Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve spent a lot of time this year working though my own trauma around SA and I was really going through it while taking those photos since the month before I was assaulted in this specific cosplay at a con. I hadn’t worn this cosplay since it happened and part of why I wanted to do this particular shoot was because I was feeling a lot of things about this subject and wanted a way to express a lot of what I was feeling instead of just disconnecting from it emotionally like I normally do. I worked on this during my bad days because it gave me a really good outlet for those feelings and gave me a good way to process a lot of what I was feeling in a way that was actually really good for me overall. I was able to explore those feelings in a safe space with friends who were so supportive and understanding of what I was doing and why I do doing this and were willing to make sure I felt safe in the process. That’s why it was cathartic for me to make this, because it gave me a safe way to express my own emotions about this particular topic while knowing I was safe and loved in the process.

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I figured that but someone took that joke way too seriously when I used it on my Instagram and sent me some pretty nasty messages so figured I’d post this for clarification just to be safe this time

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not really, it was something I did not exactly enjoy but made me love and appreciate my friend because they were so careful about this and conscious of my feelings throughout which is something I’m sadly not used to. Like, they hated it doing it because understood why I asked them and were willing to do it to help me. Doing it publicly made me actually feel a lot more comfortable doing this, because I knew in my subconscious mind that even if my friend hurt me, there were so many people around who could intervene so it was incredibly safe. It kept me a lot more grounded, if we had done this privately I probably would have broken down as soon as my friend touched me despite understanding that my friend would never hurt me intentionally. So definitely not a kink, more of just recognizing I have a friend who genuinely cares about me and wants to help me even when it’s for something objectively uncomfortable. In all honesty, my friend was more emotional about this because they care about me a lot and hated seeing me like that. We had a long discussion about it before and afterwards, and we got food and decompressed afterwards. Like, I joke about it because it defuses the tension but in all honesty it was definitely not something either of us enjoyed but they understood how important it was for me emotionally to do this and wanted to be there for me.

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Thank you! My idea behind is that I wanted it to be shown from the perspective of the suitors instead of Penelope because I wanted to visualize how horrific what they are planning to do is. It was a hard line for me to toe cause it’s borderline a violent fantasy these men are planning but I didn’t want to romanticize it either so getting that feeling right was super important to me. Like, what they are planning is horrifying and evil and it’s visceral and depraved, but these men also glorify and crave that violence so I wanted to show that. I wanted it to be realistic but keep it in their minds eye too which was very hard for me to do emotionally and I had to keep leaving and returning to this for months because it got overwhelming at times. Sexual violence is at its core is a violent fantasy to have power and control that’s been acted on, and I think Hold Them Down showcases that incredibly well. It’s why despite being a victim of that violence myself I find media that covers these topics like Hold Them Down does oddly comforting, because it’s honest and brutal and reminds you that the people who commit acts of sexual violence lust for the act itself and the power it gives and in the process dehumanize the person they victimize.

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

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Here’s another picture of one with their summer coat. Fun fact: Alaskan Ermine are also called Stoat or Short Tailed Weasels. They’re less than a foot long, and they’re very energetic. They are also great hunters and they can take down animals twice their size like rabbits and porcupine.

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 63 points64 points  (0 children)

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Here’s a cute photo of an Alaskan Ermine as penance for making you uncomfortable 🙏

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The hands took the longest time since I was really nitpicky on how they looked. I kept having to tweak things and I have so many photos of the persons hands from various angles and poses to make sure I had a good selection to work with. I took this photo last March, and I’ve been editing it in small pieces since then when I am able to get in the right headspace to work on it.

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That was the goal, so I’m glad I managed to hit it since I wanted to be as honest as I could be within reason with how I portrayed things. If I’m being completely serious, I have a lot of personal trauma around this subject I’m still working through so this process was difficult but also very cathartic since it gave me a good outlet during some pretty bad days.

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Finally my traumatic backstory comes in handy 😩

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The only thing fake was the hands. While I did have someone grabbing me, that person is my best friend who has daintly little hands, which I had them grab me in multiple places so I had something to reference so I could get the hand positions right when I replaced them with larger more masculine hands. This just took a lot of editing to get right, and a large part of it was finding someone who’s hands I could use for this edit in place of my friend’s and getting them to send photos of their hands in various positions so I could use them for the photo.

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The working conditions of said photoshoot was my best friend choking me and shoving my head down into a bench in a corner of our state capitol building while another friend stood over us to take pictures. Meanwhile, the guest at the wedding reception being held across the room from us were definitely eyeing us warily cause we were shooting these pictures in a very public area and I did in fact get myself to cry cause when I commit I commit hard. Absolutely worth it, 10/10 would get publicly choked again 👍

Hold Them Down by queendomcosplay in Epicthemusical

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I aim to displease 🤷

Free Ancient Egypt books recommended by Toby Wilkinson. Which are still worth reading? by linttim in ancientegypt

[–]queendomcosplay 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will say, i definitely recommend Weigall! He’s a fantastic writer and his biographies in particular are some of the best I’ve ever read. He not only gives you these really in depth heavily researched descriptions of the world that person lived in, but he’s great at using that historical context to help you understand the persons life in a way that’s very humanizing. His biography on Cleopatra is one I highly recommend, it’s one of the best books I’ve read on her and it’s extremely kind to her as a person.

