#i really had to do my googles to get all the terminology correct for this

[fundielicious-simblr]

(Kyleigh's POV)(AN: This post is VERY religious from the jump, gotta hammer in how fundie these people are)

We dedicated little Jackson back to the Lord this weekend! It's an honour that this is the 11th child that we've been able to do this for, the Lord sends us children to raise up for his glory and we're so thankful for his undeserved blessings and are ready to receive any further blessings that the Lord thinks we deserve.

My parents always try and be there for the kids' dedication services, they absolutely love being grandparents and try to be there for any events that involve the kids. They say that each child is an answer to prayer, and I'm so thankful that my parents raised me to view children as a blessing. Being an only child, my parents told me the story of their struggle with infertility and the circumstances that led to them only having me (AN: I actually did a backstory on her parents since they were added to the story years ago when I gave everything a backstory - let me know if you want to hear their backstory, I've been debating on whether to add a character page for the in-laws and other side characters that will be seen now and again.)

More great things have been happening recently, the kids learn both at home and at church that in order to get to heaven they need to be saved. The older 5 kids got saved at different ages, but recently both Daisy (7) and Marigold (6) both got saved. They approached Barrett and I separately after we did our nightly devotions and said that they wanted to be saved. Barrett sat both of them down and asked if they were sure about their decision, but they both expressed that they realised they were sinners and wanted to go to heaven. Each of them said the sinner's prayers and we then prayed with each one afterwards, they told their grandparents the next morning and they announced it at church where they were later baptised by their grandfather. I feel so unbelievably grateful that my children have such firm, Godly foundations in their lives with both sides of their family working to live for the Lord. Whenever a grandkid gets saved, Allan and Casandra gift them their own personalised bible and we have a family lunch after church on sunday, with Adalynn's kids they travel over to see them to have that time with them. The older the grandkids get, they're going to have to be creative with how they see them when it comes time for them to be saved.

[4dkellysworld]

Self-realization vs derealization

I saw an ask @adadisciple about derealization and thought I'd add my 2 cents here as I have experienced derealization in the past and might be able to offer a bit more insight. I didn't want to reblog that ask for personal reasons and also the response is really long. Disclaimer: I am not a therapist either, my thoughts are based on personal experience alone so take whatever feels right and leave the rest. Also I can't speak from the perspective of full realization as I am not there yet but hopefully this helps in some way.

When I first found non-dualism, I also had similar concerns as someone who had experienced derealization, I thought: was this another thing that was going to induce it?

Let's start with the definition (thank you Google) for those reading who may be unclear:

Depersonalization/derealization disorder involves a persistent or recurring feeling of being detached from one's body or mental processes, like an outside observer of one's life (depersonalization), and/or a feeling of being detached from one's surroundings (derealization).

From personal (human/ego) experience, this condition is purely of the mind and body with blocked awareness (? not sure if this is correct terminology, I am not talking about pure awareness in this case but more mindfulness*) and is often just a symptom of another mental or physical condition/illness such as depression/anxiety etc. The mind and/or body are just completely detached however, there is clouded awareness (due to the mind/body) and you just feel like you are existing and floating around. You very much still feel a part of the world and identify as such (although feeling detached & disengaged) even if you have lost faith in everything you feel as real. It's sort of hard to put into words but if you have experienced derealization too, then hopefully you can relate and understand what I am getting at. When I experienced it, I didn't know of any truth. I just lost faith in the world and didn't know what was real anymore. So, I was completely checked out.

*Mindfulness is paying full attention to what is going on in you and outside you, moment by moment, without judgment. (thanks Google)

Ada made a really good distinction here (I suggest reading the full ask)**:

The point of this all was to let go of concepts, let go of believing in things, investigating their validity, experimenting. Disbelieving you are Vanessa and denial are not the same thing. Denial is when you deny reality to something you're already giving reality to. Disbelieving was meant as an experiment, you never thought yourselves to be anything but this body, what will happen if you did?

**Actually, re-reading that ask made me realize maybe a reblog of an exercise I recommended is not the best since it instructs denial of what ego believes to be real instead of disbelief and experimentation (eep, Vanessa is still learning and evolving!). See my edit on this post :)

Here is another relevant and helpful ask by 4dbarbie:

I don't teach to do anything to the 3D, not even deny it. Not seeing the world as it is, is an aversion to it. - Lester Levenson Your 3D is right and perfect, what you see is what you are so even if you're seeing what 'you' don't want, the 3D is not wrong in being what it is. Fearing it, trying to manipulate it, lying to yourself about it being something different - all useless and vain attempts. See it as it is and it will fix itself. And no, being delusional is not good, it leads you not to trust your own judgment OR senses. Which is not right, why shouldn't you? What is wrong with your vision? Being delusional from your ego self is really harmful, someone could be abusing you and you would go "i'm sure that's not right he loves me so much in my 4D!!!"

So lets clarify the distinction:

Derealization = denial of everything while still identifying as the ego (and the world as reality) although not wanting to => ego experiences confusion/chaos/mental condition/disorders

Self-realization = disbelief of current reality concepts => letting go of such concepts and quieting the mind => experiencing the true Self (the creator of the mind) => permanent identification with Self, not imaginary concepts (including the ego) => Knowing Reality, and therefore realizing full peace and freedom

Now let's move onto practicing non-dualism. The basis of the practice is let go of thoughts, quiet the mind and focus on being awareness/I AM. It is all about letting go, not denial.

From a non-dualist perspective, derealization is just another mental concept/creation. When the mind is completely silent (and sustained) and pure awareness is realized and embodied, when Self is your permanent identification, when you (Self) know you are not your body not Vanessa feeling dissassociated from mind & body or just intellectually knowing it from learning concepts (important distinction!), it is not derealization, in fact it is the only reality, the only truth.

I have experienced short moments of experiencing myself as the pure witness where the mind was completely quiet and those short moments felt so peaceful, whole and true. There were no feelings of derealization in that moment because there was no active mind then. Right now, I do think my ego feels a bit derealized at times but this is because I have not fully identified with Self yet and it is also because my sense and understanding of reality is in the process of being recalibrated on this journey. When this happens, I sit in silence and go back to the one truth 'I Am' and feel myself into it and everything else melts away. The more you do this, the more you will feel the truth and peace until it becomes permanent (when you realize Self).

But no one can give you the whole truth but yourself.

Lester: Yes. However, knowing what you're telling me helps one let go of that obstacle of intellectual knowledge. I prod you in this direction, don't I? I say: “Don't believe anything. Start from scratch. Build up your knowledge on the solid foundation of proof, step by step.” Everyone must do this. Q: You can't take someone else's experience? Lester: Right, you would be working on hearsay, on what they have said, and the only useful thing is that which you experience. I relate it to driving a car. If I say I know how to drive a car after reading a book that directs you to turn the key on, start the motor, shift into drive and step on the gas, do I know how to drive a car? No, not until I experience it can I drive a car. It's the same thing on the path; we must experience everything. We must, of course, adopt the attitude that what the Great Ones say is so, that they have experienced it. However, you must check it out and prove it for yourself. And the basic Truth is that there’s only one Reality; there's only one absolute Truth, and that is that this whole world or universe is nothing but God, but better than that, is nothing but my very own Self. God could be far away; He could be miles and miles away in cosmic space, but my very own Self is right here, is something I know about, is something I can perceive, it is my very own Self! So, using Self as God is far more practical than putting Him out there, putting Him apart from us. But each one must start from the bottom and prove this whole thing for himself. As the proofs come, the more they come the more we accept until we experience the whole thing. - Lester Levenson, Session 11: Meditation with Quest - Keys to Ultimate Freedom

"And the basic Truth is that there’s only one Reality; there's only one absolute Truth" I literally didn't even read this excerpt before sharing it (searched the book for the keyword 'proof' because I was looking for another excerpt) but came to the same conclusion after practicing and experiencing it for myself. And that is what you must do if you want the truth too. Experience and then decide for yourself.

This perceived and experienced knowledge is the only knowledge that does us any good. We can read everything on the subject, but it doesn’t help. Our life doesn’t change much, and it doesn’t because we don’t integrate the knowledge into our beingness through realization. Realized knowledge is nonintellectual, although the means we use are intellectual. We use our mind, we direct our mind toward the answer, but you will discover that the answer does not come from the mind. It comes from a place just behind the mind. It comes from the realm of knowingness, the realm of omniscience. By quieting the mind through stilling our thoughts, each and every one of us has access to this realm of knowingness. Then and there you realize, you make real. You know and you know that you know. - Lester Levenson, Session 6: Realization - Keys to Ultimate Freedom

If you want to understand more about the process of realizing Self, I recommend reading my 4dbarbie remix post. If you have already read it, reread it, maybe even read some of the referenced posts/asks and see if you get any new understanding. Or better yet, just sit in silence and stillness, quiet the mind and focus on 'I Am'.

