#i mentioned before that the anti-god people ENTIRELY rest on appeals to emotion and like. that's the key

[utilitycaster]

Hi again! Thanks for taking the time to answer, it honestly was very helpful!

For the first point, the thing I had in mind was the last 4-sided dive from 43:23. To your point, it's honestly less explicitly mentioned that I remembered; but what I had in mind is Matt saying: "He's watched it [...] There's a lot of broken information [...] He's had time to sit with it, to find something that is very important to him and is now showing it to you for reasons he has."

And about the last point, it's not condescending at all! "Wait for it" is something I tell people a lot and I am told a lot when watching something with a lot of excitement, it happens! But my problem isn't really that I can't see them making horrible decisions in the next episode (I'll sure they will, they don't really have non-horrible options and I'm looking forward to it!); my problem is that the set up to whatever is going to happen has been so sympathetic and understanding that even if Luds manages to prove that are problems here with the gods, it will be kinda impossible to then follow it up with "therefore I think they should all die actually!"

However, to your second point, I do think I need to sit with this a bit longer and maybe go into the main tag to read some bad takes to make it more understandable lol, so feel free to not publish this at all if you don't want!

No worries and glad it didn't come off as condescending!

I really do think the situation is that Ludinus does think the gods should all die for this. For what it's worth I think this is what makes him a great villain and a very compelling and real one. I really do believe there are people who see an impossible life-threatening situation and judge those who act imperfectly out of self-preservation and terror more than those who lie down and let themselves be killed.

For of lack of a better way to put it, and deliberately avoiding any specific irl political positions, I think it is always a good exercise to consider why someone may hold political views that are entirely batshit fucking nuts to you. I think of Brennan's "personality pre-dates ideology" line a lot because a lot of political views I find hateful or lacking in empathy or lazy or stupid are based in either valid but not objective emotions; or in good intentions lacking a firm grounding in reality. One will never get anywhere invalidating their feelings, because they do really feel them; the only way forward is to say "just because you feel these real feelings does not mean you can take these harmful actions." So I do think, for example, that Ludinus is genuinely hurt and traumatized. It's just that I don't think he understands that other people's response to hurt and trauma isn't "so kill everyone who caused this" and indeed they might think that's just as bad if not worse. And again, very intelligent people can still fall into this trap.

[onetoomanysteps]

Regarding the problematic dilemma that is SnA’s eight episode

“The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions.”

― Thomas Hobbes

..Okay, so, here I am again with a long-ass critic post about Shoukoku no Altair’s anime release.  Yes. It has been a while and the anime had long ended. I know. Maybe some of you would say that roasting the anime again after all of this time is moot point, since it’s less likely that many people will come and search for it as it’s already out of season. But then again... compulsory community service in the middle of holiday time unfortunately can’t manage to shift my saltiness towards SnA anime, and once again I decided to resume doing this review that I initially thought I would abandon at the pilot episode.

Whew. Okay then, OOT rant out, now time for some content.

Warning: Spoilers, as usual. Also, quite more opinionated than the first review. Differing opinions are welcome, but please relay it with class. 

Maybe some of you would be surprised when this particular episode became the next choice for my reluctant SnA anime bashing session: after all, compared to the other ones, this one is quite tame and consistent in regards to pacing, nothing out of ordinary as it was basically adapted from the interlude-type story of 4th volume of the manga. No sloppy scene cuts and merge like the ones littering the pilot episode, the seiyuus’ expertise shining through their well-executed lines delivered with emotive and fitting voice acting, fairly decent editing for supposedly dynamic scenes like Mahmut’s gambling parade (though a dark glittery effect and Katou-sensei used in the manga would make it 100X more awesome, as it added to Manga!Mahmut’s rightfully conspiratory look when he swindled the bar patrons’ money), the smoothness of it would not give the impression of another episode that messed up so bad that it needed a bashing post of its own.

Except that that was apparently not the case. As with most of its notable adaptations recently, there is a disturbing theme that repeats itself across some of Mappa’s recent adaptation works: For some god-knows-why reason, Mappa reeeally likes to change some aspect of the story, so that it diverges from the original source material and transform the show’s overall tone. This, in my opinion, is a kind of hit-or-miss situation; when it’s done well, it can make the story even more interesting and/or bringing out a kind of freshness to it, but when done poorly, it can destroy it into barely recognizable piece of... whatever it is instead.

