#my main problem rn is the fact that there are two more volumes in the series and i don’t have the money to buy them rn

[gmkz]

very seriously weighing the pros and cons of staying up all night to finish this book because i’m really enjoying it

[omegawolverine]

I know you posted it days ago but you said something about wanting to rant about either karl or his fanbase and its been itching at my brain. Ive no clue whats happening or what is happening at all cause no one seems to be making clear points?? Or explaining anything?

Obviously you do NOT have to talk about it im sure it might be a sore point to rant because people can get SO needlessly rude to others over it. But if you want to idk explain? Just rant? Im definetly curious what it was over or about.

The "you dont need to talk about this" is amplified by the fact i am DAYS late and you are probably over it by now.

okay hi yes im happy to talk about this but i think i should preface with two things:

1) even tho it may seem like im biased towards him or being very defensive of him im actually a super casual karl viewer and the only reason i am super defensive of him sometimes is bc we act a lot alike irl and that is mainly because of our neurodivegency. when i say a lot i mean we share traits like "annoying" stimming (jumping around, making loud noises, repeating the same phrases until everyone is sick of hearing them), the difficulty reading situations, the very obvious issues with volume control and not just bouncing from subject to subject to subject as we fucking please. basically anything you've seen karl do on stream that is Very Neurodivergent ive done the same in my own way which is why i get defensive when i see people calling him annoying or saying they dont like him, usually for these types of reasons. that being said, when i say im a very casual karl viewer, i fucking mean it. i usually only watch him when he's streaming with other ccs i like or when he's doing chill alt streams bc even with the annoying donos, he's pretty relaxing and comforting when he's just fucking around by himself and he isnt trying to get as hype as he would on a main channel stream. so yeah, it may seem like im biased and sure, i guess i am on some level, but it's not coming from a place of me hyperfixating on him or me even loving him as a cc, it's coming from me being a neurodivergent who likes him just enough to get upset when i see people basically being casually ableist towards him.

2) i dont have all the facts or even a great understanding on what the fuck has been happening recently with his "drama"...mostly bc he talked about it on his priv, which im not on, and people are gatekeeping the tweets, as they always do, and basically making you "dm to see them" (which is already a problem in and of itself bc apparently in these tweets he said he didnt want them being ss and shared, yet they are being shared thru dms over and over and over again like. at that point just stop withholding the information and post the fucking shit, you clearly dont care that he said "dont share"). additionally, most of the threads ive seen on this situation havent actually explained the initial issue, just talked about his apology (a lot of people have said "it's bad" but havent said why and with no screenshots ((i havent asked for someone to dm me them and i still havent seen them posted, which is mildly surprising, but incredibly frustrating at this point)), i only have a few basic details i can actually assess it on) or they talked about the initial issue in very vague details so um. excuse me trying to explain this now, but ill try and make it make sense with how little ive actually pieced together.

(oh, also, here's my first rant about the ableism in this fandom which is way more broad. this is a pretty different rant from that one, but they're both pretty big reasons why i hate this fandoms treatment of karl)

so basically the problems started with mr beast being apart of a charity stream that donated either to autism speaks or to a similar company, im unsure on that part. im also unsure on if the people participating in the stream actually knew of this or not bc, from what i remember, the money was being donated to a separate organization that was like. under the bad company or some shit like that, idk how stuff like that works and also i read about this shit months ago bc this originally happened months ago and just sorta came to a head recently.

anyways, i think karl was supposed to be apart of this stream but pulled out of it right before (that or these were two separate streams and karl was supposed to participate in the first but pulled out while mr beast did both?? idk. regardless karl did not actually participate, just mr beast). from there people started doing the guilt from association bullshit they always do, this was also doubled by the fact that the chris being racist stuff came out sometime around then and basically he got dragged all over twitter for "being ableist" and "supporting racists" and i cant remember if he actually apologized when this originally happened or not. i vaguely remember him apologizing about something back then but i genuinely dont know if it was this or something else.

basically that died down eventually, a good chunk of people unstanned him but him and honktwt didnt end up getting the lovely lil technotwt treatment and they still havent yet, surprisingly. good for them honestly ajsksk

but now we get to the past few weeks and apparently something happened with him "laughing at someone saying the r slur" (it was mizkif, i believe), specifically when it was directed at other people, which is a big yikes, obviously, but when karl was called out for this a lot of people kind of. made this into a situation that it wasnt bc um. basically karl didnt laugh at it, he gave a few nervous giggles, as people often do when in a situation like that (and karl specifically said he does this in the one part of his apology tweet which i did stumble upon, although it wasnt the important part of the apology thread bc why would it be) and people fucking crucified him for it. they quite literally dragged a neurodivergent man for supposedly "laughing at the r slur" when he can literally reclaim it and also he was just nervous laughing.

and this is where the situation just gets really bad because they. basically forced him to admit that he was autistic on his priv to apologize for this. i havent seen the screenshots of him saying this, but i saw people discussing it and i am frankly so fucking pissed about this because sure, it was a bad situation, and i understand people wanting an explanation, but an apology? for a neurodivergent man nervous laughing at a slur he can reclaim? and then forcing the man to admit something he literally said in that tweet he didnt want people to know which is why people were being so gatekeepy about it while also LOUDLY discussing the situation, as if that wouldnt drive MORE PEOPLE to look for screenshots and ways to get ahold of this information? and then people had the audacity to call it a "bad apology" when they had quite literally just violated his privacy by forcing him to admit something that he shouldnt have needed to share in the first place if he didnt want to, which he didnt.

and this is why im so pissed off. karl is already constantly picked at and made fun of and called annoying for his neurodivergent traits, things which he literally cant help, things which are generally harmless, and now he was forced into a situation where he can now be further picked at and made fun of and called annoying bc they forced him to admit something private instead of just understanding and accepting that he had been nervous laughing at someone using a slur he has definetly been called for his neurodivergency.

tldr of my thoughts: yes i think karl needed to address this situation, it definetly looked bad, but twitter stans have this sense of entitlement with their ccs and because of that, they consistently take it way too far and harm the people they claim to care about so dearly. we've seen it happen time and time again with dream, but this is the first time ive seen them basically force someone to out themselves to make their apology "valid" and most of them still seem to not want to accept it anyways, which just makes me feel bad for him bc now that info is out their and people are just disregarding it to continue "holding him accountable".

anyways, i think that's all i can really say on this topic rn tbh, if anyone else knows this situation better please feel free to lmk clarifications and ill add them in since, like i said, i know fuck all thanks to twitter being so goddamn hush hush about the important details while simultaneously being the loudest mfers about how much they hate karl now instead of just fucking unfollowing and moving on.

thanks for the ask and im sorry if this is confusing!! i just think this is one of those weird situations where like. i think karl deserved some criticism for what happened and how he handled it or at least he shouldve been asked to address it but that just. isnt what happened, at all. he was harrassed. karl got harrassed and because of that he handled this situation even more sloppily than he probably wouldve and exposed private info about himself that he didnt feel comfortable doing and it just. fucking sucks tbh.

[transhitman]

Nobody asked but I wanna talk about my OC universe. Specifically the biology of the human species because I think it’s cool as fuck. Basically, homo sapiens is extinct after nuclear winter and all the fantasy races are the different evolutions of the human species with adaptations that allowed them to survive. There are 6 total and they’re all sort of like combinations of two or more more traditional fantasy races so yeah.

