#it's called catholic trauma and we all deal with it in different ways MOM | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

byronictrash · 3 years ago

Text

some stuff that would be different in my version of hbo supernatural (season 2)

season 1 season 3

IN MY TIME OF DYING

“where’s the colt?” “your son is dying and you're worried about a gun” “that demon is not dead yet samuel, thanks to you”

when sam finds out that john was trying to summon azazel while dean was still in comma, she loses her shit (“unbelievable! my expectations were low but you surpassed yourself! your own son is between life and death and you want to bring the demon here! for what? to have some stupid macho showdown?” “someone has to” “excuse me?” “you know samuel, this is all your fault, once again you couldn’t just man up and pull the fucking trigger, kill the thing, you had to be same old sissy and chicken off, if your brother dies its his blood in your hands”)

*ghostie dean throws that glass on the floor* john, looking terrified at sam: was it you? sam: what? no, the table is about two meters from me, how could i do it?john:... yeah, nevermind

when azazel and john make the deal, they would’ve kissed, LIKE EVERY OTHER DEMONIAC DEAL!!!!

the thing john whispers to dean is “be careful, something about your brother is not right” which dean interprets as just john being randomly transphobic so he loses his patience and shouts “oh fuck off, i almost died and you come here talking shit about your own daughter?”. john just responds “i’m not talking about this”

EVERYBODY LOVES A CLOWN

sam teasing dean for his (repressed) crush on ash (“interesting that taste in men of yours” “samantha, what the fuck are you talking???” “you flirting with ash” “i wasn’t flirting with ash!!” “you really trying to lie to your gay sister?” “no cause i’m not gay and wasn’t flirting with him” “i’ve road tripping with you over an year, your body language talking to ash were exactly the same like with any girl at a bar”

also all that jo/dean thing would be OBLITERATED because i hate it here!!!!

BLOODLUST

not much considerations here sikes there’s a lot HOWEVER gordon would be a much better built character, explaining how the trauma made him be the way he turned to be which is better than uuuuuuh a vamp killed my sister now i'm batshit crazy am i a joke to you mr kripke?

HOWEVER the misoginy in the hunter community is still a bitch so that scene where they’re all celebrating in the bar would go like “lighten up a little, sammy!” “dean’s the one who gets to call me that, is samantha to you” “oh sure, no offense meant. just celebrating a little.” “sure. well, it's just that decapitations aren’t my idea of a good time” “of course, my bad. sometimes i forget how the ladies can get when things get a little bit gory”

when that vegetarian vampire girl explains to sam that her crew don’t kill people she says “it's not because you were destined to be the monster that you can't act any different, you always have the choice” our catholic antichrist was baffled

“c’mon, hit me on the face” “what?” “i punched you earlier, sam. i have a million flaws but women beater is not one of them so if you hit me back, it will leave the domestic violence field and go to a simple fight between siblings” “ dean that’s literally not how it works!” “whatever lawgirl. now my face, punch it” “i may break your nose!” “so don't aim at it”

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

lawgirl time!!!

“i did my research, sam. 23 years old transexual woman, no job, no home address, mom died when you were a baby. your family moved around a lot when you were a kid but you were always a straight-A student, going to stanford with a full ride. about a year your roommate-” “girlfriend” “girlfriend jessica died and you fell off the grid” “i just need some time” “sam look, you’re a pre-law student, we caught you brother at the crime scene, his life is over” “actually, detective ballard, it’s not. being at the crime scene is merely circumstantial evidence”

HUNTED

“there will be a war and some humans will fight on hell’s side. humans like our very own sam.” “now you’re sounding lunatic” “i know about her visions” “and i know my sister better than myself! the girl is not evil, she feels bad for the animals whenever she eats meat” “wake up dean, all of those psychics gonna be killers” “not my sister, gordon, sam will not turn into a thing!” “look, i’m sympathetic. i know you are siblings but that’s her destiny”

HOUSE OF THE HOLY

christian antichrist time!!!

“she’s the second in town to murder because an angel told them to” “haha right” “why not” “because there’s no such thing” “dude do you have any idea how much lore about angels there is?” “and?? i’ve never seen one” “dean you and i have seen things most people couldn’t even imagine” “exactly! we see it. we’ve been hunting since kids, if angels existed we would crossed paths with them”

little does he knows that he would be dating a literal angel in less than three years but hey

when father reynolds quotes that biblical passage about angels not being ethical but fair, sam recognizes it and says “luke 2:9”

“thats a vengeful spirit right here” “then again, father reynolds started praying for god’s help two months ago, when all started to happen” “oh c’mon sammy, what’s the deal? first the angel stuff then biblical quotes by heart. what’s next, gonna start praying every day?” “i do, every morning and every night. i have prayed for a long time, since before i remember”

TALL TALES

pure sibling hostility!!!!

“you mind taking your shoes off my bed?” “not at all *rubs the sole on the sheet*” “oh my god you’re a pig!”

HEART

being said on screen, explicitly, that over the past year several women were murdered but since they were sex workers the police simply played dumb

bisexual werewolf madison my beloved

*madison puts gossip girl on* “i saw that” “saw what?” “you puffing” “i didn’t” “look, i know you’re probably thinking i’m a futile little preppy but my house, my tv. so suck it up”

“wait, so blair lost her virginity to chuck because she was mad at serena?” “that too, but actually she was mad at nate” “and chuck orchestrated the whole situation? what an asshole!”

when sam asks how an intelligent and beautiful girl like madison ended up in an abusive relationship, she explains that it didn’t start with a slap, but with smaller things that gradually scallonated

FOLSOM PRISON BLUES

let's start that all of sam's punitive speech in this episode simply wouldn't exist

like ??? it’s already ooc to the canon cw sam and hbo sam read angela davis

“this is, without a doubt, the dumbest, craziest thing we’ve ever done and we almost die once in a month” “relax sammy, it’s just a favor for an old friend, why are you so disturbed on that?” “because I'm thinking about the side risks if your plan doesn't work” “and they are?” “spending the rest of my life in a male prison”

lawgirl moment again! (“we gotta move it, if henricksen gets to the lawyer we’re fucked” “how about the lawyer-client thing?” “the privilege doesn’t apply, in fact-” “*grunting* why did i aaaask?”)

WHAT IS AND WHAT SHOULD NEVER BE

when dean saw sam wearing a pastel floral dress with light makeup he just blurts “christ, where’s all of your goth aesthetic?” and sam answers, totally confused “ended in high school, like a normal person”

“what got into you?” “what do you mean?” “suddenly you're all full of love to give” “i’m just happy for you sammy” “and since when do you call me sammy? c’mon, we don’t talk outside the holidays” “well, we should. i mean, you’re my sister.” “funny that it's been 4 years since i came out and this is the first time you call me sister”

*while going to hunt the djinn* “bitch” “excuse me????” “you’re supposed to call me jerk now” “why would i do that?” “*sights* nevermind”

ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE

“relax samantha, i’m trying to help you. you’re my favorite, the one i’m rooting for” “what does that means?” “this is a competition, only one of you is gonna make it out here alive” “weren’t we supposed to be soldiers?” “sure darling, however i don't need soldiers. i need a soldier, a leader, a queen” “what are you talking about?” “i can’t just spoil the whole story”

bobby explaining that cremating sam as the hunters praxis wouldn’t go against her Catholic faith, as cremation has been allowed by the Holy See since 1963

#hbo supernatural #trans sam winchester #supernatural #transfem sam #lesbian sam winchester #kripke era #supernatural season 2 #mine

67 notes · View notes

queerprayers · 3 years ago

Note

Hello. This might be a bit of an unorthodox ask, or maybe not. I’m also fully aware no one can make this choice for me, but it’s also not a choice I want to make alone.

So I’m a Latine Catholic. My family was never all that religious. They never had a problem with my queerness or been all too bothered by what I actually believed. We are already somewhat out of the box- my father doesn’t believe in going to church and he doesn’t believe in an afterlife. My mother believes in reincarnation and an eventual, inevitable Heaven. I told my mom once that I was considering paganism and she was just interested in what I could tell her about the theology. So the problem is me. I have ocd and a deep fear of hell and of G*d’s judgement. I spiraled so badly into scrupulosity two years ago that I consider it a religious trauma. I relaxed, eventually, but not without having learned a lot about religion, including about Judaism. It shaped a lot of what I believe, and I deeply, deeply want to convert and be truly Jewish. I’m in love with the religion in a way I have only found pieces of in my own. But that’s the problem. I do love parts of my religion- the saints and Jesus and the mysticism. and deep down Im still terrified of a hell I don’t believe in. But no matter how many times I resolve to stay Catholic, the desire to be Jewish doesn’t leave, and I feel guilty for it. Terrified G*d will punish me for it. But do you think it’s possible to be called to follow another religious path? That, perhaps, I was born to make this choice?

Sorry if this is a lot. I’ve just been confused for like two years now so I thought I’d give asking someone else a shot. Hope you’re well

Hello beloved,

I'm finally answering this! I did not forget you, and have been thinking about your ask and praying for you in the past couple weeks. I've just been dealing with my own stuff—the delay was not because it was too unorthodox or too much, neither of which exist in my inbox :)

I wanted to start out by saying that I'm so proud of how far you've come and am so sorry you've had so much trouble. Your problems might be more internal than external, but I promise that doesn't make you a problem. You are not the problem—just thought I'd make sure you know that.

I just wanted to note that "I'm still terrified of a hell I don't believe in" is such a true and raw statement and I connect with it so deeply.

Trauma can change our lives in terrifying ways, and it's usually not what we had in mind for ourselves. The very existence of trauma implies a life-changing event(s), and so the fact that your life is changing is perfectly reasonable. Many others more knowledgeable and articulate than I have spoken about trauma, but just know that you're not alone in feeling confusion and pain.

Your relationship to faith sounds beautiful and meaningful as well as painful, and it makes me so happy that you've found beauty in religion even after experiencing trauma. There are many people for whom multiple religious traditions affect their theology—you're not alone and it's not weird.

I connect immensely to Judaism—check out my tag! Judaism is an absolutely beautiful, holy religion that any Christian with any knowledge of their history should support and affirm. We worship a traditionally Jewish god. I affirm that a Palestinian Jew brought us salvation.

Yes, I believe it's possible to be called to a religion. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus is the true Messiah, but I also believe everyone is called to serve God in different ways, and that I don't know everything. I wrote in this ask about whether only Christians would be saved, and how I look at other faiths.

I'm a Lutheran Christian not because I believe wholly in everything Christians preach, or because I don't feel connected to other traditions, but because for me, right now, this is the way I am closest to God and serve Them. Being a part of a faith community doesn't mean you agree with everything 100%, and converting doesn't mean you let go of everything you've believed in the past. You can stay connected to saints and Jesus and mysticism while pursuing a life in the Jewish tradition. Obviously different traditions look at things like this differently, but ultimately, don't let anyone take those connections you have away from you. Whether you're a Jew with connections to Catholicism or a Catholic with connections to Judaism—you'll end up kind of unorthodox either way, but you'll be you.

You were definitely born to do this. I don't know exactly what this is, mind you, but you're here and you're asking these questions for a reason, and I believe there is an existence out there for you full of peace and holiness.

Questions to ask yourself/things to think about:

In what faith space/tradition do you see yourself most able to serve God, your neighbor, and yourself?

Is the religious tradition you're in right now accepting of your connections to other faiths? Would the tradition you convert to be?

Imagine being a Catholic for your entire life. What emotions come up? Are you satisfied/fulfilled? Will you spend every moment wondering what your life would be like if you made a different choice?

Is the only reason you're still a Christian fear? Is that something you want to build your faith on? What could you build your faith on instead? What would that look like?

God will always be there. To come back to, to call by a different name, to pray to in a different language, to be angry at, to be scared of, to worship. No matter how far you think you're running or where you go, God is with you.

I wrote this ask about choosing a denomination, but some of it applies here too.

Let me know if there's anything I can do for you! Sending you so much love and keeping you in my prayers.

<3 Johanna

#asks

22 notes · View notes

thechangeling · 4 years ago

Note

So I have problems with CC but considering when the book in question was written, I’m not actually surprised at the comments you’re referring to. No matter how far we have to go in terms of LGBTQ+ rights, we’ve come very far in the short time since these books were first published.

Alec grew up in an environment where the only reason people got married was to have children in order to provide more soldiers to fight demons, essentially. If you loved who you were married to, then good for you, but it certainly wasn’t something that was a requirement. And he wouldn’t have had any real exposure to other points of view. Also, let’s not forget, he was also a teenager. A very smart and capable teenager, but still, a teenager. And growing up in an environment like that can make it very hard to shake of ideas you’re raised with, even subconsciously. My mother is Irish Catholic, and I was raised very sheltered, with little exposure to any differing world views. And this was in Upstate NY for reference, so small towns, and small minds for the most part. The first time I realized that you could date someone of the same gender, because my mother introduced me to a work friend of hers who was a lesbian, she later told me that you could hate the sin and love the sinner.

So when I started questioning how you could tell you were gay or bi, because I had started looking at other girls, I was asked if I was attracted to them, at 12, when I wasn’t capable of the kind of attraction my mother was referring to. So when I said no, she said that meant that I was straight. So I went on believing that any attention that I paid other girls in anything other than a sisterly manner was wrong, and that there was something wrong with me. Meanwhile my two closest friends were both girls who were also raised in very religious families, so no one that my mother would object to; my father didn’t particularly care as long as I wasn’t dating anyone at all. So I did everything I was supposed to, I had a non-serious boyfriend, which didn’t last very long, I was an altar server and part of the church choir, not because I had to be, but because if I threw myself into the Church, maybe I would be fixed. I even very briefly, considered becoming a nun. Then when I started figuring out that I was pan, I was still under the belief that I would ignore half of who I was, and meet a boy, marry him, and have children, nevermind that I have never actually wanted children, because it was what a good girl was supposed to do. Thank god or insert whatever deity you believe in here, for books. Because books let me learn about the things that I wasn’t being taught, and let me figure out who I actually was. And I’m still trying to figure myself out, because I never had a chance to grow up properly the way I was raised.

So I can completely understand where Alec is coming from. The comments he made were ignorant, but not made out of any malice. It can be hard to break free of how you are raised, and a lot of that shows up subconsciously no matter what you might be thinking and doing consciously. I can’t tell you how many times I have said something without thinking or intending any harm, only to find out later that what I said was wrong, and have needed to apologize for it. I don’t really think the comments that Alec made were necessarily biphobic so much as him still dealing with self-hate and projecting it onto Magnus.

Sorry this took me so long to respond I was busy.

It's interesting how all of the queer people I've talked to who praise CC's queer rep are people who have backgrounds like yours. People who had difficult, oppressive backgrounds and families who weren't supportive of them. I think maybe this is something that I should start taking into consideration. Because I've gotten into so many fights with people who are honestly just trying to grasp onto something tangible after so much crap. And for me to attack them for it is actually pretty unfair.

I grew up extremely privileged in the sense that I grew up in a family of socialists who are also activists and very progressive people. My mom and dad and also step dad have been supporting queer rights since before I was born. My privilege has definitely affected me. I get that.

I tend to be more ambitious with queer liberation then most people because that's what I was raised to do. I was raised to be unapologetic and aggressive and demand respect. So that's what I do. I think many of you want to praise CC for doing the bare minimum and it makes me angry. But I've come to realize that it's because you were denied the bare minimum for so long. And that's really really sad.

But I get it in some ways. Because that's how I am with Ty. So many people were saying that they thought Ty was bare minimum and pretty stereotypical for an autistic character and it made me furious. Because Ty saved me. I personally connected with him a lot and despite his flaws, I adore him. And I was so mad that other people couldn't understand that. But I've been through a lot of trauma and oppression because of being autistic, so I'm sort of still in bare minimum mode right now. But I'm growing and evolving as I get older. But I think deep down I'll always love Ty no matter what.

