#i used my bear phobia as a metaphor for my trauma!!

[sadistic-softie]

Mama Bear. But with emphasis on the bear. The predatory nature. The strength. The teeth. The power. She can hunt. She can bite. All while looking so sweet and cuddly and cute to those who don't know what she's really like. Nobody is getting near her baby bears. Her baby bears won't stray too far. Her baby bears are obedient. They trust mama bear because mama bear is all they know. Mama bear is a role model. Mama bear is never wrong. Mama bear loves them more than anyone else. They listen to mama bear because mama bear feeds them and keeps them safe and warm. Nobody's gonna hurt mamas baby bears. Nobody but her.

[lunarwildrose]

"Except--In this world, my friends tried to be strong..They saved me, the weak. I couldn't bear that...To the two of them, I was someone to be protected."

Armin's been my kindred spirit ever since I first watched Attack on Titan ... While I do relate with some of the other characters -- like Mikasa in the OVA creating her own imaginary world to reject the cruel reality around her at having lost Eren (until he came back), having gone hungry as a child like Sasha so now I eat too much, and Historia for struggling with my identity, mother issues, father issues, fawning for validation, and rejecting my own name for the longest time -- it is overall Armin who resonates with me the most with Robbie @dmrs121923 being my Eren Yeager and Micky @octobernocturne being my Ackerman, whether Levi or Mikasa in this scenario. Armin in English also shares a voice actor with Yuri Katsuki from Yuri on Ice, another character with GAD like me (Generalized Anxiety Disorder -- I have social phobia on top of that), who is the voice actor I often mimick the voice of, and makes me want to be a voice actor when I feel that old fancy arise ... I don't know what to make of my life. I'm young but growing older, sick but not yet legally disabled, and even though I make progress, I feel held back by the past haunting me, the trauma that made me mentally ill in the first place, still I strive for independence, but some days I can barely get out of bed, not just from mental exhaustion, but the chronic physical fatigue as well ❤️‍🩹 ... I barely have spoons these days ... That's a health metaphor, like a health bar, or Link's Hearts in The Legend of Zelda ... And I need to rely on my brothers, especially Micky, to survive and get by in this cruel world ... With Robbie finding his safe person, his Mikasa, I am grateful to God that I now have a loving sis-in-law in the sweet Lizzy Rose 🌹 @esaucie too ... I will protect and love my little tribe and never, ever take them for granted. But I still cry cos of my own inferiority complex, and always want to be helpful and as useful as possible to my Beloved Ones in any way I'm able. I love you guys!! 🥺❤️‍🩹 We're Armin, Eren, Mikasa, and Levi forever!!

[illusivexemissary]

10. What are their regrets, if any, about the ways they have dealt with their sexuality or gender status before?

Gender and sexuality headcanons!

Honestly, *MY* Gabe, that is, my rp muse, has almost never done anything he outright regrets in this particular sphere of existence. Any phobias, internalized or externalized, toward gender identity that he didn’t initially understand were squashed both by being an entity too evolved for mortal distinctions of that nature, and also, by spending more time among those who DO identify bodily and social assignments of that nature than most of the Host (by virtue of being THE Messenger to deliver God’s missives to mortals).  In other words, Gabe is above gender as we understand it, but he’s also steeped in “human culture” enough to grasp why it’s so important to us, and why he shouldn’t mock anyone’s identity. 

In fact, when he’s ever cruel, it’s toward others who are cruel, particularly those who try to ostracize, condemn, or do overt harm to people who have been marginalized by their gender identity or sexual orientation.  Particularly people who quote scripture out of context to justify doing harm to these populations.

However, *IF* I took this part of that episode as canon (which I don’t, because it was bullshit writing for a cheap laugh), Gabe would cringe a LOT at how he handled the dick jokes made at his expense by Rowena, about “finishing early” etc, when he used his (insufficient) Grace to open a portal to the other universe.  Things like “it doesn’t make me less of a [man] Archangel!” and other crass counter-jibes at his impotence–bear in mind, Gabriel’s Grace was carved violently out of the back of his neck against his will with a giant needle (rape metaphor anyone?) by the Prince of Hell Asmodeus DAILY for SEVEN YEARS, and he used that same highly depleted, ravaged Grace to open the portal, so way to be tasteless, SPN writers :))))–give me a great deal of second-hand embarrassment on his behalf.  

