#but basically there are a two ways you develop a phobia: you either go through a very distressing experience about it

[vulturevanity]

I have reason to believe that fear of harmless bugs is a social construct

[nientedal]

1-22 for Megamind (just kidding, unless,) but particularly: 1, 3, 10, 15, 16

Oooooo! Lol, going straight for the throat on these >:3

Their physical weak spots The most obvious one is his neck. Look, Megamind is strong and his head is well-balanced, but his neck is quite long and that has some drawbacks. Less obvious weak spot would be his secondary respiratory system-- his gills vent between the bones of his ribcage, so if you got up in there, you could potentially do some serious damage. And you can induce a state of tonic immobility by petting back to front over his crown, which is NOT something he advertises (currently that's just in the Feathers&Fins verse, but I'm considering expanding it to my general headcanons). There is also a poorly-healed hole in the back of his skull behind his left ear, but it's VERY small, so it tends to be overlooked.

Scars or painful spots Megamind doesn't typically scar, but he does have a couple of scars on his chest from Metro Man's lasers. He will also start having some joint and spinal problems as he gets older.

Fears/phobias He doesn't 'do' doctors or medical personnel outside of the prison infirmary-- and after the doctor who treated him as a child retires, he also doesn't stay there for long. He and Minion have everything they need to treat him at Evil Lair, from basic first aid to major surgery. Having a mindtwin with mechanically-stabilized hands is useful for more than just fine electrical work! Hospitals are even worse. Too much white, and the smell is bad. Less viscerally, he fears losing the very few people who are important to him. Minion, Roxanne. Even Metro Man, in a way, although I think he only develops that fear (or realizes it's a thing) after the events of the movie. Also? Earplugs. Fuck if he knows why, but he HATES stuff in his ears. The whole business is just wrong. Show him some earplugs and he'll get the heebie jeebies.

What it takes to make them cry Megamind has walls, but there's like six inches of space between the bottoms of the walls and the ground. If you tunnel under them by doing certain things he (A) doesn't expect and (B) wants so badly he won't let himself think about them, you can get emotional reactions out of him fairly easily (just be prepared to deal with the aftermath of those reactions: displays of genuine emotion are going to freak him out after the fact). That said, actually getting him to cry would require a situation where he is already somewhat comfortable lowering the proverbial drawbridge or throwing you some climbing gear, OR he's coming down from a depersonalization episode, OR he's just really really freaking out. Otherwise, the most you're getting is probably just a couple tears without actual crying-crying. ...So, give him a panic attack, basically.

Dark secrets/’skeletons in the closet’ We're getting into this a bit in Undertow, but I headcanon that Megamind is not actually all that broken up about having to commit the occasional murder. The part that REALLY freaks him out is that he isn't freaked out. But like...he's a supervillain, yes? That's "villain" with a "super" in front of it? I'm sorry, but you do not get that title by building robo-sheep and typhoon cheese. The key is presentation, but there's a bunch of different places that could go. And in combination with the headcanon that he's also Overlord of Metro? Sometimes his hand is forced. He does typically give people a choice: death, or the Long Gallery. The latter is basically a reinforced bunker with sealed boxes of blue cubes in it, suspended over tanks of water. The boxes will disintegrate naturally in about two to three hundred years.

It takes him a lot to hit the point where he's ready to do either of those things, but sometimes shit happens. On a related note, he...also doesn't threaten to do anything he isn't ready to follow through on. This probably doesn't look like a "dark secret" until you remember some of the threats I've had him make :/ He protects his territory.

The rest of his "skeletons" are backstory-related and would probably require several content warnings, so! Not going into that too much here. Although I did very vaguely allude to one of the backstory things in the last paragraph of my response to this other ask (which nobody appears to have picked up on, lol).

[thefanficmonster]

Stargazing

Ethan Winters x Mia Winters (Resident Evil Biohazard)

Warnings: Swearing

Genre: Romance, Fluff

Summary: A year after the events that took place at the Bakers’ residence and the three years of Mia being missing, the Winters spouses have finally been healed enough to start getting back into a regular lively rhythm, nevertheless haunted by the nightmare they lived through. 

Requested by Anon. Hi dear! Sorry you’ve had to wait so long for your request but here it finally is! They deserved so much better and I’ll never stop saying that! Sorry for the brief rant, still, hope you enjoy the read! Love, Vy ❤

Holding Ethan’s hand tightly, Mia follows his instructions to keep her gaze down at the ground and avoid looking up as much as possible. She’s been having a hard time containing the smile on her face, biting her bottom lip a lot to prevent it from showing. Same as she’s had a hard time keeping quiet with her guessing games of where Ethan’s taking her. The man’s unbreakable though, never once was he tempted to let her in on what he’s planned.

It’s been a year since the Baker incident and all the couple has done is switch from one coping mechanism to another. They got stuck in a sort of therapy-work-therapy cycle where they threw themselves in their work and periodically went to their psychiatric appointments, never daring to nudge the topic at home amongst themselves. It was enough that the whole night has remained as a dark cloud hanging over their heads, addressing it has simply been to painful so they’ve steered clear of the topic the best they could.

However, an important thing to note about this coping cycle they created is that it drove all the other mechanics in their lives and their relationship to become routinely and mechanic as well. There was little to no feeling in all they did - not that they ever did much together except have dinner and sometimes breakfast, both of them fully indulged in their work the rest of the day. Work became their therapy eventually, leaving little time for one another and for fixing what’s been broken between them. This conclusion bothered them both to no end but neither wanted to address it out of fear of disturbing the other.

Luckily, Ethan didn’t feel the need to bring it up before taking action.

“Here we are!“ He announces eventually, causing Mia to snap her head upwards without a second to spare, curious eyes doing the best they can to take in the dark surroundings. 

Surprisingly enough, she doesn’t have any problem with the dark. What happened back in Louisiana didn’t give her a phobia of the dark or of ships as her therapist initially thought she’d develop. However, she’s got a huge fear of bugs and insects now - especially mosquitos. Count on her husband carrying anti bug spray wherever they go - now is no exception.

As her eyes slowly adjust to the darkness of their surroundings, it doesn’t take her a while to realize they’re in an open yet secluded field. She’s not the slightest bit surprised by where he’s taken her, in fact, she recognizes it immediately. It’s the spot of their first official date.

“Who knew going to that dorm party would be the best thing I’d do in my life.“ He mumbles under his breath, admiring the sparkles in her eyes as she takes in the beautiful field bit by bit, letting the reel of memories play back, taking her all the way back to that first year of college, that fateful night when they met, followed by the night they came to this field.

“Who knew overcoming my fear of heights at an early age would’ve helped me find the man I’d eventually marry.“ She replies, turning to look at him, their gazes locking in place, both of them no reminiscing on those events they hadn’t recalled in a very long time.

2006

The humidity doesn’t suggest that the summer months have already ended. In fact, the air is still as unbreathable as it was in July and August, making the students who have to return to their studies super conflicted, longing for those beach days with little to no responsibilities. Given that no one is ready for the school year to start, the professors included, the first few weeks of college have been rather stress-free for Ethan. Well, that is if you don’t include the agony of moving into college as a freshman from an entirely different state.

Why he chose to go to college in Texas is a question he still doesn’t have a proper answer to. It was an impulsive, basically overnight decision, one that rattled his parents to no end when he announced it. However, having his own income and savings for college purposes, they couldn’t really do much in stopping him but they didn’t support him either. They kept trying to change his mind until the very last day but alas he stood his ground and now here he is, in his college dorm, trying to read a book while there’s a raging party going on just two floors above. The music is so loud though that is sounds more like it’s taking place in his closet instead. 

His roommate went up to help set the party up, only putting mild effort into getting his Cali-boy roommate to tag along and join the shenanigans which Ethan appreciated. Parties have never really been his scene so he knew he would’ve kept refusing no matter how much he tried getting him up there.

Finding the read hopeless due to the distractions, Ethan ditches the book and lays back on his bed staring at the ceiling, feeling like a fish out of water, ready to suffocate any minute. The AC in the dorm is faulty so it’s not serving its purpose properly, leaving the air at the same temperature as it would be had the device not been turned on at all. He’s stranded on things to do, feeling awfully caged in this new environment without any proper entertainment, going even as far as to second-guess if his parents were maybe right all along.

Fortunately for him, just then, his roommate bursts in, humming along to the song that’s currently being played at the party, never missing a tune even in his clearly intoxicated state.

“Hey Winters, aren’t you Californians supposed to know of a good time? You’re disappointing me right now.“ Jared slurs, laughing a bit as he leans against the wall to keep himself to his feet.

Ethan can’t help but scoff, “Thought I’d be a party animal? Sorry for the letdown.”

Jared laughs, shaking his head, “Come on, Cali. You have two semesters to be sulking around, it’s too early to start. Listen, one beer and thirty minutes, that’s all I’m asking you for. If you like it you can stick around. If not, feel free to leave. Just please give it a shot. How else are you supposed to make friends?”

Ethan stops to contemplate for a second, weighing his options. Jared takes this as a hopeful sign, seeing as how his offer wasn’t immediately turned down as it was the first time. Finally, the blond sighs in defeat: “Ok, but thirty minutes only.“ He says as he slides off the bed, briefly looking at himself in the mirror and deeming his appearance decent enough for a dorm party. As a very new student, he’d like to make a good first impression on his classmates but given that they’re all probably wasted, he’s not stressing too much over his looks at the moment.

Following Jared up to the floor of the party, he’s immediately handed a beer which he accepts with little hesitation. His roommate goes around introducing him to a few people before he disappears with some girl he claims has been his on-again-off-again girlfriend since sophomore year of high school - Sarah. Ethan, of course, doesn’t stop him despite hating the ide of finding himself stuck alone in a crowd of people he’s seeing for the first time in his life. Still, he sticks to the deal: thirty minutes and a beer...ok, two beers, but they’ve done nothing to make him enjoy this party.

So, off he goes to search for Jared to tell him he’s leaving. Thinking he saw the dark haired girl he went off with going up the stairs to the roof, he quickly follows.

Little does he know, that’s not the dark haired girl he’s looking for. That’s Mia

Mia, the rowdy, outgoing Texas tomboy who, unlike Ethan, thoroughly enjoys going to parties and having a good time with her friends and a few drinks. However, even a party animal such as herself sometimes needs to take a breather especially when people are smoking cigarettes as though they’re inhaling air and she’s never tried a cigarette in her life and is actually quite against the idea. She found this rooftop to be her prefect hideaway whenever she felt like her surroundings would suffocate her. Students were strictly instructed that climbing up there would earn them a penalty but that didn’t bother her in the slightest - She’s been frequenting the roof already and it’s been barely a week of her fresh start in college. Luckily, she got over her fear of heights at the tender age of twelve so this journey to quite a high point doesn’t pose as much stress as it would’ve about a decade ago.

As she lies on the floor, looking up at the starry night sky above, she nearly jumps out of her skin when another voice calls out to her presumably though it’s not using the correct name.

“Hey, um, S-Sarah? Have you seen Jared?“ 

Mia turns her head as she sits up, one eyebrow raised as she takes a good look at the silhouette which this voice belongs to. It’s pretty dark so even if she knew him, she wouldn’t be able to recognize him but judging by the voice, this is not someone she’s familiar with. And judging by the accent, this guy is not from around here.

“I’m not Sarah, but if you’re looking for Jared Letterwood, I can guarantee he’s in Sarah’s dorm.“ Mia chuckles, “I’d know. Sarah’s my roommate.“

Ethan cringes at the thought, “Yikes, you’ve got it rough. I mean, Jared’s my roommate but so far I haven’t had to leave the dorm for him to...you know. Hope I never have to.” Suddenly, an idea strikes him, “Wait, where are you gonna sleep tonight?”

She laughs, lying back down with her arms folded behind her head, “Right here.” She drags out the words as she adjusts her position a little, eyes fluttering closed. “Stargazing helps me fall asleep. The whole ambience up here is just...perfect, you know. Jared and Sarah are really doing me a favor.”

Ethan can’t help but scoff, “Call me crazy, but I’ve never stargazed in my life. I don’t know, never really saw the whole appeal. Sure, it’s cool to see in a movie or whatever, but it’s got no real purpose in real life. Not that I’m trying to bash your hobby or anything...”

Before the clueless blond could finish his statement, Mia’s already snapped up in a sitting position, giving him a narrow-eyed glare he can’t really see in the darkness. Her hand taps the spot next to her, “Don’t knock until you try it, Cali boy. Come’ere, see what you’re missing out on.”

Though reluctant, Ethan takes a few steps forward, stopping for a second to ask: “Wait, how’d you know I’m Californian?” Regardless of his confusion, he sits his ass down as he was told, awkwardly laying down so that there’s half a foot or less between their bodies so he doesn’t accidentally touch her and run the risk of freaking her out.

“I know a lot of things, Cali. Unfortunately, your name isn’t one of them. That being said, either you tell me it, or I’ll have to keep calling you Cali.“ She says teasingly.

“Ethan. My name’s Ethan.“ He says through a sigh, unable to contain the smile that spreads across his face.

A smile mimicking his appears on her face as well, “Nice to meet you, Ethan. The name’s Mia.“

Needless to say, the following morning Ethan woke up still on the roof, and surprisingly and terrifyingly enough, with the girl he barely met the night prior in his arms. Under the light of the newly rising day he could examine her features better, taking in her absolute beauty, her pale features contrasting her dark as the night hair. She’s still asleep so he can’t see her eyes but he has no doubt they are as beautiful as she is. Everything about her looks so delicate yet sharp simultaneously. And he’s simply in awe.

To avoid any awkwardness in case she wakes up, he falls back asleep, not even trying to remove his arms from around her body, silently hoping she won’t kick his ass for it. The next time he wakes up, an undecided amount of time later, he’s alone on the rooftop. Alone with a note that says: ‘Did you like it? If yes, I got a better stargazing spot to show ya. You know where to find me 

 ~ M‘

“And boy, was I missing out on something.“ Ethan whispers, gently running his fingers through his wife’s hair as they lay in that same field she was referring to in her note to him, gazing up at the stars, limbs intertwined, bodies completely collided.

“Told ya. Stargazing is incredible, ain’t it?“ Mia replies, snuggling closer though that’s simply impossible.

Her husband chuckles, his chest rumbling with the noise, “That’s not really what I meant.”

Her brows furrow but she doesn’t look at him, “Oh? Then what did you mean?”

With a content sigh, he replies, “I was missing out on having you in my arms, falling asleep and waking up by your side.“ He says, his lips planting a gentle kiss at the top of her head that has her melting in his embrace.

Mia’s not the romantic nor cheesy half of this relationship, quite the opposite, but she feels emotions to a way deeper level than Ethan would imagine her feeling. So, thankful to the darkness, Mia allows her eyes to gloss over with emotional tears as she rises up to collide her lips with his in a soft and tender kiss. 

“I missed you so much, Mia.“ Ethan whispers when they pull away, foreheads resting against each other.

“I promise to never make you miss me again, baby.“ She replies in a tone as hushed as his. As though they are both afraid someone would overhear this vow of theirs and try to force them to break it.

“That’s impossible.“ He says with a soft chuckle, “I always miss you at least a little.“

Mia hums in response, “Well, right now, you don’t have to miss me at all. I’m all yours. You’re the only thing on my mind, Mr. Winters.“

Even in the dark, she sees the grin that lights up his face, “As you are the only thing on mine, Mrs. Winters.” With that, their lips reestablish their contact, this time maintaining it longer, making it more passionate than before.

[clockworkouroboros]

hey this must seem like a really slime brain question, but how do you start/where do you start/where can you start reading the edas? i’ve been meaning to ask someone for a while you just seemed the least threatening

Not slime brain at all! Tbh you must have read my mind, anon, because I was just thinking about putting together a bit of a guide to the EDAs recently. I’m super excited about anyone reading these books because I do so love them, so I definitely was excited to get this ask!

As to the “where” of reading the EDAs, I’m not going to share a link to download PDFs in a post like this, but I am definitely willing to share such a link privately. While some of the books are definitely worth buying physical copies (in my opinion), it gets expensive. I mean, there are over 70 books in the series. (Especially with a lot of the really good books; I spent something like $50USD to get Interference Books I and II.) I think literally anyone on this website who talks about the EDAs has a link to PDFs, so asking literally anyone would be a safe bet. The rest of this post is going to be under a cut, because this is gonna get lengthy.

So. Reading the EDAs. There are a few questions to keep in mind: are you a completionist? Are you interested only in specific companions or specific story arcs? Do you just really want to see why everyone is talking about this Fitz dude and why he’s so in love with the Doctor? Do you just want to know which books aren’t really worth your time? Do you just want pretty Paul McGann? (which is totally valid, by the way.)

So, uh. I’m just going to go through the EDAs and make notes, which is why this is gonna get long real quick.

The Eight Doctors: I know it’s the first book in the series, but it’s more than okay to skip it. There’s basically no plot, it’s weirdly sexist, and although it introduces a companion, it fails to actually, y’know, introduce her as a character very well.

Vampire Science: Yes! Good book! Properly introduces Sam, the companion. Has a lot of things, including Eight with kittens, Eight baby-talking to bats, butterflies!, and great characters.

The Bodysnatchers: Not...that...great. If you’re a huge Litefoot stan, go for it. Otherwise, feel free to skip.

Genocide: Would recommend. The beginning of some good character development for Sam, a fairly short book, and again, interesting characters. 

