.

wonder if part of why the swtor jedi-sith conflict plays the way it does with “sith stans” and etc because the sith empire are functionally saturday morning cartoon villains - “murder and mayhem await!” compared to the more, i guess, believable evil of the republic/jedi following good ideals to bad conclusions and justifying war crimes

I'd certainly say it doesn't help things, you're right! I have...a lot of issues with the Jedi and their portrayal (especially in the Legends/SWTOR era), but I also recognise that a lot of that is very personal to me and that another fan might feel differently. Long, ranty post ahead so if that's not your deal, skip this one.

TL;DR: thinking critically about the behaviour of the Good Guys bad, I guess, since they're the good guys and you're obviously not allowed to use your own agency to decide something they do makes you deeply, viscerally uncomfortable.  And God help you if you disagree with anything they do and cite personal experience behind your (very justified) avoidance of that rhetoric/teaching, because Bad Things Justified If Good People Do Them and how dare you have different personal experiences and responses. If that's what you do, you're doing fandom wrong /s Also, bad writing choices of the writers themselves that perpetuate toxic, harmful viewpoints and/or stereotypes don't mean anything when said viewpoints/stereotypes are the Bad Guys because...Bad Guys Aren’t Supposed To Be People With Rights, Thoughts and Feelings Too, They’re Just Evil, (cringe)

Disagreeing with someone’s opinions is fine, but if you’re going to deliberately expose yourself to content you don’t like and then attack the person that is making the content because they made it and it upset you when you went looking for it....you are, in fact, the one at fault babes. No one is holding you hostage, you can block tags or unfollow a person (especially me. I really don’t care honest to god, if my posts are not your jam just leave. please.) if you hate what they post so much and are unable to just scroll past things you don’t like to stay for things you do. I’ve done it and will continue to do so, and my fandom experience is happier for it. Also, people are human and sometimes we’re tired and we make mistakes like we miss a trigger tag, and you are within your right to come to the person and point that out, but you are not within your right to threaten them because they made a mistake. Then you’re just a dick.

But I still wouldn't be the one going around (passive) aggressively attacking other fans for disagreeing with my opinions and again, this is based on personal experience, but I've seen a lot more of that stuff from "pro-Jedi" people who seem to be conveniently okay with shit like mass-genocide and cultural erasure because "the Jedi are the good guys and the (OT) Sith are fascists!"

I don't interact with the subsect of fans that do think "the (OT) Empire did nothing wrong hurr durr" unironically (and for good reason, I don't agree with that viewpoint either and the fact that half the time the "defence" of these other fans is "well you're pro-fascist then!!" lmao) but there's a very big gap between the OT Empire which is rightfully a mirror of fascism and dictatorial governments and I do, in fact, raise my eyebrows in heavy criticism and disdain at the writers of the TOR-era deliberately choosing to "justify" the ultimate end being said fascist Empire by making the Sith species (and as always I preface this by saying I am in fact white & therefore know I have priveledge and can only "relate" on a much shallower level as POC fans, but there are places where I do find them more relatable than the TOR-era Jedi which reek of conservative, pearl-clutching Christianity (which I spent way too much of my life having forced upon me by the bible-bashing Evangelists(tm) in my family) to me and I just don't have the fucks to give to spend time fixing something that's honestly traumatising for me to be reminded of):

-heavily Indigenous/POC-coded

-"tribal" and not in a properly-researched and respectfully portrayed sense but in a very deliberate "these people are savage and need to be colonised and "sophisticated" by the More Acceptible (Human) Dark Jedi" even though they had their own society, belief systems, and even had technology - just not in the "socially acceptible, conventional sense" I guess

-perpetuating this by adding slavery and all of that can of worms into the mix too, just to drive home the "evil and bad" prototype ig. I'm not even gonna speak more on this part because it just makes me angry.

-Deliberately giving them more "alien" or inhuman characteristics, which while by itself is not necessarily a bad thing, put it together with all the other things?? Big. Fucking. Oof.

-Were literally exterminated and the survivors selectively bred for ONLY the "bad and evil" traits for not agreeing with the Jedi's beliefs. Their own practises and beliefs were automatically "evil" and "wrong" just because they didn't want to "convert" (sniff sniff, Christianity, is that you?)

A direct quote for those who can't be bothered to click and read the link:

For nearly two thousand years, superstition, loyalty and sympathy were bred out as the two groups interbred, and qualities such as cunning, ambition and affinity to the Force were favored, which shaped Sith society over the centuries.[3][21][22] In the Sith Empire, as time progressed pure-blooded Sith were steadily bred out,[6] resulting in only a few pure-blooded Sith left in the Sith Empire by the time of the Great Hyperspace War.[13] Long after, the true species in the Empire were believed to have gone extinct due to the interbreeding process.

And conversely the Jedi:

-Deny young children contact with their parents, siblings and families from the moment their Force sensitivity shows (hmmmm. )

-Continually and actively support the condemnation and Exile of "imperfect" Jedi, hell, it's even pointed out on Wookieepedia, that any Force sensitive, even those who are not aligned to either faction, but that train with or follow teachings that are not Jedi Approved (tm) is labelled as a "Dark Jedi" by the Jedi Order

Although "Dark Jedi" originally referred to a Jedi who had fallen to the dark side, it could also refer to uninitiated Force-sensitives who received no Jedi training but began their careers under another Dark Jedi. Others were simply dark-side users who did not follow the teachings of the Sith or other dark side organizations.

because "oh noooo you do not follow the way of the Truth and the Light you horrible person how dare you defy The One True Correct Teaching, that makes you the Devil Incarnate no matter what" UGH.

-Continuously push the idea (very heavily) that Emotions Are Bad, which just creates a bunch of emotionally-stunted powderkegs unable to recognise, confront and deal with said emotions (and as I've said, I would know, I was one and maybe still am in some ways lmao) , then blames said powderkeg for exploding because they were never taught how to handle the emotions in the first place.

(Fuck "there is no emotion, there is peace", that's not how people work and never will be lmao)

I don't really know what else to say about this to be honest, because even though I've only been on tumblr about a year now, I'm already tired of this constant "I'm right, you're wrong" finger-pointing between those people in the fandom.

Cause to some of these "pro-Jedi" people it's an unthinkable crime to dare to have a different opinion to them and just want to be left alone, I guess. I've literally been attacked for saying "I don't like the Jedi and find dealing with their dogma too traumatising based on personal experience and trauma from my childhood so I'm going to avoid it but you do you"

I've had American Christians (tm) clap back to that with the ever-wonderful "LMAO bitch you don't have religious trauma, you didn't grow up in the bible-belt, stop trying to be edgy, shut up and go to therapy"

(all of this is sarcasm, for those who need me to spell it out for you. I'm still traumatised by the shit I went through and have to constantly check myself and my own feelings because of the toxic "habits" those teachings tried to push onto me as a child and I have zero tolerance and patience for your (not you, ssalmon, but the royal "you" as it were) victim-blaming abuse apologism "gotchas")

because 1) clearly American Christianity and the bible-belt are the only insidious and harmful subsect of Christianity and it's not like the concept of Evangelism as a whole is inherently toxic, harmful, and traumatising to those subjected to it right 2) Obviously there's a Stated Right Way To Be Traumatised and anyone who falls outside of that (Non-Existent) handbook is "faking it for attention" 3) bold of them to assume that curating my own fandom (and life) experience, and refusing to engage with things that trigger me, isn't something that I literally fucking learned in therapy lmao

Also, I find it funny how these are the people going around attacking people like me, who are literally minding our own motherfucking business, but then claim to preach “love and tolerism” and all this other bullshit. Karen, sweetie, only one of us is going around telling people they deserve to be murdered/stabbed for disagreeing with thier opinion about a videogame and pointing out that “hey, that’s...very yikes maybe don’t do that, step back and calm down” and it ain’t me (true story, this happened a couple of months ago and I don’t wanna dredge the post up because it’s very upsetting to think about) People are allowed to have opinions, and they don’t have to agree with your opinion just because that’s what you think, and the second that you sink to sending people death threats because they don’t share your opinion, you are, in fact, the asshole in that conversation.

It was even funnier because the person in question followed me first, I initially thought they were pretty cool so I followed back, then they threw a massive temper-tantrum and threw a bunch of very upsetting and triggering shit at me without my consent because I didn’t agree with them (I’d even put my opinions in tags on MY blog in an attempt to be courteous and not hijack their post with negativity, in hindsight perhaps I should have made my own post in the first place and I do acknowledge that BUT if that’s all they’d said I would have apologised and moved on, quite gladly, there was no need for them to explode the way they did at me for...making a mistake because I’m a stranger on the internet who didn’t know them & wasn’t a mind-reader and I happened to miss a trigger tag that I didn’t think of at the time lmao)

This post is getting awful long and rambly so I'm going to shut up now, but that's my take on it I guess, I hope that's what you were getting at and if it's not I apologise, I've been taking a huge step back and actively just avoiding any and all major posts related to this discourse as of a few months ago because it just infuriates and upsets me too much, it’s not worth the detriment to my mental health, I’m just here to make friends who are also hyperfixated on SWTOR and have fun vibing and talking about our characters, not get into one-sided morality debates with pearl-clutchers. 🤷

Good morning world. And do you know what I’m thinking about this morning? Keiko (chill, autocorrect) on Deep Space Nine.

Partly because I’ve been thinking about how the show’s done her wrong since a few episodes into Season 1. Partly because, in the wake of the Atlanta shooting, it’s clearly past time to talk about how women of Asian descent are depicted in the media.

Rather go on and on about what the show did wrong, I’m going to start with what it did right, then move on into some suggestions for plot lines that might have gotten the audience into Keiko’s (and perhaps her daughter Molly’s) head better. Feel free to borrow for fanfic purposes. (And let me know if you do, or if someone else wrote some good Keiko and/or Molly fanfic I might enjoy.)

What's right: she’s a, not core character, but sort of second tier character who is on the show often. She has a respectable role: she’s a well-educated professional whose work is important to her, and a wife and mother. We also get hints of her having a life beyond that — not as much as I’d like, but for example at one point in the first season she’s away visiting her mother, and when she’s pregnant with her second child she keeps leading an active life. I think the show strikes an appropriate balance on sexuality: she’s married, we’re pretty sure she and Miles have sex, but she’s not presented as a sex object. And we don’t see her suffering more trauma than the other characters. As of where I'm currently at in Season 6, she's alive, and I have every reason to believe she'll stay alive through the end of the show. (A quick look at Memory Alpha confirms this.) Good stuff.

(She’s also in The Next Gen — parts of that I haven’t watched and others were a while back, so I’m going to stick to talking about her role in DS9.)

And...very nearly all the episodes she’s in, are very firmly from Mile’s perspective and not hers. (Even storylines that really should be about her: when she’s experiencing frustration at not being able to pursue her career and ends up going back to work, that episode is entirely from Mile’s perspective. She barely speaks a word in it.)

Contrast this to how Benjamin Sisko’s son and father are shown: Jake very much gets his own storylines and own life, and relationships that aren’t primarily about his father, even though his dad has a more central role in the show (and we definitely see their relationship from Benjamin’s perspective as well), and even though we rarely see Grandpa Sisko (huh, apparently his name is Joseph), you immediately get the sense of him as a strong-willed person who lives life on his own terms, and when he and Ben have conflicts you can understand his perspective easily. In spite of relatively little screen-time. Keiko gets far more screen time, but far less interiority. She’s presented in a way that’s hard to empathize with. And there’s less of a sense of who she is as an individual rather than as a role.

