#a lot has been said about the recovery from abuse and trauma etc. etc.

[gigglebug]

.

[velvetvexations]

I have a confession: I used to believe all narcissists were toxic, and I'm pretty sure you've singlehandedly changed my mind.

I came from a very emotionally abusive + neglectful home and my dad has a lot of narcissistic traits (as in, consistent-with-the-DSM type traits, as per a therapist, not just the pop-psych shit) that he does not acknowledge and has never sought any kind of individual MH treatment other than family therapy with me and my mom present, which was very ineffective in terms of changing his behavior or improving my relationship with him.

///////(brief description of emotional abuse in this next paragraph, just a warning, I'm not trying to trauma dump or be triggering it's just some context, you can skip it if you want)

generally, my dad would use my older brother and I as his emotional outlet in ways that were usually humiliating or demoralizing, including manipulating us into arguing/fighting with each other so that he could then break up the fight to assert dominance, or else he would join in the argument by supporting one of us (often me but not always) and criticizing/arguing against the other (often my brother), usually basically verbally browbeating his opponent into submission so he could "win". this was also as an abusive thing towards our mom, bc she hates it when people argue and would always get really uncomfortable until the fight stopped. these tactics generally involved intellectual or academic topics that he would encourage us to have really heated debates over and discourage us from leaving the conversation if we got upset, inevitably resulting in it boiling to a head of name-calling, personal insults, etc.

///////(end abuse description)

it did a number on both my brother and I; we bickered constantly and ended up emotionally distant from each other as adults, and to this day sometimes it feels like he doesn't trust me enough to reveal details of his personal life to me for fear of reprisal. it also basically ruined my relationship with my dad, ofc, especially when I became his sole outlet after my brother left and he stopped being able to scapegoat him.

as a result of this, often when I see narcissistic traits/behaviors in others, or see people mention they have NPD, and especially if they're posting basically any kind of discourse, my gut reaction is fear and aversion, because it's hardwired into my brain that that's associated with imminent abuse. it didn't help that one of the first support spaces that ever recognized what happened to me as abuse was r/raisedbynarcissists, which I'm sure you're not fond of given the amount of pseudoscience and anti-NPD shit on there, and so I fell really deep into that rabbithole of basically just thinking people with NPD were evil.

I did eventually stop going on RBN, bc I ended up majoring in psychology and realizing most of the stuff people said on that subreddit was completely divorced from any kind of validated scientific inquiry and may have even been actively harming my recovery by getting me to fixate on the abuse, along with seeing more and more frequent critiques of the community by people on this site, and I started to evolve and question my idea of what "evil" even means if it could be caused by something involuntary like a disorder (though for a while I remained quietly resistant to the idea that narcissists could be good people even if they weren't necessarily evil).

but I think seeing you post so passionately about transmasc issues and defend us so readily (I'm transmasc) really challenged that and made me question my core beliefs in a big way. here is someone with good opinions that I agree with, someone who is sticking her neck out for another group of people, and who doesn't really stand to gain much aside from some attention from strangers on the internet. in contrast to my dad, who is a misogynist who would often use my AGAB and physical traits as a means to harass me when I was younger, you're someone I can't just say is "toxic" and avoid - it became clear to me that you're someone worth listening to and learning from.

and, you know, the trauma-response voice in my head is always saying "oh, it's attention-seeking behavior, sooner or later the other shoe will drop and she'll abandon us and maybe even turn on us!" but like... even if that's the case, which I'm not even saying it is bc that's a deeply uncharitable and kind of irrational thing of me to think of you, i actually don't care?? you're doing something good here, something worth commending, I don't really care what the motive is, especially since you clearly have your head screwed on right about the morality/ethics side of the issue. You're saying things that need saying. I don't believe in punishing good deeds! and even if eventually you did decide to move on with your life and go pursue some other interest, like, that's also your right, and my abandonment issues should be my own business to deal with and not blame on others.

I'm just glad you're here now advocating for us and with us tbh. so, thank you, not just for defending transmascs but for helping me learn to understand people with NPD better and unpack my own trauma-based biases. genuinely, this change of heart is helping me in my recovery process, is helping me let go of the shame of having some of the same traits and letting me acknowledge them without judging myself, and I just wanted you to know that you had that kind of a positive impact. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing this with me. <3 I appreciate and love you a lot, and I'm glad I could be of some help to you!

[autistichalsin]

Okay, I’ve been a bit scared because I’ve been observing from the sidelines, but I do want you to know this isn’t a hateful or troll ask, I’m genuinely asking for clarification.

In my experience, “pro-shipping” has always meant ‘problematic shipping’, and all of the people I’ve talked to about this have said the same thing.

Am I the one who’s misconstrued? I really don’t get it.

Being called “pro-harassment” or “pro-censorship” is hurtful and confusing as all hell.

I don’t harass people for what they create. I don’t care to do that. I block and move on, and warn people if I know they could be upset by the content.

But I also don’t understand how certain things are justified.

I am personally not bothered by much, but I have watched friends and acquaintances go through visceral traumatic reactions because people have decided to air out their coping by sharing it with the public. (I.E, people who write romantic incestual fics, etc)

I don’t give a shit what people write. I really don’t. But it feels harmful to use the excuse of coping when you, in turn, could be hurting dozens of others.

Like I said, I genuinely am not trying to be hateful here. I’m confused, and still distraught that all of this is happening. I don’t think anyone deserves to be harassed. I just also don’t get the logic here.

Pro-shipping never once meant problematic shipping. It meant opposite of "anti" because antis would come and invade the tags and asks, calling them all kinds of names if they found their ships distasteful.

Sorry that being indirectly accused of supporting harassment hurt your feelings. Imagine how I felt, being DIRECTLY accused of supporting rape in real life because of my taste in fiction. You are throwing in your lot with people who can't distinguish fantasy and reality.

I don't like incest fics either, anon. They are triggering for me. So you know what I do? I don't read fics tagged as incest. For that reason, I have never been triggered by an incest fic. I suppose I would be if I read an incest fic that wasn't tagged as much, but you will never find a single pro-shipper who defends posting such content without a tag. You are responsible for your own experience online; it is your job to curate the content.

If it was just seeing that the fic exists that triggered the response, then I'm sorry to say they're still in the wrong. As a survivor, learning that triggers exist and how to navigate those triggers is on you. We are responsible for how we deal with our trauma. Your friends didn't deserve their traumas, and they deserve kindness and support, but requesting that people never be allowed to write distasteful fiction so that they don't have to be upset by the idea that someone somewhere shipped incest is not reasonable. Their feelings are valid; it's totally reasonable to be triggered, to strictly curate your online experience. It's reasonable to block everyone who ships the upsetting incest ships, to put an "incest shippers DNI" on your page, all of it. It's not reasonable to call them supporters of IRL incest or to accuse them of causing your trauma. It isn't hard at all on AO3 or Tumblr; they even give you the option to blacklist/filter out certain tags so you can avoid it without blocking users. There's easily half a dozen safeguards that already exist that are a lot less radical, a lot less likely to be weaponized against queer users, and a lot easier to enforce than trying to remove them.

Me writing fics, such as a character using kink to cope, can only harm a user who doesn't curate their feed (and who reads fics they know will trigger them, which I can only assume would then be a purposeful form of self-harm). Denying other survivors their coping mechanism, though, IS a direct form of harm. Stigmatizing recovery by saying that survivors are in any way akin to abusers for creating fiction is a direct form of harm.

It sounds to me like you've absorbed some very harmful and very narrow ideas of what recovery should and should not look like, and what is and isn't a good/valid survivor. You might want to reflect on why you're turning your attention to policing what survivors do to cope so much.

[meichenxi]

Hanzi update (+accidental trauma talk)

tw illness, trauma, vomiting, weight loss, recovery. I didn't plan to write about this but because of what happened in the last year I can't really write about how I studied Chinese without talking about it. so. but it's mainly about hanzi lol

I've been learning how to write traditional characters with the vague idea that I'd go and study in Taiwan, and also that if I want to write Classical Chinese or Japanese they're far more useful - but the program I want to go to Taiwan for requires HSK7, which I DO not think I can achieve and have the results of before March. Who knows! Perhaps within me lies untold brilliance and dedication!!

...well, I wouldn't rely on it. (I am also busy with a job, a partner, studying an A-level course to begin tutoring it in September, and writing the second draft of my novel.)

And even if I ended up going to Taiwan with my absolutely fantastic HSK7, there's no way I could handwrite all of those words within a year. If I learn 10 characters a day, that's like 3650 characters in a year, but realistically that will never happen - and you still have to actually remember them.

I also know from my last experience where I learnt a stupid amount of characters very quickly (about 800 in two weeks) that I can technically do it, I have a very large swollen brain, but then the brain, being very large and very swollen, promptly burns out. And leaves me to not do any Chinese again for like two months. So basically - completely pointless, because after those two months of rest I had forgotten most of them anyway. I will not be doing that again.

This time around I have been slowly, very slowly, learning things on Skritter. I have about 400 characters so far. I'm not doing words but doing characters, which is a bit slower, but I figure it'll be more useful in the long run. After I have the first 1000, I'm planning to then systematically go through the HSK and TOCFL lists and check I know how to put characters together and which 'jing' is used in 'yijing' etc.

This approach is only really going to work because I know a lot of vocabulary and can read a lot of stuff already - otherwise I wouldn't recommend to anybody without that backbone of vocabulary to just learn random isolated characters, unless you're masochistic or much harder-core than I am.

As I have said in a lot of posts before, I had a very difficult experience in China last August and have basically taken an entire year off studying because in all honesty I just couldn't bring myself to face the language again. Every time I tried I had this crazy grief and nightmares and stress response. What I went through was so stressful that during those two months in China that I lost seven kilograms, as I couldn't eat much without vomiting it back up due to stress and fear, didn't sleep, and ended up having to leave for Thailand pretty severely malnutritioned - which then made me susceptible to illnesses there and I spent the next two months after with awful health, vomiting and weak and generally sick. Luckily I was with friends and I gained the weight again and my period and digestive system sorted itself out.

