Hey, Uh Why Do You Have Two Beds?

ultimately i'm just some guy with a blog but i do hope by talking openly about my experiences as a wilderness therapy/troubled teen industry survivor, it might bring other survivors reading my posts a sense of solidarity & kinship to know they aren't alone in this. & i hope that for non-survivors reading my posts, you can learn a little bit about the TTI & factor that knowledge into how you approach matters like youth rights & ableism & the psychiatric industry

i would also like to encourage everyone reading this post to check out the unsilenced project, who are a non profit that have done a lot of anti troubled teen industry advocacy & offer support to both past and current survivors. they're also a good jumping off point in terms of information if you are interested in learning more about the industry.

& lastly - to any TTI survivors reading this post: i love you & i see you & you are not alone & i wish nothing but the best for you

Somebody at work keeps adjusting one of the perimeter cameras to have this beautiful artistic angle on the museum in a historical building across the way. The sun sets just behind it and the whole sky turns golden-blue, clouds streaked across the sky above. The lush tree line beneath the museum is perfectly lined up along the rule of thirds and the building itself towers above, almost mythical in its evening glory. Like damn, take a still from this camera and send it to the museum to frame and hang on their wall. I do need the camera to be pointing at the parking lot. Tho

The setting sun bounces off the skyscrapers downtown and hits the museum's windows and every one of them turns the same golden hue as the sky behind, reflected in the trees just starting to turn golden-orange beneath. The bottoms of the clouds take on the slightest tinge of purple and birds circle above, speckling the evening sky as they call autumn's last farewell. Someone's car got broken into in the parking lot last week, Tammy, point the damn camera at the cars

i was talking about this on my server earlier but i really think "cozy" is one of the worst genre labels out there in the gaming space. like people dunk on the terms "metroidvania" and "first person shooter" a lot for being uncreative or limiting but at least those are like... falsifiable descriptors. you can look at a game and go "yeah this game's mechanics and core gameplay loop generally operate like metroid/castlevania" or "yeah this game primarily uses a first person camera paired with some sort of projectile weapon" so i don't think they're completely useless. but "cozy" is just nonsense. fully subjective. i see a lot of games popularly labeled as "cozy" that share almost zero mechanical features between them and don't even always match in tone or aesthetic. hearing a game described as "cozy" doesn't tell you anything about what to expect as a player beyond maybe giving you a sort of forewarning about the fanbase and their discomfort tolerance. "cozy" is not a quantifiable metric. like imagine if someone offered to buy you takeout and asked you what kind of food you'd like and you told them fully unironically, and with no further elaboration, "i want to get yummy food." that's what hearing "cozy games" sounds like to me

The devil came to my house and tried to burn it down, which is why this post exists in the first place.

I can’t believe that tumblr user ao3commentoftheday is telling KIDS to go out knocking on doors asking for the devil! /s

but only *after* they piss on the poor! /s

a large majority of TMEs haven't unlearned the patriarchal idea that womanhood is a bad thing, and they do not believe trans women actually seek and embrace womanhood. a lot of them seem to think we only want (and experience) the surface level aesthetics of womanhood

... cisgender women are TME. all cis people are

also I am talking about a specific belief about trans women stemming from misogyny. not every post needs to be about how every aspect of misogyny affects everyone. maybe there's a reason a transfeminist would try to spotlight one way in which misogyny affects trans women specifically! go make your own damn post instead of getting on transfeminists' cases for centering trans women in our discussions

There are a lot of people who start creative projects with no business or financial plan, because "who cares, it isn't important, we'll figure that out later". And you can't let yourself become that person. Not because I'm a sneering finance bro who thinks your woke animated youtube series wont make money, but because if you don't you'll wind up financially exploiting your friends for years

Look, it's none of my business if you wanna work yourself to the bone for no money so you can make your dream project a reality. I think you shouldn't, but also let's be real that's basically a rite of passage for young creatives. But as soon as you start involving other people? You need a plan. You need to be able to compensate them for their time, and you need to have it in writing

anyway you should always remember that all those foreigners you see dying on the news are just as real people as you are who have just as much interiority as you do. there is nothing about you that makes you more important and it is by pure chance that you are not in their position. in fact, this holds for all of history. every person, no matter the horror of the fate that befell them, had just as much interiority as you do. i feel like some people haven't fully internalized this.

I've never seen a more deserved cat slap