#Wellness Framework

[premiercareandstaffingservic]

One of the key components in building resilience is establishing a strong support network. Clients can benefit significantly from connecting with a staffing agency in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, that understands their unique needs. These agencies can connect individuals to various resources, including therapists and support groups, that can enhance their resilience-building journey. Having a support system in place fosters a sense of belonging and provides an outlet for sharing experiences and challenges.

[chronotopes]

in general it is a lot easier for people to surrender or mellow on a culture war opinion that they recognize to have no bearing on their life than it is to surrender a position of power or even recognize that a position of power exists. conservative joe agrees with you that gay people are human beings after your heartwarming conversation or whatever but what are his thoughts on his wife who has been doing all of the domestic labor in their relationship for ten years. you know.

[noneedtoargue1994]

ok i might be in the minority on byler tumblr but i don’t think mike was only interested in el in s1 to find will. that was definitely a major factor, and her real or perceived failures to find him cause a lot of stress between them but i really think there was more to it than that. (if you want a character who doesn’t care about el in s1 besides her ability to help will, just look at lucas.)

mike is established early on to be a person who cares very deeply about his friends and about others. he’s loyal to a fault. when dustin is singled out by the bullies in s1e1, it’s mike who comforts him afterwards. i don’t need to remind anyone reading this how he treated will in s2. unlike will, lucas, dustin, and el, mike isn’t visibly different from the norm (besides being a nerd) but he sticks by his friends because he loves them.

not all of this comes from a positive place, though. mike needs to be needed. he loves to be the shoulder to cry on, the protector, the needed support (lucas, el, and dustin in s1, will in s2, el in s3, etc.). when he feels redundant or unnecessary, his self-worth falters and he struggles (see s4).

when they met el in the woods, he wasn’t in love with her, whatever he claims. he did want to send her back to the asylum he thought she came from. but he also wanted her to feel safe and like a person. he wanted to be able to help her, because helping people makes him feel good. the moments of genuine kindness they share in s1 obviously don’t have to be read as romantic - we’ve seen how he acts when he’s extremely consciously in “have a girlfriend” mode, and the beginning of s1 isn’t it. mike wheeler is the heart of the party because of his empathy and loyalty, not because he only cares about will.

[deepwaterfiction]

Text: The man who comes to fix bugs in the simulation asks if I know what I am. Version 596, I tell him. “Doesn’t that bother you?” he whispers. Agitator. If I could tell on him, I would.

[canisalbus]

When did Machete realize he was gay? Was it only when he met Vasco, or was it earlier and he just repressed it?

If you asked him, he might admit that in retrospect he must've had a vague inkling earlier (thinking of all the times he let his gaze linger on a painting of some handsome nobleman a little longer. Which almost makes it like... a 16th century equivalent of having a secret fictional crush). But I think it probably would've been more of a detached, aesthetic attraction than anything he recognized as distinctly gay, bad and worth of repressing. It's not a sin to quietly appreciate art and the beauty of the human form.

I'd say Vasco, his best friend at the time, was most likely the first real person he had actual feelings for. The realization was so distressing he stayed in denial about the whole thing for a good while.

[disacurveball]

I've decided to self-publish some of my media analysis papers on Medium.

In this essay, I will use analyses of two characters in AMC’s The Terror in order to define white masculinity’s conflation with imperialism, which I argue is emblematic of the “Self-Made Man” archetype: in a positive connotation in the 19th-century and a negative connotation in modern day. To do this, the two characters I will be analyzing are James Fitzjames, who conforms to the Victorian standard of masculinity, and Cornelius Hickey, who does not.

[nickythehickey]

more @milk_is_stable appreciation posting bc the evolution of my sfth hunger games takes from “it’d be funny if marty won bc irony” to “there is no good outcome, this was doomed to have a painful upsetting ending from the start and im a fool for thinking otherwise” should be taken as a testament to how well written a series sourced from fully randomized events is

[cdroloisms]

Cdream be like: You can't put yourself in the Prison anymore bc of the woke >:(/lh

