I’m sorry for the downer on your feed, and I know for some of my friends this’ll be the first time they hear this. I’m sorry. My minds been everywhere and I don’t have the emotional energy to tell everyone. Most learned through a prior on discord.
I promise. There’s no gorey photos here. No descriptions. I’ve seen too many that do that, maybe the scam Gaza posts have just scarred me.
And I know if a stories of a dead pet story is hard to hear. But, I talk about her below.
Either way, take care of yourselves. Tell your family you loved them. You’ll never know when they’ll be gone
https://gofund.me/347f68e14
On 30th I had to put Blaze down. She was my cat. My best friend. My little buddy. I don’t, want to go into detail, as it was incredibly fucking traumatic but. She. Was not okay, and it was sudden. We’d tried to take in a dog, and we kept them separate. Dog in my mom’s room, and we let the cats roam the house as they do. Blaze broke in despite our efforts and the dog attacked her, unprovoked.
We took her to the vet but. Well. Man.
She was the light of my life. My silly guy. Stinky ass jester, who did thought nothing but love and stick her head in our faces. Her energy limitless. Fuck, when I sick she tried to JUMP IN THE TOLIET. My mom caught her from taking a sick water bath
But.., we will press on. That’s what she’d want. Little guy bounced back emotionally from everything, even in her last moments. Maybe she taught me some of that.
Her vet and cremation bills were pricy and money isn’t great, so please reblog or donate if you can. Even just reblogging would be a blessing.
I understand if you can’t. I completely do. At the very least, take a sip of water, take a stretch. Treat yourself with kindness. Know you are loved by someone.
Blaze would like that
https://gofund.me/347f68e14
Our cat Blaze and my partner Amanda were both tragically attacked and mauled after we … j b needs your support for Help with Blaze’s Emergen
Monsters of Bureaucracy is a one-shot Podcast Jam project by Ani Rey. It follows the story of a woman experiencing that even a world where the paranormal is normalized, the methodologies and systems at play would function largely unchanged. The purpose of the work was to explore the idea of chronic pain showcased in an audio medium. Ani Rey has never released an audio fiction prior to this, despite working on them for over a year at this point. She wanted to have something of her own released, before continuing her work with Cozy AF Productions.
Content Warnings: Medical Fatphobia, Medical Transphobia, Allusion of Suicide, Dog-ish Attack @ 4:49
Drama. This episode is 23:37 long and it's a oneshot.
I looked forward and dreaded relistening this episode. It's immediately up there as one of my favorite audio fiction stories of all time. It makes me tear up just thinking about it.
So what can I say, other than "You need to listen to this story"?
This, to me, is fantasy fiction as its finest. I adore {horror, surreal, fantasy, Weird} fiction where those elements work on multiple layers. The experience of having a monster attached to her hip is real to our main character - but it's also a metaphor for us, the audience.
I adored the recurring, sometimes near-constant growling of the monster as a representation of chronic pain. Making an invisible disability audible. Bringing us into the experience of the main character. Sobbing in the car after a dismissive doctor's visit - fuck, I've been there. And the medical fat- and transphobia... hurt. angered me. sadly far too real and common of an experience.
I think the storytelling was stronger for being a solo project. In ways I won't discuss here but encourage you to discover for yourself.
I'm pretty stressed out because I'm moving, so I decided to write about König stressing out too! Yay! Anyways, let's go.
König has a complicated past. His childhood was filled with bullying, his adult life has been filled with bullets and bombs. He's been through too much for one man, honestly. The fact that he hasn't either become a hikikomori or a homicidal maniac is a miracle. I think the only reason we're safe is because he has a good family and he found good friends when he joined the military. However, he has scars. Not all of them are painted on his skin.
I've collected phobias that I think he might have into a list, however some of these fears are fears that though they impact him seriously, he can live with them and won't have a panic attack upon facing them. Fears that genuinely terrify him identified. His fears are ranked 1 through 5, with 1 being a fear that just makes him a bit wary/on edge, but he's not going to have a meltdown unless pushed or 5, a fear that can cripple him with just a brush.
Phobias are listed under the cut (also I got the fears from a list online, hence why they're mostly alphabetical)
1 Scopophobia: Fear of being watched
König grew up in a small, rural village surrounded by monsters in all shapes and sizes. Adults were cruel, children were monsters. He grew up being afraid of going out because he knew that everyone in the village saw him as the socially outcast freak. Every time he looked at people, he saw them looking at him with disdain. I think a lot of this is due to developing social anxiety, and so thus he became paranoid, but he did develop a fear of people watching him, judging him, following him with their eyes. He hates going out into the civilian world because of this.
