#Cultural Loss Recovery

[delicatelysublimeforester]

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples: Reflecting on the Past, Embracing the Future

[howdidthisevenhappenanyway]

it’s getting to the point where I want to run an event where people write fics where quinlan gets found by the coruscant guard explicitly anywhere but the bin.

like come on quinlan fans he deserves better than this

[aphroditestummyrolls]

The weight loss ads this time of year really are just the most insidious fucking thing they are the water in the cracks of my brain eroding my resolve. It feels like every other word I hear is about a diet and every other image I see is a before and after. I feel like I’m on fire.

[referencees]

‘ED recovery’ influencers drive me fucking nuts. Like their content is basically only about their ED and their recovery but then 90% of their posts are just body checking.

Like posting photos of you posing in tight workout clothes at your daily workout, making sure everyone can see your thigh gap and your flat stomach does not seem like recovery to me.

Posting your no carb, no fat, neurotically ‘clean foods’ meals does not seem like recovery to me.

Constantly posting comparisons of your current body with your ‘ED’ body to show how ‘healthy’ you are (just as skinny but slightly more muscular) does not seem like recovery to me.

Like in all honesty I genuinely hope these girls are actually recovering and doing better. I’ve had an ED. It almost killed me. It’s something that haunts you for the rest of your life. But if your recovery content is actively triggering for people with ED’s I have a hard time seeing it as genuine recovery.

[fuck-your-proana-blog]

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

-Theodore Roosevelt

[poundfooolish]

I have been on a binge reading so much bullshit about the trojan war and odyssey and myths and historicity and doing EVERYTHING IN MY POWER to absorb the stories without actually reading them.

I have to finish Ghosts of the Tsunami first but WHEN I DO-

[undead-moth]

It’s amazing how fatphobes will swear up and down that they exercise for their “health” and that fat people need to exercise for their “health” too but the second someone says they exercise even though they aren’t trying to lose weight or a doctor says “exercise doesn’t cause weight loss but it’s good for your health” fatphobes are immediately like “UM why even do it then?” Like they expose themselves every time it’s amazing. They’ll keep insisting it’s about health though lmao.

Me: Exercise does not cause weight loss. This is a fact that has been demonstrated so robustly in research that even doctors, who hate and fear evidence, are grudgingly starting to admit this.

Someone reading that post: Cool, but have you considered that exercise leads to weight loss?

Me: I am going to eat you

[6deadonarrival]

Day 1 of fast

Imma reach and make tomorrow a fast day. its thankgiving break 3 days this week and i am determined to lose 10-20 pounds before new years. this has been long overdue and i need to get my life in check. i did lose my first 10 pounds ever in the summer. Alyways

CW; 148 lb

Gw: 130 lb

UGW; 100 lb

[piratestringmoon]

Do you want to learn the BEST way to lose weight fast? Go here.

[cina-full-moon-xanadium]

Internet culture is so fascinating because usually if you've got this piece of art that through the years has been distorted or somehow lost, that's basically all you've got and there's no way of recovery -- a painting losing its ink over time, or an old tv show episode's only surviving copy being a rough capture with a cheap recording device.

But on the internet if there is an old meme or other well-known image that through various uploads through the old web has lost its original vibrancy and taken on a new visual identity through the filter of file loss, chances are the person who made that artwork or meme is still out there and might just have the original file and so you do in fact have the good chance of seeing it as it was originally made.

It's just so fascinating I think that the internet is both so new and so entrenched in advances constantly being made to perfect old technology that any original eroding is extremely recent and has a very good chance of being fixed

[evelyn-and-art]

“As the cold sinks deep into every crevice, I hope my love gives you warmth.”

My submission for Week 2 of Tea’s SuoSaku Monsterfucking Month. With the prompt “He Came Back Wrong”, I decided on a Xianxia AU featuring demonic cultivator! Suo and fierce corpse! Sakura.

Extras (and lore) + Topless Version

Topless Version [TW: (softcore) necrophilia, loss of body parts (but it’s wrapped/stitched), scars (if you’re squeamish about that) & implied decapitation and torture]

—

The idea came from @ros-ales who said to me,

She knows me so well <3. Me thinks Nirei didn’t intend for Suo to actually go through with it, they’re all in mourning after discovering Sakura’s remains and a lot of things can be said carelessly in the moment. Unfortunately, Suo was already unhinged to begin with and Sakura’s death just made him spiral down further. So yeah, this is both horny and sad. Horny sad. (Week 3 is just horny, promise 🖐️😔)

They also gave me the idea for Sakura’s left eye (or lack thereof 😭) since his golden eye might be a valuable prize for some (in this AU skr was considered one of the strongest cultivators in their generation) and I’d imagine the opposing sect responsible for his torture and death would do something like that. Why is it not back in his body like his head? Uhhh, me thinks his scarred eye serves for better storytelling. Oh! And Sakura’s choppy haircut was the result of his head being *gestures to the neck*. Between you and me, Suo has some of the hair remains kept preserved in a pouch inside his magical storage sleeves.

-bUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE:

In East Asian culture, the standard practice in wearing traditional robes was left over right; in China, this is called Yòurèn (右衽, lit. right lapel). The opposite, Zuǒren (左衽, lit. left lapel), is commonly used for the deceased.

Considering in this AU Suo dresses Sakura daily, he was initially hesitant in putting on the robe the appropriate way since it would be the final nail to the coffin (ha!) so to speak—thank you to @psychicwavementality for this additional tidbit! Ah, but I love making Suo lowkey insane so eventually he gave into his delulu and dresses Sakura as if he were still alive. It terrifies and worries the sect though, they’re scared of what might happen if they address this to Suo directly (Suo left quite the mess in their first recovery of Sakura’s body) so they continue to indulge with the pretense. It goes without saying that this is not a healthy way to cope, like at all. If you ask the sect, they would say they’re doing this for Suo, but remember it’s not just Suo who was devastated by Sakura’s death.

—

Week 3 is already out as well since I was working on it at the same time ^^. Ahhh sorry this is so late Tea ( ˶╥﹏╥)7

[fuck-your-proana-blog]

IT'S SO FUCKING HARD TO RECOVER FROM ANOREXIA WHEN MY HUSBAND IS ON A DIET AND CONSTANTLY WEIGHING HIMSELF AND PUSHING US TO "EAT HEALTHY" TOGETHER.

I spent 13 years eating "healthy food" and now is my time to enjoy food!

I know he's slightly obese and needs to lose weight for his health (he has stage 2 hypertension) so I try to support him but it's still triggering as he was anorexic as a teen and is often restricting too much now so I worry about him while also feeling like shit about myself because I've gained 50 pounds in my recovery(I think? Haven't weighed myself in months, so that's an estimate).

I want him to be healthy. I haven't lived through my 13 years of intense, debilitating suffering just for him to die when I'm finally getting healthier in some ways (even when it feels "wrong.")

There is permanent damage to my body from my disorders/disabilities/suicide attempts/long-term medication, and I just want to enjoy the rest of my life since it probably won't be too long considering my disabilities/organ damage.

[yunhogosailing]

women’s rights, stan culture, and “idolization”: what the fuck are we doing here?

tw: sexual abuse

i am absolutely dismayed to hear of the ongoing situation involving taeil, despite knowing very little about him as a person and having surface level knowledge of nct 127 as a group. i am even more dismayed at the discourse surrounding the way nctzens, especially taeil stans, have been reacting to the news since the announcement this morning.

i dont want to rant and ramble bc that helps nobody. i’ve read my fair share of thinkpieces on various platforms—some well thought out, some covering the bare minimum at best, and even more demonstrating a complete lack of understanding as to how we need to approach these subjects both as fans and as consumers. i feel as if everything that needed to be said has been said, but i do want to touch on a point of my own, and tell you all how you can help support the ongoing korean feminist movement.

it is not healthy to go about your entire life assuming that you will see the worst of someone eventually.

this is true for anyone you meet: an idol, a family member, a friend, and a complete stranger. i’m exhausted by all of the Hot Takes admonishing those who feel a sense of loss, sorrow, and disgust upon finding out that someone who they were led to trust could potentially be capable of doing something as heinous as what is being alleged against taeil.

“you don’t know these people” you’re correct! i most certainly do not.

“don’t put these people up on a pedestal” nobody is doing this by virtue of simply being a fan.

“as a boy group stan you should always keep in mind that men are shit.” are you starting to see my issue, yet?

you are not naive or stupid for believing the best in someone, even if this is a person you have never met and will never know on a more personal level than as a fan of an idol. i am exhausted with the seemingly popular belief that its somehow healthy or normal to navigate through life operating under the assumption that everyone around you has the capacity for violence and harm. it is not healthy. as a survivor of sexual abuse and harassment, one of the first things i had to regain over my life was a sense of control and sanity. this meant ridding myself of the fear that i could be re-victimized at any moment. statistically speaking, it was always a possibility. but realistically speaking, i was doing far greater harm to myself throughout my recovery when i was afraid of the men around me.

if you are an nctzen, if you are taeil biased, do not feel bad about being blindsided by this. do not start assuming that the other members must have been aware, or must be involved, or must have committed some crime of their own; that is simply not how the real world works. if you are a fan of boy groups, keep your standards high but do not view this as a reason to be hyper vigilant of the people you stan. do not assume the worst until they present you with the worst. expecting people to be decent is not idolizing someone. its when you refuse to hold them accountable to the actions that they have done that you cross the line between being a fan and being an enabler.