That man is a mess like it's facinating how messy his vision of reality is for others and himself

it is fascinating fr, and does remind me of how we'd talk a little bit about how his perspective may betray what kind of environment this guy might've been in pre-dsmp. the stick-up-his-ass about rules and rule-following, the neuroticism about conflict, and the ease with which he jumps to punishment as being the appropriate response to people who cause problems (a perspective that, quite evidently, to a certain extent, does apply to himself, doesn't it?) all seems quite indicative of someone who lived in an environment where punishment being the natural consequence of stepping outside the lines was generally something that went unquestioned. of course, this is speculative, and it's not that a #tragicbackstory is necessary to explain what the fuck is up with c!Dream, and it's hardly about justifying the choice to abuse a teenager into behaving, lmao. but while exile served his goals and exile was a lot of petty, spiteful cruelty for petty, spiteful reasons, i do think there's something to be said about how clearly c!Dream hadn't expected c!Tommy to respond quite so severely to exile and how he thought he would be "fine" with potatoes in the prison and the language he used both about exile and his own early prison stay about shit like "getting better" through punishment. of course, punitive justice as a norm is kind of ingrained in our own society (just look at the rhetoric around deserving in this fandom, lmao, which speaks more than well enough for itself) and of course that reflects onto the dream smp as well, considering how many of the characters talk quite freely about the idea of punishment/deserving/what have you, but few characters are quite as obviously a stickler for rule-following as c!dream and exile and then prison are uhhh definitely on the more extreme end of things. anyway. just some food for thought

[lucabyte]

Same anon from before. I get what you're saying, but I think we just have a difference in how we view Siffrin's gender. I don't really think it's possible for him to have a traditional gendered upbringing. They're a unique character to analyze gender wise in that sense. The Siffrin we know essentially popped into existence nearly as blank of slate as a person could be. I think about thier gender from the pov of what it would like to be that blank slate, and the detachment that would bring to the concept of gender as a whole. There's nothing for him to hold on to because he can't remember what it means to be a guy in the first place.

So to me, the he is as constructed as every other part of his identity. <- Hoping this makes sense.

(contexts: essay & prev anon)

i see i see. thank u for elaborating

i think you've misunderstood my angle, which is fair enough since I ramble a lot. But now that I know where you're coming from I can say what I'm talking about is kind of from a different mode of like. analysis.

Basically, I'm not really arguing for siffrin being able to Remember how they were raised, outside of the very specific things they exhibit in game of being afraid to want for things, which is the wish craft thing. In-universe, what I'm arguing is that Siffrin has gone for the "default" for what they have. They're going for 'he' because it's what they went with at first, and are scared to make any moves in any direction because being assertive about their wants is the thing they struggle with. It could be constructed, sure, but whatever it is, its the one they started with/got given at some point and now they're scared to change it.

But, what I'm actually arguing for, which is the point you haven't quite gotten by the sounds of it, is that I'm arguing from a like, thematic "what was the author intending/drawing paralells with the real world" angle.

In this reading, siffrin's like, inability to remember their childhood upbringing doesn't really matter? because I'm kind of arguing past that line of reasoning. I'm more talking about my speculations on Adrienne's Intentions-- I'm trying to read the authorial intent, not the in-universe reasoning.

And to me, the big smoking gun here, is that the change religion is The Transgender Religion, and Siffrin is an Outsider to it. In terms of thematic writing here, it makes most sense, to me, for Siffrin's trepidation re: change to come from a character who has been written with the assumption that they've never taken a big leap and changed their whole identity, instead clinging to what they know.

This makes Siffrin's gender another potential avenue for the game to use as Theme. The fact that they are nonbinary already is something of note, but that they seem to be doing it out of apathy rather than joy (making them opposite to isabeau) would make the most sense, thematically. They're disconnected from themself (their culture, their body, their gender) and need to make decisions about it. They can stay nonbinary, they can stay masc aligned, they can lean harder in whatever direction they want-- But they should do it because it makes them *happy*, not because its the path of least resistence. (which highly resembles the theme of the game of having those difficult conversations about wanting things!)

Which, thematically, is a little more solid if they've never taken that control before. I'm talking way more about story structure and authorial intent than i am the character's *actual* gender identity and expression, yknow?

So like. not actually incompatible with your thoughts? You're just saying they constructed the he/they at least a little bit on purpose, and i'm saying it makes sense if they're just doing that by default-- but all i'm saying is that it makes more /thematic/ story sense, if this 'default/constructed' dichotomy *also* maps on to our IRL concepts of being transgender-- ie that default is based on your Junk. Which is something that Vaugarde (and Maybe the island) don't agree with, so yeah, maybe that doesn't matter to In-universe-siffrin. but i'm not arguing about in-universe-siffrin's choices as much as i'm arguing about Adrienne id5's choices when making siffrin.

BUT dont worry this is why i was so worriedly yapping about watsonian (in-universe explanations) vs doylist (author-based explanations) so much, beause I know most fandom discussion comes from in-universe theorising, but i'm doing is basically the opposite so i was kind of expecting people to get tripped up by it. So I hope this clears it up a bit?

To try and put it succinctly... umm..

