#but it's also like... what does triggering some vet's ptsd do? it does nothing. i suppose it could make u feel bigger

[cheesebearger]

yeah sure death to america and the american war machine but you all understand youre not actually doing anything by purposely setting off fireworks to trigger military vets? like i dont even get it. what does that even do. it doesnt do anything about the people they possibly hurt overseas, it doesn't help their victims, it doesn't even protest military action abroad. it's just a deliberately malicious action that serves to make someone's life less pleasant. i guess if that's what you wanna do, go you. but i just don't see how any of it does anything to combat american militarism. just seems like diet propaganda of the deed

[imalayla]

Seeking some advice I guess. Especially if you have a background in canine behavior.

I went and stayed at a friends house for about 4 days and I took Bubbles with me. Stoli apparently had a TimeTM.

He shredded his bed Wednesday when my spouse left him in the crate when he went to work. Thursday and Friday he left him loose, which is what Stoli is usually always doing when we're gone. Thursday he was fine. Friday, he wreaked havoc. I will include photos.

This is extremely out of character for him. I've left him with my spouse multiple times for long stretches, like 7+ days, and he did fine. And this was before we adopted Bubbles/after Layla died. I'm so upset because I have no idea why he would do this or what could have triggered it. My spouse was walking him every evening, his routine was the same. And it's not like he's never been left before. This level of destruction is what I'd expect from a dog with full blown separation anxiety. He never ever has done ANYTHING like this.

Does anyone know why this could be? My spouse said that when he left in the morning, Stoli was chilling on the couch, and when he got back home, he was also chilling on the couch. He greeted my spouse with the typical happiness, no frantic behavior. My spouse even waited a few minutes outside to listen for panicked noises and he heard nothing. He isn't noise sensitive and he isn't in a fear period.

Also I leave him in the crate 1-3x a week when I take Bubbles to the vet and we are gone at least 3-4 hours, sometimes up to 6. He also sees me take her out to potty 3x a day.

This no lie has brought back some major PTSD flashbacks from when I had Mort and he had severe separation anxiety. I don't think I can do that again.

Could my stress from Bubbles be affecting him? I'm so upset.

[highlifeboat]

I love walking sims that make you think, and no nothing about Nevermind. Please tell me more, (if you're willing)

OKAY SO

Nevermind is a walking sim where you play as a Neuro Scientist (I think they actually call you a Neuro Prober) that goes through the brains of 4 trauma patients (+ an IntroSim). It's actually designed to have biofeedback so it can register your heart rate and change based on how scared it thinks you are, but you don't need that to play/get the whole experience.

The basic run down is you go through these patients memories to help them remember the cause/root of their trauma and help them find peace with what happened. To do this you go through their mind and collect memories in the form of pictures. There's ten pictures for each patient, half of them are real and half are the equivalent of trauma blocking/false memories. In order to help the patients you have to put the real memories in order of events that lead to the traumatic event you're helping them remember. (After you finish a patient you can go through it again to find little hidden memories. They aren't important over all but they're still neat and will just give the patient some extra personality)

You never actually see these people, but they'll give you a little summary that's always kind of like "This is how my past was. I don't think you'll really help, but it's worth a shot right?" They're also all pretty unique. The first is a woman who witnessed her father's death, the second a war veteran, the third is an older woman, and the last is a trans woman. All with completely different traumas.

This game is also incredibly beautiful. The visuals and scenery are all amazing, and the mind-scapes are so creative and fit their respective patients so well.

HOWEVER (and this is important) I ALSO CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH THAT THIS GAME REQUIRES A HUGE TRIGGER WARNING. It does mention it at the start of the game with a big ass warning (that I will drop below), but I figure I would mention this because it's kind of really important for deciding if you want to watch/play it.

Because this game deals with various traumas that it visualizes in various ways, it won't be for everyone.

Nevermind contains various depictions of death (both human and one instance of animal death), suicide, PTSD/CPTSD, alzheimer disease, abuse, derealization/dissociation, blood, drug abuse, transphobia, and loud noises. A lot of which are graphic and will be disturbing to people and I understand is not for everyone. (There's one in particular, a War Vet, that's really fucking intense with gore specifically)

I will also stress it doesn't glorify these things, either. The entire point is to show how various types of trauma affect people and how it really screws with the brain.

I, personally, believe the game handles all the topics very well. But, y'know, if you're sensitive to any of that stuff you might not wanna play it. There's a lot of videos of the IntroSim,however, and DS Playthroughs has a playlist of all the Sims with No Commentary if you just wanna watch a playthrough. (Literally the only full walkthrough I can find of this game)

All in all, I think it's my favourite walking sim game and I highly recommend at least taking a look at the playthrough if you're interested in it.

[indecisive-behaviors]

Originally I was just going to add this as a reblog to my previous post about the parking lot scene in KK2 but it’s almost 2k words so now it’s getting it’s own post. Be forewarned- this is fucking long.

TW for discussion of PTSD, child abuse, neglect, injury, and death, in relation to topics surrounding the show, under the cut-

Obviously, Cobra Kai is a show based around the premise of “what happened to that Lawrence kid after he got kicked in the face?”, which is honestly a pretty cool idea for a show. Johnny’s story is never explained past sitting on the sidewalk with his head in his hands at the tournament, and there are no real context clue’s to figure out what may or may not have happened.

In the show we get to learn early on that Johnny’s life spiraled after the tournament, going from bad to worse to “holy shit how are you still alive”-dropping out/never going to college, working jobs he seems to hate, becoming an alcoholic, presumably many dead end relationships, and not being there for his kid. And yeah, obviously, this would be a hard pill to swallow for anyone watching the show if Johnny had just lost the tournament. If we never got the scene in KK2, he would have just been some kid who lost a tournament- we see at the end of the first movie that(through tears holy shit Billy) that Johnny is the one who gives the trophy to Daniel with his famous line, “You’re alright, LaRusso.” There’s a level of grudging respect in that moment that isn’t lost on anyone who sees that movie- that Johnny, who throughout the movie only sees Daniel as some whimpy kid, gets proven wrong and respects that. If we didn’t have that scene, there’s reason to believe Johnny would have apologized, tried to make amends, Something, even if it was just being less of a dick at school.

But then, we get the parking lot. We get a far off shot, intended to distance you from the scene, framed over Daniel’s shoulder. This makes sense, Daniel is the main character, the protagonist, the underdog hero- why wouldn’t it be framed in his perspective? But the scene is about Johnny. We get the shouting match, the back and forth- “No, you’re the loser man.”- and again it’s fairly obvious how Johnny sees this situation. This is a man who we assume(and is later confirmed) to be a surrogate father figure, who set his friend up for failure, and then basically forced him to do the same by targeting an injured opponent, and forcing him to fight without honor. This same man presumably follows a teenager out to the parking lot, to harass him, to tell him he’s off the team, to tell him he’s a loser, that he’s nothing.

But at that point, Johnny knows the truth, even if subconsciously. At the end of the day Johnny knows that Daniel LaRusso was a worthy opponent, and that regardless of the cheating and manipulation, Daniel could have won anyway, and did win, despite of it.

And then Kreese grabs him, too fast to react to, Johnny too surprised even knowing that Kreese is the bad guy here, not believing that he would ever willingly hurt him- and Johnny isn’t strong enough to fight him off, none of the boys are, so Johnny is forced to suffocate for almost a full 30 seconds(which I double checked for the record- also as a reference, 30 seconds is about the average time it takes for a person voluntarily holding their breath to pass out- this does not account for the oxygen lost during a struggle, and the lack of preparation from both surprise and panic. The only silver lining here is the fact that Kreese was most likely compressing his windpipe, not his jugular, which would have made him pass out in about 5-10 seconds, and would have caused permanent brain damage or death in about 15).

Now, PTSD is a complex thing. I’m not a psychiatrist, and what small amount of information we have is all we have to work off of, but I feel fairly comfortable in saying Johnny mostly likely developed it after the incident. This not an uncommon take in the fandom as far as I’m aware either. But, if we assume this, we also have to assume that after the fact nothing would have been done about this. Not just in the sense that we still don’t really know everything that happened right after the tournament, but that in the early 80s, PTSD wasn’t really a thing yet.

Sure it was absolutely a condition that existed, but Post Traumatic Stress Disorder wasn’t even added to the DSM-III until 1980- and for a long time afterward, was only seen as a condition that affected primarily war vets. Even after an event as traumatic as having a man you considered a father trying to kill you, in public, without remorse, would not have been seen as something to warrant the diagnoses, let alone treatment.

Johnny Lawrence was 17 when Kreese tried to kill him, and this boy would have been offered no resources beyond filing charges with the police. And as we see in KK3, either this didn’t happen either, or someone(presumably Silver) got the charges dropped. So on top of almost being murdered, Johnny had to live with the fact that the man who did that to him was still out there, and to top it off, still ran a dojo at least for a few months after the event. The only relief he could have gotten is after Kreese faked his death.

And sure, Mr Miyagi may have gotten Kreese to let go eventually, but as several people have pointed out in comments and tags, left him and the other boys alone with Kreese still standing there in the parking lot and just... drove off. Kreese has already been established to be a psycho with no problem hurting children, a little bit of glass might not have prevented him from trying again.

So why did I talk about all of that? Because it all contributes to why Daniel LaRusso works as a credible antagonist in season 1 of Cobra Kai.

Think about this- Johnny blames losing everything on Daniel in season 1, but we specifically get a shot in KK1 and later KK2(”You’re alright, LaRusso” and “I did my best” come to mind) where he seems to be at least mostly accepting of the fact that he lost(with what was actually an illegal kick but that’s a rant for another time). So why does he blame him for everything 30 years later?

Because 30 years later, Johnny is forced to go outside, go to work, and pretend like he doesn’t see what feels like every street corner(including right outside his apartment mind you), a literal billboard sized reminder of what happened to him.

The rest of this is mostly speculation but it makes sense in my head so bear with me.

When we get introduced to Robby, it’s made pretty clear that Johnny has not been in his life for a bit. In season 2 we get Johnny’s heart to heart with Miguel, where he divulges that he missed the birth, because he spiraled after his mom’s death. This however doesn’t suggest that he stayed gone, especially knowing that it wasn’t long enough for Robby to not consider seeking out his dad. Because tacked up to the fridge, is a picture of Robby in his soccer uniform as a kid. It’s an early detail you can see in previous episodes, and says a lot about how Robby grew up. To be fair, this could have been given to him by Shannon, and not taken himself, but it’s the sport Robby’s playing that makes me question this. KK1 dedicates an entire scene to Johnny being on the soccer team in high school. Soccer, while maybe not as important to him as karate, is still part of his character. Robby does not know karate in season 1, Johnny obviously didn’t share it with him, but that doesn’t mean Johnny didn’t share anything with him.

So Johnny’s back in his kids life, maybe doing better for himself, maybe cutting back on the drinking. LaRusso Auto is already established to exist at this point but it’s in Encino, a place Johnny has no reason to go to, and probably doesn’t want to. He’s trying again and things are okay. But Robby knows enough about Daniel to know that going to him will piss off his dad. So Johnny had to have talked about him at some point. The billboards here are what’s important- they’re in the first episode, the first scene montage, Johnny draws a dick on one of them as some petty revenge.

The first billboard goes up in the late 2000s to mid 2010s. Johnny sees it, maybe he has Robby with him at the time, maybe he goes home and says something there, but he says something in a way that sticks with even a child as being important. More billboards go up. Dealerships starting popping up more and more. Daniel’s face, and by extension, the memories, the flashbacks, become inescapable. Johnny, for a third time, spirals again. Before he even knows what’s happening, he’s lost his relationship with his son. And it’s all Daniel’s fault. Of course Daniel doesn’t do it deliberately, but the constant reminders are enough to send him back into a tailspin and Johnny blames him for it.

Because it’s Daniel who is a constant reminder of his failures- it’s Daniel who caused him to lose the tournament and almost get killed, Daniel who put up the billboards that trigger his flashbacks, it’s always Daniel Daniel Daniel.

And then Johnny gets it in his head that he wants to be better. He opens a dojo, teaches Miguel and the other kids, wants to try again- and he almost succeeds.

Johnny up to this point has not deliberately antagonized Daniel in any way. Sure he named the dojo Cobra Kai, but Cobra Kai is all he knows. Besides Johnny doesn’t blame karate for his failures, his best memories are Cobra Kai and he’s trying to be better than Kreese. So what’s the harm in this really? His building is in Reseda, there’s no reason for Daniel to ever be there, he doesn’t do it out of spite, it’s because he lives there and rent is cheap. He doesn’t know about KK3, doesn’t know about Daniel’s own trauma. This isn’t an attack. Johnny sincerely just doesn’t know.

Enter Daniel, stage left. Daniel makes no attempt to talk to him- he simply makes demands and accusations, before he starts making active attempts to put him out of business.

Sure, we as the audience know Daniel has good reasons to not want Cobra Kai back. But Johnny doesn’t. All Johnny knows is that the kid he picked on in high school- who won, who got everything Johnny wanted, who grew up to be successful, has a wonderful wife, two kids who love him, a thriving business- is doing everything he can to make his life hell 30 years after the fact.

And this could only have happened because in 1986 John G. Avildsen decided to add in a scene meant for the original movie into the sequel, for absolutely no fucking reason.

[suituuup]

Could you do a follow up to the amputee Beca story where she and Chloe talk about Beca’s time in the military and Beca opens up about how she really feels about being a double amputee? And how Chloe felt seeing Beca’s residual limbs for the first time. Love what you did with the prompt.

Thank you! Here you go :)

home is wherever I’m with you

rating: T

word count: 2k

ao3 link

*

The knock on the door jolts Beca out of her thoughts, her heart doing a happy flutter. 

 Chloe’s here. 

 After graduation, Chloe moved to California to attend Davis’ vet school, and Beca’s dad finally agreed with Beca’s plan to go to LA and to support her financially until she found herself a job in the music industry. 

 Fast forward to after the summer, Beca’s now an intern in one of the country’s most praised labels. Sure, she’s not making any money yet, but at least she’s got a foot in the door. 

 (well, figuratively speaking.)

She and Chloe have been doing long distance for four months now, and they were able to see each other twice, Chloe flying down to LA every eight weeks or so. Past the fact that it’s easier for Chloe to travel, she lives in a dorm while Beca has her own studio, which grants them more privacy. 

 Rolling away from her desk, Beca heads to the door, unlatching it and pulling it open. Chloe is straddling her a second later, Beca’s squeak swallowed by the searing kiss she’s pulled in. 

 “Jesus,” she croaks out when they part, her hands drifting down to Chloe’s ass as she rests her forehead against hers. “Miss me?” 

 Chloe answers by kissing her again, and Beca can only respond in kind, her own body throbbing with want. She’s thankful Chloe chose to wear sweatpants as she slides her hand down them minutes later to give Chloe what she needs. 

 “Wanna order a pizza?” Beca asks as they lie in bed an hour later, spent and hungry from their earlier activity. 

 “You mean you didn’t whip up a romantic dinner for your girlfriend?” Chloe teases, knowing damn well Beca can’t cook to save her life. She pushes a kiss to Beca’s lips. “Pizza sounds great, babe.” 

 Beca reaches for her phone off the bedside table, wincing as another pang of pain shoots through her leg. A leg that’s no longer there. She’s been experiencing those a lot lately, and upon visiting a physical therapist, was told they’re called phantom pains. 

 “What’s wrong?” Chloe asks as Beca dials the number of the pizza place on her phone. 

 “Nothing.” She hasn’t told Chloe about it, finding it difficult still to address anything related to her amputation. But the look Chloe gives her tells Beca she won’t let it rest, and Beca heaves a sigh. “I-I sometimes have pain like-- it feels as though my legs are still there and they’re burning.” 

 “Phantom pains?” 

 Beca blinks, putting her phone aside. “You’ve heard of it?” 

 Chloe nods. “When we started dating, I… did some research about all of it.” 

 Beca’s heart does a funny thing at that. “Oh, right.” 

 “What did the doctor say?”

 “He suggested the mirror therapy where I should stand in front of one so my brain can integrate the fact that I no longer have legs, and also massaging my residual limbs.” 

 “I can do that,” Chloe murmurs. “Give you massages, if-- if you’re comfortable with that.” 

 “You really don’t have to.” 

 “I know I don’t.” Chloe’s hand drifts to cover hers. “I want to help, if I can.” 

 Beca purses her lips, hesitantly glancing at her girlfriend. “Are you sure?”

 “I’m sure. Let’s have dinner and then do that?” 

 “Yeah, okay.” 

 After dinner, Beca tells Chloe where she keeps her oil and settles back on the bed, over a towel to protect the sheets. “You’ll tell me if you feel uncomfortable, right?” She asks just to make sure as Chloe settles down beside her. 

 “Yes,” Chloe says with a smile, brushing a kiss to Beca’s lips. “And likewise for you.” 

 “Yeah.” 

 Chloe rubs some oil between her palms and starts kneading Beca’s left thigh, a groan flitting past Beca’s lips as the relief is near instant. She closes her eyes and tilts her head back against the headboard, exhaling deeply. 

 “That helps a lot,” she murmurs, brushing her fingers over Chloe’s upper arm in an affectionate gesture as she looks at her. “Thank you. I’ve always… been self conscious about how I look, ever since the procedure, and I was convinced you’d find it gross or something.” 

 “Seeing it for the first time at your PT appointment was a bit unsettling, yeah, because I couldn’t help but think about the trauma that triggered it. But did I think it was gross?” Chloe shakes her head. “Never. I promise. I know it’s easier said than done and your feelings are entirely valid, but your body is beautiful the way it is, baby. I hope you learn to accept it someday.”

 Beca is silent for a little while, letting Chloe’s words wash over her and settle the anxiety swirling in her guts. “We drove over a landmine in Afghanistan,” she croaks out after a minute or two, the memory still fresh in her brain even though it’s been two years. She feels Chloe’s movements pause but doesn’t look up. She can still smell it. The tires burning, the oil leaking, the  blood.  “The back of the truck blew up. It’s still blurry and I’m not sure what happened next but I got stuck under the side of it and my legs got crushed,” she takes a pause, emotions rising as she’s never told the story aloud except to her therapist. “Help arrived pretty quickly and they managed to free me. I was choppered to the nearest trauma center.” Beca inhales sharply as tears burn behind her eyes. She can still hear the whines and cries of her comrades before they drew their last breath. “My two best friends… they didn’t make it.”

 Chloe shuffles up to sit by Beca’s side, draping an arm around her waist as she rests her forehead against the side of Beca’s head. Beca leans against her, her hand resting on Chloe’s forearm. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

 Beca swallows, licking her lips. “I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you what happened. It’s still… hard to talk about.”

 “Thank you for trusting me,” Chloe murmurs and presses a kiss to Beca’s jaw. 

 “Thank you for being you,” Beca replies, twisting her head to look at Chloe. Her hand drifts up to cradle her cheek. She’s still in awe of how lucky she is to have found such a beautiful person who loves her as much as Chloe does despite everything; being a double amputee, the nightmares, the PTSD episodes. “I love you so much.” 

 Chloe nuzzles Beca’s nose, then brushes a kiss to her lips. “I love you, too.” 

 They experience some ups and downs over the next two years as sometimes long distance is hard to handle, but their relationship only comes out of it stronger. Beca lands a job as assistant producer in the same label. Chloe finds a job in LA after graduating, and they move in together in a cute one bedroom apartment in Pasadena. 

 “What do you mean that last scene was ridiculous?” Chloe asks, seemingly affronted. They’ve just come out of the theater after watching a romcom Chloe dragged Beca to. “I thought it was cute.”

 Beca rolls her eyes as she walks beside her girlfriend. “It was cheesy as f—” 

 A loud  BANG! cuts Beca off and she visibly shrinks, her mind and body going into shock so quickly she can’t stop it. She leans against the nearby street post, her legs feeling like jelly.

 “Babe?” Chloe’s hand comes to rest on her shoulder but Beca recoils from it as her breathing turns labored. “It was a car backfiring, Becs. We’re safe.”

 Beca shakes her head, panic having already gripped her insides and shut out any kind of rationality. Flashbacks jump her mind and sounds that still haunt her in her dreams weave themselves in a continuous loop. 

 “You’re okay baby,” Chloe soothes. “You’re okay. You’re in LA, with me, not at war. You’re  safe. ”

 Beca hears Chloe’s words without really registering them; they get lost in the cloud surrounding her brain and keeping her from going back to reality. 

 She doesn’t know how long it takes, but she eventually snaps back into the present. Street chatter replaces the cries of her friends, cars passing by are quieter than the crawlers of tanks crunching the dry ground, and Chloe is here.

 Beca leans against her, clutching on for dear life as she tries to bring her heart rate back to normal. 

 “It’s okay,” she soothes, brushing a kiss to Beca’s temple. “You’re home.”

 A year later, Beca proposes. There’s no big speech or romantic meal planned; she asks Chloe as they lie in bed one lazy Sunday morning after making love. The sun is shining over them through the window, and Chloe is pressed snugly against her, laughing at one of her lame jokes, and it’s just… perfect. 

 They get married six months later at a resort in Northern California, surrounded by their close friends and families. The next few years are a blur of domestic bliss, before their lives get a whole new meaning with the arrival of their baby.

 Beca’s not quite used to being woken up in the middle of the night, and she jolts at the shrill cry coming through the baby monitor.

 “I’ve got her,” she rasps when she feels Chloe shift next to her, and uses her arms’ strength to transfer herself in the wheelchair set next to her side of the bed. 

 They moved into a larger place when Chloe found out she was pregnant, a house with a garden on the outskirts of LA. It has no stairs and large rooms, ideal for Beca to manœuvre her chair around as she tends not to wear her prosthetics at home. They got a custom made crib which slides open on the side so Beca can easily pick their baby up from her chair, and their changing table can also be lowered to her height. 

 “What’s up, sweet pea?” She coos as she undoes the latch and slides the side of the crib open, leaning forward to lift the three month old. She knows it’s her hungry cry, and with Emma on her lap, rolls towards the kitchen to heat up a pouch of breast milk. Much like the stroller, the wheelchair movements momentarily sooth Emma. 

 “Here we are,” Beca murmurs minutes later, cradling Emma in the crook of her elbow and presenting her with the bottle. She’s still completely in awe of this tiny human being who’s captured her heart the moment Beca held her in her arms for the first time. It’s like she felt her heart double in size to be able to accomodate all the love she held for her wife and daughter. Yeah. Motherhood has turned her into a real softie. She smiles as Emma’s big blue eyes lock on her while she feeds. “You had to have your mommy’s eyes, huh? How am I going to be able to ever say no to you?” 

 Once Emma finishes, Beca heads back to the nursery to change her and sings her back to sleep, carefully setting her in her crib. 

 “Mama loves you, my sweet girl.”

 She rolls back to the master and parks her wheelchair next to her side of the bed, locking the brakes before transferring herself back into bed. After years of practice, it doesn’t take Beca as long as it used to. 

 Chloe snuggles into her side as soon as Beca’s settled down. “All good?”

 “Mhm,” Beca hums, brushing a kiss to her wife’s hair. “Everything’s perfect.”

[365days365movies]

January 4, 2021: First Blood (1982) (Part II)

Quick Recap before we go on. Oh, and SPOILERS right up top!

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is a Vietnam vet wandering through Washington State, until coming upon the town of Hope, run by the Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy).

Sheriff Will Teasle is an absolute dick who arrests Rambo for no real reason; just for being a “drifter.” His police force, which includes the sadistic Galt (Jack Starrett) and sympathetic Mitch (David Caruso, AKA Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami), beats John Rambo, and post-2020 me is UNCOMFORTABLE!!!!!!!

Rambo has Vietnam flashbacks (like you do) and escapes the prison, pursued by the obsessive and dickish Sheriff and his equally dickish men (except for Horatio, maybe).

Galt tries to shoot Rambo, and karma bitch-slaps him RIGHT in the face, holy shit. He dies, and Rambo is blamed and shot at, escaping into the forest.

OK?

OK. On with the recap!

At this point, all of Rambo’s actions are in self-defense. In truth, it’s been self-defense since the beginning. However, he does kill two dogs, so...yeah, can’t really justify that. That sucks. The dog’s handler gets shot by Rambo, who now has a gun, and we also see that Galt’s certified sociopathy has leaked into everybody else but Horatio upon his death, including the dog guy, who tells his dogs to straight up kill Rambo. But, as previously stated...that’s not what happens.

At this point, I should introduce the amemedala.

The amemedala is a portion of the mesencephalon (or midbrain) discovered in the brains of millennials and younger individuals, recently discovered, named, and made up by yours truly. This area, attached to the thalamus, acts as a relay center between the cerebrum and the various sensory receptors of the body, similar to the function of the thalamus. However, while the thalamus governs the broad relay of senses to the appropriate areas of the brain for analysis, the amemedala relays appropriate sensory signals to the frontal lobes, where catalogs of shared sociological trends, or memes, are housed. This relay and association generates connections between extrenal stimuli, and entries in the meme catalog of the frontal lobes. While this is technically an autonomic process, it can be suppressed with enough willpower.

Why am I ringing this up in the middle of First Blood? Because EVERY. SINGLE. CELL of my brain is working to suppress the amemedala right now. Why? BECAUSE OF THE LORAX, AND FOR WHOM HE SPEAKS.

Is it an outdated meme? Very much so. BUT I CANNOT GET IT OUT OF MY GODDAMN HEAD AS I WATCH THIS MOVIE.

OK. That is now out of my system. Anyway, Rambo continues to speak for the trees, which is understandably starting to spook the smalltown cops. This leads to the VERY surprising moment where a camouflaged Rambo appears OUT OF NOWHERE and stabs Horatio in the goddamn leg! Like, wow, he was invisible! I had to rewind the film to see where he was. This is tense...and awesome, not gonna lie. This is awesome.

And then, he gets another cop by JUMPING FROM A TREE. Well, a tree stump, BUT STILL. After he takes him out, he stands in plain sight in front of an approaching cop. That cop, subscribing once again to the shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy, fires. And I SWEAR, Rambo is FASTER THAN THOSE SPEEDING BULLETS, as he dodges out of the way, and the bullets HIT THE COP HE JUST TOOK OUT!

And then, when I didn’t think this could get any more intense, that cop triggers a booby trap, and A STICK WITH WOODEN SPIKES GOES THROUGH THIS MAN’S LEGS, AND HE’S SPEARED LIKE A KEBAB OH MY GOD

The asshole sheriff runs to the NEW set of panicked screams, and his compatriot is just Batman-ed away by Rambo. It’s just the sheriff, now. The storm is building, and the forest is getting darker. The sheriff frees leg-spike cop, and goes to find the other cop, who’s been PINNED TO A TREE LIKE A BUTTERFLY IN A DISPLAY CASE. See, look!

HOLY SHIT IT’S RAMBO WITH A KNIFE IN THE FOREST. He pins the sheriff up to a tree, then with some legitimately badass lines, threatens with the sheriff with “a war [he] wouldn’t believe,” and telling him to make like Elsa and…

I love this sequence. It is the most intense, crazy, holy shit sequence I’ve seen so far this month. Wow. I understand why people talk about this movie. Man, that was a hell of a ride! Good movie, though. All right, so, time for the final sco-

Oh. Oh, my God. I’m only HALFWAY INTO THE MOVIE?

...Wow. OK, then.

We now meet Colonel Sam Trautman, Rambo’s commander in the Green Berets. He’s come to “get his boy.” He says that he came to rescue the Sheriff’s dumb ass from Rambo, rather than the other way around. And the Sheriff is...an idiot. He’s an ass, he’s a maniac, and he’s a stubborn idiot. Even after learning that Rambo is the best, he’s unwilling to back down, the dummkopf.

Rambo kills a wild boar in the woods, which makes no sense for Washington State, but whatever, sure. Anyway, they try to get the colonel to lure Rambo out, even though that’s obviously gonna make his PTSD, just...SO much worse. Especially as he starts using Vietnam parlance in contacting him. Not gonna end well, guys. But it’s then that we learn that Rambo is now the last surviving member of his unit, contributing to his trauma. Rambo’s also been trying to get in contact with the Colonel, winding up here because he has no place to go. He says that there are no friendly civilians, and the trouble’s been caused by that “king-shit” cop. I will be using this term from now on.

Wow. Damn. Hell of a reason for that title. And I think I love this movie. Seriously, I’m having a good time.

King-Shit Cop keeps going ahead with his absolute idiocy, despite all warnings to the contrary. So, a bunch of troops now converge upon Rambo’s place, but he naturally opens fire on them, without killing a single person. In fact, he hasn’t killed anyone this whole movie, and they make a point of saying that he’s been holding back the whole time. So, they decide to use the next, most logical course of action. They FIRE A ROCKET AT HIM.

Afterwards, the Colonel and King Shit Cop catch up at a bar, where the latter exposes his full sociopathy, commenting that he just wanted to kill Rambo. This is opposed to the Colonel, who doesn’t really know what he’d do if Rambo survived.

Which, of course, he did. C’mon, you think a little military-grade propelled explosive is gonna kill John Rambo? Nah. He’s the best there ever was, and he’s gonna prove it now. He jumps into a military vehicle holding an M-60, and hijacks it. Doesn’t take long for the news to break that Rambo’s still kicking, and he’s quickly intercepted by King Shit Cop, who JUST. DOESN’T. KNOW. WHEN. TO QUIT. And I’d admire his tenacity if he wasn’t SUCH AN ASSHOLE.

The cops try to run Rambo and the truck of the road, and he plays the UNO Reverse Card on them instead. And I’m pretty sure at this point…

...that old Johnny boy’s just killed some cops. So, yeah, now there’s a bigger problem. He powers through the State Police blockade like it was a banner blocking a football team, stops at a gas station, grabs the gun from the car, and LIGHTS ALL OF THAT SHIT ON FIRE! Destroying the livelihood of an individual who had nothing to do with this.

Yeah, Rambo’s starting to turn from innocent acting in self-defense to public menace REAL quick. And yeah, it’s King Shit Cop’s fault entirely...but, yeah, Johnny needs some help, because he’s losing the train at this point. But, not to be outdone, King Shit Cop is also beginning to lose it, and it’s definitely beginning to seem like only one of them is going to come out of this alive. And the Colonel tries to give him an out, but King Shit Cop’s prepared to go down with the ship that he blew a hole in in the first place. Like an asshole.

But here we go, the finale. John Rambo vs. King Shit Cop (whose name, by the way, is Will Teasle. I just like Rambo’s name for him better). KSC’s on the roof, Rambo’s on the street. Rambo causes more property damage, possibly because banks also give him PTSD (I joke, but PTSD is no laughing matter, John clearly needs help), and then finds his way to a store that has just all of the ammo a psychologically-damaged Vietnam War veteran on a revenge quest could ever need.

And then he BLOWS. THAT. SHIT. UP.

And he does this...ALL of this...just to lure KSC out of hiding. This man DESTROYS A TOWN because this idiot, sociopathic, unhinged, King Shit Cop, won’t just STAND. THE FUCK. DOWN ALREADY.

Rambo enters the police station, where KSC is on the roof. And, like the Colonel and the rest of us guessed, KSC gets shot in the process. And as Rambo stands over KSC, the Colonel finally shows up and does what literally everybody else should have done.

Talk. He just...talks to Rambo. He talks to this mentally ill man, and that mentally ill man responds, espousing his pure anger at the war, the public, protesters, work, the country, the town, himself...everyone. And goddamn, is that shit palpable.

This man can no longer fit in the world that he was forced to leave, and forced to return to. This poor, poor, poor man. It hurts. And it sucks. And he pours his heart out to the Colonel, and to us, and...you feel it. You feel his trauma, you feel his pain. You feel the aftermath of war. And it’s been seven years at this point for the Colonel, but no time for John. Not Rambo. John. And it’s just...never over.

Damn. Goddamn.

This...this is one hell of a good movie. And not just a good action movie, either. A damn good movie.

And that’s it. That’s First Blood.

[sasskarian]

I know you're not exactly a DA blog anymore... But... I just finished DA2 for the very first time and, and. I got myself Inquisition with all DLCs. I need to know what happens. I want the poor baby Cullen to be happy :(

Nonnie, I am still at my heart very much a DA blog (and Mass Effect; I just tend to smear new obsessions everywhere. Like finger painting). I curate my experience as much as I can due to the fandom being shit, but my love for DA is strong and steady. 

The best thing I can say is, play through the game and DLCs. (Tho suggested order is Jaws > Descent > Trespasser) I promise you, Cullen has the option of being happy. I wouldn’t write about it if I didn’t see those paths, and at least some of them are canon. 

I know what you mean, tho. Cullen is, to some of my friends’ dismay, near and dear to my heart. He’s my canon quiz’s romance, for many reasons. The truth is, I struggle with the fandoms’ interpretations of him and was just talking about this with my DA/FO/ME bestie @asaara-writes the other day. I think a lot of Cullen’s trauma is easily missed or overlooked in favor of louder plots (like Fenris’s, who doesn’t get hated on nearly so much for his hatred and distrust of mages, or Anders who hates Templars and is lauded for it. If I see another ANDERS WAS RIGHT banner, I’m gonna overclock somebody’s capacitors)

(Pardon me, I’ll throw this under a cut because wall of text, but I have some got-damn Opinions on Cullen and how the fandom treats him)

But for me, I’m neither in the “Cullen is poor bab who never did anything wrong uwu” or the “Cullen is a horrible bastard and should be set afire” camp. I walk a more moderate line, and here’s why:

I have a Cullen. 

My fiance, he’s... so much like Cullen that it breaks my heart. Military vet, disillusioned with his desire to do good in the world and the realities of corruption and power abuse. Substance abuse issues, and recovery from addiction. Said some bad things/had bad opinions when he was younger due to abuse by certain groups of people, and has since reformed and is trying to continue changing. Abuse survivor. Blood on his hands from his career. Trying his best to find his way in a world that he doesn’t understand. So I see the similarities, and I live with the reality of what that kind of history and life is like. 

Cullen was a fresh-faced 18 year old in the Kinloch Circle (however old his in-game image looks, he was canon 18-20). Which, by canon, was one of the less problematic, more lenient Circles (though you have to have Mage origin to find that stuff out). I don’t think he’d been a Templar long at that point. And he joined the Templars out of a desire to do good in the world. His examples of Templar behavior were those stationed in a small village, who had more leniency and less lawkeeping duties. Honnleath was tiny, and quiet. I’m going on assumption here, on my own history of small towns vs larger cities, that there wasn’t much evidence of power hunger and abuse an eight year old would notice.

Note that he remains kind and even remorseful at some of his duties (for instance, having to attend Harrowings) even under a hateful man like Greagoir.

When Uldred takes over the Circle and kills everyone, Cullen is the last left. He watches possessed mages and demons run wild in his home, killing and torturing his friends. If you’re a mage origin, he talks about how the demons used his feelings and affection for you, inappropriate though they were, to torment him. It’s implied through dialogue that at least some of those demons sexually abused him. 

Yes, in his panic and fresh trauma, he begs the Warden to kill any mages found left in the Circle. I wonder why. Tumblr at large acts like the only way for PTSD and trauma to be exhibited is through cowering and nightmares, but it’s well known among people who have PTSD (including myself) that outrage, hair trigger tempers, and anger issues are as common as crying jags and insomnia. 

After the resolution of Broken Circle, Cullen is reassigned to Kirkwall. Arguably, this is the worst possible Circle he could have been sent to in the entirety of the goddamn world. Not only is Kirkwall famous for increased blood mage activity (both due to history and also due to Templar behavior), which is one of his trauma-groups, but Meredith hates mages, and rules over them with an iron fist. She is fucking crazy, and whether her past makes her a sympathetic villain or not (ymmv), she downright encouraged the abuse of mages and as she loses her mind, we see her start accusing everyone of blood magic. 

Canon states that there are Templars in Kirkwall who sexually abuse mages, who torture them, and who kill them at will, and these are never dealt with. Meredith has no desire to change the way the Gallows is run, and it’s said or implied that before her reign as the overseer, the Gallows-- while still not great-- was not this bad. 

So, freshly traumatized and young Templar is sent to the worst possible place in Thedas, under the command of a crazed mage hater, surrounded by the very thing that will trigger him nigh constantly. I see a lot of the fandom say “well why didn’t he quit/leave?” And I wonder if those fans understand what indoctrination can do. Specifically, military indoctrination. You’re told that the ranks are your home, your family, the only ones who can or will ever understand you. You’re told this for so long that it becomes a life raft. It becomes your world truth. That’s the nature of emotional abuse that fosters codependency: it literally reshapes your world. 

Added to that, Templars are controlled by the Chantry through lyrium, an addictive drug that quitting is difficult and surviving the withdrawal of is often fatal. (that’s another rant entirely that can be summed up as tl;dr fuck the fucking Chantry)

The Templars were the only thing he knew. After that kind of soul-shaking trauma, do you leave behind everything you ever knew? (Remember, he was 13 when he joined into this kind of brainwashing.) No. You cleave to what you can, to what keeps you getting through the day. 

Cullen spent a further ten years in Kirkwall, watching the city fall apart under Qunari, blood magic, and Meredith’s increasing insanity. There was no reprieve for his PTSD: everywhere he turned, there was Something. And yet, we hear in Inquisition (depending on player choices, ofc) Samson say that Cullen tried to continue to be kind. He didn’t abuse mages, he tried to protect them where and how he could. 

[Samson: He arrived after the trouble at the ferelden circle. Cullen jumped at his shadow in those days, always on the watch for abominations and demons. Did right by the mages, though, never played rough with them. Not like Meredith.]

Was it limited? Yes. Was it hampered by circumstance? Yes. Should he have tried harder? Yes. 

But he still tried. 

Does he say regrettable things? Yes. Does he regret those things later? Yes. 

I had a friend, who I am no longer friends with for various reasons, tell me that “If Cullen was a good person, he wouldn’t need a redemption arc.” And... no, No, that’s not how redemption arcs work. Everyone does problematic things. Everyone who grows up brainwashed has to unlearn shit, and atone for shit. 

Cullen still struggles with mages. He still has a deep fear of them. Partly this is the Templar in him talking, partly this is trauma. And, here’s where we break from canon and go deep into psychology land: I think partly because he’s projecting. Cullen cannot imagine forgiveness for what he’s done. I wonder if part of him fears mages because he expects-- perhaps even some part of him desires-- retribution from them for his actions and past. 

And there’s things that have been retconned or that were misleading in previous games. For example, the rumor that Cullen escaped after Broken Circle and went on a mage murdering spree. That was nothing but a rumor, but the fandom levies it against him as if it happened.

But if Cullen “hated” mages, you wouldn’t be able to romance him as a mage. And honestly, that mage romance in DAI? Is one of the sweetest, most tender things I’ve seen in DA. As a mage, you can choose to help him past his fears, help him with his lyrium addiction. Help him grow as a person, and watch as he becomes a better person. As he learns that mages are more than their magic, and that Templars are so often wrong and awful in their treatment of them. 

I find Cullen to be well written. And believable as hell. The portrayal of him-- from the mood swings, to the trauma, to the shaky but steadying growth-- feels real, and I can back that up with my fiance’s own similar path. 

So. To wrap up because hoooooo, Opinions, play through the game. There’s a lot of gems there. <3 

[punyparkerfics]

No Lifeguard on Duty!

Kid!Peter and Bio mom!Tony go swimming with the Avengers! 

TW/CW: PTSD-triggered panic attack. nothing graphic.

Word Count: ~6.7k

A/N: y’all are seeing it first. here it will be for a bit before I post it to AO3, just to show my appreciation to those that have followed. thanks for the support! xx

Edit: This is part of my One-off series! It is now available on AO3!

                                                   ⋆⋆☆⋆⋆

It was a warm June afternoon when Clint suggested at the tail-end of a meeting that the team should have a poolside team bonding session. Thor and Natasha instantly agreed, excited at the idea of sunbathing and taking a dip in Tony’s luxurious indoor lap pool.

Bruce looked to Tony expectantly. The billionaire froze for a moment before recovering and sniffing audibly. Steve knew immediately that the woman was deflecting when she just shrugged and agreed.

“I’m sure the kiddie will get a kick out of it,” She said casually, “Rhodey will join us if that’s okay.”

The kid in question was Tony’s precious son, Peter. The team had just met the (nearly) three-year-old two weeks before, and they were immediately enamored. Peter’s doe eyes and baby brown curls were hard enough to resist, but the kid was shockingly the sweetest kid any of them had ever met. Most of them (except Thor), had unfairly expected the tot to be a spoiled brat that screamed and threw things or even a gross sticky ball of self-centered energy. But the boy was shy yet friendly, very giving and sweet as candy. Peter charmed the socks off of the team but that was expected, he is a Stark after all.

The thing that shocked them even further was just how maternal Tony was with him. The genius was as far away from being the type to be a loving and affectionate mother as possible, if what their first impression of her was anything to base their judgment on. However, Tony was as gentle as could be with the boy. She was an adoring mother who doted on her son, showering him with hugs and kisses and pet names that made even Natasha feel a little gooey inside. It was a nice light to see their teammate in after the battle of New York ended.

Tony worked diligently ever since Peter was conceived to be sure her baby was the most protected life-form on the planet. Peter was her second chance after Afghanistan and she didn’t cut a single corner when it came to the boy’s safety, meaning security was upped even more once Natalie Rushman caught wind of him. Military vetted bodyguards, ironclad encryptions on all legal and medical documents pertaining to the child, and airtight NDA’s for any unauthorized person that so much suspected Tony Stark had a son were just the beginning of the laundry lists of precautions Tony took for her baby. Nonetheless, all the avengers loved Peter and jumped at the opportunity to spend time with him.

They’d only been able to see him a couple of times, as Tony had just returned from taking him to London for a few days to see some sort of astronomy exhibit or another. But, now the genius was basically offering an afternoon in the sun with a sweet little boy and a luxury pool. Basically, Steve and Bruce were sold.

Tony told the team that the pool was clean and ready, that they were welcome to go ahead and wait until she got her son ready and collected Rhodey. It took about two hours for the whole team to reconvene at the indoor swimming pool. The windows opened and sunlight beamed throughout the whole room, reflecting off the surface of the large body of water. Clint immediately ripped his shirt off and kicked his sandals away before running and belly-flopping into the pool. Steve winced audibly as Natasha rolled her eyes and Thor chuckled grandly. Widow had removed her makeup and braided her hair back. Her clothes from the day’s meeting had been swapped out for a black one-piece swimsuit that showed off a large portion of her back. She shook her head at the sight of Clint resurfacing and squirting water out of his mouth before whooping and dunking himself back underwater.

Steve shook his head and joined Doctor Banner, who was sitting on one of the beach chairs a few yards away from the pool, underneath a canopy for shade. Steve sat down on the chair beside the doctor, his eyes scanning the large open area. Admittedly, the two were only there to see Peter (and Tony, but neither would ever admit it), so they watched as Thor cannon-balled into the pool with a grand shout and plenty of amusement. Natasha called out with a deadpan tone,

“You get a 10. It had everything, theatrics, a battle cry, and a big splash. Incredible.”

“What about me?” Clint asked as he backstroked the length of the pool, his eyes on her.

“You’ve caught me on a day I’m most generous,” She replied, “You get a 2.”

“I have a feeling this competition is rigged,” Clint replied, disappearing under the surface of the water once again. Natasha shook her head and dipped her toes in the water before walking down the steps of the pool, sighing in contentment as she floated in the shallow end.

“How many times do I have to say it, Honeybear?” Tony’s voice came from the far end of the room towards the elevator, “Let me be a hot mama.”

“Just seems a little excessive, is all I’m saying,” Rhodey replied with an unimpressed shrug of his shoulders.

“To you,” Tony said, all the heads in the room turning to her and the boy in her arms, “Because you have no taste.”

Rhodey shook his head and grumbled under his breath before greeting the team. Tony bounced the toddler in her arms as she set down a small backpack on one of the unoccupied beach chairs, a melody of giggles filling the room. Steve and Bruce smiled, looking up at the boy in the billionaire’s arms.

“Say hi, tesoro. They came to see you and go swimming.” Tony said with a smile as she set him down to stand on the chair. She rifled through the bag, bending over to find something within it. Underneath a long and worn Black Sabbath t-shirt, the light blue of her bikini bottoms poked through. Steve cleared his throat as his eyes caught the curve of her rump, forcing himself to focus on the toddler before him and not his teammate’s rear.

“Hey, Peter,” Steve greeted with a smile, “It’s nice to see you. Are you ready to go swimming?”

“Yeah!” Peter cheered, throwing his little arms up in the air, “Mommy say I can ‘o swimmin’ wif’ my floadies on!”

Peter climbed over to Steve with a smile, “C’mon, cap! We gotta get the pool toys!”

“Aye, mimmo,” Tony called out to her son, “What did we agree goes before playing in the sun?”

“Sumbloc’!” The boy replied dutifully, turning to his mother, “But can me an’ cap just get the toys? Real quick, mommy, please?”

“Alright, if your skin falls off,” Tony began passively, “Don’t come to me cryin’ about it.”

Peter just giggled in response, grabbing Steve’s hand and making a big show of trying to pull him up off the beach chair. The boy planted his little feet and squeezed his eyes shut in strain, little grunts came from him as he pulled with all his might to get the super soldier on his feet. Steve smiled, pretending to fight back against the child’s pull.

“Gosh, Peter,” Steve pretended to strain, “You’re getting too strong, kid.”

Peter giggled again, putting smiles on everyone’s lips.

“Cus’ I like brock'ly now! Brock'ly makes you big and strong!” Peter exclaimed, showing off his little arms.

“No kidding,” Steve chuckled, now allowing the (nearly) three-year-old drag him to the large shed that held all the pool accessories. He helped the child pick out inner tubes and beach balls, as well as foam pool noodles and water guns, and carry them back to the beach chairs. Steve laid them down on the chair he was sitting on previously when Tony came over and scooped up the toddler.

He looked up and noticed the genius had taken off the oversized shirt she had previously adorned, leaving a simple baby blue bikini wrapped around her surprisingly pale skin. The arc reactor shone, the scar tissue around it now a pale pink. Rhodey was honestly surprised Tony was showing off her body at all. The woman was never above advertising her assets, but those closest to Tony knew that her chest was something sensitive to her. The Colonel himself had seen it plenty of times, but he’d known the genius for half of her life. These people, her team, were almost strangers. Rhodey didn’t know whether to worry about his friend or be proud that she was getting more comfortable with either her body or the Avengers; either was a big step for her.

Tony’s toned legs had the odd scrape or bruise along them, no doubt from the Iron Woman suit or chasing around a rambunctious toddler. Steve caught himself staring before shaking his head and turning to Bruce, who was hiding his own blushing face in a book.

Steve turned to those in the pool to see Natasha dunking Clint underwater and Thor cheering her on.

“C’mon, lovebug,” Tony said, wrangling a squirmy Peter in her arms as she sat on the beach chair beside Steve, “Sunblock time.”

Steve decided to just get into the pool and save himself any embarrassment. If you asked him, he was just shocked at the genius’ pale skin and not at all fawning over how beautiful she looked. Steve was simply washed with admirable respect, as it was clear Tony trusted her team enough to be so vulnerable around them. Not only was she literally in a bikini, with nowhere to hide her scars or traumatic body modifications, she was also allowing them to be with her son.

For that, Steve was certainly not ogling at her slight curves and toned muscle, nor was he appreciating how much seeing her like that reminded him what decade he was currently standing in.

Her long brown hair was tied up, and her makeup was immaculate. It was odd to Steve that she had seemingly refreshed her makeup since the meeting. Even Natasha had come to the pool barefaced, given the activity they were participating in. Steve admittedly didn’t know much about cosmetics, but he knew they didn’t typically mix well with water. Either way, the soldier whipped off his shirt and set aside his shoes before diving into the pool and literally swimming away from the warmth swirling in his chest.

“Jesus, Tony,” Rhodey chuckled, “You get paler and paler every time I come back from work. You keep that boy inside too much. Maybe leave the lab once in a while. Take him to the park or something.”

“Peter has sensitive skin,” Tony shrugged, lathering children’s sunblock on the boy in question. Her gentle hands caressed his baby soft skin which was considerably paler in comparison to Tony’s.

“Doesn’t mean you gotta make my nephew into a naked mole-rat,” Rhodey replied.

“Not a mole rat!” Peter cried indignantly to his uncle as his mother carefully applied sunblock to his face.

“That’s right,” Tony nodded, giving her son a serious face, “Stop being mean to my baby, sour patch.”

“Mean uncle Whodey!” Peter pouted, “Stinky face!’

At that, Natasha chuckled at the boy’s antics and Steve and Bruce couldn't hide their adoring smiles.

“Okay, boys,” Tony said with a smile on her face, “Play nice, or you both get time out.”

Peter sat up straight and looked up at his mother with a look of urgency on his face before miming zipping his mouth shut. Rhodey just rolled his eyes in response.

“Ca’ I go swimmin’ now, mommy?” Peter asked, bouncing up and down on her lap with a winning smile.

“You have to wait a little bit for the sunblock to soak in, Pete,” Tony replied, “Just sit in the shade for 15 minutes, then you can go.”

The genius began applying sunblock on her own skin, knowing Peter would protest wearing the gloopy stuff if his mom didn’t put it on too. Tony, once again, unknowingly earned the attention of most of the adults in the room. She was more occupied watching her son scribble on his coloring book with the crayons she had packed in his bag, her hands expertly massaging the lotion onto her legs, then stomach and chest. Her hands migrated to the exposed skin on the top of her breasts, effectively avoiding the reactor, and neck as Steve felt his throat go dry. Before he could stop himself from staring, he was accosted with a blast of water. Steve shook the water from his face and looked up to see Rhodey with a water gun, attacking him and the other avengers that happened to be staring at the billionaire. He looked up to see Bruce shaking water off of his hair and a deep blush spreading across his cheeks.

“Eyes up,” Rhodey called out with a mischievous grin, causing Steve to duck in embarrassment. Steve was a timid man when it came to women like Tony even back in the day, and that was with women from his own time period. A modern woman like Tony Stark, a woman that he admittedly didn’t treat fairly upon their first meeting was someone he couldn’t dream of shooting straight with. Plus, she was a dedicated mother with more things to worry about than Good ol’ Captain America giving her googly eyes. A woman like Tony could get any man (or woman) she desired, and Steve knew she wouldn’t choose a man that judged her harshly without him knowing her personally.

His attention was brought back to Peter who laughed loudly at his uncle’s antics, as the man continued to blast Thor for his own amusement.

“Mommy! Mommy! I wanna play with unca’ Whodey!” Peter exclaimed, turning to his mother. The genius was laying back in her reclined beach chair with her son at her feet, just relaxing in the shade.

“Just a few more minutes, baby bear,” Tony replied, running her fingers through her hair as she took down her bun.

“But, mommy!” Peter whined, climbing over to sit on her lap, “Wanna p’ay now!”

“I know, patatino,” Tony hummed, pulling the boy towards her and laying him flat against herself. Their chests pressed together and Peter rested his face on her collarbone, snuggling close, his chubby little hand laying flat against the arc reactor. Steve smiled at the idea of Peter adoring the light in his mother’s chest, his own personal nightlight that brought a whole new sense of security with her embrace.

“Just gotta wait for your sunblock to soak in,” Tony replied softly, her hands lightly rubbing the boy’s bare back, “Then you and uncle platypus can play all you want. Okay?”

“Okay, mommy,” Peter sighed, enjoying the feeling of relaxing in his mother’s arms. Peter was a mellow and well-behaved boy so moments like this weren’t uncommon. He loved just being with his momma. He liked having her in his sight but he LOVED being held in her arms.

The team looked on with fond smiles as the two Starks cuddled close, Rhodey taking a seat beside them and reclining with an audible exhale.

“Don’t get too comfy, Honeybear,” Tony smirked, “Pete’s gonna drag you into the pool in just a few minutes.”

“Want you to come swimmin’ wif us, mommy,” Peter said quietly, his eyes focused on a birthmark staining his mother’s arm. He circled the small spot with his finger, anxiously awaiting Tony’s reaction. Peter knew his mommy didn’t like swimming, she didn’t even like getting wet. Sometimes, if he splashes too much in the bath, Uncle Rhodey has to come in and help him while his mommy goes into her room and waits. At first, Peter felt really bad, he didn’t mean to be a bad boy; splashing’s just fun!

Uncle Rhodey and Auntie Pepper tell him it’s not because he’s a bad boy, just because Mommy had some scary stuff happen to her. And getting wet sometimes reminds her of it. They tell him about a time before he was born that his Mommy was taken to a scary place and bad people did scary things to her. They told him that sometimes it gives her nightmares and that’s why he can’t sleep in Mommy’s bed with her some nights, even though he wants to! He wants to be there with his mommy so he can help her calm down from a nightmare just like she does for him sometimes!

Tony tensed slightly, her grip on Peter tightening a bit before she drew in a deep breath.

“Uncle Rhodey’s going swimming with you, cucciolo,” Tony sighed, combing her fingers through the boy’s curls. It was something she’s done since Peter was born, as touching her baby’s hair provided both of them immense comfort, “I’ll be right here watching you, though.”

“But, mommy,” Peter pouted, sitting up in his mother’s lap, “Wan’ you to come too!”

Peter knew his mommy was scared of the water, but he and Uncle Rhodey would be right there with her! She’d be okay, and see that the water isn’t scary! Even the avengers were there, too. His mommy would be kept safe and protected and she’d see how much fun swimming is! As long as no one splashes her, she’ll have so much fun with him and his uncle! Peter just knows it! Plus, mommy helps him get over his fears all the time. Like the time she showed him that there were no monsters hiding in his closet, or the time she showed him that his broccoli hadn’t been poisoned.

“C’mon, buddy,” Rhodey offered gently to his nephew, “We can have fun without your mom with us. She’ll be close by watching.”

“No!” Peter shook his head, leaning forward and resting his face onto Tony’s chest, “Wan’ mommy.”

“Peter—” Tony began before Clint interrupted.

“C’mon, Stark!” The archer called out, floating on his back, “You’re not going to deprive the kid of fun in the sun with his ma, are ya?”

“Clint,” Natasha began to reprimand, catching Steve’s attention.

“What? Team bonding, right?” Clint shrugged.

“Bruce hasn’t gotten in the pool,” Natasha pointed out with a nod in the Doctor’s direction.

“Bruce didn’t come with a kid,” Clint countered, “If Pete wants his mom to swim with him, she should swim with him.”

“Tony,” Rhodey said to the genius, ignoring the talk from the pool, “I’ll go in with him, don’t worry.” “Mommy,” Peter mustered up his best puppy dog eyes and stuck out his bottom lip before saying, “Please?”

Tony tried her best to control her breathing. Her hands were hardly shaking where they rested on the small of her son’s back.

“We would most enjoy it if you joined our team festivity, Stark,” Thor encouraged, “And your little Starkson would be comforted by your engagement.”

“Tony,” Rhodey tried again. He really didn’t want what was supposed to be a fun day for the family and new friends to turn into a PTSD-related panic attack; not if he could help it.

But Tony brushed him off. She didn’t want to appear weak in front of her team. She didn’t want to prove that she wasn’t good enough to be an actual avenger rather than merely a consultant. She also didn’t want them to think she was too good to give her son anything he asked of her, as innocent as the request was. The inventor was already overly critical and self-conscious of her decision to wear a bikini in front of the team, with nowhere to hide the scars littering her body. In her head, she tried convincing herself that she just wanted to show off that she was matching Peter’s baby blue swim trunks. It was sort of her thing, anyway, to coordinate her son’s outfits with her own.

But, for Peter, she’d do anything. She’d suck up her paralyzing fear of water, for Peter. She’d agree to even go poolside at all, for Peter. So, for Peter, the genius sucked in a deep breath and stood up.

“Tony,” Rhodey said, standing up to either intervene or at least take Peter.

“C’mon, pup,” Tony said, bouncing the toddler in her arms again, “Let’s get your floaties on.”

“Mommy come?” Peter asked with a smile.

“Yeah” Tony nodded with a wide smile. They’d all seen that smile before, and Steve would give anything to know if it was genuine. “Mommy’s gonna go in the pool with you, okay? But we gotta be careful.”

Peter nodded dutifully and held his arm out for Rhodey as he approached with the inflated water wings.

“Are you sure about this, Tones?” Rhodes asked quietly, “I could take him, he won’t put up much of a fuss once he’s in there. We both know —”

“It’s fine,” Tony shook her head, her smile not leaving her face but her eyes refusing to meet the Colonel’s eyes.

“Mommy, we gonna have so much fun!” Peter cheered, offering his uncle his other arm to slide the other water wing onto.

“Yeah,” Tony replied with her own toned-down level of cheer. Steve’s heart dropped as he realized Tony was not at all comfortable with the idea of getting into the water. Was it because of them? Was it because she’d caught Steve or Bruce staring at her before? Had they made her uncomfortable? Gosh, he’d really —

“C’mon, bambino,” Tony hummed, taking shaky steps towards the large pool. She looked over the surface of the water and swallowed hard. Steve was looking up at her from the water with concern, while Nat was somewhat shepherding Thor and Clint over to the deeper end of the pool, away from where Tony stood near the steps.

“JARVIS,’ Tony called out, her voice surprisingly even, “What’s the water temp?”

“The water is sitting a standard 78 degrees Fahrenheit,” The AI dutifully replied, “Would you like me to adjust it?”

“Yeah,” Tony nodded, “A little warmer, please… For the baby,”

“Certainly, madame,” JARVIS replied and the team felt the water get warmer around them. Not uncomfortably so, but it was definitely noticeable. Clint rolled his eyes and turned back to his attempt to explain the rules of Marco Polo to Thor.

“No cold water,” Peter said wearily, looking down at the water.

“Water’s nice and warm, kid,” Rhodey said softly beside them and Tony wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to Peter.

“Uncle Whodey come too?” Peter asked, turning to face his uncle with a stunning smile.

“Of course,” Rhodey nodded, “I’m not letting your mom take all the fun.”

Tony appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood as she took another shaky step towards the pool stairs. Rhodey followed suit.

“Wait!” Peter called out, “We need the pool toys!”

“Right,” Tony chuckled nervously, turning around and walking Peter over to the beach chair that held the toys in question, “Silly me. How could I forget the pool toys?”

“Whatcha got, Stark?” Clint asked as he pulled himself up and out from the side of the pool, trudging over to the chair dripping wet.

“We got noodles and beach balls and water guns,” Peter called out excitedly, leaning forward in his mom’s grab to reach out for a toy. The boy was confident his mother would never drop him so he didn’t bother hanging onto her tightly.

“We got a whole shed of more, Legolas,” Tony nodded in the direction of the shed Peter had retrieved the toys with Steve before, “Knock yourself out.”

“Sweet,” Clint nodded and made his way over to the shed.

“Uncle Whodey!” Peter called out, extending his arms to hand over a beach ball to the Colonel, “We gotta p’ay vowwy ball!”

“You got it, squirt,” Rhodey chuckled, taking the ball from the toddler.

“And we need a noodle!” Peter exclaimed, reaching from Tony’s grip to grab a pool noodle. The boy hugged the red foam tube in his arms and gave his mother a cheeky smile.

“Okay,” Tony said, “Ready, bear?”

“Yeah!” Peter cheered, bouncing lightly in his mother’s arms as she slowly made her way back to the pool steps. She decided she’d already made a scene too big for the other avengers not to notice her trepidation. So, pointedly ignoring the screaming voice in her head and the pounding in her chest, she cuddled her baby closer to her chest and took slow and steady steps down into the shallow end of the pool. Tony focuses all her attention on the smile spreading across Peter’s face. She presses a quick kiss to his cheek and continues to wade a little further into the shallow water.

Tony hears the sound of someone entering the pool behind her, making her stiffen up and tighten her hold on Peter.

“It’s okay, Tony,” Rhodey’s calm voice sounds from behind her and she feels his hand steadily rest on the small of her back, “This is far enough.”

Tony nods, her shoulders still stiff with anxiety. The genius takes a deep breath before settling the toddler in her arms down to float in front of her.

“We swimmin’, Mommy!” Peter exclaimed, a look of pride evident on his face. Tony tried to focus every ounce of anxiety in her on the smile on her baby’s face. Peter was okay. She was okay. Rhodey was okay. They were in a pool in Manhattan, not a cave in Afghanistan. It was okay.

Tony took in another deep breath and gave her son a small smile.

“Yeah, baby,” Tony nods, “Just stay close to Mommy, okay?”

“Le’s go dis way!” Peter squeals, kicking his feet towards where Thor, Steve, and Natasha were floating, waiting for Clint to return, “Cap! Look’it me! I’m swimmin’ too!”

“Wow,” Steve smiled at the boy, “You swim really good, Pete. Look how fast you’re going.”

“Peter,” Tony called out, as the boy made his way further away from the safety of the shallow end, towards the deep end of the pool, “Peter, come to Mommy, please.”

“Mommy, le’s swim wif Cap!” Peter called out, turning back to face his mother.

“You have to stay in the shallow end, topolino,” Tony called out, her voice almost cracking at the end as her heart rate began to pick up again. Peter was out of her reach, swimming away from her. Sure, he was swimming towards the Great Captain America, but that was her baby. At that moment, her motherly instincts overpowered her self-preservation instinct as she waded further into the water towards her retreating son. As the water got deeper, it rose from just above her waist towards the bottom of her chest. The water began to slowly rise up her chest and Tony felt like the air in her lungs began to somehow liquify.

“Tony,” Rhodey called out behind her, “It’s okay. Stay right there. I’ll get him, he’s okay.”

Steve, noticing the look of pure panic on the billionaire’s face, instinctively scooped the paddling toddler up into his arms and held him securely against his chest.

“Everything alright?” The Captain asked, his voice filled with concern. He knew, logically, the boy wouldn’t drown on his watch. There were seven adults in the room with Peter that would obviously intervene before any harm came to him. But clearly, there was something the Colonel and the billionaire knew that the rest of the team didn’t and it was making them all very nervous. Tony just whimpered and nodded, her arms snaking around her waist and hugging herself tightly. Her eyes were distant and unseeing, glazed over with fear. And, she was shivering despite the warm water and sun beating down on her exposed skin.

Rhodey wades over to the Captain and reaches out to grab his nephew.

“C’mon, Pete,” Rhodey says softly, “Let’s stay closer to Mommy, okay?”

“But I’m swimmin’, Uncle Whodey! I’m swimmin wif Cap!” The boy replied, climbing into the man’s arms anyway, “It’s otay.”

“I know, buddy. But your mom wants you to stay a little closer to her, okay?” The Colonel said softly, turning to take the boy back to his mother.

“Is everything okay?” Steve asked with worry, but before the question could fully leave his lips, Clint came rushing back to the pool with a yellow inflated duck-shaped inner tube around his waist. The archer was giving out a mighty battle cry as he came running towards the pool before he jumped and cannonballed into the water.

The splash from the landing sprayed out far and wide, even getting Bruce the smallest bit wet from his spot. Natasha muttered out a curse in Russian, Thor bellowed in joyful laughter, and Steve just shook the water from his face. Peter squealed in delight before erupting in a fit of giggles.

“Tony,” Rhodey’s nervous voice sounded, causing Steve to look over at the billionaire with concern.

“Stark,” Steve exhaled, beginning to wade over to Tony who is visibly trying to keep herself calm but failing. The genius was beginning to hyperventilate and looked around the pool with eyes unseeing and blown out with fear. Once her eyes land on Peter still giggling in his uncle’s arms, safe, Tony frantically tries to make her way out of the pool.

Water splashed around her as she tried flailing out to the steps, the speed not sufficient enough to soothe her panic. Steve’s worry only increased, but he gently held Tony by the waist and helped her tread over to the side of the pool to make her escape quickly. Tony grunted and grabbed the railing once she was close enough to pull herself out of the offending water. She climbed out and scrambled to her feet, hurrying towards the door she, Colonel Rhodes, and Peter had entered from without looking back. Before she made it too far, Pepper Potts showed up in all her glory, holding a large fluffy towel.

“It’s okay,” Steve’s enhanced hearing picked up Pepper’s hushed voice as she wrapped the towel around the distressed engineer, “Everyone’s safe, Tony. Peter’s okay, you’re okay.”

Tony doesn’t even slow down as she continues her trek back into the rest of the building away from the pool, not even to acknowledge the light kiss Pepper places on her temple. Tony just allows the trusted woman to lightly guide her towards the elevator with a quiet promise to follow her up in a moment.

“JARVIS, please get a hot shower ready for Tony,” Pepper said softly as she watched the genius disappear behind the closing elevator doors.

“Certainly, Ms. Potts,” JARVIS replied dutifully. Pepper sighs and takes a few steps towards the pool, minding the water both Tony and Clint left slicking the pavement.

“Unfortunately, you will have to continue your team bonding exercise without Miss Stark. Feel free to stay and drink, eat, or whatever you please.” The woman said before turning and quickly following after Tony.

“Where mommy go?” Peter asked, looking up at his uncle sadly.

“Mommy’s gonna take a shower and rest a bit,” The Colonel explained gently, setting the boy down to allow him to float in the water, “How about you and I swim for a bit and then join her later?”

“No,” Peter squirmed around, kicking his little legs under the water, “Wan’ mommy!”

“Let’s give mommy some time, bud,” Rhodes calmly encouraged.

“Wan’ mommy, P’ease!!! Unca’ Whodey!” Peter cried out, flailing to grab onto the man.

Rhodes sighed and picked the boy up, holding him tightly against his chest.

“Alright, squirt,” He said, wading to exit the pool, “Let’s get you a bath, and then we’ll go see mommy.”

“Is Tony going to be okay?” Steve asked, his concern only growing.

“Yeah, what made her walk out on us? She even left the kid behind,” Clint asked incredulously.

Natasha replied by splashing the archer with a wave of water. The Colonel ignored Clint as he exited the pool and pulled off the water wings from Peter’s arms. Rhodes wrapped the boy in a fluffy blanket and held him close to his chest before turning to the Captain.

“Tony’ll be fine. She just needs some space,” was all Rhodes said before leaving the pool room with Peter. Upon hearing the soft sound of the elevator doors closing behind them, Steve looks over to the rest of the team with a confused look still etched on his face.

“Is- Did we- I don’t—” Bruce stammered as he rose from where he was previously seated, walking towards the pool with his eyes stuck towards where Rhodey and Peter had just disappeared.

“I was hoping we’d avoid it, but I was almost sure it was going to happen,” Natasha said almost wistfully.

“What do you mean?” Steve asked.

Natasha looked around at them all staring at her, waiting for an explanation. She rolled her eyes at their cluelessness.

“You guys heard about Afghanistan, what did you expect?”

“What does Afghanistan have to do with a pool in Manhattan?” Clint asked.

“She was tortured into compliance, moron,” Natasha bit out as she began to float on her back, looking up at the sky through the glass walls.

“The physical exam she went through after she was rescued showed signs of water inhalation. It’s suspected that she might have been forced underwater or was even waterboarded.”

“Suspected?” Bruce asked with a look of horror on his face.

“She hasn’t said much at all about what they did to her there, just what they asked of her. Stark isn’t one to talk about what she’s been through. She plays it close to the vest so as to not let any weakness slip.” Natasha explained as if it were the simplest explanation.

“Then why—” Steve asked. His heart was pounding in his chest.

Since coming out of ice, Steve had talked to a few professionals about shell shock and learned the new terminology surrounding it. PTSD, they called it now. Either way, as a leader, Steve was almost ashamed in himself for not seeing it in Tony. He saw a woman dealing with a lot on her plate. He knew she’d been captured and gotten out, but he didn’t dwell much on the fact that she’d spent months in an Afghan cave. He was a captain, damn it. He’s supposed to take care of his team.

“Why what?” Natasha asked, with an arched brow.

“Why’d you—” Steve shook his head, “Your assessment of her…”

“PTSD doesn’t make any of it any less true, I just omitted any justification for her behavior during my time watching her,” Natasha replied smoothly, never ceasing her peaceful floating.

“Why?” Bruce asked incredulously.

“Because she shouldn’t be in this line of work. She’s been through enough, and she had a toddler to take care of. I knew she didn’t want it, I was trying to keep her and Peter out of it.”

The men were shocked silent, only the sound of water rippling could be heard until Natasha spoke once again, “JARVIS, can we get the water temp down a few notches now that Tony’s not here?”

“Certainly, Agent Romanoff,” The AI replied, the water cooling down around them. It made sense now, why Tony wanted the water so warm. She wanted to do anything to not be reminded of that cave.

                                                        ⋆⋆☆⋆⋆

Pepper walked out after setting a steaming mug of tea on the nightstand. Tony sat on her large bed wrapped in a bathrobe, her long wet hair tied up in a messy bun. The warm shower helped and JARVIS was showing her the live video feed of Rhodey giving Peter a bath, soothing the genius to see her baby safe and sound. Tony smiled sadly as Peter demanded to be taken out of the bath and to his mother. She knew her son was too perceptive of his own good, knowing his mommy was upset and wanting to be with her. With a sigh, she dismissed the video feed and pulled on sweatpants and an MIT shirt that still swamped her figure even years later.

“JARVIS, get ready to play Peter Pan for us, would you, pal?” Tony asked.

“Of course, madame,” JARVIS replied, his voice fond.

Just then, there’s a soft knock on her door. Tony padded over to the door, opening it to smile at the sight of her son wrapped in a hooded towel resembling a duckling.

“Mommy,” Peter whined before reaching out towards his mother. Tony scooped the boy in her arms and held him close.

“Hey, bug,” She soothed as she began rocking the boy back and forth.

“Here’s his clean clothes, he wouldn’t let me dress him. He just wanted you,” Rhodey said, walking to her bed and setting a small stack of folded clothes with a bottle of baby lotion on top.

“That’s fine, I got him from here. Thanks, Sugarbear,” Tony smiled.

“Are you sure? I can stay, Tony. If you need help with anything, anything at all.”

“Yeah, I think we’re just going to have some quiet time. Watch Peter Pan and snuggle. I might even join him for his nap,” Tony sighed, never stopping the rocking motion as Peter snuggled close to her.

“Okay, that’s good. You two need to rest. But we’re having dinner as a family. No excuses,” The Colonel said sternly, eyeing Tony with all his concern still evident.

“Pizza,” Peter murmured sleepily against his mother’s neck, causing the two adults to chuckle.

“You got it, buddy. Take care of your mommy, I’ll see you two for dinner,” Rhodey said fondly before sparing Tony another look.

“Bye uncle whodey,” Peter sighed sleepily and let his eyes flutter shut.

“See you later, platypus,” Tony smiled, causing her best friend to nod and walk away.

Tony softly shut her door and carried Peter to her bed. She lied the boy down and ran the towel gently across his bare skin and through his damp curls. Tony was surprised that the boy was allowing her to even put him down, to begin with, but she figured she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and proceed cautiously and quickly.

It took her no time at all to lather the boy in baby lotion and stick him in a pull-up that Rhodey so graciously provided. Easily enough, she wrangled her boy into little grey sweatpants and his new favorite War Machine shirt. Tony shook her head with a smile on her face, of course, that’d be the shirt he’d pick out for her son to nap in. Tony then set aside the bottle of lotion and hung the hooded towel to dry on the door of her bathroom before climbing into her bed and cuddling close with her son.

“J, play the movie, with a volume that’s mindful of a sleeping baby,” She said softly. With that, Peter Pan began playing quietly.

“Not a baby,” Peter mumbled from where his face was buried in his mother’s shirt. The boy readjusted and scooted until he was laying chest to chest with Tony, like he was earlier by the pool, his cheek smooshed beside the arc reactor.

“You’re my baby, tesoro,” Tony hummed and began running her fingers through the boy’s still slightly damp curls, “You’ll always be my baby boy.”

Tony was so content she could almost forget entirely that the Avengers were still in the tower, probably wondering why she just up and left their bonding sesh. She could practically ignore the remnants of the anxiety and dread lingering in her chest and stomach. All Tony could feel at that moment was Peter. She could feel his weight on her chest, his breath tickling her skin, his little hand grabbing a handful of her shirt and his hair through her fingers. The billionaire buried her nose in his curls and immersed herself in the moment. Pepper and Rhodey were both in town, and they were going to have dinner like a family. Her family was home and it was warm. Warmer than an Afghan cave and an empty Malibu mansion. And best of all, her baby was right here with her, in their home, safe and sound. And that was more than she could have ever asked for.

[janiedean]

I'm sorry a portion of the fandom you virtually helped to create is being so shitty to you. I'm shocked people don't realize that half that content wouldn't even exist without you doing the work to make it happen... but if I say that anon was right about everything, can I get a song analysis about Devils and Dust? ;)

thank you dear T__T it’s appreciated ;)

aaand OF COURSE YOU CAN GET IT!!!! thank you very much for the input ;)

devils and dust is a song by his almighty bruceness for his eponymous record from 2005, which was incidentally behind the tour that was my first bruce concert so I loooveee it ;) (also watch that video he’s hot as hell in it), which as usual goes back to his Let’s Tackle PTSD In War Vets topic... except that this time it’s definitely an iraq war veteran and not a vietnam one. you absolutely should listen to it because it’s Very Good before I actually go into it u__u so, lyrics!

I got my finger on the triggerBut I don't know who to trustWhen I look into your eyesThere's just devils and dust

so, opening: we have the straight-up image of someone who’s about to shoot someone and doesn’t know who to trust, so it’s already Not Good A Situation; on top of that, he says he’s looking into someone’s eyes - considering that this introduction is throwing you into the character and then the rest of the song eviscerates those four lines, it has to be his wife as we’ll see later because he doesn’t expect to see devils and dust, but it’s JUST that. now, the dust in this case sounds blatantly like desert sand to me (and it doesn’t give you a vietnam imagery) which is why I think it’s iraq war, also because the record came out just out of the first bush presidency and into the second, and we all know where bruce stands politically.

so: he’s looking at his most likely partner, expecting something in their eyes but he just sees the war he’s left behind, and he’s about to shoot someone without knowing who to trust. bad introduction already, I guess.

then:

We're a long, long way from home, BobbieHome's a long, long way from usI feel a dirty wind blowingDevils and dust

going with the above: bobbie is a female name, so as stated above it’s his wife or partner, and now he also feels a dirty wind blowing and they’re a long way from home, so he obviously came back home but he’s having some ptsd flashback in which he’s back in war, with his partner, feeling the dust around him along with the devils which is obviously a metaphor for the evilness of war/what he had to do. at this point we’re kicking in the refrain:

I got God on my sideI'm just trying to surviveWhat if what you do to surviveKills the things you loveFear's a powerful thingIt can turn your heart black you can trustIt'll take your God filled soulAnd fill it with devils and dust

now: before, he talked about devils, now he says he has god on his side or that’s what he tells himself as he tries to survive (in a war), but what he does to survive kills the things he loves. now, since the guy is obviously back home, we can definitely take it that his survival attempts/at going on with his life kill the things he loves, so since he saw devils and dust in her eyes then maybe they’re killing their relationship (the things you love). then he adds that fear is a powerful thing and and turns your heart black, which means that the fear he (understandably) felt when going to war has so much power over him that now his heart changed and turned evil, and with that... we have the religious parallel ™️ in which is god filled soul ie a soul that once was good/pious is filled with devils and dust (ie war and sand which is what gave him ptsd) which turned him into a worse person than he used to be.

Well I dreamed of you last nightIn a field of blood and stoneThe blood began to dryThe smell began to riseWell I dreamed of you last nightIn a field of mud and boneYour blood began to dryThe smell began to rise

SOOOOO, now it gets upped a notch because now he said he dreamed of her last night but the field of blood and stone obviously suggests it’s a nightmare; also the blood dries and the smell rises, which is a thing he could absolutely have experienced during the war and so he sees his partner go through that, too, and it ups another notch after where it becomes mud and bone - mud is typical wartime stuff because the moment it rains you end up with that under your shoes, and the bones are obviously for corpses/dead people... and her blood begins to dry/the smell rises, so it means he dreams that she’s dead and he can’t save her, so now she is also a part of his ptsd-related nightmares.

We've got God on our sideWe're just trying to surviveWhat if what you do to surviveKills the things you loveFear's a powerful thingIt'll turn your heart black you can trustIt'll take your God filled soulFill it with devils and dustIt'll take your God filled soulFill it with devils and dust

now, this refrain is more or less the same except that now we have god on their side, not I have... but at the end it’s still your heart and your soul so he’s still talking about himself only, not about him and his partner, which means that she is safe from her soul being filled with devils and dust, he isn’t, because he’s been to war and she hasn’t.

Now every woman and every manThey want to take a righteous standFind the love that God willsAnd the faith that He commandsI've got my finger on the triggerAnd tonight faith just ain't enoughWhen I look inside my heartThere's just devils and dust

at which we have the last bomb. now: the first concept is that everyone wants to be righteous and so assumes it is, and god gives them the strength to do it/to be convinced of their righteousness through both love and faith that come from god, right? all sounds good - I believe in got, he fills me with love and faith, I think I’m right, that feeling legitimates my actions, which is what he supposedly thought until he went to war..... but then he says he has his finger on the trigger like the beginning (did he wake up with a gun in his hands? did he go to sleep with a gun nearby? did he hold it up against his partner?) and faith is not enough, which means that his righteousness got shredded and blown to bits in war and there’s no faith that wil make it better, because when he looks inside himself... it’s just devils and dust and nothing else, like in the eyes of his partner in the beginning, so we can retroactively say that in the beginning he saw himself in her eyes and he hated it, and now he looks inside himself and sees that too and he realizes that his righteousness doesn’t exist anymore and tldr going to war has permanently changed his life view and stripped away all his old convictions... and has turned him into a worse person in his eyes (because there are devils inside his heart), never mind that after having gone to war his faith in god is shaken and is not enough to counteract the consequences of what he suffered. 

I've got God on my sideAnd I'm just trying to surviveWhat if what you do to surviveKills the things you loveFear's a dangerous thingIt can turn your heart black you can trustIt'll take your God filled soulFill it with devils and dustIt'll take your God filled soulFill it with devils and dust

at this point, with that context, we can deduce that he still tries to hold on to god being on his side as he tries to go on, it’s not working, his relationship is in pieces and he’s afraid of facing it and of what he did during the war... to the point that his heart is still as black as it was in the beginning and the devils and dust (of most likely desert sand because above implications) have taken hold of his soul and filled it with hate/evilness/fear, and that’s where it leaves you - there’s no other solution, just the implications that he went to war feeling righteous about it and came back with ptsd and that his inability to talk about it or do anything about it or talk to someone is dragging down his relationship, too, and it’s killing the things he loves.

we can also assume that the harmonica parts (after the blood and bone part and in the end) bookend that because they’re in between the righteousness declaration and the last affirmation that it’s only devils and dust in his heart and not god’s faith or love anymore, while the rest is fairly quiet/understated as far as music goes.

in short: as this is also the opening of the record it sets the entire mood (admittedly all of devils & dust is not exactly uplifting stories except a couple songs) and the ending song talking about mexican immigrants dying drowned trying to cross to the us makes it in itself a bookend because it starts with a presumably american soldier who can’t get free of war and might ruin himself for it for good and ends with a mexican immigrant trying to get a better life and dying in the process, so thematically the fact that it gives you no satisfaction nor resolution and just concentrates on how the guy is feeling and what his ptsd has done to him actually makes sense because then you have to listen to all the rest before arriving to the very bitter ending. in short, not the first song about the subject from bruce’s catalog but an excellent addition to it that goes on yet another angle and tackling another war rather than his usual vietnam eviscerating, which was indeed what We All Needed in the year of the lord 2005. ;)

thanks anon!!

[vaixation]

Why I've been gone for two weeks – Please note that this post is going to contain some serious content. However, this is a really important personal update from me.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: - Animal death - Suicide ideation - Depression/anxiety/dissociation - (Brief mention of abuse/trauma/C-PTSD)

Post under the Read More. - - -

I'm sure there's a lot of people who didn't even notice I haven't been online anywhere for the past two weeks considering I'm a pretty quiet individual and often keep to myself / disappear off the social radar for months at a time. However, there's a pretty specific reason this time why I haven't been around, and it's important to discuss.

At the time I am writing this, it is currently Friday, May 3, 2019. I'm writing this ahead of time because... I cannot sleep and I need to get some of these thoughts off my mind. This week has been the worst week of my entire life, without exaggeration. I'll start from the beginning.

For those that don't know, a tornado came through my area on April 19th. I would like to state right off the bat that I am fine - it missed my house, but only just barely. We can literally see the path / damage of the tornado from our house. Apparently it actually formed RIGHT THERE - the people who live just like three houses up the road from ours said they actually saw the tornado's funnel come down out of the sky. It's wild to think a tornado could come to life that close to our house. We were very fortunate to be okay.

I can't necessarily say the same for others, however. I don't know if anyone got hurt, but I did hear that one person's house was completely flattened. (Apparently there was actually someone inside, but she went down into the basement and was okay. Also concerning her welfare and loss of property - I heard there was a fundraiser that was helping their family out, and they apparently were on the TV at some point too about it all? That's just what I've heard through the grapevine - it's all second hand information so I don't know how much is accurate and I've no way to double-check right now.) (EDIT: I have double-checked for our area now that I have internet again and I can confirm no-one in our area was actually hurt. All the damage is to buildings and property, thankfully.) There's entire areas of trees that have just been wiped out. And I know there was a bus that literally got thrown up by the wind and is now just sticking out of the ground. Last time I saw it, they still haven't fixed that.

Point being, we lost power for a whole day. They managed to fix the power pretty quickly considering the damage, but the internet? At the time of writing this... I still don't have internet. And that's the primary reason I haven't been around. But it gets so much worse from here on out. For me at least.

So, my week was already really stressful for this reason (not to mention MY JOB requires the internet and I have NOT been able to do any of my work; my bosses know my situation but it's still very stressful.) We called our ISP multiple times trying to get it to work - they've sent out two technicians so far and narrowed it down to the modem router. It wasn't hooked up to a surge protector, and the power going out the way it did seems to have zapped the modem router and it no longer works. So we decided to buy a new one, and I swear we went to at least ten to fifteen different stores looking for a new modem router.

The problem is, all the new modem routers in stock are coaxial cable modem routers. Our ISP is only a VDSL / ADSL modem router (requiring a phone line), and we went through several stores looking for a DSL to coax adapter with no such luck. Apparently, an adapter / converter like that doesn't even exist. The closest thing we could find was an ethernet to coax cable, but that's not what we need obviously. Through some other connections we managed to finally just order a DSL modem router via Ebay; it's supposed to get here on Monday of this week, so... we'll see if it does by then, I guess.

(EDIT: It arrived sooner than expected. We’ve been able to get it up and running, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to post this, obviously.)

But, well. That's not really why this has been the worst week of my life. I mean, it doesn't help, but... I can live without the internet for a week or two, you know? I've gone years without it. Whatever.

The thing is...

My cat died.

And this wasn't just some random cat, okay. His name was Chip - or rather, Slavashado. (It's pronounced "sluh-VAAH-shuh-doe") You see, I modeled his name after T. S. Eliot's poem "The Naming of Cats." Within this poem, it states that a cat must have three names. One is a common, everyday, ordinary name. Chip. One is unique to him. Slavashado. And one, only he himself knows. And he took it to his grave.

Chip's been with me basically almost my entire life. He was 21 years old. I'm 26 right now; I'll be 27 in June. So he's literally been in my life since I was 6 years old. He's always been there for me. Always.

So I cannot possibly put into words how heartbroken I am that he's gone.

I love him with all my heart. And I always will. But he's gone now.

I can't even remotely describe how empty I feel. How utterly alone I am. There's a void in my soul that's so deep it feels like it's going to erode me from the inside out.

You know, I've never lost anyone close to me before. It's not that I'm a stranger to death... far from it. I'll get into that later. But... this is the first time I've ever truly lost someone I really, really, truly cared about. I've always thought grief would be a linear thing. I've seen the Kübler-Ross model of grief more times than I can count. "DABDA" for short - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

It's not linear. Not for me. I feel all of these things at the same time somehow. It's not like I felt denial first, then moved onto the angry stage. No. I just feel all of them at the same time. And I'm so overwhelmed. And I'll go from one end of this spectrum to the other end and back again. It's far from linear.

The sad thing is, I feel my grip on this world unraveling each day. My world already ended with Chip... He meant everything to me. I love him more than anything else in this whole world. So... I've admittedly been having some very bad, depressive, suicidal thoughts. I'm not actively going to do something to myself, don't worry. But... I've been thinking lately, you know what? If a car runs over me, I don't care. What if the storms knock a tree over on my house and it flattens me? So what. What if I'm in a car wreck and die? I just... feel so apathetic.

It's like that song. "If the silence takes you, then I hope it takes me too."

But... I can't join him. Not yet. I still have to live a full life, you know? I can't come to you yet, sweetheart. I'm so sorry. I want to, but I can't. Not yet. I have to live a life that would make you proud of me, love.

Maybe we'll meet again in another life. Cats have nine lives after all...

But I've also just felt like I've started to really disconnect from reality, too. The other day someone said something - innocent, really - but the angry part of myself wanted to lash out and destroy and hurt. And the scariest thing was, I almost didn't care. Grief's not an excuse to lose your compassion, but I fear that I'm really losing it. It's hard to feel like anything's real, and somehow everything's all too real at the same time.

His health just... declined so rapidly in the last month. He went from being okay and active and about, to suddenly he can't jump anymore. Suddenly he's very lethargic and having a multitude of issues; he wouldn't be able to stand up without falling over. It got to the point where he wouldn't move around much anymore. I had to take care of him on a daily basis; almost 24/7 I'd watch him to make sure he was okay and wasn't having a hard time pooping/peeing and would wash him because he no longer had the strength to take care of himself or move anywhere or do much of anything.

I had to make a certain mixture of foods the vet prescribed to keep his nutrition levels up and to make it so he wouldn't be constipated, and had to monitor that he was eating / drinking enough. Eventually he stopped eating his food, so I ended up mixing it all in water and making it a liquid paste that he could drink instead, which he would gladly do. There were some glands on his throat that were swollen, so I think it was making it hard for him to eat even with the special food we had.

So... it both was and wasn't sudden. On one hand, it happened so fast? His health just plummeted and spiraled downhill within a few weeks. But on the other hand... he was just doing so badly. We took him to the vets multiple times and, there's really only so much that can be done. He was really old, you know? 21 is a long time for a cat to live. It's longer than most cats. I know he lived a long, good life, knowing he was well loved and cared for. And I truly did everything I could for him. I know I can't blame myself for anything, even though I tried to. I did my best, you know? But nothing lasts forever. All things one day die. It's the law of nature. And I'm no stranger to death. I know all too well this reality.

This isn't something I talk about a lot, but one of my parents was really abusive. She was really abusive to animals too. I've seen death. And horrible, traumatizing things too appalling to get into here. I've known from an early age that all things die. It's one reason I'm not... surprised. In a way, I accept that. I understand. I know.

It's why I'm a little obsessed with "morbid" themes, as others have put it. Death. Bones. Rot. Decay. (Plague flight on Flight Rising, anyone?) None of that is new to me. Finding an intrigue in it is a way of coping with it. Did you know that kids who deal with C-PTSD often recreate their trauma through play? Or fixate / obsess on the trauma somehow? That's why I literally relate so heavily to Henry from Fire Emblem: Awakening. He's the same way. He's seen animal death and cruelty. But he's also un-phased by blood and guts and everything. (He denies his trauma, but denial and even amnesia can be a big, big part of trauma. And the way he talks about his past almost sounds like he's dissociated from those feelings. I relate a lot to that too... I honestly find Henry to be very therapeutic to exploring my own feelings at times.) This is the reason I find horror and creepy content fascinating. And more often than not, it's hard to scare me. Fiction is so much less scary than the real thing.

My point is, I'm very aware of death. I'm aware of that finality. I'm aware of its permanence. Nothing I can do will ever bring my cat back. He's gone. So in a way, I accept that. And in a way, I also can't accept that answer. I miss him. I want him here with me.

In a way I'm kind of thankful that our internet wasn't working. It allowed me to attend to him in his last days without any other distractions. I spent so much time with him. And that gives me so small amount of peace, knowing that.

And I think he knew, the day he died. It was April 28th, somewhere in between 9-10 PM. I can't believe it's only been five days. It feels like an eternity without him here. But, that day, he was suddenly a lot more active than he'd been in months. He was up and walking around and came over to me and crawled up behind where I was sitting and snuggled and cuddled with me. I take comfort in the fact we shared a beautiful moment that day. Just sitting there, petting him, breathing in his wonderful scent and burying my face into his soft, warm fur. The deep purring, the soothing vibrations of his noise. I wish that moment could last a lifetime. I'm so thankful for the time I had with him though. It both feels like it was the right time - that it was meant to be - and at the same time I feel like he's left me far too soon. I miss him. I miss him so, so very much.

At least I got to hold him when he passed. I stroked his fur and cried as the last of his spasms died down. I've always feared I would find him one day and he just wouldn't wake up, so seeing him actually pass... it was scary. But it was good for me too. It brings me some small amount of closure that I could be with him in his final moments. He didn't have to die alone. For that I'm so thankful.

You deserve the best of everything, love. You were my faithful friend and companion for basically my whole life. I'll never, ever forget you.

Where are you now? Are you with the stars? Are you in my dreams? Where-ever you are, I hope you're safe. And happy. And at peace. Because I love you so, so much. And I always will. Now until the end of time, when death claims me too one day.

You know, at the start of the year, on New Year's, somehow... I knew. Somehow I knew this was going to be the year. I don't know why I did, but I just... felt it. And I promised myself, no matter what happens, I am going to make this a good year. And I will. But right now, I'm hurting. I'm hurting really bad.

Nothing lasts forever.

Not even pain. I'll be okay. But right now, I'm not.

"Whenever there is a meeting, a parting is sure to follow. However, that parting need not last forever... Whether a parting be forever or merely for a short time... That is up to you." - The Happy Mask Salesman, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

We buried him amongst some of the trees growing back behind our house. I buried him with some things - that heart pendant I used to slip into my photographs to mark them as "mine," for instance. It was a really important necklace to me. So I thought it was only appropriate that he have it. My heart belongs to him, after all. I buried him with a book that was also really sentimental to me. It's called Consider Love. The last line in the book was "Consider my love for incredible you." I signed it to Chip (Slavashado), from me (my name). I love you, sweetheart. I love you so, so much. Do you know that? I'm sure you did.

And I sang him a song, one last time. I don't know how many of you know this, but... when I was a child, my parents used to sing me a song. It became really sentimental to me because of this - memories of childhood days long past, so I sang it to him too. I modified some of the lyrics though.

"You are my sunshine, My only sunshine, You make me happy When skies are gray... You never know, dear, How much I love you... Please don't take My sunshine away.

The other night, dear, As I lay sleeping, I dreamt I held you In my arms. When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken, So I hung My head and cried.

You told me once, dear, You truly loved me. And nothing else could Come between. But now you've left me, To fly to heaven, You're amongst The stars and dreams."

I wrote him a letter, drew him a little picture, and wrote down those lyrics for him too. He'll always have it with him. We put him on his bed and put all of that in a box and put that into the ground. We're planning on planting some flowers out there.

Digging a hole is so much harder than I thought it'd be. There's so many rocks and roots and the chunks of dirt can be hard to lift out of the ground. To be honest I wasn't much help though. I basically just cried the entire time. I didn't even know my face could make that shape. I've never seen my own face in such agony before, but looking in the mirror I wouldn't even recognize myself for the sorrow in my features. It's just so foreign. Alien. It's weird to me.

In a way, actually physically burying him gave me closure. In a way it just made it so much worse. I feel all sides of this grief spectrum at the same time. Acceptance. Denial. Those two things are one and the same now.

It's okay to grieve. It's normal. It's natural. But it just hurts so much.

No amount of reading about grief can really... prepare you for it.

I've cried and cried until my head hurts and my face does too. Every time I open the door to my room, it hits me all over again. There's no one here. There's no one waiting for me at home, no small face peeking at me from the top of the stairs. It's so empty here. It's so lonely. It's so unfathomably quiet. And it's just too much.

I've even gone out to visit his grave, came back inside the house, opened the room to my door, and realized - he's not here. And I was literally just at his grave. It's all the small things, you know? I miss him in so many ways, little things I've gotten used to that tell me of his existence, but that presence - it's gone. And when I'm here in this room, it's so crushingly obvious. His aura no longer flows from his position. Where he should be, there's just nothing. He's not here anymore. He never will be here again. I know that. I do. I know he's gone. But it's just... it's so weird.

He's here one day, and gone the next.

"The years now before us, Fearful and unknown. I never imagined I'd face them on my own. May these thousand winters, Swiftly pass I pray. I love you - I miss you - All these miles away..." - Lullaby for a Princess

I thought I'd have more time. I looked at the can of food I had planned to feed him the next day (and I was really excited for him to try this flavor, too) and just lost it. There's not a tomorrow. He's gone.

I found a trace of his fur on a piece of furniture, and I just started crying all over again.

I leafed through some of the few pictures I've taken of him over the years - far, far too few. And I wanted so badly to reach through the screen onto the other side, where he is. Because he's not here anymore. It's just so hard.

I want him to come back to me.

And at the same time, I don't.

It was meant to be. There's no undoing what's done. He's gone. I know that. But it doesn't change my feelings. I miss him. I love him. And I hurt. I need him. What am I going to do without you, love? You were my constant. You were always there for me, every time I've wanted to end my life. Every time I've wanted to give up. You were there. I need you. I need you so much. You've left me too soon. But I wouldn't undo a single moment. I'll cherish each one of them.

"But time is not eternal. Please make the most of your time." - The Happy Mask Salesman, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

The fact that it's not eternal is what makes life so precious. Time is what gives each and every moment and second of our lives meaning, because that's time you'll never get back.

It's time like this that I'm also thankful for all the storylines I've grown attached to. Somehow, they're really cathartic to me. And they've all taught me things that have made this easier to deal with than if I didn't have them.

Super Danganronpa 2 with its message that, to give up on life is a blasphemy unto life itself. Don't give up, or you're spitting on the beauty that life is. Even if it's hard. That's all part of what makes life beautiful and worth living.

Or Undertale. That if you could control time, rewind, redo, it'd lose all meaning. Life would be static. Unmoving. And you'd get bored. Very, very bored. You'd lose what makes you... well... you. You lose yourself.

Pandora Hearts, that undoing what's happened - even tragic - would lose the meaning of what's happening. Turning back time doesn't fix things. It destroys what you had. Be thankful for the time you have, however short. Because that's what gives each moment so much meaning.

Majora's Mask, because it teaches me that loss and grief are all a part of life. And you have to learn to move on, and let go. All things come to an end. And that's okay. When one door closes, another opens. Life moves on.

There's... well. A reason why those four storylines are my top favorite storylines. They're therapeutic to me. They help me cope with life in general, and everything I've gone through.

The day before he died, we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. The fortune cookie literally told me, "Opportunity is knocking on your door - answer it tomorrow."

"May be a reason why all the doors are closed So you could open one that leads you to the perfect road" - Katy Perry, "Firework"

You know that song, "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day? If I'm not mistaken, it was written after the passing of the singer's dad. And the sentiment is something I relate to. Wake me up a few months from now. I just don't want to be here right now. I'm so tired, and so very sad. There's a sorrow deep inside my soul too heavy to bear right now. I just want to sleep. I want it to be over. I don't want to deal with all of this right now. It's so much, and I'm overwhelmed.

I don't know if this factors into denial, but I've been trying to get out of the house more. Staying here just reminds me of what I've lost. I've been taking walks outside. Just anything to get my mind off of Chip. All the scents and sounds. The life that's buzzing around right now - the seasons are beginning to change into summer, and there's so many insects and birds about. Life continues on.

Somehow it's comforting to me. And somehow it's not. The more time I spend out of the house, the more I can't tell what's real anymore. The real world feels like a dream. Fake somehow. And my house just feels like a nightmare. I dread going to sleep every night. What nights haven't been restless have been filled with fear. What if I have a nightmare? What if I have a dream where he's alive? It will just break my heart all over again to wake up in the morning and realize he's not. It hits me every morning even without that, when I wake up. The sadness returns tenfold each day. I don't know how much longer I can go on like this. Hope seems like a concept far away.

"I'll see you laugh, I'll see you smile, I'll be with you... Just for a while.

But when the morning comes, And the sun begins to rise...

I will lose you.

Because it's just a dream, When I open up my eyes, I will...

Lose you...

I used to believe in forever. But forever's too good to be true. I've hung a wish On every star It hasn't done much good so far.

I can only dream of you, Wherever you are..." - "Wherever You Are", Winnie the Pooh

I know things are going to be okay. But today is not the day.

What's kept me going is busying myself with as much as I can. Thoughts of what I'm going to do each day. I'm taking it one hour at a time at this point. It's all I can do. Just keep going. Just a little farther. The moment I stop to unwind and take a break is when I start to unravel and remember. My thoughts always drift back to the same place somehow. He's gone. What am I supposed to do now?

Perhaps this won't make any sense. And quite honestly I don't care if it doesn't make sense to anyone else, but. Somehow... I felt like Chip has given me one last hope. He left me with something, a feeling. The day after he died, I just... I felt something. Like he was telling me that things were going to be okay, and directed my thoughts to what I should do, now that he's gone.

I want a new kitten.

I'm not replacing Chip. I can never replace him. He's one of a kind, and always will be. But when one door closes, another one opens. I need something to hold. I need something tangible, that's real, to touch, and hug, and cradle, and care for. I need something that needs ME to anchor me to this world, and give me a reason to stay. I need something that can break me out of this cycle of dissociation and ground me. And caring for another life is therapeutic. It makes me feel needed. Like I have a purpose.

Everyone needs to be loved, and to give love.

You know what's wild? The other members of my household unanimously came to the same decision without me even discussing it with them. Somehow, it feels right. I get this weird feeling Chip actually... sort of pushed our thoughts towards this. I don't know why I think that? By all logic that wouldn't be possible but then again, I truly don't think Chip was an ordinary cat at this point. He was so much more.

Do you ever have a dream, and in that dream you just know something? Without knowing why? But you know it for a fact, in that weird dream-sense? For me, that's what it's like. I just know. Even if no-one else believes me on this, I just know.

I'm not great with people. But I love cats. I've always been really good at reading their body language. And I admittedly do like kids. Whenever I go to my family reunions, I always hang out with the kids, not the adults. Their energy is so fun and invigorating. There's so much life in kids, and it makes me just a little happier to spend time with them, even if I hardcore lack social skills. I might not be great around kids, but I really try. I think my cousin’s children like to spend time with me. Their mother keeps telling me so, at least.

Point is, I love that energy. I know a kitten is going to just be energy incarnate. But I think that's what I need in my life. Something to protect and love and spoil. Something to pour all of my affection and effort into. I often feel really restless. Like the life I'm living right now isn't enough. And I'm sure a kitten would more than keep me on my toes and keep me busy. I expect many sleepless nights. I expect to be woken up like 6-7 times per night, even. But you know what? That's okay. I don't mind at all.

I got to play with some of the cats that my relatives have last time I was there and it just reminded me... how long it's been since I've played with a cat like that. My cat was too old to want to play (and I didn't want to cause him issues, he had a heart murmur and so I also didn't want to get him too excited in his old age because oh dear), so I've missed being able to manipulate toys into being a cat's "prey" and lazer pointers and have cats go nuts after it. I've really missed that. So having a kitten that loves to play? Sign me the heck up.

There's a lot of things I wanted to do with my cat, but he was just too old.

You see, I was only 6 when I got my cat. So I was a kid. And I didn't really get to like... spend money on spoiling my cat because at that age it's not like I had money? Once I turned around 20 or so I started really wanting to buy things for my cat, and show him how much I loved him by getting him nice things and toys and a cat tree and all sorts of other things. But he didn't really... like most of what I got him. And it really made me feel frustrated and sad and disappointed because I really wanted to show him how much he meant to me. But at the same time I was afraid of getting him anything because he wouldn't use most of what I'd spent my precious money on. Money doesn't grow on trees.

I understand, he was old by the time I actually had money to do things for him with. But that's all the more reason why a kitten really excites me. That dang lazer pointer I bought? I bet a kitten would love that! (I mean dang I even... bought one that has a USB stick on the end so you can recharge it because I really wanted it to last. Chip was super apathetic to the lazer pointer for the most part.) I wonder if a kitten would like that catnip treat I bought from Jackson Galaxy's shop? (In case you don't know who Jackson Galaxy is, he's a cat behaviorist and honestly knows so much about cats and their behaviors and he very clearly has a passion and great love for feline friends.)

Also that fun little cat tunnel I got my cat. He hated it. I thought he'd really like it because he liked small spaces (I used to have little boxes set up for him because of this) and also he really liked sitting on crinkly / noise-making things like plastic bags and the inside of this tunnel was super crinkly sounding. So I thought it'd be perfect. But he hecking hated that cat tunnel to the point where I almost threw it away because he would avoid it with a passion.

But I bet a kitten would love it. And that cat tree I bought! And I'm gonna get a nice squishy soft bed for him too when I get him since we buried Chip with his bed. And just. Something colorful! And lots of little toys and things! My head fills with so many ideas and plans and things I've got to prepare for for the arrival of a new kitten. I don't have one yet, but I'll get one soon.

It's the only thing right now that fills my heart with hope, and love. I want to take a new life in with me, and care for this new life to the best of my ability, and love him with all my heart. I'm gonna spoil him in toys and fun things and shower him with as much time and affection as I can. I need this. I need something to love and hold and care for. I have some really strong protective instincts, so nurturing something else - it's really therapeutic to me on so many levels.

We're going to get another black cat, just like Chip. I'm not superstitious really, but. You know what I personally think? That black cats bring you GOOD luck instead of bad luck. You're blessed by their presence when they're in your life. It's when they LEAVE you that the bad luck comes rolling in. That's why crossing a black cat's path supposedly causes you bad luck. Because now they're gone.

Plus, cats actually purr at a frequency that's been proven to heal bones and soothe. That's why cats make a really good companion for people dealing with depression, to be honest. And heck knows I have a broken heart that needs mending.

"Everything's gonna be alright, Everything's gonna be okay. It's gonna be a good, good life." - Bebe Rexha, "I'm A Mess"

[cometthespacechinchilla]

I'm worried too. 1.) There were (in my opinion) some subtle signs that MC isn't really ok with the way he's behaving/treating her in the current situation. 2.) He made her promise to stay by his side (in the cave, I think) and now he left her behind?! I don't think she'll be happy after the initial relief of rescuing him.

Warning: this went completely off the rails, I apologize.

I didn’t see them as subtle, I saw her as definitely not liking how he treated her, but it also was pretty accurate to being in a relationship/friendship with someone with a mental illness, especially when you still don’t know the person well enough: where do you draw the line? She knew how she felt, but she wasn’t sure if/how to tell Atlas that.

Because while you don’t get to be treated like shit, if someone is dealing with a trigger in that moment then it’s not surprising if they’re much shorter of temper than the average person when dealing with an extremely stressful, triggering situation. And that takes time to learn how to deal with those moments, even if you have a mental illness or have dealt with other people with a mental illness. The fact is in that moment, MC (and the crew) really has no idea how to deal with this side of him because he normally doesn’t present this way or at least this intensely.

Was him getting her to give that promise hypocritical? Definitely, but it makes total sense. While Orion is the Promise’s captain, Atlas is still a leader (when he’s forced to take the lead, you can see that he is good at it, but since he views his leadership as a factor in getting his men killed he can’t bring himself to do it willingly) and is very protective over his family, especially MC. As he said, he hasn’t had to worry about someone else like he has about her in a very long time and given how the last time he was (or felt) responsible for others’ safety ended up with a lot of his friends dead, it’s not shocking how he responds at the idea of MC getting killed, especially by the same people that killed his squad years earlier. The rest of the crew, not as important to MC as him but still important, plus a lot less vulnerable, is also in this situation because of him. So can you imagine what would happen to him if any one of them got killed? Especially MC?

It’s all this stuff compounded together: he feels responsible for their deaths, he feels responsible for the situation the crew’s in, he feels responsible for MC because she’s A. his lover B. a lot more squishy than the rest of the crew just by having very different life experience and C. the first person he’s probably gotten close to in around a decade, and he’s also dealing with a series of triggers that would wreck a vet who was dealing with his PTSD healthily, let alone someone who isn’t.

Look, if you drink like he does then you have issues with living, especially because big big symptom of PTSD is suicide ideation. So the suicide mission in his mind makes sense: he’s not only helping protect the crew (and when you’re in his kind of headspace, it makes perfect sense doing this) but also he can atone for the sins he feels he has (for his murdered squad and for whatever evils he had unwittingly been doing for the Union before then). The fact that it will get him killed doesn’t register in his mind as a bad thing.

That all being said (I mainly wanted to go over that at least while it was wrong of him, it fits his character and makes sense to him and also I have a hard time judging him because... well the relationship and making stupid decisions while dealing with a mental illness is kinda relatable), I hope that MC does rip him a new one. BUT SHE HAS TO TIME IT PROPERLY. If she does it right when they escape, it’s too soon. Neither one of them is calm, Atlas is probably still easily agitated and it will go to hell and that’s how you end up with a really messy breakup. She’ll have to wait until they’re both calmed down, out of danger, and he’s not at risk for having a mental freak out (cause nothing adds stress like your partner chewing into you when you’re emotionally vulnerable and also suicidal, lest we forget that part, thanks Lovestruck). I mean, even if he didn’t have PTSD it’s good to wait until all parties are chill as a general rule, it’s just that parties in this situation may take longer to chill than others. Pop him in the fridge for half an hour, MC.

MC’s justified in her anger and frustration at how she’s been treated recently and I definitely want to see her not take this sitting down (or just let some piss-ass escuse placate her, RENZEI), but I also want them to do it right. Communicate, dammit.

And if she doesn’t, I’ll write it my damn self. As if Soulmates 2.0 didn’t have enough goddamn chapters as it is.

[thethinkingman]

PTSD and First Responders – The Thinking Man

The Thinking Man

 Posted on December 8, 2020 

PTSD and First Responders

By now we all have heard about PTSD, what it is, but not what causes it. Most people automatically think of our troops and veterans when the topic of PTSD comes up. Rarely does anyone equate First Responders with PTSD.

What is it? According to the Mayo Clinic PTSD is a mental condition triggered by a terrifying event, either experiencing it or witnessing it. Under risk factors they list “having a job that increases your risk of being exposed to traumatic events, such as military personnel and first responders.”

What are traumatic events? The list can be long and several factors can fit under one. I’m going to condense the list a little. They are combat, abuse, assault, threats to life & limb, accidents, fire, natural disasters, torture, life threatening illness, terrorism and stress. Stress accumulates and builds up increasing the PTS.

From here on out I will refer to PTSD as PTS. There is a move, I whole heartedly agree with, to drop the “D”. Disorder implies something is wrong with you and no one wants to admit that. There is a stigma of weakness with the word disorder. There’s also a stigma of dysfunction due to media malpractice. If we truly want those grappling with PTS to get treatment, council or help we have to change the approach.

The term first responder appeared somewhere around Jimmy Carters term in the White House. Society typically agrees that first responders are fire, police, EMS yet they often leave out the person who answers the phone when you call 911. In some publications they use the phrase “to include EMS” or “to include paramedics” when referring to first responders.

Let’s face it, EMS (EMT, Advanced or Intermediate EMT and Paramedics) is often forgotten. They don’t share the limelight with police and fire. No one thinks about the person answering the phone and what they relive hearing. EMS crews tend to get the worst of it. Fire and police don’t get sent to every EMS call, but EMS gets sent to most fire calls and numerous law enforcement calls. Once EMS has stabilized the person, loaded them in the ambulance, they are still working on the patient while fire and police are on to other things. EMS has them until they reach the hospital or the morgue. They carry the guilt if the patient dies.

EMS often run calls in multiple police and fire jurisdictions or beats. One EMS crew can run 20 calls in a 24 hour shift while police and fire in the same area only run a couple calls. Sometimes the EMS crew make several trips past the local firehouse while the fire crews are sleeping. EMS is entrenched in high stress life or death situations every shift.

I’m not saying fire and police don’t have valid claims of PTS, what I am saying is EMS is treated like the red headed step child of the first responder world. People rarely think of the ambulance crews until they can’t breath or grandma is having a heart attack. Then they expect them there lickity split. You then expect personable and friendly care. It never crosses your mind at 3 AM that the crew showing up has been on shit since 7 AM, has 4 hours until their shift ends, has run 6 calls since 8 PM. They are tired and hungry and might not be as friendly as a Chick-fil-A worker.

There’s a lot of cross over in the first responder community. In your less populated and rural areas many also volunteer with the local volunteer fire department or rescue squad. Many work part-time jobs with other agencies. It’s not uncommon for an EMT to work part-time for a fire department, or a cop to work part-time for EMS. Due to the unjustifiable low wages they receive 1, 2 and sometimes 3 part time jobs are needed. So even on their days off from their full-time job they are still exposed to PTS events.

We need to look at our first responders as much as we look at our military and veterans for PTS. Vets and service members get a break from the trigger events. Even with numerous deployments to a combat theater they still have days they aren’t on patrol or not being engaged by the enemy. Eventually they rotate back to the states and most never see a situation like that again. Our first responders endure the triggers every shift, every part-time shift and on many calls to their volunteer service. They don’t get weeks, months and years to recover and regroup. They are immersed in it.

Let’s look at some numbers. In an Institutes of Health article “PTSD in First Responders ” they write that more than 80% of first responders experience traumatic events on the job. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) states that about 1 in 3 first responders develop PTS whereas about 1 in 5 of the general population does. In a Sage Journal study PTSD is present in 15 % of emergency personnel (EMS), 13% of rescue teams, 7% of fire fighters and 5% of police officers. An estimated 400,000 first responders in America have PTS. Personally I believe that number is much higher. They can only track the number of respondents and info from EAP programs.

37% of EMS personnel and firefighters have contemplated suicide. This is about 10 times higher than the general population. 6.6% of those have attempted suicide. In some locals EMS is not considered an essential government service leaving EMS personnel and / or volunteers on their own to deal with PTS. Due to the low, or no wages, professional help is often unattainable to them.

I want to address the church for a moment. The church is a place to heal, be encouraged and built up to face the evils and rigors of the world. Many first responders feel unwelcome and judged at church. Consequently they stop going. The general populace has no understanding of their shifts nor how tired they can be come morning when they get home. 24 hour shifts for fire and EMS are common. Law enforcement tend to work 8 or 12 while being on a rotation like the other 2. Some of these rotations mean the person will work every Sunday in a month. Some Sundays they get off at 7 am, get home with every intention of going to church only to be so tired they crash and wake up in the afternoon.

When they come to church and people smell cigarette smoke or notice they are struggling or even questioning the existence of God they are judged and told to have stronger faith. That’s as stupid as telling someone dealing with depression to just be happy! They are told “if you just came to church more” or “pray more”. These are not helpful. They are told to mingle more and they shouldn’t be so closed up. You don’t realize that is a by product of the job and a PTS symptom. Like many vets, first responders developed unhealthy coping mechanisms and humor darker than used motor oil to cope. A vast majority of those at church don’t understand, don’t want to understand and cluck their tongues at what they deem to be inappropriate. Many first responders decide they don’t need that added stress and guilt and would rather hang out with others like them who understand and accept them.

First Responders are like vets in this, they are often uncomfortable with praise. Some thank them for their service to the community or call them heroes. I haven’t talked to one that considers themselves a hero. The opposite is often true. Just as you replay failures in your life, even when nothing you could of done would have made a difference, they do the same but their replays often involve a lost life, someone crippled, a lost home or rapist that can’t be found. Telling them they shouldn’t feel that way is as useless as you being told not to also.

Taking one 2 hour service on First Responders Day or week to recognize and praise them makes them as uncomfortable as it makes vets. We didn’t ask for it and only go along with it at the prompting of a boss or spouse. It feels fake, a phony effort to make you feel good. The church is not seen the other 364 3/4 days a year. If you want to make a difference and show your appreciation get to know them. Build a relationship with them. Over time they will become comfortable with you and open up. Until then you have no right, authority or permission to drop advice or judgment.

Lastly, stop asking them about their worst calls. The church is a place to grow, heal, strengthen and be readied for the coming week. The last thing wanted is to relive the horror, the evil, the smells of the worst call at church. I know many that stopped going to church because of this. A young lady asked a young EMT visiting a church what he did. He told her he was an EMT. She thought that was cool and asked about his worst call. He was so tired of that question that he gave very descriptive details down to collecting leaking brain matter from an exit wound. He never saw that young lady again. Not long after that he stopped going to that church. The other thing that’s hated is “oh, you’ve seen some bad stuff, you must have PTSD.” You don’t know them well enough to throw that out there. Regardless of how you meant it, it comes across as nothing but highly judgemental.

If the church truly wants to show it’s appreciation start by routinely, diligently and deliberately praying for them. Learn some of their names and call them out by name in prayer. Build relationships with them and keep an open eye as to how you can serve them. Yes, even when you get nothing in return. As you build a relationship, earn friendship and trust they will start to open up. Be an ear to listen without offering advice unless it’s asked for.

First responders have an unrelenting job that causes unique problems and dynamics to relationships and marriages. Their spouses don’t want to hear your advice either unless the relationship is established, trust is solidified and advice is solicited. The only exception is from someone who is walking in their shoes or has walked in them. Most importantly, keep your local first responders in prayer.

Andy

[julystorms]

The Great Fandom Debate: Episode 29, Nanaba’s Death

Considering that April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, it seems grotesquely fitting to talk about the anime-only reveal of Nanaba’s history as a survivor of it.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about the lines Nanaba speaks in her death throes. I’d like to add my two cents because I feel that I bring a valuable and relevant perspective to this discussion.

Here are the lines:

“Ahhh! No! No! Father, stop! Father! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I won’t do it again! Father—no!” **

They are cried out as she’s being torn apart by titans. She’s already lost most of her right leg; her femoral artery is hemorrhaging blood. Even assuming the artery contracts to try and slow the flow of blood, she’ll lose consciousness in <40 seconds and she’ll die from blood loss in less than three minutes.

A few people have commented across various posts and reblogs claiming that they interpret these lines as Nanaba recognizing her father as one of the titans attacking her, or that she’s hallucinating and she’s apologizing to her father for having joined the military. I’ve also seen people try to claim she was calling out to a priest or to God.

However, in context these interpretations don’t work. Firstly, Nanaba, using polite language, is calling out to her familial father (お父さん)—though he could be either a step-father, biological father, or adoptive father. Secondly, if Nanaba’s family was from Ragako Village, she would have gone south with Mike and/or it would have come up in the Rooftop Conversation scene. It didn’t.

Finally, you can’t take chunks of what she says and interpret them separately. They come together. Everything she says is aimed at her father. Not just, “I’m sorry.” Not just, “I won’t do it again.” She says both of those things to him. She also begs him to stop. She cries out, “No! No!”

This is not a person apologizing to their father for joining the military.

This is a person in the middle of an overwhelming PTSD Flashback. She thinks she’s with her father. She believes she’s done something wrong and is being punished for it. She’s trying to get the punishment to stop by apologizing and promising not to commit the offense again.

Nanaba is not a person who did something wrong once and got hit for it. This kind of PTSD reaction is undoubtedly the result of something bigger. These lines exist to show us that Nanaba is a survivor of child abuse.

We’re not fully privy to the type(s) of abuse inflicted upon her (though there was undoubtedly a physical component). We’re not made aware of how long it went on for, either (it could have still been ongoing at the time of her death—via letters, on furlough). We don’t get the details. All we know is that Nanaba’s experiences with her father were so traumatic that the pain of her leg being ripped off triggered a PTSD flashback.

For a more detailed look: a broken femur is one of the most painful things you can experience, yet Nanaba’s femur being snapped off triggers a PTSD flashback to her father beating her. Rating this as just physical pain, it’s obvious here which event is more painful. Yet we know what pain Nanaba sees as worse, as the bigger evil; we know what experience she associates massive amounts of pain with and the aggressor of that painful experience. It’s her father.

Most people have accepted that Nanaba is a survivor of child abuse and they all have a lot of interesting things to say. I saw many comments and reblog additions by happy and angry people, not all of whom will receive credit with their mentions here (to protect those who may wish to remain anonymous). However, I’d still like to discuss and add my own opinions to this discussion because I believe there’s a lot to be said about this character and about the backstory that has been added for her.

First, my own thoughts. I’ve been writing Nanaba for a long time. I RP’d her for a while. I had a backstory chosen for her years ago, and had mentally, at least, fleshed out her character. To give you an idea of perspective: I’m coming at this as someone who has liked this character for a very long time.

I always wrote her as a fairly confident person, but then the “Shelter from the Rain” story came out and revealed that Nanaba feels that she is a burden to her teammates, which led me to believe she has some issues with feeling that she needs to be better/that she’s not trying hard enough. Lately I’ve been writing privately with @trash-god to try and get a really deep in-depth feel for Nanaba’s character, since I’d like Nanaba to be a big part of a story I’m planning.

This reveal didn’t ruin her character for me. It didn’t alienate me. It left me feeling a little shell-shocked, a little hollow, and …uncomfortably close to her. I have a lot of fears regarding this reveal. I’m afraid people will remember Nanaba primarily as an abuse victim instead of for her actions or her personality: her resolve, her smile, the way she fought, how she took control of the situation, her belief that once you’ve signed up as a soldier you must fulfill your duty no matter how dangerous it is.

And some of the things people are saying… Honestly, reading those things makes me feel like I’m slowly crumbling.

This reveal was manipulative. It existed to make an already tragic death worse. It’s…angst fodder. It will never matter or mean anything.

It says nothing about who she was as a person.

It’s there to shock the audience, and in that it did succeed. A lot of people were shaken. I’m still shaken. I’ve watched that scene now over 20 times. I can’t stop thinking about it. I was shaken to my core over just a few lines.

It’s not the implication of child abuse that bothers me so much as the way it’s portrayed, the perspective we’re given it from.

Abuse like that…

It needs to matter. It doesn’t float in a void. The reveal made it her character instead of allowing it to be a part of her history. We were given a woman’s most private fear, something I doubt she shared with just anyone, and we saw her completely overwhelmed by it—living it, even. She shared her last moments with the person who hurt her most while she was still alive. She couldn’t escape it, couldn’t overcome it—not even as she died.

I refuse to blame Nanaba for succumbing to a PTSD flashback because she can’t help it. It happened against her will. She was terrified and in a lot of pain and those feelings are things she associates with her father. This is a reality that survivors of abuse and trauma live with, often for the rest of their lives. Nanaba can’t control her PTSD any more than any of the rest of us can.

That said, I don’t like the message it sends to victims and survivors of abuse—that they won’t be able to move past it, that it will come back to them in the end, that there’s no escaping it.

That kind of abuse…in an environment like the military… Look, it would have had an impact on Nanaba. You can’t say she was able to hide something so traumatic from everyone: from her teammates, from her supervisor, from her friends, from the person who bunked with her. If pain is a trigger, she’s probably been triggered before—where? An expedition? Training? And then there’s the fact that her father was an Authority Figure who abused her. How did she feel about the people who had power over her in training? Did anyone ever try to abuse their power over her in any way? How does she feel about Mike who is not just an authority figure but a very tall very imposing-looking man? Was there anything to overcome in regards to his presence as her immediate supervisor? What about Erwin as the head of the entire Survey Corps?

I’d also like to address the gendered stink surrounding this. I’ve accepted it as part of Nanaba’s backstory (let’s not pretend this defines her, all right?), but I think it’s really, really important for everyone to acknowledge that the writers made a conscious choice to give this to Nanaba. Not to Henning who has no real personality at all, and not to Gelgar who was suffering head trauma at the time of his death.

We know that Gelgar already had a death scene planned out. It was in the manga. He wanted a drink, didn’t want to go out sober, and was thrown into a situation of cruel irony where he got his bottle of liquor but…it was empty. Nanaba was left a little high and dry in the manga: she died silently—but I liked it because it was something I associated with her line to Mike about not wanting the cadets to see her feeling discouraged. It was something I felt connected to, because man, I really identified with her line about not showing weakness to a bunch of kids she doesn’t know well. I thought (and wrote!) that she forced herself not to cry out at her death to keep from panicking the cadets whose helplessness she felt partially responsible for.

Nanaba didn’t need anything added to her death or to her character—and she certainly didn’t need something added more than Henning (who got the least attention of all the vets at Utgard) did. I realize that Henning died instantly and so was not a good candidate for cramming in a history like this, but I want you all to think about the fact that none of our male characters have a traumatic past of this nature given this little amount of attention. Those same lines could have gone to Gelgar and had a massive impact on the audience. Here’s a fairly strong character who has shown a lot of fear, who wanted a drink, who hit his head hard enough that he lost almost all his remaining strength… And who could have cried out just the same. It would have no doubt leant another angle to his desire for alcohol, to his fear of the titans and his coping mechanisms. To a home life that we know nothing about.

But no. These lines went to Nanaba.

Just like sex/human trafficking went to Mikasa.

Just like an abusive/manipulative mother and father went to Historia.

Just like poverty went to Sasha.

Abuse went to Ymir.

An implication of rape via abuse of military power went to Hitch.

Don’t fucking tell me this shit isn’t gendered in this series. Don’t. Don’t even try. This is trauma used for flavor text. Spice. Aimed specifically at female characters. Tidbits of shit that don’t mean anything overall and never come up again/seem to impact the characters or their relationships to others. Bullshit like that.

The writers weren’t thinking any deeper than “how can we make her death sadder?” And the answer was: “Her life was painful, too.”

You can say Levi had a pretty bad past, but we get chapters devoted to it. We get a two-volume spin-off dedicated to telling that story. We see his personality page after page, chapter after chapter, extra information interviews/stories/et cetera, one after another.

We don’t get that about these female characters.

We never will.

And look. Speaking as a person with a lot of mental issues and hang-ups brought on by various factors I’m not comfortable making public knowledge, I know how they affect my life. My daily life. Including the parts people close to me can and do and will inevitably pick up on. I know how hard it is to try to exist as a “regular” person in a world that is not meant for me. I see red when I see trauma dumped into a series like this just so it can exist as…a cute little…accessory.

That’s not what it is. It’s not a fun bit of trivia. It’s not something that tells us what kind of a person she was. It just exists to make an already terrible death harder to watch. Not because we see Nanaba is rooted in the middle of a PTSD flashback and not mentally present in the situation, but because that is literally all we know of her life. So her life becomes abuse to the audience and so does her death.

This isn’t character development because nothing develops. We’re not shown her working to overcome a history of abuse. We’re not given scenes other characters being gentle to her in ways to help her get through her daily life/cope with this trauma. There’s no progress (or lack thereof) with which to compare to even make a claim that we’re seeing development. For an example: Mikasa learning to let/trust Eren look after himself is development. The fact that she was almost sold into sex/human trafficking is not.

One last comment on this subject: I think the presentation of the scene of Nanaba’s death is especially disturbing in that it manages to victimize her in a distinctly gendered way. The imagery of this scene evokes thoughts of assault, in particular of a sexual nature. I don’t know how much of this was intended and how much of it was accidental. I don’t know if we’re meant to think that Nanaba suffered that kind of abuse at the hands of her father, or because of him (prostituted to other men, for example), or if it’s just a product of how the scene was laid out in the manga. (If one titan had a hold on her and had been chewing on her leg or shoulder and she was crying out in that same way, it would not have given me the same visceral reaction or mental image/connotation.)

There is hope for those who want to look closely at Nanaba’s character, but I refuse to believe the writer(s) looked this closely themselves or even intended it, so I’m just going to stop everyone at the door and say: this is MY interpretation and NOT something I give WIT or Isayama credit for having created intentionally.

In the context of Nanaba’s history as a survivor of abuse by a prominent authority figure, one she had to call “father” (not “dad”) and speak politely to, I think her relationship to Mike is extremely important. Let me explain.

Nanaba calls Gelgar by his first name: no honorifics. The implication is that they are close, or at least view each other as equals (he returns this favor by calling her by her first name without any honorifics). Hell, Lynne talks to Gelgar that way, too.

But Mike is an authority figure—one whom Gelgar (who is in general a casual speaker) refers to respectfully (he calls him Mike-san). Nanaba, on the other hand, just calls him Mike…and not only when she’s alone. Before the rooftop scene, she calls Mike by his first name with no honorific in front of Thomas. Mike is by far her superior, one of the highest-ranked members of the Survey Corps.

For someone who was forced to call her dad “father” and speak politely to him, I think that she calls another Big Imposing Authority Figure by his first name means a lot.

I’ve mentioned this a long time ago, of course, but in light of this new context it carries much more weight. It could be a sign that she’s not weighed down anymore in her everyday life by her shit old man.

Unfortunately we don’t get to see this develop. We don’t know what Mike and Nanaba’s relationship really was, though this implies a certain closeness that isn’t implied between her and anyone else. And we will never know what obstacles she’s overcome to get to a point where she could not only call Mike by his first name, but that she could also feel comfortable going to him when she felt afraid and in need of comfort.

But I like to think it was a long journey--one they went through very carefully together.

(And I’m going to write about it.)

Shipping aside, it’s a hopeful thought. That Nanaba was not saddled with constant fear of her father every single day of her life, and that she did take what she wanted and fought for it--not just toward the end of her life, but all the way through.

Now for the things various people said about this reveal and my opinions on them:

“wonderful character development”

It’s not character development.

“it makes her memorable”

I guess in the same way I’m memorable because I don’t have teeth? Fuck off.

“her character had no hook except ‘badass woman’ in the manga”

People don’t have ‘hooks’ all right. Like from a literary standpoint I get what this is saying but it irritates me. Nanaba was a long-time veteran of a high-casualty military branch who still lost hope when she thought Rose was breached, when she thought the world was about to end. But she was talked into fighting and she did so until the very end—and gave her life to protect the helpless cadets she felt partially responsible for. “Victim of abuse” isn’t a hook. It isn’t her character.

“a cool little detail” because it shows that “even characters you don’t see much have depth to them” and “she has a backstory even if we didn’t see it or a buildup”

It’s not a “cool” “little” detail anymore than my trauma is a “cool” “little” detail of my life. Please be careful about your phrasing. That said, just like IRL everyone we see has a backstory and depth we are not necessarily privy to. It could have still been written in a way that wasn’t jarring and unnecessarily heavy-handed.

“it doesn’t add anything to her or the situation”

I won’t say it doesn’t add “anything” since information about a character in general is something, but…it doesn’t affect the situation so it’s unnecessary.

“an attempt to make her look pathetic and pitiful like Mike during his death scene”

I kind of agree. Mike’s death seemed to seek to humble a hulking giant of a dude by making him break into tears. Nanaba’s death preyed on her gender in a much more harmful way, I think. (As the “Goodnight, Sweet Dreams” story for Mike shows us that he has some PTSD that evokes tears already.)

“so on the nose” / “cheap” / “silly in its attempt to be serious and dark”

I agree with the first two but I don’t think it’s “silly” in its attempt to be serious and dark. Child abuse isn’t silly; I can’t even pretend it’s silly. It’s way darker and more serious than this series can deal with, though; it was just a cheap shot at tragic dark angst.

“no problem with the detail itself” but “pushed and unnecessary to understand her actions”

Agreed completely.

“we don’t have to know much about a character to enjoy them” / “can’t come to terms with what she said even though she never interested [them] as a character”

I agree. I’ve loved Nanaba for a long time, way before this reveal. That said, it was a very triggering thing to have suddenly thrust in your face and I know a lot of others in fandom were made very uncomfortable by it, so I’m sorry that so many people have had to deal with it.

“time spent trying to understand the character might feel thrown away?”

I don’t feel this way, but I understand why people do and I think it’s a perfectly valid way to feel. I feel frustrated, personally, by the fact that I wrote a story featuring domestic violence and Nanaba was in it and in light of this new information I feel I should go back and edit it and tell the entire story for Nanaba, too, instead of the gentle light-hearted story that was told from her perspective. A part of me feels like I’ve been telling her story wrong all these years for having failed to include it. But of course…how could I have known? I was purposefully avoiding the “she has short hair she must have been hurt by a man” stereotype.

“could have been woven in better from a narrative perspective like a realistic flashback in 26 to give her an actual little arc” 

Man oh man, I’d have really felt something if we’d gotten a hint of it in 26: her voicing her own fear, mentioning her father…or Mike mentioning her father in response to her fear-reaction re: Wall Rose (assuming he knows about her trauma and would seek to create a parallel, which is: you fought that, now you have to fight this, too. You won’t lose, you’re not lost. Not if you don’t give up). (To clarify, though, I think Mike would understand that sometimes there might not be much of her able to fight, and that’s okay.) This could be a little extra sad if we assume that she might be worried Mike is dead. Not that she needs him to stand tall, but his role as her encourager and pillar could be really important to her character, and part of her being triggered could be that she feels she’s lost it. But that’s looking way too deep at something the writers would have never bothered to attempt…

“doesn’t mean it’s sexist or shock value if it’s realistic for the world”

Our world’s pretty damn sexist but it doesn’t mean that a guy telling me I have “no business” in my field and “should be home barefoot and pregnant” isn’t a sexist comment. By definition any kind of material inserted into fiction without narrative build-up that happens to be shocking for some reason is…basically just…shock value.

“no indication of her having been abused”

I want to talk about this a little more, because I feel like…abuse isn’t something you always see. Even physical abuse. But narratively speaking it shouldn’t be inserted as a random detail of her life without any buildup. It was a poor choice. Again: shock value.

“doesn’t mean being abused is being weak”

Agreed completely. I don’t want fandom to send this message to people, either. The crime of abuse is on the abuser, not the victim. You’re not weak for doing what you have to do to survive.

“it’s not about experiencing abuse, but how it was handled”

Agreed completely. It could have been done well, but it wasn’t. End of story.

“makes nanaba weak” / “won’t be known for her bravery but as the girl who was abused” / “final moments leave big impressions” / “it’s not sexist though” / “i’d feel the same even if those lines were given to another character.”

It doesn’t make her weak. I understand the fear that she’ll be known as a victim of abuse over her actual personality traits, but I want to talk about this sexist thing you say here, where you think you’d feel the same even if the lines were given to another character. I just want to ask you if you’d refer to Gelgar, given those same lines, as “a boy” and not “a man” or “a guy” or “a veteran.” Nanaba is an adult woman, 30+ years old I’d guess. She has not been a girl for a long time, but since this reveal that word’s been thrown around a lot. Please. Stop that.

“the sexist/misogynistic messages aren’t intentional i don’t think, but they still exist”

Yeah, see below.

“latent sexism is hard to explain unless you analyze discourse and conversation because we’ve been taught it’s normal. The fact that a woman screaming in her death throes begging her father to leave her alone/promising not to misbehave again is normal enough that we consider it character development is what makes it sexism. That there was a CHOICE to give this to a female character is too.” @teetanjaeger​ [here]

This is a great post and I want everyone to read it.

“abuse used as a tragedy amplifier”

That’s exactly what it is.

“a history of abuse (and from the sound of it, horrible ongoing abuse) is canon now. we can’t pretend it doesn’t matter.” / “it won’t be explored or developed.” / “filler to amp up the sads.” @momtaku​

Yes, yes, and yes. That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with refusing to accept the anime in this instance as canon—especially if it makes you feel more comfortable.

“a lazy addition” / “cliché”

It’s definitely lazy but I don’t know if it’s cliché. I’ve never seen this kind of death in any other series that I can recall off-hand, but then again…I’m pretty selective about my reading material.

“it’s saying people are still cruel inside the walls”

HAHAHA FUCK THIS BULLSHIT. Look, I get what you’re sayin’ pal, but this is a horse that has been beat to death 3001310 times over in this series. We get it. It doesn’t need to keep being stated. The extent of Nanaba’s abuse comes to this and ONLY this: “How can we somehow make her death worse than it already is?” It’s got nothing to do with spreading more of this message we’ve already seen ten tons of.

“gratuitous and unnecessary. Girl is getting her limbs torn off by titans after losing three of her friends in battle right in front of her—that’s tragic and horrifying enough. Did we really need the implied past abuse angle thrown in there at the last second to make it even more tragic and shocking?” “some backstory or even ONE mention might have made more sense but like with Mike’s death it feels like WIT is just hamming up these deaths to make them as horrible as possible.” “grossed out” “imagery of assault, gendered violence, victimization of Nanaba.” @drinkyourfuckingmilk​ [here]

Completely agreed, especially at the imagery of assault bit. I still feel gross.

“is there sexual abuse implied in this?”

That’s up to interpretation but considering the above imagery we’re given, I think a case could be made for saying it is.

“no issue with a history of abuse” “no issue with a character who rises above it or a character who falls back into that dark place” “issue is with something serious like child abuse being treated as tragedy wank fodder” “can’t rule out the nature of her abuse/if it was sexually motivated” “all of her accomplishments now relate to that abuse, something she had no control over” “her father now colors her presentation” “she’ll never get out from under his shadow” (see: petra’s dad who made fandom see her in terms of her marriageability to a man) “didn’t need to give nanaba’s filthy father more power over her” “at the moment of her death he still had power over her” “she didn’t escape him and that’s grotesque even if we’d known about her situation all alone” “especially terrible for those who relate to her” “I’m sorry there are people using your struggle for tragedy points” @lindowyn​ [here]

Another good post. I agree. Petra’s seen by a lot of fandom the way her dad talked about her: marriageability. It’s awful. I’m afraid for how they’ll portray and talk about Nanaba in the coming years. That said, not everyone gets a full recovery or can throw off the mantle of their abuse entirely. It’s doesn’t make Nanaba weak or “less than” for what her final moments were. But damn if I hate the message it’s sending to people, especially considering how many teens read this series.

“i don’t think it was added to reinforce that strong female characters are built by and will revert to their weakness in an abused state”

I agree, but unfortunately it’s a message that seems to still be getting across. :/ It’s an unfortunate accident.

“they gave her final moments to her abuser”

Yes they did.

“it seems that people who don’t have an experience with abuse aren’t able to understand the viewpoints of those who do”

I think this is the case, especially with the younger fans. Experience goes a long way re: sympathy and empathy…

“they didn’t add this scene because they want to explore child abuse and/or nanaba’s past abuse”

They absolutely did not; you’re right. I think they’d have actually tried a little if they wanted to show us a character who had that as part of their backstory, but I know what they were doing by adding it in—just trying to get a reaction from the audience. :/

If your name is not here and you want it to be associated with your comment...let me know.

TL;DR: I’m not mad at the backstory but I’m pissed about how it was handled, and the way the fandom is arguing about it and treating it makes me feel sick. There’s a lot to discuss here. I’ve accepted that this is part of her backstory. But I don’t want fandom to make it her character and I don’t want people calling her “weak” over it, either. 

I still really love Nanaba. She’s one of my favorite characters in this series. Maybe even my favorite. (How does one pick?)

If you have any questions, concerns, thoughts, or you’d like clarification or to engage me in discussion, please feel free to send me a message.

**Edited as of 20 May 2017: Nanaba’s English Dub dialogue for this scene is as follows: “Dad, no! No, stop it! Please, I’m sorry Daddy, I’ll be a good girl from now on--I promise! Ahhh! No, Daddy, no!!”

[chocolate-brownies]

The Vietnam War veteran had enlisted when he was young, serving two combat tours and surviving multiple firefights. “To this day,” said psychologist Jack Tsai of the Yale School of Medicine, “his war memories are triggered by certain smells that remind him of Vietnam”: overgrown vegetation, the acrid stench of burning, or even sweat—like that which ran in rivulets down the faces of men fighting for their lives in the sweltering jungles—brought it all back. It was classic post-traumatic stress.

As Tsai was treating him (successfully) for PTSD, however, something unexpected emerged. The vet still described his Vietnam experiences as horrific, but he said the painful memories remind him of who he is. His experience typifies research psychologists’ new understanding of trauma: When people are least resilient—in the sense that they are knocked for a loop, do not bounce back quickly or at all, and suffer emotionally for months, if not years—they can eventually emerge from trauma stronger, more appreciative of life, more sympathetic to the suffering of others, and with different (arguably more enlightened) values and priorities. 

By no stretch of the imagination would the vet be called resilient in the sense that research psychologists use the term: an ability to go on with life, essentially unchanged mentally and emotionally, in the wake of profound adversity. To the contrary, environmental triggers returned the vet’s troubled mind to the horrors of land mines and ambushes and friends blown apart. At the same time, the vet’s military experience (and his triumph over PTSD) makes him feel that he can accomplish anything. “Nothing bothers him too much, because everything pales in comparison to Vietnam,” said Tsai.

For many, post-traumatic growth brings closer relationships—as family and other loved ones are more cherished—and a stronger sense of connection to other sufferers. 

This effect, post-traumatic growth, was so named in 1996 by psychologists Lawrence Calhoun and Richard Tedeschi of the University of North Carolina. It can take many forms, but all involve positive psychological changes: a greater sense of personal strength (“if I survived that, I can survive anything”), deeper spiritual awareness, greater appreciation of life, and recognition of previously unseen pathways and possibilities for one’s life. For many, post-traumatic growth brings closer relationships—as family and other loved ones are more cherished—and a stronger sense of connection to other sufferers. 

Stronger Than Before

The concept that from great suffering can come great wisdom is both ancient and familiar. An oncologist friend of mine talks about patients who say cancer was one of the best things that ever happened to them, cutting through life’s usual trivia and making them value the truly important. President Jimmy Carter’s Chief of Staff, Hamilton Jordan (1944–2008), said his battle with cancer made him see that “the simple joys of life are everywhere and are boundless.”

After a car crash in which my childhood friend Joyce lost her right leg at age 20, her months-long recovery and rehab left her with hours upon empty hours to think. “Stuff that used to be a big deal, like being popular, just isn’t anymore,” I remember her saying. “I care about making a difference [she became a schoolteacher], and I think I’m more empathetic. I feel that when someone is suffering I understand in my bones what she’s experiencing. Before, it was just, oh, poor her.” However, post-traumatic growth does not mean traumas are desirable, let alone that they should be downplayed when they befall others. As bestselling author Rabbi Harold Kushner said about the spiritual growth he experienced after the death of his 14-year-old son, “I would give up all of those gains in a second if I could have him back.”

Few lives are without suffering, crisis, and traumas, from extreme or rare ones, such as becoming a war refugee or being taken hostage, to common ones, such as bereavement, accidents, house fires, combat, or your own or a loved one’s serious or chronic illness. For years, psychology has assumed that the best inoculation against post-traumatic stress—as well as responses to trauma that fall well short of mental disorder—is resilience, the ability to pick up one’s life where it was before the trauma. Now that psychology has made post-traumatic growth a focus of research, what is emerging is a new understanding of the complicated relationship between trauma, resilience, PTSD, and post-traumatic growth.

Post-traumatic Growth vs. Resilience

Although the psychological concept of resilience dates back to the 1970s, scientists are still struggling to understand its origins. Some studies find it’s fostered in childhood by a strong relationship with a parent or other adult, and the belief that your fate is in your own hands (a sense of agency). But the opposite belief, that “God is in control and everything happens for a reason,” may contribute to resilience, too, said UNC’s Calhoun. A 2016 review of people who survived atrocities and war in nine countries from South Sudan and Uganda to Bosnia and Burundi found that resilience varied by culture. Strong emotional connections to others fostered resilience among survivors in some societies but not others, and a sense of agency actually backfired among some: If you believe your fate is in your hands and then see your family cut down by a sniper in Sarajevo, you feel not only grief but also crushing guilt.

In the absence of resilience, post-traumatic growth—a very different response to trauma—might emerge instead. “Post-traumatic growth means you’ve been broken—but you put yourself back together” in a stronger, more meaningful way, Tsai said. This may come as a surprise to those who think of resilience as the ability to learn, change, and gain strength in the face of adversity. Among research psychologists, however, resilience is about bouncing back with relative ease to where you were before, not necessarily bouncing forward to a stronger place. By this understanding, without the breaking, there cannot be putting back together, so people with strong coping capacities will be less challenged by trauma and therefore less likely to experience post-traumatic growth. 

In the absence of resilience, post-traumatic growth—a very different response to trauma—might emerge instead.

For post-traumatic growth to occur, the breaking need not be so extreme as to constitute PTSD, as was the case for the Vietnam War vet. Tsai and his colleagues found that among the 1,057 US military veterans they studied, the average number of lifetime traumas (such as bereavement, natural disaster, illness, and accidents, as well as military traumas) was 5.7. Only 1 in 10 had PTSD, yet 59% of the vets had experienced post-traumatic growth. And the strongest predictor of whether someone would avoid PTSD after additional trauma was whether they had experienced post-traumatic growth after an earlier one, Tsai and his colleagues reported in the Journal of Affective Disorders. It was the first study to examine whether previous post-traumatic growth can protect against PTSD if trauma strikes again. The findings suggest post-traumatic growth might in fact boost resilience.

Post-traumatic growth—unlike resilience—is not a return to baseline. It is the product of reassembling your “general set of beliefs about the world/universe and your place in it,” said Calhoun: You question the benevolence, predictability, and controllability of the world, your sense of self, the path you expected life to follow. From the shards of previous beliefs, you create wholly new worldviews, and can perhaps emerge a stronger person than you were before.

What is Trauma?

Among psychiatrists, what constitutes “trauma” is controversial. Some define trauma based on the nature of the event: Psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, for instance, says a traumatic experience  must be outside the range of what humans normally encounter. Others define trauma based on how people respond to an experience: Intense fear, helplessness, horror, or distress would be symptoms of trauma.

A circular definition —“trauma is something that leaves you traumatized”—is obviously not ideal. Nor is “outside the range of normal experience” a reliable measure: Tragically, many experiences that once were outside that range no longer are, such as natural disasters, mass shootings, or wartime horrors.

Scholars are therefore trying to do better. An emerging definition holds that trauma challenges a person’s “assumptive world”: her belief in how people behave, how the world works, and how her life would unfold. By this understanding, trauma needn’t threaten life or health, nor cause post-traumatic stress disorder. But it must make you question your bedrock assumptions, such as that the world is fair, that terrible things do not befall good people, that there are limits to humans’ capacity for inhumanity, that things will always work out, or that the old die before the young. By that definition, few of us make it through this life without experiencing trauma.

The post The Science of Bouncing Back from Trauma appeared first on Mindful.

[paler-than-thou]

Hello my lovely! Yeah, I had to turn anon off on this one as I was getting some nasty anons. I’ve screenshotted this and am putting it on my main blog as I figured you’d be looking for it on here, but if you want more info or anything than I’ll be happy to answer privately if you want ^^

Right. First of all, I know right now you probably feel very confused and possibly a little upset. It’s fine to feel like that - a new diagnosis can be overwhelming, especially if it’s on top of other ones. Remember, though, you’ve had this your whole life - things like that don’t just start from the diagnosis - and you’ve already got coping mechanisms in place. My first piece of advice is to have a look at yourself, see what you do to cope - do you stim? If so, how? Is there anything you can do to make your life easier? - and do research on your autism, look at how other people cope, that sort of thing. And do it in your own time, too - there’s no pressure, if you feel you need to wait for this to sink in first, then do. Don’t force yourself to be overwhelmed if you don’t think you can manage it.

On to my neurodivergentnessness...ness. Of course I don’t mind - I’m very open about myself, especially if it can help someone. The list is a little long, and a lot of it blurs into each other, but that’s the ‘fun’ of it, hah. I’ll put in how I cope with said things in with the points as well, which means this might get a little long, but hey. So...

I am:

Autism. Yup, I’m autistic too! I have PDD-NOS autism, and was diagnosed at a young age and wasn’t told until recently. I do a lot of things to help with this, the main one being ‘stimming’ - the act of doing something to keep myself focused, like tapping fingers or clicking pens. I use fidgets - like fidget spinners - or sometimes I can ‘tick’, which comes out as rhythmic leg-jerking or tapping my fingers or anything like that. Leading into this is my ADHD, which I’m putting with my autism even though it’s not the same thing because it’s vaguely related and I suffer from focusing issues with it. Stimming helps to calm everything down - picture an internet window that has 35 tabs open, 8 of which is playing adverts, 3 are playing music and the rest are pop-ups with 1 being what I’m trying to work on. Stimming helps me to close out some of those tabs and ignore the rest so I can focus on the one I want. What I will make clear about autism in all its wondrous glory: you are not broken. We are not broken. There is nothing to cure about autism. You’re absolutely fine :)

Severe Depression (with suicidal ideation). This one’s a little harder to cope with, and mostly I’ve found a mixture of medication and therapy (like with some of the others on this list) are the most effective. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is very helpful, that is retraining the mind out of repetitive and harmful thoughts, as well as having a support network and knowing my own thought patterns enough to recognise when I need to be careful. On good days, the suicidal ideation’s a background noise I can drown out easily, on bad - well, it’s one of those tabs I mentioned earlier and it’s not shutting up. Working out how to get around it can be hard, but it’s doable - and if you do have suicidal thoughts on the regular, I urge you to talk to your doctor about it.

Antisocial Personality Disorder. Yeah, I have this one too :D there’s a lot of scary things on the internet about this one, mostly that it’s the medical term for psychopathy. Media has a lot to answer for with this - like it does with a lot of neurodivergent things - because it’s not as frightening as it seems. Mine can be shown as a lack of empathy (when I’m really bad) and sympathy, as well as having to ‘train’ myself in the difference between right and wrong. I think it really depends on how severe it is for you as to how to cope with it, because I can’t say with any thing that it’s something I need to ‘cope’ with - it’s just there, lurking in the background, though again I’m medicated and in therapy for it so perhaps that helps? :D

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This one is...a difficult one. Without going into details, I’ve witnessed and been involved in a few hellish things, and it’s resulted in this diagnosis. I’ll admit, this is the hardest for me to cope with, as it’s the one that affects my life the most - to the point where it’s likely this is what causes my seizures and jamais vú. This is pretty much also medication and therapy - lots and lots of therapy - as they’re really the only things that can cope with PTSD. Other than that, it’s damage control - avoiding things that can trigger an episode, keeping myself safe when I’m feeling bad, stimming (yup, for this too), and having others help me with it. My partners watch movies and play games before I’m allowed to see them to vet them for scenes I need to turn away from - for instance, without giving spoilers away there’s a possible scene in a Mass Effect game I need to close my eyes and ears for because it depicts one of the things I witnessed.

Anxiety. Just. All the anxiety. I’d have to say I don’t cope with this one well. This is all down to therapy to be honest, because if left to my own devices I would be happy to just...not communicate or leave my bed, but obviously that’s not a good option. I have learned to push myself, and when I really can’t push it, but my coping mechanism is to not Do The Thing. Don’t follow that. It’s a Bad coping mechanism that I’m having to literally retrain myself out of.

I do also suffer from Fibromyalgia and Chiari Malformation, but as they aren’t exactly neuro-related (the former they don’t have a clue and the latter is my brain poking out the bottom of my skull) I’m not going to include them here. There are other things I suffer from, but those are the main ones I guess? Like others would count as co-morbidities because they’d come under or be caused by all the ones up there, like my insomnia being PTSD, ADHD and anxiety-related etc.

I hope that helped a little, Anon, though for Bipolar I would recommend you go poke @puppehgal as she has Bipolar Disorder - I can only really give you an outsider’s PoV which to be honest isn’t helpful and I don’t feel comfortable doing.

Take care, sweetheart, and come back if you need to talk - whether on anon or not <3

[shleezaemour]

Finding Solace in NA meetings

Trigger warning for drugs and abuse. Nico decided to go to an NA meeting and admits a few secrets infront of his crush Will. review at will. I own nothing!! Nico was in one of his moods. Ignoring everyone and keeping to his cabin like the hermit he was. Will hated it when Nico was like this. Sunshine didn't understand though. Will didn't know what it was like to feel like your drowning every time you force yourself into a social situation. Will didn't know what it was like hearing every noise going on at the same time to the point where you can't think! People chewing leaves rustling laughter screaming smacking of lips clinking of forks everything all at once in your ears making it impossible to focus on just staying normal. Every demigod has ADHD but none of them seemed to have issues like Nico did. All the kids were scared of him anyway it was better him holing up in his cabin doing things that needed to be done. Research of burial rights and didn't other ventures in the books his father would send him. Nico didn't know why his dad kept sending him the books but he figured it was stuff he had to learn. Maybe his dad was giving him a job in the future. That was also a far fetched thought. How could his father trust him with anything? He barely trusted himself. Nightmares of his time in Tartarus plagued his dreams keeping him awake for days at a time. The things he experienced down there were to much for one person even him. Nicks and cuts littered Nicos ravaged body. Not smooth like the rest of the campers. Some of them he did but most were from fighting. No one would understand why he would do it to himself. Just like they wouldn't understand everything else he had done. It's better that no one really knew him that personally. If they were scared of him now they would exile him from camp if they knew the things he resorted to being in his own for 4 years. You grow up a lot when your on your own. If it wasn't for his father he would be dead by now. "Nico ?" Cut from his spiraling reverie Will had found him. "Hey! What are you doing here?" "Thought I'd check on you and give you a calendar for the summer events" "I'm not the bonfire sing a long capture the flag type Sunshine though I appreciate your effort" " Oh not those I'm talking about the groups that meet through the week" "Groups what groups" " My cabin and I do different groups through the week. I do NA and Austin does a grief group for kids who have lost family and friends. Kayla does AA and Cecil does a group for PTSD" "What? I don't even know what most of those are?" " Oh well NA is for drug users AA is for alcohol and PTSD is for kids with traumas in the past. Rape and violence in their life" "Wow must be some empty rooms" Nico chuckled. "Um actually we are full up most of the time. The NA I run is done at the beach since we need so much room for everyone. " "Why do you run the NA group?" "Because I was hooked on a few things myself back in the day. My mom is a famous country singer and drugs were always around so I picked up a bad habit or two. That's why I chose to be a year rounder here. Keeps me clean of I'm not exposed I'm about 3 years clean" "Never took you the type that would even touch the stuff" "Why not? We all medicate Nico. With the lives of demigods it's almost impossible not too. Kaylas dad was a huge alcoholic. Austin lost his mom to an overdose and she died in his arms. Cecil was being attacked by his step father. We all grew up with problems and drugs and alcohol and sex are just ways we end up coping with things. " "I'll think about it" "That's all I ask" Will left him with the schedule. Nico himself could go to all of these groups. That would mean admitting to his issues. He wasn't about to do that no matter how hard Sunshine pressed. Throwing the flyer away he headed to his kitchen to make lunch when his father appeared at the kitchen table with the flyer in his hands. "Father" he bowed slightly. "Son" "What can I do for you? Run away spirit? Need me to feed Cerberus while you and Wifey go on a get away?" Nico took out two root beers out of the fridge and poured them for him and his father. Passing a glass to Hades he sat and waited for the reason he decided to visit. "So... that Apollo boy seems nice" "Yeah he's ok. The only one not cowering away from me. Shows up every day I swear I think I see him more than my own reflection." "You like him don't you?" "Dad I'm not ready to date and he's.. cute yes but he's straight" "Actually he's not I've talked to his father since you two have been spending all this time together" "You spying on me and vetting my friends?" "Yes and frankly I'm glad your making better choices" "Hmph" "Yeah well I think you need to think about attending atleast one of these groups. Perhaps the one the Apollo boy runs himself?" "Dad no I can't I don't want people knowing about that." "Your not the only one that has been through this obviously I don't see why you can atleast attempt to go." "I'm sober now. I've been sober over 7 months." "Yes and I know that you haven't been feeling the best about yourself. I don't want you to back slide. I think this could be good for you " Nico sat in silence looking at his father. The man had the same eyes as him. Nico wasn't scared of his father the way other kids were scared of his father. Or hell even their own godly parent. Hades was right though. Nico had been craving it lately. The need for a release. The need to let go. "I'll think about it" "How about you go and I'll sweeten the deal" "How?" "New set of Stygian throwing knives and I start giving you an allowance?" "Your bribing me to go to meetings?" "Yes. Go to one meeting a week and I'll give you this" A black Amex appeared in Hades hand. "Seriously? Why would you trust this? Why would you trust me to do this?" "Because deep down you want help son. I know that. I know you. That and I don't know how else to get you to go. If you don't go or stop going you will find that this card goes missing" "Ok I'll do one meeting. I want the knives though. We can talk about the card if I decide to continue" "Deal" The knives appeared on the table on a cloud of smoke. His father disappeared in the same breath. Guess he was going to see what Will stupid ass group was about. Probably a bunch of Whiney kids that smoked a few joints or got hooked on caffeine pills to stay awake and study. ------------------------------ I walked down the beach to see a low bonfire and about 30 campers sat around it. Wow so many people. There was no way all these kids had drug problems. Sitting in a chair in the back Will stood up to take everyone's attention. "Hello everyone I'm Will and I'm an addict!" "Hello Will!!" The crowd chanted together. "I'm happy to see all of your today! I see some knew people here which is great and lots of old faces! Well let's get things started I'm going to talk about cravings today. I had a craving today in the infirmary. I was giving some morphine to an Ares kid who ripped his pinky finger off during sword practice. While I was giving it to him I thought about how easy it would be for me the head healer to take some myself. To mark down that I gave him two doses instead of one. People trust me. They wouldn't even question what my paper work says. But then I thought there was a reason people trusted my paperwork. It's because I don't do that and I want people to trust me. It was hard after the battle of Manhattan. I used a lot of pain killers that my mom would just leave lying around. She never noticed they were gone. She didn't need them she just had them. I want to be a doctor one day. That starts here. That starts with me being able to be stronger than this. To be stronger than me wanting everything to float away. " Everyone clapped. Including myself. Wow sunshine liked hillbilly heroine. Who would have thought. "Ok let's have our new faces share a bit with us tonight. Ok I see you there come up and tell us about yourself." Drew Tanaka went up to the front infront of the fire. "Hi I'm drew " "Hello drew" Everyone chanted in unison. "I was hooked on cocain for a really long time. I have trouble with my weight and I thought if I just did a little here and there it wouldn't be a issue. I would lose a few pounds and it made me feel more interesting. I felt like people liked talking to me thought I was fun. Turns out that was all in my head most people just thought I was annoying when I was on it. I lost those few pounds and then some. I did it so much that I finally stopped when my nose wouldn't stop bleeding. I was so scared I was losing so much blood I almost passed out. I've been clean for about two months now but what Will said about the cravings is true. I felt it when I stepped on the scale and gained 7 pounds. I wanted so bad to go back to it. I still want to go back to it. My craving isn't over. But so far I'm ok. " She went back to her seat as everyone applauded her. "You sir in the back please come up and share!" Will shouted at Nico. I thought he would pass out. Feeling the creeping heat prickle in my ears I started to slump in my chair. A voice sounded in my mind. My fathers voice. " GO!!" I stood up and made his way toward the front. "Hi I'm Nico" "Hello Nico!" Once again in unison. This was it. Here it goes. They will all defiantly hate me after this. Might as well get it over with so I can rub it in his stupid dad's face when he was proved right. " I'm nico and I'm an addict. 7 months ago my father found me alone in an abandoned building with a needle sticking of my arm. I sold my body for drugs. I know that sounds insane. Especially at my age but my mother died. I was forced into a casino that suspended time so I'm actually in my 80s. My sister died. She was the only family I had for my entire life. The hunters stole her away and then death did. She left me twice. I had no home. No family. I didn't want to be here anymore. I didn't want to be in my body anymore. I'm gay. I was born in a time where that meant being killed or locked away. I struggled with that a lot. I found out that it's not like that anymore. Well it's atleast much more accepted and it's no longer looked at as a mental problem. I battled with that while going down my rabbit hole. I didn't have any money so my body was all I had to give drug dealers. I was lucky. My dad found me. He brought me to his home in the underworld and gave me a room. Detoxed me. Helped me get through my addiction safely. I was checked out while down there I was lucky I didn't catch any diseases from either the needles or the other thing. I knew a few that were not quite as lucky. I still want to. It never really goes away for me. But I'm trying. I'm 7 months sober. I can't promise that it won't happen again. But I'm trying." I walked back to my seat as I heard the applause. People looked me in the eye as I walked by and reached out and touched my shoulder. Everyone seemed ok with what I just said. I heard a few more stories. Surprisingly not much different from my own. I never thought so many of us went through this! I went from feeling so alone to seeing these kids tell their stories and they had an idea of what it was like. I wasn't the only one who sold my body I wasn't the only one who felt alone. I wasn't the only one who spent years in solitude with no where to go. The rest of the meeting passed in a blur. They all ended up holding hands in a circle chanting something he hadn't learned yet so he just listened. As they dispersed people came to me clapping my shoulder and thanking me for my story. A feeling of acceptance washed over me. Maybe my dad was right. I would never admit that of course. As much as Hades was right I would rather have my father think I would be attending the meetings for access to the black Amex. Walking back to my cabin Will Solace put his arm around me as he walked. As much as I wanted to shove it off the weight felt nice and contact with Will made my stomach jump with butterflies. "So you and I are in the same boat I guess" "Yeah guess so" "Well that's kind of a relief honestly. It's hard to date someone who doesn't know what it's like" "Date?!" "Yeah I want to ask you out. You and me dinner and a movie type stuff" "I didn't know you were..." Nico slyly lied knowing full well what his dad had mentioned. "I am and it took real guts to admit all that up there. I was going back and forth on the idea of asking you out because I wasn't sure if you were but now that I know I'd love you take you out" "I-I guess that would be fine." They stopped at the Hades cabin door. "Hey Nico can I ask you a question that's super uncomfortable?" "Well we just left an entire group of uncomfortable so sure go for it!" "Did they ever kiss you?" "Who?" "You know.. the people you got your fix from" "Oh uh no that's not really the way it works. Honestly I'm kind of surprised you want to go out after hearing that." "Your past is your past and now is now. Don't let it define you. It was awful that it happened to you like that but I'm glad your in a place where that's no longer your current reality" "That was convoluted Solace." "Yeah I get that way when I'm nervous" "Why are you nervous still i agreed?" "Cause of this" Leaning forward I felt Wills lips against mine. Soft and warm. His hands cupping my face like it was made of glass. Like I was something precious to hold. I deepened the kiss even though I had no clue what I was doing. Pulling wills waist to me by his belt loops. Will smelled amazing and tasted like oranges and lavender. I had never felt this. Over and over I sold my body to strangers but none of them really wanted me. Will wanted me. The feeling of that was enough to wash away those shameful memories even if it was just for a moment. Breaking apart for air I looked into the blue orbs that were Wills eyes. Getting lost in them was easy. They were trustworthy and sincere. Despite him hearing the awful things he has done Will wanted to kiss him. To take him on a date. "Wow that.. that was " "That was my first kiss.." Nico squeeked out. "Mine as well..." "Well uh I guess I'll see you for the date?" "Oh yeah um tomorrow night 7pm" "Ok I'll have bells on" "What?" "Don't ask it's an old saying" "It's cute. Bye Neeks" and he kissed me chastely stumbling away from my cabin. I went inside and jumped on my bed and screamed into my pillow.