#calming body care

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

BBW Joyful Gardens Calming Waters Fragrant Body Mist

2003

Found on Ebay, user  teresatexeira5ka7

[beccawise7]

Rest the mind. Feed the soul. ✌️

~beccawise7 💜🖤

[serpentface]

I'd say the 'aware of loss of faculties until they aren't' description is apt, but with less of the horror that most humans experience with this knowledge. Units have a sense of personhood, but archin do not tend to philosophically imagine a 'self'. Their consciousness being an emergent property of many interacting bodies kind of precludes the illusion of some core, unchanging individual essence.

The basic experience of being divided is something every unit would have been through, an entire unit is not in literal constant communication and will temporarily divide itself even down to the individual to perform simple tasks (though always with the comfort of scent trails leading back to the collective).

It would still be unsettling and a source of deep melancholy. The pain would be more knowing that there is no going back, the scent trails lead nowhere, there are no more eggs being laid that will replace the parts of you that die or are separated. You would increasingly struggle with abstract concepts and complex ideas, the edges of your personality would slowly be smoothed out, you are increasingly running on raw instinct. You remember everything, but without any way to organize these memories into anything more than flashes. Most of the pain would be a profound sense of loneliness.

How a merger would feel would depend on how much of the unit remains. If its personality is more or less intact, it will probably survive as the same 'person' (mergers are usually accomplished with recently pupated ants, or by taking a few individuals from many units so as not to disrupt other consciences). If it's down to just a few ants, any remnant of the original personality will be lost upon the merger and they will settle into the new personality (perhaps subtly changing it, as all units do over time, but not in a distinct, easily identifiable way). The only thing that remains of the former unit is their raw memory. Even individual archin have very good memories and their learned experiences will supplement the new consciousness with everything it has experienced. So the new merger might learn and 'remember' the pain of loss, though not in a complex way (complex memories, like being able to tell a story, are stored in the collective and not the individual).

Mergers between roughly equal numbers of ants are rare and only done in desperation due to being incredibly disruptive to the personality of each, and a very literal danger that individual archin will become panicked and attack the 'foreign' bodies. A large ratio is ideal so one side has enough of an intact group consciousness to tamp down these impulses, and ability to physically restrain the other side until they have calmed and accommodated to the new scent. All mergers have risks of aggression, but introducing similar numbers is especially risky and sometimes fails entirely due to too many being killed in the process.

[strwbrgirls]

⠀⠀⠀𝓨𝗈𝗎 you're wonderful 🧘🏻‍♀️🪴 ࿐⠀⠀⠀𖥔⠀ ִֶָ ࣪

— Healthy and calm

By : @strwbrgirls 🍃🧘🏻‍♀️

[aquaglow]

the sea is where I find peace, soul and self, over and over again 🦪

[bumblingbabooshka]

T'Pel is pregnant! [Patreon | Commissions]

[phagodyke]

the masculine urge to take a saucepan off thr draining board and bash myself repeatedly over the head with it until I pass out and no longer have to experience feeling Bad 😍

[ccaptain]

Scratches chin.

While I have already spoilered the Liminal Laboratories plotline, I couldn't completely justify H:SR Kaeya's haunting of Dr. Wuchlock even after he got revenge on him. By this point, the man has been reduced to an husk of himself, and will never harm anyone ''for the betterment of humankind'', as he used to say, ever again. It felt like by robbing him of alcohol and coming to poke at him once a month, for some as level-headed as Kaeya, was a bit too extreme and petty even for him, and I was pondering if to keep this facet of him in the portrayal. But then I thought about the concept of beings of the Enigmata a bit more, and I had the most fucking coming-to-Jesus moment ever. On my own fucking lore for my own fucking verse.

Zoom real fucking close to this post. Put it on 200%, we're going places and you're coming with me liking it or not.

