Tenebron

but like…Becky, of course LGBTQ+ people existed before Stonewall. We’ve all existed since the beginning of time. But the movement got a shock to its senses, a jump-start, a rocket-into-space when that glass shattered via Marsha P. Johnson, and when Sylvia Rivera was up on-stage protesting guess who was on the sidelines heckling her?

no, your friend probably has not noticed they cut you off four times in this conversation. 

no, your brother didn’t realize his music was that loud while you were studying. 

no, your bff or S.O. doesn’t remember that you’re on a tight deadline right now.

no, no one else is paying attention to the four power dynamics at play in your friend group right now.  

a habit of abused kids, especially kids with unstable parents, is the tendency to notice every little detail. We magnify small nuances into major things, largely because small nuances quickly became breaking points for parents. Managing moods, reading the room, perceiving danger in the order of words, the shift of body weight….it’s all a natural outgrowth of trying to manage unstable parents from a young age. 

Here’s the thing: most people don’t do that. I’m not saying everyone else is oblivious, I’m saying the over analysis of minor nuances is a habit of abuse. 

I have a rule: I do not respond to subtext. This includes guilt tripping, silent treatments, passive aggressive behavior, etc. I see it. I notice it. I even sometimes have to analyze it and take a deep breath and CHOOSE not to respond. Because whether it’s really there or just me over-reading things that actually don’t mean anything, the habit of lending credence to the part of me that sees danger in the wrong shift of body weight…that’s toxic for me. And dangerous to my relationships. 

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE!

I wonder how pissed this person would be to realize it’s actually four bucks??? Anyway I don’t play D&D but it looks and sounds super cool and interesting, and it has its own original art by a pro, too:

A Fool: If you don’t like it why don’t you make your own!

Publisher: That

Then, there’s Will…

Hannibal-themed ‘Murder Husband Manor’ is in the works!

me: ok so imagine gwen stacy didnt die and she got bitten by the spider instead of peter parker

them: yeah ok

me: she’s in a punk band with mary jane and she chills venom out with their music also daredevil is evil in this one

“Congratulations,” a genderless, lightly accented voice says. It doesn’t make sense, but it sounds like it’s coming through the light, echoing and warm. “You’ve been chosen to embark on a magnificent–”

I lunge before it can finish, heart thundering against my ribs, and wrap it in the black trash bag. It’s warm to the touch, even through the plastic, but once I get it properly bundled, I can’t hear or see it which means I’ve managed to contain it.

For now.

I abandon my cleaning cart, shouldering the bathroom door open too quickly. It nearly takes out a high schooler lurking behind it.

“Watch it,” the girl snarls, shaking out the hand that had caught the door before it connected with her face. 

“Be grateful,” I tell her, shoving the garbage bag bundle under my shirt. “I’m, like, basically saving your life right now.”

She scrunches her nose. “What?”

I don’t answer, instead hurrying towards the principal’s office. Sometimes the sorcerer or witch or whoever sticks around after planting them and I definitely do not want to run into them.

“Principal Flag!” I skid past the receptionist and kick the door open, arms wrapped around the quest scroll under my shirt. “We’ve got a problem!”

Principal Flag nearly throws her brush across the room at my sudden entrance, a blush rising furiously along her cheekbones. “I told you to knock!” Her horse hindquarters stamp in irritation and she hastily smooths her long, centaur skirt back over them.

“Sorry,” I pant, coming to a stop in front of her desk. “But this can’t wait, we’ve got a problem. I found a–a quest in the girls’ bathroom.”

“It’s actually a gender-neutral bathroom now,” Principal Flag corrects, seemingly on reflex. “The students voted and I think it’s quite wonderfu– did you say you found a quest?” She pales. “Was it–was it activated?”

“No,” I say. I carefully pull the bundle from out under my shirt, dropping it onto her desk. “I’m the first to come in contact. It tried to give me the Chosen One speech.”

Principal Flag’s hands hover over the black plastic. “God, it talked? Did you feel a compulsion? Depending on the strength, we could be facing quite the adversary here.”

“I don’t know.” I pull up the visitor’s chair, legs still shaking. “I’ve already been a Chosen one, you know that, a compulsion wouldn’t work on me.” I shake my head. “We can’t let whoever did this try again. A quest scroll ruined my life, our lives, I don’t want that to happen to a kid.”

“I remember,” Principal Flag says grimly. “I’ll be damned if I let some thousand-year-old warlock make off with one of my students. Not. In. My. School.” She trots around her desk to the cabinet. From there, she removes a black, metal box. “First, we’ll destroy it. It’s times like these that I’m thankful we have so many helicopter parents on the PTA. They practically give us the money for these.”

