Inky Xward

"In rough times like these, fishing is a good way to find some peace for the body, mind and soul. Just take the boat out, toss out a line and sit back. Gives you time to soak in a calmer world, and enjoy the silence. Then the occasional bite and successful catch! Nothing puts my soul at ease more than a nice lazy fishing day. Of course, there are times you reel in something so freakish you toss it back in, row back to shore and spend the rest of your day comfortably on land. We try to forget those days..."

1. Cyclops Shark - A predator of the sea, its large eye searches the dark waters for prey. Though it bears a terrifying visage for some, it only possesses a real threat to smaller fish. The structure of its head causes it to have small jaws, and the vulnerability of its eye means it doesn't want to deal with a fight when eating. Thus its hunts are aimed towards smaller prey and they end as quickly as they start. Unfortunately, this very eye makes it a target for fishermen, as it is considered a delicacy. The eye jelly of a cyclops shark is highly sought after, hitting local populations hard. Rumors claim that larger specimens dwell in the dark abyss, bearing a glowing eye that aids in its hunts.

2. Big Lip Swallower - A pale eel known for its massive maw and gluttonous ways. They are a species that never passes up a meal, thus has altered its body to consume a wide variety of prey. It may hunt for its food or try to lure it in with the pulsating tip of its tail. Once it draws close, it opens its mouth wide and expands its gullet, creating a powerful suction. Prey is pulled right in, and its lips seal tight behind it. With its stretching stomach, it can choke down food larger than it, though dead specimens have shown that its appetite may be a fatal weakness. Prey that is too big or violent may rupture its stomach or block its gills, causing it to perish in the struggle. Fishermen have been known to accidentally hook these eels when reeling in another catch, the creature attempting to feed on the caught fish and winding up snared as well. An unwanted prize, but some folks do eat the meaty lips.

3. Benthillus - A species of marine "unistilla" that has become the size of a fish due to living in nutrient rich waters. Typically found around coasts where potent runoff spills into the surrounding fluid, enriching the area. This species lacks a mouth, instead absorbing nutrients directly through their membrane, which is why they can only live in nutrient rich waters, like those around guano islands. The benthillus serves as an important species in the food chain, with their ability to absorb the ambient nutrients and plentiful numbers. Many predators feed upon the benthillus, both from the air and sea, though man is not one of them. They have no real flesh, just thick cytoplasm that tastes like the crud it absorbed. Serves as good bait for better, tastier fish.

4. Zitfish - A species that is more often seen in ornamental ponds and aquariums then its natural environment. It is known for its bulbous head growths, though this feature has been greatly exaggerated through special breeding. These bulbs possess a foul fluid within them, which spill out when ruptured to deter predators. It is also believed these growths show off the health of the individual, which is important for attracting mates. The species became popular in the pet trade, resulting in many different breeds. Two of the most common types are "White Heads" and "Black Heads" which refer to the color of the body of these breeds.

5. Brocacod - A floating brainy creature of the deep, its orb-like body filled with Phlegm. It uses its tendrils to slowly maneuver when needed, though it is content to drift along and slurp up food particles with its tongue. If it is threatened by a predator, it will release a Phlegm-fueled pulse that messes with the brain, inducing underwater vertigo. Foes are left too disoriented to properly attack it, either giving it time to swim away or leaving the hunter vulnerable to becoming the hunted. Brocacod are harvested for food and fluid, with seafolk often calling them "sea brains." They can be cooked in their shell to make a meal with a crunchy outside and juicy inside, or they are cracked open to feed solely on the brain portion. Though it uses its fluid to power vertigo pulses, the Phlegm itself is more beneficial when used as is. It is said to be used in medicinal drinks that help with sea sickness, and the brains themselves are claimed to help ease the mind when dealing with the anxieties of being on the open sea.

6. Sea Tongue - A slithering pink thing found in reefs, typically spotted slipping through cracks and crevices. Though it may appear simple, its body is actually covered in sensory buds. As it travels, its flesh "tastes" the environment around it, allowing it to detect the trails of prey or the presence of predators. A boneless body allows them to squeeze into tight spaces, either to follow food or avoid becoming food. Seafolk take note of large populations of sea tongue, as it indicates a rich environment. Unfortunately, they have also noted that sea tongue tastes pretty good, thus such catches have a few winding up on the dinner plate.

