#Just ignore their existence or smth

[jacksprostate]

Treatise on why No, the doctor just giving the narrator of Fight Club (full name) his requested sleep medication or sending him to therapy would not have Fixed Him

Firstly, saying giving him the insomnia meds would’ve fixed him ignores the reason he has insomnia in the first place. He is so deeply upset by his place in society that he literally cannot sleep. Drugging him to sleep would not change that. That, of course, is the easy, quick response.

But with regard to therapy? The biggest flaw is that it ignores a central tenet of the book. Part of what tortures the narrator and drives him to invent Tyler is that his feelings about this collective, systemic issue are constantly reduced to a Just Him thing. His seatmates ask what his company is. He’s the only one upset at the office. He gets weird looks if he says the truth of what he does. People will do anything in their power to pretend he is the issue, as an individual, because it is far scarier to consider the full implications of the systemic issues implied by what he is saying. Everyone treats it as if the issue is him, so he goes insane. He does anything to get someone to say, holy shit, that’s fucked up, what you’re a part of is wrong. In an attempt to feel any sort of vague sympathy and catharsis, he goes to support groups to pretend to be dying, because then at least people don’t habitually blame him for his anguish. 

Saying therapy would fix him ignores that his problems are not individual. They are collective. It’s the reason the entire story resonates with people! Something deeply, unignorably wrong with society, where people would rather blame you for bringing it up than try and address it, because it feels impossible. I don’t blame people for this, really, because it IS scary. It’s terrifying to sit and feel like you’ve realized there’s something deeply, deeply wrong, but if you say something, people will get mad at you since it’s so baked into everything around you. Or, even if they agree, it’s easier to deal with the dissonance by pretending it’s individual.

And it’s not like that’s not the purpose therapy and medications largely serve, anyway. Getting into dangerous territory for this website, but ultimately, the reason the narrator was seeking medication was because it’s a bandaid. A very numbing bandaid. For these very large, dissonance causing problems, therapy does very little. Medications do what they always have, and distract you with numbness or side effects. It’s a false solution. He is seeking an individualized false solution because he has been browbeaten with the idea that this is an issue with him alone, when it's plainly clear it's not. 

Don't get me wrong. Obviously he has something wrong with him. But it's a product of his situation. It is a fictional exaggeration of a very real occurrence of mental illness provoked by deep unconscionable dissonance and anguish.  There is a clear correlation between what happens and his mental state and his job and how isolated he is. 

The thing is, even if he were chemically numbed, I do think he would’ve lost it regardless. Many people on meds find they don’t fix things. For reasons I’ll get into, but in this case because even if numbed or distracted, once you’ve learned about deep, far reaching corruption in society, it’s very hard to forget. Especially if, in his case, you literally serve as the acting hand of this particular variety. He’s crawling up the walls. 

So why do people say this?  Well, it's funny I guess. Maybe the first time or whatever. But also, often, they believe it, to a degree. Maybe they've just been told how effective therapy and meds are for mental illness, they believe wholeheartedly in The Disease Model of Mental Illness, maybe they themselves have engaged with either and have considered it successful. Maybe they or someone they know has been 'saved' by such treatments. 

But in all honesty.... What therapy can help with is mentality, it's how you approach problems. For issues on a smaller scale, not meaning they are easier to deal with my any degree, but ones that are not raw and direct from deep awareness of corruption; these are things that can be worked through if you get lucky and get an actually good therapist who helps build up your resiliency. But when your issue is concrete, something large and inescapable? It's useless. At best it can help you develop coping mechanisms, but there is a limit for that. There is a point where that fails. To develop the ability to handle something like this requires intense development of a comfort with ambiguity and dissonance and being isolated and a firm positioning of your purpose and values and and belief in wonder and all the other shit I ramble about. The things that the narrator lacks, which lead him to taking an ineffectual death knell anarchist self-destruction path. Therapy, where the narrator is, full of the knowledge of braces melted to seats and all the people that have to allow this to happen? It fails. 

And meds — meds are a fucking scam. We know the working mechanism of basically none of them, the serotonin receptor model was made up and paid its way into prominence. We have very little evidence they're any better than placebo, and they come with genuinely horrific side effects. Maybe you got lucky. I did, on some meds. On others? I don't remember 2018. The pharmaceutical industry is also known for rampant medical ghostwriting, and for creating 'off-label' uses for drugs that have gained too many protests in their original use, then creating a cult of use to then have 'grassroots' campaigns for it to be made a label use (ie, legitimize their ghostwritten articles with guided anecdotes). 

