#bmt asks

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

Ok there's something that needs to be said about this solo stuff. Hobi focused on the US. Jin went to South America. RM went "exclusive" with his small gig in Korea. So tell me why Jimin is being lambasted for doing a rigorous but wholly normal Kpop promotional period? Are fans really so stupid they don't understand that each person picked what they wanted to do in consultation with their management etc? Are they really so thick-headed that they can't see how the group's western favortism has changed the group and its focus?

Jimin is doing 70 fan calls and going on K music shows, what every other Kpop group does as a matter of course for their releases. THAT isn't favortism. It's a choice to do these promotions. Everyone had this choice, and they didn't take it. Maybe fans should digest that before deigning to speak.

It seems to me the fans are changing their tune depending on what they decide to be angry on any given day. They tell people to "trust the boys and their words" and then when these men actually talk about their own decision regarding their work, all of a sudden "clearly RM and Hobi didn't want this or that and the company failed them". It's impossible to take any argument seriously.

Especially RM and Hobi's projects were conducted and promoted exactly in the manner of how Army wants them and sees them when part of the group. "Bigger than K-Pop", performing on a global stage or promoting it in exclusive settings or American museums. They had opportunities that other idols in the business for as long as they have been, do not have. And it was all thanks to BTS success. What they did was perfectly in line with the status of the group. Their fans complain about delays in shipping or physical releases, all because it impacted negatively their chances of charting high, completely ignoring that being a headline at Lolapalloza is bigger than any of that. Again, they don't see the forest for the trees.

And now they have an issue with Jimin because he embraced and reinforced his professional identity and career as an idol. His other bandmates did not do that. I thought the fans wanted them to be bigger than idols. Again, changing their tune because it's Jimin. Why do they mind so much. Is it envy? Are they projecting their own frustrations? Jimin is only doing the standard promotions for an album release, especially domestically. It's his choice. Just as everyone else had their own choice and control over what they want and how they want their music to be released to the public. The Disney+ documentary on Hobi is a testament to that because it says exactly what we are talking about. Each of these men have free will and enough autonomy to be able to decide how their career to be like. But fans would rather believe they are puppets on a string and invent lies and make vicious comments.

And an underline of this (especially from I-fans) is how army and solo stans infantilize Asian/Korean men and idols by taking away their own agency. Which means they need to be coddled, protected, defended or free from the consequences of their harmful actions, depending on the situations.

[sun-ea-sports]

whats the funniest subspace nickname you've heard. I've seen submissive, subordination, and subheading

I’ve seen people bypass and say Subshit before,,

But for “normal” nicknames (without curse words) it’d have to be Submarine :3c

[sairobee]

I just followed you after seeing your first chapter of Even the Rocks- except, I didn't realize it was a first chapter, so I tore through the whole thing and screamed "WHAT" when I reached that cliffhanger of an ending. I'm chomping at the bit to read the rest! <3

AAAAAAaaaah! This is such a huge compliment, thank you!! <3 I just finished writing chapter two, and I'm about to go on hiatus in two weeks, so crossing my fingers I'll be able to post pages in a few months!

Thank you again! And thank you everyone who has reblogged, left nice words in the tags, or replied -- it means the world to me.

[boatmediatourney]

If Atlantis wins the submarine tournament, I am rage-quitting the internet.

i fear you may have to start preparing yourself for the worst

[roxydemi]

What kind of sub? Lol gotta make sure I never buy that kind

Any of them, I have a gluten intolerance LOL

[andrefreakman]

hey im really sorry about the creeps in your questions asking to see your feet, anyways, do you think you could film a video of you taking off your shoes (for no reason) and then socks? not so i can see your feet or anything

no but ill shove them down your throat for $5 and a bmt footlong on white bread with mozzarella, lettuce, onion, pickles, cucumber, oil, vinegar, and all the seasonings, with mayo

[phunockery]

Trigger warning allergic reaction, random etymology facts pertaining to sexual acts, talking about death, the melodrama of trying not to die.

(Spoilers) If you're reading this, it means I survived the night.

This is a timed log after finding out I poisoned myself. I don't think I'll die from it but this sucks and I'm feeling emotional and melodramatic.

11:00ish

If I die tomorrow, I didn't mean to. I promise. I just wanted a drink. I usually don't, it usually upsets my stomach. But tomorrow I turn 34 and I was feeling frisky and wanted something to drink while I play my traditional birthday (and sad mood) game: Sonic 2. So I grab a Kirkland hard seltzer from the fridge. Never tried the brand, but it was black cherry and I like that.

