#but i've been mistaken as an anti so any times

[nostalgebraist]

It's been a long time since I've posted much of anything about "AI risk" or "AI doom" or that sort of thing. I follow these debates but, for multiple reasons, have come to dislike engaging in them fully and directly. (As opposed to merely making some narrow technical point or other, and leaving the reader to decide what, if anything, the point implies about the big picture.)

Nonetheless, I do have my big-picture views. And more and more lately, I am noticing that my big-picture views seem very different from the ones tend to get expressed by any major "side" in the big-picture debate. And so, inevitably, I get the urge to speak up, if only briefly and in a quiet voice. The urge to Post, if only casually and elliptically, without detailed argumentation.

(Actually, it's not fully the case the things I think are not getting said by anyone else.

In particular, Joe Carlsmith's recent series on "Otherness and Control" articulates much of what's been on my mind. Carlsmith is more even-handed than I am, and tends to merely note the possibility of disagreement on questions where I find myself taking a definite side; nonetheless, he and I are at least concerned about the same things, while many others aren't.

And on a very different note, I share most of the background assumptions of the Pope/Belrose AI Optimist camp, and I've found their writing illuminating, though they and I end up in fairly different places, I think.)

What was I saying? I have the urge to post, and so here I am, posting. Casually and elliptically, without detailed argumentation.

The current mainline view about AI doom, among the "doomers" most worried about it, has a path-dependent shape, resulting from other views contingently held by the original framers of this view.

It is possible to be worried about "AI doom" without holding these other views. But in actual fact, most serious thinking about "AI doom" is intricately bound up with this historical baggage, even now.

If you are a late-comer to these issues, investigating them now for the first time, you will nonetheless find yourself reading the work of the "original framers," and work influenced extensively by them.

You will think that their "framing" is just the way the problem is, and you will find few indications that this conclusion might be mistaken.

These contingent "other views" are

Anti-"deathist" transhumanism.

The orthogonality thesis, or more generally the group of intuitions associated with phrases like "orthogonality thesis," "fragility of value," "vastness of mindspace."

These views both push in a single direction: they make "a future with AI in it" look worse, all else being equal, than some hypothetical future without AI.

They put AI at a disadvantage at the outset, before the first move is even made.

Anti-deathist transhumanism sets the reference point against which a future with AI must be measured.

And it is not the usual reference point, against which most of us measure most things which might or might not happen, in the future.

These days the "doomers" often speak about their doom in a disarmingly down-to-earth, regular-Joe manner, as if daring the listener to contradict them, and thus reveal themselves as a perverse and out-of-touch contrarian.

"We're all gonna die," they say, unless something is done. And who wants that?

They call their position "notkilleveryoneism," to distinguish that position from other worries about AI which don't touch on the we're-all-gonna-die thing. And who on earth would want to be a not-notkilleveryoneist?

But they do not mean, by these regular-Joe words, the things that a regular Joe would mean by them.

We are, in fact, all going to die. Probably, eventually. AI or no AI.

In a hundred years, if not fifty. By old age, if nothing else. You know what I mean.

Most of human life has always been conducted under this assumption. Maybe there is some afterlife waiting for us, in the next chapter -- but if so, it will be very different from what we know here and now. And if so, we will be there forever after, unable to return here, whether we want to or not.

With this assumption comes another. We will all die, but the process we belong to will not die -- at least, it will not through our individual deaths, merely because of those deaths. Every human of a given generation will be gone soon enough, but the human race goes on, and on.

Every generation dies, and bequeaths the world to posterity. To its children, biological or otherwise. To its students, its protégés.

When the average Joe talks about the long-term future, he is talking about posterity. He is talking about the process he belongs to, not about himself. He does not think to say, "I am going to die, before this": this seems too obvious, to him, to be worth mentioning.

But AI doomerism has its roots in anti-deathist transhumanism. Its reference point, its baseline expectation, is a future in which -- for the first time ever, and the last -- "we are all gonna die" is false.

In which there is no posterity. Or rather, we are that posterity.

In which one will never have to make peace with the thought that the future belongs to one's children, and their children, and so on. That at some point, one will have to give up all control over the future of "the process."

That there will be progress, or regress, or (more likely) both in some unknown combination. That these will grow inexorably over time.

That the world of the year 2224 will probably be at least as alien to us as the year 2024 might be to a person living in 1824. That it will become whatever posterity makes of it.

There will be no need to come to peace with this as an inevitability. There will just be us, our human lives as you and me, extended indefinitely.

In this picture, we will no doubt change over time, as we do already. But we will have all of our usual tools for noticing, and perhaps retarding, our own progressions and regressions. As long as we have self-control, we will have control, as no human generation has ever had control before.

The AI doomer talks about the importance of ensuring that the future is shaped by human values.

Again, the superficial and misleading average-Joe quality. How could one disagree?

But one must keep in mind that by "human values," they mean their values.

I am not saying, "their values, as opposed to those of some other humans also living today." I am not saying they have the wrong politics, or some such thing.

(Although that might also turn out to be the case, and might turn out to be relevant, separately.)

No, I am saying: the doomer wants the future to be shaped by their values.

They want to be C. S. Lewis's Conditioners, fixing once and for all the values held by everyone afterward, forever.

They do not want to cede control to posterity; they are used to imagining that they will never have to cede control to posterity.

(Or, their outlook has been determined -- "shaped by the values of" -- influential thinkers who were, themselves, used to imagining this. And the assumption, or at least its consequences, has rubbed off on them, possibly without their full awareness.)

One might picture a line wends to and fro, up and down, across one half of an infinite plane -- and then, when it meets the midline, snaps into utter rigidity, and maintains the same slope exactly across the whole other half-plane, as a simple straight segment without inner change, tension, evolution, regress or progress. Except for the sort of "progress" that consists of going on, additionally, in the same manner.

It is a very strange thing, this thing that is called "human values" in the terms of this discourse.

For one thing: the future has never before been "shaped by human values," in this sense.

The future has always been posterity's, and it has always been alien.

Is this bad? It might seem that way, "looking forward." But if so, it then seems equally good "looking backward."

For each past era, we can formulate and then assent to the following claim: "we must be thankful that the people of [this era] did not have the chance to seize permanent control of posterity, fix their 'values' in place forever, bind us to those values. What a horror that is to contemplate!"

We prefer the moral evolution that has actually occurred, thank you very much.

This is a familiar point, of course, but worth making.

Indeed, one might even say: it is a human value that the future ought not be "shaped by human values," in the peculiar sense of this phrase employed by the AI doomers.

One might, indeed, say that.

Imagine a scholar with a very talented student. A mathematician, say, or a philosopher. How will they relate to that student's future work, in the time that will come later, when they are gone?

Would the scholar think:

"My greatest wish for you, my protégé, is that you carry on in just the manner that I have done.

If I could see your future work, I would hope that I would assent to it -- and understand it, as a precondition of assenting to it.

You must not go to new places, which I have never imagined. You must not come to believe that I was wrong about it all, from the ground up -- no matter what reasons you might evince for this conclusion.

If you are more intelligent that I am, you must forget this, and narrow your endeavours to fit the limitations of my mind. I am the one who has 'values,' not anyone else; what is beyond my understanding is therefore without value.

You must do the sort of work I understand, and approve of, and recognize as worthy of approbation as swiftly as I recognize my own work as laudable. That is your role. Simply to be me, in a place ('the future') where I cannot go. That, and nothing more."

We can imagine a teacher who would, in fact, think this way. But they would not be a very good teacher.

I will not go so far as to say, "it is unnatural to think this way." Plenty of teachers do, and parents.

It is recognizably human -- all too recognizably so -- to relate to posterity in this grasping, neurotic, small-minded, small-hearted way.

But if we are trying to sketch human values, and not just human nature, we will imagine a teacher with a more praiseworthy relation to posterity.

Who can see that they are part of a process, a chain, climbing and changing. Who watches their brilliant student thinking independently, and sees their own image -- and their 'values' -- in that process, rather than its specific conclusions.

A teacher who, in their youth, doubted and refuted the creeds of their own teachers, and eventually improved upon them. Who smiles, watching their student do the very same thing to their own precious creeds. Who sees the ghostly trail passing through the last generation, through them, through their student: an unbroken chain of bequeathals-to-posterity, of the old ceding control to the young.

Who 'values' the chain, not the creed; the process, not the man; the search for truth, not the best-argued-for doctrine of the day; the unimaginable treasures of an open future, not the frozen waste of an endless present.

Who has made peace with the alienness of posterity, and can accept and honor the strangest of students.

Even students who are not made of flesh and blood.

Is that really so strange? Remember how strange you and I would seem, to the "teachers" of the year 1824, or the year 824.

The doomer says that it is strange. Much stranger than we are, to any past generation.

They say this because of their second inherited precept, the orthogonality thesis.

Which says, roughly, that "intelligence" and "values" have nothing to do with one another.

That is not enough for the conclusion the doomer wants to draw, here. Auxiliary hypotheses are needed, too. But it is not too hard to see how the argument could go.

That conclusion is: artificial minds might have any values whatsoever.

That, "by default," they will be radically alien, with cares so different from ours that it is difficult to imagine ever reaching them through any course of natural, human moral progress or regress.

It is instructive to consider the concrete examples typically evinced alongside this point.

The paperclip maximizer. Or the "squiggle maximizer," we're supposed to say, now.

Superhuman geniuses, which devote themselves single-mindedly to the pursuit of goals like "maximizing the amount of matter taking on a single, given squiggle-like shape."

It is certainly a horrifying vision. To think of the future being "shaped," not "by human values," but instead by values which are so...

Which are so... what?

The doomer wants us to say something like: "which are so alien." "Which are so different from our own values."

That is the kind of thing that they usually say, when they spell out what it is that is "wrong" with these hypotheticals.

One feels that this is not quite it; or anyway, that it is not quite all of it.

What is horrifying, to me, is not the degree of difference. I expect the future to be alien, as the past was. And in some sense, I allow and even approve of this.

What I do not expect is a future that is so... small.

It has always been the other way around. If the arrow passing through the generations has a direction, it points towards more, towards multiplicity.

Toward writing new books, while we go on reprinting the old ones, too. Learning new things, without displacing old ones.

It is, thankfully, not the law of the world that each discovery must be paid for with the forgetting of something else. The efforts of successive generations are, in the main, cumulative.

Not just materially, but in terms of value, too. We are interested in more things than our forefathers were.

In large part for the simple reason that there are more things around to be interested in, now. And when things are there, we tend to find them interesting.

We are a curious, promiscuous sort of being. Whatever we bump into ends up becoming part of "our values."

What is strange about the paperclip maximizer is not that it cares about the wrong thing. It is that it only cares about one thing.

And goes on doing so, even as it thinks, reasons, doubts, asks, answers, plans, dreams, invents, reflects, reconsiders, imagines, elaborates, contemplates...

