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#and how that fucks up someones self esteem and makes them seek positive attention anywhere they can
wickednerdery · 4 years
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Anonymous  asked: Death Naughty Alphabet?
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I’m so delighted that someone asked for this, for her, I can’t even, haha! For one, I’d have never thought anyone would be interested in knowing such things about a female OC, but since you are let’s do it! 
NOTE: Tumblr marked this inappropriate and denied my appeal - apparently Tom kissing girls or laying on his back is too much to handle, lol - so this is merely a repost. Death is from Encounters with Death. Let’s hope Tumblr isn’t a dick...again lol!
A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex):
Assuming the lover’s survived the actual act, Death’s post-coital behavior depends widely on what’s needed. If she needs a place to stay or is trying to lower a target’s guard she will stay as long as necessary. She can and will pretend to be in love, she will read the other’s needs and play into them to the fullest. If given the option though, she’ll prefer to move along quickly. Death’s not into cuddling or conversation - what are we, friends now? - to the point it can actually make her outright uncomfortable if made to do it without a clear reason (such as for a mission).
B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)
Death loves every part of herself; some would say she’s arrogant, full of herself, but she argues “self-esteem is a good thing to have…if I don’t love myself, who will?” On a partner of her own choosing she’s not overly picky, focusing on more general things such a build that suggests they can handle her in the sack. That said a nice face and great ass will also catch her attention.
C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)
She’s an expert at faking it and tends not to actually orgasm; she’ll get aroused, very close, but rarely are partners able to push her over the edge. If she does orgasm and it’s very very intense, she’ll squirt though. Partners that accomplish that she’ll return to. No matter the gender Death doesn’t care if another comes inside of or on her body, but prefers not to let it hit her face or have to swallow during oral as she’s generally not fond of such tastes or consistencies. IF she allows for either it’s a good indication she’s enjoying the other in and out of the bedroom enough to willingly be flexible on her own wants.
D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)
A successful job can get her as, if not more, excited than any sexual activity. For her there is a rush almost dangerously close to arousal in watching her targets die as a result of her handiwork. This can carry over into the bedroom even when her lovers are not targets…it’s not uncommon for her to choke a partner to the point of them nearly passing out or using a knife to cut them, enjoying the violence as much as any sex act.
E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)
Her sexual experiences began early in life so she’s got a lot and absolutely knows what she’s doing. She’s experienced a wide range of partners so is also skilled in adjusting her own habits, shown experiences, and even apparent preferences to suit whoever the lover of the moment is. Despite the high level of experience, rarely has it been pleasurable or even pleasure-seeking for her so much as a means to an end. Because most of her experiences haven’t been her choice and/or included violence it often shows in her own selection of lovers.
F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)
If given the choice, Death will always fuck in a position where she feels she’s got the upper-hand. That, obviously, includes any variation in which she’s on top…though especially the cowgirl position where she can both be on top and in the most control of the experience. Also, from this position, she can watch the other person’s reactions to what she does be it killing or pleasuring them. This need to be in charge can also carry over with her straddling a partner on a chair or the like.
G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)
While Death’s humor is not so much goofy as dark, she would be considered more relaxed than serious in the sack. Like with murder, sex can be seen as sport to her. It’s something to enjoy, if you can, and not take too seriously. In fact, getting too serious during sex is likely to turn her off.
H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)
Provided she doesn’t need a cover that requires her to be otherwise, Death is always very well groomed. Her wigs are always in perfect condition and of the highest quality, she attends famous salons, and uses high-end products. Assuming she’s not wearing a wig, the carpet does, in fact, match the drapes and is often trimmed to a manageable “landing strip”.
I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)
Sex is a means to an end, it’s a game, it’s never a romantic/bonding moment for her…even when she might behave romantically. During sex she’s goal-oriented - whatever the goal is - rather than emotional. Attempts to add intimacy or some element of love-making may very well unnerve her as she’s unsure what to do with any sort of attempt at (emotional) depth during the act.
J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)
Death does masturbate, but not with much frequency. When she does though, she’s far more likely to think of a successful kill than anything else. This said recently she’s found her mind occasionally wandering off to her previous interactions with one Jonathan Pine and been able to find nearly as much satisfaction in those sessions as with thinking about prior kills. She’s also fantasized about her and Pine killing together…everyone needs goals, right?
K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)
She’s big into knife, gun, and blood play…usually subjecting her partner to such things, but not averse to letting specific, repeat, lovers also hold to a blade or weapon to her or even cutting her some. Anything rough, pseudo-violent, or aggressive are always going to be up Death’s sexual alley.
L = Location (Favourite places to do the deed)
Usually somewhere private because she’s often about to kill her partner OR is otherwise trying to keep a low profile. This said, if the mood strikes her, Death will have sex regardless of where she is. She doesn’t care about getting caught and sometimes find amusement both in her partner’s potential worries and the shock of others when she is.
M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)
More than anything (even aggression), it’s a challenge that arouses Death’s desire. Someone who can take her on without fear or thoughts/hopes of outright taming her. They need to be not easily defeated, not willing to just fold to her, but also willing to stroke her ego by letting her win. It’s a difficult balance and rarely achieved by others, but a select few have managed to get her truly aroused…including her latest lover, Pine.
N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)
That soft, sweet, gentle, and emotionally intense act known as love-making. While she’s had to act it out to get close to targets, she hates it. At best it’s a boring turn-off, at worst it makes her outright uncomfortable.
O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)
She’ll always prefer receiving, even if she doesn’t reach orgasm it can feel amazing and get her close enough to satisfy. It’s also one of the few times she’ll allow herself to be in a potentially vulnerable position. While she will give, and can be quite skilled at it, Death is rarely into the act…it’s far more likely that she thinks it’ll help lower the other’s guard and/or get her whatever she truly wants. IF she gives for the sheer enjoyment, however, she’ll absolutely put her considerable skills to use and indulge her partner, not stopping until they’re begging for climax and nearly fainting after.
P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)
Often fast, always rough bordering on violent. She can go slow, sensual, but only does so as is necessary. She’s far more likely to enjoy taking her time with a kill than a fuck. Even if she slows things down, the aggressive side remains nevertheless.
Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)
Death will absolutely prefer a quickie over proper sex; a quickie gets the sex out of the way so she can move onto her true goal, whatever it may be. 9/10 times she will indulge in fast and furious sex over anything else and this has borne out even with those she wishes to have sex with.
R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)
For her profession she can’t exactly afford to be squeamish so she forever remains open to new experiences. At least trying something new keeps it interesting, give her ideas for when she might select a lover on her own. And risky behavior is in her nature in every day life so it feels almost natural in the bedroom or anywhere else she might have sex.
S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)
Given her athleticism, that she’s got the strength and stamina to kill fully grown men if need be, she’s more than capable of going a few rounds in the sack…she rarely does though. More often than not she feigns exhaustion to not have to continue. If she keeps going, encourages another round, you’re doing something very right.
T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)
Aside from the standard vibrator, Death doesn’t have much in the manner of sex toys. Any she might need she’ll merely buy, then get rid of once they’re no longer of use…just like most her partners, haha! Her own vibrator is usually just reserved for herself, but she’ll use it on a lover if the mood strikes her. One toy that she buys with more frequency and for her own, personal, pleasure though is a strap-on…one that’ll she’ll use on whatever lover allows her the pleasure to. Death also uses rope, cuffs, knives, and even guns her in sex-play, but those hardly qualify as standard “sex toys”. It’s more common for her to use them on her partner - merely because she finds more power in doing so - but isn’t averse to having them used on her now and again.
U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)
Just as she doesn’t want a partner to just fall into the sack with her, she refuses to do any such thing herself. Beyond just teasing, she enjoys posing a challenge. If you want to be a true lover of hers you’ll have to prepare for a chase, for her to tease until you’re ready to just force her into submission.
V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)
Her profession, her life, is all about staying under the radar and that translates into sex as well. While she can get loud if need be, Death tends to remain as quiet having sex as she does killing a target. If you can get her to make any kind of genuine sounds, no matter how small or rare, you should consider yourself thoroughly enjoyed by her. The sounds she actually make tend more towards deep moans, groans, and gasps…if you can make her pitch high you’ll be her new favorite.
W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)
Her dealings with Jonathan Pine are highly unique for Death. Not only did she get sexual with him for little reason aside her own enjoyment, she neither killed nor seriously harmed him after even when it may have benefited her to do so. She’s allowed him to top her on more than one occasion, freely given him oral sex, and even found his taste acceptable. Beyond sex she’s also let him into her private world a touch and indulged in softer, more “romantic”, acts such as dancing. While she would not declare any kind of love for him, she does care for him and finds enjoyment with him beyond sex and violence.
