#(and potentially harmful)

[firestorm09890]

Penny stardewvalley makes me so sad because she's SO sensitive to, like, basically everything you tell her (telling her that you can't stand children while two children are nearby is a pretty lousy move but -1500 friendship?? being a jerk to other characters' faces typically loses you about 50 points, and if you choose the option labeled "creepy" and ask Leah for a kiss in her 2 heart event she physically hits you and kicks you out of her house but that's only -100 friendship…) and so if you want to befriend her it's a whole lot of lying and tiptoeing around her feelings (2 hearts: George was right but saying that makes her feel bad. 6 hearts: her food sucks but even if you try to be polite about it she feels like a failure; only a bald-faced lie pleases her. 8 hearts: saying you don't want to be tied down with a family loses you a little bit of friendship and she's only happy if you say you want kids) and I can't help but think she's a product of her environment. She lives in a trailer with only her mother, who gets drunk every night and has something of a temper. Penny's like a skittish rescue animal who won’t even come out from hiding under something unless you leave her lots of treats

[quaranmine]

i have to say the entire thing with blowing up mumbo's door was just. flawlessly executed in both concept and result. grian's like number one personality trait on the hermitcraft server, aside from being a troublemaker, is how much hes obsessed with mumbo. this man is completely deranged about mumbo. he's made it ABUNDANTLY clear he wants that crown just for the sake of having an object that proves he's mumbo's best friend. everyone knows this and has known this since he joined the server.

so to then take this desire, and trick/force grian into setting off a tnt trap that destroys mumbo's FANCY REDSTONE DOOR? oooh. ooohohohoh. it's so good. it immediately lands grian in a position that looks terrible, where he has to justify and explain what actually happened. it's redstone so he obviously can't fix it, unlike if just a portion of the build was blown up. he can't pretend it didn't happen and fix it before mumbo sees, because the tnt was placed where it actually hurts: the redstone design. it interplays perfectly back into the original sin of breaking doc's machine.

it also plays the psychological card--mumbo's only got one best friend, and it's not you. how could it be you? look how you just blew up something he worked so hard on! you can have the crown, but it's your actions that matter, and your greed to prove your friendship to mumbo with the crown has forced you to hurt him instead. it uses grian's desperation (insecurity?) against him to (potentially) drive them further apart. OUCH.

10/10 flawless torture. i'm incredibly pleased.

[ashestoashes7]

I am so obsessed with Neil climbing out windows. First thinking about it at Wymack’s before deciding it’s too high, then actually doing it in Columbia. He is fully prepared to analyze all of the possible exits and I’m not sure the Foxes fully consider what that means.

I have no doubts he would climb out of a hospital window and give the Foxes a heart attack when they come to visit him and find an empty bed and he won’t answer their calls (let’s be real, that phone is definitely dead). Panic ensues while Neil is chilling back in the dorms and wondering why they haven’t come back. Meanwhile, they are very close to calling the FBI themselves to track him down until they remember it’s Neil

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: referenced mind control / parasites / intrusive thoughts (only in the tags) / ]

(This is just a fun “what if” so bear with me-) I know we make mention of the potential for Krang remnants to be stuck with Raph and/or Donnie, but Mikey and Leo also had a moment with the other two where a type of Krang goop was crawling beneath their skin (this being immediately after Raph broke free.)

So I raise you the potential for all four of them to have a bit of that Krang parasite on them…and for that to have unforeseen consequences.

[miscling]

age gaps, and being a tmilf/older trans woman

[everything about this post is specifically about relationships between adults]

how do i feel about age gaps? well, i turned 40 a few months back and that kinda unlocked something, especially with the 20-25 year old crowd. especially since there's more than a few people who i could literally be the mother of who are down bad for me (or maybe, the idea of me as an older woman, but like, 40 is not old at all, it's not even close to old).

so, how do i feel about it? it's kinda cool, it's fun, it's also a little weird.

i mean, first off, we have the cultural view of age gaps that it's kinda creepy. normally we see it from the view of cishet couples with old guys chasing young girls. so as someone who's older, i kinda have to deal with the ick of feeling a little predatory. it makes me feel hesitant to pursue, even with clear signalling from a younger partner. i have to be pursued, but that's not all.