I decided to try to time some of my runs, nothing serious. Beat a couple of my pbs feeling good.

After drinking about 1/4th of the seltzer and I notice that my head is feeling funny and I wonder how a 5% drink was making me feel like that. My game play gets bad, but I beat my PB on Chemical Plant 2.

Aquatic Zone is a mess, mild improvement in act 2... And I start feeling itchy. Hives are building. I grab some Benadryl, chew two and as my chest tightens I look up what could be causing this.

11:15

Apparently there is a filtering process called finning that run the alcohol through animal products, like gelatin.

That comes from pigs.

That I am deathly allergic to.

The company does not have to disclose this information and honestly this a best guess, because what else would make me allergic to an alcoholic beverage?

Now I am sitting here, trying to differenciate anxiety and anaphylaxis. Taking deep breaths, epi pen in hand. I'm not going to call 911 because I can't afford it, if you're mad, join the club. (🦅 Insert screams of eagles and freedom here 🇺🇲)

It's almost midnight. I am almost 34 and I am live blogging my allergic reaction because I have nothing else to do

'call 911' that is far too expensive and I don't want to leave my kids with massive amounts of debt because I decided to get treatment (eagle screaming and freedom noises here 🦅)

I messaged a few friends, but they're busy. My friend is probably going to kill me in the morning when she sees this if I'm not already dead.

I'll probably live... I once survived a wedding where the brides mother unintentionally tried to kill me. I was lucky then because there was a doctor in the house... But that was worse. I had lost my ability to breathe immediately.

I'm just itchy. Soooo itchy. I am covered in hives... It doesn't help that my other friend made dinner and no one put cast iron that has cooked bacon and allergy together yesterday... Which I suffered for. Granted I suffered less then than I am now. Now now, but still itchy and cramps.

11:30

I hope to make it to cramps. I should. I can still breath. I am just so itchy. I hate this. I should be getting rest so I can pretend to have a good birthday. Instead I will pretend to have a good birthday and deal with aaaallll the fallout of having a full allergic reaction.

11:35

Chest is no longer feeling tight. A friend has message saying they are going to bed. I sent a message asking if they have a few moments to just sit with me. I think it was too late, they're offline.

11:40 I'm still itchy. My legs, my arms, my scalp, my chest, my armpits... It all itches. This really sucks. (Remembers that sucks used to be a euphemism for bjs and this fact gives me the chuckles of strength).

11:45

double checked messages to other friends. All unread. Some are online, some are not. But I am still alone so you, future reader, remain my emotional support pen-pal.

The skin around my eyes is itchy like I was crying. I don't think I've been crying. I'm upset, but not like that.

Good news: this won't be my worst birthday.

My worst birthday was in 2009. I was BMT for the USAF and on my 19th birthday, two days before graduating, I was acting unusually confused, was sent to the hospital and diagnosed with viral meningitis. I was booted from the USAF shortly after recovering.

11:50 Hell this isn't even as bad the last 7 years that just got progressively worse. I was let go of my job on my 30th birthday and became disabled two days later. (Barely related). Last year I was coerced into going to a water park (I don't do good with loud noises any more) and I wound up breaking a tooth trying to swim in the shallow waters. My ex was not comforting about it and suggested that I not make a scene in front of my kids because they would get upset.

11:55 I can breathe a bit easier. Still left unseen and I turn 34 in 5 minutes.

3 minutes to go and I am trying to fight the sleepy of the Benny's until I feel less itchy.

2 more minutes, I really hope I don't die, my friends don't deserve to have a corpse in their guest room

12:05 made a happy birthday post on TikTok. My voice is definitely affected, but I can talk and breath.

Still left on unseen. I feel bad that they're going to wake up and find out that a friend reached out for help and help wasn't available. That is going to suck. Hopefully I'm still alive and can tell them they're good and deserve sleep.

12:20 a rando has become the first to wish me a happy birthday. A friend messaged to let me know they're glad I'm safe and they're going to bed so they can work in the morning. They hope I find someone to talk to. It looks like it is just you and me

12:23 the stomach has put in its bid for attention. I will spare you the details. The Benny's are taking effect. I am soooo tired and the body itches slightly less. Except around the eyes, it still feels like I've been crying

12:29 my apologies to my friend: I fear I have destroyed your toilet. It should be fine in the morning.

