#I also took up psychology because I wanted to learn more about my illness and seeing this very same thing manifested in this fic

[sirgogington]

My Word Vomit Response on the Shelby Situation

Main Situation: Last week Wilbur Soot from Lovejoy was accused of having been abusive towards his ex girlfriend Shelby. Shelby is a live streamer and last week she did a livestream about the signs of knowing if you are in an abusive relationship. She never stated his name, but from details given people started assuming it was about Wilbur Soot. A few days later Wilbur confirmed that it was him in an apology tweet on his Twitter account. The abuse had to do with painful biting, and manipulation. 

    I want to start off by saying I do believe Shelby's story. I don't think Wilbur is innocent, but I do believe this situation isn't as black and white as people are claiming it to be. 

    Former fans after hearing the story started unfollowing Wilbur and Lovejoy and saying what a terrible man that Wilbur is, and vowing to never listen to or view any of his content ever again. He's not just a terrible man, he has to be evil too. I may be optimistic but I do think most people can change for the better if they truly want to. There are exceptions, but I truly believe that Wilbur can. The internet wants to just label him as evil and not give him any room to do that. The new thing is "guilty until proven innocent" and that's super harmful as I will go into in a different post. The way people are spreading hate in a us/them mentality is not a mature way of viewing/handling this situation and does more harm than good. Especially when it comes to death threats and doxing which have been received by both sides.

   Wilbur is someone who had a hard upbringing, and has brought up at different times his struggles with mental health. On screen or on stage you would never know this about him, because he has this mask of being confident, well spoken, and joyful. Through these details Wilbur has shared we know that touring took a lot out of him mentally and put him in a bad place, but that he was seeking therapy and is probably currently still seeing a therapist to try and get better. He's shared in the past that when he first blew up on the internet he used alcohol to cope because of how overwhelming it was that so many people were consuming his content. From Shelby's stream we also learned that his living space was dirty and unhygienic and that he would make excuses for it. The details for me paint the picture of a guy struggling badly with mental illness and having a hard time caring for himself and his home. Someone who can hardly take care of themselves should not have been in a relationship. This puts a lot on the other person.  It's different if he were stable and then then his mental health crashed in the middle of a longer relationship, but not if your too mentally ill to begin with. I do deeply feel sorry that Shelby had to experience that, as it truly shouldn't have happened. 

   I went to school for psychology and know quite a bit about different types of mental illnesses. I am by no means diagnosing Wilbur, but I do think he shows signs of someone with Boderline Personality Disorder. Borderline Personality Disorder is an emotional disregulation disorder characterized by unstable mood, behavior, and relationships. People with BPD self sabotage and will frequently end up pushing people away because they don't think they're good enough for them. (In this case maybe he wanted to act so bad so she would leave him, which is very unhealthy). People with BPD also go through depressive episodes and can act impulsively. Without therapy it is extremely hard to cope with this condition but with therapy you can make great strides in changing. I think like most mental illnesses you are aware of the fact you don't like the way you're acting you just have a hard time controlling it. For instance for me growing up with anxiety I knew most of my fears were completely irrational but that didn't stop them from overtaking my life and still feeling anxious. Wilbur has written some really deep lyrics on his new solo album Mammalian Sighing Reflex and I feel like it reflects that he doesn't like the way he is and feels guilty about those he's harmed through it. Maybe I'm giving this man too much credit, but like I said I do believe most people are capable of changing for the better. 

   Shelby stated she did the livestream as a way to help protect other victims of domestic violence and Wilbur Soot himself. He might still be dangerous to the public, it's really hard to know. I know after my own situation with being manipulated I was worried about the guy going after other younger women like he had with me. I didn't want anyone else have to be in that situation so I understand where Shelby is coming from. I also know that if the guy in my life had ever posted an apology, no matter how good it was, that I still wouldn't believe him and have a hard time forgiving him. Bold take but I think his apology was at least decent. Could it have been better, yeah, but could it have been a lot worse, also yes. In his apology he admits to being the person Shelby was talking about. He states that her feelings are valid, and that he wants people to hold him to higher accountability, and that he was sorry for any hurt he caused. Maybe he isnt, but it's hard to know. Wilbur stated in a livestream from last October 2023 that he was going to therapy the next day, because of this we can assume that Wilbur has been going to therapy at minimum since October. In that same livestream he states that he showers once a day when he's in his "big sad", and that he has rented places all over Brighton. He is at least hygienic in this regard, maybe moreso than he was before. It could be a red flag that Wilbur has lived all over Brighton due to possible evictions whether that be negligence or noise complaints from doing livestreams.

   We'll never know how other content creators truly feel about him except for the ones that made it obvious. Of course most content creators are going to jump on the bandwagon and agree that he's an evil man. If they don't then they'll lose their platform because of all the hate they'd get. I do believe some content creators will still hang out with Wilbur secretly or still even remain his friend. But we'll never know. 

   For the people who are posting different video evidences of Wilbur supposedly showing signs of being abusive in the past this is what is called confirmation bias. If you believe someone is abusive suddenly you can find details in the littlest things to confirm your thought process. A lot of the clips I've been seeing have been of normal everyday behavior or confirmed bits. I've seen people say that Wilbur must have bit down really hard to leave bruises. In some cases people bruise more easily than others. I know I have random bruises on my body from nothing. We can tell that what Wilbur did however was pretty painful due to have to use a safe word. Getting bitten usually hurts. I've been bitten by a 5 year old at work and can't imagine how it would feel to be bitten by a grown man who intentionally bit down hard.

This could be confirmation bias as well, but when looking at the lyrics in Mammalian Sighing Reflex and at the album art it seems to tell the story of a man (Wilbur) who really messed up in a relationship and is feeling the pain from that, and has a lot of regret due to knowing he was the cause of her pain. He poured so much of himself into the album it's like he's bleeding out in front of the audience with the amount of vulnerability.

Analyzing lyrics because why not, using lyrics from "Mammalian Sighing Reflex"

"I get so drunk I can barely see." If this album is related to his relationship with Shelby, which I think it probably is, then maybe he tried to cope with the relationship failing by using alcohol, or sabotaged the relationship through drinking.

"A lot of friends have left my life, escaping my tractor beam of woe" Having a mental illness can make it hard to maintain friendships. This could be because it makes you so self-focused on your problems, or that people get tired of hearing about your problems. If you constantly talk about how sad you are, some people are going to have a hard time dealing with that, or get burnt out from having to keep on cheering you up.

"Fuck my life, you cared when I was sick, no one ever gave a shit.....you fought this war one-sided and asked me what am I doing this for." These lyrics seem to speak about how in a past relationship (probably meaning with Shelby), that she cared that he was mentally ill/in a low point and wanted to help him get better. The fight to help him get better was one-sided due to Wilbur not helping to get himself better. If he would have helped her then they "could of stitched my mind together."

"Never been the one for romance, never thought that I'd get married. Never been the kind to give a shared life a second glance, selfish prose." In Shelby's livestream she talked about how her and Wilbur talked about the possibility of getting married and having kids until he backtracked and said that he wasn't that way and changed his mind.

The song "I Don't Think It Will Ever End" is how his mind seems to work in cycles. He'll be sad, because he feels sad he hides away for a bit, but then he feels silly for hiding himself so he forces himself to interact with people. But then when forcing himself to interact again he feels sad, which he says is not a good feeling when you're supposedly in a good phase. He says as self-sabotage he gets silly. Wilbur is known for telling a lot of jokes, and maybe this is a way he masks his true feelings. Also for Mammalian Sighing Reflex it says the songs were written by William Gold (his legal name) and performed by Wilbur Soot (his stage name). Wilbur is who the internet/fans see him as and William Gold is who he really is. Meaning the way we see him online is the extroverted, charismatic, likeable guy we know him as whereas William Gold is introverted, self-sabotaging, nerdy, and a deep thinker.

     The internet gives us way too much information. We're constantly bombarded with more and more information. Before the internet and even in the earlier internet days you did not have this. People were not being as closely viewed and known as they are now. You have to be careful about every little thing you say, because God forbid you say the wrong thing and get canceled. It didn't used to be this way. The only reason you'd ever know anything bad about a celebrity is if they were in the news. I think most of the media we consume whether TV shows, movies, etc. have the potential to have us supporting "bad people". It would be overwhelming to look up every single person we had ever consumed media from and sift through what are lies and what are not about each actor, singer, etc. I get that people don't want to give a platform to people doing bad things, but it's almost impossible to know and to remove every single bad person from the content you consume.  Being a celebrity in general is hard. It's easy to become addicted to drugs, and experience toxicity especially celebrities that live in Los Angeles. Most become people they regret, but some change for the better too. I'm not saying people who do serious crimes should get out of jail because they can become better people. People in jail should remain in jail for serious crimes. Time will tell what becomes of him. If more about him is released or if he's able to actually make strides in his health like he said he would. We will wait and see. I really hope he can heal and get better. Even the most unlikely ones can change their lives. You can both support Shubble and hope that Wilbur gets better.

[fuckyeahfightlock]

I read Deborah Spungen's book about her daughter and holy shit that was intense! I stayed up until 2am to finish it and was tearing up during. Especially at the way Nancy treated her younger sister. I shivered when I read that the doctor had indeed diagnosed Nancy with schizophrenia but then didn't tell her parents!!! It really makes you think of the what ifs; what if the doctor had told them, what if they had taken Nancy out of her boarding school and sent her to the other doctor who seemed familiar with her symptoms. A very sad read, but it was very brave of her mother to be so honest about everything.

It is a very intense read, I agree. And a page-turner! I think when I first read it (late '80s/early '90s?) I just took it at face value that Deborah Spungen wrote it, but being more jaded nowadays, i found myself thinking, "This publisher hired a hell of a ghost-writer!" I don't know whether she wrote it or not; it doesn't matter, I'm just more cynical now.

I felt such intense empathy for Deborah and the family, reading about Nancy's deeply troubled childhood, how desperate they were to get help for her, and how unfair it was that the whole family had to live their lives subject to Nancy's moods and behaviors. There was one anecdote in there about a Sunday family day trip chosen by Nancy's younger sister Suzy that was essentially cancelled because Nancy didn't want to go to the movie, and she was so explosive it was just an easier choice for the mom to set aside Suzy's plans because although she would be disappointed, she would not tear the house apart or threaten to harm anyone. It's very unfair what happens to the siblings of a troubled child, because even when their symptoms and behaviors are well managed, they still require a huge amount of attention and time that might be divided more evenly among all the family's children if one of them weren't mentally ill. The descriptions of how their marriage suffered--growing apart, always tense and unhappy, thinking the problem was with them because professionals kept telling them there was "nothing wrong" with the severely disturbed child who was turning their lives and household upside down every day.