War of the Daleks: Well. Uh. Imagine Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, but boring. And there’s a sleazy guy who tries to hit on the Doctor’s underage companion. And Daleks. If that’s your cup of tea, go for it. 

Alien Bodies: First of all, this is a great book. Fantastic. Showing just how good experimental Doctor Who can be. It’s also the start of a very big arc that doesn’t fully resolve until The Ancestor Cell. Would recommend, and if you’re interested in the War in Heaven/Faction Paradox arc, this is your starting point! I have a physical copy of this one.

Kursaal: Unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed Kursaal. It’s not objectively great, but it’s fun. Featuring pretty Paul McGann, insulting people in Latin, and truly impressive displays of gardening. And, uh, gore. There’s some nasty gore. Not important in terms of arcs, so feel free to skip.

Option Lock: Listen, I love Justin Richards as much as the next person, but this book isn’t that great, nor is it all that important in the grand scheme of things. Not terrible, but probably not your time if you just want the highlights.

Longest Day: Okay, uh, I kind of detest this book, but it’s also the beginning of a mini arc that goes through Seeing I. All you need to know is the Doctor and Sam get separated. I wouldn’t really recommend.

Legacy of the Daleks: Not worth it.

Dreamstone Moon: A good read! One of those solid but not spectacular stories. Just good Doctor Who.

Seeing I: definitely would recommend. Featuring some much-needed Sam character development and an important thing for Eight (*cries*) that will come back in a bunch of other novels. Also refers back to some of the events of Alien Bodies. I have a physical copy of this one.

You can skip both Placebo Effect and Vanderdeken’s Children. 

The Scarlet Empress: Yessss, it’s really good. Standalone and a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, plus it introduces Iris Wildthyme, who is amazing and I love her. I have a physical copy of this one.

The Janus Conjunction: Unpopular opinion, but I liked it. It’s not amazing or anything, but it’s solid sci-fi pulp. Featuring pretty Eight. And a lot of gore. It’s by Trevor Baxendale. He kind of specializes in great descriptions and lots of gore.

Beltempest: If you’re into experimental Doctor Who, try this. If not, it’s not arc-important to anything, and it’s really, really weird, so feel free to skip it. I like it, though.

The Face-Eater: Kind of gross. Not that memorable. 

The Taint: This book isn’t objectively good, but it introduces a new companion, and that new companion is Fitz Kreiner, so I still have to recommend it. I just love Fitz so much. What a loser.

Demontage: A good story, and another good look at Fitz as a character! Standalone.

Revolution Man: Very important Fitz character development. And a good story. I have a physical copy of this one.

Dominion: There’s one scene that’s kind of gross, but beyond that, I believe it’s important for Sam. And it isn’t a terrible book, either.

Unnatural History: Yes. Yes yes yes. This is one of my all-time favorite Doctor Who stories. It’s important to the arc begun in Alien Bodies, so you’ll want that and Seeing I as prior reading. It’s. So good. I have a physical copy of this one.

Autumn Mist: Autumn Mist isn’t bad, but I’d say it’s skippable. Addresses some of the hanging threads in Unnatural History.

Interference (Books I and II): So uh. Interference comes in two books, both written by the same person. The story is fantastic. There’s a lot of torture, especially in the first book. Sam leaves. Fitz, uh, has some important character things. It introduces Compassion, a new companion. Resolves some of the arc begun in Alien Bodies and expands on it. I have physical copies of both books.

Most of Compassion’s novels are really good. I would feel awful about telling someone to skip The Blue Angel, The Taking of Planet 5, Frontier Worlds, Parallel 59, The Shadows of Avalon, The Fall of Yquatine, and Coldheart. Of that whole group, I’d say Parallel 59 is the most skippable? Maybe?? But the long and short of it is that all these books are really good. The Taking of Planet 5, The Shadows of Avalon, and The Fall of Yquatine are all important to the War in Heaven arc.

The Space Age and The Banquo Legacy are skippable. I know a lot of people who like the latter, though so maybe give it a try! I personally didn���t like it, but that’s only my opinion, which is very subjective!

The Ancestor Cell: Uh. Resolves the story arc that’s been going on since Alien Bodies. So if you’ve been following that arc, yeah, it’s important. Do I like the book? Well, that’s a different question. I like parts of it. It also has a few very big very important Spoiler-y things that are important to the rest of the series.

The next five books are all part of a new arc, usually called the Earth arc. The Doctor (SPOILERS, but it’s Eight, so is it really?) has amnesia, and he’s stuck on Earth. I’d say four of the five books aren’t really bad, but some are more worth reading than others. They’re all interesting in that they examine an amnesiac Doctor really well.

The Burning: skippable. I don’t remember most of the plot. I vaguely recall the Doctor being really, uh, violent? (Part of the whole amnesiac thing.)

Casualties of War: super gory. Not terrible, but not a favorite of mine. I have friends who enjoyed it, though!

The Turing Test: yes pleasereadityesit’ssogoodplease - uh. A great queer novel, actually? Featuring Eight and Alan Turing? Made me cry, but like, it’s good?? I still haven’t bought a physical copy but I’ve been meaning to.

Endgame: Terrance Dicks, who’s an old hand at Doctor Who and also wrote the first EDA, the one I said not to read? He wrote this. And it’s amazing. Pretty standard Doctor Who fare, with characters that Dicks created but only he ever used, but it’s real good. Real real good. I loved his characterization of amnesiac Eight.

Father Time: warning: I kind of hate this book. It’s in my three least-favorite EDAs. I have...a lot of issues with it. That being said, it’s apparently a fan favorite. A lot of people like Father Time, and that’s okay! It’s a highly rated EDA that I just so happen to detest! If you want to try it, go for it, just know that I personally wouldn’t recommend it.

Escape Velocity: This book ends the earth arc, brings back Fitz, and introduces the new companion, Anji. It’s also not that great of a book, but hey, it’s important because it gives a lot of background for Anji’s character that will be instrumental in her character development.

EarthWorld: a lot of these upcoming books are standalone, and a lot of them are pretty good. EarthWorld is no exception. Would recommend. Lots of great hijinks.

Vanishing Point: Not a bad book, not a favorite. I’m not recommending it, but I’m also not trying to dissuade anyone from reading it.

Eater of Wasps: Uh. As the title suggests, maybe don’t read the book if you have a bee/wasp/stinging insect phobia. No, I definitely don’t know this from personal experience. :)))))) Other than that, though, a good book.

The Year of Intelligent Tigers: Yes. 100%. Read this book. Please. You won’t regret it. Eight has a composer boyfriend named Karl, there are giant tigers, this kind of solidifies Eight/Fitz/Anji as a favorite TARDIS team for me.

I’d say that The Slow Empire and Dark Progeny are both skippable. Not that they’re bad, but they’re not on the same level as a lot of the other books being put out in the series at this time.

City of the Dead: so good. I don’t know if you’re an Eight audio fan, anon, but Lloyd Rose also wrote the audio Caerdroia, and she brings the same kind of humor to this novel. Gosh. It’s so good. 

Grimm Reality: very dense, but enjoyable. It takes most people forever and a day to finish, though, just because there’s so much going on.

Adventuress of Henrietta Street: this is where the new arc begins. :) It won’t hurt you at all. :) If you’re interested in any of the Sabbath-related arcs, this is the starting point. :) There are various ending points for this arc, alternatively at Camera Obscura, Timeless, and Sometime Never.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen: ridiculous and good. If you just read Adventuress, you need a book like this. And it’s good, anyway. Talking poodles. From outer space. Standalone.

Hope: important character development for Anji!

Arachnophobia: A bit scary. Still would recommend. Standalone.

Trading Futures: it’s really telling how good the books are at this point that this is the weakest one in my opinion. I just have a chip on my shoulder about Lance Parkin EDAs, apparently. (He wrote Father Time, as well.) It’s not bad, but if there’s one in this whole sequence that I would consider skippable, it’s this one.

The Book of the Still: Yes. Please. Heck. The best description of Eight I’ve ever read, and there are a lot of good ones across the 74 or so books I’ve read featuring Eight. Also, if you’re a huge Eight/Fitz shipper, this is the book for you! I spent like $30USD on a physical copy it’s definitely worth every penny.

The Crooked World: Yes. Ridiculous and goofy and silly and also surprisingly deep. Try to imagine the Doctor and co. landing on a cartoon world, with cartoon physics. Now imagine that, but it’s got an interesting and heartfelt plot underneath the cartoon hijinks.

History 101: A good book, and important to the Sabbath arc started in Adventuress! Would rec.

Camera Obscura: Another Lloyd Rose book, one that kind of ends a large part of the Sabbath arc, and just really good. Heck. So good.

Time Zero: this one will rip your heart out in the first few pages and you’ll thank Justin Richards for it. Also begins a new arc, but of all the arcs you could read, I’d recommend this one the least. Each book after this through Timeless is part of this arc. It gets pretty depressing.

The Infinity Race: Not bad, not good. Take it or leave it.

The Domino Effect: Wouldn’t recommend. Seriously.

Reckless Engineering: Not...terrible. But depressing.

The Last Resort: Super confusing, very arc-heavy. Not that it’s bad, just that it’s not good.

Timeless: ends the arc started in Time Zero and has some good bits. Anji’s last EDA, so if you like her, I’d recommend it. Also introduces Trix, the new companion! (Sort of...)

Emotional Chemistry: If you like Fitz, read this book. There’s other plot, but a large part of it is Fitz character study. And I love it.

Sometime Never...: One of my favorite Justin Richards EDAs. Great character work. Fun story. Ends the Sabbath arc.

Halflife: If you ship Eight/Fitz, read this book. Otherwise, it’s not a bad book, but you could do better things with your time. I vaguely recall some Trix character development, but the Eight/Fitz is what really sticks with you.

The Tomorrow Windows: Douglas Adams Lite. Not as funny as Douglas Adams. Overall impression: meh.

The Sleep of Reason: Wouldn’t recommend. Trix is referred to as “the blonde bitch” 90% of the time, the Doctor and co don’t even make any appearances until nearly 100 pages in, and it’s just kind of disappointing. Martin Day, the author, has this weird fascination with mental institutions? Weird and kinda yikes.

The Deadstone Memorial: It’s Baxendale, so it’s gory. But it’s not bad! One of the better late EDAs, imo. And for the subject matter, it’s surprisingly wholesome.

To The Slaughter: Now this, this is what I’m talking about. One of my top Eight/Fitz/Trix stories, alongside Emotional Chemistry and Sometime Never. (And what the hell, Halflife. What can I say: I love Eight/Fitz.) It’s got some great Fitz characterization, I love Trix, and I love Eight. Really the half-a-brain-cell-at-best team. We stan.

The Gallifrey Chronicles: Nah. Don’t bother. Not really worth your time. Unless you want to read it and cry about the vore with me.

So there you have it! A ridiculously in-depth look at my EDAs recommendations! Uh. You can always start from the beginning, or you can go based on recommendations or what looks like it will suit your fancy, or you can pick an arc and read it through to the end. There’s really no perfect way to read them. Please, please dm me or something if you want a link to PDFs of the books, I’m happy to share it, and I hope you enjoy the EDAs!!

[candidsoup]

Hey I have questions for Autistic tumblr and medical/science tumblr.

My dad is 67. He is almost definitely Autistic but never diagnosed. He has always had sensory sensitivities, particularly with sound, and he has had difficulty with proprioception as long as I can remember. Mostly he has “two left feet,” an “odd gait,” and also tends to think he takes up more space than he does. Like he used to wait for someone to leave a room or say he needed more space to walk through somewhere and my mom and I would be there like … “but you have room…”

He has anxiety. And he has a driving phobia. And part of that is thinking like, a car that’s pulling up to a stop sign and stopping, just pulling up to stop and be able to see in the intersection, is going to speed out and hit him. Again, this thing of thinking he/his car takes up more space than it does, thinking things are closer to him than they are or are imminently moving closer. I promise this info is relevant..

He very recently and quite rapidly has developed some serious issues that are affecting his mobility, and are kinda dangerous. So he gets startled by an unexpected sound, or suddenly seeing something in the corner of his vision, and again, thinking it’s closer to him than it is and going to hit him or something. And first he started like, kind of throwing his hands forward / pitching forward for a second when getting startled like this. And then it developed into him falling backward on his butt as a common startle reaction. So far causes of this are unclear, like anxiety plays a huge role but there are times he’s fallen without any particular startle stimulus that he could recall, and it seems like these involuntary movements that are partially neurological, but no medical consensus yet. He’s trying to get in with the Mayo Clinic because of how weird and undiagnosable this has been. Every major clinic that handles movement disorders or medical mystery cases like this has long wait times and meanwhile he’s living in a totally wheelchair inaccessible 2 story house. I’ve been coming over and trying to help. He literally fell down the stairs last week after never having fallen on the stairs; it’s like the way he falls and what causes him to is increasing in number. whenever he falls in a place or room it increases his phobia of falling there again and increases his anxiety. So then he tends to fall there more. Since the stairs, someone walks behind him up the stairs to spot him. He says he’s fine walking down the stairs, but I’m still a little worried about that as he keeps being like “oh I don’t need help on THAT”… until he does. He’s super lucky when he fell down the stairs, he fell backwards and just slid down the carpet runner, and stopped just short before hitting his head at the bottom. Like inches away. The house floor plan is such that it’s kinda open between upstairs and downstairs… there’s a railing upstairs of a decent but not HIIGH height, and he’s tall. If he happened to have his back to the railing and fell backwards there’s honestly a chance of him falling down from upstairs which could be paralyzing or fatal? Maybe I’m overestimating the height but it wouldn’t be good. There’s stuff against this railing, so he doesn’t have a tendency to turn his back to it or be right next to it, but it’s really scary to me That it could happen. They have a home health care worker coming to assess the house and my dad tomorrow and so soon there will be someone else around more often to help him. But each moment that my parents don’t have answers or professional help they’re just freaking out.

He’s using canes and a walker but then like he went to physical therapy and they couldn’t find any muscle degeneration or physical issues. He also has a small amount of cerebellar thinning or atrophy, one of the recent findings from all the tests he’s getting done, BUT his doctor said that it’s a normal amount for his age. That just happens as you get older. Inconclusive if it’s contributing to anything. I did look up cerebellar ataxia but there’s a description of someone stumbling and kinda being shaky all the time, walking in a way that my dad does not, and talking with slurred speech, it didn’t fit with what he’s experiencing.

He’s also had an EEG testing for seizure conditions and that was all clear. His falls really don’t present anything like seizures anyway. But then his current neurologist thinks he could be having seizures but the clonnopin that he takes for anxiety is messing up the test results. At the same time the neurologist sucks and is against the majority of psychiatric medications so 🤷‍♂️

While he waits on being able to get in to Mayo Clinic or possibly MUSC, and waits on being able to see a new neurologist, I’m sitting here thinking…. if I had to guess I would say my dad has been in a state of Autistic burnout due to the pandemic and having retired and feeling like he’s stuck at home, and also my mom has serious anxiety as well and home life is probably quite stifling and not great sensory wise. They just don’t play off each other well, exactly. I was wondering if.. autistic burnout combined possibly with either some kinda physical issue OR even just aging can cause this kind of issue. Like if he’s basically having stronger responses to sensory input than normal and is just burnt out of being able to deal with it like normally. I’ve thought about this but his reactions are so extreme that I don’t know if that alone could cause this? I need to know if anyone out there has experienced this or knew someone who did. Or if you’ve got any studies to throw my way. Literally anything. Please and thank you 🙏

[mindareadsoots]

So. Peridot.

sigh, this is gonna be a mess.

So, in case you hadn’t heard, Maya Petersen said on twitter this morning that Peridot is aro/ace according to “Word of St Paul”

My opinion, honestly, is that it’s not really evident in the show so you can headcanon Peridot however you want, and that could be the end of the post right there. Full stop.

As for Lapidot, I don’t see how this post changes anything. Lapis is also adverse to fusion, so accepting that Peridot is aro/ace doesn’t even change their dynamic all that much (although put a pin in that for later, because we’re going to have to come back to that). And anyways, Word of God can not and does not stop people from shipping things.

But much like Peridot’s character development, ending things there would be abrupt and unsatisfying, so we’re going to go deeper than that.

Asexuality and Fusion

The big elephant in the room that I want to get out of the way first is that I don’t have a problem with Peridot being aro/ace. There’s some evidence for it (and some against it, but we’ll get to that later), and overall I like it as a character beat for her. It’s a fairly rare bit of representation, so it’s nice to see.

However, I have a HUGE problem with them tying asexuality to Peridot’s disinterest in fusion.

Fusion has always been much more than an analogue for sex. If it wasn’t, then we’d be talking about how Steven and Connie are too young for fusion, and Steg is incestuous. And we don’t want to go down that road. That’s a dumb road.

Fusion can represent loving (Garnet), platonic (Smoky Quartz), or familial relationships (Steg). It can represent budding relationships (Stevonnie) or alliances of convenience (Bluebird Azerite).

Fusion is a versatile metaphor, but it’s that very versatility that works against it when connecting it to asexuality. Because now you’re basically saying that aro/ace people can’t have any meaningful relationships, and that’s clearly not the message that they want to send with Peridot. This could be cleared up if Peridot’s stance on fusion and what it means for her relationships with others was actually examined in the show, but it hasn’t been.

Word of God vs The Work Itself

So is Peridot a good representation of asexuality within the show itself?

On the whole? Maybe, but at best it’s unclear.

That’s why I can’t say whether or not Peridot discovering her asexuality is a good or satisfying character beat in the show. It’s not in the show at all! If you’re looking for representation, we can do better than this. This show has done better than this.

