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anotherisodope · 1 year

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Just found out that we dodged a huge bullet

You ever have a friend who just completely derails your life with their drama every time you run into, talk to or even hear about them?

Got one like that. We’ve been trying to help him for months in a Movie of the Week level family drama situation that has, along with some other stuff, totally eaten my life. And now, things have gone from bad to cartoonishly awful, in one night.

(Now edited for clarity. I shouldn’t write when I’m that pissed off, sorry!)

The Cast

Me: Gold medalist in competitive napping

My man: Has lived with me almost two decades, there’s rings involved, you get the idea

Gonk: A formerly close friend of ours who is making himself less close with every damn day that goes by as he slowly transitions from a cinnamon roll to an ego-burdened military douche. Calling him Gonk because he increasingly, stubbornly, refuses to listen to even basic common sense if it gets in the way of what he wants to do

GFF: Gonk’s friend who has been putting him up until Gonk starts Basic Training in another state

Evil Sister: Gonk’s sister, a raging assclown whom I sometimes call the Wicked Bitch of the East--with good reason

Our friend Gonk is the sort who never, ever, EVER contacts us unless he needs something, and he’s caused all kinds of disruption, but we’ve stayed loyal as hell and supported him. I was even going to move this guy into my house before he torpedoed that plan with a set of Bad Life Decisions. (Long story I’ll cover later).

Bit of backstory. Gonk has a very bad relationship with his sister, who is a far, far bigger asshole than he’s ever dreamed of being. Evil Sister was left the house and their parents’ whole estate after their mom died (so our friend wouldn’t lose his disability benefits), and promised to “look after” Gonk to his mom’s face. Once Mom died, Evil Sister promptly started proceedings for kicking Gonk out, and turned abusive in the meantime.

One thing she’s done is weaponize the police against Gonk every time she gets mad at him, meaning she calls them on him and tries to get him imprisoned over issues he can’t even be arrested for. Argument? Call the cops. He swore while playing video games? Cops. He had a meltdown from her verbal abuse and started yelling and crying? Cops. I’m actually surprised they still come out at this point.

We’ve explained to Gonk, as have the police, that what Evil Sister is doing is a form of abuse, isn’t appropriate use of law enforcement, and wastes police time and resources as well. Gonk’s seen it, he’s felt it, he’s been told multiple times: weaponizing the police so you can hurt someone you’re mad at (especially over petty shit) is really, really wrong.

So Gonk has been staying with another friend, GFF, for a few weeks before he starts Basic Training (a whole other awful story), basically to get away from the Wicked Bitch of the East. It was a huge act of generosity on GFF’s part, and a relief for Gonk, us, and everyone who cares about Gonk. At least...until yesterday.

Last night, everything blew up very suddenly. GFF kicked Gonk out and threatened to harm him if he came back. Why?

Because Gonk decided to call the cops on poor GFF, in GFF’s own home, IN AN ARGUMENT OVER WHO OWNED A FUCKING PACK OF CIGARETTES.

That’s right. Gonk, the guy who had the police inappropriately called on him over small shit multiple times, and is in the best possible position to know how wrong that is...turned around and did it to someone else. Someone he was depending on for shelter.

The cops kicked in the door, GFF’s dog escaped and vanished, and needless to say GFF is absolutely furious. He wants nothing further to do with Gonk and will probably kick his ass, or worse, if that hypocritical dumbass tries to come back. In fact, he’s already threatened to do so.

Gonk has nothing to say for himself. He is back with Evil Sister now, for the moment. I’m just praying he doesn’t show up on our doorstep again, because this has destroyed the last of our trust in him--which thanks to other crap was already badly damaged.

I am SO goddamned glad now that Gonk didn’t end up living with us. I don’t want anyone in my life who calls the cops on innocent people he’s supposed to care about, over petty shit. Of all people, Gonk should know better. But he got big mad and tossed friendship, common sense and decency out the window over an under $20 purchase instead. Nothing GFF did for him mattered to Gonk--not even opening up his home.

That could easily have been us. And I don’t want to give Gonk the chance to make it be us. Before now, I was worried about his safety, but this is the last straw. Now I just want him to leave town for his training and never come back.

#not fallout #real life drama #with friends like these #checking in #weaponizing police #hypocrisy #trainwreck friend saga #abuse tw #how to lose a friend #family abuse #financial abuse #abuse by cop #at this point I'm more worried about the dog #bullet dodged #holy crap #Gonk

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bell-arina271 · 3 months

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1/25/2024: Update and Yearly Goals

Hello everyone! First of all, I am SO sorry to everyone who was following me and waiting on updates for the project. I was completely wiped and had a bad turn for my mental health.

HOWEVER the fundraising idea I had in mind is still on track! It’s just taking longer for me to learn everything I need to get this off the ground. A lot of it has been learning new stuff, so it’s taken longer than I anticipated. I was planning to start mid January, but now it looks more like I’ll be launching in February. Hopefully in the first week.

Just so you’re not in suspense, here’s the idea:

I want to create a “logo” for this campaign. Nothing too fancy, but something that symbolizes artistic creativity, and will represent supporting Artist Communities. Then I’ll put it on Redbubble and sell stickers, pins, notebooks, and little things people can buy so that they can openly support the cause while “donating” to the start of it. I work full time, so all my living expenses are already paid for. The profits would go straight to funding the project.

The reason it’s taking so long is because I wanted to have other designs too, in case people don’t like the logo for whatever reason (I’m not a graphic designer, so admittedly, it’s probably not gonna be great lol) so I could give them options. Also, I wanted to open up my sister’s Redbubble first. She has Downs Syndrome and is medium functioning, so she doesn’t understand how to set everything up in the shop. She is on disability and already has housing, but I figured having a little extra income for the fun stuff she wants would be good lol I wanted to make sure she was set before focusing on myself.

Anyway, my initial idea is to still take older multi-tenant places and update them with pure function in mind, not luxury. That way I can keep rent very low. Basically just charging for utility, property taxes, and pay off renovations. Which, split between multiple people should be more than reasonable.

If for some reason that doesn’t seem viable, I’ll take someone’s suggestion of buying land and just bringing up manufactured homes to make a little community. Either way this WILL happen, it just might take me a little longer to figure out how.

I’m still talking to other professionals to see how to do all the technical stuff, but after that I should be able to take charge and start getting things under way.

Unfortunately, it… may take another year after all, because my mom just had a bad turn for her health. Bad enough that she had to quit her job. So now I’m taking over mortgage payments for the house so we’ll be set while she gets the tests and treatment. Before anyone panics, she’s not in the hospital or anything, just having issues with her vision and a few other things. She plans to “rest” for two months while we fix her up, and then get an easier job that’s not so physically demanding. Thankfully she had to quit due to medical reasons, so (I think) she’s still covered from her job insurance lol.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Hopefully my next post will be the grand opening of the Redbubble! :D

Also if any of you are Christian PLEASE pray that I will find time to relax. Things keep popping up triggering my anxiety and making it hard to get good sleep and breaks OTL

#art #artists on tumblr #affordable housing

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timeoverload · 10 months

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I hope you're happy now that you "got back" at me for not showing up before. You sure know exactly how to hurt me. I don't think acting that way is healthy in a relationship. I wouldn't do that to you if you had explained to me what was going on like I tried to do. I wasn't trying to "ghost" you. I tried to communicate but I suppose I didn't do it right and I was a bitch. If I was trying to avoid seeing you, I wouldn't have tried to explain myself. I wish I could actually be invited to things without having to guess whether you want me there or not. I never get invited to anything so it's confusing for me!! Trying to have a relationship based solely on telepathy isn't healthy either. I guess verbal communication is very important to me and I feel that a lot of arguments could be avoided if we could just talk about our problems instead. Sometimes the messages I receive aren't clear and I don't understand them right away. Sometimes it takes time for me to process things and it isn't instant like some people assume. Lately I have gotten a lot of mixed messages so I don't know what to do. I already felt like shit for not being able to go. You are literally the only person I leave my house to see and that's pretty sad but it's true. Of course I want to see you and I miss you every day and I wish things were easier for me so I could just be there when I'm supposed to be. I wish you could just pick me up and we could live happily ever after. I guess I sound selfish when I talk about my physical limitations so I won't say anything about it ever again. It shouldn't be an excuse and I should just deal with the pain silently like everyone else because I guess that's what normal people do.

I was really excited today because I felt really good and I had more energy than I've had in a while. I didn't even feel the need to have a soda and I didn't take any naps because I was just ready to go. I actually had something to look forward to for once. It didn't last very long unfortunately.

I know I acted fucking crazy yesterday and I'm sorry that I let you down. I'm sorry I let everyone down multiple times. I guess I have never been very confident in myself either. I've been extremely shy since I was a kid. I wish my brain was fully developed like everyone else's. I don't like to use the word retarded but I literally am. I'm pretty smart in some ways but I still have learning disabilities and a lot of problems being social. I have problems completing basic tasks. I often think that I wasn't supposed to survive when I was born and I probably have brain damage from my mom having preeclampsia. I tried to convince myself that I was normal just like everyone else when I was growing up because my parents told me so but that wasn't true. I probably should have been in special ed... maybe I would be more successful right now if I had been. I think the only reason I graduated high school was because my parents pushed me so hard to do well and my mom played school with me during the summer when I was little. I'm also scared of literally everything all the time. I've gotten bullied my whole life for being different and it's never going away. I can't even leave my room most of the time. I am constantly second-guessing myself and I should stop doing that.

I just can't believe that someone as cool as you would want to see me and I guess you don't. I'm not very cool. Maybe I was wrong this whole time. I wish I could be more like you. Your life seems to be perfect compared to mine. You have everything you want. Everything is so easy for you. You can go out in public without being afraid or struggling to get around. You're popular and you have friends and people that you can talk to. You get to do all of the things that I can only dream of doing. You're just perfect in every way.

If you saw how I was living maybe you would understand why I'm doing as bad as I am and why it's so hard for me to just show up. I was being stupid and overly emotional again because I've barely eaten or slept this week because I've been so anxious about seeing you. I don't know why I'm so fucking delusional and thought you would just show up. That's not how things work and I should know that by now because it would have already happened if it was true. I should stop sacrificing sleep just to try to send you stuff. I spend too much time on here. I realize that it's not healthy for me to get that upset over someone either. I have been wanting to get help for my mental health problems for a while and I keep putting it off because I keep thinking someone will help me but I just need to deal with it without any help because obviously it is creating a lot of problems. It takes a lot of time for me to build up the confidence and strength to come see you after getting my ass kicked all week too. I wish I could get my pain under control so I'm not like this. I wasn't always this bad. It's really hard for me to get ready when my room is a trash pile and I can't find anything in here. I didn't want to show up looking like a clown but I guess I am. A very foolish clown. I also haven't been able to do laundry in over 6 months. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to be around me since I'm just a pathetic mess. I deserve to be lonely so I'm glad you taught me that. At least the silverfish and spiders living behind my bed will keep me company. I'm just a loser. I guess I am "Satan". I'm sorry for being embarrassing and ruining everything. I'm not sure there's any hope for me to be successful anymore.

I guess I didn't understand what you were planning to do at the time but it doesn't matter anymore. I've realized that sometimes I'm bad at understanding social cues. I will never expect anything from you. I wasn't trying to be ungrateful for anything. I don't think you understood what I was trying to say... I was trying to say I just want to be with you and I don't need you to do anything extravagant. I don't need you to buy me gifts or anything like that. Just being with you would be enough to make me happy. I really wasn't trying to be rude so I'm sorry I even said anything about it. I wasn't mad at you, I was just in a shitty mood and I should have kept it to myself. I appreciate you and everything you have done for me so far though. I also appreciate everyone at the shop for being so kind to me. Thank you for listening to me. I don't think I can go back there any time soon after having that experience though. I guess I was wrong about that being a safe place. I didn't think I could be more depressed than I was before but I was wrong. I don't believe in anything anymore. My spirit is crushed and I'm not sure my broken heart can be put back together at this point. I hope you all enjoy your holiday and the rest of your summer. Maxwell, I love you with all my heart and I always will. I'm sorry I fucked up everything. I don't want to do anymore damage and I don't want to hurt you anymore so I am going away for a long time. Goodbye.

