#feel free to come scream at me

[mymistakewriting]

Evan Buckley & trauma responses

This one was surprisingly hard to write because I had no idea just how involved I wanted this post to be because let's face it, Buck's been through a lot. So it's been sitting in my drafts the entire time my partner's been down here visiting me because I had no damned idea how to put all my thoughts and feelings into words while we were still playing catch up on the show (we still aren't caught up but we're almost there, I promise, just a couple more episodes).

That said, this isn't fully involved. There are going to be a lot of things I don't cover or don't delve into as deep as I want to. Those will come later as their own post, or you're welcome to ask my opinions on things you haven't seen me talk about yet (this goes for ANY character, not just the ones I've screamed into the void about).

Trigger / Content Warnings: Mentions of grievous injury. Mentions of abuse. Mentions of natural disasters. Basically, if you know anything about Buck, count it as a trigger. He's a walking trauma response in the form of a humanized golden retriever.

Evan "Buck" Buckley is a walking case of trauma. And it's formed a lot of who he is as a person, and I don't necessarily say that as the worst thing because all of the pain and trauma and hardship he's survived has made him who he is, which is a wonderful person. But I just want to take this post to focus in on how his behaviors changed subtly following some of his traumas.

Let's start with an easy one, though. Abby. Now, I have opinions about Abby and Buck that I'll talk about separately given the chance. But what I want to talk about is the trauma he experiences with Abby while he's with her. He's still a probie at the time (he's the 118's probie until about two months before Eddie shows up if I did the math kind of right, but it isn't a long gap), and he's naive and he's still very much a kid trying to carve out who he is as a person. Abby's not - she's given up a lot of who she is to take care of her mother and frankly, I'm not entirely unconvinced that Buck wasn't a mid-life crisis decision for her as awful as that sounds. But they mesh in a way that is what Buck needed to shove him in the right direction at the time, at the start. He needed someone who was going to hear him, who trusted him to make the calls about his own body and self worth and limits instead of suggesting that maybe he was just overreacting.

But at the same time, it was such a mess of ignoring feelings and issues for what felt safe at the time that it was never going to last. There's a bit of panic underlying just about everything with Abby and Buck, and I feel like that entire relationship was the trauma, not just the "oh I almost died and had to have an emergency tracheotomy" trauma (I know the fandom jokes a lot about that getting ignored but no, I don't think it does, I think it's juxtaposed against the rest of the relationship and thrown into a light of being less of a lasting trauma than getting so attached to someone that you know isn't right and then watching as you get left behind).

It's the first thing that really tosses Buck's abandonment issues into a light instead of just being something hinted at, joked about. It makes it into something real, something that the team tiptoes around right up until Eddie puts what they all know out there, day one.

And then begins the real rush of traumas and how Buck responds.

The Hook & Ladder pinning him, the crush injury, the fear that they won't be able to free him without an in-the-field amputation. He doesn't even talk about it like he remembers what led up to it, just the sudden feeling of 3 tons sat on his leg and the fear that no, his team, his support system isn't strong enough to save him from this.

He tiptoes around the rigs after that, for a while when he gets back to work. It shook him up enough that he hesitates, not quite enough for it to be noticed and called out, but enough that you can see the team adjust how they load in to go out on calls - someone is always at Buck's shoulder as he gets in the rig, he's never last in, never last out, and eventually he stops tiptoeing so much without anyone ever saying anything about it.

And natural disasters. This man's CANON reaction with natural disasters was to research. He talks to Eddie about all of the infrastructure that California has added to some of its buildings because of Earthquakes during the 7.1 earthquake LA deals with, and that's before he ever met Chris, he just knew he needed to comfort one of his team while his line of communication with the kid was down.

