#and begging from both the mentally and physically disabled to be given so much as time of day let alone treated with respect

[dreamlogic]

aye can i get a fuckin uuuhhhh

break. on my burger

[smilepilled]

i am very tired regarding the afab transfem/amab transmasc discourse. intersex AND perisex trans people have been begging folks to stop assigning certain genitalia or biosex characteristics to trans experiences since forever— your bioessentialism isnt helpful because youre giving it a pink progressive coat of paint. afab/amab as terms dont even mean "female" and "male" biologically, which makes all of this even more reduntant. (also the fact that the terms do have ties to intersex forceful sex-gender assignment in medical records, etc etc, makes it all the more grim in general)

even if a perisex [fe]male person were to be transfem/transmasc (and/or use these labels), who are we to bar them from it? cops? controlling the use of existence, labels and self identification is not helping anyone, much less the people you categorize as "really trans". transgenderism can come from so many different experiences that arent related to biosex details. as in... you know, intersectionality? the same thing some of you preach about, despite not grasping it to the full and proper extent? yeah, let's talk about that.

ive heard directly from close peers who are of color that their experiences with racism and related issues have made them feel as if they are trans. some of them also included their mental conditions, disability and neurodivergency into it. there are so many things that play into the category of gender, wether female or male by societal standards, its not just limited to sexual organs or characteristic or birth papers. their experiences with different forms of bigotry that werent exclusively and/or strictly related to their biological sex played into their experience with gender. who would've guessed? its complex for them, and their genders have been affected — thats more than enough reason. my peers deserve to be themselves.

but for me, the worst part is that (in a considerable amount of cases) they FEARED to identify as transfem or transmasc because of the people who jump others for being either or both, because now there's a pointless checklist for being trans in a certain way. its absolutely absurd that ive heard from some of the most incredibly transsexual peers of mine that they feel SCARED OF and SHAMED AWAY from identifying with said terms, as if that was ever the point in being transgender, as if people need permission from others to exist with proper labels to their experiences. i don't care if some of them are perisex or not, i can still embrace my fellows for their unique gender experiences, because thats how trans fellowship should fucking be. transsexual is used positively as the historical trans term, don't give me shit for this. thanks

and if you need more on that — growing up, i was "seemingly a perisex female" due to my characteristics only exposing themselves around the ages of 7-10. before that, i was already thrown around between "too manly" and "still a female" due to being mentally ill and very notoriously neurodivergent. masking my neurodivergence became useless once i grew up because i was physically "an abomination". did people stop to check my genitals to see if they could be ragingly transmisogynistic to me? no. did people let the fact i had my sex on birth papers as "female" stop them from dehumanizing me akin to any other intersex/transfem individual? also no. it was never about that, its about forcing people to fit into (usually eurocentric) ideals for gender and sex.

my XX chromossomes, my breasts and my vagina did not bar me from being played as a volleyball in social environments, nor did it stop my metamorphosis involving the fact im transgender in all directions. i have never been given a chance to be cisgender, i have never been able to be the "perisex afab tme" that so many of you are obsessed with assigning to strangers online. not once in my life did i EVER get the privilege of being treated like that, i was always either a grotesque abomination or the modern "female? to the left?" that i reside in. i am transfem, and i am CTF, and i dont need anyone to parrot their very perisex bioessentialist ideas to me umprompted. i am transfem, i am transmasc, i am transneunull — and that is final, absolute, something of which will only ever change if <i> change accordingly [which is unlikely to ever happen).

please. i am begging you. more people are begging you. this discourse is futile when trans people are actively being erased from queer history and life, as well as intersex people being systemically and robotically removed from existence through medical abuse or death. please. let's pay attention to the important issues. if you're more worried about criticizing amab/afab, male/female people, with the context of them using certain labels, then you're wasting your time and everyone's time too. please unite now more than ever instead of focusing on who can or can't use certain terminology. it is absurd that in 2025 we are still having these conversations AT ALL, please wake the fuck up and open your eyes. your "afab tme transandrodork" hate fantasies are fucking abominable and you need to lock the fuck in towards things that actually matter.

(as in, transmasc-focused forms of oppression DO matter, but being this negatively obsessed with a specific type of people isn't useful and it makes you look like the average conservative to specifically target trans dudes and transmascs. the creator of "transmisoginy" has straight up said that transmascs/trans dudes might be included in their own way within the term, so its absurd some of you use TME onto random strangers you know nothing about)

[littlemoondarling]

i don't know your characters yet, but i want to, sooo... 9, 12, 26, 30, 35, 42, 48, 50 and 57 for both ezra and theodore! hopefully it's not too much... 😅

Awww ty so much!! No ask is too much so never worry ab it! I'll answer under the read more bc I talk alot~

Starting off with dear ol Ezra Woodburn because he's a bit more down to earth than Teddy

[9] What is their love language?

His love language is physical affection, if he initiates it with you then you are sure to be his favourite person in the whole world because he despises being touched. That was how his husband discovered that "oh shit there may be something more than friendship here" when Ezra randomly cuddled next to him while watching movies on the couch.

[12] How high is their self-esteem?

Ezra's self esteem is so low it migot as well be in the center of earth XD

He was never able to accept anything about himself and always felt like a mistake that shouldn't have been born, but still, he makes it to over 50.

[26] Do they have any physical or mental ilness, how do they handle it and how open they are about it?

He has both, he has chronic joint pain and fatigue that he has been struggling with since childhood, he also suffers from terrible social anxiety, depression and autism but he never got diagnosed because he refuses to go to a psychiatrist. His family is a very conservative "pull yourself by your bootstraps" kinda family so he was raised to feel immense shame at his disabilities and so he is only open about them with his husband, but it isn't too difficult for people around him to guess given his behaviour.

[30] What are their most healthy and most unhealthy coping mechanisms?

The healthiest is definitely writing and spending quality time with his husband and cat, the unhealthy is sh and smoking :|

[35] Do they like their own appearance, and what do they do, if anything, to alter it in any way?

He really really doesn't, if he is given the chance to look like anyone else he would take it in a heartbeat. He got both top and bottom surgery to ease the dysphoria of being born in the wrong body and he has thought about going to the gym to lose some weight but his pain immediately flares up, but he is getting slightly better at accepting himself given how many kisses his husband gives the areas he considers flawed.

[42] What is their idea of a perfect friendly hangout and/or romantic date?

Going out to the library or a picnic in nature, maybe even a trip to the shelter so he can pet all the animals and coo at them and beg you for seven more cats, three birds, a turtle and a snake.

[48] Are they, or were they at some point in their life, a part of any subculture?

He experimented with the leather goth subculture in his 20s but he immediately discovered that he doesn't have the energy to melt in the summer, so for now it is only a winter and bedroom subculture XD

[50] What are they really good and really bad at?

He's good at cooking, writing, organizing, cleaning and giving orders, he sucks at teamwork, asking for help, singing and knowing when to take a break (and socializing, my man has 0 friends outside of the ones his husband introduced him to)

[57] What was the most stupid or dangerous thing they have ever done?

The most stupidly dangerous thing was to let a stranger that ten years before was his bully at summer camp into his home because he (The bully) had all his money stolen and had nowhere to stay, it ended well for him tho.

The most dangerous thing is probably having 7 attempts at his own life before he turned 25. He eventually met a guy in the psych ward who was fostering a mother cat and her kittens and that is how he got his little angel cat Pumpkin (the guy at the psych ward was Theodore)

Now for Theodore Malik!

[9] What is their love language?

Giving gifts and acts of survice, he will cook for you and make you the best outfits you've ever seen all for the small price of tolerating his existence and listening to him ramble about Batman for way waaaay too long. On the more extreme end he will kill for the people he cares about ♡

[12] How high is their self-esteem?

It fluctuates between I am a gift from god blessing you with my mere existence to I am the worst thing to ever happen to this planet and if i don't stop existing right now the whole world will explode.

[26] Do they have any physical or mental ilness, how do they handle it and how open they are about it?

He is immortal and has otherworldly physical strength and immunity but you will find him with very sever injuries more times than not, mentally he has a little cocktail that consists of depression, general anxiety, bipolar, ptsd and some psychotic hallucinations. He is very open about everything and you WILL know when he is upset because nothing on God's green earth will stop this man from complaining.

[30] What are their most healthy and most unhealthy coping mechanisms?

The healthy ones are cooking, embroidery and chatting with his friends, the unhealthy ones are smoking, drinking, driving off of cliffs and other destructive actions

[35] Do they like their own appearance, and what do they do, if anything, to alter it in any way?

He is obsessed with his appearance, narcissus levels of self love, all except his eyes, they are blue like his mother but he would very much prefer if he had inherited the warm brown of his father's.

[42] What is their idea of a perfect friendly hangout and/or romantic date?

Theodore's perfect date would be going to the club, getting wasted and forgetting about everything the next day, but if you're not a fan of that he would settle to going to a convention with you.

[48] Are they, or were they at some point in their life, a part of any subculture?

Punk goth, from the 60s till now, before that he just dressed in frilly dressed with floral patterns

[50] What are they really good and really bad at?

He is good at listening, taking care of people, cooking, making and fixing clothes, making friends, and making enemies, he's terrible and mainting a healthy long term relationship, taking care of himself, cleaning, and making good life decisions

[57] What was the most stupid or dangerous thing they have ever done?

Every choice he has ever done is stupid and dangerous, the honorable mentions being running away from home at 16 to go live with the man who stalked him, didn't end well at all. Attempting to kill his ex's abusive ex but he is the most powerful vampire so the only damage Theodore managed to do was burning half of that man's face (and getting himself on a hitlist) and having a thing for mafia bosses which isn't that good when you date two people from opposing sides at the same time :)

[sincelastsession]

Oh mom and dad and friends can all have difficult times but if I do the fuck me I guess.

Why is it though that people don't care? Where is the "no fucks given up my own ass" born?

Because today there were 3 unattended children at the pool all under 13. Then two unrelated white dudes. So I called the courtesy officer and then immediately went outside when one of the men started trying to talk to the girls.

They eventually went back to apartment 60 and the old men left immediately after.

I cared because I didn't want to see kids abused etc... by two shady ass dudes. BUT THEIR OWN MOTHER DOESN'T CARE.

My parents told me they'd move me by July or end of August.

Now I have to wait until September.

Despite the fucking noise I do have physical disabilities.

Then another fucking family came out that doesn't live here and left the kids so I had to call brpd

Now we have another huge family who has hopped the fence screaming and crying and the officer said he was coming out.

I'm so fucking sick of talking to police officers.

I've spoken to 3 of them. THREE.

I'm treated like I'm crazy.

I'm so tired of this shit.

I have BEGGED my parents to answer the phone in real actual tears. They don't care.

Don't nobody fuckin understand me nor do they try nor do they give a fuck.

I'll probably wake up to my shit knocked over or something.

My parents think I'm insane and have told me to shut the fuck up and quit calling them.

Honestly I don't know what to do anymore.

I can't even relax to take care of myself.

They have just put the blame back on me for some reason which I don't understand.

They don't seem to understand that I'm having both APTSD episode and autistic meltdown they don't know how to deal with that I've asked them to learn please I've asked them nicely so many times

I don't have anybody else to call

I don't have a life because I can't calm down to go out to go places to have a life

But he tells me to get a life and it's like I'm trying fuck

When you have to live in a place that's super loud when you have mental issues that are from legitimately bad bad traumas

It is hell

I don't like having to take any of the medicine that I have to take but I have to take it every day

And I'm so tired of being treated like shit

They're gonna end up planning a fucking funeral instead of helping me

And they'll probably fuck that up and I'll have to hold everybody.

And these are just intrusive thoughts right now and I don't mean any of that.

I'm angry though because they don't understand that 1 day I might lose touch with reality like I have before that's how I got my original diagnosis of complex PTSD I just lost my fucking mind. I thought that you know everybody was trying to hurt me and attack me and I wasn't even safe in the hospital

But I've never been safe

And The Times that I thought I was safe with somebody or in some place it backfired and everything went to shit.

Like I just want to be loved and this is hell.