I watch as she opens the box. Dark, rolling steam pours from it and across the desk. When it touches the trash bag, the air begins to smell of burning plastic.  Principal Flag picks it up, wincing as the heating plastic burns her fingers and drops it into the box.

“A CURSE,” the scroll shrieks from inside the box. “YOU HAVE DEFIED THE ANCIENT–”

Principal Flag slams the lid back on, locking the thing down. The thing is still shrieking, but the words are muffle and neither Flag or I are susceptible to half curses. Not since our childhoods.

“It had to be an inside job,” I say after the screams begin to die out. “You’ve got the school locked down and I would have noticed anyone sneaking in.”

“I agree,” Principal Flag says. She’s still glaring at the box, mouth a thin line. She looks back at me, grey eyes sharp. “Whoever planted it is a monster. There’s no way they didn’t mean for a kid to find out.”

“Giving quest scrolls to minors is against the law,” I say. “We could call the police?”

Both Flag and I stare at each other for a long moment. Then we burst into laughter.

“A Successful?” Flag howls. “Oh my god, can you imagine what a Successful would say?”

I wipe tears out of my eyes. Successfuls were people who completed quests, generally the light and fun ones that made good day time drama. “Oh,’” I say in a falsetto, “’I’d have killed to have a scroll as a kid. It’s such an honor. They’re starting off right!”

We laugh more, the sound verging on hysteria. Neither of us had the good fortune to be quested with a return the stone to the mountain scroll. We’d gotten something much, much worse.

“Oh, that’s good,” Flag says, dotting under her eyes with a tissue. She sobers slowly, chuckles dying out. “No, we won’t go to the police. I think that us two Unsuccessfuls will do the job nicely.” She grins and there’s something dark in it, darker than one might expect from a highschool principal.

I know that darkness is reflected right back in my smile. “I’ll get on it.”

There are Successfuls, heroes and martyrs who come back stronger and better after getting a quest scroll.

After 10+ years of psychotherapy, almost all of my social anxiety triggers are now at a manageable level—even academic public speaking, which was my #1 worst trigger for most of my life—except for my phone anxiety. It’s literally the one and only thing I’ve never been able to significantly improve.

I have to talk the whole conversation through with my friends beforehand.

I have to get explicit confirmation from my friends that “yes, you really need to ring that person right now”.

I have to write scripts.

I have to take anti-anxiety meds, or get drunk.

I only ever ring someone as the very last resort, when all other methods are unavailable.

I hyperventilate and cry afterwards.

I’m also a 28-year-old scientist with three degrees and a teaching position. I’m normally a logical (albeit emotional) person. But anxiety is not logical.

Anxiety is due to inability to correctly perceive threats—more specifically, due to both increased expectation and increased frequency of false recognition of threats in response to neutral stimuli (this is called “pessimistic bias”). Social anxiety simply means that this inability to correctly perceive threats is specific to social interactions, rather than generalised to all aspects of life. (For example, a resting facial expression or lack of verbal acknowledgement is more likely to be perceived as anger, disgust or rejection by a socially anxious person than a neurotypical person. But a socially anxious person is not particularly more likely to worry throughout the day that they’ve left their stove on.)

Therefore, socially anxious people learn to cope with this bias by becoming hypervigilant to social cues such as posture, hand gestures, nodding, eye contact, eyebrow position, mouth tightness, tone of voice, talking speed etc., and then using all the available information to attempt to be logical and “talk down the anxiety”. We also learn to be high self-monitors, which means that we closely observe our audience and constantly (subconsciously) monitor their responses in order to ensure that they accept us and deem us “appropriate”.

But non-verbal social cues aren’t available during phone calls!

There isn’t any body language to read, or eyes to look into. You can’t monitor your audience for approval. They don’t follow the script you prepared. All you have is their voice, which is usually masked (everyone seems to have a “phone voice”, “customer service voice” or “professional voice”) and distorted by the phone and is therefore useless. All of a sudden you’re back to relying on a single neutral stimulus, and the pessimistic bias kicks in, and you start to panic because you’re not getting constant feedback.

It’s a Recognised Psychological Thing™.

Phone anxiety (actually, phone phobia) is one of the most common, most recognised and most treated phobias in the world. Social anxiety—of which phone phobia is an extremely prevalent trigger—is one of the most common, most recognised and most treated anxiety disorders in the world.

it’s like trying to read semaphore in a snowstorm while having an allergy attack.

yes, that is hard.

no, it’s not just you.

no, you’re not making it up for attention, being a baby, or lazy.

voice calls are simply not as good as text.