#also do we forget that unaligned people exist. Like did we forget there are people who are attached to neither

[rasairui]

Post: gender identity is complicated and everyone has their own unique relationship with it. Presentation does not equal gender and not everyone likes strict labels!

Me: Yeah! True! This is great so far please don't turn this into-

Post: I will now use this as an excuse to obsessively list every possible way in which a lesbian ends up with a man. I will equate butches and gnc women to men, completely missing my own point when I said presentation doesn't equal gender. Also being transmasc is always the same as being male aligned btw. I'm going to find a way to fit dissociative identity disorder into this for some reason. I'm also going to be really condescending and talk like no lesbian has ever understood the concept of gender noncomformity, ambiguity and complex relationships to gender. No, I never talk this way about gay men and nblm why do you ask

[krystlind]

here i am. i will just write. I will just write this to me, as I always do.

I have to confess some fears

Of being heard, of hiding, hiding behind others

And then I felt this built up over the year, where its been hard to give, been hard to make space, been hard to hear of others, started losing that

i forget I have something worth saying, not because i’m credible

I realize its because I’ve been neglecting myself, what I have to say

I think as women, especially filipino women, we have such a collective mentality, we forget to be our individual voice

so in the mission of rising up...

I want you to know, that you have the answers inside of you. you have everything you need to know, already inside of you. the key is to get really still, and silent, and to learn how to listen to that voice, that is your intuition. find her. the higher self, as some would call it. in order to be able to tune into that voice clearer, you have to tune into "her” frequently. this is by getting in touch with yourself, through journaling, learning about yourself, talking with others. but a very unfrequented way of doing this is by getting still and silent. silent and stillness is one of the most powerful things we can do, and yet it is so underutilized. un-tapped into. we’re in a world where when we need answers, when we need understanding, we consume. we stream. we read info, we subscribe, we talk talk talk. we turn go on social media, on the news or videos, even books and podcasts. 

honestly, I am one to stream and consume a lot of content and information. I stream a lot of things. but lately, i just haven’t been able to carry it, all the noise. is anyone here with me on this? something I’ve been really craving lately, is silence, and getting quiet. It’s funny when I see the evolution of the pandemic, the beginning was a lot of “what’s going on with the world” attached with consuming a lot of news, updates, etc to “what’s going on with our lives, jobs, careers, norm” consumed with social media, seeing how people are dealing, what companies are doing, etc and then it just kept going longer more than we expected, and it became “what’s going on with me.” I see this year, has been so much change, so unprecedented as we said. and i mentioned this in a previous podcast, mid2020 reflections and intentions setting, how it’s allowed things hidden at the bottom of the pool to rise up to the surface. and for many of us who allowed that to rise up, we started to see things in ourselves that have been buried deep, from the distractions, from routine, from noise, from the humdrum of life, rise up. for better or for worse, this year has made us confront that which was needing confrontation all along. whether it was related to the economy, to our systems, to racial injustice, to poverty, to our home life, to our relationship, to our jobs, to our priorities, to what really matters, to most importantly, ourselves.

the reason for this theme, is because.. it came from a realization, from a moment. basically, over the past few months, i was finally letting go of a relationship, and it was really difficult. it was a person i was with for 3 years, and towards the end it just got so unaligned. . but we stayed together during the quarantine. and the problems that were always there really just got amplified. things got really rocky, and i had to get out. all of a sudden, in the midst of all the pandemic craziness going on, on top of having lost my job, i was moving out and trying to find a new home to live, and transitioning out of a 3 year relationship. It was one of those moments i felt all the plugs had been pulled. i was talking to one of my spiritual mentors, because i was anticipating this next chapter, and not really knowing how to get through. the thing is in the past, whenever there is something I’m trying to figure out, hard decision-making, i’ve tended to look at all resources around me, my community, externally, and start trying to make sense of things. i talk with my friends, mentors, i look up next steps, i research, i collect as much advice, and look at all the pieces in front of me, and make a plan. so this was quite natural to do. i don’t remember quite what I said, i was fretting “denise, i just don’t know how i’m going to get through this next part. I’m not sure where I’m moving to next. I don’t want to go back home to family, but I also need to look for a job. I’m also scared of being heartbroken, or that I’m gonna take the wrong step. I’m not sure how to make the most informed decision right now.” and she replies “you know everything you need to know already inside of you to get you through this.”