The only scene you can really point to where Peridot shows an aversion to fusion is in Log Date, when Garnet offers to show Peridot what fusion is like with a firsthand experience. 

This moment later got a callback in one of the children’s books talking about fusion, complete with the alien boxers she wore in that same episode.

The problem is that this scene happens very, VERY early on in Peridot’s character development. Log Date was a flashback episode to before Message Received, so Peridot still considered herself loyal to Homeworld at that point. That whole scene - indeed, that whole episode - was about Peridot experimenting and learning how to be more than just a tool for Homeworld. She didn’t have her meep morps yet. She didn’t have her metal powers yet. 

In fact, after Too Short to Ride came out, I remember seeing speculation that Peridot was afraid that she couldn’t fuse and so she broke off with Garnet out of embarrassment.

More importantly, it would have been wrong for Peridot to fuse right at that moment, regardless of her sexuality. She was still getting to know the Crystal Gems. She didn’t have an established relationship with Garnet or really anybody in the cast at that point, so seeing her fuse then would have been meaningless. The scene very clearly set up fusion as something for Peridot to explore later, once she has found somebody who she is ready to fuse with.

And shortly after that episode, Peridot would meet...

Lapis

Let’s call a spade a spade. The real reason why people are upset about Peridot being labeled ace is because of Lapidot, and I think that’s a perfectly valid reaction. It isn’t ace-phobia or erasure to say, “Word of God tried to sink my ship, and I don’t like it.”

I’m not going to go through all of the moments hinting at a romantic interest between Lapis and Peridot, but, ya know...

They’re there.

And they were clearly put there on purpose, as expressed by storyboarder Jesse Zuke back when they were working on the show. 

In truth, I’m not interested in re-litigating whether or not their relationship actually became a true romance, because it’s irrelevant. Either way, the most important relationship the two of them had was with each other. Peridot being ace doesn’t take way from that, but it does leave Lapis in an awkward spot in one specific way.

As I mentioned at the top of the post, Lapis has displayed an aversion to fusion, which could make her perfectly compatible with an aro/ace Peridot. However, there’s one very important difference. Unlike Peridot, who came into her asexuality from thoughtful introspection (or so we’ve been told) Lapis’s problem with fusion comes from a traumatic experience. She isn’t aromantic by choice, it’s a wound that’s still fresh.

So - and again, this question applies whether you ship Lapidot romantically or not - if Lapis is working through the trauma of a bad fusion experience, but the character she’s closest to doesn’t want to fuse, then where does that leave her?

This comes back to that first big problem with the tweet, which is that this shouldn’t be a problem. There is no reason why Peridot can’t have a platonic fusion with Lapis while being aro/ace, but it’s clearly not going to happen in SUF, and it doesn’t sound like it’s going to happen ever.

There are other candidates, of course. Lapis also has a very close and trusting friendship with Steven, she seems to be getting along well with Bismuth in the limited time we’ve seen them together, and in Why So Blue, she even made a potential new friend in fellow Lapis “Freckles” Lazuli. 

But even so, the most on screen relationship development she’s gotten has been with Peridot, and now that character development is just kind of in limbo.

In Conclusion

I don’t really have a conclusion.

I just wanted to convey that this whole situation is kind of a hot mess.

I really would like to see more aro/ace representation, and if any character in SU was going to get that label, then Peridot would be a good candidate, but this was just a bad way to get there.

It’d be one thing if we actually had an episode about Peridot exploring her asexuality. Then we could actually judge how well it plays out. Now it’s just sort of vaguely unsatisfying and it’s left a lot of people arguing about what they think it means for Peridot and the characters around her.

That’s almost certainly intentional on the part of the writers. The crew has said that they don’t want to lock down any canon ships (besides Garnet, obviously) because they don’t want to ruin headcanons. And the whole point of the episode Little Graduation was that Steven (and by extension, the audience) is not necessarily privy to every character development that happens off-screen, but you can’t say that, and then also put your thumb on the scale with tweets like this.

Honestly, I’m expecting the followup tweet any minute now of, “Don’t harass people for shipping/not shipping Peridot,” because tweeting out character details after the fact is just kicking the hornet’s nest. Maybe we’ll get a graphic novel or something where Peridot outlines what fusion means to her, but until then, let people ship what they want, and be good to each other.

[adhd-wifi]

Wei WuXian, Trauma, & ADHD (Part Two - Cynophobia Edition)

Hey I’m back with another meta post, link to the first one. Also, if you haven’t seen the first ADHD post, here it is. That one’s significantly more light-hearted. I’m gonna need to make a masterpost once I actually get all these metas posted lol.

Once again, I’ve not formally studied psychology and mental illness, so my research is my own and if anything I say is wrong please let me know thanks! Now, onto the analysis. 

== Line Break ==

So previously, I talked about the basics of his upbringing and what caused his traumas, as well as why I think he has ADHD as well as PTSD, and how the ADHD affected his response to his trauma. 

One thing I would like to talk about in particular (that I didn’t get to last time because it made the post twice as long) is WWX’s fear of dogs. Edit before I even posted this: This point ended up being the entire post lmao. 

We know that it was a trauma response he developed after his time on the streets. In fact, it’s the ONLY explicit sign of trauma from that time of his life in canon. I mentioned in the original headcanon post that his default response to merely seeing a dog is to run away screaming his head off, and we only ever see him stop running when there’s nowhere left to go or when someone is there to hide behind. Other times we see him dealing with his fear, he’s either trapped with it (Jiang Cheng I love you but you’re also on my grudge list for that stunt) so he curls into a ball shivering the whole time, or he has a safety net present to protect him (Shoutout to Lan Zhan for appearing out of literally nowhere in CQL to save him, truly iconic). What this tells us is that the way WWX responds to a tangible threat is to seek safety, be it by fleeing and physically getting to safety, curling into a ball to protect himself, or have someone else present to protect him.

Before I dive further, I would like to point out that, while the franchise tends to portray his “over-the-top” reactions as comedic (especially in CQL and the audio drama), which NORMALLY would make me saltier than the Dead Sea, it should be noted that he developed this fear as a child, so his reaction being kinda childish isn’t really that weird, especially if I’m pulling ADHD into the mix. Therefore I’m holding back on the salt but it’s on thin ice. 

(Also admittedly, it might be my ADHD-headcanon causing some level of bias here in my observations. In all honestly this could just be MXTX not understanding how phobias actually work and deciding to make a comedic gag out of a trauma-based fear, which is kinda...EH...if that’s actually the case. So as usual, take things with a grain of the salt I held back.)

The reason why I personally see his response to his fear as possibly influenced by his ADHD early in his life is simple: It’s an extremely active response, and as we know, WWX is a very active person by nature, both physically and mentally. Yes, he most likely had to run away and beg for help as a child during his encounters with the dogs and that might have just been ingrained into him, but real people, including children, who have suffered similar trauma don’t often react like that. Yes, phobia responses almost always boil down to “fight or flight”, but even in “flight” response, you’ll find that WWX’s reaction is actually fairly uncommon. It does exist, but uncommon. When it does happen, it’s usually if the object of fear in question is already coming towards them, OR, when an element of surprise is involved. 

I’d like to give a personal example, please bear with me. I have a really bad phobia of a specific species of gecko. Google “southeast asian house lizard” in the image search and you’ll find it. My fear is bad enough that even doing that to check if the images were accurate made me shiver. Anyways, these geckos are tragically very common in Singapore and I have to deal with them. A lot. There’s one living in my bathroom. His name is Bob and he terrorizes me every night. Help me. But. It’s FINE. I’m used to them being there. So USUALLY, I’m able to deal with them. But the moment I get startled by one, especially if one FALLS FROM ABOVE near me (the reason I’m scared of them in the first place), any practiced tolerance is flung out the window and I tend to have a VERY Wei WuXian reaction myself. That’s how my entire class in secondary school found out I was scared of lizards and because I’m not a shameless ass like Wei Ying I have not lived that embarrassment down to this day. For those who don’t know, I’m ADHD myself, which is why I find it a relevant comparison.

Back to the meta. With what we’ve seen with Fairy, WWX tends to run even before being chased, in fact his running and screaming is what causes Fairy to give chase at all. In these scenes, we see that he didn’t expect Fairy, so there’s the element of surprise present, however minor. It gives him no time to mentally prepare for it, and since we know WWX reacts to anger explosively, something that was mentioned in the previous post which I believe is a symptom of his ADHD, it’s not a stretch to believe that he responds to fear in a similar way. That this particular fear causes him to be much more irrational than usual, and his “usual” is being an infuriatingly calm and sassy genius in the face of death itself. 

As I mentioned in the previous post, ADHD fucks up your emotional control (please save us) and it is much easier to be irrational and react explosively, even without pent up emotions (pent up emotions are pretty much a given when you have ADHD tho ngl), especially when something as serious as phobias are involved. Also, as WWX went through his trauma with dogs specifically in his developmental years, having what’s basically an emotional amplifier built into his brain must’ve contributed to his fear ending up this bad. 

In conclusion, while it’s not entirely clear-cut or even necessarily as probable as the stuff I’ve discussed in the previous post, I do think the way Wei WuXian reacts to his fear of dogs may have some influences from typical ADHD symptoms and responses. Also, again, I might have some observational bias because I just really like the idea of ADHD, and also I just...really...really don’t like the idea of a fear borne from such trauma to just be...a gag. :V

Okay anyways, I think that’s pretty much all I have to say for now...wow this got long for a single point. Hope y’all made it here. ^^;

[technicolordeams]

So some things happened this past week since I wrote my last entry and I'm rethinking my stance on leaving or not. I was able to talk to the one girl who is befriending me and my pastor had a long talk about what makes me me and what I struggle with. I followed what my therapist told me to be which was to be more assertive. I felt very awkward and scared to do it but if I didn't, I'd end up right back where I was feeling anger and abandonment. So for now, I'm still on hold on what to choose to do.

But a couple other things popped up. Not too big but unsettling. My mind just blanked on one of them so I'll just type about the one that's stuck out the most to me right now since it happened literally within the past hour.

So obviously I have problems eating enough to keep my weight stable, let alone gain any without a LOT of work. I've been struggling with it since my gallbladder decided to take a shit on me and demand to be removed which happened on my birthday. During that time I started getting suicidal again and I hadn't dealt with those intense emotions regarding it in several years. But since December it decided to rear it's ugly head and bite into me as hard as it could ever since. It's been 8 months now with very little improvement. And during that time span my health has tanked. I developed breathing problems after my surgery which was horrific enough as it was (imagine not being fully awake but aware that you are out of control of your body and unable to utilize your coping techniques. Just like having a massive panic attack like seizure feeling but you are barely able to be aware of anything besides the viceral fear and blackness because I couldn't wake up. Just... Out of control. And you have no idea how long you were in that state before the nurse could sort of pull you out of it and even communicate more than like two words and slowly peek my eyes open a fraction. Yeah, that's what happened. I had major fear over that for at least a month. Sleeping was hard enough from the surgery and adding in that... Yeah no.) Anyways, since that started up and obviously after surgery it's hard to eat and stuff like that normally. But after the surgery I was (am) having breathing problems. I would have endless coughing fits that would even hit me and make me unable to take a full breath without coughing horribly whatever air I could get right back out. It also made me almost throw up several times (which is my biggest phobia that triggered my eating disorder to go out of control and send me into hospital stays and feeding tube hell). So at least I lost 10lbs since the surgery or even before that. I creep closer to 15lbs though most likely. I haven't been keeping track of it very much because of how much distress I've been dealing with. And I've been dealing with A LOT. Things I wonder if I will be able to get up from without more intense medical help that I probably can't get because of covid.

I've gone through several tests to see why I'm having coughing fits and every answer is that they don't see anything wrong. Well, the ENT appointment I went to the day before I went to see the pulmonary doctor really screwed me over tbh. The ENT doctor gave me steroids that day that I took that same night and told me that the pulls wouldn't affect the asthma test they were going to perform next day. It did. So I had to wait like two months before I could go back and be re-tested. But then covid hit and those practices have been closed ever since. So I can't get an accurate reading on what's going on. They did spot that I had some breathing abnormalities but because of the steroids, they couldn't say for sure. Mind you I had to literally book these doctor appointments and tell my dad you have to take me to these because he didn't think it was that important. Which has pretty much been like everything doctor related that has come up this past year. Just had to put my foot down and tell him I NEED to go to these and I'll be going whether you agree with me or not. Which adds to the distressed feeling and like I'm overreacting and being too paranoid or some shit. Also because I couldn't get actually tested for asthma properly, my regular doctor had to prescribe me with an inhaler but insurance won't help because I have not been diagnosed with it. So I had to cough up (almost literally) over a $100 for medicine that we don't know is right for me or not or whatever.. so that's like $60 every two months? Idk. Which is a lot considering I have a bunch of other bills to pay which includes when I got my wisdom teeth removed (ALL FIVEEE because I'm that extra) which cost $3,000. I have to pay my mom back for another at least year? I don't even know anymore at this point.

I've also been dealing with vision blackouts recently where I almost pass out when I get up here and there. My blood pressure tanked and went to like 70/52 and pulse all over the place. That's better now at least. Chronic fatigue, dehydration, can't sleep very well... Etc. Vitamin D and B12 are on the lower side of the normal range and my body isn't producing enough carbon dioxide.

Now along with all of this bag of shit, I have lost every friend I thought I had and the feeling that I can call anyone friend anymore. I am terrified of calling anyone a friend now because I am afraid that if I let someone in, I will be taken advantage of and lied to like I have in almost every type of relationship I've had since I was little. I am afraid of speaking because I am afraid what I say will offend or upset or whatever someone when all I do is mean well (usually unless you're an asshat). It has made me regress back to my childhood where I couldn't trust anyone and I had nobody except for a penpal on the east coast to keep me company through msn messenger, emails, or rarely phone calls. She was the only one I could call my best friend for a long time and the only one I could open up to about things and the only one who tried to consistently cheer me up when I was hospitalized at 16 by spamming me with emails. I will forever love her and no matter how far we've drifted apart over the years, I will still love her and respond to her as quickly as possible if she ever needed me again. But if we never talk again I'm okay with it. We were there for each other during really bad times in out lives and I like to think we kept each other somewhat sane. She has done more for me than I could ever ask anyone and I'll always be grateful to have "met" her.

But since all of the shit happened with my ex friends... I don't feel safe to get very close to anyone or open up to anyone. Even the girl who defended me and stuff when I was being bullied and manipulated hardly speaks to me now. I wouldn't want to talk to me very much either if all I had to talk about were extremely negative and talk about dying. I can hardly go to my parents about things. I am home alone with just my puppy that likes to get into mischief about 80% of the day. Hardly interact with people online. Usually I just now watch YouTube videos about what's going on with people. I find very little satisfaction playing video games or anything honestly. I have lost art, something that I loved dearly and way too much. I cannot go out most often due to my health. I am stuck at home. I can hardly go outside too. It's too hot (sometimes heat can trigger flashbacks), I found out I'm allergic to grass, and last week I broke out in hives from God knows what so I can't go outside even more. I was put on steroids again for 6 days which causes your immune system to weaken so it won't produce histamines that causes the INSANE itch because every topical and oral medicine OTC would barely help at all. All I do each day is very basic hygiene, sleep when I can, eat as much as I can, and try and relax while taking care of my puppy.

Only two good things has come from all of this: one, I can finally work with a trauma therapist. Hopefully she can help me. Two... Ah I forgot what the second one was actually. Maybe being able to talk to my psychiatrist more frequently? Not sure. I'm very tired right now again lol.

All I know is that I feel very much alone and there's nothing I can do about it. The world outside is extremely dangerous and I am trapped inside my mind too frequently. And there is no extra help I can get.

So all of this led up to my main grievance for today- so far at least lol long ass story to tell just to explain what I'm upset about. My mom earlier asked me if she could give me advice. I told her it depends on what it's about. But she said it anyways. Told me to check my weight each week. She knows I'm not in the most stable state of mind and she knows that me checking my weight constantly can cause a panic attack of it goes down. (thankfully it hasn't really in a month. Only reason why I know is because I had to go to my doctor's twice the past month) I told my dad what she said and he just told me to say okay and leave it at that.

I know I don't want to go back to the state I was in in 2017. I don't want to go through that hell again. Even if I did want to, there'd be way more restrictions with the threat of covid ravaging our place and infecting everyone there. When I pass the eating disorder clinic that I was forced in when I was 16, there is literally nobody there. Maybe a couple cars but they obviously are not treating kids right now. I may be wrong but it would be very dangerous. I know over at the ERC I went to in 2017 is extremely limiting any visitors from coming. The apartments when you graduate to living in temporarily while you go to just a day program only allow maybe two people to stay there at a time and instead of walking to the van pickup spot, they pick you up at your apartment. Psychiatric wards here, or at least one of them that my therapist and I talked about going to, is still slightly operational, but it's over Zoom. So you literally can't get very good support. If you fall off the deep end while at a meeting nothing can be done to help you right there and then if you run away from the meeting.

My psychiatrist told me that if I do feel that I'm in grave danger (I think the trauma therapist I met also said the same) was to go to the ER. But I am afraid to go to the ER and then be turned away quickly and also take a chance that I might catch Covid while there, not to mention the price... And since my parents are essential workers, any one of us could come down with it at any time or be a carrier without knowing. So I'm isolated from people in real life and I don't feel safe talking to anyone online as well. Even if I had someone who wanted to talk to me to begin with that isn't some creepy horny guy wanting pixel sex... I can't think of anyone who I could potentially talk to about anything in my life... I'm just so lost and afraid of both the virtual and real world... Who can I turn to besides my therapist, psychiatrist, or maybe parents depending on what is bothering me, and of course God? I'm told I need a support system. But I can only talk to the doctors so much and my parents aren't very good at being compassionate... I have no one.

