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baldrambo · 5 years ago

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On Jim Hopper....

After reading a myriad of analyses and meta on Hopper’s character in S3 on Tumblr/Reddit/Twitter/everywhere, I've come to realize that my understanding of his character and his arc is very different than most interpretations I've seen. And it frustrates me because i think ultimately, the criticism of him is unfairly harsh and misses the point of his arc.

I will make a few bold assertions (bold=likely unpopular) and address them under the cut because the more I’ve thought about this the longer it got and I want to appropriately address each point.

Assertion 1: S1 Hopper is NOT the Hopper we want, in fact, this is regressive! Hopper and we should be glad he’s gone

Assertion 2: S1/S2 Hopper is inappropriately romanticized and it created unrealistic expectations for Hopper’s characterization in S3

Assertion 3: The circumstances in S3 are dramatically different than S1-S2 and drive the changes we see in Hopper’s characterization in S3

Assertion 4: Hopper and Joyce’s arguing in S3 was a symptom of a shift in their relationship dynamic, and not OOC

Assertion 5: Hopper's negative character traits were intentionally amplified in S3 as a juxtaposition for his redemption arc coming in S4

Assertion 1:

When we are introduced to Hopper in S1 he is a pill-popping womanizer. He is a jerk. In episode 1, he shows up to work hungover cracking "your mom" jokes and when Flo tells him that Joyce is worried about her missing kid he dismisses her and says "I’m gonna get on that." A frantic Joyce has to beg him to look for her son and during the conversation, he's throwing in interjections about screwing Chrissy as a teen in the back of his dad's Oldsmobile and somewhat snidely inquiring about whether Will is gay. Not a very nice dude.

It's not until later in the episode when we learn that he had a daughter who is now dead, and begin to suspect that perhaps there is more to him than the jerk-off cop from a small town. And then the first real introduction we get to Hopper, the real Hopper, is in 1x2 when an agitated Joyce asks him "wouldn't you know your own daughter's [breathing]?" He nearly caves then, caves under the weight of his grief, the pressure of dealing with a case of a missing kid, feeling empathy for what Joyce is going through. So what does he do? He retreats to his cruiser as soon as possible and pops a pill. Why? Because he cannot handle the grief and emotion. So he medicates it away.

For anyone who has ever been on Xanax (or see i.e. Benzos in general) they are typically prescribed to dull intense emotions, such as a anxiety attack. You can be in the middle of an anxiety attack (shaking, crying, unable to breathe), and a Xanax kicks in and it halts the entire thing. You feel nothing. When you're in pain, physical or emotional, it kills that pain almost instantly, too. And that’s what makes it so addictive. And it's not just pain that it kills, but pretty much all emotion with it.

Hopper in S1 is popping Benzos because he is at the lowest point in his life. He lost his daughter and his purpose in life. He is merely existing. He feels like a curse. Part of him even seems to feel responsible for Will's disappearance for no other reason than his own misery. Think about 1x1-1x7 Hopper for a second: can you remember a scene when he smiles? Laughs? Gets angry? Cries? Shows really any emotion at all? I've watched s1 multiple times and I don't remember one. He's so heavily medicated that he isn't feeling ANYTHING.

But then in 1x8, we finally get a glimpse of the real Hopper in glimpses of his backstory. A man laughing and playfully throwing around his daughter. We see a broken man crying in a hallway. We see a tender man reading to his daughter. This is the real Hopper who isn't just existing as Hopper is in S1, but living.

Hopper saving Will, this is the very beginning of his redemption. In that moment, he is able to bring Will back. Save him in a way he couldn't with his own daughter. That wall he’s built, quite artfully, is finally cracking.

So you see. S1 Hopper isn't what we want. S1 Hopper was in a deep dark cave. Sure, he was kind to Joyce. Helpful. He listened. He didn't lose his temper. But it's easy not to lose your temper when you're not feeling anything. It's easy to be calm and rational when you’re emotionally detached. But what kind of life is that?

Assertion 2:

In S2, Hopper is already different. In 2x1 our first introduction to Hopper is positioned similarly to S1. He pulls into the station in his police car. He's still grouchy, he's still joking around about dumb shit (dating Bob Derek) but we see a real smile from him. He goes with Joyce and Will to Will’s appointments at Hawkins Lab (we don't know how often but it's obviously frequent enough that Owens jokingly refers to Hopper as Will’s “Pop”). Hopper has a purpose again. To protect Will and Joyce, keep them safe. These are externalities. And as someone as riddled with trauma as Hopper is, externalities make it easier to function. Hyper-vigilance and overprotective/controlling behavior aren’t exactly admirable qualities, but they come in handy when the people close to you are threatened by inter-dimensional shadow monsters.

It’s at the end of 2x1 when we are introduced to the biggest change for Hopper: he has El. Someone to “feed, protect, teach.” And love. Turns out, love is a feeling. And with one feeling comes many feelings. She brought him out of that deep dark cave so now Hopper smiles. Laughs. Cries. Loses his temper. And with those feelings come all of his own insecurities, imperfections, fears. He confides in El at the end of the season about some of these fears: he believes himself to be a black hole. A black hole that took Sara. Almost took Will. And could take El too and he is terrified that will happen. He apologizes for some of his bad behavior. And we see El forgive him because she not only loves him, but recognizes that his anger and fear come from a different place than Brenner’s did. Hopper isn’t exhibiting controlling behavior to manipulate her. It’s because he loves her.

But here’s the thing. His apology and his and El’s recognition of his toxic behavior doesn’t make it okay, and it doesn’t magically make it disappear moving forward.

The 2 year gap between S2 and S3, I think, gave us a lot of time as a fandom to create the Hopper we wanted in our minds. A Hopper that moved past his trauma at the end of S2. A Hopper that didn’t lose his temper anymore because he apologized to El. A temper he can shut off now because the Gate is closed. A Hopper who would patiently wait around for years until Joyce was ready for him and had moved on from Bob. A Hopper who would be fine with sharing El with Mike because love conquers all. A Hopper viewed through rose-colored glasses.

But this isn’t realistic. Trauma can often be complex and in Hopper’s case, compartmentalized, making it easy to burst forth at any given moment and often inappropriately so. It can make you act badly, irrationally. It can be 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. And as an audience, I think a lot of us didn’t expect this to be a part of his storyline in S3. The expectation was that there would be continuous upward growth from his arc in S2 and when that didn’t happen, it was the subverted expectations that led to the disappointment in how his arc was handled in S3. But this disappointment doesn’t mean his arc didn’t make sense.

Assertion 3:

The Hopper we see at the end of S2 seems content. He has El. He has Joyce’s friendship. Things are at peace, the gate is closed. All is well. Or so we think. The Hopper we see at the beginning of S3 is miserable, lonely, sad, fat, and angry. It’s kind of jarring. But so are the circumstances at the beginning of S3. In S3, there is no longer an active threat. Everyone is starting to move on from the events of S1-S2. Joyce and El don’t need his protection anymore because there is no active threat. His hyper-vigilance leads him to almost shooting Betsy Payne’s dog, not shooting inter-dimensional demodogs. His overprotective/ controlling instincts are no longer useful they’re annoying, over the top, and just plain toxic.

In short, there are no longer externalities for Hopper to focus on, so all he has to focus on is himself. And he is not good at doing that, because that means focusing on his fears, insecurities, and imperfections. And the circumstances at the beginning of s3 give him plenty to personally angst about The two major ones:

1) El is growing up. This is normal, of course. Little girls become teenagers who become adults. But El isn’t a normal girl, and Hopper is not a normal Dad. El has superpowers, and she is not a kid anymore. She is a teenager with a boyfriend, she doesn’t need him the same way she used to, and Hopper cannot protect her the way he used to. Hopper lost his daughter when she was ~6 years old and he didn’t get to raise El for the first 12 years of her life. They’ve missed out on so much together.

And here’s the tragic thing: eventually, she will become an adult, and she will no longer need him at all, theoretically. Hopper isn’t her biological father. So what ties El to him, other than her need for him to protect her? In his mind, nothing. In his mind, her growing up means turning 18 and leaving him. Permanently. He can’t lose another daughter. That would break him. So what does he do? “Try to stop the change. Turn back the clock. Make things go back to the way things were.” When she was his little girl he was not in danger of losing her. And because he has trauma, because he is unable to handle his emotions, he takes it out on Mike and Mike/El’s relationship. He takes it out on their closeness. This symbol of her becoming an adult.

2) Joyce is moving away. Understandable, of course. Her youngest son was snatched by the Demogorgon and she had to venture into another dimension to bring him back from near death, he was possessed in S2, and her boyfriend was brutally murdered in front of her. I would want out of there, too. But doing so means leaving Hopper behind. Joyce, the one other constant in his life, who he can talk to about anything, who he relies on for parenting advice for El, who he can trust completely, who is always there for him, who he loves (who perhaps he’s always loved). And she’s leaving him behind.

So he thinks maybe, maybe, if he make her feel safe, if he gives her a reason to stay (him)...that she will. But she stands him up and she doesn’t just stand him up, it turns out it’s because the threat was back and he not only didn’t realize it but wasn’t able to keep them all safe from it, despite that being his sole driving force. He had one job. And he failed.

So, you see, Hopper’s character arc in S3 is about him, and not the externalities in S1-S2. He cannot hide behind the danger anymore. He can’t hide behind “feeding, protecting, teaching.” His flaws and imperfections are on full display and it’s more difficult for us, and Hopper, to sweep them under the rug. They’re amplified by the circumstances and his arc.

Assertion 4:

This is sort of an aside? But something I still wanted to address because I see it come up a lot. Namely, that Hopper and Joyce’s dynamic in S3 didn’t make sense, was out of character, and/or that Hopper’s behavior was abusive. I think that this particular point is important to review not only for Hopper but for Joyce as well, who is integral to Hopper’s character arc, and who I think the fandom often handles with kid gloves. Full disclosure, I AM a Jopper shipper, and have been since 1x1. That being said, I was not bothered by their dynamic in S3 because I think it was an important bridge in the structure of the show as as well as their relationship.

We still at this point in time don’t know what Jopper’s backstory is, although I suspect we are going to finally get that in S4 based on some of the spoilers/casting calls we’ve gotten over the course of the last few months. What we do know is at the beginning of S1 there is a familiarity between them (she calls him Hop), there are rumors around town that they fucked, and they seem to trust each other on a level that is not shared with other adult characters.

I hear a lot of people say S2 was “peak Jopper.” Their relationship is pretty stable. They are friends, he goes with her to Hawkins Lab, she relies on him for safety and protection, they are gentle with each other. It’s nice. But it’s also not very personal. Joyce is with Bob. Hopper doesn’t tell Joyce that he’s been hiding El. They obviously care about each other (and it seems like Hopper has some feelings there) but they hold each other at arm’s length.

This isn’t the case anymore in S3. In S3, there is no more arm’s length. They’re co-parenting. He shows up at Melvald’s at the beginning of 3x1 (reminiscent of Bob appearing at the beginning of 2x1) for advice, which it appears he’s been doing for months. They really have no one else but each other to confide in, which they clearly do a lot. There are feelings there now on both sides (I don’t subscribe to the theory that Joyce doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, but that is a discussion for another thread.)

These new (old?) feelings interrupted the S2 relationship dynamic. They’re not just comfortable friends anymore reminiscing about high school. Hopper wants to be close to her, but doesn’t quite know how and blunders through attempt after attempt and the more she rejects him the more upset he gets and the worse he handles it. Joyce is still struggling to move on from Bob and (imo) is confused about her feelings for Hopper because he is a little bit like Bob, a little bit like Lonnie (and yet nothing like either of them at the same time) and I don’t think she quite knows what to do with that except to fight her feelings and hold Hopper at arm’s length. The end result is bickering and Hopper losing his temper, because neither of them are able to really discuss their feelings for various reasons.

Most significantly, when they’re bickering and when Hopper loses his temper, Joyce is not afraid of Hopper. She is never afraid of him. She holds her own, she argues back, she stands her ground. When he refuses to believe her about the magnets, she steamrolls him into following her to the Lab. When he shouts at her, she shouts back. When he digs at her, she digs back. The problem with characterizing Hopper’s behavior in S3 as abusive is it fails to grasp the intent behind the bickering. They’re attempting to find a new normal, a new relationship dynamic. The way people refer to them throughout the season is heavily coded in language that describes a “team” a “couple.” Because despite the bickering they do respect each other and care about each other and in 3x8 they start to come to that realization together.

(My other issue with calling Hopper abusive is that it makes Joyce a victim. And Joyce isn’t a victim. She’s own her independent entity with needs and wants and desires. After 2 seasons of being “mom,” shoving her into another archetype reliant on another male character’s actions sorta sucks, doesn’t it? I really do not think this what the Duffers were going for here.)

Assertion 5:

Finally, I wanted to touch on the 3 biggest Hopper blunders in S3:

1) Constantly losing his temper. I italicized this further up because I wanted to emphasize the fact that this was not something new in S3. It’s always been there. In S1 the benzo’s were masking it. In S2, he was screaming at a 12 year old girl about how she cannot do anything right. It’s unacceptable behavior. It got worse in S3 because it is also a symptom of a hurting man who is losing control of everything around him. In S1-S2 attempting to control everything worked, in S3 it didn’t work anymore.

2) Breaking up Mike and El. After nearly a year of it just being El and Hopper, he has to share her with Mike. Combine this with El growing up and Mike and El’s co-dependent behavior, it’s a recipe for disaster. He tries and fails at a heart to heart and starts shouting and carrying on instead. Slipping into cop mode is easier than Dad mode. It was also the wrong way to handle it.

3) Trying to push Joyce into a date before she was ready. I already touched a bit on this above in #3, but his eagerness to make her stay leads him to try to push her into something she is not ready for. The end result is more misery for him when she fails to show up, and him being a jerk about it for the duration of the season (”You know he reminds me a little bit of a Russian Scott Clarke.”)

Here’s the thing though, he makes these blunders because he’s flawed. He’s always been flawed. And the combination of his prior trauma, the circumstances leading up to S3, the shift in relationship dynamics between him and Joyce, and the shift of the narrative from externalities to hhis internalities, make S3 very different than S1-S2. And it showed us that Hopper really is more of an anti-hero than a “good guy” and has been this entire time.

And if you wanted him to be the good guy because he had soft moments in S1-S2, S3 was just a set-up for a let-down because Hopper isn’t the good guy. He’s a jerk. And jerks don’t get the girl. Jerks don’t get happy endings. Jerks die. Unless they survive, and get a chance at redemption.