Beings of the Enigmata predominantly act robotic-like and on logic-based courses of actions, and this is essentially what can give an ''off'' feeling that makes normal people question these impostors. Emotions are mimicked, rather than felt, until one starts being more in tune with their human-ification process, like Kaeya does with specific partners of his. A being is going to want to study what emotions are as much as possible in order to pass off as human, but most of the time they feel less of what an human would. Their act is to appear normal, and this has been enstabilished by now in this verse. With this, I imagine that an extreme situation would bring out a extreme emotion- and beings aren't equipped to sustain a large surge of this due to their predominantly logical nature and their unattunement to natural emotions.

And here's my fucking HOLY-FUCKING-SHIT moment, keep following me here: Kaeya acts on logic, as a being of the Enigmata. With this logic, he thought that if he offered himself to the facility's experiments, due to being an Emanator with much more power and features than Hannah, Wuchlock would have accepted and let her go in order to start experimenting on him. It would have given them better results in perhaps a much shorter time, and Hannah could have been let go and returned to wherever her home was with her son. This was Kaeya's course of thinking, and a naive one at that in the simple way beings tend to try and resolve conflict.

And, by refusing this course of actions, Wuchlock did not only did a stupid thing: in a moment of extremely high emotions, he caused an ''injury'' in the very core of how a being works. He refused the perfectly woven logic for a reason Kaeya could not comprehend, and confusion turned to anger as he kept trying to plead with the man who was refusing his solution citing how they were ''at an incredibly advanced point'' in their studies with the being they had captured to start anew.

During his rampage of justice through the facility to free Hannah and her son Joakim and bring down the entire thing, I write him as robotic as possible: during that time he doesn't think with complex feelings, simply hacks down everyone that attacks him or tries to harm his companions, lets those who surrended go, acts ''revenge'' upon Wuchlock, and with bringing Hannah and her son away from the planet, his task is complete. During this time, being gunned down equaled to killing the threat before the armed soldiers of the facility could get to his companions, someone surrendering and begging him to spare them meant that they no longer had any fight in them and could be safely let go due to their ''fear'' perceived as emotion, and leaving the facility meant that they could no longer be captured and harmed. Logical and simple thoughts/actions move Kaeya to the end of this plotline.

After the entire affair is over, it took Kaeya a long while to learn how to get back in tune with the emotions he has explored during his human-ification. It was an huge set back for him, and he doesn't like to talk about these times.

And here we are with the truth of what happened: the anger that Kaeya felt in a moment of extreme emotional distress, due to not being able to understand human logic and having his rejected, was so powerful, so consuming, that it ''burned'' part of him away, as if he was undergoing the being-ification again. In a much simpler word, a failsafe mechanism sprung to life within him. Beings are not supposed to feel this kind of intense emotions, and something that's causing the strong emotional pain must be sacrificed in order to restore and stabilize their status as logical beings, per how they were created to be and continue functioning over the human Fictionologists.

Part of Kaeya, along with his trust in humankind and how they handled things, was burned that day in order to keep him functioning. Part of his emotive growth shut down in order to bring back the ''being'' that he was before ''Kaeya Alberich''.

This explains a lot of things, down to his actions becoming overly-logical and straightforwardly simple after his confrontation with the biologist, to Hannah being so apprehensive about him as soon as she sees him after being freed: the anger burning away at Kaeya should not have happened. It's an alarming thing for beings to experience extreme emotions under extremely stressful conditions.

As for him tormenting Wuchlock: I imagine that beings of the Enigmata stick close to the people who have evoked such strong emotions in them to fundamentally change them. Be it anger, hate, amusement and fun, intense melancholy etc., because it's a foreign thing for them to feel so much, they stick close to the ones summoming surges of emotions out of them, consciously or not. This choice of Kaeya is conscious, and it's as much of a form of revenge as it's the instinct to study what emotions the old scientist with granitic determination that has turned into a frail old man summons within him.

tl;dr: Beings of the Enigmata can feel extremely intense emotion(s) in stressful situations; in these cases, a ''failsafe'' mechanism activates within them, ''burning'' away part of them in order to restore the logic-based individual that they are and keep them going. This is what happened to Kaeya in the LL plotline.

[collectiveclams]

Trying my best to figure out what these guys look like in my head before I go look at the fandom’s generalized designs for the characters.

A friend of my twin got us into the show and a week later we’re at season 8!

I definitely need to tweak Cole’s design a lot- I want him to have a more strongman build & revamp his entire face design. But at the very least I’m happy with getting his hair the way I want!

Kinda hard to see, but Zane’s got little screws for earrings! I honestly didn’t account for how much older the faceplate would make him look, I intended him to look way more boyish.

Rambling about my current HCs of the Ninja’s appearances below:

I’ve been having a bit of an trouble deciding what various flavor of Chinese & Japanese these dudes should be based on. Considering the show is based on a 2010s vague idea of “Asia” and carries traits of both Japanese & Chinese influence, I’m just going to use both. I don’t know what sorta general consensus the fandom has of their appearances bc I have barely interacted with the fandom, so if this violently contrasts with that then yippee I have original thoughts, I guess.

-Kai is Japanese. Kai, being vain and caring more about training than Jay for example, has a more aesthetic build that’s definitely form more than function. Like a natty powerlifter who’s not competing. I’m not sure what height he should be, but if he’s taller his muscle definition would appear smaller so I’ll have to keep that in mind.

- Nya has initially a more functional build- far less muscle definition than her brother. Not outwardly buff and doesn’t have pronounced muscles, but can fairly easily haul a 100lb hunk of metal from a scrap pile to her workbench. But after becoming the water ninja, her new training gives her more pronounced muscle definition. Initially shorter than Kai but grows taller as the show goes on.

- Cole is southern Chinese. He’s got a strongman heavy set build. I envision him as fairly short so his muscles can be a little more pronounced. If you stripped his muscle definition from his ninja training away, I still want him to look like one of assholes who haven’t worked out a day in their lives but still somehow looks jacked.

- Zane is what pops up when you look up “Chinese teen male stock photo” because he needs to look like The Most Generic person ever. No muscle definition at all on this dude. He’s a nindroid & so there’s no need to include muscle decision to show that he’s strong. He’s either average height or slightly on the shorter side bc gravity is a bitch and the taller make a humanoid robot, the more balance becomes a bitch to deal with. So average height or short Zane it is.

- Jay is Uyghur so I can get this dude his reddish-brown hair. Minor muscle definition. His isn’t for aesthetics like Kai, he’d rather do ninja training than do the types of sets & pushing to failure needed to achieve more pronounced muscle definition for aesthetic lifting. Jay needs to be shorter than Nya. He’s definitely taller than Cole but I need him to be just an inch shorter than Nya because that’s funny to me personally.

- Lloyd is Japanese. Solely because Oni come from Japan & I got spoilered that Gargamon is an Oni later. Lloyd is a stringy ass kid at first & has no muscle definition at all. During his Green Ninja training before the Travelers Tea, he’d be trained for efficiency & not for aesthetics with the deadline of him fighting his father possibly being around any corner. After Travelers Tea he likely kept his training to function over aesthetics and would share similar muscular definition to Jay & Nya. And he’s tall. His dad is tall as shit with 4 arms. I want this kid to go through the Worst gangly teen era anyones ever seen and only barely fit his form once he finishes growing.

Additional thoughts:

And as a big comic nerd who owns around 800+ comics (might be more around 1000 now?), hoo boy I have so many thoughts on Lloyd and Jay liking Starfarer. I cannot wait to make a fic that’s just Lloyd and Jay ganging up against Kai over some incredibly wrong take of the comic he absentmindedly said and trapping him in a 3 hour long conversation about frequent mischaracterization and mishandling of the characters in Starfarer & how what Kai said was wrong. I just need a fic of Jay and Lloyd talking to each other about their favorite runs of Starfarer and complaining about a tie-in/crossover comic that’s written particularly bad, or complaining how an author completely misunderstood Fitz Donnegan or complaining over an author change & etc. I just need to make a fic of these boys talking about average comic book fan things.

