#*this is not actually the case i believe but it feels right & that is when the honoured matres are from anyhow (their beautiful sisters)

[xinganhao]

🥈 svt vs. reader's bad boyfriend.

anon → "could you do a post with one of the members getting after yn's bf because he thinks he's not treating her well enough?"

⌗ ┆i have a terrible feeling i might've misunderstood this req,, so please forgive me if i did lol ꒰ ꒡⌓꒡꒱

‧₊˚✩彡 includes: reader has a bad boyfriend, hurt/comfort, [light] angst, crack, cussing, [short] headcanons under the cut.

🥈 headcanons .ᐟ

— "break up with him now" ✩ junhui, soonyoung, wonwoo, minghao, vernon.

ah, yes. the trope of someone who will immediately insist that breaking up is the solution, although, in this case, it's completely warranted. soonyoung and minghao are the most vocal about you ending your relationship, but in their own little ways. for his part, soonyoung's a little annoying about it— you'll barely have explained your current predicament and he's already whining, "just break things off with him!" minghao, meanwhile, actually listens, but his expressions and consequent advice are brutal. he's always been no-bullshit when it comes to life, and so when he hears about all the things your boyfriend is doing/has done? he's actively advocating for you to get up and go. junhui's the type to take it out on your boyfriend. he's constantly threatening bodily harm and various other minor crimes against the poor guy, even though he doesn't really ever act on it. he is extra cold when he's in the other man's presence, to the point that your boyfriend may be under the impression that junhui hates him. (spoiler alert! jun does!) wonwoo isn't always vocal about his distaste; he's a little more backhanded/passive-aggressive about it. he's more of an actions guy, through and through. picking up the slack here and there to show you that your boyfriend is a dick for not doing things that your friends can. vernon also struggles a bit to get the right words out, so he just... says it as it is. he may look like he's packaging his advice as a joke, but he's 100% sincere when he sends you breakup playlists and reddit threads about ending things with your significant other. that's just his way of communicating it, really.

— "but are you okay?" ✩ seungcheol, joshua, mingyu, jihoon, seokmin, seungkwan.

for the most part, all the boys are the 'just-end-your-relationship-please' type, but there's also some who rely more on expression of concern. take mingyu, for example, whose chief endeavor will be to cheer you up. he'll leave sweet nothings and encouraging notes in hopes of lifting your mood; his eyes, constantly peeled to see how you're faring. you can rant in to the wee hours of the morning, and both seungkwan and joshua will listen. they'll let you tell the same old stories again and again; even if they half-joke that you just never listen to them, they're still there as a shoulder to cry on. seungkwan is more likely to give advice, while joshua's strength lies in non-judgmental indulgence. seokmin will make it his life's mission to distract you from the issue at hand. a movie night? a trip to an obscure café? if it will improve your mood in any way, shape, or form, he's already halfway there. he won't even mention your boyfriend, if you don't bring him up. seungcheol is similar to mingyu in the sense that he best expresses his concern through little encouraging gifts. he's not the type to push the envelope, to try and get you to talk when/if you're not ready, so he just communicates to you that he's there, when/if you need him. jihoon's also a bit unsure how to navigate a relationship that's not his. he can pick up how you're feeling, at the very least, and so he instead focuses on that. he's a quiet, steadfast presence who will take you to the gym or encourage you to write songs, if only because he thinks those might be potential solutions.

— "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" ✩ jeonghan, chan.

svt's petty line, how i love you so. they can all admittedly be petty when they want to be, but these two? they take the cake. jeonghan is a big believer in "show him what he's missing." he'll snap hot photos of you on your behalf. he'll let you use him as a nice little ploy to incite some jealousy. is it a little toxic, a bit red flag-y? sure, but that asshole is putting you through much worse. jeonghan's a firm believer that revenge is a dish best served cold, and he's cold to the bone when it comes to making sure you get what you deserve. (and that your boyfriend, too, has what's coming for him.) chan is insistent that you should break up with your boyfriend, of course, but he's a big believer that you should go out with a bang. it's a bit amusing, to see one of the group's more lowkey members insist that your boyfriend should be on the receiving end of a public lashing. some might say he just likes the drama. truthfully, he just wants to make it abundantly clear to everyone that you're not someone to be messed with, and that you're not going to settle for anything less now that you've kicked the devil's incarnate to the curb.

[edisacornball]

I hate to say this, because it's a really soul-crushing answer, but there isn't going to be a clear enemy, especially if people are trying to claim that all of a demographic is the enemy. This is an all or none fallacy. If an organization or person is trying to convince you that all the people of one demographic are your enemy, it's a way of creating alienation, isolation, and dehumanization. This is how soliders justify that it's okay to kill "the enemy" in a war.

The enemy isn't an entire demographic. Think of the other times in your life when you've been convinced that an entire demographic thinks or feels or believes in one way. Were there any times you were forced to confront that that wasn't actually the case? Okay, now also think about a time you met a stranger who immediately formed opinions about you just based on traits about you that you have no control over. How did that feel? Were they right and that's actually who you are? Or was it just easier for them to dismiss you that way?

It's hard. It's really, really, really hard. Part of the whole way our brains work is that we're trained to look for patterns and shortcut work whenever we can. Sometimes that means making quick, easy assumptions. But sometimes, we have to take the time, effort, and work to recognize that sometimes we built our pattern recognition from really faulty sources. Like Hollywood. Or a racist upbringing. Sometimes, we grow up not knowing that the ideas around us can really hurt the people around us, and it's really hard to recognize how deeply that can work into our own psyche.

