My birth mother, my adoptive mother, my adoptive father, my birth grandfather, and my birth older brother, all for different reasons (it’s complicated).

For context. I never once in my life had a full conversation with my birth mother. My birth grandparents on her side named her and her six older sisters using a naming scheme, choosing one long C name as the first name and one long V name as the middle name. My birth mother was the youngest and her name is/was Celestina Valentina. She was the only sibling in that generation to have kids and, again, had seven. We were all girls (I’ll get to that in a moment) and, to name us, chose a different aunt’s name to swap the first and middle names around. When it came to me, she swapped her own name to name me. I was born Valentina Celestina. I feel a special connection to her from the details I am given.

In some other timeline, she might’ve had an eighth child so I wouldn’t have been the youngest, but she and my birth father were hospitalized after that (comatose, not dead), so we had to be adopted. I was adopted by an adoptive mother who happened to be the foster sister of my birth grandfather, making it a semi-family-adoption. My older siblings were adopted by a single adoptive father outside the family but who ended up marrying my adoptive mother after that, making my birth siblings step-siblings. My adoptive mother, perhaps thinking Valentina might not suit me well (while also trying to follow regional customs and knowing my grandfather had a unisex name), also renamed me Tynan after him.

I had, upon this chain of events, developed a bond with them in different ways. I developed an exclusive bond with my adoptive mother, being all I had in terms of primal attachment, while having a sense of gratefulness and debt to my stepfather but feeling bad it was accompanied by a feeling of distance due to the circumstances. My birth grandfather, who always stayed in my life, was the most classic grandfather one could ask for and would be who I bonded with the most, which made the name change feel a lot less awkward (he was also extremely accomplished, and this may have been a reason for it). His old home is the one I live in today, having been inherited from him a few years ago.

As for my birth brother or stepbrother, we all kind of had a sibling we chose as our bonding sibling. Veronica chose Vanessa, Virginia, Violetta, and Valeria are a trio, and me and Victoria/Victor chose each other. He came out as transgender when I was eight years old, which would’ve made him thirteen, and I was the first to accept him for it. I always wanted a brother, and in my mind I was getting what I always wanted since I was born. He was always the most special brother I could have. And he still is despite the current circumstances. The death of my adoptive mother was a dark time even though she was 67 when she adopted me, because, combined with the fact my stepfather had died at the beginning of covid and that I didn’t do almost anything in response to his death compared to my adoptive mother, who was also our glue until she died, my siblings all pressured each other to ghost me, with my brother being the most reluctant but ending up following through to be safe. I would have no one if not for my aunts who moved in with me (who are themselves elderly and need care due to an age gap between them and my birth mother) in the home inherited from my grandfather, which was a part of his final wishes.

Is there an equivalent for moms?

Naming your kid after you.

The same sleep, work, and education as usual.

Before Palpatine became emperor, there is reason to believe the Sith were more righteous than the Jedi. They, the Sith, operated far more based on negotiation and human experience and did not believe in immediate sectarian suppression. If only they weren’t also fans of death and destruction.

The issue that arises in these conversations are the semantics. Never have I seen someone mention “manipulators” but then define them in a way that not only includes all the intended people and excludes all of the unintended people but also could be lived up to in a consistent way. Many will point fingers and say “that person is manipulative” and will get upset when I ask “how would you define that”, because I work on these kinds of issues, and these kinds of progressions would be vital. The same people, I have noticed, are never content by saying something like “that person is deceptive”, because then they can foresee that it will progress into a conversation about how not all “manipulation” entails “deception” and not all “deception” entails “manipulation”.

In short, the first issue lies in determining what the boundaries of “manipulation” are.

If you look through any book of law, “manipulation” is a word that is very, very seldomly used, if at all.

Suppose, though, you found core ideas that can be appealed to. Do you try to stop the issue or do you leave it up to the target of these people to fare for themselves? If you can find traces of the “perpetrator” doing something that crosses questionable boundaries as a side effect of itself, definitely the former. This kind of thing can only be settled by elaborating on boundaries. Before I stepped down from some of my positions, I often added these elaborations to whatever modus operandi of management was being used. Fine lines should be applied as much as possible.

As for what society is programmed to do, I like to think people are seekers of enlightenment, although my experiences overwhelmingly suggest the exact opposite occurs from people. The severity and amount of clique-based decision-making comes across as almost monstrous, as anyone who has read the logs of an administrator can tell you. Ironically, being roundabout, often in a way that evokes the image of the people we are referring to, can serve as a demonstrator of the wrongfulness of this way of doing things.

I called my teacher mom.

At this time, I’ve just been watching other peoples’ videos for that.

I would, but I seem to inspire a lot of people to ignore me (something I can see you can relate to) due to my history, the community’s history, and the amount of places I’m barred from, an issue also shared by the rule enforcers here to a multiplied extent, which one might say also decreases the traffic, though nobody seems to have been bothered to notice, even those who are like the founder and care more about the results than the lead-up.

Could be better, to be honest. Lots of rain and interpersonal chaos. You don’t have to work in retail to relate to having to tell people you can either make up for your past or you can’t, and that they should choose one or the other, stick with the answer they’ve chosen, and act like they have chosen the answer they have chosen.

Shower thought: What do you think a retail worker would think of this place? Honestly.

Thanks for reversing mine too.

Can I use it to do a barrel roll?

I am mixed between Scottish and Pacific Islander. I will cycle between soft burns and soft darkenings/lightenings despite being light tan. Though it’s my lightening red hair I must watch out for.

I had a bat find its way into my home, if that counts.

I didn’t even know about it until I inherited it from my grandfather. It has made things interesting, to say the least.

It has its own encyclopedia page.

It’s not in-land.

Ranch dressing.

And mine too, if applicable.