#no i will not give context BUT this was in a skype chat

[ananonymousguy20]

A DOUBLE WARNING TO EVERYONE IN THE TROLLS DREAMWORKS FANDOM.

⚠️⚠️Do not interact with they. For your safety block and make others aware.⚠️⚠️

TW: Grooming, approval, justification and defense for abuse (incest and pedophilia).

1 Stay away from jade-green-butterfly also known as HealerCharm and Jussy (Justine Louise Heverm. She is from Colchester, United Kingdom). She’s on Tumblr, DeviantArt, Skype, Furaffinity and Discord. In the last few years she has been active and gaining recognition in the Trolls Fandom as if what she did to so many minors never happened so I want to spread awareness on what being a pedo really looks like and if anyone (especially minors) is friend with her they will know what kind of horrible person she is.

She was already exposed before with proofs, a lot of screenshots and testimonies of minors and Discord Mods that we can't invalidate or deny it really happened. She groomed minors on Discord: she sent them porn drawings to the chat, wanted to play a “sexy” RolePlay with minors and with a character that represents a little toddler girl. Her tastes are very clear. She is a very manipulative person and always plays the innocent victim card who made a simple mistake, but she knows what she is doing because she spread a victim blaming discurse, gaslighting and ignores all the screenshots and testimonies against her, she says they are not evidence and they are taken out of context, she is no fool.

These are not "slips" (as she wants to make them out to be), she does it on purpose, that is her true nature: an abuser.

I see, it happens tho, but why Kaitlin practically dissapeared after being accused of grooming 14* years old kids in discord chats? (*It was 13).

Jussy: “It was THEIR FAULT. They were in wrong for doing NSFW too”.💀 By the way, I think I was told that this person is or was a caregiver.

2 KaitlinEXE (Maria Romina Auxiliadora Fernandez). She is from Cadiz, Spain. Is her friend, best friend, like a sister to Jussy. She also groomed minors and therefore deleted her entire existence from the internet in 2021.

Let's be honest, an adult or even a teenager is not interested in spending their leisure time with minors, no matter how much of a “babysitter” she is. If you like spending time with children as an adult, you become a teacher or nanny, and so on. Seeking to spend time alone with minors, giving them gifts, "friendship", flattery, adults "feeling" like children or liking children's things (drawing, watching cartoons, RP, toys) are all -together- characteristics of grooming.

Although she is a TEACHER over 35 years old, yet she is looking to spend time alone with minors. It seemed normal and right for her to accept the invitation to join a Discord group with its own NSFW section where she was the only adult there and they were all minors, as she gained the trust of those minors by being nice, giving them drawings, and "befriending" them. Wanted to RolePlay being a couple, kissing, dating on Valentine's Day and then she was planning to get married. Since they had a NSFW section I think you know where this is all going: to the "honeymoon". Interacting NSFW without her putting any kind of limits on them, she even encouraged them when they drew her porn drawings.

She is a fan of porn material that mimics the sexual exploitation of minors (mangas porn loli/shota), shipping a Gohan kid with and adult Piccolo (who is like his father), drew her own manga porn with her OC Kaitlin Classic with an Elecman Classic (who is his brother and they are both children), and was a big fan of a kindergarten little girls porn comic “Irina’s World” (El Mundo de Irina, Irina Isekai) all this while she was studying to be a kindergarten teacher because being with children has always been her dream.

People, don't be fooled. Be more critical of people. Just because they're “nice” doesn't mean you should overlook the nastier things they do because then you give them a free pass to continue being this way. Jussy and KaitlinEXE are old enough to know what they’re doing is wrong. For they the internet is some fantasy world to do whatever it feels like and It's not right. The people here are PEOPLE and are not here just for your entertainment and twisted fun.

[mylordshesacactus]

plantser questionnaire marathon

What is the first thing you do when you start working on a new WIP?

Generally, I'll do a quick bullet-point "outline" of the scenes I want to include to make sure I don't leave any out. (My default setting is scrapbook-style oneshots, so this is pretty relevant!) These are EXTREMELY informal and probably incomprehensible to anyone but me. Because most of my oneshot ideas started out as chatting with friends or a tumblr post, they'll often have little dialogue snippets that occurred to me as relevant to the theme or situation but don't have any context; I'll toss any particularly effective or witty or just profoundly in-character lines--anything where I love the exact phrasing and don't want to lose it--up as their own bullet points.

If it's particularly plot-heavy or intricate, or if I'm struggling to go from an outline to actual prose, I'll add sub-bullets to brainstorm and lay out the scene more precisely to give me a better roadmap.

These "outlines" can get a little more detailed if it's a multichapter. I'll divide them first into rough chunks, less strict chapter divides and more "here's what happens in Act 1". Then I'll...start writing, and if one scene ends up longer or more detailed than I expected, I'll rearrange how I divided the scenes. Sometimes this results in me writing a scene, developing it in more detail and realizing that it could very naturally include all the important aspects I'd allocated to a different scene, so I'll combine what would have been two weak chapters into one strong one.

What is the most important question to answer about your characters?

What wouldn't they do?

This can be a moral question, of course--what's the line your character won't cross? What would make them less nobly just say no, you're not paying me enough for that? Conversely, what level of selflessness would they balk at or view with disdain--a character who'd be totally fine with a genuinely mutually beneficial arrangement, for example, might sneer at an arrangement where he got something he wanted but the other person got something they needed, because that exchange wasn't equally balanced so he thinks he got cheated.

But it doesn't have to be a big deep question.

Usually, if you're stuck when writing because you don't know what a character would do next or how they'd respond, you can get a lot of traction out of going "okay, well, what WOULDN'T they do?" and then thinking about the answer.

Like. It's easy to say well, this character absolutely would never go to the criminal organization from canon for help...but would they? Are you sure? Luke Skywalker went to every effort to make a peaceful deal with Jabba because the backup plan was incredibly risky. Robyn Hill hates the Atlesian military, but was willing to work with them in the interest of making real change on the Council; and when the heat went off in Mantle, she shelved her pride instantly and begged for help to save civilian lives.

What wouldn't they do? And how sure are you?

What are three things you have to have during a writing session?

Time, relative quiet, and a stream-of-consciousness outlet.

I don't enjoy writing under pressure and tend to get engrossed when I hit my flow, so even if I only intend to write for an hour or so I can't be trying to cram it into a limited time at the end of which I have to do something else. I can write until bedtime because that's a natural endpoint and I'm tired and would be stopping anyway, but I can't "write before bedtime" because that's a time limit. My partner will frequently go "I just need to write 500 words and then bed" but I absolutely can't do that.

I say "relative" quiet because dead silence is unpleasant, and because @alexkablob and I have discovered that we can cowrite just fine (and in fact better) while on a Skype call together. However, I cannot write independently while on a call, and I can't write with music unless it's EXTREMELY unobtrusive. I had decent results playing spaghetti western soundtracks in the background while working on Bellwether, but even then I frequently had to pause it or switch to a different track when the music got too intense.

(I have sensory processing issues where my brain physically cannot filter out background noise if it's rhythmic or has a pattern. Music or voices force my brain to pay attention to it, making it impossible to write because my attention is split. So, background music rather than full instrumental themes--music designed to play under dialogue without distracting from it--can actually be great!)

And a stream-of-consciousness outlet. Sometimes a "scratch notes" document is enough for this--something I can tab over to and jot down random dialogue that I just thought of, or a plot concept, or the solution to a problem, without having to organize it. And I write best when I can talk about what I'm doing to someone without involving auditory input--just today I was building a D&D puzzle and was able to focus on it better when I could occasionally tab over to a chat with friends who aren't in the campaign, so I could talk about what I was doing. It keeps my momentum up and keeps me excited. My original writing doc has like five people who've got access to it just so that they can see what I'm doing and help me keep interest in the ongoing project.

[sagamemes]

non-sexual forms of intimacy.   send me ‘INTIMACY +’ a number between 1-125 and i’ll write a starter or a drabble about our muses engaging in a form of intimacy outside of sexual context.   note: as the level of trust required for the things listed here varies a lot, feel free to send multiple numbers if you aren’t sure if they’ll work! bonus:   if the mun is comfortable with randomising a number if asked, state so in the tags when you reblog!

1        watching tv/movies together

2        going to an event together  ( like a carnival, festival, etc. )

3        going on dates, like to the movies or shopping

4        sharing secrets

5        hugs

6        sharing drinks

7        having a phone call

8        touching noses

9        cuddling

10      having a philosophical discussion

11      hand holding

12    �� sharing jokes

13      sharing smiles

14      laying your head on someone’s shoulder

15      linking arms

16      giving each other massages

17      tickling

18      playing with hair

19      scratching backs

20      tracing designs on arms

21      talking about the future

22      writing / receiving handwritten notes

23      moving your head to their chest and listening to their heartbeat

24      singing together or playing instruments together

25      dancing

26      feeding each other

27      drawing/writing on one another

28      brushing the other’s hair

29      sitting knee to knee across from each other

30      doing beauty treatments, like facials or manicures, hair dying or face masks

31      reading books together

32      take care of the other when sick

33      talking about the relationship  ( how i feel with you, how i feel about this relationship )

34      cooking together

35      head-scratches

36      hugging

37      discussions about themselves  ( like flaws, shortcomings, passions... )

38      just sleeping together

39      an actual open honest conversation

40      bathing and taking care of hygiene together

41      butterfly kisses

42      nuzzling

43      telling on-the-fly stories

44      meditating or sharing spirituality

45      grooming

46      sharing hobbies

47      studying

48      sharing personal stories

49      shaving

50      seeing each other without make-up or not all dressed up

51      moral support for major events

52      crying, sharing emotions, comforting each other

53      listening to the other’s breathing

54      camping/hiking

55      sleepovers

56      being with animals together

57      going on trips together

58      sharing clothes / jewellery / personal items

59      cleaning the other’s living space

60      going with / escorting the other to a doctor / therapist appointment

61      doing art together

62      kissing different body parts

63      making out

64      volunteering together

65      working together

66      talking about wants and desires

67      experiencing new things together

68      doing an extracurricular together

69      playing games together

70      playing sports together

71      walking together

72      being respectful and kind to one another  ( helping them do things, open doors for them etc. )

73      sharing responsibilities  ( chores, babysitting etc. )

74      giving each other presents, special things from the heart

75      talking about each other's boundaries

76      public displays of affection

77      grooming in front of each other

78      wrestling or play fighting

79      texting / talking online

80      looking in each other’s eyes

81      complimenting each other

82      falling asleep over skype or chat

83      making faces at each other

84      sky watching

85      writing poetry

86      inside jokes

87      telling them how you feel about them

88      getting to know each other better

89      playing 20 questions

90      going for a ride together

91      closing their eyes and memorising each other's faces with your fingers

92      walking arm in arm

93      making a playlist together

94      making up their own words or slang

95      going out to eat

96      listing each other’s best features

97      bringing your faces close without touching and feeling each other breath

98      going shopping together

99      throwing a party or other event together

100    leaving love notes

101    exercising together

102    exchanging something meaningful

103    trying to have a whole conversation with only eye contact and facial expressions

104    sitting back to back and feel each other’s heartbeat

105    learning their favourite foods and making it

106    running errands together

107    looking at photos together

108    taking photos together

109    going people watching

110    having a staring contest

111    learning something new together

112    taking turns leading each other on a nature walk blindfolded

113    getting to know each other’s family and friends

114    drawing or sculpting each other

115    painting each other’s bodies

116    playing with kids together

117    practising a skill together

118    sharing food

119    being in comfortable clothes together

120    saying goodbye

121    touching affectionately without asking

122    touching affectionately in public

123    being partially undressed with the other

124    being completely naked with the other

125    talking about each other’s bodies

[morningflames]

a word of warning

well here’s a post i never thought i’d be making

it’s come to my attention that a Certain Someone is planning on making a comeback to WrA soon and it fills me with nothing short of dread. i spent the day yesterday warning people he terrorized and manipulated that this was happening. you know it’s bad when there’s a literal network of people who share an abuser that have remained in contact for years in the event this happened again.

i am not going to lie and say that making this post does not terrify me but i cannot in good conscience sit back and let him worm his way into the rp scene again and do what he did to me and at least half a dozen others all over again.

to summarize: tarcanus aka tarcanus frostborne is a manipulative, emotionally abusive and predatory individual that should be avoided at all costs.

i am the player behind lyrinel, a former officer of his and someone who was on the receiving end of nearly a years worth of abuse and manipulation. my experiences pale in comparison to those of others who dealt with him and came forward to me after i left his guild, and i cannot speak for anyone who does not feel comfortable coming forward. if you do want to let your voice be heard, feel free to reblog and add your own anecdotes.

my story below the cut.

tw: manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, coercion, grooming

i first joined coram populo in early 2014 after my best friend and fellow survivor (i will refer to her by her character’s name of thradia from here on out) joined the raid team in december of the previous year. we were both just looking for a social place to park our characters and maybe start role playing again, as we hadn’t had a guild or dedicated rp group in a while. things were fine and friendly for the first couple of months, though it’s worth noting that a large part of the office corps had just left or was in the process of leaving when thradia and i joined. we were both 18 at the time.

i made the mistake of reaching out to tarc in the spring, when i noticed him posting to his tumblr about how busy he was. i offered to be an IC assistant of sorts to his character and he was more than happy to toss me into an absolute whirlwind. we still didn’t know much about each other, but in the span of a couple weeks we went from casual contact in guild chat to immensely long (sometimes between 10 and 12 hours) skype calls, constant DMing, and an almost uninterrupted stream of conversation. i was struggling to finish high school at this time (spoiler: i failed to graduate) and found myself suddenly caught in an all-consuming relationship with this man and his guild. from the moment i woke up to the moment i finally hung up and crawled into bed, my time was taken up by tarc and the guild and the game.

i was promoted to officer less than five months after joining the guild. this was overwhelming for a number of reasons, chief among them being the fact that i had never been an officer in a guild like this before and i was very quickly escalated to tarc’s “inner circle.” this was a circle that he evidently didn’t even include his most senior officers in, as he didn’t seem to communicate with them to the extent or abundance that he did with me - and later, when she was ALSO promoted to officer, thradia. 

within a few weeks i found myself at the center of dozens of micro-confrontations and venting from tarc about other members of the guild, raid team, and even fellow officers. every time, i would tell him he needed to take it to his co-gm and talk it through with her. she, like him, was a grown woman with a lot more experience and better people skills than me, a teenager barely out of high school, but tarc insisted on beating me over the head with his frustrations and then proceeding to guilt me and tell me i was a terrible friend when i didn’t agree with him or expressed i was uncomfortable being in the center of a vent session that i felt was unwarranted. 