The hard pill to swallow is that other humans are not your enemy. Stop going for the easy answer. It's easy to hate a gender, a race, a religion and say anyone associated with it is the "enemy." Don't be so naive as to believe that the enemy is a tangible being, a supervillain wrapped in an easy package to defeat. The difference between stories and life isn't "reality," it's complexity. Stories are based in truth, absolutely, but a shrunk down and simplified truth, able to fit an entire lifetime inside, what, less than 500 pages? Life is so much more complicated, and that's what people are trying to mean when they say "stories aren't real."

The "enemy" isn't a race, a religion, a nation, an age, or even a gender. It's so much more intangible and insidious than that. Because it's just... belief. Belief that some are better than others. Belief that anyone is deserving of pain. Belief that some people should be prevented from building happy, stable lives. Belief that exists a concept such as a person not doing "enough" with their life. And the hardest part of accepting that as the enemy... is accepting that you're going to see it in yourself a lot. And it's probably actively hurting you.

TL;DR: The enemy is hate.

garden variety conservative transphobia is going to get worse but radical feminism is also going to get worse. if youre a cis women terfs are going to try to recruit you and make you believe that the reason your rights are at stake is because of trans people. they're going to tell you that all men are your violent oppressors and they're going to include trans women in that category. they're gonna tell you about women who are gender traitors and joined the enemy and they're going to point to trans men. don't believe them. trans people are not your enemy, we have no power over you, and we desperately need your support and your solidarity.

be aware of radfem pipelines and dog whistles too. be skeptical of anyone that talks about the divine feminine or correlates birthing, menstruating, or female reproductive organs with womanhood. be especially skeptical of people who use those biological things as reasons to why women are more spiritual, or more in tune with nature, or just that they're better than men (read: anyone they decide is a man)

radical feminism is an expected reactionary outcome from cis women who are being oppressed by conservatives, especially when all they practice is ciscentric, liberal, white feminism. they feel the need to be radicalized but don't have the experience and information to pinpoint the true source of their suffering. trans people are not your enemy, AMAB people are not your enemy, anyone who identifies as a man is not your enemy. we're all being crushed under the same stone

[bramblebeau]

Alright I told myself I wouldn't interact with fandom when s2 came out, and I haven't and don't plan to except to say this about people deciding Caitlyn is the Worst or that the writing is OOC.

As someone who has had a family member violently killed, I cannot stress how much it shakes up everything you thought you were and stood for. My beliefs in proportionate compassionate justice and the rights of all human beings are some of the strongest I have (stronger now because of the way that experience affected me personally), but they were pushed to the absolute limit when it came to an individual who had killed my loved one, showed no remorse, and laughed in our faces outside court, among other things.

People generally like to believe it wouldn't be them or their peace-loving family members being talked down from seriously considering violent revenge, consequences be damned. People like to believe they wouldn't lash out at people closest to them under that pressure, that they wouldn't build walls around the kindest and most sensitive parts of themselves because those parts are the ones feeling pain you never thought possible, that they wouldn't stalk the killer, make notes on all their family and friends, and fuck up their hands punching walls in anger wishing so badly it was flesh and bone because they can't handle the fact that there's no way to turn back time to stop it all from happening. People like to think they're "better" than that. But the reality is messy and painful as hell.

With Caitlyn, she has the added guilt of having actually had the opportunity to stop Jinx before she fired the rocket, but she hesitated just long enough for it to result in the deaths of her mother and other councillors and in the cities being plunged into chaos. Not only that, but the person close to her she's lashing out at is the person who caused her to hesitate, and just so happens to be the sister of the killer.

Furthermore, her behaviour is entirely in character. We have seen her set up as someone who becomes obsessed with achieving a goal and will do pretty much anything she wants to get there. In S1, we agreed with her methods because her goal was exposing and taking down Silco, and because it led to Vi being released. In S2, she's doing a similar thing but it's fuelled by fear and a type of pain she doesn't know how to deal with, rather than being fuelled by a need to prove herself and solve a case, and it leads to her making morally questionable decisions and to hurting Vi. She admits herself, albeit privately to Vi, that she does not know what she's doing and doesn't know how to fill this hole in her chest (and the hole in the city leadership). She has been sheltered from the real world for almost all her life, and as a result she has no experience of functioning or making decisions under this kind of pressure. The real world blew up in her face in the worst way and she was given power and a loaded rifle, and then shoved into an even more elevated position by a very experienced warlord who is manipulating the shit out of the whole situation.

I'm not saying that you have free rein to hurt people when you're grieving and facing extreme stress. (If you think that's what I'm saying then idk I'm not sure there's much hope for you in terms of critical thinking skills). What I'm saying is that Caitlyn is exhibiting pretty normal human behaviour that most people would be susceptible to in those circumstances, not the behaviour of someone who is some kind of heartless abusive bastard.

TLDR: Caitlyn is being written in a way that completely makes sense and is also not OOC, and if someone told me there would be no chance of them reacting in similar ways I simply would not believe them.

[userautumn]

Please. Tommys helicopter crashing while him and Buck are still broken up? That would be such great drama.

You know what I want? I want Buck to get mad. He has yet to actually get mad at a love interest. He's been hurt and confused, but I want him to get angry. I want him to go out and fuck like he's getting revenge on Tommy, even though he's the one who got left behind again, and I want him to convince himself he's absolutely fine. Eddie can see it, of course. Bobby and Maddie and all the people who love him can see that he's not fine, but I want Buck to pretend he is like he'll die if he doesn't. He deletes Tommy's name from his contacts and dumps all his stuff in the trash and erases his existence from his life like he's nothing more than yesterday's news.

