#anyway this is enough public ADHD rambling for one night

[iamaslutforjatp]

If anyone ever wants to know what my writing process is like: I have the first 3 scenes of my fic fully outlined. The first scene's outline is >700 words, the second scene's outline is >1400 words, and the third scene's outline is >800 words.

Their. Outlines.

I know plenty of fic writers whose chapters - or entire fics - are 1.4k words! And that's how long my one scene's outline is!

. . .

To be fair, I think some writers might be more inclined to call what I do at this stage a zero draft rather than an outline. But I find calling it a draft puts too much pressure on it. I don't go into it planning to outline in that much detail, I just go into it planning on writing a paragraph, maybe two, of what happens, but as I'm typing I include whatever basic details I have so I can remember them when I go to write, and a lot of the time it turns into this person does this thing, that person has that reaction, this other person says 'xyz', the room is laid out like this, these people are present in the room doing xyz while persons a b and c are absent for d e and f reasons, person x feels this way over what person y says leading them to say 'blah blah blah' etc etc and suddenly I have a couple hundred words walking through the scene step by step.

And sometimes I don't know many details yet while other times I know a lot including actual snippets of dialogue and layouts of rooms and what specific characters are wearing, so they vary in length quite a bit, and I'll add things if I think of it, move things around and adjust as needed based on what comes out while outlining the next, etc.

Does anyone else have outlines that get out of hand like this?

[scige-alt]

LIANA LIBERATO / CIS FEMALE — don’t look now, but is that saige beaumont i see? the 21 year old criminal psychology / linguistics student is in their sophomore year and she is a rochester alum. i hear they can be blithe, energetic, evasive and irrational, so maybe keep that in mind. i bet she will make a name for themselves living in murphy’s beach homes. ( james. 20. est. she/they. )

snjdfg these took so long i’m so sorry but anyways please LIKE and i’ll slide into yr IMs for plots !!

TW DRUG USE, ALCOHOLISM, IMPLIED ABUSE, ADDICTION, HIT & RUN.

a e s t h e t i c s

stick n’ pokes at 2am – when your drunk and giggling too much in between purposeful stabs, avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk because they’re bad luck and they’ll break your mother’s back – even if your mother doesn’t love you, because you love her, the familiar riff in an old song – one that’s got you strumming along silently; there is no guitar, only empty air lit by the christmas lights you haven’t taken down. it’s may. swallowing down shots, and by default, swallowing down problems. laughing quick, easily, constantly. skinned knees from skateboarding, despite being rubbish at it. wishes on eyelashes stuck to your cheekbones, glitter sticking, running into the ocean at sunrise; feeling at home. excuses, and the many forms they come in. telling people you love them through hand squeezes and fresh muffins, sideways glances and soft, eager grins.

general info !!

full name: saige alouette beaumont

nickname(s): n/a so give her some uwu

b.o.d. - july 7th, 21 whole yrs old.

label(s): the hedonist, the icarcian, the reveler, etc. etc.

height: 5′7″ !!

hometown: thibodaux, louisiana

sexuality: bisexual w/ a very slight preference towards masc-presenting folks

pinterest

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biography !!

the fallible daughter of two very infallible people: robert beaumont, US lieutenant general, and manon levesque, world renown fashion designer. both calculating, cold, and purposeful.

saige never believed she was created out of love. it was an action with a purpose, intentions to create the perfect child. the hybrid of both military genius and fashion extraordinaire, molded to their will.

it took them no more than six months after her birth for her parents to up and move, thus beginning the cycle of packing and unpacking, flying and driving, state-to-state and country-to-country. the longest saige had ever stayed in one place was two years.

kept on a short leash, homeschooled, and learning skills she had no interest in – she was more like a pet, a project, than a child. the world moved all around her, but she felt restrictively tethered to her parents.

she had always felt this way. a bird in a cage of thorns.

it was hard to keep and maintain friends – saige would be there one day, and gone the next. a ghost, a very visible ghost. even so, she tried her hardest.

running from bodyguards (nannies, in a sense. her father is a paranoid man) into festival crowds and climbing out of windows in the dark of night to swim in lakes with locals she’d meet only a few hours earlier – she absorbed as much of what she could get; this intense, undying love for a world she had always craved to see.

it was the start of something near dangerous – a phase that seemed to never end, rebellion coursing through her veins. a wild child in the making, unknowing of limits. the bad sort of crowd was the crowd she found herself landing, more often than not – introducing the sheltered girl to a world she hadn’t quite known existed

she ran away, briefly, at age fifteen with a man three years older than her – which nearly ended up in a tabloid magazine if it hadn’t been for her parents’ money. though the guilt of her parents’ disappointed weighed on her, the thrill fueled something much worse

from that point on, she became a problem child. from public intoxication to vandalism – it was clear their daughter was unraveling and nothing could contain her.

