communities. They got pack mules passing otherwise impassable roads where no car nor other vehicle can tread to get lifesaving necessities to the hollers. Look around, and you'll find countless stories. Just in my personal circle alone, I got a sister bringing supplies up by foot, and her hiking group is moving through so much toxic mud that the soles of their fucking boots are melting. I got a brother in law taking chainsaws to downed trees to clear the path for supply deliveries. I got another sister meeting friends of mine at the state line to collect donations and distribute them by hand to counties all over WNC. We can do this, but we can't do it alone.

#3 "It's a conspiracy/It's not that widespread outside of Asheville because we don't see pictures of anywhere else."

It's happening. It's fucking happening.

You don't see pictures because many of us don't have reliable cell service right now, let alone wifi. Hell, even in perfect weather there's a joke that you better have a friend with a cell phone from each provider when you go out because only one of you is getting service at any given time in any given place. There is no way to document this from the inside for many folks at this point in time, and there is NO WAY IN from the outside.

As I mentioned--you got one road leading up the holler. That road is now gone. No one is making it up the mountain to take pictures of these horrific scenes, y'all. If they're going up the mountain its to care for their neighbors, to bring supplies to individuals and entire communities so isolated by the devastation that the only way they can be reached is on foot (or hoof!).

Which also brings me to my next counterargument: "Nothing is being done to help."

#4 "Volunteers are being turned away/Donations are being confiscated."

Volunteers are being DISCOURAGED from coming in out of state, but they're not being told to leave with a malicious intent. And they are not even being forcibly denied. They can still come, but it's really not a good idea. As I mentioned, these roads wasn't meant to take this kind of damage. They are falling apart, and all this extra traffic coming in on these streets barely hanging on is making them worse and making it harder for organized relief and rescue operations to actually get in there. People are getting stuck and taking away time and resources that could be going to survivors. Outsiders with good intentions are eating up the scarce gas and using up even scarcer water. Some of these places, like Black Mountain, physically do not have enough hands to manage and distribute the amount of donations being brought in in, so they're getting rerouted. Donations are not fucking being confiscated.

#5 "They aren't letting people be rescued/They're closing the airspace off."

The airspace is OPEN, with some temporary restrictions in place by the FAA for civilians and volunteers. Civilians can still access airspace in coordination with officials and emergency responders. What they ain't allowing is people just flying in willy nilly. What they ain't letting in is unauthorized air traffic that is clogging up airspace which otherwise needs to be used by official aircraft to bring in donations/S&R groups. Airspace is still accessible in the area, but it's not safe to just have everyone with a big heart trying to search and rescue, especially with no training, organization or proper skills. What they ain't letting happen is people trying to take trucks up obliterated roads that can't be traveled, no matter how confident you are in your vehicle. Christ, y'all. The point isn't to add more bodies to the count!

#6 "National Guardsmen are being told not to go."

The National Guard HAS been deployed.

And in numbers, too. What you're hearing is rumor of people asking to be deployed and being told no, because that's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. People can't just rush in unorganized. There is a system. There has always been a system.

#7 "But I saw TikToks of people coming to help and locals shouting them out of town!"

Oh, honey. No, what you saw was people doing what they LOVE to do in Appalachia: take poverty tours. Record how we live. Post their poverty (and now disaster) porn with thoughts and prayers and oh those poor creatures to get likes. That's been happening to us since before TikTok. Before the internet.

During FDR's administration, photographers from the Farm Security Administration went down to collect poverty porn and turn it into Hollow Folk, a collection of photographs which was then used by eugenicists and corporations alike to dehumanize us further so we could be exploited and relocated with the favor of the nation behind them.

We're done with it. We been done with it. And now, in this time of crisis where people are DEAD, you're clogging up our roads, taking up our gas, AND shoving cameras in our face. Y'all ain't from here and now more than ever y'all kinds need to get the FUCK out.

✨ FEMA ✨

FEMA deserves its own section, because holy shit. I'm mad that I'm about to defend the man in any capacity but it needs to be done. So, I'm gonna preface this by saying, largely, fuck FEMA. There are many valid complaints against FEMA and their inefficiency, but right now is not the time to use them as a tool of misinformation against Appalachia. We got enough problems without pouring the salt of government conspiracies into these raw, gaping wounds that barely even have bandaids applied to them right now.

