#truth is even if it wasnt problematic it would still be just bad

[notsp1derman]

a displeased review of the house in the cerulean sea, by tj klune

[may contain spoilers]

First of all, let me tell you all my experience with this book. I saw a bunch of people talking about it, recommending a sweet queer-found-family-cozy-fantasy comfort book, saying how this was one of the best reads of the year. This book was HUGE on tiktok and other platforms, and even as of today it still has 4,4 stars on goodreads.

So after a bit of stalling, when I next wanted a comforting read, I picked up the house in the cerulean sea, and I wasn't nearly as impressed. The writing was exaggerated to the point that every character felt like a charicature defined by a one or two traits: the Plain and Normal main character; the Intolerant and Bitter boss; even the CEOs were called only Extremely Upper Management lmao

So I thought "okay, so this is some sort of satyre right?" nope. It's just a normal YA fantasy book that desperately wants you to think it's cute and funny. The author wanted to write witty dialogue so much that every character has the same personality; everyone sounds like a snotty 13 year old really proud of the "sick burns" they deliver; everyone, even the children (half of whom are also so sarcastic, of course), uses every possible opportunity to embarass and shame the protagonist.

Which, by the way, I was already getting annoyed by. He was never pathetic by his appearance or way of living, as all the characters tried to express by their dialogue, but his trait of being so emphatetic for a second just to be painfully ignorant of the power of is actions the next get on my nerves SO FUCKING MUCH. Linus Baker's knack for saying "this isn't my jurisdiction, I only have a small, simple job" clashes so hard with the author constantly telling us how we should like him because "he's good with children and also responsible!!", which just makes him seem an average white man unable to see his privilege.

And all of this could be simply averted if Klune just made Linus a very innocent man, who was told a lie by DICOMY that all the kids from the orphanages he closed down were in better places, or even adopted. This would even make his development a lot more sympathetic, because he would suddenly discover everything he believed was a lie. But no. Linus does know, from the way he feels guilty or changes the subject or gives excuses for DICOMY the second someone questions it. How could I root for him when he just chooses to ignore what he doesn't want to acknowledge and with the author trying so hard to paint him as an inoccuous man?

Clearly, I wasn't really finding the house in the cerulean sea neither comforting nor well written. So, after almost a 1/3 of the book, I went into goodreads to see if there were other people disliking the book as well, or if I was just the biggest and bitterest asshole on the planet. And then I found out about the Sixties Scoop.

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that a white man really got inspiration from a terrible situation that brought a lot of pain and trauma, sterilized and made it cutesy and admitted to it on an interview.

"Let me be up front about something: I’m a white dude. There really isn’t much I should be preaching about. I’m queer, and a loud one at that, but the marginalization I’ve faced because of this isn’t to be compared to others facing bigotry. It’s not a contest. It sucks across the board, but I’m a mid-thirties cis man in America. I’m privileged in ways others are not. I know this, so when I wrote Cerulean, I knew I had to do so carefully, to make sure that what I’d decided on to be the central theme of the story wouldn’t be lost."

I'll not jump to conclusions, he really does seem to have had good intentions, but despite all of that, sometimes it still isn't a good idea to follow. I'm a white person myself, but I've seen a lot of the struggles of the indigenous people of my country even near my home, so I get the indignation against a government that never does shit and the want to help as much as we can, specially because of our privilege. But telling the story of a minority group from a point of view you will never have just does more harm than good, even more so when the apparent moral of the story is "oh well, the problem isn't the organization at all, just a bunch of people in a room, so we just have to wait for some dude to get tired of it all and change things"

I'll try to be less bitter, alright? I get the existence of books that focus more on found families, queer happiness and comforting emotions than something more realistic. We all need to hope that things can be better and easier, so I'm not hating on the genre or anything. But it angered me to read how easy it was to change bigotry just with "the power of talking and morals!!1!", specially when the inspiration was a real life event that we KNOW wasn't just solved with some words and a pat on the back. I'll hand to Klune that things weren't exactly solved at the end of the book, and systemic discrimination and oppression still existed, but something about the solutions and the tone of the book just didn't seat right with me.

All in all, I think the main problem was just that things didn't fit well together. A hopeful but realistic story inspired by a real event that talked about disrupting the organization and stripping down positions of power of bigot people maybe would work, but that's too much pain and delicate themes to fit into a "clean and cute" comfort book. I also thought the moral a bit too simple and black-on-white for a YA book, but as long as it makes people more kind and understanding, I can't truly hate it.

I still don't hate the millions of people who loved this book, and I also don't hate the author. But I can't in good conscience agree that it was a good idea to do or a book well written at all. Sometimes we have to use our privilege not to tell the story of others, but to force an opening and have them tell their story themselves, from their perspective. Also, I hope he is donating at least a bit of the huge profit he made with sellings to organizations related to the cause he chose to speak about in the first place.

edit: I would like to say that after posting this I've seen more people talk about the problematic stuff online, and make better points in a clearer way than me. So this is just to say that this is definitely NOT a super hot take I had. There are a lot of people more qualified to talk about this subject than me. It's always nice to research different opinions!

★ ☆̸ ☆ ☆ ☆

[mikeellee]

Shigadeku vs shigadabi

Before I jump in to talk about ships let me say this. THIS IS NOT AN TATTACK AT ANY SHIGADABI OUT THERE. IF YOU SHIP IT, THAT’S OK

I want to start saying that YES I DO HATE HORI’S CANON but will have to use canon Dabi here.

Why shigadabi is so popular? Well, one can say is bc they are hot and around the same age and then call shigadeku the p*** ones.

But huh Dabi is older than Shiggy so...by this logic isn’t this ship also problematic?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Shigadeku is a ship interesting bc no one- AFO or the Dr or even Kuro- manipulated Shiggy to go after Zuzu.

I mentioned this before. Shiggy is groomed and brainwash to follow AFO’s plans but he went, out of his free will, to Zuzu.

And Zuzu listen to him. I know some will say “bru nothing on that was romantic” and I hear you....to us it wasnt? But to Shiggy we may not know.

He asked him out

“Duh he is being ironic”

Ok....why? He sought out Izu and asked him out, if that was just to talk shit about Stain....he could have catch anyone else.

On my first watch I legit thought they would interact more. Still think is dumb Shiggy dont recruit Zuzu or interact more with him.

But headed by Hori

“Well shiggy and Dabi spends more time together”

Ok. They spend, allegendly, more time together, but the first thing Dabi -who at the time is older- says when he sees Shiggy is...he is ugly.

Dabi never seem to care for LoV. People created this image that Dabi cares and he and Shiggy are in a love relationship but the truth is...Dabi doesnt care.

Look at the panels where ShiggyAFO is making our king suffer and Dabi is not giving a shit.

“He is putting a front. In the end, he loves shiggy and LoV”

Look at the whole Twice’s death and how his whole goal is to make Endeavour’s suffer

But ok. I will bite, say he does care deep down. He still refuses to help...

I say this bc I see so many fanarts where Dabi is this amazing BF material or how “both are legacy heroes...in a happy au they have been the power house”

But you know, in the shigadeku ideas of fics I HAVE TO ENDURE PEOPLE DUMB DOWN to serve the whole “Izu is a doll” trope.

Which....is funny bc Izu is much more BF material than Dabi.

“But shigadeku is bad..”

Aside having paralels and Zuzu wanting to save him? Dont think is bad.

“Shiggy tried to kill Zuzu”

Yeah and here comes my problem with Hori’s canon bc if we take this into account ...it also means deep down Shiggy wants to be saved by Zuzu.

Seems pretty romantic to me

“Duh they are bros. That would have been incest”

Hahahahahaha. First off, they arent brothers and if they were...many people ship incest in animes.

1)if we go to the DFO theory...shigadeku still isnt incest. Why? Bc Hisashi never raised Zuzu much less Zuzu and Shiggy.

2) if we dont go to the DFO theory...still not incest. The AFO and OFA are bros sure but Izu and Shiggy ARENT AFO AND OFA

Again, you can ship whatever you want but is odd people just going and labeling Izu and Shig bros when they have more potential for romance than any other ship.

[insert-some-nice-emo-pun]

this is about the lynz drama

i didnt wanna write this post

when this shit first started i told myself im not gonna say anything about it cause a)i hate drama in any form and b)no one cares about my opinion

but today i got so fed up with everything ive seen on twitter that here we are

im just gonna kind of explain what happened and share my opinion i guess? and feel free to share yours in the comments as long as you respect other people

so everything pretty much started when someone asked lynz about people accusing jimmy urine of sexual assault

(first of all why would they ask lynz?like i know theyre in the same band but still shes not responsible for his actions)

her responese mightve indeed seem strange, like she was defending herself tho nobody attacked her and it overall felt kinda off

then the whole argument started (most of the tweets are deleted now so its kinda hard to find out what exactly happened)

so first thing im gonna adress is how everyone seems to be "cancelling" her for saying you shouldnt believe victims, but what i understood after reading all of her tweets was that she said always believe victims unless you know theyre a manipulative liar and i think theres actually nothing wrong with saying this? please correct me if you think im wrong but i dont really find this problematic (the tweets are at the end of the post!)

i know that the first tweet, the only one that isnt deleted seems really off and she defo couldve answer better and you can critize her for this but i think she thought the person who asked her was reffering to smth jessicka said which kind of explains everything

jessicka has been saying messed up things about lynz for years, so i think we can understand why she reacted in this way

now why dont i believe anything jessicka says?

because she always talks how she has "a proof" that lynz said/did smth but she never actually shows that proof

even now, when lynz mentioned her in one of her tweets she responded yelling about the proof but didnt actually say anything new

one thing ive learned while being in different fandoms and stuff is never believe that someone said/did something unless you have a video of them doing so or they confirmed it on their offcial account on social media

if she really had the proof, why dont just show it to people?

now the second big thing that happened was the whole family thing

people have been talking about her family situation for years (im more of a new fan so i wasnt here back then so please correct me if i make a mistake here or anywhere in the post)

what we knew before is that she cut off her mother and sister - she didnt want to talk to them nor send them money

her sister claimed it was because they arent rich or famous

now scroll all the way down again to see the tweets

her mum and sis recorded a video responding to this

now this is totally subjective opinion of mine, but i got really bad impression from watching their vid and things they said later on twitter (search for amy greene on twitter, youll find everything there)

now you can believe me or not, but i have experience with this kind of family situations

my opinion on the subject is that when it comes to family problems no ones really innocent but sometimes things get so messed up that you shouldnt really judge people based on that

we basically get two sides of the story, and i believe that both of them probably got some things right, but im gonna stay on lynzs side

i 100% understand cutting off fanily memebrs, even as close as your mother and after watching this video i felt really sorry for lynz (again its just my opinion, but the things they both said about lynz reminded me so much of the situation from my family)

ive seen a lot of people bringing up that they said nice things about gerard, so they must be telling the truth because if they wanted fame theyd go after him instead or smth like this

i disagree with this opinion because its once again a behavior i know

noone said anything about gerard before

the whole thing was only about lynz

so why would they even bring him up?

well imo if their intentions were clear they wouldnt say anything about him at all, because what for?

if they said anything bad about about him all of the fans would attack them, get mad, and maybe not believe the rest of their story, so it was in their interest not to talk shit about him

but why did they say nice things? (ITS JUST MY OPINION PLEASE IM NOT SAYING I KNOW IT) 90% of people who would watch the video are mcr fans. and what is the best way to gain someones trust? be nice to them. say nice things about their idols, interests etc, its a known trick and its really manipulative. again i dont want to accuse them but it just seemed really off to me, and it also makes lynz look even worse, like if theyre trying to say that everyone here is nice and shes the only bad person around (yet again something i know really well)

so in my opinion they only talked about g to have mcr fans take their side and if its true its really manipulative but its just my opinion and i totally understand if you dont agree with me because i have no proof for this

i think this post is coming to an end so i want to say that i believe lynz is a good person

not a saint, not perfect, but not someone we should cancel or hate on

you have a right to dislike her, i understand and respect it, same with everything i said here - i accept that you disagree, you can write me a comment about it, just please dont spread hate

i hate going on twitter and seeing all of this drama

i havent been following her for a long time, i wouldnt even call myself her fan, but ive always seen her being really nice to fans on twitter and interacting with people a lot, well ive heard people talking about her being mean to fans in the past but i couldnt really find any concrete proof (video of that happening, im sorry but i really dont believe in posts from fan accounts from years ago)but im not saying it never happened, if you have a video feel free to send it to me

i doubt anybody read all of this, but thank you anyway

also here are the screenshots i could find

feel compeltely free to share your opinion in the comments, i sure will read it but im done with this whole drama

i just needed to get this off my chest after seeing all these people going crazy on twitter, im sorry if some parts dont make sense or have any kinds of mistakes, english isnt my first language and its also really late now