boarding school was a small attempt to stop it – she got expelled.

she hadn’t intended to go to university, either – but, by some chance – and after a mysterious year-long disappearance from public eye during her eighteenth year of life, next thing she knew, she was a student at lockwood university.

she was involved in a getaway chase from an armed robbery at a bank which then turned into a hit-and-run in washington when she was on the brink of turning eighteen. it was a situation she had no control over, not knowing her role in the scheme until it was too late to turn back. the victim survived but saige’s family has been paying the medical fees since then. her parents haven’t spoken to her since.

ever since the accident, saige has avoided causing too much trouble - generally staying out of headlines and tabloids, partially in fear of her parents finally cutting ties, and partially in fear of doing something that’ll cost another person their life.

personality !!

bubbly. so fucking bubbly. she’s got so much fucking energy on her – she goes running every morning and every night and swims like every afternoon and she’s n e v e r tired ?? the personality of a coke bottle shaken up but like if the bottle could laugh.

tries her hardest to be the Happy Fun friend, y’know, the one who can hook you up w/ some sicccc shit b/c she befriended/possibly slept with her drug dealer and now she gets discounts.

like, generally, comes off as very confident of herself and fearless and, like, yes–reckless, but like a fun reckless, y’know ??

talks a l o t, could ramble for days, hand gestures and all.

if she wants to do something, she will do it and there’s not much you can do to stop her tbh. she’s very easy-going, very go-go-go, very…mischievous, y’know? even if she’s trying to do something stupid you kinda just have to let her do it or otherwise she’ll mope for three hours and pout at you and you’ll feel ?? this weird sense of guilt ?? which isn’t the Best thing but she’s not the best person either so dfghjh

a vegetarian !! meat makes her sick, like, physically.

uuuhh her vocabulary consists of a lot of ‘likes’ and ‘ums’ and ‘y’knows’, y’know ??

i am like 99% sure she’s got adhd but she’s never been diagnosed with it b/c her parents suck with that stuff. her parents sort of suck in general.

like…she’s currently not on speaking terms with them. she’s not disowned…like, yet, but they haven’t said more than like five words to each other since saige was eighteen and it k i l l s her but they also send her a shit ton of money every month so.

owns like…four cars…..she has them all on campus…..she prolly isn’t suppose to…but she does…one of them’s a real sleek sports car, one is a jacked up pick-up truck that’s decked out in like LED lights n shit, one is the same exact fucking car from the princess diaries b/c saige is obsessed w/ the movie. the other is like. a mini cooper probably.

a photographer, her walls are covered in photographs and art and taped-down plants and in general her room is very ?? cluttered ?? like it’s very home-y but god. she’s a mess. clothes everywhere. she’s probably got a pile of instruments and other miscellaneous hobbies on a chair in the corner that she hasn’t touched in a while

speaking of !! she has a bunch of random, like, skills ?? like knitting and sewing and cooking and three different forms of ballroom dancing, and she can definitely work a gun and a car engine except she goes thru interests so rapidly and is disinterested in most of the other ones b/c her parents forced like half of them onto her.

she plays bass guitar. she loves her bass guitar. she knows other instruments but the only ones she’ll really fidget with are her bass guitar and like, her violin. everything else she’s like ~okay~ at

got really obsessed with languages at a young age and started learning them ?? her mother is like. super french, like genuinely from france, so she already grew up speaking both english and french but she’s learnt others for the hell of it and she’s still learning like three other at the same time which is a MESS but she’s a mess so like can u blame her sdfghj

but like i said, she’s v e r y reckless. very much a party girl. she uses like…quite a few drugs, both socially and alone and frankly – she’s rarely sober.

a budding alcoholic because she’s convinced that without it she’ll be Miserable and Horrible to everybody because she’s a Horrible, Awful person who is the absolute Worse and if drinking vodka mixed in with 23 crystal lite packets helps with not thinking like that then she’ll do it no questions asked

its a problem she’s been developing since she was younger, only amplified by … the situation, that happened when she was eighteen.

is essentially wearing this mask of confidence and giddiness and flirtatiousness b/c she doesnt want people to think she’s doing Not Okay.