SO. Let's get into it.

#8 "This is all planned and by design/Don't evacuate, because FEMA is just gonna take your land and mineral rights!"

If they wanted the fucking lithium or anything else for that matter, they would just enact Eminent Domain. They don't need elaborate schemes and """weather control""" to take it. They can just literally... do it. Did we all fail civics in middle school?

(And this is purely anecdotal so I have no proof of this, but a friend of mine told me a few days ago people were actually being told NOT to evacuate in Lake Lure because they didn't anticipate the flooding to be this bad.)

What y'all SHOULD be worried about are these companies and their "disaster investors" who swoop in like fucking vultures and try to get people to sell their land before FEMA has a chance to assist them. These companies prey on the vulnerable, offering them quick cash for their land and for far less than they'd get if they held out for FEMA's relief instead.

#9. "But... but FEMA is only giving out a piddly $750 in relief!"

Yes, they are giving out $750. INITIALLY. This $750 is initial relief money for immediate needs. Medicine, food, supplies. It is NOT all that's being allocated to folks. From FEMA's website:

This is a type of assistance that you may be approved for soon after you apply, called Serious Needs Assistance. It is an upfront, flexible payment to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies. There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify for to receive and Serious Needs Assistance is an initial payment you may receive while FEMA assesses your eligibility for additional funds. As your application continues to be reviewed, you may still receive additional forms of assistance for other needs such as support for temporary housing, personal property and home repair costs.

A service being offered in the meantime, for example, is for temporary housing and you can still currently apply for it!

Long-term disaster relief funds are not being released immediately. That does not mean they do not exist.

Here is what FEMA has already allocated for North Carolina alone.

Please note I said "allocated" but not "paid out." Which brings me to my next point.

#10 "FEMA is giving their relief money to undocumented immigrants!"

This is false, and you can verify this for yourself. Cash payouts to undocumented immigrants isn't even a thing, dude. They haven't even paid out to citizens in their entirety yet. From the FEMA page "Questions and Answers for Undocumented Immigrants Regarding FEMA Assistance:"

This is in regards to STATE, LOCAL AND VOLUNTEER AGENCIES. Not through FEMA or any other federal programs. This is probably what people are hearing about, and not even bothering to look into it before running off to tell lies.

And in this, as you can see--undocumented immigrants who CAN receive assistance are not receiving cash. They are not just getting money handed over to them to spend on whatever your racist, xenophobic uncle thinks they are. FEMA is required by law to report on the use of their funds each month by the 5th day. Historically, it looks like it takes about a week for them to be posted. Keep an eye on this page to see for yourself in coming days that FEMA is not giving out money from their funds to immigrants.

#11 "But FEMA has appointees from Biden!!! How can we trust that this is the truth?!"

Please use critical thinking skills. Please, we beg. Yes, there are appointed FEMA officials from this administration, but there are also appointed officials from Trump's time in office. What sense does it make that during Trump's administration, FEMA employees were Good And Pure, and suddenly, just because they are active under Biden's administration, they are suddenly Evil And Corrupt? This is clear bias and has no solid footing.

Besides, the President doesn't even have any sway over FEMA funding like this. That is ALL congress.

H.R. 9747 "Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025," which provides relief funding (among other things) for the 2025 fiscal year, was ACTIVELY VOTED AGAINST by Republicans, including Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene--two people spreading the bullshit the loudest. UGH. Okay. In exasperated conclusion: Please, please, PLEASE leave Appalachia alone and let us get back on our feet without having to constantly dodge dumbass conspiracy theories. We are heartbroken and grieving and would really appreciate a brief reprieve from being the nation's fucking punching bag. Help us, don't hurt us.

