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qnewslgbtiqa · 2 months

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COVID: Queer Nightlife skipped a beat for my generation

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/covid-queer-nightlife-skipped-a-beat-for-my-generation/

COVID: Queer Nightlife skipped a beat for my generation

QNews’ youngest contributor reflects on the experience of the generation who entered the queer scene in the middle of COVID restrictions.

It has now become a regular saying in the Sydney gay scene that the strip “isn’t what it used to be.”

Talk to anybody over the age of 25 about how they think nightlife on Oxford Street is faring in 2024 and their response will more than likely involve an eyeroll.

The pandemic brought everything to a screeching halt in 2020, and now that we are on the other side of what is perhaps the biggest global event since WWII, it is no secret that much of our society is still in recovery mode.

This is very personal for me. As someone who works five nights a week as a bartender on Oxford Street, and as a journalist for a queer magazine. I live and breathe the gay nightlife scene in Sydney.

But I have only ever experienced Sydney’s queer nightlife post-COVID so will never be able to compare the pre and post pandemic experience.

So what exactly happened to the scene over COVID?

The lasting impact of the pandemic seems to be a topic that we can never escape, but simultaneously hate to talk about.

We are all dealing with a collective trauma that few could have seen coming.

We are still coming to grips with how to handle this, and the fallout is evident.

Hospitality has been one of the industries that is taking the longest to bounce back.

The pandemic was a kill shot for nightlife all over the world, and that still poses a significant problem for the queer scene.

For so many of us licensed venues are the beating heart of our community and where we find our identity: not just in Australia but all over the world.

The queer scene in every major city is defined by the nightlife district they have to offer.

Sydney has its Rainbow Precinct, London its Soho, New York its West Village.

Having worked on Oxford Street for 12 months, if there is one thing I have learnt about the scene, it is that one weekend will never be like the previous one, nor will it be anything like the next.

The strip is influenced by so many different factors that it is impossible to predict with any degree of certainty what any given night will look like.

This is what gives Oxford Street its charm, as one of Sydney’s most vital arteries keeping the city’s nightlife vibrant and intoxicating.

When travellers visit Sydney, any local who really knows the city will tell them to pay Oxford Street a visit if they want a good night out.

That is because we do it like nobody else, and have that chaotically unique reputation to uphold. This energy never left Oxford Street.

Even In the middle of the pandemic we all still found ways to connect, even if that meant watching drag shows over Zoom with a bottle of wine or Face Timing our Good Judies for hours on end just to have the decent shit talk with friends that we would normally enjoy on a good night out.

Queer nightlife returns

Despite its unpredictability, what has been a trend in the scene is its steady regrowth since the pandemic.

What started as embers when lockdown was lifted has very slowly been fanned into a bonfire, which we are now working hard to maintain.

Most of Sydney’s iconic queer venues have reopened, a plethora of new shows and events seem to be appearing almost every day, and through 2024 we should have the other side of the strip reactivated after many years behind construction hoardings.

Yet there is still constant talk of the scene being “dead,” as if it is unable to even light a candle to what it used to be.

I have several responses to this. To start with, these conversations more often than not have some type of blame attached to the younger generation; something along the lines of “they don’t know how to have fun anymore.”

And to be fair, the scene shrunk significantly post-COVID. Since 2020, we have been putting a Band-Aid over a bullet hole in our best attempt of breathing life back into the hospitality industry.

The state of the world that we are still in today is the result of a disease that ripped through society and kept us inside for two years straight. This was not something any of us could control.

For my generation, our first experiences with bars involved one person per square metre, seated only, no dancing allowed, masks mandatory unless drinking.

Most of us never saw the need to find a fake ID, because even if we did, there would be nowhere to use it. We celebrated our 18th birthdays over Zoom.

And when the pandemic finally lifted, we walked into a world that had one of the worst economies we have seen in the last hundred years.

For many of us that means there is less money going around – and especially for 18 to 20 year olds who have no previous experience in the workforce to rely on and often have to balance work with our studies.

That means we go out less to save money, and pregame harder than generations before us. That in turn means less drinks being bought on a night out, and less money for the venues.

Generational experiences

For those who experienced pre-pandemic Oxford Street, nightlife is never going to feel like how it was, simply due to their own experiences of nostalgia.

There is a magic to the first few years of being an adult, something about the uncertainty and ‘newness’ of everything which we will always reminisce on.

Those who were going out in the 90s and early 2000s will tell you that is when the scene peaked, because that is when they became of age.

You will get the same response from those who had their heyday in the 2010s because that is when they were having the most fun.

Each generation will never be able to compare how the scene was before they started coming out, because they didn’t experience it themselves.

The same can be applied to discussing the scene pre and post pandemic.

Speaking for myself now, I am having the time of my life.

With all the above factors considered, knowing that I will never see a ‘pre-pandemic’ scene, and considering the state of the world, I think my generation is genuinely making the most of what we’ve got because we don’t know any different.

And that’s okay. I believe personally that there is a beauty in this, and we should be celebrating what is being offered to us considering it is the best we can get.

For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

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viralhoax · 10 months

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tonight we dance, for tomorrow they release the dogs

many people have told me they’d like to see inside my head and how i come up with some of the weirdo shit i come up with and i always laugh and say no, no, it’s dark in there, you don’t want in. and it feels like i’m gatekeeping some horror club from interested people when i say that. the last thing i want to be is a gatekeeper, so i think offering some level of explanation to what i mean will be both cathartic for me and a reasonable (?) explanation (?) for my behavior as a mentally ill human.

welcome to the club, i’m the bouncer. here’s what you need to know about entering.

sometimes i just lay in my bed and experience this unrelenting feeling of fear.

i can’t sit still for very long because there is always “something” to do.

rest isn’t exactly something i’m well-versed in and i feel immediate guilt upon even thinking of relaxation. my brain skips over these days as grey area blank days where i do nothing except exist and this brings me an immense feeling of shame and guilt. there is so much to be done at all times. how dare i rest myself? how dare i sit in the stillness and accept the quiet? not when i’m constantly accessible, i have to answer all things immediately. the only reprieve and excuse i give myself for resting is when i have stressed myself out so much that i have sent myself on a one-way ticket to Migraine City and then am down for the count for sometimes up to two or three days. that’s the only rest that feels acceptable though — the rest that my body demands.

this constant feeling of fear — yes, that one, the one from earlier — it lingers in every bit of my body. i’ve been told that trauma lives in our nervous system. i can assure you that it does. some days it hurts to exist. some days i feel guilty for existing, like i am on the run for murder. my fight or flight is activated almost 24/7, and i feel like there is no way to explain how i feel other than incoherent screams. i feel like my presence and space and being aren’t worthy of anything, like i am a nuisance, like i am in the way. i constantly feel like i am in the way and need to be moved to the side, maybe underneath a shelf or on a cabinet you can’t reach. a place for me to collect dust while people who can contribute more to society dance around in the space that is now no longer taken up by me.

when people tell me they love me, that i’m good, that i’m kind, it doesn’t register with me. i do the things i think are the morally right thing to do and i try not to harm anyone. i want desperately to be loved but it is very hard for me to feel loved or believe that i am worthy of love, because for some reason, i do not think i am. perhaps it’s years of trauma that i feel like i’ve worked on enough and clearly haven’t. perhaps it’s the lack of permanence of life, knowing that people’s tastes and preferences can change and that i am easy to grow out of. perhaps it’s the fact that many people i’ve loved with all of me have outgrown me and never given me the closure of an explanation. perhaps i’m just a cynic. it’s a multitude of things, i’m sure, but it’s hard for me to even believe people like me, let alone love me.

for the first time in my life, i am flying by the seat of my pants as far as “life” goes. i have no plan, i don’t think i expected to make it this far, to be honest. i never thought past 25. 25 was my “get married, have a family, own a home” stopping point when it came to my planning. it was the off-switch for proving myself in the “working world”, i thought i would be steady and stable enough to be a parent, something i’ve always wanted to be (i think).

i am neither of those things.

i turned 25 in the middle of the pandemic and now i’m almost 28 and i have thrown all planning out the window because i’m not even sure if the earth will exist tomorrow. but it’s not a “throw all caution to the wind and live life” type thing, it’s more of a “nothing in my plan has worked out and seems fruitless and i am so disappointed in myself for not only not being on the track i thought i’d be on but for not having any idea what to do next so i’m rendered immobile” type thing. something something executive dysfunction, yada yada depression. it’s the same shit every day and once again, i’m in the way. but this time, i’m in my own way. so i’m simultaneously in my own way and everyone else’s way and there is not a big enough hiding spot for me and all my shame.

my identity confuses me daily. there are so many different facets of it that sometimes i wish i could shed it all and start again, preferably as something without sentience. i look in the mirror and hate what i see most days. i don’t know what i want, even from myself. i don’t feel like a girl or a boy, i don’t even feel like a fucking person most of the time. just this big, looming storm cloud above the people i care about’s head. this piece of radioactive glass you found on your walk home, looking fully in tact and neat from a distance but is too destructive and fragile simultaneously to be cared for closely.

but at the end of the day, does any of this even matter? the world is on fire, we’re all in debt, people are dying from gun violence and being wrongly incarcerated and silenced but here’s some whiny 28 year old child bitching on their blog about feeling bad sometimes. at the end of the day, do i have a roof over my head and food to eat and family and friends to call on? absolutely. and for those things i am eternally grateful. i am so grateful for every single thing i have and every single person who is kind to me in any capacity. i would do literally anything for my friends and family, my love for them is boundless and all-encompassing. same for my pets, who i love as deeply as i’ve ever loved anything.

so if i exist with the basic necessities, and i’m full of love, why the fuck am i so sad all the time? and how dare i be that sad? i’m uncomfortable all the time because my brain tells me to be, with no real reasoning behind it. everything feels like life or death, but zooming out and looking at it all, am i truly living in discomfort? or am i just cold in the water, waiting for it to warm up and it’s taking too long for my liking? am i asking for an in-ground pool when i should settle for the ocean?

anyway, the club is closing and the questions aren’t in positions to be answered by anyone but myself and the universe. you, the onlooker, the club-goer, the all-night-raver, now with insight into the baseboards and wiring that makes this space run — tell me, is it too dark in here or is it just me?

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varshnarsh · 1 year

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How did you go about finding and opening yourself up to new therapists? I had a therapist in 2019 and was only just beginning to uncover and understand traumas I didn't know where as serious as they turned out to be. Then the pandemic happened and I couldn't meet my therapist or have sessions online. At the time obvs we didn't know how long the pandemic would stop our sessions so we just thought we'd pick up in a few months but early 2021 she emailed to say she was going to retire.