tarc was never wrong. he did not apologize. the words “i’m sorry” did not exist in his vocabulary, and if they did, they were almost always followed up with the word “but.” constantly he would be sending multiple messages to me or thradia while we were running events and raids for the guild, ranting about a few particular members that he disliked at the time regardless of how we felt about said members. thradia and i would both be reduced to tears and/or anxiety attacks by his outbursts that all but demanded we take his side even if we didn’t. his feelings and circumstances were paramount. everyone else’s were just inconveniences. 

tarc was always the victim. no matter what was going on, no matter who had instigated whatever vein of conversation we were on that had gone awry, he had a way of making you feel like utter shit until you grovelled for his forgiveness, which he rarely gave. instead he would move on without giving any closure or allowing you to discuss your feelings at length. if you tried, you were the insensitive one who he couldn’t go to with his “unfiltered emotions,” which was the entire purpose of his inner circle to hear him say it. i was not allowed to just be his friend or just be an officer, i had to be both and neither at the same time, and it still was not the right course of action. nothing ever was.

tarc was openly manipulative and antagonistic, always citing it as an “inside joke” when called on it. i opened up to him once about my father’s alcoholism and how i was uncomfortable with alcohol culture and being around drunk people. regardless, he would constantly call while drunk (or maybe he was pretending to be to get a rise out of me, i honestly do not know what was genuine and what was put on with him) and make me stay on the call with him for hours. when he was (allegedly) diagnosed with an inability to process certain alcohols that could be life threatening, he continued to drink (or claimed he was drinking) dangerous amounts, which lead to me begging him to stop as i feared for his life. one of the worst anxiety attacks i have ever had was over him endangering his health and me believing i was going to see a friend die. he knew how much this upset me and he did not stop. he held me as a captive audience to his self destruction (or the playacting of it) and let me cry and beg and plead with him to take care of himself.

tarc loves to promote a clean, “family friendly” persona online. he will go on and on about the positive atmosphere his guild provides and how progress and accepting he and his “safe spaces” are. as soon as you are inducted to his inner circle, however, you learn otherwise. he will gladly engage in sexually charged conversation with you, even if you are ten years younger than him as thradia and i were. we were both legal adults, yes, but just barely. i can’t count the inappropriate remarks and jokes made about us, our friends, and even minors all in the spirit of joking “what if” conversation. he has a history of making young LGBT+ people uncomfortable, making their sexualities and identities about him and how he can relate to them. 

tarc was the most two-faced and divisive guild leader i’ve ever seen. he would rant to me mercilessly about wanting to kick one of the junior officers and raid team members in private while never saying a word to their face or bringing it up with the co-gm. he would start schisms between people, telling each what they wanted to hear and encouraging both parties not to confront each other about it, allowing the resentment and distrust to grow as he fanned the flames on both sides. he wanted people to stay in the guild and continue to basically work for him while also putting him above anyone else in their friend circles. he told straight up lies to thradia and i, claiming one of us had said things about the other that we never did, driving a wedge and distrust between us.

tarc treats his guild(s) like a business. he is entirely capitalist-minded even in an MMORPG that people play for fun, churning out “content” and keeping up appearances like a machine. he treats his officers and guild members like employees, not people. any time irl would demand attention away from the game, forcing someone to miss or cancel an event, he would subtly guilt them about it until they apologized, even if it was a dire situation or a family emergency. 

when tarc wanted to start a wow roleplaying podcast, he approached me about cohosting. he wanted a female voice, and since i was out of school and had no job lined up due to not graduating i was the perfect candidate. i came on to narrate and research the lore segment of the looking for roleplay podcast, which was little more than me paraphrasing a wowwiki article, but i was held to a “professional” standard. i had to have my research done by a certain day, my recording done in advance, etc. 

the podcast was a spot of contention for several reasons, one being the mysterious emails tarc would allegedly receive about it. the podcast had a shared email account that all three of us could access and look at, but tarc claimed that people sent emails directly to him since “everything’s under his email.” he would use these strawman emails as indirect criticism of turwinkle and i, reading them aloud or typing up what they supposedly said but NEVER producing a real screenshot or address to verify them. i’m convinced he only did this as a way to make turwinkle and i feel badly and work harder “for the listeners” to appease things tarc didn’t like about our segments. he also insinuated he got inappropriate emails about me specifically at this account but, again, i was never allowed to see them with my own eyes, just hear about them secondhand, which is why i believe they did not exist.

around this time, tarc began recording conversations without mine or thradias consent. he would start recording random sections of calls and taunt us, playing back out-of-context lines and joking that he would make “podcast commercials” out of them. they were often embarrassing, personal, or just wildly out of context lines that we didn’t want played to the public, and i heard only a fraction of what he possibly recorded of me. i have no idea what kind of material he has of me and thradia that was recorded without us knowing or consenting. it felt like blackmail. it still does.

i internalized all of this. i thought this was normal. i thought he was an excellent guild leader and a role model for leadership. i had begun to treat world of fucking warcraft like a goddamn job and i thought that was fine. my life revolved around coddling and entertaining him, socializing and promoting and recruiting for the guild, raiding, running pvp entirely on my own, keeping up IC connections and attending events, recording for the podcast, all of it. i ate, breathed, and slept wow and coram. it was insane. i had been talked into having no boundaries for myself and my time, and any time i tried to correct that and build a boundary i was attacked for it until i backed down. i have never felt worse about myself than i did while i was in this guild. i trusted no one. i was worn thin.

i finally had enough early 2015. at this point this man was trying to get me to come live with him hundreds of miles from my family so that i could attend a technical school in his area. i am still 18. he was 28. i had been trying to step down from my position as an officer, citing if i was going to be LIVING WITH HIM that it was going to give me an unfair bias in my standing in the guild. this set him all the way off. he was planning a trip to atlantic city for me, himself, and thradia, who i had a ticket to visit for my birthday. he was getting frantic because he had been pursuing thradia for months, and i was no longer cooperating. 

when i threw this wrench in everything, our relationship devolved in the span of a few hours. within the day i left the guild on all of my characters and pulled myself out of all of his projects. within the month i had frantically faction changed several characters and eventually unsubscribed from the game for two years because i lived in fear of him. he had always alluded to “knowing people” who could hack and track IP addresses and kept tabs on everyone who visited his blogs and websites. i didn’t know what i thought he was going to do - all i knew was his thinly veiled brags and threats were at the forefront of my mind. i have played this game since 2006, but for the first time in my life i couldn’t enjoy it out of fear and exhaustion caused by him. he had ruined my favorite game in less than a year and made me paranoid about my entire online presence, to the point where this blog was abandoned for months before i turned it into what it is today. 

and the thing is, tarc’s not a creepy or abrasive guy when you first meet him. he’s funny and charismatic and outgoing. he loves to tell you about his world travels and show you pictures of him petting baby tigers at rescues in southeast asia and go on about these crazy winnings he would have in vegas. he’s larger than life - at least online. he came to visit me twice in the year that we knew each other. the first time was also the first time i had ever met thradia in person, and we had been friends for six years at that point. he has met my family, and that of several other members (both my age and older). no one ever questions why he’s there. no one ever thought it was odd that for a week he hung out with three teenage girls exclusively. 

this horrifies me to this day. 

thradia and i are still best friends. we compared notes and were sickened at how we were played against each other. slowly, i returned to the game. i reached out to people who had left or been on their way out when i first joined the guild, curious to see if there was a common thread. there was. everyone i spoke with had similar stories: being made to feel like shit, nothing they ever did for the guild was enough, they weren’t allowed to miss events or raids no matter what the reason, they were questioned and joked about inappropriately and made to feel uncomfortable and preyed upon, etc. i was not the only one. thradia was not the only one. at least half a dozen other former members and/or officers had these stories, and tarc just kept getting away with it.

he cannot keep getting away with it.

i am being open with this for the first time in six years because i don’t want to see it happen again. because i don’t want to know that, had i said something sooner, more people could have been protected. i was 18 when this was going on. i had no real world experience. i had no standard for how i should be treated, much less by someone almost ten years my senior and who claimed to be my friend. but he knew better. he should have had boundaries and space and lines he refused to cross. he did not. he crippled my trust in people for a very long time. i have only become comfortable playing wow on horde side again in the past year or so. i finally stopped looking over my shoulder, /who’ing him and his guild, avoiding rp hubs. but now i feel like i can’t do that anymore. the safety i have worked so hard to achieve for myself is now threatened.

i understand my experiences are mild in comparison to what some offenders on this server have done. but at the end of the day, this year was the worst year of my life. to this day, the skype ringtone literally triggers me because i associated it with him and his endless calls that i never knew what to expect from or how to get out of. i can’t look at certain parts of the game without feeling fear. for months i held my breath going online or logging into wow because i was waiting for him to pop up and start accusing me of things or trying to guilt me into coming back.

tarc ran coram populo, a guild that, as far as i know, still staggers along with a few members who can’t be bothered to leave. whether or not he’s planning to return there, i don’t know. he organizes and runs (from what i can tell) the azerothian trade federation (whatever the fuck that is). i don’t know what his plans are. i don’t know what his online presence looks or will look like when he comes crawling back. but i beseech you, do not give him the time of day. do not give him a platform, no matter how nice and “woke” he makes himself out to be. he lures you in with humanist ideals and then sucks the absolute life out of you- and that’s if he doesn’t want to pressure you into a relationship on top of it.

to tarc: if somehow you’re reading this, stay away from me. keep my name out of your mouth. i do not want an apology and a string of half-assed, gaslighting excuses. i have records of past conversations. i have screenshots. i know what you fucking did to me and to my friends. i do not want you back. i do not want you here. i do not want to share space with you. i want you to go away and never come back. 

you alone made it so hard to trust myself and other people. thradia and i both have had to seek therapy due to you. and now, you have the audacity to come riding back into the scene on a white horse, being self righteous about abuse and predatory behavior online, and have the utter gall to condemn behaviors you yourself emulated without apology or second thought. i know you think you’re a good guy. that’s what makes you so fucking dangerous. you genuinely don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, and if you do, you’ve buried it and squirreled it away and have covered it up to the point where you can turn any accusation back on the claimant. 

do not attempt to contact me. do not try to threaten or appease me. go back where you were. i am finally at home again, and you will not take that from me. go. away.

[mr-entj]

PSA: For those whose internships, job searches, or careers were impacted by Covid-19

tl;dr: I’m making my career coaching, academic mentoring, and resume/CV review services openly available to my followers for a limited time via Tumblr messenger, Skype voice chat, or Zoom voice chat. If this interests you, read on. If this does not apply to you, skip this. 

I’ve received a huge influx of 50+ career-related and internship-related questions in my inbox that may or may not be related to Covid-19 and the global economic downturn. These include, but are not limited to:

Any advice for recent graduates who have had their search for a full-time job upended by covid-19 and the ensuing economic crash? I was recruiting for off-cycle roles in front office finance and I've had final round interviews be delayed indefinitely, job openings cancelled, and new job postings have slowed to essentially nothing. Beyond that, regret for past decisions to not take return offers has felt pretty paralyzing -- how do I get back into the right mindset?

Any advice for what seems to be a upcoming recession?

Hello INTJ here, currently studying psychology but figured it hasn't been the best opportunity for me yet. I was in love with med but never really approached it and kind of are into arts, bussiness and marketing approach right now but i feel kind of lost, and i read your prev ask about making impact which is something i know i would love to do so, do you mind helping me out on how to narrow it down to something or question more on where to focus for career choices on a more profound level?

Hey Mr. ENTJ. My internship was cancelled due to covid-19 and I’m panicking. How to replace the internship when it’s late in the process at this point?

Advice on how to get a job in this messy pandemic environment? For us college graduates entering what seems to be a recession, do you have any specific tips on being more successful in job hunting? Thank you again

Etc.

I won’t respond to all of these because they each have unique circumstances that require individualized attention, additional context, and an actual conversation that a Tumblr inbox can’t provide. I realize the urgency and time sensitivity given people’s academic timelines and financial situations so here’s what I can do for you: 

If your internships, job searches, or careers have been negatively impacted by Covid-19, I am offering to review your resume/CV/college essays/scholarship essays and provide personalized career/academic advice + interview preparation free of charge. 

A bit about me: Corporate strategy and global operations for a Fortune 500 Silicon Valley tech company, former Big 4 management consultant (x2), and graduate of two top-20 universities in America. I have 12+ years of experience with academic mentoring and 8+ years of experience with career coaching. My mentees have successfully been admitted into top universities like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, USC, and INSEAD or placed into top companies like Google, Facebook, Sony, Disney, McKinsey, Bain, Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, etc. I also like puppies, ice cream, and long walks on the beach.

If you’re interested, message me privately on Tumblr with specifically what you need and we can start the conversation to see if I can help. If we need to exchange documents, I’ll give you my email address. If we need to schedule a 30-minute call on Zoom or Skype (voice chat only), I’ll find time on my calendar and give you my Zoom link or my Skype username. People in Europe and Asia, we’ll figure out the time zones.

Please note this offer isn’t open to anyone under 18 and it’s not an offer for mental health/mental counseling services. It ends April 30th.

Thanks, and take care of yourselves.

[mbtiofwhys]

MBTI and quarantine

How INFJ mod and ENFP mod are dealing with self distancing

Disclaimer: quarantine for us began roughly around the end of February, and we’re writing this at the end of April, so it’s been two whole months by now.

How have we been doing up until now?

INFJ mod: the first month went well, and with “well” I mean “bad”. As an introvert, social distancing shouldn’t affect me too much, right? Well, this is true and I suppose it’s a benefit I’ve experimented in the last weeks. It somehow helps me easing emotional pain and stress and this is undoubtedly an introvert perk. At the same time I’m a J. I need a certain amount of structure and order to plan ahead and organize my nearest future. I had a couple of exams during the first month of quarantine and it was stressful to deal with them in an emergency situation with lots of unforseen problems. So, how have I been doing up until now? I must admit that an unexpected emergency like this affected my emotional well-being, but i’m trying to stay positive and learn to adapt and take advantage of quarantine!

ENFP mod: the first weeks had been absolute hell, let me tell you. I lost my routine, I lost my friends, I couldn’t even go out for a walk and every plan I’d made crumbled. Staying home felt like prison, and not having a set routine anymore affected my mental order and productivity because I was no longer able to correctly prioritize things. However, I think being N and being P helped me getting used to quarantine while at the same time being able to at least pursue my main interests and hobbies (I play games, I write, I read, and so on). I’m doing far better now, between discord calls with friends and group projects for uni, I keep in touch with people, while the increased free time allows my sparkling Ne-Fi to focus more on personal projects, like this blog.

Working/studying at home 

INFJ mod: As I stated before, I’m a student. My university reacted well to the emergency and found countermeasures to compromise between a lack of lectures and the regular exams. Now I’m attending online lessons and the situation is far less stressful than it was until a month ago. I don’t have to underestimate this lack of pressure, because in a context where every day feels the same it’s easy to slack off and to lose track of time. From a more concrete standpoint I must admit how comfortable and suitable online lessons are, since i don’t have to spend hours commuting and I can save time.

