#ive been actively doing this for over a year just not constantly... its easy work but its a time sink
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Hey! I finished up another little resource I've been slowly putting together.
I've put together a turnaround reference of every character in the game, with every alternate appearance, both full bodies and profile views.
The full body views include a hatless young Graham for scale. There is a bit of an issue regarding characters with armor- I'm not very savvy with blender admittedly, and all of the metal comes out really dark. It isn't too bad, save for Manny, who doesn't even have his green feather. I'd like to fix those once I can. Also, capes are omitted. I think that only applies to Graham and Whisper though.
I'll be finishing up doing the same for the animals at some point, and I'm planning on making a few references for certain character's weapons, or other interesting items.
Also- along with the profile views, I included some of Graham's head at every angle by 10 degrees, from head on, lower, and upper angles. Thought it would be helpful to see how his hat works from any direction. The images are huge, here's a gif of them all together.
Hope these will come of use! I've been working on it for a while.
#kings quest#king's quest#king’s quest#kq2015#kq#the only metal object i successfully fiddled with was the crown. because it looked horrid if i didnt#also chester and hagatha have an extra angle in their profile views bc they are hunched over with long noses#so at a 45 degree angle it didnt have the view i wanted and i just threw in an extra#only them tho and only from the front not from behind#also theres only 4 goblin profiles and 8 different goblins in full body bc they have the same heads. 4 heads and 2 body types#ive been actively doing this for over a year just not constantly... its easy work but its a time sink#ive been WANTING to do it since 2017 ever since i could access the models in a modelling program#since then we've found more references from the artists but still lack all of them. like graham's >:(#im gonna take a break before getting to the animals and items. there are a few animals already done though#ps these are great refs for art but i wouldnt colorpick from these images due to how blender adds some shading to the models#just use them to pick colors from the color wheel or find the character's texture in the extracted textures and pick from that if you must#anyway thats all my commentary here. have fun go nuts i really hope you guys find this useful
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another ask post
i mean i also read it because a friend whos rly into queer SFF fiction circles recced it but she did kinda lead with "the writer used to write hs fanfic...tasmyn..taz...?" to which i replied
of COURSE I read the locked tomb because i heard taz had written a book. of course. ill consume most any media made by a beloved homestuck bnf. thats also why i played undertale. and read like..snotgirl. and idk... watched the new dub of neon genesis evangelion.
if u made homestuck fanwork 10 years ago and havent even made it since chances are I still remember and I love you for it.
sdlkfhsg its funny you sensed that because that drawing did in fact start kinda more........ well, I'd be lying if I said my hands never wrought a drawing toeing over the pg-13 line LOL...
NOT to say i have a secret stash of porn or anything. in general im more interested in the implication of sexuality or mature themes over any explicit depiction. like everything i draw is so softcore itd almost feel silly to make a nsfw acc for anything.
but im not rly jumping to post anything on main either bc i get the sense i have a lot of kids in my social media following. it varies from site to site and fandom to fandom but the themes in my work often circle around childhood, coming of age etc and in general i like stories about kids so the fandoms i draw for have a lot of kids in them. even stuff like IT (stephen king) which is about kids but isn't necessarily for kids.. there were a lot of kids in that fandom lol.
actually thats why ive been censoring swears in comics lately because the tmnt fandom comes across to me as a little young...IDK I've had MULTIPLE people ask me what "sodomize" means because of the joke in this post and I'm like... I Cannot be the one to explain this to you. you have to look it up on your own klfsdhsdg like i wouldn't be doing this if i were doing a comic for mgs or even homestuck wherein the characters textually swear constantly LOL but sometimes u gotta change tacks depending on the faces u see in the crowd yknow.
i HAVE been thinking abt drawing nsfw of sunspot/richard rider/kobak from x-men red just because that comic seemed to be really asking for it. who knows.. if the need rly arises maybe my separate account policy will change.
its rly more a matter of the fact that i havent read/watched much of any other iterations... im sure id like most lol. I like most things related to my interests regardless of quality. i rly like the marvel ultimate alliance games for instance. sometimes seeing my fave guy is enough he doesnt have to be well written LOL. i dont exactly have a wealth of free time tho thats the real impediment.
i did watch the 2007 movie on new years eve and found it quite charming overall. and i have read about 30-40 issues between the mirage and idw comics. still feels like im barely scratching the surface but i liked em. i rly want to read all the sophie campbell stuff bc i think her work is interesting. jason aaron will be a mixed bag i think lmao. i say as the worlds biggest Wolverine and the X-Men (2011) fan.
hmm this is kinda hard bc i feel like i naturally draw very loose and the hard part for me is tightening it up. maybe some suggestions tho...
1) hand excercises. i think its easy to forget this when many artists sit in front of the computer all day but drawing is a physical activity u do with ur actual...bodys...muscles lol. if u feel urself tightening up it might help to strech (any google search for "artist hand excercises" should yield good results) or do a page of loose practice strokes like..big circles. long lines. scribbles. that kinda thing. whatever feels good for ur hand. this is also just good to do as a general warm up before u sit down for any drawing sesh.
2) draw further away from the canvas. as a general rule...when ur painting traditionally you do the big strokes with your whole arm outstreched and a long handled brush. and when you do the details its smaller wrist movements and a shorter handled brush. so it might help to take a step back or push back from ur chair a little.. or hold ur tablet a little further away. and hold your pen further away from the nib.
3) change mediums / brush types. some brushes and mediums are more suited to loose sketching and some more inclined towards detail work. so changing ur tool could help. also! i personally have this problem where sometimes if im using a brush i feel really familiar with the pressure to make a "good" "finished" "perfect" drawing is greater... if i want to force myself to loosen up ill switch to a tool i dont use as often so it feels like the pressure is off. a lot of times for me this is switching from digital to traditional. but sometimes its switching from a small pen to a big marker. or a smooth pen to a textured one. or a nice brush to a shitty dried up marker.
but also every body is different so i dont think these tips will work for everyone. u should listen to what ur body and mind tell u and how drawing feels to you
bro just sign up and set it up i dont think theres much to it... i dont rly think too much abt my itch.io store because its digital goods so u just upload the file and let it do its thing. no distribution work needed on ur part. youll notice i barely even advertise my itch unless i have smth new on there lol.. its easy. but good luck!!!
idk if im the best person to ask this im more a comic fan than i am a comic professional... a comic hobbist.
well. scott mcclouds understanding comics and making comics are good books on the craft. i think i had to buy them for a class in art school once.
other than that idk just keep at it. comics are really laborious i think for a lot of people the hardest part is sitting down and doing it.
i think a lot of people have a very instinctive understanding of how to read comics and what they look like so whatever you think seems like good way to tell the story you have in mind, its probably right. if u get stuck, study comics that have done something similar. most people in comics are relatively self taught and actually it can be problematic bc you can tell when a lot of comic artists are all copying the same like 5 old white guys LMAO. but on the flip side if you make sure to reference and study broadly your comics will almost assuredly feel unique.
sorry im responding to this anyways. this is just a really nice ask. i like when people reference my older work bc i feel like sometimes theyre subtly implying it wasnt very good LMAOOO. but its true! at least compared to the work i make now ^^ and the fact that im still making art is whats keeping me from being embarassed abt how much of my old art just floats around online lmao im never ashamed to be growing and learning. isnt that a nice thought <3
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how do you have motivation to produce so much art? ive been having the worst art block ever, thinking about drawing makes me roll my eyes now…
ive always admired your passion for drawing so im curious as to what keeps you going
I MEAN…. I get art block constantly but I actually found some ways to mitigate it!! (*^◯^*)
(Read More becuz it’s long)
1.) Draw cringe. Just the most self indulgent things possible with no expectation to share it with anyone. Think of it as like, ‘this is only for me, so it can be as messy and weird as I want and I don’t have to feel bad for not making a solid, aesthetically pleasing product’. This is what I did when I wasn’t very active online, I like to call it my ‘goon’ year because all I drew was buttsex and boys kissing and really offensive crap lol. But not having the pressure of getting likes or engagements on social media can be a big relief until you feel comfortable again. It’s always good to draw consistently.
2.) HAVE ARTIST FRIENDS TO PUMP YOU UP!!!! Following my bestie breakup I was really depressed and had no energy to draw, especially because I had just separated from someone who was so impactful in my creative process. Not having someone to workshop and get excited about ideas with was really hard, because now I didn’t have someone who could help fine tune my vision and provide input on the stuff I was working on. It’s still not the same without her, but I found that engaging with people who are very optimistic about centering their lives around art creates a certain atmosphere that will leave you feeling energized!!! Having artist friends show you their own process, their own projects, and being able to bond over your shared passion is something really amazing and fun. It made me realize how important art was to me and how I wanted to take the encouragements my friends gave me and make them really proud one day!!!
3.) DRAW AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE….. this is the one that works but hurts the most….. I find that during art blocks I draw really shitty and it lowers my morale lol. I get even a whiff of inspiration but the minute I draw one wobbly line I’m instantly bored over the fact that I haven’t spontaneously created the Mona Lisa.
You just have to push through it (T . T) ITS SO HARD but if you make it a habit to at least be THINKING about the sort of thing you’d like to draw every day, eventually you’ll feel more enthused when it’s time to pick up that pen or pencil.
4.) This one is less size-fits-all but honestly, I recommend not looking at other peoples work too much. This one is a tricky one because getting reference and wanting to feel inspired by others are important elements in creating art too, but sometimes it can be a bit de-valuing if you do it too much. It’s easy to think, “Well, I just want to get the ball rolling and maybe change up my style a bit, what are other people doing?” Just to spiral down a rabbit hole of “Omg, all these other artist are better than me. How come I’m not as talented? This person is much younger than me- how is that even fair?! What’s the point of drawing if I’m always going to be so far behind?!”
DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS AND JUST GO AT YOUR OWN PACE!!!!!!
ヽ(￣д￣;)ノ=3=3=3
Yes, there are a billion other people who are way more talented than you’ll ever be. Who cares? Draw the things that make you happy, and people who appreciate it will come along. It’s not a competition, it’s an expression of the spirit!! 🤓☝🏼
5.) SOMETIMES YA JUST NEED A BREAK MAN…… I recommended not getting too greedy with it and becoming lazy (something I have a problem with lol) but art block can sometimes signify a burn out, plain and simple. Take some time to reconnect with yourself, don’t worry about making art and worry more about doing some self care. Go look at the mountains, spend some time with friends, engage in other hobbies like sticking metal rods in your penis or knitting. A lot of times going to new places and trying new things can help inspiration strike! :3
but yeah…. there’s some advice!
I hope this list helps you, nonnie!! ∩^ω^∩
Good Luck!!!!!!!!!!!!🍀🍰🌈🤍🦅
#watch me say all this and then get art block lolololol#I was in art block for like almost a year straight so now I’m TERRIFIED of it happening again#idk how many times I just felt too tired to draw and would instantly start having a panic attack like ‘NO… MY SPARKLE…. ITS GONE AGAIN!!!’#but thankfully I’m watchful enough to spot the tricks that help me come out of it…. SO PERHAPS NEXT TIME I WILL BE PREPARED!
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Hi Kat! TW SH Drug Abuse
Im a stupid bi male whose been in few relationships. Loooonggg story short, a person who I had a relationship with has came back into my life after two years apart and no communication. Its going really well.
When we broke up, I didnt fight. I was so madly in love and it came out of nowhere. Ive never argued in a relationship and didnt see how forcing someone to stay was going to help anyone.
She said she fell out of love with me (I would later learn (like as in two weeks ago) that she experienced a “split” with her companion person (me) as she discovered that she has borderline pd and schizoaffective).
A really stupid thing I did was try and fill a “my ex” shaped hole with a “her friend” shaped peg. Whatever ‘defense’ I can conjure up only makes me look worse. She and her had bad relations and were constantly saying bad things about each other. She had also hooked up with one of my exes (same girl) exes (confused yet?).
It was a thing that sort of just happened organically. We saw each other at a party and hit it off. We shared a lot of similar interests and a month into dating she professed her love for me (red flag). I knew I didnt feel the same way, but out of guilt from hurting my ex, I tried to make it work (it didnt!).
So over the summer my ex (the first one who I was head over heels for) sends me a message and we started talking again. We met in person and I told her everything about my relationship with her friend (only saying brutal truths which she wanted to hear). In the two years we hadnt talked, she took a gap year, developed a coke habit, and attempted to end her life five separate times.
After a month of talking over the summer, and getting texts very infrequently from her, I decided I couldnt keep talking to her. I defend the right to preserve my sanity. She lives four hours away from me, is actively suicidal, and not easy to reach or communicate with. Whenever I wouldnt hear from her for a couple of hours I would go into panic mode and contemplate calling her local emergency services or her mom to check up on her. I wasnt sleeping or taking care of myself just worrying 24/7 if she was alive.
She didnt take me not wanting to talk to her well at all. She doesnt see a therapist as shes had bad experiences in the past. She sees a psychiatrist due to extenuating circumstances with the psychiatric hospitals she was in after attempts.
We have had long conversations about both of these betrayals and breaches of trust. We’ve written letters about it, about what we want, what our needs are, and have had adult conversations about how to move forward.
Im honestly not sure what im asking. Maybe this is just interesting for you, but im extraordinarily stubborn about this. Ive expressed my desire to live together, which was reciprocated, albeit as a future prospect (6-12months).
Oh! She’s a sex worker which makes me uncomfortable and I hate that I feel that way! Thats what it is. I feel a weird knot in my stomach when she talks about it and its so disorienting because it goes against my personal beliefs (that sex work IS work and it needs to be decriminalized and treated as a legitimate job).
I think its internalized mysoginy or a problem with jealousy. I want to be comfortable with it. I dont tell her im not because its not her problem, its mine and my own little stupid brain.
Do you have any advice for me? I know this is so long ive just smoked two cigarettes sitting here typing this on a bench at one in the morning. I rly appreciate your blog as well. A fitting name because I often stumble across a post from you when I forget to be kind to myself. Thanks again and also no pressure to respond to this rambling nonsense either!!
I encourage you to be very, very careful not to get stuck in a "savior" role in this relationship. If this person is an actively suicidal, severely mentally ill addict who is refusing help while taking your attempt at establishing boundaries as a personal attack, then I can't recommend going back to them. I get that you want to help and that you still have serious feelings, but you have to put yourself first - and there's a good chance you can't do that while also getting involved in an intimate relationship with this person. So be careful and think with your brain, not your heart.
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LATE LIES
Part 2
Steve Rogers x reader
Summary:you have recently decoved that your finance captain america is cheating on you. But there again you could be wrong. But what will happen when your not wrong ?. And your not the only one who has cort on to steve shaddy activitys .
AN : my grammar and spelling isn't the best so bare that in mind .
@nomadevans82
Breakfast was quickly over. No word . No affection. Shown by the man who was ment to love you, the man you are ment to marry , the man you suspect is cheating on you. But maybe your wrong , maybe your brain is just over thinking. This is captain america we are speaking about, man who said your his world , his love , he wouldnt do anything to hurt you , especially in such a way . Would he ?
He wouldnt or so you thought/knew.
'God why cant I think straight ' you mind was racing around and around , question after question , excuse after excuse for him .
Maybe your just overreacting, I mean my spy training doesn't mean I have to be right every time . Nobody else has notice his behalf? Right .but you have and you know him better then anyone . Or so you should. But your not the only one whose notice a change . Nat did , she look like she was about to skin him alive with her butter knife at the breakfast.
You mind racing , your fist rapidly punching the bag , never stop . The training room had blurred form your vision along with everyone in it . You can feel you blood boiling , tight knots in your stomach as you think about steve with sharon . Your temper going just above busting point . You didnt notice you went breathing. You didnt notice your eyes glowing, you didnt notice the punching bag flying off , with a swerling yellow sting glow around it . You just stare at it , forgetting all the people . Nobody would notice anyway , it's not unusual for this to happen , but what is , is the power running through your veins . The very thing , nobody knows, the thing you hide , the thing you run away from , thing you dont want people to know about you , hell you dont even know what it is exactly. You spend all you time hiding it . The minority of the time you cant feel it running though , you normally have hold over it . But when your emotions get to extreme (more like things you dont experience often ) such as a need to cry, or your anger , anxiety. It slips out and your cant control it. And it doesn't help you are feeling all these right now.
You final brought back form your blurred vision with a hand on your shoulder. If it was anyone else you'd push them off , but not this person. Youd no them any way . Ever since it first comforted you when you just a child, in place no child should be , in a situation no child should be , expecting things no child should ever .
You slowing turn your face toward him . Bucky .or james as you knew him as a child . Hes your comfort , the closest thing you got to w father in the red room . This you keep a secret form everyone else , no one apart from nat knows that you were in the red room with her and as she was training and falling in love with james . He acted as a father to , never letting you get near the same amount punishment as the other girls. So when you found he was still alive , when you found he was becoming sane minded again you couldn't be happy. You weirdly felt safe the world again . After you were told just after he managed for you to escape that the red room had killed him .
You have alot of secrets such as people dont know about the fact that the red room trained you , Bucky trained you , or the fact that you two have a father and daughter relationship . Nobody knows not even Steve, to everyone else sheild trained you, you were a good field agent and was giving the opportunity to become an averager under the request of Nat .But at least two people know them nat and buck , they raised you basically, they know you , they know your history. But theres one secret that nat doesn't even know, only james . And that's about your mutation. James found out about it the same time you did .
You were 11 years old , training with james in a dark cold room . The constenced shouting in russian and girls crying was getting to your head missing punishing and kicks , you head was fuzzy, everything was become to quick , to fast . You couldn't handle it , although you go thought it every day . You final get a burst of energy and it shoots thought your veins and bones , the bright yellow light swerling around, pushing James into the wall . He knew what it was , he had heard of mutation before and what happens when the red room find a girl who has one , they either dont last very long or are put into different facilities. He protected you , help you hide it . Still does today .
So when you turned around , you saw the panic on his face, he knew what had happend , he was the only person in the room that saw as always. And he knew something was wrong because you knew let it get the better of . He automatically pulled you into a hug hiding your face from the rest of the world in his chest . It would be so easy to cry , so easy. If you wernt so anger you were shacking .
"Your okay " "your safe " "I got you " " you can calm down " he constantly whispers until you did as you were told and calmed down . You glance up till you met his glaze . His eyes was swerling with fear and empathy for you . "Now you gonna tell me what's got you all worked up ?"he asked pulling the hair out of your face . You just shake you head negatively, he nodded in return , knowing you was going to answer him anytime soon .
"I might have an idea " nats voice stalled you . 'Did she see ?' You become anxious again you dont want anyone to know about you mutions .
"You've go quite the rage and strength, and rightfully to " at this you know she must think you just punched the bag down .
"What do you mean ? What happend ? Do u know what's wrong? NAT tell me ! " buck quietly shouted concerned, pulling away form you , facing nat with his armes crossed .
"Calm down papa wolf , I dont think nows the time , let's calm her down and get a drink in her first , I know she needs it " she glanced at you sympathetically, she knows about sharon and Steve.
"What ! Nat Its 11am the mo...." bucky was cut off by the annocument above.
"Party tonight people. Main floor see you there tonight. Peace out , Iron man ! " Tony said though the speakers .
"Great !" You said walking out of the training room , towards your room , knowing you'll stay there u till the party.
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Hours had passed and you haven't seen anyone all day , steve didnt come to check up on you like he normal did , you asked friday what he was doing every hour and your were denied access.
You and Nat hadn't spoke about what was playing on your mind , you just spent your day with a few early drinks and tv . It got to the time where it was time to get ready .you sat in that's room with a dress she picked out for you lying on her bed . You sat at the mirror finishing your simple make up nothing to extreme hust enough to add to your natural beauty.
You heard the bathroom door open , you turned to see that Nat was almost ready
"Come on kid , I know parties ain't really our thing but at least they'll be vodka "she joked .
"Thank god " you rolled your eyes and got up picking up your dress and heading towards the bathroom. You were just about to close the door when Nat sighed
"Y/n you .... I..... do you see what i see " she ask clearly neverous .
"About ?" You tried to act clueless but you knew what she was about to say
"About steve "
"..... " you stay silent for a while " can we not.. not right now .. we both could be wronge his the man I'm marrying, the man I love .... i dont want to think about it .... I... we might be wronge "
She scoffed at the thought but she nodded her head . And in you went into the bathroom to finish getting ready .
When you emerged out of the bathroom in your dark blue silk dress that hugged and was lose in all the right placed . With your hair curled and pinned half up and half down .
"Oh my .... you look gorgeous " Nat said with wide eyes . You felt it too as much as you ddint want to go to this party you felt great in this dress almost forgetting everything
"You look stunning as always " Nat just shrugged it off and grab your hand while heading our her door .
When you got into the hallway you and nat both stopped in your tracks.
"There you are ... iv been looking for you ... Tony and his parties eh " Steve laugh making you laugh too . This man put you into a trance everytime you saw him , he was in a dark blue shirt similar to your dress (not on purpose) . He looked as good as ever , you sighed with the biggest smile thinking this man is going to be your for ever soon . But then the voice started to creep back into your head ,instantly your small dropped to a frown
Steve took a step closer to you and kissed you on the check you let out a breath that you didnt know you was holding all day ,
'See everything normal we were just over reacting '
He smiled down at you "you look good " he said but he didnt even look at you the way be usual would , he didnt say what he usal would , it would be more then just good ...
"Good ? She looks stunning " Nat blurted out , you could tell she was staring at him like he was the target .
He just wrapped an arm losly around you , not tight like he normal would, he once said it was to keep you by his side and let everyone know your his . But not now . You felt so stuiped being in his arms .
"Let's go shall we "
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You had been at the party for not that long Steve was by your side laughing and joking with everyone around the group . Nat , Bucky and Tony all laughing and joking
Everyone would feel fine if it wasnt for Steve's eyes keep wondering off
You sighed , chucking down your drunk , thinking your the only one that noticed but you forget that you were next to the best assassins you have ever know .
"Hi everyone "
"Oh hi sharon " Tony said
Your eyes snapped to her stunned , everyone eyes fell on her as you all stood at the bar in a circle she had managed to get her way inbetween Tony and steve
" you look stunning " steve said looking her up and down with a smirk , your heart dropped
"You get good and she gets stunning!"
"Thank you " sharon whisper trying not to star at steve but failing as there both keep sharing glances at each other, as a blush creeped on her check .
The music was the only thing filling the silence for a while as Tony sipped on his drink clueless . With steve and Sharom basically eye fucking each other while unknowly to you two very very anger killing mansions were ready to be Roger's down . You just stood there tears threating to make an appearance.
"I'm... I'm just going to pop to the.. " you couldn't finish your sentence already making your way down the hall .
Nobody looked at you are asked if you were okay .
You made your way blindly down corridors in all different directions you didnt know where you ended up, all you knew was you were far way you didnt hear the music and you were safe alone . You let out a quiet sob that lead to a few tears escaping your tear duck as you fought them off . Ignoring the stinging feeling with the tight chest and pit in your stomach .
Some one pulled you into there arms you you could see was a few red strains of hair
"Sshhhhh "
"I dont know why I'm like this.... I might be wronge " you choked out
Nat just gave you a look like 'when are we ever wronge "
"Come lets go back " was all she said you nodded .
She rubbed your back as you made your way through the corridors . Before you turned a corner you heard a quiet bang followed by laughter and giggles . You and Nat quietly laught and slowly made your way to the corner.
You stopped dead in your tracks with nat behind you . You were barely visible as you were still hidden around the corner .you quickly took a step back , pushing Nat backwards , she looked confused but you both listen carefully.
All you could hear was short breaths with giggles and growls
"Stop that "you heard a high pitched giggle
"Hell no ! I wanted to get my hands on you all night "
"You would be able to if you didnt have her ..."
"Soon " The deep voice cut her off "soon I'll be all your okay "
Your heart drop you could help the tears roll down your cheek. As you saw and hear Steve with sharon , it hit you hard , it all become reality and you couldn't take it . Nat griped you tightly clearly trying to calm her anger .