I must emphasise that in non-duality, letting go of the ego is the basic foundation of practice as it is very much a journey of self-transformation (this is just another concept to help the ego understand, but you are always, have always been and always will be Self, you just do not see it as you are currently identified as the ego).

If you (the ego) are not willing to do that, then come back when you are ready. It is not up to anyone to convince you to adopt this practice and way of life.

[madsmilfelsen]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @thenookienostradamus, quyanaa!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 22 :)

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 237, 409, yeehaw!

3. What fandoms do you write for? Magic Mike (allegedly), Always Sunny (allegedly), Killer Joe, True Detective (season one, I get too weepy if I think about season four too long but someday!), Midnight Mass, Shadow & Bone, Tell Me Your Secrets, Loki, and I've got an original work snuck in there, too

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

5. Do you respond to comments? Typically! I have a habit of hoarding my favorites in my inbox so if I take a week or three months to answer you it's because I've been thinking about kissing you on the mouth. Comments really make my day so I do my best to show gratitude to those who take the time to make them.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Maybe Sinhound? I don't set out to write angst.................. ever, but ending with Mildred's funeral wasn't what I was expecting either.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? All of them :) I'm a sucker for love and happy endings :)))))

8. Do you get hate on fics? no and that gets more and more shocking each time I post a new work lately as my ao3 becomes a pit of depravity while I work through everything I can't put in my novel manuscript.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? hell yeah fuck yeah. I like playing in varying degrees of consent, unhealthy or unbalanced dynamics, girls who come too fast and have weird relationships with sex, yada yada. I have a really supportive husband who I am disgustingly, deeply in love with so a lot of genuine warm and fuzzy feelings for one old man in particular generates a lot of material.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I simply don't have the mind processes for it and admire those who can mix media like that.

11. free space / no question here, send me an ask with one instead please :)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Not that I know of! would be awfully neat though.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Oh man, I had a fun star wars piece I was writing with my dear friend, Jess, when impostor syndrome struck too hard to finish-- I still have the embroidery she did of our title (the inverse must also be true) in my office hanging below my first rejection letter :)

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? every goblin couple that make out nasty style, so uh, rust/sugar :( they're so special to me and pulled me out of a Hellacious writer's block

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? My only wip is Sunday School Dropout because I sort of forgot where I was going with it, it'll come back with light voyeurism, blood drinking, virginity taking, the usual order

16. What are your writing strengths? I feel like this is question to really sell myself but honestly, hell if I know, creating place? mannerisms maybe? Beyond my general insecurities, some of the nicest compliments I've gotten are for things I did unintentionally so hard to say! I have crafted some fuckin nonlinear bangers I'll give myself that much.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAINTAIN TENSE and I HAVE NO WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF SENTENCE STRUCTURES, which annoy me and are my father's biggest complaints so I can't take them seriously enough to consciously attempt to improve on them yet. Lately, I've been smoking weed and flipping vocabulary flashcards before bed because my diction feels stagnant, a bit repetitive across pieces like.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I can't even speak english well enough to write coherently I'm not going to fuck up further with google translate. I did some ballet au's a few years back that I know have some french in it but I think I did a firmly okay job with the sprinkles of dialogue-- I know damn well my terminology is correct.

19. First fandom you wrote for? technically game of thrones, I have a sansa/sandor reunion very angrily tapped out in my notes app when season eight skipped it. The first work I posted was Seduction of Odile after I saw a post here about the potential of a rey/kylo blackswan au, reached out and asked if I could give it a try and here I am 22 works and years later :)

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? I'm going to be corny but I have a soft spot for every fic that connected me with other writers who are so talented and inspiring and force me to be better so I feel like I can talk to them lmao

tagging tagging tagging @the-heartlines @labyrinthphanlivingafacade @littleredwritingcat @abeadofpoison @teeth-ing @itstendereye @barbie-nightmare-house

[robbybirdy]

22. Baking on a Budget Ft. Genshin Characters: Eula - Custard

Hello, every birdie. Today we are going to be making a dish inspired by a character named Eula. 

Eula - She is a Cyro character from Mondsadt. She has a heavy burden over her, regard to her family. She is part of the Lawerence clan and thinks that everyone doesn’t like her because of it. And no matter what happens to her she acts with “vengeance.”

She was my second 5-star character in the game. 

Every nation in Genshin is based on a specific country in the world. 

Mondsadt is Germany. 

Liyue is China

Inazuma is Japan

Sumeru is India 

For today’s recipe, we are going to be looking at a German recipe. This cookbook was gifted to me by my German grandma (adopted. We adopted each other as grandmother and granddaughter.). Like she lived in Germany until she was 7 years old.  So this cookbook will always have a place in my heart. 

I do have to have google open with this cookbook though. Because there is terminology that I don’t know and had to look up. 

Okay, onto the recipe. We are going to be following a recipe called “GUSTIN - pudding with Fruit.”

The recipe and the measurements will be down below. Feel free to look at it. 

The ingredients you will need are:

GUSTIN (corn starch powder)

Sugar 

Oetker Vanillin Sugar (if you don’t have this, which I didn’t. I added about 1 -2 tsp of vanilla extract to the same amount of granulated sugar.)

1 egg separated 

Milk or water

Milk 

Fresh fruit 

In a bowl, you are going to mix together your GUSTIN, which is your corn starch. Your sugar, and vanilla, the egg yolk with 6 Tablespoons of cold milk or water. 

In a pot on the stove, you are going to bring together a pint which is 2 cups of milk to a boil. I doubled this recipe because I was feeding 7 adults. And it didn’t look like that much. So always go with your gut feeling on the quantity you need. And yes, sometimes your gut feeling will not be correct. 

Once your milk is at a boil, remove it from the heat, and stir in the corn starch mixture. Trust me when I say that you want to turn the mixture off the heat. There have been many times when I burnt the pudding because I added the cornstarch or thickening agent when the mixture was on heat. 

When all of your dry ingredients are incorporated, you are going to bring it back to the stove and bring it to a boil, yet again. 

You are going to whisk your egg white until stiff peaks. If you have a hard time with a meringue there are a few tips that I have learned along the way from my mom. 

Put your equipment in the freezer about 10-30 minutes before you are going to use it. 

Use a metal bowl. It holds the coldness longer. 

Never try to do a meringue by hand. You will be tired at the end of it, and you will not have stiff peaks that are generally needed. 

Make sure to constantly stir your pudding mixture. Nobody likes burnt pudding, it just sits there unpleasantly at the back of your throat, just reminding you that you made a mistake. So don’t do like I have done in the past. 

Once the mixture comes to a boil, you are going to take it off the heat. And fold in your egg whites. While it is still hot, thus you cook your egg white. And you are not eating raw egg whites. 

When you serve the pudding, you can add the fruit to it however you like. I made it into like a trifle-like thing. It tasted really good, and it wasn’t a heavy dessert either. I am finding that as I get older, I am liking baking with fruits and veggies more than anything else. 

I hope that you liked this recipe. Feel free to check it out down below. See you in the next recipes. Thank you. 

Pinterest: Here

recipe via Dr. Oetker German Home Cooking -GUSTIN pudding with fruit

Ingredients

1 1/3 oz (45 g) Oetker GUSTIN (corn starch powder)

2 well heaped tablespoon (50 g) sugar

1 packet Oetket Vanillin Sugar (or 1 to 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract)

1 egg yolk

6 tablespoons milk or water

1 pint (2 cups or 570 ccm or 487.37 g) milk

1 egg white

any fresh or preserved fruit - apricots, apples, pears, cherries, plums or fruit salad. )

Directions

Blend the GUSTIN (corn starch powder), the sugar, the vanillin, sugar, and the egg yolk with the 6 tbsp. cold milk or water. Bring the pint of milk to the boil, remove from heat and stir in the GUSTIN mixture. Bring again to the boil. Whisk the egg white until stiff and fold into the pudding while it is still hot. Pour the fruit into a glass dish and pour the hot pudding over it. when cold, decorate with fruit.

[stingyslegslookweird]

Curvier - a short essay-type thing

Okay, it's been 11 years, I have to share a theory. I'm fully aware that basically no one who currently follows me and/or pays attention to the things I post about will understand anything I'm about to say, but tbh I've put way too much into this to really care.

Anyway, you guys ever heard of TOME? :D

If not, it's this neat little 15-episode (technically 16 if you count /FILE:ZERO, 25 if you also count the Season 1 shorts, and 26 if you count all of those plus AvZ, the 5-year anniversary short) animated web series about two teenagers, an imp, a dragon-man, and a [REDACTED] who get together and fight criminals in VRchat.

Jokes aside, it's really good and you can watch it here. Seriously, go do that. It's so damn good. Today's the 11th anniversary, you literally have no excuse. At least watch episode one, otherwise the rest of this post will make absolutely no sense beyond the most surface-level of details.

Okay, done? You've watched Episode 1? Good, good. So...