she loves so much. she loves everything, everybody. falls in love like five times a day but nothing really sticks to her either. if ur a shitty person/come off as an asshole then she’ll be more likely to be attracted to her b/c shes Always been like this. finds them super interesting which is ?? questionable ?? sometimes i want to just. knock some sense into her but y’know what…it’s fine we’re Fine

she gets around p frequently but is also the type of person who’ll like, try n maintain a positive, good friendship with whoever she sleeps with b/c the idea of having regrettable encounters is smth that Bothers her and she just pretty much refuses.

it’s honestly a bit of a problem ?? she blurs the lines between friendship and Something, Anything More too often and with too many people b/c she just. wants to be loved. but there is never enough !

she does stick n pokes !! a whole bunch !! let her give you one !! she can’t draw for shit but i mean, who cares, right ??

uuuhh her mom sends her like…prototypes of things she designs n shit that isn’t out yet and saige 100% always gives it away or it sits in her closet and essentially that is her go-to gift for birthdays or christmas or whenever she feels like it

there’s literally sm i could say about her but i’ll stop Here b/c it’s getting too long sksksksk

wanted connections !!

give me. a best friend. just somebody who sticks by her side even though she’s a Mess

like, a ride or die ?? is that the same as a best friend ?? idc i want both :)

and just in general, like, people she’s p close to ?? she’s really friendly and is the kind of girl who’d be really popular in high school but doesn’t care abt popularity n talks to literally Everybody like she’s known them all her life.

ESP if ur muse is a lil grumpier !! she will fuck their shit up, but like, in a friendship way.

party pals, where they don’t talk that much outside of parties but inside them ?? super close. glued to the hip. hold-your-hair-back kinda tight.

frenemies ?? fake friends ?? toxic pals ?? ppl using her for her money or like, sex, or something ?? anything ??

bad influences ?? who just encourage all of saige’s shit ??

good influences ?? who are like YOINK stop being an idiot.

a tutor b/c she’s like…she’s smart, okay, but she’s also really stupid LMAO. she’s rly bad at math and science. somebody help her.

hook ups ?? fwbs ?? that one, rare one-night-stand that went weird ??

exes ?? she’s sorta noncommittal so idk how long they would’ve dated but like sjdfkbo yolo ?? ex hook-ups too ??

…somebody who just. hates her. but she doesn’t realize bc she’s a big ol’ idiot. she thinks theyre pals !!

let her b a thorn in someone’s side, just like, an absolute annoyance LMAO

gimme an enemy, or like an ex-best friend where something happened between them n it ruined their friendship

i will take literally anything i dont know

she steals ur character’s mail ?? ur cat keeps escaping and she keeps letting them inside even tho she’s allergic ??

one of those friendships where theyre always bickering like an old married couple ?? but it’s Purely Platonic (or is it ??)

an off-and-on again that just. it’s not good for either of them b/c they keep enabling each other and then getting pissed off and it’s a Mess but ?? it’s so hard to stop.

the drug dealer she keeps sleeping with even though she can just … pay for her shit. b/c it’s funner this way !

just … people where their like … relationship status is Blurred and it’s like, are they a thing? are they not? b/c she’s a mess and gets involved with too many people without intending to !

please. take her. give me connections.

[crowned-ladybug]

Marvin from the rivals au for that character thing or just in general bc I love him so much and I want to know more about him

This got so long, I’m so sorry. This is like 2k words bc if allowed to talk about this boy then i could talk Forever. Oops

(With the meme it’s here btw)

Occasional sleeptalker. Usually just incoherent babbling, andJackie finds it hilarious to listen to if he's awake for it

Can braid his own hair perfectly without any trouble. Fear him

Shows his love of certain ppl by buying them lil gifts but hatesthe confrontation and awkwardness of giving them to them so heusually just leaves them in places he knows they'll find them,usually with no indication that they're from him either

Colour codes Everything

Has his own way of organising things that makes sense to Him okaybut he can't really explain it to anyone else. It annoys poor Jamesonto no end bc he organises shit to help with his anxiety and MarvinKeeps Ruining It

His reaction to Chase and Jackie wanting to get up to impulsivefun shit is "sure, go ahead, just don't hinder whatever I'mdoing" (or sometimes he joins them) and Schneep is sodisappointed in him for not helping him keep them in check instead

Has a fuckin perfectly figured out skincare routine and he'sdragging all the others up with him

Generally v good at lazy/spa day kinda self-care

Has ADD (tho all the egos have ADD/ADHD tbh)

Chase has absolutely compared him to Mettaton X at some point andMarvin doesn't know how to react to that

Gets cold super easily and Hates It. Is an absolute lil bitchabout it and won't stop whining until he can get warm again(favourite way to do that is to cuddle Jackie, and he just goes allhappy and melty from it, but I still wouldn't try to talk to him if Iwere you. And Jackie is a good bf who puts up with Marvin's stupidcold hands and face)