I have a child with significant behavioral, emotional, and learning challenges (plus a need for special eyeglasses and eye care, and treatment by specialists for epilepsy), and while the diagnoses and treatments we have in the present are MUCH better than what was available to the Spungens in the '60s and '70s, it is still sometimes very difficult to get correct, timely diagnosis; educational supports; mental health counselling; and medication. At times our family felt as if we were "hostage" to our child's intense needs (especially before diagnosis/treatment), and there was a year when I thought about divorce pretty much every day (my husband says the same), not because we were actually unhappy together, only that we were generally unhappy--and wanted a break. Fifty-fifty custody would have given us each some time off! lol Finding the right meds for my kiddo was a very difficult at times--one medication caused a psychotic episode in a six-year-old, we tried four epilepsy meds before we got seizures controlled (the neurology NP we saw at one point said, "This is new to me; I've never gotten to fourth medication without success before"), and in over six years I can think of TWO times it was easy to get a monthly refill for ADHD medication. That's twice out of about 80 months that it wasn't a multi-day/we're out of meds/several phone calls/several trips to the pharmacy event just to get 30 pills). Advocating for a child with emotional/behavioral/neurological/psychological issues is a full-time job, as is arranging and getting them to all their appointments, finding the right fit for their education, exploring every option for anything that might make their life better. Sometimes you do wish you could just be mama and not also this care-coordinator. I have cried much more in the second half of my 24 years of parenting (including all those very sad cases I encountered as a foster parent) than I did in the first half.

The schizophrenia diagnosis interests me; true schizophrenia in children is extremely rare, and a lot of diagnoses that used to be made to describe children's mental/behavioural/psychological illness have been dropped and modified. I can't know for sure, but I don't think even with Nancy's extreme behaviors and moods, that she would be given a diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia, today. With the exception of her hallucinations and fugue states (which do, in fact, sound like schizophrenic symptoms), a lot of what was described in the book sounded like untreated ADHD, and the "new name" for what used be labeled pediatric Bipolar Disorder--DMDD (Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder). I also wonder if Nancy was autistic--she was super intelligent and had intense interests in niche topics, and difficulty in social situations. One thing that really struck me were descriptions of her "odd gait" and poor motor skills compared with the repeated assertions that she "couldn't have brain damage" because she was so bright; obviously it's possible that damage to her brain due her traumatic birth affected certain areas of functioning more or differently than others--but I suppose we just understand brains better now. Things like Nancy's having been born cyanotic and then suffered with high bilirubin levels in her first days of life are now called "insults to the brain" and they are absolutely treated differently. My own kiddo's doctors and therapists often talk about prenatal insults to the brain when teasing out diagnoses and considering treatments; sadly thanks to the opiate crisis in the US, more and more kiddos are born every year with significant insults to their developing brains. I think if Nancy were a ten-year-old in 2025 instead of 1968, she would have a very complex set of diagnoses, many modes of therapy, and many options for medication. She might have had a different life and outcome, but it's pointless to think about people like her who "might have been saved" when the options weren't there at the time. I absolutely believe her mother did the very best she could, at every turn, to help her child.

All that said, I agree, it's wild to think that a doctor would diagnose a child--a child!--with something as serious as schizophrenia, NOT tell the parents, and dismiss her from the program with that stupid, "take her home and love her" advice. It was very frustrating to read of Nancy's struggles and how inadequate the resources were to help her.

The doctor they wanted to take her to was a quack, though, trying to treat severely troubled children with megadoses of vitamins, which later became a fashionable way to "treat" or "cure" autism. I tend to think if she'd been given stimulant medication and perhaps an antidepressant or mood stabilizer, a lot of her behaviors might have been lessened. We are lucky to live in an era that takes childhood mental health seriously and has many options for medications that work fairly well (some very well) for a variety of issues. It makes children's lives better, as well as their families'. I am a big believer in appropriate medication for troubled kiddos; they don't need to suffer the way Nancy did fifty years ago.

It was very brave of Deborah Spungen to share her family's story, especially relatively soon after her child's passing. I finished the book feeling so glad that she and her husband found the Parents of Murdered Children group; I'm sure it helped them through their grief.

A mildly interesting note: Wikipedia backs me up that the Susan Spungen whose name I used to see in Martha Stewart's magazines is Nancy's sister Suzy.

From Wikipedia: "Susan Spungen is an American food writer, editor, and food stylist. Spungen was founding food editor and editorial director of food at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, publisher of Martha Stewart Living magazine, from 1991 to 2003. She later published the books Recipes: A Collection for the Modern Cook (2005), What's a Hostess to Do? (2013), Open Kitchen (2020), and Veg Forward (2023), and worked as a culinary consultant for the films Julie & Julia and It's Complicated (both 2009), Eat Pray Love (2010), and Labor Day (2013)."

[marumarielle]

https://www.tumblr.com/chaisshitposts/733934617202180096/in-other-news-ive-gotten-a-bit-of-a

(I'm the anon who talked about how there should be ethics when it comes to manifesting, Ill be calling myself the ‼️ anon now)

To the anon who thinks EIYPO is shitty, i agree with that sentiment and have found a way to believe the law without the whole victim blaming and solipsism issue. And this is for u if I believe in the law, I think the person who's post I linked has a good view on this matter.

TW: mentions of abuse, s.a., & unfavorable households

This cleared up everything for me so nicely! Tysm ‼️ anon! I've been feeling really conflicted about it ever since I learned about it so the post you've given me made me feel lighter in a way.

Expanding on this thought, yes, our environment as we grow up shapes our pattern of thinking, our belief system, our perspective in life, money, literally everything. This is why there are people who have these unfavorable thought patterns and are even being taught to tolerate such things (and I speak from experience).

"I do not like the argument that trauma and circumstances were unconsciously manifested by those who've experienced it. if anything, those circumstances were forcefully manifested by their environment that they grew up in." ----Chai

What I quoted from Chai is so well said because I was born in a quite aggressive and limiting household and I took those limiting beliefs as I grew up. Those beliefs forcefully manifested by my environment I ended up living by. So, it's truly not my fault because those beliefs were forced upon me by the environment I grew up in. And, It's not your fault either for having unfavorable experiences (e.g., abusers, s.a., etc...)

When I grew up and found out about Law of Assumption and this whole EIYPO thing I honestly felt so guilty (which is why I'm so unsure of it). "If they act bad to you, it's because you assumed so!" So I felt "It was me? I did that? I never wanted it though...?" I ended up experiencing this period of blaming myself for how people treated me and tolerating mistreatment. Hell, I was even so obsessed with how people viewed me I forgot about how I view myself.

If you ever experienced that period of blaming yourself before, just know that you're not alone and know that I was able to get out of it. I leaned more on the psychology side of this conflict, learning that my trauma isn't my fault but the assaulter's. It took time, of course, renewing and getting rid of such beliefs.

So now: what do I do with EIYPO? honestly? not much. I just assume that people treat me kindly which is the opposite of what I assumed when I was younger.

What's the takeaway?: Don't let others convince you that it was your fault because of EIYPO. It never was your fault. I highly recommend you reading the post ‼️ anon gave because I couldn't have said it better than Chai did. Also, all credits to Chai since this whole post is just me expanding on its post!

[bizlybebo]

oh my god im not your girlfriend but i NEED your normal album analysis omg (im normal about will wood btw)

HI OH MY GOD I TOOK SO LONG TO ANSWER THIS I AM. S ORRY

AUGHH this is definitely an excuse to ramble and i am TAKING it thank you so much for this

im fucking obsessed with the normal album. like sosoos much. it's such a subversive and creative and just. sort of album that you've never seen before, i think it seriously doesn't get the credit it deserves augh

first off here's a link to a 3-hour long analysis of the normal album that i haven't actually watched yet

here's where im cutting the post off before i start incoherently rambling about every song so that i don't curse people's dashes with having to Scroll for a million miles

THIS IS. A LONG ASS POST. LIKE 2.3K WORDS. SO IF YOU CLICK ON THIS BE WARNED LMAO.

i don't expect this to get more than like 2-3 notes this is literally just an open ramble about the normal album cause i got an excuse to.

Suburbia Overture / Greetings from Mary-Bell Township / Vampire Culture is SUCHH a good intro to the album. like. not even going into the lyricism it's fucking so insanely well-composed in a musical sense, I LOVE the samples and the immediate, like, doorbell sound at the very beginning because it just. introduces the ENTIRE album so well.

and the way it introduces will wood's motif of "Everybody's all up in my goddamn business" is SOSOO good.

The first half or so of the song is very illustrative of the typical, like, nuclear family, with these sounds inspired by a very upbeat, like... almost 60s-70s kind of music? It's a very creative song but it's tune and melody are also somewhat restrictive for a decent part of it, expressing perfectly what will wood's saying about this kind of lifestyle. If that makes sense?

and THEN the sudden switch into vampire culture is INSANE. im fucking AUGHGHGH over it.

It draws back on this stereotypical, happy lifestyle where something just seems a bit off and leans ENTIRELY into the uncanny-ness of it all. it's a sudden jump into random tempo switches, fucking just making all the noise he wants, and screaming "fuck your culture".

like the symbolism is so clear yet so subtle. I fucking love it.

and I am

OBSESSED. with this outro.

and THEN the little 'love me, normally' melody at the end is fucking INSANEEE augh. there was literally no better way to start this album off.

2econd 2ight 2eer (that was fun, goodbye) is EASILY one of my fucking favorites on this album. like. god.

IMMEDIATELY starting off with "take it with a pillar of salt, H.A.L.T., it's not my fault", illustrates the point of this song so well.

HALT is the acronym Hungry Angry Lonely Tired. It encourages you to "halt" and think before making an important decision and evaluate-- are you any of these four things?

And it's often been suggested by psychiatrists to a lot of people dealing with mental health issues.

The reason why I'm so obsessed with this lyric is because this entire song is basically accepting, "hey. i'm mentally ill. like i am. FUCKED in the head. this isn't something i can't escape, not really. i'm learning to be okay with this instead of searching my whole life for a cure. i'm never going to be able to assimilate fully into normal society."

and it's mixed with this very, like. Rudimentary view of how society views mentally ill people / those struggling with more severe psychological conditions. The chorus is literally "I'm just a psycho babe; come and go out my mind"

It's almost like this expression of mania, what with the upbeat tempo and the dark lyrics.

"I didn't lose it, I set it free" is another lyric in this song i just. augh. love. love love lvoe vloevleo this whole album. this is DEFINITELY the song i could say the MOST about. but i feel like i'd almost have to save that for another, more organized post.

