#also yes i know it literally helps with this sort of thing (ie: depression)

[thefixer]

out of chara , so like i know for the past three years my life has hit a really big blow .  with my pop's cancer diagnosis and subsequent passing in 2020 and then working in the literal ass pit of hell ,  like my mental health has not been on the up and up .  it's gotten slightly better because i'm not working five days in a row ,  but still ?  i have a lot of trauma to work through and my healing journey is filled with reliving things and opening old wounds that i don't usually talk about .  my anti - depressant also isn't working as it usually did so it's been tough  (  and i'm not about trying to find something else ...  i just can't go through all that process again lmao .  ) 

however i'm lucky enough to actually start micro - dosing psilocybin  (  shrooms if you don't know lol  )  in the immediate future .  i'll be going through a whole process with a licensed person and everything ,  only because i've personally never done shooms before ?  so i'd like to take the safest route ,  and yeah ...  hopefully micro - dosing will be able to give me the support i need on my healing journey and maybe even help be creatively and all that .  i'm nervous but excited ,  i'm hoping so hard that this will work because i hate feeling the way i feel and i want to be at peace and happy with things .

[shmegmilton]

Could you do something about how Theo's death changed Burr? You said that her death 'permanently changed Burr’s demeanor' and I can't find much about Burr's later years so I wondered if you could explain it to me. Thank you.

      Yeah, that sounds about right. A lot of the info we know about Burr in the last 20ish years of his life (after returning from Europe, so 1812-1836) has sort of been haphazardly cobbled together by historians, so you only really get a ‘clear’ picture across multiple Burr biographies. We know that he continued to practice law in New York, but most of the supplementary information we have comes from other people; first-hand accounts by friends, newspaper articles, anecdotes, etc. 
Burr himself was obscenely quiet during this time period, partly (I assume) to lay low from debt collectors & people who want to chastise him for being the evil mastermind who shot Hamilton in cold blood or whatever. And partly because he was depressed for a very long time, it seems.

    The first thing that should be noted is Theo’s death came about 6 months after her son (& Burr’s grandson) Aaron Burr Alston, who he was also very attached to & called him Gampy (Burr’s nickname was Gamp so he was Gampy ie. Little Gamp). Gampy’s death effected Burr in an entirely different way, because every instance we have of Burr interacting with children was largely positive—he loved children. After Gampy’s death he seemed to go out of his way to be kind to children & to spoil them with all of the treats and gifts he never got to give Gampy. Something extra sad to note is that he loved to give little coins to children (either out of his own pocket or a pot on his desk), and one of the gifts he had been stockpiling for Gampy was coins…

Now for Theo, I haven’t been able to find any of Burr’s letters to her during this time (I’m not sure if they even survived), but we know that he tried his best to console her & convinced her to be with him in New York. It took about 6 months for her to finally say yes, so he ordered a ship (The Patriot) & a family friend named Timothy Green (who also died on the ship) to escort her from SC to NY. They of course never made it be NY, and to this day not only do we not know what happened to the ship, but we literally don’t even know where the shipwreck is other than its probably somewhere off the coast of North Carolina. There were some theories about a possibly pirate attack (The Patriot was a former privateer ship) but Burr choose not to believe it.

Burr & Joseph Alston (her husband) took up a correspondence during this time (strangely, we have some of Alston’s letters but none of Burr’s seem to have been found) where they confided to each other about their worries. Alston makes a very poignant implication during one of the surviving letters where he says that Burr must feel “severed from the human race.”

Theo wasn’t just Burr’s daughter—she was his only child to survive to adulthood, and one of his closest political & social allies, considering that the majority of the country now hated Burr for the 1804 Duel and the 1807 Conspiracy. She was really all he had for comfort, & Burr constantly mentions how much he misses her (& Gampy) in his European Journal. I can only imagine how devastated he was.

Another note, Charles Burdett (Burr’s adopted son who I’ll talk about in a moment) published a book with some of Burr’s old letters (that he must have been personally given, because I haven’t seen them published anywhere else.) One letter was written during this time period to a woman named “Kate” & he basically admits being too depressed to reply to people.

Burr also allegedly spent weeks or even months visiting the docks every day with the hope that The Patriot might be there. The death of his daughter gained Burr a bit more public sympathy, but the attention was still largely negative. People treated him like a cryptid almost. Not just because he was notorious, but because he was so socially withdrawn that it was rare to see him in public.

—

In 1878, Charles Burr Todd wrote A General History of the Burr Family in America (with Genealogical Records from 1570 to 1878). It’s a handy book with some unique information about Burr that I have yet to see in any other biographies, including a full physical description of what Burr looked & sounded like in his later years ([HERE]), and an interesting essay that Judge John Greenwood, who worked under Burr as a clerk from 1814-1820, presented to the Manhattan Historical Society after Burr’s death ([HERE]).

The Greenwood essay mentions that Burr owned a cat, which he definitely did not own during his 4 years in Europe as there was no mention of it. This implies to me that he purchased and/or adopted it because he was lonely, because there is no other account of Burr owning a pet of any kind before or after this.

Burr also adopted two children around this time, Charles Burdett & Aaron Columbus Burr (Aaron Burr Colombe). ACB is a strange case because, despite having a very public adult life—no one can seem to agree if he was French or American? Or who his mother was? Or his birth year? Some sources say 1808 and others say 1816? It’s bizarre. People also can’t seem to agree whether Charles Burdett was born in 1814 or 1815. There is also a third child (Henry Oscar Taylor, born 1818) who is documented having lived with Burr by 1833.

All of these boys are a mystery because no birth or adoption certificate exists (did they even have those back then?) so it’s unclear where they came from, who their mothers were, or at what point they came into Burr’s life—Burr’s movement & the timelines of their birth make it a bit too hard to say for sure. My personal theory is that (regardless if they were biologically his or not) Burr chose to take these children in to try and alleviate his own loneliness.

One last thing of note about Burr’s later life is that in 1823 he chose to take in Luther Martin (the lawyer who argued his 1807 case), who had recently had a stroke and had nowhere to live. He took care of him until he passed away in Burr’s home in 1827.

Burr would of course die a little less than 10 years after that (the majority of it spent fighting his divorce & dealing with his own strokes). I wish I could write more about this time period, but that is truly all we know about it.

I guess the key takeaway from this is Burr ultimately devoted a lot of his time to charity work & helping others, most likely as a way to deal with grief or find meaning in his life again.

[bigskydreaming]

Hey friendly reminder that I honestly do not want anyone to follow me unless they actually WANT to which means they are free to unfollow, refollow, leave and come back and leave again or WHATEVER as many times as they want, for any reason whatsoever. Including if my posting styles of the moment get to be too much for them or are not to their liking, etc?

BUT I have been seeing a surge in comments in notes and stuff on various posts of mine about the length of my posts or the rambling of my posts and like....I know? This is not new information to me? But I post the way I post at any given time based on the resources I have at any given time and the fact that its often a matter of I can post a long rambling post or I can make no post at all.

Like, I really truly do not like going into specifics about my situation more than necessary or when not necessary, because like, my situation is boring to me, I don’t particularly care to dwell on it any more than I have to. But the fact of the matter is its still a thing that exists so here goes: yes I have physical issues like near constant migraines and pain and also vertigo, and yes I have neurodivergencies like C-PTSD and ADHD and yes I have circumstances that include near constant stress from eternally being in the negatives, financially, as well as being almost constantly hungry from a lack of money and limited options for eating due to the physical constraints of my jaw as well as being consistently sleep deprived because there’s only so much sleep you can get when there’s no such thing as a physically comfortable sleeping arrangement for you currently, all while existing in a constant limbo of I literally have NO idea when any of this will change for me because haha fun fact WE LIVE IN A PANDEMIC.

My point is like......all of these are things I’m not shy about, but they don’t exist as bullet points in a checklist of identity or circumstantial traits, they all exist at all times as points of fact that influence and inform and interact with each other.

So my financial situation and limbo of not being able to move forward with my surgery because of the chaos of the health care industry during a pandemic directly informs both the way stress impacts my mental health issues, but also my ability to treat my mental health issues by way of medication, nutrition, rest.....ie, almost every cent I make via work, etc, goes right back out the door to keeping up my insurance premiums of $850 a month, because even though my surgery is paid for, there’s still elements like hospital stay fees, anesthesia, etc, that won’t be paid until the day of surgery itself, and which I will not be able to pay without my insurance remaining current and active. Which means that I had to prioritize an insurance package that would net me THOSE benefits, which means I had to sacrifice parts of insurance that are no longer in that package, but which previously made things like my medications, refill appointments and therapy more affordable for me. 

Which means that I have to prioritize my medication and therapy etc and maintain my therapy and PTSD, depression and anxiety meds as the most important to upkeep, while my ADHD meds are pretty much priced out of accessibility for me at the moment. Like, the specifics of my metabolism and various trial and error with different meds over the years and the way my body rapidly adapts to various meds and plateaus to a point where they cease to have any real impact on me means the only ADHD medication that’s consistently effective for me is Vyvanse, which there isn’t a viable generic form of that I can take, meaning a monthly refill of it is $350 without insurance, which I flat out can not ever afford anymore, which means its been roughly two months since I last popped an ADHD pill.

So yeah, that directly impacts things like my ability to self-edit, make a point briefly, or refrain from circling back to the same point several times over and over because I literally forget that I made it.

Now of course ADHD medication is not the be-all and end-all and its not like there aren’t various other life-hacks and coping strategies for working around ADHD even without it, after all, I didn’t even get diagnosed until I was 26. But these various other adaptations rely on things like good nutrition (which I can not regularly afford, or even consume....most leafy green vegetables for example, or fruits other than berries, are literally nonstarters for me because I don’t have enough leverage with my one-sided jaw to CHEW them in the first place, and the ingredients for making smoothies regularly are again, expensive). So nutrition as a hack for ADHD management is pretty much out - I’m too busy prioritizing eating anything I can, whenever I can afford to. Other adaptations involve getting lots of rest: something that again, physically isn’t all that viable for me these days, even leaving aside the effects of constant stress on attempts at getting meaningful rest, along with the constant stress and constraints of trying to work as much as humanly possible in my circumstances, in order to keep bringing in income to go to insurance, rent, and food and meds. Then there’s also the stabilizing effects exercise and physical activity can have on the brain and various neurodivergencies like mine, but the migraines and vertigo make most forms of exercise a nonstarter for me, with most of the rest invalidated by the fact that I’m pretty much always hungry, tired, and in chronic pain.

Now let’s examine work and the viability of obtaining more sources of income to help with all this. Well, my options are limited there too due to the ecosystem of factors in play. I’ve been trying for awhile to find even a part time job in my area I can do, but the problems are even though I can make myself mobile and active through my pain issues and migraines, and am even good at gritting and bearing it and acting like I’m smiling and laughing and happy even while in excruciating pain (yay, perks of childhood abuse making a career in retail viable even while practically dead on my feet, lololol)......there’s the simple physiological limitation that I just can’t stay upright RELIABLY for more than a couple hours at a time. Eventually, dizziness knocks me on my ass. Downside of a jaw that’s constantly hanging with all its weight from one side of your face, fucking with your ability to even stand up straight, not to mention causing inner ear and equilibrium problems at random whenever you open or close your mouth in the wrong way (or mere approximation of ANY kind of way).

So, standing upright at any kind of customer service or retail job is one issue. Stocking stuff, that sort of thing.....not really an option when you’re likely to drop all of it at any given moment. But then there’s bracing myself at cash registers, something like a job at Starbucks or hell there’s a Jamba Juice nearby, that’d also get me an employee discount for smoothies I can drink regularly. Course, there’s the whirring of blenders and such, which pair great with constant migraines. Etc. Etc.

BUT. I’m a well-rounded person with lots of skills....which lead to things like my freelance graphic design business as a book cover designer, as well as various writing endeavors, etc. And all of these are things that I DO do, currently. They’re how I make my income as is. There’s absolutely more jobs out there, but the fact is as a freelancer, FINDING additional jobs is a time consuming and spoon consuming process, that is additionally impacted by factors like ADHD, so not only does looking for work require time that’s not already being spent working, it also requires the management and expenditure of mental resources that I have to prioritize FIRST towards applying them to what work I already DO have, given the absence of ADHD medication and minimal coping or regulatory habits allowing for me to be all that productive WITHOUT said meds.

Not to mention the strain sitting in front of a computer all day for work in venues like graphic design, etc, puts on migraines, so there’s only so many hours I can devote daily or in one sitting to doing things like cover work. Much of my writing time is spent not actually writing, but me just dictating into notes on my phone and then copying and pasting all that into the appropriate formats for fiction, nonfiction and just random posts. Of course here then I have to prioritize applying my mental resources to first making sure the stuff I write to make money gets edited or properly pared down to size and isn’t repeating the same shit over and over and over, then doing the same to stuff I write fic wise as one of my few escapes from Real Life BS so I can at least point to having SOME kind of life (as this has been my daily existence for years, and uh.....people having things they like or like to do, as much as is humanly feasible, only becomes MORE of a necessity the more stress involved in their day to day life, not less). 

Meaning by the time I even get to posting, like.....as much as it may look like I do a lot of it, the speed at which I write when I have any kinds of spoons to apply to posting or composing thoughts at ALL means I actually pour out a lot in a little span of time.....BUT that’s not like, a Skill so much as its a Fact. Its just the way I am and it comes with its downsides as well as its upsides....Im good at banging out a lot in a short amount of time, but ONLY when I just....let it go, versus try and regulate it all or squeeze it out bit by bit. I’m a sprint poster these days rather than a marathoner, even if the length of my thoughts makes it LOOK like the latter.....the reality is for me it tends to be all or nothing, its whatever I can get on the page BEFORE I lose my breath or train of thought. So that’s why it looks the way it does, because that was the only form it was coming out at the specific time and space when I had the energy and brainpower TO get it out, and going back in hindsight and editing it for clarity or brevity AFTER I gasp it all out requires energy and breath I do not have PAST that point, so it becomes a simple equation of well do I want a post to exist here at all or not at all.....and I err on the side of posting. This isn’t a defense because there’s nothing to defend, mind you, I’m simply explaining my way through my thought process, approach to things, and realities of my day to day existence for you to do with whatever you want. Its just a perspective you may not have had before. Whatever. 

Of course, even this doesn’t exist in a void. Something that’s always a factor in my awareness when posting is like......I’m lucky enough to have a large enough following that cares enough about what I have to say for whatever reasons or puts enough value in what I have to say or the things I write and create, that I’ve been able to supplement my financial needs when absolutely necessary at times, by way of donation posts. I try not to lean on them more than necessary because I am keenly aware that they are a gift from people, many of whom I do not know and will likely never meet, and as such, not something I have any form of expectation for. I make donation posts when and where I do not in the anticipation of getting them met, but simply for a lack of any other options whatsoever. I’m limited in the work I can do, and the time and energy I can devote to finding more of that same work. There’s not a ton of other career paths I can pursue even from behind a computer due to my lack of a college degree, and the fact that even when I’m qualified skill or knowledge wise, I lack the specific credentials for verifying that I possess those skills or knowledge in a way employers are inclined to recognize and/or validate. Going BACK to school to get said credentials is an expenditure of time, finances, and other resources I do not have to spare at the moment or any time soon, especially not in the name of shoring up a lack of all that in the present term. 

I dropped out of college freshman year after my gaybashing and rape. I never went back to it for a variety of reasons that were only half about resources and half about intent. My family is not a presence in my life and hasn’t really been in any significant way since I was eighteen, so college in the first place was something I had to be entirely self-sufficient about....I was only able to afford to go the year that I did go by way of academic scholarships that were dependent on grades I couldn’t keep up in the wake of what happened to me, and that I couldn’t exactly ever get back without a foundation to build upon, like high school and my initial academic career. Then in the half that was about intent, I eventually moved into pursuing my actual interests like writing, graphic design and acting. One of the things I’ve always loved about those is that output and portfolio nets you more than credentials most of the time....they ARE your credentials. I was actually pretty damn successful as an actor for years, not in the way that leads to being someone that people would recognize, but in the way that leads to being able to support yourself doing what you love. All the skillsets that I have but could not back up with things like a diploma were still useful to me as an actor in a way that they’re not in terms of getting things like tutoring or teaching jobs.....I speak multiple languages but I’m self taught, I have a black belt in karate, I’m a classically trained pianist, I know a whole lot of shit about random shit that I just learned because I wanted to, and all of that got me the kind of work that I was looking for and meant I COULD work and make a living off those things for years throughout my twenty....work that I would not have been able to get if I had been back sitting in a classroom instead. The primary currency of my years as an actor were life experiences and I had those in spades, and I was very good at what I did, if I do say so myself, and the reasons I never advanced further career wise tended to have less to do with whether or not I booked the roles I auditioned for and whether I got the auditions at all......