12:30 the stomach still hates me. I hate me. I just want to go to bed.

12:40 tired. Imma go to bed with my Epi Pen on the bedside table. I wake up to everything anyways. The sudden inescapable lack of breath should be more than enough to wake.

I could really use a 'there there's and a hug. And now my eyes are itchy again, at least I know why this time.

Good night.

[procelibacyactivism]

“I believe women are hypergamous. It’s an observable fact,” my date declared matter-of-factly as we stared at each other across the abyss of Zoom. About an hour earlier, when the evening started going downhill, I began writing down the words I didn’t understand but knew I’d heard before. So, I added “hypergamous” to the list. His previous mentions of “pair bonded,” “high-value men,” and “dominant masculinity” all sounded ominously familiar as well.

In the end, my date (let’s call him King) and I talked for nearly three hours. King explained that I was behaving in a masculine way when I invited him to meet me for a date (instead of waiting for him to ask me), claimed it was a biological fact that in any romantic relationship someone (who’s cisgender and male, of course) needed to dominate the other, and feminism was a force that had only served to divide the Black community and alienate Black men. That last part came after I “revealed” that I am a feminist, something he told me was usually a complete non-starter for him.

It was like the trolls I saw skulking around the edges of Black Twitter had jumped up from under their technicolor bridges and wandered directly into my dating life. The sirens clanging in my head throughout this entire ordeal bleated out one word over and over again: incel. For months, I had seen similar words and themes being used on social media. On Twitter, men that wield a particular animus against Black women are sometimes derogatively called “nigcels.” I had to find out how the language of “chads” and “hypergamy,”—both terms I associated with white men on the internet, the latter a claim that women only date men of higher social status—had mapped onto the world of Black men.

According to Aaron Fountain Jr., a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University, it’s less about incels in the case of Black men than the Manosphere, a more racially diverse space on the internet that includes men of all ages and has developed its own offshoot, the Black Manosphere. Within the Black Manosphere’s fiefdom, there are many subgroups, rival influencers, competing philosophies, and myriad content creators. But each of them contain one common thread: a concerted, explicit disdain for Black women.

In all parts of the Manosphere, men talk about taking the “red pill,” a Matrix reference that indicates that they have woken up to the purported “truth” about women. In some corners of the Black Manosphere, men grumble about the very popular YouTuber Kevin Samuels and his ilk, because Samuels allows the Black women he berates on his show to speak at all. In his lane, influencer Mr. Palmer has coined the term “Baby Mama Terrorists,” or BMT, and he and his followers sport Fuck Child Support hats. Dr. Shawn “Thunder” Wallace, a tenured professor at The Ohio State University, is an influencer whose work teeters at the edge of the Manosphere, beckoning in Black men who might want to explore further.

The content creator Mad BusDriverX1 (MBD for short), who films his YouTube videos wearing a helmet, would only consent to being interviewed over email. He’s a founder of the Save Yourself Black Men, or SYSBM, community, but insists the group is not a part of the Black Manosphere, claiming that space has “different goals and objections” than SYSBM. In his videos, he spends hours describing the ills of Black women, the deterioration of the Black race, the importance of travel for Black men, and the virtues of dating and marrying anyone but American Black women.

In one video, titled “protect your seed black men invest it into white Asian or Latina,” MBD’s language veers close to eugenics as he addresses the Black men listening, saying, “There’s going to be two types of Black people in the future and one’s going to be Black-ish and one’s going to be traditionally Black...the permanent underclass, you know what that’s going to be. No disrespect, if you’re a Black man who needs to save himself go on ahead...because you can’t save it, it’s ingrained, you’ve got to let it [the Black race] die out because they don’t want to change.” When asked if this use of eugenics language was intentional or if he was at all concerned about the historic weaponization of eugenics language against Black men and women, MBD responded that SYSBM is about freedom for Black men, rooted in their ability to choose better for themselves.

(my note: 'eugenics language' is a genuinely idiotic term)

While SYSBM’s philosophy is deeply alarming, its foundation—the perception of Black people as pathologically violent, lazy, and unintelligent—is hardly new. The language of Black respectability and the “betterment” of the Black race has existed for generations; its most prominent proponents range from the scholar W.E.B. DuBois to pop culture figures like Bill Cosby. The Black Manosphere is fueled by this presumed cultural deficiency and shades of Black respectability politics. According to Fountain, the 1965 “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” is a regularly quoted text in the Black Manosphere. Often referred to as the Moynihan Report and commissioned by then President Johnson, this report has for decades created a pseudo-anthropological argument claiming that Black people and their culture were at fault for their own second-class citizenship in America.

