#i dont know man academics were so much easier for me in high school

[bare1ythere]

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[ghost-in-the-stalls]

What are ur tilda hcs?

Okay im finally gonna answer this!! Thank you so much for asking!!! I love receiving asks and I love sharing my headcanons. Sorry again it's so late ❤❤❤

This isn't gonna be nearly as well worded and eloquent as I originally planned. The first time I wrote it it basically became a drabble about her life. And then I lost that whole draft. Lmao

I just don't have it in me to recreate that whole thing again but I still wanna share my headcanons about her because I do have a lot!

I also wanna say this is in no way to like... excuse her behavior or try and redeem her. She was a terrible person. But people aren't born terrible. And I like taking 2 dimensional fictional women and making them make sense. So this isn't to excuse but instead to explain? I guess?

cw for all the shit you expect with the minyards by now, but specifically drug addiction and statutory rape. Also this is LONG so its going under a cut.

So first of all, I imagine her and Luther as being half siblings. Their father was a preacher or something- someone with a big role in their church's community and a big reputation of being a reliable, wise, holy man.

When Luther was maybe around 3 years old, there was this teenage girl in the congregation who would often come to Mr. Hemmick for advice, guidance, comfort, etc. She didn't quite fit in in school, wasn't great at academics and struggled to keep up with her siblings achievements, and was overall going through a lot of the turmoil thats unfortunately common for teenagers.

So she, like many people in the congregation, went to Mr Hemmick for guidance and ended up seeing a lot of him. She felt listened to and believed in with him. She felt like he treated her as more mature than the way her family treated her. She trusted him. He abused that.

If you asked her at the time, she would have said it was consensual between them. But she was 16. And when she became pregnant, he turned on her REAL fast lemme tell you. He made her promise not to tell anyone that he was the father, and he only told his wife. And of course, when he told his wife, he talked at length about how this 16 year old girl tempted him to sin; how he regretted it and only hoped she could learn to truly find God.

So he took the child in upon being born as a way to "attone" for what he'd done, but the whole community (not knowing he was the father) just saw it as an act of good will. And of course he'd tout off a lot in his sermons about how he'd be able to give the baby a much better, holier lifestyle than a teenager who turned her back on god by having sex.

So he and his wife end up raising Tilda from birth, but they make sure she knows from the beginning the circumstances of her birth. They drill it into her that her mother was a dirty sinner and that she herself is tainted as a result. She is raised always feeling like she needs to be twice as good to even be considered half as good as her brother in her parents eyes.

Naturally, she stops trying pretty early. In middle school, I imaging her being one of those bullies. The really nasty ones who get violent at their victims for even looking at them wrong. Idk about anyone else, but in my schools growing up the fights between the girls were always way bloodier than the ones between the guys. And I imagine those as the types of fights she got in- especially when one of her victims decides to stand up for themselves by throwing her own baggage back in her face.

By high school, she was thoroughly committed to the role of problem child. She would do everything she could to upset her family and get herself into shit. She'd do drugs, skip classes, show up to school drunk, stay out late, etc. In addition to all this, she would purposefully find whatever guy seemed like the most trouble and take him home. Whether this was the school drug dealer, a boy who got expelled for some rough shit, or college boys who caught her eye at parties.

So she's basically dug this hole for herself where she's committed to actually being the child of sin that her family has always seen her as anyway. The few people who tried to reach out to her wouldn't get far. She would push and push at them to see how far she could stretch their patience (to see how long it took them to give up on her like everyone else).

She even had one teacher who never did give up on her. But she outright told Tilda that she can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. Those words would ring in Tildas ears for years to come, even if she never found it in herself to put the concept into action.

So eventually she'd graduate- just barely because she rarely put in effort in school- and she'd be left to suddenly have to find a place in the world when she previously never even thought she'd have a future. She started batting heads with her family even more (which no one thought was possible at that point) but it became less antagonistic on her end. She was still a shit stirrer, don't get me wrong. But she was getting tired. The fights were less about her being intentionally aggrevating and aggressive and more about her continuously being unable to live up to their expectations.