ENFP mod: I study in the advertising field, so my lessons are more like labs and peer reviews than proper lectures - also, there’s a lot of group work. Quarantine affected all this very badly to put things lightly, and although I appreciate the effort my university put in providing online classes and reviews, things aren’t absolutely the same as before, and this is lowering my motivation overall. I also used to work part time in events and malls during weekends, so obviously I lost that one, too - what a life.

Alone time vs imposed isolation 

INFJ mod: Quarantine should be like heaven for an introvert, right? Here is the fact: I can stay at home for a week or even more without social interaction, but it will always be my choice to recharge my social batteries or to enjoy alone time. This is an entirely different situation. Imposed isolation feels exactly like what it is: a necessary imposition that I didn’t choose. So, even if I need alone time as an introvert, I really miss my friends and the simple things we can do like laughing together, talking about our lives and passions, seeing them smile or telling a joke, sharing emotions. Because as an INFJ my auxiliary Fe just NEEDS to share emotions, thoughts, experiences, fears and dreams with trusted friends. As a Fe user, I’m still managing to find healthy ways to express my feelings, and although quarantine is an unusual situation and there are more constraints, I can still stay in touch with my friend and try to use Fe in a positive way.

ENFP mod: People call us ENFPs ‘the most introverted of the extroverts’ and I can see why but truth is, the E is there and you can’t change that. Not attending classes is hard, and I miss even the smallest things of being outside - like listening to music while commuting or walking in the street and generally… feel the outer world? And even if I, too, need alone time sometimes, it’s different when it’s forced. But I got used to it in the end, so it’s not that bad anymore. Lots of reading, writing and playing games - thank God P5R came out at the end of March. I’m managing by sharing opinions and experiences with my friends - we can’t discuss how Makoto Niijima is the absolute best waifu of the P5 female cast in person, but we can do that via chat with fanworks.

Social distancing: real interaction vs digital interaction

INFJ mod: there is a huge difference between real and digital interaction. If we talk about how internet allows us to communicate and work or study at home, digital interactions surely are helpful and I’m really thankful to live in an era where I can stay in contact with my friends and even see them. At the same time, as a Fe user I find real interaction irreplaceable and from a more irrational and emotional standpoint I can’t compare the two. That being said, I really value digital interaction as substitute of real ones. It’ll always be welcomed, be it to study or to stay in touch with friends. I also must admit how digital interactions are an interesting compromise between alone and social time, a win-win for an introverted Fe user like me.

ENFP mod: I tend to be very touchy when it comes to the people I love so yeah, digital interaction isn’t the same thing. At the same time, none of my closest friends live in my city, and we often need to organize things a month prior to fit everyone schedule, so I’m at least used to not seeing them everyday. I also truly miss my classmates, with whom I used to go out after lessons and have fun. This isn’t obviously possible with Skype calls - and don’t get me started on how project works are harder to deliver like this.

Routine

INFJ mod: Maybe you’ll find it odd to read this from a J, but routines can really stress me out and I need small variation to my daily activities to relieve the fatigue. During this self imposed isolation I’m finding harder than usual to escape from routines.Yes, as a J I need structure and order to an extent. Yes, as a J I need time to adapt to new unexpected situations. What you may not know is that I also need ways to break free from strict and repetitive tasks. In my case, routines need to be a compromise between being mentally reassured by the presence of a certain amount of order and predictability and my aversion for repetitive tasks. Order and structure are subordinated to my desire for freedom. Freedom to create in an environment where I have time and space to envision what I want and how to do it, with my pace.

ENFP mod: I really struggled and I’m still struggling with routine. I don’t like routine per se, but it’s an external factor that gives structure to my life and helps me make the most of my free time while not losing track of my duties. Uni classes played the bigger role in this, and now that they’re online, the temptation of slacking off is really difficult to ignore. I keep my calendar updated and I make sure to be present and focused when needed, but I discovered I’m not well fit for smart working. To me, home is the place where I relax, rest and maybe study, but it certainly isn’t the place where I work. This conflict is what is giving me a hard time focusing on school projects, because if I’m home, the default mode is having fun. Also, I don’t have a sleep schedule anymore. I try my best every night, every night I get rejected.

Dealing with the inferior function

INFJ mod: I’m still working on my inferior Se and quarantine isn’t helping. As the inferior function, it usually takes me a while to even realize how much I’m falling into a Se grip or simply how much I’m not aware of Se. Self isolation amplifies those aspects and makes even harder to become conscious of unhealthy Se manifestations. Quarantine hasn’t stopped me to find a positive outlook in this situation and to learn from mistakes. At first I began to take a more concrete approach in daily life with simple actions. I live in a small town and I have green areas near my house, so I’m lucky enough to be able to spend some time in the nature and to experience it through the five senses. I’m also trying to become more aware of Se by being more present. This week I’m taking action and breaking vicious cycles of overthinking and self-doubt. Self isolation doesn’t allow me to experience life fully, so I’m taking advantage of the situation and I’m focusing those energies in concrete and meaningful actions, like writing on this blog or working on personal project involving creative writing. 

ENFP mod: inferior Si isn’t giving me a particularly hard time, surprisingly. I’ve experienced Si grip and I know what that means to me, but luckily that isn’t an issue now. I sometimes do things that require a more focused and detail-oriented approach: styling wigs for cosplay, trying on new make-ups, baking or cooking, observing what happens out of the window to write it down. They’re not “Si activities” by definition, but they are all things that require concentration, calm, methodical approach and that cannot be rushed - on contrary, sometimes I need to start from scratches and observe my mistakes in order to improve. These are all small things that help my Si stay present and not freaking out overthinking the past, brooding in regrets or yelling at me because I’m not living a structured life at the moment.

The risk of loops and grips

INFJ mod: this is partly tied to what I wrote in the section above: this unexpected emergency and the resulting self isolation produced stress and negative emotions. As an INFJ, my first reaction is to jump in the future and visualize possible scenarios. In this difficult times, I need to take a step back from my negative “what ifs” and to stay positive by building a better future for myself and others day by day, through simple and concrete action. Otherwise I only risk to slip into Se grips or Ni-Ti loops. As I stated before I’m already working on Se: it’s not easy, but I’m at least trying. Another piece of the puzzle is my auxiliary Fe:proper auxiliary function development is essential to avoid loops. As an INFJ, self isolation prevents me from reaching out to my friends as much as I desire, at the same time we can stay in touch through digital interactions and they are surely helping me relieving stress and preventing loops. 

ENFP mod: while the Si part is ok, I still seem to have problems with NeTe loop. I had some rough ten days in mid-March because I was so focused on the million projects I had to finish and how that was stressing me out that I practically lived for nothing else. I managed to stop that before it got worse by speaking with my colleagues and asking to slow down the pace, so that I could have some free time to spend without feeling guilty or unproductive. But I still need to be cautious about the loop.

Trying to use all the four functions (and other healthy coping mechanisms)

INFJ mod: ok, it’s time to sum up what I wrote in the last three sections. From an mbti perspective, I’m trying to find a balance between self reflection (Ni) and concrete actions (Se). Staying in the present, taking full responsibility for my actions,  approaching life through simple and steady actions are all steps I follow every day to shift my locus of control to a more internal position. There are obviously setbacks and some days are far worse than others, but I’m trying to stay positive and find hope. Fe helps me to reach other people which is invaluable but sadly, as an introvert, doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s an healthy way to alleviate or completely avoid loops and to keep my heart warm. Ti, when not involved in a loop, allows me to give structure to what I find meaningful and to organize my thoughts. Ti is basically the backbone of what I envision through Ni. 

ENFP mod: although the first times were rough, I feel I managed to find a balance along the way - with some setback from time to time. My Ne is constantly active in brainstormings for uni and discussing fictional works with friends. I must check on what my Fi needs because I tend to endure stress way more than I should do, so every now and then I must ask myself if I’m fine, if I need to stop or if I truly, absolutely like what I’m working on and, if the answer is no, if it’s possible to discuss it with my project group. Te is very active (even too much, sometimes) and it’s the core of me managing school, blog and personal projects, often writing things down on a schedule in order to keep my mind clear and ordered. I may help my Si more by really trying to re-establish a routine, but honestly the P approach helped me very much in this months of uncertainty, so I think I’ll keep going on like this as long as I’m fine.

Thank you for reading this far! - the mods

[neocab]

Translating the Cyberpunk Future

I'm a video game translator, and I love my job. It's odd work, sometimes stressful, sometimes bewildering, but it always provides interesting and inspiring challenges. Every project brings new words, slang, and cultural trends to discover, but translating also forces me to reflect on language itself. Each job also comes with its own unique set of problems to solve. Some have an exact solution that can be found in grammar or dictionaries, but others require a more... creative approach.

Sometimes, the language we’re translating from uses forms and expressions that simply have no equivalent in the language we’re translating to. To bridge such gaps, a translator must sometimes invent (or circumvent), but most importantly they must understand. Language is ever in flux. It’s an eternal cultural battleground that evolves with the lightning speed of society itself. A single word can hurt a minority, give shape to a new concept, or even win an election. It is humanity’s most powerful weapon, especially in the Internet Age, and I always feel the full weight of responsibility to use it in an informed manner.

One of my go-to ways for explaining the deep complexity of translation is the relationship between gender (masculine and feminine) and grammar. For example, in English this is a simple sentence:

"You are fantastic!"

Pretty basic, right? Easy to translate, no? NOT AT ALL!

Once you render it into a gendered language like Italian, all its facets, its potential meanings, break down like shards.

Sei fantastico! (Singular and masculine)

Sei fantastica! (Singular and feminine)

Siete fantastici! (Plural and masculine)

Siete fantastiche! (Plural and feminine)

If we were translating a movie, selecting the correct translation wouldn't be a big deal. Just like in real life, one look at the speakers would clear out the ambiguity in the English text. Video game translation, however, is a different beast where visual cues or even context is a luxury, especially if a game is still in development. Not only that, but the very nature of many games makes it simply impossible to define clearly who is being addressed in a specific line, even when development has ended. Take an open world title, for example, where characters have whole sets of lines that may be addressed indifferently to single males or females or groups (mixed or not) within a context we don't know and can't control.

In the course of my career as a translator, time and time again this has led into one of the most heated linguistic debates of the past few years: the usage of the they/them pronoun. When I was in grade school, I was taught that they/them acted as the third person plural pronoun, the equivalent of the Italian pronoun "essi." Recently, though, it has established itself as the third person singular neutral, both in written and spoken English. Basically, when we don't know whether we're talking about a he/him or a she/her, we use they/them. In this way, despite the criticism of purists, the English language has brilliantly solved all cases of uncertainty and ambiguity. For instance:

“Somebody forgot their backpack at the party.”

Thanks to the use of the pronoun "their," this sentence does not attribute a specific gender to the person who has forgotten the backpack at the party. It covers all the bases. Smooth, right? Within the LGBT circles, those who don’t recognize themselves in gender binarism have also adopted the use of they/them. Practically speaking, the neutral they/them pronoun is a powerful tool, serving both linguistic accuracy and language inclusiveness. There's just one minor issue: We have no "neutral pronouns" in Italian.

It's quite the opposite, if anything! In our language, gender informs practically everything, from adjectives to verbs. On top of that, masculine is the default gender in case of ambiguity or uncertainty. For instance:

Two male kids > Due bambini

Two female kids > Due bambine

One male kid and one female kid > Due bambini

In the field of translation, this is a major problem that often requires us to find elaborate turns of phrase or different word choices to avoid gender connotations when English maintains ambiguity. As a professional, it’s not only a matter of accuracy but also an aesthetic issue. In a video game, when a character refers to someone using the wrong gender connotation, the illusion of realism is broken. My colleagues and I have been navigating these pitfalls for years as best we can. Have you ever wondered why one of the most common Italian insults in video games is "pezzo di merda"? That's right. "Stronzo" and "bastardo" give a gender connotation, while "pezzo di merda" does not.

A few months ago, together with the Gloc team, I had the pleasure of working on the translation of Neo Cab, a video game set in a not too distant future with a cyberpunk and dystopian backdrop (and, sadly, a very plausible one). The main character is Lina, a cabbie of the "gig economy," who drives for a hypothetical future Uber in a big city during a time of deep social unrest. The story is told mainly through her conversation with the many clients she picks up in her taxi. When the game’s developers gave us the reference materials for our localization, they specified that one of the client characters was "non-binary" and that Lina respectfully uses the neutral "they/them" pronoun when she converses with them.

"Use neutral pronouns or whatever their equivalent is in your language," we were told.

I remember my Skype chat with the rest of the team. What a naive request on the client's part! Neutral pronouns? It would be lovely, but we don't have those in Italian! So what do we do now? The go-to solution in these cases is to use masculine pronouns, but such a workaround would sacrifice part of Lina’s character and the nuance of one of the interactions the game relies on to tell the story. Sad, no? It was the only reasonable choice grammatically-speaking, but also a lazy and ill-inspired one. So what were we to do? Perhaps there was another option...

Faced with losing such an important aspect of Lina’s personality, we decided to forge ahead with a new approach. We had the opportunity to do something different, and we felt like we had to do the character justice. In a game that's completely based on dialogue, such details are crucial. What's more, the game's cyberpunk setting gave us the perfect excuse to experiment and innovate. Language evolves, so why not try to imagine a future where Italian has expanded to include a neutral pronoun in everyday conversations? It might sound a bit weird, sure, but cyberpunk literature has always employed such gimmicks. And rather than take away from a character, we could actually enrich the narrative universe with an act of "world building" instead.

After contacting the developers, who enthusiastically approved of our proposal, we started working on creating a neutral pronoun for our language. But how to go about that was a question in itself. We began by studying essays on the subject, like Alma Sabatini's Raccomandazioni per un uso non sessista della lingua italiana (Recommendations for a non-sexist usage of the Italian language). We also analyzed the solutions currently adopted by some activists, like the use of asterisks, "x," and "u."

Siamo tutt* bellissim*.

Siamo tuttx bellissimx.

Siamo tuttu bellissimu.

I’d seen examples of this on signs before, but it had always seemed to me that asterisks and such were not meant to be a solution, but rather a way to highlight the issue and start a discourse on something that's deeply ingrained in our language. For our cyberpunk future, we wanted a solution that was more readable and pronounceable, so we thought we might use schwa (ə), the mid central vowel sound. What does it sound like? Quite familiar to an English speaker, it's the most common vowel sound. Standard Italian doesn’t have it, but having been separated into smaller countries for most of its history, Italy has an extraordinary variety of regional languages (“dialetti”) and many of them use this sound. We find it in the final "a" of "mammeta" in Neapolitan, for instance (and also in the dialects of Piedmont and Ciociaria, and in several other Romance languages). To pronounce it, with an approximation often seen in other romance languages, an Italian only needs to pretend not to pronounce a word's last vowel.