I’m getting a bit off topic here but I’m just saying there’s definitely a convo to be had at some point, about the roles and opportunities I turned down because I wasn’t willing to sleep with someone or put up with their advancements in order to do so. Something that’s a dime a dozen in Hollywood and the thing is.....I was a sex worker, for years, before I moved to Hollywood and started working as an actor. But there’s a distinct difference between the way people talk about, interact with and perceive someone who’s gotten roles because of sex, advanced up a corporate ladder because of sex...versus, gotten paid because of sex. I didn’t turn down offers of roles for sex because of my hang-ups about sex but rather other peoples’......I had a problem with various parts of the industry that would have thought nothing about me getting a role because a producer wanted to sleep with me, but would have turned up their nose at me because I slept with someone to get money for groceries before. Basically I’m just saying the specific bullshit Hollywood has not just about sex but predatory behavior got in the way of my career advancement because there were some games I just wasn’t willing to play....which hails from the very life experiences that oftentimes made me so good as an actor in the first place.

Which brings me back again to my main point......none of this exists in a vaccuum. Being the sum of our life experiences and variables means being the SUM of that, at ALL times, both in large and small ways. We are never just a LIST of identity traits or experiences. They all constantly loop back around and feed into each other and inform where we are at every second of every day and where we GO in each second, what we DO with our days and the choices we make.

Which is where so much of my discontent with fandoms, on social media in general, with PEOPLE in my day to day life comes from: this desire people have to compartmentalize, to ZERO IN on specific factors or variables or instances and act like it even CAN be divorced from all other influences. Its not that you can’t FOCUS on one thing at a time, its just even when you do that, that doesn’t like....snap all existing connections that thing has to everything outside of your area of focus.

As an example, my attitudes on being a survivor and various kinds of fiction get me a ton of pushback from various corners, and its all geared around the same premise: don’t like, don’t read. Put a wall up between you and it. Focus on just what you’re doing and forget what everyone else is doing.

But it doesn’t work like that. It CAN’T work like that. And this commitment people have to pretending it does just because that pretense has been working for them, THAT, I’d argue, is the true wedge in fandom spaces.

Everything about me is connected to something else. I’m a childhood abuse and incest csa survivor. When my therapist asks me to picture a moment from my childhood when I felt safe or protected, I got nothing. I don’t have that resource. I don’t know what that feeling is meant to feel like, because I never felt it. And that connects directly into the fact that when I was gaybashed in college, after they dumped me in a fucking park, bleeding and covered in writing, I didn’t even think about going to the hospital, the police, let alone calling anyone like my parents, I just picked myself up and walked back to my dorm, cleaned myself off as best I could, and went to class next Monday morning. That’s fucked up, I shouldn’t have had to, but its what I did, and there’s no divorcing that from any of the contexts of WHY that’s what I did, and why I didn’t think there was any other logical recourse or option for me then. Just like all of that also links back to growing up in the closet and entering high school the same month Matthew Shepherd was attacked, and then when he ultimately died two months later, and watching everybody’s reactions to that informed the fact that I did not remotely feel safe in the aftermath of my attack, disclosing what happened to people around me, or just like I didn’t take it on face value that even if they said appropriately sensitive things to me to my face didn’t mean that like when I was a freshman in high school and everyone was reacting to that, they wouldn’t revert to callous jokes about fags the second they felt a little less out of the spotlight or in the right company for those jokes. 

And all of that directly links into my feelings not just when people write rape and gaybashing scenes that make no attempt at any kind of catharsis but rather only appear to exist for the fetishization, the glamorization, the VALIDATION of the idea that in the right context, those kinds of scenes can be hot to the right audience rather than demoralizing to the figure who’s pain and humaniliation is required for everyone else’s entertainment....but it also additionally plays into the reactions and attitudes I have when people look at me going “wow, really don’t like the lens you’re using here or the environment you’re creating around an experience that is never anything BUT painful and traumatic for someone who lived it, like I did” and choose to respond to that by saying things that amount to “well you’re basically just like conservative southern assholes who hate free speech when you say stuff like this,” cuz y’know.....that’s describing my literal oppressors. That’s lumping me in with the actual literal kind of people who are the SOURCE of my trauma there, all because you felt butthurt and defensive about how I said I wasn’t comfortable with the kinds of jokes and output you were making about scenes that aren’t that far divorced from my own personal reality, and that I shouldn’t HAVE to divorce from my own experiences just to exist within certain fandom spaces.

And just like the fact that being an incest survivor is directly relevant to the fact that my stepmother always made an effort to keep me at a distance because not wanting to admit to what happened to me and how it played into our family entanglements was directly linked back to the fact that she and my aunt were both incest survivors who never got the opportunities to deal with what happened to them, which in turn directly plays into the fact that ultimately my aunt ended up taking her own life a few years ago, which also very much informs my attitude towards people interacting with incest ships as something cutesy and uwu, as my aunt was literally the only person in my family I ever WAS close to or comfortable with. And there’s no divorcing any of that into nice neat little compartments that make it easier for anyone on the outside looking in to just peek through ONE window to see what they might see, and try and act like it doesn’t matter what’s in any of those other boxes because it has nothing to do with the only one they want to concern themselves with.

And my lack of resources and emotional state post gay-bashing led directly into my sex work for various reasons, which led in various ways to better things for me in some respects, while compounding certain traumas of mine in other respects, and there’s no divorcing any of that from the rest either. There’s no ‘my time as a sex worker was good’ even though some of it was and there’s no ‘my time as a sex worker was bad’ even though some of it really was. And a lot of the attitudes of some of the rich assholes who paid me for sex and viewed me as a plaything they could do anything to directly informs my resistance to letting powerful assholes in Hollywood hold roles over my head in exchange for sex, even though the latter could have advanced my career in huge ways and led to me being a lot more financially stable and self-sufficient by the time my physical issues emerged due to the jaw joint on one side of my head eroding through and snapping completely just like that in turn was a long-building repercussion of not just my gaybashing, but my decision to never go to the hospital and get checked out after it.

None of this can be cut away from the rest and trimmed into neat little pieces that don’t color outside the lines or impact anything else. Just like my gaybashing itself can’t be divorced from my white privilege, and the fact that it played into the fact that I survived that night in the first place. Something I say not in some weird white guilt kinda way like people try and project onto others for even acknowledging white privilege, like no its not like I fucking wish I died to prove some kind of weird point, what I’m talking about is just the simple basic AWARENESS that multiple and even contradictory factors exist in even the most extreme of situations. And its never anything BUT self-serving to pretend that you can frame it as otherwise.

And so when I talk about being a survivor, just like with all the rest of this, I’m not talking about some arbitrary status of survivorhood that exists in a specific point in time and is only relevant to some singular event I survived, its applicable to everything about my life big and small. I’m a survivor every single day I’ve survived, every day I wake up and keep moving forward despite the pain and stress and lingering trauma of what was done to me one night sixteen years ago, I’m surviving what they did every bit as much as I survived it that night and in the morning after as I dragged myself back to my room. Just like my status as an abuse survivor stemming from childhood directly informs everything about not just my coping mechanisms but my entire freaking worldview as someone who grew up throughout childhood learning to view the world through a lens in which he was simultaneously not safe due to the presence of victimizers in his own home, while at the same time still having certain protections that others don’t have in life in general due to not just again my white privilege but my male privilege, my cis privilege.

And that’s what makes it so laughable and so offensive when people act like I’m defining myself by being a survivor as some kind of singular identity trait whenever I raise it as something of relevance in fandom discussions that have EVERYTHING to do with stances of abuse apologism and homophobic ideas that directly play into why I was so unsafe in certain parts and times of my life, because who the fuck is anyone else to tell me how my experiences as a survivor and how they shaped me are or are not relevant to ideas pertaining to those very things, when brought front and center and face to face with me in various fandoms due to the insistence of fandoms at large on KEEPING these things front and center in almost ALL fandom discussions? Like, the hilarious irony of people who have so wholly centered certain types of ship and content in terms of their own personal fandom identities that they can’t help but feel personally attacked when someone so much as says “I don’t like the ideas you’re broadcasting alongside your choice to amplify and signal boost this kind of content because you’re not JUST signalboosting the content itself, but these specific perceptions of it and ideas in support of and in apology for it.”....like, turning around and saying IM too defined by my views stemming from my existence as a survivor. The call is coming from inside the house, lolol.

Again, none of this can be divorced from the rest. It can be focused on one piece at a time, but its connections to everything else that informs it in various RELEVANT ways, can not be made IRRELEVANT just because you don’t like the picture that forms when you’re forced to look at the WHOLE picture instead of just willfully condensing the frame to just the part you like or want to talk about.

And to bring it all home, looping back up to what I opened with:

Do you know how often I hear people say shit about the length of my posts or the rambling nature or in various ways act INCONVENIENCED by various things about how they have to interact with my posts when that interaction itself is still completely voluntary?

Taking in everything I said in this post, the way it all interconnects and informs other things, I’d like to ask anyone who has ever objected to some post somewhere or derided one because of something as ultimately nonconsequential as the length of it, something where its literally just like....scroll a few more seconds......do you apply the same energy and scrutiny to posts that cross your dash that are filled with various things like racism, transphobia, rape or pedophilia fetishization or abuse apologism, or do you let that slide by without acknowledgment before looking at a post that makes you sigh because of how fucking LONG it was and think...this, THIS is what I’m gonna choose to speak up about?

Because that’s ultimately what this is all about. Here’s the kicker with everything I said....my life could be better, I want it to be better, from the biggest aspects of it and pain issues to stuff just like.....the fandom communities I immerse myself in for my own attempts at having something to counterbalance real life stress. But at the end of the day, there’s no my life sucks or my life rocks....its still just...my life. And it has its good as well as its bad, and that ultimately hails from my choices, and the fact that like....even while there are choices I literally CAN’T make, I can be comfortable with the ones I DO make.

And so like......would my life be easier in some respects now if I’d gone back to school and gotten a diploma and had more job opportunities available to me? Yeah, for sure. But that awareness doesn’t mean I regret my choice NOT to go back to school when I DID have more opportunities for that, because the acting career I had at those times instead was the choice I made, with intent, and its one I’m still glad for making. Those experiences still matter, still meant something and still mean something to me. 

And do I wish that I’d coped with what happened to me in college in different, healthier ways that would have given me more tools for how I interact with my trauma and who I became after that, rather than how I did? Yeah, sometimes, for sure. But not without losing my awareness that the choices I did make at the time were not made in a vacuum, and can not be edited in hindsight....there were reasons I made them, reasons that were informed by everything that had happened to me previously and stemmed from a lot of things I still didn’t have control over and as such always placed a cap on the range of choices that were available to me back then, because there’s a difference between choices that exist in theory versus choices that exist as something that might viably be chosen at a particular place and time.

The world is big and complicated. Life is big and complicated. WE are big and complicated. And nothing about understanding any of that is IMO benefited by putting most of our effort into SHRINKING our worldviews, constructing artificial frames that don’t just focus us in on specific aspects of it for finite periods but attempt to then treat that as its own individual thing utterly disconnected from anything else that might be going on OUTSIDE that picture frame.

So if you’ve read this far and you’ve taken anything away from this big long rambling post that could be a lot shorter, could be a lot less rambling, but could also just not have been posted at all and I’d rather have it exist in this form than let everything in it go unsaid.....

My request would be that your takeaway be this: to look at your choices in regards to some specific finite interaction in even just one of your fandoms, and see what happens when you open the frame back up. If you widen the scope. If you let other things into the picture. Are you still comfortable with the choices you make or don’t make in light of THAT image, are they any different from the ones you made or would have made when keeping things as small and contained in your awareness as possible, just because that was easier for you to conceptualize, easier to navigate around, just....less COMPLICATED?

Because things aren’t made less complicated just by the mere fact of WANTING them to be.

And if your choices are more born of what you’d say or do IF the world were as finite or as limited as its sometimes easier to pretend it is......is that really the approach you want to go with and the reasoning you want to stand by?

And similarly, if there are choices you make and that in ORDER for you to feel comfortable making them, you feel a need to tighten your focus or shrink your worldview around one specific element or area and leave out all the rest and only then are you truly comfortable with doing or saying something, like......

Its important to remember that this isn’t the only option you have for making yourself more comfortable with things you say or do or think, or even just have in the past.

The other perfectly viable option exists: you can simply....make different choices.

[serahsanguine]

What’s Left Unsaid, Says IT All Ch, 11

What’s Left Unsaid, Says it all part 10/?

Rating; NC-17, NSFW

This Story can be Found at Ao3

pt 1, pt. 2,  pt 3, pt 4, pt 5, pt 6, pt 7, pt 8, pt 9  pt. 10

Taggin; @skullsmuldon @baronessblixen  @today-in-fic

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Notes; Thank you to my wonderful beta for helping with this chapter

p.s. finally, a new chapter is here writing with depression and writer's block is so hard

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Chapter 11: Moveing Forward?

Scully was sitting on the plane with Missy. The children had fallen asleep on both their laps happily snoozing as the world quite literally flies by. Her things had been packed and the items she really wanted  (ie the baby items) to keep had been sent off by courier. She threw most of her clothes away and the ones she really, really liked she kept and were in the cargo part of the plane.  

She slouched in the chair the overhead fluorescent lights shining down on her. Ellie drooling and mumbling on her lap snuggled into her chest. Her eyes peered out of the cabin window onto the passing clouds full of greys, white, creams, and almond colors. Her mind wandered to Mulder and in a mere few weeks how they would be living together. They had come to the agreement while she was in San Francisco that the house was certainly big enough for both of them and it would be great for him to be a prominent part in their life. He would sell his apartment and also most of his things. There were only three things he really wanted to keep, one being his Syfy collection which she knew meant a lot to him. His bed, so he had somewhere to sleep and the old style brown leather couch which had fond memories for both of them. He had given her the two weeks to get settled and in some sort of routine before he moved in, to which she was grateful. She had to look past how awkward and hard it would be being so close to him everyday all day knowing she loved him and not having that feeling returned which is entirely her fault.

She sighed and Ellie's hand gripped her top and clung to it for dear life, as if knowing her mother's eternal turmoil rip her apart. He was picking her up from the airport and helping with the twins she knew he had missed them in the last two weeks and they had wormed their way into his heart just like the first time she had laid eyes upon them.

A few hours later the twins had woken up and were playing with their toys in their double pushchair, babbling to each other in their own little code.  She passed customs with ease and Melissa was being Melissa and started flirting with the security guard, he wasn't her type but she will never learn. Scully was walking to baggage to collect their things and that was where she spotted him. His chestnut hair shining against the airport lighting, his hazel eyes shimmering green against the brown and blue eyes of swarms of people. He had the broadest of smiles on his face and she could definitely tell that he was indeed happy to see both her and the kids.

“Hey Scully.”

“Hi Mulder.”

“Did you get everything you needed to be done?” he asked so casually, it sounded a little guilty they hadn’t really spoken while she was packing the house. But it was good for her and possibly to him gave them both time to think of where their ‘Relationship’ whether that be platonic or romantic.

“Fox, can we get moving now. I would like to get home at some point tonight.” Melissa spat.

“Hello, Melissa.”

“Humm.”

She was staring at him disgustingly.

“Well, yes, in fact, I borrowed the minivan to take you all home to Scully’s then I’ll leave you to it”

“Good” Melissa walked off towards the walking ramp.

“Sorry about Missy”

“It’s ok, I understand”

“She will forgive you though it's just going to take time.”

Mulder bent down so he could see the twins face to face at their level. “How are my two favourite mini people doing?”

“Dada,” Ellie said with an enthusiastic smile and Will just looked at him and back at his toy.

“Yes, baby girl I’m here.”

Scully smiled down at them both and for a few moments her anxiety about him moving in was gone  “She’s a daddy’s girl.”

“Are you saying that Will is a Mummy’s boy?”

“Well you never know.�� she said jokingly as she pushed him lightly “Come on we better get going.”

Mulder drove them to Missy’s house first and then drove Scully and the twins to her soon to be their house.

They stopped in front of the house and the long driveway the stone light up towards the front door was on.  Both kids were in the backseat giggling to themselves.

“Which one do you want me to take in?”

“Might as well please Daddy's girl” he laughed and grabbed the bags first placing them in the porch before grabbing Ellie and taking her upstairs and placing her in the crib. Scully soon followed and was taken back by what Mulder had done to the nursery.

“When? How? Jesus Mulder, you didn’t have too.”

Mulder chuckled “I’m glad you like it, I painted while you were away, I had the keys early.”

Scully placed Will in his crib and took a full slow spin around the room to really take it in. there was a jungle theme with different shades of green and blue with hand painted lions, giraffes and tigers with a crib next to it. When she spun some more the changing table sat in the middle as if separating the two halves of the room but also bringing them together.  She spun some more and saw Ellie's side of the room with pastel yellows and pinks with a huge painted light brown teddy bear.