and that really just hit me. why? because, it made me stop and ask, “I do?” and then that flipped to, “well, yes don’t i? why wouldn’t i?” the fact that i was so surprised to hear that, made me realize, how soon I was to look at all the external things around me, to plan y next move, to make me feel secure, to look for the answers, to look for clarity, how much i leaned on people as sound boards, and outside advice, to feel equipped. and there is nothing with that. i think it is so so important to use people and resources around you. but why is it that often the first place we go to make sense of what’s happening, is everyone and everything around us, and the last place we consult with is ourselves. 

since hearing that, this past few months, something i have been practicing that has been so profound is stillness. it is one of the most powerful tools we can use to get grounded and get clarity, and it is the most underutilzied. why? i  believe it is because often we don’t trust oursevles or we have been so conditioned to empower ourselve snad decisions with extenral things, and noise. we have discounted the voice within, when all along, there are answers deep inside of us, just waiting to be heard, whether it is a pointed answer or just a way of being that we don’t know yet until we tune into ourselves.

somme of the most profound realizations i have gotten in 2020 during the pandemic, was not when i talke diwth enough people, listened to enough podcasts, read enough stuff, but when it was when i got alone, got in silence, and listened to myself. really listened to myself. and when I say these moments, i mean that it literally changed me. 

for example, in the beginning of quarantine, i heard “you’re not here for us” and that was journey into love and acceptance of my body, of listening to it, of giving it love instead of making it someting to be improved.

another one was with Christy, “who are you without your productivity, and timelines” and i got silent and still and just let somethign come up, and that’s when i realized i was putting so much of my worth on my plans, and i almost didn’t know my identity without it. that realization when getting still was so profound, that’s when we began the 21 day jouranlign journey to embrace stillness. it was also a way to counter the chaos, that called people to plan, that was the beginning of my relationship to stillness.

did midyear 2020 reflections, “what is your soul trying to tell you” this has been the most powerful question for everyone

“you have been becoming all along”

“you are carried”

Becoming still and silent, has so much to offer.

In turn, this has made me really wonder 2 things:

1) why is it that the first places we turn to is everywhere but ourselves

- we haven’t been told there’s an inner knowing

- we don’t trust ourselves enough

2) what are ways we have been taught to not trust in ourselves, to disregard our intuition, and why?

How we’ve been taught to trust everything, but ourselves

And pull from every where but within

History

Before the Spanish colonized the Philippines, there existed a 500-year long tradition of indigenous feminism that predated women’s liberation in the West. Babaylan refers to the pre-colonial Philippine tradition of female mystical healers whose spiritual connectedness was a source of political and social power. Babaylan women serve as intermediaries between spiritual and material worlds in their communities. Their leadership roles are multi-fold: warrior, healer, priestess and sage. Babaylans listen to the community and lead through a deep understanding of the inter-connectedness of all life forms.

our authority, taken away. made dependent. 

Religion

I am christian, I am a follower of God, I believe he is the almighty and that we all have a piece of the divine in us

i believe that religion and the church, back in the day it was set up as an entity of power

catholicism, you confess to the priest

and they were able to control people, to listen to the priest, how things were translated 

and some of those structures, i think mistakenly and unfortunately are still permeating the way that religion and certain churches are made and teaching today

you’re taught the concept of die to the self, go to Christ

i don’t think that ever meant neglecting ourselves

if you’re a person of faith, don’t think i’m dethroning God and his authority in any way. i think there’s something very accurate about God as the ultimate omniscient source of truth. 

i feel like religion has taught us to go every where but ourselves: go to God of course, go to the church, the pastors, open up to the community group or bear each other’s burdens, but none of that about getting still and hearing what our own souls have to say. it’s almost like it blasphemous to do so. which is frustrating because i do feel that God, the Divine, communicates to us through our soul. hello

1st John 4No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

another way we have been conditioned societally to neglect our own personal knowing, voice, is through identity constructs and norms. whether its gender norms women of being non-disruptive, non- as a woman, we have been made to question our credibility. that we have to build that up first before we have the right to take up space.

studies show: job descriptions

While both genders browse jobs similarly, they apply to them differently. Research shows that in order to apply for a job women feel they need to meet 100% of the criteria while men usually apply after meeting about 60%.LinkedIn behavioral data backs this up — women tend to screen themselves out of the conversation and end up applying to 20% fewer jobs than men. What’s more, women are more hesitant to ask for a referral from somebody they know at the company.