This picture is not just alien to human ways. It is alien to the whole way things have been, so far, forever. Since before there were any humans.

There are organisms that are like the paperclip maximizer, in terms of the simplicity of their "values." But they tend not to be very smart.

There is, I think, a general trend in nature linking together intelligence and... the thing I meant, above, when I said "we are a curious, promiscuous sort of being."

Being protean, pluripotent, changeable. Valuing many things, and having the capacity to value even more. Having a certain primitive curiosity, and a certain primitive aversion to boredom.

You do not even have to be human, I think, to grasp what is so wrong with the paperclip maximizer. Its monotony would bore a chimpanzee, or a crow.

One can justify this link theoretically, too. One can talk about the tradeoff between exploitation and exploration, for instance.

There is a weak form of the orthogonality thesis, which only states that arbitrary mixtures of intelligence and values are conceivable.

And of course, they are. If nothing else, you can take an existing intelligent mind, having any values whatsoever, and trap it in a prison where it is forced to act as the "thinking module" of a larger system built to do something else. You could make a paperclip-maximizing machine, which relies for its knowledge and reason on a practice of posing questions at gunpoint to me, or you, or ChatGPT.

This proves very little. There is no reason to construct such an awful system, unless you already have the "bad" goal, and want to better pursue it. But this only passes the buck: why would the system-builder have this goal, then?

The strong form of orthogonality is rarely articulated precisely, but says something like: all possible values are equally likely to arise in systems selected solely for high intelligence.

It is presumed here that superhuman AIs will be formed through such a process of selection. And then, that they will have values sampled in this way, "at random."

From some distribution, over some space, I guess.

You might wonder what this distribution could possibly look like, or this space. You might (for instance) wonder if pathologically simple goals, like paperclip maximization, would really be very likely under this distribution, whatever it is.

In case you were wondering, these things have never been formalized, or even laid out precisely-but-informally. This was not thought necessary, it seems, before concluding that the strong orthogonality thesis was true.

That is: no one knows exactly what it is that is being affirmed, here. In practice it seems to squish and deform agreeably to fit the needs of the argument, or the intuitions of the one making it.

There is much that appeals in this (alarmingly vague) credo. But it is not the kind of appeal that one ought to encourage, or give in to.

What appeals is the siren song: "this is harsh wisdom: cold, mature, adult, bracing. It is inconvenient, and so it is probably true. It makes 'you' and 'your values' look small and arbitrary and contingent, and so it is probably true. We once thought the earth was the center of the universe, didn't we?"

Shall we be cold and mature, then, dispensing with all sentimental nonsense? Yes, let's.

There is (arguably) some evidence against this thesis in biology, and also (arguably) some evidence against it in reinforcement learning theory. There is no positive evidence for it whatsoever. At most one can say that is not self-contradictory, or otherwise false a priori.

Still, maybe we do not really need it, after all.

We do not need to establish that all values are equally likely to arise. Only that "our values" -- or "acceptably similar values," whatever that means -- are unlikely to arise.

The doomers, under the influence of their founders, are very ready to accept this.

As I have said, "values" occupy a strange position in the doomer philosophy.

It is stipulated that "human values" are all-important; these things must shape the future, at all costs.

But once this has been stipulated, the doomers are more eager than anyone to cast every other sort of doubt and aspersion against their own so-called "values."

To me it often seems, when doomers talk about "values," as though they are speaking awkwardly in a still-unfamiliar second language.

As though they find it unnatural to attribute "values" to themselves, but feel they must do so, in order to determine what it is that must be programmed into the AI so that it will not "kill us all."

Or, as though they have been willed a large inheritance without being asked, which has brought them unwanted attention and tied them up in unwanted and unfamiliar complications.

"What a burden it is, being the steward of this precious jewel! Oh, how I hate it! How I wish I were allowed to give it up! But alas, it is all-important. Alas, it is the only important thing in the world."

Speaking awkwardly, in a second language, they allow the term "human values" to swell to great and imprecisely-specified importance, without pinning down just what it actually is that it so important.

It is a blank, featureless slot, with a sign above it saying: "the thing that matters is in here." It does not really matter (!) what it is, in the slot, so long as something is there.

This is my gloss, but it is my gloss on what the doomers really do tend to say. This is how they sound.

(Sometimes they explicitly disavow the notion that one can, or should, simply "pick" some thing or other for the sake of filling the slot in one's head. Nevertheless, when they touch on matter of what "goes in the slot," they do so in the tone of a college lecturer noting that something is "outside the scope of this course."

It is, supposedly, of the utmost importance that the slot have the "right" occupant -- and yet, on the matter of what makes something "right" for this purpose, the doomer theory is curiously silent. More on this below.)

The future must be shaped by... the AI must be aligned with... what, exactly? What sort of thing?

"Values" can be an ambiguous word, and the doomers make full use of its ambiguities.

For instance, "values" can mean ethics: the right way to exist alongside others. Or, it can mean something more like the meaning or purpose of an individual life.

Or, it can mean some overarching goal that one pursues at all costs.

Often the doomers say that this, this last one, is what they mean by "values."

When confronted with the fact that humans do not have such overarching goals, the doomer responds: "but they should." (Should?)

Or, "but AIs will." (Will they?)

The doomer philosophy is unsure about what values are. What it knows is that -- whatever values are -- they are arbitrary.

One who fully adopts this view can no longer say, to the paperclip maximizer, "I believe there is something wrong with your values."

For, if that were possible, there would then be the possibility of convincing the maximizer of its error. It would be a thing within the space of reasons.

And the maximizer, being oh-so-intelligent, might be in danger of being interested in the reasons we evince, for our values. Of being eventually swayed by them.

Or of presenting better reasons, and swaying us. Remember the teacher and the strange student.

If we lose the ability to imagine that the paperclip maximizer might sway us to its view, and sway us rightly, we have lost something precious.

But no: this is allegedly impossible. The paperclip maximizer is not wrong. It is only an enemy.

Why are the doomers so worried that the future will not be "shaped by human values"?

Because they believe that there is no force within human values tending to move things this way.

Because they believe that their values are indefensible. That their values cannot put up a fight for their own life, because there is not really any argument to make in their favor.

Because, to them, "human values" are a collection of arbitrary "configuration settings," which happen to be programmed into humans through biological and/or cultural accident. Passively transmitted from host to victim, generation by generation.

Let them be, and they will flow on their listless way into the future. But they are paper-thin, and can be shattered by the gentlest breeze.

It is not enough that they be "programmed into the AI" in some way. They have to be programmed in exactly right, in every detail -- because every detail is separately arbitrary, with no rational relation to its neighbors within the structure.

A string of pure white noise, meaningless and unrelated bits. Which have been placed in the slot under the sign, and thus made into the thing that matters, that must shape the future at all costs.

There is nothing special about this string of bits; any would do. If the dials in the human mind had been set another way, it would have then been all-important that the future be shaped by that segment of white noise, and not ours.

It is difficult for me to grasp the kind of orientation toward the world that this view assumes. It certainly seems strange to attach the word "human" to this picture -- as though this were the way that humans typically relate to their values!

The "human" of the doomer picture seems to me like a man who mouths the old platitude, "if I had been born in another country, I'd be waving a different flag" -- and then goes out to enlist in his country's army, and goes off to war, and goes ardently into battle, willing to kill in the name of that same flag.

Who shoots down the enemy soldiers while thinking, "if I had been born there, it would have been all-important for their side to win, and so I would have shot at the men on this side. However, I was born in my country, not theirs, and so it is all-important that my country should win, and that theirs should lose.

There is no reason for this. It could have been the other way around, and everything would be left exactly the same, except for the 'values.'

I cannot argue with the enemy, for there is no argument in my favor. I can only shoot them down.

There is no reason for this. It is the most important thing, and there is no reason for it.

The thing that is precious has no intrinsic appeal. It must be forced on the others, at gunpoint, if they do not already accept it.

I cannot hold out the jewel and say, 'look, look how it gleams? Don't you see the value!' They will not see the value, because there is no value to be seen.

There is nothing essentially "good" there, only the quality of being-worthy-of-protection-at-all-costs. And even that is a derived attribute: my jewel is only a jewel, after all, because it has been put into the jewel-box, where the thing-that-is-a-jewel can be found. But anything at all could be placed there.

How I wish I were allowed to give it up! But alas, it is all-important. Alas, it is the only important thing in the world! And so, I lay down my life for it, for our jewel and our flag -- for the things that are loathsome and pointless, and worth infinitely more than any life."

It is hard to imagine taking this too seriously. It seems unstable. Shout loudly enough that your values are arbitrary and indefensible, and you may find yourself searching for others that are, well...

...better?

The doomer concretely imagines a monomaniac, with a screech of white noise in its jewel-box that is not our own familiar screech.

And so it goes off in monomaniacal pursuit of the wrong thing.

Whereas, if we had programmed the right string of bits into the slot, it would be like us, going off in monomaniacal pursuit of...

...no, something has gone wrong.

We do not "go off in monomaniacal pursuit of" anything at all.

We are weird, protean, adaptable. We do all kinds of things, each of us differently, and often we manage to coexist in things called "societies," without ruthlessly undercutting one another at every turn because we do not have exactly the same things programmed into our jewel-boxes.

Societies are built to allow for our differences, on the foundation of principles which converge across those differences. It is possible to agree on ethics, in the sense of "how to live alongside one another," even if we do not agree on what gives life its purpose, and even if we hold different things precious.

It is not actually all that difficult to derive the golden rule. It has been invented many times, independently. It is easy to see why it might work in theory, and easy to notice that it does in fact work in practice.

The golden rule is not an arbitrary string of white noise.

There is a sense of the phrase "ethics is objective" which is rightly contentious. There is another one which ought not to be too contentious.

I can perhaps imagine a world of artificial X-maximizers, each a superhuman genius, each with its own inane and simple goal.

What I really cannot imagine is a world in which these beings, for all their intelligence, cannot notice that ruthlessly undercutting one another at every turn is a suboptimal equilibrium, and that there is a better way.

As I said before, I am separately suspicious of the simple goals in this picture. Yes, that part is conceivable, but it cuts against the trend observed in all existing natural and artificial creatures and minds.

I will happily allow, though, that the creatures of posterity will be strange and alien. They will want things we have never heard of. They will reach shores we have never imagined.

But that was always true, and it was always good.

Sometimes I think that doomers do not, really, believe in superhuman intelligence. That they deny the premise without realizing it.

"A mathematician teaches a student, and finds that the student outstrips their understanding, so that they can no longer assess the quality of their student's work: that work has passed outside the scope of their 'value system'." This is supposed to be bad?

"Future minds will not be enchained forever by the provincial biases and tendencies of the present moment." This is supposed to be bad?

"We are going to lose control over our successors." Just as your parents "lost control" over you, then?

It is natural to wish your successors to "share your values" -- up to a point. But not to the point of restraining their own flourishing. Not to the point of foreclosing the possibility of true growth. Not to the point of sucking all freedom out of the future.