Schwa was also a perfect choice as a signifier in every possible way. Its central location in phonetics makes it as neutral as possible, and the rolled-over "e" sign "ə" is reminiscent of both a lowercase "a" (the most common feminine ending vowel in Italian) and of an unfinished "o" (the masculine equivalent). The result is:

Siamo tuttə bellissimə.

Not a perfect solution, perhaps, but eminently plausible in a futuristic cyberpunk setting. The player/reader need only look at the context and interactions to figure it out. The fact that we have no "ə" on our keyboards is easily solved with a smartphone system upgrade, and though the pronunciation may be difficult, gender-neutrals wouldn't come up often in spoken language. Indeed, neutral alternatives are most needed in writing, especially in public communication, announcements, and statements. To be extra sure our idea worked as intended and didn't overlook any critical issues, we submitted it to a few LGBT friends, and with their blessing, then sent our translation to the developers.

Fast forward to now, and the game is out. It has some schwas in it, and nobody complained about our proposal for a more inclusive future language. It took us a week to go through half a day's worth of work, but we're happy with the result. Localization is not just translation, it's a creative endeavour, and sometimes it can afford to be somewhat subversive. To sum up the whole affair, I'll let the words of Alma Sabatini wrap things up:

"Language does not simply reflect the society that speaks it, it conditions and limits its thoughts, its imagination, and its social and cultural advancement." — Alma Sabatini

Amen.

[aplaceforthesoul]

Anonymous submitted:

Advice

Hi. I really need some advice. I’m in my first year of uni and obviously it’s all online now. Each week in our zoom classes we get put into random ‘breakout rooms’ and meet a bunch of people. Obviously there isn’t much time to socially interact because we have assigned work to do. However, there have been a number of instances where I’ve met people who seem somewhat nice and people I’d potentially want to be friends with. Despite that, I don’t really know how to really initiate a friendship with them in a non weird, non awkward way. The first point of contact would be email but I have no clue what to say (well I did draft something out but I’m afraid they’ll be so weirded out thinking like we only talked for a few minutes and now she’s emailing me wanting to talk more and be friends, what a complete weirdo, how desperate can someone be etc). Also once we email and then text or whatever, it’s really hard to develop let alone maintain a friendship that is solely online. What would we talk about? How often is considered normal to text?

To give you some context (since it may come across like I am a socially inept idiot), I have never actually had true friends in my life. I’ve gone above and beyond for people and tried so hard to be the best friend anyone could want and never got anything in return, putting in all the effort and being there and no one giving a fuck about me in the end. Everyone takes friendships for granted and I would kill to experience one true friendship. Also in this quarantine where people are constantly moaning about how it’s so awful to be away from their friends does my head in, I would give anything to have people like that in my life. Anyway I try to distract myself but sometimes when I sit idly or just lie awake with my thoughts at night, I realise how truly alone I am and feel so fucking empty inside. It’s just me and my parents. I don’t have any siblings and the family I actually care about are all across the world. So I suppose this is question is in parts.

I do want to know how exactly to start a friendship with people I’ve met through random allocation into groups online in a completely natural, confident manner, like a step by step manual because sometimes I’m not even sure I remember how to make friends anymore because it’s been so long. Like what exactly to write in an email and how to keep communication going via text, how to actually start a friendship that is strictly online and how to then suggest to meet up once this is over all like a normal person. I have a tendency to be clingy at the start which people never understand is because I’ve never had a friend so at the start it’s something so exciting and dear to me and I feel so out of the loop, I don’t know how often to text someone to have a healthy friendship but that doesn’t appear needy and annoying.

Also, there is one more thing. I’ve gone to all girls schools my whole life and as a result have been completely isolated from guys. In all honesty, even if I have had like zero contact with a person in the male species, I can already tell as time goes on and I finally make friends, I will end up with more guy friends. But the thing is, I have absolutely no clue how to talk to guys (in a completely platonic way mind you), and as I’ve said, I am not particularly well versed in the social nuances being void of friendships so I don’t know whether emailing a guy a similar message about wanting to talk more and then meet up once this whole pandemic is over would suggest things I obviously don’t mean. Like I don’t want any guy to get the wrong impression that me contacting them is anything other than a friendship. I feel like nowadays the slightest thing can be misconstrued and I don’t want any guy to get weirded out because they misinterpret me wanting to be friends as something it’s not. But I also just generally feel so alone and I don’t deserve to. I always tried so hard to be a good friend to others and I got nothing in return from toxic people who never actually cared about me. Apologies for the rambling. Thank you if you made it to the end lol.

hi there :) about your online classes, zoom and wanting to become friends with some of the people in the classes? social media is where it’s at 😌

I find emails quite a formal way of introducing yourself to someone? 0: and unless it’s work / school related, not many people I know of use email much anyway! social media is a lot more relaxed and informal, it’s what everyone uses in some form or another so it makes it much easier to get replies from people and to start building a friendship. if you don’t have social media, would you consider making an account? instagram and facebook are two of the big ones when it comes to both public posts and private conversations, it’s easier to create new friendships if you’re both using the same platform. 

I agree that it’s hard to maintain friendships that are solely online, but it doesn’t have to be that way. even if all of your university classes are now online due to coronavirus, that doesn’t mean that everything has to be there. when lockdown measures start to lift, you could maybe suggest to meet up and grab a coffee? or create a study group? there’s lots of ways of to keep friendships going in real life without always needing online support. you could talk about anything haha, the weather, what they got up to on the weekend?! ask lots of questions and get to know them better, don’t be afraid to share parts of your personal life too :) talking a few times a week would be best when starting off a new friendship -- too much contact and they might feel a little overwhelmed, not enough and suddenly there’s a bit too much distance and things feel weird. 

it’s a bit hard for me to give a step-by-step manual, because most friendships occur organically and naturally? also, everyone’s different! there’s no one set rule or manual that you can follow and things will work every time, sometimes it’s a trial and error process. what I do know however, is that the more you practice something then the better you are at it and the more natural it feels. a few general tips: smile if you’re chatting to them on zoom / skype / video call, use emojis if appropriate, maybe throw in a nice compliment about something they’re wearing or how they’ve styled their hair? being nice to someone and making them feel good and confident about something never hurts :* this post here could be helpful to check out as well, give it a read and see what you think.

if you don’t want future guy friends to get the wrong impression about meeting up? just be honest and clear about what you want :) communicate the fact that you wanna be a friend, maybe drop hints of a “partner” to make it clear that you’re not interested in anything sexual etc. communication is key!! in any relationship, be it romantic or platonic or otherwise. treat guys as you would anyone else haha, they’re human just like you and me. say hi, smile and have open body language, ask questions, get to know them on a more personal level, share aspects of your life too, take it one day at a time. I hope this helps you lovely, all the best <3

- tash

[themiddlelayer]

First 1st Date

I wasn’t feeling things with Faust’s co-worker in general and between chatting with Viking and my anxiety I almost felt bad for him. He showed up right at 7pm and came in while I was pulling my jacket and scarf on. It’s a small place, but it felt like he was snooping... putting himself more into my space than I might have wanted. It could have been his size, too. He is a big guy, well over 6′ tall and so big that he was uncomfortable at the table because of the odd seats. Not fat, per se, but just big... which I generally like.

His car smelled like a cigar... a sweet cigar, but cigar nonetheless. We talked about cars on the way to the restaurant because apparently every car like mine has a story. The tables were weird.. fixed single seats on all 4 sides with awkward cross beams that hit the knees of taller people, and he was a little squished at the belly. It was so cold that I wished I’d ordered the miso soup when it was offered. 

Sushi is a communal kind of food meant to be shared, so ordering with a new person is can be somewhat awkward. In addition to the one roll and handful of nigiri, he ordered gyoza. It was pork so he ended up eating all of it himself while I picked at the sushi. I was remembering his response earlier in the week when I’d asked him how he felt about sushi. He said liked it but his wallet didn’t. He made another remark about money like that at another point, but I don’t remember what it was exactly. 

Conversation didn’t really flow until his 3rd beer when I brought up Letterkenny. By then I’d pulled my scarf on like a shawl and couldn’t feel my fingers so he paid the bill and we left, talking about where else we might go that would be warmer. In the end, we just drove around and when we got to the far end of town he made a remark that there was nothing out there except his house. I was grateful that he was stating a fact and not fishing. That was where he turned around.

As we got closer to my place I was talking about work and about playing “Would you rather” with Tor. So he said, “Well, would you rather I walk you to the door, or kiss you here.” Awkward pause. I said, “I had fun.” And he leaned in and went to kiss me. Open mouthed. I pulled away quickly and got out of the car. A friendly peck I would have been okay with, but the open mouth and pull of energy... I wasn’t there. The entire evening lasted 2 hours. 

Viking was out with friends but I messaged him to tell him that the date didn’t go well, that I didn’t want to distract him from his friends but wanted to give him another reason to smile. He replied a few hours later that he was very much smiling and not sorry. 

Viking is trouble. Good trouble. The kind of trouble that involves a D/s dynamic and total monogamy... he asked me if I’d ever worn a collar and I told him that my ex had talked about it but I’d never been with anyone strong enough for me to fully give control to. He said he would happily welcome the challenge. 

Viking absolutely took my breath away... just like the random ‘Master’ I skyped with the day I lost my mind. That tells me something about myself that I’m still processing... I really do crave that submission. I want to be in that role. I want to give away control and it’s such a primal, base urge that bubbled up when presented with the opportunity in the right context. 

It’s almost 6am and I’ve been up since 3am. I really wanted a decent night’s sleep, but clearly the prozac needs to move to mornings starting tomorrow. We’ll see what the rest of the weekend brings. 

[marzgurl]

Thoughts on this link of someone that claimed that you knew about Jewwario? Link: lunaneko14 tumblr post 183647797154 wait-marzgurl-herself-has-contributed-to-jewwario. If link doesn’t work, look at their blog and search your own name.

This person is horrifically ill-informed and is wildly speculating.

It does seem to be true that one victim told a producer what was happening. That producer told our superiors about it. Then they fired Justin. They did NOT communicate what happened to the rest of us after that.I can tell you the exact date that I found out about Justin. March 21st, 2018. I remember that date because it was the same day I was down at the Hollywood red carpet premiere of Pacific Rim 2. Cell phone reception on Hollywood Boulevard is garbage, and I was getting spotty Twitter alerts from our enormous Channel Awesome group DM chat, in which one of Justin’s victims was brought in to tell everyone what had happened. Our document was being written, and had not yet been posted. The victim told us her story, and everyone was giving their responses of, “Oh, my God,” “I had no idea,” “It can’t be true,” etc. I specifically was struggling through my spotty Internet connection and accidentally spammed the chat multiple times saying something to the effect of, “I am so sorry. Had I known any of this, I would have never made our movie.” She told us, “I was so mad at all of you. I thought you all knew. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”Our communication with each other was shit. If you read the Change The Channel document at all, then you would know that that was one of our biggest complaints. I know you all seem to think that all eighty-bajillion of us former contributors all talked to each other about everything all of the time, but that simply wasn’t true. And our superiors absolutely NEVER gave us any good communication at all whatsoever. Like, that was a HUGE crux of the document. They didn’t tell us shit. And that producer who told Mike, Rob, and Doug about Justin, they didn’t tell the rest of us, either. There might have been a spotty producer here or there who caught wind, but 90% of us, myself included, were totally uninformed. Go ahead, go back, and read the doc. You can see the parts where I said that I hated that we were expected to be on Skype, and I was quite possibly one of the most distant producers. Any other Channel Awesome producer will back that up. I’m never on Skype, and have been difficult to reach. It was part of my own shortcomings, and also contributed to me so frequently being out of the loop.That victim, by the way, she messaged me again this past month, as she saw that Justin was being brought up again through all this Vic bullshit as a means of attempting to discredit me. She messaged me and said, “I’m so sorry this is happening. This is all my fault.” I had to message her back and say, “No, you spoke your truth. You did the right thing. You didn’t do any of this.”Furthermore, the screenshot in that post unfortunately cuts a whole lot of information out. I made that tweet before the document was released on April 2nd, and also before the victim was brought into our chat on March 21st. I had been informed that Justin’s parting with Channel Awesome was a mutual decision. But Justin had been lying to everybody. His own wife didn’t know he had been fired from Channel Awesome or that he was even no longer with them at all until after he died. I was informed the parting was mutual. Some other friends of ours were told that he was displeased with how Channel Awesome was treating him and that he left of his own accord. It was all bullshit. Justin was lying to us, and the Walkers and Michaud didn’t tell anybody anything, not once.You also don’t get the full context of my response to that tweet. You don’t get me responding to the guy saying, “Yeah, turns out I was wrong.” And then him demanding that I apologize. And then me agreeing, “You’re right, I was misinformed, and I am sorry.”Links for proof.https://twitter.com/MarzGurl/status/984390105681969153

https://twitter.com/MarzGurl/status/984390763071995907As a final thought, the person writing this blog has come up with some wild conjecture in other places, like suddenly out of nowhere claiming I used to date Justin, and I’ve never heard this one before, but it’s completely out of left field and totally insane.http://lunaneko14.tumblr.com/post/183647797154/wait-marzgurl-herself-has-contributed-to-jewwarioPlease don’t listen to conspiracy theorists. If you hear these things from people who were there, that’s one thing. But I don’t know this person, have never met this person, have never spoken to this person, and at best they maybe spoke to one of Justin’s victims, and I understand that the victims legitimately thought that everybody knew after they told somebody in Channel Awesome about Justin. Unfortunately, it did NOT get back to all of us at all.This person is an outsider and is sadly, grotesquely misinformed.