And I think that's the way some people are with CC's queer rep. I personally also love a lot of her queer characters like obviously Kit and Ty, plus Magnus, Alec, Mark, Kieran, Helen, and Aline just to name my favorites. I would also sell my soul to the black market for Alastair Carstairs and his happiness. But I see the difference in their writing vs. the writing of queer characters written by queer people.

Reading books like A Line in the Dark and Red White and Royal Blue really sets it apart for me. I relate to the authenticity of the writing. When Alex says "straight people probably don't spend this much time convincing themselves that they're straight" it's real and raw and just...!!!!!!!! You know? I highly reccomend reading queer books by queer people to get the representation that you're looking for. But CC's characters do have their charm.

Anyways, I get you. But it just bugs me to see people calling her "the queen of representation" or whatever.

#mutuals #asks #anti cc #queer rep #tsc #red white and royal blue #a line in the dark

20 notes · View notes

sincerelyreidburke · 5 years ago

Note

So, I love all your wholesome cricket content, but I really need to know, do any of them have anything that triggers absolute rage or breakdown status, to where it's like now banned after an outburst?

Wowwwww, you really want the shot to the heart today, don’t you? I see, I see. Well, ask and ye shall receive; I’ll be happy to provide it. :) Let’s go to angsty cricket hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’ve talked about Quinn some, but for this post I’ll focus on the OG 3. Featuring Tragic Backstories(TM), deep-seeded anxieties, etc. I legally cannot be held liable for any feels caused by this post. But you can yell at me if I cause them.

TW: cancer, death of a family member, emotional abuse, coming-out anxiety, implied homophobia.

(Ask me anything about the crickets!)

Nando: So the thing is, Nando is a happy-go-lucky person. He has big feelings and he loves deeply. All of this is true, and he spends his time at Samwell in high spirits as a general rule. But before Samwell, Nando had a little bit of a rough go of it. He lives at home with his mom and sisters not because his dad is absent or sucky, but because his dad died. He got cancer around Nando’s junior year of high school, and he died in February of his senior year. It was very hard on the family and obviously devastating to Nando. He and his papa were very close, and they had a great relationship. Nando immensely regrets that he never came out to him, but he’s grateful that he got a lot of time to get ready to say goodbye.

And with his papa’s death even aside, something else we already know about Nando is that he had a previous relationship— and I’ll point out now that N*te was never a good boyfriend. In fact, he was kind of always a shitty boyfriend. But he was the first boy who liked Nando back, and things were good at the start, so Nando didn’t really understand how toxic the relationship was. N*te was emotionally abusive a lot of the time, and it was ugly. He body-shamed him to no end, too. Nando spent a lot of their relationship second-guessing himself, feeling like he was too much or not doing the right things.

The thing is: Nando is okay. It’s just that he does have some sad and bad memories. The main reason he wants to be a social worker is to help kids who are dealing with grief.

Touille: He’s a totally mentally healthy person, and in general he doesn’t have that much trauma or Tragic Backstory to him. But the one thing that does get Touille into a bad place is the thought of anything happening to his mémé. She’s his mom’s mom, and he’s always considered her one of the most important people in his life, because they spent so much time together growing up (Mémé has lived with him and his parents for as long as he can remember). Coming to Samwell is hard in a way because it means leaving home with the possibility of something bad happening to her and him not being around for it. He does call her all the time, so it’s not a communication problem but just the fear. She’s old, and she’s a cherished relative who he loves very much, and that’s all there is to it. He gets stress dreams about something bad happening.

Rhodey: Ah. Yes. My disaster child. When I did the “first time Rhodey meets Jack” post, I pointed out that Rhodey is a generally chill person, and I’ll repeat that here because it’s true. He’s not the anxious type, nor is he even a tiny bit socially awkward. He’s charismatic and fun, and he’s extremely proud to be himself in all aspects of his life.

The one thing for Rhodey is that he’s not out to his family. The Shaley family aren’t hateful people, they’re just Catholic, so he has a pretty good idea of what they’d think if he told them he’s pansexual. For some relatives, he expects to be told he’s just confused, and others he thinks would flat-out treat him differently. Rhodey has nothing to fear in terms of still being loved by his family, and he’s mostly aware of that. But there’s always this worry of the people he loves seeing him as a different person because of a fact about himself he can’t control and wouldn’t want to change even if he could. His brother, Joey, is the biggest source of worry. It just generally bothers him, and he’s not quite sure what he’s going to do about it.

But other than that, Rhodey is pretty fine.

We can talk more about the Angsty Side of these boys’ lives if you guys want. I hope this answers your question!!!!!

#oc taddies #crickets #nandoooooooo #rat boy #rhode island headass

25 notes · View notes

loopy777 · 4 years ago

Note

Hm. Lately I’ve been feeling conflicted. I would usually say that even if Azula did become good, she would still need to be punished for the horrible things she had done (being in prison is a punishment for sure). But then I would think about how that should be applied to Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee. Like yeah, they did decided to be good (arguable “good” with Mai & Ty Lee) in the end, but it didn’t really erase the terrible actions that they had done. (1/2)

But I’m attached to these characters. I understood why they did they things they did, why they acted like they did, and how they become who they are. And I don’t want them to be in harms way after knowing about their past, trauma, and issues that they had to worked through. But then I’m being a hypocrite since I wasn’t the same with Azula. And if Azula got punished for her past wrongs, I suppose the others should too? I don’t know... Should they have been punished? (2/2)

This gets into the purpose of punishment in general, which turns out to be a very personal thing.

I, coming from a Catholic Christian background, don’t see any purpose to punishment beyond an attempt (and we’ll touch on this word again later) to correct bad behavior. I used to be a fairly angry little kid (Raphael was my favorite Ninja Turtle for a reason) and I liked to wish misfortune (usually destruction of property, like a car dying) on the people I was mad at. So my mom used to quote me the famous bit from St Paul’s letter to the Romans: “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord.” So I was always taught that trying to pay people back for their evil deeds, purely as an act of justice, is cosmically wrong. On the other hand, I was given time-outs when my behavior was bad and also told I did not have to subject myself to the company of bullies, so clearly the lesson isn’t just to let people be bad and not worry about it.

There are people and cultures, though, that demand retaliation. This is just their worldview, and leaving bad things unaddressed would be an active injustice.

Pragmatically speaking, a punishment’s value to society at large is to discourage bad behavior. You do a bad thing, you get an appropriate punishment, and so you decide you don’t want to do the bad thing again in order to avoid future punishments. Ideally, the very threat of punishment is a preventative. Punishments are scaled to the crime to prevent inflation; if every bad act merited the death penalty, then you might as well commit premeditated murder against someone you dislike instead of just calling them a rude name.

However, as I alluded to above, punishments are an attempt to prevent or correct bad behavior, but are not necessarily effective. Rewards are the opposite side of the coin, a system of encouraging good behavior. There’s all kinds of studies on these things, how effective they are, whether and how they can be mixed, the effectiveness of certain types of punishments and rewards, etc. So I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty of all that here. This is just foundation for answering your question.

So, with my background in mind, I don’t see any reason why Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee should be punishment because they have already done the following things:

Admitted they were wrong.

Suffered for their bad behavior.

Attempted to redress or mitigate the consequences of their actions.

Changed themselves so that they are now, based on the recognition of the badness of their previous selves, forces for good.

Again, to bring up my Catholicism, this is exactly the process by which forgiveness of Sin is achieved (maybe minus the suffering depending on how old-school or hardcore the Catholicism is, but narratively the suffering usually makes for a better story), so as far as I’m concerned, there’s no need for punishment or hell for Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee. Some people, though, might not see their experiences and changes as enough; they might want the victims to judge Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee and pronounce some form of punishment or restitution. Arguably, though, this kind of already happened, with the Kyoshi Warriors accepting Ty Lee and Aang accepting Zuko as his Firebending teacher and Suki accepting Mai as a Pai Sho opponent (hey, they can’t all be dramatized on-screen). But some people might want a formal process.

Azula, on the other hand, is keeping up her bad behavior. Now, “redemption” is another one of those words that can mean different things to different people and cultures. Going by my own definition above, Azula has not admitted that her behavior was wrong- last we saw her, she was still trying to teach Zuko that fear is more powerful than love, and she’s still delighting in petty cruelties. She has suffered, but as I noted, this part is optional and not terribly important, anyway. She has not tried to fix the harm she’s caused other people. And she has certainly not even attempted to change herself to become better- just more effective at living up to her old standards.

So, arguably, Azula thus deserves a punishment as part of her path to Redemption.

However, let’s get back to discussing the effectiveness of punishment. As I noted, Azula has suffered. What punishment is going to be worse than her experiences in the finale, being left behind by her father to stew in her paranoia until she is defeated by her enemies and loses all self-control? Is throwing her in jail going to make her better? Is scarring her going to have more of an impact than what she’s already been through?

(Of course, if she doesn’t change, then jail is certainly appropriate to keep her from harming others, which she keeps actively attempting.)

This now gets into the modern debates about crime and punishment, and that our modern criminal justice system is not particularly effective at rehabilitation. Again, there’s stuff out there to learn from, but I’m going to focus on Azula’s narrative. She can certainly experience a story where she is not actively punished but nevertheless transforms into a better person through experiences that truly teach the rewards of being a good person. Azula might more effectively and believably embrace the power of love through rehabilitative experiences instead of punishments.

But would her story be as rewarding if there’s no transformational suffering? Would we feel her Redemption has been earned?

Like I said, this gets personal. I don’t think there are solid answers, hence why my own focus for telling stories about Azula isn’t “redemption.” I think there’s interesting stories to tell about her coming into mental and emotional balance, and that’s what I focus my narratives and themes on supporting. The end result might be a Redemption Fic, but I reached it through character work rather than judgement and justice. As Gandalf once said, “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” This seems to most directly address the idea of capital punishment, but I think it speaks to the inherent lack of ‘justice’ in life. There’s no undoing bad things or crimes, so no true justice can be done. What remains is simply how we ourselves react to it all.

So I don’t know if made my philosophical case, but I at least hope I explained why Azula is currently in a different class than Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee.

I am, of course, completely ignoring that the AtLA comics consistently portray Zuko as someone who tries to murder his friends whenever he disagrees with him. Because that Zuko totally needs a time-out.

#Anonymous

8 notes · View notes

mikenewtonhateblog · 5 years ago

Text

My oc’s aka too long of a gd post

The “BL” Crew (does not stand for boys love I’m just a moron who made that abbreviation before knowing what it stands for). My main crew and main series, a lot is a big WIP right now as I’m slowly redoing the first book and all the lore. Why? I love torture. Book is fantasy type but I won’t specify what.

Lacie, the protagonist. God tier idiot, bisexual bipolar depressed MESS, insomniac, former theater kid, doesn’t know what she wants out of life but currently it is not This(plot of book). Hot headed, impulsive, crude, rude, Mommy IssuesTM, would rather be taking a nap right now, rules are made to be broken, absolutely fucking FERAL, more bags under her eyes than the airport lost and found. 5’5, 130lbs, Aries, age 18, white as shit like literally the whitest human you have ever seen, strawberry blonde hair in a 2011 Hayley Willaims haircut with long bangs, the darkest brown eyes you’ve ever seen that stare directly into your soul. Lanky, no curves, body of a 12 year old boy but works out so she can and will kick your ass and thats a threat. Not human?

Josh. Soft boy, smart, Lacie’s cousin and only friend for like the first 18 years of her life, autistic anxious mess who’s special interest is anchient egyptian history, is in honors classes, despises math, passes out when his girlfriend looks too cute, just needs a hug. Can eat a whole carton of easy mac if left alone, whole wardobe is the same outfit just different colors/hoodies, sensory issues, seriously can someone give this guy a hug. 5’9, 150lbs, Pisces, age 18, mixed (half whatever flavor of white Lacie’s family is [they don’t even know its just some scandanavian shit and irish], and half mexican on his mom’s side), medium olive skin with freckles and moles, dark chocolate brown hair that’s a bit of a 2009 Beiber cut, warm brown eyes, not beefy, a lil thicc and self concious about it but squishy boys are GOOD. Gets bit by a werewolf so now he is one his mood on it is “thats a lot to unpack but let’s just throw the whole suitcase away”.

Zander. There is not one braincell in this man, himbo KING, pansexual dumbass with undiagnosed ADHD, no impulse control, head empty and full at the same time, PTSD, his fashion sense should be an actual crime, gets in fights to feel something, basic requirements for him to be attracted to you: kick his ass. Drinks his respect women juice, sees a folding table and must immediately launch himself on it, chaotic, cannot drive a car and will not, food aggression and eats enough for 3 people but never gains weight which is ILLEGAL, him and Lacie may be a couple.....but in this house we stan slow burn, he talks in caps and every sentence either ends with a question mark or exclaimation point, likes romcoms. 6’2, 190lbs, Sagittarius, age 19, austrailian roots and has the accent but is from [REDACTED FOR STORY REASONS], white, dorito shaped with long legs, blueish black hair that’s long and messy, dark navy eyes that match his hair, bigass neck scar from [REDACTED]. Not human

Peter. Gay dad friend who is TIRED of having to be in charge of a bunch of teenagers, only one with full functioning braincells, lowkey a genius who loves engineering, mixes magical technology with human technology because he likes to play god, is he ever sober? No one knows, will kill for a bottle of single malt, his fashion sense? Tastefully expensive suits perfectly tailored. Likes building his own weapons that no one else knows how to even use, generally non-threatening but can get scary if needed. 6’4, 140lbs string bean man, Scorpio, age 179 but looks early 30s, I know I said Lacie is the whitest human but he’s even paler like a literal sheet of paper with scandanavian roots/ancestors were vikings or some shit, blonde hair styled like 2013 Brendon Urie lmfao, light crystal blue eyes. He’s a vampire and was born one.

Danielle. Tiny, sweet, queen of girls supporting girls, comments on all her friends instagram posts with 20 emojis, LOVES fashion and has a wardrobe that would make anyone jealous, oozes feminine energy, only child and parents are in love still, gets exactly 8 hours of sleep each night and wakes up looking like a disney princess. Just because she is small and cute doesn’t mean you should underestimate her she WILL fuck your shit up. Quiet when angey which is terrifying. Josh is her bf and she loves him so much but also loves teashing the shit out of him. Legally cannot cuss, polite, used her high heels as a weapon once, speaks like 5 languages because studying them is her hobby, gardens, hugs everyone. 5’0, 110, Taurus, age 18, mixed (half french-american, half Korean-american), glowy skin always, PETITE frame aka the friend everyone can pick up when they hug, long past her waist curly brown hair, bright green eyes. She’s not fully human as she has fae blood in her and this gives her the ability to talk to and control plants. Flower crowns for everyone

Becca. Theater kid who would die to sing in Wicked and has the vocal range to do so, cannot wait to graduate and go to her dream college which she got into and a scholarship, closeted lesbian bc her whole giant family is extremely catholic and she feels like not dealing with it, “no boys allowed in bedroom” rule is her favorite joke, chill, middle child of 5 siblings and just wants some peace and quiet for ONCE. Her fashion sense is “I’m dropping subtle hints I’m gay but only to other gays”, has a black belt and took self defense classes. 5’6, 145lbs, Virgo, age 18, Latina (cuban and mexican mix), darker brown skin with light freckles over her nose, athletic build, eyebrows on POINT, bright caramel eyes, short light brown hair cut in a bob, has a tiny nose stud, always wears a blue friendship bracelet her gf made her. Human

Anika. Calling her a bitch/slut is a compliment, bisexual, a bit of a mean girl but she grows out of it give her time!!! Is always Too Much, the horny friend, favorite color is red so thats almost all of her outfits, loves to show off her body as much as she can because she’s hot and knows it and thrives in her own confidence. Her mom is literally like Regina George’s mom from Mean Girls but married a rich man 20 years older than her, Anika doesn’t know her bio dad but thats fine neither does her mom and her step dad is nice and does his best to be a dad. Becca’s gf, always hanging out at her home so Becca can get some quiet because Anika’s an only child and has a pool. 5’9, 135lbs, Gemini, age 18, white, long layered dark reddish brown hair, teal-blue eyes, swimmers body type (I normally do not mention bust size but she would want the internet to know she was blessed with big bahoogles so there you go), can sprint in heels. Half mermaid (boy was that a surprise considering her mom doesn’t know who her father is LOL)

Rex. Nb uses they/them he/him pronouns but honestly will respond to any, goth lite, only attracted to men and ace, can read minds so knows all your secrets, mischevious little shit, great friends with Zander and enjoys his dumbass thoughts and that he’s basically a human version of Jackass, wears too many rings, goth boots for kicking and fashion babey, always has the freshest memes and will not hesitate to roast in the group chat, hangs with the girls most of the time. Chaos god who loves making art, be gay do crime, skateboard and spraypaint. 5’8”, 165lbs, Leo, age 18, Native American, masculine frame, dark brown skin, blue eyes, firetruck red shoulder length hair that’s usually in a ponytail, knock-off gucci sunglasses just for judging their friends. Has magic in their blood so not entirely human and can cast spells and shit (don’t roast me its a wip and I’m doing my research)

Sam. Boho goddess, aromantic, makeup and nails are always instagram worthy, quiet and stoic type but losens up around close friends, Rex is her best friend, has some trauma and doesn’t want to talk about it, emotionally numbed out a bit and wants to purely vibe. Has seen some of the worst parts of humanity and wishes she hadn’t, finds no point in being bitter or resentful though because that won’t change anything, loves cats and once she moves out shes adopting one or three. Has wine aunt energy. 5’4, 200lbs PLUS SIZE QUEEN, Scorpio, age 18, Filipino (her parents are immigrants fun fact!), really olive skin sometimes has a grey/green tinge to it, dark brown almost black shoulder length hair, gold-hazel eyes. Sam’s the victim of a family curse that requires her to consume human hearts to survive, she can transform into a pretty scary looking being and uses this curse to hunt down pedoph*les, r*pists, murderers, and abusers. The less often she feeds the less human she looks, hence the constant grey/green tinge to her skin.