And I never expected that a language itself could carry trauma? Like. Nobody died, it wasn't like that, I wasn't abused or assaulted or anything but still...for just under a year, every time I spoke or heard or read Chinese I couldn't help thinking of those two months. Even now it's still hard. I'm finding my way back to it but, to be honest, I didn't expect how hard it would be. I thought I could just - move past it, because I'd already had so many great experiences in China and Taiwan and with Chinese, that they would cancel each other out or at least be aided by the huge amounts of love that the language has shown me. Alas, it was not the case.

Anyway. All of that to say - I have only managed to do about 400 characters in a year, because I essentially gave up studying completely.

Now I've just finished reviewing and re-remembering those 400 characters on Skritter, so I'm ready to start again! I don't know what's changed, I guess just time - I feel more positive, I feel curious and interested about the language again. I don't know. I'm not going to question it too deeply. But for these past two weeks, I've been having a lot of fun :)

I'll update everyone on my progress as I go! Next post - 500.

[sicknessbysalem]

Salem's Fic Masterlist (updated)

feel free to send any and all questions, comments, requests, etc. to my ask box if you like any of these fics/characters!

*important note: a lot of my works can/have crossed each other (namely Ballad of the Wildflowers, Endzone/Endgame, and Starcross/Motocross)

End Zone, Endgame

i. one: in which despite being twenty five, linebacker novak daskalov has to come to terms with the fact he is not invincible, especially when he has a child in public school. (tw for emeto, fever, sickness; additional warning: sickee is a single dad with a daughter, who appears in the story, proceed as you wish.)

ii. two: in which novak learns that despite being a football player, a dad, and an adult in his twenties, the past can still haunt you, especially when you're coming down with something. (tw emeto, fever, character panic, mentions of past abuse)

iii (a). three, part a: in which novak learns that just because the past is past, does not mean his brain lets him off the hook. especially not with a raging fever and a hell of a virus. also, novak is a grown man who makes really poor decisions. (tw emeto, fever, flashbacks of abuse)

iii (b). three, part b: in which Novak is miraculously not too terribly injured (to an extent anyway) and his physical recovery turns into the beginning of emotional recovery too. (tw emeto, concussion mention, religious trauma, parental substance abuse mention)

iv. four: in which novak is fulfilling the duties of being a dad, but also has to realize that being a dad doesn’t make him invincible. (tw emeto, illness fever, content warning: fic begins with child illness, but is majority adult illness)

v. five: in which novak is away for a team building retreat, but the team gets built in a very different way when the star linebacker gets sick (tw emeto, fever, sick away from home)

vi. six: in which novak is stuck with a migraine that results in a seizure. vanessa uses the opportunity to learn more about her girlfriend's high school best friend. (tw emeto, fever, character seizure, migraine, implied past trauma)

vii. seven: in which Novak's girlfriend, Yuliya, plans a nice dinner date night, but Novak is very poor at communicating. (tw emeto, nausea, stomach pain, character not telling significant other about something)

viii. eight: in which it's novak's birthday, but as luck would have it, a proper dinner with family and his girlfriend is the last thing his body wants to have part in, celebration or not. (tw emeto, nausea, being sick in public)

ix. nine: in which even as a coach, not a player, novak still makes terrible decisions about his health, and his girlfriend is convinced he'll send her into cardiac arrest before they get married (affectionately)(tw cough, implied emeto, fever, character making themselves sicker)

x. ten: novak is twenty-seven. he should, reasonably, not be such a fucking idiot. especially when not being an idiot is between him feeling like shit and him having a decent night with his girlfriend. but, nobody ever said he was smart. (tw emeto, food intolerance, stomach pain (the obligitory 'novak is an idiot and won't tell his fiancée girlfriend' warning as well))

xi. eleven: novak kaminski's never had it easy. he's been bounced around foster homes and families like theres no tomorrow. everyone so far has seen him as a means to an end and nothing more. but, maybe marina and nikolai daskalov will change things around for him. (tw for emeto, trauma implications, underage (17) sickie)

Ruat Caelum (Until the Heavens Fall)

i. one: in which vanessa gets sick and almost loses it outside the house she shares with her roommate, willow. (tw for emeto, sickness, fever, nausea)

ii. two: in which we see fragments of vanessa's past, and how deeply she cares for willow. (tw for emeto, panic attack, fever)

iii. three: in which the tables have turned, and we see that even a med student isn't invincible. (tw emeto, vague implication of injury, fever)

iv. four: in which despite being in police gear, vanessa is the farthest thing from invincible despite her better desires. (tw emeto, fever, stress, slight panic)

v. five: in which willow's mom instinct meets her med student instinct, and vanessa is exceptionally confused and totally a cat person (tw emeto, fever)

vi. six: willow is a nurse. vanessa was an EMT. theoretically, it shouldn't take much for them to know what sort of boundaries and precautions should be taken to stop illness from spreading. but, they'll be damned to let their girlfriend suffer. (tw emeto, fever, stomach bug)

Starcross Motocross

i. one: maverick sterling was at the top of his game once upon a time. but now, he's trying to rebuild everything he lost, from his career to himself. and nothing will stand in his way, not even a stomach virus hitting at the worst possible time and threatening to undo everything he worked for. (tw emeto, fever, panic attack, religious trauma, mentions of conversion therapy)

Ballad of the Wildflowers

i. one: meadow likes to think she's invincible, as untouchable as poison ivy, but even the most vibrant wildflowers wilt once in a while. (tws for fever, nausea, vomiting, slight panic)

ii. two: in which, despite her efforts, meadow has to deal with one of her worst fears, even if she thinks it's stupid. (tw emeto, emetophobia)

iii. three: meadow is nothing if not a showgirl with a flair for the dramatic. even if the show is for herself and the dramatic is at the expense of the Whiskey Creek Tavern's bathroom. (tw for emeto, fever, scat (in conjunction with emeto), stomach virus)

iv. four: river loves meadow, they do. really. but, dammit, meadow can read them like a book no matter how much they hate that. (tw for emeto, fever, talk of not sleeping/implied insomnia)

v. five: meadow doesn't like to call herself nosy, she just liked to know things. she knew her friends like the back of her hand. she knew her partner, and her partner's stomach, even better, and she won't take resistance as an answer. (tw emeto, chronic illness, implications of shitty parents, emeto (again))

vi. six: houston wouldn't trade a thing he does for anything in the world. he loves the tattoo parlor, loves the tavern, loves his family he gained through both. though, if he had to trade something, it would probably be the unpredictability of his stomach. (tw emeto, fever, mention of loss of a family member)

Play This Life

i. one: lana usually knows better. the last thing he needs to do is make kostya's life harder than it is. But, sometimes, shit happens. No matter what you want. (tw emeto, suspected food induced illness, scat, mentions/references to treatment and chronic illness)

ii. two: kostya just wishes things could be normal. that he wouldn't be sick, that he could just live, that he could stop being so stressful for lana to deal with, right? (tw emeto, treatment, mentions of serious illness, single dialogue mention of another character suffering an overdose, self doubt)

iii. three: lana knows how to comfort kostya, he's learned by now how to take care of his boyfriend. but it doesnt make it any easier to see him suffer. (tw for emeto, dizziness, fever, implied treatment for major illness)

iv. four: for as much as lana loves kostya, sometimes threats need to have some merit. for as much as kostya loves lana, kostya will choose violence over hospitals any day, even if his boyfriend is stressed out. (tw emeto, more emeto, chronic illness, major illness, implications of treatment for major illness)

Slice of Life

i. one: emiliene loves what she does. she loves her younger brother. she doesnt love where she's at in life, but she knows they'll make it. so long as she makes it through a rough patch like this. (tw emeto, fever, overwork, underage (16) caretaker)

Invisible String

i. one: scarlet enjoys teaching. she loves it, really. nothing would ever stand in her way of her love for what she does. except for natalia, and with that, natalia's hyper-observance and hell of a protective instinct, no matter how much she gets on scarlet's nerves. (tw emeto, stomach upset, sarcastic bickering)

Memento Vivere

i. one: hemlock doesnt know what to make of his new life, or rather his new death he supposes. but one thing is for sure, getting sick when your body is already at war with itself is not ideal. (tw for supernatural (not the show) characters {witches, half human half ghost, and a vampire}, emeto, overwork, self pressure, fear of disappointment, emeto)

Novemetober 2023 (Rescheduled)

big thanks to @monthofsick for hosting this event i. day one, unconventional receptacle: in which chef emiliene lahaye overestimates her ability to keep herself together and has to utilize a last resort. (tw emeto, fever, underage (16) caretaker)

ii. day two, can't stop puking: in which a fresh out of college novak daskalov gets sick at the worst possible time with the worst possible people. (tw emeto, fever, sickness, pushing too hard when sick, bad environment)

iii. day three, torture (figurately speaking): in which amancio literally has not been sick in over a hundred years, but his special half-human protegee decided to give him a little taste of humanity (and amancio is not enthused at all) (tw for dry heaving, supernatural (not the show) characters, half ghost character, tw implied partial death)

iv. day four, messy: meadow loves to put on a show in every aspect of her life. even the less desirable moments. meadow also learns that it can always get worse. (tw emeto, fever, sickness, scat [in conjunction with emeto])

v. day five, undesirable caretaker: the (fictive) crown prince of sweden has far from a good life, or a good support system. no matter how bad things get. he's just a liability, isn't he? (tw emeto, fever, implied abusive parent) [so much appreciation for @simplysickness to entrust me with their characters so they can live on]

vi. day six, post adrenaline puking: in which caffeine is not medicine, no matter how hard motocross star xavier davenport tries to convince himself it is. (tw emeto, caffeine overload, brief/vague mention of mental health issues, bad coping mechanisms) [once again, sparrow has put their children in Salem's Foster Care System(tm)]

vii. day seven, too feverish to think: in which even in college novak has a severe lack of braincells and refuses to let himself quit anything until he's good and fucked (tw emeto, sickness, overwork, stress, panic attack, fainting)

viii. day eight, choose: loud or silent: in which novak still refuses to quit until he's undeniably fucked beyond a logical explanation, except he's a grown ass man now which has taken more braincells from him than it has given back. (tw emeto (small), migraine, hypersensitivity, character seizure)

ix. day nine, persistant sickness: in which no, novak does not learn his lesson and thinks he is invincible no matter what. he absolutely is not. (tw for migraine, emeto, seizures, character overworking themself.)