Tl;dr Gabriel wouldn’t  be so insecure in his masculinity, in large part because Gabriel’s CONCEPT OF masculinity is NOT a human concept!  Like, he GETS how humans can be insecure in this way, because again, exposure, but Gabe himself would have laughed Rowena off and tossed a zinger right back. OR if he’d been defensive and lacked a zinger because of his Grace-linked TRAUMA, then his protests might have been “thanks for that creepily sadistic potshot at the thing I suffered for seven solid years, Ro,” not “I have a HUGE dick, my dick is GLORIOUS,  my HOLY EJACULATIONS are ‘JET FUEL,’!”  

Like bitch, please. Cringey as fuck.  And SO ooc. Gabe loves having sex, and has a crude sense of humor.  That doesn’t mean he’s insecure about his sexual prowess, like a typical macho straight guy would be. Gross.  

Also let’s not even go into how OOC it is of Rowena, who was similarly abused by Lucifer, to verbally kick Gabe when he’s down like that :/ 

[booksfornamjoon]

화양연화TheNotes Analysis (Part II)

화양연화TheNotes Analysis (Part I): Jungkook, 22 May YEAR 22

*Keep in mind this text was originally written in Spanish, so forgive any mistakes, English is not my first language.

*This analysis is mainly philological and a personal opinion.

[Here you can read Part I].

First of all, we find ourselves before a first-person narrator: 'I thought my body was floating', which tells us about a past time of a traumatic memory. Following the theories of narratology, the narrator in the first person (called 'internal narrator' or 'homodiegetic narrator'), is a character within the story ('intradiegetic narrator'), therefore, he only has and provides information based on his own experience of events. However, we must bear in mind that this type of narrator is the one that most differs from the author (the author is not the same as the narrator): Jungkook is a character in the text, he must necessarily comply with all the rules of being a character, even when he is performing tasks of storyteller. I think that, as we will see in the analysis, this narrator-protagonist tells his own story, he is the main character and everything that happens we know through him, that's why there are questions and confusion. This narrator adopts a subjective point of view that makes him identify with the protagonist and prevents him from interpreting in an absolute and impartial way the thoughts and actions of the other characters in the narrative (as we will also see). In short, it is the type of narrator that is used in genres such as the diary or autobiography and, in this case, I think it also has influences from the stream of consciousness technique, that is, trying to reproduce the mechanisms of thought in the text (associations of ideas), trying to blur the textual construction (authors such as Proust, Virginia Woolf or Joyce are experts in this type of narration).

Let's go into the text:

I thought my body was floating, but it was on a solid floor.

From the first moment, reference is made to the denial of the basic senses. Let us return to the idea of the narrator-protagonist: for him to have knowledge of something, he necessarily has to experience it with his own senses, or that some other character tells him about it. He can tell his own thoughts and opinions, but not those of the other characters, unless he knows them for any reason. Therefore, since it can only be based on its senses and these are not working properly, the narrative creates an atmosphere of confusion (which is precisely the effect that it is intended to achieve). That is why he uses verbs like 'think' ('I thought'), which in a certain way do not denote certainty.

The narrator-protagonist believes that he is floating in the air, that is, his abilities (psychic and physical) are depleted. He's like in a dream. His mind thinks that his body is flying, 'but it was on a solid floor'. He is being deceived by his own situation. We can quickly think that Jungkook has suffered an accident and, convalescing, between life and death, he experiences these sensations.

I did not feel anything for a while.

This phrase further corroborates the idea of an accident. The pain suffered causes paralysis.

I just could not lift my eyelids because my whole body was so heavy. I could not even swallow or breathe.

His body does not belong to him, although he is able to organize his ideas. His mind does work, even if it's confused and lost.

I was losing my consciousness and my surroundings slowly blurred.

Here we have the key: Jungkook is losing consciousness, he's losing the connection with reality, with life.

Then, by surprise my body started shaking heavily from something. Unknowing of what caused it, I had pain and I was in thirst.

The wounds, the pain. He does not know what happened to him or how he got to that point (or does not remember, or does not want to tell), but he is in a situation of extreme danger. Notice how many times the body is named.

It seemed like the sand has blurred my sight but something appeared.

What most attracts my attention, apart from the fact that the narrator continues to use verbs of uncertainties ('It seemed like ...'), is that they use the word 'sand' to refer to his diminished ability to see. The sand is not an image that is normally used as a metaphor for blindness (as I pointed out in the first part), but I can not help but think that that word is there for something and that it has to do with some metaphors of 'LY: Her'. Namjoon, the one who normally composes the lyrics, seems to be employing assiduously the 'sand-water' opposition. All the words in a text are a conscious choice, up to the points and commas, and we can not overlook that detail. In addition, we are presented with the first object that breaks his loneliness ('but something appeared').