The DSM itself is basically a marketing segregation plot. It's an attempt to legitimize the disease model by isolating subgroups of symptoms to propose individualized treatments for subgroups that are not necessarily all that separate. But if the groups exist, you can prescribe more and different medications, no? Not to mention, if you use the disease model, you can propose that these diseases are permanent, or permanent until treated, considered more and more severe to offset and justify the horrific side effects of the medications. Do you know why male birth control doesn't really exist? Same reason. They can justify all the horrible side effects for women, because the other option is pregnancy. For men, it's nothing. 

And they're not bothering to invent new drugs without side effects. When they invent new drugs it's just because the last one got too bad of a name, or they can enter a new market. Modern drugs don't work any better than gen1 drugs. They still have horrific side effects. At best, the industry will shit out studies saying the old one was flawed (truth) so they can say this new gen will be better (lie). They're doing it with ssris right now. 

Fundamentally, the single proposed benefit of any of these drugs is that they numb you. To whatever is torturing you. It's harder to be depressed if you can't feel it, or if you just can't muster the same outrage. Of course, there is people who find that numbness to be helpful, or worth it. But often, it's stasis. For the people who have problems that can be worked on, it serves as a stopgap to not actually work on said problems. The natural outcome of the disease model is stagnation for those whose need is to develop skills and resiliency. It keeps them medicalized and dependent on the idea that they're diseased and incapable. Profitable. Stuck in the womb. 

I’ve been there. It’s easier, to wallow, and resist growth because it’s difficult and painful and unfair and cruel and you can think of five billion reasons to justify your languishing. But don’t listen to anyone who tells you you’re just permanently damaged, no matter how nicely they word it, no identity or novel pathologization, no matter how many benefits they promise, especially if they swear up and down some lovely expensive medications with little solid backing and plentiful off-label usage and side effects that’ll kill you. Some days it feels like they want us all stuck in pods, agoraphobic and addicted to the ads they feed us to isolate the markets for the drugs they’ve trained us to beg them to pump us with. Polarization making it as easy as flashing blue light for go, red like for stop, or vice versa. I worry about the kids, for fucks sake. That’s a bit dark and intense, and I apologize. But I want you (generic) to understand, there is a profit motive. Behind everything. And they do not mean well. They do not care about your mental health or your rights or your personhood or your growth. They care about how they can profit off of you.

For those struggling with immovable, society problems, like the narrator grappling with how his job fits into and is accepted by society while his rejection and horror in the face of it does not, it can work about as well as any other drug addiction. Your mileage may vary. From what I've seen, recovering from being on prozac for a long time can be worse than alcohol. They put kids on this shit. They keep campaigning for more. Off label, again. A pharmaceutical company’s favorite thing to do has to be to spread rumors of someone who knows someone who said an off label use of this drug helps with this little understood condition. Or, in the case of mental illness, questionably defined condition. And like, damn, I know I'm posting on the 'medicalization is my identity' website so no one will like all this and has probably stopped reading by now, but yall should be exposed to at least one person who doubts this stuff. Doesn't just trust it. Because I mean, that's the thing right?

It's so big. What would it mean, for this all to be true? Yeah, everyone says pharmaceutical companies are evil and predatory and ghostwriting, but to think about what that really entails. Coming back to the book, everyone knows the car lobby is huge and puts dangerous vehicles through that kill people. What does it mean if the car companies all hire people to calculate the cost of a recall and the cost of lawsuits? No one wants to think about the scale that means for people allowing it or the systems that have to be geared towards money, not safety like they say. Hell, even Chuck misses the beat and has the narrator threaten his boss with the Department of Transportation. And shit, man, if every company is doing this, you think Transportation doesn't know? That they give a fuck? You're better off mailing all the evidence to the news outlets and hoping they only character assassinate you a little bit as they release the news in a way that says it's all the fault of little workers like you, not the whole system. Something something, David McBride, any whistleblower you feel like, etc. 

So I don't blame you, if your reaction is "but but but, that can't be right, people wouldn't do it, they wouldn't allow it" or just an overwhelming feeling of dread that pushes you to deny all of this and avoid thinking about it. Just know, that's in the book. That's all the seatmates on the flights. That's all his fellow officemates. It's easier to pretend, I know.

But think about, how the response fits in with the themes of the book. The story, as a movie too. What drives the narrator’s mental breakdown? How would you handle being in his position? How would you handle being his seatmate? It’s easy to say you’d listen. But have you? Have you had any soul wrenching betrayals of how you thought society worked? How about a betrayal by the thing that promised to be the fix of the first? Can you honestly say you wouldn’t follow that gut instinct, saying follow what everyone says, that person must just be crazy, evil, rude, cruel, whatever it is that means you can set what they said aside?