I also think about how badly I want to be hospitalized for a little while just so I can get fluids and rest and proper care but that most likely will only happen unless suicide was a big risk.

I am utterly alone...

If anyone reads this long post to the end, you're a crazy human being. xD Going to stop rambling now and put the dishes away and put the pup away for his nap and try and get one in myself.

[nbapprentice]

[this is a compilation of information on the artist Saffron, previously known as Asif. Due to the size of the document we can’t easily change name and pronouns through the file and images.]

Asif is not the kind of person he has been leading everyone to believe.

this post has honestly been a long time coming, and we have been sitting on it for quite some time while collecting sources, and trying to figure out how best to approach it. while we did that, more and more information about the kind of person asif is has been brought to us. and there’s a lot. what started as an initial worry about asif’s hypocrisy, guilt tripping, and general blasé attitude towards being okay with pedophilia and incest apologists, among other things, led us to learn more and more as time went on.

we started this post before Asif admitted that he is fully and completely endorsing The Arcana and making fanart of it, pretending that this isn’t basically free advertising and support of it, and consuming fetishistic and racist content by playing it. this is also not shocking to learn, as he has already openly apologised to dana rune and implied that incest fetishism is ‘an opinion’.

we do not take any joy in what we have learned. it has been disappointing and outright horrifying to learn that someone we trusted and supported, and whose game we played, enjoyed, and defended, turned out to be like this. we are also not the only people aware of what he has been doing, but we are the only ones Asif has not managed to intimidate into silence. if we had not, none of the people mentioned in this post would have been able to say anything, and many others who we have spoken to and shared information about asif would have also been kept quiet.

asif’s main claims are:

only white people are against him, particularly because he is muslim

he’s never exploited anyone

blair is the one who wrote all the racist lore in Gehennam

there’s an age power dynamic at play in criticism about him

he has never exposed minors to nsfw

we have proof of all these being lies and manipulations, starting with the fact that multiple poc (including those who are muslim) have been involved in the creation of this post, of which include:

Mod N/Neo (mixed romani)

Rosie/thornyflesh @ tumblr (mixed race puerto rican)

Jewel/beserkerjewel/spellboundotome @ tumblr (black, muslim)

Akira/mexicanarthur @ tumblr (black, mexican, asian)

Maria/nataliesewell @ tumblr (pakistani canadian, muslim)

preface: any names shown, and any posts shown, are used with permission. names that are blurred out are this way on request, for the person’s safety. while the bulk of the writing of this has been done by mod n and mod nba, it has been contributed to by multiple others, as shown above.

asif @souratgar has exploited people and not paid for around $1k worth of work, one of whom was 17 at the time (while he himself was 20 years old). This is money they could’ve used for rent or other necessities, such as treatment for Blair’s depression.

this post will also touch upon his mistreatment of his friends during the making of Gehennam and another briefly planned visual novel, and his current lying and extremely flippant attitude regarding NSFW in his game’s blog when he knows he has minors following him, as well as apparent ableism, fat phobia, racism and xenophobia.

because of how screenshots would stretch the post, we have compiled all receipts and transcripts in ❗THIS DOCUMENT ❗. We strongly recommend going through its entirety, but for clarity’s sake we have also included summaries of the main points in this post. in order to more easily navigate the doc, there are some searchable tag terms related to the main points made in this initial post. please use the search function (ctrl+f) to search for the appropriate tag you wish to find.

on his refusal to pay a minor for their work, and his foul treatment of them

search tag: (#.n.a) Asif invited Noah, 17 years old at the time, to participate on a previous project of his, another VN. Noah accepted on the condition that he be paid back once the game was out in full and being sold. Noah then produced about $500 worth of art before Asif disbanded without paying him a penny, and has calculated that by the end of the project the worth of what he could’ve produced would’ve been around the $2k mark.

Through this process, Asif was extremely picky, demanding Noah re-draw and re-paint sprites several times.

search tag: (#.n.b) Asif belittled Noah because of his age, claimed Noah’s art made him “feel bad” about his own, and acted like Noah weighing in on a group effort was unreasonable.

Asif also claimed he “didn’t consider himself a boss” despite the fact that he was the creative head of the project, and was the one who kicked Noah out and dissolved the group on a whim.

on his taking $1000 dollars from Blair and mistreating them during the making of Gehennam

search tag: (#.b.a) For the making of Gehennam, Blair gave Asif $1000 dollars. Asif gave no details as to how this money was spent, nor did he ever give any of it back.

Blair never felt comfortable in the group, fearing that speaking out would get him shut down or even kicked out of the project.

search tag: (#.b.b) Asif would routinely humiliate Blair in the public chat over minuscule mistakes, or things that wouldn’t even qualify as such (such as Blair telling a friend, in private, the project might be picking up a new writer).

Asif would express jealousy over Blair receiving any praise for his work on Gehennam, including praise from his own boyfriend.

search tag: (#.b.c) Asif’s abuse hurt Blair’s mental health so badly it pushed him back to drug use, and to a dangerously suicidal state of mind.

search tag: (#.l.a) Once Gehennam disbanded, Asif lied and claimed he was still friends with all except one person from the Gehennam group.

search tag: (#.l.b) Later on, Asif claimed Blair was the one responsible for all the racist lore (while claiming the rest of the lore was all his doing). More on that below.

From Blair: Image link; google doc transcript

on naz, who participated on gehennam, and francey, who participated in both Gehennam and the unnamed project Noah worked on

search tag: (#.f.n) two people who worked on gehennam, and one of whom later worked the other vn, naz and francey respectively, can also be considered at the very least complicit in asif's behavior.

naz was present during the development of gehennam and witness to how asif treated blair

francey was a part of the team later on, and he was present for the second vn and saw how asif treated noah, a minor.

neither of them have called out asif for any of this (as far as we are aware), and had not attempted to put a stop to it. francey is also shown a few times in this post, and is one of asif's more staunch supporters/defenders.

we have not been contacted by or been able to contact any others involved in either vn, although from what we can gather, only francey and naz are (openly) associating with and supporting asif still. whether or not others involved were also complicit, or perhaps victims, is unknown.

on asif’s xenophobia and anti-black racism

search tag: (#.r.a) Blair reports Asif would routinely use xenophobic slurs in the main chat and in his (now deleted) Ifritah roleplay blog

He would speak derisively of Arabic people, and has used the k slur for Jewish people.

search tag: (#.r.b) This is also reflected in his lore of the lotogh, who are based on Arab and Romani people. The original lore includes speaking of lotogh as if they were animals (only some would “show signs of intelligence”), who would resort to survival cannibalism to the point of eating their own children, and who would have an “alpha” according to the myths of how wolf packs work. Lotogh are also said to become slavers, with an emphasis on selling slaves into sex work.

search tag: (#.l.b) Asif claims this racist lore was written by Blair, but in the google docs where they were both working, Asif wrote the lotogh lore at the same time as Blair was typing lore for Vali.

search tags: (#.a.b) (#.a.c)He repeatedly has implied or said that mod n is white, and creates the impression that the only people against him are white

search tag: (#.r.c) He jokes about being black and having “a black card” because he has a black friend who humours this. Along this line, he makes jokes about “black on black crime.”

He has repeatedly reblogged posts with the n word in them.

He misuses AAVE.

on asif’s fatphobia

search tag: (#.v)  Asif boasted Gehennam as inclusive and containing many body types, but he was remarkably incapable of drawing Vali, Blair’s character, to his actual size, to the point that Noah was not even aware the character was fat when making fanart.

Every character of Asif’s is skinny. Vali, Blair’s character, is the only character in Gehennam who was not stick-thin.

on asif’s disregard of the boundaries and safety of his minor followers

search tag: (#.a.a) Asif has repeatedly posted, and is still posting, sexual content on his main and the official 1001 Days blogs. He often does not tag these posts, but even if they were tagged it is already wrong to put this content where minors can get to it.

He often jokes about Sinbad in sexual ways, including talking about nipple and genital piercings he may have, or how he personally wants to get “spitroasted” by Sinbad and Alibaba.

He has also said he would consider putting 18+ optional content in the game, as if it being optional would keep it away from minors.

When questioned about this he straight up claimed it was untrue and laughed it off, and says his blogs and game are minor-friendly.

He posts NSFW drawings without tagging them.

(#end) some final words

we're doing all of this not to tear down someone who's producing diverse content, but because we believe that content creators in our community need to be held to the same standards as anyone else, and their fans deserve accountability and to be made aware of the actions of the person/people they are supporting.

we would also like to emphasise that all of us supported gehennam at the beginning (we all met in a Gehennam fan discord server, in fact), nor is asif the first content creator that we have called out (The Arcana game and WTNC teams among others).

post the exposure of the arcana game devs, we have tried to make people aware of problems with VN devs before they get too attached to the VN and the creators, or at least inform them after the fact, and encourage them away from it. we do this as it's too easy to form parasocial relationships with a 1k+ follower blog and believe that 100% of what they do is beyond reproach, because we are all so desperate for content that represents us, and that it feels good to be acknowledged and treated with familiarity by our favourite content creators.

the reason for this entire post being put together is to give those hurt by asif at the very least, some closure, and to expose his behavior and lies, so that those who are unaware and supporting him can learn the truth. it has been made with the hope that he will not be able to hurt others in this way, and that those reading it will also now be able to see the signs of a boss who is manipulative and exploitative, and also the signs of a person who utilises their fame and online persona to create a false narrative about themself, and uses it to avoid accountability.

[jharvas]

Character Questionnaire: Jharvas Suvorsath

BASICS -

1. Height?

5′10″. One of the tallest boys back home.

2. Eye colour?

Dark blue, I think? (He’s correct.)

3. Do they need glasses?

Nope. I can see just fine. It’s the communicating thing that I need help with.

4. Scars and birthmark?

None. I’ve been in a few...fights, but I’ve never gotten a scar. Maybe this year? 

5. Tattoos and piercings?

I have a lot. Should I take off my shirt? (He has a lot of tribal tattoos over his shoulders and back and torso. He doesn’t have piercings, though.)

6. Right or left handed?

Right-handed. 

7. Any disabilities? Physical or mental.

I can’t ...communicate without the aid of my familiar, my companion, Kiora. (Kiora’s the black mare that’s always with him. Back in the depths, she took on the form of a giant gray seahorse. On land, she’s a giant landhorse. Get it? Ugh. They were magically bonded by his own tribe when he was still a child after they realized he was never going to develop his voice.)

8. Do they have any allergies?

Nope. I’m allergy-free.

9. Favourite colour?

Blue. Any shade of blue related to the seas or oceans or water. It’s my whole thing.

10. Typical outfits?

Anything comfortable, anything I can run and swim in, really. If it’s easy to take off, I’ll wear it. I do a lot of things on the surface now, but I still end up wanting to be in the oceans, which is probably just a triton thing, so I lean towards clothes I can quickly take off or won’t be a hassle to me underwater. Of course, protection is still paramount, so I have few armor lying around for the exact same use.

11. Do they wear any makeup?

Nope. I don’t need to. (He also doesn’t know how.)

12. What weapon do they use, if any?

I like my spear, though I also have daggers on me as well as a light crossbow I rarely get to use. I mean, why waste crossbow bolts when I can just blast monsters from far away?

PERSONALITY -

13. Are they more optimistic or pessimistic?

Optimistic, definitely. I’ve been through a lot as a kid, before and after my tribe magically bonded me with Kiora, and kids can be cruel at times, so because of all my bad experiences, I’ve pretty much learned to look at the brighter side of things, especially these days.

14. Are they introverted or extroverted?

What’s the difference? Oh. Yeah, I’m an extrovert. Definitely an extrovert.

15. What are their pet peeves?

Hmm. That’s a tough question. I guess...if I have to name one...I’d go with...lines? I hate lines. 

16. What bad habits do they have?

I guess I can be graceless at times? I was never taught how to dance, so, yeah...

17. Do they have any phobias?

I don’t have one, I think? Though I can’t be too sure. Maybe I just haven’t found that out yet.

18. How do they display affection?

Passionately. I am a passionate lover. I like to tell someone I love them, show them how much, and celebrate with them and stuff.

19. How competitive are they?

I can be very competitive. I’m a triton, so I was brought up to believe we’re far superior to other races just because we spent all our time protecting the rest of them from the horrors of our plane, but I’ve seen some stuff and other races can surprise you...which is why I have to prove I’m still better than them. I’m just kidding. I just love the feeling of winning but if I lose, then I lose. No harm, no foul. It won’t be the end of my world. I’m not perfect.

20. If they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be?

Hmm. I honestly can’t think of a single thing to change about me. Maybe my weapon of choice? Spears are nice but three pointed ends would be nicer than one.

21. Do they have any obscure hobbies or routines?

Nope. I’m just a simple guy who likes simple things like beautiful women, protecting them, swimming, maybe a bit of fighting, and...oysters. I do love my oysters. 

BACKSTORY -

22. What are the names and ages of their close family members? Parents, siblings, etc.

My dad’s name is Jenres, and my mother’s name is Loryn. I have a brother and a sister, Jolos and Dhorimyn.

23. Is their family alive and are they still in contact with them?

Still alive, yeah. They’re still back home. Jolos and Dhorimyn have even stepped up to protect our tribe. They’re much better warriors than me, that’s for sure.

24. Where are they from? City, nation?

Our tribe’s settlement is east of Hegaehend, far east, deep within the oceans there. I doubt you’ve heard of it, but it’s called the City of Sh'lafijn. Some call it Marai.  

25. Did they have a childhood best friend?

Yeah, I had childhood friends but I don’t think I actually had a best friend. Wait, no, Kiora... Kiora is definitely my childhood best friend. She was always there for me. She’s the bestest friend.

26. Have they had any pets?

Nope. Kiora’s more of a friend than a pet.

27. Did they grow up rich or poor? What were their living conditions like?

We were smack dab in the middle. My dad was a great fisherman and warrior, and my mom was a witty merchant, so we got by really well. Growing up with two siblings and Kiora was pretty fun, though there were bad times. Still, the good outweighed the bad, so I can’t complain.

28. What is their educational background?

I was trained by the best, taught by the best. I wasn’t the best student but my mentors didn’t have a hard time with me. I learned fast and learned better through experience over books.

29. As a child, what did they want to be when they grew up?

A warrior. A guardian of the depths. A protector. Much like our people of old. I like to think I’m on my way.

30. What advice would they give to their younger self?

It gets better. It always does. Trust in your tribe, in your friends. They’ll keep you swimming.

31. Growing up, were they ever bullied or were they the bully?

I was bullied. On account of needing Kiora to communicate with others. Before her, I was bullied for not being able to communicate. It’s a bad situation either way. But I had my fair share of friends, protectors, people I can trust who helped me out. I’d do anything for them. Everything I’ve done is for them, because of them.

32. Who do they look up to/who is their role model?

My dad, definitely. He’s a great warrior and provider. My mom, too. She’s worked hard all her life. That perseverance is admirable.

PRESENT -

33. Do they currently have a place of residence?

I go where the current takes me. I rent rooms wherever, though I like taverns close by the sea. Arx is a good place for me. I go there a lot, even for just a swim.

34. What is their most treasured possession?

Oh, man. I don’t think I have one, really. My memories?

35. What is their drink of choice?

Bilgewater. Hands down. Best drink ever. (Bilgewater is the bluish-brown, sometimes jet black, concoction that's made by soaking the inner organs of various sea creatures soaking in a fermented brine and then running them through a sieve to remove the bones and viscera. It's on most tavern's menu for around 5 copper pieces a glass. Your friendly neighborhood fisher can also brew it for you for the same price. The only side effect of this drink is that the lingering taste of rotten, brackish seafood remains on the palette for a few hours.)

36. Which king/queen are they loyal to, if any?

I’m still checking the waters. So far, I haven’t really gotten the incentive to choose a side. Maybe when it comes to it, I’ll finally get to decide. But for now? Wherever the current takes me.

37. Have they ever killed anyone?

Yep. Part of the job. Protecting our tribe, people I like... I try my best not to kill but if I don’t have a choice, then I don’t have a choice.

38. What was their last promise and did they keep it?

To never stop growing. I think I’m keeping it.

LOVE -

39. What was their first kiss like, if they’ve had one?

Oh, wow, well, uhh, if I remember correctly, it was...fine, I guess. She was better than me, I think, though it was very straight to the point, just lips smacking and that was it. I don’t recall any hint of passion there, but it was fair for a first kiss.

40. Are they in a relationship/have a love interest?

Nope. Not really looking for one, but if push comes to shove, then I’ll happily shove back.

41. Have they ever been in love?

Once or twice. I was in love with a librarian before but she was too focused on her work. I don’t think she even knew I existed.

42. Have they ever had their heart broken?

Sure. It’s a normal thing, just life. That librarian thing, I guess. Losing a friend in a battle. Stuff happens in life. That’s how you know you’re alive.

SPIRITUALITY -

43. Do they follow a god, if so who?

For a time, I followed Melora. Just because everyone else back home was doing it. But then, Kiora happened, and I never really heard from Melora, so over time, that gradually slowed down. Also, I left for the surface, so it was like forgetting how to talk to tuna, their slang and lingo.