X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)
Death is athletically built with thin, but firm, muscles throughout. While not the classic hourglass figure, she most certainly has the curves of an adult female and would not be mistaken for a male unless she made the effort to do so. Her breasts are noticeable, though may be considered small by some while her ass is rounded, high and tight, atop muscled thighs. Her skin is smooth, not tattooed, but spotted with various scars in different stages of healing. As mentioned prior her pubic hair is well-trimmed (and occasionally waxed) into a landing strip…her inner lips just poke out from her outer, clit is of average size and sensitivity, and she only bleaches her asshole if she feels she must for a job, which is incredibly rare.
Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)
She actually has a remarkably low sex drive given how much sex she has. Death would be completely fine going years without sex as, in general, it’s viewed as a tool more than a pleasurable activity. This said, if she finds someone with which she finds the act pleasurable, her sex drive may increase significantly…but only with that specific person.
Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)
Death usually doesn’t actually stick around long enough to fall asleep or has sex at times of the day not conducive to going to sleep afterward, haha! On those occasions in which sleep would be an option she still rarely does though. She leaves or stays up listening to the other person sleep until she can longer remain awake. Actually sleeping with another is rare for her, but a sign of trust if she does - whether of the person or merely their inability to hurt her.
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((And that’s what I’ve got for Death at the moment, haha! I don’t see much changing beyond what occurs in character growth, which will happen over time, no doubt. Thanks again for asking for this, Anon, it was a ton of fun and highly educational for me!!))
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jereviendrai · 3 years
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||| ooc; does every character on this blog have bpd symptoms? is this problematic, considering they’re all villains or would-be villains? is there a way to give a villain a mental health disorder without stigmatizing the disorder? well--
OH AND BIG TRIGGER WARNING FOR A WIDE RANGE OF MENTAL HEALTH TOPICS SUCH AS: eating disorders, mental illness, stigmatization of mental illness, self harm, suicidal tendencies, and a fuckload more. I don’t go into detail. There are just mentions. I’m not gonna say a bunch of graphic shit, I promise! If I went into graphic detail, this would turn into a PhD thesis proposal, and that’d be WAY too long to be worth writing. Also I have BPD, but I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert on the subject. I’m not. My word is not law, but it’d be nice if my word was taken into consideration.
this post got so fucking long and disorganized jesus christ
The answers are: yes, not inherently, and absolutely.
I want to get into the mental health of all three characters in a second, but I think it’s important to talk a little about the other two points first. That said, though -- yes, they’re all borderline. All three of them! And they all experience it differently! I will come back to that. Anyway--
I feel like it’s important to talk about villains, mental illness and stigma. There’s a really common (and insanely lazy) tendency for writers to explain a villain’s villainy by simply saying, “oh, well they’re a psychopath,” or, “they’re just crazy.” This is not only lazy and offensive, but it contributes to an unfair stigma against the mentally ill.
Mental illness might, say, compel someone to steal a chocolate bar or snap at someone out of anger. It might make a person’s emotions volatile. It might make someone unreasonable. They might suffer delusions of abandonment, of some plot against them, of people’s secret intent to humiliate them, etc. They might suffer and handle their suffering poorly. They may cause harm. But that doesn’t make them... evil. It makes them complex. And how they react to and handle their negative actions says more about them than any diagnosis could.
When you have a villain with a mental illness, you need to examine how the illness is hurting them. Write about how it hinders their progress. Write about how isolating it can be for them. Write about the impact and struggle. Not how the illness makes them so evil or so irredeemably awful. The illness should be what humanizes them and helps to make them relatable. No matter how untouchable and powerful your villain is, they have some personal struggle that is independent of their villainy. When done correctly, it can go a long way in fleshing out your villain and adding interesting inner conflict!
I know, I know. You might be asking, “yeah, but don’t people with mental health issues sometimes cause harm directly related to their symptoms?” To which I say: yeah, duh, of course. Just like a depressed person might say something mean when they’re having a bad day. Just like someone with ADHD might make someone feel like they aren’t being listened to. Just like someone who has social anxiety might make a friend feel unloved. Just like mentally healthy people also occasionally cause harm.
I’m not saying mental health issues don’t cause problems and maladaptive behaviors. I’m just saying it doesn’t... make someone inherently bad -- real or fictional. And I need people to internalize that.
ANYWAY ON TO THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR BPD
(i know, you’re probably like, “dude oh my god shut up and get on with it” sakjlfdkjsa)
I’m going to be referring to the four subtypes. I know these are controversial to some people. Some really don’t like these labels, others feel comforted by them, etc. They’re just to make it easier to talk about this whole thing. No one fits neatly into any one subtype! Some people don’t resemble any particular one! Everyone is different! Don’t box people into these subtypes if you haven’t been given consent, thanks!
Mr. A / Clark Donovan Mr. A is a classic example of the Quiet Borderline. Someone with quiet BPD mostly directs their symptoms inward. It’s harder to detect than other types, as the symptoms that are most prevalent are mostly expressed, well, inwardly. Self-esteem issues, self-blame, insecurity, withdrawing emotionally, pretending you’re not angry when you are, self harming tendencies, suicidal thoughts, etc. He’s also kind of clingy. Mr. A is an extremely loyal person to a fault. He is a people pleaser and will go to the ends of the Earth to make his loved ones happy, even if it hurts him. This is of detriment to him, as he often finds himself getting hurt on behalf of people who might not care as much as he does. He’s let a lot of bad people into his life solely because they made him feel loved, wanted and useful. He views everyone he loves through rose-tinted glasses and only takes them off long after he’s been laid to waste by them. He has terrible issues with self-image and has thus developed an eating disorder. He also has severe depersonalization/derealization disorder, which is a result of how his mental health interacts with his reality-warping powers. It creates a lot of anxiety with him, watching himself phase through things and bend the world around him on a whim. His motivations in life are connected to this, but his motivation to do evil things is not. He wants to bring other superpowered people together as a united front against humanity, as he feels that humanity is a threat to their continued existence. This has nothing to do with his mental health issues. The part of it that does tie in is that he’s painfully lonely and has chronic feelings of boredom, so being surrounded with a shit ton of different people mitigates that. It’s a motive for him bringing people closer to him, but it is not a motive for him to launch an attack on all humanity. He’d be really offended if you tried to accuse him of doing this on the basis that he’s just a bit ill. His illness literally just makes him crave contact with other living beings just like him. He sometimes does bad or stupid things because of this, but it literally has nothing to do with his motives as a villain. As an addendum of sorts, Mr. A’s alias and reluctance to use his given name (Clark Donovan) are a result of identity issues he suffers due to his BPD. He finds it hard to maintain a stable sense of identity, so he just... doesn’t.
Ivan Chanteur Ivan closely resembles what we like to call an Impulsive Borderline, comorbid with ADHD. He is an impulsive person, as the name of the subtype suggests. He’s a thrill-seeker who suffers from extreme levels of chronic boredom, which he desperately tries to combat by any means necessary. Staying still and doing repetitive tasks is literal torture for him. If he cannot get up and move and do whatever it takes to keep himself feeling fulfilled and occupied, he is probably going to fucking lose it. When he is actively vocalizing his boredom on a regular basis, this means the chronic feelings of boredom have reached critical mass. It’s not just boredom. It’s anxiety, it’s agitation, it’s existential dread, it’s an inability to focus, it’s pent-up energy that needs to go somewhere and can’t just stay in him anymore. If he can’t get it out in healthy ways, he usually resorts to self-harm or less-than-healthy pursuits. He’s been known to dabble in drugs, self-harm, occasional promiscuity on a bad night. While therapy’s helped him get a handle on it, there’ve been a lot of stressful and traumatic things going on in his life have have made it a lot harder to keep himself in check. Ivan is pretty charismatic, able to cast a wide net and catch all sorts of people in his social web. He has a sort of natural magnetism that, on a superficial level, should make him quite popular. But underneath it all, he has difficulty trusting people long enough to actually let them into his life. He’ll act like an open book, only to slam himself shut and reshelve himself before anyone can get anywhere near the end. He’s easy to befriend, but difficult to get close to. This has caused him to feel lonely and frustrated. He wishes he could easily form deep connections, but it’s hard and it hurts him. In addition to all of this, he engages in a wide variety of attention-seeking and risk-taking behaviors. He often spends time with people who are not good to him, simply for the thrill of it. This has often gotten him hurt, but he finds it hard to cut this habit in spite of everything. This leads to a lot of frustration and self-hatred, as it makes it hard for him to protect himself. Every time someone hurts or betrays him, he beats himself up over it and tells himself he should know better by now. All that said, though, he’s come a long way in therapy. He’s not quite able to keep a handle on all of it all the time, but he’s managed to secure one or two decently stable friendships along the way.
