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cozycottagetarot · 3 months

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The Next Chapter Of Your Life

How To Pick A Pile:

Everyone has their own technique for choosing a 'pile'. My recommendation is to clear your mind and focus on each image for a few seconds. The image you find yourself coming back to even when you focus on the other images is the pile for you.

Quick notes on this reading:

It's a long one -- This reading is a lot longer (I think) than what I typically post. I'd appreciate any feedback on the length since it's something I'm experimenting with. The pile titles are colour-coded -- Hopefully, it helps make scrolling to the next section quicker.

Each pile references multiple scenarios -- some scenarios came through stronger than others, but I did my best to write what I was getting to be applied to situations not mentioned.

‼️ THIS READING IS MEANT FOR SELF-REFLECTION AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY -- While this reading does contain a bit of advice and reflective questions, IT'S IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM MEANT TO REPLACE PROFESSIONAL ADVICE OF ANY KIND. Please use your discretion, think carefully before you act and only take what resonates be it a little, some or none at all. (The usual disclaimer is at the bottom).

Reading Masterlist | Patreon | Paid Readings -- Open 🥂

PILE 1 (Scrapbook)

Who are you? Cards: The Poet, The Founder rev, The Queen of Roses

This pile may be the pile for you if any of the following resonates:

Wanting to connect or being very connected to your loving, nurturing and supportive side. You've been receiving messages or sensing that a new connection is on the horizon. Motherhood/parenthood or marriage. Seeking resolutions to a relationship. Leaving behind relationships that have been in your life forever. Giving too much to others. Ending toxic relationships. Finding or wanting freedom. Finding your voice. Finding you. Tapping into your creative side. A quest for happiness.

If none of these individual sentences resonate feel free to check out a different pile.

Who will you become throughout this next chapter? Cards: The Muse, The Gambler

You will begin to bloom. Maybe not fully, but you’ll be more open to taking the necessary steps (which may feel like risk) to flourish. The end result will be you tapping into your creativity and creator energy. But also putting in the work, and changing your approach. I pulled all the cards at once so being able to take in all the cards at once, it’s this sense of making you happen. Gone will be the sense of being who you think you should or are expected to be. You’ll be gaining a new sense of self that is brighter and more wild. The risk is non-existent. It’s more perceived. It seems like a risk to indulge in the aspects of yourself that may seem like they’re more whimsy, but by actually making those things happen, you will transform into someone who can inspire themself. You won’t have to look for inspiration elsewhere, you’ll have it there within you.

How will you find success? Cards: 3 of Keys (The Chess Game), The King rev

Through changing your tactic. This chapter won’t necessarily be easy. There will be conflict with those around or above you, especially if this relates to career or relationships, possibly even both. Detach from the situation and be objective. Waiting for your opening will be the key to your success. For some, it’s a situation where everyone is only looking out for themself and I’m picking up that it's creating a stalemate. With the king reversed, you know what’s best in the situation but someone with more authority than you or a level of seniority if this is a personal relationship thinks they know better but they don’t. It’s about being firm and holding your own as well as not letting your emotions, or the part of you that’s super connected to the situation, get the best of you and influence you to make rash decisions.

Challenges you may meet: Cards: The Astronomer, The Orator, Reflection rev.

I see the biggest challenge here for you being one of mastering yourself in this next chapter. There’s a battle between your emotions and your intuition. To navigate this you need to have a conversation with yourself and determine why you’re having such strong emotions. Where are these feelings stemming from? The astronomer card is here to remind you that whatever the situation is, it’s not really about the past-- it’s not going to help you navigate this chapter. Especially if you’ve been acting according to what’s expected of you when the current/upcoming situation(s) requires you to do what is true to you. I hope I'm not repeating myself too much here, but the challenge becomes exploring the why behind the emotions so you can better make decisions and listen to your intuition. BUT, keep in mind that it doesn’t mean not to listen to your emotions at all.

Another message here is that working with other people may also show up as a challenge. There's a reminder to listen to other people's perspectives but also know that choosing to hear someone’s POV doesn’t mean you have to absorb it as yours either.

Finally, even when it gets tough, don’t doubt yourself. Take your time. It may seem like you have to have it all figured out and know what to say and which decision to make, but not really. It’s easy to feel that way when it feels like everything is at stake, but again, if you feel that way, pause and ask yourself why? Once you have your why, you can take on the world.

Lessons To Be Learned: Cards: The Painter, 8 of keys (the master artisan)

This definitely feels like it relates to career or passion projects, but of course, just adjust to your individual situation. It may or may not mean anything, but your cards have lots of florals.

Your lessons in this next chapter of life relate to learning to connect with yourself, speaking up and putting yourself out there. Your energy is one that makes me feel like you have such an amazing talent you're hesitant to embrace. You have so much to learn and just as much to offer... this is the beginning of that journey. Don’t be shy. There are opportunities out there waiting, you just have to figure out the way to pursue them that is most authentic to you. Even if it’s simply an opportunity to give love and kindness. I know I focused a lot on career and creativty, but this goes for relationships too. There is a lot of heavy energy covering this beautiful light-hearted one that just wants to break free. If you are considering going into teaching or taking up a teaching opportunity (not necessarily even in a formal education system) or enrolling in a course of some kind, I feel like this is a nod to say go for it. Especially pottery or beadwork? Trade work as well, maybe even culinary school or food-related skills. (I could be projecting there on the culinary aspect though as that's what I did and the imagery on the card reminds me of it).

Advice to take with you in this next chapter: The hound and pear (loyalty) — This card is always a bittersweet card whenever I see it. The message here is one of loyalty and friendship. A new relationship (of any kind), one founded on friendship, is precious but also delicate. Don't make irrevocable decisions based on conclusions. It must be treated with care on both sides because it can be damaged easily.

The deer and oat (healing) — Rest and recharge. Moderation and mindfulness are also key for recovering from difficult or intense situations. Ask yourself, how you can rest and nurture yourself?

The snake and fern (starting over) — it’s time to finish breaking free from the past so you can become something new. So you can return to your true self. What has protected you and brought you to this point? Are you in a position to release it? Are there any parts of your past self that you can regrow from (like snipping off part of a plant that may be unhealthy and leaving the rest so it can re-catch itself, not sure why I picked that analogy) or must you grow anew? (Planting a new seed, from the old plant. The essence is still there but a completely new plant will grow)

If you made it this far I appreciate it. Feedback is welcomed and if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in a pac, feel free to let me know!

Pile 2 (Compass)

If you’re drawn to pile 1 feel free to check that out as well.

Who are you? Cards: The Oracle of Delphi, the Sentinel, the Forgotten

This pile may be the pile for you if any of the following resonates:

Intuitive. Connected to a higher power. Diety work. Past lives. Psychic powers. Perseverance. Fighting back. Confidence threatening to become arrogance. Dominance dancing on the lines of domineering. A force to be reckoned with. Someone who's sometimes brash. Amor fati (love of fate). An academic. Dreamlight Valley. Self-esteem issues (past or present). Someone who was looked past and from it learned not to try. Fear. Anxiety. A lost soul stumbling in the dark. Chaos. Morally grey. *You may be an avid reader or enjoy fantasy media as well.

My Overall Impression: You’re a force to be reckoned with and reckon you will. Your energy is just pure power and chaos. I low-key feel like you’re battling with life/the universe (call it what you prefer, that’s just how I prefer to call it). There’s this energy of "Try me" and the universe is like "I got one for you, watch and see". But there’s no malice. I just get fed-up vibes from you and the response from life is like "Okay 👀, but chill." Enemies to lovers with life itself.

Who will you become throughout this next chapter? Cards: The Ark of the Covenant, Beith — Birth, The Queen, The Assassin

The Queen and The Assassin flew out with such fury! You’re going to become someone worthy of wearing a crown. But it comes at a price, though it’s not one you can sit around and sulk about. The next chapter of your life reminds me of being forged in fire. Now you’re stepping into the role and identity of someone who can achieve your goals. It’s dark at times, but you’re gaining the skills to do what you want to do and I get the feeling this "thing" you're meant to do is one you may feel on a deep or soul level. (It is) fulfilling a higher calling or purpose. At the very least, you’re becoming someone who has decided that this is the last time they repeat a cycle.

You’re working towards something more and it feels like by the end of this chapter, you’ll be granted a brief reprieve. There’s still more work to be done though. You’re stepping into a new era where so much will grow from you. For some of you, a new romantic relationship is coming in and/or you're expanding your family-- that includes found family as well.

How will you find success?

Cards: 4 of Roses (views of the ego) the Witch. Rev

The first message that comes through is that your success lies in cutting someone off. Someone selfish and self-absorbed to be exact. It’s a relationship you’ve stayed in too long... they could have had some kind of hold over you, not necessarily in a controlling way, but they could have meant something on a deep level which could have been why you held on. You may have done a lot you’re not happy with because you’ve done it with this person in mind. Cutting ties with them grants you success as it allows you to focus on what’s truly important to you.

The other message with the witch reversed is the importance of remembering that while you’re forging your own path, it’s okay to look to others who have made it or 'gotten out'. Maybe they haven’t gone through the exact same thing, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t wisdom in the stories of others who’ve forged through and paved their own way as well. Pile one was about breaking away from the expected, but you’re being called to review what is expected and see if there’s anything worth considering. Kind of like shopping around for inspiration? You might come across someone else's story and it might spark an idea within you on how to navigate your own.

Challenges you may meet-- Cards: The Tailor Rev, The Scribe

Your challenges in this next chapter involve trying not to force your will upon the flow of your life and refining your focus. I know, I said forged in fire. There’s an imbalance of sorts... instead of firing and hoping you hit the target (your goal), you need to pause and take a good look at what’s working vs what isn’t. The 'wheel of life' worksheet/exercise comes to mind but I personally hate that exercise so much. I bring it up because it allows you to get a visual of what areas of your life you've been focusing on vs neglecting and pinpoint which areas of your life you’re lacking in. From there you can further assess and gain a better grasp on what you should be focusing on. After all, you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.

With the scribe, you may need to study or fine-tune your skills regarding a specific matter more. Here, there's something you need to learn to influence your life in the way you want, but you have to take the time to figure out what it is that you need to learn. It doesn’t have to be formal learning either. It could be something such watch a YouTube video, reading a book or article, or even taking a free online course or masterclass. Nothing is too big or too small here, as long as it's helping you to develop to get from point A to B.

Lessons To Be Learned:

Cards: 8 or scrolls (path unknown), the diviner, the puppeteer

The 8 of scrolls here reminds you that you’ve been travelling on a path where you know the outcomes, but to get to where you want to be sometimes requires walking down paths that may mean you don’t know what’s going to happen until it happens. At the same time, that’s how opportunities we didn’t know we needed arise. In the card imagery, there’s a basket next to the girl filled with scrolls, the same type of scrolls pictured in the scribe card. I think for you it’s learning the skill or information I mentioned that is going to help you feel more confident and assured on this path you’re following. You’ve got the energy of the queen archetype (regardless of gender), and though it may be a challenge, you’ve equipped yourself with the skills necessary to go after what you want. You’ll have what it takes 100% to move on to the next phase (after this one we're talking about).

The Diviner is about divine timing and evaluation. Here you’ve done all that you can with what is in your control. What’s left now is waiting for your desires outcomes to come to fruition. While you can’t rush or force things, you can make sure you set yourself up for success when you get it. So let's say you're waiting on receiving a sum of money, in the meantime you can learn/brush up on the skills to manage money etc.

Finally with the puppeteer, mending relationships could also be a lesson. Although I think it’s more about learning to interact with others better? But also remembering that sometimes apologies can mend relationships and other times they can’t. Going back to that relationship mentioned way before, it could be a matter of "are you willing to forgive the other person if they were to apologise and see the error of their ways?" (Though with the type of person mentioned that may be unlikely but, who knows).

Another possibility with the assassin card is that you may ruffle feathers at some point, so you may learn the power or limits of an apology in that sense as well.

Advice to take with you in this next chapter:

The Finch and Peach (romance) — romance is on its way to you. Things to ponder on could be: do you feel ready to welcome love into your life? What are some things that make you feel loved/how do you like to receive love?

The Marten and Foxglove (mischief) — this card asks you to stay open to opportunities that allow you to tap into your playful side, be spontaneous or travel. Ask yourself how can you make room for spontaneity? (It could be through trying new foods, reading a different genre, visiting a place you wouldn’t typically visit, changing up your daily routine etc). Also are you at a point where you can open yourself to new adventures, big or small?

The Boar and Pumpkin (confidence) — You’re not wrong to be confident in yourself, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Take a moment to acknowledge your accomplishments and think about what you’ve done that you’re proud of (doesn’t always have to be tangible, it can also be mindsets, situations you’ve walked from etc).

The Snake and Fern (starting over) — Again, if you were drawn to pile one, I suggest you check that out. Here this card nods to beginning a new and asks you to see if there are any parts of yourself you can return to, or if it’s time to completely start anew and discover yourself from scratch.

If you made it this far I appreciate it. Feedback is welcomed and if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in a pac, feel free to let me know!

Pile 3 (The Trunks/Suitcase)

Who are you? Cards: The Smith, The Twins, The Lookout, The Askashic Library, 3 of Forces (Bird’s Nest)

This pile may be the pile for you if any of the following resonates:

The overthinker. Having a twin or prominent Gemini placements. If you're considering something you’ve been wanting to do for a while but keep putting off. A relationship with someone in which you both started on the same path but they went in another direction. Holding onto resentment. Feel like everything is up in flames. Writing. Seeking self-awareness. Manifesting. Intuitive. *Read that book you’ve been meaning to read. Needing a backup plan. Expanding. Hopeful prospects.

*If this doesn't feel like your pile, and you were eyeing pile 4, definitely check it out. This pile was actually the last I pulled and the hardest to read for and it felt like many aspects of it related to other piles as well. I recommend checking out a secondary pile in general if you were drawn to one.

Who will you become throughout this next chapter? Cards: The Waker, The Runaway, The Warrior (Sorry, I forgot to write down some of the cards 🤦‍♀️, I believe it was 'Fated Meeting' and 'Queen of Scrolls')

You’re becoming someone who is becoming centred/aligned and more intuitive. Your internal world and external world are going to become more connected. Connected to your ‘higher self’ as well, it’s going to be you vs you (levelling up). You’re going to become someone who can face the things you’ve been running from head-on.

That thing you’ve been putting off, you’re going to be able to finally put into action. Coming into being filled with inspiration, clarity and direction. This is especially if you’re considering careers/education, or projects in the fields of writing, publishing, marketing, communication, counselling or teaching. If you’re seeking a mentor, this person could help guide you to becoming this way. It could also be someone in your life already that may help you who is in one of these fields.

For a select few of you, you’re becoming the version of you that was meant to meet your person. If it’s not a romantic partner, then you’re coming into contact with a soulmate (meant as someone you have a ‘soul bond’ with).

Where Will You Find Success? Cards: 4 of Keys (Clearing The Way), Reflection, The Cartographer rev, The Weaver

If you find yourself prone to many different avenues of ideas and project but never settling on one, you’re going to find your success through settling on one thing and focusing on it. It’s time for you stop buckle down and stick with one of those brilliant ideas of yours and make it happen.

Also while it may be time for you to focus on one thing professionally or creatively, when it comes to yourself, it’s time to embrace all the pieces of you that seem random. It reminds me of this post I saw a couple of days ago about how we don't have to force ourselves fit perfectly into an aesthetic... that it's okay to have and embrace parts of your personality that are completely left field of the other bits that go hand in hand. So for some of you, maybe it’s time to embrace all the pieces of you that don’t go together neatly. Maybe that’s why you have these ideas and start them and then ditch them, because you’re a multifaceted being and you’re not allowing yourself to be so and that is the way it manifests in your life? Maybe it’s time to learn how to let all the sides of you coexist without getting lost. Food for thought maybe?

Regardless, it’s time to remove distractions that are holding you back. Tap into your intuition. Become more aware of your emotions. There's a sense of self-mastery is needed here.

Challenges You May Meet? Cards: The Pathless, The Miser, 1 of Scrolls (On Track), Up In The Air, 6 of Forces (The Waterfall) rev

Your challenges kind of relate to the things that were mentioned already. Being in your head, overthinking things, being unable to settle, but also trying to avoid falling into a headspace where you’re being pessimistic and stubborn. Just because you stick to one thing doesn’t mean you can’t shift and adjust your approach. And if you find that you’re really stuck don’t be afraid to just take a step back. If this is all relating to something where other people are giving you their unsolicited advice, don’t be afraid to brush it off and say “Hey, I might have hit a block but trust that I know what I’m doing”. Another scenario is to not internalise any unsolicited advice or opinions because I feel like that could be a trigger for getting lost in your head for some of you.

For overthinking, it'll be about learning to accept that you won’t be able to know the exact outcome of certain things. If you’re working with someone else, then feeling like you are in control or that you have a say may be the challenge. For others, the challenge may simply be making the decision or committing. It could also be coming to terms with the fact that you waited so long to pursue this goal.

Lessons To Be Learned: Cards: The Brawler, The Forgotten, 2 of Roses (The Winged Messengers), Uriel and the Sphinx, the king of roses

With the Forgotten you’ll learn that you can’t be afraid of mistakes. Mistakes help you grow. You'll come to realise how much fear has been holding you back. There's also learning how to make something out of your anxiety. Learning not to run from conflict or maybe how to properly address it could also be another lesson. This could be regarding internal conflict or conflict with another person as I am getting multiple scenarios come up.