Laplace's Angel / Hurt People? (Hurt People!)

AUGGGHHHHH.

god.

The title Laplace's Angel comes from the idea of Laplace's Demon, which concerns the whole idea of determinism, etc. It's essentially the idea that if a demon knew the position of everything, everywhere, the laws of physics would allow it to predict and understand the future.

it. doesn't make a lot of sense to me tbh.

BUT.

i understand determinism in a sense, and it's basically the idea that free will doesn't exist and that we and our actions are. products of the things that have already happened to us.

That's the best way I can explain it.

And I think that all of this, tied together with how the song is discussing important topics of morality, etc. is just. So cool and artistic and. God.

It references this guttural, primal sort of fear and this sort of "predictability" of the human psyche with the lyric that throws the entire song into it's first chorus-- said lyric being:

"Run your diagnostic tests, it's posited; nobody dies agnostic, though we still dial 9-1-1."

AND THEEENNNN. the chorus itself. augh.

You could go on all day about the main voice, "Could you take a look at me?" but i'm more in love with the backing chorus--

"It's the norm for animals, it's the norm for chemicals -- It's the norm for particles, eye for eye, for tooth"

and you can see a lot of references to other philosophies such as "an eye for an eye".

AND THEN the bridge being "wash your hands of where you been until you flood the second floor - neatly fold your skeletons but still can't shut the closet door"

essentially just being this greater commentary on morals as a whole, and how, in a sense, morality is just. subjective. Like I don't think I have the skill to illustrate just how insightful this song is on the topic of morality. god.

I / Me / Myself !

so obviously i / me / myself is a remaster of sorts of i / me / myself by Will Wood and the Tapeworms (versus just solo Will Wood)

BUT I LVOE THIS SONG. SO MUCH.

Will Wood wrote this song, essentially, about wishing he could express his femininity properly, right? how he felt like people refused to accept his identity as cisgender and heterosexual because he was a crossdresser, and very proud of it?

i fucking love that. he just puts absolutely everyone on blast for that. he's a cis dude who's also fucking with gender and fashion and art and he's letting people understand that.

but here's where i get personal because i ADORE the song as a lesbian who doesn't consider himself cisgender in the slightest.

I've spent my whole life wishing I could "be a girl" despite being born and raised female-- I simply just didn't fit into the mold of traditional femininity and, growing up in a religious background, that just made it even more difficult to fit in.

So I LOVE the lyric "i wish i were a girl".

AND THE BRIDGE IM JUST OBSESSED WITH TOO

"Eating your prosthetic, meet your anesthetic criteria, pathetic seeing you become acetic -- Say my name like a slur, but I've been called worse; I've heard it all before, no this isn't a first -- Let me be the void you fill with taxidermy fingerprints, taxonomize our differences -- I am quantum physics, my witness brings me to existence"

I think I just. need to leave that there. Cause it says more than I ever could. rahgaghag

and then closing out with the repeated line "all identities are equally invalid; don't you think that there's a chance that you could live without it?" is such cool like. food for thought yk?

idk i love the view Will Wood gave here, honestly. Especially knowing that he's very accepting of the lgbt+ community.

...well, better than the alternative

HOLY SHIT I AM. AUGH. UNWELL OVER THIS SONG.

see, the way I view it, is this attempt to just. Play into a normal, quiet life, despite EVERYTHING mentioned previously in the album. It's about trying to shove beside everything else for a normal existence.

It ties into suburbia overture, i / me / myself, and 2econd 2ight 2eer soso well. it's the perfect "halfway point of the entire album".

another lyric that i just HAVE to throw in here "This isn't my first kiss, it's better to be lost than loved, now isn't it?"

i'm mainly just. obsessed with that because of how aromantic it sounds. even though i know that's not how it was intended.

but i LOVE. THIS SONG. AUGH i love them all obviously but this one has such a special place in my heart.

It's asking somebody to "play along with" you (referring to the normal life thing) and THEN the whole "I just wanna do what's right by you"

it's just. tying together all the previous songs and like. expressing, essentially. "I'm fucked up. Are you willing to put up with me?"

or maybe im just yapping about absolutely nothing on this one idk

--

I don't know much more about the second half of this album, but I feel like diving into the lyrics of Outliars and Hyppocrates : a fun fact about apples is something i definitely need to do soon. i love this song's musical composition and.

"Don't wanna be human, anyways -- who pilots all these crude machines" ?? BANGER FUCKING LYRIC.

It's essentially just-- "the things that make you special are the things that make you strange"

meaning. get weirder with it. get fucking weirder with your art.

BlackBoxWarrior - OKULTRA is probably my favorite song on this album in terms of, musical composition and noise. I've pored over these lyrics soosososo many times and a lot of it goes over my head but over time I've started to understand a LOT of it and i just. augh.

also this song has such strong animatic vibes?? this is the one that makes me think SO much about my current writing project and i adore it for that.

I wish i was like. able to coherently express my thoughts on the lyrics of this song but they're just so complicated and. wow. it's. I think Will Wood totally outdid himself with this one because this is the most. Perfectly tied-together song on this entire album.

HOLY SHITTT

MARSHA, THANKK YOU FOR THE DIALETICS, BUT I NEED YOU TO LEAVE

OKAY I LIED I CAN TALK ABOUT THIS ONE ALL FUCKING DAY.

GOD.

I'M AUTISTIC. IN THE DIAGNOSIS PROCESS. AND LET ME TELL YOU I AM FUCKING OBSESED WITH THIS ONE SO MUCH.

Essentially, under our current system, any inability to perfectly execute a grueling 9-5, 5 days a week, on top of the mental labor of schooling and debt etc. is considered a disability. "Actual" diagnosed people are just the canaries in the coal mines, we're struggling soso much daily and it's just.

It's expanding upon this idea of microlabels and how Will Wood feels about them, and i honestly do think that, even though it's not the intent of this song, it can open up a conversation about how autism is not a "silly" thing. yk how the jokes have essentially become "I have (normal personality trait), is this... 'the tism'?" or the obsession with the fucking. god. "Neurospicy" thing.

^and how this improper culture/misunderstanding of neurodivergency and the need to make it more sanitized/palatable feeds into consumerism. but i can. go on a rant about that some other day.

But basically, with the lyric that "Dr., what's my prognosis if the study shows that: disease is in the eye of the beholder?" it expresses this sort of disdain, almost, with greater society's view on psychiatric abnormalities. if that. makes sense.

and then it's this constant repetition of "Back in my day ; ; ; we just drank ourselves to death. And we fucking liked it". It's also jabbing at this idea of how, in previous generations, you were generally just told to suck it up or you were left behind/ostracized entirely. It's about older generations not understanding the surge of mental health issues as of late. Closing with "We just bled out in the bed".

I love this song. So much. But I feel like this is all I'm gonna say about it because honestly this sort of discourse. Tires me out so much.

AAA OKAY

MY FUCKING LOVE MY DEARIE MY SHINING STAR I LOVE THIS NEXT SONG MORE THAN I LOVE ANYTHING ELSE ON THIS FUCKING PLANET

Love, me Normally

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

THIS IS THE ONE. THIS IS THETHE THE THE THEHT EH *THE* ONE.

THIS IS THE SONG THAT I UNDERSTAND THE MOST. THIS SONG IS LITERALLY ME. ME ME EM EM ME EAUGGHGH

HOLY SHIT.

I feel like so much has already been said on this song. I want to highlight, specifically, the bridge.

This is. my favorite piece of lyricism Will Wood has EVER put out and i fucking mean that.

---

"Now this is the part of the song where I like to talk to my audience

I like to tell 'em there's something I want from you hep cats tonight

I want you to look to your left, look to your right

Your 12 o'clock, three o'clock, six o'clock, nine o'clock, rock around the clock tonight

And I want you to find those points of no return, those singularities

Those burning rings of fire in the beautiful pupils of the beautiful eyes of the beautiful

Boy, girl, neither, both, or in-between that you brought with you tonight

And I want you to tell 'em how you really feel

I want you to tell 'em that you love the way they so seamlessly, like-a-dream-fully

So beautifully, oh so dutifully

Jam that square peg in the round hole in their heart

I want you to tell 'em that you love the way

That they don't stick out like sore middle fingers

That they crawl their way up the side of the bell curve

Stick their flag in the peak, and slide their way back down

I want you to tell them that you love the way that they're not maladaptive

Not malcontent, not malignant or maleficent, but rather that you love them

Exactly the way that everybody else is!"

---

now is it. unnecessary. to paste it all in here? certainly. but i just. love this so much.

the constant motif of mentioning the bell curve is amazing, too. I love this album because of it's essential... just. Being so outside of the normal bounds of society that all you can do is sit back and observe it all like "huh".

this is another ramble that i'd have to save for another post because this is the one that i understand the most.

I personally like to view this one through the lens of aromanticism. cause i can.

Now I'm not gonna go too much into detail on Memento Mori: the most important thing in the world cause BOY is it existential.

but i do think it's a beautiful way of tying this entire album together.

this entire album is almost like a note to humanity in general, this whole "you may not listen to me ever again, but give me these 45 minutes of your life to change your outlook on all of it".

Despite this album being subjective and subversive? Deviating so strongly from the norm that the average person, hell, even most avid fans, could never begin to relate to most of it?

It has this sort of... span of the human existence, in a sense. It understands it on such a small level, and it speaks bast the barriers that we usually don't try to cross. It just says shit that nobody else has said before.

I <3 this album. So insanely much.

I think that it's honestly one of the better pieces of music period that have been put out in these last few years. nothing else is as lyrically, linguistically, or musically different. aughgg

thank you for the ask if you read to the end youre fucking insane.

[nightmareofdepravity]

This Is Me

Name: Accacio Nightmare Birthday: February 17th Age: Twenty-nine going on Thirty Pronouns: He/Him Location: Hell aka Texas Occupation: Unemployed but waiting to rejoin Amazon. While I'm waiting for that. I am helping my family prepare their house so they can move out at the beginning of February. Pets: I own a little puppy named Butter and he is such a good boy. Children: I have one although he's not a child anymore. He's a 19-year-old. I'm not his biological parent or anything. It's hard to explain it because anyone who hasn't had a life online won't understand it. I took him under my wing when I met him and have stood by him ever since. He doesn't have a good mom so I've always tried to be that parent he deserved. I want more kids for sure though. I would love to raise a little baby all the way up to a promising adult. Sexuality: Questioning but definitely attracted to all genders. ⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺ My Interests: Writing, Reading, Fanfiction, Gaming, Cooking, Recipes, Photography, Psychology, Mental Illnesses and Disorders, Witchy Stuff, Animals, Natural Disasters, Binge watching TV Shows, PS5 gaming, PC gaming, Poems, Books, Wattpad, FanFiction.Net, Wolves, Supernatural, Paranormal, Weed, Vaping, Doodling, Singing horribly, Computers, Social Media, Smut, Shipping Fictional Characters, and so on.