I want this to continue through the rest of the season, long enough that both the characters and the audience start to think that maybe Buck is fine after all. Maybe this whole thing with Tommy was just a mistake, a hiccup. Maybe Tommy was right and saw writing on the wall that Buck didn't. Maybe he was smart by getting out when he did because Buck doesn't cry. He doesn't vent to Eddie, or show up on his doorstep like a kicked puppy. He lives fast and vibrant, and shows up to work covered in hickeys and lipstick and other people's cologne, and if Tommy really was as transformative of a love as he believed he was, shouldn't he be devastated?

Anyway.

Fast forward to the season finale. Athena has been following a case of corporate corruption where an auto and aeronautics manufacturer has been exposed for using faulty parts in their vehicles that have resulted in auto collisions and deaths across the country. None of this really concerns or interests Buck at all, if he's being honest. He fixes his own car for the most part (Tommy showed him how) and that which he can't do, he takes to his usual mom-and-pop mechanic for them to work on. Which is to say that, his life consists of sex and work, so news reports of [Same Company] being responsible for a Cessna crashing in Northern California don't really filter through.

Not until the 118 is called to a helicopter crash just outside of Los Angeles.

Even then, Buck doesn't think about Tommy. Why would he? Tommy Kinard is barely even a memory at this point, just an idea on the edge of his brain, an almost that was quickly buried. Helicopters crash all the time, so he has no reason to believe there's anything out of the ordinary about this one. But then when they're en route, Maddie's voice comes over the radio, tight with emotion and forcibly professional in a way that makes him immediately nauseous: Captain Nash, please be advised that the helicopter in question is one of our own. It's an LAFD chopper. Then, Hen and Eddie and Chimney and Bobby all turn to look at him, and Buck has nowhere to run from their gaze. Even if he did, he couldn't, because he feels paralyzed. Bobby's voice asking if there are any survivors, and Maddie's voice saying she's unsure get lost to the thrum of his heartbeat in his ears. Every repressed emotion, every memory, every bit of desperate longing and grief and love and anger comes rushing back in full force and all Buck can do is sit there while the engine weaves through Los Angeles traffic.

Tommy is fine, of course. He codes on the way to the hospital (Buck performing CPR on his boyfriend while begging him to stay alive is my drug), but once all is said and done, once he's come out of surgery with a little more metal in his body than he went in there with, he's okay. Buck isn't, not by a mile. He's full of too many emotions that he doesn't know how to sort through, chief among them being love, followed closely by anger, and then, guilt, of all things. But after Tommy opens his eyes, after Buck breaks down spectacularly, and after they finally confess that they love each other, Buck makes Tommy look him in the eyes:

"You don't get to run from this. Not again. I mean it. If you get scared, you talk to me. If you need to slow down, you talk to me. You don't make decisions for me, for us, and expect me to be okay with it. That's not how this works."

"Okay."

"I mean it, Tommy. I can't -"

"I mean it too. I promise. Okay?"

"Okay."

Anyways. Yeah. That's how I would do it.

[a-substantial-trash-pile]

Catalyst

so in my au which i'm totally not using to cope or anything haha, after realizing that curly isn't going to do anything about jimmy, anya confides in swansea and he goes Protective Dad Mode. i'm calling this the "Responsibility AU." ramble below cut.

swansea doesn't immediately go after jimmy with an axe or anything because 1. they're not in a high stress life/death crash situation and 2. anya specifically requests that swansea not enact violence upon jimmy after swansea says, and i quote, "i'm gonna beat his ass." anya just wants to feel safer and more supported on the ship—she doesn't want swansea to get in trouble even if jimmy does deserve to get destroyed by 10000 punches.

what swansea can do is watch out for anya and make sure she's never alone in a room with jimmy. if there's a situation where she has to be alone with jimmy (like the psych evals), she and swansea have a system where she can signal for help. with anya's permission, swansea asks daisuke to help look out for her too (without telling him the details as to why since that's anya's right to share or not). daisuke has already picked up at this point that something is wrong based on how much more hostile swansea's become towards jimmy, and he trusts his boss, so he agrees without much question.

anya, feeling less alone now that she has people watching her back, gains more confidence to stand up to jimmy. which makes him angry because his unwanted advances are being denied and swansea and daisuke keep getting in his way. he just can't understand why he's being treated as the bad guy here (this is because he is a delusional asshole).

meanwhile curly is slowly realizing that he needs to actually do something here because the tension in the crew is palpable and increasing by the day. also swansea is being mighty passive aggressive to him and talking about "responsibility" a lot. curly keeps trying to talk to jimmy about it but the guy just keeps downplaying it and blaming everyone else but himself. and curly is realizing that his friend isn't who he thought he was.

it all comes to a head one day when an angry jimmy tries to confront anya alone and swansea steps in. things get heated, people start yelling. curly show up to see swansea and jimmy on the verge of fighting with anya and daisuke trying to hold them back respectively. curly breaks up the fight. jimmy storms off. curly follows him and finds him trying to get the gun from the case in the cockpit. curly asks him why he's doing this and jimmy claims it's for his own protection because he feels "threatened by swansea." he tells curly to give him the code. curly, the sheer wrongness of the whole situation hitting him, finally calls jimmy out on all his bs. jimmy just laughs in his face, still believing that he's not in the wrong and curly doesn't have the guts to do anything anyway. so the captain fires him on the spot. jimmy snaps and he and curly get into a fight in the cockpit. jimmy is trying to crash the ship and curly is trying to stop him. then the rest of the crew show up and anya knocks jimmy's ass out with the gun case. swansea is so proud.

they throw jimmy in the cryopod so they don't have to worry about him pulling anything else and he can be properly dealt with once the stupid delivery is over. everyone's like, "wow that was a close one—could you imagine how messed up it would be if we ended up in a crash because of jimmy? thank god that didn't happen." curly makes swansea the copilot until they can get a replacement and swansea's like, "goddammit as if i don't already do enough shit around here."

anyway my whole goal here was to get rid of jimmy early so i can have beautiful Found Family shenanigans in space with the rest of the crew. apologies and healing and happy times will happen. no the whole getting laid off thing doesn't happen. no i don't have an explanation for it. sorry for the essay.