7. Amoepus - A voracious"unistilla" that has taken the shape of an octopus or jellyfish. Its lower body is much like a bell and "pulses" to help move it through fluid. This same bell is used to engulf prey, yawning wide to capture food and then cinching shut to keep it trapped. When a meal is caught, the body tightens around it, releasing digestive enzymes to break it down. Very little of prey remains after feeding, entire fish seemingly absorbed into its mass. Large meals are required for its reproduction, which is done by splitting itself in two. This species is difficult to catch due to its gelatinous body, and it cannot survive long outside of fluid. Slimy puddles on beaches are often the remains of an amoepus that was washed up and stranded. Like jellyfish, it is advised to not touch these piles of goo, as their digestive vacuoles may still be intact and may rupture when handled. What is inflicted is not life threatening, but it is quite painful, as it is essentially getting acid on your skin.

so, here is the situation.

Slowly, my household has been able to crank our monthly bills down through judicious use of Beans and Rice. i thought we were in a good place and that would be the last i would need to bother the internet for donations in a while.

then, my cat got very sick forever. last week (plus a couple days) we discovered she has very early onset hyperthyroidism, which means she has small tumors inside her thyroid glands that are causing her metabolism to skyrocket - we noticed her getting dangerously thin about two weeks ago and now she is 4 pounds. we have medication and lots of delicious yumular cat food for her, but;

each vet visit is 500 dollars (minimum two vet visits, we've already had one), and insurance does not want to cover it fully because she had high thyroid levels before we got her. medication and extra food is an expense we have not prepared for in the realm of 100 dollars a month or so. and local radioactive iodine surgery will cost us anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 dollars that we absolutely do not have. while radioactive iodine treatments have an extremely high success rate, even if insurance fully approves the treatment that puts us 300-600 dollars on the hook that we can't afford (we're on razor thin margins as it is), but if we don't, then over the course of her lifetime the medication and extra food will cost us vastly more.

this is not my usual "call to help a transgender person pay her paychecks". we simply cannot afford treatment and if we can't afford treatment she will waste away and die. and i really would prefer that not happen, because she's four years old and deserves to have a long full life.

cat tax from when she was healthier

i may set up a gofundme later. i may not because i don't know if there's a way to do it without doxxing me. in the meanwhile, feel free to donate at https://paypal.me/bstdev.

i am also available for freelance work as a writer, copyeditor, and programmer/software developer, specializing in video games and websites. rates are negotiable.

We went to a cardiologist to consult before what should've been a fairly routine I-131 procedure.

The cardiologist informs us that my cat is in decompensated heart failure and her heart is beating at half the speed it's supposed to be, and will be like that forever.

She also has extreme inflammation, tons of fluid around her heart and lungs, and could basically fall over dead at any moment.

After two months of persistent heart medication, her heart is now, as of the latest checkup yesterday, normal size, normal shape, and with zero fluid - what has been called to me "compensated heart failure". That means we are tentatively okay for I-131 surgery, but we will have to wait and see if there are further developments with her heart, thyroid, and kidneys first.

Additionally, the surgery will require her to be off her thyroid medication for two weeks, which could decompensate her heart again. That is to say, everything is very touch and go right now.

And each one of these visits costs like $500 dollars that my pet insurance is refusing to cover whatsoever. Like I pay you fuckers for anything, right???

Here is the total as it stands. All of the money raised so far has basically been spent on the respective vet visits and we are solidly in the red on vet visits now by only a couple of hundred dollars rather than several thousand. And the I-131 treatment is still looming on the horizon, if it happens at all (if it does not, I will update the total accordingly).

$4235/$6270

Mr. Bob "Bubbles" Blobowski

hi there it's princess/nova back again, i'm really sorry i have to come here like this but me and my wife are still struggling abandoned by our families and unable to reach any of our friends. we've been trying to survive without me being exposed to harassment but at this point we're going hungry. we don't have any income and need help affording food for ourselves and our kitties please if you can, donate. I would be so truly thankful

v3nm0: @Crow-Forgemaster , @Prince-Nova

c@sh@pp: $dragonforgedbutch , $StrayNova

the op linked the study in the replies & i’ve been skimming it & it’s actually rlly rlly interesting to think abt

I don't want to derail a post specifically about being neurdivergent, so I'm going to go ahead and make this its own post. But, I have been having a lot of thoughts lately on how the same thing can be said of being a survivor of abuse makes you vulnerable to more bullying and abuse.