Likes: Everything in my interests, Loyalty, Humor, Intelligence, Creativity, IMVU, Discord, Tumblr, Texting, Typing, I prefer physical books over digital but sometimes in a busy life It's easier to read on a phone than to read an actual book, Short hair on me, Thoughtfulness, Adaptability, Resilience, Alcohol, Soda, Carbonated water but not all of them, Snow, Cold Weather, The North, and so on. Dislikes: Assholes, Liars, Cheaters, Over-Opinionated people, Closedmindedness, Hot Weather, The South, Discriminators, Trump, Phone calls (I get anxiety from them but I do enjoy Voice calls which I still get anxiety from), Unreliable people, Abusive people, How much family tends to let down SOOO many people, Pepsi, and so on. ⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺ FAVORITES Food: Steak, Chicken, Pasta, Cheese, Chinese, Meat, etc. Beverages: Coca-Cola, Fruity sodas (Faygo, Sunkist, Fanta, etc), Apple Juice, Monster Energy, Monster Javas, Rockstar, Most Fruit Juice, etc. Alcoholic Beverages: Mike's Hard Lemonades, Screwdrivers, Long Island Ice Teas, Twisted Teas, Smirnoffs, Fireball, Vodka, etc. Animals: Wolves, Snakes, Frogs, Dogs, Cats, Lizards, Bats, Raccoons, etc. Colors: Black, Red, Green, and Purple. Social Media: Discord, Tumblr, Instagram, and Lemon8. ⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺ If you want to learn more about me just message or comment. I'm here not just to express myself but maybe to also make some new friends. I'm sure we can easily find something in common and If not I'm typically very adaptable to most people.

[rhazimpulsivelyposts]

So I research substances before I take them. I like to know what I am putting in my body and how it affects different types of people. I had taken mushrooms before and my first trip was really bad, but ever trip after that was good because I knew what to expect. Acid was the same way, my first trip was really bad, but every trip after has been amazing.

The first time I took Acid was with my druggy Pisces ex. He got it from some guy he worked with and asked if I’d try it and I love trying new things so sure. I researched was Acid was, what it does to people, how long it typically lasts. I put together a whole marathon of movies I thought I would want to see on Acid, because him and I were going to do it at night, at home, in a house we lived in with my abusive grandmother and alcohol father for some dumb ass reason. Don’t do acid for the first time in that kind of environment please, just asking for a shit-show.

We took it, and started watching Alice In Wonderland because I love that movie, I somehow forgot it was a musical and her singing became annoying for both of us 😆 so we skipped to Ex Machine. This was perfect! I loved this movie and I was so invested. It was my first time seeing it too so it was new to me.

This mofo FELL ASLEEP! Acid doesn’t make you tired, people don’t just fall asleep on acid, it freaked me out. I also have a massive fear of vomit, and because it was scared I was nauseous. So every sound he made that sound remotely like spitting or swallowing freaked me out! I couldn’t stay in the room with him anymore I was scared.

By this time it was so late that my grandmother and father went to bed, the house was dark and quiet, and if I were to go turning lights on it would wake them up, so I couldn’t.

My trippin’ ass went into the bathroom, curled up in the shower, and hyper focused for hours on “how long does this last? Ok 7 more hours, you’ll be fine Rhaz. You didn’t take enough to die. Can you even die on this? *googles it* ok doesn’t really look like it.” I learned so much about psychology and mental illness that night simply because I could not stop googling things while sitting fully clothed with the water off in the shower.

My next Acid trip was nothing like this, it was lovely, colourfull, i was surrounded by people who didn’t act sick or upset. It really is about your environment and mindset going in. Be open to how it makes you feel, and stay positive 😌😊 it really helps you put things into perspective when you are able to stand outside that perspective for a while. 

[cabbxges-and-kings]

OCD thoughts below

To give an overview of what OCD consists of, here's a few explanations that explain it well.

"Ultimately, you feel driven to do compulsive acts to ease your stress. Even if you try to ignore or get rid of bothersome thoughts or urges, they keep coming back. This leads you to act based on ritual. This is the vicious cycle of OCD."

"Obsessive-compulsive disorder usually includes both obsessions and compulsions. But it's also possible to have only obsession symptoms or only compulsion symptoms. You may or may not know that your obsessions and compulsions are beyond reason. But they take up a great deal of time, reduce your quality of life, and get in the way of your daily routines and responsibilities."

"Obsession symptoms: OCD obsessions are lasting and unwanted thoughts that keeping coming back or urges or images that are intrusive and cause distress or anxiety. You might try to ignore them or get rid of them by acting based on ritual. These obsessions usually intrude when you're trying to think of or do other things."

I am not a professional by any means, I have just looked into it. I'm pursing social work, which focuses on how the environment, social, bio, and psychological can influence a person's situation, be it mental illness, poverty, trauma, etc. So I will be examining more on that lens. I have more to say about Hewlett than Simcoe, but one thing stood out to me that others can branch upon if they want.

One ritual a peer in my class mentioned is tapping. This person dealt with intrusive thoughts that caused a lot of anxiety and pain, and usually I equat Simcoe's tapping with remaining focused, but I also saw that OCD can stem from trauma. With Simcoe's background of seeing his father die in front of him in India, being involved in war, he could potentially have OCD, or even a mild form of it. Most people with OCD are not violent (like Simcoe is), and sometimes deal with the intrusive thought of doing something inappropriate, violent, morally wrong things to someone else (even if it's so out of character for them). It's a sense of anxiety for them. Simcoe definitely could have trauma from seeing his father die in that manner, but I'm not entirely sure if he would have intrusive, unwanted thoughts. He could partake in rituals (cleaning a bayonet, over checking important files, repeatly checking if a door is locked), I can see that, but I wanted to note the tapping here because that's a very Simcoe trait.

I also wanted to mention here from what I learned in my classes is that people who have trauma, or PTSD (not every person with trauma has ptsd), often get diagnosed with ADHD that don't treat the main issue of trauma in their lives. This is a little side note if someone wanted to say Simcoe taps because of ADHD fidgeting.

For Hewlett, this is more on my other blog, but I do have a vampire verse that deals with a lot of religious-trauma and influence. I can see Hewlett generally having minor symptoms of OCD, gained from genetics, family history, my headcanon of him losing his sister, or environmental or familial influences in early adulthood. I can see him being particular about organizing and rituals, maybe having some intrusive thoughts that are kind of pushed to the side and unaddressed (because of the time period). This all would increase during times of stress, so I feel like he would fall into the more moral-spiritual angle of OCD, especially when he feels like the world is ending around him in a sense.

But I think for Hewlett in his vampire verse, when he is bitten by a rebel solider when he was kidnapped (framed by Simcoe, kidnapped from Whitehall, s2 stuff). For context: He already was traumatized by his time in the rebel base, but the whole vampirism aspect of it he gained really took a toll on him. The side effects of vampirism and vampires itself is something that would go against Hewlett's own religious beliefs. Hewlett already felt like sin himself and monstrous by this new transformation of being a vampire (with needing blood and all that), it's so unlike himself because it goes against his own moral compass.

With this being said, I think Hewlett's OCD could get more intensified with all this stress (and generally, his symptoms will become intense around stress) by managing intrusive thoughts revolving around morals and religion that could really impact him. I see him partaking in rituals around prayer, fear of impulse control (which can influence some rituals and obsessions he has), excessive worry around sin, being clean (so handwashing), even possession.

To end this, I want to say, I'm no expert. I'm still in college, so I know have so much knowledge regarding it. So anyone who has OCD, please let me know if this perpetuates any bad stigma because OCD is so stigmatized and downplayed as a whole. I want to treat this with the proper respect it deserves.

[destinimott]

My mom whose a narcissistic parent told me that I was self diagnosing. They often differ to that when you have an answer to their behavior. I know I am masking. I know that I am autistic. It is rare for a young black female to be diagnosed. People in their late thirties especially minority females are just now being diagnosed with it. My mom said since she didn't notice it in my childhood then I can't be. She is adamant that it is schizophrenia and bipolar disorder because she read about it. She refuses to accept any of the reading material I give her. She wants to be a psychologist because she went to a few group meetings and feels that people need her help. Psychology doesn't screen for narcism or autism. They're questions are generally structured towards the side effect of the medication. It's a 5 minute appointment. So the next time I see the psych I am going to have to ask to be screened. My mom keeps admitting me into the psych ward. I don't know what other answers they are looking for if she wont accept mine.

She tells me I need to 🤐🤫 the mind 🧠 to distract yourself. Meditate. So now she's some expert because she listens to apps on the playstore.

It is a cry 😭 for help. I am trying to move out so that I am not subjected to this treatment from her. She plays like the good guy and that I am the crazy one no one will ever listen to. She has isolated me from family and friends. She tells people that I have a mental illness not condition. It was hereditary so that would also be a fault of her own. There is a history of mental illness in the family. So she's the only one who didn't get it?

I have practiced these social skills. I work in customer service 🐕‍🦺 and have been doing so for the last twenty years. What you can't get it learn from home you can learn outside the home. So I took college classes that she is unaware of. She doesn't even give me credit for going to college. She thinks I'm retarded. Slow. That is the psychology of black women. They think because you are black your dumb. Ugly black doll test. Then she must also feel that way about herself. She is projecting that on to me. I'm her psychology rants if how she is so much more educated because she took such and such class and she graduated she feels she is better than me. I dropped it. I didn't see the point of contributing especially when she continues to reject the fact that I am sports medicine 🌿💉 I am an herbalist. Exercise scientist. I decided to go a shorter route and get a certificate in holistic wellness as a 🦮 we too know psychology. I have been working in the field for twenty years. We dont diagnose. We refer you to your primary care. It's a wellness center aka spa. Alternative 💊💉 is complimentary and supplementary to your Western care. Many people are abandoning Western 💊💉 because they haven't provided any answers. So I wouldn't be any different to give up on them because I found the answer myself. Self help books provide that for you. Self diagnosing is like them making fun of you for checking the Internet for your signs and symptoms. My mom feels that is ok to be judged and diagnosed by her and other white medical professionals.