Again there's a message here that for some of a romantic suitor specifically coming in. Overall for everyone there’s an important relationship making its way into your life. The mentor shows up as a neutral energy throughout the reading (or balanced feminine and masculine). Their energy is thoughtful, nurturing/comforting and supportive.

Advice — The Goat and Willow (overdoing obstacle) — even though there are losses to suffer, you can overcome them with renewed energy and the right balance. When obstacles appear, prioritise realigning yourself with your goals. You can even get ahead of the game and brainstorm ways to handle potential obstacles before they arise. The Chipmunk and Laurel (success) — Your path to success will be a unique one, one you have to create on your own, but there will be adventures along the way. The Elk and Ash (strength) — Don’t be afraid to fight back when met with a challenge.

If you made it this far I appreciate it. Feedback is welcomed and if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in a pac, feel free to let me know!

Pile 4 (The plane around the world)

CW: Brief implication of strong language

Who are you? Cards: The storyteller, the mascareri, 1 of roses (commitment), 6 of roses (the war of roses)

This pile may be the pile for you if any of the following resonates:

Someone who struggles with the 'self'. You may hide your true self and struggle to accept others' true selves. For you, you could spend a lot of time crafting your persona. For some of you you maybe in positions where you delegate to others or are responsible for others' behaviour (managerial or boss positions). Some of you could work with kids or want to work with kids. Putting on a mask. Neurodivergence. You could enjoy writing or be a writer of some kind. The arts. Struggling with a partnership (romantic or business), trying to balance honouring yourself and their wishes? Conflicted about a relationship. Feeling like there's a battle between your head vs your heart.

Who will you become throughout this next chapter? Cards: 4 of Scrolls rev (The Karmic Trenches), The Patron rev, The poet You’re becoming someone with so much to offer and is still looking to grow. However, people may want to take advantage of that. Becoming someone who doesn’t hesitate and is in love with life. Embracing that life is imperfect. Becoming more vulnerable. Finding like-minded people. Embracing happiness. Tapping into your creative spirit. There could be an ending of some kind, though you didn’t want it, it brought a world full of new opportunities. You're finally breaking a pattern but also having the awareness to know when you’re tip-toeing along the lines of going back. Coming out of the dark. This sense of being healed on multiple levels and being able to finally experience joy.

Where will you find success? Cards: The Astronomer Rev, The Hound, 5 of forces (summer/winter), 7 of keys (The Ascent) You’re going to be finding success through setting long-term goals. If this is about a financial situation especially, then also finding a balance between focusing on what is necessary and not letting the 'wishlist' desires lead you astray. It can apply to any situation in general though. Focusing on what’s necessary and the things you would like to do coming afterwards.

There's also a matter of assessing where your loyalties or priorities lie and releasing habits, relationships, and ideas that are no longer serving you. Loyalty and staying true to your word might be something you value heavily and stand by, but I also see you finding success in this next chapter of your life by realising, you know what, sometimes you have to cut your ties, count any losses and move on because staying is only doing more harm than good. For some of you who have a relationship in mind or the relationship part resonated with you, this is especially true.

Taking action in general will bring success. This chapter could either close out or begin in the summer, or summer will mark an important time for you. With the 7 of keys, your success is guaranteed as long as you put in the work.

Challenges You May Meet: Cards: The Founder, The Shepard, 3 of Scrolls (Setting Your Course), Caught in The Ruins With The Founder, a challenge you might run into is needing to put yourself before someone else who is asking you for your help, although I'm also feeling it maybe asking you to put them first. You might struggle to determine whether or not you should offer them your help. The Shepard urges you to step up and take the lead when others need guidance. However, I think the best question to ask is what kind of person do you have to show up as in order to offer them your support? And also what type of person do you have to show up as to meet your goals? I’d say make a decision on how to proceed based on whether the two can successfully coincide or not.

A lot of different situations come up in this pile— relationships, career/finance, behaviours… but the common theme here seems to come down to mindset. Whatever the situation is that has you feeling trapped, you have to realise that it’s not definitive, even if it seems that way in your head. It seems like a lot of what is going on, and what you have to overcome, is self-sabotage and realising that just because you’ve always done something a certain way or a situation has always played out that way, doesn’t mean it will always be that way. You have the power to change; the challenge here simply lies in picking yourself up and dusting yourself off. There’s so much more out there for you than what you’re seeing right now. If relocating or travelling, especially where you have to cross the ocean, is something you’re hoping to do, then the end of this chapter we’re discussing in this reading might be the beginning of that next chapter in your life.

Lessons To Be Learned: Cards: 3 of Roses (Loving Elementals), 5 of Roses (The Garden)

The lessons here are about having a sense of child like wonder, and learning to find joy and exploration in life. Being able to laugh and play and find inspiration once more. If any of you have been thinking about starting a family (not necessarily right away) then it’s likely that this chapter will set you up for that. If not then I think a matter of legacy here. Being exposed to opportunities to nurture and grow the future you desire.

You’ll learn that sometimes you are the one who has to be the catalyst to change your life. I love this line from the guidebook of my Citadel Orcale cards regarding the catalyst. It says “ You are the bolt of lightning that topples the tower”. If you think about the Tower card in the traditional tarot deck, there’s lightning striking the tower and setting it on fire. Whenever it comes up it talks about upheaval and there’s often a sense of “oh great, something’s about to come **** up my life” but maybe [we] should consider that we’re not always the tower, but instead, we are the lightning. You have to make the decision to do or become something different, even if goes against what you've always known or what everyone tells you you should do.

What’s also important is not dwelling on past mistakes or regrets, it’s about learning from what happened and using it to make a better decision. Stop doubting yourself and overthink until your head hurts. Give yourself some grace and self-compassion. Take your time, changing isn’t going to happen overnight and often times we have to adjust to who we’re allowing ourselves to become.

Advice to take with you in this next chapter:

The Bee and Pomegranate (productivity) rev — If you find yourself struggling with procrastination, don’t be afraid to rest a while before giving whatever it is another go. Consider what makes you productive as well as what you can do to change why you’re not feeling productive towards another task.

The Racoon and Sycamore (curiosity) — The time is now to do some self-exploration. Explore new interests and hobbies as well as take time to think about how you’ve evolved and how you’d like to further evolve.

The Finch and Peach (romance) — Love is on its way to you. (I did kind of feel like it’s romantic love but it wasn't a prominent message in the reading.)

The Bear and Cedar (leadership) — You’re being guided towards leadership opportunities but remember to ‘rule’ with fairness and care. Ask yourself how can you be a better leader? Who can benefit from your knowledge and experience?

If you made it this far I appreciate it. Feedback is welcomed and if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in a pac, feel free to let me know!

*** Disclaimer: All readings and tarot/blog games are for fun and entertainment purposes only. It is in no way meant to act as or replace professional advice of any kind. You know yourself and what’s going on in your life best so I ask that you trust yourself above all else. Finally please take only what resonates from the reading which may be some of it, all of it, or none at all.

#pick a card #pick a pile #pick a card reading #pac reading #pick a picture #pac #pick a pile reading #tarot reading #cozycottagetarot

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comicaurora · 11 months

Note

Lighting critique of a recent panel ! Dark ambient lighting is a favorite art subject of mine, so i figured this would be a good time to give some input ! ii say as if we havent been in the undergroound chapter for like a month in which it didnt occur to me to pay attention to lighting Oh well loool here it is nowwwwwwww hope you dont mind the input

Huh.

Okay, so first off, thanks - this is cool and your lighting looks very nice. I look forward to seeing what you make!

Second - I really hope sending this kind of ask isn't a habit of yours, because unsolicited artistic criticism comes across as remarkably rude.

Art criticism for the purposes of improvement is a social contract entered between two artists, typically in a scholastic environment. An artist presents their work to other artists whose opinions they trust and value, and those artists weigh in with their thoughts. Critical to the process is that the presenting artist is showing their art for the purpose of improvement, and they're prepared to receive that input because they're actively asking for it.

In contrast, I make this comic so people can read it, and while I certainly don't mind if they take it apart to analyze it or find ways the writing and art could be improved, I, the creator, am not asking for that and - more importantly - will not really benefit from it.

For instance, in this case, my style of background lighting and shading is optimized most specifically to accommodate for the fact that I need to make a lot of these pages quickly, and correspondingly cannot give everything 110%. Any individual panel could absolutely be more polished, but I often shade these backgrounds in batches of ten pages or more, each page with an average of six panels that need individual shading. So that's sixty individual backgrounds I need to shade in one go. It doesn't make your advice wrong, or even unhelpful for an artist setting out to learn this kind of technique - but it does make it unhelpful for me. This is something you realistically had no way of knowing, and I don't hold it against you! But this is why I have a short list of artists and writers whose input I actually ask for sometimes, and that list is composed of people who know me, my creative priorities, and how my process works. Because they know what I'm working with, their advice stands a much better chance of being actually helpful to me.

Criticism, like all art, has an audience it is designed for. In art school environments or artistic coworker situations, the audience for the criticism is the artist being critiqued and the other artists who are learning from the communal experience they are all agreeing to share. This is the exception and not the rule, however. Outside of this space, the audience for criticism of a work of art is typically the subset of the audience for that work of art that are trying to learn something from the experience or understand what did and didn't work for them. This group can discuss what they did and didn't like, what they would have changed, what parts worked for them that may not have worked for other members of the audience, etc. This space of critical analysis forms the backbone of most fandoms and can be incredibly interesting and rewarding to play around in.

The audience for that kind of criticism is not the creator of the art. In the same way a creator can never be fully immersed in their own fandom audience, this form of communal critique from the audience side of things does not work when directed at the creator. In the context of this work of art, we exist in very different spaces and operate under different parameters. If there's one thing I learned from back when I used to check in on the fan discord community, it's that most conversation in this space operates under the assumption that the creator will not see it or take it personally. I cannot be in the audience of my own audience.

All that to say, thanks for the thought, but please be careful doing this in the future - tumblr is the land of kneejerk hostility and poor reading comprehension, and I don't want to see you getting shredded for a kind intention. And I hope some people find this impromptu tutorial helpful!

#asks #aurora #art stuff

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hms-no-fun · 10 months

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Currently struggling a lot with getting very excited about a project, writing a lot, editing that writing until it's way more polished than what I can come up with off the cuff, and then being too intimidated to add to the document anymore since the previous good writing still gives off this looming intimidation if that makes sense? The more I write the greater the fear is I'll crash the story into a ditch that reveals the premise can't work. have you had that "its not all coming together shit theres a snag thats really important that i missed" moment? I realize it's pretty inevitable for that to happen, but whenever I write myself out of a moment like that I always second guess that I'm still overlooking something important or taking the easy way out. I know it's probably just all about pushing through but I worry that by pushing im just further diluting the original spirit of the project? Sorry for the all over the place ask, hope you have a good day :3

this is always a tough situation to navigate as a writer. happens to me often, and it has taken me a very long time to come even remotely close to being able to deal with it productively. believe it or not, i actually have quite a lot to say about this, so prepare for that below the break.

first of all, no, it's absolutely NOT all about pushing through. i find "pushing through" can just as often make the problem worse. keep in mind that i can only speak to my own experience and process, so any advice i might give here should only be taken insofar as you personally find it useful.

this is a form of writer's block. there are many different types of blocks, each with their own causes and hypothetical treatments. a big part of becoming A Writer as such is learning the difference between them, and developing methods for dealing with them on a case by case basis that don't involve substance abuse. don't do cocaine. that's step one.

most of my blocks are in the vein you describe. i'll be writing a scene that feels good, until i cross a threshold somewhere and suddenly the whole thing feels dead in the water. the first thing i do when this happens is stop writing. it's hard to stop when you're on a roll, i know. life is short and it's hard enough to write even on a good day, but sometimes you can just tell that you're on the wrong track and at that point you're probably not gonna be able to write your way back on.

once stopped, i check the basics. have i eaten recently? am i hydrated? have i taken my medications? these are rarely my problem (i keep a big water bottle with me at all times and my gf makes sure i'm fed), though you never know how useful a snack break can be. most of the time if the problem isn't with the text, it's that i've been writing for too fucking long and i need to clock out. learning to clock out is SO hard. but as i've been getting into the habit these last couple months, while i generally write less per day i ultimately end up writing more over time. i can feel my brain cooking when i've been writing too long. it's a muscle like anything else. if you did a bunch of overtime shifts at a more physical job, you'd need time to recover too. your body isn't a machine, your brain isn't a computer, and living things are inconsistent. it sucks but you'll have a better time all around when you learn to work with your body instead of against it.

another question is, have i showered recently? i find showers tedious and boring. also i still have depression even though my life is a lot better than it used to be. i lived on my own for a very long time as a deeply closeted self-hating trans woman, so my hygiene habits are not always up to sniff. as much as i hate to admit it, showers help. i can't tell you how many times i've sat at a godfeels chapter or video script and just felt fucking miserable, only to come back forty minutes later from a shower, full of creative energy. i despise self-help shit. just not a fan of the culture of positive attitude wellness check stuff because you can't self examine your way out of your class position. sometimes the problem is that you're broke. sometimes life fucking sucks and you just don't have the art in you, and that's okay. there's a common misconception that if something bad happens to you, at least you can make an art to get through it. but in my experience it's actually a lot harder to make art about bad times when you're still in them. most of the time it takes months if not years of safety and recovery before you can really face it head on artistically. so like, be nice to yourself. it's not your fault that you live in a society.

but also sometimes literally you just need a shower or to eat some leftovers or to go to fucking bed. i hate it every time that is true because i want my problems to be real and philosophical and not just some dumb body thing that happens to everyone. alas, no one can escape the quotidian obligations of simple mortality.

THAT SAID! this stuff isn't usually my problem, and often i find that what's solving the problem when i do step away to eat/drink/shower isn't even the specific activity, but the act of stepping away at all. getting my mind off it for a sec. when i hit a block that doesn't feel completely insurmountable, i like to back away from my computer and pace around a bit. then i'll stare at my big whiteboard with a marker in hand and just let my mind wander. i don't even write anything half the time! but the mere act of trying to compartmentalize the problem into something brief enough for shorthand helps me spot the pain points.

one of my favorite books is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which despite what you might assume from its title is NOT a self-help book but instead a work of philosophy from 1974 taking the form of a travelogue. what Robert Pirsig explores in this book is what he calls the Metaphysics of Quality. basically he's trying to understand the split-second judgments we make of things we like and things we don't. i absolutely do not have time to go into the specifics, just know that his Quality refers to the abstract certainty you have when something is Good or Right or Correct or Qualitatively True. like how you pull your hand away unconsciously when you touch a hot stove, but for ideas. you just Know.

a scene that really sticks with me from that book (probably the most famous scene) is when Pirsig describes needing to fix a mechanical problem with his motorcycle only to be stopped dead in his tracks by a stripped screw keeping him from removing the engine cover. he talks about being so focused on the obvious solution to the primary complex problem that, on encountering a smaller, simpler problem that has to be dealt with first, he finds himself completely stuck, calling this "a zero of consciousness." it's a problem so annoying and minuscule and stubbornly unsolvable that you just want to hit the thing with a wrench and throw it in a river. addressing this new problem, this block, requires an adjustment in thinking. and here i'm going to quote a pretty lengthy passage, but don't worry, i'm typing it out by hand with the book in front of me so there's no time saved on my end:

Consider, for a change, that this is a moment to be not feared but cultivated. If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then you may be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas. The solution to the problem often at first seems unimportant or undesirable, but the state of stuckness allows it, in time, to assume its true importance. It seemed small because your previous rigid evaluation which led to the stuckness made it small. But now consider the fact that no matter how hard you try to hang on to it, this stuckness is bound to disappear. Your mind will naturally and freely move toward a solution. Unless you are a real master at staying stuck you can't prevent this. The fear of stuckness is needless because the longer you stay stuck the more you see the Quality-reality that gets you unstuck every time. What's really been getting you stuck is the running from the stuckness [. . .] Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors. It's this understanding of Quality as revealed by stuckness which so often makes self-taught mechanics so superior to institute-trained men who have learned how to handle everything except a new situation. Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realize that this one, individual, particular screw is neither cheap nor small nor unimportant. Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out. With this re-evaluation of the screw comes a willingness to expand your knowledge of it. [. . .] What your actual solution is is unimportant as long as it has Quality. Thoughts about the screw as combined rigidness and adhesiveness and about its special helical interlock might lead naturally to solutions of impaction and use of solvents. That is one kind of Quality track. Another track may be to go to the library and look through a catalog of mechanic's tools, in which you might come across a screw extractor that would do the job. Or to call a friend who knows something about mechanical work. Or just to drill the screw out, or just burn it out with a torch. Or you might just, as a result of your meditative attention to the screw, come up with some new way of extracting it that has never been thought of before that beats all the rest and is patentable and makes you a millionaire five years from now. There's no predicting what's on that Quality track. The solutions all are simple-- after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.

this is, in brief, my entire creative philosophy when it comes to writer's block. i share such a lengthy passage because i think it's useful to underline that we're not talking about a problem that is necessarily unique to the labor of writing. this process is a human process. it's just that with writing, the nature of the block itself is often much more difficult to identify than a stripped screw.