Women have an intuition, that is so powerful. we were made to carry life so our intuition is bestowed. i’ve read somewhere that men have gut feeling and women have intuiotion, 

Women are said to posses a superior intuition (women's intuition), an almost psychic — and somewhat frightening — knack for knowing what others are feeling and thinking. Experts say this intuition is based on an ability to read facial expressions and body language.

Society is set up (credibility) to not come to the table without backing it up

what school did you go to, what are your accolades, what’s the data, what are the studies, how does your experience back it up

and in no way am i discrediting the importance of this, i am a huge proponent of if you’re coming with a view, an opinion, back it up

but what i mean is that this emphasis sometimes makes us question how much more we can go internally for answers

that we see ourselves as a person less of an authority with answers for our life than the professional therapist

but that’s why, even in therapy, they let you talk, they’re not trying to give you the answers, but the TOOLS to MINE the answers outside of yourself

that’s what i mean, we are a walking gold mine, of our own desires, next steps, of what we need to hear.

take a quick reflection of the past year of the global pandemic. lots of us were turned on our heels, lots of changes, i know for me.

audit, how many times you went externally for answers, to “make sense” and then how many times, you went internally. and i get it. it can be non-instinctive to go internally. what does that even mean. but i know you felt it, when the world was just getting too much. news alert here, covid update, numbers. you know it when social media just got too much. can you relate? there was a time, i would go on social media and it seemed like during the pandemic, everyone was making a statement, was making moves, releasing this webinar, this offering, this class, this opinion about the protest, this stance, wow they’re all making moves! i should too! and if i don’t, i’m not being worthy of this time. like i felt that. this need to “fill in” also. filipina on the rise as a platform wasn’t as engaged in this current event, we’re not making enough posts, we’re not doing virtual events

and i actually took a step back, and was like, “I don’t need to. there’s enough. there’s really no point in saying something, posting something, offering something, to be a part of it

otherwise you’re just adding to the noise!

so where it cam authentically for me, was when i felt something true from my heart to talk about, then i would. such as making the starting a podcast webinar because a lot of people in this time started getting creative and wanting to start a podcast which is awesome! and then on a random day, something stirred in my heart that i felt i needed to write about. and i would write about it. it’s so much better that way, more authentic, and more valuable to the collective conscious then just posting because you feel you *need* to.

and honestly, i don’t post now unless it’s really coming from me. not as a branding or growth technique, i know a lot of people do that and that’s cool! but I want to come of authentic and sincere, like people feel connected, not more content in their face

but it relates to what we’re talking to, if the goal is to channel something impactful, authentic and sincere out there, that comes from within and being so in touch with what it is you truly believe in and how you want to show up for the word, and guess what, that comes from diving deeper, not distractions, this is why in our last podcast we talked about personal activism, and how its so much more effective to find personal clarity and understanding of your stance before debating with the collective and adding on to the noise

when the world goes loud, get silent. when everyone goes outwards, go inwards. when the world is moving, get still.

We forget we have this inner knowing.

this is your power. this is also how you get back in touch and start cultivating that relationship with yourself, buidling that trust back up with yourself. we want to build trust within ourselves, but we need to start by giving her a voice, and saying, “hey, you’re worth it, to be heard. i know i’ve been runnign around to everything else around me first, but i’m going to give you a listen.

and this is in no way, devaluing the power of wisdom around us. from family, friends, research, teachings, education, from our community, from God, etc. 

in fact, it is counting its value, because our inner guide, is not based off of anything. our inner knowing, has been formed by these beautiful things. you have a whole voice and guide inside of you, that has lived through your life, even though you don’t remember every single thing, think of that inner wisdom as having remembered and integrated, all your experiences, all your memories and lessons learned, as having the ingredients of all the wisdom and knowledge you’ve ever received.

