#hazelhooves

[bethiebo]

Rock Nessie by Bethiebo

This is a collaboration piece technically as it was drawn out by @awthredestim but i vectored it afterwards :)

Featuring @sketchysounds, Me, @corner-and-his-corners, @askmovieslate, @nega-spark, @hazelhooves and @mechathetecha

[techmomma]

If you don't mind me asking, is there something about how I write Britty that might have indicated there may be potential for issues with the convention? I rarely get much feedback that delves into the meat and bones of her.

It's not so much how you write Britty so much as what you're doing with her--that is, what you're doing and not doing with her.

You may have created her personality, but you were given stewardship of a mascot from a company that makes money off of her image. Her image helps sell BUCKcon merchandise and advertisement. 

Ask Britannia isn't like other askblogs. It has "ask" in front, but you are in charge of a mascot. Mascots bring money in. Money depends on her. Running her blog isn't a hobby, like mine or others, it's a job; a thankless, unpaid job, but a job. And frankly, you haven't been doing that job. You took on this responsibility, and you need to be a responsible adult about it--rather than blogging about Skyrim and doing things in Skyrim with Skyrim Britannia having Skyrim adventures. In Skyrim.

I realize it's easy to get burnt out on blogs. I realize inspiration isn't always there. I realize sometimes you have to take a break. 

But frankly, it's been so long since an actual canonical non-crossover non-holiday update that I don't even know what the actual story is and can't really be bothered to look if I have to look that far and that deep. I have to go back 4 pages to get anything like actual content, and that's the story we did between Britannia and Teabiscuits. I have to go back 6 pages to get to a Clarion Call update. The end of the Merriweather crossover was about six months ago. More than ten months since a meaty update featuring Britannia herself, and not her parents in the form of her backstory. Average readers will go back three pages, if they're patient. IF. Most will glance at the first page and if you can't catch them there, they're gone.

What I'm about to say isn't me being mean. It's Techmom, giving you the hard truth.

If I was in charge of BUCKcon's PR team, I would have fired you by now. I would have considered this stringing me along, and let you go. 

Again, this is me kicking you in the butt to do things. This isn't me being mean or whinging. If Britannia were your hobby blog, I wouldn't really give a shit. Honestly, I wouldn't. It's why I'll sarcastically poke Merri or Ada. But you work for people. You chose and are choosing to do this. The con's livelihood is in some part dependent on Britannia. There is monetary value to Brit, and you don't fuck around with that.

I realize your job is shit and you're tired. But you need to decide if you can take care of Brit, or if you can't. And if you can't, then you need to give her to someone who can, and take that stress off of your shoulders and BUCK's. 

[techmomma]

hazelhooves replied to your post: Y’all got nuthin’ on my genderfluidity.

Is dat some Crayon the Homeless Artist cosplay? :P

I am swanky and sassy, not moe and boo-boo eyed, goofball.

[techmomma]

hazelhooves replied to your post: Fun Facts About [Mumbles] #3

Has he found any books in the library conveniently absent?

Nah. It's not so much that Teabiscuits is hiding the fact that he's Saddle Arabian; Mumbles is well aware of this, as he was a young child when he was taken into Teabiscuits' home, and Teabiscuits is happy to let him borrow books about Saddle Arabia. Teabiscuits just... doesn't want to talk about Mumbles' father, or any part of that side of his family because then he has to bring up Mumbles' mother--and that's not something Teabiscuits is ready to do.

So there aren't any books in the library that are absent, but Mumbles think it's kinda weird that, for Teabiscuits having a daughter, he can't find anything about her in their house. ... There's a few light spots in the wallpaper though that look like they held photographs for a long time...

[techmomma]

Just a little message to say how much I appreciate Brit being included in your portrait collection. I don't want to make a massive deal of this because I appreciate the universal sentiment you meant it in for everybody but, for the record and bearing in mind the stuff that happened last month, it really means quite a lot to me that you've done this. Thank you :)

No prob, man. Glad ya liked her! Her helmet was fun to razzle-dazzle up.

[techmomma]

hazelhooves replied to your post: Ya ever notice how there's a pattern t...

Is observable truth. How would you suggest people escape this cycle?

Honestly? The BIGGEST thing that will help you escape the cycle is self-esteem and self-kindness. Treating yourself like a friend.

The low self-esteem is going to be what drives these blogrunners to seek external validation through praise and Likes. Which drives the pressure to output, and that initial hopeful phase of "Yeah, let's do it!". But at the same time, that low self-esteem is making you hate your work, so every time you DO put something out, you loathe it and think it's "not enough" for these people and entities from which you seek your validation. It's like having a crappy drug-dealer with whom you are both dependent on and resent because of how much damn work you gotta go to get your fix and damn they keep upping their prices that cheap sonuvabitch but god that high is so good when you get it. As you, meanwhile, sometimes become tolerant, and have to get more and more to get the same high that you had before. And why the previous high doesn't sustain you like it once did. You know, "Hey, I've got a new follower! Awesome!" vs. "Oh... just one new follower?"