Luther already had a promising job as a cop at this point, meanwhile she was still living at home and bouncing between jobs that barely kept her afloat and boyfriends that barely made her feel worth something. She'd gotten into drugs in high school, and the habit only got worse now that she was out. It was the only thing that made her feel something other than misery or numbness. She could lose herself in the drugs and the boyfriends and the late nights out. She would come home to see her parents less and less and would speak to them only when absolutely necessary.

Eventually Mr. Hemmick died fairly young (heart attack or something equally as tragic. Whatever I dont care about him enough to pick the details) and his wife followed soon after by suicide. The house was left to Luther, who moved back in immediately and said there'd be changes in the household. He basically told Tilda to quit the drugs and go back to church if she wanted to stay in the house. He also had other rules like keeping a job, dumping her current boyfriend, giving her a curfew, etc.

So she left. She took her shitty beat up car an ex had fixed up for her and headed to California. A friend from high school lived out that way, so that's where she headed.

During this period in her life the drugs got a lot worse. This is also when she realized that she had become addicted. Mainly this is because, even after being away from her family and having freedom, she was still miserable. She didn't know how to get through a day sober. The constant variation between numbness and misery was too much to bare, but she wasn't ready to help herself. She wasn't ready to commit to her own healing and health.

She was in and out of therapy and rehab as quickly as she'd change jobs and partners. She wouldn't commit, and as soon as she had an out she'd take it. Had to miss an appointment for scheduling? Didn't make it back to the shelter in time to claim her bed for the night? Forgot to call back one of the few people who tried to reach out? No going back.

This is my main thing with Tilda. She was a shitty person who had a shitty life. But she never found the strength and commitment in herself to put in the work to be better. She instead let herself fall further and further down the hole because it was easier than pulling herself out. Because part of her still believed deep down that she had succeeded in living up to her birthright- that she wasn't deserving of ever healing or being better.

It was in one of these rehab facilities that she met the twins' father (and this part is absolutely inspired by Luke and Joey from the haunting of hill house). He was a guy with a similar past to hers- always sure he was meant to be bad so he committed to the role and never learned to commit to anything else. The difference between them, though, was that he was ready to get better.

They became fast friends and leaned on one another a bit while in rehab. She didn't see him as anything other than a friend, but he unfortunately became set on this idea that they would heal and move forward together. She knew he had feelings for her and enabled him (she didn't love him back but had never actually felt cared for like this before). He believed in her even when she didn't believe in herself, which was a lot. Unfortunately for him, he also ended up being more committed to her healing than she was. When she eventually started spiraling again, all other feelings for him were overshadowed by the part of her that just saw an opportunity.

She took advantage of him. She slept with him, took his money while he was sleeping, and bailed to get high and never see him again. Now I'm not gonna say she was just a devil who entered this poor man's life. He saw her more as a potential for an ideal life than a person. He was more in love with the dream he had of them getting better and starting a life together than he was actually in love with her and who she was as a person. Bad match all around.

So she never saw or heard from him again. When she found out she was pregnant, she went home to Luther and his wife and son. She didn't tell him right away that she was pregnant. Instead, she pretended she was just finally ready to commit to God and turn her life around. She played the part alright for a while, went to church with them and got sober and everything, but tried to leave and move into a women's shelter when she started showing. Luther found out and brought her home.

At first he was actually super supportive- mainly because he just genuinely thought she wanted to find God and stop "living in sin". But when she finally told him she didn't plan to keep the child, he turned on her.

We know the story from there. Personally I think the night that she stole the money and ran as her point of no return. Years down the line, when she knew she was being a terrible mother and person, she'd remember that night. And she'd think to herself how this is who she was always meant to be. How she doesnt deserve to be any better than how she is. And she'd dig the hole deeper.

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So yeah thats my take on Tilda Minyard. Sorry it was so long. I like the idea of giving depth and complexity to female characters- even the bad guys and the ones I don't like. I have a similar lengthy life concept for Mary Hatford as well, but it isn’t nearly as long. If anyone is curious lol

Thanks again for asking!