Andy. Baby of the group, must be protected at all costs, 100% didn’t sign up to be in a friendgroup of 90% monsters but highkey loves it, trans, bi, anxiety MAXED, just wants to draw comics and cosplay spiderman, has to babysit his two younger sisters a lot because his parents are....not great, and as a result now knows all the lines to Tangled and The Little Mermaid. Big nerd energy, has to draw on everything including homework, gets inspiration for comics from his friends, awkward and socially anxious, drinks way too much tea and will accidentally steal your pens. Fears include: crowds, thunder, tall angry men, tiny spaces. Just trying his best. 5’2, 100lbs BEANPOLE BOY, Leo, age 16, white (irish and scottish roots), freckles absolutely EVERYWHERE, orangey red hair thats in desperate need of a haircut, chocolate brown eyes, braces, chronic nail biter. Human and kinda wishes he wasn’t.

That’s it for now if you read all this bless u thank u here is my whole heart. Please no discourse, literally these are fictional people I’ll never publish the books they go to.

#no i am not looking for critiques on them #i get my critiques elsewhere lmao #my ocs

15 notes · View notes

forestwater87 · 5 years ago

Text

Cutting Myself on all this Edge

This post has no reason to exist, except that I keep bothering my friends with literally dozens of messages making fun of this and I need a place to keep it all.

What is “this”? Oh, just some people having some Fucking Strong Opinions about how Harry Potter is the Pied Piper (they use that comparison multiple times. It gets old fast) leading our children into the End Times with its pro-illuminati Satan-worshiping witchcraft lessons. You know, the usual.

And no, this isn’t a battle of Forest vs. the Crazy Christians; I’m like 94% sure I’m not working through any sort of religious trauma, partly because I never went deep into this kind of mentality but mostly because I’m just delighted by The Cutting Edge, a website for a very specific type of Christian (no, not you, Catholics. You’re specifically not invited to the Cutting Edge club because you worship demons) interested in the New World Order, the evils of public schools, and Satan’s favorite color.

No, really.

Satan’s favorite color is green. They don’t . . . really explain why.

This site still exists and is the best thing I’ve ever seen. Hours of fun for the whole family. I mean, look at their logo:

And look at their illustration that goes along with their particular Harry Potter series:

Are you not entertained?!

I cannot stop reading these amazing essays -- which delve surprisingly deep into Potter lore, considering they say that there is no sufficient reason for a Christian to ever read a single page of these books -- and I can’t keep harassing my friends with thousands of notifications, so here we are.

Starting small, let’s read the book review for Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s/Philosopher’s Stone. Or, as they prefer to call it:

This book chronicles Harry's first year at the Hogwart's School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. Prepare to be shocked for the bold, blatant, and bodacious raw Satanism that underlines this story! Since "proper"Drug Use is essential in opening the centres of vision and achieving higher consciousness, we should not be surprised that First-Year students learn Drug Use, Drug creation, in a way that makes Drug use seem glorious! You will be shocked to see '666 ' in the story line, and symbols of Antichrist receiving a "fatal wound"!

That’s the entire subtitle. That’s just how they roll on

THE CUTTING EDGE

Part 1: The . . . Plot? I Guess?

This story introduces us to Harry Potter, an orphaned boy sent to live with his "horrible" Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and their fat, obnoxious son, Dudley.

I feel very comfortable with the fact that Cutting Edge has chosen to put scare quotes around the word “horrible,” like that’s up for debate. Combined with the very normal and sane opinions expressed elsewhere on the site, this really bodes well for their ideas about parenting and childcare in general.

all through this book, any non-witch folk -- like Vernon and Petunia -- are depicting in disgusting language.

Typo is theirs, as is the apparent offense they take to the fictional depiction of people who are very much not real. While there hasn’t been any exciting formatting going on yet in this essay, I will replicate it as much as possible, and any changes made will be clearly indicated through square brackets and ellipses.

Non-witch people are known as Muggles , and they are depicting as being "dumber than a box of rocks", of being physically obscene, and of living the most boring, unimaginative lives possible.

I was going to argue that this isn’t true, but I suppose we don’t really meet any cool Muggles in the first book. I guess I have to give them this, but I don’t feel good about it.

Witches, on the other hand, are depicted as being very smart, very "with it", of being physically normal, and of living wonderfully exciting lives

It bears repeating:

a flashback scene to the time 10 years earlier when Harry's Mom and Dad were psychically murdered by evil Lord Voldemort

Okay. Now I’m no Potterologist, and so I’m hoping any true believers will correct me if I misinterpret the holy texts,* but I don’t think Harry’s parents were psychically murdered by anyone. I’m pretty sure they were quite literally, physically made dead. Just because it’s a beam of magic doesn’t mean it’s not physical anymore, does it? Voldy didn’t Professor-X Harry’s parents and they died of three D10 psychic damage or anything; he just fucking killed them with a wizard gun. Am I wrong here?

*By which I obviously mean Harry Potter. It teaches children how to become Satanists; we’re clearly dealing with a book of immense spiritual relevance.

Skipping a little bit of plot summary, which is a combination of, well, summary of the plot, although Cutting Edge is determined to get Hogwarts’ name wrong, and a little bit of baffling End-Times(?) nonsense thrown in for funsies --

Of course, a Christian would be immediately alerted to this turn of events [in which Harry defeats Voldemort and is scarred] because soon a supernaturally powerful global leader will demand everyone on earth take some sort of a mark in exactly this place on the body.

What?

-- and there’s some weird formatting things going on that I think are supposed to imply something sinister but really just come off as goofy:

They have Harry on a boat headed for nowhere and they had every intention of keeping Harry from ever attending Hogwarts School. However, Harry receives supernatural assistance.

(It’s not letting me do colors on desktop, which is stupid, but that “supernatural” is supposed to be both bold and red)

There’s a long description about the difference between the Real and Fantasy worlds, which apparently Satanists try to live in both of (and so does Harry, making him also a Satanist. This is actually one of the less-stupid arguments Cutting Edge has for Harry’s Satanism, so just go with it) that’s honestly more boring than funny so I’m skipping it. Then we get to a much more fun section: why Rowling’s descriptions of Muggles are . . . teaching children to hate Jesus?

Part 2: Rowling Hates Muggles

Rowling consistently depicts people who do not practice Witchcraft in most obnoxious terms. They are depicted as being really, really dumb, boring, and living a life not worth living . We share these examples, below, with you so you can appreciate the truth of this statement. Uncle Vernon was also the only Muggle quoted in the book as being really opposed to Witchcraft; therefore, when readers see how stupid, ugly, and boring Vernon is, they get the idea that all people who are opposed to Witchcraft must be as stupid, ugly, and boring as Vernon is.

... Are all people opposed to Witchcraft cowardly bullies?

I mean, you are the one going after a children’s book for daring to entertain children, so if the shoe fits . . .

"Harry was glad school was over, but there was no escaping Dudley's gang ... Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader." [p. 31] How do you know your own child does not think of you in these terms? After all, you are a non-magical Muggle.

I actually can’t complain, because this is just accurate. I 100% hate my parents and think they’re stupid because they’re not literally witches/wizards. Our relationship has never fully recovered.

"Uncle Vernon made another funny noise, like a mouse being trodden on." [p. 47] Remember Adolf Hitler, the most famous Black Magick wizard in modern history? He depicted Jews as Rats in his Propaganda Machinery, convincing the Germans they should extermination the "vermin".

GODWIN’S LAW HAS LANDED!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND EVERYTHING OUTSIDE OR IN-BETWEEN, WE HAVE OFFICIALLY COMPARED HARRY POTTER TO HITLER!

We find it highly interesting that, later in the book, when the Evil Lord Voldemort is supposedly killing the unicorn in the Forbidden Forest, the color of the blood of the unicorn is silver!

Okay, but like . . . why? I mean, it immediately follows a description of the Bloody Baron, who is depicted with silvery blood because he’s, like, a ghost, but I’m not sure what that has to do with unicorns or with Satan. Are unicorns associated with Satan? Is silver associated with Satan?

Is everything Satan? Am I Satan?

There’s a lot of rage at a gentleman named Chuck Colson throughout this section, who apparently made the grave error of telling parents it was okay for their children to read Harry Potter because it doesn’t involve contact with the supernatural. And I’ll admit, that seems like a pretty bad defense of the books, because if you define “supernatural” as ghosts, poltergeists, or whatever the hell Voldemort is, then there is absolutely a metric buttload of supernatural stuff in here.

Arguably, a better defense of why it’s okay for children to read these children’s books is that they are books made for children, but YMMV on that one. Probably depends on whether or not you think children are sitting in the giant metaphorical (or literal? Not sure Cutting Edge gets metaphors) lap of the Antichrist every time they pick up the books.

(A visual reminder.)

Part 3: Basically Part 2, But This Time There Are Colors

The next section is on colors, which are very important to Cutting Edge. As linked back in the very beginning of this post, there is an entire essay devoted to the demonic colors used in the Harry Potter books, but we get just a taste of it here:

Rowling makes use of vivid colors in her story line. Some of these colors are consistent with the colors preferred by Satan and his followers in the Occult. Rowling's use of such vivid colors also enables her to paint the Fantasy Reality of Witchcraft as THE most exciting place to live. Wizard of Oz uses the same technique: when Dorothy is in her real world in Kansas, the color is black and white, but when she steps into her Fantasy Reality, the scene explodes in the most wonderful color.

Interesting interpretation. An alternative view is that Rowling needs to use more descriptors for things within the Wizarding World, because her readers won’t have the same frame of reference to draw from that they do with real-life objects and events in the Muggle World, and one can assume that these lovely descriptions are part of her being a, y’know, good and evocative writer, and the colors are just related to how she pictured the world she was creating.

But I mean, yours is good, too.

Actually, the citations provided by Cutting Edge don’t depict anything especially vivid; it’s not like she’s throwing massive amounts of purple prose at the descriptions of the Satanic green of Harry’s eyes. In fact, the only enhancer used is “emerald” at one point. For the most part, this essayist is just . . . noticing when the word “green” appears in the text and calling it a siren song to entice good Christian children out of the colorless world of reality and goodness and into the technicolor dreamland of magic and mayhem.

Also, please remember that Satan has a favorite color, and it’s green. For all birthdays and Christmases (or wait, whatever the Satanic version of Christmas is! Halloween?), please make sure all gifts are green or green-adjacent.

Even though Harry is nearly as powerful as a Black Magick practitioner, and could easily have decided to go over to that side, he declines to go over to the Dark Arts. Dumbledore assures Harry that he is not evil as Lord Voldemort. However, as a symbol of the Black Arts he could perform, Rowling makes Harry's eyes green.

This observation -- and I use the term loosely -- implies that every single Slytherin and villain of the Harry Potter series would have green eyes, to demonstrate their capacity for evil. The fact that this is obviously not the case must just be a red herring.

Part . . . 4, I think?: Drugs, Magic, and Magic Drugs

Harry and his friends learn how to makedrugs, and the glory of taking them.

The fact that they don’t actually take any in this book is entirely irrelevant. (”Drugs” should also be red as well as bolded. It’s very serious business.)

The plant, wormwood, contains thujone, an hypnotic drug, banned by the FDA since 1915 [Christian News, "Latest Potter Book Meets Cautionary Response From Christians, July 17, 2000] ; further, wormwood is used to make Absinthe, a hallucinogenic liquor. Therefore, the drug to which Rowling makes reference is very real, and is so dangerous the FDA has banned it -- to this day, it is banned!

While thujone was illegal at the time of this essay in the United States, it was actually never banned in the UK . . . you know, where these books take place and were written? I don’t think Rowling gives a solitary fuck about our FDA standards. Also, I don’t know if you could just straight-up buy wormwood on whatever the equivalent of Amazon was in 1998 (was it just Amazon?), but you sure can now. Can’t be all that scary.

You can hardly get a better description of drug use, and drug glorification than this!

I wonder why they keep using red to emphasize all these evil things . . . you’d think they’d go with Satan’s favorite color/the sign that Harry is the Antichrist to really jazz up all of the evil.

"The drug message in this book is clear. To reach your goals in life like Harry Potter, you need to know how to make drugs and take drugs in just the right way or else you are a 'dunderhead' and will never succeed." [http://www.fflibraries.org/Book_Reports/HarryPotter ; written by a physician and father who asked to remain anonymous].

The fact that this URL doesn’t lead me to that review is one of the saddest things I’ve faced all month.

The sections on spellcasting are far less interesting, reiterating a pretty simple refrain: all magic is bad, because the books say some magic is good then the books are bad, it’s all teaching children about Satanism. Rinse and repeat.

During final exams, teachers passed out special quills with which to write; these quills had been "bewitched with an Anti-Cheating spell". The reason none of the teachers felt they could trust the honor of the students to not cheat is obvious enough; in Witchcraft, no Absolute Good and Evil exists. All objective, eternal standards of conduct and morality have been rejected. Therefore, teachers knew full well that all the students would cheat on their final exams if they thought they could get away with it. It is a sad commentary that teachers had to place an Anti-Cheating spell on the quills to prevent exams cheating. Christian parent, is this the "morality" you want your students to learn?

Now, it might just be my obvious Satanist addiction to witchcraft talking, but doesn’t it seem more likely that there’s an anti-cheating spell because sometimes . . . children cheat? And no amount of Good Wholesome Christian Teaching is going to completely eradicate the desire to cheat on a test, because of course it isn’t.

It’s not because the school has taught the students that cheating is okay and cool and sexy or whatever -- in fact, if you want evidence that there is an absolute moral standard against cheating, it would be that the teachers are actively taking steps to prevent it! If witchcraft really was all about how there’s no such thing as good and evil . . . well, for one thing they wouldn’t teach Defense against the motherfucking Dark Arts, but they also wouldn’t care if their students cheated enough to provide anti-cheating quills, because they wouldn’t consider cheating a bad thing, because they wouldn’t consider anything a bad thing!

Also, I’m not sure what listing all of the spells in the book and what they do really says about Satanism, except that . . . spells exist, and are used? Which I feel like you should really expect from the book about magic and wizards; if that’s an alarming surprise, then you’ve made a wrong turn somewhere way earlier down the road.

