#but when you watch it and remember the bs mindset people had of the older disney princess during the 2010s-ish era....

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Me: *talking about the older Disney Princess movies and how I'm re-watching them* Someone: Oh yeah, but man those older ones, the OG 3? They were horrible representation for wom- Me:

Me: Speak not another word, lest we get thrusted back into the good year of 2014. This is why Frozen gagged y'all, cause people had that antiquated and twisted mindset of something that doesn't exist.

[parasite-core]

1, 19, 21, and 22 for the critter asks!

Thank you anon ☺️ I’m going to be placing this under a cut because it got really long. I...got a tad emotional.

1: How did you first discover Critical Role?

So I’d been playing Pathfinder for about a year before Critical Role got super popular. My partner Zane, who is also the only person I played Pathfinder with back then, started watching and was pretty into it. I had a vague interest at the time, but it was already well into the Vecna arc by the time I really started hearing about it. I actually remember the first scene I ever overheard Zane listening to when he was catching up was the love potion scene 😂 Amazing first introduction. The only CR 1 episode I listened to live was about an hour of the final battle with Vecna. I didn’t actually think back then that I’d ever commit to watching it, because four hours felt like a big chunk of time weekly. Then I realized that one of the players was Liam, and I have been a huge fan of his voice work since high school. I’d heard of Laura, Travis, and Matt beforehand, but finding out Liam was in it was what really got me interested enough to take the dive and start watching live when campaign 2 started. I never looked back. Ironically now I’m the only one in my immediate friend group who still watches now.

19: Who’s your favorite cast member?

Despite my previous answer alluding to me being a huge fan of Liam’s work for years, it’s actually a tie between Liam and Taliesin. Even beyond being a huge fan of his voice work (he just has a really great recognizable voice and I always feel happy when I recognize him in something) I adore how in character Liam gets and how much thought goes into how he expresses his characters. I love how excited he gets for the fandom content too, as the art dad of the cast. I love his descriptions and how he uses D&D as a way to show his love for his nerdy best friends. But it’s really Taliesin who’s affected my life in very big very personal ways. He also really came out of left field for who I’d end up really liking of the cast. See, I grew up in a very socially conservative home. My mom is very judgmental about piercings, tattoos, clothing, hair color/style, all that stuff, and when I started Critical Role I was still fairly fresh out of college and hadn’t yet pulled myself from some of that judgmental mindset I’d grown up with. So when I first saw Taliesin, my immediate reaction was basically ‘isn’t he kind of old to be dressing like that?’. I went in basically expecting to enjoy the entire cast except Taliesin, entirely because he was an older goth. I dropped that bullshit pretty fast after I saw him play Percy and Molly, his characters have consistently been some of my favorites. Hearing him talk about self expression, and learning to not give a fuck about what people whose opinions don’t matter, and all that really helped me to let go of some of my own toxic bs. And as I started exploring my gender identity more, I saw him as an example of how to be okay with myself no matter how I ended up wanting to present myself on the outside. After Mollymauk died I had a major spike in my depression, because I’d been kind of using Molly on an unhealthy level to keep myself going on a weekly basis (telling myself “I have to survive until Thursday so I can see what Molly will do next” “I have to make it to Thursday, maybe we’ll learn more about his backstory this week”, stuff like that). Then one day I was watching some other show online Taliesin was a guest in, I don’t remember what it was just that he was there dressed in the most fabulous purple outfit, and it kind of hit me that I could do that too. I could just make Taliesin and Molly’s worldview my own, I could dress loud and bright and be someone who people remember fondly. I could try to leave every place better than I found it. So I’ve since bought a bunch of clothes I just think are fun and fanciful, just because I like them, and I’ve tried to let go of my first instinct of being scared of how people will view me, and I’ve made a very conscious effort to stop that judgmental way of looking at people that made me almost not give someone amazing like Taliesin a chance. So anyways that was probably way more personal info than you wanted to know 😂 Tl;dr, I consider Taliesin an inspiration and a role model.

21: Who’s your favorite CR1 PC

That’s hard. My first instinct is Percy. And it’s a good first instinct. I love my dark tormented soul type characters who don’t consider themselves redeemable (see: my CR2 favorite). But also I love Grog, he’s hilarious and Travis really just made him a joy to watch. His antics are some of the first things I think of any time I think of CR1. Also I love the twins, their interactions were wonderful, and Vax’s storyline was so good and so tragic. But, no, I do think I have to go with my first instinct and say Percy. I’m just a sucker for a guy with a demon in his head seeking revenge and finding a family who helps to make him a better version of himself. That final moment admitting how much he misses his family and how hurt he is by what happened and his survivor’s guilt is all so heart wrenching. Angry “No Mercy Percy” coldly going after the people who hurt him and his is so dark and mildly terrifying and so fun to watch. Just...I enjoy Percy.