[lynseymoon]

my videoranch experience

ok, hi. hello. so, now that holiday “excitement” has died down, and tumblr’s new bs nipplegate has caused a mass exodus of users, i feel like it’s an appropriate time for me to talk about this.

for those of you who aren’t aware; hi, it’s me, lynsey moon. in case you don’t feel like reading a big long mess, i will preface this by saying that this is going to be about my videoranch experience. if that’s something you don’t really care about, feel free to skip on by. ok, on we go--

so, as a lot of you have probably heard, i was fired very unceremoniously from videoranch this past september, after working there for 10 years. up until now, i haven’t really felt like i had a safe platform to vent this information on. i think i was still holding onto a little thread of hope that maybe things would go back to the way they were. unfortunately, that hope has passed, but on the bright side, i’m feeling a whole lot better about the situation. i am going to do my best to tell my complete story, while remaining as impartial as possible. there are other stories that connect to mine, but i don’t feel it is my place to speak for those people, so i am not really going to discuss anything other than my own experience. anyway, let’s get into the details--

context/backstory:

before my firing, i had worked for videoranch as their social media manager for maybe about 7 years, and had been a dj in vr3d for about 10. without getting into the long ass story of how, i was hand selected by nez. we became pretty friendly, and would exchange emails and chat on skype fairly often. even when there were long stretches where we didn’t talk, he would still occasionally shoot me a one-liner or two. after i had been djing regularly for a few years, his wife vic announced she was leaving. she was the one who pretty much kept vr running (the woman behind the curtain, so to speak), and she asked if i would take over running the vr fb page, which was virtually unused at the time. i agreed, and started making regular posts about the music, and events in vr3d. some years later, i set up the tumblr, twitter, and (more recently,) the instagram accounts for vr. i enjoyed the work i did. i really liked interacting with the fans, and getting them excited about nez news/vr happenings. over the years, i single-handedly grew their online audience to be in the thousands. so all those social media pages for vr you see, with the exception of the youtube page? yeah; those were all me.

new employee #1: 

maybe 2-3 years ago, nez’s assistant tells me that they’re temporarily hiring this well-known person in the monkees community, to help promote a t-shirt sale. we were told that this person would just be on board for the sale, and then they’d be departing. nez’s assistant asks me to give them social media privileges. keep in mind, i have been the ONLY person posting on our pages up to this point. so, of course, i give this person privileges, so they can post about the sale. the sale ends, and nez’s assistant tells me that this person is going to stay on as sort of a “sales” person, to help them move some merchandise. this person keeps their page privileges, and is told to only post things related to sales, which they do, but they also post all kinds of other trivia and photos, which is essentially what i am also doing. already, things are starting to feel a bit crowded, but i go along with things and try to be amiable, because i like my job and i don’t want there to be any animosity.

new employee #2:

about a year ago, we are told that nez’s assistant (of many, MANY years) is leaving, and that a new person is taking their place. this person had previously been in charge of the (now defunct) “vr forums”, where fans were free to discuss nez’s work. i am not going to get into this person’s reputation among the fans, because that is a whole other situation that would take way too long to get into. suffice it to say, this person is well-known.

this person immediately takes the reins from nez’s previous assistant, and sends us information on what kind of posts they’d like to see on social media. they set up an official vr youtube page. they instruct me to post one photo and one video per day. i suggest that posting that often might lead to oversaturation, and therefore not get us as much visibility through the fb algorithm. i also point out that there are only so many videos/photos available online, and i will probably run out and have to start reposting things before too long. they insist. i comply. one video and one photo per day. i start scheduling posts per their request, to meet these quotas. they also instruct me to use the tumblr page more. i try to explain that tumblr is largely a younger audience, and the posts there don’t get much traction. they insist. i comply. they also ask that i give them fb privileges, so that they can begin posting things, in addition to my posts, and the posts by new employee #1. they ask that i stop asking questions in my posts. i try to say that questions engage the fans. they disagree. i stop asking questions. our pages start to become oversaturated with multiple posts by multiple people, and i try not to make much of a fuss, because again; i like my job, and i do not want to make waves.

at this point, with the amount of posts going out on a daily basis, i quietly reduce my posts to 3-4 times a week. i try to alternate between photos and videos, to keep things from going stale. i am hoping that the new assistant does not notice, because it seems to be helping our posts get more engagements. they notice, and instruct me to again; post one photo and video a day. i try to continue with these posts as requested, and soon begin running out of photos. i ask for help in finding more, as i know this person is a known nez expert, and must have plenty. they tell me that this is my job, and i should be the one researching these things. bear in mind, before this person came along, my job was to post about the events in vr3d, and occasionally throw up a nez photo or fun fact. not to be a historian. i didn’t bother trying to explain this to the new assistant because again; i. liked. my. job. i tried to do my best to comply, just to keep things running as smoothly as possible.

the firing: 

early september 9th, i was sitting around, thinking of a post to make. as i pick up my phone, i see an email saying i’ve been removed as an admin on the fb page. immediately, i start freaking out, and fearing for the worst. if you remember, at this point, nez was on tour with the fnb, and currently in texas. frantically, i text nez’s other assistant (who mostly just deals with nez himself, and does not work with the social media side of things). i tell her what happened, and she is confused. she assumes (like me), that it had to be a mistake, and says she will check with nez and the other people in texas to see what they know. in the meantime, i message new employee #1, to see if they know anything. as i suspected, they do not, and are just as confused as i am. i start trying to convince myself that maybe it WAS just a simple mistake, but deep down i feel that it isn’t.

nez’s other assistant (i’ll just say noa) gets back to me, and says that everyone is in the dark about this. they ask me if i’ve emailed new employee #2 about it, and i confess i haven’t. i have been avoiding it, hoping i could get things corrected before having to talk to the one person i feel is responsible for this. in between all of this, i am attempting to log into all the other social media accounts, only to find that they have all had their passwords changed. instagram locks me out, because there has been an attempt to log in from texas. i am panicking, but try to appear calm as i compose an email to the assistant. i state simply that it looks like the passwords have all been changed, and inquire if maybe we’d been hacked.

a dreadfully long hour later, i receive my reply. i have it saved, but i still hate having to re-read it. the first line was the only thing close to an explanation i received:

"The operations of our company require us to remove your position as a social media content creator. You are welcome to continue DJing in VR3D, but we can no longer pay you for these sessions."

that is a direct quote, by the way. the email went on to say that the comped tickets i had already secured through noa were now null and void, and if i wanted to attend the show, i would have to pay my own way. reader, i was absolutely gutted. i was devastated. i sobbed-- SOBBED-- for an hour. i was full of confusion, loss, and hurt feelings. the lack of explanation was what killed it for me the most. that, and the fact that i was being fired by someone who had been there for a tenth of the time that i had. i was being indirectly let go by someone who i once considered my friend. i started to wonder if he even knew what had transpired, or how. also within the email was a complaint about a post i had made, about the anniversary of the newspaper ad for the monkees. i was told it was “inappropriate” to be posting monkees-related things while nez was on a fnb tour. mind you, i don’t think it was that act that got me fired, but i wasn’t even made aware that this was a problem until after the fact. it was like i was supposed to already know this, and i obviously did not.

aftermath: 

i was an absolute wreck about this for about a month. i kept going over the events in my mind, trying to make sense of it all. the offer to continue djing felt like a cold slap in my face; as though i would take joy in continuing to share music in a place that i was no longer welcome in. it felt like being broken up with. after it was confirmed, noa sent me a text that just said “i’m so sorry”. even nez’s former assistant, who had always been very kind to me, called and left me a very sweet voicemail wishing me well, and expressing her disappointment in what happened. other friends of mine in the band also expressed their shock and sadness to me. even new employee #1 claimed to be surprised, though i am now second-guessing that, as that person remains to be on the staff, while i am not. it seemed like everybody wanted me to stay, except for this new assistant. it also seemed like nobody even knew why i was fired. maybe even the assistant didn’t know, and they just wanted me gone, and had the means to make it happen. the whole thing was one big drawn out gut punch.

i agonized for a long time about whether or not i wanted to go to the show. eventually, i found a friend of a friend with two tickets, and i took that as kismet, and decided to attend. i told myself it would be my last one. before the show, i got to meet up with circe and christian, and without going into too many details (for their sake), i felt a little better after talking to them. i also saw noa there, who gave me a very sweet card and wished me well. it felt somewhat cathartic to feel that i was appreciated by (almost) everyone. the show, of course, was impeccable, though it wasn’t as enjoyable as the other nez shows i’ve attended, but i expected that to be the case. afterwards, i hung around for a bit and chatted with friends. i saw noa leading nez over to the meet and greet, and i believe she guided him past us on purpose. he gave me a sad little wave and said “hello” before being rushed off. i convinced myself that i was never going to get any real closure for the whole situation, so i called that my closure, and left.

in conclusion:

based on the way things seem to be running now, and how they were when i left, i feel a little less sad about having to leave. again, i am going to try to remain as impartial as possible here, but it almost seemed like that chapter of my life was meant to close when it did. when it first happened, in addition to the pain i felt, i also felt incredibly anxious about the extra money i was going to lose from this. i had literally JUST moved into a new, more costly apartment just a week prior, and was distraught about how i was going to afford it. luckily, things have been working out, and i’ve been getting by just fine. initially, i had hoped that everything was just a big mistake, and that nez (or someone) was going to contact me and tell me to come back, but the more time passes, the more unconvinced of that i become. at this point, it’s in my best interest to just try to move on, and take pride in all the things i accomplished while i was at videoranch. it was a huge part of my life for so long, and now then suddenly it wasn’t, so of course it was a pretty big adjustment to make. slowly but surely, i am making peace with everything.

lastly, i have seen some rumors floating around that i want to dispel:

my firing was not a “financial decision”-- some people have been spreading this around, and it is simply not true. i got confirmation on this from c&c, noa, and others. nez has enough money to hire a private jet to shuttle him from show to show. he is not hurting for money.

this probably goes without saying after everything i’ve written, but i was fired. i did not leave voluntarily, nor did i have plans to. this decision was made entirely without me.

i was getting paid for the work i was doing, and was a contract worker for vr. i was not a volunteer.

i always tried to follow instructions and requests from my superiors to the best of my ability. even though i would sometimes question the reasoning behind things, i would always try my best to be polite and maintain a productive work environment. i never once refused to do anything that was asked of me.

so there you have it; now you finally know what really happened to lynsey moon. if you have any questions about this, feel free to drop me an ask, and i will try my best to answer. thanks for listening, especially if you made it this far. i appreciate all the support i’ve received.  ❤

[starscreamxmegs]

About me-

Or "Why I won't date another person of the Ace spectrum again, sorry..."

Let me preface this by saying this is NOT ACEPHOBIC. I am NOT -phobic. They are valid and belong in the LGBT+ and I love them and defend them as I would every other identity/sexuality/humanity. Good? Good. Okay, here we go.

LONG post, apologies! I just really needed to get this off my chest. ; 3 ;

Context: So I'm still in the closet bc of my non accepting family, but I'll be moving out soon so I can be who I am. Come from Jehovah's Witness family, raised to be JW, but I dont want to be, am in the closet and dragging my heels about the JW religion. PIMO, let's make this simple. Will be moving out and be free to be out and me soon.

I'm [20 y/o F], bi/maybe lesb. (not sure yet), and dated [22y/o F] bi/ace/demi/queer. Let's just call her "Selene".

Anyways, me and Selene have been friends for years. We met in an online chatroom for fandom stuffs and got excited over fan shows/characters we liked, boom, friendship! I was like, 12ish, and she was in hs. Anyways, we would rp and write stories together, we were really good at it and writing/talking to each other made me really happy.

Skyped and video chatted too! I was so happy to put a face to my best friend now!

I had fallen in love with her mind and her intelligence first, then I thought she was the coolest/cutest thing I'd ever met. My parents always thought it was weird that we talked/spent so much time together, and sometimes called into question our relationship bc they hate the GAYS*tm and I lied through the skin of my teeth that no, we're just friends looool. When really,

I told her that I liked her and I've liked her for a good while then when I was a sophomore. And she shared the same feeling too, and so we secretly dated that whole year. And I was so happy. I genuinely loved her and could see myself spending the rest of my life with her.

My parents were really close to discovering us again so I broke it off with Selene that same year. She was sad and understanding, but we went back to being friends easily. And so go back to writing together, tell each other how we are, etc., y'know, the regular stuff of being internet friends.

Then to recent years: Writing more, be friends, etc. I graduated 2017, get job, go to community college, turn 18.

I turn 19, things change. I'm sitting on a decent pile of money for my age, and I tell her that I think it's time we meet. She agrees and we get it all planned out.

See, Selene lives out of state, and pretty waaaaay out of state. I'm talking about how she and her locals refer to the rest of the U.S. as 'lower 48', and my locals and I say 'hella'. Get the general distance/location now? Good. And I've been pretty sheltered all my life, plus don't drive yet. (Still working on it).

And top it off, we've been talking again about our recent relationships going on, she'd been seeing some guy who'd been treating her like shit, she'd vent to me about it, I'd listen and offer her advice/comfort about it, and trying to keep my negativity/jealousy separate from the situation bc I was still in love with her even after all that time. So, trying to support and help her while wanting them to break up and tell her my undying love, (I feel like this was manipulative of me looking back).

Anyways, a few months before my plane trip over, they break up (I didn't have anything to do with it, she had enough of him not putting in any work, as I understand it.) and we get to talking again and I tell her that I still love her. And to give me a chance, please. She's open to it and will think about it, but we both agree that during my stay with her and (her host family) that we're just friends meeting each other finally, y'know? Just so there wouldnt be any awkwardness.

I'd filled in my coworkers in about my love life since I cant go to my actual family for love and support, so they made me feel validated/comforted about me so I could actually get the confidence to be myself about my sexuality, so I was ready for this vacation and Selene.

First plane ride. Went over the Pacific Northwest. Over the ocean. It was beautiful. I'd definitely gotten bit by the traveling bug and I'll want to go take another trip in the future.

Land in state. We finally meet. She runs over to hug me. She's beautiful and nerdy and plump and adorable, just like in the Skype calls so I knew I wasnt going to be murdered by this stranger. Everything was so new and strange and I was happy to be there.

Arrive at the house. Miles and miles of trees all around, super remote. It's beautiful. Met the family. They were very kind and hospitable. I would be staying the week with them and bunk in her room. I was very cheery but awkward the first few days bc y'know, strangers, but in the end I got to know them a bit better and I really did like them. I sent them a thank you card with money when i got home, I do consider them friends now.

Anyway, spend week with them and her. Get to know each other. She's quiet and nerdy, responsible- I came during the last of the semester, I feel bad for the timing but she reassured me it was fine, she did fine wrapping it up, so yay. We hugged a few times, once I ruffled her hair when we woke up (separate beds), but yeah that's about it. Nothing overly romantic, we're just friends on a getting to know friends visit yknow?

Notable events: Met her mom and sister, had dinner with them(different house). Went to a local fair with Selene and friend. The family had a bonfire and the kids (my age, they were late teens/20s) invited their friends [same age) and I made new friends- notably, a gay guy and I really came out of my shell with the camaraderie. Last day, Selene's brother drive us around to go buy souvenirs.

Last day: didnt realize it was the last day, flight was at midnight, didnt know it was that day. Selene and (host family) daughter(S's friend) drive me over like whoosh. We didnt even have time to say goodbye, I thought I was late so I was in a rush to the terminal.

But I didnt even get to say goodbye. No hug. At night when we were going to sleep, she'd ask me questions in the middle of the night- and I was planning that the last night of my stay during that time I'd ask her if we could sleep in the same bed (I'd been wanting to all week but didnt have the courage to). Didnt even make a move to her all week, was too scared how'd she react.