Part whatever: Seriously, Rowling is just ALL ABOUT Satan

This entire section is basically about how JKR must be a Satanist, because she apparently depicts the world of magic and the occult with perfect accuracy, and how could she do that except through being an active practicing witch herself?

Mirrors are believed to be a portal to another dimension, including Time. Occultists believe they can go forward or backward in Time with a mirror being one of the Dimensional Portals. Harry encounters a mirror, "magnificent ... as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet ... Harry stepped in front of it. He had to clasp his hand to his mouth to stop himself from screaming ... for he had seen, not only himself in the mirror but a whole crowd of people standing right behind him ... 'Mom?', he whispered. 'Dad?' They just looked at him, smiling ... Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life." [p. 208-9]

Intriguing theory, except of course for the fact that the mirror isn’t a portal to jack shit; unless you count the weird trick where he can get the stone (and only the stone) through wishes or whatever the fuck these idiots do, and all it does is show someone what they want. It’s not actually reaching into the past to find Harry’s parents or whatever, just like it’s not actually reaching into a parallel dimension future where Ron is the king of everything. It’s just . . . idk, reading their subconscious and throwing up a neat visual or something. With magic. It’s complex, but it’s definitely not what Cutting Edge says it is.

Not pictured: a portal to another physical, metaphysical or temporal dimension. It’s literally . . . just a mirror, but a mirror that reflects your insides instead of your outsides. It’s clever or something.

Do you realize Rowling has just made the creator of the Sorcerer's Stone 666 years old? Do you realize what this means? Since the number, '666', is a symbol of Antichrist and his Mark of the Beast [Revelation 13:18] and since Rowling ties this number to the Elixir of Life, Harry Potter is teaching children that the way to achieve eternal life [Elixir of Life] is to obey the Antichrist and take his Mark of the Beast!

Fucking. Yes. I don’t even have witty commentary for this, I’m just delighted by every word in that section. I’m smiling so much.

This is a gift and we’re reading it for free!

Wonderful! We have the forbidden practice of drinking blood in this Potter book, forbidden in Scripture [Genesis 9:4-5] but practiced regularly in Satanism. I wonder if Chuck Colson, Focus On The Family, and Christianity Today ever told their Christian followers about this? Have they even read this book, before they issued their acceptance of Potter?

Don’t you dare try to employ sarcasm. People who believe in the Illuminati and New World Order are not allowed to be sarcastic -- even if the thought of this faceless stranger typing that little clever “Wonderful!” and smirking to themselves about how witty they are is a very, very good mental image.

Also, what the fuck did unicorns do to deserve being associated with the Antichrist? I mean, I get the color green; it’s the color of nature and the outdoors, and that shit fucking sucks. (Fuck you, trees!) But unicorns?

Unicorns have never done anything to anyone, ever. Unicorns couldn’t be Satanists if they tried.

This means evil Lord Voldemort -- whose killing curse upon Harry, his Mom, and his Dad had rebounded against him when Harry did not die -- is near death, and is seeking to drink the Unicorn's blood to stay alive long enough to finally achieve eternal life through drinking the '666' Elixir of Life.

Yes, that is -- sort of -- the plot of this book.

This is the specific New Age doctrine being taught here: people will have to draw their temporary spiritual life from The Christ until the time comes when their individual consciousness will have been raised so much they will achieve their personal godhood, and live forever!

This concept is genuine New Age, is consistent with prophecy, and Rowling depicts it very well!

Christian parents, do you want your child to be taught this New Age doctrine? Can you see Harry Potter playing the Pied Piper and leading your children straight to the Mark of the Beast?

Pied Piper count: 1 (that’s not a lot so far, but it’s used in like every essay. It’ll come back)

I don’t know how to tackle this, because I’m not sure Cutting Edge really understands that Voldemort is the bad guy in these books. Children aren’t going to read this book and then go, “Cool! I’m gonna go stab a unicorn and drink its essence because my favorite role model You-Know-Who told me to!”

The unicorn blood thing is unilaterally portrayed as a pretty bad move. Voldemort’s goals in general are pretty obviously not great ideas. I know Cutting Edge doesn’t have the benefit of hindsight here, but Voldemort’s quest for immortality and how bad and wrong and fucked-up that is, is kind of one of the major through-lines of the entire story. It could be argued that it’s not Voldy’s desire to live forever that’s wrong so much as his whole, like, genocide thing, which is legit . . . except that all the methods to attain immortality involve killing someone, or stealing something, or otherwise being Not a Good Dude.

Voldemort is Not a Good Dude, and I don’t know how to communicate that any clearer than the books written for third graders already did.

Part 6: I don’t really know, I just wanted a chance to break this endless essay up and this seemed like a good place to do it. So let’s talk about spells some more

Many spells require both the taking of drugs and demonic possession, so it is a matter of gravest importance that Harry is actually going to learn to cast spells. When Chuck Colson dismisses the casting of spells as innocent and of no real importance, did he know this fact?

I seem to have missed the part where Harry goes off his ass on LSD and gets possessed by B’aal. Was that in the Silmarillion?

whenever a witch changes the physical characteristics of something, he or she is practicing very high-level witchcraft, has a high level of demonic possession, and has had to carry out human sacrifice themselves or have someone else do it for them.

“It’s fiction” is often a bullshit excuse to justify bad framing, but I feel like it applies here, because maybe in the “real” world spellcasting requires you to trip balls and summon demons, but it’s extremely obvious that it doesn’t work like that in Harry Potter! You can’t just say that’s what the books are teaching when the books aren’t actually teaching anything even close to that!

(I’m starting to feel like my emphasis italics are having a similar effect to Cutting Edge’s red bolded letters. Fuck if I’m gonna stop using them, though.)

If Harry and his pals were wearing goat heads and putting virgins into a giant blender or something I think you might have an argument here, but when the people reading your essay have eyes and can see that the things you’re describing aren’t anywhere in the books, you’re just lying. And it’s very obvious, and I still love you, Cutting Edge, but you’re being disingenuous and it’s starting to kill my joy-boner to constantly have to point out the ways you’re misunderstanding a children’s book, especially when I think you’re kinda doing it on purpose. So how about you chill just a little bit and we’ll all read some Harry Potter together.

Magical Drafts and Potions , by Arsenius Jigger. Some of the potions are very real, very deadly.

Wait, did Rowling publish this one, too? How do you know what’s in the book? Does the book list some real potions and how to make them, or is this another thing that’s only available in the Cutting Edge’s copy of the books?

Students were told they could also "bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad." [p. 67] These three creatures are important to an occultists. Satanists have always revered the cat because of its reputed "nine lives", which is a symbol of reincarnation. Cats are also symbols of a witch's familiar spirit.

They have revered the frog because his prominent bulging eyes represent the All-seeing nature of Lucifer. Frogs are also consistently used in many of the potions witches concoct. They revere owls as a symbol of occult wisdom and omniscience -- again because of their eyes.

So fuck cats, I guess. They’re being pretty unfair to owls and frogs too -- especially insulting their poor eyes. They can’t help it! -- but I’m a crazy cat lady and I’m not feeling this slander.

Actually . . . my cat looks pretty high right now. Maybe she is channeling Satan.

Okay, never mind. Fuck all these animals. They’re all evil. This article is entirely right, and I renounce all of my previous statements.

McGonagall has obviously mastered her Craft because she was the tabby cat seen by Uncle Vernon reading a map, back in chapter one. Remember that any time a witch or wizard practices transfiguration, they need expert spell-casting, and demonic possession. I bet no one ever told you that little fact, did they?

No, they didn’t, because it’s not even remotely relevant to the fictional book written for children.

Like, I’m trying very hard to not question anyone’s religious beliefs, so if you believe in the occult and magic and all that then more power to you, and maybe it’s totally valid to think that real-life magic spells requires demonic possession. That doesn’t make it true in the books, though! Stop making shit up!

Potions Class -- taught in one of the dungeons [p. 136] How disgusting must the atmosphere for this class, and others, taught in a dungeon, which was built to torture people to death?

If only the classroom, teacher, and overall environment for the Potions classes was meant to be as viscerally unpleasant as possible. Then putting them in the dungeons would be a really good idea, to reflect the Slytherins’ backwards beliefs and the misery of their intolerance.

Like, JKR isn’t this subtle. When you name one of your antagonists “Bad Dragon,” you’re not aiming for this subconscious-symbolism bullshit.

Part 7: Did you think this book had a good moral? Fuck you!

The fundamental occult/Communist philosophy

Well, I guess we’re talking about Communism now! Because if there’s anything Harry Potter is interested in above all else, it’s Communism.

My favorite things about these essays is how they will pull in other social ills -- abortion, public schools, communism -- and slap them into their argument regardless of if it makes any semblance of sense.

Anyway, Cutting Edge actually has a legitimate argument here, although they take it about 50 steps too far:

the "Ends Justify The Means" permeates this entire book. To achieve a goal deemed good, Harry and his friends consistently break rules, steal, and use Witchcraft against others.

It is true that Harry and his friends break the rules, lie, and otherwise do “bad” things in the service of an ultimate good, and that they suffer relatively few consequences for it. This is a legitimate point, and actual people who know things agree.

I’ve been struck speechless by this article before, but this is the first time it’s because I think they might have an actual point.

Hermione was very mildly punished [for her lie to the professors about why they were fighting the troll], but her lie cemented a friendship with Ron and Harry, leading a child to conclude that her lie served an excellent purpose, and could not be considered 'wrong'.

I mean . . . yeah? I don’t think it’s entirely reasonable to assume that children will take that lesson away, but I read it as a child and I certainly didn’t think Hermione was wrong to lie -- nor do I now, which I suppose proves just how powerful the Satanic conditioning was.

Professor Quirrell told Harry, "There is no good or evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it ." [p. 291] This is standard Witchcraft, and standard Illuminist doctrine. This doctrine is the guiding light to those Illuminists who are driving the world into the Kingdom of Antichrist. This doctrine is very seductive to those immature children trying to grow up in our current culture; since a child's inherent nature is evil, he will find such philosophy more appealing than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christian parents, beware!

Oh thank God Satan, we’re back to the bullshit. I was getting seriously weirded out by the idea that they had good points buried in here somewhere, but now we’re just faced with the argument that the bad guy says . . . bad things . . . and is defeated because his bad ideas are obviously bad and wrong . . . and this proves that the book is teaching children to believe the bad things?

No one reads these books and wants to be the bad guys, Cutting Edge. Kids aren’t buying Harry Potter wands and robes to pretend that they’re Quirrell, trying to keep people from finding out they have a Dark Lord on the back of their head. (Though now that I’ve mentioned it, that sounds like a very fun game.)

Depicting bad things in a way that makes it clear -- to children, I must reiterate -- that they’re bad isn’t the same thing as romanticizing or promoting those bad things. This is basic stuff, CE.

Revenge Motive : "Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying, and Much, Much More , by Vindictus Viridian." [p. 80] Throughout these books, seeking revenge and attacking your enemies is high on the priority list of Harry, his friends, and other students. Do you want your children to adopt this most Satanic attitude? Notice the first name of the author of this revenge book, above, is named "Vindictus, i.e., Vindictive".

Students are taught to depend upon Witchcraft for every part of their lives . All food is conjured up rather than prepared, all the dishes are conjured clean, and even the hospital depends upon Witchcraft to get students well [p. 156]. Neville Longbottom, one of the more clumsy students, received a crystal ball from his grandmother called a Remembrall . The ball glows scarlet if you have forgotten something you should have done. [p. 145]

That’s . . . fuck, that’s actually kind of another good point. Stop kinda making sense, goddamn it!

A lot of the criticism is just that the things wizards do are cool, which will make kids want to become witches/wizards in order to do those cool things, too. And to be fair, the stuff Harry et. al. does are cool, and I did want to be a witch when I grew up. Fortunately, I was in third grade, and so my options for witchcraft were relatively limited; by the time I was old enough to pursue the endeavor properly, I was also old enough to know that it was actually nothing like Harry Potter. If magic actually was anything like those books make it seem, we’d have a lot more witches running around, zapping shit.

Possible reference to homosexuality . When I was first researching Harry Potter, I examined several pro-Potter websites. The author of one of the articles said that one of the probable developments she felt would occur in the latter books was the advent of homosexuality in the story theme. She said such activity was only hinted at in the first books.

Oh dear god, Cutting Edge found the shippers. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

(I wonder if this means they’ve also read the Draco Trilogy.)

I do have to take issue with one last point in this bit about morals, where they talk about how scarring it might be to a child to see Voldemort possessing the back of Quirrell’s head:

Rowling could not have created a better description of demonic possession by a dark and powerful demon! Christian parent, is this the type of thing you want your child to bring into their minds?

Thing is, I’ve been in a lot of Christian circles for most of my life, and this sounds exactly like the kind of dark, traumatizing thing many religious parents would be happy to put into their children’s minds.

Part Almost Done: Definitely Intentional Satanic Symbols, Really

Hey, did you know the number 11 was occultist? I didn’t, and when I Googled it, 4 of the front-page results were Christian or conspiracy groups making this claim, 2 were unclear, and 3 actually seemed to indicate some level of belief in the power of the number 11. Though I might’ve stacked the deck with the word “occult”; when I changed my search term to “magic,” I found almost exclusively positive articles about the symbolic power of the number 11, so . . . Cutting Edge isn’t necessarily wrong.

But boy, did you know how many times the number 11 shows up in Sorcerer's Stone? Not very much, but if we stretch our credibility a little bit, we might see something spooky!

Harry was eleven (11) when he was admitted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The number eleven is considered sacred to the occultist, as it is the first primary number. Occultists will also add up numbers to get an occult number that is sacred; thus, I was highly interested when the bank vault maintained for Harry by his Mom and Dad before their death was numbered '713' [p. 73]. When you add '7 + 1 + 3 = 11'. Then, we learn that, in the money of the Fantasy Reality, "twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle". When you add 2 + 9 = 11.

When Harry found the wand that was meant for him, it turned out to be 11 inches long! [p. 84]

The Hogwarts Express Train left at 11 o'clock from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. [p. 91]

Oh man, that’s some convincing evidence. Evidence of what, I have no idea, but it uses math and I’m sure it’s very alarming!

" Sorcerer's Stone " is also called the "Philosopher's Stone", and is very, very Satanic! Rosicrucianism teaches that an Initiate will pass through five stages to become the highest Adept possible, to be most proficient in exercising the power of Satanism. They call this process the "Five Stages In The Transmutation of the Soul". The final stage is depicted by the Phoenix Bird; the Adept is then said to have achieved the "Sorcerer's Stone". Thus, the fact that the term, "Sorcerer's Stone" is in the title of this book suggests that the ultimate goal of all students at Hogwarts is to achieve the Sorcerer's Stone.

Wow, that sure is an interesting interpretation of the rock that shows up in the book for like 6 pages and then is immediately destroyed! Alternate theory, if you’re open to it: It’s a rock, named the Philosopher’s Stone because the Philosopher’s Stone is historically the name of a rock, called the philosopher's stone, and it's literally just a rock and doesn't mean anything Satanist because it's a fucking ROCK.

(Pictured: A rock)

There’s a really odd part right after the long discussion about how alchemy and unicorns and whatnot are Satanic Illuminati symbols, where CE just takes a moment to explain the game of Quidditch. No commentary beyond a sassy little “[Even the Quidditch balls are 'enchanted'].” Just . . . sort of letting you know how the game is played.

To be fair, this is quite a valuable service, since I don’t think anyone actually understands how Quidditch works, but I’m not sure what it’s doing sandwiched between two declarations of Harry Potter’s obvious evil.

PART THE LAST THANK GOD: WHO THE FUCK NEEDS A SUBTITLE IT’S ALMOST OVER

The first few paragraphs are standard boilerplate conclusion stuff, reiterating the rest of the story, continued misunderstanding that bad things are done by the bad guys, no there really are drugs and Illuminati propaganda in here I promise, yadda yadda. Nothing noteworthy except for the fact that I found this sentence absolutely hilarious:

But, most horribly, we see depictions of Satanism that are truly End of the Age. We see the symbol of Antichrist, the Unicorn.