Being trapped in a frozen Russian gulag can kill you, or it can make you stronger. It can make you re-evaluate what you took for granted, how you handled situations, how you interact with those you love, what really matters. And for someone like Hopper, who loves deeply despite his issues, this is the opportunity to turn all of that around and truly start over. And if you are the Duffer brothers, you want to ying and yang that shit so the yang is that much more noticeable and emotional when it happens. This whole journey for Hopper is just as important as the outcome and as someone who loves his character, I want to be with him for that entire journey, not just the “good” parts.

So I guess, in sum, Hopper is a flawed jerk who loves El and Joyce. Who makes mistakes, but usually has good intentions. Who had a lot of bad shit happen to him. Who made a lot of missteps and mistakes, particularly in S3, but deserves empathy and a chance at redemption. Who should come back a changed man and get the girl and the happy ending. And I think S3 needs to be viewed through this vacuum in order to fully appreciate his character and the arc.

And if you read all the way through this, God Bless you.

#Jim Hopper #Joyce Byers #El Hopper #Stranger Things #Jopper #meta #not sure what else to tag this or if should even be tagging this at all?#anyway thank you for coming to my long winded ted talk #please feel free to discuss and add your thoughts if you so desire

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mbtiofwhys · 5 years ago

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Futaba Sakura

INFP

Functional Order: Fi - Ne - Si - Te

Spoiler warning This article will cover Futaba’s analysis with references to both Persona 5 and Royal main plot and events from her confidant.

Premise We know that Futaba is considered INTP by the vast majority of the fandom, so in this article we’ll proceed a bit differently. First of all, we’ll discuss why in our opinion Futaba isn’t INTP and how to differentiate between cognitive patterns, behaviors, hobbies and traumas. We’ll also address the problem of consistent writing in a fictional work. The second part of the article will move past why we don’t think she’s INTP and instead will cover why we think the best suit for her is INFP. We’ll make sure to be meticulous in our work and we’ll provide source material if anyone wants to check type theory more in depth, so please stick with us until the end. Obviously, if someone wants to discuss this with us and has solid proofs towards INTP, we’ll gladly listen!

Futaba isn’t INTP

We browsed a broad number of discussions about Futaba on the net, because at first we thought that if INTP is what everyone agrees on, maybe there were reasons we weren’t seeing. But in reality, we couldn’t have been able to find a solid analysis of her character that arguments its point with functions and cognition - apparently, she tends to be considered INTP only based on the stereotype she conveys in the game: the quirky, nerdy hacker waifu who loves pc stuff and is socially inept. So, our first approach was: ok, regardless of the stereotypes, she might really be INTP. But what does INTP mean? INTP implies: dom Ti, aux Ne, tertiary Si and inferior Fe. The Ne/Si axis can be spotted pretty easily in the game, but we’ll address this more in-depth later. The problem has been the Ti/Fe axis. Dominant Ti means a person approaches reality through logical lens: they problem-solve, they analyse, they dissect everything reality provides them until they find a structure that makes sense for them. On the opposite side, there’s inferior Fe: the unconscious need for harmony, for being liked by others, the lowkey want of being of any help without precisely realising how. Looking at Futaba, in our opinion, there aren’t much signs of a Ti/Fe axis, neither in her normal state nor in stressful situation. Futaba can be snarky, she’s quick witted and a bit weird, but she isn’t strictly logical - and besides, it’s not that a love for hacking and witty comebacks are personality traits exclusive to high-Ti users. And speaking about her awkwardness, we think that there’s a key point that is often overlooked: in Futaba’s case, social ineptitude isn’t due to inferior Fe, it is due to a trauma. Futaba lost her mother in an accident, and that event affected her so much that she became a shut-in for a year - that’s not something one easily recovers from. We know from her confidant that she didn’t have any friends beside Kana when she was in school, but to be fair, this isn’t a vital thing to know when typing someone if we don’t know the details. All we’re told is that she was bullied/ignored for being quirky and surprisingly smart for a girl her age, but again, this isn’t a thing exclusive of dominant Ti. From a person who didn’t leave her room for such a long time, it’s to be expected that her social skills would be far below average, especially since she’s so young. What is interesting to look at, though, is how she dealt with her trauma, what has blocked her for so long and what moved her forward once she started recovering.

Futaba probably is INFP

We can’t say this with a 100% certainty because in her case, past the Pyramid arc, the writer(s) didn’t do a very great and comprehensive job of showing other sides of her personality that fall outside the “quirky, nerdy hacker waifu” stereotype, even in her confidant. Nonetheless, there are more than a few elements we deemed worth looking into more. First of all, there’s the time she spent as a shut-in. From what the game showed through scenes inside and outside her Palace, it’s safe to assume that Futaba suffers a severe Si-loop, with all the incapability of moving past a certain event that prevents one from looking out for other possibilities (healthy Ne) and instead brings one to close off the outside world. More specifically, we believe it’s a FiSi loop, more than a TiSi one: the difference lays in how the person revives said past events - do they over-analyse them? Or do they wallow in their own emotions? The problem Futaba had with the whole situation (and this is repeatedly pointed out by her shadow) it’s exactly that she developed a distorted vision of what happened, due to the fake suicide note and her own guilt, and she couldn’t think straight about the whole situation. But more than that, she didn’t even try to think about things logically - she went full on self-blame, seeing herself as the murderer who killed her mom with her tantrums and childish attitude. This is a delicate topic, because all her reactions are probably tied to survivor’s guilt as well, but the point is that she didn’t even try to rationalize her supposed fault, either. She simply lived with her feelings, judging herself as a horrible person who did something extremely wrong and, thus, has to die because this is what she deserves. So, yes, given how brooding and being very hard on oneself are two patterns that characterize high Fi, especially when hurt, we believe that a FiSi loop is what led Futaba to become a shut-in. Another very interesting thing to look at is what happened when an unexpected solution came up: the Phantom Thieves. Futaba finally reached for help, but she did so in a way that can easily remind of an inferior Te grip: she became controlling and contacted the group to blackmail them into helping her as a desperate measure to get out of the situation. But she acted hastily, with only the hint of a weak plan that in fact crumbled the moment a first obstacle came up - in order to proceed with the change of heart, she would have to show her face and expose her identity, a thing she absolutely didn’t account for, and thus she dismissed everyone and called it quits. The heavy imbalance in the dom/inferior axis gets progressively fixed over time: firstly, she reconnects with the outer world (aux Ne) and learns to appreciate again all the stimuli she can get from it. Secondly, she relearns how to behave with other people and how to live in the normal world (we’ll get to this later). And, lastly, she focuses on a goal again: finding the truth about what happened to her mother. As she admits herself, this is “a super personal reason to join the Phantom Thieves”, because it’s not tied to justice or changing society: she wants the truth and she wants the revenge, and joining the group it’s the first, most effective way to obtain what she’s after. This is how a balanced Fi/Te axis works: a personal goal to reach that is tied to one’s true self and feelings, towards which the person takes concrete steps in a (more or less) structured way. Furthermore, regarding her hacker’s skills: the love for computer and coding isn’t a trait bound to high Ti. The fact that many Ti users like it doesn’t mean that if someone like it, it must be a Ti user themselves. And looking at Futaba, she specifically founded Medjed as a way to bring justice (her justice) to the world, but discarded the name as soon as other people associated with it and started to use it for personal gain. She no longer recognized Medjed as something lined with her moral, and thus distanced herself from it and became Alibaba instead. This way of thinking is something more aligned with Fi than Ti.

Social ineptitude doesn’t mean inferior Fe

“Recall that Fe is about creating a positive social support system that opens one up to receiving love and expressing generosity. [...]Immature Ti doms often suffer from: stunted emotional development, lack of empathy or inability to understand people, antagonistic/antisocial behavior, misanthropy or cynicism, selfish or stingy mindset, very shallow or unhealthy relationships.” (via mbtinotes here on Tumblr) While we can see why all of this can be easily linked to Futaba, as we’ve stated above the fact that she doesn’t know how to deal with people comes from the time she spent as a shut-in after a traumatic experience, and it’s not tied to inferior Fe. Let’s focus on this topic: inferior Fe and how it may resemble social ineptitude and social anxiety. Futaba lived as a hikikomori for months, a self-imposed isolation where she only (and barely) interacted with Sojiro. There’s also another crucial factor to bare in mind: Futaba is still very young. As a teenager, she hasn’t developed a solid sense of self not because she has inferior Fe rather than dominant Fi, but simply because she still has to live her life, making mistakes and going through significant experiences to mold her identity. Saying that Futaba may resemble a Ti dom in her social interactions is true, what makes a difference, though, are the reasons behind those behaviors: Futaba finds difficult being in big crowds or talking to strangers not because she has an immature inferior Fe, but as a result of her past traumas and the absence of human interaction in her life for a year. As we remind often in our articles, we have two dogmas: to look at cognition rather than at behaviors, and to always remember how traumas aren’t related to one’s MBTI type. So, those behaviors are tied to her social anxiety and social ineptitude not because she has inferior Fe, but rather due to her traumas and a lack of social skills caused by her hikikomori life-style. We then need to look at how Futaba ‘normally’ behaves when she’s not stressed. She doesn’t speak unless the conversation interests her, she doesn’t like useless pleasantries, she often comes up with witty retorts or comments but never in an inappropriate way. We should have, let’s say, three main factors in her interactions if she really had inferior Fe: the awkwardness tied to the will to try that is met by a constant failure, the incapability of reading the mood despite the will of ‘being appropriate’ and the lowkey strive for being accepted.

In order:

Futaba doesn’t want to try, especially at first. She only tries when she’s invested. Her first, most genuine reaction when the group ask her questions or try to involve her in their conversation is to sit on protagonist’s bed facing a wall. Because, even if she’s grateful to these people, she doesn’t properly care for them - so, they’re not worth the effort of breaking old habits. When the effort is worth? When they start talking about something that she finds interesting, and when she grows a sort of affection towards them. So, when everything starts to feel personal;

Futaba isn’t interested in ‘being appropriate’. She hardly cares less, in fact. And all her snarky comments remark how she can be quite capable of placing them without resulting awkward or ruining the mood;

Futaba doesn’t want to fit in. We understand how it can be easy to think that she strives for acceptance, but in the end, this is simply not true. Futaba “marches to the beat of her own drum” and only because she feels safer with the group or empowered by their presence, this doesn’t mean she looks for acceptance in the way Fe does. On contrary, her whole ‘recovery week’ after Medjed’s defeat revolves around the search for balance: Futaba has to learn how to live in a functioning way, but at the same time the Thieves themselves must adjust to her personality. She has to grow, but she doesn’t have to change, and certainly she doesn’t want to smooth certain aspects of her personality only to please people.

In conclusion, her initial behaviors (wearing a mask in public, hiding behind protagonist, panicking in crowds) are all tied to a form of social phobia/anxiety rather than inferior Fe.

The proofs of dominant Fi

If you want to say that there aren’t super strong evidences of dominant Fi in Futaba either in the story or her confidant, you have all the right to say so. Because it’s true. And, in our opinion, this is a case very similar to Ann’s extremely absent aux-Si: a problem that stems from writing and developing the character itself. We plan to talk more about P5 and writing in the future, but for now we’ll quickly address Futaba’s problem: as other members of the cast (especially female ones) she’s not given much opportunity to shine outside her stereotype. Her psyche and trauma are well addressed in her arc, and this is why we could gain sufficient elements to exclude TiSi loop and point towards FiSi loop. But the problem is that a character (and a person) isn’t only their traumas, and a personality cannot show only in circumstances of heavy stress. Unluckily, outside of her story arc, Futaba tends to stay in the domain of witty comebacks and nerd quotes/jokes - not that she ever gets OOC, but she doesn’t show a rounded and complete personality, either. One of the only things that stays constant throughout the story is her profound desire for truth and revenge for her mother: she joins the Phantom Thieves for that reason, she pushes through the Velvet Room confinement thanks to that, and she even mentions wanting to study cognitive psience in her future at the end of Royal. And all this is deeply tied to a personal aspect of herself and her life, namely the bond she had with her mother - this is why we think Fi dom suits her more than Ti dom, alongside with her not having inferior Fe. One could say it’s not much, but in cases like these, process of elimination also comes in hand: if she’s not INTP (which, in our opinion, she absolutely isn’t, despite having lot of stereotypical INTP traits), but still has aux Ne and tertiary Si and is an introvert (because all these three points are evident) the only other choice is INFP.

If you made it this far, thank you. We know ours is an unpopular opinion, but we hope we explained our reasons. If you still think she’s INTP and disagree with us, please let us know why, as we ourselves would like to know deeper reasons why people type her that way - and no, the fact that she’s nerd and is a hacker doesn’t count.

If you’re interested, these are the resources we’ve referred to in our analysis:

An entry from Funkymbti on loops: https://funkymbtifiction.tumblr.com/post/142527516660/can-you-describe-what-each-loop-looksacts-like

The part of Mbtinotes’ cognitive guide referring to inferior Te and Fe: https://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/theory#inftefe

Mbtinotes entries regarding spotting Fe vs Fi and Te vs Ti: https://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/post/137908467362/type-spotting-fe-v-fi https://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/post/142863816372/type-spotting-te-v-ti

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americasmarauders · 5 years ago

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Flowers and Iemanjá - Chapter 3

Iemanjá: considered as the “Brazilian Aphrodite”, the goddess of love to whom lovers go to in case of trouble in love.

title inspired by the song Meu Abrigo (by Melim).

word count: 3,8k (a big one she is)

Summary: in which a girl is having a shitty day and Spider-Man saves her. Alternetively, the day a Father expalins it all.

(see end of the chapter for notes)

mild notes: grammarly called this chapter bland, I’m sorry.

tagging my fave @hollandsosterfield I love you Jen S2

people who favorited the masterlist and now i’m flooding their notifications with my writing: @marvel-lock @ughdaddywise @allurekengi @emeraldrhee-grimes @hcllxnds @bocauhl @seniorrogers @used-avocado @ximaginx @dr-tardis-who @thismightbemypage @rafaellannery7 @sweetobservationstudent77 @lilcura1209 @taylorswiftforever13 @cheenyeelove @theyoutubedork @sweetdarlingholland @ciannemar83 @notsobasik @spideybrie @glowunderthemoon

When Y/N thought of how her day was going to turn out, she never ever would have thought that she would run into freaking Peter Parker in her Uncle’s place, of all places.

She knew that he was an intern for her Uncle. She knew that she had a chance of running into him. But she was hardly ever upstate during the weekdays – supposedly when Peter worked for Uncle Tony—and quite frankly she just didn’t believe that it was ever going to happen. Especially when she was building her suit.