[bonefall]

i dont think people are upset that the erins "weren't creative" enough with Moonpaw, they're upset that she's just. not a chimera. thats just a longhaired tortie and they justified it with chimerism. which is extremely insensitive because chimerism is a real medical thing that can cause issues in every species, including humans for those that dont know, and thats like. a big thing.

like, yay some disability rep (depending on how they write it. it wont be good. ughh) but like. its not going to be considered a disability when it can be in some cases. they are just going to say "ohh shes so special!!" like some people say with autism in this age (the infantilization of it) and its gonna be. weirdddd

anyways. sorry for ranting in your inbox.

Hey. Woah. THIS is insensitive and I don't know where you're getting this from. NONE of the three types of natural chimerism are a disability and it is extremely rare that fusion chimerism leads to medical complications.

Do not spread misinformation about a genetic condition because you're annoyed about the writing team confusing a common tortie fur pattern with chimerism. THEIR mistake is ultimately harmless. What YOU'RE doing is stigmatizing.

Quite frankly, after seeing a bunch of posts and receiving several asks about this, I don't think half of the people who are getting mad actually know anything about chimeras. I sure as fuck hope it's just ignorance, and that you aren't out here trying to call the state of being intersex a disability.

But I can fix ignorance. No need to assume malice. I will explain what chimerism is, and why you should stop going around implying it "causes issues in every species."

Chimerism is when a single individual is comprised of cells from two or more fully fertilized zygotes. There are two BROAD types of chimerism;

Artifical

Natural

Artifical chimeras are common with the advent of modern medicine. Ever had a blood transfusion? Organ transplant? You are a chimera. Or at least were for a while.

THIS can lead to complications and can cause disability, but it's not what Moonpaw is. She would be a type of natural chimera, which in and of itself has THREE subtypes;

Micro chimerism

Blood chimerism

Fusion chimerism

Microchimerism is so common that I could make a Your Mom joke out of it. It's caused by the passage of cells between the fetus and placenta during pregnancy. Everyone who has ever been pregnant is a microchimera.

While it can lead to complications, it can also be beneficial. Pregnancy could be considered a type of temporary disability, but no one would expect disability rep from every character who had ever given birth.

Blood chimeras are common in species whose twins typically share a placenta, such as cows and marmosets, but very rare in animals like humans and cats which usually don't. It occurs when tissue between two twins is exchanged through the umbilical chord. This type of chimera often ends up with a mixed bloodtype, hence the name.

This is the cause of freemartinism in cattle, when fraternal cow twins cause a sister to share her brother's hormones and act more like a bull. A type of intersex condition, not a disability-- so I sure HOPE you aren't trying to imply THIS should be "disability rep."

And even in the other case, would you automatically expect disability rep from a character that has two blood types?? No. Just like you wouldn't automatically expect disability rep from every character that had ever been pregnant, or every character who had ever needed a blood transfusion

And lastly, the one that Moonpaw ACTUALLY is. A fusion chimera. These are created when two fully fertilized zygotes fuse into a single individual.

These are extremely rare because you can't usually TELL when an individual is a chimera. There is no obvious physical difference between the "halves," with some cases of doctors insisting that patches are just weird birthmarks. They live their entire lives with normal health problems like non-chimeras. It mostly causes complications when DNA testing results in a false negative-- because the offspring of a fusion chimera occasionally end up being their genetic nespring.

Or, the two "halves" are male and female, causing gonadal differences. These people aren't disabled, there's nothing wrong with their bodies, but they're subjected to unneccesary cosmetic surgeries as children because they are intersex.

Say it. SAY IT. INTERSEX. I N T E R S E X. IM GRABBING YOU BY THE SHIRT AND SHAKING YOU THEY ARE INTERSEX.

Can some intersex conditions cause disabilities? YES. Are intersex conditions inherently disabilities? NO. Even when you're discussing infertility as a disability, tread VERY CAREFULLY because intersex people are fighting very hard to lift the stigma over their bodies.

Speak with care. Do not equate being intersex with being disabled. They are two different things.

You can be both and sometimes one could contribute to the other, but BEING intersex IS NOT a disability.

VERY rarely, even MORE rare than standard chimeras which are already very very rare and massively underreported because they are so unremarkable, a fusion chimera will happen LATE in utero. THIS can contribute to a chronic autoimmune condition where the cells reject each other, which is a disability.

