#i honestly didnt realize this until i read that facebook post

[some-sort-of-ecologist]

some thoughts on doing science as a PhD drop out

I saw this post on Facebook and it so perfectly summed up the gatekeeping aspect of doing research on a charismatic species. Ultimately the gatekeeping led to me quitting the PhD program, but I hadn't even really realized it until I read the way this person verbalized it.

When I did my undergrad thesis, I worked on reintroduced elk that no one really knew existed beyond a tiny group of biologists. Any research about these elk was exciting and GOOD, because so few people had the funding to study them. I got so much support from biologists and so much "wow, that's so cool, I had no idea we had elk here!" from the locals.

I love research. It plays up my strongest skills - outdoor field work, intense observation, patience, technical writing, and analysis. I love collaborating with people and seeing how we can ask new questions together.

I moved on to caribou for my masters and predators (wolves, bears, and cougars) for my PhD. Suddenly everyone and their dog had an opinion on these species. How they should be managed. Whether they should be studied or left alone. Whether my particular study had any value. And I heard about it. All. The. Time.

I started dreading talking about my research. I was so scared of people thinking my methods weren't rigorous enough, or I wasn't asking the right question, or I wasn't using the right statistical analysis for my question. It seemed like everyone I met had some sort of investment or special interest in my species, some reason why I had to consider their advice.

(Now don't get me wrong, I value constructive criticism from colleagues and appreciate suggestions for improvements, but these were constant, unending comments from people outside the field, people working on different species, and people I didn't ask for advice.)

Anyway. I didn't have any real kind of community or support from peers during grad school, especially compared to the network of Elk People I had during undergrad, and it, combined with the effects of the pandemic on the world, eventually led me to quit my PhD. Talking about my project felt hostile, no matter who I was talking to (and especially my labmates), and my heart wasn't in it.

The thing is, I love research. I love wildlife. I would love to pursue a PhD.

I think I just need a less charismatic wildlife.

[animentality]

Thoughts on this post?:

https://www.tumblr.com/animentality/64152073250/abc-newsman-proves-danger-of-allowing-transgender?source=share

thanks for reminding me to delete that post I made in literally 2013 when I was 15 because it doesn't reflect who I am as a person anymore.

is this supposed to be a gotcha?

are people supposed to be born woke?

I am amazed you managed to even find this post with like 6 notes, where I legitimately asked people for their opinion on the subject because I was unsure about it and I had certain taught biases that I hadn't learned to abandon yet.

it might amaze you to know that I once told a guy he'd make a great wife when he mentioned he liked cooking.

this was in 2012.

how cisheteronormative of me, right?

but you were all so woke in 2012, weren't you?

you never said anything that was not PC as a teenager.

you never told edgy jokes or said stupid offensive things.

you were born perfect, I'm sure.

it's not like I'm proud of the dumb stuff I said.

but I didn't start identifying as nonbinary until I was 18, and I didn't start identifying as trans until I was 21.

I was raised by an older mother, not a gen x er or a millennial, but a baby boomer, whose inherent biases still sometimes surface in me when I least expect it.

I was raised Catholic.

I had JUST STARTED PUBLIC SCHOOL, after spending literally 6 years in a fucking Catholic school.

I DIDNT UNDERSTAND transgender issues, nor did most people in 20 fucking 13.

how the fuck could I

my mom to this day doesn't know what the fuck nonbinary or trans are, and I identify as both.

how was I supposed to know?

I'd never even met anyone in the LGBT community at that point, nor had I realized I belonged there either.

I literally didn't even know I was pan at that point, or that I was nb/trans myself, or how I felt about most political topics.

that's why I ASKED.

and I said the wrong things. yeah, I did.

but no one had taught me the right words.

and in that post, no one bothered to explain it to me either.

I had to learn that over time.

and guess what?

I'm still not perfect now. I'm still going to make mistakes because times change, as they always do.

and all we can do is try and forgive people who are trying and doing their best, and remaining open minded to things they don't understand right from fucking birth.

but by all means, do search my history to your hearts content.

honestly, I kinda wanna see what dirt you find because this was an interesting look at the kinds of things I thought in 2013.

I can look back at myself and see how far I've come.

this post was interesting to read for me because it was wildly off mark, it misgendered trans women, and it lacked political, historical, and social understanding...

and so?

yeah?

it's offensive. it's bad.

and I didn't know any better.

but lol.

people learn things. people change their opinions.

if you people spend all your time digging up dirt and trying to cancel people for who they were, rather than who they are, or who they're trying to be... I have news for you.

your existence is pointless and your efforts are meaningless.

but I am flattered you did such a deep dive, anon.

please do find more and send them to me.

I'd like to know what other gotchas you can yank out of my ass.

I used to be on Facebook in 2011 before I deleted it in like 2013.

see if you can find anything there.

I used to write cringy poetry. it might be funny to read now.

[moodymidnightkitten]

Silver Bells Part 1

A/N: Welcome back! I meant to post yesterday but I was busy with work and getting my thigh tattooed banged out all at once in 3.5 hours, which hurts, immensely by the way. But I present to you my fic featuring the man whose last name I use as my own on Facebook, the handsome and infamous, Kakashi Hatake. Enjoy! 

w/c:1809

Pairing: Kakashi x Reader

Genre: light fluff with mostly set building 

Hit this for my masterlist!

It's been a long journey, and one you never saw yourself making. Not in all 25 years of your life, but you've received orders from a man you never met, that was given to your mother when he left after their short but apparently intense fling. 

Jiraiya, your apparent father had made sure to inform your mother that if word was to get back to her about his death she would make sure you went to the Leaf Village. And that's where you were headed now. Actually coming up to the gates now. 

Completely lost as to where to go when you stepped past the gates you spotted a stand where two shinobi sat. So you made your way over to them. 

"Uhm, good morning.." you quietly said to one of the men, who looked up to you and smiled. 

"Good morning! You look lost, what can I do for you?" He smiled at you and was being very courteous, something you didn't expect being a stranger in the village. 

"Honestly, I don't know, my father wanted me to come here after his passing given this was his home village, you might know him more than I did, but his name was Jiraiya," the smile slipped off the shinobi face at the mention of your fathers name. 

"Oh, well let me bring you to the Hokage, she will be of more assistance to you," said the shinobi, now walking out from the stand and giving a look to the other who was still sitting. 

"That seems like a lot buts its very appreciated, to be honest, I don't know much about my father, nothing worth noting at least," and you filled in the shinobi as you walked through the village. Also making sure to take in your surroundings. 

"Given his nature, this was most certainly expected," the shinobi tried to play off what he said as some dumb joke but even though you didnt know him a lot, it was still disrespect to the man who offered half of himself to create you. 

The rest of the trip was silent until you two came up to a dome-like building, climbing the stairs and walking through hallways until you reached a set of double doors. The shinobi knocked. 

"Tsunade, there's an immediate and important person here for you to see,' he peeked his head in after originally gaining permission, you heard a female voice grant permission to let you in, the shinobi held open the door for you as you walked in, closing it behind you, you realized he left you hear with a big chested blonde woman with beautiful blue eyes, this must be Tsunade, the Hokage. 

"And who might you be?" She asked, keeping attentive eye contact. 

"I'm, y/n, Jiraiya's daughter," you held your hands together in front of you. You swear you could see all emotion drain from her face, who would’ve thought news like this could shake a Hokages character, they must’ve been close you thought. After what felt like a few minutes she finally spoke again. 

“Okay, so what brings you here?” she had her hands together, fingers intertwined and elbows on the desk, basically hiding half of her face, which seemed back to normal. 

“I don't know, I was told to come here under the circumstances of his death, and here I am,” you rubbed the back of your head with one hand, feeling tense. 

“Okay, well I’ve been a friend of your father for long enough to know that even though some things he did never made sense, their was always a reason, you can stay here until we figure that out, I’ll get someone to help you with getting you to a place where you can live, just wait here for a moment,” she said, getting up and about to walk passed you, but stopping and putting an arm on your shoulder and smiling at you. Eventually leaving you in her office alone. 

You didn’t mean to peep around but you found yourself gazing over the village through the large window that wrapped itself around most of the office, taking in your apparently new home, and it looked nice, sincerely it was a change of pace from where you were living, the Tanzaku Quarters. You were deep in thought, thinking of how you left your mother to come here, from a whim of a man whom you’ve never met when you were startled by the sound of the door opening. Looking over in that direction you saw Tsunade walk back in, followed by a tall man with white hair and his facemask and his Leaf headband covering a majority of his face. 

“Y/n, this is Kakashi, he’ll be assisting you today, Kakashi, this is y/n,” she waved between you both as you walked closer to them. 

“She’s Jiraiya's daughter, see to it nothing happens to her.” The news seemed to be shocking to everyone else you’ve encountered except Kakashi. “You two may go now, as much as I would like to talk to you more, we’ll have more time for that later.” Tsunade said, walking back behind her desk and sitting. 

“Well it was nice meeting you,” you said with a bow, quickly following Kakashi who was already walking out. 

Kakashi didn’t talk much for the beginning of your journey to your new home, but that was okay you were enjoying the quiet. Casually peeping over to look at him, how nice he looked, especially his hair, which made you quite envious, how did he get such nice hair. He must’ve felt you looking at him because as his face looked down towards yours you quickly shifted your gaze to the road ahead of you. 

“Are you hungry?” he asked, pausing his walking. Causing you to abruptly stop as well, not wanting to make it seem like you were overly staring at him and how nice he looked. 

“Uhh yeah, I honestly can’t remember when the last time I stopped was,” and that was all he needed to hear before walking to his left, you averted your gaze to see where he was walking and it was a little ramen shop named Ichiraku. Kakashi lightly bent over and shifted the hanging sign, making himself a resident on one of many open seats, in fact they were all open. And you sat next to him. Walking helped distract you but now that you two were calmly sitting down together you felt a little nervous to be within such close proximity of this handsome man. 

“Kakashi! Welcome back, oh, and you brought a guest!” an older man behind the counter exclaimed in moderate excitement. Overall he seemed friendly though. And didn’t ask or talk much more than that outside of getting your order. 

“So, y/n, where exactly are you from?” Asked Kakashi in between bites. 

“Tanzaku Quarters, in the Land of Fire,” you said, finishing up your ramen. And as you went to put money on the counter Kakashi was already on it, causing your hands to awkwardly touch, and it lasted longer than it should’ve, making direct eye contact with Kakashi. This small moment had you absolutely flustered, you could feel your face burning. 

“I-I got it,” you tried to insist. 

“You’re a guest, and I asked you if you wanted to eat, it’s only right that I pay.” That was probably the longest sentence you’ve heard Kakashi speak. But little did you know, Kakashi also had a blush creeping onto his face as well. 

Kakashi POV -rewind thirty minutes ago upon first meeting Y/N-

She’s stunning, she’s just standing there by the window but she looks absolutely gorgeous. But I don’t even know her, this attraction is as irrational as it gets. 

She and Tsunade seemed to have finished their conversation, I just need to bring her to the apartment I was told to bring her to and watch over her from time to time. No need to elongate the amount of time we spend together. 

We’ve only been walking for a short while, why does she look so famished, has she not stopped moving since she left home to come here? 

“Are you hungry?” the question slipped out of my mouth before I could even think about them. 

And now here we are, fingers touching and I’m getting nervous, what am I fourteen? These emotions don’t make sense but her eyes are so much more beautiful up close. 

“Let’s go,” I finally say and begin to walk out, hearing her small footsteps trying to catch up. And when she did, she was walking closer to me, my face feels like it’s on fire, but luckily we’ve made it to the apartments. She hasn’t said anything since we left Ichiraku, so she can either be feeling as awkward as I do, or she has found herself already comfortable being around me and I’m hoping for a little bit of both. 

“Here you go,” I said, handing her the keys, after stopping in front of the door. 

Your POV

The rest of the walk was quiet, which you didn’t mind, you were used to it by now, you were enjoying it, not so much as the random strangers you didn’t know looking at you, but you were content. You and Kakashi walked up the stairs of an apartment building before he once again abruptly stopped in front of you, turning around and putting his hand out, a set of keys dangling between his fingers. 

“Here you go,” he said, waiting for you to take them, so you held out your hand and he dropped them. You unlocked the door and walked in, stopping and turning around. 

“Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it,” you said, a blush creeping on your cheeks. 

“Now that you know where you’ll be living you should get some rest before adventuring anything else,” was all he said before just walking away. Which confused you because it seemed as though he was relieved to be finished doing this small task. But you couldn’t be too offended, you would probably feel like this was such a drag to do as well if you were in his shoes. You looked around the apartment getting used to your new surroundings, it really wasn’t much but it was comfortable. But something caught your eyes, something silver and small shimmered under the setting sun on the bed. 

A set of bells and a small note that read,

“Carry these, as a just in case if you do get lost.” Signed Kakashi, it was wholesome but impractical, there's no way he would always be within distance for him to hear this but you found it really endearing. You smiled and continued to get ready for bed, actually excited to be here now, and excited for what's to come.

