#supportive network

[aphel1on]

compilation of dunmeshi images saved to my computer under variations of "FOUND FAMILY REAL":

[motivationlinkllc]

Step into a journey of self-empowerment where you hold the reins to your well-being. Boundaries aren’t barriers; they’re shields protecting your energy and preserving your peace. In a world that constantly demands our attention, setting boundaries becomes a revolutionary act of self-love and preservation.

[paularoseauthor]

 Eight Strategies for Effectively Coping with Workplace Stress.

I have experienced stress that left me questioning my competencies and my role in the workplace. 

I have been in the full-time workforce since 1971. Within that time, I have experienced stress that left me questioning my competencies and my role in the workplace.  Workplace stress is a common and pervasive issue that can significantly impact one’s well-being and performance.  The fast-paced nature of modern work environments, coupled with high expectations and demands, often leads to stress…

[the-bodhi-mantra]

The Art of Taking Calculated Risks for Business: Unlocking Opportunities and Driving Success

Introduction:In the dynamic world of business and entrepreneurship, taking risks is an inherent part of the journey to success. However, it’s not about recklessly plunging into the unknown; it’s about understanding the art of calculated risks. In this blog post, we will delve into the intriguing realm of risk-taking, exploring its significance, strategies, and the transformative impact it can…

[drdarienzo]

Ready to Say 'I Do'? Assessing Your Psychological Readiness for the Adventure of Marriage!

Determining if you are psychologically ready to get married is a crucial step before entering into a lifelong commitment. Marriage involves emotional, psychological, and relational aspects that require careful consideration and self-reflection. Here are key factors to assess your psychological readiness for marriage: Emotional Preparedness: Examine your emotional well-being and ability to form…

[a-controversial-mind]

Embracing the Journey: Finding Inspiration Amidst Life's Twists and Turns

In the midst of life’s chaos, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and mentally blocked. As someone who embraces their neurodivergent identity, battles anxiety and depression, and navigates the challenges of being a parent carer, I understand the struggles of finding inspiration. In this blog post, I invite you to join me on a journey of self-discovery and explore how embracing life’s unexpected twists…

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

being depressed emotionally but not mentally is. weird

my thoughts aren't dark, life doesn't feel hopeless, I know the mood will pass, I'm calm and at ease with that

but I still feel flat, tired, unenthusiastic about anything, I don't want to eat, I'm not drinking enough water, I didn't leave bed today until 6pm

but when I did I stood outside, I planted my bare feet in the wet grass, and for a moment I didn't feel so numb, for a moment it was nice. I enjoyed that. I was capable of enjoying that, even if briefly

it's like I'm stuck halfway, I feel like thunder without rain

just kinda weird

[vaguely-concerned]

huh. you know something I just consciously put together for the first time about caterina and lucanis' relationship is that through the game we get to hear them talk about each other a lot, but we get very few chances to hear them speak with each other at any length at all. contrast it with other companions whose storylines have elements of 'believed lost/long time no see relative returns!' like bellara and davrin, where we get to see both of them have several pretty in-depth conversations with cyrian and eldrin. hell I think even rook talks with varric longer in the regret prison scene than we ever get to see lucanis and caterina interact directly.

(and when we do see them interact, it's mostly one-sided -- it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, caterina who is doing most of the talking and giving all the orders, as he ruefully observes is her wont after murder of crows. including jumpscaring him with 'you're first talon now btw' and the shocked pikachu face in five acts he goes through in response lmao. perhaps it's more accurate to say that she talks at him and he reacts, than that they talk to each other much.)

