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Pavlov dog #9

@suncattle

i came back from the dead for this??? | art tag is nyarts | he/they | COMMISSIONS OPEN | icon by dangercore | my name is marco 
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Commission sale open!

I'm opening up coloured sketch commissions ^-^

They're $15 usd a pop, +5 per character or you can get a colorless sketch (like the one below) for $10

Dm if interested or if you have any questions but I do accept ocs, fandom work, and furry characters

(I reserve the right to deny requests based on subject matter)

[“I want to give people some tips on what the cold cut-off is like.

First, you gotta stay cold. The whining will go on FOREVER. They will call you directly. They will email you. They will put EMERGENCY in the email subject, and you will find the EMERGENCY is Why Are You Doing This To Me, You Selfish Brat. They will leave messages. They will call you at work, because they are just so worried, are you okay? If you respond to any of this, even just to say “I AM NOT TALKING TO YOU,” all you have done is show them exactly how often and in what ways they have to harass you until you respond.

After the harassment, there will be niceness. Honeymoon. You will get gifts. Concern troll gifts. My dad, he wanted to buy me a coat. It’s so cold out there, I don’t know if you know that. I am worried about your health YOU STUPID BITCH here I don’t want you to get sick now I AM GOING TO PUT YOU IN A MENTAL WARD. These will be patronizing gifts meant to guilt you about how much they love you and how you are unable to care for yourself properly. Also, there will be checks. With the checks will be little check-ins. Did you cash the check yet? I see you didn’t cash the check yet. Did you get it? Could you just tell me if you got it? I know you don’t want to talk right now and that’s fine, you need space, but just let me know if you got the check? Or when you’re going to cash it? That’s all. Can you not even do that? Really? Are you that immature? Do you need help getting to the bank? Because I can drive you. It’s just a check, for chrissakes, you can’t even take free money?

After that phase passes, there will be a period of radio silence. It’s not over. It’s just a break. When it revs up again, it’ll be through third parties. My coworker saw you at the cafe. I hope you’re not drinking too much coffee. Here, your mother asked me to give you this trinket from your childhood. She seems really upset. I don’t know what happened between you, but I think she’s been through enough, don’t you?

If you can chop your way through that, there will be mostly silence. Except on birthdays, or Christmas. Then there will be passive-aggressive cards and gifts and FUCKING CHECKS.

Let’s shoot forward a few years. Let’s assume the cut-off has worked and they’ve stopped trying to drag you back. Here’s some shit you’ll have to put up with:

You Should Really Forgive and Forget

Strangers, friends, acquaintances, anybody who hears that you have an estranged family member will tell you to forgive and forget. They will tell you that family is wonderful and really more meaningful than whatever you’re going through. Also, bonus round, but WHEN YOU GET OLDER YOU’LL UNDERSTAND, double bonus round, BUT BY THEN THEY’LL BE DEAD AND YOU’LL REGRET IT. After dealing with this shit for years, I’ve found it’s best, for me, to not respond. Maybe give them an mmm, oh, that’s interesting, but it’s not worth it to explain my circumstances or refute their assumption of my personal feelings. If they cared about my circumstances, or my personal feelings, they would have asked.

What people are telling you when they have this round-up toy spiel is what they are capable of. They are not capable of cutting off their family. They are not capable of imagining a life without forgiveness. They are not capable, perhaps, of imagining your life. They are not capable of separating the word “family” from “blood relations.” They are not capable of conceiving of happiness without traditions. These are not bad things. It’s just them, the way they prefer to live. You live differently. The only thing is, you probably don’t go around accosting strangers and advising them to cut off their family, and if they don’t, they’ll grow old and regret all their years wasted placating and living in fear. So, stay that way. Don’t be that asshole. Just understand that other people don’t have the strength to live as you do, and you do not have the strength to live as they do, and that is all okay, as long as they shut up sometime goddamn soon.

You Are Capable of Leaving Me and I Am Terrified

You will get this from partners and from friends. They know you are capable of cutting off people you love very much, people you are supposed to be with forever. There is a line and it can be crossed, and after that, you are gone from their lives forever. They never seem to hear the, “You could always make amends,” part. Just the, “I am not speaking to you anymore,” part. Some people can’t handle that. A surprising amount of people can’t handle that. They can’t handle the fact that if they were to call you on your birthday you would not be pleasantly surprised and decide that it was really all so long ago anyway. They can’t handle the fact that if they blew into town you wouldn’t have an obligatory cup of coffee, or if they got married you wouldn’t call just to say congratulations. They can’t handle the fact that you wouldn’t friend them on Facebook, or ask other friends how they’re doing.