I still have a lot of unprocessed and half opened issues to resolve but the process of starting all over again, saying those things that took so much out of me, truths and thoughts I never thought I'd say to anyone before... I'm so scared and embarrassed

I want to be better but I haven't been able to find the courage to start again like that, to share those things to a new stranger.... Do you have any tips or thoughts?

so first things first, i think understanding your position and your therapist’s position is important. from their perspective, their livelihood is built on empathetic practices and principles, exercises to support you and fill you with tools to help you. no other malicious intent, no cruel scheme, no judgement. they are here to create a safe space for you— to feel safe enough to be courageous, to feel safe enough to accept all versions of you, to feel safe enough to grow and understand yourself.

from your perspective, sadness and embarrassment are both loud and strong emotions. and if unprocessed, they’re probably still very loud and strong and pulling your thoughts to their side. they’re protecting you from feeling more from the very things you went through again. your mind is in protective mode— and when you really break that down, you realize a few things: your strong emotions if unprocessed will only get louder; your protective mode…what is it really protecting you from? if a therapist will only offer you a safe space and encourage you to heal, what are you being protected from?; have you given yourself the credit for opening up and being vulnerable yet? that is a big deal!

her retirement has nothing to do with your ability to be vulnerable as well as the pandemic really fucked up things for all of us— disrupting the trajectory of your sessions was unplanned but you were pushed into uncertainty and discomfort and you made it through.

in my opinion, shifting the thought from this idea of opening up to a stranger and reframing it to— i get to finally have a safe space and get the tools i need to feel all of these strong emotions and learn how to accept them, live with them, process them, understand them, etc. helps a lot. the courage to start up again comes from your ability to accept your vulnerability and feel it for what it is.

this shit is HARD. this inner work, this awareness, like i get it. it’s exhausting sometimes. it’s scary. it’s frustrating knowing what you need to do and not quite being able to get to that point. but i took baby steps. i researched therapists on psychology today one day. i let myself take a break. when i was ready again, the next, i looked at rates. i let myself take a break. the next, i called to schedule a consultation. break. i went to the first appointment. break. let yourself go at your own pace, let yourself take deep breaths, let yourself understand the reason why you’re doing this.

and celebrate yourself often. this is you showing up for yourself, and that’s pretty fucking amazing.

i also do online sessions, due to the pandemic and then my therapist moved to a different state but honestly i love her so much i don’t mind it’s not in person. half the time i don’t even notice— there is so much to take away from each session that there are more important things to focus on.

#a #you got this!!!!#baby steps

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cess-is-here · 1 year

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Stars Around My Scars

“Time is everything we have and don’t.”

My life amid this unprecedented pandemic is more like a roller coaster ride than anything else imaginable. Everything from elation to terror to shock to a host of other life-altering experiences. I would not alter any of these occurrences if given the opportunity to do so. If any of those things hadn't happened, I wouldn't be who I am now.

In all candor, I was rather pleased when the lockdown finally began. My academic year had ended early, classes were canceled, and the sun was beaming. I felt good and confident that I would be happy. Really, remaining at home can't be that challenging, can it? Imagine being able to skip chores and lie in bed all day. Given that we own a sari-sari store, I would probably spend most of my vacation there if the lockdown hadn’t happened. Obviously, then, I benefited from the advent of the pandemic. Nothing was done but lie in bed for the entirety of those days. I was thumbing through my phone, checking out various social media apps, and taking in an entire season of shows on Netflix. Just generally wasting time. After some time had passed, the reality of the situation started to sink in.

In those moments, I could only think of how wonderful life was without the burdens of home and classroom obligations. Looking back now, I see how self-absorbed and egocentric I was. It's like the world is ending, people are dying, many are losing their loved ones, and yet there I was, rejoicing in the fact that a pandemic has occurred. I didn't understand how mundane being at home would be until we started having issues as a family. The expected family drama has finally begun. In most cases, I think families have grown closer together during lockdowns. Since everyone is stuck at home, it's a great chance to spend quality time together as a family. But that is not the case with my family.

“The longer I stay at home, the more homeless I look.”

My lowest point in life. All the trauma, all the anxiety—I didn't even realize I was feeling them at the time. The connection that I had with my family began to show signs of strain. To this day, I have no idea what the root of the problem was that led to my alienation from them. But I suppose that one of the reasons was that we were not accustomed to being at home with the whole family at the same time for an extended period of time. Before the epidemic, my family and I didn't get to spend much time together because we were all so preoccupied with our individual lives. Therefore, it is really awkward for us to spend time together at home. At least, that's how I felt about it.

I found myself in several disagreements with both my parents and my siblings. It wasn't until then that I realized how little I actually know about my family, and the same goes for them for me. There are a great number of things that set us apart, and you should know that I am not the sort to just give in and back down. I have a theory that one of the reasons we get into disputes a lot is because neither one of us wants to acknowledge our own shortcomings. This was the mere similarity that we all have.

It even came to the point where one of my family members almost ran away from home. After that it was very hard to interact with that person. He was always in such a bad mood and what’s worse was it came to the point where he physically hurt me. I can still vividly recall the searing sensation that spread across my face where his hands had landed, as well as the buzzing sound that emanated from both of my ears. It seemed as if time had stopped moving, and all of a sudden he was so far apart from me. I believe that it was a depiction of how that one act had resulted in the severing of all of my ties with him.

Since that happened, I’ve been plagued by anxiety. My entire body would start trembling so badly whenever there would be loud noises or voices of people shouting with one another. Suddenly, it would be difficult to breathe, and going outside wouldn't be much of an option because of the lockdown. Being that my family isn't exactly the most open bunch, I had no choice but to keep everything to myself. Not until I figured out how to cope with my anxieties, anyway.

“Healing is not linear.”

There's a common belief that if someone in your family has wronged you in any manner, you must forgive them no matter what. “Pamilya mo pa ‘rin naman sila,” as the old Filipino proverb goes. It drives me crazy when people say things like this to me because it just doesn't make any sense. I stand my ground, and I have some good reasons why that adage is bunk. One thing to remember is that just because they are related to you does not absolve them of responsibility if they cause you emotional distress. Second, your mental and emotional health will suffer if you continue to be with toxic people. Finally, getting out of an abusive relationship is the only way to recover from it. These are the primary reasons why our family members do not have an excuse to dump their traumatic experiences on us. There are still a lot of other reasons why this is the case, but these are the most important ones.

I am not, however, advocating that people harbor resentment or refuse to forgive members of their own families. Despite having made peace with the past, one lesson I took away from this is that you may forgive someone without forgetting what they did. I'm to the point where I can have a regular conversation with that person, but there are still moments when it all comes crashing back in. That's fine, by the way. Healing is not linear.

Everyone has the option of forgiving, but forgetting might be challenging. To heal, it's fine to take things slowly and focus on one thing at a time. It's ultimately up to you to decide if you want to forgive, and if you don't, it doesn't make you a horrible person. Forgiving someone who has wronged you against your will isn't always the best way to heal from the hurt you've suffered.

After the horrible experience that I went through, I was never the same person again. Despite the fact that it had a positive and negative impact on me, I believe that such things are an inevitable part of life. Everything we've been through up to this point has contributed to making us who we are. Therefore, we shouldn't just stop there but should instead continue to shape ourselves in various ways. Let us not let our suffering be the defining factor of our entire lives, but rather let us use it as the impetus to get better. Sometimes we slip backwards in our recovery, and that's okay; relapses are a natural part of the process, and in no way undermines the progress that we have already made.

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”

#CNFOutputs #KabataanEssay #StarsAroundMyScars

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anonyma13 · 1 year

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Realizing just how difficult it is to have all of these creative ideas and not have the ability—the time, but mostly the energy—to work on them.

Realizing just how goddamn tired I am all. the. fucking. time.

Realizing that my every memory, regardless of what it is, is tinged with sadness and a soft horror I can’t fully describe, that feeling that says quietly you don’t want to open that door.

Realizing just how much I struggle on a daily basis. How hard even the “simple” things are. How hard it has been to return to being a “person” after months of working from home over the pandemic, even this much later. Even if that small paragraph is the extent to which I understand this feeling.

When therapy failed me I was left with a clawed open and devastatingly angry feeling. A despair so deep that I knew in my bones that I had to be the one to find it in myself to do whatever was necessary to make it better since no one else was coming to help me.

In my head I called it taking myself seriously, and I started to refuse to paper over the amount of effort it was taking me to cope. Which unraveled the whole thing, made me start to see the amount of effort it has always taken me, given me a glimpse of why I have always felt broken and decayed and unfit for this world. Wrong.

I started to use the word trauma, just inside my own head. Hesitantly. I started to see how the people who raised me failed me so utterly. He emphatically says neglect whenever I talk about it, while I still see all the ways my mother’s trauma was wracked her life. I’m still unearthing each chipped piece, not yet able to put them all together yet. It’s sweaty work.

The thoughts bombard me while I’m doing the most mundane things: copying and pasting data at work, taking out the trash, picking up dinner. Maybe it means something that the sight of Christmas lights fills me with an inexplicable dread, a sense that the world is deeply unkind and unsafe, that there is nothing good there. Maybe it’s not right that in every picture I’ve ever taken of myself until I left “home” at 28 I looked hollowed out and sad. Haunted. Maybe I really have been bullied all my life by those who were supposed to care for me. Maybe I’m not just overreacting.

I still feel this awful wariness to look back. The feeling that my every memory is tinged in grief, even the good ones. Even the ones from this life I have chosen for myself. Made with my own two hands and every ounce of that awful stubbornness my mother has always hated about me. I think, maybe that means something.

When my feelings capsize me and I’m powerless to stop them and it all feels so so indescribably horrible, I don’t try anymore. I imagine myself in a room. I have walked in the front door. I see the part of me that does nothing but wail and cry. The part of me that cannot speak even if she wanted to. She sits by a window and sobs. She’s always looking out. I tell her I’m sorry. I don’t make her any promises. I tell her I’m doing my best. That it won’t ever be perfect, but that I will do my damndest to protect her. She doesn’t really believe me yet. It’s progress.

I no longer roll my eyes at my inner self for identifying so strongly with these traumatized characters when “nothing bad has ever happened to me” and I should have no reason to. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Origin. Blood Memory. Speak. The Ice Queen. I gather them all up in a list and leave them alone for now. I trust they will be useful later.

I’m learning to open my hands. To give these fragmented pieces of my self space to breathe. The kindness and acceptance they have never had before. I’m learning to accept these small, strange tokens they give me and to trust that one day they will make some sort of sense. I am doing my level best.