x. day ten, motion sickness: in which vanessa is sure nothing stresses her out. well, everything except one thing. and of course, that one thing will make her pay for being so worried in the first place. (tw for emeto, anxiety, motion sickness, brief description of crime scenes at the beginning)

xi. day sixteen, waking up puking: novak daskalov does not know his limits and is so absolutely stupid and cannot lie to his girlfriend for shit. (tw emeto, fever, exhaustion, seizure mention (but no actual seizures this time))

xii. day seventeen, sick for the first time: in which for once novak is in the caretaker position, which isn't exactly common, and even less so that it isnt someone related to him in a familial way, but he's determined to do the best job he can for his ice princess. (tw for emeto, fever, lying about sickness, mention of chronic condition (lyme disease))

xiii. day nineteen, sick in more ways than one: in which the summer heat does nothing for one linebacker in particular, on top of everything else (reupload with edits)(tw for overheating, emeto, dizziness, migraine mention, fever)

xiv. day twenty, late caretaker: vanessa mcallister is usually a loan wold. or, she used to be. but now she has a station pup, leaving her to be a lone wolf plus one, much like her coworker is. (tw for emeto, resistance, fever, sick on the job)

xv. day twenty-one, sleepy sickie: novak likes to lie about being okay and convincing himself and others he is, but unfortunately he has one massive tell that gives him away. (tw fatigue, nausea, vomiting)

xvi. day twenty-seven, headache: novak daskalov likes to think he has no enemies (well, very few). funny how the biggest enemy of all is his own damn body and self. (tw emeto, migraine, hypersensitivity/overstimulation, seizure)

Sicktember 2024

*beginning 9/1/24

i. one:

[firespirited]

I've been sick with some sort of fluey thing that sets off migraines all week. Did manage to meet the therapist: she's fantastic, no nonsense, up to date science, specializes in autism in women and trauma from interpersonal abuse. Unfortunately I'm going to need that therapist more than ever.

Mum had no intention of doing group therapy, has no interest in fixing our relationship, she's got this idea that it would somehow be taking sides even though she regularly has long whispered conversations with me about how to deal with a situation with sis. I also really upset her by describing dad as having cluster B personality disorders that made him cruel, she read the first sentence of my psych homework and decided she was out.

Because in her mind cruelty requires intent and dad was just being pre-emptively nasty because he'd had a paranoia where he felt we'd been mean. She's retconned him as bpd??? He didn't get paranoias until I was nearly 20. He wasn't borderline, he was a bully. It was calculated and calm not often spontaneous. He had just as many calm collected bouts of psychological violence as he did rages. And oh odd thing right? he never damaged a relationship with a man or employer even if he resented them privately. He never ever once implied he was suicidal to anyone else when that was his go to move. He had depressions and manias, he was rapid cycling. He also managed to keep the damage to his immediate family (except for that school incident) and constantly quitting jobs. There are times when the cluster B was the real issue and other times when he was just selfish and enjoyed his power over others. I know that's an awful thing to say but I've known a lot of cluster B folks who are trying to not break everything and I knew dad well: he blurred the lines between deliberate long term choices and his pathology. His hostility towards my and mum's existence as ill people was obvious to my doctor and every carer we had. My sister's cptsd is mostly from the damage he did with gossip and how she made herself compliant at home.

I can't say this to mum she's in rose tinted glasses mode about dad. The psych definitely noticed when she said some really weird hurtful stuff to me. I did get very serious that she was not to talk about dad around sis. To not even think about it because it could reset her entire recovery.

I have spent the past 25 days neck deep in bpd type cptsd symptoms, learning every trigger point and rebuilding a relationship with sis where she has no idea that I'm just not sharing secrets and fears. I'm still her rock. She's just not my anchor anymore. We're actually doing pretty well now. I can trace the intense anxieties back to last may when she brought a stray dog home and began obsessing about adopting a cat (she's allergic). I can perform the correct emotions on cue instead of relying on just words. Every time she loses trust I reassure and rebuild. She's been able to open up about what she couldn't stand about 'us' (it's not us, she needs a fully quiet space not just a bedroom in a busy flat) etc.

It's sad because every worst fear I outlined in the psych homework came true over the past few days. I have to hope it's some kind of stress phase. Maybe she's got the same flu thing as me and it's making her feel vulnerable and cranky.

There are very good odds she was super spooked at the idea of therapy, goodness knows she doesn't like talking about feelings. The idea that she might one day have to explain her wild family to someone else terrifies her.

Now that I know she's not ok, I need to keep my distance for a while and build myself up so I can handle sis' next crisis alone.

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Delete this if it's weird but your post about naming your blog after one of the royals guards from hxh reminded me of something. So I am part of a DID system and some of the alters have many traits/appearance of my abusers, including some with the same names. They'd do things that were harmful as a way of keeping everyone safe. Anyways, recently our host watched hxh and one of those parts really connected with Neferpitou going from this absolutely inhumane monster of sorts to slowly learning how empathy and compassion works and has now changed their name from their original name of our abuser they're based off to Pitou instead now. Anyways I'm happy for them and just wanted to share that with ya

I held onto this ask for a while bc I was debating how detailed I wanted my response to be, but I think this is a story I've been wanting to tell for a while and if there was ever a time to fully discuss this, it would be here; the naming and themeing extends to myself as well as my blog - I do go by the name Shai irl, though I'm a little picky with where I choose to use it over the name I've had for longer (Rigel). Before I go into any more detail, I want to congratulate you for that development! It sounds like a moment of positive growth, and I'm glad you got to experience that.

The short answer is that I've basically taken my experiences with dissociation and something that may be multiplicity and fully redirected it all into a sense of spirituality. My therapist had encouraged me to not pathologize it; I was just hammering at my own personal experiences and being fixated on feeling like something was wrong with me and needed to be fixed - normal people don't experience thoughts and feelings that don't belong to them. With that being said, a large part of my recovery work was/is with acceptance; I was forced to mask a lot of things while growing up (autism, physical disability, queerness, etc) and there was a huge push from my family to seem as "normal" as possible, and now I'm actively undoing that and my work with being in the otherkin community is a massive cornerstone of that work. I identified very heavily with shaiapouf and my therapist actually watched hxh so we could use pouf as a therapy tool for me. Me naming myself after him is a huge gesture of the love I was able to give myself via my coping process - recognizing him in my trauma, and working with him to recover.

The longer answer is that I've experienced dissociation that leans towards multiplicity for a number of years now, with aforementioned thoughts and feelings included. I never had any memory loss, and the experience of another person being with me wasn't well developed enough for the definition of an alter, so I felt stuck with an experience I had no words for and no way of relating to other people with similar experiences. I remember describing it as feeling possessed, like there was suddenly another consciousness present with my own. These experiences are a lot less intense now, and I attribute that to my acceptance of them instead of pushing them away in fear. It was a while before I said anything to my therapist and was genuinely mortified because it felt like something was very seriously wrong with me and I had to fix it at all costs (with the idea of needing to "fix" things that were "wrong" with me or my life being a repeating theme as well).

Over time, as I stopped pushing everything away, I was able to start seeing where the emotions and thoughts that came with the episodes (not necessarily triggering them) were coming from, but still struggled to accept them as my own when they felt so foreign. Acceptance has brought me a long way and we've now teased out that this is a massive way for me to process not just my trauma, but the grief accompanying it.

My therapist was the one who had initially suggested I take a spiritual approach to this, and I found that in the otherkin community, where, upon actually looking at the original contexts of some of the words used in the community, found things I'd been describing to my therapist over a year ago. I'd prior been fond of the idea of reincarnation and fully embraced it in this process. My first (and so far only) tattoo is of his wings, I'll carry him with me for the rest of my life; I derived one of my names from his own. This character has been highly influential in my life and I've fully embraced him for it. He means a lot of things to me - reflection of my own trauma, the power and rage I wish I could have demonstrated while in the process of being traumatized, the delicate masculinity I wish to have as a trans man, and much more I'm sure. A lot of my episodes seem to happen when helplessness kicks in, like something to help distance myself from my pain; I feel him in righteous fury when I know I deserve better. Not all of it is bad though, I had one while I was looking at Christmas lights a few months ago and felt like I was looking at the world for the first time, simple delight as if holding someone else's hand and showing them.

All in all, I thank you for sharing your story and for giving me a place to share some of mine.

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

Tw: Grooming, Emotional Abuse, Physical?

I’m looking for comfort and support please

I remember as a kid speaking to various men and women on the phone: talking about our deepest sexual fantasies, what we’d do to each other when we met, etc. I was just 13, and I thought I was hiding it so well. One day getting picked up from school, I open the door to my mother in the drivers seat, holding my ipod, just shaking. My heart dropped and my stomach sank. She knew. The ride home was quiet even as my siblings chatted away and when we went to her room to talk I cold feel my skin crawl with anxiety. She shut the door and for a moment things were calm before she grabbed me by the hair and shook me around, cursing me out for how stupid I’d been. I was horrified and swore I’d stop.

Years passed and I of course did it again, not really knowing why, I felt loved and desired when speaking to these people. And now at 20, with my younger sisters I talk to them about the dangers, and have shared small experiences of my own and my mother says “Anon use to talk to weird guys on the internet so she knows what she’s talking about”. For some reason her saying that rubbed me wrong but I didn’t know why.

Now, a year later as I’m realizing the ugly extent of what happened to me, I’m filled with rage. She knew; Knew I was being groomed, knew I was being sexually manipulated and abused. For years I was taken advantage of, I didn’t even realize what it actually was until this year. And…for my whole life, she never once brought it up again? Never thought maybe I needed help? That I was just fine and could move on? I can barley hug her comfortably and I remember one day she said “something happened to you, and I don’t know what it is but I think that’s why you’re so scared to touch me” LIKE HELLO THE ANSWER IS IN YOUR FACE, YOU KNEW. This whole time and now what, you’re gonna use my trauma as a learning point for my younger siblings when I haven’t even resolved it myself? I just, I’m so angry. I’m so angry god why. I’m not a parent, I’m not a strong person, I’m weak and I’m allowed to be weak why couldn’t she have protected me or comforted me why. I was a kid. You say I’m so mature but why, why do you praise me for that, I don’t want to be. I want to be allowed to not be ok.

