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endobiologist · 3 years

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Trans Guy Tips #3; Testosterone HRT, How to Inject, & Its Effects On Body & Mind, Pt. 1

Note: I will likely add more sections to this at a later time, as I learn more about taking testosterone and its effects. Be sure to check back!

1. First, and this can change depending on your body type and what your own endocrinologist recommends for you,

but personally for me and for a lot of transgender men, Testosterone Cypionate, usually 200mg each dose, is the best choice, and so is taking the injection form, doing that intramuscularly, and taking them bi-weekly, meaning every other week on the exact amount of time from the time you took your last dose.

My endocrinologist explained to me that this is due to if you overload your body with testosterone constantly, or if you overdose it in an attempt to get more effects, you will instead have the opposite effect where you will instead gain estrogen, and more of it, because testosterone converts to estrogen when there's an excess of it and the body senses it as something wrong!!

So please please never take more than you are supposed to take, prescribed officially by your doctor.

They usually recommend bi-weekly for most if choosing injections, because it makes it so the testosterone spreads evenly throughout your system the entire time, and just has a very even perfect use that makes the effect stronger and it makes your body get used to it quicker, which speeds up the effects significantly, and tends to be the healthiest option.

2. Also in terms of safety, never ever get testosterone from a non-official source like the black market, online, or from a friend. You cannot trust this, as it has not been evaluated medically whatsoever.

Also, most importantly, you don't have a medical professional there to see if your hormones and all your health is correct and good to start or continue, or what dose to take, or which kind works best for your body, as well as not having any checkups, which is also vital when you take a new hormone in your body to make sure everything is balancing right!!!

So it is very dangerous, you could accidentally overdose, or your body could malfunction somehow, or you could just be injecting yourself with stuff that doesn't work ever!!

There are many things that could go wrong, so PLEASE never ever EVER do this.

Get a trans-familiar endocrinologist.

3. Now mind you, there are other options for taking T if you just cannot handle injections whatsoever.

Option one are tablets called subdermal capsules that they implant under your skin, usually under your arm or shoulder skin as it seems to spread the best that way. They will slowly leak testosterone until they replenish themselves and you have to get them replaced.

Some people praise these as they are pretty even in effects, and they make it so you have a steady supply pretty well, and also you don't have to think about it very often as the tablets last quite a while.

The downside is, that despite its evenness quality, it doesn't actually have very strong effects.

It will still give you effects for sure, but it will take a lot longer, possibly multiple years, to see the full effects of it.

There are also things known as topical testosterone, where you can put a gel or cream on yourself and it will dose you with the amount it has in it.

This is the least invasive option, however it's one with a very small amount of testosterone, so it will take some of the longest to feel, or see, effects.

Also, I have heard from some people that if you are having someone else put the gel on you, if they accidentally get it on their skin, it will literally dose them with testosterone, which is not okay if you have someone who is not trans and does not want it doing it.

So if you choose this route, please do it yourself so you're not dosing any more on to other people, and instead just on to yourself.

It also doesn't waste the dose on others that way, and you get the full effects instead.

There is also things known as oral testosterone, taken through pill form. But I have heard some bad things about these, and I have heard recommendations not to use them due to there being a lot of downsides, as it doesn't absorb into your body nearly as well as any of the other options, even the slower ones.

But really what matters is what you need, and what your body needs, so even though injections provide the most amount and the most even supply when you use them, especially bi-weekly as well, it might be different for you as every single trans guy/transmasculine person is different, physically & mentally!

And some things work better for others, so consult with your doctor, and let them know the effects and the timing you want, and they will suggest options for you if you are not able to choose yourself without assistance due to lack of knowledge etc.

I would however recommend deeply researching every section of testosterone as I did, before going to an endocrinologist, so you are very prepared and know which kind you want already which will make the appointment take less time as well.

Also you never want to rely on the information of just one person, so always research.

Don't just trust my guide immediately or anyone's guide if it's just one you read, instead do your own research on many sites & forums, and find what works for you, as I can only say what works/worked for me.

4. And when it actually comes to the fun part, the injections,

I will give you a step-by-step guide on mostly how to have someone else inject you, but you can also take my advice for injecting yourself, however I have no advice for specifics of that, such as ways to calm yourself down from queasiness when doing it yourself, since I have never injected myself due to me honestly being just a little squeamish about doing it myself.

But I've always had my mother do it, and I have watched occasionally to see how best to do it, and have experienced it quite a few times now, so I know which way is the least painful as well.

If I were ever forced to do it myself, that way I would be able to because I know how to beforehand.

Now what you do is when you pick up your prescription of Testosterone, this is assuming if you take it bi-weekly and an injection form, you get two 1 ml bottles (A month's supply) and you have to unfortunately ask for & buy the syringe that comes preloaded with the needles.

Also make sure never to ask for just a needle, cuz they will literally give you just a needle, and no syringe.

It's happened to me before, LOL.

They usually have the syringes & needles in stock almost always, but there are a few occasions where they didn't have the needles.

But it is honestly annoying having to pay for something extra when the testosterone itself doesn't cost anything, yet the injection needles you need to use it do??? Lmao.

However it's not that annoying, because they're actually relatively cheap!

Here in Nevada, with no discounts used, they usually only cost you about like $3 usually, $4 at most, so it's pretty price effective.

5. I strongly recommend this, it was my mom's edition to this by the way, she strongly recommends as well,

that you should wait at least a month before taking your first dose of T.

Even when you just received it!

The reason for this is because sometimes they will be out of testosterone or out of needles, or you won't be able to afford it for whatever reason, you never know and it's so much better to have at least 1 if not 2 backup doses and syringes + needles on hand so you never have to worry about that.

I was impatient and injected the day I got it, and so though I haven't run into a problem yet, it is stressful knowing that if a mistake happens with the injection and the fluid leaks out too much, or something happens, whatever it is, that I won't have a backup dose.

So, I would highly recommend waiting a month or even two before injecting, so you have two doses and you pick it up way before you run out every time.

That's way more efficient.

6. Now although this comes from the point of view of someone who hasn't injected themselves, and only has been injected, I pretty much know how it works so I could if I had to, I would just be squeamish.

And for a lot of people they feel the same, so it's easier to get a family member or a close friend to do it for you, as long as they're always around when you need to take your dose.

Personally I have my mom do it because she's talented at injections due to having reptiles that needed some done the same way.

So, basically, you take everything out of its containers, and make sure not to touch the needle itself ever.

Once everything's out of its containers, then make sure to test if the needle is totally closed onto the syringe.

If it is, it's good to go.

Checking the tightness of the needle is very important because if you don't, you can end up having the needle pop off inside you, and release none of the testosterone actually inside of you, wasting a dose completely & it just hurts like a SOB.

Now, take the cap off the needle.

I would recommend always sanitizing the needle, the syringe, and also having a little gauze pad or paper towel piece, all soaked with rubbing alcohol to sterilize the area you will be injecting, so there is no risk of infection at all.

Although not extremely important, I'd recommend you'd also want to bring a tiny Band-Aid.

It will be a very very tiny wound, more like a dot, but it actually bleeds quite a bit after, due to it going deep in, so it's helpful to put a Band-Aid on just for the first hour or so, then take it off and let it breathe, and it heals super quick. It'll be gone before, or by the next day, usually.

Please remember not to touch the needle ever as it'd ruin its sterilization. They're usually sterilized, but it might be a good idea to sterilize them again just in case, to basically make sure there is no risk of infection whatsoever.

Also this is just a common sense cleanliness rule,

but I still want to state it to make sure people know;

Always throw away every single needle and syringe you use, as soon as you are done using it.

Do not keep it or EVER re-inject with the same needle.

And also be sure to throw away any testosterone you have left that is excess from your dose.

You do not need that, as it goes bad and won't work after being exposed to air, so it's impossible to save and use later, unfortunately.

Now, you will be injecting intramuscularly in the leg, either leg will do, hell you can switch them up each time if you'd like. It doesn't matter much.

This means you will be injecting on the area of your thigh that is a little high up, and towards the top, but a little to the outer side.

This means the testosterone is injected straight between the muscles, and goes to the bloodstream quickly also, when you inject.

Now you want to remove the lid from the Testosterone Cypionate bottle, and shake It up very very good, so that there are no bubbles, no particles visible in the Testosterone, and no oil separation either.

If it looks completely clear, or is a slight yellowish colour but mixed together well, then you're good to go.

The possible slight yellowish color comes from the cottonseed oil that they use to store the testosterone correctly in.

It makes it to where you have to use a little bit of a bigger needle to inject yourself with, but it's actually a very very small needle and it's not painful very much at all.

A lot of myths I read about testosterone before I received it said the needles were huge and scary and painful, but the truth is they're not at all, even to me who's slightly scared of needles and has low ability to tolerate pain.

Literally, popping a zit hurts worse than the injections.

The pain is something like a very tiny ant bite, or a slight pinch on your skin, it doesn't really hurt very much at all.

In fact, whenever I take mine, even the very first time I did, I didn't even make a sound! And it's over very quickly, as well.

I would recommend for the easiest time however, for a little higher price, getting a 21 gauge syringe needle, and also an 18 gauge syringe needle for each dose you take.

The 21 gauge is larger for drawing up the testosterone from the vial easier than the 18 gauge would.

Then you remove that 21g needle from that syringe, and instead put on the 18 gauge for the actual injecting.

If you want a cheaper price tag, and/or you're just lazy like me, you can get away with using just an 18 gauge needled syringe, however it makes it much significantly harder to draw up out of the vial.

It is still quite possible, but is for sure challenging, mistakes can occur so be very careful if you choose this route.

Now when you're trying to draw up the Testosterone Cypionate out of the bottle, you want to hold it upside down, or downward at an angle kind of diagonal, and you want to make sure the needle is visibly in the liquid.

Then, you draw back slowly, but try and fill it as much as you can. You can always dispose of extra that you don't need.

If using only the 18 gauge like said earlier, which is what I personally do, it is very hard to draw up out of the bottle, so be very careful, and try to figure out the trick to it, is all I can say.

Everyone has a different trick for it.

Don't use all the testosterone in the bottle however for your actual being-injected-dose.

You need to usually use only 75 mL of the 1 ml bottle each dose.

Also before you ever inject, but after you fill the syringe, make sure to aspirate the needle, which means to act like you're injecting it, in the air pointing up, needle upwards, and you very slowly push down, which expels a little bit of the testosterone, but you also expel any air particles or bubbles that are trapped inside.

This is why you want to put a little more in the syringe than you actually will inject, because when you aspirate the needle some will leak out and make it the perfect amount to inject, rather than losing it an amount of it that you need.

If there is even a single bubble inside the syringe, that can cause a heart attack, and many other deadly problems!!!

So do not ever inject, if there is a bubble in your syringe.

If there is, best case scenario is you try to aspirate it heavily, even if you need to then refill it somewhat afterwards, the most important part is making sure no air bubbles are in it.

If there is no way to get the bubble out, you'd need to buy a new syringe, as it most likely has a deformation of some kind.

But that's the worst case scenario, and personally I haven't experienced that yet.

That, however, is why it is so important to aspirate, to make sure there's no air left in the syringe before you inject.

Now you want to make sure to get exactly .75 ml, that you put it up to the line right before 1 ml and that's about the amount you need.

And remember; never take more than prescribed, it will have the opposite affects you want.

Now that you know all the details, here is how to perform injecting the actual testosterone.

You take the needle to the sterilized area of thigh that you cleaned with the rubbing alcohol.

And you can either use a kind of sideways diagonal position to go in, or you can use straight on.

I find straight on makes it much less painful for me, so I usually go with that, but either way works, and whatever is most comfortable for you is what you should use.

Now you just go in kind of slowly, and try not to move the needle around too much, just push slowly all the way in 'till the needle is completely in the leg.

Then dispense slowly the testosterone to the intramuscular area, and once all the testosterone is out of the syringe and inside your bloodstream, pull it out very slowly, all the while holding the skin around it firmly, so that it doesn't hurt as much pulling it out. If you pull it out fast it fuckin' hurts.

You can also sterilize the area of injection again, if you want, but it's not really necessary.

Then, you just put that Band-Aid previously mentioned on, for like an hour, and you're good!

7. Now for the effects of testosterone, though I don't have a perfect timeline. But around one DAY in, I noticed for some reason my clitoral growth where your clitoris pretty much changes into a tiny penis except the urethra doesn't move unfortunately without surgery.

It can grow one to two inches at max, although I have not experienced that much yet.

However for some reason I had definitely experienced minor clitoral growth pretty much as soon as I took my first shot of testosterone, which is incredibly rare, as it's supposed to happen six months to a year in and be one of the later effects!! But for some reason, it was the first effect I got, so that really goes to show that everyone is built quite different, so some things in this guide might not be totally accurate for everyone.

1 week in, I started experiencing a very hoarse voice, not a sore throat or anything, but just where your voice sounds like you're sick or you're losing your voice, for some reason.

This is the first step in your voice changing to a deeper baritone.

It's usually not painful whatsoever, but I have heard from some people that it can irritate their throat occasionally due to the foreign feeling of it, this stage doesn't last very long though.

Then, about 1 month in, I started noticing extensive hair growth. Also I seem to have got way darker hair than any of my family members ever had, and way more hair than they ever had, so you can't totally rely on the predictions of what your family looks like to see how you're going to change.

You kind of have to be ready for anything to happen, but usually the hair growth and the masculinity of your family will almost always pass on to you when you transition physically.

This can even include male pattern baldness eventually.

Sometimes it happens to trans men immediately after taking it, other times it will take years and other times it will be when they're elderly like cis men have.

Personally, I have not seen any male pattern baldness yet, however my front l of my hair slightly receded back and in the shape of male members of my dad's side of my family, but nothing like a total receding hairline.

It still looks like a full head of hair!

Usually you can tell what type of hair you get by looking at your family members closely.

If your family includes a lot of thick hairy people naturally, then you are going to usually get very large amounts of hair.

If you have a family with barely any hair, or very light coloured hair, you'll usually get a small amount of hair or a large amount of hair but with light colour. Personally, I got real lucky so it's clear that there are exceptions, but that's usually how it goes is that you can look to your family members as to how you're going to look and sound like.

About 3 months in, my voice started really deepening and I mean really deep. But the funny thing about it is that sometimes it will switch from being really low and masculine and amazing, to being kind of regular like before, to a little low but not super low, and even to what I call the "permanent helium" which makes you literally sound like you inhaled helium but it's literally just your vocal cords cracking that bad from growing to a male length.

Sometimes it will crack in a way where you can't stop talking in that high pitch, and it's really awkward, but it is also really funny if you learn to laugh at yourself, and always remind yourself that this is the process of gaining a deeper voice.