#personal

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thickest-slimiest-malware · 1 year

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vent

cw internalised ableism/suicide

i burnt out doing "the basic ammount of work everyone does" for like a week, maybe two. i burnt out and now i cant do anything and i feel ultra useless and am beating myself up. logically i know its the disability but in terms of feelinngs.. how could i possibly explain that to a "normal" hard working person. i feel like i will never pull my own weight and people will always be angry at me when they learn how little i do and that im getting away with it. i feel like a parasite. i know theres no way for me to be as useful as id like to be, useful enough to justify all the resources im sucking up. i know im supposed to be glad i have the opportunity to live despite needing to "borrow" so much from other people but i feel like all the cool people i think of, whose opinion i really want for some reason, will always be shocked by how useless i am. and recently i feel like thats just everyone. i know im only talking to a very small number of people on this earth and im projecting those people onto everyone but it feels like anyine i will ever meet will be shocked and dissapointed by how useless i am. i feel really bad for existing. if suicide was painless and risk free i wouldve done it already. i thought about killing myself and researched how i can do that for a bunch of days in a row. part of me doesnt want me to kill myself and yet another part of me feels like its the right thing to do. and i think logically i should be angry that everyone doesnt have the opportunity to be a bit useless and that most people are so overworked and struggling but instead im angry at myself, because i get to have a huge disability rent in poland that is almost half a minimum wage, that my parents are not planning to kick me out any time soon, that we have a garden with living trees and there are nice things in the house like paintings my mom painted and that even though i usually dont put any effort into cooking, i get to have filling meals every day that dont require any effort at all like cereal and cups of yoghurt. i mean if i say it out loud it starts sounding silly "how dare i have nice things" but i really dont think i dont deserve any of it.

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suedrawl · 1 year

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okay sorry i did a huge reblog dump bcs it’s 5am and i just want to sleep but my health don’t give me any days off

anyway hey!! I’m okay. I was at the ER for 12 hours a few days ago—spent 10 hours in the waiting room, 2 in a weird closet/makeshift room. only to be told it’s likely just a minor infection or virus. god. cannot express accurately how that day went. it was…a day. so thankful for Pablo, at least

so we were initially worried about things like gallstones, appendicitis, miscarriage, kidney issues, so on. but I am okay sorta . blood work and xrays didn’t show anything outside of higher white blood count. so essentially IBS or something? but i’m still dealing with bad stomach cramps (like now!). been struggling to get myself to hydrate, fatigued, achey—it doesn’t combine well with my already Normal Pain

tho finally after weeks of trying i got an appointment set up with my pcp on monday. so maybe i’ll get more answers then. also will see about medical marijuana, physical therapy, and short term disability

i just hope something is found—anything. with the cramping, all the weight gain I’ve had, and other symptoms. i’m so tired. i’m so embarrassed with my state. i know i’ve disappointed and let people down. I haven't been around for friends as much. So I'm partial to say things Have worsened? But honestly, in a way, far from true

I haven't been passively suicidal and hopeless like I was in what felt like a decade or more. I'm with someone I love, living on my own, and have been given the space to rest/recover. And I honestly have been loving the distance from the internet and older social habits. it’s nothing against friends, but readjusting myself from the mom friend/caretaker/masking/denying myself space and needs. the solitary (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been drawing the Hermit card) and focus on irl/more in the moment has been so relieving

but also feels so… like i’m trading one bad thing for another set. my grandfather (last grandparent alive) isn’t doing well. my cat Gibbs… it won’t be long, and I don’t think I’ll be able to see him in time. Haven’t seen my family in over a year. Struggling financially. Been working through a lot of communication/boundaries/needs with Pablo and his family. This season is always rough bcs it’s SAD on top of my regular chronic depression. cold weather is hard on my fibro. other health issues are flaring and struggling to find respite. it’s also weird bcs this is the time where i was lost in the woods as a child. missing my dad. family childhood trauma. the weight…i hate it. feeling lost, discouraged, exhausted. that sense of being betrayed by my body. struggling to keep up, accepting so many limitations, realizing that realistically, you are not enough for others expectations. it’s something i am used to, and inherently can pick up fast. but still takes time to process and cope

just wanna draw and be house wife like. i have really basic needs and hopes right now

small steps. keep trying. i’ll get there, bit by bit. but i am so deeply exhausted

#sue personal #sue drawl #i am in so much pain #chronic illness on top of…whatever weird freak flareup episode that sent me to the ER #i’m trying so hard to get myself to be functional/catch up with things #i hate being seen as a disappointment #worst of all if they don’t get chronic illness and invisible disease #i want to just be marginally better #i don’t have to have a cure i just want to lose weight and work part time or something

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finsterhund · 2 years

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This planet isn't fucking fair

So after a week where I keep getting my chronic disability ignored and dismissed to my detriment I'm just not doing too good.

I really get the impression that because of the fact that I *can* force myself to do things that it's just expected of me. Like, small example, ideally I shouldn't be the one running back into the house from the car to fetch forgotten things considering my back, and now my ankle, and so on and so forth. My roommate could do it faster, more efficiently, and with less pain, but it's so often up to me.

All my life has been a series of that sort of shit. My mom and her "little Andy will die of pneumonia because of his shit heart and cringefail lungs" but letting a defect in my spine go unnoticed/treated because "if it were really that bad you'd cry more" sorta shit. (Still fucked up my roommate did the exact same thing when I broke my ankle by the way. "You couldn't be standing, you'd be screaming with pain if it was really broken " maybe if I was FUCKING WEAK perhaps)

My advice for this is that if you are disabled, take all the help and support you can get and make a huge fucking fuss about it. Don't let anyone dismiss your feelings and fuck able-bodied people feeling uncomfortable about you just existing as someone with a disability. We're made to want to appear invisible and not burdens all the time so it's hard to do that but it's worth it I promise.

Positives are that I went to the new pharmacy and they gave me all my drugs* and there weren't any weird new fees. There were a few issues but yeah Mr sick boy over here and his cringe health. That's to be expected. It was mostly just paperwork shit. Except they didn't have my night terror meds. But I'm back on my normal pills(yeah I know it's a dated meme chill out) and my hormone imbalance juice™️. Which I should feel better about but there's this phenomenon where certain mental health drugs will not work at first at stabilizing you but will give you more fight and energy (which is why there's that suicide disclaimer/warning thing some antidepressants have because your motivation to do things kicks in sooner than the effect of the drug to make you not want to die) so I've got that going on atm. My antipsychotics actually look different than they did at my old pharmacy. They're visibly different so you can tell the 10mg and the 20mg ones apart which means I can put them in the same container for convenience.

I applied for an overdraft bank thing so they won't charge me 50 dollars every time a payment gets declined. Instead I will have an overdraft I can dip into and if I don't use it I don't have to pay anything and every time I use it it only costs 5 dollars. Ultimately I will be saving money because that generally means each month I'll only ever pay that $5 extra and not the NSF return fee. Surprised I got it considering I'm on disability but relieved.

Not to reveal personal info but I found out one of my best friends now also has a chronic illness and it's just unfair. He of all people didn't deserve this and him potentially having to take some of the exact same drugs Cazza did is traumatizing.

Keep him in your thoughts.

I know "nobody who gets these things deserves them" is like, basic fucking knowledge. But I still reel at the injustice of it all. Maybe it's still that residual after effect of being raised under the instruction that some all powerful dude made the world the way it is and now I have permanent brain worms about fate. That was another thing. The way xtianity tends to talk about disability. Made me hate god and that rage doesn't go away when you stop believing, you know? It has to go somewhere if not therapy.

I got another Cazza collar thanks to my overdraft thing (already abusing the new power I possess. But don't worry I'm only doing it for the Cazza collar) and am planning to mount Cazza's actual collar with tag into like, a frame or something. If you Google dog collar memorial shadow box you'll see what I have in mind.

With my health being more stable with my medicine and the temperature finally becoming livable I'm hoping to try and do things again. In between the moments I think about Cazza. It seems like the universe has just moved on without me and I can't find a place to fit back in.

Scott is acclimatizing well to being home. He continues to slowly grow on me. I was crying today and he gave me kisses almost like Cazza used to do. He's more cuddly than she is but I'm clearly not ready for that yet.

One of these days when I am stronger I want to go back into my closet and rearrange things. I just need to make sure it won't hurt me because so much if Cazza's things I put in there.

I'm at that point where the little details about her are fading so I'm no longer hiding photos of her, even though they hurt me to look at. My roommate said I can use his printer so I am going to use his printer.

If something noteworthy happens I will try to update again.

*edit before posting*

well funny I should mention that my antipsychotics give me a brief period where I have energy and fight but the calming effects don’t kick in yet. Because before I was ready to post this I flew into a violent manic crusade against a shitty online marketplace webside called Mercari because someone was selling the very last cazza collar I needed (the small size) and it turns out there was plentiful listings of the cazza collar on that site.

But Mercari is a really shitty site that tries everything in its power to stop canadians from using it. Being able to ship to my friend’s address in the states means absolutely nothing. They won’t let you make an account, they won’t accept paypal accounts “registered outside of the US” they specifically go out of their way to make it impossible for VPN users to use the site and make it impossible to log in without javascript enabled.

They’re broken, shady, and disgusting of a website. Incompetent in literally every way except of course for keeping Canadians out. I fought and fought and fought tooth and nail. I managed to make an account and log into the account but could not buy the cazza collar because they blocked my paypal for not being made in the US. So stupid. But thanks to some ambiguously legal handiwork involving the android app I managed to sneak on just good enough that I sent a message to the seller including my email address to contact me. Which the site deleted!

But I managed to actually get into contact with the seller so I am really truly hoping this will go through. I think they partially banned me from the site as I am able to contact the seller on the app but cannot change my profile on the app which I can do on google chrome for android. So maybe I’m lucky and the “other person interested in the collar” is actually me and somehow I’ve been split in two.

I am incapable of relaxing tonight because well, I waged a cyber war against this shitty website. In the future I will try to just ask my american friends at a reasonable time to buy things for me. Which sucks because I can’t make my own account or use my own paypal at all or even really do it myself. A friend in america has to do it. There is literally no reason for it to be that way. It is so stupid.

Mercari needs to join Amazon and die in a fire.

If teleportation were possible I would absolutely have achieved it tonight. I am so frazzled and stressed. It distracts me from how much grief I’ve been experiencing though I guess so maybe it’s a small positive.

#text post #negative #long post

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momsopposed2theoccult · 3 years

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It’s come to my attention that a good majority of people on this website have a really poor understanding of the conflict between Toph and Katara in “The Chase.” As somebody who loves both characters and their friendship, this irritates me. Without further ado, let’s unpack that in what is in theory supposed to be a meta but turned out more like a rant.

“Katara was hostile towards Toph because the fact that she’s a gender non-conforming girl made Katara uncomfortable because Katara is obsessed with gender roles.”

Alright, so right off the bat this is just... completely idiotic and clearly fuelled by an agenda (and likely also a lot of projection). First of all, how is Katara of “I don’t want to heal, I want to fight!” fame “obsessed with gender roles?” There’s an entire episode in Book One dedicated to Katara refusing to conform to societal norms for women in the Northern Water Tribe! Katara routinely calls Sokka out on his misogynistic bullshit! (Mind you I adore Sokka but he could be a little twerp at times and Katara was 100% right to challenge him on it) Katara is the feminist icon of ATLA! The fact that people act like Katara is some sort of conservative tradwife who loves gender roles instead of the outspoken feminist and political activist she is makes me incredibly angry.

Second of all, Katara was extremely kind and welcoming towards Toph at first. She gently encouraged her to join in with the group as they all set up camp together as opposed to setting up her own private camp. It’s only when Toph refuses to comply with her that Katara begins to get irritated. Mind you, Toph has her reasons for this, something I’ll get to in a minute, but from Katara’s perspective (key word here is perspective) she’s just being an annoying little stubborn, selfish, lazy, anti-social, entitled brat. Of course we the audience find out later that this isn’t the case at all (or at least in theory we should find out later but apparently some people on here skipped that part), but for all her many talents Katara is not a mind reader and has no way of knowing what’s going on inside Toph’s head, nor does she know her well enough yet to fully grasp the context behind why Toph acts the way she does. Katara is somebody who greatly values community and believes in teamwork, so Toph turning down her warm welcome in favour of “carrying her own weight” likely felt like a slap in the face. Not to mention that she’s already emotionally exhausted from having to constantly mother Aang and Sokka. If I were Katara, I likely would have reacted the same way.