#deep breath #mental health shit #I have traveled so much mental ground #I am folded and unfolded and unfolding #trauma #perhaps #still wary of using that word #thank whatever deities exist for this horrible stubbornness I possess #I have always been on a journey

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mimsyaf · 2 years

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Our CK fandom, season 4, and love

At some point I’ll collect my thoughts enough to write about Season 4 more thoroughly. I haven’t even watched it all yet, am up to episode 7. To me Season 4 feels slight, and off-kilter, and slapdash, and loving, with some great moments, and some really bafflingly wrongheaded choices.

It doesn’t feel wrongheaded in a slick, soulless Marvel way, it actually feels deeply personal to the 3 main writers. I just happen to disagree with them about some… stuff. Daniel. Most of Daniel’s arc. And other stuff too. And also they tried to cram waaaay much too much in. Someone wrote that it feels hollow, and I agree.

Then there are some wondrous surprises, like just how great Terry Silver is in every moment, Tory’s storyline so far, and the fact that I have come to be very interested in Robby as a character, and care about him deeply.

But I’m not really writing about Season 4 here. I do have major problems with it (that will be very fun to write about! both critically and in terms of fic-it fics!) but I also feel the love the writers have for the characters (even if I really disagree with them on characterization!) and for the fandom, including the queer parts of fandom. It means a lot to me, that affection, those nods to us. YMMV and that’s totally fine.

The main thing I wanted to write about was YOU. My beloved fandom. Our little corner of fandom, the one that treats even KK3 as a sacred text, mines it for nuance and meaning!! This Tumblr Speakers Corner where we get on soapboxes and yell about toxic versus restorative masculinity (and occasionally Ralph Macchio’s delicate wrists and Billy Zabka’s amazing CENSORED).

I don’t need Season 4 to be that good. Because I know YOU will spin old straw into gold for me. You’ll pull out nuanced moments in beautifully colored gifsets. You’ll write fic or meta that will have me staring at my phone with my mouth open, tears springing up in my eyes, awestruck. Or giggling wildly to myself. You’ll draw the artwork that will set me to dreaming.

In season 4 they wrote a scene for Laura Lawrence that was so generic, unexamined, and shallow that I wanted to yell at my tv. Meanwhile, YOU’VE given me words about Laura that have changed forever how I view motherhood. One of you wrote words for Laura to say to Johnny upon him coming out to her that went far towards healing my mother’s rejection of my queerness. Your fic did that.

Everything about Sid has always struck me as either a misguided inside joke or inwardly directed antisemitism. And then one of you wrote an exploration of him as a character, his Jewishness, his relationship to Johnny, the country club, LA society, that was more thoughtful and thought-provoking and surprising and moving than most short stories I’ve read in the New Yorker.

Through this slog of year 2 of the pandemic, you’ve spun the most incredible castles in the air, made me think about girlhood, about queerness, about being trans or NB, bodies in sports, bodies in violence, fathers- teachers- wounds-, MEN (sooooo much about men), love between men (all kinds of love between men), martial arts, kink as a way of processing trauma, kink as an awesome fun thing to do, cars, the US’s shameful history of imperialism and oppression of Asian populations at home and abroad, Coor’s Banquet, soldiers, road trips, class in America (where we pretend it doesn’t exist), how Bobby Brown Can Get It, terminal illness, cultural appropriation, chokeholds, neurodiversity, ghosts, Elderly Homicidal Veterans Should Kiss, binary brothers, OG Cobras, stigmas around homelessness, and expired orange juice.

You took some mostly good, somewhat flawed. source material, and you’ve transformed it into a dreamscape. And I love you for it. My eyes are closing on their own right now, so I don’t have time to say that you for sharing this ride on the CK rollercoaster.

Man I hope this makes any sense at all.

#season 4 spoilers #cobra kai spoilers #meta but mostly just sleepy #I love you all so

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sariahsue · 3 years

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I just saw your take one Lilo&Stitch's approach to child protection and I was wondering if you could give some advice on how to write realistic stuff in this matter? I've been meaning to write a foster care/adoption fic and I do know the system in France must be at least a little different - and I will get down the research hole once I have a bit more time - but do you have any advice on how to write the kids reactions, the way parents deal with everything, the bonding part... things like this, so I can avoid clichés.

You don't have to answer though, feel free to ignore all this akdjwja I just figured there's no harm in asking XD

Yeah, sure! (To anyone else reading this who has a fic, feel free to send me a message if you have questions!) I’m definitely not the most knowledgeable person, but I know quite a bit. And I’m sure things are a bit different in France (hopefully their court system is better - yikes!) but I think the human element would be pretty similar, so here we go.

First off, know that everyone is foster care is having a rough time constantly. Foster kids, workers, parents, foster parents, foster siblings. And no one knows what’s going on long term. There’s always a lot of uncertainty. Will the kids go home soon? Are parental rights going to be terminated at the next court date? Who knows???

The birth parents, at best, are going through a really tough time in their life, made worse because their kids were taken away from them. Some care about their kids, but they’re extremely self-centered and have zero parents skills. Some are manipulative and see foster care as free babysitting, and as long as they get to see their kid for an hour or so a week, this arrangement is fantastic for them! At worst, they’re just horrible human beings who abuse children. In general, most parents are clueless and selfish and pretty manipulative. They say they’re good parents and have no clue why their kids were taken away, even though their kid has cigarette burn marks on their back, or had to eat out of the garbage to survive because the were left alone for hours at a time when they were four, or worse. They have no clue at all what their behavior does to their kids, and they refuse to listen to anyone who tries to explain it to them.

No matter what type of parents they were, their kids ALWAYS love them and want to go home. Every single one of them. No matter the age. No matter what their home life put them through. Some of them aren’t old enough to understand why they can’t go home. Some have been in foster care for years and hardly remember living at home but still want to go home.

It makes for complicated foster relationships sometimes because the kid will be attached to both birth and foster parents and feel guilty or conflicted or disloyal, or they’ll try really hard not to be attached to the foster parents in the first place. (I can think of only one exception to this. Two sisters who had been put into another home and liked the foster family and decided that they were going to be adopted by this family and were very excited about it... except the foster family had no plans to adopt them. I never learned what happened there.)

And this is before accounting for the mental health struggles that often accompany the trauma most of them have been through. Some kids come in with anxiety that makes it difficult to trust new people. Some kids’ behavior is so extreme that it’s difficult for foster parents to take care of them, and so the kid moves around constantly. (If their behavior is too bad, they can sometimes be put into either a group home or residential, either temporarily or permanently.)

Parents are also entitled to visits, usually either weekly or every other week, at least while the goal is reunification (which is always starts out as). Before the pandemic, these usually took place in the DCF (Department of Children and Families is what it’s called in my state) office or in a visitation center. Sometimes the court orders that the visits be supervised so they don’t start promising their kids that they’re coming to get them next week. Often the workers think that sitting down the hallway not listening counts as supervision. 🙄

With the pandemic, kids have been meeting over Zoom. That’s being phased out pretty soon here. Kids are almost always triggered by these visits. I mean, they look forward to them usually. Some kids are mad at their parents and don’t want to talk to them, but almost always, they want to see their parents. And almost always whatever behavior problems they had before is extremely worse for the next 2-5 days. (Which is terrible if you get a visit every week.) Some parents bail on these visits regularly. Some consistently bail on only birthdays and Christmas. We’ve learned not to tell the kid that they have a visit coming up until we know it’s definitely happening, or sometimes only right before we’re planning on leaving to go, because the anticipation of a visit is triggering or because getting stood up by your own mother is traumatizing. Sometimes you can get the kid’s therapist to write a note asking for the visits to be less frequent for the kid’s sake, but often that just means every other week instead of every week.

For foster families welcoming kids into their home, it’s a little different. They’re often more stable, and their whole life isn’t shifting around them. They’re just getting one or two kids into the family. The home dynamic is going to be a little different. Nothing huge, compared to what the foster kids are going through. It often depends on the kid how fast you get attached. Sometimes you know kids are only going to be there for a month because their normal foster family had to deal with an emergency, but the plan is to take them back soon. Sometimes they’re adorable babies and you get super attached really, really fast. Sometimes they’re so unhappy and scared that they make your home life completely miserable. Sometimes you’ve seen so many kids come and go over the years, and they’ve all left eventually, and your heart becomes guarded to protect you from that pain. But you get attached eventually anyway.

And sometimes your parents are given a newborn whose goal is reunification and it’s love at first sight even though you don’t know if you can keep him, and then he’s put up for adoption when he’s two and you adopt him SO HARD. And then you make future foster kids upset because you can’t adopt them too. :( And even though they get adopted by friends of yours, they still feel conflicted over it four years later.

You would think that a kid raised completely in their adoptive home from birth would have no problems, and sometimes that’s the case. Sometimes they still get upset about the adoption when they’re older because the foundational belief they have about themselves is that their mother didn’t want them, even though it’s not true.

(This is the real-life story of my brother. We are the only family he’s ever known, and he’s 13 now, but he still has issues over being adopted. The other boy is 16 and is doing much better with his new family now, though he still has some issues. We had him for a very long time, and we were all happy that we know his adoptive family well because we stayed it contact with him, which almost never happens when a foster kid leaves.)

Oh, I forgot one thing. Usually when kids first get to your house, they are perfect little angels for a while. Depending on the kid, it’s either a couple days or maybe even three months. It’s called the “honeymoon period.” Once their subconscious realizes that this is a safe place to work on their issues and they aren’t in physical danger, they start to process what they’ve been through. It comes out in a variety of ways. Behavioral issues, bedwetting, explosive anger, nightmares, etc.

A note about social workers: All the workers (at least in my state) constantly have too many cases. Like, double what they’re legally supposed to have. Most of them try hard to keep up. Some DO NOT CARE. Some are fantastic and put extra time in to go to the kid’s end-of-the-school-year recitals and build a relationship with them. They’re in charge of organizing visits and making sure the kids have everything set up and are generally important in the kid’s life. They’re required to visit once a month and make sure foster parents have all the right paperwork and arrange dentist visits and bring them to all their therapy appointments. (FYI, You get a piece of paper that says you’re the legal guardian. You have to show it to schools and doctors when you make arrangements for the kids. My mom also keeps a copy in her purse, just in case a kid starts screaming “HELP! SHE’S NOT MY MOM” in the middle of the store or something. It’s never happened, but you know, just in case.)

Also, you would think that they’re the constant in the kid’s life, but if the birth parents move, the case gets transferred to another office in the state, and so the social workers switch. I sincerely hope that’s not how things are done in France because it’s garbage for a lot of reasons.

Okay, I’ve written you an essay, but I hope it was a useful essay! Let me know if you have any more questions!