Hi anon,

I'm so sorry to hear about what happened.

Your feelings towards your mother are valid and justified. You've been through a lot and it hasn't been adequately addressed by your mom, a vital piece in all of this. She has disrespected your experience on multiple levels, from victim blaming you to cluelessly wondering why you're scared of her. You have plenty of reason to be angry.

I think sitting with that anger and allowing yourself to feel it could potentially help in digesting your experiences. Trauma recovery can mimic the stages of grief. This can involve anger and the elements of your trauma that invoke it, such as your mother's inaction. It's important to acknowledge those things as you recover at your own pace.

I hope you're doing okay and that I could help. Please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun

[system-of-a-feather]

Okay though, Imma say this and risk having their attentions turned on us or whatever, but one of the things I see on r/fakedisordercringe and similar subreddits is the idea that actually acknowledging parts as parts and not forcibly trying to convince yourself that they are "all parts of you" is the healthy way to heal and have DID and everything else is malingering, roleplaying, or harmful at best and just like...

I know the followers on here don't need me to say this but as someone whose been in treatment for 4+ years, been diagnosed and had that diagnosis validated two other times, but.... no???

Like I get where that perspective comes from, from an outsider less experienced person it is easy to assume that people with DID are just delusional and just think they are different people to keep themselves in denial and they just need to "grow up and stop thinking that and embrace all the trauma and heal" and I know a lot of psychiatrists (derogatory, at least in America they are people who are more doctors than mental health professionals and rarely know about non-medical treatment beyond surface level afaik and ime) think that as I've had psychiatrists suggest that and I have to kindly be like "Oh don't worry we have considered that and me and my therapist find that this works better".

I GET why someone might come to that conclusion, but its just NOT how it works. A lot of healing comes from learning to understand, empathize, and communicate with the other parts - and by doing that, learning to accept them for who they are and as they are, and by doing that, being more comfortable co-existing with those parts. Whether or not that results in fusion is case by case and to the individual, but you don't break the intense discomfort, rejection, and fear that CAUSES dissociative barriers and the dissociation of identity, self, etc by just repeating "that is me I don't remember, relate, or understand anything about this but I have to accept that is me" because... no?

A lot of the time when you have DID - especially in early recovery - memory is very splotchy at best. The feeling of othering from parts stems from a discontinuity of experiences, understanding, and feelings of control over behavior, memories, thoughts, and experiences. A lot of knowledge of these differences comes often from word of mouth of those around them, and sometimes through foggy mirrors and windows of things you don't feel like you'd ever do even though you "were there for" but hardly connect or remember.

To look at that and expect someone to insist and fully internally, logically, and emotionally understand that all of that is them, does really nothing more than get them logically on board and emotionally confused as fuck. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but being logically on board does little to nothing in terms of lessening dissociative barriers.

On TOP of that, you are asking someone who had gone through chronic and complex childhood trauma to just accept and trust what other people are reporting on their behavior (their actions they might not remember) and take it on good faith, when said person probably has been abused, manipulated, lied to, and/or may still be in an abusive, manipulative and dangerous environment. Is that not both a heavy ask for someone who likely has massive trust issues as is and honestly a dangerous thing to shove as "the only healthy way"?

The best way to actually heal and make progress is to learn to deeply understand the parts and their subjective experiences and accept what those parts are saying / experiencing / reporting / feeling at a face value and with all the goods and bads that come with it, because the healthier way to heal is to foster independence, love, and strength internally rather than externally.

And how are you to understand and listen to those parts with a genuine and empathetic and understanding ear, if everytime you look at their experiences, reports, feelings, and comments and shout "YOU ARE ME. YOU ARE ME. WE ARENT SEPERATE WE ARE ONE". Yes, of course we are parts of a whole, but a lot of the time, especially in early healing, that factoid does little in actually understanding the individual parts.

Now, this is where its more opinionated, but I don't see it being particularly easy to genuinely understand those parts if you don't allow for a moderate degree of separation and freedom for said parts to express as they like as to properly understand them and what they feel and experience. By letting those parts express themselves as they naturally do and communicating with them (may that be in journal, internally, discord servers, etc) you can learn to understand "where they come from" and why they are the way they are and genuinely understand and accept that part and their existence on an emotional level.

And with that in mind I really look at that "well have you tried insisting and repeating to yourself that these are parts of you?" and go "?????????? Yes and it doesn't work?????????????"

Anyways, thats just a ramble / vent but tldr, its a stupid claim.

[sleepy-shutin]

my thoughts on spoctor’s video about “system tiktok”

just watched the spoctor video i’ve seen everyone bitching about today. i have a lot of thoughts about it, and a lot of people probably aren’t going to like them.

i actually *really* liked that video. it wasn’t 100% accurate in how it described everything, and was in general a simplified understanding of DID to help people without it understand it, but i really enjoyed it. the video went really in depth into how, whether you have DID or not, publicizing your mental illness for followers online is unhealthy as hell, how people are faking DID, consciously or not, to fit in with others and how some are convincing their friends/others that they have DID when they don’t.

this video did a lot to validate and humanize people with DID, *as well as* people who are faking/confused about having it or even just exaggerating the symptoms of their pre-existing DID. it also doesn’t ignore or downplay these problems and the effects it’s had on the community.

many have considered this video “fakeclaim-y” or have shit on spoctor for being a “singlet” (when as far as i know, he’s never stated whether he has DID or not), when if you actually look at the clinical context of DID, spoctor is correct on many things, and has clearly done his research, or at the very least, a lot more than some of the people in the community claiming to have DID have done.

spoctor said some things about introjects that i don’t think are entirely true, namely questioning the trauma that specific introjects could hold, such as an introject of angel dust, when i find that there could be a myriad of things that a person who likes angel dust, as a character who is a drug addicted sex worker that also has sexual trauma, could latch onto, whether you like the character personally or not, (i.e. relating to his struggles with drugs, relating to his struggles with what could be a form of sex addiction or hypersexuality, relating to his hypersexuality in conjunction with his sexual trauma, relating to having been a sex worker and the trauma that can/often does come with being a sex worker, etc)--not that angel dust is a /sympathetic/ and /informed/ portrayal of these experiences, however i can see an edgy kid being consistently sexually abused and using drugs to cope heavily relating to even a character like angel dust.

as well as the fact that i do firmly believe that someone could introject a youtuber while experiencing a lot of trauma if they’re using that youtuber for comfort pretty consistently through the trauma, though i’d consider it more likely for this to happen with TV shows and books than youtubers personally.

but also he is 100% correct that introjects outside of abusers and caretakers and fictional characters (even these are mostly going to be characters from childhood) are *rare*. statistically speaking, introject-heavy systems are *rare*, and many of the people that claim to be introject heavy systems are not, because they’re either confused on how many alters/introjects they actually have, (due to the community hyping up the idea of introjects, with people feeling the need to fit in and accidentally inflating their alter count with alters they don’t have), or because they outright don’t have DID in the first place.

and even then, that’s only *part* of the video. most of the people complaining about this one thing in the beginning haven’t even touched on the actual *meat* of the video, because they’re so fixated on this one part. god dammit, it’s a 30 minute video. what about the rest of it?

the rest of the video explains how DID is formed, explains dissociation and amnesia, as well as trauma and PTSD, and also goes into how publicizing your mental health issues, whether you actually have them or not, is dangerous. as he puts it, when you frame your mental health problems on the wall, one day you may not want to take them down. that is dangerous, because it is anti-recovery. it doesn’t help you get better from your mental health issues, it encourages you to get worse so that you can keep the social media cycle going for yourself, whether it’s for money or attention or fame or friends or what.

the video talks about how many people will reflect each other’s behaviors and personalities to fit in, because humans are very social creatures, and how this can translate into people mistakenly identifying with DID when they don’t actually have it, just to fit in, or how other people could (intentionally or not) manipulate others into believing that they have DID when they don’t actually have it because they want their friends and the people around them to be like them. even when this is genuinely well-intentioned, misinformation on DID is what causes this to happen in the first place. when you don’t understand that people are naturally complex and multifaceted and nuanced, and have parts similar to those with DID without having the amnesia/dissociative barriers, then you start to believe that a lot more people have DID than they actually do.

this misinformation and misunderstanding of the singlet experience vs. the DID experience, and misunderstandings of amnesia, alters, dissociation, etc, are a plague. and these are things that happen that a lot of the DID community tends to brush under the rug in favor of aggressive validation of every experience relating to DID, which only contributes to mistaken (self) diagnosis and misinformation on how the disorder actually works.

don’t get me wrong, i know why people are afraid of recognizing that people fake DID, because they believe it will lead to a slippery slope of people just suddenly fakeclaiming every experience under the sun just for the fun of it. the thing is, this doesn’t happen when everyone in the community actually understands how DID works, when the community is actually working together to spread the most accurate possible information on DID that we currently have, which the community largely has not been these past few years. the DID community has not been committed to presenting an accurate and well-informed understanding of DID to anyone, including itself, for a while. it’s people like subsystems, circular, justanothersyscourse, traumascumathena, myself, and various other bloggers in the community that are actively trying to mitigate the spread of misinformation about DID within the community.

i liked this video because it displays exactly the uncomfortable information that some of the DID community really needs to hear. that people fake DID. that some people are misinformed about having DID, or how alters actually work. that not everyone who claims to have DID is an expert on it, that they can inflate their alter count accidentally or on purpose. that they can exaggerate their symptoms for social media attention, or because they feel like they have to for any reason. that they can portray an inaccurate idea of how DID works, either on purpose or accidentally. that people can mis-self diagnose with DID and not know it. that people can mis-diagnose others with DID and not know it, or even do it purposefully. that people can accidentally imitate what their friends are doing to fit in. that DID and mental health, right now, are legitimately a trend that people are denying is a trend. that misinformation is prevalent, and people refuse to believe that others will lie or misinform others on the internet either intentionally or even accidentally.

a lot of people in the DID community are so misinformed, yet seem to call themselves educators or think that they’re experts on the disorder who are qualified to say what is and isn’t possible in DID, despite having no background in DID treatment and education, and haven’t even read a book about the subject. a lot of these people in the community also tend to have only known about their DID for a few months, meanwhile people who have known about their DID for several years are struggling to combat the misinformation of the newcomers that somehow only become more and more popular, and drunk on the influence they have.

this is what contributes to the creations of incredibly misinformed and sourceless carrds, tiktoks, twitter threads, etc, that have done so much damage over time. people here can’t link sources because they haven’t read them, and the ones they do link are simplified explanations of simplified explanations, and are about as far as they’ve actually read into the disorder. it’s not information of any kind of substance, and at best, serves as a basic understanding of the disorder and nothing more.

i liked this video a lot, because it said a lot of things that i and many other people have been trying to say for a long time, and just haven’t been loud enough for others to hear.

overall, this is a *good* video. it is a great simplified explanation of how DID and dissociation work, as well as explaining some of the trend that DID has become on places like tiktok. and believe it or not, it takes an incredibly kind approach to people who mistakenly believe they have DID, or those who (intentionally or accidentally) exaggerate their symptoms online because of social media.

this video is not mean, this video is not ill-intentioned, and most of all, the people that are criticizing the video just because spoctor didn’t say anything about whether or not he had DID, and are calling him a singlet over criticizing the way the DID community has become on tiktok and other social media platforms, are completely missing the *actual* message of the video.

if you’ve found yourself disliking this video, think really hard about what specifically you dislike the most about it, and why, because you need to find out if it’s a problem worth criticizing, or if it’s actually just a *you* problem.

this post is not about endogenics. if you don’t have DID/OSDD-1 and/or aren’t a dissociative system, then this post is not about you. your experiences are left out of the post on purpose because the post and the video in question are about DID.