Oh and I agree that the “the stars look beautiful tonight, too bad you can’t see them, Toph” comment was out of line, but it doesn’t make her a horrible person. It makes her a 14 year old, and 14 year olds can be nasty, especially sleep deprived 14 year olds. Katara is otherwise a very kind and compassionate person. Other characters have said worse than that. Hell, Toph herself has said worse than that. That being said, it was a deeply hurtful comment and I do like to imagine that she apologized for it off-screen.

“Toph is a lazy, entitled, and classist spoiled rich brat who just didn’t want to do chores and expected other people to wait on her.”

This is another one that makes me roll my eyes and ask if they even watched the show. First of all, the presumption that Toph is a lazy or entitled person is just... laughable. I feel like people forget that Toph isn’t actually an earthbending prodigy in the way that Azula is a firebending prodigy (I could say more about Azula and how her belief that she was the unshakeable prodigal daughter ultimately caused her downfall and how by the end of the series Zuko is arguably a better firebender than her but this isn’t a meta about Azula and Zuko, now is it?). Nah. Toph was a sheltered kid who discovered she had the ability to earthbend, was told that she could never become great at it because she was blind, and in response said FUCK THAT and decided to work her ass off until she was not only great but the very greatest all thanks to her crazy, stupid, off-the-charts nerve, drive, grit, ambition, and desire to prove people wrong about her. Does that sound like a lazy person to you? Believe me when I say that you do not achieve that kind of skill level by sitting around on your ass and expecting to have things handed to you. And entitled? Don’t make me laugh. Toph hates having things handed to her, that’s one of her defining characteristics.

As for the implication that she’s classist and enjoys basking in her family’s wealth and being waited on...... are you stupid? Did you even watch the show? Toph absolutely despises everything about her parents’ lifestyle. Growing up like that was traumatizing and restrictive for her. We’re talking about a girl who likes to play around in the mud for fuck’s sake. Toph does not care how much money you have. She never wanted any to begin with. She even says it herself; “I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. They gave me everything I could have wanted. But they never gave me what I actually needed - their love.” Not to mention that she easily could have continued to freeload off her parents wealth but instead chose to sneak out of the house and make her own money doing what she did best; disproving people’s assumptions about her earthbending. Oh and I’ve seen someone point this out before but WWE is generally considered a “low brow” activity that “proper” people frown upon and shouldn’t associate themselves with. Toph fucking loved it. I don’t know how seriously people take the comics, as they often miss the mark when it comes to characterization (Toph’s, however, was generally pretty accurate), but there’s a part in The Rift where Sokka asks her when she’s going to start charging people to learn metalbending and she gets all serious and flat out tells him that she will never do such a thing, because money doesn’t matter to her. Sharing her one true passion with the world is what matters to her. Oh and the part where she basically tells a bunch of rich and sleazy businessmen to fuck off and “stop thinking about money and start thinking about people’s lives” is just... *chef’s kiss* Sorry my thoughts here are so incoherent but this take is so piss poor and makes me so angry that I don’t even know where to start. As for “Toph enjoys being waited on” I just- *sigh* Toph has such a visceral and defensive reaction to any implication that she is unable to take care of herself. Like I said earlier, that’s one of her defining characteristics as well as the reason for her behaviour in “The Chase.” Where are people getting these takes?

You wanna know why Toph acted the way she did in The Chase? Well, first let’s recap her life up to this point. Toph was born the blind daughter of one of the wealthiest families in the Earth Kingdom. From day one her parents treated her like glass due to her disability. She was not allowed to leave her house unsupervised, and even then she was only permitted to walk around the gardens of her home. Every day of her life she was pitied, gaslit, babied, ignored, emotionally neglected, and made to feel ashamed of herself. She was not allowed to make any decisions for herself. She was not allowed to do anything for herself. She was not allowed to talk to other children. She had no friends. Other people didn’t even know she existed on account that her parents kept her locked up in her own home and didn’t tell anybody about her because they were so ashamed to have a blind daughter. Flash forward to “The Chase.” Toph begins to set up her own camp separate from the rest of the Gaang. Considering that she flat out was not socialized as a child and hadn’t even interacted with anybody her own age prior to a few days ago, this is understandable. So then Katara comes up to her and asks her why she isn’t setting up camp with the others as if she’s somehow incapable of taking care of herself (again, this is just what happened from her perspective) like she’s her mom or something and it just angers her because she thought she joined this group to get away from all that and she doesn’t understand how friends work because she’s never had one, all she knows is that apparently this girl thinks she isn’t capable of taking care of herself, and that infuriates her because it’s the exact same bullshit she thought she was running away from.

There’s a lot more I could say about this but I’m sick of typing so yeah in conclusion both of these takes are piss poor and I’m sick of having to read them. Stan Toph, Katara, and their friendship.

#atla #avatar the last airbender #katara #toph beifong #nora speaks

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chrisevansszn · 3 years

Text

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE 🔺️🔺️🔺️ PT 6

Word Count 1.3k

“Noah text me and I thought it was you. I replied that I want the baby to have brown hair and blue eyes. Noah has black hair and brown eyes. I fucked up bad. He’s so pissed. He told me to get home now.”

“Fuck. Shit. Do you want me to come with you?”

“Hell no. Are you crazy? I’m a dead woman.”

“Don’t talk like that. If he does anything to you. Call me. I will drop everything for you.”

You give Chris you address and head out the door to face Noah. This is probably the last day of your marriage.

You grab your coat and purse and head out the door. You look back to see Chris standing there very concerned with his hands on his hips.

You take a deep breath and push the elevator button to go down. The car ride was silent, all could hear was your tires hitting the road. You turned off your radio. Your anxiety was through the roof.

You pull up at home and just sat in the car. This was about to be a shit show. You decided to leave your purse in in the car just in case it gets too crazy. You walk in the door. Noah is standing in the kitchen waiting on you. You both sit and stare at each other for a few minutes.

It’s time to come clean.

“Noah…I’ve been having an affair.”

Silence

“I already knew that.”

You looked confused.

“You think I am stupid. You never stay the night at any friend’s house. You always find a way home whether someone drops you off or you take an Uber. You’ve been leaving out at night not returning home. You fucking disabled the ring doorbell! How stupid!”

You swallow.

“Who are fucking Y/N? Enlighten me. Is he your baby’s father? We’ve been together for over a decade and not even one close call.” Noah’s is beginning to yell.

“I don’t know who the baby’s father is. It’s between you and the other man.”, You are literally whispering right now from being so embarrassed.

“And that is?” Noah sits up a little more and tilts his head. Takes a drink from his whiskey glass.

“A coworker.”

“A coworker? You get to see this fucker EVERY SINGLE DAY?” He’s basically yelling right now.

“You’ve been working so much, and I felt neglected! You don’t have time for me anymore. The getaway to Florida was the first time in a long time that you even paid any attention to me. The sex is boring, and I don’t love you anymore Noah!"

The next thing you knew Noah threw his drinking glass at your but barely missed. It hit the wall behind you. You looked up to see Noah charging at you and you threw your hands up. He slammed you in the nearest wall. He had you pinned.

“I have been saving lives while you have been here being a fucking whore.”

You hear your living room door burst open and look over to see Chris. Oh God no! The look in Chris’ eyes showed that he was ready to kill!

“Chris!” You hollered.

Noah lets you go.

“This is the mother fucking you’ve been screwing?”

“You are fucking right. I’ve been dicking down your wife bitch! Oh, and she’s having my baby too.”

Lord Jesus that made your pussy throb.

Noah charges towards Chris and Chris hits him with a quick right hook. Noah flys back and Chris runs to Noah and clocks him again.

“Chris please.” You pull Chris’ arm to drag him away from Noah. Noah is touching his mouth and it’s bleeding.

“Don’t you ever put your hands on a woman again!” Chris yells. “Punk bitch!”

“Chris leave please. Now…go!”

“I’m not leaving without you, are you crazy?”

“I will wait outside until you come out.” Chris walks out and stands by his car.

You turn to Noah.

“This marriage is over. I am in love with Chris. I am going to be with him.”

“Get your fucking shit and I want you out. Out of this house and out of my life.”

“I am going to go pack some clothes. I will get the rest of my shit when you leave out again for work, so we don’t have to see each other.”

You walk upstairs and grab a suitcase. You pack everything that is important, clothes, shoes, products. Everyday stuff. You take a deep breath and walk downstairs and out the door starting your new life. Chris is still outside. You walk up to him and give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Let’s go home baby.” He speaks.

You both make it to Chris’ apartment and your phone begins to ring, it’s your mother. Noah probably told her what just happened.

“Hi Mom.”

“Y/N, what is going on between you and Noah? You left him for another man? And he man got you pregnant? What in the world.”

“Mom, calm down and listen.”

You tell your mother everything. Yes, you had an affair, you are pregnant, and you are in love with another man. You know this mess is going to take some time to calm down, but your heart wants Chris. You stay on the phone for about another 30 mins but don’t introduce Chris because now is not the time.

“Hi Chris.”

You go and sit next to him on the couch.

“Hi there.”

“How are you feeling?”

“My adrenaline is going right now with everything.”

You smile.

“I understand. How is your hand?”

“It’s fine. It hurts a little that about it.”

You get up to go get ice for his hand and come back to watch tv and cuddle. You order take out for dinner and head to bed. You never thought in a million years that you would be in this kind of situation. You just have to take it a day at a time.

The next day you get in contact with a divorce lawyer. You want this process over with as soon as possible. You continue for the next few weeks living with Chris. Everything is going great, and no one at work has a clue until….

Noah creates a Facebook post going on a rant about the event that have taken place. You knew the divorce paper would be served today but you didn’t think he would take it to social media! Your phone begins to blow up with people trying to let you know what is going on and asking questions.

Your bestie Carrie sends you the screen shot.

“Look at this bullshit Chris!”

You show Chris the post.

“Oh my God he is bonkers. What is that going to accomplish?”

“I don’t know. He leaves for Arizona to go work this weekend. I am going to get the rest of my shit and try to get the house on the market."

You are trying to stay as calm as possible to not upset the baby. You and Chris decide to work from home for the rest of the week to get a game plan going for work. You both know people will talk but there are bigger fish to fry now.

That Saturday, you and Chris drive over to your home with Noah. You notice his car in the driveway. That’s weird he should be gone by now. You roll your eyes and walk to the door. You turn the knob, and the door is not locked. Weird.

You walk in and holler that you are there and just picking up some more stuff.

Nothing.

You walk around. You see Noah’s keys and wallet on the living room table. OK…

You walk upstairs to the bedroom, and then to the bathroom because the door was opened and lights are on. You see Noah’s lifeless body in the tub.

“CHRISSSSS!” You scream out while running out the house. He meets you at the door.

Noah is dead!

@chris-butt 💙

#cevans #chris evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x reader #chris jamal evans #marvel #andy barber #defending jacob #stevenomad

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hargrove-mayfields · 3 years

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so sorry im late asking this (i was waiting for you to get more, super surprised you didn’t get more asks tbh) but could I hear more about your wips “I have a crush on Barbara Holland” “baby fic” and “HOH Steve” also if it’s not too much “girlyfriends” and “cali house” and “medical emergency” ik ik that’s a lot but I’d honestly want hear about ALL of you wips in that list if i could. thank u in advance

It’s alright anon! I’ll accept these asks until I run out of WIPs to talk about!

I have a crush on Barbara Holland- This one is a soulmates au, where Steve has his soulmates initials, B.H., on his wrist, and he is whole heartedly convinced that that person is Barb. He’s very much in love with her, and there’s lots of talk about how pretty and nice she is (hence the title lol) but eventually she reveals that he isn’t her soulmate. Before she had hid the initials on her own wrist under a watch or a chunky bracelet, but she feels guilty, and shows Steve that her mark had long ago faded, because her soulmate passed away when they were in elementary school. Steve decides, despite how much value he used to hold in the whole soulmate thing, he doesn’t care about who some stupid mark says he should be with, so him and Barb date until her death. He’s heart broken, but the sadness very quickly turns into so much anger after Billy Hargrove, another B.H. rolls into town with a little S.H. on his wrist. He feels like the universe or whoever is even in charge of this soulmate bullshit is spiting him for thinking he could fall in love with someone he wasn’t destined to be with, so he rejects Billy for a long, long time, even after he himself figured it out that Steve is his match. When he does start to feel that way about Billy, he struggles with so much guilt and has to go through a very long grieving process to be comfortable with his feelings, because he’s not even sure if they’re his genuine feelings or the work of this soulmate bond. Very long and very angsty.

baby fic- Nancy gets pregnant that first time at the party with Tommy and Carol, and her and Steve try really really hard to make things work out for their baby, but it just isn’t meant to be. They make an arrangement that the Harringtons are very not pleased with, where Nancy has the baby at the Byers house half the time (because let’s be honest I think the Wheelers house is not really a safe place to be raising a baby) and Steve has her the rest of the time. Because it was like, a much more mature breakup without the cheating and the drunken confessions, they’re still pretty close friends. When the upside down starts making an appearance again, they have to try to figure out how to navigate it with this little four month old baby, and that means getting some help involved. Billy shows up at the Byers and instead of a fight, Steve’s all exhausted like oh good, you’re finally here, and gives him the worlds fastest run down of this monster fighting shit with a crying baby on his hip, and like, Billy just can’t say no to him asking him to go into the tunnels while he watches the baby. There is eventual Harringrove after a while, but it’s a slow burn for sure. This is also probably the least serious and least angsty thing I have ever started to write.