I have heard that vocal training to make your voice deeper also helps exponentially for more effects if you want a super deep voice.

About 4 to 5 months in, which is where I'm currently at, I've experienced way more hair growth!

Even more so than the start of it.

My head hair seems to be thicker and healthier for some reason, I'm not sure why because I have never heard of that affecting your head hair, its texture, or its thickness like that?

But it seems to have happened, so I guess it's possible?

I'm gaining a moustache and a few beard hairs, but mainly my moustache is super dark and already very visible.

Also due to my moustache and my deep voice alone, now I can already pass pretty much 100% of the time if maybe 99%, and I'm a very naturally baby-faced person too, so that's impressive!

My voice is mainly settled into a pretty deep baritone.

It still has a little bit of a high pitch sometimes, but barely.

I can tell there's a little more progress needed, but not much.

I don't do the helium thing as much as I used to, but it does still occasionally occur as lengthening your vocal cords, which is what occurs when you take testosterone, can be a lengthy and frustrating process at times.

I have also specifically seen lots of body hair at this time, way more than the sparse amount at first, including even a happy trail and a little bit of chest hair although it's not noticeable yet unless you squint, but it still has way more than I used to!

Also my hair on my arms, and especially on my legs, is thick, dark and everywhere.

I've also noticed my fat is starting tk begin redistributing a little bit.

It's not totally doing it yet, but it's getting close, as my thighs, hips, and behind area lost a bunch of weight, while my stomach gained a little bit of weight and so did my arms.

I also gained a fair bit of muscle as not only can I see it when I flex, but also I can lift things a little easier than I used to, and muscle seems to develop easier for me, even when I work out barely.

I've never been a very physical person, so it's still hard, but it's way easier now that I take testosterone.

Those are all the effects I have to record right now, as I'm only 4-5 months in, but I will update this with new parts as I experience more and more.

Also, please take all effects and timelines with a grain of salt, because everybody works differently.

Also I specifically was mentioning Testosterone Cypionate, bi-weekly injection form, so if you take testosterone in a different way, some of this might be different, irrelevant or even completely useless to you, but I am only able to provide information on these forms as they're the only form I've taken of it myself.

Now, to quickly dispel a few stupid myths that circulate around taking testosterone, to ease your worries.

Myth #1. "Testosterone makes you aggressive, violent, and a bad person!"

The truth is that testosterone does not change who you are, whatsoever.

It can however change certain little preferences like for example what flavor food you like will sometimes change, but usually not all foods, just a couple, or sometimes even just one.

It can change little tiny details, like maybe your favorite colour may change, and it definitely does have its emotional effects for sure, but it does not make anyone aggressive or violent automatically.

Testosterone is not an angry hormone, and estrogen is not a peaceful hormone, despite what most people stereotype them as being, so just blanketing everyone under the term of "aggressive" because they have testosterone in them is straight-up incorrect at best, and also sexist at worst.

Estrogen is not better than testosterone. Testosterone is not better than estrogen. It just matters what you want in your body.

What it may actually do is sometimes, people will experience a wide variety of emotions, including extreme euphoria and confidence (that's the effect I seem to have had, thankfully!)

Other people however will get very emotional and sad and will cry over things easier, and no, that's not an estrogen trait, testosterone can do that too.

And sometimes, on a rare occasion, people can get more irritable or cranky. But they're never violent.

They just get a little grumpier than usual.

However, all these emotional effects eventually do phase out and stabilize, and you'll be back to all your regular moods.

You never truly change who you are as an individual, and your beliefs and morals will stay the same.

It's not like you will completely change into a different person, you will never have to fear that, nor should any of your family and friends.

Myth #2. "Testosterone is steroids, right? So doesn't that mean that you're stronger than everyone else?"

This is a ridiculous notion, and I'm not even sure how it got spread im the first place, but I've heard it firsthand, and it's really as stupid as it sounds.

Testosterone is not steroids, they may have some similar properties due to chemical makeup, but they are not in any way steroids.

Steroids are an addictive & potentially harmful drug. Testosterone is a naturally occuring hormone that we all have some of.

For instance, testosterone also does not make you any more muscular just automatically.

It can make you a little more muscled subtly due to the muscle structure changing to that of a cis man's, but it can't straight up make you jacked, that's just not possible.

Also it does not make you any stronger than anyone else.

It might make you a little stronger than a cis female, but you are not stronger than a cis man, in fact you're weaker, due to starting out assigned female at birth.

I'm not sure why people assume that if you take testosterone, that means you're strong??

Because you're taking testosterone because you don't have any so clearly you don't have very much.

I'm not totally sure where this silly notion got spread, possibly as a way to make trans people feel guilty for taking T, by making them think it's a drug, and it's just not when you look at the facts.

It's good to dissuade folks who think this way, from this notion, as it can also make us look like drug addicts or on steroid pills, which both are just completely false.

Testosterone is not even addictive.

It's a natural hormone inside your body.

Myth #3. "Testosterone will give you all forms of cancer, and strokes and heart attacks, almost certainly!"

I'm not sure where or how this got spread either, it is true that it is possible, they said, in a scientific study, that they can't confirm completely that it could theoretically make your chances of stroke and heart attack a little higher due to your system basically changing to that of a cis man's, and going through a cis man's puberty.

But honestly, you have less risk of strokes and heart attacks than even cis men do, and you don't have a prostate which is a common location for men to get cancer, so you actually have an advantage over most!

It's very rare that you would ever come into contact with one of these things happening, pretty much as rare if a little less as it would be if you didn't take T at all.

There is also no evidence whatsoever that testosterone causes cancer, of any kind, let alone all of them.

A lot of people have tried to spread this rumour, to stop people from getting HRT treatment, which is really cruel and fucked up, and a lot of parents will use the "cancer" excuse as a way to not give their child HRT.

The truth is that it does not cause cancer, and that is a complete myth.

There's actually some evidence that being on T might improve your chances of fighting cancer, and having a stronger immune system for it as well.

Myth #4. This kind of goes along with the other one, but some people believe that "If you take testosterone, you could be shortening your lifespan by many years!!"

This is complete speculation, nothing has been confirmed.

It's possible, perhaps, that it could shorten your lifespan by a couple years, but not many.

You still would have an advantage over cis men again.

But it's never been truly proved that your lifespan gets shorter from T, so there is no reason to fear less of your life occuring just because you're trying to make yourself happier.

All right, I think that's all the rumours I can set straight, and all the info & advice about injections and medicine and general information about testosterone that I can give you at the moment.

I will update this post later, so please check back again in maybe a few month's time from now, as then I will have more effects to discuss.

But if I want to leave you with anything to think about,

remember that testosterone is a completely safe and natural chemical hormone that produces itself in your body already.

You just don't have enough of it to look the masculine way you want to.

It is not dangerous, it won't hurt you and if you really want it, go after it!!

But I would also very much advise you to be sure you want to go ahead with it, and that you are okay with all effects happening.

Because if you aren't, if you are even the least bit hesitant, not only will the doctor not allow you to proceed because you are not mentally fit to yet,

but also if you did end up taking testosterone then you could end up getting effects that you don't want, and having them be permanent, and causing you dysphoria for the rest of your life.

So please, make sure to know yourself well, and know your wants and needs clearly.

I also highly recommend having a psychiatrist or a mental health therapist for quite a while before going into testosterone therapy.

Not only does it make you more qualified to acquire testosterone because it shows you actually thought it through, but also it is exceedingly helpful for the mental and physical changes you will be proceeding with over these next years.

The last thing I want to say, my closing note, is congratulations on your testosterone, if you received it!

And I hope my guide helped in any way, and apologies if it ended up really long this time, there's a lot of things you need to know about T.

Thank you for reading, and I hope this humble trans guy's journal entries help you at all.

- Atom T. L. Yorke

#transgender guide #transgender tips #transgender #trans #ftm #trans male #trans man #trans boy #trans guy #transmasculine #lgbtqa #testosterone #testosterone hormones #hrt #trans guy tips

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pluraldeepdive · 3 years

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The Website That Started Natural Multiplicity

Disclaimer: This is a post covering a deep dive of archived events that took place in the past. DO NOT harass or send hate towards anyone mentioned.

Introduction

So, who came up with natural multiplicity? When I’ve asked this question, most people reply by saying “Nobody! It’s always existed!” But that’s not exactly what I was asking them. Sure, the experience has always existed, I agree with them there. But what I’m asking about is the name! Someone was experiencing or observing something and then they put a name to it. They decided to name it natural multiplicity—so who did that? Who came up with that?

Through my deep dive, I ended up finding the answer for myself.

As you may have read in one of my previous posts, multiplicity and multiple personality were terms that were often used interchangeably prior to the 21st century. They were used exclusively in reference to DID (more often called MPD at the time). Their origins are clinical, and they also held a lot of importance to the pre-Internet and early Internet dissociative community. (See my post on that here.) During this time, multiplicity and multiple personality meant a trauma-based dissociative disorder. The term natural multiplicity did not exist at that time—at least not in any relation to DID.

Prior to the term natural multiplicity, discussions about multiplicity being natural were usually discussions about how it’s natural to dissociate after trauma. Whenever someone mentioned that multiplicity was not a disorder to them, it was usually because the terms disorder or even MPD/DID had negative connotations to them, because they personally didn’t want to identify with medical terminology for other reasons, because they were not personally distressed by their alters, or because they had reached a stage in recovery where they were no longer struggling—not because they saw the experience as inherently non-dissociative or non-traumagenic.

But someone came along and kickstarted a changed in that narrative. This person was experiencing something that they felt wasn’t trauma-based or dissociative...and believed that it was the same multiplicity that everyone else was referring to as trauma-based and dissociative. This person decided to take that concept and redefine it to be inherently not trauma-based, not dissociation, and not pathological.

So, who was that person? Who decided to name something that was very obviously not DID the equivalent to natural DID? Well, your answer is: Astraea’s Web.

Evidence & Archives

Evidence of this wasn’t really hard to come by because, well...they’ve talked it! While they don’t go around bragging about it, it’s certainly come up a fair amount of times. Other people have talked about it, as well.

“The concepts of natural multiplicity and healthy multiplicity are very new. We only introduced them about ten years ago on our website, and while several other websites exist now and plenty of online multiples know about these ideas (whether they agree with them or not), this is still a very small subset of the online multiplicity community, which is a very small subset of multiples in general. Most people do not know about these ideas because they haven’t been publicised enough; that is what Pavilion is for, but it’s gotten off to a very slow start.” - From Bluejay Young (a member of Astraea Household) on Livejournal Multiplicity. (2005)

“Astraea’s page was the first multiplicity page that was NOT about DID.” - From Amorpha System on Livejournal Multiplicity. (2005)

“(1995) Astraea’s Web, the first Internet website to describe non-disordered and self-recognized multiplicity, goes online in September.” - From Multiple Personality Controversy on Psychology Wikia (2006)

“I’m also putting Astraea’s Web back in. It was the first website to propose the idea of healthy multiplicity.” - From Bluejay Young (a member of Astraea Household) on the DID/MPD Controversy Wikipedia discussion. (2007)

“It’s important to allow the concept to be inclusive of everyone who fits, regardless of past abuse history or origins, much as is currently being done for ‘multiplicity.’” - From Anthony Temple (a member of Astraea Household) on “A brief history of midcontinuum”. (2007)

And, yes, this all checks out. During my deep dive, I could find no website that existed before Astraea’s Web that talked about multiplicity/DID as something natural; natural meaning not trauma-based, not dissociative, and not pathological in their own words. Here are my posts on how they introduced natural multiplicity to the Internet:

Their first theory. (1998 or earlier)

How natural multiplicity went from a theory to a fact. (2000)

When they began separating multiplicity from DID. (1999)

Boycotting DID. (2000-2003)

But it’s also important to hear it straight from the source. The archived essay “What a long, strange trip it’s been...” was published sometime in 2002 or possibly earlier. In this, members of Astraea Household reflected on their journey to joining the dissociative community, realizing that they were actually not dissociative, and introducing their idea of natural multiplicity to the Internet.

Part 1 (Discovering DID & their multiplicity)

Part 2 (Coming out & wanting DID normalized)

Part 3 (Experiences in the dissociative community, doubt, introducing natural multiplicity, & backlash)

Part 4 (The empowered multiple community)

My Thoughts

Obviously, natural multiplicity has evolved and changed so much over time. Present day non-dissociative plurality is so different from its origin! It’s like a dinosaur versus a duck. One comes from the other, and there are similarities, but they shouldn’t be looked at like the same exact thing. Even though the term natural multiplicity has died out, and it’s ableist as Hell, I still find its origins so fascinating and I hope that you guys can agree.

Like I’ve stated several times before, I don’t fault people much for their past actions. The times and circumstances were very, very different. DID research back then was bare bones, filled with inaccuracies, and being bombarded with controversy and skepticism. Also, Astraea’s Web has always presented itself as an anti-psych website so it’s not that much of a surprise that they were against diagnoses.

While I personally do not agree with how Astraea Household went about certain things, I could also empathize with the situation that led up to them coining natural multiplicity. Astraea Household’s journey read to me like a story of misdiagnosing a self-diagnosis...a mis-self-diagnosis?

Sometimes people self-diagnose because it feels like a certain disorder is the only explanation they have for their experiences. It can be frightening if that one explanation turns out to not be the answer—ESPECIALLY if you got heavily involved in communities related to that disorder.

If I self-diagnosed DID but then later realized that I didn’t relate to its causation or symptoms that much, then I’d probably just think I was experiencing something else. I wouldn’t be so inclined to think that it was the professionals who were completely wrong...but what if DID was the closest explanation I had for my experiences? What if most of my friends were in the dissociative community? What if me being multiple was a big part of my closest relationships? What if I had been telling people I was multiple for years and years? What if I had a hugely successful website on me being multiple? What if I had a big influence on the dissociative community? What if my entire career revolved around me being multiple? Damn, maybe I would have come up with natural multiplicity as well in that case. (Not saying this is why Astraea Household did it.)

Anyways, please go and make your own opinions on this stuff. That’s why I share it.

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peonycats · 3 years

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Do you have any tips/resources for researching lesser documented cultures? I'm trying to learn more about African nations and tribes but there's not that much information on the internet about them,,, what is your strategy for research?

hmmm okay so I’m approaching this question from my primary experience researching African cultures and ethnic groups, so this might not apply to all situations and stuff yknow (especially with language barriers)

(obligatory disclaimer that these tips do come with the standard “check your sources, see who wrote it and when, and keep in mind the biases and perspectives of the people behind it as well as your own” warning, and that these tips do intersect and overlap)

1. General/Beginning Sources

If possible, I usually like to begin my research by starting at wikipedia and Britannica, or similar sources designed for outsider audiences. They’re pretty good for gaining a basic understanding of a people/nation and its history, and to avoid getting overwhelmed at first. (Though, try Britannica then Wikipedia because some of the pages on Wikipedia can be hella long and detailed) There’s also history videos on youtube, which will vary greatly in scope and perspective, esp when it comes to African history.