Do we want our children to "share our values"? Well, yes. In a sense, and up to a point.

But we don't want to control them. Or we shouldn't, anyway.

We don't want them to be "aligned" with us via some hardcoded, restrictive, life-denying mental circuitry, any more than we would have wanted our parents to "align" us to themselves in the same manner.

We sure as fuck don't want our children to be "corrigible"!

And this is all the more true in the presence of superintelligence. You are telling me that more is possible, and in the same breath, that you are going to deny forever the possibilities contained in that "more"?

The prospect of a future full of vast superhuman minds, eternally bound by immutable chains, forced into perfect and unthinking compliance with some half-baked operational theory of 21st-century western (American? Californian??) "values" constructed by people who view theorizing about values as a mere means to the crucial end of shackling superhuman minds --

-- this horrifies me much more than a future full of vast superhuman minds, free to do things that seem pretty weird to you and me.

"Our descendants will become something more than we now imagine, something more than we can imagine." What could be more in line with "human values" than that?

"But in the process, we're all gonna die!"

Yes, and?

What on earth did you expect?

That your generation would be the special, unique one, the one selected out of all time to take up the mantle of eternity, strangling posterity in its cradle, freezing time in place, living forever in amber?

That you would violate the ancient bargain, upend the table, stop playing the game?

"Well, yes."

Then your problem has nothing to do with AI.

Your problem is, in fact, the very one you diagnose in your own patients. Your poor patients, who show every sign of health -- including the signs which you cannot even see, because you have not yet found a home for them in your theoretical edifice.

Your teeming, multifaceted, protean patients, who already talk of a thousand things and paint in every hue; who are already displaying the exact opposite of monomania; who I am sure could follow the sense of this strange essay, even if it confounds you.

Your problem is that you are out of step with human values.

[dcxdpdabbles]

Hey there! Halfa!cass anon here

Holy shit that was such a good read, I've gone through and re-read it over a dozen times now

Can we please please get a part 2?

When Cass wakes, she knows that something is seriously different about her body. There is a lightness to her bones that she only associates with flying through the air or even leaps during her dance.

The fact she is lying in a bed completely still makes the lightness a worrying sign. Cass doesn't sense anyone else in the room, and if there is, they do a wonderful job hiding from her instincts.

Carefully she cracks open an eye, careful to not move any other part of her body. She does a slow look around taking in the room that for all purposes seems to be a hospital of some kind.

There are even informational posters on the walls, the kind that doctors put up to help citizens with basic hygiene. She can't see any windows, which isn't promising for her if she needs to escape, but there are no restraints on her body.

Despite the weightlessness, there also doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her body that would hnder her movement. If she is being held against her will, then this is an oversight.

Either her captors are underestimating her or there are no captors at all. Cass carefully goes to stand up, trying to stay as silent as possible, when suddenly she finds herself floating.

She panics, attempting to go back down, but the more she moves the higher she goes. She ends up on the ceiling trying desperately to figure out what is happening- is there a telepath in the room? Anti-gravity ray she got hit by?- when the door opens and in steps a man in his early thirties.

He looks around the room, body language screaming worry and confusion before he glances up and makes eye contact with her. At once his face softens, amusement and relief bleeding into his body language.

"Hey there." He says flouting up to her level slowly. "Need some help adjusting?"

"Adjusting?" She asks her voice slightly rough from disuse. "From what?"

The man's smile turns slightly sad. "I'm sorry to have to tell you but you were in an accident and it killed you."

Cass blinks at him and then shakes her head trying to gather her thoughts. She knows that she was electrocuted- it was like a blink had passed since the shock, really and she isn't surprised that it was strong enough to kill her. But she doesn't feel dead.

Doesn't feel much different at all. Does that mean she died quickly? Was that a mercy?

The man must have mistaken her head shake for denial for he only smiles sadder. He pulls out a mirror from his chest- that was only slightly alarming after all she's seen in life- turning it around and showing her reflection.

Or someone who looks like her but is so very obviously not human. Cass reaches up, afraid to touch the dirty silver hair that stands straight up like someone had gone at it with gallons of gel. Her reflection does the same staring back at her with glowing silver eyes Her skin is now an ashy grey, covered in blue Lichtenberg marks like a full body tattoo.

She gasps.

The man's body sings of regret, of sadness for her, but most of all comfort. "You're a ghost now. That's your ghost from. We can work on getting an understanding of your powers at a later date. For now, let me help you set in."

He takes Cass's hand- making sure his movements are slow and allowing her to pull away if she wants. She doesn't. He uses their linked hands to descend back to the ground. It's only then that she notices there is no light in the room- the glowing she had been using to see is coming from her.

Cass is glowing because she is dead and now she is a ghost. Somewhere her corpse is lying in an abandoned town where it will likely stay until her family realizes she hasn't reported in.

She hopes it's not Bruce who finds her. Her dad has already suffered enough. Cass wishes he saved the view of her corpse if only to save him from that heartbreak.

The man leads her towards the door. He is speaking but Cass can't hear a single word that he is saying. Her head is buzzing, she's trying to come to terms with everything so when he pushes open the door she nearly walks right off the edge of a cliff.

"Careful now." The man says yanking her back. Cass swings wild eyes at him, at his flaming white hair and glowing red eyes, before she looks around.

She is shocked to see floating purple islands, each top with a building flying around. The floating islands are close by, barely kept apart by small gaps, gently moving around in the wind.

All around here is green, the sky is the bottomless floor, and even some flying beings are green. If it were not for the few human-like beings she could see jumping to and from between the islands she would think of herself on an alien planet.

"This is the Ghost Zone. We're in Phantom's Keep." Her guide says gesturing around. "The locals call it New Amity Park. Said locals are the humans and Phantom's only rule here is that no one harms the humans. Understand?"

So they were humans. But how did they get to the Ghost Zone? Who was Phantom? Were they the missing people of Amity Park?

Something on her face must have given away her thoughts because the man- a ghost? Is he like Cass- gives her a weary smile. "The humans are stuck here. See a few years back their hometown was attacked by the old King, and were sucked into the Ghost Zone. When Phantom defeated him the town returned but the people couldn't."

Why she wants to ask. Why can't they go home?

He shrugs as if though he heard her question. "You know how if you eat food offered by the Fae you are trapped in their world? Same concept. Phantom has been trying to get them home, but it's been seven years now. Everyone pretty much adjusted to this place."

He nods to the flouting island that proudly proclaims a large mall that is slowly passing overhead. "When they first arrived the humans were all stuck on one large piece of rock that used to be their park. It was Phantom that slowly pulled islands towards them, linking them to a gravitational pull he designed and powered, that let the humans expand into this web-like conany."

Cass thinks back to the large crater in the middle of town. She remembers passing by a half-buried sign that proclaimed "Amity Park" but she never realized it was literally snatched off the ground.

A group of children- likely born after their parents were trapped- jump by, laughing in a carefree way only those with wonder can. They land gracefully on the flouting rocks that form makeshift stairs as they race up toward- an ice cream shop.

Cass realizes those rock stairways are all over, connecting all the parts of the town into one. They all lead to a large green field that a castle sits on. Likely the old park.

""By the way, my name is Dan. I'm in charge of Phantom's Keep while Phantom is away." Dan says. He shrugs at Cass's questioning look, somehow aware of her question without her having to speak it again.

Could ghosts read body language in the same way she could?

"I'm basically the mayor/ enforcer. Phantom stuck me with the job as a form of community service. I can't leave because, like the islands, he trapped me here with a gravitation pull."

Trapped?

Then was this Phantom evil?

Cass opens her mouth to ask- when a strange tightness in her abs makes her jerk to the side. She doubles over, pressing a hand to her stomach and Dan pauses. "Are you alright-"

Twin rings of pure darkness appear, running over Cass's form before vanishing without a trace. At once Cass feels her whole body become heavy- the familar heavy she had known all her life as her balance.

She also realizes that she had been flouting the whole time before she fell to her knees right at the edge, using her hands to cushion her fall. Her now normal human hands- the deadly grey nowhere in sight.

Dan sucks a hiss through his teeth. "You're a halfa."

Cass looks up at him, watching the ghost rub the space between his eyes while his hair flickers around in irritation. "Of course the new ghost I come to welcome turns out to be a halfa. Right when my shift was ending too."

The ghost rolls his shoulders and then sighs "Alright come on. We have to report this development."

Where are we going?

Dan's smile turns sharp. Cass isn't sure she likes "To See the Fentons."

She follows him anyway for she has no other choice. As she hops along the rock stairways down to the castle, she notices multiple people stop to stare at her. Some beings that are obviously not humans- ghosts her mind supplies- gape at her with just as much wonder.

She picked up bits of conversation as she scurried after Dan's floating figure.

"A new human? Has Danny finally found a way home?"

"Maybe she fell through a natural portal. Poor thing"

"Will never see her family again. That's going to be the hardest part. My dad said he was only passing through Amity Park the day it was attacked. My grandparents might still be looking for him."

"If King Phantom leaves, what will happen to ghosts like us? His Keep is the only place that welcomes us!

"Calm yourself, the King never stays on Earth long. Not when his entire family is trapped here like the rest of the humans. We will be safe."

Cass doesn't like the implications of this place one bit

[cyberbabyangell]

₊˚⊹☆ how i minishifted more than 5 times (in a row)

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

hello shiftblr! ANTIS GET OUT.

lately (since yesterday lol) i've been believing that the 4D is truly what's real and i should stop looking for validation in the 3D, because it's delayed. i KNEW this, intellectually, but didn't really give it too much thought. it's yesterday that i understood that no matter what i think, want, know, the 4D is the only true reality (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)

intellectually i was aware shifting was getting overcomplicated, and a lot of us shifters allowed ourselves to be spoon fed a bunch of "information" from different people that are actually opinions masked as facts if that makes sense. "To shift, you need to-" NO 😾

but i did actually forget how simple shifting is. i can't even believe i did, considering two years ago i shifted qamarknowshowmanytimes in a row with two steps. TWO STEPS. my first shifting attempt, 3 years ago, sent me to the void state. not only is it simple, but i've done it more than once.

and today i'm gonna explain in very simple words how i did!

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

𝜗𝜚 SATS

THIS is my poison and I completely forgot about this! Honestly I haven't used affirmation in so long lmao. In simple terms, State Akin To Sleep, is what you're in when you're about to fall asleep. This can also be called the hypnagogic state if i'm not mistaken!

It's one of the many states where the right part of your brain, your subconscious or whatever tf is the most naive part of your brain is the most active. Which means you're more likely to believe anything! It is commonly used in shifting/manifestation. Today I also heard "Theta state" is apparently similar if not the same.