[babyjakes]

forever and a day | 40. i believe you.

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summary | a story in which america’s favorite captain gives a new life and family to a five-year-old girl who has suffered well beyond her years at the hands of hydra.

characters | dad!steve rogers, girl/willa rogers (original character)

warnings | AU similar enough to OU to include spoilers to many Marvel movies (Age of Ultron and beyond). action and fight scenes with violence and killing. injuries/mild gore. mature themes related to and semi-graphic depictions of child abuse/neglect, past CSA and CSM, and their aftermath (emaciation, wounds, scarring, etc). medical abuse and experimentation. ptsd/trauma symptoms in a child (developmental discrepancies, de-humanized behavior, detachment, extreme fears). medical treatment of CSM and other aftermath of abuse.trauma-informed therapeutic treatment of ECT. minor mentions of disordered eating. themes relating to abuse of power/authority and immoral interrogation tactics including SA (with brief depictions.) evil!Tony Stark.

[Steve]

“Alright Cap, as much as I’d love to stay up longer and keep talking… I’m pretty beat,” Bruce admits from across the table. Glancing down at my watch, I see that it’s nearing 11:30pm. Willa was put to bed a while ago; after she went down I decided to venture back out into the rest of the group. The overall mood throughout the evening has been positive. More than anything, it just feels good to be back with all of my friends. Tony and I haven’t shared a single word, but for now, I’m okay with that. Being the first night back, he probably figured both Bucky and I would want some space. I still don’t know how I’m going to approach him about what happened to Willa at the airport. Something needs to be done, of course; I’m just not sure what yet.

For about a half-hour or so now, it’s just been the doctor and I, as everyone else has retired to bed. Our conversation has mostly been about Willa. Bruce was able to pop in before I put her to bed to check over her. In talking with him, he’s gone over some options we have in regards to treating her burns. He said that she got very lucky, and that he was fairly sure she had a good chance at a full recovery. This news has been a huge relief. Really, the whole conversation has meant a lot to me. It’s clear that he’s been worried about Willa ever since we left, and now that we’re back, I’m glad that I can place so much trust in the man in charge of her medical care.

“Yeah, it’s getting pretty late, huh?” I nod understandingly. Bruce rises from his chair and smiles at me, his eyes softening as they meet mine.

“We’re glad to have you back, Cap. You and the little one were greatly missed,” he speaks genuinely.

“Thank you, Bruce. It’s great to be back,” I say, returning the smile. He nods at me, then turns and heads for the hallway, leaving me alone in the large open living space.

Taking a moment to close my eyes, I draw in a long breath through my nose, allowing my muscles to relax. It’s been quite a long day. I can’t wait to climb into my own bed and get some much-needed sleep. But before I can do that, there’s still one more thing I need to take care of…

Opening my eyes again, I stand, pushing my chair under the table. I make my way over to the kitchen and pull out a pot, filling it with water in the sink. Setting it down on the stove, I turn the burner on medium, watching as tiny bubbles begin to form at the bottom of the metal pot. Going into the spices cabinet, I rummage around until I find the small green tin I’m looking for, all the way at the back. Carefully, I open up the old rusted box and pull out a packet. Lavender. I remember on Wanda’s first night at the tower, she asked for a cup of lavender tea. “It helps when I’m anxious,” she had told us. Ever since, I’ve made sure to keep a fresh stock on hand.

Pulling out a second packet for myself, I close and return the tin to the cabinet. When I come back to the pot, the water’s boiling steadily, and I flick off the burner, grabbing two maroon mugs and pouring them each full with the water. Tearing open the paper envelopes, I drop a pouch in each mug, the strings dangling over the sides delicately. With a mug in each hand, I return to the table, setting one down at the head seat and one at the chair beside it. Taking a moment, I sigh, running a hand through my hair. I just hope she’ll open up to me. When she snapped out of her panicked state earlier, she was trying so hard to act like she was fine. But it’s painfully obvious that she’s not. And I don’t know how to help her if I don’t know what’s wrong.

Taking another deep breath, I make my way over to the hallway, walking quietly across the wooden floor until I reach the teen’s door. A faint glow shines out from underneath it, telling me that her lamp is still on. Knocking lightly against the wood a few times, I call in softly, “Wanda? It’s Steve. You still up?”

Soft shuffling can be heard from behind the door; soon, it opens in front of me to reveal the teen. From the looks of it, she’s changed since I saw her earlier. She’s pulled her hair up into a messy bun and wrapped herself up in a white blanket. With the hallway lights now hitting her face, I can really see how sick she’s truly become. She’s much skinnier than she was the last time I saw her, and the bags under her eyes are deep and dark. the girl glances up at me, and I try to keep my heartbreak from seeping onto my face.

“Hey kiddo,” I breathe, momentarily at a loss for words. Up until today, I’ve always seen Wanda as just one of us adults. Of course I’ve known that she’s a teenager, but she’s just always held herself to such a high standard of presentation that it’s been hard to tell her apart from the others. Peter’s obviously the baby of the team, and I honestly would usually forget that he and Wanda were similar in age. But now, looking at the broken girl in front of me, it’s really sinking in how young she is, and maybe how wrong it’s been of me to treat her like something she’s not. “I made us some tea,” I say finally. “Will you come sit with me?” A look of great hesitancy flashes in her eyes. “I just wanna talk.”

“Nothing to talk about,” she mumbles quietly.

I raise my eyebrows gently at her, trying to hold onto her gaze. I know that’s not true, I want to say, but I don’t want to push her into anything, especially not right here in the hallway. “It’s lavender tea. Please? I’ve missed you,” I try. Wanda sighs, her eyes dropping to the floor.

“Fine,” she gives in. Smiling at her gratefully, I lead the way back through the hallway and out into the common space.

The girl follows slowly behind me, her feet dragging painfully beneath her. A warm, rich lavender scent hits us as we enter the room, and she looks up for a moment, a softness forming on her face. Walking her over to the table, I pull out the chair at the head for her. Carefully and slowly, she lowers herself down. I take a seat next to her, wrapping a hand around my mug.

The teen peers down at her own and brings her shaking hands up to clasp it on both sides. The mug rattles slightly against the table from her quivering, and I’m concerned to find that tears have built up in her eyes. “Wanda,” I begin sadly. “Hey-”

“Sorry,” she mumbles, bringing a shaking hand up and wiping at her eyes harshly. “Thank you, Steve. You- you didn’t have to do this.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I murmur softly, “and of course; I just hope it helps, even a little.” Wanda raises the mug to her lips and takes a swallow, her tears spilling over and running down her cheeks as she blinks. Setting her mug down, she dabs at her face with the blanket. Her eyes stay low, unable to face me. “Wanda,” I say again, wrapped up in so much sadness and worry for the poor girl. “Can you look at me?”

“I’m sorry,” she replies again, shaking her head. “I’m just- I’ll stop. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” I reassure her quickly, “it’s okay to cry. I won’t judge you for that.”

“I’m fine, I-I promise. I-” She chokes on her words, hiccuping as another round of tears hit. “-I-I’m fine, Steve.”

“Wanda,” I breathe, wishing so badly I knew what was troubling the kid. “Please. Tell me what’s going on.” Her head hangs low, her gaze locked on the table beneath her as she continues to cry, not even attempting to wipe away the evidence anymore. Her tears drip down onto the surface, forming a puddle next to her mug. “I promise, no matter what it is, it’s safe to tell me. I just wanna help you, kiddo.”

“D-don’t call me that,” she snaps coldly, the edge to her voice taking me aback. “Please,” she continues after a moment of silence, softer this time, “just don’t. I-I’m not a kid. Not yours, or anyone else’s,” she says coldly, her voice laced with a thick venom of hurt. “I’m not a child. I need to stop acting like one.”

“No. Wanda, stop,” I beg, hating how hard she is on herself. “You’re still a kid, to me and to everyone else. I know we don’t act like it, and we should. I’m sorry, Wanda. We put way too much pressure on you. You have an old soul, and wisdom well beyond your years. But in the end, you’re still a kid. And we don’t take care of you like we should.”

“I don’t need taking care of,” the girl shakes her head. “I’m not Willa, or Peter, or- or…”

“But you’re you, Wanda,” I tell her softly, and her eyes finally find their way up to meet with mine. “And you deserve to be cared for too, just like Willa and Peter.” A fresh round of tears build up in her eyes as she keeps her gaze locked on mine, a sense of overwhelming longing appearing on her face. Her bottom lip begins to tremble and I lean in closer to her, asking her gently, “Please, Wanda. Will you let me take care of you?”

She blinks, a stray tear trailing down her cheek and off her chin. What she says next sets off a familiar alarm in my mind, her words dripping with vulnerability. “Y-you won’t believe me.”

“I know you think that, and I don’t know how I could convince you otherwise, but I promise you, Wanda, I promise you: I will believe you. I know you wouldn’t lie to me. I know you’re scared; you’re terrified, and that’s okay. I’m right here for you, I just need you to let me in.”

The teen takes in a shaky breath, closing her eyes for a few seconds as if to collect herself. When she opens them again, she looks back over at me, fear lingering in her gaze. “I-I didn’t want it,” she stammers. “I promise, I-I didn’t.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, not understanding.

“I tried to stop them- I tried, but they h-had my hands wrapped up and- and th-they were stronger than me, and I-I-”

“Woah, okay. Slow down. Deep breaths,” I murmur, not wanting the girl to work herself up into a panic attack. “Who was this? Was it when you were back in captivity?” Wanda nods, her fragile frame shaking against her chair. “Do you know who it was?”

“Th-they came every day to question us… there were three of them. Th-they didn’t give their names.”

“Okay, and you said they had your hands wrapped up? So you couldn’t use your powers?” She nods again in confirmation. “Okay. And they brought you to an interrogation room?” Another nod. “What did they do to you in there?”

Her head falls and she chokes back a sob, her hands squeezing into fists as they rest against the table. “I swear, Steve, I didn’t want it, I-I tried to make them stop, b-begged them to stop,” she stutters. “I screamed ‘no’ over and over… th-they just taped my mouth shut when they got sick of it… or th-they, th-they shoved their…”

My heart drops into the pit of my stomach as my worst fears are confirmed. “Oh my god. Wanda,” I breathe, shaking my head in shock.

“Please,” she whimpers, her eyes still squeezed shut as tears pour down her face. “I-I’ll show you the bruises, I-I’ll let you see the memories, please, Steve, please believe me.” And as I continue to watch my friend sob quietly in her seat, an overwhelming urge washes over me to just hold her, to somehow show her that the information she’s shared is safe with me.

Rising slowly from my seat, I approach the crying girl, reaching out my arms and wrapping them gently around her. At the contact, she only sobs harder, leaning her face against my shoulder. With little difficulty, I lift her up and carry her over to the couch, sitting down and placing her on top of my lap. Even though she’s always been a small girl, the lack of weight I feel on top of me is highly concerning.

I take a soothing hand and begin running it over her hair, talking softly to her as she cries. “I believe you, Wanda. I believe you,” I promise her.

“I-I’m s-s-sorry,” she sobs into my shoulder, and I shush her gently, shaking my head.

“No, no sorry’s,” I coo. “You were so brave to tell me. I’m so proud of you, kiddo.” The girl only clings to me and continues to cry, and I keep my hand running over her hair, rocking her slightly back and forth, hoping the movements won’t be too obvious but still enough to somewhat soothe her.

“D-do you hate me now?” she asks through her tears, her head pulling back to look me in the eyes. My heart breaks all over when I see they’re filled with fear.

“No, of course not. I could never hate you, Wanda. What those men- those monsters- did to you says nothing about you as a person. You’re still good. You’re still so incredibly good, all the way down to your bones.” A slight hint of relief appears on her face, but she remains mostly wary. Brushing back her stray bangs out of her face, I lock eyes with hers. “Look at me, Wanda.” She does, her eyes filling with tears once more. “You are good. Still as good as you’ve ever been. They didn’t take that from you.”

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[autisticcassandracain]

The issue with Tara goes beyond victim blaming. It's even more fundamental than that. Even if Wolfman and Perez had written Tara "correctly" as an irredeemable, evil character, *they still would have failed*. As Marvel failed with Captain "Hail Hydra" America. As DC failed with Azrael as PunisherBatman. I could go on all day. Some tropes should not *be* subverted. Even if you do it "right", you're still wrong. Heroes have been deconstructed and subverted to the point of absurdity.

In general, I agree with you some tropes don't work subverted, but a) the post you're referring to was not intending to discuss whether a trope should be subverted, but meet the comic where it wants to be met and state how it fundamentally failed to achieve its goals, and b) I don't actually think the trope Tara was intended to subvert is un-subvertable. At its base level, Tara is just 'what if the teen girl hero was Actually Evil'. There are ways to do that that don't suck. I do agree that Tara's character concept fundamentally wouldn't have worked, but that is because Tara's concept was deep as a puddle and did nothing but subvert the trope directly. It didn't make any statements on the nature of evil or appearances (other than the base 'some ppl are Just Evil' and 'appearances can be deceiving'), something a good subversion of this trope would've done.

For example: a Tara who was intended to be a tragedy, who was once a good kid who became embittered by the world, and who was too scared, too stuck in her ways to allow herself to be saved, ultimately betraying the Titans and dying, could've been a good character. It could've been an opportunity to ask what makes someone evil, explore trauma and trauma recovery, whether it's possible to help people who don't want to be helped, etc. The narrative would be a depressing one, and likely still controversial, since a lot has been written on refusing trauma survivors and abuse victims closure and recovery in narratives. But personally, while I agree that there is a trend of demonizing abuse survivors in media, I also think it's possible to do an arc where a traumatized person spirals deeper into negativity until it dooms them without innately demonizing their trauma. You simply have to be compassionate and delicate about it. And this arc would've still subverted the trope; it would've just also been interesting about it. (To my memory, this is essentially what the Teen Titans cartoon did with Tara, and it worked very well.)

Furthermore, while I understand Tara was intended to subvert the Kitty Pryde archetype specificially, the idea of 'little girl is evil actually' is not exactly an un-doable one. There's been tons of variations on it, to the point where it's a trope by now. But it's important to remember that The Judas Contract was written in the 80s, when this kind of trope subversion, especially Tara's specific variant, had been significantly less explored. Part of the reason the Judas Contract is seen as such a staple is because this was one of the first major arcs to subvert the trope. Yes, nowadays, 'this little girl is evil actually!' is a huge cliché, but it wasn't nearly as much of one back then. The Bad Seed, the quintessential 'what if the little girl was evil' example, doesn't hold up for modern audiences, who can see the twist coming from a mile away (and who will likely take issue with its firm stance on the nature vs nurture debate), but critiquing the book for being cliché doesn't work when it invented the cliché. The same applies here.

Also, I don't read Marvel, and have no more than cursory knowledge on Azrael's Murder Batman. But I will say, from everything I heard, that the issue with Captain "Hail Hydra" America wasn't 'trope subversion', but the usage of a character created by Jewish writers under a time of extreme murderous antisemitism/nazism specifically to oppose said antisemitism/nazism, and then turning him into a Nazi. The issue here isn't that they subverted the trope of the righteous patriotic hero; the issue is that they were completely tonedeaf and antisemitic about it. In fact, the righteous patriotic hero archetype is one that (like the innocent girl archetype) appears in its subverted form more often than not, nowadays. It'd be far weirder to create a hero called Captain American Patriot and have him not be a jingoistic bigot. What worked and was progressive in the 1940s is not necessarily progressive today. Tropes and archetypes have shifted to reflect that. The issue with Captain "Hail Hydra" America was the failure to take a character's history into account when shallowly attempting to shock, not necessarily the subversion of the patriotic hero trope itself.

And lastly: while yes, superhero subversions have at this point been practically done to death, that doesn't mean they can't be done right. The issue with most subversions is the failure to engage with what made a trope compelling to begin with. In the case of the teen girl hero, that is the innate innocence of children, the need people have to protect and care for them, as well as the automatic tendency to underestimate them. Playing on this instinct to create a narrative that challenges the knee-jerk response does not have to end up accidentally implying that it's bad to care about kids, or whatever. You can also subvert it by crafting a character the audience will want to protect so badly, while setting them up for tragedy, asking what happens when they can't protect the children. Or you could raise questions on what innocence really is, by creating a character with stereotypical 'un-innocent' traits who is still innocent. Or you could create a character that merely looks like a little girl while not actually being one, of course, which opens up a whole range of possibilities. A Tara who was not actually a teen girl but actually, I don't know, a robot, could've worked just fine as a trope subversion while sidestepping just about any controversial or outright bad takes on trauma. This variation of the trope subversion doesn't even have to touch on how to best care for and protect children, or on questions of innocence; it can instead play on the 'automatic underestimation' angle and exploit that part of the response.

In the case of superhero trope subversions, the issue with them is an unwillingness to engage with that made the heroes good in the first place. The Murder Batman Archetype doesn't suck because subverting superheroes is innately bad, but because 'Batman is the bad guy actually because who lets a guy go around beating people without being held accountable' is a shit take on the Batman archetype. So is 'what if your favourite hero but evil'. Subversions should have interesting insights into the original trope, or at the very least, utilize the original trope in a new, interesting way. Simply flipping it on its head without doing anything else is narratively shallow and can often lead to unfortunate implications, such as implying that the teen girl is bad because she *checks notes* has self destructive behaviours, was taken advantage of by an adult man, and likes wearing make-up.

You, personally, are well within your rights to never want to see another superhero or innocent girl trope subversion ever again. I personally strongly dislike almost all iterations of superhero subversions because I tend to enjoy the fantasy that superheroes provide more than the questions a subversion may raise, and find those questions raised to be typically shallow anyway. And I would've strongly preferred a redeemed Tara over any iteration of tragedy Tara, or even secret robot Tara. But that doesn't mean these trope subversions are, inherently, a literary dead end that no-one should be allowed to explore. And it especially doesn't mean that nobody should've been allowed to try subverting the tropes forty years ago.

[gothhabiba]

hi! i've really valued advice you've given other anons & wondered if i could ask for some? i get it if not bc i know reading & thinking abt these take energy! i'm 26, and just starting uni & having career aspirations. i spent my teens & early-mid 20s v v volatile after surviving abuse in childhood, so didn't achieve anything rly except surviving & becoming stable. do you have any thoughts at all on dealing with shame/worthlessness/comparison-anxiety/etc abt starting life late, please?

I’ve been sitting on this one for a while because this is very much going to be a case of me needing to take my own advice, lmao. But:

It is not “everyone else, who seamlessly conforms to an ideal of progress over specific periods of time,” versus “you.” Rather it is “an ideal of progress over specific periods of time” versus “everyone who actually exists and the particularities of all of their lives, which are too complex to be fit into any impersonal and general ideal.” The entire thing with an “ideal” is that it is not commensurate with actual lived experience—it is in fact defined by its isolation from it.

This means, firstly, that there are a lot of things that lead people to differ from this ideal to a greater or lesser extent. LGBT people often speak about having a second adolescence in their 20s or 40s or 60s. Many people upon getting out of abusive relationships later in life have the experience of first learning about what love can be like in second or third marriages / long-term partnerships. Being disabled eradicates a timeline towards “career” and “independence” completely—makes it stall, jump around, reverse. This doesn’t mean that any of these people are failing to live their lives properly... the only life that anyone needs to be leading is their own.

This also means, secondly, that this ideal doesn’t work for anyone, including people who seem on first blush to adhere to it. The idea of “teenager”-hood in at least U.S. popular culture is very bizarre, for example—adults are meant to reminisce about specific defining “teenage” experiences, feel that they’ve “lost” something since their adolescent days, idealise a vision of what it means to “be a teenager”... even as actual teenagers often don’t receive much in the way of respect or autonomy. So “adolescence” is defined by a, like, Platonic ideal of specific experiences occurring in a specific order, rather than by... the actual experiences of actual people of a certain age range. Again, it’s specific lives that actually matter, not a rarefied idea of a type of “life” that is simultaneously longed for, nostalgia-tinged, romanticised, commodified, and derided in a culture that has an obsession with youth.

I assume you already know that these ideals are capitalist nonsense in the first place, and that nothing about human minds and bodies is actually described by them. This is easier said than internalised, but still worth repeating. These are not ideals that it is worth comparing yourself to. Other people’s lives—people who may seem to fit the pattern, but perhaps don’t in ways that aren’t always visible to you—are not worth comparing yourself to. Their lives are not yours. Value the specific over the general.

You also say you “didn’t achieve anything except surviving & becoming stable.” Any model that sees surviving and becoming stable as not being “really” an achievement is an absurd model! This is an immense achievement that you ought to be proud of. Childhood abuse impacts people more than many realise. It is not even like abuse in adulthood, where there is a sense of healthy relationships or a sense of self that has been formed prior to trauma and “recovery” can be (perhaps wrongly, but still) conceptualised as “return.” Victims of childhood abuse, upon reaching adulthood, are building from nothing. Building from worse than nothing, really, because there are not just things you need to know that you never learnt, but also habits that used to help you survive that need to be jettisoned. If rebuilding your entire concept of self and reorganising everything about how you relate to the world isn’t an “achievement,” what on Earth is? A “career”? No 😂

Basically, “what would have happened” / “where would I be if” isn’t a question that is worth dwelling on. By all means, take the time to mourn what you’ve lost or what could have been. But the point comes where it isn’t useful or productive or telling you anything new. All of your experiences have worked to shape who you are now, and you should be proud of who you are now. So why regret things? The person who would have been doing x y and z by now is a different person. This I what I mean when I say to value the particularities of your own life over a generic ideal that can only ever be devoid of life.

[zen-garden-gnome]

Long post about whiteness

I’m seeing a lot of false-start questions based on a narrow understanding of whiteness. Whiteness (and recovery from whiteness) can be tricky to unpack because it has a lot of layers that have been added over the years. So you’ll run into a layer and may be tempted to stop there, but it goes deeper.

1) Racial identity was a vague belief before it was officially named, but it’s not as old as many think it is. Prior to European Expansionism, travelers and merchants and militaries alike have generally referred to people based on their place of origin or their language. The idea of vaguely lumping hundreds of ethnicities together based on a handful of physical attributes started to kick up when Portugal began capturing and enslaving huge numbers of sub-Saharan Africans in the mid-1400s. As slave traders and “explorers” brought shiploads of captured, multi-ethnic Africans to Portuguese auction blocks to be traded all over Europe, what set these enslaved people apart from anyone else there (including other enslaved people) was a) the fact that they were to some degree darker than the Portuguese despite displaying a wide range of skin tones, b) were from Africa at the time, and c) were enslaved. When Christian militant and royal biographer Gomes de Zurara was hired in 1453 to write about the life and “accomplishments” of Portugal’s most famous slave trader, Infante Henrique aka Prince Henry the Navigator, he officiated, in writing, the idea that all these newly enslaved people were their own class of people with no differentiation between them. Here, race is a burgeoning social narrative invented to praise European slave traders, and this racial concept is defined in relation to slavery, African origins, and skin tone. Racial concepts appeared in tandem with racist concepts, because races began to be envisioned in order to excuse the abuse of others. The ideas of whiteness and blackness were birthed simultaneously, specifically around slavery, and they became deeply entrenched beliefs before they were ever officially named.

2. “Negro” became the first major racial term before “white” was widely used, binding the development of racial concepts even more securely with the practice of European slavery. In fact, race and racism became encoded in colonial-American law in 1640, when African servant John Punch ran away from his European buyers along with two European servants. He was eventually recaptured, as were his Dutch and Scottish companions. However, the colonial judicial system sentenced Punch to a lifetime of slavery, while the two Europeans had an extra year added to their initial servitude. This marks the first record of a Euro/American legal precedence for lifetime sentencing of enslavement based openly on race. John Punch’s African lineage and the other servants’ European lineage were the differences between their sentencing. Here, European origin was what freed a person from being of the “negro race” and therefore severely reduced one’s likelihood to enslavement. It was also the requirement for incoming settlers who wanted to be able to buy land. Only white people were allowed to develop inter-generational wealth, at a time when this continent was being carved up by land speculators for massive profits.

3. The concept of whiteness was officially named by Carl Linnaeus in order to rank Europeans as superior among other conceptual categories of people. It involved grouping hundreds of ethnic groups together to form white, yellow, red, and black races in he text “System Naturale" (1735). While primarily an introduction to our current taxonomy system, it included these racial categories. It was highly regarded by Europeans eager to cast themselves as superior because it a) created a popular “scientific” framework for excusing the most obscene (and profitable) crimes against humanity, b) officially outlined/invented the white race and identified it with everything good and the black race as everything bad, and then c) clearly defined Europeans as the basis of whiteness, “Homo sapiens europaeus.” Here, whiteness is coined to describe European ancestry, particularly in relation to “grotesque” non-whites.

4. An individual’s personal ideas of whiteness fluctuates with time and circumstances. As governments, social institutions, literature, etc all work to redefine history and clean up their image, people have different/less information to work with, but the effects are the same. The popular spoken definition of whiteness is often simply a reference to a relatively pale skin tone caused by European ancestry. Obviously there are pale people in other places around the world who aren’t European and weren’t related to the slavery of European Expansionism, so pale skin isn’t enough. The relation to Europe’s capitalistic global expansion is key. But what about European countries who didn’t go expanding this way, or whose involvement is harder to pinpoint? After all, most of the trading of enslaved indigenous peoples from Africa and North & South America were carried out by the Portuguese, Genoese, Dutch, French, British, Spanish, and Americans. Well, the rapid enrichment and development of the rest of Europe for centuries to come was specifically made possible by all the labor, resources, and capital brought in by this period of the European slave trade. European ancestry links every white person to privileges and developments born on the backs of black and indigenous enslaved peoples. Furthermore, simply being white makes one safer from these kinds of exploits, and today it also makes one safer from the effects of generations of racial prejudices and resource extraction on the global scene. Which brings me to...

5. Whiteness tends to involve one’s relative freedom. Freedom of movement, both physical and social, without immediate threat of policing. Freedom to explore one’s ancestral history without being blocked by 500 years of forced removal, renaming, forced childbirth, etc. Freedom to exist without having to actually know or respond to one’s racial identity. This one’s really important. Whiteness involves not having to think about being white, usually in relation to living in a country/region whose laws and norms are defined and enforced almost exclusively by other white people. Since whiteness and blackness arose mutually around the European slave trade, blackness is inherently tied to a lack of rights/freedoms and whiteness is inherently tied to an abundance of them. That doesn’t mean that every white person experiences these equally, and there will always be exceptions to the rule. But the exceptions don’t make the rule, and after centuries of globalized white supremacy, whiteness has become a subconscious signifier of power for people all over the place.

The big take-away is this: whiteness is inherently toxic. There is nothing positive to defend in whiteness. It was born out of ugliness and it is ugly to its core. That’s why it feels so bad. It’s why “white pride” is always ugly. However, the solution is not to disconnect from our ancestry. All that does is leave us trapped here, in an ugly set of circumstances, with no concept of who we are except what we’re living in, now. The real work to be done is to connect with our ancestry before whiteness, with the ancestors who related to the land as a living entity, before the land was limited in social memory to a source of private capital, servitude, and empire-building. This land, this Earth, is the backdrop against which all our relativity is measured. From this place of relative security, understanding, and development of the spirit, we can withstand the reality of our more recent ancestors, and finally heal from the last 1000 to 2000 years of trauma.

I know I’ve said this before, but now that I have this huge post, I’ll repeat it: Dr. Daniel Foor’s Ancestral Medicine is a really helpful book and/or course for this whole process. It’s not the end-all be-all resource, but it’s a great start! I’m also always down to talk about this stuff. Hit me up. I need to be able to talk about it, too.

(I should add, while blackness was created by white people and therefore was born out of the racism of whiteness, blackness was forced on people, while whiteness was claimed by the takers. It’s no white person’s place to have an opinion about "black identity.” White people started race, so white people are responsible for deconstructing our own race--no one else’s. We cannot be “post-racial” while everyone else is still living the violent reality of racism.)

[travoltacustom]

The Presentation of Hifumi’s Trauma

I’ve been thinking on how Hifumi’s trauma has been presented for years now, and with the release of Bad Ass Temple VS Matenro, I feel like now’s as good a time as any to give my thoughts on this.

Note: This is in no way a defense of KR for the presentation of Hifumi’s trauma, but it is an analysis of such. I’m open to discussion on this and you’re free to disagree with me at any point on this. Most of this was also written BEFORE the release of the album, save for the last section.

CW: Mentions of abuse, trauma and rape + spoilers of the MTR dramatrack

I hear a lot that the presentation of Hifumi’s trauma is a ‘poor attempt at humour’, but I don’t exactly think it’s that simple. It is still a presentation of trauma, but it’s not portrayed as humorous in comparison to the rest of the humour of the series.

NARRATIVE

Hifumi panics when he sees women. He is unable to do anything until women are removed from the scene - but these instances are hardly ever the focus of the scene. It’s mostly used as a scene cutter to progress the story. When Chuo enters, Hifumi’s panic cuts off the situation and the focus shifts straight to the women. When the women find Hifumi, Doppo, Gentaro and Dice, Hifumi’s jacket is taken away to shift focus off of the women and to have Gentaro and Dice speak. Rather, Hifumi’s panic at these times are plot movers and not the focal point of the scene. Sadly, they can be seen as plot devices, but it’s not supposed to be seen as humour.

In addition to this, the ‘hysterical’ screaming (for lack of a better word) in the presence of women is limited to the dramatracks. In the manga and the anime, Hifumi runs away/removes himself from the presence of women. The purpose of Hifumi’s hysteria in the dramatracks is for visualisation purposes as there’s no visual aids - the reactions to women are toned down in the anime and manga. With this, it’s easier to believe that the anime and manga is the ‘intended’ portrayal of his reactions as the dramatrack has to make up for what isn’t seen.

PRESENTATION

The narrative is very aware that Hifumi’s trauma affects him badly. It’s a panic response. But it’s not the same as a panic attack. We know how awful the presentation of such can be, and it’s definitely something triggering for a lot of people. Personally, I would feel horrible to see him have a panic attack every time he saw a woman. KR doesn’t want to make his discomfort the focus of the scene either. Simply put, I think his trauma response is a part of the scene, but has less plot purpose than what is going on around it. 

Trauma can be presented in different ways, but it’s more controlled to see only a glimpse of how trauma has affected Hifumi. There are other ways of showing this trauma and how it’s affected Hifumi that HPMI has already covered: Hifumi being unable to take off his suit jacket, behavioural change when wearing the jacket, his extremely warped perception of danger when his life is threatened etc. He’s spent 10 years adapting to the trauma and is in a stage of recovery as he’s going to confront his said abuser. If we were compounding this plot point with an idea of a Hifumi that is always having panic attacks, then we would have a Hifumi that is clearly not ready to deal with what he wants.

COMPARISON

We know the writers can portray trauma as such from Jyushi’s backstory. If we remember the fandom response, there were people who were legitimately triggered to varying degrees by what happened to Jyushi’s grandmother and the severe bullying he suffered. Really, I believe that Hifumi’s trauma hasn’t been the forefront of scenes because narratively it’s not the time for this to happen yet.

There seems to be a ‘trauma-porn’ narrative around the need to have Hifumi’s trauma played out ‘correctly. Trauma porn is media that showcases a group’s pain and trauma in excessive amounts for the sake of entertainment. There’s no need right now to show the extent of how badly Hifumi has been affected, because his trauma isn’t the focal point of the story or his character. His past is about to be shown, but it shouldn’t be what defines Hifumi as a character. And even more importantly so, there’s no ‘right’ version of trauma to portray.

HONOBONO

[ This section is written post Bad Ass Temple VS Matenro’s dramatrack.]

There are no redeeming qualities to Honobono, the source of Hifumi’s trauma. She’s despised by Chuohku and kept around for her ‘usefulness’, and Doppo was unsure of Hifumi going to confront his own abuser. However, in the recent dramatrack, Hifumi’s power is taken away from him in Honobono forcing herself into his space. This is the first time we’ve ever seen Hifumi have an explosion of emotions; ‘a typical image of a panic attack’. It is an audibly uncomfortable scene, just as Jyushi’s backstory was to read. There are different levels to trauma responses that HPMI has shown us with the 1st season’s Hifumi with short moments, but this instance is long and drawn out with guttural screaming.

HPMI was always perfectly capable of showing trauma, but for a listener, to hear this sort of occurrence every time around a woman would be potentially harmful. At this moment, Hifumi was nearly completely paralysed, suffering a breakdown of his identity by switching pronouns and screaming (similar to Gentaro’s breakdown at the insult of his clothes). It is difficult to listen to this. I don’t believe you would’ve wanted to hear this every time Hifumi was reminded of Honobono. We’ve even learned that the abuse might not have been dealt directly to Hifumi but to his family - we see Hifumi’s love for his family here in being so torn by her actions, and how trauma does not have to deal with someone directly either.  However, the first instances of Hifumi’s trauma were more ‘digestible’ for a viewer, and they set us up for this moment. It was good that Hifumi’s panic responses were less heavy than the blow we’ve been dealt with this dramatrack.

In meeting Hifumi, Honobono greets her with “Hi-Fu-Mi”, just like how Hifumi says his own name in songs. It is most likely that Honobono said his name like this when they were in highschool; for Hifumi to use it in his songs now can be seen as a reclamation of his identity, as now Honobono can’t use his own name against him. Hifumi has spent years recovering from her, and seeing small hints of how he’s trying to move on from that time is a legitimately good way to understand the recovery from trauma.

WHAT IS IT?

The HPMI fandom seemed to have an ‘obsession’ with what exactly traumatised Hifumi up until this point. Most believed that it would have been sexual abuse/rape, given that he fears the opposite gender, and it wouldn’t have been the first time sexual themes have appeared in HPMI (the trafficked women at the start of BB/MTC’s manga). However, to think that ‘there is only one sort of trauma that can cause Hifumi’s pain’ is a dangerous idea. Almost anything can be traumatising, and almost anything can be a trigger. 

There’s no need to theorise ‘what is good enough’ to be a trauma for him. To fear women, it can simply be that a woman has done something bad to him - which we see is Honobono. When we hear women fearing men because a man did something bad to them, we don’t theorise what exactly happened to her. There’s the automatic assumption that gendered fear is the result of sexual abuse, when in reality, it can be any manner of abuse that has caused this.

OPINIONS

So I don’t think KR is portraying Hifumi’s trauma as humorous. It’s definitely awkward, but the narrative has constantly made it clear that he’s in a state of discomfort that stems from trauma and Doppo and Jakurai always do their best to move him out of those situations without drawing too much attention. Nobody in the story laughs at him, save for Asunaro, who’s an ill-mannered child without sensitivity towards both Doppo and Hifumi, and Honobono, the source of his trauma. Those who don’t understand Hifumi in the adult cast however only find confusion in him. 

There’s no ‘best’ portrayal of trauma in any media. But it’s clear that HPMI isn’t trying to be malicious or poke fun at any sort of trauma at all. If anything, I think the portrayal of it so far has been relatively ‘easy’ on common audiences that don’t explore such media, helping people to realise how trauma can manifest without forcing others who do have trauma to realise their pained experience in this media. Hifumi has been painted as someone relatable to those with trauma because he’s still a man who’s capable of doing his best while still stumbling along his way to recovery. Traumatised shouldn’t be the descriptor of Hifumi, but he is a character that has been traumatised.

While Honobono and her abuse is an integral part of Hifumi’s backstory, she does not define him as a person. To portray Hifumi as a strong character, despite moments of trauma responses, was a suitable choice in treating him respectably. 

[its-our-paris]

Adding on to the previous anon, it seems the problem a lot of people have is that he’s not the ‘perfect victim’ which is absolutely bullshit. Just because he said some gross stuff in private, abused drugs and drank alcohol, wasn’t completely meek or subservient or bent to her every whim without ever standing up to her, doesn’t mean he’s not a victim or that he doesn’t deserve justice. (See: people seeing the video of him yelling and slamming cabinets after learning his mother had died and his managers had stolen millions of his money or hearing that he punched a whiteboard and immediately going ‘see he’s a violent woman beater!’) and this applies to addicts too. It’s all ‘addiction is a disease, addicts need our support’ until they relapse or display self destructive behaviour or the recovery process isn’t 100% smooth sailing.

Her lawyers and a lot of people seem to hone in on his addiction and equate it with ‘abuser’ and that is extremely problematic. People who struggle with substance abuse aren’t necessarily abusers for fuck’s sake. And I know her lawyers keep beating this dead horse because they have close to nothing. He was self medicating with opiates since he experienced DV as a child and multiple people said his behaviour is largely the same no matter sober or under influence.

Obviously he has some unhealthy coping mechanisms and unresolved traumas that have influenced how he behaves and functions in life and in relationships. He did say he ‘married his (abusive) mother’. He’s conflict avoidant and likes to escape altercation which directly set her off bc her greatest fear is him leaving her and she equates him ‘splitting’ to him not caring about her or the relationship and ‘not fighting for her’ (she also experienced DV as a child). Not excusing her actions ofc, she’s a massive narcissistic manipulator like anon said but yeah this relationship is extremely toxic.

However so far from the info that’s been made public, Johnny Depp seems self aware and mostly harmful to himself and tries hard to not let his problems negatively affect other people in his life.

TLDR; no one needs to fit whomever’s ‘perfect victim’ profile to be listened to and believed. Victims are allowed to be flawed humans and still deserve our compassion and help.

Here's the thing. I'm really not going to argue that Johnny doesn't seem like a pretty difficult, traumatised person to begin with. He sure does, traumatic childhood to match and everything. And equally, Amber also clearly is not very okay in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, people who are struggling with past trauma are usually the ones more likely to fall into toxic relationships. Few people with a completely healthy, strong sense of self-worth and the ability to form secure bonds will find themselves in abusive relationships, will find themselves becoming abusive in relationships, etc.

However, like you say, just the fact that somebody has issues, that somebody is addicted to drugs or alcohol, does not automatically make that person an abuser.

The fact is that what I'm getting from the audios, is predominantly Johnny trying to get away from her, physically, and Amber escalating fights physically. That makes him the more self-aware, reasonable person here. "I will try to get myself away from you because a) I don't feel safe and b) I don't want to do something I will regret" is the most sane thing to do in a situation where your partner is becoming physically violent, especially in the case of a man who is aware he has the physical strength to hurt his female partner easily, if he wanted to. She just does come across - I mean some of the things she says even, apart from the physical assault, about him as a father and his children, as a parent, that's... that is low, you just do not - she comes across as somebody who provokes a lot. Somebody who tries to convince her partner that her version of events is true, and his is false, in spite of what he knows to be true (gaslighting, hello) a lot.

So, yes. Her image, on the outside, is far cleaner. He's kind of a messed up guy. Not a "perfect victim", likely not even always the victim at all in every fight they had. But this trial is about the fact that she ruined his reputation by depicting herself as 100% the victim, and as far as I'm seeing, that is not even remotely true.