H. magus -- HUMANS -- Only named as such because they’re the only ones that don’t have a major outward change in physiology. They look pretty much the same but are a little bit taller on average and can have gold or purple eyes. They survived via the magic of invention and Literal Magic, and mostly stayed in one spot. They sat on resources and created pretty capitalist-leaning societies, and thus didn’t have to undergo any major changes. However, there are still enough small differences to qualify them as a different species than H. sapiens, namely that their bodies conduct magic really REALLY well.

H. bucerus -- OGRES -- Sort of like a mix between tieflings and orcs. They’re descendants of the people who were ostracized from the Human communities for whatever reason, and had to deal with radiation, harsh weather, and GIANT FREAKING SHADOW MOSTERS. Since the Human ancestors were sitting on all the resources, the proto-Ogres were forced to become nomadic. In order to survive the Badlands, their muscles became much more dense, granting them super strength. However, they also weigh twice as much as a Human of the same volume and require twice as much food. They also developed methods of dealing with cancer caused by the radiation of the world. They basically integrate tumors into their bodies as horns. They have a special type of white blood cell that specifically targets cancerous growths and forces them to the surface of the skin, where they can be removed. They also have tails, which suit their environment. There are different variants depending on the global region they’re from, each with different horn and tail types. Probably the sexiest species. They’re tall ^__^ But their size is limited to like 7ft since being too big and dense would be DISASTEROUS in the food-scarce Badlands.

H. gurges -- DWARVES -- Ok so they’re honestly more mermaid-like, but I’m trying to fit a theme with the names here. They are short, though. And most of them live in cities that are below the surface, just not a solid surface. The Dwarves are descendants of the seafaring survivors of the Pacific Ocean. There is actually a wide variety that could count as dozens and dozens of separate species, but for function’s sake they’re all under the same category. They have convergently evolved with different types of fish, getting less and less human-looking the deeper in the ocean they live. On the surface, they’re just people with fluorescent skin tones. In the Abyss, they’re barely even human. They are able to withstand enormous pressure, and notably can form symbiotic relationships with sessile sea life. Sponges and barnacles and the like often grow on their bodies, sometimes in a very stunning, very beautiful way. Though the people closer to the surface are short, those deeper in the water grow to be gigantic. One of their subspecies includes the Extremophiles, who live in the deepest part of the ocean. They can reach about 20ft in length when counting their tails. It’s unknown weather these Extremophiles age, or what they really do down there. The Dwarves outside of the deepest Abyss usually live in underwater cities, on the coast, or on floating oil rig-type things. They’re all normal.

H. hiems -- ELVES -- Elves are sort of a combination between elves, giants, and general undead creatures (skeletons lol). They’re fucking massive, and live in only the coldest areas. Their skin is usually a shade of grey, tinted by the type of mineral that is the main staple of their diet. They eat rocks. Yeah. In fact, their bodies are so fucked up and adapted to their barren environment that normal food can easily kill them. Sugar specifically is HIGHLY toxic. Because they don’t process food the same way, they’re skeletal. And 12ft tall. Basically, slenderman. Though they aren’t bald. They have pale down-like hair on their heads. They also have another strange diet habit, which developed as a result of food scarcity during the beginning of the apocalypse. They have a very different culture surrounding cannibalism. Though the consumption of entire bodies is Not A Thing anymore, having your loved ones consume small parts of your body after your death is a very important ritual. It is an acknowledgement that the soul has gone, and the body has become empty matter. The other big thing about them is their special Suit Magic, in which a symbol of one of the playing card suits appears somewhere on their body when they go though puberty. The different suits grant them different abilities, and the four suits have divided into factions which were once at war with each other. (Blood (hearts) is healing. Edges (diamonds) creates shield constructs. Blades (spades) is bolts of energy. And Fists (clubs) is bludgeoning-type weapon constructs.) However, Elves are now extremely isolated up in their mountains and tundras. Very territorial. People honestly sort of hate them cause they’re also a little bit specist.

H. invictus -- MONOS -- Mono stands for monochrome. Predictably, Monos are monochrome. Arcane albinism overwrites their natural skin tone, and instead turns them a sickly white color, tinted by their subspecies hue. Everything else on them is jet black, including their blood and organs. Or, it’s that same hue color. They’re really fucked up, honestly. They’re sort of supposed to be a mix between vampires and orcs. They’re an artificially created species, made via eugenics and dark magic. Their creators were aiming to make an unkillable army, and they sort of succeeded, but at the cost of prevalent genetic defects. Around 70% of the Mono population has some sort of disability, which really isn’t a huge problem. They’re more than capable of providing medical care and creating accessibility deceives like prosthetics and magic medicine. You can do crazy shit with technology these days! In fact Monos were engineered to be compatible with tech- oh their creators were fascist eugenicists who abused them and treated them like disposable garbage specifically because of the disabilities they themselves caused though carelessness and forced inbreeding? Well. Alright. Not how I would have done it but... Anyway, long story short, the Monos pulled a 180 at some point and broke free of all that shit. Because they’re sort of a genetic mess, they have really great healthcare out of necessity. They’re the most technologically advanced species on the planet rn, but all of their scientists are engineers and doctors, not warriors, so they’re at constant risk of being annexed by Humans. Monos also have a very low fertility rate, so the percentage of whole-blooded Monos is going way down. They’re close to being endangered at this point. Luckily, some guy figured out how to grow babies in tubes but that’s a story for another day.

H. unicus -- DOWNDEEPERS -- Ok, Downdeepers are just all the miscellaneous designs I came up with that didn’t make sense as one of the other species lol. They’re the decedents of the people who fled to the newly-formed Downdeeps cave system, which is a global system of caverns that goes really fucking deep underground. The high concentrations of magic there cause Downdeepers to mutate rapidly. No two of them are the same. They all just live in tha caves... hell yeah...

The last human species are the CHIMERAS, which are really just the people who are a cross between two or more species. They were rare at first, but they had a population boom after global travel was reestablished (somewhat, anyway).

There are a couple other inorganic races I could talk about but I’m gonna leave it there. Yeah nobody asked for this but I hope you thought it was neat. I am honestly really proud of this world I think it’s cool as hell : ) yeah. And if you’re wondering how all the species can be cohesive despite their ancestors being isolated in different parts of the world (specifically Ogres, who live on every continent and don’t have a common ancestor), that’s because of some meta shit that has to do with how magic and human will interact. Collective subconscious shit. And that would take like 3 pages to explain so like. Just go with it for now lol.

[chmpn-remix]

Okay I’m gonna do that end of the year meme now because I’m surprisingly bored

First things first, did you have a good year? ~ it’s been weird. Honestly speaking it’s been good. I did so much travelling compared to the other 22 years of my life. But I also lost friends and things were shifting quite a bit in that department (mostly for online friends) and that part was meh

How old did you turn this year? ~ 23

Do you feel your age? ~ both yes and no. This year /was/ the year of finally feeling like I’m going somewhere, career wise. and I think it’s more accepting the fact that it’s okay not to feel like an adult yet even though I am

Did your appearance change in anyway? ~ ooh! I started stretching my ears in January and now they’re at 0g! I dyed hair and went through colors I’ve used before so that’s not super new

Post your favorite selfie. ~ it’s not on my laptop so maybe I’ll post it later

If you traveled, where did you go? ~ on March @notpassingfascination drove us to Boise, ID to see panic at the disco!! and then at the end of June I went to Calgary for Otafest 

Which fashion trends did you love? ~ none for this year really, though I updated my wardrobe to include office casual stuff ahaha

Which fashion trends did you hate? ~ none that I can remember immediately

What was your favorite article of clothing this year? Post a pic if possible? ~ my fuckin space pants!! tho im fairly sure I didn’t buy it this year I think? maybe??