Has two modes when cuddling btw, he either just lies peacefullywith someone (mostly Jackie) while having an arm draped over them orholding their hand or pressed up against them, or he turns into afuckin octopus. Good luck trying to get up, you won't succeed

Which has led to multiple instances of someone needing Jackie forsomething, only to find him unavailable bc he's completely trapped bya sleeping Marvin even if he himself is wide awake. But he enjoys ita lot too bc Hell Yes Affection and would never have the heart tomove him and wake him up

He's also p damn pointy so he's not really the most comfy personto cuddle but Oh Well

Also wakes up slow and says a lot of bullshit in the process (orstuff he'd normally filter out and not get to say, like sappy shit)

A flirty lil bitch

Knows Jackie blushes super easily and enjoys the fuck out of it.Constantly trying to figure out how little it'll take for him to beall red in the face (And he knows Jackie doesn't mind and he backsoff when he's told to. Don't worry. Consent is still there)

He on the other hand doesn't blush often so when he does it meanshe's Super Flustered

Ik i said this last night too but he knows how to dance and doesit p well tbh?? He used to dance a lot when he was a kid/teen butdropped it when he realised he was trans bc then he tried to be AsMasculine As Possible bc he felt like if he didn't he'd be "fakingit"

(Grew out of that eventually. He's so glad he did)

Insecure about more stuff than he would ever let you believe

Once he starts really caring about the other egos he tries So Hardto be good to them and secretly beats himself up sometimes for stillbeing an Asshole when he messes it up. Yeah it's angsty. He'd takehimself apart just to make it up to his friends for having been anasshole to them before

Not a morning person but he can still function if woken up early,he'll just make sure you know that he's Not happy about it

Very rarely gets dysphoric, really only if continously referred towith the wrong pronouns/gendered terms or if called his deadname

At some point he started shooting Jackie flirty looks while sayingbullshit in French (Jackie doesn't speak French) to fluster him butit got to the point where Marvin realised that if he wanted to keepdoing it he'd need to Actually Learn French instead of just spoutingthe same limited amount of bullshit all the time. And that's thestory of why he started studying a Whole Other Language

Likes flowers but knows fuck all about them

I don't think I'll ever properly type down how he got his scar sohere: before Marvin pledged alliance to the other egos, Anti alreadyassumed he would, and so he captured him and threatened to torturehim to get information out of him/possibly force him on his sideinstead. Marvin called his bluff and told him to fuck himself. Antigot angry, waved his knife a lil too close to Marvin's face duringone of his threats and ended up actually cutting him. Anti was superhappy bc holy shit I Did Something, and Marvin decided that he's hadenough and since he'd been saving his energy all this time, blew up acharge of electricity in Anti's face. He then proceeded to teleporthome (with the chair he was tied to still attached but uhh. That partof the story is a lil less dignified so shh)

Anti has had a special place in Hell for him ever since (and withthis I'm realising that Anti is actually p fuckin bad at his job??Wow)

Says he doesn't like his hair messed with. He's lying.

But you gotta be Special and Important To Him to have permissionto touch his hair (or a hairdresser I guess). But Jackie is one ofthose ppl so he can mess with Marvin's hair all he wants (he evenlearned how to braid hair just to surprise him and lemme tell you,Marvin was Absolutely v surprised) Stroke and pet his hair longenough and he'll go all melty

His teeth are a lil bit pointier than average (and Jackie is sofucking gay for that and I'm shaming him)

Used to write poetry as a teen. Don't bring it up, he'sembarrassed.

Shoves all his feelings and problems in a box and hides them inthe attic bc He Doesn't Want Them

Can sing okay but doesn't do it often bc it's not Perfect so it'sBad. Hums more often tho

He's scared of a bunch of stuff in horror movies (and triggered bysome) but No One is allowed to know that. He's glad most of theothers don't much like them either and thus they don't watch themtogether anyway. He really doesn't want others to see him scared bche thinks it'd make him look weak and ridiculous

(Yes, he double-standards himself vs other ppl a Lot. Being scaredor having bad mental health or messing up is only bad if he does it.But you didn't hear that from me.)

Pokemon is one of his biggest and longest-lasting hyperfixations

Holy shit I've never drawn him in a suit but my dudes he looks SoPretty in a well-fitted suit, Holy Fuck. Give him a lapel flower andit'll be Perfect. No one can resist that amount of charm

Knows how to walk (and even run and dance) in high heels but can'tfucking stand them (no pun intended, he just finds them reallyuncomfortable)

Will be stunned silent if anyone assumes he doesn't absolutelyAdore Jackie, both bc How Dare You and bc he's trying So Hard to be agood bf is he really That Bad at it?