Siffrin is a Fictional Character, and I'm speculating about the Design and Writing Decisions that went into making them, and then using that to inform my in-universe thoughts on Siffrin.

Basically trying to get into the author's headspace to get to know them better, rather than trying to get into the Character's headspace to get to know them better. It's just a different approach and as such it can lead to different answers. (esp since. siffrin is so cagey their headspace is uh. well. even they have issues with it. its hard to get in there)

[phoenixyfriend]

Explaining my suspicion of bad-tempered 'leftist' political posts to my coworker, kinda super struggling with why certain topics are frustrating to see brought up and framed a certain way...

Until I explained the legacy of lagonegirl.

[whatdoinose]

really cowardly to restrict replies on your posts. but the male privilege that trans men experience (and we do! i would know, i'm a passing trans man!) isn't "cancelled out" by the transphobia we're oppressed by. both things can be true, that trans men are oppressed by transphobia and that trans men can benefit from male privilege. also, it should be obvious that a closeted trans person is only superficially "benefiting" from being closeted. closeted gay people are still hurt by homophobia, regardless of if someone knows they're gay.

LOL, yes i am such a coward random person hiding on anon. also none of my replies are off, check who youre seeing the reblog from. click on my post and reply to it, their settings may be overriding mine. yea.

anyways no trans person will benifit from a cis societal structure. they can find ways to "benifit" as good as you can just forget the whole thing and repress yourself forever. benifit from being "cis" there yea? anyways thats not how oppression nor intersectionality works. maybe try and understand some of the fundamental concepts before making stupid comments like this.

also why is a closeted trans person "superficially" benifiting but the random hypothetical trans man you enforce that every trans man is just "regularly" benifiting? absolutely absurd. no trans person benefits from these ideals. at best you can be hidden away and thus 'benifit' from any systematic structures thinking you are trans, but that doesn't mean the social oppression and ideals don't still affect you. this line of logic is absurd at best.

[serpentface]

Do you have any information on the root scholars that you can share? They’ve always been a cool cult/organization to me

Ok it’s a facet of the Eterhimhamdli religion, which is The most widespread single belief system east of the inner seaway (which isn't saying much in terms of scale but it's still pretty significant) and also one I've barely introduced so I'll go over it a bit here.

Eterhimhamdli has spread past its initial sphere of old (~500 years BP) southern Lowlands Yuroma kingdoms, has many folk practices, and has schismed a few times, so there's a good deal of cultural variation. But its basic tenants/tendencies are:

-Creator deities are wholly rejected, the universe is an interplay between non-personified dualistic forces of Body(evil)/Mind(good). In one schism, the interplay of these two forces is the Dream, in others dreaming is an aspect of Mind.

-Deities in general are not wholly at odds with Eterhimhamdli, but their importance is de-emphasized and worship is usually discouraged in favor of making them objects of contemplation and/or tutelary figures.

-The Mind of the universe exists as a collective soul from which human souls emanate

-every person has two souls: an egoistic soul that animates the body and an ethereal soul that animates the mind. The latter is conceptualized as a single drop from a greater sea of the collective soul.

-belief that true wisdom is derived through access to this collective soul.

-belief that the trappings of the the ego-soul and the body's demands inhibits access to said collective soul.

-belief in the concept of enlightened beings who gain full experiential knowledge of the collective soul while remaining in a body, thus becoming capable of directly communicating aspects of their wisdom to the masses.

the biggest schism in this religion is over whether enlightenment just means experiencing full knowledge of the collective before you die, or whether it means transcending the limits of the body entirely and functionally becoming an immortal, godlike being.

deities of older/other religions absorbed by Eterhimhamdli are often reframed as enlightened mortals.

-most sects believe that only sophont life (or sometimes Only humans) have a etherial-soul along with the ego-soul, while animals exclusively have the ego-soul. Plants and inanimate objects Usually aren't ascribed souls outsides of heavily syncretic folk practices.

-belief in a fundamental good-evil cosmic dualism, though in a fairly complex way (evil is a necessity for life that is to be tempered and grappled with, rather than outright vanquished from the world entirely). The notion of 'evil' here is most associated with bodily desires (this includes all bodily needs like hunger and thirst, necessary to support life but viewed dangerous in excess, and being the root of conflict and pain).

the evil nature of bodily desire is not About sex, but does translate to non-procreative sex being frowned upon to varying extents.

-belief that life is a state of internal warfare between the evil ego-soul and the good ethereal-soul, with the former being more powerful and influential. To lead a good life is to bring the ego-soul into equilibrium with the ethereal soul. To live a wise and venerable life is to fully tip the balance in the latter's favor (this is not an expectation for lay followers, as it is considered profoundly difficult and requires separation from worldly life).

