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juicedaloe · 2 years ago

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Mithrun and brain damage

I'm not sure if anyone is interested in this, but I wanted to make a post talking about why I think that Mithrun has brain damage from a traumatic brain injury instead of him being a representation of other neurological disorders or mental illness. I'm not that involved in the dunmesh fandom so I don't know how common this headcanon is, though I've seen a few people mention it here and there.

This is just my own opinion so if you disagree then that's fine. Some of this is just speculation and I can't say what Kui's intentions were. This post isn't meant to be that serious. I just wanted to talk about it and hopefully inform about how brain damage can affect some people in a way that I hope is interesting and relevant.

This will be kind of long because I like to talk so it will be under the cut. Apologies for the length and how much I ramble. Feel free to give input especially if I got anything wrong or if this is too confusing.

Okay let's go

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is incredibly complex. The long-term effects of a TBI include a wide array of symptoms. Each injury is different, and some people can completely recover rather quickly while others can become permanently disabled, even for seemingly "minor" injuries. What I'll cover here isn't a definitive representation of the experiences of all those who have long-term effects from TBI, nor do I speak for everyone with brain damage.

Here are some long term symptoms relevant to this post:

Alexithymia (inability to process and name emotions)

Inability to process and name physical perceptions

Mood swings and emotional regulation difficulties

Communication difficulties

Social impairment

Apathy about caring for oneself

Lack of motivation

Alexithymia and inability to process physical perceptions

This one is rather obvious. While Mithrun is shown to feel emotions and have physical sensations (for instance, describing his location when he gets lost in the dungeon as "a cold place"), he is also apathetic to how this affects him. This means that his physical and emotional perceptions are reduced in some way. He says that becoming lord of the dungeon will leave someone "empty", showing he is aware of his dulled emotional state.

A good example of this is can be seen here in a bonus comic where he doesn't give much of a reaction to burning his mouth on hot food.

(I love these two a lot, by the way. Pattadol is really under appreciated.)

He is also not able to recognize bodily signals, such as hunger or when he is tired. Despite collapsing from exhaustion and not eating for long periods of time, he still insists he is not tired or hungry.

Mood swings

Mood swings in combination with alexithymia can be an especially disorientating experience. Those who struggle to perceive their own emotions can still feel them even if they don't know how to recognize it.

Individuals with brain injuries often experience drastic mood swings, particularly anger. To those around them, they can appear to go from 0 to 100 in an instant.

This is more speculation/headcanon on my part, as the strongest emotion Mithrun has for most of his appearances is anger. However one could interpret this as being unrelated as he is seeking revenge for a traumatic experience.

Communication difficulties and social impairment

Not only can naming personal experiences be incredibly difficult with a brain injury, but other areas of communication are often affected as well.

Mithrun is not able to set boundaries for himself even if someone is doing something he would not actually want them to do, which can leave him in a vulnerable position.

People with brain injuries can sometimes have a paradoxical experience when it comes to communicating with others. They can go from being very quiet to speaking at length about one topic, seemingly without regard for the importance of each bit of information. (I see it like Newton's first law of motion. It is hard to start speaking and it can be just as hard to stop.)

I really like this aspect of Mithrun's characterization. Usually, he is very quiet because he has no reason to speak. However, once he starts talking he is shown to be overly specific and goes on for long periods of time. Kabru has to spend multiple days figuring out his story.

In a side comic, Kabru tells Mithrun he should condense some of the personal details that Kabru finds irrelevant to the topic of the dungeon.

Mithrun shares many details about himself because his desire not to do so is gone. This mirrors the experience of many people who have brain damage to overshare and not understand how their words will come across to others. Sometimes they say or do things that are insensitive or inappropriate for the situation.

Caring for oneself and motivation

In the dungeon, Mithrun becomes reliant on others for self care. He also seems especially incapable of motivating himself to take care of his body when he is particularly focused on his goals.

In these panels, thus far he had been fairly receptive of Kabru trying to take care of him. However, he could sense that the demon was close and was too focused on that to care to eat.

Refusal of care and treatment is often an effect of traumatic brain injury. This can be for seemingly no reason, even if the person knows that this will help them. Sometimes people will lie about receiving treatment or doing things to take care of themselves, either so they can avoid it or avoid having someone take care of them.

He knows that eating regularly and not pushing himself too much will help him - he's been told multiple times on-screen - but he still has to be continuously told by others to give him that motivation to take care of himself. He's very apathetic to his physical state, even if it seems his only desire is for revenge and he should be doing anything he can to achieve that.

Other things of note

I wasn't sure where to put this, but while Mithrun's sense of direction is speculated by Kabru to be left over from his time as lord of an ever-changing, confusing dungeon, having poor sense of direction in the way he does could also be indicative of brain injury as well.

While the dungeon is confusing and illogical, he is known to have a poor sense of direction and to get frequently lost by those around him, even trying to exit an entrance he just came through. He is shown to be very intelligent, but memory is greatly impacted by brain injuries which affects a person's sense of direction and location.