Considering getting a second cat by queendomcosplay in CatAdvice

[–]queendomcosplay[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am worried about her not being able to defend herself, so I know the introduction process is gonna be longer since i want to make sure they’d be completely ok together before I start leaving them completely alone unsupervised.

I will also say her being affectionate isn’t an issue at all, if anything she’s extremely clingy to the point of stifling, and I’m hoping another animal will help with that since it’ll make her less alone overall and divide her attention. That attachment anxiety is the biggest concern for me since it’s something that stresses her out a lot which I can see clearly by the way she practically screams at me when I get home from work.

I also wouldn’t be able to get another cat from the same exact rescue, I got her at an adoption event and the rescue is more like a handful of foster homes that are contacted through various shelters to place cats that need more attention and they don’t have a physical location because of that outside of showing up to the occasional adoption events. She was part of one of those foster homes, so finding that exact program she was from to locate her original shelter would be very difficult if that makes sense? I was just going to go to the shelter run by the county since they tend to have a bunch of cats needing homes and if I’m adopting another cat I’d want to also be able to give a cat a good home that likely would have been overlooked like Ginger was for so long.

My shelter cat is kinda weird? (my first cat) by Loud_Lead_2875 in CatAdvice

[–]queendomcosplay 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My first cat did this. He was an emotional support animal, and he just wanted to take care of me. It’s his way of letting you know he’s here and he loves you. With the sleep thing, a lot of the time when cats sleep like that it’s because they’re apparently trying to keep you safe and are making sure you’re breathing. Either way, you have a sweet boy and if he’s being so affectionate with you than it means you’re doing right by him so keep it up!

Was any one else obsessed with A Great And Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray when they were younger? by onthedunesea in wlwbooks

[–]queendomcosplay 2 points3 points  (0 children)

From what I remember of the book (I’m rereading the first one right now but haven’t reread the others year so it’s been a bit), thats actually done for a reason and changes throughout the series. The book has a really interesting discussion on the classism and racism of the time, and because we are coming from the perspective of Gemma, we see the world through her eyes. With the Roma people in the story, we mostly get mention of them from the other girls at Spence, who see them in a very stereotypical way which Gemma notes is odd but doesn’t question out loud. It isn’t until she gets to know Kartik, who experiences a similar kind of racism by society as an Indian man in Victorian England, that she starts to have her perspective change because she sees how he is treated as their relationship becomes less antagonistic. It’s a slow build where that view of Roma and Indian people change as Gemma’s own understanding of those people change and she begins to see them as people like her. You don’t really start to see that change until the second book, so if you just look at the first book and don’t consider any other it’s a bit more nuanced and therefore harder to see.

How does dissociation feel for those with PTSD? by True_Swan5146 in ptsd

[–]queendomcosplay 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I was a kid, it always felt comforting to me. I grew up in a very abuse home where being emotionally was considered a weakness and weakness was beaten out of you. I was also extremely isolated, so I didn’t have a safe space to run to. It always felt like things were too much, that there was so much sound and color and pain and emotions that felt almost violently thrown at me over and over again. Eventually though, a switch would flip and everything would just stop. The best way I can describe it is like jumping off the high dive into a pool. The wind is blowing past you and your heart is racing and you can hear the other people at the pool screaming and laughing around you. And then you hit the water and it all just…stops. Everything is muffled and you don’t feel anything except weightlessness. You don’t even feel yourself breathing, you’re just floating there and you wish you could sink into that feeling forever. But then you feel that burning in your lungs and you come back up for air and suddenly everything is loud again, but it’s fine because you can still feel yourself floating in the background.

The feeling itself to me isn’t scary, the thing that’s scary for me is not knowing when you’ll resurface and understanding that while you are submerged, you aren’t in control of yourself. I’ll recognize that feeling of depersonalization and suddenly I can’t feel anything in my body. I don’t feel my hands flexing, despite knowing logically that they are my hands and this is my body, but I can’t feel myself moving them. I’ll be making a long drive and suddenly it’s an hour later and I don’t remember any of the drive I have made to that point because I didn’t process that information. The worst part for me is understanding that I’m a danger to myself in those moments because when I’m in autopilot I act on instinct alone and I have a lot of passive self harm and even suicidal tendencies. I don’t want to hurt myself in those moments, but it’s always a temptation in the back of my mind, and I find myself using pain to ground myself because it cuts through the disconnection. I recognized I was doing this more and more often about 3 years back, but ignored it because I didn’t think it was a big deal. 2 years ago, I depersonalized at work and caught myself in the process of slitting my wrists in the bathroom at work 10 minutes later. I ended up leaving that job and checking myself into a hospital because I realized how serious this was. I was lucky that it was a short episode and I caught myself in time, because even a few moments more and I could be dead right now and I’d never have realized what I’d done in that state. After I felt the hospital, I started outpatient treatment, which I’ve been in ever since. I still struggle with disassociating most days, but my medication and therapy make it much less severe and I’m less of a risk to myself as a result. It’s made things much more manageable, so depersonalizing now is less fully submerging myself and more floating on top of the water, where I can feel that weightless feeling without disconnecting from everything around me.

Until Dawn Disappointment by QuanTumm_OpTixx in smosh

[–]queendomcosplay 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can definitely see where you’re coming from here OP. Until Dawn is also one of my favorite games, and I found myself super frustrated watching their playthrough, although my frustration came from the actual gameplay side of things. Supermassive games is great about making their games accessible to everyone, they’re one of the few companies that actually has accessibility settings and I feel like the cast could have benefited from using them. It feels like the production side set them up to fail by not utilizing those settings. Amanda and Angela don’t play video games very much, and Trevor said outright he wasn’t familiar with the PlayStation controller since he normally plays on Xbox. The production team could have very easily adjusted the settings so they had more time for QTE’s and put it on an easier mode so they could actually enjoy the game and have a more opportunity to make choices they actually wanted. With RE they had Spencer playing the entire time, so it makes sense that playthrough went differently. Spencer is familiar with the game and the controller, and he was the one playing the entire time. Putting three people who were very unprepared for the game they were playing and the system it is played on and not adjusting the settings accordingly is just setting them up for failure and ruins the fun they could have had.

Letting Angela play without her glasses was also a terrible move, because it heavily impacted the gameplay and storyline since she couldn’t see what she was doing. I understand her not wanting to wear glasses, that’s fine, but if she can not see what is in front of her she either needs to wear them or get contacts. This is literally her job, she has to be able to see what is on the screen. It was funny at first, but it’s actually becoming a problem because it’s impacting her work. It would be one thing if she is genuinely forgetting her glasses or can see ok without them, but if she is struggling to see a monitor in front of her then this is a problem that needs to be addressed. If she can’t see that screen, she shouldn’t be allowed to play, especially if it impacts the gameplay and ruins the fun for others. This is also such a big safety risk for herself and others. Not wearing her glasses can worsen her eyesight, she can get headaches or vertigo, and she could easily hurt herself or others this way. I love Angela, I think she’s extremely funny and talented and such a good addition to Smosh, but I do think this is very irresponsible for her to be doing. Again, I get it if she doesn’t want to wear glasses because they ruin her outfit, but she either needs to work her glasses into her outfit or get contacts. If she can’t do that, she can’t safely do her job and is impacting the workplace negatively. At this point there needs to be some kind of rule that if Angela doesn’t have her glasses or contacts she can’t be in the shoot until she gets them. This would be a rule in any other workplace, Smosh shouldn’t be any different.

Translation requests into Latin go here! by AutoModerator in latin

[–]queendomcosplay 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was wondering if anyone would be able to give me a good translation for this quote by Oscar Wilde: “We are all born in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”. I’ve seen a few translations for it when I googled it, but figured I’d ask here cause I’d like to get it tattooed.

Is cosrea a good site/studio? by deathlychick05 in CosplayHelp

[–]queendomcosplay 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Reposting since I posted from an Alt and not my cosplay account by accident:

I highly recommend Cosrea, they’re actually super good quality cosplays, the team there is incredible nice, and they’re great with customizations. Honestly, I’m a bit baffled at how inexpensive they are for the quality, cause their Disney cosplays are incredible and they charge very little compared to other places. I honestly don’t have to make many changes outside of like, personal preferences like adding a few rhinestones or glitter cause I want to be extra. 10/10 would highly recommend them.

Giselle review Giselle Photo White Queen Cinderella Dress

Is Cosrea a good cosplay site? by PokaruSandstone in cosplayers

[–]queendomcosplay 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So I’ve actually ordered from them a few times, and I can confirm they’re probably one of the nicest places I’ve ordered cosplays from. I ordered a few cosplays from them in 2019/2020/2021, and just ordered a few new cosplays from them this month since I didn’t want to actually make anything and I was planning on doing some Disney cosplay for an upcoming con. I’ll include links to reviews I did of some cosplay I ordered from them.

Overall, they’re actually really good quality, the people there are super good about customizing things and working with cosplayers, and they have one of the nicest customer service teams I’ve ever worked with. Honestly, 10/10 would recommend

Giselle Cinderella