there's also things like power imbalances to consider, especially with kinks that involve d/s. when i look at younger people and they're just trying to avoid adulthood and trying to give up their agency by giving themselves to someone older, that's a little worrying! i can help someone figure out the direction they want to take their own life, but i'm not going to replace your parents! (personally, even if i do take a little bit of a caregiver role, i'm a sub, so i'm not looking to take control of someone younger than me, i want to be controlled!)

and like, it's important to recognise the different stages of life we're in. when you're 20 it's much easier to drop things for an adventure in a way that's much harder in your 40's. it's not just responsibilities, but energy and health. and even the things we'll be interested in are going to be different. finding things to do together and common interests is going to be a little harder!

getting to know me as a person isn't really optional, either. like most things, if it's just about fetishising the fact that i could have concieved someone twenty years ago there's not really a lot of milage we're gonna get out of things. it can be fun for a little teasing, maybe even a little play, but it's not gonna develop any further than that, and someone like me might not really wanna go there where it involves things like kink that require a lot of trust and a relationship.

so yeah, i do enjoy dropping a 'i'm old enough to be your mother' to get someone hot, and it is fun to tease a cute young thing, and it is also a little flattering to know they might be masturbating to my pics, but in the back of my mind i'm constantly thinking about the ethics at play. the last thing i want to do is harm anyone, so i am looking out for risks and vulnerabilities and minimising them.

so that's how i feel on age gaps, taken a bit more seriously. it's a complicated subject, and i'd hope that anyone on the other side of it is also thinking about these things too! i'm still working it out, and want to proceed carefully and consciously.

[howlsnteeth]

i told you i'd be coming back again for you, but i'm not i'm going way out where the world will never find me

[justpassingby-dontmindme]

Persona has devoured my brain.

Anyway, here's Persona memes pt. 4 (very slightly NSFW in the second pic).

Pt. 1

Pt. 2

Pt. 3

[dearlyfetching]

gotta say...it'd be a lot more satisfying if the writers would let olivia cooke bring the same energy to alicent that rebecca ferguson brought to jessica in dune: part 2.

[kazamajun]

Thinking thoughts today about the contrasting yet similar ways both of them lost whole chunks of their lives

[cthoniccompanion]

what reagents even go into trying to make shades whole again? did melinoë have to scavenge the ingredients at the crossroads or did icarus have to bring them to her? is the missing component something that can only be found beneath the earth? on the surface? maybe both?? I must know

[gayvecchio]

Frannie, you are in over your head. Meaning? Meaning, guys like him don't marry girls like you. That's fairy tale. And girls like you get hurt, and guys like him don't even know it, and that's life.

[idolomantises]

I think I’m gonna discuss this once and hopefully never have to bring it up again. Originally I wanted to talk about it on Twitter but people are very disrespectful when it comes to mental health so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Basically, I haven’t been doing so great, mentally. Nothing bad has happened to me, I’m safe and surrounded by people I care about, and it’s been like that for months. I just, I haven’t been feeling good.

For people who do follow me on accounts like Twitter and Instagram, you may have noticed I haven’t posted anything new since January. I was struggling to feel motivated to make something for my main accounts despite having countless ideas I’d love to work on. I feel better now and do plan on getting something done in March, but that sudden lack of motivation is pretty rare for me. Art is not only my job but a big hobby for me, I just love drawing. I did get some nsfw art done at least.

I don’t know what really prompted my mental health decline, I’ve been getting a few worried messages and fanart because someone insulted my art. But that didn’t hurt me at all, it actually boosted my account and patreon.

I guess I just… got sad?

I have a really bad tendency to suppress and even ignore my trauma and feelings of guilt. And I guess one day I really sat with my thoughts and I just, lost it I guess. I have so much traumatic memories and sudden and intense feelings of self loathing, something I’ve never felt in almost a decade, that it got overwhelming. I couldn’t reassure myself, I couldn’t really talk to anyone about it because how do you confront things that happened years ago? You feel almost irrational. It’s just memories that haunt you, it’s nothing physical or tangible and yet it’s a crushing feeling of anxiety, self hatred and resentment.

I was crying almost every day, and crying so much that my eyes kept hurting long after I was done, and I could barely see my own screen. I’ve had paranoid thoughts about myself and others, thoughts I can’t get into because they’re so deeply irrational. I was feeling suicidal urges and thoughts of self harm. I don’t see myself doing it, but it’s so frequent and overwhelming it’s like I’m already planning my suicide note.