#foster care #adoption #birth parents

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imperiuswrecked · 3 years

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To me, it doesn’t make sense to make Magneto the main villain because it has been done so much before and it would connect it so much to the Fox Films. Also I think there is a GREAT laziness in writing Magneto especially in films. He generally didn’t want to kill all humans, subjugate them yes because he doesn’t trust them. Which isn’t a ‘good guy’ move in itself and he slips in and out of.

He legit murdered genocide I think when he was going to kill all humans. Like no.

I also think that the average cinema goer likes Magneto too much… or maybe that is me. It would also require them to recast the most famous faces of the franchises?

Like is anyone going to care if they recast Jean, Scott, Iceman, Rogue, Kitty, Beast even Mystique but Magneto? I don’t know. I have long been a fan of an actual Jewish actor playing Magneto but following Ian McKellan would be difficult for the casual fans to accept. I don’t think Fassbender left such an amazing impression.

Even my most average MCU fans friends (and god they love the MCU 😤 but I see past it) still talk about how much they want to see a Magneto solo film.

To me I would put the focus on their reveal and sentinels. Then again I thought they’ll go through Krakoa stuff. Like it turns out the mutants have been living on this Island etc

With the ‘simpler times’ comment I have to for the sake of my sanity have to think that it was because Pietro knew where he was. Things were clear to him, as much as it hurt he had his sister. The following trauma had not occurred. Again I don’t think this is true but I am trying to reason bad writing. He didn’t doubt his morality but was indebted and controlled. Shitty actions were out of his control.

I don’t read Avengers so I didn’t know he was shelved for so long.

I think the Trial of Magneto is trying to ride on the coattails of Wandavision because even though she’s not a mutant a lot of the internet was wanting Magneto to show up. So what is the best way to get those fans who wanted to see that? Set up a family comic book where they establish the family again because I guess the MCU fans heard they’ve changed their background and themselves didn’t like it.

I see the Trial of Magneto as something poorly thought out as they saw what the audience was interested in. The timeline kind of clashes uncomfortably with Inferno. Which makes me think it was wedged in there to ride the Wandavision train and undo the retcon on the side of the main storyline.

Thank you for reading my essay/rant

Ok so I'm going to first say you have a lot of great thoughts and great on picking up the whole forced feeling. You are right, it does feel wedged in there and it does feel forced because that's exactly what Marvel did.

The Trial of Magneto was supposed to be an X-Factor plot, it was Leah Williams next arc, here's an article link talking about her podcast: link (yes I know it's bleeding cool but I don't have time to listen to the podcast)

Leah Williams tells us that X-Factor was canceled because Leah's pitch for the Magneto/Wanda story for X-Factor, now called Trial Of Magneto, became such a popular pitch at Marvel but they thought the reader numbers for X-Factor wasn't big enough for this story, so they wanted it as a separate comic. And canceled X-Factor #10 rather than seeing it run as originally planned, with the Trial beginning in X-Factor #15. Williams says she only learned about the cancellation of X-Factor when she was writing #9, so as she had to finish the series quickly, squeezing six issues worth of story into those last two issues, calling it "cramped and rushed".

So I'm not a fan of Leah but the way Marvel treats it's writers has always been terrible so this cancellation doesn't surprise me. Could this be about W*ndaVision? It's likely, but it's more likely this has to do with Hickman bowing out. It's no secret literally everyone hated the retcon and I always knew it would be undone but I didn't think it would take 6 years but here we are.

Hickman leaving is a bigger thing, he stated in an interview ( link ) that he had planned Krakoa and X-Men to be a 3 arc story, and he wasn't allowed to move onto the 2nd arc because the clowns at Marvel liked the idea of Krakoa too much and I'm so mad because that's exactly the kinda behavior that annoys me with the fans, them thinking Krakoa is just a fun playground for the mutants to mess around with.

"Oh, plans have changed entirely," Hickman says. "When I pitched the X-Men story I wanted to do, I pitched a very big, very broad, three-act, three-event narrative, the first of which was House of X. And while this loosely worked as a three-year plan, I told Marvel upfront that I honestly had no idea how long the first part would last because there were a lot of interesting ideas that I had seeded that other creators would want to play with, and so, we left this rather open-ended. I was also pretty clear with all the writers that came into the office what the initial, three-act plan was so no one would be surprised when it was time for the line to pivot." Hickman continues, "However, I also knew that I was cooking with dynamite, and it was very possible that what I had written in House of X, and the ideas contained within, was not actually the first act of a three-act story, but something that resonated more deeply and worked more like Giant-Size X-Men, where it would represent a paradigm shift in the entire X-Men line for a prolonged period of time. So, during the pandemic, when the time came for me to start pointing things toward writing the second-act event, I asked everyone if they were ready for me to do that, and to a man, everyone wanted to stay in the first act. It was really interesting, because I appreciated that House of X resonated with them to the extent that they didn't want it to end, but the reality was that I knew I would be leaving the line early."

I'm so MAD because the thing I was predicting, that Hickman would have it come crashing down and everything would be revealed to be terrible and Mutant Death Sex Cult Island wasn't a paradise is never going to happen because the fucking CLOWNS at Marvel don't want him to move past it. I may have my personal gripes about some of Hickman's writing but we can't deny the man wrote one of the best if only the best Marvel Event with Fantastic Four/Avengers/Secret War.

As for the simpler times comment, like I have my theories that I wrote out here, and that's what I think is most likely but I do think Pietro's life has never been easy or simple once his adoptive parents died. Pietro could be drinking to a time before the Brotherhood.

I would love for a Jewish actor to play Magneto and any other characters who are Jewish. I would love for a Jewish writer to be able to write them too. However Ian's performance literally set him in the minds of the people as Magneto, not even Fassbender's bleh one note Magneto could compare. Imo the only reason people liked the younger Magneto was because he was young, handsome (? ig idk i dont simp for him) and they could ship him with young professor X (cowards. where is the old man ship???) But I feel like a new actor could definitely fill the role if they are Jewish and the writing was good.

Magneto's writing in comics... well I just wish we could have a Jewish writer for him. There's some great stuff for him but I feel like characters like him and Doom could be written better by non white/american writers.

Although by today's standards the og X-Men trilogy doesn't hold up I will defend the first two movies with my life simply because after Blade these movies opened up the idea that a good serious, non campy version where characters called Magneto and Cyclops were taken seriously. X2 in my mind was the definitive X-Men movie. Was it totally comic accurate? No, but it doesn't do what the MCU does, it doesn't treat the watcher like they need to have their hand held through all the military propaganda and "hints to the comics". Also side note; the reason no one cared about any of the other X-Men being recast is because all through most of the X-Men movies the focal story point has been Professor X vs Magneto. If they really want people to care about those characters/actors then we would need stories that focused on them. Not like how Storm barely had any character growth or plot in the og X-Men and even young Ororo got mishandled by the script. This is why I feel we should have "origin movies" for the X-Men that don't do what Wolverine Origins did and try to make a whole new cast but instead should use the stories as they are. If it was Kurt's story then we would see him join the X-Men, and have the other actors revolve around that. Same with each of the others, the X-Men work best when they are working off each other and each given enough screen/page time to shine. Unfortunately we all have our favorites, even movies and writers, so those are who are going to be pushed for fans to love.

Thank you for your long rant and sorry for my own long rant/reply.

#xmen #x men #comic talk #xmcu #magneto #erik lensherr #imp answers

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brokenmusicboxwolfe · 3 years

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Proof I live in isolation….

Yesterday I was wearing size 16 jeans. Today I’m wearing size 26 jeans. I do not feel embarrassed.

Explanation:

See, my everyday jeans were wearing out so badly the fabric wouldn’t take sewing up. Traditionally I’d rotate in my “in public” jeans as they would get stained or badly worn, buying new jeans once in a while. This worked most of my life.

Life isn’t the same.

Even before the pandemic my opportunities for “in public” had dwindled. It started even before Mom’s stroke, way back when Pop died, but it had gotten dramatically worse once I was on my own. Then the pandemic happened and I only needed “in public” jeans once every two weeks. So good jeans weren’t wearing out, but everyday jeans were. I certainly couldn’t see ruining a perfectly good pair of jeans when I can’t afford to go around buying new clothes. Even cheap Walmart jeans are expensive if you are broke enough. I am definitely broke enough!

Well, the last few months I’ve been going through my family’s stuff. Generations of belongs were getting sorted through and shuffled around to make space for repairs and get them out of danger of leaking roofs. My family always just kept clothes. Clothes were to be worn until they were so hole filled and unpatchable they were obscene to wear. Or if you were my Pop, until Mom decided they were so obscene she had to threaten to throw them for him.

This means bags, and bags, and bags of clothes.

I always joked we were set up for the zombie apocalypse, with enough clothes for the rest of our lives as long as we didn’t care how we looked. Little did I consider that you can have a personal apocalypse sans zombies. Honestly, the clothes sorting has been a boon for my clothes budget. I have enough t-shirts and sweatshirts and the like to last the rest of my life, like I said, as long as I don’t care how I look, also like I said. The boots I need for my foot problems and underwear would have to be bought, maybe some nightgowns, but mostly I don’t NEED to buy clothes.

Ah but jeans. Jeans I wore out. My parents’ had some good jeans, but they wouldn’t do. Mom is much shorter than me, and my father, while the same height, only failed to wear out jeans when he was skinnier than me. I had given up on jeans.

Then I found some bags of MY old jeans in a storage shed.

Once upon a time a very happy, extroverted, precocious little girl became an extremely unhappy, introverted, withdrawn little girl. This trauma transformation of personality included a physical transformation as well. Put simply, She got fat. Very fat. And she just got bigger and bigger and bigger as the school years went by. After graduation it took her another decade or more to recover emotionally. Sort of recover. And a side effect of the emotional change was that she lost weight. She wasn’t all that happy, was now a muddled mix of extrovert and introvert, and she was now stuck isolated even when she didn’t want to be…but hey, she wasn’t so fat and that’s all the world cares about. Not all stories are fairy tales. Yeah, in the space of a couple years I went from a size 26 to a size 14. Don’t go “OMG! That’s amazing you lost so much!” It was a side effect of a change of mood and three hour morning walks/runs in the woods, and never my goal. Which is good or I’d have been disappointed.

For the record, I didn’t feel any different. I had no more, or less for that matter, energy. I may have even felt weaker, no longer having the bulk for pulling and shoving things. I certainly hadn’t become prettier. Sure you could see me ribs, but you could also see great folds of lose skin.

Anyway, I completely forgot I had a trash bag full of jeans from before I lost weight! Alright, so you are thinking “Wait, they are so much bigger than your size! How can you wear such big jeans?”