44. What do they think happens to them after death?

Uhh, I guess my body just...decays? Maybe I turn into seafoam or something. I don’t know. I don’t really care. I’d be dead by then, so there’s no use thinking on that.

45. What is their spirit animal?

Kraken. 100% kraken. Absolutely.

[fallintosanity]

so I just re-read Nevermore, the unintentionally final book in the Cal Leandros series by Rob Thurman. Mostly I was rereading it on the hopeless crossover nerd whim of “Noctis Lucis Caelum and Cal Leandros look remarkably similar but are basically polar opposites in terms of personality and it would frankly be hilarious if they somehow got switched and Niko had to deal with Noctis, and Ignis (or better yet, Ardyn) had to deal with Cal”. 

But I’d forgotten how much I dislike the last couple books in the series despite what should be Sanity-flavored plot crack in Nevermore in particular (Cal time-travels eight years to the past to save his younger self from an assassin), and I’ve been thinking about why, and what went so terribly wrong with a series I love so much. I’ve been able to isolate three main reasons why the ending of the series frustrates me so much and why, I think, interest in the books dropped off so badly that the planned eleventh book was never published. 

Cut for long ramblings about writing and storytelling (also spoilers for the entire Cal Leandros series). 

The first reason is purely technical: Nevermore appears not to have been edited for spelling, punctuation, and grammar (SPaG). At all. I’m talking glaringly obvious mistakes like effect instead of affect, ‘Goodfellow grin, sword out, “I’ve been looking forward to this...”’, run-on sentences galore, and sentences just straight-up missing subjects, verbs, or objects; or which otherwise make no grammatical sense. 

Thurman’s writing style has always had a bit of a... rhythm, I suppose, to it - characters tend to speak in long complex sentences with entire asides in the middle. It’s part of the appeal of her books, normally. When properly edited, her almost lyrical sentences give her books a unique and enjoyable flow. But in Nevermore, at least once a chapter and frequently more often, I had to stop reading, go back to the beginning of the paragraph, and re-read the sentence only to discover, yes, it really is missing a vital part of its structure, or its tense doesn’t agree with the sentences before and after (or occasionally with itself). Being thrown out of the book that frequently makes it very hard to read. You can’t get deeply invested in what the characters are saying if you can’t understand them. 

The second two reasons are more complex, and fairly tightly intertwined. One of them is the entire issue of Robin Goodfellow. A good pass or three by an editor would have been helpful here, too, not just for SPaG, but also because Robin goes from straddling the line between “overbearing yet charming” and “obnoxious third wheel”, to straight-up puck ex machina. The plot of Nevermore is quite solid and enjoyable for the first half - but then Robin shows up. From there, it’s a downhill plunge of hand-waving his vast yet utterly unexplained network of “connections” or “minions” to solve half the problems they encounter. 

How did he find the Leandros brothers overnight when Caliban was incredibly careful to make himself untraceable? Something something text-recognition software in his mailbox, and vague “informants” who pointed him directly to the apartment. Where’d he get the sword that’s too long to actually hide in the suit jacket he’s wearing? A shrug and a “it was hidden up his ass” joke. Where’d he get the credit card and “wad of cash” he uses later, after said suit (and everything else he was wearing) gets destroyed and he’s walking around in a stolen bedsheet toga? Another shrug/ass joke. How does he hide the four of them from Lazarus? A mysterious “client” with a conveniently empty, ultra-protected penthouse never before mentioned, and more minions who not only manage to stock it with clothes and other necessities in the space of roughly an hour, but mange to do so with clothes and medical cocktails perfectly fit to Robin, Cal, Caliban, and Niko. 

There’s “this guy is insanely wealthy and unbelievably well-connected”, which is how Robin has always come across in past books; and there’s “this guy is a walking plot device who barely resembles himself from previous books”, which is Robin in Nevermore. And speaking of walking plot devices: on the flip side of solving half the problems they encounter, Robin “conveniently” creates a completely different problem seemingly just to set up a chapter’s worth of angst. He develops a phobia of Auphe gates so severe that he would rather die than allow Caliban to use one to get them out of a trap by Lazarus. A phobia never before mentioned in any book, despite Cal’s gates being a massive plot point in nearly all previous books (and Robin being yanked through them repeatedly). 

Which is where the third massive problem with the book comes in, a problem whose roots are in the previous book, Downfall. In Downfall, the ninth book of the series, we learn out of the blue that apparently Cal and Niko are the latest version of two guys who have been reincarnating every hundred years or so for the last few millennia. Every time they’re reincarnated, they’re reincarnated together as brothers or best friends; and every time they’re reincarnated, Robin finds them and becomes their friend. 

Up until this point, there’d been no mention of reincarnation in the books at all, nor any hint that Robin knew the Leandros brothers before. Downfall tries to “solve” this by adding some flashbacks of Robin meeting the brothers as children and recognizing them, but this doesn’t change the fact that his reactions when he first meets them in book 1 (or in any of the books beyond that) do not make any sense if he either met them before as children, or recognizes them as the reincarnations of his friends. 

On top of that, Downfall begins and Nevermore continues with the idea that the Leandros brothers’ previous reincarnations were always famous historical figures. They were Achilles and Patroclus, they were Little John and Will Scarlet (to Goodfellow’s Robin Hood, of course). They “rustled Genghis Khan’s harem”. Name a historical figure or event, the Leandros brothers and Robin were there and probably involved up to their eyeballs. 

I don’t want to say that this kind of resurrection plot, on its own, is bad. Done well, it can be quite interesting. The problems with it in this series are due to execution, not the premise itself. The reason the execution falls very, very flat is twofold. 

First, like I said, the Leandros brothers were always important historical figures or involved in the business of them. If reincarnation as a thing was more prominent in the series, if we had a reason for why this is the case other than “because protagonists”, then I might buy it. As it is, it smacks unpleasantly of the “Raven Dark’ness Dementia Way” flavor of self-insert that’s fine for self-indulgence, but a lot harder to tolerate when it comes out of left field in the ninth and tenth books of a New York Times bestselling series. 

It’s the author trying to make her characters awesome by making them have been all the awesome people in history, rather than allowing them to be awesome on their own merits. It’s also the author trying to force a closeness/brotherly bond between her characters that 1) doesn’t need to be forced as it’s already there, and 2) is actually weakened by making it be their ~reincarnation destiny~ rather than something they spent the last eight and a half books earning. 

Second, and closely related, is the fact that there was no foreshadowing whatsoever of the reincarnation thing. If this had been set up since the first book - if Robin’s reactions to the Leandros brothers in book 1 had had even the slightest hint of this, if there had been subtle clues dropped in subsequent books - it would be a lot easier to swallow. As it is, the lack of foreshadowing gives it all the subtlety and effectiveness of an “it was all a dream” ending.

The tendency to just make up something that’s “always been there” isn’t a new one for Thurman; she’s done this repeatedly throughout the Leandros series, and does it for other things in Nevermore as well. The “coming of age” ring Caliban gives to Robin was supposedly given to him by Niko, but it was never mentioned prior to that scene. “For real and for true” is likewise something that Caliban claims was always in his and Niko’s life, but is mentioned for the first time in Nevermore. (There are other examples in previous books but I don’t remember them off the top of my head.) 

The difference is that all those are relatively minor things. As a reader, I’d have loved to see the scene where Niko gives Cal the ring (where’d Niko get it? was he emotional? how did Cal respond?), but I can accept that it happened off-screen. The “for real and for true” line would have had a hell of a lot more emotional impact if it had been used in previous books, but I can buy it being a childhood thing Caliban hadn’t thought of until now. 

But an entire reincarnation plot, complete with handwaved “racial memory” thanks to “Auphe genes” that allows Caliban to remember his previous incarnations? Something that big has to be set up, foreshadowed, from the very beginning. Otherwise you leave your readers distracted by the mechanics of it, the gaping plot holes where characters’ reactions don’t line up. (Don’t get me started on the hilarious lack of hard science in any mention of Cal’s Auphe heritage; that’s a whole ‘nother rant.) 

In my entirely amateur opinion, both Downfall and Nevermore would have been much stronger books with the entire reincarnation plot ripped out. By our ninth book with these characters, we don’t need a convoluted reincarnation plot to either prove that Cal and Niko are awesome, or to convince readers of the powerful bonds of friendship and brotherhood between the two of them, and between them and Robin. It fails to make them seem cooler in any way, for one (this is a separate rant about how to write tricksters, but essentially, if Cal suddenly legitimizes every one of Robin’s outlandish claims about his involvement with historical figures, by remembering his past reincarnations where they did whatever thing it was, it makes Robin’s claims considerably more boring and uninteresting). 

It also makes the bonds between the three of them a lot weaker. They stop earning the bonds on their own merits, and fall back on “hey we fucked our way through Roman whorehouses together in a past life, let’s be besties now”. In Nevermore, Caliban struggles to earn past!Niko’s trust for very good reasons, making for interesting, painful drama and angst as he deals with the fact that the one person who’s trusted him his entire life suddenly doesn’t. But when Robin shows up, he and Caliban swap a couple raunchy memories from a past life and suddenly Robin is willing to die for Caliban (except for the aforementioned Auphe gate phobia, which frankly feels even more forced given how fully Robin trusts Caliban after the reincarnation discussion). I would have much rather seen Caliban have to earn past!Robin’s trust the way he did in the early books in the series, the way he did with past!Niko. 

So, to fix Nevermore: scale back on the puck-ex-machina - it would even be possible without changing the story that much. Cal and Caliban would both bitch about having to wear fancy clothes instead of their preferred snarky t-shirts. The boys would have had to work a bit harder to find a safe place to hole up for the night, and would have been on watch not just to wake Caliban when the nightmares started, but to keep an eye out for Lazarus. (Which, frankly, would have added another layer to Cal’s failing to wake Caliban, if he was legitimately distracted or could simply claim to have been.) Rip out the reincarnation plotline entirely. Let the boys earn each other’s trust and friendship organically, and let them be badass on their own terms rather than by borrowing historical figures’ awesomeness. And get a SPaG editor. 

...all that said, if Everwar ever does come out by whatever miracle of publishing, self- or otherwise, I’m totally buying it. I miss my emo-angst-amoral-jackass and his impossibly-good asskicking older brother. 

(maybe someday I’ll write that crossover too.)

(no Sanity you have too many fics already)

(but what if niko and ignis bemoaning their respective charges--) 

[igagliano]

                         “but most miserable is the desire that's glorious: blest be those,                                       how mean soe’er, that have their honest wills,                                                      which seasons comfort.”

                                                                                                         -- IMOGEN                                                                                     cymbaline: act i, scene 6

                                          basic information.

FULL NAME: Isabella Elena Gagliano PRONUNCIATION:  ‎iz-ah-BEHL-ah  eh-LAY-nah gAHg-lee-ah-no MEANING:

ISABELLA (circa. Spain) -- pledged to God; God is bountiful

“Qué linda, qué hermosa--nuestro amor. Gracias a Dio.” These are some of the earliest phrases that she can remember coming from Candela and Emilio Gagliano throughout her childhood. Affectionately nicknamed Bella from an early age, the Gagliano child has never been a stranger to beloved adoration. Every morning, her parents would shower the beautiful babe with kisses; every night, they would get on their knees and pray at the side of the crib, thanking God for the gift He deigned to give them. 

ELENA (circa. Greece) -- shining light; the bright one

Candela Gagliano knew what she was doing when she looked down at her darling baby and decided to gift her with a middle name full of light and brightness. That is what Isabella was to the Gagliano family: a bundle of light that, when cultivated as sweetly as she’d been, would one day righteously burn anyone who dared to try to snuff her out. 

GAGLIANO (circa. Italy/Germany) -- joyous; brave

There’s bravery in looking the hurricane in the eye and now cowering, but winking. There’s bravery in relying on words and ink rather than guns and bullets--this ideology has been absorbed by the little canary who prefers to sing her truths rather than fight battles that she knows she’s ill-equipped for. She takes immense joy in dealing justice--a rarity, especially in a place such as Verona.

NICKNAME(S): Isa, Izzy, Bella, Bells, Bell, Imogen PREFERRED NAME(S): Isa, Izzy, Isabella BIRTH DATE: October 11, 1994 AGE: 24 ZODIAC: Libra GENDER: Female PRONOUNS: She / her(s) / they / them / theirs ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Panromantic SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Pansexual CURRENT LOCATION: Verona, Italy LIVING CONDITIONS: Comfortable and modest. La justicia is far from rich, though they are not poor. TITLE(S): the justice, la justicia, il giornalista, editor 

                                                background.

BIRTH PLACE: Salamanca, Spain SOCIAL CLASS: Upper-middle class EDUCATION LEVEL: BA in Literature and Journalism FATHER: Emilio Gagliano -- It’s no surprise that Emilio Gagliano’s works have earned him the gilded favor of those in positions of power. He was a man that stood for justice and refused to crack under pressure; he was a man who called for morality and improvements far louder than those vying for its death and decay. MOTHER: Candela (neé Russo) Gagliano -- Conversely, Candela was the champion of the underdogs, the one that was beloved by the outcasts of society. She wrote for the downtrodden, those who were left to bear the weight thrust upon them by those far more fortunate.  SIBLING(S): n/a BIRTH ORDER: n/a CHILDREN: n/a PET(S): One -- A female Dalmatian named Themis. (x) OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIVES: n/a PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: There’s a handful of carefully-restitched hearts left in their wake--that Isabella Gagliano who could never find anything or anyone worth enough to keep them in one place.  ARRESTS/PRISON TIME?: n/a

                                      occupation & income.

PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME: il Giornale di Verona. Isa works for Verona’s main newspaper outlet, and has since climbed the ranks with vigor (and, in climbing ranks, has increased their own salary). SECONDARY SOURCE OF INCOME: Freelance writing. You’d be remiss to think that la justicia works for Verona and Verona alone--after all, she is a Gagliano. Anything published through this means, however, are claimed by an IMOGEN.  TERTIARY SOURCE(S) OF INCOME: [REDACTED] CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB (OR LACK THERE OF)?: Isabella Gagliano is incredibly pleased with her occupation, especially since il giornale tends to turn a blind eye to her methods of getting information that was once closed off to the common Veronan--and those hungry for the truth know better than to look a gift horse in its mouth. PAST JOB(S): Waitress (multiple times in multiple places) SPENDING HABITS: Unlikely to splurge unless it’s something that really moves them, or it’s for someone they love. Other than that, Isabella has moderate spending habits; sure, there are some superfluous purchases (yet another dog toy for Themis, another set of multi-colored ink pens for themselves, etc.) but they make sure necessities are taken care of, first. MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION: A golden heart-shaped locket (x) given to her by Celeste Duval. Inside, there is a faded-but-well-preserved picture of the two of them together--unabashedly happy and unapologetically in love.

                                          skills & abilities.

LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: Spanish, Italian, conversational Russian, English DRIVE?: Yes JUMP-STAR A CAR?: Yes. CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?: No. RIDE A BICYCLE?: Yes. SWIM?: Yes. PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?: No. PLAY CHESS?: No. BRAID HAIR?: Yes. TIE A TIE?: Yes. PICK A LOCK?: Yes.

                 physical appearance & characteristics.

FACE CLAIM: Brittany O’Grady (x, x, x) EYE COLOR: Brown HAIR COLOR: Deepest brunette - the darkest brown, which can be a very dark chestnut; sometimes appears to be off black at a distance. HAIR TYPE/STYLE: 3A/B - or curly with well-defined and springy coils that have a loopy, “S” shaped pattern.  GLASSES/CONTACTS?: Reading glasses, used sparingly at night (and usually worn at home) when going through soon-to-be-published works with a fine-toothed come.  DOMINANT HAND: Right TATTOOS: One - a scripted-font ‘C’ behind her left ear for Celeste PIERCINGS: Three - lobe piercings and a tragus piercing on her right ear. MARKS/SCARS:  NOTABLE FEATURES: Well-defined and thick eyebrows. USUAL EXPRESSION: Inquisitive, guarded. ALLERGIES: Seasonal allergies.

                                               psychology.

JUNG TYPE: ENTP (”The Debater”) - The Debater personality type is the ultimate devil’s advocate, thriving on the process of shredding arguments and beliefs and letting the ribbons drift in the wind for all to see. This tactic shouldn’t be confused with the sort of mutual understanding Diplomat personalities seek – Debaters, like all Analyst personality types, are on a constant quest for knowledge, and what better way to gain it than to attack and defend an idea, from every angle, from every side? (x) MORAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good - A chaotic good character acts as their conscience directs them with little regard for what others expect of them. They make their own way, but are kind and benevolent. They hate it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. They follow their own moral compass, which, although (subjectively) good, may not agree with that of society. (x) TEMPERAMENT: Choleric-Melancholic - The Choleric-Melancholy combination is driven by two needs. Their primary need is to get results. The secondary need is to do things right. Either need may dominate their behavior depending on the requirements of the situation. When the Choleric and the Melancholy tendencies are combined, it produces a result-oriented, detailed person, who plans and pushes their way through life. (x) ELEMENT: Fire. PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE TYPE: Linguistic - People who develop linguistic intelligence tend to demonstrate a greater ability to express themselves well both verbally and in writing. This type of person has very strong awareness and an ability to easily understand the viewpoint of others. Associated with the left side of the brain. (x) SOCIABILITY: Depends on who you ask. They’re sociable and enjoyable to be around, so long as you aren’t under their scrutiny. COMPULSION(S): Checking the locks in their home before going to bed. PHOBIA(S): Claustrophobia. DRUG USE: No. ALCOHOL USE: Occasionally. PRONE TO VIOLENCE?: Only in self-defense.