HOH Stevie- They’re all in the government hospital getting their post Starcourt once overs, Billy and El of course being rushed into surgery, and Steve’s about to get discharged when he gets addressed by name and just, does not respond at all. The doctor is like hmm, and checks his ears, and they find out he has almost no hearing in his left ear, and only about forty percent in the right. All that head trauma from the Russians and then all of the explosions of the fireworks, it leaves him deaf.

Everyone tries to be supportive, but his dad refuses to let him get hearing aids because he doesn’t believe he actually needs them (Steve’s a diagnosed hypochondriac) so for the next several months while his parents are still home waiting for their next trip, he’s struggling. He basically gets iced out by the party because he just can’t hear anything they’re saying, and the kids get tired of repeating themselves, and Nancy got insulted the one time he told her her voice is too quiet, and Robin wants to do things right for him, but she forgets sometimes, and will ramble on about something without looking at him and everytime he’s like great, I didn’t catch a single word of that, lovely talk though. It’s very frustrating and isolating and nobody seems to want to make accommodations for him.

The very same day that his parents leave for their latest vacation, he goes back to hospital. At first he just has to get more testing done, since it had been upwards of six months since the last time they saw him, and on his way out he notices Max in the waiting room chairs. He hadn’t seen much of her at all since Starcourt, so he checks on her, and at first she tells him to go away, because her friends have said some not so nice things about how much time she spends at the hospital, and assumes Steve is there to tell her Billy isn’t worth it too. Because that’s not the case, he ends up going in the room to visit Billy with her.

They do the small talk, the awkward, sorry about the fact that you’ve been in the hospital for six months now and nobody wants to come see you thing, and at some point Billy realizes that Steve can’t hear a damned thing he’s saying. He tests his theory by saying Steve’s name when he’s not looking and just waiting for him to answer but, surprise he doesn’t because he didn’t hear it at all, and Billy’s just like, you’re deaf aren’t you?

The progression of the fic is basically Steve coming to visit Billy everytime he has an appointment for his hearing (and more, but Bill doesn’t know that) but the day of his last appointment to make sure his hearing aids are functioning as well as they ever will for how bad off his hearing is, Billy’s acting different.

When he’d first walked into his room Billy had been surprisingly bright eyed and bushy-tailed for what he went through, but now he’s just acting all mopey. Max makes him tell Steve what’s wrong, and he confesses that he feels like he’s going to get left behind now that Steve’s all better, because then he has no real reason to visit him anymore. But Steve has one very good reason, and the rest of the story is him making sure Billy knows it.

girlyfriends- This’n’s sort of a non-canon compliant character study about aromantic! Billy, focusing on how awful and uncomfortable he felt with his past girlfriends, messing up dates and never going as far as they wanted him to, which at the time he pinned on liking boys instead, but then after he gets with Steve, he feels like this is different and he likes it, but he’s still not too big on all the lovey dovey, romance stuff. He rationalizes it as like, maybe just being a side effect of him being an asshole or something, but he‘s actually super insecure about how he is in relationships. There is a fluffy resolution though where he embraces his identity, it’s really not all doom and gloom, boo hoo I hate myself stuff.

cali house- Years after Starcourt, the boys have moved to a decent house in California using their government hush hush money, and they’re there for only about a month when Billy’s mother shows up at their door.

She says she caught wind that her son was back in town and wanted to come see him, after all this time. Billy of course lets her back in his life immediately, his mom meant so much to his recovery process and now that she’s here, he can’t turn her away, but Steve’s a little suspicious of her intentions.

He thinks that if she wanted to see Billy, she would’ve done that years ago before he ever even left Cali in the first place, or that you know, she wouldn’t have fucking left him behind. He tries to bring it up with Billy gently, but he won’t hear it, and he feels beyond hurt by the suggestion because he thinks Steve is just jealous that he’s spending time with his mother, who he hasn’t seen for upwards of fifteen years at this point.

They fight and avoid each other for a few days until Billy’s momma admits when he brings it up, over lunch or something saying like, “Steve thought you were using me or something, isn’t that crazy?” and she’s just like “Well, actually...”and tells him that money was tight, and she needed a little extra money, so Billy and his disability checks and his rich (boy)friend seemed like the perfect opportunity to get some.

He goes back home to Steve and expects him to be mad, to rub it in that he was right, but he’s really not, he’s super supportive, and you know, Billy finally realizes he doesn’t need to have this bullshit family thing with his mother, because he already has one, Max and Steve and his friends and all the people that actually care about him.

medical emergency (tw attempted suicide)-

Billy, who’s living on his own in an apartment downtown after Starcourt, deliberately doesn’t get his prescriptions refilled because he’s so done. He’s weak and he’s hurting and he doesn’t feel like himself anymore, and he just feels like he wouldn’t care if his body gave up, if he suffocated in his sleep or had another heart attack. So he doesn’t take care of himself, and when he runs out of oxygen he just doesn’t go get anymore, but he’s halfway to choking on his own blood when he realizes he doesn’t want to die.

He calls Steve, because he’s not calling the cops and he can’t remember anyone’s numbers in his panic, but Steve’s is written on his calendar, scribbled there because they were supposed to make plans for something with the kids. Steve takes him to the hospital, having to fight him to put the CPAP on him to make sure his lungs didn’t collapse before they could get him to Hawkins General, and Billy’s just, so bone tired.

They do all their treatment stuff and get his body back under control, so Steve finally asks him what happened, if maybe he needed someone around to help him remember his meds and stuff, and Billy just, he breaks, like a dam overfilled he just pours out with all of this helplessness and sadness he’d been feeling, how he doesn’t want to live the way he does or at all anymore, and Steve’s heart just breaks for him.

He moves in with him, nobody’s willing to leave him alone after what happened, and Steve (along with Billy getting a new therapist because the old one was incompetent enough to not notice how bad off he was) helps him to realize he has something to live for.

#answered #anonymous #ejs wips #ej writer #yeah theres no such thing as sending it late #if y’all want to ask me just ask me! dont worry about it!

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scarecoen · 3 years

Text

Trigger warning ⚠️ domestic violence.

I've typed this story a million times so I'm just going to summarize as much as I can.

A few days ago I was assaulted by my partner's family members. And as I've mentioned, I've typed this a million times and I'm honestly just exhausted thinking about it, but we could use some help.

My partner has always had a transphobic family. (I don't have anyone but my dad, who's in no position to help anyone.)

Her mom used her disability against her and manipulated her into giving her MOST of her checks. She's abused the system and my girlfriend.

When I met Jackie, she was with a terrible biggot. Jackie had came out, and her mother conspired with an abusive long distance ex, to fly her here, to stage an "intervention" and stop my partner from transitioning.

It worked. For years.

I met Jackie here on tumblr, we became good, SECRET friends because she wasn't allowed to talk to anyone.

I told Jackie openly about my views regarding gender and how I myself, was not cis.

Eventually she told her partner about us playing games together, which she responded to by harassing me.

Jackie ended up spilling the beans to me, about her mom, about the ex, everything. I realized that she had been extremely isolated and controlled her whole life.

So I intervened.

I got the two of them to separate, which wasn't smooth because Jackie was scared. She had been with her abuser for 9 years at this point. She's never known anything else.

The ex moved back to her state, and I started seeing Jackie, although she was stuck at her mom's... who was trying to play innocent at this time.

Eventually, I kinda just came and picked her up, she stayed the night, she didn't want to go back home. And I can't blame her. The house wasn't only disgusting, her family microagressed her all the time and they would tell her to pretty much stay in a dark room all day.

Ofc I didn't bring her back.

During early quarantine, we had a lot of self reflection and she started distancing herself from her mother, coming around to holding her accountable for her horrible actions.

Her mom messaged her things like "Why won't you talk to me? It's like you're trying to punish us!" Ect, just every fucking manipulative thing she could say, without ever apologizing.

Unfortunately the place we were staying fell through when my best friend's ex husband decided he wants a divorce and decided to throw in some transphobic hatespeach towards me.

We were all looking for somewhere to go.

I'm sure you know where this is going but listen, she told us EVERYTHING we wanted to hear. She told us she's not hateful now, told us she would go to trans support groups, pride, said she's realized how much she loves Jackie and it's time to accept her- and look- we had NO WHERE TO GO. We have 2 cats and at the time, a car that has no a/c or functional locks. AND I have a chronic autoimmune condition that I recently started taking chemo meds for. (Methotrexate.)

I'm too sick to be on the street, and survive. I had to think about me, Jackie, Zoe, and Boops.

And Jackie wanted to go..

I told her we'd be cautious and try to get out asap.

Well, looking for places right when the housing market crashed really fucked us up. That- and because I had only just finally got approved for disability, means I was set back in life- and had no credit to my name. No credit= no place to live.

I had almost built enough, but things went down hill very quickly with her family. Which leads us to right now:

After weeks of microagressions, giving us breakthrough covid cases, yelling at us to clean other's messes, and forcing us and our cats to isolate in our room, many broken promises, and straight up transphobic hatespeach (because she promised to get vaccinated but then said nvm as soon as we moved in and she went on vacation and got covid and gave it to us, which nearly killed me--) she said not getting the vaccine "IS A CHOICE, JUST LIKE YOU BEING TRANS AND TAKING *gestures to my testosterone* THOSE DRUGS."

We just were avoiding each other while I desperately try to gather resources for us to get out, NOW.

Of course, that wasn't good enough, so when her step father messaged her in all caps about our cats having to stay in our room and "I WON'T FUCKING TELL YOU AGAIN" my partner had a breakdown..

Her mom had let her step dad talk to her like this her whole life, basically.

Out of desperation, we went to her sister for help, maybe hoping she'd give us a place to stay for two weeks while we sign off on the lease for our new apartment.

She pretended to want to help and even said... something fucking weird? She made the comment that I'm a good person and I'm so much like her own boyfriend, that it's "scary"...

A few hours later she came to the house. She talked nicely to us, to gain access to our bedroom.

Then she attacked me.

I called the police right before, and was on the phone with dispatch when she lunged at me because she was aggressively trying to MAKE Jackie go into a separate room WITHOUT ME and Jackie was saying no, BEGGING her to STOP.

I wasn't going to let her take Jackie into that room. She looked fucking crazy.

All of the family came into our room, her two sisters, her mom, and her cousin- When they heard yelling.

It was actually me telling her mom that she's a terrible mother, that triggered her sister to try and attack me- although I knew she was planning on trying to from the moment she came into our room.

And that was after her mom was screaming in my face that if I have something to say, say it now.

Dispatch heard everything and sent emt as well...

But the police stayed outside, talking to them for a WHILE before even asking for us.

Her cousin is the only one that would have stood up for me, saying her sister never should have tried to hit me. But he was in the room with Jackie, giving her support...

I faced the cops alone.

He already had "that look."

He shined a light into my eye, letting the family stay on the porch, throwing insults and just letting it happen. He asked me where I'm hurt, and before I could even show him the scratches on my arm, he said "how do I know YOU didn't put those there?"

I wanted to fucking die in that moment.

This is a conservative city.

No one has equality stickers here. No one flies gay flags. People here that are lgbt- they LEAVE.

This is EXACTLY WHY.

I said "well is there any reason I should tell you anything when, clearly, you're already bias?"

I looked at the emts. I looked at his partner. I looked at all the lights and people coming out of their houses-

And behind me was her family.

Her sister that assaulted me, was laughing about having work in the morning.

All of them were looking at me, with hate in their eyes.

He tried to feed me bullshit about "well if I'm taking someone to jail, there has to be proof."