I was talking to my therapist about it, that I was starting to hate being alive. That I hated living. That I could spend the next 50 years of my life with no more conflict or trauma and I’d still be in intense misery and turmoil. They’re feelings I couldn’t really bring myself to tell friends about because what could they say? How do you calm yourself down and reassure yourself. I can’t even talk about my trauma verbally without crying. And it’s funny because sometimes minor irks started to affect me negatively. I was feeling anxious about what to draw because I didn’t want to do deal with homophobic backlash.

I went to a therapist, I talked to friends, Ive been working out more and eating better, I did everything I should do to improve my mental health and all of a sudden a single night just sitting in my room destroyed everything I was slowly building up over the past 5 years.

It’s been really difficult for me. I think also, I just felt so much guilt over not being the best person I could be. I decided to lessen my online usage, not just for my mental health but because I really wanted to work on being a better person. I want to stop hating myself and letting my trauma push me down and I want to do just be better and do better as a person. A lot of people have been very forgiving and kind to me but I don’t feel like it’s enough and I want to do more and I want to feel better about myself. I want to give everything I can to people around me. I’ve been going to therapy a lot more lately and things are getting better for me, but it’s been a very slow process.

I just want to repeat that nothing serious has happened to me. Nobody attacked me in a way that negatively affected my health. A lot of people, friends and strangers have been really nice to me these past few months. I just was doing a lot of self reflecting and unintentionally forced myself to confront a lot of my trauma. I’m saying trauma a lot. I don’t want to get into depth about what I endured because it’s my business but people who do know me know how bad things were for me. I don’t want to feel like that again. I want to feel better, and I want to do better.

Sorry for the long read. That’s just how I feel.

[nellasbookplanet]

Do I actually think Imogen is going to turn on the party? No. I don't think it’s any more likely to happen than I did Fjord releasing Uk’otoa, or Caleb returning to Trent and the Vollstruckers.

Given the nature of the game, any character turning fully dark is unlikely, seeing as it would take them away from the party for a time or potentially even turn them into an npc, replaced by a new pc. So far the only time we've gotten close to seeing something like it happen was Yasha siding with Obann, which could only happen specifically because Ashley was gone from the table for a long time (it was also the product of mind control, not an active choice to turn dark, and as such still doesn’t really count as a pc turning on the party in my eyes).

But the possibility is there. The seeds planted. Travis has talked about how, after he threw the falchion away, he briefly considered having Fjord leave the party and retun to the coast and Uk’otoa. Liam has mentioned that, early on, Caleb returning to work for Trent was a very real possibilty. It can happen, if the players and narrative are open to it.

And now, canonically, Imogen is desperately and understandably searching for a reason not to have to fight her own mother. She is, however briefly, questioning whether the Ruby Vanguard might have a just cause. Much as she hates it, she also feels the allure of the power Ruidus gives her. Her closest ally is someone who has repeatedly assured she will stand by her no matter what she chooses, even after she voiced the possibility of letting Predathos get out. None of these parts of Imogen are evil, and all of them are understandable and deeply rooted in pain and ostracization, but they could very easily be turned into justification, were she pushed enough.

The seeds are planted. Again, I don’t think it will happen (she seems firmly against the evil plan when reminded of how evil it is), but there’s certainly nothing strange or hateful about engaging with and being interested in the darker possibilities as presented in canon. It isn't character hate to acknowledge that Imogen has the potential to go dark, much as Fjord and Caleb and Yasha. To me, it’s what makes her character interesting. I want to see her clash with the party, whether because she’s desperate to save her own mother or because she’s high off the power of Ruidus and lured in. I want to see Laudna have to choose between the world and her promise to stand by Imogen no matter what. I want to see the fallout, the slow healing and redemption and coming to terms with bad choices. I eat that shit up, and if it doesn’t happen in canon I'll probably go read some fic about it to get my fix.

