#i learned history and what i didnt learn in school i taught myself

[cree-n-jewish-thoughts]

Pretty sure I know what genocide is better than you - me a half native half (maternal) Jew to any "pro-paley" that tries to pull that card. Bitch your house is on a burial ground for an ancient tribe your ancestors killed for the land. Stop trying to pull the card, you are literally responsible at this point in the game. You are still taking land and lives in your own first world countries, but k. Cool.

You don't even know your own country's history so don't even try to learn another's until you know your own inside and out.

K, thanks.

[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.

[kienansidhe]

heres an anecdote ive been thinking about.

i grew up in an evangelical christian cult under very extreme surveillance and censorship of incoming information. i didnt know the actual history of christianity, the real history, not the fake stuff i was taught, for many, many years. as far as i knew, the bible i read cover to cover every year was the only bible there had ever been, was the literal word of god, and the only issue was how to translate it from the original hebrew and greek. i had no reason to question this until high school, when my brother and i were sent walking around the neighborhood wearing brightly colored "ask me about jesus" tags.

an older neighbor working on his front lawn called us over. "okay," he said. "ill bite. tell me about jesus." so of course, we gave him the story we had been taught. original sin, hell, jesus dying on the cross, etc. etc. he listened patiently, then talked a bit abt his own personal spirituality. i dont remember the specifics, i think he actually was a sort of christian in a way, but only as a personal, private thing, no church, smth we had never encountered before. more importantly, he told us to look up the council of nicea.

our parents were very vague about their answer, so i ended up looking it up on wikipedia. i read that the bible as i knew it was only one canon, defined fairly recently, by one faction of the church. i learned about the existence of the apocrypha, that a bunch of old men had sat down and decided which books of the bible they considered the real word of god, which were fake.

of course, our upbringing had already provided their own magical answers for this kind of problem, but the seed was planted, alongside many other little seeds that were beginning to sink in and take root. what i knew came into direct conflict with the outside world, which gave me a point of entry for questions. how do we know which men were inspired by god? what did the other rejected books say? through this train of thought i came to find countless questions about the bible that were not as conclusively answered as i had been led to believe. prior to this, my conflicts with christianity had been on the basis of my own gut feelings. this feels wrong, arent i hurting people? but that one clue, the council of nicea, gave me a point of reference to start dismantling the whole theological basis for what i was taught.

eventually i found out that even the very concept of hell was a fabrication. i had read the bible faithfully for my whole life, once thru, cover to cover, every year. things like a lake of fire, eternity separated from god, a lot of the pieces that make up the popular concept of hell were there, scattered throughout, but when i realized that these fragments i had read had been manipulated and conflated to me from toddlerhood, that the bible never actually describes hell as i knew it, well. the whole tower crumbled.

for years i had struggled with the basic conflict of seeing with my own eyes that the things i said and did hurt people, that many horrible things had been done in the name of god. this was and always had been the original, basic instinct for my difficulty with christianity. but hell, hell had been the ultimate lynchpin. if hell was real, if not being christian doomed you to an eternity of literal torture, then any hurt i and other christians inflicted was justified. i truly evangelized and told people they were bad and going to hell out of a brainwashed desire to save them. i was terrified for them, for myself, for everyone. i dont think i will ever fully be able to convey how afraid i was, from my very first inklings of consciousness. hell tied it all together. i would do anything, anything to keep myself and those i cared about from suffering for eternity. even if my friends hated me, i had to plant the seed and pray for god to grow it in them. i had to.

once hell came into question, that fear finally began to lighten. cracks in my prison. a critical piece of information that had been carefully hidden my entire life. information that changed everything.

when youre sufficiently brainwashed, its hard to know where to even begin to question the world as you know it. your gut might tell you something is wrong, but when your world has self contained answers for everything, when it all seems to be one smooth globe around you, it can be hard to find the cracks. it seems impenetrable.

sometimes you need a little help to find the cracks.

i dont rlly have a point to this post, i just think about that weird old guy a lot. he sold heirloom tomato seedlings out of his backyard for $5 each, had torn up the entire yard without his landlords permission, and god those tomatoes were the best ive ever had. i wonder if hes still around, selling tomatoes, teaching people to question what theyve been told. id like to tell him how much he changed my life.

[petewentzisblack1312]

hi! i am curious to know....what radicalized you? for me i think it was a combination of two things: 1. my love for documentaries and 2.kwame ture. I love documentaries in general, and i also love history...so i would always be interested in how other people live...because of my love for history!!! then watching docs about poverty...seeing how there are ppl getting poorer and poorer while the rich get richer. kwame ture was the first person that radicalized me, i heard about him on social media (not in school ofc). I then began to watch his speeches first bc i am a visual learner. when i understood what he was saying in speeches, i then began to read his books. as they say..the rest is history!!! :)

that makes sense! for me if im being honest, my radicalisation came from love. like a fundamental love of my fellow human being. i always was a very empathetic child, and when i learned about other cultures and people that were different than i was (which happened when i started using tumblr! lots of varied lives and people are tumblrinas girlblogging away), and specifically of the bigotry they faced, i wanted to get rid of it. it made me so mad that people were hurting. learning about islamophobia was extremely eye opening to me, and i think that opened the door to my more radical politics over the years. i want nothing more than for everyone to be able to breathe freely, and my ideology and politics are firmly based on that, and have always been. it lead me to look into why people were treated the way they were, and learn that its not just the way the world is, but a series of incentives based on white cisheteropatriarchal capitalist hegemony.

id also credit my good friend and mentor who i have known since i was 6, he was my math teacher and homeroom teacher in forms 4 and 5 and he used the mandatory christian education and christian family life education classes to teach us anarchist philosophy (he didnt call it that though. and being honest there were like 2 people myself included who really liked those classes because every other homeroom teacher basically treated those as a free period so people kinda resented it 😞). i had already been radicalized quite a bit by then, but it taught me to base my ideology on something more than just emotions. its important to center humanity and emotions and empathy in your politics i think, but only doing that leads to becoming reactionary, and ideological inconsistency.

[candy8448]

History paper 2

Gcse rambles

For context i did: Edexel Superpower relations in the Cold War and Elizabeathen England

Man i feel bad for students who had PE, Spanish AND History today that must've been hard, i barely handled the one.

Anyways our history teacher did NOT teach us any elizabeth. He taught us enquiry one and then we had half term to study and learn enquiry 2 and 3 on our own! From scratch! I was busy all half term so i didnt have time and had to learn it all in the past three days!!! I only just finished covering all the material for the first time this morning in science because i asked my teacher if i could do hostory revision instead =_=

But i revised good today, i spent the first 2 periods going over the last of elizabeth then going over cold war again and covered the prague spring (which im so glad cuz out teacher never taught us that and it was 8 marks, and i taught and learned myself what it was today for the first time in that lesson) and then i was revising during break, just going over it all and blurting all my revision cards jnto a different notebook and then maths i took a vreak but the period after i was back at the grind and then the exam time started. (Also forgot to mention that our teacher never told us whhat tge exam paper would look like so we were going un completely blind, lol)

And i COOKED (i think, it was probably mediokre =_=) but those questions were all BLESSINGS oh my i think i did well, i remembered to use key words like "marriage of convenience" and "mutually assured destruction" and dates and i hope those gain me marks.

But that exam is way too long for no reason. Im not kidding i took a 5-10min break between EVERY question and i still had over 30 mins at the end of just sitting there 0.0 i even wrote way slower than usual cuz i couldnt bring myself to write cuz i was so tired. Its the first exam so far where ive had a decent amount of extra time at the end 0.0

Nazi Germany is the last paper, and its my worst unit and im worried cuz i want that 7 i unexpectedly got in the mocks for my priddeeee (if i dont, the examiners are homophobic)

But no exams tomorrow! Im tempted to just not come into school but my mum will probably force me =_=

Here are some memes:

[world-of-eibon]

Introductions

Copy-Pasting this from twitter dot com as an introduction to this blog and what kinda content is going to be featured here!

