#pressuring myself to work badly and get worse

[curiousorigins]

As someone who had Chronic Pain for the first like 25ish years of my life... Abled people literally do not understand the concept of a pain that never goes away.

They literally can't.

It's impossible. It even felt impossible for me because my pain was so early and so consistent that my brain literally just ignored it until one day I was doing physical therapy for a different injury... and it was just gone.

I felt it's absence and I felt the best I've felt in 20+ years.

I hadn't had a particularly good meal that day. Still had my stomach issues. Slept badly. My back hurt. Probably dehydrated. Definitely had tooth pain. But that was literally the best I can in memory, had ever felt.

The closest experience I can describe to it, is when you've got an abscessed tooth and they relieve the pressure and the pain is just gone and it's wonderful.

If there is no absence of pain... there is no relief. You can't just sleep in and feel better. You can't just drink water and feel better or get a new pillow etc. That's just your new default.

Now as someone who had previously considered myself abled who now has had an official disabled tag on me and all that... (I for the most part lucked out with a temporary disability. But know that plenty disabilities are chronic, permanent or get worse the longer you go.) I felt I was educated that I was an advocate but absolutely nothing prepared me for my body failing me so consistently. I listened to disabled folks and tried to amplify their voices.

I 100% was the person to go to bat for people who were in pain on my team. The problem is that for many people, pain is temporary. With rest, it goes away. With healing it gets better.

Most of those folks are sadly not educated. And conceptually it's a hard concept to work on despite all the empathy in the word.

The bigger the chain, the less likely that the person making the schedule can just hire another person and of course we all know companies have been understaffing on purpose for decades. This is definitely a Worker Rights issues. We've got a toxic working environment almost everywhere and the majority of the Working Class that's still working literally does not remember it being any better. You absolutely deserved better. And You definitely could use the support of an Advocate. I got in multiple fights on the behalf of co-workers all the time for these kind of issues. And when I was temporarily injured on the job, I had co-workers who fought for me too. The problem is people don't understand that we must stand together for this. For the abled folks, this is a temporary problem... just like their managers have been telling them understaffing is a temporary problem.

Look at your disabled co-workers folks and realize... one day that's going to be you. We literally all will at some point most likely be classed as disabled in some way. Sometimes permanently and sometimes not.

What you stand for TODAY is what might be left for you when it's your turn. Your managers/middle manager answer to a higher power then you and that is the greed of a very rich guy who literally sees you all as EXPENSES not VALUE.

DO NOT sacrifice YOURSELF on the Alter to Someone else's greed.

I understand the job market is tough and there are crappy work places that reveal themselves as crappy slowly. But YOU help create the CULTURE at WORK. ANYTIME I overheard management complain about such and such an employees issue with scheduling or with their ability. I ALWAYS spoke up.

I mentioned what a hard worker they were. How we'd been short on people for a long time. How we all deserved to be staffed enough that every one of us should be able to leave for 2 weeks and not have the store fall apart. I made people team lift. Reminded them that Corporate could not give them a new spine.

I trained most folks to speak up. And the more I did it, the more of use who would speak up.

And United We Bargain Divided We Beg.

The primary thing a manager is supposed to do is keep us compliant enough to work. Disgruntled rumblings are powerful when echoed.

Speak Up. Speak Up about TEMPORARY PAIN caused by WORK. TEMPORARY PAIN becomes PERMANENT PAIN if allowed to CONTINUE. PAIN is your body's FIRST attempt to get YOU to STOP doing something THAT IS HARMING YOU.

They decided that our anti-fatigue mats were a hazard. (It was actually the fact that our Stockroom was too small for the Stock they sent us and our Staff couldn't clear it with no space to work.) And tried to remove them. Every one of us had our shoes wear sooner and we all had greater back pain. I made sure to voice how weird it is that I hurt more now that we didn't have those mats. Sometimes I'd even sit down when we were unloading the truck to give my back a rest. I'd tell my other co-workers to do as well.

If a manager had the power to bring them back came in when I was sitting... I'd interrupt their telling me off for sitting that I literally hurt and what the cause was. That I'd probably be going to the doctor soon.

(Be sure to document your work pain by texting (not work but also work) other people about it. About how you hurt because blah blah at work. You might need it to prove that they should be paying to fix you if you ever need doctoring or disability pay.)

We got the mats back.

I would like to see more people talk about how jobs treat disabled employees.

I used to prep, wash dishes, and cook at mellow mushroom. I had chronic pain that wasn't NEARLY as bad as it is today, but it was still very debilitating. I told my employer "i cannot stand more than 4 to 6 hours. I CANNOT do shifts longer than this due to my illness." And even though i made my boundaries VERY clear, everyday i worked it was 8 hours at the least and 10 or 12 at the most. I would go up to my manager and say "look i really need to leave, my shift is over, my chronic pain is killing me." And he'd say "we really need to here, you HAVE to push through." And so i did, and after one, ONE month of that job my crps got incredibly worse to the point where i could no longer walk my dog around the block which was .5 miles. I quit, and that was FOUR years ago, and ever since that day I HAVE BEEN BEDRIDDEN AND HAVE TO USE A WHEELCHAIR. It is my biggest regret in life.

My best friend who has seen my whole journey has recently developed undiagnosed chronic pain, and she is in the EXACT same scenario i was 4 years ago. Busting her ass at a pizza place with extreme pain that hurts her so much she tells me "im in so much pain i don't even feel like a person." She doesn't feel LUCID. And her manager and coworkers are saying the same thing "if you don't help us you will let us down, we'll be in the shit."

That job thats hurting you isn't fucking worth it. I promise you no money is worth losing all your physical abilities and never getting them back. Your coworkers and boss do not give a shit about you, so don't you dare suffer for them. They will never understand your struggle and they will never try. They truly think being understaffed is worse than whatever pain you experience. They would rather you permanently damage yourself than inconvenience them. FUCK THEM. DON'T FUCKING DO IT!

[coffeeworldsasaki]

If the government really wanted so much to make me work instead of giving me the fucking economic Support poor people had until the last elections they would give me money every day I can't function because of depression

[carmyberzattosjournal]

Entry 17: A Man Possessed

GIF credit: @maikswen

Bearblr Promptober Day 17: Dumbification (Sub: Clueless)

Summary: Carmy has girlfriend (who he calls Darling) brainworms again, and he's even more of a disaster this time. (Or: the time Carmy had to leave work to go rail his girl)

Warnings: Smut, swearing, p in v sex, unprotected sex (she has an IUD but Carmy's not writing that in his journal), Dom/Sub dynamic, calling Carmy "sir", hair pulling, obsessed thoughts, mild spiraling, fem reader/rando lass who is a trauma surgeon, she/her pronouns.

Notes: All journal entries will be titled as such and tagged with #cb journal.

Thank you for reading. Thank you to @carmenberzattosgf for putting together this prompt list.

If you want to keep following this set of works, you can follow the #cb journal tag.

Sideblog for commentary and yapping: @m-z-shoroi

This is is a two-parter. The first part is here.

Also, if random letters or words are black/white instead of the colors they should be, that's Tumblr being dumb, I've been fighting it for days.

17 Oct 2024

I handled the second incident of Darling invading my brain much worse than the first.

I couldn’t fucking focus for five fucking minutes on anything. I was pissed off at life two minutes after opening, worse so when the place looked a fucking mess from the night before. Assholes couldn’t even clean up after themselves. I don’t even know how many times I lost track of what I was doing or why because my mind went to Darling instead of staying at The Bear. Here she was, burying her face in my t-shirt again, letting out that delicious sigh, the curve of her hip still visible under the blankets, and I wanted so badly to just grab her. To squeeze her flesh in my hands, dig my fingers into the round of her ass, to drown in her soft skin and her wet kisses to my throat. I wanted to bite her. I didn’t even know what to do with that—I just wanted to sink my teeth into the inside of her thigh before soothing her by putting my mouth to use elsewhere. Why? For what purpose? How does that make sense?