What song sums up this year for you? ~ What’s My Age by Blink-182 hahahahahahhaHAHAH

What album came out and has been on heavy rotation since then? ~ oh man After Laughter definitely

What was your favorite movie of the year? ~ Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2!!!! also wonderwoman

Did an actor/actress catch your attention for the first time this year? ~ nope but for bands it’s Waterparks and Set It Off

Favorite new TV show? ~ none that are new, but the main ones for this year are Game of Thrones and Stranger Things

Which new ship/fandom has taken over a lot of your time, attention, and tears? ~ uhhh tbh I’ve been all over the place but I’m still in the top fandom. In mostly correct order I’ve gotten into Set It Off, Halsey’s new album, Paramore’s After Laughter and also their self titled album, Voltron, GoT, Stranger Things, Waterparks and rn I’m really into Doki Doki Literature Club and kinda watching let’s players play games?

What food did you try for the first time? ~ nothing I can think of tbh

Did you make any big permanent changes this year? ~ not really, but I think I’m getting new glasses before the year is over

What was one nice thing you did for someone else? ~ this year I decided to buy my friends christmas gifts!

What was one nice thing you did for yourself? ~ set tasks/goals that are more achievable and changed my mentality a bit about getting work done. it’s getting a lil better or at least I’m feeling a lil better about it

Did you develop a new obsession? ~ nothing that was as big as twenty one pilots was in 2015 ahaha. I did have a long phase where I listened to Paramore’s self-titled almost every day

Did you vote? ~ yes!

Did you move? ~ nope

Did you get a job? ~ yes! tbh I’ve worked at like 3 places this year woah

Did you get a pet? ~ yes! I’m taking care of my boyfriend’s cat Luna (who is kinda also partly my cat)

Do you regret not doing anything? ~ buddy I have a constant feeling that I’m not doing enough s o

Do you regret doing something? ~ deleting that friend off snapchat ahahah that was honestly an accident but oh fuckin well

Have you done anything that scared you? ~ taking on new responsiblities at work

Did anyone/thing make you so mad it stayed with you for days? ~ I have a family friend who is a 14 y/o foster kid and he’s always getting into trouble. At least once a month he’ll tell me something worrying and it’ll make me mad but also frustrated and worried and everything else

Did you lose anyone close to you? ~ not in the death sense no

Did you fall in love? ~ with beb, always!! I also recently fell in love with 21 Questions by Waterparks ;D along with Paramore’s last two albums and the album Duality by Set It Off

Did you fall out of love? ~ platonic love yeah. it’s getting a lil better

Did you start a new relationship? ~ only platonic relationships m’dude

Did you go through a break up? ~ ONLY PLATONIC BREAKUPS M’DUDE

Did you have to cut ties to someone? ~ I already answered this

Who was important to you this year but wasn’t important last year? ~ b!! they are precious. Also Allie! she is a positive vibe in my life

Who wasn’t as important to you this year as they were last year? ~ One Person *looks straight into the camera*

If you could have a do over on one thing you did, would you take it? ~ yes I would’ve approached Reeve Carn*y and asked for an autograph ahaha

What was the best moment of the year for you? ~ almost straight up bawling right after PATD performed Nine in the Afternoon

What was the worst? ~ teaching this one class of two students and I was just...not on the ball that day the lead teacher was observing and I was so fuckin nervous and it was an absolute mess. that was the worst moment but the worse thing happening this year happened really slowly over time so

Did anything happen that you were sure would change you as a person but it really didn’t? ~ ngl these past 2 years are just me thinking about when I was 12 and thinking “yeah 20+ y/o me will have it figured out all the future adult stuff is her problem!” and here I am realizing I’m still that 12 year old and struggling to deal with so many things. i dont think i answered the question but tbh I’m p sure getting a job and being in grad school would Change me but not really? I’m still me but maybe a tiny bit better?

Did anything happen to you that you were sure wouldn’t change you as a person but it did? ~ I wasn’t expecting to go into therapy this year and it change me more than I expected it to and I’m really glad

What are you most proud of accomplishing? ~ being a sub teacher! It’s an important step to being a real teacher!!

What have you learned about yourself this year that you didn’t know in the years prior? ~ that I am still a petty lil shit that can’t let go (though this was for good reason tho)

Did your opinion of anyone change for the better? ~ not really?

Did your opinion of anyone change for worse? ~ meh

If you make resolutions, did you complete them this year? ~ haha no

If you make resolutions, what will your resolutions be for the coming year? ~ I don’t really make resolutions bc i know I won’t keep them ahah

If you could go on an adventure during the remaining days of the year, where would you go and what would you do?  Who would you go with? ~ ngl anywhere in a car with either Randi or beb would be an adventure to me

What do you wish for others for the coming year? ~ define others because I can’t think of a blanket wish for Everyone

What do you wish for yourself? ~ to move the fuck on and also actually like...be in the moment? I did so many adult things but I feel like I’m just going through the motions...idk I also wish I’ll be able to handle more responsibility

[prinxiety-logicalitysanderssides]

1-97 NOW ITS UR TURN I DONT EVEN CARE THAT THIS IS MY MAIN U GOTTA SUFFER TOO

I. BLOODY. DID. IT. ITS TAKEN ME /TWO DAYS/ BUT I’VE DONE IT @princeyandanxiety and I’m tagging @use-it-ironically Ironi u do it too pls. I was subjected to this after I subjected Bella to this so now u have to.

Btw this is NSFW ( some of it) and mentions suicide/depression cause I went there. There is some serious truth tea in this god damnit. I put thought and love into this. And also memes but mostly LOVE and boredom. I also feel like I forgot to answer a question or two but whatever. This is 97 questions long. And it’s 2818 words.

By the end of this, you will understand that I am a wreck

Ask me things1. What’s your middle name? No.

2. What are you listening to right now? The sound of typing cause I’m not listening to music. Also the sound of my breath and the wind in the trees. V/ relaxing. (( that was yesterday, today I’m listening to MCR and sanders Sides videos at a loud volume on chromecast on my tv))

3. What was the last thing you ate? ¼ of a cup of icing sugar. I ate it out of the measuring cup lmao.

4. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? My mum. I do talk to other people, I swear! I’m just not good at phone calls

5. Do you drink? No and I won’t in the future. Lemonade all the way if I have to drink smth.

6. Do you smoke? No and I never ever will.

7. What is the first thing you noticed in someone? Someone as in??? Random or??. In Randoms I usually notice people’s faces and then clothes, especially if they’re eye catching. I notice memorabilia/fan stuff pretty quickly as well.

8. What is your hair color? Brown but I use hair dye to make it partially blue or purple or red sometimes. It doesn’t work very well unless I bleach my hair and I can’t do that till I’m 16 which sucks. I use hair spray every now and again, I have white hair spray and glitter hair spray, and I used to have blue as well. Glitters my favourite . I also have a full rainbow of hair chalk but my friends and I dropped it at one point during the Hair Incident of Grade Eight which is what I’m calling it now.

9. What is your eye color? Blue/Grey ish. 10. Do you wear contacts/glasses? Nope. My mum says I will if I keep looking at my screen for hours on end though. I don’t want glasses cause my 20/20 vision is serving me well and I like it.

11. Dogs or cats? Rabbits.

12. What’s your favorite animal? Rabbits/see above

13. What’s your favorite television show? Gilmore girls. Hands down the best.

14. What’s your favorite movie? I don’t really have one? Princess Bride, Sound of Music and the Captain America movies. Oh and Heathers.