Pressure is not his main stim but it's the best way to bring himout of a panic/anxiety attack and just ground him in general, espwhen he can't use his magic or doesn't think to use it. (He doesn'thave any weighted stuff so in others words: lie on him.) Once hecalms down enough he'll hopefully start doing his vital-readingmagic, which should help calm him more

(Also yeah, the whole vital-reading that I've probably talk aboutjust Way Too Much already but jic I'll mention it again anyway: hecan use his magic to read other ppl's vitals. It calms and comfortshim. He mainly does it to Jackie, who has given him blanketpermission for it)

Favourite stim is fondling with squishy things (like those foamanimal keychains??) and scraping stuff like candle wax or soap (itwould probably be chewing if he actually realised that that is aValid Stim but he Doesn't)

Has his own apartment for a while still after moving in with theother egos bc he doesn't expect it to last. He sells it about a yearlater

His job is being a magician too and doing his shows that bring inAbsolutely enough money for him to not have to get another job or doshows like every other night. Ppl don't know he has Actual MagicPowers which makes a lot of things easier for him

His masks are all self-made bc he didn't wanna chance lettinganyone else do it, and he's had many less fabulous ones before bc healways wants Better. The gold patterns on the one I've drawn him withbefore are covered in glitter. He has a couple other ones he usestho, all different styles and shapes and colours for the sake ofvariety. He always wears matching make-up (mainly eye make-up andlipstick) for his shows

The scoreboard on the fridge (a piece of paper where they trackevery time him and Jackie defeat each other in Anything At All) washis idea, but it was Jackie who drew the stick figure renditions ofthe two of them on it (so it was a joint effort, really. Yeah,ironic. Or typical)

Has no shame when it comes to PDA as long as it isn't suggestive,but Jackie is a lot less sure about it (esp when out in public) soofc he respects that

That also means that if Jackie decides to hold his hand in publiche gets So Fucking Giddy you have No Idea and also you wouldn'tbelieve it even if you saw

Speaking of giddy. If you manage to get him to start talking aboutJackie (not a hard thing to achieve tbh) he will get so happy andgiddy and excited and Will Not Shut Up okay. Or at least it'll takehim a While to realise that he's rambling and has completely shed hiscool exterior. He just really loves his bf okay and he kinda justwants everyone to know how great he is

Can remember names and face p well but numbers and dates? Nah son.You better believe he has to make memos and calendar entries on hisphone for Everything. He's glad he can remember his own birthday,almost everything else he just kinda remembers (so only as specificas season or month). He feels bad about it tho, esp when he has tocheck like twice a day coming up to an important date that yes, it'sstill two days away, he didn't miss it

Has the kinda handwriting that's v pretty to look at but is anabsolute Pain to try to read

[doomednarrative]

2018: A (Personal) Year in Review

I put off writing in general so much, but I’ve put off this particular post long enough. 

And no, this isn’t about the general world or the country. It’s about my personal life, and it’s mainly a vent/personal rambling post, so I’ll put under a read more. If you don’t care to read it, that’s totally fine. 

But anyways. Here we go: 

2018 was...a fuckin ride, to put it in simplest terms. 

For those who are new and unaware, lemme briefly bring you up to speed about the end of 2017 for me, cause it’s important to the context of this entire thing:

December 17th of 2017, when I was on my third day home for Christmas break from college, I packed a backpack, and I left my dad and stepmom’s house for good. 

Their house had been abusive for years, and my mental health was in the absolute tank in college. I was feeling casually suicidal and had a full on breakdown about having to come home for winter break. After a fight I got into that night with my stepmom after she found me texting some friends on Discord (which I wasn’t supposed to have, even tho I was almost 19 and an adult at the time,) she got Pissed, and so did I. I had finally had a group of friends who supported me and helped me out so much, and I didn’t want to loose them. And I couldn’t stand the abuse, the treatment of me like I was a child with no privacy or personal autonomy, the constant pushing for me to date my one long time friend and to be straight, or my parent’s inability to accept me as their son and not their daughter any longer. 

I was given a choice, and told if I decided to leave, I wasn’t welcome back. A few months before, my best friend had said that their parents had a safe space for me to go if I ever needed it. They had been aware of how bad some things had been with my parents and feared for the worst, so they offered me a home if it came down to that. And that night, it came down to that choice. 

I packed one backpack of stuff I was allowed to bring (solely because it was stuff I bought) and I walked to my friends mom’s house, and by the next morning, I was at her dad’s house, safe and sound. 