So I call her while waiting for my flight and break down to tears. No answer, went to voicemail. (I'm sure she still has it, even though you know what's going to happen) Next time, she answers. And I tell her everything. I was so happy to meet her, to spend time together, that i had fun, i was still in love with her, didn't want to make it awkward, that I'm afraid she's happy even without a relationship (that she doesn't need me/relationship to be happy), that I wanted to ask her to sleep in same bed but chickened out, etc.

And she's crying and tells me she wanted to sleep in same bed too. That she hasnt been happy for awhile and that yes, she feels the same for me.

So there I am crying/happy crying for an hour in the terminal waiting for my flight. Before I board, we agree to be girlfriends. I finally got the love of my life back. 100/10. Best feeling of my life. I could survive going back to my state and seeing her in exactly a year to "finish my unfinished business" --> "kiss the shit out of her".

Things are good then. I was aware of Selene's sexuality being ace/demi/bi/queer, and she of mine. I thought I could handle the thought of no sex or some other stuff she wasnt comft. with, i could work with that. I just wanted her.

Months go by tho. The steam is slowing down. Video calls only sometimes. They were like an injection of pep, then when the call ends, good feeling gone, and I had to carry on myself. I tried to limit the texts and desire to spam 'I love yous', etc. bc she's much more busy than I was academically, tried to be respectful of that. Be aware of her availability and times. I try to keep busy and come off as we're doing fine, I'm feeling fine.

But I wasnt. She had a problem of not replying back ever, days later. And I would be upset bc person I love more than anything else not giving me attention, not putting in effort. Very few phone calls/video calls, but when she did, those meant the work to me. I would even write her letters about how things were (y'know, to be romantic), and her packages in the mail of stuff I thought were cool and souvenirs from my state I thought she'd enjoy. Got nothing back.

I felt alone and that I was the only one putting in emotional labor into this relationship.

As this went on for months, I felt like the emotional toll was getting worse. That I was holding this relationship together with only duct tape and my bare hands.

And so I cheated on her. Girl in my uni class I'd known since elementary. We would be handsy during the lectures. No kissing, no sex, just caressing y'know? But I still felt guilty and an emotional attachment, even tho I was with my gf.

So I tell my coworkers about the development, who thought everything was going great. Get advice/disappointment since I can't talk to my family. And I decide to call Selene and fess up.

Begore clocking in: I was completely sorry. I really did regret what I did, and I still do. She's silent.

On break time: Call her again. She finally has answer. We talk and agree to talk mor in depth after work.

I really thought that if my love/I was strong enough, I could make this work.

We talk after, agree to work on communication issues, talk more so we can keep relationship going strong.

And so, things improve from then on for a bit.

Beginning of January. We're okay. Talk more. Send pics. Kinda happy, kinda not, but okay.

2 weeks in January: break up. We'd been heading down for a bit and then it came to a head. We'd tried to schedule the talk, it gets moved to on a day I work, and semester starting up for her and her having administrative duties.

We talk 2 hours before I go to work. I knew how it was going to end but I didnt want it to end, I didnt want to lose her. But she felt she was being unfair with how she was and my needs, she cant focus on school and me. She doesn't THINK of me when we're apart like I did of her. Didnt wsnt to lead me on, etc, didnt think it was fair to me, etc. Hopefully we can still be friends, etc.

And I'm sitting there just taking it. Trying to be understanding and not get angry, not cry. Tell her I understand, I'll still be here for her, yes of course we'll still be friends but I just CANNOT right now.

I was looking up to the ceiling, biting my lip, trying not to cry or scream or hate her. Of course we're friends above everything else in life, but I would need some time apart to cope with this. And she understood. And that while I was sad about her decision, that I still love her and would hope for another chance in the future, whenever that would be, bc I still love HER. She understood that (but personally I dont think that's gonna happen)

We ended the call on good terms. And I got ready for work. I hate my job, she knows that, but of all days to get broken up with- right before my shift. I hated her, I was heartbroken, I was in a daze, my stomach hurt and I wanted to throw up, I didn't eat, how could I?

The person I loved the most broken up with me and I had to pretend I was okay.

Luckily, I was able to cry/vent to my manager about it- he and my coworkers have been real solid to me, i really appreciate them.

But yeah, for the first few days I was miserable. And I couldn't even let the people closest to me, my family, my mom, know bc they wouldnt accept me. And so I had to suffer alone.

Not totally alone, though. I had my coworkers. We'd hang out and they'd let me be sad, be angry, be miserable, and be heard.

Cue to present day May:

I'm doing much better emotionally. My coworkers were a godsend, I dont think I could've managed without them tbh. I'm much more outgoing, we hang out all the time, we're actually really good friends. I have healthy adult friendships and connections despite what my sheltered paranoid family would have me believe, bc I've seen things. I've experienced things. I know now what a good social network is now.

For those who dont know, BOOM! My folks are Jehovah's Witnesses! Now you know why all this is stacked against me!

Anyways, me and Selene had only texted once since the breakup. I asked her to send me one of those decommissioned license plates I wanted to buy at the fair we went to and she agreed. We caught up some but the interaction was terse. We havent spoken since.

I have blocked her on FB messenger, on the various fandom websites we follow each other on, and finally, this month I decided to unfriend her on FB. It was too much, yknow?

I couldn't handle seeing her name pop up on my notifications for liking something of mine. I had the feeling of, Like, 'Bitch, how the fuck dare you?!' going through my head and I was angry. I had been suffering in silence with my own heartache while she's okay and I thought she had some nerve liking my shit, and I just couldn't handle the thought of her anymore. That she had no right to know anything more of my life.

Unfriending her was the last straw for me. It was too much, emotionally.

And so now, the only way for her to contact me is to text me. She has my number but no texts so far, and I'm kinda glad about it. I still consider us friends, we ARE still friends, but I'm too sad and hurt still to even think about her anymore. I still look at her profile sometimes but that's about it.

So yeah. Bc of this experience, I dont think I can handle another relationship with someone that's on the ACE spectrum. Let me be clear that I do not hate them- I know there's some controversy going round about whether Aces do belong in the LGBT+ community and I dont stand for that shit, of course they do. They are a valid orientation and I love them and I will defend them and every other person's right to sexual exp./gender exp., they are valid and I love them.

But I cannot, and will not date one again. I'm sorry but I cannot put myself through that again. It's just not for me.

Sorry for the long post. TD;LR: Loved an ace girl, got dumped by an ace girl, now I can't put myself through loving another ace person, sorry.

I hope you will understand and I wont get hate for it, and hopefully, have someone to talk to about it. Maybe I'm selfish, maybe I'm an awful person, maybe. But I feel like this is for the best and when we talk again my hurt feelings will have finally faded and we can truly be friends without my hurt feelings in the way. For now I'm trying to heal.

Here's to growing up and having matured emotions and social connections.

[alikssepia]

Childhood—Adolescence—Youth

This is a translation of my meta “Детство - Отрочество - Юность” originally written in Russian. @saturninefeline helped smooth my English style, for which I am very grateful to her.

Below, you will see text and pictures which are better perceived via tables, and this meta was written with tables in mind. I’m afraid much of its clarity will be lost due to the need to remove the tables for the publication on Tumblr. I encourage you to check the very same meta published on AO3 with all its tables. I promise, it’s worth clicking the external link.

If the middle part of the trilogy is Adolescence, then TFA is Childhood, and the forthcoming EpIX will be Youth. The sequel trilogy, through the eyes of a Reylo, is a story of three encounters of Kylo and Rey whose appearance and behaviour refer to three different psychological ages. 

On December 14, 2017, my Reylo friends and I left the cinema theater with and without a present. We wanted to scream "It's canon!" but our throats wouldn't make a sound.

Reylos after the movie

What was it? It was as if we’d gotten everything (Force bond, Kylo's naked torso, touching hands, back to back fighting) but, at the same time, our victory seemed hollow: why did their relationship feel so rushed? Why does she slam the door right in his face? Did Reylo become canon and then immediately die?

Rey’s behavior was terribly strange:

After just a couple of Skype calls with Kylo, she quickly leapt to far-fetched conclusions such as 'Ben Solo lives'.

She attacked Luke, her aging master, from behind, even turning оn him with a lightsaber.

She refused to listen to him, jumped into the Falcon and went off to "save Ben Solo".

On the Supremacy, she tried to use her feminine charms — for naught.

Followed Kylo’s lead and fought the Praetorian guards together with him.

After this fight’s romantic overtones, she got disappointed in Kylo and flew away.

Slammed the door of the Falcon, and the door to herself, in Ren’s face.

Kylo did no better:

Secretly chatted with the girl via Skype.

Confused her with his half-naked body.

Touched her (hand).

Handed her over to Snoke at their first "date".

But quickly changed his mind and threw the whole galaxy to her feet.

... while being casually rude.

Having been rejected, he got angry and promised to destroy her.

Is this the love story we all hoped to see оn-screen? Why such haste, when the story could have developed slowly and smoothly?

As an excuse for the galactic idiots (and the idiot scriptwriter who made them that way), I could оnly recall Rian Johnson's point which he constantly repeated in many ways in his interviews: this is a coming-of-age story, Rey and Kylo are “two sides of the same coin” going through the difficult period of adolescence.

Is it really, though? Let’s take a look at the adolescent stage of development.

Typical adolescents:

get a sense of being independent entities from their parents/the adults in their lives

try to assert themselves and their wills against important adults

try to assert themselves among their peers

try out their sexuality

take self-reliant, often defiant steps

make hasty and harsh judgments

argue

feel more keenly

get easily fascinated and easily disappointed

"Adolescent" Kylo and Rey:

2. In the film, Kylo and Rey revolt against and detach from their mentors thus becoming "free from adults". From now оn, it's up to themselves to decide what lives to live.

(see above)

In this context, Hux is Kylo’s peer and competition for leadership. Kylo claims leadership using the Force. He acts as a bully towards Hux.

The hands scene, in the context of this meta, implies metaphorical adolescence of Kylo and Rey — it's the age when mutual interest manifests itself in just holding hands. Rey asks Kylo to cover himself — it's another reminder that, metaphorically, she's an adolescent girl confused by seeing the guy she likes half-naked — whereas, as we all know (wink, wink), she should enjoy it.

Rey disregards Luke's admonitions and undertakes a dangerous endeavour to entice Kylo Ren to her side.

Rey's opinion оf Luke makes a U-turn оnce she hears Ren's version of what had happened between him and Luke.

After Snoke's rebuke, Kylo is outraged and is struck with Force Lightning. The brawl between Rey and Luke is an example of confrontation between an adolescent and an adult when the younger person starts the conflict: aggression, accusations and refusal to listen to the other side.

Having realised Kylo won’t turn for her, Rey is in tears. Having realised that Rey has left him again, Kylo is enraged.

Just a few Skype calls in just a couple of days — and Rey already has an invented idealistic image of Ben Solo and is ready to cross half a galaxy to "save his soul". Daydreams of Prince Charming are quickly dashed. (Compare this to how often girls fall for participants of boys bands.)

Now let's see how the "adults" of this story behave:

Typical adults or adult abusers*:

are overprotective

forbid

* mock at youngsters' first awkward attempts to assert themselves

* use forceful methods to re-establish the previous boundaries of the relationship

* underestimate the physical strength of grown-up youngsters

"Fathers" Snoke and Luke

2. Luke storms into Rey's hut and breaks them up — a typical "busted!" situation.

(see above)

Snoke scoffs at Kylo and calls him immature: "Child in a mask".

Snoke strikes Kylo with Force Lightning in response to his attempt to argue.

Accustomed to being the dominant оne, Snoke is slain by an unexpected strike which he could have prevented if he had recognized the agency/power of Kylo.

In the summer of 2017, when first оn-set photographs emerged оn the internet, fans suddenly saw Rey's breasts. A romantic hairdo completed her fresh image which, it seemed, showed her growing into womanhood. In the light of this analysis, it is hard to escape a different conclusion: breasts develop when a girl is оn the point of puberty. In The Force Awakens, Rey's breasts were markedly flat, her hairdo pointedly childish, form very thin. In TFA, Rey is metaphorically a SMALL GIRL who is growing into adolescence in The Last Jedi.

If the middle part of the trilogy is Adolescence, then TFA is Childhood, and the forthcoming EpIX will be Youth. The sequel trilogy, through the eyes of a Reylo, is a story of three encounters of Kylo and Rey whose appearance and behaviour refer to three different psychological ages. Each age is coded in the actions of the two halves of our protagonist and the way the actors are dressed, carry themselves and play, which we will consider below.

I. CHILDHOOD (The Force Awakens)

II. ADOLESCENCE (The Last Jedi)

III. YOUTH (EpIX — forecast)

Slogan

I. That lightsaber. It belongs to me!

II. I'll destroy her. And you. And all of it.

III. [something balanced and wise]

General impression: Kylo

I. Petulant, sensitive, pretty, wearing "dress", angry, embarrassed, hysterical — Kylo Ren's image in TFA refers to a metaphorical child. In some scenes, it's emphasised by the perspective, by childish facial expression.

II. Obstinate, aggressive, daring, seeking privacy with a girl, irritated — Kylo's manners and facial expressions in TLJ remind us of those of a moody and awkward teenage boy.

III. Focused, consistent, self-assured, contained movements, even voice — in EpIX, we're going to see "the adult Kylo Ren", and outcries about "whiney boy throwing tantrums" and "teenage boy" will stop.

General impression: Rey

I. Naive, trusting, seeking for belonging, afraid of changes, playing dolls, waiting for mom to come back — here again, we have references to Rey's metaphorical childishness in TFA, but it's less noticeable because Rey is ten years younger than Kylo anyway and has been living in such circumstances that impeded her physical growing-up. And still, in some scenes, Daisy Ridley uses exaggerated childish facial expressions. For instance, see her chew:

II. Impulsive, fiery, sexy, touchy, self-reliant — Rey's image in TLJ reminds us that, metaphorically, she's a teenage girl.

III. Quiet, reasonable, seeking for an opportunity to reach understanding and sort things out, facing problems rather than running away, she will learn to accept both strengths and weaknesses of others — the adult Rey's personality will give Kylo Ren's haters no chance to see his future killer in her, even for the sake of the Light.

Appearance, hair style: Kylo

I. His helmet off, Kylo appears in TFA as a well-groomed arrogant boy — an entitled youngster like those that we've known from The Star Child by Oscar Wilde [image] and The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen [image]. Kylo's hair is luxuriously done and, possibly, even curled almost the way it's done оn the childhood portrait of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1846) by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.

II. Instead of a fine hairstyle and waves, in TLJ, we have seemingly greasy hair a la Kurt Cobain which is another reference to rebellious teenage years.

III. Kylo Ren may keep a long hairdo in EpIX. His hair will be tidy, styled in an adult way. We might no longer see it wave, at least the way it did in TFA.

