#i hate the american medical system i hate having to deal with my body i hate things always coming up at the worst times i hate it i hate it

[thepolyamorouspolymath]

I'm not insulting men -- the fact is they did turn out for Trump. That's not an insult, it's a fact.

It's not an insult to say that it's not unreasonable of me to protect my life and my health in case men lie, because people lie.

It's not an insult to say that men making their choices in the voting booth has brought American women to a place where life saving procedures may be banned, where birth control rights may be revoked, where 2 Supreme Court Justices (both appointed by Republicans) had substantive credible sexual harassment and assault allegations raised in their confirmations hearing, the President elect has been found liable of sexual assault, and the nominee for AG has been under investigation for statutory rape by the FBI, has left women unsafe in regards to sex to with men and that actions and choices have consequences. You make sex dangerous, and you don't get sex as much. That's not an insult, it's cause and effect.

And it is not an insult to refuse my body to anyone as they do not have a right to it.

I don't hate men. In fact, I love men. I'll miss sex with them.

But I had a missed miscarriage which left me with dead decaying tissue in my body. It required a procedure that is medically an abortion. Without it, my uterus would have become infected leading to sepsis and death.

I have an IUD, for many reasons. If I were to have an egg fertilized there is a solid chance of it being an ectopic pregnancy, which is deadly if not removed. A procedure that many abortion bans make illegal.

Men's votes have made p in v sex a significant health risk for women. That's not an insult, it's a fact. Suggesting that women protect themselves by not having sex with them isn't an insult it's risk reduction. Suggesting women be more careful even dating them or hanging out alone with them since justice system is quite literally going to be run by sexual abusers is also not an insult, but a risk reduction.

Elections have consequences. If one is going to be risk of death for women, then men can certainly deal with one being blue balls.

things we need to address:

gen z men getting pulled into alt-right pipelines through andrew tate, joe rogan, elon musk, jordan peterson etc

the gullibility and stupidity of half the country voting against our collective best interests

the broad effect social media has on public and common good

lazy minds and lack of empathy

outside-country interference (trump and elon’s connections to russia and the amount of bots from other countries spreading misinformation)

the long-term effects of AI and rampant disinformation

[variablejabberwocky]

welp my body is still trying to kill me

how's everyone else's day going?

[mauxanhduong]

i keep having. problems come up and i hate it. LOL !

[after-witch]

Close to My Heart [Baby Mine Part 3] [Yandere Overhaul x Reader]

Title: Close to My Heart [Baby Mine Part 3] [Yandere Overhaul x Reader]

Synopsis: He’s drugging you again. The bastard. 

Word Count:

Notes: yandere, stockholm syndrome, medical/drug content

He’s drugging you again. The bastard. The world is too much--too bright, too empty, too heavy and thick. The drugs he’s giving you make you sleepy, slow, heavy. 

And the room you’re in is so empty. Bare walls and a bed and an overhead light. The familiarity--scenes of years ago, of weeks spent in a room just like this one--is gutting. You miss the side table next to your bed with your books and notepad; you miss glancing into your daughter’s bedroom before walking downstairs to get a glass of water in the middle of the night. You miss your daughter. 

You don’t know how long these things have been gone, only that they are gone, leaving you with nothing in their stead.

Nothing but him, anyway.

He’s sitting on the end of your bed again. Staring down at you, mask on, eyes piercing even through the heaviness surrounding you. Your arms aren’t restrained anymore, but every time you move, it’s clear why he isn’t bothering: with all the drowsy-inducing sedatives built up in your system, you couldn’t muster an effective attack even if you tried.

And you’ve tried.

“How are you feeling?”

The same questions, every morning.

You press your lips together and smack them. Your throat is dry. You hope he brought your water cup. It’s the least he could do.

“Where’s my daughter?” You say, finally, voice dry and hoarse.

He doesn’t miss a beat.

“She’s safe. How are you feeling?”

“Let me see her.”

He shakes his head, a small, imperceptible motion.

“Not until you’re better. How are you feeling?”

His voice never loses its smooth, authoritative edge. You can’t say you missed this, missed the way he talked down to you like you were some weak little thing that doesn’t know right from wrong.

You lean back on your elbows, forcing your head to lift up enough to look him in the eyes. You try to muster an expression of disdain, but you don’t know if it’s registering anywhere but your own mind.

“Like shit. Fuck you, by the way.” You can’t help but take the tiniest bits of satisfaction where you can, and it doesn’t matter that your voice is hoarse and your arms are trembling and that you’re drugged to shit, because it gets a reaction fro him.

A small reaction, but still. His lips purse in a frown.

“Dear,” he says, oh-so-disappointed. “Your language.”

You let your arms give way, falling back against the pillow with a laugh that hurts your chest. Potty mouth, you think, I’m such a potty mouth. What did you read one time, some novel set in the American Midwest--better put a dollar in the swear jar.

“Stop being difficult.”

You snort.

Your head stays where it is, eyes following him as he retrieves a tray he set on the only other piece of furniture in the room: a bolted down chair, padded like a marshmallow. You’ve been tempted to point it out, tempted to ask him if he thinks you’ll try to smash your head open on a normal chair--why not pad your bed then, too? But he might just stick you in a straightjacket or something equally restricting if you so much as make a joke about harming yourself, so you don’t.

A rumbling, empty feeling in your stomach, the scratchiness of your dry throat, destroys any temptation to goad him more. He’s not above making you wait for food if you’re being testy, though you don’t think he’d go so far as to actually starve you. Just deprive you a bit, like he has a few times this week. So you force yourself to simply sit quietly and watch as he brings the tray to your bed, unfolding the little legs and placing it down in front of you.

He lifts up the cup of lukewarm water, a large blue cup you recognize from the kitchen. The little white straw peaking out of the top bounces around until you catch it with your lips. You barely listen to his words--’just a few sips, dear’--and try to ignore the tight, tingly feeling all this gives you.

Prickling humiliation, vaguely colored with childhood memories of hospital stays that made you feel helpless and alone, washes over you every time he gives you something to eat or drink. He always insists on holding the cup, on making you use a thin plastic straw--small sips only. He cuts up your food into tiny bites and only gives you a plastic spoon to eat with.

You dimly remember him feeding you thin broth some time ago, spoon knocking against your teeth every time you moved your head; but that was when your sedative dose was higher and stronger and you were so conked out of your mind that you kept calling him a doctor.

But you’ve graduated to rice and overcooked, bland vegetable that you can eat with a spoon. You know who he is, all the time, which honestly makes things a bit worse than when your stuffy mind thought he was someone else. Hooray.

Your fingers tremble as you press your spoon against the lumpy mash of vegetables. You can’t decide if he’s overcooking them on purpose or if he simply stinks at cooking now, having surely been years out of practice. They look even lumpier than normal, covered in a thick sauce; you bite down the urge to snarkily ask him if the sodium content from such a sauce is appropriate for your delicate health.

You’ve been his little home chef for how long now? Whipping up desserts and dinners like it was your profession. Whipping them up with a smile. And, before the birth of your daughter changed everything, whipping them up with a bright anxiety brimming underneath--anxiety for his approval. Did he like it? Was it too salty? The rice was cooked fine, wasn’t it?

And it wasn’t just the food, no. You’d wanted to please him in everything. In the way you cleaned, in the way you dressed, in the way you tried to soothe him after he’d clearly had a rough day while you sat at home, comparatively comfortable, reading books or fussing with the kitchen curtains again.

But true, honest (disgusting, dark, deep-seated) thoughts of pleasing him have been the furthest thing from your mind for years now. You allowed only the vainest of surface pleasantries to remain, for the sake of pretense, for the sake of getting away with the loving act long enough to get the two of you as far away as possible. Long enough to see yourself and your daughter free and happy, creating a new life--somewhere. Anywhere.

Well, look at you now.

A tear drips down onto your tray, running past your lips, warm and salty. The sight of the tear mingled with the smushed vegetables does it, brings you over the edge, and your shoulders shake helplessly as you begin to cry. You can already feel the exhaustion sweeping over you--the mere act of sitting up and crying and feeling something, feeling something so sad, means you’ll be out like a light soon. Your emotions feel so muted lately--the sedatives?--and when you do feel them, it’s so, so tiring.

His gloved hand brushes your cheek, brushes at your tear, and flinch away. You stare at the floor, white, bare. Rugs are a tripping hazard, you assume. Or maybe he wants to drive you crazy with all the light colors, the creams and eggshells and just-barely-there pale greys. 

You sigh, and look back at your tray. Your stomach demands it, so you lift up a spoonful of muddy-colored vegetables and take a bite. Despite your best efforts, the plastic spoon clinks against your teeth anyway. On your next bite, you go slower, steadying your hands--sometimes he insists on feeding you himself, if you mess up enough. You don’t think you have the energy left today to deal with that. So you eat, slow. Carefully. He doesn’t speak, simply watching as the plate of food, the vegetables and rice, slowly disappear inside you.

The sauce is salty and the vegetables are mush, but the rice is fine and you only wish there was more of it so you could stomach the vegetables more readily.

When you’re done, he holds the cup again, positioning the straw near your lips. You sip a little faster, greedy and thirsty, until there’s nothing left inside.

His eyes practically light up at the empty tray, and as he’s taking it away you leans in closer, whispering through his mask, “Good girl.”

Your stomach churns. Maybe the vegetables had gone bad. Or maybe hearing him voice praise that would have made your heart flutter before is making you feel sick.

After he sets the tray to the side, he takes his place--this time not at the end of your bed, but on the side, unnervingly close to you. You watch as he slides his hands behind his ears, slipping off his mask and setting it down on top of your bedspread.

But then he just… watches you.

You’re about to ask him what he wants, tell him to just spit it out already, tell him to fuck off if he’s just going to be a creeper who stares at you, when you feel something. Something different. A blooming, a wave, a strange feeling coming from inside your skin. Bone-deep, blood-deep.

And it’s then that you realize that he’s drugged the food with something new. Something strong. Something that does more than make you sleepy, like the stuff he injects into your arm.

Oh the fucker. Fucker, fucker, fucker. You feel it taking effect like a slow-going tide, radiating through your body. Tingles, light and airy, taking all of the sadness and stress and hate balled up inside you; soaking them up like a towel, until all that’s left inside you is a blissful feeling of forced relaxation.

“What did you do?” You ask, though it comes out as a whisper. Your head lolls a bit to the side. Was your pillow always so soft? You blink away that thought, try to focus on what’s happening: he put more drugs in the food, he put something in the food that’s not just to make you sleep and now your body is tingling.

He takes your hands in his--you dimly realize that you should pull away, but why bother? His grip helps your hands feel less floaty, anyway--and gives a firm squeeze.

“I know you’re still in there. That… untoward behavior with our daughter, none of that was really you.”

You smile. There’s a brief flicker of lightness in his eyes, but when you speak it flies away.

“You don’t know me,” you say, voice free of the snark and bite from earlier, but clearly grating to his ears all the same. 

Chisaki leans forward, and in your relaxed state you don’t attempt to move away. You simply register the closeness and focus on the way your body, your mind, is slowly deflating.

He squeezes your hands tighter. Too tight. They won’t float away, for sure.

“We’ve lived together for years. We’ve shared the same bed. We have a child together. You think I don’t know you?”

You whine--you don’t mean to, not necessarily, but your chest and lungs and throat aren’t cooperating. They’re too light for the sound you wanted to make, a guttural low sound from somewhere inside. Instead it comes across as childish and helpless and you suppose, that’s what you are.

“Lived together…” You laugh, shaking your head against the soft pillow. “But you kidnapped me.” He did, didn’t he, all those years ago. From a life you barely remember, especially right now; from people whose faces are scrubbed from your memory by time and trauma.

His fingers are stroking your hands now. It feels nice--it almost tickles. But the softness of the strokes, the way they tickle the tops of your hands, contrasts against his voice, firm, controlled, a touch of anger brushing underneath.

“I gave you a home. I indulged you in your interests, your hobbies, however silly. I gave you a family. Don’t act ungrateful.”

“M’not,” you mumble, reflexive more than reflecting. Trying to think about what he’s saying is hard, and getting harder by the minute. The tingling has now draped over your head and your thoughts are wrapped in cotton, thick and fluffy. You wish he’d talk softer. Everything else is calm, and the edge of something dark in his voice feels amplified a thousandfold.

“Look at me.” His voice is still too harsh. Maybe you should pet his hands to see if it helps, like it helped yours stay intact.

Before you can do anything, he speaks again.

“Don’t you love our daughter?”

Your head turns too quickly to look up at him, and you’re dizzy, but the words tumble out of your hoarse throat anyway.

“Yes. Oh, yes. You know I do.”

You may not remember the faces of others (your mother, your friends, your mother) but you remember your daughter’s face. Clear as a bell. Bright. You want to be with her so badly.

Another firm squeeze of your fingers. You squeeze back--hopefully it will bring him down to your level, to the cotton and balloons.

“Then why don’t you want to be with her?”

Why is he asking such a mean question? Your lips curl downwards in an unintentional childish mimic of a frown. They feel thick, almost numb, as you half-blubber out the words.

“I do want to be with her, but you won’t let me.”

His hands leave yours--you almost want to reach out, but they lay almost limp on your stomach--and he cradles your cheek instead. There’s warmth on your cheek and you realize that he’s taken his gloves off. Ah. Maybe your squeeze worked, after all; he only takes off his gloves when he’s happy, when he’s comfortable. When he wants to comfort you. 

Fuzzy memories of crying into his shoulder, of weeping openly on a bed in a long-forgotten room, mingled with the sensation of his bare skin against yours. Always soft, comforting. Enduring. Something you could rely on to release the pressure of your emotions and bring you back down.

“Because you’re unwell,” he whispers, voice as soft as the cotton wrapped around your thoughts. “You’re so unwell.”

The way he brushes his hand against your forehead feels nice. Maybe you’re sick, after all. 

You don’t even think about the words before you speak them, instinctual questions now going right from your surface thoughts to your voice and out your mouth.

“If I get better, can I see her?”