Psychologically black women are the ugliest in the world 🌍 i do statistics. I don't know the last time she read a scholar study. I didn't think I've even seen her on Wikipedia. She has admitted she doesn't write papers. I would be an English lit 🔥 major if I didn't choose to go into sports med. There is only so much you can do with an English lit degree.

[lostacelonnie]

It sure is the new year & somehow im still tired and way busier than i would like. So uh. Sorry this took me a bit to get to. The first time i read your response i thought you'd said you were watching bocchi which confused me because you had already. But im glad you are enjoying bofuri. She's such a chaotic disaster character. Ohh i think i feel you on that my brother in law & i have like. Opposing autism vibes & coexisting with him when we share apace is exhausting. I hope school is going well for you! Yeah like. Honestly sometimes ill chat with people at a theater but mostly just. Please do not. Im just there for a film. Love the communal effort to just. Understand your teacher what a time that must be. My parents did teach to cook a bit. I learned spaghetti & a basic taco recipe from them. But i learned a lot from there so i had a bit of a spring board to go off. I hope you have a fun time learning to cook stuff i enjoy it immensely. Even with all the dishes it can make. Honestly schools are just. Weird if anything. Liminal space adjacent but in a way neither good or bad. Im sad i missed getting to pull her i want ruan mei but due to bad storms my internet was out, which also contributed to late response, for the last days of her banner. So i have to save for her re run. I am so normal about her & stelle(lying). I finally finished the argenti quest but had to level & gear himeko & welt. Got kafka on my console account from her banner & it gave me e1 bailu when i hoped for clara. Ohh so its like a character growth/change type thing. As the story progresses & they change they gain new herscherr forms. I think if my understanding is right. Or right as it can be for something not fully explained? I miss manaria & the gang already. Can only tide myself over with other villainess shows til it returns. Or i read more. Dungeon meshi at least has an airing anime adaptation now which means i can see my favorite fail girl marcille in animation. I will remember that & look to the community for help as needed if i pick noita up thank you for the tip. I too want himeko to be fine & alive so i sympathize with the hi3 fans. I dont remember if she's getting off on penacony or not if thats been said. But penacony definitely has some characters i want. Oh okay damn i always wondered about her floating. So thats one mystery solved. Wait seele has just. Basically a good dog aura? Oh so kiana mei & bronya have the most extensive lore? What about uh. Durandal? I feel like ive seen that particular polish phrase before whats it mean?

HI HELLO its been 20 years which im SO FUCKING SORRY about...... my life has decided to just Not give me a break recently. and understandable akdfkgjksj i should really continue watching it but ah.... so busy. and Tired all the time. actually got to skip school today bc i was so sleep deprived i thought i was sick but then i slept for another 4 hours and i feel so much better now. should be studying [have 8 exams coming up until the end of february.......] but i also Need to chill for a bit. agghhh. and oh understandable!! it really is just like that sometimes. school, as i said, is. psychologically torturing me but im actually not in that much pain so yeah!! and thanks also. i hope my teachers let us catch a break soon. at least ive recently picked up baking to destress so at least im not about to become the joker. and REAL LIKE i also dont mind talking with people in public places from time to time but i usually just wanna mind my own business. and yeah its SO funny but also im surprised how nice all my classmates are about helping others. like. if we had to cooperate to create a message with my old classmates everyone would just instantly start making fun of each other for not knowing something. OOOH COOL....... when i have more time i should learn to make some spanish dishes. went to gran canaria with my mom recently and god ive missed their cuisine SO much. god yeah schools are like another dimension to me ngl. they work based on different rules then the rest of the world. AND AUUGHGH PAIN...... good luck with getting her on future reruns tho!!! same with being Totally Normal. and hey congrats on all that!!! i also ended up doing argentis quest and luckily didnt have time with fighting him thanks to clara who makes it extremely easy. generally shes always carrying me. finally got to trailblaze lvl 65 and i only have my clara team at lvl 80 rn so i should probs work on kafka etc but i hate grinding mats...... hell on earth. oh well. and yeah more or less!!! tho it also depends on the person and circumstances, as some people will get new authorities, some will kind of. get closer to their current one? and some people might even give up their herrscher authorities with time. but yeah honkai loves to retcon itself so its kinda blurry sometimes. I MISS EVERYONE TOOOOOO and i started watching reborn as a villainess some time ago but ah. didnt have time to continue. i ALSO started watching dunmesh and ALSO didnt have time to catch up with it but im SO excited for it bc ive only watched 3 eps but love it already. if you ever Do pick up the game then good luck!! its as brutal as it is fun to play. himeko protection squad forever....... i should finish penacony when i get the time and motivation. wasnt too interested in any chars at first but acheron stole my heart....... so would sparkle if she wasnt so Racist for no reason. yes seele Does have a good doggy aura SHDKFJKS even The Great Herrscher Of Sentience cant say no to her. shes so sweet and i love her. and yeah basically!!!! since theyre effectively all the protags, even if kiana is the "main" one. AND I WILL VERY EXCITEDLY TELL YOU LITERALLY ALL DURANDAL LORE AS I KNOW IT BY HEART BUT ALSO LITERALLY DONT HAVE ENOUGH ENERGY TO WRITE IT ALL DOWN RIGHT NOW SO ILL TRY TO GET THAT DONE BY YOUR NEXT MESSAGE. so well both have time to write our respective stuff. and oh polska gurom is a misspelled version of polska górą [since its pronounced almost the same] which more or less means poland on top. its used ironically most of the time and i LOVE saying it

[keishasknowledge]

Our Future Generation Crumpling? - KK.

One generation crumpled is equivalent to our world being crumpled.

I’ve had a discussion with a fellow friend of mine on how one’s environment could negatively influence a teenager’s life in plentiful aspects. Consequently, this discussion took a massive twist when I came across aghast headlines about the increasing suicide rates among teenagers, mental distress in education, and social influence. In an instant, it seemed like a dilemma that needed to be addressed as well as obtain the appropriate recognition, especially to the public viewers.

Before I proceeded to my observations and suggested measures to solve this “enormous” crisis, I had dealt with an episode likewise to this issue. As a student and daughter who takes account of a wide range of responsibilities, these were a spoke of the wheel for me to plan out events with my acquaintances. “I wanted to live like a normal person, but I hold tremendous obligations surrounding me like an optical illusion” — as I would like to say my typical mood was. I used to think if I was being too hard on myself, or if I would be in that distress as the students in those cases. But then it struck me like a lightning bolt, if I held these obligations, was I then molded by the environment and area that I was engrossed in every single day? Is it entirely my fault to sense that I was too occupied with my interests in life? I thus would like to answer this question straight to the point, with profound and insightful elaboration being made in addition to that.

We, as teenagers especially, tend to withdraw from our families and companions in the seasons of concentrating on our assessments, loitering around with several activities, and so on. By then, we do not have a complete acknowledgment of how balancing our time happens and may ask questions such as — “What exact procedures shall I take?”, “I never had a social life, how am I supposed to know?”. Generally speaking, this fundamental element of one’s life, or its commonly used sobriquet — “leisure time”, must be taught and explored further to other horizons. However, the fact that we don't have one could also lean towards the subject of where we've been placed. For instance, schools may give out daunting tasks for you to finish, leaving you with anxiety and distress. Our guardians may ask us to be more diligent and absorbed in one particular expectation of theirs, which actually may be sickening at times as we are just human-beings who sense curiosity with the world around us, not with the trauma of fitting into someone’s ideals.

According to the SCMP, the motive behind the scenes of the increasing rates of suicide is because of the transformation of post-pandemic life, which indicates that the “surroundings” bring out a large impact on a student’s life. Adaptation of post-pandemic life may not be the only source that delivers a sense of sorrow for students, but may also be for bullying or mocking incidents and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, wellness for a teenager is completely mishandled. The unfitting statistics and pie charts of certain psychological illnesses that one may possess, display that the understanding of mental health and counseling has not been deeply consolidated and learned from healthcare professionals, as teenagers could only achieve the so-called “temporary remedy” but have the trauma that sticks with them wherever they go. Noted from SCMP, healthcare professionals have paid close attention to the emotional needs of students and provided individual advice for healing. However, I suppose these aspects would not create a massive modification, especially with a “caught up and torn apart” student.

Putting all of these ideas into summary, we should have the acceptance that suggested solutions are not long-lasting, as we are being hauled to an imperfect life that has tornados and tsunamis along the way. This memoir I've written for today reflects on the 1960s prediction made where teenagers pointed out that by the 2010s to 2020s, life would be odious and a never-ending cycle of despair, all because of a world where the word “permanent balance and wellness” is never applicable to a teenager’s existence.

[madacademic]

Mad Academic: An Introduction

Hello, I’m Nicole (but you can call me Nic if you’d like), a queer, Mad, disabled, and chronically ill occasional part-time university student. And this, as you can probably tell, is my newsletter, Mad Academic. Though I’m not entirely sure where this Substack will end up, my current goal is to focus on assumptions in the areas of psychology and disability, as well as those assumptions’ impact on society as a whole. (Yes, that is purposefully vague. I don’t want to limit what I write here—at least not yet.) However, this project is just getting started, and I know there will be mistakes along the way. This will definitely be a learning experience for me, but stick around, and maybe you’ll learn something, too.

More About the Writer

I’ve never been the best at talking about myself, but here we go. Born pretty close to the East Coast in Northern Virginia, I grew up among the humidity and greenery, which heavily contrasts with the desert-like state I’m in now (New Mexico). I was also pretty close to Washington DC, a place I loved to visit.

I grew up unschooled for the most part. When I asked to try online school—and eventually in-person high school—my health problems, overwhelm, and lack of motivation got to me, making it so I never finished a semester, even if I just took one or two classes. I felt like a failure. Some might’ve called me lazy. Some might’ve called it the emergence of severe depression along with some other things. Some might’ve chosen a different lens and considered the ongoing trauma that began around that time as well as the fact that I never had much school experience. Maybe some would’ve gone even deeper and considered more societal implications. Me? I had no name or explanation for what was going on. I think I thought it was just part of me being weird.

Despite not doing well in anything school related, I took my first college course when I was seventeen. It was an introductory psychology course, and it actually went really well. However, I struggled with taking more than two or four classes for the most part. Back then, I would spend a lot of time on homework but almost always received grades of at least 100%. But, over the past few years, getting 100% on everything turned into either getting 100% on a project or not turning it in at all. The last time I took classes, it got to the point where I usually wouldn’t turn in assignments at all.

I started to identify what I’m going through as autistic burnout. As I’m close to starting my Master’s degree at this point, I really want to return at some point, but I’ve also heard of autistic burnout never really going away for some people. As much as I want to go back, my plan is to take things slow for now. I’m very lucky in that I can do that in the first place.