At this point I don't know at this point in time if I care about how mean I am to other people right now.

Because they do nothing but hurt me when no one else is around

Everybody fucking hurts me

Everybody treats me like a fucking insane and I'm not

I wish I had the money to fucking leave and never come back.

And they talk to each other behind my back about me they're just waiting for an excuse to put me in a psychfacility I'm just waiting for it

It doesn't matter that I'm gonna be abused by staff members of hospitals and psychfacilities and all of that it doesn't matter that that happened

Because I'm crazy and who would believe me

Because that's what everybody says about me

I'm so tired and I hate everything and it hurts so much in my chest everything hurts

It literally feels like there's just a giant hole in my chest all the time. And I hear people complaining about depression and it makes me want to scream at them because I don't even know why

It's just like I don't think people know real pain

I'm sure some do

But nobody knows my story and nobody gives a fuck

Nobody seems to understand that I'm having problems that are unrelated to manipulative behavior which everybody thinks that I do

I'm not trying to control or manipulate or fuck with anybody's head. Those thoughts don't even cross my mind and when they do it's usually because somebody has recently brought it up saying that I am manipulating and I'm doing this and I'm having a pity party at all of that and I'm not doing that.

What I'm scared of is A multitude of things.

My parents don't even know me.

They don't want to listen to me talk they don't care they want be to shut up.

I'm trying to order that together and they don't understand

They do not understand that I can lose touch with reality and flip out completely and I'm trying not to do that

And I'm scared that that is going to happen and I keep trying to tell them when they think I'm threatening them

I'm like you guys better plan for a fucking funeral then because if you guys continue to put me in a stressful condition like this and treat me like crap and blame everything on me and switch it up on me and cherry pick things from online articles and throw it in my face and use therapy against me and all that other crap then no they're not going to have a daughter because it's going to end up making me die

I have a brand new heart problem on top of all this and stress is not helping that either.

I'm not prescribed enough anxiety medicine to actually call me down completely it just slightly sedates me and that's not even working because I'm overpowering it.

Not consciously but that's what's happening.

I haven't even fucking eaten today because I can't

Because if I eat I'm gonna fucking throw up

I really just don't feel loved or cared for and I don't care how many times my parents need to tell me otherwise because they're just liars

It's hard to believe anything that they say

Everybody has me misunderstood completely and I don't know how to explain myself to them

I don't have the perfect vanacular it works to use

Every therapist I have had things that they have me pinned and they know what's going on

But they don't

I don't think you do either

I'm not doing these things that I've been accused of doing

I do actually have all of these diagnoses and sometimes unfortunately you have to go by the diagnosis treatments because that's what helps

I don't think that I'm being irrational. I don't think that anything that can be construed as a cognitive distortion is irrational right now

I think that my feelings are extremely valid.

But I don't think anybody cares about my feelings.

And nobody understands that I am in mental agony

Nobody understands what it's like to be autistic until they actually get the diagnosis and they're like oh my God this is why I've been like this my whole life

And this world is the built for people like me

The only people that understand my ptsd are fucking military people

To everybody else I'm just full of shit and making things up and haven't cognitive distortions and I can't shut up and I can't hold a fucking thought to save my life like gun head if I had to hold on to a thought I would end up getting shot

I mean it's 9:32 PM and there's people still at the pool screaming and hollering after 2 police officer vis it's and it's over a normal amount of sound

My fucking chest hurts.

And you know I really don't think that people care

They say they do but how can I trust that I don't really trust anybody

How could I trust anybody with some of the first interactions I've had with people have been literal child abuse pedophilia

And that's not my only trauma I can't even list all of them.

Some of them are so fucking hard to talk about that it just makes me want to run away immediately

I hate that I'm screaming into a phone crying because no one else will listen.

Yeah I hate that I'm about to just journal everything because no one really cares

I hate that I'm 37 and I feel like a little kid right now

Give me all I really need is for somebody to give me a hug and tell me it's gonna be okay and be reassuring and loving and caring and I'd never got that unless I was fucking dying the fucking hospital

I don't understand this world that I live in.

I have never understood why I was bullied.

I don't understand a lot and yeah I talk okay I don't sound autistic I don't act autistic as much as other people but that doesn't mean that I'm not.

I feel like if I had the money and could pay somebody to watch my cats and could fill up my car and pack a bag and just drive that I would probably make it to the Canadian border and all through 20 different states before people even noticed I was gone

But I get too much anxiety leaving my apartment to go to the fucking grocery store which is something that I never imagined myself doing

Why am I being put through all of this

I am nothing but nice to people and then they are awful to me and then they wonder why I snap back

Yeah because I show them a mirror of their bullshit and they don't like it so they hang up or they yell at me or they treat me like shit I can't help that I do those things though

All I have known how to do my whole life is to watch other people and copy what they do because I don't know how to be a person very well it's just a copy of a fucking copy of a fucking copy I'm just mirroring I'm just creating a mask so I feel safe enough to be in a space with other people because I don't feel like I'm welcome

I have never felt like my entirety has been welcome in any space

I'm so tired and I'm just want to sleep it's going to be held and I just want to be loved

And I can't even trust another person to do that properly because they'll take advantage of me

And I don't want to go to a cycle facility and I don't want to have my medicine fucked with

And I miss my old saying kai interested actually fucking stud me figured me out it was the only person that had me figured out

He knew and he understood what I went through

And this new Doctor he understands what I'm going through with the PTSD and with the abuse

But he didn't really doesn't even fucking care unless I give him money for an appointment and I can't afford a psychotherapy appointment on top of regular appointments from my medicine

And I see you and I talk to you and I don't think we're looking at the right things I don't think that we're focusing on the correct things

I feel like everybody is so focused about how I speak in the fact that I interrupt because I can't hold on to a fucking thought to save my life and I don't know how to fix that and if I did holy shit I would

I am very aware of how I act and how that looks to people no matter if I'm or not

You know I told my dad that he damaged my neck like I have damaged soft tissue from him ripping my head down to the ground almost while my sister was attacking me

He didn't give a fuck he told me he didn't give a fuck

He's still doesn't care that I've had to speak with police officers today and that I'm in distress he doesn't give a shit he thinks I'm spoiled he wants me to show you all the text messages that I sent that we're completely logical except for the last one where I exploded

I mean what am I supposed to do I don't have money to go leave my apartment and go places

I don't feel comfortable by myself in the library because I've how many weirdos just approach me

I don't know why weirdo's keep approaching me no matter where I am I feel like a fucking magnet for them

I've read plenty of articles that saying that people who have been abused especially in early childhood are going to be targets as they get older and that's true that I am proof of that and I didn't even know it I'm like oh why is this happening oh it's because I'm somehow magically giving off target energy

I'm not fucking aware of what it is that I'm doing wrong and then when people tell me I don't quite understand that either because it's so far-fetched from what I'm actually saying or doing that it doesn't make any sense to me

I'm tired of being in this apartment I'm tired of not being able to get out and go places because the only person that can give me a ride is Travis and he goes to bed early and I'm not mad at him about that I'm just aggravated that I can't see very well at night anymore because I'm getting older and so I can't go to all these events that all my friends want me to go to

And none of these people are really my friends anyway. I don't really think that anybody knows what friendship is anymore. Because the same people that invite me to go out are the same people that hang around with other people who hate my fucking guts and talk shit about me and spread bullshit around the friend community and then I have to hear about it from someone else Eventually

Like there's a giant rumor going around that me and Travis are dating which I have had to tell people multiple times that that is not what is happening

Also I'm an untrustworthy bitch according to Bonnie and everybody who's friends with her ass

Then the people who are neutral I don't quite understand it's like okay so you're gonna go on a before marriage trip to fucking Mexico with my ex best friend who is a heinous bitch and made fun of a sober person and the person that overdosed that I care about

Why is it that the meanest motherfuckers get away with so much.

I mean do I need to start being mean all the time

What's the difference between being assertive and mean because I try to be assertive all the time but everybody calls me a bitch and I'm like oh great wonderful so I failed that again

Why do all these people get away with shit and it's OK

Why is it me that's always the problem?

[fred-the-dinosaur]

YWBTA

look, I've been there before with a parent. I said hang on it's ok how im doing it, I just love them and want them to be well. I thought I was being kind, but I agreed with their doctor about losing weight and exercising to avoid diabetes. They did neither as long as it was connected to me criticising them. They lost some weight later as part of an illness. Then they got diabetes anyway (which is not caused or cured by weight changes despite what people tell you.)

I couldn't have helped them by telling them my concerns earlier or louder. Because none of that would go back in time and change their genetics, or the long times they starved in the past, before they were ever fat. Both of which are better candidates for probably influencing diabetes than being fat, though I stress, we still haven't found the cause and medical fatphobia makes it hard to do so. All I did was hurt someone I love and make them feel like it was their fault when they got diabetes, which it just wasn't.

(Also, rapid weight loss can cause gallstones, heart issues and a host of other problems that are supposedly fat people diseases)

Being overweight is much less dependently connected to being overweight than people think. Heavy calorie restriction and weight loss is much more harmful to heath than people think. If your partner has chronic health issues, they are not necessarily caused by weight and will likely persist through weight loss. And probably through genetic transfer to children.

I understand wanting to be cautious about passing on illness to children. I wish my parents and my spouse's parents had both been more prepared for the plethora of genetic illnesses that we seem to have drawn shit lottery on. In particular, alongside all the genetic physical stuff (lethal heart stuff, asthma, a couple of rarer genetic fuckery type things) chronic familial depression and similar mental illness is something that we wish they'd either decided was too much of a risk to pass on, or tried to really prepare for supporting in their children.

It's cruel to put all of that on your wife's weight. A. Your kids could be fat anyway. Will you love them still? (If no,.really don't have kids) B. There's so many other factors. Do you have a genetic clean bill of health apart from obviously the anorexia? What would your plan be if you pass that on? Have you considered random other mishaps that might cause your kids to be disabled or ill? How would you support a chronically ill child? What are your wife's actual issues? Should you maybe be sitting down and working out your own fears anround passing your own health issues onto the kids and what it might mean to look after sick kids in a world where your wife's doctors will rule out asthma because she's fat and fat people can't have asthma? Maybe you need to reckon with that rather than hurt your wife with it.

(btw it took me 15+ years to get diagnosed with asthma, 4 of those telling docs I had it and begging to be helped. I wasn't even fat, I was just too 'fit'. So which is it docs?) She NEEDS a diagnosis, untreated asthma can kill. And youknw. Cause chest pain and other chronic issues that you're worried about weight causing. I would like to share how to push for diagnosis, please message me or at me or something. This post is too long as.is.

Anyway. I have too much to say. But I'll end on this. This is not just your anoriexia speaking. The whole of the world is orthorexic, and prescribes to dangerous ideas about weight. So many people are starving themselves and pretending that weight its the scary thing while ignoring how dangerous it is to lose weight. Your wife to be needs you on her side about this. And to get the health care she needs, which is going to be hell given our culture. (I lost 20% of my body weight in 6 months for no reason and I am horrifically ill, in and out of hospital for the last two years. No one thinks the weight loss is a concern, if anything I think they're resentful of it. I'm genuinely concerned they should be looking for cancer. I'm slim and the unhealthiest I've been in my life. This is the culture you have to battle together.)

Both of you have serious illnesses in various stages of remission. Both of you may find that you have more as you age, either as consequences or new things and bad luck. Both of you may pass things on your kid you didn't even know you had. At the heart of it, health is not a reward for good behaviour. That's a terrifying paradigm to overcome. But it's more terrifying to find out that what that also means according to most people who could help is "you don't deserve help for any illness you deserve, AMD that's all of them."

There is no future proofing against becoming sick and disabled. There's just practicing how to be kind and helpful and caring, in the hope that it makes a kinder, safer world to be sick or disabled in.

WIBTA if I told my girlfriend to lose weight?

Okay, so that sounds horrific, but bear with me.