22 Who’s your favorite CR2 player character?

If he hadn’t died, it probably would have been Molly, he was easily my favorite for a long time. And I still adore him and I can’t wait for what’s coming. But there’s been such a long time between then and now, I ended up falling into my love of characters with dark backstories who don’t believe they can be redeemed. Caleb is definitely one of my favorites. I just like my sad haunted guys, I’m just that predictable. But also like I said earlier, I really like how Liam describes things, and Caleb and his magic really lend themselves to that. And he’s a dork who loves cats, and his found family. Although Beau blindsided me and ended up also being one of my favorites. I just love the Empire Siblings. Beau is so gutsy and plays up not giving a fuck but she also loves her friends so much that losing them would have been the biggest sacrifice she could think of for the hag. She came from a terrible toxic environment and she rose up and made a place for herself and she found her own family who loves her unconditionally and just 😭 I love Beau.

[ruzhansky]

i pray this will never end, i have my heart open wide

This report is not going to cover my teams, spreads and so on, as it was in 2015. I even don’t know if I should call it a ‘report’, I just want to slop down some thoughts about 2017. Have a nice read.

Why did I return to vgc? I DONT KNOW. As you might remember, I was a tryharder in 2015, but Nats loss and Autumn Series event loss completely broke me. 2016 season wasn’t a thing I’d like to try out (especially with the 2015 wounds) and I got some serious mental health problems in 2016. New pokemon game was a thing that could possibly make my days a bit brighter, and yea, I liked the game, the tapus, the ultra beasts and I became curious about the new format. The first russian tournament was announced to be held in late December, but I was busy with exams prep and haven’t even completed the main story. Though the tournament was tempting. I tested my first ideas on PS which included Instruct spam xd, but Nihilego with proper support showed a real potential at our early days of metagame. I could make it to the tournament (MSS Q1, wow Russia got midseasons...) and somehow won it. It’s like WHATTT how could i... but still. This thing lit something inside me and I decided to give that season a chance.

this is a very bad and old drawing of my mss q1 team xd sorry

January brought the first meta shift, and I started struggling with the team I had. I accidentally joined a random coversation on twitter and then I texted PephanVGC something like hey, did you remember we wanted to talk about teams. And he was very nice to me right from the start, he helped me out with the team and then we started to chat about everything. About friends, life, our past, loneliness and other troubles, and I thought I’ve found a real soulmate. We started to chat every day, but some days ago we were complete strangers to each other. This is so great.

Pephan shared a team with me I instantly fell in love with. It was Winter, so yeah Hail was cool to use, and that was the warmest winter I have :3 though Arcanines already were everywhere, and I removed Life Orb from his Koko to make it Electrium Z Koko AND IT BECAME MY MASCOT FOR THE WHOLE SEASON (i thought so before specs has come to mind...)  Also I played the same team with Pephan at Melbourne Challenge, and I got paired with him on r2... I lost in a close set and got broken so much, but he still helped me a lot with that and taught me how to treat losses less painfully. I love Pephan.

February IC poster with @Elveman yeah we had fun once

Then I built an AFK team too but with fucked item choices (firium arcanine just why), but I also had Scarf Porygon-Z and it was amazing to use. 

I brought Hail team to St Peter (yeah I travelled to St Petersburg) and Moscow PCs, got 1st and 2nd, AFK PZ team - to MSS Q2 AND I WON AGAIN. I was wondering why my enemies rivals didn’t visit our events, but ok, it was not my problem. Especially when our 2016 nats champion became my main enemy.

This was my season flow. I traveled, I played, I was studying at university and it was my graduation year, I had a job and tried to combine it with studying and pokemon, sometimes it affected my results. I was invited to represent Pokemon at Hinode 2017, the huge annual Japanese event in Moscow, with my main rival, famous russian pokemon community moderator and some TCG guys. It was definitely a nice experience. I got money from that just because I told people how amazing pokemon is, I teached them how to battle and showed that there’s much more than Pokemon Go. Yes, I don’t like Go. All pokemon players don’t like Go here.

b-but they’re so young!!! pic from Hinode.

