I'm Laura, a trans lesbian from a system of three. The rest of us don't have a blog yet but Stardust (it/its, doll not a person) sometimes uses this blog too. I'm a sub and I'm into a lot of messed up stuff. Expect untagged kink here; feel free to block me if that's a problem for you.
Might edit this post later but this will do for now.
There is something really good about collapsing into sobbing and pleading until you realize there's nothing you can do to stop it, so your captor doesn't even need to beat you into submission anymore. You just lie there gasping and weeping in their arms as they comfort you, weak and fading. The "please no no no" becomes broken silence, gazing up at them, maybe clutching at their arm for a scrap of comfort as it happens.
This is normally like a snuff thing but it should be applied to many more settings. It's a delicious flavor of forced orgasm, leaving time between accepting you can't fight it anymore and it actually slamming into you. That endless moment of agonizing dread, suspended in despair and anticipation, cringing in pain and disgust. You'd almost prefer to just cum and it to be over with but even that mercy you're denied. You must wait to suffer.
Obviously there's also forced intox. There's nothing like realizing you're coming up and helpless to do a damn thing about it. You can panic, scream, sob, bite and scratch, tell them how much you hate them, but it's inevitable. You'll be weak on the ground soon, too dizzy to fight, too confused to argue. This is where brain breaking can come in! They can mind fuck you and turn you into something else inside, and all you can do is watch ❤️
so. i just learned that my entirely me-written resume flags as being AI-written by automated HR systems for a few writing quirks and the fact that i followed all the rules of good resume writing, which is apparently a telltale sign of AI use in this fucking hellworld. i've been desperately applying to jobs that i am massively overqualified for for months with no response, not even an interview, and now i find out that at least part of the reason is because some fucking moron decided that following the rules every career advisor has given me for a decade means i cheated and should be disqualified. the ai bubble cannot pop soon enough. what the actual fuck.
"frequent use of action-result sentences. bullet points all start with action verbs. no career gaps." girl what the fuck are you talking about. that's just resume writing advice being followed. i just did what i was told. it's a fucking resume. you're supposed to do all that stuff. what the fuck do you mean it looks ai generated and wouldn't pass basic detection systems?????????? for following the resume writing rules????????????
saw a tumblr poll that was like "what would be worse to date, a chaser that won't even call you a woman or a tgirl that is unemployed" like i kind of hate it here i kind of hate you all
I love lying to my landlord. “We’re currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease here” and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, I’m gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that I’m not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlord—I’m just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease I’ve ever signed. (Also, I’ve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether they’re corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their asset—the property—is a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time it’s sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goal—and because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent money—they’re almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, it’s actually in their best interest to give you a better price.
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an “AVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAY” sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says “First month free”? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says “call for availability”? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.
You have the least leverage if you’re a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that aren’t even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if you’ve already signed a lease and you’re in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so you’re stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if you’re a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and you’re being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, they’re also probably going to have to put in some work to “turn” the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, it’s still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. They’re probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know it’ll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if you’re a prospective new tenant—if they can’t get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, that’s $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and they’ll never get it back. It’s a perishable item about to spoil.
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number they’ll quote you for the rent—the sticker price that you’ve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, they’ve built some buffer into that number. There’s almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people don’t!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Don’t reply to their initial offer right away—unless there’s a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you aren’t desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when we’re talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when it’s time to send out renewal offers didn’t get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they could’ve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)
Here’s the tricky part. You need to write an email—always negotiate over email if you can, it’s too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isn’t in writing means nothing—which simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, you’d delete those other hoes’ numbers forever! Here’s the rough script I use every time:
“ Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I should’ve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number that’s higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; you’ve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and they’re likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firm—in which case, guess what? You still didn’t lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didn’t mention it above because I just couldn’t fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically “price firm :(”, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, “actually, nvm, how’s $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?”
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
One of the best ones I saw was a thing noting that every single one of the few survivors of suicide jumps off of the Golden Gate Bridge realized, on the way down, that the problems they were killing themselves over actually were fixable or could be worked through...except for the now - extremely unfixable - problem of gravity.
Went to the Holocaust Museum in DC once. There was a video interview of an Auschwitz survivor who said he and some other prisoners stayed up all night with a man who wanted to kill himself. The man didn’t kill himself and survived to liberation.
In the video the survivor said “Never seek a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And they’re all temporary problems.”
Hearing that from a guy who survived the Holocaust rewired my brain a little bit.
I think something a lot of people don't understand is that depression is not suicidality, and suicidality is not depression.
People can, and are, depressed without being suicidal, and sometimes suicidality peaks as people are emerging from depression.
