#i feel like calling it traumatic is overstating it

[eldrai]

Why did nobody warn me that after a certain period of time after leaving a damaging environment, you will be repeatedly shown memories from that time except this time you're old enough or know enough to see them as traumatic as they actually were and you can't do anything with that knowledge except be angry it happened.

Because it's been five years out and I want to move past it already. I still get a physical reaction driving past that school. Most of the people I remember probably don't remember I exist.

I don't want to think about it. I don't know why I can't stop.

[bonebirds]

This got long but I'm fucking pissed. Content warnings for abuse mentions, trafficking mentions, discourse about discourse to prevent future discourse, "proshipper" nonsense, grooming, etc.

This is gonna be the one time I open my mouth about this because haha, hey, years of internalized fear and shame. I'm trying to lay down a boundary and that comes with so much anticipated backlash.

I do, for the record, have a background in Yelling about the crossroads of media/culture/literature/academia/games studies/trauma/capitalism. Which is a wide range and we can thank my comp exams in the PhD for that.

Since this is tumblr I also gotta just do the fuckin' disclaimer before anyone else feels like doing the "if you don't publicly condemn xyz then I'm gonna make your day worse" thing:

I don't participate in fandom and I don't ship things. I'm not about to defend specific instances or pairings because everything exists in subjective contexts, and texts especially so. But also, I have graduate degrees in English and text analysis and lived experience with CSA and trafficking that went on for a long fucking time. And I am very, very tired of being called the worst things you can call a trauma survivor because I don't care about shipping.

I'm not anti-ship, or whatever. I am not down for imposing my own trauma, feelings about it, and opinions on others in order to censor their art. Call me a proshipper if you want -- ignoring the part where I don't write fanfic or participate in fandom -- because I agree with them. I condemn CSA/CSEM, abusers, predators, the entire evil side of humanity but people who write fic aren't that. Neither are people who read it, even the most problematic of the problematic.

People can write, as fiction, as fantasy, whatever they want. There are no real people being harmed. I can distinguish between those things and, again, am a survivor of some very intense abuse. You're welcome to disagree. I'm fine with that if you're fine with me. I don't believe in absolutes when it comes to topics this complicated (and it is). I spent years on the opposite side, actually, because just the MENTION of things like incest or age gaps triggered me. And then I would do the same and get mad at the people writing it.

This is not healthy and it is not healing on either side of the argument.

But also in treating everything like such a monolithic moral purity test, where you're either good or deserve to suffer -- a test that I fail, because there is no room for things like Complexity -- you just spent a lot of time telling me I'm as bad as the people who trafficked me. Because of fiction. Because of fake things happening to fake people, based on an idea in someone else's head, people's real harm and real trauma means we're as bad as their abusers. That is so heavily the implication in so much of this talk. If I don't disregard my degrees, my training, my own experiences, my own principles and take a stand against people shipping things on the internet, I must basically be a predator!

That is violent and fucked up.

I don't want you around here, so block me and get it over with.

I (like a lot of people with trauma histories) use fiction and writing to process and heal. I don't even post them. A lot of that writing, and being able to seek it out, was helpful. It was a connection to someone else out in the world who maybe understood a little bit of the pain and fear and confusion.

There's a difference between fiction and real abuse. And the "but predators use it to groom vulnerable children" angle barely holds water -- predators use anything. Mainstream TV shows. Vending machine snacks. Gumballs. Access to a remote control to change a channel. A lot of things are more accessible and friendly to kids than making them read. Advocating for censorship, especially in today's political hellhouse, is not actually helpful. It just feels really righteous.

Which doesn't mean there aren't those trying to leverage fic to "normalize" abuse and grooming, I absolutely believe they have and do, but that does not justify externalizing your pain and trauma onto others, or policing them, or trying to take control back by claiming an imaginary moral high ground and pinning other people to it. It also doesn't mean that censoring the internet of all things icky to you saves the world, the kids, anything. It just means they'll find easier avenues, of which there are already so many. It also means you're all just attacking people from a place of presumed hurt rather than compassion, curiosity, anything like that.

So.

Anyone whose stance on this entire thing boils down to "you agree with me or you're a secret pedo enabler," you need to leave.

I'm happy to talk about it if you want! I don't think people trying to draw those lines are right but I think they're well-intentioned, until they start calling me shit that triggers entire mental collapses. You know. In the name of saving the children. Which hasn't been a red flag for conservatism and oppression for hundreds of years or anything, either. How many kids do you think are protected by shutting down places they can actually go and talk about the darkest shit in their heads? How many of us just suffer unbearable pain and isolation because the culture around us is shame-based and if you think about things like that, you're Just Like Them?

This ain't about protecting kids, basically. This discourse never has been. It's about being righteous and never examining why that is. It's about lashing out and displacement. I think the concern for victims is real, like I said, but that concern can translate to actual, real help elsewhere. People are DOING the work to make the internet safer. This? Is not that work.

You are responsible for how you manage your trauma and pain, and that has to include not taking it out on others. Full stop. Even when you disagree. Even when everything in your brain is going DANGER ALARMS DANGER ALARMS DANGER ALARMS WE MUST STOP THIS because someone ships something you think is wrong or uncomfortable. It sucks, and it sucks we have to do that, and it sucks we have to learn how. None of us asked to. None of us wanted to end up here. It's not victim blaming to say you're accountable for your own recovery.

But while you are here, maybe consider that the name/shame/blame model hasn't been working either. For hundreds of fucking years. We know shame doesn't motivate people to care, or learn.

But especially when you're weaponizing shame against trauma survivors for recognizing their own experiences in literature, art, stories. We all struggle with toxic shame. Using it against people until they agree with you?

Holy shit just look in the mirror one day, I guess. But block me first.

[circular-bircular]

hello! im currently questioning whether I am disordered or not. I was wondering if you would be willing to share your experiences if you're comfortable or maybe share some good resources about what its like being disordered because im really lost rn. this blog is great btw! take care of yourself <3

Hey there! Glad you enjoy my blog, sorry it took a bit to get to this. This is the first night in like a month that I have any free time whatsoever (and that's cause I'm putting off grades, lol...)

I hope you don't mind a bulletpointer on this one!

Disordered experiences...

Firstly, I cannot overstate how fucking everything about me is impacted by trauma. Physical health? I get sick more often because my body has fought as hard as it has to survive -- it's an actual thing that traumatized people get physically sick more often. Mental health? Shit. Depression's comorbid, anxiety is comorbid, and I've even seen discussions about the connections between autism and DID, and those two do not mix well in me. All of my everything is constantly fucked.

I cannot goddamn sleep. Sleep is a goddamn hellscape. I run from somewhere between 2 to 6 hours of sleep most nights, and have to take plenty of naps just to survive. That makes it next to impossible some days to get the energy I need, or if I did get enough nappies, to get the free-time I need.

In terms of my actual DID... Amnesia is the biggest one. I constantly have gaps. I have to write every single thing down. I have plenty of accomodations, sure! But even those fail from time to time, and then it's just a spiral. Like, today at work, I had a surprise meeting I did not write down, because I just forgot to. I forgot about the meeting until 10 minutes prior, when I got an alert in my email about it. This meant I skipped lunch, and had to try and focus without having eaten since 9am. This made my day harder, which led to...

Dissociation!!! God fuck. It's so hard to focus sometimes. I am so spaced out. Today was one of those days where I had to cling to my phone for survival and grounding. Not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it's better to be writing posts on tumblr during class than forgetting I'm in class at all. And none of the kids snitch on me -- just get a little pissy if I don't call on them quickly enough.

Trauma flashbacks. Ough. If I get stuck in one, goodbye ability to think for awhile. It's been happening more and more frequently at work lately, so there goes my 30 minute lunch spent in the bathroom forgetting I exist because I feel like I'm going to my parents house after school.

That ties into paranoia. I have to convince myself more often than not that, when I get home, my abusers won't be there. I'm 26 and haven't directly lived with them in 3 years, and I cut them off close to a year ago. I still wake up thinking they're breaking in.

That's about all I can think off quick, off the top of my head. Basically... owie owie my brain is a big ol bruise.

[celestial-blight]

Just finished season 3 episode 9 of the Orville, and can I just say, thank fucking god that Charly died.

I feel like she was a terrible addition to the show. Her only contribution was xenophobic one liners, stealing screentime from the rest of the cast, and dying so she can't return in another season.

She's not really a character honestly... She's just this entity that everyone on the bridge crew has to tolerate so she can remind everyone that the Kaylon are bad.

She was an ENSIGN who CONSTANTLY talked out of line, CONSTANTLY mocked and insulted a SUICIDAL MEMBER OF THE CREW, and NOBODY called her out on it!!

I don't hate complicated characters, I would have loved someone who was traumatized by the Kaylon attack, but this show treated her like the second in command of the whole fucking ship! She took over command one episode, has archeological expertise, she's the only person in the universe capable of seeing in the chess dimension, she was one of the first Union members on Krill, and she made the MURDER KAYLON bomb! Why was she an ensign!? She was in front of KAYLON PRIMARY and making SNIDE REMARKS while the Union was trying to make peace with them! That is unacceptable for an ENSIGN to be doing! She should have either been a captain to justify her outbursts, given less responsibility, or just... transferred off the ONE SHIP with a Kaylon on it!

Like... I really don't think I can overstate that Isaac is SUICIDAL and Charly kept HARASSING him with zero repercussions! And maybe I don't remember the episode that well, but did Isaac personally do anything that bad?

Her character resolution is her deciding in the last 10 minutes of the episode to stop being a fucking bigot advocating for GENOCIDE and sacrifice herself so she gets to join her dead girlfriend.

I'm not going to pretend there aren't weird takes about her on the internet (because, you know, scifi nerds have a history of hating women...), but her character was genuinely awful.

(Enterprise spoilers ahead!!!) Star Trek Enterprise is the best series in Trek canon. When the Xindi took out millions of people during their attack on Florida, the entire Enterprise crew was out for blood. Over the course of the season, the Enterprise crew learned more and more about the Xindi, about their motivations, their ideologies, their history, who they are as a people... And towards the end, the Xindi join with the Enterprise crew to tackle a bigger threat. Even Tripp, the guy who had his sister murdered at the hands of the Xindi, lost his rage and gained an understanding of them. It wasn't easy, this wasn't a quick transition, the Enterprise crew and the Xindi themselves had to work towards mutual understanding... Peace takes work, but it's worth it, and even your enemies will become your friends in time. You know, the point of Star Trek, and kinda what the Orville was going for with the Kaylon plotline...

Charly spends 9 episodes refusing to grow or change, then dies. The end. Maybe if the show actually took the time to have gradual growth for the character I wouldn't be complaining, but they didn't, and that sucks! She had ONE moment in a previous episode of coming to understand the Kaylon, then went right back to harassing her suicidal crewmate.

I'm not criticizing anyone for liking her, obviously. Your opinions are your own! This was a pretty darn good season! It has some of the highest highs of the show... but, y'know, some of the lowest lows... Looking at YOU, Isaac becomes neurotypical episode... I know some people hearing me criticize a woman character might immediately go on the defensive, but I promise you, I'm not mad that she's a woman, I'm mad they gave her a poor character! I want women in media to be well written!

ALSO PEOPLE COMPARE HER TO WESLEY CRUSHER!? Wesley, was a child??? Charly is an ADULT???