I thought it was a light but it was not. It was bright, big and faint. It is floated in the air without moving. Looking at it for a while, it gradually became a solid form. It was the moon.

There are many interesting aspects in this fragment. In the first place, we can be sure that it is night, or at least he's in a dark place. Second, this is the perfect explanation of how a metaphor is constructed.

Metaphor: Rhetorical figure by which a reality or concept is expressed through a different reality or concept with which the represented has a certain relationship of similarity.

The moon, whose identity is given to us at the end, is described by images that denote its qualities: 'light', 'it was bright, big and faint', 'it floated in the air without moving', 'solid form'. It goes from the plane of the abstract, of the imaginary, of the symbol..., to the plane of the real. Honestly, I consider it an excellent fragment. Precisely, Jungkook is carrying out the same process as any metaphor: he's moving from the plane of the abstract, of the imaginary, of the unconscious..., to the plane of the real, of the conscious. 

If I use the word 'conscious' or 'unconscious', I must talk about Freud. I will try to summarize it since the theory of Freudian psychoanalysis is highly complex. Let's go in parts: 'conscious' is a term used by Sigmund Freud, as an adjective to qualify a psychic state, or as a noun, to indicate the location of certain processes constituting the functioning of the psychic apparatus. In this sense, the conscious, together with the preconscious and the unconscious, is one of the three instances of the first Freudian topic. The preconscious is, broadly speaking, those psychic processes, events, operations and contents that escape the present consciousness and that being essentially tied to the self, belong to its unconscious parts, without being properly part of the unconscious system. For Freud, the unconscious system is constituted largely (but not only) by repressed contents that have been prevented from accessing consciousness, precisely because of the mechanism of repression. In other words: the unconscious is a part of our cognitive system to which the conscience has no access (we do not perceive that it exists), but which is revealed in a series of formations such as dreams, lapses, jokes, games of words, failed actions and symptoms. The unconscious, according to Freud, has the peculiarity of being both internal to the subject (and to his consciousness) and external to all forms of domination by conscious thought. If these repressed elements (desires, phobias, impulses) manage to leave the unconscious (theoretically that was the role of psychoanalysis) and move on to the conscious, that is, if the symbolic passes to the real plane, then we are able to discover, among other things (I'm simplifying a lot), our internal drives, our true desires, our traumas. In short, the conscious designates the set of experiences from which the subject can give an account through an act of internal perception. In addition, for philosophy, consciousness is the human faculty to decide actions and take responsibility for the consequences according to the conception of good and evil. A conscious person, in this sense, is responsible, who does not act with negligence and who tries to minimize the negative consequences of their actions. If the albums of 'LY' (especially 'LY: Tear') are based on a process of self-knowledge, of the rupture of the individual for the construction of  the 'self', it is not unreasonable that Jungkook is playing with the unconscious and the conscious, since, in a certain way, the Freudian theory pretended to facilitate to patients that cure of reality, that process of personal discovery.

On the other hand, the presence of the moon in literature, especially in poetry, is extremely extensive and repeated. Precisely, in Spanish poetry, the moon is a symbol of first order. Authors such as Federico García Lorca understand the moon in a contradictory way: sometimes it is a symbol of life and death, other times of fertility, but in general, he includes it as an antithesis of the life cycle. Miguel Hernández (who is also my favourite poet) uses the moon (as is common in poetry) as a symbol of perfection, since it is circular (perfect form par excellence), and its white colour becomes synonymous with purity.

The moon came to the forge  with her skirt of white, fragrant flowers.  The young boy watches her, watches.  The boy is watching her.

In the electrified air  the moon moves her arms  and points out, lecherous and pure,  her breasts of hard tin.

Flee, moon, moon, moon.  If the gypsies were to come,  they would make with your heart  white necklaces and rings.

Young boy, leave me to dance.  When they come, the gypsies  will find you upon the anvil  with closed eyes.

Flee, moon, moon, moon.  Already I sit astride horses.  Young boy, leave me, don’t step on  my starched whiteness.

The horse rider approaches  beating the drum of the plain.  Within the forge the young man  has closed eyes.

Through the olive grove they come, the gypsies –  bronze and dreaming, heads lifted and eyes half closed.

Hark, hear the night bird – how it sings in the tree. Across the sky moves the moon, holding the young boy by the hand.

Within the forge the gypsies cry, are crying out. The air watches over her, watches.  The air is watching over her.

