#I don’t like how young she is but that’s a Me Problem caused by Trauma lol

[superbattrash]

Good news, my new caseworker is a young woman with a really nice smile who laughs at my stupid jokes

[igotanidea]

Rom-com, doubts and older brother complex : Dick Grayson x sister!reader

„Hey you, how was the movie?” Dick grinned with the brightest smile upon seeing his sister back from the cinema. Said sister however was far from being happy. “Y/N?”

“Yes? I mean, yes, sure, hi Dickie. It was fine, I guess.”

“Oh no.” he muttered

“What?”

“You got that face.”

“What face?!��� involuntarily she glanced at the mirror just to check whether her older brother was serious or just trying to prank her.

“Please tell me you are not psychoanalyzing the movie.”

“Psycho…..? What? Me? Pfff, never.” She scoffed

“Mhm. Sure.”

“I’m sorry, what is your problem here, Grayson?” Y/N crossed her arms over her chest in annoyance. “Honestly I came home hoping for some peace and quiet and I feel so attacked right now.”

“Are you doing this… what was it called….?” Dick scratched his head searching for the right word “watcher insert!”

“IT’S READER INSERT!”

“Well, it was a movie, so definitely watcher insert. And you practically admitted you do.”

“I DID NOT SAY A THING LIKE THAT!”

“You didn’t have to. Like I said, you got that face.” He shrugged, absolutely not convinced and unimpressed by her yelling.

“Ugh! You are insufferable!”

“Part of my charm, you know that. Now come on, come sit here and tell me what got you spinning, huh? As a big brother…..”

“Please, spare me the talk about oldest sibling and all the duties that come with it. I can handle my own shit.” She hesitantly perched on the armrest of the sofa, but Dick was not satisfied with that and grabbed her by the waist pulling next to him.

“Come on, sis, don’t be stubborn” he pinched her stomach getting a slap on the hand in exchange “that hurt.”

“Serves you well!”

“Ok, I’ll stop. Jokes aside. Get out of that head of yours and walk me through it ‘cause I don’t get it. You went to the movie theatre to have some fun ….unlike someone we know….. and came back stuck in thinking and, let me put it simply, melancholic. Not really a normal reaction after a young adult movie. It’s young adult, right?” he frowned

“You got that one right.” She sighed “I … I don’t really know. I mean, this movie was as cliché as possible and only confirm my belief that it’s not for me.”

“How come?”

“You know… nice girl, A-grade student, not knowing the bad side of life changes the surrounding, most likely moves out of the small town.  And in the city, she meets a guy, a well-known trouble-maker and more often than not, a womanizer. Of course, she swears she wants nothing to do with him but after an hour or so, couple of fights and few misunderstanding they end up together, most likely in a X-rated scene. And after another half hour, some family drama or demons from the past emerges, but all ends well and you get those fucking singing birds, shining sun, doves and all that shit. I’m so too old for that. And I think I’m starting to get bored with such films.”

“Are you?” he looked at her carefully, voice turning soft not to startle her.

“Yes.” She made a face at him

“Y/n. You say you hate it, but …”

“Don’t you dare say it!” she jumped on the couch and jabbed his chest “Don’t. You. Dare.”

“I won’t. I’ll leave that to you. Come on, say it out loud so we can process that. No one else is here.”

“I’m sorry, since when are you my therapist?”

“Since Bruce provided all his kids with trauma and forgot to equip them with the specialist to fix it. Say it.”

“I wish I have a cliché love story.” She looked down and hid face in hands because of the embarrassment. “But I’m not exactly a material for it.”

“Why not?” Dick asked, grabbing her hands and making him look at her ‘is it because you have four vigilante brothers? That can go well in a movie.” He grinned “I bet Bruce would love a cinematic work of art about himself. Can you imagine the movie “Batman?” Two and a half hours of him brooding on the screen and saving Gotham, all while looking like a sad, tormented cat” he laughed and waved his hands around

“I got this at the manor whenever I want. And when I don’t want as well. So hard pass on that movie, thanks. Jason would love it though. It would give him an opportunity to point out everything wrong with Bruce. And Tim…”

“Nice try, but stop getting off the track. Why do you think you can’t have a love story?”

“Cause I can’t define myself.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Dick’s eyes widened in disbelief “you think you need to put a tag on yourself? My lovely, crazy, irrational, foolish sister…”

“Look Dick, I’m a mess, all right? I can do hundred different things, but cannot excel in one. I start so many projects I don’t finish. I am disorganized, got plenty ideas per minute and it’s extremely hard to keep up with me. I'm stubborn, hot-headed and always need to do things my own way. ”

“So?” he shrugged

“What do you mean by so?" Y/N frowned "I don’t have routine, and apparently I’m supposed to. I’m not the best version of myself, I hate motivational quotes and I’m not sophisticated or elegant or even close to it. Shit, I hate dresses and skirts, my make-up is limited to the most basic one and I don't feel like I'm woman enough.”

“Ok, stop right there.” He cut her off “that last one is bullshit and as for the rest, why in the world would you think that eliminates you?”

“I… It just does.”

“Why?” he insisted

“will you stop this interrogation! Let me remind you, you are not a cop anymore!”

“Old habits die hard.” He blew a raspberry.

“Be a brother Dick. Sock me for wasting your time or hug me, just don’t do this….”

“Do you need a hug?” he asked opening his arms

“Yes, please” she mumbled, diving into his arms and hiding face in his shirt, smelling that familar scent. “This feels nice.”

“Told ya! Oldest brother. Now, since we are taking the comforting approach to the problem… all the things you mentioned are those what makes you, you. All right, pumpkin?” he bopped her nose “you could adopt someone else’s lifestyle, but would you feel better then? Doing all those things that does not seem like they are yours?”

“No…” she muttered

“See? You just keep doing your thing, ok? Cause when you do something that makes you happy, even if it seems like you’re a mess, you’re just glowing and that is what makes you special, you know.”

“Example?”

“You were writing, last night, and you had that focus and spark in your eyes. Nothing but you and your ideas, put in words on the sheet. You were just beaming. That was you. You don’t need to put  a tag on yourself, believe me. It's not a competition or anything.“

"Really?" she pulled back and eyed him, raising one eyebrow "'cause you are absolutely not the one who would join The Bachelor, right?"

"That's irrelevant..." as much as he did not like it, her words made him blush a bit. (did she find that application form he hid under the bed?!)

"Let's agree to disagree" she grinned "I'll importune you for explanation on that matter later. And since we're on the subject, what about....?"

“Do you think me the role model on relationship advice?” he smirked, but a bit of sadness crept in “I made a lot of mistakes and speaking from experience, I can tell you just can’t hurry that. Just keep your mind open?”

"Did you just admit defeat in the romance matter, Dickie?" she mocked.

"Romance? Hell no! Just long-term relation..."

"Don't worry, big brother" she his his shoulder playfully "you keep my secret safe, I keep yours. But still, that’s the worst advice I ever got.”

“Maybe…” he tickled her tummy making poor girl squeal “think Damian would have better one?”

“He’s younger than me, sure as hell I’m not gonna ask him!”

“I’m serious, sis. Once you figure out who you are inside, even if it’s a bit complicated and come to terms with it, everything will fall in place.”

“Still the worst advice ever, but thank you for trying, Dickhead.”

“Doing my best for my little princess.”

“Ugh! Stop calling me that name!”

“You used to like it.”

“I was 7 years old!!”

“All right, fine, hold the fire” Dick raised his hands in surrender “Gosh, for someone who got so much fire inside, you suffer from too little self-value.”

“Four vigilante brothers can do that to a girl.”

“Y/N? I need you to promise me one thing.”