Something that really stands out to me about Mithrun is how much the things that help him are particularly helpful to those with brain damage. He is physically capable of performing tasks, but he needs an outside source to remind him and get him started. He relies entirely on routine, and when that regularity is taken away he shows extreme difficulty taking care of himself.

Sometimes, the care that some people need is simply someone else to encourage them or to tell them when to do things. The care that he needs is pretty consistent with a person with a brain injury who does not need a full time caretaker and would prefer to have some independence.

Also, healing magic is specified to not work with brain injury unless the person is killed and revived. Mithrun had not been revived after his injuries, so it is entirely possible for him to have sustained a TBI. I don't think this matters that much because one is still allowed to have headcanons even if there is a magical explanation or isn't really possible in canon, but I thought it was an interesting detail.

In conclusion

Because of all this I don't believe that his lack of self care is due solely to mental illness. While mental illnesses like depression or PTSD can cause a decline in self care, the reasons why the affected individual is avoidant of these tasks differs. These disorders can also cause cognitive difficulties and emotional regulation issues, but not to the same extent or in the same way that brain damage would. I think that he does have both depression and PTSD (both are common after a TBI) but those are not his only disabilities.

And on a personal note, I just think that having a character with brain damage is really cool. Most of the time I've seen it the characters are not given very much respect and they are treated as comic relief and a joke. Regardless of whether you agree with this post or not, it is still nice to see a character with a disability like this.

Thank you if you read all of this. I hope it was easy to understand and I did not ramble too much. I don't have anything else to say but I've been wanting to write this out for a while.

Okay bye

#Dungeon Meshi #Mithrun

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jewish-vents · 10 months ago

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I was adopted by Jewish people and converted to Judaism when I was a teenager. The morality Judaism offers has guided me through navigating my personality disorder, my severe alexithymia, my impaired judgment and my bouts of irrational paranoia. My original family lost custody of me because they beat me senseless, starved me, burned me, broke my bones and actually killed my sister by beating her to death. My girlfriend, a goy, texted me images of alleged victims of the IDF that a single reverse Google image search would have showed her are victims of US military intervention in Syria. And she honestly said, "Sometimes I think it would be better if you hadn't been adopted so you weren't technically sort of part of Israel."

I've never been to Israel but I have been up all night and now, as the dawn breaks, I've come to the conclusion I need to cut her out of my life. My whole life I've struggled with outbursts of anger, it's a part of most Cluster B personality disorders. When she said that I wasn't angry. I felt hollowed out. It feels like she ripped the personhood out of me. Because if you care about a person's well-being, you would never, EVER look at them and go, "I think it would be better if you had stayed with literal child murderers rather than be Jewish, which I am going to conflate not just with Israel but with the image of the IDF spread online". I can't be angry because it's so cruel I can't wrap my mind around it. It seems unreal. I kept checking for hours, convinced I must be having a break from reality because of the stress. I kept thinking it must be a visual hallucination. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and this is going to be a very strange dream.

I know breaking up with her is going to hurt her very badly no matter how nicely I do it. We've been dating a very long time. But I want to have kids someday and I can't do it with a woman who would rather I be dead than be Jewish. I'm not a guy who does the whole "my partner's beliefs have to match mine" thing but I can't raise Jewish children with her. I can't even trust her to see me clearly.

It's taking everything in my power not to say anything to her until I can calm down enough to approach this from a stable place. In my entire life, I don't think a single thing someone has said has ever messed me up so profoundly in my life.

I'm sorry I'm rambling. I can feel that I'm all over the place. Feel free not to publish this if it's too long. I can't imagine how much stress running this blog is. You probably get a bunch of hate and garbage on top of the already hard job of reading everyone's pain. I hope you're taking care of yourself. Thank you for running this blog.

I'm so sorry for all of that. I think you're making the right decision to cut her out. It's very reasonable to worry about how she might treat any children you have in the future, but that was also an indefensibly cruel thing to say to you.

Breaking up might hurt her, but that isn't your fault. You need to take care of yourself. -🐞

#jewish vents #antisemitism #tw: child abuse

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titan-god-helios · 7 months ago

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simply existing as neurodivergent is tiring.

no matter which it is, every neurodivergence comes with its own set of symptoms and traits that makes even sitting and trying to relax something that takes energy.

for me, my adhd makes it so that i have a CONSTANT inner monologue. and that "monologue" consists of SO much. it feels like there's a main monologue of my most prominent thoughts, another monologue in the background and another after that too, with music playing off in the distance, mental images flashing in and out and also having to stay present in the real world so i don't fuck everything up in real life. my brain is always on high speed and when it isn't there's still mental noise regardless from the monologue. and its fucking tiring. it makes my social battery lower than ever and means that i never truly get a moments' peace unless i superengineer my surroundings to force it. which again, takes energy.

if you add the fact that my autism connotes sensory issues, a baseline of anxiety for pretty much everything due to yk. uncertainty of situations, having to mask and be hypervigilant to keep up my masking etc, it becomes even more tiring. masking whilst being distracted in a conversation is even harder.

then my npd dogpiles essentially and makes it so there's a subsection of my inner monologue dedicated to screaming at me and mocking me or others all the time. that's fucking tiring.

