Just curious what the average level of personal investment in these sorts of things is. Like, how much do people usually get into silly stuff like this their friends ask of them? etc. etc. Which I know, only surveying a small sample on a very specific website means I'm not getting an exact average idea lol, but.. curious nonetheless .. Maybe reblog for bigger sample size but also this is not very serious at all/not worth a call to action gbhjbhjb

May you do some rottmnt boys headcannons for how they would react if Draxum tells them that they were y/n pet turtle before he stole and mutated them

It feels weird to write this with a romantic relationship so Im going to make this plutonic.

Raph Leo Donnie and Mikey finding out there are the readers old pet.

🐢 Anime boy backstory 🐢

Before Draxum started the mutation process, before he got ahold of Splinter, he needed some actual test subjects. You where an average New Yorker, you went to school and had a part time job and even had some unique pets that you where very attached to.

A alligator snapping turtle, a softshell, a red eared slider and a little box turtle. Draxum took interest in you because of your pets. Huginn and Muninn where sent out to find the perfect animals to mutate, that's when you where targeted by him.

On your way home from a trip to the vet to check up on your little guys health you got jumped. There was no possible way to get out but you where not about to leave your pets. You tried to run but after being picked up by Draxum's vines you got thrown against a wall, passing out. When you woke up your beloved pets where gone.

Raphael

★ He was the one who tracked you down after Draxum told him he once was someone's pet. It was kinda awkward expanding everything to you but after introducing himself you immediately pulled him in for a hug.

★ He kinda gets protective of you. But not from other people! Just in general, you took care of him when he was small. It's only fair that he does the same for you.

★ You and Raph end up being the responsible ones in there little family. The difference between getting in trouble with You instead of Raph is that you always lecture them for at least an hour. Also you get to say stuff like "I raised you better than this."

★ You get invited to every family movie night and everyone fights over who gets to sit next to you because you always cuddle with the closest person. turtle?

Leonardo

★ The reaction he had was similar to the one in in the gif above ⬆️. Yes, he was a plane old turtle once but it took him by surprise when it came out that he was a pet.

★ He's a total lap dog towards you, and only you. There's no getting out of it. He'd walk up to you and plop himself down on your lap and look up. You always give in and give him shell stitches. It's not weird if it's from you, okay!

★ His brothers collectively agree that you are now basically his babysitter. He gets into a fair amount of trouble, imagen Raphael saying "if you don't stop I'm telling y/n!" Or being the one who now yells at him after making bad discussions instead of raph.

Donatello

★ Blank face before quietly saying "What?" He knew that he was just a regular softshell but surprisingly he never thought about where he came from before getting mutated.

★ He gives you random tests on your knowledge of softshell turtles. Like you could be folding laundry and he'd just say "what is the proper temperature for a softshell turtle enclosure?" He does this to try and figure out if you where a good pet owner. He's come to the conclusion that you where a pretty good pet owner.

★ He wonders about what could've happened if Draxum never stole him and his brothers from you. Things could've turned out way differently, the thought comes back to him every once I awhile.

★ You know things about him that nobody else knows, like where he likes to be pet on his shell. But he refused to believe you without any proof. He is only slightly embarrassed when you demonstrate for him.

Michelangelo

★ *New parent acquired* He got really excited and asked a ton of questions. Did you get him from a pet store? How much did he cost? Do you still have his old habit??? He needs to know theses things!

★ If you have any photos of him and is brothers as regular turtles he's going to ask for copy's. Don't tell anyone but he's working on a family album in his free time.

★ You are now his older sister figure, no you aren't getting out of it. He comes to you when he needs help or has a problem with something or someone. He says that he inherited your kindness even though it doesn't work that way.

★He lowkey love's it when you pamper him like he is still your pet turtle. Doesn't matter if he's a big guy now! He wants chin scratches and lap pillows. Also he makes Draxum apologize for what he did to you.

One of the things that annoys me about the discussion around AI is the way folks argue that the objections artists/writers/creatives have are just stemming from a fear of new technology and tools. There is a lot to unpack there, but what it always make me think of is the Luddites.

Some of you may be aware of the term luddite as a term for folks who are needlessly afraid of/dismissive of/against new technology. Someone who rails against new tech in a "oh gosh, do we really need one of these new-fangled gadgets? aren't these smartphones and tablets really just rotting our brains?"

And I'm sure, because you're here on tumblr, you can come up with some great arguments for why smartphones and tablets can be very useful and a net good for society, while social attitudes and corporate use of the tech may need moderation. Frankly, it's here and we need to deal with the social and ethical ramifications of the tech whole holding onto the positives. So yeah, maybe those folks who hate on tech are just luddites who are afraid of change!

But what is a luddite? Where did this word come from?

As I learned fairly recently, Luddites were a group of weavers opposing new weaving machines in the early 19th century who went as far as to organize riots and break the new machines. They named their group after Ned Ludd, a weaver from a legend.

The new machines could produce cloth faster and cheaper, using less skilled weavers and often producing inferior product. The Luddites obviously did not win their battle with the burgeoning industrial revolution, but it's key to remember that this was not just a personal grudge against Change.

The Luddites were living in a time of economic uncertainty, with rising food prices and large economic divide between the wealthy and the average citizen. They were highly-skilled laborers who were being kicked out of their jobs and replaced with less-skilled workers who could be be paid less because they didn't have years of training and skill that could be leveraged for better pay. And they still had families and lives that they needed to earn money to care for. They were angry that their choices were starve or go start over with a job that pays less.

AI replacing creatives isn't upsetting just because its a scary new tool. It's because creative folks have spent years honing their skills and trying to convince people that that time and our skills have value. And folks in favor of AI-generation are like "nah, we'd rather not pay you what is fair to someone with your years of skill development and education. We'd rather pay someone with less skills and knowledge about how art works to tell this machine to spit out images. It's too bad that this is closing doors in your career field and you need to start over somewhere else or just accept this tool into your life even though this isn't what you like about making art and doesn't use a good chunk of your skills. This is cheaper and thus I can still charge the same amount for this product while spending less to make it, thus making more money for me and my investors."

Change is scary when it has consequences. And we live in a time of economic uncertainty with rising food prices and wealth disparity. We have families to feed or are struggling to keep our lone selves alive. Of course we're scared and angry and lashing out.

If I lived in a world where we had a functional UBI and free health care and I could make art to make art, I'd be much more chill about AI generated stuff and the attitudes that folks with money have about it.

Hi Christina!! I know of conservative and democrat but I don’t know where my own political beliefs lay. I’m a mix of both red and blue pill. I believe in gun bans, free world class health care (im from Australia so I’ve always had that and feel so sorry for u guys that u don’t have it), I believe in welfare and upping the welfare so people can actually live of it, upping the minimum wage, helping students and those less fortunate. But I also believe in only two genders, not confusing children about genders in school, and I think people shouldn’t be allowed to transition to another gender as I believe they are severely mentally ill, and no happy person would ever want to change sex. I’m not religious btw. Idk what to call myself politically

In the US we would generally call that a moderate or someone who is center-left? You might also describe it as being socially conservative but economically liberal.

But (and my apologies for hijacking this ask, but if you've been around here for any amount of time, you knew this was coming) I want to talk a little bit about your position on the trans community. Why does maintaining a binary set of genders matter so much to you that it excludes trans people from your goal of "helping the less fortunate"? What are you afraid will happen if trans people are allowed to live the lives that are authentic to them? How are you imagining that will impact your life, and why are you so scared of that impact that you feel like it needs to be banned entirely?

Trans people aren't "severely mentally ill". They're just people who don't relate to the biopsychosocial gender role that they were assigned at birth. Trans, gender non-conforming, and intersex people have always existed. Many cultures have historically recognized more than two genders. Even within Western culture, we recognize lots of different gender expressions amongst cis people- girls can be tomboys or girly girls, women can be femme or butch, people can be androgynous... for a while, "metrosexual" was even a term for men who put effort into their appearance. All of those concepts are just gender expressions. The line at which they go from being "cis" to "trans" really just depends on culture and the person's perception of their own experience.

While there isn't a lot of research on why some people are trans and some aren't, but the research we do have seems to suggest that trans people are just born that way. It seems that being trans is, in part, genetic, and that trans people's brain structures are (on average) more similar to the brain structures of other people of the gender they identify as, rather than the gender they were assigned at birth. Being trans is not a "severe mental illness". It's just a different way of existing in the world. But even if it were a "severe mental illness" (which, again, it is not), don't mentally ill people have the right to seek treatment that will alleviate their suffering? Because that's what transitioning does. It alleviates suffering and discomfort associated with conforming to gender roles that don't align with a person's gender identity. You're right that very few people who are happy would undergo a medical transition to change their body. But the root of that unhappiness isn't mental illness. The root of that unhappiness is feeling like you don't belong in the body you have or the gender role that you've been given. And so transitioning alleviates that unhappiness.

And there's scientific data to back this idea up. Per the American Psychiatric Association, transgender individuals who transition experience long-term mental health benefits, including reduced anxiety, depression, and suicidality. And, per the Stanford University School of Medicine, trans people who start their transition as teenagers have better mental health than those who start their transition as adults. If you want trans people to "recover" from the "severe mental illness" you perceive them as having... transitioning is the way to let them do that.

But even if you don't care at all about trans people's health and wellbeing (and let's be real, I'm not convinced that you do), why should that mean that transitioning "shouldn't be allowed"? We let adults make all sorts of decisions about their bodies that they may regret down the line. For example, cis women are allowed to get boob jobs- gender affirming care within itself- regardless of whether or not they might regret it in the future. Cis women are allowed to take hormones in order to alter their menstrual cycle - often starting when they're in their teens- and we accept that they understand the long-term risks and benefits to their health that come with that choice. Why should trans people's choices about their bodies be any different? They're making informed decisions about the medical care they (and their doctors!) think will benefit them. Who are you to take that decision away from them?