“Shoot.”

“When you get in a relationship you will let me act like big protective brother.”

“You may have to wait a while, but sure, it that’s your dream…”

“How about I play that role in a Nightiwng suit?”

“OVER MY DEAD BODY GRAYSON!”

[nerdforreid]

Prologue - Burnt out

Authors note - Hi! This is a teaser for what will hopefully be either a long one shot or a multi-part depending on whether it’s enjoyed or not but I’ve never written before and wanted to put out a teaser before releasing anything else. Please let me know if there’s anything I should change/ include.

Summary - Spencer Reid x reader. Although this is only a prologue the fic is going to be about the readers struggles with burn out and pushing her concerned coworkers away as a consequence. Despite this there is one of her coworkers who has been watching her throughout her time at the BAU and has recognised the patterns in her behaviour. However, will Spencer’s interference cause more harm than good?

Genre - hurt/comfort, heavy angst, fluff at the end

Warnings - fem!Reader, she/her pronouns used for the reader, allusions to depression, mentions of a difficult childhood, allusions to childhood trauma, possible lack of commas and proper grammar

Word count - very short but don’t get used to it x

While your childhood had been a blurry array of mismatched memories, there were a couple lessons your parents unconsciously taught you that you carried with you every day, like a form of sacred scripture. For example, you learnt at a young age how to ‘predict’ or anticipate the ways in which someone may act; some may call this walking on eggshells, but you preferred to view it as an early sign of the life ahead of you as a member of the BAU. Because of this, you liked to view yourself as very emotionally intelligent and empathetic, and you were even praised for this by your fellow team members. However, despite the highly valued benefits, it could definitely be a hurdle in itself sometimes, considering what you did for work.

It wasn’t a rare occurrence that there would be times when you would lie awake at night plagued by questions about the victim's friends and family and what came next for them. Despite your better judgement, you’d constantly torture yourself with the question, “What if things were different?”. But they weren’t different, and they never would be.

 

Burnout was something you ran from in the fear that showing the slightest weakness would prove to yourself and your coworkers that you weren’t cut out for this. You could even go months before the exhaustion and pain finally caught up, but when they did, it was all consuming.

 

Out of your two years and three months working at the BAU, there had been four separate occasions where you had sent emails in the early hours of the morning pleading with Hotch to let you take time off, each time only stating it was due to personal problems. You knew it was stupid to not just lie and say you were ill, but you also knew it would be naive of you to try to lie to one of the best profilers you knew.

 

You tried to keep occasions like this rare and would take any precautions necessary to limit the worries of your BAU family. You would force yourself to reply to each and every one of the cat memes that Penelope would forward you, and you would even reply to the long and thoughtful messages from JJ confirming that, despite her probably valid worries, you were in fact completely okay. However, there was one member of the team who could see through your perfectly crafted mirage with ease, and it was none other than your best friend, Spencer Reid.

—————————————————————————————————————

Hi again! I hope you enjoyed this despite it being so short! Please let me know if you’d like me to continue :)

[atopvisenyashill]

god that person is soooo full of brain worms or something because like even as a dany lover, i see everything you’re saying about her as great observations based on the text. She’s young, she’s traumatized, of course when she gets over to westeros it’s not going to end as well as she hopes. The only thing I can pray for is that George writes her end better than D&D did because it was atrocious how her most trusted advisors went from being her biggest supporters to acting like “no actually her grief from losing her best friend and two of her dragons who were as much like children to her as anything could be means she’s just as mad as her father”, especially when Tyrion never knew Aerys!! I would love to see her descent into madness, see how all of her losses stack and utterly break her, but the way those two switched up real quick was honestly disgusting to me

YEAH like I think the biggest issue with the show is that she’s surrounded by characters who are pale imitations of their book selves or characters she’s just NOT supposed to be interacting with like that. There’s no doubt in my mind that Tyrion is going to flip sides & it’s probably going to spell her doom, but the Tyrion in the books is in a vastly different, much darker place currently than the Tyrion she met in the show and that’s going impact their dynamic MASSIVELY. Varys is NOT some monarchial marxist aksjdj he’s a mad scientist trying to hand make the perfect king bc he’s seen the destruction caused by bad ones and he thinks he’s Above It All when in reality his traumas as a slave inform his bad behavior just as surely as they inform Melisandre’s. The show doesn’t want to engage with all of that though so Tyrion & Varys just kind of nonsensically flip on her for *checks notes* acting the exact same way she’s been acting for years when they never had a problem with her stupid behavior BEFORE s8.

And i go back and forth on what I think is going to happen but ultimately YEAH i do think george is going to write an ending that is much more fitting and also, despite what the targ nation people insist upon, TRAGIC than what we got. It’s going to hit harder, it’s going to be thematically interesting, it’s not going to be george going for the ~cool~ or wow shocking plot line the way those two idiots did!

But definitely the thing that hit my rage button on that one is this idea that like first of all, dany isn’t somehow mentally ill or that the presence of mental illness is a weakness or moral failing. I don’t know how you even exist on terros without developing something deeply unhinged in your brain, and dany meanwhile has a conga line of trauma and some ancient blood magic and incest cooking in HERS, i don’t think i’m saying anything out of pocket by saying “yeah i think she displays some patterns of behavior that are worrying when you essentially have a pet nuke.” but two it’s also like - ALL of these people are insane!!!! lannister, stark, tully, martell, baratheon, targaryen, greyjoy, on and on, they’ve all lived through at minimum one but some of them several wars that completely upended their lives and killed a lot of their family, and then got thrown into stressful situations that require a much more delicate hand than any of them are capable of. that’s the whole series!!! it’s just a bunch of insane people going “yeah exactly girl let’s do it” and “it” is usually war!!!

[youareatragedy]

I need to rant about Elain because I‘ve noticed something about her that makes me furious.

Elain doesn’t really love anyone. Not even her own sisters. She seems to rather latch onto anyone who can provide for her and turns a blind eye to anyone who cannot.

- Nesta had always been the one and only person to care for her while their father was useless to do so and Feyre was going out hunting for food. That is until Feyre got rich and powerful friends and Nesta became uncapable to care and provide for her. All of a sudden she‘s all good with Feyre, looks down at Nesta like the IC does, has the audacity to pack her bags (not even be present at that intervention), then get all impatient when Nesta didn’t heal after literally just a week, forced their father‘s death on her even after being told „no“plenty of times and then made herself the victim by crying and running away.

-The apology she gave Feyre in acomaf was half-assed. Her and Nesta got called out by Cassian and so she was trying to smoothen the tension and be polite. I‘m annoyed with the amount of times stans have made the argument that because she apologized, she should be forgiven. She didn’t even feel guilty.

- Elain doesn’t have to interact with Lucien nor accept the mating bond, but don’t tell me that Azriel, loved by the IC, has a job and a home and looks kind of like a human, isn’t the perfect man to get some distraction and protection from while Lucien can’t bring anything to the table. Heck, Elriels are literally making fun of Lucien for being „homeless“ (uhmm.. ew?)

while I hope that Eluciens win (cause they aren’t bullies like certain people), it’s hard for me to ship Elain with anyone. I just can’t stand her and I hate how coddled she is by the IC and the fandom. That’s a grown ass fucking woman, if she‘s tired of people treating her like a child then she should stop acting like one.

Rhys can stick his „Elain is Elain“ crap right up his ass. If Feyre feels about Elain the same way she feels about Nesta, then maybe Elain SHOULD be held accountable and Rhys nor anyone else has any say in this.

Hi Anon! Sorry it took me so long to reply!

