laura-the-mellifluous - Tumblr blog

laura-the-mellifluous · 15 days

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A New Start

Title: "Eve" by me, 2023 / Re-use with credit to my username

I'm really excited to start sharing a passion that is hopefully going to start being a "side hustle" for me. I am applying for a dream job, and I want to not only have a collection of posts that reflect who I am and my love for social justice (I'll wear that SJW badge with honor) but I also want it to reflect my spiritual views.

I don't think I've really explained this, but I am a very active Unitarian Universalist and the job I hope to get is through the Unitarian Universalist Association of America. It's going to be competitive, but I don't want to give up on finding work through my faith. As such, I will be curating old posts to mostly be about our mission for spiritual faith through social justice and deleting old posts that don't reflect those values.

(For more information about the UUA, here's their website. It's a great resource for anyone interested in secular religious studies: link)

I also have an interest in Earth-centered religions, which are one of our Sacred Six Sources. While I have secular views about gods, I have been able to meditate transcendentally and see beyond the cynicism of the modern world to communicate with these divine archetypes. I know that Mother Earth wants us to see her as a person, and despite her life-giving power, she needs our help to keep the web of life alive for all of us.

It's time I start sharing pages of my grimoire (spell book), which is nearing completion after nearly 4 years of customizing spells and learning from different sources. It's also time to share my spell prompts and writing that I've been doing over the past year. Finally, I plan to publish a list of youtube channels, podcasts, and web resources for people interested in learning more and obtaining personal gnosis.

As a final aside, I have been really into learning about angelology and Semitic Neoaganism lately (wikipedia article). Asherah, the Shekinah, and the Sophia are all goddess figures of the Abrahamic faiths that I never knew growing up, and frankly I feel robbed never knowing them. I will definitely be posting more about them, but my above illustration of the enlightened mother Eve is very related to my personal gnosis.

Blessed be.

#my life #spirituality #gnostic teachings #unitarian universalism #activism

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laura-the-mellifluous · 1 month

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Orthodox Christians...

If you really want to prove that gnosticism is false doctrine, stop editing wiki pages about it to make it sound "uwu soo scaawwy." Adding in garbage about how gnosticim is a gateway to Satan because "we" supposedly hid him everywhere is not going to fool a religious revival group who believes in sharing hidden knowledge, and it only serves to scare away people who don't know what "heresy" means or who think Judas was a cool dude (so you know - heretics).

If your faith is true, surely "we" seem crazy enough for the true believers to know they should stay away.

On that note,

Happy Easter!

- love, a modern day gnosticism geek

#gnosticism #gnostic christianity #judas iscariot #jesus christ superstar #happy easter 2024

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laura-the-mellifluous · 3 months

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Still getting dragged back into ponies after all these years. Thanks, YouTube algorithm.

I knew Lyra and BonBon got a background engagement moment after I stopped watching, but I didn't know that you actually see their wedding "photo."

Live laugh lesbian, baby!

So apparently Lyra Heartsrings and Bonbon are canonly married.

That's amazing.

#Lesbian #Queer #Lesbian wedding #mlp fim

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laura-the-mellifluous · 3 months

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Help

I've been dealing with a lot of neuropathy angst/self-pity lately. Being without a regular job has left me with a lot of alone time with my thoughts, which leads to me beating myself up in my brain for being in this situation. I remind myself that I'm lucky I'm not homeless, but then I start feeling guilty that I'm the one who has a roof over my head and not someone who works harder than me and still can create beautiful art without worrying their arms are going to start going numb.

(Cringe reading ahead)

So recently instead of trying to self-counsel because I can't afford real counseling, I tried placing my problem onto fictional characters. I ended up being sucked down a MLP-memory-hole thanks to the youtube algorithm and my brain settled on Rarity (who is best of the mane six don't come for me). What would that dramatic artisan character do if suddenly her horn was severed and she lost her magic? Would she give up on dress-making?

Hello no, she wouldn't!

So then I was legit thinking of a fanfic episode arc thing where she had to adapt her business to earth pony life and has to eat literal humble pie while she teaches herself how to follow her passion again, and I was thinking, "yeah, that would be really inspiring and I could do that, but as a human instead of a horse-toy-thing. And then I was like, "Oh my god. Am I going fiction-kin right now?!"

#my life #mlp fim #fiction kin #mental health

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laura-the-mellifluous · 4 months

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Wrote this depressing sh*t...