Suicidality is a wave, and the trick is to allow that wave to crest and subside WITHOUT acting on it.
Whatever it takes to ride it out. For some people that's distraction, like watching television. For others it's calling a friend -- not to talk about the suicidality, but just to talk. For others it could be as simple as going to sit in a coffee shop or library, because the presence of other people is a huge diminisher of suicide risk.
That's what suicide safety planning is about. It's like having any other type of emergency plan, like a plan for fire or evacuation. It's making a plan when you are in the frame of mind to do so, so that you can just DO the plan without having to think about it when the occasion arises.
When you're in the midst of suicidal ideation, or even intent, you're not in a problem-solving mood. So knowing past!you, with the help of a therapist hopefully, came up with the plan and all you have to do is follow up until the wave crests and subsides, is what allows you to see another day.
ETA: Here's a link to a safety plan. https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/988-safety-plan.pdf
"getting altered" is viable slang for getting fucked by a plural system. conveniently, getting fucked by a plural system does also usually mean getting altered
Fun fact! this is likely due to racism. Not the drivers, to be clear, but this is a not-entirely-unsurprising result of systemic racism in the greater Seattle area and the influence it has on infrastructure spending.
I'm a huge proponent of public transit, rail in specific, and I'm very glad that the greater Seattle area is finally starting to see some solid light rail infrastructure sprouting up in the form of the 1 and 2 lines, but that in no way stops me from critiquing the decisions made in planning and implementation.
Light Rail, in it's colloquial form here in the US, is basically always a compromise solution. It's cheaper than subways, can make good use of existing right-of-way around freeways, and can function as a kind of low-capacity commuter rail in the suburbs while behaving more like a tram or streetcar in downtown areas. It is crucially, however, not a streetcar, nor is it a commuter rail. Streetcars make frequent stops and are optimized for dense areas with lots of traffic. Commuter rails are larger and stop less frequently, optimized for bringing suburban residents into city centers. Commuter rail should, however, be independent of street traffic so it can travel at higher speeds. For this reason, most of the Link light rail system in seattle is actually not at-grade (street level), but on either elevated or sub-grade track. Downtown, the lightrail actually functions as a low-capacity low-frequency subway system in what used to be the bus tunnel (we don't have time, but yes it was stupid). Everywhere else, it's up on elevated tracks that largely follow the freeway system.
There are three stations, all immediately south of that Mount Baker elevated station, where the Link actually runs at-grade. These stations run through the historic low income immigrant neighborhoods of southeast seattle. Here, the trains are forced to stop at red lights, interact with crossing and left-turning traffic, and even cross through sidewalks and terrifyingly narrow pedestrian islands. They could have built elevated track here, as they did everywhere else, but they didn't. they didn't want to spend the money. I have personally watched light rail cars carrying hundreds of people have to wait two full minutes for cars turning left in front of them, delaying trains so like, 5 people could drive there. Once it reaches the end of this low income immigrant-dominant neighborhood, however, the Link returns to it's above-grade status, with Mount Baker being the first elevated stop. You want to know how this woman, who claims she was misdirected by her GPS, probably ended up here? I would bet anything she tried to make a turn at the intersection just before the stop and got confused. The intersection, for reference, looks like this:
I'm not saying it's an easy mistake to make, but given the number of people who drive through here every day, it's honestly not that surprising that someone, especially someone who is from out of town, or someone who is used to shared streetcar lanes, would eventually make this mistake. When you're dealing with a city of hundreds of thousands of people, it's only a matter of time before a mistake like this happens. but it is only possible for it to happen because of the decisions made in the planning process, and one of those decisions was effectively "we can save money if we make everything worse in that part of town where all the foreign poors live", and so they built the thing at-grade, instead of keeping it elevated like everywhere else.
and yes, those tracks are in the middle of a four lane road, and no, there is no way to get to any of the at-grade stations without crossing at least two lanes of traffic on a very busy avenue. and those tiny little pedestrian islands are not only terrifying to walk on, but a man in a wheelchair was clipped by a passing train car a while back because his chair didn't really fit through the tight turns well and one of his feet was sticking slightly out when the train passed by. This is not a problem at like, any other stops in the Link system. Just here. Just in this neighborhood. And it's a fucking disgrace.
Saw her shooting down a bunch of the bullshit, so i thought i would share here because i witnessed it, and shes right.
something people might want to know also, is that since these stalkers are insane they have actually managed to back up a lot of patricias blog on the wayback machine. meaning you can go and read for yourself what she was dealing with, and verify for yourself.
if youve seen any of these lies. they were perpetuated by these people:
britts-galaxy-brain, encyclipediamorbidica,rambling-crerchur.
these people continue to lie, and double down to this day.
please block these people. thanks.