And by rare I mean one case. Literally one. Of the 50 reported fusion chimeras in the review I'm referencing, Taylor Muhl was the only one with this. 4 were discovered via congenital abnormalities (unknown if connected to the chimerism b/c they were only tested because something was already wrong), 17 had fertility issues, and the remaining 28 didn't report immune conditions or birth defects but INTERSEXUALITY.

ANOTHER condition is often lumped in with chimerism, by people who do not know what chimerism is, which is mosaicism. Mosaicism, when there are two different sets of genes resulting from the same zygote, is NOT chimerism. MOSAICISM can be a cause of disability. CHIMERISM is usually not.

(Read the review in depth, as it includes mosaic cases for the sake of completion.)

They can both be fertilization errors, but are not the same thing. Follow me, I'm only going to woefully simplify a complicated topic once,

CHIMERA = Two zygotes in one body

MOSAIC = Two bodies in one zygote

CHIMERA = usually fine

MOSAIC = usually bad

And the last possible places you could be getting the idea that chimerism "causes disability" from, to my knowledge, is 1. This study that says the loss of a twin in early pregnancy increases the chance of congenital defects in the survivors (has barely anything to do with chimerism, this link is tangential, vanishing twin syndrome does not necessarily mean it was absorbed by its sibling)

Or, 2, this study of several animals where they correlated rates of benign tumors to % of chimerism based on SPECIES. BLOOD chimeras. It's COWS AND MARMOSETS AGAIN. The study ITSELF calls for further targeted research of chimerism cause of susceptibility to cancer.

It couldn't even link new growths or malignant tumors to chimerism in the mammals of its study. WE'RE mammals.

Correlation does not equal causation. Statistics 101.

So no. That's not "a big thing." Chimerism is fine, they're just very likely to be intersex if they're a fusion chimera of a male and a female zygote. Do not imply intersexuality is a disability. Please get mad about the actual ableism in the series, not the team being clueless about tortie patterns.

Also everyone say you're sorry to intersex Moonpaw. I better see you people making intersex Moonpaw pride flag edits as penance IMMEDIATELY.

UPDATE: Anon apologized! Growth! I still think this is an important post, especially in the context of the wider fandom conversation, so I'm leaving it as-is. Please feel free to reblog.

UPDATE 2: Clarification on infertility as a disability because I didn't word myself very well in one section!

[a-very-tired-jew]

You're not as informed as you think, and age does play a factor.

This is going to ruffle some feathers, but it needs to be said. You're not as informed on the I/P Conflict and the history of the region as you think, and age plays a major factor. Hell, you're not as informed on a lot of topics as you think. I want you to think about what you were doing 5 years ago. Were you still running around on the playground? Were you making dioramas for a science class? Were you in high school worried about being a first year? Were you just starting to pick out colleges or deciding to even go? Did you ever call a teacher by their first name? Now, there is a line that we hear thrown about that people don't fully mature till they're 25. While this is bupkis and misrepresents the research, it is true that the brain does not stop developing till sometime in the mid to late 20s. In fact, the brains of undergraduates age 18-22 and their respective thought patterns more closely resemble high schoolers than they do mid 20s and above. So what does this mean in the course of the I/P conflict? For one thing, this is your first incident. Your first I/P war. Those of us in our 30s and above have seen a good number of them at this point. I even remember when the use of child suicide bombers became a standard method for Hamas and other terrorist groups during the Second Intifada. As such, many of us are used to the manipulation that we see in this particular region. We're used to seeing antisemitism be dismissed and well intentioned people be manipulated. Many of us are just tired because you're going through the same shit we did at your age and we look back and go "oh, we were severely misinformed". Because this is your first, you're super passionate about it, but that passion can be manipulated. Second, you're not as smart or well informed as you think you are. This has to do with the age and maturation thing mentioned above. While 25 is an arbitrary number, there are some milestones that happen by then. By 25 you have had enough life experience to really start piecing together your education, your life experiences, your world experiences, and your respective beliefs into a coherent way of approaching topics. Hopefully by that age you're less likely to have the emotional outburst in response to a subject (think about the stereotypical slamming the door teenager behavior, many of us did that and we cringe thinking about it) and more likely to approach something in a levelheaded and informed manner. Unfortunately there is some research that shows evidence that Gen Z and Millenials are susceptible to propaganda and misinformation, with the former exhibiting behavior akin to Boomers. So keep that in mind that none of us are safe for misinformation, but some generations are worse than others. Now, who am I to say this to you? Some of you are quite mad right at the moment. Some of you have strived to be seen as well informed young adults or to be taken seriously, and in some cases you are. However...