Belts, dummy!! No, really. It works. They are nice and clown pants baggy, but since I have to tuck my jeans into the top my boots (ticks are a big problem here) and the belt is around the waist, they don’t get in the way. Woo-hoo! I don’t have to buy new “everyday” jeans!!!!

And I get to look ridiculous!!! Now I have a reason to be glad no one ever sees me! LOL

#clothes #my day #old clothes #jeans

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eroticcannibal · 3 years

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Common myths and misconceptions about home education

So in case anyone has somehow missed it, I have recently become a Big supporter of home education in a very lefty way, which has meant I have had to challenge a lot of views I have previously held about home education and that I know a lot of other lefties hold too. I am of the opinion that embracing home education, not as a last resort, but as the primary form of education for as many children as possible, is a vital part of achieving the required shifts in society needed to meet the goals of most leftists. So I am taking it on myself to convince you all that it is a very good thing, and also to clear up some misconceptions people have about home education that may make them feel they are unable to do it.

(A note, I am from the UK and shall be using UK terminology and specifics regarding law, policy and other such things will be from a UK perspective. I shall be using the term home education, as that is the legal term in the UK and is distinct from home schooling, which is the term for what school children have been doing during the pandemic.)

And I would also like to extend a quick thanks to Education Otherwise and the mods at Home education and your local authority for teaching me A LOT.

Have any questions about anything I’ve not covered here? Just let me know!

1. “Home education is illegal.”

- Sadly, home education is illegal or restricted to the point of inaccessibility in most of the world. From the research I have done, it seems that only the US and the UK have reasonable laws around home education (if I am using a very broad definition of reasonable, it is still not great). I do hope I can change this section soon, and I would *heavily* encourage people to campaign for the right to home educate post pandemic, perhaps cite any benefits learning at home has provided to children, perhaps???

2. “Home education is a tool used by religious fundamentalists to brainwash children!”

- This is a view many hold, and for good reason. For many of us, when we think of home education, we think of christian fundamentalists in the deep south of America, pulling their children out of school to avoid the liberal agenda. The truth is, anything can be used as a tool of indoctrination. This can happen in home education, and it can happen and has happened in schools too. In my own communities we have had instances of schools being a site of religious radicalization of children. The reality is this is far too complex and deep an issue to be solved by deeming any particular form of education as “bad”. I am not an expert on how best to deal with such issues, but I do feel that things like outreach and building a healthy community with otherwise more isolated religious groups would be a better way to address these issues.

3. “You need to have x qualification to home educate.”

- Again, a reasonable view to hold, given that state run and private education does require educators to hold certain qualifications, but in practice it quickly becomes evident the same does not necessarily have to apply with home education. Educational qualifications are very much focused on delivering an education in a classroom, which is a far cry from home education. During our home education of our child, my partner, who is a qualified SEN TA, has struggled far more than I have with educating our SEN child, despite the fact I hold no qualifications.

We live in amazing times when it comes to education. There are many things that parents and communities have to teach a child, and there are many things a child can teach to themself if given the tools to do so. You can even learn together! Their are endless resources available, books and games and documentaries, and even home education groups and private tutors if you feel that is the right fit for your child. You don’t need a piece of paper for your child to spend a day with their nose buried in a book, or to help the neighbor with his vegetable patch, or to cuddle up on the sofa while watching Planet Earth.

4. “You are required to follow the national curriculum.”

- This does vary by country (that allows home education). As a general rule, the stricter a country is about who can home educate, the stricter they are about what must be taught. In the UK, you are not required to follow the national curriculum. Education must be “efficient” and suited to the child’s “age, aptitude and ability”, and LAs do require that english and maths are covered. Other than that, you are allowed to tailor the content of education to the child and their interests. We have recently dropped geography for now and are only just picking up history again. It has also given us the freedom to focus on areas our child needs that would not be covered in mainstream education, such as anxiety management, trauma processing, self care and hygiene.

5. “Home education looks like school/is just filling out workbooks/etc”

- The thing you will always hear from experienced home educators when you begin home education is “home education doesn’t need to be school at home”. Much like you can tailor the content of the learning to the child, you can also tailor the delivery to the child. Some child need structure, timetable, instructions. Some need freedom and to bounce between topics. Some need to have an hour learning maths and only maths, some need to go dig up your garden “for science”. Some want to learn every day, some will need extended breaks.

Learning happens all the time, from the moment they wake to the moment they sleep. As an example, at home we have some workbooks, as both me and my child have ADHD and need someone to go “ok learn this” rather than us having to work out for ourselves what we need to cover for core subjects like english and maths. For the rest of most days my child is left to their own devices to binge youtube and netflix and work on their art. We try and go for a woodland walk every few days, where we have Deep Discussions about all kinds of topics, and we are also working on growing edible plants and baking cakes from around the world. We are more hands-off at the moment, due to the current bout of anxiety, but when that settles again we will get back to history themed crafts and STEM activities. Post-pandemic, we will be signing our kid up for swimming classes and “after school” clubs, and looking at sending them down to my mum for the home ed groups where she lives, like the forest school. A lot of home education outside of a pandemic is in groups and community based, or will make use of libraries and museums and other public learning opportunities. Frequently very little will happen at home.

In fact many home educators will advise new families to “deschool” for a while before jumping in to learning. This is a period where you “get school out of your system”, and just exist. Learning does not have to be intentional, you will be surprised how much you can achieve by just having fun.

6. “Home education is expensive.”

- It can be, ask my bank account. However, it is perfectly possible to deliver a quality education with little to no money. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s doable. Their are many online resources for free (check out oak academy), and libraries have plenty available too. Even paid resources can be very cheap if you know where to look. (psst, if your kid thrives with worksheets and powerpoints, get yourself a twinkl subscription, download everything you need for a year then cancel it.)

(This does not apply to exams. Get saving!)

7. “Home educated children are not properly socialised.”

- This is only really true during the pandemic. The rest of the time, home educated children are free to socialise whenever they want, with whoever they want, in whatever setting they choose. Socialisation while home educating is in the opinions of many of a higher quality, as they are not limited to groups of a similar age and background. Many home educating families form groups for their children to socialise together too. For ND children especially, socialising while home educated can be far less stressful and far more fulfilling than in school.

8. “Home educated children won’t get qualifications.”

- Just plain not true. Arranging qualifications can be costly and time consuming, but it is possible and regularly done. Some children may return to school or college to access exams for free, and I have heard of a handful of cases where individuals were able to secure prestigious university places without any qualifications. Home education also allows for more freedom with how exams and qualifications are approached, for example, many home educated children will pick one GCSE to focus on at a time, rather than covering numerous topics over 2 years and having exams for all of them at once like children in school will.

9. “Home education is a safeguarding risk/is used to cover up abuse/home educated children are not seen.”

- In the UK at least, home education is not considered a safeguarding risk, no matter what authorities may tell you, nor are home educated “not seen”. They still visit medical professionals, they still engage with their communities.

Now I shall add the relevant paper here should I find it again, but the idea that home education is used to cover up abuse to a statistically significant degree, or that home educated children are at more risk of abuse, is false. Home educating families do face a significantly higher risk of social services involvement than other families, but far less abuse is found in comparison to other families. It is also worth considering, when talking about social services involvement, that many families pursue home education due to failures by schools regarding a child’s vulnerabilities. In most cases, especially the Big Ones, where a home educated child is abused, the child was already known to authorities as a victim of abuse, therefore home educating did nothing to hide said abuse.

Children are also routinely abused in schools, which is another common reason for home educating.

10. “Home education has to be monitored or approved.”

- Depends on the country, I know in Japan home education is monitored by schools, however in the UK, monitoring is not lawful. Local authorities may make informal enquiries to ensure a suitable education is being facilitated (keep EVERYTHING in writing and please go straight to “home education and your local authority” group on FB for advice, you WILL need it!). In England, if your child is in mainstream education, you can deregister at will, from a special school will require LA approval. In Scotland deregistering requires LA approval. (Again, head to the aforementioned group for advice).

11. “You can’t work/get an education while home educating”

- It is hard to balance work, education and educating your child, but it is possible, people do it every day. Obviously, having at least one parent free to educate unhindered at all times is an ideal situation, but in the real world it often does not work that way. Parents may have to home educate regardless of their other commitments if a child truly needs to escape the school system. Many parents work or learn from home, and sometimes it is even possible to combine these activities with home education. Professional artists and crafters can pass down their skills while working, distance learners can invite their children to sit in on lectures. The really great thing about home education is it is flexible. Do you have a whole day of meetings? Let the kid play minecraft all day! Going to be in the office all day? Drop the kid off at the local forest school or something else they can do all day. Drop them with the grandparents to help with the gardening!

12. “Home educated are behind/achieve less than school children.”

- Their is no evidence that home education is of a lower quality than school education. Many children are home educated specifically because the school environment was detrimental to their education, and thrive with home education. Plenty of children are able to learn more simply by having 1-to-1 attention, without the distraction of an entire class. And others may well be “behind”, and are educated at home because of their specific needs that mean they will never thrive in an academic setting, so they are allowed to focus on learning skills that will allow them to live independently.

#word of god #home education

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dizexplainstheuniverse · 3 years

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Give up hope.

If the past 2 years have taught me anything, it’s the art of giving up hope.

It’s about a human as it gets to dream, to wish, to imagine, to long for, to crave, to seek after something or someone to fulfil our wants, needs and desires.

Now, I fully believe in following the path of desire. I have absolutely no interest in sitting here and telling you I’m a desire-less puritan – quite the opposite. I’m full of unmet needs and aching yearnings.

However, I am going to try and communicate with you the importance of giving up hope...

Giving up hope doesn’t mean becoming hopeless, or admitting defeat, or becoming a lost cause.

Not at all.

What I’m talking about is giving up hope as an act of surrender.

So long as we hope, we project outwards onto the world, onto others, and unknowingly give our power away to ideas, concepts, and people. We make them, the other, something or someone outside of ourselves and outside of our control responsible for our individual happiness...

Let’s take a look at one very relatable example:

So, like many of us, I spent much of my time at the beginning of 2020 ‘hoping’ that the pandemic would all be over in a few weeks. I begged and bargained with the powers that be to make my lockdown misery end and clung desperately to hope. We all know this story too well…

Did it end?

Did it fuck.

Every few weeks ‘they’ would announce yet another indeterminable amount of time stuck in the prisons we called home.

My dreams of freedom were crushed, over and over again, until eventually – I gave up hope.

I remember thinking, “alright, I get it, screw this, I give up…” and I surrendered to the now. I stopped trying to fight reality with the idea of freedom I had constructed inside my mind in order to try and cope with the current situation.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this in my relationships (I’m the fucking Queen of projection - such a powerful imagination… ).

