#im just trying my best to be supportive for my parents who ARE deeply affected by his passing (especially my dad)

[btvspolls]

Life Update

hey everyone, sorry for being so inactive this week. My paternal uncle passed away on monday morning, and helping with preparations for the funeral has taken up most of my time. I'll resume activity when I can, but in the meantime I encourage you all to check out the brilliant @sunnydaleherald for not only poll/bracket updates but also curated lists of fanfiction, fanart, meta, ect. from not only tumblr but also reddit, buffy-boards, ao3, dreamwidth, youtube...if it hosts btvs content, they cover it.

[lacunafiction]

i LOVED the ability to make it clear the MC has abandonmemt issues in how they respond to their grandfather!!!

my MC is sweet, nice, and shy though she tries to be friendly and dresses colorfully-- and i just loved the dissonance between that and her going "He wanted to take care of a dog but not me?"/"So he spent hours drawing me but refused to get into contact?" quite bitterly. i end up getting too into my character's heads, personally, (it feels like method acting but im not a good actor) and started tearing up at all the mentions the grandfather dropped about his grandkid, and by the time we got to the broken arm and i saw the blue ribbon story i just imagined my MC slamming the book closed bc she needed a minute and going "Don't write about me as if you actually cared about what happened to me" and i needed to take a minute away from the game to not cry further (i dont even have anyone in my life who left me or died like this, its not like this was a sensitive topic for me-- tho my ESA did come hurrying along and complaining loudly that i was crying and obviously in need of cuddles)

like i am FULLY engrossed in these potential abandonment issues; i think theyre so interesting and very well-written ♡ thank you for giving us some parental bitterness as a treat lmao

(also, i forget if this was mentioned in the beginning, but after grandpa gave the MC up, did he MC move in with other family members or were they put into the foster care system??)

woul it be spoilery to ask how the ROs face against loving a MC with abandonment issues?? if its spoilery to ask about how they react when its @grandpa specifically, may i ask how they fare when it affects their relationship??? like, MC is having a bad brain day and feels all sensitive and raw, and so they tearily asks the RO not to leave them to go out yet-- or the RO and the MC getting briefly seperated and the RO spots MC before the MC spots the RO, and so the RO sees MC's terrified and betrayed and kinda 'No no no no not again' expression like they've been ditched which does fade into pure (and a lil bit teary eyed) relief when MC does see the RO?? or any scenario youd wanna answer about concerning how parental abandonment issues emerge in a romantic relationship? if thats spoilers too, thats totally fine too ♡♡♡ i hope you have a great day!! and thank you again for the wicked customization, again, im absolutely adoring the ability to customize how the MC reacts to their relationship with their grandfather, youve polisher this excellently ♡

Hi Anon,

I hope you're doing well! 💚

Thank you for your kind words and I really enjoyed learning more about your MC, especially how the events in the update impacted both you and them.

The dissonance you mention is really interesting to read about--how your MC's reactions to their grandfather clashes or seem different than their typical kind/shy personality. Writing those choices into the game were important to me to give you all options to tailor the relationship; the choices you mentioned are contrasted by a more unfazed route or a MC who is possibly more forgiving (?) or trying to keep their grandfather in a positive light (e.g. the give an uncertain smile. 'the drawing is kind of...sweet?' choice), etc. There will be more choices as we go relating to him with what you learn presenting opportunities for you to change your opinion, stick to it, and so forth. I'm so glad you like that variety! :D

Hmm, I think I published an ask that alluded to that answer. Your time outside of Fernweh is not something I will get too specific about to allow for rp-ing. I will be mentioning childhood things and what happened right after the departure, but I will have to be vague for right now.

You are asking some really amazing questions and are thinking so deeply about the story! 😊 I am sorry to say that it is a bit spoilery to touch on those issues that may eventually come into play, or at least there may be options that allow you to touch on them. I will say that the ROs will handle it differently by offering support in different ways--they want to be there for you. 

You're welcome! I appreciate you sending this in and taking the time to play the demo.

Best wishes! 💚

[longbttm]

𝑭𝑹𝑨𝑵𝑲 𝑳𝑶𝑵𝑮𝑩𝑶𝑻𝑻𝑶𝑴.

Is that FRANK LONGBOTTOM we can see entering the Ministry of Magic? Our records tell us that they were born on APRIL 7TH and are a TWENTY-TWO year old, PUREBLOOD who currently works as a AUROR. Some have said that they can be described as being CONFIDENT, LOYAL & SOCIABLE, however, they also see themselves as being IMPETUOUS, OBTUSE & STUBBORN. Apparently, HE look(s) a lot like ARIA SHAHGHASEMI, whoever that is, and if they had to pick a side in the war, they would choose to JOIN THE ORDER.

hi, hey, hello ! it’s autumn again, bringing you my second child, frank ! reformed careless idiot ( now just an idiot ) & currently fighting the #Himbos4SocialJustice fight. like emma’s intro, give this a like & i’ll find you for plots <3

trigger warnings for: sibling death, grief, hints of depression.

note: this is a sideblog to @vahnity​ so im’s, follows & likes come from there.

𝑺𝑻𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑰𝑪𝑺.

full  name: franklin  camran  jamsheed  longbottom.

name  origin:  while  his  first  and  last  name  are  typical  english,  his  middle  names  are  not,  signifying  his  mother’s  influence.  “franklin”  —  free  man,  “camran”  —  meaning  succesful  in  it’s  old  persian  roots,  “jamsheed”  —  meaning  sun’s  rays,  or  light.

nickname(s):  frank,  world’s  #1  alice  fortescue  stan.  

birthdate:  april  4th,  making  him  an  aries  sun  &  sagittarius  moon.

gender  &  pronouns:  identifies  as  a  cis  man  and  uses  he/him. 

sexuality:  bisexual,  biromantic.

positives:  confident,  loyal,  sociable.

neutrals:  passionate,  mercurial,  rebellious.

negatives:  impetuous,  stubborn,  obtuse.

occupation:  junior  auror,  trainee  at  the  ministry.

education:  hogwarts,  gryffindor  house.

current  residence:  tba.              

𝑨𝑭𝑭𝑰𝑳𝑰𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺.

mother:  augusta  longbottom  (  née  shafiq  ).

father:   horace  longbottom.

siblings:  cecil  longbottom  †,  delia  longbottom.

family:  the  longbottom  family,  the  shafiq  family.

extended  family:  likely  some  shafiq  cousins.

relationship  status:  engaged  to  alice  fortescue,  love  of  his  life.

allegiance:  order  of  the  phoenix,  formerly  neutral.            

𝑴𝑨𝑮𝑰𝑪𝑨𝑳 𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑭𝑰𝑳𝑬.

 patronus:  the  buffalo,  likely  due  to  his  stubborn  nature.

 boggart:  being  the  only  one  left  alive  while  the  dead  bodies  of  his  loved  ones  lay  around  him,  a  look  of  disappointment  permanent  on  their  faces.

 wand  type:  holly  wood,  horned  serpent  horn  core,  9″,  springy.

 amortentia:  the  smell  of  lotus  flowers,  like  the  ones  in  his  grandmother’s  garden,  freshly  baked  apple  pie,  and  the  smell  of  alice’s  perfume.               

𝑩𝑨𝑪𝑲𝑺𝑻𝑶𝑹𝒀.

 the  third  child  of  augusta  &  horace  longbottom,  frank  was  raised  with  all  the  comfort  and  privilege  of  the  wizarding  world’s  upper-middle  class.  his  father  head  of  the  ministry’s  goblin  liaison  office,  his  mother  having  a  seat  on  the  wizengamot,  and  the  longbottom  name’s  place  in  the  sacred  twenty-eight  caused  them  to  be  a  well-respected  family.  they  stayed  out  of  the  pureblood  supremacy  discussions  and  held  a  tolerant  view,  but  didn’t  exactly  speak  on  that  view  either.  they  were  rich  enough  to  enjoy  a  comfortable  lifestyle,  but  didn’t  even  come  close  to  competing  with  the  generational  wealth  of  the  upper  echelons  families.  simply,  the  longbottom’s  enjoyed  a  place  in  the  wizarding  world  where  they  were  often  just  left  alone,  unless  they  chose  to  step  in  a  different  direction  themselves.  frank,  the  baby  of  the  family,  grew  up  without  much  want  or  ambition.  his  parents  provided  whatever  he  needed,  he  wasn’t  a  big  brain  like  his  older  siblings,  so  high  educational  goals  were  never  even  a  thought,  and  with  the  family’s  lack  of  involvement  in  wizarding  world  political  issues,  he  did  not  care  much  for  those  either.  frank  always  figured  he’d  probably  land  a  cozy  ministry  job,  or,  if  he  really  tried  his  best,  a  decent  position  on  a  quidditch  team  somewhere.           

 frank  made  a  couple  of  mistakes  along  the  years.  fell  in  with  the  wrong  crowds  solely  by  association  or  lack  of  care,  and  frequently  did  not  even  care  to  stand  up  for  those  being  hurt  by  said  wrong  crowd  —  no  matter  that  he  felt  guilt  about  it.  the  sorting  hat  had  doubted  between  gryffindor  and  hufflepuff  for  frank,  and  he  frequently  wondered  why  it  had  settled  on  the  former.  neutrality  felt  like  frank’s  safeguard,  no  one  bothered  him,  and  he  did  the  same  in  return.  regardless,  he  wasn’t  exactly  disliked  around  school  either.  a  decent  quidditch  player  and  all  around  chill  guy,  frank’s  smile  and  sense  of  confidence  and  ease  was  contagious.  it  wasn’t  until  his  eldest  brother  joined  the  auror’s  office  and  started  saying  some  choice  words  about  pureblood  supremacists  that  frank  ever  even  felt  actual  dislike  against  him.  cecil  was  always  the  more  passionate  one,  he  deeply  cared  about  others  —  and  would  always  fight  to  protect  those  in  need.  frank  was  frequently  questioned  if  he  shared  his  brother’s  feelings,  but  met  those  with  a  careless  shrug,  though  whenever  he  arrived  home,  cecil  always  received  an  earful  on  how  he  was  affecting  frank’s  popularity  at  school.  but  near  the  end  of  frank’s  seventh  year,  tragedy  struck  the  longbottom  family,  and  everything  changed.           

 cecil  was  a  little  too  good  at  his  job,  he’d  caused  a  little  too  much  trouble  for  those  who  opposed  him,  and  so,  the  death  eaters  moved  to  capture  and  kill  frank’s  older  brother.  no  school,  no  job,  and  a  household  filled  with  nothing  but  grief,  frank  fell  into  a  pretty  deep  darkness  —  despite  his  blasé  attitude,  he  cared  for  his  brother,  and  his  death  had  brought  him  anger.  cecil  had  only  wanted  to  make  the  world  a  better  place,  and  he  was  killed  for  it.  frank  was  without  purpose  for  a  while,  until  a  member  of  the  order  of  the  phoenix  &  friend  of  cecil  approached  him  and  offered  not  just  a  chance  to  avenge  his  brother,  but  the  chance  to  save  others  from  this  fate  as  well.  it  took  him  a  while,  but  the  order  was  good  for  him  —  and  there  was  a  fire  to  him  now.  to  improve  himself  and  find  a  source  of  income,  frank  signed  up  for  the  auror  academy  when  he  turned  nineteen,  and  has  been  working  ever  since.  he’s  never  been  the  brightest  in  the  bunch,  but  frank’s  found  his  courage  in  the  auror’s  office,  his  creativity  and  bold  approach  to  things  often  surprising  others.  it  was  there  he  also  met  alice,  and  her  presence  in  his  life  has  been  one  of  the  comforting  things  he’s  ever  experienced.  frank  is  climbing  upwards  in  the  world,  somewhat  naively  unaware  that  the  higher  he  gets,  the  harder  it  will  be  if  he  falls.           

𝑾𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑫.

 former  friends:  frank  used  to  care  very  little  about  the  political  ins  and  outs  of  the  wizarding  world,  and  fell  in  with  a  bad  crowd  more  often  than  not.  since  the  death  of  his  brother,  frank’s  made  a  sharp  turn  from  neutrality  and  a  lack  of  care  to  a  staunch  order  supporter  and  auror.  i  have  no  doubts  that  there  were  some  in  his  former  circle  of  friends  that  did  not  take  this  well,  and  who  currently  have  a  very  antagonistic  relationship  with  frank,  bordering  on  hatred.  

 mentor  /  colleague:  despite  his  passion,  bold  approach  and  creative  ideas,  frank  is  still  very  fresh  to  the  auror  gig  and  this  type  of  fighting  in  general.  he’s  also  got  the  tendency  to  rush  into  things  head  first,  without  thinking  things  through.  big  gryffindor  energy  from  him,  but  it  could  use  some  sharpening  from  a  mentor-like  figure.  

 tentative  friendships  /  suspicion:  frank  is  committed  to  his  work  at  the  order  and  the  auror’s  office,  both  to  honor  his  brother  and  because  he’s  sat  still  too  long.  he  feels  like  he  has  to  prove  something,  and  therefore  is…  somewhat  eager  in  his  work.  considering  his  past  and  former  friends,  i’d  love  to  see  some  people  that  actually  distrust  him  and  are  trying  to  feel  out  if  he’s  not  just  a  double  agent  (  and  likely  will  find  out  fast  enough  that  he  doesn’t  have  enough  braincells  for  such  a  feat  ).  

 first  impressions,  struggling  to  adjust:  like  i  mentioned  in  his  backstory,  frank  used  to  lack  care  for  others.  likely  let  things  slide  that  got  other  people  hurt,  solely  because  he  was  scared  of  what  would  happen  if  he  didn’t  (  not  so  big  gryffindor  energy  here  ).  it  would  be  interesting  to  see  someone  who  did  feel  the  sting  of  frank’s  former  carelessness,  and  who  he  is  currently  trying  to  find  a  better  ground  with  &  to  atone  for  the  hurt  he  didn’t  stop.  

 other:  co-workers,  enemies,  ex-somethings,  former  crushes,  childhood  friends,  new  friends,  first  love,  neighbors  (  current  residence  tba  ),  confidante,  enemies  turned  friends,  (  distant  )  cousins.