i get intrusive thoughts. i disassociate a lot. my mood can change very quickly due to the emotional dysregulation that comes with my everything. that's tiring.

it feels like my brain is constantly doing its best to fuck with me at all times. and its doing a pretty damn good job at it.

that's not to mention other neurodivergences that other people may have such as did/osdd, schizospec disorders, cluster a, b and c personality disorders, down syndrome, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, bipolar disorder, synaesthesia, intellectual disabilities, auditory processing disorders, anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, tourettes' syndrome, tic disorders, cerebral palsy, parkinsons', alexithymia (which i have and makes it exhausting to just. figure out how you feel at any given time and makes things such as giving consent much harder and lengthier) and so on

if you happen to have physical disabilities alongside neurodivergence, it's even fucking harder.

it's fucking hard. it's not a bed of roses, or doesn't only affect us when we're doing stuff. us sitting on the couch and trying to relax may take enormous amounts of effort that you simply do not see.

please be patient with us. we're trying our best.

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lunareiitic · 1 year ago

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HSR 1.6 SPOILERS AHEAD BE WARNED

I saw a discussion on Reddit earlier where someone talked about how gracious Herta is to Ruan Mei and felt that the plot shows that Ruan Mei is taking advantage of her and I felt like... it's not a bad conclusion to draw from the text but. It feels not correct. Like yes, Herta essentially does let RM do whatever she wants, especially with regards to the space station, and RM doesn't seem to be very thankful for it. (Setting aside the fact that it isn't really Herta's space station. Asta's the one who bankrolls and manages it. It's just got Herta's name on it. Herta is just as uncaring to the researchers lmao) But to call RM a "passive manipulator" (yes, I saw this take too) of her and nothing more I think... overlooks both of their personalities? Taking into account that both of these characters are essentially confirmed autistic (go see the official post about the Genius Society, you can't make this up) their dynamic is a little tragic but very true-to-life.

Herta is loud, pushy, and bratty. She's like a cat- she doesn't take no for an answer and the moment you try to get her to do something she doesn't want to do she goes limp and useless. She admires Ruan Mei because she's nothing like her. And RM would never push Herta to do anything. RM doesn't push. She doesn't even really manipulate. The woman cannot lie to save her life. All she did was ask Herta if she could use part of the space station and Herta obliged, and it sounds like she'd been waiting for Ruan Mei to finally ask her for something. RM doesn't really have a malicious bone in her body. That's what makes her so terrifying. People are often just willing to do as she asks and she makes no pretenses or illusions about herself, her motives, or her life. The closest she gets to lying is just not answering when pressed. She is so socially inept she has to drug the trailblazer into silence so they'll help her. And I think this is... out of embarrassment? If it were me, an autistic bitch who cannot lie to save my life, I would want to do something similar. She knows she's gotten herself into a situation because she left the incubator on too long and then the space station got attacked, but admitting that to Herta would wound her pride and also cause friction between them. You can tell that she brought the Trailblazer into that Genius meeting because she was afraid Herta and Screwllum had caught on to her, and once she realizes that it's just them debating about (in her eyes) nothing, she lets the Trailblazer go. I've seen people call that "callous", as if she was dropping them as soon as they were not useful to her. But she says why she does it basically immediately- she thinks it would bore us and she has something else more important that she needs our help with.

I think the part of Ruan Mei's character that people are overlooking right now is that Ruan Mei does care. Look at the story bit for Genius' Repose, where she serves machine oil in a teacup for Screwllum and promises to send a box of homemade sweets to Herta's flesh-and-blood body. She's the kind of person who is actively thinking of her mother and her grandmother and their little home in the snow every time she eats something sweet. Her creations are literally desperate with love. Love, love, love, love. Love that feels alien to her, love that she can't put into words, love that her alexithymia won't let her ascertain and compartmentalize. Love that is as elusive and vexing and important as that spark of the divine soul she's been chasing all this time. She loves and she loves deeply, to the point of obsession. But she's in love with the past as much as Herta is- their signature light cones both have them reflecting on a past version of themselves that they know they cannot have back. She quite literally brought her mother back to life because she couldn't bear to break a promise to her late grandmother (who... somehow, is still waiting for her... somewhere). She's a deeply sentimental person. Haven't you ever looked at other people and felt, even for just a moment, that you are apart from them? That they have something you lack? What if you let that feeling consume you? Ruan Mei yearns for a world that she cannot touch because she's lost the trees in the greater forest of her mind. She feels the need to become god because she feels so utterly alienated from the world around her. But she can't escape herself, no matter how far she runs.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that Herta and Ruan Mei are friends, even if Ruan Mei doesn't feel that she's capable of it. It makes a lot of sense that they're both ice too, element ruled primarily by The Remembrance. I wonder how they both feel about that?

#hsr #honkai star rail #hsr spoilers #ruan mei #herta #this got away from me but I have been thinking about her nonstop for two weeks now

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pikatrainer99 · 11 months ago

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Kieran is autistic and you can't change my mind!