Two of the most apparent examples of this theme is how Mappa did Dororo and Kakegurui’s anime adaptation. In Dororo, the important, plot-relevant differences shown since the beginning created a darker story that has a whole unique and interesting nuance compared to the more lighthearted original source. Meanwhile, in Kakegurui, in which the noisy, fanservice-laden changes only happened at the very end of the season, it felt abrupt and destroyed the tension that had been building since the first episode. For me, it gave an anti-climatic impression like the ending was written from a completely different story altogether and just slapped on the rest of the season like some kind of poorly made band-aid.

Apparently, it turns out that SnA anime also followed (or maybe some would say preceded, as it was aired even before Mappa!Dororo and aired together with Kakegurui) the same trend. To some extent. Here I see that SnA anime, as I had written about in the pilot episode critique, had changed some components of the story, in which the change didn’t really stem from technicalities and more of an artistic license to change the story’s overall tone. The problem is, the way that the anime changed scenes here and there is not consistent and overall not suited to the kind of story SnA is trying to tell us: the anime tried to somehow mix an image of Mahmut as a righteous, morally superior protagonist that always thrive in his every impulsive, ego-driven endeavors with a particular shape of world- building that centers on realpolitik-esque international politics, in which the highest reward would go to the actor that appeals the most to pragmatic rationality in ensuring their goal’s attainment. In this work, this mostly meant the characters’ goals regarding the wellbeing of their respective nations (i.e. national interest). In other words, the anime tried to blend two things that was supposedly not put together, and somehow tried to make it work. This made the overall tone inconsistent, as the anime was not clear on what kind of message it wanted to tell us.

This flaw was, in my opinion, most apparent in this particular episode. Why, you ask?

Because of this sly, sly, fabulous piece of work.

As some of you might already know, this magnificent bastard of a doge above is one of the, if not THE one, most pragmatic character SnA had to offer. Even more Machiavellian than other magnificent bastards such as Zaganos and Louis that has their own momentary emotion-controlled decision resulting in abject barbarism, Lucio for the most part managed to keep his underlying human emotions to himself, dividing his emotions as a human being with his rationality as a statesman with such surgical precision that even some of us sometimes forgot that he, like all other characters in the series, still has a heart underneath all of that smug diplomatic farce of his.

On one side the manga showcased his ability to create carefully balanced moves, crafted in order to maximize his city-state’s gain as a middle power with decent defensive capabilities and flourishing economy, but otherwise not immune to the effects of Turkiye and Baltrhein’s power struggle that reverberated throughout the region.

On the other hand, the manga also explored his inner, more vurnerable moments through carefully placed flashbacks and delicate showcase of blink-and-you’ll-miss micro-expression from time to time, creating a subtle nuance of conflicting desires in his mind that never truly surfaced for the whole world to see, painstakingly contained lest it becomes a crack that will rupture the delicate balance of his conscience and affect his decision-making abilities.  

This two images of Lucio that the manga expertly portrayed, to me, is a good crystalization of the implicit rules of pragmatism present in the SnA universe already mentioned above. The ‘rewards’ for his ideal behaviour are readily apparent throughout the storyline, up until now. Venedik, the city-state that Lucio currently leads, always occupies ‘safe zone’ in the manga’s plot progression: it never suffered a crippling destruction that robs it of its sovereignty (compare to Phoenicia and some of Rumeliana mainland’s city states); haven’t experienced the kind of back-and-forth win-and-losses that causes drastic depletion of its resources (compare to Baltrhein that lost a lot of human and material resources along with their territories, and Turkiye that also lost a lot of human resources, intellectual properties, and arguably their subjects’ trust); and last but not least, it is able to participate actively, according to its own terms, in securing its interest throughout the great war that engulfes the entire region (somewhat of a luxury, certainly not possessed by the Cuore that depends on the Alliance to conclude the war in favorable terms for them).

In my opinion, those advantages that Venedik has would not be there without Lucio’s careful and logic-driven way of directing Venedik’s domestic and foreign affairs and masterful management of his personal sentiments. This is especially apparent when we compare Lucio with other policy makers in the story, that more often than not commited grave errors when they let their personal sentiments cloud their judgement (Mahmut’s impatience to save Ibrahim regardless of his position that led to his demotion in the story’s early stages; Zaganos’ thirst for revenge that led to many unnecessary sacrifices in recent chapters; Constantinos’ pride that led to Phoenicia’s harsh subjugation by Lerederik’s troops; Louis’ apparent prejudice at other other states that emptied Baltrhein’s coffers to fund a costly war, et cetera). The message is quite clear: as a statesman/woman, it’s imperative to separate one’s personal sentiments from his/her job as clean as possible; or else he/she will suffer grave consequences as a result; it doesn’t care what kind of personal morality or quirks you have, it decides that you’re finished when you let them dictate your actions (although still, being shonen manga, Mahmut as the protagonist still gets more ‘redemption’ than most...). Despite it being a value that is somewhat a bit foreign and outdated in manga world, (especially when considering the modern world’s worship of Romanticism and animanga’s reputation as one of the most expressive medium of storytelling), this subtle nuance is what separates SnA from another works in the same medium, even the ones with the same umbrella genre of historical fiction.