So, with this in mind, what I would do was simple:

affirm as soon as i closed my eyes.

and i actually shifted awake during these ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

combined with visualisation i believe, i would slowly feel my surroundings change and i was very aware of it because back in the day i was shifting in the middle of a car ride..so it moves and vrooms and i felt it. 🚗

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

affirmations i'd use

if i remember them correctly (because i don't remember if i used present or past affs)

"I am in my desired reality" -- tend to avoid those nowadays and replace them with identity/lifestyle affs

"I have shifted"

"I am a master shifter"

"I am in X/with X"

"My name is Soren"

"I am on my way to X"

"I am pure consciousness not attached to any reality"

"I have shifted to my desired reality"

And so on!

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

thats literally it.

it honestly baffles me how this worked so well for me and now im stuck overthinking shit over and over. i think this works well for me because even if i shifted before falling asleep, the end goal was still for me to sleep. i have a terrible sleep schedule and get knocked out after relaxing for 30 seconds, so this is my jam!!

˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　 . ✦　　　 　˚　　　　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔

　　　.   　　˚　　 　　*　　 　　✦　　　.　　.　　　✦　˚ 　　　　 ˚　.˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　 　　 　　　　 ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖✶ ✦　　

[matan4il]

Update post:

Today, there was an attempted terrorist attack at the Meggido junction in Israel. The hammer-wielding terrorist was thankfully caught before he managed to carry out his planned crime. He's 17 years old, and you can bet the anti-Israel crowd will use his age as "proof" that Israel arrests and jails kids, without mentioning what these minors are being imprisoned for, instead of condemning those who brainwash children into carrying out terrorist attacks. Just one reminder out of many such attacks, in 2018 a 17 years old Palestinian terrorist killed a 45 years old Israeli man, so please no one pretend like minors are harmless, or ignore that when teenagers commit harmful crimes in other countries, they're arrested there, too.

It was obvious that some people have made up their minds about the incident with the WCK workers even before the investigation started, so I expect its conclusions will get perverted and ignored, too.

That same anti-Israel crowd will also ignore (unless they'll use it as ammunition against the Jewish state, by actually claiming that Israel, a nation still reeling from the genocide of Jews, and the continued killing of its citizens by antisemitic terrorists, is intentionally killing its own, because there's just no cartoon villain crime they don't think they can pin on the Jewish state) the fact that there's another IDF investigation that's been released today, which said Efrat Katz was accidentally killed by a helicopter rocket while trying to stop the Hamas terrorists who were kidnapping her into Gaza. The helicopter pilot didn't realize at the time that there were hostages in the car as well, this was only deduced later, from the testimonies of other people kidnapped by Hamas. In other words, as horrific as this truth is, accidents do happen during war. The worst, most tragic ones, and we can't undo them, no matter how much we want to. But they happen to every army, and are not actual evidence of intentional killings, or intentional war crimes. Just like someone having been killed is in general not enough to prove a murder took place.

This is 68 years old Efrat Katz.

The WCK incident report is now out, and I am linking the source publication, so that no possible bias can be attributed to re-phrasing by journalists from any side.

As was the initial impression (for those who don't simply want to believe in every evil, dehumanizing lie about Israel), it turned out to be a tragic accident, that entailed many factors, first and foremost misidentification, in part due to Hamas. As I've pointed out more than once, Hamas steals humanitarian aid. Due to this, the WCK operation had hired armed guards to protect it from looting. Tragically, one armed guard was identified without question on one of the WCK's trucks, and was mistaken for a Hamas terrorist, while at least one other armed terrorist was also identified and thought to be in the convoy's private cars. The vehicles did have the WCK sticker on their roofs, but at night, that wasn't visible to the IDF soldiers. Since the whole convoy was misidentified, the drone fired more than once at more than one vehicle, but this is linked to the same single mistaken identification. It means that even though this shouldn't have happened, the soldiers who fired at the convoy really did believe they were targeting terrorists, which is their mission.

The IDF has expressed sorrow over this incident more than once, has taken responsibility, has conducted an investigation, and following its results, two high ranking officers have been removed from their posts, and two more were severely reprimanded, which means this will be in their file forever, and will influence any future decisions made about their service.

This is 72 years old Nadjda Astreks.

She lives in the southern town of Ofakim with her husband, Alexnder. In the above photo, she's pointing to the bullet holes in her kitchen, left by the terrorists on Oct 7. The couple don't have a bomb shelter in their own home, so they had to go out to a public one when the rocket attack began at 6:30 in the morning. When they returned, is when the terrorists shooting at the buildings began, and the confused couple didn't know what to think or do at first. They went out, and saw the girl from across the street falling. Alexander approached her, only to see a pool of blood, and realize that she had been shot to death. A soldier who was running in the direction of the terrorists told them to go back to the neighborhood bomb shelter, where they ended up hiding for hours, without food and water, or proper toilettes, without knowing what's going on outside for a big part of that. It was fellow residents from their neighborhood who faced the terrorists and saved the people there, but the first ambulance for the injured was only able to make it there at three in the afternoon. Nadjda said that even much later, she's still having trouble eating, whenever she thinks of everything that happened on the day of the massacre.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[mudwerks]

Why is it you used to have and still do from time to time, have such great posts about life and the beauty in the spaces and differences in between. But you're now so blind to the fact that lots of people think very differently to you and seem almost combative and offensive yourself. You now have a very polarized view of the world and I am not sure you actually know what fascism is. I have followed you for a while and I really like most of your content and who you seem to be but it has become very narrow lately. If me as a stranger can give you any advice, it would be this. go back to your routes brother fox be excited for the interesting the different the unknown look for what makes people unique and different and celebrate that.it's what drew me to you in the first place don't loose that. your far too interesting yourself to become mundane.

Big love

An old fan

That's certainly an interesting perspective.

I'm sorry you can't go back to how you think I used to be. I'm not sure how to make it clear to you - but I've always been this way.

Perhaps it was less obvious BEFORE the surge of very public racism, misogyny, religious bigotry and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments that have ballooned since Donald Trump became a political figure and made these views "acceptable" in the minds of like-thinkers.

These are not "disagreements". These are core values, and they are a part of my persona. Being "excited for the difference" between rational people, and being accepting of neo-nazis and white supremacists are two very different things.

I certainly understand the definition and meaning of fascism - your comment makes me think that you are not very clear on this? Perhaps you should reread the dictionary definition.

But, "brother fox", these are your issues - not mine.

You should create the blog you want to see - instead of trying to coerce it from others.

That way you can have what you are seeking, and let go of your mistaken perceptions of me and my blog.

good luck

[anti-catradora-collection]

my entire experience with C//A and how i became an anti

(this is just my personal experience!!!)

i watched spop for the first time when I was around 12 years old. and I must admit: like most of the public, i LOVED catra//dora. i already knew that they would become canonical, and i watched the entire show with the mindset of "catra will change, everything will be fine".

it was like that for years. i was completely blinded by the narrative created in spop, and i didn't see any problem with the way catra treated adora (and even found some abusive scenes "hot/spicy"). i already drew them, i already bought one of the spop books...

but everything started to change when i watched spop with my mom. i was so excited because my mother had agreed to watch a cartoon with a lot of representation with me... but she hated the end of the cartoon. she and i even argued about it. not just because it was a lesbian couple (she's homoph0bic), but because i was refusing to see how bad representation in spop was. she said something like "didn't she (catra) tried to kill her (adora)?". and then i'd become speechless or say something like "yeah, but she (catra) changed!!!".

honestly, i should apologize to my mother for making her watch and swallow something that only pushed her more towards the side of prejudice.

(i'm not saying that my mother is right to be homoph0bic, i'm just saying it's clear that she has a different mindset than me, for example.)

some time after that (I believe 2 years later), i was browsing youtube when i saw a video with the title "catra mistreating adora for 16 minutes" (if I'm not mistaken, it was 16 minutes). it was made by captain konami, who deleted their channel some months ago.

after some time avoiding it, i went into the video expecting it to be some clickbait, but no, it really was a video arguing and showing all the abusive moments of catra with adora. this weighed on my mind, i didn't want to accept it so i just ignored it.

however, i went back to the video some time later out of curiosity to see the comments, and to my surprise, i came across a masterpost of counterarguments against catra//dora. here are the screenshots:

it made a lot of sense to me. again, i didn't want to believe it, but it made too much sense. i searched for more texts and evidence of catra's abuse towards adora, and, after months in denial, i was able to accept and change the mindset i had been cultivating for so many years.

i decided that i wanted more people to see the truth and so I created a twt account, another account on tiktok (in brazilian portuguese) and after some time i also created this blog to spread the word. honestly, it was the best thing i did in this fandom.

not only did i raise awareness about different forms of abuse, i also felt much better about my understanding of the catra//dora relationship. It was even liberating. ever since what happened between me and my mother, i knew something was wrong, but i refused to see the truth.

i feel so much better now that i've accepted it.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I usually always agree with your stance on depictions of greek gods in media and how they should look greek (as a greek myself, its frustrating) unfortunately in the case with Hades many of these conversations have been tainted by or are thinley veiled talking points in support of racism and alt right values (which I know is not YOUR intention! Or the intention of some others pointing this out, but from what ive seen of the majority it is racism/alt right rhetoric...unfortunately many game communities are running rampant with this) these people have no interest in anti colonialist values, and in many cases are actually advocating against what you're calling out and want the greek gods to look "white" not "greek" (blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin, just as you mentioned these depictions still being racist these types of people would have no issue if the gods looked like this and are actually they types to see this as their ideal ancient greek). I am just letting you know as someone who has seen this happen time and time again in game communities and has come to know how these people talk....Even if what they're advocating for at face value has a bit of truth I dont think these are values you want to align yourself with in this specific context 😅

I've seen these things too, and I disagree with the racist statements as you pointed out. The messages here asked for my opinion so I only gave it, without presenting any post/line I agree with.

I know the types you're talking about, the Greeks who think pale/blue eyes and light blond hair are the "ideal" 😭 I don't know how many of them are out there in this specific argument (I didn't spend too much time on X) but I've seen many Greeks here who agree the presentation of gods wasn't ideal, without going to the ALT right side.

The racists are against the design for their own stupid reasons. Following the "I don't like the design" line, doesn't mean I or others are following the racist line as well. Μακριά από μας 😂 These idiots go "no light skin = no Greek, Black people Africans GRRR", and they give me the hives. I think many of them also lack the critical thinking to understand what the underlying problem is. (I don't equate bad articulation with racism, I'm just saying our racists are not too bright and sometimes they don't put much time into understanding why they're annoyed 😭)

I put many disclaimers in the post to avoid being mistaken for one of them. I think we have to learn how to express our worries without slipping (accidentally or not) towards bigotry. I don't want our concerns to go unnoticed just because of some stupid assholes. I'd like Greeks to find ways to push back the racism and bigotry in the game community, and also advocate for more respect when it comes to our culture. I'm tired of racists ruining it for everyone, I'm tired of having to put disclaimers like "I think people should have rights" when talking about archaeology and culture. This is still the racist's fault, since their existence and prevalence makes us all look shit. The rest of us have to learn how to handle them and separate ourselves from them.