“Honestly Mulder this is truly amazing I…….” she took a large inhale as thinking her next words  “Truly don’t know what to say”

“Don’t say anything I wanted to do something nice for them”

“Thank you”

He smiled and walked downstairs. He listened as Scully gave them some stuffed toys and put on a CD of sleepy time meditations to help calm them down and settled before falling asleep. He placed his jacket on his shoulder before watching Scully tiptoe down the stairs.

“I should get going,” he said quietly.  

“You can stay if you want and watch a film, it's still early.”

“Are you sure?” he asked in a questioning voice.

“Sit down, I'll get us a drink. Do you want a beer, tea, coffee, wine?”

“Beer would be nice.”

She grabbed the drinks and sat on the floor next to him as the furniture was going to arrive tomorrow all that was on the floor was a small rug.

“Here you go.”

“Cheers,” he took a sip before he looked at her questionably, “Wine?”

“Why not?” she laughed “before you worry I pumped earlier.”

“Oh,”  he blushed slightly embarrassed  “Shame there is no tv or DVD player Caddyshack would have been good right now.”

“Really Mulder,  Caddyshack?”

“It’s a classic.”

She laughed a full belly laugh “if you say so” She took another sip of wine already feeling the effect in her stomach after not drinking for so long it was kind of a rush.

The night went on and so did the drinks they got to talking about everything and finalizing for when he was going to move in. What time he would be popping back tomorrow to help move her furniture in. The atmosphere was light and flirty, neither one of them realizing it, but simply enjoying each other's company.

Scully reached for the last bit of wine in her glass but accidentally knocked it over. Mulder jumped up, "stay there, I will get a towel" as he headed into the kitchen. He was back in an instant, kneeling beside her wiping up the small amount of wine. "Good thing it missed the rug, huh? That's all we needed was the babies getting drunk while crawling around on the floor."

"Mulder that's not even a thing!" She replied but giggled over the image in her head.

At that moment he leaned into her, pushing a bit of hair behind her ear, "it's so nice to hear you laugh, I have missed that, and other things."

"What things, Mulder?" She whispered.

At that moment Mulder raised his hands up to cup her face, his eyes moist with tears, he leaned in and gently kissed her. Scully reached up and put her hands on either side of his neck, reciprocating the kiss. Their passions deepened as their mouths parted and tongues explored, it had been so long, as both direly missed one another. His hand moved into her hair as his passion deepened then he suddenly and unexpectedly pulled away and stood up.

"Mulder, is something wrong?" Scully said breathlessly.

"I've got to go, Scully,"  as he grabbed his coat and headed to the door. "I will see you tomorrow. I just don't want to make things confusing right now, we need to think of the kids."

Scully, still sitting on the floor with tears welling up in her eyes quietly replied, "I understand Mulder, I will see you tomorrow."

At that moment he opened the door and lightly closed it behind him. Scully sat and cried quietly, not only over the fact that he left but also the fact he was back and she still loved him just as much as she did from the first time she saw him. She would fix this, she had to, he was the love of her life.

[moghedien]

The Queens as D&D classes but not the ones you’d think:

Instead of working on the threatened Boleyn essay or researching or working on my nanowrimo project I’m doing this because if I’m given an ensemble of people I have to eventually assign them as dnd classes. 

Aragon - Sorcerer: 

Sorcerers are the jocks of the magical classes in D&D. Most sorcerer types (I think wild magic sorcerers being the only exception) get their magic from their bloodlines. You know what else you get from your bloodlines? Royal titles. 

The “Paragon of Royalty” is obviously fixating on her royal lineage there and she should, because its what gave her power to the point where H*nry had to create a new religion just to get their marriage annulled divorce her. Had she been literally anyone else, the pope would have probably gone along with the annulment because popes actually tended to be pretty lenient about that sort of thing when it came to royalty back then. Aragon’s power (ie magic) comes from her bloodlines, so obviously she’d be a sorcerer of some sort since that’s literally the definition of sorcerers. 

Boleyn - Wizard: 

Anne is a high intellegence, low wisdom Icon.

Wizards are technically the smartest class, but name one wizard who isn’t also a certified dumbass, because bad decisions got nothing to do with intelligence.

I’m 100% convinced that Anne Boleyn is the smartest character in Six and one day I will write the essay explaining this. For now I‘ll say that Anne is the most unreliable narrator in her own story and intentionally so. She’s very careful to make a point of saying a whole lot of nothing about herself. And what she DOES reveal about herself is that she definitely knows how to get what she’s after, but maybe she isn’t seeing all of the consequences beforehand. The definition of high intelligence, low wisdom.

She makes it clear that she’s playing dumb for the show when she lays out the theme of the show using all of the SAT words and then saying “yeah, I read.” She’s the only one who is confirmed to read, and so as far we know she’s the only one who knows how to read (not really but the idea is hilarious to me). That makes her the nerd, which makes her a wizard.

Seymour - Barbarian: 

Jane Seymour is a motherfucking tank. 

She literally describes herself as unable to be broken, shaken, moved, or torn down. The chorus of her song is about her being able to withstand everything. She. Is. A. Fucking. Tank.

Now, as someone who plays a barbarian, I can tell you, they can be pretty indestructible. They have the highest level of hit dice, which means they’ll on average have the most hit points of any class. Which means on average, its gonna be a whole lot harder to take them down. Some barbarians have resistance to various types of damage which means that they can take more damage without being harmed. And to top it off, barbarians can have pretty high armor classes without wearing any armor. They are naturally harder to damage, to the point where sometimes wearing armor hinders more than it helps. Unlike other tanky classes, their ability to take (or in this case avoid) hits has nothing to do with their armor and they’re just fucking like that. 

So yeah, it’s gonna be pretty hard to take down Miss Jane “Stone” Seymour the Barbarian. Sadly they aren’t immune to dying of natural causes.

Oh, and if you’ve seen Seymour just go straight for K Howard’s ponytail (I’m not sure this actually happens any more but it used to) and think she isn’t able to rage (a barbarian ability which is exactly what it sounds like) then you are sorely mistaken. 

Cleves - Warlock:

Hey, you know what all warlocks do? Make deals with powerful being to get power. You know what Anna of Cleves did (or had done on her behalf at least)? Got at prenup and ended up with a palace.

Cleves is not just a warlock, she’s one of the few warlocks that got out ahead of their patron. Cleves got to be queen of England for a while, never had to worry about giving H*nry a kid, then got out of it with more freedom than she had before and more wealth than she could ever use in her own. Check her prenup. Girl knows how to make a deal and come out ahead. Also she’s obviously a charisma caster.

Howard - Bard: 

K Howard is here and manipulating us all

Could they all technically be bards because they’re all performers? Sure. Howard is the most bardy of them though.

I wrote 8,000 words about how Katherine is manipulating the audience the entire show so I won’t get into that now but she’s the one putting on the most of an act this show. She is working the audience the most and succeeding her performance checks. She also makes it clear that history and music are her two main interests, which also happen to be two ideal interests for a bard. She makes history jokes more than once. Who’s the wife of Henry V? K Howard knows even when she’s supposed to be pretending she doesn’t. What does K Howard want to do when they rewrite their stories at the end? She just wants to be able to tell her abusers to fuck off and to be able to sing until she dies. Everyone else wants some kind of success. Howard just wants to “learn everything” and then sing until she dies. Is it incredibly depressing that she doesn’t pick anything more than that? YES! But it also shows that she just wants those Bard Skillz.

She also managed to have a 7 minute long song about the horrors of sexual abuse and made it an absolute bop and honestly that’s some bard magic.

Parr - Rogue:

Parr. Cathy Parr. That sneaky ass motherfucker.

When you know you can’t win in a head on assault or with a volleys of projectiles, what do you do? You change the rules of the game, sneak around the back and take them all out from behind without them even knowing you were there .

There was no universe in which Catherine “I’m the Survivor” Parr was gonna win in a competition where two of the people she was competing against were beheaded. So Cathy Parr gets them to all ditch the competition and guess who gets to belt out the last solo part? CaThY pArR

Now the show exists in a universe where the Queens are almost definitely putting on an act just to make a point, but the fact still remains that Parr got to be the one to make The Point. She just waited in the background while every else argued and fought and told their horror stories and was like “oops sneak attack of Girl Power” and turned the whole thing around. Her argument for winning the competition doesn’t have strength, isn’t especially charismatic, and no amount of intelligence or wisdom could make anyone believe she had it worse the the ones who literally died because of H*nry. But she does got Dexterity because that girl can streeeeeetch and make sure she at the very least didn’t lose. Also she’s definitely a high int arcane trickster subclass but that’s just obvs you guys.

[shattered-catalyst]

♡ + family

Headcanon Meme:: or in the OC verse...This shit is Canon

//accepting

Family and Catalyst are a very complex and twisting topic that often times contradicts itself as he grows . Unfortunately he never had the Cadre Alliance to help him out ( or use him cough) but he also didnt have Xforce or anyone else in his corner. Hes been doing this all solo and thats why hes...An absolute counter intuitive wreck.

Sooo heres a write up since Im in pain and need something to focus on

tw for mentions of abuse,neglect, underage alcohol consumption, and all around Mojoworld Shittiness. If you know much about Mojoworld you know this is literally portrayed in canon I did not make this shit up okay i swear.

So Mojoworld doesnt have family units as we have them. There are no parents and there are seldom children. Children are in a tube being fed videos of violence and bloodshed (canon), they are taken out when they are capable of independent locomotion (something the spineless ones find absolutely disgusting. tune in next time for me to talk about how deep catalyst’s self loathing and self image and concept is affected by this).

Prior to this they are given a purpose and destination; entertainment- bands,singing, stunts,etc, servents, builders, farmers and harvesters, gladiators, and pets. Yes yes that is canon and yes I hate i had to write that.

Catalyst was ‘born’ Isaslan III and placed in the gladiator class to ensure peak anxiety +complex stress to make sure his mutation would activate. But he was also place in intense gameshow and survival show like programming during the off season to try and further speed up his mutation because Mojo is impatient.

Mojo is the godhead, the master programmer, all things lay in his hands.He places the young into units and has them train together in combat with more seasoned gladiators as their trainers. Each creche has a strict pecking order and depending on the personalities of those involved and their trainers the creche is either combative and competitive over their resources or co-operative.

Isaslan III had a co-operative creche, he just was rarely with them when they all weren’t exhausted so he didn’t get much in the way of interaction. When he did it definitely made up for it.

The gladiator class all refers to an internally reinforced honor system and they call each other intimate terms ‘brother’ ‘sister’ ‘friend’ are all used (canon). But it is more of a kinship with suffering and survival than with each other.

Isaslan III would consider them family if he had been with them a bit longer. But after his second season he was taken from the creche (most of his ‘siblings’ had since been killed in combat and only 5 of the original 12 remained) and taken to the more seasoned area all as part of Mojos plan to force a premature mutation. This was his first lost family.

Isaslan III didnt meet anyone else he would consider having a ‘family’ or any sort of bond with. Unless we consider the parasite like way Mojo and Arize both used him. Nah, not until Earth and god it just gets worse.

Here we have an alien who basically treats the world like GTA or any other simulation because Fuck if he knows if this is REAL or not and he doesnt know what LAWS are or how to read or ANYTHING and what does he land in? A fucking bar.

This is the second fucked up ‘family’ like situation he lands in. A bunch of adults who think the mutant kid who ‘likes’ to fight is ‘funny’ and they give him so much alcohol whenever his mutation acts up and it just goes spiraling downhill from there  Once he realizes this is all..A big joke he moves on but hes sworn off the idea of finding ‘family’ or anything like that.

Especially because his ideas are all based on modern cinema. Like he has 0 concepts outside of cinema and fucked up life experiences.

He doesnt consider his mutant town folks family, hes pushed family away as being something he isnt worthy of because it just isnt possible for him, or so he thinks,. He maintains a very distant, cold attitude whenever anyone pries too much or he feels hes becoming dependent on someone.

It makes therapy a bitch and trying to make friendships that seem, full, is extremely difficult. Instead he feels chronically acting and never actually genuinely connecting with others. He gravitates towards others like this; Laura (x-23) being an amazing example of this.

He falls into roles faster when he is older or more powerful than another person ie:” Livvy, Gabby, in some cases Laura (Logan Verse). He is invested in keeping them alive and caring for them but it can be very robotic at times and very much at odds with what is acceptable in terms of safety because hes taking what he learned in Gladiator school, in his creche and mashing it up with modern movies and yes he did try and teach Livvy how to kill someone with a lollipop okay yeah he did.

So the thought of having donors? aka: parents? Terrifies him beyond reason. Hes been raised to believe he can do nothing but fail them, and has it hammered in his head from one too many conversations with Mojo that they will kill him on sight for his own loses in the arenas.

Despite all that hes sorta...Really wanting parents. He really wants that support and guidance in his life. But itll take two years of intense therapy for him to cut the ‘i do not have fathers I have donors’ walls hes built up around himself.

His guilt and shame feed into Mojo’s brainwashing all to form a damning concoction that makes even considering reaching out to ricto.r or shatt.erstar almost impossible.

Though when i do get to write with these characters Catalyst’s curious and inquisitive nature ALWAYS gets the better of him and his progression actually speeds up a bit. TBH I genuinely miss those threads since it really strips all the characters defenseless and sometimes its so AWKWARD and its GREAT.

You can see him playing along with the role when with someone like Fabian Cortez where he willingly falls into a fake family dynamic, knowing full well fabian is manipulating him but he just doesnt care and is too depressed and he just wants to know even if its a lie what thats like. His early life on mojoworld prepared him to act like an idiot under the nose of arrogant men. He knows what hes doing and he has accepted the price this fake family costs him.

Still for Catalyst to genuinely feel like he has a family or to be a part of one will take years for him to build solid strong connections with others and probably a mini series or spin off or two where he gets to play supporting roles for them.

[lovemesomesurveys]

try to wrap your head around this

All About Your Head! 1. How often do you get headaches? Have you ever experienced migraines? Do you take anything in order to get rid of your headaches? Are there any natural remedies that you have tried and recommend? I get a few a month. Back in high school I used to get tension headaches quite often, which was awful. No, I’ve never experienced migraines. Unfortunately, I can’t take anything for my headaches because 1. I can’t take aspirin. 2. Stuff like Ibuprofen or Aleve don’t do shit for my headaches. 3. Tylenol doesn’t either and I can’t take it anyway because it has acetaminophen, which the pain medication I take regularly also has and too much of that can be damaging for your liver. So, all I can really do is ride them out but a cold washcloth over my eyes does help. And sleep. Peppermint or chamomile tea can help a little sometimes a well. 2. Do you feel as though you have a good head on your shoulders? Not the past few years. I’ve been a complete mess. I don’t know where my head has been. 3. Are you the type of person who overthinks and overanalyzes? Ohhhh yes. 4. Are you a daydreamer? Do you often get lost in your own thoughts and zone out a lot? Yeah. Especially at night. 5. Do you feel as though you have a good memory, or are you forgetful at times? Do you feel that your short-term memory or long-term memory is better? I think my memory is pretty good. I would probably say my long-term is better. I sometimes forget what I wore or watched on TV recently, but I dwell on shit from several years ago. 