I was either too busy clinging to a version of a person I was hoping they’d turn out to be – or clinging to a situation, scenario or concept of what I hoped relationships could be like – to see what was right in front of me all along.

The grass was ALWAYS greener, or at least I hoped it would be…

The trouble with perpetual un-fulfilment, AKA addiction, AKA the human condition, is that we’re so damn distracted looking for the cure to our pain, hoping it’ll be in the next dopamine hit, that we are literally blind to the abundant nature of reality screaming out for our attention.

There’s a saying, right: “you wouldn’t know it, even if it hit you the face…”

When it comes to love, this has certainly been true for me.

Not only are we blinded by our past conditioning and traumas, but even when we begin to see the love, joy, pleasure, freedom, safety or belonging that’s right in front of us, we’re so fucking terrified to receive it and let it in that we subconsciously sabotage, resist, deny, reject and continue to fulfil the age-old narrative that “we’re just not good enough” or “we don’t deserve it” … or, if you’ve got an extra sneaky-smart psyche “it’s just not good enough for me!” … and off we go again, demanding more, more, more…

Of all the things, situations, and people, I’ve hoped for in my life, the moment I gave up hope and surrendered to the pain of my reality, that’s where true liberation was found.

The trouble is, we aren’t all well equipped or ready to fully feel the depths of the pain that giving up hope brings. It’s scary AF. Especially if we can’t yet see what’s right in front of us. So instead, we fight, we run, we freeze, we appease. We spend every waking moment of our lives looking for the next get-out of feeling the pain from our past.

There’s that other saying: “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” - classic. I bet you can relate to that one as well.

It was painful for me to give up on my hopes in relationships. So painful, that I’ve often stayed in alternatively slightly less painful relationships, substituting one pain for another, because facing the pain underneath of the thing I was masking was deeply terrifying – like, chilled-me-to-the-core kind of terrifying. So much so, my mind had created all sorts of elaborate tales about my unworthiness and lack of deservingness to protect me from experiencing that kind of pain ever again. And the masochist in me was indeed thriving.

It was too painful to give up hope, I needed it. I dug my claws in and I refused to let go. Because giving up hope, surrendering to what is real and present right now, meant having to acknowledge and grieve what I was never given but rightfully deserved. We’re talking, of course, about childhood wounds. The pain of that betrayal, the loss of love, care and nurturing from the adults in my life that were ‘supposed’ to care about me was truly heart breaking. Not only this, I felt just as terrified to receive it. I could not trust it that it would not come at a cost of more pain and suffering – just in another form – so why risk it?

I didn’t want to be alone - I couldn’t bare re-experiencing the pain of my loneliness and isolation. I didn’t want to be close - I couldn’t bare re-experiencing the pain of risking abandonment, rejection and neglect.

Oh, my sweet, agonising, disorganised attachment injury. Forever caught in a double-bind. “Can’t live with it, can’t live without it” – there’s another one for ya.

Truly, the only invitation I have for you here if you relate at all to these experiences, is please – give up hope.

Gently, slowly, with compassion and acceptance, feel your pain.

Hold yourself tenderly, allow your heart to break open. Soften your breath, your body, feel your feet on the ground. Release your tears, cry, scream, wail, rage, punch, roar – drop deep into the depths of your pain with such loving awareness for the universal experience of how painful it is to be a human being on this tortured planet.

You are not alone.

For I assure you, what awaits the other side is a freedom, a bliss, an ecstasy more real than any hope.

Share & Follow - Instagram: @dizexplainstheuniverse | Facebook: /dizexplainstheuniverse

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thoughtsafter3am · 3 years

Text

I’m really excited for A Court of Silver Flames, but man, every time I look at anything tagged with a character from the series makes me remember why I cut my time down on this website. Maas does a good job writing multifaceted yet flawed characters, which I love, but all it seems fans of the books do is rip the characters they don’t like to shreds while not acknowledging the flaws of the ones they like. There was not this much vitriol for the first 3 books or maybe I’ve just lost my tolerance to "mean girl nonsense" now that I’m back in the tags and not an undergrad like I was when the last one was released.

I like Feyre and Rhys but I also acknowledge that they have done a pretty crappy job in understanding Nesta’s trauma and the fact that she’s really had her agency stripped from her since she was a kid. Feyre and Nesta didn’t have a great relationship from the start, so it’s natural to assume that after all they went through, their relationship would be strained. It doesn't fall on one party to do all the work in repairing a relationship when both have negatively impacted it.

I also like Nesta; however, she is not a saint. Has she gone through a lot in a short amount of time without the time and ability to process it? Yes. She has some shit to deal with, not only from being turned fae but from her childhood and life as a human as well. But that doesn't mean that she is absolved of the impacts of her actions. We can't yell at Feyre for not helping her sister when her sister has brushed off Feyre's attempts to help, even if her attempts to help may not have been exactly what Nesta needs. There has to be some sort of communication between them which, currently, there is none. When we absolve Nesta for her sins while crucifying Feyre, we are discounting vicarious trauma and valid concerns for safety.

I think it is a little drastic to call what Feyre, Rhys, and the IC tell Nesta to do is no better than Tamlin. Do I think that they are correct in how they are attempting to help Nesta? Not fully, but as someone with a family history of self-destructive coping mechanisms, it is exhausting having a family member who is hurting themselves and you feel like you can't help them. It's also scary and you would do anything to stop them from engaging in that behavior because you don't want to lose them which is how I view their actions. From my perspective, there is a difference between feeling like you have no other options to keep your loved one safe and away from spaces where they are inflicting harm upon themselves and keeping someone locked up for the sake of keeping them locked up because you're afraid they'll leave.

When Nesta is not forced to live at the House of Wind or the townhouse, but instead at her own apartment paid for by Night Court funds, I read that as Nesta being given time and space to process with Feyre and Rhys acknowledging that Nesta doesn't process things well with others. However, when she doesn't seem to be getting any better or making choices that are healthy and safe, I understand where Feyre is: feeling like a drastic intervention is necessary to save her sister and make sure she stays alive. From Feyre's perspective, she tried to acknowledge her sister's needs but feels like Nesta's behavior is spiraling and the current situation is not only allowing it, but encouraging it by letting Nesta isolate herself, with which I agree. With that in mind, removing Nesta from that environment is her goal through whatever means necessary. Just because someone has gone through trauma doesn't mean self-destructive behaviors should be ignored or downplayed but instead the opposite.

All I'm saying is this whole “If you like Feyre, Rhys, and the Inner Circle, then you hate Nesta” and vice versa is too much. There is no perfect character in this series, and that’s what I like about them. Flawed characters create tension and drama that bolsters the plot and keeps readers engaged, but it also stirs up more hate and distain than I feel like it used to during Old Tumblr™. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, so feel however you want to feel. This was not done to start fights in the comments (because this fandom clearly has enough of that as it currently stands), so I'm not going to waste my time in comment arguments. I simply had thoughts and feelings to air that were impacting my ability to feel excited about a book I've been waiting to read for a long time.

But do remember that this is a fantasy series and psychoanalyzing characters simply to make others feel small for liking them is nasty and doesn't allow them to use the books as an escape which is a book's main purpose (especially during a pandemic).

#it's been a long time since I had a post like this #we're going to post like it's 2013 #please be nice to each other #this site has gotten meaner by the year #acosf #acotar #feyre #rhysand #nesta #feysand #nessian

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therectoress · 3 years

Note

yennaia + gamer au

This was supposed to be three sentences and definitely not crack but I just had to... sksjsjssksjjs.

Yennaia prompt: Gamer AU.

LINK TO ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN IN THE REPLIES.

Word count: 1.8k+ Pairing: Yennaia. Rating: T.

Tissaia really had no idea why she was doing this. Perhaps to appease Rita. Perhaps because her addiction to nicotine had worsened over the course of one year of a bloody Continent-wide pandemic and she was loath to use her credit card every time she needed a new pack of cigarettes. Perhaps she was going through a midlife crisis to cope with the fact that being the Chancellor of Aretuza College was already stressful enough without half the generations there trying to fool her subordinates into thinking cardboard replicas or even mannequins counted as attendance or simply because the rest of the Board of Governors (Stregobor) couldn't differentiate between what could be said through an email and what required her to clean her entire house so the background of her call was pristine.

Her controller vibrated in her hands, (Why, for the love of the Gods, couldn't that setting be turned off?) her knuckles turning white from gripping it so strongly. "Oh, for fu- heaven's sake." There, she had been ambushed. Again. A funny and wholly unexpected thing happened, though, one of the users turned on her companions, offing the lot of them with clean headshots the brunette definitely couldn't pull off in the span of twenty seconds.

"Uhh..." What does one say when your virtual saviour just betrayed her entire party on a whim and was being cursed at obnoxiously loudly and vulgarly for it?

Yennefer ignored Sabrina calling her names that absolutely applied to her and her hormonal reaction to a lovely blue-eyed MILF the likes of which she had only seen in her dreams. "No thanks needed, love. I was getting tired of seeing you frown like someone had keyed your car every time you got killed. A pretty thing like you should only have cause to smile." Oh, Gods, now she sounded like a creepy old man that lived in his mum's basement. Great. Good job. Her Social Studies major was an absolute hit. Fuck her life. Fuck Oxenfurt College. And fuck Sabrina's witch-like cackling while she was at it. "Name’s Yennefer." She choked out miserably.

Tissaia scowled at her laptop. Hackers. Amazing. This was the best day of her new normal life. "Mind telling me how you broke through the most expensive antivirus in the Continent, dear? Because now I really need a refund." Now she also needed to contact Aretuza’s IT team on a Saturday night, because she was not about to mess any further with these blasphemous machines, thank you very much.

Wait, what? "That wasn't me... You left your camera on." The woman legitimately squealed at that, her oversized jumper sliding down her left shoulder and exposing just a glimpse of her collarbone as she pinned up her hair into a bun with... were those pens fashioned as swords? Oh, bugger, this was so not the time to get turned on! "Are you alright?" Mercifully Sabrina, Renfri and Phillipa were already accosting someone else, else she was sure the brunette would've completely lost it, more than she already was doing, anyways. "Hello?" No answer.

