The Bombastic Unicorn

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

Small Town English Teacher

In your town, former students sling your drinks, snap your x-rays, and report your news on TV. You hold their secrets because you remember their essays.

One returns from combat, homecoming party at the airport, and you know he only joined up because his mom was ashamed of him. You remember the essay.

One dies from an opioid OD and you know about the man who groped her at work and how she told his wife. You remember the essay.

One smiles and wins an award and you know her drunk dad pushed her mom into a wall. You remember the essay.

One closes her eyes halfway in the mugshot and you know she worked in assisted living and once brushed a dying woman's hair. You remember the essay.

- Jessie Lovett Allen

⊹ standing too close. like just barely not touching. why are their shoulders breathing on each other??

⊹ conversations that sound normal but feel like foreplay. “pass the salt” has never been so loaded.

⊹ one of them says something flirty and the other freezes for 0.2 seconds like “oh.”

⊹ eyes dropping to lips and then—back up. with effort.

⊹ holding eye contact just a little too long. like... are they gonna kiss or duel??

⊹ unintentional physical contact that lasts one second too long and now they’re both broken

⊹ a hand on the small of the back. that’s it. that’s the tweet.

⊹ tension so thick that other characters start noticing like “hey are you two okay?” (they are not)

⊹ “accidental” sleepovers. “oh no there’s only one bed.” yeah. suuuure.

⊹ biting back a smile. biting back a moan. biting anything really.

⊹ one of them walks away and the other has to physically restrain themselves from watching the hips

Orcs don't really do narrative arts, they figured out advanced chemistry before writing, and they manufacture perfumes specifically meant to mimic the scent of an orc in heat and then jack off to the smell. Having an orc roommate in college is unbearable.

Gnome porn is unspeakable. Do not speak of gnome porn.

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

[Emotion] words - synonyms for and variations of the main emotion e.g. under anger is fury, outrage, resentment, bitterness, annoyance, frustration, hostility, etc

Prompting events for feeling [emotion] - so for anger some prompting events could be "having an important goal blocked," "you or someone you care about being threatened or attacked," etc

Interpretations of events that prompt feelings of [emotion] - similar to above, but it is thought patterns or beliefs that could prompt having a feeling - an example for anger is "ruminating about the situation that caused the anger in the first place"

Biological changes and experiences of [emotion] - so for anger, bodily experiences like fast breathing, a tightness in your chest, tensed muscles, being unable to stop crying - and urges you might get, like wanting to hurt someone

Expressions and actions of [emotion] - just what it sounds like. For anger some examples are: walking heavily, stomping, slamming things; brooding or withdrawing from others; mean expression; physically or verbally attacking someone; crying; grinning

Aftereffects of [emotion] - what happens after the first intense wave of emotion finishes. For anger it includes: narrowing of attention, ruminating about past and imagined future situations that could make you angry, depersonalisation and dissociative experiences

I tend to slowly scan each part of my body for physical sensations, body language, and urges (ie "biological changes and experiences") and then try to match those to an emotion, now that I have those cheat sheets. Getting good at this took a lot of practice and repetition. For me at least, it is a manual skill I have had to build up.

Working backwards to figure out what emotions you might logically have in response to an event and seeing if those match what you are feeling can be really helpful too.

You can find these DBT emotion handouts here (scroll to page 7 for the start of the emotion profiles):

And here is every single DBT handout from the official manual for anyone interested (don't sue me pls):

Also helpful to other people I have talked to is this emotion-sensation wheel by Lindsay Brahman, which some people find easier to follow:

Just don't do a me - I took this too literally at first and thought that only the sensations directly branching off the emotions made up those emotions. In reality there is a lot of mixing and matching, and a lot of stuff not covered on the wheel. It is a rough (but often useful!) guide.

And here is another useful infographic that comes from this article by Greatist, which they adapted from a 2014 study that aimed to map bodily sensations of emotions. Yellow areas are the most activated/tense regions (so they might feel hot, tight, tense, full of energy, warm, maybe sick or fluttery if it is your stomach), and blue areas are the least activated regions (feel heavy, hard to move, maybe weak or cold)