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pink-amethyst-tarot · 3 months

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♡ YOUR NEXT SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIP ♡

P I L E 1 ~ P I L E 2 ~ P I L E 3

This PAP reading is the winner from a poll that I previously posted a week ago! Follow me for more PAP readings and polls so that you can help me decide what readings I do next!

take a deep breath and pick the pile that you feel most drawn to.

♡ p i l e 1 ♡

Ace of Wands, Queen of Pentacles, King of Cups, Knight of wands

Bottom of the Deck: Eight of Swords (Reversed)

"You are a badass being, full of life, love and possibilities. Through this deck, may you find a path to your best self." -Lisa Sterle, Modern Witch Tarot Deck

The first thing I heard, was something along the lines of, "you set me free". The writing is kind of on the tin with this one, but I feel like you have liberated this person in some way, shape or form.

This is a new person who is going to come into your life when you are the most secure in yourself and when you are at peace with yourself. If you have been trying to manifest someone who is kind, caring, loyal, faithful etc., this is who is coming your way. You will be each other's peace. Even if it feels like the whole world is against you, you know that your person is there by your side. I'm sensing that Pile 1 have had to deal with a lot of B.S. as far as romance goes; giving your heart fully, only to have it stomped on repeatedly. The person that is coming in for your next significant relationship, is coming in like a knight on a white horse. This person is such a flirt, and they want to make you feel wanted and special all the time. I feel like it's their goal to always make you feel sexy and good in general.

This might be a bit niche as far as this pile goes, but I feel that pile 1 has met this person and maybe even had a fling with this because I'm hearing, "I don't want to kiss anyone else; no one feels like you."

Thank you so much for participating in this pick a pile reading; if you want a more personal reading, you can see this post and you can see this post if you would like to see more about my Alice In Wonderland Sale.

If you would like to leave a tip, you can on CashApp ($oddlycozycottage), PayPal (@/oddlycozycottage), or Ko-fi (@/oddlycozycottage)

♡ p i l e 2 ♡

The Sun (Reversed), Page of Swords, King of Pentacles, Two of Wands

Before even pulling your cards, Pile 2, I just felt a wave of calm wash over me. It kind of felt like, "finally." Either, finally, you see me or finally you're here.

I'm also hearing that this isn't a case of confirmation bias. I can't confirm or deny if that's true for you, only you can. listen to your intuition/gut/heart, whatever you want to call it.

Getting into the cards, I feel that with Pile Three, there is distance between you and your person and a lot of you even know this person. You may not be together right now mainly because the distance is too much for the both of you but it makes you both really unhappy. The two are going to come together because you can't take being apart and not in a relationship anymore. There will be travel and for some of you, it will be a case of choosing this person or another path. It could be related to your career or choosing another person. The main thing right now, is to be patient. Everything will happen when it's supposed to happen, how it's supposed to happen. Taking your time and letting the chips fall where they may will be rewarded. You will be with your person.

Channeled Song: Long Distance by Brandy

I wish that you were here with me // but we're stuck where we are // It's so hard // so far //

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♡ p i l e 3 ♡

Seven of Cups (Reversed), Five of Swords, Eight of Cups, Six of Wands

"You are a badass being, full of life, love and possibilities. Through this deck, may you find a path to your best self". - Lisa Sterle, Modern Witch Tarot Deck

I feel so out of my element all of a sudden; like I don't know what I'm doing even though I've done two other piles before this one and have done other PAP readings before and that may be something that you can relate to. You may feel out of your element or alien to something that you are usually so familiar with.