6. Have you ever had a concussion or some other sort of brain injury before? Did you need to have surgery for it? No. 7. Would you say that you are more book-smart or more street-smart? Do you have a lot of common sense? Book smart, I guess. 8. Do you have any sort of mental illnesses or disorders? What do they involve? I have major depression and anxiety that I know of for sure and have been diagnosed with. 9. What color is your hair, naturally? Have you ever dyed it before? My hair is naturally dark brown, but I dye it red. 10. What’s the longest that your hair has ever been? How about the shortest? When is the last time that you got it cut? It’s currently the longest, it goes down past my butt. The shortest was when I had a “bob” cut. I got a trim last February. 11. Have you ever tried to count all of the hairs on your head before? Uh, no. 12. At what age did you start getting gray hairs, if you happen to have any? I swear it was the exact moment I turned 30. 13. Would you ever shave your head for any specific reason? Only if I had to for medical reasons. 14. What are some ways that you style your hair? Do you use any sorts of products in it? All I do is throw it up in a messy bun. I have all this hair and do absolutely nothing with it because I don’t have the motivation or energy to. It would be a lot easier to manage if I just cut it short again, but it took so long to get it this length and part of me still can’t help but think maybe one day I’ll get my shit together and I’ll want to have my long hair if it happens. Sigh. 15. What other words do you typically use in order to describe your head? (ie: brain, skull, noggin, noodle, think-boxer, etc) I usually just say “head”, but I’ve also said each of those except for “think-boxer.” 16. Do you ever experience brain freeze? If so, how long does it typically last for? I haven’t in quite a long time because I don’t drink cold drinks anymore.  Whenever it has happened, though, I don’t recall it lasting very long.  17. When is the last time that you felt light-headed? Have you ever passed out before? I’ve felt that way recently. I think I may have vertigo. :/ No, I’ve never passed out before. 18. Do you feel that you are more of a right-brained person or a left-brained person? I guess left-brained. Not good with numbers, though. 19. Do you feel that you are smart? In what ways? In what ways do you feel dumb, if at all? I feel I’m just very average. 20. Are you capable of doing a headstand? For How long? Nope. 21. When’s the last time you felt like banging your head against a wall? Why? I get in irritable, frustrated moods quite often. 22. Have you ever bit someone’s head off before? When was the last time? Haha my dumbass took this literally and I was like wtf kind of question is this??? As though it’s normal to go around biting people’s head off or something lmao. I get the expression now. Anyway, I don’t lash out or yell at people. I can get short and snippy, but I don’t yell. 23. When was the last time you buried your head in the sand? The past few years, really. 24. When a coin is being flipped, do you usually pick “heads” or  “tails”? Heads. 25. Have you ever fallen head over heels in love? I sure felt that way. 26. When was the last time you couldn’t make heads or tails of something? I can’t make sense of myself or some of the things I’ve been dealing with. 27. Have you ever had to drum something into someone’s head? Yeah. 28. Have you ever dressed from head to toe in only one color? Yeah.  29. Are you the type of person who likes to get a head start on things? I’m a major procrastinator, unfortunately. 30. Are you good at solving puzzles and riddles? Ehh, depends. 31. Are you capable of keeping your head above water? I’ve been drowning. 32. Have you ever given someone a head start in a race before? Has anyone ever give you a head start? Yes and yes. 33. Who was the last person that you weren’t able to get out of your head? It’s been awhile since I’ve experienced that.

34. When was the last time that someone went over your head? There’s stuff that goes over my head sometimes, at least initially and then I’m like, “Ohhh I got it.” 35. When was the last time you headed someone off? I don’t recall. 36. Have you ever given head before? How about received? No and no. 37. Has anyone ever told you that you “hit the nail right on the head”? Yes. 38. When was the last time that you felt like you were in over your head? I’ve felt that way for a long time. 39. Do you feel like your life is headed in the right direction? If not, what can you do to change all of that? No. I’ve felt really lost and unsure these past few years. 40. What was the last thing that you lost your head about? Upset and frustrated about stuff I was dealing with. 41. Do you wear any headbands or bandanas on your head? No. 42. What are your favorite types of hats to wear, if any? Beanies or baseball style caps. 43. Has anyone ever accused you of having a big head before? No. I’m not arrogant or cocky or anything of that sort. I’m certainly not full of myself. 44. Have you ever had to take a head count of people before? For what reason? Yeah, different reasons. 45. Have you ever been headbutted before? I’ve bumped heads (literally) and yeah it’s not fun. Ow. 46. Have you ever had head lice before? When I was a kid.  47. Do you think that it would be interesting be able to read the thoughts of others? Yeah, sometimes. I’d want the ability to be able to turn it on and off, though. 48. Do you ever act on impulse, without thinking? How often? I’m more hesitant and think about stuff first. 49. When was the last time that you experienced a head cold? It’s been a long time. 50. Who is the head of your household? My parents? 51. Have you ever gone down a slide or a flight of stairs head first before? No. 52. Can you be pig-headed or bull-headed at times? I am very stubborn. 53. Do you have an attached or flexible showerhead? I do. 54. Do you often wake up with a bad case of bed head? It’s not too bad. 55. Are you capable of giving answers off the top of your head? I’m the worst. I know I’d absolutely freeze up if I were ever on a game show. I’d suddenly forget everything I ever knew. I’m not good with being put on the spot. 56. When was the last time you experienced a head rush of some sort? I’m not sure. 57. Do you own any bobbleheads? Of who? Yeah, a Chewbacca one. 58. Are you the type of person who plays head games? No. Ugh, I can’t stand that. I’ve known people who do that. 59. Are you an emotional headcase? Yes. 60. When was the last time you laughed your head off? It’s been a long time since I’ve had a really good laugh like that. 61. What was the last thing you had to try to wrap your head around? 2020 was pretty difficult. 62. Do you believe the saying that “two heads are better than one”? Yeah. It can certainly be helpful to have two people thinking and working together to come up with ideas and whatnot. 63. When was the last time you tried to keep your head down? Whenever I go out, I guess. I’m just like ew don’t look at me. 64. What was the last thing that you gave someone a heads up about? I don’t remember. 65. When was the last time you believed something but in reality, it was all just in your head? Hmm.  66. Who is the last person you butted heads with, and why? My dad. We’re a lot alike and we sometimes end up butting heads. 67. Have you ever been called a bonehead before? By who? I don’t think so. 68. Do you have a few screws loose up there in your head? Is there a light in the window but nobody’s home? It sure feels that way. 69. Do you make decisions more with your head or your heart? It depends, but my emotions definitely get the best of me a lot of the time. 70. What are some techniques that you use in order to clear your head? I’m definitely not the one to ask about that. I could use some tips. 71. Do you know anyone who’s a real hot head? Who? Yes. 72. Have you ever had a gun held t your head before, or felt that way? I’ve felt that way, but no I’ve never actually been held at gunpoint.  73. Have you ever had your head examined/scanned by a medical professional before? If so, what sorts of tests were done? No. 74. How often do you walk around with your head in the clouds? My mind does drift and wander a lot. 75. Is your head just filled with all sorts of useless knowledge? My mind is a jumbled mess. 76. Do you worry a lot or have anxiety at all? Yeppp. 77. Have you ever had suicidal thoughts before? Have you ever acted on them before? Yes, but no I’ve never acted on them. 78. Have you eyes ever felt like they were going to pop out of your head? I don’t think so. 79. Who’s head would you like to see on a platter? Uhh, I’m good. 80. When was the last time a lightbulb went off in your head? What was the realization about? Hmm.  81. Is there anything you feel like you could do, standing on your head? No. 82. When’s the last time you put your head in the lion’s mouth? I don’t tend to deliberately place myself in dangerous situations. 83. Where are you headed off to now? I should probably finally drag myself outta bed now... it’s almost 5PM.

[ohsh1t2wksl8]

[bnrobertson1]

LET’S ALL GET BRAINWASHED!

Upon watching the appropriately hypnotic documentaries Holy Hell and The Vow, I find myself pondering a question I never thought I would as someone who has seen Rocky IV over thirty times: maybe brainwashing isn’t so bad?

“No,” you’re probably thinking, “you gorgeous idiot, brainwashing is bad. Because Nazis and Commies and George Orwell and government experiments and stuff.” And yes, there are certainly some very bad things that have (and will) come from coerced conviction. Giving one person or system total control of anything will inevitably lead to a flawed system as people themselves are inherently flawed, and those willing to coerce aren’t exactly known for their restraint or tact, especially when given virtually unlimited power over someone else. But between watching the aforementioned documentaries, binging Alex Garland’s superb Devs, and reading Huxley’s Brave New World for the first time*, I’m starting to think that the dangers of brainwashing have distorted humanity’s views, in the process obscuring its vast potential benefits for society at large.  

*No, I didn’t just take Psych 101 recently. Why do you ask?

So how could I be advocating for something with such potential risks? Well, for starters: it works! * Whether it’s stopping smoking or helping relieve PTSD, hypnosis has been proven to help people where other methods have failed. But that is merely scratching the surface. Consider the desperate subjects of Holy Hell and The Vow. They all have similar stories: for whatever reason, these people feel like they’re lost or lacking and are looking for something to achieve happiness, community, and/or a higher plane of consciousness. They’re seeking that thing that will make them whole- ie the journey literally everybody on earth takes at some juncture in one form or another. And- at least initially- they find it! You see, right on your TV, pure gravity-less joy illuminating their whole beings, the weight of doubt and limitation lifted. Sure, it’s doing things we may perceive as silly like singing songs about joy’s joy’s joy or stitching their cult leader a sequined Baja, but the happiness itself is nonetheless unmistakable, and leads to actual breakthroughs in cognitive ability. And with regards to the potential embarrassment, the only place where dignity and true joy are seen together are in the minds of some seriously stuffy and/or seriously shameless people.

*Used a lot of exclamation points in this piece! Apologies!

Alas, these rapturous feelings are often achieved through various shadowy systems, the masters of which are often self-fashioned messiahs who are just savvy (or manipulative) enough to tweak their followers’ brains to their liking. If this sounds similar to drugs or religion or anything else that causes a shift in consciousness, that’s because it exploits similar weaknesses in the brain to achieve the effect. Unsurprisingly, much like with drugs or religion, that initial thrill wears off, creating a desperation to recapture it. And this is where things usually go bad, leading to brandings or other bizarre/ illegal rituals that typically serve the insatiable ego of the cult leader*, as to be one of these people, you need charisma, and the other side of that coin is narcissism.  Which, indeed, makes it sound bad- at first. But compare it to human design.

*They themselves trying to recapture that initial high of being praised like a deity

Because what is more “brainwashing” than our own genetics? Are our emotions, the very real byproduct of those genetics, not the epitome of a “shadowy” system? Sure, we’ve studied them, but we seem to know virtually nothing about this beyond-complex system. And they’re nearly impossible to explore objectively because they’re nestled where we can’t sense them- specifically inside of our heads- all the time! They make us into contradictory vessels that constantly work against our own self-interest, slaves to neurological impulses and reactions we cannot control, because if we contradict them, they will punish us with anxiety, depression, or another litany of ways our own system is designed to biochemically weaponize itself against us. They push us to anchor ourselves with toxic relationships, ones in which the sporadic lapse of suffering feels like actual joy.

Sure, our cursory knowledge of this can lead to a lot of conscious-altering fun in the short run (booze, VR, one-night stands), but it’s akin to watching a robot bang itself in the head with a robot hammer in hopes of a brief kaleidoscopic wave* appearing on its robot LCD display. We get a euphoric rush when we do things that destroy our bodies and pangs of regret when we do what’s actually in our best interests. Our intellect is prisoner to our emotions, a never-ending strife that tears us apart. We use our immense brainpower to obsess over utter horseshit** as opposed to unlocking its immeasurable potential for something that would benefit both us and society as a whole.

*I assume this is like a bong hit for robots.

**Welcome to my blog!

It needn’t be this way. There are practices and systems- and yes, some would call them “brainwashing”- that fight these self-destructive, doubt-ridden processes directly, rewiring our reward system to let us feel great while actually using the entirety of our capabilities to achieve something more than what makes us feel good for a few fleeting moments. What if we could escape the scarcity-based laws of diminishing returns by programming our brains to experience things with such purity that every time we do something feels like the first time, thus transcending our brain’s magnetism to stimuli that inevitably make things less special the more you do them? But, as has been seen, these systems have their own problems*.

*Most notably, making Hall of Fame baseball players want to kill the Queen of England.

Take the big one people associate with brainwashing: the forfeiture of personal freedom- or its very root, free will. And it’s true, by giving your brain over to something, at some level you lose control of it. But doesn’t that happen anyway? And for that matter, what about free will? I’m not suggesting it doesn’t actually exist*, but as humans there are a very finite amount of likely responses one can have to a situation. It maybe a lot, but it’s finite. Sure, you can react to something so unexpectedly as to appear random, arguably the most “free” thing there is- like when someone punches you in the face you could decide to call Pizza Hut or when you hear REO Speedwagon you can lick the sidewalk**, but is this seemingly “endless” range of options actually freedom? Also, even in modern America, where “freedom” is in our birth certificate multiple times, we’re not actually free to, for instance, say whatever we want to say. This has been demonstrated ad nauseam over the last few decades with the rise of cancel culture***. “But wait,” you interject smugly****, “we have freedom of speech, not freedom of consequence.” Excellent point. But couldn’t someone technically- as in physically- pass out flyers saying “Pol Pot is a pussy” in mid-century Cambodia? Or yell anything they wanted in St. Peter’s Square during Stalin’s reign?  There were no mandatory mouth shackles I’m aware of? Is that also freedom of speech? Sure, the consequences of those actions would be far more dire- life instead of livelihood- but they’re nonetheless consequences, restricting people in their potential actions.   

*Although I seriously doubt it does

**This actually makes total sense.

***I’m not saying actions shouldn’t have consequences, or that the cancel culture is a bad thing necessarily. But it absolutely is a form of censorship- ie, a repression of our natural freedoms. (Don’t cancel me!)

****You smug, cancelling fuck!

But let’s posit we are free. While we we still would have a limited range of choices, when aggregated, they lead to a world of (virtual- but not actual) infinite possibility, but who really takes advantage of that? Isn’t everybody so wrapped up in the battle between thought and feeling that potential is more of a cruel, imprisoning tease than something actually achievable?* Due to this, we’re all pretty much stuck in our lanes no matter what, programmed to do what we’ll do. That “crazy” dude you knew in college will fall into his pattern soon enough. You may not perceive it as a pattern, but it is. So, while freedom is something that makes us feel awesome saying**, in reality it’s so limited as to not really exist. Every “free” adult I know either works 40+ hours a week or is beholden to some other sort of mechanism that could be taken away in an instant.  

*To paraphrase Creepy Keith from The Vow: “Hell is on your last day of earth meeting the person you could have become.”

**And the best George Michael song

But what about “Truth”? Well, isn’t objectivity in itself kind of “brainwashing?” For example, color doesn’t actually exist- it’s just how human’s perceive different wavelengths of light. Or take the fact that eye-witness accounts are typically untrustworthy because of the brain’s shortcomings. Doesn’t the theory of relativity prove that truth is inherently, well, relative? And it applies more to than just personal experience- in a societal sense, what more is morality than a sort of temporal societal brainwashing? Or a system of right and wrong based in relativity? You may feel bad when you sleep around on your wife, or steal a Pinto, but really, those are just things society has essentially brainwashed you to believe are bad. And those brainwashers are doing it because it serves their best interests for you to create more consumers and not steal their shit. In 200 years, when the only occupation is “Water Thief,” the people who survive will be those who get a rush of Dopamine when they swipe a bottle of Fuji from the weak-ass babies.

I could go on.

And will!

Technology both complicates the topic of brainwashing… and makes it more relevant. Netflix’s The Social Dilemma is a pretty bad use of 90 minutes but not because it isn’t timely*. The film explores how reliability on all things tech and the dawn of personalized digital echo chambers have made us victims to our own biologically-wired confirmation bias. Thus, technology is using your own biological (and I stress this again, because brainwashing plays on the weakness of the brain) impulses to reward “social” behavior in its attempt for popularity, something the brain associates with procreation.

*The movie sucks because 1/3 or so of it is a weird parallel story that needlessly dramatizes the points the film is discussing. Perhaps it makes it more digestible for some, but I felt it forced and infantilizing. Plus, it stars Pete from Mad Men (in three roles!) and the shit-head son from Righteous Gemstones which kind of takes you out of the appropriate headspace for watching what otherwise could be titled “WE’RE FUCKED!: THE FILM”

If you’re curious why the separation in this country has gone from “divide” to “chasm,” it’s because Big Tech has introduced systems into our daily lives that prey on our neurological weaknesses. Our brain is defensive of our beliefs as in many ways they are the bedrock of our identity. THIS IS A DESIGN FLAW OF OUR BRAINS THAT TECH COMPANIES EXPLOIT FOR ALL THE MONIES. And it’s an insidious one at that, as it’s impossible to see from a personal perspective, so it (ironically) propagates in the soul like ink pellets in a fishbowl in a tech ad. We all feel like we’re right and everybody else that disagrees is a Bloomin' Onion of an idiot. What a fun set-up. 

Thanks to the integration of social media’s tentacles into our beings, when something comes up that challenges these beliefs, we’d rather point to another source that suggests we’re in fact just fine, thanks, instead of having to face the fact that we could be wrong and need to change if we want our sense of sanity or morality or whatever to remain intact. It’s far intellectually easier and self-defensively strategic to just find another source that tells us “Hey, that thing that’s making you question yourself? Well, it's just lying to you because of some clandestine, nefarious system” as opposed to bucking up, biting our lip, and actually self-reflecting with the hope of change. Don’t get me wrong: being wrong sucks all sorts of choad! But the grace in humanity is in its capacity to improve*. To see its wrongs, to make amends, to apologize, to forgive, to express actual humility. Sure, there is something to be said for sticking to your guns, but the reality is one man’s discipline is another’s stubbornness- and the cold, hard truth is machines are better at both of those things by a wide margin. By not embracing change’s inevitability, we all nurture a system that temporarily fluffs our ego with pride, but is incendiary to the fabric of society as a whole.    