Okay, I KNOW that I'm not the only one who holds this headcanon...but I wanted to do an analysis on Kieran anyway, especially since my best friend @sinnohanvulpix said she'd love to see me do one. Credit to her for all the screenshots used btw. The GIFs on the other hand were either found on Google Images or created by me using gifrun.com and these YouTube videos:

youtube

I did not use my own footage for this at all...as proof here's what MY character in the game looks like...he has my real name but I tried to make him look like Orange which is why he has the orange eyes 😅

(Sorry for the bad quality btw...taking pictures of my Switch screen is hard 😅)

Okay, now without further ado, let's get started with the analysis!

First, Kieran has a CLEAR special interest in Ogerpon, he admires and looks up to her, he was obsessed with the story of the ogre, he was always trying to go to her den and meet her, he has a meltdown when Ogerpon chooses the player over him, etc. Carmine even says that Kieran "really really REALLY likes the ogre" and that made me think, "Ah! Special interest!"

And then at the end of the Teal Mask he gains a new special interest in getting stronger to beat the player...and he hyperfocuses HARD on that...to the point of it being detrimental to both his physical and mental health, as he was doing nothing but training during that time...he barely ate, barely slept, just trained...and that is not healthy. It's a rare example of media showcasing a special interest being unhealthy and absolutely CONSUMING one's life, and the consequences do actually show for it.

Kieran is very introverted and doesn't know how to make friends very well. I actually think the player is his first friend considering his surprised reaction when the player says they consider him a friend, and following this, he quickly becomes a bit...too attached to the player, as he doesn't quite understand how friendships work.

(This is also such a neurodivergent way to say "I'm so happy I finally have a friend")

He also struggles socially, as is a requirement for autistic people to qualify for a diagnosis. Kieran specifically has a hard time reading social cues, he struggles with making eye contact, he has clear anxiety when talking to people as proven by his little stutter he has at times.

(This is an adorable screenshot 🥺)

He also struggles with social and emotional processing (and might have alexithymia as well due to his sudden huge outbursts of emotion), and he also struggles with initiating conversation as well, as seen when he tries to talk to Penny at the League Club. They both have no idea how to even start a conversation with each other and it's honestly pretty adorable seeing the two quiet adorkable kids trying their best to hold conversation. I get it, you two, initiating conversation is really difficult for me too.

Also the way they try to start the conversation by talking about the weather...that's really funny and ironic to me because that's what NTs do all the time. NTs always use the weather as a small-talk conversation starter but NDs like me (and Kieran and Penny too apparently) just don't get that stuff.

(These two are so neurodivergent it's great and I love them both 🥺)

Kieran also has four in-game animations that I personally see as stimming. The first one is him tapping his fist against his hip when he's thinking or nervous.

(Focus your attention to his hand here and you'll see it.)

The second one is him playing with a strand of loose hair, usually when he's nervous.

(The little nervous side glance at the player is relatable and adorable 🥺)

The third one is a more agitated stim that he only does ONCE in the entire game...and that is tapping the front of his foot on the ground. I do that myself when I'm agitated or impatient, somehow it's comforting, especially since for some reason I really like the way my shoes sound when I tap them on the ground... especially since I got my brand new Infernape-themed shoes, they sound extra satisfying because they're brand new.

(This is not the way most people tap their foot...I've never seen an NT do it like this...only other NDs such as myself and one of my brothers)

The fourth and final one is, unfortunately, a stress stim...Kieran runs his hands very fast through his hair and it also looks like, to me anyway as someone who has self-injurious stims myself, that he is digging his nails into his scalp as well while doing that. I do something similar myself, though on top of running my hands through my hair and digging my nails into my scalp, I also pull at my hair...yeah... self-injurious stims are no joke...and I'm kinda glad Kieran's autism coding brings attention to that aspect of autism...at least in my eyes as someone who does those things myself.

(He's in so much stress here, poor kid 😔)

Another aspect of autism that I'm surprised and kinda glad that Kieran exhibits as an autistic-coded character is meltdowns and shutdowns. Kieran has actual meltdowns in the game! This is something we have never seen in such an in-your-face way in any Pokémon game, and as someone who regularly has meltdowns myself, it hit me in the feels whenever I saw him having them. His first meltdown is in the Teal Mask when he steals the Teal Mask and runs off to Loyalty Plaza where he battles the player. He yells at Carmine and the player for treating him like an outcast...which is unfortunately something that happens to a lot of autistic people, myself included. Kieran screams at the player and Carmine for for lying to him while doing his stress stim, before running up to the Lousy Three's shrine and punching it, without any regard for his safety, which is also something autistic people may do during meltdowns...I know I have no regard for my safety during mine. After that's all over he gives the mask back to the player and goes home, leaving the player to talk to Carmine alone, who says that she's worried and thinks it's just "teen angst". When I saw that I was like, "...Uh, Carmine...I don't think it's just that, I think your brother is neurodivergent and really needs a lot of help and support because he's struggling a lot right now..."