[erabundus]

anonymous &&. said... 💭 + chongyun's friendship

ren's  friendship  with  chongyun  is  actually  really  fascinating  from  a  character  development  standpoint  —  because  chronologically  (  unless  i'm  forgetting  something  )  they  are  the  first  mortal  he  has  actually  allowed  himself  to  get  close  to  who  isn't  entangled  in  his  dealings  in  sumeru.  he  befriended  him  entirely  of  his  own  volition,  even  if  i'm  sure  ren,  unreliable  narrator  extraordinaire,  would  probably  gripe  that  he  was  pulled  into  it  against  his  will  if  asked.  he  could  have  walked  away  at  any  time.  he  could  have  kept  things  strictly  impersonal  —  but  he  didn't,  and  that's  symptomatic  of  his  own character  growth  as  he  slowly  learns  how  to  let  other  people  in.

and  the  way  that  it's  developed  is  also  incredibly  INTERESTING  as  well  —  because  there  was  a  very  heavy  emphasis  on  a  transactional  element  at  first.  ren  sees  every  relationship  in  this  world  as  inherently  give  and  take,  even  if  the  things  being  exchanged  are  more  conceptual  in  nature.  (  company.  love.  loyalty.  )  that  was  true  during  his  scaramouche  era,  and  it's  a  line  of  thinking  he  still  clings  to,  even  now  —  he's  been  burned  enough  times  that  he  can't  see  anything  as  truly  unconditional  and  free  anymore.  (  i  could  delve  into  how  he  feels  compelled  to  "earn"  affection  from  his  loved  ones,  but  that's  another  post  entirely.  )  yet  his  initial  dynamic  with  chongyun  kind  of  takes  this  tendency  of  his  and  weaponizes  it  against  him  —  for  his  own  good.  because  there's  this  human  who  keeps  on  giving  him  things,  giving  him  food,  and  ren  feels  OBLIGATED  by  his  weird  moral-adjacent  code  to pay  him back in whatever way he can.

i  can't  find  the  specific  post,  but  there  comes  a  point  early  on  in  their  dynamic  where  chongyun  calls  him  a  friend  and  i  cannot  overstate  how  much  that  changes  the  entire  trajectory  of  their  relationship  —  not  only  because  it  completely  throws  ren  for  a  loop,  but  because  it  starts  to  change  how  he  goes  about  approaching  them.  again,  everything  from  ren's  perspective  is  transactional;  this  isn't  necessarily  a  cold  or  standoffish  take,  it's  just  how  he's  grown  to  view  the  world  as  a  defense  mechanism.  so  when  he  hears  chongyun  thinks  of  him  as  a  friend,  a  little  light  flicks  on  in  his  head  —  he  can  repay  him  with  his  COMPANIONSHIP.

congratulations  ren,  you've  allowed  yourself  to  make  a  friend.  now  if  only  you  could  not  be  so  weird  and  overcomplicated  about  it.

and  he  does  TRULY  consider  them  a  friend  in  return,  because  if  you  read  between  the  lines,  ren  does  go  above  and  beyond  for  chongyun  in  such  a  way  he  wouldn't  necessarily  need  to  if  he  was  merely  doling  out  his  presence  like  a  nondescript  form  of  currency.  i  think  a  really good  example  of  this  is  during  the  (  infamous  )  what  does  water  smell  like  debacle.  ren's  status  as  a  puppet  is  something  he  keeps  INCREDIBLY  close  to  his  chest  because  he's  painfully  aware  what  destruction  can  be  wrought  if  the  wrong  kind  of  person  happens  to  find  out  about  it.  yet  he  trusts  chongyun  enough  to  share  with  him  his  greatest  secret  —  something  that  has  deeply  TRAUMATIZED  him,  and  he  does  it  of  his  own  volition ...  for  the  sake  of  answering  a  silly  little  nonsense  question.

your  honor,  they  are  friends  and  it  is  a  very  important  dynamic  to  me ...

SEND 💭 AND A TOPIC FOR A HEADCANON .

[dragonseeds]

what is your opinion about the relationship between rhaenyra and alicent?

oh they’re so interesting to me! i think their relationship is just as tangled up and incestuous as anything that the consanguineous targs who marry or fuck or fall in love have going on. they grew up together like sisters (rhaenyra calls her sister in 1x04 and she’s out there lying for her life but i do think she means it), yet there is a sweetly romantic undercurrent to them too. i don’t think either of them truly understood it in that way, or would describe it as such, but it’s there. then alicent becomes her stepmother, the mother of her siblings, and that adds another dimension to what they are to each other. the way alicent fixates on rhaenyra’s body/sexual behavior specifically reads as incestuous to me because she acts like a parent (a mother, an older sister forced into that role or u know… my father lol) trying to correct perceived flaws in their daughter’s behavior in horribly damaging ways, but there’s so much more going on there—like there’s obviously redirected anger mixed with patriarchal and religious indoctrination, as well as about nine thousand permutations of jealousy.

alicent’s trauma can’t be overstated—she’s been through so much and for what? so her father (her family) could have his (their) blood sit the iron throne? so viserys could have a son he can’t love?—but i think she also did very real damage to rhaenyra during the time skip. that’s how i rationalize the extent to which adult rhaenyra feels muted and desperate—it doesn’t feel like just natural maturity to me idk i read trauma into it, especially the way rhaenyra adjusts herself when she notices alicent watching her. emma’s body language conveys so much about rhaenyra’s anxiety and shame to me.

but like. they’ve both hurt each other in so many ways by refusing to/being unable to see each other. so i think things get super toxic insane messy between them for a while, but it’s so clear that they could’ve reconciled. the love was still there, the tenderness and the sweetness, but that aspect of their relationship only becomes really interesting and important to me in 1x08 when they have it again for like a second, a dinner, a touch of their hands, before they lose the last chance of ever getting it back. it was right there, it was so close! but they can’t ever have it back because what that love represents—innocence, childhood, hope, all of that—is gone. you can’t go back. rhaenyra has so much love in her life from her children and from daemon too (fucked as that may be: this is what it is to be targaryen) that she’s been able to heal as much as she can, but alicent is trapped in the red keep which is actual hell. she’s stuck there: she can’t go back and she can’t move on or begin to heal. she’s forever a girl being sent into a room she doesn’t want to go in, looking out the window of her cage, even if she wields real power as queen.

i’m equally frustrated by and obsessed with all of that and i want them to have sad sad sweet saddd fucked up kind of hate but also loving sex after rhaenyra takes king’s landing. obviously this will never happen lol i maybe be stupid but. even if i thought the writers would actually go there, alicent is deeply sexually traumatized and, while i personally think she’s in love with rhaenyra and have the most fun with that interpretation, i still don’t think she realizes that or would be able to think of it in that way. rhaenyra is also very much in love with daemon in an extremely codependent way and i think they’re genuine soulmate level more myself than i am going to be the death of each other inextricable so. that complicates things, but if we’re being honest…. not as much as it would if this were a different family asdfkdgkj

[notaplaceofhonour]

I think part of it is that, for many of us, the community has not BEEN family. 

Like some of that is just access to meaningful, lasting, quality relationships that aren’t mediated by corporations. In many towns, the locally-owned gay bars have shuttered or been bought and/or shifted focus to merely being “gay-friendly” spaces, their places taken by dating apps (which yeah, dating apps have their pros, it beats only being able to meet in bars & being forced to hook up in the bathroom stall bc nowhere else is safe, but you can understand how losing a lot of in-person third spaces to an ephemeral series of pictures you swipe through can be alienating in its own way and make the realness of those people and the connection to that community less tangible, at least). And in a lot of online queer spaces especially, it can be difficult for a lot of people to engage with the full community without also opening themselves up to attacks from people who’ve decided to throw mspec lesbians, or asexuals, or bisexuals, or polyamorous people, or people with neopronouns & exopronouns & “microlabels” under the bus for supposedly being “the real reason” cishet society oppresses all of us. Even when it comes to IRL spaces, those are not always better for finding family; pride is corporate as fuck where I live. Our local Center is deep in bed with the cops.

And for me personally, while I know a handful of queer people I love dearly and consider family, any familial connection to the broader queer community has unfortunately been very difficult for most of my life, and I’m sure I’m not the only queer person who has felt that way. Like, more often than not, the queer people I meet are quick to ghost or cut others out at a moment’s notice, and overstate harm in a way where they will burn down other queer people with fervor over the pettiest of grievances. Or, like, when I was forced to flee an unsafe—potentially deadly—living arrangement a couple years back, a white cis lesbian couple who are well-respected members of the community happily took me in, only to spend the entire time I was there misgendering me & going at each other’s throats arguing, being verbally & emotionally abusive to each other before eventually turning their mutual abuse on me, calling me (a trans person, who they invited to live with them, who was literally only there because I had nowhere else to go after being hatecrimed) an “invader” in their space & blaming me for their relationship problems—the elder of the two literally telling me in as many words that if she didn’t take everything out on me she would have to take it out on her partner, and that it was my fault she was treating her partner so poorly. I later lived with another couple where their tumultuous relationship & mental health problems were dropped at my feet before I was thrown out into the street again.

I don’t say all that to just, like, trauma dump. And I understand that kinda shit oftentimes comes from trauma (hurt people hurt people) but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s hard to call a community that rarely has your back—and even when they do, is so mistrusting & has so many strings attached that you feel like you are always a couple missteps away from being thrown to the wolves at a moment’s notice—it’s hard to call that “family”.

On top of that, when you think of how many elder LGBTQ+ people we lost to AIDS, rampant hate crimes & suicide, etc. … and of the survivors who are left, many are just that—survivors, who’ve barely made it this far, and are still direly in need of support themselves (after all, what doesn’t kill you oftentimes doesn’t make you stronger; it just leaves you maimed, traumatized, and vulnerable)—we have a young generation of queer people growing up basically having to reinvent the wheel w/o elder queers’ help. Not to say there aren’t elder queers who are great people and have done all they can to be there as parents, mentors, and elders for the queer community, but you can’t possibly expect the few to be able to fully handle supporting both their fellow surviving elders AND be the parents to an entire new generation of queer people that outnumbers them. There’s also the unfortunate reality that many of those who are in the most economically stable position to give the most support are often the ones who got there by fitting into the established order, and have internalized a lot of toxic, oppressive bullshit that further marginalizes the queer people most in need of their help—those who are struggling through the added burden of intersectional oppressions.

just like enamored by this interaction i had yesterday and again today with this old gay man…not to be like ‘oh what a feeling to see someone who has survived’ but literally that & today we actually ended up chatting and he asked me “are you family?” which i didn’t catch at all until he gave me an extremely knowing look (chin tilt, raised eyebrow. and he really just had such a shine about him, too) and i just got flooded with this big stupid feeling thinking about how much he has seen and known…about many things but esp lgbt community as it exists offline and historically & how if i were to ask, and were somehow able to know, there are 1000 different lifetimes in his, i’m sure. his name is leonardo

[cidbillie]

i'm posting this stupid video just for posterity. i didn't make this, but my character, sids, is featured in it. she was my persona and a parody of myself. my real name is cid. i kindly ask that no one ever call me "sids" again.

the read-more is going to be long. i just want to finally put my story out there, even if it doesn't go anywhere.

my friend lionessjenna or nenna / jennabee made it. it was very popular at the time it was made. if you were wondering what happened to lionessjenna, last i heard about her she was making money off of drawing anime cp. sorry to everyone who idolized her at the time. i don't know what she's doing now or if she's changed. i can only say i recommend not looking into her.

we all made fun videos like this with our characters and developed a following. my character sids in particular became a fan favorite and she was usually the butt of the jokes we made. i was 14 when we began making stuff together. 4chan would inevitably find this video and also developed an obsession for sids. they made sids the "queen of /jp/" for a time and drew a bunch of p*rn of her. they drew a bunch of p*rn... of me, essentially. when i was 16. you can still find it, too. the p*rn... i wouldn't mind if that was gone forever. i will not be saving it for posterity. lol

then they doxxed me, made fake accounts pretending to be me, and both of my friends featured in this video would leave me to date those abusers. i never realized at the time how deeply this would hurt me.

and for the record, i don't talk to the third girl, and i won't mention her by name, but i still love her with all my heart. she was a positive force in my life, despite everything. on my old tumblr, i think i still follow her. nenna (this is what people called her at the time) however was 7 years older than the both of us, and put us both in a very dangerous situation with this video. then she went on to draw cp. i'm mentioning her if only to warn people about the dangers about being friends with adults online, and idolizing random people online.

i will say this, though. we were all traumatized kids, and the internet put too much power in our hands. i forgive both of them, and i hope they're both doing well. it's been probably over ten years since i last heard anything regarding nenna, and i'm not friends with anyone anymore who would still be in that friend circle. nenna, i know i aired out your dirty laundry, but i only did so under your old username. i have no intent of finding who you are now and bringing it all to light. i'm only posting this video as a way for me to heal from it and move on. (and ftr if you find anyone under a similar name, that still may not be her. it's been a really long time. please just leave nenna alone. i want to assume she's doing better)

i deleted everything because of this video. i didn't want to be known anymore.

but now i do. i want to be known for me and not just a parody of myself. i'm trying to create again, and i have a story i want to write that i have been working on based on my experiences growing up as a very-micro-celebrity online. i feel like i'm overstating my "success" at the time, but that was kind of what it felt like to me.

but it's hard, you know? revisiting trauma is never easy. but because of this video, i lost my drive to create. i lost so many things i cared about. i lost the ability to be myself. you can probably assume considering i spent my childhood online that i didn't have a great home life either. i won't get into that.

i revisted this video because someone on youtube was kind enough to repost it after all three of us inevitably deleted our accounts, and i've been recounting my trauma in therapy. the comments all ask where weve been off to. most of them only mention jenna, because while i took a step away from the limelight after the doxxing, she continued to make videos after the /jp/ raid and gained a huge following with a bunch of big original youtube animators at the time.

i want to say i was never a perfect person, and when you live your entire childhood on the internet, your mistakes never really go away. i don't think i ever did anything atrocious or evil, but i still had my problems, and i'm sure there are plenty of people that are still out in the world who would be glad to share.

but right now, this is a plea for help, i suppose. a plea for peace. i just want to move on. i've become recently disabled, and i was forced to leave my career because i can't walk. because of this and therapy, i've been trying to make a return to creating. i loved creating. it still makes me happy to see people comment on old videos asking where i am today. i never respond to them, but knowing i haven't been forgotten is what's giving me the strength right now to type all of this.

it's very likely no one will see this post. it's very likely this will be buried in the ocean of posts that make up the entire internet. but right now it feels like deadweight in my lifeboat, and i need to get it out.