In the first episode, specifically around 3:06, Nylocke pronounces Kirb's username wrong, to which he replies "It's Kirbopher. It's like Christopher except curvier." But... it isn't, though, is it? Merriam-Webster Dictionary (the most official dictionary, as we all know) defines a curve as "to have or take a turn, change, or deviation from a straight line or plane surface without sharp breaks or angularity", its synonyms including bend, curvature, arc, bow, and crook. Basically, any circle, half-circle, quarter-circle, oval, etc.

To be fair, assuming the onscreen textboxes are actually a "thing" in TOME itself, as opposed to a visual effect only used to tell the story, one could claim that the font Kirb's player uses is rather curvy itself (and they'd be right), but is it curvier?

After checking Google, I quickly found a list of every font used in the show, gathered in this here Google Doc by one unicornfoal (their username didn't pop up in the menu thing when I tried to @ them so idk if they still go by that), which tells us that the font Kirb uses is "Spicy Sushi Roll".

With the font determined, we can compare the curviness of the names. To do this, I typed each of them out in a word document, took a screenshot, and pasted it into my photo-editing software of choice. There, I created this handy diagram detailing every curve in the letters, in addition to offering brief definitions of my terminology and method for determining what counts as a curve.

Also, as an aside, I'm really proud of how this turned out, especially with the lines and colors and the grid in the background. Like... man. Not to suck myself off or anything, but holy hell am I good at this.

Anyway, as you can see, the name "Kirbopher" has 7 inner (convex) curves and 8 outer (concave) curves, adding up to a total of 15 curves, which, assuming I'm correct about all this, had to be intentional. "Christopher", on the other hand, has 10 inner curves and 11 outer curves, which adds up to 21 total curves. Therefore, "Kirbopher" is not only not "like Christopher except curvier", but is in fact less curvy. This revelation, while shocking, isn't my final point. No, no. Because this rabbit hole goes deeper, dear reader. First, though, we must talk about parallel universes a long-defunct 2000s internet forum.

Long before TOME was a 15-episode web series, its world and characters were conceptualized in a 70-something long series of sprite animations on Newgrounds, known as TvTome Adventures, or TTA for short. Based on the forums of the TvTome website, which now redirects to tv.com, the series featured characters based largely on the forum's users, including one white sword-wielding marshmallow-thing by the name of Kirbopher15, pictured below.

Yeah. That's... more or less Kirby in a hat. Somewhat Kirby-like. Kirbyish? Though, to be fair, it could probably be... kirbyer?

And that's where my theory kicks in. Buckle your fuckle because this is gonna blow your damn mind.

What if, and hear me out here, the original line wasn't "curvier", but instead "kirbyer", as in "more Kirby"? It'd certainly make more sense, seeing as, one, the character was originally just a Kirby recolor in a hat, and two, the name Kirbopher is literally just "Christopher" but with "Chris" replaced with "Kirby", minus the y.

Why was it changed, then? Seeing as it's so early on in the show, which has been stated to have had somewhat of a rough production, almost not making it past four episodes, it could be out of concern over copyrights, trademarks, or other legal issues possibly arising, were the show to be, say, picked up by a TV network or something. Even though Kirby is an actual name that real people have, when you factor in the character's previous incarnation, it could definitely be taken to mean the Nintendo character, instead of a regular person's name.

Oh, and one more thing. Tumblr, being very art-driven by design, is home to tons and tons of artists, writers, voice actors, etc., both amateur and professional. Plus, because Tumblr lets you @ blogs you know the names of, someone with an insane theory about a single throwaway line of dialogue in an episode of a somewhat niche web animation could, say... @ the creator of said animation, assuming they're on tumblr in the first place, and ask if they're correct in their long-winded assertions, or are simply talking out of their ass. So, with that in mind...

@kirbopher How'd I do?

[genderpunktheo]

Hey! Im confused about whats happening on twitter, so i just wanted to ask: the whole... argument. Disaster. Whatevers going on over there. Is it to do with you refering to the ‘bottom growth’ (is that actually the technical term?) as a dick, which like yes sure. But then im seeing people saying your saying the vagina/that whole area is a dick because a trans man has it, though i cant see where you did say that, which is confusing me. Because... its not, is it? The whole thing with people

Going ‘you dont have a dick your a biological women’ is dumb and transphobic, but is it correct to call those areas a dick if theyre... not? Outside of like, casual references, i mean in the more literal sense. this is all coming from a cis person whos only just learnt that this is a thing and thats why its throwing me off, i dont wanna sound like im coming from a ‘your wrong’ perspective! Im just not sure of the terminology, because a trans man who doesnt have a ‘growth’ or w/e would be a Man with a vagina, right, or would we say its a dick? I have no idea if this makes sense sorry

This ask is really old now (sorry about that! I read it at the time but just did not have it in me to answer after everything that went down on twitter) so I doubt you’ll even see this but I’ll give answering it a go anyway. 

So... when it comes to things like genitals, every trans person is gonna have a different way of dealing with that dysphoria (if they experience bottom dysphoria at all). Some trans guys are gonna call it a vagina and a clitoris, some are just gonna say “junk” to make it neutral and yeah, some are gonna say dick (and of course, any trans man who has had bottom surgery does indeed have a dick!)

Like you say, this happens often with “bottom growth” because one the clitoris grows on testosterone it can look and even function (since it will also harden or get erect when you’re aroused) much like a micro-penis. Is it exactly the same as a cis man’s penis? No, it’s not. Of course not. But... trans bodies don’t have to be the same as cis bodies. They’re still bodies. And technically, the clitoris is made from the exact same tissue as a penis. So, I would argue its perfectly correct to call it a dick if that’s how you view it and that’s what you wanna call it. 

Now I’m not saying that that means you should go label a clitoris “penis” on an anatomy chart. I’m just saying that while bottom growth isn’t biologically identical to a cis man’s penis, it’s also not biologically identical to a cis woman’s clitoris so... the lines are kind of blurred and you can call it whatever the fuck you wanna call it. 

Some people also use terms like babydick or dicklet to describe the fact that it’s obviously smaller and not exactly the same. Or words like T-dick to describe the fact that it’s growth from testosterone. 

As for if you’re not on T (like me)... then yeah it’s far more of a casual thing. I’m not an idiot I’m fully aware that I don’t actually have a penis. But I personally find it dysphoric to call my clitoris a clit, so I refer to it as my dick. Other than this one situation, this isn’t something I would usually ever speak about publically so this would just be between me and my long-term partner, who of course, has seen my junk and is aware of exactly what I have down there. It’s not misleading anyone or anything like that, it’s just a term that makes me more comfy. 

I’m perfectly happy saying that I am a man with a vagina. That is correct and true and fine. It’s just the clitoris word that spikes my dysphoria. I don’t know why, it just does. So yeah... when I’m talking with my partner, I say I have a vagina and a dick rather than a vagina and a clit. 

The whole situation on twitter started because someone jokingly tweeted about how giving a trans man a blow job (referring to bottom growth in this case) is a different skill set to giving a cis man a blow job. Some random cis guy came into the conversation to go off on one about how that wouldn’t count as a blow job so I basically told him “sucking dick is sucking dick, doesn’t matter if the dick is cis, a strap-on, bottom growth or whatever.” He proceeded to argue about whether it counted as a dick before finally saying that he’d googled pictures of it and now agreed that it was a dick.

So... I tweeted some screenshots and was like “hey cis people maybe don’t act like this... it’s kinda weird for you as a cis person to decide that it’s up to you what terms we’re allowed to use for our bodies.” Note that I was not saying that it’s the same as a cis penis! I was just saying you can it a dick or call oral a blow job if you want to! 

And for some reason... this really pissed people off. Lots of transmeds calling me a trender because “only a trender would go around saying they have a dick out of nowhere” which I find doubly frustrating because a). it wasn’t out of nowhere, some cis dude started it and b). i am 100% sure that if I called it a clit instead I’d be accused of being a trender for not being dysphoric enough. You just can’t win. 

Obviously lots of transphobes but also quite a few trans people. Who all wanted to make jokes about my body or how I have sex. Really nasty stuff, outright transphobia and bordering on sexual harassment. There was a lot of people who were attacking me for saying that a clitoris is a penis or because they thought I believed that it’s factual to say it’s identical to a cis penis. 

But... I never said any of that. All I said was that it can be a dick if you call it a dick (when it comes to stuff in the bedroom! Obviously medically speaking is a whole other issue). Because your sex life is your business. 

So there you go. There’s my thoughts on genitals. Hope that makes sense!

[probablydidrpgideas]

Not only is “phylactery” not a Jewish word (it’s Greek, actual Jews call the object a “tefflin”) , but the OP lied about being Jewish for that post, they’d even said “I’m not Jewish but I’m I’ll eat my way through Hanukkah food” before making that post. I’d retract the post at minimum, possibly reblog a correction of the post that you can find in the notes, that’s just such a sad thing to lie about.