Eve Laurier Eve is particularly difficult to talk about, but I’m going to try my best. Eve is what happens when you make a conscious decision to be bad. He knows beyond a shadow of doubt that what he’s doing is wrong, but he feels so wronged by the world that he just cannot seem to motivate himself to care. This... again... has nothing to do with his BPD. If anything, it’s his struggles with this disorder that keep him at least somewhat... grounded in reality. Eve suffered a personal tragedy -- the loss of his twin sister in a housefire. Though ruled an accident, he cried foul play. Consumed with grief at the loss of the only person he felt could truly understand him, he vowed to find the culprit and make them pay. This set him down a path of vengeance that would make John Wick blush. Eve grew up as the heir to his family’s criminal enterprise. This put him in a position of power the very moment he was born. This also left him exposed to a lot of terrible, violent crimes from a very young age. Because this was normalized by his family, he internalized and compartmentalized any misgivings he had about violence. By the time he was ready for university, he had been thoroughly trained to carry out hitjobs on behalf of the family. He was a weapon from the moment he left the womb. He was groomed to do terrible things, and it’s because of this ongoing and continuous trauma that he developed his particular cocktail of mental health issues. He mostly fits in with the label of Petulant BPD. Repeated and violent trauma did a number on him, leaving him angry and hurt over what his parents let him fall victim to. He also experiences feelings of self-loathing over the part he feels he played in his own trauma, despite the fact that it started in early childhood. He is self-defeating and self-blaming. He has a difficult time expressing his feelings and has angry outbursts fairly regularly, often resulting in self-harm and suicidal ideation. He’s been known to reach for the nearest mind-altering substance just to get out of his head for a bit. His mood swings are intense and leave him feeling fatigued and anxious. He has severe social anxiety that sometimes manifests as cold indifference. He also has issues with control, has paranoid delusions about the people in his life and doesn’t often believe it when people say that they care for him. He will find any and every piece of evidence that points to the contrary, even if he has to make it up himself. This usually ensures that he’ll end up alone again. He doesn’t have very many close relationships, if any at all. His BPD is not the reason he hurts people. Any hurt caused by his BPD is directed at himself, not at others. His BPD is a direct result of what actually has primed him to hurt people. It’s a direct result of trauma. He’s traumatized. And no, trauma is no excuse for what he’s done -- but his BPD didn’t make him kidnap and torture Ivan while he waited for Ivan’s parents to send in the ransom. That was all Eve. That was his conscious decision to make, in spite of everything in his head telling him how awful and wrong he would be to do such a thing. He knew it was wrong and ignored it, as he was under the impression that Ivan’s family had a hand in his sister’s death. If anything, his BPD aggravates his feelings of shame and self-loathing when he does precisely what his parents had been training him to do his whole life.
Anyway-- I hope this was helpful or at least interesting.
The point I’m trying to make here is that mental illness isn’t some kind of ultimate litmus test of good and evil. A disorder doesn’t make you good or bad. It’s just another facet of who you are.
So... to that end... please for the love of fuck stop using personality disorders as the reason for someone’s villainy. Please. I am begging.
I wrote a bunch of BPD villains in various stages of villainhood because I have BPD and this disorder often makes you feel like you’re evil, a monster, etc. Honestly, on good days I feel like an inherently bad person who consciously chooses to do good. That’s very flawed and I know that logically I’m not inherently bad, but that’s kind of what stigma does. It makes you feel like you’re inherently bad. And that feeling influenced how I write all three of these characters.
This is an incoherent mess but today’s the day I find out if I have coronavirus and I’m so fucking stressed out and hopped up on DayQuil. Thanks for reading any of this, I guess?
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wnq-psychology · 6 years
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How To Build Your Self Esteem
step away from the affirmations
“To be healthy, functioning individuals, we need to feel good about ourselves. To feel good about ourselves, we need to feel that our time and energy is spent meaningfully. Meaning is the fuel of our minds. When you run out of it, everything else stops working.”
Most of us struggle with self esteem. Many of us are fortunate enough to realize this, and some of us care enough to try to fix it.
The problem, however, is with the majority of the resources available to us — especially online. I am pretty sure these articles are 100% written by people who have serious self esteem issues, regurgitated from everyone else who has self esteem issues, on down the cycle to readers with self esteem issues, who think it’s just their fault for not being able to apply them and successfully boost their self esteem.
But of course not. Because none of this is how self esteem works.
First, let’s talk about what self esteem ISN’T:
Self esteem is not selfishness or narcissism
Having to say this makes me impatient, because if people don’t innately “get it,” they fight it blindly, emotionally, tooth and nail. And I understand, because there are a lot of emotions on the line here (see: entire post) so I’m just going to tread lightly and quickly when I say:
Self love and self esteem are not selfishness.
On the contrary, selfish people have desperately low self esteem and self love, which is why they overcompensate, demand, and have nothing left to give others.
Self esteem is not a series of “dont’s”
Most self esteem articles cheerily suggest things like, “Don’t have the negative self talk. Don’t compare yourself to others. Don’t put yourself down. Don’t doubt yourself,” like “just don’t have low self-esteem!”
These aren’t solutions.
The brain struggles with the word “don’t,” and when you focus on the negative, you’re still focusing on the thing. The brain interprets the sentence as an imperative, like: “ah, okay, negative self talk. Got it!” The brain is baby Groot.
The way we talk to ourself is a reflection of self esteem, not the root. It’s effect, not cause. It helps, of course, but it’s not the core. And fixing the core will fix the way we think and talk about ourselves.
Nature abhors a vacuum. If you don’t have something positive at the ready, the old stuff will just rush back in.
Self esteem does not come from others
It’s not anyone’s job to make you feel good about yourself. It can only come from you.
Some articles suggest that readers should “learn to accept compliments” — several even went so far as to suggest that you approach others and “ask them what they like about you.”
Trying to build self esteem through “others’ compliments” is like trying to learn how to walk by being carried.
Only you control of your self-acceptance and self-love.
Self esteem is not in “self help”
This is just an extension of the above.
Self help reinforces perceptions of inferiority and shame. It plays on insecurities and fabricates solutions that don’t serve real needs. It encourages avoidance.
It’s like how MayoClinic convinces us we’re dying more than it actually, directly remedies health problems. Engaging will eventually make us absorb all these negatives. We are not more powerful than what we give attention.
Self help just replaces one external influence for another. We’re still grasping for some authority figure, some omnipotent voice, to tell us what to do.
This of course includes this very post. Which is ironic, but at least honest and warm-hearted, because I wrote this only after doing tons of similar reading myself, and I write hoping we all resolve this.
Self help will never help
When I was getting my business off the ground, in the 3 dark months of “white noise” after quitting my job but before getting my first customer, isolated and running mostly on “faith” alone, someone asked me, “what kind of music do you listen to during the day?” I told them, “on good days, upbeat music. On bad days, chill music. And I know it’s an ugly day when I resort to motivational videos on YouTube.”
Those videos got me nowhere — except maybe through the day.
You want to know what finally kicked my self esteem back into gear? When I started making sales. Once that happened, I never watched another motivational, “self-help” video.
Self esteem is not about “pampering”
My god, if we could all stop with the “indulgences” and “little day to day pleasures;” if only we could stop thinking “self love” is about “treating ourselves,” or “scheduling time every day for fun and relaxation.”
Heidi Priebe said it best,
“Real self-love isn’t about ‘treating yourself’… because real self-love is less about babying yourself and more about parenting yourself.”
Good parents don’t indulge children with candy each time they cry. Good parents support, teach coping mechanisms, and gently encourage growth.
This is what loving ourselves means as well. It’s not about daily indulgences. It’s identifying and pursuing our longterm values.
Self esteem is not about affirmations
Fuck writing down all your best qualities.
I don’t know who came up with this terrible advice, but it’s pretty much useless. Consider, for a moment, the most genuinely confident person you know — do they sit down every day and write down their best qualities? Maybe they do, but I doubt it.
Confident people don’t do this. And people don’t magically become confident doing it. Only self-doubting people get stuck in this compulsive loop.
Self love is not about affirmations.