Syd must’ve noticed that I was off because she started helping with cleaning—didn’t even try to talk to me. I hate that, by the way; hate when I’m so far away that people don’t even find words worth giving me. I might not talk much, but if people don’t talk to me, I start feeling like a bug on the window; tiny, inconvenient, gross, unwanted, easily forgotten until I make an irritating sound.

I had to step out in the middle of cleaning—I hadn’t even gotten to prep yet, that’s how bad it was—and I found myself dragging my hand over the side of my neck and my throat. My heart throbbed with such violence that I wanted it to escape so I’d stop being harassed by it. My hands trembled, breaths got erratic. I heard her voice again, telling me to breathe, to find sounds around me, but it came through as static. The apple leaf adagio, the skittering of dried maple leaves, her body fits so perfectly in my hands, strawberry lip balm, what’s not to love? Fuck, that feels good, Carmy. More of that, pretty boy.

Pretty boy.

Please call me pretty boy again, I’m begging you.

I struggled to make it through the rest of prep. I’m fairly sure Sydney figured out I was that same sort of fucked up again because she didn’t wait for me to fuck up a count or fail to give directions before taking over the reigns of the kitchen. I turned into a line cook, just mindlessly doing what was asked of me because it’s what I knew I could do without making a worse mess, and she had the rest under control.

Syd always had it under control; I was the one out of control.

Once again, near dinner service, just when I thought I’d be fine, I cracked under the pressure. I had stepped out to get a break from the relentless heat of the kitchen, try to get some air that wasn’t saturated with the aromas of food (it sounds nice, but trust me, when you’re hour 10 into inhaling sautéed onions, confit garlic, vinegar, cumin, black pepper, olive oil, it gets so deep into your lungs that you feel like you might cough up a prime rib steak). The snap of cold air on my face shattered the dam keeping any assertion of reality in check, and I was inundated with this… how do I even describe it? It wasn’t quite rage, but it wasn’t far from it. Like I needed Darling. I needed her so badly that if I didn’t have her, I was going to break something.

Possessed? Was I a man possessed?

I had this crawling sensation, yeah? Not quite like ants on my skin; the feeling was bigger, coarser. It started in my back, spread to my shoulders, blazed down my arms, into my hands. I clenched and relaxed my fists, trying to ward it off, but when that did nothing—and it did precisely nothing—I rubbed hard over my arms, dug my short fingernails into my skin in some faint approximation of what Darling’s nails felt like. When I thought about doing it again, even harder, hard enough to draw blood if I had to, I knew I was fucked.

I bailed on the kitchen staff again, but something tells me they would’ve hated me being there anyway.

“Sweetheart? You’re home early, what’s going on?”

She’s on the couch fiddling with yarn—I think it’s crochet? Or is it knitting? I don’t know the difference—and has the 2005 Pride and Prejudice on in the background at a low volume. I don’t even know if she can hear it with how quiet it is. I throw off my jacket, and that’s enough for her to figure out something is wrong. She puts the yarn thing on the arm of the couch and unfolds her legs to get up, but I can’t, okay, I cannot.

“No, you stay there.” I’m sorry, did I just tell her what to do? Who the fuck am I?

She froze and leveled a look at me that I can only describe as a deer in headlights. Entirely confused. Clueless. Maybe even scared.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” It’s tiny. High in her throat.

She follows my face with those big eyes as I approach. It’s weird that it didn’t bother me then. It bothers me now, thinking about it, that she was probably confused as all hell and I should’ve stopped to talk to her, but clearly, I was on one. Or something. That crawling sensation was worse, and overwhelmed by the need, the sheer fucking need to taste her. Taste that strawberry lip balm, lap at her tongue, to occupy my mouth with soft, warm wetness. Fuck me, she was wearing my t-shirt, too.

She squeaked in surprise when I crashed our lips together. Immediately shot her hand to my forearm when one of mine blanketed over her throat. The other seized a fistful of her hair, and she grabbed at my wrist. Probably startled. It bothers me that I didn’t care at the time.

“Open,” I growled.

She obeyed immediately, relented control to let me explore her mouth, and wove her hands into my hair. Fucking hell, I needed that. I was starved of her, plagued with memories of her taste for 10 entire fucking hours—fuck I needed her, all of her, I needed her hands under my skin, goddammit. I pushed her down onto the couch, wrenched her knees apart, and settled between them. She tugged my hair in surprise and then coiled her legs around me.

“Pull harder.”

“Harder? Carmy—”

I used my grip on her hair to tip her head back and aim a glare at her. “I said pull. Fucking. Harder.”

She whimpered and did what I asked. My eyes drifted shut against my will at the tension on my hair—not painful, a sort of raw pleasurable that only pain could seem to bring in that moment. It was too fucking warm. It was boiling again. Why is it always so fucking warm? It was almost as if she could hear my thoughts because she yanked my shirt up and off. I went right back to attacking her with kisses. She hooked a leg high up on my waist and tightened it—have I mentioned how fucking strong she is? College soccer player. She’s really fucking strong.—and it was enough to trigger the ache in my back and force me to pause for a moment with my lips at her neck.

“Carmy,” she gasped, “tell me where your head is, sweetheart.”

Her sounding breathless shouldn’t’ve made me feel powerful.

I yanked off her shirt. May have torn a hook off her bra when I wrested it off her. Whatever, I’d buy her a new one.

“Carmy, I need you to talk—” I cut her off with more fervent kisses. She patted my chest, squeezed her legs again. “Hey, pretty boy.”

That got me to freeze and meet her gaze. She rubbed small circles over my chest.

“Hi… hi, sweetheart.”

“Couldn’t—” Fuck me, I could barely think. “Couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

Her confusion was replaced with a wide-eyed expression.

I ducked down to continue that hickey on her neck. I needed to leave some kind of mark on her. What the hell was going on with me? She trailed a hand down my abdomen and rested it on the bulge in my pants. Took her about two heartbeats to start fumbling with my fly. This wave of cool relief washed over me—don’t know what or why it was about—but it was brief, just a momentary breather in the flames of arousal consuming me. She got me free of my pants and underwear, kissed my temple.

“That better, hm?” Was she really trying to soothe me right now?

Did she not see the animal trying not to devour her?

It occurs to me now that I might’ve genuinely scarred her when I stared her down in response. She froze, searched my face, darted her gaze between my mouth and my eyes repeatedly. Had shaky, jerky movements when trying to shove off her sweatpants. It was odd that she wasn’t speaking. She tends to talk. Her voice is pretty soothing, honestly. At first, something of a regular check in and reassurance for me to know that I wasn’t fucking up, but now a familiar, comfortable, soothing riff in the soundtrack of our lives together. Of course, at the time, I didn’t register any of this because I just needed to be inside her already.

She tensed up when I hiked her leg up my side. Babbled frantically into my mouth, “C-Carmy? Carmy, be gentle. Please be gentle—oh fuck!”

How gentle do you think a wild animal can be, baby girl?

She was unimaginably tight but also impossibly wet. My head spun and it took every last frayed fiber of wherewithal to not immediately sink into her cunt as deep as I could. Forget thinking straight, forget thinking about anything other than the tight, wet heat enveloping my dick. I was pussy drunk already, and I just barely got started.

She dug her nails into my back, had one hand on my abdomen digging into my muscle. “Baby! Baby, please, slow down… fuck, that’s so good, but please—”

“You can take it,” I snarled into her ear.

She took a second, but then withdrew the hand pushing on me and busied it with my hair instead. Mumbled a small, “Y-yes, sir.”

Sir?