Gonna start tweeting about my #ttrpg setting in a hopefully not-unhinged matter. Especially since things are happening quickly again. I'll pin this so everyone know's what's up. Let's talk about Eibon.

Eibon is the setting that I've been working on consistently since 2018. As far as rpg settings go, that's pretty young, but Eibon hasn't exactly come out of nowhere, since as my friends could tell you, it's several hundreds of pages of lore now.

Yes, some of it is stuff that I really just loved a lot from older rpgs. I can't lay claim to that. But also, Eibon isn't meant to be this completely original thing that came exclusively from me.

Eibon is meant to be a reflection of my experiences and my beliefs, as well as the things that inspired me to take up the pen in the first place. That's why there's things that to so.e would feel out of place. Because if you love something, I think you should reference it.

I've lost a bit of my point here. Eibon started before 2018, back when I was in middle school, and being introduced to 4th ed d&d from 40k. There wasn't a setting for me and my friends, the places we went to were just places in the world.

But I got older, and as 4e ended, I got more into fantasy and world building. As well as history. The world didn't come from nowhere, life isn't a vapid fleeting thing that ends when you look away. Legacy is everywhere in our world, good and bad- shouldn't it be true in fantasy?

I decided on a name first, before I knew what I was really doing, because every place should have a name. At the time, I picked Eibon. Partly because it rolled off the tongue well, and partly because i was inspired by Soul Eater. A few years ago I learned it came from lovecraft.

In high school, I kinda lost myself, and found myself, and lost myself again. I lost loved ones, and for the first time in my life I started to think about the future. That's kinda when I realized that the history we're taught in school, it doesn't end.

All the bad things I learned about as "ancient history" for my country happened just a lifetime ago, and worst of all, things weren't getting better for us. It's also around this time that I realized the religion that I was born into was a vector for hate in our world.

This had a impact on me, and on Eibon. After that, I graduated high school, went to college, dropped out of college, and started working full time. I wouldn't really recommend living at the poverty line, but doing so has given me perspective that my relatively cushy youth didnt.

Which leads me to 2018. I had been playing CoS with some college friends and my partner asked if we could play d&d. They were living in LA at the time, which was on the opposite coast from me. I had never heard of a vtt, but decided that we could give it a shot thru discord

It was here that our rpg group of the last 6 years began. And what a journey! These people who form the core of our group are my closest friends now, and they began as strangers, or even antagonistic to me. Now one of them will be moving in with me.

Eibon has been on a journey to. At first it was lifting things from module books. Then it became "I have an idea for a town". Then my friends asked to make their characters in this world we were making. Before realized, we were excitedly talking about some of these made up places

It wasn't much later that we realized that we didn't like what other games were doing. Other RPGs are fine, but we wanted to chart our own direction. When we realized that we started to divorce Eibon from preexisting fantasy copyrights. Then we started Project Starwyrm.

A lot of people are talking about one singular generic rpg system for everything. with respect, it's a little silly. But Starwyrm is the system that me and my friends want, for Eibon. Not everyone will like it the way we do. That's fine. That's what makes it special.

It's been 6 years and Eibon is still an infant to me. But it's got a point. Like our world, Eibon has cycles and legacies. Some are good. Some are bad, so many are dangerous. These cycles and legacies don't stop whenever, they keep going until we end them.

Eibon does have a cycle of empires. Because dead civilizations are everywhere in our world, why wouldn't they be in a fantasy world? Unlike what pseudoscience will tell you, the cycle of empire isn't the life of civilization, it's the life and death of institutions and tyrants.

Eibon has horrible monsters of nations that have scarred the world, permanently, from their abuses of magic, science, and people. Some are gone, some are here, and some are yet to come. That's part of the point of it all, see? History isn't one great battle against a single evil.

Instead, history repeats like an endless waltz, which each beat repeating forever. Simultaneously, Eibon explores how what is new is old, and vice versa. This probably stems from the fact I played Guild Wars a lot when I was younger, but technology is an important part of Eibon.

Just like how ancient peoples proved the basic principles of science before we really defined what science was, in the current "age" of Eibon, people are (re)discovering science, knowledge that in ages past was common-place, but lost through that endless cycle of abuses.

Eibon will explore technology, its intersection with magic, and how that will look- since I don't believe that magic and tech are opposites clashing from two sides with chaos in the middle. I think they are more like a coin. Additionally, Eibon will explore industry and just how awful industry actually is for people. How technology and magic improves some lives, and makes some lives worse. How disparities form between people, and how people with discriminate against those without. And maybe how we can solve these problem.

Eibon wont shy away from problems- but unlike cringe weirdos, Eibon isn't going to be a place where violence against minorities is celebrated. Instead, Eibon is going to be a place where the oppressed will actually inherit the earth, and then celebrate the death of bigots.

Should take this time now to talk about the group- I won't be using names since it's rude to do that without permission, but I'll take the time to say that me and my players are a pretty diverse group. Ethnicity, sexuality, class- we're kinda all over the place. And proud of it.

Because of that, Eibon is going to be about cultures and how they intersect to. There's already some exploration and celebration of real-life cultures planned in the future of our writings, but as time goes on, we will be talking more and more about this.

I say the future, since so much of the now is what we do on a week-by-week basis in our group play. But this is kinda starting to come to an end. Not our group, we'll probably keep going until we die and leave the world, but a day is coming where everyone can explore Eibon.

I'm slowly going off and doing a generic "the future..." thing, so I'm going to be more specific. Right now Eibon is the realm of me and my friends, but there will access for all eventually. By my estimates, Starwyrm is still a few years out from being complete.

When Starwyrm is done, the core rules for it, as well as access to Eibon will be available to the public. Everyone should have equal chance to play around with something, and have an opportunity to learn if they like it, which is why the core stuff is going to be free.

Also, we're not really doing this for money either. We're writing Eibon and Starwyrm for ourselves. It's just that we feel that if you think you might like it, you should get to use it too. Will there come a time where we release books or supplements you have to pay for? Maybe.

But I don't want the rules that everyone uses to be behind a paywall. So if anything Eibon/Starwyrm related is paid, we'll tell you why, every time.

Eibon will be available to the public's eyes before Starwyrm launches though. It's hard to tell when exactly this will be, since I'm currently stuck trying to move and get a new job, but we do want to do a podcast game for those who like such things.

We're gonna keep the cast and crew reduced to our circle of friends for the time being, but probably some time within this year or the next year I'll announce a proper podcast that will stream on youtube. We're gonna do our best to make the podcast all original content rather than say, other people's modules. Will we end up running modules? Probably eventually. The podcast, like the rest of Eibon, isn't going to be done for money. It's going to be done for fun, we just want to share our creativity with the rest of you, if you'll have us.

This is all kinda ground-floor stuff. The big announcement of what Eibon is, and that we want to show everyone what we've done, and eventually let everyone play with our work. Right now, there's kinda nothing. Me and my group work 9-5s (sorta) and this is what we do for fun.

I scrolled up and saw that this thread has accrued more views than my normal tweets and reposts, which is cool. Maybe once the podcast is out in the wild, I'll make a community discord or something, if enough people notice what we're doing and want to talk about it.

the big thing with this is that in sharing Eibon with everyone, I (specifically) want to foster a community. Because by making and fostering communities, we make the world a better place.