[Note to start off the ramble before anyone says anything; I am not Jewish. Just spent all day researching this and fact-checking a few things]

Boy oh boy, we stepped in the Drama today everyone.

To get this part out of the way: People fucking suck, sucks about OP. That’s disgusting, and stupid, and just aggravating. People lying on the internet is stupid and frustrating and just. Ugh.

But hey let’s still address this part.

You DO realize Phylactery is, technically, a Jewish term, correct?

The term was originally derived from the Greek, or possibly also Latin or French based on suffix usage during the 12th and 14th centuries. We believe the Greek because we have the Greek translation of the Gospels of Matthew (St. Matthew the Evangelist, AKA Matthew the Apostle) in which the word was used. Matthew was a first century Galilean, and because he was a tax collector, was likely fluent in both Aramaic and Greek, which would’ve pushed him away from his fellow Jews as he was likely seen as siding with the Roman occupation. So, while the term came from a man using the Greek terminology, it still came from a Jewish man.

Moreover, as many people have been SO keen to make me aware, the term tefflin is used by Jewish people, not Phylactery. Believe it or not, I do know this, as I have access to Google. And THIS, my friends, is where my main problem arises with how angry people have been getting over this post.

1. When searching the term Phylactery, most of the top results (including the lovely definition Google posts from another website directly so your eyeballs see it immediately) show Jewish connections. YES, I know, it is NOT STRICTLY a Jewish term - it’s a catch-all, a term simply meant to describe an amulet. Be that as it may, it has become intrinsically tied to the Jewish faith in the eyes of those who are not Jewish. Meaning, while the term is not used by modern-day Jews, it still holds religious connotation and history strong enough to still be tied to that religion.

2. Given that fact, isn’t it still a good idea to stop using that word? If only so we can avoid this very specific kind of drama all over again? I mean, really, what REAL reason is there for us to call the container for a lich’s soul this very specific word? Why not make up our OWN word for it? It’s really not that hard to change it from that original word so that we don’t need to deal with that connotation it still holds.

3. Instead of understanding that, hmm, it really isn’t that hard to change a single word on our part to stop using that word, people went absolutely apeshit in the notes of that post. Like. Jewish People, Anti-semetic people, everyone went apeshit. And here’s the thing!! People keep saying “Jewish people have commented on the post and said they don’t care about this drama at all and they wish it would stop”! Yes! That’s true! And there are also Jewish people on this post agreeing with the fact that we should try to fix this terminology and stop using the term in D&D because of this exact fucking drama.

Ugh. Look, I’ve spent all day looking into this bullcrap. Here are my thoughts, and you can shit on them if you’d like because at this point it’s mostly opinion.

Was this antisemitism? Maybe, but almost definitely not imo. Certainly not deliberate in any case.

Should it change? Hell yes it should because the drama needs to die, so let’s change the word.

Does it matter? Well, let’s see. Has it completely overtaken my dash, turned my entire day into a hellscape of messages and reblogs and “Well ACTUALLYs” and just general UUGH? Yes. Yes it has.

Look. I get it. The big thing here is, there are far bigger issues in the world to handle. There are far worse cases of antisemitism, far more things that need to happen in this world. Changing the name of an archaic word that Jewish people don’t even use and haven’t used in more than a few centuries isn’t going to fix antisemitism. We get that. But in our small bubbles of world that we exist in, we cannot change the entire world. Yes, I would LOVE to protest antisemitic practices and god just EVERYTHING that goes on in this world. But the fact of the matter is, in my current position in life, I can’t do much beyond the scope of my inner circle of friends, and those who follow me on social media platforms.

I will always be vocal about things that I think are stupid or unjust or anywhere inbetween. This is one of those things. Because, as I said, the term is still connected to the Jewish faith, whether Jewish people like that or not! So on the surface level of Being Not A Shit Human Being, we should change the word in our D&D games. That is the easiest possible hurdle. Now, we should also start, idk, erasing the fact that the word is connected to Jewish culture in the first place (and almost ENTIRELY Jewish culture beyond the fantasy definitions) since it’s an outdated term nobody uses. But being an atheist-raised-christian with no current access to literally any Jewish people in my life, and no ability to hack every dictionary website at the same time ---- I think I’m kinda shit outta luck in that regard.

So I will do what I can, in my own little world, to change small things. Because I was raised in an environment where being antisemitic and racist and homophobic was all in the small details just like these. So much so that I didn’t realize how horrible some of the things I said and did were until they were already out of my mouth and I had already offended people.

TL;DR: Please stop messaging me about this. We should still probably change the term as it IS still connected to the Jewish Faith. OP is a crustnugget for lying. Can everyone please stop attacking each other over this post thx. Also let’s all try to be a little less antisemitic. Okay? Okay.

[queenofnohr]

hi there! i've been wanting to learn how to read japanese for a long time now for video game purposes and was just wondering if you had any recommendations on how i should go about it. are there any resources/tools you recommend? thanks in advance!

Hmmmmmmmm.

This is a bit difficult for me to answer because I’m not really “self-taught” - I was lucky enough to attend a high school that offered Japanese as a foreign language, and then studied it more in university (though there was a gap in education where I did throw myself into reading/translating despite being rusty af........) So, I’m speaking as someone who had years of kana/grammar structures/vocab/kanji/etc. under my belt before jumping into like....... doing my own reading for fun/translating video games/etc.

(Putting the rest under a cut because this got long)

Basically, you need a good foundation. Obviously, you need to be able to read kana - kanji is......... a little bit like vocabulary, I guess? Obviously memorizing them - especially common ones - will be hugely beneficial for reading, but at the end of the day, you can look up what a specific word means or look up a certain kanji. So like........ learn words and kanji, but also your main focus should be fostering a strong knowledge of grammatical structures. And there is a LOT of grammar you’ll be learning, especially because Japanese has different levels of formal -> casual speech.

In any case, as far as resources go......

The Genki textbooks are, I think, the standard textbooks used in courses (at least, I was assigned them both in high school and university). Even though “textbook” does make me clutch my wallet in fear, Genki textbooks actually aren’t all that expensive as far as textbooks go - around $45 a pop (and you might find ex-students selling theirs for cheaper lol). They also have workbooks to go along with the textbook, though those are more or less impossible to find used due to being, well, workbooks - I know doing what is essentially homework on your own time sounds like death especially because you just wanna know enough to read, but writing, especially when learning kana, is really good practice that will help ingrain the info in your brain. You can even find answers online!

I don’t personally know how effective it is, but Udemy often has discounts on entire language learning programs with a pre-recorded instructor and everything. I bought a couple lessons (to help my younger brother who never ended up using them 🙄) that a friend uses now, but like I said I can’t personally vouch for it because I’ve never had to use it.

I’m assuming you found me because of Fate translations so I will say this. Do not start on Fate. Do not do that to yourself. Pick a game with a lower reading level that isn’t going to kick you in the shins repeatedly, and start with that. Personally, I started with Fire Emblem, and aside from like...... weird fantasy terminology, it was a pretty easy read (though I again have to stress that I had years of schooling under my belt even if I also had a couple years of rust)

Speaking of reading levels, there are like........ Japanese children’s books? That you can read to get yourself comfortable and reading “naturally” as well - aka just like a toddler would, having to figure vocab out from context clues, etc. I experienced this kind of thing as an after-class method for getting some extra credit with like... physical books my sensei had, but this looks like it links to websites with either children’s stories typed out or actual full pdfs that you can read! The 3rd link looks particularly helpful in regards to that, though the site is a little intimidating (and you need to register). The trick here is to not use any dictionaries at all or anything. Just your own knowledge and context clues (which is why picture books are so helpful). If a book is too hard, go down a reading level and do those instead until you have the knowledge level to increase your reading level. Remember that it’s okay if you struggle a bit! You don’t want to be in a level you’re breezing through, but you don’t want to be in a level where you don’t know anything that’s going on either.

Dictionaries - mmmm there was a dictionary I literally lugged around with me for a while to use for translating on the go, but that was obviously a pain in the ass so I ended up paying for an app lmao. The one I got is just named “Japanese” in the app store (the icon should be red and the seller is Mark Gansicke?). I think there are other free ones and online there’s jisho.org but I like my app because, at least when I bought it, it was the only one that let me pull up kanji really fast just by selecting the appropriate radicals.

Okay, so you’ve got your foundation, you’ve got your dictionary to look up words you don’t know...... Now you’ve come across a kanji in a game and you are stumped. Flummoxed. You have no idea how it’s pronounced so you can’t just type it into your Japanese keyboard. You’re trying to use your app to search for the relevant radicals but for some reason you simply cannot find it. Have no fear - I have a solution, though it will be sacrilegious at first. Hear me out. Go to google translate. Change the input language to Japanese. (I am assuming this is on PC) Click the little pencil in the bottom right corner of the input box. This will bring up a box you can draw in. Draw the kanji you’re looking at. You may have to draw it a couple times for google to find it (knowing general stroke order helps!!!!). When you see your kanji in the suggested kanji box on the bottom, click it. It should now be in the input box. UNLESS YOU CAN VERIFY THAT THE INFORMATION GOOGLE TRANSLATE IS TELLING YOU IS CORRECT OR NOT, IGNORE THE TRANSLATION. But now you have your kanji or kanji compound available to copy+paste into your proper dictionary!