[dekarios]

when i was younger like. early to mid twenties. i used to get so mad at all the 'its a dating sim' jokes towards rpgs with romance in it. and now i'm just like.. i ain't got the time nor the energy to be upset that some people play these games exclusively for romance. there's nothing wrong with that. many people read romance novels exclusively and are only there for the romance portions, in games we have a billion visual novels where no one cares about the story and just wanna romance pretty people, blah blah romance as a genre exists for a reason and rpgs with romance options are the best option still for 'make your own character to romance the character of choice' whereas everything else gives you a premade, even in visual novels you have a premade character even if you can name them and maybe change a few things, its all very basic... i have nothing against people who use rpgs to get that same feeling but having more control over how they get it

anyway

[sergle]

also every time I talk about “clean” and “dirty” products, I get people like “clean beauty is a scam”, which is so. You’re getting caught up on the KEYWORD. We’re not talking about brands using the word Clean on their label and charging $50 for moisturizer. I’m not talking abt buzzword Clean, I’m talking about Risk Of Harm type Clean.  It’s legitimately helpful to be able to check your, idk, conditioner, and not only see what’s in it, but actually understand the ingredients. You can get so much info. Like, is this ingredient classified as dirty because it’s a skin irritant? Or because it’s an endocrine disruptor? Or because it’s a known and proven carcinogen? Like, beauty and hygiene products can have so much Shit in them, it doesn’t hurt to check.  Also, maybe this is just bc I’m nosy, but I like getting all the info. Like you can get so much shit on A Single Ingredient. I just pulled one up at random, that is in a conditioner I’ve used before. 

It gives you so much info right off the bat. How this ingredient would be more likely to cause harm/irritation in sprays or powders that can be inhaled or ingested. What it is for (a preservative). What it does NOT do (does not cause cancer, does not trigger allergies, etc), what it CAN do, and what are other names for it that you might find on a label. Like idk! I think it’s interesting! We’re just out here learning stuff! It’s not supposed to Scare you, it’s supposed to help you make Informed Decisions abt what goes in and on your body. What you should be scared of is the stuff in Head & Shoulders. 

[thedreadvampy]

vaguing a post that's on my dash that I don't want to engage with (as usual) but actually no CPTSD isn't a diagnosis for 'when things were a tiny bit bad a lot' or 'if you experienced relationships that were toxic but not abusive' it's a diagnosis describing the impacts of CONTINUOUS TRAUMA. not less significant but more frequent trauma; trauma which is ongoing/continuous/recurring in developmental years.

like I'm not trying to gatekeep here and I recognise the value of saying 'it doesn't have to be a Single Big Obvious Trauma' because one key thing about CPTSD is that generally it makes traumatic incidents Your Normal so you don't necessarily view them as unusual or concerning. but I often see people talk about CPTSD as if it implies smaller individual incidents than PTSD and that just is not the case.

most experiences I have seen people be diagnosed with CPTSD for (myself included) are not 'a little bit toxic'. they are things which, each incident taken separately, an outsider would still recognise as traumatic - medical emergencies, rape and sexual abuse, significant physical violence, emotional abuse and coercive control, homelessness, severe poverty, war, torture, etc - and the thing that makes the PTSD C is not the relative level of the trauma, but the fact that it's enough of a repeated and consistent pattern, at an early enough stage, and sufficiently embedded in everyday life, that it becomes a person's baseline for 'normal'.

CPTSD is not a synonym for emotional microtraumas or cumulative trauma or 'death by a thousand cuts'. It's specifically defining the psychological differences in response to long term formative trauma as opposed to traumatic events which you process as an aberration (eg the difference between regular violence against you from trusted adults in childhood vs being physically abused for the first time in adulthood with existing experience of healthy relationships). Traumas causing CPTSD tend to be pretty similar in type, scale and severity to traumas causing standard PTSD - they are just more embedded and normalised earlier in life.

all this to say there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that cumulative microtraumas can't affect us in traumatic ways. there's nothing wrong with pointing out that there's a broad range of types of trauma, and trauma can include stuff like growing up marginalised or ill as well as abuse, war, injury or immediate loss. there's nothing wrong, too, with acknowledging that a lot that is traumatic doesn't necessarily feel traumatic to you.

but like. no. CPTSD is not a diagnosis for people whose trauma wasn't 'big enough' for PTSD. CPTSD is not cumulative microtraumas. CPTSD is a response to formative macrotraumas or to a long term traumatic situation without hope of escape or change and if you want to talk about microtraumas then do that but it's not what CPTSD is!