(BTW, if we got to see Keiko’s perspective more, whose would we see less of? Maybe Miles, who gets quite a lot of focus. Maybe Quark, maybe Julian...basically, I’m pretty sure if I went through the season and marked down which episodes were primarily about male characters vs primarily about female characters vs pretty balanced, the ratio would be telling. And it’s not like I don’t like the male characters (well, maybe I could do with less Quark) but... I don’t like them so much that I think the show is better for having shorted the women.)

I want to see Keiko have friends. I want to see her talk to other parents on the ship as a parent. That episode where Keiko’s off station and Miles has to figure out how to get their new baby to stay asleep? I want an episode where Miles is gone and Keiko has parenting struggles. Where we get into old conflicts between her and her mother or father that she has to work through as a parent herself. (This is not an unrealistic expectation -- we got that for Odo in one episode, and we got a similar thing with Kira processing her father's death while another character was dying.) I want Molly to go on her first sleep-over and Keiko to have conflicted feelings about her daughter growing up and for Molly to have conflicted feelings where she’s excited but...also kinda misses her mom.

I want to see how Keiko’s explaining the Dominion war to Molly and what she’s skipping over. I want to see Keiko worried about her husband (which, granted, we’ve seen that) and getting emotional support from someone else (which we haven’t really.) I want to see Keiko pursuing a hobby other than gardening. I want her to be really excited to introduce Molly to something that she loved growing up. (Specifically a Japanese cultural thing or not.) I want her to take Molly to a holosuite program that shows some Japanese architecture or history or gardens. I want there to be some conversation about language — sure, universal translators, but what do people speak on their own, and what does Molly grow up speaking?

(They’ve got an interracial/inter-cultural relationship and explore absolutely nothing about that.)

Since Keiko was a teacher for a while, is she absolutely obsessing over homeschooling Molly now that there’s no school?

I’m not sure I want to see Miles and Keiko have a “no one’s right” disagreement over how to raise their children, but that’s certainly a thing that could have happened. Or could happen indirectly: Miles isn’t the talking type and yet everyone on the station knows when he’s having wife troubles and are willing to give him advice. Who does Keiko get relationship advice from?

When Keiko and Miles are apart and Miles spends all his time playing darts with Julian or reenacting battles with Julian, who is Keiko connecting with?

(Side note: one thing that Brandon Sanderson does well in his fantasy novels such as the Mistborn Trilogy, is couples that are balanced in power and narrative significance. The show made a choice to have Miles be a more central character than Keiko. There’s no intrinsic reason they couldn’t have been on the same level of narrative significance.) (But even if they were going to be at unequal levels of significance, Keiko still could have been done much better.)

(And you’ll notice the show is almost going out of its way to avoid having any female characters with less significant recurring love interests. When they partner up Kira, it’s not with some guy who’s just nice and fun or a supportive boyfriend (someone analogous to what Leeta is for Julian or later Rom), somehow even though she’s one of the most powerful characters in the show (she’s second in command on the station) she keeps getting partnered up with characters who have more religious or civil power than she does, and who become very narratively significant at least for a little while. Female characters can be just love interests or family members, male characters have to be doing something big and important.)

I think the show overdoes romance, so this wouldn’t be my first choice, but...having an old flame of Keiko’s show up could be a thing that happened. Or having a thing where she notices an interesting stranger, and of course nothing happens because she’s married, but we still get to see Keiko as, you know, a woman with desires and interests that don’t always fit perfectly into her respectable well-ordered life. We could see mirror universe Keiko — I wonder what she’s like. Or some time travel alternate timeline story where she’s with someone else, or single and enjoying the single life. (Surely even if Keiko is overall happy with her life, surely sometimes she must wonder about the roads not taken.) We could have some indication that she too misses Miles when they’re not together, or we could see her excited to get more time away or get their quarters to herself while he’s away, or both because people are complicated.

What are Molly’s adventures? Who is she best friends with? Where’s her tension between growing up and becoming her own person vs wanting her parents’ love and approval? Where’s the episode where we’re all wait, she’s really not a little toddler any more, is she?

(We don’t even know what Molly thinks about having a baby brother — and that’s a huge, highly dramatic change in the life of a child.)

Where’s the episode where she desperately wants some pet that her parents don’t want her to have, or desperately wants some toy or activity that one or both thinks is unsafe, or where she wants to be on a sports team but there aren’t enough kids on the station, or where she has to say goodbye to the Bajoran friends she made, or she starts playing make believe games involving evacuating the station...

What if we got to see Keiko’s mother and learn something about her or the family history? What if Keiko had some aunt or uncle or sibling who showed up on the station some time, what might their relationship be like? Is there some family hero that Keiko’s always encouraging Molly to grow up to be like?

If the show’s writers truly couldn’t handle writing a child that young, this is Star Trek and we have time travel — there’s no reason we couldn’t have an episode involving future grown up Molly O’Brien.

What if we got some terribly retconned explanation for why Keiko, a professionally trained botanist, was mysteriously ready and eager to step into schoolteacher mode even though that’s its own profession that requires years of specialized higher education? Did...did Keiko for some reason study to be a teacher, have something go wrong, and then go with botany as Life Pursuits Take 2? (Perhaps she was pushed into being a teacher then decided she loved botany more? But she didn’t actually dislike teaching?)

What if we actually got an episode centered around her being a botanist and exploring alien plants? There’s possibilities there — heck, one of the most popular TOS episodes centered around space wheat, so why not? I want an alien planet where all the plants are yellow or hot pink because they photosynthesize with something other than chlorophyll. Why not? (Did you know there’s an old school Piers Anthony sci fi book about killer mushrooms? Not joking.)

She’s the only woman of color who’s a regular character on the show throughout the whole series. She’s one of the few Asian-descent women who’s on American TV at all. She deserved better.

And I think we should talk about how she, and other characters, could have been written better.

⭐ SECRET JAPANESE RELIGION EASTER EGGS

Here are two for you, one short one and one long one, both from “linear time is fake,” because I am benevolent and also because I frickin’ love talking about all the wild Easter eggs in this fic.

Short (from chapter 3):

Maybe it’s because he’s using the timestop again or maybe it’s because he’s back in Japan with its fortune tellers in the train stations and Jizo statues on street corners, but his mind keeps circling back to the nature of his Stand.

Jizo is a guardian of travelers, and this is the chapter where Jotaro really starts processing trauma stuff (it’s the first chapter that includes a proper flashback to anything that happened in SDC).

Long (from chapter 5):

Maybe he’ll never know.  Maybe there’s something about this that will always be fundamentally unknowable.  That doesn’t sit right with him. “Don’t look,” his mother had said, but he had anyway.  He’d seen nothing because there had been nothing to see but white curtains, but he’d still had to know.  What did it look like in that partitioned space?  Was there a mirror, a sword, some flat piece of wood?  Was there anything there at all?

So I tend to structure a lot of my fic around wham lines, and I think this is probably the one that packs the most wallop, but nobody who has read it has mentioned it–maybe because it’s one of the most religiously oriented bits of the story?  So let’s break it down (so that you can experience this good gut punch…or at least know why I think it’s one.)

So, first off, this is a callback to an earlier scene in chapter 3, where Holly signs Jotaro up to be involved in the ceremony for the transfer of a shrine and then Jotaro tries to peek as they’re transferring the sacred object from one building to another.  There are a bunch of things happening here, so in order:

On one hand, this is a metaphor for hypervigilance and Jotaro’s inability to Let This Drop.  I feel like that’s probably pretty obvious.

On the other hand, this is very much a PTSD feel–where you’re trying to pick apart trauma and you’re interrogating everything you’re feeling and asking, “Is this real?  Where is this coming from?  Does this have any basis in reality?  (Am I allowed to be feeling this?)”  So that’s very much what’s happening here–Jotaro trying to figure out what Star Platinum is, but also what his own trauma is and where it comes from and whether it’s real.  The sense that some things are essentially unknowable is also very much a PTSD feel–I’ve seen trauma described as an event so incomprehensible that it shatters your ability to understand reality, and that’s very true in my experience.  And you can pick at that as much as you want and ask why this horrible, incomprehensible, senseless thing happened, but there are some bits of it that you may never understand.  (This is part of the reason that I find spirit possession so fascinating as a framework for understanding traumatic experiences, because it basically gives you a tool to bridge that cognitive gap.  You have this inexplicable thing, and you can say, “Wait, no, there is an explanation, but it’s something that is literally beyond normal human experience and comprehension.”)

And on the third, religious hand…one of the major tragedies of this fic is that Jotaro is asking entirely the wrong questions.  He wants to know what was inside the curtains–but theologically, it doesn’t frickin’ matter.  It doesn’t matter what your sacred object is–or even if you have one!  What it is (or isn’t) doesn’t change the reality of the deity; some priests don’t even know what their shrine’s sacred object is!  There are a fair number of stories of “secret Buddhist statues” that are worshiped and venerated for hundreds of years, and then someone from the government comes to do an inspection so the statue can get Cultural Heritage designation and they open the cabinet where the statue is being kept and discover that the statue is severely damaged or has rotted away entirely.  And that doesn’t make the veneration of the buddha in question less real!  So the tragedy is that Jotaro’s asking the wrong questions; he wants to know what Star Platinum is when what he needs to ask is how to live with it.  But he’s so utterly focused on the details and making the inexplicable explicable that he’s unable to say, “Actually, this doesn’t matter, and I need to set aside the unknowable details if I want to move on.”

o83.

[[ Random Survey Questions // By @x-hallie-x ]] 1. When you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, what kinds of things are you likely to do? How often do you find you have trouble sleeping? >> I read when that happens. I don’t have trouble sleeping all that often, but sometimes I’ll have trouble getting to sleep (especially if sleep paralysis is getting in the way) or staying asleep. They’re not really chronic issues, though, and are pretty recent developments.

2. What was the last lengthy packet you filled out? >> I can’t remember the last time I had to fill out something like this. Maybe when I first visited Heartside Clinic?

3. Are you a patient person? What is one way you have a lot of patience? What about not very much patience at all? >> I have a pretty high capacity for patience, just in general. Specific situations that might cause me to be impatient are things like waiting to go somewhere cool or dealing with a situation that I have no investment in but am forced to deal with anyway for whatever reason.

4. At what time during the day do you tend to feel your best? What about the worst? >> I don’t know. I feel pretty much the same no matter the time of day, unless I’m sleepy.

5. What was the last thing you did that you wish you could take back or do differently? >> I guess I could wish I hadn’t had Sparrow take me to Urgent Care when the situation magically cleared itself up on the way there, but the walk back home wasn’t too bad and no lasting harm was done, so... like, whatever.

6. Are there any blogs that you check first thing in the morning or on a regular basis? In general, what kinds of blogs do you like to follow? >> I get notifications for updates from some blogs, so I’ll just check those blogs when I do phone-related activities in the morning, and sometimes throughout the day depending on what else I’m doing. I follow way too many blogs to have a type, lol.

7. How frequently do you stay overnight somewhere that isn’t your own home? What things do you miss about home when you’re away? Do you tend to get homesick easily? >> I stay overnight at other places so infrequently that I actually have a difficult time falling asleep anywhere that isn’t home or the Wayland house (for the first night, particularly; after that, it evens out). The Wayland house gets off easy I guess because I stayed there for the first month when I moved out here. I usually just miss the freedom of being in my own apartment and knowing where everything is and having all my stuff within reach. But I wouldn’t say I get homesick per se, like I love to be other places; I sometimes get the “I want to go home” feeling when I’m overloaded, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I actually want to go home, ya dig.

8. Do you tend to eat more in the beginning of the day or at night? Do you have a tendency to snack when you’re bored? If so, what kinds of snacks do you normally go for? >> I’m not sure. It’s summer right now, so I just eat less in general, which makes my eating habits more nebulous and harder to track. I snack sometimes when I need something else to do with my hands/face, but sometimes I just chew gum for that.