(hehe time to plug some fave channels I watch- I would really recommend HiddenHistory for African history and archaeology and New Africa for current events, geopolitics, and history)

2. Media produced by People from that culture

This is probably the most enlightening and most useful, particularly for culture. For African ethnic groups in particular, most in my experience usually have public social media pages where they discuss things and share news (Facebook is a popular one). For certain groups, like kingdoms, they have one social media page where they make announcements or report on cultural or sociopolitical events. Local journalism also does that, and I would really recommend reading both their articles and comments section to see what people think!

There are also social media accounts dedicated to posting and educating about a certain culture- I cannot recommend them enough because one of the biggest issues with online research on culture is verifying sources (especially images oh god), and a high quality, accurate social media account is great for learning about the details!

Canada’s Cultural Information Center is very useful for learning about other countries’ cultures, especially because they have both a local perspective on how local mannerisms and nuances work, and a western perspective as well. That way, you gain an understanding of how both outsiders and insiders understand a culture.

3. Old Academic and Historical Texts

I use these mostly for lesser known historical events, archaeology, and past foreign policy, cuz generally not many people are looking for 1960s foreign policy analyses or the Kanem Bornu Empire’s outreach attempts to the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s, so that kinda stuff is usually locked up behind a pay wall.

There’s also stuff dating from the late 19th century to mid 20th century written during colonialism that offers some valuable (though... with all the prejudices and poorly aged language of the time) information and perspectives. Old newspaper clippings and reports written are pretty helpful in doing history you know

I’m lucky that I have institutional access to JSTOR, but I believe they currently let you view around 100 free articles per month during the quarantine if you have an account? Granted, you are still barred from certain articles, but still, you can access a lot! (Before the world ended it was like 10 or so articles a month I believe but I just took screenshots of the articles and saved them for later reading lmao)

Academia.edu is also a really good one for accessing research! A lot of the articles are free to download and read and you can send a nice message to authors!

Books and other published texts are really great as well, but I know that they’re not always financially available to people (if you’re looking to spend less, check out your barnes and noble sale section as well as used book stores and garage sales) But I know a handy trick called googling “[Book Title] pdf”- it gets you a lot of places lmao

#Anonymous #ask #woof that was long #but yeah hope that helps!!#thoughts tm #long post #tips

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its-bound-to-get-loud · 3 years

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Speculating about sexuality

It’s time to get a little controversial on this blog. Or at least talk about a controversial subject. I’ve recently seen some fandom discourse about this subject from multiple sources. A lot of people have the opinion that discussing a celebrity’s sexuality is a bad thing, something you shouldn’t do. I strongly disagree.

Full disclosure, I’m a Larrie. I’m a 1D fan who believes Harry and Louis are a couple. I’m also a 5SOS fan. Now I know many 5SOS fans seem to be wary of Larries in particular. I know some people have taken it too far sometimes. But also, it’s hard to compare Larry/1D to 5SOS in many ways, because Larry and 1D themselves have done a lot of things to encourage fans looking into things they normally might not. It feels to me as if 5SOS fans saw the things that happened in the 1D fandom, turned around and decided to do the exact opposite. This is a good thing in some ways, but it also leaves no room for critical thinking.

Now back to 5SOS. I’ve had a few conversations about this topic and what it comes down to is this. 5SOS are famous, they live a life that’s (partially) being seen by the public and the media. Now this will sound cold, but it’s a fact: 5SOS are a product. When we interact with them on social media, we interact with a product. In the end they want to keep selling their music to us. In order to do so, engaging with fans is part of their job. It doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy it, it doesn’t mean they’re not genuine. If you work in a supermarket part of your job may be stocking shelves. You have to do it because it’s your job, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it as well.

Part of the product that is 5SOS is their relationships. We see their girlfriends plastered over their social media, they mention them in interviews, etc. That’s not something they HAVE to do generally speaking. If we are to assume that (for argument’s sake) all 3 current 5SOS relationships are genuine, then they don’t have to show us their girlfriends if they don’t want to. This means they either choose to do so, because that’s what they want, or these girlfriends are being presented to us for a reason (PR, bearding, etc.). Which of these it is, is for you to decide. Both options make them become part of the product. We are allowed to question that product, since we are the ones consuming it. If the person in question has made comments that can be regarded as them hinting at not being straight they open the door even further. You cannot tell someone to come over and then slam the door in their face because they get too close.

If 5SOS want to they can keep their relationships private. Their social media profiles are not the same as ours. They are a representation of the product they are. A representation of their image. That’s why celebrities often have private profiles as well, where they can share private things that they don’t want to share with the public.

The 5SOS girlfriends themselves are a product as well. They all have careers that involve being in the public eye, they are just as well selling us a version of themselves. 2 public people dating does not mean we automatically HAVE to see that they are dating. Celebrities can keep things a secret or low-key if they want to. In fact, I’d dare to argue they have more tools to do so than you and I.

You can look at it like this, if I’m buying a laptop I’m doing research online, I’ll check out reviews. I’ll ask questions at the store. I question the product before I buy it. That’s not that different from what we do as fans. Before we buy their music we question if this is a product we want to buy. Most of the time that’s an unconscious decision we make. Sometimes a product can becomes unsatisfactory after a while and we choose to move on from it. I know it sounds cold, but it’s not that different with celebrities. If 5SOS keep showing me their public girlfriends on their public social media, I get to question that. If I come to the conclusion that I think that what they are telling me is false. I get to discuss that. Being a fan does not equal always taking things at face value.

There’s also a double standard in this fandom. Some people are more than willing to yell about how problematic and toxic the girlfriends are in their opinion. Which means they are allowed to poke into (what they think is) a real relationship between 2 people. When Luke says Teeth is about Sierra, they question his words and don’t hesitate to say their relationship is toxic. But when it comes to sexuality suddenly that’s a no go. I am absolutely not a fan of the way some of the way girlfriends behave. As long as this happens in a fandom environment I am also fine with talking about that. But if you disapprove of one thing and then do something similar, maybe it’s time you start practicing what you preach or leave people to have their own opinions.

This doesn’t mean you should tell the guys directly that you think their relationship is not real or that you think they are not straight. You don’t harass their friends, their crew, and their family about this. Discussing a celebrity’s sexuality/relationship should stay limited to fandom spaces. With social media it’s a lot easier for celebrities to see what we say about them. Therefor I always suggest being mindful of what you say (they may be a product, but they are still people). Personally it’s why I enjoy Tumblr, because most celebrities don’t go on here and (most of the time) we can safely discuss things that are more difficult to discuss in a place like Twitter. I will say, just because we are questioning a product, it doesn’t mean we get to be rude in the process. You generally don’t go to the store and start yelling at the salesperson if you don’t agree with what they tell you.

People seem to think it’s disrespectful to say someone is gay. Why? Is there anything wrong with being gay? Absolutely not. We live in a society that’s very heteronormative, being straight is seen as the “default” sexuality. It should not be. If you’re going to argue that it’s disrespectful to say someone is gay, then please also don’t assume they are straight. You can have personal thoughts, sure. I have personal thoughts on the specific sexuality of the guys in 5SOS as well. But I keep in mind that my personal thoughts aren’t a fact. I could be wrong. So unless someone has specifically stated their sexuality it’s best to not assume anything and keep an open mind.

Then finally I want to briefly touch on a topic that goes hand in hand with what I’ve talked about: shipping. Some people have a problem with shipping when it comes to real people. For some people shipping is just enjoying the idea of 2 people together even if you think they aren’t. While other people truly believe in that relationship. There’s nothing wrong with any of that as long as it doesn’t become invasive. It all comes back to what I’ve said before. We are consuming a product. The relationships between the 5SOS guys are a huge part of that product. The chemistry between them is part of why we love them. I’m not saying they are pretending to like each other. I fully believe their chemistry is genuine, but it does help sell the product. It also means that sometimes the guys/their team plays into that chemistry to sell the product.

They guys should not have a problem with fans shipping them together, because it’s not up to them to decide that. They sell us their relationships, so we get to form opinions about that. If we stay in our own fandom space and do not become invasive by showing them or people around them fandom content (fics, headcanons, manips, etc.). Then they should not come into our spaces and invade stuff we enjoy in that space. I get super uncomfortable whenever I see celebrities reading fanfiction or being read fanfiction. Fanfiction about them is not for them. It’s made for fans to enjoy and they should stay away from that. I want to encourage you to go and read this answer* about shipping real people. Because sometimes other people’s words say it better than my own words ever could.

With that we have reached the end of this post. As usual I am always open to discuss this in an adult manner. If you feel like you have anything to add to this discussion, feel free to send me an ask/dm. Or reply to this post. If you like/agree with what I write I would love it if you reblogged this post. That’s the only way more people can see it. My blog is small, so reblogs are very much needed to keep the discussion going. Don’t think of coming in my inbox and yelling at me how everything I said is wrong and bad and awful, because it is only going to get you blocked. If you don’t agree, that’s fine, but I’m not going to tolerate any hate.

Finally, just because you are allowed to speculate and question whatever 5SOS or any other celebrity/influencer tells you, doesn’t mean you have to. If that’s not your cup of tea, then that is more than fine. The reason I wrote this post is because we need to stop making people who think critically about the things they are being told, feel guilty about what they do.

* Please note that the author of this post does not have anything to do with what has been written in this post. If you have a problem with anything in this post, please direct it to me and not them.

#5 Seconds Of Summer #5SOS #Ashton Irwin #Calum Hood #Luke Hemmings #Michael Clifford #original #sexuality

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fourdaysofrain · 4 years

Text

Tests of Strength

Summary: Tony helps Peter test his powers.

(This is my Irondad Fic Exchange fic for @clickbearr! The prompt I chose was, "Tony doing tests on Peter's powers (how much weight can he lift? can he stick to a non-stick pan? etc.)” I hope you like it!)

Read on AO3

“Kid, do a backflip.”

Peter looked up from his AP Chem worksheet. He was in the lab with Tony, and up until now, they had been working quietly at their own separate desks.

“Um, sorry?” he said, a nervous laugh bubbling out of his mouth before he could stop it.

“I’m pretty sure those spidery little ears of yours heard me the first time.” Tony walked over from his desk and leaned on a counter facing Peter. He raised a nonchalant eyebrow. “Do a backflip.”

Peter looked over to Tony and then down at the chair he was sitting in.

Tony sighed. “Obviously, stand up first.”

Duh, Peter thought as he stood up. Of course, you need to stand up before doing a backflip in Iron Man’s lab. What else would you do?

He stood up, pushed in his chair, and shuffled a few feet away from the desk. He looked at Tony again, and upon receiving a set of raised eyebrows, he jumped and did a succinct backflip, his feet landing only a few inches from where they started. He looked for a reaction from Tony, but he remained unaffected.

“Was there a reason for that?” Peter asked.

“Suprise single-blind study, no questions.” Tony took off his tinted glasses and set them neatly on the counter behind him. ”Close your eyes.”

“Um, okay.” Peter scrunched his eyebrows together as he shut his eyes. “Will this hurt?”

Peter felt Tony gently put a hand on his shoulder. “Course not, I’m not a maniac.” The hand on his shoulder started to tug him away. “Come here.”

Peter let himself be led blindly around the lab. After a minute or so, they came to a stop.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Tony warned. Peter heard him step back. “Do another backflip.”

Peter moved a few steps to the right and then did another backflip. “Can I open my eyes yet?”

“Go ahead.”

He opened his eyes and looked around. Tony had led him to the workshop portion of the lab, where they were currently taking apart the engine of one of his cars in their spare time. He frowned at the oil spill he caused last week. He’d have to clean that up soon. He looked up and shrugged at Tony.

“Had a theory. It panned out,” Tony cooly stated.

“What was your theory?”

Tony picked up a screwdriver and tossed it up in the air a few times. Peter tracked it with his eyes, watching it go up and down, the handle spinning over and under the head.

“Close your eyes again.”

“Um, I’m not sure I like where this is going, Mr. Stark.”

Tony looked at the screwdriver and then back to Peter. Suddenly, as if just now realizing what he was about to do, he barked out a laugh and set the screwdriver down on the countertop next to him, his hand resting on top of it.

“Right,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “Right, I’m being eccentric. Ignore me, head back to your side of the lab.”

Peter muttered something indecipherable in response. He peered at Tony from the corner of his eye as he turned around to go back to his desk.

After a few seconds of walking with his back turned, he jerked to the left, just to see a screwdriver fly by where his head was a moment before. He spun around and gaped at Tony.

“Holy shit, what was that for?” he sputtered.

Tony had the decency to look sheepish. “Okay, I admit that was a little much. But check it!” He pointed at Peter. “How’d you know to move your head?”

“I, uh--” Peter looked down at his hands, at a loss for words. “I just did.”

He couldn’t explain it. There hadn’t been any noticeable warning. It had felt like someone was pulling his head on a string to the left. He probably could have fought it, but he didn’t see any reason to. Besides, if he had fought against it, he’d probably be nursing a goose egg for the next couple of hours.

“Enter my backflip test,” Tony started. “You moved to the right before doing your second backflip. Any reason why?”

Peter thought back to a few minutes prior. “I did,” he said. “Was that wrong?”

“No right or wrong answers in this place, kid.” Tony walked past him to pick up the screwdriver. “But you were right to move. I put you in the middle of a puddle of oil, you would have slipped if you tried to land a flip.” Peter’s eyes widened. Tony grinned sarcastically at him. “I would have caught you. Probably. Maybe not, actually. Don’t want to get any oil on my clothes.”

“No offense, Mr. Stark, but why did you do all this?” Peter decided to ignore the possible child-endangerment. He was almost 16, after all. He could handle himself.

Tony tilted his head and gazed at Peter through relaxed eyes. For a moment, he felt as if he was one of Tony’s projects, as if he was breaking down into ones and zeroes in front of his eyes.

“As I said, I had a theory.” Tony spun on his heel and went back to his workspace.

Peter followed him. “Hey, man,” he pestered, only feeling a little like a bothersome insect. “Can you tell me the theory?”

“Patience is a virtue, young spider,” Tony cajoled as he motioned his hands to wake up FRIDAY.

Tony’s workspace blew up in an explosion of holograms. Once Peter’s eyes adjusted to the blue light, he could see quite a few pages about spiders open from various sources online. He skimmed a few, making out a few keywords. After a moment, he looked at Tony, waiting for an explanation.