"why post this video if you don't want to known for it?" and the answer to that is... i don't know. there are a lot of internet events that happened in my life where someone else got to write the story behind it. i guess i just wanted to write mine. i wanted it out there. i wanted to be known.

[titoist]

i have never so much as recognized it to another person before but definitely the most persistent constant nagging theme in my unpleasant dreams over the last 4 years has been the project of my writing

i call them 'unpleasant dreams' rather than nightmares because that term feels almost histrionic for what they are. there's no terrifying action, no justified horror, no reasonable terror. it's never about being chased down a dark endless hallway by someone with a chainsaw, or being kidnapped by a serial killer, or anything externally scary. they're always just about feelings. the ones i spend lots of times describing here, & sometimes other ones. it's about things i am exposed to, in the dream, invoking those feelings in me, & the 'nightmare' is about the subsequent self-aware unpleasantness of my experiencing them, the terror of having them in my body. nothing happens to me except for myself. it is very boring & lacks any communicative purpose. other dreams can be communicated because ultimately being chased down dark hallways & clown slashers are universal signifiers which serve to abstract individual anxieties into ones everyone can intuitively understand, much more useful than if every nightmare was just your mind reminding you contextlessly of the pain you felt in the real world. my mind never learned how to do that. the absence of socialization goes absolutely all the way up. cruel in a completely dull way. there's no point to describing them specifically because their seed is already in everything else. i'll try it

i am a different person than who i was when i decided to begin writing my feelings down compulsively on the internet after 15 years of silence, & this is by design. it feels impossible to overstate the degree to which i experience the course of my life biphasically, where i have agreed with myself that there is a “before,” which i picture in my mind’s eye with a feeling like a photograph of a gored half-rotted dead body, something you instantly shield your eyes from & wave away frantically, & then a “now,” which is just a person who was birthed into existence at age sixteen. on bad days i become extremely regretful & afraid about the fact of having been preceded by a decayed corpse & i feel the need to desperately reassure myself that i have nothing to do with it, that the structure of my life is like a waiting room chair which initially had a corpse slumped on it but it was carried away, the chair was sanitized, & then i walked into the room & sat down in its place. what's important in this equation is that i, as the half-rotted old corpse, recognized my own insufficiency & very much wanted to die & be taken elsewhere. writing was the surgical tool with which i would systemically dissect myself. destroy, eustress, post-traumatic growth, metanoia, positive disintegration. that was the goal from the beginning. the goal was one i could fail. i can still fail it.

the consensus in me most of the time is that, all else aside, i have succeeded in reupholstering myself positively. i'm maybe smarter, i'm probably not that empty anymore. but since this process was carried out through my writing, it is intrinsically linked to it. not only that, but it is reflected. a lack of writing corresponds to a mental & spiritual stagnancy. a drop in quality (however i decide to quantify that) corresponds to objective dilapidation. i trapped myself inside of my writing so i could tighten the screws which was well & good but the issue is that i really did trap myself inside of my writing

in the unpleasant dream i see the writing of a person i admire & i negatively compare my own writing as a reflection of my personal development. i really feel dead. i feel like the initial half-rotten corpse, & think of the idea that i am not the initial half-rotten corpse suddenly as a really silly fantasy. i wait for the day when i will feel like the present phase is all there meaningfully is, when i have no more bad days consumed with fear of my illusory tie to the initial phase, when the present phase no longer lives in the former’s shadow, when it no longer exists as a referent to its inverse & instead simply exists

the point of the dream is that i want to be clean

[lionheartslowstart]

Job

Woof, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. This season is always challenging for me. I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and it leaves me depressed and with absolutely ZERO energy. I almost always gain some weight, and I spend about half the day sleeping. And the depression, I cannot overstate it. The best way to describe it is that I'm hibernating, but I'm awake. Literally as soon as the clocks turn over, this becomes my life. It's a major bummer.

The good news is, I just got a job that should start a week from tomorrow. So that's exciting. Hopefully it will be a fun job that gets me out of bed in the morning and gives me just a little more energy to get through this time of year.

I'm a little nervous. Obviously, I haven't worked in a while. That's partially due to being in school, partially due to medical issues, and partially due to, well, just being disabled. But this being my first job in a hot minute is not the only reason I'm a little on edge.

I am, without a doubt, going to be the oldest person working there. The manager who interviewed me wasn't coy about it. She was nice, but she was blunt. She asked me why I was interested in the position and what I thought I could bring to the team. I was honest, and I guess she liked my answer. Still, I was a little self-conscious. Though some people have mistaken me for younger (some as young as 23!), I feel I am starting to look my age. Trauma aside, I am worried it's going to start limiting my options in life, especially in my career. That's not to say people don't become successful when they are older. Look at Melissa McCarthy and Tina Fey. And gosh that would be amazing if it happened to me. But it's certainly not the life I wanted or hoped for, and I have the added layer of being autistic who went most of my life undiagnosed. Meaning that, up until very recently, I never had the accommodations (or frankly, the grace) I needed to get through life unscathed. Please don't get me wrong, I'm very lucky in many regards. But I'm also scarred, traumatized, and FAR behind my peers. I honestly don't even feel comfortable calling them my peers anymore. It's embarrassing.

It's not just my career I'm worried about. Even my options in the workforce will undoubtedly be affected by my age. (Note, if you're new here, my career is in the arts, so when I talk about work or jobs, I'm talking about "normal" jobs that artists have to work to pay their bills.) My age and my work experience do NOT add up at all. It will be EXTREMELY difficult for me to find jobs that fit me correctly in terms of age, maturity, and life experience. At the very least, my new boss offered me an extra dollar an hour, I assume out of respect, so that was nice.

I don't know, I guess it's all finally catching up with me. I'm getting older, my body and face are changing, and my life is not at all where I wanted it to be. But I'm going to try really really hard to stay optimistic over the next few months. Like I said, this time of year is excruciating for me, and it's way too easy for me to spiral and sink down the rabbit hole.

So for now, I'm just going to start this new job, keep practicing pole, keep submitting for roles, practice self-care, and hope everything turns out okay.

[happenedinforks]

Dating Jasper and Alice

a/n: im gay af but Jasper could hit it

warnings: some suggestive tones briefly, also possible writing mistakes (im too lazy to proof read it’s like 2 am)

They're already vampires, living with a vampire family, with a treaty considering shape-shifting wolves so a poly-relationship wasn't necessarily that big of news to them.

Like they both liked you, you liked them. If you were down to "share" then they'd be too. It was quite simple for them.

It would be quite casual at first, no one really acknowledged the whole vampirism-thing for a while. For better or for worse.

You thought you were still 17, you had time, so why stress and turn grey from over-thinking?

Surprisingly, Jasper had this same attitude. Just... for about everything in life.

It drove Alice insane. She would like to plan out what you guys would do for your anniversary and in exchange she'd get you and Jasper lounging around, reading books and saying "we'll figure it out" and "don't stress about it, darling."

But also sometimes you sided with Alice and dragged poor Jasper accross town for that adorable decorative pillow you ”just had to get for your couch”.

Having two hundred years old genius’ helping you out with homework and studying. Your grades rose like Jon Snow from the dead.

Being one of the few humans Jasper has no trouble tolerating scent-wise, mainly because he loves you but also because your scent is quite mild according to him.

During summer these two act like your personal cooling packs.

As rare as it is, sometimes it does get hot in Forks, Washington. And that’s when cuddling with two vampires gets handy.

These two weren’t as afraid of sex as their lovely brother.

Bella was kinda jealous of you let’s be honest here.

But it was a lot of: ”are you alright?” ”Does it hurt anywhere?” ”Do we need to stop?” ”Alright Jazz shut up and kiss me.” ”Alice for the love of god live in the present.” You know, the usual.

And ALSO Jasper being an empath made everything (and I mean everything) just a tad bit better.

Because, you know, feelings were enhanced. And from that also other things.

So yeah sex is amazing with them.

But also kind of a rare treat given that when they get really excited + their vampire-ism equals broken furniture.

It’s kind of a miracle you arent actually broken.

Emmett laughed at the joke, Jasper and Alice didn’t find it as funny.

Alice and Jasper have a habit of talking either in that annoying vampire speed (especially if it’s about the Volturi or Riley Biers or Victoria or overall someone or something that would worry you)

Or they would have this weird non-verbal communication.

The two have known each other for how many decades? They can basically read eachothers minds by now.

Cue you going: ”Uh, yes hello, human over here, what is going on?”

Other than that you guys are all quite open about everything.

They’d happily tell you stuff about the history.

I mean Jasper had some explaining to do with the whole... army... thing...

And even about the not so happy things.

They like to think of it not like ”oh yes we’re going to traumatize this human for life” but more like ”it’s better she knows this and hears it from us rather than from those dogs.”

Oh by the way, did you like La Push? Too bad, you’re not going anymore.

Okay, that’s a bit overstated.

But you know, they’re extremely wary of the place. And the wolves.

These two can sometimes act as your own personal body guards.

One time this one asshole tried to flirt with you in Seattle, and Alice was this close to snapping his wrist.

And dont even get me started on the silent judging you guys do.

Especially in school.

Because even though they were vampires and could easily hear stuff from accross the room, you were still sort of their first line of defense when it came to gossip.

Everytime something happened, Alice and Jasper were the first to find out.

And when someone who had called Alice weird walked past, you and Jasper would stare them down until they were out of sight.

Alice pretend pleaded you to stop but she actually enjoys it. Just a teeny bit.

They just adore everything you do.

Because they’ve been vampires for so long, they kinda forgot the small things humans do.

Like you just flipped a pancake perfectly on your pan? Amazing.

Or perfectly threw and caught popcorn from mid-air? Show-stopping.

You did what? Filled a small balloon with water and threw it at Edward, completely soaking him with water? Someone get this girl a Nobel prize.

I swear, these two were in awe from the tiniest things they had completely forgotten about.

So usually Jasper does the driving.

Because you and Alice are very passive agressive. Alice more of the type who mumbles under her breath and you the type who honks and yells inside the car as if the other driver would hear it.

But when you weren’t complaining about other drivers you would be teasing Jasper of his southern heritage.

You and Alice purposely googled old southern slang and just used them in everyday conversation.

”Don’t you start with me boy”, said with the most obnoxious southern drawl possible.

Calling Jasper son even though he’s like gazillion years older than you.

”Listen here, son—” and cue a very bad Robert de Niro personation.

It’s contagious and soon Emmett is calling Jasper ”boy” and ”son” ironically.

Also:

“Can you be the yee to my haw?”

“Alice put her to bed please.”

“There’s a snake in your boot!”

“There’s not even snakes here!”

“Saddle up.”

”We’re driving. A car.”

”This ain’t my first rodeo, boy.”

”Alice I beg, not you too.”

You’re pretty sure he secretly likes your jokes. Like at least 50% of them.

Everything is the same except 100 times more chaotic after you’ve been changed.

[samwisethewitch]

Coping with religious trauma

CONTENT WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS DISCUSSIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS, TRAUMA RECOVERY, AND HOMOPHOBIA. The advice in this post is intended for an adult audience, not for those who are legal minors.

A lot of people find their way to paganism after having traumatic experiences with organized religion, especially in countries like the United States, where 65% of the population identifies as Christian. (This number is actually at an all-time low — historically, the percentage has been much higher.) Paganism, which is necessarily less dogmatic and hierarchical than the Abrahamic religions, offers a chance to experience religion without having to fit a certain mold. This can be extremely liberating for people who have felt hurt, abused, or ignored by mainstream religion.

To avoid making generalizations that might offend people, I’ll share my own story as an example.