Come to think of it, it is suspicious that Peter—a mere intern—had permission and access to the Compound. The most secure facility in the country, that housed the people that stood between humanity and chaos, and interns had access to it. It smelled fishy to Y/N.

She was certain that her Uncle wouldn’t let just anyone in his facility. So that meant Peter was someone. Who was he, then?

A couple of days had passed between the awkward encounter between Peter and Y/N. Nothing was spoken about it. Peter hadn’t questioned why she had kept her family a secret from him and Y/N hadn’t explained herself either. Both were in a state between denial and the ethereal bliss of embarrassment.

Y/N was on to Peter. She started realizing certain patterns about him that had once flown completely over her head. The anxious bouncing of the leg. The constant looking at clocks. The sudden physical prowess at P.E. Something had happened to him and she couldn’t help but feel guilty that she hadn’t noticed those changes on her best friend before.

‘He has to be a mutant,’ she thought, projecting. ‘How else would have he gotten through all of those changes?’ she finished her thought. No, that was not it. Most mutations manifest at puberty, yes, but they don’t cause radical changes to your body and extreme anxiety like Peter was showing, do they? She would have to research that later.

It was all so confusing. At first, she was sure that her best friend was like her, and she got caught up in the euphoria of not being the weird one out that she couldn’t see rationally the situation. If Peter hadn’t told her about whatever he did with her Uncle in the so-called internship, it was for a reason. And she should respect that. Even if it felt like she was being left out from a huge part of his life.

‘But I guess it wouldn’t hurt if I knew about it,’ she thought. ‘It would make me feel better and when he decides to tell me I would already know and it would save us a lot of crying, right?’. No, it wouldn’t. She tried to drop it. But the increasing insecurity inside her almost made her continue to pursue this road of heartbreak and trust issues. Her friendship was worth more than her insecurities, she convinced herself.

She slammed her locker and looked just across the hall to Peter. He was putting his things on his locker. His blue sweater hugged his arms just right, clearly at least a size smaller than it should have been. In truth, in Y/N’s head, she was merely watching her best friends putting his things in his locker. The reality was very different. She was gawking at Peter. She was lovingly watching her supposedly best friend put things in his locker like he was the only human in the world for her.

Taking him all in, she didn’t realize she had been using her powers. She suddenly felt like every eye was on her. She started to sweat, and her hands stuck to the notebooks she was carrying. All the noise was too loud, and her head started to pound with a migraine that had spurted on her brain. Every little breathing was a warning sign on her brain. She started to breathe heavily. Why? Why? Why? ‘Is this a new power?’ she thought, panicking.

“Hey, Y/N,” Peter said. She looked at him terrified. He frowned in concern. “Is everything okay? What happened?”

“I—I—” she tried to say something, but nothing came out. Peter started to soothe her. That when it hit her. That was not her power. It was Peter’s. She steadied her breathing and blocked out his powers. And relief washed over her. The migraine that pounded on her head disappeared and her senses went back to normal. It was like opening her eyes for the first time. She didn’t notice Peter had engulfed her in a big protective hug and that he kept whispering sweet things in her ear. She broke the hug and looked at him.

She honestly could swear the world had stopped at that moment. And she had absolute certainty that she didn’t use her powers that moment. It was like she was looking at him – really looking at him – for the first time.

His eyes were a different shade of brown than the rest of the brown eyes she had ever seen. They were special, and she couldn’t for the life of her put into one word what they were like exactly because she knew she would never do justice to the real deal. He had freckles that dotted his nose and cheeks like the stars dotted the night sky on a clear night. It was only there to make him even more beautiful. His slightly crooked nose was the only flaw that he had, and Y/N wouldn’t even consider it a flaw per se. It was a part of him, and how could something that was a part of Peter be a flaw? It just didn’t make sense in her head.

His face screamed worry. A curl was dangling over his forehead, that was now adorned with lines of concern. His breath was slightly shallower than it should have been, and Y/N was certain that she was the cause of those sudden changes at his behavior. She leaned into his hug again and rested her head on his shoulder. She could feel his heart beating fast, faster than it should have been. She contemplated the thought of being because of her presence and not the fright she just gave him. Her heart did an unfamiliar flutter just at the mere consideration of her making him nervous.

“Are you okay?” Peter breathed in her ear. “Do you want me to call your Dad? Or Mr. Stark?”

“No, there’s no need,” Y/N responded. “I’m always better when I’m with you, Pete.”

Peter smiled brightly. His stomach did flip-flops, and he didn’t know a heart could beat as fast as his was without giving the person a heart attack. Not that Y/N was aware of any of this.

“Um, could you stay close today?” Y/n whispered in his ear. “Please.”

Peter broke the hug. He looked into his best friend’s eyes and smiled. It was the prettiest smile Y/N had ever seen. “Of course, love.”

Peter had no idea what happened to Y/N. He just knew that one minute, she was panicking and all he did was hug her and soothe her. Next thing he knows, he is walking her to her classes and holding her hand and whispering calming things to her because she needed it. The why was yet to be determined.

He tried to care about the why. But he couldn’t help himself to be happy about the whole situation. Not that his best friend had an anxiety attack in the shitty hallways of Midtown Tech, but that she needed him to stay close to her and hold her hand. It was exactly how he imagined it would be. Her hands fit perfectly on his like they were tailored to be together forever. They were softer than his calloused hands, just like he predicted they would be.

As he swung around New York his heart fluttered. Thankfully he wore a full mask, he would be so embarrassed if the bad guys saw him flustered over a girl.

Y/N’s day had been extremely weird. And only judging by the fact that when she got home, her Dad was sitting in the living room, pajamas on and a book in his hand, waiting for her.

She put her backpack on the ground. “I didn’t think you’d be here,” Y/N said, put a stray piece of her hair behind her ear. “You’re usually working,” she completed softly.

He closed his book and put it on the coffee table. He took his glasses off and rested them on top of his book and then got up. “Well, Tony thought it was time for me to take a vacation,” he brushed passed his daughter and went towards the kitchen. She followed him. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a coffee mug that Y/N had made in art class when she was 5. He poured himself some coffee and finally looked at his daughter for the first time that evening. “He also came to me with a very important piece of information,” he took a sip of his mug.

“I knew he would want your help with his nano-te—” she started.

“Since when have you been running around Queens vigilanting?” he questioned her, a serene look on his eyes, as the mug reached his lips and he took another sip of his coffee.

Y/N was taken back by his bluntness. Just like Uncle Tony, she expected him to be mad, and even yell at her for being stupid and putting herself in harm’s way. Hell, she would go as far as to say they would argue she was being selfish by endangering herself when there were people who cared about her and that had lost someone close to them already. Her face paled as she answered quietly, “About two months.”

“Wow,” he said. “And you didn’t get caught once.”

“I didn’t get caught by you,” she corrected him, embarrassed by the situation.

He sighed loudly. He rested his mug on the kitchen counter and ran his hands through his hair. He looked truly disheartened and Y/N felt bad for being the cause of it. “I know I haven’t been around all that much since your Mom died. And I’m sorry, I truly am. But you can’t go around Queens showcasing your powers like it’s no big deal. You know there are some people out there that don’t like people like you,” he reasoned.

“So, your solution is for me to hide,” she raised her voice. “Pretend that I’m not special in any way. Or treat my mutation as an inconvenience and just ignore it altogether. Like you do with me, Dad?”

“I don’t ignore you, Y/N, that is no way to—” he started to get worked up.

“Yes, you do!” Y/N yelled. “You can even look at me properly without feeling sad because I remind you too much of Mom. Newsflash, Dad, she’s been gone for years now, and you have been doing her memory a shitty job.”

It was her Dad’s turn to be taken back. He had never seen his daughter so angry and hurt. When it came to her emotions, she could hide it decently well. She never had bursts of anger or breakdowns where she would cry endlessly. She wore her heart on her sleeve, yes, but she showed her emotions more in waves than in floods. For her to truly yell at him, she must have been pushed too far. He had pushed her too far. To a point of neglect. “I—I—” he tried to articulate something, but the words never came.

“You what?” she sniffed; her voice now quieter. “You’re sorry? I know. But I just really wanted my Dad and you were never there,” she dried a couple of tears that fell from her eyes. “I’m going on a walk,” she headed towards the door, picked up her bag and disappeared from her Father’s sight.

He had some thinking to do, and so did she.

She ended up walking aimlessly around Queens for a couple of hours. The sun was already setting, and New York was getting chilly. Thankfully she had a coat on her.

Y/N had thought about a lot. Her brain was a mess of thoughts and feelings and she tried to untangle it just a bit. She could say she had been somewhat unsuccessful. Sure, the issues she had before were resolved, she could affirm. The problem was other issues had resurfaced.

Unconsciously, she had wandered towards all the places she had met Spider-Man, all the rooftops, all the alleyways. Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon—somewhere in between, feeling really sad about yelling at her dad, sensing the enormous amount of guilt building inside of her, and definitely deciding she may or may not have developed a crush on Peter—she had caught herself looking up towards the roofs and hoping to see just a flash of red.

At first, she questioned what that strange urge was she was feeling to see Spider-Man all so much. Perhaps, Spider-Man symbolized safety and hope, both things that felt foreign to her at the moment. Spider-Man was familiar and warm, and she was feeling particularly weird and distant. She was anxious, and everything was uncertain. She was feeling terrible, all in all. And somehow, she knew Spider-Man could fix her.

Then again, it was rather odd for her to feel that way. But nothing about her day had been ordinary, hell she wasn’t ordinary, so maybe odd was her normal. Even if that didn’t make any sense.

Arguably, Spider-Man was familiar to her. His hyper activeness and how his voice would go high pitched when he was nervous (she could tell every little nuance on his voice even with the weird robotic disguise he put on). His heartily chuckles when she made a bad joke, or when she was being silly. It all reminded her of Peter, for some reason. They gave off the same energy, and Y/N thought it was just the kind of person she attracted. She didn’t realize that they had more in common than just little perks.

Taking a shortcut towards her home, she hadn’t realized that she was being followed. She gripped her bag tightly and sniffed a bit. The cold breeze ruffled her hair, and Y/N wondered if she would get sick if she stayed that long out in the cold. She turned left towards the familiar alley that she passed on every day when a hand gripped her wrist tightly. She turned to face who it was.

The guy was, to say the least, scary. He had a rugged look about him, his clothes were old and dirty, and he had a look in his eyes that made Y/N feel like a prey about to be eaten. Just when she didn’t need anything else happening to her, everything happened.

“What a pretty girl like you doing in a shithole like this?” he said, his voice raspy and threatening.

Y/N tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he only gripped tighter. “I’m just trying to go home,” she said, scared. If only she could have the courage that she had every single day while being Noire she would have gotten out of this situation fast. But she was having a rotten day, and all she wanted was to go home, and this pervert was holding her back.

“Let me take you there, pretty girl,” he said, breathing down her neck. “It’s not safe for girls like you to be out at this time of night.”

“No, thank you,” she gulped.

“Aw, c’mon I could protect you,” the predator said. She didn’t want to be protected; in fact, she didn’t need it. She needed to go home.

“The lady said no, Mr. Pedophile,” a voice from above said. Y/N snapped her head to see Spider-Man hanging on the wall, his red suit like a beacon of hope in the dark of the evening. He proceeded to web the pervert up, a web right in his mouth and his hands glued to the wall. Spider-Man turned to her then, the eyes in his mask widened. He then cleared his throat and said in a funny and fake voice. “Ma’am, are you alright?” Now on the ground, he guided her towards the other end of the alley, getting away from the weird criminal.

She gulped again and shivered under the cold air. “I am now,” she hugged herself, trying to warm her, her coat was unfortunately not enough for the cold evening. “Thank you for what you did back there. I would have handled it myself, but he caught me on a bad day.”

Spider-Man continued to walk beside her calmly, maintaining a safe distance from her. “Would you like me to walk you home?” he asked, his voice still funny.

Y/N shrugged. She knew she could trust him, and the difference in approach was abysmal. “Yes, please, I would like that very much.”

“Lead the way,” He said as if he didn’t know the path to her home like the back of his hand.

They walked in silence for a couple of minutes, a nervous feeling rising in the pit of Y/N’s stomach. She fidgeted with a loose string from her coat, looking down at her feet while she walked. She was just so tired. She wished she could go back in time and restart her day. Maybe she would have avoided discovering Peter’s weird powers, a fight with her Dad and a weird pervert harassing her on the street. She sighed heavily.

“Do you want to talk, Miss?” Spider-Man quizzed her, his funny voice bothering her more and more.

“I’m afraid that, if I start, I will burst into tears,” she laughed quietly at her silliness.

Spider-Man shrugged, “It’s okay, we can just walk in silence.”

At that moment, Y/N could swear Spider-Man sounded like Peter Parker.

Y/N walked through the front door of her apartment, and she felt a strange sense of déjà-vu when she saw her Dad sitting on the sofa, a mug on hand and still wearing his pajamas.

She quietly closed the door behind her, then took off her shoes and gently hanged her coat. She turned to her Father, who motioned for her to sit next to him on the couch. She shoved her hands on the pocket of her jeans and walked towards him. She sat down and he released a long and relieved sigh.

He took a sip of his tea before he spoke. “I never told you this story that I’m about to tell you. Mostly because I already had forgotten about it,” he said sheepishly, “but I thought it wasn’t too important that demanded anyone but mine or your Mom’s knowledge. But I found this,” he picked up a piece of paper off the coffee table and gave it to Y/N. It was small, and it had a beautiful drawing of a woman floating above a beautiful blue ocean. The woman had long brown hair and wore all white. She had a glowing energy about her, and Y/N didn’t know why, but she immediately felt a bit calmer. She looked up at her Father again, as he continued to speak. “And I remembered a promise I made before you were born.”

“My Grandma used to tell me stories about a woman, a queen, that lived on the seas. Through the years I’ve heard different stories about this goddess if you will, but what sticks out the most to me is Grandma’s. She used to say that this woman, Iemanjá, was a warrior, the Mother of all. She was fierce and kind, smart. She was the saint of fertility and intelligence, and I don’t know why, but she was always in the back of my mind.

“On New Year’s, my Grandma decided to do an offering for her. She said it was to ask for a blessed year and she said I could ask for anything else. I remembered hearing that Iemanjá was also considered the goddess of love, or whatnot. So, I asked if I could meet the love of my life. Call it fate, destiny, Iemanjá or just a coincidence, but two months later, I met your Mom.