[mrfutureboy]

I would like to know when you started drawing and where your passion for fanart started 😊

Oh FUCK dude i did not see this i’m so fucking sorry this is so late 😭 damn you, tumblr, for not fucking notifying me!! Anyway buckle up this is gonna be much longer than you asked for <3

Honestly ive kinda been drawing all my life! I hope that doesnt sound dumb cuz obviously almost everyone drew pictures when they were kids, but i know that it’s been a consistent hobby for me since i was little. By the time i was in 3rd grade I was hoarding notebooks to draw in. Cuz that’s something fun about me: i had a real huge habit of drawing in things that werent sketchbooks. Through middle school and beyond I did buy/receive sketchbooks, but I started out with various kinds of notebooks. One I had from like 2nd grade was like a hardcover, stationary-type notebook that I drew cats in lol, and I have 2 velvet lisa frank notebooks from 3rd grade. In high school and college I had a really bad habit of drawing in the margins on my notes and on handouts the teacher/professor would give. Those classes where the prof just prints out all the notes beforehand and gives them to you to follow along? Oh man, I spent so many classes barely listening while I drew on them! I also used to draw on my physics homework and tests and sometimes I even got extra credit for them (thank you jeff :D). I actually have a folder of various drawings I’ve kept from that 8yr time period and a lot of them are on classwork 😂

Obviously, I’ve been doing a lot of digital art lately, which I’m sure is what u were more curious about rather than the shit about drawing on my homework. I got a surface pro as a graduation gift in 2016 bc prior to that i had a wacom tablet and a janky ass laptop, so the gift was kinda a 2-in-1: i can do schoolwork AND art easily! i like digital art a lot and honestly im still learning new things abt it every time i draw. I use Leonardo currently (i’ll skip that story) but I started out doing digital art on sketchfu WITHOUT the wacom tablet in maaaaybe 2012??? 2011??? does anyone on this site remember sketchfu? Honestly couldnt even tell u how i found that site hahah the internet was just full of wonders back in the day. RIP sketchfu. Once i got the tablet tho some time later i used sketchfu still (i think) but also gimp and krita i believe.

Oh i suppose I should mention that i took art all four years of highschool and also minored in it in college! So it’s something i did academically as well as for fun. I keep thinking about going to art school for realsies but idk. I’m already $$$ in debt from my first degree i dont feel like adding to that 😅😓

Ok now for the second part of your question: I’ve also pretty much always done fan art! Ive never really been one for OC’s, EXCEPT for the self-insert superhero double life “comics” i wrote about a poodle named Sassy when i was in third grade. And then the knock off “comics” i wrote at a later time which honestly it was weird that i did a knock off of my own thing rather than just adding them to the original or making it a spin off with at least one of the og characters. Cuz it wasnt a spin off!! But anyway there wasnt really much to any of these characters; i just needed vessels to get my weird ideas out.

So anyway yeah most of what ive ever drawn has been fan art or self portraits, because its just easier for me to take characters that already exist and bend them to my will (artistically). Well excluding art assignments in school i guess because i would usually have to draw something specific and therefore not something self indulgent. But yeah ive drawn for lots of fandoms like the earliest i remember is warrior cats. Then theres things like pokemon and warriors and random other books i read thru middle school (i used to read a LOT but now im practically illiterate); spn, sherlock, and marvel through high school; and then marvel and bttf thru the end of hs and beyond. Idk i also have always loved looking at other peoples fan art and so im like “shit i wanna do that too!”. Tho i will say marvel was my biggest fandom and the one i had the longest interest in, so that was probably where the passion REALLY came from cuz I was drawing marvel stuff for such a long time (tho not posting shdjsk u have to trust me), but ive been doing fan art forever :)

(Of course, a lot of the fan art i was making prior to recently was drawn in lined notebooks or on homework sheets or what have you, and I wasn’t posting really any of it, but i was still making it and a good chunk of it still exists. Oh i should also mention most of it was with pencils or ballpoint pens like i wasnt doing anything too fancy. There was some digital art in the highschool-college time frame but it also really wasnt…much. Honestly i barely posted any of it here but I know some of it’s on deviantart)