They can’t stand the fact that you could erase them and still manage to exist in the world, without them.

A friend of mine from college had cut off her family, too. She told me about an argument she had with an insecure, needy, hurtful boyfriend. He was pretty much entirely in the wrong, and when he had run out of arguments, he lashed out using her family. “I guess I just get scared,” he wheedled, “Because you cut off your family, I feel like you could cut me off, too.” She didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah,” she said. “I could. If that bothers you, we shouldn’t be dating.” She and I laughed about it later. As if it was supposed to hurt us, the idea that we could protect ourselves, that we could cut out the riffraff. I mean, she had cut off her ENTIRE family — a boyfriend was supposed to get her shaking now? Get a better ultimatum, man.

Flint tried to use this, too. So did an ex-girlfriend. During fights, they’d spit out something about how I can’t deal with family since I don’t have one. The truth was, I couldn’t deal with abuse if I wasn’t having it. If family meant what they were doing to me right then, then yes, I could not understand, would not understand, and would not participate. And that was fucking unacceptable to somebody who needed me to collude in their madness. They knew that if I made the choice to cut them off, it would be complete. We wouldn’t fight. They wouldn’t have any access to my feelings, my thoughts, my experiences, anything they could use to hurt me or know me.

When people say these things, try to cut me down for exercising my ability to define my boundaries, they are letting me know that they want to reserve the right to hurt me in specific ways. They are letting me know that if I stopped being a part of their life, they would lash out and refuse to let me go. They are telling me they expect this of me, they need this in place if they are to continue being my friend. They need to know that I will let them hurt me as a price for any love we shared. They are telling me that this is what they think love is.”]

For anyone concerned about regretting stuff like this later, I want you to know that I went no-contact with my dad for 12 years and then he died about 3,5 years ago and I never regretted anything for even a second. If you don’t want someone in your life, cut them out.

I cut off my family decades ago, I am now older, and I’ve yet to regret anything.

For the whole “But don’t you miss your parents?” crowd, you do not owe them any response, but I’ve always found “I miss the parents I wish I had, you know parents who cared about me. The abusive ones I actually had I don’t miss at all.” seems to end the conversation.

I actually moved and left no contact information but one family member tracked me down multiple times. Not answering your phone is key and not having your own voice on your voicemail cuts back on the messages. I actually had a friend record my voicemail message in a foreign language which is a great way to convince unwelcome callers that they have the wrong number.

Anyone who actually cared about you would respect your boundaries. If you said you didn’t want to hear from them, they would leave you alone. I haven’t had to deal with the insecure friends and partners but someone having a serious issue with me cutting off my family would be a huge red flag for me. My partner and I have been together for decades, they’ve never met my parents and they have no interest in meeting them.

If you’ve reached the point of cutting off your family, congratulations! Your life will be so much better without abusive family members in it.

basically, i think the general rule of thumb is: if someone REALLY wants the blood that’s inside of your body, and they’re like… a vampire, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, then that’s probably okay. a dracula and a mansquito are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body. that’s basically fine.

if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out. 

unfortunately this will not deter a really big frog, because a really big frog is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood, and basically by any means possible.

These words scan with a fantastic degree of confidence considering that together they make no sense at all

world heritage post

My blog has outlived the first comment which means my posts are full of wisdom.

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when i get asked the perfect question that allows me to ramble about a special interest or share something that i recently learned this is what i look like. this is who i turn into

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Inane worldbuilding minutia of the day: there is a viral dance craze in Runaway to the Stars "modern day" (approx. 2325), because what is society without a viral dance craze. It began on Martian social media and then spread to the rest of the human internet via the extranet social platform Megaforum.

It is called "The Whop."

It takes some skill to to whop quickly without losing your balance, and videos of skilled whoppers dancing in increasingly ridiculous and inconvenient locations has plagued the human internet for years now. It has a resurgence every time a new bubble of human space discovers and spreads it.

There is also a two-person version of The Whop:

Two-person whopping is extremely popular among children, much to the dismay of their elders. If you don't pay attention and keep time with the other party, it's extremely easy to slap them square in the face. Video compilations of people getting injured while whopping abound. School nurses have seen many victims of the viral dance, sent in with bruises and bloodied noses after whopping too hard.

men in black is not a b-movie! it had a 90 million dollar budget in 1997! tommy lee jones and will smith were two of the most famous actors in the world! fuck off!