Tissaia was fishing for her boots when she started ranting, “Oh, don’t you worry! I’m fine! Just dandy! This is exactly how I wanted my life to go.” She motioned with her hand to the space around her. “I wished for nothing more than dealing with complete morons from nine to six, five days a week, whilst trying to make sure my sanity doesn't desert me.” Biting her lower lip for a moment she began checking that the ends of the laces were the same length when she pulled them up. “Running right after to my local grocery store to buy more instant meals that are probably going to give me cancer in five years if the bullshit articles my mother keeps sending me-”

Yennefer had told herself she wasn’t going to allow this wasn’t going to get any creepier than her misguided comment but she still had a gift code for that nice liquor store which conveniently had retailers popping up every six blocks everywhere for the last few months, especially in Thanned isle, only Gods knew why. “This bloody succubus of a twat that is my best friend has been forcing me to constantly use this cursed game by changing the password for my email and then Aretuza’s server and then-” Bingo. One text to Philippa and they had her IP address, with a mortified Triss already calling Jaskier since she was the only one that had managed to get a decent scholarship at that posh college.

This was her future wife who was about to jump from a bridge from the looks of her and they just had to do humanity a great service by saving her from herself and from sobriety.

“Can you believe that tosser? I am a lesbian! I spent my teenage years clad in flannel until my girlfriends staged an intervention kind of lesbian! Yes, Vilgefortz, I will sue you for harassment in the workplace and I will blacklist you. No, Vilgefortz, I don’t want to break quarantine to go on a date with you and I definitely do not want your disgusting cologne anywhere near my-” Tissaia’s head shot up, her doorbell was ringing and she pinched the bridge of her nose, reaching for a new, disposable, mask.

“You stay right there.” She threatened the girl, who had the most beautiful violet… Perhaps she really ought to let Coral get her a therapist. It rang again. “Gods-damn-it.” She thought.

Her plan was going marvellously. She would only have to sleep with a knife under her pillow for a few weeks for blackmailing Sabrina (Who honestly hadn’t the slightest talent to pass off plagiarism as a sudden stroke of genius in her final project without her aid.) into going along with this. The blonde was lighting the candles around the monitor without trying to burn her hair off and had given away her best bottle of cheap but still good wine for the cause. Thanks to Renfri and her frankly psychotic, owl obsessed, girlfriend she already knew what she would be replacing her trauma-ridden last name with! Splendid!

The brunette shut the door on Jaskier’s face after taking the brown paper bag from his hands, spraying the bottle of vodka inside it with so much disinfectant that it dripped down onto her carpet. Taking off her gloves and disposing of them, she grabbed a knife from the counter and ignoring the annoying blue light that came from the kitchen table, “Oh, shit. You’re soulmates. I’ll tell the rest of the girls we’re all fucked.” Tissaia cut off the upper part of the glass in one smooth hit, like Calanthe had taught her when the then teacher could still be considered fun by her groups of friends.

“Shut up, tiddybug!” She heard Yennefer sing-song.

Feeling like being crass the blue-eyed woman took a rather large swing directly from the bottle. Sitting back down, she sighed. Yennefer took a dignified sip from her wine; she could do balanced when her significant other to-be needed to let loose. “Did you like the bottle? It has good reviews from… wait a minute… apparently several alcoholics who don’t know what a budget is.”

Tissaia’s face paled. “I thought you weren’t a hacker.” The woman muttered. She didn’t fancy getting kidnapped and… No, no, no. Fucking Rita. What was the cost of moving, again? If she slept four hours less a day and split her cleaning time in two she could probably trade this house for Stregobor's in-

“I am not!” Yennefer cried. Bloody hell. “You just mentioned that you worked at Aretuza and-” Sabrina had probably started a group call and Phillipa was indeed hacking into her computer to save her arse. The Redanian was currently writing a script for her to follow. “Your username in the game is your surname. My friends and I tried to get into that school a few years back and I do remember that the Chancellor is a woman and that her last name is de Vries.” Her username wasn’t her last name, it was actually something that suggested she was an Ice Queen of the highest order. Queen Elsa from the movie Frozen would be intimidated kind of Ice Queen.

“Everyone is aware the highest-ranking members of the faculty live in chalets near the castle, pardon, the building.” True. According to Triss, that was a part of their contract that if unfulfilled prohibited them from working there ever again. To Yennefer that seemed borderline cruel, forcing them to be available at all hours like circus animals for juniors that didn’t deserve their spots.

“My best friend is a student there and she knows which one is your home because she wants to eventually be a teacher.” Partially true. Until that day came, Triss, like any rational individual, avoided the Chapter’s Village like the plague lingered inside, and wouldn’t be caught dead there unless she had to stop Sabrina from doing something stupid because of the anarchist phase she was going through. Jaskier was an acquaintance of hers of sorts because Triss had tutored his boyfriend Geralt in Biology and being daddy’s boy, he knew which one was Tissaia’s house because he had almost gotten expelled like fifteen times.

“I honestly just wanted to do something nice for you, you sounded like you needed it and… I know quarantine hasn’t been lifted once in Temeria since it all started.” Philippa wrote then that she would probably make for a decent actor without flashing her breasts to the audience every five minutes. She pursed her lips and replied in the mock post-it note to fuck off.

“I… I… Thank you. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed- I’m sorry, darling.” Her pale cheeks flushed at the term of endearment that slipped her tongue and Tissaia bowed down her head, red-painted nails caressing the glass bottle almost reverently. “Say, why don’t you tell me what your email address is and I send you my mobile via chat? The explosions in the background aren’t that, uhm, comforting to listen to when I’d much rather be hearing your voice.” Should she have looked up she would have seen the smile that threatened to split Yennefer’s face. “Only if you want to, of course! I- what am I even saying? Never mi-”

“No! Wait!” She placated. Sabrina squeezed her shoulder as she went to retrieve her phone charger, offering her a genuine smile. “I’d love to.”

“Okay.” Said Tissaia, an awed sound leaving her throat when blue finally meet with lilac. Gods, she was drop-dead gorgeous. Rita could have whichever bottle, all the liquor she wanted from the school’s cellar for indirectly enabling this.

Was one week a proper enough courting period to then buy the engagement ring? Or should she just have Philippa get her the best, costliest one from that jewellery eshop they all liked through some minor fraud that would take her like half an hour at most, today? “Good.” Yennefer de Vries had such a nice ring to it.

#yennaia #tissaia de vries #post: ask #ship: yennaia #writing*#sityiatwru*

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thisselflovecamebacktome · 3 years

Text

Dancing With The Devil Parts One and Two Thoughts/Moments That Stuck Out

(I’m going to put this under a read more before it’s long, but be aware there’s going to be talk about death, sexual violence, eating disorders and drug use)

General thoughts:

So I’ve made it pretty clear that I was definitely nervous about this coming out. Any long term Demi fan knows that making these documentaries have not turned out well for Demi in the past. Likewise, I have other concerns surrounding it. In saying that, I am also not egotistical to think that I know for sure this will be different or even if it’s not, that I can change things. I also feel a little better knowing that most of what was said so far has already been spoken about in interviews rather than it all coming out at once. Either way, as always, I wish Demi nothing but the best and hope that she is currently as okay as the documentary makes it seem.

The Scrapped Documentary:

One thing that really stuck out to me as soon as it was said was the implication that her friends lied their way through the documentary that never got released. On one hand it feels like a very friend thing to do, like we’ve all been there and done it with good intentions even if it was the wrong call to make. But I definitely think that when considering that the person who called 911 felt like they had to sneak away to make the call and everyone talking about how controlled they felt by having to be careful about food and substances around Demi, there seemed to be a major push to save face and save Demi’s celebrity persona over Demi. And I mean there’s no shock about that, we all assumed Phil wasn’t just in it for Demi’s health.

But what I do find interesting is how Demi’s friend still believes that her old team meant well but was just unequip for dealing with mental issues. Once upon a time, I felt the same. Again, obviously they wanted her well for their own sake because they were making money from her, but I believed they at least wanted her well. But the melon cake revelation changed that for me. Like at that point I went from “The label clearly favoured Nick Jonas and didn’t handle things well but maybe he genuinely thought Demi couldn’t handle it” to “Demi’s team did not give the slightest fuck about her”. So I find it interesting that it didn’t for her friend and makes me wonder just how much of this saving face came from Demi herself (or what she thought she wanted) compared to her team. This is especially the case given the focus, and particularly Dallas’ words, on how she didn’t choose to be a role model but felt she had to be for her fans.

The Death Of Demi’s Father:

A little confession for you all, I almost quit watching this documentary 6 1/2 minutes into the first part. While I feel like almost everything else said in this documentary was at very least alluded to if not flat out said in interviews, this hit me over the head. I am someone who is estranged from their own father and knows that his epilepsy could cause his death at any time should a fit get that bad and that he doesn’t really have anyone who would be consistently checking in on him. So the fear of him decomposing in his flat all alone is one that is all too relatable to me. It is also relatable in terms of my mother, but at least she has my brother who wants to stay at home forever and I would call her even if I moved out, so it’s less likely. So yeah, the way Demi said it and knowing that Father’s Day passed in that time and she probably spends every Father’s Day regretting she didn’t call stings a lot and will almost definitely stay with me for a long time.

I also related to her talking about her guilt of not helping him the way she feels she’s helped other with her advocacy more than I’d like. While not drug related, I’ve spoken a few times on my blog about how I reached a point with my mother’s bipolar and need for remedies to the legal issues that worsened her health where I gave up despite still advocating for others. And she’s pointed that out. But ultimately Demi and her loved ones are right; a person needs to want help to give it to them and trying to force help doesn’t work. It didn’t for Demi’s father and it didn’t for her until she was ready.

Demi’s Drug Use:

I didn’t actually realise Sirah was Demi’s sober companion and while I didn’t really know anything about her beforehand, I think her parts were among my favourites so far. She was honest, emotional, informative and really contextualised what she was saying not only in terms of Demi but addicts as a whole.

Unfortunately one of the most relatable parts of this documentary so far was when everyone spoke about how Demi seemed normal in the weeks before her overdose. To this day, a lot of my then loved ones, whether it be family or friends, still don’t know I went to rehab in my teens. A lot of the people who do know now didn’t find out about it until years later when I was ready to talk about it. Looking back, the only really clear sign I showed that something was “wrong” is that I went from being a teacher’s pet to skipping a lot of classes and heading home for lunches instead of hanging with friends. But given a lot of my friends knew I had gone through trauma and a separate death in the year before, they didn’t think anything of it. Like from memory, I think at “worse” there was a joke made about I had become one of them and cared about school less. Granted there is always the case that they realised but never said anything, but yeah, at least from where I’m standing, they never knew. And that’s why I will never judge loved ones of someone who does anything negative off the bat, because it, and especially addiction, can be so easy to hide.