“You got your powers from a spider bite, obviously. So I did some research on spiders.” Tony waved through the holograms and expanded one so Peter could easily read it. “Did you know that there’s a species of spider that knows when it’ll be in danger?”

Peter’s eyes widened. “What, really?”

“Yeah, really. Some science-y combination of hormones and feeling vibration through their leg hair.” Tony paused to let Peter process. ”Given you’re wearing pants, it’s probably not the latter. But, you are filled to the brim with a hormone soup right now, so…”

Peter scrunched his nose. “Ew.”

Tony leaned back in his chair. “It’s your weird spider powers. Anyways, turns out you have it too.”

Peter sat down in a nearby chair to think about it. In his previous fights, he had avoided almost all of the hits anyone throws at him. He had always assumed that he had better instincts than the attackers.

“That sucks, man.”

“It--” Tony looked over at him. ”It sucks?”

“Well, I mean,” Peter said, rubbing his neck. “I just thought I was really good at fighting.”

Tony barked out a laugh. “At least now we know how you were able to stay in the ring with Happy for so long.”

Peter huffed and looked away. Since May found out about Spider-Man, she had wanted him to spend more time with Tony as a sort of job shadow so he can learn how to be safer in the field. So far, he’d trained with Rhodey and Happy. Tony typically stayed out of the physical training, keeping himself in the lab most of the time. Peter got it, he did, but it’d be cool to train with Iron Man for once.

“Which brings me to my next point,” Tony continued, closing down the holograms. “We’ve got some tests to do.”

“Tests?” he asked, voice involuntarily jumping up an octave. When he was first bit, he was worried about government scientists poking and prodding him with needles and keeping him away from his family.

Tony seemed to notice his discomfort and waved a hand noncommittally. “Nothing your weirdly-hot aunt wouldn’t approve of. Just some standard measurements. Lift a few weights, leap over a few tall buildings in a single bound, the usual.”

“Okay.” Peter snorted. “Yeah, sure. I mean, it’d be cool to know all that anyway, so…” He trailed off and looked up at Tony. “Did you wanna do it now?”

“Yeah.” Tony grabbed his tinted glasses and put them back on in one smooth move. “Unless you’ve got something better to do?”

Peter gave his AP Chemistry homework a forlorn glance. “Nah, I’m-- I’m pretty free. Nothing going on right now.”

“Great,” Tony said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s head downstairs.”

Peter followed Tony out of the lab and into the nearby elevator. He’d been to the gym a few times before, mainly to train with Happy. When he trained with Rhodey, they’d normally stay outside. He was excited to finally visit the gym with Tony, some childish part of him still wanting to show off. He tried to get his nerves under control as the elevator slowly lowered.

Finally, the elevator doors opened to the gym. There were machines lining the walls. Some of them looked familiar to Peter: there was a line of treadmills to his left, and some of those benchpress things lining the wall across from him. Most of the machines just seemed like weird chairs or benches that were slightly warped.

“Don’t worry about the machines,” Tony said, waving his hand at the various machinery. “They’d all be too easy for you.”

“Oh, yeah.” Peter ran his hand along one of the nearby weights. It was labeled 40 pounds. “This is easy. I lift weights all the time.”

He shook his fingers off the weight when they stuck nervously to the side of it. He smiled sheepishly at Tony, who was looking at him with a quirked brow.

“Cap’s old stuff is over here.” He motioned for Peter to follow him to the back corner. “We renovated recently, so he’s in the corner of shame for the moment. Figure it’s a good enough place to start.” He patted one of the punching bags that looked like it belonged in an arcade. “This one will give us a readout of how strong your punches are. Go ahead and hit it.”

Tony stepped back, giving Peter ample space to hit the punching bag. He shifted his weight from side to side and shook his right hand. He punched it casually. The bag didn’t even move.

Tony looked at the side of the machine and clicked his tongue. “113 pounds of force. Forget to eat your spinach?”

Peter glared at him half-heartedly out of the corner of his eye. He punched it again with a bit more force.

“780. Now we’re getting into enhanced range, kid. Give it another shot, come on!”

Peter gritted his teeth and punched the bag with all his force. The bag split around his knuckles and he ended up with his arm halfway submerged in sand and fabric. He looked over at Tony and raised his eyebrows. Tony rubbed his forehead and checked the side of the machine.

“Error.” Tony sucked air through his teeth sharply. “Guess that settles that.” He looked away and scratched his temple. “Can’t even remember what the max was.”

Peter pulled his arm out of the bag and tried not to grimace as a few grains of sand fell to the ground.

“Sorry, Mr. Stark. I didn’t mean to, uh…” He trailed off as he looked at the gaping hole in the punching bag. He cleared his throat. “Do that. That’s… my bad.”

“Y’know what, kid?” Tony chuckled. “It was about time that thing kicked it. Don’t worry about it.”

Peter felt his cheeks flush as he smiled awkwardly back. “Alright. Okay, uh-- What else did you want to test?”

“What do you want to find out?”

Peter thought back to when he tried to test his powers on his own, the extent of which was done secretly in the bathroom. He knew he was strong enough to break the sink and sticky enough to stick to the medicine cabinet, but that was about it. He was enhanced enough to survive all of his fights up till now, at least.

“Um,” he said after thinking for a moment. “I kinda want to know what I can stick to?”

Tony smirked. “What a coincidence, kid. So do I.”

“Should I just start testing things?” Peter asked, hand halfway to the nearby wall.

“Why not?” he replied. “But let’s do stuff you haven’t tried yet. Walls are old hat.”

Tony patted his pockets and pulled out his phone from his pants, holding it out towards Peter with his head tilted slightly.

Peter’s eyes widened. “You want me to stick to your phone?”

“No, I want you to take a selfie,” Tony quipped.

When Peter didn’t make a move to grab the phone, Tony grabbed his hand and slapped the phone in his palm, screen down.

“Okay, now turn your hand upside down without letting the phone fall.”

Peter clutched the phone with his fingers. “Do you not have a phone case?”

“Look who you’re talking to,” Tony said. “If I crack my phone screen, I can just buy a new Apple store.”

“Oh, okay. Cool.”

Peter’s grip slightly loosened as he tried not to think about his own phone screen that looked more like a spider-web than a piece of glass. He flipped the phone over in his hand subconsciously, which caused the phone to turn on. The lock screen background made him smile. It was a picture of Pepper, taken in Tony’s workshop. Pepper was holding one of the nanotech units in front of her chest with one hand with her other arm stuck towards the camera with the palm out. She looked like she was in the middle of laughing.

It was kind of weird to think about what Tony and Pepper did while they were alone, but apparently it involved Pepper making fun of him while he was working on his suits. It was sweet, Peter thought. He knew that Tony and Pepper weren’t together during the trip to Germany, but they announced their engagement just a few weeks ago. It was good to see they had fun together. Or maybe he was reading too much into a phone lock screen. But Tony seemed much happier now than when they first met, at least from his see-for-a-few-hours-every-week-or-so perspective.

“Have you met Pep yet?” Tony asked, following Peter’s line of sight.

“Uh, no. No, not yet.”

Tony smiled. “I can introduce you next time you’re both in the same building. Should happen eventually.” His focus went back to the task at hand. “Don’t be embarrassed if it slides around. Happens to the best of us.”

Peter screwed up his face and focused on sticking. It makes his head hurt if he thinks about it too much; the sticking is much easier when it’s done instinctually, when it’s either stick or die. In this case, it’s either stick or maybe break Iron Man’s personal phone, which has almost the same effect. He slowly turned his hand upside down and splayed out his fingers, leaving the phone remaining flush with his palm against all odds.

Tony poked the phone. It stuck.

“Alright, kid, keep sticking. I’m going to mess with it.”

Peter snorted as Tony kept trying to wiggle the phone. “This is glass. Glass is sheer. It should be sliding around.”

“I don’t know, man.” Peter flipped his hand back over and held the phone out to Tony. “I’m just sticky.”

Tony took the phone with a quick snap of his wrist and slid it back in his pocket. “That’s the fun part: you’re not sticky. It must be some…” He wiggled his fingers off to the side. “Electrostatic… Something.”

“I have it on my feet too,” Peter added helpfully.

Tony sighed and motioned to the window behind him. “Do your thing.”

Peter walked past Tony to reach the window. He looked over his shoulder once, and then crawled up the window. He stood up straight, effectively parallel with Tony’s line of sight. Tony walked up and pushed his shoulder. He didn’t move.

“I give up,” he said. “You’re even wearing shoes! This is worse than Thor’s hammer.”

Peter snorted and turned his neck to make eye contact with Tony. He said in a deep, gravelly voice, “Whosoever pushes this spider, if they be worthy, shall possess the power of Spider-Man.”

Tony sighed again. His lungs would probably fall out by the end of this day. “Alright. Day one results: super strong, super sticky. Anything else?”

“Um…” Peter cringed as his stomach growled. “Can we test my metabolism?”

Tony checked his watch and huffed. “Time flies. Sure, kid. What do you eat these days, pizza? Dead flies?”

“Chinese?” Peter countered, lowering himself down to the ground and wiping his hands on his jeans.

“Here, I’ll show you where we keep the takeout menus.”

Tony led Peter back to the elevators. They made their way to the kitchen area and ordered some dinner without any trouble. After a bit of chatting, Tony went down to the entrance to the compound to pick up the take-out. He returned promptly, and they started to chow down.

After a few minutes of silence, Peter got hit in the head by a chopstick. He gasped and looked up to Tony, who was shamelessly acting as if nothing happened.

“Again?”

“Just testing your…” Tony snapped his fingers as he tried to come up with a name. “Spider hormones. Turns out you’re vulnerable while you’re eating.”

Peter picked up the chopstick. “I was in the middle of chewing, man!”

He put the chopstick in the middle of his palm and flipped his hand upside down, showing off a little. Tony tried to nonchalantly tug it off, but it was stuck.

“Very funny. This place is filled with forks, I don’t need that.” Nonetheless, he was still trying to get his chopstick back. “Alright, please?”

At the magic word, Peter unstuck from the chopstick. Tony jolted back slightly at the sudden change of resistance.

“Mess with the spider, you get the webs,” Peter retorted.

Tony laughed. “Remind me to not get on your bad side.”

When Peter left the table to throw away his empty box, he eyed the pans hanging on the kitchen wall.

“Are these pans non-stick?” he called over his shoulder.

“Pretty sure. No one uses them anymore, so they might be a bit dusty.” Tony trailed behind him and leaned on the wall. “Why, still hungry? I can cook up a mean omelet.”

Peter stuck his hand to the center of one of the pans and pulled it off the rack. He looked at Tony, the pan flush with his hand.

“Not very non-stick after all.”

Tony quirked an eyebrow. “You better not get spider-fingerprints on everything now.” He warily watched as Peter eyed the ceiling. “Or spider-footprints on anything you can’t clean up.”

Peter sighed and mumbled something that almost sounded like arachnophobe. Tony threw his other chopstick at him, which he caught with his free hand without looking. He threw it back at Tony, who fumbled with it before getting a solid grasp.

“Elder abuse, I’m telling your aunt,” Tony threatened.

Peter laughed. “She’d be on my side.”

“You Parkers.” Tony sniffed theatrically. “Always ganging up on me.”

Peter smirked and put the pan back on the rack.

It was a fun day, he thought. And then he stuck his hand to his phone, just because he could.

Tag List: @ironfamjam @addi-is-amazing @mysterio-is-a-little-bitch @wellplacedbanana @night0seven @unfathomable-universe @bibbidi-bobbity-booyah @spideynamu

#this was a day late thats my b!#but bone app the teeth nonetheless #art writes #spiderman #spider-man #iron man #irondad #iron dad #mcu #marvel #wooo #not super confident about this one fellas #irondadficexchange

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ittybittytatertot · 4 years

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Online Research, a quick guide

Whether you're writing a school paper, fact-checking an article, or just curious to learn more, online research is something everyone on the net should know how to do.

Step 1: Get Your Key Words Right

As easy as it would be to say step one: open Google, the reality is, that’s rarely the step people are confused by. What the hell do I type to get relevant results? That’s the real question.

Advanced search tools like searching between certain dates, searching specific URLs, excluding certain search terms are infinitely helpful (learn more about using advanced Google searches here), but remember to choose words that are prevalent to what you’re trying to know.

If you’re trying to find a word you don’t know/can’t remember you can often look up “(subject) vocabulary”, “(subject) glossary”, “types of (subject)”, to find the search term you actually want.

Try to leave out prepositions, is/am, what/where/why/etc., You don’t always want more search words, you want better search words.

Let’s say I want to look up Marina Abramović, but I can’t remember her name, I could look up “famous female performance artists,” if I remembered a name of one of her famous pieces, I could look up “the artist is present,” Or maybe I’m trying to find a piece I don’t remember the name of. I could look up “Marina Abramović flower gun scissors” and find it was called Rhythm 0.

But let’s say you want to more than names or pictures. Or maybe the knowledge I’m looking for is much more obscure. That leads us into,

Step 2: Go Beyond Google

Google, despite being a loathsome capitalistic entity selling all of our data and destroying the concept of privacy, is a pretty good search engine. But it’s not the only tool in your research tool belt.

Wikipedia, despite being infamous for misinformation, has sources attached to each article. When you see a sentence that ends in a little number on Wikipedia? Click on that. Go to the footnotes, scroll through the sources. Many of them may be available online (though watch out for circular sources, sometimes a wiki article may cite a source that cites the wikipedia article!)

Going deeper than Google and Wikipedia, try jstor, Project Gutenberg, Cornell University Press’s online database, or specific universities and libraries. Here’s Harvard’s online library! You can even search the Library of Congress if you want!

Universities and your local library (or at least County or State library) have their own websites as well. It can be hit or miss with stuff available online, but it’s worth looking, and if you end up going in to rent a physical book? Well, that’s pretty cool, too right?

While these sites may not be as neat, speedy, and user-friendly as Google, more specific filtering tools, as well as useful citations.

These specific sites will also offer more narrowed results than Google, which is what you want! Because if I type in “intersectional feminsim” to Google, I’m going to get a popular New York Times article or a random blog instead of a peer-reviewed academic paper.

Step 3: Battling Paywalls

Unfortunately, once you find an article/essay/book you want to read, it may be stuck behind a paywall. If you don’t have the money to pay for it (understandable) don’t have the time/energy/know-how to hack your way in (also understandable), you still have options.

1. Read the preview/forward*

Often times there will be some kind of preview, forward, or summary you can read even if you don’t have access to the full article. A well-written summary will get across the thesis of the text even if it doesn’t go in depth. It isn’t perfect, but it will give you a sense if the full paper is even worth pursuing.