“Years later, I had already forgotten about all of this,” he looked for the right word, “journey I had dabbling with the mystic. I was already working with your Mom at the family business,” he said like Stark Industries was some small deli her family owned, “but that’s not important. At the time, we were trying to have kids of our own for months, but every time we thought we had it, we were going to have a kid, it slipped through our fingers. We were looking into adopting when I remembered that one time I made an offering to a goddess my Grandma told me stories about, and it worked. So, I buy the same flowers my Grandma bought for that offering, prepared everything and headed to the beach. I wished for a kid, more specifically a girl. And I can remember clearly that I asked for the most extraordinary girl, even if she was the most ordinary girl the world had ever seen, she would be amazing to me,” he cupped his daughter’s cheek and caressed it.

“When you were born, I made a promise to myself. Something along the lines of I would always look out for you, honor you and guide towards the right path, even if it was the hardest path for me to guide you to. You made me see that I was not honoring that, and most of all I was not honoring you,” he dried a single tear that rolled down Y/N’s cheek. She didn’t mean to start crying. “I’m truly and utterly sorry for that. I’m fully aware that I cannot undo all the hurt I’ve caused you, all the loneliness I’ve made you go through. But I can promise I’ll be here for you more. And if I’m not here, you will be with me, if you want, of course, working on the amazing stuff your Uncle send my way. I’m sure you will thrive in it,” he then hugged her, and she let out a sigh of relief.

After a few beats of silence, she quietly asked him. “Does that mean it’s okay for me to, you know, follow Uncle’s footsteps?”

Her Dad let out an airy chuckle. “Of course not, I would be a terrible father if I approved of that, even more terrible than the one I’ve been. But it does mean that I won’t stop you from doing it, and I’ll be there when you get hurt to patch you up.”

She smiled, still in his embrace. Things were in the right place again.

important note: so I have some explaining to do.

First of all, it has been over a month of waiting for this chapter. Sincerely, I don’t think anyone cares about this story other than me. I’m doing this for fun. Also, if you happen to read it (I thank you for that), I had life to do, meaning college got in the way and was being a bitch demanding attention.

Okay, now to the important stuff. I know many of you are not aware of the culture down here in Brazil so I’m gonna explain it to you, (something I probably would have done better last year with all my knowledge for the admissions tests for college).

Brazil was a colonized country. By Portugual, especifically (I’m going to ignore the fact that there are some parts in Brazil that were colonized briefly by France and the Netherlands because it is not important to this point i’m stalling to make). And just like any other country in the 1500′s-ish, Portugual was very keen on making this vast land into an exploration colony. If you don’t know what an exploration colony is, here it is: basically the colonizer explores everything the colonized land has to offer, in our case, it was land, and many many natural riches, like gold, coffee, sugar, and a tree called Pau-Brasil, that was used to color fabric back then and gives nothing back to the colonized except years of social inequality and racism. And, again, just like any other colonizer, Portugual after killing most of our natives, brought here millions of African Slaves to work on our crops (especifically sugar and coffee, although later on the slaves were replaced by white europeans that the Crown brought to whiten the people but that’s another story).

Now, you may wonder, why am I telling this story, when this is a peter parker fanfic? Well, dear reader, here is why. Afirican culture is very much insitlled in Brazilian culture. It is a part of the foundations of our country. And judging by the amount of enslaved people Portugual and later on our own Goverment (although it was still a part of the prtuguese Crown, but again another story) brought --I think it was 4 million people but I may be mistaken-- it is a massive part of the day to day lives of millions of brazilians. That being said, Iemanjá is a real myth, and to some people who follow the religion of Candomblé (one of the many things Africans from all over left as their legacy) she is a real goddess (technically not a goddess but agin another story). It is a real thing here to a lot of people.

Okay, now a little bit more explaining. Candomblé is basically a mix between Catholicism and many African religions. The slaves pretended to pray for Catholic saints when they were in fact praying for their own so they wouldn’t get tortured and etc. Centuries of this habit created a new religion. So, Iemanjá’s story, because of the way the religion was created, varies a lot. I have read a bit about it, but I am far from an expert on the subject.

That being said, the little story that I told about Iemanjá in this chapter SHOULD NOT be considered all true. Although I have put pieces on it that are aboslutely true (she does live in the sea, she is the goddess of love in some versions, and she is the patron of the human inteligence in others, and the offerings do happen, for sure in a more complicated way than I described), it is NOT the whole truth. It is a very complicated piece of culture, and I am far from completly understanding it.

If it interested you, I recommend looking on it. It is a beautiful part of the Brazilian culture not a lot of people in the world know. There are more to us than samba and football, believe me. We have a very complicated history, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask me. Although I am not an expert, I do love History and I remember a lot of things from the 12 years I spent on the school system learning about this type of stuff in HIstory classes.

P.S.: am I really tagging the people? I think it is not working some one help, if you are on the little list and you are not being tagged please let me know.

#peter parker #peter parker x reader #peter x reader #peter parker x oc #peter parker x you #spiderman #spider man fanfiction #spider man #spider man x reader #spider man homecoming #spider man far from home #marvel #marvel fanfiction #fanfiction #tom holland #tom holland x reader #tom holland x y/n #tony stark

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wroughtbetwixtfanfic · 5 years ago

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Love, Blood, And Rhetoric, Ch 4.

Fandom: The Society.

Summary: Campbell’s just trying to survive in the new world. He knows he can make it– it’s everyone else he’s worried about.

Rating: Mature.

Tags: Canon Divergence, Mental Health Issues, Family Issues, Substance Abuse, Complicated Relationships, Consent Issues, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Mild Sexual Content, assuming Elle and Campbell are both 18 for the sake of things, Underage Drinking, PTSD, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, implied eating disorder, Fix-It, Campbell has mild ASPD, and is actively trying to not be awful

Word Count: 4295

Ch 1 || Ch 2 || Ch 3 || Ch 5 || AO3

It was week one of the new rules.

The first day, a group text went out saying that food people already at home could be kept, but anything still in stores would be rationed immediately. People had three days to pack and move homes. Work schedules were posted at the church. Campbell felt relieved at getting clean-up duty; it would keep him busy and give him something constructive to do. Unfortunately for Elle, she got stuck with meal prep for lunch. She sighed, but gave him a little wave and made her way to the cafeteria to start.

He hadn't known what to expect when he got to the hardware store, but it was bad. Broken out windows, a burned out car, lights smashed out. There were some other guys already there, passing out tools and making lists of what needed to be done. Grizz showed up with an SUV to tow away the burned car; Campbell helped him hook it up, before moving on to some poor sucker who was looking at a ladder like it was going to bite him.

"Here, I've got it. It's alright."

The boy looked cautious, and a little confused, but then he offered a weak smile of gratitude. "Thanks. I don't do well with heights."

"I don't mind." Campbell shimmied up and eyed the lights that needed to be replaced. "Have someone send me up some bulbs, yeah?"

Everyone worked until a text went out that it was time to eat. Lunch was almost a nightmare. Campbell had known from the start that, at some point, he was going to have to face the fact that avoiding meat was no longer an option. It had been ten years. It still made his stomach turn thinking about it, but well, there wasn't going to be a lot of room to be picky. Lucky for him, this time, there was a vegetarian option.

"I convinced them to make a plain marinara," Cassandra said quietly as she sat next to him at a secluded table in the corner. "But we won't be able to do that forever."

Campbell stabbed a piece of pasta, pretending it was his uncle's face. It was their family's fault they were in this mess to begin with. "Thanks. We should gather up a list of people with allergies, though. They're gonna matter more in the long run."

"True. Lily has been asking about gluten, and I don't think it was just a fad diet thing. We can't have what happened to Emily happen to anyone else. Maybe we could have a dedicated space in the kitchen for people with allergies. Or even use a kitchen in another restaurant."

"You're also gonna have to figure out what to do for people who are diabetic or just need different meal times."

"Yeah. Well, this is just the first day; it's going to take some time to get it perfect. We'll figure something out."

"Of course." Campbell glanced up from his food. "How's the ticker going?"

"I have enough medicine to last me a while. Longer, if I take the bare minimum. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere any time soon."

"Good. What are you doing over here, anyways? You're just starting to get some good PR."

"Mm, I actually have a question for you. You know that I've formed a committee to help figure things out around here."

"I saw."

"I was wondering if you wanted in." Cassandra held up her hand when Campbell opened his mouth to object. "I asked Harry, but he said no. If you were there, I don't know, maybe he'd feel less bitter."

"Oh, I highly doubt that. We're having a little not-exactly-lovers quarrel at the moment."

"Please, Campbell? You're realistic, you're brutally honest when it counts, and we need someone who can be objective. It'd be good for you."

"Why don't you ask Allie?"

Cassandra hesitated. "She and I already had a fight over that. I told her the town would see us as the same person, but..." She let out a slow exhale. "Allie is too impulsive. She doesn't listen."

"And you think the relationship between you two will smooth over if she knows you picked me over her? No, Cassie. Hard pass."

"You said yourself, you're the idea guy."

"Then write my ideas down and pass them off as someone else's ideas, if you want anyone to agree to them. No one will take you seriously with me there, and then we'll all be fucked."

Biting her lip, Cassandra leaned back in the plastic chair and examined her hands. "Fine. But still, Harry is going to be a problem. You know that, right?"

Of course he knew it. Harry wasn't a bad person, not really. Like most guys their age, he was young and foolish and had a mouth he never really knew when to shut. He was avoidant, insecure, and took things way too personally. He was still pissed Cassandra won class president, and that had been months ago. Yeah, he was gonna be a problem. Campbell munched on his garlic bread while he considered the options, not that there were many. "I'll see if I can talk some sense into him. Get him to join the committee."

"I'm sure he would, if you said something. He listens to you. He trusts you."

"Maybe he trusts me, but he doesn't listen to me. Harry's a frightened puppy who falls behind whoever he think can protect him. But he doesn't listen to anyone."

"But you'll try? For me?"

"For you."

"Thanks, Campbell."

She smiled, and then she was gone, off to go do leaderish things. Campbell sighed to himself, finishing his lunch and heading back to work; he didn't get to see Elle, but they were all busy and trying to get used to their new lives. There'd be time to talk later. Him, he had an entire street of shops to help repair. With them all working together, the hardware store was almost completely cleaned up by the end of the day. They still needed to fix the other stores, but it was slightly less of an eyesore, and Campbell was too tired to think about what was in the stuff Will's crew served for dinner.

The days oozed by, and Campbell settled into the routine of it. He really only got to see Elle in the mornings and after the work day was over, but at least there was always enough time to cuddle in and read or watch a movie together. It was quiet. Peaceful. She never asked much of him, and he didn't expect anything from her. Was that what it felt like, to have a normal life? Whatever it was, Campbell found himself slowly, very slowly, starting to relax.

"You're in a better mood," Cassandra commented the next day at breakfast as she hung up prom posters outside the cafeteria; Elle and a few others gave them a long glance as she walked by. "I think you might be the only one."

"Who knew that all I needed to get my head right was to ditch the assholes making me miserable? I don't know, like all this sucks in a lot of ways, but there's no snotty soccer moms looking down their noses at me."

"Mental health symptoms often improve with a decrease in stress."

Campbell reflected on the last few days. Any time he walked around town, before, he felt like people were staring at him. Whispering about him. Paranoia? Maybe, but Campbell knew plenty of times he'd entered a room of chattering people and had it go silent. West Ham didn't take kindly to oddities. Since they'd arrived at this strange clone of West Ham, though, that sort of thing had eased up. He still wasn't eager to be around people or associate too closely with Cassandra, just in case, but a sort of uneasy truce had fallen over the town. People were trying to get along. Those who couldn't manage to be civil to Campbell just left him alone. It didn't seem a coincidence that Campbell's temper had mellowed at the same time.

He didn't expect it to last. If there was one thing he'd noticed over the years, it was that his best behavior came and went on a regular basis. It's not like he ever stopped being what he was. ASPD, anxiety, depression, OCD, whatever people had going on in their heads, it didn't just disappear, even when things seemed better. It just meant people were coping. But it was still a break from the constant screaming inside his head, and the ever-present anger was just a dull simmer. He'd take it, even if it wasn't permanently gone.

Will passed out little cards to everyone, asking about dietary requirements. All anonymous. Elle managed to join Campbell for lunch, filling out her little card next to him. He let her peek over at his, and she let out a little hum. "I noticed that you didn't eat meat. When did you become vegetarian?"

"When I was little. Saw a dead animal, never got over it."

"At least we have someone who'll eat all the tofu we've got in the freezers."

"Yum, yum. Love me some bean curd." Campbell leaned over and kissed Elle lightly on the shoulder. "I did wanna ask you something. I saw you looking at the prom posters. Wanna go with me? It might be fun."

Elle's eyes brightened. "You want to take me to prom?"

"Of course I do."

"I thought you didn't like crowds?"

"Well, if it's for you, I can handle one evening of socializing."

The thought turned his stomach a little, but Elle let out a happy sound and tugged him into a tight hug; her curled his arms around her and breathed in her scent, smiling. He knew he wasn't a great person. He'd fucked up more times than he could count. But things were looking up, and he wanted Elle to be happy. If that meant a night of dressing up like a yuppie and swaying around to bad music, Campbell would suck it up for her.

He sneaked a look at one of her dresses that night when she was in the shower. Cassandra allowed the clean up crew to take one item they wanted or needed as payment for a job well done, so Campbell chose a royal blue dress from one of the fancy shops downtown. It was more revealing than anything else Elle had, but Campbell had seen the kind of magazines Elle read, and would see her fawning over the super skinny models with sexy clothes. Maybe she was just too scared to buy something like that for herself.

In all the way things were changing for the better, one thing had changed for the worse. Harry was ignoring Campbell. He'd ended up with dinner serving duty for the next three weeks; the algorithm was random, according to Gordie, but Campbell wondered if someone hadn't fudged it a little to teach Harry some humility. It didn't seem to be working. Instead, Harry was withdrawing into himself, and completely brushed past Campbell at dinner to go sit alone, slumped over and picking at his food.

Maybe most people didn't notice or care, but Cassandra picked up on it five or six days after the big argument. She tugged Campbell aside at lunch, crossing her arms over her chest. "What did you do to Harry? He's acting like he's been kicked."

"Ever considered maybe it's the fact that he went from being a rich pretty boy on his way to law school, to dishing out slop and having his home become the opening scene from Home Alone?"

"Seriously? That's it?"

"I told you some people were gonna take it hard, being forced to share spaces. We're not the only people here with problems, you know." Campbell glanced over to where Harry was sitting. Harry looked back at him for a split second, then turn away. "Some of us have lost more than others."