I also find it really interesting and relatable that Demi linked her drinking with drugs like that. I spoke about this the other day in an ask, but the two have always been super linked to me. But what I find most interesting is that she spoke about it in connection to negative emotions. Because while yes, I have always connected both with negative emotions, for me, being in a negative mood has somewhat made it easier to not relapse over the years because I could justify it with “well I’m feeling bad, of course I want something to pick me up. That doesn’t make it what I need though”. Meanwhile, I found out last year that I still feel that need to use when drinking in a good mood and that freaked me out to the point I don’t drink at all anymore. Either way though, like I said, it was an interesting point to bring up the connection and definitely relatable.

This isn’t really about the documentary itself, but it really hit me how far I have personally come when she spoke about and started playing Sober. Like at the time Sober was released, I was so close to relapsing myself that I couldn’t bring myself to listen to it straight off and yet now I am really starting to feel like I reached a place where the future looks so bright.

The Sexual Assault:

I don’t really have much to say here past “god I wish this wasn’t so relatable”. During my time using, and even the early days of trying to get clean, I had someone in my life that would constantly try to start something sexual with me and when they realised I wouldn’t do it, they drugged me and did it anyway. And while that is clearly sexual violence, there still very much was that stigma of ‘well I was getting high with them anyway” and feeling like that made it consensual and realising down the track that no, it really didn’t. And while not part of the documentary itself (yet), Demi talking in an interview about how she invited the drug dealer back to her house to “make things right” afterwards really hurt my heart knowing how long I spent with the same delusion that this person would make amends too.

Other/Final Thoughts:

I find it interesting that Demi noted that this pandemic is pretty much what made her stop and fully comprehend all of her past trauma. In many ways, it reminds me of sentiments that Taylor has said in regard to Folklore and Evermore, so it’ll be interesting to see just how much of that makes it onto Dancing With The Devil: The Art Of Starting Over. I also find it interesting that according to wikipedia, the last part is meant to come out after the album which could be an implication that the album finishes at a point of Demi’s life before the documentary finishes.

All up, this documentary gives me a similar vibe to Taylor’s documentary Miss Americana where it somewhat feels like it’s more for the casual/non-fans because anyone who pays attention to Demi’s recent interviews will have heard/at least been alluded to nearly all of this information already. That in no way makes it a bad (half of a) documentary, it’s just an observation. In many ways, I also feel like that’s what made the content about her father hit harder too because it was new or things she has not spoken about in a while. It will be interesting to see where the next two parts go from here in terms of being more positive and/or the nitty gritty of picking yourself back up. Either way, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

#demi lovato #dancing with the devil

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backseatsiren · 3 years

Text

A Dramatic Day

It’s been awhile since I’ve written here! There are a couple of reasons: first, my life has reached brave new heights of busy - I was promoted to Editor in Chief at work a bit over a year ago, and my responsibilities there obviously take a lot of time. I’m also teaching more courses than usual at Berklee (right now, one section of Film and TV and two of Game Design Principles), and, as usual, I’m training grappling on top of it all. Plus, naturally, the ambulance. I’m hitting my tour hours, and proud to do it, and as pumped as ever to be an EMT in this neighborhood.

I’m also... very, very, VERY slowly *actually writing a book* about all of this. I’ve begun interviewing a few fellow EMTs, mainly volunteers, about what it is we do. Because of how insane my schedule is, it’ll be a very long term project, and I can’t put any pressure to finish soon. But, especially through the pandemic, I’ve felt a desire to document and interview and report on the idea of volunteer emergency medical services in New York City, here in Brooklyn and Queens, and I think other folks might be interested in reading a bit about it.

But I’d like to get back into the practice of writing about calls and concepts and experiences. As always, I’ll respect patients and patient privacy, and will never reveal identifying information or anything inappropriate.

Today was a fairly busy day, but it started with a bit of a dramatic call. We were called to an unknown, and flagged down by a bystander. A man called us over and told us that he saw a man lying on the train tracks (a less-used track, not the subway or commuter rail or anything). He said he regularly feeds a colony of feral cats there, and noticed the gentleman lying down the way.

We thanked him and high tailed it over, yelling out to him (the usual “sir are you ok?”). My more experienced (many, many years in EMS, including at a much higher level of certification) partner took a look at him and said “he might be dead” and began looking forward a pulse. He went for more help (another ambulance was arriving and they needed to be directed over, the physical layout of the space was weird), and he instructed me to look for a pulse. I did, and found nothing. My other partner (a newer EMT, just cleared for CC status, who I also love working with), said “he’s cold to the touch.”

It was raining lightly. The tracks were a little slick, and there was some litter. It’s early may, and the grass had that beautiful sheen on it, that it gets in the rain. Weird things, visual and sense memory things, are coming back as I write about it.

He was lying down on his face on the tracks. I checked for a carotid pulse again and felt nothing. I checked his hands - they were closed and held tight. Rigor Mortis. I checked his arms, his coat, his clothing, careful not to mess with anything, but looking for lividity. He was bleeding from his face, and, on inspection, his face was very clearly badly injured, bruised, and bloated. I was wearing an N95, but even so, you could smell that he was deceased.

I told my more experienced partner that when he arrived with the other crew. We inspected the scene - noting a shovel and some other tools. There was a little encampment nearby - possibly where this man lived. Beer and food in a little shelter.

It certainly looked like foul play was possible. I learned a few minutes later (on my next call) that the cops did start an investigation there.

As one of the other EMTs from the other crew noted, it was “like a movie scene.” Something about the rain and the light, the way the blood pooled, the way the ants crawled around in it... was surreal. It may have been my less experienced partner’s first DOA when they were first on the scene (it wasn’t mine, but it was certainly the first *outdoor* DOA where I’ve been first and had to help establish that). It was my first suspected murder scene.

And yes, it was deeply sad. There’s some initial adrenaline, for me, in every call. There would be more on my other calls today. There is a voice in my head that repeats a lot of the basic instructions and goes through scenarios: “ABCs” (a note to always prioritize airway, breathing, and circulation). I think about what happened in any given situation and what I should do for my patient. I look for threats to everyone’s safety. And when I can breathe and get a clearer picture of what’s going on, that’s when I can start to process things a bit.

We covered him with a clean sheet from the ambulance and did all the things we needed to do. We talked about it a little, after the call. But I always need to think about things for a few hours after, which is what I’m doing here, by writing about it a bit.

I’m a deeply, empathetic person. I feel for my patients. The call I’m about to talk about - the very next call - required that of me in a different way. But in this scenario, I want to first do everything right for the person and situation, and next, be as respectful as humanly possible. This poor man died - was very probably killed - and was left outside in the rain. I don’t know much about his life, and very little about his death. The whole scenario is very sad, and very surreal.

Every time I’ve had a dead patient, it’s stuck with me. I don’t think I’ll ever forget my first, a woman who very probably died of a heart attack or in her sleep, and her son found her. He was mourning. He was on top of the body, hugging her, crying “I’m sorry, mommy,” and there’s... I guess there’s nothing on earth like that. Nothing like that kind of pain. People, as a rule, do not expect to see their loved ones deceased, and when we do, we usually have a ceremony for it.

I’m just a bystander to that. I can do nothing to help the deceased person, and very little for a mourning loved one, besides being a respectful, empathetic human presence. For my deceased patient today, all we could do was establish that he was dead and do the proper things to ensure his remains would be taken care of (and his death investigated).

My next call was very different, but it was heavy in a different way. We got a call for, basically, a suicidal young woman. We arrived, with PD, to her door. The officers assessed things to an extent, but she revealed that she had been traumatized by police in the recent past, and didn’t want any police in her home. I talked with her calmly, and was able to relieve the cops and take this one, with my partner.

We listened to her. She had obviously been through some extreme trauma and needed mental health resources. I won’t reveal any details here, but I had to keep assuring her that I had no handcuffs and wasn’t interested in taking her against her will. She was terrified of being taken somewhere she didn’t want to go, and I basically sat calmly with her and talked to her about her options. Just talking. Just listening.

This is a case, like a patient a couple of years ago, where I’m very happy to take my time. I’m a volunteer, man. I’m not grinding through a shift for miserable pay, as most EMTs are - I’m here because I frankly want to be useful in this manner.

And I’m happy to sit with a person going through emotional hell, because this is what I can help with. I’m five years into being an EMT with RVAC. I do this 2-3 shifts per month, so I’ll never be the fastest, best, EMT in NYC. But I can be the most patient EMT, and I can give plenty of extra time to a person.

I’m not a therapist, and I don’t pretend to be. That’s what I told her - first, that I’m not a cop, I don’t have cuffs, I have no interest in taking her if she’s of sound mind and doesn’t want to go. Then, second, that I’m no doctor, and no therapist, and that I want her to have resources if she needs them.

We talked more, and did more vitals, and she decided she wanted to come to a mental health facility. We explained every step of the process to her, and what she could expect, and what to bring.

Do I wish I was an actual therapist who could help this girl right away? Yeah. Do I wish I had the ability to make mental health policy that provides good, effective, supportive therapy to all human beings who need it? Yeah. Do I wish I could do better for her than an ER with psych specialists? Where she could easily get lost in the cracks or simply never connect with what she truly needs? Yeah.

I can only take her to a place where people are at least trained to assess her and offer her further resources. I can only hope they actually can help, and do so.

I had another call where we did a bit of *psychological first aid* not long after that. A dramatic scene! A young woman fainted at work at a store, and several people were surrounding her and holding her at the scene! Folks were holding her hands and crying.

It looked wild at first glance, but our patient was completely ok - we got her out, had medics assess her completely, and brought her to the ER while assuring her parents that things looked ok. Her mother was extremely upset, and we had a bit of a language barrier, but we were able to assure her and let her know things looked ok, that her child had very promising vitals and EKG readings, and we just needed the ER visit to make sure.

The medics helping us out were INCREDIBLE. They offered a full walkthrough for us of what was going on physiologically with her and gave a very helpful tip on scenes like that - give bystanders little jobs (just simple stuff, like holding the door, or looking for something like a towel) to do! It helps (caring, kind, just want to help) folks feel helpful when they get scared, especially in dramatic-looking situations.

A lot of drama today. A lot of learning. I felt really good about taking charge with my psych patient and helping her to feel safe and able to make her own decision. Im glad we were able to help our young fainting patient. And as much as it’s heavy, I’m glad I was at least on scene today for our first call. I know I can do nothing but confirm obvious death, but, I take some heart in the kind bystander who called for him (the gentleman who feeds cats nearby).

At least someone cared enough to try.

I’m forever grateful for my partners, for the folks who have taken the time to teach me (back when I was VERY green and still, to this day, as I am learning every single shift), and for the patients who trust me to do my best for them.

I noticed today, this month marks five years of doing this, with my volunteer corps. I can only hope I learn more and become a more effective EMT as I go.

#volunteer ems #ems #nyc

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