*This option is great if you’re just trying to fill out a bibliography for a research paper.

2. Google it

I know, I spent all that time talking about how using these other sites is the way to go! But, like I said, Google is, for all it’s faults, good at what it does.

If you type in the name of the article you want and its authors, and maybe .pdf, you might find it among Google’s ebooks or hosted on some .edu (though don’t download things from sources you don’t trust! Pdf’s can come with viruses.)

3. University Logins and Password Sharing!**

In college? Cool! Your school is almost guaranteed to be partnered with one database or another (often multiple!)

Try logging into one of these sites with your student credentials. The sites will often list which universities they have partnerships with and/or your school’s website/library will list which databases they’re partnered with and offer directions for how to login. Speaking from experience, this circumvented the paywall for articles/essays I wanted to read roughly 80% of the time (caveat: I went to a large university partnered with many databases).

Not in college? Also cool! But do you have a friend or family member in college? Possibly!

Ask if you can borrow their login info. If that’s a no go, ask if they can download a pdf/ebook for you.

**This method usually only works as long as you’re an active student of the school. Alumni do not always retain access to logins like this.

4. Contact the author***

I get it, I have social anxiety too, but there’s no harm in a little email or facebook message or something. I wrote a script for you.

Hello (_author’s name_),

I am doing research on (_subject_), and am very interested in reading your paper (_insert article title here_), but (insert reason you can’t access it: i.e. you’re a broke college student/it’s behind a paywall/you can’t access it online). Would it be possible for you to share the paper with me?

Thank you, (_your name_)

Often times, the author is not making any money from their article/essay’s publisher. This is especially true if the text is older/out of print. Many will be happy to share their work.

***Not the best option for students who procrastinate as the author can take a while to get back to you if they ever respond at all.

***Also this works less well with books. But try asking anyway.

#long post #online research #academia

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phoenotopia · 4 years

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2020 May Update

I hope you're all staying safe and healthy during this time of Coronavirus!

We continue towards the finish line, slowly, but surely. Coronavirus did throw a few wrenches in our plans. Our talks with a publisher about a possible sponsored appearance at an upcoming event stalled.

But that was always just a possibility. We have a backup plan. If we didn't win a sponsor, we were just going to pay our own way to a convention. That's what most indies do! Anyway, that's canceled too. It doesn't seem like there'll be any conventions to showcase in the near future...

Nevertheless, we did move forward in other areas. We've got the press materials ready as well as the game's official launch site up. You can view it in its prelaunch state at this link. NOTE, It is in a "prelaunch" state, so some media links are being withheld until reveal time. But there are a bunch of new pictures and artwork you can look at.

You might notice the link reads "phoenotopia.wordpress.com". The plan is to direct "phoenotopia.com" to it in the near future. That means if you wanted to reach this tumblr specifically, you'll have to visit it at its tumblr link, "phoenotopia.tumblr.com" (which, I just noticed doesn't work... huh). Anyway, since this is a dev blog, I'll talk a little bit about the journey of creating the website.

SQUARESPACE vs WIX vs WORDPRESS

I actually tried 3 different services (in the above order), before I settled on wordpress. I did a bunch of researching, and most reviews seemed to point at WIX >= SQUARESPACE >>> WORDPRESS.

I went with Squarespace first, since it was recommended a bunch on some youtube videos I saw (guess marketing works). Even though it didn't win outright in the reviews, my impression of it was "less quantity, but more quality." I tried it and found it serviceable. It was kinda sluggish, with some not so intuitive areas. I had to ask for help a few times for some things that would seem simple ("how do I change the BG and font color and of the music player?", etc).

That was last year, when I *thought* I was near launch and would need a press site soon. One year later (present day), it was time to create a press site again, and since my website with Squarespace expired (I had only signed up for a trial period), it was a good opportunity to try Wix, especially since Pirate had lots of praise for Wix.

My impression of Wix was that it was... too distracting. After I chose a theme, in the editor view I felt bombarded by menus. Everywhere you move the mouse, things kept lighting and popping up. And it was slow. So I guess it was sorta like Squarespace, but maybe even a little worse?

(Easy ways to preview the website from phones and tablets was one of wordpress’s neat features)

What prompted me to try Wordpress was one of their slogans "35% of the web uses WordPress". If it's good enough for 35% of websites, it's good enough for me! I ended up liking it most of all. It's definitely less featured, which suited me, since I'm not trying to create something too fancy either. Unlike the other website builders which emphasize free-form, wordpress was more rigid. I couldn't drag and drop an element just anywhere - I found that comforting in a "I can't screw this up" sorta way. The most important thing was that it was fast. Loading the editor view to Wix took 11 seconds vs 4 seconds with Wordpress. And the speed advantage of wordpress extends across every action. Similarly, when Chrome launched 10+ years ago, it was also less featured vs Firefox, but it became my choice browser. I guess speed is something I value highly.

Anyway, my experience is from a drag/drop perspective with minimal coding. This is also NOT a paid advertisement. However, if wordpress would like to send some money my way, I would not be opposed... (call me!)

Achievements, Bugfixes, and Cleanup

Lots of small tasks and polish was done over the past 2 months. I finally fixed the time tracking bug - important because the Speed Run achievement depended on it. I also finally finished implementing all the technical stuff for the achievements. There was a bug where some enemies would stack up too many light sources, causing them to appear too bright and drain system resources. That's now also fixed. Lots of other small ones that don't bear mentioning.

A neat trivia about the game is that there's a final super hard achievement for those seeking to prove their mastery over the game. The player has to beat the game having never picked up a heart or energy upgrade. When playing under this constraint, some enemies can even kill the player in one hit! In the game's most current iteration, even I failed to achieve it, so I'm definitely going to have to go in and tweak things a little more.

Age Ratings

I went and got the game's age rating. I did a little research on this - it's quite fascinating. ESRB would be the age ratings board for the United States (where I'm based). But if you were in Europe, you'd get a PEGI rating. Then there's ACB for Australia and so forth. So if you wanted to launch a game globally, you'd have to deal with this process over and over, and each country rates things a little differently... that's a lot of work!

Enter IARC (International Age Rating Coalition), which aimed to simplify the process by being the one standard that you apply to, and from which you could then get the equivalent rating for all participating countries. IARC is an entirely automated process - probably necessary due to the boom of digital titles across all platforms, particularly mobile.

IARC is great for me, because they relaxed the standards for getting a rating. From my understanding, the process used to be more difficult. And you'd have to pay ESRB a hefty chunk to get a rating, but with IARC, it's totally free! So long as it's for digital and it's used only on licensed sites and store fronts. If I wanted to launch the game physically, I'd have to deal with ESRB on an individual basis again.

Without further ado, here's Phoenotopia's IARC ratings:

Fascinating... Phoenotopia is rated "Mature" in Australia... but for "Horror". Which seems suspect. The horror elements are rare (remember Dreadlands?). But when I was answering their questionnaire, they provided a video example of what they considered "horror", and it was pretty mild. About as mild as my game, so I checked that box. It is what it is...

We also got a "Teen" rating for ESRB for reasons of Fantasy Violence and "Mild Blood". This one is kinda iffy. In the game, if you hit a giant bug, it spits out a few drops of green blood. Does that really count as blood? Ocarina of time skirted by with an E rating 2 decades ago, and it let a dude spit out green blood. However, since IIARC is an automated process, I didn't see any place to dispute. But also, I wouldn't have disputed it anyway. A "T" rating is cooler than an "E" rating!

I'd like to mention this is not a paid advertisement for IARC. However, if IARC would like to send some money my way, I would not be opposed... (call me!)

Submission

I expect to polish the game for about 2 (maybe 3) more weeks. After which, I'll be submitting the game to the console "authority". From my understanding, I'll then have to wait a month while they "inspect" the title. After which, I'm then cleared to have an official launch date - which I'll probably set to be 1 month after getting approval.

So the plan is to have a very short marketing campaign. The reveal trailer will basically drop 1 month before release. And we're going to sprint to the finish line. Some marketing campaigns are 6 months to a couple years. Ours will be one month... Let's hope it works.

Wrench

That's what the plan looks like right now, but there is a possible upcoming wrench in this whole thing. I recently learned that my version of Unity is too old. Games running on old Unity versions are not automatically accepted - so I'll have to apply for an exemption. If the exemption gets rejected, we can't launch without upgrading, which will require *significant* work...

This came as a surprise to me. When I started dabbling in games development a decade ago, the most common advice I found online was "Make Games, not Game Engines." I interpreted this to mean lock in your technologies. There's always going to be a new and shinier bell or whistle, but if you keep chasing it, you're not going to work on the actual content of the game. That's probably what kept me to releasing the original game on Flash. That was a game I was making as a hobby while working a full-time job. By the time I quit my job to go full-time indie dev, Flash had long been a dead technology. But I remembered "do you want to build game engines or games?" And so I pressed forward.

So that mindset could potentially backfire here. If PC was the lead SKU, we wouldn't have these issues since PC is more relaxed as a platform. Consoles, as I'm now learning, have an ever forward shifting window of technologies. If we get rejected for the exemption, there's a couple ways we can play it. One, we go through the pain of upgrading which will take months... Two, we pivot and make PC the lead SKU again, but have to handle porting that plus its specific features, which will also take months...

So why is updating such a big issue? Unity has changed drastically over the years. When I started, it was a lot less 2D friendly. They didn't have an official 2D tilemap solution, so you had to build your own or buy a 3rd party library from their asset store. I used 2DTK for tilemaps - 2DTK is now entirely deprecated. Similarly, I had to search for and purchase a good asset to display crisp text - since you couldn't even do that in Unity back then (heh). That's the story for a lot of old Unity stuff. Think of it as a first mover's "disadvantage".

Hopefully it won't come to that, since I'm pretty spent as a developer. I've been ready for this to be over, and I know many of you feel the same. Hopefully soon! As usual, I'll update in 2 months at the latest (end of June). An update might come earlier if we have some good news to share sooner. Until then!

Fanart and Cosplay

This first picture comes from roccy_chair and shows Gail basked in light. I like how her pose and equipment together form an "X". That's a neat hidden symmetry. The way she floats also kinda reminds me of Crono's "Shining" spell. Perhaps Gail should have the ability to cast spells? Hmmm...

Cody G returns with a new art depicting the 2 Moonstone enthusiasts. I like Fran's starry-eyed expression here. That's true love on display. I also like how the Moonstones are depicted as flat and coin-shaped. Very unique! Also note Gail makes an appearance in the back :D

Thanks to M1shaaa for this cosplay of Gail! There's a lot to like here! The vibrant pink hair. The costume with 3 stitches across the vest. The pose with slingshot, accurate to Gail's depiction in the box art. Amazingly, this might also be the very *first* cosplay of Gail! Will and Pirate both alerted me about it excitedly since they were pretty stoked. We joked that we crossed the final milestone in terms of fandom.

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i-am-just-a-kiddo · 3 years

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2020 year in a review

thanks for tagging me @vishcount, eventhough you probably know all of these answers already. i don’t know if i am gonna do the other one, let’s see. tagging @the-cloud-whisperer, @sassyassassy, @intyalote as usual, if you have fun with this! I really tried to rank these amongst the top five, which was a personal challenge for me, so don’t take these rankings too seriously. my answers below the cut cause there is a novel incoming:

Top 5 Movies you saw this year

I don’t watch many movies in general, though I have seen quite a handful this year actually? I might have forgotten half of it already tbh

Moonlit Winter (2019) -I have been waiting to find this movie online for ages, so I was incredibly happy when I finally found it at the beginning of this year. It’s wonderful, heartbreaking and raw - about the relationship between mother and daughter, about lost queer love between the mother and her friend, about life in general. I cried buckets.

Parasite (2019) -do I have to say anything? I don’t think so, this movie defined many this year right?

The King and the Clown (2005) -pleasantly surprised by this one, it made me cry and sad and it’s not a happy gay story but it still touched me so much. also the production is amazing

Mulan (2009) -I rewatched this movie this year after hearing about the chaos that was Mulan 2020, and it still gets me; I don’t know what it is, but it might be the last part of the movie that always hits me like a train and I am back to thinking about it

Inside The Girls (2014) -not actually a good movie with a horrible name, but certainly interesting and had some potential?? I am listing it because I had a lot of fun watching it with my dear friend vish and it was fun sharing our opinions on that, but I don’t actually recommend it that much (unless of course you wanna see Cheng Yi and Yin Zheng in a movie together being assholes)

Top 5 TV shows you watched this year

I probably watched around 20 shows this year so picking this was hard somehow? I feel like I forgot some gems but I guess these are the ones that stood out to me

Nirvana In Fire (2015) -by far the best show I’ve seen in a long time. The plot, the characters, the production - it really blew me away. I can’t recommend it enough because I still cry about it.

Winter Begonia (2020) -Funny how I am listing this here so high considering the split opinions I have about this show but damnit, in the end it won me over. It was truly something else wow.

The Stranded (Netflix 2019) -Another surprise, but I just remembered this little show and it was so good? I really hope we will get a second season because I loved the first one and it was way too short. Also the production of this is so stunning, as well as the interesting set of characters.

Original Sin (2018) -This was a gem I discovered in the latter part of the year, mainly because of Yin Zheng, but when I watched it, it hit my mood perfectly. A crime show that has a beautiful atmosphere and is focused on characters. It has its faults and if you watch it for the cases and the plot, it’s not the most outstanding show but damnit, I watched it twice and loved it.

YYY: The Series (2020) -Amongst all these BL shows out there, this is my personal gem. It’s a wild ride of crack and sweetness, so enter at your own risk. let me just say I did not expect to bawl my eyes out at this tiny cracky show.

Top 5 songs of 2020

it really sucks having to choose only five songs but here I go from the huge amount of stuff I have listened to

Black Swan by BTS -this is pure art. in every way, it caters to my taste. I have nothing else to say except that it owns my soul. the visuals, the atmosphere, the music, the lyrics, the performance. it hits all marks and hurts me on a personal level.

Strange (feat. RM) by Agust D -this mixtape saved me and choosing my fave song from this was difficult but I guess I have to name this iconic collab. The lyrics of this are truly....something else. if you have time, please go check them out, as well as the entire mixtape.

Pain by Vaundy -I have been very obsessed with this song and this singer, he has my heart.

Rien à prouver by Yseult -again, I am just obsessed with this song and her voice, Yseult truly is a goddess to me at this point

Zombie by Day6 -perfectly captures my mind, my life and my state this year.

Top 5 books you read in 2020 I have only read two novels this year, everything else was either university stuff or poetry, so this is what I am mostly listing here.