[eroticcannibal]

It's still a minority view (plenty of varied viewpoints do get conflated with those things though, by people who have also grown up with the criticism of men = man hate line and internalised it in the other direction). It's still heavily exagruated by bad actors. Have you not actually talked to these people? Have you not looked at what they feel is man hate? Have you seen the examples the radicalised will list? Evil radfems saying all men are scum on twitter is a *tiny* fraction of what they feel attacked by and is almost never what they feel *most* attacked by.

I saw an intelligent, reasonable, compassionate, previously explicitly feminist man become *violently* (and I do mean violently, I was the target) antifeminist overnight because I expressed on Facebook I was having a trauma response (wariness of men) after an assault. And you know what else? Not a single man in that room defended me from *actual violence* because to them, fear looked like hate. Anything that made them uncomfortable looked like hate. This was during a time where publically discussing online your experiences with sexual assault was first becoming a Big Thing, the original #MeToo (interesting that it had to happen twice), and there really wasn't anyone going all men evil, just all men can be scary because we don't know who will hurt us. There was SO MUCH EFFORT to add nuance to the discussion, to let men know hey! We aren't saying *youre* bad! And they would not listen. Why? Because they'd rather listen to other men saying we are man hating feminists who are calling them all rapists even when we explicitly say the opposite! And that got me assaulted by a friend. The same shit fucking led to elevatorgate ffs. How dare a woman say she is uncomfortable, that's man hate, ignore all evidence to the contrary.

And yknow I did see an uptick in *performative* man hate at the time, but it was purely reactionary and it was a *test* (and a lot of current supposed "man hate" is still a relic of this era). Since you can make clear you don't hate men all you want and they will still say you do, "yes all men" became a sort of password. If you could here that without being a little bitch about it, if you knew the context because you actually bothered to listen, then you were cool. You knew no one actually meant that because you bothered to listen to them instead of people lying for political gain.

This is a tactic that has been going on since *before feminism even existed* and it is effective! It relies more upon the constructed belief that feminism is anti man which has become very well established over the years than it does the actual behaviour of feminists. I would strongly encourage you to look at anti-feminist sentiment throughout and predating the history of feminism (starting with the votes for women movement, that's the earliest I am personally aware of, there may be earlier examples) and see how we got to this point. Convincing every feminist to never again say "men are evil" will not create any change. (Which is not to say people *should* do it, but just that it's not the true root of this kind of radicalisation). Actual examples of it are *convenient* but not necessary for this tactic.

I would never *entirely* discredit the viewpoints of someone who has escaped cults and cult tactic using groups (I've been through that, I get it), but I would encourage caution with how much you trust the narrative of the *whys* from someone who has escaped. Leaving is quicker than undoing the thinking, and I really do believe that user isn't quite there yet. Best case scenario, that user is right about *them*, but it is not correct of radicalised men in general.

Because you can be as gentle as you like to these people getting radicalised, you can have all the nuance in the world, you could make it so that no one, not even as a joke, says anything about hating men, and you know what will happen? Just like has always happened, they will listen to who they want to listen to. They will listen to the people promising them superiority, they will listen to the people giving them a reason for their economic suffering (we must remember how much economics plays into radicalisation), that reason being evil feminists. They will see the man hate regardless of if it is there or not. Because they have been told to. Because it is convenient for them. And even if you convince them that we don't hate *men*, now you've got to convince them we don't hate them for being *white*. The point is not the hate they perceive but the superiority they seek and the power they desperately want.

Radicalisation and cult tactics do not rely on facts.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[impactrueno]

I think I rambled about this in a previous ask but my personal pet theory is that he started "life" as an actual demon (Betelgeuse being the name of a star, stars often being symbolically connected with angels, demons often being fallen angels etc) but at some point incarnated into human form and died. I also have suspicions that he's found like a million loopholes in the Afterlife Law over the years to come back to life multiple times, so that the time we saw him alive in the Italian flashback wasn't even his first lifetime. If this is the case, Delores might have been specifically seeking him out, as his soul would be uniquely powerful (and uniquely fucked up) from all the living and dying he's done

Also I like to think that if she *actually* soul sucked him, she wouldn't be able to contain him and would just explode lmao

this is a pretty cool theory, especially because it's much easier to believe that an entity like that would be named Betelgeuse and not some random graverobber in medieval italy LMAO

i don't know how much of it was intentional (probably more than we think) but i love all the little connections to demons and fallen angels ugh that's 100% my jam right there. i've seen people complain that he was referred to as a demon in the sequel (by lydia so it doesn't mean he actually is one) but i'm just like hell fucking yeah he is

besides when you think about it, if one subscribes to the demon theory he wouldn't feel too out of place in the goetia... 🤔

sidenote but you know how the name Betelgeuse comes from arabic right...but it's actually an error. the original name Yad al-Jawzā when translated to a european name got the Y replaced by a B by mistake. you know who else has a misspelled name? delores. IT'S DOLORES PLEASE IT HURTS TO TYPE DELORES EVERY TIME AS A NATIVE SPANISH SPEAKER

sorry i got sidetracked but yes i love thinking of him as a demon of some sort as well lol

[everpresence]

hi! sorry if this is a repetitive question, but how can you manifest when you are desperate for something? i try to be nonchalant about it, but i can't help but think about it obsessively and the more i affirm my desires the more i hear the opposite thing. and i know i shouldn't be paying attention to that, but i can't help it. i want to be more strong minded when it comes to loa, but right now i feel defeated.

hiya! i don't think that's a repetitive question that i've answered before, so don't worry about it. if i did answer a question like this before... well, let's just say that i'm expanding on it LOL!

the more i affirm my desires the more i hear the opposite thing

what you said is reminiscent of this passage from The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy:

I have talked to many people during the past thirty-five years whose usual complaint is, "I have said for weeks and months, 'I am wealthy, I am prosperous,' and nothing has happened." I discovered that when they said, "I am prosperous, I am wealthy," they felt within that they were lying to themselves. One man told me, "I have affirmed that I am prosperous until I am tired. Things are now worse. I knew when I made the statement that it was obviously not true." His statements were rejected by the conscious mind, and the very opposite of what he outwardly affirmed and claimed was made manifest. Your affirmation succeeds best when it is specific and when it does not produce a mental conflict or argument; hence the statements made by this man made matters worse because they suggested his lack. Your subconscious accepts what you really feel to be true, not just idle words or statements. The dominant idea or belief is always accepted by the subconscious mind.

i have a feeling that you are trying to "ignore the 3D," that you are trying to deny what the 3D looks like through your affirmations. i'm not a fan of how people teach the idea that you should "ignore the 3D."

coming from personal experience, it's exhausting to be told that. you grow weary. hammering affirmations into your head is a chore. you delude yourself by saying that the 3D looks "fantastic" when in reality, the 3D looks like shit. you are lying to yourself -- and you know very fucking well that you're lying to yourself.

when you focus on affirming against the 3D, you are suppressing your emotions and reactions to them. by trying to reject your 3D, you are giving it even more attention.

Your thought can only affirm, for even if you deny something, you are actually affirming the presence of what you deny. Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

i honestly don't think it's even about trying to manifest through the desperation anymore. it's not about struggling or fighting against the 3D to have what you want. it's about learning who you are and what the 3D represents.

your 3D circumstances are the result of your past beliefs, reactions, impressions, etc. when people look out here, they fear it because they believe that it is the "final outcome" or that it's never going to change. but it's not the final outcome. it is always responding to who you are deciding to be in your 4D, and you are always changing, expanding, and growing out of previous patterns. the 3D is just feedback of your 4D. by denying what the 3D looks like, you are literally denying what you made your 4D look like.

be honest with yourself. allow yourself to admit that the 3D looks like absolute shit because you're right, it is not the way you want it to be.

people tend to believe that acknowledging the 3D means that you're giving up, that you're resigning to it. that's not the case here! accepting that the 3D is shit is recognizing the fact that what the 3D looks like is simply a state of consciousness, and it is only one state out of infinite states that already exist in imagination.

so it's okay. you can admit that the 3D looks like shit, but you still have the free will to decide who you want to be within. no worries! you can always come back to the 4D (i.e., your imagination) and remember that creation is finished. you are not the state, you are the occupier of states (I AM). you can still experience the state that you want to be in RIGHT NOW despite what the 3D looks like.

and you're not going to be desperate anymore when you know that creation is finished, that you already have what you want in your 4D. it's a state that already exists! and to desire something is to already have it. you can always come back within and do whatever you want with it, experience the feeling of already having it because that's the truth. you already have it. you already are it. let it sink in.

[holder-culture-is]

Newly diagnosed trauma holder culture and recently only learning you have a system and not knowing what all these terms mean after years of everything being thrown at the wall to see what stuck with doctors. What is an Endo? Why is Traumagenic (me or us) a term? Are diction alters real or not? And why can't I know my alters the way others seem to define them as separate people? I'm all blurry all the time. It's so overwhelming learning all this stuff. Is it a bad thing to still mostly use singular pronouns when referring to ourselves even though I've been told there are about 12 distinct personalities? Is 12 a lot? It feels like a lot. What about the fear of being called a chronic liar? Am I bsing if I only just came to a name for my system?

(Can I be called 🦌🦇 sys anon?)

Woah okay ‼️ you’ve probably found answers to this by now cause this has been sitting in the inbox so long, but let’s take it one step at a time ^^

What is an Endo?: Endogenic systems (or endos for short!) are systems that claim to be formed by something other than trauma . Many traumagens don’t believe in endo systems, including us, but I don’t wanna tell you what to believe ‼️ do your own research on endo systems and plurality (cause I think there’s a difference ?? Idk‼️)

Why is Traumagenic a term?: has a lot to do with those that claim to be endos being more common‼️ it was created as a way to differentiate , but if you (like us) don’t believe in endos, there’s really no reason to use it . You still can , though ‼️ not here to police you ^^

Are [f]iction alters real or not?: I’m 90% sure you meant fiction and not diction , so I’ll go with this one . What you’re talking about are fictional introjects , also called fictives or fictites ‼️ And in that case, yes ‼️ They are real :3 introjection is a normal human process, but with the compartmentalization that CDDs cause , it takes that to the extreme with introjects ‼️ Fictives specifically can form if the media is a major player in a system’s life , and the brain believes an alter with the traits of a certain character could help the specific situation ^^

Why can’t I know my alters the way others seem to define them as separate people?: For starters, recognizing alters as alters instead of fully separate people is actually really good for healing ‼️ (NOTE: if you see your alters as separate people, that’s not inherently a bad thing ‼️ the fact is though , they aren’t . I’m not going to tell you what terms to use for your system , and you’re within your right to refer to alters as different people ‼️ I’m just stating a fact :>) and about knowing your alters , that comes with time . We’re still trying to figure out all of us ^^

Is it a bad thing to refer to ourselves with singular pronouns?: No ‼️ that’s your choice , and whatever makes you most comfortable is the correct option :> we use plural pronouns because that’s more comfortable , but using singular is just as valid ^^

Is 12 a lot?: That really depends ^^ your brain needed 12 separate alters to survive your trauma , so by that logic it’s not ‼️ and even if it was , that’s not a bad thing ^w^ take your time with your system :3

What about the fear of being called a chronic liar?: Denial is a huge part of CDDs ‼️ they’re meant to be covert, so discovering them is usually very difficult . And remember , you and your psychologists a know your experiences the best . Listen to your doctors , and evaluate your own experiences . If you aren’t a system , there’s no shame ‼️

Am I bsing if I only just came to a name for my system? Nope ‼️ you aren’t even required to have a system name , it’s just something a lot of us do :3 and if you mean just figuring out your experiences had a name , you wouldn’t be in that case either ^^ Either way , you aren’t bsing anon :3

Whew, this was a long one ‼️ hope you’re doing better now , anon ! Ik this took a while to get to :<

[6up-5oh-copout-procon]

this!!!! i myself, from a REALLY conservative and religious family, was also very bigoted when i was a kid. it was a taboo subject and I'd feel disgusted by queerness thinking of what i heard my parents say about it. and then i met a few queer kids who were willing to call me out when i went too far, but at the same time were patient with me and explained to me every point, and i ended up SO much better and more self aware than i could have been.

i don't think they owed me that patience, and i now think it'd have been understandable if they simply didn't want to stay friends, no one owes anyone an explanation of why they deserve human rights. but I'm still grateful, since that patience did more for me and for queerness than any alternative answer/reaction they could have given me.

Most conservative ideas are what they're named, conserved. They're old ideas passed down from generation to generation. Look around most right wing people, and you'll see their parents and grandparents usually say the same stuff they say, hell even religion is passed down in most cases. Unfortunately I'm in a conservative, dangerous for queers and religious country, but I don't hate any of the people around me for this stuff. They're all multi-faced, the same person who'll say queers deserve to be beaten up will walk and feed a stray cat around the corner.

When you grow up forced to think and believe certain things, and punished if you don't, it doesn't make you a bad person that you ended up actually thinking and believing those things, it just makes you someone who grew up controlled. I was one of them, so now i look at them with compassion and understanding, and if they're safe enough to discuss with without being outed, i usually will try to put in that effort, because i know I'm grateful that effort was put in for me.

posts about the alt-right pipeline being compassionate towards young men while radical leftists shun and shame them are not fucking saying "the men are becoming violent because feminists are too mean!" and if that is your takeaway you need to get off tumblr until you've better honed your critical thinking skills.

those posts are talking about how effective the language and approach you take in your activism can be. this is literally cult deprogramming 101. if someone is being taken in by a violent or dangerous group, that violent or dangerous group is usually offering them compassion and solace while working hard to convince them everyone else in the world is their enemy. you are under no obligation to coddle or act compassionate toward these men and their violent ideologies, but if you have the means to try, it is something that you can do to make a tangible difference.

radicalized people are often only one loving friend or family member or external voice away from being de-radicalized. of course that is not always the case, but it very often is. a lot of y'all rightfully understand that you do not carry the burden of being that voice, but a lot of y'all also have a lot of internalized ideas about morals and punitive justice and have simply written off these people as deserving of only the worst and not worth saving.

ten years ago, my grandmother was a fox news watching republican who voted red in every election and very well could have fallen down the qanon rabbit hole if not for me and her daughter challenging her compassionately, walking her through hypotheticals that validated her feelings & proving why they were false, & being patient with her despite our extreme division in political ideology. it was frustrating fucking work! but i decided i wanted to do it, because i could see the horizon and i could see me making a difference!

"misogynists have been saying feminists are too mean for years, get new material" that is not the fucking POINT. the point is that you, feminist, can be the compassionate voice that guides your brother, your father, your cousin, your grandfather away from fucking becoming or staying a nazi. you can show them compassion and companionship. you can be the woman they think of when their alt-right bros try to convince them that women are the enemy. and you can choose to crystallize that image of yourself so wholly in their mind's eye as worth protecting that they may very well choose to reject those harmful ideas.

it's not saying you HAVE to do it! it's saying you CAN do it! don't you 'firebomb a walmart' people all love taking change into your own hands? where the fuck is that energy right now, huh?

[nightmare--void]

True Detective Season 1 AU where Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto are homicide detectives working on a case together

Geto is an excellent detective. At least that's what he heard from his superiors when he finally got a chance to work on a case that will most likely shape his career. For better or for worse but he tries not to think about it too much right now.

He has two daughters he loves, he has family and friends he cares about and a partner he doesn't know and struggles to understand. Sometimes he thinks Gojo is able see more that other people can but there's so much bullshit Gojo says that he just refuses to believe it. Because if he believes any of it he'll have to accept that his whole world was wrong and he brought two kids there.

He goes to Gojo's house once — white walls, a plain mattress and a picture of a dark haired kid he wasn't supposed to see hidden under some books. "I don't drink," Gojo says when he returns to the room — referencing that pitiful invitation to join his family for dinner. "But I can come if you want. I'll bring a lemon pie and some flowers. That OK?"