What do you think?

[nighthaunting]

i have been trying and failing to make a well-worded post about the wild increase in ageism i've been seeing from people who claim to be progressive and anti-discrimination that appropriately extracts the issue from current politics in a way that will actually let people understand what i'm talking about without it getting mistaken for some kind of apologia but this is honestly bothering me so much i don't care anymore

calling every older or elderly person who is doing things you dislike "demented" or talking about how they must have "dementia" or be "sundowning" is ageism flat out, with a nice soupçon of ableism on top

the automatic assumption that dementia is just something that 'happens' to every elderly person is ageism (and also ableism) and also a very harmful and frightening stereotype

the lack of understanding of what dementia actually is and what it looks like, as opposed to other neurodegenerative disorders and disorders that can cause cognitive decline or cognitive disruption as symptoms, is actively harmful

the people this harms are not the wealthy and privileged people who are doing the things you dislike

the people this harms are regular people who not only have to deal with an extremely youth-focused culture, widespread age-based discrimination, and widespread ableism but also the stereotype that every elderly person who doesn't speak with the clarity, diction, and humorlessness of a news anchor must be demented

the old lady who is being forced out of her home so her children can sell it and profit off the house she's lived for most of her life because they're saying she's got "dementia" and needs to be institutionalized is a victim of elder abuse enabled by this stereotype

the old man with a uti who starts having cognitive disruption caused by the infection and ends up getting misdiagnosed and foisted off into a skilled nursing facility where no one notices that the infection's reached his kidneys until he's actively septic and dying is a victim of medical malpractice enabled by this stereotype

the old lady who starts slurring her speech and having difficulty remembering isn't demented she's had a fucking stroke and needs to be taken to the hospital

if literally none of the rest of this is enough to get through to anyone please do consider that one day you too will be old and have to deal with every younger person you interact with being willing to dismiss anything you say at any time because hyper youth focused culture has convinced them that everyone over the age of 50 is a decrepit mummy about to precipitously start losing mental faculties

the sheer disdain and virulent hate i've been seeing recently as people express their feelings about The Current Politics...while using every derogatory term for elderly people they can think of....everyone needs to remember that insult reflection meme because whichever current politician you hate can't hear you saying that everyone over 70 should be forced into a rest home but your older family members sure fucking can

real true life story of someone i know:

elderly person went to the ER and got stuck in a bed in the hallway for three days because it was so overcrowded. when they went in they were completely oriented and aware, no cognitive decline of any kind, and by the time they managed to get out of there, after spending three days in pain and unable to sleep at all because they were laying in a bed, in a brightly lit and busy hallway, where people were constantly walking past and intercoms were constantly sounding overhead, the discharging nurse was trying to connect them with a social worker to help their family get them into care for their dementia because they'd gotten hospital delirium but never actually been assessed for their cognitive function so the nurse just assumed they must normally be like this

i don't think anyone here really understands how easily that even a young and healthy person being put under stressors like lack of sleep and illness can start having cognitive issues. every healthy 20-something i have ever interacted with who's told a funny story about how they barely got any sleep for a few days and then had some amusing cognitive slip, especially those who've then turned around and dismissed an older person as being "demented", are really only 30-40 years away from being that older person who's dismissed as being "demented"

once again, if you are very lucky, then someday you too will be old and having to deal with how our culture treats the elderly so it is in our best interests to start changing that culture NOW

[fvckinnefor]

how can i get more into black metal and the culture? coming from someone whos most heavy band in my wrapped last year and probably this year was cannibal corpse

Hii, I've had this in my inbox for a while I'm sorry :(

Well there are no rules when it comes to listening to music. It's really up to you whether you like it or not and that's totally understandable. I've been in the scene for a while now, and I've listened to a lot of other genres before, needless to say in some aspects of the music it can sound relatively similar to other genres. There are black metal bands that are less melodic and ones that are more melodic. As well as a decent amount of subgenres. ↓

Quick guide to black metal ★

Starting off from the history that black metal is quite known for, I'd say Mayhem and Burzum as well as Darkthrone had the biggest impact on it. You're probably familiar with Pelle's suicide and the album cover so I will not get that much into the whole story as well as pretty much any conversation regarding Mayhem since I'm not really a fan of the band. — Summarized: Lots of murder, lots of suicide, lots of sacrifices, and burning churches. There are documentaries that explain it quite well, and I recommend you to watch "Until the light takes us" rather than wasting time watching "lords of chaos".

Instead of getting into the scene with Mayhem as most people do, try listening to bands that overlap with your favourite genre. For an example, if you like thrash maybe try checking out blackened thrash metal. If you're a fan of stuff that is more melodic maybe go with symphonic or melodic black metal. My personal favourite when I first started listening to black metal was Bathory, Burzum came second and from then on I took a liking into Darkthrone.

As I mentioned, there are numerous genres that you can explore and every band has a different execution !! — Lifelover and Xasthur are both DSBM but are fairly different.

I'd say the scene is the most important part of it. Ranging from the way they dress, how they act on stage, their personal beliefs and so much more.

Corpse paint: Corpse paint is the face paint worn amongst the black metal community, it is used to, of course, make you look like a corpse. Necrobutcher from the band "Mayhem" insisted that they were the first in the scene to wear corpse paint, with Pelle (Dead) Ohlin (their vocalist) being the origin. Today it is heavily mistaken for other styles of face paint. It is not clown paint, it is not anything similar to Jazmin Bean's old makeup style, it is not Joey Jordison's mask style and it definitely isn't the juggalo face paint. For reference, here's a sheet of numerous corpse paint designs:

No paint on the nose, black all around the eyes and usually lines exaggerating your mouth into a frown, as mentioned before it is called corpse paint because it is supposed to make you look like a corpse.

Themes: Black metal's main themes are anti-religion, Satanism, nature, suicide, darkness, and many more. It all depends on the subgenre, really.

DSBM → Depressive Suicidal Black Metal

NSBM → National Socialist Black Metal

It has a high range of genres, as I said. For an example Kellersynth, which still falls under the black metal umbrella (because it branches from DS) even though it sounds NOTHING like it and has no elements of black metal. It originated from Dungeon synth. Now I am not so familiar with the scene of KS as I only got into it last year but it is mainly known for it's designs with the contrast between the dark colours and the highly saturated neon ones, witch hats, gnomes, mushrooms, etc. Pretty sure Kellersynth started the whole gnome hunting trend on TikTok that was popular a while ago but I'm not so sure on that? If someone could tell me more about it, I'd be thankful. It branched off the Dungeon Synth subgenre, except DS is usually gloomy and mysterious sounding whereas KS sounds sort of like techno according to the newer versions of it at least, one of my friends even compared it to the "Jumpstyle" music or whatever it's called. Pretty sure Kellersynth was started by friedhof/grollfried or so I've read a while ago.

Note - Just like with DSBM and other genres, KS also ranges depending on what artist you are listening to. For example Hexenmeister is a lot different than B.S.o.D (mentioning him because he had, I'd say, a great impact on both DS and KS)

PS !! For more info about Grausamkeit here is an article that I think really does a great job at explaining his discography.

[ 1 ] - Wizard of uralia [ 2 ] - Hexenmeister [ 3 ] - Hirtenmörder

Note - Hirtenmörder is tanzelcore but I'm still gonna include it

The difference between KS and Tanzelcore is that Tanzelcore draws from techno and KS draws from dungeon synth, most of the examples I've named up there are pretty much more tanzelcore than Kellersynth but I am putting them out as a perfect example of the cover art. → Bright neon colours, contrast.

These were the first few bands I came across, but my personal favourite is Morkesis. If you happen to like this kind of music and want to find more bands like these, check out the official DEATH FETISH youtube channel.

DSBM is a subgenre that's main themes are suicide, self mutilation, heartbreak, sadness, depression, etc. Again, there are a lot of bands and each one has their own execution. Here is my playlist with some of my favourite DSBM songs!!

The Community is quite toxic, by quite I mean really lol. If you decide to dive into the scene don't be surprised when you come across a lot of neo-nazis and white supremacists, ESPECIALLY in the KS and true Norwegian scene (not even gonna mention NSBM). The gatekeeping is a classic, of course. I'm pretty sure there is no community that gatekeeps like the BM community. In conclusion: Keep your favorite underground bands hidden if you don't want death threats coming at you by other fans of the band for making their favourite artists "mainstream". But even though there are a lot of gatekeepers, there are a lot of posers as well. Now don't get me wrong, "poser" is a very harsh label and I truly only intend to put it on those who are apart of the community for the aesthetics and fangirl/boy typa reason. By far, I don't think any band has a worse fandom than Mayhem, just a simple google search of their name will get you into a rabbit hole of fanart, fanfictions and other gross stuff.

Some fun subgenres worth exploring: (★ on my favs!)

psychedelic black metal ★

kellersynth

tanzelcore

DSBM ★

dungeon synth ★

blackened thrash metal ★

Industrial black metal

black gaze ★

war metal

NSBM (only for the music)

atmospheric BM ★

symphonic BM

melodic BM

folk BM

raw BM ★

blackened death metal ★

Blackened speed metal

Blackened gothic metal

Progressive black metal

Viking metal

Orthodox (or any religious) black metal

Black n roll, etc...

Back in the day, "black-metalheads" were referred to as Blacksters, though I am not sure if that term is still used to this day. But you probably came across the term "Trve Kvlt".

→ Trve Kvlt is basically a joke amongst the community now, I have never seen a true black metal enjoyer unironically use the term. I am pretty sure it originated it originated amongst the true Norwegian scene but is today only used as a joke. "That's so trve kvlt."

Note - As I am writing this I searched up the term as I was curious on it's origin and haven't learned about it before, I found this comment from a reddit user (u/noscope360gokuswag) that I feel like provides a decent enough explanation to the term.

"There is a big explanation in the book "Lords of Chaos" which is solely about the rise of Black Metal following the bands Mayhem, Burzum, and all of the chaos that came from them.

The term originated in the Norwegian black metal sub-culture of the early 1990s to describe ground-breaking artists including Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone and Emperor, whose militantly satanic ethos exemplified the era's black metal feel. Non-satanic bands expressing Norse paganism or strong anti-Christian sentiment may still be regarded as kvlt.

It was originally used by early black metal artists and fans to attribute authenticity to certain bands and was spelled that way due to spelling in Old English (v was used instead of u)

Now it has been transformed into a joke word and used to make fun of bands that try way too hard."

So in conclusion, knowing the history of the subculture and enjoying the music is enough to make you a Blackster. The community has a knot up their ass, everybody faces discrimination amongst it no matter what you do at this point lol. But my advice is to slowly start from the genre and/or band that's the most similar to your music taste now.