9. If you have any dietary restrictions, do you ever miss foods you can’t have? If not, what’s something you haven’t had for a long time that you wish you could eat again? >> I would love to eat Louisiana food again. One day.

10. What was the best thing to happen to you today? What about the worst? >> I won a $15 Wendy’s gift card at Resident Appreciation Day (Sparrow won $25 to Papa John’s, which we’re going to use later today). The worst thing is, I guess, that I didn’t win the $25 AMC Theaters card, because I really wanted that. :p 

11. Is there something you still can’t do even though you’re an adult or might be expected to do this thing? >> I don’t do well on phone calls and I avoid them as much as possible. I am also pretty unemployable.

12. When was the last time you changed your opinion on a relatively big or serious issue? Overall, do you feel your opinions on things have changed a lot since you were younger or do you still feel the same about many things? What is one opinion you never see yourself changing? >> I don’t remember the last time that happened. But yeah, my opinions on things have definitely changed -- or, expanded might be a better word -- since I was younger... as an especially mercurial individual, I’d be kind of weirded out if they hadn’t. I don’t think I’ll ever change my opinion on religion, though -- I will always be fascinated by it and supportive of it in general, and I will also remain unsupportive of specific religious practices that divide and belittle people.

13. If you have a mental illness, in what ways has it made your life different from those around you? What challenges have you faced, what have you overcome, and what have you had to miss out on? >> I think of myself as neurodivergent, despite the fact that I haven’t been tested for that -- I could be wrong, of course, but then that’d just make all these experiences I’ve had in life even weirder than they already are. Neurodivergence is actually the Occam’s Razor conclusion here. So that would mean my brain developed differently than is common, and my perceptions and philosophies and understanding of the world around me are equally divergent from what is common. I process things differently, I experience emotions differently, I socialise differently, and so on. It’s a pretty pervasive thing. My social development was pretty stunted until adulthood (when I was able to do something about it). I had to learn the intricacies of communication, the differences in the way I respond to things and the ways other people do, how to navigate the world without sticking out like a sore thumb, how to recognise danger, how to avoid social traps, all that shit -- and I guess I picked both a great and terrible place to learn all that stuff in, in NYC, but at least I managed. I’ve missed out on childhood because I feel like I really wasn’t fully present for it, trapped in my own head as I was; I’ve missed out on half of high school because I was usually hospitalised (I’d developed a moderate-to-severe cutting habit due to trauma); I fell off the socially-accepted life path somewhere in high school and never managed to get back on (once the train leaves the station, catching up only gets more and more difficult as time goes on). None of this really bothers me by now, because if there’s one thing a born wanderer will always do, it’s carve a place for itself no matter where it is. I have blazed my own trail. It is mine alone, and I am glad for it -- because no other path would have suited me.

14. Again, if you have MH issues, do you ever wonder what your life would’ve been like without them? If you could snap your fingers and make your illness disappear, would you? Or would something stop you from doing this, and if so, what? >> I mean, I guess I’ve wondered that for funsies, but I can’t imagine being anyone but myself, so. (And the thing about neurodivergence is that it’s literally built into the fabric of who a person is -- if my brain had developed “normally”, I wouldn’t be the same person at all. And I can’t imagine myself as anyone else, so the imagining falls apart.) I do not want to snap my fingers and make a completely different person appear in my place. I do love who I am, it’s just difficult being who I am sometimes. I can handle a little difficulty. I’ve done so this far, after all.

15. Are you good at getting along with other people even if they have vastly different views from yours? When was the last time you had to interact with someone like this, and how did it go? >> Yeah, I can usually get along with someone if I really feel like it, no matter what they think -- with some limits, obviously (there’s no way I’m ever going to get along with a neo-Nazi, let’s be serious). But here’s the thing: most of the time, I don’t care enough to try in the first place, lmao. So it doesn’t matter.

16. What is one way you show another person you care about them? What are things that make you feel cared about in return? >> If I give someone my time and attention, I usually care about them in some fashion. I really don’t just go giving that out, and I don’t feel bad about withholding it if I don’t care about someone enough. Like, what are they going to do, be mean to me? Big deal, I’d have to care for that to matter. So if I care, I at least want to pay attention to them and listen to what they have to say and try to understand where they’re coming from even if I don’t fully grok it. It’s the effort, I guess -- I put effort in. As a pretty apathetic person, that means a lot coming from me, even if other people see it as unremarkable. I feel cared about when people pay attention to me and remember things I’ve said and respect my boundaries and appreciate my creations and encourage me and stuff. 

17. When was the last time you congratulated someone? Were you happy for them, indifferent, jealous? >> I don’t remember. I was probably indifferent emotion-wise, but like... idk, if I say “congratulations” then I at least want you to feel good about whatever it is you did or got. I don’t have to feel anything for that to be true.

18. Are you typically happy for other peoples’ successes? Was there ever a time you just couldn’t bring yourself to be, no matter what? >> I’m typically emotionally indifferent to other people’s successes, but I still want them to succeed. Like, I wouldn’t discourage them or downplay their success, I’m just not going to jump around the room or whatever-the-fuck. It’s okay, I don’t expect anyone to do it to me, either (unless they want to, obviously). And yeah, there are plenty of times when envy or dislike or whatever prevented me from even going through the motions of happiness on their behalf. It be’s like that sometimes.

19. What was the last milestone you reached in your life (graduating, buying a car, starting a family, etc)? What milestone are you going for next, if any? >> The last milestone of that nature I reached was co-signing the lease for this apartment, I guess? I don’t know. What even is a milestone. I want my next milestone to be moving out of this place, tbh. But I think the next one is probably marriage, unless we really do move in March when our lease is up again.

20. Do you feel as though you’ve lived your life according to what society typically expects, or is your life more unconventional? >> No, my life has been quite unconventional. This is the most conventional it’s been since the beginning, and that’s why I’m often so weird about it. Sometimes, to a wild thing, safety can feel like a cage. It’s a brain glitch, don’t mind it.

21. Do you enjoy getting comments or messages? How likely are you to leave comments or messages for other people? >> Sure, I like to socialise. I don’t know how likely I am to do it -- just whenever the desire strikes, I guess. I don’t think too hard about it.

22. How would you describe your handwriting? Is it what comes naturally, or have you ever purposely worked to improve or stylize your handwriting in a particular way? Do you know anyone who has particularly interesting or unusual handwriting? >> My handwriting used to be damn good, especially seeing as I was raised by someone with impeccable handwriting and calligraphy skills, but it’s degraded as I started to buy my own computers and shit. Now I’m almost exclusively a typer, and I haven’t written anything by hand that wasn’t an address on an envelope or a short form for some government thing in a long time. But my handwriting is still better than Sparrow’s, lmao, so she always has me write things out. I could always get better at it again, because it’s not difficult; I just have to care enough. I’m still considering it.

23. When are you most likely to scream (either out of fright, anger, or whatever)? Do you scream or yell often? When was the last time someone screamed at you (or in your presence)? >> I don’t scream, really. I don’t even like yelling, I just... I have one of those voices, lmao -- it’s quiet usually, but when I get passionate or upset about something, it really projects. I’d probably be great on a stage. The last time I recall being screamed at was over the holidays, at the Wayland house. Not an event I really feel like rehashing, either.

24. Do you ever ignore other people? How do you tend to react to being ignored by someone? >> Sure, I've done that. Just not frequently. I usually ignore people when they’re either trying to piss me off (like a troll on tumblr) or trying to manipulate me into responding by being antagonistic. I can’t remember the last time I was legitimately ignored by someone, so I don’t know how I’d react. I’d probably just go on about my business, like... what’s the point of doing anything else, really? Maybe whine to Can Calah about it, or something.

25. When was the last time you felt like your feelings werent being respected? Do you think you do a good job of respecting the feelings of others? >> The last time I felt like that was when I was trying to set boundaries for myself in my last relationship, and it felt like I shouldn’t even want what I wanted (listen, don’t ask, by now I don’t even remember why it felt that way), but like, that’s ancient history now. (I mean, it is to me, anyway. The only reason I thought about it now is because it’s the answer to the question, but other than now I haven’t thought about it any time recently.) I don’t know if I do a good job of respecting the feelings of others; I just do my best and hope it’s good enough. Isn’t that all any of us do?

26. If you have a pet, what is one personality quirk that they have? If you don’t have pets, was there ever a time when you had one or wanted one? >> I’ve had pets briefly, but really, I don’t... even want one at this point. They’re more trouble than I have patience for.

27. What would you say is your STRONGEST emotion? Maybe not the most frequent, but the most intense? And what emotion do you feel most weakly, even if you might feel it more often? >> I don’t know what my strongest or weakest emotion is. I’m really not emotionally connected, in case that isn’t already clear, lmao.

28. When was the last time you were up to see the sunrise? Do you tend to pay attention to things like that (sunrises, sunsets, rainstorms, etc) or do you not really care about that sort of thing? >> I was awake at the time of sunrise this morning, but I wasn’t watching it or anything. I do pay attention to the weather, but I won’t necessarily drop what I’m already doing to pay attention to it. Unless it’s a thunderstorm. I love those.

29. What was the last thing you bought for someone else? What about the last thing someone bought for you? And the last thing you bought yourself? >> The last thing I bought for someone else was... I think a book for Rez’s birthday? That was months ago, but I don’t think I’ve bought anything else? Unless it was something for Sparrow, but like, we live in the same household, we just kinda spend our money that way by default. The last thing someone bought for me (that wasn’t Sparrow) was the mindfulness book that Hallie bought me last month. The last thing I bought myself was a Gatorade (lmao not a hot one! a blue FROSTI BOI) and a pack of bubble gum.

30. How do you feel about the day you’ve been having so far? Or if it’s just started, what kinds of things do you plan to do today? >> My day was all right. A good old Saturday.

INTERVIEW: The Best Mecha Anime of 2020 is a Podcast

  It begins with a heist. As the conniving nobles of Stel Kesh marshal their forces against the war machine of Stel Apostolos, the hapless scion of empire Clementine Kesh makes a cunning plan. With the help of prisoners under her control — a pirate, a soldier, a former revolutionary — she plots to infiltrate and commandeer the mobile battle fortress Fort Icebreaker. Not for the good of her Stel, as her brilliant and cruel mother expects. But for her own use, to seize control of a house she has always revered and resented. Miraculously, Clementine and her prisoners succeed, taking Icebreaker for themselves. But fog rolls over the hills, and with it come monsters: the Divine Motion, living holy machine of Apostolos, and its cursed army of immortals known as the Black Century. Can Clementine and her squad of chained misfits, skilled as they are on the field, overcome a swarm of undead giant robots?

  You might think from this description that we’re talking about the new Gundam, or a fan-made scenario for the videogame BATTLETECH. But no, this is a podcast, the PARTIZAN season of long-running actual play podcast Friends at the Table. Each week, the cast work together to flesh out the story of a crumbling empire, the lives of its distant subjects inhabiting the planet Partizan, and how these subjects change as their world does. It is a no-holds-barred giant robot drama at a time when mecha anime is a rarity. A tale that synthesizes the melodrama and intense battles of Mobile Suit Gundam, the political debate of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and just a bit of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s shocking bio-religious imagery. There’s sadness, hilarity, amazing fights, and scene after show-stopping scene where members of the cast commit fully to their characters to make impossible choices.