This whole thread has kinda been my off the cuff, rambling thoughts about the work we've been doing in private, and finally just wanting to kinda shout out into the void of twitter about it. I want to try making a post a day now about Eibon, for the one or two who might be a little curious about what exactly we're up to and want more details about things. Don't like, expect big art or anything, since all I myself can really do is paint minis and write, and the artists in my friend circle don't do work like that for free.

but definitely expect little factoids, or me talking about whatever I can for this made-up world we've been working on. When the time comes and we are ready to announce the podcast, and the public release of Starwyrm, I'll be loud about it, promise.

That's kinda it I think! Hey thanks for reading all of this. I'm really shy, and being autistic I don't always communicate clearly. So if you have a question, just reply and I'll see if I can make a good response. This was just kinda me rambling on twitter, so I've probably lost a thought or two here and there no doubt. If you're interested in hearing more about Eibon, please just follow or like and I'll try not to disappoint. If you're the kind of person who likes to support indie stuff, also please just follow or like.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

okay so. last night i scrolled past some random podcast video ad on my fb feed, where two women were talking about “i want to teach my kids to have a healthy relationship with money”; which of course is a great thing. but then one of them went on with the classic, tired tangent you see online about “oh so we learnt pythagoras’s theorem, but NOTHING about high interest bearing accounts and home loans etc at ALL in school!!! how dare they teach us about Pythagoras but absolutely NOTHING about life skills like saving for a home!!!???”

like effie or whatever your name is. we did learn about basic interest in school, specifically in year 9 & 10 maths and probs in senior general maths too- even though i dropped maths for years 11 & 12. we did learn about how to calculate double time & half pay in maths. we did learn about saving money and budgeting in maths. but lo and behold, you were 15. and so, like many 15 year olds (very esp myself back in 2010 for example) you ignored this stuff and didnt think that it was important. like what teenager goes to apply for a car loan with a low interest variable rate of 7.5%??? not one. what 15yo actually cares about interest and how to calculate it???? not many. but maths teachers, to the best of their ability, do try to teach these things to the stubborn kids who don’t want to listen or even do the work. but it’s because they’re abstract concepts, in many ways, to kids. they defs were to me. i didn’t want to know anything about them (or mind you i didn’t want to know anything maths based bc to quote 15yo me i “loathe, despise and detest maths. so therefore i don’t have to try at it!”). and i think many teenagers who struggle with maths think like that.

but then we latch onto the obvs memorable names like pythagoras or fibonacci or just the all-encompassing term of algebra, and totally dismiss it, when we’re older, as pointless. like yes. don’t get me wrong. algebra, even without my distinct lack of trying at it, did send me into deep confusion and to *sleep acting* sleep. but for fucks sake, you can’t expect teachers and the school curriculum to cram EVERYTHING into a school day like life management skills.

i think this is one reason why teachers are so burnt out. because people like this (and generally the internet at large now) keep spitting out these stupid as fuck lines about “WE DONT NEED ALGEBRA AND PYTHAGORAS!! we need life skills classes!!! why don’t schools and teachers totally disrupt core maths skills learning and teach life skills like how high interest accounts work?!” like no. that’s a parent’s job. or even an extension project for more engaged kids thing. or even, if a kid is interested in this stuff, they’ll research it themselves. high schools don’t need to jam “life skills” into their curriculum. especially when globally, it seems, teachers are burnt the fuck out bc of low pay, bad behaviour from both kids & parents and already overloaded class planning and admin etc etc etc that goes with being a teacher.

because although i still see maths as a complete mystery tbh, i can now appreciate that it’s there in school curriculums to try to teach logic and order and systems… in a way much different to english and other artsy subjects like drama and history, that i was good at, do. but this is always ignored, bc the underlying logic of maths is also devalued as being “unnecessary and impractical” all bc no one particularly enjoys or likes algebra…. and just also conveniently forgets that you are taught money skills in maths; albeit if it is annoying…. because why the hell would you buy 70 pineapples and then split the dividends of selling those 70 pineapples amongst you and 3 of your friends??? did you buy them with a 10% discount??? what is the profit and loss of those 70 pineapples??? how do you budget and save up to buy 70 pineapples???? who knows. no one knows. except if you show your working and reasoning- which no one (and not definitely not me both now at 27 and back then) wants to do at 15 years old- let alone at 30 or 40 or whatever other age.

just yeah. i am so sick and tired of people whinging and bitching about the “we should replace pythagoras with life skills in maths!! teach me about high interest bearing accounts and how to apply for a home loan when im 15!!” when teachers are already over-burdened enough already… and if you’d just bother to find your old year 9 maths textbook from whatever year, you’d find that you did learn basic money management skills, then and there. but it went over your head, like it should have when you were 15. and like. applying for a home loan is almost null and void at this point, with how real estate and interest rates are globally (or domestically here in aus) rn. shut the fuck up and let kids be kids, vicki. and let teachers be teachers, when they’ve already got enough on their plates as is, vicki.

and also. the above doesn’t really factor in how kids would feel about so-called “life skills” classes being forced into their already jam-packed class schedules. maybe some kids would thrive in a class that gives them assessments on how to set up a bank loan for anything- a house, a car, a boat idek. or do a report how insurance premiums are set up. or what the process is for working out your superannuation (here in australia) accounts and paying your taxes.

but on the other hand, i think many kids (like 15yo me for example) would resent and hate to have another class that’s scheduled between maths and geography- or maybe gives them an extra period at school some days (eg like the catholic school i was at from years 7 to 10 did on fridays until i was halfway through year 7, i think, in 2008). no kid wants a 7 period friday. no kid wants to have a mandatory life skills class on a friday afternoon about how to file taxes and how to apply for a bank loan. when they’re already up to their eyeballs in english, history, geography, PE, religion (since i was at a religious school) and whatever other subjects they’ve got in junior years assessments and/or exams. 

and if it’s in senior years: how would it be assessed??? would they try to stuff it into a year 12 end of year exam and cause kids to have mental breakdowns all because they can’t remember the difference between CTP car insurance and regular car insurance in a HSC exam in new south wales?? or remember the correct definition of variable rate home loan??? like if i had to sit through that as a COMPULSORY exam at the end of year 12 back in 2013 i would’ve had even more of a mental breakdown than i already had back then. and it would’ve sent me into a further panic attack mode around my ATAR (uni entrance mark).

just. i think all these comments people always throw around about “they need life skills classes in schools so you learn about home loans and taxes and wages and everything Adulting™️ at school… which is FAR MORE important than pythagoras in maths or shakespeare in english and/or drama class” is really not factoring in both the capacity of teacher workloads and also kids workloads at school when EVERYTHING has to be assessed, examined AND reported on these days. it would be a nightmare.

[romanarose]

Hi!! I'm the person who left the message about chapter 4 of Seattle and I have so much I want to say!!

First of all, you are absolutely NOT useless. I think you'd be very dearly missed in fandom. You're great! Second, I am so so sorry to hear what you have been going through. As someone who struggles with depression I relate A LOT to what you described and I wish I could give you a hug. I have had that exact "crying in the car for 45 minutes" moment and honestly I respect you so much for going into Panda Express with tears in your eyes. That is a sign of strength, to do something even when it is difficult. I respect the hell out of you and I'm rooting for you really hard (I actually live in Seattle so just know there is someone over here cheering you on!!)

Speaking of, I finished Seattle yesterday and a big part of what I appreciated about it was exactly what you described - Rebecca is strong, but abuse can happen to anyone. Seeing her strength, her love, her hope was honestly so inspiring and motivating. Another thing I absolutely adored was her connection to her faith. You honoured that Marc has a complicated history with faith and his family in a beautiful way, and you allowed him and Rebecca not to be on the exact same page about it in such a respectful way. The traditions and the Hebrew you incorporated added so much character to the story and warmed my heart to read about. I have Jewish holiday notifications on my google calendar bc I want to honour my Jewish friend's faith and check in with her when important days are coming up, and Seattle actually taught me some new stuff and showed me there are so mamy things I should google so I can be a better friend to her, I dunno it was just a sweet added bonus for me in a fic that was already so great and meaningful.