The tsunami is where it gets a little more tricky. He does his research after, yes. He makes comments and references to it. But I don't think he ever faced the trauma from it. He risked his life saving others - something that I'm sure the 118 is aware of, at least, because there was more than just Charlie flying drones over the disaster zone that was the Pier and surrounding areas so there was definitely at least some footage. And he nearly died trying to find Chris - he was hurt and on blood thinners. He could have died if some of the other survivors hadn't pulled him aside and forced him to let them patch him up before he continued his search at the very least. It's why he hit the ground so fast once he knew Chris was safe. The adrenaline finally wore out of his system and that was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

He didn't take his eyes off any of his team on calls for months after he came back post-tsunami, post-lawsuit. And I don't think he's gone back to the Pier for anything other than a call since.

The lawsuit and it's aftermath will be it's own post, but you can see how heavy Eddie's words weigh on him. How hard it hits him to see his spot in his home given away in his absence, even briefly. It's childish and selfish, yes, but it stems from such a deep abandonment issue that quite frankly I'm surprised he didn't react worse. He just didn't know how else to make people listen.

And there's more. There's always more. The shit with his parents. The well collapsing on Eddie. Eddie getting shot and Buck's utter confusion at the man's concern for him when he's the one at risk of dying. His reaction to Eddie telling him that he was Chris' legal guardian if something ever happened and Eddie didn't survive it. Maddie leaving. Maddie coming back but being unsure if she could fix things. Taylor Kelly and all of the shit they went through together.

Buck's trauma responses are something that are so interesting to see because they change him as a person just briefly before he's moving on.

And it just takes his heart stopping to finally make him stop and finally start processing things - that's all his coma dream was after the lightning. It was him finally processing everything he's survived and maybe taking a step towards actually figuring out why he survived it despite the odds being against him.

[gia-d]

Team W! As in Who let them near the fire rods???

Four, Legend and Hyrule

[leonw4nter]

everyone says that leon is a cat person or a dog person and tbh I see it… but hear me out. leon as a guinea pig person, SPECIFICALLY RE2 leon. like that little white boy is laying down on the couch, knocked out, and there’s a cute little guinea pig that lowkey looks like him laying on his chest.

in a universe where the canon events never happened, he has 2 guinea pigs that he looks forward to when coming home so he can set them on the counter while he cooks. spends more money on high quality lettuce (and whatever veggies guinea pigs eat) than his own meals.

if someone hits him up about his guinea pigs?????? he will INFODUMP, go all 💡🤓👆 on the person he’s talking to ( if he gets a partner , this is his form of rizz or wtv). he WILL show pictures of his guinea pigs and you’re not sure what’s cuter, him or his pets. will talk to his guinea pigs about shit from work or a cute person he saw today.

his guinea pigs prolly look like these bad boys:

(and they’re both girls) (AND THEIR NAMES ARE PROBABLY SMN STUPID LIKE IDK buster and paper clip coz he thought one of them was a dude and the other idk he got lazy)

[rxttenfish]

merfolk in general are just. horrible horrible polyglots. their brains are already hardwired for language and quick language acquisition that remains active all their lives, further helped by retaining a high neural plasticity for their long lives, and especially enjoy complex language and language-based play and problem solving. but they also tend to have a lot of their society arranged where there's often multiple different languages at play within the same area, and only really stops being so once you get into especially small villages that have below the merfolk norm for outside contact. every merfolk alive today knows at least two languages, but most of them know far more than that, especially because one of those two will be the common-technical language. its been standardized and wide-scale implemented across the merkingdom after their dominance, to help bridge the gap between these different languages, basically as a successful version of esperanto. but its a trade language, and is mostly used for information you might want to reach as many people as possible, such as laws or business dealings or public announcements or the like. most merfolk don't view it as and don't treat it as a language proper, and its not what they prefer to converse in if they have another choice, usually finding it pretty limiting and restrictive, which is why its called common-technical.

miranda, being a royal who is regularly in contact with many different people around the merkingdom and regularly expected to be fully able to converse with them to do her job, knows just. so many languages. i might be changing exactly how many soon, but last time i counted it was in the low teens. like its just a perfect storm of her brain being wired for swift language acquisition and having a job that requires it and a position that means shes constantly around people from all around the merkingdom. not to mention having to know english too, which isn't just not her first language, it's not even her fourth language.