His second meltdown is also in the Teal Mask, when he wants Ogerpon to go with him but Ogerpon wants to go with the player...Kieran can't process that and doesn't understand how to take Ogerpon's feelings into account, instead demanding the player to battle him for the right to be Ogerpon's partner. He collapses on all fours after being defeated again, and it gets worse...he looks like he's crying while the player battles Ogerpon in order to catch her. After the player catches her, Kieran wonders why he can't be like the player, and runs off crying, locking himself in his room for the rest of the story. The end of the Teal Mask has him doing his stress stim while being consumed by a new special interest in a very detrimental way...that interest being becoming so strong that no one can defeat him...including the player.

Kieran's third meltdown is in the Indigo Disk, after the player defeats him in the championship match. That meltdown is a full-on cutscene, where it is CLEAR to see his spiraling mental state through the visuals, and he holds his hands on his head like he has a headache while trying to process the fact that he lost to the player AGAIN (which is also relatable as someone who struggles with processing difficulties myself...it really does give headaches and it is one of the worst feelings when I just can't process what's going on around me or the emotions I feel or anything really)...he collapses to his knees and looks like he's breathing very hard as he is so upset and distressed at this loss. It is definitely one of the most heartbreaking scenes for me because this is a CLEAR CUT MELTDOWN in my eyes and it hits me in the feels like a TRUCK to watch that cutscene.

Also, in the Terapagos fight, Kieran has a bit of a shutdown for a bit, standing there frozen, thinking he's useless and can't do anything right (which is relatable as I have regular shutdowns as well, and I also constantly feel like I'm a failure of a human being who can't do anything right)...but let me tell you, when the player finally gets him to snap out of it and convinces him to help and he opens his eyes revealing that the light is back in his eyes as well as visible tears...I cheered (and teared up myself). My boy was back, and I was so happy.

(When I first saw the tears I was like, "NOOOO don't cry Kieran! 😢)

Also in the Indigo Disk, Kieran seems completely different and "no longer like his usual self". His autistic traits are (mostly) nowhere to be seen as he becomes much more serious, angry, assertive,and aggressive. I personally see this as a persona he puts on by masking, which is common for autistic people to do. I myself can't mask, but Kieran definitely seems to be masking here by putting on this persona in order to get stronger and seem stronger as a person as well. This is NOT his real self, this is a FACADE!

We see him start to drop the mask again in Area Zero when he says it seems like they're in a spy movie or something and how cool that is, but once the crack in his mask is pointed out he immediately puts it back on.

After everything in the under depths ends, and you go back to Blueberry Academy, he drops the mask again completely, and goes back to his real, adorkable, relatable self...and stays that way from then on, which made me so relieved and happy.

(This is my favorite cutscene in the entire DLC because of how adorable it is and also how neurodivergent Kieran is being here while apologizing for all he did 🥺)

In conclusion, I think Kieran is a great example of an autistic-coded character who has many relatable traits, and also does a good job showcasing some of the more "unpleasant and challenging behaviors and traits" (NTs use that terminology a lot, not me... that's how NTs unfortunately view NDs a lot of the time) of autism. I used to be afraid of him during the post-Teal Mask pre-Indigo Disk era but that was my trauma and PTSD talking (I talked about the emotional rollercoaster Kieran's story arc took me on in another post from last year after I finally worked up the courage to play the Indigo Disk...feel free to check that out too if you'd like). Now though I can wholeheartedly say that I love and appreciate Kieran a lot as a character, and his relatability is definitely a big part of why he is a big comfort character for me now (please Pokémon put him in Pokémon Masters EX, PLEASE I will literally cry from joy if he gets added to the game)!

Hope you all enjoyed this autistic person's analysis of yet ANOTHER autistic-coded character in Pokémon! I know I had A LOT to say but that just proves how relatable Kieran is, and I love him for that. Let me know what you think and if I missed anything in the comments below!

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pop-punklouis · 4 months ago

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Thank you so much, he’s doing really really well now! Sober and in a much happier place. And that has given me another lens to see Liam through and that’s where my sadness is right now: he didn’t make it out of his suffering. Fuck, it’s so unfair that not everybody sees their lives get better. So seeing people just have no empathy because they don’t understand that addiction can make many things be true at the same time?? Ugh. I can’t understand this thing where people want to have this proselytizing absolutely virtuous judgement on the goodness of a person. Judging whether a person is worthy of being treated with dignity. You have no idea what you’re talking about and it’s taking cheap shots at a person who in this case is no longer here to say anything back. Liam didn’t have the chance to be whoever he was going to become as an adult and to me that’s so so fucking sad and I wish people would consider that addiction complicates how you should see a person. Anyway. I’m sad he died and I’m sad it was violent the way it happened and I’m sad that I better understand how low things were for him for a long long time because nobody deserves to feel so bad so relentlessly. 🤍

modern society's empathy deficit is such a concerning thing. even how everyone must turn things into jokes now. how topics or news or content must be ironic or dismissed away by shitposts or memes which completely just. ruins the integrity of so many things. not to sound like *old man waves fist and screams at sky* but media is genuinly rotting our brains to the core.

these are two great articles i read and kept in my folders a while ago when i was in grad school that talk about that:

How technology is harming our ability to feel empathy

Empathy, Narcissism, Alexithymia, and Social Media Use

Also didnt Ethel Cain just vent her frustrations on the irony epidemic? (let me go look hold) yes here it is. **disclaimer i'm not comparing any of this here to liam's death etc. obviously. it's just another artist talking about their frustrations with how people on social media just. react to and engage with things**

#grey

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loveless-arobee · 8 months ago

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Being Loveless

Because there’s a lot of demonisation going around still and people really gotta learn to chill down about the way other people describe their emotions.