My family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons, when I was nine years old. The Mormons are an extremely conservative sect of evangelical Christianity that places a heavy emphasis on maintaining a strong community that upholds their religious values. The problem with that is that Mormon values are inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic. As a teenager in the Mormon Church, I was told that as a woman, my only purpose in life was to marry a (Mormon) man and raise (Mormon) children. I was discouraged from pursuing a college education if it meant delaying marriage. I was not allowed to participate in the full extent of religious ritual because I was not a man. I was not allowed to express myself in ways that went against Mormon culture, and I kept my bisexuality secret for fear I would be ostracized. I didn’t have any sort of support system outside the Church, which inevitably made the mental health issues that come with being a queer woman in a conservative Christian setting much, much worse.

I left the Mormons when I was seventeen, and by that time I had some major issues stemming from my time in the Church. I had been extremely depressed and anxious for most of my teen years. I struggled with internalized misogyny and homophobia. I had very low self-esteem. I had anxiety around sex and sexuality that would take years of therapy and self-work to overcome. I wanted to form a connection with the divine, but I wasn’t sure if I was worthy of such a connection.

I was attracted to paganism, specifically Wicca, because it seemed like everything Mormonism wasn’t. Wicca teaches equality between men and women, with a heavy focus on the Goddess in worship. It places an emphasis on doing what is right for you, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. It encourages sexuality and healthy sexual expression. Learning about Wicca, and later other types of paganism, helped me develop the kind of healthy spirituality I’d never experienced as a Mormon. Although Wicca is no longer the backbone of my religious practice, it was a necessary and deeply healing step on my spiritual journey.

I’m not sharing my story to gain sympathy or to make anyone feel bad — I’m sharing it because my situation is not an uncommon one in pagan circles. The vast majority of pagans are converts, meaning they didn’t grow up pagan. Some had healthy upbringings in other faiths, or no faith at all, and simply found that paganism was a better fit for them. Others, like myself, had deeply traumatic experiences with organized religion and are attracted to paganism because of the freedom, autonomy, and empowerment it offers.

If you fall into this latter category, this post is for you. Untangling the threads of religious trauma can be an extremely difficult and overwhelming task. In this post, I lay out six steps to recovery based on my own experiences and those of other people, both pagan and non-pagan, who have lived through religious trauma.

While following these steps will help jumpstart your spiritual healing, it’s important to remember that healing is not a linear process — especially healing from emotional, mental, and spiritual trauma. You may have relapses, you may feel like you’re moving in circles, and you may still have bad days in five or ten years. That’s okay. That’s part of the healing process. Go easy on yourself, and let your journey unfold naturally.

Step One: Cut all ties with the group that caused your trauma

Or, at least, cut as many ties as reasonably possible.

Obviously, if you’re still participating in a religious organization that has caused you pain, the first step is to leave! But before you do, make sure you have an exit plan to help you disengage safely and gracefully.

To make your exit plan, start by asking yourself what the best, worst, and most likely case scenarios are, and be honest in your answers. Obviously, the best case scenario is that you leave, everyone accepts it, and all is well. The worst case scenario is that someone tries to prevent you from leaving — you may be harassed by missionaries or concerned churchgoers, for example. But what is the most likely case scenario? That depends on the religious community, their beliefs, and how involved you were in the first place. When making your exit plan, prepare for the most likely scenario, but have a backup plan in case the worst case scenario happens.

Once you’ve prepared yourself for the best, worst, and most likely outcomes, choose a friend, significant other, or family member who can help you make your exit. Ideally, this person is not a member of the group you are trying to leave. Their role is mainly to provide emotional support, although they may also need to be willing to run off any well-meaning missionaries who come calling. This person can also help you transition after you leave. For example, you might make a plan to get coffee with them every week during the time your old religious community holds worship services.

Finally, make your strategy for leaving. Choose a date and don’t put it off! If you have any responsibilities within the group, send in a letter of resignation. Figure out who you’ll need to have conversations with about your leaving — this will likely include any family members or close friends who are still part of the group. Schedule those conversations. Make sure to have them in public places, where people will be less likely to make a scene.

If you feel it is necessary, you may want to request that your name be removed from the group’s membership records so you don’t get emails, phone calls, or friendly visits from them in the future. You may not feel the need to do this, but if contact with the group triggers a mental health crisis, this extra step will help keep you safe.

Of course, it’s not always possible to completely cut ties with a group after leaving. You may have family members, a significant other, or close friends who are still members. If this is the case, you’ll need to establish some clear boundaries. Politely but firmly tell them that, although you’re glad their faith adds value to their lives, you are not willing to be involved in their religious activities. Let them know that this is what is best for your mental and emotional health and that you still value your relationship with them.

Try to make compromises that allow you to preserve the relationship without exposing you to a traumatic religious environment. For example, if your family is Christian and always spends all day on Christmas at church, offer to celebrate with them the day after, once their religious commitments are over.

Hopefully, your loved ones can respect these boundaries. If not, you may need to distance yourself or walk away altogether. If they are knowingly undermining your attempts to take care of yourself, they don’t deserve to be in your life.

During this time, you may find it helpful to read other people’s exit stories online or in books. One of my personal favorites is the book Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther. Hearing other people’s stories can help you remember that other people have been through similar situations and made it out on the other side. You will too.

Step Two: Seek professional help

I cannot overstate the importance of professional counseling when dealing with trauma of any kind, including religious trauma. Therapists and counselors have the benefit of professional training. They are able to be objective, since they’re approaching the situation from the outside. They can keep you from getting bogged down in your own thoughts and feelings.

I understand that not everyone has access to therapy. I am very lucky to have insurance that covers mental health counseling, but I know not everyone has that privilege. However, there are some options that make therapy more affordable.

There may be an organization in your area that offers free or low-cost therapy — if you live in the U.S., you can find information about these services by checking the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine or visiting mentalhealth.gov. You can also look for therapists who use a sliding scale for payment, which means they determine an hourly rate based on the client’s income. And finally, if you have a little bit of extra cash you may want to look into therapy apps like BetterHelp or Talkspace, which are typically cheaper than in-person therapy.

If none of those options work for you, the next best option is to join a support group. Support groups allow you to connect with other people whose experiences are similar to yours and, unlike therapy, they allow you to get advice and feedback from multiple people. These groups are often free, although some charge a small fee.

Finding the right group for you is important. You’re unlikely to find a group for people recovering from religious trauma but, depending on the nature of your trauma, you may fit right in with a grief and loss group, an addiction recovery group, or a group for adult survivors of child abuse. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you may be able to find a queer support group. (The LGBTQ+ club at my college was an invaluable resource in my recovery!) Depending on your area, you may also be able to find groups for specific mental and emotional issues like depression or anxiety.

Make sure to do your research before attending a meeting. Find out what, if anything, the group charges, who can join, and whether they use a curriculum or have unstructured sessions. See if you can find a statement about their values and philosophy. Make a note of where meetings are held and of who is running the group. Some support groups meet in churches and may or may not have a religious element to their curriculum. It’s best to avoid religious groups — the last thing you need right now is to be preached to.

Getting other people involved in your recovery will make you feel less alone and prevent you from getting stuck in your own head. A good therapist, counselor, or support group can help you realize what you need to work on and give you ideas for how to approach it.

Step Three: Deprogramming

“Deprogramming” refers to the practice of undoing brainwashing and reintroducing healthy thought patterns. This term is normally used in the context of cult survivors and their recovery, but deprogramming techniques can also be helpful for people recovering from a lifetime of toxic religious rhetoric.

To begin the process of deprogramming, familiarize yourself with the way organizations use thought control to shape the behavior of their members. I recommend starting with the work of Steven Hassan — his BITE model is a handy way to classify types of thought control.

The BITE model lays out four types of control. There’s Behavior Control, which controls what members do and how they spend their free time. (For example, requiring members to attend multiple hours-long meetings each week.) There’s Information Control, which restricts members’ access to information. (For example, denying certain aspects of the group’s history.) There’s Thought Control, which shapes the way members think. (For example, classifying certain thoughts as sinful or dirty.) And finally there’s Emotional Control, which manipulates members’ emotions. (For example, instilling fear of damnation or punishment.)

Here’s a simple exercise to get you started with your deprogramming. Divide a blank sheet of paper into four equal sections. Label one section “Behavior,” one “Information,” one “Thought,” and one “Emotions.” Now, in each section, make a list of the ways your old religious group controlled — and maybe still controls — that area of your life. Once you’ve completed your lists, choose a single item from one of your lists to work on undoing.

For example, let’s say that in your “Information” column, you’ve written that you were discouraged from reading certain books because they contained “evil” ideas. (For a lot of people, this was Harry Potter. For me, it was The Golden Compass.) Pick up one of those books, and read it or listen to it as an audiobook. Once you’ve read it, write down your thoughts. Did you enjoy it? Why or why not? Why do you think your group banned it? What was in this book that they didn’t want you to know about? Write it down.

Once you’ve worked on the first thing, choose something else. Keep going until you’ve undone all the items on your lists.

If you want to go further with deprogramming, I recommend the book Recovering Agency by Luna Lindsey. Although this book is specifically written for former Mormons, I genuinely believe it would be helpful to former members of other controlling religious groups as well. Lindsey does an excellent job of explaining how thought control works and of connecting it to real world examples, as well as deconstructing those ideas. Her book has been a huge help in my recovery process, and I highly recommend it.

Step Four: Replace toxic beliefs and practices with healthy ones

This goes hand-in-hand with step three, and if you’re already working on deprogramming then you’ll already have started replacing your unhealthy beliefs. This is the turning point in the recovery process. You’re no longer just undoing what others have done to you — now you get an opportunity to decide what you want to believe and do going forward. This is the time to let go of things like denial of your desires, fear of divine punishment, and holding yourself to unattainable standards. Get used to living in a way that makes you happy, without guilt.

Notice how each step builds on the previous steps. Therapy and deprogramming can help you identify what beliefs and behaviors need to be adjusted or replaced. Your therapist, support group, and/or emotional support person can help you make these changes and follow through on them.

These new beliefs and practices don’t have to be religious — in fact, it’s better if they aren’t. If you can live a healthy, happy, balanced life without religion, you’ll be in a better position to choose a religion that is the right fit for you, if that is something you want.

Your new healthy, non-religious practices may include: mindfulness meditation, nature walks, journaling, reading, exercise, energy work, learning a hobby or craft, or spending time with loves ones — or it might include none of these things, and that’s okay too. Now is the time to find what brings you joy and start doing it every day.

Step Five: Ritual healing

This is an optional step, but it’s one that has been deeply healing for me. You may find it helpful to design and perform a ritual to mark your recovery.

Note that when I say “ritual,” I don’t necessarily mean magic. Rituals serve a psychological purpose as well as a spiritual one. They can act as powerful symbolic events that mark a turning point in our lives or reinforce what we already know and believe. Even if you don’t believe in magic, even if you’re the least spiritual person you know, you can still benefit from ritual.

You might choose to perform a ritual to finalize your healing, or to symbolically throw off the chains of your old religion. It can be elaborate or simple, long or short, joyful or solemn. It might include lighting a candle and saying a few words. It might include ecstatic dance. It might include drawing or painting a representation of all the negative emotions associated with your old religion, then ritually destroying it. The possibilities are literally endless. (If you’re looking for ritual ideas, I recommend the book Light Magic for Dark Times by Lisa Marie Basile.)

One type of ritual that some people find very empowering is unbaptism. An unbaptism is exactly what it sounds like — the opposite of a baptism. The idea is that, if a baptism makes a Christian, an unbaptism makes someone un-Christian, no longer part of that lineage. It is a ritual rejection of Christianity. (Obviously, this only applies if you’re a former Christian, though some of the following suggestions could be adjusted to fit a rejection of other religions.)

If you’re interested in unbaptism, here are some ideas for how it could be done:

A classic method of unbaptism is to recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards under a full moon. (For a non-Christians version, use a significant prayer from whatever religion you have left.)

Run a bath. Add a tiny pinch of sulfur (a.k.a. brimstone) to the water. Get into the bath and say, “By water I was baptized, and by water my baptism is rejected.” Submerge your entire body under the water for several seconds. When you come back up, your unbaptism is complete. (You may want to shower after this one. Sulfur does not smell good.)

The Detroit Satanic Temple has a delightfully dramatic unbaptism ritual. For a DIY version, you will need holy water or some other relic from the faith you were baptized in, a fireproof dish, a black candle, and an apple or other sweet fruit. Light the candle and place it in your fireproof dish. Toss some holy water onto the flame (not enough to extinguish it) and say, “I cast my chains into the dust of hell.” Take a bite of the apple and say, “I savor the fruit of knowledge and disobedience.” Finally, declare proudly, “I am unbaptized.” You can add “in the name of Satan” at the end or leave it out, depending on your comfort level.

