#( never thought me being german would ever prove to be useful for this blog )

[poohsources]

Hello, Pooh. Do you happen to know what "fakevz based" is ???

I keep seeing this pop up on RP blogs and I have no idea what that means

hi there! i've never heard of it before but after some digging i think i've found the answer. "fakevz" is a german based roleplay community that formed on former popular sites like schülervz, studivz, and meinvz (random fun fact of the day: i actually used to have a schülervz account way back in my early teenage years). apparently, many former user have now found their way onto tumblr (so welcome to all of you if you’re one of them) and people use to put "fakevz based" on their blog to be able to find other people - not necessarily only those that used to be part of these groups (although that surely factors in as well, studivz and meinvz closed in march 2022 so people had to start looking for alternatives to continue roleplayinc) but also other german speaking people to write threads with in german.

i hope this helps! :)

[jidai]

jidai’s budget mutuals/friends appreciation

Hi, all! I’m quite late with this but I decided to put a small friends and mutual appreciations post in hopes of brightening up the end of this year a little bit. ❤️ If you were tagged, please make sure to check below for a small little message from me. However, I want to make it very clear that I truly appreciate all of my mutuals. You guys brighten up my dash and always reblog or create so many funny and creative posts. I just wanted to give a few special shout outs to those that have taken out the time to reach out and interacted with me past my ask box or we just see each other often.

The messages are ordered by your URL, so you might have to scroll for awhile before you see your messages. I’m so sorry lmao. 

Happy New Years, everyone!

@25th​​, Nonnie, the Young Genius. bro, remind me how old you are 🧍‍♀️ Like my brain CANNOT fathom the thought that you’re so skilled at SO many things and you’re not even in your twenties??? PLEASE SPARE THE TALENT. i will even accept crumbs. But I’m writing to tell you that you are such a wonderful presence on my dash. I always look forward to your gfx. They’re so SO good and you’re improving from one post to another. Like WOW. Now, you’re even starting an art blog, too? You’re so dedicated to the arts. I respect that a lot. Your hard work and commitment will bring you very far in life, whatever you decide to do. 

I love interacting with you. You’re such a big sweetheart and full of positivity and energy. I look forward to seeing more of your art and gfx ❤️

@biscuitwalk​, Dann, the AK Wiz. Dann, I know you’re not as active on here so idk when or if you will ever read this but I want to say that I miss you and your creations so, so much. I will say it a hundred times over and OVER but you inspire me so goddamn much. You have no fucking idea. Your works are absolutely gorgeous and unique. I can look at it once and I can instantly recognize your style (and your cute lil’ pufferfish <3). The way you utilize colors and implement various techniques, shapes, textures into your work. Goddamn, you’re so good. I always look to your work if I ever need inspiration and they help me brainstorm. God, I wish I could put it into words how much I adore your works.

We didn’t really talk for long but you seemed like such a kind and fun person to be around. I wish you the best in your future endeavors, wherever you are. Stay safe <3

@elriccs, Mirai, the Short King. 🧍‍♀️ ok look I know, I know I’m TERRIBLE at replying to you and I’m so fucking sorry. I absolutely love to talk to you but my dumbass cannot seem to reply in a timely manner LASELKSAL. That’s on me and I gotta do better. Anyways!!! Thank you SO fucking much for always leaving such kind messages on my work. I swear to god you’re one of my biggest hype man and I ALWAYS look forward to reading your tags. They’re so funny and it makes me all tingly and happy inside. Bro, like, you just radiate big fun vibes, bro. I really hope that I can get to know you better so I can just insult you until it’s too late to walk away </3

And of course, let me also remind you that I love your works so much. They way that you utilize your textures and those muted colors... OOMPH *chefs kiss* I will always love--

@lockhvrts​​, Em the Soulsborne GOD. hi em 🥺 it’s been awhile since I’ve had a proper conversation with you and I hope you’re doing okay! I miss you and our conversations where we do nothing but geek out and complain about the game industry lmao. if you manage to read this, I just wanted to let you know I miss your presence here. It’s been kinda dull not seeing your beautiful soulsborne gifs and your game rants. Let’s catch up soon. <3 stay safe and well!

@nathanprescutt, Benn, the Man. BENNNNNNNN.  I love you a lot bro. I know we haven’t had long conversations for some time and I hope I can change that! You were my first friend on this blog and I will always appreciate it. I remember us just geeking out over your works and how I would always send you a gfx request like once a week LMAO. The one thing that I have always appreciated about you was the fact that you’re very opinionated (if not, very vocal on your stance on things) and you hold your ground. There were a few time where you encouraged me to speak on topics that I think I shouldn’t and that stuck with me for quite awhile. I’m still a nervous rambling mess when it comes to debates but just know that the one time you supported me to voice my opinion--I hold it very dear to my heart. 

While I don’t spend much time together, I will always remember our animal crossing session. It was  so much fun just trashing and chilling on your island. Especially the bar :( that bar was fucking AMAZING. Maybe once FFXVI comes out, we can geek out hehe

Also, thank you so much for sending in photos of all your doggos, omg. I miss seeing them so much I hope they’re doing well. Stay hot, my German bro lol. Ich bin sehr dankbar, so eine tolle Freundin zu haben. ❤️❤️❤️

@noxdivina​, Lin the Big Dick Daddy Kind. The church is open for business bitch and I’m here to preach the GOSPEL.

Okay, jokes aside, I’m really happy that we became mutuals. You’ve always give off this like, mysterious cosmic vibe (????? huh). And your selfies just further proves that you are wtf. But you’re always so kind to those that you interact with. You’re an absolutely sweetheart and like I just want to give you a giant hug every time we interact. You’re such a soft human being. It’s so nice being around you. It’s like being tossed in the oven and baked at 250 degrees F for 25 minutes. And to boot you’re really talented, hello? God really said let there be a perfect human being and yeeted you into the universe. Thank you for always leaving such kind messages and words in my DM/askbox/works. I cherish them so much. I hope I can get to know you better in the future bc you’re rad, bro <3

anyways, updated drawing of u and maya:

i always assume you’re in a black fur parka 24/7 and maya is coatless neck down. also deck me with those jacked arms of yours thanks  🧍‍♀️

(edit: fuck i forgot to draw a PARTY HAT ON MAYA IM SORRY)

@rokuseis​, Sei, the Dumber.

i have nothing to say to you go away you banana hater ASELKSAEKL

BITCH, you doo bee getting on my nerve 24/7/365 🧍‍♀️ you were an unexpected but a very welcomed addition to my life. I can’t believe we really went 1 fuckin’ year without speaking to each other and then suddenly our friendship blew up because over a stupid BANANA. Now you gotta deal with me and my stupid, random, crude ass messages daily. I cannot. Clown to clown communication. But thank you so much bitch for being there for me and telling all of these funny ass stories and life experiences.

I know I don’t say it a lot because when we talk it’s literally just dogs barking at each other but I want to make it clear now: I love your humor and vibe so much. You never fail to make me laugh anytime I talk to you and I appreciate it so much. I can’t tell you how many times I felt better after talking to you. Even though sometimes your fucking jab hits hard and I end up actually inSULTED BY IT. But thank you for becoming my friend and I look forward to all of our stupid moments together. Looking forward to shitting in your sink when I finally fly to your home <3

@wolfamongthem, Anna, the Grinch. Please don’t hurt me for that title. I'm just saying if someone needs a live casting, it’ll be u. Anyways, did you know that I was so fucking intimidated by you for a long ass time, even before we became mutuals aseljas LMAO. I always see your gifs around on explore and they’re so gorgeous and then I look at your text posts and it’s u roasting people like there’s no tomorrow- 🧍‍♀️ bitch I was SCARED OF U KSKS. Now that I’ve talked to you a few times, you’re really funny like where do you find those reaction memes????? Like bro you and your shitposts is my morning cup of coffee. 

Anyways, in 2021 I expect a full-fledge review of all AAA games from you-- no more shit talking in the tags let it all out BITCH. Thank you for being such a great mutual! I look forward to see what weird shit you will send me the next time we talk lmao

@zenien​​, Selm, the I’m-gay-for-Lady-Maria-or-anything-that-moves-in-BB-Bitch™. ok bitch if I’m being honest I wrote yours last so my brain is FRIED. so everything i say from here is raw from the HEARt cause that’s all I got left. But anyhow, we savin’ the best for last! honestly, i didn’t expect you to barge into my life like that. i really didn’t. i was just gonna keep admiring with my 7 feet (2.1336 meters) pole. I’m glad you made the first move because look where we are wtf 🧍‍♀️ friends??? I wouldn’t believe you if you told me that in 2014 when I first followed you lmao. 

You’re such a kind soul. I know you may disagree but I’m determined to convince you. I can’t tell you how much I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me during my rough bits. It’s like sitting on a wooden bench in a park during sunset and you sit next to me, just enjoying the vast sky. You radiate such peaceful energy. It’s very calming. Or you know, 2 seconds later i’m suddenly suplexed by your 40 tons of insults like what-- 

Thank you for everything, so far. Truly. It’s been so fun listening to you talk about your Bloodborne journey and see your reactions live. It’s been so fun to see you post your graphics and it continues to blow me away. It’s been so fun hearing about your life and the stories of your adulthood. Every words that we have exchanged, I hold dearly to my heart--more than you ever know. Love u bitch.

[diversetolkien]

Hey yal! Below is a submissions I received regarding my Eol and Maeglin post. My responses are indented with the grey line! OPs are not!

——————————————————————————————————

First of all, it is absolutely necessary to draw attention to the things you’re drawing attention to. Whether you are “right” or “wrong,” or whether anyone is “right” or “wrong” is beside the point of the argument in my opinion: these issues simply need to be addressed! We need discussion and different points of view and they all need to be considered and we need them now more than ever. There are clear examples that are sketchy to say the very least: good guys are fair-skinned but the evil men ((, Haradrim) are not; orcs, clearly bad guys, are “swarthy” and “slant-eyed”. However, I do believe your point about Eöl and Maeglin on June 10 are off the mark. I believe you get too carried away by the title “dark” and hang your entire argument up on that. As far as I know, there is no textual evidence that Eöl was a dark-skinned elf at all.

Hello there! Thank you for the message. I do want to emphasize that I’ve been incredibly reluctant to answer this. As of resharing my meta I received a terribly racist message from a user on the website, and will tread cautiously with addressing any messages regarding Eol and Maeglin due to that. I completely agree that we do need discussion, and I’m open for it. This is the only way we can progress. But I won’t tolerate blatant racism.

I’m not accusing you of doing such, but for future references I want to make this clear.

While you believe I may get carried away on the aspect of dark or ‘swarth’, I think it may be important to explain what racial coding is, and also to remind you of Tolkien’s history with coding and with people of color. I talked about coding on my twitter, but in short coding is ascribing real world traits to fictional characters.

This includes attributing the historical and social context to the text to prove a point.

We’ve discussed how Tolkien has borrowed from cultures aside from his own, and with The Silmarillion published in the late 70’s, it’s not impossible to see how influence from America and racial influence there have played a role in his writings.

I also wouldn’t call it being ‘carried away’, when, as we both agree, Tolkien has a history of racism directed at people of color.

And at the same time, I think it’s important to note that while you dismiss the possibility of Tolkien considering Eol dark despite the use of swarth, you ascribe swarth to the orcs and their skin tone in the same breath. I don’t see why it’s impossible for the two to mean the same thing. Not when we do have a racist author who grew up in a very racist society already using dark skin to describe evil characers. Not when Eol’s narrative of the brute mirrors that of the orcs (ie: Celebrian and the Orcs).

And regardless if it is explicit or not, Eol is still coded. Again, we know this because we have canon stories that mirror his completely. This being, again, Celebrian and the Orcs.

We can also accept that Tolkien’s constant use of “dark” to describe evil things, and “light” to describe good things comes from a place of racism. So why is there such push back when we analyze that further?

Tolkien was known to ponder about problems, such as missing words in the Germanic languages. The term asterisk-word is coined by August Schleicher for exactly this purpose: words that should have existed in a (dead) language but aren’t recorded and needed therefore to be reconstructed. For example, Tolkien doesn’t have a recollection of how he came upon the word “hobbit” but to make it fit his Legendarium he made the asterisk-word *holbytlan, supposedly an old English word meaning “hole-builders” because hobbit language was akin to Old English. This word doesn’t exist in old English but could (and maybe should) have. Tolkien also wrote a long argument about a particular difficult passage in the Beowulf-poem which you can read in “Finn and Hengest.” Now normally I would never try to talk straight what’s curved, but Tolkien is a bit of a different case as I hope the above examples show.

The case of Eöl is a trick(s)y problem that stems from the “Prose Edda” written by Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic poet who lived in the 12th century. This is thoroughly explained by Tom Shippey in his essay “Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others: Tolkien Elvish Problem”. A quick summary is (but one really ought to read Shippey’s essay to understand it) that there are light-elves, dark-elves, dwarves and black-elves in the “Prose Edda.” Germanic scholars such as Nikolas Grundtvig and Jacob Grimm bent themselves in all kinds of shapes to explain the “error” that Snorri made. Are the black-elves the same as the dark-elves? Are both black-elves and dark-elves dwarves? What about twilight-elves? Tolkien pulls all the different strands of this one problem together and called it Eöl the Dark Elf. He could never have done this in an academic work if he wanted to be taken seriously, so his fiction seemed a great outlet to deal with this. Maybe it was all a private amusement because Tolkien never mentioned it as far as I know.

I personally can’t recall Eöl ever being called dark-skinned. He is considered “black” due to the armour he’s wearing made out of the metal galvorn that he made himself after coming into contact with dwarves (which also ties in masterfully with the whole elf-problem, again, see Shippey’s essay), but it’s not skin colour. Eöl was called the Dark Elf because he lived in a place where the sun never came. It was called Nan Almoth, the valley of the star pool, and he loved the stars, and loved to live in the twilight. The twilight-part is important in the above discussion as well.

I understand you are trying to be informative but please don’t be patronizing. Please do not explain to me what I already know. In the future, I will not be answering messages like this again. This is incredibly rude. You are assuming I don’t know about what I made a meta about, and that’s an insult to what I’ve written.

Please read my blog fully before you attempt to whitesplain something I already know. I understand debate, but there is a clear different between wanting to have a healthy discourse, and flat out patronizing me and treating me like a child.

Back the the point; The same, again, can be applied to the orcs. The orcs wear dark armor, were tortured by a creature who is often described as dark, reside in dark areas—but we know clearly that they are coded off of people given the description of them being swarthy.

The same attribute that’s given to Eol. And again, we have a clear historical context and in-canon context. And we know that Tolkien borrows from American history, and that England itself had a huge role to play in that history.

Finally, the citation from the Book of Lost Tales (BLT) where Maeglin is called swart is problematic to me. I think it’s as much proof against your point as it is in favour of it. Many, many things have changed since the BLT was written and turned into The Silmarillion (I mean Sauron was a giant cat at first!). The BLT version of Maeglin being “swart” is a discarded  version and in The Silmarillion, a way later revision, “his skin was white”. I think it would be wrong to conclude Tolkien discarded the swart skin of Maeglin as he realised it was racist. I think he simply hadn’t figured out the elf problem of the Edda when he wrote the BLT.

I think this is all negated by the fact that Tolkien has canonical characters of color, and that they have been coded. I’m having an incredibly hard time wrapping my head around why that’s accepted, yet when it comes to Eol and Maeglin it isn’t. We can accept that Tolkien has a history of racism with people of color, based on evidence far less than what I’ve provided. Maeglin’s light skin can be attributed to the fact that his mother was light. It’s possible to have a dark parent and be born light.  

And regardless if it was changed or not, it’s incredibly important to discuss it due to the fact that it was racist, and deserves to be brought to light.

I want to stress, again, that I think your work and thoughts are important, no matter if I or anyone else agrees or disagrees. It is of the utmost importance to address issues of racism, genderism and any other kinds of ism that is out there. Discussion is what matters!