Intuition, or a sixth sense, is something many of us rely on for snap judgments and often life-altering decisions. But what exactly is it? A 2008 study in the British Journal of Psychology defined intuition as what happens when the brain draws on past experiences and external cues to make a decision -- but it happens so fast that the reaction is at an unconscious level.

our soul is speaking to us, and we silence it, the very thing that makes us who we are. we discount its credibility. we discredit our own selves when we turn to everything but ourselves.

get still when you can, and listen to what you have to say. it’s not going to be like “plan this, then that.” it’s not about these material details. the soul counts that second to what its trying to tell you about your being, your value, the love that you are. when I heard “you need to be here for us” that was the most powerful thing to hear from my soul, because it allowed me to take care and give love for my body. and i wouldn’t have heard that.

so i just encourage you for a moment every day, to get still and embrace the silence. when you’re tempted to look for answers first everywhere, don’t forget to see what’s already lying within. it’s like you’re sitting on a gold mine, and you just need to tap into it. you will find so much beauty and love, in what your inner, higher self is trying to tell you. you will find she has so much love and grace and kindness and high hopes for you. 

it doesn’t mean you’re ignoring God. it just means that you are allowing yourself to love yourself by giving her trust.it

[densoro]

so @ie9999​ asked me ages ago to post info about my OCs and I just realized I’m finally on a laptop so I have a keyboard enough to do that!

Densoro is a long while in the making. I came up with him when I was 11 and for a while he was just the magic/superpower mule for a hyperactive teenage Kingdom Hearts/Final Fantasy/Legend of Zelda fan. Changed every few months to accommodate some new complete misunderstanding of the laws of physics.

The current draft, tho, is a member of the town guard. In his world, magic is common and everybody is born aligned to one element. However, rarely, people are born unaligned. Such people have no bodily pigment, no capacity for magic, difficulty understanding emotion, and experience colorblindness. The lack of pigment lowers their tolerance to extreme weather conditions, and Densoro overcompensates for his lack of magic by excessively sword training.

His world also has three alternate realities layered one on top another. His father once created a sword, using a special ore which is constantly moving like a lava flow, frozen into form. When stabbed into the ground, it opens a portal, enabling travel between the three. This discovery became a regular fact of life. However, his father tried to use the superior quality of the blade to subjugate the people of the new land he arrived in. He terrorized them for years before he was finally killed. He and his sword came to be known as Vandal.

Years later, as Densoro neared adulthood, a man wielding Vandal attacked Densoro’s town. The town guard managed to repel him, but Densoro began to question the nature of the attacks. Long story short, he uses sword training as a way to understand the lessons handed down by other people, and to eventually understand their feelings. His story is not so much focused around defeating the Vandal, as much as about becoming the kind of person who knows what he’s defending and how.

Arvyria hails from a small, unnamed territory nestled between Sweden and Norway in the early 1300s. One day, she wakes up and her entire town has vanished -- not in the sense that it was razed to the ground, but more that it seems to have never existed. She struggles to make it to civilization, steals a weapon and a few ill-fitted pieces of armor.

Around the same time, people are reporting attacks by fae or demons, some variety of monsters roaming the countryside. Arvyria finds a gauntlet which seems to be able to suck the life out of these monsters, and begins asking around to see if anybody understands how these events are connected. 

Her character vastly changes depending on which weapon she steals, who she meets, and which creatures she vanquishes, in a branching story with several routes.

Reina is one of the people Arvyria can meet. One side of her face is covered in thick, diagonal scars like claw marks framing one white eye. She’s been traveling for months with her 16 year old cousin Vincent. She ran away from her family’s home after Vincent’s father and her abusive husband killed each other. Vincent followed, believing he had a duty to keep her safe from other violent men. Reina suspects this and doesn’t know how to explain to him how sick she is of men in her family risking their lives when she can take care of herself.