As Heidi Priebe wrote,
“Claiming to love yourself and actually doing the hard work of loving yourself are not the same thing… You can repeat a thousand affirmations an hour, write a limitless number of blog posts about how you’re worthy of love and stick millions of post-it notes reminding yourself how awesome you are on every mirror in your house, but that only gets you 10% of the way to self-love.”
Except it’s more like 0%.
The real solution is: agency, awareness, authenticity, and action.
What self esteem IS:
Step 1.) Self esteem is agency
Self love is taking responsibility.
So many terrible articles encourage readers to keep self esteem at the mercy of external forces, prompting them to “think about what is affecting your self-esteem,” and suggesting “your confidence may have been lowered after a difficult experience or series of negative life event, such as: being bullied or abused, losing your job or difficulty finding employment, ongoing stress physical illness, mental health problems, a difficult relationship, separation or divorce.”
No. To this entire list: no.
I’m not saying that bad shit didn’t happen to you — it probably did. Because bad things happens to everyone. But life isn’t about playing the victim, or comparing notes on who suffered most. Life has negatives in the cards for everyone — even the most confident people you know — and the only difference between those with self esteem and those without it is that the first group chose to take responsibility for their lives, their responses, and their actions.
So when it comes to thinking about “what is affecting your self-esteem,” the answer is always “you.”
You are in control of your self esteem. That’s the entire list, beginning to end.
you are in charge. you are in charge. you. are. in. charge.
Step 2.) Self esteem is awareness
This is super important, and we don’t talk about it enough.
Get out of your damn head. Be present.
Stop slipping away. Stop shutting down. Stop freezing and falling silent any time you’re uncomfortable, or unsure, or anxious. Stop reminiscing on the past, or thinking about the future, or wandering around, mentally, anywhere that you actually aren’t.
I wrote pretty openly about struggling with this myself, and the fact that I’m currently working on it, so I speak from a place of empathy and love.
We do this is because we’ve learned that “shutting down” offers security — it’s “easier” if we don’t engage; we think there’s less risk.
But what we give up in exchange every time we do this is moments of our own lives. Which is why, in those brief moments we pull our head out of the sand, we’re filled with panic to realize we don’t like what we’re living. But then most of us respond by seeking reassurance (see “self help,” above — “you can do it!”) or solutions we don’t take, and ultimately shut it back down.
The first step? Awareness of your breathing. Second, awareness of your body in space; what you’re physically feeling. From there, you’ll become more aware of what you’re emotionally feeling as well. Accept these emotions as they come to you.
Wake up. Be aware of what you’re doing and where you are all the time. And most importantly: be aware of what you feel and think about it…
Step 3.) Self esteem is authenticity
It’s knowing what we actually want.
This is probably the hardest part. It’s also really important.
Because “nature abhors a vacuum,” if self esteem isn’t coming from external sources, but us instead, then we have to do the work of identifying what wewant and need — in that vacuum, without regard to others. (Note: just like the “selfish” section, that is not meant to read as “without regard for others.” We should still be considerate. But able to say what we want (or think or feel or need) without having to first ask, “well but what do others want?”)
Self esteem is answering “what do I think?” without first asking “what do others think?” This is harder than people realize, especially because it’s so ingrained.
I was recently thinking about what I wanted to do for Valentine’s Day, and initially could not answer this question— did I really want to go to dinner, or did I just like the way that sounded? Did I really want flowers, or did I just hope they’d serve as some security; some certainty that this was special? Did I really even want to do anything? Sometimes we do things we don’t evenreally want, but doing what “sounds good” saves us the risk of regretting having not done something come the morning of the 15th.
(In the end, what I wanted was a cookie from our favorite local bakery. We go together all the time and they put out these seasonal designs that are so adorable I could die. And then, like a good partner, I said in clear words that that’s what I wanted.)
We do this with everything. We pick where to travel, what to buy, and where to eat based on other people — our order at restaurants is influenced by others’, and we eat more in the presence of people we’re trying to impress. We often choose clothing, cars, houses, and hobbies couched in “what others think.” And sadly, we often even choose jobs and partners this way.
Sometimes we’re asked: “What would you do if you could not fail?”
And that’s great, but an equally great question is: “What would you do if you could not tell or be told by anyone?”
Would you get married if you had to go on telling people you weren’t? Would you drive the same car if nobody saw? Would you do the same thing on your weekends if you couldn’t frame it up as “how it retells on Monday morning?” Would you vacation in the same places if nobody knew?
Would you still be doing the same job and have the same partner if you had to tell people you had a totally different job and partner, both of which they deemed “unimpressive?”
What do you want? Not just in the moment, but in the long-run. What areyour values? What is your version of long-term happiness?
If that’s too hard or scary to speculate: start with a chunk of lifestyle now. Not your leisure time, but your actual life. When, for example, are you happiest at work? If your answer has anything to do with others (i.e., “when I get recognition,” “when I get a raise,” “when I win a deal,” or “when I help others,” you need to look again, for answers that serve you.) Maybe you don’t even like your work. That’s for you to explore.
If you’re struggling here and you just want more “help” on “how to do it:” you are missing the point entirely (and probably also missing the alarm bell that should be going off in your head.) This work fundamentally cannot be done by anyone else. This work is you. Do the work.
If you are so far gone that you still feel lost knowing what you want onany level: you skipped self awareness. You’re not paying attention. See “step 2” for further instruction.
Skipping this step is why “just do it!” doesn’t help
Our struggle (and reluctance) to find answers is why “advice” like “just do it!” or “just try things and see what you like” is met with apprehension at best, and disaster at worst. (If you aren’t in touch with what you actually want, and what your happiness feels like, there’s no way of even knowing if you like what you’re trying, and without this skill set, you’ll just keep falling back on “but it sounds cool” or “it’s what people do.”)
You can’t know what you love if you don’t know what love feels like, and you’re so out of touch with your own feelings you don’t know what it is.
We have to actually know who the hell we are, and what we want. Experimenting and taking action is second-grade reading level and we’re still learning letters over here.
Step 4.) Self esteem is action
Only once you understand what you want — what really makes you happy — in the long run.
Action is about making decisions. It’s about committing. It’s about choice and assertiveness and asking for the things we want and need. It’s about taking steps, and thinking, and coming to our conclusions — and then verbalizing them.
It’s also about being aware. It’s about being alert and awake and active in our own lives — not passive, compliant, or submissive.
As Nathaniel Branden wrote in “How to Raise Your Self Esteem,”
“Living consciously means taking responsibility for the awareness appropriate to the action in which we are engaged. This, above all, is the foundation of self confidence and self-respect.”
Or, to be slightly more clear,
“The difference between low self-esteem and high self-esteem is the difference between passivity and action.”
But knowing what action to take requires knowing what we want, outside of what others want — i.e., authenticity — which requires that we take full responsibility for our lives. Which requires that we dump all of the bad assumptions and models around self love, take agency in-house, and start to build self-fueling fire of our own desire.
About The Author:
Kris Gage
Motorcyclist, Software Manager, Drink-Slinger of the South 🍻 
Reach out: http://bit.ly/2CXgcv5
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crystalxfrost · 3 years
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Mirror to Salvation
I don't like looking at myself in the mirror because I've never really liked how I look. I've had low self esteem my whole life, so I actively avoid my reflection most of the time. I could use expensive makeup or name brand cosmetics to "fix" my appearance, but I've never really had anybody to show me how to use those things and was always too shy to ask, so I don't bother trying; I'm positive that whatever I try to use will only make me look like a clown anyway. So when I need to get ready to go out, I usually just pull a brush through my hair and throw it back in a braid or a ponytail and bam! I'm ready.
The only time I ever look in the mirror is the occasional three-second scan for missed random dirt or leftover dippy eggs from breakfast. However, I am extremely familiar with my reflection and my person, having spent so much time alone with it over the years, so it was something of a mighty shock when in the course of getting ready to go pick up my friend Nathan from the library down at the Square, I lifted my eyes to my mirror and saw a complete stranger in perfect mirror image of my own pose and gesture.
I blinked hard, then squeezed my eyes shut tightly and shook my head to make sure I wasn't crazy or seeing things, then opened my eyes, expecting to see my own boring reflection again. But no, the strange woman was still there in my mirror, just staring at me.I leaned forward, now both afraid and intrigued. The woman was stunningly beautiful in comparison to myself: long curly blonde hair sat perched like a golden waterfall over the shoulders of a tall slender porcelain-skinned woman with large sapphire-blue eyes. She was dressed in a black business suit and carried a small blue purse over her shoulder. I'd seen her everywhere. I'd seen her nowhere.