1 Agorophobia: Fear of open spaces or crowds
König is scared of going out into crowds. Why? See phobia above. He can't stand being outside of a place he considers safe. Not in a 'I can't go on missions' way, but in a 'I don't want to go to a shopping mall' sort of way. On a mission, he's either alone or in combat. When he's in civilian life, he doesn't know how to turn the military brain off. He can't get it through his reptilian brain that he's safe, and he's okay, and no that person carrying a duffle bag is not actually carrying a hidden rifle, and no that person with a thick coat does not have a bomb under their clothes, and no that person who's walking towards him does not have a knife in their belt. He is safe. He knows this logically, but he can't stop his heart from racing. It's too loud, too hectic, too many things can go wrong too quickly.
5 Atychiphobia: Fear of failure
Do you know what failure means when you're on a mission infiltrating a cartel base? Failure means watching your teammates get blown apart by a bomb. Failure is watching your best friend fall down into a puddle of their own blood. Failure is getting a bullet between the ears. Failure is not an option in his world. When people make mistakes, don't check their surroundings properly, when someone dares to light up a cigarette at night in an open area, that's when people die. Remember this phrase when you go to smoke on a battlefield. The first light catches the sniper's attention, the second light he lines his sights, the third light he pulls the trigger. Mistakes cost lives when on the field.
1 Catagelophobia:Fear of being ridiculed
This one is pretty self explanatory. He's been bullied his whole life. He's pretty sick of it.
3 Cynophobia: Fear of dogs
König, due to working in missions that target gangs and domestic terrorist groups, has had the misfortune of seeing dogs being used against his own people. He's been attacked by a dog before himself. In combat, dogs are tools of terror. He's seen his own team use dogs, and he knows what they're capable of. You might see a fluffy German shepherd. He sees a dog that's torn peoples hands off. However! He does also like dogs when he meets them in public. He is not going to assume your dog is a killer, but if your dog growls, he won't dare touch that dog. He won't even get close. He's seen what dogs can do.
As mentioned before in this post, König's first reaction to fears he can see is to lash out. He will punch or kick without thinking. He doesn't even yell or gasp when he does it. It's just what he does. If you go to sneak up on him, you'd best be ready to dodge. He feels really bad about it, and he's been banned from 10 different haunted houses around the world.
For fears he can't physically lash out at, he will just keep an eye on things. OODA loop, you know? Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. That's going on in his head over and over again. If he's out in public, that's going on in the back of his head. If he sees a dog, he's going through multiple different scenarios and evaluating the likelihood of each possibility. Normally he's a quiet man, but he goes deathly quiet when he's afraid. If you notice him freaking out like this, it might be nice to ground him by getting his attention and then taking his hand, or distracting him from what he's thinking about. He might not say it until later, but he'll be thankful.
The society in the US tries to gaslight us into thinking that this capitalistic hellscape is for the best. Propaganda constantly screaming that "we're the greatest country on earth!" meanwhile, we have the lowest life expectancy of any first-world country. There is rampant wealth inequality, mass incarcerations, and systemic racism and sexism, and that's just the tip of the iceberg! How dare they say we should be thankful that the noose around our necks is velvet.
I don’t admit it bc everyone makes fun of you for it but dogs stress me out especially bigger dogs like ack. Doesn’t help that my mom was attacked by a big dog unprovoked (dog was on walk, mom was on walk, dog and mom walked past each other and dog lunged) and had to get stitches.
My mom didn’t even like press charges but the county decided to prosecute the owner anyways and now the dog has to wear a muzzle on walks and they have to have beware of dogs signs on property
Trauma from dog attacks is so fucking real
My dad was attacked by a German shepherd as a 4 year old little kid and he still has scars around his entire skull under his hair where the dog wrapped its jaws around him
People will talk until they’re blue in the face about how it’s everyone’s responsibility to have basic decency and manners in public and then unironically bring their untrained Labrador into a grocery store and let it shit on the floor and not clean it up
I love dogs like I love all animals. They are not inherently malicious or dangerous or gross. It is 100% always the fault of the owner if they don’t train their dog and bring it places unleashed. Some people who can’t train them and refuse to learn to truly do not deserve their dogs