Don't shoot the messenger but, what I'm seeing is that you need to accept change before you can even worry about your next significant relationship. Learning to let go and when to walk away are things that Spirit is asking of you. In a way, they are saying that your next significant relationship needs to be with yourself. Your head is too wrapped up in all the things that you do wrong, you don't focus enough on all the things that you do right. You don't see how amazing and beautiful you are. You don't see yourself as worthy enough for love. You don't see your value and all of the wonderful things that you deserve. At this time, it should only be about you and your happiness. That doesn't mean to neglect your responsibilities, but it does mean that you matter, too, especially in your own life. It doesn't matter if your person comes in and tells you how amazing and beautiful, they believe you are if you don't even believe it. You are a masterpiece in progress but a masterpiece, still. You are so magical, and you have to take the time so that you can believe that and know that in your own heart. You should not rely on others to validate that for you. You should already know it and when someone else says it, it's seen as a plus or a bonus.

Channeled Song: Anklebiters by Paramore

Fall in love with yourself // oh, again // fall in love with yourself // Because // Someday you're gonna be the only one you got // Someday you're gonna be the only one you got // Why you wanna please the world to let yourself drop dead? // Someday you're gonna be the only one you got //

Channeled Song: Last Hope by Paramore

It's just a spark // But, it's enough/ to keep me going // and when it's dark out // noone's around // And it keeps going //

If you would like to leave a tip, you can on CashApp ($oddlycozycottage), PayPal (@/oddlycozycottage), or Ko-fi (@/oddlycozycottage)

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. THESE READINGS ARE FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. no guarantees are implied. These readings are not a substitute or replacement for any professional help or services. My readings are not a substitute for any form of professional legal, medical/psychiatric, relationship, religious/spiritual or financial/ business advice nor consultations. You should always see a professional legal/trained adviser for help in any matter. I am not responsible for any decisions/ actions you take.

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reasonsforhope · 6 months

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Do you have any advice for dealing with election anxiety?

I think/hope so!

First, a couple caveats:

I'm from the US, so US perspective, and about US 2024 elections

I know more about politics/follow them more than like, at least 85% of US Americans? But I am not an expert.

Environment/climate news and climate hope are science-based and can be measured/predicted empirically wayyyyy more than politics can, because People

I'm not getting into the trenches around Democrats vs. the Left vs. Liberals vs. Progressives. In this post, we're all in one big venn diagram of mostly interchangeable terms

So, first off, maybe my biggest piece of advice is this: The antidote to anxiety is action.

Find something you can do to help - anything. Anxiety is like fear - it's part of your brain's alarm system. It's part of your brain's mechanism for telling you that you need to do something

So if you listen to that alarm and do something, your brain won't feel the same need to desperately escalate the alarm system

You can look up and sign up for actions, protests, petitions, letter-writing campaigns, phone banking, canvassing, and more for candidates near you at Mobilize.us (no Repubs on here I promise). They also work with Swing Left a lot - a group that helps voters look up and focus on helping the nearest race that is actually competitive (because most of them aren't!)

Again, that's Mobilize.us and Swing Left as two of the best places to find out how and where to help, and sign up to do so

Other than that, I don't have advice specifically so much as I have "some useful and more hopeful ways to think about the coming US election" and to a lesser extent democracy in general

1. The media is going to underreport how well the Left and/or Democrats are doing, basically no matter what.

So, although we can't get cocky about it, this is something absolutely worth remembering when you see just about any polling or predictions about the 2024 elections.

Here's why:

Poling is weird and often inaccurate and skews in a lot of ways and is inherently biased, and it's less accurate the further you are from an election. Also, the electoral college is a huge complication here

This skewing is built into both the interpretation of the poll and the design of the poll itself - how many people do they sample? Demographic spread? Polls try to go for "likely voters," but how well can you predict that, especially as voting rates for young people and marginalized groups are rising, often dramatically?

Right now, those biases are all skewing most to all polls and predictions to the right. Including from basically all pollsters, as well as left-wing media and news outlets.