Lastly!! I did not find $10 dollars on the street but I read your story Lucky which was even better!!! Again, as someone with depression that story REALLY hit home. This line in particular "...and then I started feeling fucking useless, and things just spiraled." I FEEL LIKE YOU READ MY MIND. Everything described is exactly how I have felt, exactly what I've gone through. And everything Will said in this fic is something I need to learn to tell myself. This story really tugged at my heartstrings, made me feel understood and seen and hopeful. Thank you so much for that. I know I will be coming back to it time and time again when I feel down and need a pick me up.

Hi!!!!!! Thank you for reaching out again! The panda express cured me

jk but after a huuuuuuuuuggggeeee cry and a lot of food i feel much better this week and im really really really hoping things are on the up now.

As for Seattle... your from seattle!!!!! I bet thats why it caught your eye lol. Sorry it wasn't actually about Seattle haha.

Rebecca's faith is something I really wanted to explore with her and Marc. IDK if you read any of the bonus endings, but in Cleaning Out My Closet, Marc is quite religious again. I wanted Rebecca to be a proud Jewish woman and explore her finding her practice again. She never left being Jewish, but it was pushed down due to Jack. So it was more finding that faith expression again, while Marc found his faith. Marc never stopped being Jewish, but he was fairly removed from it all.

Jack caught Rebecca in a vunerable moment, a moment she was no longer codependant with Marc and was probably still struggling with that idea of being on her own, even if she was still in contact with Marc. Also, she didn't date. Her entire high school, Marc was at her side and no one was going to fuck with Marc. for 6 years of college and grad school she didnt date either, just trying to get through each day. And no matter how strong you are, when you've grown up with abuse and never having that parental love, you're ripe to fall for lovebombing and someone rich taking care of you.

Doesn't mean she's weak, it makes she's human.

And one of my favorite parts of Seattle is Marc's reaction to Rebecca's pregnancy. Not only is he just genuinely thrilled, elated to be having kids with her, but the fact he's so excited to tell his dad, Matty, and all his street level marvel friends.

AH Lucky, that's a comfort fic of mine, honestly. The idea of Will taking care of me....

Not that you have to, but Sunshine Starlight Sweetheart Brightside and then Leather and Lace deal with similar themes of recovery from child abuse, sexual assault, and addiction, but that's just an aside

I appreciate you reaching out, and telling me all these kind things. These sorts of messages I've gotten for my series at different times always make me so happy and warm, but at this particular dark point in my life, it's meant a lot more.

So, thank you again.

[oroborosdreadwalker]

Its time to show my hidden love for anything history related in relation to something my sister told me today, fun fact, they don't teach about WW2 anymore in my local highschool because of and I quote the paper she showed me "The possiblity to offened or cause mental distraught in students who deem it as such" her "textbook" written by the school not the schoolboard completely leave out WW2 and all the good that came out of it invention wise, they are actively removing a part of our history because some snowflakes are disheartened by the actions, I visited my local legion today to talk to our vets and one of them who fought in WW2 told me "I didnt fight for my country just for the history of it to not be taught as a way to prevent it from ever happening again" and the heartbreak in his voice almost made me cry im not going to lie myself im not afraid to admit my family lineage, I have German in me and document proof my great great grandfather was a part of the nazi army before deserting because he didn't believe in the cause anymore and realised they where the bad guys, he willingly turned himself in to a local british squad and from what my great aunt told me because i cant read german he said in his journal "I turned myself in after running away knowing I might of been shot anyways I was scared, but I was more scared of what my country had become" they allowed him his freedom in return for any information he had on troop movement, and the stories my aunt translated for me made me realise that we are going to lose this history if people continue to be as soft as they are, while I agree there are zome topics we should cushion the blow on, history is not one of them, we should not hide our history for risk of making a handful of people upset for 20 minutes on the topic though and the coolest thing that will be in my possession when my aunt kicks the bucket is my great great grandfather's journal, uniform, and mauser as that has been willed to me in my aunts will as my grandfather willed it to her, its the little bits of the history we still have left be it out vets or personal belongings handed down the generational tree. And while I am sorry to anyone who is offended by the fact that I am not afraid to hide the fact I had a Nazi in my family, I think its a good thing to learn from that we are not what our family makes us.

[certifiedceraunophile]

I can see that you're not a native English speaker but your grasp on the language is applaudable how long have you been learning?

Your writing (both tumblr posts and fanfiction) have a classical elegance to it and it's hard for even native speakers to communicate their thoughts as beautifully as you do 💙 Have you taken some special training for it?

Oh my god angel anon this is so sweet, and lmao you're right I'm not a native speaker like at all, tbvvh I struggle a lot w english, always have like I'd score the lowest in it out of all my subjects in high school, ugh my total percentage always took a hit bc of it -_- wont ever stop being salty about it ngl, so no I've had no real training whatsoever beyond like the general compulsory learning in school, and also anybody who chats w me for like more than a minute will immediately know that idgaf about spellings or sentence structure or general coherency in my day to day english, Lmao which reminds me the other day I literally told someone I ~idealize~ I look up to in every way possible when it comes to writing *cough* Jenn @cbk1000 *cough* that “……blah something blah…..I teached...blah blah” while talking and I didnt notice it for like a hot second and Jenn is too sweet (sort of) to point it out but oh my god I was mortified by it when I realized what I had said, but honestly what throws me is that I didn't really notice it was wrong for a long time and like I thought it was a-ok until it hit me that it’s taught.

So in all honesty my english is as good as any non-native speaker who had to learn the language growing up strictly for school purposes.

That being said in my ff writing I just try really really pathetically hard when I write, like the pretension leaps out and tries to reproduce whatever I myself have consumed so far in terms of writing and recycle it as my own crap, I just have this ability (it's not a special thing everyone does it lmao) to subsume what I read and I mostly just take sentences, metaphors and other writerly things sometimes even just the mood/setting of the writing that strike me and rewrite it w an added touch of pretension and it's actually really tangible how much I allow what I read to drastically affect how I write and since I read a weird eclectic mix of really….just a lot of different things that shouldn't really go together lol, my writing style/ narrator voice/ mood setting for my ff also varies a lot, like one day I write Klaus w a satire and critical wit that’s not exactly Voltaire but close, where he’s pretty much just disgusted by everything and decides to mock it all with a straight face and the next day I write him as a lil pining shit with saccharine levels of romanticism in my writing to appeal to his artist-soul mostly bc I sat my ass down and read a poem or two by Keats prior to writing, other days he’s cute and murderous, wears human teeth as jewelry and is just a tiny bit poignant bc I had a date with Poe….so yeah basically what I’m trying to say is that the only "training" I've ever had is what I've already read all these years and what I write is just all the text I've kept w myself and can recollect and re-arrange into my own writing, which is why I would never consider my work to be something that’s completely and originally mine bc I have this personal saying that goes, 

“Everything I see is an image of an image.”

Which to me means a lot of things but in this particular context means that nothing I create belongs to me and only me, it belongs to every writer I’ve read before writing it and will be reminisced by every author who I’ll read after it, that everything I create is just what creators before me have done but have allowed me to take their creations and make it mine before I too pass it on with love and history to the next person.

I also have another quote I feel in every inch of my heart and that’s

"I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women and men that I have loved; all the cities I have visited."

-Jorge Luis Borges

So really this is just my personal...philosophy?? Belief, that I owe my creativity to the world and everything it creates *through* me because I don't own the beauty, I’m only a lens through which it passes through, that my creativity refracts the world's beauty into my life and my creations, and I am glad, blessed to have been the lens through which such beauty passes through.