To be clear, I (23M) could not care less what weight she (27F) is or what she looks like. I love this woman with my whole heart and none of it is about her appearance. We’re pretty much engaged in all but name, the only reason it’s not official is because we don’t have money to even think of weddings right now, and I plan to spend the rest of my life with her.

Thing is, she’s obese. Like, medically, not in a derogatory sense. This is massively affecting her health. She’s constantly out of breath, constantly in pain, constantly struggling, and it’s leading to other conditions such as sleep apnea. She thinks she has asthma because she’s always struggling to breathe, but I’m 95% sure it just comes down to weight and her doctor has said the same, but she tends to write it off as doctors being fatphobic.

Much of this is due to the fact that she used to struggle with binge-eating disorder. She no longer binge eats, but she does overeat in general because her body is so accustomed to constant food, so she gets painfully hungry and dizzy after 2-3 hours of not eating.

I’ve tried to encourage her to exercise with me, diet with me, count calories etc., but she gives up super easy when she doesn’t see immediately results. She also says herself that she finds it very difficult to see herself accurately - she has the reverse of “typical” body dysmorphia, where she sees herself as thinner than she is, so she genuinely sees herself as thin or like slightly curvy. (To be clear, she is very visibly obese, people comment on this often, and while I’ll be the first to go fists up if someone’s a dick to her about it as people have been I also am genuinely worried about her health.) Because of that she has no motivation to lose the weight because she just doesn’t see it. It’s bad enough that she’s been told by doctors she WILL likely struggle later in life with heart failure, diabetes etc if she doesn’t lose weight, yet her POV is more, “It can’t be that bad because I’m not that big so I don’t need to worry about it”. She has occasional reality checks, most recently she put her measurements into some site that shows an image of what you look like from a third person perspective, and she was completely shocked like “I can’t look like that. Do I? This is a wake up call”, but days later it’s completely lost and she’s back to saying she’s not that big again.

She wants kids with me, and I just absolutely do not want to commit to having children with her when I know there’s a not-insignificant chance she’ll have serious health issues in the future that could mean she’s not with us for as long as she could be. Both for the kids’ sake, and selfishly because I want her around! I don’t want to think about something happening to her earlier in life and being without her.

But I just don’t know what to do. Gently suggesting it hasn’t worked, saying I’m worried about her health hasn’t worked, saying I don’t want kids until she’s healthy hasn’t worked (even if she’s still overweight I really don’t care as long as she’s not in a “danger zone” y’know?), trying to meal plan with her hasn’t worked, trying to get her to keep track of calories hasn’t worked, trying to exercise with her hasn’t worked.

People I’ve asked in the past have told me to be firm about it, but I’m incredibly reluctant to do that - I struggled with anorexia for most of my teenage and adult life and I know how deep it can cut to have your weight criticised or commented on. I don’t want to be that dick who basically calls someone I love very much unhealthy and fat and tells her to lose weight or no kids or some horrible shit like that.

But I just. Can’t work out what to do. She does express a willingness to lose weight, she says she wants to, she just doesn’t have that motivation to do it. I don’t know what else we can try.

AITA for focusing on this in the first place? Like am I actually just being fatphobic, or is my own past with EDs influencing my thinking? Am I going about it all wrong? Should I just accept it as something that’ll be a potential issue in future and deal with it then or am I fair to worry about it early on?

What are these acronyms?

[annyankers]

train tell me about your xander 👀 (please?) (also hi)

XANDDDDERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

OKAY SO--- for one thing I have a tag for him on here that’s xander (train’s version) (we see a pattern here lol) also my old rp blog for him is @andhaert  which has some things like headcanons and aesthetics. 

For starters I use Liam James, especially in his role as Billy Bennett, for my actor for Xander for a few reasons:

1. It helps mentally separate this version of Xander from canon!Xander who we all know is Very Contentious whether you think he should be or not, also helps to separate Xander from the actions of his original actor Nicholas Brendan. This is kind of a standard practice in the tumblr rp world (swapping out your actor when you find out the original is Kinda Yikes) where I started to develop my Xander Concepts more coherently and it’s stuck.

2. I think Liam works really well as an actor for Xander both in looks and acting and his role as Billy really highlights it as they’re similar characters.

3. It’s probably his most prominent role atm that I know of so it’s the easiest to get content for. He also works for me as Xander with his normal brown hair but the mohawk is the dominant look.

Moving on from there I really just like..... think about Xander in terms of what we know about him factually and textually and then separate that from the Whedon and 90s teen male tv character taints. Whedon has said that Xander is like, mary sue-ish self insert of his high school self and i feel like it shows and frankly holds his character back a LOT. I’m actually a rabid Xander stan I think he has a lot of potential and good in him. I just feel like both the writers and the fandom don’t really uh..... wanna actually engage with it or his character lol.

We know canonically that Xander comes from a poor, abusive and unstable household. We see in the show evidence of verbal and emotional abuse and heavy neglect. There’s literally a scene somewhere in S1 or S2 that I don’t wanna spend and hour finding in the transcripts where he has to remind his own mom she has a son which is played for comedy but is like um... WOW. It’s implied both of his parents are alcoholics and honestly I think his father is physically abusive (I can’t remember if it’s actually canon or not but it just you know, the Vibe is There).

I don’t think we really see? A lot of that? In how he acts? Like we do see some of it but say, compared to how much the show loves to gorge itself on Buffy’s trauma the amount of time spent on Xander’s trauma and struggles at home is laughable.

So I tend to write Xander as the true ADHD  loser burnout he is and things like the dyed mohawk, ratty clothes, punk shirts and bands and skater energy Billy has just like.... Works™ for Xander. Same with the ADHD energy. Xander strikes me as a kid from a bad home with learning disabilities who’s given up on school and has turned to staying out of the house as much as possible, weed/substances, and acting out for attention as ways to cope with his shitty life. He’s sad and desperate and begging for someone to care about him and the only person who does truly give a shit about him when we meet him is Willow with whom he’s in a kinda co-dependent clingfest with because of the huge amount of insecurities they both have.

I’m genuinely sad we didn’t get skater!Xander for the whole high school era and i’m making it happen for society. It fits in soooo well with the whole Vibe the show is going for. Also I made him worse and now he likes Ska because it’s the 90s and also just look at him. Ofc Xander would like Ska. It also adds in some interesting shit with the Xander-Spike dynamic to have Xander more on the ska/skater/burnout end of punk and spike on the more trad/this is a sociopolitical statement/i’m here for the ART side of punk. It does NOT give them an immediate middle ground but it DOES give them the ability to clock each other in 0.00005 seconds. Like Spike sees him in a Descendants shirt and is like “oh I immediately know everything i need to know about you now”.

I also just think it’s more real????? I find generally with people/kids that part of why they get into subculture and special interests and such is to Cope with things. I will never forget when this dude in high school basically told me he was so in the paint for sonic the hedgehog because it was the only thing keeping him fucking sane and it altered my whole fucking concept of life and reality. I physically cannot look at sonic the same now and every time I see it I think of him and all the other people who’re into it and I’m just like “godspeed mother fuckers may you find peace in those fucking emeralds”.

Even while trying to remove the elements of his character that I think are like, creator or era taint that tends to end up skewing the conversation around him from actually being about him to being about Other Shit I don’t remove his dogshit creeper energies in like, high school, especially 1x1 to 1x6. They get better over time sure but I think it’s important to show that side of him. His dad is the Worst and Jesse-- one of his ONLY friends-- is a Massive Creep and he’s a Teen Boy. It’s really not that shocking that when he’s like 16 he just.... Sucks So Bad. All teens Kinda Suck, it’s literally part of growing up. It’s things tho like The Pack that help to start not just him changing but galvanizing others into looking out for him more.

(including the gifs as breaks in the behemoth lol kill meeeeee)

For one thing I will die on the hill that XANDER WAS ALSO A VICTIM OF THE HYENA POSSESSION AND THE SA ATTEMPT. That’s not something he’d do, want to do or ever try to do and it occurred while he did not have full autonomous control of his actions. I’ve seen some REAL DOGSHIT TAKES ON THIS ONE AND I WILL SHOOT ON SIGHT OVER THIS.

I tend to see him trying to cover it up as him trying to compartmentalize and repress the trauma of it instead of whatever the fuck THAT was in the show. I also think it really only works for so long before he loses it because I don’t think he can look Buffy in the eye without mcfucking losing it because he just feels so awful about it. Which is what prompts like..... the only moment of Giles giving a shit about Xander because he talks to him about it and helps him find a way to get some help (be it Giles himself or whatever professional-ish help they can get him given his situation and the desire to keep his parents out of it).

And that’s one of the huge differences in My Xander™ just like, he fucking-- he fucking SEES the fucking guidance counselor or some shit for you know, THE CHILD ABUSE, NEGLECT AND SA TRAUMA. Which I mean... he probably should’ve been already give how guidance counselors work but dskjghsdkfj shhhhhhh. It’s then with that, friendship, dating Cordy and Time that he starts to get less and less shitty and more Baby Boy Little Guy Meow Meow Deluxe. He still cheats on Cordy and says shitty stuff but like... there’s a noticeable overall improvement in him over S1 to S3. He’s not getting full on grade A therapy and all that but like, he’s being given a sounding board and some tools and the thing is that Xander at his core IS A VERY GOOD AND SWEET PERSON!!!! So really it’s just all about getting him to a place where all the bullshit beaten into him by his dad and SoCieTy is out of the way so he can Be A Good Boy™.

I maintain his crush on Buffy and his struggle with it over the years but I also have it kinda Die finally around S4 and then not hang around as a weird Complex for the rest of the fucking series. Seeing how he absolutely fumbled his whole relationship with Cordy and then how his relationship with Anya is going in Some Kind of Direction it all helps to finally shut the door on that for him and he really whole chestedly embraces his role as best friendboy after that. I think especially around then when he’s being a MANIAC trying to save up to gtfo out his parents’ house and Buffy’s having a Crisis about like... being a votech gal in academic world they really hardcore bond. They’re both smart but neither of them are really made for academics or classical office vibe jobs and it’s just something people like Willow and Giles will never get. It’s basically ADHD kid solidarity and they’re finally able to achieve their final friendship form without his pining issues out of the way.

I think also to make Spike’s Yoko Factor Nonsense make ANY sense Xander should actually BE SEEN CONSIDERING JOINING THE MILITARY and it’s ENTIRELY because they have that whole recruitment thing of like “join up and we pay for your education/board/etc” and he’s DESPERATE to get out of his shitty home life. Like he cannot get a half decent job for more than a fucking week, he’s desperate for money and stability and idk he didn’t die that one time on halloween and he monster hunts w/o dying either so maybe he can handle this???? and finally Escape????? but then there’s a lot of Classic Xander Strife around the choice and a genuine fear that if he leaves they’ll just... get on with their lives just fine. which would be crushing for him, that he contributed so little they just kept going with out a hitch.

Season 5 to Season 7 is really where Xander for me comes out to be just like.... the carebear godsend hero that he’s supposed to be. Like he’s talked about as the Heart of the Scoobies and Buffy’s metaphorical heart but while he does do a solid job mirroring/expressing/etc her heart he’s kind of a shitty one for the group. Like if he’s supposed to be the MOST EMPATHETIC SCOOBY IN THE GANG THEN JFC YIKES. 

By S5 everyone else’s lives are like, officially starting to fall apart while Xander’s is getting more certain and more together. He’s like, Maturing. Like a fine Faygo. And even better he’s finding the balance between being Goofy Silly Mohawk Nerd Xander and like, Adult Big Boy Xander. I think that Xanya and Spuffy should be even BIGGER parallels especially in this season with Xanya being like the more wholesome human/demon romantic relationship dynamic-- basically PROVING that it CAN work-- something that can then be used to lampshade the issue in S6 when Spuffy enter toxic hookup hell. What Spike is asking for ISN’T insane, Xander and Anya ARE DOING IT!! wHaT’s ThE pRoBlEm BuFfY?!?!?!

But Anya’s human you say!!! it’s totally different!!!

Shut the fuck up she was a demon for 1,000 years, had a soul the whole time and never once feels bad for her past actions. She’s in the same boat as Spike you’re just a sheeple falling prey to the broken ass soul propaganda.