It’s this whole nuance that the anime failed to capture in its entirety, thus creating an underwhelmingly generic show of shonen adventure that moves because of Hero vs. Villain plot based on black-and-white morality. The drastic change they did to Lucio’s character, the character that I thought of as the ‘It’ standard of the manga’s reward-and-punishment system, presented this error clearer especially when combined with their hideous portrayal of Mahmut throughout the series already realized by a lot of other manga reader. In the anime, I didn’t see the realpolitik-savvy, confidently prudent Doge that I know and admire. In here, I saw a man so insecure about his own political inclinations that his most trusted subordinate deliberately hid a crucial intel in anticipation of an error in his judgement.

As this is already quite long, here are some screenshots to ponder on. Go figure.

Manga:

An elaborate, brilliant piece of roasting that we never knew we needed, yet the anime never gives

Anime:

Seriously? That’s all?? How about.. the Magistros’ death?

Totally blindsided by an unanticipated jab on your personal sentiments thanks to some missing intels, possibly showing your weakness and incompetence in front of foreign politicians and your own subordinates. Fun indeed.

Um... I think this is not a matter of personal preferences anymore... do you really not trust each other that much??

....Who are you, and what have you done to Lucio?

[amusewithaview]

S1:E7 - “Hook Man” - repression kills!  Literally!

If you noticed that we skipped episodes 5 and 6, well spotted!  We decided we would only watch one more (it’s getting dark) and I vetoed “Bloody Mary” because there’s a mirror right beside my bed.  BQS vetoed “Skin” for similar “fuck no I’m not walking anywhere ALONE after watching that shit” reasons.

I meant to mention this before because, as BQS has pointed out, I bitch about it every episode, but Sam has anime hair.  The whole flared out at the back combined with the Bangs of Brooding(TM) is absolutely the western/American equivalent of Sasuke Uchiha’s classic duckbutt haircut.

Sam is a Brooding Anime Anti-Hero(TM), pass it on.

me: “Aw, Cute Black Friend is going to die, isn’t she?”

BQS: “Yes.”

me: “Of fucking course.”

Okay, I get that I’m supposed to be all “oh noes, he’s pushing her for MORE PHYSICAL CONTACT THAN SHE’S COMFY WITH” but I kept getting all caught up in how awkward and... chaste?  Their kissing was?  Like their lips touch, but NO OTHER PARTS OF THEIR BODIES.  Then he goes for the bra-strap (wait, was she even wearing a bra?  Shirt strap, w/e) but he only barely touches her shoulder and maaaaybe the collarbone.

Although, considering the fetishization focus during Amy Acker’s bath scene, maybe there’s some sort of Director Appeal with a woman’s collarbones?

I will start keeping track and provide updates as events warrant.

me: “So I should expect at least one fatality in every intro scene?”

BQS: “Yes, these are the Doomed Teaser Characters(TM).”

me: “Got it.  The Supernatural Darwin Award winners.”

me: *after Cute Black Friend has been murdered*  THEY SLEEP WITH THE DOOR OPEN WIDE TO THE REST OF THE SORORITY HOUSE, DID NOBODY ELSE NOTICE THE SIGHT/SMELL OF THAT MUCH BLOOD SPILT LITERALLY EVERYWHERE?  IT WOULD SMELL!  IT WOULD SMELL AWFUL!

Sam: *expresses vague amount of empathy toward a Victim of the Week*

Dean: *proceeds to spend the entire episode pushing them together as Subtly(TM) as possible because yay!  Sammy’s feeling real emotions besides rage and guilt and revenge!*

me: “Did Dean rebury the bones after burning them?  Does he just leave behind open, burning graves wherever he goes?  Is this his trademark a la The Wet Bandits from Home Alone?”

BQS: [paraphrased] “He dug that up really quickly too, considering he did it by himself.  That’s six feet deep, normally you do it with backhoes.”

me: “AND HE NEVER TOOK HIS SHIRT OFF!  THROUGH ALL THAT DIGGING!”

BQS: “It’s DEAN, he took off like five other layers, that’s practically NAKED for him!  For a Winchester boy, that is so much skin.”

me: “So we’ve regressed back to Victorian purity standards with our shirtlessness and clothings.  God, so much about the Supernatural fandom makes so much more sense now.”