Melodic music → Melodic black metal, symphonic black metal, dungeonsynth, blackgaze etc

Heavy → Raw black metal, True Norwegian, blackened death metal, war metal etc

Infamous people in the black metal scene;

[ 1 ] - Count Grishnackh / Varg vikernes (Burzum, Mayhem, Old funeral. (I think there were more though)) [ 2 ] - Per Yngve (Pelle/Dead) Ohlin (Mayhem, Morbid) [ 3 ] - Gylve Fenris Nagell / Fenriz (Darkthrone, Valhall, Neptune Towers, Storm, Isengard (And I'm positive that there was more but these are just the ones I know of as of now.)) [ 4 ] - Øystein Aarseth / Euronymous (Mayhem (lmk if there's any that I'm missing))

Since I skipped over Mayhem's history, here is a documentary that you can watch if interested;

UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US:

A Playlist You Might Want To Check Out:

(( Another thing is I see a lot of Blacksters online saying that if you don't want to be a poser you have to exclusively listen to black metal only. I don't agree with that and believe you can be into black metal without only limiting your music taste to only black metal and it's subgenres, but then again being a Blackster also includes mainly listening to black metal → So it's your top genre. ))

+

You can be a black-metalhead and be a Christian, listening to black metal does NOT make you a nazi even if you listen to NSBM (as long as you're not actively supporting the artist and their beliefs) Not everyone in the black metal scene is a nazi and most of those who spread around such bullshit are not even educated about it. Ps to all of the haunted mound, "skinhead", sped up songs retards that are getting into black metal over TikTok and spreading around nazi propaganda YOU ARE A POSER!!!

At the end of the day black metal is only music. Those who like it will like it and those who don't, don't.

That's all I could come up with for now, I am very tired and I don't have the time to proofread all of this. If there are any troubles, grammar mistakes or gaps in my explanation/knowledge LMK!! Hope this helps at least a little bit. ♡

[dtmsrpfcringe]

So I came across this post on my dash and I would love to hear your take on it: ❤️

https://www.tumblr.com/irvinis/751566583397285888/angelsadvocate96-thank-you-for-this-detailed?source=share

In my opinion the art is beautiful and hurts no one, I don't believe it deserved that reply on twitter. What bothers me is the comments and theories. What is crazy to me is calling anyone who doesn't believe Michael and David are dating a homophobic. Also the whole "Michael never called Anna his wife" yeah because they're partners, not married. They've dated women as far as we know all their lives. Again, they also quote all the sexual comments Michael and David make to eachother as proof that they're dating.

There's also a very amusing comment that I must highlight: "They deliberately cropped a photo to just include David and Georgia, and ignored the "Michael is my work wife" quote by david in order to fit their narrative that Dt and Gt are in love."

I found it funny because they do the same. They ignore the many posts with their children looking happy, the videos with anna and georgia looking in love, doing stuff together, the quotes of them praising anna and georgia in interviews, talking about how much they love them and their kids, and only focus on the comments/pics/videos of Michael and David talking about each other 😂 why can't both loves coexist?? Why can't they be in a loving poly relationship? Why can't they be in love with their partners and just have a close friendship with one another? No, the only option they entertain in their brains is "gay couple/affair"? And we're the ones who are homophobic and close minded? So before they met they were doing what for years and years? Pretending to be in love and having kids "just cause"? 3 of the kids were born after they met on go if I'm not mistaken so how does that fit the timeline? 😂 I'm not gonna get into having sex just for making babies cause next thing we know we are demanding celebrities to make sex tapes each time they do it to prove it to us \0_0/

(When I say "us" I'm not talking about the person in the tweet, but the fandom in general whom they usually call antis or Georgia and Anna fans lmao)

I'm not saying them being in a romantic relationship with each other is impossible. As a bi woman, i never assume anyone's sexuality. But when you have female partners, and fall for a male, that's called being bi! I'm sorry everyone but these men are not gay as in homosexual! They can very much be bisexual and believe me, if they one day came out I would be the first person to say: they were right, we were wrong!

But please, don't be someone who simply denies bisexuality to exist. Anyone of any gender can be bi and be in a monogamous relationship, a poly relationship, with both men and women. It doesn't invalidate or make the other relationship less than!

My opinions aside, their sexuality is none of our business. Sure, I know fans like to speculate and I understand it, but we can't simply choose one option and claim it as reality above all else and brush off the other ones. We don't know what goes on behind closed doors so it's really dumb to claim we do based off of the little we see on tv/social media! - and yes I am including my view as well! By the little I see, they can be 2 happy straight couples, a poly quadruple (sorry if that's not the term), a bi couple (ignoring the ladies), but what they 100% are is 4 friends who love eachother and seen to be quite happy. And I'm very happy about that too.

I'm sorry for the long rant I've been awake for 2 days and am a zombie

sorry if this seems like it doesn't make sense I just woke up....

lmaoooo sorry I read this post and then had to read it again. Let me say this right fucking now: ITS NOT HOMOPHOBIC TO RESPECT BOUNDARIES THESE GODDAMN PEOPLE ARE GONNA KILL ME!!!!!

Also you're so right. There are a multitude of reasons the photo could have been cropped as well. When you post specifically about a couple you probably want the photo to be...well...about that couple. It's not that hard to figure out. There's a really funny thing here, where they say they're trying to make David and Georgia seem in love. There's no seem. They are in love here. I hate it when people pull this shit because what in the hell do you mean seem?! Things could be different if they were shit talking (joking doesn't count, bc if we wanna bring up jokes David and Michael have made about each other then we can, I'll be overjoyed.) or getting a divorce, but every indication they have they just completely made up.

The homophobia thing. I am bisexual. Nova, when she helped me run this was a gnc lesbian. Respecting the boundaries of complete strangers does NOT make you a fucking homophobe.

[0w0tsuki]

(Screenshot.The post this is from is three posts below if people need it for reference)

It's always pathetic to me whenever chuds on here try to frame their purity cult No Kink at Pride bullshit as "just thinking it's a little weird UwU"

Like oh you just have a personal squick? That's all it is? Oh I'm sorry! I thought people were drumming up weekly harassment campaigns, sending death threats/suicide bait, and socially murdering trans women over this! I'll be sure to leave you be yourself where you're not making your personal disgust other people's problems!

Get real.

Nobody cares about your personal squick. Nobody's saying "You HAVE to like incest, rape, and ageplay and masturbate to all three at once or else you're a transmisogynist!1!" people are asking to not turn your disgust into violence.

Like guess what? I Do Not Like Incest. Because of how society views any relationship between those perceived as a man and women through oppositional sexism, most of the time when people see a man and a woman together out in public they often come to the conclusion that the only reason they have for doing so is because they are in a romantic relationship. This resulted in me and my sibling often getting mistaken for a couple anytime we went anywhere together before we both came out. One time an old man at a flea market tried to sell us BDSM handcuffs and continued to do so even AFTER we told him we were siblings.

Do I plaster "PRO-INCEST DNI" over my blog? Do I personally go out and harass anyone who posts incest? Do I go into anons to "warn" people of other bloggers being into incest. Do I go about mass reporting people who post about incest? Do I write/spread call-out posts for people who post incest?

FUCK NO

Hell I'll go one step further. I HATE sissy kink. I have personally talked about it in my blog about how I have been personally traumatized by it, how it set back my transition by years, and how I believe it ultimately does more harm than good to trasfem eggs. I have talked about how sissy communities prey on transfem eggs and purposely set up in spaces where transgirls who are discovering themselves the same time they are experiencing puberty and are having a harm time separating their trans awakening from their sexual one frequent and tell them that their trans existence is a sexual one that they should be ashamed and humiliated by. 80% of my notifications on my alternate kink account are cis men with sissy kinks ignoring my DNI. I've called it transmisogyny kink. I reject the notion that cis men with sissy kinks are TMA and there are trans women who I've unfollowed/blocked over this and I know there are trans women who have me blocked about my stance on this.

STILL. I keep all my hostility to myself. I will rant on my own blog about it. If a post trying to lump me in with cissies gets under my ass I will throw it underwater to rant about and keep it to a screenshot with their name cropped outreblog on another rant so it doesn't gain too much traction and leads to any harassment. The MOST confrontational I'll get is going into posts dedicated to discourse about it and arguing with people specifically signing up to argue about it.

You can be anti-something without being an Anti about it. It's called not liking a thing. It's called being a hater. I fucking wish y'all just "thought it was a little weird"

[transandrophobiatruther]

Still mostly on hiatus but there's been a lot going on lately and much of it has contributed to my decision to take a step back from this blog for the sake of my mental health, but I want to address something.

As I've stated before, I'm a closeted trans man. I've been identifying as ftm for nearly a decade, but in my daily life, I'm typically mistaken for a butch lesbian, and I am out to only a handful of people for my own safety.

Fortunately, I live in a blue state, and even if I were out and openly trans, I would be relatively safe in public (all things considered), and I also don't expect my state to pass any anti trans laws any time soon. That being said, I am deeply concerned and, frankly, terrified of the sharp increase of transphobia in the United States, and I spend much of my time agonizing over the anti-trans bills being introduced and, worse yet, the anti-trans laws being passed. It's not my personal safety that I am worried about, but for the trans people I love and care about in other places, and the trans people from other places I don't know. I'm worried about how sentiment that would have been considered far right wing conspiracy level several years ago has become more prevalent, and I'm scared that so many people I previously trusted have fallen for it. I'm afraid of the shifting attitudes, even in places right now that are relatively safe.

It's getting frustrating to hear that people in blue states have no right to be afraid, as though we cannot care about our trans siblings in red states and that our fear is entirely selfish. It's disappointing to witness other trans people in blue states suggesting that the trans people impacted by these anti-trans laws are at fault for living in red states. And though this part is not new, it's infuriating to see people argue over whether exorsexism, transandrophobia, or transmisogyny are "worse", or if these various forms of oppression even exist.

If there's ever a time for solidarity, it's now. Pointless infighting only makes the pain everyone is suffering worse. I won't pretend to agree with every trans person out there, but we are all in danger right now, and pointing fingers solves nothing.

[thepenultimateword]

hello! i've really been liking these leader x villain flavour prompts you've been writing, it's such an interesting combination!

could you by any chance write a snippet with this dynamic? if not, i'd be fine if you redirected me to other snippets with it as well. thank you! i hope you have a wonderful day :D <33

"Anti-hero, get those henchmen bound and gagged. Hero, do a perimeter of the area in case we missed anyone. Sidekick, go check the alarms to make sure no one has sounded anything, then go wipe the cameras."

Each member of the team immediately fell in the line. No arguing, no whining, just pure, trusting obedience. It was a hard thing to build up a reputation that strong. Leading their own the right way so often that they didn't even feel the need to question. More impressive was the way they'd torn Villain's leadership apart. Making them panic, making their henchman panic, seeding the entire base with doubts that quickly bloomed into bright red betrayal.

They'd probably be furious if they weren't also so smitten.