And that I am more than happy to just be another image who is someone else’s reflection or the very object someone else will reflect, I love how much that connects every human being and every object of beauty, of creation in existence inescapably.

Now I’ve rambled on a lot like a LOT, definitely wayyyyyy more than that simple ask warranted lmao so I’ll shut up and just say you’re the sweetest lovely anon this message made me feel so very flattered and I genuinely think I blushed (and trust me brown girls cannot blush mostly bc the melanin wont let the pink filter through lmao) and I am honoured to know that you thought I took some professional coaching for this because I literally am the most amateur absolutely clueless bullshit your way through everything writer you will find out there and I am ngl proud of that.

(like seriously dude the other day I learnt for the first time how to use a semi colon and I s2g I wanted to dig a hole and bellyflop into it after realizing how many bloody times I’ve used a semi colon wrong like jfc someone kill me before I do it myself it’s mortifying)

eenyways *tackle hugs* thank you for making me smile and for your kind words youre absolutely precious 💖 and I dont deserve the compliments but I am never gonna let them go bc they make my heart warm.

[of-faunsandyellowflowers]

Dad appreciation post, personal ramblings.

yall dont know the fucking lengths of love my dad showed me as a kid in ways that I personally love most. That man would do my l9ve language. We are 90% the same person.

My dad, until I was at least 13, would cut my steaks up into bite sized chunks and always tell me to chew a LOT just so I wouldnt choke.

Hed cut my corn off the cob, because he knew I fucking hated eating it on the cob.

He steamed broccoli just enough to where it atill had crunch, because he knew I hate mushy veggies.

He would always play the card game speed eith me and checkers anytime I wanted.

He would read to me in bed, and would eventually teach me to read. Hed stay in my bed aith me while we read until I fell asleep, cuz I liked showing him my books.

He got me countless books about animals and their anatomy. He also got me a bunch of michael jordan books becayse I adored them.

He always supported my cooking and baking obsession, even if he didnt like what I made.

He taught me to parallel park every single night and helped me study a bunch for my drivers test because he knew I was nervous.

He would take me and my brother on river canyon trips for a few days every summer because he knew how much I loved rocks and water, and that i needed time away from people.

He would endure my ace ventura jokes, weird ass humor and annoyances all the time and even laugh when I did them, even though they were annoying.

He would try to help me with my math homework, even though I've got discalculia

He encouraged me to do well in school but never scolded me if I failed, because I believe my parents knew I had a learning disability.

He would watch volcano and history documentaries with me all the time, because I was so interested.

He let me dig holes in our backyard in search of goodies because of how interested I was in archeology.

He came up with songs with me, and taught me phrases that I remember to this day.

He always put extra sunscreen on me any4ime it was sunny, and taught me that safety is much more important than trying to always look good.

Hes always checking my cars oil, tire pressure, and reminding me to do that before ANY trip I have.

He pays for my cars repairs, tires, and so forth. Never asks for a dime back even though I say I want to. He refuses. I'm privileged for that.

Sometimes hell take my car to town just to fill it up with gas and not tell me becayse he knows I'm unable to buy myself gas and I dont like asking.

He ALWAYS is excited when I cook. Literally always excited.

Anytime hes out hiking or hunting he spends an extra 2 hours looking for crystals and rock formations to give to me, because I'm very interested in geology. So far hes found fossilized fish, geode, quartz, amethyst, petrified wood, and a variety of other crystals. He now gets them for me because he knows I use them for my spells.

I could list so many other things I'm just very thankful for my dad. Hes going to be 69 in February and I just......life is so short and I think about how I have so little time left with him, it scares me. Hes healthy and all, but hes getting older and that's just terrifying.

[thrallsnpuppets]

Weird Cinderella moment but not really.

I am handicapped. I had to have reconstructive surgery on my legs for vestigial heels as a result of a neurological problem.

Finding shoes that fit have always been a trigger of anxiety for me. In the past, I have been made to feel bad because i only used 'half the shoe' at full price.

I internalized that so after my surgery I was very excited to be able to try out other shoes that didn't make me feel like a broken RoboCop.

To no avail, my feet are still deformed from having to walk without heels.

So for like 20 something years, I find shoe shopping to be a point of contention and eventually learned to settle for shoes that simply didn't hurt.

As a result, I can't wear flats, heels, converse, certain cuts of boots, running shoes, sandals, really any shoe that has a strap over the arch, and basically all women's shoes. It must have arch support and cushioning around the heels to prevent rubbing of surgical scar tissue.

Wearing men's shoes became my norm. To me, it's not really a big deal but most common retail for men's shoes are less than cute. Sometimes a witch just wants to wear pretty sandals with a sundress.

Lo, it is not practical.

To be honest, before I was married, my shoe choice had frequently come up as topic of discussion with my dates. (I wore steel toe boots most of the time when I wasn't wearing gym shoes for physical therapy and no I didn't discuss my health on dates.) My choices were dull, out of place for whatever outfit, and made me taller. men's shoes provided an extra 1/2 inch of lift on average in my experience and since I'm above average in height for an American female it sometimes made me eye to eye with the men i was dating. [It was never a problem or a point with the women I went on dates with.]

I blew them off. I bought my shoes so I was going to wear what made me ... Comfortable.

So, along comes my now husband whom insists on caring needlessly about almost everything.

He thought I was intentionally depriving myself of nice things based off of some of my financial/economic idealogy combined with insecurities. And this was before I talked about my handicaps.

Some of you might be wondering why I hid any of that in the first place and those of you with physical handicaps or chronic health problems don't really need an explanation.

For me, it was trying to create a separate identity from my health issues i had since a young child and that most people I grew up with tended to attribute these symptoms as my entire personality. So, I experimented in my dating life with those whom didnt know my medical history to see if I would always be "the sick kid" or if it was entirely circumstancial. I couldnt carry out these social experiments with or at school or I'm social outings because I was absent and in hospital often. (And some people who knew about it bullied me despite trending empathy.)

(Good news, my conclusion is that individual response is mostly circumstancial based off of 'blind' studies. Much of the situational outcome was a feeling of betrayal... on their part for 'not being honest' from the start. I'm not a nun in personality so a gentle smol flower i am not. My relationships were intentionally not physical so sometimes they were emotionally incompatible. occasionally, the added physical handicaps became a breaking point for some of the individuals I had dated. It's hard for me to blame them and I don't. Argue that as you please but it seems irrational to guilt somebody into a relationship because they don't like me for being dishonest about a pivotal aspect of my life. If they were accepting of it cool. If they weren't accepting of it, the end of the relationship is best for both parties.)

I digress.

My new boyfriend (now husband) wanted to buy me new shoes after finding how deteriorated my favorites were. He specifically made a point of helping me find shoes that I liked and he would buy them.

Que me getting really grumpy about that but the gesture was sweet. Earlier in that week is when I decided to 'reveal' my deformities. Honestly, it caught him by surprise (like others whom I have told because years of physical therapy taught me to articulate walking motions effecienty though my legs still feel like QWERTY most days.) Then, for the first time, I explained to a male lover why I wear men's shoes.

He believed that I didn't ever have proper help finding shoes. (After meeting my parents and making a judgement on that.) I didn't have the heart to tell him that I have been buying my own shoes for the last few years because my parents insisted I just had "fat feet". (Denial is strong with ambitious parents of a handicap child, even after twenty something years.)

Resolutely, I decided to bear it and let him go through the whole process of having me try on pretty shoes that may or may not fit. (I knew the shoes wouldn't fit but this was the first time someone was going through this defeating process with me so I went with it.)

I tried on over a dozen shoes of varying sizes and cut. Each one never fitting properly. Mostly because, they were women's shoes. This took over an hour. I was emotionally drained and so was this man.

At one point he stopped and stared at the array of shoes beside me each with a different reason of why I can't wear them.