Then BQS and I spent about ten minutes bitching about how awful Lori was with her judginess and basically she was right, it really was all her fault.  Her boyfriend wasn’t that bad and her roommate was awesome.

College would be so much more fun with a roommate like Taylor!  “Here, borrow my cute shirt and appreciate your own hotness!  Hey, come hang out with me and a bunch of other girls and watch Reality Bites and have alcohol, no boys!  Enjoy life, how can I help you not be sad right now?”

TAYLOR WAS AWESOME, AND DID NOT DESERVE TO BE MURDERED BECAUSE LORI WAS REPRESSED AND OPPRESSED BY WEIRD RELIGIOUS NONSENSE REGARDING PURITY.

Sidebar - BQS went off on her own rant about how nobody in this town appreciates their history and they should have REMEMBERED THE LEGEND OF THE HOOK MAN, how do you even forget something like that?  She’s totally right, but when she goes off about history I just nod and smile and wait for the storm to pass because History Is Serious Business.

She’s still going, now she’s bringing in local stuff about a Cleveland serial killer?  (WHY IS THERE A MUSEUM DEVOTED TO THAT, WHY.)  Will it surprise any of you if I tell you that she is a Hannifan (sorry, Fannibal)?  She is the reason we have separate Netflix accounts, because hers is all documentaries and shows about fictional and/or real life serial killers whereas mine is mostly musicals and comedies.

BQS, on hearing this, laughed and then pointed out that her favorite musical is “Assassins,” which is about the various times Presidents of the United States have been assassinated.  Of course that’s her favorite musical.  Of course it is.

The lighting still sucks.  PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE GRAY.

[tanadrin]

Where I grew up, people had this way of spitting the word “Christian,” wielding it like a spear. That’s not Christian. We’re Christian. Krischin. Krisschin. They didn’t mean “Christian,” they meant Like Me, for better or worse. Only Like Me is neutral, requires context, can even be bad if you happen yourself to be imperfect. That’s not how they meant it of course.

Krisschin meant deserving of respect. Krisschin meant reasonable, normal, relatable. They’re Krisschin meant they’re (possibly) deserving of human decency, and by elimination, everything outside that category you could deal with how you liked. The bare text of the Bible, was, of course, acknowledged, but the implicit undercurrent that ran through the word Krisschin was that these are the things that apply between ourselves. Love your neighbor (he’s Krisschin). Treat others (other Krisschins) how you want to be treated.  Blessed are the meek (if they’re Krisschen), maybe, if you’re lucky.

 I’m appealing to a personal narrative here to give weight to this perspective, but by itself it’s not remarkable. I shouldn’t find it insidious or even particularly interesting to note that assholes are everywhere, and religion is not anti-asshole insurance. Assholery is a function of the human condition, not of religion, and it’s not an indictment of a faith to say some people who profess that faith are dicks, either on doctrinal or organizational grounds. That has, in fact, been my relationship to Christianity for most of the time since letting my Catholicism quietly extinguish itself: there’s this book, with some nice bits and some weird bits, which inspired a religion, which has mostly nice people and a few jerks, like all groups of people everywhere. Surely all people are like that; there is no reason Christianity should be different.

Except. Except then I started singing Sacred Harp music.

Look, you don’t have to believe in God to sing Sacred Harp. You sure as shit don’t have to believe in Jesus. There are Jewish Sacred Harp singers--there’s a community of singers in Israel, even--there are nonreligious Sacred Harp singers, and yeah, there are Christian sacred harp singers of every stripe. You do have to not actively despise religion, which is a high bar for some people to clear (my SO for instance), so I think there are few or no Sacred Harp singers who don’t respect religion. But if you’re the sort of person (as pretty much everybody who sings this stuff is) whose first exposure to hearing Sacred Harp music was “...” “...” “...oh my god that’s amazing,” followed by “I want to do that!” then it doesn’t seem to much matter about your personal relationship to religion.

I have passed through my own various phases of irreligion in life; I started out believing God existed because my parents and teachers told me God existed, and much like F=ma and the conservation of volume, I had no reason to doubt them. I read PZ Meyers’ blog religiously (ha ho) for a while, and went through a phase where I thought on balance religion was probably a net negative for humanity, even if I was never a bitter anti-theist. I have identified as atheist and as agnostic, and I still don’t literally believe in the existence of God, but that feels much less important to me now than it did when I was nineteen.