I love this image so much. it’s so lovingly made. it’s so earnest. it was made with a level of passion and delicacy exclusively reserved for perverts. this was not “we need an image for shipping discourse haha wouldn’t this be silly” this was made with more yearning than the human body can bear
I’m still not over this. If you just showed me this picture with no context and asked me what article it was from I would guess it was a pastiche of some kind of pastoralist art movement, Romantic in the 19th century sense, a (chaste) expression of passion, youth, and sublimity. And then you’d tell me that actually it’s the Weberian ideal-type representation of age gap yuri.
This is why a pervert is like a type of mystic to me. They see what others cannot.
I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter was one of the best works of sci-fi of our generation and one of the best works of transgender fiction ever written, and there are world renowned authors who still have successful careers after they publicly assassinated the nascent woman who wrote it. I don't think they should ever know peace.
I think this constantly and then I get angry for thinking it, because trans women should not have to be martyrs or saints to animate our politics and our art. that work should have been her debut, not her epitaph. I should be moved by her career, not her absence. I could spit.
see every time i see this status i get angry because i’ve played through literally every scenario in rct1 and there is no place where this is a thing. there is never more than one park per map. and in rct2 you can’t make that happen i the scenario editor either. it is not remotely within the game’s functionality to simulate two discrete parks and these games were coded in assembly for christ sake so it’s not like someone modded it in by adding the line “int const TOTAL_NUM_POSSIBLE_PARKS = 2;”. there is no conceivable way this post is anything close to true and even though i know how writing all this out reflects upon me as a person and even though i know exactly how meaningless and trifling of a takedown attempt this is on some random facebook screencap with hundreds of thousands of notes im going to post it anyway because i’m too petty to have any say in the matter
Listen, there's something so insanely hot about being sat in a conversation between people who are clearly very smart, not even being able to even try to follow along, and knowing they fully know how slow you are in that moment. Like, I'm not a dumb person... all the time. But it's just a hot button for me and always has been to be sat there twirling my hair as my thoughts drift away as they keep blah, blah, blahing around me about something smarty pants and I just smile and nod back. Like I'm just there for decoration. They don't expect me to get involved in fact, they love when I'm confused and silent for a change. They think it's cute.
So last night after a weekend of intense shenanigans (we played fraction8 nearly 4 times) I was VERY fractionated still, and very easy. I'm sat in a vc with my wife and our friend. We play together a fair bit and safe to say I was in one of my subby moods. The two of them are science-y types and they were talking about some sort of biology thing (for context I failed bio and chem at high school as well as maths, it's not my jam).
My wife looked in the camera and shushed me. Placing her fingers on my lips always forces me to be quiet. As she holds her finger to the camera I lost the ability to speak. So here I am flustered and fractionated. Squirming in subby frustration at this. She's like "hey since we're going to talk about smart science things you can just smile, nod and look pretty okay?" I start to unravel a little at the idea. While it wasn't stated I should be getting dumber, I was very confused, my head started to spin a little. The last time such a thing was said to me was around 2018 when I was dumbed down in this same situation. Smart people talk while I, the total ditz can only listen to the smarty pants people talking to each other doing their smart things with their full brain. Now this alone would have done me in, however earlier in the call I picked up my tally counter, my personal clicker, the one that now thanks to this friend drops me into trance when I click it. Only for a second of course, not long enough sometimes but enough to get my brain fucked up after a while. He said "I know you haven't even thought about putting it down" and I thought about that for a second. He was right. I didn't want to and after explaining the difference between wanting to do something and actually doing that thing to me he said, "you know while we talk you can also just keep clicking yourself into trance, clicking your mind away." And that did me in. I knew the game was set.
So here I was clicking, fractionating myself, gasping in and out of trance. Each time I came up I'd see the finger pressed against my mouth. I couldn't say anything but just listen to the conversation. I don't know what they said, I couldn't follow it even if I tried really, really hard. It was a blur. At one point I heard my wife point out my adorable eye rolling but I don't eye roll. Well, not normally anyway. See, when I drop I just close my eyes, or fall with them open. Eye rolls only happen when I'm really fucked up and it seems I was giving that level of helpless in the facial department. I didn't even notice. I couldn't even notice. Ooof. Anyway after a while I came back up. My friend looks at me and he said, "click" I verbally repeat it back, unprompted as my finger pressed the button for him. My damn parroty brain just latched onto anything it could as my mind was just putty in their hands and it was awesome. Truly a good time had by all.