Personally, I’ve never felt the need to unbaptize myself. I’ve ritually rejected my Mormon upbringing in other ways. Maybe someday I’ll decide to go for the unbaptism, but I’ve never really felt like I needed it. Likewise, you’ll need to decide for yourself what ritual(s) will work for you.

Step Six: Honor your recovery

Our first reaction to trauma is to hide it away and never speak of it again. When we do this, we do ourselves a disservice. Your recovery is a part of your life story. You had the strength to walk away from a situation that was hurting you, and that deserves to be celebrated! Be proud of yourself for how far you’ve come!

You may choose to honor your recovery by celebrating an important date every year, like the day you decided to leave the group, the date of the last meeting you attended, or the date you were removed from the membership records. Keep this celebration fun and light — get drinks with friends, bake a cake for yourself, or just take a few moments to silently acknowledge your journey.

If you feel like having a party is a bit much, you can also honor your recovery by talking to other people about your experiences. Share your story with others. If you’re feeling shy, try sharing your story anonymously online. (Reddit has several forums specifically for anonymous stories.) You’ll be amazed by how validating it can be to tell people what you’ve been through. `

Another way to honor your recovery is to work for personal and religious freedom for all people. Protest laws with religious motivations. Donate to organizations that campaign for the separation of church and state. Educate people about how to recognize an unhealthy religious organization. Let your own story motivate you to help others who are in similar situations.

And most of all, take joy in your journey. Be proud of yourself for how far you’ve come, but know that your recovery is a lifelong journey. Be gentle and understanding with yourself. You are doing what is right for you, and no god or spirit worthy of worship could ever be upset by that.

[firelord-frowny]

i swear i can remember shit in such comprehensive and specific detail RIGHT up until the moment where i actually need to use the information omfg

that said, imma make a List lmfao for the things i wanna mention in my next therapy session.*

Too Scared To Learn To Drive (because i fear my inability to regulate my attention will inhibit me from being able to drive safely)

2. Afraid of ~overcoming my anxiety~ because i feel my anxiety is the only thing that has protected me from making the risky/dangerous choices that people who share certain traits with me are likely to make (mostly drugs/alcohol/dumb reckless shit). like lmfao in my current state, i could NEEEEEEEEEEEVER become addicted to narcotics bc there is absolutely no way in the world that i am going to go out of my way to seek out, and initiate contact with the kinds of people from whom i could obtain drugs.

3. imposter syndrome?? i mean i know that's not a totally Real Thing but I am hellaaaaaaaaaa beholden to and held back by a persistent belief/worry that i'm not actually as good at anything as i think i am and that everyone sees through me and knows i'm a fraud.

4. fear that i'm doomed to never ever ever make any real, life long intimate (both the romantic and platonic kind) relationships with anyone in close proximity to me for as long as I'm stuck living in the region that i am, and even if i ever DO get to leave here and go someplace where my values are shared by a significant portion of its other inhabitants, by the time that happens i'll have long since forgotten how to even form/maintain friendships and it will be impossible for me to relearn :(

5. absolutely cannot stop myself from making the habitual choices that i know are detrimental to my health/safety/success/future. like. i flat out do not have the ability to say no to a habit that makes me feel good In The Moment and i have no idea how to build that skill in my brain.

6. super talented but struggle to turn any of my talents into a means of financial gain??? just in terms of talent/ability, there's no reason why I shouldn't be a successful author, musician, artist, screenwriter, etc... no reason why i shouldn't be able to sell my fanciest knitted items for top-of-the-line prices. i have absolutely nothing to show for what i'm capable of, and it makes me feel so fucking embarrassed/pathetic.

7. i've HELLA pulled away from most of my closest friends solely because i feel like their lives are probably better if i'm not around because i have nothing positive to offer anyone and the biggest favor i could ever do anyone at all is to stay far away from them.

8. the previous so-called ~therapist~ who irreparably traumatized me a few years ago. i mean i know ~irreparably~ might be overstating it, but i guess what i mean is that i feel like i won't ever ever ever not feel permanently and constantly wounded from it until i get Professional Help for it.

9. my HELLA emotionally/mentally abusive former violin teacher who also left me traumatized to the point where even the SLIGHTEST tense/non-positive interaction i'd have with her would trigger extreme anxiety to a degree that might possibly qualify as some sort of manifestation of ptsd

9.5. the honest to god fucking RAGE i feel when i think about all the ways that that woman fucking screwed me in my music education/career.

10. suck at keeping my room clean :(

[beybladefanboy]

My Honest Feelings About Reiji

Yeah… it’s about time I addressed this in a serious more rational manner. This is mostly for myself so I can process this mess of feelings but my followers or anyone else that gives a heck can know as well. As you’ve probably noticed if you’re in the former category, I’ve been posting about Reiji a little excessively lately. I’ve made no secret as to why: I have a crush on him. To people who’ve been following me for a long time, that might be a little startling. To me, it threw my entire world out of whack. Suddenly I was looking at someone who had very legitimately traumatized me as someone of romantic interest. Yeah, I’m not overstating that. Fictional character Reiji Mizuchi from the metal top show scarred me as a kid and I’ve only barely started to overcome that in recent months. Honestly, when I see other fans of Reiji talk about how they liked him as a kid or somehow didn’t know he existed until they were older I can’t help but feel baffled because my experience could not be any more different.

(I’m gonna put the rest of this under ‘keep reading’ because it’s very long and I don’t want to flood people’s feeds.)

My History with Reiji (and Beyblade as a whole)

I first got into Beyblade when I was ten years old when I saw my then five year old sibling watching Metal Fusion off of Netflix and I randomly decided to join them. I ended up getting really into it and joined them through most of the first season from that point on. I watched a few shows with my sibling like this but none of them captivated me quite like Beyblade did. I even told them not to watch it without me after a while, I was very attached to the characters and the world. I saw it as a really fun escape from my frankly shitty everyday life. I… was completely unready for what the show truly had in store. When my sibling and I first got to Battle Bladers, everything seemed fine, it was the final tournament and they were set on defeating Ryuga who I was definitely scared of at that age but not in a way I’d call abnormal.

Then out of nowhere Reiji came along… I didn’t care about Hyoma, even back then, but seeing Reiji destroy Aries like that, making Hyoma completely helpless as he watched what was essentially a friend to him get torn apart like that was completely out of left field for me. Yes, they did build up a feeling of unease during that battle but I still wasn’t expecting it to go far. Why would I? I was TEN. The most brutal piece of fiction I knew at the time was Warriors and that was a book series that was constantly brutal, not a supposedly kids show that got brutal out of nowhere. Remember, I joined my sibling watching Fusion part of the way through the season. I didn’t see much of Tetsuya or Gingka’s first battle with Ryuga, the two most brutal things before Battle Bladers, and even THAT was nothing compared to Reiji. And of course, he wasn’t done. Yu’s battle with Reiji was stressful for me and the cliffhanger ending (which might’ve been our final episode of that night if I’m remembering correctly) honestly freaked me out. So far, Reiji already scared me in a more intimate way than Ryuga did. And I mean “intimate” as in it felt more personal. Ryuga just blindly beat up everyone he fought, cackling in an over the top (albeit very entertaining) way. Reiji got into his victim’s minds, made them feel trapped and powerless as he broke their minds. Ryuga, in the moment, was only aiming to cause physical damage, which ended up temporarily killing three people. Reiji was aiming to cause psychological damage right then and there. He broke their spirits and their minds until there was nothing left but an empty terrified husk and as a kid, that seemed like a fate worse than death. That alone deeply disturbed me.

Now, for the episode that truly traumatized me: Entrusted Emotions, otherwise known as Kenta vs Reiji. At this point, I knew what a battle with Reiji entailed yet that still didn’t prepare me. I was more attached to Kenta than the previous characters Reiji battled so it threw both my sibling and I over the edge into tears. That I know is true. This next part might be me mixing up memories but the way I remember this happening was my sibling and I were crying so loud, like full on hyperventilation crying over this damn fight that our parents came out and yelled at us for being loud. Eight years later, I can remember the exact scene when my sibling and I broke:

This imagery… This depiction of a feeling of powerlessness… stuck with me even when other memories of this show became hazy in my years of absence. And it wasn’t something I could discuss or truly process. My parents were unsympathetic (or at the very least would’ve been if I truly am mixing up memories), my sibling was even younger than I was, and none of my friends at the time knew about the show. Thankfully, it wasn’t enough to quit the show. My sibling and I watched Battle Bladers but for some reason, I barely remembered seeing Gingka’s fight against Reiji. I can distinctly remember getting angry over Phoenix being alive so I know I saw those episodes but every time I’ve gone away from the show, I’ve forgotten about both Gingka and Yu’s battles with Reiji. Back in December of 2020 when I was getting back into Beyblade again, my sibling and I both thought Kenta did defeat Reiji and were genuinely shocked that he didn’t. Only then did we start remembering details of Gingka’s battle with Reiji and they were very slim. We couldn’t for the life of us remember how he beat him. Obviously that can easily be attested to a poor memory, especially since it had been three years since we’d last watched the show. However, there’s another element to this. I’ve been trying to pinpoint the cause of my former phobia of snakes for a while and now I know for a fact it was Reiji. I went so many years of my life unable to even look at pictures of snakes without screaming. They freaked me out so much and I couldn’t figure out why because when I wasn’t actively into Beyblade, the show barely crossed my mind and there were times in my life I couldn’t remember Reiji at all. Now that I’m reflecting on this, I realize exactly what I was doing: whether subconsciously or otherwise, I was blocking him out of my memory. That’s something you do as a defence mechanism when you’re traumatized. If the fact that the first four times I watched Battle Bladers I couldn’t stand to see Reiji on the screen without curling up into the fetal position, getting tense, crying and/or shaking wasn’t enough, that realization made it clear just how bad my fear of him was. He gave me an unreasonable phobia and I didn’t even realize he was the cause until I rewatched it in December because I’d blocked him out of my memory. Hell, I even admitted that I often tried to forget Reiji exists the very first time I posted about him on Tumblr. This isn’t like my feelings for Ryuga where I went from a simple fear/annoyance of him to realizing he’s a good character and liking him. My former hatred for Reiji was a shield for the trauma he inflicted on me.

Why I Stopped Hating Him

Between the time I saw Beyblade as a fifteen year old and when I got back into it in December, I took a Zoology class. I know that doesn’t sound terribly relevant but stick with me. In the class, we had a unit on reptiles so snakes obviously came up. At the time, I hadn’t seen Beyblade in a while so I couldn’t pinpoint the reason for my phobia. What I did know was that I was being very unreasonable toward my friend who loved snakes due to my irrational fear of them. I started to feel guilty about that a while before that class so when the unit came up, I decided to actively make an effort to overcome my fear of snakes by learning that snakes a) couldn’t hurt me and b) weren’t as scary as the irrational part of my brain believed they were. My fear started to ease out a little during that time. I convinced myself that snakes were more afraid of me than I was of them so I was able finally able to look at pictures/videos of snakes without being afraid. However, while I was starting to think snakes were cool, I was still a little unsettled by them. Then, a few days in advance, we were informed that some visitors would bring in snakes, among some other animals, for us to handle in class. We had the option to opt out, because snakes and spiders are pretty common fears, but I chose not to. I saw this as a chance to truly overcome my fear once and for all. I not only stood in the class while there were snakes but I decided to hold two snakes, or rather, let them wrap around my arms and settle there for a while. If you read my fanfictions, this probably sounds familiar. Some of you may already know but the scene where King handles that snake in the pet store is directly based on my own experience. He even held a red tail boa, which was one of the snakes I held (the other was, ironically, a kingsnake). This was a pivotal moment for me: my phobia of snakes lasted for eight years and I was able to make it disappear in one day. Now I’m rather fond of snakes. I'd like to hold another sometime. I just haven’t had the chance due to the pandemic.