I agree with your points, though I do think the sisters love each other to some extent. They just have different ways of coping with their traumas. Feyre for instance, latches onto Rhys and the IC because she craves love and sees them as a substitute for the family connection she’s missing. Nesta on the other hand, became ‘cold’ due to her upbringing as a high-society woman. I think she doesn’t know how to be anything other than an "arrogant" socialite and unlearning that is painful for her. That’s why she seems so "mean". Her pride was shattered when they became poor, and she’s been struggling ever since.

Now, Elain? I genuinely think she loves her sisters, but her survival strategy is to align with whoever benefits her most. She’s more of an opportunist in my opinion. Having been sheltered her whole life by people around her, the only way she knows to handle problems is by hiding behind her sisters. When they were poor, she clung to Nesta because Nesta was their ticket out of poverty (through marriage). But once Nesta became a "problem" Elain wasn’t equipped to deal with her. So, she sought refuge with Feyre and the IC. It’s shitty, and I hate how she abandoned Nesta and quickly got comfortable with the luxury Feysand offered, but I also kind of... get it? She’s not capable of standing on her own.

I think that’s why she avoids Lucien. Facing him would mean dealing with things by herself, and she can’t lean on Feyre or Nesta for that. Azriel is easier because she’s just following her sisters’ lead, figuring out how to navigate a relationship with an Illyrian man in the IC.

I firmly believe the IC sucks and needs to be put in prison for millennia, but I’m open to redemption for the sisters. They’re young, and their lives haven’t been easy. Plus, Nesta and Elain were dragged into this bullshit after Feyre and the IC led those evil people to them.

So yeah, I’m annoyed by Elain, and I’ll criticize her if needed (still not over that almost kiss with Azriel while Lucien was in the other room 🙄). I don’t love the idea of her ending up with Lucien because he deserves better but we’ll see. Hopefully, she grows out of being an opportunist and learns to stand on her own.

[real-sanemi-shinazugawa]

Yip, I’m coming here to defend Giyuu.

My man’s has had a lot of trauma, like you.

Not on the exact same level as you, but still.

He lost his parents at a very young age, and the day his sister was going to get married, she died protecting him from a demon.

With no one, he then started training under Urokodaki, the former water hashira.

He meant this boy named Sabito, and the two became extremely close friends.

At the final selection, Sabito killed almost every demon there, besides one.

He was killed by a demon, a hand demon, which caused his skull in.

Giyuu thought it was all his fault.

When he became a hashira, he thought that all of you thought that he was weird, and that you all hates him. He did try to make friends with you, you know, but you pushed him away, hurting his feelings.

You also lost a friend, Masachika. You know how bad it hurts.

(Manga spoilers, don’t read on unless you’ve completed the manga)

Then, when Tanjiro got turned into a demon, Giyu blamed himself. He thought that everyone he cared about died, or got hurt. That’s the same with you, as you lost Genya to Kokushibo (and Muichiro, and Gyomei) and all of the other hashira to other demons (minus Giyuu and Tengen).

You, out of all of the hashira, should be able to relate to what Giyuu went through. Yet you still push him away and call him a loner and weak.

He doesn’t work with the other hashira as he’s scared that they’ll also push him away.

Also yes, chihuahuas are fucking demons. Mine but my ankle earlier.

Little prick.

Yeah, if Tomioka opened his fuckin' mouth, maybe I'd sympathise with him more.

The fucker became a Hashira and refused to talk to us. "I'm not like you guys," he's always saying when I ask what's his bloody problem.

Don't blame it on me.

Also, Genya dies?!

[lux-et-astra]

analysis of what each sink scene represents - session five

once again thank you tash for the reams of analysis material!!!! spoilers (obviously) under the cut

for reference, i'm calling fire/dry girl/narrator kate, and her victim/best friend birdie

all that jazz: a first reading of this scene would suggest that it's similar to scenes like beany hag and sonic the hog, where we're shown birdie's relationships degrading because of her lingering trauma over kate and the camping trip incident with amy representing birdie and simon representing her partner. however is this the only explanation? i argue no. amy seems utterly pre-occupied with the dangers of the shower (wet)!! this seems far more like something kate would say than birdie ("Until the shower runs – dry, and you’ve drunk it all, and, and you’re dead!") however later on we get a more classic kate phrase from simon ("I’m all dry.", "Dry. For the fire.") i'll be honest, as fun as this scene is, it's pretty impenetrable analysis wise! we get a little more to work with with some of amy's fears ("Some monster is not on the way to get me.", "No, it’s not about the birds…", "She’s a perfectly normal girl, alright? You just – have to just leave it. You have to just leave it. Some monster is not coming to get me.", "Oh, Simon… please, please don’t… take him away… Simon!") the emphasis on her being a perfectly normal girl feels more like a description of kate and a defence against relations who think kate is toxic - making simon birdie in this instance!! it's hard!! i don't know what's going on!! i' think maybe i'm putting a pin in this scene. ALL THAT JAZZ WILL RETURN.

snakes and ladders: finally, a scene that makes sense. this is pretty neat cause it feels very close to what actually happened!! as we get closer to the culmination of everything in session six i think we're getting closer to the truth. anyway this scene is very much kate&birdie being genuine friends and then a little bit of outside perspective! we can see how much they're in sync and how they seem slightly strange to an external observer ("Sorry, I’m – I’m still quite confused about all the snakes?" "Same!", "W– we love climbing. We love how high we’re going." "We love being up high!" "Yay!", "Fucking hell.") i think this is really valuable to show that kate and birdie were very much on the same wavelength! they seem so young here ("But fly, sort of.") and we can very much see that they're humans! we get no mention of dry/wet/fire in this scene, it's focusing less on kate's problems and more on how their friendship actually seems a little sweet. their closeness does seem to have some exclusionary effects - they're not listening at all to their other friend, in fact he tries to share something personal which gets completely overlooked ("Whenever I was, upset, or like, sad, my grandad would help me – [...] Won’t tell you that then.") so we can see that as in-tune with each other as they are, this leads to cutting off the rest of the world - it may seem to them that all they need is each other, a sentiment which they definitely seem to be embodying here, but we the audience know what that leads to. there's a little bit of dramatic irony here - if birdie had spread her social net a little wider, spent more time listening to other people, the camping trip incident might not have happened. but we can see that their refusal to play snakes and ladders in favour of birdman ("So you – you – you start outside. Right?", "We’re all birds though, right?") echoes kate especially's refusal to "play along" with society as it stands and to play her own game. in addition i think this is the first time we see birdman as a game!! it gives an explanation not only to all the birdman scenes but also the scarecrow scenes! the explanation kate gives ("When the scarecrow finds you, it scares you. And the last bird is scared so much, his bird eyes turn hot, and into little buttons, and then the last bird becomes the scarecrow. And then you start again.") is representative of the entire point of the podcast! birdie is about to be scared so much that kate wants to turn her into the scarecrow - and start again. in a sense the emphasis on "and then you start again" represents kate's desire for her relationship with birdie to be neverending - she wants them to keep finding each other and starting again, a cycle with very sisyphean feelings. the other interesting thing about this scene i think is kate and birdie's attempt to seem much more mature than they are ("Okay. Is it like, is it a commentary?") which actually shows how young they actually are. obviously it's neither a commentary on snakes nor ladders, but we can see how much they want to present themselves as adult and mature - old enough to run away from home. i think that image of themselves as adults ties into the feeling of not needing anyone other than each other, but we can very much see the folly in both those ideas. this is a little bit of a bittersweet scene! the girls feel about the right age for the camping trip, so it feels chronologically like it's very close to everything going wrong. this is one of the last moments we have of kate and birdie before the camping trip - and we can still see a little of that youthful innocence! and their other friend! it's sad to see what could have been, knowing what comes after.