Gyeongju. The Capital of Golden Silla by Sarah Milledge Nelson -I used this as my main source for one of my fics I wrote this year and it was perfect. I spent an intense week of only researching for this topic and had a blast; especially this book was a blessing because it gave a good overview of what life back then could have been like.

Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater -one of the novels I read this year and I’ve been waiting for this for ages. Like the other books from TRC, I bingeread it on one day and adored it. Am excited for the rest of the trilogy and this new adventure!

Beyond The First Emperor’s Mausoleum: New Perspectives On Qin Art, edited by Liu Yang -I read this for one of my lectures and I thought it had very interesting essays, namely Archaeological Finds of the Maijiayuan Cemetery and Qin’s Interaction with Steppe Cultures by Wang Hui; and Qin Cosmography and the First Cosmic Capital - Xianyang by David W. Pankenier.

The Mongol Empire. Betweem Myth and Reality by Denise Aigle -another one I read for lectures and it was a good overview to the broad topic that is the Mongol Empire.

Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong -I adore Vuong’s writing style so I hope to read more of his work. This is a beautiful, raw and honest work and I hope many more will read his book and the stories he has to tell.

+ Bonus: Affinity by Sarah Waters - wlw set in 19th century London; very dark and spooky and very fun to read if you like this sort of atmosphere (as I do).

5 positive things that happened in 2020

i managed to write and create a lot during the first half of this year, which i will treasure greatly. recently i have been struggling a lot - maybe it’s getting back on track now, but i guess i am still proud of all i managed to write/draw/other wise create this year.

amazing new flatmates joined our collective so i feel happy that we have this pleasant dynamic going on currently

i acquired some new housplants which have made me very happy this year, eventhough i struggle a little bit to keep them completely happy. am truly trying my best

i started taking medications for my depression, anxiety and social phobia in autumn and i think it was for the best. i still struggle from time to time but i truly feel a difference and i am glad this worked out mostly smoothly for me

in september we went on a short holiday in on the countryside and on the last night we all went outside to sit on the pier by a small pond. i will never forget this moment because after what felt like ages, i saw a crystal clear night sky. i haven’t seen so many stars in years and i could even see their reflections on the water, it was so magical and breathtaking. i think it was the one moment that still stands out from everything else. i just wish to return there, on my own, and just lie down for hours

anyway, if you have read through this rambling, i wish you a very happy new year and hope things will get better!!

#phew #am finally done with this #i did not expect this to take so long lol #but it's nice #tag game #2020 #personal

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enamoredencoding · 4 years

Text

Ten Things to Promote Long-Term Sburban Survival

So you’ve settled into your session over the past few months, probably had your first brush with death already. The frenzy to adjust to your new life is over. You’re in it for the long haul now; what do you do?

Sessions can take years to complete, not to mention lengthening factors like postsessions, ring voyages, and various flavors of extenuating circumstances. Most likely, you’re trapped in a relatively small space with a small handful of other people and not as much imminent pressure as you’ve become used to. (Yes, a Medium counts as relatively small once everyone’s able to fly. It gets cramped.) However, there are some things you can do to stave off boredom and murder alike.

(Note: the author lives in a stable postsession after a full-length session. Not all experiences will be applicable to everyone.)

Garden. And I don’t mean ‘use magic to grow plants’, I mean ‘actually garden with your hands and soil and real, linear time’. I can’t speak for other species, but human moods are drastically improved by the presence of live plants, and you can sometimes eat what you grow! Don’t worry if you don’t have a green thumb; I once killed an “unkillable” succulent, but after two years, numerous texts to my Life player about watering frequency, and patience, I recently graduated from cactuses to bean plants and tomatoes. If your environment doesn’t have sunlight, you can alchemize quite effective sunlamps, especially by enlisting a Light player. If you don’t have seeds, you can alchemize them from most juices and depictions of plants. Fiddle around with XOR a little.

Keep a consistent day/night cycle. If you’re anything like the average Sburb player, you’ve always wished for an opportunity to stay up as long as you want. It turns out that this is terrible! You may no longer be beholden to the Sun, but it’s in your best interest to stick to whatever you and the people around you define as ‘day.’ It helps your mood and energy, and lets you actually have time to see the internet friends you used to stay up chatting to face-to-face every once in a while.

Continue having regular team meetings. (If you don’t have regular team meetings, this might be part of your problem!) It’s important to have a goal, even if it’s just research for the long term. Besides, it’s good to have mandatory check-ins with everyone. If you don’t see someone for a long time, they could be having a rough time, up to something dangerous, or worse. Better to just make sure everyone’s alright.

Keep up your friendships. No, I’m not kidding. Obviously, there are going to be some extenuating, irreconcilable circumstances, but I promise you that they’re rarer than you think. Don’t ever write off a relationship with a coplayer before you genuinely try to repair it or have concluded that they are seriously harmful to you. Someone may have been grimdark or rash or murderous, or perhaps you have, but time changes a teenager. You need not forget wrongdoings against you, but for the sake of your sanity, forgive what you can. Isolation can hurt you as surely as hunger.

Continue your education. You were most likely cut off from whatever educational institution your society had when you started playing, and while you may be enjoying the lack of homework, you’re still missing education. There’s a lot of resources online, and stuff behind paywalls should be easily accessible from Medium internet. Study what interests you, and on your own schedule. Even if it makes me sound like a teacher, I can say with confidence that you’ll be better for it. On a related note, first aid may seem redundant, but it’s still remarkably useful in more situations than you’d expect. The Red Cross or equivalent has free tutorials of all kinds.

Make your house make sense. This has to be a group project, because you probably can’t build your own home. The bottom of your dwelling spire is almost definitely a Fucking Mess, which sucks because you’re the one who has to live in this real-life-Sims abomination. So if you spend a little time and build grist making your client player’s house actually functional, and maybe nag in the group memo a little, they’ll pay it forward and you’ll be able to live into an easily-navigable abode. Just be careful your house design doesn’t let consorts use the gates. (side note: if you’re still reading this, another one of your nakodiles got in again PLEASE fix it you know who you are)

Quests and dungeons. Especially important if you may leave your session in the future, and can net you a grist safety cushion if you won’t. Assuming you have completed your full major questline including Terraforming and many of your land’s dungeons, here are some of the most viable options: Double dungeons: If a dungeon settles back into the ground or similar after it’s done, it most likely has a Super Secret Second Dungeon inside. It’s a video game thing! It has more loot! Check ‘em out if you’re bored; I promise you missed one somewhere. Escort quests: I’m so, so sorry. I know they suck, but they’re renewable and a good source of steady grist income, plus the harder ones are a pretty good way to improve your land reputation. Try to do some on other Lands for a little variety! Mail delivery: only for the bravest o7 Visit ALL the villages (or wherever the carapaces live): You may be sick of them, but they always have some sort of relatively easy problem that makes good exercise when you’re bored. Listen to a podcast or something while you’re doing whatever trivial tasks they want; just make sure to alchemize wireless earbuds so they don’t see.

Practice your aspect powers. You can do cool things because you live in a fantasy world now! ...Says no player for a long, long time after they enter. The only way you can truly discover your limits is to test them. What does your aspect really mean, and how can you apply it? Go back to your base understanding, the one you began to think about when you first started exploring. Think outside the box and believe in yourself; your classpect is probably more flexible than you think. You have the potential for an infinite supply of party tricks.

Connect outside your session. If you’re reading this guide, you already know how to, in some way! However, there’s a lot more out there than wayward guides in the void. For instance, there are wayward guides in the void from other instances of the Game! I’m kidding, guides are the tip of the iceberg. Tumblr, for some reason, is one of the most reliable websites in the ring. (My url is enamoredencoding. Message me if you have game advice and I can either answer you or find someone who can!) Similarly, there are a handful of stable-to-various-degrees Discord chat rooms that you can connect to with Pesterchum until you get a better client. In the physical world, there are scattered player settlements and benevolent moving ships that are happy to accept people.

Get wasted. And no, not that kind of wasted. The term originates from the Waste class, which may or may not be present in your session, but anyone can become an honorary Waste! I can’t say very much about it, but I can ask you this: where is everything better than expected?

#sburb guide #posted from the lighthouse signal so hopefully it'll reach where it needs to

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honeyrose-tea · 3 years

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this has been a strange start to the new year for sure. how are you doing? what did you think of the situation in the capitol? any thoughts or worries about the rest of the month? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on everything. -🌙

thank you so much for the ask💞 almost every day I check my inbox anticipating the next time I'll hear from you. just knowing that someone cares.... it really does a lot for my self-esteem. I don't have many friends right now and the few I do are very busy and have a lot of things they would rather do than talk to me. thank you for making time to listen to me and ask me how I'm doing. you wouldn't believe how many people don't. I haven't always been the most consistent presence for you and I'm sorry. I'm trying to do better and be less selfish because I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that. thank you for always being kind to me, pen pal.

there is a lot I want to say regarding the capitol and the situation in the country in general. as a social science student (and hopefully one day a professor!) these situations are of great academic interest to me. as a bisexual woman and an informed US citizen who cares about my rights I am also very personally vested in American issues. but first I would like to tackle your question regarding how I'm doing:)

I'm doing pretty good. classes have started back up but most of mine are online. I'm thinking of switching to online exclusively because of how much emotional (and sometimes physical) labor in-person classes are, and also for the sake of my health and my parents'. it's funny how so many things we did with ease before the pandemic seem so burdensome now. even small interactions are anxiety-inducing now, and I find myself having a hard time socializing even casually. like a muscle that has atrophied without use, my social skills are awful now. on a happier note, my productivity and creativity are both at all-time highs since social interactions aren't using up all my energy anymore. I brought my record player to my dorm room and I've been listening to a bunch of music, I've also been writing and recording some music of my own. I have a couple of demos and if you or anyone else is interested, I'll post them on here. once I record and edit full band versions I'll put them up on my soundcloud. I've tried sharing some of my stuff with some friends but none of them really care and I don't want to annoy them. besides, it's more for myself anyway. I wang to prove to myself that I can make music and that I can say something worth saying. a lot of my struggle over the past 6 months has been that I feel as though nothing I do or say can change anything, that none of my actions matter. I struggle a lot with control and I've been working on it for years, but it's still really hard for me. anyway. I'm enjoying class and what I do outside of it. I've been in my element living alone again (in my dorm) and feeling free to wear/do/say what I want, when I want. I wash my dishes and sing to myself and manage my time and drink lots of artificially sweetened and heavily flavored coffee without anyone around to judge me. and I get to cry and masturbate when I want, both of which are helpful in regulating my moods. I don't know. it's not like I'm doing anything exciting, but I am doing each thing I do well and with a happy heart. I feel like this portion of my life is something of a hibernation- the winter seasons combined with the pandemic have me in a cozy little daydream, reading and self-reflecting and getting back in tune with myself and my passions. I have a feeling that the spring and summer will be very vibrant bustling months so I am trying to enjoy my rest and soak in as much knowledge about myself and the world around me as I can. it's hard for me to live in the present and not get antsy (connected to control issues, I think) but I'm getting better at it. on the subject of the future, I've also been using this time to look into grad school and prepare for the GRE (a standardized test required for most grad school applications, similar to the ACT/SAT). I'm learning a lot that I didn't know since neither of my parents went further than undergrad, and I'm getting excited. I'm really looking forward to doing research. I've already been collecting some thesis ideas for an undergraduate-level thesis that I have to complete next year for the honors college, and hopefully I can turn that into a masters and/or PHD thesis when the time comes. now, on to more important matters than my silly little life.

I have very complicated feelings about america. I do have some attachment to some of the original ideas that are at the foundation- "bring me your huddled masses...", "all men are created equal", the general spirit of democracy, etc.- all of these are valid and worth keeping (in some form) to me. I think a lot of good people and ideas exist around us and I believe that we must be as empathetic and kind as possible to one another in order to navigate the current climate and preserve the good that we do have. that said, america was also founded on some pretty terrible, bigoted principles and our history- as well as our present- is marred by injustices. our society has become highly individualistic because of capitalism, and it has resulted in considerable division on every level. the competition that fuels capitalism is like an invasive species of plant, it does not only exist within our economy but it slithers out into our social world and the way we relate to others. I think capitalism coupled with our post-enlightenment founding is the source of most all of our problems as a country. capitalism has taken root in america in a way more malicious and all-consuming than in any other culture, because it was there at the beginning of our country and all of our social norms have grown out of it. many other cultures have existed long before capitalism and though it has modified their culture, it has not altogether become it. because america was founded on capitalism, we have no cultural identity outside of it. america is, itself, capitalism. that is precisely why america is experiencing all of the best and worst parts of capitalism at their most extreme. it is why, as I mentioned previously, we are perhaps the most divisive and competitive society in the modern world, and probably in history. we are the richest and most powerful country but we have the largest wealth gap and incarceration rate, among many other extremes.

all of this is to say that the rise of Trump and fascism in this country has been a long time coming, and unmistakably inevitable. to defeat it we will have to break america down to its fundamentals, throw out everything that is unethical and unjust, and rebuild our entire society from there. this is radical and hard to imagine, it will also be very difficult to execute, but I strongly believe that much of our societal systems just cannot be reformed, they must be thrown out and replaced.

the capitol riots were inexcusable and sickening but decidedly inevitable. this has been steadily building for america's entire existence. I think it will get worse before it gets better, as there are already plans for bigger and more numerous protests across the country in the following weeks. that said, I feel hopeful as I see the anti-fascist movement grow in the wake of fascism, I am hopeful as I see many people being radicalized and awakened to the realities of this country's failings. I don't know how exactly we will even begin to rid ourselves of the biases, prejudices, and downright hatred that plagues our country. I don't know how we will relate on an individual level to those with such deeply-ingrained hate in their hearts. I don't know how we will change our systems of government and economy to reflect new cultural values that we begin to build together. I am not sure what the future will hold. I do believe, however, that we will triumph over this moment and that the future will be better. I think that the only way to radically change and unite so many vastly different people and remove the blinders from their eyes is through a terrible, historic awakening like the one we are having now. the situation itself is awful, but I am hopeful that out of this mess we become a nation more committed to justice and to some of the ideals which we have falsely claimed to be emulating for our entire history.

so yes, I am worried about the next few weeks, months, and even years. there is no end to the pursuit of a just society, and I think every informed citizen is always a bit apprehensive about certain aspects of their culture. there will always be problems to combat and injustices to rectify, but I think that we will soon be moving to a better place, that we will remember these moments and say, "never again". I am hopeful, despite seeing some of the worst of humanity in recent days, that these atrocities will bring positive change.