I cant pinpoint the exact time I started getting more “serious” about my art in general, but i know the first pandemic lockdown gave me more free time and i was less stressed about schoolwork so i just kinda had a good outlet. (Tho i will say that prior, I had been in a life drawing club for a short while, and i had also been working on a personal sketchbook project that had me pretty ~inspired~ to do art. Also i watched twin peaks around this time and it inspired a lot of Feelings and i was making funky collages and other art pieced that were sometimes related to that. Some of those are on deviantart)

Honestly I think the Big thing with my digital art was coincidentally getting back into BTTF the summer of the 35th anniversary bc the fandom here was THRIVING and i was like “oh shit wait i want to contribute!” But as i kept drawing i kept wanting to improve and that leads us to right now where im constantly trying new things (whether subtle or obvious) and challenging myself to do full body drawings with different poses, and doing screencap redraws and what have you for various reasons (backgrounds, proportions, pose, etc)

So yeah :) Basically I’ve been doing fan art forever (I didnt even get into all the mediums ive tried but that’s another conversation bc this is already so long and convoluted) and it’s kinda coincidental that ive suddenly really gotten back into it and have improved dramatically in such a short time. Thank you so much @rovermcfly for the ask and again im really sorry you had to wait so long for a response! Stupid tumblr

[floralgruuunge]

Why ADHD and secondary depression/anxiety are frustrating

HERE IS A RANT. OR MORE A PERSONAL POST. IF YOU DONT CARE TO READ IT, THEN DONT. I just needed to put this somewhere cause it hurts holding it inside all day every day. Anyway, I lived my entire life up until last year (aka nearly 23 solid years, yall) with ADHD, and didn't know it. You might ask how the fuck is that possible? It's called intelligence. And insane drive to be better than other people. On the outside, I appeared to be totally functional if not more than that. In high school, I made good grades. I had a lot of friends. I had opportunities many others didn't and I used them to my advantage. These things are all still very true for me today. I've graduated college with a bachelors degree. Cum Laude. I don't say this to boast, I'm just trying to show you who I am. I was accepted to UC - Davis where I will be studying French, aka my biggest passion ever. I have two amazing pets and a boyfriend who loves me. My parents are supporting me financially until I get to grad school where my entire education is paid for minus a couple hundred bucks in administrative fees. I have a car that is completely paid off and it's from 2012. I'm in relatively good shape. I am SO MOTHERFUCKING BLESSED. I recognize this. Yet, I never feel like I am. It's 2 am here in the western USA and I am so sad. Why? Because my brain constantly tells me "HEY SOMETHING IS WRONG, HEY LOOK YOU LOST YOUR KEYS FOR THE 15TH TIME TODAY, HAHA KYRIE YOU FORGOT WHAT YOU WERE SAYING MID SENTENCE IN FRONT OF SOME STRANGERS WHO ARE WAITING FOR YOU TO FINISH A DISJOINTED STORY THEYVE LOST INTEREST IN, oh and YOU FORGOT TO TEXT YOUR BEST FRIEND BACK FOR FIVE DAYS, YOU INTERRUPTED NICK WHILE HE WAS TALKING /AGAIN/, YOU BLURTED OUT SOMETHING WITHOUT FILTERING IT AND EMBARRASSED YOURSELF, etc." Constant failure in daily activities have chipped away at my self-esteem to the point where some days, I can't look at myself in the fucking mirror. I know the exact reason why I am depressed. I I am because my ADHD limits what my intelligence and intellect produce outside of my head. I have so many amazing things I want to do daily. I could accomplish so much. Sometimes I do. But other times, actually, MOST of the time, communicating my ideas and knowledge especially orally is a nightmare. If it's for an academic paper, for instance, it's a lot easier. Oh, but only when I don't procrastinate the paper to the last minute because I was preoccupied learning the principle behind the grammatically correct phrase "that that" in English. My parents always say I need to choose to be happy. But how can I choose to be happy when some stupid fucking disorder has been causing me social, intellectual, organizational, and who knows what the fuck else types of problems since day one? I just really want someone on here to know and understand that I DIDNT CHOOSE THIS. IM NOT LAZY. I LEGITIMATELY LOST THE PAPER MY PROFESSOR GAVE ME AND COULDNT DO THE HOMEWORK AS A RESULT. TRUST ME, I PANICKED ALL NIGHT LOOKING FOR IT. IM NOT RUDE. I DONT MEAN TO RUB YOU THE WRONG WAY, BUT IF I DONT SAY THIS ONE RELATED PHRASE RIGHT NOW, I WILL FORGET IT WHEN YOU ASK AT THE END OF YOUR SENTENCE. YES, I KNOW MY BACKPACK/PURSE IS OPEN AND THINGS ARE OVERFLOWING OUT OF IT. I KNOW YOU ASKED ME TO MAKE YOUR BED WHEN I GOT OUT OF IT EACH MORNING BUT I SERIOUSLY KEPT FORGETTING. It's embarrassing. I'm embarrassing. It's so hard to separate mental illness or in my case neurodevelopmental disorder from who I am as a person. I am on meds. Not the best ones that I know work for me due to a doctor who is wary of my past substance abuse history (which, by the way, after a shitton of therapy, I've come to realize that my abuse is mainly due to boredom. Due to the ADHD. That I let develop without getting help.) ADHD is not an excuse. It's an explanation. I understand I am responsible for my actions. I understand that it is up to me to actively combat the issues I have and notify others when I am struggling with a symptom. But man, does it get old, telling the people you love day in and day out something like "I completely browned-out during the conversation, because I was distracted by X, can you please repeat everything you just said?" Someone please take this curse from me.