Cassandra pursed her lips. "I'm not changing the plan. If we run out of water or electricity, he's going to be in even worse shape."

"You asked. I answered."

"And that's really it?"

"Yeah," Campbell lied. "Yeah, that's it."

Cassandra didn't look convinced, but she let it drop. Thank fuck for that. Campbell didn't know what he was supposed to do. Their fight must have been part of the problem, considering Harry was avoiding him like the plague, but Campbell had been as nice as possible about it. And what did Harry expect, anyways? Right place, wrong time. It wasn't that Campbell had magically moved on. There was still a familiar longing in the back of his mind. At the end of the day, though, Campbell was going home to Elle. He was cooking snacks for Elle, playing Scrabble with Elle, practicing Spanish with her and listening to her sing in French while they cleaned the house. She didn't know Campbell's deep, dark secret, and she didn't ask; they just existed together, and damn it, Campbell was happy.

Sometimes you had to give up on one love, to keep another. Even if it hurt like hell.

Whatever heartache Campbell had left faded the night before prom. He folded the dress he'd gotten Elle up and placed it in a box, presenting it to her at dinner. "I hope it's okay," he said. "I kinda had to guess what you'd like."

"What's in it?"

"Just a little something for prom."

Elle perked up, pushing aside her dinner of lettuce and water to take the box. She lifted the lid and pulled the top of the dress out, her eyes going wide as she examined it. A light blush crossed her cheeks. "Oh! Campbell, I don't know if I can accept this."

"Don't worry, I didn't steal it or anything like that. I got it for cleaning up downtown. You don't like it?"

"No, I... I love it. I do, thank you."

Campbell took her hand and brushed his thumb across her skin. The stammer in her voice didn't lie. "There's something wrong."

"I really do like it. It's just..." Elle frowned. She squeezed his hand, looking over to the pile of plain lettuce on her plate. "I've been trying to lose some weight, and it shows a lot of skin. I don't know."

"There's nothing wrong with your body, Elle. You're gorgeous just the way you are."

"Say that to every major magazine."

"With the models who are airbrushed to convince you that you need to buy all sorts of expensive junk, and every other week there's some new bullshit miracle diet?"

"Campbell, that's not--"

He shook his head, cutting her off before she could defend those trashy rags. "Just try it on. If you don't like it, we can raid someone's closet and find something more conservative, but you deserve to feel as beautiful as I think you are."

"Fine." Elle leaned in and gave Campbell a chaste peck on his lips. Their first kiss. She smiled a little and pulled away, before Campbell could kiss her back. "Thank you. I guess I really would rather have a bagel with this."

"Then we shall go home and find you a bagel."

"And cream cheese?"

"Absolutely."

They got up and were heading towards the door when they passed by Harry's table. He was sitting with one of the majorly unpopular kids, whispering something about offering up his expensive cars in exchange for... something. Campbell paused. Trading workshifts? It was against the rules. It'd be easy enough to just let Harry go ahead, get caught, and get who knew what sort of punishment. But Campbell knew Harry wasn't just being lazy. He was struggling. Getting punished for having a hard time adjusting didn't seem right.

"Are you okay?" Elle asked.

"Yeah, I just need to talk to Harry. Can you go on ahead and I'll catch up to you?"

"Sure. I'll be outside."

The first kid had turned Harry down, so he'd moved on to some poor ginger who looked like he'd never had an ounce of fun in his life. "Move!" Campbell barked at him. The kid picked up and scrambled away without a single glance back. Harry glared at Campbell as he sat down, but Campbell barely blinked. Harry could just be mad about it. "What are you doing? Trying to get out of work is just going to make things worse for you."

"This is fucking humiliating," Harry snapped. "The others talk down to me like I'm a child, or haven't worked a day in my life. Nineteen people moved into my house and no one even bothered to see if they were people I'd get along with. They don't pick up after themselves, they make messes everywhere--"

"Hey, hey. Breathe. Let me talk to Cassandra about it after prom. Everyone will be in a better mood then."

"I don't care. I'm done."

"What do you mean?"

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it again. "Nothing. I didn't mean anything. I'm just frustrated, okay?"

It was a complete lie. Campbell knew exactly what Harry was talking about. "Come spend a couple days at my house. We have room. There's some food left, too. You can get some rest and I'll make us lunch. We can play some video games or something."

"I can't."

"Harry, c'mon. Don't do this to yourself."

"That house is all I have left of my family, Cam. Maybe you don't miss your parents, but I miss my mom. I miss my sister. I miss my..." Harry's voice cracked. He shook his head and curled in on himself. "I'll be okay. Just give me some time. Please."

Campbell sat down next to Harry. Harry sighed, but didn't move as Campbell leaned a little closer. "I can give you time, but listen to me. Remember when we first met as Cassandra's party?"

"Yeah, I do."

"You told me that you'd decide for yourself what I was like. You didn't care what anyone else said. Have I ever done you wrong, in all this time?"

"No. You haven't."

"Then do what I'm telling you now. You think I like picking up trash? Cleaning up after the fucks that were at your party, after they went all apeshit on the town? No. But you need to play it smart until we get back home. Understand?"

"Did Cassandra tell you to say that to me?"

"In case you haven't noticed, Cassandra and I are related. We share the common sense genes. I'd be telling you this either way."

Harry gave a hollow chuckle. "We're not gonna get home, you know. Something's wrong here. The committee of hers won't find anything. We fucked up, somehow, and now we're trapped."

"Then the smartest thing you can do is smile, nod, and try to get along. I don't want you getting hurt."

"Yeah. I get it. Must be the apocalypse, if you're getting all worried about me." Harry looked to Campbell. He smiled, just for a split second, before it faded again. "You better get going. I know Elle's waiting for you."

Well, that was a dismissal. Campbell stood and left; Elle was waiting for him under the trees, the fading summer light making shadows from the leaves dance across her skin. He was lucky. Damn lucky. That's what he had to focus on. They went home and Elle tried on the dress, keeping the door locked so he couldn't peek; she came out in her pajamas, with a bashful smile on her face.

"It fits," she said. "I'll wear it."

"Aw, I don't get to see?"

"You get to see tomorrow night."

Campbell pouted, but laughed when Elle grabbed his hand and tugged him into his room for a particularly ruthless game of Battleship. He lost twice, but it was worth it. Elle had a cute little way she'd smile when she got a hit, and she'd throw her fists up into the air when she won.

"I guess you win the night," Campbell said as he plucked the little red and white pegs from his board. "Unless you wanna make this next game winner takes all?"

"What does the winner get?"

"Whatever they want."

Elle tapped her index finger on her lips. "Hmm." Her eyes narrowed, and she seemed to regard him with hint of suspicion, but then she shrugged and picked up her board. "I'll take that bet."

Sucked for her, because Campbell won the last round. Elle groaned and pretended to flip her board, before flopping backwards onto the bed. Campbell smirked. "Do you concede?"

"Never." Elle peered over at him. "What do you want for your prize, if I did?"

"Maybe you could stay with me tonight?"

"Just sleeping?"

"Just sleeping."

He didn't want to be alone. Not after all the shit with Harry. Not that he'd admit to it, because he was trying to ignore it and trying not to look like a fool in front of Elle, but it struck a nerve he hadn't felt take a hit in a long time. He hated having useless emotions. And in situations like the one they were in, pining over your best friend when you had someone who liked you already was about as useless an emotion as you could get.

"Okay, but I get breakfast in bed tomorrow."

"Deal."

Campbell waited until Elle bounced off to take a shower, and then texted Dillon. He was a member of the committee, so Cassandra must have trusted him a little, and he was one of the least offensive people who was living in Harry's home. Hey, can you keep an eye on Harry? He's not talking to me and I need someone to call me if anything's wrong.

Sure I can do that, Dillon texted back.

Thanks. Drumming his fingers on the phone, Campbell opened his texts and scrolled down to Harry's messages. I was serious about everything I've said, okay? If you need me, call.

There was no reply. Campbell hadn't expected one, but he hoped it was because Harry was pissed still and not because Harry had gone and done something terrible. It was tempting to just go over there. He should have, he knew he should have, but Elle was standing in the doorway of his room in her cutest pajamas with a little smile on her face. It was late, and Campbell didn't want to run out on Elle. If something was wrong, Dillon would call.

Elle turned out the lights and curled up with Campbell in bed. resting her head on his shoulder. He drifted off first. The last thing he remembered was her kissing his temple, and tugging the blankets up around him. When he woke up the next morning, Elle was sleeping on his arm, and he couldn't feel his fingers. Campbell managed to wiggle loose without waking her up. A quick glance at his phone revealed no new messages, no calls. He sighed. Maybe no news was good news after all.

Breakfast in bed was the last of the eggs, done up as an omelette with cheese and the a scrap of ham that needed to be eaten before it went bad. Campbell stared at the inside of the fridge. Soon, they would have no choice but to just go to the cafeteria for all their meals. All that would be left soon was the stuff in the freezer or in tubs. Emergency provisions. If things went sideways and no one managed to figure out food, he didn't trust most of the populace to make sure he and Elle survived.

"Hey," Elle yawned as she came down the stairs. "That smells good."

Campbell closed the fridge and tried to look as cheerful as possible. "Morning. I thought you wanted breakfast in bed?"

"Kinda, but I wanted to come help more. Want me to make coffee?"

"Sure."

Watching her pad around the kitchen and make coffee was a joy in and of itself. She yawned again, rubbing her eyes and running a hand through her tussled hair. Campbell grinned as she loaded up the coffee pot and zoned out watching it. Precious. She was precious. There weren't many people that he'd felt he would do anything to defend-- Sam, Cassandra, Harry-- but he knew right at that moment that whatever happened in the future, he would do whatever it took to make sure she was okay.

She caught him staring. "What's wrong?"

Campbell opened his mouth, words right on the tip of his tongue. You're beautiful. You're important to me. I think I... But then his phone buzzed in his pocket. "Nothing's wrong. I'm just glad we both like dark roast."

"Drink of the gods."

He murmured an agreement as he pulled out his phone and checked the messages. He paused, blinked. It was from Sam. It was short and to the point, which was unlike Sam. Can I come over? Campbell frowned. It wasn't that he didn't want to see Sam. He wanted to. But what did Sam want? More of his things? Maybe he was worried Campbell had gotten rid of stuff. Who knew what shit their parents had convinced Sam that Campbell could, or would, capable of.

Campbell replied, curiosity getting the better of him. What time?

Now, came Sam's answer.

Okay. See you soon.

"Who's that?" Elle wondered as Campbell tossed the phone onto the counter.

"Sam. He's coming over in a few minutes."

"Oh? Is everything okay?"

Campbell shrugged, stroking Elle's shoulder as he walked towards the front door. "He probably just forgot something he needed or has something from Cassandra. I'm sure everything's fine."

Either way, he was about to find out.

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rosies-batim-blog · 7 years ago

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Snapped

This is another writing prompt/suggestion that’s been sitting on more computer for far too long, and I’ve finally finished it. Hunger can be dangerous, but not always in the ways expected.

Henry was very careful about his eating, about when and where and how much he ate was something he was ever so careful. He never wanted to take too much from his victim or chose someone that would immediately alarm others if they went missing for too long.

He never liked having to drink blood to stay alive, but he had no other choice. But with all the work that had been piled on him at getting back his (originally unofficial) job at Sillyvision, his feeding schedule had been thrown off track completely. Now, instead of sleeping through the day and hunting up a meal during the nights, he was coming into the old studio before sunrise and spending his entire day there until the sunset and he could go outside again. Except that, by the time he finally got off work, he was too exhausted to do much more than just go home and collapse into his bed.

He knew he needed to eat properly soon, or there would be… Problems.

But there was just too much to do, and he was stuck in the building until nightfall… Henry pushed himself to his feet with a sigh, vainly ignoring how his teeth and head were aching from hunger. His stomach was hurting too in its demands to be filled soon. Maybe he needed to get some normal food into himself? It wouldn’t get rid of the hunger completely, but it would at least dim it down enough for him to last until the sun finally went down. Hopefully.

(How many times had he done that this week? He wasn’t really sure. His headache was being very distracting)

A sudden wave of dizziness hit him as he tried to stand and he stumbled, the world abruptly tilting under his feet. One of his feet caught on the edge of his desk, throwing the vampire completely off balance. The world slid out of focus as he hit the floor, hard. Then he smelled blood (FOOD!), and all rational thought was driven from his mind.

Finding out Henry had become a vampire had caught Joey completely off guard when his old friend had been dragged into his office by an irritated Sammy Lawrence. And after getting him back on the payroll, Joey had once again thrown himself into research, but this time vampirism was his main topic. He wanted to know everything he could to help his friend, and maybe even find a way to turn him back to normal. (If there even was a way to turn him back)

But there were some things he wasn’t very certain about. At first, he’d thought he just needed to look them up in more detail, but then he realized it would be easier to just go and ask Henry about them. He’d given himself a paper cut while gathering what he’d wanted to show his friend up, but he could dash down to the infirmary to get a bandage for it once he was done.

Joey jolted at the sound of a heavy thud coming from Henry’s (new) office near his own.

The tall man hurried to the door, wrenching it open with his free hand. He spotted Henry laying on the floor by his desk, groaning weakly. He quickly closed the distance between them, carelessly throwing the books and papers aside (and ignoring the faint sting of a new papercut on his fingers), kneeling down and lifting the vampire off the ground in his worry.

“Henry? Are you alright?!” Henry was breathing hard, a slight groan escaping him as red-eyes fluttered open. He muttered something to quietly for Joey to hear. “What was that?”

“...ry.. H-hu..” Henry’s head snapped up, clouded red-eyes burning into the blonde man’s face. Joey let out a startled yelp when Henry abruptly lurched up from the floor and roughly grabbed him, knocking the taller man onto his back with an animalistic hiss. He was dazed by the hit but thankfully the fact that he had already been kneeling on the floor had kept him from being seriously hurt. Joey instinctively raised an arm to keep Henry from closing the distance between them, wincing at the vice-like grip his friend had on his shoulders.

“He-Henry! What’s going on?! Wh-What are you-” He stared into Henry’s unfocused eyes in alarm, trying to spot something, anything, that would explain what was going on. Joey’s mind scrambled to think of what could have caused this down-right feral behavior from the Vampire.

Henry’s eyes were usually so clear and calm. But now... now his eyes looked hazy and dulled, the normally cat-like pupils blown wide in a way that implied that Henry’s mind was as unfocused as his gaze. But the brown-haired man’s weren’t locked on Joey’s face, and it took him a moment to realize where he was looking.