I've lurked in subreddits for bullying victims to talk about their experiences, and there's almost always comments saying things to the victims like "bullies probably always sniff you out because you're quiet and withdrawn and act afraid of other people" "bullies sniff you out because when they raise their voice to you or say something mean you flinch and freeze up instead of standing up for yourself" "bullies sniff you out because they can tell from your body language that you have low self esteem and low self worth so they take that as you being an easy target"

Gee, I wonder what sort of life experience could make someone withdrawn, afraid of other people, flinching and freezing when someone is mean or raises their voice at them, and also lowers this person's self esteem and self worth 🤔🤔🤔

Just like in the last post I reblogged where they said it's unlikely for a bully to come right out and say "I picked this victim because they're autistic", instead they'd say "it's because this person is weird and eccentric", if you were to ask a bully who is targeting a survivor of domestic violence why they picked that target it's unlikely they'd come right out and say "I'm bullying them for being a victim of domestic violence", they would deny that much and probably don't even realize (or care) that their victim is a survivor of abuse. But that doesn't change the fact that they were drawn to this particular target because of traits the victim acquired as a result of enduring abuse.

being the victim of parental control was considered embarrassing, and lowered one's social standing considerably. one boy who was hated was scorned for having "his mother chose his clothes for him". my mother also decided daily on what i would wear as well as over my hygiene (when i was allowed to shower, to shave, etc). most people that age had certain liberties to chose their dress (within limits, as their parents also would disallow some things), over their hygiene, and so forth, and a child that had less control of this than them was socially lesser.

when i was in the middle grades, a teacher organised a special group activity on bullying with specifically my case in mind, and i remember a child explaining their dislike and rejection of me with: [their] parents are really weird and don't allow [them] to do anything! i also well remember arriving at school the day after a conflict with a semi-friend who greeted me loudly with "so did your mother give you a trashing yesterday!!!", again as declaration of my patheticness which was, of course, meant to embarrass me.

it's interesting to think on, how little class solidarity so to speak there is among children over the issue of parental control and violence. i suppose everybody that was at conditional liberty to chose their clothing, to decide on some of their activities, that wasn't beaten much at home, etc, must have, on some level, been aware that they were lucky to not have to endure this much, that, as children, had they been saddled with more uncool, more embarrassing parents, there would have been little they could've done about it. probably their parents were in many ways uncool, embarassing, restrictive and occasionally violent, but one can always punch down onto those that are controlled and abused worse.

Still, victim blamers like to feel a smug and unearned sense of accomplishment over not being a victim themselves, as if they did something right and victims must have done something wrong to warrant their abuse. Nevermind that again, it often comes down to circumstances you have no control over such as what family you're born into.

Or, even if you're abused as a teen or adult by a partner or someone else you let into your life, we've all hit low spots in our life where we're emotionally vulnerable, so it also often comes down to luck of the draw over who you're surrounded by when you've hit a low and you're in a vulnerable place.

If you are someone who freezes, fawns, or just in general has difficulty speaking up for yourself people will hate you for that, brand you a coward, say it makes you weak, and say that any abuse or bullying that happens to you is your fault for being too weak to do anything about it. (The catch 22 is that people also hate people who assert their boundaries and speak up for themselves, you really can't win!)

But again, freezing, fawning, flinching at mean/rude behavior instead of speaking back, these behaviors can become so heavily ingrained in you after years of abuse, and can be so, so hard to untrain yourself to even years after you've escaped the abuse.