                                                 mannerisms. 

NERVOUS TICKS: Taking note of all possible exits around, the fear settling heavily in their stomach, the tightening of jaws, the miniscule-flaring of nostrils, the shifting of weight from one side to the other. DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: To bring the elite of the bloodied city to their knees and have them answer for their crimes, to write as their mother taught them, to remain as unyielding as her father, to fulfill the promise made between her and her benefactor. Additionally, love. FEARS: Losing Celeste, losing the ability to write, defamation of their character POSITIVE TRAITS: Headstrong, resourceful, creative NEGATIVE TRAITS: Argumentative, insensitive, impractical DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?: Not unless spurred by unchecked emotions. 

                                                     attitudes.

GREATEST DREAM: To be the catalyst in what dismantles Verona’s hideous war; to write enough that, maybe someday, someone will be able to do more than she GREATEST FEAR: Receiving punishment for the means in which she gets information for il Giornale MOST AT EASE WHEN: Home, with Celeste Duval. Home, curled on her couch with Themis by her side and her computer on her lap--writing, of course. LEAST AT EASE WHEN: At unexpected gatherings called for and/or sponsored by the Capulets or Montagues. WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN: Being accused of being in la mafia. BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: Becoming an editor at il Giornale di Verona. BIGGEST REGRET: Waiting too long and missing the chance to ask Celeste to marry her. Not coming to Verona sooner. BIGGEST SECRET: [REDACTED] TOP PRIORITIES: Exposing the mobs, keeping loved ones safe and helping them, staying alive

[leobelgrave]

LEONIDAS BELGRAVE [CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONNAIRE]

BASICS - 1. Height?

Leo is 6′0.

2. Eye color?

Blue/Gray.

3. Do they need glasses?

No.

4. Scars and birthmark?

They have a star-shaped scar on the back of their neck, due to them being incidentally stabbed with a screwdriver by their older brother. They also have a small, round birthmark on the right side of their rib cage, which they affectionately refer to as Pascal, the third nipple.

5. Tattoos and piercings?

They have a poke tattoo of the Aries constellation on their left shoulder blade, which they have no memory of getting.

6. Right or left handed?

Left!

7. Any disabilities? Physical or mental.

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)

8. Do they have any allergies?

Not that they’re aware of.

9. Favorite color?

Doesn’t have one. Prefers warmer colors, though.

10. Typical outfits?

As eccentric as possible. Sometimes, when they feel more modest they’ll opt for baja hoodies, shawls, mismatched socks. But they also aren’t too shy to wear something more revealing. Sometimes skirts, sometimes slacks, one time literally nothing at all. The colors are always vibrant and eye catching regardless of what they are wearing though.

11. Do they wear any makeup?

Sometimes, though usually only when going out. They like to keep it simple, with a bit of mascara, eyeliner, and gloss. Their nails are always painted, though.

12. What weapon do they use, if any?

They always carry a mace around in their bag, but never once have they used it. Why a mace, you may be wondering? Because it is just as chaotic as they are.

PERSONALITY - 13. Are they more optimistic or pessimistic?

Optimistic.

14. Are they introverted or extroverted?

Extroverted. It’s nearly impossible for them to meet a stranger.

15. What are their pet peeves?

Boring conversation, people who act indifferent about everything, people who get offended easily, using eating utensils when you could use your hands, slow walkers, people who don’t wipe their mouths when they’re eating.

16. What bad habits do they have?

Oh boy. They chew on their cheek, they pull on loose threads, they fidget, they’d bite their nails if polish wasn’t so damn expensive. They are willing to take anything for a temporary escape: usually alcohol and halfling weed but... they are open to other options. They also tend to switch topics quickly and usually focus on having their own reply ready instead of focusing on what the other person is saying.

17. Do they have any phobias?

Getting old. Not physically, but spiritually. In a sense, they’re afraid there’ll be a day where they wake up and realize everything they thought they’d achieve is behind them and they no longer have anything to look forward to or be excited about. Also, sailing. They get seasick easily and there’s too much about the ocean that remains unknown. No thanks.

18. How do they display affection?

They’re super physical. They hold hands a lot, and poke people, and kiss their cheeks, and lay in their laps, and would probably permanently attach themselves to someone if they could swing it. They’re all about affection. It’s intimacy, true, genuine vulnerability, that they can’t really get comfortable with. All the physical attention usually does a good job as a deterrent, though.

19. How competitive are they?

They are ridiculously competitive, even when they don’t mean to be. If they see someone else walking toward the exit at the same time as them, they consciously walk faster and when they beat the other person, who is likely completely unaware there was a race, Leo thinks to themselves, ha, I won!

20. If they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be?

Bigger butt. Next question.

21. Do they have any obscure hobbies or routines?

They are really good at knitting and crocheting. A good percentage of their wardrobe is home crafted. They also collect rocks and crystals so that they can make jewelry out of them. They always considered themselves artistic, but their drawing and painting abilities were abhorrent, and their singing voice was... well, not great either. So they found their expression through clothing, which is why they make such weird and bold fashion choices.

BACKSTORY - 22. What are the names and ages of their close family members? Parents, siblings, etc.

His parents, Percival and Herron, are each 59. His brother Tiberius is 34, his sister Elexus is 31, and his brother Maximus is 23.

23. Is their family alive and are they still in contact with them?

Yes, and no. To Leo’s knowledge, they have not spoken in about seven years. They have no memory of this, but they only left home about 11 months ago.

24. Where are they from? City, nation?

They were born in Crowmire, Hegaehend. They grew up there, but ultimately moved to Khaggon in their early twenties.

25. Did they have a childhood best friend?

Leo has never had many close friends, as they tend to hold others at a distance for fear of rejection and of any other sort of downfall that would dampen their spirits. They’re open to the idea, but also no one has bothered to try and break down the walls thus far so in a way, they feel they’ve been right to build them up in the first place.

26. Have they had any pets?

They would love one, but they’re way too irresponsible. There is a stray cat that often hangs out on their windowsill. Leo calls it Blue because it is actually red, and sometimes they feed it scraps.

27. Did they grow up rich or poor? What were their living conditions like?

They grew up pretty comfortable. Their father owned several profitable businesses in Crowmire, so they were lucky to afford a house big enough to fit four children comfortably, and Leo never had to worry about going to bed hungry. All the siblings were meant to stick around and take over the businesses as their own. To Leo’s knowledge, they are the only one who left.

28. What is their educational background?

They went to school full-term, but genuinely did not apply themselves. For instance, when their mother demanded Leo take language courses, they took Draconic and Sylvan. Once they felt they’d learned everything they needed to learn, they sort of tuned it out and waited for it to be over. As a result, Leo isn’t very smart in terms of academic knowledge, but they feel they more than make up for it with street smarts and life experience. (However, they do not in fact make up for it.)

29. As a child, what did they want to be when they grew up?

A performer of some sort. They used to put on dramatic performances with their family where they’d write scripts and force each of them to play characters. Leo, of course, was always the lead. And yes, it was silly, but they actually weren’t a half bad actor. Oh well.

30. What advice would they give to their younger self?

They’d say, “If Mom ever tells you she is good at cutting hair, disagree and politely decline. And the way you’re feeling right now: overlooked, misunderstood, confused- that um... that gets better. You end up liking yourself, so, uh, you know. Might as well start right away. Oh, and when you’re at that one bar with the dog that pees on that dwarf lady, don’t smoke what she sells you. Seriously. Still don’t know where my pants went that night and those were some expensive pants.”

31. Growing up, were they ever bullied or were they the bully?

When they were younger, back before they really discovered themselves, they were bullied quite a bit. But as they grew to enjoy themselves and realized how cool they were for someone so young, they started to genuinely not care, and also they developed really good debate skills so when someone tried to belittle them, Leo usually ended up coming out with the upper hand.

32. Who do they look up to/who is their role model?

There really isn’t anyone they’d consider a role model. They are not at all like the people who raised them and there weren’t many outside influences who ever bothered to try. That might be a large reason Leo is so aimless most of the time: they don’t know which direction they want to go in yet.

PRESENT - 33. Do they currently have a place of residence?

They have an efficiency apartment that they pretty much just use to shower and, sometimes, to sleep.

34. What is their most treasured possession?

Their Reliquary! They keep it in their closet under their sewing supplies but anytime they’re going on a long trip they bring it with them.

35. What is their drink of choice?

Alcoholic. They don’t care if it is the cheapest ale or the most expensive spirit one can find. If it gets them drunk, it’s good.

36. Which king/queen are they loyal to, if any?

If they had to choose one, probably Kaylynn just because she’s the only one who isn’t currently dealing with a war. They actually don’t mind the idea of moving to Anari some day, and would seriously consider it if it didn’t mean such a long sea voyage.

37. Have they ever killed anyone?

They aren’t sure, but they hope not.

38. What was their last promise and did they keep it?

They promised their landlord that they would have the rent, and they did! Two days late, but, still. 

LOVE - 39. What was their first kiss like, if they’ve had one?

They were thirteen and had to kiss a boy named Oliver at a slumber party. As far as they recall, it was not terrible. It must not have been too bad, because they kissed again several times after.

40. Are they in a relationship/have a love interest?

No. Single and terrified of intimacy, unfortunately.

41. Have they ever been in love?

They don’t think of love as some sacred thing that is rare to find; Leo has loved lots of people and lots of things and experiences and memories. Have they ever been in love? No. But if you asked them, they’d lie and say it was all the same.

42. Have they ever had their heart broken?

Absolutely. One of the reasons Leo is so guarded from everyone is because they care so easily. And they trust unwavering. And they’re devastated when things don’t pan out the way they expected them to.

SPIRITUALITY - 43. Do they follow a god, if so who?

Yes: Tymora. There was a while where Beshaba was actively trying to get them to start following her instead, but Leo doesn’t remember this. Not that it matters, they ultimately stuck with Tymora anyway.

44. What do they think happens to them after death?

They don’t know. They keep their options open, but if gods exist and magic exists then it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that there is something waiting when the journey is done.

45. What is their spirit animal?

Fox. Chaotic and sly and pretty and full of mischief.

[amphtaminedreams]

Mental Health Awareness Week: My Story

Hi to anyone who’s reading this!

My name is Lauren and this is my first personal post on my Tumblr (which I’m using because I am a granny who can’t be arsed to work out the basics of Wordpress). My intention in making this blog was ultimately to talk about mental health and fashion and things that interest me and I suppose I knew that ultimately I was going to make a post like this but I just didn’t realise it would be so soon. But then Theresa May lit up Downing Street and it was Mental Health Awareness week and Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness month and I realised, best to just get this out of the way before I can start making excuses to put it off until the end of time. It’s a hard post to make because I don’t exactly know who the audience will be; I’m writing it for the mental health community and anybody who’s interested in what Borderline Personality Disorder is/looks like but I’m also conscious of the fact that one day my family and friends and even potential employers could be reading this. How much detail am I supposed to go into? A lot of people still feel uncomfortable discussing topics like this; they start seeing you a different way when they know you suffer from a mental illness, even though you’re the same person you’ve always been. It’s also hard to know where to start when I’m talking about my mental health. I feel like other posts of a similar nature tend to have a clear start, beginning, and end. A clear cause or inciting incident, one self-explanatory, well-understood diagnosis, and a clear pathway to recovery. I don’t have a single, defining trauma I can pinpoint anything to, and I don’t think I have complex PTSD (which is often conflated with BPD but as I understand it, not always the same thing). I have a family history of mental illness and a series of less significant events that in hindsight might have affected me more than I originally thought, but until I became able to think about concepts such as “mental health” and self-image and relationships in the abstract, I believed that I generally had a pretty happy childhood. My family did their very best and they loved me and we always had a roof over our heads and food on our plates. When I did start to conceptualise my mental health, I kind of thought of it as a wave of depression and insecurities and anxieties that hit me when I was in my early teens. I think this is the same for a lot of people. Only when I got a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (which I will shorten to BPD for the purpose of making this easier to read, lol!) in October 2018 did I question that.

I’ve done a lot of questioning since I got the diagnosis, the same kind of questions that make this post hard to write. Am I really that ill? Am I not just being dramatic? Do I have any right to feel like this given the privilege I have? When in reality, this deep-rooted gut instinct to doubt who you are and what you have a right to feel is an intrinsic part of BPD.

There are 9 key symptoms involved in the disorder, 5 of which must be experienced to a degree that is severe enough to affect your day to day functioning in order to receive a diagnosis. My formal assessment which took place during my stay at an inpatient psychiatric ward in October 2018 revealed I was just on the cusp of receiving a diagnosis; in 5 of the 9 categories I scored highly enough that the symptom was impairing my ability to function, thus I only just qualified (lucky me!). That’s what mental illness is really, a collection of ingrained and/or inherited behaviours that are inhibiting one’s day to day life. With regards to BPD, these 9 behaviours or symptoms are as follows:

1. Fear of abandonment (check).

2. Unstable relationships.

3. Unclear or shifting self-image (check).

4. Impulsive, self-destructive behaviours (check).

5. Self-harm (check). 

6. Extreme emotional swings (check).

7. Explosive anger.

8. Dissociative experiences (check).

9. Chronic feelings of emptiness (check, check, CHECK).

See, when the diagnosis was first suggested to me informally by a community mental health nurse in June of 2018, I was a bit like…what?! That can’t be me! I don’t have outbursts (it’s okay if you do and you’re working on it)! I don’t scream and throw things (again, okay if you do and are working on it)! And I’m definitely not manipulative (any person can be manipulative so I don’t even know where this one comes from)! That was, like, all I knew about BPD. Stereotypes. Think Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction type bullshit, we’re talking the woman that coined the phrase bunny boiler. I didn’t know that BPD can present in a million different ways, based on the person who’s suffering with it, because I thought BPD was the person. The widespread consensus on BPD isn’t the most humanising. So I hope me explaining how it’s affected my life and the way its presented itself over the years helps in turning the tide, which so many amazing people have already begun to do by sharing their stories. My aim is to do the same.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about the areas in which BPD has affected my life since my formal assessment, in which I felt I learnt a lot more about the disorder. In particular, the idea that I was always this happy child that got hit by a wave of inexplicable, crippling depression once I hit my teenage years. I remember during the assessment, the doctor asking me to talk about my early relationships and it kind of struck me at that moment that I’d been going through this pattern of switching between extreme attachment towards versus extreme devaluation of my relationships with the closest people in my life for as long as I could remember. My first real best friend of several years basically stopped speaking to me (and in hindsight, I do not blame her, lmao!) when we were about 12 because I can only imagine she was sick of me either picking a fight or desperately seeking her reassurance every time she dared to hang out with another friend. I remembered how it felt when she did choose to spend time with somebody else rather than me: “oh my god, she likes them more, she finds me boring, she hates me and she doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore! Everything’s over! I’ll never find anyone who loves me like she does because why would they? I can’t go on with my life until I know that she isn’t going to leave me!”. I think at that age, everyone has that shrill inner voice that doesn’t exactly consider logic or react in the most sensible way, but instead of my shrill inner voice going away, it just faded to more of a constantly niggling monotone that continued to affect the way I behaved around other people for years to come. This was just one of the signs that things weren’t as they should be from an early age. I think I was around 13 when the Child Adolescent Mental Health Services (otherwise known as the dreaded CAMHS), whom my parents had initially got me referred to for sleeping problems, diagnosed me with generalised anxiety and social phobia. Social phobia, despite this being its DSM name, is more commonly known as social anxiety. This came about after I had undergone successful CBT for said sleeping problems and thought I’d just drop it in, as you do, that basically, every social interaction felt like I was putting on a desperate show to keep the few remaining people left in the theatre from walking out. I told them that school was emotionally exhausting me. Whilst after the first couple of rocky years of transitioning from primary to secondary school I had developed a close group of friends, I still felt like aside from the closet few of them, absolutely nobody liked me. That was definitely true of some people, but likely not to the extent I envisioned it. I had come to feel, I suspect due to a combination of genes and a few environmental factors, like I was inherently unloveable and annoying, and even though I’m in a good place right now, these are things I continue to struggle with. When you’ve believed these things for so long, to act according to them is second nature.

The thing about BPD is that it’s hard to determine what is a co-morbidity and what is part of The Disorder™. I’m still not quite sure whether my social anxiety was in and of its own issue or if it was driven by the borderline symptom of fearing abandonment. Even recently, during a period of relative stability, I went back to my GP about dysmorphic thoughts concerning my body and appearance as I believe they go beyond the threshold of what is to be expected as part the unstable self-image facet of BPD. Whilst I can accept, for example, that the self-harming and binge eating I began indulging in around the same time I received my anxiety diagnoses were my way of coping with the mood swings and chronic feelings of emptiness I was also experiencing (get me working in the checklist of symptoms here, I imagine this is how film writers feel when they namedrop the movie in the characters’ dialogue), I have a feeling the image issues I have would exist regardless of the influence of the unstable self-image part of BPD. I mean, would perfectionism alone take me to the extremes of punishing myself for missing out on all A*s by an A or two at GCSE and A-level, forcing myself to do a degree I had no particular interest in just because the university was in the single digits in the international league tables, or at one point eating only apples for 10 days until I could barely stand up because I wanted to look like those girls on 2013 emo black and white Tumblr? Probably not. But you don’t need to have an unstable self-image to latch onto the idea that only the very best will do in today’s world, lol (typed with a totally straight face)! Yeah, if the niche that is socialist twitter has taught me anything it’s that, that’s like, late-stage capitalism for you. It’s hard to look at myself and know what is a good quality, or just a character trait, and what is disordered. I think when you call a mental illness a personality disorder, the people who are labelled with it are inevitably going to have that problem.