*A close second: The Baconator

Unsurprisingly, “brainwashing” as a whole is demonized by those doing it now, entities who believe the world will be optimized when there are 10-20 companies who control every facet of life. One thing they control: a lot of the media we consume. In the 21st century, the most recognized source of brainwashing’s ill-directed damnation is probably The Matrix. In what is its most iconic* scene, protagonist Neo must choose between the red pill (representing “the hard truth that frees”) and blue pill (signifying “blissful ignorance”). Neo, of course, picks the red pill which was good for the plot of a sci-fi movie but a pretty dumb selection if you really think about it.

*A word now defined as “Most Meme’d”

When I saw the film for the first time twenty years ago, of course I would have argued for taking the red pill. I probably would even said “freedom” and “truth” multiple times while emphatically explaining my 1000% correct decision to the poor soul who offered the question, Camel Light smoke billowing out of my ear holes*. But that’s because when you’re a teenager, especially an American one, you are taught to lionize the pseudo-rebellious, who in reality are just narcissists with savior-complexes. 

*Is the “ear” the hole? Or the fleshy part? I digress…

But what if we flipped this- to value happiness over so-called freedom? This is what makes Brave New World so believable- that if humanity were somehow trained to make this fundamental intellectual shift they’d be... well, happier. This is a premise I agree with:  I’d take happiness over freedom any day of the week. If some fundamental change in thought could make digging ditches feel like I was writing the Declaration of Independence or composing Beethoven’s 5th or hugging my 12th child, I absolutely would sign up. You could argue this is selfish, but I could argue the opposite as well*.  

*Fret not, I won’t

Because the human brain is engineered to procreate, it’s meant to be social. And defensive. This makes its rewards system- the things that make us just feel good- very vulnerable to the same things that social bonds are- such as hysteria and blind hatred and a lack of empathy. The faults of Groupthink often masquerade as “freedom.” And that limits us in so many ways. One could argue that this isn’t a flaw at all, it is actually the best thing, as it has led to pretty much all human achievement up to and including love, the apex of a humanity where people banging-it-out is pretty much the point of the species. But what if there was a way to transcend biological (and consequently societal) impulse? A way to reprogram society- or its individual members so simply making more of ourselves isn’t the only point? What would that new goal be? It just seems short-sighted for humanity’s only goal to be “make more humans”- perhaps a better mission would be to make all currently living humans happier as a whole? That seems it could kill two birds with one stone*, as those who don’t have to constantly fight for survival are more likely to reproduce. Instead, we’re caught at this wretched intersection of evolutionally biology and big tech, where we have the tools to evolve the human race by evolving its mindset, but that would require a leap of faith most won’t take, because we hang onto a lot of the systems that got us this far- competitiveness, fierce protectiveness of our own genetic code- even though they simply don’t work as well in a more technologically-dominated society (see: late stage capitalism). Unless we want to live in a world where there are ~400 happy people and just enough people around to run the machines that feed them and take them diamond-tasting or hunter-hunting or whatever billionaires do. It would be a utopia- for those 400 people. But for a more inclusive solution, we may need to rewire our reward system- and this is where brainwashing could come in.  

*Or perhaps that should be our new goal- kill all the birds!

So, Big Tech, if you’re out there reading*, I’m 100% cool with you breaking out the big scrubbing brush, digital shampoo/ conditioner, and giving my nervous center a big ole’ scrub. But I have some requests.  

*A funny thing: Not even Big Tech, which reads all data on the internet, will be reading this. Ha. Ha.

I request you make exercise feel like ecstasy, kindness to feel orgasmic, failure to feel fine (yet still be edifying), disappointment to feel like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups taste, and anger to last as briefly as a blink. For the shortcomings of others to inspire, not irritate. To recognize the humble as though they were rock stars. I want the experience of forgiveness and compassion to be akin to listening to Sticky Fingers for the first time and selfishness like that bit of fraternity hazing where we had to listen to “I’m a Little Tea Pot” on repeat for 6 consecutive hours. But I want my system to be flexible with the times, to realize something good now could be bad a century from now. So don’t make it tied to humans as they themselves are flawed. Make it regulated by emotionless things that have absolutely no scratch in the game- like hyper-intelligent machines. And holy fuck I just described The Matrix. Well, in that case, just hook me up with that blue pill.

[yoolee]

I love character analysis posts and you always give so much detail and thought about these precious lords. Would you be able to do an analysis on Kenshin? His main story is a bit confusing at points but we know he's depressed either because of the pressure of being labeled the God of War or over feeling guilty over Kagetsugu's sister for some unknown reason. I just wondered what your thoughts were on this?

Ahaahaa a) thank you, both for the ask, and for saying so! and b) I am so sorry. I AM SO SORRY.

Before I do anything lemme link you to THISbecause it’s one of my favorite theories even if we know it’s not canon.

NOW. It’s been awhile since I’ve read his route and he doesn’thave as much content as some of the other lords so my grasp here is LESS basedon little details the story gives us and more on OVERALL IMPRESSIONS and weknow that personal experience colors our impressions significantly, so, yes, yourmileage may vary.

TOO LONG, DON’T WANNA READ VERSION: I think Kenshin’s treasury is a metaphor for his dissonant worldperception – one where he fundamentally viewsneeds  (ie, hunger of these 400 people he has to seefed and the loneliness of a single old man) as equal in value, and the fact heknows other people don’t see it that way, the constant need to prioritizethings he perceives as equal value (because he is a leader and he has to and he knows/accepts this) drives his sense of guilt, as does hisperception of beauty (which, in yoolee’s head, extends to violence) which allin turn fuels his melancholy.

When I think of Kenshin I think: BEAUTY, GUILT, & DYSPHORIA/DISSONANCEIN WORLD PERCEPTION.

Imma work backwards and start with that last one.

Have you ever witnessed or experienced something and had amoment of dissonance where like, literally no one else in the room (in theclass, on the street, etc) realizes the significance of something? Going backto lee-experience here – junior year of high school (age ~16/17), we wereassigned to read The Things They Carried, and I started reading it over lunch.I had never skipped class in my lifebut I was late to my next period because I ended up vomiting in the girl’sroom. I was so shook up. There was this idea of truth that just, wholly and entirely rocked my worldview, and youadd in the idea of war, and what it does to people, and the fact this was validand generally accepted to be autobiographical depiction of it and just—it messedme up. And there was the rest of the class, going on about basketball and Spanishlines and rehearsal schedules and I was like WHY DOES NO ONE ELSE GET THIS. Andthen you wonder—did I interpret it wrong? Is this just me?

I think Kenshin’s entireperception of the world around him is in constant dissonance with everyone around him, and I think he haslong, LONG given up on trying to explain it, because if he is the only one thatsees something, it’s probably him that’s broken and not everyone else, and ifit hurts him so much why would he tryand explain it to someone else when they aren’t hurting now? He’s not going todo that.

(I think to a great extent he would still have this inmodern times, but there would be other outlets and willingness to accept and beopen to it, and probably overall more people like that, and less decisionmaking that would cause this to cause pain, as it does, for reasons BELOW)

SO.

WHAT DOES THAT PERCEPTION LOOK LIKE.

I think, specifically, it’s the perception of value of things where Kenshin radicallydiffers from…like, everyone. It isn’t necessarily that his view is any morepoetic or any less pragmatic than,for example, Kanetsugu – in fact, I think Kenshin sees the world much more honestly than most people. Ithink the world he sees is very real, toa point of being too real. I don’tthink Kenshin can walk away from something and put it out of his mind.

Like, imagine a restaurant. And shuffling carefully, slowly—becausemoving is hard and it hurts—to a corner table, all by himself, is an old man.And there’s no one there to eat with him, and there’s no one waiting at home,and he eats in silence, except for the brief interactions with the harriedwaiter—but his face lights up at even those, until the waiter drops off thecheck, and the man counts out his change, leaves it on the table, and, withoutanyone to say goodbye as he goes, leaves.

For some people, witnessing loneliness is a sting, and thenthey go back to their life. You may not fully register it.

I don’t think Kenshin is capable of going back to his life.I think that stays with him. I think that ishis life. I think he sees the child trip and skin their knee with the same vividness, clarity of detail, and gravity, as he sees the arc of his own sword in war. I think he sees the wife of the innkeeper’s eyes dart to the till in concern with the same perception he sees one of his retainers grimace after a sip of tea. I think he can’t not.

I think the hurt of lonelinessis weighted equally with the hurt of, for example, hunger to him – again going back to how he values things. I don’tthink he is wired to prioritize one over the other, to notice one thing more than another. As a leader, he is forcedto, and he is capable, because heunderstands why others would do that, but it doesn’t hurt his heart any less tosay, I can’t help these 4 people because I only have enough resources for these100 ahead of them.

And he can’t drop it and move in. He can’t file it away somewhere. So it just pilesand piles up, and he does everything he can to make sure no one else has tofeel that weight.

I also think he has convinced himself no one else willunderstand it – nor does he necessarily want them to, because it hurts right? But the fact he viewshimself as such means I think he very, very much doubts himself as a leader. Ithink, honestly, he sees his empathy as making him weak – in that era, wouldn’tyou be told as much?

THAT LEADS US TO GUILT

As a leader you have to make those decisions A LOT.

You have to leave people behind. You have to tell people towait. You don’t have enough time to stop and have dinner with an old man. Justas Kenshin is not capable of ignoring the 4 people he can’t help, nor is he capableof slighting any one of the 100 before them in their favor. To someone whovalues so many things as equal, forced prioritization has to be agony.

BASICALLY, I think his treasury is one giant metaphor forhis role in leadership – fundamentally unable to sacrifice even a torn littleleaf in favor of an elegant swathe of embroidered fabric, nor able to toss outthe fabric in favor of the leaf. But as a clan leader, he has to. And so heretreats to his treasury where he can lament the awfulness of choosing and notbe taken seriously (because being taken seriously would cause someone else tofeel pain, and he would not consciously share that burden).

I DO think he feels particularly haunted by what happened toTsugutsugu’s sister (and I think, perhaps, he valued Tsugutsugu’s sister more,and that was one of the few times in his life he has ever broken hisperception, and of course, it ended HORRIBLY so why would he try it again) butI think he is haunted by much, much more, all the time. Every interaction ofloneliness he has seen, every shadow in someone’s eyes, every dead soldier withtheir hand stiff around a loved one’s momento, every grave marker for a childwho didn’t have enough to eat.

Some leaders are capable of saying “I saved everyone Icould,” but I don’t think Kenshin is wiredto be able to make peace with that. And he knows that, and just keeps doinghis best, and his best will never, ever be enough to save everyone and he also knows that – so he is sortof a self-aware tragedy and hence we get his sweet fluttery humor, I legit thinkit is some straight up gallows humor. This is the other reason why I think hesees himself as a poor leader.

Deep down I think he knows he is not doing badly but surely someone else could dobetter, and they could do so without all this emotion clouding their judgmentetc and so forth.

AND FINALLY BEAUTY

Kenshin finds beauty everywhere. In part, I think, because he looks for it but also just because of his noticing of all the things, and as with needs, all beauty is equal.

One of my favorite, absolutely favorite, things about Kenshinis how het gets when he drinks sake, and when he goes to war.

(oh look, over there are the rails, and here is lee, far,far off of them you’ve been warned).

Violence can be horriblybeautiful. Now before you shudder and berate me for applying poeticplatitudes to something awful, lemme explain. I danced ballet for 18 years,some of them professionally. Ballet is beautiful.

You know what uses the exact same muscle groups and shapesas ballet?

Martial arts.

Like, literally, twisting out of an arm bar, arching yourback, sweeping your foot, throwing—mix it with the science of gravity and thereis a beautiful fluidity to it. Andthere is an amazing, raw humanity to indulging in the thoughtless passion ofit. Right up until someone’s arm bone meets someone’s knee and it snaps, and thenit’s as far from beautiful as it gets—that’s as insane of a juxtaposition as itgets, in seconds. Total synchronicity,and then total destruction.

Those are both realitiesfor Kenshin. I think he lives them both constantly, especially in battle. I do think he probably finds violencebeautiful even if he abhors that fact about himself. I believe part of thereason he is so good at it is because he watchesit with total fascination for the beauty inherent to it. I also think he wants to despise it but rather thanactually hating it and being stuck in hate, he’s actually stuck in a feeling-guilty-about-NOT-despising-it-as-much-as-he-shouldloop when he’s sober.

I think he can let go of the guilt when he’s drunk andindulge his selfishness. I think the ONE thing Kenshin does not view asvaluable is himself and his own wants (but yoolee, I hear you protesting, doesn’the just do whatever he wants and cause his poor retainers grief—YES but, it’snot coming from a place of self-value, it’s coming from his perception of thevalue of whatever it was he was doing) and I think he’s able to indulge a little bit when he’s drunk.  Or like, if nothing else, it dulls the guilt (at least until he’s sober, and he gets to add whatever he did while drunk to his list)

SO YEAH.

I definitely read him as someone who is very, very ground down by his own perception of the world, doing his best to…do his best, despite it. 

And I think the MC bridges his worldview with the worldview of his retainers, and that’s one of the reasons he loves her so much. She’s sort of in between the two extremes. And it scares him, because he does value her over other things and last time that happened it ended BADLY, but it’s also a relief, probably, to have one thing he CAN treasure more than other things, because it quiets the noise–instead of thinking about a thousand things, he can think of her, and just her.

She’s our God of War’s peace!

[miragevoyage]

talk about shiro cass do u want to suck his toes

y do u lov shiroi heard u wanted an ask about shirowhat do u like most abt shiro

venus , ,, ,,, 

before i get into it, i hated how he’s so .... 2d. it shows him only being a leader and that’s like always. rarely do we get scenes like the bad sound effects scene and the squishy asteroid fight scene. instead he’s a pillar for his team, he can’t show weaknesses of any sort. allura calls him a ‘born leader’ and that’s cool and all but where are my scenes with him bonding with his team??? does lance get to know shiro better than just being his hero??? what about pidge? she said that he was a legend in the holt household. hunk too he said that he got his piloting skills (mostly) from shiro and all that he’s done. keith too!!! it’s been implied they have a brotherly relationship and how shiro absolutely changed keiths life. where’s that?! the paladins are heavily influenced by him and they don’t even know it!!! SO

INHALES DEEPLY

shiro is more than a 2d character!!!! he cares about his team and he cares about the universe!! he’s so considerate and changes his plans to better suit his teams plans ie when pidge wanted to check the prisoners with or without shiro. he trusted keith to do it himself--- he knows keith better than anyone else so he knows he’s more than capable to protect himself. patience yields focus. i bet you while he was teaching at the garrison that he was so considerate of his students disabilities and even helped them when it came to tips and tricks to piloting or maybe just the math equation that they were stuck on. shiro was probably also one of those teachers that the students trusted even with personal issues. he was more than a teacher, he was someone his students admired and trusted!!!!!!

shiro is a mentally ill pilot who’s trying his HARDEST to help his team even if it means pushing his ptsd to the side. even if it means putting his well being on hold if keith wanted to talk after training or maybe some help pidge needed and it was a shiro specific thing. i don’t personally have ptsd, but i have done my research and i don’t want to speak in the place of those that have this disorder. he struggles with nightmares, he feels himself being back on the galra ship being forced to entertain those higher up. i headcanon that he also has depression, but of course he doesnt show it because again he has to be a pillar for his team --- esp when he’s not there. i could go on to talk about his ptsd, but i don’t want to tread where i’m not allowed so i’ll leave it alone. 

but otherwise?? HE’S MORE THAN HIS DASHING GOOD LOOKS, his muscles and his experience with the galra including his arm. he’s more than the producers make him out to be and thats a seller for merchandise (lauren did say they brought him back originally was because they needed toys to sell who cares about shiro, am i right?) he’s a brother, a friend, a leader. someone that his team trusts wholeheartedly. he treats his team with care and patience more than what that shitty clone shiro is. i would DIE for shiro and everything he stands for, including being a paladin of voltron, something that symbolizes peace. he is peace even though he doesn’t find peace within his body. 

he’s willing to give up his life for those he doesn’t know and damn it if that’s not something to admire then idk what is. i literally cried thinking about shiro yesterday and what happened if he actually DID die like .. ... that thought wont register and refuses because he’s still well and it actually freaks me out where shiro could be at this moment  ,,, is he safe? i hope so AAAAAAA im getting emotional. 

i could go on and on about shiro but damn i literally love him SO much and i have so many headcanons to share but this would be never ending so 

tl;dr yes venus i would suck his toes 

[newhologram]

For me, it’s not about being “better” or “higher” than someone by being kind and patient with them, it’s about realizing that I would want that same treatment if I were ignorant about something. About knowing how I would feel to be yelled at if I had a “problematic” misconception about something. The world is very big and we are very small and very limited. There is a lot all of us don’t know, even you who think you are so well-informed and perfectly #unproblematic. 

Today, and many many times in my life now, someone said in response to learning that I’m narcoleptic, “you have NARCOLEPSY?! SO YOU’LL JUST *MOTION LIKE FALLING OVER* FALL ASLEEP???” 