There’s a hand cradling your cheek again, and this time, you lean your face into the warmth. There’s that spark in his eyes again, but this time the look doesn’t melt away because of your ill-timed comment. You press your lips together to keep it that way, lest the thoughts flying out your brain make him upset again.

You feel so nice, like this, like you’re wrapped in the softest blankets in the world and there’s nothing, no hardness, no anger, no sadness, holding you down and making you cry. Just him and you and the warmth radiating throughout your body.

Why cry, when his hand is right here, when your body is so tingled and relaxed. Why cry, when all you can think about is how nice you feel, how calm he is, how calm you are.

Why cry, when the next words he speaks make your heart thud against your chest in pure, body-lifting joy.

“Of course you can.”

His hand trails along your chin, cupping it in a way that makes your stomach flutter.

“Now that I’ve found the right medicine for your… disposition, we can start the rest of your treatment right away.”

What he says should scare you. But there’s no room left in your body for anything but forced content and fuzzy softness and the smallest hint of deja vu, a wispy little thing cupping its hands and yelling warnings that you brush away with a smile.

[whumpmatsus]

Do they have to be whump related? Also Ichimatsu getting a shot pls

wasn't sure if you wanted a draw or a fic, so I did both!

and yeah, any draw or fic requests you send here should probably be whump-related since this is a whump-focused blog

though if you wanna send any draw or fic/scenario/reaction/etc. requests that AREN'T whump, you can send them to my general Osomatsu-san blog at @kisskissmatsu!

enjoooooy <3

-

-

Usually Ichimatsu is the sextuplet who’s fine being left all by himself.

Being in the hospital without his family, though, is a much different story.

It started innocently enough ― with a persistent cough that was almost certainly the herald of a cold or sore throat on the horizon. As much as he hates being sick, he sort of resigned himself to it. He’s the one among his brothers who’s forever catching what happens to be going around, despite the fact that he doesn’t spend a lot of time around other people. That’s why he started wearing a face mask when he does leave the house.

It was about a week or so of sneezing, coughing, and sniffling his way through various attempts to rest. His throat felt worse than it usually did with a cold, and even more alarming was that his chest felt like it was on fire, especially when he started coughing. Even though he started having trouble breathing, he thought maybe this was just something that would linger for a bit, something that needed more sleep to recover from.

When things didn’t taper off after that, since a week was typically all it took for him to start feeling better, the others started commenting on it.

When Ichimatsu started to spend more time in the bathroom with a sink full of hot water in the hopes that the steam would help him breathe easier, and it didn’t seem to be having any effect, they all got worried.

When Karamatsu blurted out, “I secretly took Ichimatsu’s temperature with a forehead thermometer while he was sleeping and it read 39.4!”, Mom and Dad immediately carted their fourth son off to the hospital.

It figures Shittymatsu would get him into this mess, but Ichimatsu supposes that the sneaky gesture was only out of care, otherwise Karamatsu wouldn’t have spoken up about a number that concerned him.

That doesn’t mean he has to like it. After a distressing, panic-inducing few hours of waiting and a date with the X-ray machine, the doctor diagnosed him with bacterial pneumonia. That particular diagnosis ensured that he had to be admitted into the hospital under quarantine, because as the doctor explained, bacterial pneumonia is extremely contagious and potentially life-threatening, particularly to someone with a fragile immune system like Ichimatsu. They can’t send him home to infect his brothers or the rest of the community, and even though he isn’t technically immuno-compromised, his tendency to get sick easily means that it’s better for him to be here in the hospital in case things suddenly take a bad turn.

Being in here is like he’s trapped in hell and can’t get out. Because he’s in quarantine, he never sees anybody. Which would be fine normally. Feeling so poorly is a significant reason for wanting his family nearby, though… and he can’t have them.

The most they can do is visit outside his room and talk to him through the speaker system. That’s even worse, seeing them all and not being able to have any real contact with him. Right now more than anything, what he wants is a hug from his mom. God, he wants a hug from his brothers.

It’s hard to even get any rest like he’s supposed to be doing. Most of his time is spent sitting up, trying to get a sufficient breath in while he listens to various TV channels. The idol news reminds him of Choromatsu, sports statistics remind him of Jyushimatsu, game shows remind him of Osomatsu, American dramas remind him of Karamatsu, and fashion shows remind him of Totty.

Those are just distractions, because it’s still hard to breathe. He’s struggling for most of his breaths, but too deep a breath will trigger a coughing fit. Which, in turn, makes it more difficult to breathe.

It’s barely been a day since he was admitted and already he wants out of here.

His brothers visit sometime after lunch, and they spend a few hours. Eventually the nurse gently chases them out, telling them that Ichimatsu needs to try to get some rest. Shortly after that she comes into the room, rolling her little cart with the tray on it.

“How do you feel today, Ichimatsu?” she hums, pulling on a pair of gloves. “Any better than when we admitted you?”

He shakes his head and tries to answer when another series of coughs interrupts him. Although it’s hard to cover his mouth when his whole body is aching, he does his best. After all, he doesn’t want to get anyone else sick. He’s already in quarantine, so all the doctors and nurses are taking their own precautions; still, he shouldn’t just give up and spread his germs carelessly. “N-not really.”

She nods and picks up a wrapped packet from the tray. “Well, to be honest, that’s understandable. It hasn’t been very long.” The packet is ripped open, and the distinct smell of alcohol fills the air as she carefully pushes his sleeve up. “The lack of improvement does concern us, though. So I just have to give you an injection of some medicine, okay?”

Shit. He thought that might be what was going on here. He knows he’s too exhausted to fight it, and yet, his brain evidently isn’t too exhausted to not be fucking anxious about it. “I… I have to get a shot?”

The cold wipe is rubbed against the top part of his arm. “Yeahhh… I’m sorry. This is penicillin, and it’s one of our standard treatments for pneumonia. The doctor thinks you’ll have better luck sitting still for one shot than for a whole pill-and-water deal, since you’re coughing a lot. I kind of have to agree, since you might accidentally inhale some water if you cough while trying to take the pills.”

Immediately he starts to panic. Most of the time the idea of a shot doesn’t bother him more than it might the average person ― he gets the yearly flu vaccine without any problems. Right now, however… the idea of a shot while he’s already feeling so terrible, the initial pinch and the ache that might happen afterwards and being alone, it just feels scary.

The nurse must hear the way his breathing starts to quicken, or maybe the way his hands start shaking. She gives his shoulder a little pat. “Ah, I know on your chart it says you suffer from some anxiety. Are you a bit anxious right now?”

“Y… yeah…”

“Okay. That’s totally fine, you know? Different people get anxious about different things. Would it help if I distracted you, or if I gave you a countdown so you know when it’s coming? Sometimes that helps so it’s not a surprise… or, sometimes people prefer it to be a surprise. Which one do you think would be best for you?”

… Oh. He wasn’t expecting something like that. It almost feels like he has a little control over this, despite the fact that he has to get the injection either way. “C… can you… count down?”

“Sure, of course. No problem.” Then she reaches over with one hand, grabbing the syringe with the other. “Would you like to hold my hand?”

That’s kind of… babyish, isn’t it? “I-I’m not a kid… I don’t wanna…”

She chuckles. “Well, you know, earlier today I held the hand of an elderly lady who was getting a shot. It’s not just a kid thing. But if you don’t want to, that’s fine too.”

He takes a moment to consider that, then silently slips his hand into hers.

“Alright, just squeeze if you feel like you need to. I’m all set, are you?”

“I… I think so…”

“Okay, I’m gonna give you the countdown then. Here we go. Three ― two ― one.”

As soon as she says the last number, he feels the needle pierce his skin. It’s uncomfortable, a sharp kind of pinprick pain. There’s a slight feeling of tightness and soreness as the medicine is emptied into his muscle, and a brief jolt when the nurse pulls the needle out.

All in all, even though it isn’t a pleasant experience, it’s not as bad as it could have been. It’s certainly better than choking on a pill and a glass of water if he had to try to swallow the medication.

And, at least, it’s over now.

“There. You did great, Ichimatsu. Probably my best patient of the day!” With that, she sets the syringe back down on the tray and gingerly smooths a bandage with a cotton ball over the injection site. “That should keep you clean just in case any blood trickles out from the shot, and someone will come take it off later if the adhesive starts to make your skin itch.”

He nods and coughs into his arm again, giving a soft groan. He’s just so tired, from the fever, from the coughing, from not being home. “Is it gonna m… khh… make me tired?”

“Haha, it shouldn’t, no. You might feel a little nauseous, or you might have to go to the bathroom more, or you might get a small itchy rash… just press the call button if any of that happens or if you feel strange otherwise, okay?” Her cart is all packed up already, and she’s heading out of the room. “If you get tired, it’s probably because you’re sick and need rest. So, try to sleep as much as you can.”

“’Kay.” He just feels like this illness has drained everything out of him, and there’s a little throbbing where he got the injection. But, the more he sleeps, hopefully the sooner he can recover and go home.

On her way out, the nurse dims the lights. Practically as soon as she does, Ichimatsu’s eyes start to drift closed. God, he’s so tired.

He lies down, though the bed is still a little elevated since sleeping flat will just make him cough more. Sleep tugs at him, and he has to move a little bit so he’s not putting any pressure on the area where he got the shot.

Soon. Soon he can go home.

Just as soon as he gets better.

[utterlyinevitable]

I'm sending out a few questions to my favourite writers over here because I can never have enough of your otps 💕

For Ethan and Becca/ Ethan and Odette

Who cleans the most? And who is the messiest? Who has the best table manners? How do they resolve their arguments? Who remembers dates, birthdays, and appointments? Who is the most physically affectionate?

Who has the most nightmares and how do they deal with them? Who steals the blankets? What do they do when they’re bored and together? Do they go to sleep at the same time as each other? Do they shower/bathe together? If so, how far does anything go?

Thank you for thinking of me and my beans 🥺🥰

Who cleans the most? And who is the messiest?

B&E: Ethan cleans the most, he is such a neat freak. Becca is a controlled mess, in that she leaves messes in her wake but knows where everything is inside of the anxiety-inducing piles 😆

O&E: They have hired help because Odette likes to organize rather than do deep cleaning. Everywhere everything is minimal and perfectly in place except for her shoe closet and her office. Ethan is strict in that everything has a place and he knows how Ode's OCD flares up if anything veers from the way she likes it.

Who has the best table manners?

B&E: Ethan. Idk who taught him proper etiquette because it surely wasn't Alan. Becca likes to talk about bodily habits at every turn and can be very unseemly at the dinner table. In more ways than one 😏

O&E: They're both on the same level. Odette is better at chit chat. Ethan was taught English etiquette and eats with both hands, knife in right hand and fork in left, its okay to rest wrists on the table. Odette was taught American, eating with only her dominate hand and the other resting in her lap unless she's cutting a bit of food.

How do they resolve their arguments?

B&E: They usually just ignore them, or fuck them out of their system. Once they have kids and have been together for over 5 years, they learn to agree to disagree and only do what's in the best interest of the family. At times they keep a tally of who got their way and alternate 🙄

O&E: They both need to take some time alone after an argument, to sort through their true feelings on the matter and whatnot. Then one of them (Ethan, more often than not) will apologize and they'll move on with their lives. Ode hates (afraid of?) confrontation so they don't get into arguments often.

Who remembers dates, birthdays, and appointments?

B&E: Ohhhh hmm. If it's super duper important like medical appointments, their kids birthdays or their wedding anniversary it's Ethan. He's always prepared for those well in advance. Becca remembers the smaller things, like the color of the sky during their first kiss and the first thing he's ever given her. To her the smaller moments are the crux of their relationship. She's also chaotic. The longer she and Ethan are together the more she realizes she doesn't need to remember the big things because he'll always make sure she's reminded. That way her mind can focus on other things.

O&E: Odette is like a haute elephant - she remembers everything. She's got a photographic memory and synesthesia.

Who is the most physically affectionate?

B&E: Becca, she enjoys climbing and hanging off of him like a tree. If they're in the same space odds are her hand is in his or on his thigh.

O&E: Ethan. They don't do PDA much. When they're alone he's rubbing her shoulders, peppering kisses to her skin, or just wrapping his arms around her while they relax.

Who has the most nightmares and how do they deal with them?

B&E: Becca. She's got a lot of trauma in her life and can't seem to shake it. Most nights she's fine as long as Ethan's pressed up against her. When she's pregnant she has frequent nightmares and it adds to her stress. Neither of them think she ever truly got a restful night during her pregnancies. How she deals with them is by going for a stroll to the kitchen for some water, or if its an aggressive one Ethan is up and rocks her to sleep.

O&E: Ethan, especially after Louise comes back and shakes up his entire world. Depends on how bad they are he either reads while in bed with the intent to fall back asleep, or just starts his day early. He doesn't like to dwell on them as he knows they're irrational fears and not real.

Who steals the blankets?

B&E: Becca. She steals the pillows too, even though she sleeps with 4 and Ethan sleeps with 2 🤣 She also likes to sleep smack dab in the middle of the bed.

O&E: Odette. She sleeps like a burrito. She used to have a weighted blanket but stopped using it when she and Ethan began spending every night together. She didn't need it when his arms are wrapped around her.

What do they do when they’re bored and together?

B&E: Becca likes to bake, so she's moving about the kitchen and he's making sure she doesn't burn the place down. They watch movies or one of the shows they can actually agree on watching together. Sex, obviously. Or Becca will pick a random street or neighborhood she's always wanted to explore and they'd go do that.

O&E: They like to workout. He prefers weights and running, she prefers yoga. If it's a gross day out and they can't run they'll take turns - though after a while she gives up trying to get Ethan into yoga and does it in the same room while he's working out so they can still be together. They like listening to music and shopping. Ethan likes listening to her play. He's gotten really into music history podcasts lately and likes to discuss it with her.

Do they go to sleep at the same time as each other?

B&E: They try to as evenings are the only time they truly get with one another.

O&E: When they both worked on the DT, yeah they did most days. As her career took off and his changed, there are days dinner is waiting in the microwave and the other is asleep. Weekends are for them and they get up and go to sleep together.

Do they shower/bathe together? If so, how far does anything go?

B&E: They do both. Bath's are always foreplay (unless Bec is pregnant then it's a medical necessity for her aching bod). They love showering together because it's so intimate, but more often than not it leads to sex and they cannot afford wasting all that time 🤣 They'll usually shower together at the end of a long day where it's 60/40 it'll end in sexy time.

O&E: Not often, but yes. When they shower together it's intimate - washing the others hair and body, sometimes steamy touches. It's all about the connection with them. Also Ode likes to shower immediately after sex so when they are showering together it's aftercare... Does skinny dipping in their hot tub often count as a bath?

I loved these, thank you so so much!! 💞💞

[asterekmess]

S3A - E7

So, I’m starting this episode right after finishing the last one, and I’m still kinda riled up from that bullshit. Let’s get to pissing me off and breaking my heart then. Blood/gore mention warnings for this episode.

Exercise your eyes! Read More!

Let’s just jump right in:

Starting right off with forcing myself into putting the tag in. Scott literally just listened to his mother say that giving this woman something to lessen the pain of her injuries could complicate things and make it harder to treat her. This is like an important medical thing. While yes, it’s really upsetting that she would need to keep being in pain, she needs to be able to identify and explain what exactly she’s feeling to the doctor who is going to be arrive really soon (though I have no idea why the nurses aren’t able to get these people set up. That’s what they did with me? I didn’t see a doctor for like an hour, but they didn’t make me sit in the fucking waiting room before dealing with the blood.) Her pain level will have a direct effect on how quickly she’s seen. This moment is meant to show Scott being soft-hearted, but with the doctor only ten minutes away, he could literally be making this woman’s life a whole lot worse by taking away her pain right now. There is a reason why after I was given pain killers for my surgery I wasn’t allowed to be near any heavy objects. Her pain is keeping her from irritating her wound. She could fuck herself up if she stops responding to the signals her body is trying to send her. This is not the right way to make Scott look kind. He looks like an idiot who doesn’t even listen to his nurse mom.

WHo the FUCK would keep driving with a bunch of bugs in the car? She’s not even on the interstate! PULL OVER IDIOT.

I’m actually agreeing with Scott on this one. I have no idea how medically accurate what melissa just did was, but it look pretty damn cool.

WHat the hell is this conversation? First off, Ethan, you made VERY clear in the last episode that you want to bite Danny even after he said no. Even if that was the possession talking, it was based on what YOU wanted. Danny’s not safe with you. Second, what is this bullshit about knowing Lydia is the important one? Important to Stiles and ALlison maybe. Scott literally never talks to Lydia. THIRD how exactly did you guys come up with that idea when you went after them on the FIRST DAY? You sniff him on them? cus’ if so your noses are damaged.

what...what is with this ghost car shit? She was in the middle of the city, more than ten minutes away from the hospital and behind the traffic caused by the ten car pileup. How did the car drive itself ALL THE WAY here?

Ethan. you’re an alpha. you have night vision. You shouldn’t need to ask what the fucking MOTH in the middle of the driver’s seat is.

HI NOAH! I’ll be honest. I missed you. You’re a really good actor and you just make me feel all safe. WHich is weird bc I hate father figures and I hate cops. Linden Ashby is just too good, I guess.

It’s so frustrating watching Deucalion walk around with humans pretending to be blind. Because he is. He is Pretending to be blind. He’s already proved like a dozen times that he can see just fine when he turns on the Alpha eyes. Which doesn’t make SENSE because Deaton said his iris’ were permanently damaged. He doesn’t have two different sets of eyes! And it sucks, bc they put in these little things that it would’ve been awesome to see if they included an actual blind person properly. The casual use of the cane, taking someone’s elbow and the trust that implies, and even this. Having (that looks like ethan’s coat) Ethan explain what’s in front of Deucalion, describing the scene to him.

DEREK YOUR SECURITY SYSTEM SUCKS. HOW DID THEY DO THAT WITHOUT YOU WAKING UP? WITHOUT CORA NOTICING?

Also, Cora, you look amazing, can you please be my friend and can I hug you? I love your shirt.

I HATE THIS BITCH. Fuck you Julia.

uhh....why is an English teacher filling in for a chemistry/geometry teacher? That’s not how substitutes work. Making a joke out of it doesn’t make it make any more sense. SHe shouldn’t be doing that, especially if Harris has been missing for a while.

So your office can keep werewolves out, but not darach? Okay, let me go full conspiracy theorist here. we only know Deaton saw the moths because we see it. He just tells Scott that he’s going to be taken. This is a story that Scott is telling, so he couldn’t know that deaton saw the moths unless deaton told him. Julia is currently teaching a class. Are you seriously saying she doesn’t need to be involved at all in order to do these kidnappings? She can just put them on a timer and let the autmoatic spellwork do the job for her? OR Is deaton lying about being taken, and this is just a test he came up with to force Scott’s “True Alpha”ness to the surface? JUlia clearly had other plans for her sacrifice. I don’t think Deaton was a ‘distraction’ to keep Scott from finding the actual sacrifice. I think it was Deaton using the situation to his advantage.

why does deaton have a canine acupressure chart on his wall? I’ve never seen a vet’s office have that. Does he do alternative medicine for dogs??

BOYD. ISAAC. MY BOYS. I can’t tell you how much I love this. It’s so sneaky and annoying and so pack-ish I just love it so much.

BOYD YOU ARE A GENIUS BOY AND I LOVE YOU.

I swear, like ninety percent of what the ‘adults’ in this show say is ‘go back to school.’ ‘shouldn’t you be in school’ yadda yadda. Like, they want so badly to write the teens as though they never have to go to class, so they just make them constantly skip and ignore that these are fucking teenagers who would never be able to get out of school that easily, and they handwave it with someone occasionally going ‘hmm, weird that they aren’t in school’ and then just ignoring it? Truancy is like a THING that you can get in major trouble for. At least Boyd and Isaac called in sick. You know how you could have avoided all this class bullshit? PUT THE FUCKING SEASON DURING THE SUMMERTIME DUMBASSES.

It just hurts seeing Stiles beg for Scott not to make him tell his dad, and then turn right around and admit that it’s not okay for him to let other people suffer just because it scares him that he might lose his only parent. Like, he walks into that sacrifice with eyes wide fucking open and it hurts.

I’m not talking about these dumb sex scenes anymore. I’m so tired of them.

OKay, can we talk about the fire alarm thing though? It sounds like a jokey kind of thing with Aiden teasing Lydia about wanting to leave during the fire alarm but... Remember how Lydia was haunted by Peter’s burnt corpse? How she can hear the cries of the dead, and how she went wandering into the crumbling remains of the Hale house? There’s every chance that Lydia remembers the fire through Peter’s eyes. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was forever freaked by fire alarms.

Man, Cora and Lydia, together? The sass involved? If I didn’t ship Allydia so hard, I’d totally ship Cora and Lydia.

ONce again, I wanna point out that AIDEN IS A MURDERER. Literally all it would take is someone Explaining to Lydia that he is serial killer and she’d never touch him again.

Cora and Stiles together? I’m loving it. I just, wanna point out that when Scott showed up Cora couldn’t have given less of a shit. But here....Cora doesn’t remotely question Stiles’ authority here. She immediately goes along with it and when he tells her to let go of Cora she does. Even though she has no real reason to. When she asks about the spirit board, it’s a legit question and she doesn’t argue or make fun.

PLus there’s the whole ‘Well do you know any spirits” which straight up just confirms for me that ghosts and shit are real in this universe. I trust the Hales as lore sources and Cora’s matter-of-fact tone is good enough for me.

jesus christ i wanna get deucalion and Peter in a room together and watch them just...monologue random facts and trivia at each other endlessly. “Lacrosse was originally played by Native Americans.” “Do you know what a metronome is?” Guys. come on.

Exasperated Stiles is literally my favorite Stiles. “We’re trying to save lives here for the love of god” “YOU”RE SOMETHING, OKay? JUST put out your Hand” It’s so fucking good.

Someone EXPLAIN TO ME how Scott learned to do fucking gymnastics. WHEN DID HE LEARN THIS? I hate this bullshit “I’m a werewolf, so I can do anything” shit. Especially since it’s LITERALLY just Scott they let do it. Everyone else has to actually do the work to learn it.

So...how exactly does Deucalion know where Deaton is? This literally just supports my theory that Deaton set the whole thing up.

ALSO, since I already have the tag I feel no shame in pointing out that Scott didn’t even HESITATE when he learned Derek was going to die. He immediately asked about Deaton. Yeah yeah, Deaton is a father figure to him, but if that’s an acceptable excuse for Scott to use now, then it should count as an acceptable one when it’s STILES” FATHER BEING THREATENED (but I digress, we’re not there yet.)

How did I never notice that Lydia’s Left handed?

andd.....how did Lydia know that? How did Scott know that? What did Deucalion say that even remotely hints at Danny? Scott doesn’t know about Danny’s paper...what?

Fuck yeah, vengeful Boyd. I dig it.

uh....why couldn’t allison just stand next to Scott in the closet. you know, like she did while he was getting in? Also, why was Allison hiding with him anyway? It’s HER HOUSE and HER BEDROOM.

um....okay, i know that we all like the sterek fics where they have to hide in the closet and one of them pops a boner...but I’mma be real, it’s a lot more uncomfortable when I know she broke up with Scott and they’ve been in there for like ten seconds. Plus there’s the whole knowing that she DEFINITELY has enough room to move away and so does he. *shrug*

Side note: Allison where the fuck do you get these clothes? THey’re both awesome and...kinda weird? Did you buy that dress in france?

okay, i’ll admit it, i do actually kinda like the camera angle through the map, with the blacklight lighting up the symbols (though the symbols flash on and off a little too fast). It’s kinda cool.

uh, how would taking the picture help? You don’t have the blacklight over it? None of the markings are visible anymore

why does Chris keep walking in and out? AND WHY DIDN”T ALLISON DO THAT THE FIRST TIME?

Stiles in plaid and Converse? Yes. Yes. please. That’s so my aesthetic I’m so fucking jealous. He looks COMFY.

This whole interaction is just so fucking weird XD

But like, why would Stiles know to go through Danny’s stuff instead of just asking him why he might’ve been targeted??

HOW WOULD THEY KNOW TO CUT THE POWER? THIS DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. Why does the ALpha pack keep showing up with way more information than they should have? It’s so annoying! It’s one thing if Morrell is feeding them information, but she wouldn’t have KNOWN about this! This was a good plan and there’s NO REASON the Alphas should’ve known what Boyd, Isaac, and Derek were doing! What the fuck?

....god i love Derek’s red eyes.

....god i hate that I know where this is going.

....god i wish he’d just let them tear her apart.

I know that it’s meant to be setting up the cora/stiles thing, but I love that she doesn’t hesitate to touch him, and that when she stops him it’s with a very quiet “stop.” She’s really gentle with him, which is just fucking nice. Werewolves taking care to be gentle with Stiles is like...nice.

Since when did Scott know about the plan with Boyd and Isaac? Since when did Stiles know? Is Boyd seriously texting Cora while Derek and Kali are fighting, or did he text her as soon as the power was cut?

is this the first time we see a werewolf bounce off the mountain ash? I mean, I think so, but we also see Peter in S1 try to get past some. There’s no glowing when he comes into contact with the shield. It’s the same with Isaac and Erica in s2. I mean...I guess they’re just trying to upgrade the ash stuff? I gotta say though, I kinda prefered when there were no special effects. It seemed cooler when literally the only thing making it work was belief and having this totally invisible barrier that Peter couldn’t cross. It was cool.

....i think i’m procrastinating seeing the end of this fight. I’m gonna fucking cry.

Why...why does Isaac turn and yell ‘wait’ to Boyd when he was the one running forward to Julia? I am confusion.

Dude, if Alphas could break through mountain ash barriers then Talia Hale WOULDN”T HAVE DIED. THE HALE PACK WOULDn’T HAVE DIED.

I wanna point out here, that this fight between Derek and Kali makes sense for once. Him losing makes sense. We know that the Alphas are much older than they look, or at least Kali, Deucalion and Ennis were. Aiden and Ethan don’t show up in that flashback. ANyway, Kali’s probably in her thirties or forties. SHe’s much older than Derek and she’s been fighting for a lot longer, not to mention fighting to kill.

Seriously, someone get my boy a quarterstaff to knock her feet away.

I really really don’t understand this stuff. Why is it whenever people (I mean Derek, because it’s literally always Derek) get forced to use their werewolf claws/teeth (because again I cannot believe this is happening more than once) he for some reason can’t just...shift back? Retract his claws and fangs? Derek has amazing control, he should totally have been able to do it. With the venom it made sense, he was paralyzed. But now??

What exactly was the fucking point of having Scott break the mountain ash barrier, just to have the sheriff show up and shoot Deaton down? That was literally useless.

also, Noah is an amazing shot. Hot damn.

ALSO. LIterally all this info about true alphas is being whispered to Scott when he’s all alone? How the fuck am i supposed to trust that deaton even ever said that shit to Scott? He could totally be lying about it.

WHAT KIND OF TOTAL BULLSHIT BACKWARDS ASS PLOTLINE IS THIS? After half the season being about Deucalion attacking Derek and trying to get him into the pack, suddenly “Deucalion isn’t after Derek, he’s after you” WHAT? THat’s the STUPIDEST LAZIEST SHIT I’VE EVER SEEN.

and to end my rant BOYD SHOULD NOT HAVE DIED. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? PETER STUCK HIS ENTIRE HAND THROUGH DEREK”S CHEST IN SEASON 1 WHIL IN HIS ALPHA FORM AND THREW HIM INTO A WALL AND DEREK SURVIVED JUST FINE. WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE???

Final Thoughts: No. No, no, no no, no, and no. The ‘plotline’ of this episode is literally like fifteen things that have nothing to do with each other.

Admittedly, there were a few nice moments. Cora, Lydia, and Stiles was an awesome trio. Boyd, Isaac, and Derek was an awesome trio. The sheriff? Amazing. Melissa? A fucking hero. Danny, a genius saint.

All in all, I’m going to tear this episode to shreds in order to rewrite it. Get fucked, Davis.

[successfullyadhd]

im 31, and after over a decade of trying to figure out what is wrong with me, my therapist and I are finally thinking it’s ADHD. i’ve had a gut feeling about it for a while and every ADHD post is relatable. now the problem is finding an place that does adult assessments and is affordable (no insurance). do you have any tips on going through the assessment as an adult? and if i can’t afford it, and can’t get medication. how do i ever become the productive focused person i want to be? thanks.

Sorry in advance for the long post... I put the most relevant bits in bold for a TL;DR version.

 I know getting diagnosed as an adult can seem daunting, but you shouldn’t worry too much. While ADHD was once viewed as something that only affected children, it is now widely recognized as a lifelong disorder and you shouldn’t have to fear being dismissed because you weren’t diagnosed early in life. It’s extremely helpful that you have been seeing a therapist, and they also think you have ADHD. Ask them to send over their notes when you do go to the doctor.

As for how to get diagnosed - I’ll start by saying I hate the way American healthcare is set up, as medication and healthcare in general are expensive. I have to move frequently for me and my husband’s jobs (we both work in hospitality, and as the saying goes, “You have to move out to move up!”). Because most (all?) ADHD medications are a Schedule II drug (highly regulated but still legal), I have to get rediagnosed in every new state. I always bring my past history, but most doctors want to complete testing as they are monitored for prescribing stimulants and can lose their license if found to be providing this medication without ample documentation. (All of this to say - I have been through the procedure many times as an adult.) Depending on the state, some doctors also require bloodwork and an EKG to ensure you are healthy enough to receive the medication (although some will accept past test results if done recently enough.) Also depending on the state and doctor, they may have additional requirements. In Florida, my doctor wanted a multitude of tests, and asked for a sleep study to ensure the medication wasn’t causing poor sleep. In California, as part of the Kaiser HMO system, I was required to do periodic drug tests to ensure I wasn’t also using street drugs, and to check that the Adderall was in my system (as a test that I was using it as prescribed, and not selling it). Some states are much easier – Utah, Alabama and West Virginia all were able to diagnose me in one appointment and prescribed the medication same day. Last, a General Practitioner won’t typically prescribe it and will direct you to a psychiatrist. Even if you did have insurance, most don’t cover psychiatrists or if they do, it comes with a different deductible (because obviously mental health isn’t part of regular health (heavy sarcasm)). After diagnosing, you have to meet with the doctor once a month to get the prescription refilled – due to the Schedule II status, they can’t have it on an auto-refill like other medications and they need to ensure you aren’t abusing it or having negative side effects. (although the one good thing to come out of COVID is that it normalized tele-health appointments, since an in-person meeting with a doctor once a month can be difficult to schedule). Even though I have health insurance, I typically pay out of pocket $120 a month for my visit with the doctor, and after insurance and a coupon I pay $73 for two medications (Adderall & Vyvanse). I’m fortunate now to be able to afford that expense – at the times in my life where I couldn’t, I would request a 30 day supply of the more affordable pills and only take medication on days where I couldn’t function without it (such as doing large amounts of paperwork) and try to use learned behavior techniques the rest of the time, to stretch out my resources.

As far as what goes into the actual diagnosis – doctors most commonly use a questionnaire about your daily life to assess you. Here is a link to commonly-used questionnaires: https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-assessments-and-tests/.

I know I just made it seem very daunting to get diagnosed and on a medication, but I want to be honest with you about what the process looks like, and again, depending on where you live it can be done in one session. Now that is out of the way, let me give you some information that is more helpful:

If you can, skip asking a regular GP for a referral and make an appointment directly with a psychiatrist. This will save you the extra cost of the doctor’s appointment, just to be told someone else will help. Many places have low cost mental health centers and ADHD falls into that realm, so I would check out what is available in your city. Before making an appointment, confirm the following:

-          Do they diagnose ADHD?

-          Do they prescribe medication? (Therapists don’t prescribe, only psychiatrists, and some will not prescribe ADHD medication at all so it’s important to be clear that it is your intention to receive medication if diagnosed)

-          What tests do they require for diagnosing, and prescribing medication? (Some places may have more or less requirements, and it can even vary within a city or state. This way you will know if it’s something you can afford at the time.)

Talk with the doctor about your specific situation, and what medications are affordable without insurance. Adderall, for example, is past the 10 year exclusive patent and now has a generic version available. It comes in quick release and slow release, depending on your needs. You can also talk to the doctor about a prescription to both quick and slow release, so you take the correct medicine based on your needs for that day (marathon work day? Slow release that extends over the entire day. Afternoon project – quick release that lasts for four hours). Vyvanse is great but doesn’t have a generic version and is insanely expensive without insurance (to the tune of $350+). Use the GoodRX app to find deals on medication without insurance (Adderall is about $15 for a month supply with this app). There are a ton of drug options so look up the pricing during the doctor’s visit, so you can confirm that you can afford what they prescribe. Also keep in mind that getting a prescription filled is the same cost whether you get 1 pill or 30 (a fact I learned the hard way when getting a 10 pill prescription filled once.)

 If you read all that and thought, Thanks but no thanks, here are some other options:

-          My psychiatrist in Florida recommended that I take Rhodiola Rosea supplements in addition to medication, as it has clinically proven positive effects on ADHD symptom control. I found it on Amazon. Omega-3 fatty acid supplements are also proven effective.

-          If you’re interested in this sort of thing, here is a super comprehensive study of various dietary supplements and behavior modifications that work or don’t work for ADHD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4968082/

-          Practicing meditation is a great way to relax your body (increased stress, while helpful for short-term tasks, can make ADHD symptoms worse long term) and train your mind to hold onto singular, important thoughts (people’s names, why you walked into the kitchen, etc). I use the Waking Up app and love it – there are also many free options in the App Store and on YouTube.

-          Regular exercise is another great way to manage ADHD symptoms, as it gives your body a natural serotonin and dopamine boost, two important chemicals your body has trouble producing and absorbing naturally.

-          Caffeine is a great, easily accessible stimulant that has a focusing and calming effect on ADHD individuals. My doctor actually asked my parents to give me coffee each morning before school when I was a child, before we moved onto prescriptions.

-          Often, there are other factors that go along with ADHD, such as anxiety and/or depression. Getting this under control can go a long way in managing ADHD as well. I’m not sure if you have any issues with those, but it can be helpful to treat both if you do. The medication Wellbutrin is used to treat depression and also has mild stimulants, which would be helpful for both conditions. It isn’t a Schedule II drug, so you can probably ask your doctor for a 3 or 6 month prescription.

-          There are a ton more mind hacks and learned behavioral mechanisms you can try – read some of my other posts for suggestions.

Of course, I have to give the legal disclaimer – all of this is based on my personal experience, I’m not licensed in the medical field in any way and only a doctor can give you proper advice for your body and situation, and what medications will be most helpful. 😊

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Difficult Times for Flight Attendants (NYT) One flight attendant needed medical attention for a crippling migraine brought on by confronting a passenger who refused to wear a mask. Aviation safety officials have received dozens of confidential complaints in the past year from attendants trying to enforce mask safety rules. The reports, filed in the Aviation Safety Reporting System database, at times describe a chaotic, unhinged workplace where passengers regularly abuse airline employees. The coronavirus pandemic and political divisions of the past year have caused fear, economic pain, and social and family rifts around the country, but for airline workers, and flight attendants in particular, the unease and tension have often converged in a tiny cabin space. The tension is at a level flight attendants have not seen before, said Paul Hartshorn Jr., a veteran attendant and a spokesman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants union. “I think we’re pretty well trained on how to handle a disruptive passenger,” said Mr. Hartshorn, 46. “What we’re not trained to do and what we shouldn’t be dealing with is large groups of passengers inciting a riot with another group of passengers [over political differences].” “It’s insane,” he added.

Fight The Man: What GameStop’s surge says about online mobs (AP) It’s a fable for our times: Small-time investors band together to take down greedy Wall Street hedge funds using the stock of a troubled video-game store. But the revolt of online stock-traders suggests much more. The internet is shifting society’s balance of power in unanticipated ways. In the world of pseudonymous internet message boards, pranks-gone-wild and logic turned upside down amid a global pandemic, revolts come in all shapes, sizes and aims. Last week they gave us the Great GameStop Stock Uprising. Who knows what this week will bring. “The internet can democratize access, upsetting power dynamics between the people and traditional institutions,” tweeted Tiffany C. Li, a law professor and tech attorney focusing on privacy and technology platform governance. With GameStop, she added in an interview Friday, the goal was to upset the interests of a few large hedge funds. “But in other places the goal can be more nefarious. Online spaces are being used to radicalize people toward extremism, to plan hate crimes and attacks,” she said. “The internet isn’t really the villain or the hero.”

Pandemic Pushes More Parents to Go All-In for Home Schooling (WSJ) As parents grow increasingly frustrated with remote learning during the pandemic, some are deciding to pull their children out of school and try teaching on their own. In North Carolina, the state’s home-school monitoring website crashed on the first day of enrollment, and more than 18,800 families filed to operate a home-school from July 1 to Jan. 22—more than double the school-year before, according to the state Division of Non-Public Education. In Connecticut, the number of students who left public schools to be home-schooled jumped fivefold this school year, to 3,500. In Nebraska, the number of home-schooled students jumped 56%, to 13,426, according to state education officials. “The vast majority [of parents] are saying, ‘We’ve been really trying to do what the schools are asking us to do, but we just can’t do this anymore,’ “ said J. Allen Weston, executive director of the National Home School Association, which has been fielding inquiries on the topic. Vanderbilt University’s Joseph Murphy, who studies home schooling, said “We are in a major shift from how we thought about teaching children and running schools for 100 years. Parents have shifted to the place where they feel they need more direct involvement and greater responsibility for what happens with their children.”

Vaccine skepticism lurks in town famous for syphilis study (AP) Lucenia Dunn spent the early days of the coronavirus pandemic encouraging people to wear masks and keep a safe distance from each other in Tuskegee, a mostly Black city where the government once used unsuspecting African American men as guinea pigs in a study of a sexually transmitted disease. Now, the onetime mayor of the town immortalized as the home of the infamous “Tuskegee syphilis study” is wary of getting inoculated against COVID-19. Among other things, she’s suspicious of the government promoting a vaccine that was developed in record time when it can’t seem to conduct adequate virus testing or consistently provide quality rural health care. “I’m not doing this vaccine right now. That doesn’t mean I’m never going to do it. But I know enough to withhold getting it until we see all that is involved,” said Dunn, who is Black. The coronavirus immunization campaign is off to a shaky start in Tuskegee and other parts of Macon County. Area leaders point to a resistance among residents spurred by a distrust of government promises and decades of failed health programs. Tuskegee is not a complete outlier. A recent survey conducted by the communications firm Edelman revealed that as of November, only 59% of people in the U.S. were willing to get vaccinated within a year with just 33% happy to do so as soon as possible. Health experts have stressed both the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.

As Biden prays for healing, Catholics clash over president’s faith (GMA) On his quest to heal a divided America, Joe Biden may first have to confront bitter division over his presidency from within his own church. Since his inauguration two weeks ago as the nation’s second Catholic president, Biden’s devout Christian faith has become a new flashpoint within the church. While millions of Catholics have celebrated the ascension of one of their own to the White House, some have been publicly questioning whether Biden should be considered a model of their faith. Many Catholic clergy and faithful are passionately fixated on Biden’s support for abortion rights, which the church staunchly opposes and considers an issue of “preeminent” importance. Biden opposes abortion as a personal matter, but wrote in his 2007 memoir that he doesn’t “have a right to impose my view on the rest of society.” One in five Americans identifies as Roman Catholic, the largest Christian denomination in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center. While the faithful have long been divided in matters of theology and politics, Catholic values aren’t exclusively red or blue.

Russia Protesters Defy Vast Police Operation as Signs of Kremlin Anxiety Mount (NYT) The Kremlin mounted Russia’s most fearsome nationwide police operation in recent memory on Sunday, seeking to overwhelm a protest movement backing the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny that swept across the country for a second weekend in a row. But the show of force—including closed subway stations, thousands of arrests and often brutal tactics—failed to smother the unrest. By late Sunday evening in Moscow, more than 5,000 people had been detained in at least 85 cities across Russia, an activist group reported, though many were later released. Previously unseen numbers of riot police officers in black helmets, camouflage and body armor essentially locked down the center of the metropolis of 13 million people, stopping passers-by miles from the protest to check their documents and ask what they were doing outside. “I don’t understand what they’re afraid of,” a protester named Anastasia Kuzmina, a 25-year-old account manager at an advertising agency, said of the police. Referring to the peak year of Stalin’s mass repression, she added, “It’s like we’re slipping into 1937.” The large-scale police response signaled anxiety in the Kremlin over Mr. Navalny’s ability to unite Russia’s disparate critics of President Vladimir V. Putin, from nationalists to liberals to many with no particular ideology at all.

In Myanmar coup, Suu Kyi’s ouster heralds return to military rule (Washington Post) Aung San Suu Kyi defended Myanmar’s generals against genocide charges at The Hague. She praised soldiers as they unleashed artillery against ethnic minority settlements. She took only modest steps toward democratic changes that would chip away at the army’s political power. It wasn’t enough. On Monday, Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup, detaining Suu Kyi, elected ministers from her National League for Democracy (NLD) party and others in a predawn raid. Though condemned internationally for defending the military and its campaign against the Rohingya minority, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent 15 years under house arrest until 2010 now finds herself again at the generals’ mercy. The coup underscored the fragility of Myanmar’s decade-old, quasi-democratic transition that many assumed, despite imperfections, would continue with Suu Kyi as head of the civilian government and still-entrenched powers for the military, led by Min Aung Hlaing. But the military was never comfortable with its enduring unpopularity and Suu Kyi’s godlike status among ordinary Burmese, analysts said, despite its role in engineering the country’s opening after half a century of isolationist rule.

Survivors of Beirut’s explosion endure psychological scars (AP) Joana Dagher lay unconscious and hemorrhaging under a pile of rubble in her apartment after the massive Beirut port blast in August, on the brink of death. She survived because of the courage of her husband who got her out, the kindness of a stranger who transported her in his damaged car and the help of her sisters during the chaos at the overwhelmed hospital. But Dagher doesn’t remember any of that: The 33-year-old mother of two lost her memory for two full months from the trauma she suffered in the explosion, including a cerebral contusion and brain lesions. “I lost my life on August 4,” Dagher said. “I lost my house, I lost my memory, I lost two friends,” she added, referring to neighbors killed in the explosion. “I lost my mental health, and so I lost everything.”       The Beirut explosion, which killed more than 200 people and injured more than 6,000, caused wounds on an even wider scale on the mental health of those who lived through it. Even in a country that has seen many wars and bombings, never had so many people—tens of thousands—directly experienced the same traumatizing event at the same time. It came on top of the stress that Lebanese were already feeling from multiple crises, including an unprecedented economic meltdown, the coronavirus pandemic and a feeling of helplessness after nationwide protests against corruption that failed to achieve their goals. “There are very high levels of anxiety and worry across the population,” said Mia Atwi, psychologist and president of Embrace, an organization working on mental health awareness and support. “There is a low mood bordering on clinical depression for the majority of the population.”

[thefeministpress]

Spooky Reads from FP

Here at the Feminist Press, we can’t believe it’s already over a week post-Halloween! 

It snuck up so quickly this year! Thankfully, we enjoy spooky books all year round at FP, and right now—as the nights turn dark and the wind acquires its sharp, chilling bite—is the best time to read some terrific, spine-tingling lit. As I sit here at my desk, eating leftover candy corn from Halloween out of the palm of my now-sticky hand, I shall list five of our favorite terrifying FP titles:

The Yellow Wall-Paper | Charlotte Perkins Gilman

An essential work of American literature rediscovered by the Feminist Press—our all-time bestseller. The new edition is a faithful and accurate rendition of the original 1892 edition of this classic work, with expanded textual notes. The Yellow Wall-Paper is a compelling psychological narrative of one woman's confinement and madness.

Read if you like: novellas, short stories, short reads, feminist literary classics, 19th century fiction, psychological fiction

Type of scary: chilling, psychological, claustrophobic, creepy

Quote:

It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does.

I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.

John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy.

The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out. 

(23)

Follow Me into the Dark | Felicia C. Sullivan

What happens when children are denied love and then left to their own devices? Follow Me into the Dark traces the unraveling of a family marred by perverse intergenerational abuse. Kate is a young baker whose mother is dying of cancer. Gillian is an oversexed, hyper-intellectual who looks like Kate and is sleeping with Kate’s stepfather. Jonah is Gillian’s odd but devoted stepbrother, who increasingly matches the description of the “Doll Collector,” a menacing serial killer. With Kate flailing in her mourning and beating back unwelcome memories, snippets of her family legacy are revealed just as the Doll Collector’s body count grows.

Read if you like: suspense, twists and turns, nonlinear narratives, multiple POVs, serial killers, dark stories

Type of scary: suspenseful, unsettling, psychological

Quote:

The Chinchorro were unique in their dedication to preserving the dead. Embalmers excised the skin and the flesh, replacing it with clay. Precious organs were removed and pickled before they were returned, tissue wrapped, to the body. Only the heart remained, lying still among the pickles and animal hair. I admire this ritual, the Chinchorro’s fastidious connection to the departed, and the nearly two months of care devoted to the remains. 

The curtain closes. It’s the end of the show, folks. The coffin glides in. 

After everyone leaves, watch me scream. 

(10-11)

Women Who Kill | Ann Jones

This legendary bestseller exposes the truths and consequences of women on the edges of society—women driven to kill. From Lizzie Borden to Jean Harris to Aileen Wuornos, this riveting investigation will change the ways you think about crime and punishment. A new introduction by the author illuminates the conditions for women who kill—and are killed—now.

Read if you like: nonfiction, feminist analysis, true crime with a side of analysis, historical, justice system, not academic but not sensational, social history

Type of scary: true crime, toxic masculinity, violence against women, murder, oppression

Quote:

Mrs. Churchill went through the kitchen to the sitting room. There on the horsehair sofa lay Andrew Jackson Borden, apparently stretched out for a nap, except that where his face should have been was only blood and pulp. The coroner would find the marks of ten hatchet blows. 

(240)

We Were Witches | Ariel Gore

Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single mother. She’s beset by custody disputes, homophobia, and America’s ever-present obsession with shaming odd women into passive citizenship. But even as the narrator struggles to graduate—often the triumphant climax of a dramatic narrative—the question lingers uncomfortably. If you’re dealing with precarious parenthood, queer identity, and debt: What is the true narrative shape of your experience?

Read if you like: poetic language, genre-defying books, a mix of fiction and memoir, magic and magick, queer narratives, magical realism, the 90s

Type of scary: oppression, misogyny, homophobia

Quote:

The deer doesn’t say anything. She sits down on a chair made of branches, sits as if she were more human now than hoofed animal. She folds her upper legs across her chest as if they’re arms. I look into her broad-set eyes and for a flash of a moment I see the witch’s eyes staring back at me. I take a sharp inhale, feel my chest tense. I want to ask so many things right then, but I just blink, and now her eyes are the eyes of a deer again. 

I say, “Who are you?” 

But the deer stays quiet. 

(136)

Witches, Midwives & Nurses | Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English

Witches, Midwives, & Nurses, first published by the Feminist Press in 1973, is an essential book about the corruption of the medical establishment and its historic roots in witch hunters. In this new edition, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English have written an entirely new chapter that delves into the current fascination with and controversies about witches, exposing our fears and fantasies. They build on their classic exposé on the demonization of women healers and the political and economic monopolization of medicine. This quick history brings us up-to-date, exploring today's changing attitudes toward childbirth, alternative medicine, and modern-day witches.

Read if you like: US history, European history, feminist history, medicine and healing, short reads, easy-to-read nonfiction

Type of scary: true crime (historical), misogyny, oppression, patriarchy, classism, state-sanctioned murder, violence against women

Quote:

The witch-hunts left a lasting effect: An aspect of the female has ever since been associated with the witch, and an aura of contamination has remained—especially around the midwife and other women healers . . . The women's health movement of today has ancient roots in the medieval covens, and its opponents have as their ancestors those who ruthlessly forced the elimination of witches.  

(32-33)

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

So here’s a thing that happened, tumblr.

Many moons ago, I was in the Neuro ICU for a while. I was actually in there twice--for a week at first, then out, then in again for about two weeks. In between: “Nothing’s wrong! It’s resolved!” As you might imagine, given the spoiler there about how I went to the Neuro ICU twice: in fact, Something was wrong, and it was not resolved (then).

(it is resolved now, thank you)

This post is not actually ABOUT that, but we must start there, out of order.

This is a post about art and rivers and boys in cars. But we start in the Neuro ICU.

I don’t like talking about this time in my life. I would have been skittish and mysterious ANYWAY--I was raised like that--but I’m extra skittish and vague about my timeline because I don’t want to talk about it, you know? I survived something I had no business surviving. I had to relearn how to walk. That took months and that was the easy part. Because I am a big tiddy goth girl, and because I was very young then, people love to assume that the problem was drugs, and I did it to myself, as if that somehow makes anything less tragic.

I was 23 years old with a brain bleed due to a congenital defect, and even at the time, I had to defend myself: no, I’m not on drugs, I don’t do drugs, I didn’t do coke, I’ve never done coke.

I am also Colombian, which, I suppose, might play into their calculus about the coke, but WHO KNOWS. I was busy gibbering and almost dying at the time, which left little energy for noticing potential microaggressions.

Is it a microaggression, I guess, when you’re dying? Who knows.

I have never even been drunk, tumblr. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t snort. I never have. This is mostly because I’m a paranoid loon with an off again, on again anorexia, ya know, thing, so occasionally I get really hung up on irrational concepts of bodily purity. People think it’s a flex when I try to explain this, that I’m relishing in some kind of moral superiority. I’m not. I admitting to SEVERAL defects (“quirks”) of personality there. The eating disorder. The deep distrust: I will not be vulnerable in the presence of others, I will not dull my senses, I will not allow myself to be weak. A certain perfectionism. A certain tendency towards slow burn self harm. Grand ideas made of nothing that sometimes take hold.

My point is that this big disruptive thing happened.

I survived, which is AWESOME. And yeah, I had to relearn how to walk, and some other things, but you guys know that I do yoga and aerial silks and lyra and ran off to Thailand to train kickboxing for a summer on fighter street and I STILL do not shut the fuck up about it.

So, cool, cool cool cool cool.

And I don’t even want to talk about that part, the medical drama, the body horror, the institutional whatever. My neurosurgeon was fantastic and like a week after my discharge I was high as SHIT on prescribed painkillers my caregivers insisted I take and wrote him a gushing effusive letter about how he was MY HERO because I was ALIVE and anyway that basically makes you BATMAN, DOCTOR LEWIS, I FUCKING LOVE BATMAN.

Again: high as fuck, ok.

 My point is: I hate talking about this.

Because once you’re a survivor in people’s minds, that’s all you are. You are reduced to this one event that had very little to do with you. You are defined by this thing that happened to you.

And this isn’t even the weirdest thing that’s happened TO me! But still. Happened TO me. Not something I did. Not my action. Barely even my reaction.

But again, personality flaws. What does it say about me that I look at social norms about comfort and inwardly I snarl that I want no one’s pity?

Except I’m not actually that mean. I don’t snarl.

I just withdraw.

This is a tactic that has served me well in life a BUNCH of times. Is it always the answer? No. Is it often worth a shot? Listen. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Sometimes you flee an abusive home life because that’s the only option, and you don’t want to die. Hypothetically speaking: sometimes all you can do is run.

But sometimes you flee people with mostly good intentions, maybe.

This is all very high minded but what’s prompting me to write this isn’t exactly the upcoming (many year) anniversary of the event. It’s something way more mundane and dumb.

I have not logged into my facebook account since this happened. I never bothered deleting the account(s), either. I presume they still exist. I have no idea HOW to log back onto them, and, more importantly, no desire.

“So what?”

So, okay, back when I had my first stint in the Neuro ICU? Like, totally out of nowhere, I just disappeared from people’s feeds. (you all know I do this) Somehow part of the story got out and SOMEHOW, I have no idea how, a small group of my friends managed to independently track down the hospital I was at. And this is on next to no info, across state lines, like--I have no idea how the fuck they did it.

I also don’t fucking know who they were.

I was told, at the time. I have a vague idea of who two out of (I think) four were, or might have been. I was kind of busy at the time, with the dying.

And when I say I don’t like talking about this time: I don’t like even THINKING about it. I avoid it.

Fleeing. See?

So I don’t have a memory of the names. I don’t have memories of the memory.

“So what?”

So, I know from groups other than this one, groups less dedicated than this one, that people actually get REALLY fucking mad at you for not accepting their get better soon wishes. And like, I get it! You were very worried and I did nothing to reassure you.

I WAS BUSY.

I was busy dying. Almost dying. Not dying. I was busy sleeping 20 hrs a day. I was busy being unable to walk. I was busy re-learning to walk. I was busy relearning how to write with pen and paper and for months I COULD NOT DO IT, do you have any idea how that feels to someone who is and has always been and has always wanted to be a writer? Fuck it. Fuck you.

The initial disappearance. I am not to blame.

But then doing nothing to reach out to anybody for YEARS and YEARS--

Okay, maybe a dick move on my part.

“So what?”

So I think one of the people who managed to track me down in the hospital was my best friend from high school, a terribly sweet Brazilian boy who mostly called me not by my name, but simply: The Devil.

I dig it. Always did.

And it’s high school, right. Everybody is thirsty as fuck for their friends, one way or another. We never dated--we were both always dating or pursuing other people--but we had the typical high school bestie unresolved romantic tension deal going on.

This is important so remember it for later: the problem was not attraction. The problem was not one sided unresolved sexual tension. I had a particular thing for how he looked while driving, shades on, one arm slung over the wheel in that terribly and typically male lounging driving pose that’s probably a safety hazard.

We spent a lot of time in his car.

I didn’t drive, at the time, because my mother didn’t allow me to learn, and I got kicked out of my house and disowned when I was 17. This dude spent a LOT of time driving me places. Boys in cars is practically a genre of erotic poetry, thanks to Richard Siken. This is because boys look Cool driving cars, wearing sunglasses, pretending they’re not paying attention to you while you know they are.

So he was fun.

More importantly, I guess, the fact that he picked my ass up at like 6 AM over and over and over again for a big chunk of my senior year is one of the few reasons I managed to graduate despite being technically homeless.

He was not a morning person. I am not a morning person. He did it anyway.

Why didn’t we date, I wondered, years later, for a fraction of a second, and then I forgot about it.

“SO WHAT?!”

So I’m grown up and happy and fulfilled and in a lovely long term relationship (remember! we’re buying a house!), so it’s not about “what if?” It’s that I’m happy and grown up and I write books sometimes.

But there it is.

I write books sometimes.

Artists are constantly stealing ideas from everywhere and this is good. Artists also steal from themselves, grubby little hands on secret parts of our hearts.

So I’m writing this book, right. My Great Work. My Break Out Novel. My SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS book. My “this is the thing I’ve worked the hardest on in my whole entire LIFE” book.

And in this book there is a male love interest. He is a political statement. I’m writing him as sexy and heroic as possible. I want this to be the MOST attractive man I’ve ever written.

Latino. Sexy as fuck. Not a criminal. Overly responsible. Action ready, and terribly nurturing.

Hot Single Dad and Reluctant Necromancer is my masterpiece. A passionate statement and stance against the depiction of Latino men in media. A war cry to examine our own subconscious biases. A weapon raised against an unjust system.