It’s also an opportunity with the solidification of his relationship with Anya as like Something Real and not young adult horny relationshiping to show how he really is as a person. Less of the belittling “helpful” comments and more him just like, genuinely LISTENING to her and LEARNING her language like we see him do when he’s Suave!Xander in 5x3. like he Hears her and then is able to almost IMMEDIATELY understand what she’s actually saying/where her anxiety is coming from. I love the idea of Xander basically always being the most kneejerk reactionary to all situations and sometimes saying Dumb Shit because of that but then also being the only one who’s brave enough to then circle back later and reevaluate his stance.

Like he’ll say something that hurts someone’s feelings then be willing to circle back unprompted and look at himself with harsh honesty and see what he did and what’s going on with him then act accordingly and adjust/apologize/reconsider his stance/etc. Basically if Buffy is a bleeding heart then Xander should be too and the thing that makes him The Heart™ and not Buffy is that unlike her he is unwilling or unable to close off his heart to anything. Buffy can face off against the hordes of Hell but will collapse under the threat of emotional honesty with even herself. Xander was raised in Hell and not unlike Angel tbh, has to constantly reevaluate his like Whole Existence to make sure he’s not becoming what he hates-- the very real and human monstrosity that his parents represent.

His whole goal in life is to not be his father. His superpower that not even Buffy has is that he’s so incredibly brave in the face of human evil, human cruelty AND emotional vulnerability. He’s been mocked, ridiculed, bullied and tormented his entire life and he’s still stayed big hearted and intensely kind when it counted his entire life. He’s open, thoughtful, understanding, empathetic and more than willing and able to put himself in the other guy’s shoes. Something none of the others can manage like... at all lol. His relationship with Anya should be in part about showing us this and it only fails because he’s like what... 21? and still working through all his bullshit around his shitty family. Not because they were a broken couple which is more the show vibe no matter how they wanna pretend like he wasn’t a shitty boyfriend to Anya for 2 seasons lol.

I think it’s important in the back end to have at least one of them still semi-functional and Xander’s already been living in “I have to do something about my life bc otherwise I will Become That Which I Fear” hell since high school. He’s the furthest along on that road and the emotional anchor of the group so ofc he fucking sam gamgee carries them all up the side of mt doom for like 2 solid seasons lol.

my depiction of Xander is always about healing, growth and the power of empathy, love and kindness. I feel like making him more subculture-y and with a certain amount of substance abuse (weed and booze mainly) makes sense given his history. I think he’s the foil to Angel and Spike (and Giles in someways) and their own explorations around toxic masculinity and masculinity in general. He unpacks the damage done by his father way more efficiently than Angel ever does and he learns how to be more emotionally open without reflexive retaliation when hurt than Spike does. He’s very much trying to get to this place where “I am. And that is enough.” sits well in his chest and permeates his life. Which is more than anyone else in either series can say LOL.

Also just like.... make the whole Xander vs the trio toxic nerd boy culture meta discussion thing actually WORK.

He also highlights in the narrative the idea of there always being another option. He’s not living the expected college life. He’s not acting or dressing like society thinks he should. He’s also found a way to thrive via construction/carpentry and finds a happy place between growing up and not giving up all the things he likes that can be considered childish or lame. He also hasn’t compromised his personality or identity to “be more mature” or “act like an adult”. He refutes the ideas that Giles keeps expressing about what he (Giles) has to do as an Adult or what Buffy should now be capable of as one by just like being a Cringey Little Dude and also Pay Taxes On Time. Like Spike he’s living and working in defiance of a society that has done nothing but hurt him but unlike Spike he’s coming from a place of optimism and compassion. 

Xander SHOULD be friend shaped. He and Tara SHOULD be the go-tos on all things emotional. He should be kind, creative, open minded, empathetic, and loving all while also being Kind of a Dick sometimes. When the writers talk about how when they wanted to make the audience upset/riot they’d just put Willow in danger or emotional distress -- by the end of the show that should be Xander!!!!!! by S7 I should be RIOTING if Xander is in danger!!!!!

Also the faith-xander victims of child abuse self recognition via the other vibes oh god the faith-xander victims of child abuse self recognition via the other vibes

 He’s just a silly little guy!!!! just a fun little boy!!!! just a harmless little fun-time boy!!!!!! you wouldnt sentence a silly harmless little fun-time boy!!!!! its his birthday!!!!!!

GOD THIS ISN’T EVEN ALL OF IT BUT I LOST MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT AND THIS IS SOOOOOOO LONG ALREADY FUCK

(last gif for the road bc this is massive Xander/Cordelia energy)

[writingwithcolor]

Space based story with prison camps: problematic parallels?

Trigger warnings:

Holocaust

Unethical Medical Experimentation (in the post and resources)

ivypool2005 asked:

I'm writing a sci-fi novel set on Mars in the 25th century. There are two countries on Mars: Country A, a hereditary dictatorship, and Country B, a democracy occupied by Country A after losing a war. Country A's government is secretly being puppeted by a company that is illegally testing experimental technology on children. On orders from the company, Country A is putting civilian children from Country B in prison camps, where the company can fake their deaths and experiment on them. (1/2)

My novel takes place in one of the prison camps. I am aware that this setting carries associations with various concentration camps in history. Specifically, I'm worried about the experimentation aspect, as I know traumatic medical experimentation occurred during the Holocaust. Is there anything I should avoid? How can I acknowledge the history while still keeping some fantasy/sci-fi distance from real experiences -- or is it a bad idea to try to straddle that fence at all? Thank you! (2/2)

We are far from being the only people to have suffered traumatic medical experiments.. 

--Shira

TW: Unethical Medical Experimentation (in the post, and all of the links)

Medical experimentation in history

Perhaps without intending to, you have posed an enormous question. 

I will start by saying that we, the Jewish people, are not the only group to have unethical, immoral, vicious experiments performed on our bodies.  Horrific experimentation has been conducted on Black people, on Indigenous people, on disabled people, on poor people of various backgrounds, on women, on queer people... the legacy of human cruelty is long. Here are some very surface-level sources for you, and anyone else interested to go through. Many, many more can be found.

General Wiki Article on Unethical Human Experimentation

US Specific Article  on Unethical Human Experimentation 

The early history of modern American Gynecology is largely comprised of absolutely inhumane experimentation, mostly on enslaved women (with some notable exceptions among Irish immigrant women)

An Article on Gynecological Experimentation on Enslaved Women

I  also recommend reading Medical Bondage by Deirdre Cooper Owens

The Tuskegee Experiment 

First Nations Children Denied Nutrition

Guatemala Syphilis Experiment

Unit 731

AZT Testing on Zimbabwean Women

Project MKUltra

Conversion Therapy

Medical Experiments on Prison Inmates 

Medical Interventions on Intersex Infants and Children

Again, these are only a few, of a tragic multitude of examples. 

While I don't feel comfortable saying, as a blanket statement, that stories like this should never be fictionalized, it feels important to emphasize the historicity of medical experimentation, and indeed, medical horrors. These things happened, in the real world, throughout history, and across the globe. 

The story of this kind of human experimentation is one of immense cruelty, and the complete denial of the humanity of others. Experimentation was done on unwilling subjects, with no real regard for their wellbeing, their physical pain, the trauma they would incur, the effect it would have on families, or on communities. These are stories, not of random, mythical "subjects," but of human beings. These were Black women, already suffering enslavement, who were medically tortured. These were Indigenous children, who were utterly powerless, denied nutrition, just to see what would happen. These were Black men, lied to about their own health, and sent home to infect their spouses, and denied treatment once it was available. These were Aboriginal Australians, forced to have unnecessary medical procedures, children given brutal gynecological exams, and medications that were untested.. These were inmates in US prisons, under the complete control of the state. These were prisoners of war. These were pregnant people, desperate to save their fetuses, lied to by doctors. These were also Jewish people, imprisoned, and brutalized as part of a systematic attempt to destroy us. 

The story of medical torture, of experimentation without any meaningful consent, of the removal of human dignity, and human rights, is so vast, and so long, there is no way to do it justice. It is a story about human beings, without agency, without rights, it's the story of doctors, scientists, and the inquisitive, looking right through a person, and seeing nothing but parts. This is not some vague plot point, or a curiosity to note in passing, it is a real, terrible thing that happened, and is still happening to actual human beings. I understand the draw, to want to write about the Worst of the Worst, the things that happen when people set aside kindness, and pick up cruelty, but this is not simply a device. This kind of torture cannot be used as authorial shorthand, to show who the real bad guys are. 

On writing this subject - research

If you want to write a fictional story that includes this kind of deep, abiding horror, you need to immerse yourself in it. You need to read about it, not only in secondhand accounts, and not only from people stating facts dispassionately. You need to seek out firsthand accounts, read whatever you can find, watch whatever videos you can find. You need to find works recounting these atrocities by the descendants, and community members of people who suffered. 

Then, when you have done that, you need to spend time reflecting, and actively working to recognize the humanity of the people this happened to, and continues to happen to. 

You have to recognize that getting a stamp of approval from three Jewish people on a single website would never be enough, and seek out multiple sensitivity readers who have personal, familial, or cultural experience with forced experimentation.

If that seems like a lot of work, or overkill, I beg you not to write this story. It's simply too important. 

-- Dierdra

If you study public health and sociology, it is often a given that the intersection of institutional power and marginalized populations produces extreme human rights abuses. This is not to say that such abuse should be treated as an inevitability, but rather to help us understand, as Dierdra says, how often we need to be aware of the risk of treating our fellow humans poorly. Much of modern medical history is the story of the unwilling sacrifices made by people unable to defend themselves from the powers that be. Whether we are talking about the poor residents of public hospitals in France during the 18th century whose bodies were used to advance anatomy and pathology, to vaccine testing in the 19th century, to mental asylum patients in the 20th century who endured isolation, lobotomies, colectomies and thorazine, one can easily see this pattern beyond the Holocaust. 

Even when we shift our focus away from abuse justified by “experimentation”, we have many such incidents of institutionalized state collusion in abuse that have made the news within the last 20 years with depressing regularity. Beyond the examples mentioned above, I offer border migrant detention centers and black sites for America, Xinjiang re-education sites and prisoner organ donation in China, Soviet gulags still in use in Russia, and North Korean forced labor camps (FLCs) for political prisoners as more current examples. I agree with Dierdra that these themes affect many people still alive today who have endured such abuses, and are enduring such abuses. 

More on proper research and resources

Given that you are going to be exploring a topic when the pain is still so fresh, so raw, I think you had better have something meaningful to say. Dierdra’s recommendation to immerse yourself in nonfiction primary sources is essential, but I think you will also want to brush up on many established works of dystopian fiction featuring themes relating to state institutions and the exploitation of vulnerable populations. While doing so, read about the authors and how the circumstances of their environments and time periods influenced their stories’ messages and themes. I further recommend that you do so both slowly and deliberately so you can both properly take in the information while also checking in with your own comfort. 

- Marika

[i-love-hobbies]

The biggest criticism Lilith's redemption arc gets and Eda's biggest strength

(ft. me getting completely side tracked and wanting a Hooty redemption arc)

Ok, so firstly I wanna talk about real life and then say how it was done in the owl house.

I hate the words "Everyone should get what they deserve." Cause firstly this never happens, secondly, the words are very vague and it opens a window of miscommunication and thirdly, cause in Lilith's case they are focused at, she needs to be hurt in order to change.

There are even people that have said that they are looking forward to watching Lilith suffer (I don't know if I've said it on the internet but I was one of them.)

Revenge has been proven to not make people feel better. And a lot of therapists usually say you need to forgive people. That doesn't mean fix the relationship, it means try to stop wishing they get hurt. Cause the feeling is only hurting you.

Also it's a normal human feeling to be angry, so no I'm not calling people monsters for this. And forgiveness is a hard process that takes a lot of work, but it usually isn't helped by hurting others.

The words people usually use to defend this sentence are:

"Consequences change people's minds or at the very least make them scared of doing it again."