She moaned something of a pitiful sound when I got to work. Whatever that version of me was, it wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t seem to care. She hiked her leg up higher when I hit her deep, begged for more, clung to me tighter when I sunk my teeth into her shoulder and did just that, mumbled praises in my ear as I relentlessly fucked her through her orgasm. Good boy; that’s it, you’re making me feel so good; fuck, baby, I’m so full; I can take more, keep going. It crossed the rat’s nest of busted wires in my brain further. All I can remember is this raw, unfiltered, white-hot pleasure burning a chasm into my core, this tension winding so tight I couldn’t get enough air in. Braided steel cable creaking under a construction load? How do I describe this? Tightening rubber band? No.

Sinew tensioning as a dull knife dug into it. That’s an apt descriptor. Like with the ice cubes in the kitchen that first time. Only all-consuming, raw, visceral, centered on her—her scent, her heat, her strained breaths, her wetness, her taste. 

I hid my face in the crook of her neck when I was right on the edge.

Her lips brushed my ear. Her voice was strained but still the same kind of soothing to my soul. “Come on, sweetheart. Let go… Cum, pretty boy…”

I clutched her like a drowning man when my orgasm finally hit me. It knocked the air out of my lungs, killed a scream in my throat, set off a thrumming sound in my ears, first bathed me in flames and then abruptly flooded ice water through my veins. My abdomen screamed from how violently it spasmed, the muscles in my back seized up. Everything stopped. Everything—never in my life had my entire existence been so blank, so empty, so quiet, so at peace. I might even have blacked out for a bit (or my memory is just as shit as it’s always been) because the next thing I remember is slow, gentle caresses over my face, neck, chest, shoulder, then back up to my face to repeat the circuit. Her lips pressed to my hairline at intervals. My eyelashes brushed her neck while I tried to blink the cobwebs away.

“You with me, sweetheart?”

Nope. Not even close. I don’t even know what planet I’m on right now.

She smoothed my sweaty hair back off my face. Planted another kiss to my temple. “That’s okay. You’re safe. Take your time.”

This is going too well, right? She’s too perfect. God’s a sadist; that other shoe is going to return from orbit, and because I am willing to give my whole being to this woman, it will kill me. This love will kill me.

[zahri-melitor]

What can you infer about the editorial meddling Young Justice went through?

Oh god. It’s like the old quote about pornography: you know it when you see it. Spend enough time reading comics and you can just tell.

Notable problems with the Young Justice 2019 run that smack of interference:

You can really tell there was external pressure to include Steph in the run and that she was not originally intended to join the team or appear any further than occasional cameos such as the flashbacks at the Hall of Justice as a link to Tim’s final scene in Tynion’s Tec run. Structurally her story makes no sense whatsoever for how to put a plot together. Steph’s not an original Young Justice character, the run already was supporting two new female characters plus a reboot of Amethyst introducing Amy to a new generation, even before we look at the crossovers from other titles in the imprint. The fact they ended up throwing in a single issue entirely about 'what Steph has been up to and her fight against Cluemaster' in the last section of the run makes it even worse, as that was valuable page time wasted pandering that could and should have been used to give Jinny Hex or Keli Quintela more development.

The entire ‘Drake’ situation, which for a costume change had very little build up, was under-designed, and then disappeared with Tim back in the Robin costume between two panels. It was a test balloon from someone that was comprehensively shot down by some mix of the fandom and editorial, and I remain convinced that DC is gunshy about a new costume and identity for Tim all the way up to the present day because of how badly it was handled.

It was being used as the anchor for Wonder Comics, leading to the required mega crossover (that also spilled over into Bendis’ Action Comics to give it some more space), putting even more pressure on the title to be telling a big crossover story when it was still trying to re-establish “your favourites are back” and suggesting potentially expanding the Young Justice lineup out to around thirteen characters, a massively oversized team that the title was not set up to handle.

Lost in the Multiverse was where the story started to get bogged down by being pulled in too many directions by expectations.

It’s also super telling that the last third of the book got turned over to essentially doing one-shot character pieces about the Core Four, the last defence of a run that can see cancellation coming and doesn’t feel confident launching a new story arc they don’t expect to get to finish. Some of this stuff was clearly background character work they would have preferred to have dripped out over a longer run.

Also I know I’m repeating myself, but having the Tim piece focus on Steph mostly, in the frame of Tim and Steph’s relationship? That’s not where I’d be spending my time when looking at Tim Drake in the focus of Young Justice. How he’s coping with his returned memories of having two or three different lives now? Thinking about what ‘Tell Conner you’re sorry’ means? Discussion about his feelings in terms of moving on from being Robin or not? Nah let’s talk about Steph's problems with her dad instead. That’s not a natural fit compared to what everyone else got and does not follow from any of the preceding story.

Still ropeable that the whole set of storylines about regained memories and alternate timelines doesn’t get to intersect with Lois Lane (which spoilers but also is committed to storytelling about ‘people have memories of other places bleeding through’ prior to the full Infinite Frontier retcon) or explore how those memories change things for Tim, Bart or Cassie (Kon at least does get a story about reconnecting in Action).

And that’s just off the top of my head, ignoring any of the more subtle signs.

I love Young Justice 2019. It is a run that adores Bart, Kon, Cassie and Tim (and particularly Bart. I cannot explain to you how much this story adores Bart if you’ve never read it) and the opening 6 issues make me feel warm and fuzzy every time I read them in terms of how cleverly it works to explain how we get everything back. There are clever subtle moments in the text that give a lot more depth to the story that are implied rather than spelled out: how Cassie suddenly remembers Bart when Bart comes near her, suggesting that her returned memories are a Speed Force side effect from being a lightning rod to Bart; Cassie and Tim sense Kon using TTK and recognise it as familiar, something the new characters cannot; the fakeout in the art where when Tim’s memories are restored, he sees Cissie in his memories, but unless you know the exact YJ98 page being referenced you’d think it was Steph; etc.

But gosh it would have been so much better if it had not been required to devote so much page time to crossovers and to pandering to fans, among other elements.

[kiritila]

Are you still gonna be updating no one saw me?

this is such a long time overdue, but since ive been away so long i figured this would be a good way to address everything, like whats been happening in my life and my future plans for no1sm for everyones clarity.

to put it shortly, i work full-time, and have done for nearly 2 years now. i am a product designer and i work monday-friday, 9-5. i attend a full day of college classes once a week, this day being even longer than a work day, and on top of that i have a personal work-based tutor that i have to complete work for as well. so in terms of professional obligations, im extremely busy. in my personal life, ive been seeing friends a lot, running errands, planning for weddings, parties, buying a car, SO MANY THINGS. my life has been so hectic.

ive also been suffering some health problems recently. my earliest or readers that are close friends probably know i began writing no1sm to vent my feelings about trauma i underwent, and this obviously still affects me quite greatly alongside depression and anxiety. ive also been suffering quite badly with insomnia and fatigue problems, as well as, embarrassingly, moderately bad eczema.

perhaps the most ridiculous development of all: I AM NOT CURRENTLY HYPERFIXATED ON SOUTH PARK. SHOCK HORROR. BUT PLEASE DONT PANIC: it is still my spin, stan and kyle are still my most favourite characters ever, and most of all i still ENJOY south park and enjoy thinking about, planning, and writing no1sm (when im not completely utterly knackered). ive actually recently gotten majorly into formula 1 as a result of my friends, so if there are any f1 fans following me PLEASE SAY HI!!!!! i plan to do art for it but i have been busy and im also very much a perfectionist. (FYI: my favourite driver is max verstappen. no questions asked. i also love charles daniel lando oscar and honestly most drivers on the grid. i love niki lauda james hunt seb vettel and jenson button. i had a brief mclaren tooned hyperfixation. I AM CURRENTLY INCREDIBLY DEPRESSED OVER DANIEL RICCIARDO LOSING HIS SEAT)

anyway.. getting back on track.

AM I STILL GOING TO BE UPDATING NO1SM?