As I leaned closer, forgetting myself in more than a little bewilderment mixed with fear at the sight of this woman there in the mirror where my own reflection should be, something large and fast swung into view from beyond the right edge of the mirror and smashed against the side of the blonde woman's head. I shrieked and jumped back in horror as her head simply disintegrated into a bloody mass of pulp and raw flesh as whatever that thing had been blew her head right off her shoulders. Blood, lots of it and packed with bits of brain matter and fragments of skull, splashed up against the mirror and I cowered, screaming, eyes screwed tightly shut, fully expecting the wave to bathe me in its disgusting carryings. But no warm wave came.
Shaking and still cringing with the extent of my stress, I looked up at the mirror and slowly rose from the floor where I'd been sitting, praying that whatever horrific thing had just happened was now gone from my view. To my surprise, I was greeted once more by my bright blue myopic eyes behind their plastic blue Walmart frames and my messy un-perfect totally REAL hair attached to my own very real head. And never had I been happier to see my own face.
I would have stayed to muse more over the horrible thing I'd just seen, but I was pulled from my walking daymare when my watch beeped. I glanced at my watch and swore loudly to myself; if I didn't leave now, I'd be late. I paused briefly for one last cautious look in the mirror as I threw on my jacket and sighed in relief when all I saw was my own boring reflection. Sparing no more time for musings, I grabbed my keys and was out the door.The drive through the city to the Square was a lengthy one, my attentions now no longer on the horror my mirror had just shown me, but on the asshole drivers and cranky I-hate-Mondayers in a rush to cut me off on their way to whatever hated job they catered to. Thankfully, at this time on a Monday, the Square was mostly deserted with plenty of ideal parking, so I quickly selected a spot and pulled my Cadillac in.
The Square, which sat in the very center of town, was overshadowed by the city's historically monolithic public library. It was a wide open smoothly paved expanse that boasted its own walking path, multiple benches under artistically shaded canopies, and a huge lighted marble sculpture of a knight brandishing a wicked sceptre. This sculpture was normally very impressive, but this time it was surrounded by scaffolding. The talk was that a large crack had surfaced in the narrowest part of the sceptre's handle due to age and the city had been tasked with its repair, yet no workers could be seen anywhere amidst the crowds of people that bustled across the Square going about their days.
It was under this huge sculpture that I normally met Nathan, usually Wednesdays and Fridays since on those days, he let his 17-year-old sister Natalie borrow his car for driving class. This spot had been our designated meeting place for quite some time now and we both knew it well, had spent many a fine day as children playing on and about the feet of the massive statue.
As I stood there under the shadow of the statue, the sunlight disappeared briefly as ominous clouds covered the sun, and I shivered, the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention. I couldn't shake the ominous feeling of doom that had crept into my mind and nested there. To take my mind off the oppressive notion of impending death, I decided to watch the people instead.
During times of incredible boredom, of which there tended to be many, I liked to watch the denizens of my city walk past and create life scenarios based on their appearances. Here was a rather stout pissed-off looking gentleman in a stiff three-piece suit; he was a farmer by trade but just came from the funeral of his great-great-aunt Bertha in his only good suit that he hated and the old bitch didn't leave him shit in her will. There was a windblown woman with wild hair and a tired expression in jeans and a thick sweater; she'd spent her only day off this week shopping for food so she could feed her three starving cretins and gluttonous bossy husband to keep them quiet while she cleaned. And here was a tall slender blonde woman in a very expensive black business suit talking hurriedly on her cell phone, her small blue purse swinging back and forth as she rushed along on her way.
Wait a second...
The vision my mirror had shown me slammed back into my thoughts, and I panicked as the vision hit me a second time. I looked around wildly, trying to keep the woman in my view and watching for any wayward objects. I watched her bustle right past me even as a deafening crack ripped the silence. Time seemed to slow down as I automatically craned my neck up to gawk at the orb in the king's sceptre that even now was falling, the crack had given way after all this time and the huge marble ball was falling from the sceptre.
I watched as the ball, suspended only by a few thin strong cables in case of this very thing, dropped fast out of the sky, caught at the last second and came swinging down like a wrecking ball, and with something like dulled horror, I realized that the ball would clap the woman directly in the side of the head...just like in my vision. I struggled to reach her, shouting, and just as she turned around, I tackled her to the ground. Her mouth, which had likely been poised to yell at me for interrupting her important phone call, froze in a solid O as the huge marble ball swung safely over us on its cables through the exact spot where her head would have been, mere feet from where we now lay, me panting with fear and exertion and her with fear and the steadily growing realization that I had just saved her life.We stood up, awkwardly brushing off our hair and clothes. She just gaped at me then. "You...you saved my life. That ball would have..."
"It would have smashed your fucking head like a sledgehammer on a watermelon," I snapped, reeling at the unexpected viciousness of my words but finding myself unable to stop. "Maybe next time you should get off your fucking phone and watch where you're going!" Then I spun on my heel and stalked away without a single glance back, much to her shock.
Back at my own home, after dropping Nathan back off at his house, I closed myself in my bedroom and bawled my eyes out in loud unbroken unhindered sobs, the day finally taking its toll on me. I was upset over the statue finally breaking after all these years, exhausted and sore from tackling the woman to the ground, and sorry as hell for the way I had spoken to her after I'd saved her life. I chalked it up to stress I'd never before encountered until a new thought pushed its way through all the rest like a fresh spring daisy: my mirror, my plain old thrift store mirror that I'd had for years, had shown me a life to save. Maybe I could save someone else, bring some form of purpose to my boring little existence.
From then on, every single day I was given a new life to save, a true vision of gore or other means of death always preceding the encounter. They always turned up wherever I happened be no matter where that was; I never had to actively seek out these people. Hell, I didn't even have to know their names. I saved a suave business man from a drug deal gone wrong, a single mother of four kids from an armed robbery, a black woman from drowning at the local pool. And every time, my mirror showed me the way.
Soon I became something of a local celebrity. When asked how I knew about these deaths and how I knew to be there at the right time, I always answered with the truth, that I saw it in my mirror. The rumors began to swirl that I was psychic, that I could see the future, that I was a witch...that I could stop death. All the big talk shows wanted me to discuss my experiences on air with them, one after another. People now recognized me as a person, and for quite a good deed too.
Weeks came and went, then months. I received hundreds of thousands of fan letters from those who wanted me to predict their deaths, dozens of phone calls from alleged directors and producers who saw potential in my weird abilities for the next big prime time or big screen. I never answered any of them; my mirror only showed me who it wanted me to. And still I continued to save life after life, every day one more unknowing soul my responsibility. I took every challenge, all against the better judgment of my own aching and battered body. And I never once realized that this enormous responsibility was killing me slowly.It came to a head one morning, several years later, after another long night where I'd saved a whole family from their burning house, everyone but the fucking dog. I stood in my bedroom in front of my mirror, eyes closed, feeling emotionally and physically drained, my body resisting every movement with a sharp outcry of pain. I barely even felt the thing I now held in my hand; my mind didn't quite fully register the weight of it.
I wearily opened my eyes, expecting to see yet another perfect stranger in my mirror, but this time I only saw myself. I saw my exhausted eyes, the grays at my temple, the lines that aged my face, and all at once the tears began leaking down my cheeks as I realized that quite simply, I was tired...tired of being responsible for other people, tired of pushing myself so hard...tired of being tired. All this attention, fame...I'd never wanted this.
As I gazed back at my reflection, I smiled in spite of my tears as I watched my reflection raise the gun to its head and pull the trigger. My only thought as my arm echoed the motion of my reflection's was that out of all the lives I'd saved, how ironic that the only life I couldn't save was my own.
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moreracquetball · 7 years
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Youtuber AU Headcanons
(Lowkey inspired by a post by @whizzerbrowne who brought the idea to my attention and it has since dominated my brain). Let’s just get started:
(This got way too long, yikes. I had to include a read more line)
~ Three Youtubers: Jason, Cordelia, and Whizzer.
Jason
Type: He’s one of those younger, newer youtubers. He started when he was nine, and he talked frankly about stuff like divorce (bc his parents were going through a divorce at the time) and being an introvert and being autistic and being Jewish and dealing with a difficult relationship with his parents. He has trouble really talking to people so it was like really easy to just sit in front of a camera and start talking at them. Side note: this was totally Mendel’s idea as a therapy exercise that actually worked, okay? And (as we’ve seen in the musical), Jason has this raw honesty and wit to him that is very funny and real to watch. As he’s gotten older, he’s started talking about other things - like not such heavy topics. He talks about the things that he’s hyperfixated on (baseball, chess, the emoji movie, etc), and though his content is pretty erratic and all over the place, people just love his commentary and he’s amassed millions of followers in just a few years??