it has such an interesting effect too, because in deliberately denying us direct insight or experience and only having this mosaic of description from each of them to go on, as well as forcing us to pay attention to the negative space of what is carefully not said, it's evocative along the same principle that you never actually show the monster in a horror film. if you've read the wigmaker job you have a clearer image of the more uh. worrying elements at play here going in, but there is something fascinatingly insidious and naturalistic in the way it's 'hushed up' in the game itself. she has his complete loyalty both as a member of her house and, more importantly, that of an abused child to a parent figure. he readily admits several times that she's a difficult person to live with, an even more difficult person to be loved by ("even for me. and I was her favourite")... but never once does he actively blame her nor truly conceptualize that he has every right to do so (that he can be angry with her and still love her, because whether he should or not he unavoidably does), or that she might have acted differently than she did, that she made a choice every time to hurt him. even affectionately he speaks of her as a force of nature, an act of god -- something that can't be reasoned or pleaded with or resisted, something you can only hope to navigate with as little pain as possible and pray to survive. let yourself get carried away by the riptide, resisting it will only make it worse. you don't compromise with a hurricane, you just try to find the best shelter you can and cross your fingers while you wait for it to pass and be calm again.

love is that hurricane. you do whatever she asks. you earn her continued affection day by day by never letting her down. you only want the things she tells you it's okay to want and cut everything else away preemptively. ("A wyvern tooth dagger?? I loved wyverns as a boy --Caterina would never let me have one of these, though." and as we have all wept and gnashed our teeth over, it never even OCCURS to him that he's a like thirty-five year old adult man who can buy himself any dagger he wants at any time. she said he couldn't have one. so he'll never have one. that's just how it works. and maybe if Illario could just accept that and find his peace with it like I have, this whole thing wouldn't be so difficult. oh lucanis.)

such is the price -- and the cost -- of being loved by her, it's a loan on which the interest will never stop piling up. you have to keep paying it down in perfection every day if you want to keep it. who got the worse deal there: the grandson who has abandoned everything else in life to live up to that and mostly succeeded, until the day he's so burned out and broken it threatens to no longer be an option, or the grandson who can never seem to scrape together enough worth in her eyes no matter how he begs, borrows or steals it, how he hustles and plays dirty?

one of the worst things that can happen to anyone is to be loved by a selfish god. another one of the worst things that can ever happen to anyone is to not be loved by a selfish god. (hope that helps, boys!) even in betraying everything else, Illario can't bring himself to hurt his grandmother, because that would defeat the whole point. who would he defiantly be proving himself worthy to, without her. in love, devotion, submission, hatred, frustration, bitterness, everything is defined in relation to her, you can spot the gravitational force of it through how the dellamorte family move through time and space. she -- her love and regard and attention -- is still the sun both of their worlds orbit around, even as adults. the game might never tell you outright 'she used to beat and starve them growing up. for their own good you see, so they'd be strong (and broken down enough for her to build them up again however she wanted but I'm sure that's incidental)', but if you know even a little bit about how these dynamics can work the writing is on the wall everywhere you look and all the more unsettling for it.

follow lucanis' freeze-logic and fraught interpersonal catch 22 irreconcilable mixed emotions problems back far enough, looong before the ossuary entered the picture, and you start to see caterina's ghost around every fucking corner. she is so proud of him. (well, she would be. she made him. she forged exactly the knife she needed and it rests willingly, devotedly, in her hands, it would return to her every time because it doesn't know love as anything but to be a knife. his tama never taught him how to be anything else. his biggest fear with her is that she won't even want him back, the way he is now.) to the best ability of her soul, whatever parts of it survived a lifetime of crow politics and 'five children, eight grandchildren, only Illario and me left now', I think she really does loves him. he certainly loves her, with all the sincerity and artless desperation of a child, of the little boy he was once. and what she's done to him (and to illario, for all his shitty gremlin scar-ass antics lol) is awful. the harm is real, and the love is real, and trying to find a way for these two truths to exist in the same space is driving all three of them their own individualized forms of insane. you know. the way only family can and so often does lol.

through implications and short glimpses and having to put the pieces together yourself, you can have the feeling that there is very genuine mutual love and attachment in this relationship... and that beneath that there is something so profoundly wrong. and the sneaking '...oh shit it gets worse the longer I think about it' horror of that is more effective for me at least than the stark in-your-face presentation of the facts of the matter could have been. the love is here. the love is here. it only ever makes it worse.