Ok so how about we use this sentence instead, it's short enough and the main mission now is keeping ourselves safe Instead of it being hurting someone, you're still wishing it but it's not the main goal, it's a secondary one.

Well, cause it immediately shows two issues both statements have.

Firstly a friendship with someone that wants to hurt you but is scared of doing so is not a healthy one, cause they'll just try to be sneaky. You can only do it with people that aren't close to you like how the authorities do it towards criminals.

Secondly punishments rarely change people's minds. They've never worked on me, especially when you attack my identity, cause this way you make it even worse. And expecting that you can change someone usually means you're about to fail.

"But we can't get rid of punishments, people will hurt us."

I'm not saying we should. I'm saying our main goal should be our safety and hurting them may happen but it shouldn't be important.

Or better yet:

"Building healthy boundaries to the point where you're not getting hurt anymore, but not going overboard."

Examples:

- You have a friend you see Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. But on Wednesdays, after work, they usually are very ignorant of your feelings and sometimes joke at your expense. So you stop going out at Wednesdays.

They might never ask why you did it and that's ok, cause you're not getting hurt anymore.

But usually they do ask why? You explain to them the issue with respect, don't call them names.

Some people will change after this and you can get rid of the boundary later on.

Other people may acknowledge this and say it's a good idea, cause they are overwhelmed, but never change.

Other other people may start hurting you even more. You build the boundaries even more, sometimes to the point you cut them out of your life, even if they weren't hurting you intentionally.

Which is completely ok if you can't maintain contact without being hurt.

- Eda's handling of Gwendolyn's cures is another good one. She never called her names or anything. She just made sure that Gwen can't hurt her anymore. Cause it wasn't only the cures. Eda's feelings were always getting ignored. She literally couldn't talk with her about anything other than the curse. Her emotions were getting neglected.

- Eda's handling of Tibbles is also an interesting example.

At first after the scamming she just left him. She couldn't see how he could hurt her.

And in episode 14 she killed him. Cause he showed that he would do anything to murder her dump kids and knew their address. Almost same story with Adegast.

Yes murder in this extreme cases can be a healthy boundary.

Lilith's relationships with the owl fam

King:

King didn't know Lilith was living with them and knows about her neglect.

Luz:

Luz would only stand up for others never for herself which is very unhealthy. I don't know if she forgave Lilith, but I can see her not mentioning it if she hasn't and playing along as a teacher.

"The real mystery is how she can be both so smart and yet so wrong at the same time. Academics, am I right?"

The closest one to her she has roasted like this, is her mentor, who firstly makes people feel safe.

"EDA, You're embarrassing me Infront of my crew." - Raine, after thirty years of not seeing her.

Secondly, she was being a jerk, she was teaching Luz about cards while she was begging for magic lessons and was not getting it for weeks.

"Cards, the paper rectangles that old people think are fun."

Heck, she might even be scared of Lilith. She almost got killed.

So far I don't have a reason to think she likes her. She hasn't really talked with her or about her much.

Eda:

Eda has already shown that she can handle conflicts in relationships. Like in episode 9, where she got Luz into Hexside and everything I already said.

I made an entire post about Eda being too emotional and I still stand by it, but serious situations that have to do with relationships, she usually is very rational and good at handling them. Probably because of the curse making her afraid of her anger and countless people attacking her.

At the beginning of the series Eda probably was expecting that the worst case scenario would be for Lilith to catch her and if Lilith isn't given the time to realise what she did, she'd be killed and best case scenario Lilith changes.

Episode 5, where Lilith burned down her wanted posters, episode 8 where Lilith was gonna get her straight in the coven instead of arresting her, episode 11, where Lilith said she wanted for Eda to join on her own and episode 17, where they played grudgby.

Proved to her even more that Lilith cares a lot for her and maybe she will change.

Then episode 18 happened and King wanting hugs and Luz's "Let me die!" Suddenly the worst case scenario became not her dieing but her dieing and the trauma the kids will experience. The fact that they won't have her in their lifes.

Lilith says "Then why were you so easy to curse?!?" This does not sound like "I accidentally did this and I'm sorry." No, Eda thought Lilith did this on purpose. And now her kids might get killed by her own sister cause she was too naive to trust her.

From now on I don't think she was trying to kill her cause Lilith isn't dangerous without raw power like Adegast and Tibbles, but to disable her is a possibility.

To add to this Eda wasn't rational almost throughout the entire finale. She probably didn't pick up on the line "If you would just let me explain." Just like she didn't question why Lilith was thrown in a cage.

Then she learns that Lilith commited treason together with her kids and started feeling like she doesn't know the full story, but Lilith is still a caring person. So she jumps Infront of the beam to save both Lilith and King.

Afterwards Lilith shares the curse and has nowhere to go if she gets kicked out so there is no reason to believe that she would hurt them physically.

I know in a post I said I don't think she fully processed the situation with Lilith. But now I think I was only half right.

She didn't fully process how much she was hurt but she understood Lilith's situation. Forgave her as soon as possible, not immediately. But that doesn't mean she rebuilded the relationship as soon as she forgave her.

First of, the forgiveness part happened after episode 1. The entire episode she was guilt tripping her, which I don't think was helping the situation. It makes Lilith more emotional which then makes it harder for her to face reality.

I'm not calling Eda a bad person for this but I do think it was a mistake.

What wasn't a mistake but a good thing is Eda wasn't the one to listen to her problems, it was Hooty. Cause her emotional health matters too and standing in one room with her sister is challenging.

And now I'm wondering does Eda know about how Lilith was treated by both the coven and their parents.

Eda calling Lilith a tool, seems to me more of them competing with each other rather than the recent events. Also Lilith forcing her rules without saying why they are there.

I'm glad the episode ended with them switching roles, where Lilith is now more powerful. Though I'm pretty sure the roles are getting switched again.

So what about the rebuilding of the relationship or should I say trust.

Well they didn't show us much, but I think the trust isn't fully back.

Cause she has only been proving that she can be physically trusted like when she saved King's life.

Eda never opens up, which is unhealthy. But in this case it's a healthy boundary, cause King did it and he got Lilith projecting onto him.

Lilith isn't good at being mentally supportive and still has bad habits.

Lulu and Hootsifer

Hooty helping Lilith was something, she really needed and didn't take for granted, cause the only one to ever even consider this is Eda.

They are buddies that look out for each other. I wouldn't say they talk a lot about feelings as they have no idea how to do that, but there are examples where they do.

Like "What kind of a witch am I?" and Hooty's letter.

Her letter for Hooty, was supportive, but ignored the issue of Hooty always being in people's personal space.

Which led to Hooty drugging Eda, kidnapping three children and almost killing said kids when his plans didn't work the way he wanted. He also ate the letter for King.

I want a Hooty redemption arc, now!

[tyrannuspitch]

#he is the only king among slaves and the only slave among kings

yesss exactly!!

the ableist undertones are such an interesting point... i'm always saying that loki has jester vibes, and that's partly about the role he plays (companion, entertainer, magician, trickster) but it's also about like... othering? jesters are outsiders, they don't play by the usual (social) rules, they're frequently mocked (both as in self-deprecation being rewarded and as in just having to put up with awful treatment)... and as a group they have a massive overlap with "freaks".

and i mean... obviously the alien dwarfism(?) situation specifically has the same paradox as the space racism, because you wouldn't know loki was small if you didn't know he was jotun, much less small enough to be a victim of child exposure... but there's still somehow this ever-present undertone of everyone seeing loki as a weakling. and sure, it could be about other things too (gender, mental health, competition with thor) but it's still kind of maddening because it's both not true at all (he's a highly skilled elite warrior) and literally true (he does have a major but currently-invisible disability, but how did you know?)

(maybe they're picking up on odin and frigga's attitudes towards him; maybe whatever's up with loki physically is not asymptomatic even if you don't have the context to see how small he is; maybe it's just really unfortunate thematic resonance throughout his myth of a life. maybe all of the above. whichever is true, he's still the strongest of the weak and the weakest of the strong.)

and disability also interacts with space racism in a really fucked-up way because like, loki is doubly "monstrous", an outcast from the outcasts, but that can actually bring him back into the asgardian fold because where else does he have to turn? if odin had to save him from his home-world and birth parents by bringing him to a world that might well kill him on sight if it ever actually saw him, then loki has every reason to fear that odin and frigga (parents and asgardians) will try to kill him too and yet they're the only ones who have ever known who he is and shown him mercy. they've betrayed him so fundamentally and yet they might be the most trustworthy people in his life, not because they are trustworthy but because there's just. nothing else.

(and also, of course, the sense of debt... and ownership. they saved your life [kept you from dying] so you owe them your life [a lifetime of service and a useful death]. you were given up as useless and therefore unworthy of life, but they found a use for you, and you should be grateful for that, you should be begging for the chance to be useful. they decided to keep a "monster" in the world, and so it's their right and responsibility to control it.)

(AND there's the fact that loki's disability literally, physically makes him look more asgardian. a key part of what allows him to survive among asgardians IS his "weakness", because if he were any less vulnerable the threat of his "monsterhood" would be overwhelming. odin took the smallest of the giants, an abandoned, disabled infant, and chose to make that one into his pawn. there's no way that's a coincidence. imagining for a second that laufey might have abandoned an abled son... would odin have saved that child? even if he had, i honestly think he might have stunted his growth himself.)

sorry this reply is absolutely all over the place. casually losing my mind in your notes. but god it's just so much. sooo many different entangled power dynamics, all leading back to the same place: the servant-prince trying desperately to serve his purpose, and to convince himself that's power. [head in hands] [screams]

it also really frustrates me sometimes when i want to talk about One Specific Aspect of loki's whole deal but i can't find a more specific word for it than "power" or "hierarchy".

like, it *is* about space racism, but for the vast majority of his life he and most of the people around him didn't *know* that. and it *is* about class/rank... kind of...? but in a weird paradoxical way where he's still nominally a prince, and maybe he's arguably being treated like a servant but even if he is he's a pretty high-ranking servant, used for politics rather than manual labour... but also at the same time, as a jotun he's lowlier than anyone on asgard and the only one (that we know of) who might actually be better described as a slave than a servant, because if he was "stolen" then he is property... and none of it's really summarisable in any particular way because this has always just expressed itself as people being Weird About Loki in particular. like there is SO much secrecy and hypocrisy surrounding this power dynamic that odin has had to make loki into his own unique personal category of disempowered outsider. but also. maybe that's just what a combination of domestic and peer abuse looks like. but it's still hardly a typical relationship when your household and its power dynamics envelop the whole kingdom because your father is THE ALLFATHER. hhhhhhhhhh

[thanakite]

Almost every job I look at I would be physically incapable of doing

The rest, I don’t qualify for in another way (required experience, skills, qualifications,etc.)

Like I literally cannot sit, stand, walk, etc. for periods longer than like 10-15 minutes. I cannot lift 25-50 lbs. (Like so many jobs require) without it causing extreme pain. I can’t lift more than 15 lbs. for an extended period (anything longer than a few minutes, absolute max, and if I reach that limit I can’t lift anything else for the rest of the day, maybe even the next several and that’s if I’m lucky). I can’t do any repetitive motions for more than a couple of days before I have to stop for at least a couple months

I have to spend most of my time laying down, and even then it only does so much, I still flare at least 1 day a week and my pain is at, at least a 9 every day. My bones feel like they are always about to break inside my body, my muscles feel like they are decaying under my skin

What jobs can I do? What job will let me work only for short periods, almost exclusively from my bed? What job will let me work only when I’m physically capable of doing so, and won’t be upset if I wake up in the morning and can’t work that day? What can I do?