He also vlogs /a lot/, which is how his audience got to know Trina, Mendel, and Marvin.
Trina - Everyone literally adores her. She is v nervous and awkward in her cameos in Jason’s videos, but she is also very honest and vocal about her opinions and calls herself the Cool Mom even though Jason’s like “Mom, you don’t let me stay up past ten even when it’s not a school night” and Trina’s just “A Cool Mom can’t still care about your healthy and well-being??”
Mendel - As a one-off, Jason asked his followers to submit questions to Mendel the Psychiatrist for a collab idea with his stepdad, and his pieces of advice were kinda off the wall and funny and it quickly became a series and one of Jason’s most popular series ever. Some people are convinced Mendel is just playing a character so Jason has to be like “no he is actually like this. You have to believe me.” Also: Mendel gets a snapchat that everyone follows. He uploads grainy pictures of like trees and makes puns and constantly spams his story with pictures of Trina with captions like “look at how pretty she is” and “how did i get so lucky” and “rare photo of an actual goddess.” 
Marvin - Tbh, the audience’s reaction to Marvin is a little more mixed, esp at first. Jason had talked a lot about his difficult relationship with Marvin and his “Draw My Life” video did stir up some contempt for Marvin’s selfishness. But like, over the years and through small snippets of cameos, it is generally believed that Marvin has changed and grown up a lot and is like an amazing (but dorky) dad. His cameos in Jason’s videos are the best bc it shows how eerily alike those two are and at one point Marvin briefly talks about internalized homophobia and toxic masculinity and hints at the stuff that he is’t proud of, and everyone - no matter their outward opinion of him - has like a little crush on him. Also, the videos with Marvin and Mendel both?? Their petty arguing gets like millions of hits every time.
Jason also totally does all the trend/tag videos but also has like that sarcastic, almost ironic vibe at first but he ends up really sincerely liking it. 
Jason also does like monologues of his thoughts and opinions while also doing mini skits in between and he is iconic and a jack of all trades really.
He is very articulate and seems so mature but like any hate whatsoever does get to him a lot. He’s learned how to deal with his self-doubt and ignoring the trolls better than he had when he first started, but every once in awhile it still gets to him.
Also??? Remember that Roast Yourself Challenge trend??? Jason did that, and it was on the top page for like a solid week. He went too hard and too real.
Cordelia
Type: Totally like Hannah Hart’s Drunk Kitchen, are you even kidding me?? That it totally Cordelia. She drinks and talks about current events and makes really bad food puns and it is Everything. She also branches out after awhile and starts doing like satirical how-to videos. Lowkey once she tried to make a wry, parody version of a beauty vlogger how-to and she ended up having so much fun with it and her after make-up looked ballin, so she starts doing make-up tutorials, too.
She’s also very very proudly gay and out. Like, her username is literally lesbiancaterer. But she still gets like comments on her videos saying “are you straight?” or “her boyfriend must be a lucky guy” and it just makes her go “????? How could I ever make this clearer?” (once, in a collab with Marvin, one comment said “ahh, her and her bf are such #relationship goals” which then launched a very satirical, very deadpan boyfriend tag video with her and Marvin that made it abundantly clear just how fucking gay those two are).
Charotte first got introduced very very early in her videos bc once during a drunk kitchen, Cordelia cut her finger with a knife and called for her girlfriend and Charlotte went into complete Doctor Mode and started treating her immediately. Cordelia is a little tipsy at that point and starts blatantly flirting with her and calling her “my doctor” and that video’s comment section is just keysmashing and the phrase “my doctor.”
Cordelia does not try to hide her relationship in any way. She and Charlotte have done all those cute couples tags and Charlotte is the star of Cordelia’s social media and vlogs. Now they are #relationship goals.
Cordelia actually got into Youtube bc of Jason and everyone was like lowkey shocked when it turned out that these two popular but different youtubers knew each other and cameo in one another’s videos a lot and Cordelia is like “he is literally my godson, guys. Ofc I’m gonna be around him and support him.”
Whizzer
Type: Ohhh boy!! Whizzer is def the kind of youtuber that has been around on the platform since circa 2007 - are you even gonna try to fight me on that??? He is a fashion channel (also has like a series of the youtube version of fashion police) but also like a major storytime channel bc he’s been around and tells the craziest but realest stories of all time. He is also quickly considered The Gay Icon^tm of Youtube.
He is definitely one of the biggest youtubers on the platform but he also lowkey feels too old to still be on here and has that like Shane Dawson kinda feel of like keeping it real about youtube drama and rebranding himself and learning from stupid old videos when he was still like a shit 20-something that was lowkey problematic. 
He stans so hard for Britney Spears and Carly Rae Jepsen and he got Carly in one of his collabs and he could not stop smiling and fangirling and he is literally all of us.
He is very, very vocal and honest about his sexuality and sexual history. He has a lot of Body and Sex Positivity videos and speaks very bluntly about the importance of self-esteem and body image and safe sex.
(One of his most popular videos is the one with him candidly speaking about having HIV and he talks about his mistake with unsafe sex and all the terrible stigmas around the topic. He talks about how it’s both a physical and emotional struggle, and he also talks about treatment and awareness and prevention and seeking emotional help to combat depression).
He arranges a collab with Jason bc they are alike in that they always speak candidly about issues and struggles and have like the exact same sense of dry, almost scathing humor. Whizzer meets Marvin bc Marvin is like “Jason, there is no way you’re meeting a strange man who you met over the internet. I am definitely going to be the one that goes with you.”
(Awkward moment when Marvin and Jason get to Whizzer’s apartment, and Marvin and Whizzer’s profiles light up with one another from one of those websites like Grindr). Whizzer has like lowkey commented on Jason’s videos before with lewd comments about his hot dad, but like this is so not what Whizzer had been expecting?? Yeah, at the end of Whizzer and Jason’s collab video, Whizzer puts like a small blooper reel and it’s him continually flirting with Jason’s dad (who’s behind the camera) and the Internet suddenly has a new fave ship.
(Marvin and Whizzer totally messaged each other and hooked up like the next day).
But like, they keep the budding relationship very underwraps bc they both really don’t want it to affect Jason’s channel and neither really think at first that their whole arrangement will go anywhere close to serious because Whizzer has never been in love or had a steady boyfriend and Marvin cannot hold a relationship either even after his divorce.
But of course they fall in love, and of course the internet knows something’s up. Whizzer keeps vaguing on Twitter about the new man in his life with weird tweets like “I can’t believe I’m deliberately sleeping with a man who UNIRONICALLY knows every word to Allstar” and “get you a man who always sends that courtesy ‘thank you.’ text after you send him a dick pic.” And when Whizzer vlogs, he always makes sure to keep the camera trained on himself but you can see that his eyes are always looking away as he’s like smiling at someone who does not want to be on camera. Also, Jason’s weekend vlogs have cameos of Whizzer in them now.
They mess up when in one of aforementioned Jason’s vlogs, there’s a grainy clip of Marvin and Whizzer in the background and Marvin kisses Whizzer’s cheek. The internet loses their minds
(After nine/ten months of dating, Whizzer and Marvin abruptly break up and neither really acknowledges it. However, weeks after their break up, Whizzer decides to make a story-time video about this fucking asshole boyfriend that broke up with him over a chess game. He wanted it to be like both petty but also very funny because that is such a ridiculous story, but like when he’s editing it, he notices himself being like on the verge of tears in some parts and being overly bitter and tense, and he never uploads it and he realizes that he isn’t over Marvin like he had said he was).
(However, Whizzer does end up making a story-time video later about how Jason’s baseball game brought him and Marvin back together).
After they get back together, they’ve worked out their issues and are couples goals now and they do not hide their relationship and Marvin makes cameos in both Whizzer and Jason’s videos/younows and it is incredible.
Through Jason and Marvin, Whizzer and Cordelia meet and they become best friends. They collab all the time and they complain about queer struggles and they talk about their relationships and get drunk on camera and be weird, loud idiots and those videos get tons of views.
And Whizzer gets candid about how he’s always felt like alone in the world and hasn’t really had the opportunity to rely on anyone but himself but through Jason and Marvin, he meets Cordelia and Charlotte and Mendel and Trina, and even though they might not get along all the time and some people are closer to other people, they’re all his family and he never thought that he’d really have one that close before. It’s one of his most vulnerable videos.