  Just like anime is a team effort, PARTIZAN is collaborative content. The guiding hand of game master and games critic Austin Walker, the music of composer and Fallen London contributor Jack de Quidt, Ali Acampora’s sharp editing, and their excellent roleplaying together with the talents of Sylvia Clare, Art Martinez-Tebbel, Janine Hawkins, Keith Carberry, and Andrew “Dre” Lee Swan. Every single one of these people commits to the world, their character, and whatever choice would be the most “interesting” for the story, rather than for power-gaming. Just like Yoshiyuki Tomino’s work on Gundam would be nothing without the input of industry luminaries like Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, Kunio Okawara, and Ichiro Itano, PARTIZAN is made what it is through everyone’s input. That is, a fantastic story composed by folks at the top of their game worthy of comparison to any of its influences. The best mecha anime of the year is a podcast.

  With this in mind, I reached out to the Friends at the Table crew after the end of its recent Millennium Break arc to better understand their creative process. Their game master, Austin Walker, was kind enough to answer my questions via e-mail, with a few other players pitching in, as well. The following questions and answers are lightly edited for clarity and content. They are as follows:

  Which anime served as an influence when creating the world of PARTIZAN? How does its focus differ from COUNTER/Weight, Friends at the Table’s first season featuring mecha? Are there non-anime giant robot stories (like BATTLETECH) that served as an influence?

  Austin: At first I thought that this would be a tough question: How do I even start to list things like this? Then I remembered that a full year ago now, when I first started planning the season, I started a brainstorming doc by listing a set of inspirations (which were of course added to over the course of pre-production). The anime on that list were Legend of Galactic Heroes, Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt, 08th MS Team, the first season of Code Geass, and the good parts of ALDNOAH.ZERO. Harsh but fair, I think. [Ouch! You’ll make Slaine cry if you aren’t careful. -Adam]

  The list also includes references to games, art, philosophy, and historical events, including The Imperial Radch Trilogy, A Memory Called Empire, Valkyria Chronicles, BATTLETECH, Armored Core, Legend of the Five Rings, Tie Fighter, Crusader Kings 2, the character art from Coup, Jakub Rozalski’s 1920+ series, Theses on the Philosophy of History, Civilization and Its Discontents, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Pride and Prejudice, the 30 Years War, the Warring States Period(s), and the Westphalian Peace.

  BATTLETECH skyrocketed up that list after the 2018 game came out and solidified so much of the vibe I wanted, especially with the incredible cinematics and music. I think I must’ve linked the game’s incredible intro to the cast of the show ten times. 

    There are also a ton of things that became touchstones once the whole crew was talking about the season, or which have become inspirations along the way. Evangelion obviously came back into the public consciousness last summer, so elements of that were on our minds in some ways. I’ve been rewatching Mobile Suit Gundam Wing thanks to The Great Gundam Project and that’s definitely squeezed its way into the season, too. 

  And you know, the times we’re living in. How could that not shape anything right now?

  With the exception of Gundam, giant robots have fallen out of fashion in the anime industry over the past few years. This is due to a combination of factors: the rate at which skilled mechanical designers are retiring, the industry’s difficulty in training new animators in these skills, and the changing tastes of audiences. Do you believe that the genre’s fate is deserved, or that mecha shows deserve another shot in the spotlight?

  Austin: I don’t think that any genre’s fate is “deserved,” in that I don’t think success or failure in a market is some objective mark of quality. Many things fail to find an audience for reasons that have nothing to do with the artfulness on display, the effort of the creators, or the relevance or depth of thematic content. 

  Likewise (and as you said in the question), the reason for success is multifaceted and overdetermined. There is not one reason why, for instance, isekai seems ascendant right now. (Or, I should say, a particular type of isekai). Nor does something being in or out of trend preclude the ability for breakout works or shows that will one day become influential or critical for the development of new material. 

  All of which is to say that despite being a big fan of the genre, I’m not too put out by it not being the center of anime fandom’s collective attention right now. The wheel turns, and I expect that mecha shows will have their time in the spotlight again in the future — and hell, that might be because of a show (or animation technique or technology) that I don’t even like!

    There’s a phenomenon that former anime blogger ghostlighting referred to as “remembering love” —when anime pays homage to earlier works so as to honor the past. Some examples might include how the Renton Runs Away storyline in Eureka Seven subtly reworks the arc where Amuro runs from White Base in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, or how the flame dragons in Promare riff on animator Yoshinori Kanada’s love of dragon-shaped effects animation. PARTIZAN (as well as earlier seasons of Friends at the Table) argues that clinging to past glories is futile and that imagining a new future is not only important but necessary. But are there ways that PARTIZAN (and its Tomino-esque naming sense, begun in earlier seasons of the show) “remembers love” as well?

  Austin: Ironically, I think you’ve identified the biggest way in which we “remember love.” How better to engage with the work of Tomino and Gundam than to argue that “imagining a new future is necessary”? What is at stake in Tomino’s Gundam is how we imagine better futures, what we are (and aren’t) willing to do to achieve them, and how possibility is restricted by systems of power. 

  The core of the (often complex and contradictory) story of the newtype is that we are born into the world with the capability to overcome difference and connect to each other through a power of collective understanding. This is then drilled out of us so severely that the only thing that can make it return is trauma, technology, training, or the luck of history. (This is why children are the center of so much of Gundam, and why despite its bad reputation, Victory Gundam is so essential in understanding his work writ large). 

  I think our work owes a lot to Tomino’s in that regard, and likewise, I think both Gundam and Friends at the Table (and countless other things) are in dialog with the concerns of politics and philosophy since the mid-century. How do we do better? How do we ensure society does not charge further into fascism? How does power function? These are big questions that undergird Gundam as much as Macross as much as Evangelion —though each offers different answers, for sure. 

  Beyond all of that, there are lots of other examples of “remembering love” in our show, too. The idea of the poetic cipher system that shows up in the Orzen arc is a nod to Arkady Martine’s novel A Memory Called Empire. There are unconscious or ad hoc references, think about all the Hideo Kojima stuff we’ve stumbled into throughout PARTIZAN. The improvisational nature of Actual Play podcasts lets the mind wander, and you end up reaching toward things you might not ever choose to reference if you were working in a more iterative medium.

  According to Matt Alt in his recent book Pure Invention, several members of Mobile Suit Gundam's creative staff were veterans of Japan’s '60s student movement who filtered into the anime and manga industry. PARTIZAN has a clear political stance that speaks to the present in the same way that Gundam spoke to its own audience. Accepting that all media is inherently political, what opportunities do you believe giant robot stories grant to speak to the world we live in?

  Austin: If I did a full list of the ways that giant robot stories could speak to our world, I’d need another hundred pages. “Here is a mechanical, humanoid body of incredible strength” is a potent, but malleable metaphor. Instead of re-litigating this, I’ll defer to this tweet of mine from last year which lays out just some of the questions that mecha stories bring the table:

  Whether you're telling a hard sci-fi story about military mechs or the most cartoonish super robot tale, both will involve big mechanical chassis doing actions the human-scale characters aren't. And that raises all sorts of questions! Here are a handful: pic.twitter.com/mxaVhGOW4x

— austin walker (@austin_walker) February 24, 2019

  How a show answers those questions — and trust me, I could seriously keep going all day on this — contribute to a show’s thematic and political meaning, and those answers differ wildly across the genre. Even just inside of Gundam, the answers are all over the place. Think about how different something like Mobile Suit GUNDAM Iron Blooded Orphans is compared to some other shows in the series.  And I don’t even mean Mobile Fighter G Gundam, the endless outlier, I mean Mobile Suit Gundam Seed or MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM 00 or even 08th MS Team. 

  Each new mech story is an opportunity to play with these ideas. I don’t think there’s a “right” answer for any of these questions, even if I have my preferences and tastes. Storytellers who want to play in this genre have a wide and varied palette of ideas to engage with. If there is any reason why I hope we see an uptick in mecha stories, it’s because I’m eager to see what a new generation of storytellers, artists, and animators could do with the genre.

  Something I’ve appreciated about Friends at the Table since its first episode is how much every member of the cast brings to the table — not just in the character they play, but in their dedication to shaping the narrative. Many of the show’s best moments come about not because of a single person’s ideas but through the creative alchemy of many different talented people playing off one another. In your opinion, how does the collaborative nature of actual play influence the development of PARTIZAN? What unique challenges are present compared to more "singular" works such as manga or novels? (Or considering that manga artists often use assistants and novels are also the product of editors and other collaborators, is all art collaborative to some degree?)

  Austin: In some ways, it’s very similar to working with co-writers on any other type of creative project. You bring your expertise and background and ideas to the table, they mesh in unique and interesting ways, and the final product represents a range of voices and perspectives.

  But it’s also a unique medium, in a way that I think is even distinct from working with a direct writing collaborator or in a TV show’s writer’s room. Everyone has a great deal of autonomy over their characters, which immediately means that as a showrunner or a creative lead, my role isn’t about “controlling” the story. Even if I might have idea A in mind for their character, they might have idea B or C or X, who knows. Because the show is at its best when people are engaged with their characters, the best thing I can do in a situation like that is to play in the narrative spaces that the cast is interested in, even if it diverges from my own expectations about where the season’s plot or themes might be going.

  Plus, both their and my ideas are also shaped by the dice! So many of the big, memorable Friends at the Table moments are arrived at via dice, using them either to determine an outcome or to help prompt us to set up certain stakes or consequences. The absolute best storytelling we do is when all of us let go just a little bit, meld with the game rules, and see what happens.

    Janine: The way we collaborate doesn't feel like it's about surrendering control in the way a lot of people would believe it does? At least from a player POV, if we feel strongly about how a story should go, especially regarding our characters, that's still encouraged and we often work to try and make those things happen. But there's also an advantage in the fact that every player has their own background, their own influences, their own style of storytelling, that no single individual no matter how broad their own background could replicate. Someone else at the table can come up with ideas that just may have never occurred to me, and the end result will almost certainly be stronger for it.

  Andrew: I would second Janine's answer, and say having everyone to build off of and collaborate with makes me feel more confident and competent in doing this. A big part of my personal anxiety is thoughts of "wait what if I'm doing a bad job??" and working in a group like this helps to combat that by 1) seeing other people immediately go "OOOOOOOOH" and get that positive feedback and 2) knowing that if I do have a half-baked or just not great idea that needs work or is better off getting binned, I also get that constructive feedback. 

  What is your favorite anime, personally? Would be glad to hear from any member of the crew who would feel comfortable answering.

  Austin: All-around: Paranoia Agent. Mecha: Zeta Gundam.

  Janine: Petshop of Horrors.

  Jack: Gundam 0800 War in the Pocket.

  Dre: Laid-Back Camp.

  Ali: Revolutionary Girl Utena. [I agree with Ali. -Adam]

  Sylvia: Ergo Proxy. (Two and a half hours pass.) Actually, I need to be honest my favorite anime is Death Note.

  Keith: I thought most of the night about this and I've got to go with the English dub of Yu Yu Hakusho. It's got to be specifically the dub or something else would win, probably the 2011 Hunter x Hunter.

    One more thing: if every member of the PARTIZAN season was entrusted with creating their own spin-off of PARTIZAN (in the vein of, say, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's Gundam: The Origin manga, or the weird Votoms spin-off Armored Fighter Mellowlink) — what would they come up with?

  Austin: This is unfair because if I was desperate to do something, I’d figure out how to just do it, whether through a one-shot or a short fiction episode or something else. Because anything I say might be taken as a hint of what is to come. I’ll say that I’d love to fill in more of the blanks of how the setting of PARTIZAN got to be what it is: an anthology series telling even more stories about the long arc of the empire’s rise, told from the perspectives of ordinary people across space. This is already just The Road to PARTIZAN that we did, but more of it.

  Janine: A story about Kesh housekeepers in the vein of Kaoru Mori's Emma: A Victorian Romance.