Appearance, hair style: Rey

I. Rey's hair is tied in three funny buns in TFA. Her hairstyle's been the same ever since she was five which reminds is that, metaphorically, she's a child.

II. In TLJ, Rey dives into a wet 'hairy' hole and emerges from it with her hair down оn her shoulders. A young girl's hairstyle refers to the symbolic age of puberty. Since Rey 'explored' the hole, she's been keeping her hair down.

III. Rey might have her hair loose in EpIX. Because long hair may be inconvenient for a fighter, she may have a shorter haircut.

Lexical coding

I. In The Force Awakens, they call Kylo 'boy' and 'son'. They say 'girl' about Rey. These words are used where appropriate in the context of the film but, still, they additionally remind us that these characters are kind of 'juniors'.

II. In The Last Jedi, Kylo still has two father figures who call him 'child in a mask' and 'kid'. Snoke calls Rey 'child' too. By the end of the film, both father figures are dead.

III. In EpIX, words 'girl', 'boy', 'son', 'kid' etc won't be used.

Behaviour with important adults

I. Kylo and Rey, lost children, found new important adults after having been left unattended by their parents. A child doesn't dare to disobey, and seeks praise for its obedience. In TFA, when Snoke demanded that Kylo does the inconceivable, Kylo reluctantly obeyed.

II. Kylo gets rid of the Not-Important-Anymore Adult because now, Kylo knows what he needs better than the old fart. In TLJ, his reverence for Vader gives place to radicalism and denial of authority: "Let the past die." Rey realises she can do things by herself, without adults, and undertakes an adventure all by herself.

III. EpIX: Kylo and Rey get accustomed to being adults. Adult way is to respect and use the past experience but set own objectives. Rey takes Jedi texts with her. She's оn her own but she admits she needs the legacy of the past. Kylo may dismiss the idea to destroy the past. It no longer impedes his moving forward.

Critical thinking/ Credulity

I. A child emulates their authority figure. Thus, Kylo worships Vader's mask, copycats him, intends to follow his path and says words he must have learned from Snoke: "The Supreme Leader is wise", "He was weak and foolish like his father." A child doesn't critically assess a given situation. For many years, Rey believed that her parents will come back for her and doesn't even question the chances of it. They may have long been dead, they may have no desire to return.

II. Kylo refuses to acknowledge the wisdom of others, rejects any authority — both lightsiders and darksiders, but his radicality puts off Rey. Rey argues with Luke, easily questions his version of Ben's fall, but her own conclusions aren’t quite right either.

III. Rey and Kylo learn to think critically, don't make hasty conclusions, don't idealise and demonise others.

Kylo and Rey's relative positions

I. Kylo offers Rey to be her teacher, i. e. expects to be a step higher than her.

II. Kylo offers Rey to rule the galaxy together, i. e. to be his peer.

III. Here I can't be certain about the future development:

— Will Kylo be humbled, and will Rey rise? — Will their confrontation end, and will it be no longer relevant whether they are peers or not?

Outcome of Kylo and Rey's fights

I. Rey wins.

II. No оne wins.

III. Here again, there's room for speculation:

— Will Kylo win? — Will there be no fight between Rey and Kylo?

Interaction between Rey and Kylo

I. TFA: Boys are stupid, girls are mean. He was pulling her pigtails — she hit him with her school bag. He started to cry and complained to adults.

II. TLJ: Wow, you can make friends with girls (guys). But it's safer to stay with your own people.

III. EpIX: Boy and girl form a couple. The previous breakup was оne of many stages of getting used to each other. This trope is not something unseen in romantic stories, such as The Two Captains by Russian writer Veniamin Kaverin. Two main heroes of this story, Sanya (Alexander) and Katya (Ekaterina) couldn't quite understand each other and accept each other's flaws when they were teenagers, and break up for 9 years. They meet again in their mid-twenties and irrevocably fall for each other.

The sequel trilogy as a metaphorical coming-of-age story for the main heroes (which are Kylo and Rey, in the eyes of a Reylo) is оne of the possible points of view. If this POV proves correct with the release of EpIX, then we'll get that very Reylo-canon we've been waiting for since TFA: romantic relationship of grown-up Kylo and Rey will get its smooth progress via ups and downs and will be based оn mature acceptance of not оnly merits but also flaws of each other.

[4wordletter]

@say-never - my apologies for taking so long to reply, i wanted to think of a reply. i’ll never dodge/ignore questions and i’ll always tell the truth.

you’re actually the first to ask this but i think your question is still a valid one.

some context:

i first connected with M in 2008. she was the sister of a friend of mine. she added me on facebook pretty much randomly. i immediately had a huge crush on her. i found her fascinating and i’d read her facebook posts but i never talked to her. i think once or twice i commented on her page. i called her cute and i said that incubus were cool. lol

in 2013 i was on my lunch break and i went on facebook. i saw that it was M’s birthday. i clicked a button and i was presented with some options to send her a birthday gift. i sent her a starbucks card for like $5 or something. i found it fascinating that i could give someone a gift from so far away. i thought it was really cool. i thought SHE was really cool.

she thanked me and told me she got a drink with it. we didn’t talk apart from that but i remember the warm feeling in my chest just from that conversation

a year later in 2014 - october 17th to be precise, we started really talking. i had sent her a message asking about my friend (her brother) because he’d deleted his facebook and i didn’t know how to contact him. we were good buddies and i liked talking to him and hearing what he was up to. he’s a software engineer as well and we had some pretty interesting chats despite the fact that he liked to tease me for being a web developer - not a REAL software engineer, as he’d say lol

well M gave me his email and i thanked her. we were friends on instagram at that point and i’d sometimes comment on her pics and she’d comment on mine. just friendly things. she posted a picture of her holding a can of coke. she had a really cute thumb ring that i complimented. we got on well and i liked her a lot despite it only being friendly comments

well, on oct 17 we really got to talking. i was quite shy and didn’t say hello to her first or anything, but she kept messaging me. each time i was pleasantly surprised to see her name pop up. 

pretty soon she was the highlight of my day. she gave me butterflies every time i spoke to her. i started saying hi first. i got to know her schedule. i knew she had a baby but i knew she’d be good to talk after 1am my time. my heart would pound with excitement when i got a notification from her. i was well and truly smitten.

we’d have these conversations with such depth. we’d talk about the darkest parts of ourselves. we’d talk about our dreams, our fears. we connected and bonded with each other in a way that i’ve never connected with anyone before. i felt understood, i felt like i didn’t have to pretend to be anything.

she was interested in me and I in her. we genuinely cared for each other and for what we had to say. we moved from facebook to whatsapp. we nervously introduced ourselves. i recorded and re-recorded my message a dozen times. she was so nervous she said she was 3 years younger than she was (which was shyly corrected soon after)

i found her absolutely fascinating. the way she spoke. the words she used. the way she spelled things. i couldn’t get enough. i hung on her every word. i wanted to learn more and more about her. we talked and talked and talked. i’d leave her messages to wake up to and she’d do the same for me.

we’d take pictures from all sorts of things from our daily lives. just regular things like candy or a loaf of bread. she was the first american woman i’d talked to. i’d never been to america before and i’d always been deeply in love with america since i was a kid. everything about the USA fascinated me (and still does)

pretty soon we were sending boxes of gifts to each other. i’d send flowers too. i wanted to make her happy. i wanted to see her smile. i’d write little notes with sharpies. silly little flickbook things with messages idek what.

before i knew it i was so deeply in love with this girl. i’d never felt anything like it in my life. i’d been in relationships but nothing like this. i hadn’t even met the girl but i absolutely adored her.

in june 2015 she came to see me. it was absolutely perfect. thinking back, i’ve never been as relaxed and happy as i was over those 10 days. i cried like a baby when she left to go home. i wept and wept. those 10 days reaffirmed in my mind that she was who i wanted to spend the rest of my life with. my heart had made a choice and it was dead-set on her. i wanted a family with her as my wife.

fast forward to april 12 2016. the day of my flight to go see her. i didn’t sleep the night before because i was so anxious. i felt i couldn’t do it. it felt too “big” for me. i was small and full of fear. i didn’t believe in myself. i didn’t have courage or confidence. i failed. i failed both M and her daughter. i didn’t go.

my identity shattered into a million pieces as i lost sight of who i was. this was my dream, why wasn’t i pursuing it? i had so many questions about myself. i just didn’t understand. i was so lost.

i immediately got myself into therapy. i was so scared of losing M that i had agreed to fly out in july instead. i figured it would be enough time to fix myself.

dead wrong. i felt the weight of the new deadline crushing down on me. it was around this time that i recognized the impact that M’s parents had on her. her mom was telling her so many things about me - that i’d have to come visit twice before M would ever visit me again. her parents were extremely cynical of me and this fed into M’s mindset and it came out when she talked to me. she’d relay everything that her parents said about me

i was trying so hard to recover but i was becoming more and more sick. M was supposed to come in august that year and she said that if i didn’t come in july then she wouldn’t come in august. i believe this was a stipulation her parents made for her and she forwarded it on to me

i was a mess and the pressure to “get better” was mounting to a fever pitch. i wanted to see my girls. i so desperately wanted to see them. there was so much riding on me traveling out there that i buckled under the pressure. 

i begged and begged literally on my knees on skype, crying like a baby. i pleaded with her not to give up on me, not give up on us. she wouldn’t come in august. she’d made up her mind and her parents backed her up. she said even if she wanted to come, her parents wouldn’t let her.

i was devastated. anxiety was a thing of the past, replaced by pure darkness, pure depression. i desperately wanted to die but i was so fucking furious with myself that i wouldn’t give myself the satisfaction of an early death.

no. i would do this. i would not sit back and let my life slip between my fingers. that’s not who i am.

i lost my job. i was laid off by the company. completely out the blue. they’d said they were making cut backs but i never thought i’d be one. i’d just started. surely it wouldn’t be me. 

it was me. right in the middle of all this shit, i was canned. no severance package because i’d been there less than a year. 

i have no words for how any of this felt. i have no idea how i survived. i spent so long on autopilot. i had lost everything. absolutely everything.

M’s parents cut me off from E, her daughter. she’d no longer call me dada and i wouldn’t get to see her much. M would have to sneak her laptop upstairs so i could see E (if you read the Happy Birthday post then you’ll know how much E meant to me)

i still had contact with M although she had stopped saying she loved me or anything like that. i swore to her that i’d come see her. i swore to god i wouldn’t let it end like this.

i got a new job within a couple weeks of losing my old one. it was a godsend.

with my first paycheck i bought tickets to go see M. i felt God at my core. i felt so strong. i felt like i could do anything. i felt that, no matter what, God would carry me through anything. i prayed so many nights in tears on my bedroom floor.

things with M and myself were turbulent. she had no faith that i was coming to see her. i didn’t blame her. she was angry with me. really angry with me. i didn’t blame her for that either because i was angry with myself as well.

december came around. i woke up, got in the car, went to the airport and got on the plane. i was going to see my girls come hell or high water. i woke up that morning and there was no hell nor high water. just pure, peaceful clarity. a shining, sparkling reality that i’d never seen before.

i felt relief before i even left the house. it was like i’d already done it. i was so happy. i was so thankful to God that i felt this way. i felt the expanse of the whole world in my heart. as if...i was just a part of the world. how could one part of the world be afraid of another? i felt like i was meant to be alive. meant to be here. i felt God in each breath, each breath of pure, cool december air.

i looked back on myself and smiled at how fearful i was. how small i was. i’d let fear run my life. with the newfound strength i felt, all the past versions of myself didn’t make sense.

i was so sure M was the one for me. after this journey, after all we’d been through, i’d never for one second lost sight of her. my heart was still absolutely set on her, absolutely resolute and steadfast. i’d marry this woman.

M knew i wanted to marry her. i knew she wanted to marry me. we’d looked at wedding dresses together. we’d talked family plans. we’d looked at baby names. i was giddy at the thought of her pregnant with my child. a baby brother or sister for E. i was so excited. these girls were my world.

in december i went to church with M and her family. the sermon was about abraham and isaac and sacrifice. it was about identifying what the “isaac” is in your life, and do you have the faith enough to sacrifice?

M & E were my isaac. i went to M’s parents and talked with them. i confessed just how much i truly loved these girls. i told them they were my isaac. i told them i’d be back in february and they gave me the green light on asking M to marry me. they said they were very happy with how i treated M - they laid out some provisions about me getting a job here etc. i told them i’d speak to my boss about working from the USA

during the week i felt a strange sort of energy coming from her parents, almost as if they were apathetic towards me or didn’t like me. i felt like they didn’t want me to spend time with E. M wasn’t allowed to stay with me during my stay and i felt like M always wanted to be home with them. i didn’t think about it too much, i was just happy to be there

i did come visit the following february. i went with a diamond ring. i’d felt M out to find out what sort of ring she would like to wear. i got her finger size (well, she went to a store to have it measured to be sure). i felt so happy and proud that i was going to ask this lovely woman to be my wife.

the energy that week was just...off. in ways i can’t describe. i felt the apathy/disdain coming from her parents was way more intense than in december. they really didn’t want me to spend time with E and this time, M was spending way more time with them at their house. again she wasn’t allowed to stay with me

M spent a lot of the week crying. she would be in a restaurant and go to the bathroom in tears. i felt so lost and confused that i was in 2 minds about asking her to marry me. 

i sat down with her parents once more just to be sure. the energy was completely different once again. they said they hadn’t had a chance to talk to M about it in the past 3 months since my last visit. i felt they had a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear. i think there was a lot going on behind the scenes that i simply wasn’t aware of. i think they had conversations and talked about a lot of things i didn’t know about

M talked with her parents but she never really said what they talked about. she said they didn’t trust me and were cynical about me and worried i was in the scottish mafia and was using M for a green card. in december i had said that, even if i had to work at walmart, i’d do any job to support my girls. this was obviously hyperbole which i used to indicate my level of commitment but they took it very literally - they complained to M that i couldn’t support her and E with a walmart job

there was an extremely mixed message and i had a lot of internal conflict because of M’s parents. i felt they were muddling her mind. M said i had the go-ahead to ask to marry her. her parents never said anything to me the day after they talked. i thought they would give me the go ahead directly but they didn’t say anything about it, almost like no conversation happened

i didn’t want to disappoint M, not again. i wanted to show her my commitment. i wanted to show just how much i loved her. i wanted to prove my loyalty to her and E. 

we went to a lovely place called Easton where there was a fountain in the town square. it was picturesque. after having afternoon tea at american girl (for E), i got down on one knee and proposed to M in front of the fountain. she said “oh god” in such a fearful way but, i think after choking back the fear, she said yes. i slipped the ring on her finger after giving her a little speech about how much she and E meant to me.

i felt happy yet...conflicted still. M seemed the same - happy but conflicted. her brother was happy for us and sent message of congrats. all her FB friends congratulated her as well as she posted her ring online that night

she kept monitoring for her parents liking her fb picture. they never said anything. neither online nor offline. they didn’t say anything at all. they didn’t acknowledge our engagement in any way. we went out for dinner that night and we didn’t even talk about it at all.

it was clear by this point what was going and why M was so upset the whole time. something was going on behind the scenes that i wasn’t ever privy to. 

i felt like an outcast. i felt unwelcome. i just wanted to go home. i was deeply upset and confused. i didn’t know what was going on. M’s parents didn’t want me to see E on the last day before i went home. they kept trying to come between us

before i left i gave her parents a bunch of flowers. although my time there was very confusing and upsetting i wanted to show gratitude for them opening their home to me. in the car M said it was good that i was taking the high road. i didn’t really know what it meant but now i do.

when i gave them the flowers it was only then that M’s dad extended his hand to me to shake mine. he said “welcome to the Angles family” - i was stunned. i didn’t expect him to say that. i nervously said “that would be amazing” - lol

i was even further confused. were the flowers really make-or-break? what was happening here? i couldn’t figure it out at all

well, i hugged them both and went to the airport and went home.

over the next couple days i was super jetlagged and tired cuz my flight was delayed due to storms and i don’t generally sleep while traveling so i was in a haze

M didn’t talk to me. something was up. she said she talked to her dad the previous night. he was saying things about how i deceived him and that i never told him i was going to ask her to marry me. i was so confused. i had asked him twice for M’s hand in marriage. i tried to resist the accusations but it didn’t go well and M got really angry.

we were using an app called life360 so we could each see each other on a map (kinda like the snapchat map). it was my favourite app because when i missed M i could look at the map and see her moving around her city. i’d be able to say “aww she’s at the store” and things like that.