[justmikerrss]

to all the boys that will *never* love me:

Dear christian, stephen, mikio, oscar, royce, pat, manny, derrick, mars, gill, rex, max, kevin, and nick -- whether y’all were a crush or someone i saw myself being in a relationship with get ready bc i’m going IN. I’m gonna use this time to rank these catastrophes from level 1 to level 5. level 1 being a crush yenno not so bad or scarring, and level 5 being sad machine playing while the world is burning to pieces like bish you left a MARK on my heart. if you know me i think you know who that person is hahaha

*alexa, please play truth hurts by lizzo*

christian - level 1. lol let’s take a trip down memory lane to my first crush ever!! my gosh i remember being so kilig over this boy in elementary school at st. leander lol it was so obvious. hahaha. your spikey hair and like goofy ass smile i don’t know i was such a sucker for that. the first filipino boy i ever crushed on waow <3 but then I left st. leander and never spoke to you again. you went to o’dowd, i went to sjnd and that was it really. you went to sfsu i went to usf. idk how we ever found each other on insta, but it is so cute to see posts of you and jasmine haha a USF don as well!! the last “convo” (i wouldn’t even call it that) was when i commented on your graduation post and you commented back thanking me and saying congrats too. so happy that your trillest brand is killing it and you know nothing about me anymore but what a great time it was to know you were my first crush ever lol. thanks for this <3

stephen - level 1. lol i left st. leander and moved to sjes and was like ok, who am i gonna crush on now?? hello stephen, my first white boi lol. i knew fosho that you thought i was weird in elementary school like there is a particular time where in church i sat next to you and during the our father you did not want to hold my hand LMAO and that’s when i knew. i stood from afar. touched your thumb for heads up 7 up HAHAHA gosh you were so out of my league and such an asshole tbh. you and nick, forever making fun of me for liking mikio lmfao hate y’all forever. you went to lmu and that was history. lmao you were so mean to me. but all well. you were like not a good person i think i just liked you because of your looks? lol hahaha

mikio - level 2.5. oh my god the epitome of my boy problems in high school lmfao fuck you. jk. but high school mika wouldn’t take that back. oh myyyyy what a FLIRT were you. i had so many fantasies thinking we’d be together, we’d be m&m HAHAH BARF wow, and then you dated mel and it was just like??? then you were my escort but then i was like nope and switched you with ryann LOL suuuuper crazy like I don’t really remember the details of everything but i knew in high school being so kawawa over not being noticed by you. but then you went to davis, slo, and now in sl?? idk where you are now but you had my heart back then (barf) but that was such a long time ago that honestly it doesn’t phase me anymore!! a feeling high school mika wouldn’t have thought was possible. so thank you. i liked you because you gave me little glimmers of hope of like maybe we could be together -- you were nice, flirtatious, close to your family... not afraid to make a fool of yourself for the one you’re interested in. which wasn’t me but again that’s okay! I wrote a letter to you didn’t i? idk what i was doing why was i so dramatic tbh. you did things that honestly weren’t in my control so i can’t hate you really. again realizing that you fit my type so it just, idk

oscar -- level 1. when mikio was being a butt i knew i could crush on you. LOL the hugs, the convos, being able to laugh at anything when you were in the room what a time SJND was when you were there. now you’re in boston with your boo and i’m still really regretful over not being able to see you when i was in boston last year but it’s okay. happy that you’re happy out there :-)

royce and pat -- level 1.5. ah. USF college times man. these two were literally a duo. RA’s of the 4th floor (share yall are silly for assigning that haha) and damn, what a trip it was to crush on you. royce you were a dj so thats how i knew my thing for dj’s came. you both did your jobs at ra’s, pat you were on eboard so i saw your hustle there which i super appreciated. and this is also how i knew filipinos were my type? lol. EVEN THO YALL WERE LIKE WITH BOOS lol i am cursed but yall had hustle, swagger, passion for what you love, and still made time for partying it up and studying. and now i see royce at parties sometimes n i would awk hug him (rip at the phoenix hotel party) and i havent seen pat since he graduated but hes so happy with becca!! so cute. and its cute (and weird) how kierst is happy with royce.

****DJ SPARKY/AGANA/YURI -- level 1. yall are dj’s who i will always cringe at bc of how naive i was at shooting my shot... BUT IM GLAD YOU ALL ARE THRIVING OK LETS DISMISS THOSE BOIZ NOW 

manny -- level 2.5. ahhhhh manny manny manny. my first trip towards using dating apps and matching with someone on TINDER!!! LOL!!!! ok anywho i met up with you for a few times and it was just like... a lot of question marks bc i didn’t really know where my standards were when it came to online dating. we went on dates? but the first time i paid, and the second time you “forgot your card” so i paid again?? and then you walked me to my dorm and kissed me on the forehead?? red alert!! then you kept wanting like a second chance, to prove me wrong and i kept ignoring you bc wtf lmao... then i was foolish to let you into my life again and realized that was a mistake and blocked you again. and now you’re like a bonafide dj living your edm dreams. i saw you at audio TWICE omg rip. i liked you because lol ur filipino, a dj, buttered me up a whole ton which again problematic bc i didn’t see any of it within myself... but its okay mika is better now. better to not be talking to you. but thank you for being my stepping stone into dating apps.

derrick -- level 1. omg at times i forget about you! which i don’t know is a good or bad thing but i don’t think i ever told anyone about you lol. we met on okc, this filipino boi (lol a trend) andddd i went on like two dates with him? one, i met up with him at that one coffee spot near golden gate park. then we walked over to ggp and we just talked and thinking about it now it was very ideal for me to be myself fully, in public if that makes sense. you were so nice and genuine omg. we went to sweet maple the second time around and you paid for the food which was like wow!! diff than manny!! and i remember talking to you about kh and you loving it as much as me. but i got scared because you were like 26 or somn? i was still 20 i think and i was like this dude might be asking a lot out of me...so i told him the “this is on me i don’t feel ready and not sure how i feel” spiel. and that was history. i honestly don’t know what he is doing now but he was really nice. i felt no malicious intentions from me, i just wasn’t ready to move forward w him. the first nice guy i ever let down bruh. ugh.i hope you’re doing well now though.  

mars -- LEVEL 5. fuck me i hate this chapter SO MUCH lmao. so many drunk cries and just cries in general post this whole... like chapter. but lets start off with why i liked you: handsome as hell, close to your family, athletic, hustled, SO MF KIND EVEN WHEN I WAS BEING CRAZY, a great homie and bf quality, gave me the false hope of like “yeah ill see if i can come through” “ill let you know when i listen to this” the forever ILL LET YOU KNOWS but still views my stories and still doesn’t let me know mentality.... you never initiated any of our convos. i was STRAIGHT pursuing you even though i didn’t believe that you’d change your mind about just seeing me as a friend. you made that clear to me from the start but i didn’t take that as an answer LOL which is why i was so crazy to keep hanging out with you... even tho you were super busy and i felt like a burden you STILL made time with me, whether that was peruvian food, or thursday nightlife followed by dancing at a bar together (which i ruined when you took me home and asked you about your love language lmao), souvla, and then our final time of seeing each other: san tung and tpumps. what a fucking few months that was...only to come out of it with another girlfriend with the same name as me. LIKE WHAT. ARE. THE. ODDS. i still can’t believe it till this day. my gosh you were so nice to me mars. such a great homie. and i wasnt empathetic or smart enough to make diff decisions to retain what we had...but im happy that you’re happy with mika. other mika. yeah. man i never felt so in the dark when going through this time, this was so rough. i wasn’t eating, i’d cry in bed for days, it was so bad. i’d like to say that I’m healed from that though. lol to burning the shirt which honestly i should have kept bc it was a cute shirt.. but yeah. thank you.

gill -- level 1. lol you were dumb to think i was attractive enough to dance with at the soulection event. we exchange numbers and i think because i told you i was 21, you backed off. lol guess i was a fetus then. still am. lmao. we text for a bit but then i find out you tried to get into arcilla’s pants?? lMAO. oh and then i see you at that pool party, saw you talking to other girls and i broke DOWN bc i was crossed as hell LOL sorry ate kayla that you had to take me home that day LOL ugh i hate myself for that night. and then i see you right in front of me at OSL. in 2019?? for childish?? that was such weird weird fate. thank god you didn’t recognize me (i had long black hair there, you remembered me with short brown hair plus it was dark). i just thought it was crazy. uhm you had the fuckboy vibe and look on point.. knew everything about soulection. family oriented. but it just fizzled bc i blocked you and then just stopped talking to you lol.

*****chris l/frankie -- level 1. again i cringe at how dramatic i pursued yall sorta as crushes but for sure bc yall were soulcycle and about fitness YES bodies 10/10 and you understood soul. but omg chris pls get ur life together (which is what it seems like ur doing??) and frankie well you’ve been having your life together being married and all so0o0o0 im trash for crushing lmao BUT IM GLAD THATS ALL IN THE PAST AND THAT WE’VE FORGOTTEN i think lmao

rex -- level 0.5. lmfao you were dumb you’re gonna keep looking at me and emily only for me to make the move in letting you know i was interested, follow you on ig, and then you block me?? weirdo. bye.

MY HINGE BOYS </3 

Max -- level 3. oh maximus lmao. we talked for a whole month and what a pleasure it was to text you every day, receive and send memes, curate playlists, be w/ each other at different events... only for it to end after we netflix party/facetime where i don’t feel the kilig i’d feel when texting you. so i told you i wanted to be friends. and then i try to still reach out and be friends, but i got delayed responses to no responses. and now you just, look at my stories? lmao i know it don’t mean shit to look and you recently liked my post, but i feel like i invested a lot into our quarantine reality. you had GREAT music taste (even tho ur playlist was a lil questionable), for all i know you were just telling me things to like get you on my good side, motivated, privileged......... yeah. i hope you find your 5′0 qt rave queen that can go to events with u

KEVIN -- level 1. lmfao honestly you SUCK hahaha even with the benefit of the doubt, it does not take 10 hours to reply...even if you are busy at work NICK AND MAX WERE ABLE TO!!! you were spotty to begin with but then we netflix party and then you dont talk to me anymore after i ask if we could exchange music playlists? i didnt even ask u to be my boyfriend its a fucking playlist.... we talked about music so much. ugh BOYS ARE SO DUMB LIKE SERIOUSLY. hope amazon treats ya right

NICK -- level 4. ugh. ughguhgughgh. i liked you because your profile/resume was all my criteria: music taste A1 bc of bryson, i hated mint chip, i loved spongebob (even tho you NEVER sent me spongebob memes fuck u), you were hapa (he he but fuck u) (i laugh while typing this i am so dum), uhm. yeah. we talked everyday consistently for two weeks. you were such a joy to text bc you were funny (i was funny too), even tho it was hard to keep the convo going w you at times in the beginning because you never inquired about me at times. max did. its like you were better than mars, but not like A+ in replying like max was. you never really flirted with me? lmao i mean even those attempts of me tryna bait you, i always got... friend vibes. benefit of the doubt maybe you just didn’t know how to flirt but you had posts of your past relationship up on your feed so you cant tell me that that exp did not have you pursue a girl and flirt her up. to me, there was no initiative from you. i was chasing you for sure. this dating life is a two way street -- life doesn’t work where one pursues you only otherwise like no. bet if i went the fuckboi approach, gave you lame responds would you have kept the convo going? prolly not bc ur a cancer and want to feel needed. the only thing ill commend you on is when you’d apologize for delays in text messages but then you kinda stopped that. like understand i should also feel like i should be pursued and never did i feel that i felt like you just responded just to respond... like you’re a cancer its in your nature to dive deep and ask deep questions but you never did, you were the type to play video games with your pals LMAO and like/????/? me understanding gamer life i was like YES this boy gets me but like CMON. lol so many things. ok maybe i am reading too into this but this is the freshest heartache :/ you never like told me i was cute or anything like... max made remarks about my looks and you never did. i mean cool maybe you were just vibing off my energy but i just now question if you were actually interested in me? bc i was trying so hard to make you like me. every meme, was a move. you didnt play your cards right!! its like i kept hitting you with plus fours, and then all you’d put down is the same color number card. where was the fun in that? it was super effortless but anxiety filling for me at the same time bc i was convinced that you were the one. :’/ super good news to hear that you wanted to meet virtually literally NO EXPECTATIONS but then monday rolls around, you dont text me the whole day, i check in at 530, you tell me you go to costco instead and want to reschedule bc you thought i was ghosting you????? wtf did u just like expect me to just call u right at 7 and expect u to be ready?? max texted me after work and was like “we still on right?” so i was high key expecting that from you bc 1. show interest and 2. take initiative but you DIDN’T!! so i was honest in telling you how i felt but kept it light and asked to reschedule. you take forever to reply, but when you do you tell me it was silly OF ME to think you were supposed to confirm it which i get i initiated it i shoulda texted you earlier (but what if i had the worst day ever and couldn’t text you??? would you have just let it be and not text me anymore bc you assumed i ghosted you???) you also said that you thought maybe it was too quick to assume that i ghosted you which is YES tru. however i was not going to apologize for not texting you earlier and waiting for you to reply bc boy, that was on you to make a move to double check. if i was in your shoes i woulda texted. that would indicate to me that oh wow this boy is making sure we are meeting and confirming! even drop a hey hows your day you excited for tonight? i made it obvious to hype you up on your photos and everything, you just were like wow your photos are so good! wow i hope you posted that picture! like idk. i kept it light bc i still really wanted to meet you, and just wanted to attribute this small ass thing as a misunderstanding between the two of us but after long hours of making me wait, you decide you don’t want to reschedule because you were unsure of how you were feeling and that you couldn't put your all in and said sorry. no sentiment towards wanting to be friends just a straight goodbye which basically meant, in harsher terms im prolly not as down as you are for me and maybe i am nervous to meet u (idk ill never know if you were) anddd im not interested anymore bc you’re crazy and ME being the womyn that i am ended up being the mature one and said the goodbye hope you have a good life without me text and then our lovestory ended lololol what a great two weeks am i right? honestly maybe you still need to do some growing buddy but relationships are not easy going they are a two way street but also ill never know maybe you were just texting me just to text me and you still wanted to be the nice guy bc you were scared of how invested things would be post call so you call it off and it was just in the moment for you to be down but then have it change on another day.... i woke up in a better headpsace today about how this turned out but like god fucking dammit i had high hopes for you you infj CANCER. *squidward voice* so thanks. thanks for NOTHING (this is when you start your spongebob dialogue of all how to get everyone on board for practicing for the bubble bowl and sing sweet victory)