For a lot of people, they can do that, I guess. Set it aside. Reaching that aforementioned state of managing to cope with the dissonance and ambiguity and despair is very hard. The narrator made the Big Realization, but he couldn’t cope. He self-destructed. Even when people don’t make the big realization consciously, they’re already self-destructing. It’s hard to escape it when it feels easier than continuing anyway. When it feels like the only option,

Would therapy fix the narrator of Fight Club? Would meds fix the narrator of Fight Club? No. He knows too much. All meds will do, by the time he’s in the psych ward, is spiritually neuter him. A silly phrase, but really. Take the wind out of his sails. 

Is he fixed if he doesn’t try to blow up town? If he just shuts up and settles in and stops costing money? If he still can’t cope with the things he’s unearthed? Do you see how this is a commentary in a commentary in a commentary?

Fight Club is an absolutely fascinating story because of this. The fact that it addresses the fallout of knowing. The isolation. The hopelessness. The spiral that results from a lack of hope. This is, I think, what resonates most with people, even if not consciously. Going insane because you’ve discovered something you wish you could unknow. It’s a classic horror story. Should our society be lovecraftian evil? I don’t think so. 

Do I think changing it will be easy? No. Lord knows a lot exists to push people who make these sorts of Realizations towards feelings of individuality and individualized solutions and denial and other distractions and coping methods. And to prevent people who make One realization from expanding on it and considering further ramifications. Fight Club itself gets into this; the isolation of men being a strict part of the role society shapes for their sex leaves them very vulnerable to death fetishes, in a sense, and generally towards self destructive violence. It helps funnel them away from substantial change and towards ineffectual change. Many things, misogyny, racism, serve to keep people isolated from one another, individualized, angry, and impossible to work with. Market segregation; god knows even appealing on those fronts has become such a classic ploy that companies do it now, the US military frames its plundering that way, etc. 

I’ve wandered a bit but ultimately, my point is this: Fight Club is a love letter to the horrors of critical thinking, and the importance of not falling into the trap of self destruction and hopelessness in the face of it. The latter is why Tyler was an anarchoterrorist instead of anything useful. The latter is why it was a death cult. It’s important to work through the horrors of critical thinking so you can do it, and stand on the other side ready to believe in each other. It’s worth it.

[chill-vibes-but-rainbow-panic]

I love characters not being able to tell they're being deceived by a shapeshifter!

Love the audience not being able to tell they're being deceived by a shapeshifter!!!

[mezzmerizd]

silly meme thing made me draw Tango and one of my fav. dinosaurs, an Allosaurus, sooo enjoy!! :]]

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

On the topic tho of like. The archons switching up domains, what do you think could be other interesting changes? Like. Zhongli and Eternity vs Erosion, or how contracts could be subsumed by Justice. Similarly- I think Nahida, with her domain of dreams- could honestly be really fun to play with a Freedom domain, considering the irony of a caged god of freedom to parallel Ventis current story. Alternatively- Freedom in the nation of hydro, where they’re cursed because of the flouting of the rules, and Furina is trapped in a centuries long gilded cage- like. There’s interesting things you can do!! -☁️ (hi it’s me again, I forgot to tag the previous backreading one)

oh yeah absolutely, honestly since the game is about solving problems and dealing with Situations, you could reasonable slap freedom onto any nation and find an interesting outcome. like- freedom from the shogun's dicatorial rule, freedom for ei from her own fears and isolation, freedom for nahida from her prison, freedom of knowledge in sumeru, freedom for furina in how she wants to live life, freedom as it is seen by the people of meropide choosing to remain underwater, freedom for the people of fontaine to finally be people as their ancestors wished without celestia dictating what they can and cannot do, freedom for zhongli to retire and live life at his leisure, freedom for the humans of liyue to carve their own path forward on their own two feet (i admit that's the weakest one); and now natlan will probably be freedom to coexist or freedom from violence or freedom from natlan itself since it's closed. snezhnaya, too, could be about freedom: freedom from celestia's rule, freedom from the heavenly principles (or whatever the fatui are doing); same thing for khaenri'ah and the abyss sibling. freedom from fate and to be able to decide your own destiny. at the end of the day any plot with any conflict can include freedom as a motif, so like- yeah, freedom would be the easier to switch around.

as for the others, that would be the more interesting part i think. like you said, contracts and justice, eternity vs erosion (which is already ei's plot so zhongli wouldn't be all that new honestly), wisdom for zhongli too with the whole witnessing history thing. eternity for nahida in the way wisdom perseveres through time but also in the irony of knowledge is beholden to irminsul and knowledge in irminsul is apparently subject to erasure. stuff like that

we'll have to see how we can play around with natlan and snezhnaya. if snezhnaya is about love that could also be really interesting, as you could also feasibly slap it most of everywhere, too.