I thought this would be therapeutic, but I'm actually more bummed out now than I was before. I wish I could afford a therapist so they could read this, but I'm still unemployed and the whole mental health industry is f**d. I call it, "An Honest Cover Letter:"

Dear Prospective Employer,

My name is Laura Lewandowski. People who know my extended family call me “Laura Lew,” because my dad was “Mr. Lew.” I grew up in my father’s shadow as “the cool teacher” at most of my schools, which at least helped me academically because I didn’t have a choice but to care about my education. When I write these things, I often say that I’ve “worn a lot of hats,” but that’s not accurate. Hats are something you can take off at any time and are actually encouraged to take off in formal situations. What I’ve worn at different jobs are masks, always to play the part of either a supporting actress or a clown. I guess my masks are really convincing, because I’m never asked to take them off after work, and people often tell me that I’m “the happiest person they know” or that I “never get angry.” It’s still really hard to wear masks all day long, multiple days a week, but I always pull through. When your parents, your extended family, and most of their friends are educators, you learn that you must show every adult in your life respect, even if some adults say the most idiotic, heartless things you’ve ever heard. Thanks to my life experiences, I can adapt to just about any audience, though I often resent the crowd I’m performing for.

There was a time in my life where my identity was tied directly to what I like to do, because it kept me distinct from the family education trade. I was an artist and a writer who would sometimes hike around in nature, geek out about science, and read about the paranormal for fun. I even went to school to be an artist. What I didn’t know was that I would start experiencing chronic pain at a much younger age than society told me I would. I now live in fear of my body failing me while working on a project, or writing a long report, or being on a hike; I certainly don’t want to identify as an artist anymore, even if I still make artwork any time my body lets me. Vulnerability makes me ashamed of myself, and being honest about my limitations just makes me feel more vulnerable. Plus, I don’t have nearly the strict limitations of the other disabled people I live and work with regularly. I know I should just suck it up and “do a regular job.”

So, maybe you can give me a regular job where I don’t have to wear a mask - at least not all the time. I need a job where I don’t have to sit with my lack-of-identity for long periods of time, because no paycheck is worth that deep emptiness. We can probably have a few funny conversations at the water cooler (if we have one), and I’ll do my job adequately enough to fit in for eight hours. Then I’ll go home to sleep, get up, and do it all again tomorrow. I’ll never tell you if I’m actually feeling sad about something, so I promise that you’ll be able to focus on important things at work.

Thanks for allowing me to take up some of your valuable time,

Laura Lewandowski

#my writing #depressing shit #if cover letters were honest

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laura-the-mellifluous · 5 months

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Gamepress.gg, I don't know what you're smoking...

... And I don't want it!

Wyrdeer is not Pokémon Go "dex filler" at all. True, it can't hit steel types outside of Wild Charge -which is essentially sacrificing itself when you can't switch- but that's why you DON'T LEAD with it. This steed is bulky, and can take lots of hits from the "Ultra League King Giratina" while hitting back with Confusion and Psychic. Furthermore, Poison and Fighting types are destroyed by this deer and you can hit rocks with it. All your Normal bases are covered.

If only you could catch one that is under 1500 CP for Great League... guess that's what Girafarig is for.

Seriously, y'all. Put Wyrdeer on switch defense in Ultra League. If you have a decent Dark or even Ghost type to lead with, you get great coverage with it. I'm switching from Skeledirge to Wyrdeer and I'm still able to overcome every Dark type short of Guzzlord (tanky interdimensional jerk).

Even crazier though is how much my Wyrdeer can take with just being 3🌟 and no max stats. I wouldn't use it for IRL tournaments (definitely would hunt for one with max HP or defense) but for online PVP it's too much fun!

#my life #pokemon go #competitive pokemon #wyrdeer

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laura-the-mellifluous · 5 months

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Pokémon Speculation

I'm sure that someone else thought of this, but I really don't want to spend the time running through various Reddit threads and youtube videos unless I have to.

So, the Unova/Isshu region has a lot of Pokémon species based off animals from the African savannah, South American rainforests, and Indonesian jungles. These are areas in our world where the corresponding animals are critically endangered. Some examples:

Minccino = Chinchillas, which are hunted for their fur and kept as pets. Some species are still critically endangered.

Darmanitan = Orangutans (duh), who have lost much of their natural habitat and now only live in Borneo and Sumatra. They are also critically endangered.

Zebstrika = the Grevy's Zebra, which is (you guessed it) endangered. There was once a Zebra variety called Quaggas that humans drove to extinction. We've attempted to bring it back with breeding to mixed results.