so, the end LOL basically. to all the boys who will never love me, ultimately thank you for being a part of my life. thank you srsly. thank you for making me exp the pain, the kilig, the uh everything. growing pains these are, but at the end of the day, i hope you have a good life. whether or not we cross paths again this gives me clarity as to what i’m looking for and what i deserve. this goalgetting, resilient, funny, hardworking, awkward but in the best way pinay is a force to be reckoned with!!! she has the best support system out there!!! she has so much to live for because she is determined to not let down anyone counting on her!!!! so fuck u for missing out on that!!!

k. my ideal man list is coming soon. until then... see ya later.

xoxo,

Mika (allison to some)

[someguy1023]

Nobody’s gonna care about this, but maybe someone will

i think it’ll help convey why im so stuck on this, and why i seem to be focusing more on Holly and, according to messages i kept getting, “white knighting” for her. I’m not gonna justify Holly’s behavior. thats not what this is about. I just want this off my chest.

(im gonna regret this)

also, just to preemptively defend myself, i know how cheesy all this is gonna sound. But its the truth.

so. i guess i should preface this by explaining when I first heard about Holly. Maybe it’ll help this make sense in context. Maybe not. I don’t know but it doesnt hurt to try.

I didn’t actually learn about Holly through the internet like i assume most others did. I actually first found her through TV. More specifically, through that Heroes of Cosplay show SciFi has produced a few years back. I enjoyed it, but found myself mainly enjoying the work Holly and Jessica did while on the show. They were my favorite team, and I always tried to watch whenever they were in an episode. After a while though, I, like a lot of others apparently, got bored and moved on, and eventually forgot about Holly.

It was a few years later that I would find her again. This time, like many others, through Grumps. More specifically, through Ross and Steam Train. I was surprised when it turns out that one of my favorite members of GG was also married to one of my favorite people on HoC. Small world. I stayed a more casual fan, watching the occasional playthrough or crafting episode on her channel. I was more of a fan of GG and Ross, so I tended to watch more of his stuff than hers, but I still made sure to keep watching her stuff. It wasn’t anything major, she just made me smile.

A few years later, it meant something more to me.

In 2016, my father died. Normally, that wouldn’t be such a big deal for something like this. It was everything leading up to his death that was the problem. I always had a very “problematic” relationship with my father. He was abusive towards me when I was younger, lashing out at me for really minor problems. (for example, one time he had lifted me up in the air by my throat and began strangling me when I was ~6. Why? Because I had used some money our neighbor gave me for cleaning up his lawn to buy a popsicle from an ice cream truck, ate half of it, then put the other half in the fridge. He found it, got mad at me, and then began to yell at me. I had a nervous tic when I was younger where I giggled uncontrollably when I was scared. Sure enough, I began to giggle and could stop it, and then he, enraged, lifted me up. I realize years later he was probably drunk, considering he smelled really weird. It isnt a good memory.) He eventually left my mom and I when I was almost 7, moving down to Alabama with this lady he met in a bar, and proceeded to do pretty much every major drug imaginable. I didn’t see/hear from him again until a few years later at his mother’s funeral. He seemed remorseful for what he did to me, and a year or two later, moved in with his cousin back in the state I was living in at the time. I began visiting him when I was 13, and he seemed to be better. He apologized to me for what he did, he tried to be a good dad, and I believed him. That was my first mistake.

Flash forward to January 3rd, 2016. I was visiting him for the weekend after staying at my cousin’s, and was sorting through my things to make sure i didnt forget anything. We had visited one of his friends to get something he borrowed (according to him) then got back to his house. He was sitting on the couch, watching TV, and I thought he fell asleep. I noticed he had a cigarette in his mouth he was going to light before he passed out, so I went over to put it aside. I figured out he wasn’t sleeping. It turns out, he was overdosing, and what I thought was snoring was his throat closed shut and the air escaping his lungs. He was dying. I told his wife (at the time) what what happening, she called 911, and I went upstairs to hide in my bedroom. A lil while later, the ambulance came by, and the paramedics gave him whatever that stuff is they give addicts who OD. (At the time, I didnt know what was going on. He had really bad lungs, and I thought they were shutting down or something. I was told it was from him overdosing later that night.) He woke up, and they drove him to the hospital to make sure he was okay. I went back to my moms house, and stayed there. That was the last time I saw him alive

As it turns out, my dad had been using me for over 2 or 3 years. He was not only stealing money from me under the pretense of helping him with driving for over an hour to pick up/drop me off from my moms place to visit, but had also been heavily manipulating me for years in order to control me. He had tried to turn me against my mother and her side of the family, claiming she had used me to verbally abuse and control him when they were married, telling me lies in order to keep me under his thumb. (like how she threatened to abort me if he didnt marry her after knocking her up, or how she had him steal from his sister during her wedding, etc.) I began to despise my mother, arguing with her constantly, and, on his insistence, never told her anything about what he was doing or what he told me. It wasnt until after that day that I learned it was all lies.

I was devastated. I felt hurt, used, and betrayed. (I realize now...its because I actually was.) I was a wreck. It didnt help that 4 months later...he died. Needless to say, it was a very, very tough grieving period. I locked myself away in my room, unable to summon the energy to even get up in the morning. I had suffered from mild depression prior to this, but it was much worse. I couldn’t find a way to get through this, suffering for months, and eventually, began to think about suicide.

Thats where Holly came back in.

Besided the playthroughs helping cheer me up a lil whenever I put them on, it was her advice that really began my path to healing. Her kind words and support to others began to help me sort through the baggage I had been dealing with about my dad. I began to follow her advice on how to deal with my depression, and began to slowly ull myself back from the edge, and, over time, began to pull myself back up. Eventually, with her help, I began to attend regular therapy sessions, and managed to fully come to terms with what my father had done to me, as well as properly manage both my depression and anxiety problems. I honestly don’t know where I’d be right now if it wasn’t for Holly. She helped keep me going when I really needed it. She, for lack of a better expression, helped save my life. I’ll always be grateful to her for that...despite all of this. Ever since then, whenever I felt my depression weighing me down, or felt my anxiety creep back up on me, I could rely on her to help keep me grounded.

When all this happened, I couldnt help but notice I felt the same way as I did all those years ago. Despite the fact that its just some random lady on the internet, and shouldnt have mattered as much as it did...it still hurt on a personal level. The worst part of this whole thing? I can’t go back to the thing that helped me out whenever I felt this way. Not without being reminded everywhere I go of how everyone thinks of her.

So...maybe thats why I’m doing all this. Not just to stop people from spreading hate and rumors based on speculation...but because part of me cant/doesnt want to believe one of the people I relied on and put trust in could be the bad guy. Because part of me just refuses to let go or lose someone who meant so much to me. Because part of me wants to believe that things will get better...even if I know they wont.

If you read through this, thank you. Maybe someone out there feels the same way I do. Maybe, if they dont, someone can understand. Its been a rough month for me. I just hope things will look up somehow. I dont know if I’m gonna come back to this. Im realizing it probably isnt healthy. The only thing I have left to say, then, if I dont come back; please, try to spread good. I know this is the internet, and even worse, tumblr...but i think people need some light nowadays. and constantly spreading hate and cruelty...that wont help anyone. I know nothing i say matters, that nothing i’ve done has changed any minds. but even if you cant trust Holly anymore, or dont believe anything she says...at least believe in one of her beliefs. That kindness is the greatest thing to spread to others, and the world can sure use a lot more of it.

Good night.

[go-diane-winchester]

If you don't like Misha, this post might make you smirk.

I did this post yesterday and then deleted it because the OP made me feel sorry for her.  Luckily for me, someone reblogged it and my momentary stupidity is now remedied.  This whole scenario makes me smirk. 

Yesterday's post:

Doll face found @dean-supernatural-akf ranting in the main tags, including the Jensen tag, which is why she forwarded this biased drivel to me.  Thanks sweetie.  I scrolled though OPs blog, trying to figure this person out, because she ships wincest and destiel, apparently.  And she hates the haters.  It is convenient and dismissive to label those who don’t agree with you, don’t you think?  Label them rather than proving them wrong conclusively, because that would be difficult and you might lose the argument because of a lack of intelligence.  So call them names and be done with it.  Her rant is in italics, and my rebuttal in bold.

Rude and Missunderstood.

I CAN LIKE MISHA COLLINS AS AN HUMAN AND ACTOR WITHOUT BEING ONE OF HIS MINIONS.

Shocking right?

Here have a seat and lean back.

Very recently i got heavily missunderstood, and i’m making this post so it won’t happen again.

I asked someone if their blog is real . Because it was so full of hate against this actor named Misha Collins.

This guy right here, and I bet when you are one of the anti misha people then you even share the same look on your face right now, congrats.

Listen… I love JENSEN and i love JARED. And yes i love MISHA too.

But i don’t follow him around like a dog, i don’t kiss the ground where hes walking on.

AND i also don’t do this with J2.

Why is it that when there is an entire blog dedicated to hate for Jensen or Jared, there is no bleeding heart rant like this about that blogger?  But if you write a blog about all the mean things Misha and his fans do, you are a “horrible human being” with “toxicity and hate in your heart”.  No, I would prefer to call it discernment.  I wont like someone just because “it SPNFamily darn it, haters don’t belong”.  So if Misha gives me consistent reasons to hate him, I am still not allowed to hate him because I will be ejected from SPNFamily?  What is this?  A communist fanbase?  Nobody is allowed to have their own opinions?  Everybody must think the same way and feel the same fairytale happy feelings?  Which dandelion world did you pop up from?

I fight for all of them, i fight against the hate that all of those three get and Misha gets more hate then J2 and thats a fact.

Misha gets more hate?  Really?  You mean like death threats?  Like people tweeting him directly that they wish he was dead?  That kind of hate?  Please, show me where the hate is.  Bring me your receipts.  I want to see all the hate that Misha gets. 

And it’s so fucking unfair, i have seen blogs and people that wish that he would die, a man with two children and wife.

This is so sick and it’s so not okay.

Prove it.  Screenshot and show me where all these horrible people are.  I will put it in a post.  I always do.  The death threats and death wishes for J2 have been screenshotted and are on my blog.  So I have proof for my claims.  Bring the proof for your claims.  Its called making mature statements.  Quantifying your claims.  So please, set me straight.  Show me all the nastiness poor Misha gets.  I would like to see it. 

About the Misha minions, MISHA ISNT THE ONLY ONE WITH MINIONS.

Shocking again, right ?

From under which rock did you emerge?  Misha named his fans minions.  Very disrespectful.  No other actor has ’‘minions’’.  Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t like his fans referring to themselves as Cumberb*tches.  I respect him for that.  Misha did the opposite.   Shocking, right?