birdman 4: the extra bit we get here is "One by one, it never stopped.", "It’s coming now! There’s nothing we can do, it’s a monster, Jim! It’s a monster, it’s coming to get us!". this feels very reminiscent of all that jazz (painfully for me) given lines like "Some monster is not coming to get me." which... i don't know what that means because as i have mentioned, all that jazz is impenetrable to me. rip. anyway this bit is very interesting! the use of "it" instead of "he" distinguishes the thing coming for them from the birdman, which had come to "warn" them. despite the fact that kate is playing the part of the birdman/scarecrow, i think there's an important distinction to be made between the birdman for john & jim, which is the birdman of birdie's dreams, a reminder that she needs to be watchful, and the birdman kate is playing, a real-life figure who is genuinely coming for birdie. obviously not using "she" delays the realisation until session six but also using "it" very much dehumanises kate - implying she has lost her humanity and become nothing more than the scarecrow she was pretending to be. the key thing from this scene is "it never stopped", i think - kate never stopped! she's still out there! birdie's dreams are doing a great job trying to warn her - the game of birdman isn't finished. it's still going. kate's still playing. ooh and i've just noticed!! "Jim, did a Birdman come to your school?" - this has been clearly juxtaposing the birdman with school this whole time! it's very much a schoolyard game and they've been suggesting that this whole time! wow i'm a silly billy for not noticing that immediately. the birdman is in the realm of children, not adults. i'll even call back a bit from birdman 1 - "Yeah, at the time, even the teachers –" here, they're suggesting it was odd that no one noticed that the birdman wasn't a man at all. i have a two-fold realisation here! on one hand - no one noticed that kate was going off the deep end. boring analysis. on the other - the birdman wasn't a man. he was a BIRD!! he wasn't a scarecrow!!!! he really hadn't come to scare you - the birdman isn't the scary thing! he's a reminder of the scary thing! ugh natasha hodgson your mind. you can't be scared of dreams, can you. the birdman is poor birdie trying to warn herself but she's just not remembering.

sherbet: the story of how kate and birdie met <33 honestly aside from the real laser gun action i have no trouble believing that this is entirely accurate to how kate and birdie met. it makes sense that birdie is getting closer to remembering the truth and this is a formative moment quite literally ("And right now, with – with her looking right at you, is the last moment you’ll, sort of, be alive. Because it – it was all a different life, after that. You were a different person now.") there's so much in this but i feel like for the most part it speaks for itself? like ("She was in the back, and she had to lean over the middle bit, and open the other side of the car. Just for you. Just for you. And so, when you see her, for the first time, she’s leaning over to open the door, and you look at each other, and you just think… oh no.") you get it you get the themes. if i were writing an essay on any of the scenes from the sink it would probably be this one if it couldn't be like. the whole of session six. like kate is crossing the gap to be closer to birdie literally closing the distance. which is what she's doing right now. closing the distance. ("You were a different person now.") she's not birdie anymore she's half of kate&birdie. that's genuinely how it feels in relationships like that, that you're not whole without the other person. even after you're separate again not a day goes by without you thinking of them. so yeah tash pulled it out of the bag with this one. ("You walk over with your see-through dolphin bag with three dolphins on, bumping on your leg. And she’s got a chewy stick from a sherbet fountain in her mouth, so her mouth is all foamy, like a beach.") i like how realistic this is. like we get all the details!! really hammers home how much birdie was her own person before she became kate's friend and before she was haunted by the memory of kate. also something something violent destruction - chewy stick in her mouth means gnawing down on it & we see immediately that act of violence in the innocuous facade of a child. anyway. ("And this is the last moment you’ll be… alive. Because, the rest of your life is, is just – playing it back. And back. Over and over, watching the yellow sherbet foam, and her leaning over the middle, and hearing the seatbelt click.") hits home when you think about how much birdie has forgotten, has tried to forget - and yet she's still playing it back over and over. every dream she has is playing it back. ("And most of the time, you’re you. When you’re doing it, over and over, in your head. And sometimes you’re her. Just to wonder – what she was thinking. Always. Always, you’re wondering that, and sometimes you’re the sherbet, being in her mouth. Lovely, wet, yellow. With her chin like sand.") this is most key as context for the whole of the sink. most of the time you're you and sometimes you're her and sometimes you're the sherbet. most of the time the scenes are birdie and sometimes they're kate and sometimes they're the birdman. INTERESTING that the sherbet in her mouth is WET. suggests that she's so so early on!! this is before she's all dry!! she's still a baby!! and then after the imagery of birdie imagining being in kate's mouth we get the somewhat violent penetrative image ("With her hand, like, just… just putting it in your body.") which is slightly creepy and represents the intrusion of kate firmly into birdie's life. this is imagery that gets picked up on later in session six and like. right now because they're children it's a little creepy but it's harmless enough. but when they're older it's more... like. putting something in your body. the ultimate intimacy.

hope you enjoyed - sorry about all that jazz but i do not have the brainpower to parse what's going on there!!! let me know if you have any thoughts (especially if you can shed some light on all that jazz lol) or if you just want to chat about the sink!!!

[maskedrealities]

Hi. Cut has a personal vent. You can read or respond if you want to, I can’t tell you what to do, but just know this gets into my personal life and how my views on myself have been very harsh.

For the warnings: suicidal ideation, self-harming thoughts, mentions of wanting to overdose, brief trauma issues, near death experience from illness.

Recently, all of my thoughts have been worsening. No one was “able” to take my to my therapy appointment before we moved, the same person that hounded me for going due to intense trauma from a very young age gave up completely on trying to get me to go. She made excuses although she wants to claim she cares, but I know she never did the second I stopped seeing the shared therapist we had, which that therapist was treating us the same and seemingly more upset with me when I didn’t do anything wrong.

I know that I haven’t done anything to actively harm people, to take advantage of them, anything. But that’s really hit where I’ve been hurt a lot. I stay lonely. Even with my lover and friends, I push a lot of people away and stay lonely. That’s something I’ll admit to. Of all of the times I’ve had someone close to me, I never feel worthy of their time, effort, love, care, anything. So I don’t accept it. It’s hard for me to accept it without getting irritated or angry.

I was getting somewhat better but not with the medication. It really sent my emotions flying and left me completely derailed from what was a normal for me. They made me too sick to eat, I couldn’t do anything without crying and that, to me, is something I can never do without being weak. That has been burned into my brain that crying is a weakness, my emotions are a weakness, and they have left me to be used before.

I don’t trust my memory of my childhood. I know I should because it affects me greatly, but I have no solid proof or evidence that I have had that happen to me. If any physical scars are there, they’re gone, completely, I have no proof that they ever existed. What if I just took in media and “adopted” that into nightmares? Believed it so hard enough that I’ve molded it into something that causes me problems? I can’t force myself to cry from that, I cringe when I see it, when it’s mentioned, when it’s slightly talked about in posts or shown to me. Yet it feels so made up.

I’ve wanted to overdose so much, to die, to simply cease existing. Sometimes I want to hit myself, punch myself, watch myself bleed, relive what I remember again and again just to have the proof that it happened. I wish that I could ask the one that hurt me “did this truly happen? Detail everything you’ve ever done to me, please, just to make me stop losing my mind.” It tears me apart.

Maybe if I just had the proof, had anything I needed that would just prove to me that it happened, that Im not making it up, would I be better? Would I finally be able to let go? Would I finally be able to sleep easy? To make me stop these actions that I have no control over? What then?

But I can’t talk about what happened to me. If I can’t believe it myself, why would someone else?