I could go on, but there's more...

Unova is also based on New York City and is one of the more developed Pokémon regions in terms of urbanization. It also is a Pokémon region where the local species are largely protected from outside, "invasive" species (to the point that the developers clearly scrapped having a Tauros and Luvdisc evolution and thought we wouldn't notice).

Really?

My speculation is that at some point in Unova's ancient past, it had a thriving savannah and jungle ecosystem and that the indigenous people there lived in relative harmony with the land. Sigilyph, Golerk, and Yamask echo the art and folklore of different ancient tribes from the Middle East to support this theory.

Golurk and Sigilyph both have Pokedex entries about protecting ancient civilizations, while Yamask wanders the ruins of ancient cities. Yamask is even said to be a dead human reincarnated into a Pokemon, possibly from these tribes(!)

Around 2500 years ago, the back story of the two brothers and the great dragon occurred, and ultimately, Unova was left open to urbanization after the split. Foreign humans started settling the land with more dangerous technology than the native Unovans (both human and Pokémon) could keep up with, and their urban sprawl destroyed many of the lush habitats there. As more and more people came to the area, they also brought in Pokémon that were not native to Unova, which had already adapted to blend in with human technology and likely assist their trainers in their destruction. Many Pokémon species were either driven to extinction or bred with compatible species to produce new variations, at the cost of never being able to gain their original forms back. Ancient Unova and its ecosystem was destroyed.

You can't tell me that these Pokémon are naturally adapted to a savannah or jungle environment. They were either invasive species or they rapidly adapted through crossbreeding to survive in the new urban sprawl.

This speculative history would reflect that of both the United States' and Japanese colonization. It would also explain why, in modern times, there is so much concern for Pokémon - particularly the native Unovan ones - and their wellbeing. These Pokémon are all that's left of a once diverse and wild ecosystem, and the people pf Unova overwhelmingly want to keep them from harm. This makes them susceptible to extremists who weaponize their righteous passion; enter Team Plasma.

#hellyeahlegendsunova

@franki-lew-yo

@thebigdeepcheatsy

#pokemon theory #unova #fandom essay #colonial violence #endangered animals

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laura-the-mellifluous · 5 months

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Trevor’s Hanukkah has been a fun ordeal, packed with delicious food and great conversation, but now he’s exhausted and his family is begging him to spin the dreidel. Trevor finally gives in and ends up the big winner, collecting more foil-covered chocolate coins than he knows what to do with.

This is Hanukkah gelt, and Trevor’s not convinced that the taste of these old, cheap chocolate coins will be any good. He gives them all back except for one, but when Trevor realizes his snack is sentient, a whole new set of problems arise.

Now Trevor is awkwardly playing host to his living gelt, but as the night goes on the two of them begin to notice there more blossoming between them then just hunger for a snack… there’s a hunger for some dick.

This erotic tale is 4,000 words of sizzling human on gay living Hanukkah gelt action, including anal, blowjobs, rough sex, and sentient chocolate coin love.

----

happy hanukkah buds enjoy new tingler POUNDED BY THE HANUKKAH GELT I WON PLAYING DREIDEL THAT I THOUGHT I’D NEVER EAT BUT NOW I’M SEEING IN A WHOLE NEW LIGHT BECAUSE IT’S TWO IN THE MORNING AND I’M HUNGRY out now on amazon and patreon

this is the single version of one of the new stories featured in holiday paperback GREAT GIFT FOR BUCKAROOS

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laura-the-mellifluous · 6 months

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I really shouldn't use my phone to draw at all. It's terrible for my pinched nerve and now that the screen has a small crack the backlight flickers. Old habits truly die hard.

No matter what timeline or universe, Toriel just can't NOT embarrass her children from time to time. You don't become "#1 Nose Nuzzler" without using that power.

#my art #undertale toriel #undertale frisk #sketches

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laura-the-mellifluous · 6 months

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My dashboard is filled with “There’s only 365 days until next Halloween!” Posts.

Very citizens of Halloween of us

#the nightmare before christmas #halloween 2024

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laura-the-mellifluous · 7 months

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It was only a partial eclipse where I'm at in the US, so I think I'm safe to go plant shopping.

(So glad someone else had eclipse glasses so I could see it!)

if you live in the us, today i’m counting on you all not to buy a suspicious plant that may or may not eat blood

#little shop of horrors #solar eclipse

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laura-the-mellifluous · 8 months

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Legitimately helpful for PTSD flashbacks...