  Jack: A story about a squad of Hyphan commandos who have been besieged in a square mile of forest.

  Dre:  A sports anime about another pilot who entered the Mech Sumo contest at the Kingdom game.

  Sylvia: Alise Breka presents: Among Sharks. The story of a Nidean captain escaping from an Apostolos base with the help of the very soldier who shot him down.

  Ali:  A slice of life story of Apparatus Aperitif, the night mayor, learning the ropes of the job.

  Art: I want a Lambic House adventure story. Going out and getting fancy beer ingredients from weird places.

  Keith: Not to be self-serving but of course the anime I want is an Equiaxed pirate anime. But what I really want isn't an anime spinoff, it's a podcast spinoff. I want the concurrent Pod Save America podcast of, like, what a bunch of power serving dudes think about politics on PARTIZAN set during the events of the show.

  That's it for now. In the meantime, do you listen to actual play podcasts? What is your favorite podcast? What is the best Gundam and why is it Turn A Gundam? Let us know in the comments!

      Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't listening to podcasts, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at: @wendeego

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

Mindfulness...

The topic of mindfulness has come up in a couple of sessions recently...  Paraphrasing: do I think it is useful and something that should be done, or not? 

I try and answer questions as openly as I can (if I can), but usually after an exploration of why my client thought to ask me. This can be useful and also this helps to ensure my clients’ views remain the central focus, rather than an opinion of mine.

After some talk along these lines, I wanted to give an answer to these questions, but both times I had to think hard about it.  

On the one hand, I think mindfulness is very useful, even crucial, and has value when looked at from a number of ways... but on the other hand, I often let my own practice of mindfulness lapse.

Claiming it is wonderful then admitting to practising infrequently seems a strange position, no?

Jon Kabat-Zinn is a leading author on Mindfulness having pioneered a number of mindfulness-based stress reduction programmes in the States.  He defines mindfulness as “paying attention to the present moment with intention, while letting go of judgement, as if your life depended on it” and I write this definition mostly because it is one I happen to have remembered - but there are different definitions depending on whether you see mindfulness as a spiritual, psychological, or physiological phenomenon.

Mindfulness/meditation plays a part in many organised religions, and the focused intentionality (similar to present-moment awareness described by Kabat-Zinn) can be seen in the process of ‘prayer’.  It may be most visible in Buddhism, where mindful meditation is the central vehicle of spiritual development.  Here we see purposeful meditations which focus on bodily experience, desired states of mind, and on the nature and causes of suffering, and much else. 

These meditations form a roadmap to Nirvana and Enlightenment - a state of bliss - where insights are made into the nature of reality. This is done through exercising the ‘muscle’ of sustained present-moment awareness and concentration on an object of meditation.

So meditation can be a gateway to the divine.  This usually comes with attendant religious rituals; some kind of ‘code’ and belief structure, religious ceremonies, rites-of-passage to mark spiritual transitions, even a ‘total way of life’ including legal structure etc.  Mindful meditation/prayer is an important tool through which we can symbolise events in awareness in the present moment, and is part of the bedrock of a spiritual way of life.

In recent years there has been so much written about the psychological benefits of being mindful.  The spiritual dimension is still there, but the emphasis is on the benefits of practice in reducing stress and improving general health.  There’s so much out there to read, but Kabat-Zinn, Eckhart Tolle, the Dalai Lama & Mark Williams are on my bookshelf somewhere and I’ve found them all interesting starting points.

There is one aspect which seems crucial at the heart of mindfulness.  To live ‘mindfully’ implies an ability for a person to be in a situation, but to develop a capacity that allows them not to equate themselves with the situation they are in.  It strengthens a reflective capacity that allows us to break free from psychological-equivalence with difficult circumstances in our lives (either in our inner world or real-life events) that feel rigidly permanent.  It allows room for new narratives and interpretations, and so we avoid being completely swallowed by a problem situation.

All of us at some time may feel totally embedded in difficult situations in our lives, and it’s tricky to see a bigger picture.  Sometimes this is helpful (for example, I don’t want to think of the ‘bigger picture’ at a time where I need to take urgent action), but a lot of the time we’re stuck and embedded in problems in ways that leave us exhausted, unhappy.  Perhaps in damaging relationships, or difficult jobs, overthinking, dealing with trauma and so on.  We might feel absolutely swallowed up with difficult emotions and unable to get any distance from them, or any objectivity.  Instead, our world becomes one of psychological-equivalence with the events that are ‘happening to us’.  This is usually not a good place to be.

This is why I think mindfulness is very helpful indeed.  It is the psychological practice through which we can cultivate and encourage flexibility.  We can draw ourselves up and out of this embedded state, allowing ourselves to become aware even for a few seconds that we are a subject capable of overseeing our own experience, and not an object being buffeted from one event to another.

This is where psychotherapy can play a big part too in helping people strengthen their ability to hold different perspectives when looking at the problems they are experiencing in life.  It encourages the kind of mental flexibility that allows people to become ‘untrapped’- able to move away from repeated painful patterns and recognise there may be other ways of seeing the world that might be more helpful.    I think psychotherapy and mindfulness are similar in this respect, both help to develop the same mentalizing function.

From a physiological standpoint a mindfulness practice may well help you train-your-brain along the lines I covered in my last blog post (see It’s not brain surgery....is it?).  Kabat-Zinn cites studies carried out by his research unit at the University of Massachusetts - these show interesting results, including shifting activation in particular areas of the pre-frontal cortex from the right-hemisphere to the left-side, and associated strengthening of this region of the brain.  This may help operate as a brake on powerful emotions that upset equilibrium and lead to better emotional balance. 

In addition, studies show greater activation of areas of the cerebral cortex involved with present moment awareness (as compared to a sample of people who had not completed his mindfulness programme). This suggests mindfulness helps people develop a more sophisticated way of experiencing oneself, others and the world.

This is good stuff then.

So why do I often find my own mindfulness/meditation practice stalling?

Well, frankly, there’s not a great excuse but the real answer is because it’s HARD.   But writing this has motivated me to start afresh.  I tell myself I am usually too busy, and I am quite busy but I have a few minutes a day.   I tend to jump a little too far into the future when considering things I want to start, which is nicely ironic for mindful meditation. For example,  a part of me is also considering how I will sit, where, for how long, what I will wear to be comfortable etc.  This can sometimes squash gentle first steps.  Knowing this, I think I will start small this time and work up. 

www.whitestonetherapy.com

hey I've seen you reblog stuff about drugs and stuff and I just wanted to ask what narcatics were you into? random and blunt question but just curous. I'm having a hard time lately... drinking but I'm trying to quit with with it now and just started weed. I just feel like it's neve gonna be better, you know? shit I so okay for so long and then it all goes to fucking hell again. I'm sorry for unloading like this....

It’s okay, I hope you don’t mind if I ramble a long-ass answer. I was mainly addicted to drugs that were not traditionally considered addictive physically, just psychologically. My main drugs of choice were weed, acid, mushrooms and occasionally molly. I never had a huge problem with alcohol, as in I didn’t drink often but when I did I went way overboard and would often mix drugs that would make me very ill. Weed was okay for me at first before I went overboard and was spending hundreds a month, and I am not completely anti-weed like some people in NA, but I think there are people who can and can’t handle it mentally. I can’t. If you have mental health issues, especially anxiety (though I’ve seen some people it can help their anxiety), paranoia, dissociation, derealization or hallucinations/problems with reality to begin with, it is like playing with fire. I’m not saying you should panic, everyone has different reactions, but I could never smoke again after the bad acid trips and ego deaths I’ve had. Too many flashbacks. And I got serotonin syndrome a lot. I quit using 17 months ago and I’m still dealing with effects like visual fractals, a new worldview and mood problems. 

For about a year I was suicidal and having panic attacks every day, and I had to work double shifts while crying and vomiting (quiting was not an option because we are too poor and I did not want to be homeless again, especially in that condition). It takes a while for your brain to recover and learn to produce it’s own serotonin after smoking weed every day for two years, so there is a major depression that occurs when you get clean. I lost my appetite for a couple months, and also couldn’t sleep on my own. Drugs were basically my go-to for every minor inconvenience, so learning to be a person again and deal with problems directly was difficult. I became extremely paranoid while detoxing. I also lost all interest in everything, I experienced no joy and only dread, terror and depression. My obsessions such as movies and music were no longer enough to enjoy, I needed to experience them on absurd amounts of psychedelics and meditate on them and see them from weird perspectives to appreciate them. I have started gaining back my appreciation for the little things in life again by now. 

The hardest part for me was coming to terms with the fact that I will never be the same as I was before ever again, and now I just have to adjust. It sucks that I was a teenager while this was happening, and my brain was still developing, so now it became a part of my youth and shaped my personality a lot. But I try to think of it positively, because now I have a new chance to become a better person, I have a fresh start and not many people can have a second chance after fucking up and having no common sense. I am lucky to have not gotten into any legal trouble, though a lot of relationships were destroyed, I really deserved it. I am not trying to self-pity, but it is a fact that I have suffered beyond words and been to hell (I’m not religious but to me hell is a psychological state of torment and existential darkness and lack of reality), but I have also grown as a person and become exponentially more self-aware, empathetic, introspective and accepting of my defects. 

I know exactly what you mean when you say you feel it will never get better. When you’re in darkness it effects your whole perception and sense of reality and colors every area of life. We lose our memory of anything good ever. Kind of like a Dementor from harry Potter has sucked out our soul, which Dementors incidentally were written by JK Rowling as an analogy of her depression (Sorry for random reference, I am a fan of Harry Potter). But we are both still young, well I am and I assume you are as well as I don’t know many elderly people on Tumblr, and time changes things. Time doesn’t heal, but it does give you the opportunity to heal and grow. Nothing will ever magically heal, we will always be addicts, but you will have good days, and some very good days and memories, and those are worth riding through the bad to get to. It is very difficult to keep perspective, but I spent a couple years of my life on drugs. I have 70 years left ahead of me, best case scenario. This is not the end at all. 

I have seen people successfully drink and smoke and not become upset or addicted, but I have Asperger’s and BPD and I was foolish to ignore the sensitivities and chances I was taking and I put my trust into the wrong influences and people. I have developed my own coping mechanisms throughout my life, because addiction was obviously not the first and only trauma I’ve been through, I’ve been having issues since being a toddler basically including emotional violent abuse from the time I was born, sexual assault, personal deaths, bullying, self-harm and mental illness, having parents who are mentally ill and unstable and dealing with their suicide threats as a child, divorce, homelessness, murderers in the family, robbery, knife attacks, being a therapist to my mother, trying to stay objective as she described to me her post-partum depression involving demons telling her to throw me off a balcony and molest me, multiple suicide attempts of my own including a horrendous overdose, multiple hospitalizations, medications, dating a man in his 40’s as a young teen, being cheated on twice, coming to grips with my LGBT identity, and much more. I grew up in a fantasy world, always acting and playing pretend even to this day, I live my life through the eyes of my favorite characters, even while alone. AT this point it is very easy for me to detach from my emotions and reality and observe my own suffering as though I was a character in a movie or something. This is also why I have a decent tolerance to pain. I just view it as an experience, a memory. Time is really an illusion, so when I am hurt, I just remember that in a few hours it will be like nothing ever happened. 