Anyways, months after that was my second rewatch of Beyblade (the second being three years prior). I went in remembering Reiji though again, didn’t remember that Kenta lost to him or that he battled Gingka and honestly I was still scared of him. The psychological horror aspect was still there, fear of snakes or otherwise and I didn’t see any reason to like him or even consider him anything more than a minor villain. Then came my rewatch with my friend, Shadow, who was watching it for the first time. Upon seeing Reiji’s battles with Hyoma and Yu, he hated Reiji just as much as I did and we were both pretty scared of him as adults. After that, I made a post on Tumblr talking about how much I hated Reiji. I knew he had fans, I’d even met some online at the time, so I tried to be civil about my feelings but I fully admitted I couldn’t understand what people saw in him. People even told me he had hidden depth, I just literally didn’t see it. Later that week, Shadow and I watched the next four episodes, which included Kenta vs Reiji and Gingka vs Reiji. I warned him about the former beforehand and his hatred of Reiji peaked in that episode. Then we watched Gingka vs Reiji and… I finally started to notice what people meant. He completely broke when Gingka defeated him and not in a satisfying or even villainous way: he was screaming about being scared and turned to stone. That’s… really brutal. I didn’t remember any of this from either of my previous watches, likely because my trauma blocked it out, so I was startled and couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him. That was the first time I felt anything other than fear or anger toward him and suddenly I didn’t know what to think of him anymore. Shadow also admitted that his hatred for Reiji completely vanished, pointing out that his breakdown was like one of a person who realized their entire life was a lie. It wasn’t so cut and dry anymore. I couldn’t help but still fear Reiji and hate his actions but hating him felt so wrong, especially when I started piecing together some of the other hints of his frankly dark backstory. I said for a while after that that I disliked Reiji but really, I was just confused. I thought he was an interesting character and I was able to refer to him casually (rather than blocking him out of my memory) but he was still distant from my mind as I was watching the rest of the series with Shadow and working on fanfiction about Ryuga.

Writing About Him

It was around April when I started to work on L-Drago’s Return, the sequel to my story about Ryuga surviving Fury and coping with the loss of L-Drago. I wrote the story solely as a coping mechanism and didn’t expect people to want a sequel. I discussed the idea of L-Drago returning with a fan, now a friend of the first story and came up with enough material to write a full sequel. When I was writing plans for the big tournament of what would become chapters five and six, I was thinking about what characters would be most interesting to bring back for Ryuga and potentially Kenta to battle. One of the characters I thought of was Reiji. I don’t fully know why he came to mind but I really liked the idea of him and Ryuga meating to showcase the similarities and differences between them, as both of them were long-term abused by Doji, at least in my interpretation. However, I didn’t particularly want to write a Reiji battle. With L-Drago back, I knew I would have to write more in depth bey battles and to do that, I would want to rewatch the clips and do a lot of research on the beys to make sure I write their movements accurately. I didn’t want to do that for Reiji. I was still kind of scared of him and I just really didn’t want to see him hurt Kenta or Yu again. However, I still wanted Kenta to beat his sorry ass so I admittedly took the easy way out: I had Ryuga have his own battle then rush in during the middle of Kent and Reiji’s battle so all I had to do was write the part where the battle started going well. I’ll admit, it was lazy. The research I did on Reiji was pretty minimal and I’d do more if I was writing it now but at the time, I just wanted those comparisons between Ryuga and Reiji and for Kenta to beat him so I did what I felt I could. However, there was still one other problem: what do I do with Reiji now? Having him disappear again, when my explanation for him disappearing was that he never left the Dark Nebula building, drowning himself in his past traumatic memories while Ryuga did everything he could to avoid the thought of his past felt really unpoetic and just kind of sad. I was stuck on what to do about this for a while. So I started looking at Reiji content on Tumblr and saw some pictures of him with Tsubasa and Yu. Then I got the idea in my head of Tsubasa taking Reiji to therapy and giving him the home he never had before. My way of getting from point A to point B there was admittedly kind of stupid: Ryuga basically throws Reiji at Tsubasa and is like “take him to therapy, I don’t wanna deal with him bye” which is admittedly a Ryuga thing to do and was definitely my viewpoint at the time if I’m being honest. I felt bad for Reiji, I wanted him to get better, but I didn’t want to be involved… or did I? Alas, after finishing L-Drago’s Return came the third and currently last Ryuga story of mine: Ryuga x King. That story isn’t fully out but I will admit that Reiji appears more than once and writing this tamer more human Reiji made me like him more. It was obviously all fanon but it helped humanize him in my mind. After all, I was still trying to make him the same person he was in canon, just after experiencing some change/development. It was also around this time I started reading fanfiction about Reiji. Nothing romantic, just a few one-shots I found on AO3. Around that time, I also posted this:

I don’t think I even thought that hard about it at the time but I was considering Reiji a character I could potentially like, as a character that is. I did like the way I’d written him and I was starting to appreciate how well he was written in the series but the one roadblock in my way was my own fear. He was under “conflicted” in my character tier list I made around that time. Heck, I made the category for him and in the video I made explaining/building the tier list, my reasoning for putting Reiji there boiled down to: “He’s a good character, but he scares me so I don’t know what I think of him anymore.” However, I didn’t ruminate much over it. After all, I was busy writing Ryuga x King at the time. When I finished that story and was suddenly left without a main project, I found myself bored and restless. Then, for some reason, I decided to write about Reiji. (I won’t be sharing it since it’s private writing so I’ll discuss it) It started as just me trying to overcome my fear of him without… you know actually watching the episodes he was in… Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking. Honestly, I don’t think I was thinking at all. It was like I was so caught up in the moment that I didn’t process exactly what I was doing, even as I was writing something involving Reiji that was inherently romantic by nature. When I did stop and think, I was baffled because despite everything I’ve said, I was still scared of him. Reading about his actions at Battle Bladers or even just that memory made me shudder. I was scared of him yet drawn to him. I had so many feelings suddenly hitting me all at once and they were all at odds with each other, filling me most with confusion. My friend unwittingly made it worse by suggesting I could be having some reaction to trauma or stress. None of this is okay, I told myself, even though I knew deep down I couldn't fight it. I thought, how in the world could I ever fall for someone who made me feel so horrible?

I wanted to forget about Reiji like I kept doing in the past but the group chat I’d recently joined made that impossible, as they kept bringing up Reiji and unintentionally putting me in situations where I had to defend him, which was a position I did not want to be in but I saw no other choice. Finally, I decided the only way I could know what my feelings are was to rewatch Battle Bladers. Technically, I only really needed to rewatch the ones Reiji was in but yeah there’s no way I was gonna skip Ryuga. When I watched it, I wasn’t nearly as scared of Reiji as I once was. He still unsettled me and the part where he defeats Kenta almost got a tear out of me but… I simply wasn’t as afraid. I kind of went in with the mindset of “Reiji’s like a snake. He’s more afraid of me than I am of him” which… yeah sounds kinda weird when I put it like that. To be more detailed, I remembered how he’d crumbled when Gingka defeated him and could sort of see through his shield. I also started to see more of those little hints of depth his fans insisted were there so many months ago and realized that he really does talk like an abuse victim. I didn’t feel much sympathy while watching those battles… until Gingka. My god, I went into Gingka vs Reiji expecting an epic victory and yeah it kinda was but… wow Gingka. I don’t know how I didn’t remember this but he was straight up taunting Reiji and toying with him like Reiji had done to his opponents. You’d think that would be satisfying but it wasn’t. Like I said earlier, Reiji didn’t act like a villain that had been defeated, he acted like a scared child then TURNED TO STONE. I’m sorry but what kind of ending to his character was THAT?! If the writers were trying to make Reiji pure evil, they failed. They flat out say that Doji is using him and he was genuinely terrified when Kenta and Gingka gained the upper hand. And not in a “you’ve foiled my plan” type way but in a “I’m going to be hurt if I fail” way. Why else would he say “it hurts!” during his battle with Kenta? What else could he possibly be referring to?! Wow… it’s like once you see those little details, you can never unsee them.

My Current Feelings

So… after all that, where do I stand with Reiji? Well… yeah, it’s a crush. I can’t really deny that one. I don’t relate to him as much as Ryuga but I do feel a similar warm feeling when I think of Reiji. The arc I went through with these feelings was like a puzzle: as I put each piece together more and more, I started to get a clearer picture of who Reiji was and that made me start to appreciate the little details of him as well: his voice, his mannerisms, his eyes. I can’t help but like him now. I still have my moments of being unsettled by him but my other crushes, Ryuga, Kyoya, and Tsubasa are the same way. Tsubasa when he was taken over by dark power, Kyoya when he snapped early on in Fusion, and Ryuga… yeah, let me get a list going for him XD. So… I’ve mostly accepted my feelings for Reiji, especially after writing this. It’s a shame he didn’t get more screen time, I feel like some kind of redemption arc could’ve worked for him. He didn’t have to be a regular on the show: I just want to know that he’s okay. Well, at least there’s my fanfiction. Kinda funny that part of the reason I wrote him into my story was for his fans and now I’m one of them. Funny how that worked out. If you read this far, I honestly applaud you because I really just wrote this to sort out my messy feelings. So uh… thanks for reading :)

[tonya-the-chicken]

I’m not going to change your views but it does feel a bit dismissive when you say it wasn’t that bad because he had rich parents who neglected him but hey they got a maid for him and he probably wasn’t outcasted or bullied so hey it’s not that bad right 🤷‍♀️! I don’t know he definitely didn’t have the worse out of the villains but I don’t know it felt a bit dismissive is all. Although we need to all remember these are fictional characters so have no idea why the other anon needed to get so aggressive! Also the person in the notes I don’t know how to say it but uh the whole the Todoroki’s had a rich father they didn’t have to work a day in their life take is not a good look. Just because someone has parents with money it doesn’t derail the fact that neglect can cause trauma.

Anyways for the real reason I sent this, you wonder why Dabi is so insane. Well take into account the neglect alongside the fact that he burnt to near death up on that hill alone at the age of what 13? That’s got to be extra traumatising, especially for a child that was already not mentally ok. We also don’t know what his circumstances were like after that fire, like was he homeless? Or picked up by someone nefarious? Kind of like AFO(not him exactly but someone nasty) who maybe fed on his brewing anger and hate instead of positive healing. I’m sure we will find out at some point? I don’t think it was just what happened in the Todoroki household or the fire that broke his mind? There had to be other factors after the fire after his “death”!

[[WARNING!!! I love Dabi as a character but I am not a woobifier so if you are too much into him don't read!!!! No complaints taken, y'all will be blocked for being rude I am too old to deal with people unable to interact with me in good faith (anon it's not for you, you are good and I can't understand your point of view I am just not as good as a person and too old for that shit)]]

I don't think I will change my mind either but I feel like the belief that every trauma is equally bad is just... Simply wrong. Like, we can legit compare this stuff and how badly it affects our brain, what do y'all think psychologists research 🤷‍♀️ Like, your therapist won't tell you this because it's not their job to make you understand you not the centre of the Earth (and it won't help because it is a legit trauma response that is very valid but is annoying you're fucking 25 yo). And to say that, neglectful parenthood is probably the worst parenthood style, as far as I know XD I wrote coursework about this (neglectful bitches are having a lot of need to make us the biggest victims (the bitches is me))... It also feels really American to me? Like, are we going to pretend people who got to live in a nice house and were neglect somehow got it as bad as people living in poverty or warzones? Hello? Imagine telling some orphan "I know you have no parents but actually, my trauma of my father not spending enough time with me is just as severe as yours". Bruh couldn't be me sorry... Like, even taking into account the fact that we can have weaker or stronger nervous systems or be more prone to depressive episodes *looks in the mirror and cries* I simply wouldn't find the guts to say my trauma is as severe as idk people who had physically abusive parents or no parents at all or who were disowned for being gay

And like **again** I am not saying that neglect is not traumatic I WAS NEGLECTED THIS IS TRAUMATIZING AS FUCK. I just am living in a country at war and with lots of discrimination problems and I like... Can't say I am the biggest victim. Sorry I can't though there were times when I was a lot more bitchy especially before being in therapy so I understand where you are coming from and I know what I am saying won't resonate with everyone (it's ok go on your own healing journey I believe in you) but this doesn't mean it is garbage and won't help me or someone else... I've already talked once about it but as a person, I am very easily irritated and envious and really not your local Jesus and partially my trauma turned me like this so being more humble about my sufferings helps me not be a complete bitch (believe me or not but people with traumas and mental illnesses are often insufferable *looks in the mirror* not me though I am perfect... BUT IT IS OK TO BE INSUFFERABLE OK??? like, bitch, that's normal. That's normal to stink when you are depressed it's ok to be a bitch when you are hurting. Forgive yourself because I forgive you (when you are not being an abusive asshole but if you apologize and explain yourself I will forgive that too)