Now, THAT'S NOT INHERENTLY A BAD THING. It's not because they don't want the Left to win. It's because in 2016, basically all mainstream media, including left-leaning media, said that there was a very low chance Trump was going to win. They said that Hillary Clinton had it in the bag. So they're all correcting for the huge inaccuracy in the 2016 (and 2020 and 2022 tbh) elections

Not only were they catastrophically and humiliatingly wrong about that, they then had to deal with the fact that that very reporting was part of why Clinton lost in 2016 - voters heard she was probably going to win, so they felt safe staying home instead of voting

And then the 2020 election polls were also super wrong, mostly in the other direction

Polling as a field is undergoing a massive shakeup around this, trying to figure out how to not fuck up that badly again, but they haven't figured it out yet, so right now they're skewing things to compensate

That's for the sake of both their own credibility and, you know, the part where just about no one in either left-wing or mainstream media or mainstream polling orgs wants Trump to win

So they're going to underreport Democratic chances on purpose to a) compensate for the bias skewing things toward Democrats in their models, and b) to make sure that they don't accidentally help Trump win again

Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

Reasons the Republicans are in more trouble than a lot of people think

Democrats are largely closing ranks hard around Biden, because no matter what they think of Biden, they know a Repub victory would be a thousand times worse

Republicans, however, are absolutely NOT unifying around a candidate. And they're also the ones who go around saying a ton of awful and offensive and wildly untrue things about their opponents. Meaning that the Republican primary is about to get fucking messy, and probably all of their candidates will be tarred in the process

So, basically, the Republican candidates are all going to be busy smearing the fuck out of each other - while Biden mostly doesn't have to deal with that level of negative campaigning against him for months and months

As studies show, in politics, "a negative frame is much more persistent, or “stickier,” than a positive one. If you come at an issue negatively, but are later reminded of the policy's positive aspects, you will still think it's a bust."

Also, Biden is gonna get basically all presidential-race left-wing big-name donor money, while the Right will have that money split a bunch of ways and blow through it hard on infighting, creating a probable funding gap

Trump's campaign contributions are all going to pay his legal fees. Like, to the extent that last month, his main PAC had just $4 million in cash on hand - because they siphoned over $101 million to pay his legal fees (muahahaha)

Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x

Other hopeful things to consider

Yes, Trump's indictments and trials are, unfortunately, boosting his numbers among his supporters. However, that's only with the hard right wing - and you can't win a general election with just the far right. He needs to appeal to independent voters and moderate Repubs - and every indictment and trial hurts his chances with them. x, x

In 2022, literally everyone was predicting a "red tsunami." And they were wrong: it never happened. Instead, Democrats picked up a seat in the senate, lost a third or less of the seats in the House that they were expected to, and won a number of statewide races. x, x, x, x, x

DeSantis's decision to go to war with Disney stands to do him a lot of fucking hard. Disney isn't just powerful in general - it's an unbelievably powerful force and employer in DeSantis's home state of Florida. Disney has already pulled a $1 billion project from Florida due to the feud, is responsible for "half" of FL's tourism industry, and and is branding DeSantis as "anti-corporation" and "anti-business" - dangerous charges in the right wing. x, x, x, x, x, x

Abortion is an issue that gets voters to the polls. This is an issue on which politicians are wildly out of step with voters: Numbers change depending on how you break it down, but generally 60% to 70% of Americans think abortion should be legal - which is, in election terms, is a landslide. For years, that momentum has been with Republicans. Well, now it's with us, and so far pro-choice candidates and ballot propositions have done way better than expected. To quote Vox, in 2022, "abortion rights won in all six states with abortion ballot measures, including in red states like Kentucky and Montana that otherwise elected Republican lawmakers." x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

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writingwithcolor · 2 years

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Working Through Identity Issues and Other Pitfalls With Representation

We get a lot of asks from people with lived experience in one aspect of marginalization— LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, physically disabled, ex-religious people—and the asks boil down to, essentially: can I take all of my own trauma and put it on someone multiply marginalized?

This question has many facets, which this guide is set to outline.

Power Dynamics and Intersections

Within any space centred around a marginalized identity, white supremacy and colorism still play a very large part within those spaces. Imani Barbarin of Crutches and Spice observed that white disabled people can only exercise the full extent of their white privilege within disabled spaces, because white supremacy has ableism built in and views disabled white people as lesser; white people are denied the ability to be completely white in abled society. As a result, the only opportunity they have to exercise the full extent of white privilege is disabled spaces.

The same goes with LGBTQIA+ spaces; they can end up colonialist because of white people in those spaces assume that their methods of coming out and living in their identity are the only way that exist, when people of colour can (and often do) have totally different but still perfectly valid ways of living in their identity. Again, white supremacy has homophobia built in, so white LGBTQ+ people don’t have full access to white privilege unless they’re with other LGBTQ+ people.

As a result: if you pick an identity that you have power over, you are bringing all of those power dynamics to the table in your representation. Even if you share a marginalization with the character, one aspect of discrimination does not an understanding of all discrimination make. Identities are all intersectional.

Representing multiple axes of marginalization is much more difficult, because you will have to unpack your own power, realize how many other ways of existing there are, and leave your own ideas for how the story should go at the door in order to respect experiences you don’t have in full.

You have to listen to the people you’re representing, or else you won’t be writing representation for them.

The Bias Game of Telephone

Insiders to any given group are taught a lot of “truths” about outside groups without spending much time listening to those groups, which results in a lot of problems. What might have been said or observed once or twice travels around people in a game of telephone, fanning xenophobia because it’s so much easier to critique people over there than ourselves.

So yes, you heard that Over There, the practice is x. Apply some stereotypes, spread it around as a societal “everyone knows”, and suddenly you think you know a lot more than you do about any one group.

For example: the Public Religion Research Institute polled over a dozen religious groups in the United States on whether they support LGBTQ rights in 2019, and the results were that people who are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and basically every religious group you could think of except Jehovah’s Witnesses were in favour of legal LGBTQ+ protection. They even polled in Christian denominations separating out white, Hispanic, and Black—and all of them agreed: LGBTQ+ rights needed to be put into law. (Source: Broad Support for LGBT Rights Across all 50 States: Findings from the 2019 American Values Atlas )

Throws a wrench into “everyone knows that [insert group here] is homophobic”, doesn’t it?

The problem is, these biases are going to colour your initial research stage. If you “know” that x group believes y, then you’re going to “naturally” slot them into that role in the story, then come to us asking if that’s okay.

Instead, what you need to do is poke your own assumptions:

Why did you make this situation happen that way?

Do the numbers support this assumption?

Have you actually spent any time in groups with these individuals to see how they live?

Did you read even one multiply-marginalized person’s social media feed to see what they believe? Preferably multiple?

Once you’ve done those steps, you’ll be in a much better place to see if you’ve even made something realistic, or if you’re projecting your experience too much as a 1 to 1 in situations where it just wouldn’t happen that way.

White is Not Neutral

Any identity you have as a white person is going to look different for someone not white. Being queer, Muslim, and Black in America looks a lot different than being gay, white, and Protestant in America. Those combinations of identities will look different again if you’re in a Muslim-majority country vs Muslim-minority, Christian-majority vs Christian-minority.

The traumas of being a certain identity in a society that doesn’t like you are racialized. White is not the default experience of how life happens, and a Hindu person with a strong connection to their family and wants to maintain some connection, just with boundaries, will have a much different set of priorities than an exvangelical who wants to get away from their family the minute they turn 18.

Even if you get a Hindu person who wants to get away from their family the minute they turn 18, the logic for getting there and the hurdles to overcome will be different, because they’ll have been raised differently. If you start to assume that you know how they’ll reach that logic, then you’re probably playing a game of bias telephone, as detailed above.

Mental illness, gender, disability and basically any identity under the sun will have a different expression in different cultures. A cross-cultural study on schizophrenia’s auditory hallucinations showed that the voices people hear are shaped by culture. In Accra, Ghana and Chennai, India—people mostly reported their heard voices as a positive thing. Meanwhile in San Mateo, California, not one person did the same. (source: Hallucinatory 'voices' shaped by local culture, Stanford anthropologist says)

Different cultures will define “man” differently. Cultures might have third genders that are more widespread and accepted than non-binary people in North America and Europe. Expectations for a parent will be different. Expectations for children will be different. Expectations between friends will be different. Disability (physical and/or mental) accommodations that are built into culture will be wildly different depending on cultural values. Wealth and class struggles will also be different.

All of these things will deeply impact a majority* character from a marginalized group, let alone one multiply marginalized. If you can’t answer how a majority character would behave based off cultural practices, then answer that before you work on a multiply marginalized person from that group.

* majority= cis, het, pale, financially stable, aka, somebody who has the most institutional power within that group even if they are marginalized in broader society (if they’re in a society where they are the dominant group, then they are privileged)

Healing, Distance, and Diversity

I know many marginalized people use fictional stories to be seen on paper, especially in a society where the stories for us just don’t exist. And you’re also aware of how white the representation of otherwise-marginalized people is, so you want to do your part to change that.

There are three paths you can take with this:

1- You are writing a story primarily for others, and have worked through your own stuff enough that you can use it as an influence instead of a story basis.

You realize you might not know exactly how a Buddhist East Asian person in a supportive family feels, but you know what it’s like to feel supported growing up and want to pull from that experience to show a loving Buddhist East Asian family. Or maybe you know what it’s like to love your parents but never, ever, ever feel safe coming out to them, and you want to show other people stuck in that place it’s okay, and it just so happens that the character this time around is Black.

This is a place where you can put aside your own desires and really dig into the research. Because it will take a lot of research. There will be so many little things that you don’t know. It will be diversity on hard mode.

2- You are writing this story primarily for yourself, but it’s just so emotional to think of your own context you want to make it Different, somehow

If you are in this position, consider keeping the story private. Not a judgement, at all—we all need private stories. But until you’ve worked through your own pain, you’re going to be relying a little too heavily on assumptions and your own experience to do respectful research.

That emotional situation you want to write about is going to look so different once you change the racial demographic, you probably won’t get the catharsis you want while writing it. Which means the story and your healing will suffer, because you’re not able to do research and you’re not able to work through all of your feelings from running into cultural roadblocks.

Get catharsis first, then consider doing diversity once your emotions are less intense. You need to be able to put “you” aside, and when your feelings are too big, that just is not happening. That’s okay! Not all of your representation has to be perfectly done for others to consume.

But that also means, you don’t have to ask WWC about it. Because you’re not writing a story for public consumption—you’re writing a story to process your own trauma.

3- You are writing this story primarily for others, but you’re simply trying to toss as much diversity in to “fix” the “everyone is white” problem and haven’t really stepped back to ask yourself if you’re representing them, or if you’re trying to show off.

This is a place you can very quickly be accidentally hurtful, because you don’t know what you don’t know. Maybe you’re wanting to toss in some background flavour, have some experience with death, decide to change the character’s race because they’re a smaller background part… and then you don’t look at what grief norms are in their culture over yours.

You could also find out that your experience has a lot of similarities and get lucky! Or you could get a few things wrong but at least you tried. Or, worst case, you could get it completely wrong and end up not representing anyone.

When in doubt, ask. If you’ve never seen x group handle y, then look it up before you go writing about it—same way you’d research any other component of your plot. Fear is not the place to write diversity from.

TL;DR

No matter how many marginalizations you have, it’ll still be different if you don’t share race

Marginalized spaces are often the only spaces where marginalized white people have full access to white privilege, so they can be extremely hostile to PoC

Groups grow, change, and evolve, as time goes on. Don’t assume that you know how they’ll actually handle any given marginalization unless you’ve listened to them at length.

Context matters; the same identity will have a different experience depending on their level of privilege within their society/group

There are limits to how much you can extrapolate your experience to relate with others who share an identity (chronically ill, LGBTQ+, etc) with you

If you’re just taking PoC to make the story different from your lived experience, keep the story private and heal before you start to write for others

Simply trying to avoid criticism of writing all white people is a poor place to start writing diversity, and you need some basic research before you polish things

~Mod Lesya

#guides #research #creator responsibility #stereotypes #representation #characters #intersectionality

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authorhjk1 · 5 months

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December Special!