I thiiiiiiiink that’s it? Or at least like... all the advice I can give. Sorry I can’t offer more, but I hope this is at least somewhat helpful!

[autailome]

my journey of discovering what the fuck does two and three stone bow mean in fgep

so i'm reading fgep and obviously two and three stone bows show up again and again, the whole time i'm reading i assume the author is talking about a longbow with 30-40 pound draw weight, and honestly.........that is not that high? and is very doable even for a beginner really? so I was confused and had to look into it & i think probably a lot of english readers also dont know about this so if you care abt random historical minutae look no further!

i was curious abt the terminology bc i hadn't encountered it before so i'm googling and apparently a "stone bow" is supposed to refer to a crossbow??? obviously the writing made it pretty clear lin wanyue is drawing a longbow and then around halfway through the book li xian gifts lin wanyue a thumb ring which makes the visual of a longbow even more clear

so obviously a "two stone" bow is not a "stone bow" but instead a bow with a unit of two stone which according to the english system would be 28 pounds which is basically nothing! but thanks to this great fan translation site i found apparently stone (石) is an old unit of measurement which according to wikipedia was around in the han dynasty (where im p sure fgep takes place? is this the han-xiongu war?? like not actually in the story but like if you were to place it in time.........correct me if wrong...)

now this is where it gets interesting/complicated because there seems to be a lot of different conversion rates for a picul but it apparently was around 100 斤 which are called catties where 1 catty is 500g (in china? apparently not elsewhere)

SO all of this to say that a two stone bow would be  2 石 or 200 斤 which is 500g times 200 which is 100kg............. SO a two stone bow has a draw weight of around 220 pounds which if you dont know about bows that is literally FUCKING INSANE! its like basically the heaviest that a draw weight can be and very few people could draw it the fact that lin wanyue can do that is so impressive! heres a great video of a dude trying to draw an english longbow with 240lb draw weight and totally fucking failing lol just to give you an idea.....LIN WANYUE’S POWER!!!!!!!!!!!

its not historically innaccurate in the slightest to have a bow with that type of draw weight theres tons of archaeological finds so honestly a two stone bow like i can vibe with it, not REMOTELY the right time period but here’s some examples of common draw weights in the qing dynasty (which is way later but i took what i could find lol) and here too

...............but the fact that.... she draws a THREE STONE BOW ....... 330 POUND DRAW WEIGHT.............LIN WANYUE’S ARMS....................................

honestly i think if we are talking about a 300 lb draw weight its becoming like more fantastical/ancient history mythos type shit but hey i believe it thats the power of lesbianism baby! also though if anyone knows of a 300+lb draw weight on bows in history please come through with some info bc i want to know if its fucking possible? i really dont think it is possible lol

anyway thanks for coming on this journey with me i spent an hour trying to figure this out instead of .............actually finishing the book

[frankpanioncube]

Food Anon: What are some of the interesting things you tried over the holidays?

Tried making? Or tried eating?

Making: 

I’ve mentioned the celery root/celery soup, which has no right to be as good as it is. That was interesting in an ‘unusual series of very humble ingredients shaping up to be excellent’ way.

I also would site making the sous-vide turkey breast, in part because I had to butcher the thing myself. It was left over from thanksgiving and I know -how- to break down a bird but turkey breasts are comparatively fucking huge. Plus I’ve never actually done that specifically ‘uncooked’ specifically already off the rest of the bird and all making sure it was intact enough to be rolled up and put in a bag and wouldn’t break apart while being in a circulation water bath for 4 hours or so. 

I also made what seem to be colloquially known as ‘Hawaiian rolls’ for a ham and swiss sandwich appetizer and I’m very sort of fussy about pineapple and didn’t expect to dig them as much as I did. But they were EXTREMELY good. I brought home the remains with me and finished them the other day for supper. I guess this counts as ‘made AND had’.

Tried Eating:

I had to look up the terminology but while I have tried Filipino lumpia before, this one in particular called Sariwa (from what Google tells me - and what I had seems to be correct, though I’ll have to ask my Gran’s psw - she’s the one who made them at the party) refers to crepes instead of wrappers and has some crushed peanuts.

In a hilarious moment at the buffet on Christmas day, a number of us were staring at this one dessert, when I finally said I believed it to be a croquembouche but with chocolate instead of spun caramel. I believe in some way I was correct - it was indeed a profiterole tower drizzled with chocolate and well, you know when there’s 4 people daring you to be the one to break it, you kinda gotta. It was very good - at the very least the profiteroles were well made however I personally would love to try a real croquembouche  some day. 

I had uni for the first time. I had to TRIPLE check on THAT one (again- I do like seafood, it just often doesn’t like me very much - with a shellfish allergy I have to be VERY careful - and way too many restaurants - even good ones cross contaminate in oil) but given the chance to eat sea urchin gonads man...and a food considered very highly prized - you have to at least ask. It’s’....it’s really different. I’m not very seafood savvy so I only know what I know based off of cooking shows, but I imagine the only way it’s ever good is if it’s prepared fresh. This was. I don’t think there’s much I could easily compare it to. Given research and opportunity I would have it again.

Olive pimento loaf. I buy a lot of cold cuts and make wraps or sandwiches as a go-to meal quite a bit. I try to push my budget in the direction of somewhere in the happy middle of going direct to deli counter but not getting 50 slices of pre-packaged baloney either. Okay, I could eat olive piminto loaf. A lot. It’s good. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t love it.

And on that note - Cotton candy ice cream on New Years’ Eve. That was great. That was so good. I have bills and shit but the second I am the slightest bit paid up to a point I am comfortable with I am marching my ass down to the convenience store at the end of my block and getting another bucket of that. I mean - a friend got a candyfloss maker as a gag gift back in undergrad and she brought it over and we made some and I faintly remember my 7 or 8 year old self getting some at a sports event, but the ice cream was good. maybe it was the brand. Who the hell knows.

I think also under ‘made and had’ might fall toasted spice chocolate cake. I’ve made chocolate gingerbread before but I didn’t toast the spices and I think the thing works texture-wise better as a cake. 

[casismybestfriend]

Thanks for tagging me, @scarlett-witch!! I’m currently procrastinating on homework, so this is much appreciated :P

Nickname: Ceci

Height: 5′5″ (1.7ish meters?)

Zodiac sign: I have a necklace for my Maya Haab’ month, the owl muwan

Hogwarts house: Hufflepuff

The last thing I googled: The correct terminology for the Maya month name, ‘cause my necklace just says “Moan - May 2 May 21″ on the back

Favourite song: Pfft no idea. I do have “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish stuck in my head rn

Following and followers: following 183 and 837 followers

Amount of sleep I get: Right now given this... unique point in history: I slept okay during spring break a few weeks ago, maybe 10 hours a night; when I came back home and had no school work I slept less due to confusion and stress of the quarantine, maybe 7 hours; now that I have online school work I’m back to 10 but only due to staying up ‘til 1 and waking up late, unless I have a morning Zoom meeting to attend

Lucky number(s): Usually just my age

Dream job: Travel the world and eat food, learn languages, take photos

Wearing: Green pants, uni hoodie, and a Doctor Who t-shirt, trying to wear the clothes I don’t normally wear

Instruments: I’ve played the trumpet since elementary school, but I don’t practice much so I still suck at it. My brother started teaching himself the guitar this year and especially in the past few weeks he’s gotten really good. He did a virtual concert with his friends and I could hear ‘Wonderwall” from down the hall XD

Random facts: I got a 1/43-scale black ‘67 Chevy Impala like the one on SPN from the checkout of my local grocery store, and I noticed immediately that the “Chevrolet” name on the front is upside-down

Aesthetic: I think the aesthetic I give off is “sad/angry/disappointed woman who doesn’t care about her appearance,” which is definitely not what I’m going for. Still trying to work out my overall presentation, and hoping that an even shorter haircut can help me along with that

Tagging… all you guys! You’re tagged, if you see this

[enby-caelans]

We got Chapter 2 boys

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22190719/chapters/52979194 

‘Why is my boyfriend paying more attention to his soulmate than me?’

Spencer sighed as his Google search returned only judgment and jealous girlfriends. 

He really didn’t mind if Danny wanted to talk to his soulmate; he’s not a monster. Besides, he talked to his all the time. 

It’s just— they were on a date! Okay, yeah, they were at Chick-fil-A for the irony, but still. 

Danny giggled at something on his arm, and Spencer glumly shoves a fry in his mouth. Whatever. Two can play at that game.

“U busy?”

Spencer looked up, hoping that Danny’s jealous boyfriend sensors went off. Nothing. 

“Not really. Just reading Caesar. Why?”

“My bf is ignoring me for his soulmate :(“

“Are you not also doing that?”

So he can talk back!

“An eye for an eye ;)”

“The rule of beasts.”

Spencer stifled a laugh (some of us have manners and don’t want our boyfriends to know we’re ignoring them).

“How’s Caesar?”

“Oh, you know. Avoiding the verb. How’s your boyfriend?”

“Dreamy, if mildly absent. We’re at Chick-fil-A and he only posted like one pic of the entrance on his Snapchat. What’s even the point?? What if I get hatecrimed?? Not even worth it if there’s no clout :,(“

Ah, his arm was getting crowded. He feels the tickle of his soulmates script climb higher and heads to the bathroom to make room. 

Danny doesn’t notice him stand up. It’s fine. 

“I don’t think that’s a word, though to be fair Vergil also has a habit of making nouns into verbs. Also, what do you mean? Why would you ‘get hatecrimed’ at Chick-fil-A?”

Huh, education time. 

“Baby, I’m as good as Vergil ;) also bc like?? Homophobia??? What else?”

His soulmate stopped replying. 

=====================

Brian may have been having a crisis. His soulmate, apparently, was gay. 

He needed to text Nora. 

‘Hey, what do I do if my soulmate is gay?’

The typing bubble mocked him for a minute. 

‘AHAHAHA. DUDE. what do u attract queers? lol. its probs just platonic.’

Oh. Right, platonic. Brian would be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed. Platonic soulmates were still somewhat of a taboo subject in more conservative circles, the idea being that only soulmates should be able to get married. Although, he has to wonder whether they prefer he married someone who isn’t his soulmate or marries a man. It’s a good distraction to imagine them imploding from the paradox. 

He should probably write his soulmate back, there was a persistent tickle on his arm. 

“Hey uh. r u homophobic??? I really need to know man. b/c I’m a gay dude. And also I’m ur soulmate. So we may have an issue.

I’m kinda freaking out can you at least say a slur or something so I can know if I need to never wear short sleeves again. 

?? Hello ??”

Oh, shit. 

“No. I’m not homophobic. My best friend is a transgender woman.” Nora had him well-versed in her terminology. “It’s fine, I was just shocked, as I thought you were a girl. I’m a straight male, by the way.” 

“Oh, thank GOD. 

You’re really funny, I’d hate to stop talking to you :(“

She— He, he corrected himself— thought Brian was funny? Most people didn’t like his dry delivery, probably because it came off as uptight. 

Those people need to learn what kind of music he listens to. Despite his admittedly overly professional texting and writing habits, he hardly went an hour without listening to music that anyone truly uptight would faint at. 

Nora was the only person he cursed around— and boy, did he curse. He tends to pick up habits from the music, some of which Nora recommended anyway. She was the only person he knew who laughs wholeheartedly at his jokes, likely because she was the only one who could tell when he was joking.

Well, so he thought. 

Another tickle brought him out of his thoughts.

“Ahh my bf has to leave :(( ttyl!!! <333”

“Bye. Thanks for thinking I’m funny.”

What? Who says that?

“ur a riot lol”

What a day.

[smartass-hoot]

you fucking fujoshi you take pride in fetishizing gay men you rotten straight white bitch you should just die do you know how much your hurting the lgbt community you think they're only for sex and sub/dom tropes you fucking asshole you should go to hell for that

Today we shall learn how to properly break down (and reply to) a tasteless anonymous message in my very special limited edition coaching class of savagery. We will be examining the elements of grammar, irony, stereotypes and assumptions, correct usage of terminology, and wordplay to see the extent to which one can pick at the seams of a hastily sewn together message to pull it apart till it is nothing but a clump of thread lying on the floor, waiting for its turn to get picked up by something for the first time in its life.

Let us start with the grammar. The message lacks punctuation that is supposed to create a sensible flow in the sentence and the thoughts, which alludes to the dilapidated state of the messager’s life (which is as nonexistent as the punctuation). Next, we move on to the incorrect usage of “your”. I understand that not everyone has had the privilege to go to school but if you have an internet connection and have somehow managed to form your thoughts into words, I shall make an assumption that you *have* attended school but were probably forced to drop out because there is a minimum IQ requirement of 0 brain cells. Let me inform you on what you’ve missed - it is “you’re” as in “you are” and not “your” which shows possession.

Moving onto the next element, we have irony. Now, this message makes an argument claiming that I keep stereotyping gay relationships into tropes that show dominance and submissiveness. However, in the same message, they call me a “straight white bitch” and that shows that they themselves are stereotyping me. This assumption is clearly wrong because I am neither straight nor white, so I do not understand what they are going on about. I am not “hurting” the LGBT community in any way because I do not “fetishize” gay men. 

This leads me to my argument on wordplay. This not-so-clever anonymous messager has accused me of “fetishizing” gay men which is a grave, miscalculated error on their part (I blame their lack of schooling for their inability to calculate and I apologize to math teachers around the world). That is because (correct me if I am wrong) when a person has a fetish, it is usually directed towards objects and this clearly states that they consider gay people to be an object, and that leads me to ask them who really is the one doing the harm? Know your terminology before you attack me.

Ah, talking about terminology, I see that you attempted at a joke by calling me a fujoshi and then calling me rotten. Bravo! You have succeeded in earning once cent to pay off the million dollars I scraped off from you. I am not a fujoshi. I appreciate love in all forms and that means that I am willing to read any story that has the following: good plot (unlike your life), good characters (unlike your personality), good flow of events (unlike your thoughts) and good relationships (I suggest you google the term to fully understand what it is). I have read many stories and it just so happens that the anime I am currently obsessed with has a lot of (healthy) ships, which have chemistry to back them up.

I would like to further analyze this to show the world how to construct a good insult and how important it is to have the context to a situation before you leap into it. Let’s take the analogy of diving to understand the latter purpose of this text. Before you dive, you need to know the depth of the pool. You might think it is deep, but a pool reflects your personality and will end up being too shallow to even reach your ankles. 

I hope I have made myself crystal clear and I could give a conclusion but I realized an audience such as the anonymous messager would much appreciate a summary of the text so that they do not have to rack their nonexistent brain over trying to interpret this response in a way that it would score them at least -1% in their examination. So I shall bring myself down to your level and speak in your primitive language. 

summary: fuk u

[katnissdoesnotfollowback]

I really need to re-read "Pure." And, also, comment on it. It's vague in my head, and clearly, that must be corrected. I would love a "director's cut" of "Break" which is one of my favorites. I lovelovelove that Katniss especially, but the whole scenario just pulls me in everysingletime (and there have been many. Breaks into a sweat thinking about it.) -- xo

*Hides behind a rock hoping Pure holds up on a reread*... Anywho! Break. This one has a special place in my heart and we’ll get to that. So!

Break started as a smutty little drabble I wrote here on tumblr as a Christmas 2014 gift to the lovely @sohypothetically who has diligently posted hot bodies and mancandy for years. Her #smuttivation has often been my #smutspiration.

As soon as I was done writing it, I actually started drafting a part 2 about the morning after, but something about it was off. It didn’t sizzle the way that I wanted it to, so I shelved it and walked away. Then I got caught up in a few other fic related projects, namely -- Ampersand, Everything You Are, One Last Hope, and Lay Me Down, Let Me Dream. During the summer of 2015, I was flying high on what I felt was the success of Lay Me Down...my first completed multi-chapter fanfic. But it was also co-written so I wondered how much of my drive to finish it was tied to the expectations. There’s another writer depending on me to pull my weight sort of thing. I was pushing myself to finish something other than a drabble or a oneshot -- preferably one of those three other fics in that list up there -- to prove that I could do it, and I pushed too hard too far. My drive containing all of my writing got fried. I had thought I had backups, but they were several months outdated. This was before I had started writing almost exclusively on Google Drive, so no, there was nothing stored in the cloud.

After the crash, I got a little lost. I had been pushing myself so hard that I had no energy to try to recover what I lost. It seemed almost impossible and I lost my determination to see most of those projects through. I started down a few tangents, some of which went somewhere (It’s All a Lie) and some that looked like they might but then didn’t (a story featuring stripper!Peeta), lots of drabbles and oneshots.I won’t list what I lost in that crash because that will make me cry all over again. Instead I’ll mention what survived -- any number of random ideas and half-baked fics that I had started for PiP through the years, or just for fun then rejected, none of which you all have seen or will ever see. And most importantly... the partially finished second part of Break.

I felt like none of my projects were going anywhere and I was getting kind of desperate, thinking maybe I’m not really cut out for this writing thing after all and all sorts of other whiny nonsense. One night, I opened the old Break part 2 file, which already had the title Air Ball, and read it. My brain went back to what started the first part -- smutspiration. Then I had a ridiculous thought... what if I wrote a story with smut in every single chapter? So instead of it becoming the total angst fest I’d initially planned, I decided I wanted to write a friends to friends-with-benefits to lovers story that was mostly happy and a whole lotta smutty.

I spent a few minutes brushing up my pool knowledge and glancing over terminology for the game, and before I knew it, I had five chapters vaguely outlined and five chapter titles that are all pool terms. The second chapter underwent drastic changes and when I posted it here on tumblr in the summer of 2016, I was glad I made those changes.

There were a few twists and turns I had planned, and the original outline actually called for Katniss to run at one point, but as I posted the chapters, the story sort of naturally took on this rhythm of Everlark dealing with a slight bump in the road or an obstacle in each chapter, but the issue being mostly resolved by the end of that chapter. Without even meaning to, I made it like a pool game -- one shot at a time. And yes, there’s some strategy and focus on future shots in pool, but you also have to dial in to the current shot or you might miss it and throw your strategy to hell.Thus, massive amounts of angst got ditched in favor of some kind of resolution in each installment.

Also, I did not put this Katniss and Peeta through nearly the amounts of trauma that I put them through in my other stories. They’re college/grad students and yes Katniss lost her father and her mother dealt with grief, and yes Peeta’s mother was still verbally and sometimes physically abusive...but neither of them starved or dealt with the trauma imposed on them by the Games or just by living in Panem. They felt like two people who might be scared of taking a risk on loving each other but they’d also have some boldness to them that comes from a mostly secure life and an already established and strong friendship. Just by the nature of it being a modern AU about the time right after graduating when you’re trying to find you’re footing in the adult world, I removed a lot of the stakes that canon K&P deal with and changed them into something less life-threatening but still something they would need to support each other through.

In those ways, angst galore just didn’t make sense to me. Thus it became more of a building their relationship story than a drama. It also had the advantage that if I lost my steam and didn’t finish, at least I didn’t leave you all on a cliffhanger!

This one was also different for me in that I wrote it in third person, which isn’t my default writing voice. I think maybe that’s because I am drawn in by the emotional gut punch so I lean towards first person, present tense narration. There are a lot of my stories written in third person solely because I have moment of “Grumble grumble I’ve written almost everything in first lately fine fine FINE!!!!” It was a bit of a challenge to achieve that immersion into the character’s mind when I’d already hemmed myself in with the first chapter and didn’t want to try revising the whole thing to go with first person POV. Let’s just say there was lots of swearing and deleting of the word “I” as I wrote this sucker.

Eventually it expanded from five chapters to seven, but who are we kidding I’m no good at estimating fic length when I start the project.

One problem I ran into writing this story was trying to make the smut sound different for each chapter. Since the sex was such a big part of the story, I didn’t want it to feel like the same scene over and over. Not sure how successful I was, but that was when I really discovered my smut writing muscles and how to focus on the emotions surrounding sex, lol. It wasn’t the first smut I wrote, but I do feel like it helped improve that skill. ;)

Another thing about this story is that it was initially posted only to tumblr. A lot of that had to do with the handful of unfinished stories on my AO3 account that had been waiting for almost a year or longer to be updated (and yes I know those stories are all still waiting for updates, one thing at a time!), I felt guilty posting something new when they’d been languishing and I wasn’t yet confident in my ability to finish a project.

But also, Lay Me Down was posted exclusively to tumblr at first and I had actually managed to finish that one. I guess in a way, I was hoping to make Break as low pressure on me as possible. Once I felt confident that I was actually going to finish it, I started posting to AO3.

49,914 words, three months (not counting the time between the first part being posted and the second part going up), and seven chapters later, I was able to mark complete my first multi-chapter fanfic penned by solely by me. And let me tell you, it was an incredible boost to the confidence.

Banner by loving-mellark.

[footmanj-blog]

ASSESSING HEEL PAIN / PLANTAR FASCIITIS

Welcome to the first of a series of 3 articles about plantar fasciitis that I hope will help you understand the processes involved in achieving resolution of this often frustrating and sometimes debilitating foot condition. In this article we will look at assessment of the problem.

To keep terminology simple, I will use the label “heel pain” even though sometimes symptoms may vary from just pain and they may be located adjacent to the heel or further from it. So that brings us to one of the first important points we need to assess when looking at heel pain.

Where is the pain located?

A vague description won’t help us here as the foot is anatomically very complex with 26 bones, 33 joints, and more than a hundred muscles, tendons and ligaments. In just the sole of the foot where the plantarfascia is, there are 4 layers of muscles each with their own origins, insertions, functions and directions of pull. Directly under the heel bone itself (called the calcaneum) there is fascial tissue, fat pad, dermis, and epidermis.

Any of these tissues can get damaged so we need to look at the specific location of symptoms in order to ascertain which anatomical structure(s) may be involved. Is the pain on the inside or outside or back or underneath the heel? Is it on the bony part or the soft part of the heel? Is it nearer one of the ankle bones or further into the arch of the foot?

By pinpointing the symptom location(s) if possible, it gives us a great start to the assessment process. Remember that Podiatrists know foot anatomy intimately so can identify the structures affected.

Tell Jonathan Small, Lead Podiatrist, the story of your symptoms – right from the beginning

After introducing myself to a patient presenting with heel pain, and running through their medical history, I then move to learning about the problem that has brought them to see me, and their expectations of what they want from me. Often they are in a hurry to tell me about how it is at this moment in time (or at least within the past couple of days as its amazing how many say “its feeling easier now I’ve come to see you with it” – now if only I could bottle that magic and send it to all with foot pain!).

However HISTORY, HISTORY, HISTORY is so important for us to assess in order that we can help to fix the problem as quickly as possible and don’t waste time, energy, effort or money on chasing red herrings. So I want to know when the pain first started, during what activity, how did it progress, and how was it managed back then. The story then unfolds of the treatments tried, the limiting effects of the condition, the advice followed from others, and how the patient has ended up on my door as the person they hope can fix their feet. Once we’ve explored the past and established a historical timeline, we can then look at the present.

Describe your problem as of now

The next piece of the initial assessment process is about getting a comprehensive understanding of what the heel pain is like at present. What type of pain is it (such as burning, throbbing, shooting, stabbing, aching etc)? Does it move or even radiate? When does it feel worse/better? Is it present every day? All day? Which footwear helps/hinders the problem? There are many many more questions that we may ask depending on what any previous answers are, but once this process is finished, we will have a full picture of the symptoms in all their multi-coloured glory. This will be vital to record as we will reflect back on it at future appointments to ensure we are making progress with any treatment plan that the patient embarks upon.

Now let me take a look at you Through advances in medical science, there are many investigations that can be carried out to help achieve a correct diagnosis and establish an effective treatment plan. The first investigation should ideally involve some form of hands/eyes-on check of what is going on, otherwise important things can be easily missed. For instance, it is quite common for heel pain to be caused by a foreign body such as an embedded animal hair or a shard of broken glass, but because of the nature and location of the skin under the heel, it is hidden from the untrained eye. On many occasions I have seen patients who have a lot of information from “Dr. Google” for completely the wrong diagnosis, but we will cover this more in the next article.

You may have heard of the term ‘biomechanical assessment’. This is the process of looking at how your body functions with regard to movement such as walking / running. This can be as simple or as indepth as necessary, but it should always add to the pot of information regarding the presenting condition. It shouldn’t just be carried out for the sake of it. So using the example above, you should not need a biomechanical assessment for a foreign body causing pain in your heel, as long as that is the only cause of pain.

Therefore beware of people who advocate biomechanical assessments just because they can do them (to a greater or lesser extent) or because that is their only assessment tool. Saying that, a lot of heel pain (but not all) has a mechanical cause or contributing factor(s), and such assessment is likely to be more useful than an X-ray for example, as this only looks at one type of structure (bone) on the simplest level. Biomechanical assessments should involve 3 main stages, none of which will give a complete picture on their own, but when brought together they can really help to understand what is stopping resolution of plantarfasciitis for example. These 3 stages involve assessing the patient on the couch, assessing them standing, and assessing them when walking/running (and possibly other activities). During each activity your Podiatrist will be looking at how the joints, muscles, nerves etc are all functioning. They are not just looking to see if you have flat feet, high arches, pronation, supination, or any other of the simplistic descriptors of foot position / function frequently mentioned alongside heel pain.

Other useful (but generally not essential) assessments for heel pain are 3D gait analysis, force/pressure assessment, ultrasound investigation, MRI scans and blood tests. Knowing your Podiatrist is able to carry these assessments out, or have access to them via referral if necessary, would help to reassure that you are in good hands to get your heel pain sorted. However it is important to treat the patient, not the test results as they may be spurious.

So that’s the assessment stage covered

From all of these steps that make up assessment of heel pain (“plantar fasciitis”), we should now be able to make a diagnosis or at least have some differential diagnoses to help guide our treatments. In the next article, we will cover diagnosis in more detail.

The above indepth assessments of heel pain / plantarfasciitis are available from Jonathan Small, Lead Podiatrist at Health First Foot & Gait Clinic in Southam, Warwickshire, and Theorem Health & Wellness in Alcester, Warwickshire. Remember that Podiatrists are the Foot Specialists – #PodsHealHeels and #PodsFixFeet.

www.healthfirstsoutham.co.uk                

www.facebook.com/healthfirstsoutham

01926 811272   health1first@aol.com    

www.theoremhealth.co.uk/podiatry

Review on Google from Beverley Spicer:

“If you are suffering with Plantar Fasciitis Jonathan Small is your man. I was in agony for months and knew I needed a biometrics expert. Jonathan assessed my feet and provided a variety of insoles including one that he cast a mould of my foot to make. They were expensive, professional health care is not cheap, but years later I am still wearing and benefiting from my investment. My feet had hurt all of my life, but no longer! I am just back from a weekend walking in the Alps with happy feet! :)”

[dimitrippy]

Pride month may be over, but it is also important to retain some sense of it. So here are some book reviews. If you've read these books, you might not like what I have to say. If you haven't, you may find that you don't want to. Or maybe you're so intrigued by what I've said, you'll want to read them anyway. The books I've chosen to read and review are (in order): This Book is Gay by James Dawson (2014), Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan (2003), and Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World by Sarah Prager (2017).

Note: I am an independent person with no affiliations and I am doing this for fun, I am by no means a professional book reviewer.

This Book is Gay by James Dawson

I'm gonna start right off the bat and say that this book is... out-dated. Published in 2014, this book is a crash course on all things gay... but that's it. Despite many a disclaimer within the book itself, I found the writing to focus almost exclusively on homosexuality, with very little focus on bisexuality or being transgender. 'Well' you may say 'the book is GAY.' And right, it is, but the author, James Dawson, touted it as a guide to all things LGBT, which it wasn't. I understand the lack of nonbinary genders being mentioned, as the term did not really become widespread until very recently, but many trans people will find themselves unhappy when their eyes flick to the words 'transsexual' and 'transvestite'. Not to mention, in a later chapter about sex (skipping this chapter is an option, Dawson makes that clear) diagrams that equate genitals to gender. Overall, incredibly cisnormative. I'm not going to lie, Tumblr may have made me overly bias to any sort of queer literature created by a cis, gay man, but a good LGBT book should really spread out the attention between all of the letters.

I also found the writing style to be, for lack of a better word, trite. And I guess another good word would be condescending. Don't believe me? Dawson refers to sex as 'sexyfuntimes' at least 3 times, if not more. I understand that this book was written to appeal to young adolescents who might be questioning their sexuality or gender, but the word sex was already being used. Why change it to sexyfuntimes? Anyone reading the book should KNOW what sexyfuntimes means. Once was funny, but to keep using it to refer to consensual bedroom business made me feel like the author didn't care about his target audience. Speaking somewhat from experience, an adult talking down to me always made me feel like shit. Teenagers aren't stupid. Us adults need to start acting like it. ( that's not to say that teens can't be stupid, but generally when consuming content that is meant for them, it can be alienating.)

Then the author wrote a chapter on religion that I felt was written from a Christian-centric point of view. The author himself said he had limited knowledge about certain religions but went ahead and wrote about them anyway, assuming knowledge. This is a book that contained interviews with other queer people, you couldn't have found queer people of faith to interview? That just seems lazy to me.

Another big BIG problem that I had with the book was the chapter called 'Gay Saints'... or something to that effect. I had to return the book and I'm writing a lot of this from memory, which is quite good but can't always remember everything...

Anyway, I'm sorry, but however they may have felt while functioning as a boy-band, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are NOT gay icons. They're nothing more than two young men that over-zealous straight girls wish would get together. Sure, they may support the queer community which is all well in good but to refer to 'Larry Stylison' as a gay icon just... left a bad taste in my mouth. Also, Dawson referred to Macklemore as handsome which is just... not correct.

Honestly it felt like a lot of these 'icons' were straight people. And of course gay people have been idolizing straight people for basically forever (look up Friends of Dorothy) but one moment of activism does not a gay icon make.

Not to mention that leaving out Billie Joe Armstrong out of a list like that is criminal, considering he's been an open bisexual and supporting LGBT punk bands since Green Day became popular.

… Also a crime to leave out Prince but there are some battles you can't win...

Still, it would be remiss of me to not mention that this book was meant to be read by EVERYONE, not just by LGBT kids. I definitely understand the need for a book like this, but the queer community has become so fast paced and new terminology is updated and accepted on a near- daily basis. And I, personally, would not recommend this book to my friends (unless my friends want to know the book i'm slamming – LOL ). Perhaps a companion book titled “This Book is Trans” or “This Book is Queer”? Or maybe keep the title and come out with a second, more inclusive edition.

I would, however, recommend it to young, questioning kids and their parents – should said parents be aware of their kid's situation. I also recommend it to straight people who have very little interaction with LGBT people but who want to understand us a little better. I know I said the writing was condescending at times, but it is a good resource for people who aren't gay or who aren't sure what they are yet, especially if they don't wanna dig through Google, trying to find non-homophobic sources.

My overall opinion in a nutshell: Mediocre and non-inclusive

Score: 4/10

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

I'm not going to lie, if I had read this book in middle school or high school, I probably would have LOVED it. Pretentious teen romance was probably my favorite genre. (Something I don't talk about very much because everyone on Tumblr has a boner for hating the king of pretentious teen romance novels, John Green, and I rather like him.) Now, however, it is... to be honest it's uninteresting drivel.

The story focuses on local gay high schooler, Paul. Paul has ALWAYS known he was gay and everyone in his small, shockingly liberal town (shocking because it's so small) doesn't really care, except for the parents' of his friend, Tony, another gay high schooler. (only Tony's parents are homophobes and they have to lie about stuff just to get him out of the house)

We have other great characters! Such as Kyle, the bisexual who won't call himself bisexual because he doesn't like labels, also Paul's ex. Infinite Darlene, a trans girl who Paul does not call trans, only drag queen. She is homecoming queen and captain of the football team and also the other drag queens in school (???) don't like her because she's too masculine. Cis drag queens hating trans women, what else is new?

We also have Noah, the pretentious artist new kid and Paul's crush. And Joni, who was Paul's best friend but dumped him for her crappy boyfriend.

Right? The sheer amount of characters made my head spin too. And the drama with everyone was... too much. The only redeeming moment was when Tony finally stood up to his parents. Which he did so in, again, an unrealistic way.

And I'm not even going to mention the motorcycle cheerleaders.

So by the end of it, I was pretty disappointed.

Until I read the author's note. 10 years after it's original publication, David Levithan answers some questions about the book and gave a myriad of reasons as to why he wrote the book the way he did. He explained that he knew how unrealistic some parts of the story were, and that that's why they were there. Because as unrealistic as it was, it is something that he wants to one day be a reality. And that while we're far from that reality, it's something we should always, always be working towards.

There's something very brave about that. It's definitely true that there are far, far too many tragic stories featuring LGBTQA+ characters, but this is nothing short of a very happy story published in a time when stories like that simply didn't exist. A jaded queer person (such as myself) might brush off the pie in the sky life that Paul leads, but ultimately there really is nothing wrong with writing happy endings for people like you.

Should you choose to read this book, I recommend the new edition that comes with the author's note. It puts the entire novel in a much better perspective. It also has a short story featuring Infinite Darlene.

My overall opinion in a nutshell: Pretentious but well meaning

Score: 6/10 (points taken away were re-added after reading the author's not

Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World by Sarah Prager

As an avid history nerd who doesn't read nearly as much historic shit as they should, I loved this book. Clear, concise, and with a detailed bibliography in the back, Queer, There, and Everywhere gives us undeniable proof that people like us – queer people – have always existed.

Starting in ancient Rome, through the civil rights movement and up the the present, Prager makes the context easy to understand by using modern language and beginning each chapter with a brief flashback to each figure's time. While many scholars look at things from a cishet lens and use the language to match, Prager does pretty much the opposite, making a disclaimer at the beginning of each chapter any time modern terminology or certain pronouns usage needs to be used for clarity.

This book doesn't just cover cis, gay people over the course of history, it has something for everyone across the spectrum of gender and sexuality – trans and nonbinary people, lesbian pioneers (no, not 1800s pioneers),George Takei, and much, much more.

While queer history can be a touchy subject, Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World makes it so that our history can not, should not, and will not be erased.

My overall opinion in a nutshell: Fantastic and a necessary must for any person who needs a brief course in queer history.

Score: 8/10 (some of the historic figures she picked struck me as far-fetched, plus use of the outdated terms transsexual and transvestite)