I, like thousands of people, have PTSD. The why and the what abouts are not important, but the flashbacks are. If you have trauma, you might have gotten stuck thinking about a particular place in time in your life. For me, it's usually things I regret not doing differently or situations I felt powerless in. That's a flashback, which usually gets shown in a dramatic "cut to" in a movie, but in our everyday lives is more of a "zone out and get stuck in space."

I'm in an online support group and twice now this exercise has helped me:

Take a deep breath. If closing your eyes helps you visualize, do it. If that makes the moment of trauma worse, don't do it. I just have found I focus better with my eyes closed, but we all work differently.

Once you've followed a breath or two, ask yourself what age you are. I don't mean your current body age but the age you are stuck in when the traumatic incident happened (unless the trauma happened in the past year, but there's a workaround coming). My most recent flashback was to 2014, so I would have been just turning 22 at that time.

From there I ask myself, "what happened when you turned 23?" I give myself another life event, even if it's also not the best, and then slowly work my way up to my current age year by year. If I find myself getting stuck in a year between the flashback incident and today, I take my time and keep asking about what happened the next year. Eventually I'm able to get back to my current age, and that puts a really bad memory into perspective. It was just one bad time in one likely less bad year in my life. It was definitely awful, but it hasn't been like that every day since then. I'm not stuck in the past or anywhere after that.

The workaround for a same-year incident is to ask yourself what's happened in the months or weeks since the incident that's sucking you back in time. Instead of saying, "what happened when you turned 31?" you ask, "what happened in December?" and so on until you reach the current time.

Disclaimer: I don't know if this would work well for a recent life-threatening injury or diagnosis. Definitely talk to a doctor or crisis line for that scenario, as that sh** is traumatic and it is good to acknowledge permanent changes to our self images rather than get pulled into denial.

Here's to aging ourselves out of trauma!

#my life #random #self help #ptsd recovery #trauma recovery

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laura-the-mellifluous · 9 months

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Social Experiment Idea

Now that Tyrant Drumpnik has a mugshot, someone should let people know that he published a new book while serving time called "My Stolen Struggle." We already have English translations of "Mein Kampf" for education purposes on propaganda. Get a person or AI to sprinkle a few Trump-isms in the text so it matches, and you'd probably fool a bunch of people into thinking it's a brand new book.

Let people who are interested know that they can read the book for free if they provide a review of how they felt about it afterward. From there, watch the reviews pour in. After submitting the review, the screen automatically lets the reader know what the entire charade was about.

I doubt it would make any of them change, but it might at least get them thinking about their views, and flush out a few more n@zis to boot.

#random #shower thoughts #current events #orange man bad actually

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laura-the-mellifluous · 9 months

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Completely agree, and don't forget how the rise of smartphones led to this minimalist aesthetic too. When people buy and browse through items one at a time on screen and at the tap of a button, a busy storefront doesn't compute... at least not in the minds of marketers. Store and other logos used to be visually interesting because they were made for physical signage rather than a 4" phone screen.

- She says from her Tumblr mobile app.

i hate how capitalism and 2010s-20s minimalistic designs took away creative and colorful designs. i miss how mcdonald’s used to look when it had the red tile roof and when they had chairs in the dining room molded after their characters. i miss when storefronts would have colorful cartoon art on the walls and windows. i miss how hot topic used to look, when it looked like it’d be scary to walk into when you were a kid but after you got in and saw all the invader zim merchandise it was okay. or how malls used to have so much color, from the tiles to the walls to the ceiling. i hate the bland minimalism we have now. i hate the beige and silver design that every store has now. i hate it.

#random #my life #aesthitics #marketing history

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laura-the-mellifluous · 9 months

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Humans are to the ape family as Chinese cresteds are to other dog breeds.

#random #shower thoughts

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laura-the-mellifluous · 9 months

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✞ 666 ✞

#my life #urban witchcraft #everyday witchcraft #witchblr

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laura-the-mellifluous · 9 months

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Inspired by the Pasadena Playhouse Audrey II puppet (which is hot pink and VERY "Stranger Things" inspired. I dig it. This was another one of my Cretacolor tone sketch experiments. It's hard to see in this scan, but there is a slight red tone here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093Q7VZF9?th=1&psc=1&language=en_US

Psst! If you want to see more of my art, including different plants, I'm on Patreon and Ko-Fi: https://www.patreon.com/mellifluousart

#my art #sketches #little shop of horrors #audrey 2 #pencil

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