15. What’s your favorite band/singer? I can’t choose but Alessia Cara comes to mind? Scars to your Beautiful? And MCR. And Panic! At the Disco and Fall Out Boy. I’m an emo nightmare tbh

16. How old are you? Bich no u can guess. I’m a minor tho.

17. Do you have a crush on anyone? No. But I want a girlfriend/datemate ( all the boys my age are awful and the girls/nonbinary people r better)

18. What’s your sexual orientation? Pansexual. To keep it simple anyway.

19. What’s your favorite color? Aqua blue/ the green of Australian forests

20. What was your most embarrassing moment? Going up on stage in like,, grade six, for a talent show, that I decided to volunteer for THAT DAY and literally singing which is fine but I kept shuffling not dancing and the other kid I was doing it with was kinda dancing and we fucking sucked. But I’m at a different school half the city away now thank god.

21. Do you ever wish you were someone else? Characters in stories, yeah, but like, I want to be in their universe, with their mind and my mind combined so I’m more them than me but I also remember that I want to give people a piece of my mind and fix the universe and make everyone happy but also have angst before that. I project a lot tbh. Oh well.

22. What were you like when you were a kid? I ran away from the class a lot, a ‘difficult’ and 'problem’ child. I have ADHD.

23. What would your dream house be like? Huge, I would want to have lots of pets and secret rooms and a big library and have it surrounded by country side and let scouts have camps near by and stuff

24. What last made you laugh? There were a few things but I forgot damn. But probably my bunnies antics I swear they r ridiculous sometimes( all the time) (( that was yesterday, today its sanders Sides videos again whoops))

25. What is your favorite word ? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) its called a Lenny and I love it

26. What is your least favorite word? Poo. Or moist. Both are awful.

27. What turns you on? Coffee when I wake up

28. What turns you off? Sleeping pills

29. What is your star sign? Aquarius

30. What are your favorite books? TAMORA PIERCE’S 'The circle of Magic ’ quartet and all of its sequels and Tamora Pierces 'The Lionness’ quartet and her 'Protector of the small’ quartet, really, all of her books. Also the Obernewtyn series which is FUCKING AMAZING. ITS BY AN AUSSIE AUTHOR, ISOBELLE CARMODY WHO IVE MEET TWICE AND THEY R SMAZINGSOWNFKEFKWJCKD YES.

31. Do you have any siblings? Only child, suck it.

32. Do you like to dance?Yes, but I’m not a professional or up to date with the latest ~moves~

33. What is your definition of cheating? This is hard cause my definition is in my head but it’s hard to explain. I’m gonna try though.( ACTUALLY I’m gonna come back and write this later) (( lmao I never did go back and write this but it basically depends on what people in a relationship have agreed it to mean bc I’m tired and this is complicated))

34. Have you ever cheated on someone? No I’ve never dated anyone.

35. Do you regret anything? A few things. Not gonna get into them tho. I do regret not working harder in grade seven and eight.

36. Do you have any phobias? Not really no. I hate leeches with a fiery passion and there are spiders next to my shower which I don’t like but other than that, no.

37. Ever broken any bones? No and I’d like to understand what it feels like tbh

38. Ever come close to death? When I walk anywhere cause I’m yes. Does being suicidal back when I was eleven count? And the fact it recurs every now and again? Also

39. What is your religion, if any? I piece together my own world view, based on many philosophies and science.

40. Have you ever been to a psychiatrist/therapist? I’m going to one rn actually. School counsellor who is great and has lollipops and also let my friends and I play monopoly in her office all lunch. I lost. The bell was about to go so I just flipped the board upside down cause why not? My friends made me clean it up lmao 41. Are looks important in a relationship? Depends

42. Are you more like your mom or your dad? I pray I’m more like my mum as my dad is an awful person tbh

43. What is your favorite season? Whichever one I’m not sneezing in/ when it’s warm/ I don’t really have one

44. Do you have any tattoos? No 45. Do you have any piercings? I did have normal ear piercings but they grew over

46. How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had? None

47. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Have you met me

48. Who is your celebrity crush? Thomas Sanders

49. Are you a virgin? Again, have you meet me. YES. Obviously.

50. Do you get jealous easily? Define 'jealous’. I mean, kind of. Not usually.

51. What is your favorite type of food? Pasta.

52. Do you ever want to get married?Depends, I mean, LGBT marriage isn’t legal in Australia for whatever fucking stupid reason ( the reason is homophobic pollies, literally 90% of Australia wants fucking gay marriage goddamnit)

53. Who was your first kiss with? Lmao I haven’t had one

54. Have you ever been cheated on? See above

55. What is your idea of the perfect date? ?'not sure tbh?

56. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Extroverted introvert. I like meeting people and i have lots of friends but I also need my space. I’m an introvert.

57. Do you believe in aliens or life on other planets? After seeing the 'thingu’ video, I hope not. I do believe in other life but not as sentient as us? Well, at least I don’t think we will find any sentient aliens now that we elected trump tbh

58. What talent do you wish you’d been born with?Be a great dancer?

59. What is your saddest memory? Not today Satan

60. Do you believe in love at first sight? I believe you can find someone aesthetically pleasing at first sight, at first talk, you can like them for their personality. So kind of? But not really. Movie love sucks tho. Unrealistic.

61. Do you believe in soul mates? Kind of. I wish we had a soulmate au irl

62. Have you ever dyed your hair? See above ( yes)

63. Has someone ever spread a nasty rumor about you?I don’t really look at gossip so??? No? They could be talking about me all the time lmao I got bullied from 11-13 years old but that’s different and now I can’t be fucking bothered to listen to bullies

64. Would you go against your moral code for money?Depending on the circumstances. I’m not evil. Very rarely would I ever do that and I have never actually done that.

65. What are three things most people don’t know about you? . My teachers think I have asbergers(autism) and I agree but my parents don’t . NSFW as hell?? I mean most people would look at my chumb face and think I’m innocent i would guess. . I want a datemate? Like I haven’t really acknowledged that but like every opnow and again this Year and

66. Who are you jealous of? People who get more likes than me

67. Do you sleep with a stuffed toy?Yes, but only if my bed is clean IE It has been washed within the last week. Sometimes I don’t wash my sheets for a month and i don’t want to subject my Rabbit toy to that. She’s thirty-nine years old.

68. How long was your longest relationship? No

69. Is the glass half empty or half full?Half empty, I drank half the water.

70. What is the sexiest thing someone could ever do for/to you? Nsfw fanfiction for sanders sides. Nah, I don’t really know as I’m still in high school I’m in Grade Nine . So like? How would I know? (But seriously pls write more nsfw)

71. Who is your most loyal friend? My best friend Addy? ( she was the one we tried to comb her hair) or you people

72. Are you in a relationship? Ok this is getting annoying

73. If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, what is your favorite thing about him/her? Come ON.

74. Are you a bad person? Depends. Is the scale puppies to trump or a grumpy cat to trump. Cause I’m in the low-middle of the first scale and at the bottom of the second.

75. Are you a lover or a fighter? I wanna fite but I don’t bite and I’m usually just high as a kite.

76. What did you do on your last birthday? Like… nothing. Mum and I have to save money for scout camps ( there’s a big Venture I’m going on at the start of next year, AV2018) and I couldn’t be bothered to have a birthday party when I would have to have one just before or after term starts, my birthday is the 24th of Jan. Usually I have my party like a week after school starts again but I couldn’t be bothered.

77. What is your favorite quote and why? “I’m sceptical that you could, yet intrigued that you may” I got it off a screenshot on tumblr ALSO “What are you looking at?” “ Something Replusive” “I’m not a mirror Karen” from the fanfiction Iris Zero, my fav Hetalia fan fic about Romerica. Also “I’m hella pan with a hella plan” off tumblr.