If you’re wondering how a 60-year-old, oft-debunked government report holds so much weight among some Black men, whom it also seems to disparage, the answer seems to be, in part, its enduring place in white conservative talking points about Black families and communities. But even more critically for the Black Manosphere, the Moynihan Report places the responsibility for a stated Black pathology squarely on the shoulders of Black women. It was the Moynihan Report that propelled generations of ire toward Black woman-led households and served as the basis for the Reagan-era Black “welfare queen” stereotype. Its author, then-Assistant Labor Secretary Daniel Patrick Moynihan, admonished, “Given the strains of the disorganized and matrifocal family life in which so many Negro youth come of age, the Armed Forces are a dramatic and desperately needed change: a world away from women, a world run by strong men of unquestioned authority...”

On our Zoom date, King had also bemoaned the idea of Black women leading anything from households to topics of conversation. His belief, one clearly indebted to the legacy of Moynihan’s report, was that Black men’s supremacy in heterosexual relationships is the healing balm the Black community needs to subvert a racial caste system.

Mumia Obsidian Ali, a Philly resident and self-described “co-founder” of the Black Manosphere, told me has a great deal of respect for Moynihan and his report. Over the past 12 years, Ali says his writing and videos have been featured on “just about every Black Manosphere venue” of note. According to Ali, he sought to establish and expand the Black Manosphere because “Black women as a group have long enjoyed a megaphone to air out their grievances, much of it—not all of it—concerning Black men...And I got tired of being left out of the conversation.”

Ali initially refused to be interviewed until I read his 42-chapter screed on Black dating. When we finally spoke via Zoom, our conversation began at an imbalance. Ali started not with a greeting, but instead by playing a fake advertisement for the “Wookie Weave Warehouse,” presumably a dig at my own purple box braids. (He kept his own camera off.) In his book, Ali defines Wookie Weave as “hair extensions, lace front wigs, hair weaves and other hair appliances Black women are known to use in their daily beauty regimen. Many Black men do not like them on Black women, particularly when it comes to long term mating.” The ad not only featured the braying of Star Wars’ Chewbacca, it offered to throw in Elmer’s glue to keep the weave on my head. Overall, the targeting felt consistent with Ali’s written and public profile. Throughout his dating guide for “non-select” Black men, for instance, Ali decries the marginalization of Black men at the hands of Black women, whom he crowns with such titles as Paper Tigress, Spinster, Mizz Thang, and Victim Queen, to name a few.

Like the white Manosphere, the Black Manosphere is right-wing and politically conservative. (Ali proudly said he voted for Trump twice.) Its content creators perpetuate the belief that Black women—not systemic economic, political, or social oppression—are to blame for any inequities Black people, especially Black men, observe in their lives.

Packaging and repackaging this message is how the Manosphere grows its audience. Jamaal Muwwakkil, a Ph.D. candidate and linguist at University of California, Santa Barbara, has been researching conservative political groups as well as the linguistic and cultural memes that conservatives use to recruit young people. Muwwakkil explained how using memes in spaces like the Black Manosphere serve both as tools for community building and self-identification.

“I like to look at [these memes] as cultural signifiers, where I can signal to you who I am, where I’m from, what I know, quickly. By quoting a song lyric or a movie quote or referencing even with my body. It doesn’t even have to be verbal,” Muwwakkil says. “It kind of provides for a plausible deniability, which was the other function of memeing. You get to [joke] your way out of any sticky situations. But if a person believes [your meme], I can see, ‘Ah, you, too, are a man of culture.’”

In addition to “red pill” language, the Black Manosphere is awash in these memes. Ali, Samuels, Dr. Thunder, and many others use sound clips to reinforce negative portrayals of Black women (i.e. their tendencies toward “Wookie Weave” or the “idiot woman” sound loop Kevin Samuels directs at his callers). As Muwwakkil observes, the ever-expanding lexicon of Black Manosphere memes allows for its most harmful themes about Black women to be disguised in everyday conversations as off-color humor. In fact, when I asked Fountain about how he discovered the Black Manosphere, he admitted that, initially, he’d seen its videos as entertaining, absurdist humor.