My memory can’t be trusted or is that what was wanted? I feel like a child lost in a corridor of doors, where do I run to? I have no one to run to, all the doors are slamming closed and there’s always a haunting laugh while the mirror maze in my mind shatters. I feel lost and alone. I want solitude, isolation. I mask and act all well and fine but the panic underneath is something I don’t like.

Just one restful night of sleep is all I’ve ever wanted. But I’m too afraid to be the same level of sick or close to death, I can’t walk that void again, I cannot hear my own heartbeat fail while I sit and beg for someone to save me. I know the voice I heard that told me to wake up will never return, I will never heal, I will never survive that again as much as I want to. I don’t have time.

I don’t feel like I will ever have time to do the things I want, to have a family like I want, without rushing my life away. There’s always been this feeling the older I get to 28, I’m running out of time. I’m running low on what I never had. And I will be stuck in that void for the rest of what I have, never finding a way out, being alone in solitude with my own mind breaking again and again.

But I have to keep my composure.

[unnervinglyferal]

I’ve been thinking about you since I read your “I’m ugly and fat …etc” post the other day.

And there’s a little thought exercise I’ve used for myself, and maybe it might help you too?

What would you do if your daughter came to you and said the same thing? If she came crying and said “Dad, I’m ugly and fat and disgusting and I don’t like it!”? Think hard on how you would parent her and see if you can’t do the same for yourself.

Now I have pretty good parents, and as an adult I’m on good terms with them and love seeing them as grandparents to my children. But, they failed me in many ways when I was younger which lead me to make a lot of terrible decisions and a bunch of trauma. And I find myself trying to be the parent I WISH they would have been when I was young. And oftentimes I have to try and extend that grace to myself.

To be forgiving to myself, kind to myself and to parent myself out of whatever I’m in.

And yes it’s true babies will get vibed out by your bad mood. Sometimes with my first, I used to get so worked up when she wouldn’t fall asleep and she would be crying and I would get even more agitated. And my husband would step in and take her and she would calm down and sleep almost instantly. Then I would go calm down and it would be alright. We were creating a negative feeling feedback loop. No fun.

So yes, your daughter wants you. Regardless of how you look. But she also wants you to feel secure, so she can feel secure. It’s your job to do that for her (waaay easier said than done)

So pack up those feelings and take them out in therapy but put them away when she needs you.

At least, that’s supposed to be like encouraging. Sorry if it doesn’t sound like it.

No, I get it. She'll pick up that I'm upset about something and then be upset about it and I'm putting permanent scars on her already by not being able to stop feeling like this when she's supposed to be learning how to feel safe. And I can't pull her into this loop too, she's going to grow up to look like me just the same as I grew up to look like my father.

Being ugly should be the least of my problems, but being bothered by being ugly is the main cause of my problems.

[dragynkeep]

(Sorry for dragging this topic back but) I don’t think Taiyang is abusive. However, I’m personally annoyed with how flippantly the show treats Taiyang’s parenting because its so half assed [how they depict it], me thinks. Granted, I haven’t watched past Volume 3, so that might be coloring my perception and I don’t have all the details, but it would have been so much better showing the effects of Yang taking care of Ruby at a young age, and Ruby being taken care of by someone literally 2 years older than her, with Taiyang absent and Qrow presumably away a lot.

Firstly, the show is way too ambiguous with it. How does Ruby feel about it? How does Qrow? Hell, does Taiyang ever talk to Yang about that? Is there even some sort of “sorry I was kind of out of it in your formative years” “Hey, don’t worry about it, since you’re here now and I know you’re doing your best and I’m glad we’re talking about it now”???

What did Yang have to do to help? Did she have to make Ruby’s breakfast and/or her own? Did she have to take her to and from school? Help her get showered? Clean their room? Wash their clothes? Could this tie into Yang’s recklessness and supposed overprotectiveness? Was there a babysitter? How much does Qrow contribute to their household and in what way(s)? What would have let Taiyang leave a cabin of two kids in/near the woods in a world where creatures like Grimm exist (was someone supposed to be watching them, did Tai have an emergency, did he just up and fucking leave, how long was he gone, was Qrow there, etc)? I know some of these are uncharitable perspectives but we aren’t getting any details and this stuff happens far more often than people think.

It just hits too close to my own home situation, where my mom would literally be in the house and not help with chores or talk to us much, but just stay in her room on hours long calls with her neighbor while adultifying my older sister, because my mom was also an adultified first born girl and refuses to deal with that, and seeing the show just drop this plot point without explaining how we got from Taiyang being sad to Taiyang being Best Dad (TM) is actually triggering to me.

I think another reason why people don’t like Taiyang is the same reason why people don’t like Ozpin, and that’s because the show gives these nonsensically contradicting traits or moments or descriptions, and its so confusing that its easier to do the time-old RWBY fan manouver and just tweak each scene to how you originally percieved the character.

Is Ozpin a manipulative shadow leader or a tragic figure who just wanted to help the world? I dunno, the show’s too busy trying to get people mad about BIIIIIIRDS to actually deal with either the fact that Ozpin willingly sent a bunch of first years to a third year mission to stop terrorists who then cause The Breach, or the fact that Salem abused him.

Is Taiyang a parent genuinely trying his best or a neglectful jerk who can’t even see his kids at the Vytal Tournament? I dunno, I know literally nothing about this man except he shows up at the ass end of Volume 3 and start of Volume 4, and any meaningful description of what he might be as a parent is muddled by the fact that his kids love him but he invites Peter the creepy teacher and tricked Qrow into wearing a skirt because “MaN sKiRt FuNnY”. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about him, there’s really both too much and too little going on with him.

honestly agree, & this seems to be a consistent problem with a lot of peripheral characters like the parents where we're told one thing & shown another. the belladonnas are another excellent example of it where like, we're told they're amazing parents & they love blake more than anything but also didn't do anything when she ran away to a supposed terrorist organization, exposed her to violent protests as a child, told her it was her job to tame violent men around her as a woman, & allowed her to blame herself for all the trauma she's carried for years.

shown one thing, told another. should be rwby's motto really.

[toaarcan]

I want to get back to writing eventually, but this is just on my mind at the moment:

Re-integrating a character like Fiona into the Freedom Fighters post-Mecha Sally is weirdly easy, just because of how much shit they’ve been through in the past few weeks.

Fiona: You're being weirdly nice to me. It’s kinda confusing.

Sally: Last month Eggman shot me, rewrote the universe, roboticized me while trying to do the same to the entire planet and nuke every piece of technology on its surface, peeled my skin off with a blowtorch and shoved a bunch of guns in me while I was still awake, rebooted the universe again and tried to kill me with a failsafe when he lost. And while that was happening the council I set up to limit the power of the crown gave said crown to Ixis Naugus, who proceeded to exile one of my best friends from the city and make an alliance with Eggman to assassinate my brother. I'm finding it really hard to care about the small shit* these days.

Fiona: Are... are you okay?

Sally: No.

(*I’m referring to Fiona’s betrayal as “small shit” for a few reasons, 1) People in-universe don’t like or respect Scourge and treat his actions with appropriate scorn, and 2) Sally in particular has recognised that she was an abuse victim and so she’s more vigilant when it comes to other people in similar positions, which includes Fiona (do not challenge me on that, I have receipts), so she is substantially more willing to offer an olive branch than she otherwise would be. Also, 3) It had basically zero impact in the comic itself. Sally already didn’t like or trust her, Amy was upset about what Fiona said for one issue and then immediately got over it and also never exchanged words with her again, Ant took it as motivation to propose to Bunnie and then neither of them ever mentioned it again either, Tails was more angry about Sonic dating Fiona than he was about anything Fiona did within seven issues, and Sonic himself stopped giving a shit after 172 itself closed. Least impactful betrayal ever.)