Surprising absolutely no-one, trying to fit into these ideals I had created and emotionally detaching myself from my friends and family didn’t do any good for my wellbeing. I gave into self-destructive impulses with increased frequency and as I went into sixth form and drifted even further away from the few people I did feel close to, I began to experience derealisation (not depersonalisation, though this is something a lot of people with BPD do experience). This would come under the dissociative experiences symptom of the BPD. It was like my eyes were glass windows and I was just watching life unfold in front of me from the other side. It’s not as if I didn’t have control of my actions, I did, I threw myself into revision, but it all just felt slightly unreal, like I was going through the motions, almost robotically, detached from everyone around me. Everything was muted. Generally, I find that my mood swings between 5 different states: lethargic depression, extreme distress, anxious irritability, an almost mania like sense of confidence and purpose, and a more pleasant calmness. The best way to explain how I experience this switch is that I can almost physically feel the gear of my brain shift, with this change of energy then flowing down to the rest of my body. My thoughts take on a different tone of voice, my body feels heavier, or if I’m going up, it’s like I can feel electricity running and crackling through me. It can happen in a split second, and it can be random, though often it’s triggered by something as small as a phone call or how much I’ve eaten. If multiple plans fall apart at the same time, it can be enough to make me angry at the world and distrustful of everyone in my life, closed off and weighed down. However, back when I was experiencing this derealisation, I remember only really switching back and forth between feeling numb and feeling passively suicidal; I feel like I lost my teenage years to this big, grey cloud of meh-ness that fogged up my brain and obfuscated my ability to regularly feel any positive emotion. To use a cliche, there was this void inside of me that nothing would fill and I had learnt that trying to use relationships to do this was dangerous for me because without sounding melodramatic, it hurt too much when I felt they weren’t reciprocating my love (what a John Green line, lmao).

My fear that people didn’t like me morphed into paranoia that even the people I was supposed to be friends with were ridiculing me the second I left the room; please don’t laugh when I say my greatest pleasure during this time was to go home at lunchtime to avoid having to spend an hour sat with them so I could eat Dairy Milk Oreo, nap and listen to The Neighbourhood (careful, don’t cut yourself on that edge!). I put on a lot of weight due to binge eating, would often leave sixth form early or skip it altogether, and saw my GP, who reestablished my anxiety diagnoses now with an exotic side order of depression. When it comes to NHS services where I live, I’ve kind of won the postcode lottery. There’s a large, conservative elderly population which I’m assuming is the reason our area receives a lot more funding than other, debatably more deserving other areas, and this meant that along with prescribing me the first of many SSRIs I was to try, I was also referred back to CAMHS. I’d been discharged from them about 2 years prior, and what had back then been about a 1 or 2-month waiting list to be seen had doubled in longevity since. I say I won the postcode lottery because, in a lot of places, it’s not uncommon for people to still be waiting to be seen by their local mental health team over a year after they’re first referred. Even so, the help I was offered was very minimal; I met a counsellor once every couple of months that didn’t really specialise in any particular kind of therapy and would kind of just talk at me for the hour I saw her. This was in spite of me expressing suicidal feelings and regularly self-harming.

That being said, by the time I left sixth form, I had finally found an SSRI that worked to blunt the intensity of my social anxiety. I was attending my “perfect” university with my “perfect” grades and (prepare yourself for the twist of the century) I finally managed to get my lazy arse to the gym, and get to that “perfect” weight. I was forming emotional connections with people for the first time in years. On a shallow level, in my first year of uni, things were finally beginning to look up, and yet I was experiencing worse mood swings than ever, becoming more dependent on drugs and alcohol to function through these, and throwing myself into intense friendships where anything less than utmost enthusiasm on the other end of the relationship would send me back into that “oh my god, I’ll never make another friend in my life, I’ll always be alone, I can’t deal with this, the only way to deal with this pain is to end it!” mode. I don’t know why things got so drastic so suddenly. Maybe it was being away from my parents, or maybe it’s just that late teens/early twenties are a time when negative emotions do tend to get more serious after being repressed for years and consequently accumulating. The whole having to be the smartest person in the room to maintain a sense of self shtick was also taking a bit of a hit because university is bloody hard and everyone’s bloody smart and bloody passionate and here I was not even understanding what the assigned reading was trying to say let alone having any brilliant ideas about it to contribute; I was so quiet in one of my seminar groups the lecturer forgot I existed in a class with a grand total of 9 students. Big fish in a little pond to little fish in a big pond syndrome or maybe just more simply put, imposter syndrome, is a real thing and when you struggle with your identity anyway, it’s enough to throw you off completely. I finished that year with a first but I told myself it probably wouldn’t happen again. A couple of days later, feeling shit and overwhelmed, I did what I’d taken to doing to manage my emotions, and got high. The delusional episode ended me up in A&E for self-harm, and when they let me go the next day, I travelled back to my family home and pretended nothing was wrong.

The whole “act like everything’s fine” approach doesn’t work in the long term. 10/10 would not recommend. Without my parents around, when I went back to uni in September, everything fell apart again. I was using drugs every day, either not eating at all or binge eating, self-harming, binge drinking regularly, skipping all my lectures. Honestly, when I think back to that time it’s like I’m watching myself from outside my body. I was feeling very done with the dumpster fire (how very American of me) that was my brain. I was done with the constant 100mph up and down internal monologue. I was done with trying to cope and to hold myself together. I intentionally overdosed multiple times and after one sent me to A&E, my dad brought me home from university. It was a horrible shock for my parents: they knew I was a worrier that could be a little closed off and miserable sometimes, and they were the ones who’d first taken me to CAMHS when I was younger, but they’d struggled with that, and so from then on I’d tried to keep my issues to myself. To be honest, I don’t blame them at all for not realising anything was drastically wrong. I did a pretty good job of hiding my problems; everyone had their own things to deal with and so I became quite adept at internalising my feelings and acting “inwards” rather than outwards. It was also definitely a case of things escalating whilst I was away. With all this in mind, the overdose kind of came out of nowhere for them, but I was so detached from reality I didn’t even consider this at the time. Thankfully, I can’t really remember how they actually reacted either. Benzodiazepines do that to you, a little tidbit of information that all these teen rappers and social media personalities hyping up Xanax fail to mention. I think my dad made the decision to bring me home rather than have me stay in hospital in London, as was offered, because he thought that would be better for me. However, a few days later, after numerous, distressing visits from the crisis team (another name that will be regrettably familiar to anyone who has experienced severe mental health problems before), where I can only assume a lack of time and recourses on their part forced me to repeat what had happened over and over again to the revolving door of staff members, I took another overdose. I had become paranoid that they were out to get me and falsely believed that I was too much of a burden on my family, who were having to take time off work to look after me. This time from A&E, I went on to stay in a psychiatric ward where I was given the formal diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder I mentioned earlier. And it’s here that my life changed forever, I believe for the better.

It changed my life for many reasons. Firstly, it was incredibly validating. To learn that I didn’t have a plethora of different problems but rather one problem, the different facets of which can present themselves in many different ways and affect multiple areas of your life, was so, so reassuring. It not only gave me a clear treatment path but helped me to understand that there was a reason all this was happening. Additionally, the events forced me to open up to my parents and for them to grasp the severity of the situation. After all these years, I finally felt like I had a support system. My parents had always been there before but I had emotionally distanced myself from everyone, and being a “typical teenager” I believed they didn’t understand me (get that angst). I think in retrospect they didn’t understand me because I wasn’t using the right words. I didn’t want to sound dramatic so whenever I spoke to either of my parents about how I felt, I downplayed it a lot. My mum, who works so incredibly hard and has a lot on her plate herself, had a tough upbringing so her approach to me being miserable was pretty much telling me to be grateful for what I had. Had she known what I was really getting at, I know that she wouldn’t have reacted like this to what I was saying. The minute I got my diagnosis, she went out and bought every (mildly offensively titled) book on how to support someone with BPD out there and I learnt today has even been trying to bring an emphasis on mental health into her workplace! She is a wonderful person.

With all this being said, my main piece of advice for other people who are newly diagnosed with BPD or just suffering from any kind of mental health condition is to be brutally honest with the trusted people around you about what you’re dealing with. It will be uncomfortable but I can promise it’ll be worth it. With something like BPD, having a support system who know exactly what you’re dealing with, minus the vagueness and the bullshit, is so, so important. I say this because, despite Theresa’s green lights, neither she nor her party are doing much in the way of providing the funding for professional help. When I first came out of hospital, I had a lot of nights where I felt incredibly depressed, almost as depressed as I did before I went in. Prior to my family knowing about my BPD diagnosis, I would have dealt with these feelings in unhealthy ways but this time, I could go to my mum and stay with her and just cry it out until the feeling passed. That is also a useful sentiment to remember, that the feelings will pass. It’s in the nature of BPD to swing around, when I’m not experiencing a period of depression, and that’s something I find it helpful to remember. I personally really like the Youper app to track my moods because when I do get suicidal, feel anxious or wired, I have something to look at objectively to remind myself that I did feel like this before, in fact, I felt like this yesterday, but a few hours later I told the app I felt okay again. It also helps you to dissect your irrational thought processes and identify “thinking traps”. Meditation, ASMR and CBD are big parts of my life and stability, though I would recommend doing some research into the latter before trying it yourself.

On a less subjective, more physiological level, I notice that my medication really aids my emotional stability; when I have been off it, my mood swings are a lot more intense. So whilst medication isn’t for everyone, it can be something to consider talking to your GP about to see if it could be beneficial for you. Another help is the DBT skills course I completed in March, DBT being the abbreviation of dialectical behavioural therapy, the treatment specifically developed for BPD by Marsha Linehan. If you have time, she’s a great person to do some research into. She herself was diagnosed with what doctors called an “incurable” case of BPD yet she’s gone on to do the most incredible things and help so many people also suffering from the disorder. Not only did DBT provide me with a skill set of more functional coping mechanisms for both interpersonal insecurities and individual struggles, but I liked the fact that once a week I got to be with a group of people who really understood what I’m dealing with and didn’t judge. Even if you can’t find a DBT group, it’s worth checking to see if there are any mental health peer support groups in your area for this reason. I found that being around people who are dealing with similar issues helped me to see my own struggles more objectively; it reminds you that what you’re experiencing is not about you personally and that whilst you may feel isolated, you’re not. The world hasn’t got it out for you. It’s a condition that many people experience. In terms of the feelings of emptiness BPD causes, I have found that since my diagnosis, I’ve actually had more of a sense of purpose in life. On a practical level, having therapy along with a year out of uni and the presence of a constant support system has had me time to get back into writing properly. What I’ve found to be even more rewarding, however, is my participation in the online mental health community.

Something I wasn’t made aware of prior to my diagnosis was the amount of stigma there is still towards mental health issues, Borderline Personality Disorder especially. It really is one of the most demonised mental health issues in and outside of the healthcare system and that’s a hard fact to learn, because it’s a difficult enough condition to learn to manage already without knowing that there are people out there who think you’re a monster for it and are going to judge everything you do through a certain lens. Whilst we are a lot more accepting as a society of conditions like depression and anxiety, conditions such as bipolar, schizophrenia and personality disorders are still greatly misunderstood by wider society who have largely taken their understandings of these illnesses from ill-informed media portrayals and shallow, surface-level observations of a sufferer’s behaviour. I doubt the name “personality disorder” helps matters; it’s hardly the most flattering description of what we’re dealing with I’ve ever heard. I’ve found that even mental health professionals and other mental illness sufferers have a negative bias towards BPD. There’s a widespread view that we are dangerous, manipulative individuals who choose to be difficult and act erratically, that our behaviour is not “organic” like that produced by other mental health problems. I have no idea where the latter assumption comes from. Most experts on the condition tend to agree that the mood swings, impulsive, destructive behaviour, and irrational thinking originate in the hypothalamus and come from a faulty fight-flight response or other atypical brain structures; in other words, BPD has a biological basis. Whilst I agree that we can learn to change our coping mechanisms, the idea that they are as a result of anything other than pure desperation and mental anguish is incredibly puzzling and dehumanising. Simply looking the causes of the condition up online or doing a small amount of research from a credible source debunks all the common BPD stereotypes, yet people like to speak about it as if they know everything about the condition just because they’ve heard a few horror stories. There are nasty people in the world. Some of them have BPD, but that doesn’t mean everyone with BPD is a nasty person, and the bottom line is that most people suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder will hurt themselves before they hurt anyone else. We are so hypersensitive to any changes in our relationships in the first place that the last thing we want to do is damage them. When we say something feels like the end of the world, that’s because the emotional dysregulation part of BPD really makes it feel like it is. We’re not being dramatic or trying to get your attention. In fact, I can say for certain that despite feeling this way on a daily basis for about 7 years, I rarely actually voiced the sentiment. I still don’t. But I should be able to. To give the example of one person suffering from physical illness and one suffering from a mental illness, where both publicly talk about the pain they’re experiencing, why is only the latter of the two called an attention seeker? If the former tweeted about how much pain they were in, nobody would bat an eyelid. Why is this? When so many people experience mental health problems? When the gender who are typically expected by society to repress their feelings accounted for over 70% of suicide victims in the UK last year? It’s clear that keeping our feelings to ourselves and suffering in silence doesn’t do us any good, so why are so many so eager for us to continue doing so? I think being open about mental health simply needs to be normalised, and that once it is, hopefully, this sentiment will die out. I find that by being open about my mental health on social media (still quite selectively, I must admit! I can’t see myself making a post about BPD on Facebook any time soon!) has given me a sense of purpose because I do feel like I’m helping to normalise this kind of honesty. With regards to the stigma that surrounds BPD specifically, I feel that my presence online and my support of others helps to show that we’re just human beings who are struggling, not the awful mythos that surrounds us.

To finish, one of my main goals in my recovery is to be more compassionate to myself. BPD is a hard enough diagnosis to have without constantly internally doubting and questioning it. I find that as the months go by, I am feeling more and more stable, and this leads me to question if I was ever sick, especially since I only displayed 5/9 of the borderline traits in the first place, which meant that I only just met the diagnostic criteria. I don’t have psychotic rage or complete blackouts and tend to act inwards rather than outwards. I am what is considered within the mental health community to be a “quiet” borderline. I know theoretically that this doesn’t make my condition any less valid, but for this reason, part of me fears moving towards being “well”. Because if I’m well, then I feel like I’ve lost part of an already fragile identity. Of course, I’d rather not have BPD. But because I’ve been expressing symptoms for so long, I worry what’s left of me without it. At the same time, I fear going back to a place where my BPD is so severe that I have to go back to hospital. So really, it’s like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. It’s a double-edged sword. Is that enough cliches? The thing that I wish more people could understand is that mental illness in itself is traumatic and that even when you’ve moved on, what you experienced will always be a part of you. You still need that support. I’m not going to lie, resisting the urge to indulge in old coping mechanisms and habits is hard, and whilst the sense of pride I feel every time I don’t, or every time I use responsibly something I’m used to abusing is rewarding, there are days where waiting for the need to use them to pass is very long and very hard. I need to stop telling myself that just because I am feeling better than I did, I don’t deserve that support anymore. I do. I still deserve compassion. I still deserve a safety net. I still deserve a sense of understanding from the people around me. I deserve all of it, as does everyone else. I also deserve to be proud of how far I’ve come already instead of berating myself for not having come far enough. As I write this I haven’t self-harmed in 169 days, have been at my current job for coming up to 6 months, have an interview for a psychology course at the uni I came to love in a week’s time. I’m finally somewhat healthily managing my weight for the first time in years! I have also decided that once I do return to university, my reason for being there is not contingent on me maintaining firsts; my mental health, and what I do with the degree is much more important. I would ultimately like to go into clinical psychology and do as much as I can in that area to help people going through similar issues. With the current state of the mental health (and healthcare, in general) system in the UK, it’s definitely easy to get disheartened that the services it provides will never be adequate due to funding issues. However, in the meantime, I think the more of us with lived experience that can get into mental health care, the better the service that eventually is provided can be. Every week I’m thinking of new things I’d like to research once I have the footing, epigenetic and intergenerational trauma and the use of psychedelics and the benefit of peer support groups. There’s always a way to turn the negative into a positive, even if it takes time to learn how to do so and I think after all these years, I’m finally getting the hang of it. If my brain has been a “dumpster fire” for the last however many years, then I don’t want to let the ashes go to waste. I’m going to make them into some really morbid confetti! As I sit here writing this, I can firmly say I am happier than I’ve ever been. Game of Thrones is pissing me off (might do a post how identity and attachment issues lead to a correlation between BPD and obsessive character fixations at some point because BOY has that been driven home to me this week!) but tomorrow I’m going to an ABBA party with uni friends, Yvie Oddly is smashing drag race, and my cat is lying next to me purring. It gets better. The hard days become less frequent and they get easier to cope with too; you can learn to ride the waves and find reasons to continue doing so, regardless of how tiring it might be sometimes.

My pipe dream for this time next year is that we have people in government who really care about the invisibly ill of this country. That Downing Street can do more than turn green. I hope that we get to see more realistic and sympathetic portrayals of BPD in the media that draw attention to the issue without glamourising or romanticising it and that we get more portrayals of queer, disabled and POC experiences of mental illness too as it’s not just skinny caucasian girls that deal with this shit! Most importantly, I also hope that I continue to flourish, and wish the same for everyone struggling with mental illness/any kind of turmoil. Anybody who reads this ’til the end, wow! Thank you! It was a bit of an essay but what do you expect coming from an ex-history student and wannabe author, lol! Please let me know if there is something you’d like to see me post about on this Tumblr, such as any specific BPD symptoms and how they might present, how I deal with social anxiety and body image, or even anything completed unrelated to mental health! God knows I love the sound of my own…prose? Is that the right word to use?

I hope you enjoyed reading!

Lauren x

[scarefox]

Uhg, today is the “tearing at my nerves” day... 1. Had a presentation / oral exam today for the career developing class (basically we were supposed to make a career plan and analyze our goals and personality, write an application and vitae). I was way too nervous beforehand. I told the prof and I volunteered to begin with my presentation, so it would be over fast. It went well. But got the usual hints, that I talk too quiet and should be more passionate. Yeah, I know but it’s the social phobia and depression that does that. The hard part was, that the prof even asked kinda personal but relevant questions. Like why am I so nervous or is it a shy-problem? And he began to explain to me that I could go to a rhetoric class or even a behavior therapy. And it’s not that stigmatized anymore etc. And I just stood there nodded and smiled, like I didn’t had two years of therapy and another two years of medication behind me and my therapist kinda gave up because of my slow progress. 2. Then when the next person had her presentation, the prof got the awesome idea, since she was a bit shy as well, that we two should perform an exercise job interview with him in front of the class. Without preparation. Even though I declined this option weeks ago, since it was voluntary. He accepted it back then but was so convinced today that I need to do that... And to make it worse he made us do a vocal warm up so I got a better voice, you know the “mimimomonananana”. At least everyone had to do the warm up together with me. Then he wanted me to shout at him, which I finally declined. I can’t do that, the phobia is still too strong for that one. It’s like my voice hits a wall if I tried. SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE. Then I did the job interview thing while everyone watched us. Good, that it was just 5 people today and everyone else skipped. I kinda managed to get into my “worksona” and ignored everyone else. Still shitty to get all those hard job interview questions for a random company without preparation. He even switched from German to English in between and later back to German. I am still amazed that I even brought out some English sentences (writing in English is still different from talking) and managed to switch without brain lag. All that trouble just so they could tell me again that my content was good but I am too quiet, too introverted, too monotone and to fidgety when nervous (lol don’t give me an office chair) and therefore come across as unsure and not convincing. Yeah I knew that before this torture. And I still don’t know how to turn my mental illnesses off in such situations. I am either an anxious mess or an emotionless way too honnest Q&A. Which is wrong as well because my personality isn’t suitable for most jobs and I shouldn’t tell my real weaknesses. Means I should lie and act more in job interviews. thanks. (I know his intentions were good and he wanted to help analyzing myself, for me to get better. But well, nothing new was learned here. Except for my personal victory of calming myself down over time and not dying inside besides being overwhelmed.) 3. Bunnyboy is sick again/still. Noticed yesterday evening that he can’t close his one eye anymore and his face was askew since 2 weeks now. But I thought it was just because I removed some matted fur from his cheeks which made it look wonky.... he is fine otherwise, still eating with joy and running around the flat. Well, as I read yesterday it might be an ear infection (this hits a nerve in their face which causes those symptoms). I couldn’t call the vet yesterday since they were closed already. I tried to call the vet this morning, didn’t get through. After my exam, the first thing I did at home was calling the vet again. And then the women told me I should have come like three days earlier with those symptoms because it could be the E.C. virus (I am 90% sure it’s not that)... she gave me an appointment for tomorrow morning. Now I feel shitty and guilty because of her implications. Even though I know she doesn’t know the whole picture with him having months of treatment for bladder sludge behind him at the previous vet and his all time chronic flu. But I am also mad at the previous vets for not checking his ears better or just making a blood check. Like I am not a vet, I am not supposed to google all thos things when it’s almost too late! I was at a vet with him for scratching and shaking his ears last year, vet couldn’t find anything. It got better and I thought well maybe it’s nothing then. The last vet where he was because of his bladder, they knew he has the chronic flu which could cause an ear infection and an ear infection causes bladder sludge. They even x-rayed him but not his head, and said he was healthy except for the bladder sludge...

[nanonaturalist]

When I were a lad I had the unfortunate luck to sit on on a yellow jacket nest, step on another a week later and then a hornet nest a week later. I developed a phobia and now my heart races even if a fly buzzes past my ear. I have done some emersion therapy by walking in a lavender field while honey bees were working.. but I still fear bee-ish creatures. I love them and I plant them flowers, but I want to be less afraid. What can I do?

Hello, @keepcalmandcarrieunderwood, I’ve been thinking about your question a lot, and this is a really hard one to answer. The obvious first step in getting over a fear of anything is wanting to get over that fear. When you have so many traumatic experiences so close together, especially when you’re young, it will take a lot of work to train your mind to be more comfortable around black and yellow striped things. So first off, congratulations on wanting to be more comfortable about our stripey friends! The good news is, you can do it!

Warning: wall of text precedes bug photos! Also this got Looooooong sorry (not sorry)

Fun fact about me: I have a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology (from way back in 2005). And one of my favorite things about studying psychology was learning about classical and operant conditioning. You are probably already familiar with both of these. 

In classical conditioning, two stimuli are paired (they may or may not be at all related), and your reflexive, unconscious response to one gets associated to the other. This phenomenon was popularized with Pavlov and his digestive experiments with dogs (dogs salivate when a bell rings in the absence of food, because the bell has been paired with food many times previously). In your case, the two stimuli are actually very closely related (seeing/hearing things that might be stinging insects, and being stung by stinging insects). Because many organisms rely on learning quickly about danger for survival, it can only take one such pairing to develop a very long-lasting response to something. 

In operant conditioning, behaviors are punished or rewarded, which can result in an individual’s behavior changing given the right circumstances. The behavior change is not necessarily conscious. A lot of interesting stuff in our brains happens outside of view from us. Say you look into a cactus flower once and you see a really cool beetle. Neat! You’re going to start looking into cactus flowers a lot more often. And if you keep seeing neat beetles, oh boy those cactus flowers better look out. Even if those flowers start turning up empty, you’ll still keep peeking in them for a while, even if you are in a situation where it’s really not appropriate to keep peeking into cactus flowers (apologies to people on my last guided hike…). I’ll get back to operant conditioning in a minute.

You may have heard about a common treatment for anxiety disorders called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I’m a big fan of this method, because it asks you to re-evaluate your thoughts, as you are having them, to restructure your gut reaction to a situation into a less emotionally-charged one. In other words, you have a fear resulting from classical conditioning–it’s totally reflexive and unconscious, and you had no control over the creation of your phobia. The problem is, phobias can become self-sustaining with the help of operant conditioning. Basically: Bee > PANIC! > flee > relief! The act of removing yourself from bee-like insects will give you relief from the fear, and makes you more likely to avoid bee-like insects in the future. But, you don’t want to be afraid anymore!

The trick is: turn your reflexive, unconscious responses into thoughts. This can be really hard–I have a lot of generalized anxiety issues, and I don’t always know what (if any) actual thoughts are making me uneasy. But I think it is easier to translate reflexes into thoughts for phobias, even if they aren’t always logical. 

In the case of a fear of stings from bees/wasps, there are several angles you can take:

Learn more about stinging insects and their behaviors, and understand why they sting. Take fear and reshape it into curiosity, use what you learn to avoid getting stung. 

Not all that buzzes is a bee. Similarly for yellow/black striped insects. There are lots of mimics out there, who look like a dangerous stinging insect to protect themselves, when they are totally harmless. Learn how to tell them apart, so know which ones couldn’t hurt you even if they wanted to.

Not all bees/wasps can sting! Males cannot sting, and some species are completely stingless.

Desensitization through Education

First off, you need to know a little about stingers. What are they, exactly? Well, they weren’t originally stingers. Before there were stingers, there were ovipositors.

Ovipositors in katydids. Left two: common conehead katydids; Right: lesser meadow katydid

Ovipositors are tubes that some insects use to lay their eggs inside something. Insects who lay their eggs in the ground (but who aren’t burrowing insects, like katydids) will use the ovipositor to make sure the eggs are safely tucked away from predators. Some insects go a step further, and lay their eggs inside another organism (these are called parasites or parasitoids depending on whether or not they kill the host). These insects will lay their eggs either in plant tissues (gall wasps and midges do this, and I wrote a post about galls a little while back [link]), or in animal tissues. 

Various parasitic wasps, Superfamily Ichneumonoidea. I have no idea who these are at the moment. iNat links: [Photo 1 Link] [Photo 2 Link] [Photo 3 Link]

These parasitoid insects tend to be wasps, and they tend to have some pretty fancy ovipositors. The larger ones tend to parasitize caterpillars, and before you gasp and lament the plight of the poor helpless babies, remember that every living creature in nature serves a very important purpose. Caterpillars can absolutely destroy a vegetable garden. These wasps make sure there’s still something left for us. 

These wasps do not sting. The painful sting is a result of venom, and these wasps with long ovipositors do not have a venom gland. 

But, as insects are wont to do, if there is a niche, they will fill it. The inside of the caterpillar is claimed? Well, you can just lay your egg on the caterpillar instead. This is a lot harder to do. With a long ovipositor, you can just hold on, stick it in, and go. But if you need to lovingly affix your eggs to the outside of a wiggling caterpillar, you’re gonna have a hard time. If only there was a way to temporarily paralyze it!

Meet Netelia. This is a genus of Ichneumon wasp. Notice her ovipositor? Kinda short, huh? That’s because it’s a stinger [link]. She stings the caterpillar, which is paralyzed long enough for her to beadazzle it with eggs, and off she goes. I don’t know much about the evolutionary history of ovipositors and stingers, but somehow, some species started living in large colonies full of sterile female workers and a stingless queen who laid all the eggs (think ants and bees). If you didn’t reproduce, you could make some pretty scary and painful stingers to protect your colony! Also: this means that only females can sting. 

And this brings us to the issue: some of them DO sting humans and it is not pleasant!

Bees and wasps are similar in that the notorious species tend to live in large colonies, but they sting for very different reasons. Bees are defensive (their stingers are embedded into flesh and detach from their bodies–a nice way of saying they rip their guts out and die), while wasps are offensive (they can sting many, many times, and will do it when they feel threatened even if they are not under attack).

Left: Western Honey Bee; Right: Apache Wasp

Why are they so different? Bees are vegetarians, so they have no need to kill for food. Their stingers are the last line of defense for their colonies, because every bee who stings will die. A colony can’t survive if all the workers die, but it also needs to protect the young and the queen. But these bees tend to make fairly elaborate hives which serve as a good line of defense in addition to the army of stinging workers. Bees will sting if you are actively harming them or the hive, even if you don’t realize it. Remember those ridiculous wide leg raver pants (hey, I said I graduated from college in 2005, stop looking at me like that)? I knew a guy who wore those all the time, and one day his pant leg managed to fall over a single lady bee, and she… uh… Well, she felt threatened. Let’s just say I laughed. Yes, as it happened. I regret nothing. Bees do not want to sting you.

Wasps are also vegetarians (wait, WHAT??)–at least, they are in adulthood. Wasp larvae? Carnivores. Those evil wasps killing other bugs and carrying them off are taking them to their nest. They will lay an egg alongside their prey, which is paralyzed to keep it alive until the egg hatches (terrifying, huh?). What a good mother! Some wasp species are solitary, and their nests can be safe underground. But paper wasps, which you are likely more familiar with, have their babies literally hanging out in the open. Their delicious, nutritious babies. They are so vulnerable! They must be protected! 

Paper wasps. Left: Apache wasp nest; Right: Common paper wasp nest

The only thing between a hungry predator and the life of those babies are the valiant wasps sworn to protect the nest. If they sense something which triggers the “hungry predator” switch in their brain, they will attack. Is their nest pretty low to the ground? Are you TOO CLOSE? Look out! Is their nest HIDDEN IN YOUR BALCONY WALL and you bump the side while enjoying a beautiful spring day? Are you throwing rocks at the nest? Do you smell like a bear? I don’t know what triggers wasps, but the only time I’ve been stung was when they secretly lived in my balcony wall. Thing with wasps is, when they’ve had enough, they will come after you. They can sting you to teach you to STAY AWAY and fly back to their nest. 

But, if you don’t set off “hungry predator” alarms, and instead exist in their world as “irrelevant scavenger,” you can actually get pretty close to them. I was lucky to find this Common Paper Wasp lady making her nest on the underside of a pokeweed leaf in my backyard two years ago. I took these photos with my phone. I was inches away from her. Sometimes I had a headlamp shining in her face. She never once came after me. I started to recognize her foraging around my yard for paper fiber (ever see a wasp hanging out on your wooden fence, or landing on grass or dried dead plants? they are collecting building materials!), so I could get a really close look at her nest and the eggs inside. Look in the cells in the nest in the top left and bottom right photos. Those little white things are her eggs!

So there’s a bit of a Catch-22 here. If you’re not afraid of wasps, come up to them curiously, SHOVE A CELL PHONE IN THEIR FACE WHILE BLINDING THEM WITH A HEADLAMP, eh, they don’t care. But if you are afraid of getting stung… what are you going to do? Calmly walk away? NO! You’re going to swat at it, flail around, run, scream, etc. All things a predator would do. Same thing with bees. Sometimes, they will land on you for whatever reason. Maybe you’re wearing a fluorescent yellow shirt and you look delicious.

All this baby wanted was some nectar, and from her perspective, I was *clearly* advertising that I had bountiful nectar reserves. If I was not aware that they see UV light, and that this is how they find flowers so quickly, and if I instead thought that bees hate the color yellow and will sting you if you’re wearing it (this is what I was taught growing up… *sigh*), I would have thought I was getting attacked, and would have started with the flailing. This lady, who thought she was coming for lunch, instead now has to start fighting? She’s gonna be mad.

There is a lot to know about bees and wasps. I do not know that much about them, but I think they are very interesting and I love learning more about them.

Mimics Can’t Fool You!

Wow that first section was long. How about some pictures of things that aren’t bees or wasps?

Hover flies! Top: Left - Eupeodes sp.; Right - Copestylum sp. Bottom: Left - Palpada agrorum; Right - Yellow-shouldered Drone Fly

Longhorn beetles! Top: Neoclytus mucronatus (both photos) Bottom: Left - Zebra Longhorn Beetle; Right - Painted Hickory Borer

Robber flies! Left: MacQuart’s Bee-mimic Robber Fly; Right: Beelzebub Bee-Killer

Moths! Left: Sphinx moths; Right: Clear-wing mothsI know, I’m cheating a little here. These are specimens in the Texas A&M University Entomology Collections. They have an open house every January and it’s AMAZING! 

Bee flies! (really!) Left: Poecilanthrax sp.; Middle: Exoprosopa fascipennis; Right: Villa sp.

Some clear take-aways here: (1) Flies are very into bees(2) Looking like a bee/wasp is a very successful survival strategy!(3) If it looks like a bee… it’s probably a fly (unless it’s actually a bee)

Stingless Fakers

There are two major groups of bees that don’t sting–Tribe Meliponini (Stingless Bees) and Family Andrenidae (Mining Bees).

Admittedly, I have not seen many of these. The two Meliponini species I saw were in Malawi (Africa), and those are the two photos on the left. Far left is a group going to their hive (they can make honey, too!), and center is a different species in their nest (a wax tube on the side of my cottage). These bees are so tiny you’d think they were fruit flies! Right photo is from West Texas, Mining Bees in the Macrotera genus (I love them! Little Valentine butts!)

BUT! There is another fairly common group of stingless bees: MALES. No male insect can sting (they can bite if equipped, but remember, stingers are modified ovipositors!). You may never see a male honey bee, but here’s what they look like: 

Not the best photo, but you can see he’s shaped… kinda weird? His eyes are HUGE, which is probably the easiest way to tell him apart from the females.

You are more likely to meet a male Carpenter bee, however. How will you know a male carpenter bee?

Male Eastern Carpenter Bee above. I read the males have a white patch on their face (look! his nose!), and there were some other features, but really, WHITE! NOSE!

Another Carpenter Bee I see at home (and NOTICE because … well you’ll see in a minute):

Xylocopa tabaniformis Carpenter Bee. Many apologies for the TERRIBLE PHOTOS. These were from my phone before I had a Real Camera and they only *just came back* this year and I am way behind on photos sorrryyyyyyyy

Anyway, I don’t know how to tell the females/males apart visually (or if you even can). And this photo may very well be of a female, who knows. But the way you know the males: They will get in your business. That’s why I call this section “Stingless Fakers.” It’s because of these. I love them. This pink bush is right outside my front door. I walk around it to get to my car in the morning. And in the summers, there are always a few of these buzzing around. And the males are interested in protecting their (small underground) colonies, so they will COME UP TO YOU to see if you’re a threat. Or maybe to intimidate you because THEY ARE A BEE THEY COULD STING LOOK OUT! 

Carpenter bees are distinguished from bumble bees by not being as furry. Carpenter bees will have shiny abdomens. Bumble Bees should be bumbly furry.

ANYWAY IN CONCLUSION Bees/Wasps are interesting, not everything is a bee/wasp even if it looks like one, and they don’t all sting. I wish you the best of luck in facing your fears and buzzing back at bees and hornets in triumph.

Posted (finally–sorry!) May 31, 2018As always, all photos are mine and most were taken in Texas. Exceptions are Netelia and Meliponini from Malawi.