‘My neck… He’s focused on my neck! That must be it! The books I managed to find said that Vampires can turn Feral when they’ve been deprived of food for too long but Henry should have… When was the last time Henry ate?’

He struggled to remember when he had last seen Henry eat properly, while still keeping the vampire back. He had seen his friend snack on all kinds of normal foods while in the studio, but he had never seen or heard of Henry taking time to eat (feed?). Shit, had Henry eaten at all since coming back to the studio?

He heard Henry hiss again, straining against the arm Joey was using to keep him at bay.

“Henry. Henry calm down, I-I need you calm down,” Joey started, trying to keep his anxiety out of his voice. He didn’t know just how far gone Henry was right then, but he hoped that enough of his friend was still there that he could get to him. “You… You’re hungry, aren’t you Henry? You need to eat something, am I right?”

But his words were only met with another feral hiss. Which, as far as Joey was concerned, was enough to tell him that Henry wasn’t able to think at all in this state. So talking him out of taking a bite out of the blonde up was out of the question. The only way he was going to get Henry to back to being himself would be if he did something to sate his friend’s hunger. But since the vampire was currently pinning him to the floor, he wasn’t exactly in a position to find someone willing to let Henry bite them.

Which left him with only one option.

Joey used his free hand to tug at his tie, loosening it enough to get at the collar of his shirt to undo the buttons. A small part of him was relieved when Henry lessened his efforts to get passed Joey’s arm, his eyes still trained on Joey’s throat. He knew Henry was easily strong enough to hurt him, but the fact that he wasn’t showed that at least part of Henry’s mind was still there. He leaned his head back as much as he could in his current position, purposely exposing his neck to the hungry vampire, and slowly removed the arm keeping Henry back.

“Okay Henry, go on. Take as much as you need.” There was a moments pause, then Henry lunged, his jaws slamming shut on Joey’s neck. He couldn’t help the pained wince from the roughness of the bite but forced himself to stay still. (Moving would jostle Henry’s fangs, and that would hurt)

It was the first time he’d actually been bitten by Henry, or any vampire really, but hearing the other man swallow next to his ear and feeling the growing lightheadedness from blood loss was definitely a strange experience. But he kept himself calm with the self-reminder that Henry needed this. He could feel the vampire’s muscles and grip slowly relaxing as he continued, which was a relief for Joey’s aching shoulders. But then the now-loose grip started shaking, and the sounds from the vampire stopped.

He felt the fangs be removed from his throat, and he watched Henry (whose eyes no longer looked distant and clouded) slowly pulled away.

Had Henry finished already? Surely he needed to drink more than that from Joey if he had gone without long enough to turn feral like that. He looked up and Henry’s face, only to see an expression of alarm and mounting shock.

“J-Joey?” Red eyes widened in horror, and Henry abruptly lurched back from him, a hand clasping over his mouth. “Oh god, d-did I...? Shit, Joey, I didn’t mean to-”

Despite his somewhat light-headed state, Joey managed to catch hold of Henry’s other arm, keeping the man from scrambling back any further. He knew his friend well enough to know what was probably going through Henry’s head, and he really didn’t want him to wallow in those thoughts for too long.

“Henry. Henry. Calm down, it’s fine. You’re fine. I’m not angry about this.” He said with a surprising amount of calm. As glad as he was that Henry seemed to finally be back in his right mind again, he didn’t want him to be panicking. Panic wasn’t much of an improvement as far as he was concerned. “I should have expected something like this to happen at some point. It’s fine.”

“How can you say that Joey? I just attacked you!” Henry asked, his tone slightly hysterical.

“Because you had gone for too long without eating and weren’t able to think clearly anymore. I know, I’ve been doing my research about your condition. And it’s fine.” Joey said firmly. And it was.

There had been plenty of warnings in the books he’d found about what would happen if a vampire went too long without eating, but he had never thought to actually check in and make sure his friend was getting everything he needed when they’d forcibly changed his schedule like they had. Honestly, he had a fair amount of blame for what lead to this happening. (There was plenty to share right them)

It was actually kind of strange, for him to be the one to try and talk sense into someone. But since it was for Henry? He was damn well going to try to get his friend to calm down.

“Since this happened, we’ll just need to put some measures up to keep it from happening again. No problems, right?” He watched Henry hesitate then slowly nod, the tenseness slowly bleeding out of him. Joey held back a smile, glad that he was getting through to Henry.

“I-I guess,” the brunette muttered, his hand finally lowering. Blue eyes narrowed slightly, spotting the still elongated fangs in Henry’s mouth. So Henry hadn’t enough to full sate himself. Well, he would have to change that.

“Good, now finish.” Henry’s head snapped to him.

“I- Excuse me?”

“Did I stutter? According to what I’ve been reading, you would have had to have been borderline starving yourself to’ve snapped like that. And I doubt that bite was enough to fix that.” Joey pointed at his own neck, his grip on the vampire’s arming remaining, giving a firm glare at Henry. “Now finish eating. We can talk more about this afterward.”

Henry gaped at him, mouthing wordlessly.

“You… You serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Completely,” Joey confirmed with a nod. Henry gave a helpless laugh.

“Alright, alright. But I’m going to be dragging you to the infirmary once I’m done.” Henry’s eyes narrowed. “And later, you’re going to get something to eat too.”

“That’s fine. Ooo~ Didn’t someone bring some fruits into the cafeteria the other day? That’s supposed to be a good thing to have after donating blood…”

True to his word, when Henry had finally finished eating, he’d carried the very light headed and slightly delirious Joey down to the infirmary to get some food in himself and some rest. And then later in the day, Joey had popped up in his office again (this time in a wheelchair being pushed by Norman) with an entire list of willing donors for Henry to prevent future incidents.

But Henry was more embarrassed by the schedule Joey posted in the cafeteria the next week (with a list of benefits for the donors) so no one could forget when they would be donating.

#batim #batim au #bendy and the ink machine #bendy and the ink machine au #vampire Henry au #Henry evans #Joey Drew #story #hungry vampire is hungry #feed the boi #vhstudio #vhstudio au

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queerplanttattooblog-blog · 7 years ago

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On OCD

I would like to preface this by saying I do not speak for all individuals that have mental disorders, nor do I speak for those suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. My plan with this post is to provide context to the disease for those who may not understand it as well as describe the manifestation and subsequent treatment of my disorder.

The mental illness I’ll be talking about in this post is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Maybe you’re familiar with OCD because of how people say they have “a little OCD” everytime they have to adjust something that isn’t just perfect. Or from watching “My Strange Addiction”, where disorders are televised for entertainment purposes. There are also those individuals like renowned aviation engineer Howard Hughes and former host of “Double Dare,” Marc Summers. Each of these people are capable of articulating their particular form of OCD in different ways. The best way I can describe OCD is that it is a part of the consciousness that generates false alarms in your mind and causes you to obsess about issues that don’t exist. It’s not about adjusting things to be fine; It’s about not being able to recognize when they are fine.

Let's break down OCD to it's letters.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Let's starts with Obsessive: This part of the disorder is where normal everyday activities become nightmares. A fear of maybe cutting someone because you have razor blades on your fingers; a fear you might accidentally kill your child out of a fit of uncontrollable rage; a fear you will accidentally run over someone if you ever drive a car; a fear you will contract or spread a deadly disease if you don't wash your hands enough; a fear of coming back to a destroyed house because you forgot to turn off an appliance. These are examples of obsessions where everyday activities that with a little help from the imagination become nightmare scenarios that you fear might happen. The obsessions have a pattern. They take simple scenarios and turn them into a life or death situation - they are never dull or manageable obsessions. Individuals suffering from OCD spend hours creating new fears of things that have never happened and then obsess about them for days, weeks, months, even years. Trying to figure out why you’re obsessed is difficult because every time you try to think about how irrational the thoughts are you start fearing that thinking about the obsessions will make them happen. I’ll use a simile: Having OCD and figuring out an obsession is like solving a rubix cube but all the sides are covered in spikes and it’s on fire.

Compulsive, this is where rituals and repeated checking comes into play. To understand this next part you’re going to have to comprehend how your own error detection “software” works. By that I mean your consciousness telling you whether something is wrong or right within a situation. Let’s use the stove as an example. When I say “check” you’re probably thinking, “Well just look at it, and acknowledge if it’s on or off”. OCD is looking at a perfectly normal situation and having a deep sinking feeling in your gut that calamity is about to strike. It’s your error detection software being compromised by a mixture of signals leading to a literal overheating of your brain. You’re fully focused on the stove because you're getting a mixture of messages from your brain telling you it’s off, but this anxiety is telling you to keep checking over and over again. This desire to check excessively is the compulsion. Understanding the relationship between checks and compulsions is important to understanding the full consequences of both. Such examples include: washing hands constantly for fear of bacterial infection; checking the faucet a certain number of times to ensure it doesn’t flood the house; flipping switches a certain number of times to avoid bad luck; cleaning or disinfecting surfaces repeatedly to stave off the plague; saying certain phrases repeatedly for good luck; or avoiding certain behaviors entirely like driving and cooking for fear of catastrophic disaster. A compulsion can be both an action taken to cope with an obsession or an action taken to proactively avoid the obsession entirely. If avoiding an obsession is not possible you create repetitive rituals or checks to exert a form of control over the compulsions. The rituals don’t even help, but you manage to fool yourself into thinking they do. The same way the fear tricked you into thinking the threat is real, it also manages to fool you into thinking that the compulsion will protect against the obsession. It’s a vicious anxiety filled cycle.

Disorder is the disturbance of the regular function of a process. To put it simply, a part of your brain is not working with you, but against you in certain cases. Praying for it to go away, hating yourself for having it, thinking deeply about traumatic moments that might have caused an obsession, and avoiding situations that involve an obsession haven’t helped. I’ve thought of a million reasons why I have my OCD and knowing why I have it didn’t fix the problem. I can know exactly what parts of my brain are malfunctioning; I can even sort out what thoughts are “OCD” thoughts and what thoughts are “regular” thoughts. In my case little of that has mattered until I admitted that the disorder was out of control and that it would only get worse if I didn’t change my behavior. To not just cope with the fear but to gain lost ground and fight back against it. That’s why you need to accept Jesus in your life. Just kidding that wasn’t the solution. The solution in my case has been relearning how to check and being confident to trust my own judgement.

So let’s get into how mine developed and what I am doing now to treat it.

Mental illness in the form of hoarding, OCD, and crippling social anxiety have been present on both sides of my family. Given that some mental illnesses are hereditary, it's no surprise that I would also end up with OCD.

I’ll describe it by taking you through a routine check before I leave the apartment. I systematically always start at the bathroom, check to make sure faucet and shower are off, then to my room to make sure my medication drawer is shut, then I check the door to my room to make sure it’s closed, then I check the floor, then I check the front door to make sure it’s locked, then I turn off the living room lights, the dining room lights, then I’m in the kitchen. In the kitchen I check on the pets’ food and water, then the stove, then the fridge, then the kitchen faucet, I check all the lights, then I gather my things, leave through the backdoor, lock the door, check to make sure the door is locked by twisting and pulling the handle four times. If this sounded repetitive, imagine physically doing this routine over and over. Just to put this into perspective, this is with medication and therapy and takes a total of maybe 5 minutes. This is because while I still check the number of checks is reduced. You might be thinking to yourself, “what does he mean by check the floor?” Or ”why does he check the fridge?,” and all I can say to that is… good question.

Before medication and therapy, checks could take 20-30 minutes during a typical work week (being gone 8 hours/day), but if I was going out of town for days, the checks could take hours. I rationalized that if by accident, despite my checks, I managed to leave something on the fear would grow proportionally with the amount of time away. Instead of 8 hours with a running faucet before I found it, the faucet could be running for days. In my instance, the obsession is leaving the house safe, the compulsion is checking things repeatedly and the disorder is my error detection software giving false alarms.

It’s not that simple though to develop those checks it takes a kind of twisted nurturing over time. In my case it required past trauma along with a mixture of anxiety, self doubt and depression to twist my normal error detection ‘software’ into a nightmare. I first felt OCD roughly five years ago at my uncle’s house. I had left the stove on while cooking and what felt like a switch flipped in my head. Naturally, I turned the stove off, but something was still drawing me to that moment: What would have been a simple realization of a mistake and then resolving it, suddenly became a matter of life or death. Given my father’s recent passing, I made a connection: If I left the stove on or made a mistake I could be the cause of death for people that I love, so I had to be more diligent. Always.

It starts with the stove: You rationalize checking it repeatedly by reminding yourself of all the bad things that can happen if you leave it on. The house could burn down, pets could die, your roommate could die, leaving the stove on could destroy your life. Then you apply that same logic to other things gradually. For instance: the sink. You rationalize that if the sink overflows you could end up with an electrical fire or flooding. Then you apply it to doors because you don’t want to get burgled, the floor because you're afraid of leaving things on the ground the pets might eat, the fridge door because you don’t want to spoil the food, the lights because you're afraid of getting a high electric bill, etc etc. OCD plants it’s roots in your fears, in the things you are responsible for, and feeds itself by taking those fears to their illogical extreme.

First you obsess about the home, then the car, then work, then your friends’ house. It makes you low-key excited to leave places together with other people because you share the load of responsibility in making sure a place can be left alone for a time. Each day you go through the same rituals, each day you try to bargain or understand why you do this, each day you wish you were more normal and that you didn’t have issues, each day you fear coming home to a burned down house, each day you hate yourself for letting the OCD get so bad, each day you rationalize not getting professional treatment because you feel investing that time is just more proof that you lost against OCD.

That’s how things were before the next traumatic event in my life as well as some of yours: losing my friend and chosen family member Marina. She had never rushed me or urged me or given me ultimatums to get treatment. She was a person who had an 80 mph personality and lacked the slightest patience for indecision, but when it came to my mental disorder, she not only didn’t see it as an issue but showed patience in allowing me to go through my checks without pressuring me. She as well as the friends I also consider to be my chosen family know I have OCD, but it’s “just a Lewis thing”. Losing Marina was a wakeup call. I realized I had lacked the confidence to follow through with the treatment, afraid if I started and failed I would be left with the OCD and failure forever. I decided to get treatment because I thought I had been afraid long enough, and that it was time to get my act together and at least give it a try- whatever the outcome of treatment it was better than doing nothing.

Six months on- medication, therapy, adjusting my diet, writing about and studying my OCD have helped me make progress. It isn’t a mountain anymore and things that could normally paralyze me with fear don’t have the same effect. Checks that would normally take 15-30 minutes can now take 1-5 minutes depending on how I feel that day. Occasionally I end up with longer 15 minute checks but for the most part I know I’m on the upswing.