He dismissed everything I attempted to say, until I just stared at the ground and he decided he did his job here.

I told him my whole fucking body hurts because I had 4 people fucking toss my 100lbs ass all over the fucking room, which was a mess that he refused to look at.

He said "I don't see bruises."

I SPAT "BRUISES TAKE TIME?"

He retorted IMMEDIATELY- "YOU'RE NOT EVEN RED."

I asked what about the dispatcher- she seemed concerned- to which he said "you see, sometimes when people call us- they scream and be dramatic- for a quicker response."

I asked what we could do while the two weeks go by for our new place, and he fucking said "I DONT KNOW. BARRICADE YOURSELF IN YOUR ROOM OR SOMETHING."

Needless to say, we are now safe, in a hotel and I've gotten in touch with a few lgbt organizations that are attempting to help us get justice.

Unfortunately because it's a holiday weekend, all we can do is wait right now.

Our first order of business is getting a protection order, so that we can retrieve the rest of our things without her sister trying to attack us again. (I say us because she kept jumping towards Jackie, like she was threatening to hit her.)

I've been so gaslit and victim blamed that I was too scared to go to the er, even though this all happened in the midst of a flare, possibly including my liver health.

There's so much more to this story, as I'm sure other trans people can relate.. unfortunately.

The emts reluctantly offered to take me to the er, but I was like "and leave my partner here with them?" And he just fucking shrugged dude.

I hate this city.

I want out so bad but unfortunately I've committed to a year, but at least it'll be *our* apartment.

We could NOT stay there for two more weeks. Her step dad is a violent offender that has attempted to murder a homeless prostitute over some fucking pocket change- and he has a GUN in the house.

This hotel might run us into a hole, despite it being the cheapest, shittiest hotel in town, it's still going to be about 700$ for ONE week.

To ADD INSULT TO INJURY, SOMEONE ATTEMPTED TO STEAL MY VEHICLE WHILE WE'VE BEEN STAYING HERE.

I'm feeling incredibly paranoid and unsafe, but I'm on anxiety meds now at least and its SORTA helping us cope (My partner and I have the same Dr and she gave her permission to have some.)

The organization BRAVO is trying to help us with a hotel voucher, but because of all the natural disasters, it's hard to find room in charity for people like us, which is fair enough. We aren't immediately on the street, and for that I'm incredibly thankful.

However, if you or anyone you know wish to help you can donate to venmo: kittyzibby. Or you could just signal boost this.

If you can't help, I understand. And IF YOU'RE STRUGGLING FINANCIALLY, don't worry about it, for real.

Right now I'm just scared we'll go into debt before getting the apartment settled in.

I will update on things once our case moves along more, and we were already considering turning to OF sexwork before all of this, so if there could be support that way, maybe we'll get that going once we get moved in. That way, I feel good about providing a service in return.

Thank you so much for sticking with us during all of this. And really- we're doing much better today. We've given each other pep talks, but we are still determined to start our lives together.

Her family was merely trying to scare me away from her, but I got my girl's name tatted on me for a reason.

I know I'm not the bad person here.

Every time Jackie is feeling more gender euphoric, and showing me her changes, and seeing her get more confident, the more I know that what I'm doing with and for her, is right.

I love her so much. And I will never abandon her, like they tried to get me to do.

Jackie is taking a break from some socials, but she's given me permission to talk about what's been happening.

She needs justice too.

I will update as much as I can, but seriously, I think we both just have a fire under our asses now.

Mentally, we're stronger than ever.

Thank you for reading. My heart really goes out to the rest of the queer community that have experienced or are going through similar things.

It's really made me realize why we need to stick together and fight this bigotry bullshit! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

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zoinkshaggy · 3 years

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BASIC QUESTIONS

First name? “Sha– uh, Norville.”

Surname? “Rogers.”

Middle names? “Matthew.”

Nicknames? “Shaggy.”

Date of birth? “November 4th, 1995.”

Age? “Twenty five.”

PHYSICAL / APPEARANCE

Height? “6′0.”

Weight? “150-ish.”

Build? “Uh, long.”

Hair color? “Brown.”

Hair style? “I had dreads for awhile, but now I keep my hair short. Not short. Medium length, I guess.”

Eye color? “Also brown.”

Eye Shape? “Like, normal?”

Glasses or contact lenses? “Neither.”

Distinguishing facial features? “I’d say probably my smile.”

Which facial feature is most prominent? “Smile.”

Which bodily feature is most prominent? “My legs and arms, ‘cause they’re, like, twenty feet long.”

Other distinguishing features? “That’s it.”

Skin? “Oilier than I’d like.”

Hands? “Callused.”

Make up? “I don’t wear any.”

Scars? “Nothing important.”

Birthmarks? “Nah.”

Tattoos? “No! Needles? No thank you!”

Physical handicaps? “None.”

Type of clothes? “I really like sweaters. Sweaters will always be my favorite. They feel safe. It’s a little too hot for that here, though.”

How do you wear your clothes? “How they come.”

What are your feet like? “Kind of big, I guess. Two left feet, that’s what my mom said ‘cause I’m such a klutz. Uh, I should buy some more socks and shoes. Some of my socks have toe holes and my shoes are kind of coming apart.”

Race / Ethnicity? “I don’t have my birth parents around to ask, but I know I’m Spanish.”

Mannerisms? “I have a habit of, like, playing with my necklace or hair or bracelet — my hands don’t always like being still.”

Are you in good health? “It’s alright, I think.”

Do you have any disabilities? “No.”

PERSONALITY

What words or phrases do you overuse? “Like. I use it, like, a lot.”

Do you have a catchphrase? “Zoinks.”

Are you more optimistic or pessimistic? “I definitely think I’m more optimistic, but I have my moments.”

Are you introverted or extroverted? “Introverted.”

Do you ever put on airs? “I… don’t know what that means.”

What bad habits do you have? “Overeating, not eating healthy. Sleeping in too late. Chewing my nails, only sometimes.”

What makes you laugh out loud? “Usually myself.”

How do you display affection? “My idea of affection is kind of, just, hanging around someone. Hugs can be nice too.”

Mental handicaps? “My anxiety.”

How do you want to be seen by others? “A person they came come to and trust.”

How do you see themselves? “Better than I used to be.”

How are you seen by others? “Probably… nervous.”

Strongest character trait? “My loyalty.”

Weakest character trait? “Getting stuck in my head.”

How competitive are you? “Not at all.”

Do you make snap judgements or take time to consider? “Like, I take too much time to consider.”

How do you react to praise? “I don’t know what to say. I guess I get kind of flustered, you know?”

How do you react to criticism? “Just kind of shrug it off.”

What is your greatest fear? “Ghosts, spiders, heights, bees, guns... losing Scooby.”

What are your biggest secrets? “I don’t really keep secrets.”

What is your philosophy of life? “We’re all just here for a little while, so we should make it easier on each other.”

When was the last time you cried? “It’s been a few months, actually.”

What haunts you? “Zoinks. Hopefully not any ghosts.”

What are your political views? “I don’t pay enough attention to politics to have any views, really. I’ll vote for whoever Velma votes for. She knows what she’s talking about.”

What will you stand up for? “I will always stand up for my friends.”

Who do you quote? “Usually if I’m quoting someone, I don’t even know who I’m quoting.”

Are you indoorsy or outdoorsy? “Indoors. I like walking Scoob and everything, but, like, there’s too many bugs outside.”

What is your sinful little habit? “Putting mustard on ice cream.”

What sense do you most rely on? “Taste. But also hearing.”

How do you treat people better than you? “The same.”

How do you treat people worse than you? “The same.”

What quality do you most value in a friend? “Kindness.”

What do you consider an overrated virtue? “I wanna say courage. Biased opinion.”

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? “I’d stop worrying about everything.”

What is your obsession? “Good food.”

What are your pet peeves? “When people are mean for no reason.”

What are your idiosyncrasies? “Gotta make sure I turn all the lights off before I leave.”

FRIENDS AND FAMILY

Is your family big or small? Who does it consist of? “I guess it’s kind of small. I have my dad, my mom and my sister, Maggie. I haven’t seen my real parents since I was a kid.”

What is your perception of family? “I don’t think family has anything to do with blood, it’s how people treat you.”

Do you have siblings? Older or younger? “Maggie, she’s younger.”

Describe your best friend. “I’ve known her since, well... it feels like forever, but it’s only been, like, a decade and a half. She’s the best person I know. She’s so smart and funny, and she’s beautiful. She has a beautiful soul and... just... everything about her is beautiful. She makes me feel safe, it doesn’t matter what’s going on or how much my mind is racing, if I know she’s there it just feels like everything’s gonna be okay.”

Ideal best friend? “I’ve already got ‘em all.”

Describe your other friends. “They’re great. They’re all unique in their own ways, you know? Freddy’s headstrong and he’s the coolest guy you’ll meet, Daph is such a warm energy and she’s a great conversationalist, Buzz is genuine and he’s loyal. I know everyone thinks so, but I really do have the best friends.”

Describe your acquaintances. “I guess that would be the people I work with. Like, they’re okay.”

Do you have any pets? “Yeah, I have Scoob, but he’s more like my brother or something at this point.”

Who are your natural allies? “Probably the Mystery Inc gang.”

Who are your surprising allies? “I guess it’s surprising I’d fit in with them, huh?”

PAST AND FUTURE

What were you like as a baby? As a child? “I was happy. I can’t remember much from being that young, but I know I was traveling with my parents, I remember I felt like the world was so big and exciting. I felt so loved. I guess I kind of lost that feeling when I was adopted, suddenly the exciting stuff was just, like, scary. I was an anxious wreck as a child, that’s all, honestly.”

Did you grow up rich or poor? “The Rogers family is well off. I wouldn’t say rich, but, like, well off.”

Did you grow up nurtured or neglected? “I don’t wanna say they neglected me. I did feel that way a lot, but some of it was... me, I guess, myself worrying. Yeah.”

What is the most offensive thing you ever said? “I hope nothing.”

What is your greatest achievement? “Is it sad to say everything I’ve done in this last year? For awhile it felt like I was just getting by, but right now, I feel like I’m really living. I got a job, like, it’s not much but it’s a job, I’m doing better in school, I’ve got Velma now, really got her...”

What was your first kiss like? “It was with my favorite person. Kind of later than most people’s, I guess, but worth waiting for.”

What is the worst thing you did to someone you loved? “Come into my mom’s life, probably.”

What are your ambitions? “I’ve been thinking I might wanna go to culinary school.”

What advice would you give your younger self? “I would just tell him that nothing is wrong with him, it’s okay to go your own pace and, like, it’s all gonna be okay, little guy.”

What smells remind you of your childhood? “Corn dogs and pizza. Apple pie. Playground mulch. Hair spray and perfume. Dirt.”

What was your childhood ambition? “I just remember wanting to stop being so scared.”

What is your best childhood memory? “It’s so old it’s blurry, but I remember one of my birthdays, I guess it was my last before I was adopted. We were traveling, my parents were happy, I was happy. It was the last time everything felt okay for awhile.”

What is your worst childhood memory? “There’s a few. Most of them involved panic attacks alone in my bedroom.”

Did you have an imaginary childhood friend? “Not that I remember.”

When was the last time you were crushed with disappointment? “Sometime before I moved to Elias.”

What past act are you most ashamed of? “I’m ashamed that I let myself get separated from my parents, that I couldn’t figure out how to get in touch with them. Maybe shame isn’t the right word. I just wish I knew how my mom and dad were doing, my other mom and dad.”

What past act are you most proud of? “Taking whatever the first step was to stepping out of my shell.”

Has anyone ever saved their life? “I feel like Scooby Doo saved my life.”

Strongest childhood memory? “Another birthday. My first one with the Rogers family. I ended up crying in the bathroom. I was so confused and overwhelmed, I felt like the only person in the world. I just wanted to go home. I don’t think that feeling will ever leave me.”

LOVE

Do you believe in love at first sight? “Yes.”

Are you in a relationship? “I’m with Velma.”

How do you behave in a relationship? “I don’t really know what I’m doing, I’m just trying to make her happy.”

When did you last have sex? “I-- uh... that’s personal.”

What sort of sex do you have? “Like, w-why are you asking that?”

Have you ever been in love? “I am right now.”

Have you ever had your heart broken? “Yeah, but it wasn’t in a relationship.”

CONFLICT

How do you respond to a threat? “Run.”

Are you most likely to fight with your fists or your tongue? “Like, neither.”