I identify as loveless as both a personal identity, as well as a somewhat political (? For lack of a better word rn) one on top of it. I’ll explain what I mean by both.

This is only my personal experience, not every loveless person feels the same! If any other loveless person wants to share their experience in the notes, feel free to do so! I enjoy hearing about other people :)

Long post incoming. I tried to keep on track but my mind is messy whenever I’m writing something that’s not a book haha.

So, why I personally identify as loveless is actually the most obvious reason: I don’t really feel anything I’d label as "love". This ties into my low empathy, I think, and my inability to really understand my own emotions, too (alexithymia) (though I see both of that as the same thing, really; to me it just feels like my own low empathy extends to myself, too, not just other people. (But that’s just me, ig))

I don’t really feel like the word love accurately describes any of my feelings, there’s always better phrases to describe what I actually mean. "Love" is a muddy word that can mean almost anything; it just doesn’t make any sense to me. I prefer to use precise language. Like, "I enjoy your company/I like spending time with you", "You’re my favourite person", and "I’d die for you" etc., all carry so much more meaning to me than just a simple "I love you"; because that could mean all of the above or none of it.

For me, it’s just an inaccurate word that doesn’t serve what I want to say at all, almost all of the time. It either can mean everything or it’s just some thing people say, so what am I supposed to expect when someone says they love me? And what do people expect from me when I say I love them?

People also try to give me shit then for "not loving my pets"; as if my dogs and cat and mice would care how I label my emotions! I cuddle them when they want to, give them food and water and entertain them, get them to the vet when they need it, let the one mouse who likes it crawl all over my body, and make sure they live the best life I can offer them. Because I care for them! I chose to get pets; so it’s my responsibility to make sure they are healthy and happy, even when they piss me off from time to time. That’s a lot more than what I see other pet owners do that repeat again and again how much they "love their pets" but that’s a whole other can of worms I don’t want to open here.

The point is: why do my emotions mean so much more than my actions? What, because I don’t have the good and right emotions behind something, my actions are automatically bad? Because you love your pets your obvious abuse of them doesn’t matter, because you just mean well, and you feel the good and right emotions?

Which ties into why I think being loveless is also an at least somewhat "political" identity. At least in the culture I grew up in (European, but I’m very interested in people’s experiences outside of western culture!), love can be and is used to excuse all kinds of abuse and harmful actions.

We can see that a lot in parental abuse; children get told over and over again that their parents just mean well, that they didn’t mean to harm them, that they love them and isn’t that so much more important than the harm they’re doing? And when it gets "to far" (all abuse is to far), they turn and say well, they didn’t really love you if they did those things!

And isn’t it just so romantic that they loved their partner for so long before and stalked them and didn’t take no for an answer and pressured them until they finally agreed? So much love!

And so much more examples.

But of course when I point that out, people are going to hound me with stuff like "well if they’d really love them they wouldn’t do that" or some other variation of "that’s not real love, then!"

But that is just ignoring all the harm that can be and actively is done in the name of love. It is ignoring how love is used far to often to cover up suffering and harm by keeping it on that pedestal of can do no harm, only good. And that is bad. That is very bad.

Love is an emotion just like every other. It can cause both harm and good; and acting like people who love you are incapable of harming you is setting yourself up for abuse. And acting like loving someone means you could never harm or hurt them is making you ignorant to all the hurt you might be causing.

Being loveless, on a political level, means taking "love" down from that pedestal. It is about decentering love, and it’s about freeing myself from the societal expectations put on everyone. It’s about rejecting other people’s reading of my emotions.

And I honestly do not trust people who act like you can only care for someone and want to help them if you love them (or have empathy for them!)

Because basing your support on your own emotions for a person—or a group of people—will often times lead to you being a horrible ally. Because if that person, or some people from that group, do something you don’t approve of, or have an experience you can’t relate to, emotionally, do they not deserve your support anymore?

And why is my support worth less simply because I can’t feel other peoples’ feelings, or even fully understand them for the most part?

Of course, I’m not saying that labelling your own feelings as love is bad in general. But you shouldn’t act like loving someone absolves you fully from ever doing any harm to them, just because you obviously meant well (and they should be thankful you were even trying to help them!)

And you shouldn’t push your definition of emotions onto other people, or act like people with different experiences than yours are inherently evil. I am loveless, and I don’t care for love at all. If that makes you uncomfortable, if that makes you feel attacked, that is your problem, not mine. Take it out with yourself.

Love is not necessary to make a good human. And love can make some people absolutely horrid humans, too! Feelings are feelings and have absolutely nothing to do with one’s morals. Please stop acting like it does.

Thank you for reading this.

Some pet pics before someone asks:

(The last mouse does also have a friend, don’t worry. I would never keep a mouse alone! His friend is just asleep in their house rn and I don’t have a photo of them both. I found him sitting behind a house like this just now.)

#aromantic #aro #loveless #loveless aro #heartless #heartless aro #AroAllo #AlloAro #AroAce #amatonormativity #low empathy

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itsaspectrumcomic · 10 months ago

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i’m curious how common this is.

even before i realized i could be autistic, id have horribly delayed emotional reactions. like, unless it was big enough to get through my brain within some minutes, it’d usually take hours to process emotionally and i wouldn’t react emotionally until way later. in the moment, id react but in a way where it was obviously logic driven and there was barely any emotional response. thoughts!

Yep I also do this, it can take me ages to register how I feel about something that's happened, good or bad, and I don't always react in a way that makes sense to others. It can be part of alexithymia which is when a person has difficulty identifying or understanding their emotions, and also I think it's because autistic people tend to process things in a different way to non autistic people. Often we actually take in a LOT more information at once because we can't filter things out in the same way - which means it can take longer to process everything!

#autistic #actually autistic #ask #anon ask #alexithymia

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butchcarmy · 1 year ago

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i’d really like to know your opinion on carmy and sex, in the sex scene with claire he doesn’t seem all there with it

YES I would LOVE to discuss this!! Strap in everyone I have so many thoughts, and I totally invite ppl to agree or disagree :D

Firstly you’re so right… tbh I never gave that scene much thought but I love this take for many reasons. Like, carmy is a VIRGIN. he’s NEVER had a girlfriend. I think he’s barely had friends. He’s not good at relationships. While I do LOVE writing him as a pussy devourer and soft dom it would take a while for him to get to that point… putting this in a read more bc it got lengthy btw

Carmy is a very repressed person by nature. With that being said, I think he’s also very lonely. He definitely has sexual desires and fantasies, but has never let him act on them, nor has given himself the opportunity. After never having sex for 30 years, I think he’s built up a lot of pressure towards it.

He also has so much trouble allowing himself joy of any kind. He has this logic where if he lets himself be happy, tragedy will come. Foreboding joy and all that. That extends to every part of his life, including sex, ESPECIALLY sex, relationships of any kind. But deep down, he truly wants connection, physical intimacy, emotional intimacy.

So when he has sex for the first time, it has to be with someone he really trusts and likes. He’ll put a ton of pressure on himself to feel good, but mostly to make the other person feel good. He’d ask the other person how to make them feel good, what he should do. If he’s good at anything, it’s following instructions, following a recipe to completion.

But he’s probably gonna get too caught up in what he thinks he should be doing to properly enjoy himself. Sex is about communication, something he isn’t good at doing with himself or with others. He’ll get stuck in his own head, possibly being unable to pick up cues from himself or his partner. And probably end up dissociating quite a bit, just like you noticed.

Practice (and communication) makes perfect! As long as he has a patient partner, I’m sure Carmy will be able to reach a comfortable place with sex. He’s a giving person, and he wants to give in bed too, vis a vis pussy eating champion (but also oral fixation lol). I also think a blow job could fix him HAHAHA he could come like. Instantaneously LMFAO

I have a lot of fun writing him being like, super good at sex, and I think once he jumps over some mental hurdles he can become his enlightened pussy destroyer self. That’s the version of carmy I’d write in my fic line “let me love on you”, but realistically, sex for him would look much different than that. That’s what I hope to explore in my slow burn fic “ALEXITHYMIA”!!

Anyway wow my thoughts are all over the place here but I hope this makes sense. I think about carmy so much lol

#carmen berzatto #carmy berzatto #the bear #carmy berzatto x reader #carmy x reader #carmen berzatto x you #carmen berzatto x reader #carmy berzatto x you #the bear fx #the bear Hulu #my asks #IS IT OBVIOUS THAT IVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS GUY CONSTANTLY. HAHAHA #also full transparency I typed this out while I’m taking my lunch break at work rn #bear talk

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watermelonfaerie · 11 days ago

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Hey So- This is BULLSHIT.