2018 became the year of learning how to be an adult in a house that treated me as one, and in a house that didn’t put my personal safety and mental health in danger. 

2018 was...well, it was simultaneously the worst and best year of my life. 

Early on, I could tell my parents weren’t going to let my off easy for leaving. My mom wasn’t a problem, she had been out of my life for almost two years at that point, and hadn’t attempted to make contact with me for a long time. 

But my dad and my stepmom? Oh, they were determined to make my life as bas as they could while not being physically around me. 

First thing they did? They tried to take all of my possessions from my dorm at college without my knowledge, because they thought that They owned that stuff. I only found this out because I called the college to formally drop out and ask when I could pick up my stuff, and they informed me my parents were already planning on picking up my stuff for me. 

Me and my now adoptive parents ended up making an impromptu trip, four hours up and four hours back, that night to my college campus to make sure that I could get my possessions before they could. And we were successful.

Next thing my dad did to screw me over after moving out? 

That bastard stole about 700$ from a joint bank account I had with him to use for college. That was money I earned from about 7 months of work at my summer food truck job. And he took it because he legally could since it was a joint account, and didn’t tell me. i found out when I went into the bank to withdraw that money and open a separate account. 

So I was starting off the year with already some setbacks. 

Thankfully, I Was able to replace my birth certificate and social security card relatively easily, so that was in my favor at least. 

Then, come my birthday on January 26 last year, I got a letter. Two letters to be specific. One from my stepmom, and one from my dad. 

Both were full of manipulation and guilt tripping language and just. Gaslighting and more emotional abuse. They had somehow gotten my address from when I had set up my separate bank account and changed my information in the bank system.  And they decided to send me abusive shit as a birthday present. 

I’m not gonna lie, it hurt a lot. 

They continued to try to do stuff like that. They called me multiple times from different numbers, they called police on my adoptive family to say that I was crazy and that my parents were like. concerned for my safety because i had blocked their phone numbers after the first two phone calls. They texted me from different numbers, just. A lot of different bullshit. 

February was the first time I saw my dad since leaving. I had gone to a screening of Love Simon, as it was really important to me, and somehow thru some stalkery methods, he knew i was there and he confronted me in the theater lobby after the film. (When I asked how he found me there, his answer was ‘I have my ways.’ I never posted about this encounter when it originally happened.)

He proceeded to be transphobic to me in public, demeaning me and humiliating me in front of everyone in the theater, told me I was the reason my siblings were now in therapy (which is a lie, my brother was already in therapy for anxiety long before I left), calling me crazy, telling my adoptive mother that I “needed help” and that “she’ll outstay her welcome.” He said a lot of awful things, and eventually I left the theatre in tears after screaming at him that I was his son and that this shit was why I left in the first place, and that he should go fuck himself.

Thankfully, I didn’t see him for months afterword, not til october, right before I left my retail job that he and my stepmom found out I worked at. I saw my stepmom three times at that job, once with my siblings (which is the only time I’ve seen them since leaving and that was. Very hard to deal with and a very emotional time), and twice without my siblings. The times she came without them, she was an absolute fucking asshole to me, still spewing her abusive rhetoric about how I was in the wrong for leaving, and how my father did nothing wrong when he saw me in February. 

She and my father only left me alone after I told them that I would not get into an argument while I was on the clock, and that if they didn’t leave I’d call the store security guard. 

After that, they haven’t done anything else. Yet. We’ll see what 2019 holds. 

But, aside from the bullshit with my parents, 2018 had its other ups and downs. More ups than downs, but it still had it’s rough moments. 

I got a job in early May as a sales associate/cashier/fitting room attendant for a well known Coat Factory chain store. 

That job was pure fuckin hell, and I’m glad I don’t work there anymore. The last week that I was supposed to work there before leaving for my new job, I got pulled into the side office by the manager on duty (she wasn’t an actual manager, she just had closing priviledges) and she Screamed at me about how a customer complained about me, she hated me, my coworkers all hated me, all three of my managers hated me, and how she was tired of my attitude and how she couldn’t wait til I was fuckin gone. The whole issue that night had started because of her and how she couldn’t properly communicate to me where she wanted me to be that night and what duties she wanted me handling. She took out her frusteration at her own mistakes on me, and I had had enough. I stood my ground with her and didn’t let her walk all over me, but I went home that night, bawled for about two hours because being yelled at is a trigger for me, and she had been all in my personal space like she was going to hit me, and then I emailed my general manager the next day and told her she could replace me for my last two shifts and I wouldn’t be coming in for them. 

I haven’t stepped foot in that goddamned store since I left that night. 

I have a different job now. I work as an overnight personal care assistant at a nursing home, but it’s a higher end one, and it’s not bad. It can be stressful and super draining at times, but enviornmentally its a better job than the retail one ever was, so it’s good. 

My mental health has been a wild ride as well. I won’t get into the full details here, but let just say that uh. I’m 99% sure that I’m both ADHD and autistic, and I’m thinking I have some form of ptsd as well from years of trauma shit. I’m not suicidal anymore, but I have bouts of depression and anxiety and sometimes anger that last for days to weeks at a time. It’s...rough, to say the least. And dysphoria doesn’t help any of that. 

But I’m alive and fighting, and that’s the important part. 

Not everything this year has been bad tho. There’s been a fair amount of good too, and I’m greatful for it. 

December 23rd I celebrated my first year aniversary with @curious-corvids, and i couldn’t be happier about that. He’s been there thru this Entire ride, and he’s been such a positive force in my life, and I hope to keep him around for years to come. 

Similarly, March 18th this year will be my one year aniversary with @sinclair-solutions, and that I’m immensely happy about as well. They’re such a wonderful person and just. i’m very lucky to have them, I really am. they’ve also been here thru everything, and I could never thank then enough for that. 

I made some friends in the past few months that I can’t imagine what my days would be like without them in it. Kathy, Jay, Fi, and Evan are such great people, and I’m lucky to have them around. 

I got the chance to meet Ren, Lu and Erin in person for the first time at DragonCon, and went to both my first comic convention and my first out of state trip alone with them, and it was honestly the best five days of my life. I can’t wait to do that again with them this year. 

I’ve been steadily improving at art this year and took commissions for the first time, and that’s been a very fun thing to do. 

I’m actually able to like. Afford to buy things for myself and spend my money without interferance, and thats such a change from how my parents used to control my finances. 

Overall 2018 was just..a wild ride. 

2019 is sure to bring better things. With luck this month, I should be starting the process of legally changing my name, and that will be a very freeing thing to do. 

I turn 20 on January 26th, and just. 

I didn’t think I’d actually make it to 20. That’s a personal milestone for me, to have made it this far. 

Whatever this new year brings tho, here’s to hoping it goes better than 2018. 

Here’s to hoping I’m better this year than I was last year. 

[gaiatheorist]

Not-so-smart phones?

Flicking through the headlines, and generally trying to avoid anything with ‘Apocalypse’ in it, the first two I skimmed through related to mobile tech. I remember when we didn’t all have the internet in our pockets at all times, when ‘the internet’ was that one computer at school, that each class got about half an hour a month, to talk to another school. I remember when a ‘phone’ was either the house-phone, that your Mum would pick up the other extension on, and listen to your “No, you hang up...”, or various public telephone boxes, where you needed a handful of change, and to avoid the smack-head waiting to call their dealer.

The kid didn’t have a smart-phone until he went to Uni, he’d been using the same mini-brick he’d had since he was 12, topped-up with £10 credit about twice a year. He didn’t open a Fakebook account until he was 16. That’s not my CEOP-training, or my Safeguarding head, he went through the swearing-at-strangers-on-Xbox-live stage, and I think he uses Steam to chat to his mates. ‘I think’, Gods, I’m one of those dinosaur-parents, who doesn’t actually know what their child is doing. I’m not overly concerned, he leaves his laptop open, and his phone and tablet lying about, there’s no element of concealment to indicate there’s anything he wouldn’t want me to know about, so I don’t try to look.

(My head’s doing that then/now thing it does sometimes, I’m amused by the thought of time-travelling back to my teenaged self, and not being able to immediately search any given thing, instead of going to the library to look it up.)

The kid hasn’t been kept in a cupboard under the stairs, he’s sort of come-of-age during this period where the instant-internet is normal, to the extent that we both get exasperated when the connection glitches, and we can’t watch TV-from-everywhere over the broadband at the same time as we both have several devices connected to various other apps. (Look at that, ‘apps’ doesn’t flag on spell-check any more.)