He looked at my old broken in boots, then back at the dainty women's shoes around me. I had been quiet for sometime now. I have already been through this process several times before and had sobbed about it on multiple occasions on shoe shopping trips right after my surgery (main reason why my parents insisted I just buy them by myself.) As an adult, I settled for practicality and reserved my sullen reservations for when i returned home.

I waited as he crunched the numbers in his head, kneeling by my feet and rubbing his chin in contemplation.

"are the sizes too small?" He pondered.

"my feet aren't that long." I uttered.

"Why don't these ones work?" He pointed at a pair of tennis shoes.

"to get the shoe to close all the way requires me to tighten the laces so hard across my arch it makes my toes go numb." I replied.

"and a bigger size won't help?" He furrowed his brow.

"the size differences don't include depth of the shoe and arch height." I said, "it's why I wear men's or boys shoes. They're deeper with more support even if they're a bit too big in length."

"I can tell you from personal experience that men's shoes are dull and not cute." He said earnestly.

I guffawed. I know he meant well but that wasn't the first time I bought a pair of men's shoes. Still, he carried a look of defeat. He had wanted to do something he thought was nice and buy me a cute pair of shoes because he thought it'd make me happy.

I'm not trying to make a point here.

I'm merely venting because I had to buy new shoes again yesterday because the snow storm killed my last pair and I was stressed out about it.

My husband now has a sense of what shoes I purchase for myself so typically he's right there and the trip ends in about ten minutes without a scheduled panic attack.

[worstdoctorsyndrome]

Do you guys mind if I share something personal? I swear it's relevent.

I never uh, got an education. I was "homeschooled" and by that I mean pulled out of school after first grade, literally handed the teacher's guide and given the responsibility to teach myself with the weird fundamentalist textbooks we had at home. With no supervision, no tests, nothing. Never turned in a single report. Nobody else noticed, and I thought it was normal because my parents would brag to other adults that their kid was so smart they were "teaching themselves." It didnt feel like a secret because how open they were about it.

I've always had a strong desire to learn so I did my best, picking up what I could on my own but even that knowledge doesn't feel like very...credible because I mean, saying my curriculum wasn't very good would be an understatement. It straight up taught stuff like "science is actually a myth used to discredit christianity," "the only book you need to understand history is the bible" and some reeeally concerning things like "it's a good thing if your parents hit you." And heck, some years I didn't even have the textbooks. So now as an adult I'm working really hard to make up for what I missed. And I'm doing good! I'm learning and having a great time!

Anyway, getting to my point, given the theme of this blog I thought y'all might be interested in the crazy stuff I was taught about medical science?? It really is just medieval medicine 2.0. Might share some later

[mycatmoo]

yknow. with these protests in portland i wanna share some things concerning portland i learned from my black history class. im not an expert about this by any means and its been 2 years since i was in this class so some details are fuzzy but i think it should be shared regardless since no regular history class will teach these details

the first thing is something people may know of: portlands history with segregation. as everyone knows, for 100 years (between 1849-1950) black people and white people lived in different places with white people having the better stuff and black people have the crappy stuff. this is basic stuff taught in elementary school when we’re taught about martin luther king. whats not taught though is that city boards actually  drew up maps of their cities and and determined the “good” areas and the “bad” areas. the good areas were places that were close to schools, malls, libraries, ect ect but most importantly: were where white people lived. this is called red lining. these good had the most expensive pricing, which made it difficult for black people to leave the poor areas for a better life, and even if someone was able to leave then it would lower the overall community. even the presence of one black person in a community would bring the “best” areas to a “good” area. but this could quickly spiral with the white people leaving the community, bringing their businesses with them and eventually bringing that community down to a poor community. 

so cities started making segregation laws

and portland had some of, if not the most egregious laws in all of the us

and even after segregation ended, it affected portland to the point that its still the whitest city in all of the us

(putting a cut because this is a long post)

i dont remember any details on the laws portland put in place, as i said its been two years. i can offer this map though.

this map was created in 1934 showing the red lining at the time. the great areas are the “best” areas, blue “desirable”, yellow “definitely declining”, and red “undesirable.”

there is a website out there that is collecting as many of these maps as possible and archiving them. if someone knows this website could you tell me it? i was going to put a link to it here but i couldnt find it

next thing up: vanport. vanport was a city between portland and vancouver, thus its name, which was made in a short amount of time to give workers helping a dude build ships to win ww2 a place to live. and i mean was a city. because it flooded and no one running the city did anything to stop it. 

once upon a time vanport was seen as a grand feat of architecture, having been a city made in a little over a hundred days and all. but quickly became a stain on portland after the war when all the white people moved out and all of the black people had to stay. because where could they go? they didnt have the money to move out and portland didnt want them. so they were stuck there. 

the unfortunate thing was that they were protected by a massive damn. this is unfortunate because, as i said, it flooded. the residence only had a 3 days warning to pick up and leave before it destroyed the whole city.

theres debate on why vanport flooded. some argues that the people in charge just didnt know it at the time or if they just wanted to flood an entire city to get rid of it out of racism. personally? i call bullshit that they just didnt know. 

whatever the case may be though the fact still stands that a city full of primarily black people was destroyed and that should be talked about.

if you want to know more about the history of vanport, here is a website i found while googling for the vanport historic site:  https://vanporthistory.org/ portland has a long history of racism that still (clearly) affects it to this day. with whats going on now more than ever i feel its important to for everyone (hell, myself included) to educate themselves on this history. i only gave a basic rundown based off of what i remember, so if you want to make any corrections (well, dm me on things i could add or correct for this post) or if you want to add onto anything here i more than encourage you to do so

and to the people in portland, from a neighbor across the river, stay safe. remember to protest safely. and if im able to i fully intend to join the protests too. its just difficult for me since i live in vancouver and my only means of transportation is really by car due to some personal reasons on my end

and one last thing. here is a link to a map of the lynchings all across the us: 

https://plaintalkhistory.com/monroeandflorencework/explore/map2/#3.91/41.43/-102.75

and before any of you ask why italians are included there. white people were also racist against other white people. the difference is that they can be subsumed into the norm while people of other races cant

[dragonpiango]

My review of 2019

January:

So I recently graduated from community college in the previous December, and I started university at HT with a scholarship for piano performance. Honestly I thought going to a HBCU was going to be weird, but turns out I’m not much of an outcast. It was a nice transition to a new setting and new people and a breath of fresh air! It was amazing having a practice room to myself and the mental thought of “getting to know my music” became a reality although my first piano lesson with my new professor was strange. His impression of me was way different than what I thought. Although he is a outstanding teacher, he might have overthought what I was capable of.... him assigning me my pieces and they consisted of Bach French suite No. 5 in G Major, Mozart sonata K.332 in F Major, Chopin Nocturne in D-flat Major, Chopin Scherzo No.2 in b-flat minor, and the most memorable piece IMHO Ravel’s Une Barque Sur L’Ocean from Miroirs.

February:

So still settling into a new university and meeting new people (although I just stayed in the music building bc that’s where all my classes were) it was Black History Month. Being apart of the choir at school and the only ensemble they offered, we were pretty busy with a lot of performances BUT it was enlightening too. Everyone has been so welcoming and coming from a background in classical music I’ve been introduced to Gospel music not only for voice, but piano. From accompanying spirituals to gospel it really has opened my eyes that music doesn’t have to be so strict. It is a way of expressing emotions and from then on I took my repertoire more seriously in the sense each piece had its own “character.”