The reason why I talk about the fact he is rich is that I've got a disease called leftism and I am a person of several marginalized identities and since this fandom LOVES looking at characters like real humans, I looked at Dabi this way. And if Dabi was a real human, I wouldn't sympathize with him one bit. I would fucking hate him for being the biggest entitled asshole who commits crimes for the reason his Daddy didn't give him attention. Bitch, my Dad didn't give me attention either! But somehow I don't kill people! And I don't even have money!!!! But like... I am not denying that neglectful parents are not a problem. It is. But he is overreacting, bro. He needs to humble down and recognize the fact he is a fucking idiot (he is). He has inherently so much more resources to recover and heal himself than I had... Yes, I am just being jealous at this point but honestly. Making an entire country suffer for you is not a good thing and y'all need to stop using trauma and mental illness as an excuse for people. No! Being abusive to people because of neglect is not valid, is overreacting and you had no reason to do that. I am dismissing your trauma because you are exaggerating it to make me sympathize with your asshole behaviour. I won't judge people with different sets of standards as I judge myself

I bet it would be dismissive and bad if I said it in conversation with someone who is currently struggling with mental health and is not a murderer. But guess what! I don't talk with humans and my friends the same way I talk on my Tumblr about fictional characters 🤷‍♀️ Not to mention I don't have rich friends akabsksbxm

I think with Dabi there's this whole thing where we saw him at 14 (poor baby boy) and 24 (a grown-ass boy) and... Like, I am so sorry for 14 years old Touya not receiving the help he needs (bruh so relatable) but I am not gonna act like 24 years old bitch can't get his ass to a psychiatrist (extremely unrelatable and infuriating). We shouldn't apply the same standards to kids and adults. We can talk all day long about how society is bad and how our parents ruined us but at some points, you gotta take your life into your own hands and do something and be an adult. And it's fucking hard when you're born with a shitty brain that was fucked up by your parents even more in a society where no one gives a fuck but I sincerely don't know another way to live. You will feel bad and want to die but you either keep on recovering or keep on getting worse and at this point getting worse is Dabi's *choice* That's how I live, that's my framework and I am, of course, extremely fortunate in a lot of ways but I just don't know how are you supposed to survive without the notion that grown people are responsible for themselves and their mental health. We can't act like adults are babies

But as a character, Dabi is fucking hot ngl. Like, do I sometimes want to murder my entire family, make them suffer AND commit terrorist attacks? We all do. Dabi is the dark fantasy of us neglectful bitches craving some attention. Gotta kill the president and tell everyone that my Dad sucks. Imagine the entire country hearing your Dad sucks? That's the juice, that's the dream. Trauma makes you vicious. I get the sentiment. Imagine all those fuckers who made you feel like shit pissing their pants and crying? Imagine your Mom being afraid of you the way you used to be afraid of her? People do have the desire for some violent justice but like... Think of bullied kids committing school shootings. But instead of a kid, it's a grown man who graduated school and who also have a rich father

Ok too much about irl stuff and philosophy shit. I know my way of talking is kinda brute so just know the way I treat people is different from that I treat fictional characters, in particular, I don't call real-life humans submissive and breedable... And stuff...

Damn Dabi is kinda good to project your hatred of your parents in bruh, I should write a fanfic about that (would be cathartic)

To the plotline, I am also very interested in what the hell happened with him after burning because... How the hell he wasn't found? I kind of DON'T want him to be groomed at this point because I feel like it won't be as cool as him just more naturally evolving into what he became. Like, surely, he is an asshole but consider this: as a villain, he is morally obligated to be an asshole

I feel like someone hiding him and Touya overstating the gruesomeness of his living conditions to the dude so he feels *bad* for him and hides him and feels sympathy and Touya gets attention but also begins to reassure himself in the fact his Dad needs to be punished... Idk it's a lot of mystery but I feel like more suffering won't deliver the point the way I want it... I mean it CAN be handled this way and initially I thought a lot about Dabi being brainwashed a bit or having his memories altered so it seems worse to him or even him being groomed or lied too but nowadays I am not into it. I mean I believe in Horikoshi and that he will handle him well 🛐

I talk a lot so I will summarize

If we judge him as a real human

14 yo Touya - DID NOTHING WRONG IN HIS LIFE PROTECT HIM

24 yo Dabi - go fuck yourself bitch you older than me and act like a child and kill people, I couldn't care less about your trauma rich boy

If you want me to talk as his psychologist

Yeah, it is painful and sad, I understand him so much and surely, his trauma is valid as is his hatred but probably revenge won't bring him what he wants. And what he wants is love and attention. But he gotta make choices that will lead to his healing. He needs to *want* to heal. And we will step by step go to the healing because it is possible. He is loved and he is enough. AND YOU ALL MOTHERFUCKERS WILL HEAL I BELIEVE IN YOU BESTIES

Also his therapist (behind his back)

You won't believe it but my client is the most infantile attention whore I've ever met

But if we talk about him as a character... Very delicious soup

If you talk with your friends

Please, if your friends are being abusive to you or someone else don't even LET them say how their trauma made them this way. No. Nothing allows you to be an abuser. Call them out and stop them and make them talk to the therapist. Like, surely, there are extreme situations like severe mental illnesses or extreme neglect where we should be more forgiving but babying adults won't do you any good and won't make them recover

Yeah, I guess this is what I forgot to say. When I say "it wasn't that bad" what I mean is that I would be more forgiving to people who had it worse. It's more of a personal measure where I can tolerate stuff from people who had particular traumas or from those who suffered greatly (it's not my place to be a bitch here). I can forgive 14 years old or a poor person for stealing stuff but not the 25-year-old man who got no need for money and is not a kleptomaniac. I would be more forgiving to Shigaraki than to Dabi because Shigaraki was groomed a whole lot. Same for Toga, who is not even an adult or Twice who is a poor orphan. But that doesn't mean I would forgive them completely. All of them are shitty people. It's just that they had fewer resources and possibilities to not be what they became while Dabi had more but he acts like he is extremely hurt and the biggest victim which is like... There will be people like this in your life, please, don't make friends with them, they WILL abuse you

I talked a lot damn. It's adhd I can't shut up

[agent-cupcake]

Dimitri and mental illness

**Warnings for Blue Lions spoilers and armchair psychology

Depending on who you ask, Dimitri is an innocent sweetheart whose actions are entirely excusable and justified or an unforgivable war criminal and overall terrible character. Arguments for both sides have been exhausted, usually in the form of the popular Edelgard versus Dimitri debate, but I feel that both statements are heavily flawed and, truthfully, I think I take more issue with the former. Does it strike anyone else as rather patronizing that the audience (and the game, to an extent) treats Dimitri like an innocent, broken uwu soft boy both before the time skip and once he begins his recovery arc? Of course, a lot of this can be blamed on the awful pacing and poor writing of said recovery (which is the most valid structural critique of his character imo), but there’s a lot to be said about the fan depiction of Dimitri and the way people treat his mental illness. I think the reason this gets me is because I see it as an extension of the problems I have with the romanticization of male-specific mental illness. In this case, “all depressed boys are emasculated, soft, sad bois” and “anger is an accessory that is vanished once the cute boy takes it off” with the related sentiment of “the only two real mental illnesses are depression and anxiety, with a splash of PTSD for argument's sake”. And, speaking of arguments, while many people bring up mental illness in regards to the discussion around Three Houses characters, it is often supplementary to support their points rather than the main point unto itself. Dimitri’s mental illness (aka, the thing his entire arc is predicated upon) is mostly given only a passing recognition in the discussion of his actions. Even then, it’s often used as a justification to defend or lambaste him.

TL;DR Dimitri is a flawed person with a debilitating and incredibly well written mental illness that, while not excusing his actions, allows for further exploration of his character and a well-deserved shot at a recovery arc that is not usually awarded to people with the “non-traditional” mental illnesses. Furthermore, the game offers a wealth of insight as to what they intended his mental illness to be, the symptoms that manifested, and a plausible background to match up with it all and I have the receipts to prove it. Let’s go~

“Me? Oh. Um. Please forgive me... It's difficult to open up on the spot, don't you think? I'm afraid my story has not been a pleasant one... I do hope that doesn't color your view of me, but I understand if that can't be helped.”

I know that mental illness can be singularly caused by a traumatic event or events. That is, generally, how I see people framing Dimitri’s mental illness. My argument, however, is that the Tragedy of Duscur was not the genesis, but the trigger for issues that would exist otherwise. Perhaps it’s due to my own personal experience with mental illness, but I’m almost always more inclined to believe that issues stem from an unlucky combination of many things. 

Regardless, my evidence to entertain the idea that he would be naturally predisposed to mental illness is slim. Aside from arguing that it wouldn’t be out of the question for his mother to have been unwell while she was pregnant with him considering she would later die of plague (a cause that in and of itself is subject to skepticism), I would bring up his Crest. In-game there is clear proof that Crests have wide-reaching effects on the person, there are actually a few analysis posts that hypothesize that Crests could be the reason for certain character motivations. In ng+, the Crest of Blaiddyd is called the Grim Dragon Sign. There’s no definitive proof to point to here, but if his Crest was one of the reasons for his mental deterioration it would follow other rules set in-game. Rather than inherited human genetics creating the blueprint for mental issues and the writers having to face that issue on its own terms, it was the Crest’s influence. This goes along with the fact that the game never overtly references Dimitri’s illness, essentially using “the dead” as a blanket symptom of his problems. Both these things are cool ways to imply a possible way to read more deeply without having to use anachronistic medical terms.

Side note: There’s something uncomfortable about the idea of a Crest that gives the individual inhuman strength and mental issues. Grim Dragon indeed.

My next point is one that I don’t see being brought up too often in regards to how it might have affected Dimitri, likely because the events that came later in his life far overshadow it, but Dimitri lost his mom when he was young. The date is not given, but I think it’d be when he was about six-ish. Admittedly, the timeline is strange and non-specific around here but if that were true, it would mean that the plague, Dimitri’s mother’s death, and Lambert and Rodrigue’s war campaign to subjugate the southern half of Sreng would all have happened around the same time. Dimitri says he doesn’t remember it, but that doesn’t necessarily matter. At six years old he had lost one parent and the other one left him to go on a battle march, leaving this child without any sort of parent figure to console him in a country that is culturally opposed to expressing emotion. Lambert will probably always remain a mystery, but I think it could be fair to say he was a poor father. Or at the very least a distant one. Dimitri was undoubtedly a sensitive child (if we’re to judge by the sensitive person he grew up to be) and during the years where he was actually becoming old enough to remember, he had nobody to teach him how to properly navigate and manage his emotions. Emotional neglect in a child who is predisposed to being emotional and empathetic can leave them suffering from a sense of isolation, an inability to ask for help, and a predisposition to having break downs as they get older.

But three-ish years later, possibly one of the best things that ever would happen to Dimitri came to pass and Lambert married Patricia. Dimitri adored her. 

“I share no blood with my stepmother, but to hear you say that... It pleases me greatly. She was the one who raised me. I suppose it makes sense that we would share certain mannerisms.” (Dimitri’s B support with Hapi)

I don’t think Dimitri’s feelings about Patricia can be overstated, as I feel it’s one of the most defining aspects of his reactions to things that happen later on. Dimitri talks about Patricia more lovingly than he talks about Lambert. She was in his life for around four to five years but had such an impact on him that even his mannerisms are similar. 

Soon after, a ten-year-old Dimitri made his first friend that wasn’t knightly, who didn’t embody those Faerghus ideals of stifling emotions and swinging swords.

People point out the Faerghus crew as Dimitri’s best friends, and yet Edelgard is the one associated with his best memories. It’s just my own assumptions, but I think that it’s because both Edelgard and Patricia gave Dimitri space to be an emotional child, to not have to be the knightly prince who had no emotions and engaged only in the most masculine of activities. And, I mean, look at them. He’s learning to dance and she’s bossing him around, absolutely no regard for propriety.  

It’s pretty clear that Dimitri doesn’t feel romantic feelings towards Edelgard in the academy phase, but I think it would be fair to say she was his first love when they were young. He essentially says this was the best year of his life and establishes Edelgard as someone very precious to him (as well as the daughter of one of the most precious people to him). Strong feelings beget strong feelings, do they not? 

Google says that eleven to fourteen is the general age of male puberty. It’s the time that kids begin to more fully define how they’re going to emotionally interact with people and the world at large. Meeting Edelgard was at the cusp of this period of Dimitri’s life, and the Tragedy of Duscur was right in the midst of it. 

And we all know what that turned out.

Dimitri’s accounts of what happened during the Tragedy are... conflicting. This CG of an unharmed Dimitri in a field of corpses is... conflicting.

“My father...was the strongest man I knew. Someone I loved and admired deeply. That said, he was killed before my eyes. His head severed clean off. My stepmother, the kindest person I had ever known, left me behind and disappeared into the infernal flames.”