So what have I been doing during my break from school? I started doing some streaming and reading. (You can find my stream over here.) And from here on, I plan to do more reading and streaming, along with some writing, too, starting with this newsletter.

I consider myself disabled and have been diagnosed with multiple physical and mental disorders throughout my life. Though I used to care a lot about the DSM, ultimately memorizing the criteria for many disorders (it was a special interest, okay?), I’ve started to realize it’s limited and even harmful to people. (And now I often use my knowledge to bash it!) Today, I continue to learn about the effects of the psychiatric system on different individuals.

Why Bother Writing About This?

I’m writing about this because it feels important; impacts me; hopefully will inform others; and allows me to learn, evolve, and be corrected in this area of knowledge.

What to Expect

I’m not sure what exactly I’m going to post about other than my thought on issues that arise in psychology. Maybe there will also be some other societal topics—maybe some personal topics. But in the end, I’m hoping for it to keep the same theme while letting the newsletter evolve however it’s meant to evolve.

Overall, this is meant to be a place to post my finished (or almost finished) thoughts related to psychology, disability, and potentially all kinds of societal issues. I’m planning to do a lot more research in the future, which is why the future topics of this newsletter are partially to be determined. It all sounds like a mess. I know. I figured the fastest way to figure out what this newsletter should be about is to learn as I go. I guess we’ll see how that works out.

How often will I post? I’m hoping to start with one post on the first of each month. I’m also hoping to post at least one Instagram post a week, but that will be further figured out later. (For anyone who doesn’t know, my Instagram account is @madacademic.)

At the moment, this newsletter is entirely free, and it might stay that way. While there are paid options, those are just for giving further support to this project and do not affect which content you can access. If I ever change this, I’ll be sure to announce it.

[journalofkate]

11/04/2024

TW: toxic relationships, drug abuse, financial abuse, alcoholism, homelessness, dysphoria, suicide and suicidal thoughts, mental illness

It's been a... very long time since I posted on this blog, and even longer since I've made a long form post. To be honest I had forgotten this blog existed. So much has happened in my life these past few years, so much has changed. For the sake of my mind I felt I should make a new entry, and hopefully it can reach someone who's been through similar things.

In my first post on this blog I took substantial time talking about my identity as a trans woman and my experience of living with parents who were extremely bigoted and feeling like I could never be out and proud of who I am. Much has changed regarding that, some for worse and some for better.

In the summer of 2022, a few short months after my original post, my sister was attacked and kicked out of the house by our mom. This caused a massive rift between me and my parents, a rift that would only grow wider with time. I have always been extremely protective of my sisters because of the abuse I and some of my sisters faced with my biological mother, but more than that I was sad to lose the only person in my home whom I could be honest with. She supported me and at that time she was one of a small group of people who knew my identity. Over the next year I became aware of my parents stealing a lot of money from me, little by little, adding up to thousands of dollars. It became evident that I could no longer stay in this house with the family I had known for years. I do not know why my parents stole that much money from me, they were drug addicts when I was a young kid and it's possible they relapsed but they were also generally bad with money and had gotten themselves into a lot of debt.

In January of 2023 I made the decision that I would leave, and it was only a decision of where I would go. My close friend at the time, whom I will call Gwen, suggested I come to stay with her in Oklahoma. I did not like this idea as I had gone through much effort to leave Oklahoma just two years earlier. Against my better judgement I accepted her offer so in summer of 2023 I began my long road trip from beautiful Olympia, WA to the Midwestern wasteland known as Oklahoma City. There was, however, a problem with my plan. Shortly before I was to set out my friend Gwen got evicted and had to move into her sister's house, which has no room for me. By this point there was no option to stay with my parents any longer. Bridges had been burned, and even if they hadn't it would have killed me to stay in that house any longer with people who had lied and stolen from me and attacked my sister. I had to leave. I. Had. To. Leave. And so I left. I had a decent paying job lined up and I was content to live in my car until I found an apartment of my own. And so... I... Left...

In the time between my sister getting kicked out and me leaving I had started seeing a psychiatrist in an attempt to avoid a full psychological breakdown. In this time I learned that I have bipolar disorder, in retrospect many of the events that follow seem to be a result of my mood swings and are situations that are far too common for those of us with bipolar disorder.

For 3 long, hot months I living in a Walmart parking lot in my car waking up at 6am every day to work a job that was much harder in my body and mind than I had anticipated. One day Gwen approached me about a woman she had met, whom I will call Michelle, who wanted to meet me. I met with Michelle and learned that she had been told all about my situation and wanted to help me and Gwen get into an apartment. During this time I was experiencing a depression worse than any I had experienced before and Gwen, perhaps believing my job was the cause of this convinced me to quit, saying that she would financially support me until the apartment we had found was ready for us to move in. When Michelle discovered this she insisted that I stay with her in the meantime. I was grateful that she took me into her home, if even for a few weeks. So grateful that I cooked her dinner every night I stayed there. For some reason that I cannot fully recall, or perhaps never fully knew, Gwen ended up staying there as well, she also quit her job around this same time so we were both fully financially relying on Michelle. During our stay there was a strange tension in the air at all times between Gwen and Michelle. I do not know if this was because we were unemployed, or because I was invited there and she was not. During my time in Oklahoma up to this point I had been in such a deep depression that I began to lose touch with reality. I was simply following the path I was already on and hoping I would not end up homeless again or crawling back to my parents whom I never wanted to see again.

In September of 2023 Gwen and I moved into our apartment. Michelle came by a few days after we moved in and delivered each of us a check for $4000 each. I do not remember the details exactly, but I remember her making it very clear that she wanted us to live off this money while we looked for jobs so that we would be financially independent of her. I had to deposit my check into Gwen's bank account because my bank would not allow me to deposit the check, so Gwen had full control of all $8000. A few days later Gwen came home with a car full of groceries and a crate of various bottles of alcohol. Gwen was a bartender, it was a job she was very passionate about and she wanted to continue practicing her skills while she was looking for a job. Over the next few months Gwen spent increasing amounts of money on expensive groceries from the highest end grocery stores, something I was fully against. By this point I knew the money had run low, I knew I had made a mistake by giving her control of the money, but I was not in my normal state of mind and I had fully lost touch with reality. I began drinking, heavily, something I had never done before. I quit taking my medication because I could no longer afford to have it refilled, so I drank more. All of my bills fell behind, most crucially our rent, my car payments, and my payments for my storage unit in Washington that had almost every single thing I owned. I could not find a job no matter how hard I tried, the economy had gotten worse and it was getting harder to find jobs. No matter how many jobs I interviewed for none of them called me back. I began delivering food for doordash just to keep food in the apartment. I did not want to ask Michelle for more money because it had been very clear that we had taken a financial toll on her and it was clear that she wouldn't be able to give us any more money after the checks. Gwen found a job, and things were finally starting to look up. Unfortunately I had fallen into a very heavy drinking binge as had Gwen, and we began arguing constantly.

A week after Gwen found a job Michelle knocked on our apartment door. Unknown to me Gwen had been in contact with her, the things they discussed I do not know, but she found me in a drunken state, depressed and out of touch with reality. We had a conversation about how we would get our finances back in track and it seemed that everything went well. The next day when I woke up Gwen and all of her belongings were gone. I felt betrayed, I felt abandoned, and I felt alone. At this point I could no longer contact either Gwen nor Michelle. I did not fully understand what happened. I still don't fully understand what happened. I used the last of my funds to get some food from the cheapest grocery store I could find. The next day my car was repossessed. I stopped drinking. I found out some time later that Gwen had lied to Michelle and said that I had full control of the finances and spent all the money, on what she did not know. I found out 6 months later that Gwen was still, seemingly fully, financially relying on Michelle.

In the months that followed I faced mental distress like I had not felt since my childhood. I got into contact with my older sister and she gave me some money when she could so that I could keep the lights on and keep some food around. She offered to let me come stay with her in Texas but she ended up extremely reluctant to actually let me go there. In the following months I spent my days endlessly searching for jobs within walking distance. I felt hunger like I had never felt before. Some days all I would eat was a small bowl of rice. Some days I ate nothing at all. I was convinced I would die there, starved to death in an apartment i couldn't afford in a city I hated. This did not happen.

In January of this year, 2024, I found a job in a sandwich shop a mile from my apartment, an acceptable walking distance. I began paying back my debts. During the first few weeks at this job I remained haunted by everything I had experienced the past year, I fell into another terrible depression. I became completely detached from reality, all I knew was that I was in pain and I wanted it to end.

TW: suicide

In February of this year I began to see clearly through the fog of my mind a way to end the pain I was feeling. I had decided to kill myself. I knew how I would do it, I knew what my final words would be, and I knew what my final meal would be. I couldn't focus on work, I couldn't focus on fun, I couldn't even sleep. All I could think about was ending my life. I sat down one night in silence with my final meal, a meal which thankfully I do not remember, and began to eat while thinking exactly how I would word my note. Suddenly my phone buzzed with a notification. I was not expecting any messages that night. The message was from a close friend of mine from high school who I had been talking to almost daily for years. In the message he asked me if I was okay, a question I had never heard him ask. He said I seemed withdrawn and said he knew I wasn't doing well and he wanted to check in. For some reason this message snapped me out of my fog completely. I told him I was fine and just really tired from work. I finished my meal and went to sleep. He did not know it at the time but he saved my life that night.

I no longer saw suicide as an option out of my situation, despite the pain I couldn't let it all end. In a strange sort of way it felt like if I killed myself I would be giving gwen, and my parents, as much control over my death as they had over my life. I began making friends at work. I grew very close to a woman who I will call Allison and a woman who I will call Heather. I was awkward, I had just gotten out of a series of severe mental health crises and aside from that I was never very good at interacting with people. I came out to Heather and Allison a month or two later, and accepted me with zero hesitation.

Heather and I grew closer, after a few months of being friends I started to think I had a crush on her and I began to wonder if she felt the same way. Eventually I confessed to her and learned she felt the same way. We've now been dating for almost 6 months.

Unfortunately despite finding a job, the pay wasn't enough to cover the debts I had accrued and in June of this year I was evicted from my apartment. Since then I have been living in an extended stay motel paycheck to paycheck barely making ends meet. I almost fell into another suicidal episode but the thought of the people close to me having to grieve me has kept me from even considering that as an option. Though I did not accept my drinking problem last year, I now understand I truly have a problem with alcohol. It's easy for me to not drink at all, but it's hard to stop once I start... So I simply do not drink at all. Though I am not out to my coworkers, in my every day life I live openly as a woman, something I never thought would happen. I have been looking at apartments lately and I believe I will be in one soon and once I am it will be easier to live a normal life.