[shibalen]

Hiii! could i request a bnha romantic matchup?(jewellerybox, musicbox) Any pronouns, you can call me Gigi, i’m 5’0, and pansexual.

i’m an ENFP, an aries, chaotic good/neutral. i’m very energetic, weird, disorganized, loud, honest, loyal, optimistic, creative, calm, empathetic, emotional, dramatic, active, airhead and aloof, indecisive, talkative, patient, moody. even though i’m vey energetic and talkative i’m pretty calm and can be quiet and bring my energy to a lower level to match other people’s around me.

i like collecting stuffed animals and random objects, i’m pretty competitive and aggressive, i also love competitive games especially just dance and mario kart, speaking of being aggressive i love physical fights(mainly play fights), i ask a lot of questions and kinda doze off a lot, i like to bake and i’m pretty good at it but i’m terrible at cooking, i’m sorta an airhead and out of touch with reality quite often i also get distracted quite easily, i can never tell when someone likes me even if it’s painfuly obvious, i love physical affection weather i’m giving or receiving like cuddles and hugs🥰, in general i’m quite a physical person when it comes to anything i love getting in there and doing things so i can’t stand sitting around and doing nothing unless i’m playing a video game, I really like preforming, loud noises, rain, sunsets, rainbows, music, food and sleep. i love animals especially little ones like frogs, snails, ducks, rabbits and cats, i love thunderstorms, and im really good at comforting and calming down people if they’re really stressed, sad or angry. i love romance stories or just casually seeing two people out on the street in love it just makes me happy. my sister is really hot headed and doesn’t like to admit she’s wrong so i’m used to dealing with her attitude and anger, but my parents and brother are pretty easy going and calmer so i’m also used to that, i hate spiders and the dark. i’ve been told i’m the cinnamon roll and crackhead of my friendgroup and great at giving advice although i suck at giving myself advice. i’m quite chaotic, clumsy, and random and i tend to do dangerous things with out thinking them through. i also love gymnastics, climbing things and obstacle courses. i like sunsets and going on walks or just being outside during them. i also love going on fun “adventures” with people. my cousins and i would make up new games to play all the time. i love snow and sledding but i hate the cold so i’m always bundled up. i procrastinate way too much and usually forget things. i get along with most people and i’m pretty open minded. i usually say what’s on my mind even oft it’s not appropriate for the moment, i’m fairly honest to people, and i love theatre even though i’m not the best singer at least my acting and dancing are decent. also thank you in advance 💛🐌

♡︎ matchup for anon

hi! this was a toughie but i finally came to the best decision (◡ ω ◡) put it under the cut because the request itself is already quite long. i hope you enjoy!!

bnha: i match you with . . .

ochako uraraka !!

• there are a lot of points to make but the biggest of them all is that how comfortable you would make each other feel. you have several similar traits such as bubbliness(?), honesty and positivity. in addition, with Ochako there's an endless stream of compliments, little favours and soft touches that assure you you're never alone.

• asdfghjk that was the first bullet and i'm already in love

• i think there is something very special about having a s/o that reacts to things the same way you do. it creates a bond without neither of you having to exchange long conversations. usually these are during moments of happiness or excitement that the two of you just click.

• the trust between you and Ocha is simply otherworldly. you're so open with each other, able to talk about almost anything and knowing you have someone who supports you regardless of anything.

• i am convinced she was crushing on you, her best friend, for the longest time. everything about you and what you did was mesmerising. Ocha stopped counting how many times she caught herself in a daze, staring at you with warm cheeks (´･ᴗ･`)

• you were so oblivious to her feelings though she wanted to cry. luckily there was Mina who called together a whole operation featuring most of class 1-A to get you two together!

• they worked so hard to get you alone or hint Ochako's feelings for you. it was almost comical how badly they failed each time though . . . when she was bummed out about the series of failures sitting by herself you asked her what was wrong.

• obviously she was too embarrassed to tell you but you began worrying that it was something much worse.

• "Ocha, you can tell me anything but i understand if you don't want to. i'll give you some space if that helps you feel better."

• The next second she leaped up, grabbing her hand in yours. "no, Gigi! it's not that."

• "i love you, Ochako. i will keep all of your secrets."

• "wait. . . you love me? like 'in love with me'?"

• "well. . . yeah"

• and so you ended up accidentally confessing instead ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Ochako almost faint and had to lie down but all's well that ends well.

• your energy and dramatic acts never fail to make her laugh. it's so infectious i swear both of you end up rolling on the floor and clutching your stomachs in laughter over something stupid.

• just because you're literally the most wholesome couple in existence doesn't mean you'll have any mercy on the other in any competition though.

• playing mario kart? banana peels and shells, this is war and we die like Daichi (oops wrong fandom—) on a brisky jog? y'all run a marathon just to win. though you probably simultaneously end up getting distracted by a cat or a rainbow aww

• if you can't take care of yourself Ochako sure will. she'll give you her best advice and remind you of your deadlines. she's not below taking away your cuddling rights either, don't test her >:(

• Ochako is the softest person to cuddle with! after an exhausting day of working of assignments she holds to close to her while you're both bundled in a blanket and snacking.

• whether you're chatting or watching a movie she usually ends up making you cute little hairdo, like piggytails or just putting colourful hairclips in your hair.

• your dates include sport dates which means just doing anything active like going climbing or long walks, going to theatres (usually nearby ones to support the local associations), chill movie nights which may or may not turn into tickle fights, and late night adventures ♡︎

♫︎ music box

— Gimmie Love by Joji

— Crush by Tessa Violet

— Bubble Tea by dark cat

— Watermelon Sugar by Harry Styles

— we fell in love in october by girl in ocober

𑁍 jewellery box

— favourite memory with you

when both of you forgot the key to your dorm rooms so you slept on the common roo sofa for the night. it was before you got together so Ochako had to pretend she wasn't super nervous about the whole thing. then you thought she was cold and inviteed her to sleep on the same sofa so you could cuddle. surprisingly, Ochako did relax as you talked. it was the moment she became determined to confess to you.

— favourite activity to do together

going on small adventures together is enough to fill her to the brim with joy. it can be something as simple as going grocery shopping or running errands, really. with you she feels like anything can happen, that even the daily life can be full of small, wonderful things.

— favourite place to kiss you

it's not really a kiss but i'm telling you she can't stop blowing little raspberries on your arms. it starts out with cute kisses but eventually she can't resist herself. if you're alone in your room it might just escalate into a tickle fight.

— favourite nicknames for you

'Mochgi'. wait, don't go yet i can explain! you were eating mochi together when she asked you to pass her some more. she wanted to say "can you give me some more mochi, Gigi?" but it came out as "can go give me some more mochgi?" because her mouth was full. it became a thing for you to laugh about but actually Ochako kind of likes it now because it suits you.

— favourite thing about you

your open-minded approach to the world and your empathy. all Ochako ever wants to do is help people and make them smile—you seem to do so naturally without even trying. admittedly, she wishes she could be the same and deeply admires those traits in you. you have to remind her that she's perfect the way she is. in return she will likely refuse to let go of you for the rest of the day.

♡︎ runner up: Katsuki Bakugo (istg i was this close to matching you with him but i couldn't get the concept of Ochako and you out of my head)

i think i'm gonna have to give up on trying to schedule my writing because i fail each time. this took forever but thank you fpr being patient! happy new year and stay safe ♡︎

[ohsweetflips]

so im just gonna vent/monologue for a hot second and idc who does or does not read this but we’re just gonna be super chill abt it and not read too deeply into the stuff that i say, so!!!

and if i delete this in the morning, ignore all this!!!

i think the best way to start this post off in general is “i had a bunch of stuff i wanted to vent abt but from the shower to here (total of like 5 minutes) i have forgotten most of it”

which is very on brand bc i don’t remember most things nowadays ajkdjkdskj

anyways tho also shout out to my lack of emotional object permeance bc i have been in such a Not Fun State for X days (bc i dont really remember when this started this week akjdsjkdsjk) and i cannot remember what started it nor can i fully process that i have only been in this state for like A Few Days and not like........................ weeks

but i think that is also due to the fact that i do, in fact, bounce back and forth between “hey things are fine idk why i ever thought they were bad :)” and “hey things are bad idk why i ever thought they were fine :)”

it also doesn’t help that. every day. i am analyzing the complicated relationship i have with my parents. specificaly my mom. and it definitely isn’t fun to think abt.

basically every day i think abt that scene from the breakfast club when they all talk abt how they’re fated to become their parents, no matter how hard they try not to be, and it especially fucks me up when i think abt how much me and my mom are alike, in both the good and the bad, and i’m just like “hmm am i just being a shitty daughter (possible) or do i have to figure out how to fix this (don’t know how) or am i just gonna have to break the chain eventually (upsetting!)”

but that is deeply upsetting to think and talk abt so :^)

and i also think a lot abt how i’m 99% sure ********** runs in our family which i guess i’ll have to deal with eventually even tho it doesn’t really. affect me rn. i guess!

let it be known that i do love my parents very much!! i just. have too many thoughts in my head.

also i get nervous throwing terms around bc im scared of being wrong but i genuinely think i have like. adhd and/or depression and/or anxiety and also i think there’s something messy going on with my empathy which is!! also upsetting!!!!

but tbh i have never been more. like. resistant to treatment in my life than i am right now. so i just deal with all of this in my brain.

also i’m kinda just back into my way of “consume the same media over and over and let it just become my whole personality so i can feel like a normal person” except that makes, like, idk “coming back to reality” a bitch bc i have spent the past?? 24/48 hours feeling like i’m on and off floating through space and time

also ik that this will all probably be over in a couple days, idk maybe even tomorrow!!! but for rn i’m just :^)

also me and my best friend were talking today and he said something like “i think everyone has certain things they do that just make them feel bad” and i kinda just nodded along bc i knew that my answer of “well i basically at this point purposely keep a shitty sleep schedule and, even when i wake up at 11am, i basically don’t let myself eat until 4/5pm bc, besides having some things i probably need to unpack, i also find something terribly grounding in feeling shitty” would Not go over well 

also there is no way i am mentally and emotionally ready to go back to school in september, like i say this every year and i think at this point i just need to accept that i’ve wasted away my college years feeling shitty and i will never get this back!!!! which is. fun.

also i’m doing so many things this semester that i don’t want to do bc apparently i care abt what other people want more than i do. for some stupid reason.

also ngl i’ve come to the realization that sometimes my brain is just not a great place to be akjdkjdskj

also i have to do my thesis this semester and i already feel behind and next semester i’m barely gonna get to see my professors/friends except for like one or two days a week so while a part of me literally does not want to step foot on my campus/in a class room bc i am So Not Ready, i also feel like i’m basically gonna have no support that will be tangible to me 

anyways tho i’ve fully brought taz/dnd back into my life so that is always an upside!! and i mean that unironically, like. when in doubt. taz/dnd will give me my serotonin and fantasy escapism that i crave <3

i feel like i could say more but at this point i’m just tired!!! so, to quote adam parrish, “i want to feel awake when my eyes are open”

[cardassiangf]

okay actually let me just do the top three placements for the ds9 crew, okay? okay here we go! these are just for fun & also my interpretation. also i realize some arent human and therefore would have different placements entirely, but you know what? idc. (and no ezri since i havent seen enough of her to make a good guess sfdgfhjh sorry!) 

julian i already said was a cancer sun virgo moon. workaholics who are kinda anxious but also full of love and affection, plus they also love to talk. for rising im kind of caught between aries and sagittarius, because they both in nicely with the top two. i am leaning more towards aries rising though for him. moves very fast to keep interest in things & is career minded. it’s kind of a combination that swings back and forth between this unflappable confidence (usually in the workplace) and a deep emotional vulnerability. also, they’re caregivers by nature. his childhood teddy bear was his ‘first patient,’ and that has to mean something. he also repeatedly shows himself to be drawn to people that might be in need of ‘fixing,’ and might not necessarily pull back until something shakes him out of it. julian is someone who buzzes with energy and feels so much at once it can be hard to reign in, but once he actually manages to do that, it’s almost unstoppable. 

for sisko im feeling gemini sun and scorpio moon. okay yes two signs with a bad rep for some reason but hear me out: this person is extremely charming, confident & elegant except when they're Not, there's intense confidence and resolve that comes through. and on that intensity, we’ve all seen sisko when he gets serious about something--it’s a Lot. it’s a combo that can also be thrown off kilter and that’s not a great thing, but sisko has an excellent support system to ground him so you don’t see the negativity. he’s also a pisces rising. the same intensity comes out in love and emotional intelligence with him here, he’s definitely someone in touch with that side of himself and that’s very Water Sign of him. so basically loving, protective, the type of person people get drawn too for one reason or another but also there’s a chaotic side to him too, and he’s got a flair for the dramatic (his escapades in the mirrorverse come to mind when i think about this.) 

jadzia... okay see my initial reaction is to just. fill her chart with fire. she’s a big personality on the surface, and extremely magnetic. but actually? leo sun pisces moon. okay yeah, a fire sign out from the gate but hear me out. there’s a lot of duality in jadzia, and while she outwardly shows a ton of confidence, she’s also pretty self reflective and i get the sense she much prefers to deal with her problems internally. like, people don’t really see much past her dazzling outside either, and as another leo sun, people do tend to write us off as a bit one dimensional at times. the known emotional sensitivity of the pisces mized with leo’s capacity to love is good for her i think. rising is a bit tricky, since jadzia also has dax to blend her personality with, but i think that virgo rising suits her well. for all of the fun she brings to the table, she also has a brilliant streak of practicality. 

kira is another instinctively ‘oh, fire sign!’ person but actually? i think she has a ton of water in her chart. she’s emotional and passionate and so devoted to the things and people she believes in, and maybe she isn’t used to paying attention to her emotions because the occupation didn’t let her, but she feels so deeply. for this reason, pisces sun sagittarius moon scorpio rising. the thing about kira is that she might hold a lot of anger, but most of it stems from love and protectiveness. she’s incredibly blunt and adaptable, and definitely one of those pisces who doesn’t actually want to admit they have anything in common with the other water signs lmao. she’s at her best when she’s around people who can ground her and kind of make her pause to evaluate things before jumping into action and seriously values the bonds she makes with people. she also doesn’t really care for staying still or playing political mind games and would much prefer to just jump into the Doing phase of things. 

quark is just. it took me a minute for him actually? idk he’s a bit of a weird one. for quark, he’s kind of dramatic and emotional but also has this wonderfully deviant side and, when it comes down to it, isn’t terrible at business negotiations at all. yes he has majorly fucked up some big opportunities, but also somehow has kept his bar running for what, 15? 20 years? through everything that’s happened on ds9.  quark is a capricorn sun, but it’s balanced out (or in conflict with) his aquarius moon and leo rising. quark is weird, and kind of a dick sometimes, but when he’s not trying to be a menace, he actually has a pretty good heart. he’s a pretty creative thinker and constantly finds new ways to use practical knowledge to his advantage. but he also likes to ‘outshine’ others and keep the spotlight on himself, and he’ll lie and trample over people to do so. the fact that this combo makes him attentive can be a bit of a double-edged sword; sure, he can listen to people when he feels like it, but what’s going to happen with that knowledge? who knows. not quark until he finds an opportunity for it at least. 

odo! does not technically have a birthday but who cares i love him so he’s here. yes, we will start obviously: virgo sun. what else would i go with. he’s a reserved person with a personality that errs on the side of uptight; very virgo stereotypical. but you know what else? aries moon. oh yes. odo walks into a room and as long as he wants you to know he’s there, you Will know. he’s bold in his own way, and extremely on top of details with intense attentiveness. of course there’s some fire in his chart, and probably a lot of it in other placements too.  his gemini rising helps this out immensely, which is kinda surprising. but also when gemini is ascendant with virgo in sun, it makes them meticulous, fast learners. maybe a bit nitpicky at times, but nothing that can’t be helped with practice. i think the aries placement would also probably explain the underlying sensitivity, because like, it’s generally one of the louder signs of the zodiac but here’s a secret from anther fire sign: we are So sensitive oh my fucking god. we have a ton of ego and pride (and you can’t tell me odo doesn’t have moments of that) so typically unless we’re in a place we feel we can let go, you won’t see it, but jesus Fucking christ fire signs have a lot of emotion under the surface. 

miles, who i just wanna lowkey take the piss out of and slap him with virgo/virgo/virgo but i will refrain lmao. no, for him, libra sun leo moon virgo rising. he’s extremely reliable, devoted to his work & friends & family even if he’s not the greatest at showing it? a bit emotionally constipated but he does try very hard and that’s why we love him. is it the placements or the fact that he’s an irish dad? who knows, but he’s very prone to just telling people things outright with nothing to cushion it. this can be good or bad, and seems to depend more on how well the other person knows him. his leo side makes him pretty warm when he’s comfortable, and i think his relationship with keiko actually paints him as a lowkey traditional romantic too. also, these placements make for really good parents, and we don’t see it as much as we see the jake/sisko father/son dynamic, but miles really does do his best for his kids. 

worf my boy, who i have loved dearly since i first saw tng. hard to make a guess for him im 100% happy with though. im decently satisfied with taurus sun leo moon scorpio rising. worf is just like. he doesn’t have a really big personality but you also are very aware of him? i wouldn’t say he’s stoic by any means, he’s just very. focused. he’s honest and tries his best to look at situations from a more lawful standpoint, or at least, one that makes the most sense with his own honour code. he seems drawn to stability, but also finds himself drawn to people who challenge him too? he’s out here looking for something to balance him out and put things in perspective for him. whether or not he takes that into consideration is another thing entirely. and i say scorpio because, you know what they say, still water runs deep. you might know what he’s thinking because he told you, but you might not know how he Feels about it. actually, you probably will not. the leo doesn’t really make him want to be in the spotlight or anything, in his case i think it acts more like his driving force. 

and listen. i know garak isn't crew. but i love him so he’s here and we’re all gonna like it.  this chaotic little bastard spy is an aquarius sun pisces moon capricorn rising.  garak is unique, and even if he doesn’t want to say it, he’s pretty ruled by his emotions too. he’s creative, and a grade-A manipulator who can charm his way just about anywhere (provided of course, the person in question isn’t someone who’s been warned about him, but even then, he has a good chance). he’s good a good, if not a bit Off, sense of humour and he comes off as someone who has a personal interest in the behaviour of people. not just a spy thing, but he’s invested--he does crave a certain intimacy and closeness which gets denied uh. most of his life actually. the capricorn read comes from how he’s been able to compartmentalize and commit acts of cruelty. an interrogation that was four hours of staring and not speaking is certainly creative. it’s also an insanely calculated and sadistic mind game for him. and it’s interesting to note that as much as he manipulates, he’s also very easily manipulated himself (see: Everything about tain jesus fuck i hate that man so much). he also runs into quite a bit of trouble when he’s not able to compartmentalize things any longer, whether it’s because the emotional toll is too high or he simply doesn’t see the point in the actions any longer. 

[ajokeformur-ray]

From oldest to newest ~ Erika answers asks ~

hailmary-yramliah said: Wait I’m really tripping out. I realized you were following me on Tumblr and I didn’t even know?!?!?!? I ABSOLUTELY LOVE YOUR FICS LIKE WTF IM SO SLOW BUT THANK YOU YOURE LIKE ACTUALLY AMAZING AND ME STANNING YOU RN MAKES ME EMBARRASSED BUT I JUST WANT TO SAY THAT YOU ARE SO TALENTED!!! Ahhhhh I love your Arthur/Joker fics XD 

Thank you so so much!!! <33333 This means so much to me! <3333 I hope you continue to enjoy the works that I work so hard on x

Anonymous said:Ngl I feel like it’s wrong to like Arthur & read fics about him only bc my sis thinks it’s weird af. Our interests are complete opposite & finds mine very weird and it kinda makes me sad. I wish she loved the movie as much as me & understood my “obsessions” as she calls them. Anyways, love your fics sm! You’ve gotten me into this fandom so quickly and I love it! 💕

Your sister sounds just like my, and others’, family. They don’t understand because the film wasn’t for them. It was for people like us who see Arthur and who understand him. If you find enjoyment in something, darling, most especially if it’s fictional (though very realistic), then there’s no shame in indulging in it. Thank you very much, that means a lot! <3

insfirebunny said: Ok As you might see rn I make myself comfortable in your blog. Hope you don't mind. I enjoy every single one story of yours. You write so beautifully that it's magical. Take care of yourself, sunshine ☀

I don’t mind at all, I’m flattered, thank you so, so much! <33333 take care of yourself too!!!!

Anonymous said: Would you rather date Arthur or Joker??

To me, Arthur never went insane and ‘became’ Joker. He’s not the insane one; the world is mad. So I would date Arthur and I would love him and protect him and help him (everything I write about is everything I would do for him; the things I write for others are very self-indulgent lmao I have no shame) and if, in his own time, he grew into himself (Joker), then I would still love and support him just the same. I don’t think he went mad - I think he just dropped everything holding him down, holding him back, and said “fuck the world”. And honestly? That’s a big fucking mood.

Anonymous said: Okay speaking of the multiverse theory, what is your view on it regarding fictional characters. I personally believe that not only do they exist, but with the right skills you could connect with them in some way.

Since I was a child, for as long as I could remember, I’ve had this super vivid made up, carefully crafted world inside my head with all my most loved characters. I have spent my life inside my head daydreaming. I’ve never needed real life friends because I have my imagination and though I tried to make friends. I tried so hard but I never got anywhere because I was a freak, I was this and that etc. etc. (I was bullied for like 15 years lmao fuck ‘em) and so I stayed inside my head and didn’t bother trying to cross that invisible glass wall between me and everyone else. I’m 22 and I still haven’t bothered to try; it’s cosy here so I’ll stay inside my head where I can make others happy with my daydreams. But I digress - I like to think that our loves know that we love them. Every thought, every tear, every daydream, every squeal, every pillow we’ve squeezed wanting to be them, every imagine, everything we have done or do because of them, for them, they know. They see it; they feel it. I like to believe that Arthur Fleck knows how deeply he is loved and cherished he is by all of us and more than that - he loves us all just as fiercely, and he’s so, so proud of all of us. (Also lowkey I know it’s your skin shifting due to temperature changes etc. but you know when you think you feel a hand on your shoulder or fingers in your hair when you’re like half asleep and just dozing??? Or when you have a dream of him? That’s Arthur reaching out to us in the only way he can to say he knows, he sees and he loves us too.)

Anonymous said: I LOVE YOUR WRITING SO MUCH! Like it’s crazy how good you write

Thank you so, so much!!! <3333333 I work .v. hard (one piece can take up to three hours, though the longest I’ve ever spent on a piece (Coming Home To You) was six hours. I still say that is the best thing I’ve ever written, so that means a lot! <3

Anonymous said: I love Joker from our dearly beloved 2019 Joker movie as well as Joker from The Dark Night. I can't choose which I love more so why not both! At the same time! ifyouknowwhatimsaying 👀👀👀

Sksksksksksk I believe @gothamslittlejester can help you out here lmao she’s written for poly!readerxJokerxJoker so go check out her works; they’re phenomenal! <3

Anonymous said: There's a tornado warning in my area. We NEVER get tornado warnings, like ever, so I'm kind of scared.

Ohmygoodness please stay safe, darling!!! I’ve never experienced any kind of natural phenomena like that so I can’t imagine how scary that must be! I hope everything turned out well x

Anonymous said: I read what happened to you at work and deeply sorry. I’m sure you are more than aware of this but their reaction is a reflection of themselves than of you. You have the full power to enjoy and like what you please. Also, it is okay to bite back when it is needed. It may be hard to, but sometimes it’s healthy to stand up for yourself at times. Of course it is easier said than done. Remember you’re a goddess! Take back your power ✨

Thank you so, so much!!!! I’m not really all that affected by what happened anymore; it was only a week ago but already I’ve reached that nice part of apathy where you still care but you’re like, aa fuck it, I don’t wanna be hurt by it anymore. Standing up for myself is very hard; I’m a lot like Arthur in that respect: I put my head down, bite my tongue and take it because I hate confrontation. I hate it so much so I’d rather stay quiet. My parents told me I need to be a bit less Arthur and a bit more Joker; maybe in time that bite will come to me xp thank you honey! Your words mean a lot; I’m always here if you ever wanna talk about anything!!!

Anonymous said: I just read what you said about your coworkers. Honestly that's so horrible and I hope you're feeling better soon. ♡ I feel you so much, things like that happened to me all the time while I was still in school. But please, don't hate yourself. You have such a beautiful mind, you have talent & creativity most of them couldn't even dream of. It's not your fault that they can't see how beautiful being an introvert & a daydreamer can be. You're wonderful the way you are. ♡ ( @buried-in-windy-meadows )

I’m so sorry that you had to experience that, too, it’s an awful feeling when you try to be yourself and people are mean. I hope you know that they are no reflection on you, as the previous anon says - it’s all on them! Thank you so much; your words mean a lot <3 I’ve always been this way, for as long as I can remember I’ve lived inside my head, so I see no reason to change; I’m happy in, not necessarily myself, but my imagination and my creativity is my favourite part of myself (even when I’m at war with the rest of me, I can find solace in my imagination and I’m very lucky to have that) and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Anonymous said: I’m pretty sure you’re on the opposite side of the world from me so I just wanted to let you know your words and your attitude are making someone on the other side of the planet smile. We are all so lucky to have you and to have this movie to connect us. It makes me feel really human 🧡

This film is without a doubt the best thing that’s ever happened to me - we’ve all found a home, a place to go to vent and to write and to support each other and it’s so beautiful how such a tragic, grisly and dark film has brought light to so many of us. Arthur would adore it, I know he would. Thank you, darling, this means a lot to me! Please know I’m always here for you should you ever need anything or just wanna drop a line! <3

rafaelina-casillas said:Aw, I'm so so sorry that happened to you! People can be so nasty - especially to those who never deserved it! I hope you're feeling a lot better now! I can only say that in my country (where Halloween is not a tradition but more and more people are celebrating it) I saw at least 5 or 6 people in less than an hour who were doing the same makeup as you - and no one tried to mock them. I guess you had the worst luck with your colleagues but try to not mind them. They don't deserve your nerves! 💖

Exactly! I didn’t go out with my makeup, I just stayed home and enjoyed my private and personal display of love for Joker - I’m sure he’d have been flattered! And I dared to open up to my colleagues; it’s a mistake I won’t make twice, that’s for sure. Thank you, you’re always so kind to me and it means a lot - will have to DM you soon!

insfirebunny said: You look so cute and your writing is a pure gold. Stay strong

Thank you so, so much, you’re too kind!!! Take care of yourself, love! <3

Anonymous said: binge watching Batman: The Animated Series this weekend. Mark Hamil’s joker is amazing tbh

I’ll have to check that out; see if it’s on Netflix or Youtube. I hope you had a wonderful weekend! <3

theclownsqueen said: Hi! Im a new page, i love your page so much and your work is amazing! Sorry just thought I'd drop by. :)

Yeeeees ohmygoodness I gotta reply to your DM; I’ve got so many lmao <3333 thank you so much, you’re far too kind, I hope you continue to enjoy my works; I’m always here if you need anything x

Anonymous said: I relate to Arthur so bad. I’ve always been a loner and really shy, plus I’ve been helping out my mother a lot with financial problems. Once I saw the movie in theaters I just fell in love with it and it really brings me joy to read your fics. I just wish I wouldn’t get labeled a weirdo or freak for openly expressing that I like Arthur. Just makes me feel ashamed for liking something which sucks.

Thank you, darling - I’m glad my works can bring you joy; that’s really all I want to do with my writing is to help people in the moments they most need it. Even if all I manage to do is make your lips quirk upwards, that means I’ve done what I set out to do! I’m sorry you’re having such a rough time of it and I hope things start to look up for you soon! <3 The people who should feel ashamed are the ones labelling you for expressing yourself; truly, they’re the punchline of the joke Arthur was laughing at during the end of the film. Don’t let them take your sun from you, love - that means they’re winning. Please know I’m always here for you; don’t be afraid to drop me a line! <3

Anonymous said: I love your writing!

Thanks, honey! That means a lot <3

Anonymous said: Any tips for fic writers out there? Love your work btw!

There’s so much I could tell you but honestly, rules and guidelines don’t matter. Just have fun with it. Write what you wanna write in the way you wanna write it, when you wanna write it, and if anyone doesn’t like it, then who cares? Do it for you, even if you’re fulfilling requests for other people. Step back when you gotta, don’t be afraid to turn down writing requests if you don’t gel with them or you just don’t wanna or you’re not comfy with it, and really just have fun. If you have fun with the work you put in, then it’ll shine through and people’ll love it!

writings-of-a-gen-z said: hey love hope everythings going okay for you and the world isnt being too mean x

You’re too good to me, you always are. Thanks, love, and the same for you <3 sending hugs and love!

jibanyyan submitted:

I love your writing so so so so much you don’t even know it! I get excited each time I get notified that you posted again and I even take my time to read them in uni!!!

Just know that I love your blog and you can always reach out to me if you need someone to talk to even though we don’t know each other!

Much love goes out to you love xx

Thank you so, so much omgggggg you’re always so kind and supportive and it’s???? amazing ???? Please know the same for you; I’m almost always online when I’m not at work (even when I’m studying I have tumblr open in case people need me lmao) so I’ll reply .p. quickly! <3333 thank you so much omgggg sending you loads of love and hugs, I hope you’re well!

harlyquln said: when do you plan on opening requests again? 🥵

I’m not sure yet, love, but because I love to put myself under pressure lmao because nothing will make you work like an impending deadline, shall we say the beginning of December? That gives me just under 3 weeks to write almost 40 requests and honestly, that seems reasonable (ish). <3

Anonymous said: your comfort fics are always so beautiful 💕 i’ve never felt like i was actually IN an imagine before i read one of yours. you’re honestly one of my fav authors

Omggggg thank youuuuuu~ comfort fics are my favourite thing to write so that means so much! <3

kat-o-combs said: Good morning sunshine ☺️ I hope your day is going well. You deserve happiness, comfort, and contentment 💕 love ya!

Omgggg you’re always so good to me wtfffff <3333 thank youuu I hope the same for you too; you deserve all the best things in life! Love you too x

Anonymous said: Hope you're gonna feel better! I've discovered your blog... a week ago, I think, and your stories have helped me more than you'll ever know. I find a lot of comfort and support to keep me going when I read your stories and I'm so thankful for your blog. :)

Anonymous said: Hope you're gonna feel better! I've discovered your blog... a week ago, I think, and your stories have helped me more than you'll ever know. I find a lot of comfort and support to keep me going when I read your stories and I'm so thankful for your blog. :)

Helping people with my writing is a literal dream so thank you for telling me this! When I write the softer comfort imagines, they’re very emotionally draining and I have to dig deep to write them so usually I come away feeling old wounds and pretty tired in myself; I take care of myself in the ways I know helps (funnily enough, writing is both the issue and the solution) and I come back out on top. Thank you very much for telling me this, I’m glad I’m able to help you! <3

Anonymous said: Awww I hope you feel better soon!!

I do, darling, thank you so much x

Anonymous said: Sneaking up to nuzzle Arthur, then blowing a raspberry on his neck and watching him grin and shy away with a giggle.

Yeeeees~ lmaooooo it’s what he deserves!!!!!! <33333

Anonymous said: I saw joker for the second time and I think I've finally accepted in myself what you had a while ago. Arthur feels like home, he feels like comfort. When he would be dancing or just even smile I felt like I was there and I felt like everything was okay. I've fallen in love with a fictional character, but I can accept that. Because escaping with him brings me so much joy and love, I cant imagine being without it

Neither can I, nonnie. I’ve felt love for characters before but never like this. Never. I never wanna be without him or without this community again. We found a home in Arthur Fleck and fuck he’d love that so much. I’m glad he’s able to to bring you joy and love, it’s all he’d want for you and he’d be so proud of you!!! <3

Anonymous said: I had a dream about arthur last night???? Like I got into a car crash and he came and got me and brought me home and cuddled me and gave me kisses and honestly the dream was super scattered but so nice wow

That sounds like such a lovely dream omg loving Arthur and being loved right back??? Where do we sign up?? <3

Anonymous said: wish i could make Arthur a flower crown right now god damn

A) he’d look so fucking cute and B) he’d wear it around the apartment all the time omgggggg ~ he’d never wear it outside bc he’s scared it’ll get lost or stolen or broken but at home he’d cherish it so much and he’d look adorable ohhhh~ ;33333

Anonymous said: Hey, Ily and all though I'm not the biggest fan of Joker fics I just want you to know I still support and care for you

Thank you honey, this means a lot!!!! If this isn’t your scene, you’re welcome to unfollow, I won’t be mad or anything at all. Thank you for your continued support if you decide to stay, though, it means so much x

rebs-doom said:reminder that u r my fave person bye

Come here and let me love you, you precious, beautiful soul. I love you so much.

Anonymous said: What do you get when you cross a sad, touch-starved man with a blog that cherishes him and treats him well? I'll tell you what you get, you get what you fucking deserve. *smooch*

Can you imagine:

“Hey, Arthur?”

Arthur made a soft noise of acknowledgement from where he was sleepily cuddled into your side.

“Wanna hear a joke?”

“Mm,” He chuckled, “What?” He blearily opened his eyes to gaze at you fondly.

*You tell him this joke but swap ‘blog’ for ‘person’ and kiss him before he can react*

And see how fast he gives you what you deserve ;) ;)

(high key it’d become a way for you to say ‘i love you’ without saying it. Like, “you’re always so good to me” // “it’s what you deserve”) <333 sweet boi deserves the world.

Anonymous said: Can I just say how much of a blessing you are to the Arthur Fleck/Joker fandom!

Istg I’m drowning in all this love omggggg you’re far too kind to me I’m just a simple girl pouring out her love for Arthur/Joker into her blog because it’s got nowhere else to go <333333333 thank you so much!!! <3333

Anonymous said: I feel so sad for Arthur; he pretty much had the world against him from day one. I could only imagine some of the stuff he'd gone through when he was small. I just see baby Arthur lying in a filthy crib, crying for his mother's comfort or from hunger, and Penny just not even noticing it or caring.

I know :( it’s so tragic and dark and there are thousands of Arthur Flecks in real life who are unseen and defeated and broken down but they can’t get help but they’re trying and they work so hard and they just. Keep. Going. I left the cinema each time crying really hard and got home and cried some more for Arthur and for all the people, including myself, who watched the film and saw pieces of themselves in Arthur. When I think of Penny, I find it oddly funny that she always called him ‘Happy’ when he was anything but and it was only until she died that he became what she always thought he was. It’s beautifully ironic, in a strange way.

Okay, so uh... I gotta not let asks build up like that again lmao this took me two hours wowowowow <3333 I’m aiming to get some writing done today, there’s three or four pieces I’ve started and not finished so I’ll work on those. Thanks, loves, you have no idea how much you all mean to me! <3

[queerchristianaffirmations]

Hi! I dont know if this is the kind of stuff y'all post about, but i need advice. All my life all ive seen is how awful christians are to their communities (and even outside of their communities) and its been hard to not let that affect how i see my husband and my husbands family (who are deeply religious christians. My mother in law's parents were missionaries). I have a lot of pain and anger around that. I am a pagan and i am open to other religions and take teaching from (1/2)

(2/2) from other religions and thats where im happiest. I see truths in all religions. But in a conversation with my husband this morning i found out that he doesnt disagree with the concept of people proselytizing(?) To people in other countries. I got upset because to me, forcing religions as truth onto other people usually isnt welcome. He only sees his religion as truth, and i have a hard time coping.. How do i support him without sacrificing my own morals and beliefs… Thanks.

Heya! this is a tough question! i’m no expert on marriage, my best advice is to have an honest conversation with your husband about this, the way you view religion, and the places that make you uncomfortable. It’s already this amazing thing that you have this marriage across different religious beliefs, that must mean that you care for each other a lot and are adept and seeing one another beyond differences. it’s just communication. 

try bringing it up, and remember that a lot of us are brought up in this very toxic environment where proselytizing/evangelizing is viewed as the end all be all evidence of faith, it’s a big ‘damnation or no’ deal for a lot of churches. that stuff can be reaaaaally hard to shake. and while a lot of us here understand that evangelization has done a looot of harm, within the church, you mostly hear success stories, however warped they may or may not be. have an honest conversation with your husband about his historical theology behind proselytizing, how it’s affected him, how he views it, be prepared to disagree. 

i hope this helps. i’m praying for y’all! 

[honey-yoongles]

Written BTS ship for btsismy6thkink

Written ship YEEEAAAAS (sorry it’s long)

Hello… it is I, one of your favourite people in the world, I am here for a ship. Also I do apologise for this being unnecessarily long, and disclaimer to you can ship me with whom ever it doesn’t need to be my bias I won’t get mad, but I might get wrecked😂

I mean you know what I look like, but if anybody else reading my ship doesn’t then this is for their curiosity. Brown, collarbone length hair also newly with bangs; blue eyes, kinda chubby but I mean I don’t mind I look cute anyway and I’m 174(coincidentally making me shorter than all the members. I don’t know if this is necessary but I have 3 marks on my body proving how unlucky and clumsy I truly am, scar at my eye(a kid threw a shovel from a decent height, thanks for that you fucking twat), scar on my finger (tried to open a can of dog food but cutting myself in the process), burn on my foot(I spilled boiling water on it while making noodles).

I’ve been struggling with mental illness since I was like 10, I used to have undiagnosed anxiety and depression causing me an inability to talk to people and easily be embarrassed and it then proceeding to my brain driving me to the edge because I couldn’t take it. I’ve been able to control it though, sure I’ve had meltdowns and suicidal thought but it got better for a while… not going to lie it’s gotten worse again but hey, I’m not planning on quitting now.

Okay, so personality traits are + INFJ (advocate, that’s what the internet tells me) + Kind, even to people who don’t deserve it. + Forgiving + Weird + Happy, even with my mental illnesses I am happy. + Funny, like yeah but dark humour + Always hungry + Stubborn(so stubborn I taught myself to ride a bike, I didn’t speak in front of my parents when I was a baby only to myself when I was alone and I taught myself English bc my teacher wasn’t good at it) + Caring + Helpful + Positive

My dream job would be a writer, but frankly I will settle for teacher as the only person who believes I could write is dead and I’m not about to have people make fun of it. I am that one huge tea drinker who doesn’t known when I should stop, I LOVE books with a passion, I want to own every book I read and that’s just how it is. I love makeup which is just a way of expressing myself. I don’t have a huge support system but I got one person I would trust with my life and frankly to whom ever you ship me with they better be alright with third wheeling.

I love horror movies, like sign me the fuck up honestly I could watch them all day, they don’t scare me. However i am jumpy, literally if I drop something and then the sound reaches my ears I jump( lets just keep the anxiety thing in mind, because that is why). I have a little baby(bunny) but her name is literally baby. I love her with all my being because she is my squishy and she shall me mine(get that reference?? Sorry). Also got a dog but I mean we all know I love him. Actually I’m just a giant animal person. One more thing before I lead into boyfriend material things, I have a dirty mind, literally I can make everything you say dirty.

As for S/O, I would be supportive as fuck, kiss them any time of the day not caring about the place, probably jealous but not to the ‘crazy’ mark, the girlfriend who would let them pick the food and not actually complain bc I mean it when I say I don’t care, I don’t lie so I would tell him everything even I he did something wrong I would leave him to guess what he did. In return I would like trust and loyalty, that’s literally all I need… okay maybe like sex but I mean, we knew that at this point.

THATS IT I DONT KNOW WHAT MORE TO WRITE 

@btsismy6thkink ~

Hello to you, my in fact favourite person in the world right after min yoongi ofc lmAO IM SORRy

You asked, and I will deliver! Do not apologize for the length of your submission, it’s not like the one I send you was any better!（≧ｙ≦＊） Also we can’t have you being wrecked! Therefor I didn’t have to think twice about whom to ship you with. （＾ｖ＾）

I would encourage everyone to go and check out her blog, as I personally find her writing very good! (She writes great reactions, fan-fictions as well as ships, and she’s the reason I started doing them as well!)

Once again, thank you for your submission, I hope that you like your ship and the description I put together for you as well! *hand kiss*（*＾3＾）♡

Disclaimer: This written ship will be longer and more detailed than of what I usually do. I got carried away, so this is a one-time thing only!

I ship you with: Kim Namjoon

The first time he ever laid his eyes on you, he got hooked. He found you super cute, standing alongside and having a conversation with a girl he imagined was your best friend. You hadn’t noticed him yet, you were caught up in the gossip between you and your friend, laughing and taking sips from your drink every now and then. He admired you from afar: the way your hair framed your face perfectly, your fashionable outfit and the cutest smile, which he frankly caught himself smiling along with as well. Because he was so intrigued by you, he didn’t notice that your friend had left you alone at your table. This was his opportunity, he would think to himself, as he walked across the room taking the seat your friend had just left. Puzzled by his sudden appearance, you would let out a small sigh trying not to seem interested, when in fact you were the exact opposite. Namjoon would leave the impression of being rather introverted and shy from the first glance you’d send him, but you quickly realized that he was actually such a social butterfly. The two of you would have an hour long conversation about god knows what; he even offered to buy you a drink which you kindly refused at first, but accepted the offer the second time.

Once he got to know you better, Namjoon would admire your kind, positive yet peculiar personality. Every remark from you brought a smile on his lips, causing him to usually flash his dimples that you adored so much. Being just as unlucky and clumsy as you, the two of you would always look out for each other. Once he knew about your past issues and struggles with anxiety and depression, Namjoon would be all over you. He is the worrying kind, and would want to check up on you every minute if possible. He would at times go overboard, but you knew he did it because he cared so deeply for you.

It was no secret that Namjoon was crazy for you at this point, and it didn’t take more than a month before the two of you were officially a couple. Namjoon had written hundred of love songs about other girls and his past relationships, but when it came to you, he was simply just lost for words. You were the kind of girl who deserved the world, and yet he felt like it was impossible for him to put it into words. It was however almost certain that he would manage to write you something personal in the end.

Let us not forget about the shared interests that the two of you have as well. He loved that you had a passion for reading and collecting books, and would always ask you after you finish a piece whether or not you would recommend it for him to read. When you both had the time, he would invite you to different bookstores, buying you whatever book you showed the slightest interest in. On other occasions, Namjoon loved to take you out for either lunch or dinner. He would always suggest going to fancy places with menus on different languages that none of you understood, and although you usually didn’t care where the two of you went and what you had to eat, there would still be times where you would go against his crazy ideas, suggesting something a bit more simple. Another thing that he loved when the two of you were together, was your way of showing affection towards him. The fact that you didn’t care about what other people thought about the two of you, as well as you taking his hand while walking and randomly stealing kisses in the open.

Already after the first day of your relationship, Namjoon had invited you over to their house. He had no doubts about introducing you to the rest of the boys, because he just knew how well you would get along with them. Your positive and kind charisma would attract Taehyung and Hoseok in an instant, and they would quickly become some of your best friends. The fact that you were so good with animals as well, made them invite you over to their place rather often. They didn’t really want to admit it, but you sometimes only accepted their invite to come over just to spend time with both Yeontan and Mickey, and occasionally Holly as well, rather than hanging out with them. Seokjin would also introduce you to Eomuk and Odeng, and allow you to hold and feed them, and watch them climb around in their cage all day. After a while you would also come to befriend Yoongi, who was rather distant to begin with. Once you got to know him though, he was way more open and social when you were around the house. 

[elizabethrobertajones]

Do you think we'll see Dean and Jody discuss Cas? Does Jody even know Cas exists? They told her s8 angels exits and she was claire but still i thibk textually they never mentioned his name around her? Im guessing they are gonna discuss Deans feeling about Mary since Jody knew her but Cas?

I don’t know, which I know I say to like basically all questions about speculation but this one is something I don’t really have a clue about and I’m not even sitting on my thumbs pretending not to have an opinion because I’d rather not say anything on the record until I know I’m right or not… I really, genuinely, to the best of my ability to sound it all out and guess from the available information, don’t know :P 

It depends how they handle Cas being gone overall, whether Dean’s openly, loudly mourning him all the time every episode constantly, which is a detail where I’d only be able to offer you a confident speculation on the eve of this episode anyway after seeing the first 2. If Dean goes stoic and jaw-twitchy but quiet about it then probably not but that’s just like… super obvious and short term.

In the mean time, please assume the tin foil hat position you’d take to listen to a conversation that sounds like this:

There’s quite a lot to pack in with meeting Patience, and getting our guys some good face to face time with Jody for any emotional support they need to sponge off her. Sam doesn’t seem to be around so he may be off with Jack, but if he wasn’t, he’d probably want to learn how to be a mom to him from Jody, for all we know :P Thematically it might sort of be that way anyhow - if Patience doesn’t come in direct contact with Sam it seems ridiculously unlikely she’s not going to be thematically connected to him and therefore Jack through an extremely easy join the dots between 13x03 and 1x09. (Sam already kinda went one round with this sort of thing in 12x04 so in a way he’s got his booster shot of dealing with it directly so it can just be storytelling mirrors for him :P)

Certainly Jody is more connected to Mary symbolically and in general the Wayward Sisters stuff has been more about parenting and those dynamics recently, with 11x12 looking at how Jody copes and teasing us with hindsight for Mary’s return with Dean talking to her about wishing his mom had been around, and in 12x06 and 12x22 she and Mary sort of bounce off each other as moms directly in a continuation of that - in 12x16 she’s not around except on the other end of phonecalls but Dean’s carrying on parenting Claire as a hunter a lil bit. 

Of all of those, 11x12 was the only one to make a nod to Cas with Claire holding grumpy cat in one of her scenes, but the show has decided to treat him a lot as just the inciting incident to get her onto the road hunting by dragging her into the life, while Dean does the thing he does around feisty wayward teenagers, and probably was mostly responsible for switching Claire’s amateur detective attempt onto a hunting thing in 10x20. I don’t want to make Claire cringe but I think she thought he was actually kinda cool and inspired her or something, because she had not had any interest in the supernatural side of things before that episode… 

Despite all her connections to Cas I think Dean sort of birthed hunter!Claire, so the story sort of wanders that direction and leaves Cas behind because he’s more like Azazel in Claire’s story than anything, even if a very sad soft squishy Azazel who gave her a stuffed toy for her birthday :P Still they played it like her forgiving and hugging Cas was about the same as Dean finally getting to shoot Azazel, in both case freeing them to go do their job with the angsty backstory resolved…

In any case, I think Cas is probably an emergency contact Jody has for Claire-related stuff, although whether they told her to or not, she’d probably always call Sam and Dean first because she knows and understands them (and has met them), and I think the story is asking us to believe that with this symbolism of Claire getting past what Cas did to her family, she’s in a new stage of life he’s not a part of in the same way even if she does cling onto grumpy cat, and Cas is still family to people who consider Jody as family, who she considers family. Sort of shunting him from awkward dad no. 3 of 4 as per 10x20′s recap and symbolism to a weird uncle or something. (Although if Jody has mom symbolism to both Claire and Dean, that makes them siblings and Cas her brother in law… this found family stuff is really difficult :P)

So there’s all that shaping my expectations - Claire’s not in the episode and she’s our connection between Cas and Jody. Previous episodes have made it clear that Sam and Dean really hate calling even beloved friends with their shit and don’t tell Jody alarmingly huge things like that Mary came back from death. She’s been offering a shoulder to Dean personally while he’s been going through all his stuff, and in 9x08 I think Sam did open up to Jody more than Dean even when they were all in the same room, never mind in that and 7x12 they got split up from Dean and actually bonded (And I think this is also a quote from Kim Rhodes but also just something fairly obvious, that because Sam was the one connected to her more in her intro episode and ended up shooting her zombie son for her, they’ve always had a closer emotional bond via shared trauma). 

I don’t think it’s showing that Sam and Jody aren’t as close now to have her switch focus to Dean but that Jody is determined to get Dean to open up to her *too*. In 12x06 they have really different attitudes about her when Sam makes the comment about Dean’s “animated Japanese erotica” which show how they’ve grown in different directions with Jody. So I think Sam’s closeness to her is fairly accepted fact and now Dean’s the tough nut to crack for her :P Anyway she’s made the offer two or three times now that she’s there to talk if Dean in particular needs her (definitely 10x08 and 12x06… Can’t remember if she said as much in 11x12 although they did also have an actual personal conversation in that episode, so one point to Jody there). I think 12x06 made it clear there’s still an owed conversation of greater than that opening up and spilling the beans on what’s making him emo right now, so there’s that.

And Cas and Mary have been connected all through season 12, in their arcs, in the subtext, in basically everything, and Dean textually named that in 12x22 that in the start of the season he’d “got Cas back, got Mom back” and in 12x23 of course he loses both, again, in a highly inter-connected way, and so again they’re going to be parallel lines to him, though again I think showing how he feels differently about one and the other and hopefully we get to unpack what those individual losses mean by the way of having both at once (and Crowley, who often in these cases is included to put a finger on the scale :P). 

One of the things confusing me right now is of last night’s behind the scenes set peeking which revealed a Turducken Slammer relaunch from the ever-hopeful Biggerson’s, which is not letting frequent murder and mayhem and dodgy meat recalls on its premises stop it from trying. Even if it’s as overall irrelevant to the story in the sense of being mentioned or actually explored as the Mystery Spot sign in 12x01, it’s still telling us something and making connections. I mean yeah it can just be worldbuilding continuity but it’s always picked for a reason and they know what all these signs mean and how to connect them, which is why we have the beer language for example. 

And Jody is pretty deeply connected to season 7 and Dean’s arc. And this connection was obliquely referenced in 12x06 in that moment I already mentioned, where Sam outs Dean’s porn habits to Jody. It was a nod from Yockey that he’d watched past Jody episodes because in every way it was a season 12 style rehash of Sam’s “strictly into Dick” comment, which was from a Jody episode. And… look, maybe this is the best way to explain how I felt the season 12 references were kind of out of this world in their scope and intelligence :P 

For starters, that comment was not just a run of the mill Dick joke, that was a Robbie level Dick joke, which collected up a hilarious character thing for Sam (his fucked up moment when he should have made the barb, his determination to hang onto the Best Zinger Of His Life until Dean next gave him an opportunity and bless Sam’s cotton socks he delivered it like a pro :P) and Dean’s spiralling obsession with Dick as a Dick or Anime thing. Dean’s anime-watching was from 7x01, when he was waiting for Godstiel to blow up the planet in despair, and was at just about the lowest point we’ve ever seen him. In 7x02 Bobby gives him the “You just lost your best friend” pep talk, which is a role of comforting parental figure Dean then went and lost that season when Bobby died. And in the end of 7x02 Dean reveals how Not Fine he is to Bobby’s answerphone, which is important that it’s never commented on again but I think affects how Bobby treats him and in the subtext of 7x09 you have to know all that happened. 

In 7x09 Bobby’s on his farewell tour of comforting advice to his adopted sons, in the last great set of retconning episodes to embed him permanently into their backstory as having always been there for them, to make it hurt juuust that much more than it already does. Towards the end of the episode he has another talk with Dean that mirrors advice Dean will get from Frank and Ness in 7x11 and 7x12, and *that* is opened up by Dean getting drugged by the turducken slammer and going on about how he doesn’t care about how he doesn’t care, and that he feels great for the first time since Cas and the black goo. Like, wow, his depression and hurt and betrayal didn’t go anywhere just because he said he was fine, who knew :P 

And that’s the backstory to Dean’s obsession over killing Dick, who has taken everything from him by this point in season 7, told through the medium of anime and sandwiches and somehow always ending up about Cas and Dean’s feelings for him. The anime was an attempt to not care and not think about it that the slammer actually inflicted on Dean, and was used to get Dean to tell us how he really felt. By 7x12 it’s a joke for Sam to make implying Dean’s into lowercase dick, with one of those false binaries the show loves making. And like in season 13 Dean’s lost a love interest and a parental figure, and now things are really blurry about which one hurts more in this short run of episodes before they both reappear in the narrative and make it confusing. 7x11 makes the hurt most about Bobby. 7x12 subtextually tells us rather a lot about Cas, especially by making a Bobby figure to contrast in the background with the lady in the shop who literally calls Dean an idjit at some point, I think, or some other Bobby-ism, to make it clear that Ness is definitely not standing in for that and all those Cas parallels are probably where it’s at while Dean fangirls over him :P 

And nope I’m not even done unpacking the Yockey Robbie Edlund turducken because of course JODY is all tied up in this completely. She’s incidentally in 7x02 as a useful local beloved character who can get menaced by Dr Sexy and let them know there’s leviathan nearby, and so she’s pretty embedded in the early Leviathan worldbuilding. Of course Edlund being Edlund, while the lil girl leviathan is channel surfing for ideas, there’s a Biggerson’s advert, I think the same one that plays in 7x03 or 7x22 about their pie salad bar (it’s like a salad bar, but pie!) and in the end she lands on wanting to be a Dr Sexy when she grows up. 

(Stop me when you think this might somehow subtextually be about Dean :P)

The Dr Sexy leviathan has an amusingly childlike view on being a surgeon as a result of forming its opinions on that job while being a little girl, and apparently not listening to the memories of the poor guy it ate except to get a frightening knowledge of anatomy. It very much acts the part of being a doctor on TV who can just wheel patients off to perform unnecessary surgery, as per the malpractice of our favourite sexy doctor on TV - and there’s a thing to contemplate about “I’m not a doctor, I just play one one TV” but that’s digressing :P But it goes and menaces Jody and Bobby goes and saves her, and Robbie brings her back 2 more times in season 7, once in 7x06 to thank Bobby for saving her, and to link them romantically so she can even more handily take over the parental role by being romantically linked to their adopted father, which is just a sort of easy association to help. And in 7x12 of course she’s just there and helping and mourning Bobby a lil bit with Sam (since Dean was the one in the focus for mourning Bobby in 7x11), drinking his dubiously won scotch from 11x16 (… Rufus didn’t have to let him have that one, Bobby WAS insisting it was a ghost :P I think he just wanted Bobby to have a win after seeing how down he was.) But that IS a Jody episode so it would have been on Yockey’s list for homework for 12x06 and it contained the anime/Dick thing. 

And, if he’d watched the deleted scene, at the end of the episode Dean makes it clear that he’s not sitting alone in the dark watching anime, he is strictly into Dick, and goes and reads an article on Dick “erecting” a tower.

(I hope it is clear how much I love the Dick references in season 7 by now and I’m not sorry, they started it :P)

So yeah. Jody is already intrinsically linked into a ridiculous chunk of the Dean/Cas subtext from season 7, the absolute wild nonsense that Edlund and Robbie were messing around with with pie and turducken and Dr Sexy and anime and Dick, to create the absolutely most ridiculous, like… no one part of it on its own in isolation doesn’t make you cry laughing, bit of storytelling (that, of course, added up into a full picture, just makes you cry a lot in earnest for poor Dean right then).

To me this is the picture of Dean mourning Cas in season 7, and the unique elements to season 7 are the anime (already referenced in season 12 just as an aside and I don’t think as anything more than a witty reference to past canon except that Dean was “kinda bummed” about Cas being gone (and don’t worry, I’m getting to Berens :P)) and the turducken, and Jody as one of the key characters wandering through all this picking up the emotional baton from Bobby, which she has been attempting to use on them ever since season 9, when they got back in contact with her after neglecting her all of season 8. 

(And, oh gosh, I stared out the window to try and collect my thoughts for the next paragraph and washed up on thinking about Sam going and crashing out on Jody over the Dean in Purgatory period instead of hitting a dog and ending up with Amelia, like Dean with Lisa except by the time Dean gets back Sam’s probably been whipped into shape and is wandering around Sioux Falls in a deputy uniform…)

Anyway yeah, to go back to 13x03 finally… If the Turducken sign isn’t portentous of anything, I’m still seeing the Gas n Sip sign, in the maroon colours rather than blue one, but still, in a Berens episode. And if you can’t get mourning Cas in season 7 via Jody and a turducken related things to stick, you can totally shortcut through the fairly simple steps of Berens + Gas n Sip = 9x06 and assume whatever personal feelings stuff Dean and Jody talk about, this is a great way to cram Cas into the background via the enormous glowing yellow sun that has come to represent him. (And, of course, it was Berens who had the “morning, Sunshine” line for us in 12x03.)

So I think the set stuff and character stuff all have some fairly good slap to the back of the head things for Dean to maybe open up to Jody or at the very least for whatever he says to her to be heavily subtextually about Cas even if Jody asks about Mary. Because Dean’s wearing weirdly Cas-coded clothes, and Jody is wearing the family unity red n blue plaid colours. The maroon Gas n Sip seems to be more about family and even Wayward Sisters, since it was prominently used behind Claire in 12x16 and maroon has been a lot about family because of the infamous red hoodie that Kevin, Charlie and Cas all wore, and that Mary was put in maroon within an episode of getting back (and Chuck tried to cash in on it in 11x21 to make himself look harmless and cute and relatable in the same hoodie). But even in 12x16 having the Gas n Sip sun looking over Claire, with her connections to Cas, made it seem like he was watching over her too. The colours change the meaning in some ways but the overall message is the same. I think in 13x03 we have to remember it’s also going to be about the Wayward Sisters so whether Jody and Dean are having a personal conversation or not, the sun might be about Cas but the overall thing might be a more neutral family building thing for the main arc stuff. If it was a blue Gas n Sip I’d immediately think it was all about Cas and oozing tragic subtext *everywhere* and completely unavoidably.

(it might also just be that they’re maroon because Biggerson’s are and maybe there’s some sort of corporate alliance of Gas n Sips connected to Biggerson’s, because, after all, Dick Roman ended up owning both franchises and by 7x23 you can see that both are involved in his masterplan, which is part of why I love so much Cas is then intimately connected to both later while still in a gloomy penance mood about the whole thing and everything he’s ever done since…)

… So to actually answer your question, I can see some really really convoluted reasons in the history of the show that if Dean and Jody have their big important “seriously how are you” talk in this exact location while hanging out and hugging in front of all these signs, that they might either not mention Cas at all because he’s not a part of the openly stated story going on between Dean and Jody and all this family stuff and Wayward Sisters and everything absorbed into the entire chunk of the show about parental relationships, of which Jody has been a part since 7x06 thanks to Robbie. Or it’s a part of the emotional backstory to Dean losing Cas which Edlund kicked into high gear in 7x02 while dibsing all the important Dean and Bobby conversations which shine a light on Dean’s loss and Cas, also dragging Jody into a ridiculous web of Dr Sexy and stuff that Robbie and then much much later Yockey were playing around with.

Either way,

[likechild]

35 questions

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

Bjork 

2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

I’d like to be cult famous as a mixed-media artist and get to collaborate with my favorite artists on their projects as well as my own. 

3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

Maybe for an interview, but not usually. 

4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

Waking up to kisses and cuddles. Going for a long drive somewhere pretty stopping all along the way. Playing in sunshine and water. Falling asleep with someone who loves me. 

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

To myself, daily. To someone else, so long ago.

6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

Body. I don’t think the mind significantly declines after 30? If anything you get wiser after 30.

7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

I think I will die at 88 years old and I always imagined it would happen pretty peacefully and that I would accept it beforehand.

8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

I’m recently single. And it hard for me to realize this question is not about them anymore.

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

My best friends. My bedroom. Sunshine. The ocean. Animals. Trees. Queer community. The arts. Hope.

10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

My family would have been kinder, more sensitive, and more supportive.

11.  Tell your life story.

Um this is a lot so I’ll go with the very basics. I was born in San Jose, CA on June 11, 1993. I lived in a house with my four half-siblings and two parents. My parents were in an abusive relationship and divorced when I was five. Since my half-siblings were not related by blood two went to live with each parent and I travelled back and forth between the two. I was afraid of my father my entire life and my mother was emotionally distant. I don’t feel I know either of them now or that they know me. I had a lot of support from friends, other families, teachers, etc. I was quite spiritual and optimistic, but I do remember the feeling of losing hope when it came to family. I moved to San Francisco in 2011 to go to college. It was a difficult adjustment, but ultimately I fit in well with city life. I met many life-long best friends in high school and early college and I am deeply grateful to them. I have not had a lot of luck with romantic love. Or in my career. I have had a lot of opportunities to travel, party, enjoy the arts, meet lots of interesting people. I have trouble validating myself, but I am ready to become the most empowered version of myself. I’ve had a few run-ins with love, i’m just now getting out of my first relationship and it was full of tenderness, affection, heart-ache and insecurity. I hope dearly the next time I love I feel safer.

12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

To speak many languages. Or just a general sense of confidence / direction.

13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?

I’d want to know the good things. And maybe how to prepare better for the bad things. Like little tips about the future.

14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?

I think I need to reconnect with my dreams. I may have convinced myself they were out of reach and not to dream them anymore.

15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

Traveling internationally. I dreamed of it as a child and it’s something I didn’t know if I would ever be able to do. 

16. What do you value most in a friendship?

Stability and intimacy. My friends are my family and I need to know that they feel the same. 

17. What is your most treasured memory?

Driving down the coast with Whitney holding hands with the windows rolled down. Laying in a hammock drinking liquor and opening up our hearts to each other. Watching him set up camp in the middle of the night in a beanie smoking a cigarette. When I was his only girlfriend and I felt secure. 

18. What is your most terrible memory?

When Whitney told me he fell in love with someone else. When I spent months trying to be someone I couldn’t be for him. When he broke my heart on the first day of a state mandated self-quarantine at a time I was already feeling scared, lonely, anxious, and in need of a lover and a friend.

19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

I would move in with Anna, spend all my money on traveling, seeing friends, participating in the arts. Make a small clothing line and buy a harp. Swim more. Try to fall in love.

20. What does friendship mean to you?

Supporting and encouraging each other to find our best self. Finding joy in the mundane together. Taking risks together and trusting in the importance of change and adventure. 

21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?

They mean so much to me and when I allow myself to develop it with someone it comes very naturally to me. Unfortunately I am often to afraid to allow someone that close.

22.  Share 5 positive characteristics of yourself.

1. My intentions are always pure. 2. I can almost always see the silver lining in things. 3. I don’t judge people for their past or for their differences from myself. 4. I constantly strive to be better. 5. I still believe in love.

23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?

Not so close, not so warm. I don’t remember a lot of my early childhood now.

24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

It’s distant and I don’t think it’s very fixable. I’ve always felt she never tried to know me as a complex and sentient human being. I wonder how she sees our relationship.

25. Make three true I statements.

I am listening to french pop. I am in bed. I am doing my best.

26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share... “

..,my life with, build a home with, feel safe with, share love with.

27. If you were going to become a close friend with a partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.

Friendships last a lifetime for me. Once I let someone into my heart they never leave it. Even when we don’t speak or see each other anymore. Please commit to being gentle with my heart. Please commit to helping me heal from you if you decide to leave. 

28. What did you like about your last partner?

I liked how tender they were. How they wrote me poems, played me music, wrote me letters, and made me little radio shows. How often they professed their deep love and admiration for me. How passionate they were about my mind and my body. How he read me to sleep and took joy in giving me joy. How we would go on adventures to nowhere together. How we were happy no matter where we were as long as we were together.

29. What is an embarrassing moment in your life?

Im embarrassed anytime I am unhappy and unsure of myself.

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

I’ve cried a lot lately. In front of people and by myself.

31. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

I mean know your audience. 

32. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

I would want Whitney to know I love him, but he doesn’t want to hear from me. And he already knows I do.

33. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

A box of photos and love letters I’ve collected.

34. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

My mom. Because I do love her and she means well and neither of us knew how to bridge our distance.

35. Share a personal problem.

I think I need professional help in sorting out my childhood, insecurities, anxieties, and view of relationships. But it seems so difficult to obtain any help, let alone the kind of help that might actually make a difference. I try to manage everything on my own, and I fear this will only lead me in circles.

[realselfblog]

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp

To succeed in the business of health information technology (HIT), a company has to be very clear on the problems it’s trying to address. Now that EHRs are well-adopted in physicians’ practices and hospitals, patient data have gone digital, and can be aggregated and mined for better diagnosis, treatment, and intelligent decision making. There’s surely lots of data to mine. And there are also lots of opportunities to design tools that aren’t very useful for the core problems we need to solve, for the clinicians on the front-lines trying to solve them, and for the patients and people  whom we ultimately serve.

At the end of each day, the HIT company has to remember that at the end of a digital transaction, there’s a person. That individual could be a member of a health plan, a nurse, a physician, a grandparent-caregiver tapping into her grandchild’s medical portal…all people, with different abilities to read and comprehend data, values, and incentives.

Earlier this week, I spent a day with Medecision’s digital health team, aka ‘the Liberators.’ My role in the event was to provide a through-line from introductions to trend-weaving what I heard and learned at the end of the day. In the middle of the day, I spoke about trends in health care focusing on the patient: as a payor, as im-patient, as digital, as a consumer, and as political.

As a payor, the insured patient in 2019 is likely to be managing a high-deductible health plan, responsible for first-dollar costs until s/he reaches that threshold. As such, health care spending feels like a retail event, prompting the patient-as-payor to ask, “what’s the price?” “What’s the value?” “What’s the product?” “What are the alternatives?” Even though price transparency has gone live online among more hospitals, this start-up phase is still heavy-lifting and confounding for people to understand. Health care costs continue to be the top pocketbook issue for most families in the U.S. across income cohorts.

As that payor, expecting retail service, patients are im-patient. Why can’t appointments be made online like I do with restaurants on OpenTable? What’s so hard about getting me my lab test on the day or next-day after I provide my sample? Health care surely doesn’t feel like the best retail experience, and that’s especially true for health plans. I shared the Temkin Group’s data on customer experience (shown here), where our favorites are found in grocery stores, fast food joints, and retailers. Health insurance plans? Not so much.

Patients are also digital: smartphones are fairly ubiquitous (although we must remember that not all people can afford data plans – my mantra, that connectivity and broadband are a social determinant of health). This means people (with connectivity) want work-flows for health care the way they conduct their financial affairs, social networking, travel planning, and way-finding. People are omni-channel, too, so health care must think like a retailer in reaching people wherever and however they want to be reached: online, via email, via text, phone call, and even via snail mail for some (albeit increasingly fewer) patients.

Patients are consumers, at the end of the day. As payors, digital beings, im-patient people demanding service levels they experience elsewhere — outside of healthcare.

Finally, patients are political. Health care was the top issue driving voters to the 2018 mid-term elections. Health care will also be top-of-mind among voters in 2020, who are becoming more aware of the risks of losing coverage. This week, the level of uninsured people in America rose to a four-year high, with the erosion of support for the Affordable Care Act by President Trump and Congress over the past two years. Growing concern for losing coverage for pre-existing conditions has become mainstream across political parties.

Politics underpin what’s happening in health plans in the public sector, and I spoke a bit about Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is the place to look, across the fifty State Governors, for Medicaid expansion (or not); growing integration of behavioral health to deal with depression, anxiety, and the opioid crisis; and greater attention to the social determinants of health and long term social supports (LTSS). You can see the latest Medicaid demonstration waiver data from a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis done January 9, 2019 shown in the bar chart.

To that point, during the day, two Medecision Liberators played out a scenario for complex cardio management. In the role play, a patient-persona was speaking with a call center associate. In the conversation, the plan member asked how the associate knew so much about them. Further into the conversation, the member said she needed to hurry off the call to get to her bingo game in time.

That conversation raised two important points and opportunities to drive health outcomes: first, on the issue of privacy and trust, as the member questioned just how the associate knew so much about her. That’s an opportunity to forge a bond of trust between the member and the health plan or provider, to discuss how bringing various data together can help paint a picture of her whole life and help her achieve better health.

The second item — the bingo game — presented an opportunity to discuss social supports, transportation to the event, and what the member might be snacking on during bingo. If it turns out she loves the salty snacks or M&Ms, the health coach has an opportunity to counsel the member on the impact of salt on her heart health, and suggestions for some healthier snacking.

This kind of conversation is inherent in the values that Health New England’s Lisa Holland discussed in the context of HNE’s customer promises for the organization: quality, thoughtfulness, and humanity.

The Medecision Liberators collaborated in a brainstorming exercise about social determinants of health, generating important insightful questions they would ask people about their lives to un-earth opportunities to address social supports. A few of these questions were:

What’s your most challenging daily activity?

Walk me through your typical day.

Do you have someone you can rely on if you need help?

What does living independently look like to you?

Do you have access to healthy food?

What did you do for entertainment today that gave you pleasure?

Can you read?

That led me to end the day’s trend-weaving quoting one of my favorite JAMA columns from the recent past: that Value-based payments require valuing what matters to patients, co-written by Dr. Joann Lynn, Dr. Aaron McKethan, and Dr. Ashish Jha. This has become a pillar in my thinking about the role of respect and trust in health care between patients (as payors, consumers, self-carers and caregivers) and health care organizations. They ask and answer: “How can a care system be structured to deeply respect the myriad differences among patients when disabilities or advanced age makes those differences especially important? The answer is that the delivery system must proactively help affected people articulate their priorities and goals.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The theme of trust was mentioned throughout the day, across a wide range of discussion topics. I noted in closing that this week also convened the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which Edelman annually updates their Trust Barometer. This year’s survey found that globally in 2019, the most trusted institution for consumers is the employer: both for ensuring a job for “me,” as well as for being a good corporate citizen in the community locally and in the larger world, in sustainability and responsibility.

This behavior drives trust, which we learned is the most important driver behind peoples’ engagement in health — a key finding in the first Edelman Health Engagement Barometer conducted in 2008. Eleven years later, trust as a health engagement requirement is even more important in light of our AI-enabled health care world.

We remember that at the end of every health IT transaction, there’s a person: a plan member, a consumer, a doctor, a caregiver.

“We are all the same,” a doctor’s essay in JAMA noted this week. Dr. Mandy Maneval, a family practitioner in Mifflintown, PA, wrote:

It strikes me that so many of life’s moments are dichotomies of health and disease, life and death, joy and sorrow. As a family medicine physician, this mirrors my everyday life. I often leave one patient’s room after giving bad news and immediately enter the next room to see the happy parents of a newborn. Navigating the full spectrum of human emotion is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. There are days when I feel like a hero and others when I cannot do a thing right…Connecting deeply through our shared humanity, no matter our differences, is one of the most precious gifts we offer and receive as physicians. We are all the same.

That works for physicians, and it works for all of us in the health care ecosystem. I thank Medecision for the opportunity to participate in this day of insights, team-building, and real human connection.

That last sentence was going to be the conclusion of this post. But just in time, on cue as this post was being scheduled on WordPress, an article titled A Framework for Increasing Trust Between Patients and the Organizations That Care for Them arrived in my inbox from JAMA published on 24th January 2019. Dr. Thomas Lee and colleagues explained:

Trust matters in health care. It makes patients feel less vulnerable, clinicians feel more effective, and reduces the imbalances of information by improving the flow of information. Trust is so fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that it is easy to assume it exists. But because of changes in health care and society at large, trust is increasingly understood to be at risk and in need of attention.

The authors outline potential approaches to increase trust between patients and health care organizations, which include:

As a first step, leadership should acknowledge that trust is foundational and a trusting environment essential for good health care

Measuring trust should be a standard part of evaluating patient care experiences, including those with health plans

Transparency of patient care experiences should be part of measuring, monitoring and continually improving quality and safety

Boards and leadership should routinely examine data that reflect on patient and staff trust, and include these in reward plans

Standards, training and accountability systems should be developed for clinicians and for teams

Relationships between patients and clinicians should be structured such that patients can make choices reflecting their personal preferences: this recognizes that patients know more about what matters to them and how they are doing

Health systems should insure needs of patients for a navigator or translator are met

Finally, patients should be actively engaged in designing solutions to the erosion of trust.

This article is free from JAMA’s usual paywall, so please click on the link above to access the entire discussion. These doctors who crowdsourced the recommendations really understand that it’s good to know about patient’s love of bingo, taste for salty snacks, and social support systems…and patients really do want to be part of their own planning and care.

The post The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp posted first on http://dentistfortworth.blogspot.com

[maxihealth]

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp

To succeed in the business of health information technology (HIT), a company has to be very clear on the problems it’s trying to address. Now that EHRs are well-adopted in physicians’ practices and hospitals, patient data have gone digital, and can be aggregated and mined for better diagnosis, treatment, and intelligent decision making. There’s surely lots of data to mine. And there are also lots of opportunities to design tools that aren’t very useful for the core problems we need to solve, for the clinicians on the front-lines trying to solve them, and for the patients and people  whom we ultimately serve.

At the end of each day, the HIT company has to remember that at the end of a digital transaction, there’s a person. That individual could be a member of a health plan, a nurse, a physician, a grandparent-caregiver tapping into her grandchild’s medical portal…all people, with different abilities to read and comprehend data, values, and incentives.

Earlier this week, I spent a day with Medecision’s digital health team, aka ‘the Liberators.’ My role in the event was to provide a through-line from introductions to trend-weaving what I heard and learned at the end of the day. In the middle of the day, I spoke about trends in health care focusing on the patient: as a payor, as im-patient, as digital, as a consumer, and as political.

As a payor, the insured patient in 2019 is likely to be managing a high-deductible health plan, responsible for first-dollar costs until s/he reaches that threshold. As such, health care spending feels like a retail event, prompting the patient-as-payor to ask, “what’s the price?” “What’s the value?” “What’s the product?” “What are the alternatives?” Even though price transparency has gone live online among more hospitals, this start-up phase is still heavy-lifting and confounding for people to understand. Health care costs continue to be the top pocketbook issue for most families in the U.S. across income cohorts.

As that payor, expecting retail service, patients are im-patient. Why can’t appointments be made online like I do with restaurants on OpenTable? What’s so hard about getting me my lab test on the day or next-day after I provide my sample? Health care surely doesn’t feel like the best retail experience, and that’s especially true for health plans. I shared the Temkin Group’s data on customer experience (shown here), where our favorites are found in grocery stores, fast food joints, and retailers. Health insurance plans? Not so much.

Patients are also digital: smartphones are fairly ubiquitous (although we must remember that not all people can afford data plans – my mantra, that connectivity and broadband are a social determinant of health). This means people (with connectivity) want work-flows for health care the way they conduct their financial affairs, social networking, travel planning, and way-finding. People are omni-channel, too, so health care must think like a retailer in reaching people wherever and however they want to be reached: online, via email, via text, phone call, and even via snail mail for some (albeit increasingly fewer) patients.

Patients are consumers, at the end of the day. As payors, digital beings, im-patient people demanding service levels they experience elsewhere — outside of healthcare.

Finally, patients are political. Health care was the top issue driving voters to the 2018 mid-term elections. Health care will also be top-of-mind among voters in 2020, who are becoming more aware of the risks of losing coverage. This week, the level of uninsured people in America rose to a four-year high, with the erosion of support for the Affordable Care Act by President Trump and Congress over the past two years. Growing concern for losing coverage for pre-existing conditions has become mainstream across political parties.

Politics underpin what’s happening in health plans in the public sector, and I spoke a bit about Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is the place to look, across the fifty State Governors, for Medicaid expansion (or not); growing integration of behavioral health to deal with depression, anxiety, and the opioid crisis; and greater attention to the social determinants of health and long term social supports (LTSS). You can see the latest Medicaid demonstration waiver data from a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis done January 9, 2019 shown in the bar chart.

To that point, during the day, two Medecision Liberators played out a scenario for complex cardio management. In the role play, a patient-persona was speaking with a call center associate. In the conversation, the plan member asked how the associate knew so much about them. Further into the conversation, the member said she needed to hurry off the call to get to her bingo game in time.

That conversation raised two important points and opportunities to drive health outcomes: first, on the issue of privacy and trust, as the member questioned just how the associate knew so much about her. That’s an opportunity to forge a bond of trust between the member and the health plan or provider, to discuss how bringing various data together can help paint a picture of her whole life and help her achieve better health.

The second item — the bingo game — presented an opportunity to discuss social supports, transportation to the event, and what the member might be snacking on during bingo. If it turns out she loves the salty snacks or M&Ms, the health coach has an opportunity to counsel the member on the impact of salt on her heart health, and suggestions for some healthier snacking.

This kind of conversation is inherent in the values that Health New England’s Lisa Holland discussed in the context of HNE’s customer promises for the organization: quality, thoughtfulness, and humanity.

The Medecision Liberators collaborated in a brainstorming exercise about social determinants of health, generating important insightful questions they would ask people about their lives to un-earth opportunities to address social supports. A few of these questions were:

What’s your most challenging daily activity?

Walk me through your typical day.

Do you have someone you can rely on if you need help?

What does living independently look like to you?

Do you have access to healthy food?

What did you do for entertainment today that gave you pleasure?

Can you read?

That led me to end the day’s trend-weaving quoting one of my favorite JAMA columns from the recent past: that Value-based payments require valuing what matters to patients, co-written by Dr. Joann Lynn, Dr. Aaron McKethan, and Dr. Ashish Jha. This has become a pillar in my thinking about the role of respect and trust in health care between patients (as payors, consumers, self-carers and caregivers) and health care organizations. They ask and answer: “How can a care system be structured to deeply respect the myriad differences among patients when disabilities or advanced age makes those differences especially important? The answer is that the delivery system must proactively help affected people articulate their priorities and goals.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The theme of trust was mentioned throughout the day, across a wide range of discussion topics. I noted in closing that this week also convened the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which Edelman annually updates their Trust Barometer. This year’s survey found that globally in 2019, the most trusted institution for consumers is the employer: both for ensuring a job for “me,” as well as for being a good corporate citizen in the community locally and in the larger world, in sustainability and responsibility.

This behavior drives trust, which we learned is the most important driver behind peoples’ engagement in health — a key finding in the first Edelman Health Engagement Barometer conducted in 2008. Eleven years later, trust as a health engagement requirement is even more important in light of our AI-enabled health care world.

We remember that at the end of every health IT transaction, there’s a person: a plan member, a consumer, a doctor, a caregiver.

“We are all the same,” a doctor’s essay in JAMA noted this week. Dr. Mandy Maneval, a family practitioner in Mifflintown, PA, wrote:

It strikes me that so many of life’s moments are dichotomies of health and disease, life and death, joy and sorrow. As a family medicine physician, this mirrors my everyday life. I often leave one patient’s room after giving bad news and immediately enter the next room to see the happy parents of a newborn. Navigating the full spectrum of human emotion is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. There are days when I feel like a hero and others when I cannot do a thing right…Connecting deeply through our shared humanity, no matter our differences, is one of the most precious gifts we offer and receive as physicians. We are all the same.

That works for physicians, and it works for all of us in the health care ecosystem. I thank Medecision for the opportunity to participate in this day of insights, team-building, and real human connection.

That last sentence was going to be the conclusion of this post. But just in time, on cue as this post was being scheduled on WordPress, an article titled A Framework for Increasing Trust Between Patients and the Organizations That Care for Them arrived in my inbox from JAMA published on 24th January 2019. Dr. Thomas Lee and colleagues explained:

Trust matters in health care. It makes patients feel less vulnerable, clinicians feel more effective, and reduces the imbalances of information by improving the flow of information. Trust is so fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that it is easy to assume it exists. But because of changes in health care and society at large, trust is increasingly understood to be at risk and in need of attention.

The authors outline potential approaches to increase trust between patients and health care organizations, which include:

As a first step, leadership should acknowledge that trust is foundational and a trusting environment essential for good health care

Measuring trust should be a standard part of evaluating patient care experiences, including those with health plans

Transparency of patient care experiences should be part of measuring, monitoring and continually improving quality and safety

Boards and leadership should routinely examine data that reflect on patient and staff trust, and include these in reward plans

Standards, training and accountability systems should be developed for clinicians and for teams

Relationships between patients and clinicians should be structured such that patients can make choices reflecting their personal preferences: this recognizes that patients know more about what matters to them and how they are doing

Health systems should insure needs of patients for a navigator or translator are met

Finally, patients should be actively engaged in designing solutions to the erosion of trust.

This article is free from JAMA’s usual paywall, so please click on the link above to access the entire discussion. These doctors who crowdsourced the recommendations really understand that it’s good to know about patient’s love of bingo, taste for salty snacks, and social support systems…and patients really do want to be part of their own planning and care.

The post The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp posted first on https://carilloncitydental.blogspot.com

[titheguerrero]

The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp

To succeed in the business of health information technology (HIT), a company has to be very clear on the problems it’s trying to address. Now that EHRs are well-adopted in physicians’ practices and hospitals, patient data have gone digital, and can be aggregated and mined for better diagnosis, treatment, and intelligent decision making. There’s surely lots of data to mine. And there are also lots of opportunities to design tools that aren’t very useful for the core problems we need to solve, for the clinicians on the front-lines trying to solve them, and for the patients and people  whom we ultimately serve.

At the end of each day, the HIT company has to remember that at the end of a digital transaction, there’s a person. That individual could be a member of a health plan, a nurse, a physician, a grandparent-caregiver tapping into her grandchild’s medical portal…all people, with different abilities to read and comprehend data, values, and incentives.

Earlier this week, I spent a day with Medecision’s digital health team, aka ‘the Liberators.’ My role in the event was to provide a through-line from introductions to trend-weaving what I heard and learned at the end of the day. In the middle of the day, I spoke about trends in health care focusing on the patient: as a payor, as im-patient, as digital, as a consumer, and as political.

As a payor, the insured patient in 2019 is likely to be managing a high-deductible health plan, responsible for first-dollar costs until s/he reaches that threshold. As such, health care spending feels like a retail event, prompting the patient-as-payor to ask, “what’s the price?” “What’s the value?” “What’s the product?” “What are the alternatives?” Even though price transparency has gone live online among more hospitals, this start-up phase is still heavy-lifting and confounding for people to understand. Health care costs continue to be the top pocketbook issue for most families in the U.S. across income cohorts.

As that payor, expecting retail service, patients are im-patient. Why can’t appointments be made online like I do with restaurants on OpenTable? What’s so hard about getting me my lab test on the day or next-day after I provide my sample? Health care surely doesn’t feel like the best retail experience, and that’s especially true for health plans. I shared the Temkin Group’s data on customer experience (shown here), where our favorites are found in grocery stores, fast food joints, and retailers. Health insurance plans? Not so much.

Patients are also digital: smartphones are fairly ubiquitous (although we must remember that not all people can afford data plans – my mantra, that connectivity and broadband are a social determinant of health). This means people (with connectivity) want work-flows for health care the way they conduct their financial affairs, social networking, travel planning, and way-finding. People are omni-channel, too, so health care must think like a retailer in reaching people wherever and however they want to be reached: online, via email, via text, phone call, and even via snail mail for some (albeit increasingly fewer) patients.

Patients are consumers, at the end of the day. As payors, digital beings, im-patient people demanding service levels they experience elsewhere — outside of healthcare.

Finally, patients are political. Health care was the top issue driving voters to the 2018 mid-term elections. Health care will also be top-of-mind among voters in 2020, who are becoming more aware of the risks of losing coverage. This week, the level of uninsured people in America rose to a four-year high, with the erosion of support for the Affordable Care Act by President Trump and Congress over the past two years. Growing concern for losing coverage for pre-existing conditions has become mainstream across political parties.

Politics underpin what’s happening in health plans in the public sector, and I spoke a bit about Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is the place to look, across the fifty State Governors, for Medicaid expansion (or not); growing integration of behavioral health to deal with depression, anxiety, and the opioid crisis; and greater attention to the social determinants of health and long term social supports (LTSS). You can see the latest Medicaid demonstration waiver data from a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis done January 9, 2019 shown in the bar chart.

To that point, during the day, two Medecision Liberators played out a scenario for complex cardio management. In the role play, a patient-persona was speaking with a call center associate. In the conversation, the plan member asked how the associate knew so much about them. Further into the conversation, the member said she needed to hurry off the call to get to her bingo game in time.

That conversation raised two important points and opportunities to drive health outcomes: first, on the issue of privacy and trust, as the member questioned just how the associate knew so much about her. That’s an opportunity to forge a bond of trust between the member and the health plan or provider, to discuss how bringing various data together can help paint a picture of her whole life and help her achieve better health.

The second item — the bingo game — presented an opportunity to discuss social supports, transportation to the event, and what the member might be snacking on during bingo. If it turns out she loves the salty snacks or M&Ms, the health coach has an opportunity to counsel the member on the impact of salt on her heart health, and suggestions for some healthier snacking.

This kind of conversation is inherent in the values that Health New England’s Lisa Holland discussed in the context of HNE’s customer promises for the organization: quality, thoughtfulness, and humanity.

The Medecision Liberators collaborated in a brainstorming exercise about social determinants of health, generating important insightful questions they would ask people about their lives to un-earth opportunities to address social supports. A few of these questions were:

What’s your most challenging daily activity?

Walk me through your typical day.

Do you have someone you can rely on if you need help?

What does living independently look like to you?

Do you have access to healthy food?

What did you do for entertainment today that gave you pleasure?

Can you read?

That led me to end the day’s trend-weaving quoting one of my favorite JAMA columns from the recent past: that Value-based payments require valuing what matters to patients, co-written by Dr. Joann Lynn, Dr. Aaron McKethan, and Dr. Ashish Jha. This has become a pillar in my thinking about the role of respect and trust in health care between patients (as payors, consumers, self-carers and caregivers) and health care organizations. They ask and answer: “How can a care system be structured to deeply respect the myriad differences among patients when disabilities or advanced age makes those differences especially important? The answer is that the delivery system must proactively help affected people articulate their priorities and goals.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  The theme of trust was mentioned throughout the day, across a wide range of discussion topics. I noted in closing that this week also convened the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which Edelman annually updates their Trust Barometer. This year’s survey found that globally in 2019, the most trusted institution for consumers is the employer: both for ensuring a job for “me,” as well as for being a good corporate citizen in the community locally and in the larger world, in sustainability and responsibility.

This behavior drives trust, which we learned is the most important driver behind peoples’ engagement in health — a key finding in the first Edelman Health Engagement Barometer conducted in 2008. Eleven years later, trust as a health engagement requirement is even more important in light of our AI-enabled health care world.

We remember that at the end of every health IT transaction, there’s a person: a plan member, a consumer, a doctor, a caregiver.

“We are all the same,” a doctor’s essay in JAMA noted this week. Dr. Mandy Maneval, a family practitioner in Mifflintown, PA, wrote:

It strikes me that so many of life’s moments are dichotomies of health and disease, life and death, joy and sorrow. As a family medicine physician, this mirrors my everyday life. I often leave one patient’s room after giving bad news and immediately enter the next room to see the happy parents of a newborn. Navigating the full spectrum of human emotion is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. There are days when I feel like a hero and others when I cannot do a thing right…Connecting deeply through our shared humanity, no matter our differences, is one of the most precious gifts we offer and receive as physicians. We are all the same.

That works for physicians, and it works for all of us in the health care ecosystem. I thank Medecision for the opportunity to participate in this day of insights, team-building, and real human connection.

That last sentence was going to be the conclusion of this post. But just in time, on cue as this post was being scheduled on WordPress, an article titled A Framework for Increasing Trust Between Patients and the Organizations That Care for Them arrived in my inbox from JAMA published on 24th January 2019. Dr. Thomas Lee and colleagues explained:

Trust matters in health care. It makes patients feel less vulnerable, clinicians feel more effective, and reduces the imbalances of information by improving the flow of information. Trust is so fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that it is easy to assume it exists. But because of changes in health care and society at large, trust is increasingly understood to be at risk and in need of attention.

The authors outline potential approaches to increase trust between patients and health care organizations, which include:

As a first step, leadership should acknowledge that trust is foundational and a trusting environment essential for good health care

Measuring trust should be a standard part of evaluating patient care experiences, including those with health plans

Transparency of patient care experiences should be part of measuring, monitoring and continually improving quality and safety

Boards and leadership should routinely examine data that reflect on patient and staff trust, and include these in reward plans

Standards, training and accountability systems should be developed for clinicians and for teams

Relationships between patients and clinicians should be structured such that patients can make choices reflecting their personal preferences: this recognizes that patients know more about what matters to them and how they are doing

Health systems should insure needs of patients for a navigator or translator are met

Finally, patients should be actively engaged in designing solutions to the erosion of trust.

This article is free from JAMA’s usual paywall, so please click on the link above to access the entire discussion. These doctors who crowdsourced the recommendations really understand that it’s good to know about patient’s love of bingo, taste for salty snacks, and social support systems…and patients really do want to be part of their own planning and care.

The post The Consumer and the Payor, Bingo and Trust: My Day At Medecision Liberator Bootcamp appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Article source:Health Populi

[weepingalter-blog]

Have you ever:

1) Self harmed?

yeah. i no longer do it tho. i fear the response 

2) Got into a real fight?

cam and i would get into fights when we were young. it wasnt serious but hes strong and im weak so bruises werent uncommon. apart from that then no

3) Been too depressed to move out of your bed?

yup

4) Tried to commit suicide?

yes. obviously failed

5) Had to lie to EVERYONE about how you felt?

yeah

6) Watched an entire season of a TV show in one sitting?

no. i dont watch tv

7) Talked yourself out of serious trouble?

yup. go back to self harm

8) Accused someone of using you?

of course. i am so afraid of the past repeating itself

9) Shoplifted?

no. too afraid to

10) Gotten drunk/high?

no. i doubt i never will

11) Been to a concert where your favourite artist was playing?

no. concerts scare me so much

12) Skipped doing homework to play a video game?

not really

(Right now) Are you: 13) Suicidal?

yeah. not like i would ever do it

14) Bored?

no? just extremely depressed and paranoid

15) Avoiding someone?

technically yes. i dont want to talk to people right now

16) Avoiding some task?

yes if you count self destructive things

17) Depressed?

haha yes

18) Crying?

god i wish so. i cant as mum will soon come up to bed and i cant let her see me crying

19) Annoyed with a friend?

paranoia is making me do feel annoyed

20) Worried and confused about something important to you?

yeah i guess

Do you: 21) Get depressed easily?

yeeeesss

22) Get jealous/envious easily?

again yes

23) Feel listening to music can take your mind off things?

depends on the music

24) Worry about messing about your relationships a lot?

yes. a lot. i do it anyway so why worry

25) Try hard in all your classes at school?

i am at college now but yeah. i need to try now

26) Go out drinking?

no

27) Smoke cigarettes?

no

28) Smoke weed?

no

29) Do any hard drugs?

no

30) If you said yes to 28 but no to 29, Why?

no to both. i cant even get away with it so why bother

31) Believe in God/Belong to a religion of your own free will?

no. i am sure i am a nihilist

32) Avoid people you care about because you feel you will only hurt them?

yesyesyes

33) Agree that self harm numbs emotional pain?

yup

34) Believe people deserve second chances?

NO

35) Agree with ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’? (ignoring the religious relation to that saying)

i dont know. i fear being hurt for doing something bad in return so i guess not

36) Think things will get better?

i want to think it but i cant even believe it

37) Feel afraid that you have done wrong and will eventually be punished?

yes

38) (be honest) Do you judge people who think differently to you? (seriously, be honest)

of course

Preference in boyfriend/girlfriend: pretty sure im on the ace spectrum but regardless ill do it

39) Long hair OR short hair?

long

40) (For Girls one) nice smile OR nice abs?

nice abs i guess

41) (For Guys one) nice smile OR nice chest?

i dont think im attracted to men

42) Shy OR open?

open? as long as they are there for me

43) Eyes OR body?

eyes

44) Religious OR non-religious?

non-religious i guess

45) Caring OR non-restricting of you?

caring

46) Straight edge OR non-straight edge?

i dont know what this means

47) Piercings OR no piercings?

no piercings

48) Tattoos OR no tattoos?

tattoos

49) Quiet stay-at-home type OR party type?

stay at home

50) Has friends you get along with OR has parents you get along with?

friends

Would you: 51) Drink alcohol until you were drunk?

no

52) Smoke weed?

no

53) Smoke cigarettes?

no

54) Get even with someone who betrayed you?

never

55) Forgive a boyfriend/girlfriend who deeply hurt you?

fuck no

56) Attempt to kill yourself if everything fails you?

maybe. if theres nothing to stop me then yeah

57) Keep your faith (any religious view) no matter what?

sure

58) Join a band as a part time activity?

no

59) Feel sorry for someone who is being affected negatively from alcohol/drug abuse?

i mean sure

60) Stand up for your beliefs if someone strongly goes against them?

nooo

61) Go vegetarian for a month to see what is was like?

i might not stick to it but ill try

62) Fight someone who was harassing your friends/family?

no. cant fight

63) Edit photos of yourself before posting them online?

i dont post pictures online

64) Put up with friends who constantly hated against something you believed in/supported?

they arent friends so no

65) Be friends with someone who was nice to you, but a cunt to other people?

i dont really interact with people but sure

66) Not like someone simply because your friend(s) didn’t like them?

possibly

67) Lie to someone close to you because you don’t want them put up with your problems?

oh lots

68) Starve yourself so you fit some certain clothes?

not for clothes, no. i am close to underweight as im 5.3ft and around 110 pounds so very close to underweight

69) Get surgery on any part of you? If yes then which part of you?

no. why bother

70) Sleep naked?

i do that already so yeah

You can only choose one: 71) Black or Orange?

black

72) Metalcore OR Post-Hardcore?

metal?

73) Cellphone or Computer?

computer

74) Chocolate milk OR Coke?

coke

75) Tumblr OR Friends?

tumblr. i can be private on here

76) Apple OR PC?

whats the difference

77) TV Shows OR Movies?

movies

78) Old bands OR new Bands?

new

79) Pop-Punk OR Alternative Rock?

music

80) Reading OR Listening to music?

listening to music

81) Coke OR Pepsi? Define your reason for your choice.

whats the difference

82) Staying who you are OR changing yourself drastically?

staying who i am. the latter would make things worse

83) Breakdown OR Clean vocal bridge?

i dont care

84) Jonny Craig OR Kellin Quinn? Define your reason for your choice.

wut

85) Ronnie OR Craig? Define your reason for your choice.

dont care

86) Your life as a comedy OR Your life as a documentary?

documentary. i know my life is a joke but it suits a documentary

87) Go to outer space OR Go all around Europe?

outer space

88) Shoes OR Shirts?

shirts

89) Chelsea Grin OR Suicide Silence?

nah

90) Drop out of school to get a job OR stay at school and finish your education. Define your reason for your choice.

stay. i am close to finishing college so why bother

Almost over: 91) So far have you told 90 truths? And for fuck sake be honest.

i did my best

92) Are you quiet about your social life with your family?

yes

93) Do you want to travel when you are older?

no

94) Would you let go of people who mean the most to you to follow your dreams?

i dont have any dreams so no

95) Did you notice there are no sex related questions?

i dont care. plus since there are questions about school then good

96) Rather be the opposite gender?

what would that be? agender?

97) What will you name your son/daughter?

hope

98) Do you get harassed more than most people do?

i think

99) What band do you hate the most? Define your reason.

dont have one

100) What makes you a bad person in your mind?

im just so shit and terrible and all i do is hurt others

[elementalgrowth]

Lower back pain affects 80 percent of all adults at some point in our lives. Symptoms of back pain usually get worse with movement and often limit range of motion, sends shooting pains down the back, causes restless nights and limits you quality of life. Natural treatments often include chiropractic adjustments, yoga, a healthy diet and complementary therapies. There are also medical procedures and prescriptions drugs but my intent is to guide you on a healing journey devoid of these things whenever possible.

Lower back pain is commonly caused by this tension and shows up as a form of inflammation. What is the cause of your stress? Can you can take steps to reduce the sources of tension and choose effective alternatives for healing? Let’s take a look at this from as a whole today and really get to the roots. Most of the time lower back pain such as sciatica is rooted in the second chakra, meaning that your life forces energy is unable to move freely causing symptoms of pain and inflammation. The sacral chakra (2nd chakra) holds onto unexpressed emotions, sexual energy, extra weight in the belly which can cause further illness or heaviness in the shoulders which affects our posture. Often blockages in this area manifest when we are holding onto hurt from relationships with family, friends and lovers from our past or rejecting our emotions in someway.

What you are experiencing is an weakening of your life force, our kundalini energy wants to rise up properly through your chakras but we must first restore a healthy flow of energy through the sacral chakra. The lumbar region is strong and supportive but holding on to issues of fear and loss causes imbalance and weakens this area of body making us weak in every other area of our life, for if our foundation is weak enduring the storm will be much more difficult.

  All of your senses, all of your perceptions, all of your states of awareness, are associated with each Chakra.  Your Chakras represent not only your physical body but also your consciousness. Take back your body and release your pain by balancing your Chakras and watch your whole world begin to change.

  Here are my top tips for relieving back pain:

  Practice self love, compassion, honouring your body, choosing a partner and friends that are complimentary to your lifestyle, share your old hurts with someone you trust or release the pain that you are holding onto in a ritual.

Practice energy-based meditation so you can learn to identify blocks, release built-up energies, emotions, tensions and begin to transform our body & life. Doing this in nature or with water in someway will better activate your healing.

Work with a trained healer or coach which can guide and support you in your journey of health and happiness.

Stay hydrated, when the body is dehydrated the ability to clear lactic acid, and other forms of waste is compromised, as is its ability to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the joints, muscles, and other tissues. The volume of vertebral discs also shrinks when a person is dehydrated, which further compromises the joint space and strains muscles and tendons.

Magnesium oil spray and Epsom salt baths are incredibly restorative for sore, stiff muscles.

Be mindful of your posture, when the skeletal system is out of alignment it creates a strain on our muscles, tendons, and ligaments, as well as promotes the development of fascial adhesions. Yoga is a useful tool.

Try Arnica which is a plant with numerous healing properties.

Eat a mostly plant-based diet that includes such things as flax and chia seeds to avoid inflammation. “Deeply colored fruits and vegetables are a key part of an anti-inflammatory diet,” says Dana Greene, MS, RD, LDN. I wrote all about different foods and herbs which correct inflammation, to read it click here.

Avoid processed foods, fast foods, and saturated fats, all of these fuel inflammation. I also recommend you stay away from caffeine, nicotine and consuming large amounts of alcohol, anything more then 1 glass of wine a couple times a week may cause inflammation.

Avoid toxins and chemicals in toiletries, cosmetics, deodorants, shampoos, soaps, lotions, cleaning products, cookware, plastics, synthetic prepackaged food, pesticides, heavy metals, antibiotics and synthetic medicine.

Grieve the loss of your “former self;” accept that things have changed, you are not your past – you are the person who has grown and learned from your past. Embrace your ability to be the hero of your own story.

Set S.M.A.R.T. (simple, measurable, achievable, rewarded, time stamped) goals that help you move forward, this method enables you to track your progress, celebrate your successes and stay motivated.

Love all, but do not care what they think of you. Trust yourself, know your weaknesses and strengths, only then will you be able to remove blockages and detoxify your physical body relieving yourself of pain.

Nurture your emotional, spiritual and physical body as are all intimately tied together. Love yourself.

Practice regular meditation, healing visualizations, Chakra opening meditations,  Reiki treatments and mindfulness. Each of these practices can help balance your Chakras.

  Chronic pain affects 116 million American adults. That’s more than a third of the US population. And while pain pills reduce suffering, they can be addictive and produce side effects. Worse, they often fail to eliminate the true cause of the pain. “Almost always, if we find pharmaceuticals doing the trick, we’ll find a plant doing the same trick—and doing it more safely,” says botanist James A. Duke, PhD. Americans spend at least $50 billion each year to help diagnose and treat various lower back pain symptoms while our body naturally releases endorphins more powerful than morphine that can decrease pain and even elevate positive moods on its own. We just have to tap into this.

  I teach extensively on the chakras in different blogs and social posts but you can also book a breakthrough session if you’d prefer additional guidance on journey of health and happiness. Disclosure: what I am sharing with you is what I am doing, what is working for me now based on my current experience, training and knowledge. There is a lot of science behind what im talking about it’s not all theory and opinion however it’s always recommended that you do your own research and speak with your physician before starting a new diet/natural therapies.

    Hi there, I am Ashley Michaud, Mama, Healer, Integrative Nutrition Health Coach and Founder of Elemental Growth. I am passionate about travel, using plants as food/medicine and realigning people like yourself with nature and your natural flow of energy so that you can be your happy healthy best.

In addition to graduating from the world’s largest Nutrition school I have been trained in transformational coaching, attuned as a Reiki Master, actively practicing yoga since 2014, sharing natural alternatives to everyday products for the majority of my life and experienced in the following areas: Fertility, Natural Pregnancy, Home Birth, Breastfeeding, Parenting, Meditation, Intuitive Healing, Herbology, Foraging and Permaculture.

  ↠ Alternative Healing ↞ Reiki & Chakra Balancing Herbology & Plant Medicine

↠ Integrative Health Coaching ↞ Book your breakthrough consult

  Journey Through The Chakras: Heal Your Back Pain Lower back pain affects 80 percent of all adults at some point in our lives. Symptoms of back pain usually get worse with movement and often limit range of motion, sends shooting pains down the back, causes restless nights and limits you quality of life.