This isn’t a post about, “hey everyone look I beat my OCD, I’m the poster child for fighting mental illness”, or “this one weird trick worked for my mental disorder and what you should be doing”, this isn't me asking people to look at me different or treat me different because I have this disorder. Fighting my OCD is an ongoing process and it always will be. The solution that is working for me might not work for everyone. And finally, I don’t want people to see me differently after learning this. I write this because I know a lot of people who are fighting with their own mental disorders and aren’t afraid to open up about them. Those people helped me accept my own disorder and led to my decision to get treatment for it. I don’t want to be afraid, and I don’t want those friends who are afraid to feel alone. I want them to know we’re in these trenches together and we’re going to have to fight. Some days are going to suck more than others, but everyday you can remind yourself you’re not where you were before. And that’s what makes it worth doing.

If you have any questions or concerns please, feel free to comment or message me privately.

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aheartattacklastifuntreated · 5 years ago

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Helpful Information For Understanding Panic Attacks

Panic attacks are an unfounded fear that can come in the form of increased heart rate, rapid breathing and chills or sweat. These are just a few of the many symptoms of panic, the symptoms you have may vary widely from these. They come on suddenly, without warning. The cause may be known or unknown. Your panic triggers may be very different than those of other sufferers, unless you are suffering from a phobia, which I discuss more below. There are some commonalities in how people feel during a panic attack. Sufferers report that they think they may be dying, may be having a heart attack, are losing control, feeling confusion, and are greatly frightened.

It can be very helpful to know what mechanism is operating inside you when you are experiencing a panic attack. Very simply, some stimulus, either from outside you (a spider, a dangerous moment on the freeway...) or internally (a thought, a fear, anxiety) bypasses the normal rational thinking part of your brain, and instead triggers the part of your brain responsible for the "flight or fight" response. Before you can think about it, this part has triggered the rapid breathing and heart rate, the sweat, the nausea, and all the other symptoms you experience.

Panic attacks are a form of a panic disorder caused by anxiety. Anxiety is a different condition than panic attacks. Anxiety is a condition that seems to be going on all the time, and has no specific cause. Panic attacks usually don't last longer than about 30 minutes, and can be as brief as 5 minutes.

Panic attacks, if untreated, may cause a phobia. When you have anxiety about something specific, like spiders or small spaces, that's a phobia. It's a phobia when you think about it and you react negatively, or just can't function.

Some sufferers are phobic about panic attacks!

How do you know if you are suffering from anxiety, or panic? One fairly consistent indicator is how long your symptoms last. Ongoing symptoms generally indicate anxiety, if they are brief, from 5 to 30 minutes generally, then it's most likely panic. Another fairly dependable indicator is if the attacks occur in a specific circumstance, like in the presence of a snake or spider (or if you think about that thing and you start to have an attack). When there are specific triggers, it's possible you are suffering from a phobia, which may require different treatment than for generalized anxiety.

About 2.4 million Americans suffer from an anxiety disorder, and there are over 30 years of research into panic and anxiety relief, and yet many go untreated. The variety of treatments include medication, relaxation exercises, physical exercise, breathing, meditation, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and more. All of these have been shown to be useful.

The first time you suffer a panic attack you may not understand what is happening. By simply understanding exactly what a panic attack is, and how many other people suffer from it, you can begin to engage your logical, rational mind. If you suffer from panic attacks, or know someone who does, you owe it to yourself to look into a treatment method that is right for you.

This article is presented as informational only, and we do not diagnose or treat any disease. If you believe you suffer from anxiety or depression, we recommend you consult with your doctor.

Want to know more? I offer a free mini-course with panic solutions [http://panicsolutions.info] at my website!

Dan DeLuca, CH, is a Certified Consulting Hypnotherapist, Trainer, and Speaker in the fields of Personal Growth, Motivation and Communication. Since 2005, Dan has been practicing Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis, TimeLine Therapy and other transformation modalities.

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nyerus · 8 years ago

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Victor Nikiforov Appreciation Post!!!

I just want to take a moment and talk about how much I love Victor Nikiforov and how he’s just such a refreshing character. I know everyone and their dog has done a post like this already but I’ve been crying over this lovable goof for months and this had been sitting in my drafts for too long now anyway and also I’m avoiding my textbooks AND THIS SORTA TURNED INTO A CHARACTER ANALYSIS I’M SORRY.

So as far back as the PV, there were assumptions flying around that Victor would end up being an antagonist of some sort. That either he was using Yuuri for his own gain, or was just straight up evil. Laughable now, of course, but the reason those rumors were prevalent was because we see it so often. How easy was it to think that Victor was “helping” Yuuri only to further his own goals in the end? We’ve seen this common mentor-betrays-student trope before and it’s no wonder that early on fans were afraid of this even as the show progressed. And honestly? This would have made for some great drama—for Victor to turn out to not be such a nice guy and for him to eventually become someone Yuuri had to defeat in competition. However the show did not go down that route at all. It turns out that yeah, Victor is actually just a really nice guy who cares a great deal about Yuuri and the people around him. He doesn’t show up in Hasetsu with any evil ulterior motives—he just wants to get to know Yuuri and help him take his skating to the next level, and maybe find inspiration (and love) along the way.

Also how could a man with a heart-shaped smile be evil???

(Continued under the cut.)

We know for a fact that pre-series Victor was a lonely soul who couldn’t find the same joy in skating as he once did. Though he loved skating, it was now suffocating him and he knew he was close to the end of his career.

Diagnosis: depression, probably

But instead of wallowing in it, Victor goes out there and skates his heart out anyway (335.76 points overall at the GPF holy shit goddamn that’s him at his emotional lowest????). Maybe he was hoping someone would hear his plea through his skating. Then he dances with a cute boy at the banquet and has a great time and his life is changed forever—only for said cute boy to vanish into the night. Victor was probably super upset after this, but again, instead of wallowing he goes out there and skates his heart out to nab gold at Worlds. Maybe this time he was hoping Yuuri would watch him. One (1) viral video later and he decides “well time to drop everything in favor of love” and fly off to Japan. Victor took a MASSIVE risk by doing this. Who in their right mind would drop an insanely successful career just because some drunk dude asked “be my coach” months prior and made no contact since? As a fandom we seem to like to code Victor as being this ditzy, spontaneous person—and he is, to a degree. But Victor’s very smart. He’s not an idiot by any means. He would have known what dropping everything and going to Japan would mean but he did it anyway because he decided that the risk was worth it. That takes an insane amount of courage and I think that’s super understated. (And I’ve seen the theories that state that Victor had actually been planning it for a while and Yuuri’s video was just the final push, but even so the point still stands.)

And when he gets to Japan, expecting a love connection with Yuuri, he’s quickly faced with that fact that Yuuri does not want that. Victor is very clear in his romantic advances—he makes this apparent early on. But once he sees that Yuuri is uncomfortable with this he stops being so forward. Victor was clearly hurt by this at least to some degree (the man goes to sleep cuddling his doggo when he gets rejected…), but he doesn’t blame Yuuri for it. He doesn’t take out his frustration on Yuuri or anyone else—he just accepts it. In so many shows/movies/books the guy is relentless about pursuing his love interest even if they’re uncomfortable with it (and eventually the LI gives in, blah blah blah). That or he just pins his LI down like we see in so many other shows. But Victor does none of these things. He does the normal, rational human thing: he lets it go. He stops being so forward because he sees that it’s clearly making Yuuri uncomfortable. Honestly I shouldn’t have to praise the writers for writing Victor this way—this should be standard everywhere—but here we are. For once we got a character that’s mature about his romantic advances being rebuffed. And he doesn’t sulk around, either.

(A shout-out here for Victor immediately supporting Yuuri’s “Katsudon is my Eros” spiel from that moment in episode 3. Like after the initial moment of shock, his knee-jerk reaction was support, not indignation or anything else. Victor knew that Yuuri was a sensitive person and was glad that he came up with something unique and quintessentially him, rather than saying anything that could potentially dishearten him before the big Onsen on Ice showdown. Did Victor break down afterwards and cry into his bowl? Probably. But not in front of Yuuri.)

Also I think if Yuuri gave off a strong “I-don’t-have-any-romantic-feelings-for-you” vibe for real, Victor would have totally backed off. He would have been crushed inside, but he was dedicated to being Yuuri’s coach already and he wouldn’t flake on that just because he was heartbroken. But Yuuri actually didn’t give off any such vibes—instead he sort of makes it clear that there was something between them, even if Yuuri himself was hesitant to call it romantic.

That’s the “hon I’m getting mixed signals from you” look.

Yet instead of returning to his old tactics, Victor realizes that he needs to be a lot more subtle in how he shows Yuuri affection. He takes the time to learn what Yuuri is and isn’t okay with, and he never makes Yuuri uncomfortable from this point on. And on that subject, he gets to know Yuuri as a person. This is highlighted especially in episode 4. When Yuuri pushes him away because of his own anxiety, Victor tries his hardest to re-connect. And when all his attempts don’t work, instead of getting angry at Yuuri and demanding an explanation like many people would, he takes Yuuri to a place where he can feel safe and comfortable (the beach). He opens up a little bit about himself first, allowing Yuuri to do the same afterwards. Victor clearly does not know what it’s like to have anxiety in the way Yuuri does, but he’s aware of that and sincerely tries his best to make sure he’s someone Yuuri can always confide in. It’s this genuine sincerity that makes all the difference, too.

And a moment here to cry over the fact that the beach scene was probably as pivotal for Victor as it was for Yuuri. It was probably one of the few times someone asked him to be himself instead of putting on a face. He was so ready to play whatever role Yuuri needed him to be (be it platonic or romantic), and that’s actually really sad if you think about it. That’s probably how Victor interacted with most of the people in his life. And even though Victor had feelings for Yuuri, he was willing to stow them in favor of being what Yuuri needed. But on that beach, Yuuri told him he didn’t want anything but Victor, as himself, not as anyone else—and to Victor that was probably something very important.

He probably has no idea what being himself means though.

Now I mentioned that Victor never coddles Yuuri and I think that’s a really important thing. Even though he’s clearly head-over-heels for the guy, when Victor is in coach mode he’s fairly professional. Sure he’s touchy-feely, but that physical contact is something that soothes Yuuri and gives him strength. Yet as quick as Victor is to give praise where it’s due, he’s just as quick to give constructive criticism. Sometimes he’s not always the most tactful when it comes to this, but it’s still really significant because, again, this is exactly what Yuuri needs. This is the type of support Yuuri craves and it’s why their student-coach relationship works so well. And while there’s definitely blurred lines in regards to aforementioned relationship, Victor does keep his emotions from affecting his coaching to a degree. The best example of this is in the beginning of episode 12, where Victor is very clearly still distraught because of Yuuri’s “let’s end this” thing, but he’s still as supportive of Yuuri as he can be despite the fact that he probably felt like he’d been shot in the heart several times. And when he sees that Yuuri is in need of support before the free skate, Victor tries his best to give him some comforting words until Yuuri tells him to knock it off and just be himself. (While we’re on the subject, I just want to point out that Victor never pressures Yuuri into making a decision about his future, despite how upset he was when Yuuri dropped the bombshell on him. Though maybe some clear communication could have prevented the whole thing—but I digress. That’s another post.)

Now of course I’m going to talk about That Garage Scene from episode 7, too. I know we were all going “what were you thinking?!” when Victor pulled the “if you miss the podium I’ll take responsibility and resign as your coach” shocker. But this was a super important scene, nonetheless, and made me actually really like Victor as a person. Because when Victor messes up here, he realizes it. He understands that he screwed up and inadvertently hurt Yuuri and immediately apologizes for it without trying to explain himself—because he knows it doesn’t matter why; what matters is that he hurt Yuuri by saying it in the first place. He has no idea how to comfort someone because he’s never been in an emotionally deep relationship before, but when Yuuri tells him what he needs out of him, Victor listens and immediately modifies his behavior so that never does something like that again. This is how an apology should be and is more than I can say for a lot of people, to be honest.

Switching gears now, I also want to talk about how even though Victor was in a foreign country, he never once complained. Everyone uses chopsticks to eat here? Great—chopsticks it is! Has to sleep on a futon for a few days until his stuff is set up? No problem! All the locals speak a completely different language than him? Konnichiwa, Mr. Fisherman! As someone who moved to a different country for school myself, I can say that adjusting to a culture is by no means easy. And for me, it was moving back to a country I was originally born in and whose culture I was at least surrounded by even back home—yet it was still a case of massive culture shock that took me months to adjust to. Sure Victor’s been around the world for competitions and things, but visiting various places for a few days at a time for a sporting event is vastly different than moving to a place and actually living there. Like… interacting with people who may or may not understand you, adjusting to the food and the climate, and learning the customs and language…? That’s a type of hard many people will never understand. It’s not easy for anyone and it probably wasn’t easy for Victor either—yet he embraced it with zeal and never complained. I don’t even know where to begin with that.

Too adorable I can’t—

Going off of that, Victor’s just a really nice guy. Like a genuinely good person. He’s incredibly talented, wealthy, and famous yet he never talks down to anyone. He never badmouthed any of his competitors (though no one in the show really does) and is courteous to everyone around him. He’s sincere in his affections and isn’t afraid to show it. It’s a little funny, actually, how on one hand he can come off as an eccentric genius who’s a bit lost, and yet on the other hand he just seems to have his shit together incredibly well. I.e. he can be a bit childish at times but when it counts he’s #AdultGoals.

But yeah, Victor is by no means perfect though. He has a number of flaws but all of them make him feel more real as a character. No one is perfect—we slip up and say things we don’t mean and do things we ultimately regret. And like… Victor is forgetful and doesn’t always know how to navigate a one-on-one social situation and is evidently not a paragon of clear communication sometimes. But when he does fuck up, he tries his best to fix things and never throws around blame. It’s just really nice to see a male character who is genuinely funny, kind, and sensitive (and beautiful) and not subject to those creepy, toxic masculine stereotypes we often see in media.

(Since we don’t know anything about Victor’s past I didn’t mention it. But if it turns out he has a tragic backstory I will cry myself to sleep because it would mean he’s a sweetheart despite that—and those are the characters I like the most.)