I’ve seen people create a plausible scenario in which Dimitri’s recollection is entirely accurate, where he saw Lambert call for revenge and get beheaded, saw Glenn’s ruined body and face twisted in pain, saw his step-mother disappear into the flames, and all despite the raging chaos of the battle and how people would undoubtedly be targeting the prince, but I think it makes more sense that his memories are unreliable. Dimitri suffered a severe head injury (very important to keep in mind) at Duscur. Maybe that happened early on, after seeing who attacked Lambert but before he was an actual target himself, which merely made him look dead. Maybe he saw a version of the events he described, but through the filter of confused head trauma, smoke inhalation, and intense terror. To think that his recollection isn’t exactly entirely reliable sets a precedent for his later skewed take on reality. 

Regardless of opinion, though, the facts are that Dimitri left Duscur with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. 

After that, from thirteen to seventeen, Dimitri was pretty isolated. Most of the people he cared about were dead. His entire emotional support system (Patricia) was gone. He saved Dedue (although they were definitely not on even terms, that relationship is unbalanced to the extreme) and occasionally saw Rodrigue (who I have no reason to believe was emotionally accommodating in any way considering the way he sees Dimitri as an extension of Lambert to his dying breath). Again, it’s strange. People act like Dimitri was super close friends with the Faerghus crew, that he was surrounded by people who loved him (although it is clear there is a lot of love there), but he never presents things in a way to imply that’s the case. In fact, he highlights his isolation:

“In Duscur, I lost my father, stepmother, and closest friends. I didn't have many allies at the castle after that. In truth, I had only Dedue for companionship.”... “I once had people I could confide in. Family, friends, instructors, even the royal soldiers. But they were all taken away from me four years ago.” (Dimitri’s C support with Byleth.)

Two years passed before the next time Dimitri saw his friends and it was a war campaign, putting down the rebellion in western Faerghus. Dimitri speaks about those battles from a place of deeply affected emotion, expressing empathy, pain, and disgust with his actions and the killing.

“I recall coming across a dead soldier's body. He was clutching a locket. Inside was a lock of golden hair. I don't know to whom it belonged. His wife, his daughter...mother, lover... I'll never know.... in that moment, I realized he was also a real person, just like the rest of us… Killing is part of the job, but even so... There are times when I'm chilled to the bone by the depravity of my own actions.” (Dimitri’s B Support with Byleth)

I love this support, honestly. It’s so very telling about the destructive quality of empathy. Although caring can be a good thing, it’s also arguably one of the most destructive of Dimitri’s qualities. His empathy is what presents him with situations he cannot accept, the thing that pushes him to disassociate from reality so he can be rid of it and fight without remorse like he was taught to do by his father and other soldiers. Dimitri is a man of extremes. Either total control or none, without any room for error. This dialogue is also the first time Dimitri brings up reconciling himself with reality and hints to the fact that he has been unable to do so. This is contrasted perfectly in this line from Felix,

“The way you suppressed that rebellion... It was ruthless slaughter and you loved every second. I remember the way you killed your victims. How you watched them suffer. And your face...that expression. All the world's evil packed into it...” (Dimitri’s C Support with Felix)

Dimitri doesn’t deny this. Just like all of the other terrible things Felix says, he takes it without protesting in an act of what I think is stilted contrition. Although, it’s not just in supports that Dimitri’s contrasting behavior is brought up. The Remire incident probably works as a good reference for what Felix saw all those years back.

This is the first time we see Dimitri’s darker side in full. The similarities in the situation to what is shown to have happened in the Tragedy of Duscur are interesting. The fire, the utter chaos, strange figures watching it all from above. This is another case of a perfect disaster. I wonder if his ultimate snap would have been so destructive if not for Remire.

Anyway, this draws parallels to his and Felix’s separate recall of the rebellion because later Dimitri apologizes.

“Professor... I...I'm sorry you saw that side of me in the village… When I saw the chaos and violence there...my mind just went completely dark.”

Dimitri is unreliable. A lack of control, a separation of self, and becoming consumed by a dark rage only to come to his senses later, full of shame and a sense of confusion about why. From my own experience, it’s not unnatural to come out of an episode like this without being able to explain what was happening and being baffled by your behavior. This firmly establishes Dimitri’s uncomfortably fast mood shifts in relation to his trauma from the Tragedy and confirms all of the warnings Felix had given. When Dimitri was faced with a reality he could not accept, he lost control of his emotions and his mental state shifted to adapt accordingly.

This is when I’d also like to note something interesting about how Dimitri discusses his trauma. He is very honest and open about his experiences, explaining exactly what happened to him to Byleth. However, he uses the truth to hide. In recounting the events of the Tragedy of Duscur, in talking about how his family died and saying how badly it hurt him, he does not make himself vulnerable. When he admits weakness, he does so in the past tense or apologetically, vowing to be stronger. “Stronger”, aka, he’ll be better in suppressing his emotions. 

“I always strive to keep my emotions at bay, but... Sometimes the darkness takes hold and...it's impossible to suppress. It just shows you how lacking I am... I have much to learn.”

Dimitri lies by using the truth, shoving down his feelings, and blaming himself rather than attempting to figure out how to handle his emotions. In his own words:

“Everyone has something that is unacceptable within them. I certainly do, and I'd wager you do as well. I wonder which is best, Professor... To cut away that which is unacceptable, or to find a way to accept it anyway...”

Good advice Dimitri. Might want to keep that in mind.

It is at this point is when I’m going to get into my personal thoughts and armchair psychiatry nonsense.

First off, when I mentioned earlier about “non-traditional” mental illness, I did not mean abnormal or rare. Although people mostly just point to Dimitri having PTSD (and depression) as the source of his issues, I’m going to use all of my above information to make the (decently common) argument that Dimitri is schizophrenic, which is, contrary to popular belief, not too unusual. I state that with the caveat that I understand that there’s a lot to be said about schizophrenia and the tumultuous relationship between mental health and fiction. However, now is not really the time to go into mental health politics and representation or the many lies spread about the illness so instead, I recommend that you read into the topic if you’re personally interested (This has some good information). 

At the very least be aware that this IS sensationalized.

That said, Dimitri does not, to my understanding using grossly simplified terms, meet the qualifications generally (very generally) used to diagnose schizophrenia through the majority of the White Clouds chapters. These qualifying symptoms include, but are not limited to, the duration of the psychotic episode, the concurrent presence of hallucinations and delusions, and a greatly lowered ability to keep up with basic quality-of-life tasks. You only see these symptoms in the final chapter of White Clouds and the first few of Azure Moon. This isn’t unusual, however, because schizophrenia manifesting fully in younger individuals is extremely uncommon, sometimes taking years to trigger during a person’s late teens. And since the diagnosis generally relies on the occurrence of a psychotic episode, it can be mistaken as other mood disorders. Actually, the idea of him having a mood disorder was one of the things that caught my eye originally. Prodromal symptoms such as depression, irritability, headaches, sleep disruption, and mood swings are common in bipolar disorder (and, of course, schizophrenia). 

Still, I don't deny that Dimitri has PTSD and depression, only that I don’t think PTSD is his main (or only) issue. In reality, PTSD and schizophrenia are closely tied. They share many symptoms, even the symptom of psychosis. There’s also evidence that those with genetic precedent to develop PTSD overlap with those at risk for schizophrenia, and that the nature of PTSD triggers can act as a severe stressor to aggravate a schizophrenic episode. 

(From here)

This falls into the realm of being uncertain where one ends the other begins, highlighting the lack of concrete understanding about schizophrenia and the dependency of diagnosis and treatment to rely entirely on the individual experience, but that’s not a conversation I’m actually qualified to have. 

The study that truly caught my eye and while researching for this was one called “Psychiatric disorders and traumatic brain injury”. As I mentioned, at some point during the Tragedy, Dimitri sustained severe head trauma. We know this because of his development of the rare inability to taste called ageusia. I was originally interested in following this narrative thread because, as you might know if you follow true crime cases, there are many murderers who recall having sustained a head injury as children. Not that Dimitri shares similar psychology to people that kill and eat their victim's feet... Although his body count is higher. Besides that, head trauma, in general, is known to be linked to mental illness and altering a person’s behavior. There is even a correlation between TBI (traumatic brain injury) and schizophrenia. 

From the study I linked above:

To put it more simply, patients in the study who had suffered TBI and developed schizophrenia reported that their most common symptoms were delusions of persecution, auditory hallucinations, and aggressive behaviors. The auditory hallucinations were often voices. Many of the subjects experienced psychotic episodes two or more years after the initial incident (although, as I mentioned, Dimitri’s age could also have something to do with the timing as children rarely have fully developed schizophrenic episodes). Furthermore, the behaviors classified as an absence of normal behaviors called “negative symptoms” (which include apathy and disordered speech) were rare in this testing group. 

Dimitri exclusively displays “positive” symptoms of schizophrenia (“positive” meaning the presence of symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions). He also clearly suffers from delusions of persecution in his belief that Edelgard is the sole instigator of Duscur and the war and that he immediately accuses Byleth of being an Imperial spy upon meeting them post time skip. I think it’s pretty fascinating how closely Dimitri’s symptoms follow the outline of the study, especially with the aggressive behaviors, as those aren’t actually very common in schizophrenics. 

In very, very simplistic terms, if I’m right and Dimitri was born with the genetic blueprint for schizophrenia/PTSD (through Crests, inheritance, or environmental causes) and later suffered severe head trauma in an event that also gave him PTSD in combination with his pre-existing parental issues and stilted emotional development, then this could definitely create the type of person who loses all sense of reality, can’t control his emotions, and is prone to episodes of murderous rage when being reminded of the trigger (however tangentially) of losing everything he loved.

However, I’ll add real quick that the study I mentioned should be taken with a grain of salt. 

I use it mainly because I thought the similarities were interesting and it shows that there was more thought put into Dimitri than maybe people appreciate.

This brings us to my final point; Some kind of twisted joke.

A major point I saw being made as proof of how terrible Dimitri is as a character was that he blamed Edelgard for the Tragedy of Duscur (a time where she would have been twelve). More accurately, he blamed her for everything that had happened and the thing is, I don’t disagree with that critique entirely. However, this is a case of him being a bad person, not a bad character. This might seem like an odd distinction, but I think it changes the scope of deserved criticism.  

As I’ve been trying so desperately to illustrate, Dimitri snapping wasn’t just because of Edelgard being revealed as the Flame Emperor. Rather, it was an unlucky combination of many things. His grasp and interpretation of reality were already hazy at best by the time she was unmasked, slowly falling apart as his prodromal symptoms worsened. Going into the fight, he believed the Flame Emperor to be responsible in whole or in part for the worst thing that had ever happened to him, guessed at Arundel’s involvement, had found (and lied about) the dagger, and was rapidly mentally deteriorating. While Dimitri suspected Edelgard’s involvement to some degree, he did his best to act like it wasn’t true.  

Dimitri didn’t want it to be true. To the extent that he was willing to lie to Byleth (and to himself) to avoid reality. He cared deeply about Edelgard. The best year of his life was spent with her, she was his first love, and she was the daughter of the step-mother he adored. Strong feelings beget strong feelings, do they not? This reveal confronted Dimitri with something that he could not accept, so his mind sidestepped the issue altogether. Delusion convinced him that all of the fears and worries he had beforehand were related, all into one larger delusion that Edelgard had sole responsibility. It’s not right and maybe not even excusable, but it falls in line with everything else.

Edelgard and Dimitri. Bound by some twisted fate but forever doomed to be separated, unable to understand the other’s chosen path. 

I do recognize the flaws of Dimitri’s character and arc. There are some pretty major flaws. I have parts of a post typed out about his shoddy recovery and how I’d fix it that, hopefully, one day will see the light of day as well as many complaints about the way the story is hindered by the need for flexibility to accommodate gameplay and a happy ending.

But, despite that, this has all been a very long-winded way of praising Dimitri’s writing. His mental illness has a surprising amount of depth and I loved studying it as intently as I did. I learned a lot about his character as well as about mental illness in general.

Ultimately, Dimitri is neither an innocent sweetheart whose actions are entirely excusable and justified or an unforgivable war criminal and overall terrible character. You can feel bad for his pain and his struggle with his illness and understand that as a reason for his actions, but you shouldn’t use it as justification. He had the opportunity to seek help before things got too bad. He was selfish with the mismanagement of his emotions and goals. However, he also was a victim. Dimitri worked to recover and mend the mistakes he made while he was unwell, which is a side of this mental illness that is rarely shown in media.  

I wholeheartedly believe that, love him or hate him, Dimitri is the most well-written of the Three Houses characters,