Smart/stupid link on spell-check, there, and my bubbling rage when Fakebook people just let anything that isn’t underlined go. Just because it IS a word, doesn’t mean it’s the right one. That’s another rage-bubble I need to work on, because it’s able-ist, It doesn’t matter that spelling and grammar errors make me twitchy, but it does sort of loop back around to the point of this ramble. In 2003, when I started working as an SEN teaching assistant, I was assigned to a group of students who had been removed from their GCSE English class. Not a disruption-removal, they’d been removed from the bottom-set English class because they couldn’t read. Rolling back my ridiculous memory, they were all in the Moderate Learning Difficulties category on the SEN ‘register’, I had four regular ‘MLD’ students, and occasionally the SpLD lad with the ‘Specific Learning Difficulty’ of dyslexia. Oh, sometimes I had the boy with Asperger’s and ADHD as well, but only if one of the MLD boys was absent, because if you put them in the same room they fought. That was how SEN students were catered for back then, the weakest students were removed from the mainstream class, and plonked in a room with a teaching assistant (being paid thruppence ha’penny an hour to teach the curriculum.), because that was a more effective use of resources than the teacher having to spend half the lesson trying to ‘keep them on task’. (More accurately, trying to stop them masturbating under the desk, or falling off their chairs again.) 

‘Teaching’ four children who couldn’t actually read, without a degree, or a teaching qualification. I know, brilliant, isn’t it? 

Rambling. My point was that the particular learning difficulties those children had led to a LOT of pick-the-first-word-spellcheck-suggests essays. The kids had no real clue what most of the words said, and “Look it up in the dictionary.” was never an effective solution, they couldn’t ‘look it up’, BECAUSE they didn’t have enough of a grasp of spelling to even know what the word started with. English is awkward like that. (Saw one of them on a bus a few days ago, so at least one of them managed to survive to the age of nearly-30.) Back-then, they didn’t have mobile phones, and I doubt they had the internet at home. (Some of them didn’t appear to have washing machines, or parents with the ability to use one, anyway.) 

Back to the present, ALL the kids have mobiles, and it’s a rare house that doesn’t have ‘the internet’. Even the in-laws have ‘the internet’ now, although what they actually have is permission to use next door’s broadband password. (Which they probably have written in a book somewhere.) Fantastic, virtually every piece of knowledge humanity has ever acquired, at our fingertips, all the time. (So we use it to start fights, and look at pictures of cats.) The news is accused of dumbing-down to reach a wider audience, ‘exams are getting easier’, ‘university students are buying essays online’, and now, the fact-checking thing. As much as we have an element of society that will always pick the first word on spell-check, we also have an element that will believe the top-result on any given internet search. (Even when it’s a bloody advert.) The woman in whichever-African-country who thought her phone could scan her fingerprint and provide ‘the answer’ to whether she had AIDS. Scary world, people.

Even more scary is the man in Ohio, who live-streamed himself murdering a stranger. In the olden days, we wouldn’t have known about that as-it-happened, we would have had to wait for a printed newspaper to tell us about it the next day. We didn’t have 24-hour-television-news back then, an emergency broadcast was a very rare thing, but generally meant the death of a member of the royal family, not the apocalypse. Now? Now we’re so used to the ‘breaking news’ banner popping up, that it barely even registers. That desensitisation is a protective mechanism, because if we all read all of the news all of the time, we WOULD go completely insane. Our bubble-worlds, and the repeated articles about ‘digital detox’ are a strange reflection of how saturated we’ve become by the ‘connectivity’ that’s crept into our ‘normal’. 

I’m smirking at myself, the smart-phone that never leaves my side is pretty much never used as a phone. I looked at the call-time total on it a few weeks ago, and I’ve used 16 minutes. I’ve had the phone over a year, and the TOTAL talk-time on it is 16 minutes. I don’t talk, I type. My phone is a camera, to record stupid-shit-I’ve-done, and a calendar/reminder, alarms all over the place, to remind me to eat, or take medication, or put trousers on. My phone is effectively my ‘carer’, but that’s not why I have a gripping phobia of dropping it and breaking it. We ‘all’ have that, don’t we? The panic when you tap the pocket where your phone should be, and it isn’t? The Fear of Updates, battery-panic, and that subconscious thing we all do where we know where the signal-dead-spots are. We’re not scared of being eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger any more, we’re scared of being without wifi. 

There’s no real point to this one, I’m not going on a digital detox, because I barely ‘connect’ with anyone. I’m aware that two messages came to my phone last night, but I’m not breaking my neck to respond to one of them. (Fakebook fact-checking-man pointing out that I’m ‘quiet’, and asking me if I’m OK, I’ll lie to him later, because my sleeping patterns are out-of-synch with most humans, and his wife HATES me, I don’t want to ‘ping’ his phone and start some sort of domestic between them.) That’s the other thought-stream on this, I’m deliberately keeping my head down on Fakebook to disengage from ‘work’. The union lady said this would happen, that the longer I was off, the less people would try to engage with me. “You’ll be able to tell which ones were your real friends, because they’ll keep in touch.” That’s a most-people rule, though, it doesn’t apply to me