That's because our brains and bodies are hardwired to do what it takes for us to survive any given situation. When you're trapped in an abusive situation, you probably did try fighting back and standing up for yourself at some point. Maybe dozens of times. Maybe even hundreds of times. And chances are every single time, or almost every single time, that you tried standing up for yourself and fighting back this just made the abuser dial up the abuse even more, so fighting back only put you in more danger. And at some point, in a pavlovian manner, a very primal part of your brain began to understand that fighting back and standing up for yourself was only putting you in more danger, endangering your safety, possibly even endangering your life. So your brain, which is evolved to keep you safe and more importantly alive, changed its wiring down to the very primal core to make you do what it would take to keep you safe during abuse, which often is freezing or fawning, but certainly not trying to fight back or stand up for yourself (after that only put you in more danger the first 10 or 50 or 100 times). Freezing and/or fawning is often the only reaction that will please an abuser who's actively lashing out at you, and get them to calm down and back off, or at least not hurt you more than they were already planning to.

So as a survival mechanism, these behaviors become very, very hardwired into you, because they were the only things keeping you safe, possibly even alive, for many years. That's why once you leave the abuse you can't just switch off these behaviors. The more severe the abuse, the more hardwired these are. That's why it can take years working with a therapist, preferably one who specializes in trauma recovery, to hopefully re-wire your brain a little bit. But not everyone has access to a therapist specializing in trauma recovery.

When I see someone who freezes, fawns, has trouble speaking up, who flinches and backs down when someone raises their voice, I don't see a coward. I see someone whose brain was re-wired to keep them safe and alive in a very horrible situation.

And yet, people are so quick to judge these behaviors as "weak" "cowardly" and "pathetic" because society hates abuse survivors so much, and surviving abuse is still so heavily stigmatized.

As a defense mechanism, they believe they aren't just lucky but somehow better than the people they see suffering. If people are poor because they're lazy and I'm not lazy, I don't have to fear poverty. If I've never been disabled or killed in a car crash, it's because I'm a good driver and therefore I can ignore the possibility that it could happen to me. Because I'm not like them, I won't suffer like them.

Not only does it justify cruelty by saying only the deserving suffer (and so they also deserve your cruelty and you don't have to feel bad) it creates an incentive to alienate and avoid anyone who's suffering. If you get close to them, you might start to like them. You might start to wonder if they really deserve it. You might learn they did nothing wrong, were just like you...and they still got unlucky.

That is rightfully terrifying. It's true and accepting it will not only give you more reason to be kind but also prepare you better for your own bad luck and make you a bit harder to manipulate. Knowing the risks won't save you but it will improve your odds.

This is mostly speaking from my experience, but when I was a child, my fear response used to be Fight. I would stand up to my father when he was screaming at me. I would tell him when his reasoning didn’t make sense and when I thought he was being unjust. I would defend my mother when she and my father fought, because he screamed and she did not, so I thought she felt alone and vulnerable so I felt like it was my duty to protect her. I would defend myself when I was being bullied, even if that only resulted in more bullying. I remember myself being ‘brave’. But like was said before, fighting didn’t help. It only made things worse. So I learned to Fawn. I learned to hide myself, and that instinct to hide got so bad that it was directly interfering with my ability to function in society. But the anger isn’t gone. I still feel indignant when I believe a situation to be unjust, I just can no longer act on those feelings.

If someone else is being abused by their boss? They must've done something to deserve it. No need for unions to actually hold corporations accountable. Someone disabled in a workplace accident? Must've been their fault, they'd best not sue, and if anyone speaks up for them their livelihoods are potentially on the line. People are encouraged to compete with each other, and discouraged to cooperate and help each other. From the very beginning in school, from a young age, you are set against your peers in competition- not cooperation. Those who do well will get better opportunities, be able to apply to be accepted into colleges, ect. Students that suffer from abuse and bullying will obviously do worse than students who don't. People like me lost years if not over a decade of their lives to the abuse, and the bullies not only get off scott-free, they go on to become successful and are in-charge of workplaces like managers. US society has been structured to reward some of the worst among us for half a century, and it has really come home to roost this past decade.

Stimming is not an Autism Only Behavior. Not only does it show up for ADHD, but also OCD and most Anxiety Disorders. Including PTSD something that survivors of abuse famously have a high rate of.

In fact, overstimulation is also something that shows up in both autism and PTSD (and schizophrenia). There is an uncomfortable overlap in PTSD and ASD symptoms, and I've even seen the theory that it because the official ASD symptoms aren't actually the base autistic neurotype, but the Traumatized version.