This is the Goose of Outrageous Self Assuredness. Take from her example, her ludicrous and excellent poise in the face of bullying, and be confident in your place, your course, your equal validity.
I’m always amazed by the amount of fucks geese refuse to give.
This is it, this is everything you need to know about geese in one video.
girl culture is turning around every few feet when you’re walking alone to see if someone’s following u
Learn to peep through the corner of your eye so you’re not quite so obvious when you turn.
Putting in your earphones so hopefully no random men try to talk to/harass you but not actually playing music so you can listen for footsteps/other suspicious noises behind you.
feeling like someone is following you and subtly shifting whatever object you’re holding into a better grip so you can use it as a bludgeon if the person behind you tries anything
Being fucking terrified when street lamps give you more than one shadow
just girly things~🌟
Ok, buckle up for some advice from your local redhead who grew up in a collection of iffy neighborhoods.
Square. The Frick. Up.
No one to fight? No one near? Square Up.
Leaving work late? Going out on public transit? Square Up.
Don’t know how to fight? Terrified? Square Up.
Square Up doesn’t mean fists up and ready to punch in this case it just means shoulders back chin up and walk like you might be late for an argument.
The deal with the threats we face is that it’s classic predator/prey dynamics. Preds look for prey, not other preds. Walk like a predator not prey. Sometimes that doesn’t work. Sometimes that one pred doesn’t get the idea.
Sucks to be them. Cuz they’re not getting out of this without a serious slice of humble pie. Be it a simple comment or getting their skin cells under your fingernails, that’s up to them. Don’t talk more than absolutely necessary, keep it short and powerful. “I don’t have time” seems to work best for me bc it’s urgent, true, and usually not insulting enough to feel like a challenge. Stay visible, never hide.
You’ve been grabbed? Grab. Them. Back. Your hand over their wrist, nails digging into the softest skin possible. Take the power, take the situation, it’s yours. You grab that wrist and lean back, pivot on your feet, turn and use both your strength and body weight to swing them off of you. Yell. “Do not touch me!” They’ll usually become less interested after this point, you’re putting up too much of a fight, you’re ‘a psycho bitch’. Damn right you are you gorgeous beast.
If they don’t give up on you, God forbid, they attack? Go for broke. Hit the soft parts, throat and genitals are the best. Men: grab a handful of the Twins and squeeze as hard as you can while pulling and twisting. Women: same deal up top, tiddies are sensitive as we’re just as prone to crotch-shots as men. Can’t do that? Bite and Scratch. Get their evidence on you and yours on them. Nothing is more incriminating than a human bite mark. Be the reason they need to go to a hospital.
Yell and scream as much as possible, I don’t care what just scream.
No direct threat? Just the ol anxiety playing up? Trust your gut, the one time you don’t will be the one time you wish you did.
Contrary to popular belief, you can call emergency services. Tell the operator “I’m walking home and feel unsafe” and they’ll stay on the line with you, might even send a nearby squad car to give you a lift home. Don’t feel safe calling the police? Call or text your closest relationship. Talk to them the whole way back, text them every five minutes like clockwork.
All these things are two pronged: address the immediate threat and aid investigators in the future should the worst occur. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Have a well meaning but maybe dense friend? Ask them to walk with you, they may not have known you were scared.
Most people are great, they’ll help you even if you’re a frazzled thing pounding on their front door past midnight bc the shadows aren’t trustworthy. Go for the house with the nicest garden, I’ve never met a mean green thumb they’re always the loveliest.
When you yell make sure you yell as loud as you can in a deep voice phrases like “No!” and “Don’t touch me!” and “I don’t want to go with you!” because then any eye witnesses in the area will tell the cops that they were handling you against your will.
Okay, this is actually what you do if you’re being sexually harassed in any kind of public space. Draw attention to it, preferably pull away and let EVERYONE know that someone is touching you. This will not only get him to get off you but he’ll definitely think about this situation next time he wants to do something like this.
Spreading the word.
My mom and I were talking about this today after hearing about a woman who was molested on a plane who said nothing until she was picked up at the airport by her parents. My mom looked at me and asked what I would do in that situation and I looked her dead in the eye and I told her “it would take me .02 seconds to realize what was going on and yell angrily, and then I would be straight on to bitch slapping him so hard he wouldn’t be able to see the punch I’d throw with the opposite hand”.
She nodded and accepted my salty language like a seasoned sailor.
I’ve had experience with this before, in Prague a group of five girls and I were followed by three men at night. After a while they started yelling at us, the most common being “how much?” Meaning how much we “cost” as prostitutes. Seeing as they weren’t going to stop, I turned on my heel, faced them (which surprised them), spat at their feet and responded with “You couldn’t afford me.” This prompted the other girls to start yelling back at them as well, starting with our spitfire Czech friend to start slinging curses in Czech as she and the rest of the girls came up beside me. Needless to say the men backed off and pretty much fled. They weren’t expecting a fight. It empowered me and encouraged the rest of the girls to yell back too.
I’ve heard that a lot of people don’t know what to do in this situation because they’ve been taught all their lives to be polite and non-aggressive. Keep your heads down or whatever.
Keep in mind that studies have shown that rapists look for victims who won’t fight back.
Remember that nobody has the right to touch you without your consent or harass you, and you have all the right to make the biggest fuss about it that you can possibly make.
Get angry. Be in command.