Toxic archetypes of Black womanhood—the mammy, the Black matriarch, the jezebel (or the Scraggle Daggle, in SYSBM parlance), and the welfare mother—are all alive and well in the Black Manosphere. The research of Dr. Patricia Hill-Collins, a preeminent Black feminist scholar and distinguished professor emerita at the University of Maryland, shows that such images have been used since Black people’s forced arrival in the country to justify Black women’s dehumanization by racist systems and to mask the physical and psychological harm they experience. The Black Manosphere breathes new life into these long-standing cultural memes and helps to reanimate their virulence in digital spaces.

A 2018 study analyzing the abusive and violent tweets women receive on Twitter found that Black women are 84 percent more likely than their white counterparts to experience violent threats and language on the platform. The vast majority of that language was racialized. Dr. Sarah Adeyinka-Skold, an assistant professor of sociology at Furman University, has seen these truths born out in her research on the dating lives of heterosexual Black women. She explains that on dating apps, Black women are often not selected by male partners, and when they do garner attention, tropes of them as sluts or welfare queens also mean they face fetishization and derogatory language. According to Adeyinka-Skold, “[Black women] are the only racial group to be excluded by non-Black men and Black men.”

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Black Manosphere is the immense amount of pain its content creators appear to be in, even as they dispense supposedly clear-eyed truths. Their own rejection and ostracization has been transmuted into a blunt object used to bludgeon their way to supposed relevance. When I asked Ali what a realistic (by his standards) Black romance movie would look like, he replied, “80 percent of the guys get looked over while 20 percent of the guys get the ladies, who then screw the ladies over. And the Black ladies complain that Black men ain’t shit.” And yet, the loss these Black Manosphere content creators feel at not holding a “select” or “high-value” position in society is never channeled into anger at systems like racism, colorism, classism, or fatphobia. Instead, their crosshairs are steadfastly trained on Black women and feminism.

During our interview, Ali asked me why I am a feminist. I had answered a similar question from my date, months before, in almost the exact same way. I told them both that, for me, Black queer feminism provides a lens and a framework through which to see myself and other people (of all genders) more expansively. I explained that Black queer feminist scholars have pushed me to question the limiting nature of white dominant definitions of masculinity and femininity. I talked about the freedom to see each other, especially Black people, as whole, myriad, and not boxed in by what we are told we have to be. Strangely, or perhaps miraculously, they both agreed with this part of the feminist doctrine they purport to hate. “Being more expansive,” Ali mused. “I have no problem with that.”

[tilliwriteapine]

I literally can't get myself to read any of these articles about infective endocarditis. Like, it is overwhelming and I am not 100% sure the direction my instructor wants for this presentation. I have the basic patho down, thankfully. Videos are AMAZING.

Blah. That will be a Friday problem.

Tomorrow, I'm going to read articles for the leadership paper that may be useful for my DNP project (I'm still thinking about steroid-induced DM in oncology patients... Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to the BMT unit for a few terms, which is frustrating. I have a contact, so I guess I need to contact them). Then, I have a doctor's appointment I miraculously got. Then I have class.

I asked for this. I asked for this in 2022. I'm just feeling the weight of the weather, exhaustion, and much more hitting me hard. Oof.

[boobblog]

I'm not editing this...

Luke has been worried about my heart for years. He used to tell me all the time that he seriously thinks I'm going to have a heart attack. Now, between cancer and my stupid sense of urgency that may or may not be from my time in Air Force, he is even more acutely aware. I was talking with a friend the other day and I was able to put into words what happens in my brain when I'm feeling "stressed."

Everything and I mean everything, carries an equal value of importance, HAS to be done as quickly as possible, so that no one is affected by my time management skills, but it also has to be done perfectly creating zero room for errors. If I mess something up, there is a whole shame cycle I will go through. I'm telling y'all, it's cluster up there.

The problem, there's a lot, but the one I've recently uncovered is that I'm driving myself crazy. I thrive in creative spaces, which can be spaces not always used creatively, but the tasks I'm doing become boring because I have these made up rules in my head, that only I am holding myself too. Insane right? Who in the their right mind makes up rules for tasks that don't have rules, and then punishes themselves for not meeting the expected outcome.

Me. I do that. With everything I do.

I mentioned my time in the Air Force. I did 4 years active duty, all of which were spent in Misawa, Japan, and 2 years in the reserves here in DFW. Part of me thinks I would have stayed till retirement had I not entered into the most traumatic relationship of my life immediately following my active duty stint. However, during that 10 year stint I was not ok, mentally or physically. I hurt people too. But, we can't change that can we.