What is your kryptonite? “All you can eat buffets.”

If you could only save one thing from your burning house, what would it be? “I assume Scooby and Velma don’t count, so I guess I’d probably grab my favorite shirt or something.”

How do you perceive strangers? “Scary.”

What do you love to hate? “I don’t hate anything... except maybe lima beans... and there is no love there, like, at all.”

What are your phobias? “There’s a lot of ‘em.”

What is your choice of weapon? “I’m more of a hider. If I had to use something, I’d probably grab whatever was blunt and close to me.”

What living person do you most despise? “I don’t despise anyone.”

Have you ever been bullied or teased? “Yeah.”

Where do you go when you’re angry? “I don’t get angry. When I’m sad, I just go home.”

Who are your enemies and why? “The bad guys the gang and I try to stop... because we’re trying to stop them...”

WORK, EDUCATION AND HOBBIES

What is your current job? “Right now I flip burgers.”

What do you think about your current job? “It’s not too bad. It pays the bills for now. Maybe one day I can get a real cooking job.”

What are some of your past jobs? “This is my first job.”

What are your hobbies? “Just chilling, mostly. Smoking, eating.”

Educational background? “I’m in college.”

Intelligence level? “I’m not the smartest guy you’ll meet, but I’m trying.”

Do you have any specialist training? “No.”

Do you have a natural talent for something? “I don’t know if it’s a talent, but I have a lot of knowledge on the supernatural. Weeding out what’s real and what’s not, though, that’s the hard part.”

Do you play a sport? Are you any good? “No, I’ve never been good at sports... I hated gym class.”

What is their socioeconomic status? “I recycle, but I should do more.”

FAVORITES

What is your favorite animal? “Dogs.”

Which animal do you dislike the most? “Anything that bites or stings.”

What place would you most like to visit? “I think Antarctica would be pretty cool. Ha, ba-dum-tss.”

What is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen? “I remember Topanga Canyon being so pretty...”

What is your favorite song? “Two Princes, Spin Doctors.”

Music, art, reading preferred? “Music.”

What is your favorite color? “Green.”

What is their password? “Scoobydoobydoo420 --- like, wait, why are you asking?”

Favorite food? “Like, that’s too hard!”

What is your favorite work of art? “Uh... Mona Lisa?”

Who is your favorite artist? “I don’t know artists that well.”

What is your favorite day of the week? “With my work schedule, it doesn’t really matter.”

POSSESSIONS

What is in your fridge? “What isn’t in my fridge? Let’s see, right now I know there’s barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, mustard, honey mustard, honey, shredded cheddar cheese, American cheese slices, a wheel of Gouda, ketchup, ranch, spicy barbeque, sour cream, strawberry and grape jelly, apple jam, butter, margarine, milk, chocolate milk, Almond milk, strawberry syrup, cherries, a half eaten Philly Cheesesteak, ham, turkey, black forest ham, broccoli, Reeses cups, water bottles, apple juice, leftover brown rice, at least one eggplant, eggs, one slice of buffalo chicken pizza, cabbage, few different Lunchables, green peppers, one red pepper, mild salsa, medium salsa, a microwaveable Calzone, strawberries, raspberries, cream cheese, a bowl of chili and... actually, I think that’s it. Don’t get me started on the freezer.”

What is on your bedside table? “My phone and an old water bottle, probably.”

What is in your car? “I don’t have a car.”

What is in your bin? “Candy wrappers, empty Chinese takeout boxes, probably some junk mail.”

What is in your purse or wallet? “My ID, debit card, a little bit of cash, Scoob’s service dog certificate, a picture of Velma.”

What is in your pockets? “Scooby snacks.”

What is your most treasured possession? “I’m not attached to any specific items, really, just people.”

SPIRITUALITY

Who or what is your guardian angel? “I don’t know, I’d just like to think I have one.”

Do you believe in the afterlife? “I’m not sure. When I think about it, I get a little freaked out.”

What are your religious views? “Uh, I- I don’t know.”

What do you think heaven is? “I think it would be this safe place on the clouds where everyone you love is waiting.”

What do you think hell is? “Bad.”

Are you superstitious? “I guess, yeah.”

What would you like to be reincarnated as? “I guess being a dog would be pretty fun... anything like that. I don’t think I’d wanna be a human again. It’s too much.”

How would you like to die? “Not... painfully...”

What is your spirit animal? “A sloth.”

What is your zodiac sign? “Scorpio.”

VALUES

What do you think is the worst thing that can be done to a person? “Breaking them down. Making them feel like they’re not important, they don’t matter, they have to change who they are to be loved.”

What is your view of ‘freedom’? “Having the chance to choose.”

When did you last lie? “Like, I don’t want to lie, but this guy at work asked me if I liked his new sunglasses, and I didn’t want to be rude and they were pretty expensive, so I said yeah, but... I really didn’t like them.”

What’s your view of lying? “I hate doing it, I don’t want to be lied to.”

When did you last make a promise? “Last week.”

Did you keep or break their last promise? “I keep my promises.”

DAILY LIFE

What are their eating habits? “Whatever I want when I want it.”

Do you have any allergies? “Not that I know of, but I bet I’m allergic to bees, I feel like if I got stung I’d die, so I try to avoid them.”

Describe your home. “It’s just a small apartment. It feels like home when Velma’s there, though.”

Are you a minimalist or a clutter hoarder? “Can I be both? I’m trying to do better about clutter, it’s usually just clothes and trash, I don’t have many belongings.”

What do you do first thing on a weekday morning? “Kiss Velma on the head. Get ready for work. If I’m off, I’ll cuddle a little longer, then we’ll have breakfast.

What do you do on a Sunday afternoon? “Take my shoes off, sit on the couch and watch some TV.”

What do you do on a Friday night? “Whatever Velma wants to do.”

What is your soft drink of choice? “Dr. Pepper.”

What is your alcoholic drink of choice? “I don’t drink much. Mike’s Lemonade is enough for me, and it tastes good.”

MISCELLANEOUS

What or who would you dress up as for Halloween? “I like dressing up as ghosts with Scoob. I think I was the Hamburglar last year. Maybe me, Scooby and and Velma can all do matching costumes this Halloween.”

Are you comfortable with technology? “I guess.”

If you could save one person, who would it be? “Velma.”

If you could call one person for help, who would it be? “Depends on the situation. Freddy, Daph or Velma.”

What is your greatest extravagance? “Food...”

What is your greatest regret? “I don’t think I have any.”

What is your perception of redemption? “Noticing that you need to do better, then striving to do it.”

What would you do if you won the lottery? “I’d pay off any bills my friends have. Put some funding into the Mystery Inc. I guess I’d save the rest.”

What is your favorite fairytale? “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”

What fairytale do you hate? “Like, Little Red Riding Hood makes me feel... weird...”

Do you believe in happy endings? “Yes.”

What is your idea of perfect happiness? “Being comfortable in your own skin and surrounding yourself with people that are good for you.”

What would you ask a fortune teller? “I’d ask how my birth parents are doing.”

If you could travel through time, where would you go? “I’d go back and spend another day with them.”

What sport do you excel at? “None, no sports.”

What sport do you suck at? “All of them. Especially baseball.”

If you could have a superpower, what would you choose? “I’d like to be able to turn invisible. Not to spy on people. Just to hide when everything got too overwhelming.”

#yes i did every single one #took me longer to figure out what's in his fridge than do the rest of this task + graphic #watask #tasks.

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edelblau · 3 years

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i feel like talking about my life in a longform post so im gonna do that. ive added a read more but sometimes tumblr breaks and just, removes them for me so im sorry if this breaks and yall get a long ass post on your dash

i still think of how this whole ‘miles moving and having to move by february on incredibly short notice’ thing is all entirely my moms fault and its also blowing up in her face bc now shes gotta move on short notice as well

like for one, all of this began bc she was mad i asked to be more informed on when her boyfriend was coming over because she never told ANYONE in the household when he was coming. ever. she also used all the groceries to cook for him (he ate large portions) so like, she buys one 4 pack of chicken breasts? all 4 are used on dinner for her bf and we were left with nothing. like im sure people remember my first few donation posts-- those were all to buy food becaause me and my sister were left with SCRAPS bc shed buy very limited food and then buy takeout with her bf on the days there were no groceries. at the time i had no income at all other than commissions to beign with and even as i eased onto disability.... i have under 300 dollars left after rent goes through so my only money for a whole month is 300 and if i put anything into savings oops that goes down significantly!

anyways because i dared to get upset about this, not even the food concerns but just. wanting to know if he was over and god forbid wanting the tv to be at a reasonable volume as my room and hers share a wall she threw a HUGE FIT

and talked about how i was (to paraphrase) a burden, that ‘youre an adult now so i shouldnt have to parent you’ (i was 21 and am disabled and unable to work) and that we were ‘basically roommates’ and i was a bad roommate (as if roommates dont communicate when they have guests over in their shared space) and how i ‘didnt want her to live in her own home’

anyways then she started to talk about how i need to move bc blah blah i dont respect her so i was kinda like. ok im done with this too!

at the time i didnt know if id be accepted onto disablity (the program is notorious for rejecting ppl first try) but lo and behold i was! at a lower price than my mom ‘expected’ so i had to try and fucking wager my rent lower (which worked but barely) so i could save anything at all (again. i have under 300 fucking dollars a month of spending money)

anyways. i started saving! i was as good as i could be with her still not buying food (until a few months ago), every bit i could save... and i had to replace a mattress so i lost a huge portion of that (lol) bc as much as i tried to avoid it i... couldnt anymore and now i have under 500 in savings but the KICKER is my fucking mother turns out to have gone to my grandparents behind everyones backs to convince them to get on the active waiting list for a retirement home, which theyre VERY HIGH UP ON ! leading to this whole fucking time constrained bullshit bc oops my grandparents own the damn house and to move theyd be selling it putting me, my sister and my mother herself needing to move within a short ass time frame

im just so mad all the time about it its so frustrating and annoying and... i was already in a quite frankly awful position bc my finances are so fucked and then she fucked it further and as further salt in the wounds apparently my extended family thinks me and my sister dont pay rent at all! which is really fucking interesting! also interesting how my grandma seems concerned and surprised by how much i pay for rent considering that the rent is supposedly going to her!

idk what to even do anymore im so sick and tired and scared i hate living here if i didnt have a friend who has quite ltierally offered to pay first and last for me id be literally fucked right now bc my mom DOESNT THINK

anyways thats all im just! upset

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hellyeahtrickster · 3 years

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It occurs to me that I have friends here that I don't have contact with in other spheres, so ... life update: my mother passed away unexpectedly last Friday. I'm doing as well as one would expect. Been going through her things as both a walk down memory lane and a goodbye. I keep coming across things she never got around to using, and it hits hard that now, she'll never have the chance. And I can't stop thinking of the stories we watched together that now she won't know the ending to, or shows I wanted to try with her. And then there's all the things we used to do together on the regular -- all the places I can never go with her to again. And all the places we wanted to go to "someday", but now she never will.

We were two weeks out from our second COVID shots, and 4 weeks from being totally vaccinated. We were finally going to get back to EPCOT, to see the Flower and Garden show. Finally going to get back to the Florida Mall. Going out to lunch. That I won't be doing this things with her anymore ... it's unfathomable. I can't wrap my head around it.

Thanks, anti-mask / anti-vaccine Covidiots, for prolonging the presence of this pandemic -- basically stealing the last year of my mother's life. She was anxious to see her elderly mother again, because we don't know how long *she* has left ... and now she never go to see her mother again. I knew losing my mom would happen someday, but my mother was relatively young yet, so I thought it would be a while ....

It doesn't help that she died after the second night on a new bed. See, she slept on her side all the time, what with the couch being narrow, but with a twin mattress, the bed was much wider. She snored a lot -- I highly suspect she had sleep apnea. When I found her the next morning, she was on her BACK. The doctor agreed that her cardiac arrest could have been caused by sleep apnea. In trying to make my mom more comfortable .... Yeah, I know, it's not my fault, but I cannot shake that thought away, that she's not here anymore because we tried to do something nice for her. How cruel the humour of the universe can be.

(I'd put the rest of this behind a cut, but I don't see that option anymore? Sorry!!)