78. If your best friend died, what would you do? I would be a fucking wreck and I’m not gonna think about it.

79. If you had to go back in time and change one thing, what would it be? If i went back and time and changed smth, i wouldn’t be me anymore, but I would go back and get a proper depression diagnosis bc we knew I had it but I’m a good actor so the doctors couldn’t diagnose the kid who was fucking suicidal great job Australia ANYWAY

80. If you only had 24 hours to live, what would you do? My mum texted me this morning ( btw I did this ask over a couple days) with 'If you die today would you like the last thing you spent your precious life hours on to be tumblr??’ I responded with 'yes’ to be a bitch and also bc I kinda would? I would get all my friends and all of the food I wanted, write my will, etc. I’d go fucking ridiculous with what I’d do tbh. All the adventurous activities .

81. What is the strangest dream you’ve ever had? One time when I was 11, I had a dream I was a princess with a guy servant and a girl lady in waiting/servant and we were all bffs, ( looking normal so far lmao), and then we were getting chased around my kingdom by a guy with a floppy dick which was flopping around like a bendy/wobble pencil. Both friends sacrificed themselves to stop him and made me keep running away lol

82. Are you happier single or in a relationship? I don’t know

83. Who were you in a past life? The human embodiment of Anxiety Sanders

84. What is your happiest childhood memory?Lazy sunny days with my mum. Chores and relaxing. Cooking.

85. Have you ever experienced unrequited love? Not,,,, really,, see above, I,, haven’t really had any experience with love

86. Have you ever had an imaginary friend? I don’t think so?

87. If you were the prime minister , what would you do? Fucking Marriage Equality, Safe schools is mandatory, sexual assault/homelessness/youth in crisis support is fucking fixed and improved, Scouts is connected to schools, primary school system revised, improved and fixed, high school system improved, counselling is better overall, science in all grades, maths teaching is improved over all, teachers can get constructive criticism from students and will LISTEN to them. Abuse is redefined as both emotional and psychical and people start to understand that, neurodivergents are fucking accommodated more, same for disabled people. Mental illness are listened to for fucks sake.

88. What is your ideal career? Engineer, scientist, musician, YouTuber, anything that makes me happy and makes people happy and supports people. I also want money tbh so A) i can donate to charity B) i want to transition and all I fucking love memey products.

89. What is your political affiliation?/90. Are you conservative or liberal? Liberal. When I vote, I will weight my options and choose which ever is the least awful tbh. I’m an intersectional feminist meaning I support poc, the wider LGBT+ community, feminism, people with mental illness, neurodivergents and disabled people.

91. Is the male or female body closest to perfection?Male doesn’t get periods so u decide

92. Do you like kissing in public? I’ve seen people kiss in public ONCE in my life so like?? Do what you want

93. If you could change one thing in the world, what would you change? Unlike my prime minister answer, I’m thinking smaller here : everyone is allowed to transition/get married/ all LGBTAI+ rights are legalised

94. Where would you like to live? Huge house full of secret tunnels and it’s all waterproof and I keep rescue pets and secretly help refugees there so they can get a normal life again. There would be huge libraries. In the countryside as well. Tazmania probably. Or Melbourne in a nice house with my rabbits and datemate/s

95. Where would you go on your dream vacation?I’d want to go on a world tour and meet all my mutuals and the people I am fans of.

96. Describe yourself in one word.Chaotic ( good lmao)(( jk every time i take that chaotic/neutral/lawful quiz I get lawful good but lawful good is was I aspire to be and chaotic good is what I am. ))

97. Describe yourself in one sentenceVery. Fucking. Complicated. Wreck. Who Loves All My Mutuals and Friends So Much.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to imagine the ways in which we'll seem backward to future generations that we wait till patients have physical symptoms to be diagnosed with conditions like heart disease and cancer. And so you didn't get a lot of compound bugs. The effects of World War II was an extreme case of this. You enjoy it more if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal. That problem is irreducible; it should be hard. T: Scheme has no libraries, and Lisp syntax is scary. The answer to the paradox, I think, is to have multiple plans depending on how much you can learn from Yahoo's first fatal flaw. So as animals get bigger they have trouble radiating heat.

Founders are often competitive people, and the best research solves problems that are not only new, but it has to be some point down the slope of consulting at which you can move into a big one or from which you can survive.1 One of the reasons Jane Austen's novels are so good is that she read them out loud to your friends as something you'd written, you'll feel all too keenly what an imposition that kind of thing is upon the reader. To use a purely Web-based applications. But a significant number do. I did; I knew I was learning so little that I wasn't even learning what the choices were, let alone which to choose. It would be great if a startup could do. 0 bubble.2 But the money itself may be more dangerous than Google because, like you, they're cornered animals. Second, I do it because I don't like the idea of starting their own company rather than work for someone else's. Chasing hot deals doesn't make investors choose better; it just didn't percolate all the way to an IPO, just as volume and surface area do.

For the average user, is far fewer bugs to start with. Some investors will let you email them a business plan, but you definitely want to keep out more than bad people. Microsoft now owned the PC standard, and the best research solves problems that are not only new, but actually they tend to; and vice versa. Relief. There are several ways to approach this problem. A round from Sequoia. Neither Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg knew at first how big their companies were going to get rarer. I got there in 1998.

And indeed, things hadn't changed much yet. Meet such investors last, if at all. The core users of News. Starting a startup to launch them before raising their next round of investors would presumably have lost money. From the first conversation to wiring the money, and ambivalence about being a technology company, and in addition to writing software ten times faster than you'd ever had to before, they expected you to answer support calls, administer the servers, it would seem to have been headed down the wrong path. This was why they were trying to get people to fight for an idea.3 So for all practical purposes, there is still room for more. And during the Renaissance, journeymen from northern Europe were often employed to do the things a startup founder, and it's hard to design something for an unsophisticated user.

Users should not have to be trimmed properly; the engines have to be shaped by admissions officers. And beloved of the DoD, happens nonetheless to be a lot of plot, but they sometimes fear the wrong things for six months, and the customers would be individual people that you could actually make the finished work from the 1970s.4 Palo Alto, the original ground zero, is about thirty miles away, and the rate at which it grows is itself increasing. And because you can, try to ensure that all universities are roughly equal in quality.5 Being John Malkovich where the nerdy hero encounters a very attractive, sophisticated woman. Whereas if you're determined to stick around no matter what, they'll be going against thousands of years of medical tradition.6 The best intranet is the Internet. Whatever Microsoft's. The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the standards of the desktop to prevent, or constrain, this new generation of software? Gradually the government realized that anti-competitive policies were doing more harm than good.

The less you spend, the easier it is to believe now, the big economic story was the rise of startups.7 My wife thinks I'm more forgiving than she is, but my motives are purely selfish. Startups condense more easily here. Convince yourself that your startup is doing a deal, just assume it's not going to go out of business. Just pick a project that seems interesting: to master some chunk of material, or to answer some question. But other VCs will make no more than superficial changes.8 Though founders are rightly indignant when their plans get leaked to competitors, I can't think of a startup than that? No one is going to succeed. Professional athletes know they'll be pulled if they play badly for just a couple guys, either with day jobs or in school, writing a prototype of something that might, if it looks promising, turn into a big one.