(Romance of the moon, moon, moon, written by Federico García Lorca in 1928).

We change the paragraph and the text continues:

The world was turned upside down as if I had turned my head.

Many fans have already made reference to that in the video of 'DNA', V comes out in some scenes upside down, which could explain this strange symbol. At the edge of the unconscious, almost hallucinating, his world is upside down (in a way I can not help relating this to the video of 'Serendipity', where Jimin's world also trembles because of falling in love).

In that world, the moon was also hanging upside down.

As if he were floating, the moon is down and he is up looking at her. I love this poetic image.

I tried to cough to breathe but could not move. And then I got the chills. I was scared.

His senses remain numb, but look how the sentences get shorter, creating an atmosphere of suspense. Suddenly, realizing his helplessness, he is afraid.

I tried to talk but I could not speak.

He can not talk, can not see, can not hear or move. He is subject to something he does not know.

I did not close my eyes but suddenly everything became black.

Abruptly, the narrative takes another turn. Jungkook is fainting beyond repair. We are going to lose him, he will not be able to tell us anything else and suddenly the last sentence of the text appears:

I lost my conscious and someone said: Living can be more painful than dying. But do you want to live?

He loses consciousness (which is what the text was suggesting the whole time) and, outside the world of the living, of the tangible, of the 'real', someone appears. It is curious this figure that appears when he is on the verge of death. He can not tell us who he is, how he is physically..., he/she is categorized indefinitely, which gives the figure an aura of mystery and certain danger. This appearance addresses him with enigmatic words: Living can be more painful than dying. But do you want to live?

Is God? Is his consciousness? His unconscious?

Whatever it is, it is obvious that he/she's providing another opportunity to live, but first asks if JK wants that second chance. Do you want to live? Are you willing to pay the price of what it means to live? Do you value your life? Do you deserve to be reborn?

Living can be more painful than dying. 

This phrase has a direct influence on one of the basic ideas of Christianity (at least in its origins): life as a valley or path of tears. The earth is a place of penance to reach heaven.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart are Thy ways, who passing through the Valley of Baca makes it a well; the rain also filleth the pools. They go from strength to strength; every one of them in Zion appeareth before God (Psalms 84: 5-7).

It also reminds me of the philosophy of Schopenhauer, who only considered salvation through suffering.

Finally, inevitably, that 'someone', by how he/she appears on the scene and by the words he/she addresses, reminds me of Dante's Divine Comedy. Specifically, the encounter between Dante and Virgil at the beginning of the book (Inferno: Canto I). At that point in the storyline, Dante is lost, in the middle of an inhospitable beach (SAND!!!) that is as strange as terrifying. Afterwards, three wild beasts (symbolizing lust, pride and greed) prevent him from going (Does not this have anything to do with ‘Wings' album?!). When he can not advance anymore, he only has the path of the wild jungle, in where he has awakened without knowing how he got there (Similarities to JK's situation?). There, crying with fear, an unknown figure appears. It is Virgil, one of the most important Latin poets (and a role model for humanists like Dante Alighieri), who from that moment will become his guide through hell, the first stage of his purification process to reach his beloved, Beatrice.  Dante, who personifies humanity, represents the temptation of sin, Beatrice, who personifies the Faith and will take Dante to each of the spheres of paradise, to the Empyrean, immobile space, where he will contemplate the mystical Rose formed by God and his chosen. And Virgilio, who symbolises reason.

It is because of me that he goes to the city of tears, it is because of me that he goes to the eternal pain and to the place where the condemned race suffers, I was created by the divine power, the supreme wisdom and the first love, and there was nothing that existed before me, abandon hope if you enter here (Inscription Dante reads in the door of Hell).

The Divine Comedy is a work written around 1321 and narrates the journey of Dante through hell and purgatory (with overcoming all tests) to reach paradise, where his beloved waits. Hell represents the human being in front of his sins and his dire consequences. Purgatory, the slow purification of their faults until liberation. Going down to the underworld to re-emerge, even if it leads to the resurrection from the dead, is the price for self-knowledge. We are, once again, facing a path of personal discovery that, although it involves pain, shapes the individual.

[naijaboi]

If we were to believe the dominant narratives around gender transition, we could only conclude that it’s a magical, affirming, and life-giving process. With these stories—and the glorious “before and after” photos that accompany them—we’re told that the uncomplicated truth of transition is that when the transformation is complete, we emerge on the other side whole and shimmering.

I am not whole, nor am I shimmering.