YES. YES YES A MILLION TIMES YES. i dont know when, but this story is something i have to complete for myself and for you guys. i realised i was putting myself under so much pressure for it to be perfect that it sapped the love i felt for it from me. now that i no longer have visible eyes on me waiting for updates on twitter, i feel much freer and relaxed with it. i dont know how or when, but yes, the story will be completed. do not ask me about the kyle prequel ive planned though DONT DO IT.

i also dont plan on posting about updates anywhere other than tumblr going forwards. ive since moved on from the twitter south park fandom where i was most active, as i felt like i was too old to be in a fandom of minors and the discourse was simply too much. so i decided to move to a fan space and sport that is a million times worse but still somehow has been better for me. so if you still want to follow me on twitter even though i dont south park post anymore, you can follow me at @vrstappns :)

WILL NO1SM HAVE AN UPDATE SCHEDULE?

NO. sorry, my mental health and my career comes first. i want to try and find a better balance that leaves me time to write but im afraid i need time to ease myself back in after so long off and theres no guarantee how long that will take me.

WILL YOU STILL BE MAKING ART FOR NO1SM?

YES. I HOPE. who knows when though cause i havent been able to draw in a long time and im still pissed off that i cant draw max verstappen as easily as i could ever draw kyle broflovski.

AM I ALLOWED TO USE YOUR STORY AND WRITE THE ENDING FOR MYSELF?

NO. PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS. as much as other authors may encourage this I REALLY DO NOT LIKE THIS. you dont know how much work i have put into this fic as well as how much of my own life and traumas are embedded between the lines of writing. this fic is practically half of me in the same way my parents’ DNA is a part of my make-up. not to sound rude but to even think you could possibly imagine how i intend for this fic to resolve and end when you dont even know me is laughable.

HOW WILL THE INTENSE HOMOSEXUAL RIVALRIES OF FORMULA ONE INFLUENCE THE INTENSE HOMOSEXUAL RIVALRY OF STAN AND KYLE GOING FORWARDS?

im sure 2019 charles leclerc and max verstappen guided carefully by brocedes and james hunt and niki lauda will figure something out. maybe not brocedes actually i am unsure if i want stan marsh to end up like nico rosberg. but i guess he is a good youtuber too and has great hair which is two things stan is NOT. gay loser. also david coulthard and sebastian vettel are there somewhere. GAY RED BULL RACING WILL LEAD US TO WORLD PEACE

thank you so much for reading, i know youve all probably moved on with your life but its a weight off my chest to finally write this out. i love this fic and i love that you all love this fic, if you are still here. i can only apologise for how long ive made you all wait.

please just have patience with me,

thanks muchly,

mike (formerly marshplaylist) vrstappns

[aita-blorbos]

WIBTA for faking my own death?

Throwaway account, for obvious reasons.

My family and I are on pretty bad terms. They're super bigoted, we fight a lot, and they don't really care about me or respect me at all. On top of that, they own and run a horrible environmentally destructive family business that's been around for ages (it's basically a strip mining operation but worse), and I know they know that upsets me, but they just talk over me and treat me like a child whenever I try to have a conversation about it, and I feel like I can't negotiate with them at all. They've always been like this, and I hate it.

Recently, they've been trying to pressure me to join in the family business and basically gave me the deeds to a chunk of land they want to mine/develop, though they're still basically running the operations logistically. The place is so beautiful, and it's a home to multiple endangered species that could literally go extinct if the project goes through. I've seen it myself and I can't possibly live with the idea of letting that happen.

I couldn't get through to them directly, and I couldn't risk them confiscating the land and just doing things themselves, so I... basically ended up making a whole ecoterrorist alter-ego to sabotage myself so I could have an excuse not to do it? Which was fun, and it has made some actual dents in the project! And I like the person I get to be when I don't have to play along with their awfulness. I've made friends as this person, and um, maaaybe even a girlfriend? Which my family will absolutely lose their shit over if they ever find out about. (That goes for a lot of my friends right now, honestly.) Buuut now they're making a huge deal out of the whole thing and basically want my other persona dead, which is going to be hard to explain when that person turns out to be me! I don't want to have to have this conversation ever if I can help it, and I'm really scared of what will happen to my friends if I get caught.

Right now, almost all my actual friends only know me as my other persona. I don't know what they would think of me if they knew. The only person who knows is my girlfriend, and only because she works for my parents' business as well (she was sort of hired as a personal assistant after I scared off the last one? Long story. Younger me was… not the most mature.) I'm terrified of what might happen if my secret gets out, and I don't think there's any more good I can do as the bratty little princess of the family I'm still badly pretending to be.

I can't keep up this ruse, and I can't keep living like this. I hate it here. I don't want to be this person I am around them anymore. I just want to be me, and the only way I can see to do that is to make a clean break.

So. WIBTA for faking my death to get away from them?

[h50europe]

When one side of the fandom lies bleeding while the other one is thriving or how I learned about fandom wars the hard way

This is a message from someone whose beloved ship rests forever in the depths of the ocean.

We had high hopes. It looked like our ship was afloat and ready to explore the seven seas for three seasons. Then, the show got a new showrunner who was very homophobic, and from that point on, the show and our favorite ship went downhill. Even though I'd been in different fandoms for about fifteen years and should have known better, I let myself get caught up in an unprecedented fandom war. Those who favored the Het couple were attacking one half of our ship, not just his character but the actor. Don't think they don't know what's going on just because an actor isn't on social media. We knew some crew members and learned that everyone knew about this fandom war.

The whole thing escalated until the show's final episode, which came to a more than undignified end after ten years. Knowing what he was doing, the showrunner wrote an ending that damaged the show and destroyed our ship. It was bad. There were words like, "Now we're dancing on your grave," and much worse. I was mentally at the end of my rope at that point. Then, the sets were immediately dismantled after the last scene was shot. It's something that happens very rarely when a show reaches some cult status. Our ship didn't even do a joint farewell interview for the fans because the actors left the set quickly and never looked back.

Why am I telling you this? Because I've learned to observe things from a certain distance.

We are fans of the same show but have different priorities and ships. As a multi-shipper, it's easier, I'd say. But those who are running amok right now because their ship is staying in the harbor while another is sailing away with flying colors brings back extremely unpleasant memories to me. But the same goes for those who are just as happy about what's happening and are starting to lose their grip. Please take it from someone badly burned: This is not a competition. This is not me winning and you losing. It's deceptive to think you're on the winning side and make fun of others for it. The tide can turn. We don't know what the showrunner has in mind. We don't even know that season eight might not be the last. Take what we have right now and be thankful for it. Enjoy it while it lasts. But don't be tempted to point fingers and mock others or say, "Your ship will never be canon. Mine already is. Your ship is crap. Mine is better." Also, do not be fooled by the fact that the haters in the fandom are a small group of people who only appear to be many because of their vocality and because some are playing the old sock puppet account game again to make it look like they are many.

I can only tell you from experience that we should treat each other respectfully. Not every Buddie fan is an enemy. Unfortunately, I also see another phenomenon that is becoming more and more common. Fans barely dare to post anything for fear of the crazies in the fandom (which unfortunately exist on both sides). Fans who have nothing to do with a fandom war want to have fun. And if they have a ship, they just want to interact with like-minded people. Which - especially on X - seems to turn into a gauntlet. Because suddenly, Your Rudeness sneaks into the conversation and starts pissing on the timeline. For clowns like this, the block button still works. Getting involved in any discussion is pointless. I also had to pay dearly for this realization.

"Never wrestle with a pig because you'll both get dirty, and the pig likes it." - Positive energy is much more powerful than negative energy. If you stay positive, negativity can't touch you. Oh, and I've wrestled a lot of pigs. Other than excessive blood pressure, gastritis, and countless sleepless nights, it didn't do me any good.