Sacred Harp did two things for me. One, it gave me an emotional connection to the things it talked about. Catholicism, when you are ten, is a lot of people talking at you about what you should believe: your religion teacher, the priest, etc. It can feel very academic and abstract, and honestly, I never felt that transubstantiation or the wording of the Nicene Creed had a very strong effect on my life (btw, the current translation is shit: “all things seen and unseen” sounds way better than “visible and invisible,” though I know why they changed it. They’re wrong). When you are twenty-seven, and you sing in a chorus words by Isaac Watts or Charles Wesley that talk about grief and terror and hope for salvation better than anyone you have ever heard in your life, that can, uh, have an effect on a person. So yeah, it changed how I related to the topic. Not just the general idea of a benevolent God, but the specific idea that no matter how shitty or ugly or awful you feel in the moment, or even for your entire life, you can hope to be redeemed.

The second thing it did was make me angry at everyone who had ever presumed to teach me about religion in my entire life. More than that: it made me angry at the Krisschins, the ones I grew up around, and the ones I have encountered since. There is something to Christianity, something I never encountered in hours and hours of Mass, or in any religion class, or in any hand-wavy non-answer from the Catholic catechism about whether the Jews are going to hell, but which I do find in 285t, and 30b, and 168. It’s hard to put into words. Something like this: you are suffering now. It’s not your imagination; it’s real, and it’s because the world itself is fucked up and has been from the beginning, but it will be okay. Not now, not soon, and not maybe for a long time to come. But it will be, and when it is, all of this will be worth it, I promise. Only, because it’s music, and not just words, and because it’s music better than all of the shitty, anodyne hymns that passed for church music in Catholicism put together,it actually has weight to it. Even if you don’t believe it, you know Watts and Billings and all the rest did, with every fiber of their being, and that counts for something.

So while intellectually I may think that Christianity is a two thousand year old diverse intellectual movement with murky origins sometime in the first few decades CE with as many disparate interpretations as there are distinct denominations (and there are many, even among pre-Reformation churches and heresies), and therefore despite competing claims to legitimacy no single authority to say what is or isn’t definitely Christian. On the other hand, on a gut level, it feels like someone ripped back a curtain and showed me a fiery luminous jewel, whose light is an abject love for everyone alive. And I look at this jewel at the one hand, and I compare it to the ordinary messiness of the human condition of which the Krisschins are only one not-particularly-terrible example, and I am so. Fucking. Angry.

Part of the problem, perhaps, is that Christianity was not meant to rule. It was, it can be agreed, an initially small offshoot of an already minority religion, that only latterly became the faith of an empire, whose first bishops led their churches from basements and private homes, not from thrones which they sat on in glittering robes. No movement can endure the negative attentions of authority if it fails to mention the virtue it places on humility and respect; and no king can rule if he says to peasant whose throat he’s stepping on that he is, in the final accounting, just as wretched. I don’t know whether that shining jewel was the totality of what James preached in Jerusalem before Paul came along, and I don’t know for certain that the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch have no knowledge of it as they sit on their thrones. But if there is anything in religion you want to point to as self-evidently good, as a tangible and universalizable righteousness without arrogance or pretense, that is it. No utopian idealist, no flag-waving revolutionary, no prince however wise and no philanthropist however generous has ever promoted a cause more worthy to be cherished, more challenging to or more fulfilling of human nature, and its only competition in that respects tends to a diluted version of it (or the same light from a different direction).

I did not know when you said “Christian” that by it you could mean this jewel; no one ever showed it to me before. Having seen it, I don’t know how you could mean anything else. I don’t know what else, in comparison, could really be important, and spitting the word Christian until it becomes a meaningless phonetic hiss to cut apart the body of the human race, becoming obsessed with the doctrines and the failures that form a kind of klipah that obscures and is utterly opposed to that essential truth, which overthrows all the others, can be considered nothing but human failure.

Except it’s worse than that, if you actually believe. If you actually believe Jesus Christ was God, then you believe your God, ancient beyond time, wise beyond comprehension, good beyond anything any human being could ever aspire to, took the form of a human being and suffered and died for no reason other than love. Failure to endure the brightness of that jewel--turning aside for a moment, or for a day, or for a lifetime--might be ascribed to mere human weakness; but to valorize your failure as orthodoxy, as what your God wanted when he died choking on a hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago, to despise or shun or judge or sneer at your fellow human beings and to call that Christianity, is the ugliest blasphemy I can imagine. Your God died because he loved everyone alive without reservation, and how dare you spit on him like that.

I’m a big believer in calling yourself what you aspire to be. A rationalist is someone who aspires to be more rational; an artist is someone who aspires  to make beautiful art; the best we can hope for, if we want to be a good person, is to aspire to do as much good as we can. If you call yourself a Christian, and you do not at least aspire toward that kind of abject love, whatever my intellectual knowledge about the messiness of real-world religious movements and the scotsman fallacy say, in my heart of hearts I will believe you to be a hypocrite and a liar.