Hey there! So this is going to be a long post- but here is my TLDR: The basis that autistic writers are getting flagged for AI is utter bullshit and you all really need to stop reading everything you see on *REDDIT* as fucking gospel. My essay will now follow. First off, hello! My name is Lila and I am a dyslexic and autistic writer. I have been writing fanfiction and fictional narratives since the first grade! I am also an artist, a singer and a voice actor. I am *very* creatively inclined on all sides of this argument. I would like to know who what when where why and HOW you all- [royally, I'm speaking to a specific group of people who decided reddit was the place to get this information and did ZERO research?] - decided that the take would be: "Oh AuTisTic WrItErS aRe At RiSk Of PiNgInG aS aI-" You do realize that this is pandering to a an EXTREME and very SMALL part of the population with Autism??? So you're going to tell me that every person with Autism is robotic and cannot convey emotions / writes as a cliff faced awkward phrasing individual? I need you to go ahead and look at the facts instead of trying to think that a reddit post with an individual who probably falls into the category of having alexithymia. Lets define that- shall we? Alexithymia, also called emotional blindness,[1] is a neuropsychological phenomenon characterized by significant challenges in recognizing, expressing, feeling, sourcing,[2] and describing one's emotions. Alexithymia IS NOT AUTISM. However it is proven that a little over 50% of people with Autism can and do *have* various degrees of alexithymia. According to an article written by the National Library of Medicine "However, not all autistic people have alexithymia, with a recent study finding a prevalence rate of 55% in autistic adolescents [23]. Consequently, Bird & Cook [6] have proposed the “alexithymia hypothesis” of ASD: that the emotion processing difficulties seen in ASD stem from co-occurring alexithymia, rather than representing a core feature. In line with this hypothesis, research has found that alexithymia, and not ASD, is predictive of problems with emotion processing" With this in mind: NOT EVERYONE WITH AUTISM HAS A PROBLEM / OR THE INABILITY OF CONVEYING OR EXPRESSING EMOTIONS / UNDERSTANDING THEM. And thinking that people with autism are all the same: not understanding sarcasm, unable to convey emotion and or being put under the label of being slower than other people [to put it lightly] is an uneducated and ableist take that I am NOT going to sit idly on. Now- A reddit post has been circulating that people on the ASD spectrum-[because some people don't know- it IS a spectrum of various degrees of needing accommodations and different attributes that may or may not afflict them!] -are getting flagged for AI usage for NON NATIVE SPEAKERS WHILE TRANSLATING THEIR WRITING. Meaning- AI taking one language- trying to cram it into another language syntax and sentence structure without the aid of a NATIVE SPEAKER / READER /WRITER yeah- its going to churn it out to be awkward- robotic- too formal - and most of the time BLATANTLY INCORRECT. Because translators by themselves CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT be the only way you translate your fanfictions / writing. This already has NOTHING to do with how someone with Autism writes naturally! Therefore cannot be CONCLUSIVE to the fucking argument at hand that Autistic native speaking writers are going to get wrongfully flagged as using AI.

#tumblr tried to delete most of my post #luckily im not an idiot and screenshot most of my writing #ai in creative spaces critical #can yall get some critical thinking please #i am fucking angry at yall who really think this is going to save specific individuals from their ai usage and lying about it #yeah im talking about you #you know who you are #get well you narcissist #stop blaming neurodivergents and ai checkers for your own hole you're digging yourself into #and stop having your friends send you anon messages #thats fucking weird #please

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schizopositivity · 2 years ago

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Why it's hard for schizophrenic people to get treatment and diagnosis for physical health problems:

• Having "schizophrenic" in our charts makes a lot of medical professionals automatically not believe us. Especially if it is a problem that they can't instantly see themselves. They may think we are either delusional or having some kind of tactile hallucinations. They could see it more as a "psychiatric problem" rather than the physical medical problem that it is.

• If you have flat or blunted affect, they may not believe you, especially if you are describing pain. They have the expectations that you would be screaming, crying, grimacing, etc. When you are straight faced and monotone and say "I am in extreme pain right now" they will likely not believe you. And this paired with medical professionals views of chronic pain just makes them not believe you even more.

• Alexithymia makes describing your symptoms very hard, and even harder to describe how the symptoms affect you. The medical professional goes off of what you tell them, if you are vague or don't have the words, they will not understand you or not believe what you are describing. Either way that will hinder your road to treatment and diagnosis.

• Having memory problems, or trouble keeping track of things can also hinder your care. If you can't remember, or even remember to write down how often a symptom occurs, how long it lasts, how it felt in the moment, and how it impacted your life at the time, they may once again not believe you. Diagnosis often requires some sort of timeline or prevalence of symptoms, and not keeping track of that could keep you from diagnosis.

• They may avoid prescribing pain killers (even if you need it) because the fact that schizophrenic people are more likely to abuse drugs than the general population. And while that fact is true, it doesn't mean that someone in extreme pain does not deserve the right to pain killers just as much as anyone else who needs them.

• Being part of a disenfranchised group while also being schizophrenic can have compounding affects on your physical health treatment. Being low-income, being a person of color, being assigned female at birth, being transgender, being intersex, any other disenfranchised group or any combination of these will impact how you are treated by the healthcare system.

• Fear of medical professionals, or fear of Dr.s offices can impact the quality of your visit. You may feel too frightened to tell them how you really feel, you may just completely avoid going into the building at all. This can happen to anyone but is especially common for schizophrenic people due to our paranoia, inability to advocate for ourselves, lack of self esteem, historical medical abuse or personal experiences with medical abuse. Plus we can have doubts about the quality of our care because of any of the other reasons listed above.

And all this occurs while we as schizophrenic people, are at higher risks of several physical health problems (you can read about it here):

#i will make a part 2 on how i personally deal with these issues #this itself is just to raise awareness #schizophrenia #tw medical abuse #schizophrenia stigma #sanism #flat affect #blunted affect #memory problems #memory issues #alexithymia #medical abuse #medical neglect #tw healthcare #tw drs #tw painkillers #tw medication #tw drug abuse

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