Well, I thought season should have something else besides MSS and PCs, and hell yes, 8 Russian Special Events at 8 different cities were announced in May. Moar travelling! We(my rival, me and our tcg frens) decided to go to St Peter (again), Perm, Astrakhan and Ufa. Someone decided to go to all 8 SE because he wanted to.

The big-big drama started at our community but I don’t wanna share it here.

I graduated, traveled and played, and since my rival missed 2 Specials due to his own graduation and some other issues, my invite made a bit more real. Wait. THE DREAM OF MAKING WORLDS BECAME REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But I still needed to put a lot ot work into it. Top 1 vgc gets paid invite, I was 1st, but tcg guy with a good amount of vgc points was second (because he always played vgc after tcg at special events). I thought he will play TCG after all and he won’t interfere with my road to worlds, but I found out that he is going to the city we’re all decided not to go, to grind some tcg AND vgc points. I got angry as a rival and made an impulsive decision to go to Irkutsk Special before Moscow Special. And I went. And got some important points. And pretty locked up my invite. But I said to myself that I shouldn’t sсream it out loud and dance in the shower before the official ceremony in the end of the season. I still had Moscow event.

Huh. Our system this year allowed travelling, and 8 Special Events were held in June and July. Because I had the will and money to travel, because I got a job and combined it with studying at university and somehow haven’t lost it, I visited 6 Special Events. People started to shittalk me. I am wallet warrior, I am noob, I am not worlds caliber, I bought an invite and so on. I even partly agree. At that point winning russian events isn’t close to winning or doing well at EU/US events. Not every SE at regions gave us a strong competition. I am deadly far from WolfeyNails/Markus/etc level. But even with that, should I leave my spot and act like a fucking noble idiot? ‘Oh I am bad and not worlds caliber, guess I should give up now’. Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I have a game I love, a desire to travel, a job and money for that, so why not. If you don’t play and try, you can never ‘get good’. Sitting on a sofa and thinking ‘oh I will never be good enough so I better don’t play’ is a shitty mindset as well. And then twitter drama about ‘free worlds not being elitist’ happened, I’ve become so sick of that.  

Moscow Special. The long-awaited end of the season. Really long-awaited because I felt like every day had 48 hours. I didn’t have special plans for Moscow. I didn’t want win it out as hell, I just wanted everything to end. And it ended. 

the event

party after d1

i remember how to draw

the main scene

turn your main enemies to judges lol

#lifegoals

<3

Despite tons of personal shit happened to me this season, apparently I found myself a better person. i don’t know if this is growing up, I am already 21 and difference between 19 and 21 doesn’t seem too big, though my mind and attitude to some things have noticeably changed.

Got rid of fake elitism, as it was in my early days of competitive and my -most famous year- (2015). I can’t even imagine now but then I thought that competitive is the BEST part we can have about pokemon, and everyone else who likes casual playing or anime are absolute losers and can never be as cool as us. Your dream is completing dex? Breeding a shiny? You love some anime characters and wanna watch fuckin dummies�� anime forever? Uh, dream of becoming a xXxWORLDCHAMPIONxXx just disparages your shitty life goals. I laughed at people i don’t know in person and who didn’t do anything bad to me.

I don’t know what changed my mind in particular. It’s like I just woke up with thoughts “why should I do this”. I saw that people who are not only about competitive can have and reach their own pokemon dreams, they’re valuable too. They can travel not only for competitive. For love to the franchise all of us are fond of. I am sorry for being an asshole :)

Got some skills of loving myself. Yup, y’all might know it was a big problem. Tl,dr: I haven’t a reason to. My only ray of light was being successful enough in vgc and when I wasn’t it became a catastrophe. Bad runs at IC, losses at regionals stages, bad BS sessions? Oh god, i am so shitty, i hate myself - and it was the softest thing I said. It was a mix of hatred and sadness and absolutely wasn’t a great thing to feel.  It cost me a real depression in 2016 - though I didn’t even play that season, it hit me hard. I let it happen, I let myself think and treat the game that way. Now it is slightly better, and it also feels so new. It’s like WOAH you actually may not hate yourself for a loss? In 2015 I had my Nats spot already reserved, but every mediocre regionals stage run made me feel terrible. This season I was fighting for the Worlds (Worlds > Rus Nats) right from the start with no ‘safe options’, I was losing too, but I could cope with that. Though losing is always sad. The difference is in being frustrated and hating yourself for days or week and being frustrated and hating yourself for an evening, and then you’re saying something like enough, it won’t make me better, learning and practice will make me better, so let’s play tomorrow. Pephan helped me out a lot with this. Tons of love to Pephan.

Well, also I reached a dream. When I was 17, I watched 2013 Worlds with excitement, though I understood nothing because I was an OU child. New format? Big event? That was very unfamiliar but holy crap so breathtaking! Two guys were fighting for the honourable title with some beautiful teams and strategies, I felt their drive even when I was so far away. That blew my mind. I told myself that I want to visit Pokemon World Championships too. The long way of getting better started in 2013 and will never end. I won Russian VGC 2014 big event and got closer to my dream. I qualified to Russian National Championships in 2015 and almost made my dream real, finishing 2nd. I got broken and gave up because sometimes it was too hard to keep up. I remembered how I sang lyrics from “Wavin Flag”: ‘when I get older, I will be stronger’. The dream wasn’t dead.  And I tried again. And I did it. The most trivial thing I can say now is do not give up and fight for your dreams, but this is really true!

Every Trainer has a choice To listen to that voice inside. I know the battle may be long, Winners may have come and gone I will carry on! Yeah, this dream will last forever, And this dream will never die, We will rise to meet the challenge every time. (Advanced Challenge) Yeah, this dream keeps us together, This shows that you and I Will be the best that the world's ever seen, Cause we always will follow this dream!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nothing can be perfect in one second. I still have issues with rivalry and with the community, though I wonder how we will do in 2018.

Thanks for reading and, finally I can say it, see you at Worlds!

Shout-outs to: PurpurVGC, Loui, PephanVGC, Elveman, Sergey, Annet Ilvers, unhealthy rivalry and Havkai for making this season amazing.

[forceyourway]

Tree of Life Shadow Work Challenge

Day Two: “What facet of my childhood have I overlooked or otherwise need to evaluate?”

(Using Loki’s tarot deck, “The Raven’s Prophecy Tarot”)

The Magician - A master of all they undertake, The Magician has extraordinary influence on the world. They’re versatile; they can shape things and bring them into being, alter them, and destroy them. As such, they are in a sense indomitable; they can take whatever the world throws at them and make it their own. I thought this would be Loki’s signifier, as I experience him very much in this way, but he ended up going for the Nine of Wands. I do maintain that he fits the description, and though it may not be is calling card, he is The Magician all the same. This may be about recognizing how he fits into my life, and/or about recognizing my own power and ability to control my destiny. Both, probably. Both is good.

My Childhood

Trace back your memories as far as you can. Try to overview your early life in as much detail as possible. Articulate or otherwise express how you experienced childhood as a whole. Heed to any areas of resistance you encounter. Note pivotal turning points or memories that stand out. Attempt to recall the first time you experienced emotions like sadness, anger, jealousy, anxiety, remorse, and contempt.

TW: abuse, child abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, mental abuse, spiritual abuse, bullying, Christianity

It sucked, basically. My mom’s abusive, my dad’s abusive, my sister’s abusive, everyone’s abusive.

When I was young, I’m not sure how young, but before 3rd grade, my dad was setting off fireworks in the backyard. He’s still really into that. They’re illegal in my state, so a police car came by, and I think they were asking my dad questions. My babysitter took me and my sister and ran upstairs to hide. Maybe in a closet. I didn’t know what was going to happen and I was scared. That’s probably my first “fear” moment. That or walking in on my mom watching poltergeist, holy shit that was terrifying. I still can’t do scary movies, especially not supernatural ones. I had a crush on the boy who lived a few houses down. He was a few years older than me, and his sister was the babysitter mentioned above. Sometimes I hung out over at their house, playing Sonic and stuff. One day, he and his older brother staged some kind of ridiculous murder scene downstairs. They kept trying to get me down by bribing me with lollipops, but I kept refusing. I knew they were up to something. I don’t remember how I ended up going down - maybe just to get them to stop bugging me - but they played out this whole thing where there was a murderer in the house and he was slowly killing everyone. Ketchup and lemonade (to make their voice hoarse, as if they were choked) were involved. I knew the “blood” was ketchup and that everything was fake, but ended up getting really upset by the thought of my crush being murdered. That’s probably my first “anxiety/despair” moment.