The most successful videos on all three’s channels are the collabs of the three of them together: Jason and Cordelia and Whizzer. And they become like one of those Youtube cliques that collab all the time and tweet about each other’s videos constantly and always hang out with one another at all the events like Vidcon and Playlist Live. 
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violetsystems · 4 years
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#personal
I think everyone these days is going through a crisis of validation.  Nobody knows isolation better than an only child.  I’m the kind that grew up an outcast for the most part.  My mom always tells me how smart and well behaved I was.  I was always quiet.  Never in my thoughts.  That never went away.  To this day people I don’t even know are used to me being comfortable enough to sit down and share my thoughts every weekend.  I attend all these corporate webinars where they talk about companies controlling their “own narrative” in uncertain times.  There is a lot of reaching out and face to face regardless of distance.  Telepresence is such a real thing now because of the situation we are in.  Business keeps happening.  So does life.  I’ve graduated four steps in my cloth mask adventure.  Stepping up from sewing one back together left for me in the alley to finding a 3 pack of black cotton PPE’s online.  Being able to read the situations around us gives you some flexibility.  I’ve been up against the wall and under duress so many times in the last five years.  I’ve written about the feeling.  Being isolated and alone.  Under inspection and violated without any judgement ever materializing from it.  A trail by fire on whether or not I deserve to be left alone to live my life.  I finally got that wish I guess.  There’s a point when you want to curl up into a ball and sleep.  Having your office in your home is a blessing and a curse that way.  I’ve stuck to the same schedule I was always on.  I roll out of bed regardless at five.  I crawl back into bed around nine thirty.  Nobody told me how to do what I needed to do.  But I had some ideas from observing over the years.  Working from home every day means that my kitchen is my physical office.  My connection to the internet and my reliability to maintain office hours is another layer.  I spent a good portion last week massaging my internet’s router and modem.  Even when it goes down for an hour like on Friday, I have to run seamlessly off my phone’s LTE.  The difference in speed and ping has grown to have some meaning.  Just like cloud based virtual desktops and subnet math have been haunting me more than the plague.  My ping from my home is under ten milliseconds.  My response time to cases as they flow into my inbox is a little slower.  I spent Friday evening running a virtual happy hour and going away party for one of my employees.  I’m down two positions now.  I’m constantly barraged with people’s feelings on the internet about employment, disease, and what they think is fair.  And then there’s the work.  I know a lot about work.  I donated twenty dollars to the Jacobins in Brooklyn.  I also bought a watch.  I know what time it is usually.  It was 10:56 am CST when I got that Bronze 56k drop.  No masks unfortunately.  Just a logo’d sweatshirt.  The stussy sweater from Dover Street Market was a good look on Zoom for work.  My hair is growing back to a charming style as well.  I feel good about myself.  That comes from self care.  A process demonstrated weekly in my journal I write for you here.
Isolation doesn’t produce a lot of feedback from others.  It can be an echo chamber for the things that bother you about yourself.  For me the last month has really been a crisis of organization.  When I close my eyes and think of everything in my apartment I can account for most of everything.  If I scry back five years ago and overlay my apartment over the past it’s a way different narrative.  I was messy and chaotic.  I still am in spirit.  I was plagued by confrontations I didn’t face.  But I’ve made a lot of room for that poltergeist to dance wildly through the glass house I live in.  I answered to things in my life.  My health was a big one.  The virtual happy hour I hosted encouraged employees to drink.  I don’t drink anymore.  What makes me happy these days is maintaining a moderate degree of fiscal responsibility.  I can tell you how much money I wasted trying to cover up my unhappiness with myself.  That’s a big motivator these days.  Running makes me happy.  So does staying healthy.  Nurturing a culture of normality at work keeps things chill too.  Everything I’ve learned from working in this situation hasn’t made me feel unsure of myself or my skills.  It has made me feel overworked and drained.  Appearing on camera all day doesn’t bother me.  I still kind of fade into the background in large conversations.  But work is work.  I get tired of having to both justify my livelihood and be hidden and irrelevant at the same time.  It gets harder to know in isolation when it’s time to shut the office door.  For me it’s pretty easy.  Because I’ve been shutting the office door and setting up boundaries slowly for years.  Privacy is a mother fucker.  I’ve also been fighting battles and secret wars in this city for longer than I care to remember.  When I’m alone with my own thoughts its quiet and restful.  So the time has helped me understanding I’m still in a process of healing.  When you can sit and stare at the wall and smile to yourself without thinking anything.  Nothing creeps up behind you to ruin your mood.  That is the state my apartment is in at the moment.  I worry less about the world and more about access to my physical record collection.  If I suddenly think of an artist like Walt SImonson or John Byrne I want to be able to effortlessly remove it from the shelf.  I have time to alphabetize.  I have calendar reminders to sort.  And once all that is done I can sit and stare at the wall even more and have room to think of more.  There’s space in my mind and my heart that isn’t seeking validation from half assed sources.  I have time to reflect.  Time to know what’s working and what isn’t.  I spend less time worrying and more time doing.  Sometimes it feels like nobody is watching.  Nobody is paying attention to how I live my life.  Like I don’t matter to them.  That doesn’t really matter when you have self confidence.  It matters to me how I choose to live.  What sacrifices I made and their value to me.  And everything I spend my time and thoughts on matters to me as well.  I don’t have to say that out loud.  I project it how I live my life.  I’m a leader.  And most importantly I’ve had to lead myself out of darker places.  Alone.
How long have I been alone?  It’s a fucking mind blowing amount of time.  An amount of time no one ever recognizes or listens to.  Nobody has ever asked how it fucking feels.  I’ve said it here.  Just like I’ve transparently bore a hole in my heart for everyone to read.  Has it changed things?  Yes and no.  Has the world changed despite of that?  Yes.  How hard have I been hit by these dark times?  I mean if you want me to be blunt... These dark times have nothing on the depths of human shit I have witnessed.  And all I can do is shrug and live them.  Alone again.  Ignored except by phantom accounts with strange content.  Catfished by a million bots.  Some of which is probably a smokescreen for some genuine reals emotion under contract of duress.  Some people are just now realizing that online means something.  That people are more than just flesh and bone to touch, scar and warp.  Then there’s me.  You know me.  You know how I have felt.  You know for how long.  And you know nothing has changed.  That I am still right here feeling like I’m wasting and rotting away.  And yet I look around me and all I see is death and worry.  Why the long face?  Why so sad?  How long have I really been alone?  How psychologically emaciated am I from never being touched tenderly or told how easy I am to love?  How dark can it feel to be abandoned, talked and hunted by invisible predators?  To have your financial accounts prodded by hackers and scammers every week.  To have your packages targeted and stolen for months.  How do you think all this feels to live with and carry on your shoulders?  And worse to have no one acknowledge this weight you carry in your heart.  I don’t carry it alone if that’s what you are wondering.  I never have.  For years now, I’ve been typing away at a ghost in the machine.  Hoping someone was listening to what I said.  Hoping for a validation and connection.  And what I realized years ago.  Is that I had made a connection to something.  I was alone and yet not.  I looked around me and saw the old me in other people.  A sadder Tim desperately trying to claw for some sort of self esteem out of every moment.  Pointing the camera at myself and subjecting myself to public judgement.  Years later I’ve graduated to being completely ignored.  I just don’t register.  I’ll never be anything more than myself.  And here I am again.  Another week.  Same Tim.  Cleaner apartment.  Cooler gear.  Still just as much in love with this situation as I was February 14th.  Nobody is going anywhere for awhile.  Including me.  Which means I’m right where you want me as always.  Alone in my thoughts of you.  It’s a good place to be for the record.  I know I’m not the only one who thinks that way.  <3 Tim
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bestlivesexwebcams · 7 years
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The Juice on Jasmin Cams
Everyone in the live sex cam industry seems to be offering free shows these days, so what the fuck is the point in paying for anything anymore? If you can get your rocks off without spending a penny, why would you bother forking over your cash for some ass? It’s because some of these sites are much better than others, and it’s because you always get what you pay for.
We have been doing this shit for a long time. You could even say we’re experts in the sex toy and self-pleasure arena. Because of our expertise, we can eyeball a sex cam website from 286 miles away. But since we’re so fucking special and nobody can do what we do (that’s a lie), we’re forced to spell it out to prevent rip-offs and disappointment among our readers. That’s right; we love you bastards. Tell anyone and we’ll fucking quit.