I have it in my head that Mecha Sally was the turning point. It changed things. These characters just went through an intense amount of trauma, and it’s altered a lot of their perspectives. I recognise that, had this been an official continuation, they likely would’ve snapped back to normal fairly quickly. But I’m not trying to write an official continuation, I’m doing my own thing. And I say “Trauma responses for everybody!”

Eggman overstepped the line at warp speed, and that’s going to cause him problems. And not just because he pushed them so far that they decided that “Waking up the 3000-year-old apocalypse robot” was a risk worth taking.

(Art by @nicholas-anderson)

Fiona either escaping from her previous situation, or being forced to return by circumstance, would be coming back to a group of people who aren’t the same as they were when she left, and are in a position where they’re a lot more capable of understanding her perspective too.

And also, like, Sonic not going back to save her when they were kids is actually addressed. And explained.

(Sidenote: The explanation is that he did go back and save her, but it was actually Auto-Fiona 1.0 that he found. Being young and not knowing what an Auto-Automaton was, he assumed that Fiona had always been a robot and gave up on trying to save her. He didn’t know she was real until she turned up in Knothole after he came back from space.)

Things between her and the FF would still be fairly rocky in places, but honestly that has more to do with Fiona’s own trauma response being anger and self-isolation than anything else, and that the last people who were unexpectedly nice to her really didn’t have her best interests at heart.

[kidflashimpulse]

it's morbidly funny to me that Bart, Tara and Cass Cain are three of the youngest heroes in the show and have been through The Worst Shit of basically all the characters. Cass? abused into being a weapon her whole life. Tara? kidnapped, meta-gene forcibly activated, brainwashed and abused into being a tool for the Shadows, her parents got murdered, her brother did That Shit. Bart? grew up in a apocalypse, been through who knows what, lost MULTIPLE family members. and none of them are even 18 yet

gonna answer this now cause this is exactly what went through my mind yesterday whilst i was putting together their pictures 😭 i was like damn, this sure is a special edition collection of trauma lol and the fact that the whole point was that they’re among the younger generation of heroes? it’s kind of insane

it also really puts things into perspective regarding bart’s background, like it’s not like Court and Steph had a problem free life, but being able to group him with Cass and Tara in comparison so easily based on some trauma scale, like it’s rough lol

seeing tara in phantoms was great cause it’s rlly nice to see her enjoy her new found freedom and life with support, it’s cute. And Cass too in Targets wearing civvies clothes was also sweet, like these girls finally get some type of semblance of peace. It’s the same as Bart in outsiders, just enjoying his life with friends. Like sure trauma is always interesting plot wise/for story telling/character development, but it’s refreshing to see good things going on in these peoples lives.

It’s interesting to note that with Cass and Tara, the Team are somewhat very much involved in their “origin story” and getting them out of there. So they’re quite familiar with what would be needed for them to heal and get settled down into a more stable life (Tara with therapy and Cass being taught how to communicate with ASL/read and write (based on ask greg)). Whilst in both their stories it was about them being given the opportunity of agency and they themselves ultimately making the right choice, the team still was involved in setting it up. Ultimately, it’s a way superior approach to their origin story (at the very least for Tara who’s infamous for hers in comics and for Cass well the agency plays less of a role for her and more for Barbara as to why she became Oracle, i think originally Cass made the decision entirely herself). But ultimately their stories can also be both explained with “oh they’re young, they deserve to be given this opportunity” which is a premise that YJ as a whole is largely based on. Because it’s about the original generation of the Team using their experiences to make the world a better place for future ones.

Whereas with Bart that isn’t the case, it’s almost practically in reverse. Like sure, we know he was enslaved, had to scavenge and got desensitised to death, but that’s all stuff from practically a different world that only he himself really knows of/experienced and no one else, like even we as the audience don’t know much about it. His escape was facilitated with his own agency (with help from Nathaniel) and he practically established the terms in how others got to help by playing the role of a messenger from the future. That’s what makes it so believable that even though time has passed at this point of the series and he’s clearly nicely integrated in the present, there’s still some type of underlying darkness around him, because despite him being a literal refugee from a post-apocalyptic world (which in itself sounds crazy), his backstory is more nuanced which adds to the eery factor. His whole backstory is also worth considering in terms of how important things like the Outsiders and the MHYC might be to him specifically, it’s the same type of reasoning as to why the Team also helped people like Tara and Cass. It’s not only that he wants to play hero, he has personal stakes in the weight of everything because he understands what difference that type of help explicitly does. And it must be the same for Tara in the Outsiders and Cass now in the Team.

i think all this is also a good way to show the weight and importance of agency itself, especially in the context of trauma and also explains why I HC Bart to be easily integrated in daily life without the need of therapy/much help from day 1. It’s not that he isn’t traumatised, but considering his constant exposure to it in growing up in such a world since birth for 13 years (Tara was royalty for most of her life, which must’ve made everything more shocking to her, Cass is more like Bart in that sense with the constant exposure, but had alot of her agency stripped away for so long, with Bart it’s unknown) as well as having control over his own choices in terms of his escape/planning, i think it makes a difference and also establishes why exactly he would have a high threshold of tolerating traumatic situations. This is basically all to explain desensitisation but yeah i wanted to get into the specifics of it lol

this all isn’t to compare traumas and all that, because that’s cheap lol, this is just to say that it’s crazy how all three characters can be considered “dark” using different approaches in both story telling and origins. I just think that’s really cool, because sometimes stories can get a bit repetitive with their development of jaded characters which ironically makes the story lose its edge. That’s why i really enjoy it and makes “reminder” moments like in Phantoms when he confronted the Legion all the more entertaining lol

so yeah, whoever took the time to read my word vomit, i hope u enjoyed it and would love to hear further thoughts on this if y’all have any :D

also thanks anon for sharing ur thoughts with us <3, i love these type of topics sm lol

[edge-oftheworld]

“yknow as a fandom I think we could do a better job of appreciating Sierra Deaton”

No just have less appreciating Sierra cause she’s been anti-black, a creep towards fans, invalidated a 5sos fan’s mental health because they’re a fan, trauma dumped on young fans and overshared, slut shamed Ashton, and so on and so forth

hey anon!! Thanks for this concise little list. But seriously, thanks for making me think and pull together a bunch of ideas in my head; I hope in this essay really you can see some of my thought process. I can’t imagine how hard it’d be to be reaching out with something really hard and expect compassion and get a negative interaction instead—if that was you or whoever it is I hope they’re doing better and finding community and people who care. And I don’t want to pretend she’s perfect or has done everything right, we know that’s not how it is, Sierra knows that, Luke knows that, so does, idk, God.

and I’ll admit I’m a bit old fashioned when it comes to cancelling people and I do like to try and see the good in people where possible—sometimes imo it’s the only way to get any positive change. to look beyond the superficial where someone might lash out—is it in malice, or fear, a momentary impulse they might regret later or maybe realise for some reason were pushed to a point where they couldn’t manage anything better. I know I’ve been to that point and I know how I spiral if I don’t know how to forgive myself. I also know this is a fandom where shit gets real and we’re young and hurting and sometimes that just makes us defenceless against our idols and those around them being human, and the shitty side of human we all have potential to become too. And we live in an era of systemic racism and lack of access to mental health services which both causes and exacerbates so many issues that, was the world not so anti-black; had every mentally ill child and youth a support network in real life (instead of the way many of us often spend years only ever feeling seen by the songs we listen to, 5sos songs easily filling in that need)—we might be a little more able to be like ‘wtf that’s not cool but that’s a her problem’ and move on. and can I say we do deserve a world that doesn’t discriminate. And in order to get what we deserve we have to make it. and in order to make it we have to learn how to do better and let people learn to do better—these people aren’t going anywhere. somehow bad people have to turn into good people and yes in order to do that they have to be made accountable. Repentance is truly a beautiful thing; it’s also something that can’t happen when we feel scared and in our survival brain. When we feel like that we tend to easily get into us vs them and dig deeper into our (often wrong) convictions and that’s actually an evolutionary response to when we have to fight against predators; we don’t have time to think ‘but what if they’re actually in the right’ when we’re fighting for our lives.