I will feel more genuine respect for any random selfish asshole who thinks they got theirs, so fuck everybody else, than I will for someone who uses a word that should mean “aspiring toward abject love stronger than you can imagine” to mean “condescends toward people who are different from me,” “silently judges people a bunch of Italians in funny hats told me are going to hell,” or “clutches my pearls every time someone with skin darker than Pantone 2309 comes within fifteen feet.” And I have no respect for doctrines, which, claiming that love as their wellspring and their heart, as the example of all that they aspire to, betray it with a laundry list of bullshit they have furiously rationalized to themselves and their followers.

Something’s shifted in me, has been shifting for a while; I have felt the urge, driven by Sacred Harp, more and more to find some way in my life to give expression to religious modes and thoughts, emotionally, personally, the space for such things is inside a Catholic church, but there’s too much there that feels like a lie, and not a comforting one, an ugly, crass lie where we have taken our worst failures and renamed them holiness. Protestantism has no particular connection for me, emotionally or intellectually, even the liberal denominations that people like to make fun of as not believing in anything (say what you will, at least they’re not hypocrites). So I guess for now I will continue to what I have been doing semi-regularly for the past year, and once a week I’ll go out on Thursday nights, and I’ll sing.

[breatheinthesea]

Truth, set me free

If you’re reading this right now, I assume you’re coming from my video or you just happen to be among the few thousand who still follow this account- 

either way, and regardless of if you know me personally or not, I just have to start off by saying thank you. A genuine thank you- one that could make me cry just thinking about. I know anyone who couldn’t give a rats ass about me or my life wouldn’t be here, so by default, I’m guessing (secretly hoping) the rest of you do. Anyway, thank you for reading this. I know it’s long as hell and will take up some of your minutes here on earth, and that’s important to me, that you chose to be here rather than anywhere else. I want it to be like we’re sitting on the bed talking like best friends do when they really need to open up about something that’s been hurting them, even if I’m a complete stranger or just another “youtuber” to you. And speaking of best friends, I haven’t really fully opened up to mine about what’s been going on, so if you’re reading, I’m sorry for being so distant this past year and a half, and I hope this blog post helps everyone and anyone in whatever way it can. It will surely be helping me.

So, where to begin? is the question I am haunted by every time I think about actually writing this blog post. I begin obsessing over the starting point and then never end up starting, which can be so utterly frustrating. I have a thousand thoughts racing through my head, it’s hard enough to grab onto one, let alone place it in the perfect sequence. While writing used to ease my mind, now I am just overwhelmed by the never-ending options of words to use, opportunities to make run-on sentences, and ways to say everything I wish I would’ve said differently. I over-analyze every sentence, read it over and over and have to convince myself not to delete it. So as you can imagine, I’ve avoided any kind of writing lately- journaling, blogging, texting friends and emailing companies back, etc… You get the idea. Basically, something I used to love has turned into a struggle, something I avoid like the plague. And my mentioning this is to make a comparison of what my life’s turned into- something I used to love and now completely struggle to manage on a daily basis.

If you happened to sit through my agonizingly long video titled “Where Have I Been?”, then you’re probably already familiar with the fact that I’ve struggled with mental illness for a while now. If you didn’t watch it, and don’t want to, I basically explained that in the beginning of 2015, I began losing myself. I started questioning my religion that I had put my entire identity into, thus launching me into an identity and existential crisis, which I couldn’t really recognize at the time and surely didn’t know how to process. I felt extreme guilt, shame, and self-hatred for not being the person I thought I was for so many years, and who others expected me to be. I only confided in very few people, and they all told me to just keep praying and trying to mend my relationship with God, and when that didn’t work, I felt obligated to wear a mask of certainty to compensate for how terrified I was of actually admitting I didn’t know what I believed. It was exhausting and painful to keep up that facade, especially being so formerly open and confident about it online.

Now that I’ve spent the time analyzing exactly what happened and asking myself “where did it all go wrong?”, I’ve discovered the questioning and doubting actually began in 2013. I just couldn’t handle it anymore after two years of feeling like a fake, a sinner, a liar, and a person who was surely going to hell if I had died. And as it goes, those internalized emotions that I had been bottling up for years eventually manifested into harming myself in a desperate attempt to get the people around me to realize I was not okay. And it worked. I got the attention I desired, and it quickly turned into an obsession that I had not prepared myself for at all. I always believed I was in control of it, but just like with any addiction, it soon took control over me. I was powerless to the urges and addicted to the rush. I started cutting on February 7th, 2015 and didn’t stop until October 5th- 3 trips to the ER, 25 stitches, and 4 days in a psych ward later. It was the worst time of my life, and I was sure I had hit rock bottom.