-lay followers practice forms of temperance to bring these forces into equilibrium, priests practice forms of asceticism to subdue the ego-soul and gain experiential wisdom in the process.

-The way you balance your life has consequences for the afterlife. An evil life causes an eternal death (this is usually posited as an underworld), a life in equilibrium causes one to be reborn into a new human body (a neutral fate), and a good life results in full return to the collective soul (this is a state of complete peace and contentedness and access to infinite wisdom).

-A selection of hallucinogenic plants are central to the monastic/priestly aspects of the religion, being seen as the key method through which the body can be transcended and the ego-soul can be quieted in order to tap into the collective. Lay followers do not participate in this facet on a regular basis.

-Priests also participate in self-flagellation, as the struggle with physical pain is a key microcosm of the broader internal war with the ego-soul, and can be a source of wisdom and contemplation. They are extensively tattooed for partly related purposes. Laymen are not expected to flagellate as a practice but rather to apply teachings to/learn from struggles with everyday pain.

-Very complicated relations with violence as a concept. Some strains of Eterhimhamdli philosophy see violence as an exclusive result of evil to be avoided whenever possible (usually more completely by priesthoods than the wider societies they live in), others see it as a neutral tool in of itself that Can be a force for good when used wisely. (Large scale 'wise usages of violence for the sake of good', shockingly, tend to favor the in-group's position in preexisting ethnic/religious/territorial conflicts).

-Most sects are proselytizing and see conversion as a necessity to create a better world, and have broadly unfavorable views of other religious practices.

This does not extend to seeing all societies that practice Eterhimhamdli or even The Same Schism Of Eterhimhamdli in a positive light (the birthplace of this religion is currently about 60 semi independent city-states organized into leagues that are frequently at war with each other)

-Highly favors education, literacy, rhetoric, debate, and the acquisition of material knowledge along with deeper spiritual wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom are venerable traits and societies should be led by the learned, or at least by people under their guidance.

---

The Scholarly Order of the Root is one order of Lowlands Eterhimhamdli monastics, functioning as a closed cult/mystery religion. They’re based out of Suurota (one of the biggest Yuroma city-states and dominant member of its league). They're at the top of the league's hierarchy of monastics, very wealthy, and have some involvement in governance (being an advisory body to the magistrate).

The Scholars primarily interact with the general public by hosting many of the league's institutions of scholarship and philosophy, and some of the biggest libraries in this part of the world. Their institutions are used by laymen Suurota citizens and members of government for study, and they host monks and priests (uninitiated to the inner cult) in their halls.

Actual membership to the Scholars cult is limited, they neither expect nor want associates to participate in their rituals. Rather, they position themselves as teachers- revealing small aspects of their secret knowledge to laymen and the lesser monastics as a form of guidance, while keeping dangerous knowledge for only the trusted inner circle.

Their baseline belief system aligns with the general schema of Lowlands Eterhimhamdli (one of three major schisms of this belief system), but their closed cult practices revolve around fairly unique interpretations, understood to be the ultimate underlying truths of this worldview.

The Scholars focus on an extention the Mind-Body model of the universe where their synthesis is the Dream (this itself is not unique to this cult, but the depths of their focus is). Under this model, the world is the dream of the collective consciousness, and achieving enlightenment or even temporary lucidity can allow the dream to be shaped to one's will.

One of their most secretive practices is god-building, in which they utilize altered mental states to shape the fabric of the dream into entities they can use as personal teachers of secret knowledge (also as a type of magic in general, they use it to 'build' guardians and curses and the like).

The process involves using mild doses of Ur-Root brew (mostly derived from roots of the clonal Ur-Wood colony, whose bark has notable concentrations of dimethyltryptamine and also hosts milder fungal hallucinogens) while maintaining an object and concept as a focal point of concentration. The altered state provided by the Root allows the user some access to the wisdom of the collective soul, and they will experience secret knowledge and revelations about this object, how it can best be used (this will be supplemented by material knowledge about the subject). This process is repeated until the user experiences a sense of Presence in the object, which must be interacted with, given a name and a face. Through more repetition, the object is believed to be shaped into a sort of thoughtform god which has come into material existence via manipulation of the dream.

This is considered to take immense time and effort to come to completion, god-building projects can last for years and be the combined effort of multiple Scholars. In the end, you have shaped an entity to your will that can operate independently of you.