Internally, I was pulling my hair out. It’s frustrating. I’m sick of it. It makes me want to rant. 

But my feelings are not a permission slip to take out that frustration on someone who literally does not know better, whether or not they were trying to be an asshole. Doesn’t mean I get to be an asshole. 

So as I try to do, I just sort of laughed and said, “no, actually that’s a huge misconception—narcolepsy is not just some random disorder where you fall asleep for no reason. Some narcoleptics have that symptom but not all, and we are so, so tired because our brains are missing what they need to allow us to get deep, restorative sleep. Most narcoleptics struggle with insomnia, and some like me have frequent waking hallucinations as well as episodes of sleep paralysis with very vivid and strong hallucinations. Depression also comes with it both from the brain itself and how difficult the illness is to live with. We feel as though we’ve been awake for 3 days straight all the time, no matter how much we actually sleep.” 

She was blown away! She had no idea! 

I taught someone instead of yelling and looking like an asshole and wasting an opportunity just for a moment of anger release. That’s why I got squishies for that shit lol. 

I don’t mean that you cannot be firm when you need to (believe you me, like when Latinas, especially older women, tell me that because I’m mixed, I’m not Latina at all! wtf??) but I just feel like... So much of this assholery is completely unnecessary and then they try to justify it with “but I was mad and I have feelings about xyz bad thing I experience due to abc”.

I get it, man. I don’t need to do my whole checklist here to tell you that I get it. Shit is so hard and it makes it easier to be mad at SOMEONE instead of recognizing things on a bigger scale like, “why the fuck does everyone think narcolepsy is just *falling asleep randomly* and not, you know, an actual illness that causes a lot of suffering and hardship just on its own??”

So then, I talk about it, I make videos about it, I take breaks when I’m too tired to talk about it. I’ve had a lot of anger about it, especially when I was first diagnosed. I’ve had people blow the fuck up at me for commenting on their baby animal sleeping pics or random stranger sleeping in public pics because they fucking tag it as #Lol #narcolepsy and I’m like... dude, it’s an illness. It’s not someone just sleeping in a funny or cute way. It’s not #lol at all. I’ve had people tell me I’m lucky and have a gift since I can get stimulants from doctors, which I don’t want or use anyway (they made me worse why the hell did they give a severe insomniac narcoleptic with anxiety who sleeps like 10 mins at a time STIMULANTS I NEED LESS STIMULI PLEASE). 

Point is, with my multiple illnesses/disabilities, I’ve had people say so much fucking dumb shit to me, including everyone’s favorite, “have you tried yoga?” 

Yes. Almost every day, if I can. I love it, actually. I’ve been doing it casually for 10 years. I went to an Ayurvedic healing center for 10 days when I was really sick a few years ago when this got bad. I meditate. I journal. I do just about everything possible except upping my pain medication dose because I’m scared of going down that road. 

And I’m still in so pain and I’m angry 90% of the day because the pain just immediately consumes my body. 

But. I still try my best to be patient with people. As I would want them to be with me. I’m not perfect and I mess up still. But I’ve found it’s so worth trying, instead of just using it as an excuse to make #neurotypicalkaren memes that don’t actually... help the situation? Honestly that’s why I can’t groove with so much of tumblr’s anti-recovery stuff, they prioritize being angry and making mean memes about an issue over actually, like, doing something about it. I’m not saying you can’t vent and must always choose activism (ACTIVE-ISM, actively doing something) but damn, like... All I see is disabled people yelling at other disabled people lmao. And even some white knight actually neurotypical people trying to “protect” me from myself by crusading against menhera fashion (oh, please!).

I’m so mad about no one understanding let alone ever hearing about the illnesses that are making me hold on through high tides. And I mean some high tides. I wanna change that. Even in little ways here and there, if I can. Because education doesn’t just help “neurotypicals” to understand, it helps people who thought they were NT get diagnosed and get help. I mean, I lived with sleep parlaysis and hallucinations from age 12 on but no on ever took me seriously and I also thought maybe I was being visited by demons and didn’t want people to think I was crazier than they already did. If I had known, or if my doctors had known that it sounded off...

If the signs and symptoms of narcolepsy and all my other things were more widely understood (ie, not just “that disease where you fall asleep randomly LOL!!!”) I could’ve been diagnosed at an earlier age. If we had known, there would’ve been plenty to do to make sure I don’t end up a pharmaceutical cash cow by adulthood. 

*x-files theme* medicine in the US is real fishy sometimes

[qyriad]

Ok, Let���s Talk About 13 Reasons Why

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding 13 Reasons Why, I’m here to give my two cents because I feel the people praising it and those condemning it are both missing a lot. I’m going to try to fill in the gaps...which considering the overwhelming amount of controversy means I’m going to be advocating it a lot. 

Having said that, I’m going to start with what the people who are praising it are missing. Before that though, let me add to my credibility a bit; a lot of those who condemn the show say that those who praise the show obviously don’t have any experience with mental health. That may very well be true. I, however, am personally depressed. I have self-harmed. I’m passively suicidal. I have anxiety too (and serious insomnia but that’s slightly off topic). I am an asexual transgender lesbian. I have a right to talk about mental health. *Ahem*, let’s begin. 

13 Reasons Why is Not Some Force For Mental Health

I’m actually pretty surprised that the first few articles that surfaced about 13 Reasons Why regarded it as such. From the first ten minutes it was clear to me that it wasn’t going to have any meaningful message on suicide. The premise is that a girl kills herself and sends tapes listing her reasons, essentially her suicide note(s), to all the people that she blames. The idea of that premise is pretty absurd, and to me it is already obviously glorifying suicide. This isn’t going to be clear to a lot of people who are dealing with mental health issues, but I would have hopped that the people writing this article maybe would have. 

There is no takeaway on mental health here, or no good one at least. No takeaway on suicide. This show doesn’t have anything good to say about either of those.

Showing the Actual Suicide is Indefensible

Holy shit I still can’t believe they actually did that. I can’t believe they actually thought it was a good idea to show the act of performing suicide. They literally decided it was a good idea to show suicidal people how to kill themselves. That is indefensible. I can’t even begin to explain how dangerous that is. That alone makes any ban against the show completely justified. 

“You Can’t Love Someone Back to Life” / “You Can Try”

I’m sorry...what? This is another demonstration of why I don’t think this show is supposed to be taken seriously as a force for mental health in general. Let’s be a tad bit real: love? It helps. A lot. Personally I don’t think I would be here writing this without the ones that love me and that I love. That being said. You cannot fucking say that love prevents suicide as a rule. That’s just bullshit. It’s almost embarrassing. Plenty of people have been loved and still killed themselves. Also this sends the message to loved ones of suicide victims it’s their fault. That’s dangerous to anyone with existing mental health problems as well!

“Self Harm is What You Do Instead of Killing Yourself”

*Groans*. Ok. First of all that line was almost unbearably cringey to hear. This is another thing I can’t believe they actually put in the script. And I guess to a certain strange extent they’re kinda sorta not really right? Like sure, I’d much rather someone self-harm than kill themself. But that line was basically saying “if you’re even thinking about suicide, cut yourself instead!” That is dangerous, but hey at least it’s less dangerous than suicide right? Oh wait they showed the actual suicide. God dammit. 

That was a lot shorter than it could have been because there is no shortage of criticism for 13 Reasons Why. Having said that let’s move on to what this show is good for.

Parents

This is a big one for me. There’s not nearly enough media that shows meh or bad parents and the effects of them. There’s plenty on stereotypically abusive parents, and plenty of media have meh or bad parents, but they gloss over them. 13 Reasons Why has some great moments where you just want to scream at the kids’ parents. Especially Clay’s. I’m going to cite when Clay comes home drunk here. They ask him if he’s drunk and he responds “I think so”. Presumably Clay has never done anything like that before. As the viewers, we know that he was forced to. Admittedly it’s pretty unreasonable to expect parents to come to that conclusion. However, without knowing what actually happened, it would have been pretty reasonable to assume that Clay made a huge mistake that he either does or will deeply regret. Instead Clay’s mother skips logical reasoning and goes straight to punishment: grounding and yelling. There is a lot wrong with that, and 13 Reason Why paints in a way that you feel Clay’s frustration toward his parents. Things like that are actually really important. Clay’s parents didn’t even ask for an explanation. His dad finally offers some sanity and stops his mother before she goes too crazy, but even he doesn’t try to figure out what actually happened. All sorts of parents are shown in this show, and while each representation isn’t perfect, it is much better than mainstream media is doing. 

I’d also like to take a small moment to also praise the show for depicting the counselor as a condescending asshole, because that really is how most counselors feel. 

Rape

Ok I’m going to cop out this one a little bit, because I have to. I have no experience with rape. As such I’m not fully qualified to speak on it, and if anyone would like to correct me in any way, please do so. That being said, I’m going to speak on what I think I can still talk about, and on what I’ve seen others who do have experience say. 

I’m very glad they depicted it the way they did. They didn’t display it as overtly violent other than the rape itself: ie they didn’t show someone beating the crap out of a women to the ground and brutally raping her. That’s the stereotypical representation, and it’s dangerous. It perpetuates the idea that rape has to be that way. No. Rape is nonconsensual sex. I’m sure you can find plenty of other Tumblr posts talking about that. 13 Reasons Why depicts it as just that, and that is great. Yes it’s hard to watch, it should be. It should also have way more trigger warnings definitely. But it does show what is probably one of the more common forms of rape, and it firmly takes a stand against it. Which brings me to my next point. 

How We Talk About Rape

Yes rape gets two sections. Hannah goes to the school counselor and starts to talk about how she was rapped. The counselor immediately assumes Hannah “made a decision with a boy she regrets”. Hannah actually calls him out on this which is pretty awesome. After that, she’s asked if someone forced themself on her, to which she replies yes. She’s then asked if she was drunk or otherwise under the influence. He asks if she said “stop” or explicitly told him “no”. Hannah’s frustration is obvious, Clay’s reaction to hearing about this is obvious; the show makes a clear and strong stance against victim blaming. Then he just tells Hannah to “move on”, which is what causes Hannah to finally give up. 13 Reasons Why shows how society blames rape victims and does nothing about it, and vehemently condemns it. That is extremely important.

Storytelling

In a perfect world, this would be an incredible show. If we didn’t have to worry about the messages it sends, I’d be praising it endlessly. The audio and visual direction is fantastic. The characters are well developed, and Hannah’s sense of humor is kind of perfect. The pacing is brilliant (especially considering they dragged this out from a book that takes place over the course of one night). This show is really good art. However, this is not a perfect world, and the messages sent by media are more important than ever every day. 

Conclusion

I hope that we can learn from 13 Reasons Why. In both ways. If you stripped cringey moments and the, again indefensible showing of the actual suicide, you’d just have the premise, and then we could just say “hey this show is built on a crazy premise, don’t take the premise seriously, but it’s pretty good”. But we can’t. So I don’t advise your average person, and especially not someone with mental health problems to watch this. I do recommend this to anyone who likes analyzing storytelling, and anyone creating storytelling, because then maybe we can start to see better depictions of parenting and its effects on kids. Maybe then we can start seeing media talk about rape the way it should be talked about. I’m certainly not saying we should ignore what’s wrong with the show. However, it does do a lot of things right too, and if we’re very very lucky, maybe other media can learn from those instead. 

[archive-dcgausscr]

Break down these two adorable idiots or u aint a true ho

well with my title as a true ho on the line, i guess i have no choice.

send me a ship and i’ll break them down:

how did they meet?

i feel like they ran into each other at the central perk and like immediately clicked. oh my god like chan was waiting for the gang to show up and he was reading the same thing tris was reading, and tris was just like aH I HAVE TO ASK HIM ABOUT IT. which is weird because he never does that, but he also never sees someone reading the same thing he is.

who developed romantic feelings first?

chandler! and he was all cute and anxious about it,  in a true chan fashion!! but it was mostly because he had no idea whether or not it would be well received, and it was cute? oh my god tristan was so endeared. honestly, tristan followed behind pretty quickly. i don’t think he expected to fall as hard for chandler as he did.

who is their biggest “shipper”?

phoebe!! oh my god, she called it before it happened, and i think out of anyone in the group she’s able to see how their energies sort of help sort the other out. chandler keeps tris grounded, and tris’ typically stoic nature sort of evens chan out; and they do all this without stifling the other and ahhhh it’s phoebe. phoebe ships them, and it definitely helps that she and tristan really click. aLSO ALL THE FLIRTING WITH HIM I LOVE PHOEBE AND TRISTAN’S FRIENDSHIP I WISH WE HAD A PHOEBE

when did they have their first kiss and under what circumstances?

it was after their third date and chan was sorta fumbling as he walked tristan to the door and he just went for it, and it was kind of rushed considering chandler was nervous af and booked it right after. but the next time they hung out they had like a PROPER kiss in which tristan actually got to reciprocate and it was sweet and ahhhhh

who confessed their feelings first?

chan, both times around. i mean in terms of saying he was attracted to tristan and in terms of saying it went deeper than that. but that’s mostly because tristan doesn’t usually talk about that sort of stuff. he’s more likely to show you how he feels than tell you. plus i feel like considering they were friends first the transition wasn’t really like WHOA HOLY SHIT I LOVE HIM it was just a slight upgrade (well not upgrade but whatever you wanna call it) from platonic love.

what was their first official date?

they went for coffee!!

how do they feel about double dates/group dates?

as long as it’s not with ross tristan is down!! i mean, tris spends so much time with his friends it couldn’t be that big of a deal? and tristan has so few people he really considers friends that he’s rarely the one setting up double dates.

what do they do in their down time?

the play video games and watch movies and tell bag jokes/puns and they lay around on the bed or on the couch all day and they eat a lot and tHEY JUST UGH IT’S CUTE THEIR DOWN TIME TOGETHER IS CUTE

what was the first meeting of parents as an official couple like?

ohh well first time chan met tristan’s family (sans his father) was thanksgiving, and they were all super excited to meet him, so that went really well. as for tris meeting chan’s parents? i feel like given the fact that his parents hate each other it was a lil awkward and tense but it had nothing to do with tristan, and separately tris found them to be vaguely pleasant people. at the same time i don’t think tris could really LIKE chandler’s parents considering all that weird childhood-related trauma chan suffers from. but still, he’s perfectly pleasant/civil.

what was their first fight over and how did they get past it?

THAT TIME CHANDLER MADE THAT REALLY INSENSITIVE COMMENT ABOUT TRISTAN BEING HOMELESS AS A TEENAGER BUT IT WAS WEIRD BECAUSE TRISTAN DOESN’T GET OUTWARDLY ANGRY HE GETS QUIET ANGRY SO IT DIDN’T FEEL LIKE A FIGHT, BUT IT DEFINITELY WAS. FORTUNATELY IT BLEW OVER QUICKLY ONCE TRIS SAID WHAT HE NEEDED TO SAY AND CHAN REALIZED HE WAS BEING AN ASS

which one is more easily made jealous?

i wanna say chan, in the sense that, for once tristan feels really secure in a relationship? like usually tristan wants to kill anyone who breathes in his s/o’s direction, but i guess with chan it’s less of a dON’T YOU STEAL HIM FROM ME and more of a LOL FUCK U HE’S MINE. so i think chan is more outwardly jealous at times, makes jokes and kinda mean sarcastic comments because he’s uncomfortable and all. maybe says something self deprecating?

what is their favorite thing to get to eat?

that’s a tough once because tristan just loves food. i mean, i know chan has a tendency to like food most people enjoyed in their chilldhood (ie, mac and cheese with cut up hot dogs, or grilled cheeses and chips) so they probably meet somewhere in the middle. like diner food? or like advanced mac and cheese~ bc manhattan has tons of mac and cheese spots let me tell you.

who’s the cuddly one? what’s their favorite cuddling position?

here’s the thing, i don’t think either start off super cuddly, but then once they start sleeping together (like literally sleeping, not sex) they wake up all tangled in each other and, once chan gets like used to it they both super cuddly? because tris is just MINE and chan’s just tHIS IS NICE. 

are they hand holders?

kind of? sometimes? i think they’re just usually touching each other in some way, like someone’s got their arm wrapped around the other’s shoulder or on their waist. like they seem like the time to absentmindedly touch the other

how long did they wait before sleeping together for the first time? what are the circumstances?

they waited quite a while before finally having penetrative sex. it was one of those things where, tristan knew he’d ultimately have the be the one bottoming and he was super uncomfortable about that, and in general the whole thing was pretty new for chan. so they slowly built their way up to penetrative sex, and by the time they got there there was so much trust ?? and it was just ?? it was great. i don’t think it was one of those things where they planned ahead of time like WE’RE GONNA HAVE SEX TONIGHT but rather a super heat of the moment decision, that neither regrets, that’s for sure.

who tops?

chandler. i’m sure one day that get to a place where they switch, but chandler for a while.

what’s the worse fight they’ve ever gotten into?

they don’t really fight, they have like small arguments? and those usually resolve themselves pretty quickly. they’re so prone to talking it out nothing really gets to fester and turn into a bad fight. so, they haven’t realy had a bad fight let alone one they could say was the WORST one.

who does the shopping and the cooking?

chan does the cooking, if there’s any cooking. i think shopping is pretty evenly split between the two, like tris will do the shopping no problem, but so will chan? and sometimes they’ll go together. it’s more about whoever can go get the groceries more easily. like when they live together tris will probably get them on his way home from work because he takes his car rather than the train

which one is more organized and prone to tidiness?

tristan i guess, in the sense that he doesn’t mind messes as long as they’re organized and contained. he gets really depressed when things get too messy. that whole your room reflects your mental state thing for him realy rings true. at the same time i don’t think chandler is especially messy, so this never really comes up and isn’t much of an issue.

who proposes?

chandler!! i dunno how, but i do know it was him, because proposing would’ve never crossed tristan’s mind. not in the way where he doesn’t want marriage, but he wouldn’t expect chandler to want to spend the rest of his life with him.

do they have joined bachelor/bachelorette parties or separate?

separate. tristan doesn’t wanna see ross, and i think what they’d really enjoy doing would end up being different? like tris would wanna go party with his friends and chan is a lot more mellow in that respect. no strippers for either of them though.

who is the best man/maid of honor? any other groomsmen or bridesmaids?

well it’s their wedding and they can do what they want so either ross and joey, or ross OR joey for chan, but tris would definitely choose his brother. i think ultimately a good bend of both their friends end up in the wedding party.

big ceremony or small?

small and nice.

do they have a honeymoon? if so, where?

y E S. i think they kind of float around western europe for a few. like it’s on the longer end of a honeymoon, like a couple weeks rather than one. (definitely had their wedding at the end of the year so they could blow all their PTO/sick days without having to suffer any real consequences.) start off in england maybe? and then head over to spain and work their way over

do they have any children? how many?

i want to say yes. and honestly, i think they could very easily have the four kids that chan wanted. tris loves kids, in a way he’s always wanted a big family, and i don’t see him having any qualms about having four kids. so i’m sticking with four. and they can have chan’s cat with a bell around his neck, but tris does kinda want a dog. soooo that’s something they’ll ultimately have to discuss.