I'm in my 30s and I have been teaching at the college level for a decade and some change now. By no means am I an expert, but I have enough experience to say something. The ages I teach are 18+, meaning I've had students that are typical fresh high school grads and students that are in their 50s. Myself and my colleagues have heard repeatedly from students the "I'm an adult, I know what I'm doing" line to only watch that 18-22 y.o. student fail miserably or come crying to us later. I have personally watched students go through the stages of grief as they realized in my classes that their pet science activism is not what they thought, but they've wrapped so much of their identity around it. You're still learning, and thinking you know more just because you read something online is an issue. You're also still growing and developing as a person. Recognize that you can be manipulated. Recognize that you can be wrong. Recognize your own inherent biases. Then do better.

[muffin-man-marq-lynch]

I've only been a wrestling fan for a few months but I have to say with the nervous flutter about wrestlers lurking on Tumblr and fic sites and other traditionally closed-off fandomy spaces? I get it. On both sides.

But if I was a wrestler with the natural inclinations and curiosity to poke my nose into what people are saying in my industry outside of the dirtsheets, I would get really, really tired of the same six talking points regurgitated over and over on Twitter and Reddit threads arguing about ratings, whether X is washed up, the same fucking wank over and over floating to the top. I say this because I have tried to stick my nose into the wrestling Twitter and Reddit communities a few times as a new fan and it exhausts me already.

So yeah, I can see the appeal as a lurking wrestler on Tumblr for the exact same things we do.

Look at that! HD Gifsets of the matches! Showing off the moments that really made people pop and the moves that were incredible in more than just YouTube clips, filled with tagged commentary.

Oh fun, longer form commentary on where matches might go, pulling together histories of feuds and reigns, lighter hearted debates and shitposts all around.

A tagging system that actually allows some muting once in a while that people sometimes use?

And yes, fic, art, and objectification. Cheers, I have been working very hard on my pecs, my tits did look amazing tonight, thank you for noticing my costume details change.

Yes, we're horny, we're ravenous, we're transing your genders, foaming at the mouth, etc etc. But we've been here doing this for a while. I was doing this shit with a community on LiveJournal for Kayfabe Jon Stewart & "Stephen" Colbert back in 2009 and they knew and played it up for us too.

The weird pervert who is harmless but a good friend trope has gone way down lately, which makes sense given the current climate post #MeToo, but Kenny Omega on Being The Elite was a great example: in a sea of other dick jokes he was the ulti-perv they all still chose to hang out with. We on Tumblr are for the most part not bashing, harassing, haranguing, or spreading misinformation. We're just making art, noticing details, supporting work, and throwing out lewd jokes.

It's entirely up to the wrestling community if they want to hang out with us while we do those things, but it seems pretty clear that that is a vibe a lot of them are comfortable with, and some are happy to dig deeper into the weird shit we're making.

I just see a lot of people getting self-loathing about what they've been posting and I wanted to offer a different perspective. I've seen actors lose their minds being delighted at body pillows of themselves or mousepads of their supple tits. Adults are all different and none of this should be forced on anyone at conventions or tagged at them etc, but if they seek it out and like it? Well then, welcome to the Devil's Sacrament. Have fun, and personally I'm glad Tumblr is also your happy escape space.

[stellarsagittarius]

🧭 8th House: Your Biggest Challenges in Astrology 🧭

[You can book a personal reading with me, kindly check the pinned post <3]

Masterlist: All my astrology posts at one place

8th House in Astrology rules over everything that is the considered to be the challenging parts of life. It has positive connotations in a way that through these challenges we find our brightest light. The lessons in the 8th house present themselves through our connections with other people, whether its physically, mentally, emotionally or even spiritually. Because through our connection with others we learn about life. 8th house is also connected with debts, other people's resources, being involved in drama, but that's a topic for a different day. Let's see how you can use your 8th house to navigate your challenging lessons, so that the outcome is positive and growth oriented.