The people who only love J2 hate on Misha. And the people who love all of them hate back against the anti Misha people.

That is an incredibly simplistic way of putting it.  And it gives me the impression that this rant was written by someone who is young and idealistic in their notion of how the world works.  How come you don’t talk about the people who like Jensen and Misha and therefore hate Jared?  You cant.  You cant because that would be problematic to the narrative you are vomiting right now.  Those cockles perverts are the ones that tweet him, telling him that that they cant wait for him to die.  Receipts on my blog. 

The way you support J2 is the same way that Misha’s people support him.

Actually no, J2 fans don’t get angry when Misha is interviewed for Elle magazine, yelling “where’s J2”.  They don’t ask “Whose line is it,anyway?” why they excluded J2.  They don’t threaten to burn Misha alive in his house for being anti-destiel and/or making a joke about Jensen.  That happened with Jensen.  I have the receipts.  The same group were discussing kidnapping Jared’s kids.  That group was made up of 3500 people.  So many haters slipped up your radar?  Well, now you know. 

Minions and bitchy people are EVERYWHERE.

It is such a useless fight, don’t like someone?

THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.

Yeah, take a page out of your own book.  If you don’t like the “haters”, as you dismissively call them, then don’t put this incorrect, unsubstantiated, unquantifiable rant in the main tags.  In fact, keep your uninformed opinion to yourself. 

What you do when you hate someone so badly and make a whole tumblr Blog about it then you are not better as those highschool bullies.

Dealing with the entire subject of hate, in the most abstract manner, without any analysis into your darling actor’s bad behavior and without taking into account the nasty behavior of his fandom, shows that high school is all you know.  Hopefully, one day you will grow up and think on broader terms. 

Cyberbullying is a serious subject, and thats exactly what you do with Hate Blogs and Hate tweets and Hate comments.

Keep using the word “hate”.  It will abrogate all the legitimate anger that the J2 fans have against Misha and his hellerminions.  Hellers are the biggest cyberbullies in fandom.  They sent hate directly to J2.  Some of the things they write will shock a person who has a real disdain to hate, not a daffodil like you who thinks Misha is infallible and doesn’t deserve an anti tag.  One said that she couldn’t wait for Jared to die.  And she tweeted that directly to Jared, along with a praying emoji.  Oh, you don’t know about that?  Well, then I guess you are not an authority on who is SPNFamily and who is not, now are you? 

You want to be a bully ? You love spreading hate ?

THEN JUST FUCKING BLOCK ME AND DON’T REPLY TO THIS.

Don’t reply to this?  Then why put it in the main tags, as well as inappropriate tags, and still hope that nobody disagree with you.  Aren’t we childish? 

What happened after the post was put up:

She DM's me and says that she has since changed her mind because she did another post about the hate that J2 get, and if I could please remove my post, because she was suffering panic attacks over it.  I said I would, but she is going to remove the above misleading post and provide me with proof that Misha gets death threats.  Caught between a rock and a hard place, she said that she came across the death threats on two blogs, that had blocked her for some mysterious reason, which is why she couldn't screenshot the evidence.  I found what those reasons were, when I went to those blogs: 

@castiel-needs-2-go

@destiew-must-go

I searched through their blogs, and found nothing.  No death threats.  They just point out the truth about Misha.  That is it.  She accused them for nothing.  Of course, that didn't occur to me until today, because I still felt concerned for her because the poor kid was suffering panic attacks.  So I deleted the post.  Today I find this message from her:

''So i asked like 10 different people Misha stans and Misha haters about those things you said he did. Nobody has ever heard of it, no one. You are telling your lies man, i aint stopping ya. But you are a horrible person if you need to attack a 19 year old on the Internet and 'Call me out' just because it gives you a kick. And just because you disagreed. My post will stay deleted because it wasnt up to Date anymore, but it wont be my last one. People like you need to be stopped, people like you are the reason why this fandom sucks so hard. Bye Bye. You are the sick one here .''

The weird thing is she attached this gif:

I don't know whether she thought it was going to hurt my feelings or something but, it actually helps to show her true identity.  She is not a wincest fan.  She is a Sam-hating heller in disguise.  Who would have thunk it? 

[alicezan-ncgred]

Bleeding Red

Preface: I’ve been bitching around the bush of this long enough. So, I’ve been really silent on a bunch of stuff that’s been eating me alive which has made me both inactive and unproductive. I’m going to get straight to the point, starting off with the TL:DR from my post on my main blog. Context: An anon asked me if I was alright because I hadn’t updated in a while.

TL:DR You probably didn’t ask this to hear about all the bad shit of my life so here’s the short of it. No, I’m not doing fine. I will try get next weeks post out on time and I’ll work on making up on the lost posts. Updates will return regularly, ‘ite.

Time for the thick and thin of it.

Insecurity and being shafted: I’m stoic, even at my worst I won’t say anything. I’ll push through regardless of my current condition and since I’ve gone years like this, it’s not hard for me to do. In my real life situation, I’m currently in a place of social isolation. This has lead to a somewhat near reliance on Tumblr to be my social outlet. This present many issues.

The main one is that I’m quite the isolationist. This has only been reinforced by many interactions throughout the entirely of my life. Because of this, I can’t say I’ve ever had anything really more than two friends at a time. While in a way this has helped me express myself so well through writing, it’s come at the cost of social skill. I don’t talk to anyone.

With this kind of issue you could easily imagine that the THREE PEOPLE (four now, but very limited) to ever directly talk ended up in a way shafting me. The first blocked and disconnected with me without warning or reason. At this point we’ve been talking to each for about a month and we hit it off very well and then one day, silence. Never heard from them again. That fucked me up hard when I finally realized what happened.

The second person left during the Tumblr P**n Purge. We were talking about how to contact each other on other platforms and then they stopped responding. I had already given contact to other platforms of which they pinged me in any way. Another person that I trusted massively on here just abandoned me and I’m still hurting from that. Wasn’t fair at all.

Then the third person was someone that I been following for a while. This person is actually the reason that I’ve been putting this off for so long. I don’t want them to see this post but they will. I got an ask from them that ultimately turned out to be misinformation. I said I wasn’t mad but I was. I was so fucking angry about it and I’m still kinda mad, but I didn’t want problems. I still don’t. I just didn’t want them to worry about it. This will come back later.

I try my best to be as inoffensive as possible. The problem with that is that much of the things I believe or enjoy are highly divisive. Hell, even my own identity can be seen as offence. I’m bisexual, non-binary (I’m currently still questioning this. I might actually be gender fluid but in the overall scheme, that’s worse than being non-binary), and nonreligious. I’m in a very religious area so you I’m still “in the closet” about much of this IRL. I though it would better online but with how much people are saying bisexuality doesn’t exist, or that non-binary isn’t a valid gender (or that being gender fluid make you insane and you should be locked up) and all the hate people who say they are this are getting, the very community that’s supposed to accept me, HATES me. I had a bi pride flag icon last year during Pride Month. I never doing that ever again. It was terrible.

I’m trying my best to come out of my shell like I said I would when I made this blog but it seems I’m just crawling further into it. People I think I can trust keep setting me up to fall, people I know in real life won’t ever accept my existence if they knew who I really was, and my own mental health problem and self loathing are eating me alive. But that isn’t the total of it.

Crumbling Pillar: I’ve always ended up in the position where things were thrown onto me. In which no one wanted to do, I was stuck with. Because of this not only do I have a severe distaste being around my family (beyond everything mentioned before hand) but I grew to have a negative out look on everything. This effect is still quite obvious in my writings, especially my poems. Out of the 14 poems on my poem blog @washed-soul​, only one has a happy meaning.

The one happy poem was called dreams. Under a metaphor it talks about how a demon kept me trapped in a dark space. I start to get better and nearly break free before I have a negative relapse back to my old ways. The poems ends with the demon putting a end to itself leaving the nightmare in which it was keeping me in to slowly fade away, letting one crack of light peeking through to become a window to a door until one day I walk free. When writing this poem, I never thought I would find myself rebuilding the nightmare but that’s where I am.

I’m done with holding things together that other people have placed onto me. Because of this, issues have began showing in my private life. Issues that should’ve been solved decades ago are only now being addressed. This change in the status quo of my life has caused many issues in my productive and mood. Between everything else I’m too tired to do anything.

Is that a reason, is that an excuse. No it isn’t but it’s the best thing I got as a reason. I’m doing my damnedest to do the best I can but of course, when it comes to the thing that matter I just fall short. Big fucking whopha my intelligence and capability does me if I can’t use it for anything that means a damn.

Meaningless Triviality: I’m a very emotional person. I’m very strongly bound to my emotions and if everything above hasn’t given it away, my emotions are very negative prone. But it just doesn’t stop there, it goes back into my memories. I can only honestly place 3 happy memories for certain that aren’t either A) a dream or B) me escaping reality through my mind. Besides that, almost all my memories are negative. 

People like to throw around the word Nihilist to describe themselves because today's culture is very, god while I hate to use this word, edgy. For those who don’t know a Nihilist is someone who views the world as being completely  meaningless and reject all religious and moral principles. I very truly struggle with this outlook of life. It’s a daily for me to berate myself saying “just kill yourself” or “I want to die” or just shutting down and crumpling up while say “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again. Hell, I did that while writing this. 

I take things very hard, even the slightest transgression. I’m so used to trying to make things perfect and because people have the image that I’m the smart one, the mature one, the capable one, I’m left with the over hanging expectation of excellence. Almost no room for margin of error or being human. Since I’m the silent type, I put up no challenge and work to meet it. Only time I get any praise for anything too. 

I guess as a little self promotion to my main blog, for those that have read the very first few updates of my main blog @the-truth-behind-redacted, or read Defiance’s character sheet, while The Machine and Defiance are separate character, they both share the name Machine. That in part is a reflect of said above expectation. How ravenous and inhuman it can be all under the guise of something human. Those characters are the two sides to the same coin. 

Remember how I said I try to be un-problematical and how I try to avoid any potential conflict. In the first segment I told on how I lied about my feelings just so another person didn’t have to worry over something that honestly, in hindsight, wasn’t even really a big deal. But I also said how it consumed me in anger. I just don’t want to bother anyone over anything. It’s part of the reason why I am writing this post, as some way of a self enforced rehab program to get better. 

This absolute consumption of negative emotion has pushed me into a non human state before. I hit a point of absolute mental exhaustion and in such a self enforced bubble of actual hatred I became completely apathetic. I felt numb to everything. I watched and heard of terrible things happening to people, and felt nothing. I watched people lives crumble before them leaving them nowhere to go and LAUGHED. “Just another worthless pathetic worm on this rotting carcass of a planet being hit with the hard reality that life doesn’t care for them. What whimsical pathetic bullshit they deluded themselves with to think otherwise.” This isn’t an exaggeration on how I thought, this is what I actually thought. Which brings me too.

The Mandatory Sob Story: Roll your eyes everyone and get the tiny violin. I guess in order for everyone to exactly understand the place I’m coming from when it comes to mental health I’ll have to detail my experiences. I have a long standing history with mental illness. I have professionally diagnosed OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, and visual and auditory hallucinations. I take 600 mg of Seroquel a day as well as Amitriptyline when needed. I’m also still currently in therapy to deal with said OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, the visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as Suicidal thoughts, and my Nihilism. There’s a reason to why I’m so god damn familiar with mental illness and treatment plans.  

OCD and Bipolarism run in my family on my fathers side. My Father’s Father had them, my Sister has them, my brother most likely has them (however he refuses to see a doctor because he uses said possible mental illnesses as a get out of jail free card. He doesn’t want to be treated and he has FUCKING ADMITTED IT), my father has them, and I have them. I, however, have the misfortune of having it real bad. I said yes to well over half of all the total symptoms when I was being tested (I don’t remember exact numbers but I remember there being three pages worth of common symptoms) which was very worrying to the doctor. I was currently in an inpatient hospitalization program at the time for both suicidal thoughts and actions, and severe depression. 

On that, my graze in with suicide. Before I went into my first inpatient program I was contemplating suicide. I was sat in front of a mirror with a bottle of over the counter medication. It was an unopened bottle of ibuprofen, 1000 200mg tables. What I planed to do was down the whole bottle with benadryl and die in my sleep. I had the small box of benadryl got from the Kroger pharmacy and a hand full of ibuprofen poured out looking directly into the mirror. My suicide note was sitting on the desk on my room with an online copy on my laptop open.