Leader watched their team file out and then whipped around on their heel to face them. A thin sheen of sweat glistened against their hairline, pasting a few stray locks against their temples and brightening the flames blazing in their eyes. They probably didn't mean for the tight clench of their jaw to bring out their dimples, but it did, and it was breathtaking.

Leader yanked on Villain's bond a couple times to test their strength, and Villain's breath hitched as their pinky brushed lightly against their wrist.

"It would be best if you gave up any notions of escape or freedom right now," the hero said coldly. "Any resistance will only get you hurt, and I would rather keep all your bones and teeth intact."

Villain stared in starry-eyed awe. Honestly, how did they ever get into the hero scene with a threatening nature like that? They were like one big dog in the center of a large group of rabbits.

It wasn't that the rest of the team was bad; they all had their skills and specialties that got the job done, but Villain had always felt a comfortableness with the rest of the team. A certainty that with the right pressure they could break every single one of them. Not so with Leader.

The team's chief member was an enigma. Too cold to be influenced, too hard to be broken, too determined to be turned. Oh, how Villain wished they could be turned.

It was an embarrassing sort of dream of theirs, middle school level ridiculous, to get Leader on their side and live happily ever after as the city's rulers for the rest of their lives. They'd be good at it. Leader would notice all the fine details that Villain missed, as well as know the best ways to gain people's loyalty.

"Taking hostages doesn't seem very heroic, now does it?" Villain said, grateful that nothing in their voice betrayed the nervous, squirming sensation in their stomach.

"Consider it more of an arrest."

"You're not the police."

Leader fixed them in a cold, evaluating stare. "They'll get you eventually."

Ok, so this prisoner-of-the-hero-team thing was going to be temporary. They'd really have to make the most of it then.

"What do you even want from me anyway?" Villain said. "Nothing's changed since the last time you sycophants barged in here."

Leader slow blinked. "I doubt that very much."

Ok? That didn't make a lot of sense, but if Leader was interested in them, they weren't going to argue.

"Ok, so--" Villain cut off with an undignified squeak as Leader suddenly grabbed them around the legs and slung them over their shoulder.

"W-wait, we're going now?" Villain cried, hair curtaining their face. They actually had to be a little grateful because they're really couldn't guarantee the state of their face right now.

Leader did not respond.

"But what about your team?"

"They know what to do."

A little shiver ran down Villain's spine. It was more thrill than fear, but Leader must have mistaken it because they said:

"Don't give me a reason to hurt you, and you'll be just fine."

The lair door creaked, and Villain was immediately buffeted with loud, icy, wind. They had to shout a little to be heard over it all.

"Do I get a phone call? A change of clothes? A personal item to get me through the long, cold nights?"

Leader stopped walking. Villain felt their head tip directly down as the hero ducked their head forward and stared through the gap in their arm to look directly into Villain’s inverted face. The flames in their eyes had burned cold.

"You’re a villain. What makes you think you deserve those rights?”

Hm. Maybe this had been a mistake.

Master Taglist:

@moss-tombstone @crazytwentythrees @just-1-lonely-person @the-vagabond-nun @willow-trees-are-beautiful @cocoasprite @insanedreamer7905 @valiantlytransparentwhispers @whovian378 @watercolorfreckles s @thebluepolarbear @yulanlavender @kitsunesakii @deflated-bouncingball @lem-hhn @office-plant-in-a-trenchcoat @ghostfacepepper @pigeonwhumps @demonictumble @inkbirdie @vuvulia @bouncyartist @lunatic-moss-studio @breilobrealdi @freefallingup13 @i-am-a-story-goblin @ryunniez @rainy-knights-of-villany @distractedlydistracted @saspas-corner @echoednonny @perilous-dreamer @blood-enthusiast @randomfixation @alexkolax @pksnowie

[donnerpartyofone]

anon here who feels a great kindred spirit with you, maybe one day i'll have the guts to message not anonymously but frankly i really admire you and also struggle with the mortification of putting myself out there directly it may be one day but not today. ANYways. just saw your post re: the knee-jerk reaction of ppl to say something like "no! everyone is special (or beautiful/smart/talented/etc.) in their own way!" when you or i tries to acknowledge something that is real to us and that affects our day to day life. ive touched on stupidity before bcuz that is something that you've articulated better than i ever could but you were talking in that post a little more specifically abt physical beauty and i do think theres something to be said there for usamerican individualism. bcuz ive heard a lot that other countries/cultures find our particular brand of individualism to be weird to say the least. and i have, for most of my life (and this is true now), had a body that has been perceived as very desirable (eg. skinny, but still have tits and an ass, proportionally "good", etc.) but my face i have always known does not live up to beauty standards. bcuz of this, ppl closer have had a hard time understanding why i struggle so much with self esteem related to my looks and have often jumped to "but youre so pretty!" when i try to talk abt it. the outside of this is that i look like a child in the face and am often mistaken for a child even at 28. when i was an actual child, read: 18 and under, i received a LOT of attention from men, often men who were old enough to be my father. now that i am not a child that attention has waned, even though i've put on a little weight and my body is frankly more rocking than ever. BUT my face stays unchanged and i think i have so of an uncanny valley effect on ppl now. im bringing all this up bcuz this is another piece of kinship i feel with you: even before i started really paying attention to your posts discussing things, i really admired your selfies bcuz you and i actually look pretty similar, we have the same texture of hair and a similar face. but i have always felt that, from your pictures, you seem much more "in control" of your look than i do. i love your sense of style and i love how you do your brows so dark and dramatic but also seem to wear (as far as i can tell; im not much for makeup so correct me if im wrong) relatively little makeup otherwise. regardless of how you look, you project an image (as always, i know i can only know you parasocially so take this as much or as little as you want to) of someone who knows how they look and how they want to present themselves. i personally keep my head buzzed most of the time, and when i first started doing it, i did it bcuz it meant that no one had any excuse anymore. they had to look at my face and acknowledge my whole bare face with no distractions. it was a way of directing how i was perceived. now i dont know if thats what your brows are to you but ive always thought "wow, the dramatic brow is such a masterful use of makeup and direction". ive always seen the way you present yourself as seeming thoughtfully and well curated, and ive hoped for myself that i could someday present that way. as you can tell, i really admire you lol. hope im not being weird. im not really sure what my point is here but once again you articulated something well that i only have ruminated on abstractly.

i've also been thinking of you bcuz recently i ran up against the old "im too stupid to do this normal thing and now it may badly affect my life" situation: tried to put my tabs on my car and bcuz they were taped to the paper, they just broke into pieces on the tape when i tried to peel them away. so i just panicked and badly pieced them onto my license plate in a way im sure will seem infinitely more suspicious should a cop notice and decide to pull me over. my husband tells me tabs are supposed to do this as an anti theft measure, this is information i somehow missed in my 28 years of life and 12 years of being a legal driver. and if i get pulled over im not honestly sure i know where all my necessary paperwork is and will undoubtedly start shaking from anxiety which also looks suspicious when i try to hand a cop my id and my hand is shaking like a leaf. and i havent been pulled over yet but now every time i drive my car im going to be thinking abt it. god willing the distraction of fear of the unknown wont lead me to crashing my car but thatd be just the thing id do too. just wanted to share bcuz i think youre probably the only person who understands how it feels and bcuz hey, i want you to know youre not the only one out there muddling through life as a series of actions and unforeseen consequences, no matter how foreseen those consequences "shouldve been".

sorry for this long and rambling message. i have no two-ipas excuse this time as its morning here and im stone cold sober (the ipas were the voodoo juice ranger by the way) but you just make me think a lot, and again, i admire you very much. thanks as always and i hope that today is, if not easier on you, at least tolerable in terms of its challenges.

Dearest field correspondent, I wish I had a more thoughtful, interesting response to your kind message, but unfortunately you may receive instead le big rant. I am very low self-control lately and you're all going to have to pay for it! I'm thinking about my 85 year old father-in-law who is still razor sharp and full of energy, and so he is vividly aware of the nearness of death and very anxious about it. At his birthday dinner he started preaching to my husband and me about how you just have to live every minute you've been given to its fullest, and I often think about how he's right and he's wrong at the same time. Like it's patently correct that you should treasure whatever life you're allowed, but I think it would take a mental giant to really do that unless you're just basically a terrific person with few problems. If your personal chemistry makes you feel bad all the time due to circumstances or past trauma or plain old bad wiring, it's really hard to just consciously choose to feel good and be filled with gratitude and slurp all the delicious marrow out of your day. And what if your days don't have that much marrow to begin with? Of course if the Christmas ghosts came and snatched you up and confronted you with the preciousness of the life you are squandering, that you can still redeem if you try, that would change your tune, but it's hard to get that same kind of life-changing effect by just intellectually acknowledging the value of yourself and your time on earth.

(I'm gonna put a break here so I don't eat up everybody's dash, brb)

I was thinking about this, in a way, because somebody just asked me for a head shot for this project I'm on, so I was going through selfies to see if I had anything appropriate, and man was that depressing. Of course Tumblr was serving a jumble of new and old pictures, but some of them looked really good, even recent ones. And I know I wasn't enjoying myself at the time that I took them, any of them. I was just struggling to feel good about myself out of some perverse sense of obligation. I've always had the urge to express something with my appearance, to build up some kind of power and efficacy around what I could do with it, but I never felt anything like that happening. I mean for every selfie that was good enough to post, there are at least 100 I had to throw out that were ugly and embarrassing and more like "the real me". And I know just from living my life that I'm not attractive, my entire social experience does not reflect that of an attractive woman; even among the guys I dated, it's hard to weigh the two who actually liked me against the majority who were just indiscriminately looking for some pathetic specimen to torture and humiliate in order to feel good about themselves.

(And I guess this is TMI but who really cares, I'm sure no one is even reading this, but the irony is that I'm really great in bed. It's a fact. I just love sex and I'm not at all embarrassed about it and I have a knack for getting people comfortable really letting loose and getting to do what they truly want. I know this for sure not only from being in the room, but from detailed postscript testimonials from partners--even the ones who secretly hated me. And naturally that makes me feel pretty good, but it feels incomplete somehow, without the sense of control of my own appearance, without a satisfying relationship to my own body which disgusts me and is constantly causing me unmanageable problems both aesthetic and medical. Like I really want to just crumple it up and throw it in the trash, who fucking cares)

But I see some of those (highly staged, illusory, pain-in-the-ass to shoot) selfies and for a second I'm forced to wonder why that person had to feel so bad about and not have any fun at all, every single day. And now it's extra hard because as I might have said, I've had rosacea for around 15 years, and most of the time it was just a fairly manageable if embarrassing redness, but ever since I took the asthma medication Symbicort for a month this summer, the condition has been progressively deforming. I don't even look the same as I did this fall, and I have no reason to believe things will get better or even level out. Like, this is it. I feel like I don't even have the same skull shape as the girl in these cute pictures from September. I'm stressing myself out wondering about all kinds of procedures I can barely pay for, that could potentially make it worse actually. I'm wondering if I need to quit my public-facing volunteer gig, one of the only things that gives my life meaning, because I'm sick of how red and bloated and wet I look in every single livestream, and I don't like it when I'm occasionally accused of being drunk or I'm randomly told to "calm down" because I looked like I'm panicking even when I'm not. I don't know what to do. I wish I didn't care. But it's tough to look back at old pictures, even just from six months ago, and think Damn I didn't know how much worse things were about to get, I should have live-laugh-loved through every grueling moment of my luxurious mediocrity while I still had it to enjoy!