and this isn’t the place to psychoanalyse Sierra. I don’t know exactly what goes on in her head, I don’t know if she’s sorry or even remembers these things but I do know the rift between her and fans has been quite heated and even scary at some points over the years. And maybe I have the privilege of never being someone who has been hurt by her to have grace for the fact that ‘gotta be nice to this fan they’re having an experience of a lifetime to be interacting with my partner and I’m gonna give the benefit of the doubt that they’re not one of the individuals in a sea of fans who all look identical to me sending me death threats’ is a hell of a lot to put your brain through every single day. If she (and it’s not if, we know she did) make mistakes. If there was too much trauma to hold and she put it out on the internet to cope in a season of her life. If the insecurity became jealousy of one of the most important people in her s/o’s life which became insults that were thrown around back in high school before everyone realised how uncool they were and tried to stop using them but they were still burned in their brains to come out on impulse (I actually have no idea how that specific event went down, or if there were one or multiple). I hope they sorted that out internally; I don’t know what else I can do but trust that it’s something they’re capable of doing and care for each other enough as a group of friends and songwriters to do.

I wanted to save the lateral racism example for last because I feel like everything above is kind of a metaphor for it, if you follow. I’m coming from a place where I’m southeast asian and part white living in a largely western country, so is Sierra, so I’m automatically going to see her as ‘like me’ (and can I say how rarely I get this kind of representation?) whereas if you’re black, or if you find your experience more relatable to blackness, then you’re going to experience this very differently. I can’t know your experience. I also know that asians can be brutal in this area: it’s the reason my childhood best friend hasn’t told her dad she got engaged to her partner nearly a year ago. Lateral racism isn’t okay. But unfortunately what happens is often when you’re discriminated against in some ways we’re conditioned to take the side of the oppressor against someone who’s discriminated against in other ways. It’s all ‘okay maybe I’m x and I should be y but at least I’m not z’ and again it’s that evolutionary survival instinct to not be at the bottom of the pile; channeled in horrible ways into today’s society. It takes a lot of effort and self awareness to be like ‘we’re united in this experience of being oppressed, together we have the power to make a stand that this is Not Cool’ and most of us fail the first few times. but what’s important is we keep trying. we can all heal together when we do.

so anon I have no idea who you are or your background or how much you’ve had to wrestle with this yourself, if you’ve had to stand up against communities who were hostile, if you’ve had to do this while being discriminated against from outside as well, if you know the experience of not fully being one race but not fully being another etc. and also you’ve got no obligation to like Sierra, this is such unsolicited advice but this whole release period for boy ep I’ve really just been thinking ‘it’s healthy to feel our feelings even when it’s not always pleasant isn’t it’ and wherever that hurt is please love it embrace it bring it into the light whatever you do to realise you’re valuable and you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. even your mistakes and where you’ve hurt people and regret that, you’re gonna grow so much from that and have so many chances to do better. maybe you’re young and you haven’t had the chance to hurt anyone yet. I hope you manage to stay that way but if you do, I hope you can forgive yourself too. I hope you dip your toes in activism for Black Lives Matter, for mental health, for sex positivity, I can see you really value these things and that’s really encouraging to see.

and in the end: sometimes I have to be annoyingly human and come down to the fact that I really enjoy the songs that Sierra writes. I’ve fanned enough about gothic summer on this blog already. I enjoy the things she writes and so I listen to them, and I’m not actively boycotting Sierra specifically, I love the creative outcomes when she works with 5sos as a whole, with Luke, with other artists I love as well. As a result I do care about her as a person, I always do, and hey, I respect her funny little routine donations and the undertones of her UNICEF donation back in October and the random animal sanctuary and the occasional nod to some Australian mental health charity.

I’ve inferred a lot about how much more relaxed and at ease and free to feel things and process life at his own pace Luke seems to be with her than beforehand—and the fan in me who’s so protective of these guys just desperately wants someone to be there for them in ways that really matter and I feel like we have seen that, even despite the often rocky nature of the relationship between Sierra and Luke’s fans. Luke is someone I relate to a lot, and there are some experiences that are really hard to come back from, and I’m really proud of him right now and I do get the impression being with Sierra has really helped him get there. I don’t know for sure, I could be wrong, but I’m always going to be grateful when celebrities get to be human and not have their lives and choices dictated by fans either directly or indirectly. I’ll take the allies I can in my activism and even if there are criticisms around sincerity I do generally see Sierra trying and I want to appreciate that. I don’t want to say she hasn’t hurt anyone ever and I pray for resolution and peace for the fans, for Ashton, for her, for the Black community in general, for everyone who’s been hurt in the wake of colonialism and the generational trauma it breeds. And then I’ll go listen to bloodline and think, maybe in some ways we were born inheriting the sins of our parents before we knew better. But every day I discover ways of choosing better and compassion takes us so far and I hope every day I learn a bit more about how to channel that.

thank you for the ask, it really got me thinking and the opportunity to compile some thoughts I’d had that I didn’t realise formed a neat little mindmap around Sierra as a case study!! Much more fun than regular sociology. And I didn’t even get to delve into the political history of Saigon that I’ve been trying to understand more about!!

[northlight14]

Major spoilers for danganronpa 2 ahead!!! (If anything said here is incorrect to canon, my bad. I’ve only played the first and second game and am currently on the 3rd trial of the 3rd game. I also haven’t seen the anime or any other bonus stuff. So if anything is incorrect, just take it as a canon divergence or something)

I don’t have the time or motivation to write this fic yet so I’m gonna put my overall ideas here and if anyone wants to write or do something with them, feel free to (with credit, obviously)

So I feel very opinionated about how Byakuya and Hiyoko should be best friends and that they’re the only ones who can truly relate to each others struggles family wise. So with that being said, just hear me out on this

Post danganronpa 2, the remnants of hope decide to return for a bit to the island after being informed that the others have woken up, basically to have them undergo some rehabilitation. All of them are making progress, opening up about what caused them to fall into despair etc, and working to be better people. And then there’s Hiyoko, who of course is still being actively rude to everyone, refusing to cooperate, continuing with her toxic behaviour, etc. All the remnants are getting absolutely sick of her behaviour and not knowing what to do. Enter Byakuya -I recognise this attitude- Togami who is like “yeah you’re all idiots, you’re not gonna get her to improve through kind words and trying to appeal to her. So Byakuya goes to Hiyoko, meeting with her alone to talk to her. Hiyoko naturally tries her usual insults but when she sees that he’s not affected and can even return such insults, and also that he isn’t affected by her fake crying, she loses interest. Hiyoko questions if he’s here to give her “anothet stupid therapy session” to which Byakuya is like “no, why would I do that? I already know everything I need to about you and you wouldn’t cooperate with me anyway.” Hiyoko just scoffs and tells him he doesn’t know anything about her, to which he responds saying how “your name is Hiyoko Saionji. You are from a very famous family, the Saionji clan, and as such you had a lot of pressure put on you from a very young age and your life was repeatedly put in danger because you were part of this family. You have witnessed more violence and malicious acts than most had at a young age. You have a strained relationship with your family, not being allowed to see a lot of your blood relatives and hating the ones who you could see. While you appreciate being cared for, you hate that you now don’t really know how to care for yourself as most of it was done for you. You put up walls and push people away as best you can as a defence mechanism, not wanting others to know how weak you really are. You felt the weight of your family’s expectations put on you at a young age and resent them for the trauma they inflicted and yet, despite that, feel completely lost now that they are gone and don’t know what to do next.” Hiyoko brushes him off, accusing him of being a creep and a stalker as she does, Byakuya obviously saying that he’s no such thing. Byakuya then goes to leave but as he does, Hiyoko asks what made him say all that, to which he simply responds “because I was no different” and leaves. Cut days afterwards and Hiyoko at first she denies any similarity between her and Byakuya, still insulting him. But slowly she starts to speak to Byakuya more, gradually opening up. Byakuya makes a point of repeating what Makoto said to him to Hiyoko and giving her space to talk about her problems but in a way where they’re able to relate to each other as opposed to putting Hiyoko on the spot, effectively making them equals as opposed to her being the only one being vulnerable. And for the first time they have someone in their lives who truly understands their experiences, not just sympathising or pitying them