I sat there for an hour in the dead of midnight complicating my life. I had lost all hope in the world, filled with hatred, anger, pain, and despair. I had no god or after life to look forward too, part way hoping that a Hell existed for me to burn in. I hated myself that much. I was close to taking the first handful before before I caught a glimpse of my own eyes in the mirror. In what was in a weird sudden epiphany I realized that I truly did become what I hated but not for any reason I told myself. I became the very bastion of negativity I sought to fight and rid of in what little friends I did have. That was what set off my path to recovery in spite of the medical system. I guess if people care I’ll make a separate post on that. 

Before I move on, I feel I should explain my history with the visual and auditory hallucinations. It should be no surprise that with everything else above, I also had extreme paranoia that led to me having very bad insomnia. Insomnia is, just like most other medical disorders like Depression, Self-harm, Anxiety, OCD,  Bipolarism, is romanticized to hell. Insomnia isn’t having one nights bad sleep where you got 5 hours of sleep instead of 8.

You know what Insomnia is? insomnia is being physical incapable of sleeping despite not sleeping in 2 to 3 day while your body suffers massive agony brought on by this. Muscle spasms and seizing, difficulty breathing, your eyes feeling like fire ants are eating them, and of course visual and auditory hallucinations. Now I already had issues with visual and auditory hallucinations even when I could get sleep regularly but the combined effects of my OCD and Bipolarism made this perfect condition of Insomnia, Anxiety, Paranoia, with the already added in disposition to hallucinations and I felt like I was actually losing my mind. 

My hallucinations presented themselves in three forms. Disassociation of reality, night terrors, or alterations of reality. Disassociation of reality often were complete black out moments. I would lose any perceived connect to reality and enter an episode of my mind. I can’t remember what they actually were but I do remember what it felt like. Cold sweats, anxiety to point where if I didn’t lock up I would vomit, actual physical pain, mind numbing fear, and intense fatigue. 

The second were night terrors often in the form of horrific “things.” I do remember these and most of them were as best as I could describe, forms of things that were vaguely human and formations of industrial machinery. The most vivid one I remember was of a long lengthy apparition that was for the most part human but many locations of it’s impossible physiology were rebar beams and mechanical sockets. It began when I was about to fall asleep and it was next to my window. The thing was making week groaning and gasping sounds before it violently slammed against my window breaking it then letting out a horrific howl that I can’t describe as it tossed itself out followed shorty after with the sound of bones breaking against the dirt. 

Now that might not seem so bad, exspecally with everything that is in horror movies or games now, but keep in mind that was fucking real to me. It was as real as the clicking of the keys of my keyboard as I’m writing this. As real as the chair I’m sitting in and as real as the wall in front of me. As far as my mind was concerned that thing, what ever it was, actually existed. It took me physical touching my window to make sure it wasn’t actually broken and checking outside to see if there wasn’t a body there. This isn’t the type of thing I talk about lightly. 

Finally there is the alteration of reality. This is very simply but it’s something that fucked with me hard. For very little meaning or warning, I would have trouble interpreting the world around me. My hearing and sight would be warped and there wasn’t any real way to tell what I was hearing or seeing was real or not until the episode was over. The way I got through these was the ultimate fake it till you make it. Obviously, very often I failed and this created issue in my schooling. 

Ending Message: I’ve been in a very bad state for a while now and as it is now, no signs of getting better. I also strongly believe my medications are being to fail me which I’ve been telling my doctor and therapist for over a year now but nothing’s been done. Mainly it’s my Depression but insomnia episodes are beginning and my own paranoia been on the rise. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even look at a creepy image or thumbnail without having a very bad episode. 

I’ve managed to eat something today which was nice but my body is cramping hard. And to possible stave of a possible comment, I’m biologically male. Like I said I’m not in the best head space, or living for that matter. If this gets better, only time will tell. 

[theday]

I CAN'T REPLY BC I'M ON DESKTOP AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO REPLY ON DESKTOP (is that even an option??) but i agree!!! what are you thoughts, feel free to Discuss i will defend you from Bad

so the discussion here will be on people who dig stuff up from the past to use to shit on other people if that makes sense?? ill just be sharing my opinion and probably what caused me to share in the first place,,

first of all if anyone other than falen reads this id like to say that im all for discussing opinions so if you have one that differs from mine please do share as well! and if you think my opinion is wrong/incorrect let me know too!! id love to hear what others think honestly

next!! onto the actual topic of bringing up the past,, i understand that if whatever was done is relevant and if they havent apologised then it’d make sense to include it when “calling out” to add to the sources of whatever behaviour but if the person (whos being targeted) has shown visible remorse/changes/understanding then i feel like there’s no need to bring it up again? there’s also the thing where people don’t check the dates of sources so if let’s say a tweet was brought up and it was from 2015 people don’t bother to check and immediately assume that whatever said is true in present times 

in the event that whoever’s opinion hasn’t changed and they’re still quite clearly bad then bringing up the past is fine since, it helps to indicate how theyve been consistently racist, homophobic, etc. whatever the topic is then thats alright of course

however, in my opinion id rather if shit from the past wasnt brought up if the person has apologized for it,, i know it still doesnt change the fact that they used to be like such but at least theyve learnt from their mistake so theres no need to call them out for that?? if what youre calling them out for is e.g. racism then use something thats from the present and something thats accurate ensure that what youre using cannot be taken out of context. its always better to check multiple sources and see what others say first before jumping to conclusions - unless the cold hard truth is stated there then yeah. theyre problematic and are doing shit things. 

idk if this is a relevant example but you know. im sure because of the way we’re brought up, we were all homop/hobic at one point of our lives (usually when we were younger) thats because of how in media all we see are het relationships,, because everyone we know is in a straight relationship and being gay was “not normal” thats what everyone thought. its what i thought. if you dug shit up from me from the past youd probably be able to see me making fun of people who’re gay and yeah i admit i was probably against the idea of dating someone of the same gender because of the way everyone would put it 

but thats because of the environment i was put in, as soon as i started using tumblr it was evident that being gay was not wrong and that it was okay to be bisexual, asexual, whatever it is! so idk what i want to say i went off tangent its just that its better to fact check before anything else because,, throwing false information wont do anyone good. 

despite saying this i know that itll hurt seeing your faves do something you dont stan for,, and even if they have apologized for it itll really suck to see such behaviour coming from someone you love - feelings of anger/sadness are normal in such cases as long as you know that what theyre doing is wrong and want to educate them,, people who blindly defend their faves arent helping anyone especially not themselves,, thats what i think anyway!! 

i know its hard to accept when your fave does something wrong but i chose to see the good, and even if its been a few months, i wont forgive my fave for doing whatever wrong thing theyve done and thats fine! you dont have to force yourself to unstan because theyve done something problematic!! likewise, you dont have to force yourself to keep stanning because if they make you feel worse than happy then theres no point sticking around!! do whatever you think is best for yourself. 

[saintkimora]

well i finally found time to type this all up so! here is the story of how last last friday and saturday night went (not the ones from this weekend but the weekend before so like a week and a half ago). it isnt really a nice story but it is significant. first part is tristan then joel then tristan again, the tristan parts are good but the joel part is pretty bad. this is only part 1 btw! sorry @ that one anon a few days ago bc this might make you even more mad lmao

first part: tristan! so on friday i was in the library holding an online eboard meeting for gsa and tristan (the first guy i talked to for a while then hooked up with like 2 years ago and last christmas eve) was apparently studying in nexus which is the building next door to the library. and he sent me a snap (it was clearly the type you send to a lot of people it wasnt like an individual one) of him captioned i hate studying so i sent him one saying i hate planning events bc thats what i was doing. so we snapped back and forth for a while and then the library closed so i was leaving and he was like “come say hi to me in nexus” so i was like ok! 

so i went and sat across the table from him and we talked for like an hour and a half and it was so nice! hes v good to talk to but our conversation dynamic was kinda similar to me and joel’s dynamic so that was interesting. he called me my voice cute at the beginning bc i was like “sorry if i sound weird im a little congested today” and he was like “no you sound like you always do, its cute” so i was like hm so then we talked and caught up and it was very good conversation! then at one point after asking how i was in general he was like “so how are you doing....romantically” and i told him how i was with someone rn but i was kinda having some issues and he was like oh ok and i asked him and he said hes looking but its hard bc people keep ghosting him so i was like aw :/ (but on the inside i was like well thats what you get for ghosting me all those years ago lmao) 

also at one point i told him i go to the gym now so i have a little bit of muscle and he was like “yeah haha sure” and i was NOT about to take that so i was like “i can show you right now if you want” (i was wearing a tank and a zip up hoodie) so i took off one hoodie sleeve revealing my arm and i flexed and he was shook he was like “oh wow you werent kidding, thats actual progress” and i was like ha

after an hour and a half he had to go meet his friends or something so i went home. overall it was super nice! i loved talking to him so later that night i just sent him a nice text thanking him for spending time w me and saying how much i enjoyed it and then he thanked me for keeping him company and said he really enjoyed catching up so that was nice! then later that night things took a turn for the worst.....

so at this point it was friday night and joel and i were texting as usual, we were having a nice convo and were making jokes and what not. then after i asked about his day he texted me this “its fine but i just got another fucking email from slut A and im over it” and i was like “slut A......” and he was like “fucking tinamarie” (the girl who always causes trouble for his theatre club that gets him really pissed off even though it really isnt that serious) and i was like “yeah i figured but did you really need to call her that” and he was like “if youre literally gonna criticize every single word i say then im just gonna stop talking” so then i apologized like 3 times but he left me on read and didnt talk to me for the rest of the night

so! the second i read that final text i had like......a panic attack? or something? idk but it was a mess i got soooooooo cold instantly like i put on sweats socks a hoodie and 2 blankets and i was still trembling and my teeth were chattering so hard i couldnt even talk bc it just came out as gibberish and my toes were numb and my heart was beating fast and you know all that good stuff. i texted several hunties but none of them answered so i decided to text tristan! he was v nice and he comforted me and talked me through it which i appreciated. but like getting that text reminded me so much of the texts i would get from caleb so it just made all those feelings come rushing back and it was v overwhelming but i wasnt about to call joel about it bc he was already mad at me and i was scared i was gonna make it worse

about an hour later i sent him a long text saying how sorry i was bc he wanted to vent to me and i shut him down when i shouldve just taken his side and stuff bc i wanted to try to fix the situation. half of it was lies though like i was not sorry for what i did at all bc he should not be calling this tinamarie girl that! he didnt read that text until the next morning but even after he didnt respond. he was def still awake when i sent it though bc i saw him active on fb messenger slightly afterwards. anyways the next day tristan texted me again to check on me and see if i heard from joel which i hadnt by that point but i really appreciated that he went through the effort of doing that! joel and i had plans to go to the mall that day so i texted him around 4pm (this is saturday now) saying i hope his auditions went well and asking if he wouldve still liked to go to the mall w me. he said he wasnt feeling up for it bc hes tired and i was like not up for the mall or not up for me and he was like just the mall, you can come over instead. so i went over and brought him popeyes bc he was hungry and we hung out and watched dragula and talked and it was like a completely normal day so i was a little surprised he didnt bring up the events of last night. so like 3 eps into dragula s1 i asked him if he could pause it so we could talk so he did and this is where things got worse

so i was like “so....how are you feeling about what happened last night?” and he was like “well it was fucking annoying because i wanted to vent to you and you tried to school me, im already socially conscious, i know its wrong but it was the first thing that came to mind at the time” and i was like “well if you are mad at a woman and your first instinct is to call her that then that might be a problem” and he was like “can i be a fucking human?” like ???????????????? the STUPIDEST excuse like that makes no sense! you can be human without saying misogynistic things like.....annoying. he just had soooo many excuses he was like “oh its ok bc i would never actually say that to her face” like...ok great to know that being socially conscious is just a performative thing for you! if you only do it in public but are still problematic in private then like...whats the point

he was also like “it may seem like a small issue that isnt important to you but her emails are actually a huge problem. YOU wouldnt know since your organization isnt as involved, but her actions affect every area of the organization so its stressful to deal with her” like heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeereeeee we go again idk why he always tries to drag my gsa for no reason. i didnt even say he couldnt be stressed or angry with her i just said he shouldnt call her what he did! 

so now for when it got personal. so i told him i was like “i know you were mad and wanted to cool off so i wasnt gonna force you to talk to me, but it wouldve been nice if you just sent me a text like ‘oh perry im mad and dont wanna talk rn, i need some space ill talk to you later’ instead of just ignoring me for the rest of the night” and he was like “well i didnt have time i had too much going on with the organization” and i was like “i mean it takes 10 seconds to send a text” and he was like “well i didnt want to” OH so now the truth comes out! and then he was like “i was already stressed out with the email so then its like ‘oh now i have to deal with perry too’” and like..............that was really hurtful bc literally the main reason i rarely ever bring up any issues i have to him is bc hes already so stressed with everything else and i want to be a source of happiness in his life not another source of stress so im afraid to bring things up bc i dont want to add to his stress and be another thing that he has to “deal with” so like, he literally vocalized the exact reason im afraid to talk to him about these things so its just confirmed my suspicions and now i feel even worse about bringing up any issues i have with him 

i didnt tell him about the panic attack yet but i did say “well i mean im sure you can tell i was upset, since i sent you a long ass apology text an hour after the convo ended. and if it was the other way around and i knew you were upset about something i said i wouldve dropped everything and called you right away to fix the issue” and he said.............. “well im not gonna prioritize you” like.... !!!!!!!!!!!!! ok!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! great! we already knew i was at the bottom of his priority list but at least now he basically admitted it :/ i was just like well ok

that is the end of part 1 bc im splitting up this post lol

[thefreshchannel]

Hey I'm newish to the td fandom so do mind me asking who Tasha is?