[thebetasystem]

The Beta System Answers Some Questions

system ask meme...

a set of questions I either haven’t seen, can’t remember, or thought would be a bit of a novelty, cause there aren’t many of these. here we go!

——

1. is there anyone you consider the “host”? has there ever been one?

The core was the Host for a long time, and then they integrated with multiple others. Then for a short time it was Nova and Nico. Now the core integrated form is a co-host with Nico, and has a ‘blended name’. 

2. what was life like in the early days of realising you were more-than-one?

In the really early days we just thought we were role-playing. We’ve said this before, but the earliest we REMEMBER being a multiple/noticing dissociation was about 6/7 years ago. Then when we understood what dissociation WAS, we were in therapy and it was said to be a coping mechanism. 

It was scary. It was blurry. Headaches, emotions out of control. Spiraling depression, panic. But the alters were also helpful at times. There was just a lot. 

3. Describe the funniest thing you’ve seen happen between two alters.

One alter rickrolled Nova/Nico in the Inner World control room (we don’t know how to describe it.

There was a screen in the control room that usually had reminders on it and one day it suddenly just changed. To a rickroll. But lofi edition because they didn’t want to trigger and alter with a sudden noise. Quite an ordeal.

4. How many interpersonal bonds are there? Describe one (or a few!).

5. Who is the most protective?

Demon (Immortal, Protector, Persecutor)

6. Who is the most energetic?

Lill. She is two years old. She tries to cut our friend's shoelaces. Constantly.

7. Who holds the most anger? (We see you, and we love you)

Demon, probably. Amber (Solo), Eliora, and Nelson are very close, though.

8. Who needs the most support (and are they getting it)?

Probably all forms of Amber. Her character seems the most traumatised. Either her or Maria. 

Amber di Angelo is getting as much support as Nico is able to give, but...not what she needs. 

Maria is in no way getting the support she needs, and she never will. She doesn’t speak. Nobody even knows she exists. 

9. Describe what happened when an unusual fronter had a day in the limelight.

They got the police called on us.

The dungeon somehow didnt work and they were let out. The police were called. It was a horrible day.

10. If you are attending therapy, is it helping (eg. do you feel more grounded in the present? is there less amnesia, if any? is there more cooperation, communication, and sharing of tasks)?

N o p e 

Our therapist didn’t believe in dissociation and didn’t help us with it. 

We met a new therapist though and we’re starting with her so high hopes.

11. Who is prone to backseat driving, ie. directing the fronter without fronting themselves?

LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE ALTER WHO IS IN THE CONTROL ROOM

It’s easier to list those who don’t. 

Ryo, Lilli, Finn, Adaleyza (Fae) and Wes

12. Do you have any introjects (fictives/factives)? How are they similar to their source? How do they differ?

I’m not comfortable putting that information out about non-consenting alters. 

13. Describe the most drastic change a fictive has gone through since their first appearance.

They went from being a small, happy, cis female to a depressed, self-harming, OCD, darkgender who went through all kinds of abuse. Not to mention she’s not straight like dark though they were.

Went from curly blonde hair to black, red and purple. Style has changed. They’re polyfragmented. 

14. Does anyone have any special interests?

Yes. 

Music for most of them (one of them is actually pitch-perfect)

Graphic design

Writing

Psychology

15. Describe some of the kids!

Jade says that we shouldn’t post about our littles on the internet. We’re not comfortable with that question. 

16. Who is the most responsible and/or good at keeping track of and tackling daily tasks?

Hope, by far. She was formed to take care of certain children, and she does so well. She tracks eating, sleeping, and all physical things for everyone. Jade takes care of tracking our emotional states quite well. 

17. Who isn’t good at keeping track of the time and tasks to do?

Nico

Amber (in any form)

Ellana 

18. Elegant, suave, refined. Who did I just describe? 

Adaleyza Fawn (Fae)

19. Peaceful, brotherly, patient. Who did I just describe?

Will Solace or Percy

20. Angry, spitfire, vicious. Who did I just describe?

Demon or Nelson

21. Dejected, passive, tired. Who did I just describe?

Nico, Eliora and Amber

22. Free-spirited, active, protective. Who did I just describe?

Reyna

23. Describe another alter with three adjectives.

Traumatised, quiet, sweet- Ryo

24. Does anyone feel shame about their past? (as this is a symptom of trauma you don’t have to go into detail, or at all)

Yes. Most of us. All of us, really. Either because of trauma, or because of our switching. 

25. Who works together best to complete daily tasks? Is anyone good at washing up, but really bad at vacuuming?

We actually have pairs who work well together. Almost everyone in the System does chores, and in our case, we have a list of who works well and who doesn’t.

Annabeth and Ryo are the best at completing tasks. Add Percy and Will (Nico too)  to the mix and you’ve got a great combo

26. Who has the most issues completing tasks?

Amber, Ellana, the trauma-stuck alters or any of the kids.

27. Who, if anyone, creates memory blackouts?

Everyone. Literally everyone 

28. Who can’t keep their thoughts private to save their life?

Percy 

29. Are there any inseparable pairs/groups? Alternatively, what are the social groups like?

We have about 50 alters, so we’re like an entire community. We have besties, people who can;t stand eachother, all of that.

Finn and Ellana are inseparable. 

Nico and Amber are always together.

Reyna and Annabeth fight alot. 

Eliora, Nelson, Wes, and Deb are constantly in some sort of war. 

30. Is there any gender/sexuality variance in-system?

We go from super-straight homophobes to darkgender influencers. 

Sexuality is all of the place.

31. Describe, if any, an inhuman alter.

Some of our non-humans are Greek-style immortals

Others are magical beings from our own universes

32. How big is the system?

Around fifty

33. Describe what switching fronts feels like.

Pain and confusion. Blurry

34. How do different parts react to dissociation (ie. involuntarily switching fronts)?

Most are deeply traumatized and scared by it.

35. Is anyone a bit of a “control freak”?

Our trauma holders and protectors. Nelson, Eliora, Wes, Nico, Will, Deb, Demon, Jade, Amber, Rubi, Maria are the ones most often fighting to control it.

36. Is there a place, like a round table, where everyone can get together to communicate?

We have a ‘control room’, but it’s difficult to communicate more othen than not.

37. Does anyone have a fascination with numbers, shapes, or using repetition to self-soothe?

Many of the trauma holders, because they have OCD. 

38. Describe someone who doesn’t usually get a day in the limelight (if they consent).

Miki and Ryo, along with an alter who doesn’t want to be named. They’re the deepest trauma holders and prefer not to be seen.

39. What’s something you’ve managed to create as a team?

Our innerworld. It’s always expanding, it’s something that’s taken a lot of work. Alot of pain. 

We also managed to create a group of people who support us no matter what. 

40. Describe, in as few or as many words as you like, the journey from discovery of your multiplicity to the present.

We went from 3 alters to start to around 50 now. The major psychological change is indescribable. It’s a roller coaster that we don’t want to describe.

[rebeccahpedersen]

Top-Ten Burning Questions For The 2019 Real Estate Market

TorontoRealtyBlog

Just as my “year-end” blog posts are thematic, ie. the “Top Five Blog Posts” and the shortly-thereafter, “Top Five Real Estate Stories,” I usually feature some sort of early-2019 themed blogs as well.

Either predictions, questions, stories, or themes, I feel the best way to jump into the new year, of real estate blogging, is to offer up some discussion points…

…that we can all disagree on!

Kidding!  Just kidding.

It’s been two weeks since we’ve all been in the same (virtual) room.  I missed you guys!

Raise your hand if you had too much time with family over the break.  Anyone?  Anybody care to admit it?

I actually felt cheated this holiday season, since I didn’t spend as much time with family as I thought I would.  My daughter was very sick after Christmas, with a fever that lasted for days, so we had to cut short our family-bonanza and stay home to care for her.  If I ever watch another episode of “Paw Patrol,” it will be too soon.  Seriously.  How about five hours per day of that goddam show, in attempts to keep my child’s delirium at bay!?  I can’t stand the characters anymore.  That kid, Alex?  Yeah, he drives me nuts.  His entire existence is based upon making mistakes that the Paw Patrol has to clean up.  And Mr. Porter?  There’s something off about that guy.  I wouldn’t trust him.

Post New Year’s, however, things were better.  And what child doesn’t love opening Christmas presents one full week after Christmas, right?  That’s how sick she was – she refused to open presents!  So was she ever a happy camper on New Year’s day.

This was the first year we went out and cut down our own tree, which is something I might do every year, forever, or, something I will never do again.  This tree basically dried up by mid-December, and by Christmas, the needles would literally fall off with a medium-sized exhale from your mouth.  Our fingers had the touch of death, it was actually somewhat fascinating – seeing every last pine needle fall off a branch, just with a gentle touch.

This might be overkill, but I can’t resist.  Plus, I don’t think words do this tree justice:

  My wife hates taking the tree down every year; if it were up to her, we’d still have it up in February.  But this year, with the pine-needle-extravaganza combined with her debilitating O.C.D., she was standing at the door with a saw and a garbage bag by January 1st.  Our tree is sitting on the curb as we speak, and I actually saw a couple of passer-byers stop, point, giggle, and then laugh away.  Yes, our tree is nothing but brown branches, without a green needle in sight.

I went 16 days without working out, I ate more pizza and Swiss Chalet than I care to mention, I was in bed on New Year’s Eve at 11:40pm (I actually forgot about the whole ‘midnight’ thing), and I spent way too much money on 1950’s hockey cards.

So those are my holiday stories, folks.  Perhaps we could add the one night that I got tipsy and watched Home Alone, laughing like I was 5-years-old, and reciting every single line from memory, and I think the holiday recap is complete.

Now here we are with a new day, a new dawn, and a new……….real estate market.

Damn.  That just doesn’t have the same “ring” to it as the Michael Buble song.

To start 2018 here on Toronto Realty Blog, I wrote “Predictions For The 2018 Toronto Real Estate Market.”  I think that in attempts to avoid predictability, I should probably switch up the theme, so this year I’m going to look at “Ten Burning Questions.”

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t look back at my 2018 predictions, not only to remind readers what some of the hot topics were coming into the year, but also to look at how right, or how wrong, I was.

So for those of you that were hoping to see those “burning questions” today, I’m sorry.  I’m a tease.

We’re going to start this 3-part blog series by looking back at my 2018 predictions, just to put the market in perspective.

There’s method to the madness, trust me.

Perhaps Bruce Lee’s “Empty your cup” analogy isn’t 100% accurate here, but I can’t help but feel like we can’t look ahead to 2019 before first emptying what’s left in the tank of 2018.

Plus, it will give some of you an opportunity to say “I told you so,” and who doesn’t love that?

I made five predictions coming into 2018, so here they are, and here’s how they turned out…

2018 Prediction #1: The average home price will increase in Toronto, in 2018.

This was wrong.

Dead wrong.

With a “peak” average home price in April of 2017 around $920,000, the November price was down to $761,757 at the time I wrote this blog, and the year-end price was looking like it would come in around $820,000.

My thinking was simple: the market had crapped out in May, June, July, and August, before making a modest comeback in the Fall.  Average out the good months with the bad months, and the $820,000’ish average home price was incredibly depressed.

I surmised that we’d see a return to $820,000’ish numbers, which still represented a dramatic drop from that March-April peak of $916,000 and $920,000 and change.

I was wrong.

As I wrote in a December blog post, 2018 would be the first year since 1996 that the average home price declined, year-over-year, which was yet another reason why I predicted a 2018 increase.  I suppose the “stick with the trend” mentality can only get you so far!

So how much did the average home price in Toronto actually decline in 2018?

The average home price in Toronto in 2017 was $822,572.

As of this writing, the December stats (and thus year-end stats) were just released by TREB.  Talk about cutting it close!

My late-December blog post guesstimated a 2018 final average sale price of $790,000, based on a weighted average of the preceding 11 months.  The average home price for 2018 actually came in at $787,300, so I wasn’t that far off.

That’s a 4.29% decline, year-over-year, in the Toronto average home price.

Just as a refresher, here’s the average home price movement since the last time we saw a decrease, and I’ve added in 2018:

So, once again, I was wrong.

But what about the Toronto-416 home price?  Do I get a reprieve by looking at the “central core,” which I would probably argue can, and will, survive market forces in the short, medium, and long-term?

This overlaps with my second prediction, so at the risk of being repetitive, let me come back to this at the end of Prediction #2.

–

2018 Prediction #2: The freehold market will outpace the condo market.

Wrong again.

But I would love to meet the person who predicted the opposite coming into last year.

Generally-speaking, houses are more popular than condos, agree?  That’s simplistic, but let’s say that if most people had a choice, they would live in a house over a condo, and it’s price that’s stopping them from doing so.  It’s also supply.

So coming into 2018, with the same “they’re not building any more houses in Toronto; it’s just cranes in the sky” mentality, I can’t look back and say I should have seen the condo appreciation coming.

So how did the housing market do in 2017 versus 2018?

Well, because the Toronto Real Estate Board refuses to provide us with the appropriate data points (let’s just say that on December 31st, they were ringing in 2006…), I took the time to plot each and every month’s sales and sale prices for the four major housing types, in the past 24 months: condo, detached, semi-detached, and townhouse.  This is the only way to get true, accurate numbers.

You don’t need the charts to understand the conclusions, but I spent so much damn time on this, I may as well share it!

Here you can see the sale price for each housing type, in each month, and the corresponding number of sales.  Why is the number of sales important?  Because we need a weighted-average to get an accurate yearly number.  If there were 2,000 sales in May, and only 500 sales in December, we can’t simply average the two corresponding months’ sale prices.  We need a weighted-average based on sales.

Then I’ve taken a further weighted average of all the all the sale types, and come up with a freehold average for detached, semi-detached, and townhouse, which we can see there is $1,194,327.

That is the true average freehold sale price for 2017.  And gosh-darnit, I would love if TREB would make this available, but I won’t hold my breath…

So three things to look at here:

1) How wrong was I with respect to my 2018 prediction that the freehold market would outpace the condo market? 2) While we’re at it, and while we have this data set, how did the Toronto (416) market compare to the overall “Toronto” market that we’re accustomed to hearing about? 3) In Toronto-416, how does the year-over-year average sale price look for the four individual home types (ie. freehold, semi-detached, townhouse, condo)?

First thing’s first, here is the 2018 data:

Well, I think the bolded numbers pretty much sum it up!

Keeping in mind that we’re looking at the 416 and not the overall Toronto market with respect to the “freehold versus condo” comparison, the data speaks volumes.