I stole parts of him from Frank Castle. I stole parts of him from Geralt. I stole (MANY) parts of him from this one IRL hot dad former Army Ranger guy, Mexican American with a tattoo on his arm of a jack o lantern one of his kids drew. I stole parts of him from this cute Marine in my DMs who gave me story advice about guns and gear. I stole parts of him from indigenous leaders from centuries ago, from the peoples he is descended from. I stole parts of him from every man I’ve met who worked in dog rescue. I stole parts of him from myself, hiding secret parts of my heart in the male character so that no one will know.

Lovely. All good so far.

I got like two whole drafts in before I was thumbing through some printed out pages, idly thinking: how funny that I don’t have any real life, personal to me models for this guy.

All my prior male love interests, you see, are based on someone. In the werewolf trilogy, they’re BOTH based on someone--different someones. The villain, too, is jokingly referred to as the “evil werewolf ex boyfriend” for a reason.

Everybody is someone.

So how funny, I thought, that necromancer hot dad lacks any references from my own--

OH, wait, fuck--

Overly responsible brown dude with sad dog eyes drives the female lead/occult specialist around while good naturedly complaining that she’s weird as shit.

Oh, damn.

And suddenly a bunch of teensy little backstory details made sense.

Cool.

“So what?”

Bonus round of self realization: my own understanding of this time in my life radically shifted, turning, lurching, sickly rotating on a new axis.

Why didn’t we date?

Somewhere between then and now, post ICU but pre novel writing time--

This one time I overheard somebody talking to somebody else and it had nothing to do with me but sight unseen, on the other side of the stacks in a used bookstore, one dude said to another: “you know that if you were lighter, you’d have a chance with her, right?”

How terrible, I thought, and I forgot about it.

Why didn’t we date?

Because my mother told me, when I was very young, that boys from Brazil were all very wild, and I should avoid them. And she told me this so early and so plainly that I never thought to question it. When I was older she took harder stances that I easily ignored because I knew they were wrong--don’t you dare bring a black boy into this house. You’re dating a Jew? I can’t believe you did this to me. What are you going to do next, kiss a girl?

WELL, Ma, as it turns out, I mean, not til college, but yes.

But the smaller, more mild statement was so much more insidious.

I wonder if he knew. I don’t think he did. I wonder if he figured it out later. I have no idea, because we were friends when we were still essentially children, and now we are grown. Not everybody thinks about this kind of thing, and I don’t blame them.

How much damage did I do?

Does it matter?

Does he know?

I know.

I know, now, that my rallying cry against a system’s unfairness is also a cry wrenched wetly from my own subconscious depths. YOUR biases against? Yes. But more accurately: my biases against.

“So what?”

So this kind of epiphany shit leaves you breathless about it and you wanna scream. You wanna SHARE it. You must infect others with this knowledge.

But you can’t out of nowhere foist this apology on someone. That’s selfish. That’s about redeeming yourself in your own eyes AND asking someone else to confront unpleasant emotions on your behalf, even though they’re the wronged party. Selfish. Tell me I’m not a bad person, baby. Tell me I never hurt you, not even a little. Forgive me if I did. Wade through this pile of astral shit for me just to make me feel better. Reassure me. Hurt yourself for me in the here and now.

So I’m not going to do that, obviously.

“So what?”

But there’s that other part of it, right? Not the apology. The surge of emotion. The realization that all those morning drives back then added up to something deep within me, something so foundational to my concept of care and maybe even the start of something like love--the knowledge that this person gently carved some ideals for you, so long ago, so subtly that you never questioned it, never even realized, because it felt so natural, because something about it is so inherently good and right.

Despite everything--despite society, propaganda, colonialism, the prejudice of my upbringing, my own unexamined complicity, ALL of it--

Despite everything, this person taught me something so deeply about love and the shape of it, something so foundational that I built all my art on it and didn’t even see the beams of it until halfway through my most ambitious and soul bearing undertaking.

This is how you care for another, went the lesson, and I wrote pragmatic actions over words romantic male leads all the way down.

This is what love might look like, and in my own life, ever ambitious, I chose a poet talented with words and actions and good fight choreography, because I think that’s sexy and dichotomies are mostly bullshit, or at least things that happen to other people.

But I didn’t learn what love looked like from my childhood home life, obviously. How could I?

Without you, though, without you and your mirror sunglasses at 6 AM and your exasperated teasing, devil, witch, bruja, without any of those, where would I have learned? How long would it take me, to find someone who would teach me a wholesome lesson?

I’m small and cute and predators love a victim with a lack of context. I give myself and my wit some credit, but what’s pattern recognition worth if you never get any good data points?

Deep lessons.

Again: this kind of epiphany makes you wanna scream. Who to infect, with all this new knowledge?

Maybe no one. Probably no one.

But maybe, just a little, you wonder--

How would that conversation even go?

Hey, so I wrote this book--no, it’s my fifth, not my first, but thanks--so I wrote this book, and there’s this character, right, and he’s--well, hahah, I mean, he’s not exactly--I just--funny story, really--no, god, no, you don’t have to read it--it’s just--he’s just--I mean, no, you, you’re just--forget it, actually, just--

Like, what the fuck is there to say?

“I couldn’t have written this without you.”

And

“Did you check on me? When you thought I was dead?”

and

“I’m sorry I didn’t notice, at the time, that I meant anything to you.”

or is it really

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize until now that you meant something to me.”

What to do with all this emotion? Or more accurately--like rivers carve out gorges, here is the shape of something that once was. This shape will always be here. Even without a single drop of water ever again: we see the river.

What to do with the shape of all this emotion?

I consult the great Richard Siken via a feat of bibliomancy. Advise me, O Oracle. The oracle is War of the Foxes (2015), turned over blindly in my hands, opened randomly to The Worm King’s Lullaby, pg 45, verse 1:

The holes in this story are not lamps, they are not wheels. I walked and walked, grew a beard so I could drag it in the dirt, into a forest that wasn’t there. I want to give you more but not everything. You don’t need everything.

This advice is too good. I close the book.

The advice does not tell me what to do, but it’s too good. The verse reaches into my chest and carves out my heart, slices it open. Inside my heart: pomegranate seeds. Tiny jewels, fit for a dragon, snacking on garnets and rubies, and the apple of Eden wasn’t an apple, because it was the desert, wasn’t it? It was a pomegranate. Something with scales, maybe snakes. The serpent, the devil.

What to do with all this love?

I swallow the pomegranate seeds. I buy myself some time. I want to give you more, but not everything. Do you need everything? I don’t know. I don’t have it to give to you, in any case. Does it matter?

Why are you doing this, me?

Because art is messy. Art is cutting yourself open over and over again. You clean up most of the mess, try to bottle the fluids and label them nicely or deliberately misleadingly, fit for someone else’s consumption, but either way, you’re bleeding.

Maybe this urge is bleed with me or maybe it is oh, you already did.

I swallow the seeds. I buy some time.

I’m not done yet. I’m not.

Maybe all this adds up to nothing.

Maybe if I do this right, it adds up to a lot.

Maybe if I do this right it will feel real, maybe what I want is to gift the shape of these rivers to somebody else, all emotionally intimately with strangers. This is a shape that love can be. This is a silhouette you may recognize.

Maybe that’s a tribute, or a tributary.

But it’s not about you, not really, so don’t get too big headed about it. This is about Art and something like Justice. Big things. This is a book about big things, about history and dogs, history and gods, crimes and lies, slaughter and slander.

Right, yeah.

An act of faith, an act of will.

I swallow the pomegranate seeds. I buy myself some time.

It’s not harvest season yet. Not yet, not now, not yet.

If not now, then when?

When it’s ready.

There is no ready. Perfection is an illusion.

Yeah, sure, but page count is REAL.

You’re evading. That’s another word for fleeing. Do you know that?

Yes. I do.

How long will you run?

Just a little bit more. Just a little. I promise.

[suitofvibraniumarmor]

The American Initiative (Finale)

Part Fifteen

Summary: Grace Cleveland and Eleanor Baker both thought their lives were over, until they became part of something much bigger – the Avengers. Pairing(s): Clint Barton x OFC, Steve Rogers x OFC Word Count: 1893 Blanket Warnings: Death, mentioned a couple of different ways, but not detailed; canon divergence; more based on Marvel movies. In the infamous word of Steve Rogers, “Language.” A/N: Yes, you read that correctly -- this is the last part of this fic! Thank you to everyone who has read it and loved it. Special thanks to my Marvel consultant, resident sounding board, and all around bestie @captain-s-rogers​. You guys don’t know how much this story wouldn’t be a thing if it wasn’t for her! 

Now the question is, should I do a sequel? Hmm, maybe read this first, then let me know ;)

Masterlist Wanna be tagged?

Even just the brief lowdown Tony gave Bruce before they returned to the lab was too long for Grace’s safety. When they walked in, Joel had one bloody -- but healing -- arm around Grace. With his free arm, he was injecting some serum into Grace’s neck.

Bruce took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders back; Tony could see that things were going to escalate very quickly. No matter how much Bruce hated the green guy, Tony’s first priority was Grace.

“Bruce,” Tony said quietly, catching eyes with the other man, who was already turning shades of green, “big guy on big guy, yeah? I’ll get Gracie.”

Bruce nodded and a few seconds later, the Hulk was there, letting out a shouting growl. Joel looked up from Grace’s still form, now aware of the company in the lab. He began to change to match Bruce’s size, tossing the needle to the side and laying Grace on the floor. Joel challenged Hulk with a growl in return, immediately going for the first swing as he lunged at the Hulk.

Tony slid across the well-waxed floor like he was sliding into home plate. He ended up at Grace’s side, pulling her away from the two giants fighting for control of the situation.

“Jarvis, a suit -- like, now, please!”

As Joel and Hulk continued to wrestle around, Tony hovered over Grace’s body, shielding her from being hurt by the two of them. The suit arrived none too soon and once he was clicked in, Tony picked Grace up and crashed up and out of the lab, just ahead of Joel and Hulk crashing into the main floor of the house. The growling and yelling and crashing continued while Tony tried to think fast of what to do with Grace. He didn’t want to abandon Bruce, but Grace wasn’t even conscious.

“Tony, we’re outside,” Nat announced via his earpiece, “if you can, get Grace and get outta there.”

“I’ve got her, we’re coming out,” Tony replied, heading outside. “She was injected with something, I don’t know what.”

The quinjet was waiting for them, hovering just above the ground with Nat at the helm. The jet bridge lowered; Steve, Clint, Thor, and Ellie were there, at the ready and on guard. Tony passed Grace off to Clint, who got her secured in the jet and notified medical that they would need assistance soon.

“I’ve got her Clint, you go,” Nat encouraged, already preparing to do a body scan with the technology they did have aboard the jet. “I’ll get her back to the compound, they’ll start working on her right away.”

“I wanna stay.”

Nat squeezed his shoulder. “Clint. If you don’t go and kick this guy’s ass, you’re never going to forgive yourself. Go.”

Clint took one more lingering glance at Grace. She was in good hands with Natasha, but he couldn’t stop the nagging need to tell her goodbye, just in case. He kissed her forehead, pursed his lips, and headed in to join the fight.

Hulk had managed to get Joel back on the defensive, but it was going to take the whole team to take Joel down for the last, final time.

“Whatever we throw at him, he gets back up,” Clint noted, slinging taser arrows one after the other, with little to no effect on the man.

Ellie, face to face with Joel at the moment, faked him out the way she had done to Steve a couple of months before when they were sparring. Joel lunged for her but fell on his face. Thor was right there with the mjolnir, swinging the hammer in an upper-cut motion to throw Joel backwards. Joel flew against a wall, crashed through it, and slumped on the floor. He worked to push himself up, but was unable to get back on his feet. The team assembled in front of him, on guard and ready to fight more.

“I know about all of you, you know,” Joel sputtered, spitting blood and a tooth that had come loose. “I know about the hawk, who gave Grace confidence in herself again. She ran right to you when she came back from me, didn’t she? Did she tell you what I did to her? How do you feel, knowing that I touched her, that I kissed her?”

Clint’s jaw set hard. He absolutely hated the way thinking of those things made him feel, but he knew that Joel was playing mind games. Every fiber in him wanted to put an arrow, a real one, right between Joel’s eyes.

“Then there’s the Iron Man,” Joel continued, managing to sit up, his legs stretched out in front of him. His size was decreasing by the second. “What’s your deal with her? The daughter you never had? Maybe some inappropriate feelings?”

Tony’s chin lifted, and his chest puffed out. It wasn’t often that he cared about someone other than himself, but when he did, he cared deeply. What he didn’t care for was this dumb son of a bitch cheapening his emotions towards Grace. He held his hand out, repulsor glowing and ready to fire.

“And let’s not forget the pathetic excuse for an enhanced that Grace believes is some kind of sister now,” Joel continued, spitting in Ellie’s direction. “Pathetic is being generous, by the way. I mean, truly, what kind of tragic, self-deprecating martyrdom are you trying to achieve, Eleanor? You have a daughter who lost both of her parents, unexpectedly. She could have a mother, and yet you let her live her life without you. You’re here instead, trying to find some sort of purpose when --”

Steve had watched Ellie’s confidence waver as Joel’s speech went on. Rather than stand strong, Ellie was back away, and her eyes were brimming with tears. Joel had delivered a particularly low blow, bringing her daughter into the picture. Unable to watch anymore, Steve had taken one good shot at Joel with his shield, stopping the monologue.

Joel’s face went from sardonic amusement to an evil, angry scowl. He made to get up again, his size increasing and decreasing as he worked up the change to take advantage of his enhancements. The team stood strong, though Steve did tuck Ellie behind him in an effort to cover for her sudden uncertainty.

As Joel began to heave for breath, Clint took his shot. An electrically-charged arrow sailed into Joel’s chest, knocking him back on his ass. The other man’s eyes went wide, gripping his chest, scratching at his ribcage and his throat as he struggled to take a breath. His eyes became bloodshot and his lips started to turn blue. The panting became wheezing, fewer and farther in between, until Joel’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fell to the floor.

Cautiously, Steve stepped forward to check Joel’s pulse. He looked behind him at the team and shook his head.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Tony sighed. The repulsor went dark and his arm was again at his side.

“We don’t know if the enhancements will bring him back,” Thor commented. “We need to get him back to the compound where he can be monitored until we know for sure.”

Everyone agreed. They radioed for transport, with Nat promising that she was already returning with the quinjet.

“ETA three minutes,” she informed.

As they all worked to come down from the fight, Steve put a hand on Ellie’s arm. “You all right?”

Ellie nodded, but refused to meet eyes with him. Thor had Joel’s body thrown over his shoulder, and as the others followed the Asgardian out to the front, Ellie fell in line, Steve behind her.

Joel was dead -- really dead. He was monitored until the decomposition process began, at which time S.H.I.E.L.D took care of things. The crisis was over, but there was always another one on the horizon. For most of them, life went on as it had before Ellie, Grace, and Joel came into their lives.

Tony was staying at the compound for the time being, while his house was repaired. He could have stayed at home, but then he would have been much further from Grace than he preferred to be at the moment.

In contrast, Clint made himself as busy as possible so that he didn’t have time to see Grace. He took every mission possible and trained in the meantime. The only person he would speak to outside of missions was Natasha, but not even she could convince him to see Grace, or talk about his feelings in regard to that situation.

Ellie had barely left Grace’s side since they had returned with Joel’s body. Day and night, she was with her friend, waiting for whatever was going to happen next -- until she made a decision and knew that Grace was simply going to have to be okay without her.

Steve found Ellie next to Grace’s bedside. Grace was breathing on her own -- in fact all of her organs were functioning normal. There was an IV in the back of Grace’s hand, to keep fluids and nutrition going into her system, wires monitoring her heart, and electrodes attached at various places over her head to monitor her brain activity. That was the only organ not functioning normally; per the EKG, Grace’s brain was actually functioning almost twice as much as it had before.

Despite all of that, nothing and no one had been able to wake her up since Joel had injected her with the unknown serum.

“You leaving isn’t gonna wake her up, Elle,” Steve said, standing next to Ellie with his hands in his pockets.

Ellie nodded. “I know, but me staying isn’t going to wake her up, either. And I think Grace would want me to do what’s best for me -- now more than ever.”

“You think?”

“I still can’t read her. I see the lines on the monitor, her brain is working. But I get nothing.” Ellie took a deep breath. “Gracie has to take care of herself, and I have to take care of myself. I don’t want to say Joel was right, necessarily, but he had a point. I can stay here and be a hero and let my daughter see me on a new report one day, or I can go there and face up to my whole family and see if they’ll have me back.”

Steve licked his lips and nodded. “And what about us?”

Ellie took her time answering. “There’s not an us, Steve. I know what we’ve both been feeling, I know that I kissed you. But I can’t think about any of that now -- and I certainly can’t put it ahead of my family.”

“Okay.” Steve nodded. He put an arm around her waist and kissed her temple. “I wish you the best, Ellie. You know where to find us -- to find me -- if you need anything.”

She wanted to reach out for him, to ask him to go with her. For the first time since she had been brought back to life, though, Ellie was confident that she could face this on her own -- that she needed to face this on her own.

Ellie took one more glance at Grace, squeezed her friend’s hand, then adjusted her bag strap on her shoulder, and turned to leave the Avengers compound.

Tags: @captain-s-rogers​​​​ @the-murder-strut-murdered-me​​​​ @xtina2191​​​​ @shynara51​​​​

[inboldmagazine]

INBOLD MEETS: Nwaobiala, the artist healing the hidden traumas of the African Diaspora

Nwaobiala poses with paintings created by BAKHITA. Photo taken by BAKHITA. Interview and Text by Nandi Ndoro. 

Nwaobiala (they/them/their) is the mixed-media artist the African Diaspora never knew it needed. Hailing from Nigeria and Prince George's County, Maryland, Nwaobiala is a 21-year-old creative using short films, photography, personal essays, mixed-media collages, and other mediums of art to promote self-care and self-expression.

Since starting university as a pre-med major to appease their traditional parents, Nwaobiala has been shifting into full-time artistry. Addressing everything from their first time having an STI to intergenerational abuse amongst African mothers, Nwaobiala's art is powerful, especially to black people who have never been able to have these conversations. There is no doubt that as they continue to explore their artistic capabilities, they are creating a movement of young black people who seek to explore, expose, and heal the hidden traumas of communities in the African Diaspora.

Nwaobiala’s most recent project, “we are more than bodies,” explores the effects of cultural homophobia in Queer Nigerian Americans via photography and digital collaging.

Nwaobiala sat down with Inbold in July to talk about their upbringing and what it has been like being honest in communities that often promote secrecy.  

How did you get into art?

I've been writing stories ever since I was in 2nd grade. I showed them to my teachers but never to my parents. They used to say, "You have to be a doctor. You have to go to medical school." They still say that. Then from seventh grade to the middle of 10th grade, I went to school in Nigeria. When I came back to the States, I ended up in this English class taught by this really dope, black woman. When we got to the Poetry unit, I didn't know how to write poetry but I ended up writing a piece about women empowerment. I performed it in front of the class and I got a standing ovation. I was like, "Wow, I'm actually kind of good at this." Then, during my senior year of high school, I took a TV production class and that was the first time I ever held a camera. I thought it was cool how some people used visuals to tell their stories. I had started working around that time so I decided to buy myself a camera. I had also just come out of a terrible breakup so it was perfect timing. I was still using that camera when I got to college.

When did you start doing slam poetry?

After that poetry performance about women empowerment, I found a lot of spoken word videos on YouTube which I became obsessed with. Then, during my freshman year of college, I joined CUPSI, the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, so I was competing in poetry slam events across the country. I did that for two years and it was really cool. That was really when I started to express myself more. I just met so many cool people doing their thing: being queer as hell and gay as shit. It was everything I needed. I'm taking a break this year though because I'm not really into slam poetry anymore.

Why is that?

At the time I was doing slam poetry, it was bringing up a lot of trauma in my life. I didn't have therapy and I couldn't deal with it. I feel like people want you to tell them about your traumatic experiences during performances but that's re-traumatizing for me. I needed to take a break. Looking back now, I don't think I'm going to go back to it. I also don't like when my writing is in that "slam poetry format". I realized that when I took poet Ariana Brown's workshop and I was like, "Wow, I hate the way my writing is structured." Once I left that format, I liked my writing a lot more.

How did you get into collages?  

Last year, I was at home for Christmas, and I was really bored. My parents are really strict so when I go home, I don't leave the house that much. So I was like, "Okay, let's make art." I couldn't take pictures though because it was cold, plus I needed models and transportation. I had been seeing people make digital collages so I started making them and they were a really big hit.

“we are more than bodies” by Nwaobiala

Are you still making them?

Definitely. I think digital collages are really cool because you get to put different parts together to create a whole new message. I have one about intergenerational trauma via mothers that's inspired by Safia Elhillo. She has literally some of the best diaspora poems that I've ever read, specifically from her book The January Children. The college is about how cultures that only see women as objects for breeding children, not as a people to be loved, impact our mothers. I think my mother is very much affected by that culture. She's not happy in her marriage but she'll still go around telling people, "At least I kept my man." I'm like, "Who cares?". That nigga stresses her out so why is she happy about that? I think a lot of women are unhappy in their marriages, especially in Nigeria. It makes me so sad. Even more, when I watched the Nina Simone documentary, it reminded me of this intergenerational trauma. Nina Simone was abused by her husband and went on to abuse her daughter. You can see the cycle of trauma within that situation. Now that I think about it, we all remember Nina Simone differently than how she really lived. Exploring that type of trauma and how we interact with our mothers is an example of what my collages are about. Outside of that, I'm also trying to get into music.

I was gonna ask you about that… music is the one thing you haven't conquered yet!

Yeah, I'm trying to get into DJing because I think it's so sexy.

Honestly, it is.

Yeah, but the equipment is a barrier. Same thing with photography. Honestly, all this art shit is extremely expensive. Photography is really expensive. The one lens that I have only cost me $30, so that's good. It's nice but it's not versatile. I've been applying to a million, trillion grants and they’re hard to get so I have to wait until I win some before getting more photography equipment. My laptop is also running out of storage every day because of my YouTube channel. Lol, it's just been a lot.

I love your videos!

Thank you! I actually make my videos via my external hard drive because I can't have them on my laptop. Oh, man. It's a mess. Art is expensive and tedious.

But it's something that you have to continue?

Oh, yeah. Art is the only thing that feels right to me. I'm not drawn to anything else. I don't see myself looking up YouTube videos about engineering, for example. I don't feel any type of drive to do anything but art. I'm interested in a variety of subjects but I like the medium of art. I like how it gets to people and I like making it.

“we are more than bodies” by Nwaobiala

What has your relationship with your parents been like since you started spending more time creating art?

My parents don’t really know about the art thing. See what had happened was, I had told my dad that I was going to go to university as a Bioengineering major to eventually get into medical school, I’m still on an engineering scholarship, but my first semester was so stressful. It was really anxiety-inducing and I was stressed about my GPA all the time. I couldn’t live like that. So I changed my major to Industrial engineering, which even though it’s still STEM, my dad doesn’t approve.

But being a full-time artist is the goal?

Yes. I’m building my brand now with my website and social media. I’m mostly financially independent so even if my parents tell me I can’t do it, I’m just gonna do it.

When did you start identifying with the Diaspora as opposed to just Africans in general?

The Diaspora is home for me. Even though I grew up in Nigeria partly, I can't fully identify with Nigerians because I do have that "Americanness" in me. Whenever I have a dissenting opinion about our culture, they often attribute it to me being "spoiled" or "damaged" by western culture.

Yeah, that "Americanness" will separate you so fast from an African community.

Facts. It's just hard for a lot of people to understand or see any other point of view that's different from theirs. But recently, I've been connecting with a lot of people that I went to boarding school within Nigeria. Some of them are roaring feminists now and that's hella cool. I know two who are queer so I would really like to interview them. In Nigeria, the ignorance about queer identity is real. Actually, I don't even have to go back there to feel the ignorance. I can just go to a family reunion or talk to my Dad. It's really hard to deal with, honestly. It makes me so mad that I need to calm myself down.

Who are some of your influences?

Oh man, this question is so hard! I need to pull out my Instagram. One of the first people that comes to mind is Yagazie Emezi. She's a Nigerian photographer and she's a trailblazer. I like everything that her work revolves around. I also like her personality: she's the type of person to say that the photography industry is really white and male and that they all want you to be a certain type of way. They want you to be quiet and aloof. You're just an artist so you can't have a presence to you. But she's like "Fuck all of that! I'm going to be whoever I want and you should just take it or leave it." She also doesn't let people dangle money in front of her and she's very successful. Who else? Oh, Koffee, the musician! She's just herself and I love it.

What has your networking been like with other artists?

A lot of my friends are artists. I have one friend who I went to school with in Nigeria and in the States as well. Her name is Crystal Anokam and she's an amazing photographer. She's really been my support system because she's also a Nigerian American so she knows what's up. In general, I surround myself with a lot of people from the African Diaspora. If you're Diaspora: I want to value your work, I want to pay for your work, I want to see your work. I care about the stories that you're telling. That's the art I want to see. I hate going to museums sometimes because there's so much white art! If I wanted to see white art, I'd go to church. For example, the MFA in Boston is hella white. I was there one time and this teacher was taking a group of students through the African art section. The teacher said to the students, "Oh yeah, this is the African art. We haven't really talked about Africa this year..." and he just kept speeding past all the work. I was like, "Bruh, this is your chance to talk to your students about our continent!" It's sad because there were black kids in that group too. But yeah, I like to surround myself with people who have that background because they know where I'm coming from. Even if our parents don't support our art, we know that the art that we create matters. It's so important for us to talk about heavy subjects and these stories because no one is specifically scouting for African artists. You have to push yourself into the spotlight. You also need to be able to connect with other people. Ever since I started my YouTube channel, I've had so many people message me and tell me "Damn, I'm going through the exact same thing!" It's nice to hear people say that and to be able to have these difficult conversations. Sometimes I feel like I'm just kind of here by myself. This shit can get rough so that's nice.

You can find more of Nwaobiala’s work at www.nwaobiala.com, on Instagram @nwaobiala, or on YouTube: nwaobiala. 

[yousweetsunshine]

Is There Any Relation Between Food and Sweat ?

We all perspiration, yet a few of us sweat a great deal. Like, genuinely, a ton. On the off chance that you fall into this class, you know how irritating and here and there humiliating it tends to be. In any case, never dread, my sweat-soaked companions; we're here to share a few hints to make your life somewhat simpler.

Why you sweat to such an extent

Most importantly, perspiring is totally sound and typical. Everybody sweats. It's the means by which your body chills, expels poisons and keeps up saltiness in your body. So don't perspire a lot about perspiring.

You have somewhere in the range of 1.6 and 5 million perspiration organs found all over your body, and two sorts of organs do a large portion of the work: apocrine organs, which are found fundamentally in your armpit zone, and eccrine organs, which are increasingly plentiful and discovered all over your body. The Encyclopedia Britannica clarifies that your apocrine organs are normally the guilty parties with regards to most humiliating perspiring issues:

Apocrine perspiration organs, which are generally connected with hair follicles, persistently discharge a greasy perspiration into the organ tubule. Passionate pressure causes the tubule divider to contract, ousting the greasy discharge to the skin, where nearby microorganisms separate it into smelly unsaturated fats.

The way that a large portion of your apocrine organs are packed in your underarm locale is the reason you just put antiperspirant or antiperspirant under your arms and not all over your body. Your eccrine organs, then again, shoot when your body gets excessively hot and you have to chill off. The greater part of the wetness you feel when you work out or when you're in a hot situation originates from these organs, however the there is considerably less smell. Here are a couple of the primary driver for over the top perspiring (other than being hot):

Exercise: When your body warms up from work out, sweat is delivered to chill you.