The both of them have the ability to see that magic on Earth is a sort of gaseous fluid that surrounds us like an atmosphere. Much like moving underwater, this fluid echoes off our motions in waves and ripples. This allows them to do superhuman feats, but also keeps them up at night because their dreams have been replaced by the ability to watch these waves ebb and flow off everybody’s actions. In places infested by monsters, though, this flow is frozen in place. Because of this and various other stressors -- including their personal situation -- they’re prone to night terrors which cause them to thrash about. Given their abilities, this makes them a danger to entire cities. Reina’s screams alone can fell redwoods.

Depending on how Arvyria’s relationship with Reina develops, Reina may figure out how to explain the motion of magic to her and turn her into another sleepwalker. Also they fall in so much bi lady love and I ship it so hard tbh

Rowen is another potentially crucial figure in Arvyria’s life. He claims to understand the cause of the frozen atmosphere and the monster attacks. He’s a fervent Christian who believes that these creatures were created by a man -- and that the creation of ‘life’ is an affront to God. He’s dedicated himself to mastering the two-handed sword so that he can fight these creatures off, and he has high, uncompromising expectations of all his allies in this endeavor.

If Arvyria is bad enough at using the sword she stole a week ago, she’ll get badly injured in battle, and Rowen will demand that she meet with him for sword lessons as soon as she’s able to move again. He believes he can’t allow her to be a weakness in their cause.

Arvyria as influenced by Reina is a softer, more worldly sort of person. She’s less shy, more able to open up to other people. Reina brings her out of her shell and teaches her to move with magic. On the other hand, Arvyria as trained by Rowen is even more stiff and businesslike than before, downright militaristic, and is a much more disciplined sword-wielder.

(spoilers there’s also a third ending where shit goes all kinds of fucked up and the same force that created the monsters creates Densoro’s entire world lolol)

Alex Blake is a college student in Anchorage, Alaska, living in present day. However, in her timeline, the world’s been stuck in winter for three years straight. The snow basically never stops. In addition, violent crime rates have climbed exponentially and millions of people have gone missing during the three-year winter.

One day, a man follows Alex home and shoots her. The next day, she wakes up in her bed and, despite gruesome memories of her own death, forces herself to go to school. On the walk there, she witnesses something she can’t quite describe: some sort of entity getting mauled to death by a force she can’t see or comprehend. The dying creature’s shadow casts onto her, physically wraps around her, and forms a suit of armor. Long story short, this allows her to walk through the time stream in order to fight monsters that exist in time in a way we don’t understand.

(Fun fact: Alex’s story was going great until I realized I didn’t understand a thing about Alaska’s relationship with its indigenous people and spent days googling things that did nothing to help me understand :’3 I felt I was mishandling the setting and everything crawled to a standstill)

Carson lives in the near future. Young Carson is fine being assigned female, but they keep getting visions of themselves as a tall, lean man with a sword. It gets to the point where they keep forgetting how long their arms actually are -- like they’re used to being taller.

They keep finding incredibly finely-crafted, modern, machined swords hidden in strange places. They keep recognizing them. And they keep getting drawn into violent conflicts where they’re forced to use these weapons.

As Carson gets older, sword fighting overtakes more and more of their life, and they come out as agender. Their body proportions grow to match the man from their visions. They develop a supernatural sense to ‘feel’ the movements other people are making with their bodies -- to feel your arm as though it’s their own. Using this power, they become a paranormal exterminator of sorts.

An unnamed woman from the Gobi desert (because I realized I know nothing about the linguistic conventions of that region and don’t want my white ass to slap some Mandarin on her lolol) grew up in a militaristic society where the unforgiving climate of the expanding desert combined with monster attacks to make survival next to impossible. Their society is at war with the monsters, and uses armored trains covered in spikes to traverse the wastelands safely. However, she tried out for the leader’s personal guard and received a set of armor and intensive magic training when she passed the test. Her trademark is the ability to make force bounce off on contact. For example, she can fall straight down off a cliff, hit the ground, and rather than taking the shock of the fall directly into her body, she can deflect the force so that she flies forward and armor-punches a monster’s face off. Uncertain circumstances bring her to America to confront Carson.

...It’s late. I’ve got a lot down already, but a lot more still to follow XD Feel free to ask for more info about anyone if you’re curious though!