FUCKING RELEVANT
If someone is doing something that makes you uncomfortable like this, you do not need to be nice. Swear, kick, scream, make the asshole cry. You don’t have to nice, be as rude as you want
never make a suicide joke again. yes this includes “i wanna die” as a figure of speech. swear off of it. actually make an effort to change how you think about things.
find something to compliment someone for at least 4 times a day. notice the little things about the world that make you happy, and use that to make other people happy.
talk to people. initiate conversation as often as you possibly can. keep your mind busy and you wont have to worry anymore
picture the bad intrusive thoughts in youe head as an edgy 13 year old and tell them to go be emo somewhere else
if someone makes you feel bad most of the time, stop talking to them. making yourself hang out with people who drain you is self harm. stop it.
… 8|
That’s some pretty good advice. I don’t know what’s left of my humor after ‘guess I’ll just die’ jokes but it’s worth a shot.
Personally i went from “guess I’ll die” jokes to “IF I HAVE TO BE HERE FOR 5 MORE MINUTES I PROMISE YOU I WILL BUY JUST, AN ARRAY OF CLOTHES.” and other wild hyperbolic stuff. Just replace the death part with something ridiculous and off topic. Its very entertaining
This also works with calling myself things like stupid, worthless, trash, etc. Even if you do this jokingly to yourself, your brain still believes it, and keeps up the cycle. Seriously, I found that when I stopped saying these things about myself, even jokingly, it made a massive difference.
Here’s a tip I picked up from a friend that’s helped me a lot — replace self deprecating jokes with ironically self aggrandizing jokes
Like every time I trip and fall, instead of saying “l’m just a disaster human” I say “I’m the epitome of grace and beauty”
Or like, when I draw a picture I’m not 100% happy with, instead of saying “my art is trash” I say something like “you know I think it’s time we replaced the Mona Lisa”
When you do that you get to make a joke, but you’re ALSO getting practice building yourself up, y’know?
And eventually it becomes a reflex and you get so used to it that you can say nice stuff about yourself even when you AREN’T joking
Most of your fandom experience is shaped by who you follow. Find a good group of people and stick with them.
Support your favs and a lot of them will become your friends, or at least be friendly back to you.
Just unfollow people who bring unwanted content or negativity onto your dash.
Block people who cause you stress. It’s not worth your time to focus on parts of fandom that don’t make you happy.
Blacklisting words/tags is a tool you are allowed to use as much as you need to.
Don’t feel like you have to pretend to like things that make you uncomfortable in order to fit in. Set healthy boundaries for yourself.
Never tag your hate. Never send hate anons to someone.
Content creators love getting comments, seeing people gush in the tags on reblogs, and getting fans in their inbox. It’s the best way to motivate them to keep making awesome stuff.
If there’s certain content you want to see but it doesn’t exist yet, then make it. Draw the thing, write that fic. If you can’t, then comission an artist or writer, or send someone a prompt if they’re open to it. If you can’t do that either, then write meta or headcanons about it. Put it into the world.
Create what you love. Do it for yourself first and foremost, and if even one other person likes it too, then that’s a bonus.
ITS OKAY IF WHAT YOU IDENTIFY AS CHANGES. I used to think I was straight. Then I was bi. Now I’m Bi/Panromantic and Asexual (no sexual attraction, but can fall in love with anyone regardless), with a strong preference for femininity. I have a close friend who used to consider herself a lesbian. Then she crushed on a dude, and now she considers herself bi. She’s even got a boyfriend now! My boyfriend M to consider himself NB. Now he’s out as trans.
IT IS OKAY TO GROW AND CHANGE AND LEARN ABOUT NEW THINGS THAT MAKE YOU RECONSIDER YOURSELF. SO DONT WORRY ABOUT “WHAT IF IM NOT LEGITIMATELY X BECAUSE I USED TO CALL MYSELF Y?”, BECAUSE IT CAN CHANGE AS YOU DEVELOP AND GROW!
Do me a favor okay? Stop trying to go back to who you were before. Before you were raped, before you got sick before an eating disorder took over your life. stop trying to be who you were five, ten, twenty years ago. Before the mental illness took over, before he died, back before your parents split or you lost your best friend.
You are NOT the same person as before. You never will be again. Give up the idolization of “before” and be who you are now. Be the you AFTER.
Thank you
no post on tumblr has ever hit me more than this whoa
one of the more valuable things I’ve learned in life as a survivor of a mentally unstable parent is that it is likely that no one has thought through it as much as you have.
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.
The best thing I ever did for myself and my relationships was insist upon frank communication and a categorical denial of subtext. For some people this is a moral stance. For survivors of mentally unstable parents this is a requirement of recovery.
Seriously. I mean it. Because inevitably you will love something that no one else loves. Or you will love something that everyone loves and people will shit all over it because it’s “so trite and unimaginative and done.” Or you will love something that no one else has ever heard of. Or you will love something dark and edgy and or obscure and people will roll their eyes and say, “What, do you want people to think you’re dark and edgy and obscure?”
Alternatively, you will not love the thing that everyone else loves, and you will wonder what precisely is wrong with you that the sight of that thing is aggravating the shit out of you now when the whole world sings its praises as one.
People will irritate you. They’ll irritate you with headcanons that make no sense and misinterpretations of canon. They will make the same jokes 500 times. They will overwhelm your corner of fandom with something you either are tired of hearing about or don’t care about. They will post art that isn’t theirs. You will meet people who think you are the greatest person ever and bombard you with messages only to wander off when they find someone new or shinier; you will meet people whom you admire and who do not really seem to notice you exist.
So give zero fucks about it. Seriously. Like what you like, blacklist what you need to blacklist, and ignore everything else. Be friends, play nice, enjoy it. And in the meantime, just do you. Like what you like, love what you love, and to hell with all the rest of it.
Question of Smoke 