The Ur-Wood itself is the center of Scholar cult practice, as it is both the purveyor of their most important hallucinogen and believed to have been the first god ever shaped by this form of lucid dreaming (it's a pilgrimage site for Eterhimhamdli where thousands of followers have undergone Ur-Root trips over the past four centuries, using the woods as an object of contemplation). To them the Ur-Tree is the ultimate teacher of their cult, an extremely powerful built-god that has been involved in almost every journey to enlightenment and contains all these journeys within its substance.

They believe that communing with the tree via Ur-Root can grant access to all enlightened mortals- full trips (with a DMT breakthrough type experience) will often involve sensations of encountering entities, which they interpret to be these historical figures. Within their religious framework, they're kind of speedrunning enlightenment. Under most conventional frameworks, the teachings of wise and/or enlightened people are conveyed in writing or speech as things to Contemplate on one's own journey- you might be able to understand them Conceptually but true understanding is Experiential, a process that can take a lifetime. In their framework, they're both receiving these teachings directly AND embodying states in which they can experientially comprehend them.

That summarizes most of their secret practices, and the rest of their practice is pretty standard for devout Lowlands Eterhimhamdlist priests. They live a partly ascetic lifestyle, they bear extensive tattoos as a contemplation of pain and marker of their journeys, they flagellate, they use tutelary hallucinogens, they refine their non-experiential body of knowledge through debate and rhetoric, they work to accumulate both worldly and spiritual knowledge, they work as scribes, etc.

[benevadeca]

LBH / SJ as parallels makes me crazy bc on one hand there's the themes of personal responsibility and the hard work necessary for taking agency for your choices and them being what shapes the kind of life that is reachable but on the other SJ was literally replaceable by the narrative and even when he did sporadically try to be Good it always blew up on him / never knew anything else and so was unable to be anything else.

VS LBH was not / protagonist halo / literal bloodline superiority / did at least know love which is what made him able to transcend the world by knowing the abuse he faced was something wrong and not something natural. Anyway

[predictingtragedy]

Being an Aquarius Venus means a tendency to treat friends like lovers and lovers like friends, which is cool for the person with that placement, but a bit confusing for everyone else

[nothorses]

hello am nonbinary 👍 i think a lot of binary trans people fail to recognize the ways they ignore or erase or are unaware of nonbinary trans issues. we are... like, rebinarized, either treated the same as transmale/transfemale or as cismale/cisfemale, when neither of those experiences are accurate or similar to ours (generalizing here, i know transmasc and transfem enbies Exist lol). i dont feel like exorsexism is taken seriously amongst binary trans people.

like... so many nonbinary people talk about having to lie and pretend to be binary trans to endocrinologists to get access to hrt, or not being able to access hrt BECAUSE of their nonbinary transition goals. but when i bring this up, my nonbinary perspective is often overrode in favor of a binary trans perspective (like, "well the gatekeeping hurts binary trans people too, youre not unique"). does that make sense? if i talk about how i feel about the english language's intense gendering and how it will never be possible for me to be "stealth", how i feel like im forcibly recloseted bc of rigidly binary gender roles and will likely die like this, im told that "everyone deals with misgendering". every time i try to talk about something specific to my own experience as a nonbinary trans person, it is derailed

i dont think "binary privilege" is like. a real thing. bc thats not what the word "privilege" means. but there is A Real Difference in how binary trans people are treated vs nonbinary trans people. its like, we should talk about that for the same reason why we talk abt the differences in transandrophobia and transmisogyny. and idk, in my experience, binary trans people dont usually want to talk about that?

I 100% agree, and I think it's a real problem. And I want to be clear that I agree with everything you've said here; I think there is absolutely a real difference in how nonbinary people are treated vs. other trans people, and I think other trans people very often do treat nonbinary folks differently in a way that is genuinely shitty and harmful.

I think we're on the same page about this one, tbh. I'm a little tired of the idea of "binary privilege", but generally for the same reasons that I think "trans male privilege" is nonsense, and that "transandrophobia" as a concept exists without implying that transmascs are oppressed by transfems.

I just think that not everything is an oppression/privilege dynamic, and it's important to be able to talk about unique experiences and lateral aggression without that conversation centering around arguments about who has it "worse", who's perspectives aren't to be trusted, who's problems aren't real, and which other trans people are the Real Enemy. Which it sounds like you agree with.

[mashamorevvna]

my one unpopular opinion is that i do think it’s legitimately interesting to think of gale’s rship to magic as coloured by csa. the one advantage of a setting where otherwise abstract or allegorical concepts can be personified & made literal is that it does allow you to explore how a child can be defined by being ‘chosen’ by another adult (divinity) & the way that shapes said child’s relation to the self & the way other adults interface with them. especially as they grow into adulthood.