In all seriousness, the Jasmin Cams site is certainly worthy of our attention and yours. We aren’t quite ready to commit yet, but we’d say the site (and the bitches on it) are top quality. With over 60,000 current members, we think it’s safe to say that plenty of people agree. So, what makes Jasmin Cams such a hotspot for hot honeys? At first, things look pretty standard, but as we thrusted deeper and tried different positions, we caught hold of some surprisingly tight features hidden within the standard browser tabs.
The Who, What, When, Why, and How
At first glance, Jasmin Cams is the basic sex cam site with willing naked bitches all lined up in a row. For someone who doesn’t know what to do with thousands of horny hookers, we suppose that’s all Jasmin Cams is. But for someone who can handle the pressure, this site is something else entirely. Like many of the other online sex cam sites, this one has its own Rules of Engagement. We suggest looking at that shit before making an ass out of yourself to thousands of cool people.
The best way we can describe Jasmin Cams is: professional and responsive. This shit looks like it was developed at NASA under the strict guidelines of pre-Monica President Clinton. If you’re too young to get that joke, then you’re probably too young to use this site. Although it does have categories which display super young twats, everyone on it (member, performer, or otherwise) is of age. You’ll have to put the kids to bed to enjoy Live Jasmin.
The homepage is set up to make search and navigation super easy, although you can’t get very far without registering. Only amateurs can get off by looking at the previews, so you’ll have to pay to play. The site is advertised as free, but that’s not exactly the case. While previews and sex chats are on the house, more extreme shit will require you to open your wallet and buy credits.
Yes, Live Jasmin Cams works on credits, which is something we personally prefer. There’s nothing worse than your partner seeing hundreds of tiny charges on your credit card for shit like this. Good luck explaining that one, and good luck hiding the evidence of your debauchery on Jasmin. The mandatory registration needs an email address and instant confirmation before you can proceed, so come prepared. Maybe make a special email account for this junk. We really don’t know what to tell you.
How Does This Work?
Getting around the Live Jasmin site is about as easy as anywhere else. The site admins have really made the platform simple, although the amount of variety can be overwhelming to someone who doesn’t know what to expect. We liked the fact that we could sign on, search for favorite sin, and get going without much delay. There is only one type of membership option, but as we said, there are tokens available in different denominations for your voyeuristic convenience.
As part of the throbbing CumTV conglomerate, this popular website features a variety of models to spend your credits on. First time visitors even get 10 free live strip tease shows when they sign up, and that’s what we call service. Speaking of service, Jasmin Cams has customer reps available for questions via online chat, email, or phone. So, if one of those skanks gives you trouble, someone’s got your back. Meanwhile, enjoy the site’s streamlined interface that is designed for the following purposes:
Stream live or pre-recorded cam show videos
Get hot and heavy during a private and erotic chat session
Watch as a model gives you a strip tease
Look over thousands of mind-numbing nudes
Have instant cybersex with the hoe of your dreams
Navigating the site to accomplish your lustful goals is as easy as knowing what you want from the model. They will do almost anything as long as it’s within the site’s rules. We all like to get a little dangerous, but if you break the guidelines of Jasmin Cams you can be expelled for good. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Who’s on the Site?
We found that discovering the model we wanted was relatively simple on Live Jasmin, even if that means having to spend a boatload of credits. First, you must choose between what sort of sexual experience you desire. Your choices are as follows:
Hot flirting
Soul mating
Lesbian encounter
Sex with a mature woman
Fetish quenching
Couples play
Male for female
Male for male
Gender bending
We aren’t gonna lie; we tried them all. Within each of those categories are even more categories from which to choose. We tried to tell you that the variety was dense. We’re just thankful the site is so organized. The sub-categories include the following:
New/Amateur models
Age 18+
Big tits
Latin women
Stockings wearers
Asian girls
Blonde bombshells
Brunette babes
Petite ladies
Vibra toy users
Smokers
Redheads
Piercings
Tattoos
This site even has a few hoes for sale. That’s got to do some damage to the self-esteem, although a lot of the discount skanks aren’t half bad. If you can’t decide, the Jasmin admins have a “recommended” category where the most popular cams on the site can be found instantly. Now that’s what we call convenient.
What’s in It for Me?
The thing about Jasmin Cams is that it is very simple to get the goods once you find what you’re looking for. Users simply register on the site to ensure they’re old enough to play, and then the party begins shortly thereafter. Considering the site is free to use for everyone and all new members get a handful of strip teases on the house, you could end up going all the way with a virtual hoe without spending a dime.
The catch is that your free ride eventually runs out, and then you’re forced to pay for credits or else you’ll be left jerking off to thumbnail photos and preview clips. That’s some sad shit right there. Do yourself a favor and go the extra mile on this one. We think you’ll be sorry if you don’t, especially since the models are so fucking good at what they do.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Although there aren’t as many categories on Live Jasmin Cams as some of the others we reviewed, it seems like there’s enough for everybody. It appears the ones in charge of the content sifted through the rubble to offer up only what most people seek, without all the extra fluff to make themselves seem more legit. We can respect that, but we still had a couple of issues with the overall presentation. Allow us to break it down for ya:
PROS
Get in Rotation – The variety of hot models on the site changes quite rapidly and is updated on a regular basis, so none of that stale pussy bullshit we all know and hate.
Let the Professionals Handle It – The virtual hookers really know their stuff, and that’s obvious by how comfortable they are in front of the camera.
Is This Hollywood? – Featuring some of the best cam quality shows in the industry, this site takes your satisfaction very seriously. You’ll still find low quality shows, but not as many as you’d find on other sex cam sites.
Cum and Go – The speed at which these models respond to your request for play is amazing. We have to call our mothers to get that much attention.
Lead by Example – Jasmin Cams has been around for a while, which means it’s pretty much set in its ways – a very good thing considering they’re doing a lot of shit right. Maybe some of the other sites could take notes.
The Tower of Babel – Multiple languages can come together to share in a sexy online experience because Live Jasmin Cams can be translated with the click of a button. Gotta love technology.
Have It Your Way – If you can’t find what you’re looking for using the pre-determined categories, use the search tool provided to narrow down your choices.
Let’s Make a Deal – Although you do have to pay for credits eventually, the cost is super cheap.
CONS
But Wait, There’s More – You think this shit is free until it gets hot and heavy and you find out the hard way that you need to pay for credits. Not cool, guys.
Rules Aren’t for Breaking – Because this site offers so much good shit, they require their models and members to abide by a set of guidelines.
Who Do You Think You Are? – Play by the rules or you will find out real quick why they say the most beautiful roses smell like shit.
Help Me, Rhonda – Good luck getting in touch with one of the customer service representatives in less than 24 hours. You won’t.
Getting in Like Flynn
If you like what you’ve seen and heard so far, you’ll want to get registered as soon as possible. With thousands of members and a hoard of busy bitches, Jasmin Cams is on and popping around the clock, with no scheduling required. When all is said and done, there are only 3 steps between not even knowing about this site and becoming a virtual pimp professional.
Registration requires nothing more than your name and email address. We suggest being John Doe for a while until you decide whether you like the content on the site or not. You wouldn’t want a boatload of spam showing up in your inbox; and trust us, there will be a lot. Because of the massive number of affiliates that Live Jasmin Cams has, getting around the marketing campaigns is kind of tough.
If discretion is a big deal to you, Jasmin Cams is a good choice. It won’t exactly blow your cover, but a little privacy management may end up being in order. While your mailbox might receive a few pieces of spam, there won’t be any more disruptions after than that. As much as you wish these women would call you at home, they’re not going to. Dream on, dickhead.
When Judgment Day Comes
Our opinion of Live Jasmin Cams matters because of two reasons: 1) We know good shit when we see it, and 2) This is what we do for a living. We have no agendas and we don’t mind making enemies. We just want to blow our load, so that’s exactly what we’re doing. And it’s precisely what we did when we were finished with this site.
On our infamous scale of 1 to 10, Jasmin gets an 8.5 because the content is so prime. It’s not set up better than others, cheaper than free, or special in any other way. The only thing is that you’ll find better models with fewer hang-ups here, just keep in mind it comes with a price. You know what they say: Few things worth having are free, and few free things are worth having. Perhaps that was the motto of the designers of Jas Cams, because from the looks of it these people are trying to make bank. We would pay for it in a second if we didn’t know better.
from Best Live Sex Web Cams http://www.bestlivesexwebcams.com/sex-chat-sites/jasmin/
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