[unravelling-the-world]

random thoughts related to kagepro (tw for depression?? death?? suicide ?? implied ?? im not sure and idk what else read at ur own risk)

well idk lately ive been thinking a lot and ik ive uh always (? since i can remember?) have been depressed (i mean...it started around age 12...i dont really remember much before that. most of what i remember are bad moments anyways. or very specific scenes. but they dont feel mine. if that makes sense. its like remembering the scene from a movie.  back on track i guess idk well lately ive realized i actually kin some characters and lately ive...been relating a lot to shintaro kisaragi fromkagepro. i mean its ok. there´s always been that specific similarity in us (after all, how many characters in anime are as related to coca cola as shintaro //and me,,im literally a coca cola addict lmao// well anyways. after some days, this lead me to thinking...to a hidden memory within my brain, i guess. I remember introducing my then best friends, to kagepro. one told me haha he´s like u bc the coca cola!! and i think i just laughed and smiled? i truly didn´t see it? i was sad sure, but i couldnt really relate to him. after all, i was the leader of my own little group of 12 year old weebs,right? (i was also 12 btw) i didnt personally dislike shintaro but i didnt rly see myself in him yknow? also i have loved ayano from ever since i have memory so idk like she´s one of my biggest comfort characters and its weird bc if she was ´´real´´ idk if i could date her or anything but im just glad she exists bc it somehow comforts me a lot yeah anyways ayano essay for another time lol. anyways at this age my favorite characters in kagepro were ayano and konoha ( i still love them a lot) thing is, at this point in my life i didnt know/wasnt aware i was transgender but i already kinda liked he/him pronouns so i roleplayed a lot. online. i roleplayed as konoha obviously lmao and actually one of my irl friends related to shintaro ?? and i think we may have roleplayed lmao and stuff.... she even had a facebook account named shin hikkikomori or smth like that. anyways fast forward bc after being 12 a lot of stuff happened obviously. and none of that relates to kagepro until quite some time. i will mention some items that dont really relate to kagepro but marked moments in my friend group that may be relevant later on. Around 2016)? Some of my closest friends changed schools (but we kept contact) yet i still had a big group at school. But it got fragmented along the way. 2017 i went to Japan and formed a new, different friend group with people that even today, are dear to me. When i came back, my friend group fragmented more. I kept contact with other members of the old group but one on one, not as a group anymore. 2018 we graduated, and i broke up my realtionship with one of my former best friends (2016-2018) 2019 was a year of change, and even though i was afraid and shit got weird, i was not doing too bad. i will skip that. Well. Im sure we all know 2020 was a trainwreck, shit happened. i had a villain arc. I lost my shit,definetely. Ups, downs, whatever. 2021 has not been too different. However, even through everything, in early 2020, i kept close relationships with my friend group. as the year moved forward and the restrictions started lifting ( thank you government very cool <3 //ironically obviously, this is the reason this shit wont go away//) some of my friends saw each other irl and stuff, or talked about stuff i didn´t understand/didn´t want to hear while on discord. I felt alienated. I felt empty. I got mad at a friend for the first time, for something he said. I ended up isolating myself. A friend celebrated her birthday. She invited me and never excluded me, asked me a lot of things and asked to virtually include me. But that would just make me feel more alienated, wouldn´t it? I told her it was ok, i didn´t go. Honestly, I felt like a bother. I didn´t want to bother. I wasn´t okay, but i didn´t want to bother anyone, so i isolated myself. I had a very bad breakdown. lasted weeks. When I recovered, it wasn´t the same. It felt like everyone else was closer, while i drifted away. I kind of recconected with some of my friends from Japan after this. In the vacations, i felt like i reconnected with some friends just to drift away again later. However, i never could reconnect with one of my best friends. She never really got mad at me or anything ( i think) but we don´t really talk much anymore. We used to talk daily, be it actual talking, memes, anything. I don´t think we´ve actually talked in weeks. There´s nothing I can do. This year, another friend had a birthday, but I was so disconnected from everyone I didn´t even care. I mean. It´s all broken now, isn´t it? The other day I just started wondering. When did I start relating to Shintaro so much? I had always been like this, hadn´t I? Who am I, actually? Why do I relate so much now? It´s not just about the soda. I had lost friends before, but I never really felt like that. Sometimes I feel like I´ve lost everyone. In a one year span I became a hikkikomori. About a month ago, when I entered classes, I was recognized as Shintaro pfp and I admitted to kinning him to people i´d never talked to before (on chat) // I decided to go apeshit idc anymore about what anyone thinks of me// I had fun. I think I must´ve posted on my stories, because two different people told me they were the ene to my shintaro. I appreciated it. i mean it´s kinda true bc now that i´m only on the pc they do bother me online and try to get me to open up or get better but sometimes the just annoy me lmao but also not bc they all have their own particular lives and they all seem to be doing better than me. Still, my classmates are very nice and inclusive. But it´s not like im close to any of them I guess. I´m just alone now. I´m fucked up man....I don´t feel real anymore. I don´t really know who I am. I guess that´s why I find comfort in seeing a part of myself in Shintaro? But when did i turn out like this? Why didn´t I relate when I was younger? Well, I hadn´t really lost any friends back then. I now know how painful that is. How lonely it is to be alone even when there is people around. idk. and i´ve always been quiet. introverted. shy. a loser. yet now whenever i meet anyone i try to idk connect? but i cant. i wish i could be more evil. maybe it´d just be easier if everyone really, truly hated me. maybe i´d get the strength to actually kill myself then. it´s weird. i really see myself in route xx shintaro. I know that´s fucked up because I know how it ends. but truly, i was trying. I was healing, i think i was going somewhere. and i was trying to keep my newly formed renovated friend group together. I really was trying to. I didn´t mind if we had sub groups on the big group, but we were all there for each other. I tried my best. I felt like i belonged. but now im alone again. and this time there´s nothing i can do. if something, i´ve made it worse. and i keep making it worse. it´s weird. when i first got into kagepro, both shintaro and ayano felt like adults. i thought they were really, really big. im older than them now. now i know theyre not really adults. i get it. i still feel 18. after all, these last two years have been taken away from me. i didnt waste them myself this time.  i feel like a rotten 18 year old...when i listen to lost time memory, i just...get it. i always liked the song. i thought the story was so cool. when it first came out.. i still remember. iwas there. i waited for it. i loved it. i still do, but back then, i just saw it all as some really great and cool song. now i feel like i really, really get it. i love it even more. im hiding away in all my memories. but what is my true heart? what do i really want? i don´t know, i don´t know... If I'm 'wise' then, I can't face forward; I have no reason to so, I'll rot away instead It would be nice if time could be turned back. Years may pass but I'll never die I repeat hopeful words to myself, even though I know I still won't be able to reach you. "It doesn't matter, just die already!" I said as I clutched my wrist, simply cursing it. Unable to do anything, I merely indulged myself in life. "If summer can show me dreams, then let's go to before you were taken away" The days where I hid my embarrassment are illuminating upon the atmosphere and burning my mind. If I'm wishing for a dream that can't come true, then I'll embrace this blurry past and have a dream which I don't wake up from and naturally seclude myself from the outside world. "But that means you can't even see tomorrow?" I don't really care 'bout that, so it's ok I stained my hands in order to kill these boring days I'm choosing "solitude" after all A rotten boy at 18 today too, prayed again while clinging on to your colored smile Underneath the blazing sun Asking "Somehow, please take me away instead of leaving like this!" and my murmuring breath was quietly stopped

I guess i just wish someone could actually help me. take me out of this hole. Maybe some kind of closure would be nice. It´s not the same, though. I don´t have enough bravery in myself to actually kill myself. Mostly because of guilt. I can´t take the guilt of dissapointing everyone. I don´t want my parents to get hurt. I don´t want my bunny to miss me. Yet i wish everyday for it to be over. Lately, half of my dreams have been in Japan, with many friends, some who i met there, some who have never been there. Yet my brain shows me the dreams before it was all taken away. I think one of my favorite parts of the day is dreaming. I like to sleep simply because I dream. And i sleep very few. mayb bc i hate myself? I still barely indulge in life. I do anything to stay distracted. If i think, it all goes to shit. it all does. like now. Heh. it´s funny. I guess no one is truly my ene, because no one actually knows how mentally fucked up i got these past months. No one knows how badly i´ve been treating myself and how badly i´ve been doing. Still, i can´t tell anyone but scream it into the tumblr void. No one has to keep up with my shit. No one has to take care of me. After all, it was I who chose solitude. It was me who kept them away. But I don´t get a second choice. I don´t get a change of routes if things go sour. And i guess I don´t get to get a mentally fucked up friend group where I belong for a second time. Once was good enough, wasn´t it? I.. Even when I wasnt as deep as i am now (again) into kagepro, ive always wanted to die on August 15. It holds meaning to me now as well. Every year I used to ask people to go out with me that day. I know im not brave enough to kill myself. I always hoped for a lil miracle i guess. Last year was the first year...I didn´t do anything. I just... I just hope this year i can make it. I hope the miracle happens this year....I can only hope......its too late for me to be saved, isn´t it? I never thought it´d be like this. I don´t get closure. I don´t get goodbyes. I am left behind on a world that keeps moving. I am nothing.

[pixie-punx]

VERY LONG POST BUT IT'S ABOUT ME PLZ PLZ READ

hi friends, ive never really talked about this until now but i feel like i really need to post this somewhere because it's really important to look for toxic friendships and know what to do

so here's my story. i had this friend that i made in elementary school. for now, ill call them chuck. chuck was literally my best friend and we did everything together in like 5th and 6th grade. chuck ended up moving away in sixth grade and we were both really sad but we ended up moving on and not keeping contact cause it was pretty hard to keep up back then.

when facebook started being more popular and i was in 9th grade, chuck and i reconnected through facebook and whatnot. we were both older and hung out infrequently since they still lived pretty far away and what not. we eventually started talking as more than friends, and in the summer we had started dating, or so i had thought.

we would send cute texts to each other every day and talk about cuddling and all that cute, bologna hs stuff. except everytime i wouldn't text them for a little bit cause i was busy doing something, they'd get upset at me and tell mr that i didn't really care about them. this was obviously wrong and me being the person that i was, i tried to fix the situation and reassure them that it wasn't true at all. this went on for a really long time.

one day, they texted me telling me that we weren't actually dating and that we never were. i was very confused and hurt because i thought i had been in this relationship for several months. we texted every day, i told them how much i cared about them, all that stuff, i cashed in all of my "dumb kid" points on this situation obviously. they said we could still be cute and talk about all this stuff, but that they weren't ready for a relationship, which i said was okay because i respected their space and their decision. i mean come on, it was chuck after all.

in that same conversation they were telling me that they were moving back to my town and that they were gonna be coming to the same school as me. i was thrilled, maybe chuck and i could actually hang out sometime and finally cuddle like we talked about and stuff.

we very smartly set our parameters for what we wanted while we were at school. we decided no on all the pda stuff cause we were just friends, which was their decision and i was again all cool with it because why wouldn't i be?

i see them one day holding hands with someone else. this obviously hurt me because chuck made me feel like i was special and they told me that they didnt want to do pda woth someone they weren't dating, but also that they weren't ready for a conversation. i was very very confused, and i texted them about it

they of course got mad at me and told me that it was perfectly okay that two friends were holding hands and that i was being overdramatic, even telling me that they were starting to doubt how much i wanted to be friends with them. i of course went back into defense mode because they made me feel like a terrible person for addressing it.

there were many points here that i should've decided to keep space, and i even tried to several times, but every time i tried i was greeted with 'you dont care about me, i guess im nothing to you" ya know, the stuff that makes you feel like the worst person on the planet.

one day after chuck and i had another one of those conversations that was like "if i was ready for a relationship I'd date you but i just can't rn but i still like you a lot," chuck started dating someone else that i knew. i was fucking devasted. my trust was broken, i was lied to, i was lead on and i felt like a chump. they weren't texting me for a while because of their new relationship, which was good because i finally found the distance that i needed. I didn't think anything of this situation besides reminding myself that i am worthy of love, something that i honestly still have problems with today. i have to thank the love of my life @joel_august for being just the absolute best and making me feel like an important person and making me feel worthy of love again 💜💜

the reason I'm making this post now and not two years ago when it all ended was because i didnt even realize that this was a toxic friendship until a few weeks ago when i got a text from chuck wanting to catch up. chuck played an important part of my life but they also made me feel like a terrible person and was the person that made it so that I'm very bad at texting, very down on myself a lot and very careful with my friends. im glad that my life has improved a lot since then and that ive been feeling a lot better of myself again (once again thanks joel i love you very much 💜💜💜) and i just wanted to share my story with y'all. thank you lovelies!