See where the ruler of your 8th house falls:

Check 8th House Sign (ex. Libra) -> Sign's Planetary Ruler (ex, Libra is ruled by Venus) -> Which house the ruler falls into (ex, Venus in 4th House)

The signs and their rulers: Don't use Uranus, Neptune and Pluto as rulers of any signs. Firstly it lack proper credits, and second it's just not it (found after 1700s). We rather rely on the Traditional Astrology that has been around for millenias (since about 2nd Century CE). It just makes so much more sense (I'm going to make a long detailed post about this).

Aries, Scorpio: Mars

Taurus, Libra: Venus

Gemini, Virgo: Mercury

Cancer: Moon

Leo: Sun

Sagittarius, Pisces: Jupiter

Capricorn, Aquarius: Saturn

If you have your ruler of the 8H in the 1H, all the lessons that you experience lead you back to yourself. It's an extremely self-development oriented aspect. Your challenges and lessons shape the way you view the world. So whenever such lessons strike, seek to understand how it alters the way you understand reality and life itself. These challenges are presented to you so that you can understand no one but yourself, better. You might have a bit of insecurities and self esteem issues, that result from challenging experiences. Seek to nurture yourself in whatever way you feel the most comfortable, and put your beliefs + values first and foremost.

If you have your ruler of the 8H in the 2H, you are here to practice healthy give and take. You experience people meddling in your business all the time. Perhaps you are always stuck with people using your for your resources or material possessions or simply taking more from you than they can ever return, vice versa. Your lesson is to prioritize yourself, but also not be greedy or manipulative with others. Try to not overly attach with material outcomes, and you shall see a much better flow of finances, resources, etc. Seek healthy ways of intermingling with others, of trading and making deals. Don't lessen your personal value for anyone.

If you have your ruler of the 8H in the 3H, your biggest lesson is to express your thoughts and ideas in a better way. If you have your Mercury here *as the ruler, then it means literally speech issues like stammering or even difficultly concentrating. If you have Moon here *as the ruler, then inability to express your emotions into words. Beware of gossip or spreading misinformation, and also consuming information that is unverified or unconfirmed, since you are much more prone to issues with miscommunication. Seek journaling or writing as it can help you regulate all those thoughts in a better way. And don't hold yourself back from speaking up.

If you have your ruler of the 8H in the 4H, you have this sense of privacy that you seek to protect at all costs. The issues you regularly struggle with have to do with being vulnerable and not being able to open up, or opening up too much with anyone. There could be issues with the home and family life, perhaps there are people constantly prying over your personal life or violating your boundaries, or some of your family members being a pain in the butt. There are many ways to tackle these issues, but the best one is too have proper and healthy boundaries, because you are not everyone else's business. Seek close and trusted people to confide in.

If you have your ruler of the 8H in 5H, you might struggle a lot with either being too serious or not being serious at all when it comes to life's pleasures and fun. Striking a balance is the key. People also take advantage of your light-hearted nature, therefore your must have healthy boundaries that allows you to protect your creative and happy space. People can meddle between your kids or your creative endeavors. Your biggest lessons come from you learning how to rely on your creative self expression. Do not be afraid to shine. Your light is very strong and you deserve to feel the best. Seek to explore cool forms of expression and prioritize your inner child.

If you have your ruler of the 8H in 6H, you are meant to prioritize your routines and learn how to be a more grounded/organized/productive person. The thing is you don't need to burn yourself out or push yourself to do tasks/things that simply aren't working out, just for the sake of it. Instead, set systems that actually suit you. Do not make grand resolutions that you actually cannot put to ground. You have a bit of challenge with the material realm, either being too obsessed with perfection or being super disorganized. Some can even have a bit of health issues. Seek balance and create a healthy lifestyle that you actually enjoy living with. Build systems and not routines.