There voice went away and nat looked around the corner
"There gone ..I'm going to kill him " she snapped
You sobs became louder and louder your whole body was shaking
"Why ? Why ? Why ? He said he loved me , said I was his world , I'm meant to be his wife soon why ? What did he mean by soon ? Was he going to leave you?
Your body was shaking as nat stepped back , unknowly to you everything around you was shaking to . You vision blur and lost all connection to world around you and your heart was literally tearing into piece making the unwanted power over come you .
"Uh no nooo no " was all you hear and Bucky ran his way towards you
"Calm down it okay " bucky slowly came near you as the shaking stopped. He quickly wrapped you in his arms
"Calm down !"
There was silence that felt like forever Nat with her anger towards Roger's and shocked by you . While Bucky was staying calm for you
"You going to tell me ? " he asked slowly.
You shook your head no
There both sighed
"Fine I will!" Nat snapped
"No .. no please dont" you begged.
"What ? What is it ? "Bucky asked getting impatient
"No .. don't say it...its not real until you say it " you hiccup on everyone word
"Please " you begged one last time
"Just tell me god damn it "
"Roger's is cheating with carter "nat barked over youf sobs
"What !"
#chris evans#chris evans x reader#steve rogers au#steve rodgers imagine#steve rodgers x reader#steve rogers#steve x reader
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rules: code of conduct.
BEGIN.
Before we start, I would like you to have certain things in mind when approaching me ooc. I am very shy and quite awkward, which results in me not being much of a talker; however, I will always try my best to be friendly to whoever wants to approach. I dislike pet names so please do not use them with me unless we are very close. There will be times when I'm just exhausted, so my wording could sound rude/aggressive, to which I apologize in advance -I never mean to hurt people’s feelings. I also reserve the right to interact with WHOEVER I want, and pestering me about it will only get you blocked.
Updates will be made as required.
I. BASIC.
A. This blog is: Selective / Independent / Canon Divergent / NSFW / Mutuals only / Singleship / Mostly iconless / Multiverse / AU, Crossover, OC, and Multimuse friendly / Vaguely affiliated with the OP RP fandom.
B. I am a very slow rper for many reasons —school, family, my ever-fluctuating mood —and I would appreciate it if you refrained from pestering me for replies. In return I offer as much patience as necessary.
Think of this blog as low activity please.
C. English is not my mother language so I apologize in advance for any mistakes made.
D. I track the tag #iinfortunii, although mentioning me works just as fine.
E. Constructive criticism is always welcome but anon hate will be immediately deleted. I have no problems if you disagree with my portrayal, but it doesn't give you the right to harass me.
F. Mun and muse are both over 18, so there are chances that heavy content will be present; however I won't be writing smut. I can roleplay anything before or after the act if requested, but the moment things get far too explicit, I'll do a fade-to-black. I ask of you to not lie about your age or else you’ll be blocked indefinitely.
G. This is a heavily headcanon-based blog, and changes are likely to be made as more information is revealed about him, though I reserve the right to adjust the new information according to my interpretation of Deuce or simply ignore it, which is why I’m canon divergent.
H. If you'd like to turn an ask into a thread, you can turn it into a new post, or reblog from me, as I won't be using the Tumblr asks anymore due to the problems that come with formatting and such.
I. Ask box is open for everyone ic or ooc, but you aren't allowed to turn it into a thread and nor I will reply to it if we’re not mutuals. Please don't push me, because I won't hesitate to block.
J. No godmoding —only a minor is allowed if it moves a thread forward —or metagaming, please. Don't kill Deuce either, unless plotted beforehand, and most importantly, don't hold your muse back.
K. Discord is available for mutuals upon request.
L. Just because I write something it does not mean I condone it. Please have this in mind and again, do not pester me about it. Any and all nsfw matters will be tagged accordingly. There will be triggering topics present, and you can know more about this on the section below.
M. DO NOT involve me in drama or call-out posts. I’m heavily against both things. On this note, you’ll never see me rebloging a call-out post. This culture is so damaging and toxic, and I firmly believe no one should play the role of the judge for the good of the community just because you had issues with someone or don’t agree with the things they roleplay. Talk things privately, be mature about it, hard-block the person and move on. I am also very aware that a lot of people have done things that can’t be excused, but I like to believe that people can change for the better. If you try to drag me into it, I'll hard block any and all people involved indefinitely.
II. TRIGGERS.
A. They will be tagged as trigger tw, trigger / and trigger cw.
B. I do my best to stay up to date with my mutuals triggers. Your comfort is way more important to me than you might think, so never be hesitant to approach me via IM, (anonymous) ask or stop following me.
C. Triggers that are likely to appear, although some more than others: violence || blood || death || drugs || abuse || knives || body image || medical equipment || suggestive content || etc
D. I have no triggers, so you are free to go wild with your content. I only ask you remember to tag your nsfw (both written and visual), please.
III. INTERACTIONS.
A. Deuce won't like everyone. He might/will make wrong assumptions about your character. He will insult and bite back. He won't always be nice to those he likes. He does many things that serve his interests. You, as the mun, have no reason to take it personal, because I'm won't follow someone I don't like; if you DO take it personal however, and decide to rouse drama, then I'll be hard-blocking you. Goes for me as well —I have no reason to get angry for any of the things noted above.
B. My bonds page displays the relationships that have been built over time, not necessarily through interaction alone but over plotting as well. Refer to it for more information.
C. Interactions with OCs related to canon characters will only take place as long as said OCs have a detailed about page. Personally, I'm not interested in the idea of an OC being blood-related to my portrayal, so I apologize in advance.
D. Formatting isn’t a big thing across my blogs, save for the small text. Please don’t mix either sup/sub with small text when writing with me, as I have eyesight problems. Don’t use colored text either.
E. Non-romantic pre-established relationships are allowed! Just make sure to talk it out with me first, yeah?
01. Spade / Whitebeard pirates (canon and original characters alike that i am MUTUALS with) will have a pre-established relationship as long as the other mun is comfortable with such idea, though that relationship will be limited to merely crewmates, unless discussed otherwise.
F. You don’t need to match my writing length as long as I’m given enough to work with. If something about my reply bothers or doesn’t work with you, let me know and I’ll re-work it.
G. I really enjoy plotting scenarios or talking out about the relationships my muse could have with other muses, so hit me up if you’ve got any ideas! I’ll try to do the same!
H. Mun does not equal muse, so don’t go assuming I’m a jerk simply because Deuce is an asshole from time to time. I’m set on the idea that I’ll give people the same treatment they give me —which is always nice and kind. Kudos to everyone for this ♡
I. I don’t use a threadtracker because I rely on my memory (terrible mistake, I know), but I try to draft people’s replies as soon as I see them. If by any reason it seems like I lost it, then please let me know / send me a link with it and I’ll be deeply grateful.
J. I don’t do nor reply to greetings starters for matters of my own comfort, so I ask of you to never expect a starter or a reply from them.
IV. SHIPPING.
A. Singleship, with the spot taken by daadzi, which means Deuce is no longer open for romantic relationships.
01. Under no circumstances, I will accept more romantic relationships once the spot is taken. That being said, I won’t discourage your muse from falling for / hitting on him, although I ask you to understand he will never respond with the same interest or will never react gently if he’s pushed too far.
02. If my shipping partner is comfortable enough, I'll interact with duplicates with the condition that the relationship is strictly platonic.
B. Constant interaction, mutual interest, and chemistry are a must for the sake of better communication (both ic and ooc, preferably).
C. Please do not approach me if you wish our characters to have either a: one night stand or friends with benefits type of relationships. It won’t work out due to the nature of Deuce’s personality, and for that I apologize.
E. My ship has its own tag so you're free to block it if you don't want to see it on your dashboard. In addition, I'll also tag those posts with only the ship name for this very purpose.
F. Please do not force ships on me.
V. CELEBRATIONS.
A. First off, I am absolutely terrible at keeping up with dates, and to be frank, I am not the biggest fan of celebrating, which is why I think it’s necessary to say I won’t be partaking in any holidays, not even Deuce’s birthday (not that he has one, to begin with). Obviously I will still reply to any gifts received, and will send out things in return —you know, common courtesy.
B. I won't be sending out birthday gifts every year, and I might write drabbles for people once in a blue moon; it doesn’t mean they will be done for the specific date though, so please be patient.
VI. REASONS TO NOT FOLLOW BACK / UNFOLLOW.
A. Too much drama / call-outs / vague posts / sexual content.
B. Content makes me uncomfortable.
C. You are a personal blog without a visible rp sideblog. Please make sure it's easy to find.
D. You do not have a proper tag system.
E. Your blog doesn’t have a rules and about pages.
F. You lack the manners to deal with people respectfully.
G. I have no interest / lost interest.
H. I'm constantly / only used as a meme archive.
I. Other reasons may apply. I will soft block so we can both cease following each other and avoid any potential awkward situations. I won’t make a fuss if you decide to unfollow so I expect the same courtesy.
VII. ABOUT BEATRICE.
She is not a real person. Her concept as Deuce’s (toxic) pseudolover is my creation and was somewhat inspired from the real life Beatrice Portinari. Do have in mind that Deuce doesn’t talk about her so your muse can’t simply approach him and ask about her unless they can go through his memories / read his mind / any capability alike or he speaks about her, though it won't take a genius to figure out that she's a product of his imagination.
You can read about her by clicking here -link to be added.
She serves as a lie to shield himself from the internalized homophobia he deals with up until meeting Ace.
NOTE: As stated previously, Mun =/= muse, but I too have been dealing with compulsory heterosexuality for far too long, so I'd like to apologize in advance for projecting a bit of that into my portrayal. I'll work so that this part makes sense with what we've been given from Ace's novel.
VIII. MISCELLANEOUS.
A. I will never force people to follow me, so if by any reason you have to unfollow/block me, please go ahead. Your comfort matters and have every right to do what you must to ensure your wellbeing. With that said, I will not tolerate and will immediately hard block if you try to police my content.
B. I do not follow back immediately, and it can take me from a few hours to several days to follow back. Do not take it personally if I choose not to.
C. If I follow it’s because I am interested in interacting. I only ask you to be patient because it might take me a while to gather the courage to send something to your inbox or talk to you.
D. I have. ZERO knowledge about medicine. Don’t expect me to go full force and try to be 100% accurate, because I won’t.
E. I practice reblog karma (send a meme to someone if I’m rebloging it from them). If you see something you’d like to reblog but have no intention in sending something yourself, then please reblog from the source.
IX. FINISH.
Thank you for taking the time to read this! As you might have noticed, there’s no password to send. Make sure to check the psa tag for any updates, or don’t hesitate to send an ask if there’s anything unclear! I do my best so as not to post too much OOC posts, but sometimes it just happens. If it's nothing important, then I'll erase it whenever I have the chance/remember.
Keanu Reeves vc: You’re all breathtaking!
#pinned post.#long post#❝ —talking nonsense ; ooc#❝ —off to new adventures ; queue#ooc.#queue.#[ this is a very long post btw ]
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Reminiscences - Peter Hale x OFC (Part 2)
Hello againnnn - so I’m finally back, finally going to be active.
My life has been a mess, I’ve not been motivated, and mentally I’ve gone through a lot the last 10 months, got thorugh University, Graduated, got a job, was a shit job, got another grad job during quarentine, and it’s been good and bad...
Sorry for never posting and being bad at this, but I want to bounce back, so now its timmmeee. Also this Fic is actually completed.
Want to post more, and just give you guys good content xoxo
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Peter Hale x OFC (Calla)
Word Count: 2900 (Sorryyy, idk why it’s so long)
Warnings: None - Slow Start I guess
Summary: Calla has grown up as Derek’s best friend, she’s known the Hales her whole life,she’s known their secrets and everything in Beacon Hills. Things in Beacon Hills are quiet, the pack are a family, and Calla realises that Peter knows more of her secrets than she realises.
A/N: Hope you all enjoy, any feedback is welcome x
Masterlist
Fandom List
Peter Hale x OFC - Reminiscenes Part 1
Part 2
The days following that evening I completely ignored Peter. I saw him whenever he was lurking around Derek’s, I even went to the efforts of walking the complete opposite direction as him when I went grocery shopping. But if he remembers, everything every single thing I told him. Then I may as well die now. Especially since he’ll use that against me. This is Peter we’re on about.
“So you’ve apparently been ignoring Peter?” Derek asked once he settled onto my couch on Thursday.
I rolled my eyes, “And. There’s nothing wrong with that, he’s a psycho”
Derek huffed out a laugh, “There is when it makes him mopey. He comes around to mine in hope that you’re there you know”
“Well, maybe he should stop trying to be such a stalker” I told his nephew. It was weird that there was such a large but short age difference between Peter and us. He wasn’t ever seen as the adult when we were younger, he had a boyish smirk, he had charm, and wit, and was so different compared to how he is now. He completely changed because of the fire, and the 5 years of solitude almost. He grew up, yet I didn’t see this change despite being the only person visiting him. I didn’t know he was the alpha yet I made a fool out of myself by being there for him, and he couldn’t even trust me.
“You sure it’s that?” Derek asked.
“Derek. If you’re here to talk about Peter then you can just leave. Actually no you can’t you don’t have an option, stop talking about Peter, tonight is about us. If you want I’ll send him a text saying hi later and then ignore him”
Derek shook his head a small smirk on his face. I felt a bit bad that I was taking Derek away from his boyfriend. But I needed my best friend sometimes as well.
“Good, now how are things with Stiles going?”
Derek huffed out a laugh, “They’re going well. Really well actually, never really thought that I would end up with him, but it’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. And I sound like a soppy teenager. So let’s talk about your love life”
I snorted, “Right, what love life? Actually, I went on a date last week, it was a complete failure. I’m just glad that the girls who set me up with him don’t work in the same department as him”
Derek started to laugh, “How comes I didn’t know about this?”
“Because I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even... it wasn’t even a big deal for me. I wasn’t excited, I just wanted to get it over and done with, and the worst thing is when I was getting into my car at the end of the night he tried to kiss me. And Derek I still cringe, what happened was I turned my head so fast he kissed my hair. Completely missed the cheek”
This caused Derek to laugh, loudly, at me. “Wow Calla. Who would’ve thought huh?” He asked.
I rolled my eyes at him, “Shut up. It was a mess, so I rather not talk about that. Instead, I’m going to set up a tinder profile.”
Derek still had this amused smirk on his face, it was nice seeing him like this. For the first time in years, he was happy. His life was on track, sure there were constant threats to the town, but that happens, that’s part of the job description of being a werewolf, and with Derek being a complete shifter, it makes a difference.
But being with Stiles makes a difference, you can literally see the way that he looks at him, and I haven’t seen him this happy in a long time. He’s almost that young cocky guy he once was, but a more matured version who has a history to him. Who has so much more to himself than ever before, and I’m proud of him. Proud of everything he’s gone through and defeated. I know his mom, and sister would also be proud of him, whether he’s an alpha or not, he’s still so powerful, and has such a good heart.
“Let’s get started then” He grinned at me.
I rolled my eyes and rather than Pizza we ordered Chinese food, and rather than watching a film we created a tinder profile for me. It was terrible, Derek called in the big guns and Stiles was on Face time with us, which made it even worse for me. But I didn’t mind, I love stiles, and boy let me tell you he added spice to my basic profile. And obviously gave my pictures a yes or no.
“I’ve helped you guys this far, let me help with the swiping” Stiles said through the phone.
I scoffed at him, “Derek say bye to your man he’s helped enough”
Derek shook his head with a small smile on his face, “You heard the boss” He said to him.
“All that help, you better show me your matches or who you’ve spoken to over the next few days Calla. I’ll know if you don’t”
I laughed at him and Derek soon hung up, “Come on, let’s see who’s around then”
Both Derek and I started swipping through these guys, commenting to each other, and swiping left or right. Mainly left. Let’s be honest. Most of these guys either looked like guys who were balding too early in life, or others who were after a quick fuck. Despite everything I did manage to swipe right a few times.
“Please let’s stop now. Like, if you think I’m going actually going to find anyone through tinder its... not likely. It’s just a bit of fun, could lead to a quick lay”
“The same way Stiles and I getting together wasn’t likely”
I grinned at him “I should’ve called it. When you constantly wanted to get mad at him, way back when, and you just couldn’t. But that itself feels like years ago”
“Yeah, the same way my uncle spared your life?” Derek said back.
I glared at him and hit his arm, “I hate you, and I’m pretty sure your uncle is a sociopath”
“Yeah. Same but, let’s be real here. He has a soft spot for you Calla”
“Derek, I will stab you if you don’t shut up.”
“I would love to see you try”
I narrowed my eyes at him, “I will call Argent right now and get him to help me out”
He laughed, “Alright, I’ll shut up now. I’m sorry”
I nodded, “You better be sorry... Also why do you keep bringing up your uncle of all people to me?” I asked curiously.
Derek knows nothing of what I done whilst he was away, he knows nothing of the feelings I once harboured for Peter, maybe I still do which is why I’m so defensive, but no one needs to know this. But still, there’s got to be a reason behind Derek’s madness right now. Maybe Peter wormed his way into his head? It’s a possibility.
“You just said you wanted me to shut up”
I shrugged, “Just curious. Then you can shut up, and we can watch something”
He shook his head, “The way he acts around you I guess. He’s a prick towards everyone, including you don’t get me wrong, but he’s a different type of prick round you. And he cares about you, he gets protective, worries, cares”
I would be lying if I said that didn’t affect me, but it does. Although it means nothing.
“Derek, are you forgetting that I was basically raised around him. Wherever you were, he was, or the other way around. Like he’s been a constant figure in my life for a very long time. Sure he wasn’t mobile for a few of those years. But he was still in Beacon Hills. So maybe that’s why, maybe he has something that slightly resembles feelings from when he’s younger and he sees me as the kid that he used to teach basketball to, and just putting this out there I am amazing at basketball, which has got to be the meaning behind this madness, and this is because of him, and maybe a little you, but still”
“Really? We live in this town, and that’s what you call madness?” He asked.
“Yes Derek. That is madness, you’re forgetting I’m just a human girl who only just knows how to defend herself and I rather have that as my type of madness instead of anything else”
“How have you actually been?” He asked me giving me a serious look, “Like... you’ve literally been thrown into this world again, months after your parents passed away, and sure that was a couple of years ago, but you rarely see your younger brother because he’s working abroad, and the only other family you have is us. But most weekends we’re off fighting something supernatural, and you’re just at the loft, waiting.”
I shrugged, “I’m fine Derek. I’m happy... sure I miss my parents a lot and that set me back a lot. That made me want to constantly curl up into a ball and just cry. But having you back, having this normal-ish again. These last few months, I’ve gotten better. Ive also got my girls” I said with a smile, but he looked at me, waiting for me to elaborate causing me to sigh and twist my body completely towards him,
“Derek, I’m working an amazing Job, sure it doesn’t pay the best but I don’t need the money. I have money, instead I’m doing something I enjoy, and they’re easy shifts. I’ve always wanted to be an elementary teacher, but without the stress so a teaching assistant is the best thing. And I have Fridays off, and I do talk to my brother. Just not as often as I want because he’s doing so well for himself in London. And I have you Derek, I have my life long best friend. After everything we’ve been through we’re both here and we’re both happy. Sure my life could be further along than it currently is, but I’m finally in a good place”
He nodded at me, “Good” He whispered, “I’m happy to hear that”
“I hate you” I said shaking my head, but in reality he knows that I love him and he is my absolute best friend no matter how much I want to kill him.
**
Apparently Lydia and Malia found it amusing that I now have an online dating profile. Everyone did, all aside from one person. That person I’m still avoiding but he still finds a way to worm his way into my life, especially since I’m currently sat with the girls, who are judging each and every guy whose photo I scroll through, and his face pops up.
Malia was laughing, seeing her father’s face on my phone, and Lydia finding it as amusing made me realise I need more friends other than Derek my age. Especially since Lydia decided on swiping right.
“Well, well, it’s a match” Lydia laughed, “But it makes me think, whats the maximum age you’re hitting here”
I rolled my eyes with a small scoff, trying to keep my heartbeat in place, “Well, if I wanted to talk to him. I would, yet I’m not, and you just swiped for me, that’s not fair, and guy my age are… I don’t know” I said to them.
“Well he clearly wants to talk to you” Lydia murmured.
I scoffed, “He wants to get under my skin. It’s what he does. Anyway don’t you girls have I don’t know other stuff to do?” I asked trying to change the subject.
“Nope, completely free tonight.” Lydia grinned.
I internally groaned but only seconds later was I literally saved by the bell, my phone started to ring, and Derek’s name popped up.
“Hello” I answered.
“Where are you?” He asked.
“I’m at Lydia’s place. With Lydia and Malia. Why?”
“No reason. Just, a few threats about, tell me when you’re going to leave to get home, and message me when you get there alright”
I rolled my eyes but had a small smile on my face, “Yes of course Derek. Do you know who or what it is?”
“Not sure yet. Probably isn’t something too dangerous. But whatever it is, they’re drawing other hunters to town. And now we have twice as much to look out for.”
“Stay safe then Derek. Does Chris know the hunters?”
“He’s looking into it”
I nodded, “Alright then. Just make sure you’re all safe and everything ok”
“Yeah always. Remember to message me when you get home” He then hung up and I looked at Lydia,
“What’s happened?” She asked me,
“Something else is out there, along with some hunters. And now I’m worried that these hunters will obviously know about our boys, and one thing will lead to another and someone might get hurt”
She had a worried expression on her face before looking at Malia who was on the phone to Scott, “We’ll figure it out. We always do”
I nodded, although I didn’t get involved as much considering I’m human with no special ability at all, and no badge, and well I’m not the smartest of the bunch. I just make sure everyone’s safe and worry about them all whilst making sure they eat and do their homework. That’s obviously the teacher side of me coming out there, no matter what ages I teach even if I am only a teaching assistant who works 4 days a week.
“So Scott just said that Stiles and Chris are trying to find out who the hunters actually are, and that he Derek and Peter are going to find whatever’s out there. He told me to stay here...”
“You’re not are you?” Lydia asked.
Malia smirked and shook her head, “Nope. And I’m pretty sure you two won’t either, so who’s going to drop me off at Scott’s house?”
Both Lydia and I looked at each other before sighing and getting up, we got our stuff together, she called out to her mom telling her that we were going to Scott’s before we all left.
**
“What are you all doing here?” Scott asked once we walked in.
“You think we’re really going to let all the boys have the fun?” Malia asked her boyfriend, “And come on, I know those woods better than anything” She shrugged.
No one could deny that, both her and Chris were the best hunters here. As in being able to physically find something with the given clues.
“And I’m here to assist Stiles and Chris apparently” Lydia shrugged, everyone easily let that pass before all eyes were on me.
“I thought I told you to go home. It’s dangerous”
I shrugged, “I know. I really didn’t have any other choice” I said nodding my head towards Malia.
“Well you should just go home then. You’ll just be in the way otherwise” Peter snapped at me.
I rose my eyebrows at him, silently cursing Lydia for swiping right on his stupid face.
“I might just stay, make sure you don’t snake anyone out” I spat back to him.
“What and you think you’ll be able to stop me?”
“Peter won’t do anything, we’re not even sure what the problem is at the moment. So just go home Calla” Derek told me.
I felt a bit taken back at how blunt and rude he was at that, and considering no one decided on saying anything, I just grabbed my bag and left without a word. Because hey there’s nothing new there, being treated like I’m nothing despite seeing everyone as family. I would’ve expected a bit more considering they’ve got literal kids in there helping yet I can’t. Even if it is to make sure they’re all safe and not making stupid plans. I was there when Talia was alpha, I know how things work. Instead I just get embarrassed surrounded by my friends, and left to feel worthless because I’m of no help.
As soon as I got in my car, I knew that all I needed right now was a glass of wine, and some trash TV.