[fizzingwizard]

under a cut because my daaaaadddddd rant rant rant do not read negativity vortex

so my dad shared this post on facebook...

now look. this kind of "locker room talk" (is it even locker room talk when all women know about it?) isn't going away. dudes are gonna complain about women no matter what, we get it, moving on...

my DAD though. my dad has noooooo right to be sharing shit like this. he ignored and took advantage of my mom for decades. he expected to make all the decisions and leave all the follow-through to my mom. she occasionally got angry, but my DAD is the one with anger issues, my DAD is the one who came home grumpy almost every day, banged things around, swore, and hid in his basement office all night (my mom meanwhile never had any space for herself - not even the bedroom because it was small and my dad insisted on a king size bed which no joke took up the entire room! there was only a narrow passage from the door to the bed).

and my mom stayed with him all those years until he started lying. about money. when she finally found out what he'd done, guess who had to fix it? my MOM. she had debt collectors breathing down her neck and told me how stressful it was and none of it was her fault, my dad insisted that the money was his domain and got super pissed if you questioned him about it. it's so funny looking back and realizing how much my family was living in the 60s in terms of gender roles. anyway the point is my mom is the one who fixed my dad's lies and she got so upset that she finally, finally left him, I never thought it would happen but it did.

and now when i talk to her she tells me "your dad had this money issue and called me for help saying he doesn't know how to handle it and only I can handle these things" and it's like. dude. you are sooo lucky your ex still handles this shit for you and yet you're STILL ON FACEBOOK sharing shit like THIS. where do you get off complaining about high maintenance women???????? you were married to the most low maintenance woman in the world for twenty-plus years!!! and you couldn't even handle her! that's on you bub not my entire gender! she never asked for anything except to be appreciated now and then. and to be told the truth about things that directly affected HER life. my mom couldn't be farther from the assumed traits associated with the sexy blonde in red thigh highs in this picture and I honestly can't even imagine what woman my dad thinks he knows who DOES fit this description even a teeny bit. not me! not my aunts! not my female cousins! my dad's driven most of the family away regardless of gender with his endless political trash talking and disrespect, a thing which he pretty much blames THEM for and sees no responsibility on his end. but whatever if you count tally for tally it's my dad who is high maintenance lmao.

look at the accusations "loud" (my dad is 100x louder than my mom who never yells! ever!), "expensive" (who caused the money problems?? who needed the expensive TV?? when I was cold I wasn't allowed to turn up the thermostat because we needed to save money, yet somehow we could afford a whole new car every single time my dad totaled his which was no joke almost once a year when i was a teenager!) and "impossible to control" (no one should be controlling anyone but compromise in relationships is a thing and not a thing i would call my dad's strong point! again he made most of the decisions. he didnt completely ignore my mom, i dont think she would say that, but we switched churches because of him, he controlled the finances, and when he lost his job and left my mom with everything on her back he barely even helped around the house or hunted for a new job)

seriously please switch out sexy blonde lady for a pic of My Dad!!

the thing is he shares stuff like this regularly. lad type "women are so complicated man cant live with em cant live without em" posts and crap. he's just joking of course! he's also just joking when he says any democrat libtard female politician slept her way to the talk or needs a good fucking etc etc (never has similar stuff to say about male politicians of course even ones he hates). always always always he's "only joking" and the rest of us are just "too woke to take a joke haha hey that rhymes" -_____-

it's annoying, but this is the post that sets me off. this is beyond annoying to me personally because it shows SO LITTLE self-reflection like gag me. i love my dad despite his flaws, he has many good traits and i have plenty of flaws myself, but i cant stand this. i cant stand this total lack of awareness. you dont know a single high maintenance woman dad. every second of your life some woman is cleaning up your messes. or listening to your problems and being understanding while biting the shit out of her tongue to avoid making you upset. always we have to listen and be kind and fix things, but never ever EVER complain because otherwise "it's so hard to understand what you want!" (why is it so hard for you to do that when you constantly expect the same of us??) "why do women get upset for no reason?" (no one gets upset for no reason as much as you dad!!!) "it's probably pms" (sure blame pms for everything. go ahead. what excuse do you have dad?? do you pms every single day of your whole entire life???) ugggghhh

[mytearsrricochet]

ok so....inspired by the events that took place tonight (or were rather “exposed” tonight, if you will) I feel this is a good opportunity to share my own story about a similar situation. it’s been awhile since this happened and I don’t tell almost anyone about this. but I feel like talking through it step by step will help me cope. the realization about this thing happening was about 6 or so months ago I think....and I haven’t let myself think about it or really do anything with it because I've been terrified of confronting my feelings. I just wanted to put it behind me and forget about it, but we all know that’s not healthy.

so this doesn’t really relate to anything in this fandom, and it may seem too personal for me to post, but ya know whatever this is my blog and one means of posting about something that happened to me without judgment from people who already know me in the real world (besides just the internet). I'm putting it under a cut because I don’t want to bother people with this long ass story lol.

trigger warnings for abuse, self harm, suicide attempts, all that jazz

so when I was about 12 and a half or so, I embarrassingly took place in a thing that was popular back then (circa 2011/12) which was facebook roleplaying. basically what you did was create a new facebook account for a character you wanted to play, which could either be a character that was canonical or one you made up, but you were usually in a fandom. I roleplayed a character from the hunger games as I was very into the fandom at the time, but I was also very into glee then as well. that meant I was active in both fandoms equally, roleplaying with thg and glee people. it was a way to pass the time and I met a lot of cool people on there.

I became friends with a girl who was roleplaying a glee character very quickly. her real name was Emilee and I facetimed with her a lot and had her on my real facebook. she was really great and she was actually a few months younger than me. no qualms about her in this story. she role-play “dated” a male character from glee, Finn. the guy behind Finn was clearly foreign as he spoke English but pretty choppy. since I was friends with Emilee in real life (not just on facebook), I became friends with the Finn character too. the person behind the facebook account was named James. he was really nice and cool, and I didn’t really go further with him in our friendship in terms of social media. eventually though, Emilee deleted her role-play account very suddenly and blocked me on all social media. I had no idea why until Finn/James told me he would rather role-play date me. please keep in mind I was like 12/13 so this is more dramatic then than it is for me now at 19. I thought it was stupid for Emilee to ghost me like that as I liked finn/James as a friend, but Emilee was a really good friend to me and I was pissed that he would tell her that knowing it would jeopardize our friendship. again, 12 years old. this was a big deal back then.

I ended up getting over Emilee ghosting me pretty quickly, and after talking to finn/James (as my character, not about real-life issues, strictly still role-play) I decided sure why not. Emilee (her character was Rachel) was no longer around and I liked to role-play dating scenarios since I had never had a relationship in real life and I liked to act them out online.

my character (Madge) began dating James’s character Finn. they got engaged, married, whatever. by this point in the role-play timeline though, I had actually grown to know James more personally, and half our conversations were about our own lives. we became actual friends. he was really nice, and eventually, I formed a crush on him. I had never met him, facetimed, Skyped, or anything with him, I just really liked his personality. he was nice and funny and always cared about what I wanted to talk about. naturally I formed a desire to talk to him more, which I probably wrongly perceived as a crush. I just liked attention, and at that age, I was going through a hard time in my life with an abusive person that my father was dating, and I was honestly just trying to find comfort anywhere. James provided it for me.

I was getting bored with roleplaying and was getting anxiety about having a crush on someone I didnt know, so I confronted him about it. he told me he cared for me honestly, not just in the roleplaying world. that was about it at that point. I didnt know what that meant which caused more anxiety. eventually he told me he had a crush on me too, based off of the things we had talked about before, and he wanted to get to know me better. I had just celebrated my 13th birthday around this time. I vividly remember going to church with one of my friends and seeing a long paragraph he messaged me about himself. he was 17, his name was James Levine, and he was from France. I realized at that point I was too scared to tell him my age because it might scare him off, so I let him know I wasn't comfortable with sharing my age, but I shared a lot of other personal stuff like my name and whatever. he understood.

about 2 years goes by, and we are still talking and “dating”. the thing is, he has never shown me a picture of himself, we haven’t talked on the phone, we don’t FaceTime, nothing. I had requested it before, but he always blew me off. I had a really bad feeling in my stomach about it, and I think I always knew what was going on, but he was my outlet during a time where I had either bad friends or no friends, my dad was in and out of rehab, I was living with my emotionally abusive grandmother, and I had no one to rely on. I ignored what I knew in my heart because I just needed someone to talk to. it’s my biggest regret to this day.

anyway, when I was 15, I tell him how old I am. if you do the math, he is 19 by now. he’s kind of upset about the age difference, but he kind of forgets about it, I guess. nothing happened from it. I send him a selfie of me, and it’s the first time he’s ever seen me. the next morning, he sends me a selfie of him. he’s cute. we go about our lives.

he sent me recordings of songs he covered, and sometimes when I was really upset, I listened to them before I went to sleep because his voice soothed me. things seemed pretty normal, but I still had that gut feeling, and I ignored it.

one day I opened my laptop to reverse image search something for a friend, and something hit me...I could reverse image search the pictures he’d been sending me of himself. I started crying before I even clicked the search button because I knew what I was about to see. I was right. he used the picture of some 15 year old model from Portugal. before I even confronted him, I (somehow) sleuthed really well and found the model’s social media and sent him a message on all of it to let him know someone was using his pictures to catfish him. I'm not sure what he could've done about it, but I guess it gave me some satisfaction. he responded “ok”. 

finally I confronted James about it, and his first response was to tell me he wanted to delete his account and never speak to me again. he told me this was for my own good, since there was no way I could ever continue to love him after that. and for some reason...since I honestly had no one at the time...I told him to let me think bout it for a few days. I did, and I returned as if nothing happened. he still neglected to send me a picture after that, and I was pissed.

this was around the time of my first suicide attempt. with everything going on in my life, I couldn’t handle it. he was very scared, understandably, and I tried again a few weeks after the first. for this time, though, instead of being met with sympathy, he told me I was selfish and all i thought about was myself. 

around this time, he also started talking about how sick he was. I always knew he had a heart problem (he told me the specific name but I can’t remember now). he was afraid it was getting worse. whenever I had panic attacks, he would pretend his heart was acting up and leave.

now, I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD since around this time. I had started going to therapy after my second attempt, where I was diagnosed with a multitude of illnesses. one of them was PTSD and one of the triggers, though it has since been handled via therapy, was alcohol. he knew this, and one of the things he always told me was that he hated alcohol and could never drink it. this was good for my situation, as we did one day plan to meet up and get married (yeah, you don’t have to lecture me about that, I know, just keep reading). but one night, he got shitface drunk and told me all about how he had a huge crush on this girl that worked for his dad, and he really wanted to leave me because my depression and PTSD were too much for him, and he couldn’t handle me anymore. in fact, he kissed one of his best friends that night, a girl who he had been friends with for awhile and she always made me really jealous because he would talk about her so often. this sent me into a deep depression that literally took me forever to get out of. I was so hurt for many many reasons.

the next day, he asked me, as if it was no big deal, “so uh I know I told you about the girl Payton, can I leave now? I wanna go ask her out”

I just wanted to include that to note his lack of empathy. typing that made me mad all over, though it was FAR from the worst thing he did.

I didn’t talk to him for about a week, until he came back and said it was just a fascination with the girl and not a crush, and he really loved me. I foolishly said ok. 

one day, I was sitting on my computer, and out of nowhere, I got this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if I was going to vomit, and I spent 3 hours surfing youtube to see if the audio clips he sent me of song covers were even his. I have NO idea how I did it, but lo and behold, I found the channel of a guy with those song covers. I remember clicking on a video and hearing the first notes and vomiting all over my lap. I was so upset.

let’s just say I didn’t learn. I forgave him.

he finally sent me pictures of his face, and I was satisfied with that. he sent me voice recordings of him saying my name. I let everything else go, because he did what I asked him to do. still no Skype or phone call.

fast forward a bit, and when I was 17, our relationship was really waning. we wouldn’t talk to each other for days, and when we did, it was nothing of substance. on Black Friday, I went shopping with my friends, and I found the hair dye I'd been wanting to dye my hair for awhile, this metallic blue. I sent him a picture of the bottle and was clearly excited that I had found it. he sent back, “you’d look so ugly in that, I wouldn’t date you if you dyed your hair that color”

contrary to popular belief, I did not suck it up as I did all those years before. I said “ok, guess you don’t have a girlfriend anymore”. that night I went home and dyed my hair an electric blue, and that was a mistake as I didn’t mix the color correctly, but damn if I may say I felt really confident with that bright blue hair after that.

we talked a little bit after that, and he backtracked and said he liked the blue in order to get me back. the night before our 4th anniversary, he broke up with me. and I said “ok. I'm done”. I blocked him on facebook and went on my damn merry way. I was pissed because I never found out what I wanted to know, about who he really was, but I was so done with the years of emotional abuse and neglect from him, all the lies and the insults and the long nights with no sleep and missing school because he would ask me to so he could still talk to me. what a wanker. however, right before I left the account, he told me he thought he might have cancer. I said ok cool and continued on.

fast forward a year, I reactivate the account because I am bored and I wonder if he still has the account. he does. I send a message “hi”. this turns into a few days of talking. I was in college at this point, definitely healed from the wounds he created, though I'm still very insecure about the things he pointed out. finally, I asked him, “can I know the truth?” it took him an hour to reply, and he said “tomorrow. I will tell you everything”

now, that weekend, my roommate’s friend was in town, and I wasn’t sure how that was going to be handled as she was staying in our dorm and I knew if what he would tell me was bad, I'd probably not leave my bed for days.

the day comes, and the first thing he does Is send a voice recording.

typing this part out still hurts, as I never let myself cope with what he told me. the rest of the story is old news and something I honestly don’t care about anymore, but this part just happened 6-7 months ago, and I still can hardly breathe when I think about it.

James was actually...Daniela. she was a 20 year old girl from Mexico who liked to role-play on Facebook as men. she never told anyone about it, and for some reason, instead of just telling me the truth when we decided to talk outside of our role-play characters, she lied to me. she made up WILDLY elaborate stories. I knew I couldn’t trust this person the whole time I was “dating” them, but this was another level. if you’re doing the math correctly, she also lied about her age by a few years, and our age difference was one of the many things that gave me anxiety throughout our “relationship”. 

I literally didn’t get out of bed for 11 hours. my roommate didn’t know what to do with her friend, but eventually I got up. I ended up with my fourth suicide attempt (the third was not mentioned in this story as it was not relevant to Finn/James/Dani). she Brought up the fact that she had told me (as James) that she thought she had cancer and it was very true. she still thought she did.

the next day, she acted as if everything was back to normal. as in, when we were dating. calling me baby, saying I love you. I was so pissed. but for some reason, she sweet-talked me into feeling like this was normal, and for a few days, I even went along with it. until one day, I snapped, and blocked her on everything (at this point I had gotten her snapchat too). I wanted nothing to do with her.