I guess since she seems to have deleted i can tell the story now lmao

She was basically a fake identity created to harass """the populars™""" like if u heard of jaded teenage girl tashalovesnirvana u probably already know what her personality was like, but the td fanbase was basically her origins and it is an incredibly long story to tell u every little thing shes done so a tl;dr would be tasha is basically a harasser/stalker who traumatized a lot of people for many years. like she pretended to be so many other people and was very out for blood lmao. Also she was a fake persona, along w many others, created by the creator of theconfessioncam herself cherri (who hasnt been online since new years 2015) to make everyone miserable for “kicking her out the td fandom” 

BUT IF U WANNA KNOW THE FULL STORY IT’S UNDER A CUT CAUSE BOI IS IT LONG AND TYPING IT FELT UNREAL

I already spoke abt theconfessioncam so we'll just skip to the day the person behind it was exposed. The person behind it was called cherri (isabelle was her real name but we all called her cherri bc it was in her url)

Cherri was infamous amongst the fanbase bc she shipped chrindsay and wouldn't understand why others didn't, was mostly anti sj/w, liked and defended the one character who shall not be named at the time people were calling out the issues they had w the character (all ppl calling out the issues being neurodivergent while she was neurotypical also this is discourse i am not willing to touch again so dont even think abt sending asks about this lmao), created the phrase "screw you i'm getting my duncney on" and constantly commenting abt why the fandom was toxic and shit like that. Most people would ignore her at first until after theconfessioncam turned out to be her. Many people presented proof and evidence and now she was public enemy #1 like no one liked her and one night everyone started calling her out for her shit and like she immediately blew up. On everyone. I'm p sure after that night the whole plot started.

So like. Shortly after comes a person called "holly-so-jolly" (who then became holly-smokes-molly for a short period of time in late 2015? 2016? fuck idk but her fame was very short but thats another story)Holly befriended cherri and her group of uglies so fast by always being like "wow fuck the populars"  

the populars, a term coined in by theconfessioncam's anons, referred to ppl who would argue a lot abt smthn and others would agree w over well, cherris gang. Anyways holly would almost immediately always start a fight w the populars or say some problematic shit or stan for cherri a lot. I know y'all are wondering what this has to do w tasha but trust me we'll get there lol

A few days (maybe a day or two) after holly joins the fanbase, a new hateblog (SPECIFICALLY MADE TO SEND HATE ABOUT THE POPULARS) popped up. The populars would get anons about the hate blog seeing as it was so brand new that it wouldnt show up in the tag just yet. And these confessions were CRUEL. Like wishing death/murder upon these ppl, encouraging self harm, harassing minors (literally under 16 at the time), ableist comments, racism, transphobia, homophobia like it was all there. Someone else faked a new blog agreeing w these confessions and managed to speak to the new hate blog (this was someone who was undercover and managed to expose the person running that hateblog, which ended up being holly)

Holly then changed her url to winner-challenged to try to impersonate ryan, but them claimed to be other 2 people making an april fool's joke (in february no less lmao) and then she changed her persona completely to desireesparx and tried to pass off as a new person in the fanbase. But it didnt work and she deleted as fast as she came in. Antitotaldramapopulars only lasted one day. On the same day, theconfessioncam was deleted. People suspected cherri was behind all this all to which she claimed she wasnt but we all know the truth lol.

After holly hell, tasha fiasco started. And boy was tasha fucking persistent. Like she came in early 2014, and only JUST NOW DELETED. It is 2017.

Tasha-loves-duncney was ?? I guess ur basic td blogger who just loved duncney? No one had any thoughts of her at first until she made a post about not understanding why people hated mike. So people went on to explain. And i forgot rlly what happened but like tasha started getting more aggressive. Like she would reblog "the populars'" personal posts and mock them, she even added a comment hoping for the person's house to fall on them. Someone then made the "fly away tasha" comment and she CRIED because apparently she had been bullied for having a bird nose and been told that before so it only made the phrase stick. She then made an entire post saying rape wasnt bad or some weird ugly shit like that, and even after that she still had a few ppl supporting her (mostly other anti s/jws in the fanbase and cherris old friends ((also CHERRI WAS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND OR SEEN! SHE DISAPPEARED DURING ALL THIS LOL))) And that's when we all were all over her and i'm p sure it was when all the hate blogs came back.

I'm not sure if maybe i'm confusing it for another hateblog or if there was another one before this one (or i'm getting the timeline wrong bc is2g tasha deleted and came back so many times) but a confession blog popped up called "camerainthepotty" or smthn along the lines that just seemed to post whatever random weird asks ppl would send them. Then during that night it converted to tdgossipgirls and ?? It was such a weird blog lmao like just like antitotaldramapopulars, it aimed to bully the fandom populars in burn book style ? Tabloid magazine style? Point is we all knew it was tasha lmao and at this point it started to become clear who tasha really was. Whatever hateblog it was it would post fake edited asks allegedly sent by the populars themselves which gave us great classics such as "king bee ryan outtie!"

Anyways tasha liked another populars' personal post and people told her to delete bc it was a super heavy personal post. She claimed it was for support but like she finally deleted. And we were tasha clear for a few months? Weeks? (someone even took the url i think) so she then came back as "tashasbackbitches" and boi was she mad lmao. The whole tag asked her to fly away and she took a screenshot of it and claimed bullying. She then tried to ruin ale//noah day by posting pics of dunc/ney which compared to all she's done this is the most tame thing she had done but ppl were still mad abt that anyways lol. So i think a day later she made the anti-winnerchallenged blog specifically aimed at ryan for whatever reason. She ""accidentally"" made a post for anti-winnerchallenged on tashasbackbitches but like once ppl pointed it out something even weirder happened like it sounds fucking unreal but apparently it was a fake tasha???? According to real tasha??? Who was now back as "tashalovesduncney" with no hyphens?? And going to people's inbox saying that tashasbackbitches WAS NOT HER And that she had proof on her blog bc there was a pic of her holding a piece of paper w her url written on it and also an audio post explaining what happened.

So tashasbackbitches was deleted and now we were stuck with tashalovesduncney. Which at first was??? Idk but the audio post on her blog sounded high pitched like. It didnt sound like no human voice lmao. Also the pic of her had the piece of paper edited in. So someone pointed it out and like. She immediately assumed another ""popular"", cass, had sent it. And when i tell u this tasha was DARK AND OUT FOR BLOOD, I MEAN IT LMAO. Like tasha clung on to cass ever since. She would @ them and all that shit on posts and like. This tasha was out to attack. She would constantly say awful shit abt the populars and @ them in her posts, or she would @ well known anti sj/w blogs (such as p0ppypicklesticks, swimmninda/privilege u name it) and encourage them to slay our sjw asses. Not only that but now there was an anti-deadbyshawn blog to aim hate at cass specifically.

I guess at some point someone else came in the fandom by the name of staceyd123 and was received in many different ways like1. People assuming this was tasha2. People defending her bc she was a minor3. Tasha encouraging her to befriend her

However a lot of ppl started to believe this was a different person. She did befriend tasha and a lot of the ppl in the fandom and bc she was a minor a lot of the older kids protected her from tasha and constantly warned her. Sometime between that antitdpopulars came back and more fake asks were posted, populars were being blamed on for the blog to bring attention to themselves. Not sure if it was earlier or at this exact time but i think it would tie into the next event better.

so tasha and stacey had this BIG FIGHT i guess cause stacey outed tasha for running the new anti populars blog and in this fight tasha blamed stacey for staceys parents divorcing and stacey claimed tasha clipped her toenails in a voice call and like. It was so odd at this point tasha started making fake asks about the people who supported her lmao. Then she would submit herself to blogs to send love to ppl being bullied and then those ppl would fight us and the whole night was a mess. Stacey had deleted and then tasha kept her url. I'm p sure sometime later tasha deleted too?? She came back as a sideblog the next time.  

Stacey came back a bit around the same time and ofc had ppl on her side welcoming her back. Almost immediately. Another new persona came in at the time too known as ""fucknmacine18??"" He changed the url to "thechazmeister" or whatever but he was basically a dumb white straight dude fake persona that claimed to have abandoned the south park fandom. Once in the td fandom, he would reblog a lot of the girls selfies and make comments on them also claiming to fall in love w one of the populars? Two of the populars? Idk but point is him being there was. Irrelevant for a while. He would send uncomfortable asks to stacey apparently and also told tasha to fly away/rejected her or some weird shit that happened there idk the story of that but i know tasha was trying to befriend him and flirting w him lmao.

Several hateblogs came out too, one being psychoanalyzing the populars which would reveal incredibly personal information about them (based on their personal posts) and evaluate them. It was a really fucked up blog and no one knew how on earth she managed to get that information. The other one was very tame, it was battleofthepopulars or smthn like that which consisted of the populars being in a td  like setting and each being voted off everyday and like. No one rlly paid attention to it lol. In the end when she booted off one of the populars, she ranted that it was bc she had blamed cherri for something she didn't even do. Which was suspicious seeing as tasha wasnt here around that time, meaning this person knew about cherri being exposed as theconfessioncam.

During that same time, tasha was still very much clinging onto cass. Sending them fanmails as she couldnt send asks since she was on a sideblog. Meaning she followed ppl on an unknown main blog. Cass would receive over 200 fanmails a day from tasha. Tasha even changed her blog's url to match cass'. One night tasha got tired of being ignored and blackmailed cass into talking to them, or their friends would be harassed. The main tag was full of tasha posting edited pictures of ryan on the main td tag, personal posts of another one of cass' friends with the read more code taken off. It was a horrible night. But in the end tasha exposed her main blog was staceyd123. Tasha had faked being stacey which would explain how she managed to get the personal information for her psychoanalyzations blog. She explained it was because she was someone who got kicked out of the fandom by “tortellani and the other populars” and that she finally knew what it was like living like a popular. She then proceeded to spam the tag w animal gore knowing it was a heavy trigger for one of the populars. Stacey/tasha then deleted. Never to be heard of until...oh no wait, we almost forgot our buddy chaz.

So chaz stuck around and made dumb posts and like. No one really cared for him. Until he wanted to be seen as a threat so he made a hate blog on american thanksgiving day taking the populars' descriptions on their mobile blogs and making them bad adding racist/homophobic commentary. It was here where he stole 2 urls belonging to two other populars and tried to pass off as them. Cass had remade, but chaz took their current url (hottiemcfright) as well as the tortellani url belonging to the other person who had changed urls to avoid traffic from TiA. So that night chaz. God it was a blur but he pretended to be those two people and filled the tag w a bunch of animal gore. Tumblr did jump on that and deleted him. Chaz was another of tasha's personas so, NOW we don't hear of tasha until february of 2015.

So now under the url: tashalovesnirvana, she sent popular bloggers racist slurs thinking she was on anon and then begged for them not to be posted and theyre posted for everyone to read. No one thought twice about it when the screenshots were going around but eventually ppl in the td fanbase noticed that tasha had sent those. And i mean, you can basically look this up as it spread from just the td fandom to literally all of tumblr knew about her. They made her asks into copypastas. And it got rlly funny bc at some point she didnt even know who kurt cobain was.

Anyways after this mess she deleted but she came back. Except this time tumblr updated the blocking system so it could actually work. And boy did it work well. Tasha did get 15 minutes of fame (or less) again when she came back but everyone would just block her and she would never be heard of again. She was still there reblogging posts from the ppl she hated toLet them know. She would try to get their attention but. The moment she would contact them she'd get hit w the block button. So naturally she brought back her persona "holly" as a stoner girl "holly-smokes-molly" who also had a short lived fame but then, again, people stopped caring after they had blocked her.  One of her comebacks was her coming back as a woke feminist but no one else cared about her. Tasha was an old meme, so 2 years ago. No one else gave attention to her.