[tomboyyyaoi]

catboy?

[schnitzelsemmerl]

a vent/rant :3 (normally dont post stuff like that but.)

anybody else whos never ever coming out to their family and planning to just marry a man, have kids one day, get everything over with, be "normal" (or atleast what my parents consider "normal") and stuff or is that just me?

[fecto-forgo]

If zan summoned a galactic nova, and was able to use that wish, what do you think she'd wish for?

she wouldnt succeed w the summoning bc zan is herself n does not have a streak of success abt anything

jk i believe in her.anyways likely the same as she wishes to the supposed shooting star on twitter:for hyness to remember her name, bc zan partizanne does not mind being hurt or thrown around or being sacrificed for their god, but she does mind her beloved leader struggles (she hopes he just struggles she hopes hes genuinely trying) w remembering her name.w remembering her.its such a little wish for such a big task, isnt it?

[purrfectnothing]

so... uh.. i couldve.. i couldve lived in canada....................

[koheletgirl]

you guys have the moral perception of cartoons i hope you understand what you sound like when you say things like "there are no civilians"

[sehrgefaelltmir]

would it be dumb and/or wrong and/or selfish to delete a fic other people like just cause i don’t like it cause like. i kinda want to but i feel bad 💀

[riverblujay]

You just reblogged my FHSY post with some EXCELLENT tags and I wanted to say you're so right the pair the spare stuff was bizarre. I ended up liking where Sandra Lynn and Jawbone went in SY but at the end of FY it's so weird. Also I'm following you now because you're a self proclaimed Murph girlie and SPMGs like us need to stick together

(aforementioned tags)

ty bestie!!

truly TRULY the worst part of FY for me. like, i super get that they were trying to wrap stuff up after having a super intense combat, so i also don't, like, hold it against d20 that much?? and maybe it would be even less tasteful to me if we didn't have icon and aroace ally murph (and brennan ig but murph like. INITIATED this plot line) giving us Allo/Amatonormativity Personified as baron.

fwiw, im not 100% romance repulsed either. and i GET that teen romance is part of the genre they're trying to convey in fh!! i just think maybe it should have been limited to the teens, at the very least in FY. it's SO awkward and personally i think reads as "brennan had some (head)canons abt who got together with who, eventually, but it's the last episode so there's no time to seed that in a graceful way if he wants his two cents out there." which is his right to have ideas for who among the adults get together, but like--the entire focus of the whole season was the bad kids, not their parents. so it feels weird when your thoughts abt who ends up dating, even if there is SO MUCH context and build up in brennan's head, are presented as a loose thread being tied up in a bow.

ignoring my complicated and by no means exhaustive feelings/rambling on the topic, if you have not listened to naddpod yet i cannot recommend it enough!!!! yes im a murph girlie and i LOVE his dm style (recently saw a comment on a post saying naddpod has less patrons than wbn bc "brennan is a better dm" and it made me FERAL. i get it i shouldn't have read the comments in the first place, and also you (the commenter) hate consequences and dope encounters. literally no one can say a DROP of MURPH SLANDER unless they have listened to eldermourne finale AND c3e27 the king of dragons. combat and encounter design dm of all time FR!!!!)

but i just love how despite naddpods tight editing, you can tell just how much murph, emily, caldwell, and jake care abt each other both as people and as their pcs. emily has literally said the way jake INSTANTLY decided that hardwon loved the crick made her feel always welcome at a table with him. how much the cast makes each other laugh, or cry, or feel any kind of emotion.

ALSO moonshine is SO aroallo coded to me. axmurph aspec allies fr fr. naddpod dnd podcast of all time in my heart <3

[lesbianlenas]

the thing is that i HATE orientation stuff so much like i hate having to do little activities i hate having to talk to random ppl around me i hate having to pretend like i care abt the school as some sort of identity like i do not care i am just here bc i want an education……& like fr and honestly i hate heterosexual ppl so much like i really do and i’m always surrounded by heterosexuals at these types of things and they never want to talk to me & i never want to talk to them so i just feel incredibly uncomfortable the whole time. like this happened to me in both high school & college and it will inevitably happen again. i am not made for this world on god……….

[byanyan]

...staring at my drafts and realizing i should perhaps consider pausing on answering ask prompts to start getting caught back up on those instead bc the number is back in the 40s & i just found a starter i completely forgot about bc it got lost on the second page :x

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

here's the idea.

leo's wife/lauretta . (gets stabbed to death)

[her-canine-teeth]

pisces moon by flower face

[bunnihearted]

reminded of the fact that women's lives have never mattered, dont matter, and never will matter 😀