But because they keep trying to validate themselves with the praise of other people, and not themselves, they're never going to get what they want. It's like trying to get somewhere while you're stuck in a hamsterwheel. 

So it's not until you step off that wheel and become independent of the need for external praise that you really start finding the internal motivation to upkeep a blog. That core drive that lets you go, "Yeah, I wanna work on this! I wanna tell this character's story! I have a story to tell and I'm gonna tell it, dammit, whether I have two followers or two thousand!" Wanting some external praise sometimes is fine, mind you. But make sure that you are not dependent on it because that is where the trouble comes in.

You feed the cycle with hate and self-loathing. You stop the cycle with kindness and self-love.

[techmomma]

What would you say are the major qualities that make a person's actions/ behaviours abusive and the difference between the ones who do so intentionally and those who do so in ignorance of how destructive they are being? Big ask, I know, but I'm curious about what signs tip you off when it comes to complete strangers like the families you've encountered.

What makes behaviour abusive is if that behaviour aims to benefit the abuser in some way, at the cost of the abused. We call screaming at someone when they did something wrong "abusive" because the aim was to scare the abused into submission, to acknowledge the abuser's "power." Abuse is aggressive, though that aggression may sometimes be covert. The biggest factor though is that abuse has a negative impact on, a cost to, the person being abused. Whether that is the integrity of their self-image (in the form of humiliating them), or their feelings of safety (threatening them), their agency (manipulating them) or otherwise.

The thing is it doesn't matter if it's intentional or not; there's no real difference. You can absolutely be abusive without meaning to be--and this is actually the case about half of the time. My father, honestly--swear to God--never meant to be abusive. But it was what he knew, and what he could do with as little control over his emotions and insecurities as he had. But it still affected me and hurt me and left me with scars just the same. The difference is whether or not the abusive person will own up to it, when confronted with it.

Please note that I am hypersensitive due to my background. IRL, I'm not terrific at social cues, but I watch gesture, eye movement, body language, tone, wording, all of it. But it's not usually just one or two things that tip me off. It's typically a pattern. With most families I let them be, but when I start hearing or seeing certain things, I'll watch more carefully, and if I start seeing more of the signs, then I start getting more worried. I'm particularly wary of how parents will treat young children, because it's more apparent whether or not things are okay at home. It's easier to hide abuse with older children. 

If you remember my post about trolls a little while ago, the biggest thing abusers need is power and control. Ad nauseum. This is kind of the biggest tip-off, and it'll usually come in the form of perfectionism and and kind of extreme demands from the parents. For example, I've seen a parent ask their child, in this absolutely nasty tone, "Hey, I asked you a question." They weren't loud. But their tone was a threat. They asked a question, how dare the child hesitate. Who cares if the child is three and only just barely grasps what their fingers do!

Often they'll order for their children, though it's apparent the child--even being like thirteen--really would like to do it themselves, they'll answer questions for the child when I very pointedly asked the child and they are clearly capable of answering on their own, they'll interject as the child is talking. If a child is young and kind of rambunctious, they act as if the child is a burden. "Ugh, can you take them already, god." Not in the exasperated, "I've been dealing with this all day" tone, but a tone more akin to a dog pissing on their lap. I've seen adults say to toddlers, "'Ey, can you knock that off? This's why I've already taken aspirin." Another tip off is, if the kid embarrasses them, do they get angry about it.

A big tip-off is, when a single parent is taking children out, does one of the children act like the "adult"? The second parent, almost. Because most often in abusive families, a child will become the parent's "babysitter" of sorts, having to shoulder the burden of the family and be the adult because the parents wouldn't be. (That was my role.)

Sometimes parents will humiliate their children in minor ways. When I ask, "Is everything all right over here?" I've had adults say, "Well it WAS all right until I found out my son didn't do his homework." Not in any kind of playful tone. Why do I need to know this? Because they want their kid to be embarrassed. This was the same family that had the babysitter child. 

The biggest tip-off is, "Are they treating them like children, or like stupid adults?" 

With children themselves, other than the babysitter child, you can sometimes spot tip-offs like chronically needing attention, sometimes they are absolutely austere and silent while the adult seems fine--though stern with their children. Sometimes those really bratty children are bratty because they have the strength to fight back against their parents who are being awful to them, and that's the only way to get them to back off. 

With children, I'm looking for, "are they enthusiastically happy, or happy-but-walking-on-eggshells." 

A lot of it is nuance and patterns though. Some of the things I watch for, if it happens once, or is a single item, you can kinda let that slide. Maybe they're havin' a bad day. But if there's a pattern being established that one or both of the parents need extreme control, or HAVE to maintain their authority, then you can almost bet that away from the restaurant, where they're on "good behaviour," it's gonna be worse at home.

I apologize if any of this is incoherent, it's two in the morning and I've written mostly off-the-cuff.

[bethiebo]

Continuing on with my askbrit character badges... we have a svelte badge (c) askbritannia/ hazelhooves (c) art style to me