#yoi #yuri on ice #yuri!!! on ice #victor nikiforov #viktor nikiforov #this post is like 4 months too late i'm sorry #but think of it as a reminder that victor is a good character and i love him #why did i even write this #oh that's right i like to avoid my real-life responsibilities #YOI is my coping mechanism i swear #nyerus.txt #meta

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makeroomforthejolyghost · 8 years ago

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HERE IT IS!!! i’ve been waiting 700 fuckin pages for this omg; i have such fuckin Collector’s Pride about this passage in proust bc i think it is. the only instance in anything i have ever read??? where an author describes how the interaction btwn feeling compelled to hide vs. to draw attention to their being sick[bats] plays out--and where they get it right, bc proust speaks 1. from personal experience and 2. without either undue self-defensiveness or -mockery. SO I AM GOING TO QUOTE IT AT LENGTH, w/ regrets if ur on mobile.

Neurotic subjects are perhaps less addicted than any ... to “listening to their insides”: they hear so many things going on by which they realise later that they were wrong to let themselves be alarmed, that they end by paying no attention to any of them. Their nervous systems have so often cried out to them for help, as though with some serious malady, when it was simply going to start snowing or they were going to move house, that they have acquired the habit of paying no more heed to these warnings than a soldier who in the heat of battle perceives them so little that he is capable, although dying, of carrying on for some days still the life of a man in perfect health. One morning, bearing within me all my habitual ailments, from whose constant internal circulation I kept my mind turned as resolutely away as from the circulation of my blood, I came running blithely into the dining-room where my parents were already at table, and--having assured myself, as usual, that to feel cold may mean not that one ought to warm oneself but that, for instance, one has received a scolding, and not to feel hungry may mean that it is going to rain and not that one ought to fast--had taken my place between them when in the act of swallowing the first mouthful of a particularly tempting cutlet, a nausea and dizziness brought me to a halt, the feverish reaction of an illness that had already begun, the symptoms of which had been masked ... by the ice of my indifference, but which obstinately refused the nourishment that I was not in a fit state to absorb. Then, at the same moment, the thought that I would be prevented from going out if I was seen to be unwell gave me, as the instinct of self-preservation gives a wounded man, the strength to crawl to my own room, where I found that I had a temperature of 104, and then to get ready to go to the Champs-Elysées. Through the languid and vulnerable shell which encased them, my eager thoughts were urging me towards, were clamouring for the soothing delight of a game of prisoner’s base with Gilberte, and an hour later, barely able to keep on my feet, but happy in being by her side, I had still the strength to enjoy it. (2.92-3)

fjslahgsdf i love that (in addition to being complete nonsense in context) his rationalization re feeling cold teaches him to associate illness w/ punishment and thus w/ bad behavior??? and how he slides right from there to the more obvious connection btwn these phenomena, i.e. that as a child u feel compelled to hide both so as not to let ur parents deprive you of a privilege. also haha notice that in spite of his habitual lack of interest in food the narrator describes the cutlet as “particularly tempting,” vs. his later description of “eager thoughts” inside a “languid and vulnerable shell” holy... shit... yes??? i. get maybe unnecessarily excited, when i see depicted this, like. necessary cognitive dissonance. that comes w/ chronic illness; i often see that phenomenon reduced to “we fake being well, not being sick” but that never quite feels accurate to my experience. like it’s true that’s what ur doing when you go out n try to look nice and have fun, do school &c. w/out mentioning to anyone that ur not well, yeah, but. qua sensation it’s more like a disconnect btwn the state of the fleshcase and the standard by which u judge external phenomena. like? the threshold past which you lose the ability to do that--to aesthetically appreciate or even feel tempted by food you intellectually know would nauseate you, for example--gets way higher; you develop a tolerance to the altered state, i guess, as you would to an actual drug.

anyway, also this:

For some time now I had been liable to fits of breathlessness, and our doctor, braving the disapproval of my grandmother, who saw me already dying a drunkard’s death, had recommended me to take ... beer, champagne or brandy when I felt an attack coming. ... I was often obliged, so that my grandmother should allow it to be given to me, instead of disguising, almost to make a display of my state of suffocation. On the other hand, as soon as I felt it coming, ... I would grow distressed at the thought of my grandmother’s anxiety, of which I was far more afraid than of my own sufferings. But at the same time my body, either because it was too weak to keep those sufferings secret, or because it feared lest, in their ignorance of the imminent attack, people might demand of me some exertion which it would have found impossible or dangerous, gave me the need to warn my grandmother of my symptoms with a precision into which I put a sort of physiological punctiliousness. If I observed in myself a disturbing symptom which I had not previously discerned, my body was in distress so long as I had not communicated it to my grandmother. If she pretended to take no notice, it made me insist. Sometimes I went too far; and that beloved face, which was no longer able always to control its emotion as in the past, would betray an expression of pity, a painful contraction. ... And its scruples being at the same time calmed by the certainty that she was now aware of the discomfort that I felt, my body offered no opposition to my reassuring her. I protested that this discomfort was not really painful, that I was in no sense to be pitied, that she might be quite sure that I was now happy; my body had wished to secure exactly the amount of pity that it deserved, and, provided that someone knew that it had a pain in its right side, it could see no harm in my declaring that this pain was of no consequence and was not an obstacle to my happiness (93-4)

i just?? yes? exactly!!! that is exactly how it works like it feels fucking horrible not to tell anyone but also u. don’t want to, because it will inevitably sound like a Big Deal, and sort of is a big deal In The Grand Scheme Of Things re how much it affects your life, but in order to admit that (and thus not have to worry about how to Break The News when and if it becomes relevant) you risk making it sound Tragic or Scary, which it isn’t, because it’s. normal. i like that the only role he gives to fear, here, is worry about how to navigate social situations while ill; i’ve been so indignant lately about all the time i spent accepting other people’s perception that i was afraid of being or becoming ill when... no? he’s right; that stopped being scary ages ago. what u have is a constant quiet knowledge that u are Weak and Ailing--in a way/to an extent that it may or may not be safe or plausible to hide--and a fear of how that might affect ur social existence and ability to function. and it’s so fucking nice to see that mentality figure in a story!!!

#tell marcel i'm ignoring his text posts #screalth tag #alcohol ///#emetophobia warning ///

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chestnutpost · 6 years ago

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How I Learned To Deal With Panic Attacks At Work — And You Can Too

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During the middle of an ordinary work day, I began to die. Or at least it felt like it, because I was having a panic attack. My throat closed up, my heart rate spiked, and my breathing quickened as I struggled to regain control of my body, sure that death was imminent.

It felt both silly and not silly that the fear of not getting enough air would panic me so much, I would cry about it in the privacy of a bathroom stall, then have to leave work early to go see a doctor, who would clear me as healthy. After the episode passed, I felt defective, wondering what caused the malfunction. I was getting enough air. My heartbeat was normal. My lungs were perfectly operational. But the panic attack destabilized my sense of what was normal.

It wasn’t the first time I experienced a sudden, intense fear for my life for no rational reason. The waves of panic first crashed over me in the months I was unemployed after a layoff. Even after I got a new job, it persisted. The anxiety settled into my bones and made a home there. I no longer trusted myself, so I no longer trusted my body, jumping to the worst conclusion each time a thought misfired in my mind: “You’re not getting enough air, your heart rate is too high, you’re dying, run, get out of the office.” While my co-workers were typing around me, getting work done, I was alone in a life-or-death match with my body.

These panic attacks cost me my time and productivity. I would disrupt my work under deadline to walk outside to a nearby garden and pace among trees until I could prove to myself that my body was fine. What is debilitating about panic attacks is that once you have one, you can develop a fear of them happening again. The shame isolated me and prevented me from asking for help. I did not want my boss or co-workers to see me as unreliable, so I kept these episodes of panic to myself.

It took trial and error, a good therapist, self-help books and time to retrain my brain to trust my body again. Making peace with myself is a process I am still refining, and it’s one panicked people everywhere can learn too, whether they experience panic on a clinical level or through an occasional sense of acute dread. Here are the expert-backed tips I learned that I would share with my anxious self and anyone who feels creeping panic at work.

1. Focus your breathing

Focused breathing centers our bodies when we are being hijacked by a surge of panic. Research has linked breathing to lower stress levels and reduced negative anxiety and emotions.

But being told to just breathe can be less helpful when you feel short of breath at your desk. Try long, slow breaths as you feel the symptoms of panic rise, said Maryland-based clinical psychologist Monique Reynolds of the Center for Anxiety and Behavior Change.

She recommended breathing in for a count of four, then breathing out for a count of six to slow your heart rate and breathing, which in turn activates the parasympathetic nervous system. During a panic attack, our body’s fight-or-flight response is turned on, releasing adrenaline and increasing heart rate and breathing to enable the body to fend off or flee a perceived threat. Breathing slowly tells the body we can let our guard down.

“We want to activate the brake system, the parasympathetic system,” Reynolds said. “A long slow breath is a really good way to do that. It cues our whole system that we are safe, there’s no danger here.”

2. Confront the panic head-on

Once we’re in the full throes of a panic attack, we may experience physical symptoms that accompany overwhelming sudden fear, like shaking, heart palpitations, chest pains, difficulty breathing, lightheadedness and paralyzing terror, according to the American Psychological Association.

These symptoms can be scary, but instead of shying away from the body’s discomfort, people should accept their circumstances to make the panic attack shorter. “Anxiety needs avoidance to really function,” Reynolds said. “The moment we start saying, ‘Oh, my God, this can’t happen now. I can’t have this panic attack. This is the worst time ever,’ then you’re in trouble.”

It may seem counterintuitive, but the quickest way to move through to the other side of a panic attack is to confront the feelings directly, she said. “If you know that typically you have a rapid heart rate, you might say to yourself, ‘Bring it on. I know my heart is going to pound, I’m going to feel dizzy for a second, my hands are going to sweat,’” she said. “Part of it is really educating yourself on what are your symptoms of panic.”

In his book When Panic Attacks, psychiatrist David Burns recalls how he lessened his fear of blood after he was forced to be surrounded by it in an emergency room as a student. “Instead of avoiding the thing you fear, you intentionally expose yourself to it and flood yourself with anxiety,” he writes. “You don’t fight the anxiety or try to control it, you just surrender to it. Eventually the anxiety burns itself out and you’re cured.”

3) Get logical

During a panic attack, we can stop thinking logically. Signals from deeper regions of the brain like the hypothalamus and brain stem, which are involved in defense responses, can take over instead of being moderated by the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decisionmaking. You can put the logical part of your brain back in the driver’s seat with a few techniques.

Narrate your experience. Addressing panic means giving it language, even if it is just you narrating what you’re going through in your head. This narration can help get your brain’s reasoning parts back online when you are not thinking straight during a panic attack.

“When you’re having a panic attack, your prefrontal cortex that has all that logical, sequential thought ― the reasoning, rational brain ― actually goes offline,” Reynolds said.

Narration can include talking yourself through an attack in multiple ways. You can become curious about your feelings instead of afraid of them. Noticing the world outside yourself or writing down how you feel can help accomplish that.

Take five. If you’re in the middle of a panic attack, unable to speak, one thing you can do to re-engage the rational brain is to focus on other sensations. Look around the room and find five things of a certain color, then listen for four different sounds, touch three textures, smell two things and taste one thing, Reynolds recommended. “The process of engaging your senses and focusing on sensory information pushes your brain back into engaging your prefrontal cortex,” she said.

Write it down. If panicking at work happens with any frequency or with known triggers, she recommended writing down self-coaching reminders on index cards to cue your logical side.

These statements should not be blanket reassurances like “You’re going to be fine” but positive statements you can believe in, such as “This feeling is uncomfortable, but it is not dangerous” or “I can handle difficulty,” Reynolds said.

Journaling how you feel before or after a panic attack can also help you notice what may be beneath those intense feelings of panic. Chloe Carmichael, a New York City–based clinical psychologist, recommended that people first confirm with a medical doctor that they are healthy and then use techniques like journaling to uncover the hidden emotions driving the panic.

“If you really do feel you’re having sudden, intense emergencies over your feelings, then it may be a sign you need to connect with your feelings more frequently so they don’t have to reach fever pitch to get your attention,” she said.

For people who avoid their emotions until they burst out in a panic attack, documenting what happened during the day can be a useful way to use language to calm down, feel in control and understand what prompts panicky fear. “In a very simple way, write down what was your high point and your low point of the day,” Carmichael said.

4. Connect with someone

During one frantic walk outside my office, I called my dad and felt my heart rate slow at the sound of his familiar voice. I no longer felt helpless, and knowing that support was a phone call away kept me going and enabled me to finish the workday.

Too many of us keep quiet about what is happening when we start to panic at work. A panic attack can be an isolating event, especially in a workplace where you may not feel comfortable sharing this vulnerability with your colleagues.

“There’s this sense of secrecy that tends to inflame the situation,” Reynolds said.

Seeking our support structures takes away secrecy’s isolating power and can put us back in control of our situations. “Instead of just being reactive, which is just running to the bathroom to catch your breath, you can be proactive by noticing in advance that you’re feeling on edge and could use some support,” Carmichael said. Texting or emailing friends or family members to see if they can chat during your lunch break or arranging to meet up with someone after work can be ways to call on your support, she said.

5. Identify your workplace triggers

After a panic attack, where it happened can become a source of dread. If the workplace becomes a place of panic-inducing stress, reflect on the triggers to see what can be changed about the situation.

“It’s really important to start using really descriptive language on what exactly about your office was so stressful that you ended up reacting this way,” Carmichael said. Ask yourself if it was your office environment or if the source is your field of work in general, social dynamics in your office or that you need to learn how to communicate more assertively about your workload, she said.

Even if you do not experience panic attacks specifically, knowing how you can address workplace stress is useful.

Unfortunately, addressing workplace stress and anxiety that you cannot avoid can be difficult. “It becomes a problem when the thing that your brain wants to avoid is also the thing that allows you to pay rent,” said Mary Poffenroth, a San Jose University researcher and lecturer on fear.

She said people can think about the central trigger for that workplace panic so they can talk with leadership on what can be adjusted. “Was it an individual person? Was it the overall culture? Was it a project? Was it a particular thing, like presenting?” she said. Then you can arrive at “some creative ways to deliver on what that need is but not do that thing that you know is going to send you into a tailspin.”

Panic happens to many of us

I am not the only person who has experienced embarrassing panic in a most inconvenient setting like an office, and I will not be the last. It’s estimated that 6 million American adults live with panic disorder, which comes with frequent attacks, and many more experience attacks less often. If you are huffing and pacing outside your office to get through the workday, if you need to take a break to call your parents to cope under a deadline, if you are slowly counting out breaths at your desk, know that there are many supportive people out there and that tools like the ones above can help.

If this is affecting your everyday life to the point that you can’t function, it’s worth seeing a mental health professional to get to the bottom of what’s going on. You deserve to be able to live a normal, productive life both in and out of the office.

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