Anywho, there's a video in my flashbacks of the BMT chow hall, and how all the drill instructors are deliberately tearing us down, so they can mold us into the machine that is the United States military. I'm sure you can sense where this is going, so I will spare you the imperialistic ramifications of cultivizing children. But know I'm not alone in these thoughts.

The military taught so many lessons, but it also created one of the deepest grooves in my brain that I have to physically work at daily to undo. It's annoying more than anything. But it showed me exactly how I will not be "molding" my child.

I got distracted, I was trying to explain my unreal sense of urgency and what I've learned about it. I get so angry, like Big Mad when I feel rushed. I've always thought that there was person to blame for this. Someone put pressure on me to do all these things, right now, perfectly. It's true, I always feel rushed, but no one was rushing me.

I just rushed! Why are all my epiphanies so simple when I type them out. In my brain these revelations are massive and a very big deal.

So how does my sense of urgency have anything to do with cancer you ask? The hospitalist actually congratulated me on doing all of my testing done within 2 months. He said that he's never seen that and called me the poster child of cancer treatment. What the fuck? People sit on a diagnosis like that? Why was it so easy for me to make all the 50457937 appointments, and push for all these procedures before chemo? Who knows, my sense of urgency was helpful, making the chance for me to get rid of it further and further away.

I have a particularly fucked up bag of tricks, that's what I like to call my mental health disorders. Yup multiple. I am officially diagnosed with: Severe Anxiety, Chronic Depression, Bulimia (in remission, yes, I already told y'all this, but I did that, I stopped it,) and Complex-PTSD. Luckily for me, every single one of these diagnoses presents like something entirely different, at different times. Not. So managing the symptoms and thoughts has been complicated to say the least.

Let's talk about that. Having cancer while also having depression is so fucked up. It's like the universe, said Hey look at that depressy/stressy person who already struggles with suicidal ideations, they're perfect! Let's give them this disease that will absolutley kill them if they don't do the most painful things to their bodies. But have no fear, we will call them survivors and warriors making them think this was their choice. Cancer doesn't give a fuck about your mental health. It's like here you go, now's your chance to just let go. But, if you don't fight (insert religious trauma here), so the only choice is to go suffer tremendouly while actively fighting to keep the life you didn't want to keep before.

This is one of the reasons I struggle with God the Father. Because I have the best father, and if my earthly Dad is better than some people's Heavenly father, who is capable of preventing this shit, but doesn't, then I have a really hard time wrapping my mind around an all loving heavenly father. So, I say the universe. Not to discredit your God, this is what works for me. People have used God the father to beat me over the head for years. Maybe there's a lot to heal from here still, but if he is all knowing then he shouldn't mind, right?

I'm not a warrior, I have a low pain tolerance now (tattoos do not count, that's therapy and I love that pain) and I have the weakest stomach. I struggle changing the dressings on my own body. I used to be this bad ass first assist with a stomach made from steel, seriously, I held eyeballs, and reconstructed faces after drunken bar fights between stupid boys. Now, I cry and/or throw up rubbing antibiotic ointment on my "nipples". Cool cool cool cool

I'm typing this from the notes I took last night at 0352 in the morning on my phone. I learned another thing about myself. Self discovery is a journey, and it's the only place I can go right now. So I learned that this blog will be the physical manifestations of me properly re-filing my memories. Remember how I told you guys how my PTSD hid thoughts and memories to protect me. Well now it thinks I'm strong enough to process all of them, at once, while I have cancer.

THAT IS WHAT MAKES ME A WARRIOR. I'M DOING THAT.

I wanted to start this entry with a thought I had last night. Why is it that most people are telling me I look and/or sound good when they see or speak to me? Is there a way that I'm supposed to look or sound? Am I fucking cancer up too?

Nope that's not a real thought. So imagine it is now 0406 last night and I identified an unreal thought in real time! My therapy peeps will know that this is a huge accomplishment, so get ready to have your minds blown.

That thought is irrational. I'm really only speaking at lengths to my family and they have said those things. But they would NEVER mean it the way my fucked up little brain imagined up. But that made me reflect more. They wouldn't mean it like that because I've told them about how I think and feel about the impact words have on me.

Communication is such a tool that not many people have mastered. We should be taught better how to have hard verbal conversations about things like cancer, and rape.