March:

This month is a crucial one, not only did I find my “clique” at school, but they only consisted of two people. Ant and KayP. Not going to use their names but these two were the only two that understood who I was and I understood who they were. We might have drifted a little bit since one has graduated but in the mean time, during these few months, have been my shoulder to cry on. They were very talented vocalist who taught me a lot in the sense of accompanying and vice versa. Since our school is small, our “accompanist” was my piano teacher, so every rehearsal was around his schedule, until I came into the picture. They really pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and really get me to where I need to be. During this time, I was still working retail and I have a true appreciation for those who commit full time to retail because lemme tell y’all. That shit is a lot of work. Especially around holidays. Balancing out school and work was a struggle, but I managed through especially when I don’t have a piano at home. I have to go to school to practice and with retail, all my extra time would be working.

April:

By this time, everyone is stressing because of finals, but luckily since I grabbed an associates degree from COmmunity college, I didn’t have to take my core classes and cry. Music classes were all my focuses were on especially performance. I had a few performances in between for our seminar where we perform in front of all the music students, and for me, being a pianist, I didn’t have to rely on my teacher for rehearsals and accompanying. I just focused on me and this got me ready for our benefit concert that I was honored to be a part of. KayP being the current Miss HBCU and queen of the school, decided to raise money for students of troubled pasts who have really turned their lives around in college and made a great GPA would be rewarded with scholarship money that we raised. I was the one who got to close the whole show out and it truly was an amazing experience. Being able to perform for a great cause is always heart warming and I will cherish that moment forever.

May:

So the semester comes to an end and I have juries (where we perform our pieces in front of the faculty and get graded ) what I did not know is that since our school is so small, they invite and pay other professors from the biggest university next to us UT Austin and have them come sit and grade us as well. That to me was a shock moment, because coming from a university in a small town before we had enough people and knew everyone. Community college DIDNT have juries for piano which was odd, but this was a perfect opportunity to really put my hard work into good use. After juries, I did splendid with a few mistakes that I was able to recover from, and lemme tell y’all. No performance is perfect. And I have accepted that. My piano teacher hooked me up with one of his good friends who owns and directs her own music school and I became a piano teacher there. Oddly, I’m the youngest teacher there with no doctoral degree and am working on a BA still..... but none the less, this transition really opened my eyes.

June:

School is finally out, and I reduced my retail job to just Saturday. I finally got my reputation as a teacher at my new job and gained students rather quickly to where I was almost booked up Monday through Friday. With little to no teaching experience it was a trial and error process. I was taking over a studio of a former teacher who had visa issues. So all his students were a tad skeptical with me more so their parents. But after observing lessons and learning their names it was only a matter of time that I was teaching them and really became someone they look up to. It started off rocky because I wasn’t used to a build your own schedule, from what I’ve experienced with teaching at a music school is that someone does the schedule for you. Not in this case, so having to communicate and try to accommodate every students schedule was a tough start, but once I got used to it, the ride was easy from there. Unfortunately, most students were gone on vacation so I had to work with only a few who stayed in town and accommodate those who were in town for that week. That aside, my communication improved after constantly talking with parents 24/7.

July:

This is where life gets exciting. My boyfriend had surprised me with tickets to go to Chicago. I would go back because the city is amazing and food is delicious and it’s easy to get around in Chicago. It was a nice break from work and really helped me bond with my partner. During this time we had two cats. One names Roger and the other Gladys. So a little back story, when I moved in with my partner, his cats basically adopted me. Gladys was a daddy’s girl and kept to Todd mostly but she was very seeet with me and made adorable monkey noises when you picked her up and cuddled with her. She was diagnosed with cancer and the year before that we made the decision to remove her tumor and hope that she would live a healthy life. Well this is where the tumor came back full force and in Chicago, I was a wreck because I felt bad enjoying my time away and leaving her at home. My partner (who is the mature one in our relationship) had a sit down with me about what to do with her and I lost it. He didn’t want to put her down either, but it was for the best. We agreed to keep her comfortable until we knew it was time. Before the month ends tho, we are back home and my sisters boyfriend sends me a text saying he is serious about her and wants to marry her. The retail I work for is a jewelry store and he had asked me to help pick out a diamond for my sister since he knew what she wanted. So this was the good news. We find the diamond, and have it set in her favorite setting and my boyfriend who is full of surprises gets me a ticket to visit her in LA.

August:

So my birthday month is here, and I fly out to LA to deliver the ring to my now sisters fiancé and they fly out to Italy and he does the deed and she says yes. Happy note. But as school starts back up for the new semester, my partner had a issue to where he would be in a state to where he couldn’t move much due to a unusual circumstance. And before that we decided to put Gladys down. It was a tough decision but we gave her the best life we could ever had hoped for her and I was emotionally drained from everything. Having to keep a positive attitude for my students and going to school and being an adult in general. The only way I got thru this period is from my best friend and coworker who knows what it’s like to go through life and it’s always better to have an open mind and ear to talk to. I call her my mamma because she’s like a mother figure to me but also a amazing friend. Without her, I probably wouldn’t have been mentally there at all for anyone. In the time of summer until now I haven’t had a chance to practice because I forgot to mention that i had a Jr recital coming up which is why my repertoire was so big.

September:

After everything passed and I’m in a better mental state, I proceed to my schedule of school and work and find a time to practice in between. What’s great about this month is that since the semester just started, I had plenty of time to catch up on my practice and really get my lessons to become productive in shaping and understanding different musical styles. My partner is all better and life is great because I was in the best part of my life. Doing well in school, amazing texting job, and a best friend who is there for me and most importantly my partner. He’s been my rock since we first met and I can always rely on him and vice versa. He understood that with my free day off that I needed to spend it practicing and told me to go for it and be as productive as I can. I honestly wasn’t used to that kind of support but I am grateful.

October:

This is where reality hits and my recital is next month. I get very crazy about everything. I had all my music learned but because of my indecisiveness, I kept changing how I shaped everything and my mind goes blank. Probably a dark time for me because I didn’t know how to handle this kind of stress. I’ve put on hour long recitals before and the only thing different this time is that I’m getting graded and want to make such a great impression to further my education to a dictator degree. The dress was eating me alive and on top of that, one of my students decided he wants to enter in a competition and I say why not. Let’s do it. Getting him ready for that and keeping my sanity was hard to do but I managed. He did well, but not well enough to get a medal but his parents were very impressed with how quickly he progressed with me. That’s always a plus, right?

November:

The month has come for me to have my big recital and I invited all my friends and coworkers and they all made it. I was truly nervous but if you don’t get nervous, are you even human? It turned out wonderful although the first piece (Bach French suite) was shaky, I had to tell my self that I was having fun and everyone here is here to support me and want me to do well. That little talk was a confidence booster and ended the recital flawlessly. After my recital, my job has their student recitals so my focus was all on my students doing the best they can and having fun. This month was fun because I was selected to do masterclasses for piano students through out my job and it was very enlightening to see how talented the new generation of musicians are! Only positive comments because I couldn’t honestly find anything wrong with any of the students performances and their teachers are amazing.

December:

So getting all my students ready for their recital was a big time investment but totally worth it because they all performed so well and I honestly cried bc I felt like a proud parent LOL. But after that was time for the semester to end up and one class was making me go crazy. Everything ended well and I had ALL A’s and one B but I know what to expect for next semester and everything will be great. Honestly this year has me all sorts of fucked up with emotions and I proved to myself that when I stay committed, I can really achieve what I want. This year was a great year for me and a way to end a decade because when 2020 starts, I know what I need to do and where I need to be.