In 2017 she finally deleted. Like the url isnt even hoarded so that's how u know that it's all done. It took 3 years for her to leave us alone. 3 traumatizing years. A lot of the people involved were minors too.

I know i probably messed up some parts of this or got confused w the many hateblogs she made but like. Trust me when i say that she remade so many times it's hard to keep track of all the weird shit she has done. Also i've been typing this since 8am and i still shake a bit thinking about this lol.

[oovitus]

Weekend Reading, 6.24.18

A friend of mine told me that he recently went to a conference where all of the attendees seemed to be talking about perfectionism, in spite of that fact that it wasn’t the conference theme. They were discussing it as people who had been susceptible to impossible standards in the past, but now counted themselves lucky to have let perfectionism go.

As we were talking, it occurred to me that I haven’t thought about perfectionism in a long time, though it had a hold on me for years. Even after I stopped trying to do everything “right,” perfectionism (and to some extent, being “Type A”) was a big part of my identity. I called myself a “recovering perfectionist,” which was truthful, but in retrospect I think it was also my way of continuing to identify with perfectionism and communicate it to others. I didn’t want to be subject to oppressive standards anymore, but I hadn’t yet figured out who I was without them.

In the end, perfectionism exited my life out of necessity; I untangled from it because I didn’t have a choice. Living with bouts of depression and anxiety in the last few years has meant letting go of a lot of my self-imposed notions of what constitutes productivity, success, or a day well spent.

A common experience of depression, I think, is that small, routine asks can suddenly seem insurmountable: doing laundry, cleaning up, running errands. This would have sounded unbelievable to me at one point in my life, when these kinds of to-dos were just afterthoughts, but now I know what it’s like to struggle with the everyday.

I’m thinking back to an afternoon two summers ago that illustrates this perfectly: my anxiety had been particularly bad, and I’d been paralyzed by procrastination all day. By dinnertime I was genuinely proud of myself for having gotten out of the house to pick up groceries and mail a package. This was a radically different measure of productivity than I was used to, and it didn’t matter: I was relieved to have done something, anything.

I’m in a different place now, capable of fuller days, but my perspective remains valuably altered by that experience. I don’t wake up with a fixed agenda anymore. I don’t plan on doing more than I know I can handle. If I notice that tasks remain undone everyday on my modest to-do list, I take it as a sign that I need to plan on doing less, rather than wondering why I can’t do more.

I’ve learned that my capacity for doing and my tendency to get overwhelmed ebb and flow. Sometimes they shift for reasons that I can identify, like how I’m feeling physically or whether something has made me anxious. Sometimes they change suddenly and for no apparent reason. I don’t try to bully myself out of feeling overwhelmed; rather, I ask what would make me feel calmer and more steady.

I often remind myself of a mantra that my friend Maria gave herself when her MS symptoms started keeping her from the pace and routines that had become customary: “better than before.” The origin of this mantra was an ongoing struggle to keep tidy the home she shared with her young son. As Maria’s “functional self” receded, she noticed the presence of another self, who “though less physically versatile, was stronger than I ever could have imagined from the perspective of the one who functioned’ throughout the day. She began to show me things my functional self simply missed.”

One of those things, she goes on to say,

was to be able to notice when I was completely out of energy to exert myself. This might be when something was halfway wiped, or not wiped at all, but I had somehow managed to put some things away. She would know to say that’s enough for now. And she was very clever about what would satisfy my functional self, who would never have been satisfied with that’s enough. It sobered that functional self to learn when the diagnosis of MS finally came that the “forcing” she had habituated herself to was the worst thing to do if she wanted to preserve her physical abilities.  But as the saying goes, it’s really true that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. So my deeper wiser identity came up with something even more ingenious than this looming threat:

Better Than It Was.

Or, (depending on the context): Cleaner Than It Was.

These two statements became my mottos. And they still are. They allowed me to learn to pace myself while still satisfying that Functional Self that I was making what she considered progress through the daily requirements of life, even if many of them were slowed to a crawl or a downright standstill.  Better Than It Was.

Maria’s story is uniquely her own, and my own sense of high functionality has shifted for reasons that are uniquely mine. But her clever motto has given me great comfort since I first read about it on her blog. So, too, does this quote from Melody Beattie: “Our best yesterday was good enough; our best today is plenty good too.”

The best thing about letting go of perfectionism is developing a capacity to recognize that “our best” can look very different from moment to moment. There’s no longer an immovable standard of output. I wish that I’d been able to pry my ego away from productivity and being busy on my own, rather than being forced to reckon with a dramatic shift in my capacities, but in the end, it doesn’t matter how I got here. What matters is that I’m learning to be grateful for what I can do, rather than fixating on what I haven’t, or can’t.

Throughout all of this, I’ve had the tremendous luxury of being able to adjust my schedule and responsibilities in a way that allowed me to create a dynamic “new normal.” Not every person has the space to do this, depending on his or her professional and personal circumstances. I recognize and respect the many men and women who go through periods of depression and anxiety while also keeping up with fixed schedules. And of course I worry sometimes about my DI year: now that I’m learning how to take gentle care in the moments when I need to, what will it be like to temporarily lose control of my schedule and workload?

I don’t have an answer, but to some degree I suspect that I don’t need one. My routine next year will be a challenge, but so long as I can do my best without succumbing to the influence of perfectionism, I know I’ll be OK. Much as I’ve made my schedule more realistic, letting go of perfectionism has been an inside job. It resides in recognizing how futile perfectionism is, how it discourages me needlessly while keeping me from recognizing the good that I can do, and maybe have done (another observation that’s prompted by Beattie).

Here’s to a week—and a month, and a summer, and a year—of doing my best and trusting that my best is enough. I wish the same for you, too. And here’s the weekly roundup of links.

Recipes

I would never think to put fruit in a tabbouleh, but I love Katie’s creative mixture of blueberries, parsley, mint, and quinoa—I’d actually love to try it as a savory breakfast dish!

A very different kind of quinoa salad, but no less delicious: a curried mixture with red cabbage, raisins, and pumpkin seeds from Melanie of Veggie Jam.

Two recipes for summer entertaining caught my eye this past week. The first is these show-stopping chipotle cauliflower nachos from my friend Jeanine of Love & Lemons.

Number two is this platter of green summer rolls with mango miso sauce from Anya of Lazy Cat Kitchen. The sauce alone is calling to me, but I also love all of the tender green veggies here (asparagus, zucchini, broccolini).

Finally, a summery vegan pasta salad with creamy avocado dressing—perfect timing, as pasta salad’s been on my mind lately (and I may just have a recipe coming soon!).

Reads

1. This article is about a month old, but it’s very on-topic for today’s post: why you should stop being so hard on yourself, via The New York Times.

2. Ed Yong’s new article on the threat of imminent global pandemics frightened me (and the blurb under the title didn’t help), but it’s an important topic, and I’m glad that it’s being written about. Yong notes the medical supply shortages that are becoming increasingly problematic in the US; hopefully greater awareness might somehow inspire solutions.

3. Reporting on the termination of a major NIH study of alcohol, heart attack, and stroke, which was shut down when conflicts of interest were identified. It’s an important examination of the ethics of funding and scientific research.

4. Dispatches from the Gulf of California, where the vaquita—now the world’s rarest marine mammal—is on the brink of extinction.

5. I was so full of appreciation and respect when I read my friend Karen’s latest post on numbers and body acceptance.

Like Karen, I went through a long period of asking to be blind weighed at the doctor’s office and not owning a scale. That time served a purpose, but nowadays I can be aware of the number without identifying with it, which I’m grateful for. I’ve had a bunch of doctor’s appointments in the last month, and getting weighed has been the last thing on my mind: feeling more at home in my body has been my only point of focus.

Karen opens up about her own recent experience with the scale and the annual physical, then reflects on why she’s committed to being transparent about what “balance” looks like for her. It’s great to witness her journey unfolding.

On that inspiring note, happy Sunday—and from a celebratory NYC, happy pride! I’ll be circling back this week with my first fruit-filled dessert of the summer.

xo

The post Weekend Reading, 6.24.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.

Weekend Reading, 6.24.18 published first on

[alienvirals]

Alien: Covenants Katherine Waterston: We live in hypersexualised yet totally prudish times

The actor following in the footsteps of Sigourney Weaver has been dubbed the new Ripley

Ripley, the indomitable action hero played by Sigourney Weaver in the Alien series, may have hung up her flamethrower for good, but the franchises latest prequel, Alien: Covenant, features a convincing replacement in the form of tough cookie Daniels, played by Katherine Waterston. The 37-year-old actor got her breakthrough role as the enigmatic Shasta Fay in Paul Thomas Andersons fuzzy comic thriller Inherent Vice and was last seen sporting a cloche hat and brandishing a wand as Tina in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

In person, she cuts a jaunty, unassuming figure. She saunters into the room in white trainers and navy trousers, red socks visible in the gap between them: a black tank-top partially conceals a white T-shirt. She is tomboyish and tall, like Ally Sheedy on stilts, so that when she folds her long legs under her chair, she looks exaggeratedly S-shaped. Dealing with the weight of expectation from Alien fans hasnt been too intense, she says, nibbling on a pain aux raisins. The way I looked at it with this and Fantastic Beasts was that it was like being recruited on to a sports team. Theres a devotion from these fans who are just excited for the next game. They arent sat there thinking: Youd better not let me down, Waterston!

Alien: Covenant trailer: Ridley Scott returns with sci-fi thriller

Rumours suggested that Daniels would be Ripleys mother and, whatever the truth, there are resemblances. Both are rational women transformed by circumstance into gun-toting warriors. Both are shown at some point in singlets, or clomping around in magnetic boots, and each has a problematic relationship with a synthetic colleague. The only shortfall comes in the area of the catchphrase, where Danielss multiple efforts (including I got you, you son-of-a-bitch and Lets kill this fucker!) are no match for Ripleys emphatic: Get away from her, you bitch!

Most strikingly, the first note Waterston has to play in the new film is outright panic when technical problems wake her prematurely from hypersleep. The second is grief. Its like slamming on the brakes before anyone has the chance to buckle their seat belts. I didnt know how I would play it or how I could get there, but thats always the most appealing thing to me. The insecurity is exciting. Maybe Im also curious about testing my ability. She widens her eyes. Seeing if its still there.

Although Daniels is treading in Ripleys footsteps, or, given that Covenant is set 20-odd years before Alien, forging the path that Ripley will follow, Waterston didnt talk to Weaver about the part. But the two women have a distant connection. When Waterston was starting out as an actor, she got her first lead role in a play at The Flea, a New York theatre co-founded by Weavers husband, Jim Simpson. Sigourney came to see it and said something like: You were good. Nothing extraordinary. But when someone like her says that, you hang on to it for years. When I got this job, I thought immediately of that moment.

Waterston is big on the idea of all actors as an extended clan, perhaps unsurprisingly for someone whose siblings are in the business, and whose father is Sam Waterston, the veteran from The Killing Fields, Crimes and Misdemeanors and the TV hit Law and Order. Her mother is the former model Lynn Louisa Woodruff. Acting is a community where you come in and out of each others lives. Im slightly envious of the golden age of Hollywood. It must have been frustrating to be owned by the studio, but it was also like being in a company, working with the same people, and that appeals to me.

Working On Alien: Covenant, she was reunited with Carmen Ejogo (Fantastic Beasts) and Michael Fassbender, with whom she shared some fraught scenes in Steve Jobs, as well as her old chum Billy Crudup. At one point during our conversation, she leaps up and yanks open the door in response to voices outside. Billy Crudup, will you shut the fuck up? she hollers down the hallway. Im trying to focus!

Crudup sidles into view. What you doing for dinner tonight, he purrs. You want to join us? Me and Danny McBride? You should be so lucky! What larks. Of course, its entirely possible that she could have put on a more vivid display of her need to cultivate actorly intimacy than bounding out of the room to accost a colleague. Possible, yes, but not likely.

She first saw Crudup when she was 15 in a Broadway production of Tom Stoppards Arcadia, which she now credits with confirming in her mind her acting ambitions. It was the thing that clicked me over to that next level of curiosity. Clicked? You know when youre going up at the start of the rollercoaster and its going click-click-click towards the summit? Id had the initial idea of wanting to act but I didnt know how I could do it.

Even though her dad is an actor? I know! Isnt that weird? On a rollercoaster, theres an inevitability about whats going to happen next.

Did acting feel that way? Yes. Even though I wasnt sure how it would come about, I knew it would.

Determined to distinguish herself from her family, she eschewed performing as a teenager. Didnt appear in so much as a school play. Photography was her bag. I loved the darkroom. Its a good place for an angsty teenager. Her favourite picture is one she took while visiting her father on location in Dublin. Its of this drunk gambler at the racetrack, totally loaded, who had climbed into a tree to get a better view of the horses. She smiles sadly. I cant imagine having the guts to do that now. I wonder sometimes if Ive got in the habit of only being courageous when someone else has written the words I have to say.