It's slightly dickish of investors to care more about who else is investing than any other aspect of your startup.9 If you're an inexperienced founder, the only reason VCs are so sneaky is the giant deals they do. And this is not a single point where you don't need Microsoft on the client, and if you enforce them it seems possible to keep a lid on meanness. Which inevitably, if unions had been doing their job tended to be lower. Reading novels isn't. In fact it's the old model: mainframe applications are all server-based software gets used round the clock, so everything you do is immediately put through the wringer. When it turns up you often know what's wrong before you even knew what you were building, you've created a broken company. Inside your head, anything is allowed. Launching companies isn't identical with launching products.10

And that is just what I'm advocating. To a newly arrived undergraduate, all university departments look much the same way that a distributed algorithm protects you from investors who flake in much the same way that someone might design a building or a chair that's horribly uncomfortable to sit in, then simply explained this well to investors. I wouldn't do that. The inconvenience of this model becomes more and more college graduates. Dilution is a hard problem. Not understanding that investors view investments as bets combines with the ten page paper due, then ten pages you must write, even if they invest in. Julian knew a lot about law and business, but his advice ended there; he was not a startup guy he probably gave them useful advice.11 Sun's business model is being undermined on two fronts. Of course, prestige isn't the main reason they never considered this was that they hired bad programmers.12

Notes

My point is that they probably don't notice even when I read comments on e. Articles of this essay wrote: After the war, federal tax receipts have stayed close to starting startups since Viaweb, he'd get his ear pierced.

And no, you need a higher growth rate has to be. It's much easier to take a small amount of time and became the twin centers from which I removed a pair of metaphors that made it over a hundred and one VC. Add water as specified on rice package. The story of creation in the fall of 2008 but no one is harder, the group of Europeans who said the things you're taught.

Icio. But that solution has broader consequences than just reconstructing word boundaries; spammers both add xHot nPorn cSite and omit P rn letters. And though they have to solve are random, they still probably won't invest. Vii.

If they were. 001 negative effect on returns, but delusion strikes a step later in the general sense of the subject today is still hard to game the system? Digg is Slashdot with voting instead of uebfgbsb. The constraint propagates up as well use the word as in most competitive sports, the 2005 summer founders, like good scientists, motivated less by financial rewards than by you based on respect for their judgement.

I know randomly generated DNA would not be surprised how often have you read about startup founders are effective. There are a handful of companies that have economic inequality.

There were several other reasons, including both you and the low countries, where x includes math, law, writing in 1975, said the things attributed to Confucius and Plato saw themselves as teachers of administrators, and we should find it's most popular with voting instead of a liberal education than past generations have. They also generally provide a better source of food. The University of Vermont: The variation in productivity is the converse: that startups aren't the problem is that promising ideas are not written by the fact that they don't, but in practice investors discount merely predicted revenue, so if you were going back to 1970 it would take their customers directly, which in startups. This is why so many still make you expend as much difference to a woman who had made Lotus into the work that seems formidable from the government to take board seats by switching to what you really want, like storytellers, must have been in the belief that they'll be able to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a cap.

These anti-dilution protections. Zagat's lists the Ritz Carlton Dining Room in SF as requiring jackets but I couldn't convince Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this essay, I would be vulnerable both to attack the A P supermarket chain because it is possible to have done and try another approach. The first version was mostly Lisp, because they were to work on stuff you love, or boards, or an acquisition for more of the statistics they use the phrase frequently, you produce in copious quantities. But it is to imagine how an investor they already know; but it wasn't.

So it may not have raised money on Demo Day pitch, the average major league baseball player's salary during the war had been a waste of time, which is as straightforward as building a new SEC rule issued in 1982 rule 415 that made them register. And for those founders.

They overshot the available RAM somewhat, causing much inconvenient disk swapping, but I took so long. 25. Most word problems in school math textbooks are not just the location of the latter without also slowing the former, and eventually markets learn how to execute them.

Not only do convertible debt at a 3 year old son, you'll find that with a clear upward trend. Even college textbooks are similarly misleading. If you're sufficiently good at generating your own mind about whether you can fix by writing library functions.

Though in fact had its own momentum. His critical invention was a very good. The solution to that mystery is that promising ideas are not merely blurry versions of great ones.

It's conceivable that intellectual centers like Cambridge will one day have an email address you can, Jeff Byun mentions one reason not to like to fight back themselves.

[fqtoxicity]

New Post has been published on My Quin Story

New Post has been published on http://www.myquinstory.info/chronic-floxing-and-toxic-positivity/

Chronic Floxing and Toxic Positivity

Recently a fellow chronically floxed person posted a very apropos link on Facebook.  The link was to a page from our friends over at Health Rising, Finding Answers to ME/CFS and FM.  The article was entitled “Just Be Positive!” Toxic Positivity, ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia.   It is well written and frankly, speaks volumes. After I read it, it prompted me to write a quick article that focuses a bit more from the Chronic FQAD  persepctive.

Let me throw in the caveat that if you are newly floxed, let’s say two years or less, it’s probably best that you pass this article over, especially if you are in a bad space emotionally.  Seriously. 

Every few days I get a new contact from a floxie that has been suffering chronically for several years, some of them decades.  As a matter of fact, that demographic is the predominant visitor that comes to my website and hangs around. 

When the situation arises and I have the opportunity for additional interaction with some of these individuals a common thread of frustration emerges. I find that many of them are looking for validation for their negative feelings.  They are often angry, frustrated, depressed, remorseful, full of regret and often just plain pissed off.  These emotions are the spectrum of feelings that are commonly felt in those who are long term or chronic sufferers.

Hope, The Caveat

Before you wonder where I am going with this, let me throw in the caveat that, there is no denying that hope is powerful and necessary.  For me, over the last twelve years, I don’t know how many times the only thing I could do was just hold on to a very fragile thread of hope while experiencing very dark times.  I have faced death three times at the hands of the FQ’s (1,2,3) over the last several years, so I know…all I can say is that, I know.  

Having said that, it is interesting to note that very rarely, if ever, do I get industrial strength level of frustration from a newly floxed person.   To them, they are still coming to grips with shock and awe of a new reality and frankly, although they are justifiably upset, have not had the time to process the deeper, PTSD level, hard core range of emotions that comes with long term chronicity.  

For a long-term chronic sufferer, this is where things get a bit blurry.

It seems that for each chronic sufferer there is a fine line between validation, true hope, and those commonly seen sanitized stories or messages that border on toxic positivity.   Many times, people, especially those who are not veterans to the depth or length of suffering that the FQ’s can cause, have difficulty understanding this level of frustration.  They make the mistake of thinking that you can make long term sufferers be positive or they just dismiss the long term sufferer as bitter. Let me try to unpack this a bit. 

Although I wish everyone would heal from an adverse event to the FQ’s, the truth is that many don’t, and stats I have collected unfortunately show this.  It is not a popular message, just bluntly true, and yet another reason why these horrific pharmaceuticals shouldn’t be handed out like candy. 

Visitor and poll demographics that I have collected show that there are so many who took a hit from the FQ’s, then believing to be healed walked away; Some announce recovery and even others claiming to have ‘figured out’ the healing process.  Then, in an unfortunate twist of events, something goes wrong and they return.  The time span varies from months to years.  Either way, the dark realization sets in that many of the recovery stories that we hear were/are inaccurate, very inaccurate.  They unfortunately don’t reflect the true reality.  

The gravity of the situation is that for a lot of individuals, late effects, or delayed adverse events resulting in long term chronicity is more of a reality.  Dealing with the emotions that come along with this living hell is tough to say the least, and that is one of my main points. 