The 2018 freehold price of $1,132,633 trails the 2017 freehold price of $1,194,327 by 5.17%.

And the 2018 condo price of $592,922, as you can see, is well ahead of that $545,635 price that the market experienced in 2017.

The freehold market went down by 5.2%.

The condo market went up by 8.7%.

I was wrong, as I said before.  But with that out of the way, what conclusions can we draw from all of this, and/or what questions should be asked?

I suppose we’d want know, first and foremost, why the 416-Toronto condo market was so resilient!

Were condos under-valued coming into 2017?  And did they remain under-valued coming into 2018?

Does this mean we should expect condos to cool in 2019?  By association, should we expect the freehold market to outpace the condo market in 2019?

All good questions, and all with answers that will vary dramatically depending on your interpretation for the last 24 month’s market activity, and your prognostications.

As for the second question asked above – how the Toronto-416 market compared to the overall Toronto market, there’s a huge difference, but I think this could have been easily predicted.

Some of you might doubt the conclusions, since the rhetoric has been nothing but doom-and-gloom all year, but this is a stat that TREB does provide, so go to the Market Watch and see for yourself.

The average sale price in Toronto-GTA is down 4.3%; that’s $787,300 up from $822,587.

The average sale price in Toronto-416 is actually up by 0.2%; that’s $835,422, up from $834,138.

As for the third question, here is where things get interesting.

These stats are from my spreadsheets above, since TREB does not provide a breakdown of the four property types, year-to-date, in the 416:

Freehold – down 7.0%

Semi-Detached – up 1.0%

Townhouse – up 2.5%

Condo – up 8.7%

Basically we’re looking at a market that has seen a 0.2% appreciation overall, where the decrease in average freehold price has been offset by the increase in average condo price, and with the smaller sample-sizes of semi-detached and townhouse helping to round out the final number.

All in all, it was a great year for condos, a down year for detached, and a flat year for the 416 on the whole.

I chalk up part of the reason for the 7% decline in 416-detached homes to far fewer “luxury” homes trading hands, which upsets the balance, but admittedly the overall detached market is down.  Now to be fair, it really depends on price once again.  If a $1,000,000 semi-detached is up 1% on average, I’m willing to bet the $1,150,000 detached house next door is also up 1% on average as well.  I think the $2.8M detached houses at Avenue & Lawrence are down, no question.  But we always have to be careful not to paint a whole subset of housing with the same brush.

–

The rest of my predictions were less interesting, and in the interest of time, I’ll summarize.

3) The “stress-test” will have a short-term effect, but no medium-term effect.

The stress-test definitely did have a short-term effect.  I had clients in January that had to scale back their target purchase prices, but only two.

I heard from other agents working with buyers that the situation was a bit more prevalent, but as I said last year, most buyers don’t buy to their max pre-approval, so I didn’t think the decrease in mortgage amount would actually lead to a decrease in purchase amount.

–

4) Banks will change their lending criteria.

I was right about this, but for the wrong reason.

Toward the end of 2018, I saw banks tightening up their criteria in a big way.

And in one specific case, for the sale of a condominium listing, I was asked for a copy of the Status Certificate – are you ready for this?  From the bank!

That’s right, the bank wanted a copy of the Status, which is something I have never seen before.  They likely wanted to ensure that there were no maintenance fee increases scheduled, or no special assessments for the condo corporation.  Perhaps it was a buyer who was right up against the ceiling.

Coming into 2018, I figured banks would change their lending criteria to allow them to lend more.

I always say, “Banks are in the business of loaning money, and they’ll find a way to do so.”  If the government enacts measures to curb or restrict lending, the banks will find a way around it.  Coming in to 2018, I started to see some banks get creative, but that was short-lived.

Alternative lenders and B-lenders picked up a lot of the slack in 2018.

–

5) The spring market will provide the reverse chronology of 2017.

I nailed this one, as the following chart, updated from my 2018 blog, will show:

–

6) The government is finished meddling in the real estate market.

This was true, for the most part.

Doug Ford did tinker with rent control in late-2018, but we didn’t see anything this past year like we saw in 2017 with the launch of the “Fair Housing Plan,” and there were no major government initiatives enacted this year.  You might attribute that to Prediction #7…

–

7) Kathleen Wynne will Wynne another Premiership, and that’s scary for home-owners, and home-buyers.

Wrong about this one too.

I suppose I underestimated the zeal of voters, who I thought would rather be guided by the devil they know, than the devil they don’t.

But in the end, we decided we’d rather have a 1980’s drug kingpin lead the province than a person who wants to tax us to death.

Time will tell if we made the right call.

–

And on that wonderful note, I adjourn until Wednesday…

The post Top-Ten Burning Questions For The 2019 Real Estate Market appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

Originated from http://bit.ly/2FdY5UM

[rebeccahpedersen]

Top-Ten Burning Questions For The 2019 Real Estate Market

TorontoRealtyBlog

Just as my “year-end” blog posts are thematic, ie. the “Top Five Blog Posts” and the shortly-thereafter, “Top Five Real Estate Stories,” I usually feature some sort of early-2019 themed blogs as well.

Either predictions, questions, stories, or themes, I feel the best way to jump into the new year, of real estate blogging, is to offer up some discussion points…

…that we can all disagree on!

Kidding!  Just kidding.

It’s been two weeks since we’ve all been in the same (virtual) room.  I missed you guys!

Raise your hand if you had too much time with family over the break.  Anyone?  Anybody care to admit it?

I actually felt cheated this holiday season, since I didn’t spend as much time with family as I thought I would.  My daughter was very sick after Christmas, with a fever that lasted for days, so we had to cut short our family-bonanza and stay home to care for her.  If I ever watch another episode of “Paw Patrol,” it will be too soon.  Seriously.  How about five hours per day of that goddam show, in attempts to keep my child’s delirium at bay!?  I can’t stand the characters anymore.  That kid, Alex?  Yeah, he drives me nuts.  His entire existence is based upon making mistakes that the Paw Patrol has to clean up.  And Mr. Porter?  There’s something off about that guy.  I wouldn’t trust him.

Post New Year’s, however, things were better.  And what child doesn’t love opening Christmas presents one full week after Christmas, right?  That’s how sick she was – she refused to open presents!  So was she ever a happy camper on New Year’s day.

This was the first year we went out and cut down our own tree, which is something I might do every year, forever, or, something I will never do again.  This tree basically dried up by mid-December, and by Christmas, the needles would literally fall off with a medium-sized exhale from your mouth.  Our fingers had the touch of death, it was actually somewhat fascinating – seeing every last pine needle fall off a branch, just with a gentle touch.

This might be overkill, but I can’t resist.  Plus, I don’t think words do this tree justice:

  My wife hates taking the tree down every year; if it were up to her, we’d still have it up in February.  But this year, with the pine-needle-extravaganza combined with her debilitating O.C.D., she was standing at the door with a saw and a garbage bag by January 1st.  Our tree is sitting on the curb as we speak, and I actually saw a couple of passer-byers stop, point, giggle, and then laugh away.  Yes, our tree is nothing but brown branches, without a green needle in sight.

I went 16 days without working out, I ate more pizza and Swiss Chalet than I care to mention, I was in bed on New Year’s Eve at 11:40pm (I actually forgot about the whole ‘midnight’ thing), and I spent way too much money on 1950’s hockey cards.

So those are my holiday stories, folks.  Perhaps we could add the one night that I got tipsy and watched Home Alone, laughing like I was 5-years-old, and reciting every single line from memory, and I think the holiday recap is complete.

Now here we are with a new day, a new dawn, and a new……….real estate market.

Damn.  That just doesn’t have the same “ring” to it as the Michael Buble song.

To start 2018 here on Toronto Realty Blog, I wrote “Predictions For The 2018 Toronto Real Estate Market.”  I think that in attempts to avoid predictability, I should probably switch up the theme, so this year I’m going to look at “Ten Burning Questions.”

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t look back at my 2018 predictions, not only to remind readers what some of the hot topics were coming into the year, but also to look at how right, or how wrong, I was.

So for those of you that were hoping to see those “burning questions” today, I’m sorry.  I’m a tease.

We’re going to start this 3-part blog series by looking back at my 2018 predictions, just to put the market in perspective.

There’s method to the madness, trust me.

Perhaps Bruce Lee’s “Empty your cup” analogy isn’t 100% accurate here, but I can’t help but feel like we can’t look ahead to 2019 before first emptying what’s left in the tank of 2018.

Plus, it will give some of you an opportunity to say “I told you so,” and who doesn’t love that?

I made five predictions coming into 2018, so here they are, and here’s how they turned out…

2018 Prediction #1: The average home price will increase in Toronto, in 2018.

This was wrong.

Dead wrong.

With a “peak” average home price in April of 2017 around $920,000, the November price was down to $761,757 at the time I wrote this blog, and the year-end price was looking like it would come in around $820,000.

My thinking was simple: the market had crapped out in May, June, July, and August, before making a modest comeback in the Fall.  Average out the good months with the bad months, and the $820,000’ish average home price was incredibly depressed.

I surmised that we’d see a return to $820,000’ish numbers, which still represented a dramatic drop from that March-April peak of $916,000 and $920,000 and change.

I was wrong.

As I wrote in a December blog post, 2018 would be the first year since 1996 that the average home price declined, year-over-year, which was yet another reason why I predicted a 2018 increase.  I suppose the “stick with the trend” mentality can only get you so far!

So how much did the average home price in Toronto actually decline in 2018?

The average home price in Toronto in 2017 was $822,572.

As of this writing, the December stats (and thus year-end stats) were just released by TREB.  Talk about cutting it close!

My late-December blog post guesstimated a 2018 final average sale price of $790,000, based on a weighted average of the preceding 11 months.  The average home price for 2018 actually came in at $787,300, so I wasn’t that far off.

That’s a 4.29% decline, year-over-year, in the Toronto average home price.

Just as a refresher, here’s the average home price movement since the last time we saw a decrease, and I’ve added in 2018:

So, once again, I was wrong.

But what about the Toronto-416 home price?  Do I get a reprieve by looking at the “central core,” which I would probably argue can, and will, survive market forces in the short, medium, and long-term?

This overlaps with my second prediction, so at the risk of being repetitive, let me come back to this at the end of Prediction #2.

–

2018 Prediction #2: The freehold market will outpace the condo market.

Wrong again.

But I would love to meet the person who predicted the opposite coming into last year.

Generally-speaking, houses are more popular than condos, agree?  That’s simplistic, but let’s say that if most people had a choice, they would live in a house over a condo, and it’s price that’s stopping them from doing so.  It’s also supply.

So coming into 2018, with the same “they’re not building any more houses in Toronto; it’s just cranes in the sky” mentality, I can’t look back and say I should have seen the condo appreciation coming.

So how did the housing market do in 2017 versus 2018?

Well, because the Toronto Real Estate Board refuses to provide us with the appropriate data points (let’s just say that on December 31st, they were ringing in 2006…), I took the time to plot each and every month’s sales and sale prices for the four major housing types, in the past 24 months: condo, detached, semi-detached, and townhouse.  This is the only way to get true, accurate numbers.

You don’t need the charts to understand the conclusions, but I spent so much damn time on this, I may as well share it!

Here you can see the sale price for each housing type, in each month, and the corresponding number of sales.  Why is the number of sales important?  Because we need a weighted-average to get an accurate yearly number.  If there were 2,000 sales in May, and only 500 sales in December, we can’t simply average the two corresponding months’ sale prices.  We need a weighted-average based on sales.

Then I’ve taken a further weighted average of all the all the sale types, and come up with a freehold average for detached, semi-detached, and townhouse, which we can see there is $1,194,327.

That is the true average freehold sale price for 2017.  And gosh-darnit, I would love if TREB would make this available, but I won’t hold my breath…

So three things to look at here:

1) How wrong was I with respect to my 2018 prediction that the freehold market would outpace the condo market? 2) While we’re at it, and while we have this data set, how did the Toronto (416) market compare to the overall “Toronto” market that we’re accustomed to hearing about? 3) In Toronto-416, how does the year-over-year average sale price look for the four individual home types (ie. freehold, semi-detached, townhouse, condo)?

First thing’s first, here is the 2018 data:

Well, I think the bolded numbers pretty much sum it up!

Keeping in mind that we’re looking at the 416 and not the overall Toronto market with respect to the “freehold versus condo” comparison, the data speaks volumes.

The 2018 freehold price of $1,132,633 trails the 2017 freehold price of $1,194,327 by 5.17%.

And the 2018 condo price of $592,922, as you can see, is well ahead of that $545,635 price that the market experienced in 2017.

The freehold market went down by 5.2%.

The condo market went up by 8.7%.

I was wrong, as I said before.  But with that out of the way, what conclusions can we draw from all of this, and/or what questions should be asked?

I suppose we’d want know, first and foremost, why the 416-Toronto condo market was so resilient!

Were condos under-valued coming into 2017?  And did they remain under-valued coming into 2018?

Does this mean we should expect condos to cool in 2019?  By association, should we expect the freehold market to outpace the condo market in 2019?

All good questions, and all with answers that will vary dramatically depending on your interpretation for the last 24 month’s market activity, and your prognostications.

As for the second question asked above – how the Toronto-416 market compared to the overall Toronto market, there’s a huge difference, but I think this could have been easily predicted.

Some of you might doubt the conclusions, since the rhetoric has been nothing but doom-and-gloom all year, but this is a stat that TREB does provide, so go to the Market Watch and see for yourself.

The average sale price in Toronto-GTA is down 4.3%; that’s $787,300 up from $822,587.

The average sale price in Toronto-416 is actually up by 0.2%; that’s $835,422, up from $834,138.

As for the third question, here is where things get interesting.

These stats are from my spreadsheets above, since TREB does not provide a breakdown of the four property types, year-to-date, in the 416:

Freehold – down 7.0%

Semi-Detached – up 1.0%

Townhouse – up 2.5%

Condo – up 8.7%

Basically we’re looking at a market that has seen a 0.2% appreciation overall, where the decrease in average freehold price has been offset by the increase in average condo price, and with the smaller sample-sizes of semi-detached and townhouse helping to round out the final number.

All in all, it was a great year for condos, a down year for detached, and a flat year for the 416 on the whole.

I chalk up part of the reason for the 7% decline in 416-detached homes to far fewer “luxury” homes trading hands, which upsets the balance, but admittedly the overall detached market is down.  Now to be fair, it really depends on price once again.  If a $1,000,000 semi-detached is up 1% on average, I’m willing to bet the $1,150,000 detached house next door is also up 1% on average as well.  I think the $2.8M detached houses at Avenue & Lawrence are down, no question.  But we always have to be careful not to paint a whole subset of housing with the same brush.

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The rest of my predictions were less interesting, and in the interest of time, I’ll summarize.

3) The “stress-test” will have a short-term effect, but no medium-term effect.

The stress-test definitely did have a short-term effect.  I had clients in January that had to scale back their target purchase prices, but only two.

I heard from other agents working with buyers that the situation was a bit more prevalent, but as I said last year, most buyers don’t buy to their max pre-approval, so I didn’t think the decrease in mortgage amount would actually lead to a decrease in purchase amount.

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4) Banks will change their lending criteria.

I was right about this, but for the wrong reason.

Toward the end of 2018, I saw banks tightening up their criteria in a big way.

And in one specific case, for the sale of a condominium listing, I was asked for a copy of the Status Certificate – are you ready for this?  From the bank!

That’s right, the bank wanted a copy of the Status, which is something I have never seen before.  They likely wanted to ensure that there were no maintenance fee increases scheduled, or no special assessments for the condo corporation.  Perhaps it was a buyer who was right up against the ceiling.

Coming into 2018, I figured banks would change their lending criteria to allow them to lend more.

I always say, “Banks are in the business of loaning money, and they’ll find a way to do so.”  If the government enacts measures to curb or restrict lending, the banks will find a way around it.  Coming in to 2018, I started to see some banks get creative, but that was short-lived.

Alternative lenders and B-lenders picked up a lot of the slack in 2018.

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5) The spring market will provide the reverse chronology of 2017.

I nailed this one, as the following chart, updated from my 2018 blog, will show:

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6) The government is finished meddling in the real estate market.

This was true, for the most part.

Doug Ford did tinker with rent control in late-2018, but we didn’t see anything this past year like we saw in 2017 with the launch of the “Fair Housing Plan,” and there were no major government initiatives enacted this year.  You might attribute that to Prediction #7…

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7) Kathleen Wynne will Wynne another Premiership, and that’s scary for home-owners, and home-buyers.

Wrong about this one too.

I suppose I underestimated the zeal of voters, who I thought would rather be guided by the devil they know, than the devil they don’t.

But in the end, we decided we’d rather have a 1980’s drug kingpin lead the province than a person who wants to tax us to death.

Time will tell if we made the right call.

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And on that wonderful note, I adjourn until Wednesday…

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