I unblocked her on facebook a day later for some reason, and she sent me 40 messages about how I betrayed her. my last message was “fuck off. I hope you die”.

brutal, but that was the last correspondence I have with her. and I fucking mean it. I hope nothing bad bad things happen to her. I'm still heartbroken over it, though not surprised. 

catfishing is very real, and while I knew what was happening th whole time, that doesn’t mean what happened was ok. I'm WAY better now, but the experience left me with trust issues, severe insecurities, a fear of talking about my mental illnesses because I assume I'll be judged, and a fear of getting close to people.

so yeah. there’s that. sorry about posting, but honestly, this was so therapeutic.

[your-iron-lung]

tagged by @eloarei​ for ANOTHER MEMEARINO BOYS (tho i didnt see it earlier so im just now doing it despite being tagged a while ago?)

The rules: go to page 7 of your WIP, go to the seventh line, share seven sentences, and tag 7 more people.

i dont uh

have 7 fandom wips some are.... ORIGINAL CONTENT sorry 

first up is a future scene from mixed up that... ill finish writing eventually even though its been 4 years.....

He was about to clarify what he meant when he realized his question was rather open ended and non-direct, but Zoro seemed to know what he meant when he answered.

“Being vulnerable,” he said, adjusting his posture slightly.

“Vulnerable?” Sanji repeated, frowning slightly. He cast Zoro a confused look, but he just nodded in return.

“When I was a kid,” Zoro said, sitting up now to explain. “A lot of stuff was happening around me that I couldn’t control.”

He paused, his face becoming drawn and tight as he recalled the events of his past. Sanji waited patiently, watching as Zoro grabbed a handful of sand and let it spill back out onto the beach.

Sanji had never seen him look so lost in thought.

second is from a harringrove one shot but idk if ill ever finish/post it entirely lol

Billy didn’t miss the hint of annoyance in Steve’s voice, but how the hell was he supposed to explain to him that it was a big deal? About how the last time he’d had a boy over to ‘see his room’, he’d wound up in the hospital? There were risks involved when it came to visiting the Hargrove household under Billy’s name, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to let Steve sign that waiver.

Sitting on the hood of Billy’s Camaro, Steve stared out into the abyss of the quarry with a distant look in his eye. In one hand he held a cigarette, and in the other he held a half drunk beer that had warmed up too much for him to properly enjoy.

“What’s there to see?” Huffing on his own cigarette, he moved to stand in front of Steve and slapped at his legs until he spread them. Sidling in between them, he tried to play it cool and took Steve’s beer away from him, finishing it off in one messy gulp. “I got a mirror, a bed, and some hot chicks on the wall. Normal shit.”

this bit is from an old old OLLDD one piece zosan fic i was writing many many years ago that ive started rewritign

That way, he got what he wanted out of the encounter and they got what they paid for.

Easy.

Like him, if the rumors were to be believed. Which, of course, they weren’t.

His business life and pleasure life were entirely separate. Just because he could be coaxed into sleeping with someone for money when he was on the job did not mean he would readily sleep with anyone who asked. He had a career to protect, after all.

Despite how openly he advertised himself, a great majority of the people who called upon him for his services tended to call him at night, either too ashamed or embarrassed to hook up during the day.

this one is from a one piece one shot idk if ill finish that was supposed to be kind of funny

Of course, traveling on the Grand Line made the seasons unpredictable. One day they could be docked at a beautiful spring island, and the next be sailing through a winter zone that was so cold one could hardly remember ever being warm. The winters were never any match for Sanji’s culinary expertise, though. He served the ladies coffees mixed with peppermint, chocolate, vanilla, and a variety of other things to keep it interesting, but they’d been traveling through a peculiar climate that had left him stumped with what sort of drink he ought to be serving his ladies.

It was a climate that felt like fall, but acted more like a harsh winter. The islands were clustered close together in this part of the Grand Line, and where they should have been in similar seasonal states, they differed. None of them had ever seen anything quite like it before, and when he’d asked Nami about it, all she could say was that it must have been a transitional area somehow; a part of the Grand Line that was stuck in a median where it was neither truly fall, nor truly winter.

NO READ MORES BC I LIKE SHARING

this one is about my oc and my friends oc tha ti started writing....3 years ago? its never gonna get finished lel

“Look, can y’least give me a shoulder, huh?” Peter said as he lurched forward towards Keith, sounding breathless. “I kinnae make it on me own. ‘s dark. Kinnae even see where ‘m goin’.”

Keith paused and faced him, frowning, but relinquished himself to give him support. He heard a breathy sigh of relief blow past his ear when Peter slouched down upon him and grimaced miserably as he dragged the drunkard along the walk with one of his arms flopped across his shoulders.

“Did you ‘appen to see that girl at the bar?” Peter asked, gripping Keith’s shoulder loosely off and on. “Did you see ‘ow she kept givin me those looks? I coulda gone with her, but here I am, with you.”

“You are making me wanting to drop you,” Keith growled in warning, lowering the shoulder he had Peter propped on, already prepared to do so.

another thing about the same ocs as before lol but i kno im not gonna finish this one probably

They should be so lucky to be given the chance to perform with the great Peter Saint Peter, somethingsomething extraordinaire.

Whatever his opinion was on the matter, though, it didn’t change anything about his situation.

He already had a few people interested in renting out their living rooms for his tour, but they wouldn’t be interested for long if he couldn’t find someone to support him.

“There’s got to be someone,” he hissed in irritation, scowling as he scrolled down his Facebook feed. “Tell me honestly, Kelley, does everyone in London bloody hate me?”

“Well, I know I do.” Across the room and sitting at his shabby excuse for a kitchen table, Kelley looked bored and utterly despondent. 

and yep thats it

thats only 6 i kno but thats all I GOT 

no tags bc i dont know anyone :^)

[edmartinsta]

Nice To Think I’m Still On Here

Woah has life changed since this. Tumblr is my first place I ever published anything and posted anything before Facebook and Twitter were even a thing for me. I cant tell you how excited I am to know that from here on out I can log in and continue something special to my heart. My posts are a little here and there so I hope I dont scare you away or weird you out or make it boring. From this moment I’ll try to continue my content through here where I know only one person will actually know to find me and no one else haha. To those that may not know me so well I used to be a music blog where I would talk about so much stuff until I realized I wanted to make a website. This was more of a private thing and actually more public than it is now with Tumblr’s popularity back in 2010ish when everyone I thought was cool owned a Tumblr. I guess I can’t blame them I left for a long time this and fell off hard even though I probably could have done something pretty cool with it by now or used it to help me on my other things. 

Little update: I left high school in 2013 so not much after the music posts I remember stopping this and maybe continuing it here and there, After there I went to community college where I ended up making lost of memories which im sure I’ll have plenty of time reminiscing with you guys, I then moved to Chicago to follow my dreams as a designer and stayed out there for about four years. Was amazing and could have been better if I planned better and actually could get a job out there that was laidback as I was a pretty tardy asshole to my employers. I wasnt late by hours but I was late often and if that didnt get me fired I would simply quit and never show my face there again. It was a mess, I was a mess, everything was fucked up but everything was also new and fascinating. I dont regret any of it. Now its been years since college and sadly I never finished with a semester remaining. That was a terrible day for my mother I could see she wanted to yell and cry because I told her I got expelled basically from art school for flunking. Man that was a terrible situation I tried to tell people I really tried my best was just a reckless kid who could never get any sleep and was always thinking of what to do and not doing the stuff. Ugh I get upset just thinking about it. So much time wasted. But I suppose I at least realize it now....also that I still dont regret it, it shapes us these failures. im 25 now and soon to be 26 and honestly I’m scared shitless. I feel like i never saved anything, never built credit, havent gone on a date in years, havent gone to eat with friends more than five times in six years, have broken almost everything I own in some sort of way. i dont eat correctly all the time, i dont exercise to keep the figure i used to have less than two years ago. I started college senior year of high school and somehow still screwed up the process and fell behind over and over again and even got screwed by the education system and now have tons of debt which im barely getting out of because of my amazing mom who is also the most toxic person in my life. Man........i know I look bad i know i suck.....im not perfect in any way.....I lost my way..........I know my way back and what I gotta do but........that time ill never get back. Ive never had a stable job in my life for god sake. Ugh I hope I dont come off as a failure I feel it completely but I dont want to be one. I have done so much in my life and met amazing people that honestly makes it all worth something but damn my heart........I don’t want to blame anyone but myself. My parents werent the best educated and still scares me to think I was so alone when I was younger that even my parents only talked to me to put me down and still kinda do but now we can carry a conversation and bond a smidge...im 25......

This quickly turned into something more than just a update I got caught up. But I want to take this extra step in my life to document on here most of my thoughts and things as I used to back before high school culture was no more for me. To Christina.....if you read this at all...just know the only thing over the past couple years on my mind has been you if not my purpose in this life..my life....has been nothing short of terrible since we last talked and yeah I had a ton of good luck too and am blessed to say the least but the man I said I wanted to become just hasnt happened yet. I let myself go for a bit...but now I want to show the world and you...that the past couple years didnt just happen for nothing....there is so much, so fucking much I got planned and been planning for that I just hope you see why it took so long. My time will come..and maybe one day we can talk and laugh about all this because you were one of the most memorable people ever to cross paths with and even though we barely text each other anymore I hope one day we can be good friends again. Im sure we all been so busy surviving. 

To those who got this far I really didnt expect anyone to finish this. It was a huge ramble. But I hope you can see I came a bit moody into the post but also with hope and excitement that Tumblr will be my home again for getting away from social media. Its been almost two years since I posted on Facebook and I dont use instagram as much anymore so ill be on here :D message me if anyone wants to be friends or anyone who may relate heck anyone who thinks they wanna be friends haha penpals that maybe have art side to them too??? hahah okay thats all bye everyone <3

[a-baleful-howl]

7.07 Thoughts

First off - the leaked scripts were real. It was actually pretty annoying. I felt like I was watching the episode twice. I hope Season 8 doesnt have a lad leaker. I really do. I enjoy watching the episodes raw. And lets be completely, dead honest here - I would not have known about the leaks or seen them accidentally if I wasnt as active on Tumblr. At least on Reddit I can choose to avoid certain subreddits. On tumblr, if someone posts a spoiler there is absolutely no way of blocking it preemptively. I dont want to have to leave Tumblr next season... My sister (the family that is visiting right now, that I posted about not too long ago that we do not get along), doesnt watch GoT because she doesnt have HBO. She keeps up via snapchat and posts on Facebook. She thought that Longclaw blinking was super important, if that helps you understand how she keeps up with GoT. In gifs and screaming southerners on facebook. Anywho, when Jon said he pledged himself for D@ny, my sister leaned over and whispered "that made her super horny." Yes. I didn't see "horniness" in Danish Pastries eyes, but that was literally what was written in the leaked script - so obviously it translated to a very VERY casual viewer. So I asked her it she thought Jon was in love with D@ny and she acted like I was crazy for even asking. Obviously he likes her. Like a boy is mean to his crush on the playground, she said. That didn't make me feel much better. Honestly, I dont think Emilia is a bad actress. I think she plays stern, cold boss bitch very well. Or screaming entitled delusional girl. (which I honestly mean because Emilia is such the opposite in real life) And when directors told her to play heart eyes, she did heart eyes. I dont think shes a bad actress. I just find D@ny as a character boring now. Up until saving the Wight Hunters, she hadnt done anything redeemable or "good" since maybe Season 2-3. Anywho- off track. All this talk about honor and keeping his word and being Ned Starks "son" really struck me. He promised to fight for the north no matter the odds. So him pledging to D@ny is his own way of protecting the north. Protecting his family. But how can he talk about honor and keeping his word if he's secretly undercover? I really think he's being sacrificial. Thats something Jon would do. Give up his dreams and personal gain to save everyone. When Cersei, the coldest, baddest, most heartless bitch in all of Westeros, talks about how seeing just ONE wight made her fear for the ones she loves - imagine how JON FEELS seeing thousands of them. He is AFRAID for his family. He will so whatever it takes to protect Sansa, Arya, Bran and the North who chose him as their leader. I dont know if Jon realized immediately, that once Viserion died the NK had him. If Jon did, then that absolutely would have put him on express mode. Now - one big thing when Jon was with Ygritte and the Wildlings, is that they ALWAYS said "burn my body so I dont end up like them." I can just imagine Jon remembering those words every time he thinks of Sansa, Arya and Bran or the coming walkers. That he doesnt want his loved ones to turn into wights - because it was even what the wildlings feared most. Its a fate worse than death. He burned Ygritte. He's burned so many people so they dont turn into wights. He is trying to save his family from that morbid fate. Then we have Theon and Jon talking. So - I think Jon's "it might look that way on the outside" is a hint at his undercover/sacrificial ways. But, whats also really interesting to me, is that Theon brings up RAMSAY. And Jon narrows his eyes like "yea, tell me more about that monster who hurt my Sansa." As if he wants to hear about Ramsay and what Theon went through - as if to understand Sansa more. To get more insight on what happened to her. Theon bringing up Ramsay would make Jon think about Sansa here. And they're talking about THEON saving his SISTER. And Jons response is "why are you talking instead of doing? What are you waiting for?" YES. YES. YES. Jon is so sure that the right thing to do is to put yourself in danger to save your family - your sister. He doesn't think about it. His answer is instinctual. Because thats what hes doing now. JUST DO - dont think. His answer is everything to me. SO MUCH. SO MUCH. Sansa didnt seem that upset when Petyr suggested Jon wants to marry D@ny. Which to me says Sansa has NOT considered a romantic relationship with Jon - YET. And what usually happens in romantic plots, is that theres an awakening moment that brings one of the interests to realize what they want. Maybe this is Sansas wake up call. That the idea of Jon marrying another leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. But we dont see full on jealously in this episode, really. At least I didnt. Okay - now to boatsex. We have a brief moment of Jon standing in front of her door before knocking. He goes TO HER. Which bothers me. I just cant imagine canon!Jon initiating sex with anyone. Hes too noble and honorable. Sex outside of marriage? Possible bastard babies? Reading signs wrong? But this could be a moment where hes deciding - welp, I have to do this to earn her undying loyalty for good. Im not completely sold on ignoring my "he'll fuck the first girl who isnt his sister" or "he has to prove something" headcanons either. I mean, I believe he is giving into D@nys affections because he has nothing else to lose. Sansa is his sister. D@ny is beautiful. And Jon might see something good in her, especially after she has postponed her quest for the throne to save mankind - but deep down their characters are so different that HOW could he really be in love with her? And the fact that their sex scene is over cut with exposition and dialogue means that this scene is more than just a romance. Its a plot point. It has to be spelled out. Its still mysterious. D@ny is in love, but Jon? Jon searches into her eyes as if he has to convince himself to stay hard. I think Jonsa is endgame - but the real question here is, does he love Sansa or D@ny? Will he love both? Or does he love neither? I have more posts about the other characters this episode, the writing, and the problems soon. This is just my quick post episode Jonsa reaction. My phone is at 4% so I will have to come back later. (OMG PLEASE DONT DIE ON ME) Lets just say that I think JonxD@ny is fanservice, and that we shouldnt trust D&DBs writing completely or write any possible outcome and plot turn off. And love each other, we have fanfiction and remember they are fiction. (but Jonsa is endgame ;) ) OH- And "the dragon and the wolf"? The writers obviously thought they were being clever to get a double meaning out of a title, about Rheagar and Lyanna and Jon and D@ny. Doesnt mean theyre a couple - theyre just the most important plot reveal this episode. :p

