Art Commissions

I take art commissions! Yay! No, I will not accept them through this blog, as I'm rarely here, but I am doing commissions currently for a group of Premiere Designs consultants. But, yeah, I will eventually be making headway as an artist in the world. To see some art posts of mine, you can go to <a href="http://blaquestbird.tumblr.com/search/art">my personal tumblr</a>, but not all the posts underneath the art tag are exclusively mine. The ones that are mine are mostly cross posted from <a href="https://www.instagram.com/knightofthecrow/">Instagram</a> though some are posted straight from tumblr. Just look for pieces that originate from one of my blogs.

Update June 18, 2015

UPDATE June 4, 2015

HAPPY NEWS AT END OMG SFDGFDGFGHGHG

Q&A May 29, 2015

9 Different Voices Women Use

This is from Stuff Mom Never Told You

I do not own.

What Does The Transgender Brain Look Like?

We exist! And science backs that up.

Two Boys Kissing Review

I promised my followers on Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr a review on David Levithan's book Two Boys Kissing a while ago, so here it is!  The first book review for my channel! I'm sorry I have such horrible book review skills, but it's not like I had a template or was writing an essay, lol. This book is a must read, especially if you were to put it on a Queer Reading list.

I Can't

So, today my grandmother was upset with me because I didn't go to school. i tried telling her about how much bullshit life just is and how I couldn't deal with it but she said I still need to go to school, especially since I already missed two days in a row. What she didn't understand though was that it took all the strength I had just to get out of bed and walk 10 feet to tell her why I wasn't getting up. All I wanted to do this morning was curl up and cry. To be honest, I've no idea why I felt this way. I just did. I felt awful nearly all day. Now I'm somewhat okay, but school got out three hours ago, so... Yeah, that sucks. Anyway, I'm going to use this time to catch up on some work, both related and unrelated to school. This morning and most of today was just a big ball of "I Can't". I know I "sound like a white girl" and yeah, I'm a white boy, but whatever. That's really how I was able to describe my feelings. Sigh. Anyway, I'll see y'all later.

A List of Different Genders and Identities

My Life Sucks. I've No Money for College, I want to teach Sex Ed.

Okay, so, I'm supposed to be typing up copies of a script for theatre so that my partners can have their lines in their hands instead of on flash cards or on their phones, and I was watching the new season of Switched at Birth on Netflix, but I kind of need to vent.

Well, first off, I'm changing my name to Sebastian Sean, but that's another story.

So, I've never had a college fund. Ever. I've only ever had one job. My high school career... Well, my GPA has always been at least okay, but my grades turn to shit every once in a while. First semester junior year, I gave up all hopes of going to college. Until my English teacher handed me a bunch of websites that offered scholarships. Then I wanted to do military and was thinking that I would be okay for college. Now... I'm not doing military (wouldn't be legally allowed to, anyway) and I've nearly given up on college. Again. I've no money! And it's way too expensive. Financially, my best hope is Stanford. But they're extremely exclusive. UCR has great LGBT+ community programs and gender incluisve housing and diversity and a taiko group... But I wouldn't be let in with how they calculate their GPA. My best bet is community college then transfer. But none of the community colleges in my area offer Sexuality/Gender Studies. None of them. Like what the fuck?

I've decided today that I want to be a sexuality educator. Sexuality education in America is complete shit, even in places like California where it's "comprehensive". I want to offer kids a chance at understanding the fluidity of the sexuality spectrum with a fully comprehensive, all inclusive, sex positive education. I want them to know it's okay to be gay or trans or sexual or asexual. I want them to know when a relationship is abusive, even if they're not physically being lashed at. I want them to know the proper names for their genitals, how their bodies work. I want them to understand power dynamics, what consent is and what it isn't. I want them to learn of the world without having their parents breathing down their necks or having to seek their permission for knowledge.

But if I'm to achieve this... Course wise, my best bet is Stanford. But I really want to go to UCR. But I need to go to community college if I hope to get in anywhere soon. So if I go down the route of community college... I would need to take Family Studies/Child Development, Sociology, Psychology, Biology, Anatomy, maybe even Anthropology, and who knows what else. But that could take years and I don't even have money to get a car; how am I supposed to get an education? And don't forget that my true passion is Art and I would be taking all sorts of Art classes, too.