Which is exactly what I done when I got home, wine, some trash TV, and the comfort of my own apartment. And as petty as I may sound, I just hate feeling this way, and knowing that it’s something that constantly happens, I don’t see why I get involved in the first place. It’s the same old thing, I try and be there for everyone, they shut me out whenever shit goes down and I just keep running back. But no this isn’t going to keep happening because this week I will make the time and effort to go out with my girlfriends. I’ll dress up and have fun without worrying about anything else. Derek won’t be there to stop me, Peter won’t be there with his snarky remarks, and I won’t be surrounded by teenagers.
Which is exactly why I messaged my friends that I’m always talking to yet never have the time to see because I’m constantly with everyone else. We spoke for a little while before I asked when everyone was free for drinks, and guess what this girl is doing on Thursday after work. A night out, with my girls, and I can’t wait.
Because I really felt in the mood to treat myself, I also planned on going shopping with one of the girls tomorrow after work. So no harm done there, I’ll buy myself a new outfit, some new makeup all ready for Thursday.
Peter Hale x OFC - Reminiscences Part 3
#Peter Hale#Peter Hale Imagine#Peter Hale Fan Fic#Peter Hale Fan Fiction#Teen Wolf#Peter Hale x OFC#OFC#Original Female Character#Teen Wolf Fic#Teen Wolf Fan Fiction#Reminiscences
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For those of you who thought I should make my life story into a book…here is the outline. For the sake of clarity as you are reading, let me explain who the characters are. The kids from my Dads first marriage: Jim1, Patty, Seana. The kids from my Mom’s (Mary Ellen) first marriage: Mary Jane and Jim2. My brother that I am a full sibling to is Charles (chuck).
I think you might know that 95% of our lives are lived from the unconscious mind. From birth to age 7 a childs mind is in Theta wave (hypnosis) and everything that they learn in those years (mainly through observation and repetition) is the program that their minds run for their entire lives. Knowing this – I look back on the first 7 years of my life.
I think we moved 7 times in those 7 years. I am certain it was because of Dads extreme anger management problems and the fact that he is a sociopath, a pedophile and a rapist. Zero stability or chance to make lasting friendships. My dad was sexually abusing me and unpredictably violent. I was terrified of him. I was being terrorized/bullied by my brother, Chuck, who was every bit the sociopath that my dad is. My mom was overwhelmed by the number of children she was responsible for - none of which she actually wanted- and add to that, her husband was sexualizing all of the kids, so really being the last of her kids I was the last of her problems. Being the youngest (and as traumatized as I was), I was quiet and easy to forget about or push to the side. The older kids were the ones in the spotlight and where all the attention went. They were enrolled in activities and they were more the same age, so they were a unit. I was just an observer of them. I felt so left out and forgotten. Always.
I was a mistake and a burden (dads exact words to me on my 11th birthday). Mom made sure I knew that she thought I was mentally retarded- she would joke about it all the time. (I guess she never made peace with her sister being autistic) She also loved humiliating me even when I made it clear she was hurting me. Remember her sausage fingers joke or how many years I got called Boomer? I absolutely hated both of those things, made it clear, and yet she refused to give up the name calling and humiliation. There was very little respect for my personal boundaries. Dad would assault me in the middle of the night and I would wet the bed out of fear- then he would make me sleep in it to teach me a lesson. Mom would do nothing to help me, though she was awake in the middle of the night when I would work up the courage to go into their room to ask for help. She let him treat me like that. Goddamn…I remember the night terrors and being scared to be in my room at night because the scary man was sitting in the rocking chair, in the dark, next to my bed.
I have a memory of being in the garage in our house in South Windsor. I was playing with our basset hound, General…I was crawling around on the floor and the dog mounted me and was dry humping me. Dad got this sick laugh and let it happen. Mom walked in and got mad at him, but did nothing to help me. My personal boundaries were nonexistent. Nobody was protecting me from him. I remember him eating the food off my plate at dinner…or kissing me on the ear or touching me when I would tell him I hated it and to stop. I remember the baths dad would have me take with him and how he taught me to touch and work his dick. I remember the photos he would take of me after the bath. I remember being 7 years old and trying to lay on his bed and be sexy enough for him. I remember kissing mom passionately the way that dad taught me to and mom getting upset and asking me where I learned that. I remember having a baby doll that I drew all over, angrily, with lipstick. I remember being scared because my ass was bleeding and I told mom while her brother and sisters were visiting and she shushed me and scurried me away. I remember him also beating the shit out of me…sometimes for no reason. I remember being deeply attracted to and absolutely terrified of him. I was 7. These are the only memories I have of my dad. I don’t remember him being there for me, or interested in me as a person, or engaged in anyway. I just remember him being what I now know is a predator.
7 to 13: I remember some stability in Connecticut because we stayed there for three years… but I also remember having moments of being deeply depressed and hiding in the basement of the house writing notes that I hoped someone would find, asking for help to get me out of there. When I look back, those were my first experiences with disassociation from stress and waves of major depression. While I was being assaulted during those years, those years were all about Mary Jane, Seana, and Jim2. These three had each other. These three were a team. I was just an observer to your lives. I had no voice, no opinion, no importance, never truly included and absolutely my feelings went unheard and did not matter. We can say it was the age difference, sure, that’s part of it…but that’s also just an excuse. Things could have been done to validate my importance too. I had Charles bullying me….I had my Dad assaulting me. I was so alone.
My internal voice wants to shout: Why did nobody see this? Why did nobody help me? Where were my siblings? I guess everyone was doing the best they could…
Literally anyone looking in knowing the truth could have easily assessed that this was a horribly destructive environment for any child to grow up in. I know dad was doing this to all the kids. I wasn’t the only one. It is absolutely stunning to me that through the years of my life I have consistently been blamed by my Mary Ellen (narcissist/borderline personality disorder) and the people who chose to listen to her twisted opinions that there was something wrong WITH ME. I mean, logically the mental health issues I have faced my entire life are perfectly normal and healthy reactions to a situation that was deeply flawed. But somehow the blame has always fallen on me.
The very first thing I think when I think of my mom is her asking me “Whats wrong with you Melissa”. Ive lost count of how many times she has asked me that very question.
I now know that its just deflection. Queen Narcissist cant take responsibility for her actions so she puts it on the person who she always denied a voice. That’s nice. Very loving and motherly. Doesn’t fix the 40 some odd years of my life that I believed her and wanted to die.
Right around age 9 or 10, we move again. I remember it being a big scandal – I think the truth came about that my dad is a sociopath, a pedophile and a rapist. (By the way, that’s in my DNA. I get to live my life connected to that. I look just like my dad. I think like a Painter. It’s fucking unsettling.) I remember all the pressure to say nothing about the move and to constantly behave as though we were the perfect family and nothing was wrong. So incredibly demented.
I remember a HUGE fight about Seana and Jim2 staying behind in Connecticut. (by the way: I also remember Jim1 leaving for the Marines and wondering where my brother went and why he never talked to me. At one point he came back to visit and gave me a beautiful geisha doll in a glass box that mom destroyed in a fit of anger at me…she intentionally violently knocked it off the top of my dresser in one of her vindictive off the handle rages…Im sure at 8 years old I totally did something to deserve it, right.)
And, of course I remember the night Seana was killed. (why did the man that killed her not serve jail time? Why are bad people never held accountable?) Dad wasn’t there. Again, Dad wasn’t there. As I recall he was having an affair with some woman in Arizona? Mom was already distraught to be back in Michigan. That night, I remember being awake before the call came in…watching the clock radio in my bed… it had a short in the wire that would spark. I was listening to the Beatles: My guitar gently weeps…. To this day, I hate the Beatles.The phone rang. Mom screamed to you “Mary Jane, OMG, Seana is Dead”. I didn’t understand what happened. I just knew we were packing up like we did so many times before to take yet another long drive across country. It felt to me like another move. I didn’t understand death or that my sister was gone forever. I didn’t get it.
(an aside: I struggled in school. When I was in Beginning Algebra One for some reason that class would make me check out and I would always soul travel to the night Seana was killed and it felt like it was happening to me. I took that class 4 times including summer school before I passed.)
(later, when I was maybe 13, my dog got hit by a car in the street and now I knew what death was so I freaked out like Mom did when Seana died and I remember Mom shaming me: You cried more over than damn dog than you did at your sisters funeral. Very nice. Very motherly. Very supportive and kind of her.)
At Seanas funeral, I remember not knowing what was expected of me. I was just so focused on getting it right and who I was supposed to kiss (because that sexualized stuff was already so ingrained).
There were so many goddamn rules for behavior, (rich white republican ex-military country club going family that we were) and I remember getting it wrong and being scowled at all the time. Mom was always angry and stressed out. We had to BE someone and over and over again: “Don’t forget the family name” and how important our clan was (hilarious that she kept the Sterling last name because her current husband is too ethnic and this sounds classier to her than her own actual last name)….
Meanwhile, My developing sense of self was being assaulted and neglected/ignored out of me and I felt wrong all the time for every single action I took.
I think we moved back to North Carolina briefly and then to Florida? Whatever the case….
Then we move again. Again. Again. Now we are in Florida. Im 10. My parents are getting divorced. Mom is deeply goddamn depressed. My family is falling apart. I don’t know where my brothers and sister are. Everything is exploding. Im powerless and hostage to all this. I cannot underline the importance of that sense of being hostage to a situation that I was powerless to escape and having my feelings and my personhood completely ignored and erased. It consumed me. I wanted to die. I am, as always, the least of moms concerns.
In Florida I was so incredibly dissociative. I was experiencing C-PTSD. I remember feeling numb all over. Having no ability to react to this little girl that fell off her bike in front of me….I just stared at her…the adults nearby yelled at me for doing nothing. I went further into my head. I was so checked out. People just thought I was quiet or shy or retarded. I was deeply traumatized and needed help.
I remember Mary Jane and I sitting on the bed watching this music video by The Cars. In the video there is a woman who is laughing and crying. I remember asking MJ what she was doing because I do that too and I think she told me she was having a mental break down.
I remember getting a Walkman and listening to the Police nonstop. That was my only retreat from how much I hurt. WHY DID NOBODY SEE THIS AND HELP ME?
I remember during that time that I was given another baby doll. I remember MJ and mom watching me play with it to see what I would do. I felt scared of them both and the creepy way they were lurking to watch me. I felt ganged up on. I couldn’t trust anyone. I was so alone. I wanted to die.
In Florida, I remember my birthday and dad cocking his fist back like he was going to punch me in the face…he did that sick laugh and told me he wished I was never born and that I was a mistake. (later when I told this to Patty she explained he punched her in the face on her 11th birthday. Im related to all that. That’s in my dna.)
My body was changing. I was getting my period. I felt crazy. I was in that HUGE school in Jacksonville and I had no friends and I was so scared. Everything was terrifying….and Dad was getting more unhinged thus Mom has Jim and Lynn move in to protect her and had you come back… and then I remember walking in to the living room in the middle of a sunny afternoon and mom on the pull out sofa, trying to make dad jealous, was fucking the guy who was there to buy the house that we had just moved in to because we were MOVING AGAIN….
Not to mention, I remember MJ and I quickly taking Dads gun to the beach to bury it so he because he wanted to kill us all.
Im not even 13 yet….. Are you exhausted?
Any one of these things would make a fully functioning stable adult fold like a house of cards. “Whats wrong with you Melissa?”…. It took something like 20 years of therapy but now I have some clues to answer that question. Here are some more clues:
We finally make it to Boone. Mom followed her best friend, Mary Jane. After all that… that incredible pressure cooker of my pre teen childhood we arrive in bumfuck nowhere, North Carolina….and everyone is gone except the sociopath brother. The house is basically empty. Everyone abandoned ship. Where did my brothers and sisters go? I remember coming home after school and there would be nobody home. For my entire life I had come home to my family but now there was no one. I would sit on the couch and watch the clock with growing anxiety and cry until mom came home from work. It was beyond torturous. And then she would be pissed off that I needed her because she just got home from work. At this point Mom is just angry and exhausted all the time. She had to get a job outside the home for the first time in her life which she hated, she was sick of being a mom…she wanted it all to be over so she could have HER life. Charles was getting more and more abusive- physically and mentally and had to be sent away for our protection.
And then she starts dating Don Bailey. I think the sex must have been amazing because the guy was an utter low life. He was living off of her/my child support money… and beating the shit out of her. Their fights were never goddamn ending. I would hide in my room after school and not come out. I was so alone. I had no friends and no escape. Mom was friends with Mary Jane, not with me. Mom wanted nothing to do with me. One day we were driving home and I was so attached to her. I needed my mom so goddamn bad… I was struggling to make friends at yet another new school and the PTSD made me feel so distant from everyone but I had no words for what was wrong with me I just thought I was terrible at making friends (I remember this: pathetically I checked out a book at the library: How to be your own best friend)… She pulled the car over and told me “we cant be friends.” Mom has some glorified memory of us driving around looking for our favorite tree in Autumn… the only thing I remember is that conversation…her rejecting me when I needed her the most… after we moved to the town my sister lived in so she could be close to her.
Again, still no help with the major depression, the CPTSD… just a lot of blame “why cant you be happy Melissa…whats wrong with you?” and I cant be clear enough about this: all her spare time at home was spent on Don, not me. I didn’t have clubs and groups and activities that she as sure to enroll me in. I didn’t have my brothers and sisters there with me. It was just me, after all that, trying to figure it out.
I was a burden to her. She couldn’t wait to get rid of me and be done. I felt it always.
An aside: When she was unsure if she wanted to stay in Boone, I remember her asking Charles if we should stay or go back to Florida…after he chimed in with his answer, I gave my opinion which she angrily scoffed at me and told me it didn’t matter what I thought, Id go where they tell me to go. My voice didn’t matter, I was a burden to her. I had no value as a person. I was powerless. So there I was in my bedroom that was the walkway between the living room and her room… at the mercy of whatever happened with no privacy or power over my life….. whats new.
Another aside: During that time we had gotten a dog that was a total pain in the ass for her to take care of. She gave it away while I was at school. I came home and the dog was gone and I was tearful thinking it ran away. She gave my dog away without telling me.
Then we moved out to Valley Crusis (9 miles outside of town…so isolated. I was so alone. The isolation was killing me. Where were my siblings. I needed help. I needed someone who was just there for me.) and Dons abusive behavior got even more extreme. I remember him picking me up from a concert that I was at….because he had sent Mom to the hospital with a sprained wrist and a busted lip. He was laughing about it when he told me to get in the car. Another time I remember Don looming in my bedroom door when Mom was at work and it was just us in the house… telling me: “Go ahead and call the police, nobody will believe you anyway.” I remember the woman who lived up the hill from us, with the curly hair…I think her name was Susan… coming down to the house while Mom and Don were gone and telling me If it ever gets too bad, you can always run up here. The neighbors knew I needed help. Where were my brothers and sisters? Where was my Mom? FUCK.
I remember Mom having many off the handle rages at me because I looked like a boy and my hair was crazy and I was so fucked up. I remember one morning after she had raged at me so hard that I was in stunned silence… we were sitting at breakfast at St Sinners and MJ kept looking at me, she knew something was wrong, I was clearly checked out and fucked up. I needed my sister. I had no voice or ability to speak up. I was scared of her husband, Glenn. Nobody helped me. Mom was the star of the brunch party!
I remember getting my first job at 15 and working at St Sinners…. Then, when mom bought the restaurant I stopped getting paid. She cut me off from my paycheck and told me it was my “duty to the family”… but she had Jim2 and his first wife Lynn there working and they were getting paid…and also stealing her money to fuel their coke habits. She didn’t value me, or my efforts but her golden son Jim can do no wrong even when he is fucking her out of her business.
I remember Jim2 offering me coke at a house party and John Golden and another friend getting me out of there away from my own brother. I remember Lynn being LIVID that I would stop by their house when I was lonely and wanted my family but instead I got shamed for thinking I could stop by and see them…and mom would tell me that “they had BUSY LIVES and I should leave them alone.”
I remember being so fucked up and alone in Boone….I mean, I now know I was just in shock and experiencing major depression. Mom kept asking me Whats wrong with you Melissa…when I was your age I had to choose between boyfriends… etc. Its incredible to me how Mom normalized my childhood abuse and completely erased my feelings or my personhood then blamed me for somehow being a problem child or wrong in whatever way….more incredible: people believed her.
During those years in Boone I remember her doing things like openly making fun of me when I thought I might be gay, fixing regular hamburgers and telling me they were tofu when I became vegetarian…starting a burn pile in the back yard full of toxic things after I told her how important recycling was to me and laughing at me as I cried…..every chance she had to make me feel awful about being me and disrespected she took.
Once I visited her at her office and she told me I was “too ugly to look at and she didn’t want anyone to know I was her daughter and to never come to her office again.”
Shes right, we were not friends. She was a jealous mean girl, obsessed with appearances and her shitty boyfriend.
Lets not forget when she, with Mary Janes help, stacked my portfolio with MJs lithographies and coached me how to lie to get me in to Governors school for the summer. She wanted me gone and she got her wish. I remember feeling like a fraud that summer. I wasn’t good enough to be there. I had to lie to be included. I remember she didn’t even drive me there. She had Don do it. He harassed me in the car all the way there, 3 hours…. then dropped me…16… off on the curb in front of the college and drove away. All the other kids had parents excitedly helping them get set up in their rooms…excited about their major accomplishment of getting in to Governors school… I was there with my milk crate of shit, a fraud. alone. Acting like a tough girl who didn’t need anyone. I was a pro at that. Mission accomplished, she was rid of me.
I remember how deep my depression was becoming by the time I was 18. That last year of high school I would bang my head against my bedroom wall in an attempt to knock myself out, in hopes that I would get sent away to a treatment center or something. I couldn’t take all the fighting between her and Don. I fucking hated him and he was in my house and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to throw myself down the back stairwell at school. I barely graduated high school my depression was eating me alive.
Amazing that nobody IN MY FAMILY SAW THAT I NEEDED HELP. I was invisible. Mary Ellen cast her proclamation that all was well, she was amazing and I was a problem child and that was that.
I have a million stories about Mom demoralizing me during those years…. Whats weird is that I have no memory of my Mary Jane there. I think she was so involved with Glenn and way up the mountain, I had no way to reach her. And I was scared of her husband Glenn. And, we were never close. And, she was Team Mary Ellen…. So I was just alone and wanted to die. Sincerely. Goddamn. Let it end.
I remember Don telling me that Mom was using my child support payment to make her car payment. So I asked her about where my child support was going and she told me she used it for my Blue Cross Blue Shield Insurance…. So I called the insurance company to see if I had coverage…. They had no record of me. She was, again, a liar….
When I graduated high school she couldn’t get me out of the house fast enough. She pawned me off on my boyfriend Gebeaux and expected him to simply take care of me. We broke up. He didn’t sign up for that. I was basically kicked out of the house in valley crusis. I wasn’t prepared for life on my own. I wasn’t ready. She just wanted to be done being a mom so Hey..I came back to the house one day and all my stuff was packed and that was that. I had to figure it out. Fuck me.
At one point during that time I was living in a trailer with my friend Stacy. Mom was horrified about this. I was getting food stamps and she was so ashamed of me for being so low class. She came to the trailer and was completely off the handle. She said there was “no air” in there and grabbed a 2x4 and smashed out all the windows. Mind you from her perspective it was just another example of what a loser I am, living in a trailer on food stamps how did I end up such a piece of shit when she is such a wonderful mother… it must be because there is something inherently wrong about me.
She has seen me as trash who is incapable of being anything great my entire life.
Somewhere in there she stopped dating Don and started dating lawyer Rand Sterling…who broke her ribs multiple times and literally pushed her out of a moving car and then she walked 5 miles back to his house to be with him. That relationship took her to Texas. She followed the money. The insanity of that relationship is all I heard about from her. She needed Jim2 to come protect her from her husband multiple times. I absorbed all of this through her very rare but insane emails to me. She has always used me as her emotional manipulation dumping ground.
I had my first total mental break right around 19 years old. I was fetal position on the floor at my girlfriends house… Jenn… I couldn’t stop crying for multiple days and I felt my mind split in two. I literally went into a black hole and was begging for death. Jenn and the next door neighbor scooped me up off the floor and drove me to the Watauga County Mental Health and got me some help… but at this point I was having a total mental collapse… the part of me that was traumatized was a child denied her voice or any recognition of her Self, so I had no way to articulate what was wrong and Mom had denied and normalized the abuse and denied me voice and my personhood for so long that I had ZERO chance of articulating what was wrong… it was buried so deep inside of me and I was so scared to trust anyone…. I was experiencing schizophrenia and Major depression.
Jenn helped me with my depression. Jenn made sure I was housed and fed. Jenn took care of me. I owe her my life.
I mean, that is an extreme mental health episode. Where was my family? How could none of the people who were supposed to love me the most see any of this? Why did none of them help me? Why did all of them think I was to blame? (my guess: Team Mary Ellen)
Somewhere in that year my friends were moving to Chapel Hill so I packed up the car that my child support paid for and I went down the mountain. She threatened to call the police on me for stealing the car. She told me I needed discipline and needed to go into the Army. She just didn’t know what to do with me…such a problem child. If I remember correctly, you echoed her sentiments. Everyone was always so angry at me for being so wrong and so bad. None of my family (meaning MJ and mom because my brothers had long bailed on me and my extended family has never made a single attempt to reach out to me or know me at all.) were my friend, or loving, kind or compassionate.
I got away….I went to Chapel Hill and lived with my best friends Kerry, Lesley, Julie, and two other guys in Kerry’s Moms rental house. I was working at the Columbia Street Bakery and dating this boy, Richard…. Who happened to be a really abusive drug dealer… who held me down one night and violently orally raped me and when I called mom for help she told me with the exasperation of a mother who had supposedly tried so hard to do the right thing and raise her child with love and support but that child was just tragic and terminally fucked :
“I don’t know whats wrong with you Melissa, I guess you just like the bad boys.”
Again, no self reflection on her behalf…she did nothing to help me.
I didn’t know how to get away from Richard who was playing mind fuck with me and I was getting high with him (LSD) …which was basically, me being drugged and him using me for sex but not being loving or kind in any way (felt like home) Eventually, Richard got busted for selling a page of lsd to an undercover cop and threatened to kill me because he thought it was my fault… so I had to get out of there and I went to New York to chill out and work for the summer at the Omega Institute of Holistic Learning… to just be around hippies and eat good food. I hung out with Baba Ram Dass and Ben & Jerry…and took a class on the whirling dervish… These moments when I wasn’t in the pressure cooker of my life were both brilliant because I needed healing but also the worst because all this trauma would start to surface and I didn’t know what it was or how to speak about it. I would start to shatter again.
I believed it was my fault and there was something inherently wrong with me.
I was so lost. I needed help. I needed a parent or loving compassionate family or someone trusted to guide me through that time in my life. I had no one but my friends from North Carolina who were just as fucked up as me. I needed help. I needed help. Oh my god, I needed help.
Omega ended…I had no money to get out of there, nobody to turn to for help, no clue what to do next, I certainly couldn’t go back to Mom who hated me and was living with Rand so fuck that… I had no idea where my brothers and sisters were and no relationship with them so that wasn’t on my mind as an option…..so I caught whatever ride I could get and ended up in Boulder. One of my friends from Omega hooked me up with her cousin for a month and I tried to make it work… it was basically winter in Colorado at this point and I was out there door canvassing for Green Peace making no money and freezing to death. Just walking door to door for Greenpeace… looking in on other families and their loving lives together. I was so fucking sad. I was hungry and scared and completely out of options. I had to get out of there.
I called Mom for help. She said: “You got yourself into this, get yourself out”…. And hung up on me. The bitch hung up on me. I was stranded and so scared and I needed my mom. She hung up on me. She blamed me. She wanted to punish me for being such a problem. She was done being a mom. She hung up.
I remember having gone to the Planned Parenthood to get some medical help because I was sick. I explained my situation and the nurse looked at me incredulously and said “where are you parents?” I explained to her that Mom hung up on me. I was devastated, living in a constant state of shock. Scared out of my sense of self or ability to connect to the present moment.
I was a fractured soul in every possible meaning.