[ixvyupdates]

I’m a Black Gay Man, and Supporting LGBTQ+ Kids Is Important to Me

Brian Coleman, who heads the counseling department at Jones College Prep, has been named the 2019 National School Counselor of the Year. This is the second year in a row that a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) counselor has held the title. Maureen Kelleher of Chicago Unheard spoke with Brian recently about his journey from acting to school counseling, the ways Jones is strengthening college access for first-gen and under-represented students and how student advocacy has created safe space for LGBTQ+ students and improved sex education at Jones. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Tell us your story. How did you become a school counselor?

I’ve always been really passionate about human behavior and patterns of human behavior. I think that first manifested for me through acting. When I was in college, I started touring with About Face Youth Theater. We were doing really powerful pieces related to LGBTQ+ homelessness in Chicago high schools. We had talk-backs with the students after the shows, discussing identity, privilege and power, social justice and so many other issues. I was so moved by the discussions we were having, I began asking myself, “How can I engage in school work in a more intentional way? Who does this kind of work in schools?”

I quickly realized school counselors are best positioned to explore identity development with high school students and thought, “If I’m going to make a career change that would be the way to go.”

I interviewed at Jones College Prep, got accepted as an intern and have been there ever since.

I’ve seen the research showing that students from low-income neighborhoods at selective enrollment schools are actually less likely to attend selective colleges than either their wealthier peers in their school or kids from neighborhoods like theirs who attend high-performing neighborhood or magnet schools. I’ve also seen research showing that high-achieving Black and Latinx students across CPS are especially likely to see their grades plummet freshman year, which can have long-lasting negative effects on GPA. Taken together, these findings raise concerns that selective enrollment schools aren’t supporting low-income students of color as well as one would expect, particularly when it comes to college access. How are you working to change this?

It’s a work in progress. We’ve seen some of the research and data on how students of color do at selective enrollment and we’re asking how do we create buy-in around equity and access? How are we making sure all students have access to AP courses? What are the prerequisities?

When I started at Jones, our counseling work with juniors and seniors was almost exclusively about postsecondary, while with freshmen and sophomores the work was mostly social emotional. I started by working with freshmen and sophomores and it was painful to turn that relationship over to another counselor just as they were starting to work on postsecondary.

More than anything, counseling is relationship driven work. Starting a relationship with kids halfway through their high school process and jumping into postsecondary work did not serve student interests. You can’t replicate two years of work.

We moved to a model where we sustain relationships across the four years. Each counselor has a segment of the alphabet and works with those kids for all four years. This has allowed us to ensure we are constantly working on three strands of development: postsecondary, social emotional, and academic in the sense of understanding GPA, learning about time management, and so on.

Now we’re doing a better job of targeting. We went from not knowing our percentage of first-generation kids to tracking it. This is our second year of tracking intensively at each grade level who are our first-gens. [Coleman estimates between a quarter and a third of Jones’ student body could be described as first-generation college students.]