[isang-pangarap]

August 8, 2019 | 7:36 PM Life has been pretty damn good lately. But I guess it's also been pretty bad since I'm back on here... I went back and read some of my pre-Culture Night posts, and I teared up. Mainly because I STILL remember how I felt back then. Luckily, in terms of things like school and life goals, all is good. I just apploed to PA schools, I just applied to a study abroad program, and I'm starting my final semester of college. I survived Microbio and Orgo2, maintained that lovely 4.0, and pulled a stellar Culture Night out of my ass with the help of my friends. This summer I adjusted to working in my new retail job, I got to travel to Norway, France, and Italy, and I have plenty of free time now to bujo and learn Tagalog. :) Truly, life is so wonderful. Now... why am I here? Because there are just some parts of life that are sadly... just not wonderful anymore. Unfortunately, the problem with the ol' PR chair is still quite a problem. Turns out she has been resenting me much more than I realized; I noticed she unfollowed me from Ig and completely unfriended me on Facebook... Crazy. In all honestly, in the grand, GRANDEST scheme of my life, she really, REALLY does not matter. I was just barely friends with her, and after I graduate, I likely will NEVER see or encounter her again. Thus, it really shouldn't bother me. The only thing is that... it just sucks that I didn't realize how bad it was until it was over. I made a mistake and said something that... really was not intentioned to be racist. I do see how it can be taken though, since I really shouldn't have pointed out race in general. (Long story short, she expressed interest in a position for next year, I said "Think of how diverse things will be next year," and she replied with "... oh if that's the only reason then nevermind"). Yes, I shouldn't have pointed out race. It was unnecessary. But the thing that upsets me is that she made it seem like that was the ONLY reason why I wanted her to do the position. In the past, I have expressed to her how proud I was that she broke out of her shy shell when joining this org, how she was so on top of her job and so on point. So she KNOWS it was not only about race. I could tell she had been getting annoyed/tired of me and was avoiding me throughout that semester. So the fact that she used my mistake as the final straw to justify her literally treating me like I don't exist is just absurd. Not to mention she also had disdain towards me because she felt that I was favoring my other grandlittle over her. (No dip I would do that... she had been acting so coldly to me throughout the semester, why would I pry myself in her life and good graces if she didnt seem to want to talk to me? How would I know she just wanted me to be as enthused about her as I was about my other grandlittle when she was acting like THAT? NOT to mention my other glittle is literally an angel who is ALWAYS excited to see me and is the one giving ME hugs and sayingI love you and wanting me to say it back to her. Of course I would reciprocate her love!!!) I really wanted things to be good (or at this point.. at least okay) with her. I intended to talk to her in the beginning of the summer, after she completely ignored me when I saw her at preview... but I never built up the courage or made the time to ask. Now I will be seeing her tomorrow, and I don't know how to act. I have been advised to and also kind of want to talk things out with her, just to try (and what happens... que sera sera), but another side of me as been told and feels that there are truly people out there who will just not cooperate with you, who will see you as a bad guy, no matter what you do. Because it makes them feel better about themselves. And thus, I should just try to move on, and learn that hard lesson. I still don't know what I want to do yet. But, I just hope this retreat is enjoyable. :( 2nd thing that has been haunting me is... my relationship with Scott. It's literally in shambles. When people ask me what's going on, I say I don't know, I shrug, I laugh... because it's just in shambles. It had been going downhill since probably our 2nd anniversary. I think I probably got mad at Scott for another dumb thing, or got jealous about something again... but our fights just got worse and worse. I got worse. And to be honest, I treated him so poorly by the end of it. I treat him poorly now. At some point, I stopped wanting or caring if he was happy. I guess it's because his happy-go-lucky-but-neglectful attitude made me feel like HE didn't care if I was happy. In that last year, I expected him to do this and that, and became so dependent on him that I truly did take him away for a lot of time. (Though I still dont think his dumb sister's talk with me was justified at all... she and they got their own problems, HAD their own problems, before I even came into the picture. And they're still there and yes, my presence made then worse, but ultimately that's something THEY need to fix and SHE should've talked to Scott about FIRST before blaming me. Smh she has to work on her goddamn social skills, they're somehow worse than mine.) ANYWAY... I did take up a lot of his time, and got too dependent on him. During that year, I guess I thought we still had a chance of getting better. I guess I wanted and believed he would change into the guy I wanted. I would just get mad at him for not meeting my expectations as a boyfriend... (to be fair... LITERALLY who brings ONE sandwich, to a picnic date for 2. Insane). Though on the otherhand, my expectations are pretty high. Maybe too high... who knows. All I am sure about is that we definitely aren't working out at all. Not as an official couple, and not as a title-less couple, and not even as FWB. And our lives are starting on different journeys. It makes me sad, but this is truly one of those points where two lines converge, but eventually drift apart. Those lines are our lives, and that point where they touched was us. But we are at the end of us. I need to have the strength to keep my distance. So we can finally, officially end it. It will hurt a lot, but it is necessary for us to move on. Anyways... those are the things that have been haunting me. I just want to have a positive mindset. When it comes to my social shambles, sometimes I think towards them negatively. But I want to stop. The only way for me to move on is to not think about it at all. I want to hope for the best for them, and if they don't like me or want me in their lives, then that's fine. I want to stop worrying about it. I don't want to feel anxiety whenever I see them, whether in real life or social media. I want to be free and to be happy. I just want to be happy again. :(

[bong-rips-bleeding-hips]

Am I even worth it?

Why am I here? What point is there to all of this madness? Why do I not take the measure and ask for new meds? I can feel myself losing my grip on everything again. Why do I function like a clock?

I went and hung out with my friend the other day and took pictures, hiked, and had a lot of fun for once, and then I came home and felt the air change. Why is it, when nothing happened, that I feel this strange sense like the people I live with, my boyfriend's own family, thinks that i cheated? I suppose it's because it's easy. It's easy to talk shit about me. It's easy to believe that I am unfaithful when he is the one who's always taken on that role, I suppose. It's easy to believe I was unfaithful when I am unhappy with my boyfriend. I guess it's too fucking hard to believe that even though I am unhappy I am a moral fucking person and wouldnt do that to his family. It's hard to believe I would not disrespect his and his familys name and household. Why did I choose a family that has only seen the bad in people? Why did I choose a family in which the parents don't seem to care enough to ever discipline their children even though those very children have zero regard for anything their parents say?

Why do i love him so much? Why do i actually love him enough to NOT go and fuck around with other men?

Why do i know that his parents hate me? Hell his whole fucking family hates me. I try so fucking hard to be a person they want around and I am just not that person. My childhood was entirely too fucked up for me to be a normal person though. My mental state doesnt make me an ideal canidate for being someone ANYBODY wants around, nobody wants the depressed, sullen, bitch, right?

I know im not wanted here. I'm just not fucking wanted.

He's trying to make things work, i can really see him trying with taking me out to go get food, but he doesn't talk to me while we eat. He doesnt talk to me in the car. He doesnt talk to me at home. He doesnt talk around his own best friend when I'm there. He doesnt talk.

I'm so fucking boring and I try to talk. I never get out of the house and I still try to talk. If I go and do something he'll sometime ask, but most often not. If he learns anything about me its usually because I just randomly start talking about it and then he doesnt say anything about it. I'm not a funny person. Im just not. And when i do try to make jokes he doesnt laugh. He rarely laughs at the things i show him.

I just dont know What I'm trying for anymore. Almost makes me think I shouldve actually cheated. But I couldnt do that, not only because of him, but because of his sister. Because I know for a fact that if I did that she would beat the shit out of me so fucking fast. And I call her my best friend. But is she really? I made a long heartfelt post about her birthday and she didnt even comment on it, is that too petty? Too insignificant? After the day passed I realized that a letter or a speech wouldve been more personal but I didnt think of that, I wanted to show the public "hey everybody my best friend turned 18 and I want you to know that i love her" because i do. And I dont think the feelings are mutual. I think shes honestly just faking it until his and I relationship falls apart at this point.

I think part of why she didnt respond is because she initially read it on my phone and couldnt and then just didnt think about it after she saw it on her phone, but it was really fucking long and I'm dissapointed that I didnt even get a comment because practically everybody else did and I know thats petty but I made the LONGEST most detailed post and there was no response. Crickets anybody? I didnt make any posts for his birthday or our anniversary because he has never made a single gesture like that for me on Facebook in the entire 5 years of our relationship. So, I think subconsciously since I didn't write him a birthday post my brain said "write posts for all of your friends" but I typically write some sort of post on my 3 over the years best friends every single year so I didnt think anything of it. But his family is on my Facebook so they probably took it the wrong way. I dont know what I'm doing anymore.

So I ask again, why am i here? Is it all worth it?

[trendingnewsb]

Sympathy for the Incel

If you want to know why young men are broken, ask them.

There is a cultural crisis emboldening the misogyny and violence of the little-known incel movement (an abbreviation for the self-professed involuntary celibate community of men) and which has now been tied to three mass murders: Elliot Rodger, Chris Harper-Mercer and, this week, the alleged Toronto killer Alek Minassian, who is accused of killing 10 and injuring 15 people in one of the most horrific acts of mass violence in Canada in years.

One after another, media outlets are seeking to understand how this could happen while raising the question of how we got here. The Internet is enabling a community of men who want to kill women, read the headline in The Verge. Can the radicalization of incels be stopped? asked the Globe and Mail. But one headline stood out, from The National Post: What should we do about the incels? Maybe help them. Shouting about what horrible women-hating losers they are (which they may be) is not going to prevent one of them from murdering again.

This, in particular, is the question Im concerned with, and why I am attempting to find whatever empathy or compassion might be possible for the disconnected young men flocking to the movement and who might be at a crossroads. One young man stood out in the countless hours I spent listening to podcasts, videos and chat room conversations within the incel community which I have been following for months now: 19-year-old Jack Peterson, a socially awkward Chicagoan who after hours of interviews agreed to reveal his real identity for the first time to The Daily Beast.

To be clear, Peterson initially did not want to do any media regarding the group, particularly a profile on what the makings of an incel look like, but after considering my appeal that perhaps others might want to reach out if they could have a better understanding, he agreed.

Born Kalerthon Demetro in the suburbs of Chicago, Peterson (his mothers last name) is a high school dropout who lives with his single mother and whose father left when he was two years old. Peripherally involved in the online incel community for years, Petersons first reaction to the Toronto horror was to record a podcast specifically condemning violence and misogyny and underscoring that for the majority of participants, this is not their reality. For him and many like him, he says, the incel community is a means of supporting one another in a world when it sometimes feels like there is no one else.

To listen to the teenager speak, he does not seem psychopathic. He does not seem like he endorses psychopathy. On the contrary, he seems shy and awkward and lonely and angry. He laughs when other incels make dark jokes about killers, but he does not make them himself. He gets it. They are blowing off steam.

Being an incel is not about violence or misogyny, repeats Peterson, who is the only incel who has been on television doing interviews in recent days since the alleged Toronto killer pointed a finger at the incel movement in a cryptic post on Facebook confirmed earlier this week. Yes, for some guys it is, but not for me. Not for many of us.

The challenge in covering the incel movement is that in many cases the cherry-picked and sensationalist coverage reinforces these mens persecution complexes and drives them further into a pit of rage-fueled nihilism. Attempting to find any kind of compassion is in no way to excuse or normalize the deranged among them. On the other hand, it is to see what options we have left in reaching them at all.

In the groundbreaking book Change or Die, author Alan Deutschman writes, [The sense of self is threatened by any major change in the deep-rooted patterns of how we think, feel, and act, even a tremendously positive change such as leaving behind a life of crime and addiction. A change in progress demands new explanations for a past thats now cast in a darker light.

Essentially, reaching someone entrenched within a near-fanatical belief system is often impossible because the ego will put up a fight to the death in order to not deal with the psychic pain of feeling that everything that has been done up until this point has been done wrong. But it is possible.