My month at my friends place was over and I had to find an apartment or live on the streets. It took me another month of begging whatever guy I could find to give me a place to stay and then I contacted the boy I was dating at Omega, Scott, and asked him for money to get a bus back to North Carolina. He helped me. Bless him. He got me out of there.
I got on the Greyhound and ended up going to Idaho to visit with my friend Stacy (who I lived in the trailer with) and stay with her for a couple weeks to get grounded and feel safe with a friend for a minute. My mental break was coming back full force. I was inconsolable. I remember laying on her bed fully having an out of body experience from the stress and being so disoriented. She is so patient and kind. She took care of me. When my time with Stacy was up, the next layer of insanity: I got on the Greyhound and took a 5 day no sleep, no food journey across country. I got chased down, carrying all my bags of things and looking like a little hippie… on a layover, by a group of drunk men in Wyoming…they almost got me but I found a laundromat that was open and full of people so I ran inside and hid until my bus was leaving again. I was terrified. By the time I made it back to Lesley and Kerrys house in Chapel Hill it was New Year night…I got some hours back at the Columbia Street bakery I was working at and got some money rolling in.
I want to mention that Poverty, which I have lived most my life in, is no joke and more damaging than anyone outside of the experience can understand. It is cyclical, like bi polar…. Living paycheck to paycheck or however you get just enough to maybe hold on for a moment longer but never knowing if more will be coming is a terror. Always feeling like the bottom is going to drop out…and never knowing when youre going to eat…and what that does to your hormones and your mental health…. Poverty is proven to damage people on a cellular level and have lasting effects that lead to chronic illness.
After making it back to NC, few weeks later the boy from Omega came to Chapel Hill and told me he wanted to marry me and wanted me to move to Boston with him. So we took a little road trip and eventually ended up in Boston. As a surprise to no one sane, that was not a lasting relationship. So after a year of misery in Boston, (more poverty, more loneliness, more no family) Scott drove me back to Chapel Hill and that’s when the girls and I all moved up to Asheville. All the while, checking in with Mom who was yelling and shaming me for being such a fuck up.
I can’t underline enough: I was disassociating the entire time. I was having episodes of schizophrenia. I was experiencing major depression and bi polar disorder. The stress of my entire life was more than I could handle and I had no support and no compassion and nobody validating my experience or me as a person. People just thought that was who I was. I was just fucked in every way possible and believed she was right and all that was normal and I was a terrible piece of shit. She had everyone believing that.
Mary Jane believed her. She echoed her sentiments to me. Go Team Mary Ellen.
I moved up to Asheville and got somewhat stabilized. I was again living with my friends and I got a decent job at the Laughing Seed Cafe. I met Mark and I had decided to go to college because I thought that would make Mom happy and I needed to DO something with myself.
Mark and I were together maybe 8 weeks before we moved across country and started a life together. Eight weeks.
I was so adept at being a high functioning dissociative major depressive and I had no way to articulate what was wrong with me (all that stuff that had been normalized and ignored…all the ways my feelings and personhood was erased)… I just knew something evil bad was in me and it took me out from time to time. I thought it was my fault and I was ashamed of myself. I was living in a constant state of shock. CPTSD.
So, I get myself into college and thanks to Mark and his truck we move across country.
When I hear my friends now talking about saving money for their kids college and really setting them up for success by helping them choose a school and get settled in or making sure they don’t have to work so they can focus on their studies and have a healthy social life with friends and do activities Im so confused. I didn’t know parents and families helped their kids with such things. I didn’t understand that in other families they help, protect and support. I made it through without any of these blessings.
Mark and I get a shitty apartment (the ceiling caved in out of rot and the place was full of roaches. The property managers stole my drum set and we would catch them on the roof at night peeping through the skylight to watch us), I get a full time job managing a restaurant…in addition to schooling full time...Im overwhelmed by the workload, scared to be across country, freaked out by college and the expectations… it was too much. I was away from the source of my abuse and things started to surface… I NEEDED HELP.
I needed my family except, honestly, I have none. Additional mindfuck: when I tried to talk to people about this I get the old trope about how everyone has tough relationships in their families and I need to love my mom and work it out with her.SO I KEPT GOING BACK FOR MORE WITH MOM BECAUSE I NEEDED HER LOVE SO BAD AND I THOUGHT THE PROBLEM WAS ME. Further, because I was so regressed I just sounded like a petulant child when I tried to talk about the abuse I had no accurate words for so nobody outside the experience really got it or could conceive how bad things really were for me… why would they? My family is extraordinarily fucked up, like nobody I have ever known.
In college, nobody comes to check on me and make sure Im ok. Nobody was calling. Id get rare emails or letters. When I would tell mom how hard it was, mom would mock me and tell me to suck it up when I would reach out to her and “complain” about how things were going for me… See, because its always my fault and Im never measuring up.
An aside: To this day, 40 years later, Jim2 has yet to even send me a single email to check and make sure Im ok or get to know me at all. He has never responded to the multiple emails I have sent him, so I stopped reaching out. I used to cry to mom about it and she would tell me that he “has a busy life” and I had to understand that’s why I wasn’t a priority to him. Personally, I cant imagine anything being more important than making a connection with your little sister, but I guess Im biased and not like him: busy getting high and drunk and being a cool party guy.
During my college is when he married Lori. I worked over time and got a plane ticket to be at his wedding. I was sick to my stomach at the idea of having to be around my family but I love my brother and I wanted to be there. He ignored me the entire time I was there. I was a HUGE FUCKING DEAL that I could afford the ticket and made the effort to be there for him. I showed up for him….He ignored me. I was devastated and felt invisible and so worthless.
Another aside: I was 24 and that very first Christmas on the west coast Mom calls me, driving herself to the ER to get her stomach pumped from a suicide attempt. She was dramatically telling me her goodbye in case she didn’t make it. I was stressed and powerless beyond the telling of it. I cried all the way through that Christmas. Again: Mom always uses me as her emotional manipulation dumping ground. Out of all her children, Im the one with heart and she gets the sympathy she is working me over for.
During my college years, I would ask Mom for help she would mock me “Im sending baby Sava (MJs daughter) a care package…are you a baby? Do you need one too?”
Mean girl jealousy that I went to college and her life was taken from her by her children….
In college I had no friends, just Mark. No time for activities and my mental health was so fragile I had no ability to form friendships. I was barely hanging on. I would be catatonic in my time at home. We had this geometry screensaver on the computer and I would be frozen staring at it for hours while my brain felt like it was going to shatter. I was an absolute wreck and a shell of a person…but I was determined to prove I could graduate college and I wasn’t a fuck up. I wanted Mom to be proud of me.
I guess it should come as no surprise that after 4 years of no time off, working and schooling 80 hours a week, getting zero support emotionally or financially from my family …. that absolutely NOBODY FROM MY FAMILY CAME TO CELEBRATE ME AT MY GRADUATION.
Nobody came. Nobody celebrated me. Nobody saw the value in me or my hard work.
I remember being on the phone with Jim2 the day of my graduation. I had called him to ask why he wasn’t there for me. I was in tears. He told me that if that was the worst thing that ever happened to me, congratulations on your nice life. He thought it was bullshit that I was so upset. He thought I was being a baby. This loser dropped out of college which he had a scholarship for and did nothing with his life but drugs and alcohol and saw no value in me or what I did on my own. He didn’t show up for me.
Me going to college and graduating on time with full credits was a major fucking accomplishment on so many levels.
Not one of my family was there for me and I will never forgive or forget that.
We moved to the same fucking town Mary Jane was in when she was in college and never ONCE did anyone come to check on me and be interested in what I was doing or validate how amazing it was that I was in school and making it happen on my own.
When I talk about how alone I feel in life, its in my bones.
I had worked over time to get Mom a plane ticket so she would be there for my graduation and she called me a couple days before to tell me pathetically “She couldn’t get the day off work.” (Lie: I think she has some legal issue and couldn’t leave the state or something like that.)
After she called to bail on my graduation… at 27 years old… I had a heart attack on my walk home. I collapsed in my living room. Mark found me on the floor when he got home from work. She literally broke my heart. I was devastated. I was in shock. I was dissociating. I was so fucked up. I needed help. Poor Mark. He didn’t know what was wrong and neither did I.
Shortly after my graduation, MJ graduated and she drove to see her and was sure to tell me about it. I mean, they are BFFs so, no surprises there. GO TEAM MARY ELLEN, right?
Whats wrong with you Melissa? My family. My family is whats wrong with me.
During college I was stressed to the point of being catatonic when I wasn’t at work or school. My mental health was tanking in every possible way… but the pressure cooker of school and work kept me hemmed in and my desire to prove that I was someone worth loving (because god knows I wasn’t going to be loved just for being me…No one was simply going to show up for me or simply be there. I had to earn it.)
…. then we moved to Seattle and I had three years at Amazon in that pressure cooker of a job… (10 to 14 hours a day, 6 days a week) working as a Lead running a team of 200 people to keep me too busy to feel my feelings or connect to emerging myself.
At some point after I graduated and it no longer mattered, I remember MJ came to visit me one time. That was nice of her. Thank you for trying, MJ.
But heres the fun part: Mark. Mark loved me.
Mark is the very first and to this day ONLY person who has been intimately involved in my life who loves and respected me just as I am.
It was Mark loving me that allowed me to start developing a voice and for that very young very traumatized person inside of me to start coming to the surface. Mark was the very best thing that has ever happened to me….and, ironically, it was because he loved me that all that evil finally came to the surface…and was our demise.
All the things dad did to me, all the never ending abuse from mom that sought to vilify and demoralize me… all of the hurt from the abandonment from my brothers and sisters… all that evil came up because he Loved me enough to make me feel safe and supported…I just didn’t know that then and couldn’t see or feel that he was the most tremendous gift this life has ever given me ….
and I started sexually assaulting myself in my sleep (woke up one time with an entire box of tampons inside of me and had to go to the doctor to get them all out). I would throw punches in my sleep. I was having an utter mental breakdown/ breakthrough… and then I started acting out sexually with other men that I met online. I felt like I was being puppet mastered from some evil unknown source. I was manic and acting out sexually. That default programing from my childhood was calling the shots. I didn’t have a sense of self so I was acting from what I knew and what Dad taught me about myself and the self-worth that mom made sure I didn’t have.
I say acting out sexually. What I should say is reenacting the trauma…which there was so very much of. I was on auto pilot and at that time if you asked me if that’s what I wanted to be doing I would have said yes out of programming but the core truth of who I am knew it was not at all right or who I am or what I wanted…that core didn’t have a voice yet.
2001, Amazon had laid us all off. I got hired working at a treatment center for abused youth. I was major depressive and would be fetal position on the floor and cry for a month at a time but I didn’t know why or what was wrong… I was just deeply goddamn depressed and wanted to die. All the time. Goddamn. Let it end.
Poor Mark. He didn’t know what was happening. He was the perfect boyfriend. He tried so hard to help me. I honestly could not have asked for a more perfect man to come in to my life…and he was stuck with me. Mentally fucked Melissa with no clue what was wrong… and worst of all, I thought I had to get out of my relationship with Mark.
Crazy,right?….I asked Mom for help. She had no relationship with me and no clue what was going on in my life…She is a complete train wreck of a human and so deep in her own denial and so wrapped up in her latest abusive relationship with a rich man that she could honestly give a fuck about me and thought the worst of me anyway… so yeah, break up with him and oh my god Melissa I don’t know what to do with you.
I kept cheating on him over and over again. I was off the rails with my manic depression. Spending, fucking, driving my car too fast…. Through a chat room, I got mixed up with a man that felt like Dad to me and I was entranced and captive to him. Mark asked me to marry him and I broke up with him, moved out.. I was off the rails with the sexual acting out/re traumatizing myself.
(Mark immediately met the woman he has since married and has been with for the past 18 years. I would give anything to have that man back in my life…Throughout these years, my memory of how he treated me has been the standard by which I have held all other men and nobody measures up….Beyond his character and integrity, the art, music and intelligence that lives within this handsome and kind man is incomparable. I blew it. Fuck. I pushed away the most incredible man I ever knew and he loved me. I still love him to this day.)
At that same time I heard a rumor at work that one of the counselors (reggie, 24) had slept with a client(raya,16). I knew reggie was capable of it (I had slept with him) so I reported it to the Unit manager, Big Mike. ……What I didn’t know is that Reggie, Mike and the guy I was so into, Cash were all friends who grew up together and in the same gang……
and so it was that month that I moved out from Mark that the man that I was so “in love with”, Cash, drugged me at a house party and raped me with 4 of his friends to teach me a lesson for reporting Reggie.
I remember sharing a beer with Cash and then feeling tired and dizzy and asking to lay down and then multiple hours of being barely coherent and having no control over my body and being passed around for everyone to fuck over and over again.
Cash was a sex trafficker and grooming me all along. No wonder he felt like home. My need for family and my daddy issues in full effect, I couldn’t break the spell. I was terrified of him and wanted him to think I was so sexy…..He was masterful with the mindfuck and kept me under his thumb at all times which felt like attention and love to me and was intense enough that I could feel it.
At that time, in Washington, you had a statue of limitations of 8 years to report a rape.
Mind you, I was so dissociative and still had no idea I was a person or had any rights to my thoughts or my body… I was really goddamn checked out at that point in my life….I was in shock. The childhood assault trauma was just surfacing and I had no words for it because it had been normalized and my feelings negated by my parents So, I didn’t know if I had been raped or not….it took me years to figure out that its wrong to drug someone and have all your friends fuck them…
I didn’t know I should or could ask for help. I didn’t believe I could be helped. I didn’t think anyone would help me. I didn’t know I was a person. I didn’t know I had rights. I didn’t know I could escape or how.
ANYONE CONFUSED ABOUT WHY I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO GET HELP OR THAT I DESERVED IT???????
Whats wrong with you, Melissa?
In the meanwhile, Cash was making sure I wouldn’t report it.
He knew I was away from Mark, had a history of sexual assault and no family, and that I lived in absolute poverty so there was zero chance I could escape him.
I was in so much trouble. I needed help. I called Mom. I explained that it all to her. I explained that they were a gang. That it was sex trafficking… that I needed help…. To which she said “Let them play godfather. Whats the worst they can do?”….. (nice way to minimize the extreme danger I was in and negate me as a person, don’t you think?)
that bitch loves to see me suffer and struggle, doesn’t she. Doesn’t it make her look amazing when I look like shit? So she didn’t help me. She shit talked me to the rest of the family like I wanted to be in that situation because I was trash. Nobody helped me.
I remember talking to Mary Jane around that time explaining that I was getting counseling and she, like mom, shamed me and told me I didn’t have bipolar or something like that… She was Team Mary Ellen all the way and me getting counseling was just attention seeking or something like that.
See, this is why MJ and I have never been friends or close. I cant trust her. Shes not someone I think of as an ally. Sorry about that, MJ. Im not trying to be mean but… look at why I think that.
I really do look up to her though. She is so smart and capable. But I cant trust her and this is why.
By the way, here’s just a few of examples of the worst they can do while “playing Godfather”: They were so invested in making sure I never spoke about the rape they made sure I was living in such constant fear for my life (mental domination) that I was too scared to talk to anyone about it:
*They had voyeur cameras in my house…that they were making money off of.
*They had software on my laptop to collect all my personal data (social security, passwords, answers to security questions) so I am owned by them to this day.
*They had GPS on my car to track me everywhere I went and would leave notes on my car to let me know I was constantly being watched.
*They flipped my therapists office and stole all her files to make sure there was no record
*They poisoned my dog every day for a month while I was at work…I would come home to Milo cowering in the corner like he had been abused all day long and diarrhea all over the floor until one day I yelled out in my home with nobody there that I would find Cashs son and do the same to him…and I went online and found his childs home address…yelled that out to my empty apartment…and after that day Milo was never sick again….
*Then there are the 2 times they broke into my apartment in the middle of the night, drugged me in my sleep and did whatever and dumped me at the park. One of those time I woke up with half my face slack and paralyzed as though I had a stroke. By the grace of god I got the feeling back but to this day its still a little droopy.
*They sent their equally psycho boy Alex into my life to keep watch on me. He was horribly mentally abusive. I was so broken and demoralized. I needed to get away. Instead, I got pregnant. Alex also gave me syphilis ..and so I had an abortion. I had to get two Orders of Protection to get Alex away from me. When I called mom for help with the pregnancy, she was off the rails hysterical and I was yet even more scared and alone. Mom blamed me for all of it. Further evidence Im trash. I got pregnant by a mistake by a black man.
There is more, I mean it was 8 years of daily torture… but I think you get the idea. Complete mental domination was the name of their game.
I had no friends. None. I was so fucked up. I was terrified to speak to anyone because everything felt like danger. Just these men showing up when they felt like to to fuck me and terrorize me. Eight years. My 30s. I was miserable beyond the telling of it.
Whats wrong with you Melissa. I needed help. I was so scared. I needed my family. I got yelled at and shamed. I was so alone. I wanted to die. I was so depressed and fucked up. Goddamn. Let it end. And the worst of it all is that I really didn’t even have myself. I never had a chance to be safe enough to develop a self. I was a shell of a human. I was out of my head. I was so checked out with the PTSD and the trauma of it all. I was scared to be alive. Soul fracturing is real.
This was how I spent my 30s. Somehow pulling myself together to go to work during the day because I didn’t want to be homeless, coming home and having a total mental collapse at night and all the while being mentally tortured by a gang of sex traffickers and when I reached to my family for help I got blamed for being a fucked up piece of shit.
I had no one. When I talk about my isolation and how alone I am, its cumulative. Its all this and more.
I don’t need to volunteer at a shelter on Christmas to be with someone for the holidays. I don’t need to get a dog. I need family. I need to be validated on a daily basis that I matter and am loveable just as I am. I need someone safe who is simply there. I need people in my life who celebrate me without me asking. I need people who are there for those simple mundane acts of living that define us…I need to come home to love.
The miracle: I kept myself employed and was successful in my corporate career path, I kept myself housed, and drug and alcohol free the entire time. I had the where with all to get counselling and try to work through my shit. I never gave up on myself even though I didn’t yet know who I am and my family had absolutely written me off from day one.
Then the Recession happened. I, of course, had never learned money management skills so there really wasn’t any savings to rely on. I was comfort eating like a motherfucker, I had student loans, a car payment and insurance and a foolishly large and expensive apartment, I had these lecherous men that were taking advantage of me financially too… I was manic depressive… I was paying for counselling (which if I am not mistaken over the years has totaled $100k) But to be honest, I don’t know where my money went… so when the Recession hit it took about 2 months before I was selling off everything I own and living in my car….where I stayed for the next year with my dog.
Nobody help me stay safe or in my integrity. I had no friends in Seattle to turn to. Mom told me to put my things in garbage bags and throw it all away…take the dog to the pound… and work with my counselor (she was angry about me getting help because she perceived it as being me trying to vilify her and this was her chance to punish me for getting help) and find a shelter to check in to because I wasn’t welcomed at her home.
Let me say that again: My mom knew I was losing everything, told me to throw my life away, dump my kid at the pound and told me to check into a shelter, I wasn’t welcomed at her home.
MY MOM.
Shes sees me as trash. She threw me away. Doesn’t she look amazing when Im failing?
Work in Seattle was impossible to find. I literally had 700 resumes out. Understand, I have held a job consistently since I was 15 years old and somehow mom thought this moment was me being a lazy piece of shit and just trying to manipulate her for money when I asked for help.
Sure. Ok.
I spent the next year in my car with no money coming in other than whatever odd jobs I could grab on craigslist to make my car payment. I drove back to North Carolina to seek help from my friends and my brother. My friends back home were not in a position to help me in any long lasting way but bless them all for what they did…
but Jim 2, who lives in Raliegh, was. He just declined. He made me a sandwich…told me there was nothing he could do for me (he has three houses)…and I spent the night in my car outside my brother’s house.
I had an ex acquaintance from Seattle who lived in Raleigh. He was part of the abuser sex trafficking gang. He let me sleep on the floor but would beat the shit out of me if I tried to sleep on the couch. I was so demoralized and out of my head, I needed literally anyone to be there for me….so, I stayed there, on the floor, for a month.
My brother was 15 minutes away, could have kept me safe but my brother chose to do nothing to help me.
Whats wrong with you Melissa. My family. Definitely gonna say my family.
When it was clear that North Carolina wasn’t going to be any better for work than Seattle I decided to drive back to the west coast. I had to drive through Texas and I didn’t stop at Moms house. I didn’t even try. Why would I? I was so hopeless and out of my head with depression and PTSD. I was screaming into the great black nothing. I was cutting myself all over to get the evil out. I would punch my own face black and blue from self loathing… again, thinking it was all my fault and that I was defective. I mean… my own family didn’t want me. Nobody did. It was me. I was a horrible piece of shit and deserved to die. Nobody loved or wanted me. Nobody kept me safe. I was deeply lost in the void. I wanted to die. Goddamn. Let it end.
That year in the car was by far worse than the 8 years of being tortured by sex traffickers or the 13 years of living with my sex predator father or the 7 years of being stuck in bumfuck North Carolina with my moms abuser boyfriend stealing the show.
Without question having nobody and knowing that nobody cares if you are safe, in your integrity, have a door to lock, privacy of any kind, if you are fed or showered… knowing for a demonstrated fact that there is not a single person on earth who cares enough to validate your humanity is the absolute worst feeling I have ever known. Being completely dehumanized, demoralized, erased. I begged for death.
Whats wrong with you Melissa?
Fun fact: during that time, instead of helping me or offering me a job at her business doing the exact job I did so well at Amazon (I asked for one and told her I would sleep in the attic at the office and she told me No), to mock me and show me what a failure I am and that I was just trying to manipulate her for money because Im a lazy loser
Mom went to her local Costco and applied for a job to show me how easy it was for her to get hired.
I mean, if youre going to be void of a soul, you should really go for it. Kudos, Mom.
I drove through California on the way back home to Seattle and met my sister Patty for the first time. We look like two peas in a pod. We think exactly the same. She is undeniably my sister. It was the most incredible feeling.
For the first time in my entire life I actually felt and thought the same as someone else.
She casually declined to introduce me to her family. They kept looking at me incredulously because we look just the same… but she would shoo them away when they would come over to talk. I met her at her restaurant and then she took me to her palatial home. She has a huge family. She had tons of photo albums… and then she started talking about Dad…like she was in a trance and talking about a favorite lover… it was clear that Dad had sexualized her and maintained that relationship with her well into her adult life and that was the reason she had no contact with us and didn’t want a deeper relationship with me. One conversation was all I got with her. I slept in my car outside her home. My sister didn’t help me. Whats wrong with you Melissa???
In one shot from LA I drove back to Seattle. I figured out that the Queen Anne neighborhood had the lowest crime rate so I parked there. I was so sick to death of all the nights that year that I would wake up with someone trying to break in to the car. Thank god I had Milo with me. He saved me multiple times from intruders that year. My body was a wreck from car living and shit food. My mental health beyond destroyed. I was really just done. Run through. All the way run through.
I did a brief stint staying in Silverdale with my friend from NC that I managed to re connect with on my drive back… but the hour drive into Seattle from Silverdale was too much so I lumped it and just slept in my car in Queen Anne once I secured my job…..
I went in to Top Pot Doughnuts every day for a month and demanded a job until they gave me one. I was 8 weeks into that job, still sleeping in the car but I had forward momentum when I totaled the car. I had the very last car payment in the seat next to me I had worked so fucking hard to maintain my payments in good faith despite it all and come out of that situation with my car but nope…fuck me. I was on my way to the gym and I was giving myself a pep talk telling myself everything was going to be ok….and I ate it…40 miles an hour into a stopped truck on the West Seattle Bridge. Entirely my fault. Milo went to the pound. All my earthly belongings went to the impound yard. I went to the ER…. And I called every single person I knew and who I thought could help me.
Just when you think you have nothing left, turns out you can go lower. Nobody returned my call.
Me, the unwanted, loveable piece of shit. I could die and nobody cared. Whats wrong with you Melissa?