This is our first year offering a counseling group for juniors about what being first-gen might mean for going through the college admissions process. We’ve revised all our college and postsecondary curriculum to spell out the possibilities for students who aren’t in the junior group.

 As the parent of a transgender daughter, I can tell you that Jones has a very strong reputation in the community for supporting LGBTQ+ students. How did it get there? How did you help?

That brings tears to my eyes, to be honest. It means a lot to me that Jones is known to be a welcoming space. It’s a very important piece of what brought me to this work.

When I started here there was a GSA [Gay-Straight Alliance]. I will never forget one of the first conversations I had here, with a student who said, “But I’m not gay or straight, so how is this an organization for me?”

That was a beautiful moment of learning for me and I realized we needed a rebrand to make a change. I immediately became the sponsor of the organization we had known as our GSA. We’ve been through some different names based on what spoke to students. About two years ago we rebranded to Jones Pride. I think that’s something students can get behind.

I came into Jones expecting students to want more of an advocacy organization. What I found was students wanted a safe and affirming space to talk about issues important to them. It was a good fit. In addition to our [Jones Pride] group, I ran a counseling group for students (Exploring Gender and Sexuality) where students could get structured support for the coming-out process. Over time a lot of that morphed into Jones Pride.

A lot of my work has also been helping rebrand counseling. I’m a Black gay man, I’m a big personality and from day one I said, “Supporting gay and gender non-conforming kids is important to me.” Students come up and tell me, “I heard about you before I got here.” I have facilitated many conversations between students and their counselors here. I don’t think prior to me participating in the counseling function did students think, “Oh, these are issues I could explore with my counselor.”

Staff struggle to know how to talk in an open and affirming way about choices and decisions students are making related to gender and sexuality. Those are many conversations I’ve had with our staff. Comprehensive sex education is a program we are still trying to get established across our school communities.

Tell me more about the changes to the sex education curriculum at Jones. Is there interest in sharing what you’ve developed with other Chicago high schools?

When I arrived, comprehensive sexual health education was offered to freshmen and given through outside providers. Students would say, “What about us—gender and sexual minority students?”

Jones Pride members talked with the sophomore student government association. They took it to administration and the P.E. department. Then the adults came to me and said, “Mr. Coleman, can you help us figure this out?” That’s not something I can say no to. The sophomore student government association wanted content on gender and sexual identity development, healthy relationships and laws related to sexual violence.

CPS and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance have created this incredible K-12 curriculum for schools to be using. I got trained on the full curriculum and found relevant options for the sophomores—healthy relationships, sexual violence. I said, “I can support this, but this has to be schoolwide, and I need more staff. Mr. Coleman will not be teaching comprehensive sex education to the entire sophomore class.” I put out a call to staff, and eight people were willing to get trained and help teach. Over a few days, 470 or so sophomores received three hours straight of curriculum provided by a duo of teachers. This year we’re revising the model to build a partnership between last year’s team and the P.E. department.

People in education want to do right by students. When you hear from students, “This is how you can support us,” it’s much easier to gain traction for new programming.

Is there anything else you want to tell our audience of teachers and parents?

What we’ve been able to do at Jones doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are powerful things happening at the district level around social-emotional learning and postsecondary planning. There’s amazing professional development coming from the district helping us understand first-generation students and postsecondary planning. I’ve seen that be powerful.

There is district support prioritizing counseling. It’s not just Jones. There’s momentum around creating space, time, energy and priority for counselors around the district. With things happening on the state level around special education, we were able to get a case manager about three months ago. There is money for schools to get additional support with case management.

With Kirsten Perry being the National School Counselor of the Year Last year, it shows we’ve been able to accomplish amazing things in very different environments. [You can read about Perry’s work at North Lawndale Community Academy here.] It really speaks to the wonderful work happening in our district.

An original version of this interview appeared on Chicago Unheard as Jones Counselor Brian Coleman Talks College Access, Sex Ed and Supporting LGBTQ+ Students.

Photos courtesy of Brian Coleman.

I’m a Black Gay Man, and Supporting LGBTQ+ Kids Is Important to Me syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com