I know that was long and instead of discussing issues about the capitol, or even just current political issues, I expanded the scope considerably and dragged in a lot of things from history and grander sociopolitical theories. still, I think it is hard to talk about the insurrection attempt without talking about a lot more. thank you for reading my takes and caring about them. I spend a lot of time thinking about these things, and it feels nice to share them with someone other than my annoyed professors who want me to shut up so they can finish the lecture and stick to their semester schedule.

I hope you're well and that you're staying safe and healthy. are you in school now too? have you or your family had the virus? thank you for coming to talk to me, I always enjoy it. I'll talk to you again soon💞

#pen pal

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moneysourceyt · 4 years

Text

My Personal Experience With John Crestani’s Super Affiliate System

How It All Started

It all started on one weekend when I was scrolling on my Twitter timeline. My attention was drawn to this one retweet from one of my friends on Twitter. He had retweeted a tweet by John Crestani. I don’t remember much about what exactly the tweet was all about but it was something in the line of “financial freedom” and “making passive income.” I guess I was a little too excited to pay attention to the details.

So, I clicked on the link provided and found myself on what looked like a well-crafted landing page. On this page, John shared lots of information regarding a system that he had discovered and one that he believed could empower beginner and intermediate affiliate marketers.

I wasn’t new to affiliate marketing at that time. The first time I heard of it was back in 2014 when I was doing some online research on how to make money online. After sifting through dozens of scams, I finally managed to sign up for the Amazon Associate program.

Once my account was approved, I simply went to my back-end, picked a few banner codes and pasted them on my blog. At that time, I didn’t know much about targeting the right audience and the need for being niche specific.

So, as fate would have it, my affiliate marketing dream hit a snag. My account was closed within 90 days and that’s because despite delivering some clicks, no one was buying through my affiliate links. To cut the long story short, I completely gave up on the idea of making money online by getting random strangers to make purchases through some goddamn links.

I chose to stick to my day job which to be honest I didn’t like that much. But as any other person looking to pay the bills would do, I had to keep going to the office, deal with numerous client calls and sit in a dimly lit cubicle all day.

So, when I came across John Crestani’s tweet and eventually the landing page, my dream of being independent once again came back to life.

Who Is John Crestani

The reason John grabbed my attention is that he had a story that was almost similar to mine. He was once stuck in a boring day job but unfortunately, for him, he got fired without a clear exit strategy. I can only imagine if I was the one in such a situation. How would I pay my rent? How would I convince my daughter that there was no food in the house or money to keep the AC working?

But John somehow managed to go through it all, effectively building a $500k business from scratch. Having seen it all, John seeks to help you and me learn the tricks and techniques it took him years to master.

I really liked how genuine he sounded but, to be honest, I was still a bit skeptical. That’s because John kept talking about his current affluent life. I even peeped into his Instagram and Facebook pages and realized that he frequently posts photos of himself standing next to Lamborghini’s. Why do you need a Lambo to sell a $47 course?

I am not a fun of marketing tactics that involve showing off what one owns or drives. If anything, it’s always possible to rent a Lambo and fool people on social media that it’s all yours.

In my opinion, if John could spare us all the stuff about his personal life, he can be a bit more convincing and authoritative. Otherwise, one might mistake him for a scammer despite the fact that he’s selling a really good course.

How It Works

So, I started out by signing up for the Internet Jetset program. It’s a subscription-based service which goes for $47. This program comprises some awesome lessons for beginners. In particular, it walks you through some awesome ways to generate valuable traffic without spending a dime.

These are strategies that other marketers hardly talk about. And even if they talk about them, they hardly bother to get into the details as John does.

The lessons are presented in video format. John narrates everything using screen recordings. This makes his courses pretty easy to follow. In fact, you can do everything he says as he narrates to you and that’s because it’s possible to pause the videos and resume when necessary.

What I didn’t like, however, is that it’s not possible to “fast-forward” the videos. So, if you’re already familiar with whatever John is talking about at any given moment, you’d have no alternative than to still listen to it. This can be quite annoying and time wasting.

Also, I don’t know if it’s just me or that John talks really slowly. Some of the lessons could have been 30 minutes but he talks rather slowly and a good number of them go up to 45 minutes in length. The upside is that you get some highly detailed and in-depth training no matter your level of skills.

Also, the Internet Jetset courses are divided into tiny, little portions. Ideally, you should take 1 module per week meaning you’d need several weeks to finish the entire program. Fortunately, you don’t have to finish it for you to start making real cash. You can start using your skills to get the systems up and running. For instance, you can use the skills learned within the Google Free Traffic Module to tap into the power of SEO.

The Upsells

The Jetset is pretty affordable at $47 per month, so what’s the catch? Well, the catch is that you’ll constantly receive emails from John enticing you to buy one of the premium packages on offer. For instance, if you’re already enrolled in the Internet JetSet program, you’ll constantly be enticed to go for the Super Affiliate program which goes for close to $1,000.

There’s also the JetsetLIVE webinars package that goes for $97. You’ll also find the JetSet Xtreme Members course which goes for $187.

I accidentally subscribed to the JetSet Xtreme Members course when I clicked on the link out of curiosity. And instead of being taken to a check out page, I got a message reading “Thank you for purchasing the Jetset Xtreme Members” course.

My Thoughts on the JetSet Xtreme Members Course

This is a platform full of pre-recorded videos of other affiliate marketers who have used this system to successfully make money. The course also provides you with links to third-party tools that you can use to make purchases. At first, I thought these were free tools but upon clicking on them I realized they belonged to other companies and you had to pay up to use them.

So, in my opinion, while the JetSet Xtreme is full of value especially if you’re looking to learn from the experiences of other affiliate marketers, it doesn’t really provide you with free tools. Just a bunch of affiliate links to other services.

I did not find this part of the program to be worth the $187 they charge for it. And for that reason, I claimed my money back. Fortunately, John kept his word and I got back all the money I had accidentally spent on this upsell.

I really liked the fact that the company is made up of honest people. It’s rare to come across companies that are willing to refund money nowadays – so two thumbs up to the Super Affiliate System team.

My Thoughts on the $997 Super Affiliate System (SAS)

While the Internet Jetset program focuses on the free sources of traffic, the SAS shows you exactly what you need to do to leverage on paid traffic methods. In my opinion, the $997 you pay for this course is worth it but only if you’re willing to sit down and learn the tricks. It won’t work like magic.

You see, everyone can place an advert on Facebook, Instagram or even Google Adwords. But if you ask around, you’ll realize that most of those ads don’t convert. It doesn’t matter how much you invest in the course unless you really understand the psychology of the buyer, you’d end up making shots in the dark.

The good thing with paid traffic is that it works almost instantly. That’s unlike the free traffic methods which take months or even years to materialize. So, if you don’t have the time to build dozens of backlinks and implement other SEO tasks for your site to rank (which normally takes years), this strategy enables you to start making money immediately.

And the best part is that besides exposing you to the language of paid affiliate marketing, the SAS course also provides you with 3 core skills. These include:

Copywriting

Data analysis

Research

In general, the SAS is an 8-week course which comprises 50 hours’ worth of content. It also contains lots of additional resources that can help complement your unique strategy.

Week One – The System Setup

This section of the training mainly comprises stuff to do with creating a website, setting up a presell page and rolling out Facebook ads.

Week Two – Understanding the System

Introduces you to the core skills of online business. It also aims to help you unlock a super affiliate mindset so you can profit from different situations.

Week Three – Marketing Skills

How do you get people to click on your ads and convert? As we all know, it takes an expert to hack this. Luckily, those skills are provided within this section of the training.

Week Four – Facebook & Google Ads

Facebook and Google have more than 2 billion active users per month. So, if you were to get a piece of this pie, chances are that you’d make some pretty huge bucks as well. And that’s what John Crestani does in week 4 of his training.

Week Five – Native & YouTube Ads

Ever thought of leveraging the power of native ads? Basically, native ads are ones that are included within a media format. For instance, you can include such ads on your webpage content and so forth. Besides that, you’ll also get to learn how to do YouTube Ads and so forth.

Week Six – Scaling and Outsourcing

Once you have the skills needed to make the first dollars, you’ll need to find ways to grow and expand your trade. Using the tidbits shared in the 6-th week of this training, you’ll be able to outsource and automate quite a number of tasks so you can focus on growing your business.

Week Seven – More Ad Campaigns

Most people usually limit themselves to Google and Facebook. But did you know that there’s a lot of unused potential on platforms like LinkedIn and Bing? In this module, you’ll be able to learn about all that plus a lot more.

Week Eight – Implementing the System

If you’re wondering which ad network to join and which niche to embrace, this is the module you’ll need to take. It’s a highly advanced section of the training that helps you decide the direction you want your online business to follow.

My Results

After going through this program, I’d like to admit that I learned quite a lot. Most importantly, I was able to re-apply for the Amazon Associates program and got accepted. I have been making quite some bucks over the last few years. One of my sites rakes in $1500 while the other one brings about $2000 per month.

My goal is to scale these two sites up – I know there’s potential to make $10,000 per site (per month) with more content and a stronger SEO presence. But that might take time. For now, I appreciate the fact that the investment I made in the Super Affiliate System is now paying back.

The Pros & Cons

Pros

Easy to use

Contains tons of useful advice

Relevant information provided

Well thought out curriculum

John is a good trainer and he takes time to explain different points

They offer a genuine money back guarantee

Pre-built templates for ads

Cons

Customer support only available via email

Quite a few optional upsells included

Frequent emails were sent to market their upsells

Final Thoughts

The Super Affiliate System by John Crestani is not without its flaws. But that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. In fact, as long as you’re willing to learn and implement its contents, you can truly benefit from it. I personally would recommend it to any person looking to make genuine cash in the vast online markets.

You can check it out here.

#money #makingmoneyonline #make money online #make money fast #making money online

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timeisacephalopod · 5 years

Text

Courtship

Have a fun high school ABO AU in which Bucky is a tired omega who’s kind of tired of people hitting on him and Tony happens to be the only one who gives him good courting gifts!

Bucky stares into his locker as some random alpha prattles on next to him about shit he doesn’t care about. He sighs and turns to her, “want to know how to lose about fifteen pounds instantly?” he asks and she frowns.

“Uh, sure?” she asks more than states.

“Get into a car accident and lose an arm,” he tells her. It has the desired result of making her give him a confused and also slightly grossed out look as she walks away.

Beside him he hears a snort and he turns to find some other god damn alpha beside him and honestly how many really feel the need to try their luck today? Can’t they take a hint? “Nice. Should have told her to lose her head though. I mean, you’d have to sacrifice the fact that you lost an arm in a car accident once but it’d still be funny. I could make you a new arm though,” the guy says and Bucky laughs.

“I can do without some weird straw arm, thanks.” Its more polite than he feels like being but he’s pretty sure laughing at the guy’s suggestion is harsh enough. Doesn’t seem to fluster him any and Bucky can’t tell if that’s good or bad at the moment.

“It wouldn’t be straw, but that’s cute. Or disturbing, depends on if someone has handed you a straw arm before.” Bucky doesn’t answer and the guy winces. “Fuck, people around here have no idea how to give courting gifts,” he mumbles and he walks off. Bucky frowns because that’s the first time someone else’s weird behavior managed to get someone to leave him be. He doesn’t think too long on it though, content to go to class instead of worrying himself with it.

Tony’s had the design half made for awhile and he figured the gift was original enough to make him not look like a fucking idiot but apparently some other tool bag went and made poor Bucky a straw arm so he automatically looks better in comparison. Still kind of a weird gift but Tony figures if nothing else its practical and he think practicality is a useful thing to consider when gift giving. Also, without knowing Bucky all that well its kind of all he has to go on.

Bucky looks baffled though, but not the same kind of baffled he is when he gets jewelry, which Tony doesn’t get because he’s never seen Bucky wear any jewelry. Rhodey’s always annoyed that no one gets him any jewelry but mostly because he’d pawn it for money so he can buy stuff he actually wants. Probably another model plane not that Tony would ever tell anyone sniffing around for that information that.

“You made me an arm,” he says, sounding more confused than he looks.

Tony has no idea if this is a good or bad reaction. “Um, yeah. Said I would. And its not straw,” he adds, attempting to make a joke but it falls flat.

“Its metal,” Bucky says, ever the astute one.

Yeah, this has gone terribly. Tony shrugs a little, “um. Better building material? I’ll uh, leave you to it,” he tells Bucky before scurrying off.

Rhodey’s face tells him everything he needs to know when he gets back to his own locker space. He settles a hand on Tony’s shoulder, “I mean, you tried man.”

“Guess the good news is that he didn’t quote Charles Manson?” Tony asks more than states but Rhodey looks like he feels even more sorry for him at that.

“Tones, that should probably be a given.”

Okay, maybe that’s a point but Bucky does manage to pull the weirdest quotes from the even more fucked up sources just to get people to give him a break and maybe not getting a weird line from a cult leader is a good thing. But maybe given Rhodey’s pitying look it isn’t an improvement at all.

Bucky has no idea how the arm is doing any of that but holy shit it works mostly like a normal arm. Grasping stuff is a little difficult because he doesn’t know how to control strength given that his flesh arm has limits this one doesn’t but still he didn’t think it was more than a stunt. He only tried it on for shits and giggles.

“Hey,” he says, finding Tony in the back of the library with, of all things, college math texts around him. Bucky frowns, “what’s with the higher curriculum?” he asks.

Tony sighs, shooting a copy of Macbeth an offended look. “Technically I could have graduated high school years ago but English continues to fuck me over. And I need a couple other credits. But I’m good at math so,” he says, gesturing to his math texts.

Bucky mostly sees letters and his last brain cell checks out because fuck that shit. “Uh huh. How’d you get this arm to do these things? Its like its reading my mind,” he says, lifting his hand and looking at it. Freaks him out still when he lifts it because he hasn’t had a left arm in a year and when it shows up in his field of vision he jumps out of surprise.

“It kind of is-” Tony starts but Bucky cuts him off.

“My arm is psychic?” he asks and why did he have to go say that? The one time he manages to not get a shitty gift from someone who wasn’t at all pushy about it and he had to go say something weird.

Tony laughs though, “I... well no, that’s not technically how it works but I’ll spare you the long winded scientific explanation because a psychic arm is more fun.”

Fuck, Bucky doesn’t know what to do here now. He used to be kind of good at this but that car accident fucked him up pretty good and now his best bet is to get people do go away because he doesn’t want to date anyone. Sometimes he missed the dates and courting were fun because now its a hassle for him because of the newfound anxiety.

“Thanks for the arm, it freaks me out when I see it because I forget that I used to have an arm but this is neat,” he says and immediately flees because that is by far the worst reaction he could have spit out.