meanwhile, aaravi knows english and a little bit of hindi, less because of her mother and moreso because of her nana... its not that her mother never used it with her, but she was. less focused on using it or teaching aaravi, let's say. nana mishra uses it a lot more and is more interested in teaching aaravi when she asks her, especially in the intermittent period after her mom died and nana mishra was able to come back into her life to help aaravi pick up the pieces (though not after aaravi kind of. got left on her own. for an unfortunate amount of time). its just also fallen by the wayside with aaravi's whole Everything Else and kind of having a hard time accepting her nana's help and kind of being terrified of her (of no fault of her nana's, aaravi's just. she's just really traumatized after Everything, alright. having someone try to offer her help afterwards, especially when aaravi's scared of getting singled out as half human and half monster, is just. it's not something she can bring herself to trust.)

[peaches2217]

Having been raised in a cult that started off as a legitimate church and now seeking faith on my own terms, I’ve recently (as in, like, three days ago) developed a hyperfixation for researching various denominations of Christianity. It’s incredible, how little I knew about what denominations actually believe what.

TW: Reflections on religious extremism and experiences (nothing traumatic, I’m keeping this lighthearted, but I know it can be touchy!)

When my cult was still a church, it was an Assemblies of God church, and I’m fairly certain they still hold to a lot of that doctrine, just with even more heaping helpings of fire and brimstone and doomsday. We were taught to jokingly view Southern Baptists (or just “Baptists,” because they refused to acknowledge American Baptists and I didn’t even realize American Baptism was a THING until recently) as our rivals: they were our polar opposite in practice but equals in theology, and all other denominations just couldn’t get it right or were too scared to break free from Catholicism. We were told Catholics and those who worshiped and believed like them weren’t true Christians and destined for Hell. There was no interdenominational unity and collaboration, nor was there any encouragement to look at other denominations’ doctrine. Ours was right, the Baptists were close enough, and nothing else held any sort of merit.

(I’m pretty sure now they’ve even cut out the Baptist sympathetics, and while it’s become wholly self-contained, they’re still accepted as an AoG church — albeit a more extreme example of the denomination — but I can’t say any of that with certainty. I’d ask my dad but, well, he’s still wholly devoted to the cult, I don’t trust him to be objective in his view. 😅)

I briefly attended an Episcopal church before I moved last year, mostly because it was the polar oppose of what I was raised in and there was something very comforting about that (plus they’re openly supportive of things like LGBTQ+ rights), but ultimately my dad and FB friends kinda shamed me out of attending because “There’s no blessing in structure, sis!”. My hope was to start going to the Episcopal church here where I currently live, but when I showed up last week, there were exactly two people and they gave me rather dirty looks, so I quickly high-tailed it back to my car.

I ended up at a Methodist church because I was running behind and theirs was the only non-Baptist service that hadn’t started yet, and… I dunno. They had some trappings of my birth cult, sang some of the same songs, but there was also a structure to things like I’d seen in the Episcopal church. No hour-long praise and worship where you make a show of screaming and crying harder than anyone else, followed by an hour-long sermon that leads into another two-hour stretch of loud music and light shows and shouldaboughtahyundai steadIboughtakias until everyone was either unconscious or in a state of religious ecstasy; there was an order to things, with opportunities to take time in private prayer at the alter or at your seat, and the sermon was heartfelt and impactful but never once delved into the pastor screaming frantically into the mic. I followed their website to the official doctrine of the United Methodist denomination, and I was shocked to find that I agreed with most of it.

And that shocked me because, due to their notoriously liberal stances and heavy Catholic influence, my dad and those around me always told me that the Episcopal church isn’t really respectable. Most of them, however, consider Methodism a perfectly legitimate denomination that gets enough right to be deemed a proper church… and their doctrine isn’t much more conservative than Episcopalian doctrine. They have no formal stance on queer issues (which I’ll take over “Y’all are going to Hell” any day) but they’re vocal proponents of social justice and sexual education, both things I was taught growing up are evil.