Two years ago I couldn't imagine myself without my family, I couldn't imagine myself living a genuine life. I was stuck. I don't know what my parents have been up to since I left, and honestly I do not want to know, but sometimes it feels like it would've been easier if we were estranged because of my identity.

I still have mood episodes, I'll probably always have mood episodes. I am not currently medicated because I still cannot afford to have a psychiatrist but once I have an apartment and a little bit of money to be able to spend on that sort of thing it's my first priority. I haven't had a serious episode since February. I don't always know when I'm having episodes but my partner is getting good at recognizing when I'm having one. When she says she thinks I'm having an episode it lets me know that I should be very careful about any actions or decisions I make. She has helped me considerably through all of this, I don't know if I can ever truly show her how grateful I am for how much she helps me, but I can still try.

That's all I have for today

-Kathryn F.

03/03/2022

Content Warning: detailed descriptions of gender dysphoria, transphobia, internalized transphobia, homophobia, internalized homophobia, biphobia, internalized biphobia, sex (not abusive), and brief mentions of abuse.

Today was a particularly bad day for my dysphoria, but in a strange way it brought me some clarity. I realized that the bulk of my dysphoria comes from knowing that the people around me won't accept me as a woman if I came out.

I always see people on social media, blogs, and articles talking about how to come out or why you should come out but I haven't really come across anything about what to do when you really don't think you CAN come out. On this topic, I'd like to share my history of how I figured out I was trans, why I feel I can't come out, and what solutions I have come up with. Strap in because this may be a long story.

Though my memory can be foggy at times, I do distinctly remember having this feeling that I wasn't really a boy when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I never expressed these emotions to my family members except for on one occasion after I learned what a 'tomboy' was I told my parents that I wanted to be a "tomgirl", to which my father replied "you can't be a tomgirl, that's not a thing".

When I was about 10 or 11 puberty was fast approaching, and I began to become vaguely aware of the existence of trans and intersex people. By this point I had started having this intense feeling that I really, really was supposed to be a girl. I began having this consistent fantasy that despite having been born with male genitalia, I would develop female secondary sex characteristics. Soon after my voice dropped, and I began to grow hair on my face and body. It was starting to appear that my fantasy would not become reality. At age 12 my mother* told her husband to teach me how to shave my face. Though for most people this would have been a bonding experience with their stepfather, it left me deeply uncomfortable. I couldn't stand to look in the mirror and see hair on my face, and then have to interact with that hair just to get rid of it. I stayed clean shaven for most of jr high and high school.

*the woman I refer to as 'mother' and the woman I will in the future refer to as 'mom' are two different people. My mother is the woman who birthed me, and then went on to abuse me and my sisters. My mom is my biological father's wife who has cared for me as her own since I moved in with her.

At age 13 I thought I was gay. I started a romantic relationship with one of my friends who I had known for years, his name was Joseph. Around this same time I had gained a better understanding of what transgender meant, and had even made some trans friends. I had begun to wonder if maybe I was transgender, before this time my only window into these communities was movies and television, in which trans people are often seen as freaks of nature or the punchline to a joke, but now I knew actual trans people and being trans didn't seem like such a shameful thing. A few months into our relationship I asked Joseph "would you still date me if I was a girl?" To which he replied "it doesn't really matter, because you aren't a girl." I never brought up this possibility to him again. About 4 months into this relationship I decided to come out to my mother, she was surprisingly accepting however in the months that followed there was a tension that wasn't there before and an unspoken idea that I would grow out of it.

When I was 14 I broke up with Joseph because he had become abusive. To be in an abusive relationship this young is a devastating thing, but it is a story for another entry. I began to distance myself from my gay and trans friends because most of them were mutual friends. At some point I, very consciously, decided to prove my mother right as I receded back into the closet. It was unspoken, but as far as anybody else was concerned I was actually straight. Progress is not a straight line. I began to reject my attraction to men, as well as any feeling of being the wrong gender. The next 2 years are the darkest years of my life. I got a girlfriend, we broke up and made up every few months. I was horrible to her, and she was horrible to me, it may have been the most toxic relationship I've been in. I lost my virginity. I told myself that all cis men wanted to be women. I started to adopt extremely conservative views. My depression spiraled out of control. I began to think horrible things about trans people, things I will not repeat. These 2 years are the years I remember the least.

When I was 16 I left my mother's house to live with my father. Around this same time I slept with a man for the first time, but all my internalized bigotry made me push him away when he wanted a relationship. The next year of my life was the beginning of a major shift in my life. I finally was able to be free, and go and explore my place in the world. I joined theatre, made friends, and eventually started a romantic relationship with a trans man. I was beginning to actually live my life. I began to move from town to town every few months or every year. Each time I moved the amount I was open about my sexuality changed. I never came out to my parents.

At 19 I gained enough financial independence to live on my own. I started a relationship with a woman who ended up using me for her own financial stability. After she left, I felt extremely lost. After a few months I was in the store and found myself just standing in the makeup section. I bought some makeup and went home and tried to learn how to do makeup. It looked horrible, but it felt good. I came to the realization that I could buy whatever I wanted, so I began buying women's clothes, and I loved them. At that time I thought it was just crossdressing, I thought maybe it was a sexual thing. After a few months I began to seriously question if I was trans. I confided in an old friend and she told me I should explore the possibility, I still wonder if she remembers that conversation. Eventually life got hectic, and my exploration of my gender fell low on my list of priorities for some time.

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic started, and my life kind of grinded to a halt. A few months after lockdown began I decided to move back in with my parents. Because I never felt comfortable coming out to them I had to throw away my clothes and makeup, I didn't realize what effect this would have on me. A few more months into the pandemic I began to experience severe gender dysphoria, and with no outlet it just got worse. On a phone call with a very close friend I suddenly blurted out "I'm trans" - and that shocked me. I did not expect those words to come out of my mouth, and definitely not in that moment. My friend told me that she's also trans and she was waiting for the right time to tell me. Over the next year I began to use social media to cope with my dysphoria, people didn't see me as a woman in real life but they respected my gender online. I developed a social media addiction.

In 2021 I made the decision to move to a different state with my parents. They believed I just wanted to live somewhere more beautiful and near the sea, but in truth I wanted to live somewhere that was more accepting.

Now it is 2022, I still live with my parents and I don't make enough money to live alone. I moved to one of the most progressive states in the US, but I still feel like I can't be myself. Thought my mom and dad have cared for me more than my birth mother, they are still extremely bigoted. They are racist in a very disgusting, casual way. My father is homophobic openly. My mom tries to respect the pronouns of trans people she meets, but she has said they aren't really their gender. I financially depend on them, I can't risk losing my apartment. I simply can't come out to my family, which means I'm forced to wear this disguise of a man. I go to work and I use a gender neutral name instead of Kathryn because I don't want to be ostracized from my workplace. Everything I did over the past few years has been to improve my life, but it doesn't feel like it has improved at all. I'm scared to lose my family. I'm scared to lose my job. I'm scared to lose my apartment. I have to live in the closet. I sleep in the closet, eat in the closet, I carry the closet on my back through my daily life. It's gotten to the point where I feel I'm living a double life, and I have a dysphoria induced panic attack every couple days.

This is the story of my life, the story of discovering myself. I must solve these problems I'm faced with because who could live like this forever? I've been saving money, I plan to move to another country in the next few years. If I put enough distance between me and my family it may become easier to come out. I'm going to get my own apartment soon so that I can begin to live free again. Despite the fear I feel, I will begin to leave the house presenting as the woman I am. I've also been working on my social media addiction, I no longer scroll I only post, and I only post once a day. I'm at the point in my life where I've realized the only way for me to live free is for me to live as though I am alone.

This is my first online journal entry. I'll be back with another tomorrow, hopefully not a long sad story.

- Kathryn F.

[gatheringbones]

[“I want to spend a moment reflecting on exploitation: I’ve been eyed for social work since I was in my mid-teens. A racialized, mentally ill, gender queer youth, I was also remarkably articulate, psychologically precocious, eager to help and to please. The adult service providers whose orbit I floated in were quick to notice and take a shine to me—I was one of those once-in-a-blue-moon clients, the kind it feels both easy and rewarding to work with because I was so traumatized yet seemed to “improve” so quickly. The adults I trusted always seemed to want me in their empowerment initiatives, they were eager to put me on youth councils and committees, they gave me leadership roles despite the fact that I was in way over my head. I was brilliant and gifted, they said. I had so much to offer, they said. Helping was what I was made for.

I came to identify my worth with helping, my lovableness with how much I was able to give and please. It didn’t matter that most of my early jobs and roles involved some significant risks—for example, facilitating antihomophobia workshops in high schools as a high school student myself might have required a rather enormous amount of self-disclosure and vulnerability to strangers, but it was all for the cause, wasn’t it? And how proud my youth workers were whenever I came back from another successful outing. And if the honorariums they paid me were less than minimum wage, well, it was more money than I’d ever made before, wasn’t it? And how lucky was I to get paid to do something that did so much good for other people?

When I got to college age, I knew it was my purpose in life to help and heal other people. In my darker moments, it sort of seemed like that was all I was good for—and all the trusted adults, the wise youth workers and therapists and psychiatrists who mentored me, said I was gifted. They said I was special. My diversity made me fashionable. So “interesting” and “textured,” one psychotherapy supervisor called me. A wealthy white psychologist said I was an “ambassador for my people.” (She didn’t specify which people.) This was how, at twenty-two years old, I began an internship that involved doing therapy with adults who had survived childhood sexual trauma. Although I had no real clinical training, I held sessions for them at night in the windowless basement of a hospital in Montreal. I learned therapy techniques quickly, from videos on the internet and by practising on the job. People were counting me. I had to help.

Some quick number-crunching tells me that I gave over 4,000 hours of unpaid therapy in order to get to paid work as a clinician. By contrast, the very first sex work gig I got paid me $100 for some nude cuddling and a sloppy hand job that I completed in twenty minutes. I almost never think about that first gig now. I still dream about the stories my clients told me in that first unpaid therapy internship I took at twenty-two. Occasionally, I still cry, wondering how they are now, if I’d done enough to help them.