[appleciders]

begging my male coworkers to develop coping mechanisms that aren't exercise

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

Avon mark. Self Sanctuary Spa Sea Water Dry Oil Mist

2005

Found on Poshmark, user cbhannum

[scrimple]

I can regulate my emotions just fine as long as I can cut myself :3

[nights-at-crystarium]

wolqotd

How does your WoL handle being alone after a mundanely shitty day? What's their go-to comforting memory, dream, or a relaxing routine? Something else that restores peace of mind?

[hussyknee]

Uninstalled Twitter and Tumblr off my phone and have been trying to disengage but the harder I try, the more the images rise up and refuse to leave. Yesterday I had a couple of hours of distraction and then my brain decided to throw up the video I saw weeks ago, of a toddler covered in ash, her little mouth a moue of surprise, conscious and blinking up at the ceiling while the medic cradled the back of her blown out skull. She died afterwards.

And it comes back to me again and again that there is no end to this, no respite, no help. And I feel half mad with pain.

I know it's entirely my fault that I engaged with Gaza at all knowing I was far too mentally ill to handle it, and then never once being able to disengage for over a month. Nobody with hyperempathy should go near something like this. But I kept thinking it would stop, it had to stop, they can't just systematically slaughter two million people with the entire world watching and protesting. But they're going to. They don't need bombs anymore because there's no food or water or medicine or place to escape the toxic smog of a month's worth of bombs and rotting corpses under rubble. They're just continuing to empty out all of Uncle Sam's toys on the heads of dying people because they're sadistic murderers who like to see their food writhing. And it's not going to end.

I feel unhinged with pain. If it hadn't been for my three little rescue kittens climbing on my lap and headbutting me for petting, I would have gone back to the hospital and demanded they fry my brain again. Six weeks of gaving my memory ripped up like lettuce leaves and tossed like a salad earlier this year was such a terrifying experience that I swore I would never get that desperate again. But I'd take my memory being wiped clean to just never have to remember any of this again.

[zebratoys]

12 עוגנים לאיזון השקטה ושלווה 1. מודעות לנשימה ותרגילי נשימה, מדיטציה. 2. הודיה, הערכה על הטוב הקיים, מיקוד ב"יש" בחוזקות במה שעובד. 3. לשים כוונה, לשאת תפילה, להתמקד ברצונות ותשוקות, בעשייה תכליתית. 4. תזונה בריאה ומאוזנת. 5. שהייה בטבע, לטבול בים בנחל ביער ובחורשה. 6. לעשות דברים שאוהבים עם עצמך או עם אחרים. 7. להציע עזרה, להתנדב ולתת. 8. לעסוק באמנות, ליצור, לקרוא, ללמוד משהו חדש, לשמוע מוזיקה. 9. קרקוע אדמה, הליכה, ישיבה, שכיבה על החול. 10. תנועה, לרקוד, להתמתח, להרים משקולות, לרוץ. 11. תשומת לב לצבעים, טעמים, צלילים, מרקמים וניחוחות. 12. לחייך, לצחוק, לחבק מישהו שאוהבים, שיחה טובה עם חבר/ה.

אורית בן שפר לזכות בתקווה חדשה מלווה אותך לבחירה בחיים מעצימים ומשמעותיים.

אורית גוטמכר לוי הַלְלוּיָהּ www.zebratoys.etsy.com

#שליפיםלחייםטובים

[kyofsonder]

Physically, I'm already lying down.

Emotionally, I feel like I need to find a soft spot and crumple dramatically to the ground and lay down for a few weeks.