And so I leave you with this one final thought, because it’s all I can fit into the saggy mush that was once my brain:

From Genesis through Revelation, God demands His people separate themselves from the evil around them! SEPARATE! SEPARATE! SEPARATE!

S E P A R A T E

#harry potter #hp #rowling #jkr #this doesn't really count as fandom history does it?#i did discover this amazing site through f_w #tagging this as Christianity would be mean i think #but i'm ignoring the wank mostly and sticking to the FACTS #'facts' like 'harry potter's eyes are the color of satan'#WAKE UP SHEEPLE #this is the world's longest post and i'm not sure it's interesting to anyone except me #i got very tired at the end of this can you tell #i refuse to even consider editing this #you will take my thoughts as i have them #if the 'read more' doesn't show up IT IS NOT MY FAULT I FUCKING PUT IT THERE I SWEAR IT #quotes aren't showing up on mobile #can't do red text or fun fonts on desktop #this post is a goddamn disaster and it's what both i and this essay deserve

12 notes · View notes

kaspmatic · 5 years ago

Note

How would you say you relate to Eddie?

BIG FUCKING OOF –ok, I hope you guys are ready to go on a wild ride with me down memory lanehere. there is quite a bit that I can cover on how I relate to Eddie – soplease bear with me and if you read this then; kudos, brownie points, goldstars, all of that shit to you. I’m going to put my actual answer under a read morebecause I know this is going to get lengthy. And honestly, probably a littlepatchy and I might jump around a bit so I won’t force this shit on anyone whowon’t intentionally click that read more for the deets. LOL.

OVERBEARINGFAMILY - REPRESSED HOMOSEXUALITY

To lay a little backgroundon everyone, I grew up NOT knowing my biological father. I lost himat a young age and spent a lot of my younger years growing up with a singlemother – my mom worked in a hospital, so every little thing that happenedbecame a giant issue; I had a cough? go to the doctors. I was always cold? goto the doctors. I sneezed funny? go to the doctors. (I think you guys get mydrift with where I’m going here). as a child I spent a lot of time in and out of thehospital because of this, now I’m not saying my mom has Munchausen Syndrome byany means, she definitely didn’t force diseases onto me. I justrelate and understand that pain of always having to go to the hospitalfor the most trivial of concepts. As a child, however, I did spend quite a fewyears toting around an inhaler that I didn’t even fucking need. Call it a baddiagnosis or whatever you will – but it was still something that I had todo that I didn’t even need.

Not having my dad aroundlead for a lot of weird and one-sided views in my mind throughout my youngeryears of life – for a long time I had only the woman’s point of view onevery aspect (at least until my mom remarried years later - I was in myteens by that time).

To continue talking aboutmy overbearing mom – she still tries to be to this way alongsideher husband to this very day (hi, I’m fucking 32 years old here – just tothrow out my Grandma age on tumblr so you aren’t shocked in a paragraph or two).Everything has to be done a certain way or its wrong – they thrive on avery myway or the highway look of things, and this has been something that Ihave constantly had to push back against in more recent years - because I havefound love and support from those who are willing to tell me that its fuckingOK to not be the person your parents want you to be.

Like Eddie, I’ve lost partsof myself throughout life appeasing my family with moldingmyself to fit what they thought I should be - what I needed to be. The biggestissue being homosexuality. I grew up with a Catholic Grandmother who wouldat anychance and drop of a hat find any reason to bitch about the gaysin the most hate speech and closed minded filled way I have everheard in my entire existence. I grew up believing that I couldn’t come out –that I couldn’t truly be who I wanted to be because my family wouldn’t be onboard and I was terrified that they wouldn’t understand or support me and Ibelieved wholeheartedly that if I DID comeout, that I would lose each and every family member that I had becausemy Grandma and other members of my family have very strict views on it - andneed I repeat, are overwhelming overbearing and controlling. When I was firststruggling with the idea that I was part of the queer community, oddly enough,I was 13. By this point in time I was used to listening to my Grandma bitchabout the LGBT+ community for years. I remember one instancedirectly with my mom; we were on a vacation and I remember asking my mom what shethought of the LGBT+ community and she told me flat out that I wasn’t allowedto be Gay.

That right there told me everythingthat my young mind needed to hear. That no matter who I was as a person, that myfamily wouldn’t support me – even over something so simple as lovingsomeone of the same sex. I spent the next 17 years hiding who I was, just toappease the ideals that I thought I had to adhere to. I dated strictlyboys and it landed me in unhappy relationship after unhappy relationship– ultimately my last relationship with a CIS male was a completelycontrolling and abusive one. One where they wanted to control everyaspect of my life - much like how Myra does to Eddie once he’s given in andfallen to Sonia’s whims and has told himself that he has to take the easy wayout. I was miserable in the relationship and everything had to beapproved of by him. It was some of the darkest times in my life but thatrelationship was one that defined me and really made me realize just how unhappyof a life I was leading just by appeasing those around me.

Granted, my repression andcloseted sexuality doesn’t end there. I got out of that relationship when I was22 and spent years recovering from the sheer amount of abuse I was taking fromhim – all the while I was still so tightly wound into the clutches of myparents. I traded off from one controlling household, to a new controllinghousehold, and back to the one in which molded me.

I spent the next 8 yearsgoing through a lot – all the while I was being medicated on anything andeverything under the sun just to right me as a person – because obviouslythat’s the answer here. I spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals due tobad reactions to medications, medications not mixing well, just generallytrying to get myself back to WHO I was. I was just a shell of myself duringthese years, I was in college and struggling even more so with myself and mysexuality as a free bird – so to speak. I tried dating around and nevertold my family when I was with a woman because I didn’t know how. I didn’t knowhow to tell a family so openly against it that’s who I waswith. So, I continued to lie and appease and struggle.

The entirety of my closetedyears – those 17 years – I struggled with every sexual thought Ihad toward a woman. I hated myself. Told myself I was wrong and that it wasn’twhat I was supposed to do. It took me a long time and some reallyfucked up situations to really start to love myself for me. To understand thatno matter what – whether my family love me or accept me – that I am who Iam and NO ONE can fucking changethat.

Granted this story at thevery least has a happy ending, unlike Eddie’s, I met Ari and finally came outat 30 – much to part of my family’s dislike – but my parents wereaccepting and my Mom ultimately didn’t even fucking remember the trauma she hadinduced when I was young. BUT I DIGRESS….

EMOTIONS - DEALING WITHEMOTIONS

Eddie and I both similarlyshow our emotions – and it’s not always in the best light. I struggle withsomething called Emotional Overwhelm which I actually have a headcanon for I’vebeen meaning to write up for Eddie for fucking weeks since I went and saw ITChapter 2’s early release. It’s something that I recognized in Eddie and reallystruggle dealing with in day to day life. Emotional Overwhelm is an instancewhere things kind of pile the fuck up – everything,even if it’s something small, can feel like a deep wound. People whostruggle with emotional overwhelm feel things differently than normal – anoffhanded comment that could make one person laugh and blow it off will feellike a stab to the heart and a betrayal to someone who deals with it. Strugglingwith this kind of an emotional issue causes me to lash out at unnecessary timesand can be rather debilitating in relationships if your friends, family, oryour partners don’t understand it. It’s worse when you feel a sense of being “gangedup on” (at least for me) so during times of joking around I can easily lash outand take a simple joke as a complete attack.

My chest constricts – mybody will not allow me to breathe easily and if I don’t force it – and ithurts deeper than it should. My anxiety runs high during these times and that panicsets in deep. I can’t fathom emotions if there are too many in place, my mindwill refuse to address them so they pile up. During this time, my mind will fogand I can’t even process anything being said – for instance; if I’m in asituation where issues are being listed off to me and I start to hit thatemotional overwhelm peak – my mind is still focused on exhibit A while theperson is already listing exhibit E. My mind will not allow me to process situationslike this as a WHOLE not in a rapid-firesuccession. The buildup can be excruciating and takes a toll on my body that itall will spill out in a sassy, feisty, and – for the lack of a better word – kindof a shitty outburst.

Having these outbursts stemfrom growing up in a household where I wasn’t appropriately taughthow to handle my emotions. My family were not people who would discuss emotionsor situations where my emotions got “out of control” – it was always a “stophaving emotions” type argument. I was gaslighted, manipulated, and bullied intothinking any and all emotions were bad. Plain and simple. I wasn’t allowed tocompose my emotions into words as this was not a thing that would everhappen with my family.

Much like Eddie, I tend tohave my emotions out there regardless of what I was taught – regardless ofbeing able to recognize those emotions I hate talking about them. It’s a viciouscycle. Discussing my emotions brings out my emotional overwhelm and it’s justan all-around messy situation at that. So, I try my best to hide my emotions– I clench my jaw, I go silent, I refuse to talk about it, I completelyshut down – I’m stubborn. It takes someone remarkably special and someone Itrust completely for me to really level with them – to be raw and showevery little bit of emotion that I have. Someone who is tolerable of it andunderstands what I’m going through, how I process my emotions… So needless to say,I have only ONE person who I feel comfortable with being this raw andvulnerable towards given my home life. So, a lot of the time my emotions– if every questioned by anyone will mostly be met with anger, because itwas the one emotion I was used to receiving growing up. It’s easier to lash outthan it is to make yourself vulnerable.

When I’m not having a terriblytraumatizing day and my emotional overwhelm hasn’t taken over, I tend to hide myemotions behind my sass. If I magically have a day where I’m notcompletely losing it and on an emotional overload type of day, my hurt showsthrough real quick sass and sometimes it’s not always tasteful. My brainto filter usually shuts off when I’m hurt and I feel like I’m being come for.

UNDIAGNOSEDADHD - MENTAL HEALTH

Ok, this is another headcanonsituation I want to write up – mostly because of instances between Chapter 1 andChapter 2 that I picked up on. But I’m a firm believer that Eddie has undiagnosedADHD – take for instance the entire scene where they’re first introduced to TheClubhouse. Eddie’s reaction and the way he bounces from subject to subject withhalf sentences, his reaction to the paddle ball with Stan, his rapid fire nearlystumbling speech. I wholeheartedly believe that Sonia wasn’t concerned in theleast about mental health issues, only concerned for issues that would harmEddie physically and more in the realm of physical health issues.

Much like this, my Mom wasadamant that I didn’t have ADHD and refused to have me tested by any means. Istruggle with half sentences where my mind will be moving faster than my mouthor fingers – I notice this more when I’m typing, whether it be having adiscussion on discord or responding to replies. I don’t know how many times Ihave gone back to proof read and somehow, I’m missing portions of sentences andeverything is nearly a half thought. My mind processes things too quickly andone moment I’ll have my attention in one place and within a second something elsewill catch my attention. It’s always fast and catches nearly everyone around meoff guard that don’t really understand what’s going on.

To kind of wrap this backaround to my abusive situation and the lack of HELP in the metal health realm where the Mom’s are concerned. WhileI was dealing with these issues I dealt with a lot of mental health ailments(ptsd, manic depression, insomnia, and major anxiety/panic attacks to name afew.) these were all situations that required a lot of help through doctor’s,psychiatrists – you name it. But my Mom (and her husband) were always inthe realm of thought that a mental battle can be won without the use of medication– and this is honestly how I feel Sonia Kaspbrak thought and took mentalhealth issues. That they weren’t as big of an issue as say “health” issues areconcerned. That they were easily bypassed and just a “phase” that could begrown out of. Considering Sonia, who is a woman suffering with MunchausenSyndrome – mental health issues don’t get you the same attention as say asick and suffering child would with an actual sickness or disease that can beSEEN. And that is the biggest difference and I think why Eddie was nevertreated for having ADHD.

It’s seen, but it’s not onethat would necessarily bring about any sort of sympathy from others or keepEddie bound in her realm of control that she preferred to rule.

#Anonymous #⌊ they’re gazebos! they’re bullshit! ⌉ - ooc #ooc.#⌊ have you ever heard of a staph infection? ⌉ - answered #answered.

6 notes · View notes

frighthouseofalighthouse · 6 years ago

Note

Hey no problem! I hope it helped distract you for a bit! I'm glad I could give you something to write and maybe cheer you up a bit with some genuinely deep questions. I always feel good telling stories and sharing things I love! I can only hope it helps you too!

Thanks so much for sending a follow up message! I’m actually doing kind of shitty rn so I logged on to reblog the other ask with my answers and saw that you sent a followup! So this makes it easier!

Here are all the botanical asks:

Jasmine: Which mythological figure do you wish actually existed?

100% dragons!!! I want big dragons who I keep in my backyard, I want dragons the size of medium dogs, I want non-firebreathing dragons the size of bunnies! I! Want! Dragons!

Lavender: Soundcloud or vinyls?

This is weird because I don’t actually use either, but vinyls I guess???

Primrose: What book does everyone need to read right now?

Heretics Anonymous by Katie Henry! I read it on new year’s day (yes, just one day, it was that good). It takes place at a Catholic school, and it’s about a group of kids who form a secret club (the name is the title) who challenge the social norms of the Church in passive and ACTIVE ways. It’s about coming together for a common cause and overcoming differences in faith, and it’s about overwhelming love and acceptance, and how that’s what true faith should be. And it’s super, super funny.

Lunar Mist: Do you like wearing other people’s shirts/jackets?

I don’t do it too often currently, but yeah!!!

Bird of Paradise: What was the best thing that happened to you this month?

Probably the church youth conference I went to last weekend, where we talked about hope. I really needed a booster on that subject, and it was so amazing to be surrounded by other Christian youth so care about, support, and love me. It really got me thinking about the hope I need to keep feeding in order to overcome all the darkness I’ve faced in my life. And that no matter how bad I feel some days, I am SO SO glad to be alive (which logically I shouldn’t be, so it’s honestly a miracle and a great deal of the basis for my faith.)

Gardenia: What’s a promise you’ve recently made to yourself?

That I will always, always check on other people, because it’s not always visible when their hope is dim. And because I’ve already lost too many.

Lion’s Fairytale: Would you rather be in the sky, the ocean, or the forests?

The forests!!!! The ocean scares me, and the sky is weird. But there’s something about shade, and trees, and moss, and a rustling breeze, man.

Whirling Butterflies: Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

I have never said this before because prior to this, it was somebody different, but...YES. a thousand times yes!

Marmalade Skies: Do you plan your outfits?

Most of the time, yeah lmao

Apricot Drift: How do you feel right now?

Down in the dumps and depressed for like, literally no reason other than my brain chemistry. But I’m managing. And I get to eat dinner and watch Wheel of Fortune soon.

Everlasting Daisy: What’s the last dream you remember having?

Last night it was something about a ghost in our house and my stepdad wouldn’t believe it even though we saw a roll of toilet paper floating across the living room.

Queen’s Cup: What are you craving right now?

Pizza, pasta, ice cream, potato chips. XD

Lavender Dream: Turn ons/offs?

This is a really complicated question so I hope it’s cool if I just leave it blank for now??? Presently sex is a difficult subject for me because I am incapable of much physical intimacy as a result of trauma and just recently figured this out.

Water Lilly: When was the last time you cried? Why?

This morning because my stupid fucking state passed the Heartbeat Bill and it’s going to ruin so many women’s lives.

Lily of the Valley: Did the one person who hurt you most in your life apologize?

No. And I doubt she ever will. She doesn’t even acknowledge that she put me through hell, she’s still busy pinning everything on me.

Winterberry: Do you bite or lick your ice cream?

I take one bite off the top of the cone so it doesn’t fall over, then the rest is licking.

Honey Perfume: Favorite movie ever?

WONDER WOMAN. ALWAYS WONDER WOMAN

Desert Rose: Do you like yourself?

Occasionally. But I’m getting to a place of yes. Slowly.

Snapdragon: Have you ever met or seen in person a celebrity?