Round Two!!

Hi everyone! This will be our last and final round throughout the coming week. The links in this post will direct you to the four polls for the four chapters. Keep in mind that I will decide on the order randomly as I write along.

I put all the options into this post, beacuse I do not have the nerve to type all of this four times. Tumblr doesn't let me copy text and paste it into a post.

Have fun!

Chapter

You knew this might happen. You read the script of your knew role in the upcoming kdrama. And yet, you are surprised when your co-star pulls you aside after filming that day. Seo Yeaji's face can switch in a heartbeat. From a cold and emotionless mask, to an adorable , cute smile. While she asks you, if the two of you could practice the next scene, her face shows a new expression. Lust. It's quite a spicy scene after all.

Idols are always stressed, overworked and tired. On top of that, they can't even relax properly. They have to be careful about their food, words and actions. And one thing, that some people might neglect, is sexual satisfaction. That becomes a problem for Karina, Jihyo and Eunbi. Having bigger breasts only adds to their problems. Due to stress, their milk production starts to rise. When the three of them invite you to join their pre-Christmas party, they obviously have ulterior motives.

IU's and Kang Seulgi's competition started, when they caught each other, having sex backstage during an award show, a couple of months ago. At first, it picked up slowly. Random challenges, send via text on kakaoTalk app, answered by pictures as proof of the accomplished mission. Now, the two of them are tied, desperate to come up with something new. Luckily, IU and Seulgi have a lot of fans, who are more than happy to help them out.

You and Irene are coworkers with a special history. The two of you tried out more kinks and positions and places than even married couples. But some things are still missing. Luckily, Irene has a friend who got hired a couple of weeks ago. You were planning on welcoming her properly anyways.

After just being hired by Dreamcatcher Company, you are already tasked with shooting Jiu's and SuA's special clip. Jiu knows that you are an Insomnia and that SuA is your bias. Maybe you will get to shoot another type of special clip with the two of them, thanks to Jiu.

You meet your exgirlfriend IU at a high school friend's wedding. After the memories of your school times come back, the two of you sneak off.

You have worked with a couple of idols already. They are often models and embassadors for brands after all. Now you are tasked with filming a small video to promote Jimmy Choo's newly designed dress. The woman who appears in your studio is no other than Cho Miyeon.

Yuna has always been quite kinky. But her Christmas present for you this year is on another level. It's Ryujin. She is kneeling on her bed, wrapped in red lingerie and a bow like a gift. Her hands are tied behind her back, while her eyes are covered with a red blindfold.

You have already tried everything. Drinking warm milk with honey, listening to music, reading a book. Nothing. Working out, spending more time on your job. Nothing. Even after bringing that girl home last night, Yunjin, you vaguely remember her name, didn't help at all. You still can't fall asleep. It's late at night and you are lying in bed once more. Sleepless. Then, your doorbell rings. That must be your neighbor. Chaewon. After telling her about your insomnia, she said she might know aomething.

10.

Going to college is already hard enough, considering your background. Bad grades, devorced father, stepmother and stepsister and so on. The only reason you got in was because of your scholarship. You are not a good student. But a talented football player. And now everything becomes even more difficult. While trying to learn for your upcoming test, someone knocks on your door. Tzuyu, your stepsister. Her and her mom, Jihyo, seemed to have gotten into a huge fight once again. Can you cheer her up?

11.

The one thing you love most about your job is the fact that you see beautiful women pretty much every day. Being a photographer enables you to make them take any kind of pose in any kind of outfit. Of course, when you started your career, you never thought about it like this. Until you meet Im Yoona.

#kpop #kpop smut #kpop girls #kpop gg #male reader #lee jieun #gidle #le sserafim #twice #aespa #red velvet #dreamcatcher

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