Ohhhhh nice seque again, rape. Yup, #metoo. Moving on, it doesn't define me, I will not be shamed, or embarrassed and I absolutely, definitely, without a second thought NOT tone down MY story for your comfortability. If it makes you uncomfortable, go touch some grass and be thankful you don't have to figure out how to "survive". Yet.

[xtruss]

Pro-Palestine demonstrators gather during a vigil for U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Aaron Bushnell, Who Self-Immolated For Palestine 🇵🇸, Had Grown Deeply Disillusioned With The Military! “I have Been Complicit in The Violent Domination of The World And I Will Never Get The Blood 🩸 🩸🩸 Off My Hands.”

— By Nikita Mazurov | February 28 2024

Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty U.S. Air Force Airman who set himself on fire Sunday to protest Israel’s war on Gaza, appears to have grown disillusioned with the U.S. military and his own role as a service member, according to posts on the online forum Reddit under a handle matching one used by Bushnell.

Bushnell, 25, made international news when he professed that he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and recorded himself shouting “Free Palestine!” as he burned to death in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on Sunday. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” Bushnell had announced on a livestream before his self-immolation, “but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers is not extreme at all.”

The Reddit posts, by a user named acebush1 and mostly from the past four years, chronicle a young person’s experience struggling with money as the pandemic took hold. The Reddit poster turned to the military and was initially enamored with the Air Force, but quickly came to denounce it.

In the months leading up to Bushnell’s act of self-immolation, several of acebush1’s posts showed how sharply their view of the military had shifted. On the r/Airforce subreddit, a user asked veterans whether, in hindsight, they would still choose to join the military. Acebush1 answered, “Absolutely not.”

“I have been complicit in the violent domination of the world,” they said, “and I will never get the blood off my hands.”

The Intercept analysis linked the acebush1 Reddit account to Bushnell by analyzing his social media activity. In a post on Facebook the same day as his self-immolation, Bushnell had posted a link to the video streaming platform Twitch with the username LillyAnarKitty. Using a Twitch username history tool that identifies a user’s prior account names, The Intercept found that the same Twitch User ID number used by LillyAnarKitty previously employed the handle acebush1.

A Reddit user with the same username — acebush1 — posted over a thousand times since 2014. The Reddit posts mention details that align closely with Bushnell’s life, including being in the Air Force, having a friend who was a conscientious objector, and studying computer science.

As this story was being drafted, acebush1’s posts started to be removed from Reddit. The posts were archived and, though Reddit instantly deletes posts from their new interface, visiting the old-style Reddit user profile page reveals their recently deleted posts.

“A Regret I Will Carry”

The acebush1 Reddit user joined the military soon after posting about their financial struggles at the beginning of the pandemic. On March 19, 2020, acebush1 inquired about becoming an Uber Eats driver. The following month they posted asking for financial help: “HELP – Can’t get stimulus or unemployment benefits, about to run out of money.”

In May, acebush1 posted a photo with the caption “My Dad getting suited up to give me a goodbye? hug before I leave for BMT” — basic military training. According to Bushnell’s LinkedIn page, he enrolled in “Basic & Technical Training” in the Air Force in May 2020.

Several months into enrollment, acebush1 appeared excited by the Air Force, reposting a video of a military aircraft in August 2020 and giving it a heading that said: “Man, the Air Force does some cool-ass shit.”

Acebush1 also regularly posted in various video game Reddit communities, including one dedicated to the video game “Valheim.” In Bushnell’s self-immolation livestream, the liquid container he is carrying has a sticker with the slogan ‘the bees are happy,’ a meme from “Valheim.”

In November 2021, acebush1 made multiple posts asking about advice in pursuing a computer science degree. Bushnell’s LinkedIn profile, which has been memorialized “as a tribute to Aaron Bushnell’s professional legacy,” lists him as having been in the process of pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer software engineering.

Nearly a year later, acebush1’s posts shifted from largely video game-based content to posts with titles like “Solidarity with Prisoners!” with a link to a Guardian article about an Alabama prison strike, and to reposting a meme image of anarchist philosopher Max Stirner. In 2023, acebush1 made a post with the title “Free Palestine!” and linked to a video of an activist takeover of UAV Tactical Systems, a drone company operated in part by the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems.

“I Didn’t Realize What A Huge Mistake It Was Until I Was More Than Halfway Through.”

Shortly after the pro-Palestine post, in June 2023, acebush1 wrote, “I’m sticking it out to the end of my contract as I didn’t realize what a huge mistake it was until I was more than halfway through, and I only have a year left at this point. However it is a regret I will carry the rest of my life.”