Sort of? Not super major ones but yeah. When I was 11 I met the band Gaelic Storm, when I was 14 I met the Christian pop artist Britt Nicole at a meet and greet, and in the past 3 years I’ve met two nationally bestselling authors who are from my area AND gotten signed books and writing advice from both of them: Cinda Williams Chima and Mindy McGinnis.

Night Owl: how many countries have you visited?

One, just the US

Heliotrope: Have you ever been in a castle?

NO, I WISH, IF I WENT IN A CASTLE I’D NEVER LEAVE. The closest things I’ve been in are Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio, and Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina.

Creams and Sky: What’s the craziest/bravest thing you’ve ever done?

Gotten up and done an Irish jig in front of a bunch of people at a folk music festival when I was like...10 maybe. idk, I can’t think of much lmao

Lantana: What’s on your mind right now?

I need to call my uncle because I made plans to watch a movie with him tonight and I really don’t feel like it.

Pumpkin Patch: What’s your zodiac sign?

Pisces sun, Capricorn moon, Leo Rising. And my Chinese zodiac is the metal dragon!

Tulip: Name 5 facts about yourself?

1) I have crooked pinkies, a result of extra tendons in the fingers which also cause reduced flexibility 2) I’ve never been to DisneyWorld and I hate amusement parks but I would love to go 3) I’ve been creatively writing since I was 6 years old 4) I took a sewing class when I was like 12 and made like pillow cases and a throw pillow and some curtains and stuff but I probably remember like none of it 5) I’ve had a lot of dreams/memories/weird experiences which lead me to believe that I had a past life.

Daphne: Do you believe in karma?

A form of it, yes. I believe God brings justice to those who deserve punishment in his own time. It’s hard to wait on it.

Queen of the Meadow: Ever been in love?

Yes, I fall in love super easily lmao

Wisteria: Whom do you admire and why?

Easy answer - my mom, because she’s overcome so much and been an amazing mother and teacher, even though she doesn’t believe she’s done well enough for me.

Angel’s Face: What was your favorite bedtime story as a child?

Lord of the Rings!

Now there’s still a lot more of these, but tumblr has a paragraph limit on posts now, so I WILL reblog this with the rest of the answers later this evening, I promise!

1 note · View note

sapphicscholar · 7 years ago

Note

your fics are helping me get through the shittiest breakup right now, so thank you. I know you probably have a million prompts but would you be interested in writing a story where maggie is having a really dark day and feeling really depressed/worthless within herself (either because of internalised homophobia, past trauma etc) and alex takes care of her? maybe even some soft tearful smut later?

Hey, I hope you’re doing alright! I’m sorry it’s taken me a little while to get to this prompt (I didn’t want to do a shitty job when my focus was so divided with work and applications). Sending all the best thoughts your way! It’s now posted to AO3.

Author notes:

CW on homophobia, abusive families, anxiety/depression, etc.

A/N: Now that we’re in the thick of the holiday season, I’ve gotten a few asks for chosen family and hurt/comfort. I know it can be really hard dealing with family (or making the perfectly legitimate choice not to but seeing posts on social media that make it seem like everyone else has a loving, supportive biological family). No matter what choice you make (and I know sometimes there really isn’t a choice, depending on the situation), I’m sending you all the best thoughts. I hope you’re able to make time for yourself, even if it just means finding a quiet room to be alone for a little bit, maybe some wifi to catch up on gay af fanfic or cute puppy gifs, which I’ll try to post in spades over the break when I have time to be on my phone or computer. There are links to resources here as well.

A/N 2: Regarding a few lines in this fic: Obviously not all religion is inherently homophobic, nor do I think anyone smart and scientific (e.g. Alex) must necessarily be an atheist. But I think for so many of us who were raised Catholic (fun foreshadowing here for the nerd notes at the end today), religion was something that shaped our upbringing in an often profound way and was then thrown back in our faces when we came out. Are there Catholics who don’t follow the Church on its teachings about LGBTQ issues? Of course. But, for instance, the fact that my family happened to be supportive of LGBTQ rights in a general way didn’t mean that I wasn’t terrified of coming out to them; it didn’t exempt me from years of internalized shame after hearing priests and religion teachers teaching that homosexuality was an intrinsic disorder of the soul; and it certainly didn’t save me from the humiliation of having to write that gay sexuality was a sin on a test to get an A, of knowing that I put the jobs of my family members who worked for the Church at risk just by being out, of being forced back into the closet to serve as a teacher at a Catholic high school. And even with all of that, I had it easy (and I certainly had it much easier than my fiancée), which I say not to guilt anyone who is still religious, but to explain the perspective from which I’m writing in advance.

Resources:National Domestic Abuse Hotline (online and phone options): http://www.thehotline.org/

US and International Hotlines for a variety of causes: https://sapphicscholarwrites.tumblr.com/post/167199297270/dont-ever-hesitate-reblog-this-tumblr-rule

Self-Harm Resources:http://myresourcemasterlist.tumblr.com/selfharmhttp://self-care-club.tumblr.com/post/139740925552/giant-self-help-masterposthttp://chooserecovery.tumblr.com/post/64162912692/ultimate-self-injury-recovery-masterpost

Suicide-specific resources:https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/https://themighty.com/suicide-prevention-resources/(For ones that link outside of the US):https://sapphicscholarwrites.tumblr.com/post/164643935260/selfharm-surviver-holybadbitch98https://sapphicscholarwrites.tumblr.com/post/164329606770/uie-fuwaprince-us-helplines-depression

Chapter Text:

“Are you and Maggie doing anything for Christmas?” Kara asked, popping another handful of popcorn into her mouth as she nudged Alex, who had started to nod off during the last episode of The Walking Dead.

“Hmm?”

“Christmas—what are you doing?”

“Oh,” Alex sighed, pulling herself up and rubbing at her eyes. “I don’t know. I mean…I know Maggie used to celebrate it with her family, but obviously that hasn’t been the case in years.”

“Right, right.”

“And it’s not like she goes to church at all these days.”

“I mean…you’re not exactly religious, but we still do Hanukkah with Eliza.”

Alex shook her head. “It’s different, I think. I was never religious; it was always more about…I don’t know, being with family and having something in common. I thought mom might be disappointed in me for being gay, but I never thought her reasoning would be that God said it was bad or anything like that.”

“Right,” Kara conceded. “But it might still be nice to celebrate together—you know, build new traditions.”

“I kinda fucked up with that whole thing on Valentine’s Day,” Alex sighed. Sure, they’d talked eventually and found a way to celebrate, to reclaim memories that had hurt Maggie for so many years. But Alex didn’t want to try to surprise Maggie this time and risk dredging up buried trauma once more. “I don’t know. I’ll talk to her.”

Closing her eyes, Maggie blinked back hot tears that threatened to fall. She focused on her breathing: Breathe in—1, 2, 3, 4, 5—hold—1, 2, 3—exhale—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. She fumbled to take off her watch, finding her pulse and focusing on its too fast beat, waiting for it to slow in time with her deep breathing. She ignored the clock, ignored the reminders of how soon Alex would be home, how weak she would look sitting at the kitchen counter and crying over a piece of paper—a stupid Hallmark greeting card with some trite bullshit scrawled across it in fake cursive.

Of course, the card itself hadn’t set her off. It was the hand-written note inside. The sight of the same handwriting that had adorned the rare note in her lunchbox in kindergarten was what had left her eyes stinging, not the vague platitudes about having a very merry Christmas and an even happier New Year. As she read, she was overcome with surges of anger and sorrow and a guilt that she had never quite been able to shake, no matter how much “pride” she claimed.

She tried to seize on the anger—the rage and frustration that she’d used as motivation to succeed: to do well enough in school to get herself out of that small Nebraska town; to do well enough in college to keep her scholarship; to do well enough in the academy to guarantee her a job, even as a non-straight, non-white woman. And there was plenty of it. Anger at her father’s suggestion that her family had always been there for her, as though they hadn’t left her alone at her aunt’s house with barely enough clothing for the week. Rage at this idea that she had been the one to wrong the family simply by living her life honestly and authentically, that she had ruined something otherwise perfect by being herself. Frustration at the phrase, “your friend,” as though her father hadn’t stormed out of their bridal shower precisely because Alex was so much more than just a friend, as though he hadn’t forced her out of her home and family as a mere child because her feelings for Eliza exceeded the bounds of friendship.

But then there was the photo of all of the cousins and nieces and nephews she’d never met. There were sentences about just how much older everyone had gotten, the sickness and bad times they’d been through without her there, the deaths she’d never known about, let alone mourned. Because she’d already done that—mourning the loss of a family that still existed—but not for her. Not with her.

It still got to her, still struck her with a guilt that felt like it could wrench her open, could undo everything she’d worked for, could tear down every inch of progress and confidence and sense of self she’d fought to build for herself.

Maybe he was right. Maybe they were all right. Maybe she was selfish—selfish for putting herself and her desires above her family, the people who had raised her, who had sacrificed their lives to try to make hers better.

And there was another voice—much quieter, harder to hear, harder to believe—that seemed to call back, to tell her that she was worth it, that her life wasn’t worth sacrificing on the altar of bigoted beliefs, no matter who else worshiped there. She thought the voice sounded an awful lot like Alex’s, and its echoes, the voices of her new family: M’gann and J’onn and James and Kara and Eliza and Winn and everyone else who had come together to prove to her that she had people in her corner even when she felt most alone and least worthy of love.

But they were just that: voices. And in the face of the letter, its words right there, her fingers able to trace over them, feel the indents where her father had pressed down just a little harder, those marks and proof of a family that existed in reality—a family she could barely even think of as family anymore—those voices advocating for her faded to the background, drowned out in a chorus of self-loathing so overpowering she could barely manage to stagger toward the bed, her deep breathing long forgotten.

—

Alex found her there nearly an hour later. Her body was rigid, trembling every so often but otherwise catatonic. She looked as pale as Alex had ever seen her, and there were tear tracks streaked across her cheeks, her eyes puffy and rubbed raw from the harsh swipe of her shirt sleeves. Her fingers were clenched into fists, and her short nails were leaving deep moon-shaped imprints in her palms.

“Maggie!” Alex called out, rushing forward. She’d seen her like this once before—just once—and it had terrified her as much then as it did now. Remembering her DEO training, she forced herself to stay calm, to detach herself from the situation and let her medical instincts take over.

“Hey, Maggie, it’s me, Alex,” she said, her voice low and even as she knelt down on the ground next to her, pulling out the bottle of water she carried with her in her bag and putting it beside Maggie on the bedside table. “You okay if I sit here?”

Maggie managed to get herself to nod.

“Great. And if that changes, I can move, okay? I’m going to stay with you, but I can be a little farther away, or I can get closer if you want.” She paused to let Maggie process. “Do you think you can breathe with me?”

“It’s not helping,” Maggie forced out, her teeth chattering shut.

“Maybe if we do it together, it’ll help a little, okay?” Alex murmured. “Can I put a blanket on you?” Seeing the nod of assent, Alex pulled out the fluffiest blanket they had—the one with no tags, no rough patches or odd seams, the one that Maggie had wrapped around her after everything with her dad and Cadmus—and carefully draped it over Maggie, taking care not to tuck it under her, lest she feel trapped. Feeling how cold Maggie was to the touch, she slipped over to the edge of the room and turned up the thermostat before making her way back over to the bed.

She knelt next to Maggie, helping her to slow her breathing, holding her hand once she told her it was okay to touch, checking her pulse and smiling broadly as it came down to close to normal levels, telling Maggie just how proud she was when she was able to unclench her muscles and relax slightly into the mattress. Once the worst of it seemed to be over, she got Maggie to drink water and stretch out her stiff muscles.

“What do you say to a hot bath together? It’ll warm you up, and we can light the nice candles.”

“Even the cookie one?”

“Definitely the cookie one,” Alex agreed, smiling at the signs of Maggie returning. A few moments later, she came back into the bedroom, having lit the candles and begun filling the bath. “You good to walk?”

“Yeah,” Maggie nodded, standing up and rolling her neck to work out the cricks that had developed in it. She still let Alex take her by the hand and walk her to the bathroom, cracked a joke or two when Alex asked to help take off her clothes, grinned when Alex pulled out the extra fluffy towels they had picked up a few weekends ago and set them on the radiator to warm while they were in the bath.

For a while they relaxed in silence, Maggie sitting between Alex’s legs, her head resting on Alex’s shoulders while Alex ran her fingers through Maggie’s hair.

“My dad wrote,” Maggie said, her voice quiet.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Do you think I’m a bad person?”

“What? No, Maggie, never. You’re—god, you’re one of the best people I know.”

“That’s not true. You know Supergirl.”

“Yeah, well Supergirl never gives me the last slice of pizza, and you always offer to share.”

Maggie snorted, shaking her head against Alex’s shoulder. “That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean? Because honestly, Maggie, you are one of the most caring people I know. I—you’ve made me better. And not just by helping me to come out,” she clarified, anticipating Maggie’s objection that anyone could’ve done that with enough perseverance or bluntness. “You’ve made me rethink some of those things I assumed I knew. You helped me to see aliens who weren’t just like my sister as people who needed protection, not just prosecution or imprisonment. You showed me possibilities for a life I never thought I’d have.”

“But you didn’t say anything about my family. People have died, Alex—people I loved, people who loved me. They died, and I didn’t know.”

“There’s a difference between choosing not to know and never having been told.”

“Is there? Phones exist. Hell, mail exists. I never tried reaching out.”

“You did nothing wrong!” Alex tried to bite back her anger, knowing that wasn’t what Maggie needed. “Look, I get where you’re coming from. But self-preservation, knowing to take care of yourself—that matters too. You had no way of knowing how they would react if you tried to reach out. They had already hurt you, Maggie.”

“Still. They’re family.”

“And so am I, but if I hurt you—god, Maggie, if I hurt you that way, I wouldn’t want you to feel like you owed me anything. You don’t owe anyone your forgiveness.” Trying to find words, Alex let out a sigh of frustration. “You did try, Maggie. Think about it that way. You tried—you invited your dad to our bridal shower, in part because I wasn’t thinking quite clearly. I thought…I could only think in terms of my own relationship with my mother. And we went through some rough, rough periods, but it was different. I didn’t see that clearly then. But you gave him a chance he didn’t deserve—a chance you were good and pure and kind enough to give him—and he threw it away.”

“He came.”

“Yes, and he left.”

“I know,” Maggie huffed. “And I thought that would be it! And if it was…well, maybe this would all be easier, you know? God, I just—he said no! He doesn’t want me the way I am. So why won’t he stop acting like it’s my fault?”

“I don’t know,” Alex admitted, her voice barely a whisper as she wrapped her arms around Maggie. “I really don’t. And I don’t—I don’t have the perfect advice to offer. I’m happy to call him and yell at him, or get a restraining order, or burn the letter, or ignore it entirely and hold you, or kiss you until you can’t think about anything else. I mean, whatever you want, you know? I’m here for you, and I’ll support you no matter what you choose.”

“Even if I choose vegan ice cream and a whole night of Rizzoli and Isles?” Maggie teased, opting to ignore the tears prickling the corners of her eyes.

“Even both of those terrible choices.”

“You love Rizzles just as much as I do.”

“You’re a cop! How do you deal with all the procedural violations?”

“I watch for the hot ladies with delightful romantic chemistry on my screen and put up with the rest.”

“Yeah, yeah. They don’t even get to make out, though.”

“Neither do half of the actual gay couples on television!”

“Fine,” Alex whined, though she kissed Maggie’s cheek anyway, which led Maggie to turn around, finding Alex’s lips with her own and letting herself be held, letting herself be cared for.

Eventually they got out of the tub, the water having grown lukewarm. Wrapped up in a fuzzy towel, Maggie nudged Alex with her shoulder. “You think it’s okay that I don’t try to reach out to him for Christmas?”

“I think that’s your decision, and you are allowed to celebrate however you want.”

“I mean…I want to celebrate by going sledding and destroying you in a snowball fight.”

“Whatever you want within reason,” Alex clarified, laughing at Maggie’s pout. “And maybe, just maybe, we can think about traveling somewhere cold for a vacation. Don’t see why we’d want to, though,” she added, winking at her fiancée.

“So cheesy movies and as much junk food as Kara can bring over? And maybe when she leaves you and I can find our own way to celebrate…”

“I think that sounds perfect.”

#ask me #anon #prompt fill #fanfic #cw homophobia #cw family abuse #cw depression #angst #hurt/comfort #sanvers #supergirl #maggie sawyer #alex danvers #kara danvers #holidays #maggie-centric #ao3feed

27 notes · View notes

mujer--solitaria · 5 years ago

Text

What have u just learned?

That ur body knows u better than u can rationalize it.

There are these very distinct episodes or events in my life where I took a thing too much. A little weed, a lil cigarette, a lil alcohol, and when I would explain these things, I was so aware of how full of shit I sounded, “Oh, I didn’t mean to!” But I hadn’t meant to. The thing is some of these events ran concurrent with emotionally high states and exasperated them. Not the getting lit part, but the hangovers, the paranoia, my body’s response to crossing the line. The same way certain emotional breakdowns ran concurrent with severe flu episodes. I think, it just occurred to me this morning, that they might’ve happened because I needed permission, permission to feel the underlying thing. I insist that I did not experience it like that at first at all. It was always just a shot or puff or drink too many, a mundane bit over the line. But in the way we are art and the way things have gone lately, I can see how I foretold my own future and grabbed at things that would later reveal themselves to be truly apropos, when I had thought I was simply making a mistake, and a short-sighted one.

The thing is it just happened again this morning, I just did it again. I smoked two cigarettes and got a stomachache. I had sworn to myself not to, and having been a swimmer and a runner before the pandemic, I still identify as such. I was trying to fend off negative feelings and judgement of myself over it, and it turns out, my period had just come in the interim.

So I asked myself, why did I rationalize impending cramps as shame? Previously, I had rationalized the physical and emotional pain as coincidental, and that therefore, they were at least equal in strength. But now, I think I just learned to not be so hard on myself. To be careful with my sentiments. To take it easy. I think the Catholic in me is always just ready with the shame and everything latches on to it. In a moment like that, like this, being kind to myself means that pain should be listened to first before it is explained because at my hands is a language that’s trying to explain a phenomenon, myself, which is much greater than it. My relationship to how I treat my body is much more important than judging myself for a moment of weakness or wanting to feel a little bit of recklessness during this global pandemic. And yeah, its collective trauma but I’m not gonna call it that. I want to call it, from my point of view, collective permission. A collective code switch.

Most of us are in contact with that which we don’t like, and I believe in rants. Rant is my middle name. But I also understand that the people who we are ranting about because they are or aren’t taking advantage of the new circumstances, those people who don’t take up a new skill or the new influx of sex workers, I also want to add that those people we are judging might already know this on some level, and that’s where the code switching comes in. It’s about privilege. For example, a local music producer and what I call a sort of archivist was going on about how there’s no excuse now not to learn a new instrument or skill, as he is a champion of this school of thought. Personally, I have been practicing a more anti-hustle mindset in favor of rest, but as a person of skin color privilege, what can I learn from him as a black man? Let him be! He’s a very particular person, and besides, while I understand the value of rest, and my mom in particular should fucken rest, I really, really, really don’t want to act like our millennially-learned way of being is the most high for all marginalized people. Yes, rest benefits all generations, but migration’s way of living gave us everything we have. Leave them alone, leave us alone. There’s a pro and con to them both. None of this is helping me deal with a parent who can’t stop and will actually rebel against me trying to care for her.

Another person who went on an important rant was a Black sex worker who was talking about the new influx of people joining to make easy money. As a person of skin color privilege, how do I move with them? I look at my experience and make it so I agree, because she’s not wrong. I totally 100% get the rant because I, myself, went on a rant where I sort of wished harm on the newbies. That for better or worse, yall will learn today. But I will also add that I’ve never not heard a sex worker say they wanted to try another line of sex work business because they thought it would be easier. We could play bingo with that. Many of us enter the business thinking that to some degree. I say this for myself and for the people I’ve worked with. I say this as someone who first learned of the sex worker communities on tumblr before venturing into the clubs myself and found that there was a huge gap between the two. I have yet to find an in-person place that was as hardcore as them, social justice-wise.

This is why its difficult for me to agree that a revolution is coming because there’s always a gap, and not everyone understands that. They think, we think that distance means we can get away with something and pretend its not there, which it does, unfortunately. But it also means dissonance, and that u are looking away from the thing that is actually right next to u and that sometimes u share with someone very different than u. That’s not the kind of body we should be building. The revolution without this will not be inclusive for me and I know it will not be for others.

Its been right next door, the revolution and what precedes it, and we just pretended not to know what was going on. We heard the screams, we heard the death. I know that we learn new shit all the time, and I’m also ranting here, but it just helps me, personally, to resituate things, deconstruct, recontextualize. I’ve been waiting for a revolution to happen a long time using many different frames and lenses. When I was younger, I used to go to a lot of protests and it always felt like the revolution was going to happen any moment now. I’m just not for the kind of language that makes me feel good about it anymore, not only, as if its going to happen widely. I have a steady full time job now for the first time in, like, ever, and it’s a job I hate and I’m happy. If that’s not the cherry on top of cynicism, I don’t know what is. Right now, in this moment in history, in this dynamic, frightening moment in history, I am finally free-ish. I’m often not on the same page as others so that’s where my lesson is from. The revolution is illusive because it goes by another name.

I think the revolution is a collective permission to perhaps to not be on the same page. At least it is mine. Collectively, I think permission is in some ways subtle, and it will take a long time to get it together, but the revolution also involves something as big as knowing that the president was going to, that this was going to happen a second term. How did we not see this coming? That the good people don’t strike back like that, we so far haven’t, and the longer u insist that u will, its already gone, that method no longer exists for u, for me. And I think I just learned something else.

It takes so little to ruin everything, and it takes so much to fix it. I think that while people are good and deserve love, that dissonance points to the truth of our nature. We are infinitely destructive beings, and it would help me to move forward on my education and building with that in mind. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I love people who have different roles in our community, but we’re all on different parts of our journey. It has served me better to accept that than be mad at one another during a nationally mismanaged crisis, at people who I share something with.

0 notes

quadrophenicc · 7 years ago

Photo

Alice Glass and Lydia Lunch on Why Pleasure is the Ultimate Feminist Rebellion

Alice Glass ran away from home for the first time when she was 14 years old. She moved into a dilapidated house in downtown Toronto, split the rent with 20 other teenagers, and, one year later, ran into Ethan Kath high out of her mind in the streets. The two went on to form Crystal Castles, the witchy, bleakly aggressive electronic Toronto outfit that came to define a certain sound of the mid-aughts. The band’s front woman, she was so much more than just a figurehead—she was a magnetic force to be reckoned with. Crystal Castles toured for six years straight, and in October of 2014, she broke out on her own. Now Glass is preparing to release her debut solo album. The new offering is dark—she has compared its sound to “kittens eating their hoarding owners after they die”—and its first single, “Stillbirth,” is an anthem for domestic violence survivors, a screaming, visceral cry. This music is personal—her most intimate offering yet—representing a move toward a style that reaches outside electronica. Lydia Lunch, the legendary No Wave poet, writer, speaker, and musician, called Glass from her home in Park Slope. The two spoke about crawling out of bedroom windows, how the nuclear family is the ultimate fascist society, and just how art has saved them, time and again.

Alice Glass—Thanks so much for agreeing to talk with me, Lydia! This is an honor.

Lydia Lunch—I wish I was out in L.A. driving around with you through Echo Park right now, but we’ll have to do this on the psychic and verbal plane for now.

Alice—I’d like to imagine that. I can’t drive, so I’m going to imagine you driving.

Lydia—I was reading up on you, and it seems that we’ve had a quite similar background as teenage runaways and upstarts. We knew what we had to do.

Alice—I moved [away] from home when I was about 15. I just couldn’t live there anymore and the community I was in, it just seemed like the natural thing to do.

Lydia—Yeah, the microcosm of a fascist society: the nuclear family. Get the fuck out! I ran away for the first time when I was about 13. I snuck out my basement window. I came to New York and I went, “Oh my God, I know what I might possibly have to do and I’m going to go find some money so I don’t have to be forced into that.” So, I went back and got money. I lied about my age and got a job as a maid in a hotel, which was quite convenient if you like to steal and fuck the engineers, which I did. You have to do what you have to do, which is not only escape but create.

Alice—I remember sneaking out a window as well, but we lived in a Victorian house so my room was on the third floor. It was really difficult; I had hoses connected to all the nooks and crevices. It’s pretty fucking dangerous to think about now, but I felt pretty good about it then.

Lydia—I just went back to my hometown for the first time in 30 years and toured a lot of my old stomping grounds. I grew up in a black ghetto in Rochester, New York, and I kind of traced some of the paths of memorable, horrific moments. I had my first storytelling experiences under someone’s shotgun to my head—paid storytelling at 13. I think that set me on my path.

Alice—It’s weird, the only time that I can really get nostalgic is seeing the alley that my friends and I used to hang out in. It’s always used in movie sets, because it’s cheaper to film in Canada, but they to try and make it look like New York. They always use the exact same alley.

Lydia—When did you start writing, Alice?

Alice—I always kept journals and wrote little bits of poetry. When I was a kid, my parents worked in the city and I was left to my own devices a lot, so I’d just wander around singing melodies. I was in the school choir—I went to Catholic school.

Lydia—Me too! Look at how much good that did us. The devil goes to Catholic school.

Alice—[Laughing.] Yeah, my grandparents were definitely really religious, and my grandmother gave me a lot of Catholic guilt, even when I was going to church.

Lydia—I’ve never had a moment of guilt in my life. My father was a door-to-door Bible salesman at one point and, trust me, he was not at all religious. He was just trying to get into women’s houses. At nine, I was reading this really beautiful, highly illustrated, full-color 10-pound bible, and that’s when I just said, “God is a Marvel comic.” I didn’t have the God-haul that some people have.

Alice—Yeah. When I was nine years old I had a lot of friends that were boys, and I’d make up stories for us to play that involved being Power Rangers or whatever. One of the most prominent Catholic school stay-at-home moms started a rumor that I was actually friends with them because I was giving them hand jobs. I had no idea what that was!

Lydia—You know, I don’t have a lot of the normal, what I consider “cancer-causing” emotions, and I think it’s because, unlike a lot of traumatized people, I never turned the knife inward. I turned it outward. I started writing really violent poetry and I never felt any guilt. There were a lot of emotions, because I came out of such hatred and anger. But I flat-lined and built emotion. The stuff I do is very heavy and aggressive, and people think it’s negative, but I have so much empathy. I’m angry at the fucking world, but I’m not angry with anybody specifically.

Alice—I definitely can relate to that sentiment. I think that trying to channel that energy through art and performance and turning that anger into something creative and positive saved my life. I was someone that did internalize the events that happened to me, and I had a really hard time overcoming depression and feelings of worthlessness. I self-harmed from a really young age thinking it was something that I needed to do. [Music] felt like a relief, like I finally had control over myself. That’s something that I’ve been able to get now creatively.

Lydia—Because all of those emotions are things that people put upon you, they’re not how you ever were. I realized at a pretty early age that whatever the individual circumstances of our traumas were, I should never feel that my experience is unique. I felt that they were universal traumas for women, children, and the nuclear family—I had to come out and tell them. I’m trying to speak for and about those that have a mouth but don’t know how to scream yet or can’t find the words. That’s why so many sensitive, weird, outside “freaks”—and I say that with the highest of compliments—come to both of us. They need the mouth that can scream, that can whisper, that can sing, that can detail and find a way to express the existential horror of existence. Fuck you if you think I’m going to hate shit just because you made me hate you. Oh no, I’m very rebellious. It’s the individual duty as a rebel who will not be forced into the cycle of abuse to find, like what you do in music, beauty through the horror.

Surviving and existing a lot of the time is like a ‘fuck you’ to all the energy that’s put into trying to destroy us.

Alice—Yes, wow. I mean that’s my goal. Music is cathartic and I do feel like it’s something that I’m still kind of dealing with. I’ve only been able to get out and realize it now, because I was taking so many things internally and putting the guilt and blame on myself. There are things I’m doing on this new record that I would never have felt confident enough to do before. It’s very emotional music. There’s a personal message behind every song, but what I’m singing about is more than just personal. These past couple years have just been about recognizing that—I think that most people are fundamentally good—but that there are just people out there that take advantage of the optimism that others have for life.

Lydia—Well, there’s also a magnetism to victimology. I guess that’s why I became a predator at a very early age. I used sex as—I wouldn’t necessarily say a weapon—but kind of as a battery charger, and I was always the predator, because I needed an accelerated state of existence.

Alice—I love that. I do think I can relate to that. I think that finding other women in the punk scene that share that kind of sentiment is important, and I really don’t think that you can be punk without being a feminist and without being empathetic towards all walks of life. It’s kind of a little bit like being a hippie but being more aggressive instead of being passive. All of my female friends felt the same way—banding together is kind of what propelled me to not give in and get had, at least not immediately.

Lydia—I came up in a very different time. The late 70s. The scene that you came out of had a much more—or tried to have a much more—positive community spirit. There was a huge community of various types of artists, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, etc., but we were highly negative in the sense that we were completely disappointed by the failure of the 60s. Some of the biggest influences on my reactionary behavior were the failure of the Summer of Love bookended by the summer of hate by Charles Manson—very impressive—the Vietnam War, Kennedy’s assassination, and Kent State. These were things that really defined that attitude of my generation to come out and make music that was so incredibly violent. As opposed to, I’m not going to say punk rock, because I’m No Wave—No Wave, to me, means not audience friendly. I always felt outside of every collective I was in. Although I’ve collaborated with a lot of people, I’ve always felt kind of outside it.

Alice—I definitely romanticize the scene you came up in, the late 70s and early 80s, because it did feel more individual-based. By my time, it’s kind of like you have a sincere idea of something that can be razor sharp, and then after a while it trickles down and it turns into something that doesn’t even resemble the original. The climate that I was in was completely male-driven, almost like sports or something, where all the local men could sort of come together in the community. I wasn’t so much part of a scene as I was around one.

Lydia—Exactly. That’s what was so interesting about No Wave: there were so many women in bands, doing films, doing photography, doing art, and it wasn’t so much of an issue at that point. It wasn’t a gender issue. We were in a city that was bankrupt, that looked like Beirut on the Hudson, which was so criminal in all aspects, from the government, to the police, to the purposeful burnout of the Lower East Side and the Bronx. Gender was the least of our issues and it wasn’t such a big deal at that point.

Alice—It seemed like, growing up, that women’s liberation wasn’t so much of an issue. It wasn’t something that was really talked about, it was just kind of assumed, but to a dangerous degree where I was idealistic about people that I was surrounding myself with. Me and my friends were all 14 or 15 going to shows, and it was kind of a way for men in their 40s to prey on that idealism. There is one band that’s been [playing] since the 80s, and in Toronto you had to give respect to them even though they fucking suck. The lead singer guy was in his 40s and would prey on 14-year-old girls—sleep with them in a bathroom at an all-ages punk show. He just kept getting away with it. That was the climate.

I really don’t think that you can be punk without being a feminist and without being empathetic towards all walks of life.

Lydia—I was trying to readdress the imbalance of sexual power when I was 13 to probably 24. It felt like it was my duty to go out and be the predator. I felt that I was not just avenging myself, but kind of avenging women in general. I never had any personal animosity against the individual male. My animosity has always been against the greater cabal of the “cock-ocracy” and the kleptocracy and the patriarchy. The problem with society is that it’s not about the rights of the individual, which is what it was supposed to be. It’s not even about the rights of the collective or the majority. It’s about the wants, the greed, the desires of the minority, which is 1 percent of the population. What the fuck is the solution? I don’t have it. But in the meantime, I’m going to continue to fucking complain about it, because all I can do is try and articulate the frustrations and point out that in the last election there was no fucking option. Because they threw the only option under the bus.

Alice—Bernie.

Lydia—Bernie Sanders. The last person I voted for was Larry Flynt because, actually, not only does he believe in freedom and liberty for all, but he actually pays to have political sex scandals in the public eye. Yeah, “Hustler” magazine. Chew on that one for a while.

Alice—It’s great to talk to someone who I feel has a great grasp on the situation, more than anyone else that I’ve really talked to. I went to the Women’s March in Los Angeles, and it was really powerful to see so many people take a stance for humanity and everything, but it’s like, what do we do next?

Lydia—I think every woman needs to know self-defense and needs to be mentally armed if not physically armed. You need to at least feel safe in your own home. When I moved to New Orleans from New York in 1990, 17 cops were arrested. I decided to take gun training because I wasn’t going to be the victim of a fucking road cop. So now I have more gun training than the New York City police force. It’s always been “Apocalypse Now” for me, that’s the state of mind I live in. Numbers mean nothing: one death may be a tragedy, but one million is a fucking statistic—you can’t comprehend it. You can’t comprehend three quarters of a million Iraqis dead. Agent Orange, for what? Because our pawn in the game decided not to fucking play by the rules anymore. Happens over and over again. Welcome to America, asshole. Oh yeah, we’re supposed to be talking about your new album!

I was trying to readdress the imbalance of sexual power when I was 13 to probably 24. It felt like it was my duty to go out and be the predator.

Alice—[Laughing.] Whatever. I mean, music is kind of a lot less interesting to talk about right now.

Lydia—Well no, because it’s what saves you. It’s the only way we have to rebel, with music, art, literature, spoken word. Even at my most quote-unquote negative, I still think there is beauty in the “brutarian” poetry. They will not steal my sense of wonder; they will not kill my love of hedonistic pleasure. I always close my solo shows with this: Pleasure is the ultimate rebellion. The first thing they steal from us as women is pleasure at the brink of the apocalypse, pleasure at the mouth of the volcano. Pleasure. And that’s why we create.

Alice—As an individual, I think that just surviving and existing a lot of the time is like a “fuck you” to all the energy that’s put into trying to destroy us.

Lydia—And let’s not only say “Fuck you, and fuck you again,” but, “Hey, you know what? I’m gonna fuck you and I’m gonna like it. There you go motherfucker, how ’bout that?” Can I get an oh yeah, oh yeah?

#Alice Glass #Lydia Lunch #documentjournal #crystal castles

33 notes · View notes

autisticadventurer · 7 years ago

Text

My History

CW: emotional, sexual, and financial abuse, suicide, drugs and alcohol, conversion therapy, divorce, homelessness, seriously... you name it.

For the very young among my readers, and for those who simply weren’t aware of what was happening in the queer community in the 90′s, let me tell you a little more about my family.

My dad is from a city. His family later moved to a more rural environment, but he also grew up with a cosmopolitan experience. His mom’s parents were filthy rich and disinherited her for eloping with my grandpa but my dad still got to do rich people things when he was a kid. He has funny memories of his grandma nearly killing them because she was too drunk to drive but he also remembers doing farm labor as a teenager. He was a math whiz and played varsity football his sophomore year but had to quit after a car accident when the doctors discovered that one of his kidneys is totally non functional and the other is under developed. When he joined the Air Force, he was training to be a helicopter flight mechanic but there is something wrong with his depth perception so he was recycled and ended up with the far less glamorous but still noble position of cooking. Cooking runs in our blood.

My mom is from a very small town, 1000 people or so. The only diversity she ever really knew was Lutheran or Catholic and because of her heritage on her biological dad’s side, she may have been the only Jewish person in town. She was raised Catholic, though, by her mom and step dad. Her stories of childhood have a much different tone than my dad’s do. She was constantly angry at her mom for being too stupid. She earned average grades in all subjects and helped in the family store from the time she started high school. She played basketball for a few years in school, but most of her time was spent getting drunk probably because she had no framework to understand her attraction to other women. When she joined the Air Force, she did so as a diet tech.

My parents met in a kitchen on an Air Force base thousands of miles from their home states. My dad told me that it was love at first sight. My mom has never talked about it. Their marriage was unhappy. They produced two children and then divorced a few years later. My dad was depressed for years and my mom openly shamed his depression to us kids. I have heard so many versions of why he left the Air Force but he was the primary parent when I was a kid. After the divorce, he struggled to find suitable work.

My mom convinced us kids not to visit my dad more than once and even forbade us from visiting him on other occasions. I remember being coerced into signing a contract that we would not visit him at all when I was eleven. I figured out that my mom was gay when I was seven. Luckily, I had not been exposed to other culture stories about homosexuality before this so for me it was just data. We had to keep it a secret from the Air Force. In the 90′s being queer could cost you your job, especially in the military. This secrecy was used to convince us to keep our mouths shut about all the abuse that was happening in the home. “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll be investigated and lose my job.”

Ironically, my mom preached tolerance while perpetrating all kinds of conversion therapy on me that would have left me traumatized for life if I had not taken matters into my own hands as an adult. It was on a nearly daily basis that she openly declared my sibling the favorite and called me Number Two. I think that may have something to do with why I make so many poop jokes. I tried to earn her love and respect by doing well in school but my straight A’s did nothing but only further enrage her. When my IQ was tested at the age of 8, she denied the score because scores in that range almost always point to autism and she was working her ass off to deny that part of me. She even hid my fidget, my teddy bear, from me as a prank on more than one occasion. Imagine what it is like to have a mother who makes fun of you as a rule and will only show you love if you act right, and you never act right because you’re not right.

You can imagine that I lived with my dad as often as I could. My dad is strange though. He would only want both of us to live with him. He was also very poor but I didn’t care because being able to breathe freely was a luxury that I didn’t have when living with mom. (I actually had to see a specialist at one point because my stress was preventing me from being able to breathe. The muscles in my neck were locking up but this only lead to being teased about putting less strain on my vocal chords. She didn’t love me at all.) Living with my dad wasn’t perfect. I was unable to continue the swim team into high school because my dad was fearful of me riding in a car to get to practice (unresolved trauma from his past) and his work schedule prevented him from taking me. But I was allowed to be in the IB Program and I begged my way into a few summer camps at the university. During my Junior year, my mom and dad got into a stupid fight and my dad lost it. I can’t say I blame him now because as an adult, I understand my mom’s power to provoke and pick at emotional wounds... but at the time, all I could think was, “what the fuck?” and I had that thought for years.

We ended up back with mom who wanted me to drop out of IB and get a job which also derailed my plans to attempt to get into MIT and they had been scouting me since I took my PSAT. Why did I do what my mom wanted me to do? I guess I trusted her, I still saw her only as my mommy and not as the manipulative, abusive person that she is. Staying in the IB Program would’ve led to my finding a suitable job but you have to remember, she hated the idea of having a genius child because that meant having an aspergers/autistic child and she retained her small town mentality for fear and shame of difference. In a weird way, not becoming an engineer has worked out for me and if she hadn’t treated me like so much dog shit for 25 years, we’d probably still have a relationship. My relationship with my dad was later repaired because he apologized for what had happened as a result of the fight.

During my twenties, I was chronically homeless. Although I did well in school, because I was taught, but nobody ever taught me how to live in this world. I struggled to find work because I am strange, I cannot work full time because of the intensity of my sensory processing disorder, and the paychecks I earned were never enough to even cover rent, let alone food or a phone bill or student loan payments. I tried living with family, which meant my mom, and this only lead to my second suicide attempt at the age of 25. (My first was at age 12, also while living with my mom.) My sibling found me and I woke up in the psych ward a couple days later. It was after this that I lived in a home called a Board and Lodge. About a third of us were autistic but requiring less staff than a traditional group home. There were also people with physical injuries, drug addiction, prison re-entries, and one guy with schizophrenia. It was not a safe place to live because there was a great deal of abuse amongst the residents and staff due to what I think was a social power struggle. It was so bad that some of the staff wouldn’t even perform their jobs appropriately and I reported it when I moved out.

I’m leaving a lot out: my years in college, my marriage and divorce, my time in a cult, being taken advantage of financially, the sexual assault, and other things. Being unable to recognize danger does not magically help an autistic person recognize danger. I have a lot to thank my therapist for because she has mentored me to help me recognize danger and to help me see the world as it is. She has helped me to build life skills and self care skills so that I can live independently and not be at the mercy of people who don’t understand autism and think they’re doing me a favor by trying to abuse me into being normal. I am hoping against hope that I can find a part time job in this state that will be understanding of my autism and accommodate me in the way the law requires them to. I have a lot to give but I cannot give what I do not have.

Everyone you know has a hidden past that has been molded and shaped by the hidden past of their parents and grandparents. Try to put a hold on judgements and assumptions, if you can. It will help to foster tolerance and acceptance without having know things that are none of your business. It is an important lesson to learn that nobody owes you an explanation for who they are and nobody is obligated to share what they consider private.

#long post #family history #actually autistic

1 note · View note

inklingpost · 8 years ago

Text

If you didn’t think the march was for you, it was, you just don’t realize it.

If you didn't think the march was for you, it was, you just don’t realize it.

If you had told me I would have a possibly lethal pregnancy shortly after I turned 26 years old, there's no way I would have believed you. Things in pregnancy while you are young are supposed to go smoothly. Or so we are taught to believe. I used to think most pregnancy problems or chromosome issues happened after the age of 35. Or at least that has become the norm with medical intervention. The mortality rate for women and children revolving around births has decreased immensely over the decades of science and study.

But there are a lot of things we still don’t acknowledge in our modern day culture. Things that should be part of the conversation as we move forward with the new knowledge we have and how it forms our decisions in every day life as we propel ourselves toward being more sophisticated as a leading nation.

Some people like to complain that the march wasn’t for them because they are “pro-life.”

Guess what? We are all pro-life, so let’s just move on from that rhetoric. The way I see it is we are all pro-life, and then there are sub-categories below it of pro-choice and anti-choice. Either you have a wide knowledge and understanding that every person is very different and medical complications can be vary in scale, and this is an issue that isn’t so black and white, so we have to respect those differences and let a doctor guide a patient through their difficult circumstances. OR you have a fundamental lack of understanding of the complexities of pregnancy and women’s health, so you jumped on board the “pro-life” rhetoric because you don’t want to be “pro-death,” so you feel more comfortable in that zone. But that’s a really naive stance to take because by doing so, you don’t even know what you don’t know, and you don’t even realize you are campaigning against yourself and are endangering lives by trying to make laws based on fear.

The main argument I hear from the “anti-choice” people (that is what I will call you for the sake of this piece) is that you have a religious standpoint you cling to that revolves around the idea that man shouldn’t determine when death calls, only God should. But this is a really poor argument because for 1) you are usurping and assuming you know how your god thinks and behaves, and 2) what about the life of the mother? I’ve heard that the Catholic viewpoint is to save the child and not the mother—which for me holds no weight in rational thinking. Especially if the baby was going to die anyway, why would you not save the mom? And who are you to speak for your god? And that’s all fine if you want to live by those standards, but who are you to force those views on other people with different belief systems? We are a pluralistic nation after all.

The point is, you have the option to choose to let the mother die and save the baby, or you have the option to wait out a pregnancy that may be of risk…you have the option because women spoke out and marched for you to still be able to keep your stance. Taking away the right for a mother to choose her own life over her child’s life by being “anti-choice” is incredibly selfish, and dangerous.

And guess what? You might be taking away your own right to choose your life to live as a result of taking a stance like this. You taking this standpoint of letting laws dictate women’s health, could be the thing that kills you. Or the thing that kills your daughter or the partner of your son or daughter. That’s the part you are forgetting. That’s the human element you are choosing not to acknowledge.

Did you know you could get pregnant with odd, but rare, bad luck circumstances where the pregnancy actually turns into cancer? Did you know you can have a pregnancy where there is actually no fetus that grows? Just an empty sack of amniotic fluid that keeps growing and spiking your hcg levels. I didn’t. Not until I had a pregnancy like that. Abortion actually is just a medical term for miscarriage. It’s a word that has been abused and thrown around to insult already pained women. But did you know that you can have a “missed-abortion” where your body doesn’t miscarry the dead fetus and can poison you? I didn’t, until I had a pregnancy like that. My body apparently wanted a baby so badly it clung to whatever life form there was…even when there wasn’t a life form. And I needed medical intervention.

Here’s the other thing you aren’t taking into consideration those of you in the “anti-choice” category. You aren’t considering the emotional and mental health of the individuals involved. And I make it plural, because it is a family decision…a family’s overall health to be considered. You don’t know what trauma they’ve had prior to these horrible pregnancies, you don’t know how many pregnancies they had like this repetitively reliving the horror and disappointment…it takes a toll. You don’t know what this new trauma might trigger, you don’t know if carrying out a pregnancy might lead to suicide because it’s too emotionally painful to bear. You don’t know what the father wants. If there is already an existing sibling, will the parents be left as shells of themselves for those kids? Will their existing kids be damaged by their circumstances? There’s a lot to consider. It isn’t so simple.

And it could be you that faces it. And then tell me, if you have taken away the right to medical treatments due to law, and if you now stand in these circumstances of dangerous pregnancies, are you still standing by your religious views that this is your time for death and you don’t want to intervene? Would you be ok with watching your impending death, or wait for a possible miracle and then spread your story representing us poorly by saying “it could happen to you too…god could save your life,” offering false hope.

And if that is the case, why couldn’t you just simply say, “this is how it was for me…I was lucky…but it’s very different for everyone, and I can understand why laws shouldn’t play a role in the family dynamics of health care in this way.”

I’m not trying to scare anyone about pregnancy, what we have gone through is not the majority. Triploidy is rare. Molar pregnancies are rare. In fact, it’s so rare that it’s shifted our perspective for everything now when it comes to statistics. If the pregnancies we’ve had are less than 1% of all pregnancies everywhere, and most of those don’t make it into the second trimester, they only know because they tested miscarriage tissue to gain statistics…that means really just a handful of us in this particular instance actually experienced circumstances like we have. But it’s still worth fighting for because it sucks. And nobody needs to make it suck even more than it already does.

Now anytime we are given odds or statistics, we shy away from it. “Oh, you need sinus surgery, but there’s a risk of 1/3,000 that they could puncture your brain and leak fluid.” Awesome, no thanks, that will probably happen to me…because I won the lottery of less than 1% world wide for child loss…so no thank you, I can’t take that risk.

If you didn’t think the march was for you, you are wrong. It was and is for you. I hope you never go through what my husband and I have gone through. But if you do, know that we have marched for you and fought for you in order to face it as gracefully as you can muster through all the shock, PTSD, the heartbreak, and confusion. If or when your religious rhetoric fails you, and you change your mind and want to fight for your life instead, we will be here for you. You will have those options. Or if you choose to honor your stance and say goodbye to your time in this world and leave your spouse or children behind because you think that is your god’s will for you, we will be here for your family after you pass. Because that is your right. Being pro-choice still gives you that right…you aren’t losing anything. But by being anti-choice, you take a great deal away from families facing pregnancies like I have. And I can’t stay silent about that. It would dishonor what I’ve been through. It would dishonor my daughter’s life and story.

Here’s the thing, if you are anti-choice, I ask that you do show up at the next march. I will save a spot for you. Because I want you to see the faces and hear the stories of who you hurt with your rhetoric and votes and desired laws. I want you to bring humanity back to your soul. I want you to connect with us. Because at some point in your life, you or someone very close to you, may find yourselves in similar devastating circumstances that offer enlightenment, and some day, you may really experience the weight of what those laws actually meant for America.

Mary Oliver says it best, “Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

And I will leave you with these closing words by Mary Oliver, because I think it sums up my intention nicely,

“I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.”

I hope we can spread the empathy, connectedness, and protection, and comfort. We need to safeguard what we want America to be. We need to break hearts.

To see more of our story, visit the archive page to start at the beginning.

#womensmarch #womensrights #womensrightsarehumanrights #prochoice #sayhername #stillwithher #plannedparenthood #womenshealthcare #maryoliver #poetry #fuckreligion #feminist

15 notes · View notes