Apprehension: Your battle or-flight framework actuates when you're anxious and it makes a surge of hormones in your body. Your pulse increments and you begin to consume vitality, so your perspiration by and by comes to chill your body off.

Hyperhidrosis: According to Harvard Medical School, Hyperhidrosis is a condition that influences one to three percent of the populace and includes unnecessary perspiration in the palms, underarms, feet and crotch. Basically, individuals with hyperhidrosis produce significantly more perspiration than what's viewed as ordinary.

Feelings: Strong feelings like indignation, energy, or stress can actuate your perspiration organs. Like the way being apprehensive makes you sweat, solid positive emotions—like seeing the adoration for your life or being next to jump on your preferred ride—can wrench up your perspiration creation.

There are different components that can expand your perspiring—like your qualities—yet these are the principle patrons for unreasonable perspiration.

Step by step instructions to Look Sharp in the Summer and Still Beat the Heat

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How To Control This Issue

The most effective method to forestall over-perspiring

Antiperspirants and antiperspirants can help some with regards to perspire issues, yet they aren't constantly 100 percent compelling. On the off chance that wetness is an issue for you, utilize an antiperspirant, and consider taking care of it on before you go around evening time. On the off chance that you battle with stench, antiperspirant is intended to murder the stinky microscopic organisms that feeds off of your perspiration results and make you smell decent.

Once in a while antiperspirants aren't sufficient, however. In the event that unreasonable perspiration is something you manage all the time, there are a few nourishments you might need to keep away from. Think about decreasing your espresso consumption. A few examinations, similar to this one in the Journal of Medicinal Food, recommend that caffeine affects your focal sensory system, making you sweat more. Drinking it hot doesn't help you either, as it raises your internal heat level. You likewise might need to stay away from zesty nourishments. Barry Green, from the John B. Puncture Laboratory, clarifies in Scientific American why hot nourishments have some "heat" to them:

...fiery nourishments energize the receptors in the skin that ordinarily react to warm. Those receptors are torment strands, actually known as polymodal nociceptors... The focal sensory system can be befuddled or tricked when these agony strands are invigorated by a compound, similar to that in stew peppers, which triggers a questionable neural reaction. The focal sensory system responds to whatever the tangible framework tells it is going on. In this manner, the example of movement from torment and warm nerve strands triggers both the sensations and the physical responses of warmth, including vasodilation, perspiring and flushing.

On the off chance that you've experienced various potential reasons for your over the top perspiring and still can't make sense of it, an encounter with your primary care physician may assist you with finding an answer.

Apply Antiperspirant at Night for Maximum Effectiveness

On the off chance that you use antiperspirant, applying it is in all likelihood part of your morning schedule. It's

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Monitor your stench

Over the top perspiration as a rule prompts personal stench, however there are approaches to monitor it. The most clear path is to wear a decent antiperspirant. Antiperspirant not just conceals BO with wonderful scents, it likewise contains liquor to slaughter the microscopic organisms that is causing those grievous aromas.

The nourishment you eat can have an influence too. As indicated by UC Berkeley, several sorts of nourishment and drink can add to your personal stench:

Nourishments containing sulfur: Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and some other plants in the Brassica sort. Plants in the Allium class, similar to onions and garlic, can contribute too.

Liquor: Once devoured, liquor is used into acidic corrosive, yet some is discharged through your perspiration causing a stench.

A to some degree evident tip—yet one a few people despite everything figure out how to dismiss—is washing consistently. In case you're mindful of your BO issue, washing each day with cleanser ought to be an easy decision. Avoiding a day or two lets the microscopic organisms develop and it will just keep on deteriorating. To wrap things up, you can shave your armpits. A larger part of ladies as of now practice this, however it very well may be gainful for men as well. At the point when you shave your armpits, you evacuate hair that is shielding antiperspirants and antiperspirants from getting to your skin, and the perspiration that is created there might have the option to dissipate quicker to diminish wetness.

Dress to shroud your perspiration

A few people—myself included—simply sweat and don't quit perspiring regardless of what items they use or what nourishments they keep away from. In those cases, you're left with some restricted alternatives (except if you need to get Botox infused in your armpits). One of the manners in which you can assume responsibility for you sweat issues is by dressing to conceal it away.

There are a lot of alternatives in the apparel domain to keep you resembling a typical dry individual. First off, the hues you wear have an enormous effect. James Harris, composing for Complex, shares a few hints on what hues you ought to and shouldn't put on your strangely wet body:

Dull hues like naval force and dark won't show wet stains that severely, and neither will light hues like white. Grays, blues, and brilliant hues are the most exceedingly awful alternatives for concealing perspiration, and they'll certainly show the world that you can't stand the warmth.

Also, specific kinds of examples can assist you with concealing glaring wet spots as well. You can wear designs like plaid or camo and sweat won't stick out. You may likewise need to wear something underneath your noticeable garments. Mike Theobald at Everyday Health proposes dressing in layers:

Wear a breathable undershirt to assimilate sweat before it arrives at the external layer of your apparel. Including a coat or cardigan in a breathable material may likewise assist keep with perspiring from coming into see. Simply be certain your layers are slight or proper to the season — you would prefer not to feel overheated and intensify the issue.

Other than shading and the quantity of layers you wear, you may likewise need to consider the materials you're wearing. Something breathable is helpful, yet as Men's Health brings up, cotton is top dog:

It relaxes. Genuine, cotton is actually an inappropriate thing to wear in the rec center when you sweat hard—it absorbs the perspiration as opposed to wicking it away. In any case, in the decently wet states of the workplace, cotton is your decision for remaining cool. Polyester or poly/cotton mixes will in general snare heat, making you sweat more.

There's nothing amiss with attempting to dress to dazzle, yet being agreeable in what you're wearing is your main need. In the event that an outfit is going feature your sweat-soaked spots, you're likely happier wearing something different.

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Forestall sweat recolors on your garments

There are a lot of different approaches to battle the unpleasant, recoloring wet spots. Here are a couple of more tips you can utilize:

Air those pits out: One of the best approaches to keep away from pit stains—and one of my undisputed top choices—is expelling the opportunity for your perspiration to show itself in any case. Wear a tank top or some other sort of shirt that has enormous arm openings. Presently—expecting you have an antiperspirant monitoring the smell—you can perspire as much as you can imagine and nobody is going to take note.

Keep a difference in garments available: Switch your garments when things begin to get too damp with sweat. You can even keep an additional arrangement of what you're wearing with you and it resembles nothing at any point occurred. Not all perspiration issues are pit-related, so this is probably the best choice for those circumstances.

Verdict

Wear sweat shields: There are over-the-counter cushions that you can wear or join to attire that retains sweat before it ever gets to your external layers. In case you're after all other options have been exhausted, you can likewise make some basic ones with some tape and paper towels. It beats vanishing like clockwork to get dry your pits in the washroom.

Pit stains can be humiliating, however there are a lot of ways around them. The most significant thing you can do is prepare.

[sindrafalcone]

Life Update

Just a small real life update about what I’ve been doing lately. So, I’ll put it under a cut in case you don’t care to read that sort of thing. :)

First, the fun stuff: I got another Grand-niece in November! <3 So, helping out with that where I can has kept me on my toes. She’s adorable! (and ginger!!!) I mostly help by spending time with my first grand-niece who is now a spitfire toddler. lol Still loves her some YB though!

I’ve been watching a lot of Kdrama. Finally finished Descendants of the Sun. Didn’t particularly like it. Followed that up with W, which was weird but quite good. And then I proceeded to take forever to watch Princess Hours. lol I think it was just too similar to Boys Over Flowers. (Or vice versa, I’m not sure which came out first.) But at least I can now say that I’ve seen GD’s fave drama. :p Currently, I’m IN LOVE with Touch Your Heart. It’s the best thing I’ve watched since Goblin, no lie. So adorable. <3 I’m 12 episodes in, so around halfway & I don’t want it to end!

Other than that, I’m just basically “momming”. Trying to keep up with one kid graduating this year & the other applying to go to the Academy next year. (Think of it as advanced High school. You graduate in 4 years with both a diploma and an associates degree.) Cross your fingers that he gets in please! They only take 20 kids per year in the program he applied for.

Now, the not so fun stuff: I told you guys a while back that I had to have an MRI. The reason why is because I’ve been having problems with my blood pressure suddenly spiking. This has been happening for about a year and a half now. The first doctor I saw was totally useless for 6 months & the one I switched to has been amazing and spent a year helping me figure this out.

The short answer is that I have a benign tumor growing in my liver that’s occasionally pressing against my hepatic vein. They found it while doing a CT scan to see if I had a different type of tumor. (Thankfully, I don’t. That one would have been a whole lot worse.) And the MRI was to get a better look at it. Then I had a biopsy done just to make sure exactly what we were dealing with.

The technical term is Hepatocellular Adenoma. Most likely, it was caused by excess estrogen in my system, either from my birth control before I had kids, by my pregnancies themselves or just naturally. Either way, mine is currently 4.5 cm. I can’t have it removed unless it gets to 5cm. (Thank you, shitty American healthcare system.) So, I have to live with it for now. Luckily, my current medication regimen keeps my blood pressure mostly under control, with only the occasional spike. I go back in April to see if the stupid thing has grown. If it has, then we start planning surgery, which would be major because they’d have to take a good chunk of liver along with it. But honestly, I’m to the point where I really want this thing out of me.

I hope this explains why my writing has been nonexistent for a while now. Juggling life and multiple doctor appointments has taken up a lot of my time. (Once I had to drive 2 hours just to see a specialist & all they did was draw blood.  *sigh*)

I’m going to at least try my best and finish the Babysitting fic before April. I hate that I’ve left you guys hanging on that one. But it’s difficult to write when your body hates you.

If/when things change, I’ll keep you guys informed.

Love, Sin

[babbushka]

Hey! Can I ask what is the AIDS epidemic related to homosexuals in the 80's? I'm really curious...

Hi! This is something I’m really passionate about for a lot of reasons but one of them being my family was directly impacted by the AIDs epidemic so this answer is going to probably get very long and deal with some sensitive content, so I’m gonna put it under a cut! 

So, to start out with, HIV/AIDs (Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) didn’t start out being called HIV/AIDs. It originally was called GRIDs, which stood for Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, because back when the epidemic first started happening, it was seemingly only happening to gay men. 

But before it even had a name, gay people were just...dying. Dropping dead, literally in the streets, in their homes. It was terrifying. No one knew what was causing it, and no one knew what to do about it. 

In the 80s, AIDs was a death sentence.It was a very fast acting disease that attacked the immune systems of those who had it, killing off strong T cells which protect the body from external illnesses. While many people thought it was just through having unprotected sex, it in fact was transmitted through the use of sharing needles for taking drugs (no surprise that there was a huge heroin problem during the time too). But because there was such a heavy association to gay people, it got labeled GRIDs, and was effectively written off as “not a problem.” 

This, obviously, became a problem. 

One of the reasons the epidemic was as devastating as it was, was because of the president of the united states at the time, Ronald Reagan. He KNEW about the epidemic, he KNEW there was medication that could be developed if only it were funded, but he REFUSED to even SAY THE WORDS AIDs until it was too late. He said things like most American’s didn’t “approve of that lifestyle” and insinuated that the only people who should care are gay people. He made it obvious funding for treatment wasn’t a priority. 

His blatant and willful ignorance of just how many people were dying has painted him as one of the most dangerous and hated presidents in the eyes of the LGBT community. 

The AIDs epidemic was also HEAVILY exploited by homophobic capitalism of the time -- many landlords of poor neighborhoods in NYC would shut off the heat and water (illegally), causing the deaths of their (gay and infected) tenants. The tenants would die from the conditions attacking their weakened bodies, and the landlords would be able to usher in new people. The whole thing was disgusting. 

People rioted, protested in the streets, on the steps all across DC. People were begging for their lives, for funding for medication. Back then? If you were diagnosed with AIDs, you had maybe a couple weeks to live. Maybe. The AIDs quilt was a way to bring attention to it in a peaceful way. For every person who passed from AIDs, a large rectangle was sewn with their name, things about them, photographs of them. It was a demand to not be forgotten, a demand for attention, to shed light on the epidemic. 

Openly being gay was already such a dangerous fucking thing, but NOW there was a whole stigma attached to it. If you were gay, you had AIDs. No ifs ands or buts about it. People were now openly refusing service, jobs, homes to gay people, because they didn’t want to be infected. Many people thought that AIDs was a good thing, because they were of the opinion that gay people should drop dead anyway, because “being gay was a sin and this is what happens to sinners.” Hate crimes went up, people were killed before the AIDs could even get to them. Hospitals stopped accepting blood donations from gay men, thinking they were automatically infected. It was widespread panic, but no one was doing anything about it except punishing everyone who could remotely be involved. 

There was no national news coverage for it until a young white straight boy caught it and died. Suddenly then everyone freaked out, and things started to change. But by then, tens of thousands of people had already died. It’s hard to find a number even, of how many passed from AIDs, because there were no records kept for gay patients, there wasn’t even a name for the disease until it was too late. 

My moms (lesbians) lost dozens of friends in the 80s from AIDs. My mom would see someone, and then next week their name would be on a newsletter of who had died. They went to the original unveiling of the quilt, they say it’s indescribable, seeing so many names, so many friends gone. 

My father’s long-term partner died from complication of AIDs medication. I was young, but I’ll never forget Roberto, and how kind he was, so kind despite being so so so sick. 

There’s a void in the LGBT community, because of the AIDs crisis. We lost so much. So many people, so many communities. We lost history, because of bigotry and hatred and cruelty. BUT it’s important to remember that AIDs hasn’t gone away!!! Because of the cruelty of a political party there was lack of funding for medication and education, and as of 2017 there are more than 1.1 million people living with HIV and more than 700,000 people with AIDS have died since the beginning of the epidemic.

It’s something I think everyone should read in depth about, learn, speak to those in your community who were there and remember.