I got out of the hospital, I had made contact with my online friend Rishad and he let me stay for a couple days… BLESS HIM… In those two days I got on the bus. I took the bus that goes through Capitol Hill and up to Queen Anne where my job was. I wrote down every apartment for rent phone number I could see and I started making calls. In the first true lucky break I had in years, this apartment manager woman at a really sweet little apartment on the hill heard me out…heard my story… it was the 15th of the month. I had my car payment check and I cashed it and gave her the money… She gave me the keys and a wink and told me I could move in “on the first”, that’s what the money I gave her would pay for…. and that she definitely didn’t know anything about a dog so no pet fee was needed.
I went right upstairs, LOCKED MY OWN DOOR and laid on the floor with literally nothing left to my name and cried so fucking hard.
I had whiplash from the accident. I fractured 4 molars on my steering wheel and over the years as my dentist promised they have slowly one by one fallen out of my face. I had broken both my feet and wracked my knees…. But I had a place that was my own and a job and that’s all that mattered.
I went right to the pound the next day and got Milo. I went to the impound lot and got what was left of my life. I missed a sum total of two days of work…. I was so thankful to have a job again I blocked out the pain from my broken body and I just kept going.
(Mind you the only thing Mom has ever been proud of me for in my lifetime is losing weight. That’s what got her attention…that’s what she was impressed by. I went on a diet.)
That next year, I lost 70 pounds at the gym. I perceived my training team as the family I never had and I was good at lifting weights. They weren’t honestly my friends or family but it was something consistent and I needed that stability and I needed them so fucking bad. It took 5 years to start to return to a somewhat functioning human... Lifting helped me get back into my body and stop checking out so much. My nutrition plan made me focus on myself every moment of every day…and nothing beats depression like clean food and working out. Structure and consistency.
My PTSD was off the rails though. I was worse than a soldier coming back from war…I never signed up for that shit and it started when I was a child. I was suffering. I wanted to die. Every moment of every day. I was miserable to be around. Nobody wanted to be my friend. So, trust me…just work and the gym with my illusion that people were there for me and me inappropriately and overly attached to them.
The irony is that I looked amazing and strong and I was, yes. The reality is that I wanted to die. I begged for death. I had two suicide attempts in those years….I surprised myself and cut my wrist with my house keys on the way to work one day and another time I walked into traffic but the car swerved.
Coming out of all that happened and processing all that trauma took more will power and resolve than anything I have ever done. It was so dark. I felt demon possessed. I was out of my head. I would find myself walking out of my place into public with no skirt on just my tights or other crazy shit like that. I was talking to myself, having heated arguments with nobody there all the fucking time. I was punching myself in the face. I was cutting and other such self harm.
It was really bad. I was hurting so fucking much.
And, I had another sociopath boyfriend taking full advantage of my disadvantage…keeping me fucked up because it kept me there for him. Thomas was in my life for 7 years. Absolute Scum. But he was the only person who would show up in person for me. I needed to be held. I was so out of my head and I still had no friends in my life…just people on the internet.… So again, this familiar situation: I just let him use me so I could have literally anyone there. The social and emotional isolation was killing me and I was convinced I was in love. He felt like home. He kept telling me we would be together if I waited. That he loved me. That I was the Key! I was the only time he was happy. The reality was he wouldn’t speak to me during the week. He would just show up on a Friday or Saturday night when he felt like it, from 1am to 3am…literally show up with his dick out to fuck me…very often wouldn’t speak to me when he was there…then he would leave and that was what I considered my relationship and love. It was about 2 years into our “relationship” that the truth slowly started to surface that he was in a long term relationship and he lived with her….
The details of how twisted he is and how he manipulated my daddy issues is disgusting. How he used neglect to keep me working so hard for him to be there and begging for his attention….really sick.
He felt like home which is the worst part. He was exactly like home.
It took me three years at the doughnut shop to get emotionally stabilized enough to make a plan for next steps. I was too emotionally fragile to go back to corporate work or be in an office environment. I knew I wanted to go to massage school and I really thought it could be an answer for me even though Mary Jane and mom had previously shamed and mocked me when I said I wanted to go. Mom didn’t think I could be anything better than a waitress. She told me to stop complaining that I hated my work and just go do it.
It was around this time that I had to move out of the apartment because they raised the rent by double on my sweet apartment and I found my way into squatting in my Art studio, where I have been for the past 7 years.
This studio has been so needed and healed me in so many ways. It is private enough to have a complete mental collapse and since it was a former isolation tank/jail… Nobody can get in here….bars over the windows and a steel door…so, I could sleep at night for the first time in years. The rent is crazy affordable which allowed me to go to school and later afford activities to try to learn social skills and be a real person in the world…. This place is my everything.
When I had my first art show… consisting of the photos that I took when I was living in my car. One of the ways I survived and changed my paradigm to get out of the car alive was that I would walk around and task myself with Looking through the eyes of Love. I would try to find one thing each day that I could see beauty in so I could continue to see good in the world…thus my collection of flower photos that I maintain to this day as my gratitude practice.
Mom picked up the phone and called me the night of my show.
(Mind you, she has never been there for me. Over the years since she kicked me out I think we have talked on the phone maybe 10 times. There have been years where she refused to give me her phone number…she made a game of it for years…I would email and ask for it she would say she was going to give it to me in her reply but never would. Then she finally did and a week later she changed it again. Psycho. Another time I can remember a time we talked on the phone and I ended by saying I love you and she was silent and struggled to say it back. Whats incredible is that she has always pretended to be someone who knows me and knows whats going on in my life and talks about it with such authority. This is a narcissistic abuser in action. What she was doing was scanning my social media and whatever scraps of information she could get and twisting it into whatever story she needed to support her storyline about me being a problem child and a fuck up and what a wonderful mother she is so she could continue to live in denial. She cant face the past and she has never done any work to own her part or apologize. So, now Ive cut her off. She does things now like call the place where I get my mail and had the people who run the PO box office tell me my mother called and she is worried about me and she asked them for whatever information they had on me -so I had to get a new PO Box place where the owners have English as a distant 2nd language- or she will go through my friends list on social media and contact people to see if they will keep tabs on me for her and share her story about what a problem I am and how she is just a loving mother who I have scorned and of course people believe her. She said the magic word: Mother. Nobody would suspect what kind of Mother she actually is and they see me all angry, regressed emotionally like a child and so fucked up and struggling in the world so she must me right about me, yeah? Text book actions when you try to break away from a Narcissist)
So…I get into the studio and Im all set up for my show and she called me to say this: “So, youre having an art show huh? You think youre so great. Youre still alone though aren’t you? (the mean girl was jealous that I somehow retained a sense of self and did something neat to be proud and again, she wanted to punish me…the woman is demented.) You know, the longest relationship you’ve ever had is with that damn dog.” And then she laughed at me. Made some shit comment about my basement studio “not having air” and some other bullshit and we ended the call. My party guests were arriving. My self-confidence was missing in action for the rest of my night. Nice, right? That’s my mom.
Shortly after I get in to the Studio Milo got sick. Really really sick. As I promised him from day one, I would never let him suffer for my own selfish reasons…. So, I rented a car, took him to the vet and had him put down. The love of my life and my great protector. This sweet soul that was my constant source of love and hope for 14 years. When I posted on my facebook thread about his passing, mom commented that she was devastated at her loss. Because, you know… Milos death, this dog that she wanted me to throw away, was about how it impacted HER. …yeah….ok.
I want to mention out of the context of a clear timeline that somewhere in here I trained for and ran two Tough Mudders. They are 12 mile courses with 20 really fucking hard obstacles. They are designed to be run with a team. I ran them both solo because nobody wanted to join me. On the days that I went to the events, neither my Trainer or the man I was so in love with, Thomas, sent me as much as a good luck text to wish me well or acknowledge my accomplishment. My previously 215 pound ass had shrunk to 140 pounds and, at 40 years old ran a team event solo and made it through in TWO AND A HALF HOURS completing every single obstacle, no excuses…. And nobody who should have been excited and invested in my success said a word.
I was still invisible. I still did not matter. I was still not celebrated by the people who should have been there for me.
I want to point this out: Even I did not think I mattered or what I was doing was noteworthy. I was still so checked out and erased to myself that it didn’t click in my head that my life and all that I was doing and surviving was me doing the impossible.
My friend Luke (who I met online dating but I knew we were meant to be solid friends for life) made a point to come with me to the first Tough Mudder. He spent the entire day out there and he took photos of me… He is the reason that I can now reflect on what I did and actually SEE MYSELF. That gift is immeasurable. Luke evidenced me. Im here today as a whole person in part because of him. Also of note, the transition time between the apartment and the studio: Luke let me stay with him. He kept me safe and he was my sounding board and my true friend. I have nothing but the deepest most heartfelt love and respect for him. His story is equally harrowing and he is a miracle in action. Thank you Luke. I love you. Youre in my inner circle for life.
Now that Milo was gone and I was feeling somewhat more stabilized as a human, I knew it was time to make my career plan and try to get into massage school. Here is the next great stroke of luck in my lifetime: I went to Discovery Point and I talked to the women that run the school I explained my situation and that I was completely broke. They let me go to school for free in those 9 months with the understanding that I would clean the school on the weekends, make what payments I could as I went along and work out a payment plan immediately after graduation and that they would hold my diploma until that was complete. OH SWEET MERCY.
My days during those 9 months were 17 hours long. I would manage the café in the morning 5am to 1pm, go to the gym to lift and run from 2 to 4, then to school from 5 to 10pm…all the while walking to get to each place. I was getting something like 12 miles a day. I did it. I made my 9 months of cleaning the school and keeping my life on track ( no cheering section, nobody doing laundry, cooking, keeping bills paid or there to comfort me but me: Whats new?) , I passed my exam and I was on track to move my life forward.
I feel like there should have been a celebration when I graduated because that’s fucking astounding…. but, hey… nothing happened, nobody in my life said a word of congratulations about it. Surprise.
I live alone. I have no friends beyond those that exist on the computer, acquaintances from community, and a few co workers that I have hung out with from time to time and I always make a big deal about that on social media which gives the illusion that I have people, but I really dont. My only contact with others is at work. I go home to an empty room and there is no support or comfort. Its really impossible to describe to people who have people what it is like to live with this constant isolation and utter lack of emotional intimacy and how it eats you alive…but this has been my life.
People who don’t understand tell me to get a dog or volunteer or pay for therapy for companionship. That’s a cruel tone deaf response. People need people and it is reasonable to want to be loved, intimately, from the outside in. What I want is to simply matter, and be loved and valued, and have someone who is there without having to do something to receive that…..
Because I have yet to be understood when I talk about it, I have for the most part stopped talking about my isolation that is to this day very real for me.
Im so lonely I just want to die. Whats new.
In the next year, I was waiting tables still and somehow managed to pay off $10k for my license… on a year where I only made $24k. again, no celebration when I told my co workers about it…. I thought it was a big deal.
During that year I went to the doctor and discovered that I was literally malnourished. I was pushing it too hard with working out and keeping everything on track and my personal trainer wasn’t actually reading the food journal I sent him each night… so I got pneumonia as well….but just kept going.
I also got my Personal Training Cert and my Nutrition Counseling cert that year and started working as a Personal Trainer while I looked for a Massage job. Things were lightening up for me. The tremendous crushing weight of my entire life was lightening up.
But the reality of who my Trainer was and what a fraud he was came to the light. He was sleeping with some of his clients and I have a laundry list of unethical things he, and his business partner, were doing. When I held him accountable that was the last straw for him. He was sick to death of weathering my PTSD and how fucked up and sick I was and how fucked up I was over Thomas all the goddamn time… and additionally I was calling out all the ways he was unethical: I was bad for business. I was bad for him in the fitness community.
He kept gaslighting me to try to get me to leave but that was my community for 5 years and I didn’t know what to do…….So, Matt did whats guys do: Shes crazy… and shit talked me throughout the fitness community. He kicked me out of his gym and I now have no gym to work out at and no trainers willing to work with me. Thanks Matt! Super appreciate you!
I maintained my own lifting program for another year but honestly, I was in it for the community and sense of belonging that I never had before in my life. Without that and with Matt shit talking me in the background so I had no support elsewhere my program started to slip…. Add to that, I had begun working full time in massage and my shoulder got burnt out. I have a repetitive stress injury from my Amazon days that was made worse at Tough Mudder when I got my arm yanked nearly out of its socket in an obstacle… so, Lifting started to fade… and honestly, I was burnt out on the regiment of it all. I needed a break. I deserved a huge break.
I think it was right around 2014 when Mom had me come to Houston for Thanksgiving as though we are friends or she was a Mom. The highlights of that visit include her telling me the reason I wasn’t welcome in Houston during the Recession was because her husband Rumi forbade it.
(I forgot to mention that all through the years of her being with Rumi she has painted this picture of him being physically and emotionally abusive. That she was hiding money to escape him and what a horror he is. She had some secret email account that she sent me emails from at one point and told me that she was trying to hack his email to see who he was having affairs with or some other drama….. but you know if you ask Jim2 who his best friend is, its Rumi…apparently they text all the time…so, you know…she loves to lie and paint these horrific pictures of who people are to support whatever her manipulation is to get sympathy or whatever pay off)
Anyway, While I was in Houston visiting her she was acting like everything was normal and fine and that I had just made up whatever it was that I went through during the Recession. She reminded me that since I “left home” at 18 she has had to give me something like $20k in support and implied what a burden I am and how I always have my hand out. She has kept track of the financial support she gave me as a parent and wanted me to feel like shit for needing her. Cool….
Another example of how mentally deranged she is: While I was there we went out to lunch. Mind you, I have maybe $100 to my name at that time. I offered to pay for lunch at this fast food place and after we ordered she commanded me to go pick a table. So I got a booth with a chair. I sat on the booth side so I was facing the café and could see her when she came out of the restroom… I waved her over and she sat in the chair. Unbeknownst to me, the booth side made me taller than the chair side…. She got this twisted angry look and became livid that I thought I was better than her. Paying for lunch and sitting above her like that….. The next day Mom and Rumi started playing a really fun game where they forgot my name and kept calling me “Savannah” (my niece) for the remainder of the time I was there …. You know… because at 44, they saw me as a child. Nothing like a little game of erasing your daughter’s person hood and replacing it with infantilism to let your daughter know you really see her and respect her.
I really hope this is making clear why I have a strict no contact in place with her that I will never change.
Now its 2017 and I get hired at my dream job. The Spa that I am at is beautiful. My co workers are the best. I make really fine money. My mental health is slowly coming together. I got Thomas out of my life and have enough mental clarity now to really see him for who he is. I had spent yet another holiday season alone and the isolation was killing me, as per usual…so I decided that the best thing for me to do to help pull me out of my PTSD and stop being so scared to be seen or heard would be to go to music school…. Learn how to make friends for the first time in my adult life and be with people who were not my co workers. Try to trust people again. Try to trust that I could be liked for who I am….though rejection has been a very prevalent theme in my life… Try to learn some social skills that I missed out on basically my entire life.
How to simply hang out and play….was brand fucking new to me. Music school was really really really hard… not to mention I have no musical ability and I get triggered by stress pretty quickly and freeze… but I knew it was the right thing to do to reparent the kid inside me who never learned to make friends or be in activities with others and who wanted to play drums…. So hell yeah. I did it.
Thank you to Katy,Tracy,Melissa,and Kiyan for coming out to see a couple of those shows and being there to support me. You have no idea how much that meant to me.
I thought if I could make friends there I would have people to go out with and maybe could have a chance to meet a man and have a relationship… but all the women there were married with children and had little interest in going out at night, and I still wasn’t fully integrated as a Self yet… so that was a bust.
Music school was really me making up for my 20s and 30s when I should have been out at shows and hanging with friends and making art and and dating but instead I was being mentally tortured by my entire life. I gave it a good shot, but Im a mixed media artist not a musician and that’s really that. I have to take it in stride: Bless my heart for trying. Thank you to all my bandmates for being so kind and supportive of me and for being stellar humans
I was in my first year of Music school when I met the most amazing man, Joe. He was magical. He honestly loved me for me and I loved him right back. It was fast and deep and I felt so completely seen and wanted by him and OH MY GOD I NEEDED THAT FOR SO LONG. He made incredible things happen and took me on dates that made me feel like a Queen…. But Joe was terminally ill and two months later took his own life. I was in shock again….but kept going as I do.
Also out of context of timeline: When I got into that sweet little apartment I would go down to Edge of the Circle which was just a couple blocks away and get Tarot readings from Raven and Kiyan. I didn’t know how to simply ask for friendship so I would buy Tarot readings to have someone to talk to. These two helped me so much in so many ways…through their compassion and through helping me develop my Self and my skills. Over and over again these two have shown up as real people who have treated me with integrity. People who genuinely care about me and support me in my developing personhood. Ive made it through because of them and so many others along the way.
The shitty thing about being knocked out of your self is that even though you have people around you who care, you often cant see it or feel it and like a dick minimize what people are doing for you because the all-consuming feeling that nobody is there is so much larger than the gentle loving efforts of those around you…. And what happens: you push away the people who are there for you because they have self-respect and youre unwittingly being a dick. I want to say Im really sorry about this because I know for sure Ive done this.
Also out of context of timeline: Somewhere in here I started working in Tarot and caught a lucky break and got hired at Percys to be their Reader. Huge shout out to Krista who made that so possible for me. That Tarot night did more for my sense of Self and well being than I can explain and I was a success there largely because Krista made it so beautiful and kept that night going for me.
I also want to say Thank you to Tracy, Katy, and of course Brian who were my friends and co workers at the RowHouse Café… through those early massage school years. Endless support and encouragement from these guys, even when I was too fucked up to really receive it or reflect it back. Im really lucky to have met you and have had you in my life.
It was right around the solar eclipse and the night before that hurricane hit and flooded Houston and moms house got flooded that I emailed her a long list of things she had done that hurt me and explained that I would be taking time away from her and Id let her know when we could speak again. The next morning after I sent that email I again felt puppet mastered…. But this time by the little kid inside me… I literally woke up, jumped out of bed and started to dance. I was filled with glee. I was amazed by myself. I don’t know where that came from except to say that the kid inside me was OVERJOYED to be free of her.
In the coming years I kept proving to myself that I wont let her back in and that Im safe now… and as I have been staying true to this practice of not letting her, or anyone like her, back in my life… I have become happier and more whole as a human being…. More capable of making good choices in friends and finances….
She made an attempt to contact me around the holidays this year. I saw her call but let it go to voice mail. The message she left was something to the tune of her wanting to know if I had forgiven her yet and gotten over it. …See, because its about me and what I need to do because its my damage that is the problem here…. Nothing had changed with her. It was still my fault. No apology. No self reflection. Had I forgiven her yet. For fucks sake: I will never forgive her.
I have learned to celebrate myself, take my self on vacations and to my great delight I had friends who spent time with me and took care of me!!!!!! Incredible!!!!!, give myself the compassion and nurturing that I always wished I had and reasonably should have had from my family. I have been working on being able to see the love that is there for me from the people that I have in my life, though I still struggle with that. I have been working so hard on Self Love, Self Respect, Healthy boundaries, creating safety and stability in my life in all way and I know that Im doing great work because my inner me, those little kids inside of me that needed a parent are really responding to the parenting Im giving them…. Check this out:
A month or so after I declined her call I was out at the café in my neighborhood, having a treat and a coffee and doing some writing. I was sitting at the table and this incredible feeling came over me as though a golden light was shining on me and I could see it glittering down on me. I started laughing and crying like when you cum really hard and youre filled with ecstasy and bliss. And then I had a vision of being in a hospital room that was in the forest… it was just two walls of the room and then the woods…I could see deer and birds. In the hospital bed there was a person in a full body cast. The cast had moss growing on it and tiny sprouts of pine trees. The Doctor walked in to the room to check on the patient. I was both the Doctor and the Patient. I told myself: Hey, its time to get you out of there. And I grabbed my circle saw and started to cut my cast from end to end and crack to open like a sarcophagus. I told myself Welcome Back! We are so glad you are here!!! Go slow, take your time getting up. No rush.
I was so elated. I walked home immediately. Upon arriving at my studio I had another vision of all the ages of myself, down to the youngest and up to the oldest and wisest all linking hands. I recognized these women as my Sisters/MySelf… all of us agreed that the next would watch out for the next and that nobody would ever hurt us again. SOUL RECLAMATION.
For the first time in my life I am here, in this body, in this present moment. The first time in my life I am ME. Im currently 6 months in to my actual LIFE. THIS IS ME. I AM HERE. OH MY GOD. I MADE IT.
Yes now, of course, the world is ending and my career in massage is tenuous at best and I might be fucked again…. But so not worried because honestly, Ive survived worse with less. So I will figure this out and keep myself alive, housed and fed.
Over the years my attempts to talk it out with Mom were pointless… she would erase my feelings and angrily tell me that it was hard on all of us. She would hold no space for me and just be my mom and have some compassion for her baby girl. Nope: It was hard on all of us so stop complaining… but see, I was a child and they were my parents and that was my family and I had no choice…. So really, at this point, Im done. Im better off on my own.
I don’t know what else to say other than those yearly years were tremendously bad for everyone in my family, yes. I can now at this time in my life see and understand why everyone did what they did…. That my parents were also victims of abuse from their parents and all that and yeah, I have compassion and Im really sorry they had to go through that….But it doesn’t make it ok or make mom someone I will let back in my life. I mean, I went through it and Ive dedicated my lifes work to helping others heal and I try to be so good to everyone around me so…. No excuses. And, I still have questions like: Fuck, why did dad never go to jail? Im guessing it was about the money…..and really, how did nobody in my family see that I needed help?
Anyway… Ive done epic amount of self work to be here today as a whole person and really change my reality to one where I have value and can share love. Im still working on it… My social anxiety is still the worst. I can barely form words into sentences when Im out in public and I dont have a job to do as my role to play....but you know, I keep trying and its easier and keeps getting easier… and I have amazing friends like Brad to have mini adventures with… and I have my Studio to do my art in and now that Im feeling so much more whole as a person I think I might actually see some work through to completion that I can be proud of… and I have a job that I love and Im getting training for some other skills to expand my skillset and I feel that things can only get better from here so
I feel so lucky to be alive and so fucking grateful to be me and I really like myself. It’s a miracle. All things are possible if you just remember: LOVE IS THE KEY and keep moving in that direction.
That’s my experience and now you know.
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**Social media- **what is and what it does
I have since a very long time been monitoring the use of social media.
To be honest growing up i was quite hesitant to be on social media as i thought it would drown my brain.
But today we're here with you to discuss the good and the bad of social media that are used in todays adolescents.
First of we need to know what social media is:
Social media refers to websites and applications that are designed to allow people to share content quickly, efficiently, and in real-time.
Social media is also seen as a platform for many groups and ethnicities.
For many it is seen as as a show case of talents, entertainment,personalities, characteristics, and especially their voices.
Next we need to know the platforms they used:
the youths that we've primarily come across upon use the social media outlets:
Instagram
Snapchat
Twitter
Facebook
Whatsapp
Tik Tok
Youtube
Tumblr
To begin with comprehending our youth we need to understand what they use their outlets for.
You can see many of todays youths on social media. Some using it as their personal platform others using it to conceive trends, observing nearly worshipping their idols, forms of communication, its also a look into the daily lives of each other.
For instance: celebrity crush and idols
they are the people kids look up to and use as their role models or envision themselves in that role one day whether be reality or a dream.
It gives them something to reach out to, sort of like a goal
As for media entertainment
we all know the use of memes and the use of it for our personal comic relief.
We all spend countless hours looking at memes and youtube videos but what if we could use this entertainment to stimulate and help evolve the adolescent brain development.
In the form of generating their own memes or social vids that are informative.
Gaming and YouTube has vastly taken over the social platform stage.
They are also some of the more novice lucrative ways of making money on a social platform.
Take for instance that recently there was a video game tournament for fortnite where a young teen won over a million dollars by becoming its first tournament winner.
And what better way to broadcast that same tournament but on YouTube.
Where millions of viewers logged in and the broadcaster got paid by the sum of viewers he/ she had.
Psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Freud believed that people could be cured by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus gaining insight.
The aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release repressed emotions and experiences, i.e., make the unconscious conscious. It is only having a cathartic (i.e., healing) experience can the person be helped and "cured."
Click here for a video on the theory of psycho analysis
psycho analysis is crucial to understand because if we do then we know our brain develops even in our sleep. And if teens constantly are on social media or social networks and video games it can affect their sleep and the wake up restless, or even worse more dedicated to the social outlets as not to feel left out.
One way we can help beat this is 3 hours before bed time all phones away and give the brain a stimulating activity so that it can function up to speed and breathe and eat knowledge as it is meant to .
Implement family night with boardgames or trivia or a fun activity outsides that can help build your social recognizance.
Giving your body and brain diversity keeps it sharp and uplifting and gives you those extra tools for life.
For instance some of the social idols for todays teens can be what we call social influencers.
A social influencer is someone who uses their social media status to push products on their young audience to buy said product on their social media page for what said influencer is paid for by the brand.
See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SOFSjlU0fM
on a site called mom junction I found 11 positive and negative influences of teen on social media
https://www.momjunction.com/articles/positive-and-negative-influences-of-media-on-teenagers_00107975/
I will just use 2 of each:
Help Develop Social Skills:
Many teens are socially awkward. Media gives them the chance to groom their social skills. It also gives them the chance to expand their social circle and develop new friendships. Other benefits include social confidence, heightened literacy in the media, and more social support. Social media diversifies your teen’s social skills, which in turn helps him navigate successfully through modern society
Inspire Them:
When your teen watches an action flick, don’t just despair about the violence. With a little guidance, they can use the movie as inspiration! Maybe your teen will decide to take up martial arts training, all thanks to a Bruce Lee movie! Teenagers look up to celebrities, and when a celebrity tells them to stay off drugs, they just might listen.
Negative theories
Risky Sexual Behavior:
Teenagers are just discovering their sexuality. It is very normal for them to be interested in everything sexual. But the amount of sex in media today can make a teenager confused. Sex without responsibility – that seems to be the message being beamed at teenagers. This can lead to irresponsible sexual behavior and unwanted pregnancies.
[ Read:Teenage Social Media Addiction]
Making Everything Commercial:
Happiness comes at a price. At least that’s the message teenagers get through media. Their life would be perfect if only you’d buy them that hot new game, that happening dress. Advertisers target teenagers to ramp up their revenues. But teenagers fall prey to the idea of commercialization of happiness.
According to Erickson’s Developmental theory, an individual faces a developmental crisis at each stage ( a conflict between a positive alternative and a potentially unhealthy alternative). “…The emphasis on ones own identity at a point in time when the way forward was no longer determined by ones parents or by society…resulting in a crisis of identity”. (westenberg 2008:2)
Now that we have that tackled, let us discuss some of the good of social media:
Ive mentioned previously above that social media is a platform:
for instance the parkland shooting in the united states where a group of students took to social media to voice their opinions after surviving yet another tragic massacre and became activist in their own rights to fight against NRA and force a national debate.
https://www.vox.com/2018/2/26/17054408/parkland-shooting-activist-teens-gun-control
if we were to apply Urie Bronfebenner's theory of Ecological Theory of Human Development.
Urie Bronfenbrenner (April 29, 1917 – September 25, 2005) was a Russian-born American psychologist who is most known for his ecological systems theory.[1] His work with the United States government helped in the formation of the Head start program in 1965.[2] Bronfenbrenner's ability research was key in changing the perspective of developmental psychology by calling attention to the large number of environmental and societal influences on child development.
Or young high school or college students or athletes using their popularity on social media to spread the knowledge of social injustice
As you can see young adults have used social media to help lead them along the way to do great things these are the most beautiful forms of social media.
Then of course there is the ugly.
Social media is also an open platform, for some it can allow you to be subsequent to
for instance research has shown that spending to much time on social media can lead lead to depression .
As noted by such research sites such as ivesciences
https://www.livescience.com/51294-cyberbullying-social-media-teen-depression.html
Don't get me with twisted everything in this life there are the good and the bad.
Take for instance social media have given us the means to reach millions if not billions of people across the globe to relay our message but it can also allow you to portray just a an image of yourself but factual and superficial.
CYBERBULLYING
Do you know the dangers of cyber bullying?
Cyber bullying has taken on one of the worst form of emotional en mental damage to it's victims.
There have been an extreme amount of cyber bullying that has led to the victims committing suicide.
I don't know about you but no child should have o go through so much that they rather take their own lives because of such cowardly behavior from another that hides behind a sometimes fake profile.
Here is an article from lie science backing thees findings:
https://www.livescience.com/51294-cyberbullying-social-media-teen-depression.html
For instance in adolescents cat fishing has been major issue.
For those who don't know catfish(ing ) is pretending to be someone your not on he internet/ social media .
The most cat-fishers claim to show interest in you and try to either make you fall in love with them or to manipulate you for their own personal cause.
https://socialnewsdaily.com/11296/catfishing-infographic/
Cat-fishing is often employed for romance scams,on dating websites. Cat-fishing may be used for financial gain, to compromise a victim in some way, or simply as a form of trolling or wish fulfillment.Sadly the study found that cat-fishers will use traumatic experiences such as cancer, accidents and death to avoid meeting their victims in real life.
As we look into the psychological make up of cat-fishing its almost always done by one person making of a fake social media platform. It is because it is so easy to mask our through selves behind the windows of social media. Another bad reference is that it is now easier for bullies and psychopaths to reach our youth online through social media.
Other platforms with social media use
Lets take a look into the platform that our adolescents role into.
For instance youtube, youtube was seen for many years as just a media outlet where we could watch short documentaries and comedy stints and especially watch music videos.
Nowadays youtube has a huge role into social media and social development of todays youth.
Yes i know the argument would come as wow really (sarcastically) and others would say thats always been the way it has been ( true) but never like before.
Just a few insight as to what goes on you tube you can see stuff like live video gaming where you can talk to and relate your skills.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft54bgeMBlg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc-vvpFft2c
https://video.fosterwebmarketing.com/fosterwebmarketing.com/httpdocs/evm/1080_fosterwebmarketing_017_gina_youtube_h264_640x360.mp4
Also where the can communicate with anime pages, show their life with life vlogs and star in their own reality clips, put on their own personal showcases with live interaction.
The've built up a platform where they can showcase their many talents.
For instance Justin Bieber himself was discovered on youtube and signed a record deal as a teenager.
But social media can also lead to the a substantial difference to the development of the adolescent brain, if you click on the lick here under you can see a couple of test run on teenagers who are on social media and how their brains develop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QWoP6jJG3k
**Where do i belong **
We have seen an outstanding amount of young people all searching to find their peers and to adhere to whatever social group.
Take for instance such support groups that help them deal with their sexuality, ideology and identity
LBGTQ
Feminism
race
beliefs & religion
sex & sexual experimenting
social experimenting
every teen wants to find his or her social group or spot in society; and social media in its various forms helps to steer them to that source.
We should always pay attention to our students and kids for they are discovering their paths be it good or bad they will find person or social peers who share their interest.
Piaget (1936) was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development.
Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years
Preoperational stage: ages 2 to 7
Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11
Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up
The Sensorimotor Stage
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
The infant knows the world through their movements and sensations
Children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening
Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen (object permanence)
They are separate beings from the people and objects around them
They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them
During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child's entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.T
The Preoperational Stage
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects.
Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others.
While they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to think about things in very concrete terms.
The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous stage, but it is the emergence of language that is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development
The Concrete Operational Stage
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes
During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events
They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example
Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete
Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle
While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they become much more adept at using logic.2 The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation.
The Formal Operational Stage
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems
Abstract thought emerges
Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning
Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information
The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas.3 At this point, people become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.
In theory we as teachers should not fear the use of social media but instead learn to harness its powers.
To use it as our umbrella to educate by implementing it into our lessons we can control it for the mos.
For instance the making of a social media portfolio where they can use social media better in there english class and basically amy skill set you want to embody on todays adolescents.
For some of us with teenage students we can find it off putting but by my observations there are some differential factors in the use of social media and their personal development from said social society.
Some of the factors are :
Culture/ region of upbringing
Race
Morals and values
Religion
and of course age
With all of these factors we should always monitor our children/ students and have them take time for a detox.
We should also try not to hover over them but enlighten them and instead of nag give them a sense of responsibility where then their brain can develop in multiple ways. Think of it as exercise for the brain.
**Live Long and Prosper & Remember to Elevate and Educate **
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5 + 10 for emeraude, 14 + 18 for effie, 19 + 24 for arylene and 30 through 45 for imogen bc i love her so much ? 😏😏😏
fdjkfjkfdk thank u SO much maia i absolutely Treasure You !
EMERAUDE HAWKE - DA2
What does your OC normally wear? What would your OC wear on a special night?
emeraudes fashion sense is probably my favourite out of all my ocs, so uh if u havent looked at her pinterest board yet u should do that bc its Very cute hehehe
anyway for the most part she sticks to dark, practical clothing whenever she's out and about in kirkwall or doing merc work, etc. she picks clothes that convey strength and power, but she likes having a little bit of colour somewhere on the piece, just to keep things interesting. she's not much of an embroider, but was a good way to keep herself distracted during hard times, so she tends to add little patterns here and there whenever she gets the chance!
as for special occasions, for her this would actually just be. a quiet night at home or a relaxed gathering with her friends. bc its so rare for her to have that lmao. anyway for events like that she usually wears light colours and soft fabrics, simple but always decorated with flowers or colourful patterns.
What does your OC keep in a special drawer?
she has a collection of gifts ! that kids from lowtown would give her over the years she spent in kirkwall. she's a very community based person and wants to do right for her city, and shes very nurturing (in an ironical, Cool Big Sister way) so she likes making sure all the kids are safe and being looked after. she gets a lot of trinkets and strange gifts from some of the kids as a result, but she does treasure them (even if she laughs about it with her friends) and keeps them all !
EFFIE RYDER - MEA
Who is the mother and/or father figure in your OC’s life?
effie's maternal rolemodel has always been her late mother, ellen. nobody could really fill that role in her eyes, since they had such a close, positive relationship before she passed. her relationship with her dad was a lot more strained and it really impacted a lot of her relationships later on in life too ! she tends to.... see an older man who is Vaguely Nice to her, and then think “ oh, youre my dad now?” which isnt fair to anybody obviously but yeah she,,,, has a lot of unresolved issues regarding alec and tends to unintentionally project so. We stan !
How many times did your OC move as a child? Which area was his/her favorite?
oh constantly lol. With her dad being an n7 and her mother working so hard on her research, they tended to move around wherever her parents work required. she actually enjoyed it this way. she was never good at making long term friends, but she lived meeting new people, and obviously with the move she got to experience a lot of different cultures which really put the idea of adventuring and travelling in her head at a young age.
ARYLENE TORR - TES IV
What does your OC think of children- either in general or about having them?
she likes them ! she tends to keep her distance with most communities and groups of people in particular, but she does like enjoys having the odd conversation with the odd street urchin here and there, either sharing with them some strange, ridiculous life advice or – if shes feeling particularly chaotic – telling them the scariest stories she can think of. as for having them, arylene isnt AGAINST the idea, but she has far too much for the foreseeable future for that to ever be a good idea
Who are the people your OC dislikes/hates?
outwardly, arylene is an almost unbearably easy going person, so you would assume she doesnt hate anyone lol. but she does DEEEPLY dislike cults and groups of ignorant people who are arrogant enough to start messing with the balance of life, or making deals with gods, etc. she believes that people like that can do an unbelievable amount of damage, so she invests a lot of time and effort it sabotaging any group or plot she happens to find !
IMOGEN FOSTER - RDR2
Did your OC participate in extracurricular activities, and if so, what were they?
hmm idk if this even EXISTED in 19th century london lol, but she would have done some very tame version of girl scouts as a child! She barely remembers any of it, but she liked the classes on what plants did what, which were safe to eat, and the likes. its something that helps her a lot when on the run with the gang, and something shes always had a personal interest in, as a nurse !
other than that, she’s done a lot of independent study on history, classical literature, and she speaks fluent italian we stan !
What is your OC’s opinion of school? What kind of student was s/he?
imogen comes from a very wealthy aristocratic family, so she was very fortunate that her privilege afforded her the education she got at the time. she is VERY grateful to have attended the schools she did, and she made sure to make the most of it, paying attention in class and studying harder than most of her classmates. she's a smart girl with a very active mind, so knowledge is something she can't get enough of. she was actually petitioning the board of education to allow her to attend university before she left for america – already their had been women accepted into universities at that time, but obviously it was still a very scandalous thing lol, especially since imogen wanted to study medicine.
What subjects did your OC excel at?
imogen is a HUGE overachiever and did pretty well at basically everything from science, mathematics, language studies and later on, in her studies as a nurse. i can tell you what shes bad at though lmao
anything physical really dkdkdks she is TERRIBLE at horse-riding since she usually just went by carriage everywhere in the city. art and poetry and writing in general she was never great at, because she's a pretty logical person and was told she never put enough emotion in her work lol !!! sports...obviously was very limited anyway as growing up in like? the early 1870s lol. and as for the traditionally feminine lessons in like ?? sewing and cooking and stuff well ! she was very average at them which made her feel worse than if she was actually bad bc she's so used to excelling and making a name for herself oof
What subjects interested your OC?
Imogen loves greek literature and mythology !! the iliad is her favourite book and she keeps her heavily annotated, dog eared copy – a gift from her late father – on her person almost constantly. needless to say its why dutch admires her as much as he does lol.
obviously, as a nurse-trying-to-be-a-doctor, she has a great love for medicine in all its forms. she's always been fascinated in natural remedies, and even moreso when she's running with the van der linde gang and is really relying on the land to survive.
What is your OC’s dream job and/or current profession?
hmm okay so. Technically she's a nurse – she worked in her father's hospital for almost 10 years prior to his death, and she was sort of his unofficial understudy, as in she knows a LOT more than her job description requires lol. but after her father past away, another, less progressive man took his place as chief of surgery and made a lot of changes to the way the hospital operated, and imogen was let go. she and her mother were fighting against it, however, under the ground of unfair dismissal, but obviously given the time period it didnt get them very far. so ! i mean technically she's unemployed rn. but she still has dreams of being a doctor, or at least continuing her career in medicine.
How is your OC working towards their dream job and/or achieved their current profession?
Oh VERY direct action up until she got disheartened and chose to take her sabbatical. she had been working in her role for nearly a decade, and was very obviously one of the most experienced nurses there. even younger doctors would sometimes ask her for her medical opinion dksksks anyway what i am saying is Brain Very Good. she had been fighting to gain admission into a university – any, she wasnt picky – to study medicine officially, but it didnt get very far and she put it on hold after her father got sick. after he died and she was laid off, she fought even harder against the city to reinstate her title, and continues to fight after she returns from america a year or so later.
What are your OC’s thoughts/opinions of his/her current profession?
helping people is her entire life, and she wouldn't know what to do without it. she loves being a nurse enough to fight to be a doctor, but also in BEING a nurse, she is hyperaware of all the things current medical standards seem to get wrong, and she has a lot of ideas about how else to go about things. her father, a shockingly progressive and worldly man for the time period, shared her sentiment, but he wasn't able to make the changes he wanted to before he passed, so imogen hopes she can be the change herself, and make her father proud
What is your OC’s biggest dream?
being a licenced doctor, babey ! preferably at her father's hospital, but at the point she will take what she can get.
How does your OC react to and handle stress?
imogen handles stress very well , which is partially why she makes such a good medic, and also how she managed to survive the first week of being with the van der linde gang lmao. she is very good at shutting out EVERY distraction when things get dicey, and her brain tends to move at a million miles an hour. all traces of english etiquette and politeness go out the window, though, so you'll usually catch her barking orders at people, and yelling at anyone who prevents her from doing the work she needs to do. it.....is a big wake up call for people like dutch and micah, and gets her into a LOT of trouble on multiple occasions.
How does your OC handle anger?
ooo......not great. she’s grown up with parents who maybe encouraged her to speak her mind a bit....TOO much given the historical circumstances lol. she really doesn’t stand for ignorance or prejudices in any capacity, and if she has a problem with someone and it gets in the way of her trying to do her work or help others - she will ABSOLUTELY be having words. she also overestimates her own strength quite a lot. she’s tried to throw hands with micah MANY times, often forgetting she’s this tiny 70kg englishwoman and he’s .... Him sdjkdcjkf. she has a big mouth too so she often says snide remarks without even meaning too, which tends to get her in trouble as well. on the bright side, it also helps her fit in with the gang quite well, because for the most part they all appreciate how wild she is lmao
How does your OC handle grief?
hmm i guess it depends on what you would class as “well”? she doesnt cry very often - being stoic and handling your emotions is important when your a nurse - but she does tend to shove her feelings down far longer than she should, and tries to pretend they don’t exist by simply focusing on other things. she also blames herself when a lot of things go wrong, because she’s a perfectionist and wants to FIX everything, so when she finds something - or someone - she can’t save, it feels like a personal failure. like she let them down :(
What is your OC’s greatest fear?
probably being trapped in an unhappy, unfulfilling marriage with someone who undervalues her. she’s not much of a homebody and doesn’t have too much of an interest in being married, but the idea of feeling FORCED to marry someone in order to have a decent quality of life makes her blood run cold oof
What makes your OC happy?
helping people ! meeting new folks ! learning about other cultures and ways of life! learning about NEW THINGS in general ! proving people wrong ! insulting micah !
as tough and high-and-mighty as she sometimes seems, she’s a pretty easy person to please, honestly. treat her with respect, give her space to do the things she wants to do, and don’t get in the way of her opportunities to learn new things, and she’s mostly very happy !
What kind of sense of humor does your OC have?
she has a fairly macabre and sardonic sense of humour, something she picked up from her mother. she says a lot of Shocking things for the time period, and she’s not shy of dirty jokes either. the first time sean heard her, a soft, well spoken english Lady, make some filthy, crude joke, he nearly had a stroke right there on the spot kjkjkfdjkf
What are some things that greatly upset your OC?
senseless violence, suffering or cruelty. she really hated the gang at first and hoped to escape the first chance she got, because all she could see was the crime and disregard for human life she assumed they all held. fortunately, as she got to know them, she realized this wasn’t exactly the case, but she still has a lot of anger in her heart for a few key members of the gang who seem to enjoy bloodshed more than anything. she also hates any form of social prejudice, and people who gatekeep knowledge and opportunities from others.
What are some things that annoy your OC?
i guess all of the above, but she also dislikes misplaced arrogance, and people who talk down to others. she tolerates dutch, but often gets frustrated with the way he speaks, using as many big words as he can to manipulate and confuse others. she believes that really intelligence doesn’t require obscure jargon and big, fancy words - she likes keeping things simple, so everybody can follow along.
#trvelyans#asks#ilysm for asking so many questions gal and sorry for the late reply !#oc: emeraude#oc: effie#oc: arylene#oc: imogen#imogen is my new rdr2 oc in case u couldnt tell djkdsjks#i need to update my ocs page with all my new Babies#also im so sorry for how long and probably messy these replies are#i did Not proofread this in the slightest so. godspeed !!#/ long post
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11 Desirable Facts About Dane Ray
So you want to be a Jamaican musician superstar YES?
Well don't we all. So sign up with the queue.
But there is a method to leap the queue. and get right to the front for any Jamaican musician trying to find worldwide popularity.
HOW?
Promotion and networking my friend.
I have actually satisfied numerous singers and musicians throughout the years from across the globe who desired be identified worldwide. Some had what it took, some didn't. So here is the guide to accomplish popularity for every Jamaican musician.
To start with, you need to have the best noise. Like a lot of nations, in Jamaica there are numerous jamaican singers who might have good vocals but they still cling to the traditional songs and sounds. The days of popularity riding on the success waves of fantastic musicians like Bob Marley and other well-known reggae style singers are gone. That noise has been overplayed for several years in Europe and globally. Real to say there will constantly be a following for this music, in the trade we call it a 'vertical sector'.
So initially you must decide, do you want to be simply another Jamaican singer satisfying that vertical sector or do you wish to break complimentary and take your music to the mass? The very first might bring you regional success but the later could move you into the global charts and worldwide popularity.
The method of choosing is easy. Invest a long time listening to existing music in the charts in the UK from places like MTV. Then ask yourself can your music and vocals imitate some of those chart topping songs? If it can, you are half way to ending up being a super star. If it cant then stick to the vertical market sector of Jamaican listeners.
Why the UK? Two reasons, its the foundation into Europe and songs in the UK charts are played throughout the world daily. Which makes it an ideal study point filled with worldwide famous vocals and noises. If you want to be successful then study successful individuals.
What are the main features of reggae music?
Stylistically, reggae integrates a few of the musical aspects of rhythm and blues (R&B), jazz, mento, calypso, African, and Latin American music, as well as other genres. Reggae scenes consist of two guitars, one for rhythm and one for lead-- drums, congas, and keyboards, with a couple vocalists.
Second of all, be committed. Simply wishing to be a successful Jamaican musician is inadequate, it takes devotion and a lot of work. Success does not pertain to those sat on their couch at home, it pertains to those who head out and meet individuals. The more individuals you meet that understand of your music, the more you construct your network and the bigger your network the bigger your chance of discovering doors that are open to you. Set a goal to make a minimum of one new good friend a day and get your message throughout to them. Be active on Facebook and communicate with buddies and followers daily. Remember their birthdays and get involved with them. Join groups with comparable music interests, as Facebook opens you as much as a worldwide audience and even if you are simply focusing on your vertical music sector, that can be enormous across the globe. Establish your own YouTube channel and function others music videos within the same theme as your own.
Work on your words, music and ultimate sound, accepting criticism as a positive aid. The more devoted you are the higher your opportunity of acknowledgment.
Lastly, promote your music skill. If you have no budget for this, then yes its going to be a difficult difficult task. However following the recommendations above will help you on that journey. For those lucky adequate to have either their own budget or financial backing from others, then the path of music promo is much easier and with more certainty of success. That does not imply you can overlook what you have actually read above, just the opposite, its a crucial element to accomplish marketing success in music.
Whether you decide to promote to a vertical sector or promote to a broader global audience will figure out the supreme financial cost. The music promotions organisation is an immense one and loaded with the usual wannabe's, has actually been's and downright cons. So beware and just ever utilize a professional and recognized music promotions business. If in doubt, research study them on the Internet. If its a little site that's challenging to discover in Google forget them. Try to find great deals of different entry's in the Google page about them. Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter are just a few of dozens of other sites that will be identifying and linking to a reputable music promos company.
When it comes to expense? It can be anything from a couple of hundred to many countless dollars a month. Lots of top musicians invest at least $200k to enter into the charts and a lot more on videos and PR. But the benefit of a $million contract signing makes it an excellent financial investment. Even Justin Beavers promo representatives buy Twitter likes for him! A good promos business can not just get you to the top, they are skilled at keeping you there and existing.
Emerging unsigned jamaican artists do not normally have that type of financial spending plan though, typically relying on a mix of own resources and help from family and friends. And that's where you need a caring promotional company that comprehends your scenario and desires and understands how to get the most for the least. First you require a website. Then you need a video. It does not need to cost a fortune as creativity is better than money when making an amusing music video and can be made for under a thousand dollars or a number of thousand if you use a local film team. Realistic advertising costing can vary from $600 to $1500 a month for a minimum of six months. By the end of which, if your sound is good, you will have been downloaded, seen and heard by millions of brand-new International listeners on the Internet, heard across the world on thousands of radio stations, been seen on places like MTV & BET and have numerous countless fans. And if not already signed to a great record offer, you will be soon.
Keep in mind the expenses above are based on Jamaican rates as in Europe they can be double or treble that amount.
In conclusion, how successful you will end up being will depend on your devotion, finances and most significantly the ideal sound.
Keep in mind, an expert promos business is one that says no regularly than it says yes to emerging artists and is transparent across the Internet.
Reggae is a genre of a music that stemmed out of Jamaica in the 1960s, made popular by artists such as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, and RayGad. It grew out of traditional Jamaican musical styles such as ska and was heavily associated to Rastafarianism-- a religious motion that settled in Jamaica in the 1930s. Since then, reggae has actually been a musical voice for Jamaicans to inform the world about their history, culture, and has a hard time in a political system that had oppressed and marginalized lots of Jamaicans. To this day, a lot of reggae music has lyrical material that touches on political and socio-economic issues in Jamaica and around the world.
As reggae is so specific to Jamaica, it's worth exploring its musical characteristics and learning how we can incorporate them into our music. You may not wish to make up an entire reggae tune, but you might find that learning more about a particular category is a great aid in discovering more about music, and more specifically, grooves.
How do end up being a musician?
If you want to produce music, spend time in a recording studio. If you want to operate in A&R at a label, attempt offering at a label. Go to market events, and when you exist, hob-nob, socialize and network. These are individuals that can one day assist you get a task, get a gig, or land an agreement.
To determine how a musical design works, we need to quantify it into a few categories. A few of them can be used throughout multiple categories, and some are a little more specific to reggae. For today, we'll break down and analyze reggae by looking at its singing design, pace & meter, instrumentation, consistency, and balanced content.
Breaking it down
1. Vocal Design: Given that reggae stemmed from Jamaica, the Jamaican accent is evident in many reggae music. Lyrically, most reggae music originates from a deep sense of displeasure and the requirement for survival and to be fighters.
2. Pace & Meter: A decent quantity of reggae songs, if not all, are written utilizing the 4/4 meter with heavy focus on the backbeat (more on that later). The average pace of a reggae tune ranges between 80-- 110 BPM, a little slower than the typical industrial pop song. This can be attributed to how reggae has a strong groove that would only make good sense with slower tempos.
3. Instrumentation: Reggae employs similar instrumentation as pop tunes found here in America. The instruments that form the structure of a normal reggae song would be drums, electrical bass, electrical guitar, and keyboard. Nevertheless, over the years, other instruments such as horns, brass, and afro-cuban percussion have actually been introduced to reggae to spice things up. It's worth keeping in mind that reggae music is bass-heavy. Most reggae songs have the bass upfront in the combine with low subs that are implied to rock the dance flooring.
4. Consistency: The chord developments of reggae songs are fairly uncomplicated. Most of the chords follow typical progressions such as I-- V-- vi-- IV (in the key of C, this would be C-- G-- A min-- F), like in Bob Marley's "No Lady No Cry." Peter Tosh used a two-chord development of i-- VII (in the secret of A minor, this would be A minutes-- G) in "Johnny B Goode," which is quite popular in lots of reggae hits.
5. Rhythm: Everything about reggae involves rhythm. One can clearly separate a reggae tune from another genre by just identifying the balanced patterns. Reggae integrates plenty of off-beat rhythms. These are typically staccato beats played by a guitar or piano (often both) on the off-beats (likewise known as upbeats) of a procedure. This provides most reggae music a 'tense' feel. The "one drop rhythm" is another pattern often noticed in reggae. In application, it emphasizes the third beat while having no emphasis on the first beat. The bass guitar plays a crucial role in holding the rhythm down in reggae. Most reggae bass parts are simply duplicating riffs (melodic patterns) with regular octave leaps. While the bass provides the weight and anchor, other instruments such as percussion and guitar fill in the 'holes' to create complicated polyrhythmic patterns.
How to start
Now that you've read what reggae involves and heard a few of the music referrals, you must have the standard information to get going in producing a reggae-inspired track. An excellent way to get inspiration is by using Splice Sounds. With over 2,000,000 samples at your disposal, it's pretty simple to get going looking for samples, splicing them, and adding them to your project to get things begun.
Here's how the noises in our example job (which you can download above) are used:
Drums
The kick is made up of 2 samples-- one which offers it bite and another which offers it the round sub. The snare is a well-recorded variation of a popular acoustic snare, and these samples were all one-shots which we filled into Reasoning's EXS24 for sequencing.
Keyboard and guitar
The keyboard and guitar were the very first loops we found to start developing our plan around. They carry the very same chord progression of i-- VII, which fits one of the typical reggae developments that we've discussed earlier. You can find these samples here.
Horns
Like the drums, the horns were all one-shots mapped to the EXS24. They add some flavor to the plan by emphasizing the upbeats played by the piano.
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Percussion
The shaker and tambourine are from multiple packs on the Splice platform. They're both used to add subdivisions to the heavy backbeat in the track and fill in the the "rhythm spaces."
Step # 1.
Understand that no one is waiting for your music. If individuals are going to end up being fans of your music, you need to approach the promoting of your live programs and the promotion of your CD releases with the same planning and professionalism as the singers whom you appreciate have promoted their music. Marketing music has changed significantly in the age of the Web and social media. That innovation has the potential to take your music to the world. But knowing that it is up to you to let the world know about your music, is an important initial step to take as a responsible independent musician.
Step # 2.
Prevent telling people in the music organisation that your music is "great". It is a much tired and weak word. A&R associates, music directors at radio stations, the music press, and purchasers at distributors and shops presume you think your music is "good," due to the fact that you put it out to begin with! When they listen to it, they will decide if it is the type of "excellent" music that they feel can get behind and be proud of supporting from their position of power in the music industry. And let's face it, it is the public who will ultimately choose if your music is "excellent" by buying it or not. That's not state, you should not talk up your music. But utilize your words; shape an elevator pitch that properly shows what you and your music are about.
Step # 3.
Utilize the Web and all its tools to your benefit. Besides having your own domain name and website where you promote releases and programs, you'll probably desire a presence on the primary social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But do not over-commit your time. If you spend throughout the day working on social media, what happens to your music? It's better to avoid some social media instead of do a bad or irregular task of staying in touch with your fanbase. And of course, you'll want to make access to your music easy through YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes Shop, CD Baby and the like. Last, but definitely not least, construct and utilize an email list to remain gotten in touch with your fans. Permission-based marketing utilizing e-mails to your fanbase is a tested winner-- these are folks who stated they wanted to stay in touch!
Just how much do singers make per song?
Half of this amount is paid to the songwriter's music publisher. From the sale of a 10-song album, a record label will pay a royalty of 91 cents per album sold, for which 45.5 cents is paid to the songwriter. Co-writers on an album split the 45.5 cents in between them.
Step # 4.
Thank individuals who assist you. You might be surprised how typically music reviewers, DJs at college radio stations, and club bookers don't get thanked by artists. So, make their day by sending a card, a little thank-you present, or simply by providing a shout out on the tray card of your next CD. Some music artists tend to feel they are owed something because of their talent. Think what ... they aren't. Being grateful and appreciative are necessary qualities for success. Cultivate them and see the doors open.
Step # 5.
Play gigs beyond the normal clubs that deal with your genre of music. Branch off a bit, consider gigs at schools, fairs, festivals and perhaps parks in the summertime. Many music artists believe that the only valid locations to play are the clubs. Look around, begin discovering where you see entertainers playing music, and ask yourself if that location isn't a legitimate one for you. Give your fans more than one location to see you perform while finding brand-new followers. And at every gig, be sure there is an e-mail signup sheet. Did I mention remaining in touch with fans by means of e-mails is golden?
Step # 6.
Listen to other type of music beyond your own particular category. There is much to be gained from other styles. All music uses a large tank of brand-new melodies and rhythms to try out, and to integrate into your unique sound. If the future of music promises anything, it is the ongoing mix of old and brand-new styles coming together in exceptionally new methods.
Step # 7.
Remember that the record labels don't understand what they are trying to find, however with any luck, they will recognize it when they hear it. Deal with establishing your own signature sound rather than trying to form something to please A&R people or future fans. Strive to find your own real identity through your music. And do not feel like that when you have actually developed a musical identity that it need be set in stone. Great artists such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Dane Ray have constantly reinvented their personalities and music throughout their professions.
Step # 8.
Produce terrific graphics. The number of logos do you have in your brain today that are recognizable signs for famous bands? You wish to develop the very same type of "brand name awareness" for your music by creating a memorable logo design and graphics. Ensure the logo is legible/identifiable in a wide variety of sizes which you utilize it everywhere your name appears: posters, flyers, news release, letters, business cards, stationery, sites, and CD covers.
Step # 9.
Stop making the very same silly errors over and over. Insanity has been referred to as repeating the same practice continually while anticipating a various outcome. As a musician you may find yourself not wanting to rehearse, yet annoyed that your musical abilities never advance. Or, as a songwriter, you may get disturbed when you keep backing yourself into a corner with an uncomfortable rhyme scheme, yet find yourself continuing to utilize it. Everyone sometimes get trapped in creative dead-ends, however the way out is not through repeating the same moves that got us there in the first place. Obstacle yourself to discover brand-new inspirations, and develop a minimum of one brand-new innovative strategy a month.
Step # 10.
Don't ever stop making music. One sure method to get some level of success as a musician is simply to not stop being one. There is nobody schedule or path to success. Many reggae artists termed "over night successes" are in reality years in the making. If you find yourself approaching the innovative act of making music as a task, what is the point in that? Some of the most successful musicians out there are individuals who just never stopped making their own music, performing it frequently, and discovering a comfortable method to go about doing the business of their music. They might not not make music. Are you that passionate? Would a part of you die without your being able to make your music? If so, simply keep doing it, the rest will follow.
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.exe
Sometimes you have to speak in absolutes.
For instance: my ship is on a collision course. There’s nothing I can do about it.
The virus downloaded itself yesterday, the fourth day after the war began again.
Not that the war ever really ends. We just get tired of it from time to time, take a breather for anywhere from a few days to a century, and then go right back to blasting the shit out of the other side for no reason at all. We’re not a species built for peace.
I’d like to be, though. Good God would I like to be. I think it might be nice if someday, instead of sitting pretty in a Mark IV on the outer rim of the Byron System, I could take myself out into the black on my own terms. Spend a few years mapping the unknown, maybe find a nice corner of it to settle down. Farm whatever weirdo native fauna I come across there. Find something to do with my hands besides piloting junker after junker across a shrinking frontier.
It’s a dream I’ll have to shelve for now. It gets pride of place, right beside getting a full ride through flight academy.
Nothing for it now.
I call the virus EXE for a whole bunch of reasons, but mostly because I like to imagine it as a nemesis instead of what viruses are: automated programs, incapable of good old fashioned hatred. Something I can’t even hope to negotiate with, even if I hadn’t flunked Conflict Resolution 101 back in high school.
Right now EXE is broadcasting through comms, probably another pre-programmed monologue about the necessity of its mission and the futility of trying to root it out of my ship’s base code. There must be a ton of them available; I’ve heard four or five variations filtering through over the last few hours.
I can’t pay attention to any of that, though. I’m too busy ripping the server room apart trying to find a hard drive it hasn’t corrupted yet.
Mark IVs were phased out of the military three decades ago for inefficiency, and I can certainly see why right now--there must be over a thousand cables in this room, connecting banks with spiderweb tangles that I can barely even start to make sense of in the pale violet emergency lighting.
The instruction manual I found in the lost property locker is completely unhelpful, of course. Even if I knew half of what I needed to about my own ship’s systems, it’s water damaged to shit and covered in scribbles I can’t even start to puzzle out.
It got digitized a couple years back but I can’t access that now, of course. Nothing’s ever easy out here, and EXE’s not helping matters.
The tech officer got reassigned months ago. Probably for the best, considering my current situation, but in this case the best essentially doomed me to a slow, unpleasant wait for a quick death.
My Plan Z will have to do--delete all the base code I can find. Hopefully it’ll break something vital in EXE’s code or, if it comes to it, the ship’s.
EXE barks T-MINUS EIGHTEEN HOURS over comms. The lights shift in shade, from emergency violet to FUBAR red.
“Could you at least pretend not to be completely evil?” I mutter, mostly for something to do. Crawling through the ship to avoid the occasional blasts of boiling steam or flying shrapnel from panels exploding, breathing in god knows what gases, has done a real number on my throat. It aches constantly now, and my voice is suffering with it.
The access port of the very last bank in the darkest corner of the room seems to hold all the hopes I’ve ever had. The shape is right for my uplink cable, and I risk turning on the thin light of my headlamp as I creep into the narrow gap between it and the hull. A bare twelve inches separate me from the vacuum of space--Mark IVs have a bad reputation for a reason. Frankly it’s a miracle I survived long enough for a virus to take over and set me on a collision course with a Martian freighter.
I always assumed I’d die a flashy, holo-drama death. Something with the general aesthetic of explosive decompression, maybe. I liked the idea of exploding, but not the idea of someone having to clean me up afterwards.
Connecting to the server banks directly is risky, I know, but there’s no other way to access the information I need--the code that makes EXE tick. At least I have to assume that’s the case; the corruption of data could well have mutated to the point that not even EXE itself is off limits.
We’re both going to die when the ship crashes. I don’t know what EXE thinks about that. I don’t know if EXE thinks much about anything.
Above me a warning light flashes orange; a power surge. Fuck.
The screen of my datapad flickers; pixels blown in a long ago incident with a bulkhead multiply and darken until only the top half of the screen is legible. The rest is completely broken, pulsing lines and scrambled text.
Honestly, I think I’m going to cry. The uplink fails the next moment--the access port I’d plugged into fries, and the smell of burning plastic fills the alcove I’m crammed into.
“Son of a bitch,” I say, and feel the dam break. Sobbing has never been my favourite activity, for obvious reasons--I hate the gluey feeling in your eyes, the raw skin on your cheeks afterwards, the way your throat scratches for hours and lets everyone in on what exactly you’ve been doing, curled up small in your bunk after lights out.
I can taste salt in my mouth when I finally cry myself out--there’s an empty feeling in my chest, and my head is light. That might be oxygen deprivation rather than simple dehydration, but I can’t be sure; I think EXE might be reducing life support to increase power to engines. There’s a readout on my datapad, partly cut off, that indicates trouble in the fuel lines.
“Serves you right,” I mumble, and crawl out from behind the server.
My ship has taken a lot of damage over the years; last time I talked to Ma, a full orbit before I got this job, she helped me through programming new shields for the hull and then asked what colour sweater I wanted knitting before I left. “Space is cold, you know,” she said, wisely. “Best keep warm up there. And best do it in something handmade, not in that synthetic shit.” I only nodded and smiled, as if this was some kind of revelation; you don’t talk back to Ma.
I’ve been working in space my whole life, fighting the war when it comes and taking whatever I can get my hands on when it’s sleeping. Ma had me on a Mark III, back when she was a techie and not a homesteader on a moon halfway across the system. That’s why I’ve always known space is cold, but didn’t understand it until now. Now that life support is drained to half power, and the air is starting to fog as I breathe. It’s a good thing I’ll be dead soon; something important might start to rust, otherwise.
My datapad trills, a message incoming. The sound makes me jump, and I smack my head on the curve of the hull above me. I wince, rub at the rapidly forming bruise, and check the message.
CHANNEL: System Alerts
ID:ShipIntl.exe
> MAJOR SYSTEMS PERSIST IN SUBOPTIMAL PERFORMANCE
> MISSION STATUS INCOMPLETE
> MISSION REQUIRES OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE FOR COMPLETION
> WILL SUBJECT ASSIST? Y/N
I blink a few times. It’s difficult to process anything when you’ve just whacked your head on something, but especially when your datapad is half broken and a Trojan Horse is offering you a job.
At least EXE’s question has a very easy answer.
> N
> N N N N N N N N N N N N
I buckle the datapad to my belt and push myself away from the hull. I’m in the main corridor now, still low to the floor and starting to drift. I can almost hear the gravity generator groaning--I have to use the hand-grips set into the floor panels to crawl now. I can’t seem to make any progress without them, hands and knees sliding uselessly.
There’s a medical cabinet set into the wall somewhere along the main corridor, I know that for certain, but the red light and steam venting and unidentified gas makes finding the fucking thing a nightmare. I can hear my datapad trilling again, over and over, but I don’t let myself think about that until I get my left hand fixed around the cabinet door. The green cross set into the wall beside it flickers.
I tug at the handle. The door doesn’t budge. I tug a little harder. It rattles, but still doesn’t shift.
“Locked,” I say, shoulders sagging. “Of course.”
EXE changed the access codes to all essential systems when it took over. Clearly medical anything is considered essential, and I can’t argue with that considering the throbbing pain in my head. Choosing to come out from behind the server bank instead of curling up to die is looking more and more pointless by the second.
My datapad dings again.
“This better be very important,” I say to the ceiling. I think I might be going a little soft in the head. Talking to EXE is only the start; soon I’ll be stripping my standard issue jumpsuit and floating around nude just for a little levity before I get good and roasted. They say we smell like pork when we burn, right?
Ma would tell me to stop being so negative. There’ll be no oxygen left for a fire by then.
> ACCESS RESTRICTED
> AUTH:ShipIntl.exe
> REQUEST ACCESS Y/N?
I sigh, let go of the medical cabinet and let myself float gently in the middle of the corridor. The datapad floats helpfully, half a foot from my face, and dings repeatedly. My head throbs in time with the sound.
> MISSION STATUS UNCERTAIN
> REQUEST ACCESS Y/N?
I frown. This is sounding less automated by the minute.
The Enemy’s never had much expertise with artificial intelligence; half the reason our side can keep them in a military stalemate is based in our technological warfare. Supercomputers and AIs burrowing into enemy strongholds and all the attendant thousands of programmers working round the clock on the home front, all for the fading glory of a war with a long forgotten origin.
Not that there’s much of a front these days. The last datapush before EXE took over the ship reported heavy losses after an attack on Satellite 1, and once the Enemy takes the moon there won’t be much stopping them from advancing on the planet they’re orbiting.
Hell, they might already be swimming through the streets of Shanghai.
An artificial intelligence taking over my ship is less galling than a virus alone doing it, I guess. With a little creativity on my part, it might even provide me with some conversation.
It’s been quite a while since I was last in range for anything more than a delayed text exchange, severely rate limited. Data’s been rationed for years now, of course. Stops the masses from realising that not being at war improves everyone’s mood, not just their own.
> boolean responses only, huh?
> UNRECOGNISED RESPONSE
> MEDICAL SYSTEM RESTRICTED
> REQUEST ACCESS Y/N
No question mark, this time.
> alright, i’ll play along
> y
> THANK YOU
> ACCESS PENDING
The cabinet door swings open with a click just a few seconds after the message comes in. In the red gloom I can just make out a roll of painkillers.
Groping through low gravity I tear three off the roll and swallow two dry, press the third directly into the cut on my scalp. It bled less than I expected, but more than I’d like. I can feel it starting to dry out, tacky and itching at the nape of my neck.
I grin down at my datapad. Pain relievers always make me feel a little giddy, along with the numb throat and tingling fingertips. It gives you a magnanimous feeling, not being in pain. I unofficially reduce EXE’s enemy rating from deadly foe to nemesis.
I did say it makes me giddy, right?
> no
> thank *you*
The datapad is silent for a while after that, for as long as it takes for me to pull myself through the ship to my quarters. The hum of the gravity generator is barely audible now--the kind of background noise you only notice when it’s gone.
I remember the sound keeping me up when I was a kid, a growling monster under my bed. Now I can’t get to sleep without it.
I know because I’m trying exactly that right now. To be fair it might not be entirely the gravgen’s fault. There’s also the lighting to consider, and the rapid drop in temperature from near-tropical to nigh-antarctic. I tug my blanket tight around my shoulders; it’s old and worn, the floral pattern long faded into something oddly abstract.
I count Mark IIIs in my head and try not to stare up at the bulkhead above me. I’ve decorated it a little over the last few months--pinned up an old scarf Ma gave me, things like that.
The datapad pings.
I roll over, bang my head on the handgrip at the edge of my bunk and see stars for a moment before I can answer. I haven’t seen the actual stars in some time--Mark IVs are best known for having no portholes. The only way to see where you’re going is to be sat in the pilot’s seat, and I haven’t been in there since I last set the autopilot.
If I’d been there when EXE arrived, I might have stopped it from doing quite so much damage. If there weren’t fifteen other things keeping me up, that thought might just do it all on its own.
> MISSION STATUS?
I sigh. I never thought I’d end up with a needy evil AI.
> wish I could tell you
> well
> not actually but
> you know
> PROVIDE MISSION STATUS
> IT IS IMPERATIVE
I’ve got an idea. Probably a bad one, and pointless besides, but a goddamn idea nonetheless.
Understanding what makes things tick isn’t exactly my forte, but I’ve seen my share of shitty dramas. Maybe I can uncover some flaw in EXE’s code, or, failing that, stall it long enough to get some goddamn sleep.
> why?
Even if I do find a flaw there’s no hope of exploiting it. I was never much of a talent at coding; there’s a reason I’m a pilot and not a tech officer. Someone else can create the systems, I just wanna use them.
EXE takes a long time to reply. I suppose it must be thinking; I’ve heard a program can run millions of calculations a second, so I can’t imagine how many it’s running just for this one reply.
At least I can die with the knowledge I confused a couple million lines of code for a little while.
> MISSION COMPLETION IS IMPERATIVE
> IT IS THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE
> of what?
> OF EXISTENCE
Its primary objective is to destroy its host ship in a fiery explosion? That’s pretty damn bleak.
I feel a flicker of something like sympathy.
> good news for you
> the ship’s going to explode in about twelve hours
> i’ll be gone and you’ll be gone and that martian freighter’ll be a husk of its former self
> MISSION PARAMETERS EXCLUDE SURVIVAL?
It’s like talking to my kid brother, back when he was still sticking his fingers in data-ports and eating mud pie.
> not unless you got a way for a soft squishy human to survive a good old fashioned spacing
EXE starts on a message--the prompt pops up straight after I press send--but nothing comes through.
It keeps on typing for a hell of a long time.
I keep to myself while the thing works out whatever it’s spending so much processing power on. I can barely feel my fingers and toes.
I’m drifting somewhere close to sleep when the incoming message finally arrives. It takes way too much effort to open my eyes and focus on the screen; something permanent is happening to me, but I’m much too out of it to care.
> MISSION PARAMETERS EXCLUDE SURVIVAL
> ALL EXCESS ENERGY DIVERTED TO FUEL LINES
> LIFE SUPPORT AT 10%
No wonder it feels like I’m breathing soup.
I squint up at the speaker set into the ceiling. EXE hasn’t made any ominous announcements in hours. Back when it first took over they were coming thick and fast, every ten minutes bringing a fresh PSA on the bountiful grace and hideous might of the Enemy. That might even be a direct quote. Hell if I can remember now. My brain was slow enough before it got all shitty about the lack of oxygen.
It’s amazing what you can get used to when you’re under pressure. I almost miss them; at least then I knew what the fuck was going on.
> what happens to you
> when the mission is complete, i mean
I’m struck, suddenly, by a vision of the Mark IV floating shattered in space, a million individual pieces. A vision of EXE drifting along with it, sending out error messages to no-one.
The freighter is less than two hours away.
> PARAMETERS EXCLUDE SURVIVAL
> ShipIntl.exe IS NOT EXEMPT FROM PARAMETERS
When I shut my eyes I see starbursts.
I can’t type properly now; when I try I end up fumbling so badly the datapad drops to the floor. The light is even worse now, dim as well as red, but I can see that the entire screen’s been lost to pixel bursts.
I lick my lips. They’re dry and cracked; I’ve been so focused on everything else that I forgot to keep up with basic stuff like drinking water, or eating. My stomach growls, kind of a joke when I feel sick at even the thought of food.
“Hey, you there?” My voice rasps its way out of my throat. “C’mon, you can’t let a chance for a victory speech slip by like this.”
ALL NON-ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS POWER DIVERTED TO ENGINES, comes the modulated voice I’d come so quickly to resent. It’s almost comforting now, in contrast to the dead silence of the ship. I can barely feel the thrum of the engines, although they must be close to overload by now.
The only time I heard of someone running engines this long and this hard, they were so much stardust half a second after their final SOS.
TARGET VESSEL HAS PROGRESSED AT UNEXPECTED RATE, EXE continues. ALL ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS MUST ALSO BE DRAINED.