And it REALLY doesn't help that, not only have I lost the person I was closest to, but now I am stuck alone with the person I least want to be with: my dad. I'm pretty liberal, and he's pretty conservative. We fight a LOT. We haven't really since mom died (things got a little tense here and there, but not like we usually are) ... but I know it won't last. It can't -- not when he believes BLM are terrorists, or that gays have an agenda. And now he keeps wanting to do things with me, like watch my shows, and a petulant part of me is like, no, this is mom's territory -- stay out. I don't want to do anything with him. (Especially since I know he'll start ranting once the shows start talking about racism and homophobia.)

My parents always had a volatile relationship. Mom didn't know you could get pregnant the first time, and when she found out she was pregnant, her Catholic family bullied her into marrying him.* And he cheated on her at LEAST once (with a girl who was only a few years older than me at the time -- I was 15, she was 19, he was 33). My mother was far from perfect, so I don't blame all the marital problems on him. But my point is they were married "in name only" for about the last 25 years, so it's ... offensive to me now that he would dare to act bereaved.

I know he can be hella manipulative, make himself seem generous so as to be loved, and then turn on you like a viper, getting irrationally angry. I can't drive, we live in a very rural area with no public trans, there are no friends or fam less than an hour away, I've had next to no job for the last 17 years, I barely feel like a functional human being (am coming to seriously suspect I have ADHD and Dyscalculia; I have diabetes and suspect have PCOS and a thyroid problem; all these things having strong interconnections; and I have no insurance, nor do I qualify for aid, thanks to living in Florida), and I feel utterly trapped. There's a reason Rapunzel is my fave princess. I've had bad experiences with cabs, so using Uber / Lyft kind of terrifies me. Plus, he'd want to know where I'm going, and likely either insist on coming too, or insist I can't go, because his house, his money, his rules. The ONLY time each year I get away is when I go to Dragon Con (and I'm worried he might forbid that in the future -- he has once before).

And then there's the problem of ... he has no one. As much as I can't stand him, he lost his job because of COVID, he's lost his wife, he has no real friends (total homebody), and like it or not, he has supported me financially for so long. Even if someone else were to take me in, or I can get a job and save to leave ... how can I leave him (a person with severe rheumatoid arthritis / in not-great health)? I owe him too damn much, and I feel like it would be entirely callous of me. Yes, I realise that that's the abuse talking, but ... it's also true?

Anyway, I feel like I'm on Sliders, and keep stepping into progressively worse timelines.

* Let me mention that I have long suspected my mother is -- was -- on the autism spectrum, but when I mentioned it to one of her sisters, the sister seemed skeptical, saying that if anything, mom had a penchant for reading out loud, so they thought maybe she had a reading disability, and took her to a specialist, but "that's it". (Mom was in "remedial" classes through high school, so it doesn't sound like they did enough -- and maybe couldn't because the science just wasn't there.) I explained that mom frequently seemed to have trouble grasping concepts, especially humour. Like when a radio ad featured someone reciting a love-letter to a tomato, she was all, "That's stupid -- tomatoes can't read!" Try as I might, I could not get her to understand that the love letter was a playful way to tell US about what makes the tomato so good.)

Anyway, when I talked to my grandmother recently, she said that my mom "always had a special way of looking at things," and that she guessed mom was "what do they call it -- neuro-something? 'Aspie'? High-functioning, but still." And I told my cousin about it, and he said, "Wait, I thought it was common knowledge in our family that your mom was autistic?" (Note: we have other, officially diagnosed family members who are on different areas of the spectrum.) People always commented when I was growing up that it was like my mom's role and mine was reversed -- like I was the parent, and she was the child.

But to think my family had *recognised* that something was up, and left me, a child, to deal with it on my own?? To think they *pressured* someone who was "special" into having a child?

I know my mom loved me, but my whole life, she said she wished I'd never been born, and so she'd never have married my dad -- I know both can be true, that she loved me but wished she'd never had me (she'd have never known what she was missing). She only survived her marriage because I was there; I've always felt she'd have had a better life if she hadn't married him. When she tried to leave him, her mother would not take her in, because divorce was against her mother's Catholic beliefs (never mind that my uncle divorced twice)

I loved my mother, but were fought a lot, and she frequently exasperated me as we struggled to communicate. She frequently left words out, but did not believe that she did; when we met her last PCP the first time, he looked at me and said, "Is she always like this, or is she having a stroke?" And she would always angrily proclaim that I wasn't listening, when most of the time, it's that I couldn't get her to understand that she was working from a misconception or misunderstanding in the first place, because she would focus on ONE THING, to the exclusion of all else.

An example of an exchange (copied from a letter I wrote to a friend): We got into a weird argument yesterday. She had asked me for pain reliever, a glass of tap water (you're supposed to drink a full glass of water with the pills), and a "cold water" from the fridge (it's too cold to drink it all at once, but we both prefer ice water in general). Later, I was picking stuff up from her table-tray, including a bottle of pain reliever, and put a bunch of stuff away. When I passed by again, she asked for more cold water. I happened to look as see that she had the tap water glass still full, even though she had asked tor it half an hour before. I asked if I needed to bring the pain pill bottle back, because she hadn't drunk the tap water yet -- had I taken the pill bottle too soon, or had she forgotten to drink the water? She was all, "no, I said I need COLD water!" I said I knew that, and I would bring it; I was just asking of she had taken her pills already, or if I needed to bring the pill bottle back too. Her (again): "I said I need COLD WATER!" Me: "I know, and I will bring that -- I just want to know why you haven't drunk the tap water yet? Did you take your pills?" Her: "No, I'll take them at bed!" Me: "So I should bring back the pill bottle? Did I put it away too early?" Her: "YOU DON'T LISTEN! I SAID I NEED COLD WATER!" Me: "And I said I will bring that -- I'm just asking if you also need your pain pills?" Her: "You already took the bottle!! Did you forget that already?"

And then I finally spotted the white pain pills on the napkin under the tap-water glass, so I knew that no, I didn't need to bring it. But it's a frequent struggle to figure out how to phrase questions so I get the answer I need -- nearly every time, I get her screaming at me that I don't listen.

She loved me, but she was never mothering. She hated to be touched, so never hugged me; I was pretty touch-starved. I learned to read because she was a very slow reader when reading me stories; I got impatient and learned to do it for myself. She couldn't help me with my homework. She resented having to take me to school recitals and science fairs. She wasn't someone I could get advice from. I admit I was often envious of characters who had physically-loving, compassionate, wise mother-figures (who weren't so binary about morality -- and so weren't always screaming that this or that character should die, no matter how small the transgression).

But I wish she were still here to frustrate me -- that's so much better than not having her at all. And I wish I had been better at keeping my temper.

She was an atheist, and firm in that belief. Maybe she's right, or maybe her firm belief is affecting me, because I would dream frequently about others I have loved and lost, and swear I feel them, but with her ... nothing. Just a gaping hole in the fabric of my waking life, threatening to suck all the light and hope into it.

#mine #rant #personal #tw: death #cw: death #the death of my mom #my mom

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brotherlysuggestion · 4 years

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Some basic baking/cooking tips that I've picked up over the years:

Basic tips:

Food keeps burning on the outside but is underdone on the inside? Try a lower heat for a longer time. This goes for both the stove top and oven. All foods. Eggs, pancakes, cupcakes, cookies, whatever.

Put a little bit of oil and salt in the water you're cooking your pasta in. The oil will help keep the noodles from sticking together, and the salt helps add flavor.

In general, salt the water of stuff you boil! Contrary to popular myth it doesn't make water boil any faster, but it adds some nice flavor to your potatoes/pasta/etc.

Adding coffee to a boxed chocolate cake mix can bump up the taste a few notches! I like to brew black coffee and use it in place of the plain water the recipe asks for.

When using a stand mixer, mix in the flour on a lower setting, half a cup/cup at a time. If you put in a bunch of flour in at a high speed, it'll poof into a giant flour cloud and coat everything that you love in a fine coat of flour dust.

Crust on your pie/cheesecake keeps burning? Put tin foil around the rim of the pan, covering the crust. It will protect it from getting so overdone.

If you like brownies that are a little gooey in the middle, add an extra egg! It makes them super gooey without actually being undercooked/unsafe to eat.

In math, 4 of 1/4 cup = 1 cup. This is not how measuring cups work. I don't know why, but 2 half cups have more flour in them than 1 whole cup. If you double a recipe just use the original measurement cups/spoons twice, otherwise your ratios will end up screwy.

If you mix melted butter with a cold liquid, the butter WILL resolidify into little chunks! If you need your liquid butter to stay liquid, mix in room temp/warm liquid!

Softened butter gives a different texture to dough/batter than melted butter. Know which one your recipe calls for.

There’s multiple levels that your oven rack can sit on, like a shelf! They’re little grooves in the wall of your oven that the metal grate sits on. You almost always want to be using the very middle one, unless the recipe specifies otherwise.

If a recipe calls for spices/herbs/etc but comes out bland on first attempt, try it again! My rule with bland recipes is to try it twice: once seasoned as directed, and once with seasoning adjusted as if the author of the recipe is a suburban soccer mom who thinks ketchup is spicy. Go ham and double/triple/whatever the spices to your tastes. Try it with adjusted spices at least once before tossing the recipe out.

Weird but common terms in recipes:

If a recipe calls for "stiffly beaten egg whites" it means to beat them until they're white and foamy/frothy throughout!

If a recipe tells you to "fold" batter, it's a method of gentle stirring that gets a lot of air into the batter. You sort of mix the batter up and over itself using vertical strokes instead of horizontal.

Also "cutting in" butter or margarine is a specific mixing technique. You use a fork or a knife to incorporate very small chunks of butter into your flour/dry ingredients. This is a really good technique for making flaky pie crusts/biscuits (American biscuits, that is)

All of these weird terms are easily googled and have written or video tutorials on how to do it!

Safety advice:

If you ever use a pressure cooker; please, PLEASE very carefully read how to release/equalize the pressure before attempting to open it. It will straight up explode. It is dangerous for both your house and body. Don't just wing it, please.

Don't use wax paper in place of parchment paper in the oven! Parchment paper and wax paper look and feel very similar, but parchment paper is coated in a silicone layer while wax paper is coated in a wax (generally paraffin). Silicone is heat resistant. Wax melts off of the paper, potentially allowing the paper to catch fire. Don't catch your food on fire.

DO NOT try to put out a grease fire with water! Turn the heat off and either smother it by putting a lid/cover over it until it is deprived of oxygen and goes out, or smother it using baking soda or salt. DO NOT use flour/sugar/baking powder to try and smother the fire. These look similar, but their chemical makeup is different enough that they will catch on fire and make a bigger mess.

Nervous about food being uncooked in the center? Open them up! I always stab into the pancakes/potatoes/meat I cook to check that it's cooked thoroughly. I know it doesn't look picture perfect, but it'll be okay. You're allowed to check.

Dietary restrictions:

If you're using gluten free flour try adding some unflavored gelatine, pectin, or agar agar powder to add moisture and keep it from crumbling! Gelatine isn't vegan/vegetarian safe, but both pectin and agar agar are! About a teaspoon of powder to cup of flour usually does it, but there's a lot of guides online.

Egg replacements for recipes are numerous! Yogurt, ripe mashed bananas, peanut butter, agar agar in water, silken tofu, and cornstarch with water all work really well depending on what you’re making and how many eggs you’re replacing! There’s lots of guides online for this.

Recipe calls for buttermilk, but you can’t/don’t drink milk? Put in about a teaspoon of vinegar per cup of plant based milk (almond milk, rice milk, soy milk, etc.). BAM, buttermilk substitute!

Tofu, mushrooms, eggplants, and beans are all really good meat substitutes!

For disabled and neurodivergent bakers/cooks:

You’re allowed to sit down when baking! Get your ingredients and measuring tools all laid out in one place and take a seat while you blend ingredients! Take a seat while you stir your food on the stove! If standing is unpleasant for you, don’t do it!

If you have trouble keeping track of what ingredients you’ve put in already, make a list on a piece of scratch paper! Write down all of your ingredients and check them off when you put them in! If you need help to keep track of how many cups/tablespoons/etc. of something you’ve put in already, put a tally mark after each cup you put in! Then if you forget/lose track, you have a little checklist showing you where you are!

If you can’t handle the noise/stimulus of mechanical mixers, think about whether or not you can mix it by hand! It might take longer than when using a mixer, but it’s worth it if you otherwise couldn’t do it.