And that’s the long-winded explanation of how I got to where I am now: digging deep into what each denomination actually believes, because I knew my viewpoint was limited by experience and further restrained by indoctrination and trauma, but holy fuck, I didn’t realize just how crazy my cult’s beliefs were until I started comparing all the doctrine. Of course doctrine isn’t everything, I know that, but the more I read, the more and more I realize that the faith I was raised in wasn’t all that Christlike after all.

A side note: my boss let me take half a day off on Sunday to go back to that church. The pastor’s husband came up and greeted me, told me his wife had mentioned meeting me, asked me a couple questions, standard New Person in Church-type stuff. I got about two questions in before I was shaking visibly and so scared I went briefly nonverbal, because for how kindly I’ve been treated and how strong my faith is, I’ve still got hella religious trauma. I alluded to being raised in church and had my trans and enby pride bracelets on, along with my bigender symbol necklace, so I’m pretty sure he could infer exactly why I was so scared.

He clasped my hand and said, in a quiet voice with a little smile, “You’re safe here. This is a safe place. We’re so glad you’re here.” I couldn’t say anything except thank you, but I hope it was enough to express just how deeply those words impacted me.

[panevanbuckley]

y'all were NOT lying when you said mota was fruiter than the other shows huh

[theroseredreaper]

nearly done reading volume 9 of jeweler richard and the roller coaster of emotions I have been on in that conversation between Seigi and Richard 😭😭😭

[arolesbianism]

Despite how much I suffered making my last isat au Aris sprite redraw, I decided to do it again and once again went through hell doing it. There’s like a billion mistakes in this (such as her having the wrong arm rip) but at the end of the day I’m still happy with how it turned out :]

[silverraes]

the discord is here!

a couple of days ago I made a half-joking post asking who wants to be my dumb little thai bl friend circle and after getting a lot of reactions to that, some people seemed interested in joining a discord server where we can all scream together. If you're one of those people (or if you just happen to stumble upon this and are interested): here it is!

there's not much going on in there yet but I'm hoping to make it a bit prettier once I see what people are usually talking about :)

[screaming-universe]

🏹🏹🏹

Hi, hope you enjoy this snippet! :3

🏹 Hunger Games AU

"Edmundo Diaz, the boy on fire," a voice drawled behind Eddie, "is a firefighter now?" Eddie had not had a good day so far, so he whipped around and started talking before he knew who stood behind him. "It's Eddie-" And only then he saw who stood behind him. It was Tommy Kinard, tribute from District 4, wearing - what was he even wearing? Not much, that was sure. It looked like net, wrapped around his hip in a way that barely allowed for public decency. All of his very impressive chest and arms were on display for sure. Evidently Eddie did not hide his...surprise well at all. When his eyes snapped back up to Tommy's face, he was grinning down at him - smirking. He looked pretty pleased with himself and Eddie could feel himself blush under his make-up. "Hey Tommy," Buck said, suddenly standing right behind Eddie. His voice sounded cold and hostile in a way Eddie had rarely - if ever heard.

[shaperaverse-brainrot]

little sneak peak of a Lloyd I'm drawing for my Shaperaverse pirate au

Actually writing the fic ❌

Drawing them all and coming up with random headcanons for it ✅

[miodiodavinci]

the burnout is real lads . . . . .

[whumpy-wyrms]

Have you ever hear of the webtoon Silent Screams? It's full of whump and it honestly reminds me of some of your work. Highly recommend

YES!!!! i love silent screams!! i was actually just reading the recently updated episode earlier. it’s sooo good, i definitely recommend it to anyone who likes lab whump! also thanks for thinking of my stuff too that’s so cool :)

when i started reading it in like october, it made me wanna make a tllr webcomic soooo bad but i just don’t have the time for that lol. maybe some day (definitely Some day because a tllr webcomic would go so fucking hard)

also whump in the form of comics/web comics/graphic novels is like my favorite way of consuming whump so if anyone has any recommendations feel free to let me know! :)

[zincbot]

WWW EPISODE 19

[baynton]

Mat Baynton as Neil in 1234

[cloud-ya]

You rlly love this fox huh?

yes but she doesn't want to come home