[gallantgautier]

That Gautier Family Meta That No One Asked For

I’ve been thinking about the Gautier Family on and off for the last few weeks. Dribs and drabs of little details that slowly but surely have been coming together into something cohesive. Today I wanted to spend some time collecting all of those headcanons together to give myself a nice little piece to refer back to, and maybe some fun reading for others. As always, I welcome any and all questions!

Margave Gullan Adán Gautier

Naming Inspirations

“Gullan”

as a boys' name is of Old Norse derivation, and the meaning of the name Gullan is "battler, warrior". Gullan is an alternate form of Gunnar (Old Norse): from Old Norse gunnr "strife". Going with Rai’s Headcanon that the Fraldarius territory is loosely based upon Norway (albeit only geographically,) I looked to Scandinavian names for Sylvain’s father, as well as keeping similar “ahn” sounds at the end of the name. (It’s worth noting that “Sylvain’s” name in localisation fits better due to the inspirations for his name. However, in other languages his name is actually pronounced more like Sil-vahn. Just a fun tidbit)

 Another reason for my name choice comes from; “The surname Gullan was first found in East Lothian, where they held a family seat on the English/Scottish border. After the Norman Conquest of England many of Duke William's rebellious Barons moved north. The border became a convenient but turbulent no-man's land where the persecuted Many were given land by King Malcolm Canmore and later by King David of Scotland. Some were native Scots. In the 16th century they became known as the 'unruly clans'. The name was first recorded in Scotland in Gullen in the parish of Dirleton in East Lothian.”

“Adán”

Quite simply, the Spanish form of Adam. As I mentioned briefly in another post of Sylvain’s middle name being that of a biblical figure and translated into its Spanish form, Gullan’s follows that trend.

 Personality

On the surface, Gullan is a seemingly cold man who never says more than is necessary. Each and every one of his words has purpose and motive, and he is not the type to lay praise on thick unless it’s either warranted, or strategic.

His purpose is to defend the border, a task he takes so seriously that his devotion to it can often come across as boastful. There are likely those who believe he ‘showcases’ the worth of his house, ever eager to ‘prove House Gautier’s usefulness.’ And indeed, Gullan is happy to allow that attitude to continue rather than spend time attempting to change minds that can instead be spent ensuring his troops are ever ready for another assault from Sreng.

Much like his youngest son, Gullan has a tendency to put up a front, to be as unshakable as the border defences. While this serves his purpose well at official business, war councils and formal functions, it does hurt his ability to be a father. This trait runs so deeply that he always put his duty before his family, which extends to ensuring his son can take up the mantle after him, and thus his reliance on his family Crest. (See “Crest of Gautier, Lance of Ruin and other details” further below.)

 Margravine Eloise Ambre Gautier

Naming Inspirations

I didn’t think too deeply about choosing this name. I just like it. Sue me.

Personality/details of note

Eloise is a person of striking contrast to her husband. She is softly spoken, warm and kind-hearted. That said, in regard to her family and the expectations placed upon them, she often finds her hands tied in what she can actually do for her children. She would have loved nothing more than to coddle them but knew that would only harm them in the long run.

Eloise’s health has never been the greatest, little energy and of low appetite. Pregnancy and childbirth were great ordeals for her, which is why they stopped having children after Sylvain. A family that places such importance on passing on their Crest wouldn’t reasonably – I believe – stop at only one.

 Miklan Anschutz Gautier

Naming Inspirations

“Miklan”

Sadly, after much googling, I can’t find anything. This appears to just be a case of “let’s make a name similar to yet distinct from his brother” style of name choice.

“Anschutz”

Not to copy paste some previous things I talked about but “North German (Anschütz): occupational name for someone whose job was to keep a dam or pool filled with water (German anschützen ‘to fill up’), especially a dam above a water channel serving a mill or mine.” TL;DR: He’s a placeholder.

Personality/details of note

Long story short, Miklan was a monster before he got his hands upon the Lance of Ruin.

Short story lengthened; Miklan is a jealous, entitled person without much in the way of a moral compass. There is only one reason he hates his brother, the fact that Sylvain has a Crest and he does not. Children of noble families are tested upon birth to see if they bare one, at least, that’s what Sylvain tells us. It’s possible that only his family does this, and he believes all families are like that, or that some or many families do that, but not all. Still, it’s reasonable to believe that at least House Gautier tests their children for Crest Inheritance at birth.

What kind of person hates a baby? Enough to want them dead and even attempt to kill them himself? Someone who lacks a moral compass.

On that same train of thought, Miklan was disinherited (not disowned) only three years prior to the events of the game. This means that, while he would never be the head of House, he was still in line to inherit something. Perhaps not lands and prestige, but he would have been able to live comfortably. He would have this regardless of being Crestless, and yet, the fact that he wouldn’t have everything is enough to drive him to multiple attempts to murder his brother. It’s difficult to think that this man has any redeeming qualities, considering that fact.

 Sylvain Jose Gautier

Information regarding the origins of Sylvain’s name and its meanings are all over both the wiki and this blog, as is the case with aspects of his personality, so I’m not going to get too into detail about those. Instead, I’m just going to list some fun tibits about his early life.

As a very young child, Sylvain was actually very shy, he was often found hiding behind his mother’s skirts. He didn’t like the way people would look at him, though at the time he didn’t understand it was because of his Crest. It was largely Glenn’s encouragement that got him out of his shell.

 For a long time, he didn’t really know how food worked. That is, he thought all you had to do was place the ingredients in a bowl, put it in the oven, and five minutes later, out comes food. The kitchen staff once caught him trying to place a glass bowl full of flour, too much sugar, an entire stick of butter and three whole eggs (yes, whole, 100% intact) into the oven. He wanted to make a cake for his mother’s birthday.

As seen in Etude and Learning the Melody, Sylvain took piano lessons as a child and had no small amount of talent for it. He gave it up though, believing his family’s encouragement came only from a place of wanting him to have whatever he wants on account of his Crest and not from a place of love.

 Crest of Gautier and the Lance of Ruin

The Crest

Crests are often seen as a status symbol in Fódlan, and it would be reasonable to think that House Gautier is of the same opinion. This is an attitude that Gullan perpetrates in order to secure a successful marriage for his son to pass on his Crest. In truth, however, the importance of the Crest of Gautier is solely to ensure that the Lance of Ruin can continue to be wielded.

Lance of Ruin

Heroes Relics are weapons of incredible power, and the Lance has been used to defend the border with Sreng. The reliance on the weapon to do the task stems from how the Lance has likely become a symbol of ruin to the Srengi people. In fact, the question has been asked; “Why is it that all the Relics have actual names like Areadbhar and Failnaught, and yet only two are Sword of the Creator and Lance of Ruin?” While I cannot speak for the Sword, I believe that the Lance once had a name that was slowly lost to time, gaining its new moniker some years after the formation of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus when it was brought to bear against Sreng.

[clubpassim]

Women in Folk - Abby Altman

Hi there!

Katie here, sad to say this will be the last interview of the series. I wanted to end things full-circle, and so I’m excited to introduce you to Passim’s very own, Abby Altman!

Abby is the Club Manager here at Passim, which means that most nights you can find her in the soundbooth or box office at Passim shows. She went to school for English Literature and German Language, grew up playing classical violin, and didn’t know much about the folk world until she found herself in Boston approximately five years ago. Soon after moving here, she sought out Passim one night for a show and has lived in the Club ever since. Though I’m kidding about that last part, you must understand the love Abby has for this special place. As soon as that first show ended, she immediately asked the Club if there was something, anything she could help with. And so, she started working at the box office here. Within a year, Matt Smith (managing director) had trained Abby on sound, as well as anything else she could learn to do at the Club. She has now been working at Passim for over 5 years, holds the title of Club Manager, and to set her love in stone, got a Passim tattoo on her right forearm.

While Abby has been a lover of music all her life, she never really enjoyed going to live shows. There was something about the talking and the distractions that deterred her from making that something she did regularly. So, I asked her, ‘Why Passim?’

“In college, I used to go to divey bars with blaring music everyone talked over anyways, or giant stadium shows where people spill beer on your shoes and are there more for the party than the music. I didn’t know there was a small version of music until I saw Passim. This is a listening room, where people stop talking for an hour and just sit and really listen. I had to be a part of that. I had to help make it happen.”

And happen it did. As Club Manager, Abby gets to wear a lot of different hats. She’s the manager for the night, soundchecks the bands and sets the stage up, and does payout at the end of the night. In larger clubs, there’d be one person on each job, but it’s that hands-on, all immersive part of the job that is Abby’s favorite part; she loves knowing that she’s a facilitator.

The next part of the interview discusses her role as a woman in a male-dominated profession.

[full interview under the cut]                        

Club Passim: Talk a little bit about your experiences as a female in a male-dominated profession/field.

Abby Altman: When I first started working here and learning sound, I didn’t realize the gender imbalance. I had no idea. I didn’t go to school for sound and notice all my classmates were guys, I didn’t go to other venues much and see “oh it’s always a sound GUY”. I didn’t have any background, and so Passim was my bubble. Whatever was normal for Passim was normal for me, and at Passim we have at least an equal number of men and women working sound and throughout the organization. It wasn't until I started working shows and talking with artists that came through that I realized, “Oh, I’m weird.” No one told me I couldn’t do it, so I didn’t even think about it. Once I started working downstairs regularly is when I noticed folks commenting, and not always negative things. I’ve gotten the whole range of comments from artists, from walking through the door and them saying to me, “Where’s the sound guy?” to after a show having artists come up to me and say, “this is fantastic; you’re my first sound woman”.

There will be nights where almost our entire staff are women, from the servers to the box office to me, it’s such a cool thing when it happens. Right now we have 4 women and 3 men on staff who run sound, but now when I do go out to other venues, I make a point to look at who’s working. Usually, I’m disappointed to see barely any women on staff. The same thing goes for festivals. We just had a couple of festivals in the area held with big stages and lots of crew, and it's always men. Every year. All men.

I’ve heard some hypotheses why more women don’t get hired for sound positions, and some of it is that not as many women go to school for sound engineering to begin with, and the workforce reflects that. But then you ask, ‘well why aren’t more women going into that’? And that’s a question I still don’t have an answer to.

CP: Do you notice a difference in how you’re treated by other artists, venues, audiences, and industry professionals before vs. after you stage manage?

AA: Sometimes. There are some people that definitely just walk in and judge you, but once I show them I know what I’m doing, they relax. Artists are so focused on making sure that they’re going to give the best show they possibly can, and understandably so. If for some reason they perceive the sound person isn’t going to be the best thing for their show, they’re going to be nervous and will want to run the whole thing. Artists will come back to the soundboard and change things for me, and that’s one of those things where sometimes that’s okay, and sometimes it is not. It can be with an air of ego where they think they can do my job better than me, or it can be actually helpful, especially if I’ve never heard the artists before or they’ve never played on our stage. It can really save time in the soundcheck and ensure the artist gives their best show.

CP: What do you do in a situation when you feel disrespected by the artists/co-workers you’re surrounded by?

AA: Every situation is different. Usually, I’d step aside and let them do what they need to do, because at the end of the day, it is the artist's show. If I’m fighting with them during soundcheck they’re not going to be in a good headspace for the show, which will make them give a worse performance. I have no problem taking a backseat when I need to.

Sometimes all it takes though is a little indication to show them that I do know what I’m doing. It’s silly that I feel like I have to prove it though, you know? I have this job. Passim has trusted me to run this show, so I shouldn’t have to prove to you that I’m qualified. But sometimes, if an artist asks you to do something and you reply in a way so they know you understand, it will put them at ease because to them it shows that you know what you’re talking about.

That’s something I’m not always sure if it’s a gender thing or an age thing, you know. I’m 28, and I look younger than I am, so I don’t always know if people’s reservations come from a woman being at the soundboard, because of my age, or because they just don’t know me. 

CP: In your opinion, how can men be more aware or informed about their women co-workers and peers in the music industry?

AA: Hire women. Whatever role you happen to be in, hire women to do things. If you’re an artist and you’re hiring a band, consider women for your band. If you’re looking for a studio engineer to record with, or a graphic designer for your new ep, look for women; tour managing, videography, producing, everything counts.

I get very, very tired of seeing bands of 6, 7, 8 people made up entirely of men.  It feels like something is wrong when you can’t find a single woman you want in your group.

Some of the arguments come back to ‘there aren’t as many women to hire’. And I’m not saying if 2% of studio engineers are women that you should hire a woman just to tick that box, but you should at least consider it.

CP: What message do you want to display as a woman “behind the scenes”?

AA: It is normal. Don’t try to make a big deal about it, being a woman in sound shouldn’t be a phenomenon, so don’t treat it like one. Just being there and making sure that I’m capable and do my job well is important. 

Actually, for the first time earlier this year I had a job offer to stage manage outside of Passim for a weekend festival. It was in a giant auditorium and I’ve never worked with anything that scale, but the artist who reached out to me was a musician who had worked with me before at Passim, and so when he was producing a show of his own he thought of me. That was really mind-blowing. It means that people do pay attention. 

It’s always such a balance. You want to be supportive and say, “I’m a woman and I’m awesome and look at all these other awesome women”, and you want to ensure people really see how badass it is when women run things. On the other hand, you feel like you shouldn’t have to do that, that it shouldn’t be something that gets pointed out.  Where’s the balance between shouting from the rooftops about amazing women artists but also trying to normalize their presence as simply artists?  That’s something I struggle with for sure.

CP: What words of wisdom/encouragement do you have for aspiring women in this field?

AA: Ask women for help. If you’re a woman and want to start doing something you wish you knew more about, it’s good to approach other women and ask them “How did you do this? How did you get here?” If I were in the sound booth and a woman came up to me after a show and asked me how a PA works, I would be extremely happy to talk about it. Lean on women, but remember that there are good men out there too. 

                                                             ~

Thank you, Abby, for such a unique perspective on this subject! Your love for your workplace and what you do is apparent to all who cross paths with you. It doesn’t matter where you come from or how much experience you have, all it takes is hard work, determination, and a passion for what you do. The rest will fall in place.

Thank you all for reading, and stay tuned for one last post from me in the ‘Women in Folk’ blog.

Katie

[tacticalgrandma]

So @illegalanger‘s birthday was earlier this week. Rose is one of those people where it honestly boggles your mind that someone can be simultaneously so creative, talented, and just plain cool and also so incredibly thoughtful, empathetic, and sweet. AND she also ships Spiderbyte holy shit. She’s an amazing person and if you’re not already following her/checking out her art, you should be.

Anyway. In celebration of Rose, here’s some Spiderbyte pranking Tracer. Happy late birthday you beautiful sea lion <3

"She," Widow announced, "is the worst."

She looked around the drop ship expectantly. Sombra shrugged and Reyes kept his eyes fixed on the floor.

"Yeah, that sucked," Sombra said. "But we got out okay, and I got my data, so..."

"She's not that bad," Reyes mumbled.

Widow fell back in her flight seat with a huff. No one had so much as spit in her direction until Tracer had shown up, and made a blue-streaked beeline for her perch. She had tried to hold her off, but her rifle was pathetic at the close ranges the girl insisted on fighting at. Reyes had had to fall back from his position to support her. Sombra had had less time to get her job done. All because of one girl, who was the absolute worst.

"I have known plenty of British people in my life, and none of them talk like her," Widow said, intent to prove her point. "She's doing that on purpose. It's embarrassing." Sombra nodded sympathetically. Reyes coughed. Widow turned to him with narrowed eyes. "What?"

"No, you're right," he said. "She absolutely is a ridiculous national stereotype."

"Thank you!" Widow said. She set about disassembling her rifle, and therefore missed Sombra kicking a somewhat sheepish looking Reyes in the shin. "And those goggles," she continued. "What's even the point of them?"

"Keep bugs out of her eyes?" Sombra ventured. "But like, actually though. She goes really fast, right?" Both Reyes and Widow stared at her. "Haven't you guys ever seen the grills of supercars, after they've done speed tests with them? It's like..." Sombra made a splat motion with her hand, then drifted off as the two continued to silently watch her.

"It's because she's a pilot, Widow," Reyes said.

"WAS a pilot. Now she just wants to get away with her World War I cosplay."

"World War I pilots didn't have asses like that," Sombra said. Widow scowled at her.

"Just because we didn't like your bug idea doesn't mean you have to be petty."

"I didn't say your ass was worse! I just said she has a nice ass!"

"There were World War I pilots with nice asses," Reyes said. "I saw a photoessay on gay soldiers throughout history and like. Trust me."

"We're getting off topic," Widow said. "The point is, Tracer is the worst of any of them."

“Eh. I don’t know. His ex is worse,” Sombra said, point at Reyes, who nodded enthusiastically. “I have friends back home who are still in the hospital because he wanted to play white savior to those poor, helpless Mexicans. And Tracer’s just kind of funny, with how huffy she gets over the upgrades I made to her tech.”

“You get used to her after a while,” Reyes added. “At least, that’s what she was like back when we worked together. And Sombra’s right. Jack is much more annoying.”

“Or what about the German guy?” Sombra added.

“Reinhardt? In terms of pure sensory shit, yeah, he’s worse. His whisper is about the volume of most people’s yell.”

“His hair is what turned me gay.”

“Hey, come on, he’s a bear icon. You can’t be too mean about his looks.”

Widow slouched back down in her seat as Sombra and Reyes devolved into an argument about the cornerstones of gay culture. She stayed sullenly silent for the rest of the flight, until Sombra grabbed her elbow as they were disembarking.

“Hey,” Sombra said softly. “Are you actually mad about the ass thing? Because, like, trust me Widow, I’d take yours over hers any damn day. Like seriously, it only really looks good because the rest of her is so small, but yours–”

“No, I– no. But thank you.” Sombra continued to stand at her side, concerned frown on her face, and Widow sighed. “I’m just upset, I guess.”

“Upset with her?”

“Upset with myself.” Sombra’s frown deepened and Widow took her hand and began walking towards the base. “That’s the second time that girl has stopped me from completing a mission. And she almost kept me from doing the Mondatta job. I just– don’t like it, I suppose.” She brushed her hair from her face with her other hand. “I’ve tried training in close combat, I upgraded the venom mines, but she keeps beating me, and this time it hurt you two as well. It’s just very frustrating, feeling like someone’s always getting the best of you.”

“Hey. Widow. You’re the best.” Widow shook her head and Sombra stopped, pulling her towards the wall. “I mean it. You’re the best sniper in the world, and she’s the epitome of spray and pray. Gabe helped you out today because he knew making sure you could do your job would mean the best for all of us. And it worked, right? We got it done.”

“But I couldn’t have done it without you,” Widow muttered. Sombra laughed and kissed her.

“Yeah, man. It’s called being part of a team. That’s kind of the deal.” She took Widow’s hand once more and Widow let herself be led back into the base. “But trust me. You’ll get one up on her, and soon.”

-

Widow had thought Sombra’s words were empty affirmation. She should have known that while Sombra may have been a consumate conwoman, she never lied to her.

“What are we doing here, Sombra?” Widow hissed, as Sombra held the door open for her. The apartment building they were in was by no means bad, particularly for London housing. But it definitely was not the typical domicile of her high-profile targets. And she hadn’t received any briefings from the Council, and Sombra was carrying a large box she had refused to tell her the contents of. Something was up.

“So,” Sombra whispered, closing the door behind them. “I was thinking about how annoyed you were with Tracer. And I maintain that you’re better than her in every way, still. Especially in terms of ass.” Widow snorted and looked down. “So you don’t need to go out of your way to beat her. It’s going to happen. But.”

“But?”

“But I thought maybe I could help you out.” Sombra grinned and held out the box. “Take a look.”

Widow eyed it over. “I don’t understand. It’s not the right shape for my rifle.”

“What? No! Okay, hang on.” Sombra rubbed her face, balancing the box on her hip. “I mean, she’s still… this isn’t an assassination job. Sorry to get your hopes up. But I still think you’ll enjoy this?”

She held the box out once more. Widow gave her one last apprehensive look, then opened the lid.

A spider crawled onto her hand.

“My God,” she whispered, staring inside. The box was full of spiders. Sombra laughed in delight.

“Your aesthetic is very conducive to pranks, Spider. I appreciate it.” She handed Widow a pair of gloves, and Widow put them on, a small smile beginning to form. “And do you want to know the best part?”

“What?”

“Her girlfriend’s vegan. She posted a picture on Twitter of Tracer carrying out a bug for her, with the caption ‘my hero!’ So...”

“So she won’t be able to squish any of them,” Widow completed. She laughed, sprinkling the spiders on the couch. “Good. I wouldn’t want her to hurt any of these beautiful souls.”

“You kill people for a living.”

“Yes, but look at them.” Widow held a handful of spiders up to Sombra’s face. Sombra gave an appreciative nod.

“Good point. Now help me get some of them inside the Playstation.”

-

Sombra and Widow were having a pleasant breakfast when Reyes stomped up to them and dropped his holovid on the table. They looked between him and it, then at each other.

“Uh,” Sombra began.

“Does one of you want to explain this?” Reyes asked, pointing at the device. The two bent over it. There was an article on screen, with the blaring headline “OVERWATCH HERO LENA OXTON SEEN ENGAGING IN BIZARRE SPIDER RITUAL– LESBIAN WITCHCRAFT?!”

“I didn’t know you read gossip blogs,” Widow said.

“I know this was you two,” Reyes snapped. “Spiders? Really? You couldn’t have used something less obvious? This makes us look completely unprofessional. Akande will be furious.” He looked down at the holovid again. Below the headline was a picture of a very unhappy looking Tracer holding a cup filled with spiders far, far away from her. He sighed. “I just don’t know why she was carrying them out like that.”

“Oh, Gabe, that’s the best part. So, her girlfriend’s some ridiculous hardcore vegan–”

“I’m a vegan,” Reyes snarled. Sombra and Widow paused and looked at each other.

Very delicately, Sombra asked, “Don’t you eat people?”

Reyes pivoted and stomped away from the table. Sombra smiled widely at Widow, and her smile grew when Widow kissed her on the cheek.

“You're the best,” Widow murmured in her ear.

[deliciousanarchist]

Don't talk foody to me!

About diet talk and body positivity

This text started as an attempt to write about why I don’t like people commenting on (my) food when eating in public. While writing I realised I had to share more of my personal life and where I’m coming from, so it is more understandable why I’m having such a hard time with diet talk. In the end, this became a blog about diets, intuitive eating, self-care, and about respecting our own bodies and the bodies of others.

Society is pretty hung up on perfect bodies and, thus, food – those two seem to hang closely together. “We are what we eat”, right? Sounds legit. Or does it rather cut something very complex down to a simplifying and, well, blatantly incorrect sentence?

First of all, what we eat depends on so many things – like on the place we grow up, in what country we are born, and in what social part or class of society we were raised in. Also, when we look closely, stuff like what gender we are assigned with could be seen to make us choose different food. A lot of people believe that a “real man” needs to eat meat, or that women should generally eat less than men do. So “you are what you eat” strongly ignores social inequalities and, even worse, it judges you on things you did not decide by yourself.

It also sounds like a religion or a fatal cult. By this logic we are the sum of the food we eat. If we do “good” we get rewarded, if we do “bad” we will be punished. And if we get sick and some doctor tracks that back to our lifestyle (like to what we eat), then we supposedly brought it all on ourselves because we should have known better. We knew the rules of “health”, right? So if we have a heart attack, it’s because we ate too much fatty food. If we get diabetes, we ate too much sugar or simple carbohydrates. If we get an auto-immune disease, we exposed ourselves to too much to the “wrong” food like gluten, milk, or red meat. In all cases we definitely omitted to exercise enough, too, I’m sure.

And in the final consequence, if we brought our ‘unhealthy’ bodies on ourselves, then why should anyone, doctor or health insurance, help us and treat our disease? We made our bed, now we must lie in it, right?

A new diet theory every year

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that our food and lifestyle does not have any impact on the condition of our bodies, but I’m sure that we get the cause wrong most of the time. The human body is so complex. Who are we do think that we figured it all out? Watching some new food being demonized every other year should have proven this to us by now, shouldn’t it?

We are exposed to so much information about diets and nutrition in the course of our lives: Don’t eat wheat. Oh wait, but you can eat older wheat like dinkle. Drinking milk will kill you. But milk is so healthy, because calcium, you should drink milk every day. Butter is better than margarine. No, margarine is better. Or are both equally bad for you but for different reasons? Fat is bad for you no matter what. No wait, some fats are actually good and we need them for our body to process other food groups. Vegetables are always good for you. Unless it’s corn. And watch out for canned foods because of all the salt and sugar in it, but frozen vegetables are fresh and untreated. Fruits are healthy. In general we should eat vegetables and fruits 5 times a day. Oh no wait, fruit has sugar in it, so it’s not good after all. But oh, vitamins. That’s a twist, I guess. Red meat is bad, white meat is good. Or is meat always bad and should we replace it with fish? Let’s all go vegan to save the planet! (At this point I’m not going into the debate on if we Middle/Northern Europeans should or shouldn’t eat stuff like avocados or quinoa, and how fish is tricky anyway because of overfishing. Food production in capitalism in general, oh my.)

If you speak/read German, I highly recommend the book “Fa(t)shionista” by Magda Albrecht from 2018. She shares a lot of personal stories about the relationship to her body but also scientific info like the history of BMI or where the diseases (and “diseases”) of modern society more likely come from. Did you know that the BMI was never meant for categorizing individuals? And that in 1997 the WHO just set a new BMI for ‘obesety’ which made millions of people become overweight overnight? Also Magda writes: “[A]uch bei Bluthochdruck, Blutzucker oder dem Cholesterinspiegel [hat] die Lobbyarbeit der Pharmaindustrie dafür gesorgt [...], dass Grenzwerte so lange gesenkt wurden, bis die Mehrzahl der Bevölkerung in mindestens eine der zahlreichen Risikofaktoren fielen: Alles für die Gesundheit, natürlich! Oder vielleicht auch nur für die Geldbeutel großer Unternehmen?” (p. 157 // in english: “It’s the same with blood pressure, blood sugar or cholesterol. The drug industry kept declining the setpoint values for those too, so now most of our society suffers from at least one of those risk factors. All for the sake of health, of course! Or is it for the sake of the wallets of large companies?”)

Life is all about diversity

When I was 17 I stopped eating meat, and I was  immediately told from a lot of different people whose opinions I never asked for that becoming a vegetarian is really unhealthy. (Of course now, in 2019, that viewpoint has shifted from vegetarians to vegans, so…)

Whenever my iron was low my doctors told me it was probably from being a vegetarian. Or from having my period. Or if they had been honest with me and themselves – they had no idea. Sometimes blood levels change, and who is to say that everybody has the same range of components in their blood? For example, my leukocytes are so low all the time that I would constantly be sick from colds and other infections. Surprisingly, I hardly ever have those. I do have other issues though. We’re all different, and our bodies react differently to medications, food, and different lifestyles. It’s a little like hormones. If you use hormone levels to prove that there are only two genders you won’t get very far. Like using blood components to divide people into healthy and unhealthy. Let’s give biology some credit and see how diverse we are on so many levels, shall we?

All my life I have been interested in food theories and diets. At some point in my life I even wanted to become a nutritionist, but then got scared of chemistry and all the science behind it. But I also had a dark interest in diets, too. Being a teenager I had a phase of body hate that resulted in an eating disorder that resulted in drastically cutting down my food until I lost more and more weight. I soon looked very thin and according to a lot of people in my life, “really great”. The doctors who had suggested I “lose a few pounds” were happy too. Myself? I felt like crap. And even after all that weight loss, I didn’t even see my body as thin, so disconnected was I to body image and the reality of it. Looking back on those pictures today, I feel fear – I can’t even recognise myself in them, I look so gaunt.

Good bye, diet mentality

However, I learned something from that experience: Being thin doesn’t automatically make me happy. And realizing that back then I felt betrayed by science. It should have worked, right? Lose weight, feel great!? I guess not.

I wish I could say that this made me come to peace with my body for good, but it didn’t. Later in life I still tried to change my body and/or weight by regulating my diet and using sports, very often against the will of my body. Yet I was never one of the people who did an official diet, I never used concepts like the “Ornish Diet”, “The Grapefruit Diet” or the new “Brigittte Diät”. But at some point in life I realized I became an “unconscious dieter”. This is a term I found a few years ago in a book called “Intuitive Eating” (Tribole/Resch 1995/2012: 9) and resonated. For example, at times I felt like I should cut back on chocolate or processed food only because I felt like I should strive for a more healthy lifestyle and a healthier body (whatever that’s supposed to be). I never would have called this “being on a diet”, but in fact I was: I acted on internalised food rules, was not listening to my body, and was very judgemental about my eating behaviour (in the privacy of my thoughts) while dividing food into good and bad.

Every time I changed the food on my table I got disappointed again to find that my body did not react the way I expected it to. For weeks I rationalised my chocolate consumption, but it only lead to me being unsatisfied because I wanted more chocolate or I wanted it at a time I wouldn’t allow myself. Sometimes I did not want it at all when scheduled but ate it anyway because I felt like I should not let the opportunity for chocolate pass me by.

Giving your body what it doesn’t want and withholding your body from what it needs can’t ever be healthy. In other words, quoting Tribole/Resch: “A dieting body is a starving body” (Tribole/Resch 1995/2012: 59).

Listen to your heart... or your body in general

Later in life I stopped consuming cow’s milk and everything that is made from it on the advice of various therapies. It’s common if you have an immune-disease like I have, to look for clues in your diet, too. Meanwhile I started avoiding eggs and coconut milk, because they didn’t leave me feeling well. But, occasionally, I get the feeling I want to eat them and, when I listen to my body, that impulse is right and I don’t feel sick afterwards. Body intuition for the win.

Realising that I actually have a good sense of what food is good for me and what isn’t, the whole diet problem began to make more sense. I was trying to press my food schedule into the desires or the nutrition that other people came up with. This would never have worked. Actually, I think we all have that sense of what is good for us, but it’s covered with all the public opinions on diets and the “perfect” body.

When I really allow myself to listen to my body, most of the time I can feel what it needs and what it doesn’t. Nothing is off limits.

If only it was that easy. Because by listening to my body, I have to ward of constant urges society has given me to divide my food into “good food” and “bad food”. I have to push aside the illusion that a thin body would make me happy. I have to push aside all the body shaming I have internalised. The thought that our body is something to be hated or be feared and that it has to be punished if we are too weak to stay on our fancy paleo or whatever diet.

In the end, it’s all about self-respect, body-positivity, and about acknowledging that our body is not a machine. Our body is a complex system and no one else but us can say what it needs.

You eat tomatoes, I want potatoes

Listening to my body is getting me different results every day. Some essential things stay kind of the same though. Like, my body has almost zero problems with carbohydrates, and I love eating potatoes in any form imaginable. Gluten and yeast are fine with me, bread making an appearance in my meals every day.  Occasionally I like things made of soy/tofu, but they’re not my go to protein. I love legumes and vegetables of all kinds, but I only like to eat (raw) fruits on rare occasions. Green salad and raw food in general is tricky, and mostly repulsive. Yet from time to time I crave a green salad with a simple vinegar-honey dressing. Especially in public spaces, vegan food works best for me because then I can be sure there is no meat and no cow milk in there. Also I just love vegan food.

But that’s just how my body works right now. I believe for everybody there’s different food that works best. Let’s not act like there is one diet that works on all of us. Also our body and the food we need changes over time. And I guess in theory we all know that, but our routines are still hard to change.

The other day I read a tagline online saying, “Being obsessed with health doesn’t make you healthy. It only makes you obsessed”. And had to take a minute at the truth behind it. Especially as we can’t say what makes us healthy anyway. But we can say if something makes us feel good or not. Eating according to my intuition is the thing that has made most sense to me up to now, compared to all other diets and nutrition theories. Being happy while eating and the simple feeling that my body is having a good time is more important than eating what society thinks is right.

My struggle with intuition

I have to admit there is still one thing I have not figured out yet, and it’s something that’s overshadowed by my eating disorder from my teenage years that sometimes catches up with me: How many meals a day work best with me? So far I think it’s not three big meals, but more meals of different sizes. And eating at what time of the day works best for me? I try to listen to my body and eat when it feels right. Whereas, I can get a good feeling what I want to eat, I’m not that good in knowing when to eat. And having experienced an eating disorder, I know I can very well suppress the feeling of hunger, sometimes unconsciously. I have a lot of awful strategies to trick my body. There is a part of me that likes to punish my body by keeping it from eating. So this is really tricky and I’m still working on it.

And of course there is a major problem for all of us: our other-directed daily routines. Eating intuitively would work way better if only we could decide what and when to eat everyday. But with having to work to make money to pay for rent and – oh right, food (ha) and everything else, a lot of my meals are not all decided by myself. I can’t arrive to work at any given time, so I often have breakfast earlier than I’d like to. Then my day is filled with projects and meetings and private dates, so I have to plan my meals around them.

Not only that, too much stress makes it hard for me to hear what my body needs. I love chocolate (in case I haven’t mentioned this before ;)), but when I am too stressed out by work I eat chocolate for stress release. This is not bad in general. But after a while of this happening again and again I don’t even enjoy eating the chocolate. So next time I want to eat chocolate, instead I try questioning that decision and try to listen to my body: Is this really what would make me feel good now? And sometimes it is and I eat chocolate. Sometimes it’s not, and then I try to figure out what I want instead and what would really make me feel better. I do like things such as sugar, beer, and even smoking a cigarette from time to time. But I do not like it when I stop enjoying these things and only use them because I am stressed or sad or angry. Sure, I sometimes have a beer after a shitty day and that’s okay, but I would hate to make a habit out of that. Both the shitty days and the beers.

So I guess my theories don’t always work perfectly yet. It’s a work in progress.

Relearning the rules

In the last couple of years I had to relearn a lot of opinions and reflexes I was taught about eating when being young. And I’m still (un)learning, like: There is no good food/bad food. I don’t have to finish my plate if I am not hungry anymore. It’s okay to eat something else instead too. I don’t have to eat lots of fruits and vegetables every day if the thought of eating it makes me sick. I don’t have to stick to a fix count of meals a day. I don’t have to eat the same amount of food every day. And so on.

One more thing I try to learn is not to explain why I eat or won’t eat something right now. I used to say stuff like “I’m not hungry”, “I already ate so much today” or “Nothing for me, I had a late breakfast” or “It’s too late in the evening for me to be eating now” or thinking “I already had fries for lunch, I can’t have fries for dinner again”. Nope. No explanations, no regrets, no diet talk, no body shaming anymore. Three carbs-only-meals in a row because it feels right? I’ll do it. Eating dinner at 11pm because my body longs for food right now? Sure. If I’m not ravenous, but still feel my body would love something to eat? I’m having it.

Sharing’s not always caring

Something I don’t enjoy a lot for many different reasons is eating in public. I’m easily stressed by social situations in general but especially when it comes to sharing a meal, so I don’t often eat together with other people.

The other reason for that is that I hate it when people comment on my food. Or the food of others. Or their own food. And I don’t mean comments like “Wow, that looks so good!” or “I think I will order that myself”, I would love those comments. No, the comments I hear and hate a lot are comments that appear harmless, but really mess with my head. Like when I order and the person next to me says “Wow that’s quite a big portion!” or “Oooh, that looks like pure sugar” or “That would be impossible for me to eat.”

It’s tricky even if people make that comments about their own food. When someone eats half of the food on their plate and then says, “This was so much, now I’m going to be full for the rest of the day.” How will that make the person feel that sits next to them that ate all the food on the plate and is still hungry? Especially when that person commenting is thinner than the other one? 

Sorry, but in a world that condemns sugar (or even all carbs) and divides good and bad food and wants us to eat less food in general, those comments can’t ever be neutral observations or harmless notes.

Keeping your diet talk to yourself

“I get through the day easily without eating much at all.” “Eating a lot of fast food makes me feel toxic.” “Gluten is pure poison for my body.” “Since I’m doing [insert new diet] I feel like a human again.” “I can’t eat anything right now, I had a generous lunch.” “I could never function when eating toast with Nutella for breakfast.” “I’ll burn off the calories in the gym later.” “Alright, today is my ‘cheat day’.”

All of these comments are steeped in society's expectations.

I totally get that these are things people say about themselves in that moment, and if I’d only see them as self-revelation it guess it would be fine in a way. But that’s not how communication works, especially not with topics that are so morally pre-shaped like diets, food, and bodies. On good days, I can brush these words off, but on bad days I fall into despair: Why don’t I want to eat salad more? Why do I have to like chocolate so much? Maybe gluten is poison for me too, but I just don’t know it yet? My lunch was also generous, but I’m hungry again. What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I get through today without much food? (This is an especially hard sentence for me as it cuts right into my eating disorder whispering that I could too, and all I have to do is… yeah, let’s not go there.)

Sometimes I wish I could just share meals without anyone making comments on the food beyond if they like it or not – their eating habits, and their or my body, all disguised as small talk. I think we should all be more careful how we talk about food because it’s a minefield full of stereotypes, preoccupations, shame, and it mostly comes with our personal past full of hurtful experiences with diet talk. So let’s think about how what we say can make other people feel like, and maybe let’s remember that most of us carry trauma from the topics of diet and food in one or another way.

~Sam Chills, 2019

[worldcakecakecake]

Amor Aeternus

Ludwig, the son of a Germanic Tribe leader, is offered a chance to visit the famous city of Rome, where he would fall in great acquaintance and love with the youngest son of the emperor, Feliciano.

Also, headcannon human name for Rome is Augustus (Thanks deValier), so yeah, when they’re talking about the emperor, is not…the actual first emperor of Rome Augustus, but Hetalia’s Rome. Felt the need to clarify just in case.

EDIT: Posted in this blog now. Originally posted for the first time in gerita writing network.

                                            Chapter 2

“Alfnod was trying too hard to convince them. I was at the verge of simply admitting the truth for him, apologize and hopefully the guards wouldn’t be so harsh with us.”

Despite the late night, the village still remained as festive. Children were running about, men were huddled in food and drinks, women cleaning or in their own circles, talking and watching over the children. Aldrich and Ludwig shared a table in a private corner, for the conversation only to be heard between them. They had barely moved from the table and were deeply set in their conversation, nothing even of passing distracting them.

“The wind was strong that day, so sadly the cover had been blown, and what we had brought had been revealed to them.” It was the type of thing that could have the entire village roaring in laughter, but Ludwig only gave but a short grin, taking a sip from his alcohol as Aldrich did his own.

“Did they still let you pass to Ticinum?”

“They did, but with watchful eyes on us all the time. Not at all pleasant. Several times they had the guards on us for any small thing that might seem treacherous.” Another sip he took. “We had to cut our stay short because of it.”

“Did you get mints though?”

Aldrich smiled, taking a small bag from one of the pouches he held in his belt and throwing it to the table. Ludwig opened it to reveal the leaves, already a refreshing air, even if one so small.

“We even got some seeds. Hopefully we can plant them here.” His eyes gazed to the area that they were expecting to grow them.

Ludwig then grew nervous to ask him his next question, his hands intertwined in the table to hold, biting his lips, his mind still finding the right words he could say without sounding so desperate. He always though he did with this specific topic. Many had told him so. Aldrich noticed his hesitation, something that he had learned to spot in both his sons. He got more comfortable in his chair, his gaze now completely on Ludwig, expecting him to come out with whatever was worrying him.

“Rome," he finally said, “how was it?” And he grew more confident, a begging in his eyes that even made his father chuckle, not understanding why Ludwig would feel so worried to say it.

His fascination with the empire was no secret to himself, and he was quite excited to tell him what he had experienced. He leaned closer, his voice down to a whisper, like a secret that was to remain only between them. “As grand as you think it is.”

That light that arose in his eyes, one of those few moments that Aldrich could tell that it was what his son wanted to hear. Only part of it though, he knew he wanted more information than a compliment like that.

“It’s big. The size of our village could be an equivalent to parts of their buildings.”

Ludwig found himself looking around their village. Despite its small size, it was what he knew, thus he considered it large for what it was. To know that there was something much larger just perked his interest even more and it slightly intimidated him.

“Their architecture was unbelievable, beautiful, every part of your eyes taking something unthinkable. Polish white and bronze marble that stood higher than even the trees around us. With designs, bends, arches, columns, and domes that showcased their incredible talent in art. Ah their art, one could stare forever at a single wall or statue, finding a new detail each time. We always questioned how they could make something so exact, and people were so used to it that they passed by without a care unless they were studying it or offering certain buildings prayers. People flooded and made the city the more active. Merchants, feasts, games, soldiers, gladiators, different challenges to prove their strength and skill, belittling ours honestly. The guards couldn’t keep their eyes on us with so much commotion. We even lost the assigned ones we got after only a couple of hours. We even saw animals that I never knew existed, traded among them all across from different parts of the empire. It is rich, my son, rich not just in wealth, but just about everything. Food so easily found and handed, fabrics so soft, our sleeping arrangements, probably the best rest I’ve ever had. One again I say, Ludwig, it is as grand as you think it is.”

One could say, with the look in his boy’s eyes, that he was in love. They would probably ask him who the woman was. No one was bound to believe that it was excitement over a city that he had heard so much about, that he had dreamed and had yearned to visit ever since the first time his father had sat him down on his lap and told him as he just did.

There was more to say, so much more, so much he could go into detail that would leave them there the whole night, but there were other matters to discuss in such a beautiful starry night as this when he was to give him great news.

“While I was there…” his drink was done, only but a small amount that he enjoyed swiveling around in the cup. “I met with an old friend, who is now in a position I never thought I would meet him again.” He placed the cup on the table, board with his little game for now, and Ludwig found it added suspense. “He’s the emperor," he said without a care, like he was talking about any other position in their village.

Ludwig had choked on his drink, accidentally letting his cup drop to the floor, which in turn got many eyes looking. He waited for the others to continue with their chatter before he leaned much closer, hoping his father could see how serious this was and how he expected him to be more quiet about it.

“How in the world did you meet the emperor?” Another question that Aldrich had no problem answering, leaning just as close, when suspecting the last stares from his people.

“Many years ago, when I was about your age, the emperor had just been but a guard at the wall, at a time when it was common for many bandits to try and make their way into the empire in brute force. He was well known for all parts of the wall for his great leadership in stopping these attacks, there were even rumors that he had taken a group of six single handedly. I didn’t really believe in such a thing, so when my father had given me the mission on getting some items from a village over the wall, I went ahead without much of a worry. Because of the constant attacks, most of these soldiers were paranoid and on alert, so when I had come to pass, they thought I was another bandit. They held me hostage in one of the watch towers and didn’t let me go out for days. Augustus was in charge of watching me and we used the time mostly to talk. After I was released, Augustus and I would meet by the walls, to exchange items or just talk as we had in the watchtower. Sooner or later, I guess you could say we became good friends.” He sounded regretful about it, but a later chuckle proved that it was indeed what their relationship was.

“But around the time I started being with your mother, he was sent off to Rome. Apparently even the emperor at the time had heard of his skill and knowledge when it came to politics and adopted him into his family in hopes that he would take his place in the throne upon his death. We maintained contact with letters, but they became less until there came a point I didn’t receive anything from him again. Last I heard was his engagement to a Greek princess.” Even in his common serious expression, Ludwig could tell the hurt and the sort of betrayal of losing contact with someone he began to consider of good friendship.

“He never really told me about his new position. I assumed he got promoted to a general, so when I met him in the Pantheon, never I expected I would meet him as the great Emperor Augustus, in his purple trabea, surrounded in senators who looked at me as if I was the lowest of commoners. It was even embarrassing Ludwig.” He even leaned his head down in his hands, hair falling to his sides, hoping he could rub out the memory. “And yet, Augustus invited me over to the palace of all places, got me dressed and even my men in the softest of silks I’ve ever felt, perfect for the weather of the city I have to admit. He presented us with dinner and even music, even a tour around the palace where we spoke of lost years.” It was then that he took out a small scroll, pushing it close to Ludwig.

“He has two sons of his own as well, his wife died shortly after giving birth to the second one. I had the privilege of meeting his eldest, Lovino, who in my opinion looks and acts a lot like his father..  a much worst temper though.” He rolled his eyes, his memory of his loud voice echoing across the palace, waking everybody in it. Not at all pleasant. “His youngest, I could not meet, Augustus refused to let me, but he is to turn eighteen shortly and a feast will be held in Rome for his coming of age.” He pointed over to the scroll, which Ludwig opened, to reveal an invitation for three to the very feast he spoke about. With the date coming soon, his father would have to leave again and once again he will be left behind to watch over the village. Yet Aldrich had been insisting that Ludwig opened it, his eyes remaining on Ludwig as he expected…something. Ludwig remained with his own stoic expression, indifferent to the invitation.

“So you’re leaving soon to Rome for the celebration.” Disappointment was evident in his voice.

“Yes, I am, but the invitation requires I bring two other men with me. I was hoping to take Gilbert, but since he is not here yet from his battles, I will have to take Roderich with me.”

Roderich? His cousin who could barely even hold any of the weapons, that when the village worked he remained in the shadows hoping for the workers to bring him food and water, who got lost on his first hunting trip, who refused to use any of their cloaks or tunics unless they were the richest from the empire, and his father decided that he should go through the excruciating trip to Rome? Of course he felt betrayed. Why give the honor to a spoiled man like him? He gazed at him from his spot and he was currently on his own table, drinking his own drink while he participated in conversation with the young women of the village.

“And whose the other man you wish to take?” Probably one of the other two men he had taken the last trip.

“You, son.”

He though it was his mind who made up the image in front of him.

“Ludwig, I decided on taking you this time on the trip to Rome.”

His father was actually saying this, he was offering for once to take him.

“You���want me to go?” He needed to be sure, his voice trembling afraid that the chance could be taken away so easily.

“Of course, Augustus insisted on meeting my own children, and since Gilbert can’t, well, another member of the family could suffice.” That explains why he decided on Roderich. But wait…it would mean meeting the emperor as well. He…would meet the emperor. He could have fainted on the spot, not sure how he could deal with being in the presence of someone so powerful.

“What about the village?” He managed to think of.

“I’ll leave my brother Korbin in charge until we return," he assured. “You’ve watched the village enough times already, come with me this time and you’ll get the chance you’ve wanted so much.”

How could he refuse? How could he hold back from such a chance? Aldrich could already sense his acceptance. He did not even have to hear it to know.

“We’ll leave in three days. We’ll use this time to supply and get ready.” He stood then, ready to spend some time with other villagers. “Depending on the trip, maybe I’ll suit you ready to take the leadership of the village and the rest of our tribes. We’ll find you a suitable wife and you will bring forth a heir.” And he had left, not knowing on the sudden stress Ludwig had felt at his words.

The prospect of going to Rome at least distracted him enough to not think about those duties, standing forward from his table and thinking it a good time to head to rest.

Roderich had actually been quite ecstatic to be given the chance to go, even deciding to help Aldrich and Ludwig with their preparations for the trip. It was in that process that Aldrich told Roderich of what he expected from Ludwig on the trip to then bestow him as King of the united tribes. So when Ludwig and Roderich were in the forest looking for some herbs, rocks, wood and other materials, Roderich found it best to speak about this to him, in the loneliness away from the village.

“King, huh?” He began, not knowing yet how Ludwig could feel about this.

At first Ludwig seemed rather confused, picking just then a branch that held berries they could eat for the day. With the reminder, the weight came back again…the dread, the impending force of much larger responsibilities than what he knew, the life he was expected to have. His mind could have gone on if Roderich hadn’t asked him again.

“Oh yeah...he told you about it," he finally answered, moving to another bush.

“He’ll soon enough tell it to the whole village.” How Ludwig wish he didn’t. “How are you feeling about it?” And once again silence. It was enough of a response for Roderich.

“I am the heir, it is something I expected and I will be willing to take if my father deems me worthy.”

“Are you really? You’re not nervous?”

“I am, but it’s only normal. I’m actually quite confident, just didn’t expect it so soon.” By now they had enough items, and Ludwig found it well to return to the village.

“You are of age and have been tested by watching over the village by yourself ever since you were a teenager.” Roderich pointed out. “There is nothing too soon, and I assure you it is of perfect time and you are ready. The hard part will be getting a wife and hoping for male heirs.” That was one thing that was making this unfavorable. He didn’t speak much about it and hoped they both remained silent until they got to the village.

He had no desire of such a thing. He rather much deal with the dogs of the village then with a child of his own, and a wife just didn’t seem as appealing as other villagers made it seem. Yes, there were excellent women in his village to choose from. Strong, hardworking and beautiful, but none had really attracted him enough in such a way to wed, and he pretty much hoped he could rule by himself. His father and his older brother would probably refuse to, and in the end, they will choose one for him and he would not be able to go against it. But he had Rome to distract him, a trip that seemed like the last of his liberties before he will be turned king.

With much anticipation, the day had finally arrived. The carriage with their things had everything they would need, two good horses were chosen and all that was missing were the three travelers, who were wishing their goodbyes and setting some last duties before they headed off.

Helga had given them medallions for luck and begged for Wuotan to grant them safety. She was the last farewell Ludwig had wished, already taking one of the horses, his father the other, Roderich settling with having a seat in the carriage. With the whole village there to witness, they settled off. Ludwig only gave them but a last single wave of goodbye before setting his gaze to the now continuing front.

The forests here were familiar, he had been here, hunted and knew them well, but soon enough the trees and hills changed and Ludwig could see he was not home anymore. Aldrich then lead them, knowing the way well, pointing to each new different thing and explaining as much as he could of what he knew. His son was of course interested, taking every single word and breath. His nephew on the other hand, was close to falling asleep. He did not really care about battles or legends or myths of every leaf out there, he just hoped to wake up to Rome the next time. But the trip to the city was not at all easy and it would take them many more days to get there.

They met with other villages and one of them had offered them stay for one night. They continued through dense and small forests, valleys and fields that extended infinitely but gave them an amazing breeze, between high hills and mountains that had left Roderich and Ludwig amazed, never thinking they could meet such tall ones. They passed the more treacherous Alps, one night staying in one side and then another to the more new side. Beautiful landscapes and lakes had them stopping, for them to bathe and drink before they continued down.

The villages they began to meet…well…more like cities began to present themselves, a preview to what they could expect in Rome. Already Ludwig was impressed by these cities, so populous and with structures he never thought possible. Many times he had his hands extended to touch every wall, every figure and design, making sure if it was indeed real. In the inn they had stayed, he couldn’t sleep, from the window gazing to the city, the hills that extended in the distance, the fauna and view worth his late night gaze exploration.

They were so close to the main city, already meeting many of the more famous roads, overhearing some people who had just left Rome. Ludwig’s grip on the reigns of his horse had become tighter, a way that his anticipation was showed.

He met with other hills, villages and large houses in marble and stone that made the scene the much more picturesque. And in a single turn, that had caught him by surprise, it was there, seen from a distance in a glowing light. Arriving in the still early afternoon was the best lighting to see it in, like it was still in his dreams. So breathless he was that he couldn’t find it in him to let his horse go faster, Roderich and Aldrich moving away without noticing. Ludwig did not care if they would arrive first to the city and forget about him, because this moment, he wanted to remember it well, and this view, he wanted it to be forever in his mind, all in his grip to take before he would come closer, experience it as any Roman would.

“Ludwig!” His father had called, noticing how far behind he was.

Why would he waste his time here though? In the outskirts when he could be inside.

Seeing as he was done, he pushed for the horse to catch up to them. They were soon to enter.

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[violetsystems]

#personal

As much as I try to joke about emotional labor, it is hard work to do so at six in the morning. It can be particularly harder to muster the tone on a holiday in America dedicated to just that. I took a few weeks off from the heavy lifting of encapsulating my feelings about everything to live in the world. You know instead of talking about it. The world hasn't been much different for me lately. I do a lot of cooking. I do a lot of cleaning. I organize things relentlessly. My outlets and lightbulbs are part of some IoT maze that I click on and off randomly on my phone. I spent a good portion of the last month trying to be more efficient with the electricity I use. Most of my current business model revolves around mining the ethereal. You could confuse that with Ethereum just like you could call me legally grey. It's all fuzzy how any of my life works out other than paying the bills and balancing the books. If I had a quarter for every time I had to break out my people skills at the Aldi, I'd get it back eventually. One such incident happened just the other day. A woman had put a quarter in the slot of the wrong cart locking it up in an impossible chain of karma. Aldi is particularly German in the fact that it likes interaction by design. I guess it requires mindfulness to give a quarter and get it back. So much so that there were times in the past I have just forgone going to that store on account of how interactive it is. These days I'm less shy. I've been followed around for what seems years. I use to expend more energy dealing with people. I find talking to people very easy and I do so sparingly. Patience is a labor in and of itself when dealing with human beings. It's also a pretty decent Guns N Roses song I like to sing all by myself. In a very non Fleetwood Mac sort of way, I did try to break the chain. I gave the woman my quarter so she could just grab another cart. I said I would use my bag. She ended up locking another cart together. Suddenly a security guard stopped by and asked if we were having trouble. There were nervous looks all around. I explained the situation mutely. Just the facts. He unhooked both carts for us. I smiled at both of them and simply said "Teamwork." They smiled back thoughtfully and we went about our shopping experiences. It took some energy and some interaction. But through compromise we solved a problem in five seconds flat. I understand that people try to create problems to show people's true mettle. But I've been living through problem after problem proving absolutely nothing other than my own genuine care and attention. Emotional labor is something we all do when we take the time to use empathy. There are times when it's valued. And there are times when it's abused. It's even harder to understand when it's not worth expending the energy. And there is always guilt that maybe you aren't doing enough.

Labor can be manipulated. This is most evident in what I see happening at my old job. I haven't been unemployed this entire time. I own my own business legally. It has been a full year of half assed attempts from people reaching out. Even more half assed attempts at maintaining the linkedin connections. People are people. So why should it be that I talk about any of them awfully? I seem to be doing just fine paying the bills a year later. I wouldn't say it hasn't been a laborious experience. Nobody really has held my hand in any of this other than my friends online. I was middle management. It was a tough job being the intermediary between the worker and the boss man. My position was dissolved, my office contents thrown in the trash, and I was issued a large sum of money in the form of a pension benefit. Most of the labor of the last year has been figuring out how to put this money back to work. And thus the comparisons to American Psycho have circulated as I have fallen out of the cradle of institutional revolutionary thought. There are a lot of things I miss about the environment. But I always thought the care and attention was somewhat forced. I could never pin my finger on it. Until I was let go. I just realized that the things people talk about are more for show. And getting into a discussion with people who don't value conviction let alone the labor it takes to live by your word isn't very lucrative. The collectives that people build sound really nice. This utopian vision of everyone getting along starts smaller in my eyes. Like unlocking the cart at Aldi. I didn't have to mention the fact that the racial and gender makeup was across the board. Just like I don't have to mention I care about women and trans lives enough to protect them silently with little fanfare. I know I write enough about it to show who I am inside. But trust is something harder to develop when actions don't meet the words. Sure it would be great to have this parade like revolution corralled in the square with song and fire. We could show off my girly guns and four pack abs as the weapons of America's cultural revolution. This happens every time I wear a statement shirt that is too loud. Somebody always tries to rain on the parade. To test their strength against the Antifa prince of Pilsen. I don't really identify with anything other than blogging about things I like on the internet. I live in a country that is free enough to tell people to fuck off to their face and walk away. I do this by my lonesome and I encourage people to decentralize and do the same. Freedom isn't something you can pigeonhole. It also has a lot of moving parts when you walk off your property into public. There's a grey zone on the porch and sandy brown hair. The emotional labor expended on that creates a culture all of its own. One that is like the blockchain in some ways. Encrypted in culture.

The biggest labor of love I have with America is that I both hate it and know it's mine to own. I've learned that fighting it is something that can wear you out. And even the same people and places can do the same. I always find something new to explore in Chicago and just outside of it. When I feel like everyone is on my dick too much around here, I can take the train to Cicero and watch a movie. People out there seem less inclined to start fights and more interested in why I prefer being low key out of the limelight. There's a lot of labor involved in keeping a secret. There's also a lot of labor involved in not asking too many questions. But the result is something that we own that everyone else in the world idolizes. It's that freedom we have that we stand to lose. And yet we still have enough freedom to think outside the box. The empathy we expend trying to get people to understand our point of view is often used to neutralize us. Think tanks whether how artistically well intentioned they are attempt to galvanize the individual for the collective middling out. America is the biggest think tank there is. And yet, we're all supposed to figure out how to get along without imploding. Financial literacy is one tool. But I've used my heart more than I've spent my money. Peace is a hard thing to labor for. You sometimes feel like you deserve more than you get. It's been somewhat peaceful here in my home a year later. There's drama still. People who silently expect you to understand how they want to be treated without ever asking your name. Sometimes I think it's best nobody asks too many questions. You almost set the precedent with me these days. I'm not going to tell you anything. I love what I love. I love who I love. And I want people to have the same kind of contentment. The emotional labor I expend in that direction is my vision that guides me through all these little altercations. I've listened to arguments. I've been cornered in every way imaginable to prove my worth and value. And these little skirmishes are inefficient at best. The small problems out there are problems that get solved not just debated for hours on end with no resolution. We all want peace. We all know we have to work together to achieve it no matter how small. Let's start small and quit all the heavy lifting for a change. Sometimes just letting someone know you are there is enough. That you care enough to think about how they would feel if you didn't take their feelings into account. A simple genuine gesture means more than a pile of nice words, thoughts, feelings and prayers. I care enough to know when it's not worth anyone's time to get involved in muddying up the signal to noise. I also get some pretty good deals on chicken breasts these days. It all works out in the end. <3 Tim

[ghostchild90]

Get to know me part 2

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?

More milk, I like to drink it after.

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day?

Yes, I do.

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books?

Mostly postcards, receipts, toilet paper…

4: how do you take your coffee/tea?

Black/ unsweetened or REALLY REALLY sweet with lots of milk, there is no in between.

5: are you self-conscious of your smile?

No! I have great teeth and I like my lips

6: do you keep plants?

I keep a cat. Ha. Ha. No seriously I keep herbs and I like sunflowers and yellow or pink roses, sometimes a cactus will survive.

7: do you name your plants?

No, they won’t live long enough.

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?

I sing a lot, I scribble, sometimes I’ll write but I’ll mostly blog about my feelings.

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?

I sing like all the time. Music is my favourite thing in the world and I would die for real singing lessons, to improve my voice.

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?

All above :) mostly on my side. Hey girlfriend, how do I sleep?

11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends?

Some ridiculous mean names mostly, the plantkin or “remembers me of my first time”

12: what’s your favorite planet?

It’s Jupiter! Such an interesting planet and I really like the mythical side too.

13: what’s something that made you smile today?

Skyping with my girlfriend (aww It’s so cheesy, it’s terrible. I love it)

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like?

I like cosy rooms, lots of wood and knick knacks, books, pillows, big colourful windows and a really nice kitchen with fresh herbs!

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is!

If it was 80 times more massive, Jupiter would have become a star instead of a planet.

16: what’s your favorite pasta dish?

I really like everything with mushrooms, spinach and broccoli, but the best Pasta dish I ate was a vegan Putanesca one in Amsterdam, maybe because I was high, but that’s not important here.

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?

I like my ginger hair as it is, but I would choose pastel colours.

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up.

There is really too much to tell. Maybe the shopping card race with Chris or the burnt kitchen? But something I did? I nearly killed Felix and myself accidentally but playing cards in an epic traffic was more fun.

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it?

I have roughly 400 sketchbooks and notebooks. I don’t use them daily, but I love to write or draw things down.

20: what’s your favorite eye color?

Green or darker colours.

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces.

I do love my current backpack! It slowly falls apart but I love it. I patched it by myself.

22: are you a morning person?

I can hear you snorting girlfriend. But no, I am not.

23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations?

I don’t like to do nothing when I’m by myself. If I had my lovelies with me, I would stay in bed and maybe read out loud, but while I’m alone, I like to wander around and play Pokemon… Or I’ll bingwatch some stuff.

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?

Yes I’m lucky enough to have someone, well there are about 3 people who truly know me, but I’m not sure if a single person knows everything about me.

25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into?

A fury convention in Magdeburg, it was surreal.

26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit?

My black platform boots I LOVE them to pieces.

27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor?

Spearmint or apples

28: sunrise or sunset?

I see the sunset way more often than the rise, it’s both pretty but the morning is more beautiful. (If I’m still awake of course)

29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?

Sometimes my friends surprise me with really nice things they say about me.

For example, Felix told me once I’m so curious about life, It’s inspirational and I still think about this. Otherwise, Jessi gives the best hugs, it’s cute. Oh and my gf has this adorable look on her face when she is confused ;)

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared?

Yes, I have a deep fear of dying and I’m terrible scared of maggots.

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks.

Okay take a seat, this will take a while.

Socks tell a lot about your personality, are you playful? Are you all business? I personally love weird socks. I’ve got some with hotdogs on them and I’m a vegetarian. My most favourite ones are spooky socks I bought Halloween, or the Ravenclaw ones. I hate to wear mismatched socks and I can’t even tell you why. Even when they are all black, to KNOW that they have a different high drives me nuts. And I loathe to wear socks in bed! I cannot sleep with them and I HATE them in combination with sex. BUT! That’s not fully true. Kneehigh socks or stockings are a huge turn on, while wearing them or on others. I have this weird clothing kink, but that’s a different story. Normal socks are fine as they are, white ones are boring and I find it very relaxing to sort them after washing them. So, that’s a lot on socks.

 32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends.

Well. Only 4am knows all my secrets but 3am sees me in weird states of really deep conversations on a kitchen counter or stargazing in a shopping cart.

33: what’s your fave pastry?

I could die for lemon rolls or everything with apples in it.

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?

My oldest one is a cat named Leodor. He is white with black patches and maybe he is a leopard. My most favourite one is a big cream coloured teddy bear my Grandpa gave me. Her name is Rosi and of course I still have both. I have a lot of stuffed animals and I still remember every name.

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often?

I have a really nice pen but I don’t write with it too often. I can’t tell you why, I really don’t know. I also have a bad handwriting.

36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now?

Subway to Sally – Seemanslied or ASP& Chamber – Ride on. Maybe even When the day met the night from Panic! At the Disco because I thought a lot about the moon tonight.

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean?

My bedroom seems to be always messy, the rest is okay. Not sterile but I do my best.

38: tell us about your pet peeves!

It drives me nuts when the hem of a shirt is turned inside out and I really hate rude people.

39: what color do you wear the most?

Black and green

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you?

Oh that’s easy, I would say my Triskele! I wear it on a chain since 2014 and I only put it off when I shower, because it’s iron and I want to avoid rust. It’s kind of my lucky charm.

41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving?

The last one I read not so much but I greatly enjoyed Hermann Hesses – der Steppenwolf.

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it!

I had one! And I’m in a dire need for a new one! I want to become a regular in a coffee shop again.

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with?

I do a lot of lonely stargazing, but I guess it was with Chris, very drunk of course and somehow funny. But I have someone else in mind. (Yes, you)

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything?

The week in Vienna, talking about feelings, having the courage for kissing and touching.

45: do you trust your instincts a lot?

Yes, I do! I have fantastic instincts.

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of.

My last hairdresser appointment is long hair. (it makes more sense in German, trust me)

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?

The desire for power and pineapples on pizza.

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today?

The fear of dying. It’s still the same. And the fear of being alone, this is different now.

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought?

Yes, I do! The last one was A fever you can’t sweat out by Panic! At the Disco.

50: what’s an odd thing you collect?

For me? I collect soda cans and sharks

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them?

Well for today it’s still the Seemanslied and it’s about my feelings for my girlfriend (It’s about longing and finding home)

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far?

I FUCKING LOVE MEMES! The best meme 2017 was the one with the guy and the two girls. ( He looks after her and she looks offended, I saw really funny things about this)

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them?

Yes – love it,

nope,

yes – it’s my fucking aesthetic and

yes of course! It’s so good.

54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face?

It was my mum, for reasons.

55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point?

Oh I don’t know. Am I a dramatic person? Yes of course but do I have to prove my points? Well, who knows.

56: what are some things you find endearing in people?

Smiles, serious wonder for the world and kindness in general.

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics?

You never saw me ROCKING THIS SONG. Haha. You will someday, be very afraid.

58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why?

Sometimes I’m both, but no seriously I’m totally the momfriend but more with vodka than wine.

59: what’s your favorite myth?

Ginger will turn into vampires after they die (Thanks Greece)

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?

Yes I do! The life that I have is my current favourite.

61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received?

I don’t give stupid gifts :P And the most strange but cool one I received was a rainbow projector!

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind?

Nope, only coffee. Black. But I do love orange and apple juice.

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?

I have lists of lists for other lists about my books and to reads, and music I like and quotes and favourite things and statistics and I change the order weekly.

64: what color is the sky where you are right now?

Pitch black with stars out there.

65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with?

Yeah, but that’s no longer possible.

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like?

A lot of light coloured flowers, some smaller sunflowers and berries!

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel?

At ease. I really enjoy the silent days.

68: what’s winter like where you live?

Strange. It’s mostly cold but not too cold. We never have snow or it snows for four weeks straight.

69: what are your favorite board games?

Siedler, Monopoly, any kind of game honestly

70: have you ever used a ouija board?

No

71: what’s your favorite kind of tea?

I enjoy green tea or Turkish apple tea but I’m not picky.

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it?

I like to write everything down but I have a sharp memory.

73: what are some of your worst habits?

Overthinking, eating with my fingers, I never vacuum

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns.

Smart, an honest to God asshole but I learned so much from them. We are like siblings and I’m very proud of their changing  

75: tell us about your pets!

This is my cat Momo. He has black fur, is way too smart and a giant asshole. I love him to pieces but I do want to strangle him. He is very cuddly, like all the time. Yes, even when you try to sleep.

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t?

Sleeping, I guess.

77: pink or yellow lemonade?

I really don’t care. Pink if it’s more bitter.

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub?

I used to like them a lot but it’s just too much. I still adore despicable me 1!

79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?

Fighting for me when I didn’t expect it.

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why?

Dark grey and one wall has black and white stripes. I did choose them because of the Tim Burton aesthetic, and because I like it. Duh.

81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of.

The sky after a storm, no, shortly before a thunderstorm. The minutes when you can’t see the sun but it’s not too dark, it’s murky and full of tension but calm and in colours you usually won’t see in the sky. A kind of dark green, but not emerald, more jade or really good olives from Italy. The feeling when you find a hidden cave under tree roots in the forest, it smells like old wood and long forgotten tales and the kind of adventure you’ll have as a child and you swear it was real and the biggest mystery you ever faced. Even when it was just a trick of lightning and no one believed you.

82: are/were you good in school?

Yes, I was/am a nerd but lazy as hell.

83: what’s some of your favorite album art?

Welcome to the sound of pretty odd from Panic! At the Disco

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones?

I have one already, but I like to have the sun and the moon on my forearms and some more.

85: do you read comics? what are your faves?

I do! I greatly enjoyed the Sandman comics from Neil Gaiman

86: do you like concept albums? which ones?

Yes! I love the Danger Days concept from my Chemical romance or the tales of ASP

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?

Shortbus, Prayers for Bobby, Pride, Die Kindes des Monsieur Matthieu

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy?

I love street art! Banksy is one of my favourites.

89: are you close to your parents?

Yes, but in a weird way

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities.

Oh okay, I totally adore Berlin, the energy in it and the endless possibilities. I’m looking forward to live there! And I like Amsterdam very much, beautiful architecture and the people are really laid back. Oh, and Krakau…. Okay I like a lot of cities

91: where do you plan on traveling this year?

Well in 2018 I’ll travel to the Netherlands by bike and hopefully to Paris with my girlfriend. I hope to visit Vienna again too!

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch?

Depends on my mood and the sauce!

93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most?

A low ponytail or a messy halfbun

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday?

Uh, a workmate of mine had birthday yesterday?

95: what are your plans for this weekend?

Sleeping, cleaning and working. Hopefully chat a lot with my loved ones.

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot?

Shhh… Quickly of course ;)

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house?

INTJ, Sagittarius, Ravenclaw

98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it?

It was a while ago and I love hiking

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them.

I’m always a sucker for good old Vivaldi or Smetana, but songs, fine.

“The green Gentleman” – Panic! At the Disco

“Big houses” – Squalloscope

“Evelyn” – Kim Tillman

“Ertrinken” – Die Toten Hosen

“Spiegel” or “Stille der Nacht” – ASP

“Seemannslied” or “Krähenkönig” - Subway to Sally

THERE ARE TOO MANY

@herzpraline

[drdanwrites]

On Our Own: ***Stephen Wraysford x Pregnant Reader Request ***

Could you do one with Stephen and the reader is pregnant and she ends up going into labor and there isn't a doctor around.

I need to give @hiccuphaddockswife a big shout out. She is the first person to like my posts and re blog them. Every. Single. Time. She was one of the first people to request a story from me,  and here it is, my ever patient friend. Thank you so much for your never wavering support. I hope you like this! :) xxx

The rain was loud against the glass window panes of your tiny village home. Your husband, Stephen Wraysford could be seen pacing back and forth on the phone frantically waving his arms, emotionally speaking into the receiver.

“I don’t care what the weather’s doing. My wife is in labor, I haven’t the faintest idea what to do and the midwife still hasn’t arrived.” He continued his pacing path meanwhile listening to your painful moans from the next room. His nerves started to get the best of him and he began to subconsciously take it out on his thumb nail, pressing it hard in between his teeth. He listened to the operator from the hospital and rolled his eyes. “Is that the best you can do?” There could be heard noisy chatter coming from the other end of the line. At the stranger’s unhelpful response, Stephen gave a half-hearted thanks and slammed the phone down on the hook.

All these months of planning couldn’t have prepared him for this. For what he was going to have to do. Slowly, Stephen made his way to your bedroom. He could hear your heated moans of pain as he walked through the door.

Labor was proving much worse than you could have ever imagined. When Stephen and you had found out that you would be expecting a little bundle, you both were pleasantly surprised. As the months flew by your shock turned to pure joy. Joy with every kick, every mention of possible names and the future life of your unborn baby. Stephen had taken a while to come to terms with the pregnancy, but you had noticed him being more protective over you and the ever growing bump.

As you heard him walk in at this moment, you could see the fear in his eyes.

“So?” You manage to say through a grunt of pain. Stephen looked over at you and gave you his best fake smile, but just as loving as any real one.

“Of course, darling. Of course everything is going to be fine. The midwife will be round just as soon as the storm clears. In the meantime, I’m here for both of you.”

You continue to pace the room as the next contraction threatened to come in slowly. Building like a roaring ocean wave before it erupts throughout your body. Crashing through every nerve and you lean forward and let out a crying wail. Stephen quickly rushes towards you and braces you in his arms as you squeeze him tightly. Relaxing and letting him go only when the pain lets you move once more. Finally you can think.

“We’re on our own, I suppose.” Stephen kisses your forehead and chuckles.

“It’s better that way don’t you think?” He flashes you a caring look as he holds you closer. Your arms climb up his side and you look into his eyes, trying to make sense before your brain is taken over by another contraction. 

“I need a distraction, please.” He looks quickly around the room. The first thing his eyes land on is the phonograph. He holds you by the sides of your arms and moves you so that you can brace yourself on the edge of the bed and leaves you to place a record on the table. Placing the needle down, slowly the echoes of crackling can be heard. A melody begins to slightly float through the air to your ears. The rain’s patter on the windows creates a syncopated beat against the music playing. Stephen looks back at you, beaming with pride. This wasn’t so difficult, he thought as he began to rhythmically walk over to you and took you gracefully in his arms. The pair of you began to sway back and forth and for a second you had forgotten about the pain and the child who was about to make their entrance. You were just Mrs. Wraysford, dancing with your thoughtful and wonderful husband. He smiles down at you in that thought and gives you a very careful twirl.

“Who would have thought, years later we would be dancing to this song once more, married and having a baby.”

“Quite literally.” You both laugh at the joke.

Who would have thought that two strangers who had ended up at a wedding alone would have turned out like this? The last time they had danced to this song, you were unknown to each other. Dancing to it now held another special meaning. It had been the start of your journey together and now it would mean the beginnings of your family.

Another contraction hits you without warning, harder and longer than the time before. It forces you to lurch forward over Stephen’s arm and he catches you and holds you close as you ride the devilish wave. You breath deeply trying desperately to gain some control. Tears welling in the corners of your eyes. Then suddenly a new feeling, something you had not felt yet. You turned and looked up at Stephen.

“I need to push.” These words proved to scare Stephen worse than any German gunshot or any tunnel duty from his war past. His face froze and went almost white, though he quickly composed himself and tried to hold onto you and you began to slowly drop to the floor.

“Push? Already? Are you sure? The rain seems to be letting up darling, do you think you could hold on just a few more hours” You could have laughed in his face. What part of this were you in control of?

“Stephen, this darling baby has decided they would like to grace us with their presence now. With or without any midwife.” As your bottom reached the floor you new things were going to go much faster now. “Best to get me to the bathroom now, love.”

Without hesitating for a second, Stephen collected you in his arms and began to quickly walk you into the bathroom that sat next to your room. As he entered he saw the bathtub and instantly decided that it would make the best place for you. The tub rang out as he places you carefully into the middle of the tub. You both maneuver your body into position quickly and Stephen could see the evidence that this was it and it was time. 

“Alright, my love, you are doing a fantastic job, I just need you to listen to me and concentrate on my voice.” Sweat dripped from every pore on your face and you did your best to wipe it from your eyes. Bracing yourself for an intense couple of minutes, you wrapped each foot around the end of either side of the tub. “Concentrate. I want you to focus on me. Don’t think about the pain. Think of all the love we are going to give this child. Think of those sweet eyes opening for the first time and seeing us, it’s parents for the first time.” Stephen was getting emotional himself as he witnessed the wonders of labor like a fly on the wall. With every word he said you listened and set your mind to his images. You knew each push would bring you closer and closer to this baby who was already so loved by its parents. Loved by parents who, in turn, were so in love with each other.

The storm outside had eventually dissolved and the midwife had found you both in the bathroom, Stephen holding your towel-wrapped baby in his arms. She spared now time inspecting you and the baby, giving Stephen a well done for handling all the chaos. She had sent you both to bed while she cleaned and tidied. The baby lay against Stephen’s bare chest, a swaddling cloth covering his body. His wrinkly old man face was mushed against Stephen’s skin and his little hand lay inches from his mouth and it was a sight you would never forget. A memory that was trapped in your mind, just like the dance you shared with Stephen for the first time.

“Thank you.” You both said simultaneously.

“For what?” You look puzzled at him.

“For helping me create such a stunning young lad.”

“Well, thank you for being an amazing partner, I couldn’t have done this without you.” Stephen lets his fingers daintily glide up and down the baby’s back.

“We just make an brilliant team.” He said opening his arm to allow you to cuddle into his side.

Stephen let the warmth of the room fill him as he let his wife and new son warm his heart. The two of you asleep next to him was the greatest gift life had ever afforded him.

I’m sorry if that was really short :S I didn’t want to over do it. It makes me miss my son as a newborn, he’ll be 2 in November! :’(

[michaelslimee]

Story Number 6: Getting in to acting.

I think I’ve written this out on my main blog like a year ago but now I can go into dumb detail so why not rewrite it here?

I distinctly remember telling someone in 2nd or 3rd grade that acting was dumb. I think I associated acting with celebrities and celebrities with being popular. And every tv show ever told me being popular meant you were a jerk. So I didn’t want that. Against my will I was cast in school plays throughout elementary school. The only one I specifically remember was about a dude using his rocket to fly around and learn about all the planets. I played “Neptune Dad”. Now it’s never been clear to me if I played a dad who lived on Neptune or the planet itself, but I digress. I had a lot of fun but refused to seriously consider acting. I didn’t really change until my senior year of high school. That time in my life was a large period of growth for me which is why it comes up so often. But god it feels redundant to type. (Side note jeez I wish I had a few stories about life post HS). Anyway, that year was when I thought to myself “Screw my reputation! I’m primarily taking electives this year and am very bored! Imma agree to random shit.”. Started when a video production teacher told the class that he heard the school was looking for someone to announce the freshman football games. No one spoke up so I did it. Mind you I knew almost nothing about football so I was not the correct choice. I basically sat in a booth overlooking the field and would repeat into the microphone whatever the scorekeeper said. I had a bunch of fun doing it. After that I saw my school’s production of Grease. One of my close friends was playing a main role so I went to support him rather than any interest in theater or acting. A week later he tells me that they are casting for their next big show “Arsenic and Old Lace”, and that he thought I should try out. I told him I had no interest in acting. He bugged me about it and told me the plot. It sounded amusing, but I didn’t really want to. He told me to just stop by auditions with a monologue prepared. I gave in and learned a monologue from “Plan 9 From Outer Space”. I figured if I wasn’t going to get a part I might as well have fun with it. The auditions were odd. It was in a cramped classroom and everyone else auditioning was also there. I performed the monologue in a goofy German accent, received some laughs and polite applause and sat down. I was told I’d receive an email if they wanted to call me back. And to my surprise I got the first callback. I read for a handful of characters the next day and did pretty okay. I got a second callback and they asked me to read for a couple more characters. Some time passes and I check the final cast list and I was cast as “The Reverend Dr. Harper”. I’d basically get maybe 15-20 minutes of stage time but that was 15-20 more than I was expecting. The next month or so was awesome. Rehearsals were great. There was also some playful competition. See, our school theater program typically did two casts for plays. One made up of theater students and one made up of non-theater students. I fell in to the latter. Our cast wanted to prove we were superior, so we kicked some ass in rehearsals and the final performances. I’ve heard our cast was preferred but I can’t confirm that. Either way, I wanted more. More acting. I “caught the bug”. But I didn’t want to do more stage work. I enjoyed the experience but man I suck at stage business. I just don’t know what to do with my hands and you can tell just by looking that I’m keeping track of stage directions with every movement. I said the words fine, but I needed a lot of work. In rehearsals someone said another cast member would be a good voice actor. I had a mild interest in voice acting but after the play I figured I’d give it a shot. I signed up to BTVA and started auditioning after graduation. A year later I was cast in the Let’s Dub Project. It’s been 4 or 5 years since I’ve started this wild ride and I don’t plan on stopping now.

[autismus-obscurus]

On self-dx

A while ago, someone asked me privately to tell them why I was clearly pro self-dx. It's a question I have seen a lot. It's a complex topic and there's a lot of misconceptions about what self-dx even is. Here's a slightly adapted version of my answer (under a cut so I don’t clog your dash). If anyone else has something to add, please do.

Also, TW: swearing. Sorry not sorry, It's just how I talk.

First off, we have to define what self-dx even is. Self dx is NOT googling "autism symptoms", reading one list, and the deciding "oh I'm autistic, lets go beg for pity". I can't speak for all autistics, but I don't fucking want pity. That's not the point of saying you're autistic. I just want to live without constant overload, okay? Lets go a bit more into detail: I’m very clearly pro self-dx, but I will not take someone seriously who takes one test and reads one blog post and then decides “I’m autistic.” That’s not how this works. Self-dx means hours upon hours of reading blogs, of reading articles, of checking the criteria again and again (cynically said, you're checking off a list, we'll get to that again later on), of asking autistics about every tiny trait you suspect could point towards or against it, of self doubt, of hope, of finding autistics spreading positivity or Autism Speaks / Autism Moms(TM) telling you you’re a monster. It’s emotionally draining as fuck. Self-dx is a search for identity. It’s trying to find out why your life is the way it is, why you are a certain way and how to cope with problems in a way that doesn’t do any more damage.

This line of thought goes in hand with another tumblr thing: Many people shit on self-dx because there's this nearly immortal assumption that people self-dx because it’s “cool” to be mentally ill. It’s not. Admittedly, teenagers are fucking weird and maybe some genuinely think they are ill when they are not, but I'm convinced that is the minority at best. Also, when we get to the point of preteneding to be sick that’s a legitimate disorder in itself. (Münchhausen or imposter’s syndrome. I've heard it called pathological lying, but that's quite a bit different and also a disorder that people cannot control and need help for.)

Let's look at a few statistics. In Europe 30% of people are officially diagnosed with a disorder under the ICD-10 / DSM-V. 75% of mental disorders start in adolescence (according to a German survey, BGS 98; here's also a link to the offical WHO page with statistics: HERE). The survey does not include those who are too ashamed to get help, who have no access to help, who are just not taken serious or have to fear abuse if it becomes known. Autism is not a mental disorder, obviously, but the staggering majority of autistics in the past was diagnosed as a child and face many of the same problems. (I’ll get to why the diagnosis age is a problem for autistic people in general in a second.) Now imagine finding a community of people who understand you, who can give you actually helpful tips, and you don’t have to reveal your identity. Anything classified as abnormal is still a taboo. People don’t believe you or make jokes about you. Example: I had to fight for an autism diagnosis because my dad, and I quote, says “there is nothing wrong with you”. No, there’s not, but I’m still autistic. That’s the mindset people apply to any neurodivergence. As to the matter of why so many people on the internet claim to be neurodivergent / mentally ill, I have a theory of my own. I can’t prove it, but it makes sense for me. Many neurodivergencies make it hard to go out. I’m introverted as hell, and often don't have the spoons to go out. So what do I do? I spend my life at home, browsing the internet. It takes me so much less effort to keep contact with people than if I had to go out and meet them. No sensory overload, nothing unexpected will happen. Meanwhile, the healthy people and extroverts are out and about having fun their own way. And, coming back to the community, on here it’s a lot easier to express your thoughts, especially on taboo topics.

Example: I think reading this text we can agree that my English (my second language) is reasonably good and that I’m a logical, intelligent person that can express arguments in an ordered manner. Right? Well, if you would be talking to me face to face, I would probably not make a whole lot of sense. I stutter, I lose trains of thoughts, I fall over my vocabulary, my pronunciation is often wobbly and then I will inevitably panic and make even less sense (this goes for talking in my L1 as well, in case anyone wonders). I’m not dumb, but face to face communication is hard.

Next up, the issue with psychologists and getting diagnosed. There is this pervasive notion that pschologists are The Authority (TM) who know everything and nobody else can be as good as them. Here's the thing: Psychologists are human. They’re not omniscient. And sometimes those psychologists are just shit. They can be sexist, and racist, and narcissistic. They can be condescending, and unable to admit they doN't know enough about a topic, and flat out ignore new evidence because it doesn’t fit their worldview. Go in the actuallyautistic tag. The amount of people who are dismissed by their therapists because this so called professional “has a feeling” they’re not autistic is ridiculous. Feelings don’t matter. Only the diagnostic interview matters, but the patients are denied that because a psychologist trusts his gut more than science. Without a decent self-dx it will be pretty hard to get diagnosed as a teenager or adult. On top of that, once you have learned to pass, autistic traits get lost or suppressed for fear of punishment. Often you have to convince them to test you with a detailed list that describes how you fit the DSM criteria. Which is by definition already a self-dx. "Oh, but psychologist are trained for that, surely they know!!!!!11!" I’m a psychology student. I just got an A in my clinical psychology class. I'll write my thesis in clinical psychology probably. The amount of diagnoses you have to learn does not allow to go in depth of anything. What a psychologist does is listen to you and check boxes on a list. (Sound familiar? I said we'd get there again.) We didn't even talk about autism. I did a presentation on it, found out my course teacher doesn't even know ABA is harmful (his point was "well the literature says it's effective"; Are You Kidding?). Our paedagogy prof spewed some ableist phrases pitying her friend that has an autistic kid. The perks of being an undercover autistic person :))) (That's sarcasm.)

To get back to the point: An ableist at worst, at best uneducated psychologist decides if you’re autistic, solely on what they have been told. The amount of posts that goes "I was denied diagnosis because I have good grades / are a girl / have friends / can talk" is ridiculous.

Example: I was in therapy three times until I was fifteen and NONE of them got the idea I might be autistic, despite me showing pretty severe symptoms. I had to self-dx and then convince my therapist to test me. I only even got that idea because we watched Rain Man in school. Seriously? Who knows you better: You or a psychologist you know for an hour?

Okay, before I get carried off, all of that assumes you actually get as far as being tested. To get there, it requires parents to listen to their kid. Parents typically don’t want anything to be wrong with their kid. (There’s nothing wrong with being autistic, but too many people still think that.)

Example: My dad still doesn’t believe I’m autistic. My diagnosis was four years ago. Because, I quote, “There’s nothing wrong with you.” No there’s not, but that doesn’t make me allistic.

The amount of stereotypes and ableist myths is staggering. Autism is one of the most misunderstood conditions I’ve ever researched. The DSM criteria are shit. They are, since decades, based on boys. They’re very limited, and while not wrong, describe things in a way that makes it hard for people to find "atypical" examples (stereotypical interests = trains). What about girls obsessed with horses? Nobody thinks that’s abnormal, yet it’s very possible. There are still a ton of people who think girls cannot be autistic, or if they are, to use the ableist principles this idea is founded on, they have to be “low-functioning”. The truth is, even the diagnostic interviews can’t pick up on autistic girls very well, that is a known fact. (Look at this link for example: HERE) I have most of those posts tagged either as info or ableism, but I don't have the spoons to check right now and my internet is shit.) To paraphrase the article and the other sources I know: Most autistic females just fly under the radar because they’re better at adapting and hiding it. That doesn’t have to be a conscious effort, but it’s exhausting, and then you sit there as a teenager and wonder why you’re feeling like shit because you never learned healthy autistic coping machanisms (or got punished for them).

Example: I didn’t learn of stimming, of dyspraxia, of sensory processing issue and literally everything that had defined my daily life until I found the autsitic community. I don’t think my therapist ever heard of that and I was labeled too “high-functioning” to actually get help. I managed, and back then I was fine, or thought I was after the depression wore off. I’m paying the price for that now.

People of color and women are severely mis- and underdiagnosed in literally everything medical. Teenagers are very rarely taken seriously, especially girls. Some people don’t believe autism exists at all. Now, assume somebody has understanding parents or teachers or is an adult, and could, thoretically go to a doctor to get diagnosed. Because (paraphrasing the original ask here) by validating self-dx we only push the notiion that you don't need a doctor to be diagnosed (which is again the Autority Lane (TM)). Well, yes, it would be preferable to get an official diagnosis, for the accomodations alone, but there is a shitton of reasons not to.

Example: I am currently undiagnosed. How so? My therapist made a deal with my parents that we would not write down the diagnosis, to prevent it from bringing me trouble. At first I was like “that’s ableist bullshit”. It’s not. Well, it still involves a lot of ableism, but there are a lot of reasons why I have to weigh if getting a diagnosis is worth it, even though I clearly need the help right now.

Here is a list of good reasons why someone could choose not to get professionally diagnosed:

money (in Germany healthcare is mostly free, but in the US getting a diagnosis can cost several thousand dollar)

autistic people are at a much higher risk of abuse, and don’t get taken as seriously (see ABA therapy and Autism Moms)

With an autism diagnosis you can be instituationalized far easier against your will (that works with almost all mental diagnoses)

In Germany you will have a harder time getting an insurance, they will make you pay more and don’t provide certain services e.g. You want an insurance for when you become unable to work, you know, like almost everyone has? Yeah, forget about it, autistic people don’t get that.

It can be used against you when you get in a fight about your kids’ custody

Medical ableism is a thing. You can have everything from a cold to cancer, from depression to borderline, it’s all The Autism. Autistic people are often seen as not having enough insight into their own body and mind to judge their own body (just like women, so as an autistic woman you're fucked twice as much :))) )

Getting a job outside of “supportive” businesses (read: they want Rain Man. They’re IT businesses who want autistic programmers and engineers, everyone else is pretty much fucked.) will be almost impossible. Autism is a disability and nobody wants disabled people past what the necessary quota is.

In the psych field there are no officially diagnosed people I know of, one researcher’s work was discredited when it came out she was autistic. I was already warned several times that I should hide my autism if I wanted to get a job at all.

basically, people are shit and can and will use your diagnosis against you

Lastly, I don’t really understand why people are so hateful towards the self-dx crowd. I can’t prove that there’s no black sheep, but most of them are people who look to improve their lives and better their mental health. Let’s put it like this:

The anti-self dx crowd: Only psychologists can tell if you’re autistic. Self-dx: I think I’m autistic. Antis: How dare you! I can clearly tell you’re not autistic. Fuck off, faker.

Call me cynic, but that is the core of reason most anti-self-dxers apply. Who the hell gave them the authority to judge other people? How do you know what a person is going through from reading two posts on tumblr? This isn’t some elite club. That kind of thinking ostracizes us even more when we alread have to fight so hard to be allwoed to live. Who are the self-dxers hurting? The ableists treat us like shit anyway. And honestly? I’d rather let in five fakers than have an autistic person suffer alone because of they can’t “prove” they’re autistic.

Dev out.

[actutrends]

#159: Are You A Maximizer Or A Satisficer?

| By John Petersik | December 16, 2019 |

Have you ever thought about your approach to making decisions? It turns out that humans tend to have two distinct styles (and they even have fancy psychological terms to go along with them). The funny revelation is that Sherry & I each exemplify a different one. So this week we’re sharing what we’ve learned about each type of decision maker, and how it can impact everything from how we choose items for our home to how we booked our first international family vacation. We’re also outlining five ways you can refresh a room without spending ANY money whatsoever. As in zero dollars (Sherry would add a “holla!” right here). Plus, the new kid-friendly kitchen activity that we’re loving, the exciting-ish conclusion to our Color of the Year predictions, and how far people will go for bread.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, and Spotify – or listen to it below! Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you may have to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

If you want a great primer on Maximizers vs. Satisficers, Gretchen Rubin has a blog post all about them and this article from Psychologist World goes into the topic with even more depth.

Plus, you can hear the original segment where my maximizing tendencies came to light in Episode #156 when we were talking about how we were reducing the stress of our master bathroom renovation.

image source

And if you have any “must do” suggestions for Costa Rica (specifically the region around Manuel Antonio National Park, please let us know!). We’re headed there for our first international family trip after Christmas and we’re psyched for some adventures!

Updates

Here’s Pantone’s official announcement about their Color of the Year 2020: Classic Blue where you can read more their choice.

And if you want to hear all of our original Color of the Year predictions, hit up Episode #147. And in Episode #149 and Episode #151 Sherry got to bask in the glory of being spot on with her predictions.

image source

You can also hear our full discussion about holiday traditions from around the world in last week’s show, Episode #158.

Pictured above is a photo from Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade that we heard about after the original episode aired. I have to say it’s much more extravagant than we pictured! More info here.

And here is some info that debunks the myth of the German pickle ornament and below is a video that makes me feel like I’ll never say Newfoundland correctly 🙂

Zero Budget Ways To Update Your Spaces

As promised, here’s a recap of the five ways that you can refresh or tweak your rooms without spending a single dime (because sometimes you have an itch to change things up, but it doesn’t mean your bank account has to feel it).

1. Take things out

We’ve talked a lot about simplifying and minimizing the past couple of years, and it still amazes us how paring things down can bring renewed focus and appreciation to the things still left. Plus, the extra breathing space in a room will help it feel different even though you didn’t actually bring anything new in.

2. Rearrange or reorganize existing furniture or items within a room

Whether it’s trying a new arrangement or simply switching art, pillows, or plants around within the room – a little shuffling can give it a feeling of newness and might just unlock a better or more functional layout along the way.

We talked about how we rearranged our beach house backyard furniture, which you can read more about it in this post, but below you can see the new layout complete with the conversation area that didn’t exist before. And again, we didn’t buy anything additional – just redistributed what we already had. Only took about an hour of trying a few things and seeing what we liked best.

We also talked about doing this in our master bedroom, where we recently moved two existing dressers to act as our nightstands. That easy change not only proved to be more functional for us, the layout also feels a lot more balanced in person because the mirror above the dresser on the right mimics the window on the other side of that wall.

3. Shop your house

Instead of buying something new, see if you can steal something that you already own from another room. It could be as big as a rug (Sherry often moves rugs around when she stages homes for sale) or as small as an artwork or lamp swap. That painting above our bed used to hang over my desk in the office, but last year we moved it upstairs to mix things up. We like it so much better up there and the spare mirror we hung in the office offers me a better view out the windows from my desk (even if it’s just a reflection).

4. Use your leftover supplies or materials

Dip into your craft closet or paint cabinet and see if there’s a project you can drum up using the fabric, ribbon, spray paint, wood, etc. that you already own. We love little projects like painting the back of a bookcase, a small piece of furniture, or even a pillow (yes, a pillow)

Sherry also mentioned how people are using Ardex feather finish to give old lamp bases a concrete look. We have yet to try that ourselves, but we did use it to give our old laminate counters an update and to make a new top for a coffee table.

5. Add greenery

Last but not least, take some clippers to your yard and bring back a branch, a bloom, or any other greenery that you can pop into a vessel that you already have on hand (pitchers work, as do old vases – heck, even a drinking glass!). You may be surprised by how much life and “newness” it adds to a room without spending a single buck.

Also, if you missed our original discussion that spawned this topic, you can check our conversation with personal finance expert Tanja Hester in Episode #157 (which is where she mentioned that she decided not to spend any money on her home anymore, so that she could achieve a big financial goal).

We’re Digging

There’s the toy & game closet that we have in our foyer, although it’s an older picture from before we moved all of the games to the top shelf to keep the pieces from getting “repurposed” for other activities (or, you know, lost). No more Scrooge McDucking with the Monopoly Money before school.

And as Sherry promised in the episode, here are some of our favorite family games these days (these are all games that we can play with our kids aged 5 & 9).

Sequence

Ticket To Ride

Low Down

Uno Flip

Exploding Kittens

Bears Vs. Babies

Tenzi

Set

Those are some of the pancakes we made using the Foodstirs pancake art kit (I made the chihuahua, and our daughter made that happy little pancake with hair on the right). We’ve asked for a couple more of their kids’ baking kits for Christmas presents for the kids from the grandparents, so that should be fun.

If you don’t want a kit, you can buy Foodstirs baking mixes a la cart too (everything’s organic and non-GMO) so we may use those to restock our pancake mix to make more beauties like the ones you see above.

If you’re looking for something that we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes. You can also see all the books we’ve recommended on our Book Club page.

And lastly, a big thank you to SnapPower for sponsoring this episode. Use the code YHL15 to get 15% off your entire order of easy-to-install nightlights, guidelights, and more at SnapPower.com.

Thanks for listening, guys!