Byakuya essentially becomes to Hiyoko what Makoto was to him, a source of hope and a sign that things can improve

[hessolivagant]

I really want to state something that’s been bothering me for like 10 months now😭 and i finally have a phone to say something about it.

And it’s mike and eleven, i don’t hate m*leven but i don’t love them either. I’m neutral and i would be fine with it being endgame, it’s just they have to fix the problem with mikes idealization of eleven. I don’t understand romanticizing that scene because el is just in pain and she clearly didn’t believe mike when he said i love you, she obviously does not like being called a superhero, which is not cute or #couplegoals🥺

It’s just sad, and i couldn’t help but empathize with el, eleven is not getting what she wants from mike and the fact she broke down sobbing in front of mike for him to just say “i love you” just shows how much pain the relationship is causing her, she’s trying her absolute best and mike is giving in 30%

If you truly do love someone you would tell them that you love them when they’re practically sobbing in front of you, right? Or would you only say i love you if their sibling told you to LMAO which is what happened and i find it hilarious how anyone would think mike actually meant his dialogue, I’m sure he loves el but not in a romantic way. They’re very close because of trauma and they care for each other deeply.

I don’t like relationships where someone has severe trauma and they decide to date someone, especially at a young age too. I don’t find it cute at all. I have a lot of ships in mind and m*leven is one of them. S4 milkvan was a mess and i really don’t see them fixing anything, even mike said this after their argument that “it’s a fight you can’t come back from” because you literally cannot.

Eleven was distant from mike after the speech, why did we get will and mike and not el and mike? Shouldn’t they have been closer after mike said i love you? Clearly eleven is upset and i think she’s gonna end it off with a mutual friendship and switch her priorities from mike to vecna. The relationship really waters both of them down.

Elevens arc with max about being independent would’ve been the dumbest arc because it would’ve meant nothing, and it’ll fall into that annoying ass troupe of female protagonists needing a man to fight on🥺🥺🥺 which btw that trope has already been used and it didn’t work. It was mikes dialogue with el snd how it literally didn’t work, but as soon as el saw max. The vines loosened. Which i love a lot more that el relying on mike for her power. I really just want to see an independent eleven.

And mike just being eleven’s boyfriend LMAO it’s such a boring relationship. Mike was so much more interesting in s2 and s1 because he was more than eleven’s boyfriend. He felt more important in s1 and s2 and he felt more important to me as an audience.

El and mike are miserable with each other. Eleven deserves better and mike needs someone he can actually say ily to LMAO

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

TW Emotional Abuse? Familial problems, general trauma, addiction, drugging, sa/hospitalization, very depressing

Hello I think I’m asking for advice mainly on how to escape my situation or even just support/resources. I currently live with my older sister who hasn’t ever really been close to me but instead has been more of a negative person in my life. I haven’t been able to stop crying rethinking the situation I’m in since it feels emotionally paralyzing.

My parents sort of forced her to take care of me at a young age so as a result she naturally hates me and is stuck with me as I am with her. After a long bout of traumas/fights etc from leaving our abusive household together we sort of were bonding since we understood each others pain and we kind of had to, our checks together were the only things stopping us from being homeless but still are which is why I’m really stressed out.

After we moved in together to our first apartment however my older brother had also been having issues at our parents so I let him come over whenever he felt like. He was doing meth and didn’t let me know but instead lied and said he was clean, eventually meth got into my system after he stayed for 2 days possibly when he let me try a cigarette for the first time or I’m not sure if he laced my weed but I ended up in the hospital for two weeks unaware of instead thinking I had finally broke my brain until I saw my hospital discharge papers. I was in psychosis for almost 2 years on and off going back into hospitals mainly because I became so suicidal I couldn’t take it anymore, I hardly remember the past 3 years of my life either because I didn’t create memories I loved or it was just so stressful my mind blocked it out.

What really halted my recovery was my sister letting my brother come back around after I came out of the hospital because she felt bad for him. She’d put up paintings he’d make while on meth on the kitchen wall and when I’d cry and ask her to take them down she’d basically make me feel guilty for feeling the way I did. This only made me worse and it’s taken 3 years for me to get back to a place mentally where I feel safe but the last time she let him over here was still a month ago, I just finally couldn’t take it anymore and told him to leave and not come back. She let him back in the next morning though but kicked him out when he inconvenienced her instead.

Earlier this year I tried going to a program called Job Corps because it was a free ticket out of the state but straight to a gov facility, at least they’d give me training for a trade certification and some needed skills, mainly a new environment. However my sister didn’t like the idea when I mentioned moving out or leaving for the year so now I’m just washing dishes for 14 an hour instead of studying like I wanted and need to. I try not to throw the term abuse around but it just feels emotionally damaging how i haveto live in her shadow all the time.

I’m scared of moving out not because of having to support myself but her being left with a financial mess, she also had told me that leaving would make things harder for her and just be “running away”. I’m in my early 20s and she’s 10 years older yet my job is what’s keeping us from being homeless I mention it just cause it’s weird she went to vacation a few days ago even though we’re broke and I give her most of my money when I get l paid, and even then she’ll get mad if I buy something she thinks I shouldn’t have.

I just constantly feel alone like I’ve never heard of someone being in this sort of situation so I’ve never heard of anyone being able to leave it behind either, I guess I’m mainly asking for hope after letting this all out I don’t really have any left but I’m trying, I appreciate it.

Hi anon,

I'm so sorry about what you've been through. Please know that you're not alone in experiencing this, and I have answered a few other asks from people in similar situations as well.

It's important to remember that while your sister may have some resentment over having to take care of you growing up, that doesn't explain or justify becoming abusive to you. It sounds like you have a complicated dynamic between your siblings. It seems that your sister feels pity for your brother and doesn't understand why he makes you uncomfortable, especially considering your hospital visit and suicidal thoughts.

It's not up to your sister to determine where you will work - you are your own self. It sounds like she is emotionally abusive and doesn't respect your autonomy, especially if it means moving out. It also sounds like she may be financially abusive as well considering that you give her most of your money when you get paid, and controls how you spend your money. Part of why your sister may be discouraging you from leaving is because it would mean that she can no longer take advantage of you.

Leaving this kind of situation is not simple or easy, but there are a few suggestions. While this resource is in reference to domestic violence cases, these tips on leaving an abusive situation can still apply. Here is a masterlist of international crisis lines you can contact, which may be able to help you get in touch with someone who can assist you in this process.

If anyone has any comments or suggestions, feel free to add on. Otherwise, I hope I could help, and please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun