#coming into spaces as a professional

[trans-axolotl2]

In my last residential treatment stay, I did have one psychiatrist who I trusted and had a positive relationship with. Her name was Dr. R, and when I came in on the first day of treatment and told her that I would not take any psych meds and that I had a lot of past psych trauma, she validated me and told me that she would not bring up meds unless I did. Throughout my stay there, she was empathetic, listened to my concerns, helped advocate for me, and generally made me feel heard. At the same time, when management took away our doors-she did nothing. When I needed to get a feeding tube--she lied to me about how long it would be in, and what I needed to do to get it out. She enforced policies about restricting outside breaks, restrictions on items, and contributed to treatment plans that my friends felt were unfair and damaging.

She was a good person and I liked her, but she was choosing to work within a system where she could not control the dozens of things happening there that harmed us every single day. This is what I mean when I say there is no such thing as a good psychiatrist in inpatient units--she was a progressive, validating, nice person --but her very job description made it impossible for a “good provider” to exist. To be a provider who wasn’t a part of the harm that was occurring on that unit, she would have had to quit, because the very requirements of her job required committing ethical violations, restricting peoples autonomy, and perpetrating iatrogenic harm. If she had stopped enforcing harmful policies and challenged her coworkers publically, she probably would have gotten fired. And that really is the problem--causing iatrogenic harm has essentially become a job requirement on inpatient units, and being a “good provider” by the metrics of the system require you to participate in that harm. 

I think Dr. R did a better job than most inpatient psychs in mitigating the harms she participated in, and finding ways to resist shitty systems when possible. I was glad she was there and I think she made my treatment better, but the two of us had a lot of conversations together where she acknowledged the fucked up things happening in the treatment center, acknowledged her role in them, and also stated that she did not have any power to change them. She could not fix the system by working within the system. 

I get a lot of questions by people who are interested in careers in the mental health system, and asking me on whether I think it’s okay for them to work there. My first response is usually if you’re asking because you’re feeling guilty after seeing what psych survivors say, I’m not someone who’s going to give you permission to ignore that guilt. The second thing I usually say is this: you need to go into this job aware with the fact that you will cause people harm, you will get into ethical dilemmas, and there will be times where you will either have to betray your personal values or quit. There isn’t one right answer on how to engage with mental healthcare as a provider, with the reality that until we build up alternative systems of care, the current structures still exist and have people who need support inside of them.  If that’s something that you think you can navigate in a way that lets you create the least harm possible, then that’s something you need to decide for yourself, and to think really deeply about if the reality of the psych system matches up with your goals.

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[fisheito]

i told myself that yakuei only had one position then i proved myself (sorta) wrong

my fave face here:

[beggars-opera]

I don't normally advocate for murder but I will make an exception for our board president

[borealopelta]

conked out for nearly 12 hours which is really nice on a i slept less the past 2 nights combined level but also i was supposed to be up at 7

[cosmogyros]

Literally can't pay my rent until I get paid for September, which hasn't happened yet. Today is Friday, and Monday is the last day of the month. I'm so tired of being poor.

[elftwink]

have to work on a project today and an unrelated thing happened that just made me so so so so so mad (just some irl personal stuff), which normally derails my entire day because i find it so hard to come out of the angry/upset state and tend to just circle back and obsess over whatever triggered it but! today after 20 minutes of that i had a council meeting about it (<- what i call my decision making process) the outcome of which was putting it aside (!!!) for later when i could actually talk about it and resolve it (!!!) & in the meantime we could just do other stuff.

local man exuberant and jubilated to achieve feats of basic emotional self-regulation and was seen excitedly telling reporters he "never thought this day would come" and began giving a thank you speech to nobody in particular. more on this story as it develops

[th3houseofleaves]

my BODY is MY CREATION!

call me god, call me frankenstein, call me sculptor, call me creator because i am taking what i am owed i am shaping creating making myself over in the image of adam, i will rid myself of this extra rib called longing and i will be bloody and pure and new as i am born again in the body i forged for myself.

INTRODUCING christopher "kit" warren an original character based in the dc comics universe. he is portrayed by jordan gonzalez.

christopher "kit" warren is the civilian identity of the vigilante known as PORTAL, a twenty-six year old meta-human with the ability to warp or teleport short distances (safely). outside of hero work, he's an independent video game developer and graphic designer, though the latter job is more for bringing in a semi steady flow of income rather than a job he does for pleasure. ideally, he'd love to have more time to work on games but he knows that that's not feasible at this point; both for the lack of income and because of his commitment to protect his community. being a hero comes first to him.

kit is originally from star city but moved away in his early twenties. his birth parents died when he was just a baby, his godfather, cole carpenter, took him in and raised him. his home life was fairly chill, he was well taken care of and never went without necessities but it was incredibly clear that cole wasn't prepared to raise a child. he still had growing up to do when he took kit in, since he was only in his early twenties and still hadn't even decided what he wanted to do in life. and while cole did his best, he was more of an older brother figure rather than the parental figure that kit needed.

that being said kit wouldn't change a single thing. he loves cole so much. that's his only real family. plus, there were perks to growing up with a young parent — rules tended to be lax, he had an easier time getting his way if he needed, and, once he was older, he could have fun spending time with his godfather doing things that they'd both enjoy. (one thing they would do together regularly was training at the gym where cole works. it started off as easy stuff, where kit was trying to mirror what cole was doing and gradually became more serious and branched off into kit begging cole to let him seriously train to become a fighter like he was. cole caved fairly fast.)

growing up he, like so many other children, loved superheroes. he'd play pretend with the other kids in his neighborhood and they'd all have their own hero identity (no one ever volunteered to be the villain, it was always more fun to be the good guys because they got all the perks). if anyone asked him during that time, he would've proudly told them that he wanted to be a hero when he grew up, he wanted to save people just like the heroes on the news. it wouldn't be until he was a little older that he'd realise his childish daydream could be reality. (his meta abilities would first manifest when he was around nine or ten, thus paving the way for his eventual decision to become a hero.)

being a meta was only a shock to kit himself, his godfather knew there was a chance he'd be one since both his parents were. the only thing he wouldn't have been able to predict was kit's abilities, which were nothing like his parents'. having a superpower was cool as hell to kit but it was terrible for cole; he now had to wrangle a superpowered child, who wasn't easily convinced that he shouldn't show off his power, and who was capable of evading him without putting much effort into it.

shortly after his abilities first manifested, kit came out to his godfather which caused cole to become more protective of him. he enrolled kit into self defense classes, alongside the training he was already doing with kit, to make sure that kit was able to defend himself when he was on his own. he wasn't about to lose his kid because some asshole didn't approve of his identity.

cole had no way of knowing that kit was going to use those skills when he would sneak out at night, taking his first steps as a hero in his neighborhood. he should've expected it, he really should've, given how serious kit was about becoming a hero but it still nearly gave him a heart attack when he found out. not even because kit told him, no he saw something, when he was reading the news, about a new meta hero that popped up in star city... who appeared to be pretty young (there was questions about how safe it is for a kid to be fighting crime)... and who could seemingly teleport.... and he didn't have to be a genius to figure out that that was HIS idiot teenage wannabe hero. needless to say kit was grounded for a couple weeks after cole found out and they had to have a long discussion about safety and why he shouldn't keep going out, even though cole knew that it wouldn't stop kit from going out. unfortunately.

as he got older he got cockier. he'd investigate riskier cases, he'd patrol outside of his neighborhood, and he stopped trying to stay under the radar of other heroes and vigilantes that happened to be in star city.

at twenty-six years old he's a fairly well established vigilante (& if the whole no metas in gotham fanon rule thing exists, than he's pretty regularly breaking that rule because? he doesn't give a shit about what batman says. he can't stop him.)

additional link: pinterest.

(edit insp.)

[meowthplushie]

posting this bc of the absolute shitshow i've been seeing on social media lately: do not follow me if you're a pedophile or zoophile. do not follow me if you think pedophiles and zoophiles deserve a "safe space and community". they don't need an echo chamber. they absolutely don't need to keep telling each other to create and share harmful content and make themselves worse + more dangerous in the name of "art liberation" and "no censorship". fuck all the way off

[dadbodbensisko-moved]

ok we as a society need to talk about a wrath of khan au where everything is the same but saavik is a spirk baby and kirk and spock (mostly kirk) spend the whole movie smothering and embarrassing her

[i-appear-misssing]

I just had the horrible thought that I need to fall in love because having devastating crushes on beautiful, competent, authoritative women that I desperately want to please is exhausting and I need it to stop

[mars-ipan]

this is gonna sound incredibly virtue signal-y i fear but i have been feeling. so fiercely protective of all the transfems i've ever met lately

[dykeredhood]

Do I have to outwardly love x because she’s the lesbian singer in vogue rn

[theinfinitedivides]

btw building on my last post a funeral is not the time and place to serve c*nt. that being said that is Do Young's default setting so when he shows up to his de facto mother-in-law's funeral he will do so and bring the c*ntservers of the gang (read: Oh Jae) with him. boyfriend/wife meet cute ig

[nostalgia-tblr]

re: my seemingly fringe "I don't think we're meant to think Odin was a dreadful cunt" take, when was Thor 1 actually made? Like... 2010/2011? Because I think Odin is (presumably based on comics canon) meant to be "a bit distant but overall good as a parent" but 2010ish is well after the recent (historically recent, by which I mean since maybe the 1980s) shift in our culture's ideas about fatherhood and what make "a good dad" as well as similarly radical shifts in how we approach disciplining children. MCU!Odin is therefore odd because he's a couple of generations out if he's meant to convince the audience that he's A Good Dad or even an acceptable one. Even the people making the film can't have (all) thought he was any good so with this in mind I'm more open to the idea that Odin is meant to be fairly shit. (But not entirely, and certainly not to the point of him being evil - he's doing his best and arguably the issue isn't him but the culture they've all been born into.)

IDK how old the writer was but there could be an intentional generation-gap thing going on there? An "everyone thinks this is acceptable and even good parenting, but it isn't and everyone involved is getting messed up by it." You don't have to go that far back historically before failing to show regular affection to your kids wouldn't be seen as a significant flaw in a father (whereas it absolutely would be in a mother - v interesting that as the status of women in our society has increased our idea of a good dad has shifted significantly towards an ideal that would previously have been considered "maternal" and thus "unmanly." Oh hey, looks like patriarchy is bad for men too!)

I still think a lot of fanon and fanfic overstates it (which is fine until we're at the point of inventing obviously abusive behaviour and then seemingly forgetting that we made that up), and that Odin is at least meant to be 'doing his best' but yeah Them Thor Films must surely be aware that his best is nowhere near Actually Good, yeah? I mean unless they were written by a man who lives in the 1950s, which they probably weren't. (There is absolutely some generational variation in how far the social change has taken hold but you'd have to look for a long time before you'd find a man of any age who'd say "I really wish my father had been more reserved and had spent less quality time with me" rather than wistfully expressing the opposite of that.)

[trashbinbackyard]

failure future ghost guilt hate for ivana and an immortal

Girl wins and fails. (I rolled a d4 for the immortals bc I couldn’t choose and it landed on 2 so angsty Maya ahoy!)

failure: What's your OC's greatest failure? Have they been able to move past it? Does anyone else know about it?

Probably an incident with a target, where she couldn’t get the guy fast enough and civilian people lost their lives. She managed to get her target but too late in her opinion. It’s a source of shame for her and no matter how much she tries to move past it, she goes to bed knowing people died because she wasn’t good enough yet. Orion would know as he was her boss back then, and anyone who stumbles on the case files

Not keeping closer contact with her friends after Nayden’s coronation. Their merry band sort of scattered into the four winds soon after and Lucas was her only friend left. If she knew what would become of her she would’ve clung to them tooth and nail but it’s too late now, they’re long dead

future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility?

The worst outcome she sees for herself is growing old and cynical like Orion, loved by none and hated by many, there’s an inkling of pity she feels for him but she will die before she admits it. She wants to avoid it, but she can see herself slipping into the same patterns as he did, so it takes active work and thought to not end up like him. She tries her best to upkeep the bonds she already has and be open to new ones aka Carmina and her family

As the years go on and on and on she becomes more isolated and jaded. She’s seen how Dimos’ mind has completely broken and she fears the same thing will happen to her eventually, even if Dimos is younger than her. She tries to find comfort in the fleeting moments with mortals and get closer to the other immortals who share her fears of the future. 

ghost: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

Orion. She took so much abuse from him yet she never stopped respecting him. It was some sort of sick admiration and warning tale. And now that he’s gone and she’s stepped into his shoes she can feel the pressure he was under. But she also doesn’t have an astonishingly failed relationship and hatred for any and all things living so she has that to one up the ghost of Orion

Out of everyone she lost, Lana, her sister. Way back when, she was supposed to take care of Maya when their mother refused, she was supposed to keep her safe. She failed, but got another chance years after. She didn’t get to say goodbye to her, for all Lana knew she died in the woods being ambushed by bandits and Maya knows Lana felt so guilty about it, that she failed her again.

guilt: What is your OC guilty about? How do they handle their guilt? Do they try to avoid guilt, or do they accept it?

Guilty about treating her team harshly. She has that streak of perfectionism and expects everyone to be just as detail oriented and punctual as she is. She comes off as ruthless, she admits it. She justifies it by thinking it’ll keep everyone sharp.

She feels guilty for thinking bad thoughts about Lucas, Lucien, Viessa and Dimos. They’re her only threads to the world she once knew and her lifelines. They should get along great right? But sometimes they frustrate her so much she isolates herself from them. And eventually feels bad about it and comes back with her tail between her legs

hate: What does your OC hate? Why? How do they act towards the object of their hatred?

Most of the police department, organized criminals. The little guys, the thieves, the scammers and the sort who do it just to get by she knows the systems have failed them. But the big dogs like Ipes she despises.

As much as she loves Lucas, or the being that once was Lucas, she despises him. Gods do not understand how mortals aren’t meant to experience eternity, estrangement from the world is sometimes too much to bear, everything she knew and loved is long gone, trapped with company she didn’t choose. She still carries out his will, for there is not much else to do. And she will become his voice in the coming ages. It’s complicated, is what I’m saying. As well as bad parents, and two who abuse their power, but she can now deal with them herself and guardian of the lost