We moved the summer before I started 3rd grade, I think, and stayed there for the entirety of my childhood.  I’m not sure when my parents started going at each other. I remember we went to Disney World, maybe when I was in 5th grade? and there was a good bit of screaming at each other then. I don’t remember it before; maybe I was too young to know. Regardless, Disney World is probably my happiest (childhood) memory.

In 5th grade, we went to a Catholic school. I was bullied by pretty much everyone, even my “best friend,” who ended up being a sort of nightmare. But otherwise, nothing too crazy.

When I was in 6th grade, my mom took me and my sister and ran off to another state (where our extended family is). No warning. One day we were just gone. I don’t remember how she explained that to us. We went to a Catholic school that had a serious Hive Mentality thing going on. They didn’t want me and my sister. Our teachers were horrible to us, and I kept ending up in situations where I looked very guilty but was in fact innocent and totally oblivious to what was going on. This is probably the start of “anger.” They wanted to expel me, but couldn’t come up with a reason why. My mom immediately started seeing other people, and my dad was furious. He’s of a very traditional mindset, marriage is forever, your duty is to your family, blah blah. So he did some e-mail hacking and ended up posing as an online therapist, who encouraged my mom to go back to him. She still doesn’t know.

That’s about when shit started getting really bad. He would scream til he was purple about how awful she was, pretty much all hours, pretty much every day, I think. Anti-women slurs everywhere. When me or my sister displeased him, he’d turn it on us. Even casual conversation with him was somehow linked back to our mother “ruining our lives.” At some point there was family therapy, which was an absolute disaster. They said I was “Obsessive Defiant.” I guess “abused” was never even a consideration. He’d start screaming “Defiance!” at me if I didn’t do a thing fast enough, like, “Pass the butter. Defiance!!!” like shit give me a second. My mom I guess blamed us for our dad’s BS and was always on about how we’re ruining her life and how I’m some kind of evil devil child and I’d have nightmares all the time about burning in hell.

The second half of 6th grade I went back into public school, and basically went right to my closest friends from public-elementary-school, who were The Losers. No one else remembered me, so going straight for The Losers pretty much instantly made me one of them. Probably the most, like, “establishing character moment” in my life, and the first "fuck you” at the world moment. Like I was starting to realize what behaviour was not acceptable among people (after fucking up a whole lot first, courtesy of my parents), and pretty much took a hard stand against bullshit, and recognizing my friends being The Losers was messed up. I got bullied. One girl beat the shit out of me once. My dad picked me up from a sleepover at her house, and blamed me for it. Obviously I must have deserved it, or something.

My sister was a weird aggressive child who physically grew up too fast, if you get me. She was always jealous that I got along so well with our cousin (she was like in-between us, age-wise), and her favorite game was Beat Up. It’s exactly what it sounds like, with me as the target. People don’t take notice because she’s younger than me - a good bit younger - but damn if she wasn’t bigger/stronger than me, like. There’s more, but I won’t type that on here. I don’t talk about that.

High school there was more persistent bullying, but never physical. Only the one time ever was. In 9th grade it got to the point where I just stopped talking. I’d talk to like 1 person, and at home because god, can you imagine what would have happened if I went silent at home. “Defiance!!11!1″ I think in 10th it got better. I kind of acquired friends because my (new) best friend was friends with a bunch of people, and I was always hanging out with her. We’re all still friends now. I guess.

No one knew about my family’s issues. Not my friends, anyway. One of my sister’s friends found out once after kind of witnessing my dad beat the shit out of me because I refused to go swimming at the river (I was on my period, dude). He was screaming about how I was destroying the family or something??? I provoked him into hitting me, so he smacked the shit out of me. The poor girl was apparently smacked around herself, because she didn’t take seeing this well at all. I remember my dad was going to drive me to school for my senior picture, and I was tying my shoelaces and clearing my throat. You know how your voice kind of catches in your throat? For some reason he assumed this was me throwing a fit about him not “getting ready fast enough”??? and he started with the usual screaming. I said fine, I’ll walk, not wanting to really ride with that anyway. I get about halfway there, and he’s in the car hanging out the window, purple-red, screaming about how if I don’t get in the car he’ll drag me in, and my mother, my mother, it’s all her fault, I’m just like her. I tried sitting in the back. Wrong choice. He screamed in my face the whole way there. I was crying hysterically at school, but trying to hide it. People who hated me were asking me what was wrong. None of my friends were there. I was trying not to burst into tears literally as they were taking my picture.

It was bad. My childhood was bad. Bad all over. Not sure what you’re looking for here, really.