Stop participating in dick-measuring contests. Stop bragging about your favorite ship and how the others are nothing but losers. Stop saying we won because we didn't. Again, this is not a contest. We are on equal footing, and we can all coexist in peace. There is plenty of room. For everyone, for every ship, for every fan. Oliver made a single statement for those unhappy with Buck's journey and his current travel companion. He dropped it for good. And I couldn't agree more with the message and how he did it.

Of course, we would like to see more of our ship. Of course, we want the actors to have a relationship storyline to sink their teeth into, and hopefully, we get to see some domestic stuff and some hot scenes. But so far, that is fanon and not canon. So far, there is usually more going on off-screen than we see. We can only hope that this will change. Those who call themselves open-minded and tolerant while going on a witch hunt should think twice about what those words mean, and they should live them and not just throw shallow phrases around.

My wish for the future of this fandom is that it becomes a safe place. Safe as in a h*te-free zone. A place where no one has to be afraid to speak their mind. And a place where you can express (constructive) criticism without getting a shitstorm. Peace out.

[lakesbian]

and now for our Checking In With The Dallon Sisters poasting

Panacea shook her head, “Tattletale found a way around my sister’s invincibility. Glory Girl was bitten pretty badly, which is why I didn’t come sooner. I think it hits you harder, psychologically, when you’re pretty much invincible but you get hurt anyways. But we’re okay now. She’s healed but sulking. I- I’m alright. Bump on my head, but I’m okay.”

victoria is demonstrably having a bad time with the previously noted psychological pain of being forcibly reminded that, no matter how hard she tries, she will never be the spotless, invincible, perfect hero she wants to be. the bug bites suck obviously but the "sulking" After being healed is an indicator of where it really hurt--not just physically.

(amy's power reminds me of. do you guys know that one tumblr post about the concept of exploring the horror potential inherent to D&D-esque fantasy healers? like, the horror inherent to being perfectly, magically healed from horrifying injury a hundred times over, and being expected to just get up and keep fighting afterwards, without any regards to how your mental health is doing. that's exactly how amy's power functions: you're made physically better than ever, and expected to get back up and keep being a hero, but you still have the memory of the pain and the lingering psychological aftereffects. but, like, you're fine now, so you just need to get over it and go back to throwing yourself in the line of fire, okay?)

amy is also right off the bat clearly not doing so hot--she's acting very shy and withdrawn and unsure compared to both of her prior appearances. obviously that is due to the horror of some random villain going "btw, remember that you're ontologically an invader into the family you are trying to belong in!" but i think it's probably compounded by the fact that amy is so used to being treated either 1. like she's intrinsically awful/unwanted or 2. like she's only valuable/desirable as a resource by Everyone But Victoria that walking into a room of heroes w/o victoria by her side is always liable to make her insecure and withdrawn.

oh, and the burnout. obviously the severe fucking burnout.

“No, I hated that he would have a normal life, because I’d given up mine.  I was scared that I might intentionally make a mistake.  That I might let myself fuck up the procedure with this kid.  I could have killed him or ruined his life, but it would have eased the pressure.  Lowered expectations, you know?  Maybe it would have even lowered my own expectations for myself.  I… I was just so tired.  So exhausted.  I actually considered, for the briefest moment, abandoning a child to suffer or die.” “That sounds like more than just exhaustion,” Gallant replied, quietly. “Is this how it starts?  Is this the point I start becoming like my father, whoever he was?”

the "every second i rest, someone dies" conundrum would be nightmarish for her even if she had the healthiest social support net on the planet, but her circumstances make it infinitely worse. she's treated by everyone in her "family" but victoria like an invader, and even victoria has unintentionally stressed the importance of using her healing power in the way that the family wants (i.e. to cover up victoria's police brutality) in order to Be A Good Family Member. amy has internalized that being a good dallon is the same as being a good hero, and failing at being a dallon is the same as being overcome by her ontologically criminal roots. so she works herself to the bone, and when she inevitably starts to falter, she views it as an indicator of something intrinsically wrong with her rather than as a sign that her family + society's expectations for her are harmful and unfair.

and dean's advice for her only reinforces this further:

Gallant let out a slow breath, “I could say no, that you’re never going to be like your father. But I’d be lying. Any of us, all of us, we run the risk of finding our own way down that path. I can see the strain you’re experiencing, the stress. I’ve seen people snap because of less. So yeah. It’s possible.”

he suggests that she try to take a break, but only in the service of "so you can heal more people in the long run." he validates the idea that she could go "down that path," as if becoming a villain--becoming A Bad Person--is a risk all heroes have to fight against on an individual level, as opposed to criminality being a result of circumstance and not even inherently immoral. and of course dean thinks that way--he's a millionaire child soldier, his entire life is predicated on individualist thought with ignorance to the ways in which systematic factors impact people. acknowledging that amy is being horrifically mistreated would mean not only acknowledging the flaws in the PRT system, but acknowledging what might lead people to stray from it, and he simply can't do that. it goes counter to every idea that his life is built on.

he never even tells anyone that amy thought about letting a child die, or if he did, it didn't go anywhere. she was desperate for help all along, increasingly ready to explode, and everyone just ignored it. because as she says:

"My sister’s all I’ve got. The only person with no expectations, who knows me as a person. Carol never really wanted me.  Mark is clinically depressed, so as nice as he is, he’s too focused on himself to really be a dad. My aunt and uncle are sweet, but they’ve got their own problems. So it’s just me and Victoria. Has been almost from the beginning."

this is also where we see another more blatant sign of her crush on victoria--it's very ambiguous as to whether dean is interpreting amy's feelings towards him as meaning "wants to date me" or "jealous of me for dating victoria" but i think it's probably the former because there's no way he would keep his mouth shut if it was the latter, lmao. really what this scene is doing is introducing all of the stressors amy is experiencing that, because they're going unaddressed, because everyone else is refusing to address them and she has internalized that's how it should be, are going to boil over horrifically later on. that burnout and fear of accidentally-on-purpose making a mistake will lead to truly being unable to heal victoria later on. that sense of obligation, that if she can't keep healing she's turning into her father, will contribute to her being unable to just walk away from victoria instead of trying to heal her. her crush on victoria--the ultimate example of how her should-be family has ostracized her--will boil over in the impulsive brain alteration & the sexual nature of the wretch's design.

and all of this would've been avoidable if not for, as mentioned in the prior post abt this interlude, the dallons' and the PRT's enforcement of wallpapering over the kid heroes' pain to Keep Up The Show.

[ilovescreamingbirths]

I wanna be laboring for hours, days even. Moaning through my contractions, then my moans turns into screams of agony. I'm desperate to push, but the midwife makes me hold it in.

As I'm finally dilated, I give into the urge.

I push and push with all my might, but the midwife keeps repeating "push harder!" My body seems to be working against me. The waves of contractions come too fast and stay too long. The baby is just too big.

Drenched in sweat, I remove my silk gown. I don't care I'm nude, I just want the baby out!

Hours pass. Every push is a struggle.

Against my begging screams to help me, the midwife reminds me the only way is to push. Whether or not I meet my baby is up to the strength of my pushes. Two of the attendants hold up my legs; I grit my teeth and force myself to push.

My grunts turn into screams. But I keep pushing, powered by sheer determination. Another hour goes by, until I feel it. The head! So much pressure! I need to get it out, I can feel it touching my cunt!

Ughhh! My cunt! It's on fire!

Between my outstretched legs, the slit is opening up, like a bulging eye. It only grows, as I push harder than ever.

But the midwife orders me to stop to let it stretch. She coaches me to breathe. My breathing soon becomes whimpering, then wailing, then screaming.

My cunt's lips are an angry red. I'd give anything to push! I don't care if I tear! This searing pain is so much worse than dilating, even contractions come and go.

The midwife places her fingers on my cunt lips, gently stretching and massaging them. It does little to quiet my screams. My cunt is so sensitive, it stings when she touches it.