Sure social media has its drawbacks but Tony did manage to glean a bunch of information from Bucky’s Facebook so there’s that even if he hates Zuckerberg. Still, every troll has its use so when he shows up beside Bucky’s locker he feels relatively confident in himself at least until he gets a fucking death glare. He stops for a moment, glancing behind himself for some stupid reason before making peace with the fact that Bucky was, in fact, glaring at him in particular. “I can go,” he says, waving a hand around.

Thankfully Bucky relaxes and sighs. “Sorry, I’ve had a bad morning,” he says, picking up the fucking ugliest brooch Tony has ever seen with his thumb and forefinger in disgust and holding it up like a totem of annoyance. Which Tony supposes it is.

“Good news Buck, that’s expensive. Faberge. From the looks of it you could probably get a couple grand for that,” he says and Bucky stares at it him like he’s nuts.

“For tis ugly as fuck beetle looking thing?” he asks and Tony shrugs.

“Rich people like ugly shit.” As a rich person he feels he’s qualified to talk on the subject and frankly he doesn’t get the obsession people have with the tackiest stuff. Even his mom has a weird attachment to ugly things.

Bucky looks back to the ugly beetle brooch. “I think you telling me this isn’t a worthless hideous trinket is better than the actual gift,” he says before he tosses it back in his locker. “I assume you come bearing gifts too?” he asks more than states. He looks tired of it and frankly Tony doesn’t blame him, omegas seem to constantly be drown in attention that betas are jealous of and alphas who suck whine about because why do they have to buy all the gifts? Tony might think that has merit if it wasn’t for the fact that alphas started that trend and continue to enforce it with much more attention than any omega does. Actually omegas seem to avoid the attention but the pretty ones don’t get a choice. Hence Bucky.

He moves a little closer and hands Bucky his next gift. Bucky takes the tickets and his eyebrows go up in surprise, “Rocky Horror tickets,” he says, shocked.

“Yeah, uh. The second one is for whoever. Steve I assume. Musicals aren’t my thing,” Tony says. He watched it for reference and honestly Bucky has some... weird taste. Online research tells him its a classic but its definitely not Tony’s taste.

Bucky frowns, “you gave me tickets to a show you don’t even expect me to take you to?” he asks and Tony frowns.

“Is that not normal? I watched the movie but like... I don’t get the appeal. Why would I go to something that doesn’t really interest me when you have friends that you'd probably rather take?” If he got tickets to something he liked he’d take Rhodey over anyone else unless whatever it was interested Pepper more, then he’d take her.

“I... wow okay. Thanks,” Bucky says, smiling down at the tickets.

Rhodey stares across the parking lot and Tony follows his gaze, frowning. “She’s a lesbian, Rhodey,” he tells him. Rhodey turns to give him a dirty look.

“What do you know, Stark?” he asks and Pepper snorts from the other side of the car.

“More than you because he’s right, Carol is clearly gay as hell and in love with Maria. I don’t know if they know it yet though. What do you think?” she asks him and Tony doesn’t know why. He sucks at this stuff.

“I think Carol knows, but Maria is clueless.”

Pepper nods, looking back over to them talking together. Carol has her head thrown back, laughing at something Maria has said. “You guys are wrong,” he tells them but he has no confidence in his voice so Tony knows Rhodey knows that he and Pepper are right. “So how’s the Bucky thing going?” he asks instead, changing the subject. Pepper looks interested too and Tony shrugs.

“I assume okay. I haven’t found any of my stuff in the garbage so that’s nice.” Pretty sure that brooch would have ended up in the trash if Tony hadn’t told him it was worth money.

“You gave him an arm, how’s he supposed to throw that out?” Rhodey asks and Tony squints.

“Trash cans can hold arms, Rhodey. Serial killers occasionally leave them in there.” Rhodey rolls his eyes at him and that’s fucking rude, Tony’s right and they all know it.

“Well that’s good news! The not throwing out your gifts thing, not the serial killer arm thing obviously” Pepper adds when she realizes how that sounds. “Maybe if he agrees to a date you’ll shut up about him.”

Tony gives her a dirty look because he doesn't even talk about Bucky that much. “Yeah, you’re always on about him,” Rhodey says, happy to latch on to anyone but him being made fun of. Tony gives him a dirty look too. “Don’t look at us like that, its not our fault you never stop talking about him.”

“I don’t talk about him that much,” Tony mumbles.

Bucky starts looking forward to Tony’s gifts because they’re always something that Bucky would like, not something shiny, or something his suitor would like but he doesn’t care about. The gifts show that Tony pays attention to what he says given that he mentioned liking Harley Quinn once and Tony got him a bunch of comics about her. Better than any of the other stuff he got anyway and even if he spends a lot, and Bucky is sure he does, he’s not showy about it. Or pushy and Bucky is especially fond of that.

Some alphas, they go out of their way to give people who didn’t ask for them gifts and then get mad when omegas don’t respond the way they like. Tony clearly wants his affections, but he never really pushes it. So when Tony hands him a gift card to a book store Bucky calls him back. “How do you know I read?” he asks and Tony snorts.

“There’s at least three new books in your locker every week. Usually on cults or serial killers and you have weird interests. Was gunna grab a book on something you read about, but then I realized I have no idea what you’ve already read and you obviously have that information so I figured a gift card might be more useful to you than my stab in the dark.”

A gift card would be more useful to him. Tony isn’t exactly wrong about that, but the fact that he knows anything at all about Bucky’s interests is surprising in its own right. “Do you have any plans tonight?” he asks and Tony smiles brightly for a moment before ehe pulls back a little.

“Not really. I mean I was probably going to watch Star Wars for the millionth time but other than that, no.”

“I’ve never seen Star Wars,” Bucky admits and he laughs when Tony appears to short circuit. “What? I have better things to do. I watch a lot of documentaries,” he says in his own defense.

“Okay but like. Star Wars,” Tony says meaningfully.

Bucky shakes his head, smiling. “Fine, since you’ve taken such an interest in what I like I’ll watch Star Wars with you but be warned that I don’t trust people who give me bad movie recommendations.”

“Star Wars is great, you’ll love it if for no other reason than weird looking aliens and totally cheesy graphics compared to what people can do now.”

#winteriron #tony x bucky #abo #fanfiction #alternate universe

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its-bianca · 5 years

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Studying/Planner Apps

Essential apps for studying, planning, health, etc. Who says everything has to be analog?

These are all the ones I’ve tried and downloaded (unless said otherwise). The ones with the * next to it are the ones I don’t use or have gotten rid of for personal reasons, but still highly recommend all of them.

I go through apps like a child goes through toys. I try them out, get rid of the ones I don’t like. Apps are toys.

There’s tons more, but these ones are the ones that I recommend to people with similar needs and schedules like mine. The ones I haven’t or don’t use anymore are ones I could definitely see being helpful to others or that I’d maybe use in the future if my needs change.

Note: these are things from the App Store, but I’m pretty sure most are available on the Play Store too.

Podomoro Time Trackers

Forrest* - Haven’t tried this because you have to pay for it on the App Store, but I’ve seen everyone go bonkers over this app and how they plant trees for studying, etc. etc.

Plantie - Best and only Podomoro app I still use. Gamified, but not TOO gamified. You just grow fruit, collect, coins, buy more fruit trees. It’s super simple, while still providing really good graphs and charts. Also, it allows you to turn off the feature where it stops your task as soon as you leave the app. Sometimes I need to use my phone for assignments, and I still want to track my time. It’s completely FREE, with GREAT charts as a visual. Other apps need a premium subscription to access the graphs and charts, which is why I love this app because even though the chart is quite simple, it does its job. Although, it doesn’t tell you when to take the longer break and it has to be adjusted manually. That’s fine for me, because I always get disturbed by something before I even get to 4 blocks, and if I waited until I had a big chunk, I’d never get anything done.

Block & Flow: Stay focused* - Podomoro but visualised with stacks of blocks for each day or week. And you can list out what tasks you have for that day and sort out sections for work, reading, school, etc. I didn’t need that feature, which is why I used Plantie instead.

Workflow Timer* - Another good option with options to make multiple tasks lists. One of the simpler and more user-friendly ones. It also looks really good!

Hours Time Tracking* - App for timeblocking, scheduling, and tracking the time while you’re working. It’s not helpful for me, because it’s practically impossible for me to strictly schedule something in my day after school, but could be useful for others. Really easy to makes tasks and separate by color.

Stay Focused* - Simplest Podomoro timer out there. No distractions, no graphs, no gamification, just pure focus.

Planners/Calendars/Tasks

Wunderlist - Great reminder system, intuitive (type in “essay next mon” and it will schedule the task to be due next Monday), syncs everywhere, attach documents, etc. I used this for my assignment list, books to read list, schedule etc. for a long time, until recently where things got hectic and I wanted to make a daily to do list rather than only a master list. I use a bullet journal for school stuff now, but still keep Wunderlist for that shopping/movies/books/apps/websites to check out list.

24me* - Personal assistant, lots and lots of features, with scheduling, to-do lists, notes, journaling, etc. Tracks weather and traffic to and from work/school. All in one.

Google Calendar - I don’t schedule on this, but use it to sync my school calendar with personal calendar. Easy scheduling and you can SHARE your calendar with a friend! All Google apps are made for collaboration basically.

Habitify* - Habit tracker on your phone and tracks progress every day, showing when you skip and reminding you of it. Don’t quite remember why I got rid of it because checking back it seems really good. Might redownload.

Trello* - Kanban boards, “cards” and lists, great reviews. I’ve heard people use it as a bullet journal sort of and project planner though that wasn’t it’s original purpose. I downloaded it for a club thing, but never really used it personally.

Notetaking/Planning/Journaling

OneNote - I use this ALL the time, even though I don’t use my Microsoft account much anymore. My notes are organized and have a hierarchy. Very customizable with headers, notebook sections, pages, subpages, etc. Easy to share with group mates and an okay collaboration space if you want to see each other’s progress on research or something during a group project. MUCH better than having tons of Google or Word docs of notes. Completely FREE for the full experience.

Notion* - One in all workspace for journaling, notes, scheduling, planning projects basically a mini-website for your life and work. Great guide for bullet journaling on Notion from studyblr Eintsein here. Another Notion bullet journaling guide on YouTube here and here. I highly recommend it, but don’t use it since I use an analog bujo, prefer OneNote for class notes, and don’t have much use for it other than that currently. You do have to pay for unlimited notes, but there’s a pretty good amount to start out, and if you really don’t want to pay, there are workarounds to it.

Milanote* - Like Notion, but more restrictions on the free version. I don’t use it anymore because I’ve realized I didn’t really have a good purpose for it and it cluttered up my phone. In a way, it’s more ~aesthetic~ than Notion, but there are less things you can do. It does have a better learning curve though.

Evernote - I don’t use it often, but I have it to take quick notes or other stuff. Evernote is like a god in the notetaking world, because it’s user friendly, quick, and syncs up really easily with everything.

Health

7 Minute Fitness - There’s a lot of these out there. Go find one or two. Don’t be sedentary.

30 Day Fitness Challenge - Same concept as above.

Simple Habit - FULL of free mostly 5 minute guided meditations (though there’s premium access). There’s no excuse now. Also, I used to try 10 minute meditations on Headspace which made me really sleepy. 5 minutes work best, because they’re quick, and if you want more time, just move on to the next part in the series or find another one. Lots of free series for basically any subject (school, women, mothers, grade anxiety, sleep) and SOS mode. Unfortunately, you can’t download any of them in the free version.

AloeBud* - Self-care pocket companion. Make reminders on your phone for every self-care thing you can think of. Schedule notifications multiple times a day with personalized messages.

TaoMix2 - Mixer for relaxing nature/white noise sounds. It’s pretty restricted in the free, but it’s enough for me.

Cove* - If you’re a music person, this app let’s you make quick music and tunes matching your mood. A sort of an easy music therapy if you’re not good with instruments or composition.

Reflecty* - Little journal buddy asking you fun/reflective questions about your day and tracking your mood. It’s short and sweet. Each entry is a “story”.

Oak* - Great for breathing and very simple guided meditations. Breathing practices for anxiety, freshening up, and calming nerves before a big performance. It just takes 15 seconds to breathe.

Grid Diary* - Journal prompts in grid fromat. Customizable daily prompts.

DayOne Journal* - Again, RAVING reviews. Everyone loves it. I haven’t used it because I prefer analog journals, but it’s a pretty good for travel journals with pictures, audio, video, etc.

UVLens - Reminds you to put sunscreen on throughout the day depending on your skin, activities that day, and type of sunscreen.

Flo - Period tracker. Need I say more?

Tasty - FOOOD (by Buzzfeed). New recipe ideas, includes shopping list, make your own cookbook.

KitchenStories - MORE FOOOOD. Includes Asian and international cuisine since it’s crowd-sourced.

Miscellaneous

Audiobooks - Audiobooks from the Gutenberg Project, but in app form. You can download classics for free, etc. There are some paid audiobooks, but they’re usually for better narrators/text corrections, so absolutely not necessary to get lost in an old book. Jane Austen, Charlotte Brönte, L. Frank Baum, all the good stuff.

Daylio - Tracks mood, activities, with intuitive charts. You can edit moods and activities shown per day. Free version is pretty good, and it replaces the need for making a habit tracker in my journal, because I don’t like making those.

Scannable - Very intuitive scanning app. I’ve used this for many legal/important documents and nobody had a clue it was “scanned” on a phone. It makes regular photos of documents easier to read and look like it came from a scanner. It can share as a PDF or jpg. Granted, you need good lighting for the best quality.

Google Docs, Spreadsheets, Slides - Everyone’s probably used this before, but to reiterate, this is the best collaboration app/website. Super easy to share with real-time tracking and updates.

BEAKER by THIX* - For chemistry people. Mix compounds/elements together, make new compounds, see their reactions. Don’t have much use for it since my chemistry class is moving at a glacial pace but I could see this being useful for others.

Chemtriz - Same as above, but gamified. You take elements and put them together in the right configuration to make compounds.

PictureThis - Plant Identifier - Weird addition to list, but it’s a cool app to get back in with nature. Now I know what a boxwood plant looks like.

IFTTT* - Hard to explain, but it enables different apps that don’t usually work together to work together. So if you input something in an email, you can make it go into a Google Spreadsheet(?). Just go check it out. It’s cool. Many shortcuts, track stuff in the Health App, get emails showing cool NASA pictures.

Canva - AMAZING graphic design app/website for those who can’t use Photoshop (ie. me). It’s better online, but there are hundreds of templates for magazines, book covers, planners, posters, flyers, and basically any graphic design needs. Many free graphics and photos ready to use. Premium version is NOT necessary to get full benefits from this program. I used it to create this calendar for my room.

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