The poster mentioned a friend who left the armed services on the basis of conscientious objection; Bushnell’s friend Levi Pierpont, according to the Washington Post, objected and left the military.

Acebush1’s posts became more stridently pro-Palestinian as Israel’s war in Gaza got underway. In one, they denounce Israel as a “settler colonialist apartheid state,” and exclaim that there are no Israeli “civilians” because the entire country is engaged in oppression. They refuse on several occasion to denounce armed Palestinian resistance, saying in the apartheid post that they “work for the air force and would also have no right to complain about violent resistance against my actions.”

In November 2023, acebush1 made another post describing “the moral necessity of getting out.”

In the last few months, acebush1 accelerated their posting across various anarchism-related Reddit communities, as well as on other various communities. “Piracy is always ethical,” acebush1 posted. “If you think that you’re making a difference with who you do and don’t choose to give your money to, you don’t understand how markets work.”

Acebush1’s last Reddit post was on February 24, expounding on how “whiteness erases culture” — a day before Bushnell’s self-immolating direct action. In an earlier post, acebush1 had written, “I’ve never been one for bullshit.”

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

Jimin should have used all of Taekooker's narrative in his debut album. Hiding a gay couple pretending to be gay, being a homewrecker and king of fanservice, getting a woman pregnant and cheating on her, fake hickeys on his biological brother from Busan... He could easily get 13 tracks and #1 on global Spotify and Hot 100. Miley and Shakira wouldn't reach it.

The tracklist for a mini album:

Jimin Fatale

Love You Like a Brother

You Make Me Feel Like Giving Hickeys

More Than a Homewrecker

I Shall Be Released (From Business Gay)

The Bitch Is Back (Elton John Cover)

[blackandwhiteflag]

For the ask thing: What’s your go to sandwich order (if you got one??)

idk how i missed this? 😭

i will ALWAYS order a turkey sandwich no questions asked 😌 and if it’s subway an italian bmt makes me happy

[buttcheek2]

i'm going to a work event on wednesday and they asked me for my subway order. i said italian BMT. they emailed me back:

"okay julian, i want to make sure that i understand what you want. please tell me what bmt means."

i don't know what BMT means. i look it up. it means "Biggest, Meatiest, Tastiest"

i'm now forced to send that phrase in my reply. to my union chair. NDNDDJSJNSNSNNSNDN

[mangosimoothie]

microscope, mixtape, and shooting star for esther ! 🖤

tysm for asking about the queen 🖤

microscope: zoom in – describe the little, insignificant details about an OC.

some small physical details about Esther: 6' but 6' 4" presenting (boots), slight chipped front tooth from getting knocked in the mouth with a beer bottle (it was an accident but she still got the dude back) other than that really good teeth for someone who hasn't been to the dentist since she was a teenager, she has a deviated septum from when Pixie broke her nose in the pit - part of the reason why she never got a septum piercing. she knows having it be crooked would annoy her.

mixtape: 5 songs that describe your OC(s) or songs they themselves would like.

this is the perfect question because I make playlists for all my characters 💀 this is the whole playlist for Esther - it's a combo of songs she'd listen to and songs that remind me of her. the 5 that I think would be on her On Repeat are:

shooting star: if your OC(s) could have one wish what would it be?

world domination at the end of the day esther just wants to do what she loves and nothing else which is make music with her friends and disrespect authority. the deeper answer is story things sooo stay tuned

ask me questions! <3

[starrbar]

First sketch pair is a leftover vent from my previous low point that I forgot to paste on the previous page.

Something funny that happened to me afterward was that I ordered a sandwich—my usual: Italian BMT with pickles, banana peppers, mayo n mustard, and shredded cheese. And instead of pepperoni, salami, and ham, I got meatballs and marinara! o_o

Also more of me mocking the way certain people act like they're allergic to people with kinks they don't like. Someone recently told me that it was manipulative of me to make a post asking for mutual aid for an artist I like without disclaiming that they're an "open proshipper", as if that's such a game changer and this stranger WOULD have deserved help if not for their kinks, which are no one's business to judge.

Like can people not wrap their head around the fact that they only get to know my kinks because I let them, and even if I kept them private—which everyone has a right to do, if you've forgotten what personal boundaries are—that would not change someone's ability to judge how SAFE I am to be around. But nah, people wanna keep pretending they can detect predatory intent through people's fuckin' fantasies. Grow up.