When I am allowed to push again, I can only push lightly to not tear. It takes forever to get the top of the head out. The midwife mentions his fuzzy blond hair, just like his father.

Suddenly, I don't care how badly this hurts anymore . I want to meet my son.

I sit up, and give the biggest pushes my body would allow, and I feel the rest of the head emerge. My scream turns into a groan of relief. The worst was over.

I push and push and push again. It takes a while to realize the baby isn't moving. I sink back into bed in frustration.

I am stuck when I am so stretched. The ring of fire in my cunt is too much! I wish the midwife would just pull him out!

She tells me to save my energy. The pain is so bad, I let out some tears as I force myself to stop. My body shakes, I feel her fingers inside me. My cunt is so raw from the stretching, I swear it would tear any second now.

She turns the baby sideways, making me cry out. My screams get louder as I try pushing again. Slowly, I can feel the shoulders dislodge. I don't stop, but the baby is still slow to come. I would have to endure this burning for just a little longer. That is the price for birthing a big baby. I gather my strength and push as hard as I can, until I feel his feet sliding out of my cunt.

He is a big guy. The midwife puts him on my chest after cleaning him and wrapping him in a blue bundle. Though he cries, I am able to get a closer look. It's hard to tell now, I think the only thing he has from me is his violet eyes.

This is what I want, to be in my most primal and feminine and intimate state, birthing your child.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It ended up being a little longer than I intended, I just meant to write a short drabble-ish fic about a birth with some stuff I like (i.e. having big babies, difficult births etc.), y'know just dipping my toes into this kind of thing. This is my first kink story ever, so all criticism is appreciated :)

[directivexero]

don't give up on fighting games, fighting games won't give up on you

I wanted to make a follow up post to my big spiel from the other night, because tonight really put things into perspective for me. strap in everyone, this is a long one

I played in the PRIDEFGC Strive bracket today, and I got absolutely rinsed. but it didn't feel bad, I lost and it didn't feel bad for the first time in a *looooong* time. In fact, I felt incredible about how i played today. round 2 in losers was against another Sol, and i lost because they were very patient and taking advantage of space and whiff punishing me for everything. but also, my pressure on offense was really good and I managed to take a round off of them! and round 1 was special, and something so important to me and to fighting games as a whole

my round 1 was a bit of a mess, online brackets are never perfect. start.gg in particular is a real stickler for checking in on time and DQ'ing people bc they didnt get an email or a discord notification immediately. it happens, and it gets worse the bigger the bracket, and it was a massive bracket. something like 2 40ish player pools? that's huge for an online *charity* event, its bigger than some locals.

I was really upset about this at first. i was feeling myself today. taking yesterday off to just vibe, eat a decent bento box from my local japanese restaurant and play a bunch of DBD was a really good break for me. and i woke up this morning, nearly forgetting that i had signed up. i was signed up for a bracket last night, my online local Dust Up, but i had been timed out from the server for being a real shithead to myself and generally being unhappy with fighting games, because i had mentally tied my self worth to them without realizing it. but today was different.

I got some work done, got my stream schedule up for the week, played some more DBD (with friends this time) and just enjoyed a nice day. and then I got the email for the bracket and was like "oh shit right, i should probably show up for that". so i booted up Strive and hopped into training mode to warm up. and you know what? that combo that i had been struggling with? the one that took me almost 200 times to get right just the once? i got it on my first try, with the Clean Hit Tyrant Rave even! and while i couldnt replicate the clean hit again, i got the combo 20 more times in a row without a single drop

and this was a real shock to me. i didnt play at all yesterday, and i felt like i wasnt getting anywhere with the game. i was considering even swapping characters again to see if there was something that i was missing, to see if there was some fun i could have somewhere else. but in the end, i dont think i need it anymore. what I really needed, and what everyone was telling me and what i refused to hear, was that i just needed to give myself some room to breathe. taking a *single* day off made me more consistent with this combo, it just gave it time to rest and settle into my brain and hands. it's all i needed, and it was right in front of me the entire time. i just couldnt get it through my head

after this revelation, and was FUCKING *STOKED* to get into bracket. I saw who my first opponent was, Hazel. i recognized the name, they had taken second in the Granblue bracket last night. they were so exciting to watch, i was rooting for them the whole time! how could i not? they were playing my wife Narmaya, i wanted them to win so badly. and after an INCREDIBLE grand finals, they ended up in second. i was a little sad to see them not make it all the way, but I was so thrilled to see such good gameplay last night, and I knew I was gonna get some good games from them today

so we got the whole bracket situated, i messaged her on discord to make sure we were still able to play, got it sorted with a TO and met up in the park. they pulled up with a level 800 Bedman? and i was so excited. it was, a strange feeling, being in bracket, seeing a player i knew was a monster pull up with a character 700 levels above mine, and to be *this* ecstatic to be squaring up. and I have no idea how to play against the bed. nobody plays this guy. and i went in expecting to get rinsed. which i did! but it wasn't actually all that bad on the surface. I managed to block the overhead jump-in for the first time *ever* tonight, and I did it 5 more times over the course of the set. i still got blown up for not blocking the slow overhead and bedman's lows are deceptively far-reaching, and i just wasn't sure how to adapt to those. but that's okay! i did some very good things today, and my pressure was clean enough to take a round off of this very high level player. im so proud of what ive done, and im happy that ive finally escaped the fog that was clouding my mind for so long

and after bracket, i got up, refilled my drink, and hopped into the tower. i was *hungry* for more games. and I got smoked by a Slayer. just absolutely rinsed. but! i caught on to their tricks pretty early, and started to 6S more often than i ever had, and got a lot of counterhits! slowly getting a feel for that matchup, even reading how they follow up after Dandy step and punishing it accordingly. i also got a ping in BAN from RKP, one of the TOs there, looking for games. i responded almost immediately, i wanted to scrap more. they asked for a ft5 at first, but wanted to know if i wanted a ft10. i declined, because i could tell that i was reaching my limit. another step towards progress!

he met me in the park, asking to take player 2 bc he wanted to work on player 2 side inputs. we both pulled up looking to work on stuff, as i wanted to try to implement some of the whiff punishing i was just subjected to by that Sol player. and I got rinsed *again*. but! I landed my corner combo!!! (almost, dropped the HVV at the end, but its still progress) and I also did the correct follow-up after the counter-hit meaty Fafnir setup for the first time! i was so happy, RKP is so fucking good at this game and an incredibly nice person as well. grappler players play like sickos, but they're so sweet in reality.

and this is what its all about. i love fighting games so much. no other community, no other hobby, no other sport will you get camaraderie like this. you won't get this anywhere else. the passion, the love, the friendships. you won't get it anywhere else. everyone's gonna have their bad days, their bad weeks, sometimes even their bad months. but if you just take a breath, take a few steps back, make sure you've taken care of yourself, it will all be okay.

don't give up on fighting games, because no matter what, they won't give up on you

[boxheadpaint]

diary post baby. Heavier than usual or at least probably but i dont know or remember a good portion of the things ive ever said about myself on this line. For the normal guys though i had fun making that comic, usually when i get the motivation to make anything in that format i get pretty bummed about it pretty quickly simply because of the paneling

its fun to imagine making dynamic pages of comic panels, but when you have no experience beyond trying to make manga in your teens you mostly just have the squares/rectangles stacked next to eachother. for anyone else this is fine and isnt boring to look at by its nature alone, but for me i always believe that my own work would be too dull and unexciting to eye-catching to even bother reading. trying to just lose that pressure i give myself for a day and make something silly like some animals looking at eachother is nice

one of the things i kept hearing from my own head during the call about The Good News Of Getting Disability Income And Payment For The Time I Wasn't Recieving Benefits, was that i needed to kill myself for some reason. my body reacts badly to experiencing a lot of things, though of course its worst when its negative feelings. not even particularly strong ones, maybe a little nervous or a little mad and it likes to tremble or tense up totally. i dont know why exactly i reacted in this particular way other than the usual "what do you mean i dont need to freak out about this anymore. what am i going to do with all this freaking out juice? just chug it?"