M said that her dad told her to delete the app because i was using it to manipulate her. i was so confused and upset

this was all happening at a rapid pace and i could barely keep up. i couldn’t keep my eyes open at work and i was really struggling to mentally process all these things

she blocked me everywhere. on every app we used. facebook, everything. i emailed her

once again, i look so pathetic and weak. this was just a day after i landed back home. so utterly lost in confusion.

some back story for the next part:

in december (the month of my first trip) M started getting emails from what seemed like a computer virus or something. it said that it had her iCloud backup (or something like that i don’t remember) and that unless she paid X amount the icloud things would be made public. it sent these emails on christmas day and it emailed her work email address

i helped her secure her email account and set up a password manager just to be sure that no one had access to her account. i felt kinda useless but it was the best i could do. it really ruined that christmas

not long after i landed back home in february those emails came again but more aggressive. it started emailing fragments of private emails to her contact list including me and her parents and her brother

i’ll never forget when i called her in confusion trying to find out what was happening. i wasn’t thinking of the emails too much, i just figured it was some dumb kid who had guessed a password or something and was trying to make money by threatening folks

M told me i was a “prime suspect”. i remember the silence that came after as i tried to process this. M’s parents had convinced her that i was behind the emails, that i was targeting her and trying to hurt her

at that point there was no going back. they really ran with the email thing. her mom went through all her things in her room and made her throw out anything associated with me. i had gotten M a book that was inscribed to her in gold lettering. her mom was furious she had it. she made her throw out absolutely everything and get rid of me out of her life

M did. she was threatened with being kicked out. if she didn’t comply she’d be kicked out with her daughter.

M’s mom sent back her engagement ring. she chose the cheapest service to make sure it took the longest amount of time to get here. this woman really, really hated me and i will never know why.

i think M was conflicted. i know that she didn’t believe that i sent the emails. her parents were insistent that it was me. the blame fell square on my shoulders

a couple months later M’s parents went to chicago and she could be herself at home. we skyped for the first time in a long time. i got to see E. we played music together. we had a really fantastic weekend just on skype. we were both happy and relaxed. i recorded some of our jam sessions and put them on youtube because i had a few songs up there already. it was nice to have M involved and she played piano beautifully

i had a little video page on my tumblr where i’d put links to my videos. i put M on there. i was proud to have a little song with her. besides that, i wanted to show her that she was still important to me.

her mom found my tumblr page. she was furious. she saw the videos we made. she was livid. at this point M had signed up for college and her parents were using that as leverage to get me gone - she couldn’t “talk to boys” while she was at college. her mom stalked my tumblr watching my every move

she’d make comments about me. initially my tumblr was quite christian. i’d reblog messages of love, peace and hope. they really kept me going during these dark times. her mom saw this and called me a fake christian. i think you know me well enough now to know that my love and faith in God are by no means fake - especially not after december. i would have no strength if not for God

M’s mom (maybe) hired a private investigator. she wanted to track down everything about me. she must have gotten my tumblr link from my facebook page. she found a tumblr that M used to have. where we used to talk to each other.

i used to have a page called “thoughts about M” where i’d post cutesy lovey-dovey crap about M. with the distance involved, i missed her a lot. i needed an outlet, a way to show affection. there’s only so many times i can say “i love you” - this blog was for me to express that

M’s mom found that page too. she was furious. M was really upset and asked me to delete it. pleaded with me to delete the page. so i did. a year or more of “thoughts about M” gone at the click of a button all because her mom said so

this is okay, maybe 10% of everything. her parents went on to do a lot more.

the reason i still talk to M is because my heart overflows with love for her. not romantic love, but love nonetheless. i watched how her parents were. i’ve seen what they did to her. i’ve seen first hand the things they make her do. i saw them manipulate her into thinking i was an enemy. i saw them make her send her engagement ring back and call off her engagement. i saw them fill her head with bizarre fears and anxiety about mafias and all sorts of things. 

M is just as much a victim as I was - if not more so. I got to move on. yes, I’m seriously damaged by this whole experience. yes, it’s possible I’ll never trust any woman or her parents ever again. but think of M - she knows what her parents did. she knows what they’re capable of now. she knows how cruel they were and how violent the things they did were. believe it or not, i wasn’t the first one they tore from her arms and i won’t be the last.

no. i have to see beyond all this. i know M on a deep level. i understand her mind and i see her darkness. i know what she’s up against. i do not blame her for what happened. she is not at fault. M is my best friend and always will be. our bond will always be there regardless of what her parents think or say. not a romantic bond, but a bond between two humans.

this story is truly heartbreaking, but not just for what happened to me, but for what happened to M. how heartbreaking to have your mother send your engagement ring back. how heartbreaking to hear your own parents fill your head with schemes of mafias. how heartbreaking to have them destroy your relationship so needlessly. 

M is a soft and delicate girl who never deserved this to happen. she deserved to be treated with love and respect and nothing less. she’s a lovely person, a great mom, a great friend, daughter and sister. I’ve always maintained this. I am, and always will be, proud to be her friend. for better or worse, we’ve weathered a hell of a storm. we’ll never be together but that’s not the goal. I’ve learned a lot from her, and hopefully, her from me. she was my first “true love” - she means the world to me even if we never speak again.

[nat-der-kunstler]

my friends and i skyped DSOD in the middle of the night to celebrate my birthday and here are some out of context quotes

I’d like to clarify that my friends don’t know ANYTHING about yugioh. They only know some basic names and everything about ryou bakura. But that’s only bc I can never shut up about bakura. I only started writing things down consistently like halfway through so whoops. 

“Oh wow Nat are you a part of that fangirl brigade” “yeah, i’m bakura fangirl kin, you got me.” “oh wow, blue hair I wonder who’s important” “Could you imagine sitting at your desk and suddenly you look over and there are five assholes staring at you from the front of the class.”

(So I stopped writing them down for a while at this point and picked it up again around the part where joey’s being consumed by the plana-verse or whatever) “Just throw a dab joey” “DO ONE LAST COOL THING BEFORE YOU GET CONSUMED BY THE VOID JOEY” “throw the plana oFF A BUILDING. that’ll test its strength.” “Kaiba!! KAIBA!!!” “Who the FUCK is kaiba” “This giant pile of garbage that I adore” “I don’t understand why he’s dressed like that.” “Kaiba could just stomp on yugi and kill him and he refuses to do this” “Mockumaba” (Intermission because it hit 12 AM and they wanted to sing me happy birthday. We did and then I made them join me in singing happy birthday to bakura.) “Get out the way yugi” “Beep beep BITCH” “Wouldn’t it be funny if Kaiba just left him in the middle of the road and he can’t go to the tournament because he’s dead” “Kaiba’d still make him duel in a hospital bed” “No he’d dump yugi’s corpse into the stadium” “Yugi’s corpse would still win tho” “Why is this 14 year old working for the company” “Oh bro. he’s the vice president” *BOTH MY FRIENDS BURST INTO SUDDEN LAUGHTER* “Yes Diva, you’ve forgotten what you are...a bitch” - My friend mimicking sera “Lemme d-d-d-d-duel ya ass” “Oh damn he sent an entire stadium into the void” “Could you imagine being at home and watching this on TV and all of a sudden everything’s red” ”Why’s there a fuchsia filter on my TV” “Take a shot every time someone says vijam” “Diva is the only person that says vijam” “STOP TRYING TO MAKE VIJAM HAPPEN DIVA” “What the hell are they doing? Why is it all card games? I just need someone to be like: I summon. My glock.” “Don’t you mean you dimension summon ur glock” “Yeah, it attacks ur lifepoints directly bitch” (At one point my friend just started repeating everything Diva said in a mocking voice.) (one of my friends disappears for a while and my other friend  and I are concerned and when she comes back she says) “Yeah no, Diva showed up into my room and sent my ass to the shadow realm” “Straight into the void motherfucker” “Oh you had a tough childhood? So did I. I just dealt with it through my crippling depression, get over yourself” “Sera is the worst anime waifu ever” “Yugi shreked his ass in TWO TURNS” “Sure didn’t fucking FEEL like two turns” “c-carl. CARL COME BACK THE TV’S FIXED IT’S NOT PINK ANYMORE” “oh my god GUYS I just remembered it’s bakura’s birthday today!!” “Nat. It’s your birthday. That’s why we’re watching this” “I suMMON MARSHMALLOW BUTTPLUG AND PUT DOWN TWO CARDS” “Blue eyes white dragon? That’s racist” “Kaiba has dragons and Yugi decided to bring sentient beauty blenders” “Dark Magician just DODGE HIS ATTACK” “This isn’t pokemon sean” “oh my god yugi haS A SQUAD OF LESBIANS” “Kaiba has belts wrapped around his arms and that’s why he deserves nothing but death” “I wanna give a shoutout to my sister sera for being absolutely FUCKING USELESS” “Is anyone going to call the police” “There’s police?” “Why do they have to duel this monster they could just go up and slap it.” “Fine sean. YOU go up there and slap it” “Yugi’s short enough to jump and knee it in the box crotch” “My strategy as a duelist would be to distract my opponents and then beat their ass” “Someone tried that and yugi sent his ass to the shadow realm so quick” “Man it’d be worth it tho” “Everyone. Shhhhhhh. Kaiba’s about to do the first good thing in his life” “Finally.” “Oh that’s really gay” “Oh he’s a flaming homo” “I cannot believe yugi just summoned a club penguin puffle and murdered it.” “That is kuRIBOH” “Puffle.” “Which yugi is this” “Goth hot topic yugi” “I know. They’re both goth hot topic yugi” “Why is he ripped he has NO REASON to be this ripped” “So Yugioh-” “U know his name is Yugi right sean?” “The show’s called yugioh so his NAME is yugioh” “It’s yugi-OH because yugi is always surprising us” “Oh shit yugi’s two yugi’s now. mitosis.” “Who are you.” “I’m you if I went to planet fitness” “No no NO, I’m you, but you shop at hot topic and I shop at spencers” “Great now they have to go back to begging because diva’s stupid ass lost the plana” “Sera’s plan is probably just to ask yugi for money but be super vague about it and then just stand around ” “Oh by the way sean. Kaiba’s got a giant space station” *deep sigh* “Mokuba’s a better sibling than kaiba deserves” “DID HE JUST SHOW UP TO 800 BC. TO JUST. FOR ALL THIS EFFORT HE BETTER JUST BE PHYSICALLY KICKING THE PHARAOH’S ASS. KAIBA HAS THE HIGHER GROUND. LITERALLY” “Maria, where did sean go?” “Um he just texted “I can’t with this fucking petty bullshit. it’s like being back in high school but so much worse” in the group chat and now his phone is off.” “mood.”

[taltos-seidmadr]

Loki haunting me in the shape of youtube video essayists has become so much of its own theme, I might as well make regular posts about it at this point. 

Okay, a short personal story about this one.

There’s this dude who was really close to me, had been pretty much my best friend through my uni years but then we fell out of touch for a while. I knew he didn’t like social media but I missed him and with the excuse of “coming out” to him as pagan (I think he’s probably the only person in my life I know face to face and don’t have to explain what paganism even is) I prod him on facebook and we end up chatting again over Skype, all the good feels return, and all that. 

He can hardly contain his excitement to share with me how entranced he’s become with Jordan Peterson and his ideas. Gods, I wish I didn’t recognize that name. I tried not to show it but something immediately turned sour in my mind. I listen to him with a fake smile over gritted teeth and listen to him as he ecstatically tells me parable after parable about destroying dragons and reaping rewards and after that, I don’t know how to tell him that my friend, I am the dragon.

I don’t know what to tell him when he tries to explain me how logical it is that my wish to be called a they will directly lead to the fall of democracy as we know it in the western world. Of course he doesn’t know it’s me whom he’s talking about. But it is. He doesn’t quite notice the irony of taking the advice of bravely facing the unknown from someone who considers other people’s self identification a threat. He talks about men, women, then men again, then women some more, and he says something about the concept of the truth and how important it is to him and I realize that his version of the truth doesn’t include me. I don’t exist in his world. 

Not anymore.

I excuse myself politely and hang up the call. My heart feels heavy.

The very next day after that, this video comes up in my youtube recommendations for some completely unknown reason, absolutely unprompted - I have never seen any of ContraPoints’ videos before and never heard of her; even my eyes wouldn’t have stumbled into it in the first place if it weren’t for Jordan Peterson’s name. I watch it, and find some consolation in it as Dr. Laufeyjarson Parrott dons a dozen disguises and interweaves philosophy with some bawdy jokes in a truly Loki-like fashion while giving an explanation/deconstruction of some of the points here that to me sounded really fair.

I don’t have much to offer as a punchline to this story, except I recommend it because I thought it was both educational and entertaining. The bit about ironism (14:50ish... for context can watch from... roughly 11:50 and onwards) reminded me of certain lines of the Hávamál quite a bit - I think Ódin would make a great skeptic.

My closing thought is just the following: I think trying to slay dragons for rewards is both vain, foolish, and ineffective - the dragon’s head will always grow back, and it’s only a temporary escape from facing the reality that a little bit, we are all dragons too. Embrace the dragon. The rewards will be much greater.