"Sure," Geto tries to fix the books before catching his gaze. "You know I can't stop thinking about one thing."

"Hm?"

"Why do you even do all of that?" he points at the room. "I mean how do you spend your money? What's all of that for? Your job, everything."

"Because I know I can help. I'm doing what I'm good at."

He's the best detective Geto ever met in his life actually.

But no one seems to believe Gojo when he finds a connection between their current case and all those kids that went missing in the area during the last twenty years. Nobody seems to care about them anymore. Sure, they're not like two girls he comes home to after his work — clean nice dresses and neat ponytails. People feed him and Gojo with some half-baked stories like they thought these kids ran away from their parents or they were killed by the wildlife. But Geto can't unsee certain things anymore.

There's something going on here and people who were praising him for his good work might be a part of it — without a carefully put blindfold even the sky hurts his eyes. And he can't shrug off the feeling of loneliness that comes with it.

He looks at Gojo as they're driving from another rundown house to the other and he's thankful to him but at the same time he knows that both of them are cursed.

"Then I closed my eyes, and saw the Crimson King moving through the forest," Gojo says — his eyes are as clear as ever but his smile is almost insane. "I was there, Suguru. I saw the shrine of the Crimson King."

[zeb-z]

“Red team was so selfish looking past the cursed team like that” listen man they were thinking about it often, and had evidence they were cursed too. They were convinced they were cursed too. Bad (with Pierre’s help I’ll be honest) singlehandedly destroyed any sort of civil relations and good faith between the two teams and this shot Blue in the foot when they tried to make the case about them being cursed last minute, about trying to rig it in the cursed teams favor.

There was never a cursed team in the first place, it was all a tactic to build paranoia and that feeling of betrayal and to get them to tear eachother a part. And it worked super well! At the end, neither would listen to the other about their evidence, not with an honest open ear, not with the willingness to think the other team could be cursed. It’s not a case of ‘Red just refused to listen because they wanted to win more than they cared’ they thought they were cursed too - if they were selfish, then so were Blue in the same way.

Every time Red had tried to talk first early on, it was met with extreme violence - and with Bad consistently proving he’ll play dirty to win, they didn’t trust Blue enough to listen to them in the later game. Maybe they should have listened then. Maybe Blue have listened earlier. The game worked as intended to set them against eachother.

[melancholic-pigeon]

@vaspider @mistresskabooms @nerdykeppie I'm the one who's being weird? Me? really? You are absolutely sure you're not the asshole in this situation? You're ABSOLUTELY SURE this was a justified response to my polite confusion?

Wow. I really misread you.

[snailchimera]

This is actually the most hopeful thing I've read since the election. It's hard to believe we'll all be okay just because we're full of spite or we're on the right side of history. It's easy to believe Trump and his administration is a pile of venomous bucket crabs in clownshoes.

Take that part about grifters and amateur analysts on the left seriously. Scam artists take advantage of panic and desperation, and a lot of us are feeling panicked and desperate. Also, when people are panicked and desperate, their critical thinking skills suck and they don't necessarily come to logical conclusions even when doing their best. God knows I've fallen for scams and dramatic worst case scenarios. The most important thing is to check your sources and be suspicious of dramatic appeals to emotion (though dramatic appeals to emotion don't mean something is false, either).

Isolation fries your brain. I know there are lots of ways to wind up trapped in an isolating situation, but reach out to other people- preferably multiple groups of other people- any way you can. Volunteering is a good way to do this.

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬ November 8, 2024

This is not going to be a repeat of 2016-2020. It will be better, it will be worse, but most of all it will be different. Here are things I want every single person to keep in mind as we head into round 2 of a Trump admin.

My credentials: I’m a queer female public interest attorney working on tech policy in DC. I’ve been doing this for a decade--longer than some, not as long as others. I had to navigate three different administrations, as well as Congress, regulatory agencies, courts, and the advocacy world.

FIRST: don’t let despair override your media literacy.

The left has grifters, just like every other movement. If you’re able and compelled to donate, give to orgs with established track records. Avoid giving to individuals, especially anyone who emerges overnight with a one-weird-trick “plan.”

The left is not immune to misinformation, and everyone—EVERYONE—falls for it sometimes, present company included. There is no shame in it. When (not if) it happens to you, you should acknowledge it; delete or retract the post to reduce the spread; and move on.

If a source consistently shares half-truths or outright misinformation, it is not trustworthy, no matter how much “their heart is in the right place.” Unfollow and move on.

Prediction, analysis, and reporting are three fundamentally different things. Learn to identify them for what they are. Reject attempts by amateur “analysts” to predict the future. They know as much as you do.

Real subject matter experts know and acknowledge their limits. They’re also (usually) hesitant to try and predict the future. The best frame their predictions in terms of a range of possible outcomes. Subject matter experts may also disagree with one another! It happens!

SECOND: What we know for sure about how the Trump, how he operates, and how that will impact the next four years.

Trump is a narcissist who avoids reading and doesn’t care about details. He cannot be persuaded by argument or logic; he’s moved mostly by flattery, and will agree with the last person who flattered him. He can and will upend his own administration’s work without warning, often by tweet.

As a result, most policy experts—even those "on his side"—dread him taking an interest in their field. Ask any Republican staffer who worked in Congress during the last administration, and most of them will confirm that their greatest fear was Trump tweeting about anything related to their work.

As such, people who are serious about their work will do everything to make it as invisible and boring-seeming as possible. This is the policy equivalent of defensive camouflage. Lots of “normie” work will continue in silence. (The lion’s share of tech policy ends up in this bucket.)