im worried lately that ive built up too much of a tolerance to my sertraline, if thats something that happens. but i dont know for sure, and i dont know what ill do if that is the case. maybe it is still working and i just cant tell because even though its bad things would be much worse if i stopped taking it. it just feels like these days it doesnt do anything to help me feel better or more in control. can i speedrun making it work again by going cold turkey for a week and then getting back on it so my brain is like wow this awfulness stopped after i took this awesome pills.

can i give the money i recieve from social security to someone else to save? is that legal? or do they hunt you down for sport for doing that. what if you wanted to buy a house. or rent a house. Or just fucking live somewhere because these days prices are fucking absurd. ridiculous even.

hey girl, rat piss. hey girl, rat piss. I realize other than the blue puppy video i havent posted anything for pride. partly of anxieties of course, especially given the Great track record of the site withing the past month, but also straight up forgetfulness. I keep forgetting too many things and being too tired to remember. At night though i can do just about anything. I think ill take a nap and then wake up at 2 am to keep drawing. I have things to draw

6/24/2024

[mindotaur]

Here's a post about our experience locking headmates away because of their role as persecutors.

Trigger warnings for brief mentions of self-harm, suicide attempts and general self-destructive behavior.

Giselle, alongside Roland, was our main host when we were teenagers going through active trauma. At some point, she discovered DID and put together that we are a system. Lim, our primary protector at the time, saw how little support we would get on all fronts and decided this knowledge had to stay buried, so she locked Giselle away from us and Ryan became the host.

Giselle had her problems - as a host, she had a history of self-harm and we had all had some suicide attempts because of the situation we were in - but she got much, much worse after being locked away.

When we moved away from the traumatic situation and started college, Ryan started to have blackouts. Full, noticeable blackouts. We had several severe mood swings and instances of what we perceived as psychosis, terrible migraines from fighting to keep control of ourselves. We pushed away the people who were closest to us and ended up creating more stress than we could handle.

Ryan was terrified of going insane. With some pressure and an ultimatum after certain incidents, we sought a psychologist and psychiatric assistance. Our initial diagnosis, as we mentioned before on here, was schizoaffective bipolar disorder.

We started taking heavy antipsychotics, rotating through every single one you can think of over the next few years. The voices didn't go away. We didn't stop losing control of our body, we didn't stop this feeling that we weren't alone, everything was muddy as hell.

Ryan woke up in the bathroom at 9:30pm, covered in blood, with safety pins in his arms. He didn't remember anything beyond going into the shower. He freaked out and called our psychologist, who immediately drove from her house to the clinic to see us at 10pm.

We started drinking even more heavily, but Ryan didn't remember his nights out. It's obviously the alcohol. We took up smoking again, even though we managed to stop when Giselle was locked away (not that we knew that was the reason).

Ryan would come to at 6am, throw up, and drag himself to bed before class.

This went on for a while. Three years into treatment, Ryan came across information about DID and everything seemed to click. The voices, waking up in places he didn't remember going to, Lim's constant presence - he didn't have a logical and explanation for her, she was just a "helpful hallucination" - and so on.

The logical conclusion was that there was Lim, Ryan, a little and someone else. Someone scary. Someone who was out to hurt us and burn the bridges between us and our loved ones. Maybe they'd hurt our loved ones, we didn't know.

We called her the fragment for a while, because Lim wouldn't talk about her and Ryan couldn't make out much. The internal communication with everyone except Lim was pretty bad.

Ryan began noticing switches and fighting them tooth and nail, which caused more migraines.

We took our medicine one night and it was a completely odd experience, like everything was out of Ryan's control even though he could perceive the outside world as if he were fronting.

Giselle had taken the front, and she took two whole bottles of our antipsychotics. We woke up 20h later, tied to a hospital bed with a catheter in our arm.

I think that was both the scariest moment and the clearest - whoever this was, they were hurting badly enough to want to end everything even though we had moved out, even though we were paying rent, even though we had a stable job.

It took us years of working on our communication. I, as Giselle, hated Lim and Ryan for what happened to me, and I was in so much pain that I wanted to scream and claw at myself and them and everything in between.

I, as Ryan, was terrified of what Giselle would do, terrified of losing control to someone more impulsive and less responsible.

It took us four years to become Austin. We never meant to fuse - Giselle and Roland fused first, signaling her main healing step, and they became August. August and Ryan fused this year and became me, Austin.

Now, with the perspective from both sides, I can say that locking Giselle away was absolutely the worst thing we could have done for her/my healing. Lim didn't know what else to do, she was desperate, and I understand that now. I've forgiven her, and I forgave Ryan before the fusion. It doesn't mean that was the right choice, and the pain caused by it was infinitely more than what we would have gotten with patience and understanding.

Locking a headmate out takes away their autonomy, their social life, their reality. It's solitary confinement taken to the maximum, and it's maddening.

I understand the fear that led me to fighting Giselle at every turn; I understand the agony I felt when Ryan would rather suffer for hours or days than let me front.

It's scary, it's overwhelming, but locking away a persecutor doesn't reform them. It makes them feel worse, and it makes them take it out on the body/system even more.

If you're a traumagenic system, don't traumatize your headmates even more. Don't lock them away. Trust me, I've been there.

P.S. we're not trying to assign rules to any other system. If you have something in place that works for you, that's good. But if this is something that would traumatize your headmates, please consider what we've said above.

[keyh0use]

why I've been absent & tw for m*rder, su*cide

I know I don't really owe anyone an explanation but I want to give one for my own piece of mind because I feel so guilty. Back in February I was injured really badly and hospitalised, and a couple days later my cousin, Christopher, was brutally murdered in prison. As a CO myself I've seen it happen more times than I can stomach to think about so it wasn't a huge shock, but we had gotten close over the last couples years, trying to provide him the support the rest of our family has denied him since his sentencing. Amongst so many other things we surprisingly had in common, he wrote too (not the same content as me, obviously, lol) and he was willing to provide me with a perspective I could only speculate on in Delicate, going over the relationships and how he would feel reconnecting with the person who got him incarcerated, like Rafe does with Barry in the story. And he succumbed to his injuries all by himself, no funeral, no obituary and I clung to that fic, terrified if anyone read it and criticised it I would literally never write again. As a distraction I put all my efforts into a story where Rafe tries to follow in his mothers footsteps by committing suicide, I just felt the heartache for it. My first funeral was for my aunt and uncle, Chris' parents, also murdered and the comparisons kept coming until I finished it. Then the same thing happened, it felt too real and vulnerable to share. So I tried writing something lighter, couldn't. Vampires? Blood, killing. Reminded me too much of what it felt like to be really hurt. And like what happened to someone I cared deeply for. As the months went by I pushed myself way too hard to get better physically and emotionally, pressured myself to sit through movies that made me uncomfortable to try and associate violence with actors instead of myself and ended up just getting way, way worse when I faced my attacker in court. Things slowed down after that, I tried to give myself a break that didn't make me feel guilty, ignored all the messages and comments asking for updates, just stayed off this side of social media all together so I wouldn't be reminded I'm not giving people the content they follow me for. My grandfathers cancer progressed, I spent a lot of time with him thankfully, and he committed medically assisted suicide the day of my best friends wedding rehearsal. The next night? Love of my life confesses his feelings for me but it's too late, we never said anything over the last 11 or so years and a couple weeks ago he married someone else. We buried my grampy, miscommunication tropes are super fun to write about but absolutely suck in real life, and I'm still not really feeling up to posting anything. All this to say I'm really sorry if I'm disappointing anyone. All I can do is promise I'm trying to figure everything out and that I haven't abandoned any works.