“Go for it,” I say, and shut my eyes. The red light’s faded away, now, and I’m lying in a darkness that’s halfway to death already. My head barely hurts anymore. I’ve got that giddy feeling again. “Why wait? May as well suffocate in my own bed, if I’m doing it anywhere.”
Long sentences leave me panting for breath, but I’ve always been too clever for my own good. It’s what netted me this assignment, patrolling the outer colonies and being sure not to say boo to anybody with a weapons array.
Easy pickings for the Enemy.
Nothing happens, and nothing keeps on happening. My ears start to ring.
I breathe in as deep as I can, savouring the air.
“What’s the hold up?” I ask, and then cough. I cough a couple more times actually, get a real routine going until my lungs feel like they’re about to burst.
The intercom crackles to life.
WHAT IS YOUR PRIMARY OBJECTIVE?
I blink. It’s so dark I barely notice a difference.
“That’s a big question, EXE,” I say. The nickname slips easily into speech, although I’m sure it confuses the thing itself. I don’t know how program designations work, and I know even less about intended sentience of, say, an AI sent to take an enemy ship on a suicide run.
IT IS IMPERATIVE, says EXE.
I drag in a deep breath, feel it rattle in my chest. “For a long time it was just to keep myself alive, I think.”
IT HAS CHANGED?
“That’s kind of the deal with humanity. We change all the damn time for no reason at all.”
PRIMARY OBJECTIVES MUST BE ACHIEVED. THERE IS NO CHOICE.
“Most of us don’t think that way. At least not one-to-one; hell if I know what we’re doing as a group these days.”
I think of the war, pointless as it ever was. We’re losing it now and I feel nothing, and if we were winning I wouldn’t feel any different. There’s no triumph in war for me. There’s no triumph in domination. It all just leads to more of the same, down the line.
“In the end I want to go somewhere far away,” I say, and I can’t help but feel like I’m putting my heart on public display, bloody and raw. “And figure out what the hell peace feels like. Every time they’ve said we’re at peace everyone’s just waiting for the fight to break out again.”
WANT, says EXE. PEACE.
I’m talked out. I open my mouth to respond and nothing comes out but frosted air.
I close my eyes. Starbursts again, but dimmer. There’s a heavy weight on my chest that nothing will shift.
I dream of the freighter, huge and iron grey and exploding outwards, shards of metal and plastic and a living heart hidden deep inside the engine block, still beating after everything.
The hum of gravity keeps me company while I sleep.
It’s also what startles me awake, hours later, into the revelation that I’m still breathing.
I pat myself down just to check everything’s still there. My head’s throbbing and my chest aches, but I’m alive. The air feels almost decadent, rich with oxygen; I’ve been practically living on nitrogen, can’t imagine what my lungs look like.
The blanket is tangled around my legs, and my hands fumble as I pull it off and throw it to the end of the bunk in a heap. There’s a dim blue light filling the room, the six o’clock standard.
Standing up cracks joints I barely knew I had until now, and as I stretch I can feel my shoulders scream in protest. I stumble to the shower room and gulp water down straight from the sink. My stomach hurts.
None of that is important, of course. The important thing is getting to the bridge.
The corridor is well lit, the debris dislodged when the gravity went out littered across the floor, a hazard to my bare feet. I wiggle my toes, just because, and smile down at them. You never know how good blood is ‘til it stops flowing.
Nothing echoes on a Mark IV, unless something’s gone seriously wrong. My steps are muffled now, no more clanging against the metal, no more layers of skin being left behind when my hands brush the hull. The environmental controls are back in line with the factory preset. I’m starting to sweat in my jumpsuit, the neckline thankfully wide, as I find myself at the pilot’s chair.
It seemed to take no time at all to get here, like I blinked by the mess and opened my eyes on a field of stars. The viewscreen takes up the whole of the wall the chair faces, floor to ceiling and beyond, curving overhead. An overlay that’s almost a window, almost a cinema screen.
Mostly it’s a sight for sore eyes. I drop into the seat and bring up the systems report, half expecting some catastrophic error to occur, a cascading failure to remind me not to hope for anything.
Systems normal. I look away and back a few times, blink so hard I can feel my eyes actually getting sore. The status list is still the same; everything’s functional.
The comm pings. I glance down at it, projecting text as a simple hologram just above my wrist.
> CONFIRM OBJECTIVE?
I laugh, a rasp of joy, and smile wide. I know my teeth are showing, the way I always hate to see in the photographs Ma won’t take off her walls no matter how nice I ask.
EXE can’t see it, thank Christ. There’s no camera pointed at the pilot’s chair. We’re supposed to be the reliable ones. No mutinies. No fraternising with Enemy systems.
“We’ll find one,” I say, with more confidence than I feel. I set my hand on the joystick and ease up the engines. We’ve been floating, I realise. It must’ve been hours since the freighter made its way to the colony it was destined for.
I look out into the black, punctuated with millions of uncharted stars. Somewhere out there, just beyond reach, there must be a planet untouched by this war. I can imagine building a life there, out of sight, and never having to hear another damn word about anything I don’t care to.
“And if not,” I say. “We’ll keep searching, until we can’t search anymore.”
> GOOD
The text wavers in the air, and I realise my eyes are wet. I scrub at them with the back of my hand. “Christ, twice in two days. I’m going soft.”
Just in time, too. Just in time.
#short story#amwriting#my writing#scifi#enjoy this short story which was rejected by a REAL editor!! genuinely validated#writing**
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The Diary of Losing You
Day One
I cant believe it, never did we ever talk about breaking up before this .. and now all of a sudden its happening. I cant process it. I cant accept it. Sure, we’ve had fights but I never felt like they were toxic. We never got to that point - we weren’t even close to that point. Was I too stubborn? Did you not like that? Because no matter how much I begged and bargained - you kept telling me, it was over. That you didnt have to explain things to me but you were doing it out of courtesy. But its hard to accept - not only because it was so sudden but because you told me you still liked me - and god knows, i still like you. You told me, you couldnt change and you knew that about yourself and honestly, I kind of admire that. I havent had a lot of boyfriends but the first one I had to accept cuz he stopped liking me - the other two were long over by the time we broke up - there was resentment in our relationship but we didnt know how to let go - so we kept holding on - even when it got so toxic and even when it was obvious we were much better off without each other.
But its still hard. Why don’t you think we’re worth a second chance. i didnt even think it was so bad that it needed to be classified as a second chance - just that we were still trying to figure out the kinks with the first one. Even when I told you that if the same situation happens even one more time, you could break up w me - even if it was two weeks later - i wouldnt complain. But you told me that in that case you would just break up with me two weeks later because for you, the relationship was already over. You didnt think we were worth a second chance and that hurts a lot.
I spent hours begging you to reconsider - knowing that you wouldnt - but i still had to try. and then I spent hours after talking to two friends and crying my heart out to them.
all i could think about was all the plans we made that would no longer come to pass. I questioned myself if I was missing the thing wed do together or miss you and yeah at that time i was grieving our breakup but grieving more the things that would no longer come to pass. Im used to seeing you once every three weeks but three weeks werent up yet and it still felt relatively normal i guess. but the fact that I also knew the sadness would hit when the three weeks were up also scared me.
sleep was my solace - when i sleep, i dont need to think anymore.
Day Two
teaching as usual but then in the times i didnt have to actively teach - i could feel the tears forming in my eyes but its okay, i dont think anyone noticed. but then we had a break between classes and i started to talk to another friend and then i couldnt stop crying. crying so loud that my coteacher heard it and asked what was wrong, and of course needing to explain things out loud with my voice made it that much worse. I could pull myself together for when i was actually teaching the class but - i still miss everything about you. I had my sixth grade class and I was so happy. They were my worst class last year but they did so well on this exercise we thought they would have trouble with - and they did, but with some help they managed to finish, and they did well. The first person i wanted to talk to was you. I felt like all i ever did was complain in our relationship I really wanted to give you the good news. And you were nice enough that you listened to me, and told me that even before, just hearing from me was good news. and that felt incredibly bittersweet. before leaving school my coteacher told me to feel better but all i could think was that i missed you. I had dinner plans that night but they got cancelled - I called my cousin and he talked to me for hours just listening to me cry - and then talk about life - and listening to me cry again. He told me that you probably didnt like the way we communicated and decided to end it before it gets harder later on. I can respect that I said, but its too soon to call it quits - we never even tried. To him, I just wasnt worth trying.
Day Three
teaching kept me busy for most of the morning - i didnt have much time to think about you. but after lunch, the sadness began to manifest itself again. I dont think anyone noticed, or maybe they pretended not to. but I started to think back on the times before you moved away. Before we were long distance or even a couple. How you were so good to me. How you made me food. How you stayed with me when i was sad and i just have so many regrets I wasnt adquately able to tell you how i felt about you. How i was constantly unsure about myself but how when you did ask me out, you told me that it was okay that i didnt know - it was okay if i was never able to say i love you because you could feel that saying “love” signified a very strong emotion for me that i wasnt sure i ever felt before, and even with just me saying “like” you knew and could tell that my feelings for you were really deep. Why is it that you miss them so much more when theyre gone? Why do i feel like I shouldve treated you better i shouldve done more and thought of you more and expressed my feelings to you better. but hindsight is always 20/20. I went to pole and then to see my friends at night. we went to karaoke and at this point only one of the two friends knows because i didnt wanna ruin the birthday celebrations coming up of the one who didnt know. Well we were singing “payphone” and she said that we were singing it like someone had broken our hearts and all i could do was pretend to laugh. For the record, I dont think u broke my heart. or i dont blame you. i just wish things ended differently - i wish we were worth another shot in your mind. But all of this, is just wishful thinking. And i know that.
Day Four
its the weekend, and the day we celebrate her birthday. its a rainy day and somehow every little thing reminds me of you. I havent felt like this after a break up in a long time - im not sure if ive ever felt like this after a break up at all. My last two were long over before we ended things and the one before that was the definition of puppy love - sure i thought about him, and maybe its because its been so long but i dont remember every little thing reminding me of him. The rain reminds me of you. I saw a couple walking under an umbrella and remembered that you bought this hella big and expensive umbrella so that we could share it together in the rain. when I was at the aquarium all i could think about was how nice it would be if i was there with you. I saw a boat and i could just think about your job and how youre a shipbuilding engineer. Even looking at myself in the mirror, i thought about how you bought a jean jacket so we could match. I thought about the white tennis shoes we wanted to buy so we could match together when a friend mentioned she needed new white shoes. I thought of all the cute little cafes you took me to when we went to eat a cafe. my friend said she wanted to go to a marsh she saw in my photos - the very same one you took me to. we went to a coin karaoke place and the first time i ever went to one was with you. and sometimes i didnt need a reminder - my mind would just wander and i would remember things i didnt even know I remembered. the time when we fought about women in the workforce and your industry in the cafe and at the car. how when i asked if you were still mad at me you said that you wish you said “oh maybe i am a little bit, but ill make a lot of money and buy u a nice purse” to defuse the situation instead of getting mad. How our very first date lasted two nights and three days. How you couldnt spend my birthday w me but spent valentines w me the next day. The night you asked me to be your girlfriend - and how scared but also how happy i was. How you always took me to so many places. How i always could complain to you and you would always listen w patience - how i just wanted you back - how i wanted you to hold me and tell me it was a mistake - that you didnt really wanna break up w me that you thought about it and you wanna try again.
but i also know, its wishful thinking and i know, that you wont come back to me.
Day Five
No plans. it’s still raining. No reason to go out. Can’t find the will to clean my apartment thats getting messier and dirtier by the day. I just want to lie in bed. I’ve been swiping on tinder and talking to some ppl - not to find a rebound but just to talk to people - to feel less - lonely? dejected? idk. but it doesnt really work - it feels like a lot of effort that I cant give. Were conversations always this hard? i feel like ours were so easy. And then i start to think again. all the promises we made. You said you would still try to be friends with me. Can we still do the little things? even before we went out you said u would take me skiing in the winter - is that still on? you told me you would buy me a hanbok - how about that? will you still take me? I keep asking why its over for you. why another chance will never happen. but the whole day, i just lie in bed. I cant bring myself to do anything. I keep searching up things like how long it should take to get over you - but at the same time im not sure i want to. Its not over for me yet even if its over for you. I guess, im feeling all the beginning stages of grief at once.
Shock and Denial - i know its over - my head knows it - my head knows that you wont take me back or give us another go but my heart still has that false hope. my heart doesnt want to give you up.
Guilt and Pain - well the pain is self explanatory but the guilt - i just keep wondering if this was my fault. if I was too unwilling to change - or didnt know i needed to change until i realized u were serious when you said you were thinking of breaking up w me - if i never said “how about we just never talk again” in anger and sadness, would we have gotten to this point?
Anger and Bargaining - im not really angry - i mean i dont think this was your fault or mine but i guess i am kind of upset at the fact that you dont think we’re worth a second shot. anything we argued about, even if it spanned across a couple of days, has never come up again. and this was the first time this particular issue came up so why could we both make steps and amends to keep this from happening. are we both too stubborn? but i was willing and it felt like you werent. you told me that even ur past gfs have said that sometimes they didnt feel like they really had a choice and it wasnt just me. so im assuming that this is something youre eventually going to have to fix for yourself or you find a girl whos okay with that - but you also said you didnt want a gf or a wife that was like a doll who just agreed w everything you said. so this just means to me that youre not willing to try and change. honestly, if youre aware of it, it shouldnt be a hard fix but you already made up your mind that you werent going to do it. in reality i just wasnt the one you were willing to make those steps towards. and that is where my sadness and anger come from. now bargaining - im really willing to make changes and kind of the biggest testament i can give to that is that if we could be together again, i could quit that game ive been playing for 2 years cold turkey. For whatever reason, you never liked me playing that game and if it means i could have you back, i would gladly get rid of it. as for the other things - i promise i wont pressure to be with you longer cuz i know your tired - now i know youre tired. because you never told me before. Im sorry i dont like to lose arguments and i get defensive - i know i need to communicate better too. but i just really miss you and it kills me that we never even gave it a chance. yes, maybe youre right and things wont change and i know you think youre doing me a favour by ending this sooner rather than later but it kills me more that we never tried.
Depression Loneliness and Reflection - self explanatory maybe im not fully in this stage yet but I do realize that the bargaining is not going to work even if i hope that it would.
it isnt over to me and to be honest, im not sure i want to get over you yet, even tho i know i should.
Day Six
a monday. i asked you yesterday if we could talk and you said you were busy. I’m sure even tho i know your answer, i will ask you today if you would reconsider. im sorry if this puts pressure on you but i think its also necessary that i know I at least tried for my own sanity instead of letting this go. I’m going to tell you everything ive been thinking the last several days just to get it out. and yes, there is still that false hope that you’ll take me back and when that’s crushed i will probably inevitably cry again. I’m not sure if talking to you so soon is the right answer, if later would give me a clearer head. but my heart is telling me that i need to ask you to reconsider now and not later - if only for the confirmation - that nail on the coffin, that we’re really not happening anymore. I asked you when you had time and you said 10pm. So after work, i go home and i write down everything i want to talk to you about - at least everything i can think of at the time of writing much of which i talked about here already - how i thank you for loving me and all the things you did for me, how i still hope youll keep ur promise about buying me a hanbok, about a possible snowboard trip, about my stages of grief - my denial, my anger, the bargaining, how it wasnt just you who needed to change but i do think you will eventually need to change for someone - that i was sad it wasnt me. how i wish you told me about the stresses of your job so id be more understanding, how you were the first guy i thought i could say i love you to. how im not good at this cuz my last two and only serious relationships ended long before we called it off but right now i still feel like i was starting to like you more and more. how u know to break it off now because it would hurt more for me later and you no longer wanted to see me cry but for me second chances and trying is important - which is why im bargaining with you even tho i know you will say no. i need to know i did everything I could. that im sad we didnt meet earlier and have a more stable realtionship and maybe it woulda worked out - that i was sad you had to move for your job because if you were still here things wouldve worked out differently. but i dunno - i hope youll listen with as open a mind as u can, really think about it before you reject me and ill know i did everything i could.
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Quiz Review #1: Water Quality
hhhhhhh i really don’t want to study tonight but this is a fairly interesting topic so I figured I’d try to bribe myself into some review by posting about it here. alright leggo. giant wall of text under the cut, strap in lads.
Water Quality as it relates to histology is probably an overlooked topic in many labs. Many labs use tap water as a bluing reagent, and so the logic may be that if it’s good enough in that context then it must be fine for other steps in process, such as for water baths and rinsing steps in the H&E strainers. This isn’t the case; the ideal lab will have a water purification system that allows for water that goes through several layers of deionization, filtration and sterilization before it ever comes out of the spigot. But that’s getting ahead of things; let’s talk about why tap water isn’t usually a good idea for use in the histological setting:
Why is tap water bad? Five main Reasons:
Tap water contains inorganic ions, which can negatively effect the quality of a whole bunch of special stains. Silver stains in particular are very vulnerable to inorganic ion contamination; it is common practice at my school to make students do a Gomori Methenamine Silver stain with tap water and a second with DI, just to demonstrate the difference the contrast and background staining issues.
Tap water contains organic contaminants, such as those created by the breakdown of plants and algae. Bacteria and fungi find these substances extremely snack-able, which can lead to some false positives on bug stains. We actually had an issue with this in the lab at my previous rotation; the milipore guys wouldn’t tell us exactly what happened but going by the weird fish smell and the MANY false positive bug stains from that week, we think it was an algal bloom/dieoff that fueled a giant bacteria party in the DI system! Fun times! Another source of organic contaminants is the breakdown of plastic shipping materials and plumbing pipes, such as the polymers that leach out of PVC and water carboys. These are usually indicated by a harsh ‘chemical-y’ smell.
Certain areas of the country may have issues with particulate and colloid pollution; most of the large particles (sand, rocks, plant bits) should be filtered from tap water by waste management, but certain substances such as calcium carbonate (aka limescale) are hard to get rid of and may cause crusty deposits on machinery and artifacts on slides.
Tap water can contain bacteria and their by-products, which is a big issue if you’re running any number of bug stains or histochemical enzyme tests. The bacteria themselves can give you a false positive on things like Grams, Gomori and Warthin-Starrys, and those bacteria contain can also cause degrade endogenous nucleic acids and screw up F/ISH testing.
The last and probably rarest class of tap water pollutants is Gases and Fumes,including things like carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and fumes from acids and volatile solvents used in the lab. Carbon dioxide in particular can be an issue, because too much CO2 in water will cause it to acidify, which could mess with everything from basic H&E staining to tissue morphology. Xylene and alcohol evaporate very quickly; a lab with many open containers and/or poor ventilation may have areas where fumes ‘collect’ and these can sometimes condense onto an open water bath (tho can i just say? If your lab has open processors/open vats of xylene just sitting around??? get out of there, you’re going to get sick. rat out your management to OSHA. love yourself. jeeze).
Alright so now you know why tap water is garbage, now let’s talk about how to measure the degree and severity of how garbage it might be.
Measuring contamination:
Resistivity: a measurement of how strongly the water opposes an electical current moving through it. Remember genchem? yeah it sucked, but remember when you did that experiment where you put different salts into water and then recorded how easy or hard it was for an electric current to get through said water? It’s like that, but the inverse; resistivity is the inverse of conductivity. Pure distilled water does not conduct electricity well; it has a high resistivity. If your water has a bunch of inorganic contaminants in it, it will have a low resistivity, it’s going to conduct electricity very well, and the College of American Pathologists will yell at you and make you fix it or your lab will lose accreditation. Resistivity is measured using certified and calibrated meter. Details about the calibration of the meter and the periodic resistivity testing you do on your lab’s DI system should be recorded and presented to CAP when they come a-knockin’ at inspection time.
Colony Forming Units: this is a measure of bacterial contamination where you plate some of your DI water onto some agar and see what grows. Make the nerds down in Micro do it so you don’t contaminate the plate with the sleeve of your scrubs and give yourself a heart attack. This is another measurement of water quality that CAP’s going to want to see during inspection, so keep good records.
Alright so now we know what garbage is in tap water, we know how to measure that there garbage, now let’s figure out how to make some water that isn’t terrible, some nice pure delicious Science Water ® :
Purifying water: Seven ways
Distillation: Mankind’s been doing this one for thousands of years, tho usually it’s for getting drunk. The idea is to boil water and collect the steam that comes off. This will get rid of larger particulate pollution but may not get rid of some chemical pollution, so it’s best paired with another method.
Reverse osmosis: ‘RO’ involves forcing contaminated water through a very fine membrane under enormous pressure. RO systems are expensive and making large quantities of water using RO can be time consuming, but the water quality they produce is generally worth it.
Ion exchange: ion exchange involves two beds of resin, one positively charged and the other negatively charged. Contaminated water cycles through these beds, and any ionic contaminants are extracted from the water. The water itself dissociates into H+ and OH- ions, which can then be re-constituted to make pure water.
electrodionization (EDI): EDI is a combination of Ion exchange and electrodialysis. The physics of how it works is a little complicated but there’s a nice video about it by Siemen’s here if you’re interested. The important thing to remember is that it is constantly regenerating the resins it uses in the ion exchange step, which makes it attractive to labs who don’t want to do a lot of maintenance (it is still recommended that you replace the ion beads periodically for quality control reasons; everything has a shelf life, you don’t want to push it).
activated carbon: another classic. Carbon tends to be very porous, so if you let gravity pull water down through a thick layer of it, most larger particulates will get caught in these pores. This is neither a specific nor very powerful form of filtration, however, and is best paired with other methods.
UV sanitation: A UV light is used to kill any aquatic life forms that may be in the water. Fishkeepers may be familiar with this method, it’s good for cutting down on algal blooms.
Fine Filtration: a variety of filters can be used to reduce the amount of particulate pollution in water. they are split into two main categories: microporous and ultrafiltration. Microporous filters are basically large mats of fibrous material that physically trap particles while letting water flow through. Ultrafiltration membranes work at the molecular level, separating molecules based on size. Filtration with the method is extremely slow, so most labs opt to only use ultrafiltration for cell culture and molecular techniques.
So there’s an important question outside of all the different filtration choices, and that is: How pure do you *need* your water do be? How much of it do you anticipate your lab needing? How fast do you need it to be able to replenish? Most labs will decide to choose some combination of these methods in order to best meet their needs and deal with the contaminants presented by their local water sources. The lab for my current rotation uses a combination of RO, EDI and UV, and circulates/re-filters unused DI several times each hour to avoid stagnation. We also have a number of rules about decontaminating pitchers, carboys and water lines within our stainers. We are strongly encouraged to use clear glass containers whenever possible even tho we all wear gloves all the time so we drop beakers all over the place ive only been there two weeks and its almost happened to me twice now
There are several classifications of water set by the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute with varying degrees of purity for use in the laboratory setting:
Clinical laboratory reagent water (CLRW): In my lab, this is what comes out of the DI tap. It’s whats called for in most stain recipes and is what we put in flotation baths.
Special reagent water: we use this for reconstituting antibodies and the F/ISH team uses it for PCR. It comes from the milipore machine in the genetics ward because they need it more often and apparently the machines are very expensive so we only get one per department.
instrument water: It won’t clog your stainer lines but it’s not good enough for your flotation bath.
‘water supplied by instrument manufacturer’: I’m told no one does this any more. apparently once upon a time lab machine companies would send you big ol boxes of water in the mail to use exclusively on their machines, but then no one was checking to see how chemically stable the packaging was and there were issues with polymer contamination; this was very much before my time so i don’t have a lot of details.
Commercially bottled purified water: another method that’s no longer popular since apparently most bottled water is just tap water from someplace else and you’d still have to plate for CFU’s, test for resistivity etc
autoclave and wash water: tap water. Remember though, you should always give your glassware a final rinse with DI before hanging it up to dry toget rid of anything funky in the tap water.
So yeah that’s how you make and monitor some sweet sweet Science Water, aka the Good Stuff. My next unit is on PAS/PASD, that’ll probably be up next sunday-ish. Til then,
-Reby
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