At this point I really don’t know what to do, I’ve tried applying to be a virtual assistant and never get hired, I’ve tried getting set up with transcription work, but my hands aren’t always cooperative so I don’t have the best wpm count, I thought about newspaper delivery, but it requires repetitive hand motions, I have tried so many things and I either couldn’t handle it physically or mentally or I just don’t qualify overall

Back when I worked full time I was taking way too much OTC pain medication to just be able to get to work where I’d spend the day between a 9.8 and a 10 on the pain scale (And yes I can tell the difference between a 9 and 9.8 or even a 9.8 and a 9.9), I’d have migraines at least a couple days a week and most of the time that meant continually going to throw up only to have to go back to work and deal with the fact I couldn’t see out of one of my eyes, and all of this made my overall pain worse. I used to have days where it was at an 8 or an 8.5, I can’t remember the last one of those I had though now

Even working part time was destroying me, I just wasn’t given another choice. I’d work for 2 or 3 days and spend the rest recovering, something I was never fully able to do as I always had school on top of it. I had managers that knew I was terrified enough of heights that I’d never get on a ladder so they’d tell me that my options were to lift heavy items or go up on the ladder. I’d spend days or weeks practically unable to move. This only severed to work to ensure my pain never drops below a 9 anymore

None of this even addresses the mental health problems (or even other physical issues I deal with) I deal with both as a result of all this and just in general, and yet here are my parents starting to make statements that I need to get a job when I ask for easy to eat foods to be purchased, here are my parents insisting I get a job or they are going to be taking away the few things I have that bring me joy, and here I am looking and looking and looking, and finding nothing that works within all these limitations. Here I am begging whatever is out in the universe to just kill me

So, please if anyone has any suggestions for a job that can be done that won’t make me worse, that won’t constantly demand that I shove through pain, and push through limits only to increase the pain I feel daily worse, that won’t treat me like shit, and can be done with no experience or with the maximum of a Bachelor’s degree in history and about 3-3.5 years of experience in customer service please tell me, because I have no clue, and nothing I look up helps.

I am applying for disability but the soonest it will go through won’t be until the end of January at the earliest and that’s if they approve me right away, which is unlikely since Chronic Pain Syndrome is an invisible illness that doesn’t have a direct test to determine if you have it. My parents are convinced I’ll never get it, and I’ll never get Medicaid. They don’t seem to get that without both of those I’m essentially screwed at this point. They don’t get that I’m having to mentally prepare myself for the day I become homeless because they decide to kick me out or sell our family home

Please, please, please help me

[missmentelle]

What the Hell is “Emotional Incest”?

Emotional incest, also known as “covert incest”, “spousification” or “parentification” is a certain type of unhealthy relationship that can exist between a parent and child. In these situations, the child is treated more like a “subsitute spouse”or even a “substitute parent” to their parent than an actual child. The parent’s need to have an adult life partner or a parent of their own outweighs the child’s need for an actual childhood, and the child takes on an adult role in the relationship at a much, much earlier age than is developmentally appropriate. Although this does not involve actual physical incest, it can give the child lifelong struggles with intimacy, relationships and self-esteem. 

Sounds familiar to you? You may have experienced emotional incest or parentification if:

You grew up in a family that was dysfunctional or broken in some way. Emotional incest (EI) and parentification generally don’t happen in households where there are stable, loving parental figures who have a healthy relationship between them. EI usually occurs in households where one parent is dead, disabled, incarcerated or absent, or in households where there is serious dysfunction - alcoholism, drug use, mental illness, violence, poverty, divorce or other major issues. Generally, EI stems from a parent being unable to cope with their own loneliness or with the seriousness of their circumstances, and leaning hard on their child as a result. 

Your parent confided in you at an inappropriately young age. You were treated like your parent’s substitute therapist, and asked for your input on situations that you were much too young to handle - your parent may have told you about their sex life, your other parent’s infidelity, their own experiences of child abuse, or other adult issues that you were not old enough to handle. No attempt was made to explain things in an age-appropriate manner, and you were not told these things for your benefit; your parent simply dumped their emotional issues on you, and expected you to deal with them in a meaningful way, even when you were barely old enough to understand them. 

It was your responsibility to keep the household running. Almost all children are responsible for some amount of age-appropriate household chores, like dishes and vacuuming, but you were responsible for major household tasks that should have been your parent’s responsibility. You had to make sure that there was food in the fridge, school clothes for the younger children and that someone had paid the electrical bill, because if you didn’t do those things, nobody else was going to. At an age where most children can’t use the stove by themselves, you were expected to keep the household functioning.

You had to set rules and boundaries for your parent, not the other way around. You were the one who had to lecture your parent about responsibility when they came home drunk on a Tuesday night or when they forgot to take their medication again. You had to take on the “adult” role in the relationship and beg or scold your parent into growing up and being an adult for once. Although being on equal footing with your parent might sound awesome once you are both adults, it is an exhausting thing for a child to have to deal with - you aren’t even old enough to take care of yourself yet, but you are already responsible for trying to emotionally parent a grown adult.

You may have had to physically take care of your parent. In some households, children are made to engage in something called “instrumental parentification” - this is where you are expected to physically take care of a parent. This can happen in households where a parent has a physical disability and needs their child to prepare their meals, dress them, etc, but it is especially common in households where one or more parents struggles with substance abuse. If you had to routinely put a drunk parent to bed and clean up their vomit, you are well aware of what instrumental parentification feels like.

You were given no discipline or structure by your parent. It might sound awesome to live in a house where there are no rules and you can do whatever you want, but it is actually emotionally devastating to grow up in a household where no one gives a shit if you drop out of school or don’t come home at night. You weren’t given healthy boundaries and no one made any meaningful effort to look after your well-being - if you wanted to smoke and have unprotected sex in high school, no one cared. All of your boundaries and responsibilities were things you had to figure out for yourself.

You are probably the eldest child, or the eldest child of your sex. Children who experience EI or parentification are normally one of the oldest children in the family. Eldest daughters are at especially high risk, as both fathers and mothers are disproportionately likely to turn their eldest girl into a substitute mother or spouse. There are cases, however, where a parent chooses the eldest son for their codependency; this is especially likely in families where the father figure is dead or absent. 

You raised your younger siblings. You were, for all intents and purposes, the true parent of your younger siblings. Most older siblings have to do some occasional babysitting or keeping an eye out for the younger siblings, but your role went well beyond that - you may have been the only one making sure that they were fed, bathed and doing okay in school. If you didn’t get them up and off to school in the mornings, they simply didn’t go. You probably signed field trip permission slips, made sure that everyone had clothes for school, and took an interest in your siblings’ lives in a way that your parent never did. Your parent may have kept on having kids well into your adolescence - there was an assumption that you’d just keep on raising whatever children they handed to you.

Your parent was unable to handle your emotions, so you stopped showing them. Whenever you had some kind of breakdown or emotional moment, your parent absolutely could not handle it; they were depending on you to be the “rock” of the household, and when you showed any signs of cracking, it completely overwhelmed them. They could not step up to the plate and cope with your emotions in any way; they often made your emotions all about them. So you quickly learned to push everything down and put on a brave face at all times, all for the sake of your parent. 

Your parent did everything in their power to prevent you from moving out. Your parent was likely not a huge fan of the idea that you would one day move on with your life and leave them to fend for themselves, and they may have gone to great lengths to delay it. They might have discouraged you from having any kind of independence by preventing you from going to college or having a job, or they may simply have appealed to your emotions, insisting that you were needed at home and that leaving would mean “abandoning” them. Your parent may have intensely disliked all of your romantic partners, and felt threatened by the idea that your partner was trying to “take you away” from them.

Examples of emotional incest and parentification in fiction:

Fiona from Shameless. Fiona is perhaps the boilerplate example of extreme parentification. She is the oldest daughter in a family where one parent has outright abandoned the family, and the other parent is a low-functioning alcoholic with little interest in being a father. Fiona raises all of her younger siblings and ensures that the household is somewhat functional, at the cost of her own happiness. She repeatedly makes poor decisions in her personal life, but does not have any parent around to offer her guidance.

Princess Carolyn from Bojack Horseman. Princess Carolyn was raised by an alcoholic mother, and often had to fill in for her mom at her cleaning job when she was too drunk to work, so her mother would not be fired. Her mother also tries to use guilt to keep Princess Carolyn from leaving home to achieve her dreams. As an adult, Princess Carolyn continues to be hyper-responsible for the dysfunctional adults around her, and jumps in to save them from themselves even when it harms her. 

Bella from Twilight. Bella’s parents are depicted as being flighty, irresponsible and clueless, particularly her mother, Renee. Bella expresses guilt over leaving each of her parents to fend for themselves at different points in the story, even though she is a minor and they are both adults. Even while living with her father Charlie, Bella takes over the household chores and does all of the cooking, as her adult father is unable to cook for himself. 

Like anything else, emotional incest and parentification fall on a spectrum. You may have had a parent who was relatively functional when it came to finances and household chores, but made a habit of unloading on you emotionally and expecting you to give advice on adult issues. Or you may have had a deeply mentally ill and addicted parent who required huge amounts of care. Sometimes, parentification and emotional incest are temporary things - your parent may have leaned on you to be their parent for a few years after a major upset, like a divorce, before gradually getting back on their own feet, or their functionality may have waxed and waned as they recovered and relapsed from their issues. Some people have experiencing everything on this list and more, while some may have only experienced one or two things, and only for a short time. Not two families are alike. 

It’s also important to remember that the impacts of emotional incest are deeply negative. There is a huge misconception that being a parentified child is somehow “good” for you, because it will make you wise and responsible at a young age. This isn’t actually the case; what many people see as “responsibility” is usually just high-functioning anxiety, which comes from being raised in a household where you got very little guidance and there wasn’t always a parent there to back you up if you messed up. Parentified children often get a “late start” in life, as they may continue to feel responsible for their parents well into their 20s, and their parents may go out of their way to discourage life milestones like college, independence and marriage. Children who have experienced emotional incest also tend to struggle with their own relationships as adults; they frequently have poor self-esteem and an enormous tolerance for dysfunction in their romantic partners, which can be a dangerous combination. They often struggle to have relationships without taking on codependent tendencies and placing an enormous caretaker burden on themselves, and it can take a long time for them to feel comfortable in egalitarian relationships.

There is hope for children who grew up in these situations - therapy can be an excellent tool for working past these tendencies and moving past the loss of one’s childhood. But the first step is recognizing that something was wrong. 

[hannukay]

*sigh* time to jump on my "mental illnesses/disabilities aren't inherently any easier to deal with than physical illnesses/disabilities" soap box again

Listen, I get it. There's a lot of ableism coming from mentally ill able-bodied people directed at physically disabled people. But one, that ableism is largely coming from people who are ignorant of disability activism and the things it stands for, it's not a "mentally ill but physically abled" problem it's an "ignorant about disability activism but knowledgeable about mental illness" problem, and two, it doesn't give you an excuse to be ableist back.

And the latest instance of this that I came across was coming from someone who is both physically and mentally ill, which was just disappointing. Oh, "As someone who used to not be chronically ill, but was extremely depressed, and is now chronically ill, they are for sure not the same experiences." oh wow, let me just add a little "for me" to the end of that sentence there, because that's all you're actually saying. They weren't the same experiences for you.

As someone who can also describe myself as "someone who used to not be chronically ill, but was extremely depressed, and is now chronically ill" (except if I did I would insert "physically" in front of "chronically ill" because mental illnesses can be chronic too and also I actually was physically chronically ill even before I got slapped with severe depression but it wasn't having much of an affect on my life) I vehemently disagree with your description of those two experiences as "for sure not the same."

Also, wow, another person who sees their experience with depression as the end all be all of what mental illness can be like, never seen that before. /s

Anyway, I am just so tired of people purporting themselves to be disability activists while saying the most horrifically ableist things about disabilities that are classified as mental.

Actually, hold on, I want to talk a bit more about my physical illness prior to the severe depression. I was physically ill, and it's not like it wasn't affecting my life at all, it was, and I was also in denial about just how much it was affecting my life because of internalized ableism, but it was mostly just a nuisance. And I didn't experience any ableism due to it, not unless you count stuff like a classmate telling me that she was jealous that I kept being called out of class when, unbeknownst to her, the reason I was getting called out of class was to be given my meds.