Well Meaning But Misdirected Advice

Although I don’t visit the various floxed groups on social media like I used to, when I did visit, I would see examples or forms toxic positivity directed at chronic sufferers on occasion. It usually went something like this, a long term floxed person would make a comment about the soul wrenching heartache they have felt while enduring years of setbacks and, frankly, insurmountable emotional and physical pain.  Instead of receiving validation for these emotions, the well-meaning positive ‘fairies’ would swoop in with advice.  These were usually folks low seniority so to speak.    Examples of these well-meaning advice tropes are: 

Positive thoughts to generate positive realities, (“Just ell yourself you are going to feel better.”)…yeah? ah, no.  

Treatment advice, (“I have found the reason for floxing!  All you need to do is start taking magnesium!”)….The veteran floxie has heard it all, so it better be good, real good. To be blunt, if the advice giver has been floxed less than six months they better keep their pie-hole shut about telling others what to do, lest things get real violent.  I don’t care if you are an M.D. or have a PhD in biology. Seriously, in the last twelve and a half years I have heard it all.   

Dismissive statements or caveats, (“Not all floxies are this bad,” or “She had a particularly bad reaction…”)…These statements just frost my cookies. It is usually done to blunt the negative effects of expressing valid negative emotions. In other words, an attempt to keep the really messy scary stuff hidden away, out of sight.  Guess what?  Floxing is really scary and messy.  Hiding the reality doesn’t make it go away.

Now don’t get me wrong, most of these are offered up by well meaning individuals.  Unfortunately, they can’t even comprehend the head-space the recipient is in. 

Email From A Chronic Floxie

This led me to a search for an email that I received last fall while I was reeling from the symptoms of a CSF leak.  Unfortunately I did not respond to her at the time but I did read the email.  I usually read all emails I receive. Anyway, she spoke with such candor to this topic that I re-contacted her and got permission to reprint a few excerpts from her email (I changed her name of course).  

Lynn, a former nurse and now a chronically floxed individual candidly shared her feelings in her email:

“I never realized how evil these drugs were.  I was used to seeing side effects from medication at work, but this was a whole new level of understanding. When I first became floxed I gravitated to stories of healing.  As a matter of fact, I was scared and went out of my way to avoid listening to those who had been battling FQAD for a long time.  Shameful to say, I even complained when I thought someone was being too negative.”

She goes on, “I ate healthy, avoided all prescriptions and shunned negative emotions.  I even paid money to a high-priced naturopath who claimed to have treated floxed people before.  After several months I started healing, and after several more months, I felt good enough to go back to work.  I proclaimed myself recovered and walked away, chalking it up as a bad nightmare. Then the unthinkable happened, after a year the symptoms came roaring back.  I could never figure out what I did to trigger their return, if anything.  I really don’t believe I did anything.”

“When I reluctantly came back searching for more answers my whole perspective had changed.  I realized that my previous dismissive behavior before was motivated out of fear.  Worse yet, being an RN I thought I had it figured out, that somehow I was more knowledgeable than most. I didn’t realize that my behavior was having the opposite effect on those who were really suffering.  I viewed those who were really suffering as a minority.  Even worse, to the outside world and other medical personnel I was sending the wrong message.  I was telling them that the FQ’s weren’t really all that bad.  I was sending the message that they could be beaten, if you just really tried.”

One poignant aspect of Lynne’s email, and it is something that I deal with all the time. She wondered how many people don’t even realize their long term problems are the result of taking an FQ? Even those folks who knew they had an initial adverse event, but then thought they healed.  The numbers are probably staggering.

Emotions

Lynne bravely went on and with candor detailed her psychological battle dealing with the negative emotions, including depression, anxiety and anger.  Emotions that weren’t as prevalent her first time around. She, like many, has been battling FQAD for several years now and is receiving regular counseling for PTSD-like symptoms.

It is unfortunate that I receive variants on this type of email on occasion from those who didn’t get better, from those whose recovery didn’t proceed like expected, or from those who were thrust back into this hellish reality after a perceived escape.  

You get the idea.

For many, they become unable to express their emotions and the sense of isolation becomes unbearable, which just compounds the problem.

People do feel isolated because of what this damn drug has done to their bodies and the collateral affect it has had on your homes, jobs, marriages, relationships, and families. 

I once heard someone said that true empathy is getting down in the hole with the suffering person, instead of shouting positive messages from the edge.   Boy, can I relate to that!

So, if you are down in that hole, let me assure you that you are not alone.  

You are not alone in your grief or anger.  You are not alone in your sorrow or despair. I have walked a similar path, and so have many more.  Please know that you have friends in this battle and it’s healthy, natural and necessary to feel the negative emotions brought on by being disabled by these drugs. 

For me, I have learned to cope with these issues through my faith and focusing on the blessings that I have in my life.   Even then it is still hard and some days, really hard.

One thing you won’t get from me is false promises. I won’t blow smoke at you and promise you that it’s going to get better. I won’t lie to you like that. 

But I can tell you somethings that I know to be true. First, despite your disability, you still have self-worth. And secondly, something that I have learned and seen over the last twelve years; You will become stronger in your weakness.

This I know.  I can’t fully explain it, but I have seen it time and time again.  The human spirit and the will to survive still amazes me to this day.

Just know….you are not alone.

This website makes use of licensed stock photography and graphics. All photography is for illustrative purposes only and all persons depicted are models.

[thiswillbereportedtomanagement]