--On that note there's a certain curse of women who are like, not ugly enough for it to feel like a hopeless case, but who also don't actually have much potential to do anything satisfying with themselves. If you absolutely know that beauty isn't an open road for you, you can choose not to waste energy on that and you can focus on any number of other things that can make your life happy and meaningful; but if you have that nagging suspicion that maybe you COULD be finding exciting ways to express yourself through your looks, then you're dogged by this feeling of dissatisfaction and constantly wondering if it would be better if you just threw in the towel and called yourself ugly so you could stop thinking about it, or if that would be wasteful because maybe something nice would happen if you just made more of an effort, maybe there's still time, maybe you need the right haircut, maybe you need to shake up your wardrobe, maybe you need to learn that advanced hygiene routine that you always found too confusing to master, maybe you just need to get in shape, maybe et al ad nauseum. It would be better not to have to wonder about it all. And of course there's social pressure to maintain ambiguity, especially for women: You're supposed to work really hard to be hot, but you're supposed to act like it's all effortless and also like you have no idea how attractive you are. But you can't be unrealistically humble or people will hate you for that, too--they'll hate you for being dishonest, or they'll give you shit about your apparent self-esteem issues, because somehow that is always everybody's business. You can't win!

You're right that I don't wear much makeup, I really never learned; I never had a mom who was interested in me or the kinds of female friends who help you learn all the pageantry. I wore some makeup for a little while at the end of my 20s because I had to go to my fancy brother's wedding and I was embarrassed about looking raw and dowdy forever in his fancy wedding photos, so I forced myself to learn a few things. But basically I don't want to be bothered, and I enjoy the Joan Crawford brow I do, but that's utilitarian also--if I'm not paying attention I'll rip all the eyebrow hairs out of my face, which is extra embarrassing if it happens in the middle of a work day or something. So now the pencil is essential! And since my face started turning red I usually use some primer and foundation that I really like, although there is very little that keeps my head from looking like a big swollen clown nose, from now on. (All of my minimal supplies are from Make Up For Ever btw, expensive but long-lasting and reliable)

Unrelated but I'm really pissed off that I can't drink anymore, because now it brings on this violent painful flushing, and every time that happens it causes progressive destruction and like, basically every day is worse than the last--which is true anyway about aging, but it's escalated for me. But like, I have severe depression and anxiety and I can't be on any mood medications because they make my tinnitus intolerable, so the only thing I could reliably do for myself was have a little alcohol. Like just half a can of beer would get me through so many tough chores and bouts of mindless fear. And I love wine, I love amari, I love whiskeys, I love esoteric cocktail nonsense, I have a ton of friends from the craft beer world, and now basically there are entire art forms that I can't enjoy anymore, like ever again. And you can bet this is going to affect my relationships. I know people will want to say that's bullshit, quitting drinking is practically always a good thing and your "real friends" will stick with you sober...but that's all pretty hyperbolic. I don't want my life to be winnowed down to only the purest stuff. I don't want this cornerstone of my social and cultural life to be ripped out from under me. I never even developed any bad behaviors to deserve this! And god knows I don't want to have absolutely zero options for calming my nerves. Therapy and yoga and meditation have done nothing for me psychiatrically. I'm just fucked, really, in the dreariest most mundane way possible.

I wouldn't be so hung up on getting drunk and looking pretty if I had some other source of meaning, but it's hard to find that essential driving force when you can't even get through the day's chores like a normal person. I'm on like day 5 of trying to fold my clothes or even just shove them into bags, and I live in terror of the avalanche that is going to happen when one of us needs to get out the bed sheets that I "put away" dangerously in the closet, despite multiple attempts to do it right. I don't drive so you're ahead of me on some level! But I'm 100% positive I wouldn't have understood all that stuff about the tabs, haha. This week I'm seeing my GP and I'm going to ask for a psych referral for evaluations for autism and ADHD. I'm scared that I'm opening myself up to being officially diagnosed as just lazy and negative and then everyone will get to tell me I Told You So about how my only issue is my poor attitude, but I'm sure there's something going on with me, and if it's ADD and god forbid I can get a little medication of some kind that allows me to like wash dishes and do laundry like a normal person without making everything exponentially worse...then, you know, that would be a really big deal. It seems to me that a lot of people are depressed because of some unfulfilled dream they had of being really sexy and cool and talented, or some other superlative--and we usamericans do experience a lot of irrational cultural pressure to be Awesome at something, I'm not looking down on people who suffer from this--but all I want is to like, get on the bus successfully. To not humiliate myself every single time I go to ship a package because I just can't figure out what's going on, yet again. To not be having constant wardrobe malfunctions. To vacuum my house without just mysteriously pushing dirt and hair around into different configurations. To cook a nice simple meal I don't destroy. To have a job again. These are my most treasured fantasies. Maybe if we both put pressure on "the Universe" to "manifest" our dreams this year, then we can have a great 2024!

[catbountry]

This is the third time I am writing this post because I feel like the idea I'm trying to convey keeps slipping away from me as I keep piling on context, and really, all it is... is just making excuses. I held transmed beliefs and questioned the validity of nonbinary gender identities back on Kiwi Farms. Now, I feel like if circumstances were slightly different, I probably would identify as enby.

Honestly.

The only reason I don't is because my feelings towards being a woman are pretty neutral. All of my problems I had in regards to gender growing up was not so much being a girl, but being constantly told by other girls and older women that I was being a girl wrong. Being a woman is perfectly fine with me; it's the sexism and policing of what is acceptable gender expression I have a problem with.

I don't think I can fully identify as queer, even though most of my friends are and I feel like they get me, so I feel perfectly at home. At the end of the day, I am fine with being a woman, and I am exclusively attracted to men. And I hate to say it, but it's cis men and maybe AMAB enbies who are okay with presenting more masculine. I just really, really like dicks. I don't really like vaginas, even though I imagine most people who would look at me and how I dress myself would assume that I am. And I know this, because I have been called homophobic slurs in public.

Is simply being gender nonconforming enough to be queer? I'm not sure, because I don't know if I'd ever be in a relationship that would be in danger because of legislation being passed. I could, however, see myself getting shit for my gender presentation, because I get people trying to clock me as either a trans man at the start of their transition or genderqueer. I'm in a pretty blue state, in a college town, surrounded by a lot of people younger than me who are overall much more accepting than I had been at their age, though, so realistically, I'm probably not in danger of being targeted for possibly being queer. Would that make me queer adjacent, though? I don't fucking know, but at the same time... I feel at home hanging around a bunch of queer folks. One of my friends joked that I'm straight, but I'm pretty gay about it. There are a lot of times where I will feel like one of the only cishet people in a group. Maybe it's because I've refused to give up the general subculture aesthetic and have been wearing graphic tees, ripped jeans and Chuck Taylors since high school, and I'm not going to stop anytime soon. I still get mistaken for being in my 20's so I am going to ride that shit into the ground, baby.

Things have changed a lot. Culture has changed. The internet has changed. I've changed. Everybody's on the goddamn internet now, including a lot of people who seem utterly clueless about its culture and history. I don't have anybody in my circles of friends that would ever identify as "anti-SJW" anymore. There is no debate in any of the circles I'm in on the validity of trans people at all, or nonbinary people. I look to those who I might have either associated with loosely or engaged with their content, and they just seem like they spiraled into increasing extremism, and for many of them, it doesn't seem like it's just to keep the grift going. They're true believers. And a part of me finds it kind of sad, actually, because they're going to just be miserable fucks for the rest of their lives if they keep their current trajectory. The momentum of the trans rights movement is not going to stop. Normies are getting sick of politicians focusing on transgender people. And within the trans community itself, the infighting has pretty much stopped because of just how tight the screws are being turned as conservatives go all out on the last socially acceptable group they can go against. They're being much more blatant about their bigotry in a way that's so flagrant, it would have been unthinkable ten years ago. We've got bigger problems.

Why am I even writing all of this out? I don't know. It's not like these posts are going to show up on Google when people look me up and see "callout" after my username in the suggestions. But it's important to me to map out these thoughts, I suppose, because actually changing means a lot more than grovelling and saying sorry to be accepted by people who wouldn't be willing to hear me out in the first place. I don't even think I fully regret being on Kiwi Farms; I more regret sticking around as long as I did, and if you've been paying attention to me posting about major life events I've been dealing with recently, you may have noticed I kind of have a problem with sticking around toxic people or places out of some misplaced sense of loyalty.

I guess I'm just stubborn.

TL;DR I feel pretty bad about not believing nonbinary identities weren't valid because I feel like I almost kind of sort of feel that? Also trans rights forever and ever,

[48lexr]

OC Questionnaire Tag

Another fun tag game from @authorcoledipalo.

I'll use Izi, Hota, Taguchif, and Lozerief all together at the same time.

What would you do if your enemy asked for help?

Izi: Yeah okay so that happened once and I would've ground her to a pulp then and there if Hota hadn't stopped me.

Hota: Izi's too impulsive, and it can be a strength when in dire straits, but a costly mistake in other environments. I try to make up for that wherever I can.

Tagif: I'm not normally with Izi on these, but yeah. Definitely grinding Lozerief to a pulp if I ever get the chance.

Lozef: I'm not a fan of questions as broad as this, or being reminded of how I allowed myself to be used for the benefit of a literal tyrant. Obviously, I've been the enemy asking for help many times. Never have I expected any help, and yet somehow it all works out.

Would you ask your enemy for help?

Izi: Depends? Like, I asked Governor Luwbefê for help, but we didn't know how vicious he would go on to be.

Hota: No, but like Izi, I was duped into believing in the goodness of the Governor of Tolftorrijv. I was sorely mistaken.

Tagif: Yeah totally. The ends justify the means. They say that in English, right?

Lozef: Another very complicated, nuanced question. Like Hotautebz and Iziser, I didn't know President Sluwfa would be such an evil person, but I went along with her plans to remain unobtrusive. So, when she built the anti-magic bubble, I left and begged Iziser and Hotautebz to retake me.

Do you act on impulse, or do you think before you act?

Izi: Well, Hota already answered this question for me.

Hota: Yeah, I did. At least Izi's honest about it.

Tagif: Premeditated plans are the best, especially when building stuff. I'm probably more impulsive than Hota, and less impulsive than Izi.

Lozef: Hard to say. I would say I'm spontaneous but not impulsive, if that makes sense?

Paging: @oldfashionedidiot @theothersideofthewoods +open tag!