I often wonder: Can it be true that I can’t inhabit this body anymore—with its curves and parts that alienate me—but am still bonded to it? Top surgery is on the horizon for me. While I can’t fathom living the rest of my life with this chest, a part of me is grieving this loss. These curves were always guests (never residents), but their absence still means something to me.

I understand it only in metaphor. Imagine the kidnapped person who bonds to their captor. Imagine that the trauma forces them to forge a bond that will sustain them and wound them all at once. Imagine the attachment that is both real and illusory, born out of a need to survive.

For many transgender people, we find ways to form attachments to the assigned bodies and identities that harm us so that we can bear the burden for another day. And so the euphoria, disgust, and the fear come all at once. Behind the joy, my transition has been grief. My transition has been letting go. My transition has been hard.

I am losing the face that I knew. I delight in my beard, yet I long for the softness that was once underneath. I am angular in all the right ways, yet I still have affection for the youth I once held in my cheeks. And I wonder if it’s possible that the face I rejected (the dysphoria and the distress still real) wasn’t mine to keep but still meant something to me.

I know the feeling of being misgendered, like a knife perpetually wedged between your ribs. And I know the feeling of entrapment in a body that isn’t “right,” a fleshy coffin that conceals and suffocates you. And someday, I hope I’ll know the relief of having broken free of those things—to recognize myself fully when I look in the mirror.

But I live in the real world, too, where the pretending had to be so emphatic, it flirted with the truth. I had to be something I wasn’t long enough to reasonably convince myself, and the feelings there are residual, even now. My breasts disgust me, but they are familiar to me, too—sometimes I cringe, sometimes I cry, sometimes I laugh, sometimes I even smile, and sometimes I feel nothing at all.

When your body is the captor, and your urge is to survive, how do you go on? For some of us, we dissociate, we separate, we detach. But I believe that some of us form attachments, too—to our dead names that our protectors used to coo as they cradled us in their arms, to our bodies that lovers used to gently trace with a finger or lusted after from across the room. And while we know in our hearts that we must change, the intimacy and meaning of what we were was never lost on us.

And it’s this attachment that too many trans people are deeply ashamed of. How can I be seen as valid if I am not willing to abandon the entirety of what I was, of what that felt like? Am I truly transgender if I am unsure, afraid—or grief-stricken, even? If this is everything I need, but it hurts just the same? How can I hold this contradiction if it threatens my existence?

My brother, on occasion, slips and calls me his “sister.” Like a good trans person, I correct him. But some part of me cannot admit that when he says it, I am sometimes comforted—not because I am a woman or was ever a girl, but because I remember the warmth and protection his voice carried when he said it to me, when I was small and still new to this world.

When he says “sister,” it evokes a memory—a very particular one—of blood. When I cut my head open when I was 13, and despite his undeniable phobia of blood, he held his breath and a towel firmly against the wound while I cried. He was brave and he was sensitive and he spoke so softly to me. Then, and many times over, I was so proud to be his “sister.”

I admit that I am still learning to be proud of being his “brother,” too.

Like many trans people, I am learning to reattach to new words and new parts. I imagine what my body will be with immense joy and fear, worried and wondering what of “me” I’ve gained and what of “me” I’ve lost. Every year that passes, I fall more deeply in love with my name—Sam Dylan Finch, which rolls off the tongue like a tender incantation—while still wondering if the name I buried lives on someplace else. The unfamiliar becomes sweetly familiar, while the once familiar nips at my heels like a neglected dog.

It all had to mean something—and in a parallel universe, I think it still does, living on just as it was—because for this life to be bearable, I had to make meaning of these things. Because while the trauma of my assigned gender was at times like a clenched jaw around my body, it was, at first, the only thing I knew. And I created safety with what little kindling I had; I built a fire. Though it may have burned me and even, for a moment, engulfed me, it also kept me warm.

The truth of transition, they will tell you, is that it is pure and unadulterated joy and discovery. It makes for a touching story, to be sure. But quietly, I hold the space for something more—the messy reality that mingling with that joy is also raw and relentless grief, a letting go that too many of us struggle to make sense of.

To live these lives—to survive the trauma of being transgender in a world that denies us, invalidates us, destroys us—we’ve struck a delicate balance of detachment and attachment, forming bonds with our captors that we are unlearning as we become who we’re meant to be.

They tell us that those bonds make us confused or invalid. But I write these words to speak the truth: those bonds are a testament to our resilience. And whether you choose to break them or protect them, what matters most is that you’re still here.