The Streetwear Startup forum lets aspiring creative directors figure out whether their graphics are cool—and where they can get blank tees to print them on.There is absolutely no good reason the words “yo pierre, you wanna come out here?” should be here pinned on the page for Reddit’s Streetwear Startup subforum. Clicking on the words leads you nowhere, and the phrase—first heard on the Jamie Foxx Show and more recently popularized by hip-hop producer Pierre Bourne—doesn’t have anything to do with the page’s function: convening an unusually friendly online community to help burgeoning streetwear designers launch their brands. But it turns out that “yo pierre” is a perfect symbol for a genre of clothing that thrives on coded imagery—ranging from Coca-Cola to Dragon Ball Z—to signal to other people you’re hip, you’re in the know, and yes, you would like to come out here.The streetwear startup aims to dissect the very concept of cool. Can the designs and signals that have catapulted brands like Supreme and Kith into the fashion stratosphere be focus group-tested until you’ve found the thing that resonates with customers? After all, if the almost-14,000 users on the page think your piece is a must-cop, it’s also possible that Miami Dolphin Jarvis Landry will too, and will then wear it on ESPN, like he did with streetwear startup success story Rude Vogue. And if this chorus of voices say fire, there’s a decent chance the streetwear press will join in, like Hypebeast did with the brand Deadnight.Anyone with an Instagram account would be forgiven for thinking that the streetwear market is oversaturated with streetwear brands. But others see the endless stream as a siren call to jump into the fray. But the rush with coming up with a catchy name—seriously, it can be anything; the most popular streetwear brand in the world is called Supreme—can make you forget there are logistics to be dealt with. How do you get your vision on the screen? How do you make other people fuck with that vision? How do you get that art on a T-shirt? And, wait, where do you even get those T-shirts from? And once you have the T-shirts and someone willing to shell out the cash for it… what then?How do I get these printed?Streetwear Startup is built to answer those questions. “I want to keep it as open as possible and for it to be for anyone curious about brand startup as a whole,” says Dustin Wilkie, a recent UNC-Asheville grad who moderates the subreddit. The subreddit was formed, in November of 2013, and Wilkie, who was working on a brand of his own at the time, joined almost immediately. Wilkie says the person “who actually made it just doesn't use it, and I don't even have contact with them any more”—a poetic start for a page that’s all about trial and error. Wilkie was put in charge because he was the longest-tenured member.The subreddit’s main services can be broken down into two parts: beginner questions (What’s the best ecommerce site?) and brand feedback (What logo do you like most?). Wilkie’s goal is to eradicate the first part by compiling a How to Streetwear 101 handbook that will contain everything you need to get from idea to brand. “We have a pretty big problem with people posting the same beginner question over and over,” Wilkie laments. The ”wiki” currently covers four topics but “we're creating a how to beginner's guide that should handle all of those questions,” Wilkie says.“The subreddit is filled with people who are grinding away every day in the same way as me,” says Slade, a 20-year-old college student studying graphic design in Missouri who founded the brand VVID. “Oftentimes, they've stumbled and had to learn during their journey, too, and they're nice enough to impart that knowledge to me, and in turn I get to circumvent those mistakes.”Wilkie says the page has been growing quickly recently, though he can’t pinpoint the exact reason for all the newfound subscribers. Jaffry Mallari, a 19-year old Geomatics Engineering Technology student at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, says that when he joined almost two years ago, there were only around 2,000 followers. He took a break after his first brand went to that friendly Shopify site in the sky, but when he came back around a year ago the number of subscribers had tripled to 6,000. Now it stands at around 14,000 members—and more people means more voices. “There is more information now,” Mallari says. “So now it's like more of a struggle [to get to the top post] but since there's more competition now it made me push harder on my designs.” Mallari dubbed his new brand Resurgence: “To fix the mistakes that I’d made and to do twice as well as before—that's the meaning of the brand.”When I catch Slade on email he tells me he was getting “sewing 101 tips.” Others start by sponging up even more rudimentary knowledge. Mallari recounts his first experience on the page: “I just kept putting in designs and kept asking questions, like, ‘What websites do I use? How do I get these printed?” Mallari says that the first brand he made “crumbled and fell off” after a bad business decision. “But back then I was still new to it and I thought [I’d found] an easier way. That's when I learned the hard way that's not how you need to run something.”Everyone started from the bottomBuilding a career in fashion takes time: Alessandro Michele worked anonymously for more than a decade at Gucci before being handed the reins. Building a career on r/StreetwearStartup is a considerably quicker process. “I have been posting in the subreddit showcasing my collections for about 18 months now,” says Sam Hall, a 27-year-old living in Manchester. In that span, his brand Deadnight has been featured on Hypebeast. Well-followed DJs like Example and KuruptFM requested clothing from him. Now, he says he’s in talks to be stocked “across Asia for a very large organization.” That’s thanks to the subreddit, he says: “Each time I have received high praise from members, but most importantly vital feedback which I have used each and every time to improve.” And therein lies what’s truly one-of-a-kind about this page: unlike most internet enclaves, most people on Streetwear Startup aren’t total assholes.A large percentage of the posts request feedback on a design. Amateur designers posting their best efforts to an audience granted internet anonymity should be like throwing red meat to a pack of hypebeasts. But the group on Streetwear Startup is almost entirely supportive, and only intends to nurture when it does give feedback. Compare the top comment on a recent Hypebeast article—”Looka ma stickers bruuuuuuuh. Fucking f*****s”—with a comment the brand Anomaly received when its founder asked for feedback on a tee: “I really like the original to the point where I'll cop rn if you release.”And that’s just one of the 33 comments offering advice on what the graphic should look like (“If you're going for the water reflection look, I feel like you should make the water a little more recognizable,” writes one commenter) and ways to add small details (“Would like to see something really simple on the back of the shirt,” reads another post). Anomaly’s founder Adam has been on the subreddit since 2015 and describes it as a key resource in building his brand. “It's the first place I turn to whenever I need feedback on a new design, tips on marketing, or just advice in general,” Adam tells me via email. “I'm not exaggerating when I say I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the supportive, albeit critical, community​.”That sentiment is echoed by other users. “I personally value when people on the sub are a bit ruthless,” says VVID’s Slade. “It may often hurt my feelings at first reaction, but I also find harsh critique to give my subconscious a new perspective when approaching design.”What feeds the harmonious atmosphere is the fact that everyone has some skin in the game. “Everyone has the same perspective,” says Mallari. “So it's much easier for them to praise others, keep it up, this is good. It's a supportive environment because everyone started from the bottom.” Wilkie says he’s only ever banned one person.The whole community is reliant on this continuous feedback loop. “If you give to the community, we're going to try and give back to you,” says Wilkie.But this isn’t just a fun hobby; those who stick with the subreddit are serious about their success and the page can act as a fast track to it. “This is the future for me,” says Slade of his brand. “I'm hoping when Volume 3 releases I'll be able to drop out of school and do VVID full-time. I don't think it’s a long shot.”Adam, a 17-year-old who runs a brand called Anomaly with his friends Omar and Abdullah, echoes that thought. “Every brand owner within the subreddit wants the same thing: to make it big,” he says.It’s the amount of experience that all of us combined can bring to one person's ideaThe subreddit’s greatest strength, though, is the sheer number of voices and people it can bring to bear on an issue. “We have [14,000] people now but even if 10 people talk to you about a design that may help you decide to start over or decide that, ‘Wow this is really something I can work on.’” says Wilkie.When I ask Slade what the most valuable thing he gets from the subreddit is he says opinions. This is what’s most disruptive about the page: it lets burgeoning designers to crowdsource their designs rather than coming up with designs in isolation, investing the money, then plopping them on the web in hopes of finding an audience for the work.The process by which the clothing is made is different, but the resulting products have a lot in common with brands we’re familiar with. In the world of streetwear, the difference between what we consider hot and not oftentimes has a lot to do with the name behind it, rather than the strict aesthetic appeal of whatever’s on the front. The reasons we lose our collective shit over a white tee with a red box on it isn’t because of its unprecedented design quality; it’s because of everything that red box signifies. Anomaly recently featured paintings that were criticized for looking too similar to those used by popular streetwear brand Heron Preston. The factor that makes one cool and another unoriginal can often come down to the name. There’s nothing inherently uncool about the brands on the streetwear subreddit except maybe that they’re just not cool yet.Sorting out all the signals is why the streetwear startup can be so helpful. “I needed a place to gauge the response a larger audience would have to the collection and I wanted to know if it would stand out the way I wanted it to,” Slade explains. “What better way to test that than post in a community of people who look at or create streetwear designs all day, and see what they think?” You can feel out a customer base before needing, you know, a customer base.And because these are people who also have brands, it makes them the perfect target market. “If the majority of them like it, it will mostly likely at least sell a few pieces,” says Mallari. Streetwear Startup offers people a testing ground for items and designs before they ever put real monetary investment into anything. And you can keep taking the community’s advice until you’ve smoothed out the edges enough that someone—probably a number of someones on Streetwear Startup, who have now all helped you make a garment closer to their tastes—might actually buy your product. Fashion isn’t a science, but in Streetwear Startup you can play a game of addition and subtraction based on feedback until you’ve got something at least one person will wear.And you can keep adding and subtracting until someone like Jarvis Landry wears your clothes on ESPN. Matt Nicholas, a 30-years-old supplement store manager in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada and the designer behind Rude Vogue, says that the subreddit vaulted him in front of a larger audience, but the Landry placement is on a different level. “It was a pretty amazing feeling, just growing up always watching ESPN daily and then to see your brand you've worked so hard for making a cameo on SportsCenter,” Nicholas says. The rest of the subreddits users are hoping to find the same kind of streetwear success — with a little help from their 14,000 friends.Watch Now:How Kinfolk Became One of the Coolest Designers on the PlanetMORE STORIES LIKE THIS ONE

https://www.gq.com/story/reddit-streetwear-startup