Nope haha.

After months of therapy, I thought things were starting to look up. I moved out of my apartment that encased those terrible memories, and planned to start completely fresh. I was determined to get happy again. I began embracing the unknown and started aligning my actions with my morals. I discovered veganism and realized what I had been missing my entire life. I started smoking marijuana again after 5 years of demonizing it, which in turn helped keep me away from the heavy drinking which was a major trigger for my self-harm (I finally quit after cutting through a nerve that made me lose feeling in half my forearm.) I moved into an even bigger apartment, started dating someone who thought like I did, and spent all my time and energy trying to control and perfect every aspect of my life to make up for the years I felt I had wasted. I made my beauty room white and sparkly like everyone else’s, bought a better camera, new lighting, a monitor, a green screen, a new microphone, etc… and once everything was perfect in my eyes, I vowed to my subscribers that I was back, that “2016 would be my bitch”.

Nope again haha.

I still felt empty. I still wasn’t satisfied. I was still filling a void. While I attempted to make everything around me perfect, I just felt more and more imperfect. Thoughts of being incompetent, a failure, not good enough, and a waste of talent were all I could focus on. Filming gave me anxiety like I had never experienced before, and I was never satisfied with any video I tried to produce. My heart was simply no longer in it because the perfectionism I acquired inhibited any form of enjoyment that I formerly got from creating youtube videos. And this shattered me, because I had no plan B. I had no college degree to fall back on, no other passions, this was it for me. So I pushed on, and tried my best, but fell short over and over. The shame of not feeling capable of doing a job I used to be in love with, and that others would kill for and find incredibly easy, weighed on me every day like a ton of bricks. I watched other youtuber’s execute videos so flawlessly and passionately and instead of getting inspired, I became crippled with envy and decided I could never be as talented, as professional, as funny, as naturally beautiful as them, and this was so disheartening coming from a person who used to make videos called “how to be confident”. I realized that while I had recognized that I lost myself somewhere along the way, I never truly found myself, and still haven’t. I got swept up in my own depression, leaning solely on my boyfriend to make me happy, and we all know that doesn’t and cannot work for the benefit of both people in a relationship. I became attached, overly dependent, extremely jealous and it only caused more pain. I had so much negative energy, it was like carrying a cloud around me where anyone who came close would just suffocate with me.

Of course, I didn’t want to feel this way, and I noticed the only time I felt okay with myself was when I was high. So I stayed high. My addictive personality leached onto this plant like it was my new savior. I couldn’t stand being sober, because it revealed how miserable I was inside. I wasn’t willing or simply didn’t know how to deal with my emotions, and it got worse and worse as I continued to self-medicate and ignore the root cause of my depression and anxiety for months. I tried medication after medication and the up’s and downs from those side effects were truly unbearable at times. There were weeks where I didn’t enjoy anything or even recognize myself. My favorite foods didn’t appeal to me and all I wanted to do was sleep where I finally felt safe in a dream. I remember listening to music and there wasn’t a single song that made me feel anything. Nothing. It’s like I was a robot, just a body with no soul inside. I remember walking into my mom’s house one day and not recognizing her face. I remember getting my skirt altered for my best friend’s wedding and I was just staring out the window thinking “I’m not real. None of this is real.” I often felt like I was tripping and had to have someone convince me I was a real person, in a real world. My perception of reality would become so distorted. It sent me into panic, I would have severe episodes of rage and confusion and no one would know what to do about it or how to help me. This happened multiple times a week for a period of time. This is the type of shit that convinces people to kill themselves because they lose any attachment to themselves or outer world. It was the scariest shit I’ve ever experienced, and partially why I’ve sworn against anti-depressants and mood stabilizers for a while.

My life felt like it was falling apart, and well, it pretty much was. My income was decreasing at an alarming rate due to the fact that I was barely filming videos and terminated all contracts with any companies that tested on animals (all of them). I spent my money so carelessly because I never imagined that with this job I could ever fall back into debt. I was financially stable for so many years and expected that to be the case for a long time, but I was very wrong. The last month of living in my apartment I had to ask another Youtuber to loan me money to pay my rent, which was incredibly embarrassing and shameful for me, but thank god for kind and generous friends. I moved back into my moms house in October and my depression, anxiety and manic episodes continued full force.

I’m getting anxious at this point, biting my cuticles like a mad man trying to make sure my story comes across accurately. I’ve been putting this off for so long that now I just want it done and over with so I can move forward. But I don’t want to forget anything, or not include the important details of what’s been happening. But then again, I’m in control of this, and I think I just need to hurry it up. So, long story short, things got even worse once I moved home, which I didn’t think was possible. I was still smoking every day, my relationship with my mom was turning very ugly with almost every conversation ending in “fuck you” instead of “I love you.” I barely left my room and was sleeping more than any normal person should. My rage was at an all time high. We found a different psychiatrist to do some intensive testing on me, and after 4 hours of questioning, it was revealed to me that I had Borderline Personality Disorder. This was relieving and shocking all at the same time. I didn’t know what that “disorder” was when I first found out, but once I researched more, I realized I definitely acquired it somewhere along the way, and this was somewhat good news because now we at least had some direction to go in as far as treating it.

I started therapy again but it just wasn’t enough. I was still an emotional roller coaster every day, with no ambition to help myself and still completely reliant on marijuana to mellow me out. Everything overwhelmed me, everything scared me, and nothing was good enough. I would just stare at my walls and genuinely want to be dead. I was consumed by negative thoughts, and felt there was no way out. That’s when I decided to go to treatment.

I’ve been in treatment since January 25th. I go to a psychiatric facility every single day for 7 hours, and will for another month. We focus on DBT therapy and so far I’ve seen some improvement. I no longer have the manic episodes, and I’m learning how to control my anger in healthier ways. I’ve been sober for 67 days and will remain so for the duration of my treatment. I’ve met some pretty amazing people there, and just the structure and routine of it has been something I’ve needed for a long time. I don’t consider it a “cure” and my mental illnesses are something I will have to battle for a long, long time. Maybe even the rest of my life. But I can see the light now when for months all I saw was darkness. I’ve started reading books again and have fallen in love with learning and expanding the horizons of my mind. I’ve realized that nothing is the same as it was and nothing should ever be the same as it was. I am constantly growing and constantly becoming. I know now that I had a very abrupt spiritual awakening when I couldn’t yet comprehend that I was wakening, and it has proven to be the most important challenge in my life thus far, and for that, I am grateful.

As far as Youtube goes, all I can say is I didn’t come this far to only come this far. I have shit to say and minds to reach. I am working day in and day out to overcome my perfectionism and anxiety so I can return to Youtube as the absolute best version of myself. It will take time. It will take patience on both ends. I have to re-learn how to love myself and I’m sure some of you can relate to that. But I’m just so fucking thankful the universe gave me this job and this platform that I get to come back to when I feel ready. I know not everyone has agreed or understood why I can’t just film myself putting on makeup, but I hope this blog post has helped you realize why. When you get an illness, you take time off of work. When you get a mental illness, you should 100% do the same. It was me against myself the entire time. I don’t know exactly when, but I stopped loving myself and it crushed my spirit, crushed everything I had ever loved, including Youtube. And don’t get me started on the overwhelming amounts of guilt for not using my platform to spread the vegan message. That’s a whole other story.

Meditation, DBT skills, books, and TED talks are about the only things keeping me sane right now. I’ve had to accept the fact that I’m a work in progress and I hope everyone else can too. We’re all struggling with something. Life is fucking hard. But I’ve survived my darkest days and know that the only direction I can go from here is up and that is exciting. But I am still scuffling for stability, especially financially. I know it’s been obvious with the sporadic sponsored videos but for right now, that is just the reality of it. I need money to stay afloat just like you do, and I’m trying my best to stay true to myself in the process, but it has been very compromising. I’m still trying to figure this all out. And I appreciate those of you who are understanding and defend my integrity in those situations where it is questioned. I get it, though, and I’m going to make it up to you. It is my goal to return to my channel as a new evolved being, with a passion for makeup artistry and MANY other things. I am completely open for suggestions when it comes to future content, but I won’t be reading comments for a while until I know I can handle it. My friends and family will be reporting back to me with requests and constructive criticism so we can still stay connected.

I can’t believe I’m about to end this post when I never thought I’d see it come to completion. What a weight it was to carry. I feel so relieved and so happy to have gotten this off my chest and into the abyss of the universe. I cannot predict what this will mean or what it will do for someone, but my hope is that it is a catalyst for support, love, and positive endeavors moving forward. I will not return to social media if I cannot do it wholeheartedly. I must be unapologetically myself as I am still learning who that is, so it will be interesting haha. For the first time in a while, I am excited for the future. I hope y’all are too. Thank you immensely for your unconditional support and friendship. Despite everything, I know I am very blessed.

Thank you for reading. 

“Transformation isn't sweet or bright. It’s a dark and murky, painful pushing. An unraveling of the untruths you’ve carried in your body. A complete uprooting before becoming.”