There's a lot more I can say here and a lot of studies I can cite. I can tell you that every major U.S. medical and mental health organization, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association, plus global health organizations including the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, and the World Medical Association, and the World Health organization support access to age-appropriate, individualized medical transition for transgender youth and adults. The Australian Psychological Society is also included in that group, in case you were curious. I can tell you that the evaluations that trans people undergo in order to receive gender affirming care are extensive, even moreso for trans children. I can walk you through the reasoning behind introducing discussions of gender into classrooms early, and explain that children often have an understanding of gender by the age of three. I can talk about how the points people bring up when talking about trans people are the same ones they used about gay people fifteen years ago, and the world didn't end when countries started legalizing gay marriage. But I don't know if any of that will make a difference, because the reaction people have to trans people isn't really based in fact (no matter how much people will try to insist that it is). It's based in emotion.

So instead, I want to wrap up by asking this. How do you know that you are the gender you are? What makes you feel like a man or a woman? Are those things innate, are they cultural, are they both? How would you feel if one day, everyone started calling you a name of the opposite gender (for example, Michael instead of Michelle or vice versa) and insisting that you adopt the social roles of the opposite gender? What if you were forced into activities that you don't enjoy, with people who aren't like you? That would suck, right? You'd probably want to do whatever you could to be seen the way you feel on the inside, right? That's all trans people really want- to be seen for who they are. You can think that they're mentally ill or cringe if you want (although I really hope you won't), but don't legislate away their ability to pursue their happiness, even if you don't get why they would want that.

If you're interested in learning about trans issues more in-depth, I highly recommend ContraPoints' channel. She does a really good job of discussing transphobia and gender critical ideas while still being incredibly entertaining and fun.

psychology & mental health deep dive.  ˎˊ˗             general mental health related trigger warnings apply. feel free to include more or exclude those facts / test results that take too much time or don’t apply, you can check out this list for more personality-related quizzes to include!

as a general note: a lot of allie’s preexisting conditions and symptoms are amplified and influenced by her magic, making them harder to deal with and her symptoms more intense than they might be for the average person who is affected by those disorders.

quick facts.

diagnoses:  nothing formally diagnosed, but i am all knowing so this is what she has and what i have written her with the ideas of :) autism spectrum diagnosis, generalized anxiety disorder, and probably something to do with substance abuse, because she uses a variety of them to distract herself very frequently, but it’s not at a point where it’s conflicting with her relationships, or she has a very clear ‘addiction’ to it.

triggers:  being alone for long amounts of time, winter and fall seasons, maybe anytime it is cold outside, a sensory overload can sometimes play into it as well- if she’s already anxious about something before hand, or she’s just having a bad day, it will easily overwhelm her -, feeling trapped in an ‘i can’t escape this’ figurative sense, not so much literal, but if you trap her in a closed space, i can see that triggering her as well, but the figurative is what happens most often, with her feeling like she has no choice in something or a bad situation she can’t get out of, anger, when she can tell that someone else is feeling it, makes her incredibly anxious and often leads her to panic and obsession with ‘fixing’ whatever has made them angry, sadness inspires a similar response from her, though it causes less panic and she can normally think clearer about helping and listening.

positive coping skills:  all of allie’s coping skills are in the moment fixes to distract herself from the problem, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, what makes it a ‘bad thing’ is that she doesn’t ever try to truly deal with the problem. she’s good at seeking comfort, though not necessarily for talking about or trying to work through whatever she’s working through, but being with her loved ones it does help her cope, though sometimes it can turn into relying on that and that person, especially regarding physical and sexual intimacy. allie often uses her garden to cope, spending a long amount of time outside and with her plants helps her to clear her mind.

negative coping skills:  avoidance, she doesn’t like to deal with things in a clear way, and she often needs help to deal with things, support and validation that whatever happened wasn’t her fault, because of her tendency to guilt and blame herself first. she worries that bringing anything up that she’s struggling with will ruin the mood and the way that the other person sees her, or what she’s supposed to act like. also substance use. this could be considered both a positive and a negative skill, but she’s good at leaving. not necessarily leaving the situation permanently, but giving herself a break away from whatever is causing her stress, often in a very extreme and sudden way, leaving her entire life behind, including her loved ones and home.

attachment style:  secure. she trusts others so, so much but like. she is absolutely terrified of being abandoned (again). and when she worries about it it’s always her fault, her doing something to cause it and push them away, but it’s still a very clear and distinct worry. 

love language… -to give:  words of affirmation, physical touch, and quality time i think. in that order. also!!! she gives a lot of plants to her loved ones but it’s not just gift giving, it’s plants specifically. -to receive:  words of affirmation. like she will take anything and any kind of love but she understands words of affirmation the best. if you want her to know, tell her. -love language that probably falls into one or more of the official ones but is specific to her:  when people are patient with her, explain things to her in a way that doesn’t make her feel dumb or like she’s being talked down to (because sometimes- a lot of times -she notices, she just tries really, really hard not to) which has a lot to due with her own insecurities and that she’s not used to patience, as well as just not thinking she deserves it. i don’t know if this counts as a love language actually but like. explaining things. patience. she likes it and it makes her feel loved.

myers briggs / mbti:  esfp.

enneagram:  she had really close scores for types 2, 7 and 9.

history exploration.

are their diagnoses formal ( via a doctor, therapist, etc. ) or informal ( self diagnosis, a hunch, unrealized, etc. )?  informal and unrealized, beyond a point of like ‘there’s something ‘wrong’(read: different) with me and i don’t want there to be’.

have they ever been treated / medicated?  no, not formally, but she has self-medicated with different drugs and substances, though not usually prescription type drugs or even pills because she tries to stay away from them unless offered. she will not seek them out.

have they ever been hospitalized or treated on an inpatient basis?  no, she’s really never been to any hospital at all, for any reason, and she’s terrified of them.

how old were they when they first started experiencing / realizing symptoms?  autism specifically usually presents very young, though allie never had any peers to compare herself to, and her mother wasn’t educated in it, so she never quite realized she had symptoms. when she struggled with things, she was never aware that it was more of a struggle than a neurotypical child. her mother took notice of it, of course, and frequently reminded allie when she was bothering her or causing her effort or a disservice. once allie became old enough to go to school- according to her mother, who had little knowledge of human culture, which meant no preschool and little preparation (school supplies or any sort of idea of what would happen) -that’s when she became hyper aware of how different her peers were and acted. it didn’t help that allie’s peers were mostly kids who came from old-money/rich families, seeing as that was the kind of town she grew up in, because it isolated her even more. 

do they have a family history of mental illness?  yes, probably, i don’t have any specific ideas but for sure i know that allie’s mother projected a lot of her own insecurities and regrets onto allie, which likely meant that she herself was neurodivergent and some part of her wants to protect allie from her struggles, although the right way to do that is not what she did.

how was mental health handled / discussed in the family / community?  it really wasn’t discussed. allie’s mother taught her things that were essentially about masking and giving other people what they want from her easier, a lot of it was inappropriate given how old she was at the time of these talks, but allie clung to them and took them to heart given that this was really the only time her mother would actually parent her.

what are their thoughts on mental health / their diagnosis?  she has a very ‘it’s okay for everyone except for me’ way of thinking of mental health. she will preach about taking the time for yourself and being kind to yourself and your brain until it comes to her. like i said before, she thinks there’s something wrong with her, which isn’t true, and doesn’t want there to be. but she just ignores it and doesn’t deal with it. it’s not like a ‘something’s wrong and i want to fix it’ she just tries to distract herself, and others, from it.

in what ways has their diagnosis shaped their life or experiences?  her diagnosis has always caused her to feel different from others, though she’s never known what exactly was ‘wrong’ with her, only that something separated her from everyone else. she’s always felt more sensitive, like she felt more, like she noticed more, and so she often acted as if she never knew anything. and she did struggle with some things, she always struggled with school, but she was smart with people, and could often tell what they were feeling because she was so perceptive. 

symptoms.            note that all of the below are, on their own, normative and typical aspects of human functioning. they become “symptoms” when they last longer than “normal” or when they pose a significant impact on someone’s life / functioning. bold all that are present, italicize those that are resolved or in the history.

depression. anxiety. panic attacks. dissociation. derealization. depersonalization. suicidal ideation. self harm. homicidal ideation. psychosis. auditory hallucinations. visual hallucinations. delusions. mania. hypomania. racing thoughts. hyperactivity. attention difficulty. flashbacks. nightmares. hyperarousal. hypoarousal. hypersexuality. hyposexuality. psychopathy. risky behavior. catatonia. somatic / bodily concerns. mutism. phobia. agoraphobia. hoarding. obsessions. compulsions. body dysmorphia. hair picking. skin picking. amnesia. illness anxiety / hypochondria. sensory loss. speech difficulty. comprehension difficulty. communication difficulty. tics. defiant behavior. irritable mood. vindictiveness. aggression. pyromania. kleptomania. paranoia. attention seeking. narcissism. avoidance. dependency. pica. rumination. food restriction. food binging. purging. soiling the bed. insomnia. fatigue. sexual dysfunction. delirium. developmental delays.

explanations / elaborations on any of the above symptoms:

she experiences long periods of depression, especially in the winter, where she won’t leave her bed and declines to take care of herself, not making an effort to communicate with anyone or let anyone know of her wellbeing. she often spends most of the time asleep, or legitimately staring at the wall and dug deep in a hole of her own thoughts, often spiraling further because of them. this is probably one of the hardest aspects of her mental health to represent in rp because these episodes happen when she’s alone, which obviously doesn’t work in a thread with another muse. her loved ones almost always bring her out of an episode, even if they’re just around. she is just so, so lonely that any attention becomes good attention, but when she’s not receiving attention or company, her progress takes several steps back. there are plenty of times when she’s alone and she doesn’t descend into an episode, when she’s the one that reaches out first to others and when she can cope with being alone. but there are many times when she doesn’t cope. i also think her episodes stem from being alone for long periods of time when she was a child, and she had to get to school still or fend for herself, but now that she’s older she doesn’t have ‘places to be’ per se, so she just rots away in the cottage instead. 

her anxiety can manifest in seemingly childish fits of panic- or displays of emotion that may seem to lead to one -or feeling so anxious that she can hardly sit still and gets very hyper, which is when racing thoughts and hyperactivity can happen and be especially overwhelming, though they can happen on their own, they’re more common paired with the anxiety, for allie.

dissociation can happen when she’s very overwhelmed, though it’s not uncommon for her to zone out if she’s got a lot on her mind, in general, just not necessarily as extreme as dissociation spells.

she has a hard time dealing with attention difficulties and staying focused, and this doesn’t necessarily have to be triggered by anything, it’s just something that she struggles with on a pretty regular basis.

allie has nightmares pretty regularly when she sleeps alone, and while some of them are side effects of her mother’s magic, at this point, a lot of them are due to her own trauma. one of her frequently repeating nightmares is the one where her wings get cut off, though she never sees who is cutting them off, only can feel the excruciating pain of it. she’ll also dream about drowning or sometimes even pirates or hunters. her mother used to supply her with a magic drug to take care of them, and allie had developed an addiction to it. though after her mother left, her nightmares worsened due to withdrawal from the drug.

i’d say compulsions and risky behavior go together, with the risky behavior being things she feels compelled to do. the risky behavior is very often distractions from dealing with other things, things allie considers sad or bad. and when describing her risky behaviors, allie often says she doesn’t know why she does them, or that they’re silly thoughts she has. and i also think that she truly has no idea where they come from, just that they help to distract her from feeling ‘bad’ things.

allie has thalassophobia, and while it does have a reason behind it, (falling down the well when she was a toddler and what her mother would tell her about the water and its dangers and conflicts with her magic) i think it is ultimately irrational because of how she approaches it and her general refusal to learn how to swim and to be more comfortable around the water. however, i will say that with the more time i have spent writing allie, the more she has shown progress to feeling safer by the water, though a lot of that has to do with her loved ones help.

allie struggles with hoarding, and has kept nearly everything her mother has ever owned, and kept everything in the cottage as it was when her mother was around, especially her mother’s room. she also keeps everything that she can, trying to reuse anything the best she can, especially things that are meant to be thrown away, like plastic or paper.

while a lot of it is caused by magic, and her present struggles with memory loss and amnesia are because of the magic her mother used on her, there are also memories of her mother that allie just can’t remember because she has blocked it out. her amnesia especially affects memories in her older years when her mother was present, because her mother had stopped with the spells by then and had pretty much given up on allie entirely. 

comprehension difficulty comes especially with social cues and sarcasm, but she struggles all around with ‘book smarts’ types of things as well. she’s good with plants and plant science, as well as some aspects of biology when it comes to animals, but in other areas of academia and knowledge in general, she struggles with understanding. 

avoidance and dependency being right next to each other is definitely a choice but listen, she avoids mostly anything that upsets her or could upset someone else. her problems for certain, and like i said before, her leaving coping mechanism is the avoidance. she avoids the bad things and clings to the good. she often depends on other people, without meaning to, to remind her to take care of herself, which really isn’t healthy.

allie has experienced developmental delays due to her trauma. she is incredibly naive, sometimes to a point that it can seem childish. this directly relates to her trauma, and that she never really had the chance to grow up properly because her mother left her right when she would’ve been maturing and growing up, and she had even started to decline from parenting allie heavily even before that.

allie also has a sort of disordered eating, which usually ties in with the lack of taking care of herself during depressive episodes. she often forgets to eat unless she’s with someone, and eats very little in general. i don’t think she even does it on purpose? maybe a little bit of it is but it’s not an obsession that i think is common with a lot of eating disorders. she thinks that her body is one of her only redeeming qualities, so she thinks she has to maintain it in order to be desirable, but that’s not entirely why she has trouble with eating, and it’s not something that she thinks about a lot of the time. her lack of eating or eating proper meals that fill her up causes frequent stomach aches due to stomach acid having nothing to absorb.

tagged by;   @lighthouseborn​​​​​​​​​​​  ♡♡ tagging;   you, steal this and say i tagged you!

Living in the United States of America in 2022 is having a serious conversation with your partner of 16 years about getting a divorce – not because you're unhappy or you're not planning on staying together, but because the upfront cost of a divorce is only about $300 in your state. And if you're divorced, your wife qualifies for state health insurance, which will literally save you $3-5K a year just in premiums and her routine medical expenses alone.

Living in the U.S. in 2022 is getting divorced because you cannot afford to remain married. Because somehow even though the average cost of rent in your county is almost 60% of your monthly household income (or 70% if you want a 2 bedroom) you don't qualify for any kind of state or federal assistance.

I work in a white collar middle-class job with a decent amount of education under my belt and better than average benefits. We've been incredibly fortunate where housing is concerned and we're still looking at almost 40% of our income going to it. Our monthly budget after minimum expenses is -$200. We will continue to operate at that deficit for at least a year, because despite the fact that my (perhaps soon-to-be ex?) wife has a medical diagnosis declaring her disabled and unable to work, her application will require at least one or two appeals before she'll be approved – because that's the standard process in this country.

Now, we're very privileged compared to a lot of other people. I have the option to work overtime with some regularity and most months can make up the deficit with ease. She had a decent amount of retirement savings that she cashed in when she was no longer able to work and we can live comfortably enough supplementing my income with that. We have a wide support network of family (mostly found, some blood) that would help out in a pinch. This is not one of those "please help us" posts and I'm not linking you to my Venmo or Kofi. I'm a geriatric millennial. I don't even have a Kofi.

This is just a statement of how profoundly fucked this country is. We couldn't even legally get married until 2016 because the "land of the free" didn't recognize same-sex marriage until then, and we were so excited to do it that we did it twice (one legal ceremony, one wedding). I don't believe a marriage vow is something that should be taken lightly. I won't say I don't believe in divorce, but for me personally when I made my vows, I knew it meant that I was committing to (among other things) always work with her to make our marriage work, no matter how challenging it might get. It hasn't always been sunshine and rainbows, but honestly, most days it is. And anyone who tells you that marriage is hard work is probably married to the wrong person. I wake up every single day next to my wife, and every single day I am grateful to be married to her because she is a gift.

Yet today I find myself seriously considering divorce, because a piece of paper doesn't change a thing between us (somewhat ironic, I know, given the number of times I've written that sentiment into fics for the opposite reason, lol) and taking steps to provide us with a better quality of life & more financial security feels in line with my marriage vows, even if we have to break them in the process. But I am so incredibly fucking disappointed that that's the choice I have. I am so fucking furious that this country has built a structure so dedicated to profit at all costs that the best thing I can do to provide for my wife is to divorce her.

That's it. No pretty words or bow to put on top of this rant. Just a heap of bitter disappointment and a big ol' Fuck Capitalism and Fuck the U.S.

A Closer Look at Local Professional Cleaning Services: Features and Benefits

When life gets busy, maintaining a clean and organized home can become a daunting task. This is where local professional cleaning services come into play, offering numerous advantages for both residential and commercial spaces. If you've ever wondered whether these services are right for you, here's a detailed look at the features and benefits they provide, helping you make an informed decision.

Why Consider Professional Cleaning Services?

The primary allure of professional cleaning services lies in their ability to transform living and working environments into pristine spaces. These services not only cater to the aesthetic appeal of your surroundings but also promote a healthier environment by reducing allergens, dust, and pathogens. But what exactly makes them stand out?

Comprehensive Cleaning Solutions

Professional cleaners are equipped with the tools and expertise to perform a much more thorough clean than the average person. They have access to high-grade cleaning agents and equipment that can tackle tough stains, build-up, and areas that are difficult to reach. This level of cleaning is difficult to achieve with regular home equipment and supplies.

Customizable Service Offerings

One of the standout features of local professional cleaning services is their adaptability. Most companies offer a range of packages, from basic cleaning to deep cleaning and even specialized services like carpet cleaning, window washing, and post-construction clean-ups. You can choose a plan that fits your specific needs, whether you're looking for a one-time service for a special occasion or regular scheduled cleanings to maintain your space.

Time and Energy Saving

In today’s fast-paced world, time is a precious commodity. By outsourcing your cleaning tasks, you save on the considerable amount of time and effort it would take to do it yourself. This frees you up to focus on work, hobbies, family time, or simply relaxing. Moreover, regular maintenance by professionals extends the life of your belongings by keeping them in pristine condition, potentially saving you money in the long run.

Health Benefits

A clean environment is crucial for maintaining good health. Dust, mold, and mildew are not just unsightly; they can cause serious health issues, particularly for those with allergies or respiratory conditions. Professional cleaners use effective techniques and products to sanitize surfaces, improve air quality, and reduce the risk of illness.

Enhanced Appearance and Impression

For businesses, the cleanliness of your premises is often the first impression you make on a client or customer. Professional cleaning services ensure that your environment is always ready to impress. For homeowners, it’s about creating a space that you’re proud to show off and enjoy.

Reliability and Expertise

When you hire a reputable local cleaning service, you gain the benefit of their expertise. Experienced cleaners know the best practices for every type of situation and surface, ensuring that everything is handled with care. Furthermore, most companies perform background checks on their staff, adding an extra layer of security and peace of mind for clients.

Conclusion

Investing in local professional cleaning services offers more than just a clean home or office; it enhances your quality of life. From saving time and maintaining a healthier environment to improving the longevity of your home’s interiors, the benefits are manifold. As you consider a cleaning service, think about these features and benefits to decide how they can best meet your needs and improve your daily life. Whether for occasional deep cleaning or regular upkeep, professional cleaners can make a substantial difference in maintaining and enhancing your environment.

Opinion: Saving $60,000 for a home down payment isn’t impossible. Here’s how you can do it without stocks and without waiting forever.

New Post has been published on https://medianwire.com/opinion-saving-60000-for-a-home-down-payment-isnt-impossible-heres-how-you-can-do-it-without-stocks-and-without-waiting-forever-2/

Opinion: Saving $60,000 for a home down payment isn’t impossible. Here’s how you can do it without stocks and without waiting forever.

Yes, starting from zero and trying to save a bit each month will take a while. To put together that princely sum, you’d have to save $500 a month for around nine years in a high-interest savings account yielding 2%.

But that’s not your only option. 

You might be tempted to try the routes with the potential to speed the process — like investing in cryptocurrency, meme stocks or just an S&P 500 index fund SPY, +0.51%. But this can go badly wrong.

“I had a client who day traded the down-payment money for his house. I didn’t know about this until I was working on their tax return and got the 1099-B from the broker. As expected, there was a very large capital loss,” says Larry Pon, a certified public accountant and financial adviser based in Redwood Shores, Calif. 

Another client was convinced bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.52% was the way to double his money fast. You can guess what happened to that plan. 

And high-risk instruments are not a prerequisite for going astray. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, the Nasdaq COMP, the S&P 500 SPX and even the bond market BX:TMUBMUSD10Y are all down sharply this year. 

“I’ve been doing this for 36 years, and the advice has never changed: You park a down payment somewhere safe,” says Pon. 

The following are some strategies to help your savings grow faster so you don’t grow too old to enjoy your white picket fence. 

First of all, you need a house fund

“Move [down-payment] money into a separate savings account and name it,” says Jean Chatzky, personal-finance expert and CEO of Her Money. People may find this silly, but she’s serious and includes it in a step in her Finance Fixx courses.

Be as visual about it as you can, like naming it the “304 Maple Avenue Fund,” so you’re motivated to save for a specific goal. 

Then set up automatic monthly deposits, as you would with 401(k) deductions from your paycheck, Chatzky says. You can even ask your payroll department to have the money sent there directly from your paycheck, so you never have the opportunity to spend it. 

Want to save even more? Shield the growth of your savings in a health savings account, where you can save up to $3,650 a year for an individual in 2022. That money comes out of your paycheck before taxes, and the growth is also free of federal, state and local income taxes.

“Don’t reimburse yourself as you go, but save the receipts,” suggests Pon. 

When it’s time to buy a house, you can withdraw the money and the earnings — up to the amount you have justified with the receipts — without penalties or fees. 

Squeeze the most yield you can

The goal with short-term savings is to get the most interest that you can without taking on risk. In today’s economy, that’s always shifting. I-bonds are a great option if you have a large chunk already saved and your house purchase is at least 15 months in the future. In October 2022, for example, you’d lock in a 9.62% rate for the next six months, and then probably another decent rate for another six months.

A couple of caveats: You must hold I-bonds for at least a year, and if you cash in before five years you’ll lose three months of interest. Since the rate changes every six months and the Treasurydirect.gov buying system is clunky, it’s probably not the best for incremental purchases. 

That’s why financial adviser Jeremy Keil, based in Milwaukee, is turning right now to Treasury bills and laddering them for clients. “It’s always about getting the best interest you can find,” he says, and he finds the yield on six-month bills TMUBMUSD06M, 4.120%, at nearly 4% in early October, to be the best option.

Laddering strategies can be complicated, requiring spreadsheets and constant management, so you might want to ask a financial adviser for help. Some brokerages will help you create Treasury ladders or CD ladders that will automatically roll over and reinvest for you. 

You can also consider other bond options. Nicholas Olesen, a financial adviser at Kathmere Capital Management in Wayne, Pa., has a client closing soon on a house, putting money into ultrashort California municipal bonds. You can access short-term bonds through exchange-traded funds too, and some yield 4%, he says. 

With rates changing so quickly, you’ll want to be cautious on how long you lock up your money. In the very short term, a simple high-yield savings account might be your best option. 

Other ways to turbocharge your savings

Still not going fast enough for you? Increase your savings rate. “Maybe you take on a weekend side hustle or ask for a raise. You could look for a better paying job,” says Bobbi Rebell, a certified financial planner and host of the podcast Money Tips for Financial Grownups.

Read: I’ve set pay policies at big companies — here are 3 secrets to getting a raise

You can also look at your tax refund, bonus and gifts from family members to put big cash infusions into your house fund. 

“Drip-drip-drip is a great strategy, but people get impatient with that,” says Pon. 

Another way Pon’s clients save for down payments is by looking at their restricted stock options and employee stock-purchase plans. “This is part of income, not necessarily part of equity,” he says, especially if you exercise the options right away when you know their value. 

Shift the goalposts

At the end of the day, a goal of $60,000 — or whatever your initial target might be — could be too much for you. So think about a smaller house or waiting out a housing market in which mortgage interest rates are touching 7% and house values are shifting daily. “Biding your time is a good financial move,” says Chatzky.

If anything seems too expensive, it probably is. Walk away and keep looking. “Take comfort in the fact that as a buyer you always have choices. There will be another property to buy,” says Rebell. 

More from MarketWatch

‘Passion budgeting’ lets you keep what matters most yet still fix your finances

Home prices fell in August from July, CoreLogic says. These are the top 5 markets at risk of steep declines.

House hunters on the ‘demoralizing’ process of buying a house in a crazy market. One listing had 30 offers — and sold for $85,000 above asking.

Read the full article here

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Dim light, sleep tight: How to use light & darkness to optimize sleep

Feeling sleepy? You’re not alone. More than a third of Americans aren’t getting the recommended minimum of seven hours of sleep per night, and on average we get a full hour less sleep than we did 60 years ago. This has far greater implications than simply feeling tired and cranky or needing that extra cup of coffee to keep yourself going. Inadequate sleep has been linked to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, impaired cognitive function, depression, and many other health problems.

For millennia, our bodies have been governed by circadian rhythms set by the rising and setting of the sun. We are hard-wired through millions of years of evolution to wind down in the evening and go to sleep soon after dark. Modern society has disrupted this natural pattern, and man-made light is partly to blame. Research has shown that nighttime light exposure suppresses the production of melatonin, the hormone that controls sleep and wake cycles. This can be disastrous for sleep quality.

For thousands of years, humans were exposed to bright light from the sun throughout the day, while the night had only the warm yellow glow from fire and candles. Sixty years ago, we had plenty of light at night, but homes were mostly lit with warm-spectrum incandescent bulbs. TV, phone, and computer screens, on the other hand, emit blue-spectrum light, which suppresses melatonin much more than warmer light. In many homes, incandescent bulbs have been replaced with more energy-efficient fluorescent or LED bulbs, which emit considerably more blue light. All this blue-light exposure sends the message to our brains that it’s daytime and time to be awake.

When TV became widespread, there were only a handful of channels, and most signed off at night. Today, we have infinite digital entertainment available 24 hours a day. If there’s nothing good on TV, you can watch something on Netflix or YouTube. There’s always Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat to keep up with, strangers to argue with, and cat videos to watch. All this temptation makes it much more difficult to get to bed at a decent time. This constant online entertainment keeps us up later, while bathing our eyes in a constant flood of blue light. This has contributed to an epidemic of poor sleep, insomnia, and chronic sleep deprivation.

Solutions

Getting bright light exposure before noon increases the production of serotonin, a precursor to melatonin, and helps optimize our circadian rhythm. A walk outside before work or at lunchtime (without sunglasses) can make a big difference at bedtime.

Make your bedroom a pitch-dark space. Get rid of any glowing clocks, night-lights, and anything else that has a light. Even tiny lights, like those on a power strip, can have an effect on melatonin; these can be covered with electrical tape. Get blackout shades for your windows if light comes in from outside.

Choose warm-white bulbs for lights in your bedroom and other rooms where you spend time in the evening. You can even replace regular bulbs with orange bulbs for a cozy, firelight ambiance. I have an orange LED nightlight in my bathroom so I don’t have to turn a light on when I get up during the night.

Use your phone’s settings or an app to automatically change the color of your screen to a warmer hue, which will reduce the amount of blue light getting to your eyes. You can also do this on your desktop or laptop with a free app called f.lux.

Geek out and try orange glasses! If you want to watch TV or can’t keep off your devices, blue-blocker glasses can, as the name implies, block blue light and prevent melatonin suppression. You can buy blue-blocker glasses for less than $10.

This is a tough one: turn off your devices in the evening. Most of us are hopelessly addicted to our phones or tablets, and the urge to check your email one last time or see if anyone commented on your Facebook post is powerful. This not only exposes you to blue light, it also stimulates your brain much more than something more passive such as reading a book. Before bed, you want to be winding your brain down, not firing it up!

Set an alarm 60 or 90 minutes before bed to remind you to turn your devices off or put them away. Keeping them out of the bedroom can also reduce temptation.

Sleep well, everybody!

Invisalign Houston, TX

Invisalign in Houston, TX is a treatment that straightens teeth and improves bite issues, without the use of metal brackets and wires. Invisalign is a series of clear, removable plastic trays that gradually straighten your teeth. You will receive each tray in the mail, and wear it for 20 to 22 hours each day for 1 to 2 weeks, as directed by your dentist.

Invisalign uses a patented thermoplastic FDA-approved material called SmartTrack®, a type of plastic that is free from BPA, BPS, latex, and gluten.

Your dental care professional will create a unique, digital treatment plan that maps out where your teeth will move. Each Invisalign tray gradually shifts your teeth each day until you reach your new smile.

You will leave your aligners in for 20 to 22 hours every day, and take them out only when you eat, drink, and brush or floss your teeth.

Always remove your Invisalign before eating and drinking any foods or beverages, as doing so may damage or stain the aligner. Be sure to brush your teeth before putting your Invisalign back into your mouth.

While undergoing Invisalign treatment, avoid eating food that might push your teeth out of alignment. Stay away from uncooked carrots, for example, and avoid caramel that can pull on teeth. Avoid beverages that can stain your aligners, such as coffee, tea, and wine. Do not drink hot beverages while wearing Invisalign, as high temperatures can warp the aligner.

Invisalign treatment time is 12 to 18 months on average, although you may see results in just weeks.

The Invisalign process begins with a trip to your dentist or orthodontist, who can help you decide if Invisalign is right for you. Your dental health professional will discuss your teeth-straightening goals with you and examine your teeth and bite. They will also discuss how long you might be using Invisalign, and ways to improve your results.

Once you approve the plan, a laboratory will make your aligners and send them to you in the mail every week or two. You will wear each aligner for the predetermined amount of time – usually one to two weeks. Throw away the old aligner and start wearing the new one as scheduled.

Tooth movement can cause discomfort, particularly during the first few days of wearing each aligner. Invisalign is very comfortable compared with the metal brackets and wires of traditional braces, largely because of the smooth plastic materials from which the aligners are made. Furthermore, Invisalign aligners are trimmed to remove any rough edges that may cause discomfort.

Buttons are tiny tooth-colored brackets onto which you will attach small rubber bands, which increases the gentle pressure applied to the teeth. Buttons help the Invisalign aligners move teeth better than the aligners can do by themselves. Your dentists can tell you if you will need buttons to improve the teeth-straightening effects of Invisalign.

Make an appointment with your dentist or orthodontist. Your dental health professional can help you decide if Invisalign can give you the smile you have always wanted.

Dr. Watson and our team at Watson Orthodontics are experts in orthodontic treatment. We are here to answer any question or concern you may have involving Invisalign and Invisalign Teen in Houston TX, Tomball TX, Spring TX, Katy TX, Willowbrook TX, Cypress TX, and the surrounding areas of Harris County TX. Contact Watson Orthodontics to schedule a free consultation today. 

Monday | July 11th, 2022 | 4:29PM

It’s been a few days since I quit my job and I honestly haven’t felt this peaceful in a very long time. I’m starting to recognize the repeating pattern of how jobs make me feel overtime and it’s all stemming from this part of me that knows my purpose is way bigger than a grocery store or a factory job or any kind of workplace that I’m not truly passionate about.

I begin to reflect— as I always do —and I found this file in my mind that’s been secretly stored there about how everything you do and what you put a lot of your energy into will reflect back onto you & your life in many different ways, i.e. law of attraction (in a metaphorical sense, when my subconscious doesn’t have enough space in the back, the energy will begin to shift and merge some information into the conscious but it has its own ways and times that it chooses to be seen or interacted with. But the stronger your intuition becomes, the more you’ll be able to sense and self reflection helps heighten that).

If I keep spending my time working somewhere that I know I wouldn’t be doing for free, something that doesn’t make me genuinely happy, somewhere I’m not fulfilling my purpose in the way I’m meant to, a place where you gotta tolerate immature, petty and outlandish behavior from customers & coworkers that constantly drain you, the energies and emotions I continuously experience while being there will just manifest into different forms. I noticed that all the time and energy I was putting into a job caused me to not feel motivated, focused or inspired enough to put a good amount of time into what actually made me happy. I’d come home from work, shower, eat, chill, and by the time I’m writing in my journal or picking up a book, it’s maybe an hour or two before I gotta go to sleep so I can wake up and do it all again. I also feel that two days out of the week to be off isn’t enough time and jobs that don’t allow breaks unless your working a double is insanity.

And you know, there’s people out here that genuinely are meant for these jobs, there’s people who have no problem adapting and excelling in certain environments because it’s what’s meant for them, what resonates with them, what is apart of their journey/purpose. That’s wonderful and I wouldn’t wanna stop anyone from doing what they feel is meant for their highest good and brings them security, stability, transparency, peace, stillness, fulfillment, the list goes on. But what a lot of people fail to understand is that what works for me won’t always work for you and vice versa. Why can’t we just accept that some people are fit for it, and some aren’t? Why shame the ones that aren’t, the ones that struggle with it? I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my mental and spiritual health for something that only brings me financial gain. That energy exchange doesn’t serve me because that’s all it’s bringing. It already needs to come with joy, faith, grace, clarity, transmutation, spiritual stimulation and so much more. I put intention in everything, from my breath to a love interest, it’s all an exchange of energy somehow, someway. If I’m looking for love, and I find someone who can keep me financially secure but they don’t treat me well, they talk bad about me behind my back, they don’t wanna see me grow, they don’t support me enough to feel confident around them, they drain me to the last drop, why would I feel that it would be in my best interest to stay with that person? It wouldn’t, and I’m not going to lie to myself and say that it would.

You need to release any and everything that isn’t serving your highest good and be more mindful of what you choose to connect with and put your precious energy into.

I’m very energetically sensitive so I’m able to sense a lot more naturally than the average person. We all have an intuition, & we all have our own gifts, it’s just about whether or not you choose to actually incorporate those things into your life because it’s incredibly powerful and so important to your journey. When I’m constantly around people that do nothing but drain me, it’s definitely going to take a toll as the time passes, and trust me, it does. Jobs make me have nights where I wonder why I’m wasting so much of my time doing something that doesn’t serve my highest good and why I’m letting a dirty green piece of paper control me to go to a place I don’t want to go, to be around people that don’t like me or themselves, and to do things and act in a certain way that I don’t wish to. You know, I’m starting to realize that this even triggers childhood memories because that’s how I was raised— constantly pushed in a mold that wasn’t meant for me, pushed to be someone that was going against my true self and being criticized with whatever didn’t go with my guardians’ choices or perceptions. Overtime I’ve accepted that the root of that behavior stems from how they were raised and them simply trying to do their best and desiring what’s best for us, but sometimes your perception just isn’t a clear representation of actuality and that distorted view can really alter everything in your life.

I still live with my guardians and I’m grateful for them but I’ve had a desire to get my own space for a long while. It’s just not my time yet, but it will be soon. I can feel it. It’s been close to a week since I’ve quit my job and my guardians still haven’t asked me their million dollar question, thankfully.

“So… What are your plans, Parousia?” They say rather disappointingly.

Which is really the mellow version of, “So… When are you gonna move out already?”

Did I also mention that I am a high school dropout? :)

Can’t really be upset with them when it’s their home and they don’t have me paying for anything, but part of me does wish they could be more patient with me. I wish they were able to understand that living the life I desire and deserve is more than possible but their heavy energy that weighs on me does slow me down a bit when I’m trying to tap into what I’m passionate about. But that’s just because their energy in itself triggers unresolved pain and resentment from childhood so being around them always makes me a little more on edge. I do plan on shifting that, though because I wouldn’t want anyone to have that much control over me.

I’m at a time now where I’m just doing what I love and living my life the way I wish to, as presently as possible. Whatever happens is what’s meant to happen but for right now, I’m investing into what I love and I know it’ll all come back tenfold.

I don’t have any friends, I’ve gotten off mainstream socials for good (Tumblr is a whole different category and I can happily visit without being bombarded with celebrity drama and unnecessary gossip. I know if I looked for it it would most likely be here but the beauty of this app is that if I don’t look for it, it’s not gonna try to find me), and I changed my number. Now it’s time to lock in.

On another note, I’ve been feeling really moved to read Love, Freedom, Aloneness by Osho so I think I’m gonna get into that today. I’m currently reading They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera, only 170 pages in but I’m really excited about finishing it. I got some audiobooks by Thich Nhat Hanh that I wanna listen to soon, as well. I’ll give you an update on how they move me along the way. I have high hopes for all.

Asé

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Genuinely asking, isn't self-diagnose with a condition kind of dangerous? Because legitimizing self-diagnosing opens a door to many malicious people who would want to exploit the fact they can self-diagnose? And in turn, make the space of autistic people worse?

Was going to skip this, but I’m writing a LONG response because I’m VERY exhausted with the amount of misinformation I see on this “self dx is dangerous” take, so buckle up and allow me to info dump.

Recently, authentic_autism_advocacy, an Instagram account run by a supposed medically diagnosed autistic woman was discovered to be a non-autistic woman, Connie Manning, posing as a medically diagnosed autistic person to spread hate and anti-self diagnosing speech. In reality, she is a neurotypical mother who regularly uses her autistic son for clout; she also turned out to have a hand behind CalmWear, a brand of sensory compression products designed for disabled people. Not only had she been spewing hatred towards other autistic people, she had been accusing well known AFAB autistic tiktokers like beckspectrum of faking being autistic and threatening self diagnosed autistics and saying they are a danger to the community, and engaging in other incredibly discriminating behaviour. Yes, she herself was a neurotypical person posing as a medically diagnosed autistic to perpetuate hateful rhetoric about self diagnosed people and used her voice to speak OVER autistic folk for financial gain and exploitation of autistic people, including her own son. If you want to read this roller coaster of a story, an autistic person wrote an entire article on it with tons of screenshots and sources.

So let me make one thing clear to you.

The purpose of actually, genuinely self diagnosing is not done to attract attention or to parade around and exploit other autistic people. Self diagnosed autistic individuals have recognised due to difficult life circumstances, financial hardship, bigotry and stigma within the medical/legal world, being a minor, lack of insurance, lack of proper access to safe care facilities, being denied assessment due to incompetent or biased practitioners, and/or any other obstacle that they may temporarily or permanently be barred from diagnosis. Self diagnosis does NOT instantly mean a person is posing for clout, nor does it indicate a person is trying to wring money from assistance services or exploit other autistics. And nts who use self diagnose with intentions of harming the community? That’s NOT self diagnosis, that’s abuse of something meant to aid people blocked from medical care or financial means to that care. All we can do for autistic people, no matter who we perceive them to be, is treat them the same way we would any other autistic person. Because the moment you start deciding by your own book who deserves respect and who doesn’t, you’ll be on a slippery slope to locking out thousands of autistic people from the community. If it’s discovered a person like Connie is literally abusing the system of self dx to intentionally mislead the community, by all means, we must hold them accountable. But you cannot simply go about granting and revoking access from people just because someone lacks a diagnosis or doesn’t fit your idea of what being autistic looks like, especially if it’s based on stereotypes.

Moral of the story? Isn’t it ironic how anti-self dx people will 100% believe a user who claims to be medically diagnosed but shows no “written proof” of it, yet always demand written proof from a self dx person? It’s almost like even anti-self dx people can’t tell the difference between someone who is medically diagnosed autistic and someone who isn’t. Well, that’s because they can’t. While there might be common traits, autism has no set model, it is a spectrum, no autistic person is alike; Policing self diagnosed people about their self diagnosis isn’t a form of protecting the community. It’s a form of gatekeeping. If you find yourself granting instant acceptance, without asking for proof, to a person insisting they are medically diagnosed like this neurotyical mother, but then prohibit self dx people from entry entirely on the grounds of not showing proof of medical assessment, you are upholding a double standard. This is why policing autistic people’s diagnosis, self or not, is inherently useless.

So here’s the thing... instead of asking people to stop self diagnosing, what you should instead be asking yourself is, “Why do people self diagnose? What kind of medical system could possibly be in place where people feel they need to resort to self diagnosis rather than get an actual diagnosis?”

Well, it’s mainly common knowledge among most of the autistic community that diagnosis is NOT easy to come by.

One of the main reasons why people cannot get a diagnosis is due to financial/insurance reasons. It’s reasonable to estimate that by the end of 2020 almost 30 million Americans alone were without health insurance. I’ve heard costs out of pocket for an autism diagnosis are between $500-$6000. If a person or a family cannot afford health insurance—which by the way on average is around $5,400 a year for a single person and $13,800 for a family here—where are they supposed to pull out $6,000 to get screened?

You might be asking, “Well aren’t insurances supposed to cover disability?” Sure, there are options for disability care through health insurance—not even going to get into that—but like a lot of things in the US, this is a severely flawed system. A lot of private health insurance will stop or limit coverage for an autism diagnosis or assistance services once a person reaches 18 to 21 years old. In most states, coverage has a higher chance of being denied to autistic adults coming with the added age cap or ONLY covering ABA, an abusive, manipulative “therapy” used to force social compliance and trait suppression on autistic people. The fact that ABA, a conversion therapy, is covered, but little else, shows exactly what insurance companies think of autistic people: they’ll only cover us if we want to learn to be “normal”. This can leave many undiagnosed autistic adults who cannot afford analysis, insurance, or safe assistance services with nowhere to turn. If I was not on my parents’ insurance, there is NO WAY I would EVER be able to afford a diagnosis. I don’t have $2,000 lying around. The MONEY ALONE would prohibit me from getting a diagnosis, no matter how many autistic traits I presented.

When I was going through this system years ago to start a diagnosis, I was shocked to find no therapist within three hours of me was accepting adult patients. “Up to 18 only” their websites would say. And in the event I had found one (1) that accepted me as a then 20 year old with X insurance, and that person refused me diagnosis, I would be out of options unless I planned a 5 hour drive which may have also led me to another biased screener. A person seeking self financed assessment can waste thousands of dollars therapist hopping.

People will say, “Well I live in X place, and where I come from, it’s covered!” Well the reality is that everyone in the world does not live where you live. It’s not realistic to assume everyone is in the same position as you or your family to afford care or access the same resources as you. When you say, “Just go out and get a diagnosis! It’s not that hard!”, understand you are speaking from your personal vantage point where screening may be easily accessed or easily covered/is free OR you have no personal knowledge of what that process is like yourself.

The second thing that bars a ton of people from being diagnosed is the fact that when autism was first discovered, its research was HEAVILY centered on white, cis, heterosexual men. The idea that autistic people are ONLY cis, white, heterosexual men carries on to this day. If you are an outlier to this stereotype, your chances of being misdiagnosed with something else or refused diagnosis skyrocket because so-called “professionals” don’t know how to observe traits in any other person besides a cis, white, heterosexual man, and refuse/fail to recognise the endless ways in which a person can be autistic. ALL the time I hear how AFAB people will go in to get screened only to find out their screener does not believe AFAB people can be autistic, because yes, sexism and anti-lgbtq+ ideas play a huge role in the incredibly outdated diagnostic process, because autism is still believed to be an “AMAB only” thing. People report going into a therapists office and being asked questions like, “Do you like going outside? Do you like having friends?” and being told that if you agree with either of these, you cannot be autistic because criteria at some places is so backwards, you can’t even say you enjoy conversation without failing the test. Other things commonly heard during the analysis are screeners telling someone they are too smart/articulate to be autistic, gas lighting them by saying they are mistaking their symptoms for something else/making them up, telling a person they seem normal, dismissing clear autistic traits by saying they’re unique “superpowers”, or intentionally misdiagnosing a person as ADHD INSTEAD of autistic. People on social media have also pointed out what influences racism has on the diagnostic process as well and how lack of research and understanding of autistic POC contributes to under-diagnosis and stigma has only contributed to refusal of care and under-representation of POC in the disabled community, as one autistic Black woman points out on Instagram, “I found excellent articles that support and validate my feelings and experiences, but I could find no research on autistic Black people.” Additionally, because research has primarily been done on young men, this means anyone who is not a cis man and is over the age of 18 and is seeking a diagnosis has a much higher chance of not receiving one because screeners don’t understand how autistic traits may present differently in adults, especially since adults are very likely to mask. Some autism screeners are so against autism they have told clients they would only diagnosis a person autistic if it was their last resort to avoid “placing a burden on their shoulders”. These reasons are largely responsible for why autism is incredibly mis/under-diagnosed. This ask would be the length of a novel if I included every single type of discrimination and mistreatment during the evaluation process alone, but understand it can be incredibly biased, sexist, transphobic, racist, or just flat out ableist. And guess what? Though this process can take as little as a month to get sorted, that is rare. The assessment SHOULD be very short. But a lot of autistic people have reported their diagnosis took more than 2-4 years because of having to waste time, energy, and money hopping from therapist to therapist looking for someone to take them seriously, as many autistic people compiled on the actuallyautistictiktoks page on Instagram point out.

The last thing I want to touch on is this idea that people have that self diagnosing is dangerous. “What if someone self diagnoses and they take advantage of services that are meant for autistic people?” ...The Big Things you think I am going to take advantage of as a self diagnosed autistic person, like scholarship money for instance or SSDI, I do not have legal access to without a formal diagnosis. I cannot waltz into a law firm and ask for a $5,000 scholarship for autistic people without a diagnosis, because they WILL NOT give it to me!

Let me tell you some of things I’ve “cruelly taken advantage of” as a self diagnosed autistic person. I bought glasses with blue light protection, because screen and fluorescent lighting at work and even natural blue toned light from the sky lowers my threshold for some sensory input like noise and social interaction; wearing them to work everyday has improved my sensory thresholds incredibly. I’ve talked to my manager and told him I’m autistic and that I have a hard time understanding vague direction and may need to step away briefly on occasion to tend to a shutdown before a meltdown comes on at work; he had no problem with this. I use subtitles; sometimes I have trouble processing audio or reading facial expressions and tone, and being able to see the words displayed on the screen gives me a significantly better understanding of what I watch. All my life, I have been having meltdowns which I had mistaken for mental breakdowns or panic attacks and having access to resources that walked me through preventative methods and tips on what to do if I have one has been ENORMOUSLY helpful to me. All my life, I was trying to deal with them thinking they were something else; becoming aware of this and accepting that they are in fact autistic meltdowns has helped me not only go through them, but has helped me redirect stims which at their worst previously had me hitting and clawing my arms, slapping my face, and even hitting my head. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait 4 years for a diagnosis to use resources I could be using to make my life more accessible right now!

People will say, “Oh well yeah, I don’t mean You are one of Those Types of self diagnosed autistic people, you clearly sound/look autistic, I’m talking about other people.” The thing is, there is no broad “sounding/looking autistic”, that’s stereotyping, and you can’t demand everyone who interacts with you show you their Autistic Card, because again, not everyone is able to be diagnosed, especially given the mistreatment and stigma present towards autistic people in the medical field! And what made you ask for their diagnosis? Because they “don’t seem autistic” to you? Why didn’t you ask for their diagnosis? Because they “seemed autistic” to you? By denying anyone who doesn’t have a diagnosis resources they may very well need, you are denying assistance to thousands of people who are without means to be diagnosed. And I am SO tired of seeing comments online on self diagnosis posts that “people don’t know what they’re taking about” as if they know us personally, like are you me? Are you my doctor I’ve consulted? Did you watch me academically research and consult with other autistic people about being autistic for over 3 years? I’m tired of “well, one time a self diagnosed person laughed at my actually autistic diagnosed friend...so all self dx people are evil” because there is ZERO correlation between a person being self assessed and their behavior towards a non self assessed person. The fact both those arguments are in use whenever self dx comes up is yet another form of gatekeeping.

Self diagnosing autism is not begging for attention or Evil Criminal Money Funneling Schemes. It is a result of a deeply flawed medical and insurance system that has failed to give proper attention and care to those who need it, it is a result of resources not made available, of safe support systems not there for kids and adults alike. You want to talk about what’s truly dangerous? How the hate group Autism Speaks has been parading itself around since 2005 as an advocacy group for autistic people and has been misusing millions of dollars worth of donation money and promoting stigma and hatred around autistic people; no autistic members are present on their board. How Sia and her new film Music was nominated for 2 Golden Globes despite it replacing the original autistic actor with a neurotypical actor, using offensive stereotypes, and using the main autistic character as a prop, and featured an extremely dangerous bodily restraint scene on an autistic person having a meltdown in public and featured very insensitive content due to Sia’s lack of consulting with autistic people to make the film (spoilers in that article).

Instead of policing autistic people, whether they fit your idea of what an autistic person is or not, redirect your efforts and your energy to dismantling systems and holding others accountable for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about autistic people that are legitimately dangerous on such a scale that they have created insurmountable damage to the autistic community. But I guarantee you, worrying over whether your classmate is “faking it” will not do any justice to the decades worth of discrimination autistic people face still today.

I understand. You care about the community, you don’t want autistic people to be exploited or taken advantage of. I don’t want to be exploited and taken advantage of as an autistic person, and I don’t want that for others! But I also understand that when we self proclaim ourselves as judges of random autistic strangers on the internet or start accusing people of faking or demanding to see medical paperwork from people when the basis of our suspicions is “this person doesn’t look like my stereotyped view on how I think an autistic person should act”, THAT is when you really run into trouble. Because if you are allowed to deny self dx people entrance into the autistic community, what’s stopping you from thinking you have the power to deny ANYONE entrance into that community?

And there is power in self diagnosis for many autistic people. When the evaluation system is literally rigged to set you up for failure and put you through unnecessary hardship, self dx is a self affirming, empowering tool to take back control from a process designed to gaslight and crush you. The evaluation process was NOT formulated by an autistic person, nor was it made to be inclusive of all autistic people. Until the evaluation system in place for autistic people is safe, accessible, and free to ALL, you have EVERY right to self diagnose.

Been seeing a lot of “backyard eggs are cruel” articles lately, so I wanted to go through a couple of the points they raise and highlight why backyard eggs aren’t inherently cruel.

1) Chicks come from factory farm hatcheries

This point is entirely dependent upon an individuals purchasing choices. The only chicks coming from factory farm hatcheries are production hybrids, so ISA Brown, HYLINE Brown, Utility Leghorn, etc. so long as you don’t purchase these hybrids, you don’t support the unethical factories.

Although private hatcheries have their own plethora of ethical issues, these places are not suppliers to factory farms. The best place to purchase your chicks or pullets from is a private breeder who has good welfare standards. Neither of these options support the factory farms, and the claim that majority of backyard hens come from these factory farm hatcheries is false. I currently can’t name a single person I know with birds from a factory farm hatchery.

2) Male chicks are killed at birth

If you are buying factory farm chicks, yes. However as I mentioned above, few backyard hens are coming from this source. Private hatcheries which sex chicks either sell cockerels cheaper, or sell them in bundle deals for meat birds. Unfortunately private hatcheries are about profit, and believe it or not they can still profit off cockerels.

Private breeders rarely ever sex chicks. It requires specialised training and cockerels are harder to sell, so most sell chicks unsexed. Breeders also want to grow out these cockerels, there needs to be a keep back for the next generation of breeding. Either way, private hatcheries and breeders where a lot of backyard hens are sourced from are not killing male chicks on a large scale.

3) Hens are unhealthy and unnatural due to genetic manipulation

First of all, domestic hens lay more eggs than their ancestors due to selective breeding, not ‘genetic modification’ or ‘genetic manipulation’. Production hybrids are certainly unhealthy, laying over 300 eggs a year causes their bodies to wear out and they’re predisposed to so many reproductive issues. They were bred with the intention of maximum production, replaced after 18 months once this production declines. They are a mess and frankly should not exist.

This is the argument point which always frustrates me the most because, you do realise there are hundreds of chicken breeds right? And just like with dogs, these breeds all have different temperaments, characteristics, and health statuses.

A well bred Wyandotte who lays 200 eggs a year rarely experiences the health issues of production hybrids. These issues are almost unheard of in Sumatra or Sebright who lay 50-100 eggs a year. There are so many heritage breeds out there bred for their longevity, living on average 7-8 years rather than the measly 2-3 of production hybrids.

Most people who keep backyard hens love these birds dearly, these are their pets. Why would someone purchase an unethical production hybrid off the factory farms knowing she will die a horrible death in 2 years, when they could instead get a heritage breed who’ll lay them eggs until she’s at least 5?

I know very few people with backyard hens who keep the production birds

4) Hens are abandoned/killed when production slows/stops

I have yet to meet a single person who has purposefully gotten rid of their hens once production slows or stops.

Production hybrids rarely stop laying unless they are actively affected by reproductive complications, these birds sadly die before they stop laying so owners are definitely not ‘abandoning’ these birds, rather they die long before their time while still pumping out those eggs. Alternatively, heritage breeds will lay for years. We’ve had a 9 year old Sussex still laying eggs. For all the backyard keepers with heritage breeds, the time to ‘replace’ hens is often very far into the future.

This isn’t even raising the point that, these hens are pets. People can eat eggs and still bond fiercely with their hens, people can eat eggs and still value the life of the hen. I don’t think many people are going to turn around and kill their friend suddenly because she stops laying as frequently. My grandfather who used to own a small scale egg farm always kept his old hens who no longer laid, he’d had them for 7 years and that’s an attachment that’s hard to break.

The idea that hens suddenly stop laying eggs one day so people replace them is quite silly, it just doesn’t happen in a backyard setting. Certainly in egg farms, but not with pet hens.

5) Laying eggs depletes nutrients. Hens need to be fed their eggs to get these back

Laying eggs definitely takes up a shocking amount of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. A big one is calcium, the egg needs a lot to shell it, but each egg also needs enough calcium stores inside the yolk to nurture and grow a chicks skeleton. If a hen doesn’t have enough calcium, she’ll draw it from her bones to produce eggs.

But the thing is, she doesn’t need to eat her own eggs to gain this nutrition back. Chickens have been domesticated for thousands of years, and in this time we’ve perfected their diet. There are many fantastic feeds on the market tailored specifically for a laying hens needs! She should be fed a pellet or mash diet, this ensures she gets the correct amount of all the nutrients, whereas with grain she can pick and chose parts and become deficient. Furthermore, chickens aren’t stupid animals. A hen will know if she needs more calcium, and this is why it’s important to offer them oyster shell, limestone, and crushed egg shells so she can eat extra calcium at her leisure.

Sceptical of the feed, or maybe you just think she deserves those eggs back after all her hard work? Well while it’s nice to treat your hens to an egg every now and then, too many can cause many fatal health issues. If she eats every single egg she lays, AND eats a nutritional balanced diet, she’s getting way too much of those nutrients since the feed is already replacing that loss. A really big concern is that she’ll put on too much weight from all the protein in eggs, this can lead to fatty liver disease which kills many backyard hens annually. Maintaining a good weight in your flock is vital to preventing other health issues too such as egg binding and heart failure.

I love letting my hens eat raw eggs, it’s hilarious and they love it. However I actually had to stop because one of my hens Sooty got dangerously overweight and was at risk of fatty liver disease. You might think feeding hens back their own eggs is great for their health, but it should be in moderation, there is too much of a good thing. Unless you’re feeding your hen rubbish, she doesn’t need the eggs since her diet replaces those nutrients daily, and please don’t feed your hens rubbish.

6) We are using the hens. They are not ours to use as we please

I suppose this point holds up depending on your personal beliefs. I personally don’t feel pet hens are being ‘used’ at all, rather it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. We give them food, safety, and friendship, so they return that friendship and sometimes eggs.

A part of domestication is that the animal adapts to living alongside us, with chickens it just happened to be the constant access to good food and a safe nest encouraged them to lay more eggs. We can’t change that now, so we may as well use the eggs. A dog or cat domesticated for companionship will provide that, are we abusing those pets as well by taking their companionship?

Also if I’m being quite frank, no one will ever get eggs cheaper by keeping backyard chickens. Feed is expensive, coops are expensive, veterinary care is expensive. Anyone getting backyard hens will have some other motive to it rather than just “I want free eggs” because these eggs aren’t free. Most people want a pet, they don’t want to support the factory farming, or they want to feel more self sufficient, maybe all three of those reasons! People aren’t getting backyard hens with the intent of ‘using’ them for eggs, because it’s cheaper just to buy eggs.

So to sum this up, backyard eggs aren’t hurting the hens! If anything, it’s helping them! Showing support for more ethical means of egg production will put pressure on the large scale egg farms to change ways. Hopefully these unethical practices will be phased out one day, it’ll take time, but one step at a time.

Thanks for reading! Epponnee says this egg is for you, they’re tasty and she wants to share! Please take it or she will keep crowing until you do!

Flesh, Part 1

Excerpt from Memoirs of a Flesh Eater, never published

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And now we come to what you’ve all been waiting for, the meat of this book {Editing Note: Boooo}. The gory details, such as they are, of how we acquire our flesh. It’s a topic that’s captured the public imagination for a long time - we’ve all heard plenty of lurid stories and speculation all our lives. I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve skipped straight to this chapter to finally hear it straight from the monster’s mouth. I’ll do my best to satisfy your curiosity. Understand, though - this topic is deadly serious, and more than almost any other subject I’ve covered, I’m aware of the danger inherent in revealing this. If the information I lay out here compromises these avenues of flesh, people will die for it. I will tell you as much as I can without risking that outcome.

{Editing Note: Everything after this needs strict review, and not just from me. Get as many eyes as possible on this before publishing.}

Nearly every ghoul has or will participate in the direct acquisition of flesh at some point. Finding food is an involved process, and not a particularly scaleable one. There are no factory farms for humans, nor should there be. Truly steady supplies of flesh are rare. Most of our methods involve gathering a small group of ghouls periodically, rather than just one or two of us working continuously. This, unfortunately, causes inconsistencies in supply more often than is comfortable. As such, we’ve had ample opportunity to figure out exactly how much flesh we need to survive. 

For the average mature ghoul, 5 pounds of flesh per day is the ideal consumption rate. Very roughly, we should be eating one adult human body per month for peak health. Put that starkly, it’s a grim picture. Extrapolate from that, and that means each of us is eating 12 humans a year. Obviously, we don’t eat that much from the moment of birth. I remember starting to get hungry more often around age 15, and I can count on one hand the number of ghouls I’ve met over 50, so let’s call the 35 years between those two ages our lifespan. Over the course of our lives, we will each eat over 400 humans. When you look at it from that angle, one life against 400, it’s no wonder that you have, as a whole, decided that we need to die.

But that angle misses some important subtleties. For one, we can handle some remarkably flexible feeding patterns. We can subsist on much less than an ideal diet for a very long time without serious ill effects. For example, I follow a fairly common feeding pattern and only eat half-meals three weeks out of every four. The only ill effects I notice are increased exhaustion and soreness, usually beginning towards the end of the second week and gradually escalating until the fourth. We can also go for multiple days without eating before noticing any ill effects. Many ghouls have only one or two very large meals each week. I personally prefer to have smaller meals more consistently - it makes me feel more human - but it’s a pattern I’ve followed plenty of times when flesh is scarce.

The other main subtlety that the math I presented above misses is that, often, we do not have to kill for flesh. People die all the time from causes that have nothing to do with us, and rarely in ways that make their flesh inedible. We have hardy constitutions and strong stomachs - most diseases and toxic chemicals can be processed and rendered inert in our digestive tracts. There are nearly three million deaths every year in the U.S. alone, the vast majority of which have nothing to do with us. If we could utilize all of that flesh, we could comfortably feed 250,000 ghouls without harming a single person. Obviously that’s never going to happen, but I also doubt there are that many ghouls in the country, so… Suffice to say that there is, theoretically, more than enough ethically-sourced flesh to go around.

Utilizing that flesh, however, is a significant logistical challenge. People aren’t in the habit of donating their bodies for our dining pleasure, and people tend to take the security of their loved ones’ remains pretty seriously. Taking flesh by force, even when we’re not trying to part it from a living body, is difficult, dangerous, messy work, so we prefer to sidestep that wherever possible. This brings us nicely to the first of our three main strategies: farming.

Farming is, unfortunately, our least productive method, but it’s the one that I hope we’ll be able to rely on entirely, some nebulous day in the future. Farming is the practice of discreetly smuggling dead flesh, produced by natural causes, out of the facilities where it is held. This is the only method we use that is sustainable, in the sense that it requires one or two ghouls working constantly and delivering a steady supply, rather than the periodic group efforts I described earlier. This method is also unusual in that it depends on us being integrated in human society, integrated enough to have unsupervised access to dead flesh.

There are two primary sources that we farm. First, there are hospitals. Countless surgical procedures result in the separation of flesh from living humans. Sometimes this flesh is passed along for scientific analysis, but most of it ends up classified as medical waste sooner rather than later. As I’ve said, though, we can safely handle most of the factors that cause limbs to be amputated or organs to be removed. Once these have been marked for disposal, ghouls working at the hospital can usually hide away the flesh for later retrieval without anyone noticing its absence. Unfortunately, caution requires our farmers to take less than is truly salvageable, given how damning it is to be caught stealing flesh. They also avoid taking whole cadavers, which are much more closely observed while in the hospital, and are typically handed over to other people rather than fully disposed of. We also, as a general rule, are careful to avoid eating anything cancerous. Tumors are something of a taboo, only to be eaten in times of extreme famine. We are as vulnerable to cancer as humans are, and there is a strong fear that eating tumors may cause you to absorb some of the cancerous cells into your own body, where they will be free to grow again. I can’t speak to the truth of that, but it’s not a fate I’m interested in tempting.

Our other main farming source is funeral homes. Contrary to popular perception, and to government defence policies, we actually have very little interest in robbing graveyards. By the time bodies go in the ground, they’ve usually been rendered inedible by embalming practices. Given how robust our digestive tracts are, it’s my theory that embalming practices were, at some point in history, specifically designed to protect human bodies from us. Obviously not all bodies are properly embalmed, but there’s no way to tell that without digging one up, and digging up a grave is hard. It is far more beneficial for us to intercept the bodies before they get to that stage. Therefore, we find it very valuable to train as morticians. This allows us to take cuts of flesh before a body is embalmed. Over the years, we’ve figured out exactly how much flesh can be taken and from where without showing at an open casket funeral. For closed caskets, or for cremations, we can take nearly the entire body without detection.

{Editing Note: That’s going to be upsetting for anyone who’s ever buried a family member. I’m not sure how to address that gently. I don’t know how receptive most people would be to “it’s okay that we ate your grandma because it means we got to live long enough to eat other people’s grandmas”.}

Unfortunately, there are a limited number of jobs with access to farmable bodies, and as the number of ghouls in those positions increase, so does the chance of one of them being discovered. Some of you, I’m sure, have seen how paranoid everyone gets when one of us is outed among you. We can’t even come close to fully utilizing these outlets without risking a lot of us dying. My household is fortunate - three of our members are farmers, and we may be gaining a fourth, depending on what degree Scarlet actually settles on. But that supply of farmed flesh is not always enough to feed all of us, and it certainly isn’t enough for Yaga’s charity projects. So about once a month, we send out a group to engage in our second method - gathering.

As I said, there are a lot of deaths that have nothing to do with us. Gathering is our attempt to get ahold of some of those dead before other factors take care of them. Death is, unfortunately, unpredictable, so the best we can do is send people out at irregular intervals to scoop up what we can. A gathering party typically consists of at least half a dozen ghouls; the exact size depends on the amount of ground we want to cover, how many bodies we expect to be transporting, and how worried we are about getting into a violent confrontation. Ideally, no one gets hurt by our gathering parties, but no one is going to look too kindly on body snatching, and sometimes we just attract the wrong kind of attention. If we need an especially large group, or if we intend to cover a particularly large area, we might even reach out to other households for extra help in exchange for a share of our find.

A gathering run typically begins at night, in the poorer parts of the city. I’m sure gathering happens in rural areas, but I can’t speak to their methods. In the city, though, it’s the poor and the homeless and the addicts, the abandoned of human society that are most likely to die somewhere we can get to them. So we put on anonymizing clothing and start looking. Our most reliable leads come from homeless communities and drug sites. Sometimes it’s enough to just show up, make small talk, and look around for the dead or imminently dying. If it’s the latter, sometimes we just wait - keep them company while they wait for the end. Unfortunately for us, people don’t generally die all at once at predictable intervals; it’s not uncommon for us to find no bodies at all. Fortunately, there are some people who are desperate enough to sell us leads. Buying leads is a dangerous game - any person who knows us to be ghouls, even if we take pains to conceal our identities from them, is one more person who could bring the exterminators down on us - and the more effective the method of gathering leads is, the more dangerous it is. The safest thing is to find a stranger and offer them money for a lead, one time deal, and never contact them again. Regular contacts have more opportunities to expose us, whether for exterminator money, moral duty, or just by being careless, but if they know to expect us, they can amass leads, or sometimes even hold bodies for us to buy off them directly. I’ve heard that some households even have arrangements with organized crime to act as free, efficient body disposal.

Once we’ve thoroughly checked these areas, the next step is to check accident sites. Typically we’ll separate to stake out common suicide and accident sites. These aren’t particularly reliable either, but they turn up bodies often enough to be worth staking out once we’ve exhausted our more proactive options. Sometimes, on particularly slow gathering parties, we’ll break out a police scanner and listen for any incident reports likely to produce a body and see if we can get there before the cops. It’s a dangerous game, and often no more lucrative than our other approaches, but there is nothing more depressing or upsetting than coming back from gathering empty handed. Coming home empty handed means we need to take more drastic measures.

I’ve been on around a dozen gathering parties so far. Most of them went well enough, with minimal incident and moderate success. I’ve been on two where we had to chase police scanners. And I’ve been on one that came back empty-handed. That isn’t the only one my household has ever run that came back empty-handed, but it’s the one that stuck out most in my mind because it’s the one time I felt personally responsible for what happened next. When our regular gathering still doesn’t produce enough flesh, we have three options, none of them pleasant. We could all tighten our belts, ration our flesh carefully, and try to endure until we can make up our shortfall. There are a lot of factors that can make this approach unsafe, though. Starving isn’t any more pleasant for us than it is for humans, and it can make us less careful than is safe. Or sometimes someone is injured or sick and wouldn’t be able to handle stricter rationing. Our next option is to organize a gathering raid. There are plenty of hospitals and funeral homes that we can’t farm, for one reason or another, but sometimes we can steal from them. This is a high-risk endeavor, obviously. Anywhere that handles human remains is on the lookout for this kind of thing, and even if we get away clean, the raid will almost certainly make the news and bring exterminators sniffing around. That’s not even touching the fact that, just because we aren’t farming somewhere, that doesn’t mean someone else isn’t. The kind of scrutiny a raid draws can be a death sentence for any ghouls working at the raid target. So, most of the time, Yaga chooses to take our third option. She calls for a Hunt.

{Editing Note: I need to talk to Spatha before I write the rest of this. I need to convince her that I’ll just listen this time, and then I need to actually do that. I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t want to reopen this wound between us. I don’t want to risk our friendship. Is this project really worth that? Do I seriously think it will make a difference?}