Inherent Vice trailer: watch Joaquin Phoenix in the first look at Paul Thomas Andersons Thomas Pynchon adaptation

No one who gave the sort of performance that Waterston did in Inherent Vice should be in any hurry to sell herself short. Shasta Fay appears in only a couple of scenes but her presence permeates the film; she is the personification of its riddles. Attention at the time focused disproportionately on one scene in which Waterston lies naked across the lap of her ex-lover, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and invites him to spank her. One journalist asked if Joaquin left red marks on my butt, she recalls incredulously. I wish Id said: I dont remember but Ill tell you what bend over and Ill spank you as hard as I can and well see what happens.

We live in such hypersexualised yet totally prudish times. People have this expectation about everyone elses relationship to their own bodies. Surely you must have shame about your body? Surely whats scariest for you as actor would be to stand in a room naked? Believe me, Ive been in so many more terrifying situations as a performer than that. This was working with people I trusted in a scene that was rich and complex and there was so much to do there that I hardly even thought about that thing that seems to be all everyone could talk about. Theyre just hoping Ill say: Oh, I was so scared that day and then I drank a few shots of whisky and I felt better. She gives a mighty roll of the eyes.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them trailer: Eddie Redmayne in Harry Potter spinoff video

After Inherent Vice wrapped, she was convinced she would become known as the first actor to be bad in an Anderson movie. That period between finishing the film and opening night is agonising. Thats part of why actors go from job to job so they dont have to live with the anxiety in the interim.

As if to prove that, she has already shot another three pictures since Alien: Covenant, including Steven Soderberghs Logan Lucky opposite Channing Tatum, and is about to start Fantastic Beasts 2.

Having likened acting to a sports team and a rollercoaster, she saves her most conflicted analogy for last. Ive heard this is how cults brainwash people, she says. You wake up and you go to conferences that go on all day and then youre so exhausted that you sleep, and then you get up and do it again the next day. Thats what its like making movies. Youre up before dawn, you collapse at night and then you do it all over again until theres no room for anything else in your brain.

Alien: Covenant is released in Australia today, in the UK on 12 May, and the US on 19 May.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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[theday]

Oh I think it's good that you're still politely tweeting @ him! And as for my current thoughts, I mean I guess I'm doing okay? Of course I haven't forgotten, but every time I see him in a post I try to quell the feelings of negativity with the fact that I believe in him. That's because even though he did something that I don't agree with since I think it's bad, I strongly believe (because what we see of them is so limited, but you can still kind of tell I guess?) that he doesn't.. have bad

(cont under cut)

intentions. It’s like when a friend of yours makes a mistake but because you know them and how they are, you know that they most likely didn’t mean it. That’s how I’m viewing this situation right now. Yeah I don’t know Jae personally but from what we’ve seen so far, I deeply feel like he didn’t have bad intentions with that. That’s how I get through these negative feelings towards him haha. Sorry if that was repetitive I just wanted to make sure that my thoughts were clear for you to understand. (2)

Also, I think it’s nice that you’re still actively reaching out to Jae so he can address the issue for whatever reasons it may be. Like you said, lots of people have stopped doing so for their own reasons. But it’s good to know that you’re still doing that. I don’t know it’s hard to explain lol. And thank you! I tend to have faith in people most of the time because… well there are a lot of reasons. To sum it up: people are usually quick to assume things about others. Hm. For example, in this (3)

situation, some people might just assume that Jae’s bad because the recommendation of a song like that reflects that thought. However, I don’t think it’s fair to assume that, even though they have the right to believe that with what they’ve seen. I don’t like hastily assuming the bad side in people because I think that it could lead to a misunderstanding in doing so, which can take away the truth of it all. That probably didn’t make sense but I don’t want to make this any longer than it already (4)

is lol. Thank you again and I hope you have a nice day or night too! (5)

ahh thank you for coming back to my ask box to talk about this!! something im really glad about is that there arent any articles about the whole thing??? i know as soon as an idol or famous person does (1) problematic thing everyones on that shit immediately so im relieved that this wasnt blown out of proportion

this might have to do with why there arent a lot of people tweeting to him about it - so it wont be publicised (?) which is great!! because i know for a fact that if an article was to be put up about what jae did many anti fans (?) will come for jaes blood which… is ridiculous?? because as you said one incident really doesnt show who a person is and what theyre like!! mydays would know that jae is a sweet person who’s always encouraging us and we all know that he loves us and day6 a lot.. so thats one thing im thankful for,,

i dont really have anything to say about this and ill just keep @ ing him and if theres a fanchatting thing coming up ill be sure to apply so i can ask him if its still not touched upon,, there should be MA tomorrow too so if i can ill tune in to ask him!!

it was really a blessing to have someone to talk to about this whole situation so once again thank you so much for coming into my ask to talk about this and if you ever want to talk about anythng else or just day6 please feel free to come back bc im lonely always willing to listen to other people’s rambles bc i love seeing people talk about their favourite people its cute!!! 

[oovitus]

Weekend Reading, 6.24.18

A friend of mine told me that he recently went to a conference where all of the attendees seemed to be talking about perfectionism, in spite of that fact that it wasn’t the conference theme. They were discussing it as people who had been susceptible to impossible standards in the past, but now counted themselves lucky to have let perfectionism go.

As we were talking, it occurred to me that I haven’t thought about perfectionism in a long time, though it had a hold on me for years. Even after I stopped trying to do everything “right,” perfectionism (and to some extent, being “Type A”) was a big part of my identity. I called myself a “recovering perfectionist,” which was truthful, but in retrospect I think it was also my way of continuing to identify with perfectionism and communicate it to others. I didn’t want to be subject to oppressive standards anymore, but I hadn’t yet figured out who I was without them.

In the end, perfectionism exited my life out of necessity; I untangled from it because I didn’t have a choice. Living with bouts of depression and anxiety in the last few years has meant letting go of a lot of my self-imposed notions of what constitutes productivity, success, or a day well spent.

A common experience of depression, I think, is that small, routine asks can suddenly seem insurmountable: doing laundry, cleaning up, running errands. This would have sounded unbelievable to me at one point in my life, when these kinds of to-dos were just afterthoughts, but now I know what it’s like to struggle with the everyday.

I’m thinking back to an afternoon two summers ago that illustrates this perfectly: my anxiety had been particularly bad, and I’d been paralyzed by procrastination all day. By dinnertime I was genuinely proud of myself for having gotten out of the house to pick up groceries and mail a package. This was a radically different measure of productivity than I was used to, and it didn’t matter: I was relieved to have done something, anything.

I’m in a different place now, capable of fuller days, but my perspective remains valuably altered by that experience. I don’t wake up with a fixed agenda anymore. I don’t plan on doing more than I know I can handle. If I notice that tasks remain undone everyday on my modest to-do list, I take it as a sign that I need to plan on doing less, rather than wondering why I can’t do more.

I’ve learned that my capacity for doing and my tendency to get overwhelmed ebb and flow. Sometimes they shift for reasons that I can identify, like how I’m feeling physically or whether something has made me anxious. Sometimes they change suddenly and for no apparent reason. I don’t try to bully myself out of feeling overwhelmed; rather, I ask what would make me feel calmer and more steady.

I often remind myself of a mantra that my friend Maria gave herself when her MS symptoms started keeping her from the pace and routines that had become customary: “better than before.” The origin of this mantra was an ongoing struggle to keep tidy the home she shared with her young son. As Maria’s “functional self” receded, she noticed the presence of another self, who “though less physically versatile, was stronger than I ever could have imagined from the perspective of the one who functioned’ throughout the day. She began to show me things my functional self simply missed.”

One of those things, she goes on to say,

was to be able to notice when I was completely out of energy to exert myself. This might be when something was halfway wiped, or not wiped at all, but I had somehow managed to put some things away. She would know to say that’s enough for now. And she was very clever about what would satisfy my functional self, who would never have been satisfied with that’s enough. It sobered that functional self to learn when the diagnosis of MS finally came that the “forcing” she had habituated herself to was the worst thing to do if she wanted to preserve her physical abilities.  But as the saying goes, it’s really true that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. So my deeper wiser identity came up with something even more ingenious than this looming threat:

Better Than It Was.

Or, (depending on the context): Cleaner Than It Was.

These two statements became my mottos. And they still are. They allowed me to learn to pace myself while still satisfying that Functional Self that I was making what she considered progress through the daily requirements of life, even if many of them were slowed to a crawl or a downright standstill.  Better Than It Was.

Maria’s story is uniquely her own, and my own sense of high functionality has shifted for reasons that are uniquely mine. But her clever motto has given me great comfort since I first read about it on her blog. So, too, does this quote from Melody Beattie: “Our best yesterday was good enough; our best today is plenty good too.”

The best thing about letting go of perfectionism is developing a capacity to recognize that “our best” can look very different from moment to moment. There’s no longer an immovable standard of output. I wish that I’d been able to pry my ego away from productivity and being busy on my own, rather than being forced to reckon with a dramatic shift in my capacities, but in the end, it doesn’t matter how I got here. What matters is that I’m learning to be grateful for what I can do, rather than fixating on what I haven’t, or can’t.

Throughout all of this, I’ve had the tremendous luxury of being able to adjust my schedule and responsibilities in a way that allowed me to create a dynamic “new normal.” Not every person has the space to do this, depending on his or her professional and personal circumstances. I recognize and respect the many men and women who go through periods of depression and anxiety while also keeping up with fixed schedules. And of course I worry sometimes about my DI year: now that I’m learning how to take gentle care in the moments when I need to, what will it be like to temporarily lose control of my schedule and workload?

I don’t have an answer, but to some degree I suspect that I don’t need one. My routine next year will be a challenge, but so long as I can do my best without succumbing to the influence of perfectionism, I know I’ll be OK. Much as I’ve made my schedule more realistic, letting go of perfectionism has been an inside job. It resides in recognizing how futile perfectionism is, how it discourages me needlessly while keeping me from recognizing the good that I can do, and maybe have done (another observation that’s prompted by Beattie).

Here’s to a week—and a month, and a summer, and a year—of doing my best and trusting that my best is enough. I wish the same for you, too. And here’s the weekly roundup of links.

Recipes

I would never think to put fruit in a tabbouleh, but I love Katie’s creative mixture of blueberries, parsley, mint, and quinoa—I’d actually love to try it as a savory breakfast dish!

A very different kind of quinoa salad, but no less delicious: a curried mixture with red cabbage, raisins, and pumpkin seeds from Melanie of Veggie Jam.

Two recipes for summer entertaining caught my eye this past week. The first is these show-stopping chipotle cauliflower nachos from my friend Jeanine of Love & Lemons.

Number two is this platter of green summer rolls with mango miso sauce from Anya of Lazy Cat Kitchen. The sauce alone is calling to me, but I also love all of the tender green veggies here (asparagus, zucchini, broccolini).

Finally, a summery vegan pasta salad with creamy avocado dressing—perfect timing, as pasta salad’s been on my mind lately (and I may just have a recipe coming soon!).

Reads

1. This article is about a month old, but it’s very on-topic for today’s post: why you should stop being so hard on yourself, via The New York Times.

2. Ed Yong’s new article on the threat of imminent global pandemics frightened me (and the blurb under the title didn’t help), but it’s an important topic, and I’m glad that it’s being written about. Yong notes the medical supply shortages that are becoming increasingly problematic in the US; hopefully greater awareness might somehow inspire solutions.

3. Reporting on the termination of a major NIH study of alcohol, heart attack, and stroke, which was shut down when conflicts of interest were identified. It’s an important examination of the ethics of funding and scientific research.

4. Dispatches from the Gulf of California, where the vaquita—now the world’s rarest marine mammal—is on the brink of extinction.

5. I was so full of appreciation and respect when I read my friend Karen’s latest post on numbers and body acceptance.

Like Karen, I went through a long period of asking to be blind weighed at the doctor’s office and not owning a scale. That time served a purpose, but nowadays I can be aware of the number without identifying with it, which I’m grateful for. I’ve had a bunch of doctor’s appointments in the last month, and getting weighed has been the last thing on my mind: feeling more at home in my body has been my only point of focus.

Karen opens up about her own recent experience with the scale and the annual physical, then reflects on why she’s committed to being transparent about what “balance” looks like for her. It’s great to witness her journey unfolding.

On that inspiring note, happy Sunday—and from a celebratory NYC, happy pride! I’ll be circling back this week with my first fruit-filled dessert of the summer.

xo

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