[canisalbus]

Why do I get the feeling Vasco would just react normally to a horror. He would bake bread for the devil, man, he is the most well adjusted dude.

[fivveweeks]

moe moe beam

[dewdrops-whammy-bar]

Kind of obsessed with the idea of Terzo referring to Omega as “my partner Meg” to people who have never seen him so they get the shock of their life when Meg turns out to be a 6’7 guy with unnerving eyes who’s built like a brick shithouse and could crush a watermelon with his thighs.

[bloodsoakedbuckley]

"you wanna do a rope rescue? 🙄 of course you do." is bad enough on its own. sickening. get married. but then bobby hits you with: "well, he's not doing it alone. he's gonna need you on the pulley."

and like. thesis statement. thesis statement. im out of my mind about it. buck is gonna do the reckless thing and eddie is gonna be there having his back. partners. forever. its SICK

[triluvial]

I wrote a post where Reader was more politically powerful than Feyd.

But now I'm thinking about the implications of that. What if that meant that Feyd was the one of the pairing who had to move planets? What parent, if they had the political capital to avoid it, would let their only child move to Geidi fucking Prime? It's dangerous there, and yes, being Na-Baroness would offer Reader some protections but half the time when the noble family are slaughtering their servants they are not even looking at them. Reader could be killed by a guard or citizen before they checked who they were.

So, for the time being, Feyd is moving to Reader's planet. The specific challenges would depend on what the planet was like exactly but I'm thinking warm with greenery.

Feyd being warned about the dangers of a sunburn, scoffing because he's so tough and getting one anyways and turning pink. Reader applies sunscreen for him.

Feyd isn't allowed in the gardens anymore because he's allergic to something, concluded he'd been poisoned and going nuclear.

Feyd going from being worshipped to being eyed fearfully all the time. That would be a huge adjustment.

Warriors on Reader's planet using a different type of sword so he can't really train with them. Only spar.

His black all leather look overheats at noon and he needs to wear something breezier. Possibly shirtless. There's more sunscreen involved. He claims he still doesn't know how it works and Reader needs to help him again. This stuff needs to reapplied you say? Oh how sad, see you in a few hours for more rubbing.

Obviously he has no concubines. He could have kept the harpies in his own house but he couldn’t bring them with him to his good father's house. He's a bit pent up. This just makes everyone else more nervous.

He's not allowed to murder people. Even if they annoy him. No, not even if they insult him to his face. No, Feyd, that's a child, you cannot kill her for offering to help you look for where you lost your hair.

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

What Making Friends Should Feel Like:

I CAN Network Ltd

[sexhaver]

if i ever become religious again, i will solely be interpreting the nature of God by consulting media produced by terminally online and clearly mentally unwell people. think Gene Ray's Time Cube, Terry Davis's TempleOS, and Bob Hickman's... entire online presence

Bob Hickman in particular is fascinating to me for a lot of reasons. first off, his mantra has wormed its way into my brain and i find myself thinking it at the most random times: "God Entered My Body Like A Body My Same Size" tickles something deep in the reptilian corners of my neocortex. also it helps that he spreads this message by making literally tens of thousands of different accounts across different websites, cold calling random phone numbers, and driving this car around Indianapolis:

what really gets me about his delivery of the mantra is how rote it seems to him. he rattles it off at the beginning of every single one of his video posts, but it always seems like he's a bit distracted and just getting through it for the ten thousandth time so he can say what he wants to. he says it the same way we said the pledge of allegiance in middle school (USAmerican moment), like someone or something is forcing him to.

what intrigues me most, though, is the way he talks about receiving the Holy Spirit. in sharp contrast to the official party line that God is good and being blessed is a positive thing, Bob seems to treat God entering him as a great burden, like some alien consciousness is forcing itself inside. God Entered My Body Like A Body My Same Size, so now it's twice as cramped. God as a parasite; a freeloader; a body snatcher. this is the kind of heresy and blasphemy i can get behind