why is this important to keep in mind?

we as kpop stans are in a particularly unique position. we are consumers of a byproduct from a culture that is undergoing a severe women’s rights crisis.

just recently, a series of telegram groups were discovered in which hundreds of thousands of users created and shared artificial explicit materials (deepfakes) involving women and young girls spanning from kindergartners to university students to adults; family members, classmates, coworkers, etc. the figures of the perpetrators involved could potentially be as high as 300,000 individuals, and a overwhelming majority of those in these chats are believed to be men.

this incident is coming right off the tails of another, more infamous group of telegram rooms nicknamed “the Nth rooms”—where a number of men helped to orchestrate one of the largest cases of digital sex crimes in south korean history, victimizing over a hundred women and young girls for the purpose of disseminating violent sexually explicit materials.

even before the original Nth Room case, korean women had more than enough reasons to fear for their safety; molka (hidden camera) crimes were on the rise, with over 30,000 cases being reported between 2013 and 2018. korean women were being assaulted and killed in their homes and on the street for no reason (significantly high femicide rates are still an issue in south korea today). women were being prosecuted over the mere belief that they may be involved in the country’s feminist movement—experiencing professional repercussions over accusations such as reading a book, having short hair, or making a gesture. in the wake of this anti-feminist backlash, it became increasingly common for men to voice their discomfort for what they believe to be “radical” measures taken by korean women to ensure their safety and improve their futures. see, for example, rapper San-E who wrote a diss track towards feminists and is still able to walk these streets relatively unharmed due to his position of privilege.

the notion that you should always assume that every man you meet is a potential sex criminal or a misogynist is harmful simply because that is the exact reason why korean feminists have been working so hard to change the legislation surrounding sexual crimes for the last two decades. the ultimate goal of gender equality is having that reassurance that no matter what gender motivated crime is committed against you, you will be entitled to justice through the courts and free of the stigma of being a victim in society. korean women want to be able to interact with their brothers and fathers without worrying about ending up in a deepfake video. korean women want to be able to venture outside their homes at night without fear of being followed and abducted. korean women want to be able to use the restroom at work without having to check the stalls for microscopic recording devices. the idea that you should be weary of those around you and those who have gained your trust is detrimental to your mental health, and with this knowledge, korean women have been actively working tirelessly to ensure a future where they will not have to worry about this.

it could be your faves, but theres no guarantee that it will ever be or that it will never be. rather, work today to uphold the standard that women should be protected and hold those who have violated their rights as human beings to the full power of the law. keep the names of those who have suffered or died from violent crimes against women alive and their stories in the media. south korean feminists are asking for our help in spreading the news about the recent deepfake Nth rooms, because they are facing silence and noncompliance from domestic media outlets to do their due diligence in investigating this matter.

they are suggesting that you take korean news articles surrounding the deepfakes, or korean feminist posts discussing the telegram groups and any events that are being planned to protest for women’s rights, and run them through a translator if needed in order to share them with english speaking news media. the idea is that as long as international eyes are on the atrocities being committed against women in the country, the korean news cannot suppress their voices.

here are the twitter accounts that i know of who are taking the risk to share their stories and that of other south korean women:

link to profile

link to profile

link to profile

link to profile

link to profile

[wawawawawawawawawawawawawa]

the amount of times i Do This must be a joke at this point but here i am. doing it once more. izaya's highschool videogame SCREAMS "i just found out i have aspd and i am NOT taking it well." and i shall explain how

a preface: wrt "how did he know in high school, don't you have to be 18?" you do.... with the dsm guidelines. japan, iirc, uses a conbination of the dsm and icd to diagnose mental illnesses, and the age stipulation isn't in the icd. also, shinra could have told him, and lbr shinra wouldnt care about strictly adhering to the age thing

anyway i went thru and highlighted different parts of the videogame's text, so i can easier explain which part means what. i'll primarily be focusing on the chronic boredom associated with aspd- since izaya's game deals with patience, most musings in it will be related to that boredom. but the boredom, especially izaya's, IS important, as its the boredom that drives him to do what he does. to be what he is.

(shoutout to miyukiwinter for the scan)

so... the red bit. this relates to izaya's worldview of the need to keep evolving to escape the mundane, and it not mattering if you aim high or low. now at this point, izaya was solidly in some shady shit and clearly on the path of the low aim. but the thing is, about aspd... the boredom is all consuming. you'll do ANYTHING to not be bored. i've seen people say they developed substance abuse problems to escape the boredom, and i confess... i've done it too. it truly is THAT bad

i say all this because... izaya will never be able to stop going lower, and lower, and lower. he's fated to fall forever. maybe he wouldve been able to brush his behavior off as teenage craziness, but with a diagnosis like aspd it becomes increadingly obvious that there is no "oh, i'll mellow out once i reach my 20s." it's not going to happen, at least, not without great effort. and lets be real, nobody has any faith in aspd's recovery rates, less so in the early 2010s, so izaya upon diagnosis would see NO FUTURE for himself. no escape from the cycle. he's trapped.

the blue bits are a bit more vauge, but the undertainty turning to loss evokes the next stage after the initial shock of diagnosis: grief. and make no mistake, there IS a grieving process with mental health diagnoses. you go from being shocked and scared, to being depressed and numb.

but there's... another layer to this, with aspd. you see it with cluster b disorders in general, but aspd is HUGE in the pop culture zeitgeist

the layer is, the idea that People Like That don't feel emotions. that any emotional display is false and an explicit ploy to mainpulate someone

and when this inevitably ends up untrue, you might start to feel... odd... about feeling those emotions people say you can't feel. and one of the biggest emotions aspd gets that with, is fear and by extension, anxiety.

some aspd people genuinely do feel reduced fear! but it's far from being a diagnostic criteria, and aspd can actually be comorbid with anxiety disorders. but scientific facts and wider culture rarely match up, so the idea persists

so izaya might have started to think.... was he ever truly anxious? or worried? was he really more rotten than people thought; was he just mainpulating people the whole time? does he really not feel anxiety? was his nervousness over things like shinra leaving him or hell, this diagnosis, rendered null and void?

and then we reach the teal portion.... despair

(just a sidenote, tumblr has no teal color option so it'll just be blue)

in this sense, "the hole" refers to the endless downward spiral, and his diagnosis- but not just having it. no, "the hole" most likely refers to the moment izaya developed it in the first place.

who are you, if you thought you were in control your whole life, but you found out that the reason you do the things you do were because of foeces beyond your control? who are you now, having a label you know will cause everyone to see you as nothing but a stereotype?

why was he still alive, suffering like this? what point is it to be alive, controlled by something you can't fight, forced to make your life worse and worse and worse, until you die young?

so now what? who did this to him?

in the game, the hatred is towards "the player." and honestly this could have multiple different meanings when applied to izaya's own life

does he hate god? was he raised religious, his father being a christian, and was this what made him lose faith? what loving god would condemn someone to suffer like this?

does he hate his parents? after all, it was their genetics that passed this down, their upbringing that nurtured it, their neglect that made him the way he was. is it their fault?

or... does he hate himself, for being the way that he is? for having it in the first place, for not being able to overcome it, for having such a bad reaction to it?

for being too cowardly to kill himself?

which brings us to the final segment. awareness.

he says outright, the game is depicting the player's life. in the game itself, this ties into his mockery of players, but in a meta sense, it could be a hidden admission that it's depicting his life

especially the talk of meaningless games- fooling around with nakura creating small gangs, betting pools, and his eventual adult pastimes of messing with people. is his life enriched? no, it's merely occupied, and he knows it. he might have repressed it as an adult, but here, in high school, at this moment, he knows.

and if he can never truly alleviate his boredom, never truly be fufilled, then he can act like he's in control all he wants, but he's no better than a man falling in a hole.

[salthien]

i haven't seen this mentioned much by anyone else, but i can see postcanon siffrin growing very fond of the ocean.

they clearly had some innate familiarity with it pre-memory loss. enough to know how to use a rowboat as a child, to be confident that they'd be able to turn around and go back. and being an island nation, the forgotten country likely utilized a lot of the natural resources ocean could give them; even the King mentions the sea while being frozen in act 5. but it wasn't a unique focus of their culture - not like their reverence for the Universe and knowledge of Wish Craft - thus it wasn't forgotten.

so the ocean, i imagine, could be a sort of comfortably-close way for siffrin to connect with a small piece of their childhood that still remains. it skirts the edges of the memories that give them migraines, but standing on the shore and letting the tide lap at their ankles doesn't give him headaches unless he consciously follows the thread of familiarity in it. seafood is a similar situation - it might lack some of the specific spices or preparation methods that were lost, but it can still be a comfort without carrying too much of that loss directly. and the way those things bleed into the lost memories might help dredge more of them up in a thoughtless sort of way - the way he remembers the rowboat, or his favorite food, or any of the other moments when they're able to remember without really thinking about it too hard. little snatches of memory torn from the jaws of Wish Craft and treasured.

so while i don't imagine he'd ever go full-tilt into memory recovery At Any Cost, i think he'd be fond of the sea as something home country adjacent - something deeply familiar to them in a simpler way than the stars or Wish Craft. they deserve to have that, i think.