[wolfislost]

Touching Base

TL;DR: I'm trying to get back in touch with my kin side.

I've been neglecting my kin side pretty heavily lately. I know this might seem a little strange, given that I made a post not that long ago about how my experience of being alterhuman is a lot more balanced nowadays. In the grand scheme of things however, i'm still a fledgling here. I've been a part of the community for a little under three years. Joining the community more or less coincided with beginning to properly explore this part of myself. All of this is to say, i'm still very early in this journey. As to be expected, I'm still making mistakes and figuring out how to live happily as an alterhuman.

I've been wrapped up in human stress, for a while now. To some extent, it's my own fault. I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to spend every waking moment possible being productive. This is made even worse given the fact that i'm disabled, and thus have additional struggles on top of that pressure. Even when relaxing or talking to friends, I find some way to sneak work in somehow.

To be clear, this is not a good thing. I'm not romanticising the grind or whatever. The grind sucks. I'm throwing myself into this thing that I hate, because it's the best path I have to my goals right now. Still wouldn't wish it on anyone.

You might see where this is going already. I've been working constantly on tasks that require my human side to perform, or they fall apart. I'm doing them constantly, unless I'm sleeping or otherwise incapacitated. That's not an environment where being a werewolf is really possible. I HAVE to maintain my human state, or sacrifice productivity.

So I've found myself completely distanced from something that's a really important part of who I am. It isn't just work, I don't really have any opportunities to be myself in my social life right now either.

So yesterday I ran into the woods.

Technically it wasn't as spontaneous as that, but I did go to the woods. And I stayed there. I'm not sure how many hours it was, but it was enough to start realising something.

I'm badly out of touch.

Alone in the woods, surrounded by small mammals and fresh air. I should have been the most shifty I've been in a while. But it was only a faint echo. I had to consciously make myself let go and loosen up. Even then, it was limited. Restricted. I struggled to fully lose myself and be free.

It's clear that I've seriously hindred my ability to feel and express myself freely. To just exist as a werewolf in three dimensional space. It's frustrating and disheartening but it's also my own fault. I pushed too hard for too long, and i'm paying the price.

I don't intend to just leave things here though.

For now at least, I plan on going back to the woods. Once every two weeks at least. I want to make time spent in nature a more frequent part of my routine. It'll help get my stress levels to a manageable level. With time, it should also let me get back in touch with what I've lost.

If there's a lesson in all this, I suppose it's not to take my urges and general kin side for granted. It can be trouble, it can be uncomfortable. But it's also important. And at times fun. It's part of who I am.

[poisonandpages]

Gender and style ramblings ahoy!

Growing up I was never really "girly", and by that I mean I love pretty things, elegant things, stereo-typically "feminine" things, but more...more as a bystander than a participant, if that makes any sense? So in my teens while I was figuring out what I liked, I preferred sort of masculine-androgynous styles... and I was made to feel like absolute crap about it. Constantly facing sneers and frowns even from people I loved and trusted, and the pressure to change got 10x worse when I started working and suddenly found myself meeting hundreds of strangers daily.

It was weird because I grew up in a fairly progressive place with relatively progressive people and saw loads of women one might describe as "butch", so I never really understood why they could get to be themselves but I was heavily discouraged from the same. So I guess I rationalised it in my head by thinking that butch was a style for women who were either very handsome or very confident and capable, and neither of those described me. I wasn't "good enough" to be masc so I'd instead have to put in a lot of work to be more feminine (something I'd never say about another person, but I've always been much more cruel to myself than I am to others).

I think in part this was to do with my undiagnosed autism as well - maybe people thought that if I looked more like their idea of a woman I'd stick out less as a weirdo.

So for the past decade or so I've tried to fit myself into a shape that prioritised what other people would like to see instead of who I'd like to be. And I thought "ok, if I can be feminine but kind of edgy, everybody wins! Funky haircuts and punk or retro clothing but with a shedload of makeup and holding myself in a way that makes me look smaller, that'll do, right?" I trimmed myself down and covered myself up until I could be palatable to those around me.

But over this past year or so I've learned a lot of things about myself, and I've been deconstructing a lot of things about the way I view myself that I had already dealt with years ago about how I view others, and I came to the conclusion that all that wasn't making me happy. There were elements that I liked, I still love my dangly kooky earrings and sometimes playing around with makeup can be fun, but altogether the femme identity started to feel like a jacket that fit me really badly to begin with and was getting worse with each passing year, to the point it was squishing in my ribcage and giving me breathing problems.

In recent months I've been experimenting with more masculine/neutral clothing, wearing makeup way less, and had a barber cut my hair shorter than it's ever been before (which was a whole revelation because previously I've paid upward of £35 to have hairdressers ignore my instructions, and this lad did a perfect job for £12 in my living room). I was so scared that I'd look ugly or stupid but instead, I'm happier than I've ever been. I'm still 90-something percent sure that I'm cis, but as an autistic lesbian I feel like I have a more unique relationship with gender as a concept and it feels so freeing to now be able to express it. I'm getting much more comfortable with my natural face (not completely as you can see, I am still a recovering victim of 90s eyebrow trends, but we'll get there.) I accentuate my naturally broad shoulders and square jaw instead of trying to hide them. I wear shirts bought from the men's section of thrift shops. And when I look in the mirror I see me, and not the masquerade version of myself that others might want me to be.

I'm really happy, but I wish I had figured out all this sooner.

[theashemarie]

Hi Ashe, love your stuff. You mentioned finding a typing layout that won't lead to long term strain? I'm primed to face similar wrist-related injuries in my future, and I was curious if you'd be willing to share? (No pressure if not!)

Okay, this got really long so I'm gonna append it under a read more for everyone's sake.

tldr; arm and hand angle while typing are very important. also stretching!! additionally, paying very close attention to how you use your wrists in all aspects of your life, not just while typing.

It's been a while since I rehashed this, but just for the sake of everyone who wasn't here in 2020: one major reason I stopped writing and posting Pearlina fanfic was because I had repetitive strain injuries in both of my wrists and had to basically stop writing for a year.

My writing speed is high; I'm not saying this to brag, just to illustrate. My WPM is 90 and I can do 2k words in an hour on a good day. Because I was so inspired, I was writing a lot and I was writing quickly, and, as a result, I basically injured myself badly enough to get my ass benched for a full calendar year.

Of course, you can do this to yourself if you have a slower writing speed. Listen to your body! If you wrist hurts, stop.

This time around, I've been troubleshooting. I have three keyboards: a mechanical, a split mechanical (a keyboard that's basically two big pieces, cut right down the middle), and one of my most behated Apple butterfly switch monstrosities. I've slowly rotated between the three as my wrist pain has gotten worse.

Wrist alignment matters. I write at work when I'm not busy, and I realized that I don't end up in pain there. Why? The keyboard is angled down and the travel distance between the keys is very low.

Unfortunately, I've discovered that my ideal typing setup to avoid strain is to use the awful Apple keyboard with very little travel distance between the keys. Because of the butterfly switches, I don't have to press down hard on the keys either. I miss my thonky click clack keyboards every day, but since switching, I've had more days without pain than I have in a while. I also got a new desk that sits lower so my arms are at a natural resting position.

I still have to take whole days where I can't use a keyboard. It's a struggle, but it's getting better. I've also realized that my left wrist, which is the one most prone to strain, is the one that I use to prop myself up with the most, like when I brush my teeth or get up off the couch. It's def worth paying attention to when you're not sitting at your desk.

Of course, stretch, stretch, stretch! Also, it can't hurt to get a 2 pound weight and do some strengthening exercises. This is not medical advice, but my doctor told me to grip the weight and lift it using just my wrist. This will strengthen the tendon that runs through the wrist and make it less prone to strain.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions!