Stealing Commas

Need help again, could lose my home (also: pretty pictures, of an abstract nature, at end of post)

2025-08-19T18:59:00.000-04:00

I think I've said before, I never meant to disappear. It's been a bad . . . eight and a half years, I'd say, with the five most recent of them being worse than what came before, and the three most recent of those being worst of all.

I hate coming back here to just to fundraise, but... that's where things stand.

So, it's important to state that there's more in play here than money. There's a lot of work I need to do, some of it hard in the traditional sense, some of it hard for mental health reasons, some of it both. Some of it just paperwork.

Unless you can physically show up at my door, though, the place you're most likely to be able to help is with money, either by donating money, spreading word of the fundraiser, or both.

I'm at a crossroads where one path leads to my home being sold out from under me and the other leads to me becoming its owner and the financial problems that have been ever present in my life finally being conclusively dealt with.

As in, if I became the owner of this home and I were starting from zero, everything should work going forward. I am not starting from zero. At all. Things are very negative.

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There are smaller problems, but the two big ones are that the house needs some long overdue repairs that, in part because of how long they've been left to fester, are gonna cost a fair amount (by my standards at least) and getting rid of high interest debt that's entirely unsustainable.

There's not a lot to be said about the repairs. They're extensive, but not complex. They'll cost money I don't currently have, but by the standards of home repairs (assuming I understand said standards) not that much. They're doable and shouldn't pose a problem. If I can fund them.

I guess the the biggest thing to be said about repairs is that them not being done is part of why a home that was going to be given to me free and clear is now at risk of being sold out from under me. I was supposed to be the one doing them; I didn't.

If I can't prove that I can keep the house in good repair, starting with the overdue repairs, and I can also be financially self sustaining, this place will be sold out from under me. If I can, it'll be given to me, which given income and asset restrictions for people on SSI disability, is almost certainly the only hope I'll ever have of owning the place I live (wherever that may be.)

I think that covers everything there is to say about the repairs. While there were a lot of other factors in the past (and I'll talk about some) the big thing currently standing between me and being self-sustaining is the high interest debt, and everything that follows will be about that

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I think I only mentioned this once here before, but the way I used to ask for and get financial help was wrong. Totally how you're not supposed to do it in terms of SSI.

You're allowed $20 of unearned income in a month, and anything over that is deducted from your next month's supplement. Because I'm saying here at just the expenses a homeowner would pay, and the SSA has decided that in this neighborhood a homeowner would charge $200 more than expenses per month, I'm already considered to be getting $200 of unearned income in the form of a housing subsidy from the actual homeowner, so that $20 I'm allowed is already accounted for (and then some.)

What that means is that any money I get as donations, as opposed to wages (from an employer or as self-employment income), is deducted in full from my next month's supplement.

For a very long time this wasn't happening because I didn't understand, and the people I was reporting to made bad assumptions. Short version: when I said I got help paying bills, they assumed I meant that people paid the bills directly.

In almost any context, there's no difference between someone giving money so I can pay to have heating oil delivered, and someone paying the exact same amount of money to the heating oil company to have heating oil delivered to me. In the end, the person who helped me, myself, and the heating oil company each has exactly as much money in one scenario as they do in the other, and my tank has exactly as much oil as it would in the other.

Under SSI, these two things are completely different.

If I'm given the money to pay for the oil, that's unearned income and (since the $20 wiggle room is already covered) is supposed to be deducted in full from my next month's SSI payment. If the heating oil company is paid directly, and I never touch the money, that's an "in kind" payment that's not countable as unearned income, and it won't cause a single cent to be deducted from my next month's SSI payment.

So all of those times I fundraised via Paypal? That was supposed to be taken away from me the next month. This has two very important consequences.

First, now that misunderstandings are cleared up, someone donating to me via Paypal is only useful if having that money now is worth losing the same amount in a month or if it's more than my entire next month's SSI payment, since I don't think they make you pay them the difference if the amount to be deducted exceeds the full payment amount.

Second, all of the money that wasn't deducted is money I wasn't supposed to get, which means I'm supposed to pay it back . . . sort of. Nothing is ever simple with these people, but this "sort of" isn't a bad one.

Because it was misunderstanding and miscommunication instead of, like, fraud, there's a window on how much is counted against me, meaning I don't owe the SSA every single cent I ever got in donations over the entire period I've been on SSI. Likewise, there are other mechanisms in place to make things somewhat less terrible.

The problem is, the $180 that was being deducted from each month's payment--because they thought paying the expenses I would if I owned this home was the same as being given a $200 a month supplement--already had me always skating close to the edge, which is why I needed help so often.

Having even more deducted as part of the repayment plan meant I was almost always over the edge, and my usual means of getting help when I was in the red was a no-go.

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I've already given a bare bones description of what needs to happen for a donation to be ok under SSI rules, and it probably already sounds kind of like some kind of scam. The full set of rules is so bizarre, inexplicable, and counterintuitive that it really sounds like a scam.

Even when I get someone who has the potential to be the necessary third party to read things themselves from the government's own website to see that those are the rules, it still feels like a scam enough that people, even people who like me and want to help me, want no part in it.

Since the rules were clarified to me and everything has been done as it's supposed to be done, this is only the second time I've been able to get the help needed to jump through the hoops the SSA requires for people to keep what's donated to them if they're on SSI.

The first time was heating oil. Someone else raised money on my behalf, once there was enough money, they used it to pay for heating oil for me, and that made everything fine even under the fucked up rules that are in place.

It's been a while since everything started being accounted for correctly, I've spent much of that time in the red because of the need to pay back past donations, and that heating oil is the only help I've gotten in that time. Things are bad.

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As I said, everything's at a place where it should work out now if I were starting from a neutral position. There's a lot to that, and some's not quite finished, but it's all in place or on the way in the near future and entirely doable.

But, look at the above. All of that time in the red when I couldn't meaningfully get any help from anyone except heating oil that one time.

I had to pay for stuff on credit, and then making the payments on the debt left less to pay for regular bills, leaving me even further in the red, meaning I had to pay for even more on credit, and that's a fucking death spiral.

It's reached the point where I'm effectively out of credit. It's hard to scrape up enough to keep the cards from going over their limits from interest alone. Some bills are being deferred because there's neither money nor credit to pay for them with.

When it came time to get more heating oil, I couldn't. It's summer; I'll live. That was the first because it's an irregular expense, something in addition to the monthly stuff, but it's hitting the point where I won't be able to cover monthly bills (without the fundraiser, which has already raised enough that that won't happen rigtht away even if it fails.)

Two nigh-suicidal depressive spirals didn't help either.
(The "nigh" is important. I promise you, I'm not in danger.)

Increasingly when I think about the future, instead of staring into the abyss I face I think, "I'll just kill myself." This isn't actually suicidal thinking, because I don't mean it any more than the average person who says, "Kill me now," is asking to be murdered, and YES I have spoken to a mental health professional about this. More than once.

It's a maladaptive coping strategy based on the idea that you don't have to worry about what tomorrow will bring if you won't be here tomorrow, but those nigh-suicidal depressive spirals kicked that up several notches.

It didn't kick over into actually meaning it, or actually wanting to die, but at their depths that sense of there being no tomorrow was palpable, and the truth is that I can't blame all of my financial woes on shit that was outside my control. And I feel so guilty asking for help fixing a problem that's partially self-inflicted.

Also, as an aside, in addition to being a maladaptive coping strategy, that sentence popping into my head unbidden is disturbing as all fuck. For as long as I've had to deal with depression, I've been afraid it might become suicidal. Actively afraid it might.

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When trying to put a dollar value to what it'll take, money wise, to do the things I'll need to do to save my house, I came out to about $10,000. I have literally never had that much money to my name in my life.

Fortunately, the SSA lets you have one house, provided you live in it, that isn't counted against you as an asset, so if I become owner, my net worth increasing severalfold because of the home's value won't pose a problem. But for that to happen I need to get to a place where I'm financially sustainable, which means getting rid of the debt, and I need to do the repairs, which means paying for the supplies needed to do them.

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To anyone wondering why I just said $10,000 when the GoFundMe says $5,000, it's an automated thing for momentum building or some such. I considered saying I was trying to raise $20,000, so it would say I was going for $10,000 from the outset, as that felt more honest, and because the $10,000 is my attempted (rounded) minimum estimate, but ultimately went with $10,000 as the final goal.

If fluctuating prices or unexpected hiccups in repairs mean doing what needs to be done costs more, I think those problems are ones I'll be able to absorb on my own going forward if I can get rid of the massive problems I'm faced with right now.

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I actively hate asking for things, especially when I'm not giving anything in return, so I'd like to offer up some pretty pictures.

I don't remember if researching five-fold symmetries led me to quasicrystals or learning about quasicrystals led to looking into five-fold symmetries, but at some point I used sinusoidal functions to experiment with them.

After creating a complex wave function, and deploying it fivefold, I gravitated toward this area of the resulting graph:

Astute observers will note that it only has a single line of reflectional symmetry (it's symmetrical left to right) and only has near-symmetry along other lines or under rotation.

It's only around the origin of rotation that there's true five fold rotational symmetry and true five fold reflectional symmetry.

Recently, I came back to the work I'd done on that, and worked out a way to pull that shape to the origin thus allowing for those true symmetries, here's four color variants on the shape from the center of the image, but with true symmetries:

"Ladybugs" inspired story idea

2024-11-08T19:47:00.003-05:00

Patreon recently added a collections feature, and one of the two collections I've made so far is "Just Transbian Stories" so --since I have that collection available to me, for restarting posting here I'm grabbing a few from that collection.

On that note, this was originally posted on Patreon on April 28, 2024 but behind a paywall, so it's easier to just read it here.

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[If you don't want a summary of what Ladybugs was/is, and just want the story idea, skip to the first or second break. (Either should work, the difference is two short paragraphs.)]

For some reason the memory of the 1992 Rodney Dangerfield movie Ladybugs popped into my head about a week ago, it's been there ever since, and . . . the movie is bad.

Morally bad.

Like, if you wanted TERF propaganda in a family-friendly package, and were thus prohibited from making your own version of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs (whom TERFs cite all the fucking time to the point you'd think the movie had been a documentary) Ladybugs is basically what you'd make.

A cis boy pretends to be a girl to join a girls' soccer team for two reasons.

First, his mother's fiancée (Dangerfield's character) is the coach, and he wants the underperforming team to win, and what better way to do that than to get an athletic but unremarkable boy to secretly play on the team? So it plays straight into TERF shit about trans girls just being cheaters using their alleged male advantage to beat their real, true, "biologically female" competitors.

Second, the cis boy in question has a crush on one of the players, and joining the team as a girl lets him get closer to her, so it plays straight into shit TERFs imagine and say about teenage boys pretending to be girls so they can invade female only groups and/or spaces to get closer to the teenage girls that turn them on.

While the cis boy crossdressing his way onto the team is presented as a sympathetic character, it's notable that a) they cast Jonathan Brandis (Lucas Wolenczak from SeaQuest) instead of Leonardo DiCaprio (he's been in too much to have a signature roll) because teenage-DiCaprio passed as a girl too well, and they felt that would kill the humor, and b) the film ends with . . . I'll just quote Wikipedia:

[Dangerfield's character] is now managing the company's girls softball team, where the entire team are boys dressed as girls. After his boss congratulates him on his success, [Dangerfield's character] says to the audience, "I finally got some respect!"

So it's not just Brandis' character; having one boy (and remember that conservative propaganda says all trans girls are boys) on one team has paved the way to have all the girls on an entire other girls-only team replaced by boys, and while the film ends there, in TERF fever dreams, that's just the beginning.

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The part that originally popped into my head wasn't actually terrible, and indeed Dangerfield's character was being nice, albeit in a way that upheld sexist standards of beauty, but the idea that set things off wasn't related to that specific bit, but instead general concept of the movie.

The idea was basically, "What if you did this and it weren't a comedy? What if you did this and it were a serious drama instead?"

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So we start with a sexist coach of a girls' soccer team, and he's convinced if he could just sneak a boy onto the team they'd instantly be the best girls' team in whatever league they're in.

Then we introduce a "boy" he has power over, leverage against, or both. So say an uncle that's blackmailing "him".

Being an uncle puts the coach as an adult in the family, which gives him a degree of power, even more so if the closeted trans girl who will be our main character is a latchkey kid because of parents who are never around, and uncle-coach has become the adult relative who's around the kid most often, possibly with the parents trusting him to check in on the kid and do the adulting when they're not around.

As for the blackmail, originally I was thinking an uncle-coach caught the trans girl dressed as a girl, which he took for crossdressing instead of a sign of transness (he probably doesn't believe there is such a thing as an actual trans girl) which has the benefit of explaining where the uncle-coach got the whole, "I could get a boy pretending to be a girl to join the team," idea from, but - by the lights of toxic masculinity - crossdressing would discount "his" value as a "male", and thus make trans girl a poor candidate. So maybe something else.

It could still be something trans-related. In fact, it could still be something clothing related. Maybe uncle came across one of trans girl's bras one time he was checking in on trans girl and assumed that "he" was secretly sneaking girls over for sex. The blackmail becomes a carrot and a stick, "If you do this for me, I'll let you keep doing that and pretend I never noticed anything; if you don't, I'll tell your parents exactly what you've been doing behind their backs," or something to the same effect.

Uncle thinks he's sneaking a virile young man onto the girls' soccer team he coaches; trans girl main character doesn't know which would be worse, her parents believing she's secretly sexually active, or her parents discovering the truth after uncle tells them she's sexually active.

Thus we get a closeted trans girl being forced onto the soccer team.

⁂

And her emotions are all over the place.

On the one hand, she likes how she looks, she likes the new friends she's making, she likes that they just accept her as female. On the other hand, this isn't something she's doing of her own free will, coercion can turn wonderful things into terrible things, and she feels that. Any time thoughts of why this is happening in general or thoughts about her uncle in particular come to mind, it makes her feel like shit.

On Zaphod Beeblebrox's third hand, she's terrified.

Terrified of how the new friends she's made will react when they learn the truth, terrified of what might happen to her if the truth becomes public, terrified that if she does well on the field she'll become conservative propaganda that adds fuel to the fire of banning girls like her from girls' sports, terrified that if she doesn't perform well her uncle will think she's intentionally doing badly to weasel out of upholding her end of the deal, terrified of damn near everything.

And with all that in her head she's not performing at her best, and even if she didn't have that going on she wouldn't magically become the best player on the team, and certainly not the best player in the league, via her "maleness".

⁂

Her basic strategy for dealing with some of that is to find ways to prevent her from participating in actual games. Practice, she's there, friendly matches where it doesn't have an effect on the team's standing in the league, she's probably there. A game that actually counts? She tries to use the fact that her participation is secret to get double booked.

After all, she can't very well tell people, "I'm not available at such and such a time because I'm secretly leading a double life in which other-me is a soccer player who has a game then," so it's not her fault if someone schedules her to do something else at game time.

A watershed moment is probably when she privately begs a teacher she trusts to give her detention at a certain time, and while she doesn't tell the teacher exactly what's going on, the encounter does lead to her beginning to go to therapy.

At some point she comes out first to her closest friends on the team, and eventually the whole team.

Of course, at the same time she's edging toward better mental health and an increasing circle of supportive people who know she's trans, her "It's not my fault I can't play, [so and so] is making me [whatever] at game time," is getting rather less convincing.

She did have steps to obfuscate that she was intentionally missing games (like making sure she was forced to be unavailable for the same reasons at non-game times, and having multiple things that seemed unrelated prevent her from playing) but that can only go so far.

And since she's being blackmailed, "I don't care what else is going on, play in the next game or I'll ruin your life," is a thing her uncle-coach can and does say (though exact wording might differ because this is so much of a first draft that I only put it into words right this moment.)

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Also there is a teen romance plot, but very much not the trans girl joining the team to get closer to the girl she has a crush on. It develops starting from nothing, through friendship to romance over the course of the story.

Trans girl is pretty oblivious, in part because she's got so much going on in her head, and in part just because. At one point a third party has to take her aside and explain that she'd just been flirting with best friend/love interest because she totally failed to notice that that's what she and best friend/love interest were doing.

And here's something I've kind of been going back and forth on because on the one hand there's a gender critical talking point about trans girls and women being . . . sex crazed perverts who want to boink all the females, and even though the concept for this story is entirely sex-free (none of them feel like they're ready) having the main character end up with more than one girlfriend kind of plays into that talking point, but on the other hand why shouldn't a story feature a teenage poly relationship?

Also on the second of those two hands, pretty much the only dialogue I thought up is about that.

Though I never wrote it down, and it might be trying to flee my head right now.

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At the first official game trans girl is successfully forced to play in she manages to pull the other coach aside beforehand and have an incredibly awkward coming out because she is, again, terrified that she'll be used as "boys in girls' sports" propaganda, and she figures having the other coach demand she sit the game out is better for everyone (including the world at large) than having the truth come out after she plays in the game.

The other coach is actually fine with having a pre-hormones (pre-everything) trans girl playing on the other team, and keeps the fact trans girl is trans to her(?)self, because she's not just gonna out a random teenager.

Trans girl, meanwhile, spends the entire game really self-conscious because she just came out to a complete stranger and doesn't know who that stranger might have told. In spite of that worry, she ultimately doesn't think the other coach outed her, but her self-consciousness based hyper-alertness means she does notice that one player on the other team has been looking at her in particular, and she thinks that girl can tell she's trans/"a boy" (depending on how bad the trans girl's imposter syndrome is at that particular moment.)

Since she's scared, she confides in her best friend after the game who then (to her horror) walks over and asks the girl on the other team about it.

After Best Friend gets the other girl to agree to talk to her at enough of a distance from other people that they won't be overheard, this happens:

Best Friend: So, my friend over there is really shy. Kinda insecure, even. *pause* She thinks you were staring at her.

Other Girl: I wasn't-- I don't-- *looks away, blushes* Was it that obvious?

Best Friend: Apparently.

Other Girl: (back to looking at Best Friend) I was trying not to.

Best Friend: That's nice. *beat* Why were you staring at her?

*silence*

Best Friend: If I can't give her an answer, she's gonna go nuts thinking--

Other Girl: (blurted out) Because I think she's cute.

Best Friend: Right there with you.

*Other Girl gives confused look*

Best Friend: *Looks at ground, looks at sky, looks back at other girl* (possibly says something to herself under her breath to get courage up) Hey, how would you feel about a date with three people?

Other Girl: (shades of, "I must have heard you wrong") What?

Best Friend: You, me, her, going on a date together.

Other Girl: (shades of, "Ok, I heard you right, but now I'm even more confused") What?

Best Friend: Like I said, I think she's cute too.

Other Girl: (knitted brow, fresh out of emotion to put into her voice) So *beat* like *another beat* you and I compete to see who she likes more?

Best Friend: No. *pause* You think she's cute, I think she's cute, *briefly looks off to the side* I think you're cute, *Other Girl blushes slightly* I'd like to think I'm not ugly so . . . *pause during which she glances up, down, and off to the side* So *beat* So you go on a date with her at the same time she goes on a date with me while I go on a date with you.

*pause*

Best Friend: Yes, this is me asking you out.

Other Girl: Uh . . .

Best Friend: (losing confidence with every word she speaks) Of course this is contig-- contingent on her agreeing to this, and - like I said - she's shy, and this is probably a stupid idea and--

Other Girl: Yes. *pause* (flustered) Wait, you didn't ask a yes or no question. I mean-- What I mean to say-- That is-- *closes her eyes, takes a deep breath* (after opening her eyes) I'd love to go on a three person date. *pause* I think. *beat* And if I wouldn't I won't know until I try, so just *makes a circular gesture with one of her hands as she tries to find the words* (having not found the words) Yes.

Best Friend: (playfully, having regained some confidence and even more snark) I didn't ask a yes or no question.

Contact info is exchanged, Best Friend returns to trans girl. While walking back she probably says something like, "Jesus Christ, did I really just do that?" to herself.

Anyway:

Trans Girl: Does . . . does she know?

Best Friend: No idea; I didn't ask.

*Trans Girl looks at Best Friend in utter confusion*

Best Friend: She was staring at you, but only because she thinks you're cute.

Trans Girl: She... but . . . What? *beat* How?

Best Friend: She probably thinks that because you are cute.

*Trans girl is frozen, transfixed like a deer in headlights*

Best Friend: She also agreed to go on a date with us.

Trans Girl: (shocked into being able to move and speak again) Uh, what?

Best Friend: The three of us go on a date together--I suggested it, she's up for it, so now the only question is if you're interested.

*Trans Girl goes right back to being akin to a deer in headlights*

*silence*

Best Friend: You don't actually have to use words, you know? You could just nod for "yes", shake your head for "no", and, like, shrug your shoulders if you need more--

*Trans Girl nods*

*Best Friend texts Other Girl to let her know Trans Girl's response and start the process of figuring out a time that works for all three of them*

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Something else I considered but am not sure on is an older sister who's at college, and as Trans Girl sees that things are going to fall apart and uncle-coach may soon be outing her,* she takes a bus to the college to confess, because she'd stolen clothes from older sister when she was too afraid to go out and buy her own, and she wanted to admit to that and apologize in person before Uncle could out her.

This then opens the door to older sister potentially taking trans girl in if the parents kick her out when they find out she's a trans girl instead of the son they think they should have.

The parents accepting the trans girl as she is might be a more heartwarming ending, but I think it works better if the trans girl is right that her parents finding out she's trans would basically be the end of the world for her, and then it's the relationships forged or (in the sister's case) renewed/strengthened in the story that make it not be the end of the world.

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Not completely sure how uncle-coach should be brought down, but it should definitely happen, and the seeds of it are probably the opposing coach trans girl came out to mentioning Uncle's niece, him being all, "I don't have a niece," and then opposing coach realizing that there's more going on than she was originally told.

[Added]

I originally meant this as, "I don't have a niece (on the team)," but depending on the relationship between the uncle and the older sister (if she exists) it could work as literally "I don't have a niece" since she's far enough out of sight and mind that he sees no reason to acknowledge her existence.

The next sentence picks up from other coach "then opposing coach realizing that there's more going on than she was originally told."

[/added]

(Which wasn't much; just that uncle-coach had an attitude of, "What they don't know can't hurt them," but trans girl was more worried about if people found out and objected after the fact, and would rather be benched in advance than have that happen.)

Or crime. I am totally up for characters doing crime for great justice, so if some combination of likable characters con uncle-coach out of everything he owns, that works too.

Or it could work from both ends, with the opposing coach getting him barred from coaching because blackmailing a kid into participating probably breaks some league rule or other, while the kids (and possibly big sister) bankrupt him to pay for . . . any number of things.

No longer being able to count on parental support paying for college for big sister and trans girl, never having it in the first place for a poorer member of the team, getting an entirely new wardrobe because your old one screams, "I'm a boy!" isn't cheap, big sister might want to get a place closer to home so moving in with her doesn't mean trans girl is moving away from her friends (though it would saddle her with a daily commute to get to classes), any money they can't come up with a pressing use for they can donate to a teen homeless shelter or soup kitchen or some such.

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Best friend might be non-binary, and they come out to trans girl as non-binary at the same time trans girl admits she's trans to them. Sort of:

Trans Girl: I . . . I'm not a real . . . I'm trans.

*Trans Girl braces herself for rejection*

*Best friend blinks their eyes and takes a moment to think*

Best Friend: I'm non-binary. *pause* I wasn't actually planning on telling anyone, but *beat* you trusted me, so . . .

That would make the above off because of pronouns and because "Other Girl" would in fact be the only girl in the conversion between her and Best Friend I shared.

Regardless, keeping terminology consistent for the moment, if Best Friend is non-binary (and maybe even they aren't) Other Girl goes off on a rant at some point about how people saying they're grammatically incapable of using singular "they" are liars and hypocrites, because "you" is every bit as plural as "they" and those selfsame people use singular "you" without batting an eyelash.

I'm also totally up for a side story where trans girl coming out as trans to the soccer team is the catalyst that leads one of the members to realize they're actually a dude, and by the end this trans boy has started on his transition.

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And that's as much as I've thought up.

. . .

Well, it was at the time of posting on Patreon, something popped into my head last night, but as is often the case, the details become fleeting when I try to actually write it out, regardless:

[Older sister is not in good standing with the parents & uncle because she's never been in a relationship with a boy. This is because she's aro ace, but none of the bigots involved would understand what that means anyway.]

*Older sister stops by, forgot to call ahead*
*she walks in on Trans Girl and Best Friend kissing on the living room couch*

Older Sister: And our parents thought I was the lesbian.

*Trans Girl and Best Friend react with a sort of, "It looks like they almost had heart attacks" shock*

Older Sister: Sorry, I just felt like it'd be way more creepy if I didn't say something to let you know you weren't alone.

*Other Girl, walks into living room carrying a bowl of popcorn*

Other Girl: (while looking at Older Sister in confusion) . . . who?

Trans Girl: Uh, my sister.

Older Sister: (to Trans Girl) I think we need more/better introductions than that. (To Other Girl) I'm [name], her older sister, and I'm usually not around because I'm a student at [university].

Other Girl: I'm [Trans Girl]'s girlfriend, [name]. ... um ... I actually go to [other high school], not [trans girl's high school]; we met at a soccer match.

Best Friend: In which [Other Girl]'s team kicked our asses.

Other Girl: (softly, while smiling a bit) Yeah, we did.

Best Friend: I'm [name], [Trans Girl]'s enbyfriend, we met because I'm on the soccer team [Uncle] blackmailed her into playing on.

=Older Sister: Cool. (too herself, getting used to the sound of the name) [Trans Girl]. (to Trans Girl) You know, you forgot to tell me your name--your real name--when you came to visit.

Trans Girl: I did?

Older Sister: Yup. *beat* Don't worry about it, I forgot to ask.

Or something like that.

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* It doesn't actually matter if he's figured out she's a trans girl, not a cis boy. All of the time spent presenting as a girl would have given him ample opportunity to replace his original blackmail, which was based on his word alone and lacked any proof, with photos and/or videos of trans girl "pretending" to be a girl.

A Genie, True Love, and Transness (story idea and some bare dialogue)

2024-10-21T05:13:00.001-04:00

(Released on Patreon 22 months and 5 days earlier, because: depression.)
(As mentioned, I have a some already written stuff I can start sharing. Not much prose, though, mostly story ideas like this instead of actual stories.)

The premise is simple enough: Dude frees Genie from a bottle or lamp or whatever.

It's an old school genie: grants wishes as thanks for being released from confinement, so there's no worries about getting screwed over by the wording of the wish being off, and there's no limit on the number of wishes, but there's also no magical obligation, genie can just say, "Fuck you," and walk off. The problem is that it's deep-seated ingrained cultural belief for the genie that the scales need to be balanced and payment to the one who set them free must be made.

Things start off pretty simple, wealth, power, every gaming system on earth, improvements to housing, that sort of thing. Then dude gets his eyes set on a potential romantic interest, and genie's all, "Look, there's shit we don't do, and making someone fall in love is one of them. I'm not gonna magic roofie someone for you."

Dude is persistent with, "Well, can't you do something?" And genie's like, "Fine, I owe you, I'll do something. I can make you more desirable to her, but first I have to know what she's into, and I can't read minds either, so I'm gonna have to get to know her, and that's gonna take some fucking time."

Dude's impatient and makes no secret of that, and he's constantly asking for updates and pushing for results, but getting to know someone takes time, and he's forced to wait around all the while getting more snippy and less kind toward the genie.

And I keep flip flopping on the genie's sex, because what first put this into my head was coming across a description of some old movie where the dude was lusting after one woman while a hot female genie who was enamored with him was right fucking there, and that female genie setup could work just fine, and I'm sure you can see where it would go, but at the same time, I'm me, and I put trans stuff everywhere, and the genie realizing she's trans would work fine too.

Genie's been locked in a bottle/lamp/mystery box/jar/whatever for a long time, depending on the culture they were in beforehand, the entire concept of being trans might be unknown to the genie.

So you could have:

Object of affection: Hey, thanks for standing up for [name] back there, she gets a lot of flack for being trans, and she deserves better.
Genie: Trans?
Object of affection: Oh, you didn't know? Well, thanks anyway.
Genie: What's trans?
Object of affection: Wow, you don't . . . sorry, that sounds condescending, I just . . . it's like . . . ok, so, when you're born the doctor looks at you and says, "It's a boy," or, "It's a girl," but some people, when they grow up, they realize the doctor was wrong.
Genie: So, what, they just decide, "I'm a girl now," and...
Object of affection: Something like that.
Genie: That's an option?
Object of affection: I wouldn't call it "an option" per se, you either are trans or you're not, but it is something some people realize.
*genie stares blankly into space*
Object of affection: Are you . . . ok?
Genie: How . . . how do you know if you're trans?
Object of affection: Um, well, I'm not really the best person to describe this because I'm--
Genie: It's ok, I'm not . . . I'm not gonna get mad at you for not being the most knowledgeable, and I'm not gonna hate you if you say something wrong, but . . . but . . . please . . . how do you know if you're trans?
Object of affection: Well, I think you . . . just . . . try out other genders, like, try out a new name, or a new haircut, get some gender coded clothes and see how you feel when you wear them, take . . . take like a test drive of being another gender, and if it feels right, if it feels like you're more your true self while you're trying that than you are normally, then you're probably trans. *pause* Or at least gender non-conforming. I . . . like, stuff is complicated, and I'm not an expert, but just . . . try. Preferably with friends you can trust, but even just at home on your own, you can just . . . experiment, I guess. I'm . . . I'm really not the best person to ask.
Genie: (mostly to self) I don't really have any friends.
Object of affection: I'm your friend.
*genie blinks*
Genie: We barely know each other.
Object of affection: I mean, true, but I like talking to you, and I think you like talking to me, and we've had fun hanging out right?
Genie: (somewhat weak/disbelieving) I guess. (normal) I honestly thought I was bothering you.
Object of affection: (cheerfully) Well you thought wrong; I've had a great time.
Genie: (doubtful) Really?
Object of affection: Really. *pause* "And if you're really thinking . . . wondering . . . uh . . . if you're really that, why don't we go clothes shopping together?
Genie: I . . . um . . . but . . .
Object of affection: You can say no. It's fine to say no. This is . . . a lot to spring on you all at once, and it's not like I . . . I mean, I thought you already knew, so it was an incredibly rough introduction, but . . . I don't know; you've been really nice to me, and if I can help you figure yourself out, I'd like to, and it's . . . (expression changes, shoulders drop) it's probably a stupid idea, but (rambling) I just got it into my head that there was this thing that I could do for you that might help you a lot, and then I'd be like . . . I don't know, a hero or something, but really what I'm trying to do is convince you to do something you're clearly not comfortable with, and that's not nice, and I should probably be ashamed of--
Genie: Where would we shop?
Object of affection: (completely lost) What?
Genie: If we went clothes shopping, where would we go?
Object of affection: I . . . um . . . so the thing is *beat* I have no plan. I'm just saying whatever comes to mind because I don't know what I'm doing, but . . . I think that would probably depend on how much money you have to spend.
Genie: (half serious, half playful) Money is no object for me, it's a complex and convoluted story full of lies intrigue and and things man is not meant to know--
Object of affection: Not a man.
Genie: (smiling) Things beyond one's mortal ken.
Object of affection: I love seeing you smile.
*genie blushes*
*pause*
Genie: Uh . . . you pick the place.

And then genie transitions, and the story eventually ends with the two of them becoming lovers while dude is left on his own.

He doesn't manage his wealth the best, his power crumbles with it, and he probably somehow ends up losing his gaming systems too, because by the end of the story you realize he's a misogynistic, homophobic, transphobe, so no happy ending for him.

That's where this originally ended but I'm gonna spitball some more stuff.

Definite happy endings for the genie and love interest. In a world with magic beings like genies there's probably some force that's a limiting factor on how much one can do to change the world with one's magic, but whatever the uncrossable line is, genie would routinely go right up to it, with her probably-anarchist definitely social justice conscious girlfriend (and eventual wife) helping her figure out the most good she could do with her power.

Also, they probably have every gaming system on earth, running on magic with a negative carbon footprint, because why should the jerk be the only one to have that going for them?

Food, water, shelter, medical care, education, and videogames for the underclasses of whatever place they happen to live in. Videogames mostly just because I said that that the dude used a wish to get every gaming system, but also because entertainment is important in itself.

The local library may end up bigger on the inside with an impossibly comprehensive collection. People who don't want poor people in the library will find their fortunes suddenly take a turn for the crap end of the spectrum, and all will know, especially children, that if you need a safe, warm, and dry place to be during the day, you can go to the library and read all day.

[You can stop reading here, things are about to go off the rails hard.]

[Hard enough for me to go back after I finished writing and add this note before posting.]

The genie and love interest may end up with an impossible pet, just because. An adorable little velociraptor, a dodo--

Ok, I just did a search for "coolest extinct animals" to find something to put after "dodo" as an option, and the top of the list google decided to pick as its definitive list was "Neanderthals", and yes, fucking yes, they deserve so much credit for being awesome.

The oldest surviving art on earth (that we've discovered) is a Neanderthal hand stencil. You know, hand stencils being the thing that children do to this day. These people were so much like us, and one of the few things we know about them is that they cared for the sick and injured. People who required more work done to keep them alive and healthy than they could ever do in return, but Neanderthals did that work because fuck capitalism and fuck the idea that someone needs to earn their right to be alive.

"Neanderthal" needs to stop being an insult and start being something we recognize as sadly departed family.

If we'd understood the dangers of habitat fragmentation and the resulting inbreeding a hundred thousand years ago, they might still be with us, but back then no one knew that staying in an isolated village for untold generations would spell your doom. If they'd known they had travel to other villages and interbreed to survive, they were more than capable. It sucks that we lost an entire branch of our family tree just because, when they didn't have a compelling reason to migrate, they preferred to stay home instead of chase the horizon.

That search result is obviously useless for picking an impossibly cool genie-summoned pet, because I should have been searching for "coolest extinct non-human animals", but I am none the less glad I saw it, because fuck do we need to be less racist and give more credit.

Pretty much every new result about Neanderthals says that we've been unfairly maligning them. (Also, the fact that we're only willing to consider the possibility that a tool was their doing if we know for a fact that anatomically modern humans weren't in the region when it was made is just fucky. We know there are tools they made, their teeth show evidence of them creating cords, so on, so forth. We just want all the credit for ourselves.)

Anyway, that's a long tangent completely unrelated to the rest of the post, but this is actually important to me because they're not just our family, they're also, for all of us who have heritage outside of sub-Saharan Africa, our ancestors. They're part of us (for the value of "us" in the previous sentence.) They deserve our respect, and also we should be proud of that heritage, because they figured out shit that had never been figured out before.

(Unless new research has changed our understanding...) The only reason they're not a larger part of us is that the Neanderthal Y chromosome doesn't seem to mix well with something in modern human genetics. The modern human X chromosome would be my first guess, but given that any half-breed also would have one each of all the modern human non-sex chromosomes, it could have been anywhere in our genetic code.

. . .

I don't know, it just pisses me off when people disrespect Neanderthals, because what precious little we know about the kind of people they were says they were altruistic, and for people like me, they're part of us. Not distant cousins; distant ancestors.

Also, while there are other things we may de-extinct, I think they're gone for good. Even if we did bring them back, their culture would be lost, but I don't think we can ethically bring them back regardless, because we can't even treat other modern humans with dignity and respect, so if there were another species of human, we'd label them subhuman and curtail all their rights.

Back on point, Tasmanian tigers are smaller than I realized, and with magic involved to keep it from eating your face, it could be a viable impossible pet, and for a larger option . . .

Wait, Quagga aren't extinct anymore?

. . .

Oh, they still are, but there's a project to breed something Quagga-like from their closest surviving relatives. Anyway, I was thinking something smaller, hence velociraptor being at the front of the list, but I do love equines.

And rather than go on further unrelated tangents, I'm gonna end there.

It was suggested in a comment that microraptor could be an impossible pet. I approve of this.

If you've never heard of a microraptor, look them up. We know a surprisingly large amount about them given how long they've been gone; like the fact their feathers were iridescent which is not something I would have expected to be determinable based on fossils.

I still exist

2024-10-20T02:33:00.001-04:00

Added short version:

I never intended to have this place go dark, and after it did, I always intended to come back to it. I was actually planning on putting it off a bit longer, though, because I didn't want it to seem like I only remember this place when I'm in dire financial straights and need money. And I'm in dire financial straights and need money.

Then TRiG reached out to me, and - honestly - if I put it off I might never get around to coming back, so I decided to post now. This is long because I'm long winded, because I'm tired, and because I don't actually remember what relevant context I've shared here before.

/addded

I never meant to disappear, but that's never stopped be before, so it's probably not a surprise it didn't stop me this time.

I always meant to come back and regularly post here again, but . . . same sort of thing in the other direction.

The only place I've stayed active, if disappearing for months at a time and mostly only posting to say why I haven't been posting can be said to be "active", is my patreon, and that's only because if I lose that income I lose my ability to stay in my house, full stop.

Originally the plan was for everything posted over there to eventually be available here for free, and that's still mostly the plan, which means I've got a fair bit of pre-made content to share, but there will be exceptions because of how things developed.

So, there's some stuff that's happened that makes keeping some stuff off the open web desirable.

One, probably the most minor one but also the longest running one, is that for a long time, since back when I was actually active here in fact, I've occasionally done sort of live reacts to bad stuff. Bad in various ways, sometimes stuff of terrible quality, sometimes immoral. Originally this was mostly extremely low quality fanfic, and the thing is . . . I give people the benefit of the doubt there. If someone is writing like they're a twelve year old, I assume they're a twelve year old. I don't want to make some kid cry (or even worse, put them off writing entirely) by publicly savaging their work.

That's why I never shared such stuff here. I haven't actually done this, but patreon provides a way for me to share that stuff without risking making children cry. I put it up behind a paywall, and even if they search the internet for their work, they'll never see me tearing it apart.

A much bigger deal is that when I made this blog* various people who know me in real life promised that they wouldn't read it so I could feel free to say whatever without looking over my figurative shoulder. That promise has not been kept. So if I want to freely talk about things related to people around me, it can't be here. And ideally it can't be on the open web. Thus the usefulness of pay-walling stuff at patreon. It is, again, not really about money, it's about privacy.

Somewhere between the two is that something I wrote on here has literally been brought up in court. It was no big deal, just a poem, and nothing came of it, but it's kind of . . . daunting, maybe? Not really a thing I expected to happen when I started this place.

So that's also made me realize that having a barrier between things I say about, say, personal disputes involving my sister and her (now-ex) neighbors might be better off stored in a place where a lawyer with a grudge and an internet connection couldn't find them.

Some sort of members only space, like my patreon.

(The lawyer didn't actually have a grudge against me, and indeed I wasn't in the courtroom, and know of the poem showing up in court only second-hand.)

One can note that the fiction this blog was originally created to share doesn't fall into any of these categories, nor do the decons I started but then ran out of steam on pretty fast. So basically the topics that will be hidden, safely ensconced in members only access on my patreon, are the live reacts I never really did here (if I ever get around to sharing them at all) and life updates that I'm not comfortable having the people involved in those updates read.

Assuming I actually manage to stick with updating here and don't disappear again.

Ok, all of that stuff about my patreon vs here and the place where content will differ out of the way, here's an update on me.

I have not been doing well. At all.

Enough bad shit has happened that there's no way I could keep track of it all, but the big thing was 17 months ago. (I think, as near as I can tell I first mentioned it seventeen months ago.)

I get SSI for reasons of disability. In a just world everyone would get enough to live on regardless, and in a somewhat less decent world disabled people would all get the same assistance regardless, because being financially well off doesn't make you less disabled, and we shouldn't punish people for being able to work in spite of their disability.

In this world, if you have more than $2,000 in assets (the house you live in, if you own it, and a single car, if you use it, don't count; everything else does) in a given month, you don't get paid.

We're gonna come back to that, but first some context.

[link to skip the context]

In 2021 the world was on fire and I felt helpless, there was an attempted coup no one was being held accountable, a disease we could have dealt with in a matter of weeks had been allowed to run rampant for a year and every new strain of note was even more contagious than the last (this could kind of go without saying, since for it to be of note it needs to out compete what's already out there, but it's become apparent that a lot of things that should go without saying don't) and we were discovering that instead of infection giving you antibodies with which to fight it off, people could and did get reinfected and every new infection increased the odds of increasingly serious complications.

And then there was the rats.

2020 was the year I had people living with me. I don't regret giving housemate a place to stay with me rent free, given she was literally planning to be homeless to get out of a mutually terrible situation with my sister, and am kinda proud that because of that she was able to get on her feet and get a job at Pizza Hut instead of being forced to make money the way she had in the past (prostitution) which she positively hated (beyond all of the reasons one might hate that job in general, she's a lesbian and the Johns were male.)

I do regret everything else that resulted from be letting her stay here. When we ran out of toilet paper she used paper towels. You can't flush those. Toilet paper is made to dissolve, paper towels are made to hold together. Sewage backed up into the house, notably including the place where I was sleeping at the time. The place plumbers needed to get to to fix things was the absolute least accessible corner of the basement. Furniture that had been stored there for years (maybe decades) had to be moved. It was a lot of work.

That was when houseguest came. In theory to help clear out a space for the plumber to work, but not everyone was on the same page. Some people thought he was staying long term. Then he was trapped by travel restrictions for the pandemic and the question became kind of moot.

He was there to help clear out one spot in the basement. First day he arrived my depression was so bad I couldn't function. All I could do was sit on the couch, staring forward, listening to the very, very loud sounds of him "cleaning" the kitchen, overstimulation sucks and housemate and houseguest both excelled at causing auditory overstimulation.

They couldn't do anything quietly. Even something as simple as cleaning dishes, which is a naturally quiet act given that a sponge or (if stuff is really stuck on) scouring pad rubbing against a dish or cookware is generally quiet as all fuck, sounded like they'd put a bunch of glass, metal, and ceramics in a tumble dryer and turned it onto the fastest possible spin setting.

When I finally did make it into the kitchen I found that a lot of stuff had indeed been cleaned . . . so the kitchen was clean . . . and it was empty. My blender? Gone. My popcorn popper? Gone. my countertop oven? Gone. My bread machine? Gone. My pizza pans? Gone. My silverware? Gone. My cookware? Gone.

Basically the only things not-gone were my microwave, my refrigerator, my normal (full size) stove, and my dishwasher. Oh, and my kitchen table and kitchen cabinets.

They threw out everything else.

Good news, trash hadn't been collected yet. Bad news: they made no distinction between food waste, non-waste, and clean waste. So to find my fucking cookware, I had to dig through unsanitary shit, but more than that I couldn't just throw out the food waste because it was mixed in with stuff I couldn't afford to replace.

They did the same thing in multiple other rooms. There was so much I had to go through, it was impossible to get the job done quickly regardless, but my mental health was also shit.

So the food waste ended up sitting outside waiting for me to go through it. In 2020. When all of the city rats suddenly needed to find new food sources because the restaurant dumpsters they usually used for food were no longer being stocked up. At the same time a long abandoned building not far from me was demolished without being cleared of rodents first. We don't know for sure if it had rats, but if it did, they suddenly needed to find a new home.

Definitely city rats, and possibly rats from the abandoned building, found my home. Because of the food waste mixed with the "I am actively suffering because I don't have access to this useful thing, and I don't have the money to buy a new one" stuff. Usually I spent months suffering for the lack of something before I managed to find it, there was just so much to go through. Sometimes I'm pretty sure it was a year.

But it wasn't just the stuff outside. Housemate and Houseguest both left uneaten food all over the fucking place. So when the rats eventually found their way inside, they found a buffet.

They chew through your walls. You could hear them gnawing some nights.

This was Hell. But that wasn't the problem come 2021.

Rats are a health hazard. The city takes notice when a large number of rats decide to take up residence on your property. The public health guy from the city was an intimidating liar. It took me a long time to realize this, so a cycle started.

The first time he showed up was very cordial and not at all terrible, to his credit. Every time after that he would make threats and ultimatums so, so extremely stressful and scary that I'd lock up and be unable to do anything. With the passage of time I'd become more functional and get work done, but it'd become clear I couldn't do what he demanded before the time the threat/ultimatum came to pass, still I'd work to the bone trying. Then the deadline would come and nothing happened. I'd email him. No response.

I'd stop working because I didn't know if there was even any point. My life was pure and utter dread and I was desperate to know what was happening. All effort was in getting information on what the fuck the situation was. Had I been given an extension I hadn't been notified about? Was it already too late? Was I gonna be kicked out of my house because it was declared a health hazard? (One of the the threats.) Was my house in the process of being condemned because of the incredibly persistent rats (another of the threats) was [insert terrible thing here] already in motion?

The uncertainly was Hellish and it consumed everything. Working was impossible.

Then, over time, I'd become acclimated to the uncertainty, and start working on fixing things again.

And that's when he'd come back. That's when he'd do everything in his power (including telling egregious lies) to kick my generalized anxiety disorder from, "Hey, I almost forgot I had that," to, "I cannot function because my anxiety is well past the point that renders me incapable of doing anything."

And repeat.

Inasmuch as there was good news, I was no longer suffering from Housemate and Houseguest|.

Housemate and Houseguest had tried dating. It worked out about as well as you'd expect given that this involved a (non-bisexual) lesbian attempting to be in sexual and romantic relationship with a straight dude. After the inevitable breakup, they both started being horrible to each other. Houseguest demanded I kick out Housemate, I refused to take a side, so he left.

After an unpleasant experience away from home where someone tried to strangle me (yes, I'm pretty sure it was attempted strangulation, and the goal was not merely the actual choking that took place, though the choking sucked too) I returned home to discover my cat had disappeared. More than that, Houseguest hadn't thought to contact me to tell me the cat had disappeared, nor to mention it when I got back, and was apparently never planning on telling me she hadn't seen the cat the whole time I was gone.

The cat was old, frail, and only allowed outside because being outside (and probably destroying the ecosystem) was the only thing that seemed to bring her joy anymore. I knew there was a risk of her not coming back every time time I let her out. I did my best to emotionally prepare for that. I was not emotionally prepared for her to have disappeared to the point she hadn't been seen in days when I got back from being attacked.

It was my birthday.

I ended up in a bad place, said some things I shouldn't have, and other things I should have said much, much sooner, and told her to find a new place to stay.

There wasn't a deadline, I didn't know how long it would take and the whole point of taking her in was keeping her from being homeless, but by September first she'd found another place to live. Public health guy came later in September.

So at that point, I didn't have to deal with either of them, and my mom started coming down regularly to help me deal with the rat problem. For a while it was great. Punctuated with the public health guy fucking up my mental health, but seeing her and working with her was great. Good for my mental health, a welcome change from what being around housemate and houseguest had been like. Consistent positive human contact.

The garage was packed with stuff to go through to separate the stuff I needed from the actual trash, and we did almost all of it in about a month. The one thing left to do was to move an old couch that had turned into a nesting area. My mom was on her way to rent a truck so we could take the old couch to the dump, and after that we planned on working on all of the stuff lost due to "cleaning" that had been stored inside the house.

She was on the road, on her way, when she got a call from the police. My sister had been involuntarily admitted to a psyche ward and my mother was being told to come pick up my sister's three kids.

After that, my mom didn't have time to come down. And it's harder to work alone. Not just harder in that you need to do all the work instead of part of the work, harder in that it's harder to motivate yourself on your own than when you have someone working with you.

And her not being able to come down and help was the end of (almost all of) my in-person human contact. The bottom dropped out. My mental health collapsed. Even now, over three years later and coming up on four, the majority of that "inside the house" we were about to start on remains undone.

But the public health guy kept on coming and fucking with my mental health into early 2021.

So the world was on fire, there was a coup attempt no one was being held accountable for, I was being told my house would be condemned and possibly demolished if I couldn't deal with shit that my mental health wouldn't allow me to deal with, said mental health was absolute shit, and then GameStop.

Volatility creates the potential for people involved in stocks to make or lose a lot of money fast. The difference between, "TO THE MOON!" and, "It's worth like five dollars," is hella volatile, and no one's retirement money was invested in GameStop. The only people engaging with that shitshow were people who were willing to engage in a high risk marketplace that was set to completely collapse any second. No moral qualms about making money off GameStop stock, because everyone losing money had self-selected into this incredibly punishing game in hopes of getting rich quick.

In the past, it was impossible for people like me to engage in the stock market, it cost too much. Then fractional trading. You didn't have to buy full stocks, you could just say, "I want five bucks of [whatever]," and if [whatever] was trading at $500 dollars a share, you'd get 1% ownership of one share.

So I thought, given everything was fucked anyway, why not give it a try? For once in my life I wasn't in the red, I had to figure out what to do with what was left over of my stimulus funds, and I thought, "Why should rich people be the only ones to make money by doing nothing of value?"

The answer, by the way, is because the rules are set up such that only rich people are able to make money by doing nothing of value. For a little bit, I was actually doing well, until I ran up against those rules. I should have stopped when I realized just how rigged the game was (I'd known it was rigged, but vastly underestimated the degree), but the stock market is the world's largest casino, and it turns out I'm a gambling addict.

Never had an opportunity to discover that before, and I don't have a formal diagnosis, but "addiction" is the only way I can describe what was happening to me. I. Could. Not. Stop.

Notes I was taking were full of asides saying, "This is unhealthy, and I need to stop," sometimes in those exact words, other times in other words that meant the same thing.

I couldn't stop.

Then my computer broke.

Good news: I'd used some of the stimulus money for a down payment on a desktop. Possibly the first desktop I'd owned in decades. I was in the process of setting it up when my laptop died. As I transferred files, passwords, logins, and so forth from my laptop's hard drives to the new computer I made sure not to transfer the information needed to log into the brokerage account.

Because I was afraid. I was afraid that if it were possible to get into that account, I'd go back to how I was, allow it to consume my entire life again, and be unable to stop.

I knew that the money I had in there, about a thousand dollars I think, would lose its value because it was all in stuff that could only possibly go up in the short term, and would drop way the fuck down once a degree of sanity returned.

Even as much as a thousand dollars could help me (five months of food, for example) I thought it was an acceptable loss if it meant I wouldn't lose myself to the stock market and a gambling addiction again.

And then we come to seventeen months ago. Somebody (some non-governmental agency contracted by the SSA) told the SSA I had over thirty fucking thousand dollars in that account.

Again, any month your countable assets are $2,000 or more, you get nothing.

They were cutting my SSI payments to zero and demanding repayment. This would make survival impossible.

So I transferred the login information to the desktop. Couldn't log in. Jumped through a ton of hoops, including walking to the next town over to get an up to date state ID on a day that was way too hot for walking, and doing some online thing to indicate that I had the same face as the one on the State ID.

No dice.

Eventually I got in by hotwiring my desktop to run off of the laptop's hard drive, which the site interpreted as being the same computer. As I recall, there was one hundred and sixty something dollars.

Even though I'd never seriously believed I had anything like $30,000 in that account, I still somehow managed to feel the gut punch and loss as if I'd had $30,000 taken away from me.

That wasn't the problem seventeen months ago.

The problem was that in the midst of all of this the SSA did a full blown review where they discovered they'd been handling my case wrong for years. They'd made bad assumptions in phone interviews, whereas if they'd asked for clarification instead of making assumptions I'd have told them what they needed to get things right.

Also, if certain rules had been explained to me more clearly, I would have known to point out that some stuff wasn't adding up.

The thing is, they'd been mishandling my case in my favor.

When I said people would help me pay bills sometimes, referring to when I'd ask for donations because I couldn't cover a bill, they assumed the people were paying the bills directly, and this is completely different from how things are treated if people give me money with which I pay the bill (which is what was happening.)

Short version: donations are unearned income, and I am allowed to have fucking mountains of unearned income with no penalties whatsoever provided the income is not in the form of money, rent, or food. (I think the food thing has recently changed though.)

I am allowed to have $20 of unearned income with no penalties if it's in the form of money.

They already think I'm getting more than $20 of unearned income, because I don't own the house, and they think no one would ever let anyone live in a house at just the cost of expenses, because they think everyone on earth is a rent seeking motherfucker. (If I owned the house, they'd say I was getting no-house related unearned income, but because my mom owns it they invented a rent they claim I should be paying, and the difference between that and the expenses is the unearned income they're punishing me for re:housing.)

What this means is that if I, say, need $800 for oil and someone gives me $800 dollars to buy oil and I buy $800 dollars of oil with that money, I get penalized $800. If the person with $800 dollars pays the oil company directly, I'm not penalized at all.

The practical upshot of this is that I can't fucking fundraise when I fall short. I have to instead pay for the shortfall with debt. Credit card debt, which racks up interest like fucking whoa. And it's been that way for 17 months.

The only exception was when I got someone else to do a GoFundMe to pay for oil for me, but that person had to bow out of the "I'll fundraise for you," position due to mental health reasons and no one replaced them.

And what happened 17 months ago is worse than just that, but for this bit I think it's all on me.

As of 17 months ago, my patreon income is classed as unearned and thus cut out of the base amount I get paid monthly, meaning that I fall short a lot more often than I used to.

I spent a long time trying to convince them my earned income is earned income, and it never worked. Recently, I think I figured out why. The SSA and IRS share information to determine the benefits a person should have. So if I say I'm self-employed and the IRS says, "She's not paying self-employment taxes," the SSA trusts the IRS.

Now my self employment income is around 4.5 thousand dollars a year. If you look up who needs to file taxes you'll find that a single person under 65 only needs to file taxes if their gross countable income is $12,950 or more. (Well, that's what the IRS website says right now, but I think it's for last year.) So it looks like I don't need to.

On less than perfect websites it really looks like I don't need to, because there's nothing about exceptions.

When I found out the $12,950 figure didn't apply to me I went to check places I'd checked before. Depending on the exact page in question one of two things was happening with respect to exceptions. On some, there was an asterisk I'd consistently failed to notice for years. On others, it was a "but first" thing.

That refers to an episode of M*A*S*H my mother has told me about. Hawkeye and Trapper are sent to defuse a bomb, and these are the instructions:

First, you need a wrench. Now place it gently on the nut just above the locking ring, and loosen.
Now, rotate the locking ring counterclockwise.
Now, remove the tail assembly.
And carefully cut the wires leading to the clockwork fuse at the head.
But first, remove the fuse.

The result is that the wires get cut before the, "But first, remove the fuse," is read. The bomb detonates.

On tax sites without an asterisk it tells you that the threshold for someone in my demographic is $12,950, then it lists nine other demographics and the thresholds for them.

Then, completely outside of the chart that shows the thresholds for filing, it says that self-employed individuals are required to file if their income is at or over $400.

Which is a very different value than $12,950.

So the fact I don't file taxes clearly means I can't be making more than $4,000 dollars in self employment income a year.

Based on what I know of how the SSA handles things, I'll have a windfall consisting of all of the money withheld because my earned income was classified as unearned the moment the tax situation is fixed and I can use the tax documents as proof it's earned income. Though who knows what the back taxes will be.

The thing is, that does jack shit to address the high interest on the debt I used to pay for things that money was supposed to go to. And I've reached the point where the interest on the debt is piling up so fast there's seriously not enough left over to pay utilities (which is why I'm behind on them and at risk of having them switched off.)

But it gets worse.

Six months ago, I was in a bad place mentally. I think I remember why, but it falls into the "stuff I don't want to put on the open web because of who might be reading" category.

I started having suicide-adjacent thoughts. They weren't suicidal any more than someone saying "Just kill me now," is asking to be euthanized (credit to my therapist for that comparison) and indeed it was just an intrusive thought in the form of a phrase that kept entering my head. Whenever I thought about the future and the problems I'd have to face in it, the words, "Well, I'll just kill myself," appeared unbidden in my head. No related thoughts or feelings or desires or plans or whatnot related to suicide, just the words.

Now this is an easily identified maladaptive coping mechanism. You can't worry about, or otherwise stress out about, the future if there is no future. Thus it releases the pressure the future is putting on your mental health.

There's two problems, one is that I've been terrified my depression might become suicidal for most of my life, and thoughts like that don't help.

The other, the one that's having a big impact right here right now, it was successful in producing that "no tomorrow" thinking, but said thinking wasn't limited to stress about the future.

And six months interest free financing is a thing.

You can probably see where this is going, but there's another wrinkle.

I never self-harm physically, unless you count not eating, drinking, and/or sleeping (which some people do, but I really don't) but there are other things I do to hurt myself.

A friend who has a history of physical self-harm once shared other ways she hurt herself, and that came with some, "That's me!" realizations.

She'd do things she knew were stupid and irresponsible so that a) they'd come back to bite her, and b) she could tell herself she was stupid and irresponsible. She could "prove" to herself that she was a bad person, no matter what other people said, because only a bad person would do things that stupid and irresponsible while fully aware that it was stupid and irresponsible to do them.

I don't do that a lot, but sometimes when my mental health is really bad; yeah: that's me.

So six months ago I spent a bunch of money on useless digital goods that aren't returnable or transferable. No returns means I can't get the money back. No transfers means I can't resell it to get part of the money back. It was, very much, stupid and irresponsible.

Thus allowing me to tell myself that I'm a terrible fucked up person who is a drain on society and deserves everything, every bad thing at least, that ever comes her way.

To keep the lights, phone, internet, and water turned on, to refill my nearly empty oil tank, and to stop the stupid stuff from six months ago from exploding via retroactive compound interest I need $3,240.78 (plus or minus depending on fluctuations in the price of oil) in less than two weeks (That is, before November 1st), and I don't have a way to raise anything because I can't take direct donations and I don't have anyone willing to take them on my behalf.

But the stupid and irresponsible spending wasn't all confined to a single month, it spanned the boundary between two months, so there's another $1,249.62 "lest this explode" that needs to be paid before December starts, and as impossible as it seems to get any of this, it's not even the majority of the problem.

Because there's also all of the debt that built up to the point it's growing so fast it leaves me short on funds for utilities.

Put it all together, and add in repairs I need to do to the roof (which could cave in when the snows come if not fixed) and the basement (the windows and the door need to be fixed because right now cold air can flow right into the house through holes) and it's circa $10,000.

Circa $10,000 That I need to somehow get raised and paid to appropriate places without ever actually touching or controlling the money itself.

The exact figure, less the cost of materials for repairs (because I don't know the exact cost of those) is $9,624.63 with the usual margin of error based on the fluctuating price of oil. The materials should cost less than $375 so while what I need is circa $10,000, it's also under $10,000.

The only part of the roof that needs to be repaired, by the way, is the beams holding it up. The actual roofing is pristine because after someone saw the damage done by a positively absurd windstorm and paid to have the outside redone. The roofers who did that work had apparently never worked on a roof like mine before, because the beams holding the roof up are in a very, very specific place phase of falling apart.

Human beings temporarily walking on the roof isn't enough to cave it in (yet) but it is enough to make the cracked supports bend. A lot. The experience of walking on it was described as "bouncy". While they were working on it, I heard them talking to each other about how in all their years they'd never felt a roof act like that before, and even if I hadn't overheard it, they made sure to report it to the person who actually paid them.

The situation is this: the beams are all in one piece, which is why it hasn't collapsed, but the beams are all severely cracked to the point they can and do bend at the cracks. Or, to put it more parsimoniously, they're buckling. That's not a sustainable state.

Enough bends, and they'll break completely. Likewise, if there's extra weight on them for a long enough period, that'll break them too. Here's the thing: roof rakes exist to stop snow from piling up too heavy on a roof, but you can never rake all the snow off. And then when rain comes and soaks into that snow things get much heavier, if it turns to ice, that extra weight sticks around.

That's why roof rakes are a preventative. Once the damage is done, and in this case it has been done, they can't fix anything, and can't guarantee a collapse won't come.

I don't actually know if the roof will cave in this winter if I don't get it fixed. I do know that if can't prove that I'm capable of dealing with the problem I'll lose the house. When we were in talks about me being given the house so my SSI stopped having a bunch deducted from it for not paying an imaginary rent in full. That, combined with getting taxes figured out and filed so my earned income is counted as earned would fix the root cause of the financial problems I've been having since forever.

Except, it may be too late for that. Because the root cause being fixed will mean fuckall if I can't deal with the $9,624.63 and change I'm currently facing down.

Before I went back and added the stuff about the nature of the roof problem, this is how things ended:
(Stuff already said formatted as a quote)

Circa $10,000 That I need to somehow get raised and paid to appropriate places without ever actually touching or controlling the money itself.
The exact figure, less the cost of materials for repairs (because I don't know the exact cost of those) is $9,624.63 with the usual margin of error based on the fluctuating price of oil. The materials should cost less than $375 so while what I need is circa $10,000, it's also under $10,000.

Pretty sure I'm fucked.

That's why I was thinking of holding off on reviving this place until after fundraising. I don't want it to seem like I only remember Stealing Commas when I need money, and I currently need money. Somehow.

* (↑) I still think "blog" sounds like something you throw up, and if people were gonna shorten "web log" to something "webl" would have been better. Yeah, it's two syllables ("web-el"), but at least it doesn't sound like vomit.

I need help (also, what's been going on the last 2 1/4 years of my life)

2022-11-03T03:11:00.012-04:00

I told myself that when I came back here it would be because I had something to share. It wouldn't be another begging post. I set deadlines for when I'd resume posting, in hopes of giving a sense of urgency that would let me produce something. The deadlines wooshed passed, no posts were made.

I'm here to beg. I don't have something creative to share. This is exactly what I promised myself I wouldn't do.

Let's talk about the last two years.

First, though, as I said, I'm here to beg.

I'm here to beg for over $3,800 dollars.
(Sorry for the lack of an exact figure, the explanation for that is below.)

⁂

Donate button is in the upper righthand corner, but PayPal's coded it in a way that you can't just link to the donate page; you have to get there by pressing the button. I think it's because they want everyone to have a PayPal account, so they make the thing that does require a PayPal account easier to pass around. That's my PayPal.me page. (http://paypal.me/christhecynic)

If you want to signal boost, that's probably the the link to share. And sweet fuck could I ever use some signal boosting. Another way to signal boost would be using this tweet, which is at the end of a thread that covers a tiny bit of what I'll share below.

The only upside of the "Donate" button here is that will take credit cards without requiring one to have a paypal account. A warning about it, though. If you click it, there's a checkbox that says "Make this a monthly donation". Don't check that box. Do not. It does not work. It has never worked. I have no idea why they put it there when it never worked, and I certainly don't know why they haven't removed it.

For monthly donations, use my patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/chris_the_cynic) Don't expect actual content, though. At least not stuff that's worth reading. Most of the posts are of the form, "Hey, I haven't posted anything in two months, and here's why: my mental health sucks. There might be some promising signs things will improve, but in the next 'Why I haven't posted anything' post, it'll turn out that they were false hope."

I vaguely remembered something about setting up a Ko-fi account, and sure enough I was able to find it. Not sure when I set it up, but based on the description I used it must have been way back when I still had a camera. I miss photography. Anyway, I've reset my password and got back in, so if Ko-fi is better than Paypal.me for anyone, this is my Ko-fi page. (https://ko-fi.com/christhecynic) If you're gonna signal boost, maybe spread that link along with the paypal.me one.

⁂

Ok, so, the last two years. Not long before my birthday, I'm pretty sure someone tried to kill me. I can't prove it, and he had better opportunities that he passed up, but when he started choking me in a rage (before there wasn't rage, he was toying with me) I sincerely believe he intended to strangle me.

For those who don't know, "strangle" means kill. Specifically, it means "choke to death".

I got back home. A few days later was my birthday. I made two posts. One of them was called, "I survived another year," and given the context, I have to wonder if the experience was on my mind when I made that title.

If memory serves, my birthday was when I realized my cat was gone. Or maybe my birthday was when I realized that my depression induced immobility (I seriously couldn't make myself leave the house) meant that I'd let enough time pass that the chances of finding her alive had dropped from "very slim" to "almost zero" without me so much as putting up a "missing cat" flyer or asking any of the neighbors if they'd seen her.

Houseguest was gone by then, having had a falling out with housemate that proved they were both . . . actually, one of them's died since then. If there's any peace to be had, I'm gonna let 'em rest in it.

Out of everything--throwing out my valuables, running roughshod over my house and my life without any kind of permission, causing sewage to backup into my sleeping area, causing a rat infestation, out of every fucking thing--it was my cat that finally made me tell housemate she had to leave.

See, while I'd been away from the house (at the place of the attempted strangling) I'd left the cat and the dog in her care. When she didn't see the cat, she says she assumed I must have taken the cat with me, which is something I'd literally never done, but that's not the problem.

She didn't call to check, she just made that assumption, decided that the cat not showing up for food or water or literally anything was therefore explained, and ignored her absence. When I got back home, I was kind of distracted. Thinking you came pretty close to being murdered will do that to you.

That's why it took a bit to realize that, since my return, the cat had been gone way too long. She might disappear for a bit periodically, but not that long. Then, come to find out that she'd been missing not just since my return, but since I left. A rather longer, rather more worrying, amount of time.

Housemate had apparently decided she was never going to mention the cat to me. Certainly didn't say a word when I returned without the cat she'd baselessly assumed I took with me when I left in spite of leaving it, like the dog (which she did care for) in her care.

Whenever it was that I realized that there was no fucking way I was going to find my frail old cat again, I crossed a line for the first time. For longer than I can remember, I usually haven't cared if I lived or died. I hadn't wanted to die, but neither did I want to live. If some kind of eternal enchanted sleep from which you'd never wake up, but neither would you die in said sleep, were an option, that would appeal to me so fucking much.

But I'd never actively wanted to die. Then, one day, because of my cat, or rather the lack of her, I did.

Then housemate tried to stop me from kicking her out by threatening to kill herself, (she later admitted she didn't mean it, which makes me feel better about thinking she was full of shit when she said it.)

So the cat. The cat that was technically named "Pandora" but was really named "the Cat". She was old. She was frail. I knew she could be gone at any time. I worried whenever I let her out, but wanting to go out was the only time I saw her wanting anything anymore, and I wasn't gonna take that one last joy away from her.

I knew she might leave and never come back, but the way it happened, with me in another county and not even knowing until days after I got back because I was distracted by trauma, I wasn't prepared for that.

I'd had her since she was a kitten the size of my fist. For the vast, vast majority of the time after my mom left this house to move in with her boyfriend, she was the only other mammal in the house, and since the gecko isn't something you can handle (it's apparently normal for the gecko species in question to have too much fear and too much bite to be a pet you can . . . pet) the cat was my only companion.

I wasn't prepared for her to disappear without a trace without me noticing. I wasn't prepared for wondering if she really never showed up after I left, or housemate just wasn't attentive enough to see if she was waiting outside and needed to be let in. I wasn't prepared to wonder if she disappeared because she chose to as dying animals sometimes do, because of injury or attack, or because she suddenly found that the doors to my house no longer opened for her.

I wasn't prepared for the lack of closure.

⁂

In late August, housemate had found both a job and a place she could afford to stay with the pay from that job. When she first tried to get a job after moving into my house, the lockdown kicked in just before her first day of work. The whole time she was here, she was staying rent free. Houseguest too.

I guess her finally being able to find a job was probably an early sign that, while COVID-19 was in full swing, the US wasn't going to fight it, and we've certainly surrendered to it in the years since.

September marked the return to me being the only human living here. September also marked when the rat problem drew institutional notice.

⁂

Can't remember what I've said here, and I'm not gonna check, but when housemate using paper towels in lieu of toilet paper caused sewage to back up into my house (and my personal sleeping area) the problem was such that a plumber needed to put a giant machine in a very specific place. That place was the absolute least accessible part of my house.

Furniture that had been stored in the basement for years or decades needed to be moved, and housemate thought it was a three person job. That's why houseguest originally came. Then he got stranded by the lockdown. Then he decided he liked it here and wanted to stay. Then things went wrong.

But originally he came to help move furniture in the basement. On the day he arrived I was in a really bad place. I spent the entire day sitting on the couch because I lacked the energy to stand up. I heard housemate and houseguest "cleaning" my kitchen, which is not moving furniture in the basement, but was helpless to do anything about it.

They threw out everything. My blender. My toaster oven. A different kind of oven that I always used to cook meat (especially steak) that I don't know the technical term for. The newer better phone I was planning to replace my crap corded phone with. Some of my jewelry. Family photos. $200 dollars in savings bonds belonging to my sister. Pots. Pans.

Everything.

The kitchen looked clean afterward, yes. It also looked empty. I couldn't cook, because I no longer had cookware.

The good news was that it wasn't trash day. Or, I suppose, the day before trash day. The bad news was that they mixed the "trash" with the actual trash. And worst still, they'd mixed stuff I could not and cannot afford to replace with food waste.

They would repeat this process for various rooms, each time claiming that they'd learned their lesson and wouldn't pull the same shit again. I'm conflict averse enough that I spent much of the time they were living here rent free hiding from them. I didn't have the fight in me to stop them from doing things I knew they'd fuck up badly.

In fact, when it comes to having fight in me, I seem to have two settings: doormat and . . . not throwing punches, but dangerously close. Physical. The one time I crossed out of doormat territory while both of them were here had me grabbing onto houseguest and shoving him against a wall. It stopped at that, but that just means I was the only one to lay hands.

Regardless, everything, no matter how useful or valuable, in a given room gets bagged up as trash, and mixed with trash, and sometimes that actual trash is food waste.

I spent the rest of the year digging through bags of "trash" separating the stuff that really was trash from the much larger category of, "I've been suffering for X months because I couldn't find this, thank God it didn't make it into the stuff put out for weekly pickup!"

This was not a fast process, and depression didn't make it any faster. And, again, food waste.

⁂

At the same time, the lockdown forced the city rats, used to bountiful feeding from now-empty restaurant dumpsters, to branch out and look for new feeding grounds. Possibly exacerbating the problem was an old church, derelict for years, being demolished without any attempt to check if it had become a vermin nest, or exterminate any vermin that might have infested it.

I don't think I made the connection to the church the last time I posted here, a neighbor brought it up rather later as I recall, so I probably didn't mention that. Then again, we don't know for sure that it was related to the neighborhood's sudden rat problem.

What I do know is that the various rats seeking new food and shelter found a fucking banquet laid out for them in the "trash" I had yet to go through. It would be nice to say that my garage became their new nesting grounds, but that would ignore something that's critically important.

I've always made a distinction between a clean mess and . . . the other kind of mess.

A clean mess is a bunch of completely dry cardboard boxes in an unruly heap. A clean mess is when a stack of papers gets knocked over. A clean mess is a floor strewn with toys. A clean mess is when you take the dishes and silverware and whatnot out of the dish washer, make sure they're clean, but don't get them put back into drawers and cabinets and such.

An unclean mess? It's what happens when you don't clear the table after eating. It's what happens when you don't wash the dishes, it's what happens when you leave food or other organic material around where it can decay, molder, form new and different species previously unknown to science, and/or be eaten by rats.

Having colonized my garage, the rats sent out expeditions to nearby areas of interest, my house being the closest. Once upon a time they would have found no loose food. With housemate and houseguest living here, they found no end to food. Seriously, no end.

No matter how many times I told them top stop leaving food out because we could literally hear the rats chewing through my walls so stop feeding the rats, housemate and houseguest kept on leaving food out, and the rats, being both cunning and opportunistic, kept eating it. Sure, on any given day they might eat all of it, but the next day housemate and houseguest would leave them more.

They're not just cunning and opportunistic. They're not just capable of chewing straight through your walls. They're also stubborn and tenacious.

Once they've found a feeding ground, they aren't willing to give it up just because the previously unending food finally stops. They'll start experimenting. They'll chew through anything, in hopes there might be food in it.

They even got into the rat poison I got but then decided against using (didn't want a dead rat decomposing inside one of my walls) but also shampoo, and just . . . everything.

I'd only ever dealt with mice before.

So come September, housemate and houseguest were gone, and with them the supply of daily food that had originally drawn the rats into the house, but the rats had already started experimenting with containers that, while not obviously food related, weren't rat proof (they're a curious lot), and when their usual in-house food supply got cut off, that kicked into high gear.

Containers that had kept the rats out for months were suddenly being proven woefully non-rat-proof as the rats upped their game.

And outside, I still hadn't gone through all of the "trash" because depression and stress, and living with two people who made me want to just disappear while I was inside my own house (not because they were malicious, but just because personalities didn't mesh at all.)

And then the city came to call.

⁂

The rat guy showed up, explained he was from the city investigating reports of a rat haven, and asked me to show him around. It didn't take him long to (correctly) identify my property as a rat haven.

I would later learn that he took this as license to stop investigating all reports of rats anywhere near me, on the assumption that they had to be coming from my property and my property alone. It's possible that that was true, I have no way of knowing.

My experience with them suggests that they'll set up a new colony, if circumstances permit, no matter how close the old colony is, so in the area the rat guy decided he never had to look into there could have been dozens of colonies, but again, I have no way of knowing.

Regardless, the rat guy, the city public health official, had arrived, and so began a new chapter in my life.

See, a rat haven is a public health hazard because rats carry diseases, and as a result, it's illegal to be a rat haven. You could be fined, your property could be condemned, the whole place could even be razed if they determined it was bad enough to justify it. (After all, if a building is declared unlivable and condemned, what's the point of leaving it standing?)

So this is what would happen, and it took me way, way too long to recognize the pattern.

The rat guy would come, and every time after the first time he would berate me, threaten me, and lie to me. I won't be able to remember every lie, but the only one that really matters is the ultimatum. Every time he would give a deadline, and if I didn't have things solved to his satisfaction by the deadline, terrible things would happen.

He would go all out to frighten me, and he would scare me so much that I would shut the fuck down and be unable to do anything. Time would pass, I'd start to become more functional again, and I'd get to work on fixing the the problem. Because of the time that had passed, it'd become clear that I couldn't get things done by the deadline.

I'd have to divide my time between trying to fix the problem and trying to contact him asking for an extension. As the deadline grew closer, less and less time would be devoted to fixing the the problem, because it became clearer and clearer that getting it done by the deadline was an impossible task. I needed some kind of extension or accommodation, or something or all of the work I'd done would be for nothing.

He'd ignore emails and phone calls, it's only now that I realize I never tried sending a physical letter. He wouldn't just refuse to respond to any attempt from me to contact him, but also any attempt from my mother, who's the actual property owner.

The deadline would come. I wouldn't hear a word.

Had he assessed the state of property without telling me? Had things progressed to the next level? Did I get an extension and the notice just never made it to me? Was I in some kind of limbo? What the fucking fuck?

I'd be in outright panic, because the things he threatened me with didn't actually require I be notified in advance. To prevent them, I needed to convince him I'd made enough progress, or completely fixed X or Y part of the problem, but if I didn't convince him, then the bad shit that was happening was supposed to kick in automatically.

Well, if I didn't even see him, then I surely couldn't have convinced him, so as I continued to hear nothing, I'd just go through a process of catastrophizing that I'm not sure a person without depression, anxiety, and so forth can truly understand.

Obviously literally no time was spent trying to solve the rat problem. It was too late. I had to figure out some way to do some sort of administrative magic to undo things that were supposedly already in motion and retroactively get the time I was allowed extended. And my point of contact wasn't answering his phone calls or checking his email.

At one point I got worried that maybe something had happened to the rat guy. He was the city public health official. A search of his name said that he was part of the city's team for responding to the pandemic. Maybe he'd gotten COVID-19. What if I was making all of these attempts to contact someone who was in the hospital, or something. Wouldn't that be terrible?

I tried reaching out to a co-worker of his to see if they could tell me if he was ok. The co-worker ignored me too.

Eventually either the realization that the ultimatum hadn't come to pass or fatalism would set in. Either, "I guess, maybe, just this once, no news really is good news," or, "Well, if I'm fucked I'm fucked, might as well keep doing what I was doing," because the simple truth of the matter was I was planning on fixing the rat problem before the rat guy even showed up. Not like I wanted my house to be rat infested.

So I'd get to work, and it'd take a while to get into a flow of it, like it always did, and my depression would slow me down, but I'd start making some real progress. It'd be clear that if I could just keep this up, I'd definitely hit this or that major milestone soon.

And then the rat guy would show up, unannounced, and repeat the process. He'd give me another completely fake ultimatum, I'd believe every fucking word, and he'd leave me too terrified to do anything.

This process would repeat, I don't know how many times, until January 2021. Or maybe early February.

But during this time, something more important happened.

⁂

My mother, as mentioned, is the home owner. I pay all the expenses on the property, but I don't own it, she does, and so she and I were obviously talking about someone from the city threatening terrible repercussions vis a vis the property she owns.

At some point, she started coming down to physically help me with the work. We'd spend days together undoing the damage housemate and houseguest had caused. It's so quick to throw everything you can grab into a bag, it's a lot slower to sort it all out.

The first thing you have to is dump it the fuck out. Not sure how long it took me to realize this, but trying to go through the bag from top to bottom with the stuff still in the bag is the slowest possible way to approach the problem.

And we worked things out as we went. And eventually we had a system. And when rat guy and his deadlines weren't preventing us from working on the problem, we were making progress at breakneck speed.

We were working outside, we had a sort of makeshift giant table set up so the bags could be dumped for easy sorting without needing anyone to be bending down or crouched on the ground or what have you, and actual trash was being separated from recyclables from stuff I'd been looking for for months and it was . . . good.

It was good. Human contact that wasn't stressing me the fuck out, someone who loved me within arm's reach, working outdoors in a good season for it. The cooperation helped me from falling into a complete depressive slump. My mental health might make some days slower, but with my mom there working with me it didn't grind to a halt.

My garage, which had been filled with fucking bags upon bags was getting cleared out, and we were talking about when we'd finish it and move onto the house.

The rare things that housemate and houseguest had realized they shouldn't throw out were in jumbled unsorted piles in the basement, and they were where we'd potentially find the most useful things that had gone missing, or at least, the most useful things that had gone missing that we hadn't already found.

For all of the progress we were making, none of it was making my life in the house any better, but the garage had to come first, because the food waste still mixed in was the biggest thing keeping the rats around.

There was a couch way in the back of the garage that had been there since I was a child. I can vaguely remember using it when it was still in the house, but I can't attach anything else to those memories. Rats had visibly been nesting in it. It was too big to take to the dump in my mom's vehicle, so we were gonna rent a truck.

That was gonna be the day we took all of the "definitely trash, but unable to be thrown out the usual way" stuff away. It was gonna be a major milestone, and after it happened there'd be only a few more things to finish up in the garage, and then we could move on to the house.

The day came, my mom had called and told me she was on her way.

Then she called again.

⁂

I can't remember if it was the police or Child Protective Services that called her, but she'd been told my sister had been sent to the psyche ward, and she would have to drive up and take in my sister's kids.

The people at the psyche ward wanted to have my sister committed, by my sister won the hearing that would have committed her, and so she only spent a week in the psyche ward. She never got custody of her children back.

My sister blames my mother.

At first my mom was taking care of three children, at her age, she and her boyfriend couldn't handle that, and my sister's children were split up. Since then, my mother has cared for the eldest, while the other two have been outside our family.

With a child to look after, my mom no longer had time to come down and help me deal with the situation at the house.

Just like that, my only source of human contact disappeared.

⁂

That was, if I'm not getting my months confused, late November 2020, meaning the cycles of rat guy terrifying me into being unable to do anything would continue for a few months more.

That didn't help, but . . . I think it's the only source of human contact thing that's the bigger deal.

The work my mother and I had done was enough for the rat population to dwindle, the rat guy disappeared from my life. We were into 2021, and . . . only source of human contact had disappeared.

Also, at some point in there, I got sick. COVID-19 symptoms, but without the worry I'd give it to my mother, and without anyone else I was in contact with, I couldn't muster the motivation to get tested.

That's not important. What's important is that when I stopped having that human contact, it was like the bottom dropped out, my depression got so much worse, and I just stopped.

All this time later, and the work my mother and I were going to do in the house hasn't been done. So much stuff, important stuff without which I can't fully utilize my house and, especially, my kitchen, has yet to be found. The whole basement is basically a "no go; too much clutter" area. Thank God they didn't put any food waste down there.

But that's the present, back to early 2021. Because there was a . . . let's call it an alternate source of human contact for a bit.

⁂

For a time in early 2021, my sister and her boyfriend were camped out in her van in my driveway. My anxiety was at the highest level it's ever been, basically non-stop.

At some point, they had a disagreement, and my sister decided she didn't want to be outside. She decided to clean up while she was in here.

I probably don't need to explain why that very concept triggers my anxiety at this point. That, ultimately, wasn't what led to the breaking point. It was the noise. Sometimes, I'm hypersensitive to sound. Every noise was so overpowering it was like a physical attack. It hurt. She wouldn't stop.

Two modes: doormat; physical.

She wouldn't stop. It was hurting me.

She was pretty close to the front door, going through some stuff the dog had knocked over in the hallway it opens up to. I pushed and pulled her out of my house. I didn't know what to do.

Later on, I couldn't tell you how long--a day, a week, a month? Probably not a month--she was in my house again, and refused to leave again, and said that if I touched her she'd call the cops. Quite possibly reasonable. I don't know if pushing and pulling constitutes a crime, but it's definitely getting physical, and that's not a good way to solve problems.

I found a third mode: calling the cops. (Credit to my sister for giving me the idea.)

Terrified, because I was inviting people with guns into a potentially volatile situation, but calling the cops none the less because I didn't know what else to do.

They got her to leave, thankfully without any violence.

I think it was the next day she showed up and acted like nothing had happened.

The cops said you need to be firm, I'm not good at that, and just not let the person back in, because without a, "You're not allowed here," limit being continually enforced, sooner or later, the person will be there and refusing to leave again.

I'm not good at being firm, and ACAB is definitely a thing, but being able to say, "The cops told me not to let you back here," made things easier.

Thus ended my sister camped out in her van in my driveway. (Sometimes with her boyfriend, sometimes not.)

⁂

As 2021 dragged on, and things involving custody of my sister's children got increasingly heated, my depression and anxiety worsened, and I kept on getting drawn into things, and every time my phone rang it felt like an attack, and I dreaded hearing what the message might be (I screen my phone calls) and when the answering machine filled up, instead of clearing it off or picking up without screening, I just left it full, and let it ring until the person on the other end gave up.

I also stopped checking my mail. I'd bring it in the house so the box didn't get full, and then drop it in a pile somewhere without even checking who it was from, much less opening it.

This led to me missing what would have been my first dentist appointment in years. This cost me my food supplement.

⁂

As of January 2022, I haven't been on food stamps. It took me so long to try to deal with it that they said it was impossible to reinstate, and I'd need to reapply. I tried. In April. I haven't heard back at all. Naturally, I should call them. Find out what's wrong. Fix the problem, stop spending $200 I don't have on food each month when there's a (potential) solution just a phone call away.

That is not how I have spent my year. I've spent my year letting my depression lead to me getting so undernourished, dehydrated, and/or sleep deprived that I can't function. Undernourishment is the most expensive one.

There comes a point where you don't have energy to prepare food, meaning even if you have food you can't use it unless it's the right kind of food (grab and eat, think a granola bar or a cookie.) I think there was an entire month where I ate granola bars almost exclusively, but eventually you don't have grab and eat food, and that's where the expense comes in.

If you don't have the energy to prepare food due to lack of calories, and the only food you have in the house is food that needs to be prepared before it can be eaten, then you need prepared food delivered, and enough of it that you'll have the energy needed to make use of the food you do have.

That can cost in the realm of half a month of store bought food. Needing to do it multiple times? It adds up.

⁂

Someone who was reading in 2020 and has a good memory might notice that I left out the part where my dog got hit by a car in March of 2020.

She's doing fine. She's been doing fine. All she needed was to be kept stable, have a blood transfusion, and have her punctured lung fixed, and she was basically back to normal. As soon as the medications she'd been put on wore off, she was completely back to normal.

When Chloe got back from the emergency vet, completely recovered except for medication induced . . . drowsiness, I think it was, the sense of urgency--the thing that had let me fundraise in spite of my depression-- disappeared.

I stopped trying.

Living on public assistance is always living near the edge, one major disruption away from complete financial catastrophe. Never fully dealing with the debt that came from paying for Chloe's life to be saved? That put me closer to the edge.

I'm not sure how much closer, but there have definitely been disruptions causing catastrophes causing me to go begging, but they all sort of pale in comparison to the big ones I'm facing now.

⁂

The lack of my food supplement, the fact that when I managed to get that dentist appointment rescheduled I didn't take into account the effect of the lack of my food supplement.

Briefly, fixing my teeth is not covered even though the holes in them are rather large, and I always knew I'd need to fundraise to pay for it, but I didn't really think about what it would mean to be doing that in the middle of other financial problems. I just thought that I'd finally get my teeth fixed. In fact, it's only the teeth on the right side that have been fixed so far, but sweet fuck did that cost a lot.

Ok, so, lack of food supplement for 11 months now, repeatedly needing to do the expensive shit that is buying emergency "Undernourishment has left me with too little energy to make food, so I need stuff that's already made delivered to my door" food, dentistry, having to pay for all of this shit on credit cards, interest, late fees, interest on late fees, and Vladimir Putin waging a genocidal war in Ukraine.

Because of that last one, heating oil costs more than twice as much as it normally would. The weather grows cold, my tank isn't on the verge of running out right this second, but it is close to empty.

I've had my phone, internet, and power cut multiple times for non-payment. (Only ever one at a time, mind.) Twice I've had someone come to my door to say, "I'm here to disconnect your water, if you don't want me to, you should pay now."

A month ago, I tried to work out what it would take to get me back to living right on the edge of disaster, instead of living in a state of ongoing . . . whatever the fuck you call this. The very drawn out early stages of a disaster in progress.

I came up with $2,511.12. I was wrong. I didn't take into account heating oil, and also that tally comes with the sort of rosy idea that I would have gotten my food supplement back right then, whereas I spent the past month barely functional, certainly not reaching out and solving problems.

When I say I didn't take into account heating oil, I don't mean the increase in the price, I mean even if I had raised that much (I raised less than a fifth) I'd have had nothing set aside for heating oil.

So, what I didn't raise then plus heating oil is circa $3,500, but that assumed I'd have my food supplement back, where I actually used some of what I did raise for food instead of digging myself out of the hole, and I had another starvation-mode episode, putting it to circa $3,800. (I bought more than a normal month's worth of food in hopes of avoiding a future starvation-mode episode.)

The reason for the "circa" is that the price of heating oil fluctuates by the day. There's also some additional things but . . .

But let me tell you about the day I bought food.

⁂

After a while of having trouble getting this prescription or that authorized or filled, I finally had all of my medications and was taking them and they seemed to be working. I finally had appointments related to sleep apnea set up, and treating that could be the missing piece that finally lets me break through from, "As good as I can ever get, but still worse than I should be," to, "Actually fucking normal, like a mentally healthy person would be."

I had a talk therapist again, and had just finished a session with him that was cementing my belief he was gonna work out really well for me. I was back in contact with my primary care physician, and had just gotten a blood pressure problem sorted out with minimal difficulty. All signs were positive, and it seemed like all I had to do was drink some water and go to sleep at a reasonable hour, and I'd be ready to finally make some phone calls and sort out the food supplement issue.

There may have been other signs too.

AND I bought a bunch of food with a specific eye toward making sure there was enough grab and eat stuff to avoid another starvation mode thing.

Things really seemed to be looking up, and I had hope.

Then the payment didn't go through. Tried it a couple times because I was told the machine was finicky. Still declined. Tried a different card. Didn't work. Card three failed because I hadn't noticed that it was expired and a new one was already in a pile of mail in my house waiting to be activated.

Card four worked.

So after I get home, and I get the stuff that needs to be refrigerated or frozen put away, I hopped onto my computer to figure out what was up with that shit. And it turned out that it wasn't actually . . . I should have seen it coming. I knew that I raised less than one fifth of what I needed, and the fact I was barely functional for a month didn't mean my financial problems had taken a vacation.

Things were bad. Things were very bad, but they weren't necessarily unexpectedly bad. I had come up more than $2,000 short of my "avoid catastrophe" price tag, so where did I think things were going to be a month down the line?

I started doing a new tally. I remembered to include heating oil this time. I added in the cost of dealing with the starvation mode thing. I added in what buying food for November had taken away from paying of what I'd needed back in October. I hit $3,800 plus or minus, depending on the fluctuations in the price of heating oil.

When I'd bought food, I'd also stocked up on some non-food supplies that were well overdue, the cost was definitely more than the fluctuations in in the price of heating oil, but how much more?

I stopped. I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't want to know how close to $4,000 it was. Fuck's sake, I couldn't even raise $500 when I went for $2,511.12 a month ago.

What did it matter what the exact tally was, when there was no hope regardless?

So I never did check the price of those last things. I just know that they're enough to turn "$3,800 plus or minus" into "over $3,800." How much over? I don't even want to know.

Doing that tally took me from the most hopeful I've been in . . . years, probably, to depressed to the point of being just above non-functional.

And that's where things stand.

Plus $64 because Capital One, a card I don't think I've used in a year, charged me a membership fee, and I didn't notice until after the payment was due, so then they charged a late fee on the membership fee. Paid it off so I won't have to worry about interest on that and another late fee come December.

So that card's completely empty, but if things keep going the way they're going, I'm gonna fill it up too, because I'm in so deep that my debt can only grow.

And the price to get to a point where that's not true anymore? $3,800 dollars.

Over $3,800 dollars.

For a writer who hasn't published a chapter in over two years, and a would-be amateur photographer with no camera. I don't see a way out of this, which is why--even though I promised myself that when I finally returned to this place it wouldn't be to beg--I'm here begging.

Things I want or need -- 2020 Birthday Edition

2020-08-03T22:19:00.001-04:00

I said I'd post this today, but it's now time for me to go to sleep and I've written all of three things, and only two of them are complete.

So, the idea behind this is that instead of just saying, "Give me money," I could make a list of things that would be useful, and maybe someone has one of those things that they're not using, or maybe someone is more willing to buy a specific thing than they are to just give general funds (or perhaps they could get a better deal than I would be able to get or...)

If there's anything on this pseudo-list that you have and are willing to send me, contact me via email:
⦑ cpw [at] maine (dot) rr {dot} com ⦒

As I try to keep my head up and myself awake long enough to get this posted, I'm just gonna add some quick things at the start. This will be a hodgepodge of, "My half awake brain was firing randomly" stuff. I'll try to make a better list at later date.

-- One thing that would be very useful, but it utterly fails to fall into the "You might have this lying around and not be using it" category, is food. People "helpfully" cleaned out my freezer, which meant I had nothing in reserve for the times when there was more month than there was food money for the month, and I've had a lot of times when there's more month than food lately. Also, when my depression is really bad (and it basically always is these days) I'm not necessarily able to cook.

Someone I know got someone else I know a pizza in spite of the two of them being in different states, something like that would be so very useful to me right now. I doubt anyone would do anything like that, but if one does want to try, contact me via email.

Oh, and the heating element in my stove isn't working properly, which is just fucking wonderful.

-- As mentioned below, basically anything that's electronic I'll theoretically have some use for. This is especially true for any kind of computer, no matter how old or how crappy.
-- -- Adding to the above, my last functional USB mouse looks like it's losing functionality. So if you're one of the

-- Tools. I'm not entirely sure how but I seem to have run out of tools. Screwdrivers, my drill, wrenches, generally all things that happen to be useful that you hold in your hand are rather lacking around here.

-- Bicycle tires, but you would need to know what size and I don't know so this is useless.

-- Clothes, but you would need to know what size and I don't know so this is useless. (This includes shoes since I'm down to one pair that is starting to come apart at the seams in the most literal way possible.)

-- This is probably redundant given tools is listed above, but when alleged helpful people did something to my house that they assure me was called "cleaning" the soldering stuff I had, which was very, very basic anyway, disappeared.

-- Fans. There is one working fan in my house. Two if you count the one nailed to the ceiling of the master bedroom. The non-ceiling fan is on the verge of failure, and I'm not sure how much longer percussive maintenance will be able to keep it running. As such whether a little fan that goes on a desk, or a big one that sits on the floor, I could use any fan that's available.

-- Basically anything vaguely musical, even if broken.

-- Anything My Little Pony or Equestria Girls related. I actually made an Amazon wishlist of stuff that I thought might help me in my fanfic writing (and also has the potential of allowing me to introduce my unicorn loving nephew to pen and paper RPGs), but in terms of stuff one isn't setting out to buy so much as get rid of, basically anything.

-- Bedding, but I'd need to verify the size of the mattress, which I'm not going to do right now.
-- Curtains.
-- Probably other stuff along the lines of bedding and curtains, though my mind is drawing a blank

This whole thing is basically an attempt to do something that I've done before (twice), the things in those posts might still apply. I should reread them:
⊙ Things I need or want
⦾ Stuff you could send me

That was more than the "some quick things" I promised. Anyway, that's what I added when it was already late enough that I should have been first going to bed and then sleeping. The original intent was to go into more detail about stuff, what follows is what I wrote before I let myself fall into a depressive stupor that consumed most of the day:

Dog and Cat Supplies

As one might imagine based on the fact that the dog got hit by a car (she's fine now, by the way) I have a dog now. When she got hit by the car she wasn't mine, she was just staying here until we could find a new home for her, but I promised her that if she lived I'd keep her. She's very much alive.

Here's the thing: I didn't have much in the way of dog stuff to begin with, assholes lost or broke most of the dog stuff.

Retractable leash? Broken. Normal leashes? Lost. (Instead of clipping things to her collar, I've been tying a bowline every time I need to hook her up to something.) Toys? Almost none, and what I did have has been reduced by stuff getting lost. Grooming supplies? Never had them in the first place.

For the cat, it's much more on the side of never having stuff to begin with. In all things (including human affection) anything she likes she likes more when it's outside, usually to a fairly significant degree. As such, it never really made sense to buy indoor cat stuff. The thing is, she's getting old, and I'd actually like it if I could convince her to spend more time inside. Not lock her inside or anything, but--

Ok, here's the thing, I wanted to give her more stuff to do inside before this because I'd feel better about her safety if she started spending more time inside instead of outside, but it might be too late.

From sometime Thursday to sometime Sunday I was at my sister's. It was a very eventful time. Someone choked me three times on Thursday and I'm pretty sure that on the third time, in the heat of that particular moment, they were genuinely trying to kill me. While such things were happening to me, my housemate was supposed to watch the cat and dog. I learned today that when the cat never showed up, housemate figured that I had changed my mind and brought my cat with me, because why else would the cat just disappear at the same time I did?

So my cat could already be dead or abducted, which is precisely the kind of thing I was hoping to avoid by enticing her to spend more of her time inside as she grew older.

I'm scared. I'm worried. I want to scream. I want to cry.

Books

It's no secret that I can't enjoy reading like I used to. At this point the only types of fiction I can enjoy are video games and incredibly niche fanfiction that retreads the same territory I've read a hundred times before with just a few tweaks here and there.

That said, I do have uses for books. For one thing, not all books are fiction. Any given art book is something that I'm interested in. Books about creating fiction I'm interested in as well, whether it's of the form "This is how such and such thing was created" or "Advice for plotting your next novel".

Digitized books are also of great interest to me because of some metatextual computer projects I want to work on. That said, digitized books are also potentially problematic legally speaking. Reselling used books is an established practice that's older and more respected than any government extant today. Reselling ebooks has the potential to get one sued into non-existence.

Alternate versions are also of interest. Different translations of the same work, the novelization of a movie, game, or TV show, scripts, so on, so forth.

Outdated reference books, too, oddly enough.

Physical copies of books the Twilight, Narnia, and/or Left Behind series. As many as people are willing to send. It's for what basically amounts to a craft project, they shall be taken apart, put back together in new and different ways, and . . . stuff.

Computer stuff

Short version: basically anything computer related, including computers themselves, I'd be happy to take off people's hands.

Actually, pretty much anything electronic at all. If I can manage to do anything, which is by no means given, a project that I'm about to start is Frankensteining some older stuff into new and different things, probably starting with some old smartphones I got my hands on.

If I should ever become rich, I would love to have a kickass top of the line gaming desktop. That will probably never happen. (If I were to have thousands of dollars to spend, it'd go toward paying down my debt, not computing.) Neither do I expect anyone to get me a gaming desktop.

My interests are not, however, limited to gaming. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to do where older computers no one would ever even think about using for gaming that could just sit there and run for extended periods would be useful. A lot of stuff. If I had a whole fleet of computers, I could still probably have productive use for more.

I've said something similar to this before, and gotten a response. Unfortunately I was in a semi-zombified

⁂

Like I said only two of them were finished. I'll try to have some fiction posted tomorrow.

I survived another year (It's my birthday)

2020-08-03T11:52:00.002-04:00

I didn't mean to go dark for over three months. Sorry about that.

The best way I have to describe how things are right now is that it's been like trying not to drown. Every day is a struggle to keep my head above water, and if I inhale . . . well, that's about as good as it gets. Keeping up with anything? Keeping in touch with anyone? That's beyond me.

I try to eat, I try to drink, I try to sleep. Sometimes I even succeed. Sleep is my favorite. I rarely remember any dreams, so it's just the comforting embrace of darkness. Nothing hurts; nothing is bad. It's like I don't exist.

Then I wake up, and the world is just as bad as it ever was, but now I'm a bit older and have gone a bit longer without accomplishing anything.

Anyway, as of today I'm old enough to legally serve as President of the United States.

-

I have some stuff I'm going to bring over here to share. Think it's all Equestria Girls stuff.

I did finally start trying to make let's plays, but my computer needs repair. I guess the heat sink being improperly attached is a known issue. One hopes that the resulting overheating hasn't damaged anything else. Contacting tech support is, in theory, easy. In practice . . . depression sucks.

-

I've been meaning to make a list of things that would be useful and/or nice.

Mostly because, "Here are things you might not be using that I could use," isn't asking for money, and I hate asking for money, even though I do need it. (A lot of it, in fact.) After the dog got hit by a car, my high interest debt increased by nearly $4,000 dollars and the amount I owe my mother broke $10,000. That was in late March. Things are worse now, but I don't have exact figures for how much so off the top of my head.

So, my birthday seems like as good a time as any to talk about stuff I want or need on the off chance someone might give me something. I'm going to follow this up with a post to that effect.

Tentative Plans

2020-04-29T12:53:00.002-04:00

Ok, it looks like I've talked about doing Let's Play's for over nine months at the very least. I've never actually done any.

Let's start with the background on that.

My depression is really, really bad. Anyone who's been reading along knows this. For a bit over three years my depression has done two things: not get better and get worse.

Early 2017 to mid 2018: bad.
Mid 2018 to mid 2019: worse.
Mid 2019 onward: worst it's ever been.

[the above was written on or before April 5th, for whatever it's worth]

Long ago, my depression took something precious from me. I can't really read books anymore. I can try, but I don't engage, and before long I'm not able to continue. I don't remember when it happened, but I remember the "Well . . . fuck" realization that bookstores had lost their appeal.

Once upon a time, being in a bookstore was a whole lot of "I want ALL THE BOOKS" with a large side of, "I could stay here forever!" It transformed into "Meh" and "I'm bored." I actually think that things have gotten less bad on that front, though I also think it's in large part because bookstores seem to have a lot more in the way of books with pictures than they used to.

It also could be tied up in the fact that, while I say "books" it actually seems to be somewhat more narrow. I can't read book-form fiction.

It's also more broad, just in another way. I can't really read original fiction. Ditto for non-fiction in narrative form (unless it's short enough to be, say, an article in some internet publication.)

What does this have to do with Let's Plays? Well, I'll tell you.

⁂

At this point my horizons have contracted even further, and there's only one type of original fiction that I can truly engage with. I think it's because of the interactivity, but regardless of the reason, it's video games. Video games are the only original stories I can engage with.

As such, I've been playing them fairly frequently, though I've kind of dropped off on that front over the past month or two. Drop off aside, that means that Let's Plays are one of the few things I'm in a decent position to attempt making.

So I've been thinking about doing them for the better part of a year now. It's not just so that I can have content here and at Patreon, it's also then when I'm not creating anything I feel fairly useless, which very much does not help with depression.

So . . . that's a thing I've been thinking about doing. As you might have noticed, I haven't actually done it. The plan, back when I started this post on or before April 5th, was to announce something like . . . wait, I actually wrote this up on Patreon, I wonder . . .

I still don't have an exact date, but it looks like I can revise "on or before April 5th" to "between March 31st and April 2nd" inclusive. That probably doesn't interest anyone, but it's what I was wondering in italic at the end of the previous paragraph.

Ok, so, wrote this up on Patreon.

Anyway, doing Let's Plays is still an idea that makes sense because Video Games are one of the few things that can make me feel like a fully functional human being, emotionally speaking, I have a ton of them, and (critically) primary computer is working again.

Basically the only things holding me back are:

Depression makes it incredibly difficult to begin any project whatsoever. Even things that aren't projects, like getting ready for bed or taking my medication in the morning, are incredibly difficult to start.

Even though none of it is difficult, I do have to set up stuff. It's not something I can just jump into with no prep. (I need to be able to capture video and audio, after all.)

My voice. Everyone who hears my voice thinks I'm a dude, and for good reason. I didn't transition until way after puberty. My voice is testosteroned the fuck up. That's not something that goes away.* I am massively insecure about the sound of my own voice.

My ideal set up for getting work done (regardless of what the work in question is) is when I'm alone in the house with no one else around. Other people live here now, and with a pandemic going on they're in the house even more than they'd otherwise be.

[snip]

I'm going to make it a goal to start recording Let's Plays in April. Hopefully I succeed in this. Hopefully they don't suck. Hopefully you enjoy them.

Given that today and tomorrow are the only days left of April and I'm no closer to starting than I was when I wrote the above on March 31st, the goal of starting in April will probably not be met, but I'll still try for it.

Regardless, it's a goal and, therefore, one of the things tentatively planned.

⁂

It's entirely possible that one reading the above might note that I used the term "original" a few times. There is a reason for that.

The one type of fiction I can consistently read is derivative work. I can't read as much of it as I used to, but I can read fanfic. Right now there are only two types of fanfic I can engage with: My Little Pony stuff, especially Equestria Girls stuff, and Raven/Terra Teen Titans stuff.

Raven/Terra is very rare. It's gotten less rare of late, the number of stories on Archive of Our Own just about doubled in the past year and a half, but it's still lodged firmly in "very rare". After all, the reason it could almost double in so short a time is that barely any existed to begin with. (40% of the total Archive of Our Own stories were produced by three people who currently hang out in a Discord Server together.)

My Little Pony, including Equestria Girls in particular, is rather less rare. FIMfiction, the primary English language MLP fanfic site, has 132,848 stories right now, 8,101 of which are Equestria Girls. As far as I know, there isn't any Teen Titans equivalent to FIMfiction, so a direct comparison isn't really possible, but however you figure it, there's a reason that my reading has been skewed so far away from Raven/Terra Teen Titans fic.

So, with all of that said, let's talk about how this figures into tentative plans.

⁂

It's highly likely that anything I write will reflect the things I'm reading. So there's some possibility of Raven/Terra Teen Titans fic, and it'll definitely be the case that any creative output vis-à-vis fiction will be dominated by MLP in general and Equestria Girls in particular.

Given that it's been about ten months since I posted anything fiction related that wasn't MLP stuff, you probably could have guessed the non-Raven/Terra side of that.

Something that I've been thinking about doing for a while is a decon of the Equestria Girls Holiday Special comic. It's the bad (semi)canonical thing that most of my Equestria Girls stuff is based off of and unlike, say, Twilight, no one has really done an in depth look at it.

Something else that I might do, if I find the restraint not to quote and respond to every line, is reactions to some bad fanfics on FIMfiction. That's not a plan so much as me thinking, "I've already done this on a private discord, so maybe I can do it in public."

There are two reasons why I might decide not to post reactions here. One is that, as noted, I have a tendency to quote every damned line, which means that I end up copying the whole story into the result. I'm pretty sure it's not kosher to copy entire stories, even if you're embedding it into a line-by-line commentary. The other is that it's one thing to take apart professionally published fiction, but it feels a good deal more mean spirited to a public takedown of a fanfic.

Another thing that I've thought about, but am less than sure on, is re-watching Friendship is Magic and/or Equestria Grils and doing something decon-esque with that. The reasons that I'm not really confident enough in this idea to call it a plan are myriad.

It's not the kind of fiction I'm really able to engage with in itself, so it might not work regardless. I'd basically be counting on the combination of familiarity and analysis to change that, when there's no evidence it would work. I have pretty much zero confidence I could do it well, and four seasons of MLP analysis have already been done better than I could ever hope to by Jen A. Blue.

⁂

The possibility of doing a close reading of MLP brings us to another thing I'd like to do, but I've wanted to do it for ages (literally years at this point) and haven't made any progress. I want to return to Kim Possible and .hack//Sign. In late 2013, I tried to return to .hack//Sign. I made it one post. In early 2018, I tried to restart my trek through Kim Possible. I made it one post into that as well.

⁂

I'd like to do some things that involve physical construction. Whether or not I acutally will remains to be seen.

Also, I take pictures nigh constantly, I might return to sharing them here.

That's everything I can think of for tentative plans at the moment.

Displacement et alia, Ch1: Well, we have to start somewhere; now, don't we?

2020-03-29T15:25:00.000-04:00

[Main Page for this story]
[Originally posted at Fimfiction.net.]

You read the long description[1] ⹁right? ᠎ No, don't answer; I can't actually hear you. ᠎ I noted this in the long description ⹁which you should have read. ᠎ I don't know if you read it, because I can't hear you.

Got it?[2] ᠎ Good. ᠎ So, here's what we're going to do ⹁and by "we" I mean "me", we are going to do this in "Choose Your Own Adventure" style.

HAVE YOU ⹁dear reader, READ THE LONG DESCRIPTION?
IF NO: Go read the damned thing.
IF YES: Continue on this page.

Look[3] at all of the heavy-lifting[4] we just did. ᠎ I don't have to tell you the beginnings of my tale of woe.[5] ᠎ You know that I was dressed as Tsukasaˌ you know it was Anime Boston where I bought the thingˌ you know it was a level 99 staff with a silly[6] name. ᠎ You know I'm in Equestria.

Everybody still on board here?[7] ᠎ Good.[8] ᠎ So, ⹁once upon a time,[9] a human appeared in Equestria. ᠎ Her name was ~~Celestabellebethabelle~~[10] temporarily Tsukasa (つかさ) ⹁which you should know by now, she was in a body not her own,[11] and she was three feet off the floor of Princess Luna's bedchambers.

Three feet does not ⹁in fact, give one time to spin into a decent position for a landing. ᠎ Thank God[12] for anti-concussion magic, because: damn. ᠎ I mean, I think it's actually more of a combination of three spells[13], but the point? ᠎ The point is: oy motherfucking vey![14]

Anyway, Luna said, "What manner of beast are you?" and in response I sort of groaned out:

"I've read this fanfic."[15] ᠎ Not the best response ever, but ⹁you have to remember, at this point I'd just been yoinked out of my home dimension, stuffed into a different body ⹁which happened to be fictional, and dumped into a ⹁different, fictional world. ᠎ Also, I'd fallen several feet and hit my head on the cold stone floor.

"I assure you," Luna said in her princessly way, "this is quite real. ᠎ I know ⹁more than most, the difference between the real and the imaginary," which ⹁you know, she would say. ᠎ When was the last time someone came out and said, 'Hi, this is totes a work of fiction,' or, 'I am singularly unqualified to tell the false from the real'?

The pain ⹁at this point, was passing. ᠎ I sat up and touched a hand to my head.

"I'm human," I said. ᠎ Also: still in costume.

The hand that touched my head ⹁that being the right one, almost knocked my hat off, but that was as nothing compared to the fact that ⹁while my hat was still on, my wig was not in evidence. ᠎ My hair ⹁however, was doing a really impressive 'Tsukasa wig' impression. ᠎ Like, really, really impressive.

Now, by this point you're probably[16] saying, 'So, you knew you were in a displaced story, right?'

To which I reply, 'Screw you; I just hit my head on the floor and only avoided traumatic brain injury via the intervention of magic.'

Anywho,[17] at this point I was still getting my bearings and wondering whether it was a dream or a hallucination.

Luna ⹁Princess of the Night and founder of the School for Gifted Pegasi, said, "Ah. ᠎ One of the creatures Twilight Sparkle has described."

"Has she indeed?" I asked as I got to my feet. ᠎ While still operating on the hypothesis that this was all in my head, I none the less started to place myself on a timeline. ᠎ Assuming this wasn't one of those stories with non-canonical human encounters[18], that meant Equestria Girls had come and gone.

Luna ⹁being Luna, responded with, "She has indeed."

We were about eye to eye. ᠎ That brought up a potential problem. ᠎ It would only be a problem if this were a darker and grittier ⹁some would say 'stabbier', version of the My Little Pony we all know and ⹁presumably,[19] love. ᠎ The problem (potential only ⹁remember) was simply this: I was standing at full height looking a god-level royal in the eye.

"Should I..." I started. ᠎ Clearly that had gone wonderfully, so much so ⹁in fact, that I decided to try doing the exact same thing again. ᠎ "Should I," I asked, "be bowing?" ᠎ That that worked proved ⹁semi-conclusively, that this was a 'Try, try again,' situation instead of a 'Definition of Insanity' situation.

"That will not be necessary," Luna said.

She's got a nice voice, that one.

"Do you have any idea how I got here?" I asked rather quickly, the pace practically tripping over itself as I moved from one word to the next. ᠎ "Because I have no idea how I got here."

"You appeared to teleport into my bedchambers and fall on the floor," Luna said with a completely straight face ⹁and a level tone to boot.

"I'm--" that was a stammer. ᠎ Not my most eloquent ever. ᠎ I looked around. ᠎ These were ⹁indeed, chambers with a bed in them. ᠎ "I'm in your bedchambers?"

"You are."

Yeah, ⹁so, stabby seemed like it might be on the table even if this weren't all that dark or grit filled.

"I-- I, um... I'm sorry?" I said.[20]

"For what?" Luna asked; "if I may ask."

That, by the way, is precisely the kind of structure for which the question comma was invented. ᠎ The first two words form a question, while "If I may ask" is not a question and would ⹁in fact, generally be punctuated with a comma. ᠎ All and sundry know[21] that one does not follow an 'if I may ask' with a question mark. ᠎ A dash? ᠎ Maybe. ᠎ An ellipsis? ᠎ Sure. ᠎ An ellipse? ᠎ It'd be weird ⹁and you'd need some artistic chops to draw a proper ellipse[22] in a size that fits cleanly into a line of standard text, but it still makes more sense than a question mark.

Now, to business.[23]

First, of course she may ask. ᠎ I somehow magically invaded her bedchambers; she's got all the right in the universe to ask me whatever she wants. ᠎ Second, for invading her her bedchambers ⹁obviously.

"For invading-- for somehow invading the privacy of--"

"It is clear to me that this is not your fault," Luna said. ᠎ After a pause she added, "Or you that you are an impressive actor."

"Oh," I said ⹁finally managing to get back to a casual ⹁instead of afraid of immolation, mindset, "I am not an impressive actor. ᠎ I can't act for sh--" ᠎ Stopping in the middle of a one syllable word is a skill that will serve you well should you ever find yourself magically transported into the bedchambers of a god-princess pony. ᠎ God-pony princess? ᠎ Whatever. ᠎ Have I said that before? ᠎ I think I have, but do not know.

Regardless, ⹁after the awkward pause, I said, "For something that probably shouldn't be uttered in the presence of royalty."

"Merdae,"[24] Luna said.

I gawked.

"αφόδευσι,"[25] Luna said. ᠎ "Merde. ᠎ Scheiße. ᠎ Shit."[26]

By now my mouth was hanging open. ᠎ Not really something I'm proud of, but: damn.[27]

"I have never understood the idea that my sister and I are somehow naive innocent creatures with virgin ears that have never been ⹁and will never be, tainted by the vulgar language of common ponies."

"O," I said slowly ⹁allowing my brain to reboot, before finishing with a quick, "k." ᠎ After a beat of pause I said, "Thing one: I'm not a pony."

"So I have noticed."

"Thing two, there's . . . like . . ." I swear she was amused by my inability to words properly, "decorum or some such."

"In court, yes." Luna said. ᠎ "During official functions, yes. ᠎ In the context of a royal meet and greet,[28] yes." ᠎ A pause. ᠎ "We are not in those places; we are in my bedchambers."

So, I can't actually see my own face. ᠎ Any time that I say something about the appearance of my face ⹁unless there are reflections involved, it's a 'best guess' kind of situation. ᠎ Pretty sure I blushed at that, though.

Here's a disturbing thought ⹁if ever there were one, what if a god-pony thought you found them physically attractive rather than realizing you were simply embarrassed?

"S-sorry about that," I said ⹁stammering back in full force.

Thankfully ⹁though, ⹁spoiler alertˌ I suppose, that thing from two paragraphs up did not ⹁in fact, happen. ᠎ Instead Luna said, "I believe that we have already established that you are not at fault." ᠎ At this, I relaxed somewhat. ᠎ "There is still the question of how you came to be here."

"Yeah," I said, "I'd like an answer to that one myself."

"What is your most recent memory, prior to your arrival?" Luna asked.

"Um . . ." I said in the universal language of 'I'm going to have to think about that.' ᠎ "I was at a convention . . ." ᠎ That sinking feeling[29] set in around nowish, but I wouldn't identify the source for a little bit. ᠎ "Do they have conventions in Equestria?"

"By 'convention' do you mean a gathering of individuals united by a common interest, at which there are speakers, merchants, and . . . I believe the term is, 'swag'?" Luna asked.

"Yeah, pretty much; also cosplayers," I said.

"Then, yes, Equestria has those," Luna said.

"I wasn't really sure what to do, because the panelist I'd hoped to see no longer did panels," I said.

"A tragic fate indeed," Luna said. ᠎ To fully understand ⹁though, you must realize that it was said with the utmost seriousness.

"I'd known that, of course," I said. ᠎ "I guess I mostly went because I'd been trying to get there for so long that it felt like ⹁even without her doing panels, I might as well give it a try now that I actually could go."

Luna nodded.

"I got a few complements on my costume." ᠎ I gestured to what I was wearing. ᠎ The sinking feeling intensified. ᠎ "A few people took pictures of me. ᠎ I wandered around and eventually . . ." ᠎ Down and down we go.

The silence I had lapsed into eventually drew its own response.

"Yes?" Luna said in that encouraging, 'Keep going,' kind of way.

"I went to the dealers room..." ᠎ It wasn't sinking anymore; it was falling. ᠎ The bottom had dropped out. ᠎ "...to see what was on sale." ᠎ My eyes dropped to the floor. ᠎ There it was: the instrument of my downfall.

I squatted down to pick up the staff. ᠎ I considered all manner of profanity. ᠎ But instead ⹁as I actually took hold of the staff, I said, "I know what happened," in the sort of defeated way you say, 'Everything good about my life has been utterly destroyed.'

The staff was shaped like a question mark or a shepherd's crook. ᠎ And there ⹁perfectly placed, was the red ball ⹁suspended without any visible support, in the gap that made the top a hook instead of a circle. ᠎ When I picked it up, the ball moved with the rest of the staff ⹁as if they were a single connected whole. ᠎ It was what I had wanted; the price was too high.

At this point I was sort of weak in the . . . everything. ᠎ Knees are the part everyone always talks about. ᠎ I used the staff as a third leg ⹁which is what staffs are for[30] when you think about it, and returned to a standing position. ᠎ There was some difficulty in that ⹁due to the aforementioned weakness, but I pulled it off.

Luna simply looked at me expectantly.

I sighed, looked at the floor, looked back up, and spoke, "There's a meta-fictional construct comprising a sub-genre of pseudo-crossover works in which someone dressed as a character from one work," I gestured to my costume, "is dumped into your universe," Luna raised an eyebrow, "or a version thereof."

The eyebrow stayed up.

I sighed. ᠎ Again. ᠎ Then I explained, "Where I come from, your world exists as a popular story ⹁in serial format," I was pretty sure that Equestria didn't have TV, thus: 'serial format story' instead of 'TV series', "as well as several . . ." I'd never really paid attention ⹁beyond the existence of Vinyl Scratch, to the examples where modern technology invaded the pseudo-medieval world of Friendship is Magic; in other words: I had no idea if movies existed in Equestria, "um . . ." yeah: no idea ⹁which meant no idea if I could just say they were movies, ". . . plays depicting Princess Twilight's adventures in the human world, and another play ⹁with significantly higher production values, about a temporarily successful invasion of Equestria and how it was eventually repelled."

"It seems that we are quite popular in your world," Princess Luna said. ᠎ Massive understatement.

"You have no idea," I said. ᠎ Cliché response.

"You seem quite calm for one interacting with what he believed to be a fictional character and world."

"She," I said.

"I apologize," Luna said.

"There's no need," I said; "assuming that the tropes and genre conventions held true, the process tried to make me male."

"That is most unconscionable," Luna said.

"I agree entirely, which is part of why I'm still hoping this is a dream or delusion," I said.

Luna said, "I assure you it is not," which is just what a delusion would say. ᠎ After a beat[31], she added, "Though, I suppose that is what you would expect a dream or delusion to say."

"Pretty much," I said, "but as much as I might hope for things to be otherwise, the feelings of dread and defeat currently warring for dominance inside me are indicative of the fact I think you're correct."

The truth was that I wasn't calm so much as nonplussed[32], and that had left me with a pretty flat affect[33] ⹁which could easily be misconstrued[34] as calm.

Luna nodded.

"I believe I now know enough to proceed," she said. ᠎ Exposition successfully dumped; now we can move on to the plot. ᠎ Woo. ᠎ "Please follow me."

She opened a door with magic, and led me out of the room.

As we walked, she talked.

"There are spells that will help make your present condition more bearable until such time as you can be returned to your own body," she said. ᠎ "For that ⹁and for returning you to your world, the best pony for the job is undoubtedly Princess Twilight Sparkle."

"The human world she visited--" I started.

"I not your own," Luna interrupted ⹁quite rudely. ᠎ "Princess Twilight was quite detailed in her descriptions of that world's history and culture. ᠎ If it embedded our world ⹁and itself, as works of fiction within it, I believe she would have noted that fact."

"Well, she did live in a library on her first visit," I said ⹁assuming ⹁without evidence, that the movie Equestria Girls was an accurate depiction of events in this multiverse.

"She does that," Luna said. ᠎ Luna is ⹁officially, my favorite princess. ᠎ She wasn't originally. ᠎ Before I got dumped into her bedchambers by a contrived and overused plot device, I thought of her mostly as, 'That princess the writers keep forgetting the existence of,'[35] but now. . . now I see her as she truly is: Princess of Non-Neurotic Deadpan Snarking.

Unfortunately, my story does not take place in Canterlot ⹁at least not primarily, so I don't actually spend much time around my now-favorite princess.

"So if you know . ? ." I asked. ᠎ Let it be known that one does not need to actually ask a question in order to ⹁you know, ask a question.

"Of the two foremost experts on portals between worlds," Luna explained, "she is one."

"And the other?"

"Her pen-pal."

Sunset Shimmer. ᠎ I really should have seen that coming.

I said, "Ah," and ⹁just like that, we arrived at our first destination.

Luna knocked upon a doorˌ it openedˌ and there was Princess Celestia.

"What fell creature is that?" Celestia asked with uncommon dread.

"Are you calling me fierceˌ cruelˌ terribleˌ sinisterˌ malevolentˌ particularly destructiveˌ or deadly?"[36] I asked with ⹁what I hope was, complete deadpan. ᠎ "I ask because I'm not entirely clear regarding that point."

"She's simply been waiting to say that again since the first time we saw Tirek," Luna said.

Celestia cocked her head to one side, shrugged her . . . I think they're still called shoulders in a pony. ᠎ Whatever, she shrugged those things, and gave a silly little smile like she was a foal caught with her hoof in the cookie jar.[o]

"Oh," I said. ᠎ "Ok." ᠎ And ⹁truly, it was. ᠎ Who doesn't want to cry out, 'What fell creature is that‽'[o+1]

"I am ⹁however," Celestia said, "genuinely curious as to your nature."

"Well, I was a human ⹁from a world where this world was just a work of fiction," I said, "and I'm still definitely in human form, but I think I might actually be some kind of digital construct ⹁which merely looks human, instead of an actual human right now."

An eyebrow was raised.

There was silence.

Finally I said, "If you're expecting me to properly interpret which of the things I just said you're raising an eyebrow at . . ." ᠎ Insert end of sentence here, should you have it on you. ᠎ (I did not.)

The eyebrow went back down, and Celestia said, "Perhaps you should simply tell me what has transpired."

Did she ever use words like "transpired" in the series? ᠎ I don't remember. ᠎ On the one hand, that is the sort of thing a wise mentor figure would say. ᠎ On the other hand, consider the intended audience and the patronizing assumptions people are wont to make about them.

So I told her.[o+2]

Luna ⹁for her part, was very interested in the prospect of a video game that:
a) Was more advanced than Pong-era console stuff,
b) Did not require magic in order to run, and
c) One could become trapped in.

Should points b) and c) seem contradictory to you, remember that there's a difference between what is sufficient for operating a program and what is included in that program.

Celestia was amused by my claim to be named Celestabellebethabelleˌ my staff was confirmed to be a genuine magically thingamabobˌ[o+3] the mechanism by which I arrived could not be determined ⹁because that would be too easy,[o+4] it was decided that I should probably adopt a pseudonym ⹁like "Tsukasa" or "Mary Sue" or "Oh God, not another one!", if I wanted to maintain my privacy in light of the fact that my biography[o+5] would probably be the easiest thing to transmit to my homeworld ⹁in light of narrative conventions.

Then it was off to Ponyville. ᠎ They did not ⹁in fact, stick the strange creature nopony had ever seen before on a train full of ponies. ᠎ No, the second ⹁and final, destination on Luna's 'I believe I now know enough to proceed' tour of Canterlot castle was to a launching and landing area. ᠎ The ride was via Pegasus chariot ⹁which gave me a wonderful view and did not ⹁in any way, make me afraid of falling to my gruesome death, and I was told that a letter had been sent to Princess Sparklepants[o+6] so that my arrival would not come as a surprise.

With that, this show was officially on the figurative road. ᠎ Because ⹁where we were ~~going~~ flying, one didn't need (literal) roads.

- - - ~ ~ ~ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ~ ~ ~ - - -

[1] For those who don't know what this is, a lesson. ᠎ Click the story name, this will take you to the story page. ᠎ When you get there, there are words. ᠎ The words under the tags and above the chapters are the long description.
(Onsite Link)

[2] If you responded to this, may God have mercy on your soul. ᠎ How many times have I already said I can't hear you?[n]

[3] I mean this figuratively, of course.

[4] Ditto.

[5] I mean, ⹁technically, I don't have to tell you anything. ᠎ It's just that I'm stuck in a displaced story; what else am I going to do?

[6] This is the part that you read literally.[n+1] ᠎ The name was "Ludicrous", and if you can't see the pun, I can't really help you.

[7] Don't answer.

[8] This is a rhetorical response; I still can't hear you.

[9] Between Rainbow Rocks and The Cutie Map ⹁seems to be. ᠎ You had better fucking know this; it was in the long description. As for when I left my world, funny story that. It was the last day of Anime Boston 2018. Yes, that does make zero chronological sense. Yes, I do know what day that was.

[10] Still a joke.

[11] Yes, that includes a dick. ᠎ No, we are not going to talk about it. ᠎ If you're really so damned interested in biology, look up what a "perineal raphe" is.

[12] I suppose ⹁technically, that Luna is more of a lowercase "g" god.

[13] The spells in question seem to be:
⊙ Stop ⹁inertia be ignored, before you damage yourself further!
⊙ Pain, pain, go away!
⊙ Grey matter, heal thyself (of the damage inflicted before the first spell took effect)!

[14] I am not now ⹁and have never been, a Yiddish speaker. ᠎ Someone[n+2] once said:

In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful humanity.

Let words like "Shmuck" and "Shlubbly" roll off your tongue and you'll find that it is a language that begs to be spoken. ᠎ Even some of the cool German words ⹁like "Dreck" and "Kaput", come to English via Yiddish.

I totally had to restrain myself from using "Schlong" in footnote [11], because ⹁while it's a great thing to say, it would have obliterated the serious nature of said footnote via it's informal nature.

[15] Technically what I read was a fanfic pitch. ᠎ Don't me wrong, it was 93.6 percent fanfic ⹁with just twenty words of explanation at the front, but it was by no means a complete work. ᠎ Just an idea as demonstrated via its first scene.

To wit:

The Element of Magic didn't know what to do with Sunset Shimmer so it fell back on an old standby . . .

Sunset Shimmer remembered pain. ᠎ She placed a crown upon her head and it twisted and broke her. ᠎ Then she had lost herself, became a cackling caricature, crossed lines she swore she'd never cross, and finally: more pain. ᠎ The corruption burned away in a rainbow fire that hurt but refused to consume. ᠎ She'd thought the pain would last forever.

Now, though, it was gone. ᠎ Just a memory.

When she blinked the tears from her eyes she saw magnificent desolation. ᠎ A grey on grey landscape so pocked and pitted that it might have been a minefield. ᠎ The sky was black, but that made no sense. ᠎ It wasn't dark; she cast a shadow.

She felt exceptionally light as she picked herself up, it only added to the surreal quality of . . . everything.

Moments after she was on her feet, she heard the sound of galloping. ᠎ It approached impossibly quickly, but when she turned to face it, that thought was banished by something far more dire. ᠎ The source of light --the thing that made her cast a shadow on the grey wasteland-- wasn't the Sun, or Moon, or even the stars. ᠎ It was Equestria. Sunset's home hung in the sky, it was magnificent in the light of the unseen Sun. ᠎ The daylight it reflected shone down upon her . . . and the thing she stood upon.

Any lingering doubt about her location was demolished when Nightmare Moon --a creature from foals' tales-- finally finished her gallop toward Sunset. ᠎ At another time Sunset might have been incredulous or afraid or --more likely-- a bit of both. ᠎ With Equestria hanging in the sky above them, though, Sunset couldn't find it in herself to care.

"What manner of beast are you?" Nightmare Moon asked Sunset.

[16] Still can't hear youˌ and thus I am forced to guess.[n+3]

[17] That's a legit word. ᠎ First known use 1850. ᠎ That's pre-Civil War. ᠎ It's been a word since before the people of the United States ⹁north and south, grudgingly acknowledged ⹁at the cost of the lives of 650ˌ000 to 850ˌ000 men[n+4] and God knows how many non-men, that slavery might ⹁perhaps, be wrong.

All of that being saidˌ that was the "Anyhoo" spelling. ᠎ Can't tell you about the "Anywho" spelling's vintage off the top of my head.

[18] Not the safest assumption ⹁all things considered, but one has to make assumptions if they're to reach conclusions.

Whitehead and Russell started with five assumptions. ᠎ Result? ᠎ It took over three hundred pages[n+5] to get to the point where they could conclude "1 + 1 = 2".

Peano started with nine assumptions. ᠎ Result? ᠎ Takes about three lines to conclude "1 + 1 = 2". ᠎ Which would you prefer? ᠎ And ⹁no, I can't hear your answer. ᠎ More assumptions leads to quicker results. ᠎ And if your assumptions are flawedˌ ⹁sooner or later, you'll hit a contradictionˌ and boom: you've learned something.

[19] I do not ⹁actually, presume this. ᠎ You could be hate-reading. ᠎ You could be a hyper-intelligent shade of the color blue who is interested in this document purely for its anthropological value. ᠎ You could be being forced to read this at gunpoint as part of a psychological torture regime. ᠎ The possibilities abound.

[20] Strictly speaking ⹁and it is often good to speak with strictness, "I'm sorry" is not supposed to be a question. ᠎ There is a form to questions that those two words ⹁one of them a contraction it should be noted, simply lack. ᠎ That having been said, the English language often marks questions not by words or grammar but instead by rising pitch as one approaches the syntactic terminus. ᠎ This allows for a degree of flexibility ⹁which can be put to use by ones such as myself upon discovering oneself to have invaded the bedchambers of a god-princess.

[21] All and sundry know nothing; no knowledge is universal.

[22] A proper ellipse ⹁by the way, is precisely twice as wide as it is tall. ᠎ For those who don't understand words such as "wide" and "tall", the major axis has a scalar magnitude double that of the minor axisˌ and ⹁furthermore, the minor axis is vertical. ᠎ This is the canonical proper ellipseˌ and the fact that I can produce no evidence supporting this claim should not ⹁in any way, be taken to mean it is incorrect or ⹁Heaven forfend, unfounded.

[23] This is not a toast. ᠎ Do not raise you glasses. ᠎ Do not clink.

[24] This is the Latin word for "shit". ᠎ It is in the singular ⹁just one shitˌ not multiple shits, dative. ᠎ The dative is most commonly rendered into English as "to" or "for". ᠎ She literally said, "for shit." ᠎ In Latin.

[25] See previous, but in Ancient Greek.

[26] Frenchˌ Germanˌ and English for "shit" in that order.

[27] I know that I've done the whole "⦑conjunction⦒ ⦑colon⦒ ⦑italic 'damn'⦒" thing already ⹁thank you very much. ᠎ That's the point. ᠎ Princess Potty Mouth's polylingual profanity hit me with the force of a cold stone floor to the head.

[28] I am aware that ponies speak English. Not just because I have seen the show, but also because I was speaking English to a pony who was speaking English back to me. Even so, 'Meet and greet'? Of all of the words and phrases that could be translocated from our world to Equestria, why that one?

[29] The one that has ⹁heretofore, gone unmentioned. ᠎ Still, look at the first word of the title. Consider the story you're reading; consider the significance of conventions in the genre. ᠎ (Not to be confused with genre conventions.) ᠎ You know what sinking feeling I'm talking about. ᠎ You'd have felt it yourself in my place.

[30] That and bopping people ⹁of course. If we want to get technical and exhaustive, the function of a staff is ⹁in fact, threefold: providing a third point of contact with the ground or floor ⹁as though it were an extra leg, bopping people, guiding ruminants ⹁such as goats or sheep.

[31] Since this is the second time I've used the word "beat" in this fashion, I suppose I should define it. ᠎ A beat is a pause that's longer than the full stop at the end of a sentenceˌ but shorter than what you think of when you read the word "pause" or ⹁indeed, the phrase "a short pause".

[32] Definition:

non·plussed
/nänˈpləst/
adjective
1. (of a person) surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react.

[33] Medical jargon definition of "flat" ⹁second meaning:

characterized by general impoverishment in the presence of emotion-evoking stimuli

Medical jargon definition of "affect" ⹁also the second meaning:

a set of observable manifestations of a subjectively experienced emotion

Thus: medical jargon meaning of "flat affect":

characterized by a lack of emotional expressiveness; emotions are experienced but not displayed

Basically, think Maud Pie.

[34] Look this one up your own damned self. ᠎ It's a perfectly ordinary word ⹁neither medical jargon like [33] nor commonly misused like [32], so ⹁honestly, you shouldn't need to look it up. ᠎ If you do, that's your own damn fault.[n+6]

[35] The reason that they say not to end your sentences with propositions is because at one point a bunch of stodgy old men ⹁possibly joined by stodgy old women, wanted English to be like Latin. ᠎ It is legit impossible to end a non-incomplete Latin sentence with a preposition, so they said you weren't allowed to do it in English ⹁where it works just fine.

This is also the reason they tell you not to flagrantly split infinitives. ᠎ Can't do that in Latin. ᠎ Why? ᠎ Because in Latin most infinitives are a single word. ᠎ Can you insert another word into a single word? ᠎ Absa-fucking-lutely.[n+7] ᠎ It's called "tmesis" ⹁which comes from the Ancient Greek "τμῆσις" ⹁which in turn means "a cutting". ᠎ Still, not something you do all the time.

The point here ⹁though, is that even though I could have written, "That princess, the existence of whom the writers keep forgetting," I don't need to. ᠎ End your sentences with prepositions, begin your paragraphs ⹁or even books,[n+8] with conjunctions, fracture the frightful fetters of linguistic prescriptivism! ᠎ Damn the manˌ and down with the grammatical oligarchy!

[36] These are the definitions of "fell". ᠎ If that was not known to you, you probably have no idea what "one fell swoop" means. ᠎ Shakespeare must confuse you greatly. ᠎ I suggest a dictionary and a running gloss. ᠎ (I'm not sure just one of those things would be enough for you; use both.)

[o] I assume; I've never actually seen a foal caught with their hoof in the cookie jar. ᠎ "Which cookie jar?" you may ask ⹁in spite of the fact that I can't hear you. ᠎ The cookie jar.

[o+1] I am fully cognizant of the fact that there are probably a great many people who don't particularly want to. ᠎ I am also aware that I switched punctuation. ᠎ I assure you, it has not escaped my notice. ᠎ Dread is a hard thing to get right. ᠎ Celestia nailed it ⹁don't get me wrong, but for the general public I believe that crying out ⹁to the point an interobang is justified (because a question mark just won't cut it), is probably a better route.

[o+2] If you're expecting me to tell you personal details about my life before my arrival, you are vastly mistaken about the kinds of things I'm willing to divulge. ᠎ Want to know more about me? ᠎ Build a portal to here, so that I might go back there, and ⹁as reward for giving me a way home, I'll have a nice long talk with you ⹁in which we can trade notes about our political leanings and favorite Douglas Adams books.

[o+3] Technical term.

[o+4] Not even being sarcastic. ᠎ It would ⹁quite literally, be too easy. ᠎ Certain things are required for a story to actually function as a story, and if we'd figured everything out then and there, this wouldn't. ᠎ If this didn't function as a story, then I would not be writing it as a story, and you would not be reading it right now. ᠎ The very fact that you are here reading these words in this footnote means that that could not have happened.

The name for this is the "anthropic principle" which states that ⹁since in order for a story to be read it must first be written, any story that is read must necessarily have a arisen from a set of conditions that allowed for the writing of said story. ᠎ Therefore, the fact that you are reading this means that things were not so easy as to prevent a plot from forming ⹁which means that anything that would make the situation that easy is necessarily too easy.

See? ᠎ Like I said: not even being sarcastic.

[o+5] The thing you're reading right now.

[o+6] Any objections that she doesn't wear pants will be ignored because ⹁as repeatedly noted, I can't hear you.

[n] Two sentences in the long descriptionˌ two sentences in the main text of this chapterˌ one sentence from which it can be inferred in the long descriptionˌ and one sentence from which it can be inferred in the footnotes. ᠎ As such, depending on whether you include the long descriptionˌ footnotesˌ and inference, this question has multiple answers.[m]

[n+1] And figuratively ⹁for that matter. ᠎ Read it every damned which way you can.

[n+2] Isaac Bashevis Singer ⹁winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature, in his Nobel Lecture. ᠎ I cite my sources. ᠎ Saying that in-line would have broken up the flow of things ⹁though.

[n+3] No, I am not. ᠎ Not even close. ᠎ I am in no way forced. ᠎ I say now ⹁to you, "That was just a rhetorical flourish." ᠎ Don't believe me? ᠎ Read the thing in quotation marks; I totally said that.

[n+4] Hacker, J. David -- 2012

[n+5] The words:

From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1 + 1 = 2.

appear on page 379 of the first edition of Volume 1 and 362 of the second edition of the same. ᠎ The actual proof has to wait till Volume 2. ᠎ In the first edition of Volume 2, it falls on page 86. ᠎ I have not read any other editions of Volume 2.

[n+6] Yes, I use "damn" ⹁and variations thereof, a lot. ᠎ Deal with it.

[n+7] For those wondering why it's "Absa" instead of "Abso", it's because within the word itself everyone knows the "o" is a schwa, but if you just have the "Abso" one is liable to pronounce that "o" like the one "so", and that's not a schwa. ᠎ Not even close.

[n+8] It worked for Apuleius ⹁didn't it?

[m] Those being twoˌ threeˌ fourˌ and six. ᠎ Five need not apply.

Author's Note:

You want me to make notes?* Ok, let's talk notes. I have things I've wanted to note. Apostrophes get lots of love.† Commas ⹁though? They get no love.‡ This is clearly wrong, and I shall topple any government that says otherwise.°
Also, hey, see this "꘏"? That's a question mark. Cooler than the one we have, now isn't it?

Is that not what you wanted?[·]

Well how about this:

.hack//SIGN was an anime that ran from April 4, 2002 to September 25, 2002 and had 28 episodes in total.▵ It explored themes of depression, the isolation and detachment that can come with it, as well as anxiety, abuse, and dysfunction. It's character driven story also addresses escapism and the limits thereof, along with other coping mechanisms.

In the simplest terms and most convenient definitions, it was the story of Tsukasa and his time trapped in a Japanese online game known as "The World" (in English.)

That better? {+} Or did you want some sort of manifesto about why I'm writing about my life stuck in a world with talking ponies with, in a body not my own, where the only humans around[▫] come in more ⹁and more outlandish, colors than the complete output of the Skittles brand?

Really not sure what to write in an "author's" note that I wouldn't already have put in the footnotes. So I guess this is where we part ways. Tune in next time for "How I got to Ponyville, and what I set on fire once I got there".{⁕}

* After all of those footnotes I generously gave you, you want more?

† You can get them forward, backward, upside down, upside down and backwards, and completely vertical with no fore or aft bias. In other words, Apostrophes get a system. With ⦑ ‛ ' ’ ⦒ you effectively have ⦑ ( | ) ⦒, and with that you can do all kinds of things.

‡ Why is there no vertical comma? Where is the comma version of the "typewriter apostrophe"? Why is the reverse comma left out of so many fonts? What the fuckadoodle(•) people?

Why should I be stuck in Equestria with an incomplete system of typography that lacks even the most basic considerations?

° In the interest of complete honesty: No. No, I will not.

[·] You had better not be answering. I can't hear you.

▵The original run contained 26, one of which was just a clip show. Two additional episodes were released on DVD.

{+} Please tell me you didn't answer. Or don't. Not like I'll hear you either way.

[▫] If the next world over can truly be called "around".

{⁕} We're not calling it that. Not even close.

(•) Totally a legit swear. (That I just made up.)

⸎

⁂
⁂ ⁂

So, with this, we have chapter one. There wasn't a plan here. None whatsoever. Probably why I started off sending people to the long description. No idea why I chose to dump the protagonist in Luna's bed chambers.

⁂

The numbering of the footnotes was originally supposed to be placeholders that would all be replaced with actual numbers once I knew what those numbers would be. So we had {[1] [2], [3],...} as the footnotes for the text, {[n], [n+1], [n+2],...} as the footnotes for the footnotes, and then {[M]} as the one footnote for one of those.

I skipped ahead and wrote a little bit of meeting Celestia before the story reached that point, so I didn't know what number the footnotes in that section would have, so I started the {[o], [o+1], [o+2],...} since, you know, "o" comes before "n".

When I let someone read it pre-publication, they liked the placeholder footnotes, so I left them as is.

⁂

The human vs. Pony scale here completely ignores all attempts to figure out the size of the ponies. This is not, it should be noted, intentional.

Tsukasa is somewhat short, attempts to figure out the relative sizes of humans and ponies tend to have the Equestria Girls characters about eye to eye with Celestia, Luna is shorter than Celestia . . . it made sense at that time.

Then I looked at some imaged for reference and realized exactly how much shorter than Celestia Luna actually is. This would make protagonist a full head shorter than an Equestria Girls girl. Of course, since traveling between worlds results in a body swap, that's never going to come up anyway.

It's probably for the best, honestly. The ponies really are little. Placing protagonist as eye to eye with Luna makes her about as tall as the average pony is when they stand (vertically) on two legs, and has the ponies about waist high when they're standing normally.

I think that works better than the actual apparent scale, which would have the ponies closer to knee height normally, and chest height when they make the effort to be vertical.

⁂

That princess the writers keep forgetting the existence of

Let me show you something from the finale. Not a finale. The finale. The the last regular episode --the two part special that ends nine seasons of Friendship is Magic-- with only a distant epilogue to follow.

This is the thing that I wish to show to you:

Rarity: It's the first shift in royal power in over a millennium.

That's from the first half of the two part finale, which means that it's mirror image is the second half of the two part premiere. In that, Luna (after being banished for a thousand years) returned, was redeemed, and took her place at Celestia's side. The monarchy became a diarchy. Royal power was completely altered. (Princess Cadence, while she retroactively existed, had no real power at that point.)

It's not precisely clear how much time passed between the first episode and the last, but one thing that is clear is that it's nine years or less. It is possible that in universe time passes at an average of one year per season, it is possible that in universe time passes more slowly, it is not possible that it passes more quickly.

It has been less than a decade, possibly significantly less, since Princess Luna became one of the royals in charge of Equestria again. As far as the writers are concerned (it's not just Rarity, because no one even considers correcting her; it's the whole damned universe) royal power hasn't shifted in over a thousand years, which happens to be over a hundred decades.

This is, in many ways, the most important episode of the show. A bad ending can sour everything that came before. It's the one episode that we know, beyond doubt, got checked and rechecked by people at all levels of production to make sure absolutely nothing was off. While many episodes may represent the idiosyncrasies of a single writer, this was essentially signed off on by the franchise as a whole.

The kicker? Luna had a speaking part in the previous scene. It really puts the whole thing in perspective. While she does occasionally get to do something in this episode or that, her contributions are considered non-existent by the writing staff themselves and she exists primarily as someone for Celestia to speak to (about Twilight Sparkle.)

⁂

There's a degree of fun in writing from a condescending point of view. I would never tell people that they aren't prepared for Shakespeare if they don't know the definitions of "fell". I don't know the definitions of "fell". I had to look them up. But hopefully snarky displaced first person narrator knows them off the top of her head and she'll look down on you if you don't.

Likewise, it took a lot of damned time to figure out how many assumptions were used in the Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell (not to be confused with Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Issac Newton.) Hopefully snarky first person narrator knows that, along with the page numbers of various significant passages (across multiple editions) from memory.

⁂

I suppose I might as well discuss the Principia now, since I've mentioned it.

In some class, I don't know which, Dr. John Brunette was talking about axioms and assumptions and proofs. It was probably a class where we used an axiomatic approach to the construction of the real numbers. I don't know if he mentioned Russell by name, my memory isn't that specific.

What I do remember is that he told us about someone who decided to do things with fewer givens than most people use and decided to prove the rest. He mentioned how the person took hundreds of pages to prove that one plus one equals two, something most people would accept as a definition.

Later in life, I mentioned something about this and someone I was talking to threw a divide by cheese error because ⟨very short proof⟩. They did it using a system I had never seen before, and didn't fully understand. The reason that I'd never seen it, for whatever it may be worth, is that I tend to work with the real numbers, and the Peano axioms are for the natural numbers only.

Now, to be clear, part of the reason that Russel took so long to prove "1 + 1 = 2" is because he wasn't trying to prove it.

He didn't like set theory. Russel's paradox is something he thought up that demolishes naive set theory. (Consider the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Logic go boom.) Set theory didn't work. Russell wanted a version of mathematics built up from solid first principles of logic, not a system that didn't even work properly.

So he set out to create that. (And he had help, see:Alfred North Whitehead.)

Together they painstakingly built up a foundation of mathematics based in rigorous logic. Every little thing was proven, no matter how small it might be, while they built toward the point where they could say, "See? This works."

When Russel announced the paradox with his name, Ernst Zermelo had already discovered the same paradox, but had not published it, two years prior. Zermelo took a different approach. He set out to created an axiomatic set theory that lacked such paradoxes. It wasn't perfect, and was augmented by Abraham Fraenkel. Zermelo-Frankel set theory, with (ZFC) or without (ZF) the axiom of choice, is the foundation upon which almost all modern mathematical theories are based.

⁂

Luna being an avid gamer is a pretty common fandom thing.

"Yes, I do know what day that was." -- April 1st. Not part of any plan, just happened to be the last day of Anime Boston 2018.

"perineal raphe" -- Look it up if you're interested. It's a feature of how the human body deals with creating sexual dimorphism.

[15] This was a silly idea I pitched once upon a time. The whole thing is in the footnote. The Elements of Harmony do various things. The first one we learn about is that they banished Luna/Nightmare Moon to the moon for a thousand years. So at some point them sending Sunset Shimmer to the same place (and time) popped into my head.

"hyper-intelligent shade of the color blue" -- Line from Douglas Adams.

"This is not a toast. ᠎ Do not raise you glasses. ᠎ Do not clink."-- Reference to a line from Douglas Adams. (Not sure how widespread the terminology of "clinking" is. It's when you touch glasses together during a toast.)

⁂

"If you're expecting me to tell you personal details about my life before my arrival, you are vastly mistaken about the kinds of things I'm willing to divulge." -- While I could claim that this a deconstruction of the underdeveloped nature of main characters in displaced fics, it's actually a pretty straightforward bit of characterization.

Here's a conversation from the comments at Fimfiction going into a bit more detail:

Not-Me:

You could shown that as bits and pieces in each chapter showing their past before displacement.
Me:

The main character said, in no uncertain terms, that she wouldn't be revealing her past pre-displacement (because she wasn't comfortable with doing so, though that bit was more implied than outright stated.)
Not-Me:

Also, the main character not wanting to talk about it? That's more of an in character thing that she'd rather not tell others inside of the story, but not outside, as in the readers.
Me:

If you paid more attention, you might note that main character treats the fourth wall like a one way mirror. She may not be able to see what's going on on our side, but she's well aware that her memoirs will be read.

She's sending this out into the multiverse, she already said she's weirded out by the idea of people who know her reading it, and there's only so much she's willing to share with strangers.

If I seem snippy in that exchange, it's because (owing in part to stuff I didn't quote) it's pretty clear the person didn't actually read anything I wrote in the story (or description) itself.

⁂

"anthropic principle" -- Some people look at the laws of the universe, note how if they were just a smidge different we couldn't exist, and then wonder about how perfectly calibrated they seem to be. Other people point out:

Well, yeah.

The universes that can't support intelligent life don't have any intelligent life in them to look at their physical laws and say, "Dang, these laws seem pretty craptastic when it comes to conditions for intelligent life."

Of course the results are always going to say "This is a universe in which these results could be gathered"; that's a necessary prerequisite for getting the results in the first place.

This is known as the "anthropic principle" of cosmology.

This should not be confused with the "strong anthropic principle" which states that universes are compelled to create sapient life, and therefore must be conducive to life by their very nature.

⁂

The oldest Roman novel that survives in its entirety, which is therefore the oldest novel of any kind that survives in its entirety,* is The Metamorphoses of Apuleius which is more commonly known as "The Golden Ass" (Asinus aureus). It begins with the word "at" which means "but".

If memory serves, it ends with a conjunction as well.

* Given how widespread they are now, it's kind of hard to believe that novels were once a strictly regional thing. That being said, it happens to be true.

Displacement, semicolons, reverse commas, idioms used in lieu of flavoring particles, and excessive footnotes

2020-03-29T09:56:00.001-04:00

[Originally posted at Fimfiction.net]
[Know how I usually say that things will make sense without prior knowledge of the source material? Doubt that applies here. Notes at the end.]

Once upon a time my name was Celestabellebethabelle[1] and I lived on earth[2]. I was ⹁you see, once a human like you,[3] but (as you might imagine) I went to a convention. "Which convention?" I hear you ask.[4] Anime Boston. Knowing me,[5] you'd have thought it was Arisia, but it was Anime Boston. Things never work out quite the way you'd expect.[6]

So, try as I might ⹁with magnetsˌ superconductorsˌ liquid nitrogenˌ and so forth, I could not get the floating ball in my Tsukasa[7] staff to actually ⹁you know, float. Now, I could have just used a wire or ⹁I shudder to think, a metal rod, but that's entirely missing the point.

So I had the rest of my outfit, right? I mean, you know this story even if you've tried not hear it;[8] you know all about how my outfit was awesome. Those green stones inset in the hat? Malachite.[9] Nailed it. Where applicable[10] I used the actual skin of actual animals because ~~suede is awesome~~ my outfit had to perfect, ya know?

Get to the convention ⹁I'm all alone, and Jen A. Blue doesn't do panels anymore so the thing that originally made me decide I had to come to Anime Boston[11] isn't even there anymore. I have no idea what to do. Been trying for years to get here, finally arrive after the thing I was coming for is gone.

So I wonder and I wander and I find a disreputable looking person selling just the sort of thing I want to illicitly buy. By which ⹁of course, I mean that wave master staff with the red ball actually suspended in mid-air. I've waited my whole life for this moment,[12] and it's only going to cost me three human soulsˌ twenty three minutes of my brain being used as a computer processorˌ and . . . I know that humor says I should add a third ludicrous thing, but I'm out of ideas. The staff is ⹁however, named "Ludicrous".[13]

The price (the real one) was decent, I really wanted it, money changed hands, and then . . . you know, right? Call me, "Megan Willams,"[14] because I'm a human in Equestria. I think ⹁but am not sure, I'm in the gap between Rainbow Rocks and The Cutie Map. Go figure.

As mentioned, I know about displaced stories. You really can't not. I haven't read them, but I'm pretty sure I don't like them. Now I'm living one.

So . . . that's what's up with me. Woo.

- - - ~ ~ ~ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ~ ~ ~ - - -

[1] Ok: No, it wasn't. Humor is basically the only thing that keeps me sane at this point, though. Let me have this.

[2] The one where humans don't have poly-chromatic skin and hair colors.

[3] Several points to make here. In no particular order:
⊙ By this I mean I was once ⦑a human like you⦒ not, "Like you, I was once a human."
⊙ This assumes that you are a human; if you are not, then I was once a human unlike you.
⊙ Furthermore, what was like you ⹁assuming you are human, about me was our shared humanity. We probably did have other things in common, but I do not know what they are. It should in no way be inferred that I was any more like you than any other human.

[4] Full disclosure: No, I don't. Not even a little. If you are attempting to communicate with me in an auditory kind of way, try harder.

[5] Which you don't. Unless you do. If you do, I'm actually kind of weirded out by the fact you're reading this. Unless reading this will assist you in building a portal from where I was to where I am ⹁thus allowing me to return, please stop in the name of privacy and/or not weirding people out.

[6] Except when they do.

[7] Main character from .hack//Sign. He was getting trapped in an MMO back before it was cool. If it is cool now. Even if it isn't cool now, I suppose it counts as being before it was cool provided that it wasn't being cool before or during his tenure trapped within The World.[15] Is it true that he did it before it was cool? No idea. Cool and I have never been on speaking terms.

[8] This ⹁I know, from experience.

[9] I don't always use rocks as wardrobe accessories, but ⹁when I do, I prefer Cu₂(CO₃)(OH)₂. Stay thirsty my friends.

[10] So . . . not that much, really.

[11] Get my My Little Pony and Fullmetal Alchemist analysis from the same person? Sign me up. But you can't ⹁at least not without a time machine, because: see above. Took too fucking long to get my act together. Another in a long series of regrets.

[12] This isn't even hyperbole; it's just an outright lie.

[13] I'm not even making it up. It's not named that in the series ⹁and I'm a "Series only" kind of girl, but when looking something or other up I learned that it's a level 99 silver staff named "Ludicrous". So, there is that.

[14] She was the human main character of an animated TV series called "My Little Pony". You may have heard of it. She beat such luminaries as Tirek, Grogar, and the Smooze. Let it be known. She beat Tirek in her first appearance, because only suckers wait till the last episode of of season 4.[16] The book "Who Was Megan" is in the Fall of Sunset Shimmer in the dark magic section of Canterlot library, and ⹁in the same story, when Sunset first emerges into the human world, a flyer on the ground says that submissions to the CHS yearbook are to be brought to her or her siblings.[17] Look it up.

[15] You have to remember that this was a Japanese thing, so having it be called "The World" in English is like if we had an online game called "世界" or "せかい" or "sekai". It sounds a little bit less uninspired that way, doesn't it?

[16] I've never seen the G1 series and movies, so take that as you will. Tradition calls for taking salt with it. Also, Twilight Sparkle is not ⹁to my knowledge, a sucker.

[17] Nepotism much?

[----][HERE][Next]

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⁂ ⁂

[top] This is the end, I promised notes.

"Displaced" stories are stories where someone goes to a convention, finds a shifty vendor selling the one thing they need to complete their costume, buys it, and then gets dumped in Equestria as the character they were cosplaying as. It's like a crossover, but without any of the established character traits, character history, or other such things that might interfere with it from being pure author/reader insert power fantasy.

It's difficult to get an accurate count, but there are very definitely over a thousand such stories.

I don't remember why I decided to try writing one. I do know that I only made it as far as the long description (what's reproduced on this page) and then left it sitting there as an unpublished story with no actual content (long description doesn't count toward the word count, so by the standard metric it was literally a story with zero words.)

On Tuesday I added an "unpublished view password" which, as the name suggests, lets people view it even though it's unpublished. The response I got from the person who took a look was pretty positive, so I decided to write an actual first chapter and then inflict the thing upon the world.

~ ~ ~

Celestabellebethabelle is the unicorn from Gravity Falls. The (definite article) unicorn. There are other unicorns as well, but Celestabellebethabelle is not those unicorns (collectively or individually.)

Tsukasa is, as noted, the main character from .hack//Sign. He and it are described in some detail here.

Jen A. Blue is froborr.

~ ~ ~

The Oxford Comma Wars are entirely because we don't use reverse commas. I'm probably, for what it's worth, not using them very well here. (I don't have any more practice using them than the average person, after all.)

Replace commas with parentheses and you'll see the problem. This isn't an article on commas; I'll stick to just one example. It'll be an MLP flavored one. (OC = Original Character; Red and Black Alicorn = edgy power fantasy; king = male monarch.)

First, with no commas:

[...] my OC a red and black alicorn and a king.

We can punctuate this two ways:

[...] my OC) a red and black alicorn) and a king.
[...] my OC) a red and black alicorn and a king.

It can mean three things:

[...] my OC (a red and black alicorn and a king).
[...] my OC (a red and black alicorn) and a king.
[...] my OC) a red and black alicorn) and a king.

The confusion is entirely tied up in the fact that we don't know if the first comma is the opening of an aside or not. If it is, then whether or not there's a comma before the "and" changes the meaning drastically. It it isn't, then the Oxford comma may be omitted without loss of meaning (but minor Oxford Comma Skirmishes may still be fought over the aesthetics of such an omission.)

Ideally we'd probably want three commas, opening, closing, and separating items in a list. So, more or less, the comma versions of these things: (∣). It's the lack of an opening comma, though, that causes confusion. An opening comma would, presumably, just be a regular comma in reverse.

The dog was hit by a car, I need help to pay for her medical bills

2020-03-23T01:49:00.001-04:00

Really short version:
The estimated total is $7,454.11 to $9,702.30.

The most immediate way to help is by donating money to me on Paypal. A debit card is linked to my Paypal account, so I can use money in the account instantly. I already paid $400 the bill that way (and maxed out three credit cards to pay another $4,085.)

One can also donate via a GoFundMe that my sister's . . . ok, I don't think "it's been complicated" is a good description for a relationship. It suggests that things are no longer complicated and therefore doesn't describe the current relationship in the least except to say "It's not complicated, but I'm not fucking telling you what it actually is!" and this is the fifth? sixth? Hell, it could be seventh, time I've been forced to write "'it's been complicated' relationship partner" and I haven't slept decently since Thursday night, which wasn't even that decent, and fuck! set up. My sister's that set it up.

The information given fails to convey the relationship the dog has with any human being, living or dead, but the money is eventually going to go towards the dog's bills, so there is that. This is not on Terin (my sister's that) because, while Terin did the work of setting it up, the information comes directly from my sister in her own words. (Terin is awesome. They deserve praise.)

If you can't donate, and I generally assume that no one can, you can spread those links around. It is my assumption (possibly correct, possibly not) that people who don't know me will trust the GoFundMe more than my Paypal.me page, and therefore signal boosting it will get better results even though, if someone is going to donate, it's better for them to use the Paypal.me one if they can.

This is a picture of Chloe and my niece:

So, the story.

Chloe was never properly trained. Chloe had puppies in early December. Something went wrong between Chloe and Terin's dog. Both were injured, Terin's dog much more severely. It is conjectured that something happened which Chloe misinterpreted as a threat to one of her puppies. What the truth is, be it that or something else, we'll never know.

So I got a call saying that Chloe was going to be put down unless I would take her. I took her.

I'm not on my own right now. I can't remember if I've talked about how I came to have a housemate here, but even if I have, that doesn't quite cover it.

Given that it's a bad idea to travel from Maine to New Orleans (a trip that should probably be accompanied by a recitation of Longfellow's "Evangeline", for historical reasons), well a bad time to do that if it isn't necessary, house guest is living with me and housemate for the foreseeable future. He is a fantastic dog trainer.

The prospect of Chloe being trained so that a repeat of the dog-v-dog violence wouldn't happen didn't make my sister actually want Chloe, and it became apparent that Chloe's future depended on me. Housemate and house guest will help with her in the near term, but long term Chloe would either become my sole responsibility, or she'd need a new home.

I tried not to get attached because . . . well because my depression is the worst it's ever been, because I can't even take care of myself properly, because I'm seriously at the point that, while I don't want to, I wouldn't mind the prospect of dying in the least. Because I don't know when or if I'll be able to care for a dog.

That was the only reason my sister is still the owner.

* * *

Fast forward to a week ago.

A bit after 11:00 AM Sunday morning, I start writing. I write for five and a half hours straight. It's the most promising sign that my depression might be lifting in years.

On Tuesday, I see my depression doctor for the first time in ages because I kept on missing appointments because depression would prevent me from making it there. It's the last day they're having appointments in person and the waiting room is deserted. For much of the time I'm the only one there. When I'm not, which was before that, I was one of only two. Receptionists calling people about the switch to over the phone meetings (except for new patient intakes, as those require that paperwork be signed) is the only sound. Others will enter or leave, no one lingers.

With everything in a state of flux, my arrival gets lost in the shuffle. I'm checked in on the computer, but it doesn't get noticed by the one who needs to. There comes a point where I know something is wrong. I'm not yet at a point where I can just get up and say, "Hey, I've been forgotten over here." I picked a bad place to sit too. The receptionists have no line of sight on me.

It's an hour after my appointment when I'm finally able to face starting a "someone on your side of the equation fucked up conversation" I don't phrase it like that. Unless I tap into my Witham family rage reserves (which isn't something one controls, not really), I'm so very . . . meek, I guess. I know someone screwed up, I know it wasn't me, I act like me even speaking to them is a presumptuous imposition on my part, and I'm so very quiet and deferential.

They are massively apologetic. After talking to doctor, we make a tweak to dosage that might do nothing, or might make all the difference in the world.

I got a cab over, but I walk back.

* * *

The crowd outside the soup kitchen/food pantry disturbs me. Portland is shut down (because Saint Patrick's day could turn our eight cases into eight hundred or eight thousand.) Any restaurants that are open are takeout only. No crowds. No one gathers in pubs, no one gathers in restaurants, certain other public venues are also off limits, police will enforce.

This is the right decision, though it's only half of the right decision and the other half I haven't heard anyone even mention. Now more than ever, people need to get paid. People who depend on tips are incredibly vulnerable. We just cancelled Saint Patrick's Day. Why have I not heard about aid to help those who lost their income as a result?

But that's not the point. The point is that we understand that crowds are dangerous. The streets aren't empty, but I'm pretty sure they're as depopulated as I've ever seen them (and I've walked these streets in some of the worst whether Portland has to throw at you.) That's as it should be.

Except for the giant fucking crowd outside Preble. (Food pantry/soup kitchen/resource center.) It's not any larger than usual, but that's because it's usually a really big crowd. Of the . . . well, ok, they're not the most at risk (except for those who are for other reasons) but I'm pretty sure "poor as fuck" puts you at way higher risk than "I, sir and/or madam, am above needing handouts."

"Poor as fuck," by the way, includes me. Especially with three people here now, housemate's (briefly successful) job hunting shut down by the pandemic, and house guest not even living in this state. The only reason we haven't gotten food from Preble is we couldn't get the logistics to work properly.

So, like I said, the crowd disturbs me. I don't have a solution. I have some off-the-top-of-my-head ideas, none of which are complete solution, and all of which would cost money. Unless Portland has gotten way more philanthropic than it was the only time I knew details about funding, Preble doesn't have anything to spare. They fight a losing battle against time yearly because people only feel charitable en masse at and around Christmas.

The crowd of people who are least equipped to deal with getting sick disturbs me, but it's very near the beginning of the walk, other things happen too.

* * *

[redacted]

It was getting to be way too much about me and Tuesday. We'll come back to it in a later post. Maybe. I feel like every time I've said that (or something like that) I've never actually gotten back to it. (I suck at follow through.)

Quicker version of what was turning into a way too detailed thing:

I shouldn't be out, but it and doing the same walk (for a different appointment) a week earlier, represent the only exercise I've gotten in God knows how long. I take pictures of the empty streets both to take pictures and because, if I ever get around to sending them to her, my sister might be interested.

Someone asks for change, I give him my last 43 cents. I officially have no tangible money. (Unless I find those two twenties I misplaced a week or two ago. Would be nice if I did, that's a lot of money for me these days.) I take pictures of things I couldn't take pictures of before because of high pedestrian traffic. In Longfellow square, which is not a square, I go overboard. I take pictures until the light starts to die. I race the setting sun. My camera runs out of battery.

On the one hand, that was photography was compulsive behavior (though not, I think, on a remotely clinical level), on the other hand, it was also me being a photographer again. I think, on balance, it was a good sign.

* * *

On Wednesday I get a ride to go food shopping. This is good, the house is out of food. Housemate comes with me, she looks like she's going to rob a bank in a western. She has good reason, her immune system is compromised.

Most shopping is at a buy-in-bulk warehouse store. Huge sections are empty. I take pictures, I think my sister will be interested. Also, taking pictures is what I do. Pick up a few other things at a regular grocery store. Neither store had toilet paper. Still three people in the house, still no toilet paper. The grocery store had what looked like two or three, four at most, packages of paper towels. Bulk store didn't have anything within a seven block radius of paper towels or toilet paper.

I'm not sure whether it's when I get back or on Thursday that I see a roll of paper towels in the bathroom at home has been crudely cut in half, and is now two toilet paper sized rolls. On the one hand, this is useful. On the other hand, it means I have to be even more careful when it comes to remembering "it's not toilet paper, don't put in the toilet, it can't be flushed."

Paper towels being flushed cost me six hundred fucking dollars in plumbing. It will not be repeated.

Definitely on Thursday, I make a lamp out of an orange (which I bought on Wednesday) and canola oil. Wait, I already wrote this. Before I decided to talk about my week before Thursday.

See:

Fast forward to Thursday. I make a lamp out of an orange (not a tangerine, a fucking orange) and canola oil. I feel pretty good about myself. Friday I use that as the image for the open thread at Ana Mardoll's.

* * *

Now, attempts by housemate and house guest at cleaning were massively overzealous when it came to what to throw out, so I've been looking through bags of "trash" outside, on the days I can actually handle going outside. Friday is drizzly, but I haven't been going through the bags as much as I want to, and I can give it a shot in the drizzle.

After all, I've had a pretty good week so far.

I tie out Chloe, as I often do when I'm going through the stuff, and I also bring out Magpie, who I probably should have mentioned prior to this.

Magpie (they/them) is one of Chloe's puppies. Three and a half months old. They're house guest's dog. They're already off leash trained really well. They're "they/them" most because house guest broke his own mind re:Magpie's sex and gender. Since dogs can't tell us their gender, we tend to go with sex, and Magpie is a penis-haver. Magpie's nickname is "Maggie". These two facts, when taken together, have rendered house mate unable to place Magpie in the gender binary.

The fact that Terin (my sister's [see above]) is they/them may have provided inspiration. Or may not have. No idea what house guest's history is with trans* people and knowledge thereof.

Magpie doesn't need to be tied out. This is good as a) multiple lines lead to tangles, and b) we only have one set up. The only thing that can cause Magpie to take off is if Chloe takes off, because they will follow mom if she sprints away down the street.

If you don't sense a trainwreck coming on, I think you've forgotten what we're talking about. Look a the title to remind yourself.

* * *

Attempts to work in the drizzle are met with no success whatsoever, and the dogs are all drizzled out. It's time to go in.

I have Magpie on my left, I think I'm holding onto their collar just in case. I have Chloe on my right. Everyone is ready to go in. The end of the line doesn't reach to the door, but we're about a pace away from the steps to the door when I let Chloe off the line.

I have done this many times. Take her off the line, guide her by the collar into the house, close the doors once we're in the house, done. The distance isn't even enough to justify putting her onto a short leash for the trip from the line to the house. Just guide her by the collar.

You can't let her go because Chloe has never been properly trained, and running free is fun, and she will bolt. She did it the night before when her collar was too loose and fell off. (Magpie is teething, and seems to like their mom's collar. They haven't broken it yet, but damn do they ever loosen it.)

For some inexplicable reason, I think that, since the stairs are right in front of, she'll go up them. She won't. She never does. I'm not sure if this is a, "Wait, I don't want to go in yet," thing, or not liking stairs, or something else, but without guiding her she never goes up the stairs.

She's being trained out of her bad habits, but I'm under no illusions that that somehow happened overnight.

I just . . . assume that she'll go up the stairs on her own without any guidance from me in spite of the fact she's never done that before.

* * *

I'm a little bit hazy on what I did when she bolted. That's putting it mildly. My memories of what happened between when I let her off the line, didn't take her collar for guidance, and thus let her get away and when I saw her . . . let's just call it "the accident". Between letting her bolt and seeing the accident, my memories are an incoherent mess.

I think that I let go of Magpie to better run. Then again, I'm not totally sure I was holding them in the first place. I think when I saw Chloe run off of my hardly-ever-used residential street and onto Main Street I decided to prioritize keeping Magpie from following their mom into danger over getting Chloe out of danger, because if I kept my focus on Chloe there would, for an unknown amount of time, be two dogs in danger, but if I intercepted Magpie it would stay at just one.

Whatever the case, it didn't last long, and what happened sort of overshadowed all the details of everything that came before.

I don't think the car was up to speed. That would imply the light had recently changed. It was, however, at a higher speed than it could be if the light had just changed. So if the "light recently changed" hypothesis is accurate, it definitely wasn't the first car in line.

Chloe was not run over. She went up. She flipped over in the air. Then she came back down.

At this point I wasn't moving anymore. I was staring in shock or horror. I was too far away to see if she was . . . I thought she might already be dead.

Then she sprang up and ran back toward the house, me, my street, and so forth. At least one leg wasn't working remotely right. That didn't even slow her down.

She collapses.

Blood is coming out of her mouth, her breathing isn't right, and I think I see some blood coming out of an eye.

I don't know what to do. I don't know if she'll live long enough to get help. I don't know how to get help. I don't even know how to comfort her, not really. Magpie comes. I grab onto their collar like all of our lives depend on me never letting go of a dog again.

Other hand is reserved for Chloe. Not knowing how to comfort her doesn't mean I can't try. I call out for help. I'm screaming in the middle of the street.

The world is empty. It's me, two dogs, my screams, and buildings. Nothing else. No one else.

* * *

Eventually someone does come. Couldn't tell you much about them. Mask and gloves. Unlike me they're dressed for a pandemic.

They ask what they can do to help. I have them take Magpie and lead her back to the house while I carry Chloe. This, for the record, is stupid.

My training might be intended for humans and long expired, but you don't move someone after something like that without a good fucking reason. I do not have a good reason, fucking or otherwise.

On this street, we're safe. For someone to hit us on this street they would have to make a conscious effort to run me down. She was just hit by a car in a street, I'm not leaving in in a (completely different) street.

I put her down in the front hall, thank the helpful and prepared person, and send them away. I think I indicate that I have some kind of plan. I have no plan.

The order of events is unclear to me at this point. I spend a while at Chloe's side. I spend a while on the phone. I have no idea which I do first. At some point I start alternating between the two.

Before we get to that, my exercise induced asthma kicked in. I think it was carrying Chloe that did it, but even the part where I ran after her could have potentially set it off. So at this point I'm breathing like I just ran a marathon I was in no way fit to run. It never even occurs to me to use my inhaler.

The only proactive thing I can think to do is make phone calls. Breathing isn't going well. (Not dangerously badly, but still.) So, that's fun.

Setting Chloe down didn't go as I'd hoped. She tried to stand, which was a no-go, and ended up laying sphinx style, which didn't look comfortable in her present condition, but I was worried that if I tried to rearrange her I'd cause more pain than I'd alleviate.

* * *

The first person I call is my mom. She's always been the one to deal with vets. Even though she doesn't live around here anymore, she's the one most likely to have a phone number, or know where it's written down.

That works insofar as getting the number. The number is out of date.

At some point . . . wait, I know when. I'm on the phone with my mom, don't know which time (a lot of calls get made) but it is, at least, more than, "At some point..." I'm on the phone with my mom, it's after the first call because getting through to a vet has failed. I ask her to try to get through to someone because I'm afraid that Chloe will die alone while I'm right down the hall making phone calls.

This is when alternating between phone and dog starts in earnest. Chloe poops in here too. Pretty sure it wasn't intentional given that she didn't move at all. I can't see it, and don't actually know it was her and not Magpie yet, but from here on out the aroma of dog shit is in the air.

In this whole mess, my sister calls up with a suggestion: Call my dad. The reason for giving this suggestion was wrong in all possible ways. It turned out to be vital none the less.

She said she was pretty sure he was at home. As previously established, this was Friday. My dad is not at home on Friday unless it's the beginning or end of the day; it is neither. The call gets the expected result:he's not at home and can't help transport the dog.

Then he calls back. He has a suggestion: call animal control. It's their job to move animals, they'll know what to do. If that doesn't work, ask to talk to the canine unit, they must know what to do when their dogs are seriously injured, but mostly: call the police, ask for animal control.

I look up the numbers and find the direct line to animal control. They're not there. I call the police. They don't need to transfer me to anyone.

The hard part is to get across that I'm not trying to report the dog getting hit, I just need it to get medical help. Honestly, my focus was so very much on the dog that the driver could have turned around and come back and I wouldn't have noticed. I don't think they did, but that is neither here nor there.

* * *

It's at around this point that I-- no, it was during that. That was two calls and my memory jammed them together. Anyway, I discover that I still haven't gotten the hand of understanding heavy sleepers. I made the same mistake when my sister was run over. In case of emergency, open the damned door and verify whether the person is there or not. Don't just yell really loudly.

See, the thing is, I forget a lot of things. Not just things like the police thing being two calls. Things like, "Hey, Chris, I'm going to [X] and I'll be back in [Y] hours." It is entirely plausible that I might be alone in the house without realizing it until I attempted to talk to the other person or people.

I once again assumed that because noise had gotten no response, I was alone. It was once again false.

Housemate is having an emotional breakdown because she'd been getting sick of the bad habits Chloe needs to unlearn and said . . . let's say, "unkind things." She didn't mean them. Chloe is bloodied on the floor, barely able to keep her eyes open (and they're only open half-way anyway) with difficulty breathing. The guilt housemate is feeling is irrational and inordinate. That doesn't make it any less devastating. Feelings of guilt don't operate on logic.

House guest is more able to face the situation. Both of them have smartphones. I order them to contact everyone they know until they find someone who can transport a dog. At this point the plan, insofar as there is one, is to bring the dog to the vet and, due to us not actually getting in contact with them . . . freak them the Hell out, I suppose.

Or maybe it was to contact the vet after we had a person to get us to the vet.

The police were going to call me back, so I was trying to leave the house phone open. I spent the time comforting Chloe (there were only two smartphones, both in use.)

When I got called back, I had house guest take over comforting Chloe (housemate very seriously can't, not in the state she's in mentally and Chloe is in physically, so it has to be house guest.)

Somewhere in here something happens that overshadows the details of where we were in the saga of getting police help.

* * *

House guest is describing what I've described to him. I'm reliving the whole thing, but spoken in third person. I am not up for that. I tell him to stop. He does. Then he starts again. I tell him to stop far less politely. There was probably a "fuck" or a "fucking" or some variation in there, but diction is the last thing on my mind and I don't remember.

Part of that rudeness is basically trying to shame him for not spending every second trying to get someone to transport Chloe. One doesn't need a play by play of the exact details of an accident to know whether or not they can come to us, put the dog in their vehicle, and go somewhere else.

The person on the other end won't let him hang up. I somehow realize it's my sister. I could have been told, I could have heard the voice coming through house guests phone more clearly, I don't know. I do, however, know what my diction was for this one, "Tell her to fuck off and hang up."

That's not good diction. The first part, "Tell her to fuck off," is perfectly fine. It's clear and concise and basically everything one could want in communication. The "and hang up" is a problem. I meant that I wanted house guest to hang up after telling her to fuck off. The entire point was that I wanted him to hang up no matter how much my sister tried to keep him on the line.

Trouble is, the way I said it could be construed as telling house guest to tell my sister to hang up, which leaves control over whether the call ends in precisely the place I don't want it to be: my sister's hands.

As one might imagine from this description, I was not happy with her right then. First off, she'd already called up to say literally nothing during the period when I was trying to leave the line open and had refused to hang up then too. Then after I said that I couldn't emotionally handle a play by play of the accident right now, she ordered house guest to give it anyway. Then she refused to hang up again, this time on a different phone.

Everything other than the calling up to say nothing was while I was on the phone with the police trying to get a Chloe transported to a medical care. As I said, the episode with my sister overshadowed the details of the conversation with the police.

It still wasn't clear to me whether they were going to give the dog a damned ride, which was why I still wanted house guest to be trying to find someone else, but beyond that I'm not sure. Not really. I think that part of the problem was that I couldn't pay attention to my phone call while my sister was making house guest put on a performance of "the terrible brutally emotionally painful thing that chris the cynic just lived through" in the background. But I'm not sure. I could have been on hold, because the details really were lost beneath the weight of:

*HG gives painful detailed account.*
Me: I can't take hearing that; stop.
*HG stops*
*HG resumes*
Me: I told you to stop; end the call.
*HG tries to end call politely, can't*
Me: Screw being polite, just hang up.

Obviously that's a paraphrase. You know that I don't know the words from time two, I'll add that I don't know the exact words from time one, and you know the exact words from time three, which don't appear in the paraphrase.

Regardless, soon after it was established that the police would in fact transport Chloe to emergency care, and a car was on its way. The tyrannical rule of chris the cynic --she who makes you contact everyone you know to ask, "Hey, can you move a dog?"-- ends.

* * *

I'm back on the floor in the hall with Chloe. Magpie, who had initially been completely oblivious to the gravity of the situation (tried to play with me and, to a lesser extent, Chloe) is moved. I have no clue where Magpie was between the earliest part of Chloe being on front hall floor (when the attempts to play occurred) and this point. Don't know where Magpie was afterward either.

I send houseguest to the porch to watch for the cops. Housemate is presumably with Magpie.

Initially there are two cops, based on what I overheard, I think one happened to be in the area free to roam and came over, and the other was the one that was sent to us. When they come in, Chloe becomes animated again. At the time, I think it's because of new people. Then it becomes clear that, whether it's a staggering coincidence or somehow related to to the new people or not, she's actually moving so she can poop.

The time has come to discuss dog feces.

Dog shit isn't particularly pretty and it doesn't smell very good either. That's completely expected and, unpleasant as it is, not unusual when you spend enough time around one or more dogs. The stuff that came out of Chloe, though, was on an entirely different level.

I know nothing of dog digestion, but I'm pretty sure that that intensely literal shit wasn't actually supposed to come out yet. It was sort of like some grotesquely malformed dog shit prototype.

I do have a reason for talking about this: right before we leave the house, the thought in my head is something along the lines of, "They say your bowels empty when you die, right?"

Now, while my focus is on not retching again (the first time was unavoidable) cop number three showed up. I honestly have no idea why we had three cops, but it is into cop number three's car that we put Chloe. We put her in the driver's side. We're asked if anyone is going with her, I say I am before the question is fully asked.

* * *

House guest asks if I want to clean up first, and I just realized I never talked about the blood on my arm. Like I said at the start, I've told this a bunch of times. It can be hard to keep track of what I said where.

Two things I left out here:

The first time Chloe's breath hitched in the front hall, I thought she had died. Again. First time when she landed after being hit, second time right then, when her breathing stopped in the front hall.

It wasn't a particularly long hitch, but the way she was breathing made you feel like every breath could be her last. While I didn't think she died on later hitches, I was still terrified each time, because knowing it was probably just a hitch in her breathing didn't change the fact that until the next breath came, I didn't have any proof it was just a hitch in her breathing and not the end of her breathing.

The second thing is that at some point she tried to lift her head, and I gave her support. Not actually holding anything up, just taking some of the weight off her. That result was blood smeared on my right forearm.

So I look down at the blood, I'm covered in sweat, and my clothes are probably dirty but I can't even tell. I focus on the blood. I say I'll do it when we get there. I get into the passenger side door, and discover that Chloe has crawled into the middle of the back seat and left a puddle of blood on the passenger side where I was planning to sit.

I decide not to sit in a blood puddle, and go through the car to the driver's side. There's a lot of space back there; it's easy to do this. I'm not actually sure this was the right decision. I can and do pet Chloe, hold her, and talk to her, but she can't see me. She's facing away and is in no condition to turn around.

Once upon a time my sister got a ride from a friendly cop, and since she thought it would be cool to ride in the back like she'd just been arrested, she learned something: it's most comfortable if you have your hands behind your back.

The seats are made with the assumption that a fair number of the people stuck sitting in them will have their hands cuffed behind them. I doubt that comfort was the first priority, I presume it's a side-effect, but they definitely are shaped to accommodate hands cuffed behind one's back.

I do not make use of this knowledge, because my hands are busy trying to make Chloe comfortable and, if at all possible, reassured.

* * *

When we get there, Chloe is taken in by two people. That's the last I've seen of her, not that I was expecting anything else. I think the difficulty in finding a way to transport Chloe kind of demonstrates that getting a ride isn't the easiest thing in the world.

I wash my hands and forearms in a bathroom which is, mercifully, located right next to the door and outside of the waiting room. Why mercifully? Because I honestly don't know if I was told to wait outside the building, or it was a "No, you can't go where the dog is going, don't even ask," kind of thing. When I'm washed, and sanitized, and have sanitized everything that I touched (especially what I touched before getting sanitized), I come out just in time to meet the person bringing me paperwork.

Oh, another thing that I left out of this account (I should merge the information from all of them someday) on the ride in the cop car, I promised Chloe that if she got through this I'd take her. Not for a while; forever. I'd figure out a way to make sure my depression didn't leave her neglected, and she'd have a permanent home with me.

So, paperwork, on the one hand, I really wished I could have put myself down there as the owner. On the other hand, it was a lot easier to explain why I had so little of the information they asked for when I could say (something along the lines of), "Her legal owner is still my sister, who still has all her documentation, and she hasn't been living with me for that long."

I didn't fill out the paperwork in the waiting room. I didn't wait in the waiting room. The only time I spent in the waiting room was the time it took to walk through it on the way in and on the way out. There's a pandemic; precautions are being taken. So all of my waiting and all of my paperwork time and so forth was in an empty exam room.

And it was in there that I made a decision. Or at least formally announced to myself that I'd already made a decision. (It can be hard to tell sometimes.) I've had a lot of pets die. None of it prepared me for what happened to Chloe. I was going to spend whatever it took to . . . not even to keep her from dying like that, to give her the chance to survive, even if it were slim.

* * *

As it turned out, they couldn't tell me if it was a slim chance or not. It was too early to give so much as a guess as to her chances. The ride home was the first time I rode Uber. I'm not sure if I can say that I used Uber, because all of the business was done by others.

I alternated between closing my eyes and looking out the window. The driver softly sang something to himself. I tried to lose myself in the music I didn't understand.

Not far from my house, police car/suv/things were blocking a lane of traffic. There were people in sort of khaki colored uniforms. The uniforms were not identical from person to person. On the back of a vest one was wearing it said (if I'm remembering correctly) US Marshals. Someone in a not-khaki uniform I couldn't make out was patting down a guy who was smoking. It looked like he already had his hands cuffed behind him. The driver stopped singing as we passed that.

The last thing I noticed of them was the gun one was wearing. It was a big fucking gun. The kind of rifle that belongs in a war, on a firing range, and nowhere else.

Soon after we were at my house. I asked the driver what he'd been singing. The most important word didn't make any sense to me, but I didn't expect it to. After I compared the sounds I remembered to a list of words it might have been, I think he said it was a Chewa song.

* * *

Now, the emergency vet people have a policy so that if they do work they know they'll actually get paid. As near as I can tell that policy is, "Halfish of the high end of the estimate up front." The high end of the estimate for stabilizing Chloe was over four thousand dollars, which worked out to needing two thousand eighty five before they got started.

I gave their number to house guest, because he's in constant contact with my sister, and told him to get her to give them Chloe's information. Then I collapsed onto the couch, did I don't know what, and waited.

The call I got wasn't the one I was waiting for. My sister didn't want to give them any information whatsoever until she knew she wasn't going to have to pay. Apparently she had once brought in an injured stray cat to an emergency veterinary place (possibly the same one), it had died, and she'd had to pay, even though a) it wasn't her cat, and b) she wasn't told that up front.

If it was the same place, they've changed since then, because they were very upfront about the "this stuff costs money" aspect. So I got my sister to give the them the information, and waited for them to call me about the two thousand eighty five dollars. I still didn't get the call I was waiting for. I got my sister saying the figure I'd already known in tones of, "It's not worth paying."

So I called them. And I paid. On, as I think I mentioned, a credit card.

* * *

When I was ready to go to sleep, my sister showed up with three children and two puppies. As is often the case, the presumed-autistic child (Terin's, not one of my sister's) started off perfectly fine and nice and calm and generally exactly what you'd want from a child save for words, but it was not to last because sensory overload turned him into a screaming crying wreck.

He and I, it should be noted, were on completely the same page. I mean, I'd probably rock back and forth while rubbing my sternum or cover my ears, close my eyes, and suffer like that, but the principle is the same. Unfortunately, I am contractually obligated to be the adult in the room (especially when I'm the only adult in the room) so that wasn't an option.

It was sound and motion and pain.

When it finally ended, my sister asked me if I wanted to go to a party. "Last concert before the apocalypse" and it was at a house that was "trans as fuck". That second part does sound rather affirming. Terin is the only trans person I've met in Maine outside of a sort of support group thing that I think I attended all of two meetings of.

That said, my sister is the person who invented the term "Brister" (Brother-Sister) rather than call me her sister. (Though, to her credit, when under oath she calls me her sister) I'm am very much not convinced that going to a trans as fuck place with her as the person I know best is a good idea. Terin is, I think, causing my sister to become better regarding trans issues. That's good.

But the truth was, that wasn't even a factor because I was out at "party". I'd just been attacked by noise, and Noise, and NOISE and she ~~asked if I wanted to go to a p~~ that's not accurate. She tried to convince me to go to a party. I wanted to go into isolation. Darkness, silence, and a comfortable thing to lay down upon would have been heavenly right then.

* * *

Before house guest headed off with my sister to go to said party, I realized something disturbing. I hadn't seen the cat all day. Yes, there was a huge thing involving a Chloe getting hit by a car, so I may not have been the most observant, but she makes herself be noticed and it wasn't like her. Not when there are people in the house.

House guest and housemate hadn't either, so it wasn't that she had come in and gotten her fill of humans and houses for the day while I was away, and departed before I returned. Shortly before I went to sleep, I had an unsettling thought. What if Chloe had run into the middle of Main Street because she was chasing the cat? Chloe came back onto my street on her own. I never went to the site of the accident. I certainly never looked around there.

If the cat had been hit by a car too, I'd never have known.

I didn't think it was true, but I had to check. No sign of the cat, or anything else unusual, at the scene of the accident.

Somewhere in all of this I did some halfhearted shuffling and drew three cards.

XVI Tower, Reversed XIV Temperance, Reversed 00 The Fool

What does it mean? Presumably nothing.

The shuffling I did wasn't enough to add any decent randomness. The position of the cards on Thursday, if not before (whenever I most recently shuffled it), would have played the largest role in determining which sequences of cards were possible. Which sequence was actually chosen would depend solely on Friday, of course, but the same could be said if the only thing I'd done on Friday was cut the deck.

I got to sleep so late, and then woke up at four AM the next morning because a blood transfusion had to be authorized.

The cat showed up, completely fine, not long after. No idea where she was on Friday.

* * *

I think I'm gonna pass out or something if I try to type much more, so just be aware that later in the day on Thursday we got to the point where it was time to start the rest of what Chloe needed which is supposed to end with her being able to come home soon. Needed another $2400 to get started. $1,000 went on the same card as before, but I knew that put me near my limit (less than $200 away) so I needed to get the rest from elsewhere. Maxed out two card that had been paid off, $500 on each. (The limits on my cards don't follow any particular patterns.)

At that point, if not for donations, I'm not sure what I'd have done. I could have found the remaining $400, I'm pretty sure, but I'm not sure how I would have. Thankfully, donations to Paypal + Debit card. That $400 is the only part that's going to start generating high interest debt if not paid off, because it doesn't need to be paid off, it was paid for before it was spent.

I go to sleep.

Economics Lesson -or- Why the shelves are empty (Non-fiction)

2020-03-18T22:13:00.000-04:00

~~[This isn't even a rough draft, not really~~, it's something that I typed out in a Discord chat, but it is a something that you might find useful when trying to understand the world in which we live and the state in which it is in.]
[I've edited it a bit, I suppose it probably qualifies as a rough draft at this point.]

Ok, economics lesson time, mostly because I've been seeing people who are Wrong on the Internet™. Also on mainstream (and fringe) news media, but I'm mostly concerned with the internet. Obligatory xkcd link: https://xkcd.com/386/

In an ideal system (the thing that is to capitalism as a frictionless vacuum is to high school physics problems), there would be no warehouses, there would be no back in which employees could check for products when the shelf was empty and, honestly, there would be no shelves. Products would be sold the instant they were created and nothing would ever sit around ever.

In the real world, it doesn't work that way. Certain things can be produced on demand at the point of sale, but most things will have to wait at some point in their life cycle. They wait on the shelf for people to buy them, they wait in the back room (or under the counter, or up high, or wherever the company stores excess) for there to be space on the shelf, and they wait in a warehouse somewhere for there to be space in the back room.

All of this costs money. Obviously any shelf-space occupied by something that isn't selling could be more profitably filled with something that is, but that's nowhere near the chief concern. Warehouses cost the most. You have a whole fucking building that doesn't make a cent but has to have utilities, property taxes (where applicable), maintenance, and so forth paid for. That being said, even having something in the back room instead of on the shelf is losing you money that you would be making in ~~a frictionless vacuum~~ an ideal system.

Also, no matter where it's being stored, paying for something before you can sell it costs money too. Time is literally money (see: interest rates) and by buying this thing (whatever it happens to be) before it will sell you lose that money and have to pay to store it.

At some point people realized that with the speed of modern communication, with advanced statistical modeling, and with other crap like that, they could reduce that cost.

The result has been decades of efforts to make sure that retailers have enough for normal demand and not a jot more. Well . . . that's not quite true. Empty shelves don't make people feel safe and secure and happy about a store, so the ideal towards which businesses have been working is to have exactly enough to keep the shelves filled, and not a bit more.

You can cut out entire warehouses, or at least sell them and replace them with smaller ones, you can reduce the time between paying for an item and selling it, and --in many cases-- you can even do a bit of remodeling to convert some of the back room storage space into additional store space which will increase your profits if you utilize it properly.

The goal, of course, is to have absolutely nothing in reserve, and have all the stuff on the shelves be bought that very day. That goal has not been reached yet, but impressive strides have been made in that general direction.

Profits have increased, prices haven't really gone down, and everybody's happy (at least everybody who matters.) Everything is perfect.

But, chris, you say, if there's only enough to meet demand, what will happen if demand increases?

Worry not, that problem was noticed long ago and a wonderful solution was found. That solution is very simple: ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

I jest. In fact it's more a "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs" thing.

If people are at home instead of outside (at work, shopping, watching a movie, going to a club, celebrating Saint Patrick's Day, what have you) then there will be a massive spike in demand for everything that they're used to getting elsewhere. This runs from food they might get at restaurants, to the toilet paper they would use in public (or work) restrooms. Since you never bothered to have reserve stock, you won't be able to meet that demand.

However, since all of your major competitors have been operating on the same damned model, they won't either. You're not losing your customers to other companies, so no real harm done. After all, selling all of your stock (which is what left you with empty shelves) means you're doing way better than usual. Profits are high. Everything is good.

What about old fashioned "mom and pop" stores who--

First off, most of them went out of business ages ago. Second, note how I said "major competitors"? Well, with all of them, and you, out of the same product, anyone who does keep supplies in reserve is going to find themselves overburdened regardless, and they'll run out soon too. There might be a brief spike in your customers going to them, but it'll die out pretty soon. By the time this is over your customers won't even remember that those guys had it in stock for longer than you.

Still, doesn't it . . . I don't know, look bad when I'm out of the stuff I'm supposed to not be out of?

In other circumstances, it kind of would. See the above thing about empty shelves being a turn off to consumers. That doesn't apply here, though. If everyone has empty shelves, then your shelves being empty doesn't reflect badly on you. You're judged in comparison to your competition, not the Platonic ideal of a compassionate company.

Ok but it's my job to provide this stuff, won't it reflect poorly upon me if I can't?

Not really. You can just blame the consumers. "Look at all of these people buying stuff they suddenly need three times as much of; aren't they stupid? They're the reason we ran out. Just blame them," you'll say.

But in times of crisis the government advises people to--

No one cares. No one ever blames a corporation for failing to provide what it promises. Moreover, you've missed the point.

The point, dear reader, is this:

Everyone knew from the beginning that this would cause stores to run out of essentials the moment something changed. No one cared. Why? Because it works. You save money constantly by not having to buy excess stock, and whenever the shelves run empty that just means you sold more than you expected. It's a windfall, not a problem.

After all, if you're the kind of person deciding on whether to make yourself somewhat richer or serve the average consumer in the times of heightened demand that you know will come from time to time, you're never going to run out any of that shit, now are you?

No one you care about suffers.

And that has been today's economic lesson. The empty shelves we're seeing now (and I was shopping today, I saw entire empty aisles in the best stocked store I visited) aren't a bug or a miscalculation. They're a predicted and acceptable (to those who made the decision) side effect of optimizing profit by reducing unused stock.

The system is working exactly how it was designed to work. This was always part of the plan. The flip-side of saving money by only buying the absolute minimum to fill your shelves has always been and will always be having those shelves empty when you underestimate that minimum because of unforeseen circumstances, which you know will inevitably arise from time to time.

Once upon a time people realized they could save money at the cost of having this happen every so often. They responded with an enthusiastic, "Worth it!" and they haven't changed their tune yet. No one with the power to change things is talking about going back to having more stock in reserve.

(Which is why I'm stuck in a house with three people and no toilet paper.)

[In response to someone offering sympathy for the parenthetical:]

It's not pleasant, but I'm actually somewhat more annoyed with myself for forgetting the economics behind the whole thing when it first started happening. Yeah, it definitely seems weird when all of the toilet paper is getting sold out, but when you remember that the businesses that are sold out have spent literal decades trying not to have any extra, it makes sense that a mild increase in demand (on a global scale) would have that result.

It's really easy to blame people who are, by and large, doing sensible things instead of the ones who are actually responsible, and I did it myself a few days ago.

-
- -
- - -
- -
-

The really short version:

All of this --every inventory shortfall, everything (no matter how necessary) that you can't get because the stores are out-- was foreseen. It was considered an acceptable cost to incur in order to reap the associated benefits (vis-à-vis savings during normal operations), and now that we're in the midst of it that hasn't changed in the least.

It's not a feature, per se, but it's definitely not a bug. That means no one is going to fix it, because in the eyes of those who set up the system, nothing is broken.

False Accusations and Mistaken Identities, Ch1: Every word you've ever said, every thing you've ever done, and every choice you've ever made has led to this moment

2020-03-18T17:14:00.000-04:00

Some notes and stuff:

On Sunday I wrote for five and a half hours straight. I don't know the last time that happened. This is the result.

I know that I say one shouldn't need prior knowledge of the source material a lot, but in this case it's especially true. This is the story of Sunset Shimmer beginning to [start of plot] so you don't need to know anything about her in advance because you're about to read who she is.

That's not to say that prior knowledge wouldn't help. It could prevent you from thinking things like, "Wait, what statue?" "I thought her name was Cadence, not Cadenza," "Why is this group called the 'Rainbooms'" or (right at the end) "Why does she know the names of these people she hasn't met before?"

It's just that the first three don't actually matter when it comes to understanding the story (nor do any other unexplained names, references, or objects), and the last one is a Chapter Two question, which will be answered therein. (If it ever gets written.

So, with that said, I hope someone actually reads this, and (if any do) I hope they enjoy it.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Sunset's earliest memories were vague. Fuzzy as fuck and hard to make out. The one constant within them was a feeling. She belonged. She was loved. She was part of a family. Anything beyond that was either lost entirely or corrupted and fragmented to the point of being meaningless.

She had no idea what her parents had looked like. No sense of what they sounded or smelled like. No physical sensations; just emotion. She also didn't have anything tangible to remind her of those days. Just memories that faded more and more with each passing moon.

Sometimes she thought that she'd imagined it all. That she'd always been alone, and family was just a pleasing fiction she'd invented to provide some comfort in her otherwise dreary life. Lie to yourself often enough, and it stops being a lie. It becomes something else, something stronger. Just as false as a lie, but without the knowledge of that falsehood. A delusion that, for you, has all the force of truth.

Other times she avoided thinking about it at all. The difference between then and now hurt too much.

But when she did think about it, when she did believe it . . . well, there was a time when she would have done anything to get that feeling back. Lie, cheat, steal? Of course. Dark magic? No problem. High treason? Absolutely. Other treason too, but who cared about that when it stood in the shadow of treason against the immortal ruler who could (and did) make the sun and moon move at her command?

Corrupting a magical artifact vital to the security of her homeland? Tartarus, she would have corrupted all six, but only one was in position to be easily stolen. Raising an army of innocent schoolchildren so they could be used as literal human shields to keep her from getting swarmed, which happened to be the only tactic to ever defeat said-artifact, long enough to use that artifact to take over Equestria? That was just her emergency backup plan for if she had hours instead of days with the Element. Plans A through G were more involved.

All that and so much more.

~ * ⁂ * ~

The moment Celestia adopted Cadence as a long lost niece, Sunset had become obsessed with becoming an alicorn because, if a Pegasus who sprouted a horn merited adoption, then surely a unicorn who sprouted wings would as well. Then the barrier between student and teacher could fall, and Celestia could be what Sunset had always wanted, but never had the courage to ask, her to be: Sunset's mother.

She devoted every waking moment to the project of sprouting those wings. If she could have, she'd have devoted even more time to it, but she'd never gotten the hang of lucid dreaming. When the mirror showed her wings, she thought she'd found the key. Instead she became the youngest pony to ever be banished from Canterlot Castle. Everypony else had waited till they were in double digits, Sunset had done it at nine and a half.

Celestia would have provided her with lodging, Sunset had no doubt, but they'd be even further apart. Sunset would be physically comfortable, but she wouldn't belong. She wanted to belong. She wanted, so very hard, to belong. It had been a split second decision. The mirror was in the castle, if she let herself be taken out of the castle she might never see it again, and the mirror had shown her wings.

If she went to the other world, got those wings, and came back . . . well then Celestia would have to adopt her, and Sunset could finally belong again.

The mirror had already been near the end of its active phase. For almost two days she'd considered going through anyway, but concluded that it wasn't worth the risk. Not until she knew more. Then her hoof had been forced. Jump through unprepared, or risk never going at all.

Adrenaline and desperation had been enough to get her through, but that couldn't last forever, and when everything crashed back down her resolve shattered. It didn't matter. There was no going back; the portal was closed.

~ * ⁂ * ~

She'd always known that ascension was no small task. It would take time. She'd been ready to commit thirty moons to study while she waited for the next active phase. She had been in it for the long haul. That did nothing to lessen the fact she was completely unprepared for thirty moons as a human.

Surrounded by strange creatures, in a body not her own, with no one to help her, and no magic to protect her, Sunset Shimmer was terrified and broken. Many nights she cried herself to sleep. Whenever possible, she only moved at night, slinking from shadow to shadow on mostly deserted streets.

Slowly, though, she remembered who she was. She was Sunset Shimmer. She hadn't always lived in a castle; she'd grown up on the streets. Princess Celestia had taken Sunset in after seeing her use advanced magic, far beyond what other ponies her age struggled with, to steal bits from a noble's enchanted saddlebag.

Without her magic Sunset had felt helpless, but it didn't take too long to realize that no one else had magic either. In a world of creatures who ate terrestrial meat, Sunset had felt horrified, but that just meant she could be assured of her moral superiority. She didn't have shelter? So what? No one was taking care of her? She didn't need anyone to.

And so she turned things around. She was Sunset Shimmer, she was unstoppable, and the human world would never know what hit it.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Begging could work well when one was a cute child and it could work even better when one was with a cute child; Sunset had known this. Her earliest clear memories were of going out with this or that adult pretending to be their foal in exchange for a cut of the earnings. Stealing took more work. Fingers were not magic. Learning guitar was her version of intensive self-directed physical therapy. Originally, actually, she'd played ukulele.

It had been surprisingly easy to get someone to teach her. Busking got you more money than begging, and therefore saying, "Help me feed my daughter who is playing her heart out for you right now," got better returns than, "Help me feed my daughter who is standing there looking cute and destitute." After all, she was cute and destitute either way.

None of those relationships involved any kind of belonging. It was business. They used her to increase their take, Sunset used them to get a take (without risking a run in with Child Protective.) Homelessness was neither abuse nor neglect, so as long as people thought she had a parent, she was safe. She had learned that in a public library, which was where she spent most of her non-working daylight hours.

At night . . . well, the humans threw out a lot of food. Dumpsters beckoned. Sunset answered the call.

That was life. That was life for a good long while. Sunset didn't just survive; she thrived.
It was never meant to be forever, though. After enough moons had passed, there was a sense of anticipation that grew and grew. By the 29th moon, she spent most of her days euphoric; she was going home.

Then she got sick. It was a disgusting thing. Her memories were of pain, snot, fever dreams, vomit, and waking experiences so disjointed and surreal that they blended with the dreams. Mostly snot.

The portal was open for three days. She'd been out of it for five. It had been all she could do to eat, drink, and move to a different corner of the room when she needed to relieve herself. She hadn't left the building. There was no going home.

~ * ⁂ * ~

When the sickness finally broke, she woke up surrounded by the scattered remains of her entire stockpile of food and drink. It hadn't been enough, not really. She felt like she was starving, and the dehydration hurt in that way only a distinct lack of water could. Stacking an undernourishment headache on top of a dehydration headache didn't make thinking the easiest thing in the world, and the lingering effects of the sickness itself didn't help either.

It took her a while to even remember that she should be thinking about the portal.

When she did, she ran outside, looked at the sky, and refused to accept what it told her. She sprinted to the portal, and pounded on it. She begged it to open between ragged gasps for air. The sprint had taken almost all of her energy; it wasn't long before she collapsed to the ground. She kept on pounding; she kept on begging.

The worst part wasn't even that she'd missed the opening. The worst part was that she'd missed it by less than an hour. Two at most.

She reached the point where she didn't have the energy to hit it anymore. She kept begging.
She said she was sorry. She begged to come home. She promised to be a good pony.

Exhaustion must have taken full hold of her at some point because Sunset's memory skipped from begging Princess Celestia to let her come home to being woken by predawn light. Her hands were bloodied, something she hadn't noticed before. So was the statue.

She was an eleven year old with no guardian who'd been sleeping in a public place.

She ran.

Her birthday was about a moon and a half away. All she had wanted for it was to be in Equestria. Anywhere in Equestria. Princess Celestia wasn't prone to sticking ponies in dungeons, but Sunset gladly would have occupied one if it meant she could be home. Magic in the air, horn on her head, an actual snout on her face . . . hooves. She had just wanted to go home.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Interdimensional portals don't respond to spoken pleas, and even Princess Celestia couldn't hear things said in one world from her place in another. Sunset had known that. In times of extreme emotion one does stupid things.

Once she'd put herself back together, once she'd gotten food in her belly and, more importantly, gotten hydrated, she had to face an unalterable fact: she was there. She was in the human world and that wouldn't change for a good many moons.

She was rapidly aging out of the status of "adorable waif" and moving towards "Unruly kids these days; always up to no good," and that meant she needed to change tack. She needed to exist as something other than another untouchable poor person to be avoided and ignored. She needed, in short, to be respectable.

So she still ate out of dumpsters, and she still picked pockets, but she stopped begging and busking because when she made her appearance in polite society one, "Aren't you the filthy girl who plays guitar in the park for spare change?" could ruin everything.

Inventing a life took time, but she was Sunset Shimmer. She could do anything. Human paperwork would come to fear her power.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Not a lot of people tried to fraudulently enroll in middle school, so her documentation for that wouldn't be subject to any great scrutiny, but the best times to slip into the school system unnoticed were the switch from elementary school to middle school, which she'd missed, and the switch from middle school to high school, which she wasn't quite ready for.

At those points there would be a sea of new faces, so her sudden appearance in the school system would go largely unnoticed. The only people who would know were those who needed to know, if such people even existed. Whether they existed or not depended a great deal on precisely how Sunset ultimately decided to sneak into the system. Regardless of how she did it, the switch from middle school to high school was definitely an opportunity worth waiting for.

So she took her time.

Even though she'd laid enough of the groundwork to enroll by the time the next school year started, she stayed out and worked on perfecting her human identity. She also studied at the library a great deal, because she didn't want anyone realizing she hadn't attended grades one through eight. She worked out the kinks, she perfected her mannerisms, she did many and varied illegal things involving records, identification, and other documentary evidence that a person, legally speaking, existed.

A year after she'd missed the portal, she felt her identity was well and truly ready, but she still had a summer vacation to wait out before she could go through with it. So she ingratiated herself with local kids her age. By the time she actually set foot in Canterlot High School, many of them were already looking forward to her company there.

School took up a lot of her time, obviously, but it wasn't nearly as much of a drain on her as she'd initially anticipated. While she had studied to make up for eight years grades of not being in the system, she learned that the more advanced forms of mathematics had a great deal in common with magical theory, as did several types of science. It came easily to her. Also, she'd apparently studied a bit too much in her attempt to catch up. She'd been aiming for "unremarkable", instead she was quickly switched into advanced classes.

With "unremarkable" off the table, she decided to actually try, and see what she could do. She excelled. She also felt something familiar. It wasn't belonging. (She'd almost forgotten about belonging.) It was more than being alone, though. It was like Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns: However pointless, she was a part of something.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Being part of CSGU had been pointless. She was the Princess' personal student, the others were nothing. Any time spent there was time that wasn't spent with the Princess herself. But no matter how aloof she'd been, it was impossible to miss that time spent there was time spent as part of a larger whole.

Things were different in high school. She wasn't so full of herself anymore. Everyone else was there because they hadn't foolishly run away, they hadn't thrown themselves through a stupid mirror, and they hadn't missed their one three day opening in thirty moons. That didn't mean she had a particularly lofty opinion of them, but her opinion of herself was low enough that she'd mix with the unwashed masses. She'd spent thirty moons excessively unwashed before deciding to give school a try, after all.

Because she was in advanced classes, Sunset had a fair amount of contact with upperclassmen, which apparently conferred a degree of "coolness" upon her with those in her own grade. Because Sunset was legitimately terrible at judging human ages and because Canterlot High School was adjoined to a middle school so closely that the vague and amorphous distinction between one and the other was largely ignored, Sunset had a fair amount of contact with younger kids, who thought she was "incredibly awesomely cool" simply because she was willing to speak to them as, more or less, equals.

She became popular without even trying.

She might have found belonging there, if she'd been willing to look. While she'd almost forgotten what it was like to belong, hearing other students talk about their families made her remember. She stifled the resentment she felt; it wasn't useful. She also reached a conclusion that was, at best, shaky and ill informed. She thought that one had to be home, which, to her, meant Equestria, to belong, and therefore she could never belong in the human world.

It made perfect sense at the time. Those hazy memories of the time she did belong --when she was loved-- took place in Equestria; failing to return to Equestria had emotionally crushed her; when the other kids talked about time spent with their families, it was usually time spent at home and always time spent in their own world.

So, for all that she was surrounded by people who liked her, she never let herself really connect. If she would be going back to Equestria, what was the point? She had friendly acquaintances, but not friends. The kind of people you could enjoy spending a year with, but wouldn't feel bad about never seeing again after that year ended.

The school provided a good place to crash; it was heated year round and uninhabited at night. Being so close to the portal was a nice bonus. So her new routine was born. During the school day she was a popular and promising student, outside of school hours and during off days she was spending time with classmates (she joined the fencing club), enjoying herself alone, or ironing out the few remaining wrinkles in her human identity, and at night she grabbed food from dumpsters then slept in the school.

She wouldn't be here for that long, but why not enjoy the wait?

That was how it went, and the time flew by.

~ * ⁂ * ~

This time she didn't miss the portal. She headed straight through ready to face whatever Celestia decided to do to her, come what may. The first surprise was that the portal had been moved to a more public, and thus more dangerous, place. It was in the throne room. Sunset guessed that Celestia hoped to intercept Sunset herself, which made the second surprise larger.

Canterlot Castle was abandoned.

When she ventured out into Canterlot proper, Sunset was able to piece together what had happened. As foretold long ago, Nightmare Moon returned. Celestia had the castle evacuated to avoid collateral damage when Nightmare Moon came for her. The cover story Celestia used was that everyone was being given the night and following morning off as a sort of special treat for the Thousandth Summer Sun Celebration; it didn't look like Celestia had actually told anyone that she knew Nightmare Moon would be coming back.

Given the lack of damage to the castle, Celestia had clearly tossed the fight. The reason why . . . Sunset had been broken before. She'd been broken several times, in fact. The reason why broke Sunset in a new and different way.

Celestia's faithful student had activated the Elements of Harmony in the Everfree then used them to defeat Nightmare Moon and restore Celestia, which had clearly been the plan all along.

When Sunset left Equestria, she was the only personal student Celestia had taken on in living memory. Sunset was special. Celestia saw something of value in her. Sunset wasn't just the street trash everypony saw when they looked at her, she mattered. Or so Sunset had thought.

Celestia had apparently replaced her so quickly that a mere sixty moons later that replacement was ready for field work. The replacement was ready to be sent into the field to battle against Eldritch foes.

How much training would it take for a pony to reach that point? Certainly more than thirty moons worth. Forty? Fifty? What if it were sixty?

After banishing Sunset, did Celestia get a replacement the same day, or did she wait a whole week out of respect for the departed?

Sunset fumed. Her replacement probably got everything Sunset ever wanted. She probably belonged since she was born and had living loving parents still. She probably belonged with Celestia, and received the love Sunset had been denied. Had she ever had to eat out of a dumpster? Had she ever had to rely on her wits to stay alive? Had she ever lived through anything Sunset had suffered?

For the first time, Sunset's yearning for belonging was fueled by pure, unadulterated rage.

The Elements of Harmony were in play? Fine. She'd use that. She knew things about the Elements that a faithful student, one who never went behind Celestia's back, would never learn.

She'd become an alicorn, she'd make Celestia acknowledge her as a daughter, she'd banish Cadenza to the farthest reaches, and most of all she'd deal with her replacement. She would take back everything that should have been hers. Everything that her replacement had.

She was Sunset Shimmer, she could do anything, and all of Equestria would quake in fear and beg for her forgiveness when she came back.

She slipped back into the castle and back through the portal. She had thirty moons to plan.

~ * ⁂ * ~

And so she planned. That, however, wasn't all she did, which was why those thirty moons were the part of her life that Sunset hated most.

Rage and a sense of entitlement only ever really worked if three things were true. First, you had to actually be entitled to whatever it was you felt you were entitled to. Second, the rage had to be justifiable. Third, you had to have enough control to direct that emotion in a way that actually brought you closer to your goal. For Sunset, none of those things were true.

Everyone around her noticed the change. The friendly acquaintances started to distance themselves. Bitterness infused every interaction Sunset had with anyone, and most people didn't consider that a particularly attractive trait for a conversational partner to have.

That was how it started, but it didn't stay that subtle and low key. There were the times she just went off. All of that rage had nowhere to go, the portal was closed again, but it had to go somewhere, so when an opportunity presented itself, it would be directed at whichever poor unfortunate soul had created that opportunity.

The popularity (and the attendant power) that had come naturally to Sunset started to slip away. She wouldn't have that. She had spent so long among these lesser beings that she'd forgotten who she was. What she was. She was above all of these dull creatures. She was someone who deserved to be a princess of Equestria and have powers the ignorant humans couldn't possibly comprehend.

While Sunset had starved, these people had been throwing perfectly good food in the trash. While she had shivered in the freezing cold lying on flattened cardboard boxes, not knowing if she would survive to see the next morning, they had been warm in their beds. When she had to beg or steal to be able to clothe herself, they'd decide that their, higher quality, clothes were out of style, toss them in the back of a closet, and leave them there to do no one any good.

She was better than them, but they had it better than her. Something was broken. It was time for change.

Any who dared to think themselves her equal were torn down and made example of. The students she vented her rage on were so terrified they'd give her anything she asked of them and, in some cases, would stuff themselves in lockers rather than face her when she was in a bad mood.

Those who threatened her power indirectly, and against whom she had no personal grudge, were treated more gently. She used manipulation to break their friendships and erode their power base, but they never knew her wrath and they never felt terror.

The administration saw none of this. To them she was a model student. The object of praise and validation.

One girl couldn't control an entire school, especially not in a way that was deniable, so she got underlings. She had to pick them carefully, lest they be able to turn her own tactics against her. Snips and Snails proved perfect. They had no real ambition beyond being associated with a high status individual, they were eager to please, and she had no fears of them deposing her.

Thirty moons of anger, of hate, of manipulation. Thirty moons of intimidation. Thirty moons of bullying. Thirty moons of becoming the kind of person who deserved to end up in a smoking crater.

Far and away, this was the part of Sunset's life that she hated the most.

It also made her feel downright stupid in retrospect. You can't force someone to love you; the entire premise was flawed.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Then came Princess Twilight Sparkle, the faithful student whose name Sunset had never bothered to learn, now sporting wings and a crown.The plan was off from the beginning. The mirror was supposed to be in Canterlot. That the Element of Magic was with the mirror in the Crystal Empire, which Sunset had thought was still in the midst of its existence failure, was pure luck. She tripped over the tail of a baby dragon, which Sunset thought was supposed to be in the care of older dragons, and the entire replacement idea went out the window.

Out the window, off a cliff, into a moat, and finally up in smoke. (The moat was filled with oil, obviously.)

She got the Element of Magic into the right world, but not in her possession. That's about when Sunset started coughing on the smoke that the replacement plan went up in. Without the replacement to compare it to, the human Celestia and Luna assumed that the Element was the replacement. Since said-replacement was the Fall Formal crown, which belonged to the school until handed out, and since it had obviously been stolen once already, they locked it up.

In her wisdom, Princess Twilight Sparkle decided to attempt to win the crown rather than return the actual Fall Formal crown, explain there had been a mix up, and get hers back in that way, which likely would have taken under an hour.

This was the part where clearing the field turned against Sunset. Running unopposed was nice; running with a single opponent was not. Instead of being divided between multiple other students, the not-Sunset vote was completely consolidated behind one not-student: Twilight Sparkle.

In point of fact, this was the part where everything turned against Sunset. If Sunset hadn't torn them apart, it would not have been possible for Twilight to reunite the future-Rainbooms, and without that they wouldn't be in Twilight's debt. Likewise, if she hadn't ordered Snips and Snails to trash the gym to frame Twilight, Twilight wouldn't have been able to unite the student body by cleaning up the gym.

Sunset laid the groundwork for her own defeat, and kept on building toward that defeat right up until she was hit by a rainbow, which rendered future construction irrelevant.

There isn't a word for the pain Sunset experienced inside that rainbow. Someone nails you to a cross and leaves you out die of exposure, over a period that can last up to three days, as a form of execution by torture? There's a word for that pain: excruciating.

To have all your sins remembered, to see them and not be able to turn away --not be able to blink-- to hear them and not be able to drown out the sound. To experience everything, the sum total of your life, and not be able to make excuses or rationalize or do anything but realize, bone deep, "This is me. This is who I am," is something for which there is no word. It's not even supposed to be possible.

But there was something else in there. Something that ached in an entirely different way. Sunset could almost see their faces. Sunset could almost hear their voices. When it came to the emotion, there was no "almost". Sunset remembered, in full, what it was like to be loved. What it was like to belong. Why she'd started this whole execrable ordeal. What she was further from than she'd ever been before.

And Sunset saw and felt all of the times that feeling had almost blossomed again, only to be crushed because it hadn't come in the form Sunset had wanted. All of the times that she could have belonged again that she threw away either because she was so focused on the idea that having wings was the way to get there, or because she was so furious with a pony that, back then, she'd never even met.

And she cried. She cried in a way that she hadn't in sixty moons, give or take several hours. She was an eleven year old, almost twelve, who had just missed the portal. She was a nine year old, who exiled herself to a strange world. She was the architect of her own suffering, and it hurt.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Then the world changed, and things got better. The portal was closed again. Another thirty moons. By the time it was scheduled to reopen again Sunset would have spent more time as a human than a unicorn. She didn't mind. Not this time.

She had work to do. She'd caused a lot of pain and done a lot of damage, and she knew she could never make up for it or fix it, but that was no excuse. She had to try.

No one liked her. The Rainbooms, though they weren't called that at first, tolerated her. She did whatever they told her. She cheered them on. She tried to learn the Magic of Friendship. She tried to help those she'd harmed. She tried to ignore the fact that, deserved or not, being the most hated person in school hurt.

The results she got were . . . less than ideal. While everyone was preparing posters for the musical showcase, she offered to help Rainbow Dash's biggest fan and the little sisters of Applejack and Rarity --the three students in the entire school, outside of the Rainbooms themselves, most likely to give her a chance-- she was not given a chance.

Her hopes of having new students get to know not-evil her before they heard about how she used to be were killed off pretty quickly when it turned out they were evil monsters from Equestria's past drawn in by the display of magic she had instigated. Her attempt at a warning failed; Luna thought she was trying to deflect unwanted attention and escape her past. Then she sent a message to her Celestia. Celestia didn't answer. Twilight did, though, and that went . . . well, it wasn't the worst thing ever.

Utter failure, a chance at success, and getting slapped right back down again was what it took for anyone to ask for Sunset's help.

That changed everything. For one thing, the Rainbooms started being her actual friends. She even joined the band. For another, even though no one forgot what she had done, people finally gave her a second chance.

~ * ⁂ * ~

And that's when Sunset started feeling it again. Looking back now, she wished she hadn't. She was a Rainboom. She was a friend. She was loved. She belonged. She wrote to Twilight, now her magical pen pal, that she felt like she was part of a family again.She had everything she'd ever wanted.

The Monday after she wrote that, her new family disowned her. Any illusions Sunset had about newfound emotional stability were shattered when all it took to leave her crying on the floor was a few harsh words.

So much for family.

Maybe it was poetic justice. Sunset had accused a lot of people of things they hadn't done. Only fair that she be brought down by being framed.

Her only lead evaporated when Trixie proved to be entirely innocent. All Sunset got out of that was the guilt of having made a false accusation herself.

Twilight said that Sunset had to find her family, and she'd tried. She tried. She went to the Rainbooms, a group that didn't include her anymore, and planned to let them know how much she cared about them in hopes that they'd remember how much they, she wanted to believe, cared about her.

She didn't get a word in.

Before she was through the door, Rainbow Dash shouted, "Hey! Get out!"

Applejack followed up with, "Yer not welcome here, Sunset."

Sunset gave up. She turned around, walked right back out the door, tried to hold her tears in while she stood there in the snow, and finally ran in a random direction when the tears came anyway.

~ * ⁂ * ~

What hurt the most was that, no matter what the others said now, it had been real. She had, at long last, belonged. She was loved, for however brief a time. Now it was over. And she didn't know if she could endure that. It had been one thing to be chasing after a half-remembered feeling from her childhood, this was something else entirely.

She'd had it, she'd lived it. Not in a memory that might not even be accurate; it was so, so recent this time. It had been, she thought, the new normal. Instead it was gone.

She couldn't go back to how she'd been before. She couldn't bear it. But she didn't know what she could do. So she ran.

She ran until she couldn't run any more. Then she walked. As the cold sank in and her energy drained away, her walking deteriorated. She'd stumble, or go crooked for a few steps, she even bumped into a "No Parking" sign once. She didn't care. She barely noticed.

She kept walking.

Then there was light and motion and noise. So much. Too much. Nothing touched her, but the disorientation dropped her. The snow was dirty; it stung against her face. She didn't feel like getting up.

~ * ⁂ * ~

There were sounds (doors maybe?) then voices.

"What the Hell were you thinking, walking--" Sunset didn't do anything to interrupt, she didn't know why the person stopped talking.

The silence was broken when a second voice said, "We didn't hit her, right? If we hit her, we would have felt it, and I didn't feel it, so we didn't hit her. Right?"

"We didn't hit her," the first voice said, "but that's entirely because of my driving instead of--"

"Not the time," a third voice said. Come to think of it, these voices sounded vaguely familiar.

Sunset was pulled off the ground, whoever did it turned her as they lifted, and the end result was almost like she was sitting.

"Are you ok?" the third voice asked. Sunset tried to look at the person talking, but her eyes stung and her vision was clouded by . . . tears? Snow? She didn't know which. All she saw was an indistinct blob. Sunset was being held by an indistinct blob with a familiar sounding voice.

As for the question . . . Sunset wasn't really prepared to answer that question. Not that week. Not that day. Not that hour. Certainly not that moment. Still, she tried.

"I'm alive," she said.

"Well obviously," the second voice said, Sunset looked in their direction, but what she saw was just another blob, "we can see that. Unless . . ." there was a gasp. "Are you a zombie‽"

It definitely wasn't Pinkie Pie's voice, but part of Sunset was crying out that she was dealing with Pinkie Pie as a result of that.

"You're the worst," the first voice said. Sunset didn't bother trying to look.

"No y--" the second voice said.

"Not the time!" the third voice shouted.

There were a couple murmurs of what might have been, "Sorry," from voices one and two.

"Look," the third voice said, "you're obviously not alright, and you shouldn't be out in this weather. Let us give you a ride home." Sunset didn't argue.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Sunset ended up in the backseat of a car with voice three on her left and voice two on her right. She closed her eyes and tried to will the world away. Voice two wasn't having that. Voice one was on the same page.

"Are you from Canterlot?" voice two asked.

"Of course she is," voice one said from the front seat. "This is Canterlot."

"Well, we're in Canterlot."

"I just said that!"

"And we're not from Canterlot."

The owner of voice one made an "ugh" sound. Voice three remained silent.

"So she could be like us," voice two continued. "Oh! Are you a second semester transfer to CHS like us?"

"You. Are. The. Worst," voice one said.

"No, you are!" voice two shouted back.

You'll have to excuse them, voice three said from Sunset's memories. They're idiots. Suddenly everything clicked.

Sunset opened her eyes, blinked the last water from them, and looked around. She saw exactly what she expected to see: Adagio Dazzle was on her left, long suffering look on her face, Sonata Dusk was pouting on Sunset's right, and Aria Blaze was driving.

This, Sunset realized, was going to go very, very badly.

~ * ~

~ * ⁂ * ~

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

As noted, this came from writing for five and a half hours straight, which is not a common occurrence. It also came from another place.

Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk are the villains of the second Equestria Girls movie. They're originally from Equestria (pony-world) but were banished to the human world a long time ago. (The reasoning was basically, "The lack of magic in that world will probably neutralize them as a thread, and if it doesn't . . . who cares? It's not our world.) The in fandom three of them are collectively known as "The Dazzlings", as that was their band name.

The human and pony worlds are the sort of parallel world pair where individuals from one world have pseudo-identical counterparts in the other. (Once you adjust for species, which the trip from one world to the other does on its own, and fashion sense, if there's any difference, an individual and their counterpart are virtually indistinguishable.)

Since the Dazzlings are originally from pony-world, if they have counterparts those counterparts would be ordinary humans in the human world.

So, a while back, someone wrote a story in which the human counterparts of the Dazzlings transfer into CHS, the high school in which Equestria Girls is set, and that works out about as well as you'd expect.

Someone I know on Discord said this about that story:

Holy haybiscuits, you guys all need to read this story. It's everything you'd wish from an Anon-a-miss story, but with the Dazzlings and it's just an absolutely amazing read so far.

Anon-a-Miss stories are those based off of (usually theoretically better versions of) The Equestria Girls Holiday Special. I've got eleventy billion of them.* The core of the plot is that Sunset Shimmer is framed for leaking embarrassing secrets online (which would have been a huge breach of trust if true) and is denounced and abandoned by her friends. (Because her friends did this in a public place, and because of Sunset's less than stellar history, she ends up with, more or less, the entire school against her.)

It's pretty easy to see the connection between that and the concept with the human counterparts of the Dazzlings. Everyone blames Sunset for something she didn't do because she was framed. Everyone blames human-Dazzlings for something they didn't do because their exact doppelgangers did do it.

Much more recently, someone (unknowingly) suggested crossing those two streams. Their suggestion was very short, and boiled down to Sunset linking up with the human counterparts of the Dazzlings during Anon-a-Miss. There wasn't any detail beyond that, but I was thinking about all of the above as soon as I read the description.

After three hours of it marinating in my head, I wrote this.

~ ~ ~

I meant what I said at the start about not needing to know things. Sunset's feelings are what matter in this chapter, not the details of who and what and where. That said, if anyone wants to know more . . .

Princess Celestia is the immortal ruler of Equestria and has taken on two personal students that we know of in canon. The first was Sunset Shimmer, and I've given you an in depth story on that. The second was Twilight Sparkle, and the entire of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is about that.

Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, who prefers to be called Cadence (technically "Cadance" but that's just a way to keep the search results focused on her instead of cadences, and nothing more, so I spell it with one "a") was a Pegasus who grew a horn after doing impressive stuff and was adopted by Celestia as a niece.

According to a deuterocanonical comic, Sunset Shimmer had a vision of herself with wings (and still having a horn) in the magic mirror that happens to be the pony-side of the portal between worlds. She became obsessed with it, and things did not go well. The human side of the portal is one side of a presumably marble pedestal for a horse statue that stands in front of Canterlot High School (their sports teams are named "Wondercolts".) Under regular conditions it only opens for one three day period every thirty moons.

Given that it's the position of the moon among the stars I've calculated that time using sidereal moons instead of the much more common and traditional synodic month. (I did the same thing in the only other recent story here.) It only occurred to me after doing all of that math that I was missing something obvious. The most reasonable way to combine "When people say 'moons', they mean 'synodic moons'" and "the position with respect to the stars matters" is to have an approximate calculation based on thirty synodic moons and then refine it to an exact date using sidereal moons.

So either 32 sidereal moons (which is less than thirty synodic moons) or 33 sidereal moons (which is more than 30 synodic moons.) Instead I did 30, so . . . yeah.

I said "under regular conditions" when talking about how the portal opened. In the second movie Princess Twilight Sparkle built a machine that piggybacked the portal's operations off of a signal linking two magical books. Anything written in one appeared in the other and Sunset and Princess Celestia used them for communication before their falling out. With one book in each world, the magic connecting them provided a way to open a portal even when the two worlds weren't in their easily navigated "three days every thirty moons" alignment.

As such, by the time of this story it's possible to travel between worlds at well.

"The Rainbooms" are a band that, at the present tense of this story, includes: Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Applejack. These five also happen to be Sunset's former friends. With the exception of certain bits of very meta fandom shorthand, "the Rainbooms" is the most concise way to refer to this group.

Human Celestia and Luna are the principal and vice principal of Canterlot High School respectively. Pony Celestia and Luna are the rulers of Equestria who move the sun and moon respectively, but when Sunset left Equestria Luna had allowed her resentment to transform her into Nightmare Moon and had been banished to the moon. In Luna's absence, Celestia controlled both the sun and moon.

The worlds, and emphasis, attributed to Rainbow Dash and Applejack in this come directly from the source material. In the Holiday Special comic Sunset convinced them to listen to her. In this . . . well, you read it (presumably.)

That may or may not cover all of the things that make more sense with knowledge of the source material.

~ ~ ~

* In Latin, that feeling when you realize that the novels you've been reading are secretly non-fiction memoirs, staying closer to source material, when Sunset Shimmer's human counterpart comes to town, a sequel to someone else's story, and many, many more that haven't been posted here.)

Comment Dump of updates posted elsewhere, because I haven't finished the recap plus update that was supposed to be posted here

2020-03-14T17:17:00.001-04:00

First, here's the last thing posted here to talk about the state of things:

Comment Dump: The past month and a week and a day

That that was also a comment dump probably says something about where I am when it comes to actually writing things.

(Bear in mind that what follows involves stuff taken from three different places. There is plenty of duplication herein.)

Wondrously Hyperlinked Table of Contents:

February 15th -- Disqus Comment (things done that week)
February 16th -- Disqus Comment (games and hopes)
February 20th -- Disqus Comment (plumbing and problems with it)
February 25th -- On a Discord Server ("cleaning" begins)
February 28th -- Disqus Comment (things done that week)
February 28th -- Fimfiction Blog Post (mental health, story progress)
February 28th -- On a Discord Server (stuff that doesn't belong in stoves)
February 29th -- On a Discord Server (progress toward plumbing fix)
February 29th -- On a Discord Server (cookies, expectations)
March 1st -- On a Discord Server (plumbing, cash, communication)
March 2nd -- Patreon Post (Recap, needing to dig stuff out of trash, so on)
March 5th -- On a Discord Server (photos in the trash, my dead uncle)
March 5th -- On a Discord Server (back from the wake, open caskets, memory)
March 6th -- Disqus Comment (why there's a dog, dealing with the ongoing "cleaning")
March 7th -- On a Discord Server (spreading misery never helps)
March 13th -- On a Discord Server (how people prepare for pandemics)
March 13th -- On a Discord Server (rain, proper packing of trash)
March 13th -- Disqus Comment (rain, attempting to rescue stuff, general state of things)

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February 15th (↑) -- Disqus Comment. Link to original context.

I collected the comments I made in open threads here about how I've been doing and what's been going on into a post at Stealing Commas.

I made a post to answer the question of if there's anything people can do to help me. I wish it didn't boil down to "Here are multiple ways you can spend money." Unfortunately, that's the state of things. I need to deal with serious financial problems, and I need fiction to serve as both escape and inspiration, and the only fiction that's working for me right now is not even close to free.

I also need calories, but I feel like telling people on the internet "You could have pizza delivered to me"* is courting logistical catastrophe.

* Delivery is great when you lack the energy to do much of anything, and the Portland Pie Company makes fantastic pizza.

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February 16th (↑) -- Disqus Comment. Link to original context.

As noted somewhere or other, primary computer is working again.

If I can pull myself together enough to make the attempt, I might go back to the "Maybe I could do let's plays" idea I was considering before primary computer stopped working. The idea being that I'd really like to be producing something (I feel so very useless and worthless when I'm not) and taking a break from myself and the real world by playing games is something that I'm doing anyway, since it makes life bearable.

Whether or not I manage to do that, I am at least able to play games again.

Yesterday I reinstalled and played a game called AER: Memories of Old it's really good. In particular, the flying is . . . it's probably not perfect, because nothing ever is, but it's good enough that I can't see any way to improve upon it. It's exactly what you want from the bird side of a game where you can turn into a bird.

I spent a good long while yesterday just flying. I did save the world at some point (because: why not?) but I spent significantly more flying for flying's sake. Zipping through trees, skimming along clouds, occasionally going through waterfalls or holes in the floating islands.

So, yeah, I totally recommend that.

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February 20th (↑) -- Disqus Comment. Link to original context.

[I've never heard anyone ask for a plumbing content note, but given that we're talking about shit here, I figured people might want a warning. This is that warning.]

There's a plumbing problem in my house. It's almost certainly a clog caused by the fact that, when toilet paper ran out, my housemate used paper towels. This is nothing against my housemate, by the way, I didn't know either.

It's kind of obvious in retrospect: paper towels are made so you can clean up, sometimes with scrubbing, things that are wet. That is to say, they are specifically designed to not dissolve in water. Toilet paper is designed to dissolve in water, and plumbing systems rely upon that fact. Substituting paper towels for toilet paper might work once or twice (though I wouldn't recommend testing that, because it also might not) but done at any length it will result in disaster.

There already was a problem because of that. I managed to fix it (it was not fun) but my current theory is that while I fixed the immediate problem, I didn't get everything out. I mean, I was fishing stuff out with an unwrapped coat hanger, not any kind of plumbing tool, so it's pretty reasonable to assume my results weren't perfect.

Pause to note something. First, I actually have asthma, but it's minor exercise induced asthma. So when I talk about not being able to breathe, unless it's something that happened during or immediately after exertion, it's not a matter of asthma.

That wasn't the thing to note, I just wanted to have that disclaimer before I noted the something in question. My breathing is less than ideal when confronted with smells or fumes of a certain character. It feels like the two are linked, but I couldn't go into any great detail about the feeling.

For fumes it tends to be at a far lower level. The reason I stay in the car at a gas station is to avoid discomfort (sometimes silent, sometimes involving lots of coughing) for sufficiently large smells, it's on another level. (This feels like a difference of degree rather than quality, as noted.)

Certain types of shit, certain types of rot, and (possibly) urine produce the strongest reaction. It's kind of like a gag reflex, but at the same very much not like a gag reflex. I lack the words (or perhaps the points of reference) to describe it properly. The smell hits me and I can't breathe. I've never tested how long the inability to breathe lasts for. I remove myself from the smell, breathe, and (if necessary) return and repeat.

So, for example, when it falls on me to change diapers, I have to do it in stages.

Fishing paper towels out of your sewer pipe smells a lot like changing diapers, but there's no cute child, and there's no readily apparent limit. One knows that it can't go on forever, but until you actually reach the point where you're not finding more, there's no end in sight.

So, like I said, fixing the original problem was not a pleasant process. Definitely not something I had any desire to repeat.

My best guess on what happened is that, while I got a lot of stuff out (and things flowed properly again), I didn't get everything, and what remained eventually collected together to form a new clog. I don't know whether or not that's true, but it's my best guess.

Originally I was going to try to fix the current problem myself, but two things happened. One is that I couldn't bring myself to even start the attempt. Why? See above. I may not have known what would be involved in full, but I know the smell and how my body reacts to it. The other is that if I'm right about what happened, the present problem is because I wasn't thorough enough the first time; who's to say that I would be this time?

So I got a professional, which wasn't easy because severe depression does not, for me, mix well with phones.

Professional came today, professional did what he could, turns out the current clog is in a bad place. It's outside the house. I was afraid that might be the case. It's far enough outside the house that special tools need to be used. Even though the clog is almost certainly composed of paper towels, we're talking the kinds of tools they'd use for if a tree were growing through the pipe.

(I'm not actually sure if this is because such tools are the only ones he has that are that long, company policy, or some regulation or other. Just that the guy either can't do it, or isn't allowed to do it, without breaking out those tools.)

This in itself isn't a terribly big problem. The guy showed up in a big company truck that had those tools and doubtless many more. The problem is that the sewer / main drain pipe,* by a combination of design and necessity, is in the least well traveled corner of the basement. The basement that is used for storage.

While the space available is more than enough to fix most potential plumbing problems, the equipment needed to fix this one needs more space than currently available. (And it also needs to get there.) Again: the least well traveled corner of a basement being used, primarily, for storage.

So, in closing, fuck.

* I'm not sure which is the correct terminology, but I've definitely heard both. "Sewer" because it's the one and only pipe in the house that connects to the sewer, "main drain" because it's what all the other drain pipes drain into.

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February 25th (↑) -- On a Discord Server

Not eating enough finally caught up to me. I can barely hold my head up, I doubt I could stand for long. Sitting on the couch, trying to keep my eyes open, but it isn't a "sleepy" kind of tired. I just don't have any energy.

Yesterday my sister's sorta-boyfriend came to help clear the space the plumber needs to work in the basement.

He and housemate, who was my sister's friend before my sister turned on her and became outrageously emotionally abusive, are currently cleaning my kitchen, which is not in the basement.

The only reason housemate is my housemate is that she had literally no place else to go, and the choice of "become homeless or keep getting abused" wasn't fair, so I offered my home. I don't like having other people in my house, but housemate kept to herself so it was ok.

If I had the energy (and I managed to cope with dealing with people) I'd be in the kitchen, and almost certainly telling them not to fucking do half of the things they're doing. I can hear them talking and working (and maybe I'm misinterpreting, but), it definitely sounds like why I don't ever accept offers of help cleaning: no one ever does what the fuck you tell them.

They do what they think is best for you. They do what's easy or obvious. They operate on a combination of, "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission," and, "She thinks she doesn't want this, but she'll thank me in the end."

Don't get me wrong, I'd love for my kitchen to be clean, and it will be, but either my future is going to involve digging through fucking garbage bags (which will, of course, be mostly filled with actual garbage) or I'm going to lose stuff I don't want to lose.

If people could be trusted to just do what I ask them to do, my house would have been cleaned ages ago because I wouldn't be constantly turning away help. With my depression how it is, though, its possible that I never would have gotten it done anyway. It's been three years since things got bad, two since things got worse, and . . . I don't know, eight or nine months since things got even worse than that.

So, anyway, that's going on. On the one hand, nice people are being helpful. On the other hand, it's incredibly stressful.

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February 28th (↑) -- Disqus Comment. Link to original context.

I wrote a thing. Said thing being a conversation (and accompanying thoughts) in the Equestria Girls 'verse that touches on moons as a unit of measure (in light of the difference between a sidereal month and a synodic month), the smell of old books, probability, question begging, and hastily made cover stories for other dimensional duplicates.

I posted three things at Patreon, but if you can read them you probably already got automatic email notifications. Still, here's a list.

First we had my proposed remake of the game The Last of Us (now with 100% less killing off of teenage lesbians.)

Second is something that's free to everyone, but that's mostly because it's been freely available at other places for positively ages. It's the first chapter of an Equestria Girls story called Fractured Friendship. I mostly posted it so that there would be on-Patreon context for the last thing.

Finally there was a fragment of Fractured Friendship that will eventually be the beginning of Chapter 2. Not sure when exactly that will happen, since I've been trying to write the rest of chapter two for a very long time and had no progress.

The three things at Patreon are old things I dug up rather than any kind of recent writing.

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Februrary 28th -- Fimfiction Blog Post. Link to original context.

Still Alive (and an update on where various stories stand)

Figured that I'd check in. Things are bad. Things have always been bad. Things had already been notably bad for six months before I became a member here. They've only gotten worse since then.

At this point the best I can say about where I'm at is, "I'm not suicidal yet," which isn't nearly as positive as it sounds because in days gone by I would have never imagined it might be necessary to tack a "yet" onto the end of the sentence, and now I feel it is.

Here's a rundown of where my stories stand:

Fractured Friendship
⊙ 971 words have been written for Chapter 2
⊙ ~~11,727~~ 18,010 words have been written for later chapters
᠎ ᠎ ᠎ ᠎ (That figure is inflated because some are redundant while others are superfluous.)

A New Path Forward
⊙ 0 words have been written for Chapter 3
⊙ 1,702 words have been written for Chapter 5
⊙ 287 words of bare dialogue have been written for a yet to be determined later chapter
⊙ 813 words from a different yet to be determined chapter have been written

From the Ashes
⊙ 104 words have been written for Chapter 1. (The only published chapter is the prologue.)
⊙ 1,389 words have been written for Chapter 2 or 3 (won't be sure which until I get there.)
⊙ 5,760 words have been written for another chapter, I know not which.
⊙ 526 words have been written that likely belong in one or both of the previously mentioned chapters.

Down the Memory Hole
⊙ 0 words have been written for Chapter 2.
⊙ 331 words have been written for a later installment. (Late enough to be circa the climax)

Those are the in progress stories that have words actually written instead of just plans in my head.

Stories I'm not actually writing (including eleventy billion alternate Anon-a-Miss ideas)
⊙ 45,992 words have been written.

- - - - - ❋ ❋ ❋ - - - - -

Let's close with a random snippet from the story I didn't actually end up writing for the second Imposing Sovereigns contest:

“Equestria was almost conquered, twice, by a creature whose sole power was the ability to steal magic.”

“Ok, but Equestria is almost conquered all the time,” Sci-Twi said. “After the first eight times, it stops sounding impressive.”

“Your incredibly rude and tasteless point is well made,” Celestia said.

“Thank you.”

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February 28th (↑) -- On a Discord Server

I should be asleep, but I decided that eating was important and set out to make myself a pizza.

It never occurred to me to check to see if someone might have placed meltable plastic in my oven. It never occurred to me to check to see if someone had placed stuff that doesn't belong in an oven in my oven in general.

Through the beauty of preheating I have destroyed one or more things, I know not what. In the morning, when said things have had a chance to cool down, I shall inspect the damage. No pizza tonight.

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February 29th (↑) -- On a Discord Server

So, on the one hand, real progress toward getting plumbing fixed. Space needed for plumber to work has been cleared, then need to clear the way to get there (because, to avoid stairs, it's via a door I literally nailed shut last winter), then work is done and plumber comes tomorrow morning.

That's good. Especially if it makes people stop "helpfully" cleaning my house.

On the other hand, I'm drenched in sweat and I can't take a shower or wash clothes until the plumbing is actually fixed. When the work is done, I'll change into less dirty clothes, but that's not remotely the same as being clean.

As a complete aside, I've been having nausea for this whole ordeal. It seems to be a result of not doing much in the way of eating.

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February 29th (↑) -- On a Discord Server

Yesterday I got a massive thing of cookies. They're a great thing to eat when (because you haven't been eating) you don't have the energy to eat much of anything.

In entirely unrelated news, yesterday I published a blog post the gist of which was:

Things have gotten so bad that the only good thing I can say is, "I'm not suicidal yet."

Also, here's a status update (with exact word counts) for every one of my stories that has progress beyond what's published.

Only response:

I'm still waiting for some chapters for Fractured Friendship.

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March 1st (↑) -- On a Discord Server

So, I got help setting up the thing with the plumber because I can't do phones right now. Would have been nice if the person helping had told me that the plumber in question was cash or check only before we set up to have the guy come here on a day when the banks are closed. (Also, the first of the month isn't the best time for cash.)

As such, I'm sitting here hoping that enough of my patreon income is processed in time, so I can send it to paypal (which is thankfully instantaneous) and then run across the street to get that money out of an ATM.

Fun.

I just took a shower. Being clean is wonderful.

Any idea what that fee is lookin like?
(wait can i even ask that sry)

Yes, you can ask. It ended up being $190 and my dad was able to come over with cash. (Which is good, because Patreon processing is still at $85 and change.)

hoh damn, I'm glad the dad came through
Because that was a shituation right there

In more ways than one. I'm convinced that human shit is the worst smelling shit in the world. (Chickens try really hard for the title, though.)

And, yeah, if I'd known I needed cash I wouldn't have had the plumber come on a day when banks are closed and my online income was being processed. If I could have gone to the bank, I could have gotten the cash. By this time tomorrow my patreon income will be processed and that (once I transfer it to Paypal, which, again, is instant) can be gotten from an ATM, no bank needed.

The communications breakdown was actually fairly simple, I would have assumed I needed to pay in cash, except the previous plumber (who flaked out on finishing the job) took credit and I expected the person helping me to inform me of any major differences for non-flaky plumber, needing to be paid in a different way being a major difference. Person helping me saw the situation as "Not taking credit is the default option, so it goes without saying."

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March 2nd (↑) -- Patreon Post Link to original context.

How we got to the point that I need to put scare quotes around "helpful" and "cleaning", and what it's like now that we're here

I'm going to stick this one inside a collapsible.

[Contains: plumbing problems, feeling helpless in one's one home because people are "helping", flashlights, glassware, stuff, things, things and stuff, and dead plants.]

A while ago, early November maybe, I went up to help my sister for, I think, a weekend. It was definitely three days. The plan was to arrive on one day, work on what needed doing until it was time to sleep, spend the whole next day working, and then work until my mom arrived to take me home on the third day.

No work got done.

On the ride up my sister told me about how she wanted her then-housemate gone but didn't have the heart to throw her out because, as she had nowhere else to go, that would make her homeless. Even though housemate tried to stay out of sight, my sister spent the first day too preoccupied with housemate do do anything. That night I thought I was going to have to do a lot of awkward and uncomfortable work to fix things.

Before I got out of bed the next morning, my sister told me, at great length, how horrible housemate was. (Housemate woke up to this.) It was pretty clear pretty fast that things couldn't be fixed. My sister spent the day yelling at housemate and threatening to throw her out right that second. Housemate spent most of the day crying in her room. She called everyone she could think of and asked them to come and give her a ride away. No one was simultaneously willing and able.

To be clear, she was only asking for a ride from these people. There was no other home she was trying to get a ride to. The plan was to be homeless in Portland, because she knew (from experience) that she could survive being homeless in Portland, and the same couldn't be said of being homeless in the less populated area where my sister lives.

I offered housemate two things. One was a ride out of there when my mom came the day after. The other was an empty room at my house. The hardest part was convincing my sister to just fucking wait until the next day, instead of kicking housemate out right then.

The third day was completely different. My sister tried to convince both of use to stay for two more days and actually get some work done.

First off, the reason that work hadn't been done on days one and two was that my sister wouldn't stop going on about how horrible housemate was and how she couldn't endure another minute of having housemate in the house, which left no time to do actual work.

Second, she'd been trying to get rid of housemate this whole time and it was a constant struggle just to get her to wait until day three because another night (or indeed another hour) was, apparently, too much time spent with housemate in the house. Now she was asking for two more days and nights because . . . bwah?

As you might imagine, we got the fuck out of there.

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For the record, I am in no way saying that housemate was not at fault in the relationship. I wasn't there, I don't know what the fuck led to that point. Housemate is obsessive about my sister, and she makes no secret of the fact that the love she feels for my sister isn't exactly the chaste familial kind. (My sister loves her back, but it is the familial kind. It's the same type of love our father had for the two of us when we were kids: tainted fucked up love.)

I legitimately have no idea if the things my sister said about housemate were true or not. I just know that when I was there it was completely one sided with a clear victim.

Anyway, now housemate is my housemate which worked out to be far less disruptive than I expected on a day to day basis.

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Fast forward to late November and my sister's truck runs her over. This is, naturally, a "Drop everything and help out" situation. Housemate tried to do the same --they'd managed to work together one time since housemate had come to live with me and my sister did request her presence-- but that worked out not in the least. So housemate went back to my house while I was at my sister's and at the hospital. House ran out of toilet paper; housemate used paper towels. Don't ever do that.

In retrospect the problem is kind of obvious: toilet paper is made to come apart in water, paper towels are made to hold together when wet (so one can scrub.) That being said, I could easily have made the same mistake if I'd been at home, run out, and my depression had been too severe for me to make a trip to the store.

Anyway: bad idea; don't ever do that.

I was the one to notice there was a problem, figure out what it was, and try to solve it.

Fishing paper towels out of a sewer pipe with a tool you've improvised from a wire coat hanger is not fun. I had at least one involuntary gag reflex per attempt. There were a lot of attempts (usually successful) because the paper towels seemed to go on without end.

I went back up to help my sister before I finished and was informed that the job had been completed by a family member in my absence.

While the immediate problem might have been solved, the job had not, in fact, been completed. There were still paper towels in the system, and they collected to form a new clog further down the line. Far enough down the line that it was outside the house (but not so far as to become the city's problem.)

This wasn't noticed immediately because some previous plumber had broken a clean out cap. They'd twisted the fitting right off, leaving a hole in the middle. I have no idea how long ago that might have happened. Years for sure. A decade? maybe. Decades plural? Could be.

There had never been a problem that interacted with that hole. Now there was. In what was, arguably, the most remote corner of the basement. For a while I could tell that something was wrong, but I couldn't tell what or where. It wasn't until I was downstairs when the washing machine was draining and could hear the water coming out through the hole in the cleanout plug that I figured out what was wrong.

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At this point it's probably important to mention that my depression was making it basically impossible to make phone calls. Eventually we did get a plumber to come, he determined that the problem was far enough in (more than six feet) that he'd need to use a tool that took more space than was available, and he said he'd have a quote for the rest of the job when we called up to tell him we'd cleared the space.

We never got that quote.

Housemate thought we'd need help, getting the help took several days. One too many days for the plumber, who retroactively decided that he considered the conditions unsafe and was afraid to come back. That deserves some attention.

I didn't think to ask the plumber "How much space do you need?" when he was there, because sometimes absurdly obvious things go right over my head. So when we'd imported the helper housemate thought we'd need to clear the space, we were suddenly faced with the fact we didn't know actually know what that space was.

So we called the plumber, or rather the company he worked for, to ask. This was actually the day after imported helper arrived, because the day of arrival wasn't a particularly good day for any of us, so we decided to rest, recover, and then get to work the next morning. At that point we discovered that the plumber had told his boss, the previous day, that he wasn't coming back here.

That means that he came here, determined that the problem (in spite of just being paper towels) required big honking equipment (so, again, don't ever let paper towels go down the drain), told me to call him back when we'd cleared space for it, spent several days ready and willing to return to my house, and then, after several days of considering the house a safe working environment, decided, sight unseen, that it had somehow mutated into an unsafe one.

Now, it turns out that when a plumber in that company decides they're not going back to a house, the company stops sharing information like "It's best to have an eight foot by eight foot area cleared when using the thingamajig in question" or, "Here's how much the job would have cost."

So the operator couldn't give us any of the answers that had been sitting around ready to be relayed until the plumber got cold feet and changed his mind the day before we called. She could, however, say to the plumber, "They're literally asking you what conditions you want and offering to provide exactly what you ask for, no matter what that may happen to be, so could you at least tell them what it would take for you to do the job?"

This left us in a weird situation. We didn't know what we had to do to make the plumbing possible and we also didn't know if we should call a different plumber. We did have three people to do the work.

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In the end it turned out that we didn't need three people to do the work of clearing the area. Imported helper and I were able to clear it, tons of extra space, and several adjacent spaces in one day (during which housemate was in a depressive slump that prevented her from helping.) We did this after getting a new and different plumber who was willing to tell us what he needed in order to do his job.

Here's the thing, though. The day after arriving, imported helper started to clean the kitchen, which is not in the basement and had no bearing on the plumber (the equipment needed was less than ideal for going down stairs, so the plumber entered through the back door and never needed to visit the ground floor.) Several days were taken on that, and other things, before we even called the new and different plumber who actually did plumbing.

On the first day, not eating caught up to me and I could barely hold my head up. I spent the whole day sitting on the couch because a lack of calories meant I didn't have enough energy to do much of anything else. That meant that I was stuck sitting there listening while housemate and imported helper cleaned the kitchen which sounded like breaking glass and ceramic and would have been stressful anyway because I wasn't there to separate the good stuff from the trash.

I had food delivered and ingested sufficient calories that night, in the following days I was more able to do stuff. That said, the clanging of pots and pans (remember: kitchen) proved to be too much for me, and I had to give up on helping one day because of that. Too much noise; had to hide.

The lack of eating nausea didn't go away nearly as easily as the lack of energy from the lack of calories. That limited my involvement too. Just the fact there were two of them left me feeling outnumbered. With the exception of the day that depression had housemate too out of it to engage, both housemate and imported helper have way more energy than I do.

It's not quite that I feel unsafe; I know that neither of these people would intentionally hurt me. That said, outnumbered, out powered, and not remotely in control. Especially since, whether I'm able to help or not, they could ask me things, and they don't. They just do what they think is best.

People cleaning my house for me without needing any effort on my part sounds nice in overly simplistic theory. The thing is, I don't trust them. It's not that I expect them to steal things or anything like that. They are generally nice and trustworthy people. I just don't trust them to do the job properly.

They say the right things, but the results speak differently.

The rooms they've cleaned are clean. There's no doubt about that. They're also empty. Desolate. It isn't hard to see why.

It's easy to clean the threshing floor when you don't separate the wheat from the chaff. Just throw out everything, and you're done. It's so very quick and simple. Sure, you don't have any actual grain at the end of it, but it's not like that matters, right?

I had a sense from the start that, "We're cleaning!" actually meant, "You're going to have to dig through a bunch of trash bags one by one to pull things out." I've been assured that, because they understand and respect that it's not their house, that won't be the case and they're leaving everything for me to go through at leisure. Only things that are very definitely undeniably obviously trash are being sorted as trash.

I was given this assurance without ever needing to state my misgivings, by the way.

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One of the bags of "Yup, only trash here," burst some days ago, and they haven't gotten around to picking it up yet. (Fun.) I had a look through it today. Laid out on the ground I did indeed find some trash. Also a lot of my silverware. Canned food. (All of my fucking peaches.) A flashlight.

My depression has been so bad that I haven't watered plants like I should. Many have died. I am not proud of this. I do have a question, though. Who throws out the vase because the plant in it has died?

Apparently the answer to that is "Housemate and/or imported helper."

The plug for the kitchen sink. Several glass cups, not a chip on them. (Impressive given that they were thrown in a bag with metal cans, metal silverware, and so forth, carried in it, and then fell on a paved driveway when that bag broke.) Neon green frosting, unopened.* Flash cards for Ancient Greek, somehow dry and pristine (in spite of being left outside in the wetness of late winter since the bag burst) and still bound by elastic into one easy to cycle through thematic group. My tuna strainer (and its concentric extension for times when you get an oversized can.) Pliers.

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Let's pause for a moment on those pliers. They were lost. Part of cleaning is finding lost things. You find your lost pliers and you don't need to waste money on new pliers when you have perfectly good pliers already. That, of course, only works if you don't throw the fucking pliers out.

Not everything was lost. I knew where the canned food was, and the only thing needed to use it was having the will. (And a can opener, but that's nailed to the fucking wall, well . . . to the copulating cabinet.) The plug to the kitchen sink probably could have used some cleaning and both the silverware and the cups definitely needed cleaning, but I knew where all of these things were.

The tuna strainer I'm not sure about. Once upon a time we did lose one and ended up buying a new one. This was long enough ago that "we" meant my mom and I. I have yet to come across a situation where I needed two, so I've been pretty laissez-faire** when it comes to keeping track of the second one (whichever that happens to be) when I've got a firm grasp on where the one I'm using is. The one that got thrown out might have been the one I wasn't keeping track of, it might have been the one I was. There's a decent chance I'll never know.

The neon green frosting I could have located (probably, we'll never know for sure now) in spite of not knowing precisely where it was. The kitchen has, or rather: had a general "cake stuff" area.

The flashlight, the flash cards, and the pliers, though? Those were very definitely lost. Again, one of the best parts of cleaning --real cleaning instead of this "throw out everything" shit-- is finding lost things. I've already gotten into the details of the pliers. Recap: I'd have needed to buy new ones if I hadn't found them.

The flash cards are different. They're a reminder of one of the few good things in a very bleak part of my life. They're something that could finally spur me into actually re-learning Ancient Greek, which I've been meaning to do forever. And, whether I start that project now or later, they're functional.

The flashlight is complicated. Right now, I could use another flashlight in the house. That may continue to be the case. On the other hand, it could turn out that when this ordeal is over I have more flashlights than I could ever want or need in the house. (I know that won't be the case with the pliers, but for flashlights it's possible.) In that case, there are various possibilities.

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I've been in plenty of situations where it would be useful to have a spare flashlight to loan to someone, and in many of those situations it would be even better if you could just give it to them. I'm pretty sure that I have family members who could use flashlights in their cars, but don't have them. Having a dedicated flashlight for something means that wherever you take that something, you'll always have a flashlight. It could be a tent bag. It could be a purse or a backpack. It could be a first aid kit. (Not all injuries happen in well lit places.) It could be basically anything.

As one final thing, I can make something out of it.

Like what? you may ask.

So, anyone who's seen me in a place where there's free or obscenely cheap stuff has probably noticed that I have a tendency to grab things of clear patterned glass. For example, I have at least two (possibly three) Wexford pattern clear glass cruets in spite of the fact that I have never once thought to myself, "I need something to hold liquid condiments such as oil or vinegar."

But, Chris, you could possibly say but probably wouldn't, those things are nothing. You can get them online for five to twelve dollars.

This is true. I've only just learned that it's true as a side effect of trying to figure out what those damned things are called. That being said, first off it's better when it's free and, even when it isn't free, it feels more significant when you find it yourself and hold it in your hands before getting it.

Ok, but you still haven't said why you want them or what it has to do with flashlights, the hypothetical interlocutor I've been calling "you" will now say as a cheap way to advance the narrative.

The answer is, quite simply, this:

Now, the first thing to note is that that's not one of the aforementioned cruets. I have no idea what this lidded glass bowl is called, and I do not, in fact, have two of them. It does, however, have a flashlight in it.

But, Chris, hypothetical you says again, that looks like crap. The light is all concentrated in one spot, you've braced the flashlight by doing something ugly with the wrist strap, and everything's massively uneven and uninspiring.

Right you are, hypothetical rude person. That doesn't look terribly good and leaves a lot to be desired. However, the reason it doesn't look all that good and leaves a lot to be desired is because the flashlight in question is one I use as a flashlight.

After sticking it in there, taking a few pictures, and finally using lid as beam spreader so that I could hold the flashlight like a torch while I walked around the house during that power outage (assuming I'm remembering correctly), I separated the flashlight from the glass kitchenware so that the flashlight could easily be used as a flashlight in future times (which by now include past and present times) and the kitchenware could sit on a shelf being pretty.

If, however, I didn't need the flashlight to continue to be a flashlight, I could have ripped it apart, altered it to suit the intended purpose, and made a much nicer lamp than the improvised and temporary fare you see above.

That only works if the unnecessary flashlight is in my possession instead of in the trash, though, which brings us back to the central thesis of this post:

People are "cleaning" my house, and I want them to stop, but am conflict averse (and one of them lives here now and thus ought to have a say regardless), and all of this means that I'm going to need to dig through a bunch of trash bags because: sweet fuck people, you can't just throw out everything!

As an aside, while the two Wexford pattern clear glass cruets I definitely own are (somehow) still on their shelf in the kitchen, the illuminated glass bowl, with cover, pictured above is not on its shelf. This does not mean that it's been thrown out (though it might have been) because housemate and imported helper cleared almost every damned thing out of the kitchen with some subset of it intended to be returned at a later time.

One would hope that the pretty glass thing made it into the "temporarily removed" pile instead of the "trash, get rid of it" pile, if only because in the first pile it seems less likely to be broken.

There is something I like about such things beyond just shoving a light source inside of them, though. (And beyond their obvious mundane aesthetic appeal, I mean.) Shine a laser into the lidded glass bowl, and the effect is beautiful. I never looked into it as much as I intended at the time, but it seemed like it might be possible to make a light source out of that effect, provided the surrounding area were sufficiently dark. Even if it couldn't be used for practical lighting, it's still pretty.

Ok, so, we're done with the burst bag of trash that included a bunch of non-trash, right? The flashlight was the last thing to discuss, as I recall. So, let's stick an asterism here so that the wall of text is punctuated by non-text. (I'll retroactively insert some up-post as well.)

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Wait, that wasn't the end of it. Plant pots, and . . . other stuff. I've totally forgotten. (This is the last thing I'm adding to the post, having come back to stick it in after writing the rest.) The plant pots are significant just because not everything comes down to matters of hydroponics. That there were more not-trash things than listed above is significant mostly because the list really did go on (and on.) In a single bag. That contained pounds of perfectly good canned peaches. (Canned diced tomatoes too.) And was supposed to be entirely trash.

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Here's another fun tidbit. There are three places in my house where I keep plants. There are two that housemate and imported helper haven't come near yet, and the one place they've dealt with. The place they dealt with had only one plant that survived my depression-induced lack of watering.

When the plants all disappeared, I had (for the first and only time) cause to believe that maybe this cleaning wouldn't be as bad as I imagined. While the dead plants were gone without a trace, the live plant had been carefully laid aside and kept safe. I was going to put it back in the window, but I couldn't find anything to put it in. (If those vases hadn't been thrown out, it would have been a different story.) This happened while I was the only one in the house.

So I was forced to wait so that I could ask housemate and imported helper, "Where'd you put all the stuff that could hold a plant?" By the time I had a chance to ask, the plant had mysteriously vanished.

The only kitchen plant to survive my depression, and the neglect that came with it, killed by cleaning. I mean, there's a slim chance that I'll find it before it's dead, but it's probably outside. Even if it has survived the night so far, and it's really not made for that, come Thursday the low is supposed to be below freezing.

I can't look through that much "trash" in that amount of time and expect to find something that small.

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So, here's the thing, or one of the things, about having to look through bags of trash to find the stuff that shouldn't have been thrown out instead of putting trash in the trash while putting non-trash where it goes: bags of trash have trash in them. (Usually.)

That means that the whole thing is a good deal less pleasant than dealing with the original mess. It also means that any time you put something icky in the trash, it's with the knowledge that you're going to have to deal with that shit later.

Eat a banana, throw the peel in the trash. Unless you looked through that bag and verified it was all actually trash immediately before throwing the peel in and then took it out of the trash can, tied it up, and put it wherever you store curb-ready trash immediately after throwing the peel in, you're going to meet that peel again.

No matter how unappealing (pun not intended, but acknowledged) that peel is when it goes in, it's going to be worse the next time you meet it.

The smart thing to do, other than saying, "Please, for the love of God, stop fucking cleaning my house!" would probably be to have a private secret trash bag into which I could safely put things like that banana peel because, since the others didn't know about it, I wouldn't have to worry about someone not-me putting non-trash in it. (If I were to put non-trash in it, that would be my own fault, and thus qualitatively different.)

I'm not actually gonna do that.

Have another picture of a flashlight:

⁂

* It comes in packs of multiple colors, so sometimes you have to set one or more away for the next cake because the current cake doesn't need every color. They're sealed completely air tight (you have to physically cut the container open to get at the frosting) so that it will keep until the next cake comes around.

** Yes, I did have a long discussion about economics today.

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March 5th (↑) -- On a Discord Server

Adventures in having "helpful" people "cleaning" my house, part n:

I've spent all morning in the driveway going through trash bags. Most of it really should have been thrown out. In the recycling instead of the trash, but that wouldn't be so much of a problem.

I found photographs, which are definitely older than me and possibly older than my mom of my grandfather and others. I didn't look through them, so I can't really say who was in them in any detail. One person who might be in those photos is my grandfather's brother Andy. Andy died two Tuesdays ago (February 25th), and today is his wake and funeral. (Not burial, though. You have to wait for the ground to thaw.)

Not long after I found the photos, one of the helpful cleaners noticed that I was going through the trash and announced that she was going to stop helping because she couldn't work if it was going to be for nothing. I very much hope she's serious.

(Another thing being thrown out: the newer better phone that's supposed to replace my crappy current phone. Fun.)

wait why are they cleaning your entire house
(also my condolences...¿)

Because that seems to have been the plan from the beginning, and I just wasn't let in on it. Also, as of yesterday I'm stuck with one of my sister's dogs. I am not in a mental state where I'm able to take care of a dog right now, so I kind of need extra people around, which removes the only option I hadn't tried yet: yelling at them to get the fuck out.

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March 5th (↑) -- On a Discord Server

Back from the wake. I would have stayed for the funeral, but neither of the person who gave me a ride there had to head off well before that and the one who gave me a ride home hadn't been planning on staying and I didn't want to impose. Said person way my mom, and her uncle just died (obviously), so it's not a good time for imposing. (Besides which, even though I would have stayed for the funeral service, it's not like I would have gotten much out of it. It would have been more of a perfunctory attendance.)

Didn't mean to get side tracked on logistics and scheduling.

What I wanted to say, instead, was this: they never look right.

Never.

They're too big in some places and too thin in others and they never look right.

(this me quoting a story someone else on the server wrote)

It looked nothing like Sunset Shimmer.

It looked exactly like Sunset's corpse.

Every fucking time there's an open casket. They never look right. They look strange and wrong and foreign and unknown and fuck my memory!

I saw him not long ago. A few months maybe. I don't remember what he looked like, not really. I saw his corpse an hour ago, perhaps less, I don't remember what it looked like, not really.

My memory doesn't work that way. It's probably why I take so many pictures, even of things that really, honestly, there's no reason to take pictures of. Instead there's this . . . sense, a feeling, like trying to get a firm grasp on something from a dream you're in the process of forgtetting. I know the idea of what he looked like, and that would be enough to recognize him in an instant, and it's certainly enough to know that the thing in the casket doesn't look like him.

I should have shot fucking video the last time I saw him, even though we weren't talking about much of anything and I, as I so often do in conversation, sounded like an idiot (I'm pretty sure.) Because now I'm never going to see him again, and I don't remember what he looked like.

My uncle Andy (technically great uncle, but we didn't call him that) was the last of his generation in the family. Everyone else was already gone. I can't explain why that matters, and I'm pretty sure it shouldn't, but for some reason that just adds to the . . . everything.

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March 6th (↑) -- Disqus Comment. Link to original context.

Nothing new this week. Nothing old that I've dug up and posting. I did come across some old writings of mine, possibly high school era, in the past week, but I've been way too much in "I have to rescue things before the people

Wait, I did have something new. At patreon I wrote a post called How we got to the point that I need to put scare quotes around "helpful" and "cleaning", and what it's like now that we're here, but if you're not paying me that link is pretty worthless. I have an incomplete post for Stealing Commas that will cover much of the same territory while also placing it in a larger context (basically: the last three years), but I didn't manage to finish it.

[Not being in control of my own house, pet violence, coercion by threatening to put a pet down, memories of a different pet being put down]

Anyway, in the course of trying to save stuff from the "helpful" people "cleaning" my house I cam across some old stuff of mine. Poetry and prose both, very possibly from high school, and if not then likely early college. I haven't had a chance to look at it, because I'm spending my time going through bags of "trash" and pulling out large quantities of not-trash.

The plumbing problem has been fixed. Finally taking a shower was great.

My sister never trained or properly socialized her dogs. This resulted in some kind of vicious dog to dog violence. My sister called up and ~~basically said that~~ no. She flat out said that if I wouldn't let her dog stay at my house she would put it down, herself, with a fucking shotgun.

Apart from not being house trained, the dog is fine as far as dogs go. I'm not really in a place, mentally, where I can take care of a dog. Housemate will probably do much of the work, and right now the person we brought in to help clear space for the plumber (furniture needed to be moved) will also help until he heads back out. Both of them have some level of experience with training dogs, so that's theoretically good.

When I say that "we" brought him in to help clear the space . . . *deep breath*

Housemate didn't think two people would be enough. Two people was enough. (She was out of it due to her depression being set off, hard, the day we actually cleared the space in question.) It was sold to me as him coming to clear the necessary space for plumbing. Apparently everyone else on earth knew that he was coming to help clean the whole house.

I was well aware that people "cleaning" my house would in fact be "Me being forced to dig through fucking trash bags to pull out non-trash" which was why I wanted it to just be about clearing out space for the necessary equipment for the plumbing.

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March 7th (↑) -- On a Discord Server

You know the thing that almost all Anon-a-Miss fics get wrong? No matter how justified the anger, verbally ripping people down and making them feel bad doesn't make you feel good. Not really. In the moment you can sometimes ride a wave of righteous fury and feel like you're accomplishing something, but in the end nothing has been fixed and you're empty.

Housemate and temporary housemate were away for much of today. I was going through the giant pile of trash bags they'd created pulling out the non-trash things. This shouldn't be necessary in the first place, but I'd kind of gotten used to it.

Things started to go wrong when I found a tarot card, then several more, then several more again, then went into the house so I could use the kitchen table to help in putting them in order (easiest way to check what, if anything, is missing.) It's the second full deck of tarot cards I found in the stuff they threw out.

Then I found my glasses. They needed to have the frame fixed, so I've been wearing backup ones that aren't my actual prescription. Trouble with finding my glasses is, I only found half of the frame. Also my-- Wait, before that I found my favorite shirt. Not the first clothing I've found, but this was very definitely very completely clean. Then my glasses, and the doubly emergency backup glasses for situations like if someone threw my glasses into the trash, and then something happened to backup glasses too.

Then jewelry. And books. Books have been a stable of what they've thrown out. Home improvement supplies, new in their boxes. So on.

And I was left to stew on this for much of the day while I raced against the setting sun to find everything that had been dumped in that particular bag especially, I hoped, the rest of my glasses. (I didn't.)

They came back from where they'd been, a photo shoot with a friend of theirs, and as soon as both of them were in the house I unloaded on them. So they went from a good day to me berating them. Ruined their day with enough force to cause emotional whiplash; my day (and my mood) have not improved. Because that never works.

They fucked up, the behavior was downright assholic, but me tearing them down fixed nothing. I just brought more misery into the world, nothing more.

That's the thing that all of the "Yell at the Rainbooms and/or CMC" fics miss. It never makes you feel better, not really.

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March 13th (↑) -- On a Discord Server

Wait . . . the reason it was difficult to get toilet paper is because people thought it would save them from a pandemic and started stockpiling it?

Sweet fuck do we live in a strange world.

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March 13th (↑) -- On a Discord Server

It's raining today. Hard.

There are still a bunch of trash bags outside filled with a mixture of trash and not-trash. Given how heavily the not-trash skews towards things that respond badly to water (including fucking books) this is a very stressful thing for me.

The people who bagged all of this up and took it outside, and kept on doing so after there was no space remaining in the garage which, while hardly the safest place, at least has a roof over it, are in another city/town right now. This is probably a good thing since flaying people alive is supposed to an over the top threat rather than a means of non-verbal interpersonal communication.
‌
There would be less to stress out about if they'd bagged things up well, since trash bags are waterproof, but many of the bags are quite thoroughly perforated at this point.

It probably would have all fit in the garage if they'd used any sort of care in packing, because I keep finding empty containers and cardboard boxes that haven't been broken down meaning that much (possibly even most) of the volume is taken up by empty space.

But the kind of people who bag well and/or with care probably wouldn't have thrown out half of the things they threw out.

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March 13th (↑) -- Disqus Comment. Link to original context.

It's raining today. That, in itself, is stressful. You see, there are still a large number of bags of "trash" outside. I've been spending a lot of my daylight time, perhaps even most of my daylight time, going through those bags. I've pulled out a lot of things that don't respond well to water. (Electronics, books, and loose-papers-with-important-things-written-on-them stand out.)

The trash bags are water poof, which is good, but the lack of care with which they were filled has led to many of them becoming . . . perforated. Water can and does get in. I have seen it. (Though, mercifully, only rarely.)

It's also the case that whenever I remove a bag and make progress on separating ~~the wheat from the chaff~~ not-trash from the trash, I might be putting at risk something that was, up to that point, perfectly preserved. Without the removed bag there, new holes may be exposed. It could be that right now, as I type this, the most important thing to be thrown out is being destroyed because a bag I went through yesterday is no longer playing blocker.

Entirely apart from the fact that we're talking about the fact my books and jewelry and so forth have been thrown out, the way these bags were filled is downright absurd. The reason it took so many bags, which is probably the reason that the bags of "trash" didn't all fit in the garage under the roof thereof, is because the volume is largely empty space. (As near as I can tell, based on what I've gone through so far.) Boxes were not broken down. Containers were not opened.

The rolling suitcase/dufflebag I use when traveling for a week or more was thrown out (which it shouldn't have been) empty. That's a pretty decent volume of air and a relatively small amount of plastic and canvas. When it's in a large black trash bag, though, it looks like any other pile of trash.

It occurs to me now, when it's definitely too late for the storm that's here, that I might have done better to open up all the bags, take out the big empty things, and then see if I could fit what remained somewhere safe.

A hug part of the reason it takes so much time is because of how damned slow it is to go through the little stuff. If I'd focused on the big stuff only, instead of going one bag at a time, maybe I could have had everything safe by today. Fuck.

I'm alone today. In human terms at least. My sister's dog is still here. Not really fit to take care of her properly, but given how neglected she was in the past, it's probably still a step up. I don't really know why I'm alone today. The housemate and extended-stay house guest were supposed to be spending a single night away to test out a possible living and working arrangement. That night was two nights ago.

I would love to be able to enjoy their absence, but I'm way too worn down, it means that the dog is solely my responsibility, and it means that the things they said they'd do which I probably can trust them to do (washing the dishes is the only thing that comes to mind) won't get done unless I take time away from the thousand other things I need to do because of their past actions, recuperation, or both.

I can't cope with this shit, and yet I have no choice.

All of this, including the plumbing problem that set off these adventures in ["When we say, "Clean," we mean, "Toss everything important to you in the trash"], is because I tried to be a decent human being. The relationship between my sister and housemate was toxic as fuck, housemate was begging people to get her out of there even though she had no place else to go. Her plan, insofar as it existed, was to be homeless in a city she knew (from experience) she could survive being homeless in instead of a countryside where that wasn't true.

I offered her an empty room at my house, so she'd have a place to go. I don't regret that and if I had known about (but somehow been unable to change) all of the bullshit that resulted from it, I'd still have made the same decision, but it still feels massively unfair that doing something good has led to this.

Moons, books, odds, question begging, and cover stories for other dimensional duplicates (Equestria Girls)

2020-02-25T14:55:00.004-05:00

First some notes and meta stuff:

There are a lot of stories that imagine the Equestria Girls characters meeting the human Twilight Sparkle early (canonically she isn't encountered until movie three.) This fragment has Sunset Shimmer meeting her between the first and second movie, and features an explanation for "I've already met someone with your name who looks just like you," that I've never seen anyone use.

In theory, you shouldn't need to know anything about Equestria Girls to understand this. In practice it probably helps to know that it's a setting in which individuals in one world have identical-ish duplicates in another and Princess Twilight Sparkle visited the Equestria Girls world for three days before returning to her own.

Now it's story time.

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"Twilight?" Sunset asked. Well, 'asked' was probably an overly charitable description of what Sunset did. It wasn't a question so much as befuddlement given form.

It had been less than a moon since the Fall Formal, making it more than twenty nine moons till the portal opened again. Not proper moons, mind you, it was the position of the moon in the stars that mattered rather than the phase. It made the math more difficult to do in one's head simply because the mind cried out that a moon was slightly more than twenty nine and a half days, certainly not a mere twenty seven days and change, and consequently there was a constant threat of switching units mid calculation.

Still, she'd done the math repeatedly; she'd memorized it: two years, eighty nine days --eighty eight if one of the years happened to be a leap year-- fifteen hours, thirty five and three quarters minutes.

Every one of those numbers meant one thing and one thing only: Twilight Sparkle couldn't be here. It was literally impossible. And yet . . . here she was. Here she was in a mall of all places. Why would a Princess of Equestria violate the laws of reality to come to a human mall?

It made no sense, hence the befuddlement.

That Twilight hadn't seen fit to notify Sunset of her return, on the other hand, made perfect sense. Sunset was the monster who mind controlled the student body and tried to kill Twilight. The princess had been merciful in condemning her to mere exile, and exile as a form of probation with the expectation of rehabilitation no less, but that in no way meant she'd make Sunset privy to her travel plans.

For her part, Twilight was quite quiet. In fact, she seemed to be in some form of shock. She probably hadn't expected to see Sunset, and certainly not to encounter her alone. While Sunset considered how to put Twilight at ease, a bow perhaps to show proper deference-- Twilight composed herself and spoke.

It was not the voice of authority that had characterized their previous meeting, then again, Sunset wasn't a smoking mess at the bottom of a crater this time. It was the words, more than the tone, that surprised Sunset. Twilight said, "How do you know my name."

It didn't feel like a noble indicating that she was so far above a nothing like Sunset as to--

And then it hit Sunset.

"Oh," Sunset said, drawing the word out for longer than a single syllable had any right to stretch. "You 're--" and that was as far as Sunset got before she realized that she had no idea what to say in this situation. They'd never talked about what to do in the event of meeting the Princess's double. Based on what Twilight's friends had told her, between "No offence"s, and Pinkie Pie's "Just a hunch"ing, Sunset figured that they weren't likely to meet this Twilight.

Human Celestia was, at best, unlikely to order human Twilight to leave the city of her birth and journey to an unfamilar place as part of of a Xanthos gambit to redeem Nightmare moon. This was true for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that human Luna didn't need redemption. The fact that human Celestia didn't actually know human Twilight was a distant second.

Regardless, this was a time for thinking on one's feet. It was time for creativity and ingenuity. It was, in short, time for making shit up. Lying, to put it bluntly.

"Ok, so, this is probably gonna sound really bad at first," Sunset said, "but I promise you that it isn't and, regardless, the situation is over."

Twilight, whom Sunset had decided to dub 'Glasses Twilight' because of the thick black glasses Sunset had somehow managed to not notice at first, looked even more uneasy, which was to be expected at this point.

"All of CHS--" Sunset realized she might have to say what that stood for, "uh, that is, Can--"

Glasses Twilight said, "Canterlot High School," with an air of 'Don't treat me like I'm ignorant,' then, a moment later, added, "I've . . . heard of it," with a good deal less confidence.

"Yeah," Sunset said. "That. Everyone at CHS thinks they already know you."

What followed was, by far, the loudest, "What‽" Sunset had ever heard in her life. It made Sunset acutely aware of their location: a crowded mall. A crowded Mall where everyone was now looking at them.

Glasses Twilight seemed to remember that as well, quickly looked around, somehow managed to make herself smaller through a combination of bad posture and embarrassment, and finally made Sunset worry that a panic attack was imminent.

Sunset drew out the word, "So," considered that drawing out single syllable words might be a nervous tic on her part, and said, "maybe we should go someplace less public."

Glasses Twilight nodded vigorously.

"Is there anywhere that makes you feel comfortable?"

Soon they were in a used book store. The air smelled the good kind of musty: the almond odor of benzaldehyde, the vanilla of vanillin, the sweet aroma of toluene and ethyl benzene, the floral touches of 2-ethyl hexanol. These books were well aged, and it smelled like they'd been a good vintage to begin with.

Modern humans just didn't leave enough lignin in their paper; it never smelled right.

After breathing deeply for a bit, Glasses Twilight said, "Alright, I'm ready to talk."

Sunset nodded and said, "Ok."

"Why does everyone at a school I've never set foot in know my name?"

"A few weeks ago CHS had a visitor who was . . ." Sunset paused to think. She didn't need to lie for this part, and the best lies were the ones that diverged from the truth only when necessary, but she did need to phrase this well. "Well, let's just say she wasn't from around here."

Glasses Twilight raised an eyebrow and asked, "You had an undocumented immigrant at your school?"

Sunset gaped.

"The only reason you'd be cagey about where this person came from is if the knowledge become public could have a deleterious effect," Glasses Twilight said. Sunset was used to that kind of deduction being delivered in a threatening manner. Glasses Twilight had done nothing of the sort. It was purely analytical. There was no more menace than if Glasses Twilight were explaining how she'd come to realize that the logarithmic spiral is scale invariant.

"Yes," Sunset said. So very much, yes. "It wasn't just her presence in-country that was undocumented. On paper she didn't exist. She did, however, look just--"

"Like me," Glasses Twilight said. It was . . . it wasn't quite angry, but there was a hardness to her words. "You're telling me --expecting me to believe-- that someone who looked exactly like me just appeared out of the blue."

Sunset took a deep breath. This was where the lying came in. "Is it really so hard to believe that a newcomer to a city the size of Canterlot could find someone who looked like her?"

Princess Twilight didn't find anyone. She didn't look. It was sheer luck that no one at CHS had known this Twilight, and the only person who recognized that there were two Twilight in the city was the one person at school who'd immediately assume that it was a case of twin girls with twin dogs.

Glasses Twilight, of course, didn't know any of that. She just knew that Sunset claimed Princess Twilight had set out to find someone who looked like her. Reframing at it's best, Sunset hoped.

Glasses Twilight thought it over for a bit, then seemed to deflate. "I guess when you put it that way . . ." she said.

"You were begging the question?" Sunset asked.

Glasses Twilight's eyes lit up, and she asked, "You know what that actually means?" with a sort of awe.

Sunset smirked. Then she said, "Well, let's consider this conversation, or rather the meeting that precipitated it." She adopted a playfully overblown style for the question, "What are the odds that this happened by random chance? What. Are. The. Odds?"

After a suitably dramatic pause, she shifted into a conspiratorial mode of speech for the rest, "I'm just one person among so many in the city, this is just one day out of infinite, and this mall is but one place in the whole of Canterlot. The chances of you meeting me (of all people), today (of all days), and doing it here (of all places) are so very negligibly low that this can't be random."

Glasses Twilight snorted, Sunset continued, "Maybe it's destiny, maybe it's fate, maybe it's a conspiracy, but someone or something wanted this meeting to take place. It's the only reasonable explanation for how something so astronomically unlikely could have actually happened."

"You're not saying it was aliens," Glasses Twilight said.

"But it was aliens," Sunset said.

"And, of course, it all depends on assuming the end result was predetermined," Glasses Twilight said, "the odds of me meeting someone on some day in some place aren't low at all. It's only if we assume it had to be you, it had to be here, and it had to be now when it seems unlikely to be random."

Sunset nodded. This was going well. "Someone's got to win the lottery. Not every time, of course, but if enough people play . . ."

"And given the population of the planet," Glasses Twilight said, "if the odds of something happening to a random person on a random day are one in a million. . ."

"It happens seventy seven hundred times a day," Sunset said.

Glasses Twilight looked around. Sunset did too. There were no signs they'd be kicked out of the bookstore anytime soon.

After taking a deep breath then letting it out, Glasses Twilight said, "So someone came to your school, and --probably unsurprisingly-- there was someone in Canterlot she resembled, and I happened to be that person."

"Pretty much," Sunset said, "if you switched to contacts and let your hair down, you'd be one wardrobe change away from being indistinguishable."

"And she stole my identity," Glasses Twilight said with a touch of anger in her voice.

Sunset looked away. This was the hard part. Maybe it had seemed like getting Glasses Twilight to believe this was a case of mundane similarity would be the hard part --then again, maybe it hadn't; Sunset didn't remember-- but this was the real hard part. Princess Twilight had saved Sunset, and now Sunset was accusing her of a crime she didn't commit. Again, no less.

"This all started with you knowing my name," Glasses Twilight said. "Ergo, she took my name."

"Remember how I said it wasn't as bad as it seems?" Sunset asked.

"And because of that an entire school of people I've never met think they know me." The anger had grown significantly.

"She didn't mean any harm," Sunset said. "She was here for three days, two nights, and she wanted to blend in."

"By stealing my . . ." Glasses Twilight faltered. "My . . ." again she stopped.

"No one at CHS had ever met you," Sunset said.

Glasses Twilight near-shouted, "That's not--"

"She needed a place to stay," Sunset said.

"That's not the--" Glasses Twilight stopped. All of the anger disappeared in an instant.

Sunset pondered whether emotional whiplash were just an expression, or something Glasses Twilight might have to worry about.

"A place to stay?" Glasses Twilight asked with nothing but concern.

"She slept in the school library," Sunset said.

Things you can do to help

2020-02-15T01:54:00.000-05:00

Short version: If you want to help me in this time of severe depression and wanting to give up and have the world go away, you could give me money, or [insert clothing/shoes/backpack stuff here], or give me fiction. For fiction, have a wishlist, a wishlist, links to two games and a DLC pack on Steam, and my Steam account.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Obviously the plan to get this written and posted yesterday didn't work. On the other hand, it was the plan to post this that got the previous post ~~written~~ copied, pasted, and posted; so that plan, failed though it may have been, did have some positive effects.

I'd actually been meaning to write a post like this for ages, but there were two important factors holding me back. One is that my depression makes it hard to do anything. The other is that I always feel sleazy and cheap and other things along those lines when I ask for . . . anything really, but especially when I ask for money or stuff.

I feel like I'm abusing people's kindness, trying to get things I don't deserve, and providing nothing in return.

I know, however, that that feeling isn't entirely accurate. There are very much people who would like to help and telling them how they can do that isn't, inherently, a bad thing. That knowledge doesn't lessen the feeling.

The final impetus for actually writing this is that Kristycat asked, "Is there anything we can do to help?" eleven days ago.

~ * ⁂ * ~

I really hate asking for money, but the simplest thing you can do to help is to give me money. Here's the Paypal.me link.

So, for the most part, being behind on bills has been a matter of depression leaving me too out of it to read mail, check accounts online, remember that bills are a thing, or even stand up (which is a necessary first step for various things that help with bill paying.) Or, to put it another way, the reason that my phone was turned off, someone was sent to disconnect the water if I didn't pay my water bill right then, and I came within a hair's breadth of losing my internet isn't that I couldn't pay.

The money was available, I just wasn't in a state where I could do anything with it. That being said, I very definitely need money I don't have. Part of this is late fees and interest, part of this is that when things get really bad sometimes it takes something that costs money to make it through that, and most of it is because . . .

Well, actually, let me pause for a moment and say that I have no idea where the fuck my finances are at. It's been at least six months (almost certainly eight, and quite possibly more) since I was actually on top of things enough to know where I stood.

Credit cards, my student loan, utilities, and such, can be looked up online with relative ease. I think it only took me four or five months to do so. It's what I owe my mom, who happens to be my landlord, that I don't know about.

She doesn't charge late fees or interest. She doesn't give penalties of any form for paying late. She's really nice about that stuff, in fact, which makes me feel like utter shit when, as now, I'm taking advantage of her kindness.

I have to be at least two thousand dollars behind. Probably more. (Maybe a lot more.) I don't know. I can find out, but it'll take more than visiting a website, and most of the time visiting a website is beyond me.

So, yeah, I need money. Lots of fucking money.

~ * ⁂ * ~

[I'll try to come back tomorrow and provide the information necessary to actually turn this into a thing you can do]

I need shoes. I need a backpack. I need clothes.

My right foot doesn't lift evenly when I walk. (It's why, before I broke the left one, I sprained my right ankle so often.) The sole of that shoe is now worn down at a considerable angle. I'm not sure how much wear is left before it runs out of sole.

One of the main pockets of my backpack has a broken zipper. The other main pocket has a hole at the top; said hole is so large I've become accustomed to putting things in and taking things out without bothering to unzip the thing.

I have one pair of jeans. All of my other pants are unwearable, most of them because I wore right through them, and that turned into massive rips/holes at inopportune places.

I think I've got one decent skirt left. Maybe two.

I cycle through the same three t-shirts in perpetuity. They all have holes in them, sure, but unlike the rest of my shirts, said holes don't leave me indecent. Sometimes, if I haven't been able to do a load of laundry in a while, I add two others to the mix. Their holes don't leave me indecent, per se, but they're large enough and plentiful enough that each shirt has been relegated to the status of "emergency back up t-shirt".

I don't seem to have a winter coat. I'm honestly not sure how that happened.

The only non-damaged coat I do have is musty smelling suede jacket that I basically never use.

The coats that I do use are two hoodies. On the outside they look like two instances of the same thing, but one is of higher quality. I'm not sure that really matters anymore. They show their age mostly in the way they've faded into a color that might best be described as "Well . . . it used to be blue" and the absolute tatters the cuffs (that's the name for sleeve ends, right?) and pockets are in.

There's one other coat that I sometimes use if appearance matters. From the outside I think it looks ok, but the lining is damaged to the point that wearing it is decidedly odd.

None of this is the result of tragic accidents or any such thing, it's just what happens when things hit the point of threadbare and you keep going. It's been so long since I got new clothes that I've worn most of what I have to destruction, and the rest of it is pretty damned close to destruction.

~ * ⁂ * ~

Once upon a time, depression took away my ability to enjoy reading books. That was devastating on multiple levels. Things have gotten much worse. Outside of a couple of franchise specific exceptions (which I'll get to), there's only one story format I can still engage with.

That format is video games. My best guess on why I can engage with them when I can't with any other form of storytelling is that it's tied up with how one is necessarily part of the action in a game. It's just a guess though, I very definitely don't know for sure.

The two franchises that I can still emotionally engage with outside of video games are My Little Pony (Friendship is Magic and Equestria Girls both) and Teen Titans (the 2003 series.)

When I thought I might be on the verge of writing again, and knew it would probably be MLP fanfic, I put together an Amazon wishlist of things I thought might help. There are three types of thing on there. The first is tie in reference books (all written from in-universe perspectives), the second is RPG books that I would use as reference books (and possibly to run a game if the relevant children are interested, but I've never done anything like that), and the third is art books (concept art is awesome.)

MLP is on Netflix, so you won't find the show itself on that list. Teen Titans is not on Netflix, so when I made a similar wishlist for it, I put the show as the top thing on the list. Originally that was the only thing I thought of, which wouldn't be much of a list, but then I remembered a recent Raven-centric comic that caught my interest, the actual tie in comic to the show,* which shouldn't be confused with the later show and comic of the same name, and Amazon reminded me that the "Teen Titans meet the Teen Titans" movie is a thing.

* though the collected editions only cover the first 32 issues, and I wasn't up for adding the remaining 23 issues to the list individually, and I really don't know why I couldn't just stick this on a wishlist.

When it comes to gaming . . . unless someone wants to buy me a gaming desktop (primary computer is a laptop), a console, or VR equipment, I think I should just stick to talking about the games themselves. Resident Evil 2 is at a steep discount on Steam until the 17th, Jedi: Fallen Order appears to be the Star Wars game I've been waiting for since Jedi Academy, and I'd like to get the DLC for Arkham Origins (while the season pass doesn't have all of it, it seems to have the important stuff.)

As mentioned though, I can actually engage with games in general. (It's not like I don't have depression dulling the feelings, but it's way better than nothing.) That means that I could potentially enjoy games I never heard of (see: Celeste.) Things I know I want are probably a safer bet, but the possibility exists that something outside the box could get good results.

No matter what, (if I understand Steam gifting correctly) someone wanting to give me a Steam game will need to find my Steam account. Here it is.

~ * ⁂ * ~

There was probably supposed to be more, but I'm on the verge of losing consciousness. That's a good thing, though. Being asleep is better than being awake these days. So, away I go. Darkness take me.

Comment Dump: The past month and a week and a day

2020-02-12T18:06:00.000-05:00

I haven't written anything here in a while. Specifically I haven't written anything in a month and a week and day. That is not, in fact, what the title is referring to, it's mostly a coincidence of timing, though there's a decent enough chance of partial causation that one should not call it an unqualified coincidence, instead this a time for hedging.

Anyway, a month and a week and a day ago was when I wrote "Retrospective", the last thing I published here, and it also happens to be the date of an open thread at Ana Mardoll's. I handle the open threads, and because I'm there anyway, I often write up what's going on even if I have absolutely nothing to share. So, as a sort of low effort update on what's going on, I'm going to copy the stuff I've said at the open threads over that time into this post.

Also, there's kind of a deadline to this, because no one wants to hear about a month and a week and two days; it has no ring to it. So, low effort + deadline = decent chance I'll actually post this today, as I am planning to.

⁂

I'm planning on making a "things you can do if you want to help" post later today, which is part of why I didn't include the post to that effect in the following. Most of the rest of the reason being tied up in the fact that it was sort of hasty and therefore sort of . . . crap.

⁂

[Content Note: mostly severe depression with spikes of passive suicidal thinking and feeling, also financial stuff, and probably some other things I forgot about]

January 4th, Main Post:

Open Thread: Winter Floof

Unfortunately it was a wet day, so Elliot's floofiness isn't as visible as ideal when one is naming the open thread after that floofiness. None the less, that is a picture of a pony floofed up for winter.

~ ~ ~

January 4th, Comment:

I used that picture because it was already edited on my computer. Also: floofy pony.

I've been . . . well, I'm alive. Not long after I posted last week's open thread, Lonespark and I went to see the new Star Wars together. I meant to write a post about it the next day. Haven't started yet.

That was good (not the movie, seeing it with Lonespark) nothing else is or has been. Come mid February, it'll be three years since I broke my ankle. A few days more and it'll be three years since I needed to go off my hormones (because of surgery related blood clot risk) and that fucked up everything.

The injury is . . . I think I'd actually forgotten that there's a metal plate in my foot. It's long since passed. I'm not even close to having recovered mental-health-wise.

I was going to write a post looking back over those three years, talking about stuff that had changed, what I had-- yeah,this isn't quite that. Or all that close, really. I should probably remind everyone that I've never been actively suicidal, and have never engaged in self-harm.

Hope you're all doing better than I am.

⁂

January 17th, main post:

Open Thread: Snow Day

Picture taken yesterday morning on my sister's farm.

~ ~ ~

January 17th, comment:

[Content note: depression, passive suicidal thinking, the fear that it will become active]

Sorry about the lack of open thread last week. Depression has been really bad. Eating, drinking, sleeping has been hard. Too hard to do right more often than not. There have been times when I couldn't do anything but cry and want everything to be over.

Wanting to disappear, wanting the world to go away and never bother me again, wanting to give up, wanting to go to sleep and never wake up. Imagining, say, being hit by a car and finding the idea fairly positive.

A fear and sadness filled breakdown when when I wondered how many times I can come up to the edge of suicidal without taking that next step and becoming suicidal.

So on. So forth. Honestly, nothing really out of the ordinary. Just more of the same, if unusually intense.

I haven't written in two weeks. The last post I wrote, which was the "woe is me, I can't write fiction anymore" shit that everything is these days, was on the same day as the previous open thread. The previous open thread being two weeks ago because I failed to post one last week.

⁂

February 2nd, main post:

Open Thread: Puppy

There are sixteen dogs in my sister's house now. Her two adult dogs, their thirteen puppies, and a housemate's adult dog. This is one of them, her name (for some inexplicable reason) is Panda-dora. When the picture was taken she was a month and a week and a day old.

Sorry there was no Open Thread a week ago. Sorry this is so late.

~ ~ ~

February 2nd, comment:

[CN: depression and a dash of passive suicidal thinking/feeling.]

I'm still alive. That's basically where the good news ends. (And it doesn't even feel like good news to me.)

I don't know the last time I wrote something. Definitely nothing new since last time.

There hasn't been anything notably bad that's happened. Just sort of steady-state not-good status quo.

That status quo involves my sister completely disrupting any attempt to turn things around by getting me to come up to her house all the fucking time. This isn't because she got run over, by the way. It's how she always is. She calls on everyone all the time without really caring about what it does to their lives.

That's not the primary thing, though, because her disrupting attempts to make things better only matters if those attempts exist, and usually they don't.

⁂

February 9th, main post:

Open Thread: Ice on a Windshield

Not much to say about this one. While I think the liquid water in the upper right adds to the picture, it doesn't add enough, in my opinion, to make it into the title.

Sorry that this is late again, but at least it exists.

~ ~ ~

February 9th, comment:

[CN: More of the same, so financial troubles, depression, a touch of passive suicidal thinking (but not much of the last one.)]

Fell so far behind on my bills that my landline has been disconnected. I didn't even notice until I tried to make an outgoing call earlier this afternoon.

The sad part is that that wasn't one of the bills I had any reason to fall behind on. The money was there, I've just been too out of it to go through the necessary motions. I almost had the same thing happen to my internet a week or two ago, and came within a hair's breadth of having my water turned off in . . . January, I think?

Maybe December or November for the water. It all runs together. Could be January, like I originally said, but I honestly wouldn't surprise me if it were October or some such instead.

My utilities, at least, don't charge absurd late fees. They just want to get paid, it's not like credit card companies and such that see late fees and interest as the place where the real money is made.

The one truly getting screwed by all of this isn't even me. It's my mom. She doesn't charge late fees; she doesn't disconnect my utilities. As such, when there isn't enough money, she's the one who doesn't get paid. I don't even know the last time I paid her, at this point what I owe her has to be downright staggering, but I won't know how much it is until I go through a bunch of records (because I haven't been keeping proper track) and I'm honestly not sure when I'll be in a state where I can do that.

Everything sucks, and I'm pretty sure I'm a horrible person. I look down on m sister when abuses my mom's willingness to . . . basically to suffer to make my sister's life easier, and here I am doing the same thing. I'm hurting her financially and emotionally (money is, far and away, the thing that puts the most stress on my already constantly stressed mother.) Not really in a position to judge my sister's mistreating of our mom, if I'm doing the same damned thing.

Everything sucks, a lot of things hurt, and I just want to go to sleep and have the world go away.

Retrospective

2020-01-04T17:03:00.000-05:00

The beginning of 2017 was by no means a time of great joy. It was, however, a time of hope. I used to be that the problem that always had me skating on the edge of financial collapse was--

You know what, fuck it. We don't need to get into that, because I'm already on the verge of crying just thinking about back when things were better.

I had graduated, without tuition numbers added up properly, I was going to be ok financially going forward. Then the thing with my sister's neighbors. Everything started to fall apart. Yet as 2016 drew to an end, I could believe that things were going to get better. That the future was bright.

There's a reason for that. From the start of the new year to February 15th I posted 43 times. Not quite a post a day, but close. Of course, some of that was talking about bad stuff in my life. A lot of it wasn't.

There were six self-contained snippets in my story verse with super people (yes, there are superheroes, but there are people other than heroes too.) Five installments on what was then an ongoing story set in the same universe. (An index for that story, too.) Four things talking about the setting and those in it that were not themselves stories.

There were three Kim Possible fragments.

There was a silly random story, a story idea in summary, and two times I related unpleasant real life things in story form.

Stepping away from stories, there was a post about my first impressions of that year's Arisia, a post about something I'm often curious about, and two essay-like things (how this is not like the end of the Roman Republic, and when magical world building makes sense vs. when it doesn't.)

On the meta front, there were two things about Stealing Commas stuff and two posts about my then-new Patreon account.

Also, outside of the usual categories, I had a post describing the artwork I envisioned on two cards of a tarot deck in my head.

That's a lot of stuff. 22 stories or story related things (not counting the index) alone.

In that month and a half, I did as much storytelling as I have in the past nineteen months.

There's a reason for that. My hormones had been figured out, my depression was managed as well as it ever had been, and --even with the terrible things happening to my sister-- things were generally looking up and looking positive.'

Then I broke my ankle in three places.

And, you know what? I didn't think it was going to be that much of a problem. I was taking notes for the posts I was gonna write about it and shit like that.

Then I had to go off my hormones because of blood clot risk. And everything fell apart.

In less than a month and a half, it'll be three years since I broke my ankle. My mental health still hasn't recovered. I don't know if it ever will.

If I remember correctly, right before I broke my ankle I ordered jars so that I could buy ingredients in bulk, but then not have to deal with the huge fucking containers constantly. By the time they arrived (again: if I remember correctly) my ankle was broken. Unboxing happened today. 34ish months later.

I don't want to be here anymore. I want the world to go away. I want to go to sleep and never wake up. Not die in my sleep, just call in Maleficent and have me sleep forever.

None of this is new, other than the jar thing, you've probably read all of the stuff after "Then I broke my ankle..." several times before.

I don't know what to do.

Nothing I've tried to do has worked, but that's not so much because things have failed, it's more that I haven't been able to fucking start anything. So, in a sense, nothing I've tried to do has actually been tried.

I want to disappear. I want to not be.

Existing is nothing but sadness, false hope, crushing disappointment, and bills I can't pay.

So, that's the past 34.5 months. Likely forecast is for more of the same to continue indefinitely.

My sister is back in her home, I'm back in mine, and there are puppies

2019-12-21T20:55:00.001-05:00

All told, my sister was in the hospital for several hours less than two weeks. I spent almost all of that time away from my home. Most of it was at her house, but for several days at the end I was staying across the street from the hospital. (There's an apartment building set aside for the loved ones of patients who don't live in the area.)

At no point in that time away from home did I sleep well. It's over a week and a half since I got back home, and I'm still not sleeping right, which leads to not eating or drinking right, and also getting my medication schedule all screwed up. Which is part of why it's been over a week and a half since she got out of the hospital and I'm only just now publishing a post saying she got out the hospital.

So, all of that said, she seems to be doing pretty well, though she's actually back in the hospital today for minor surgery.

The day she got out of the hospital she gave an interview to a woman named Donna Perry. You can read the resulting article here. You can also read it in several other places, which come up well before that on Google, but that's the newspaper Ms. Perry actually writes for. There's some stuff in there that I didn't know about until I read the article myself.

People have a tendency to want to help someone after something goes wrong, and if you can afford to and you want to, there are three ways you can do that.

The thing that would (probably) get her help the fastest at the moment is this Amazon wishlist, since if you pay for something on there it'll be shipped straight to her house right now. She had me set up Paypal and Ko-fi accounts too, but I don't have the information needed to connect those to her bank account, so any money donated is going to have to wait until she gets around to that. (If you happen to be reading this in January, though, presumably that's been done.)

On the subject of Amazon wishlists, anyone reading might have noticed that everything I've been writing has had an MLP bent for over two years now. If you'd like to help me in that arena, I set up a list that has reference books along with a few RPG things that I'd use as reference books.*

Lastly, puppies. Thirteen were born the day before my sister's birthday. These were taken when they were three days old:

* I mean, I could try to use them as intended by actually running a game, but:
a) I've never done anything like that before
b) I'd have to wait for my sister's younger two to be old enough. (Once upon a time I was told eldest loved all things unicorn, but if it was accurate, it appears to have stopped being true since then.)

My sister was run over (by her own truck)

2019-12-02T23:13:00.000-05:00

[Getting run over isn't a pretty thing, I'm going to be talking about the aftermath. This is your warning, read at your own risk.]

It happened on Tuesday, much of the information I've been given was third hand (I didn't go up to my sister in the emergency room and order her to regale me with the story of how she got there; I didn't do that in the ICU either), so it's possible some details are off (or missing) but I'll tell you what I know.

The daycare my sister's middle and youngest child attend is one of those smaller more personal affairs where it's run out of the provider's home. That home is on a hill. Maine, especially non-coastal Maine (after losing the farm, my sister's family moved inland), is cold in late November. To keep the kids from freezing, my sister left the truck on (and thus the heat on) while she got them in. The middle child, a three year old, knows how to unbuckle himself.

In what is, so far as I know, his first time shifting gears in his life, the three year old put the truck in neutral. My sister's luck being what it is, she was down hill from it.

Whatever the exact logistics of being run over were, she ended up belly down. She was taken, by helicopter, to a hospital, and was still in the emergency room when I arrived. (In imaging at the exact time I got there.)

When I got to see her, her neck was in a brace which left her head pointed straight up, her hair was splayed out around her (it didn't move at all, for obvious reasons), she spoke only in whispers, sometimes you had to lean in to make out what she was saying (broken ribs made greater volume equate to greater pain), and there was dried blood on her teeth.

They came in at some point with a portable X-ray machine and took shots of her knees. I never did learn what the results of those were.

At some other point, before the X-ray I think, someone (doctor? nurse?) told my mom and I that her spinal cord was intact and she had no nerve damage. Her spine wasn't unharmed, but the harm was minor and on the outside of the vertebrae in question --I think it was the spinous process of each of the two vertabra in question-- thus safely far away from the spinal cord.

My sister added that the first thing she did after being run over was wiggle her toes, and she was so happy/relieved/[good thing] when she could feel them wiggle.

She coughed up bloody gunk. The pain of coughing was very severe, she held my hand while she did it. It wasn't the first time she'd done that, I was told.

This wasn't just lung gunk with blood in it, this was lung gunk that had merged with blood to the point that it was uniformly blood colored (no hint of the original lung gunk color) and was saturated enough that the blood color didn't look at all watered down or diluted in spite of the fact that lung gunk is not remotely blood colored.

They took her away to look into the goings on in her chest. Then they sent her to the ICU.

My mom spent the night, my dad and I went home.

I got home at midnight, I think it was probably two AM before I even tried to sleep. (I wasn't in the right state of mind for attempting sleep when I got home.)

The next day, there was a fair amount of confusion as to plans. Also, I discovered a plumbing problem that prevented me from washing my clothes. It ended up being the case that I came up to help out at my sister's house, without much in the way of clothes, later than the journey should have been undertaken (my dad was my ride, my dad and driving in the dark do not mix well at all.)

The hospital was on the way to my sister's house, so I got to stop in and see her that day too. I haven't seen her since then.

She was out of the neck brace, which made her look so much more alive, but a new problem had surfaced alongside that. Something is wrong with her jaw. It could be as little as nerve damage to a single tooth, it could be something worse. They told her they were going to look into what it was that morning. (I don't know how to phrase that well, they told her that morning, yes, but the point is that what they told her was that they were going to look into it that same morning.) It was dusk when she and I parted ways, they still hadn't done anything.

The thing with her jaw was important not just because it was (and, to my knowledge, still is) causing her severe pain. (Worse than the broken ribs, which is saying something.) It was causing her so much pain that she couldn't eat and neither could she cough. The first is important because they weren't giving her nutrients any other way, just setting food that she couldn't eat in front of her in a sort of modern day torment of Tantalus. The second because they told her that she should be coughing in order to get the bloody gunk out of her lungs.

Speaking of her lungs, they never told her what the results of that pre-ICU test were. They said that if it had been bad enough to worry about she would have been sent to a specialized ward (I think it was cardiac, not pulmonary, because they were specifically looking at the blood vessels around her lungs, and the heart's right there in the near-center of that area.) So they told her one thing that the results weren't, but they never told her what the results were.

When I left at dusk, they were moving her out of the ICU.

They have since moved her back.

I've been at her house, which is not the hospital, since that night, so that's the most recent time I've seen her. She's going to need to be able to live out of a single floor, which means moving her bedroom and cleaning up a bathroom that's currently being used as a night-time dog kennel. Most of what I've done house-related here is tied up in that. We're clearing out a storage room on the first floor to be her bedroom. It's a storage room. It has a lot of stuff in it.

There's also the matter of her kids.

The daycare provider watched the younger two for a good long while, meanwhile her oldest was scheduled to visit the other side of his family (he has a different father than the younger two) for Thanksgiving and that's what he did.

Her housemate has a three year old of her own. If I understand correctly, this is a time that was specifically set aside for housemate to spend with her daughter, away from said daughter's father and current significant other, sort of like the way my sister's eldest was spending Thanksgiving exclusively with the other side of his family and away from us. (But not the same, it must be said. His father is deceased, so it was with his uncle and other grandparents, while this child is staying with one of her parents and no other relatives.)

As of Sunday night, this house has a two year old, two three year olds, and a six year old. It is a headache incarnate, full of noise and motion and . . . "signifying nothing" is the only way I can think of to end that sentence.

(Wednesday had the six year old because his departure had been delayed, another day had the other two, and housemate's kid has been here non-stop, but until Sunday night we hadn't had to deal with all four kids all at once.)

And that's where things stand.

I'm far from home, trying to help out at my sister's house. She's far from home, though not as far, in a hospital. I don't know her prognosis. I don't know if she has a prognosis yet.

Everything is a mess.

⁂

The licence plate on my sister's truck is UNIQRN. (She came up with that herself.)

She would like the world to know that she was run over by a unicorn.

Ping

2019-11-21T12:40:00.004-05:00

Quick but important question:

Is anyone reading this? Does anyone care?

I guess that's two questions.

The short version is that I feel like if I shut down Stealing Commas it wouldn't really inconvenience anyone. No one would care, and I'm not even sure that anyone would notice.

Given my lack of output writing-wise, I feel like that might be the reasonable thing to do.

But those are feelings. Facts might be more useful here. So, if you're reading this, please leave a comment saying so. If you care, please mention that as well.

The long version is after the break

~ ~ ~

I was walking home from seeing my psychiatrist and psychologist, though honestly it's possible they're neither. I got used to saying that when I very definitely did have one of each. My psychiatric meds prescriber and my psychiatric talking person.

It's mid Autumn, the sun sets earlier than I am ever prepared to think of the sun setting. So I was walking home in the dark, in the cold, and in the rain. Also, my depression is pretty bad right now. I mean, for months my posts have almost exclusively been of the form, "Depression is bad, I'm somewhat sick, and I need money." So you could probably guess that my depression is bad right now (also that I'm somewhat sick and I need money.)

All of this didn't necessarily leave me in the best head-space, but that doesn't automatically mean that what I was thinking is wrong.

I want to curl up into a ball and disappear. That is not now, and has never been, an option. I'd love to go to sleep and (calling on Maleficent or some such now) never wake up. Not die in my sleep, stay asleep forever. Also not an option.

So, those are not things I can act on. There are other things, though, that I can.

I can admit that I'm not a writer anymore. Writers write. I don't. This doesn't count as writing in this context because when I say "writer" there's a host of unspecified constraints on the topic. Usually I mean storyteller, and (more specifically) fiction writer. But it's also the case that I'm not exactly cranking out essays or articles or anything like that either, so the sense in which I'm not a writer is even broader than it would usually be if I said some thing like that.

When, in fits and starts and unpolished spurts, I do manage to write, or more accurately did manage to write, for the past . . . forever, it seems like, it's all been Equestria Girls or, rarely, more general My Little Pony. (The generation thereof that's ending.)

The impression that I have is that, even if someone is here sometimes reading things, and even if some such person does care about what I write in general, no one here is interested in that.

I've actually got some more stuff I could share. Scraps I wrote back when I could write that are arguably postable as readable stand-alone fragments. I'm not sure there's any point. Why bother posting things that no one's going to read and no one cares about?

~ ~ ~

Every time I think I might be able to do something to change things or turn them around, it falls apart before it even starts.

I was thinking of doing Let's Plays because playing video games was actually helpful to my mood, so why not work with that. I don't know if I'd do them well or anyone would be interested, but I could at least feel like I was being productive and that's an important feeling to have.

I broke my computer before I could even attempt to start. Computer failures happen to me all the time, it's like my family need only look at a computer to make it go wrong, but this wasn't a case of my computer failing. I. Fucking. Broke it.

I don't even know how. Zapped something? Scratched something? Flipped a setting? No idea. But I do know that it was entirely my own fault and, even though it should be simple to send it away to have some expert or other fix it, I haven't. I haven't made any god damned progress.

I haven't made any progress on anything.

~ ~ ~

Anyway, those are the questions:

Does anyone read what I write here? Does anyone care?

Because right now it feels like I should admit that I'm not capable of writing anymore, shut this place down, fade away, and be forgotten. (If I haven't been already.)

Quick computer question that hopefully isn't important, but could be -- (deleted files and Chromebooks)

2019-11-06T10:34:00.001-05:00

Chromebooks don't have a recycle bin. Deleted things are deleted. I deleted what looked like some empty folders. Then I realized it wasn't showing me hidden files. So I could have deleted some important stuff.*

Now, they say anything deleted on a Chromebook is gone for good, but I haven't zeroed out anything, which means that that's probably not entirely accurate. Especially since the hard drive I deleted things from was external, which means I can and have removed it, which means they're not going to get overwritten (unless they already were, which would have needed to happen almost immediately.)

The thing is, though, you can't just install shit on a Chromebook. It needs to be Chromebook compatible which most things aren't.

Right now, everything but the Chromebook is out of commission, which means that if I want to recover those folders, and the files they may or may not contain, I need to do it using the Chromebook.

So, we come to the question: How do I recover erased files on a Chromebook?

Please remember that I am well aware that there's no native function for doing that. I'm not asking "Where is the Recycle Bin so that I can take the files out?" I'm asking, "The files are well and truly deleted but have (almost certainly) not been overwritten, given that, how do I get them back?"

Basically what I need here is either "This is an app on Google Play that is simultaneously: capable of doing the job and Chromebook compatible" or "Even though you know nothing of Linux, you need Linux. Here is a step by step --leaves out no details no matter how obvious they may seem-- process to recover erased files with the version of Linux you can install on a Chromebook."

The Linux thing is in the beta stage right now, which means it might not work completely properly, but this is the key thing: it used to be that you had to swap your Chromebook into developer mode to use any Linux thing whatsoever, and that process can (apparently) erase every fucking thing you have. The beta stage "install Linux with the push of a button" function doesn't require any such tinkering, and is relatively risk free.

It also doesn't give you much in the way of control. There are literally no options. You push the button, it installs Linux, and you have no input on what that actually means.

(Even if you can't help) if you're reading this, thanks.

* Important stuff not actually from the Chromebook, I was supposed to be copying something, but instead I moved it, when I noticed the mistake I canceled the move, and I was undoing it, but the Chromebook didn't merge the relevant folders so I took a look inside to manually movie the files in the folders into the places they were meant to be, and didn't find any files to move.

I deleted the seeming superfluous folders, and only then did it occur to me, "There might have been hidden files." I checked, and (sure enough) hidden files were hidden, so I have no idea if I deleted any or not.

I'm terrified, and somewhat sick, and without a real computer, and my depression is pretty bad

2019-11-05T21:59:00.004-05:00

Ok, let me pause for a moment to say: FUCK!

I was a fair bit into this post when everything just crashed. Usually that's ok. Local storage means that it's saved. Nothing was saved. Well, the title was. So now I'm already crying as though I were a fair bit into writing this, and . . . it wasn't brilliant or anything, but I thought that what I'd written did a good job of capturing what was . . . again, fuck.

I thought that I'd managed to figure out what to say and how to say it. I thought that I was communicating well. It's gone. I don't know if I can do it again.

⁂

So . . . anxiety.

Usually my anxiety takes a back seat to my depression. With depression making me either a hollow shell with no emotions or a despondent wreck, there's not a lot of space for fear. Sometimes I literally forget I have an anxiety problem.

That's probably not surprising. It wasn't diagnosed until we made real progress in dealing with my depression because it wasn't until then that it got a real chance to shine. That progress is fucking gone.

It's two years and nine months (less ten days) now since I fell down those fucking stairs and, basically, reset everything. If you're reading this, and I'm not convinced anyone is, then you've heard me talk about all that. I'm not getting into it again.

And on that topic of the possibly fictional people who read what I write, if you do exist and you are reading this, then I haven't exactly been giving you much to read lately, have I?

Mostly it's been sporadic updates like this one, saying the same thing as all the others: I'm not writing much, or at all (depending on the month) when it comes to fiction, my depression is really bad, my financial situation is increasingly terrible (which means that if I don't get help I'm doomed, but there's no fixed timetable so it's a sort of limbo of doom thing), I've been having a series of problems regarding access to medication since July or August (I've lost track) which may or may not be related to my pharmacy closing circa the same time.

All of that crap? Still true. Still have terrible depression, still not writing fiction, still need money, still suffering the fallout from the medication stuff. (Though at least I have all my meds now, unfortunately that hasn't made things go back to the way they were before the problems.)

Today, though, there's something new. Obviously anxiety. I'm not sure why today. Everything that's bad today was just as bad yesterday. And the day before that. And the week before that, and (with the exception of my ever worsening finances) the months before that.

It's not like anxiety needs a reason.

Anyway, pretty sure I'm the worst I've been short of a nervous breakdown. The feeling in my chest is as visceral as an injury or a headache, but instead of pain it's fear. That's the dread. The terror doesn't really have a location.

Actually, the terror has receded. Apparently my "take as needed" anxiety med does actually accomplish something.

Regardless, things are very much not good.

I want to give up. There's just one problem: I'm not actually doing anything. There's nothing to give up.

I'm failing to do a great many things, so you might think I could give up trying, but that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the way in which I'm failing. I'm not managing to try. I get out of bed. I attempt to make sure I get enough to eat and drink over the course of the day, and then I try to get to sleep on time.

Anything more than that and I just . . . can't. Not right now.

I have the lingering remnants of a cold. Ordinarily it wouldn't be too much of a problem, but with the level my depression's at right now, it's enough to stop me from doing pretty much anything. I can read certain fanfiction. I can play certain, fairly mindless, games.* I can't do much of anything else.

It's not that I try and fail. It's that I can muster the . . . something to try in the first place. Energy? Willpower? Emotion? I'm not sure.

So, I want to give up. I can't give up because there's nothing left to give up on.

I want to curl up in a ball and fall asleep. Darkness take me. Then not wake up. Not as in "die in my sleep" as in "Call in Maleficent so that I can be in an enchanted sleep forever."

I didn't know that "passively suicidal" was a thing until this year. Now that I do . . . well, I think I said it when I published it. Indifference contains way more of myself and my life than I ever intended. It just sort of came out.

Everything either of the characters says about their condition applies to me with the one exception being that it wasn't the edge of a roof for me. It was the edge of cliffs. I haven't been in a position to be dangerously close to the edge of a cliff in a long damned time, but back when I was . . . well, the views are amazing, but looking back there's something else that's clear.

I used to think that people who were concerned about my proximity to cliff edges were being needlessly concerned, overly protective, or just worried over nothing. After all, I wasn't worried. I wasn't afraid. I was the one who knew exactly how close I was, I was the one who could feel what my footing was or wasn't like. Surely I would know best whether or not there was something to fear.

I never got introspective enough, on that particular topic, to realize what was going on. Falling and getting hurt scared me. So much so that I always erred on the side of being afraid when I was perfectly safe, not on the side of feeling safe when I was at risk. Falling and dying, though . . . that wasn't scary.

And that was the disconnect.

I did have more information. I wasn't necessarily good at judging risk, but I was the right combination of "good enough" and "cautious" that "I'm not at all worried about falling" almost always meant I was well and truly safe vis-à-vis falling. If this were a case of "If you fall, you're probably get scraped up" then my approach of relying on whether or not I felt like I had something to worry about in the falling department would have been a safe one (to the point of being detrimental, actually.)

But it wasn't a case of whether or not I'd get scraped up and "whether or not there's something to fear" doesn't just depend upon the facts of the matter, it also depends on what one is afraid of. I wasn't afraid of dying. The prospect of me dying was frightening to other people.

⁂

I think the only thing left is the computer issue. I got a Chromebook as an emergency back up option. Primary computer and secondary computer are both non-functional.

I'm really regretting not spending more money to get basically anything else as an emergency back up option. The last thing I need right now is more debt, but fuck is frustrating . . . I don't have words.

Secondary computer has been having problems with the power jack for ages, that's why I got an emergency back up option, and it finally broke completely. All of the computery bits are still working, but with no way to charge the battery, it's a paperweight. Well . . . several paperweights.

Secondary computer's hard drive is now, effectively, a USB stick. That's good. What was on it wasn't lost. Yay.

I would, perhaps, be more enthused about that if primary computer weren't also busted. (And I'm massively pissed off at myself because it's my fucking fault.)

The primary computer's charger broke. It was the cord, and if it had been on the outlet side that would have been great, because that's not actually a part of the charger, it's just a power cord. I don't think I've ever had one of the power cords that connect outlet and charge break. I do, now that I think of it, believe that I might have once had a dog bite one into three pieces. (It wasn't live at the time, the dog was fine)

So the cord that's built into the charger broke, which means that the charger broke. I bought a replacement charger. Same specifications, same manufacturer, but not the exact same model. In my defense, it didn't say it needed the exact same model. It said the specifications it needed and that a charger from the same manufacturer was preferred.

The new charger would power the computer, but it wouldn't charge it. So I looked that up. I found out that with the type of computer I have, sometimes after a charger goes wonky things need to be reset before it will work properly with the next charger.

It's a really fucking simple reset too, just disconnect the battery and the BIOS battery. Somehow I managed to fuck something up when I did that. I don't know how. I don't know what.

I just know that now the computer won't start. I can get into BIOS fine. I can run diagnostics too, and they assure me that everything is peachy, but the moment the computer tries to start anything else (Windows be it normal or in safe mode, Windows' special "Hey, we noticed that Windows isn't starting" repair thingy, a recovery drive, whatever) it freezes.

It freezes before it even leaves the "We were afraid you'd forget what kind of computer you're using, so we put the logo here" pre-operating system loading screen. The dots that go around in a circle to let you know that things are happening and the computer hasn't frozen stop moving. Nothing happens. Waiting, as expected, accomplishes nothing. The only thing I can do at that point is power the damned thing down.

The best part of all of this, though, is that the problem I was trying to fix wasn't even the problem. In spite of not saying so anywhere, the computer just needs the exact same type of charger it was shipped with. Once you ignore what you're told it needs (and should be compatible) and resign yourself to paying for a factory new charger of the latest design, which is nowhere stated to be functionally different from the previous model, the thing charges fine.

It's just that before I did that I opened up the computer in an attempt to fix a problem it didn't have and, in the process, somehow did something that ruined everything. What did I do? No fucking clue. The diagnostics all say everything is fine.

If I'd just spent the money on a factory new charger to begin with, I'd never have had the problem that led to me opening it up. If, when the charger that was supposed to be compatible didn't charge it, I'd gone with my suspicion that there was something, not stated in the specs, that made it need the latest iteration of the charger in question, I still wouldn't have messed things up.

Whatever's wrong with the computer isn't just totally and completely my fault, it was also utterly avoidable. All I had to do was not attempt to troubleshoot it.

And I really do have no fucking clue what happened. Did I bend something? Did I accidentally complete a circuit and zap some vital thing not checked by the diagnostics? Is there some BIOS setting that got flipped on reset and fixing things is as simple as flipping it back? No idea.

I just want to back up the hard drives before I try to have primary fixed, and that is one of many reasons why I'm finding the Chromebook frustrating. It's built for being online and storing things on Google Drive. When it comes to dealing with files on physically present drives, the interface is rudimentary at best.

More than that, though, the way I want to back up the drives is by creating disk images on an external hard drive. If I had a functioning Windows computer, that would be easy. I don't. I have a Chromebook. As near as I can tell, this thing doesn't know what a disk image is.

⁂

Originally I was just going to re-post what I said at Ana's two days ago. The anxiety, though, seemed worth talking about, and it only happened today. So I started writing about that, and then I lost everything, and then I wrote more, and now we have all of this. I haven't really covered what I said over there, though, so I'm still going to re-post that.

From the main open thread post:

Sorry this is so very late. Depression has been really bad. I have food and water, but it's hard to think, hard to move, hard to get the food or the water, and hard to remember that I'm supposed to be eating or drinking it instead of staring off into space.

Normally I'd reserve such "Woe is me" stuff for the comments or my own blog, but this is really late and I figured you all deserved an explanation.

And the actual comment:

If there's a polar opposite of keeping on top of things, that's what I've been doing lately.

I've been having problems with medications since August or July, I've lost track. As of last Friday I'm back on all my meds (until the next problem crops up.)

For the longest time it was my most important medication. There's a story there, not particularly interesting (just stupid), but that's not the point. I've been back on that one. It was just that once I got back on that one something went wrong with another one.

So, the one that was most recently a problem . . . it's my ADHD med. It has a nothing half-life. It doesn't need time to build up. I should have been back to normal circa last Saturday. The past week has been just like the months leading up to it. No improvement whatsoever.

So, anyway, getting back to the first sentence in this comment. Someone came by a day or two ago to tell me that if I didn't pay up (within a half hour of being notified) my water would be turned off. I've never been that far behind with a bill before.

Water isn't the problem, though. It's not a major expense and the late fees are negligible.

The thing is, back before all of this (so before August or July) there was something else. I think it was alternating between being sick and exhausting myself helping my sister, but everything's hazy right now.

I don't even know where things stand, but I know I'm thousands of dollars behind on . . . everything.

If you have money to spare, you should probably give it to Ana, but here's my thing anyway:
paypal.me/ChrisTheCynic

⁂
⁂ ⁂

* Did I mention I have a tablet? Ana gave me a tablet. Ana is awesome.

For the first time I have a "mobile device" (though I'm still not sure why laptops aren't considered mobile devices.) I can play Subway Surfers without needing to borrow someone's iPad.

Ana installed Seedship before she sent it to me (I presume; I don't think it comes standard), and for a while I was saving humanity by shepherding them to a new home, but I'm seriously at a point where "Is this planet good enough, or should I hold out for a better one?" and "Would I rather damage be done to the cultural or scientific database?" is beyond me.

I'm also playing the Gameloft MLP game. It's not the first time I've given it a shot, but the Windows version hasn't been updated since the dark ages, and I was never able to do well with Android emulators, so attempting to play it on PC never worked out.

I discovered the hard way that I'm not the kind of person who can just play a game like that. It's one of the the things where you're supposed to play for a little while, set up some tasks that last hours in the process, leave, come back, and repeat. That's . . . not how I operate.

Without setting some ground rules for myself first (which I didn't do originally because I didn't know I needed to) I will grind the fuck out of such a game. I'll do the "play for a little while" tasks non-stop. That fills the space (during which I'm supposed to be interacting with the rest of the world instead of playing the game) between when the long tasks start and stop, and I level up absurdly quickly at the expense of, you know, losing my every waking moment to the game.

Now that I have set some ground rules for myself, though, that's not a problem.

It has a story, so to speak, and thus a substance of a sort that Subway Surfers lacks, but it doesn't have the same kind of choice and consequence and evaluation that Seedship has.

Expanding on the difference from Seedship: you want to do [whatever] it'll tell you how to do it. For example "Send Pinkie Pie to do such and such; now that that's done, gather this many [thingys]" rather than have you make high stakes decisions, which could result in complete disaster, which will shape the future (or lack thereof) of the human race.

They know Latin! Run Away; They Know Latin!

2019-10-25T16:15:00.000-04:00

[Originally posted at my Patreon over a year ago.]
[Things worth knowing:
-- Sunset (unicorn in human form) has seen her entire high school turn on her.
-- Sunny is a character from her homeland who is her one supporter.
-- Magic can be accessed via music.]

- ~ ´ * ⁂ * ` ~ -

If the fluently obscene and incisively profane Latin echoing through the hallways were any indication, something had gone very badly with Sunny and it hadn't finished yet. Just before Sunset turned what she was reasonably confident was the last corner, the Latin abruptly stopped.

Sunset was worried that something had happened to Sunny, but when she did round the corner she saw several students, all uninjured, being restrained by teachers and other staff. Sunny Skies herself was being held against a wall of lockers, glaring at the other restrained students with a disturbingly cold stare.

Sunset briefly wondered if Sunny were capable, emotionally, of killing someone, but shook the thought from her head. Right now Sunny, her only friend, was in need of a friend herself. Sunset's pace had slowed because she was now surrounded by teachers in an area that was under the highest level of supervision the school staff ever managed.

Sunny's right arm caught Sunset's attention. Sunny was, for lack of a better word, slapping her hand against the lockers behind her. It wasn't particularly hard or loud, but it was unusual and definitely not a tic Sunny had displayed before.

It was almost as if Sunny were trying to tap out in some combat sport, but didn't realize you had to do it in a way that the other person would actually notice, for example tapping them instead of the wall behind you.

There was something strange about it though. Some sort of pattern or--

It was music.

The teachers were forgotten as Sunset sprinted to reach Sunny. Sunset had no idea what kind of magic an angry Pegasus in human form might use, but she was pretty sure Sunny wasn't trying to pony up, something she'd previously shown only abstract academic interest in, just to take a flight around the campus.

If she succeeded in summoning magic things could get very bad very fast.

When Sunset reached Sunny she said, "Stand down," because she wasn't in the right frame of mind to think of anything more interesting or clever than that.

Sunny responded with an angry, "Istae verpae et te calumniantur, et--"

"Maledicant," Sunset said with the kind of calm that one could only show if they were faking it and well practiced in doing so. The word itself should have been able to go unspoken. Of course let them say what they would, after all, it wasn't like anything good came from trying to stop the hateful, hurtful, and infuriating words others spewed about her. Regardless, Sunset attempted to continue on, "Simpliciter--"

Sunny was unconvinced. Sunset didn't have words to describe the degree to which Sunny was unconvinced. Her right hand sped its rhythm, taping faster and louder on the locker, and she snarled, "Istam merdam paedica!"

That . . . was physically impossible. And not just because the merda was figurative. Still, in situations like these connotations were often more important than denotations and Sunset let it pass without comment.

Instead she stepped closer to Sunny, gently took Sunny's right arm in her left hand (to stop her from trying to pony up) and looked Sunny in the eyes before speaking again.

The teacher restraining Sunny, for his part, seemed entirely content to ignore all of this and relegate his attention and effort only to making sure Sunny didn't bolt. Since Sunset was now blocking the most viable escape route, he barely seemed to notice what was going on. He had a hand on Sunny's left shoulder, lightly pinning her to the locker, but that was the extend of his involvement.

Sunset was clearly on her own here.

"Defervesce," Calm down, "quia tu libebit," because it will be pleasing to me.

Sunny tried to shout, "Sed-!-"

"Non!" Sunset said unintentionally loudly. It was just short of a shout and not the sort of thing Ideally suited for communicating with someone when one was practically nose to nose with. She took a moment, calmed herself, and lowered her volume. "Noli dicire 'sed'," Don't say 'But'. "Nolo ex tu succensere," I don't want your rage.

Sunny wasn't ready to give up, but she also wasn't struggling or trying to tap some other part of her body in time to a beat that might let her sprout wings.

Sunset caressed Sunny's cheek, there'd be Hell to pay with the rumor mill, but the important thing was that Sunny wouldn't misinterpret the gesture as amorous, so using physical displays of affection to calm Sunny was definitely on the table.

"Noli incipere operare qua vindice meo me nolente," Sunset said, Don't be my champion/savior/defender without my consent, white knighting helped no one, after all. "Nolo illud," I don't want this, Sunset said, using the hand she'd touched Sunny's cheek with to gesture to the teachers finally getting students calmed down and breaking up the gawkers. "Ego nolo illud," she said, I don't want this.

She caressed Sunny's cheek again. All else aside, it was nice to have an Equestrian around just for the physical contact. Humans seemed to think it needed to be reserved for romance and sex. "Ne volo illud," she said one last time. I do not want this.

"Esse mihi amicam, carissimam, volo," Sunset said: I want my dearest friend with me.

Sunny let out a long breath, then visibly calmed. "Mea culpa," she said: My bad. "Hanc rem me paenitet, " I regret this matter. "Mihine ignosces?," Will you forgive me?

"Ita vero," Sunset said, yes/of course, "sed rei similī aliquem iterum nefacies," but you will never do anything like this again. True, she had no idea what had happened before she turned the corner, and she didn't have a way to gauge the potential damage that might be caused by unleashing Equestrian magic under these circumstances, but the situation was, both in broad strokes and in specific details, unacceptable.

"Iustum est," That's fair, Sunny said.

"Coercitora adveniēns, . ." Sunny said, it wasn't even close to a complete sentence. Still, a gesture indicated that Sunset should turn, and when she did she saw Vice Principal Luna. Thus the words make sense.

"Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in?" Luna asked Sunny.

Sunny said, "Εν νω εχω--"

And Sunset decided to end that little trip to another language right then and there. "Nescis. Non informationem habes."

Sunny was from another world that ran on the literal magics of Harmony and Friendship, with occasional assists from other happy cheery abstract concepts like Love and the like.

Nothing there could possibly have prepared Sunny for high school punishments.

"Before I descend into the dark recesses of my psyche to determine whether I want to maintain my record of professionalism or simply give up and scream profanity at my students, I do have a question for both of you," Luna said.

Sunset said, "Sagitta," at the same time Sunny said, "Τοξευου."

"You two are aware that we have a Classics Club, right?" Luna asked. "You know: a place where your mastery of the three great languages --Greek, Latin, and profanity-- would be met with praise and adulation."

Sunset shrugged, Sunny, for her part, seemed mildly interested.

"Miss Skies, please go to my office," Luna said to Sunny. Sunny started walking, and --when she'd made it a fair distance away-- Luna said, "Thank you for what you did today," to Sunset.

Sunset shrugged again. "I just talked."

"You took a fellow student from a state of poly-lingual bloodlust to a safe and normal place," Luna said. "That's not nothing."

Sunset decided not to note that Sunny only became poly-lingual again after the bloodlust had passed. Instead she shared something else that was on her mind:

"It's not much, either," she said.

"Given that the school seems to be coming apart," Luna said. "I'll take what I can get."

After a pause Luna said, "I'll need to go talk to Miss Skies now, I'd like you to be there to . . . take her off my hands when the meeting is finished."

"Produc, magistra," Sunset said; "produc."

Lead on, teacher; lead on.

- ~ ´ * ⁂ * ` ~ -

As it often the case, this is part of a larger story. As is often the case, it's the only part of that story that's actually written.

The Equestria Girls Holiday Special makes a point of completely isolating Sunset when it comes to in-person friends and allies. (Magical pen pals are exempt.) That means that one of the major questions raised by it is "What if just one person had been there (physically been there) for Sunset?" The answer depends a great deal on who that person is.

Moving on to other notes . . .

Sunny is asexual aromantic, Sunset knows, and Sunny knows that Sunset knows, so there's no risk of "I'm trying to comfort you, my friend, using physical contact" being misinterpreted as, "I'm coming onto you."

They're from the species that invented nuzzling so physical contact is a big deal socially.

Sunny's spent her entire life biting back on her anger because of propriety, decorum, and political concerns.

It suddenly hit her that, since she was in another world where no one knows her ("Sunny Skies" is a pseudonym; only a handful of people know that she's only human temporarily and a once and future pony by birth and choice) she could, for once in her life, let loose with what she really thought and tell people who hurt those she cares about exactly what she thinks of them.

It didn't take long before she surrendered all control to letting the pent up anger, rage, and frustration flow outward. There wasn't actually a physical altercation between students (teachers did have to hold students back to keep it that way), but if the teachers had been about 30 seconds slower to show up there would have been violence because the posturing stage had ended.

I didn't do a sufficient job of showing that, while Sunny calmed over the course of the Latin, she was still ready to restart the fray right until Sunset's last, "I don't want this," and accompanying "I want" statement.

Sunny has a lot of bottled up negative emotions and they've just tasted freedom for the first time in forever. She's volatile at the moment.

- ~ ´ * ⁂ * ` ~ -

Translations:

"Istae verpae et te calumniantur, et--"
Those dicks are both slandering you and--

"Maledicant, simpliciter--"
Let them speak ill, just--
Let them evil-speak, just--

"Istam merdam paedica!"
Fuck that shit! (in the butt)

Why "butt-fuck"?

The Latin for "fuck, in general" was profane but not particularly derogatory. Instead the Romans had a thing about penetration. (So too did the ancient Greeks we have records of) and so the options for getting "Fuck that shit! to have the right connotations are:
a) (butt-)fuck that shit! Or
~~b) Give head to that shit!~~
b) Get head from that shit!

I feel that the second loses something in translation.

[Added]
The original thing was way off. The Romans and the ancient Greeks whose attitudes we know about had a thing about the ways cis dudes could be sexually penetrated. Short version: "penetrating = good, being penetrated = bad." As such "Give head to that shit" would only ever be used to render the English "Get fucked by that shit" which is absolutely nothing like the intended meaning of "Fuck that shit."
[/added]

"Defervesce,"
Calm down/ Simmer down / Stop boiling over

"quia tu libebit,"
because it will please me.

Sunset is in to/for mode and mentally changed the aspect to make that work better, hence her rendering it as "because it will be pleasing to me."

"Sed -!-"
But -!-

Add the "exclamation cut off" hyphen to the punctuation marks we need alongside the the exclamation comma, the question versions of both, the trailing off question ( . ? . ) and the reverse comma (which would end the ambiguities that are allegedly the cause of the Oxford Comma Wars.)

"Non!"
No!

Noli dicire 'sed',
No "but",
Literally: Do not wish to say 'But'.

Nolo ex tu succensere
I don't want [flames on the side of your face anger] from you

"Noli incipere operare qua vindice meo me nolente,"
Don't start to work as my defender when I don't want that.
Don't go bein' my white knight when I want it not.
Don't be become a champion of mine without my consent.

"Nolo illud,"
I don't want this

"Ego nolo illud,"
I don't want this.

Directly stating the "I" is emphatic because it is implied by the verb conjugation and thus usually left out.

"Ne volo illud,"
I do not want this.

Nolo is what happened to "ne volo" when it was allowed to grow and change for centuries. To separate them out again is to go full on archaic (possibly breaking the rules and bylaws of grammar) for the purpose of emphasis.

"Esse mihi amicam, carissimam, volo,"
I want my dearest friend with me.
Literally: I want my friend, most dear, to be for me.

Someone once said that you don't translate Latin into English, you translate Latin into English-Latin. (Or maybe Latin-English. The point is, not English-English.) I bring that up because "to be for me" is most definitely not English-English.

It's a weird statement anyway, mind you. "I want you to verb for me," isn't that strange, but when the verb in question is "to be" the weirdness kicks in, pretty much regardless of how you end up phrasing it.

The idea is that what she wants Sunny to do for her is nothing more (or less) than exist. Angry shouting matches are not something she wants Sunny to do for her. Where the "with" from the English translation comes from is that if Sunny is existing for Sunset, she'll naturally (Sunset thinks) be doing it around Sunset (be it physically or some other measure of proximity) and thus with Sunset.

"Mea culpa,"
My bad.

"Huius rei me paenitet,"
I regret this matter.
Literally: It causes me to repent of this thing.
(No, the "it" doesn't stand for anything. impersonal verbs are like that.)

"Mihine ignosces?"
Will you forgive me?
Literally: To me --this is a "yes" or "no" question by the way-- will you give forgiveness?

"Ita vero,"
of course/yes verily/yuparoonie
Literally: So true.

Originally I planned to have "yuparoonie" as a translation in the story proper.

Some people might be interested to know that Latin doesn't have a word for "yes". Instead they used "ita vero" which, as I noted, literally translates to "so true". So, from now on, whenever people talk about how this or that language doesn't have word for "no", you can contribute the knowledge "Latin didn't have a word for 'yes'." (Please exercise discretion when determining whether or not you should make that contribution.)

"sed rei similī aliquem iterum nefacies."
but you will never do anything like this again.

"Iustum est,"
That's fair,
Literally: Fairness is.

"Coercitora adveniēns, . ."
Enforcer arriving, . .

This is known as an ablative absolute. In English we use nominative for our absolutes. Absolutes are free from entanglement and exist in themselves, they're grammatically disconnected from the rest of the sentence forcing you to figure out (usually from context) how they fit.

English absolutes include things like the "Arms akimbo" in "Arms akimbo, they came stalking down the stairs." You can figure out what that means ("With [their] arms akimbo, they came stalking down the stairs") but from a grammatical and structural standpoint it's disconnected.

Before we get to other things, I just looked up the definition of akimbo and had to change how they came down the stairs. Why does it mean "flung about haphazardly" with anything other than the arms, but "in a specific reserved, haughty, and judgmental stance" when discussing the arms? This is sub-optimal.

I was playing fast and loose with punctuation when I wrote that. That phrase should end with a comma, but since the rest of the sentence wasn't there I made up a modified ellipsis starting with a comma instead of the first period.

"Εν νω εχω--"
I have in mind.

This is idiom significant to me because it's one of the few non-English things I will spontaneously think. As such it's basically the one part of learning Latin and ancient Greek that was an unambiguous success.

There were, however, a lot of things surrounding the learning that I would not trade for anything. Almost a decade of my life would have been lost in a black hole of depression without the support I got from the embattled (and eventually defeated) USM Classics Program.

I don't think it's likely to happen, but if Jeannine showed up at my door saying, "I need your help, we'll probably die, we have to go now," I think that I probably would get involved in that thriller and/or action movie. I'd have questions, of course, but they could be asked on the way.

(Not that I have anything against Peter, I just feel like if someone comes knocking at my door needing help in some kind of life or death battle between good and evil, Jeannine is the more likely candidate.)

"Nescis. Non informationem habes."
You don't know. You have no idea.

"Sagitta"
Shoot (with an arrow), in Latin

"Τοξευου."
Shoot (with an arrow), in Greek

"Produc, magistra; produc."
Lead forth, teacher; lead forth.

"Produc" is one of those weird words. It's supposed to be "produce" (pro-du-kay), and we all know it's supposed to be "produce", and the Romans knew it too, but "produc" is an option too for some reason. Likewise true if you chop the "pro" off.

- ~ ´ * ⁂ * ` ~ -

Normally when I think of angry Latin conversations I think of Jacob and Shin from Life After and the arguments they have in my head of which, I'm pretty sure, none have been written.

Metapost: Depression is bad; can't write, need money

2019-10-25T15:04:00.000-04:00

Part of the reason I haven't been posting here is that everything is terrible at the moment.

I just came off of months of problems with getting my most important medication, I still haven't figured out what the fuck is wrong with my ADHD prescription so I haven't had that for ages. (Definitely I haven't had it since the most important medication got sorted out.)

All of that disruption hasn't helped. I was helping my sister a bunch, which sucks the life out of me to the point that helping her two or three days often means losing a week of productivity in my own home because it's not just the days that I'm not here, it's the days that it takes to recover from going there. It usually takes more days to recover than days spent there helping.

(My leg's been doing weird things, so she hasn't had me doing any particularly great manual labor, but the mental/emotional drain is always high as fuck.)

She hasn't asked me to help for a while, which would make things better, except that I've been sick since the last time I did help her. (Pretty sure I picked it up from her kids.) It's not an "Oh my God, I'm gonna die" thing. It's basically just a lingering chest cold, that's providing me with a perma-headache that makes all attempts at thinking kind of . . . "hazy" is the best word I've come up for it. It also gives me this general sense of ickiness.

I've been passively suicidal for basically as long as I can remember, but I only recently learned that was an actual thing so it's sort of new to me even though I've had it forever.

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One bright spot is that someone at Fimfiction (the My Little Pony fanfiction site) invited me to her discord server. That's related to suicidal stuff. In terms of thoughts, she's actively suicidal. In terms of actions she's actively self harming. Neither of these things are good, and hopefully they both stop, but having an internet friend who's extremely open in talking about her experience with those things is good.

I have mental healthcare, if things ever make the switch from passive to active I'll be getting professional help, but friends are important, and sometimes it's easier to talk to a friend you've never met and do it via a text only medium. It's comforting to me to know that if that switch ever happens I'll have that sort of friend who can simultaneously relate to what I'd be going through and tell me "Don't act on those thoughts."

(Right now, the concept of intentionally hurting myself in any way throws a divide by cheese error, I've always been downright terrified of what might happen, what I might do, if that ever stopped being true.)

That's comforting to me, but it's not the majority of why her inviting me to that server was a good thing. It's just having the people to talk to. Pre-Discord, all of the internet communities I'd been part of were always public. The only discord server I'd been on before this one was less . . . cozy, I guess. Also, the people there drifted in a direction I didn't. But mostly it's the less cozy thing.

This new group feels like something I haven't had before. Something good.

Also we talked extensively about the assassination of Julius Caesar the other day. (Caesar got offed because he didn't care what other people thought and/or couldn't read a room. Augustus got what Caesar had wanted by caring about the sensibilities of others and being able to read a room.) Geeking out with people is fun.

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Switching gears back to stuff that's been going on that's been affecting here, it's been very hard to make myself eat and drink enough. Dehydration and malnutrition have depression like symptoms even if you don't have depression, if you do have depression then they make those symptoms so much worse. Another thing that does that? Not getting enough sleep. Guess what else I've been having trouble doing?

Secondary computer died. The only thing that was wrong with it is the power socket, but I'd have to get a new part (a new socket) and solder it on to fix that. I have never soldered anything in my life. I want to, but I haven't yet.

I am now able to access the hard drive, which is good.

I somehow fucked up primary computer. The power cord broke. I got a new power cord. It didn't charge. Apparently getting stuck in "I can't charge mode" after a run in with a bad power cord is a known issue that's easy to troubleshoot. I tried.

First off. That wasn't the problem. The problem is that the model of computer is very finicky to the point that cords that should be compatible with it won't charge it. They'll power it, but unless it's exact same cord (slightly older iteration of the same cord with the same specifications will not work), the computer doesn't trust it enough to use it to charge the battery.

Got a new fresh off the assembly line cord from the manufacturer, and the computer charges just fine. The problem is that I somehow fucked something up somewhere when I tried to deal with the problem it didn't really have.

I have no idea what that something is, or what that somewhere is. All that I know is that when I attempt to start the computer I can get into the BIOS, where everything checks out, and I can run diagnostics, where everything checks out, but when it tries to actually start windows it freezes on the computer's logo screen. Those spinning dots stop spinning. Nothing happens. Computer doesn't work.

It does this even if I try to boot from a USB drive.

Most everything on the internet says that if the diagnostics say everything is peachy, it's probably some kind of software problem, so booting from a USB recovery drive should help, and thus they give no advice on what to do if it doesn't.

Computer is under warranty, I just need to back it up. Note that I have neither primary computer nor secondary computer at this point. I have emergency back up "Chromebooks are cheap". Chromebooks, I am finding, are less than ideal for backing things up. I can access the hard drive (both of them, for there are two) but it looks like backing it up will be tedious, and I've been trying to gather the emotional energy to do it for a week or two. So far, hasn't happened.

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Through all of this I've still been trying to write, but it hasn't been going the best. I'm lucky if I get a few sentences. I never seem to get something that can actually be shared.

I do have some old stuff, that hasn't been put here yet. I'm going to copy and paste one of those things over right after posting this.

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And . . . money. I need so much money. And I'm behind on all sorts of things, and late fees suck, and so on.

And it's like . . . it's really important that I get ~$650 dollars in the next few weeks. But it's also very important that I start catching up on all of the stuff that's already behind, and at this point I don't even know what to freak out about because everything is one giant homogeneous pile of, "Oh God, oh God; we're all gonna die."

The diffuse nature of the horrible is preventing me from focusing on anything, and that's not good. I really should be desperately begging for money because I've allowed things to get completely out of hand to the point I can't fix it without major outside help, but . . . I don't even know where to start.