In Deutschmans book, spanning extensive research on changing past negative behavior to future positive actions, one case study of a parole officer illuminates how he found the most success in reaching the seemingly unreachable. By realizing that the real reason why people dont change is demoralizationthe overwhelming sense of hopelessness and power he applied the theory that the most he could do is to inspire a new sense of hope and power. Indeed, this officer invited 14 of the most argumentative ex-convicts and spent 90-minute sessions listening to them rather than telling them what to do. The response was extraordinary. The parole officer recounted: In one and a half hours they calmed down. They said, These guys arent against us. Now they come back every week and say, At least Im being listened to. In the last year the difference has been huge. They want to make a change.

In speaking to Peterson on the phone, while a journalist is about as a far away from a parole officer as you can get, its amazing the difference that occurs when I listen to what he has to say about the reality of incel culture versus how he sees the media portraying its members.

In his view, as despicable and morally unfathomable as the psychopathic fringe is, the reality of the wider membership estimated in the tens of thousands of active members is far more complex.

The way Peterson tells itand as is supported by his digital footprint of videos, podcasts and commentsfor him and many others, to be an incel is to seek the camaraderie of a group of male peers who provide an outlet where, for once, they can honestly talk about the increasing fragmentation, disconnection, alienation and ostracization they feel in an always-online world in which, as far as they can see, they are not welcome or wanted.

Peterson compared the mischaracterization of incels to the xenophobic broad brush that takes a minority of radicalized Islamic suicide-bombers and uses it to condemn the vast majority of Muslims. Instead, he said, there is an acceptance that there is a vile minority who distorts the vision of the communitybut that it is not his vision for the group.

Like many in the incel community, Peterson essentially grew up without a strong father figure.

His mother kicked his father out because, in Petersons words, he used to beat the shit out of my mother and she got a restraining order. His father was the same age that he is now when he got his 39-year-old mother pregnant, and hes never met him, but they have spoken on the phone a few times.

I dont really have any feelings about him, Peterson says. He just kind of is.

From an early age, Peterson felt a level of social anxiety that was bearable but distinct. His kindergarten teacher asked him why he did not play with the others. He said, I dont know how.

Things started to change around the third or fourth grade. It was the first time the girls started making fun of him, he says, saying he was creepy and gross and weird.

I didnt understand it, he says. I was told either to act like a man or that girls could do no wrong. And yet I was constantly told that men were the cruel, bad ones. None of it made any sense to me. I was just extremely shy. I didnt talk to them, but the teasing was relentless and made me want to kill myself.

In the seventh grade, Peterson transferred to three different middle schools all in one year as the bullying followed him everywhere. By the time he reached high school, he says, one young woman started taking photos of him and sharing them with other girls who openly laughed in his face about how ugly he was and why they did not want him near them. He did not finish his freshman year at the Chicago Academy for the Arts, but dropped out after the first semester. His mother never knew the extent of the bullying he experienced.

I was just ashamed, he says. How do you talk about that?

The profoundly formative pain of youthful bullying has been around forever. When a classmate taunts you and proclaims your worthlessness to all your peers, if you are a kid, the humiliation of such an experience doesnt feel like its happening in a classroomit can feel like a worldwide-televised death sentence.

Very few kids on the receiving end of the cruelty know how to deal with itbecause of a lack of life experience that is just as undeveloped as their pubescent brains.

But for a kid growing up today, the tool of the Internet levels the game. No longer do you wonder, Will anyone ever love me? Now you can Google it, and find secret places and communities and bodies of knowledge that your parents dont even know exist. This can be exciting, emboldening, a total game-changer.

I remember the first time I found a site that even mentioned the word incel, I was like, Woah, these guys are outcasts, too, he says. I kind of felt like, maybe Im not alone.

At the age of 11, Peterson visited 4chan for the first time, and he saw his rage and loneliness expressed as well as the impotence of such advice as just get over it. He didnt know how to. He didnt have anyone to ask. He just didnt want any more ridicule.

It was kind of crazy to see and read a lot of the stuff I did, Peterson says. But it was also the only place where other guys talked about some of the things I was experiencing. Feeling so alone and rejected by the people around you. I was extremely shy then, and still kind of am, but it makes you feel really fucked up to be told youre a creepy loser by a pretty popular girl when youre just sitting there, saying nothing, doing nothing, wishing you were invisible but instead being the quiet freak with the cystic acne all over his face.

He also received an indoctrination into the culture of these young men who accepted him and what they found acceptableand what he would need to as well if he were to finally fit in somewhere.

To understand the increasingly irony-rich language of the users, its essential to read Angela Nagles book Kill All Normies, which exquisitely captures the critical shift in online perspective and the death of what remained of a mass culture sensibility that happened at exactly the same time Peterson began actively engaging with it.

In her brilliant book documenting the culture wars of the extreme left and the extreme right in recent years, focusing on subcultures including 4chan and incels, Nagle describes the attitude rebellion on the site against the sentimentality and absurd priorities of Western liberal performative politics and the online mass hysteria that often characterized it.

Peterson is one of the best representations of exactly how these culture wars are shaping our young mens identities.

When everything is ironic, nothing is. So they mock it. All of it.

Theres this big hypocrisy in the fact that so many people who say they are all about human rights and empowerment think its actually funny when boys get mocked, he says. I never said a single misogynistic thing growing up. And I was punished. Just because I was weird. I couldnt help it. I honestly wanted to die.

On the contrary, the incel communities he found online seemed different.

When I dropped out of high school, the one place I felt okay about stuff for a little while was when I was online, Peterson tells me. By the time I discovered the incel culture on Reddit, it felt like, Okay, Im not insane. I was reading all these other guys stories about how girls told them they were repulsive. I never identified with the misogyny, but I did identify with the rage at the hypocrisy of just how untouchable women were in society. No matter what, no matter what awful thing a woman did, it was always supposed to be like, Oh yeah, thats female empowerment. But when you have no friends and are getting bullied and humiliated by women constantly and are told to both man up and renounce your masculinity its like the one bright light you see is this community.

By the time he was 16, Peterson finally met in person a young womanfour years older than himwith whom he had been chatting online since he was 12 years old. She did not know what he looked like for some time, and when he finally shared his picture, she told him that she didnt find him attractive. He lost his virginity to her, after which he says she ridiculed his penis size and laughed at him. Later, she sent him copies of messages that she had sent on to other men she was cheating on him with where she explicitly described the sex acts she wanted done to her. (Ive seen corroborating evidence of all of this.)

I was literally cucked, Peterson says. That word doesnt have any meaning anymore, but thats what I was. I still wanted to see her though. She was the only girl who had ever expressed interest in me, even though she tore me down and told me how ugly I was. It was still better than nothing.

According to Peterson, the relationship finally disintegrated when she began choking him and tried to go after him in her car. He ran to a nearby store to get help, and has the actual footage of the security cam showing him flailing against the glass window. The police came, and to cover for the girl, he said that he was suicidal. He spent three days in a mental institution because of it.

This was a turning point for Peterson.

He finally aligned himself fully as an incel. He was, in the words of Internet argot, black-pilled.

Anyone who has dabbled in understanding Internet lingo is likely familiar with the term red-pilled (inspired by the film The Matrix, where Neo is offered a blue pill where everything stays status quo or a red pill where the ugly truth is supposedly exposed). Adopted by mens rights activists around 2004, to get red-pilled is to subscribe to the particular ideology that feminism is a cancer and men are the real victims. But what does it mean to get black-pilled, as many refer to this communitys belief system? It sounds as bleak as it is.

Essentially, the philosophy is that everything is broken and the answer lies in refusing to engage in a meaningful or constructive way with society. (The phrase black pill first appeared in 2012 on a blog called Omega Virgin Revolt.) A critical part of being black-pilled is recognizing, with zero sentimentality or euphemism or explaining away, that women do not like genetically inferior men. They now have infinite options in the form of men who are higher status (be it, economic, physical, or intellectual) because of the breakdown in societal monogamy and now high-status men can game apps and use hypergamy (or dating up) to their advantage. (Meaning, a less attractive woman will nowadays reject a less attractive male if she is suddenly able to have meaningless sex with a high status man, who can juggle multiple women. This leaves men who are not as good-looking in the dust.)

Incels theorize that once you are black-pilled, you are finally given the gift of brutally honest Darwinian truth that, essentially, the game is rigged, so why bother? With such entrenchment in the truth of the doctrine comes freedom. No longer do you have to run around in circles. You can accept the world for what it is and settle back into your status on the lower rungs.

If you are red-pilled, you might take this theory of female behavior to use it in manipulative pick-up strategies to try to game women into thinking you are higher status or to find the weakest prey.

If you are an incel and have never had a single successful romantic attempt or only disastrous ones, this type of theorizing provides that wonderful feeling of certainty that comes with confirmation bias and the emancipation from regret of knowing that nothing could have been done anyway. Which is why many incels describe being black-pilled as an awakening from humiliation. Like finally realizing that you have been the subject of a joke that everyone else has been in on the whole time.

For a young man like Peterson, spouting such beliefs, he seems not so much a product of toxic masculinity as a failure of masculinity itself.

No one is teaching these men how to be men. This doesnt mean men in the sense of mens rights activists, but a healthy, balanced (not extremist) definition which includes someone who treats women well but also treats himself well by not being afraid to think for himself with opinions that deviate from the loudest, most hateful elements in the community.

But isnt the worst parts of the incel community hate speech? And shouldnt such hate speech be eradicated?

In Nadine Strossens timely new book Hate, she makes the case for countering bad speech with more speech, and illustrates how in countries where hate speech speech laws have been enacted, support for racist and xenophobic politicians has risen. In Europe, hate speech laws have in fact been used as a means of stifling dissent amongst the disenfranchised.

Equal justice for all depends on full freedom of speech for all, she writes.

Not only that, but as Keith Whittington argues in his new book Speak Freely, offensive speech is crucial to safeguard because of its utility in generating, testing, and communicating ideas.

One of the most brilliant defenses of the subject is Jonathan Rauchs 2013 essay, The Case for Hate Speech in The Atlantic, where he thanks the loudest and most noxious voices he faced along the way in his fight for gay marriage. [W]e won in the realm of ideas, he writes. And our antagonists–people who spouted speech we believed was deeply offensive, from Anita Bryant to Jerry Falwell to, yes, Orson Scott Card–helped us win.

For the incel community, of course, many of the ideas espoused are in defense of their identity as the losers of society, which frees them of the need to take personal responsibility.

I think thats a valid criticism, Peterson says. I get sick of the guys who seem like they just want to keep others down no matter what. Its almost like you are scorned when you experience a little bit of success.

The podcast Peterson recorded after the Toronto attack represents the incel community as not seeming as extreme as a cursory visit to the incel-tracking site We Hunted the Mammoth or the incel-mocking community Incel Tears might lead you to believe. On these sites, in the communitys most chilling screengrabs, posts include suggestions that in order to truly terrorize the women who have rejected incels over the years, perhaps mass acid attacks and rapes could be coordinated in order to inflict the same damage upon women that these young men feel has happened to them.

In contrast, Petersons podcast discussion contains an unusual degree of literacy about sociological phenomena, including the Japanese trend of hikikomori, or isolationism and utter retreat occurring with young men, which many incels predict will spread around the world in due time.

But at its core, it is still a conversation littered with misogyny and resentment.

At one point, someone says that women use men like emotional tampons. Another brings up the possibility of mandated girlfriends (or state-sanctioned rape, as shown on the new season of The Handmaids Tale). A joke is made that the best-case scenario is when incels go ER (or Elliot Rodger). There is discussion about the evolutionary benefits of sexual violence, which harkens Rodgers infamously deranged advocacy of a program where men could kill all women because if women were able to choose their own mates, their inferior brains would devolve humanity completely. Someone laughs about the idea of blackmailing women into having sex with them by threatening to post nude photos online. Peterson himself brings up the idea of access to assisted suicide for incels to prevent future attacks, and he suggests that talking to those who wonder about incel culture might help with improving our image, especially if you attach a face to the incel phenomenon, I think that that makes it more sympathetic.

Peterson clarifies to me: He was not suggesting it be him.

I meant someone else, but then it turned out, I guess I was the only person dumb enough to show my face in videos I made online, he says. So here we are.

When I ask him about the references in the podcast to Rodger, he responds, That guy was fucking nuts. I dont really joke about going ER, but I dont tell the guys who make those jokes not to do it because I know theyre being sarcastic. All this shocking stuff is often just the guys trolling. I would argue that I dont think anybody is going to be stupid enough to believe that sanctioned rape is being talked about as an actual suggestion. Sometimes the most ridiculous shit makes me laugh, even though I dont condone it. So if I do laugh at some of this stuff its probably me laughing at something because its fucking stupid.

The psychopaths are the problem, not the incels, he says.

If someone is going to carry out an attack like this theyre gonna have to be severely mentally ill to be capable of that, he says. Making jokes or being active in the incel community doesnt cause it. Being mentally ill does.

But what about when jokes arent just jokes?

I mention how last year when the Nazi website The Daily Stormers guidebook was leaked online, it contained the message: The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. So what about when such humor is actually a means of subversive propaganda?

I can see that, Peterson acknowledges. I mean, Ive had guys tell me some really fucked-up shit, and Ive told them, you know, get some help because I dont want you to hurt anyone. But I do think that making dark jokes for people who arent mentally ill helps keep a lot of us from going crazy.

And how exactly does he feel about the disparagement of women in saying that they use men as emotional tampons? Men do the same fucking thing, Peterson says. Thats not a one-sided thing. Men can use women emotionally, too.

And what of the suicide idea?

What it really comes down to is that Id rather these mass shooters and attackers just kill themselves than kill 10 or more innocent people. So maybe if it was easier to commit suicide wed see less of these attacks. Im not condoning suicide but I prefer that to innocent people dying.

On the incels.me forum, a stated list of rules for participation include guidelines that are stricter than most elite private clubs in America.

No women allowed. No exception.

Yes, this means that a forum dedicated to decrying success with women has as one of its primary rules a focus on enforced isolation. Other rules also brutally shut out any chance to provide advice or mentorship to other young men.

A few months ago, when Peterson was using the forum, he suddenly found that he was banned from having certain privileges in the chatrooms. Even the incels, it seemed, were rejecting him.

In response, he filmed and put on his YouTube one of the most astonishing, hyper-granular deconstructions of modern Internet life Ive ever seen.

It is bizarro land for anyone not deep in the world of Internet language.

To create the video, he spent three days nonstop (two days spent up for 24 hours straight in between passing out) to create a meticulous 30-minute PowerPoint video that he filmed objecting to the ban and making his case that he in fact was a genuine incel using a barrage of evidence and minutiae and dictionary definitions and failures of logic to try to break down the bullying he felt he experienced on the forum.

And, if you want to get brutal about the absurdity of the exercise (and the insanity such subcultures can create amongst its members), to prove exactly why he was just as reprehensible to society as the rest of the incels.

It was pretty ridiculous, he says in retrospect. Its like American Vandal, Netflixs mockumentary on super-deep-dive crime docs, except with the heartbreaking element of seeing how brainwashed a young man is into trying to obtain peer approval.

At one point in the video, he even includes a diagnosis that he is paranoid schizophrenic as evidence that he ought to qualify as an incel because of this mental illness. The reality is that after he was given that diagnosis, another psychologist said he was not. Instead, the doctor told him (and is evidenced in the video), he was making himself sick with his own thoughts.

All of this humiliation is laid out for his fellow community of incels to seeand all of it to get back into good standing in the incel community. Thats how bad isolated young men want status and the reassurance of having a community to call their own. Even when the group identity is in how perversely low and entrenched their status really is.

Is it any wonder that these boys need a father figure?

Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson (no relation to Jack) has been known to be moved to tears in interviews when discussing the crisis of alienation he sees amongst young men today and the need to provide them with tools that will reach them.

As he told Tim Lott of The Spectator late last year about his 90 percent male audience, Im telling them something they desperately need to hearthat there are important things that need to be fixed up. Im saying, You guys really need to get your act together and you need to bear some responsibility and grow the hell up. The lack of an identifiable and compelling path forward and the denialism these kids are being fed on a daily basis is undoubtedly destroying them and that is especially true of the young men.

Lott then observes the author of The 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos displaying a level of vulnerability on the subject that is striking.

At this point, to my astonishment, Peterson begins to weep. He talks through his tears for the next several minutes. Every time I talk about this, it breaks me up, he says. The message Ive been delivering is, Find the heaviest weight you can and pick it up. And that will make you strong. Youre not who you could be. And who you could be is worthwhile.

As psychologist William Pollack articulates in the documentary The Mask You Live In about the boy code that warps masculinity from an early age: The way that boys are brought up makes them hide all of their natural, vulnerable, empathic feelings behind a mask of masculinity When theyre most in pain, they cant reach out and ask for help because theyre not allowed to or they wont be a real boy.

In fact, boys express depression in a completely opposite way than girls. They act out. But most people see it as a conduct disorder or just a bad kid.

After the Parkland high school shooting in March, one of the foremost activists in trying to address the crisis of reaching out to troubled young men before they become killers met with President Donald Trump to say his piece. Every single one of these school shootings has been from young men who are disconnected, said Darrell Scott, the father of the first student murdered at Columbine High School almost 20 years ago. In response, he founded Rachels Challenge to intervene with action rather than yet another toothless spectacle of condemnation of the empirically condemnable violence itself.

In a tweet rant posted during this same time by Martin Daubney, the editor of the English lad magazine Loaded, he articulated a similarly jarring portrait of collective angst from young men who feel callously tossed aside and branded as innately wrong, which only serves to compound the sense of victimization even further.

Im mindful of a seminal TEDTalk by Warren Farrell, author of The Boy Crisis, Daubney wrote. He looks at school shootings, and says: Boys who hurt, hurt us…They say todays boys feel part of some grand problem. You could frame it as #ToxicMasculinity: the notion that all males are to blame for the actions of a minority of damaged individuals. This is identity politics at its most destructive. Because we live in a world where every male indiscretion is used to attack all males. Im saying this: many boys are switching off. Were losing them.

How does an incel feel about all of this concernextended within the realm of ideas and intellectualism?

Itd be nice, Jack Peterson says, if he just had someone else to talk to about it.

I like Jordan Peterson a lot, he admits in a tone that sounds more upbeat than the rest of our conversation. I was going to go see him with another incel but that guy ended up not being able to go. But I bought a VIP ticket so I get to meet him next week.

In the wake of the Toronto attack, Peterson is unique in that unlike many in the incel community who have scrubbed their social or taken down their WordPress blogs that chronicled their life, he decided to see what happened when he went on TV to talk about his life in this widely reviled community now most associated with mass murder.

The decision to do so was gutsy. Especially considering the against-the-agenda talking points he is now presenting in condemning misogyny and violence.

The reaction he has received from other incels has been negative. And the public certainly doesnt like anyone who might be an incel.

Its an unwinnable place to be for someone who might still have a chance of climbing out of the twisted, self-fulfilling prophecy gutter that such dangerous places can become for young men who dont think they have anywhere else to go.

But Peterson doesnt regret doing the media and putting his face out there.

Instead, he speaks with an inverse of the perverted sadism of the Toronto attacker. It is a nihilism of potential that is in stark contrast to the nihilism of murderous revenge.

As he describes the decision, you can almost hear an epiphany clicking: When you dont care when you have nothing else to lose, it can be used for good or evil.

I dont know why I said yes to identifying myself as an incel, he says, mulling it over. I just felt like, you know What do I have to lose?

Of course, within the incel community itself, the answer is clear.

He could very well lose his status as an incel.

They called him all the predictable names. He was a cuck. He was a status-seeker. He was an opportunist. He was a number of slurs that are not fit to print. But for an incel, the worst insult he received of all was that he was a fake.

And, this being incel-world, the name he was called was targeted and precise.

You see, for incels, each man within the community self-identifies with how they qualify for their incel status. For instance, mentalcels achieve their status as a result of mental illness. A braincel is that way because of intelligence. A truecel has never had sex, a relationship, any kind of success at all.

Thus Peterson was called a fakecel. No, Peterson says, thats wrong. He definitely still is an incel. He is a part of the group. Where then does he now belong?

Peterson is quiet as he considers the answer.

I think something where I can help people, he says. I like talking about the positive stuff more, even if its frowned upon.

He considers a while longer.

I dont know, he considers, maybe Im a hopecel.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/sympathy-for-the-incel

from Viral News HQ https://ift.tt/2ruveDU via Viral News HQ

[dannybangs]

hey so this is a vent post so dont read it if like you dont care l m a o

so my first gf and i are ancient history at this point but like we still keep coming into contact randomly over the years but im just having this realization

luna only comes back to talk to me when it suits her, and never really considered my feelings as a friend, let alone as an unresolved ex

she broke up with me originally in an abusive way, when my parents were on holiday and i was home alone. she was meant to come sleep over and keep me company because honestly, it was fucking lonely. instead, she went to a party to drink and have fun (without telling me), and after sending a few messages on facebook, she blocked me.

i called her number crying, but instead of her answering, it was a friend. i told them how down in the dumps i was, with no friends in my town because i went to a semi private school the next town over. while they were as supportive as they could be, they told me luna didnt want to talk to me anymore and wouldnt come to the phone, even though i could hear her laughing and having fun in the background.

i was not in a stable place at this point. i was 16, my first love was breaking up with me (and not even in the shittiest way via text, but in the absolute cowards way via blocking and ignoring me)

long story short, we broke up. messily. all i knew was that she found new friends and moved on.

years later, anonymous starts asking about past relationships, and when i start talking about luna, they latch onto that and start asking more questions.

turns out its luna, and at the time im honestly ecstatic. like, my favourite person in the world is finally talking to me again. but when i look back , luna only got back in contact with me because she had recently moved away from home, her parents were divorced, and she didnt have many, if any, friends.

eventually though, after talking for a bit on tumblr, she disappears without a word again. deletes her tumblr and i cant contact her anymore

late 2016 hits, and i get a friend request from her on facebook. she wants to play overwatch, so i add her, we play that night and get on pretty well. after that though, she’s pretty vacant. eventually, when she stops responding to invites on battle net over the next 4 months or so, i take her off battle net and set her profile on facebook to low notifications, but still friends.

mid 2017, and we get back in contact over a facebook post of hers saying she doesnt feel like she belongs in social spaces and talks about how lonely she is. we talk, i say i might be moving to her town, she seems excited and it seems like she wouldnt mind catching up.

and then no contact.

again.

keep in mind that over all these years, im honestly still kind of in love with this girl. i never really got any closure on why she broke up with me, the reasons shes given me over the years changes a lot. she wanted to experiment, she wasnt interested in me anymore, she thought i was moving when i wasnt, and eventually saying that she didnt want to burden me with her depression.

if we go by this last reason, its honestly kinda shit. i never got a choice in the matter. she made up my mind up for me, and broke my heart for me. 

lets fast forward to our last conversation. three nights ago, 6am and i havent slept for like 2 days. i straight up ask her ‘look, would you ever consider dating me in the future’

i wait a day and i get no reply. so the next night, i tell her not to worry about it and i wont bother her again.

she instantly replies, saying that shes been thinking about it, and that its a question that cant be answered until i move closer and we ‘actually hang out and get to know each other’ again

i ask her again, this time defining it as a general possibility in our future.

first message makes my heart soar. ‘i dont see why not tbh’

second message crushes me. ‘other than im a huge lesbian and i dont know what you ID (identify) as these days’

its her soft way of saying ‘i think because you present as male and prefer male pronouns, i cant let my lesbian aesthetic that ive built up to my new friends and girlfriend crumble by considering dating you’

luna always said she was pan / bi before she was transitioning (shes a trans girl and im a trans guy) but while she was questioning her gender, until she had a bad wrap with several gay guys. and i get how peoples preferences change over the years, i really do.

but it really hurts to see this girl who you grew and changed with (we both started questioning our sexuality and gender together) turn into a gold star lesbian (in my definition, this is a girl who ONLY dates women and doesnt consider he/him lesbians and similar situations)

it crushes me because ive never gotten over this girl for 4 years now, and i thought that eventually we might meet again and get to know each other again and maybe be together. but obviously thats not the case

what made me start thinking about how i was an idiot for chasing and entertaining this thought of ‘the girl who got away’ was today, when i get my letter from the district health board telling me my endocrinology appointment is in 3 weeks. and i realized how excited i am to start T and properly transition.

like, reading that letter made me realize that i was holding onto my past, as a girl, with this stranger who doesnt know me or love me anymore. why would i ever consider not transitioning just so i can be with this person.

im young as hell, in a relationship with a girl that loves me to pieces, who is just as excited as i am that im about to start transitioning and becoming the person i want to be

im excited for the future, and i cant wait to move to a new town with my girlfriend, start T, start the degree i always wanted, and forget about the past that i was hopelessly clinging to

honestly, writing this was really cathartic. i cried a lot writing this, because this is still a new pain im dealing with. but i feel a lot better now. thanks for reading guys

[topicprinter]