[the-sanders-sides]

inidan american (desi) logan

a sequel to this post because people asked for more and i decided that they shall receive (and also i love writing these)

fair warning, logans a bitter kid, and this isnt as positive and happy as romans post. ive experienced two different ways of being desi, one where i lived in fully asian and indian community and didnt even think id ever feel alone, and another where i moved to a place where i havent met another desi in like 7 years of living here in a 3 hour driving radius. in romans post i played into my first experience and how at home i felt. in the second experience, the one im in right now, i am much more bitter about who i am and not really knowing anyone who gets it anymore. so i play into that A LOT in this. so keep that in mind. (and he will get happier in a future part. m planning on making this into a series)

ok so first off. his name is logan sanders. people (mostly other indians) dont believe him when he tells them. he tells them they dont know indian history. they say they do. he tells them that the british fucked around (quite literally) in india for four centuries so of course english names would stick with that precise wording

sometimes when he’s annoyed enough and doesnt want to explain this for the millionth he defends himself with this russel peters skit (watch it, it’s hilarious) because it describes his family. to a T. 

he grew up in a community with not very many asians, and knew no indians outside his family so he felt a sort of disconnect to his culture

while his grandparents and parents would teach him about indian culture, he felt so distant from it since he knew no one outside his family who was indian, and since he didnt have any siblings or any nearby cousins to hang around with

he had visited india once but he was too young to remember it properly or too remember his cousins

the closest mandir was an hour away so that also limited the amount of indian kids/people he knew

he barely knew hindi because everyone in his family spoke english, especially in public

he felt guilty over the disconnect he felt and would always try to bridge it but would never accomplish this because it he kept losing passion since he rarely saw other people like him in the real world and in the media and he didnt see the point of trying

this all changed in eight grade when he moved next door to the Kumar family in a north indian street of some south asian blocks in an asian community

when his family first moved, the Kumar family invited the Sanders over to welcome them

it turns out the Kumar’s had a son who was the same age as logan

“hi logan! im rohan kumar! but i like going by roman instead of rohan!” 

this introduction pissed logan off 

he was seething because why would this kid who got to have an indian first AND last name change his name to an english one! why didnt he see the value of his name!

he knew right away that such a difference meant they could never be friends 

“im logan sanders, but thats all youll get to know about me because i see no use associating myself with someone as... well, ignorant, as you”

roman decides to whip out one of the swears his cousins taught him and whisper shouts “who are you calling ignorant, bhenchod?” 

 it became clear to him that this was new turf, and people on this new turf must be speaking hindi. and that he was the ignorant one if he couldnt talk in hindi. he made a vow to learn it as fast as he could to make sure this roman kid wasnt better than him

but, logan grits his teeth and says “you, and i know it must be true because you were too dumb to understand me the first time”

this evidently struck a sore spot in roman because he didnt fight back but just stalked away. logan smiled slightly, happy to have won that argument

logan asks his grandpa to teach him hindi and his grandpa gets super excited

they start lessons immediately and despite barely hearing it growing up, it’s as if his brain was made for this because he picks the language up amazingly fast and in a months time, while not able to speak back yet, he can understand most casual conversation

his first diwali in basically little india is the most magical thing ever

diwali at his old home was very quiet because there wasnt anyone around to celebrate with

everyone is so happy in this new home however. everyone is dressed up and all the houses are lit up and there are diyas everywhere and he doesnt want to admit it but the kumar’s have the best rangoli on the street and it’s because of roman and he knows roman did it because sometimes he’d stare out of his bedroom window while doing homework and have a perfect view of roman delicately working on it for two weeks

(the kumar’s front porch had been covered with tarp waiting for diwali to make sure romans precious rangoli wasnt stepped on or ruined. when it’s finally let up, everywhere where there could be art, there is. it’s insane how good at colors roman is, logan thinks)

diwali morning: 

he fights his parents because he doesnt want to miss school for diwali because americans dont have a day off for it. his parents set the clocks in the house ahead to make him think he overslept so he would skip school. (logan didnt know that his parents had submitted an excused absence form for religious reasons and that the school was very understanding. he thought it would be like his old school where he wouldnteven bother trying since he wasnt christain and the school was lkinda discriminatory)

they spend the morning in mandir and it’s nice. for once he doesnt feel different from his peers because he goes to mandir and not church or synagogue. he feels at home.

diwali afternoon:

the afternoon is spent with frantic cleaning and cooking and digging around for the diya’s that were still in boxes, packed away from when they moved

logan offered to find them all to continue with a diya science experiment he started two years prior. his theory was that the diya’s were multiplying and there were more each year despite no one buying anymore

this held true, because even though he could only find half of their diya collection, it was somehow more than the entire diya collection of two years prior. 

diwali evening:

theres a big potluck and everyone in the neighborhood is out talking to each other, looking at the decorations at everyones houses, eating samosas, and playing with sparklers. 

logan feels content

he makes a new resolve to learn more about hinduism. if this is what ti was supposed to be, then he never wanted to be away from hinduism. 

he looked at the metaphors and symbolism in everything and finally understood what his dad meant he told logan that hinduism is just science written in poetry and that string theory is written in the ancient texts

middle school in this new town is so much better than middle school in his old home. why?

a. doesnt get bullied for being a nerd

b. doesnt get called gay slurs 

c. the classes are harder 

d. much less racism

e. all of the above

soon enough, logans asking his grandpa to teach him how to cook Indian food

Logan spends the day burning dosas and making lopsided rotis

(eventually he gets the hang of it, and a he'll be cooking food for an infuriating Indian boy ;) ;) psst it's roman)

Speaking of boys

Coming out isn't an option for logan

He knows that his parents arent really religious enough to really look into hinduism and see that no, gays are not bad

But they are traditional and conservative enough to be homophobic

not homophobic as in spewing hate with the westboro baptist church at a pride parade

But homophobic as in "the gays are fine as long as they don't do it in front of me" kinda thing

So Logan stays quiet

the closet kinda sucks but i mean what can he do

it’s safer inside, and he as illogical as wishing is, he wishes that people would use their brains and realize there’s nothing wrong with gay

anyway

in school logan makes his first desi friend, who was dubbed as anxiety years ago and cant seem to get rid of the nickname and now has a whole complex about his name so logan doesnt know his name

logan and anxiety meet in the school library: logan studying and anxiety hiding

people dont like anxiety

especially non-indian kids

surprise surprise it’s an old buddy called racism, but anxiety’s story is for another time

(but even though no one really likes anxiety, whenever racist shit goes down, it has to go through roman)

so logan and anxiety become fast friends

and they make fun of roman (a+ bonding)

logan claims that roman is a hypocrite for changing his name to an english one while being so immersed in indian culture

anxiety doesnt dispute this, but says he has a past with roman

a past that involved getting stuck with the name anxiety

again, another story for another time

one day, when logan and anxiety are eating lunch they see roman destroy some homophobes who throw around the word f*g and keep calling caitlyn jenner, bruce jenner

logans chest surges

he’s all like “what?? emotions?? pride at roman?? is he better than me for being so open and standing up for what he believes in??”

gay panic basically

but logan masked it well and pushed it away

the next day roman comes to school with a pride patch on his jean jacket

logan feels like he cant breathe

logan is supremely jealous of roman.

he can be gay in peace

he can pretend not to be indian in a way that benefits him

and he’s not affected by stereotypes in the same way?? like what does this kid not have

and by stereotypes i mean

roman is the complete opposite of all indian and desi stereotypes: loud, flamboyant, theatrical

logan’s personality is exactly how the stereotypes are. he’s nerdy and likes science and math and it seems like he cant escape the stereotypes. they follow him. and he feels guilty that he likes science and math and is nerdy. 

as illogical as it is, he wishes he was different from how he is

but logan later learns that there are more than just his perspective on being desi and that every desi kid growing up faces challenges about it that are different than his, causing them to experience being desi differently

and logan will accept that, in another story at another time

for now, he’s just bitter. and as illogical as it is, he wishes the world was better

and now, i shall tag some people who asked to be tagged and some other desi’s who loved this because i feel like you guys might appreciate this too. also i love u. desi famders squad up.

@sssixeyedrunt @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @caterpiller-tea @xxxbladeangelxxx @snufflesthegrim227 @cloudchaser7 @thelowlysatsuma