If you have a niche issue that you care about, now is a great time to donate to orgs that work on it. Lots of money will be funneled to big legacy orgs working on headline issues: ACLU, climate change orgs, etc. Consider sending your donations where they matter most: local, niche, established.

Trump runs his cabinet like the Apprentice. He thrives on chaos and making people compete for his approval. Not only does he not reward collaboration between his subordinates, he actively undermines it.

Moreover, everyone who works with him knows that they’re vulnerable to being thrown under the bus at a moment’s notice, for any reason (or for no reason at all). His cabinet is going to be scorpions in a bottle. They will not be able to coordinate, for good or ill.

One scorpion can still do a lot of horrific damage. But large scale inter-agency coordination is unlikely, particularly after the first few months, by which point he will likely (prediction warning!) have gone through a handful of cabinet secretaries already.

FINALLY: The view from inside civil society heading into 2025.

In 2016, Trump was a largely unknown quantity. The left and establishment right alike wasted a lot of time trying to read tea leaves and make sense of this guy, because he was completely outside the realm of what anyone had dealt with. That’s not happening now.

He did us a favor by broadcasting his plans in advance (aka Project 2025). Civil society has spent the last 2.5 years strategizing around it. We’re not starting off flat-footed.

The Biden admin did a good amount to future-proof its own achievements. Folks can speak to their own areas of expertise, but clean energy and CHIPS and Science Act (investing in domestic semiconductor production) have benefitted from huge sunk investments. That money’s not getting clawed back.

OVERALL TAKE-AWAYS:

It's going to suck. But civil society and the political left have some advantages we didn't have last time. We know him, we know his angles, and we know who he's bringing in--none of which we had in 2016.

We'll get through this. It will be grim, but we'll get through it.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

Thanks Meredith. I really valued your analysis over the past few years, and I think this is a reasonable, actionable framework to think about the upcoming storm

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

I really cannot overstate how much time was (necessarily) wasted in 2017 trying to figure out this guy and his influences. The fact that he's not only a known quantity, but ran the most over-studied administration in this nation's recent history, makes this a very different game.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

I bet we can weaponize his narcissism. Let's say some ghoul starts making progress with a mass deportation effort, if we start calling that ghoul that "shadow president" en masse, Trump would fire him in right away and appoint Hulk Hogan or something

‪Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

This is exactly why I don't think Musk will last very long. Trump is very clear that he's the only one in the room allowed to have an ego or any kind of brand name.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

If your HOF/Hawke/Inky couldn't romance their usual partners, who would they choose instead?

Oof, this is a hard one.

Tabris/Alistair, Hawke/Anders, and Lavellan/Cullen are such an integral part of my canon run that I can't imagine them romancing anyone else. Like, it feels wrong to imagine them not ending up with their respective partners.

But, for the sake of discussion, I'll do my best to answer.

Rose is probably the hardest one because she and Alistair, and their romance, are so intertwined with everything that happens in DAO that I feel like she'd remain single if he wasn't an option, y'know? Her other options are Leliana and Zevran, and I can't see her going with either of them.

Leliana's sweet and Rose likes her a lot, but she's a little too into the Chantry. That's something I see Rose having a problem with; she's not exactly shy about telling off the mothers, sisters, and templars, or pointing out how they mistreat elves and mages.

Rose and Zevran are friends but I've never viewed him as an option for her; after everything Rose goes through in her origin, his openly sexual nature is just a major turn off for her. He calls her a sex goddess in their first conversation and that's just not it. They don't even start to become friends until after she tells him to stop looking at her that way and he respects her wishes.

Plus, Leliana and Zevran lack the shared experiences of being a warden, Ostagar, having to deal with the blight from the very beginning. That's something only Rose and Alistair have and that's what separates him from the others as a love interest... so yeah, Rose would be single, me thinks.

As for my Hawke, Ed's gay so if he can't be with Anders, his only other option is Fenris. I've romanced him before and enjoyed it, so I think he and Ed could work out... though again, it's a similar problem I have where Ed's relationship with Anders is so crucial because Anders saved Carver's life in the deep roads... y'know, Ed's brother who he cherishes above all else. Kind of a big deal. A huge factor in bringing them together.

Ed and Fenris always worked better as friends but out of everyone, Ed's the one I could actually imagine with someone else.

Finally, there's my Lavellan... once again, Ash ending up with Cullen is a huge deal for the narrative of DAI. I've talked about this before, but how I play DAI is my Lavellan is actually Surana from DAO. She and Cullen knew each other and maaaaaybe had a thing... but because Duncan didn't show up, she escaped the circle with Jowan. After he died, Ash joined the dalish, changed her name, and ended up at the conclave... where she and Cullen reunited and proceeded to have hardcore ex vibes the entire time they're at Haven.

If they decided that they're never getting back together, I think Ash might've ended up with either Josephine or Solas. She views Sera as more of a little sister and a friend. She likes Blackwall but he's not her type. The Iron Bull romance progression doesn't suit her even though she admires his intelligence and strength, she's just not up for a friends with benefits turned romantic relationship.

Ash always craved knowledge, and when she was in the circle, she knew the game that she needed to play in order to survive and come out on top... her pride and inability to see when she's wrong led to her downfall with Jowan. She needs someone who she can challenge and who challenges her, both without backing down, on a variety of topics; she needs an academic, I guess?? But she also needs someone who isn't afraid to humble her. Cullen, Josephine, and Solas all fit this in different ways.

I'm more inclined to push her toward Josephine though... I don't think she would've handled the Solas break up well at all.

[infirmux]

i remember about drow every few months through some indefatigable process completely silly concept so pleased they exist...