Amazon FBA courses have been all the rage lately, with lofty promises of a lucrative digital nomad lifestyle. There are hundreds of courses to choose from, but 3 stick out from the crowd. It might be due to their high price tag, or maybe its the individuals behind the course. Either way, you cant scroll through any Amazon forums with seeing these courses being discussed. So I went ahead and took all 3 of them. I didn't really intend on dong a review, I just got them so I could learn. I started my journey 2 months ago and today my first product arrived, with 2 more on the way :D Here is my in-depth video review:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD58vSR2Pv4 I will also post the script for the review here in case you prefer not to watch the video at work, or you dont want to use data :) Please keep in mid that the punctuation might be weird because I write my scripts how I talk as opposed to proper English lol. I have fully completed all 3 of these courses. Now full disclosure, I did not pay for amazing selling machine, I had a friend lend me all the videos and files for it. It is however asm 7, so its the newest version. I would also like to add that before taking these courses I knew NOTHING about amazon FBA. Nick just told me how much he was making, so I jumped right into tanner course. So I have have the complete beginner's perspective on this. lets get to it. FIRST UP, Amazon Seller mastery.Price: $498 USDTotal Watch Time: 2 hours 11 minutes= $3.80 per minute So tanners course is the cheapest of the 3, but it is also the shortest. He’s had many successful students come through, including youtuber james bowen. However this course really just skims the surface. There are a total of 5 modules, but I felt like they were all bare bones. Especially as someone who knew nothing about amazon FBA, I finished the course with a bunch of questions. For example, module 2, titled “suppliers and shipping” only contains 2 videos, totaling just 14minutes. To be fair, after finishing that module I felt like I knew all there was to know on suppliers and shipping and I thought “seems easy enough”, it wasnt until I actually tried contacting suppliers that I realized I was still in the dark for some aspects. Overall, tanner does a good job at teaching the material. Its very obvious that he knows what hes talking about and he instructs pretty clearly. That being said, you can tell the production and time spent editing was cut short. He doest cut out beginings or ending of the videos, and some mistakes that could be edited out are just kept in. It feels like he was just winging it for the most part and didnt have too much of the structure pre-planned. Theres even a part where he’s talking about shipping terms, and he straight up says “you can just google what they mean”. Now yes, thats fine and its common sense if you’re making any regular youtube video, but it wouldn’t be that hard for him to google it first and then provide a PDF for student resources. And finally, this might not bother you guys, but for me me it was a little annoying.. None of the videos in the course were captured in full screen. His window was always minimized, so you could see his desktop background. Again not a huge deal, but for a $500 course it just didnt float my boat. So lets get on to Kevin Davids Amazon ninja materclass. Price: $1,250 USDTotal Watch Time: 9h 50min= $2.12 / Minute So Kevin’s course is much pricier than tanners, but as you can see its still a better value per minute of actual content. He also gives you the option to buy each module separately. Now I do like the idea behind separating the modules, but it causes a little bit of overlap for someone that has the full course. What I mean by that is, in some modules, he’ll re-explain some things that he already covered in a previous module. Im sure hes doing it to cover the bases just incase someone bought the module separately, but when you’re watching them consecutively, it just leaves parts to skip. Kevin also has a little underwhelming video production for a 1200 dollar course, some videos his cam is way too big and actually blocks important information. In this clip hes talking about the display ad on the right side, but you cant even see it because its under his webcam. However other than that the visuals arent bad at all. The biggest issue I had with this course was that it wasn't totally sequential or chronological. Yes the modules are in order from product research to facebook marketing, but the content in the modules were all over the place. They werent following (for lack of a better word).. A storyline. Thats actually one thing I liked about tanners course. He starts with the lockpick set and carries on the process for that product in a good step by step order. That being said, Kevin does do long videos to end every module that kind of put the pieces together, but overall its like has all these superb bircks of information on a topic, and then it just all goes into one bucket as opposed to laying them out piece by piece. Now lets get on to what I love about kevins course. First off, and probably the most important. Its loaded to the brim with super insightful information. He goes a lot into the actual mindest or thought process behind what he does and why. And what I like even more is that he doesnt just say “you should do this or do that because im the master”. His vibe is more open ended, like “this is what I suggest you do based on all my experience, but dont blindly take my word for it” which I appreciate. The course is also very practical and inspiring, he doesnt have any fluff, and he’s a great communicator”. On his site he says its the only course you’ll ever need, and I cant say hes wrong. He goes way beyond Amazon in the later modules. Covering in depth facebook ads, instagram, getting onto blogs, and even virtual assistants. With the Ninja Masterclass I’d say the pros heavily outweigh the cons, and its the only course I really refer back to when I run into problems with my new FBA business. But before I crown the champ, I have to talk about the biggest course of them all. Amazing Selling Machine! Price: $3,500Total Watch Time: 36h 53m= $1.58 / minute Now of course I left the big fish for last. Amazing selling machine is longest running and most expensive one of the 3 of courses, and probably of all fba courses in the world. Along with the video lessons, ASM has huge events every year with tickets ranging from $400 to $750. But lets talk about the videos. With nearly 37 hours of screen time, it is definitely a lot to take in. I believe the actual course makes you watch it throughout 8 weeks, but since I just had all the video files already, I decided to binge it. Now I did not watch all the coaching calls, but I finished all the other modules. And I do have to say, compared to the other two, these videos are very dry. They provide lots of info, but they do so with text. I’d say 50-60% of the videos are taken up by this blue screen with white text. As opposed to just showing the practical stuff, they have a lot of fluff. They spend a few minutes before every video explaining everything thats going to happen instead of just diving straight into it. Now you might be thinking “well that makes it great for notes”, but they already provide all these bullet points in the form of PDFs. And thats honestly what bugged me most. Every single video had a pdf to accompany it, which is great, but the guys in the video were just reading off of it. Its almost like they wrote an awesome amazon FBA book, and they’re just reading it to us, instead of a cut to the chase kind of course. Here you can see the PDF, and beside it the video. Its line by line. Now that may be appealing to some people, but for me it was just filler. With tanner and kevin, it felt like you were learning from a friend or mentor, With mike and Rich, its more of a classroom vibe, less passion more rules. And that another thing, their rules or guidelines are very firm. Unlike kevins who i said leaves it at “this is what I suggest, based on experience”. ASM is very much “this is what you need to do to be successful. Use the ASM criteria”. With all that said, there’s still brilliant content inside. The most surprising to me was their product research, being new to FBA, I really thought that jungle scout was the only way to do solid product research. However in ASM they use DS quickview, and a method that heavily relies on a products BSR. While it seems like a little more work than using jungle scout and 999 track, I thinks good to see another perspective on product research, and its something I will add in the future just to be extra sure on my products. They are also the best when talking about having a sequential or chronological order. Its VERY beginner friendly with everything laid out nice and neat. I would even say that you could jump into the ASM course without ever using a computer before, thats how comprehensive they get with their explanations. However the one thing that separates ASM from all the rest in my opinion his how they give you actionable steps at the end of every video. Just like homework. The intention is so that you actually follow along with them as they go to ensure you get results. Of course this can be hard if you dont actually find a product after the product research module. But like I said it was designed to be dripped throughout 8 weeks, not 8 days. So what would I suggest? Well I can starting as a beginner, I feel like I definitely got my degree in FBA after all these courses. They all have a different and unique spin to them, and all of them offer their own little gold nuggets that the other doesn't. However this is just like goldilocks, One of them is too little, one of them is too much, and the other is just right. So, with all things considered, I would have to give the crown to Kevin Davids Ninja MasterClass. Its not the cheapest per minute, but its the most practical, It doesn't have the most content, but it cuts the fluff, and id say he gives the greatest perspective on incorporating amazon into your everyday lifestyle. He talks about how gets great product ideas outside of amazon by just being more observant or talking to people. And its that outside the box thinking that I think sets a good seller apart from a great one. His course actually dives deeper into the facebook and marketing side than ASM does, he could have almost sold that as a separate course. He also has the best tricks in terms of keywords and ranking. As for me, I started watching these courses last month, and today I have 3 products on the way. I can't confirm yet if the products are any good, but one of them gets in tomorrow, so we shall find out soon and update you guys once sales start coming in.

[somedaypast-thesunset]

i feel upset today because there is a continual expectation for me to put myself out for other people and get next to nothing in return as they ask for everything. and if i ask for something, it just goes ignored. 

i’m tired of my work being devalued. i’m tired of people just taking it for granted and using it to their own benefit. i felt nothing but anxiety and animosity at the last show our group put on because i was knowingly bullied on more than one occasion by another member and then forced to put on a show with them - and was even questioned why i might pull out my art. 

i was going to perform at this event. but as the weeks passed i realized i was putting in more work than anyone else and when i asked for certain things, they were ignored or put off. and yet there was an expectation for me to complete something for them ‘asap’. this made performing for the first time really devalued. like sure, i worked hard to create the event but why? what was the purpose of this? it was never to bring anyone together, it was never to showcase anything but the organizers themselves and the lack of good promotion means the likelihood of selling something at a venue not known for after hours shows and not joining our marketing is pretty low. 

i am 27 years old now. i have no fucking desire to put on shitty teen shows that are half assed thrown together with a bunch of my friends. thats not what this is about for me - it lacks a certain amount of organization and class. it lacks a curation in performers. i thought i might be the worst one - and that’d be okay. they cant all be winners. but now it’s just open mic - and if i really wanted to perform at a open mic, i’d go to a real one. if i’m going to do a large amount of the work - outside of meeting with the owner one time and putting up 5 flyers on street poles - i want the results to be worth the work i put in. and IMO it’s not. it’s mediocre and thrown together. 

and i feel a personal insult about this because of how much work i put intothe group itself. ive dedicated time on a semi regular basis to all the admin work, the promotion, keeping social media active, posting new submissions, fielding a majority of the questions and i’m not asking for praise - i’m asking for people to respect the work i’ve done. don’t come in and draw on it with magic marker and tell me its acceptable quality when theres folks painting in oils. i dedicated time to create an entity that could be used and harnessed; i ask for the quality of our output to match whats already there. 

and i think it’s asinine that i would hve to argue doing better than average. if this is just a hobby or random activity for you - fine. it’s not serious. you’re not serious. none of this matters. but it was presented as serious. it was presented as a showcase of people’s craft. there is no effort into making it somewhere one would wnt to be. we’re all going for the ~decor. we print posters because we want to see our name on a poster in the street - not becuse we’re really advertising an event. it was acceptable that the only people in attendance would be the performers and a few of their friends. acceptable!! that’s an unsuccessful house party, in my opinion. 

you know whats missing  locally? proper use of social media to network between people. it’s impossible to find other artists in the area unless you scour through obscure hashtags. but yet theres dozens and dozens if not hundreds of artists in the local area. this means you get stuck in one influence and within that influence you may be chastised for going against the “norm” of their influence. instead of new ideas being welcomed, they’re constantly turned down or argued against. 

i’ve met all of the people i know through facebook and instagram in my art world. thats a very powerful tool.i know models who only book through instagram. and ive had arguements about the use of hashtags. as if theyre not relevant. 

i’m tired of questioning what i know. tht honestly gives me the most anxiety. and its not like im tired of questioning what i do - its healthy to question your actions - but what i know and believe makes me feel unsure of myself and the skills i have. i have had experience working in the creative industries since i was 17, freelancing. and i have a wide variety of skills in graphic design, retouching photos, photography of models & landscapes & products, glamour modeling & product modeling (of which i’ve done for dozens of photographers in the local area), web design & blogging + knowlege of e-commerce platforms, wordpress, seo, promotion & marketing both online & offline, i’ve sold crafts online for almost four years and switched my primary creative tool from artisan crafts to trditional & figure art that i studied & practiced extensively for over two years, i have skills in copywriting & journalism, i have a handle on the basic laws of creative works & how they can be used, basic knowledge in building & selling a brand, communicating with clients & customers (of which i’ve had no complaints in regards to my communication - ive had complaints about shipping because post offices are not so nice), creating organized file systems which can be used by multiple people -- i have paid my dues. i am still growing, absolutely. i am not the best at any of the above things i listed. i could be even better. i could spend two hours today on one of these skills and be better than i am right now. i can always be better.

but just because i can be better doesnt take away from what i know now, what i have learned, what i have studied - like i took the time to study and read up on research and marketing & promotion techniques. a good portion of my first shop was spent reading about how to sell stuff, not so much making stuff to sell. as i did not realize at the time how much work went into being successful online. and i did not realize until my shop closed how i had taken that skill for granted - because i had done all that work & effort, it was able to pull in a few sales a month with little to no effort now. if i worked harder, maybe i couldve been even better. 

i also (un)willingly have worked full time as an artist and only an artist for at least two years. this is the “luxury” ive been allowed in  life even though i am the definition of starving artist. i didnt have it as a part time job or hobby - it was something i did every single day and i marketed & promoted for hours a day. an acquaintance of mine upon hearing of my mental state now told me that i had gone so hard for so long - and i kind of appreciated that he saw that on the outside. that someone could see that i actully did work incredibly hard. that i was dedicated.. that i AM dedicated. 

i’m not saying any of this makes me better thn anyone else or knowing more - it just means i’m experienced. i am very very experienced in not only practicing a craft but marketing that craft to sell, displaying that craft in it’s best light, knowing the best places to sell. i also work in quality over quantity. i am not interested in doing 9  - 10 shows a year. i’m not interested in shitting out  5 - 7 paintings at a time. it means before i touch anything to paper or canvas or wood - i’ve thought about it. i’ve really, really thought about it. i didnt just sit down and throw paint on the canvas. i couldve been thinking of this image for days before i do it. or the craft itself - my bone jewelry came because i absolutely neded to make a necklace out of fish bones i found and they needed vials attached. why? i dont know. but it just needed to be. 

when i started the group, i asked about names. i didnt choose a name or dictate the name. i was given a suggestion by someone i actually dont like at all and was given a reson for why he felt it was a good suggestion and i agreed because business-wise it was a good suggestion. i respected that he hd different ideas and experiences that shaped that suggestion that i did not have. i learned through it that i should expand my reach - both in my personal creative life and my ‘business’ creative life. 

my ~partner was disappointed i wasn’t going to perform. i could tell it was frustrating and dissappointing to him because i think he thought it wouldve been good for me and that i would hopefully find something in it that would bring me something. and through his disappointment he told me that it wasn’t totally right to drop out of something you planned to do or that peopl expected you to be at.

but i’d like to turn that around - my partner is someone who also puts himself out for others on a regular basis. and for a long, long, long time he was fucked around and fucked over by many people. an old friend came to his door and asked to borrow money and he allowed him to despite knowing he might be a drug addict now. he had no obligation to this person but it was like since he was asked, he should. and i think if he lerned to say no, or learned to walk away from an unhealthy situation, he would be happier as well. i’ve learned first hand the benefit of walking away from something toxic. and you will feel misplaced guilt for a bit, i feel some guilt now but it’s for the best. 

i try to think how i can change my perspective on it but i cannot. i wold not walk down the street if this was held in the local gallery, nevermind 20km away. like once i took myself out as a performer i realized i wouldnt even want to go. i dont want to see anyone perform but my partner; who will already be subdued because of the venue. ive been completely taken out of the organization of the event - despite having been continually involved in the promotion and a few conversations since the lst one where i said i didnt want to keep doing this. so ive deleted my advertisement efforts online andi’m just halting any further promotion on my part of this event. i’m 97% sure i’m personally not even going to go. i no longer ant to see half of the people there on a personal level so it’s not even worth going to to hang out and i dont care about displaying my art.