Because of this, back when I first got severely depressed I completely bought into the kind of stuff that people get upset at mentally ill able-bodied people for saying, despite being physically disabled myself. Does this mean that those things that some mentally ill able-bodied people say are right, actually? No, it doesn't; it just means that internalized ableism exists, and also that disabled experiences vary, and they don't only vary depending on whether someone's disability is classified as physical or mental. I am begging everyone to understand that your experiences are not universal.

[freifraufischer]

Dörte Thümmler 

1987 Uneven Bars World Champion, 1988 Olympic Team Bronze medalist.

Young Dörte didn’t want to be a gymnast, but a figure skater, that wasn’t in the cards for her as her mother was coach for the East German National Gymnastics federation and her stepfather, Manfred Thümmler, was the head of sports medicine for SC Dynamo Berlin.  SC Dynamo was the sports club that represented the Ministry for State Security (known as the Stasi) and the president of the club was the head Stasi for 42 years until the fall of the wall.  She recalls that her childhood ended when her mother married Thümmler and everything became about training.

At 11 she begged to quit the sport but the coaches and sports officials said she had too much talent and her parents were so embedded in the state system that she wasn’t allowed to do so.  Her talent was too great.

“I never had a chance to get out of there in any way. You need the support of your parents for that, and I didn't have that. Because my parents were too closely involved in the whole system and were much more fixated on the services than on me."

Coaches in the system had a free hand to do whatever they wished openly and Thümmler remembers once when she was exhausted and her coach shoved her off the beam.

“The worst part was that he knocked both feet off the beam and that's why I got totally rotated. I hit the beam, he wanted to hurt me. I was always afraid of this coach.” 

In the East German sports system everyone was given large amounts of performance enhancing drugs, even those who were not in the elite system because the doctors believed that you could use amateur athletes to test the effects of such drugs.  Thümmler’s reaction to the drugs among other things caused her back pain severe enough that she retired from the sport at 16 just after the 1988 Olympics.  She had to retire from all work at 40 years old due to physical and mental disability caused directly by the drugs.  Her stepfather was charged in the doping trials of 1999 but those charges were dropped.

(x)

[placesthatchangedpeople]

A former resident about Eating Recovery Center

Hi! I'm new here. I've procrastinated for ages wrt joining reddit because I generally don't like it very much, but some communities speak to me. This is one of them.

The place I was sent to wasn't as bad as some of what I see here, I think because it was (purportedly) single-issue, rather than "treating" all kinds of teen trouble. They were hand in hand with wilderness camps and boarding schools, though. Their marketing directors - the people who gussy up the website and advertise their 97% parent satisfaction rate - were trained by, and have past experience at, CRC Health. They run Aspen education programs, and a whole bunch of other ones. They regularly sent kids off to wilderness camps or schools after they finished with ERC. It was like the "next step".

The place that I was was called Eating Recovery Center (ERC) and it's located in Denver, CO, although they have off-shoot locations in Texas, California, and more. They do have an adult treatment center as well, but I believe it is less abusive.

The child and adolescent inpatient and residential facility is awful, but incredibly popular. They've spread to something like ten states, luring families in with their garbage website. The whole thing is written like "Parents, you're so stressed, and it's because your child is a Gigantic Problem. We know how hard it is to have horrible kids. Please, send them to us, and we'll rehabilitate them while you get to relax and connect with the fun parts of life, which you haven't been able to do with your lil problem child over here." It's marketing genius. Whenever a kid says "hey, this is abusive", not only do they say that the kid is a dirty liar who just wants to leave, they actually say that this is proof that it's working. Like, "Your child has been taken prisoner by their Evil Disorder. As we cure your child from the Disorder, the Disorder gets scared and lashes out. Your true child is waiting underneath, and they're very excited to be healing. The more that your child fights our program, the closer to recovery they are. Claiming that we are abusive is, in fact, a sign of recovery." That's a summary, but you get the gist. It's like a god damned exorcism.

I was a patient there in 2013, in September. I wasn't there for long, because I made a fuss about their abuse, and I was 18 and they knew they couldn't fully shut me up, so they transferred me to a lower level of care. They did, however, convince my parents (who, to their credit, were just desperate and didn't want me to die; they've since acknowledged that they fucked up) that if I signed myself out of treatment, I should not be allowed home, and should be left to live on the street. The idea, I think, was that this would "shock" me into getting better. Yet they (the RTC staff) also told me that they didn't care if I was any better when I left so long as I followed their rules in the meantime. But, details. So.

They were emotionally and psychologically abusive, as well as neglectful and I'd say perhaps physically. Psychiatrically, too. The shittiest thing they did, in my opinion, was lock my twelve year old friend in isolation for 14 hours as punishment for exercising (I do not know how much she'd been exercising, but since this place considers standing up from a seated position to be 'excessive movement', it was probably nothing - standing up without permission was considered an infraction). She wasn't allowed so much as access to a bathroom, and wound up defecating on herself. Staff didn't see this as a problem. They told her it was her fault, and that she needed to make better choices.

The threat of isolation as a punishment for ignoring behavior warnings (three "redirections" and you're punished) was always there, and this room was called the "quiet room", if I remember correctly. During my stay there, there was one patient who was eleven years old and had some sort of developmental disability, and they kept him in isolation for what I think was days. I remember that he regularly wound up in there and that we could often hear him crying and screaming. How therapeutic /s

Patients were given NG (nasal gastric) tubes if they refused a meal. I had an NG tube put in, which didn't bother me very much, but it made my nose run like no other and made it really hard to swallow solid food. It wouldn't stop dripping during nighttime snack, but we weren't allowed Kleenex or napkins. I asked a staff member for a napkin due to literally not being able to stop the deluge of snot from my nostrils, right, and she kept refusing and said she wouldn't help me until I finished my snack. I kept asking and eventually, she gave me a really bitchy look and threw the napkins at my face. This isn't particularly abusive, I think, because napkins don't hurt, but that's just not the kind of behavior that should be shown by somebody working in a treatment facility. The staff would regularly scream at kids who didn't finish snacks or meals.

I, along with several of the kids, regularly didn't finish meals. And by regularly, I mean over the course of my first day or two, so not much of a precident, imo. This issue was brought up after dinner, when the group gathered for a post-meal check-in. Patients were encouraged to name the patients who were not finishing meals, explain how said patient was bothersome to them, and then the staff would shame the patients who were named, and ask the other patients to help come up with an appropriate "response" (punishment). The staff decided that we should be made to sit at a separate table, in a separate room, during meal times, and not be permitted to speak to each other, nor communicate in any other way. If we made prolonged eye contact or started giggling, we were reprimanded. Talking at meal times was one of the ways that patients coped with having to eat large meals, and it kept morale up, and they took it away as a punishment. It certainly doesn't make anyone eat better. When we had downtime, we were closely monitored so that we never discussed our grievances re: the program, with each other. We managed to anyway, by whispering and speaking as quickly as possible, by writing notes which we then had to dispose of (since they went through all of our belongings and journals, and withheld these things whenever they arbitrarily deemed them inappropriate - my journal was confiscated because I wasn't displaying the proper mindset). But staff were always looming, and it was stressful.

I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure that I wasn't allowed contact with my parents for the first three days of my stay. I could be conflating it with some other hospital or center, but I don't think so. All parents of patients were encouraged to stay in the Denver area for as long as possible, and my parents rented a condo (while also forking out some $30,000 per month) and came in for family therapy a couple of times a week. Family therapy consisted of my "therapist" (she was licensed, but I've no clue how) encouraging my parents to complain about me, and when I said that I didn't like something my parents had done, she just said, "well, I don't think they're doing that. That's not what I see at all. Maybe you should change your behavior/perception/etc." She gave me these ridiculous assignments a few times each week, and I never completed them, because they were stupid and I was on Mission: Get Myself Kicked Out of Here, but I found the way she handled this to be a red flag. She was /so/ disappointed that I hadn't done the assignments, and looked at me all sad, and said "[name], that hurts me. It hurts me when you ignore these things that I've worked so hard on for you. I want to help you. This is hurtful, can you see that?" The fact that she was so manipulative without a single qualm really worries me, because the majority of the patients were younger and less defiant than I was, and bought into all of the brainwashing and manipulation that these people touted.

The majority of them came from abusive homes, but the RTC's whole philosophy is that mental illness treatment has been centered on parental flaws for too long, that parents are perfect, and that kids are bitchy little problems for no good reason. This is a tempting philosophy both for parents like mine who aren't abusive and don't want to be told that they are, and for abusive parents who want to be validated and excused.

Everyone there was deprived of sleep (I used to fall asleep on the concrete floors), water (only one cup with meals), and the right to use the bathroom when we needed to. Staff actually bragged about having had patients pee on the floor before, like this was some kind of accomplishment, not letting children pee.

The psychiatrists would keep children on medications that the children complained about, things that didn't help, and I was personally fine with my meds but I had friends who were being kept on awful medications. They eventually just started doing that thing where they move the pills to that little pocket between their teeth and cheek, swallow the water, pass the "swallowed pills" check, and then spit them out.

Somehow, at one point, the staff got it into their heads that I wasn't changing my underwear every day. I have no clue how this happened, but they implemented a policy where I had to show them my clothes each day so that they could "make sure" I was changing all of them. Like, what? That doesn't even make sense to me, because wtf, but it was just really degrading. This might be slightly TMI, but when I was on my period (and I have endometriosis, so it's really heavy and makes me nearly pass out/vomit when I'm not on 'round the clock birth control), they still wouldn't let me use the bathroom except on Their Schedule. I had to beg to be allowed to use it, and they got so mad at me. Like, sorry? I can't actually do anything about this?? That was really degrading too. As if I wanted to tell a whole bunch of hostile, abusive near-strangers that I'd bled through my clothes again, damn.

I don't remember ever having a phone call. I saw my parents on weekends for an hour, but there wasn't much communication. When they kicked me out of residential and put me in partial hospitalization (a ten-hour-a-day every day outpatient program in a nearby building, also run by them - it was a "step down" thing), they told my parents to never let me have my cell phone for longer than thirty minutes, and to watch me (and its screen) the entire time I had it. To go through all of my electronics and journals to make sure I was Doing It Right. They told my parents that withholding everything I enjoy until I recovered was completely reasonable, and that it was okay (even good) to kick me out on to the street if I was noncompliant. Hilariously, I'd nearly been sold into sex trafficking not two months before I went to ERC, when I was 17, and I'm like, y'all, if you'd kicked me out I'm absolutely sure I would have been trafficked for real. Like, damn, talk about a bad idea. The whole reason I developed the eating disorder, self harm, suicidal behavior etc was because I was sexually abused as a kid, but we weren't ever allowed to discuss anything of any real import in therapy groups, and anyway, I was just A Problem Child, not traumatized /s

To this day, I still can't handle the word "manipulative". I use it very occasionally myself, but for the most part, seeing it used to describe anyone just makes me bristle. Even genuinely manipulative people. I just can't handle it. I was branded as manipulative so many times just for hurting and wanting real help.

I know that most other patients there went through worse things than I did, but I don't know the extent at all. It seemed like the younger the kid, the worse the abuse. Some of the young kids were able to quickly adapt and become The Perfect Patient, but those who didn't, got it bad.

I'm glad that I was relatively lucky (a three month stay, a somewhat less abusive center, being older). But all of these places just piss me off so much. The general public knows nothing about it. I've lurked on this subreddit before and finally decided to bite the bullet and post on it. I know my RTC experience wasn't anywhere close to as bad as it gets, but it still screwed me up for a long time. Luckily, I'm 100% mentally healthy and happy these days, but it took a lot of work and was only ever made worse by ERC and abusive therapists like them.

[voice-oftheempire--archived-blog]

SEMI-HIATUS NOTICE

// It probably doesn’t come as any sort of great shocker to see that, given that I haven’t exactly been really active on here or @morvokk now for some time. This blog has been running on queue, in fact, due to just not having the energy and capability to actually do anything.

So let me get on that, explain what is going on, and we’ll sort of move on from there.