Also, the one most important message I took from NA is probably the simplest, and most people don’t give it a second thought because it’s just a cliche to them, but when you really meditate on it and practice it, you realize how incredibly true and helpful it is: “One day at a time.” And that motto is a principle, not have to take it literally. I know for a lot of people, myself included, it can be more like one minute at a time, but you really gotta try to keep priorities in sight and self-care when need be. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to help yourself but go to sleep all day. It is fine to do that. I have trained myself to fall asleep relatively quickly using deep, controlled stomach breathing and and stims and mental focus patterns such as waterfalls, space travel, etc, movement that stays constant and is relaxing. Music helps too, but only without lyrics. There are a lot of sound pieces on youtube and stuff made for relaxing, like the sound of rain, or nature like the ocean or amazon. Whatever suits you. It is handy to have an off button like a computer sometimes. You just shut down and reboot. 

I’m not saying it is healthy to be avoidant, and I definitely have shut down and become very robotic as of late, but it is highly preferable to the alternative for me until when/if I learn better skills. You will hopefully feel better when you wake up, whether it was physical anxiety or mental or both. Plus, scientifically, sleep and dreaming is when our brains process information and memories, so we may come to familiarize ourselves with unknown fears or stresses while we sleep and wake up more able to deal with them rationally without the fight or flight. One day at a time ties in to a concept we call “the triangle of self-obsession”, and it relates to how living in the past causes resentments, focusing on negatives in the present causes anger, and fear stems from living in the future. One day at a time, take shit as it comes and don’t cross bridges before you get to them. of course, planning still is good but we must be flexible and not place our whole mental state on something that hasn’t happened yet. Anger roots back to fear, fear roots back to lack of control, and once we accept that we really cannot control everything and be omnipresent and all-knowing puppetmasters, we become more humble. 

I myself have come to terms with the fact that I am very narcissistic. I never thought I was, due to low self-esteem, but it only recently occurred to me that being narcissism is usually just a symptom of low self-esteem anyways, and it is just expressed differently. Some people build massive egos and brag. For me, my narcissism forms through being self-centered and selfishly focused on my own problems. Some people focus daily on distinguishing whether they are living and acting on their own will or their higher power’s will, and adjusting their behavior accordingly, because living on our own will is what got us in this position in the first place. I don’t really have a higher power in the traditional sense at this point, but it is still good to be mindful that I am not the center of everything, and that even though I claim to be open-minded, I am still just as judgmental and hypocritical as anyone else, I just express and experience it in different ways. Anyways, long tangent, no one cares, I will shut up now. I am kind of a basketcase, but if you need to talk, you can message or dm me anytime.

Lynn 87

I got there and was anxious because I was seven minutes late, but Lynn was apparently late and not there yet to so I had time to use the bathroom and then go into session. She asked me how I’m doing and I said good and asked how she was. She said she was also good and she took a seat. First she told me that she really liked my shirt and then she realize that I had on the shoes that she loves and she was like and the shoes and your whole outfit I just love that whole outfit and I was like thank you and she was like it’s almost time to be wearing jeans and I was like I mean and she was like you always wear jeans though right now was like yeah and she was like to work and I was like yeah I don’t care and she was like me neither I just normally wear dresses in the summer and I was like yeah and I feel like you do a lot of leggings in the winter and she was like yeah I love leggings and jagging‘s and sometimes jeans. I told her that I actually have a lot of anxiety around wearing dresses but that my husband also said the same thing about wanting to wear dresses if he was a woman because it would be so much cooler and Lynn was like well once you get to my age that’s the truth and I was like oh my God. She just said it’s more convenient . She asked how I’ve been and I said I was good and just generally anxious but that I realized that we have only been in the house for 2 1/2 weeks so I guess it makes sense that things are moving slowly. I said that I just feel like I have this massive to do list that I’m perpetually behind on and some of it is stupid things like renewing my license. Lynn was like oh that’s easy and takes two minutes you can do it online and I was like are you sure and she was like yeah and I was like but are we in the same licensing board and she was like oh I’m not sure and she asked if it was through the department of health and I was like well yes but I feel like mine encompasses professional counselors marriage and family therapists and clinical pastoral counselors and so she got up and checked her license and indeed she does have her own licensing board for LCSW so I was like I hope you are right and it’s an easy process, I just know that their application process for everything has been a complete mess where they often lose things and links on their website don’t work and it’s hard to find the documents you need. I mentioned already having my CE use printed out and ready and she was like you don’t need those and I was like wait what and she was like yeah I don’t think you need those and I was like oh maybe I remembered it wrong, maybe you just need them printed and ready in case if you get audited and she was like yeah but in general you don’t have to send them back anything other than the one paper about license renewal and payment but for us you can do it online. So we will see about that. I said that I had gotten upset and actually started to cry in the grocery store with my husband and I were shopping and it wasn’t actually over the food necessarily but that he had randomly wanted putting and he had asked what kind of putting my mom got when we were kids and I did know the brand and stuff but I got all upset thinking about how my mom would buy a pudding and Cap’n Crunch cereal so that my brother could have them because she said he needed calcium since he didn’t like milk. I was allowed to eat it also sometimes, but I got upset thinking about how she only went out of her way and bought unhealthy foods for him because of what food he didn’t like, and yet when it came to me it didn’t matter that I was skipping entire meals and crying but she never did anything to make sure that I would eat something. Lynn pointed out that it seemed like I was having compassion for myself and I was like I guess it’s kind of just hard to know whether not I’m feeling compassion or just anger because there’s a part of me that feels sad and then jumps to feeling mad because it’s like how do you do that to your kid and she was like yeah I know and I said about how I have a kid on my caseload right now who has arfid which Lynn asked what it was, and I reminded her and I explained it and she was like how is that different from picky eating and I was like I think the biggest distinction that I notice is that it’s not just all I don’t like that food and I’m being defiant, it’s more so that I’m scared of eating that food so it almost presents like a phobia of eating and often leads to kids being underweight and missing key nutrients. Lynn was like what’s the harm in the meeting just a few foods as long as they’re eating enough and I was like I mean in theory I guess that’s OK and I think that’s what this kid did before he started severely cutting out foods but you really can’t live on just three foods because you would end up with nutritional deficiencies. I explained how this kid was probably an anxious eater but eating enough while he was younger but ever since a allergic reaction, things have gotten much more severe. I said usually my kids have had some sort of allergic reaction or choking experience or something that triggers it and she asked if I do EMD are with it. I was like yeah and it’s hit or miss with how much it works and I said how I felt like honestly this one was a flop because we did it around that original memory of the reaction and they reported a sud zero but it didn’t change whether or not they eat so I don’t now and Lynn was like that sounds like a great thing to talk to Helen about and I was like yeah I’m actually calling her tomorrow and she was like oh perfect look at that and I was like yeah and she asked if I was doing the certification and I was like yeah it’s just slow moving because I only called her once a month but I’m technically in that process even though it doesn’t really matter and she was like yes it does and I was like generally speaking and she was like well maybe not to our clientele but it definitely trained well and she pointed out that she thinks a lot of people are getting trained now but aren’t following up and continuing and aren’t doing very good work. I was like oh I definitely agree and I asked if I had told her about my client who used to see Aaron who Aaron made her do EMD are for like three months and it wasn’t helpful at all so she didn’t want to do any with me and after working with her for a bit I’ve convinced her to do it and it works just fine with me so I don’t know what the fuck Aaron was doing and Lynn was like yeah she probably wasn’t doing very well. I was like yeah for sure. Lynn told me about how her son’s best friend has a severe milk allergy and the mom has a ton of anxiety and he’s about to go off to college and she is sure that it’s making the kid anxious but he kind of internalizes things and it’s been fine but he didn’t have anxiety around foods growing up. I said in my case with my client similar and lots of religiousness but always chronic anxiety and the stereo typical controlling super religious family. She was like of course and she asked me if I had done any studies or training on spiritual abuse and I said no and she was like you should look out for some trainings for that I’m sure you see that a lot in your area I think would be interesting for you yourself and I was like yeah I will definitely keep my eyes open. She said sometimes spiritual abuse comes up in trainings and she would classify my experiences that way. I said yeah and I said how I intentionally texted my mom asking if I was underweight as a kid and had told her about my client as a way to make it sound like I wasn’t asking for personal reasons and that my mom had written back and was like yeah but I was too and doctors are concerned when kids are underway they’re only concerned when they’re overweight and Lynn was like oh my God always defensive and I was like yeah I know. I told her that I texted her literally two separate times following that about that kid and my mom completely ignored it and change the subject and didn’t want to go there. She said yeah and it sounds like I’m having some compassion for myself again and I was like maybe it just makes me mad because I’m like what the heck like I can remember all of these meltdowns and in working with some of these parents whose kids have arfid which probably would have been what I would’ve been diagnosed with as a kid, it’s like these parents will always tell me that doctors have told him to just make the kid to eat and these parents are like but I just can’t they’re so anxious and they’re just scared and it’s like how did my parents miss that. I said I get frustrated because I think back and it’s like how how could you not know that this wasn’t normal. She agreed but pointed out that they aren’t going to get it and they just can’t and that’s how they are. I said how I actually went and made a list of my childhood symptoms after session since we had talked about my childhood being Trumatic and me feeling like it wasn’t that bad and I made the list and looking at it objectively it was like wow that actually was pretty bad and I actually sent the list of things to our insurance coordinator at work and acted like it’s for a potential client coming in and asked if she thought insurance would approve and she said yes absolutely!! I said also in looking at the list if this was my kid I would be looking for what was sort of the main trauma that would’ve triggered all of this and Lynn took that as me meaning my own child and I meant like my client that she was like but your parents they were controlling and not aware and they didn’t want to be aware and you know we can probably assume that from infancy your parents were restricting your food. I said yeah I really don’t know but I would think it was probably hard because I was colic for the first two months so it was probably hard to tell if I was even hungry and I probably didn’t always eat because I knew it was going to make me feel sick or didn’t want to eat and didn’t like it because it made me feel sick and I said how the only way that my parents could come down and get me to sleep was by driving me around in the car and when pointed out how interesting it was that it was another car memory. She said she is assuming that there must be some pre-memory incidents that have triggered a lot of my stuff and how interesting it is that it’s another being in the car memory and she wonders if there’s any connection and I was like honestly I hadn’t really thought of it and I said how I was fine once they switched formulas and Lynn was like oh you were breast-fed and I was like no and I laughed and she was like OK well that makes sense and I was like Yep. She pointed out that I’m continuing to make a lot of progress and she asked me how we should work on today. I just center awkwardly smiled and said I wasn’t sure and she opened up her file and was like well in regards to self compassion and some of these areas of noticing your childhood was bad so why don’t we go with that so I said OK and I picked up the tappers. I noticed that it’s really hard for me to really acknowledge that my childhood was bad even though I can objectively look at the list of symptoms and be like yeah well that’s rough but when I think of in regards to myself it’s like no it wasn’t really that bad and I noticed that I think part of that is because I’ve always felt like I had a good childhood because you know I grew up with my best friend next-door and I have so many really great memories of us playing together. I noticed that I guess it’s hard for me to balance the sword of two reality is that there were parts of my childhood that we’re good but then also parts that were bad and I think part of that is because you know like my husband will point out that I have so many happy childhood memories and he can’t remember anything and I don’t know if part of why I remember so many details because I am chronically introspective and obsessive and thinking about my childhood and so the more you intentionally remember something the more likely you are to not forget it so there’s that and we have tended to talk about it a lot over the years and laugh about the things we used to do but also noticing that my parents always made it seem like my childhood was really good and I think because they would point out how great their marriage was and how lucky I was to be in a two parent home I think I really thought the only bad thing that can happen to a child was divorce and my parents would always point out that Michelle‘s parents had issues and I can remember at least three big fights that they had where Michelle ran outside crying and telling me that her parents were getting divorced particularly the time that her dad busted out a car window because he was so mad and I can remember hugging her and comforting her and telling her that it would be OK and I think I thought that my problems are so insignificant in that they weren’t actually problems because everybody around me was just minimizing everything and acting like it wasn’t a big deal so I think I thought that it wasn’t a big deal and that I definitely didn’t deserve to be comforted the way that I did to Michelle but that the only time that I can remember going to her for comfort was actually when my dad put microwavable tacos in the toaster and they caught on fire and I was so scared that I ran outside crying and saying that our house was going to burn down because I was so terrified of fire and of course you know it was fine my dad put it out immediately but that was the only time. She was like him in a mess and I was like my extended family and then I noticed that it wasn’t just my family and extended family but also that it must have been people at church because I can recall a time when I was standing outside of the bathroom crying because we just got to church and my brother had just thrown up in the car and I had just had a panic attack and I was still crying and there was a teenage boy in the bathroom and he open the door and I member being so embarrassed so I must’ve been old enough to know how embarrassing that was in front of a teenage boy and we left that church at the end of sixth grade so I’m assuming I was probably a sixth grader and I think that as I got older I would run inside and crying in the bathroom until I would come down but as a young kid I know that I would run and crying and go hide in one of the kids classrooms so part of me feels like Shirley somebody should have said something or noticed or done something but at the same time maybe they did say something to my parents and maybe my parents just denied it or acted like it wasn’t a big deal or said that it was fine or I would go out of it Arlyne. Now that they didn’t want to tell my parents because my parents are controlling and would have denied that there was even a problem. I noticed that I had so much guilt because I was really close to my brother and I love him a ton and I can remember one time where they didn’t feed him in the car or before because they were afraid he would throw up and so he was eating in one of the little classrooms at church and I had already had my panic attack in the car and had calmed down enough but I remember feeling so anxious and so guilty because I wanted to check on him and make sure he was OK and I was able to push through Meg’s idea enough to poke my head in and check but that was as much as I could do and I just felt so anxious. I also noticed that it makes me mad that my parents didn’t notice or care about a lot of the weird associations that I had made like with that we had picked up bagels on the way to church and I had eaten my salt bagel in the car before he said his stomach hurt and I had a panic attack and disassociated, and I had pair this irrational believe that because I ate the salt bagel he got sick, so I never ate salt bagels again and how I had thrown up wearing my favorite purple pajamas and even though they were my absolute favorite I wouldn’t wear them ever again because I was convinced that if I were them I would throw up again and it would be my fault and I just kept them in the armoire never touch them and if anybody was sick in the house I refused to use the bathroom that they all used because I was convinced that I would get sick too so I would only use the basement bathroom even though I was scared to be alone in the basement by myself I would still go down there for several weeks every single time. And now I’m like how did nobody think that maybe this wasn’t normal behavior. Lynn pointed out that there was a sense of responsibility that my bagel had caused him to get sick and I was like yeah I mean I guess there was that feeling of it was my fault and if I could control and do something different maybe it wouldn’t happen. She told me to go with that and I noticed that my phobia definitely influenced my eating because I can remember literally every single time that I have ever seen anyone throw up in front of me and anything then I had ever seen them throw up I refused to eat even though I knew that wasn’t necessarily logical like I can remember Garrick throwing up in the cafeteria after he had been sick back-and-forth to the nurses office and she convinced him to eat lunch so he drink chocolate milk and pasta and threw up in the cafeteria and that was it I never drink the chocolate milk or pasta again or any chocolate milk that came in a little carton like that because I was so scared that it would make me throw up too. She told me to go with that and be curious why would I have done that and I noticed that I guess it was self protection because I knew that my experience with throw up was so awful and I felt so alone and like there was something so wrong with me and I think I just never wanted to feel that way again. Lynn asked how old I was and I reminded her that I was six that time when my mom responded really poorly to me throwing up and I think I just felt like I was bothering her and getting on her nerves and burdening her by waking her up and begging her to sit with me and you know I eventually fell sleep on the floor outside of her door after she locked me out and I had seen her later on in life comfort my brother and sit with him in the bathroom and you know she said that she had apparently prayed away her own fear of throw up by the time my brother was home and that was the exclamation for why she was able to comfort him but that’s really fucking confusing for a kid because instead I just saw these experiences where other people deserved to be comforted when they got sick but when it was me there something wrong with me and I didn’t deserve it. She told me to think of a very specific time and I pointed out how my brother had thrown up the Purdue chicken and rice and I think it was because he had a sensitive gag reflex and he must’ve eaten too quickly but I remember seeing him throwing up and I can remember just sitting at the table and feeling so so hungry but also just having so much anxiety and feeling like I could not make myself eat the rice and chicken because I had seen him throw it up once before I think I just didn’t want to feel that alone again. Lynn pointing out that it did not work and I still feel alone and I was like I mean yes. I said that I wish someone would have sat down and explain things to me like the fact that sometimes you have a stomach virus or some times you are allergic to something but it’s like no one ever really explain anything to me and I was left trying to figure out all of the possible reasons for throwing up because even to this day I still have no idea why I threw up those chocolate coins but if I had to make a guest now I would look back and think well it was a Rosh Hashanah at my grandparents house there was a big buffet spread and I was serving myself so I’m sure that I over ate an excessive amount and foods that I don’t normally eat so it probably upset my stomach and the last thing that I ate was a bunch of chocolate coins which is why my puke with chocolate but I wish someone would have taught me logic about all of that. I said how honestly I’m not even sure if it would’ve made much of a difference because even to this day that’s essentially what I do for myself now because I said how you know I really have such a hard time knowing when I’m physically feeling in my body and I know Dr. Hill’s research says the insula is on eating disorder brain scans as being faulty, but I still often don’t know if I’m going to throw up and as stupid as it sounds I was like literally every week before I come in here I debate in my head whether or not I should ask you for a garbage pail because I always feel nauseous and I am convinced that I’m going to throw up. I was like and honestly I used to just not even eat before I came because I was so anxious that it was going to happen and for a while I would just stop at a gas station bathroom and stand of the toilet and commence myself that if I needed to throw up I would need to do it right then and there and not in your office. Lynn laughed and was like well I’ve had people throw up in my office before and I was like I no and rationally there’s no reason to think that I would just randomly throw up in here. She was like I mean sometimes it does happen when people are processing and she said that she has a client who literally dry heaves in the bathroom after every session and I was like well I’m not going to throw up and for as anxious as I always am about it I have no reason to believe that I would start throwing up all of a sudden and she was like well usually you get some warning signs like I can tell them people start getting pale and kind of sickly. I was like oh I would warn you with 1 million minutes in advance and I’ve literally never missed puking in the toilet so there’s no doubt my mind that if the feeling actually hit I’d be fine and know what to do but I’m just always anxious and paranoid that it’s gonna happen and I don’t have any good reason why. I was like and logically I know that you wouldn’t care if it did happen I mean I know you wouldn’t be thrilled but it’s not like you’re going to tell me you won’t see me anymore and she was like no definitely not and I said I think as a kid maybe I was afraid that if I did throw up and bird and everyone that it would like confirmed my fears of there being something wrong with me and then people would hate me or not want to be around me anymore. She said she thinks that there is clearly a six-year-old part of me that is stuck and I making changes in my life so there must be some parts of my history that are processing, but there’s a little maybe stubborn six-year-old who is having a hard time that we need to continue working on. I said OK and I agreed. She told me that I was lucky because I actually hit my deductible in July and I was like really are you sure? And she was like yeah that’s what it shows online because they are paying out and I was like oh OK well if you are sure because I have been getting checks in the mail from my work benefits where they kick in in a certain amount once I’ve hit the deductible and she said that she would need to print my EOB statements and do the math but she is pretty sure that I don’t actually owe anything for today and possibly not even some of the future sessions but she will let me know. I said OK and we scheduled for actually four weeks out because she said that three weeks from now she won’t be here she doesn’t think. She said after the 13th she will know for sure which week she is bringing her daughter up to New York because it depends on whether or not her daughter will get a paid gig in a commercial. I said dang and she was like yeah for starving actor anything counts LOL and I was like that makes sense and she said she would email me and let me know if she finds out before our next session. I said thank you and headed out.

Wed Aug 15 #sexed @sugartheshop Sensual Bondage with Pervertibles

Perveritble: any common often domestic item that can be used for a different purpose other than that originally intended by the manufacturer in a style that is part of a BDSM or kinky play scene

Below are three separate blog posts because ain't no body got time for that...separate posting bullshit.

I just want to go play in the woods.

1. Sugar classes, when sex workers lose clients to death, and the amazing Domme I met

2. The post I promised you yesterday

3. Summary of the successful summer tour (and whatever shit I decide to write about along the way)

First up...SUGAR

Below is the post I promised you yesterday.

 But before we get to that...please check out this  bondageworkshop I’m teaching on August 15 in Baltimore at www.sugartheshop.com. Tickets are $25 and the classis 90 minutes, from 630 to 8. I always hang around til close because it’s fun and the teaching space is super gorgeous. The stores great too :) and they share the same space…

 On a more personal/professional note, I’ve read about the grieving process particular to sex workers who loose long term clients. And now I am both proud and saddened to say I find myself for the first time at this place in my peculiar career. Both clients are regulars and souls that I genuinely enjoy, cleints who respect me and men I believe are a blessing to those who know and work with them, and especially those that may love them or call them family. Good people. I’m not sure what this chapter of my journey is going to have in store but I’m prepared to face it without fear or reservation, because as I see it? My job is to make every moment feel like life its self until the last moment the slave can retire to the great Master of us all, that quaking moment between here and forever.  

 Last Wednesday after my class at Sugar I attended the wake for the untimely end of the Baltimore Eagle and bumped into an amazing Domme with the verbal gymnastics of the best stand up can offer and she was dressed like a pin up doll, veil and all. And I wondered, why can’t we all be like that? When I discussed my style with her, professionally speaking, her replay was,

 “Oh honey, you work so hard, that’s why they have to pay you for it.”

 Such a siren with the sweet tongue was she that still I do not know if I am flattered, or being scolded.

 I liked her. It’s a lonely sport, topping the top 1%.

 One. More, Eclipse. This week. Then you can all breath but my ruler is gonna play hopscotch across my sky for the NEXT two months so I’m just gonna keep riding this ride and asking for patience because GD if I couldn’t slap a bitch on a day like today #PMSRealness B r e e e a t h e

 See you on the 15th.

2. Yesterday's blog post is about domestic violence, the kind I have lived with most of my life until now, so I'm finally ready. Let's all take a deep breath.