there's a couple things i do to try to identify what's got me stuck. a lot of times what happens is that everything in a scene felt good until it didn't, and then everything after that moment fell flat. so i'll go back and read the whole thing and just try to feel the scene. is everyone in character? is their dialogue too quippy, or too aggressive, too expository? are we in the midst of a conversation that has simply gone on way too fucking long? i know it can be torturous to reread your own stuff but idk what else to say except get used to it. especially when you're still early in the drafting phase! like if you know you're not gonna release this thing imminently, there's no reason to be precious about the stuff that's good or to beat yourself up over the stuff that's bad. i know that compulsion to try to Get Everything Right The First Time is strong, but it's completely unsustainable.

sometimes the block is that i just don't feel like writing narration. i've always sucked at grounding a scene with descriptions of the place. lately i'm trying to get away from relying solely on descriptions of staging/blocking, but it's hard for a bitch like me who mostly prefers writing dialogue. i've gotten a lot more comfortable with putting notes between dialogue exchanges like [character moves, looks at picture, has a dramatic thought, other character fiddles with object]. it can feel like cheating sometimes but it's not. there's no such thing. no one will know the route you took to get to the end. they will only see what you show them, when you decide to show it to them.

sometimes the block is in some minor or major betrayal of the story's spirit. the (Terezi) & Jade scene i talked about in this ask is a good example. i hit a point where nothing was working anymore. no one would talk to me. the light was gone. i can always tell when i made the wrong choice. it's such a particular sensation. as though i'm walking and i realize i no longer recognize the road i'm on and must've made a wrong turn somewhere. the solution to this particular block is introspection, retracing my steps, because the wrong turn isn't always obvious. maybe it's that someone in the scene is being too mean, or that i've failed to accomplish what the scene exists to do in some way, or that someone's made an uncharacteristic choice that now everyone in the scene is arguing about and it's like, man, this is taking too long, i'm not enjoying this anymore.

another example from A1 is the second half of the solo. i'd had most of the jasprose scene, the karkat-calliope-roxy scenes, and the vrisrezi-jade scenes written since i posted the A1 chorus. where i ran into trouble was that i needed to get jane, jake, and (terezi) to show up. my original plan was to have them arrive one by one, thus allowing their individual dramas a moment in the spotlight before being subsumed into the group. not a bad idea in theory but in practice it was fucking tedious. here we have a bunch of characters already immersed in the scene captured by the intrigue of Jade being enigmatic, and then some unawares jagoff wanders in and suddenly everyone has to stop what they're doing and be like "hey hello how are you what's up" and then they explain how they got there and then they ask what's up and it's such a DRAG. honestly i would say the majority of my creative blocks by volume are moments when the story really wants me to just cut to black for a smoke break and come back when somebody gets mad enough to throw a punch. i mean that's the the development of A1 in a nutshell. originally everyone was gonna start the track locked up in space-jail on the hopebringer, jade would show up all apologetic and say what she expects padua's deliberation to be, then the whole cast would see her throw a fit over a decision she knew was coming, they'd all be absolved of guilt and let free, then they'd all argue about who's staying or going with Jade in the morning, they'd split up to go pack their stuff and then...

well that was exactly the problem. i wanted to get all the pertinent things out of the way. jade's code switching, voidthought, some EWL teases. give the whole cast a chance to react to it. i thought that would be expedient, because it got the Plot out of the way and gave time to characters for Feelings. if that version of the scene had come at the end of chapter 8, it might have worked. but i realized that as soon as jade's audience was no longer captive, i had no fucking clue what to do with them anymore. we already knew who would go with jade, so acting like that's some kind of mystery is just lame. i started writing A1 from a place of desiring informational density & a quick pace, because we've got places to go and things to do. but if the real purpose of A1 is to explore why these characters choose to go with Jade, then that needed to be done with a lot more care and precision. that's when i decided to let Jade spend two days underground making the earth right again, so that she has to come to everyone individually rather than the other way around. and it muddies her motivations, if you don't mind the pun. it puts her at an appropriate remove from the others. i ultimately wound up conveying all the same information as in the original version, but i did it in a way that was more appropriate thematically and artistically. it wound up being longer road than i anticipated, but this is a long story and in this case the longer road was better for the journey.

take the chapter where Jade visits Roxy. i needed some time with Roxy alone to set the scene, since she's the first person Jade decides to visit and i like writing about the insides of trailer homes. i wanted to get some politics from Jane in this chapter, so hey, why not throw in a televised speech? oh, and then i can have some tucker carlson types remind us that Earth C is a fucking mess. i wrote all that, and it was good, but it was just Roxy watching tv. i tried to get into Jade's arrival and couldn't. so i went back and realized, oh, Roxy should be yelling at the tv the whole time! now we get Jane's politics, Roxy's reactions to those politics, as well as bits and pieces of context re: Jane's relationships with Karkat and Roxy. now when Jade arrives, we can play with the question of whether she heard the speech from outside Roxy's door, and why neither of them was physically at the speech in the first place. there's tension and imbalance in Roxy's state of mind when Jade does arrive, so we're more inside her perspective than we usually are, which in turn helps us identify with her when Jade starts infodumping about antimemes.

so often for me, working through a block is a matter of doing a better job utilizing what's available to you. going back to the A1 solo and trying to bring Jake, Jane, and (Terezi) into the scene. i finally returned to it after a couple months of being sick and dealing with life problems. i was frustrated because i'd hoped to be several tracks in to 3.2 by now, and instead i was confronted with just how much more of this thing is left and how long that might take if i couldn't pick up the pace. this thing NEEDED to get done.

and then i remembered that Jasprose is literally right there.

and that was it! problem fucking solved! i had jasprose drop all three of them into the scene completely unceremoniously using manic teleportation through a fenestrated plane, and from there the entire rest of the chapter erupted out of me in a single go. it's such an obvious solution to the problem that you as reader probably assumed it was the plan from the very beginning. but it's like Pirsig says: the solutions all are obvious-- after you've arrived at them.

then there's the problem of overwriting. i actually did i think four different versions of the opening to the A1 solo. the first person narration was a late addition. i tweaked that scene so so so many times. it kept feeling close but not quite. when i did the thing where i reread to find where the block happened, instead of actually reading the thing i just kept finding spots where i could write more. i can extend this anecdote. this line could be better. maybe a comma here would work better than an ellipsis...

this can be good because sometimes what's blocking you is that you skipped over something that needed more time. maybe some information or a dramatic emphasis that gives the stuff you can't yet write the momentum it needs to get going again. but i've gotta be real careful doing this, because i can do it forever. and then, as you describe (hey look, i'm actually talking about your specific problem now!), that hyper-polished section sets everything else up to fail by comparison.

i think the trick is knowing the difference between when a scene needs an editing pass vs when a scene just straight up isn't working. when it's not working, sometimes you do just have to throw it all out and start over. but if it's good enough that you feel like all it's missing is better dialogue and some more description, then you can hold off on that polish until the rest of the thing is done. this conundrum is most common at the beginning of a chapter or story in my experience, precisely as a result of the process i've been describing this whole time. when you hit a block and retrace your steps, you can always find things to fix. so it's sort of natural that any given chapter becomes less polished the further along you get in to it. that's why it's so important to understand the differences between all these different types of blocks, and to remind yourself that literally nothing you've written is finished until the moment you've made it public.

a big part of getting the A1 solo out the door was me swallowing my desire for perfection in every exchange and saying, no, this is good enough. it's not 100% what i want, but it's close enough that it just isn't worth the effort it would take to get there. sometimes there are scenes that are worth that effort, but they are always rarer than you think and they're never the ones you'd expect. i will freely admit that there are a lot of characters expositing their motivations in this chapter. i tried to embed as much of that in humor or drama as i could, but sometimes you just have to shrug your shoulders and walk away and hope your readers will be nice to you.

of course the funny thing is, once i finished the chapter and had all the panels sketched out and wiped my hands clean of the whole affair, janet needed two weeks to make the images. so i ended up having time to polish up a couple of those things that i felt were lacking after all. but those additions were radically small and intuitive, because i'd divorced myself from the raw production and had committed to so many directions that i *couldn't* change much. i'm so used to writing for release that i don't know what to do with myself when my part of the job is done before i can kick it out the door. i've come to find that waiting, taking breaks, walking away and coming back, do wonders for your ability to egolessly examine your work and identify what's wrong. sometimes you just need a day or two to sleep on it.

and sometimes you realize that you've really just over-written a scene, out of preciousness or insecurity or whatever else, and the result is so much bigger than everything else you want to do that it's more expedient to just scrap it. i hate when this happens, man. i did this with an early version of the A1 chorus, when Jade is stuck in space alone and shouting about how unfair her life has been. you know sometimes there's an emotion in a scene that's addictive. some bit of pathos that you just feel down to your bones, fuck me man, this is so GOOD, this is so JUICY, this shit has QUALITY. it's so good you don't want it to be finished. so you keep writing it, and writing it, and you rewrite it, and you add to it, because you really want to squeeze every drop of emotion you can from the thing. and then you wind up with a bloated melodramatic mess that's so overplayed you've annihilated everything that compelled you to write it in the first place.

i want to be clear that this isn't wasted work. nothing you ever put to the page, no matter how ultimately useless it might prove to be, is wasted work. the way i see this whole process, top to bottom, is that there's this thing. i don't know what it is, but it's there. maybe it starts with an image, or a line of dialogue, or a relationship, or a natural vista, whatever. it can be anything. what matters is it's a sign pointing you in a direction. it's something that has Quality that you can feel with such potent immediacy that you have no choice but to write it. the act of writing is something of an expedition, because the real magic of it comes when those disparate signs start colliding with one another. an image becomes a scene, a house, a world, a universe. sometimes these signs lead to dead ends, but with experience you learn to tell the dead ends from the rough patches. you learn how to make your own way. you do this by listening to what this thing is telling you. every story i've ever written has known better than me what it wants. i can impose so much onto it, i control 90% of the process at least. but that other 10% cannot, should not be quantified or controlled but simply understood. if you try to bottle the flame, you'll just end up snuffing it out.

no artist really knows why they do what they do or how they're able to pull it off. they can tell you their methods, their process, their coping mechanisms, they can write ludicrously lengthy diatribes on tumblr in response to an innocuous ask, but you can't pin down the soul of the thing. Quality is ephemeral, because it's first. it happens before you've had time to think, like putting your hand on a hot stove. you just know. and you have to trust that knowledge to carry you forward, not second guess it too much, not try to wrangle the thing into a shape it doesn't want to assume. sometimes this requires writing scenes that you don't love, because it's easier to build a messy bridge between the moments that drive you than it is to perfect every single moment out of an artificial commitment to like, Being A Good Writer or whatever.

a lot of this is just practice. you get better at communicating with your creative impulses. but also i think it helps to internalize that nobody sees the rough drafts, nobody sees the duct tape. and nobody knows the perfect vision you'll be convinced you failed to meet. nobody has ever made a perfect thing, and no one ever will. who wants to be perfect, anyway? godfeels wouldn't be what it is if i wasn't willing to let it be messy. if i'd tried to do it better, it never would have gotten done, and nothing i'm doing now would have even conceptually gotten to exist.

also, it's okay to abandon shit when it stops feeling good. i have so many unfinished books kicking around from my 20s, dude. i feel bad about some of them, but ten years not finishing books is still ten years spent writing. it's actually quite rare for good ideas to result in finished works, because good ideas are cheap and they're not all for you. but you gotta keep trying anyway because sooner or later you'll catch a spark that has real gas, and if you've done the work you'll be ready for it. it'll feel like destiny. it'll feel like magic, how matched that idea is to your skill level. but it won't be magic, it'll be skill. if you hadn't put the work in to know how to follow that intuition, it'd be just as dead an end as everything else you never finished. you do the work so that when you get lucky you can take advantage of it. so in that context, writing is quite low stakes. if it's not good enough, fuck it, try something else!

anyway i hope there's some decent insight buried in here somewhere. thanks for such a good question!

#sarahposts #writing advice #writing tips #homestuck #godfeels #zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance #robert pirsig #metaphysics #writer's block #creative block #art block

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pain-in-the-butler · 6 months

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Dadbastian Week Day 6/7: Needed Advice and Setting Sun

Happy final day of Dadbastian week, my fellow fans. This was a wild ride, and I had so much fun seeing all the creations everyone came up with to celebrate! It may be the end of the seven days, but you can certainly expect more Dadbastian content from me in the future regardless. Let's keep the party going 😎

This "drabble" was better intended for yesterday's prompt, but I sort of shoehorned in a sunset so that I could post this on the final day. I would have liked to craft a story for each day of Dadbastian week, but sometimes that's life! And at 5.2k, this one's length is basically worth two prompts anyway.

No major warnings needed, but perhaps a small note that this story takes place when Ciel is still only ten years old. He engages in some regressive behavior as a way of coping with his trauma, and Sebastian handles the situation very Sebastianly. So it feels weird to say enjoy but uh... enjoy!

How many souls had Sebastian devoured in the centuries before he met this one?

Two or three hundred, approximately. But how many of them had stood out as especially worthy? Perhaps one or two – and those experiences were not so remarkable. Merely different from the norm. Ask a human every meal they’d eaten over the course of their measly lifetime. Even they would laugh. Impossible! They could scarcely remember what they’d eaten last week. Perhaps a particularly delectable trifle or perfectly roasted guinea fowl would stand out. But would even a hundred meals? Of course not. Don’t be silly.

How old was Sebastian? Perhaps as old as the universe; perhaps as old as the wheel. He was amorphous. Time did not mark him with crow’s feet and gray hair. Time had no power over him at all, and Sebastian did not need to consider it. It was a concept built for mortals. And though Sebastian had a vague idea of how long he had been a greater demon, of the moment he had stopped lapping up other demons’ scraps and began forming contracts of his own, such knowledge didn’t intrigue him. The only span of time that had ever mattered was “soon.” When was his next meal? Soon. Always soon, because humans were easy to please and easy to trick, and Sebastian was well-suited for pleasure and trickery.

It had been over a month since Sebastian had thought the word “soon.”

Today marked the hundredth day of his contract with “Ciel” Phantomhive, a ten-year-old boy who was, without question, the youngest person Sebastian had ever played the shadow of. Ten years old: why, ten years was nothing to a demon. In the amount of time it had taken Ciel to merely exist, Sebastian had done nothing but sit patiently waiting for the right moment to strike, to bargain with just the right human. A hundred days ago, he and his future meal at last crossed paths.

This is the most curious and enticing soul I have found so far, Sebastian remembered thinking that day, and it will be mine in mere moments. For how could a frail, wounded, sniveling orphan possibly take longer to cultivate than a monarch, or a prodigy, or a megalomaniac?

Sebastian denounced them all. They were games, comparatively, to this real test of will he was engaged in now. For yesterday’s orphan was today’s earl, and the guidelines of this contract would not allow for a swift victory. Though Sebastian had never known hunger so intimately before this contract, now he was also getting to know patience – and hunger and patience would work together to transform this soul into a dining experience Sebastian had never known the likes of before.

And yet... often Sebastian found himself thinking, This is the soul clever enough to test my cunning? This is the one?

For the boy was still just that: a boy. And the boy’s childish habits were still so wildly out of control, it was a wonder he had ever been a noble’s son.

“You’ve been picking at your skin again,” Sebastian scolded at bathtime when he noticed the little pink marks freckling those skinny arms. “You mustn’t do that. The areas could become infected.”

“Young master. Are you listening to me?” Ciel’s gaze would often drift to the window in the middle of a lesson. “Repeat what I just said. …Yes, that’s what I thought. Pay attention.”

“Leave that alone,” Sebastian said when Ciel would play with the string of his eye patch.

“You must sit still,” Sebastian said at dinnertime and teatime and any time Ciel was in a chair.

“Rings stay on your fingers, unless you’re sealing an envelope.”

“Look me in the eye.”

“Stop tapping your foot.”

“Sit up straight.”

“No fidgeting.”

“Smaller bites.”

“Don’t yawn.”

“Don’t scratch.”

“And take that out of your mouth this instant.”

That last sentiment was by far the most awful one to consider, and, alas, the most persistent. In the privacy of his own home, Ciel chewed on things relentlessly: his fingers, his nails, his own hair, a pen he might be holding. His teeth, still a subtle mismatch of adult and milk teeth, longed to keep busy. When he wasn’t eating, they sought out other objects to masticate and weren’t picky about what that object happened to be.

“Are you a rodent?” Sebastian asked him one afternoon when he caught Ciel nibbling at his own sleeve.

Ciel blinked at him. “What?”

“Or a teething puppy?”

Ciel blushed angrily. “No.”

“Then I can think of no reason why you should be unable to keep your clothing out of your mouth,” Sebastian said distastefully.

Ciel glowered at him and stopped in the meantime. But the chewing was incessant. He always went back to it as soon as he thought Sebastian’s back was turned.

“I struggle to comprehend,” Sebastian confided to Tanaka one evening, “how the young master got away with such deplorable behaviors while he was growing up.”

Tanaka looked at Sebastian sadly from the servant’s table. The two were in the kitchen, Tanaka drinking green tea while Sebastian stood at the counter, polishing silver. “The young master did not have such persistent habits before you knew him… I believe this developed during that month he spent alone. That month we know so little about.” Tanaka pressed his fingers into the warm ceramic of the yunomi cup, staring into its depths. “There are three empty spaces in his heart now… and for a boy so young, it’s hard to know how to fill such space except with distraction. We must be gentle with him.”

But “gentle” took patience, and gentle took time, and there was no reason to spend it when a smart rap on the wrist would do just as well at a fraction of the speed.

Most of Ciel’s habits had been defeated with a rap on the wrist. The chewing was not so easily thwarted. What was worse, after a week of testing various objects in his mouth, Ciel seemed to have decided that the hems of his sleeves were his top choice. Sebastian’s irritation grew when he saw the state of Ciel’s shirt one evening before bed, the sleeves crimped and wrinkled from what seemed to be a whole day’s worth of suckling.

“This is flagrantly infantile,” he hissed lightly as he gripped his charge by the forearm. Ciel was looking hard at the floor and flushing with defiance. “What should anyone think of an earl with such deplorable attire? You’d do better without teeth than with sleeves like this.”

“It’s not like I do it in front of anyone!” Ciel argued with a heat that came from embarrassment.

Sebastian’s frown quirked. “It is pathetic to defend this behavior. You will stop, or there will be consequences.”

Ciel snorted, smirking now. “Consequences? What are you going to do? Hit my palms with a ruler till they bleed?” It was clear the boy wanted to recover some dignity. “You can’t stop me. I might have a bad habit, but I bet you don’t really know how to stop me from doing this.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Don’t I?”

“Well then, what are you going to do about it?” Ciel shot back.

The butler hesitated, then started unbuttoning the young master’s shirt up by its rounded collar. “Continue this charade, and perhaps I shall have to decide.”

“When we were younger and Edward would do something wrong, I remember Aunt Francis would take away his pocket money,” Ciel continued matter-of-factly as Sebastian slipped the nightgown over his master’s small head. “But you can’t take my money away from me. And you can’t force me to stay in my room until I repent, like my parents would.”

“No, perhaps not,” was Sebastian’s even answer.

“Well, good luck, then!” Ciel challenged, and Sebastian could swear that just before he extinguished the candle and turned to leave, the rotten brat was bringing his sleeve toward his mouth for a repeat performance.

It was clear Ciel thought he had won. Let him think that. It would only make the consequences of his actions all the more shocking.

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In England, the bird pepper was best known for its importance in making the highest quality cayenne. It was a thin, red capsicum that shone as bright as a warning. The human stomach knew no particulars: surely this coloration was nature’s way of advertising danger, but humans were the one species that delighted in spice, cultivated it, and celebrated the flavor of this irritating chemical. Sebastian was not sure if he found this act unnaturally stupid or minutely impressive. But it meant he would have easy access to the drought that would curb his master’s behavior.

Once delivered to the manor, the capsicums promptly had their piths removed and jarred in water to soak for a few days. The water took on a slightly orange quality, but was diluted with a bit more water until it was nearly clear. Finally, that water was painted on the sleeves of one of Ciel’s nightshirts using a basting brush and left hanging for another day until perfectly dry and unassuming.

Between the night Sebastian had decided on his plan and the evening he was able to execute it, Ciel’s habit had somewhat abated, but only somewhat. Sebastian’s warnings had grown sharper, and thus Ciel’s emotions towards the warnings had become more dramatic in response. He would grow absentminded, his eyes glossing over in the middle of a lesson, and then he’d automatically fall into his old pattern. Sebastian would rebuke, “Stop that,” whenever he caught the young master in the act, and Ciel would startle back to reality with a fleeting look of bewilderment. Then the shame and contempt would take over, and Ciel would shoot his butler such a scathing glare that Sebastian felt no sympathy whatsoever for what would soon come to pass.

“I must advise you, young master, not to go about biting your sleeves after I leave the room tonight,” Sebastian said at bedtime as the hands were threaded through the innocuous, soft pajama sleeves with perhaps only the slightest aroma of scarlet truth. “I will know if you have disobeyed; I have my ways. You must understand that it’s for your own good that I do whatever it takes to stop you.”

Ciel’s watchful eyes fell to the floor, and his shoulders slumped. For a moment, he looked just like the child that he was. “I’m trying, all right? It’s hard.”

“Ridiculous,” Sebastian huffed, planting his hands on his hips. “If your sleeve is in your mouth, take it out. This is all that you have to do. You would really have me believe such a thing is hard?”

“As if a damn demon would understand!” Ciel whined, though his face looked red again. “It’s not… Ugh, never mind! I’m trying, so you can stop treating me as if I’m not already!”

“If you really are trying, then I have faith that tonight will be different,” Sebastian said, with just a single thread of slyness stringing together his words as he pulled away the covers and draped them back over the curled-up troublemaker. “And who knows, you may just be rewarded if you manage to follow through.”

“... What kind of reward will I get?” Ciel asked.

Sebastian paused briefly at Ciel’s look of earnest curiosity. The ‘reward’ he’d meant was really ‘a lack of punishment.’ Would a reward actually be a worthy incentive when the boy was misbehaving? “We shall discuss it in the morning, but only if you manage to keep your sleeves away from your teeth all night. That is the first obstacle. Now then, will you be needing anything else before bed?”

Ciel stuffed his hands beneath his pillow. “No.”

“Very good. Then… I wish you luck, and goodnight.”

The light in the room was snuffed out. Sebastian left and went immediately to the kitchen to prepare the glass of milk. He had no faith the sleeves would remain untouched for very long. Mortals were driven by instinct, even to their own detriment. It was any wonder they managed to exist as a species. They could not go without their little vices. Even Ciel, who was too young and too coddled to have ever been introduced to alcohol or tobacco, had come up with a crutch all on his own. Sebastian snickered under his breath as he poured the cold milk into the teacup from the bottle he’d kept cool in the pantry. A human struggling to escape his own nature, also made to feel guilty for his own nature… Sebastian couldn’t lie and tell himself it wasn’t a positively delicious notion.

And yet… a full hour passed by with no outcry. Sebastian was minutely surprised. He had kept the cup of milk ready to deliver as he went about tidying up the kitchen for the end of the day. But eventually he had to admit to himself that the young master must have fallen asleep without indulging in his habit. Sebastian tutted as he poured the undrunk milk back into its bottle. He hadn’t meant to look forward to it, but it was a little boring to consider that his plan wouldn’t unfold after all… Oh well. Perhaps now was the time for some of the more encompassing chores Tanaka had warned him came with spring. Apparently replacing all of the winter curtains in the manor with a muslin set was only one such nuisance to consider…

It was two a.m. that brought the scream.

Sebastian knew this scream well. It was not the disgusted surprise of a boy who had tasted something unappealing, but the anguish of a soul bursting free from a nightmare. It was a sound all too familiar in this household. Sebastian dropped what he was doing to attend it at once. But perhaps he had been too unhurried all the same, because along the way, an actual summons was issued as well, then again, with all the persistence of a lost little lamb.

The lamps in their sconces flared to life as Sebastian entered the sitting area of the master bedroom. “I am here, young master. There is no need to call for me twice. I can guarantee you will be heard no matter how quiet you must be.”

Sebastian strode to the bedside casually nonetheless. He was never too harried in these cases. They were nearly always the same. Ciel would be hiding in a cave of his own blankets. Sebastian would produce a few whimsical promises for closeness, for security. Ciel would eventually drift back off and never mention their encounter in the morning. But tonight, the script was not being followed.

Ciel was sitting outside of the covers. He was bolt upright and rubbing at his face abrasively with his sleeves. “My eyes,” he said in a voice that was liquid and hollow. “S-Something is wrong with my eyes.”

Sebastian felt his insides give a lurch. Suddenly this was serious.

“Drop your hands at once.” He didn’t wait for the command to be followed. He snagged the little wrists and pulled them away. Ciel stared at him with wide, blinking eyes that were fringed pink with irritation. Sebastian clucked his tongue, disapproving. “Ah, look at this mess… What ever were you doing this for?”

Ciel’s face lit with the terror of an innocent. “It’s not my fault! I didn’t do anything! My eyes just started burning, and they won’t stop no matter what I do!” Ciel struggled in his butler’s grip, desperate to touch and rub and unwittingly worsen the situation. “It hurts, let me go—”

“Settle yourself down. Or am I unable to leave you alone for even a mere moment to retrieve the antidote for your suffering?” Sebastian said sternly. Exasperated, he freed one hand to pull the handkerchief from his lapel pocket. “If you must touch your eyes, do so with this. Your sleeves are the issue, so do not return to them. Do you understand me?”

Ciel was already busy grinding the clean cloth into his eye sockets. When Sebastian repeated himself, the young master immediately whined, “Yes, I get it, just help me already!”

To be so ungrateful when he’s at the mercy of whoever will come to his aid… Sebastian snorted a breath as he returned to fetch the milk from the kitchen. It was serving a different purpose than Sebastian had expected… and though it wasn’t as perfect a solution here as it was for taste buds, it certainly had to be better than that horrid paste of lead sugar and rainwater that other humans seemed to think was an acceptable cure for ocular inflammation. He returned with it and a clean cloth in less than a minute.

Ciel was still pressing the handkerchief into his eyes with both palms as if it would do any good. “Allow me to see now.” Sebastian pulled the child's hands away from his face without waiting. Ciel made a small noise of frustration in the back of his throat and swatted off the manhandling. There was a brief tussle of arms as both fought for control of the situation, but when the cold relief of the milk-soaked cloth touched his lids, Ciel froze beneath his butler's hand. The tantrum became a forgotten thing. All at once, Ciel sat as still and silent as a fawn while Sebastian dabbed at his eyes with salve.

Finally. Sebastian sighed loudly in relief. “There, there we are. Isn’t that better?”

“... What’s wrong with me…?” Ciel’s voice was thin and exhausted, the tension of a crisis at last flooding out of him.

Sebastian put on a wry grin. “If you hadn’t been indulging in your chewing habit, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said as he continued to tend to the site. “I soaked your sleeves in capsicum water a few days ago, so that if you tried putting them in your mouth when I had my back turned, the taste would repel you and I would know what you had done.”

“H-Huh…?” Ciel was half-awake and still working through his fear. “You… You did this?”

“You did this,” Sebastian corrected. “I was only trying to help you with your habit, and now here we are… Ah, but what were you rubbing your face for? This was not supposed to end up in your eyes.” A new, clean section of the cloth was selected and dipped in the milk.

Ciel stared at Sebastian, puzzled, bewildered. “This happened because of you?” His voice was picking up understanding, alongside volume.

“How could I expect that you would touch your eyes?” Sebastian huffed in exasperation. Ciel leaned away when he came at him with the cloth this time. “Young master, honestly…”

“Let me do it myself!” Ciel snatched the fabric away and began treating his own eyes, which were still rimmed in pink and watering in the aftermath. Sebastian watched him, narrowing his gaze. What a pathetic scene. The boy looked as miserable as a child who hadn’t gotten his way at a game and, in a show of disapproval at the injustice of life, let out a great bout of crocodile…

… tears.

“... The young master was having a bad dream before all of this, yes?” Sebastian asked.

Ciel had the entire upper half of his face hidden in the cloth now. “What do you care?”

“You were touching your eyes with your sleeves because you were crying.” No need to ask this time.

Ciel’s shoulders seized up. “Wh-What does it matter why I did it! It’s my clothing! I can do whatever I want with it! I don’t need to explain myself to you…” Then, with his eyes still covered by the cloth, Ciel dug down with his chin, slipped it beneath the collar of his pajamas, and clenched the material between his teeth to begin chewing.

Even after all this drama, he hasn’t given it up.

With nothing left in his arsenal, Sebastian simply observed for a moment in defeat. The boy was pressing a milk-soaked cloth to his face while gnawing the front of his nightclothes and sniveling relentlessly. It was no proud moment for either of them. Right now, they were not Earl and butler at all. They were again rendered the child and demon of their earliest days.

What was left to be done? Shaming his charge hadn’t done any good in destroying the habit, nor had this punishment. It was forcing Sebastian to assess if shame had really ever been useful to him beyond acting as a seasoning for a soul. It hadn’t changed this situation at all. Nothing Sebastian had tried so far had. If he wanted something to change, he had to try a different method. But what method would that even be? And how would that method serve to flavor the soul?

Sebastian did not have a clue. This was entirely new ground.

… Hmm. Something new.

Interesting.

“Let me take a look at your eyes now.” Sebastian nudged Ciel’s hands until they were finally lowered. The irritation was ebbing. Fortunate, but it made sense too: there couldn’t have been very much dried capsicum juice in those sleeves, really. “The skin looks improved. We should flush with water now instead.”

Ciel’s own personal irritation hadn’t gone anywhere. He said nothing, but he radiated anger and humiliation in equal measure from his person. Sebastian rinsed the cloth in the bathroom sink and returned with it still damp to press into the young master’s eyes next. Ciel sat and received this treatment like a kitten with raised hackles being bathed by his mother. This thought warmed Sebastian to the caretaking quite astoundingly.

Ciel let the collar of his shirt fall from his mouth to speak. “You can never do something like this to me again. Such tricks are barbaric and unacceptable for a butler.” His fingers were spread wide and nails clenching into the mattress as his pain was tended to.

Sebastian hummed a laugh. “So I will not. But surely this habit of yours must come to an end either way. How would you suggest I help you if not with force?”

Ciel grit his teeth. “If you don’t know what to do, then don’t do anything! Just leave me alone! If I just do this in private, who am I hurting anyway?”

“Your clothing and your reputation, certainly…” Sebastian mumbled. Ah, right; no more shame. “However, I have noticed that you only do this when no one but myself is watching. Thus, you clearly understand that this isn’t acceptable behavior.”

Ciel lowered his chin. “O-Of course I know… I just keep doing it without thinking about it…”

That was surprising. Sebastian took the towel away. “Really. It is involuntary?”

Ciel blinked starrily in the lamplight. He glanced down at the bed. “Sort of.”

“You do not mean to do it, nor want to?”

“I don’t mean to start…” Ciel furrowed his brow. “But when I notice I’m doing it, I don’t stop either.”

Hmm. “Why do you want to do this?” Sebastian had trouble keeping confusion out of his voice. “It is very unlike you and it is quite unseemly. Lady Midford would have a fit if she knew.”

Mortification washed over Ciel’s expression at the mention of aunt. “I don’t want to do this,” he explained hastily. “It’s just that I can’t stop. It feels good for some reason.” And then Ciel nearly put his sleeve in his mouth again, but flinched away at Sebastian’s warning. “See! I don’t mean to!” he cried, blushing again. He looked at Sebastian helplessly, indignantly, from the tops of his eyes. “I don’t mean to, all right… I don’t mean to…”

Sebastian was very surprised. All this time, the two of them were on the same page. Ciel didn’t like the behavior either. He was simply at its mercy. Was that why shaming him had had no effect? Because it was already a matter of shame, not a matter of pride?

And — granted the previous was the case — if shame removed pride, then would pride remove shame?

There was only one way to find out.

“Let us get you into a new nightshirt,” Sebastian said. Ciel opened his mouth, and Sebastian interjected, “There will be no tricks this time. It is late, and the important thing now is getting you back to sleep so that tomorrow’s schedule isn’t a wreck. If you chew your sleeves tonight, then so be it. We will work out a new strategy in the morning.”

The boy’s posture slumped. “… Mmn. Fine.”

Ciel was subdued as the pajamas were swapped out. He kept touching his eyes, which were improved but likely rather dried out from their ordeal. He looked like he wanted to be angry still but wasn’t sure how to go about expressing it in this circumstance. As usual, he had no choice but to rely on the being that would one day claim his soul, and it likely left him feeling disturbed. Sebastian at least knew that much from prior contracts. What he didn’t know was what their ‘new strategy’ for stopping the sleeve-biting was going to be.

“Would you still want me to stay here until you fall asleep?” Sebastian offered as he walked his charge back to bed.

Ciel climbed delicately onto the enormous mattress that was meant for a married couple, not a single small child. He rubbed his contract eye and glared at Sebastian with the blue one. “Fine. But that doesn’t mean I’m happy with you,” he said at last. “You’re going to make up for this stupid prank. It was cruel. It goes completely against a ‘butler’s aesthetic,’ or however it is you put it.”

Sebastian narrowed his gaze but decided to concede. They shouldn’t fight anymore right now. “… Perhaps you are right. I went too far today.”

“You definitely went too far.” The boy might’ve meant to sound angry but it came out as more of a plea.

Sebastian stood against the wall and waited for Ciel to tuck himself back into bed before extinguishing the light from the room. “Tomorrow, we will discuss a plan. Until then… I hope you are able to dream pleasantly. Goodnight, young master.”

Ciel curled up in bed. He stayed awake for longer than usual, nearly half an hour. But eventually there was a very careful shifting sound, and Sebastian registered that Ciel must be chewing his sleeves again. As promised, Sebastian did not put an end to the behavior, and very soon after the habit started up, the young master slipped off to sleep.

This proved that the action soothed him. It wasn’t just mindless incivility: it served a purpose, even for a half-grown child. How fascinating… and yet, it certainly could not continue. The soul of a wretched little orphan was no worthy meal. If Sebastian wanted to dine on the soul of a confident earl who left childhood behind him and never looked back, it meant Sebastian had to do whatever it took to instill that confidence. Even if that included being kind and understanding — temporarily, of course.

So then: where to begin?

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“Oh, goodness… Young master, do hold still for a moment. You’ve just managed to sully your right cuff with frosting.”

At the prompting of his butler, thirteen-year-old Ciel Phantomhive did not hold still. He instead curved his wrist around to analyze the situation for himself. “Oh, blast. Well, I had better not waste perfectly good chocolate.” Assessment complete, the boy unceremoniously opened his mouth and lipped the swath of frosting right off.

Sebastian could not refrain from grimacing. “Young master, must you forget your manners…”

Ciel was undaunted, smug even. “It’s my clothing, so I can do as I like.” He then held out his arm for Sebastian to have a chance at the remaining smear. “Here.”

There was nothing that could be done now though. “I’m afraid yellow soap and a turn at the washboard is the cure for this. We shall have to return to the bedroom and get you a new shirt.”

Ciel waved him off and continued with his dessert. “It’s already after dinnertime, so who cares. The servants won’t. And now I don’t have to worry about eating so carefully either…” Ciel licked the end of his finger almost cheerfully and helped himself to a heaping forkful of amandine cake.

Sebastian wanted to show more disapproval, but a memory stirred that turned one corner of his mouth up instead of down. “Young master, do you recall when chewing on your sleeves used to be a habit for you?”

Ciel swallowed and pinkened slightly with either embarrassment or disdain (probably both). “Are you seriously asking if I remember the night you put a spicy substance on my pajamas and allowed me to burn my eyes with it?”

Sebastian’s smile became sheepish. “Yes, that was the event, wasn't it… I still had plenty left to learn about how to treat children back then. Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you also remember how we came about helping you with your habit?”

Ciel lapped the prongs of his fork as if he were holding a lollipop. “Now I do. You asked me what I thought would be the way to handle it, and I said that you should reward me with dessert for breakfast if I stopped chewing whenever you asked me to.”

Sebastian nodded slowly, affirmatively. “To your credit, it did do the trick. It only took a few weeks for you to give up your habit altogether after that.”

“But there’s no chance you would ever let me have dessert for breakfast now,” Ciel snickered.

Sebastian followed with a chuckle of his own. “As I said, I had plenty yet to learn about how to treat children.” Ciel rolled his eyes, probably sour about being referred to as a child. Sebastian was in opposite spirits. “I don’t believe I ever properly apologized for the way I treated you back then.”

Ciel stared. Behind him through the window, the sun spangled through the tree limbs on its slow descent below the horizon. “You mean to tell me that you’re actually sorry about it?”

“What pride is there to be found, in tricking someone so young and vulnerable?” Sebastian bowed his conciliation. “It was a shameful display. I should like to do better in the future.”

“...” Ciel glanced away after a few moments. “Apologies don’t become you. They only make you look all the more twisted for the things you don’t apologize for.”

“Ah, well, that is probably true.” Sebastian straightened up, feeling a strange sort of fondness.

“Besides,” Ciel made a mischievous expression, all too comfortable heckling a demon, for better or worse, “the old Sebastian was much smarter than the current Sebastian in one way.”

‘Current Sebastian’ tilted his chin inquiringly. “Oh? And dare I ask what way that is?”

Ciel scraped the last bit of cake off of his plate with his fork. “The old you knew that the best way to apologize is with chocolate.”

After a moment, Sebastian raised both eyebrows high. “Hmm, is that so? What a relief it is, then, that you have stated that apologies don’t become me.”

“W-Wait, wait, I only meant verbal apologies. Cake apologies are another matter.”

“Very good. Then I shall be sure to learn a recipe with semolina and chard for next time.”

“Chard? In a cake? Ugh, what a revolting idea. Surely your butler aesthetic would never let you serve that. Especially not as an apology.”

“Then perhaps the young master should not request any further ‘cake apologies’ lest he want to find out for certain. Now, let me clear your plate, and then it’s back to your vocabulary textbooks for a little evening practice. There are only three days remaining until we head out for Germany, and the young master’s pronunciation yet leaves something to be desired…”

#happy dadbastian week!#I just checked the version history and I actually started writing this in 2020 #it was only for Dadbastian week that I decided I ought to finish it. it was a good reason to do so and I'm glad it gave me the opportunity

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writing-with-sophia · 4 months

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Hello dear,

I recently found your page. Thank you so much for inspiring us! Glad I found ur account.

I thought of asking you....

I started to write 5 years ago. From last year may I started to put my work online.

Now, I feel like emotions arent flowing like they used to flow( I m experiencing burnout , seeking help as well)

Writing is only thing I have which helps me to understand and feel. I feel like I have to feel first to write about it.

Can you give me any advice how I can slowly get back to writing again. I started to feel like me and words now lives on parallel lines waiting for reunion.

I really want to share my work with lovely people, I dont care much about followers as long it reaches to right people who needs it. I want to explore human emotions to extent where we all shine through our scars.

Will wait for respone. Lots of love.

Take care.

First, thank you for your compliments. I'm glad to have met lovely followers like you too. I understand your situation very well right now because I have also gone through the same thing. Don't worry, this is an inevitable process in writing that I believe every writer or author has encountered at least once. In fact, there is no way I can help you, as each person is different. But, I can give you few ways I did.

Firstly, you can take a break and engage in activities that recharge you. This could include reading, spending time in nature, practicing self-care, or pursuing other hobbies that bring you joy. The more comfortable you are, the easier it will be to write. Don't put too much pressure on yourself, it will only make you more stuck.

Secondly, seek your inspiration by engage with different forms of art, such as reading books, watching movies, listening to music, or visiting exhibitions. You can also start a person journal where you can freely express your thoughts, emotions, experiences, and save new ideas.

You should start from small and set realistic writing goals for yourself. Instead of pressuring yourself to write a complete story or novel, focus on smaller writing exercises or prompts. Gradually increase the time and effort you dedicate to writing as you regain your rhythm.

Remember, the process of rediscovering your writing passion may take time. So be patient with yourself and allow yourself the space to heal and rejuvenate. Writing should be a joyful and fulfilling experience, so focus on reconnecting with your own emotions and finding your unique voice.

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corainne · 1 year

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While I’m fighting for my life trying to hammer this fic into shape and actually finish it, have what is the first part of the first chapter of baby Nightingale at Casterbrook

The night before he first left for Casterbrook his Uncle Stanley took him aside, to impart some last advice that he believed would help Thomas at school. That his own experiences at Casterbrook would turn out to be fundamentally different to those of Stanley, who could only be considered a wizard of average abilities if one were feeling particularly charitable, Thomas had had no way of knowing that night.

"And stay away from that Mellenby boy," Stanley said at last, straightening out the creases that had formed around his knees as he had knelt before Thomas, "if he is anything like his father he is nothing but trouble"

Had Stanley raised any children of his own he would have known that prohibition only inspired adverse action. As it was, his words only made Thomas want to meet David Mellenby more, whoever that was.

Casterbrook, it turned out, was everything he had hoped it would be and more.They were a small group, as years at Casterbrook were prone to be, all of them following in the footsteps of a father or, as was the case for Thomas, an uncle. While he had never met any of the boys before his arrival at Casterbrook, when he wrote to Stanley - supplying, as he had been instructed to do beforehand, a complete list of all the other boys in his form - his uncle knew how each of them was connected to the Folly.

No doubt the others were informed in similar fashion, because within only a few days they had formed a social hierarchy amongst themselves that was eerily reminiscent of the positions their relatives occupied within the Folly. James Ballantine Jr, whose father - James Ballentine Sr - occupied a senior position within the Folly, quickly established himself as the leader of their year, always ready to order the others around and to punish them whenever they overstepped his mercurial rulings. Most of his close circle were the sons and nephews of other influential or notable practitioners, who seemed utterly convinced that those accomplishments entitled them to special treatment at Casterbrook. Thomas, who had the poor fortune that Stanley Nightingale wasn’t much interested in the Folly, apart from it’s convenient location in London and rather extensive wine cellar, and that his grandfather hadn’t done anything of note since losing his bid for Master of the Folly the previous decade, found himself adrift for the first few weeks.

If he had been given to introspection he might have admitted that he was lonely,friendless as he was, but he'd always had the ability to lock away his troubles in some hidden corner of his mind. His situation quickly changed, however, once they began to learn magic - actual, practical magic and not the excruciatingly boring theory behind all of it that had dominated the first two months or so of lessons.

When their teacher had finished preaching the safety precautions to them one last time and finally demonstrated a werelight for the very first time, asking them all to feel for the formula he was using Thomas did so with ease. It still took him a little over a week until a werelight finally appeared above his outstretched palm, but when it finally did he felt such a clear, exhilarating thrill go through his body, like he had never felt before, that he let out a joyful cheer that made every person in the room turn towards him. He'd been sitting on his own, at the very back of the room, so everyone had a clear view of the warm globe that only existed because Thomas had willed it to be. None of the others, even those who had bragged upon their arrival that they’d been taught the most fundamental magic at home, had managed a werelight so far, and by the time even Walter Cholmondeley, who went on to accomplish great success in the field of theoretical magic but remained a mere amateur in the application of it for the rest of his life, managed a small, rather unstable werelight about three weeks later Thomas's werelight was controlled and evenly lit, and he had figured out how to make it grow and shrink in size.

Unsurprisingly this early success made him rather more popular with the other boys, as well as ingratiate him with the Masters. At night he would light up the dorm with his spell while the others tried to replicate it - so early on in their time at school even the laziest of them - Ballentine - was still eager to master his first spell. Thus Thomas suddenly found himself amongst a large group of boys at mealtimes and quickly fell in with the group that had formed around Ballentine, and it was those boys Thomas spent the majority of his remaining first year at Casterbrook. Busy exploring the grounds with Ballentine and Lazy Arse Dance, and sneaking into the kitchens at night with Horace Greenway, stuffing their pockets with sweets and small cakes to carry back to their dorm, Thomas barely noticed his first term pass by in nothing more than the blink of an eye. He returned home for Christmas full of tales about Casterbrook but no one who wanted to hear them. With his mother too busy most of the time, his father uninterested as always, his siblings mostly older than him and therefore more knowledgeable about school and indeed most things in life, the only one he could talk to was Daisy, his only younger sibling, but at five she was wont to burst into tears every time he mentioned Casterbrook, because she didn’t understand why she couldn’t learn magic as well when she was older. Ultimately Stephen, eleven months older than Thomas, humoured him a week into their time at home and listened to everything Thomas had to tell, and it was very well that he had done so, because if he hadn’t it was more than likely that it all would have burst out of him sooner rather than later.

By the time summer came Thomas had less news to share, but instead more than just two spells that he could show his siblings. He'd joined the school choir and started playing rugby, of which the former delighted his mother to no end and the matter caused his brothers to finally let him play with them in the garden, even though five players was an awkward number. That problem solved itself, at least for a short time, when their Aunt Anthea arrived with her three sons in tow. The oldest, Andrew, was a year younger than Thomas, and since they were desperate for a sixth player he was deemed old enough by Richard and Joseph to participate in their games. Or at least until Andrew set fire to the pagoda and Anthea send him back home to stay with his father until he could be shipped off to school and would become someone else’s problem for most of the year.

He thus started his second form in high spirits, although that was not meant to last for long. At the end of the last term their theory teacher had been forced to resign – Thomas later found out that it was due to a liason with one of the older students they’d been carrying on for a few years, not that he was the only Master guilty of that – and the headmaster, who’d previously only taught lower and upper sixth form, began teaching the lower forms as well. The old warhorse - for that was what the students called him amongst themselves - was famously bad at remembering names and had them sit alphabetically so that he could keep them apart more easily. And that was how he first became involuntarily acquaintanced with David Mellenby.

Mellenby was a good bit shorter than Thomas, with a round face topped by blonde curls that were cut close to his scalp. His eyes shone with intelligence, and whispered of a friendliness Thomas had yet to experience from Mellenby. From the very first day of school Mellenby had made it clear that he had little interest in most, if any, of the other boys. His father was even more important than Ballentine Sr was, and his older brother was to forms above them at Casterbrook, which under normal circumstances would have put him in the perfect position to become the most popular boy in the form, but that first evening, when they had all been trying their best to make a good impression Mellenby had taken an armful of books - none of which they'd needed to read for class - and marched off towards his bed without a word to any of them. He'd drawn the curtains and hadn’t emerged until the next morning. So far his attitude hadn’t changed much, and Thomas felt that Mellenby thought himself superior to all of them. He certainly couldn’t remember ever speaking to him outside of class.

In any case his books seemed to be more important to him than genuine human connection. What was important to him, and anyone forced to spend even five minutes in the same classroom as Mellenby, was academic validation. The year before Thomas had mostly ignored Mellenby as best as he could, not particularly inclined to spend the standoffish boy always sitting in the front row any mind, but now it was impossible not to notice that he raised his hand at every question, no matter which class, even in Latin and Ancient Greek where he seemed to struggle, at least to his standards. It didn’t matter what it was the Masters wanted to know, Mellenby's hand shot up before Thomas could even process the questions and more often than not his hand came dangerously close to striking Thomas in the face. And while Mellenby’s unrelenting efforts to turn theory class into a contact sport certainly made the lessons more interesting and forced him to actually pay more attention than he would have otherwise done, it was also rather annoying.

But naturally it wasn’t enough that Thomas had to suffer Mellenby’s presence in class, but he was forced to spend even more time with him in the afternoons. The old warhorse preferred the essays they had to write on the formae they were learning to be done in pars, so on at least one afternoon each week Mellenby dragged him to the library, where all Thomas could do was stare longingly out of the window and watch the other students unwind after their classes, until at least the first draft of their essay was finished and Mellenby was satisfied with their efforts.

On one of those days, perhaps two or three months into the term, a package had just arrived from his Uncle Stanley, who’d recently been in America. Since Thomas had started at Casterbrook Stanley had begun sending Thomas pulp magazine’s for him to read, and he’d taken a particular liking to Adventure, an American publication, which he could only get his hands on when Stanley, or one of his many friends, travelled to the States. Most of the issues Stanley had sent him were tucked away under his pillow in the dorm, but he had tucked the oldest between the pages of one of his school books, eager to finally read the continuation of one of his favourite stories. Mellenby had stayed behind after physics class to ask their teacher a dozen or so questions and Thomas had trudged towards the library on his own, because he finally wanted to get to his magazine, and because he was sure he wouldn’t have understood what Mellenby was asking about even if he had stayed.

“What are you reading?” A voice – Mellenby – asked suddenly and Thomas flinched. He hadn’t noticed Mellenby approach, and was sure he’d be facing a lecture about not getting a head start on their essay in the very near future.

“Adventure,” Thomas said, a tad defensively, and held up the magazine so Mellenby could see the cover.

“I don’t know what that is,” Mellenby said, and Thomas was sure it had been difficult for him to admit.

“It’s an adventure magazine from America. My uncle buys them for me when he is overseas”

He expected some witty retort from Mellenby about the inferior quality of pulp magazines, but instead he asked, “Are they any good?”

“I think so,” Thomas said, “even better than the British magazines”

Mellenby shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never read one”

“Why not?” Thomas asked, somewhat shocked. He’d never heard of anyone his age who hadn’t read at least some pulp magazines. Even his sister Drina had, and she was a frightful bore.

“My father won’t let us buy them. He says they aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on”

“And your mother agrees?” Surely she would have come to her children’s aid.

“My mother is dead,” Mellenby said, his voice betraying no emotion on the matter, “she died when I was born”

“Oh,” Thomas said, “If you want you can read some of mine. I’ve got a few upstairs, and I can bring even more from home after Christmas”

Mellenby seemed surprised. “Honestly? You really mean that?”

“Why would I offer if I didn’t”

Mellenby, it turned out, read a lot, and he did so with alarming speed. By the time Thomas was on a train back to Devon for the holidays Mellenby had read all of the magazine’s Thomas had brought with him for the entire term, and as far as Thomas could tell his schoolwork hadn’t suffered the least because of it, although Thomas thought that his presence had become somewhat more bearable. When it came time to pack for his return to Casterbrook Thomas made sure to bring all the magazines he had at home.

“You should stop answering all the questions,” Thomas told Mellenby one sunny afternoon, “in class.”

He wasn’t sure why Mellenby had been trailing after him like a lost puppy with his pocket watch in hand, but he suspected it had something to do with the small rain cloud that had been following Thomas around for the past few minutes, a punishment for daydreaming in class. Other masters would have beaten him for the same offence, but the headmaster seemed to prefer a more psychological kind of punishment.

“Why?” Mellenby asked, “because the other chaps think I’m a swot?”

There was nothing to do about that now, hadn’t been since their first night of school, when Mellenby had spent the night reading in some textbooks he had borrowed from his older brother instead of socialising with the other boys. Unsurprisingly David had no more than one friend, Walter, equally bookish if not quite as smart. “No,” Thomas said, “because it makes them lazy. If they know you’re going to answer all the questions, why bother learning the answers themselves?”

If the masters were to be believed they were the worst year to go through Casterbrook in more than a generation, and Thomas was inclined to believe them. There weren’t many troubles with the practical use of magic, as it was taught to them, but with the theoretical aspects. Few but Mellenby even bothered opening their books before the lessons, let alone taking notes during them.

“But I know the answers,” Mellenby, typical of him, didn’t seem to understand Thomas’ meaning.

“You know you know the answers, and God knows the masters know you know. Who else matters?” Thomas said, “If you must show off, why not only answer three out of four questions? The uncertainty will drive the others to pull their socks up”

“And you?” asked Mellenby, “Will you pull your socks up?”

Perhaps he did have a point there.

Thomas did not pull his socks up, Not quite yet, at least. No matter how much Mellenby and the Masters might have disapproved, ther were simply more interesting things than the study of theory and some science that diverted his attention, science and magic chiefly among them, There was nothing quitle like the feeling of utter joy and freedom both caused, and Thomas was loath to give up either in favour of endless hours spend in the dreary library. He knew, just like anyone who’d spend even the smallest amount of time with him could suspect, that he was not going to end up as either a scientist or a teacher – not that there were other options as far as Mellenby was concerned. At thirteen he’d mastered a look of utter disapproval that could – albeit it rarely – move Thomas to study.

That changed when old Dudders – the Master who taught chemistry, a subject no one but Mellenby could find any pleasure in – asked him to stay behind after one of the lessons shortly after Easter during his second term, and told him in no uncertain terms that if his work didn’t greatly improve over the last weeks of term he’d bee banned from playing rugby after the hols.

So it was his determination to keep playing, more than anything else that finally motivated him to start learning. He hunted down Mellenby that very afternoon and asked him – begged him even – to help Thomas understand the sciences, a next to impossible feat. It was just his luck that Mellenby liked a challenge and considered nothing in the world to be impossible.

Once Mellenby had begun a project it was difficult to dissuade him from it again, as Thomas quickly discovered. Over the next few weeks he learned more about chemistry, physics and mathematics than he had ever before, certainly more than he could ever need to know, and while he truly understood nothing of it, Mellenby’s explanations were at least enough to get him through the exams without too many problems, and with better results than he had ever thought possible. He barely slept or ate, and as soon as Casterbrook had disappeared behind him for the summer he had forgotten everything Mellenby had hammered into his skill, but he had saved his spot on the rugby team, and that was all that mattered to Thomas.

When the first letter from Mellenby arrived Thomas was more than a little surprised. They’d spend more time together recently, yes, but they’d hardly become friends. Or so Thomas had thought. Mellenby certainly hadn’t behaved as if he had any interest in spending more time with Thomas outside of lessons and the library, but when he invited Thomas to come visit him at his family home in [Oxfordshire] Thomas began to suspect that he simply hadn’t been brave enough to broach the topic. After all Mellenby didn’t seem to have very many friends. The only one at school he truly seemed to get along with well was Cholmondeley, who was nearly as bookish as Mellenby, even if he’d been struggling with magic since the beginning, a problem which Mellenby decidedly lacked.

Thomas tried to ask his mother if he could go, but discovered that she’d retired to her room with a headache, attempted to get his father’s attention, but he was busy as always, and ended up knocking on his sister’s door, who as the eldest daughter of the family might as well have been a second mother.

“I don’t see why not,” she said, angling her body so Thomas could not see inside her room, “but you’ll have to be back in time for grandfather’s birthday, the entire family is coming”

He promised that he would, and bounded off to reply to Mellenby’s letter. Three days later he was on a train bound north.

#i keep thinking that this part is too rushed and short but it's actually 3k #rivers of london

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a-dragons-journal · 1 year

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For most of my life I've had what I call my "Inner Me", a being who has gone on many adventures, talked to many people and saved their reality itself countless times while my physical body has developed and grown. They've grown and changed parallel to me, having their own life while I've had mine. We have learned from each others' experiences and love the people in each others' lives. We talk to each other, mostly indirectly, to the point I feel like I know near everything about them. 1/?

I'm just gonna go ahead and say straight-up: I cannot answer this for you. Nobody can answer this for you but you, unfortunately, and I know how much that sucks when you really don't know how to go forward, but it's true. I can try to give some advice on how to figure it out, but the experiences overlap enough that sometimes it's just so hard to tell as to be impossible to tell from anyone's perspective but yours, and sometimes it really does come down to picking what feels best to you/the two of you and going from there.

The best advice I can give:

My best attempt at a read on the situation: The self-image incongruence makes me lean toward parallel life kintype, as does the bleedthrough of selfness, but on the flipside the fact that you communicate with each other - even mostly indirectly - makes me lean toward some form of plurality, since that's not a typical experience with kintypes. I am aware this is thoroughly unhelpful as a tiebreaker, sorry.

If you haven't already, ask them. My experience with me-not-me thoughtforms is somewhat different (that being my daemon), but he's got a better instinctive grasp on his exact nature than I do. Talk about this with your Inner You, if you haven't already, and get their opinions - if they answer "are we the same person" with "no," you've pretty well got your answer. Even if they don't have a clear answer for you, the dialogue may help y'all figure things out. (And, again, I'll point out that if you can get a clear dialogue, that's a pretty strong point in favor of some form of plurality.)

I feel like these two things are... not mutually exclusive, tbh. I believe @dinocanid has spoken about having kintypes who are also headmates (or vice versa, however you want to look at it) before, though I could be misremembering?

I hate to bring this up as another possibility, but the sentences "they have always felt like they're the MORE REAL Me than the one on this reality. Like, I have a physical body, I can feel things with it and I've gone through stuff, but other than that? I feel like the rest of me is more existent in my Inner Me's reality," especially in combination with your Inner You being a hero figure in their world, makes me want to bring up MADD, Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder, as something you may want to look into. It only needs to be a concern if this is negatively impacting your life, which I don't know if it is from that phrase, but - if it is, then something to keep in mind.

#otherkin #fictionkin #parallel life #plurality #plural system #i'm sorry anon the gray-area edge cases are always gonna be a trip to figure out and there is a limited amount anyone can do about that #rani talks #asked and answered #anonymous

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boy-gender · 1 year

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hey dude, this might be a loaded question so no need to reply if you don't want to. but how do you deal with being surrounded by transphobia, like hearing people say transphobic shit and having to see radfem blogs/accounts or posts? a year ago i started to argue and beef with any terf i came across on here because of how fed up i was with being treated like shit and being walked all over, as a trans guy. but obviously that only did damage to my mental state and was a form of self-harm where i would go on terf blogs and hate read and argue with them. i still do it now sometimes and i'm trying to stop but if i do, i feel otherwise helpless in this world seemingly filled with transphobia. i just want to be myself and exist as i am, without weird cunts calling me a fetishist or a tranny or a mentally ill lesbian for being t4t. radfems and their allies make me so angry and i feel like if i don't at least show them that i hate them, they will start to abuse me again.

idk i have a lot more to say on this situation but yeah. do you have any advice or any experience on this?

I have very much been in your position, and sometimes I still fall into old habits of seeking out arguments online. It never makes me feel better, but I get so angry I feel like I'll explode if I don't put it somewhere. I actually found a few things that helped me reframe it though:

First, if I get into an argument here, on this blog, I am platforming the hate. I have to reblog it to argue with it, which means I am passing it on. This blog has hundreds and hundreds of followers, most of whom I assume are trans. Do I want to be a part of exposing them to the vitriol I see? It's bad enough I had to see it, I don't want to inflict it on other people. There are going to be trans people here who aren't as strong as me, who are in a bad place, who are in active crisis, and their safety is more important than an argument. Them seeing that one last bit of crap, that one horrible sentence that really sticks with them, could be the thing they torture themselves with past the breaking point. I don't want to give that to people.

This is why I don't reblog terfs to argue with them, I don't ever post the hatemail I get, and I don't show off hate I find in the wild. If I find something like a law that is hateful that can be fought against and has actionable options, or if someone is confused but I feel they're asking something in good faith and can be corrected, those I will reblog and speak about. I'll even talk about my own personal horrible experiences, because those are my stories and I can control how impactful I write them and how much of the nastiness of them I pass on. But those are very different scenarios.

I've started, when I see hate, to focus on my followers instead, and ask myself: do they need to see this? can anything be accomplished by having more eyes on this? can anything i say change the situation? could the harm done by passing this on outweigh any benefit? And once I've assessed those risks, I often find it isn't worth the argument. The best way to handle terfs is to block them, don't platform them, report them if you see something that violates community guidelines, and mark them as red on shinigami eyes to give others a heads up. You can even make a post like "hey username123 is a terf, you should block them" without passing on the shit they say.

But those are all public facing problems. I have a private tiktok, I have sideblogs with no followers/I remove the followers, and there are anonymous options like reddit and other worse cesspools. No risk of passing that shit on, so what holds me back from going there and having a field day?

One simple tenet. My being trans, being vocally and visibly and obnoxiously trans, annoys them far more than anything I can ever say. Terfs are, at the heart, a reactionary group. They don't exist without something to react to. Like a fire slowly being cut off from oxygen, they will wither and kill each other in infighting if left in isolation. Atleast the regular online scum will. This doesn't apply to ones that have the actual power to lobby for real world harm like joanne and the other big ones- but the odds of you talking to them online are slim. Let the terfs implode on each other and continue to exist. Your existence in a world that wants you dead is a radical act of defiance, and your existence despite what terfs say to you makes them froth at the mouth. No fact you could educate them with, no insult you could give them, will ever make them as upset as you simply living your trans life, thriving.

Piss them off with queer joy, is what I'm saying. It's far more effective. Not only do I not post hate I get, I never vagueblog or acknowledge it either. People sit there refreshing my blog constantly waiting to see the attention I'll give them with a snappy reply, and it never comes, and then they refresh more. I can literally see them doing this with an IP tracker and it's hilarious to me. What I do instead is for every piece of hate about trans people, I make two positivity posts about trans people. I FLOOD the tags with positivity and support. I drown out the hate that no one knows I got- because surely someone else has gotten it too. To me it's reassuring to go to a tag and see the love outweigh the hate- which it does. For every terf you find dozens of trans people in love with who they are. I would rather be a part of that. I'd rather pass that on.

It's also really rewarding. I can see in the tags of my reblogs- some posts have thousands- of people saying they didn't know they had options for their lives, thanking me, thanking other people who contributed to the thread, being so reassured and excited to learn there's hope. I suggest not just reblogging positivity, but also creating your own. Put your defiance into the world and let it give other people strength, and then when they come back and comment on it, take strength from them.

As for the world at large? Maybe I'm a bit more nihilistic, but I look at it two ways. First, trans people can never be totally eradicated via genocide. We are a group that occurs naturally and we will always grow back. If every trans person in the world were killed right now, and all knowledge of us erased, within a decade there would be more people who realized they were trans. They might lack community, they might lack the vocabulary to describe themselves, but they will exist again. Our culture might die- our people will survive. It will be horrific and tragic and a blight on the world that what was here was lost, but trans people and nonbinary people and gnc people and queer people will always grow back again, make a new community, carve out a new place in history. We always have, we always will. An interrupted history is still a history.

Second, the majority of people do not want us dead. The system may want us dead, and a very vocal minority with a lot of money and resources want us dead. But polls show over half of gen z identifies as some type of queer. Polls show most people disapprove of us being political hockey pucks. The violent reaction to us that you see is the death rattle of the conservatives, and they know this, which is why they're using the last of their power to do one last act of catastrophic harm. They only have the power to attack the most disenfranchised among us- queer people, PoC, the mentally ill or disabled, the extremely poor- and they will use it. Historically bigots get loudest right before their entire platform collapses in the mainstream. If we make it through the next decade, through the isolation and poverty and violence, we've made it. That's a big if for some of us. For many of us, we won't make it as individuals. I'm not gonna sugarcoat that. But our people will live on, and new trans people will come after we are gone

Now I'm speaking directly to you, anon. For now, my biggest motivator I can give you is to be here to see victory. Endure. Stay with us. I'm staying whether I like it or not. Stay to see all the queer people who will come next and all the beauty they'll bring and the things we will make. Come sit on my picnic blanket and watch the sunset with me. We might not be okay, but we can be not okay together, and we can start getting better together after that.

#long post #transphobia #trans positivity #trans pride #queer pride #queer resistance #trans resistance #og #transblr

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confessionsofanasexual · 8 months

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Hi, so I'm very confused

For a while now I've had the idea that I'm somewhere on the ace spectrum, demisexual to be exact. Since I relate to things like love isn't everything, look away at kiss scenes since it's a private affair to me, sometimes I get confused in romantic or seggsual situations (also I have autism), need to know someone before I'll even think about liking them & also daydream about romantic scenarios from characters in a series that I watch.

I'd like to be in a relationship, but in a slow pace. Btw I haven't dated anyone, wasn't very interested at the time. I don't mind to date anyone? (of any gender?), bc I invest more on someone's personality than looks. Idk if I simply don't care or mind, bc yeah Idk anymore.

Also like the idea of a qpr? Like you can decide with your partner what you want and how (if I understand it correctly), it sounds amazing with no expectations!

I'm not like seggs repulsed or something, does that count? Idk, guess I'll see if I want it or not...?

Sooo yeah, can anyone give me advice or suggest something that can help me figure this shit out?

Take things at your own pace and don't go into dating or being in a relationship with a lot of pressure. It's sometimes just good to enter dating with an open mind, don't have any expectations, and just do it for fun to see where it goes. It makes first dates and starting dating that much easier. You will not click with everyone. You will not be in a healthy relationship with everyone - sometimes it's just that you're not compatible and that's okay. It's good to explore what you like and don't like in a relationship.

I think any relationship is much easier if you do communicate. Communicate if you want sex, if you don't want sex. If you want to hold hands or have different forms of physical contact. Communicate if you don't want to be touched. Keep in mind that it might change, and that's okay. Open and constant communication is good and healthy. It can help you discuss problems you're having without it escalating to a fight.

I do find it's easier dating someone else that's queer, and maybe even easier dating someone that's on the ace/aro spectrum. It helps because you can relate with each other in the experiences you have. (Same thing can be true with dating a person that's trans if you're trans. Of course, you don't have to, but it's a common foundation)

I'm also (likely) autistic. So dating my now boyfriend was a bit of a shock at how different our minds work. It's not bad, but it was an oh shit, I'm autistic and my whole family is likely autistic - most people are not like this. It takes a lot of communication so your partner knows what behaviors are normal for you. I'm quiet and speak in monotone a lot, but it doesn't mean I'm mad. I also have a hard time telling if they're joking, so we limit that amount of teasing.

But a lot of this is also good advice for having a friendship. Communicate. Look for people with similar values to yourself. Have fun and be safe.

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mejomonster · 9 months

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So like. I'm demisexual and demiromantic and. In general I never thought much of it in terms of "how it might effect forming relationships." Because while yes for me, the crush will take months to even exist and so will the sexual desire, the actual process on my end Appeared Similar to me on the surface right? Like... I find a person who's aesthetically okay or nice, who seems to be fun to talk to or hang out with. I ask them out, or they ask me out. We go out on dates or hang out as friends and wait to see if things get "serious." Which on my end, apparently different from their end (but I never thought about it much), was waiting to see if I'd even want to touch them or them to touch me. Seeing if I'd eventually feel butterflies and get excited that they looked at me and get all warm and fuzzy inside thinking about how cool and sweet and awesome I think they are. And if after a few to several months I felt nothing? I guess call it quits and be friends, or not even friends if we didn't even click that much. And like... I figured from the other person's end, people date and take things slow getting to know each other ALL THE TIME. Its not particularly weird if I don't want to kiss until we go from dating to committed. It doesn't really matter much if I actually like them or not until 3 months later, if the results of liking them don't really Have to progress until we are committed. Then yeah, they may want to be physical or be mushy, and by then I'll be on the same page as them so it's fine.

Absolute ramble about demi dating below ToT (obviously very colored by my own experiences and not universal to others by any means)

But :c real life is messy and unfortunately it does seem my feelings being different than theirs? Does make things kinda not what I'd hope. See, in real life, I would Hope if someone likes me and worries i don't like them they would SAY something instead of silently feeling rejected. Instead, people tend to silently think "I didn't get a first date kiss! They see me as only a friend! Better move on! (Even though THEY asked me out on a romantic date, so they said they want to date, the lack of kiss is a sign they don't want to date after all! Even though they Said Nothing of the sort)." Or they think "oh i think sex is normal after a month of dating, but my partner still hasn't even joked about sex or kissed me... yeah I guess they don't desire me, I'm gonna get serious with someone else who does" when like... goddamn all those people would have to do is... tell me what they are concerned about and let me answer. Yes, it's okay if they WANT a partner who kisses on date 1. That's fine to stop seeing me for. But if they don't really care about when a kiss happens, they just want to know I really Do want to be with them? They could've asked and assuaged their fears with the truth. And this kind of implicit stupid guessing game of X action or lack of action means Y even though my partner NEVER SAID ANYTHING goes on and on.

I'm straightforward and honest. I feel something or worry, I say it. If I didn't say it then I'm not thinking about it or going to act on it, because I think it'd be stupid if I acted on something I don't even try to communicate about first. Now to be fair, as I get older and people are more mature, communication patches up such situations a little better.

But just a little.

I've had a friend tell me I need to start telling people I'm demi on a first date AND tell them i need X months to get to know them before we can get X Y Z intimate. Which is kind of a shock to me, because I know some allosexual alloromantic people who wait to kiss until full on marriage. But I have to thoroughly explain why I need to wait a few months to kiss, or taking the seeing each other casual like friends for a while first, because otherwise people will just assume I'm uninterested??? Why is it an alloromantic who wants to wait a year for marriage is fine. But whatever, I'll take the advice next time and say I'm demi and explain. Said friend also said being demi means I may seem unavailable so maybe that's why I attract the unavailable who don't want relationships anyway and... oh boy. I don't even know how I'd go about fixing that. I can communicate Gratuitiously More, like to an annoying degree more so there's no doubt I've brought up how much I'm very much INTO long term dating for a partner I deeply love lol. But. Great. Great problem to have.-.-

Also as I've gotten older... I've realized the stuff I thought were full on lies like "falling in love in a week" might be real for alloromantic people. Like? I always figured you date casually to get to know someone, judge their compatibility and safety (red flags or green), and get emotionally attached over time. So the casual period when you are NOT committed is so if you see something incompatible or yikes, you can stop seeing them BEFORE you're so emotionally attached it's too emotionally painful to leave them easily, even if they are hurting you. I had no idea that for some people, genuinely, they feel intensely attached from the first few days and even though they're also looking for a good compatible safe partner... its extremely hard for them to ignore their intense fond emotions even if there's red flags. Also it now makes more sense to me how someone can "love someone one week then next month another." If you're alloromantic maybe a rebound really does work stronger: you struggle to break up with lover 1 due to strong feelings (or maybe alloromantics fall out of love as easily as they fall into it I have no idea), but you can meet a new person and quickly feel STRONGLY for them, which helps move on from the last one. Versus me who takes months to love (and trust me unfortunately lol demi ppl can fall for abusers too, you don't screen out red flags even given time to judge without strong feelings, if you haven't addressed your own trauma and the things you unconsciously gravitate toward ToT). So when I break up its like cool ill be unable to feel a crush for 6 months to 1 year at least. (Though I'm sure a demi person could rebound fine, there's such a thing as a crush on 2+ people you've known for a while, one relationship could end with another person around you also have a crush on etc).

Back to my point though about alloromantics. So like, they CAN love fast. And then comes the potential issue. I ask a person out, and will need 3+ months to crush (and more to fall in love). They either don't immediately like me, but if they do develop a crush it'll be faster than me. Or they already like me. In either case if they ever like Me, they'll like me sooner than I like them. Then they notice I don't get as obsessed with them or as horny or as clingy or as gushy. They might worry its not mutual. If they're dating multiple people, this might be when it's time to focus all love on another person who's acting just as crushy back. Or of they're dating multiple people, this is when other options may appeal more. If other dating options already like them, then that attention and gushing may make the other person more appealing for them (fair enough everyone likes to feel wanted). If they're dating no one else, they may still feel they aren't being given enough romantic intense Honeymoon stage attention, and not want to wait a few more months for it from me. If they NEVER like Me back, then I may appeal to them at first since I won't Honeymoon stage love dump on them or expect them to do it back. And they'll potentially leave me when they DO meet someone else they like. So we wither never become exclusive, or when I finally like them its one sided because I now have feelings for them but they've never liked me and never will. I'm just a placeholder for them until they meet someone they Do like or who gives them more of whatever they're looking for. So not a mutual love partner.

The alternative of course is make friends and only ask friends out once I already like them, so that I'm in that Honeymoon stage at the start of casual dating. So the other party feels wanted, feels intensely desired, and I'm acting like an alloromantic in the first stages of dating. The problem with that route? Is if I made friends, and we were friends let's say 6 months? An alloromantic probably doesn't like me if by then, they never developed a crush. They may not ever like me (wooh). Or, because they're alloromantic, they've fallen in love with one or a few people by then, and are already in a relationship. This second option is how crushes on friends have gone: I finally developed a crush, they're dating someone else. They're finally single, rebound with me since i ask them out when theyre single jnowing theyre likely to immediately get in a relationship again if i dont ask them out while theyre still single, then they move onto another person because it was more about them getting over their ex than liking me. And again, if they had liked me they couldve broken up and asked me out. Now of course, alloromantics can probably develop a crush years into knowing someone, instead of right away. So in theory they could meet me and NOT like me, then in a couple years if I ask them out, gradually develop a crush then. So far? I haven't experienced it. I know it's possible though so wooh for the people out there going through this dating route, I wish you luck on finding love.

Anyway so its just like... while on the surface I used to think oh, demi doesn't really effect the dating process! That's unfortunately naive of me. Logically I don't think it should, if everyone talked and communicated their feelings and wants and expectations and checked in about it regularly. But I had my assumptions on how things worked, and alloromantics have theirs. They don't know everyone else isn't also operating on the same implicit expectations! Just like I didnt realize they operated on theirs! I didn't realize a person might stop seeing someone just because they didn't get intense attention in a Honeymoon stage within a certain time frame. I didn't realize that if my dating partner Doesn't Expect me to do that, its possible they don't like me at all and therefore don't care if I show I like them or not. I didn't realize no one was going to say anything about these unspoken expected norms. I'm still not sure I have a solution for this either.

I'd like to say, my new solution could be telling new potential dates I'm demi, I need X time to get physical or gush emotionally, and then maybe ask to be friends first so if they have a crush on me the LACK of me gushing emotionally isn't weird because friends generally hold that stuff back. Then date once I feel something, so I can fulfill that expectation of flirting and emotionally involved when an alloromantic Expects such things to match their level of engagement. I'm not sure it'd work though. My gut says an alloromantic, if told to be friends for a few months first before dating, would potentially prefer other partners who could flirt/be physical/gush emotionally over them quicker, and would prefer someone they could immediately Express their happy crush feelings to and know they'd be returned (like saying compliments and holding hands and kissing and desiring each orhers attention Very Frequently). Alternatively, my gut says if they did still find me appealing if I ask to be friends first? Then either they have no feelings for me and enjoy the idea of an easy dating partner I'd be in a few months as they might think I'd have low expectations of them in exchange for them getting to Not Be Single, or they'd have feelings for me and be hoping unconsciously for an unavailable partner (which I'd represent as the unobtainable person who can't be dated for X amount of time) so things would go fine until we started dating and the person realized they didn't Actually want someone who mutually liked them.

-.- my anxiety of course, at this point, would love to tell me to research endlessly HOW to solve the problem. I'm aware that's my self destructive tendency whirling lmao, wanting me to read stuff that has no concrete answer but lots of conflicting confusing ones that no person can implement all the answers I'd find at the same time. And knowing I'd try to implement the contradicting advice, inevitably fail because it's impossible to do conflicting advice, then blame myself for being unable to solve the problem.

Because in reality... at least as far as I know (if you have an answer HELP me lol)... only thing a person can do is communicate a lot and as clearly as you can. And hope in good faith the other person does too. And then it's down to luck that you meet someone who does like you, and is willing to figure out how to make it work with you even if it's not the route they usually take. Even if it means a few weird months for them with no kisses or no intense-emotional-ttention from your end except purposeful friendly attention you give to try and match their effort. Then maybe, if someone really thinks you're nice and would like to try and see if it'd work out, they stick around and really date you for a while.

#rant #demi #i just. well i think tonight i personally finally figured out WHY emotionally unavailable people date me #and why in my long term relationships none of them even liked me back when they finally said as much #:c because i appeal to them. because i dont notice their lack of interest in the beginning. because #i have no crush either so i dont expect people to act any more lovey dovey then me Not Doing so #so then eventually i DO get a crush and fall in love with them. but they do not fall for me or love me.#and for a while its fine. even Good if they match my effort even if they feel nothing for me.#then inevitably they ACTUALLY like someone. and im just a placeholder until they can date someone #who DOES give them butterflies and intense emotions. so i guess i attract... emotionally unavailable #people who do NOT like being single so im a very appealing option as placeholder #:/ well that is not fun. i dont wanna date anyone like that again.#id like to date someone who likes me. id really like that.

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ablednt · 2 years

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i hope it's okay to talk about this here, if not, that's okay, you can ignore it, but tw for transphobia, medical abuse, reality checking, psychiatric abuse, medical gaslighting, ableism, sanism, psyism and pluralphobia.

my system basically seemingly all went dormant last night after earlier yesterday our mother's social worker told us that we're a delusion ( when he doesn't even know us, he only knows our mother's side of the story, she told him about our plurality without our consent ) and then he blatantly deadnamed me and refused to call the body's chosen name after i called him out on it ( and this guy supposedly worked with ppl w/ psychosis for a decade now and for some reason he groups psychosis and plurality together and basically used these outdated myths about plurality ) and now she refuses to call us by our true names and only responds to the body and now it's a possibility that we might be given antipsychotics against our will and she's blatantly telling us that "if you don't get rid of them with antipsychotics, you're gonna stay in a group home for the rest of your life." and literally all of these are massive red flags.

now i disowned my mother because i literally can't trust her anymore and im trying to learn lifeskills as much as possible so i can get away from her. im just so angry and upset and feel trapped.

God I'm so sorry that's awful.

I've never gone through anything quite that extreme but I did have people try and pressure me into seeking therapy for delusions and tried to force me to stop believing in my headmates very soon after my syscovery.

Having had that experience I can say that they're absolutely wrong in doing this to you. To start you know yourselves and your experiences far better than anyone on the outside can. I do experience delusions relatively severely but even I can fairly easily tell that my headmates are not delusions (they're too consistent, a delusion isn't going to be a consistent person you communicate with for weeks to months at a time with very little change.).

But to play devils advocate even if you WERE just having delusions this is not at all a safe or healthy way for them to support you. First off delusions aren't always harmful, psychotic people deserve the right to refuse treatment for a delusion and to say reality checks aren't needed. No one should ever force a delusional person to abruptly stop yhr delusion they should be offering a safe space. Ultimately, although I do fully believe you that your headmates are real, this was a violation of your autonomy either way and unacceptable to treat you this way.

Getting out when you can is a good idea and I promise that once you are able to get out on your own there's lot's of us out there and there's more people supportive of systems than it seems. However, it's important to be careful and get all the details straight before you leave. I do not know what the situation here is exactly so I can't give specific advice but you'll need to already have somewhere to go in mind, what you'll do when you get there, and a long term plan afterwards for how you'll keep going. Also be sure you have any legal documents that you need such as IDs, birth certificates, etc. If you're running away try to save up for it in cash.

My plan to leave my house wounded up being trying to stick it out until i can get a job and move out the normal way just because I'm too disabled to really risk anyrhing different and that's still ongoing unfortunately so I can't offer much advice here just be careful and be sure to think things through realistically.

In any case things are pretty bad for you right now and I completely understand how disorienting and horrifying this all must be but I want to say that the main strength of a system is resilience. Your dormant members can most likely wake up again, you'll also form more eventually and meet new people. Even if you're forced to mask again and pretend to be singlet to avoid the abuse you still have each other and you'll still be able to find ways to talk to and support each other. Those connections can never truly be taken from you no matter how hard anyone tries to destroy what you have together they cannot.

The community is always here if you need encouragement, advice on masking and quality of life improvements, etc. We're rooting for you!

#pluralphobia tw #ableism tw #ask to tag #transphobia tw

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neonhorn · 4 months

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Well, after letting it really get to me for an entire night and finally get some rest... I've decided to double down and talk about things just as earnestly and even longer. If someone wants to just dismiss me out of hand and put me up for people to laugh at for no reason then that reflects on them. I still believe strongly in talking about various mentalities of going into competitive games. I'm the kind of person that can get really competitive in multiplayer games. Have it be Pokemon, Armoured Core, or dm_mariokart2_b3.bsp on TF2, etc.

Over the years I've had plenty of time to think and put into practice mentalities that work for me. I'm not saying the following will work for everyone but is more friendly advice from someone who wants to help other people learn and have more fun. I'm not a scientist or making a paper, this is more like a friend talking to you. I'm not preaching, just wanting to share my experiences in the hope it might help. A lot of what I say may be obvious, but I often find that said obvious things are rarely taken to heart or practised. They're more taken for granted. Sometimes you just need someone talking about it for it to sink in, I know I did and still do. So maybe I can be that for just one person, that would be worth it. All it takes it one person and maybe that person might pass it on themselves or maybe not. It's still worth it.

Even if you don't read this, already know what I say and more, or perhaps what I say doesn't even help at all; I hope you have a good day.

Tilt

Let's first talk about tilt, frustration, getting salty etc. What is it? Tilt and frustration can take different forms in different people. Generally it seems it comes up most in the form of annoyance or anger and can lead to people acting out. I find there are some other things that are much less talked about such as how it makes you feel when you encounter the thing that tilted you again and how it makes you feel afterwards. Whenever I encounter something even to this day that terribly tilted me, I notice how much quicker I end up getting tilted again. I get in my own head. This obstacle, character, game mode, etc. each time becomes more and more of this insurmountable obstacle with no counter play. Simply put, you don't want to deal with it.

What about afterwards? When you put down the game? Getting tilted often to most people including myself, can make it really hard to pick the game back up again. That ever looming feeling that you're going to lose, play some mode you hate, a shitty map, etc. really makes it hard to go back. Why pick it back up if it's just going to tilt you and you can just go play some other game that gives you instant gratification?

These couple of points bring me to my main point that I alluded to before: mentality. You can be the most talented player of a game or the worst, if you have a bad mental you're not going to improve and find ways to keep going. Mechanical skill isn't everything.

Some advice I learned the hard way is to just put the game down if you're on a losing streak. You may not feel your typical Tilt always, but it can cause a more 'silent' Tilt. In these situations I find it best to put the game down for the rest of the day or at least until I've moved on and done something else.

Before we move on, remember: it's completely fine to be casual or competitive at games. What's important is that you enjoy yourself. Most of us aren't genuinely planning on becoming esports stars, video creators, or streamers, so don't take the games you're playing as jobs. Hell, even the latter two you may wanna take it easy unless your brand is being really good at the game.

Mental

For most of my time I've really been into gaming and getting better I've had carpal tunnel. It's gotten better over the years but also my reaction speeds have slowed down as I age. Both of these things have had adverse effect on my mental and therefore tilt. "If only my hand didn't lock up", "If only my arm didn't hurt during that play", "If only I had gotten into things like this when I was younger", etc. All these thoughts and more are things I deal with nearly any time I pick up a competitive game. So how do I deal with it? How do I not let it drag me down? While there's not concrete answer for everyone, sometimes the simplest and most obvious things are the best. Taking breaks genuinely helped me a lot, and not just sitting there and stewing on the bad game I just had. Moving around, doing something else, getting some water, generally removing myself from the situation helps clear my head and it might yours as well. Sometimes just having a friend or document to vent into helps as well.

Just whatever you find that helps you clear your head make sure it's not harmful to yourself or others, that's just counter productive.

So now that your head is clear, what do you do? Sure you can just hop back into things, but I also like to reflect. What could I have done differently? What did the opponent do that tripped me up? Why didn't I like that part? It's important to reflect and theorize, without it you're just running in blindly and not learning. It's also important to not put blame on things that you cannot control, like physical disabilities or teammates. Sure they could be the reason something went wrong, but at least for me blaming it all on that doesn't help me improve. It just gives me excuses.

(Though I'm not saying that games shouldn't have accessibility features or shouldn't try to, they very much should especially if they're AAA, but that's a whole other discussion I'm not getting into here.)

So Rest and Reflect? Any other esoteric wise words? Of course! Practice! Bet no one's ever told you that one before. I find a lot of people just blurt this out like the whole process starts and ends with this. It's hard to start this step or even learn properly if you're not in the right head space to do it. As we all grow older it becomes harder and harder to reach a head space where we can do this, more and more responsibilities pile up and the ever degrading work week takes more and more out of us. This brings me to my next point...

Goals

While this can technically be under mental, I think it's very important to single out.

This is where you decide what the game you're playing really means to you and what you want to do with it. Are you going to pursue this game competitively or are you going to be more satisfied being more casual about it? Both are fine, but you have to not let yourself get too stuck in the middle.

A clear goal is needed.

Not something vague like "I want to get better" or "I want to play it with friends". Better goals would be "I want to get to the high end of the competitive ladder" or "I want to be able to beat all my friends". When you have goals you have something to work towards and think around. You can have multiple goals as well, such as wanting to be the top of the ladder and the best at a certain character.

I know it sucks to admit, but those high school teachers and therapists were right. Having a goal to work towards does wonders for the mind. Even if you know the goal is unattainable, having something to push you forwards helps you learn and progress. Once again, you need a good Mental.

Part of these goals as well is to see how much you want to Invest into the game. Realizing you may not want to invest that much time into the game can be a freeing thing. Realizing the opposite as well. I find being uncertain tends to invite Tilt a lot more. Knowing I want to just take Elden Ring PVP causally suddenly turns me getting stomped easily from a frustrating experience into a funny one I can tell my friends how I was atomized.

It's completely alright to change your mind in the future about how you want to invest yourself into a game there is nothing wrong with that. But knowing what you want invest in the moment is important. Especially with all these live service games trying to guilt you and make you feel like you're losing out if you don't constantly play them.

It's also important to pay attention to what game you're getting into and adjust yourself accordingly. If it's a game that's been out for a few years or more the barrier to entry is going to be much higher. People have learned all these tricks and techs, and coming in as a new player or returning one can be extremely daunting. So what do you do?

Resources

One of my biggest hurdles back in the day was getting over my sense of pride and looking up resources. It's all well and good, admirable even, to want to learn everything yourself and climb on just your own. But even at the highest level you can always learn stuff from others.

If you've read this far you're already practising this advice. Other people have a wealth of knowledge that can help contribute to your own. Sure it can be hard to sometimes parse the trash trying to get a quick buck from people who know what they're talking about. It's a skill that comes with time, as well as knowledge of the community you're trying to engage with by playing the game. It's something that comes with time. Though my very entry level tip is probably don't take advice from a gaming outlet like IGN too seriously.

There are plenty of passionate and creative people out there, even watching funny highlights of a game can give you insight. It's all about what you do with this information and how you interact with it. If you simply try to just mimic what you see others doing, you'll find moderate success at best. If you want to elevate your play and become even better, you have to start asking and figuring out the WHY of it. If you don't understand why someone tells you do something in certain situations or why a combo is good, you won't learn. You're just copying. I'm not the best teacher, I'm sure I could be doing a lot better in this write up but I strongly believe knowing or at least thinking about the WHY of things is important and I've been trying to put that in. Learning the WHY of things leads you to be able to make your own choices, create your own things, and have a fundamentally deeper understanding of what you're doing. WHY did they go that direction, WHY did that person back off from that, WHY did that combo work, WHY did that hit me, etc. When you question the why, you can better understand the how. Critical thinking and analysis are important, even in games, and in order to that you need a clear head.

Misc.

Here's just a category of some miscellaneous advice I have. If you're struggling against a certain character or archetype, learning said character or archetype can greatly help out. Sure you can bang your head against that wall until you learn that way, but by picking that character up yourself and getting at least decent at will completely change how you see that frustrating situation. I know how tempting it is to just play that one character, but branching out and understanding other play styles and characters is important. Hell, you may even enjoy the things you try.

Are you saying to never drop a game ever? No, of course not. If you're not enjoying something then of course let it go. At the same time I see way too many people give up extremely early. It's like watching a baby bird give up because it can't fly, discouraged because other birds are in the sky flying. For example I had to drop League after a few years of playing due to how unhealthy it was for me. I was getting really mad constantly and none of my techniques were helping me. So I had to back off and not let it do that to me anymore.

Be kind in team games. It will win you more games, keeping a good mental around frustrating teammates is a skill in of itself. Getting angry and yelling at teammates or telling them to do something else will often just end up making you lose a teammate. I'm not saying to deny your frustration, but if you're going to grumble and rant do it off mic. Get your frustrations out and back to thinking more clearly.

"I took a break for a while and now it feels like I've gotten worse :c" For me at least I found that my time before I get rusty at a game is 2-3 days and it can take up to 5 days before I'm back in the groove. If you're serious about improving I suggest not putting the game down for too long or else you'll be fighting rust more than the opponent. Of course real life obligations and other things get in the way and that's alright, it's just better to know how long it takes before you start getting rusty and about how long it will take for you to get back into things.

Anyways, I hope even a bit of this helps someone. There's a good chance no one reads this and it will just be lost to time, but I still think it's better that I put this out there. And hey, if you actually read through this or just skipped down in curiosity; Hi! And thanks for your time. I hope you have a good one and i wish you luck and skill in your games.

glhf

#video games #competitive video games #competitive games #fps #fighting game #moba #rpg #advice #etc.#dont really know what to tag this with #so have those generic ones #cyas~

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living-dead-dyke · 7 months

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hi, i follow you for wrestling but i also happen to be disabled and largely homebound (and within that, largely bedbound). i want to tell you that what you're feeling is super normal. our relationships with the people who care for us are incredibly complex. i don't know what your relationship with your family is like (personally mine was antagonistic and i don't speak to or live with them) but i will share my perspective in hopes that you find it helpful. it can be difficult to feel that any frustration on my end is warranted since the person who helps me survive didn't exactly sign up for this and is doing their best with an incredibly difficult and demanding situation. but it's important to also remember that i didn't sign up for this either, and the same is true of me. i would never have willingly chosen a scenario in which i am unable to function independently in a world that is incredibly hostile on a structural level to any form of dysfunction. it is an incredibly humiliating and dehumanizing experience to exist entirely at the mercy of others and bad feelings about that are very valid to have. but for me it also helps to remember that the reason it is humiliating and dehumanizing and feels bad to exist this way isn't because of the individual i am at the mercy of— they wouldn't have chosen this either, for me or themself; it's because our society and culture isn't constructed in such a way as to make an existence like ours work smoothly. people who care for people like us are often overburdened managing aspects of our lives, not to mention their own, that a better social safety net from the state would easily be able to cover. but we aren't a priority of the state, because we aren't useful to it. this is not an easy way to live. it sucks to be constantly managing my own feelings, trying to have grace towards and hold space for my carer's valid feelings while also dealing with my own not to mention my condition itself, and also navigating appeasement/trying to avoid "being too difficult" so that the relationship i'm forced to rely on in order to live doesn't deteriorate. i have to make a lot of compromises. i have to let a lot of things go that i might not want to let go if i had other options. but i'm sure the same is true for them in different ways. and at the end of the day, we care about each other deeply, we both want the same thing (a life together that is as nice as possible to live under difficult circumstances), and we're on the same side— the source of most of our grievances will always be the system in which an existence like this is so brutal on both of us when it shouldn't be, not one another. i hope this helps... again, idk how applicable it is to the nuances of your specific situation. other advice that is more generic: try to take as much advantage of social/community/health & human services as you possibly can. if you're in usamerica, try 211.org. a support group where you can vent, commiserate, and share advice/resources/jokes/etc with people in similar living situations is worth looking into, even if it's an online community, even something as simple as a local facebook group. reading about disability advocacy & activism might also be insightful, for you and your carers if they're interested. sorry i don't have anything more specific to go on. love and solidarity to you.

anon,,, you're gonna make me cry thank you so much <3 this really put shit into perspective for me , i hope you have an amazing life :). i'm not as good at talking as some people but you have my gratitude and adoration :)

i'm kicking my ass into gear and trying to garner as much independence as i can and this honesty inspired me :)

#the void speaks back #disability

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marjaystuff · 1 year

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Lori Foster Interview

“The McKenzie Series” by Lori Foster are great reads. The stories are intense thrillers with characters that are relatable and identifiable. There is plenty of action, some humor, and family bonds. Each book has the serious subjects of human trafficking and abuse embedded in the emotional stories.

The first book in the series, No Holding Back, has the eldest son Cade McKenzie as the hero and Sterling as the heroine. All the family work behind the scenes to take down human traffickers along with Sterling. This is personal for her since the trafficker has ties to her past.

The second book in the series is Stronger Than You Know with Reyes McKenzie as the hero and Kennedy as the heroine along with her friend, Jodi. The story delves much more into the background of why the family seeks justice. Both Kennedy and Jodi are still being pursued by the traffickers who kidnapped them and need Reyes and his family to help.

The third book in the series is Watching Over You with Madison McKenzie as the heroine and Crosby as the hero. Parrish, the matriarch of the McKenzie family hires Crosby to find out who is threatening their family. He and Madison must work together, which is where the attraction between them begins.

Elise Cooper: Would you ever consider writing a YEARLY series where you would have adventures of the TASK FORCE that include all the McKenzies and Jodi with Hunter?

Lori Foster: I’d certainly love to, but my publisher would have to be behind the series, or I’d need to do them as an indie author. I’m not sure if either of those things will happen so I can’t commit to anything too far in the future.

Writing action and “conquer all the evil” type heroes and heroines, is my absolute favorite writing endeavors. The world needs more heroes...of all kinds.

EC: Why the topics of human trafficking and abuse: what did you want the readers to understand?

LF: What I attempt to do in every book is to entertain readers. I would never presume to judge someone else’s mistakes because I’ve made plenty of my own. We all have different backgrounds, different perspectives formed from our upbringings. We have our good and bad influences and experience. What seems easy for me could be horribly difficult for someone else, and vice versa. That said, when I write, I like for my characters to tackle really big, believable problems.

Human trafficking is such a large, looming, and growing real life problem that’s literally everywhere. Far, far too often we look past situations – even if we think something looks off, most people don’t want to get involved – so when I write it in a book, I have an opportunity to show how important those alpha people are. Alphas – male and female – will step up when others shy away. While some of us would worry about wrongly accusing someone, possibly giving an insult where none is intended, others step up and do what they can to help.

Real life heroes exist, though the news so rarely focuses on them – so *I* focus on them... in my books.

EC: In the second book of the McKenzie series, you introduce Jodi, which was the heroine in the book, The Dangerous One. How has Jodi changed from book 2 to the latest book?

LF: Before: She was vulnerable, needed purpose, did not have direction, floundering in fear and hatred, feels alone, unhinged, wounded, and suspicious, had a fight or flight attitude.

Jodi changed because 1) she was given a chance for a different life, 2) she was shown a better way, and 3) she met people who cared. It’s a sad truth that far too many people are left to fend for themselves in the world. We all need love, positive feedback, emotional support, and good advice. Of course, we also must be willing to work for a better life, and to listen to those positive influences.

LF: Now: She has a stand-in family with Parrish like a father, and Kennedy like a sister. All the McKenzies made her realize there are people out there who care. She can be disagreeable when worried, foolishly brave, sharply dangerous, yet realizes with Hunter she can trust again, and he realizes she has good instincts, as she tries to be independent. In the book, she also changes because she realizes she can never be “the everyday woman,” not after what she’s survived. And it’s okay that she’s different – especially since she finds her special someone who is also apart from “the everyday” type. Together, Hunter and Jodi are able to be themselves, with their sharpened senses, dangerous edges, and fine-honed instincts.

EC: What do you see are the similarities and differences between the other females abused: Sterling, Kennedy, and Silver?

a. Please describe each personality and how they react to danger

LF: Sterling, the heroine in No Holding Back, is driven largely by guilt and the need to make a difference. She escaped while others didn’t, and she knows if she doesn’t make the effort to help, her life will feel meaningless. It takes a person just as strong as her to match her determined personality, assist her in her efforts, and also allow her to be herself, to stand back and admit when she needs help. Cade is the person she finally trusts to see her vulnerability. Like Jodi, Sterling is full-steam-ahead, but unlike Jodi, Sterling is bigger and physically better equipped. LF: Kennedy is the heroine in Stronger Than You Know, which also introduces Jodi. She is the thoughtful one. For her, survival is all about understanding the situation and educating others so they understand as well. Through her published novels and public speaking, she hopes to better equip others to recognize danger and react accordingly. Kennedy is small like Jodi, but her soul isn’t as wounded. She doesn’t mind admitting when she needs help, which is something Jodi would find abhorrent. Kennedy is good at seeing people – their strengths and weaknesses – and what she sees in Reyes is someone who jokes about life rather than show his true feelings, but he’s serious when he needs to be, and he has a protective streak as big as his heart. Jodi, on the other hand, tends to view everyone as victims, abusers, or those who feel sorry for her. It took a lot for her to realize her own perspectives were skewed, that family, either blood ties or emotional bonds, was something altogether different. LF: Silver, a secondary character in Madison’s book, Watching Over You, wasn’t trafficked so much as she was in an abusive relationship. Her big thing is gratitude and, thanks to the assistance she received, moving forward in a steady, comfortable life... without any disruptions like romantic love. Unlike Jodi, she immediately embraces being part of a family, and she accepts and nourishes the familiar love she’s given, returning it with a lot of loyalty. Like Jodi, she’s a little suspicious of anything that rocks the boat. It takes the coaxing of a really good guy friend (the one who helped her out of her situation) for her to give love another shot – but I’m glad she did!

EC: Describe each member of the McKenzie clan.

a. Parrish: Can be Bossy and controlling but is very caring. He’s also motivated by his love for the woman he lost. Parrish is like a suave, super-polished wrecking ball determined to take out evil so no one else will suffer as his love did. He has the wealth, clout, and determination to go up against the devil himself – and while he knows he hasn’t been a perfect father, he loves his children fiercely.

b. Cade: Protective, former military, proficient, with quiet authority. Cade is also rebellious and enjoys butting heads with his father on nearly every issue. In many ways he’s a loner. He’ll protect his family – and all innocents – but he isn’t big on group think, and he definitely bristles at edicts from his father, while at the same time he likes order and discipline. Let’s call the man a contradiction, because he is!

c. Reyes: Confidant, cocky, likes to irritate people, a teaser, and brash. He’s very much a lover, too, and doesn’t mind who knows it. A super physical guy. Though he’s also smart and motivated, with a bent for home design: he’s good with his hands. Although, he doesn’t particularly want anyone to know about those assets. He prefers the illusion of the super-sexy, cocky, annoying guy.

d. Madison: She is a tech guru, must deal with over-protective brothers, pushy, competitive, optimistic, and stubborn. To counter the take-charge tendencies of her brothers, Madison has worked extra hard for equal footing. She’s forthright to a painful degree, and usually only realizes that she’s overstepped after the fact. She loves her alpha family, likes herself as is, understands her own ability and she’s smart enough to realize it’d take one heck of a guy to really gain her interest. Once she finds him, there’s no holding her back. She’s a winner, and never gives up easily.

e. Bernard: Comic relief, gentle version of Parrish, advisor, like Alfred in Batman. Bernard is all heart! He knew Parrish and the “kids” needed him, so he readily stepped in to fill an impossible role – and excelled at it. He’s territorial, wise, and when he lets loose, it’s hilarious.

EC: Crosby is Madison’s love interest. There is a book quote that talks about Crosby’s profession as a police officer: “they are witnesses to the pain, hunger, neglect, abuse, and violent crime in society.” Please explain!

LF: I have massive, MASSIVE respect for law enforcement. Are they perfect? No. Who is? Do I think the vast majority have the best of intentions? Yup. I can’t even imagine the amount of stress they’re under, or the heartbreaking things they see.

I did a ride-along with a police office and he pointed out prostitutes everywhere. I had NEVER seen them. I had no idea. He showed me drug dealers. Once, in an evening ride-along in California (I was visiting the area) a cop flipped on his lights and people scattered in the most remarkable ways. Groups leaping over walls. Drug deals breaking up. Sex acts breaking up. Again, I’d had no idea! It really proved to me what a sheltered life I’d lead – and that so, so many were not as fortunate.

EC: What is the relationship like between Cade and Sterling?

LF: Adversarial at first, because Sterling has a hard time trusting. But Cade immediately knew that she was different, and how she affected him was different, so he couldn’t give up. Their relationship is based on mutual respect of abilities – and so much more.

EC: What is the relationship like between Reyes and Kennedy?

LF: She sees him as no one else does, and he’s immediately intrigued by her. Few women tell Reyes to get lost, so that hooked him, and his protective tendencies finished him off. That she would rely on him, and need him, not as part of his family but as an individual, meant a lot to Reyes. For Kennedy, being able to trust him without exception is important. To many, they might seem like opposites attract, but really they have more in common than outsiders realize.

EC: What is the relationship like between Madison and Crosby?

LF: Crosby measures up! With examples like her brothers, she couldn’t get too excited over most guys. Plus Madison is really tall with lethal skills, and for her, the idea of being able to best a guy wasn’t that appealing. Crosby isn’t that easy – but at the same time, he respects and admires her ability. Beyond that, he sees her softer side, and he loves how she loves his family. Crosby fought it at first, but it was meant to be.

EC: Can you describe the task force? If not, it would surely be nice to have that-Is this your wishful thinking?

LF: It helps victims get counseling, legal representation, financial assistance, guidance, gives physical and emotional support. Their goal is to bust sex traffickers, abusers, and punish them.

This is mostly a Lori Foster’s dream world, where good guys win and bad guys perish, and the world becomes a better, safer place. Individuals need to be more proactive, so I like to imagine those characters and create their stories.

I did base the task force off a real task force, but without the legal ties. My characters are a little more freewheeling with the law. Back when I wrote my first rescue from trafficking” stories: “The Men Who Walk The Edge of Honor series,” the law hadn’t quite caught up with the idea of human traffickers actively operating in rural and suburban settings here in the U.S. Now, if you go to a truck stop or a rest area off the highway, there are almost always posters in the bathrooms advising people what to do if they’re in a situation, or suspect they’re witnessing a situation, that could be abusive. There are dedicated phone numbers to call. Resources. Advisors. Law Enforcement and our military are educated on what to look for, how to recognize the signs.

More and more women, children, and often men, are abused in trafficking situations for sex or forced labor. Look up the statistics – it’s absolutely staggering. I won’t spout statistics to anyone, but if you take 5 minutes to google the number of missing children, and those who’ve been trafficked, it’ll shatter your heart.

Politicians give lip service to solving problems, but on both sides of the aisle, they’re mostly concerned with maintaining their power and giving “their side” the win. We, the people, are never “their side.”

EC: Next books?

LF: May 9th is The Little Flower Shop, set in a fun, small community of quirky people, featuring a 40 something florist and an almost 40 restaurant owner... plus the town full of characters, family ties, and pets galore. I laughed – and cried – while writing it.

June 1st is Bray, one of my benefit books, which means all advance and all royalties for the life of the book go to the no-kill animal shelter, The Animal Adoption Foundation. I’ve done a benefit book every year for 19 years now. https://lorifoster.com/meet/#benefit

December 26th is The Fearless One, featuring the second Osborn brother, related to The Dangerous One. Memphis is like his brother, Hunter, in many ways, but he’s also different. More laidback, quick with a laugh, and when he falls in love, he doesn’t bother denying it or fighting it. All his focus is on keeping her safe – against any and all threats, and there are many.

THANK YOU!!

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