If you have the ruler of your 8H in 7H, most of your challenges and transformative situations in life has to do with others. These could be relationships, partnerships, friendships and family. Through people, you learn and grow. If you have your Venus in the 7H *as the ruler of 8H, you experience very life changing things in regards to romance and building connections with others. If you have Mercury in the 7H *as the ruler of the 8H, you experience difficultly expressing yourself with others. If you have Moon in the 7H *as the ruler of the 8H, you may have attachment issues. So seek healthy forms of communication, expression, etc. Try to learn the healthy patters of being in relationships and don't hold onto people that stall you from moving forward. Easier said than done, but even being aware of yourself helps a ton!

If you have the ruler of your 8H in 8H, you might go through a lot of shitty situations, but you are tough af. This is actually a pretty good aspect because your challenges don't leak to other areas of your life. The only area it affects, ie, the 8H, is about getting involved in other people's lives deeply, psychology and the occult. So you may resort to things like shadow work, alternative healing, etc, to help you transmute all this shadow into light. With this aspect you need to make sure that you don't make 'healing' your entire identity or make your pain your identity, especially if you have a major planetary ruler such as Sun or Moon. You are here to learn about the deeper parts of life, and that is not always dark and shadowy. Sometimes the lessons you learn from other people can be your most motivating teachers in life. So, take it easy. It happens for you, not to you.

If you have the ruler of your 8H in the 9H, you are here to literally find the light at the end of the tunnel. If the 8H is about the shadow, 9H is about the light. Your lessons give you a really big opportunity to go towards the brighter side of things. And at the same time these lessons are very much ingrained with becoming more open minded with life, being interested in learning about life on a higher level such as philosophy or self development. On the other hand, these challenges can also be related with foreign travel, other cultures, higher education, global media platforms, philosophy, etc, so make sure you tackle these accordingly. You struggle more with letting go and getting "lucky" in life because you tend to get comfortable in the uncomfortable side of life. Seek to expand beyond your challenges, and resolve painful situations by connecting with your spiritual/religious side.

If you have the ruler of your 8H in the 10H, you biggest challenges steams from your career and public reputation. You tend to be a bit more secretive about your life when out in public, or simply view others as prying on your private life. People might become manipulative with you when it comes to your career and you might be prone to people spreading batshit about you all the time. There are a lot of ways these events can be tackled, but one of the advice is to not let others know information about your work or achievements unless they are someone you trust A LOT. People can use you to gain some type of fame or take credit for things they didn't even do. You publicly go through tough things, whether that 'public' is just relatives or a few friends/acquaintances. People always get to know about your challenges and lessons for some reason. So, be careful of how much you let random people know.

If you have the ruler of your 8H in the 11H, you experience a bit of similar situation as the ones who has their ruler in the 10H, but the difference is, people use your issues to propel themselves forward in some way or the other. For the 10H persons, people only spread rumors about them and talk about their issues. But for you, people use it to their advantage. You might have a bit of challenge with making genuine connections with others, as in networking and socializing (not personal relationships). These people can use you to advance their career, use and exploit your ideas and work to give themselves a boost. And you might also struggle with creating long term plans and holding your visions. So the advice for the manipulative people part is that hold on until you actually know that someone is trustworthy. And even then, don't tell them everything about your plans and your dreams. 11H or not, some people are very quick to take advantage of our dreams.

If you have the ruler of your 8H in 12H, first of all I want to do is give you a big hug! *sending a virtual hug*. The reason I say this is because both these houses have a reputation for bringing a lot of intense and transformative situations in a person's life in a variety of ways, but not everyone is able to instantly identity these toxic patterns and help themselves get out of it. With this placement your biggest challenges have a deeply rooted karmic hint to them. And almost all the time, it requires for you to understand what that karma is and end that cycle so that you can grow. Based on the planetary ruler in the 12H your situation can be the most intense to least intense, but what is asks for you is to identity the subconscious/subliminal patterns that keep you stuck in life, and transmute them into healing. Take it easy, don't make 'healing' your entire identity. Focus on grounding and your well-being, first and foremost.

Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for more Astrology content 🏹✨️!