As any of you who have been with my blogs since they were started back in October know, my health hasn’t been in the greatest of dispositions for one reason or another. Given that I do have some new followers, I’ll retell some things, so a few bits will be old-news-moving-into-new for the veterans here, eheh. (If you want to skip to the new stuff, search for “***”)

As this story goes, I went in to the ER, primary care, and a handful of different specialists on numerous occasions and ended up basically grabbing a doctor in the ER by the lapels and screaming at him what he was going to do to my body to find out what was wrong that time.

This was how we found out I had biliary dyskinesia. Again, for those of you who have been around for a bit, you know that this was but for the new ones this is basically a huge dysfunction of the gallbladder where it produces all the same symptoms of gallbladder disease with gallstones. . .except you lack the ability to actually make stones. No stones means this can’t be picked up easily through blood tests (mine were always “good”) or through an ultrasound because there’s nothing to see. You must get something called a HIDA scan done that basically induces your gallbladder to do it’s job and measures if it does. It should perform at lowest 35%, but doctors prefer 40%. Mine was 20% when the test was done. And dropping.

Scheduled for surgery, but it was postponed numerous times while I was given a run-around by my surgeon who wanted my heart cleared because I had been having chest pains since November (mind, this was January now when I finally had this together). I had asked about that, but they had denied me, so I grumpily wore it for three days and now have five scars on my torso from the stickers, tachycardia when I have panic attacks and bradycardia when I take narcotic painkillers. Thanks, heart monitor. Gallbladder out on February 5th, have bad recovery.

***This is where the new stuff starts kicking in, for those of you who have been around here.

As I recovered from my gallbladder surgery, I noticed that it was taking me a lot longer to actually recover than what it was supposed to. Like. A lot longer. Weeks more. I was steps back from my peers. I had to order another round of painkillers because I was still in agony. I was still suffering chest pain. I was told, “It’s just built-up gasses -- you’re fine, you’re fine.” And then the images came back from my surgery and we found the cyst on my left ovary. Okay, cool, nothing huge to panic over. Made an appointment with my OBGYN and discussed it with him. Got scheduled for an ultrasound to see what kind of cyst we were dealing with and why it was pretty sizeable. Discussed and agreed to having an ablation treatment to my inner lining to hopefully fix a lot of those problems too. Schedule that after the ultrasound (because if we gotta do surgery for one, may as well do them at the same time, right? Right).

And then there were the pesky panic attacks that were keeping me up at night. Gasping, chest-crushing, sobbing, I-am-dying, screaming into pillows and begging for it to end attacks on end. Five, six, eleven times a day. All hours, always worse at night. I was staying awake instead of sleeping. My spouse was getting two hours on good nights where all he could do was try to keep me from hyperventilating and screaming. Most of the time I just sobbed and begged him to make it stop.

The muscle weakness came not long after. My arms went first, but we expected them to be a little off, especially since I had been on strict orders from my doctors to not lift beyond five pounds. But my legs? When it became almost impossible for me to stand up from sitting in a chair, or getting out of my car without help I knew something was wrong. It felt like sandbags weighed me down. Like I had done leg day for eons. Like a thousand leg presses. Whatever. It was wrong, and it got worse every day.

Then the brain bleed happened out of nowhere. That one was fun and scary. A simple trip to the ER for a headache that felt very wrong that I wasn’t willing to mess with (my aunt has a history of brain tumors, so nu-uh) revealed blood on my brain and wham I was laid up for two days in a much fancier hospital ICU. Three more CTs later, plus a cerebral angiogram I was released, and no one knew where the bleed had come from or if it would happen again.

And all the while my chest got worse and worse. And my entire body began hurting and aching. My headaches became worse, but no more bleeds (even after another ER trip to make sure). Many days I would wake up and barely be able to roll out of bed without wanting to scream. Some days I was up and okay but still not there. I was always dizzy, always a bit sick, always foggy in my brain. Given new drugs to help with the panic attacks (they did, for a bit, and then they came back).

My primary care doctor sat me down and gave me this: you will go see a gastroenterologist. The testing will ultimately probably come back clear, and when that does I can give you the referral to the best rheumatologist. You have an auto-immune disease or fibromyalgia. Maybe both at this point, but it’s not our specialty. It’s theirs. 

Then: the nail. The insurance I was riding was literally riding -- I was coasting on the fumes of my old job’s insurance -- expired. When I showed up for my ultrasound appointment they told me they had tried to bill it the day prior and it bounced back as gone and asked if I had new insurance. Well, no, not yet.

Now, this isn’t to say I haven’t been working with Medicaid here since December because of chronic illnesses and various mental/physical disabilities keeping me from having a job to be able to PAY for insurance, but they had to collect paperwork from every doctor I had seen in six months time. That was over sixteen doctors. And some...were not sending. And not sending. And not sending. As of right now there are still some who have not sent from months ago and I am screaming because they are hindering my potential.

Anyway

$400 upfront for my ultrasound and who knew how much for the actual appointment? Sorry, no could do. Guess that cyst is there to stay for now, fellas. I had to cancel my GI appointment, which also means that all my progress is now halted. I’m a dead fish in the water with no insurance. My doctor has given my prescription strength NSAIDs to see if that will help relieve some of the issues in my chest, but so far nothing. 

And, not to make this sound more Danny Downer? But each day I wake up and it’s worse. For the past two days I haven’t even gotten a whole five hours because I woke up to roll over and my heart started hammering in my chest, my entire chest cavity began hurting worse than ever, I felt like I couldn’t breathe and was dying all over again...and hours later it still feels like that? I was in the ER again last night for pain uncharacteristic for all of this and they couldn’t even diagnose it at this point. It’s just a, “You’re not having a heart attack, so you’re alright and that’s the best we have.”

The week before I was in the ER too. I’m getting very tired of hospitals.

My point here is: today, I’m doing really good to be sitting up and typing. I’m really proud I walked from my bed to my attached bathroom and back again before I started sobbing. I keep writing in my chronic illness journal and I keep waiting for something to happen with insurance. But I’m always exhausted and my creativity is absolutely gone. It’s just...zapped and gone.

For now, I’m having to take a step back, focus on just trying to get through each one of my days as I have them, and exist. Adding the responsibility of Tumblr to my life right now just isn’t quite possible. It’s too taxing right now, and I feel too much guilt looking at how many replies I owe or how many Asks I have in my box. And given that some days I can’t even sit up to type? Or even see the screen or keyboard? Maybe best not.

So, in the meantime, both Valoren (@voice-oftheempire) and Morvok (@morvokk) will be placed on a SEMI-HIATUS with an indefinite return date. I’ll be in and out as I can, when I can, and work as I can, but it will be extremely low-key, threads will be highly-selective, and I will ask for the upmost patience with my partners while I navigate good and bad days. 

As always, I love each and every one of you, and please, please do not hesitate to hit me up on Discord just to chat or whatnot. Just remembering that someone else is out there is often enough to help someone through their day. I’ve actually lost irl friends because my health bothers them -- and I would hate for that to happen here as well simply because I wasn’t writing as frequently as before.

PS: There are certain drugs that if you take them will make your urinalysis come back positive for meth, cocaine, and cannabis. If you have been in and out of the hospital as much as I have, the nurses will ask in on your Drug Cartel. This legit happened last night. I had to end this on an amusing note. <3

[secretlyatargaryen]

Tyrion and the Trickster Archetype

Tyrion is both an embodiment of the trickster figure in literature and a deconstruction of it. Specifically Tyrion deconstructs the way that the trope is applied to disabled characters.

Karl Karenyi has famously suggested that the trickster is the “exponent and personification of the life of the body” (1955, 185). However, for Jung, the trickster “represents an archaic level of consciousness, an ‘animal’ or more primitive self given to more intense expressions of libido, gluttony, and physical abuse” (Russo, 2008, 143). This archetype of the trickster is difficult to shake and calls up many of the worst stereotypes about disability - disability as a lack of reason, as pure appetite and uncivilized impulse. (source)

Tyrion is often regarded by other characters in the text as morally perverse or given to excesses, even while many characters in the books display the same behavior. Most notable is Tyrion’s father’s treatment of him as “spiteful little creature” who disgusts Tywin with his drinking and lust - and I’ve long argued that Tywin’s views of Tyrion come less from what Tyrion actually does and more from Tywin’s desire to control his son - but even Jaime labels Tyrion with this stereotype in Tyrion’s very first chapter.

Even if the boy does live, he will be a cripple. Worse than a cripple. A grotesque. Give me a good clean death.“   

Tyrion replied with a shrug that accentuated the twist of his shoulders. "Speaking for the grotesques,” he said, “I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.”

Jaime smiled. “You are a perverse little imp, aren’t you?”  

“Oh, yes,” Tyrion admitted. “I hope the boy does wake. I would be most interested to hear what he might have to say.”

And Tyrion’s response is to play the role, as he often does. The scene here, one of the very first scenes Martin gives us from Tyrion’s POV, presents us with Tyrion’s disability closely linked to his role as trickster. In fact, Tyrion purposely accentuates his physical abnormality as he reminds his brother that he is one of the “grotesques”. Jaime accuses him of being “perverse”. Tyrion here also embodies several other characteristics of tricksters.

In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story (god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphisation), which exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge, and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour. (source)

In this scene Tyrion implies knowledge that he should not have of Bran’s fall, and uses it to deliberately provoke his brother and sister. He points out not only how his existence defies normal societal rules - he is a “grotesque” who if firmly determined to live his life to the fullest despite what society thinks is acceptable - but also he calls attention to the taboo secret of Cersei and Jaime’s affair.

One of the things that is really interesting about Tyrion is that he both embodies the role of malformed trickster and rails against it. His performance of the role contains a certain irony or bitterness, as in the scene where he meets Jon Snow for the first time.

“Did I offend you?” Lannister said. “Sorry. Dwarfs don’t have to be tactful. Generations of capering fools in motley have won me the right to dress badly and say any damn thing that comes into my head.” He grinned.

Of course, Tyrion is not sorry for offending Jon, as he deliberately provoked him in the first place. But the phrase “generations of capering fools in motley” has such wonderful contempt to it and shows us that Tyrion doesn’t think this is much of a privilege, even though he is willing to use it, to shove the role he’s been stereotyped with in people’s faces. His speech here to Jon about not forgetting what you are is also about not letting other people forget, much as they might seek to marginalize you with it. Which is why Tyrion is always the first to make a joke about himself before others do, the first to remind others of their jokes about him and the last to forgive.

Throughout the series, Tyrion becomes increasingly weary of this role, which is a direct contrast to the archetype of the trickster who usually remains untouched by the narrative. Like the standard Trickster archetype, Tyrion is a survivor - “life is full of possibilities” - who uses unconventional means - “my mind is my weapon” - but he does not emerge unscathed by his trials. The mental and physical trauma that he endures take their toll on him until the play isn’t funny anymore. In ADWD Tyrion’s indulgence in excesses go from socially transgressive to self-destructive. Previously they represented his determination to live, but at the beginning of ADWD they begin to represent a destructive force that is directed both inward and outward. I’ve seen a lot of discussion of Tyrion’s alcoholism and sex addiction and how destructive that becomes in ADWD, but even food plays that role. We see Tyrion eating a lot in the books. In fact, the scene in Tyrion’s very first chapter mentioned above also involves Tyrion eating a hardy breakfast, complete with beer to wash it down. Tyrion does not skimp on enjoying life. Yet in ADWD food becomes destructive. First represented in the scene with the poisonous mushrooms, buttered and presented at table as if harmless, but secretly hiding the desire for self-destruction.

Then there’s Tyrion’s excessive eating when he is on the road with Illyrio, punctuated with excessive drinking and dreams and nightmares of what he’s lost.

Although all three of these things (sex, food, and alcohol) quickly become scarce for Tyrion after he leaves Illyrio’s company.

I also think it's interesting that Tyrion's descent into depression and self loathing is punctuated by the loss of his nose, one of the body parts emphasized as a part of the grotesque body that embodies the spirit of the carnival, the realm of the undisciplined and the mischevious. Tyrion's traumatic scarring both represents the deconstruction of the trickster figure as untouchable and outside the narrative and represents the chipping away of Tyrion's sense of self by being forced to embody this role.