My social work experience isn’t every social worker’s experience, so I can’t claim to speak for the whole social work community. What I can say is that the people around me saw something useful and beautiful that they liked in me, so they took it and used it and I allowed it to happen because I wanted to feel loved and I didn’t think I really had choices. What I can say is that my sex work practice started out rough and frightening, but it blossomed into a decent learning experience and a business that paid me lots of cash up front, usually with no strings attached.”]

kai cheng thom, do you feel empowered in your job? and other questions therapists ask sex workers, from The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory & Transformative Justice Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health, edited by Zena Sharman, 2021

[sofiadragon]

Welcome, Friend

I've been writing fanfiction since the '90s. While I do post in-progress snippets of fanfiction I am writing here (you can check the "my writing" tag for that) the main place to read my written work is on AO3.

In case of shenanigans here is the address: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofiaDragon/works

I use my bookmarks as a collection of stories I have read and enjoyed enough not to lose. I also use the Recommended Stories feature, so if you want to see a list of fantastic stories, you can utilize the filter or just click here.

I reblog a lot of things that catch my attention, but mostly fandom stuff and current events. There are a lot of different fandoms I am interested in, and sometimes I'll go back to the stories that first got me interested in writing. From Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek to the latest MCU movie and Spy X Family - I like a wide range of story types so long as the characters are well crafted. Give me someone who seems so real they can walk right off the page, and I'm happy. If you like that sort of thing, pull up a chair and stay a while.

I do not brag about charity for spiritual reasons. That I do not reblog posts or answer asks about charity means nothing about what I do or do not support offline.

More personal stuff about who I am under the cut!

Autistic spectrum cis female. US American, socialist-democrat, has been overseas but not as much as I'd like. Can vaguely understand spoken Japanese and written Latin but only fluent in English.

I put a lot of worldbuilding in my writing with a dash of humor and dramatic irony. In IRL conversation I'm sarcastic and enjoy ethical and political debates - and I have the privilege of coming from a family where we don't take those disagreements personally and will happily "devil's advocate" a position just to prolong the discussion if the conversation is productive in finding the flaws in the politicalnideas we support. Especially on the internet, hot intellectual debate of serious issues without catching feelings is a rare commodity.

I studied world religion, psychology, and creative writing as an Early Childhood Education major for my first round in college. Then I had to go make money due to a family calamity, so I swapped to Small Business Management and learned about economics, politics, teaching adults, and bookkeeping. Eventually, I took a job at a small chocolate shop and learned how to make gourmet chocolates, because the stress of my management job was actually killing me.

I believe that most of the fan criticisms of series and movies come from a place of love, since we wouldn't care so much if we weren't invested. You will see posts tagged "critical" or "criticism" related to fandoms that I adore. That thing I said about intellectual debates? It absolutely applies here.

I also tag political posts. If you don't want to see commentary on real life drama when browsing please filter your tumblr - I highly reccomend a side blog with "#politics" blocked if you don't like seeing that stuff. Curate your experience.

I've had some mental health struggles related to my poor physical health (chronic illness sucks) and fertility problems stemming from a hormone imbalance caused by working in an office where my boss used testosterone cream irresponsibly, don't try me on gender dysphoria it isn't a trigger it's waving a flag in front a bull. I will give you the horns. I'm very strong on trans/genderqueer issues partly because I have experienced the distress of my body doing masculine things like growing a full beard against my will and partly because I have a cousin more than 20 years older than me who transitioned when I was a kid and is one of the most actualized and happy people I've ever known.

Nobody should be forced to use their body or perform their life in a certain way for the benefit of other people contrary to their nature or will. This also includes medical privacy and legalizing [while responsibly regulating] most drugs. You will see this theme in some of my stories and it colors all of them in the sense that my idea of what is morally correct includes that kind of freedom.

[summercurial]

last night's date thing was really fun! okay so ill be calling him N, hes 26 and a little shorter than me and he has great stubble and i think he's handsome and he has nice arms from doing rock climbing and he's really good at chess and he's a programmer (front end javascript booooo). anyway. he picked me up at my house and we went to noodles and company and he put his arm around me and we talked and it was fun and then we went back to my place and i laid next to him and then i got on top of him and he told me he could tell i was thirsty but he liked cuddling and wanted to go slower (as like. a dom thing. there was some light pre-domming. also he told me to wear a particular outfit, as a dom thing. anyway) and so we cuddled a bit more and then he wanted to talk about what were into, he said he liked collars and chastity and i told him i liked praise and headpets and pain. and then he told me to close my eyes and he put handcuffs on me. and then he kissed me. and then he used his belt as a collar cuz i only have the one FKA aidan gave me. anyway this was really weird but he wanted me to recite after him a hebrew prayer thanking god for our great luck? because it felt like the situation was really wonderful? he's jewish but not religious. it was kind of cute. anyway.

he's good at reading me, and he tells me what he's reading, which i like. we cuddled some more and kissed some more and then he decided he wanted me to suck his dick but he wanted me to earn it. so he put my blanket on the floor as padding. and then he put me over his knee and spanked me really hard (theres some bruising). my roommates heard but i dont care. i was handcuffed, behind my back, so that was...really intense. i had to tell him to do harder at first but he got it pretty quick. that was really intense, and hot.

anyway, so then im on my knees and he's standing and i suck his dick. he really enjoyed it! he was like, shaking. he didnt cum, he said i brought him "past orgasm" which is maybe bullshit. his dick was pretty big! very thick. anyway so after he was very tired and we cuddled some more and....twist reveal! he's a virgin! he said i was his first time for french kissing onward! which i was shocked by. he was really good, at like the psychological stuff. anyway he brought stuff in case he wanted to stay the night so he stayed the night. it was nice to sleep all night with him.

in the morning he wanted to cuddle more and then he wanted to try the handcuffs on which was a bit weird. he was like def getting off on it, he was open about that. i felt sort of weird and paralyzed. and then when i took them off him he put them on me, behind my back again, which was really nice. i like the way they take choices away, simplify things. he learned i like having my nipples pinched, hard.

anyway after that we took a shower. we were very thorough with each other, i spent a while just washing his legs, squatting on the floor. it was...psychologically intense. anyway he got a nosebleed at the end lol. we cuddled some more and then i went and made myself some breakfast (he had to go to work) and we talked with my roommate and it seemed like they thought each other were pretty cool which was fun. im really hoping we do more stuff, it was really fun and im really into him.

[definitelynotcesia]

41. let it rain

HELPLINE —kang taehyun smau ☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ

pairing: kang taehyun x reader ⊰⊹ฺ genre: fluff, angst, humor/slice of life ⊰⊹ฺ word count: 756 ⊰⊹ฺ chapter type: semi text ⊰⊹ฺ chapter warning: can get a little confusing(?)

GENERAL FOREWORD: I have no ill intention of romanticizing emotional manipulation. I aim to portray a story that will give awareness to these matters, as they are very much real and victims shouldn’t be labeled, judged, or stigmatized. Please know that I made a thorough research prior, along with everything that I learned as a psychology major, as I was conceptualizing the story so as to give a realistic point of view.

"im sorry", is what greeted you the moment you met eyes with yeonjun. he was leaning closer and whispering.

"sorry for what?" you whispered back even though you weren't sure what you were whispering for.

"for failing to protect you", he replied tilting his head towards taehyun who was laughing with beomgyu a few steps ahead of you.

you disregarded the subtle action he did earlier and decided to tease him, "am i getting assassinated or what?"

"no, but i would be glad to do so if you don't stop acting all sunny with me, y/n." as expected, yeonjun gave you an annoyed look as he moved away.

"geez calm down, grandpa!" you raised both your hands up as a sign of defeat while stifling a laugh.

"what is going on here?", meg interrupted when she noticed your hands raised and the creasing of yeonjun's forehead. "are you bullying my sunshine?" she asked as she snaked her arms around your waist.

"sunshine?", he scoffed. "corny ass nickname if i'm being honest."

you mirrored the annoyed look he gave you earlier. if he wasn't so out of your arm's reach, he would've received a punch too.

"touché", meg hummed to which yeonjun chuckled in approval.

"and i thought you're here to defend me!"

"i am!" meg exclaimed. "but you gotta admit though, sunshine is overrated. i'd rather have a whole weather forecast than just all sunny days. you gotta let it rain at times, y/n. heck bring on a storm!! that doesn't make you less beautiful, at all."

that was rather unprovoked.

you were about to tease meg for saying those, but as if in cue, kai did the honor.

"man, we need the bingsu as soon as possible. meg's sputtering quotable quotes now!", kai's shrill voice interrupted the group making those who were in walking front of you look back.

you just realized how everyone's just been chatting randomly as you walked towards the shop.

"lower your voice, dumbass. you're embarrassing me!" meg elbowed him.

"so what? it's not like they know me anyways!"

"do you ever shut up?"

meg's full attention now shifted to kai, thus starting another unending back-and-forth between the two. you gave yourself a mental face palm. this afternoon is going to be great as you thought.

"meg's right. you truly are the sunshine, literally and figuratively. but you're also more than that, y/n." yeonjun whispered before dragging you closer to the group to join in on the ongoing conversation.

the bingsu tasted way better than you expected. probably because this was your first time so you didn't know what to expect— or probably because of the people you were with the whole time.

just when you thought meg and kai are already a handful, beomgyu had to come in the picture completing the golden trio. arya looked at them in amusement, probably thinking about how hard must it be for the parents if these three were siblings. speaking of parent, soobin took on the job as he attempted to pacify the trio but would miserably fail everytime. yeonjun was as sweet yet as mischievous as ever. if anything, he could pass as the mentor of the golden trio.

and taehyun... you tried your best to subtly avoid him. as much as you want him around, his presence still reminded of your heartbreak. yet you never wanted to treat him half-heartedly— or was it your irrational brain telling you one eye contact might bring you to the edge?

although it's weird, you were scared that he might see through you if you put your guards down, even just for a second.

you can't afford to do that.

not now.

however being with all of them feels surprisingly healing. you laughed harder than you expected making both of your cheeks and stomach to hurt. it felt like all the crying and pain you put yourself into these past few days were insignificant. which was hard to admit at first because you knew your emotions were real, and very painful to say the least.

and yet looking around you now,

the golden streaks of the afternoon sun coating the interior of the cafe,

the fat cat lazily lounging on the cashier counter as if he owned the place,

the laughter of your friends shamelessly filling the silence,

the afternoon felt as perfect as a dream.

but unlike any other dreamlike afternoon you've experienced, this one wasn't hazy. today was clearer, more vivid. more real.

"you are sunshine and more than that." as meg and yeonjun said.

HELPLINE —kang taehyun smau ☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ

♡ synopsis: determined to take the pain off the past, y/n wanted nothing more but become the help and comfort that others needed. yet here comes the man with an obnoxiously adorable eye smile, unintentionally ready to sabotage all that she thought was healing— that includes a 24/7 help line and an alternate persona.

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