I'm so young and yet I can just feel my life wasting away...

Non Hetero Sexual Orientations

Did this Monday, which is NonHetero Sexual Orientation Acceptance Day

5 Trans Misconceptions Bruce Jenner Cleared Up!

Return of the Fifth

Should Rihanna Say Bitch?

I DO NOT OWN THIS VIDEO, I JUST LOVE LACI GREEN.

Double Design/Les Love Boat Cool Mesh Zipper Short Chest Binder Review

Commedia Characters

A MESSAGE TO PEOPLE ON TWITTER & YOUTUBE

Poetry

I write a lot of poetry sometimes. It's a very good way to express how I feel. It helps me to sort out my feelings sometimes or to just deal with them. I write a lot of poetry when I'm down. Some of my best poetry comes to me when I'm kind of emotional. So all my poems sound kind of weird. I've posted some more stuff on my poetry blog and I'm going to try to update it as much as possible. I've written a lot of poetry and prayers in my lifetime. Some poems are a little gruesome, but I'm a dark person. So, I'm updating it, y'all should take a look at it.

Depression

YouTube Editor sucks. ANYWAY. Yes, these videos of some random kid talking are videos of ME. Don't worry about it.

Questionnaire March 16, 2015

An English Writing Assignment for Into the Wild Tells my Tale (Sort of)

 On January 5, 2014, Crow boarded an airplane and flew from Kansas City, Missouri to Ontario, California, bringing with her only a backpack and two large duffel bags. The day before, after cutting herself, she swore she would no longer self-harm. At the airport, she was greeted by her family, whom she hadn’t seen in over a year. Soon after settling down into the small city of Redlands, she was enrolled in a nearby high school. She knew nobody and would even have a nervous embarrassment or anxiety about approaching other students when needing help finding a teacher. When group assignments came about in class, like usual, she worked alone. Unlike at her former high school, Olathe South, she rarely raised her hand to answer questions. She found people to cling to and make friends with very shortly, but she rarely ventured out of this group, even after being settled in for a long time. Being in this new school confused her some. Normally, she was friendly and kind, but avoided people a little bit; in her new habitat, she avoided people even more. For a while, she kept to herself the struggles she had to stay clean, the physical pain she experienced whenever she fought the urge to cut. Eventually, she found someone to confide in, but not even he knew every detail. She always seemed to have a habit of keeping to herself.

Hitting Home

I haven't really talked about this before. But I feel I should right now. I'm hesitant in typing this up. It feels weird... But I've got to do this. Little by little.

Just now, I finished the last episode of the second season of the L Word on Netflix. Jenny... Jenny... Cut herself. She dug a small razor into her thighs. She hid it in her compact mirror and when she got out of the bath she took it out and started cutting her thighs. Shane finds her and stops her. They cry. They decide Jenny needs help. But... I cried, too. From the moment the camera first let you see her wounds. I almost started crying when they showed her taking out her razor. But... It shook me. It shook me up. In fact, I'm starting to cry again. I guess it... hit home.

I'm self-harm. That is a big part of my identity. The fact that I fought depression and that I really do try to be strong. The fact that there are still times where I struggle. To try to get away from cutting, I've drawn on myself. It's hard. Sometimes, the urge is so strong, all I can do is lay on my bed, curled up in pain. Yes, pain. Because the urge itself can be physically painful and resisting it, fighting it, makes it even more so. My scars are very faint, but that's just the physical ones. The other ones, the ones on the very inside of my being are much, much more hideous.

Why am I blogging this, you might ask? Because it's a real fucking thing. People actually suffer from it. We don't do it for attention. Usually, we do such a damn good job at hiding it that nobody even notices until it's too late. People need to know about this. They need to fucking get a clue and help those who can't recover on their own. Something as simple and trivial as just a "How are you feeling today?" or even a hug for no reason can sometimes be the best thing int he world.

For me, the defining moment was when, one day, at lunch, I rolled up the sleeves of my jacket and my best friend saw the marks in the inside of my left wrist. I always wore the jakcet and other long sleeve shirts to hide the cuts. But that day at school, I wasn' careful enough in hiding them. And it saved my life...

When ypou see someone who looks normal, happy, or whatever, but they have scars, cuts, and other marks on them, on their arms, their legs, their torsos, their hands, their feet, please take notice of it. Please, give them a hug. Please, take them aside and ask them about it. Because you could very well be their saviour.

Sometimes, it's easy to talk about self-harm, depression, starvation, suicide, other times, like this, I bawl my fucking eyes out. I have a deep feeling for this. I have a raw, sore, aching, wounded heart for this. Because I've been through it. And recovery isn't linear. Nor is it easy. The journey to recovery is a bitch. A long and hard one.

August, 2013... I was beautiful. I was sexy, confident. I referred to myself as a "Sexy Beast" and I had the most confidence I have ever had in my entire life. I want that back. I want it so bad... No more of this "I'm fat", "I'm fucked up", "I'm not worth it" bullshit.

If you have to look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself over and over that you are strong, beautiful, and that you can and will be happy and it still sounds like you're lying... then you have a problem.

In August 2013, my confidence was wrecked all in one fell swoop. It took so long to get it and yet so little time to kill it.

I began to starve myself. Barely eating anything, if I ate anything at all, during lunch at school. Eating the smallest amount I could get away with during dinner at home to keep my father and his wife off my back, so they would never suspect a thing of my eating habits. I didn't eat if I could avoid it. I lost 20 pounds.

In November 2013, after many suicide attempts, my best friend saw the cuts on my wrist. She asked me about it. I told her "Not here", so she pulled me aside and I told her... basically, everything. She was there for me. She was my go-to person whenever I was having a bad day or a bad moment.

I cried during Dead Poets Society.

I cried when talking about Leelah Alcorn on YouTube.

I cried when Jenny cut herself on the L Word.

I cried listening to Pierce the Veil's "Match Into Water".

I almost cried seeing the scars that covered the arm of one of the most beautiful blue-haired girls I've ever seen.

Why?

Because not only am I a crier, but becasue I've been there.

I've been there.

And so have so many others.

So, please, please give love to others. Give them support. Help someone. DO SOMETHING.

Me?

I'm writing a blog.

Symbols: God Is A Girl

(Image taken from Google Images, borrowed from: RedBubble)

I'm going to talk a little about this Celtic knot. It's real cute, a heart and a triquetera woven together to form one knot. Not as simple to draw as a normal triquetera, but still easy. Where have you seen this symbol? Nowhere, probably. Just like the triquetra, it's a Pagan symbol. It's a goddess symbol and is generally interpreted as "God is a Girl" is the impression I've been given. It's on T-shirts, book bags, Google Images, a girl in my English class (who most likely doesn't know what it means) has it tattooed on her back, I've drawn it on my notebook besides "BORN AGAIN PAGAN", a double pentacle with the triple moon and yin yang at the center, a triquetera in a circle, a regular pentacle, a clockwise swirl, a septacle, and another moon goddess symbol. So, what does it mean exactly? Well, I said its meaning was "God is a Girl", as the above picture states, but what if you've never seen the symbol before and that slogan was not with it? So, with that hypothetical situation is where I will make my case, breaking it down into separate symbols then building it back up for definition.

Let's take a look at the symbol everyone will recognize from this symbol: the heart. Hearts bring to mind love, Valentin'es Day, romance, (my awful typos I'm not always going to fix *ahem*), couples, red, pink, crushes, kisses, sex, dates, marriage... So what does the heart stand for then? The agreed upon meaning will be "love" or "romance", but we could delve deeper in to this. A heart could be love, it could be the soul, it could be one's desperate search for purpose or a meaningful existence. Then again, what does that all point back to? Love. I'm not talking romance; I'm talking that raw, deep feeling, that true emotion, the thing that will rip your heart out (I apologize for saying "heart" when talking about hearts, LOL), that one thing that makes everyone go crazy. So, yeah, you cant' get much deeper than "love", but most people think puppy love or fleeting romances, hugs and kisses for your temporary lover. If you look at the heart symbol, it's usually perfectly symmetrical down the vertical central axis. Symmetry is associated with perfection, like how your face could be if you never, ever, ever got sick a single day in your life. Also, if you went on the assumption that love automatically brings trust, then you could say that the heart can symbolize trust as well. Also, when looking at it, there are only two corners, two sides, as if to speak of the duality of the Universe, which is actually a spectrum, but humans seem to generally only see things as binary. It has no openings, like a protective barrier. Both sides are exactly the same, creating unity withing the symbol. So, judging from all this, you could say that it means "Perfect Love and Perfect Trust" (which is a phrase that's common among Wiccan and other Pagan-themed books and stories) or "Unity of Duality". But let's go with the former, to make things simpler.

Now let's take a look at the other lesser known symbol: the triquetera. Triquetera is a symbol of three, of Life, Death, and Rebirth, of Young, Mature, and Old. It's Celtic and has been seen in the show Charmed, borrowed by many Christian organizations, and seen throughout different areas, though not as commonly as the heart. It's hard to tell where it begins and where it ends, which is generally the point of Celtic knots, it seems. It stands for a few things, which I've listed, but let's focus on the numbers: three. The Power of Three. (Yes, kind of like the show Charmed, I suppose, which is probably why they chose this symbol to appear repeatedly throughout the series). The number three is seen as powerful, auspicious, good, or meaningful in many religions it seems. And from three stems the circle of life, the course of time, and, apparently, the Christian gods. Three is seen in Life, Death, and Rebirth, which is something celebrated nearly all year by Pagans, as that is what is seen as the cycle of life: in the spring everything is young, the summer it all matures, the fall is when things have grown old, the winter when they die, and the spring when they are to be born again... Not exactly the way festivals and holidays go, seeing winter as the time of Rebirth, but that is in regards to religous observances and not seasonal ones, which could be quite secular. Three is seen in Young, Mature, and Old, as seen with the Christian gods and the Pagan Triple God and Goddess, which are all, respectively, the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, the Youth, the Father, and the Sage, and the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone.

Now, putting these two together, I';m just going to put the "ignorant" interpretation simply: "Power in Love". Because Love has Power. It's what keeps us going, it's what we all yearn for, it's the thing that brings us alive, and the same thing that most effectively kills us.

Now, to put it in closer terms with it's usual meaning: "Perfect Love and Perfect Trust with the Maiden/Youth/Son, Mother/Father, and Crone/Sage/Holy Spirit". But that part depends on how you believe.

What do you think? Leave your interpretation in a comment below.

All Apologies

No, it's not going to be the lyrics to a Nirvana song; sorry. It's currently 6:54 PM. Pacific Time, on this fine, Friday evening, February 6, 2015. Wow.... I haven't written in any of my blogs since last year. It was only a semester, but still. Anyways, this particular post is just me saying sorry for the long farewell; I hope you all forgive me. And by "you all", yes, I'm addressing my nonexistent readers. Which is fine. I mean, I only have a few posts. I guess I just got caught up with life and barely going on a computer (which is somewhat fixed, now that I have my own laptop). Recently, I had my first every surgery. Now, for those of you invisible children who watch my YouTube videos, you'll already know I had an appendectomy. Yes, I had appendicitis, mild case. My appendix in the second and third week of January was very much inflamed, causing me great pain and making me puke my guts up. Stuff I normally was able to eat would make me sick, I had intestinal problems, terrible stomach cramps... Then, a few hours before campus opened on the first day of school after winter break, I was taken to Urgent Care, who sent me to the emergency room across the street, where I was all day and night until I left for home probably around 9:00. Then I missed the entire first week of school and wasn't really fully recovered until recently. That's basically everything. I also now have my very first plant all of my own. It's called "Lucky Bamboo", though it's actually closer related to asparagus. But it's still real cute and apparently easy to take care of. Had it for a few weeks now. Well, hopefully, I'll be blogging some more, posting more poems and stories and such.

My instagram: @knightofthecrow

Facebook Page: Crow

You can see my art on these links, also, my Twitter is the same as my Instagram.

YouTube: AiRenji