If the noise/stimulus of metal clinking against ceramics is bad for you, there’s multiple ways to get around that! Plastic bowls are inexpensive and will dull the noise of a spoon hitting them! Depending on what you’re doing, rubber spatulas can be used in place of a metal utensil, and those will make very little noise! If you need a fork replacement or a stiffer utensil, then check out baby utensils! Oftentimes forks/spoons/etc. for small children will be coated with a rubbery material on the outside, and if you can find them in sizes that aren’t too tiny, it will also muffle the noises a lot.

Reassurances that you aren’t a bad baker/cook:

All those cool cookie frosting designs from instagram? They frosted those using mostly/all royal icing. It's a runny icing that hardens quickly and is great for decorating cookies. Regular cake frosting won't ever really achieve the same effects as royal icing. If you've ever tried cookie decorating and it came out horribly then you probably aren't a bad decorator, you probably just didn't have the right frosting.

It’s okay if you feel like there’s too much for you to remember! Most all (good) recipes lay everything out for you and will specify if you need to pay special attention to not overmix, or making sure the butter stays liquid, etc. etc.

Very few people can “just eyeball it” and cook/bake (especially bake) well without using recipe measurements. If you want to adjust seasoning, or flavor components, that’s fine! But there’s no shame in needing to follow recipes to get the base down correctly. I’ve been baking/cooking for 10+ years and I have to follow recipes!

Try not to stress out too much about the end result! Baking and cooking can be incredibly therapeutic. Try to enjoy the process if possible! Put on some music or a television show/movie in the background!

Okay, that’s all I have for now, but go out there and bake! I promise that you can do it! As long as you have a good recipe and some spare time/energy, you can do it!

And feel free to contact me if you have more questions! I’m not an expert, but I’d love to help!

#mod static #not a suggestion #baking #cooking #adulting #lifehacks #protip #life advice #life hacks #cooking advice #baking advice #food #advice #ask to tag #sorry for taking so long on this you guys!#I meant to have this done sooner but I got so wrapped up in projects over the holidays #I wanted to add more but I have to call it good enough for now I think #I hope that this helps somebody!

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ms-demeanor · 4 years

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After reading your "ultra-long postivity post", now I have kind of a weird feeling because i relate a lot to pretty much everything you said, but i ended up approaching the "not everyone can x" from the opposite side, being the "gifted kid" teachers used to hold everyone to unrealistic standards (that i knew most couldnt achieve in the given timeframes), and now i get frustrated when i dont develop skills immediately, because i have done it before and feel like i should be able to and aaaaaaaaaa

Funny story: when I was a kid my parents had both my sister and I tested for learning and developmental disabilities. This testing included IQ testing.

It identified that we were both “gifted” kids* and that I’m dyslexic.

It totally missed my ADHD, though!

The problem with that is that my parents. Hm.

Okay my parents both grew up in very poor families. VERY poor. And they both wanted to go to college and knew the only way that they could was through scholarships. So they became debaters. They met at a tournament in high school.

Debaters are weird. You need an efficient working memory and strong recall and the ability to think quickly on your feet. Being witty and kind of an asshole are also good traits for debaters. Basically you’ve either gotta be really fuck-off smart to be a competitive debater or you’ve gotta at least *seem* really fuck-off smart.

And my parents were champion debaters at a national level. The Whittier College debate trophy has my mom’s name written directly under Richard goddamn Nixon. My dad was on the USC debate team and competed against Harvard and won. Not only that but he ended up coaching debate for USC and Cal Tech.

So as kids who grew up in extremely poor families and were able to go to college and get middle-class jobs and buy a house because of intellectual ability my parents placed A LOT of importance on intellectual ability.

So that IQ score became a large part of my life.

First we attacked the dyslexia. The approach was basically teaching me a bunch of sight words because sounding out phonics doesn’t work when the letters get screwed up. And because I was *gifted* we did a lot of really BIG sight words.

It took about six months to get me up to speed from “memorizing the pages of a story to match the pictures because I couldn’t read along in class” to “the first book I read on my own was The Hobbit.” I guess that counted as “cured” because that was the last time I got any kind of educational assistance.

At that time I was at a gifted school, a really tiny private school that was also an after-school daycare where we did full-day classes and then did gymnastics and swim from 3-6pm. I also was there over the summer because my parents worked.

So going from “tiny private school where the teacher has you stand up in class to read your failing grade in front of everyone so that she could shame you into performing better” to “fine public school in a suburb wealthy enough to have arts programs” was a major, major change. They did an aptitude test because I was transferring in from a different district and there was much discussion about whether or not to move me directly from the second to the sixth grade.

The district refused, thank fuck.

The public elementary school didn’t *have* a gifted program so it took very little time for me to become the Certified Weird Kid. My third grade teacher had me read aloud to our class for twenty minutes a day. I taught the class the multiplication table.

When it got to be time to go to the junior high school my mom went to a meeting for the school’s gifted kids program. APPARENTLY one of the kid’s dad’s basically said “I don’t understand why you’re wasting school funds on field trips for the stupid kids, the school should spend more of its resources on kids who have a chance of actually meaning something to the world” and my mom decided that while being gifted was important it was less important than making sure I wasn’t exposed to assholes of that caliber on a regular basis.

(thanks mom, I actually do really appreciate that reprieve)

Several teachers pushed me into advanced classes - my math teacher insisted that I take the advanced algebra classes in the seventh and eighth grade.

The GATE kids *WERE* assholes and were extra bonus special assholes to me because math was the only advanced class that I was in. (At my junior high school you had to pick your elective based on what level of classes you were in - to take the GATE classes you HAD to take a music elective; if you took art, drama, shop, or home ec you couldn’t take the smart kid classes. The algebra class was a new, separate addition to the program so *some* of the kids in the “electives for dropouts” program could take algebra. Schools are really fucked up, guys, in case you didn’t know schools are really fucked up and that was BEFORE No Child Left Behind).

I got a C in that algebra class and sat in my room for literally an hour screaming at myself for being such a selfish, distracted idiot that I let myself read my books instead of studying harder for the class. (clearly very healthy, normal twelve-year-old behavior)

When it was time to go to high school my teachers made a united plea to the district to transfer me into honors/IB/AP classes.

The kids in the honors/IB/AP classes continued to be kind of awful to me. I got extremely depressed and basically started doing the lazy-but-brilliant thing of completely ignoring homework or in-class work but performing spectacularly well on tests or essays in the classes that I wasn’t catastrophically failing

I was the only person at the school who got a perfect score on the vocab part of my SAT. I was the only honors kid who hadn’t been in SAT prep classes. There was only one other kid who graduated with the same number of units as I had, we’d outstripped the valedictorian and salutatorian but three classes each. I only applied to one college - I got accepted for painting but my interviewer urged me to move to the writing program and I got accepted for that too.

My financial aid didn’t come through and my dad wasn’t willing to cosign for loans on “an art program at a trade school.”

I got accepted to Pratt Institute on their Writing for Publication track which included an internship with the New York Times for third-year students in the program.

At that point I had a Columbia Scholastic Press award for my work on my high school yearbook.

Let me tell you, the community college that I went to and spent five years variously failing and succeeding at had a fucking *killer* newspaper and magazine when I was there. The local community newspaper that hired me when I was 21 was also much better designed and edited than it had any right to be for the three years I worked there (getting paid a whole eight dollars an hour and sometimes working 20 hours straight to get it in to the printer on time).

When I transferred to the state school I got perfect grades and worked full time and won every contest offered by the school’s English Honors society (which I couldn’t join because I was a transfer student and hadn’t done honors classes my freshman and sophomore years). I started a literary magazine with some friends when I graduated; we published four full issues online before it fell apart.

You know what’s also funny?

Even the food-service job I had to pay my way though the community college I felt terrible about attending was a skills test. I was a barista, so of course for a while I was a competitive barista.

I disappointed my parents a lot. I heard a lot of “we know you’re better than this.” I got told I was too smart to be screwing up this bad. I mentioned it a couple weeks ago but my results from that IQ test got compared to my sister’s and that was the justification for holding me to a higher standard. “You’re measurably brilliant, why aren’t you acting like it?”

Here lies the corpse of a gifted kid. Look on my works ye might and despair.

I am the perfect picture of a twice exceptional gifted kid and the reason I wrote all of this out is to tell you one thing:

“Gifted Kid” is a label that someone applied to you, it has nothing to do with who and what you ARE.

It’s very, very unfair that the adults in your life used you that way. I have an exceptionally terrible memory of being singled out as the only one who passed the first test in my IB World History class; “Why is Alli the only one of all of you who is writing at grade level? You’re supposed to be the smartest kids in the school, why did you all fail?”

That’s awful for the kids around you, that’s awful for you. It doesn’t do anybody any favors if people around you are being informed that you’re setting the curve they’ll be judged against. And it really, really doesn’t do YOU any favors because it doesn’t take long *at all* for your brain to learn that that’s all you’re good for. If you aren’t the best at a thing then what’s the point, you HAVE to be best because they already SAID you were best and if you aren’t then all these other people hate you for setting a standard that even you can’t keep up with.

You end up competing with past versions of yourself and focusing on those things that make the grownups in your life praise you because the grownups in your life has praised you in such a way that it’s turned all the other kids against you.

You know who bullied the fuck out of me? The kids I taught the times tables to, the kids I read to for half an hour a day.

Those kids were MEAN to me but the teacher who told me to read Boxcar Kids to the class after lunch everyday was NICE and she told me not to worry, they were just jealous and I should be proud of my gifts.

“Anon did this in three minutes. What’s taking the rest of you so long?” - what a terrible weight to put on a child. You’re right. Not everyone can do everything.

Fucking hell.

Adults what the everloving shit is wrong with us? Please don’t treat kids like that.

Okay.

But here’s the other thing:

If there’s any time in your life that it’s easy to acquire skills with no apparent effort it’s when you’re a child surrounded by a support system that is engaged in making sure that you can acquire those skills.

It took three adults, two dictionaries, and several hours a day to teach me enough sight-words to throw me into “look at baby genius*” territory but from my perspective as a little kid I was just reading cool stories.

I spent four hours a day in the yearbook room and ditched and failed other classes so that I could work on the yearbook. I collected hundreds of magazines to get an eye for layout. But from my perspective as a teenager it was a fun activity that I did with the closest thing I had to friends.

I’m sure that there are some skills that you had a natural aptitude for, some things that came naturally. But I’m also sure that you didn’t learn those skills with no effort, it’s just that now as an adult with a life and other shit going on it takes more effort to learn to do things.

In all likelihood you weren’t a savant who did everything perfectly the first time you tried. It just seems that way because even really smart kids don’t know when they’re bad at things and are mostly being compared against other kids (with the few rare exceptions of music prodigies or math prodigies or those kids who end up in science grad programs at 12 and boy howdy do I think there’s a whole other can of worms when it comes to the way child prodigies* interact with the world).

You wanna know what probably saved my life in the last few years?

That “anti-capitalist love notes” tumblr post.

You are worth more than your productivity.

I was actually kind of offended the first time I saw that post on my dash. “No I’m not,” I thought. “You’re only worth what you can do, everyone knows that. People care about what you do for them.”

And why the hell would I think anything else? That’s what I’d learned for pretty much my whole life.

It took me a really long time to understand that I was wrong. I matter outside of what I can do for people or how well I perform. I matter more than being able to perfectly recite poetry from memory or do calculations on command or sit down at a piano and play a piece I’ve never played by sight-reading it.

And you matter outside of that too. You’re more than your performance, you’re better than being gifted. There are people who love you for the way you make them laugh and how you listen to their stories and for the simple joy of your presence.

It’s nice to be clever, it’s handy in a lot of situations even if it does come with a lot of baggage for some people.

But god damn, it’s important to be kind.

* Personally I have issues with the way that society constructs the concepts of giftedness, genius, and prodigies. There are a lot of “gifted” kids who were the kids who scored in the top 5% of their class in school but there are also gifted kids who were doing high-level math or reading novels as toddlers; there are prodigies who showed an aptitude for music young and who were then schooled in that instrument to the exclusion of all other activities (and I bet there are a fair number of kids who might be considered prodigies if they were trained to play flute for nine hours a day and didn’t have friends but thankfully we don’t *do* that to very many people - side note, ask me my opinion about olympic athletes some time). Words like “genius” and “gifted” are very nearly meaningless and almost *never* accurately reflect skills proficiency or long-term success or are reflected in income or respect. People think that geniuses are hypercompetent robots with their shit together but literally every adult I know with a genius-level IQ is some variety or other of total fucking tire fire.

#congratulations you have unlocked level two of my tragic backstory #long post

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