*This post contains affiliate links*

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[upshotre]

Abati, Osun Governorship Poll and the Supreme Court Verdict

By Semiu Okanlawon Rueben Abati is a household name, at least for those literate enough to consume media contents of the print and television channels. And I respect him. He has a rich profile as a writer and columnist of note; rising to stardom as member and later Chairman, Editorial Board of one of Nigeria’s most thriving newspapers, The Guardian; one time spokesman of a Nigerian former president; founder of a blog, www.ruebenabati.com.ng and a regular anchor on one of the most watched television channels in Africa, Arise. With a First Class degree in Theatre, holding a doctorate degree, Abati simply should be one of the most brilliant minds around. Just as many of us, as school boys, ‘worshipped’ the writings of notable Nigerian writers and columnists such Alaba Ogunsanwo, Tola Adeniyi (Abba Saheed), Bisi Onabanjo (Ayekooto), Alade Odunewu (AllahDe) and even much more contemporary ones like Ray Ekpu, Dare Babarinsa, Onome Osifo-Whiskey and that generation of opinion molders, it is obvious that some Nigerian young minds aiming at careers in journalism and writing may have come under the ‘spell’ of their supposed model; savouring his ideas the way kids savour and devour noodle meals. It is not unlikely that within the academic community as well, some budding researchers in stylistics, writings, communications, dramatic arts and other related knowledge fields may have been making his works subjects of their dissertations. Such are some of the additions that fame can bring. The dossier above has necessitated this piece as a response to Abati’s article with the title Osun, Supreme Court And The Violent Senator. In the said piece, Abati had tried frantically to discredit the judgment of the Supreme Court on the Osun governorship poll which declared that Gboyega Oyetola of the All Progressive Congress was indeed the winner of that election. In summary, he posited that the Supreme Court judges were wrong to have relied on technicalities of the law and also said that the verdict runs contrary to what the common man on the streets expected. This must be made clear at this juncture. Abati’s piece could not have been an unbiased, fair representation of the facts as they are on the Osun governorship poll and the attendant legal wrestling that followed. And lest his audience believe the article was one of the numerous interventions on issues of national importance, we must remind them that Abati, far from being a commentator, detached from the emotions and sentiments of partisanship, wrote his piece to protect the interests (wrong or right) of the political party he to which he belongs. Those who may have forgotten should be reminded that the author of this article in question contested election in Ogun State in 2019 as the running mate to the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Buruji Kashamu. He is not an uninterested party. Now to his bone of contention! The Osun 2018 governorship election has come and gone including the litigations up to the apex court in the land. Expectedly, the outcome of the litigation certainly will continue to be at the centre of political and legal discussions for some time to come. The Supreme Court, on Friday July 5th, 2019 laid to rest all the issues in controversy regarding the said election and affirmed Oyetola of the All Progressive Congress as the Governor of the State. The Supreme Court of Nigeria is the apex court in the land, thus placing it in a vantage position to do and undo. Its finality is much more embedded in Justice Oputa’s dictum in the celebrated case of ADEGOKE MOTORS LTD. V. ADESANYA & ANOR thus ‘’It is not part of jurisdiction or duties of this court to go on looking for imaginary conflicts. We are final not because we are infallible; rather we are infallible because we are final.’’ The finality of the Supreme Court also enjoys constitutional provision. Thus it is the last bus stop for all appeals. Judges of the Supreme Court are human beings capable of erring, since ‘’to err is human.’’ I, however, hold the view that it has demonstrated unusual courage in matters before it. The court’s decision on Rivers and Zamfara states’ congresses, which were nullified are still fresh culminating in victories for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party in those states. In those instances cited above, when the PDP and their allies threw lavish parties and regaled in their ‘deserved’ victories, the Supreme Court did well! Now that the apex court affirmed the position of the Court of Appeal on Osun’s case, name-calling, skepticism as well as implied casting of aspersions on the character and integrity of those judges may not be ruled out. What hypocrisy! It is needless to state that the apex court in adjudicating upon cases before it, has demonstrated an unusual candour and courage to take the best decisions regardless of whose ox is gored. This has attracted commendations and condemnations from political gladiators depending on their sentiments. It is imperative that the court would not act in vacuum in deciding cases but based on established legal and judicial principles. Responding to Supreme Court’s verdict on Osun governorship election, he had argued that the judgment was based much more on technicality as same was hinged on the absence of Justice Obiorah at the February 6 sitting of the election tribunal, which made the Court of Appeal and the Apex court to nullify the majority decision of the tribunal delivered by Justice Obiora J. Wendel Holmes had stated that ‘’life of law is not logic but experience.’’ It is the latter that culminate in sacrosanct doctrine of stare decisis which urges courts not to depart from principles earlier laid down by them. This ensures consistency of principles of law, which is sine qua non to a formidable legal system. The law has been settled by the apex court in KALEJAIYE v. LPDC which is to the effect that where a member of a judicial tribunal did not participate in a trial and thereafter gives a decision in the matter, the decision is nothing but a nullity. That was why Wole Olanipekun SAN, in his submission at the Court of Appeal equated Justice Obiora’s act to judicial hearsay which has no place in our law. I am of the opinion that informed legal opinions even have much more jurisprudential authorities to back this than the case of KALEJAIYE V. LPDC. It is convenient for this writer to amplify alleged intimidations during the rerun election which were never proved but ignore the fact that the PDP candidate could not indeed have come near the votes he scored in the main election had there been credible voting in Ede South, Ede North, Egbedore where the PDP and its candidate and allies perfected their electoral malfeasance. I invite Dr. Abati to place side-by-side the number of polling units where the rerun took place and those in the three local government areas where APC loyalists were locked indoors to avert the bloodshed they had been promised if they ever voted against a “son of the soil?” Abati further raised in his piece, that the apex court did not consider some issues before it. The answer is simple. It is a well-established principle of Appellate Practice that a single issue, well-formulated, germane, successfully argued and considered by an Appellate Court such as the Supreme Court of Nigeria can dispose off an appeal. As disciples of the Realist School of Jurisprudence that believe in nothing but what the law courts say as law, we need not reiterate that the law as it stands today is what the apex court says in the Osun governorship election tussle. The Supreme Court has power to overrule itself when opportunities present themselves. Until then, the court’s verdict on the 2018 Osun election dispute is not only the extant position of the law but a precedent to be followed by the court when cases that are on all fours with the Osun case come before it. Kindly perish the thought that the positions of the dissenting judges both at the Appeal and the Supreme courts would end up being much more useful to justice and humanity than the majority decisions. There is a complex case of self-contradiction if Dr. Abati in one breath argued that “It is not the duty of judges to rely on public sentiments for determining cases” and in the same breath queries “What does the ordinary man think?” If, using his own words, “it seems to me that the ordinary man in this case considers the ruling of the Supreme Court, an anti-climax,” Dr. Abati appears to have arrogated the right to think for the common man to himself. If justice is to be served based only on the opinions and emotions of the common man, the cases in Zamfara and Rivers would most probably have gone in favour of the APC. Let it be said that in spite of the generally widespread knowledge of Nigeria that the elite claim, we must never conclude we fully understand the real, critical issues that determine and sway the psyche of the common man when he is taking decisions such as those he takes when holding ballot papers at polling stations. The point is this: The ordinary man in Osun, in their huge majority with some card-carrying PDP loyalists, would queue behind a Gboyega Oyetola instead and not an Ademola Adeleke. Forget about someone’s dancing steps. That’s not an issue. There are many other critical considerations that set apart these two personalities and those factors are there for all right-thinking people to see especially when it comes to the serious issues of governance. I conclude by stating that every other argument over this matter amounts to mere linguistic gymnastics aimed at some political intrigues. Let Dr. Abati save himself the trouble of compelling the discerning segment of his readers and followers to question the rationales behind his writings on issues of national relevance. My humble advice! *Semiu Okanlawon, journalist, Communication and Strategy Consultant was Special Adviser, Information and Strategy in Osun and writes via sokanlawon67@gmail.com Read the full article

[rough-tweed-action]

🔥 about tjlc and the tinfoil hat conspiracists

This is a tough one. I'm guessing my opinion (why are they doing this to themselves?) is actually a popular one. So, an unpopular opinion about these people, hmm.

Have you seen Rowan Atkinson's sketch about Toby the Devil? He welcomes souls to hell and divides them into groups: murderers, thieves, French and lastly, Christians. 'Christians? Ah yes, I’m sorry, I’m afraid the Jews were right.' Apart from being hilarious, it makes me wonder: what if we, the non-johnlockers, are wrong and they are right? What if everything I think I know about Sherlock is wrong because I'm a straight, adult woman and judging from the post-TFP dramatic posts, the majority of the cult consists of gay youth. What if BBC Sherlock really is a romantic story and I saw none of that because I'm biased?

What if they were rightfully angry after series 4? I mean, from what I heard, they predicted TAB's content pretty well. Maybe they aren't as delusional as we think. Maybe they were, in fact, portrayed on the show not only as the First TJCLer Hudders but also as the league of furies. Maybe today's gay youth needs more recognition than suffragettes. I don't know.

What if Mofftiss did betray them? What if they intentionally made Sherlock gay and John bi to attract the attention of gay fans? What if they wanted to give them the kiss, but the BBC didn't let them?What if Mark Gatiss, who seems like a lovely person, is actually the evil incarnate and a homophobic, cruel gay who likes to torment people like him? How can I tell? I don't know him. What if Mofftiss are lying liars who lie about lying about lying about lying and they really are playing a long game here. Maybe they intentionally made series 4 not gay and hurt the fans only to make the kiss in series 5 sweeter? Who can tell?

Did Gatiss honestly tell gay fans via Mary that it doesn't matter who they really are? Would he do that? Will he and Moffat butcher Dracula and make him not explicitly gay?

What if I, a Sheriarty shipper, completely misinterpreted the Moriarty episodes? What if Sherlock is, in fact, scared of Moriarty and there's no chemistry? Perhaps Sherlock wanted to catch Moriarty to save John and be gay with him? Could the Sheriarty content be just a cynical milkshake to lure the hungry Fannibals to the yard? What if the Sheriarty scene from TAB was not sentimentally and sexually charged? What if Moriarty's motivation was 'if I can't have you, then no one can'? WHAT IF SHERLOCK JUST HAD A GUN IN HIS POCKET AND WASN’T PLEASED TO SEE HIM?

What if Adlock isn't canon? Is Irene's theme really a johnlock theme? The person who deflowered Sherlock, Irene or John? Were Irene's pupils dilated because she was scared? Did she say 'Well I am [gay], look at us both' to prove there was no Adlock, not because saying 'Well I am bisexual' would make no sense? Were all the reminders of Irene meaningless? Do I ship it bc I'm straight? Was I.... straight-baited?

Was it a coincidence that Sherlock said 'I'm you' to Jim and played Irene's theme when asked to play himself? Was the Adlock/Sheriarty mash-up (TAB) unimportant? Is Sherlock actually attracted only to his exact opposite, John boring dull predictable Watson?

What if that Arwel guy is not a funny person who likes elephants and things that glow? What if he taunted the cult with gay elephants all those years? I'm actually surprised to have heard of the Eurus' glass elephant just recently and not from a cult member. Huh. Is the glowing skull a secret sign? What if the billboards from HLV were not a coincidence?

And what if all the small inconsistencies like the disappearing John from the T6T scene with Hopkins are, in fact, important? Look, as a Holmescest shipper, I watched the Unwise, brother mine scene many, many times. Two inconsistencies there. 

What if the First TJLCer and John are actually likeable characters? Is John's abusive behaviour excusable bc of sexual frustration and being closeted? Was his awful comment about Mycroft (what goes around comes around) justified? We may never know.

Is johnlock actually a sweet, lovely, vanilla ship, romantic and pure? Despite all the women deceived and used to stop the gossip? It bothers me, actually. Maybe it's because I think that honesty in any relationship is crucial. Did Sherlock and John really flirt with each other in Mary's or Irene's presence? Did John make a decision to marry Mary just to prove he's straight, although he could have just ditch the bitch and make out with his loved-up booooooooooyfriend? Is it ok for a bi-curious person to lie to their straight partner and use them a shield? Should I root for a gay couple who try to get together on the fucking WEDDING RECEPTION in front of the clueless bride? Is this good? Do I find it disgusting and inexcusable bc I'm not gay? Maybe it is a gay fantasy, the opposite of the hetero wish to turn a gay person straight?  Mystery.

Is this theory that the true villain of BBC Sherlock is anyone who thinks Sherlock is not gay right? Do I erase an important part of his personality bc I don't want Sherlock the fictional character to be happy the way he should have been from the start? Was ACD inspired by Oscar Wilde and the original Sherlock Holmes was in as gay as Wilde? Did Watson invent Mary Morstan to be safely gay with Holmes?

Is the unaired pilot gay and I can't see it bc I am not? Did Sherlock say that he knew being gay is fine not because John said his 'which is fine' the way I say 'I do like the Germans and I’m not scared of the German nationalism and do not resent them for using the most hideous language in the world, no sir'? Did Sherlock never correct the people who assumed he was John's boyfriend not because he simply didn't care what they thought about him?

What if Mary killed herself to make Sherlock commit suicide? What if Sherlock hated her the whole time and only pretended he liked her, so very convincingly? Did he and John conspire to murder her while she was heavily pregnant and sipped tea in John's chair? Was she the real Moriarty? Did she work for CAM? For Mycroft? Did the homicidal Sherlock and John try to protect her from Ajay because... they wanted to kill her themselves?

Was the Warstan reunion in HLV not sweet and realistic but sinister? Did John threaten her while she was pregnant with his child?

Is the *sigh* M theory true? Moriarty, Mary and Magnussen using Mycroft to destroy johnlock? Because nothing else that universe is more important than these two Brits licking Marmite off the other's prick.

What if our perception of the acronym cult is wrong? Maybe it's not just toxic. Maybe it helps its members embrace their sexuality. Maybe they were just trying to defend themselves? Maybe the only member who needed therapy was one of the leaders? Was it ok for another leader, the one who's still active, to respond to my message by going through my blog and judging the content? Despite my having mentioned twice in the message that I was just curious and had no evil intentions. I'm no expert.

Is the concept of a slow-burn romance (with a huge portion of miscommunication) between John and Sherlock possible? Wouldn't Sherlock just say: 'John, we should kiss, for science!' or John, when Sherlock returned, 'I have missed you so much. Don't ever leave again. Also, I love you, I can say this now.'

Did the suggestion to name the baby Sherlock actually meant 'I wish we have got married, I'd love to be your Sherlock Watson'? Did John the free widower say 'the chance doesn't last forever' and put so much emphasis on the word 'alive' because... I dunno, really.

Does John's 'I am not gay/not Sherlock's boyfriend' mean: 'I'm bisexual and would love to show Sherlock some military discipline'? Wouldn’t bi-John feel comfortable with Hudders, enough to tell her his secret?

Was John's reaction to Mary's death really less emotional than his reaction to Sherlock's suicide?

Was John's WTF when Janine strode out of Sherlock's bedroom jealousy and not the strong feeling that Sherlock either changed overnight or was doing some serious bullshitting?

Is Sherlock’s reaction to Janine and that other female character flirting with him a definite proof that he does not want to offer his virginity to a woman? Even... The Woman?

Was the idea of Warstan bad enough to make Sherlock suicidal on FIVE separate occasions? I counted: the sad, suicidal chips in TEH, the conversation with Sholto through the door, the post-wedding relapse that was NOT for a case, the TAB overdose and the TLD relapse. Dude. Sherlock, son, maybe find a hobby.

Did Mofftiss lose their minds and made not one but TWO 'all in your head' series? Is John dying? Is Sherlock in a coma? Was Eurus real? Is Redbeard a dog? Do I care?

Are Adlock and Smallcroft shippers delusional bc both Holmes brothers are so obviously gay? Is it all right to say that a character's sexual orientation cannot be different from the actor's (but only if the actor is gay)? Does Gatiss have a right to play or create non-gay characters?  Is he morally obliged to make every Sherlock character gay? Does he owe anything to the gay community?

What if having your otp work together and raise a kid together is not enough?

WAS THE LAZARUS REAL? I do agree with finalproblem on this particular subject, 100%.

Is Jim Moriarty alive? Is Mary alive? Is Rosie real?

IS FUCKY a real, useable word?

WAS IT HUDDERS WHO SAID 'SOFTER, SHERLOCK' IN TFP??? That old, stoned witch, I knew I shouldn't trust her.

WHAT IF THERE WILL BE A LOST SPECIAL/LOST GAY BAR SCENE/THE KISS AND WE, THE NON-BELIEVERS/CASUAL ANTIS, WILL DIE OF SHOCK AND CHOKE ON OUR HOMOPHOBIA?

WHAT IF IT WAS TWINS???

Seriously, though. Do I think conspiracy theorists are crazy in real life? No. I think I'm fairly normal despite my strong belief that General Sikorski was murdered by the British. I will NEVER accept that it was an accident. Never. 

Thank you, that was a journey.