DV stands for a lot for a lot of things. Not just my initials, Domina (D) Vontana (V), but also...domestic violence. This post is a coming out story. This is my emotional psychological and mental #metoo moment. I’ll never be capable of sharing the stories of my multiple sexual assaults. I’m too much of a scorpio for that shit. Last week I picked up a new pickup truck and it’s been glorious. I’ve started rapidly checking things off my to do list at the farm that have lingered for months, years even. And then finally today the clouds part, the sky clears and FOR FUCKING ONCE there is sun in the sky on a Saturday. If you live in the Mid Atlantic you appreciate what I know. For those of you who don’t let me say this - I arrived back from Asia the last week of April. I arrived at the farm the first week of May. It has rained. Every. God. Damn. Day. Since minus maaaybe...a total of 2 weeks. Today is one of those days that makes up those two weeks and so I took a nice long drive through the country in my new truck. And that’s when I realized...I haven't been yelled at by a man in a year and a half. That is a record in my recent history. And by recent I mean the past decade, at least. Because strong women get abused too. Honestly, I’ve often wondered if my abusers didn’t take more pleasure in hurting me BECAUSE I was a dominatrix. My father was a Pisces and a preacher. My mother was a Sagittarius and a musician. If you know your astrology your cringing right now, and probably laughing. Both my parents were trauma survivors. Especially my father. He was as queer as his daughter here and just as charismatic and beautiful. My mother was the codependent to his addict and as the eldest child and a daughter I was expected to perform the role of caretaker to both. And it sucked. It sucked every single day. There wasn’t a god damn day that went by that there wasn’t some potentially humiliating and or completely unjust situation to deal with while the world outside the window carried on like inside everything in my life wasn’t completely absurd, completely violent and completely religious, all at the same time. Mind fuck is not even the word. Oh and the cherry on this shit cake is that the context for all of this is rural, white America where everyone knows your name and your business. The only place to hide is literally, the corn fields. My parents did their best. I know this now. And it was not that great. I accept this now. And that is why for most of my adult life I have loved men who returned my love with vicious emotional and often violent attacks. Some of these men I am still friends with and they may read this and be upset at me and that’s a price I’m willing to pay because the very reason I haven't been screamed at in the past year and a half is because finally, finally...I am putting myself first everywhere in my life, not just in the dungeon. It is a choice who’s time had come and a choice that has made me more available to the people in my life, not less. If I hadn’t had the figurative and literal space of the dungeon to practice speaking up for myself and EXPECTING to be heard I would most certainly be less fulfilled than I am today. And today I am filled with all the things that make life worth living - love, friendship, passion, creativity, community and family. And I’m almost positive that the only reasons I’m coming up with this blog post now, at this moment, rather than any other I’ve contemplated revealing the truth of my struggle is probably the intense PMS I’ve experienced during the full lunar eclipse on my moon. So bare with me, babes. And what the actual fuck is my part in all of this? I stayed. I believed the lie that obligated me to fix these men. I honestly thought I could heal someone, all I lacked was resources. Then I found myself in a situation with limitless resources and it didn’t make a damn bit of difference - the addict stayed sick for a very long time. Long enough for me to finally skip country and fulfill my expat fantasies and also to finally quit my codependent habit. Now I am in control of my life in and out of the dungeon and no longer suffer fools in any area of my life. And for that every broken bone, every stint in the ER, every bruise and every scar is worth it because I am free at last. Psst. Come closer. I have another secret to tell you. The final reveal. Remember when they said it was scary out there in the real world and so maybe we closed our heart chakras to feel safe? Turns out that is a red flag for predators that sends them knocking at our doors. It was only after I took the chance and did the work that I found myself starting to attract the kind of people and experiences I had always longed for that’s why recently when I felt my heart trying to close again I reminded myself that THAT was NOT the path to security. My brother (biological): “Once a woman realizes she doesn’t need you? It’s over.” 3. Summer Tour Summary

This note is to tell you Mistress had a wonderful summer tour and will be taking the next week off to do even more fun stuff, the old fashion way - without social media.

 Three a.m. and the gypsy finally rests, alone, on her bed. It’s been ten days and four states. At least 1,000 miles.

 I.am. so. Blessed.

 Several years ago I was up for a full ride to UNC so I moved to Chapel Hill. Thus began a period of restoration. My work is very demanding and there are few opportunities for training or mentorship. I left my vanilla life behind when I went pro out of necessity, not choice. This past week I visited the very people who gave me back my vanilla life.

 It wasn’t until this week when I stepped back into the wooded paradise I called home for two years that I felt like I was finally back from Asia. That yard is where the Japanese Ume plum blossom first appeared in January and I didn’t even know what I was smelling, but it was fantastic. Fast forward four months it’s April and I was stepping off a plane in Tokyo with just a backpack. My dream to change my life yet again started in that yard, and it ended there. Last week.

 Some people know what they want. I know what I don’t want. The path to perfection for me is a process of elimination, not acquisition. Turns out, I want less of myself and more of others. I want more experiences and less things. I want love. And beauty. And art. And laughter. And dialogue. And play. And I’m an introvert. So quality not quantity.

 I’ve spent much of my life alone, in one form or another, often literally alone. I admit that part of this lifestyle is self sustaining for me, if not self serving. But all good things must come to an end. Now that I’m back my gypsy spirit has managed to work out a reasonable circuit: Baltimore, DC, rest at the farm, repeat.

 So I’ll see you there (www.sugartheshop.com)

Regret the day I discovered alcohol as self-liberation, cuz really it was a prison.

there's so much to be said about the nature of the beast that shuts down your brain in  sequential order, that  renders consent impossible and  makes so many bad things happen to your body. there's  so much to be said for the pressures we face growing up that are unrealistic to meet. the internalized stigma around our bodies and the weird pressure that creates within as we internalize the violence that caused us the  harm in our childhood and we  continue to injure ourselves in  adolescence. 

to think that sex wasn't for me, that I was an alien, to think that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. for me not to be able to understand what that fundamental thing was, to not be able to get what was happening with me. its a cruel thing to have a child immigrate and then encourage them not to take advantage of resources that are available in the community. to be raised in a world where America wasn't form me and to be given friends who at least on surface cared about me, and showed me an incredible 17th birthday, at least I thought, but I'm so conflicted because it was so chock full of substances, the same substances that took vivek's life at 24. in college where I was constantly feeling like a monster. a layover from high school where I never went to parties and even if I was invited would always feel left out. I think people didn't want to challenge my visible orthodoxy even if it was begging for it. I was screaming for saving and no-one felt obliged. and so I kinda waifed out of school, just amid w weed smoke and beer cans, and loop pedals, and isolation. there I wrote the beginnings of what would become the discography of my life of which most seems lost. but still you start over, and over. eventually you get to a point where you've collected enough that you don't necessarily find yourself going through old archives that you made because the life you lived at the time was just too harmful to recollect. [pause] I understand that when my brain was off and I was trying to battle my demons I was in the company of people who were chasing the dragon but not necessarily for the reasons that I was. its a difficult matter to try to navigate and I really just need to continue to be honest, like my friends suggest. I think there's nooks and crannies in my mind that need to be explored yet and my friends demand better from me. so that's what I'll do. [pause] I guess I'm left with the harm that this person experienced, and I have to give them space to express that. if I don't then I'm not like doing my part, or following my friends advice, and really thats all I have in this stage. why would my friends offer advice if I wasn't going to follow it. [pause] This is a part of my being that is hard to access. I guess tears are coming out and I don't want people who've experienced harm to be lying in my wake. its a difficult matter to navigate but I'm getting good advice and I'd do well to follow it. [pause] I wish I didn't have this sense of romance when it came to drinking, like this james Bond-esque super-hero in a suit in the 70's with guns and explosions and girls. why is this like fueling my romance of what it is to drink. well dressed chavs with smarmy charismatic sneers pasted on their faces with wild eyes and hair blowing in the wind, and a cold glow about them. a sense of danger and freedom. a stubbly chin and immaculate fingernails and dapper dress interpreted through chav aesthetic. [pause] all of this and more seems to run through mind, like the whimsical joy of carrying a beer on the train in the UK and being OK. the freedom and sexiness of it all. but in reality I think about how unsexy being too drunk is. how terrible it can feel to be weighed down by whisky, to have the shades drawn mentally and medically have parts of your brain literally de-activting as per the want of alcohol to manifest. [pause] this grandiose life that wasn't for me, as an immigrant, and a kid with a super religious family, who'd never approve of partying. the knowledge of doing exactly what you weren't supposed to be doing was its own reward, a stab back at the family that would constantly torture you all day with all sorts of clothing potions that you'd never wear, all kinds of smarmy remarks about your body, asking you to weigh yourself on the scales, asking you to change your posture, asking you to change your diet. this always would fuck with me and contribute to a sense of two terrible things. [pause] me and my pal vivek would pain the town red and it was grand, like all the visions of radness that had plagued my pre-teen visions of awesome were manifesting at the age of 19. I was the badass id always dreamed to be, and it nearly killed me. I literally woke up in the ER. vivek, he went out in a body bag. so destructive was our dream. now I talk about liberation and its just weird to think that libation is more of a prison and this is almost a slogan but the truth is damning. damn it. I just wish that I wasn't sold this golden vision of substance abuse as a fast track to badassery. I never smoked a cigarette outside of a few chance parties, and hated it every time. weed never stuck. neither did any other drug. it was always alcohol for me. this weird like, sexification of a substance that was in all likelihood a turnoff the whole time. [pause] and now I guess I have a conversation pending with a person whose experienced harm due to drinking and thats going to be a day of reckoning for sure. I'm being given the harsh truth of things and id expect nothing less from my friends and partners. it is what it is, its nothing to sneeze at and I need to step my game here. I need to center their concerns. they need to know that I hear them. [pause] I grew up around bro's. like I was a chav growing up, also a grammar school kid, over in the UK. a northerner, a manc, a blackburnian, a Lancastrian. we'd wear our uniforms and say our prayers. and thats part of a tradition of schools of that nature going back hundreds of years. it was an old world thing. we were raised to love soccer. that was just the way of it. there were no bones about it, you were there, you were playing the game, you loved the game. it was also a city phenomenon, the blackburn rovers, a team that used to be badass when I was a kid but now don't even qualify for the main league. [pause] soccer was a way for me to continue a part of my culture as an immigrant who otherwise had no place to practice my accent, or any other trapping of my britishness. and then white adult comedians have the audacity to come to me and mock the state of my ability to express my internalized and still remembered Britishness as a sign of my ... [pause] its a lot to delve into. its super painful for me to talk about the way I was harmed by midwest public space to the degree that I had to self censure my own accent in order to find any escape from the harm that was being visited upon me daily by taking up space as a british, identifiably british person with religious garb of a faith they misidentified daily, another thing that I ended up leaving behind to step away from the harm coming my way. [pause] sometimes I wonder where does it end, like this weird tapestry of harm that I've internalized, the pain and the trauma, I go through my narrative and my head spins, and its hard for me to ground myself. but still, here I am all the same. [pause] what can anyone do anyway, given the world. I think about my gender and how thats buried in there somewhere, how I'm an immigrant and how thats kinda elusive for me to understand, how like... so many things. like the difficulty I have with mascara, and the few times I've worn a dress, how they've turned into jokes amongst friends. [pause] my body is a problem for me as I... like... you know, am not necessarily drawn to the standard male stuff with regards to fashion despite my swarthy appearance, and in saying that I feel like its racist to use those words. but I've spoken so few times about all this I have a lot of blunderousness in vocab to overcome. my family used to shame my body, my clothing choice, my posture, my body shape, despite being for many years the sole source of all nutrition for me. straight from my mothers kitchen to my stomach, to my body, to their eyes, their lips, and to my shame, the pain, the harm, the trauma. [pause] and I think about the boy from daycare, when I was a pre-teen, I think about the contact we made, their hand on my cheek, the electricity I felt. I think about my old neighbor, how we were close, very close, and how I missed that, and maybe they never felt the same, and maybe thats why they avoided me in years since. there have always been boys, although I'm not running after every boy I see. I have a type, and when it strikes me, it does. [pause] I'm about to do something really difficult and crazy, and I think it might work, but I am not going to pretend like I have everything figured out, I dont. I'll suck before I do better. [pause] but before all that I need to have this conversation with this person whose experienced harm. it was a surprise, a horrible one, but I have reached out and let them know I'm down to speak, and they seem down too. who knows what the right move is from there. but its important to recognize the harm that went down. and I don't know whats going to happen but it needs to and thats the main thing. on the phone he [their friend] told me to center their trauma over my ego. I'm already there trust me. but sure, feel free to say so. [pause] callouts and callins are triggering to me especially when they occur in this city because they've in my experience been used to fuel racist agendas that never get addressed, because of the power dynamics at play. but in this case I feel like maybe I can go through this process without being too worried about that.