#i quite literally have a mood disorder and never know whats going on with my emotions

[pretty-little-martyr]

the fun part of having my Various Mental Health Issues + being completely blind to my own emotions/the reasons for them is this past weekedn i was forced to be around my grandparents, who do not know im trans and Should Not Know I'm Trans, so i was unceremoniously shoved back into the closet for 3 days. during that time i was experiencing "strange" bouts of suddenly feeling like i was about to cry, and stomach pains, and i was like "oh, fuck, am i having a bad reaction to my new birth control? is it making me all hormonal and cramp-y?" but now that i'm back home im perfectly fine. i was just experiencing psychic damage yet simultaneously Unaware

[galactica7071]

let's diagnose the Irish guy from punch-out

disclaimer: I am but a lass with ADD, so while I do know a lot from both my own experiences and research, you should still take my ramblings with a few grains of salt. I encourage anyone reading to form their own headcanons, and would love to hear them!

So, the Punch-Out wiki (in its current state) implies that Aran Ryan has some sort of mental disorder, so I projected onto dissected him like a deep sea specimen, and may have found out what's going on in his very empty and screwed up head

🎉congrats! it's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder! (probably)🎉

ADHD has a bunch of characteristics that go with it, but I'll only be going over the ones that apply to Aran and are displayed in canon. Of course, I'll insert some speculation here and there to further support and reason through some of my points. For more reading, I suggest checking out organizations like Mayo Clinic and the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as any self-reports and blogs by people with ADHD (the latter tends to be more personal and far less clinical-sounding, but are just as helpful). Wikipedia is also a good place to go for anything, and you might even find yourself down a few rabbit holes!

Hyperactivity and restlessness

Aran exhibits this in PO Wii heavily. He has a high-stamina fighting style with lots of shuffling around, always bouncing around Little Mac. He can only be stunned through counter-punches and being faster than him (During round breaks, Doc Louis literally says "beat Aran Ryan to the punch"). It is extremely difficult to KO or TKO Aran without intercepting him due to this mechanic. During round breaks, regardless of how beaten and bruised he is, Aran will bounce his leg constantly in Contender and harass the audience in Title Defense.

Impulsivity and recklessness

This one's consistent between his two appearances, surprisingly. In Wii, Aran is portrayed as a dirty cheater who would "do anything to win", according to supplementary comics. He has the most rule infractions in the Punch-Out series, at 32 combined. He stuffs his gloves with horseshoes before his Contender fight and brings a homemade flail made from a broken boxing glove to his bout with Little Mac in Title Defense. During matches, he makes use of headbutts and elbows quite frequently. These are both illegal and very stupid moves, due to the potential of self-inflicted trauma. His flail in Title Defense could be a sign of creativity by thinking outside the box, which is often seen in people with ADHD. In supplementary material for Super Punch-Out!!, it's implied that a fight usually broke out whenever Aran was made fun of in school, showing that he was reckless during his childhood as well.

Emotional dysregulation

In Super Punch-Out!!, Aran Ryan is rather grumpy, and is one of two characters in the entire game to never smile in any of his sprites (the other being Nick Bruiser). Compared to his Wii portrayal, Aran is as clean as it gets in this game, even complimenting the player during the credits. Supplementary material attributes his lower mood to the teasing he endured during his childhood, and that he got into boxing to channel some of his pent-up anger. Depending on how you view it, him being so angry over his peers making fun of his name could be an overblown reaction. This hot-headedness is retained in PO Wii (which could be a sign of impulsivity), but he's essentially the inverse of how he was in Super. He's boisterous, reckless, dishonest, and smiles even while he's stunned. Many of Aran's reactions to being hit are him laughing, which might imply masochism on some level, but is nonetheless seen as an inappropriate response to being hit. He displays some antisocial traits, even, as seen when he throws aside the referee in Title Defense. This is likely caused by a low tolerance of authority, but is still an extreme reaction to the referee just trying to maintain order in the ring (good luck with that, ref...).

Difficulty starting tasks

This is a sign of executive dysfunction, which is closely linked to inattention in people with ADHD. It's exhibited in his Contender intro, where he spends the first three frames of the cutscene messing around. For this one, I'm going to compare Aran's behavior in his Contender intro to all the other boxers that spend their entire intro cutscene in a gym/dojo/training environment, spend the majority of their cutscene explicitly training, or are in several training environments. Here's a neat little chart, where the numbers represent how many slides they spent being "off-task":

can you tell that graphic design is my passion

I've counted any activity that builds strength and endurance (like eating, running, lifting, or practicing magic in Tiger's case), or requires a large amount of work put in to do (like chopping trees or playing hockey, for Bear Hugger). Some of you might be wondering why I didn't include certain characters, but that's because they're either in a combat setting, switch from training to non-training settings, or are doing unrelated things in what could be a training setting.

If Aran has 3 instances of being off-task, he ties with TD Kaiser, Don, and Macho in terms of how long they're off-task for. If "gearing up" is being counted as being on-task, he only ties with TD Kaiser and himself. Of course, context matters heavily. TD Kaiser, Don, and Macho aren't off-task purely for the sake of slacking off, but show developments of their story throughout Career Mode. TD Aran is off-task for storytelling as well, but it's not motivated by a grudge towards Mac like the other three and falls under the normal definition of "slacking off". Speaking of cutscenes,

Inattention and distractibility

Aran shows this several times in Title Defense. In his intro, he notices a rope in the trash can and gets the idea of making his flail, seemingly forgetting all about training for his match with Little Mac. During round intermissions, he's distracted by the audience throwing objects at him, and threatens them instead of spending the break resting or strategizing.

Anxiety

ADHD is highly comorbid with anxiety, due to executive dysfunction (mainly sensory processing), and the risk of overthinking. I admit that this one is a bit of a stretch, since general restlessness and anxiety are linked in many mood disorders, but it's shared between both of his appearances. Super's version of Aran being caught up in his own past can be a sign of social anxiety as well as falling victim to overthinking. In PO Wii, the leg bouncing can be a sign of anxiety for various reasons, whether it be physiological (ex. outside stimuli being unpleasant) or psychological (ex. overthinking the match). His stance in Exhibition's menu for his Contender match is also a little shaky, which is common in fight-or-flight reactions, though it could also be plain hyperactivity.

Pressured speech

In PO Wii. Aran usually talks very quickly, which can be caused by the classic ADHD experience of "having a lot to say, and feeling like there's no time to say it". It's very likely that it's just be a characteristic of his accent, though.

🍀🌠🌈this is a cool section break🌈🌠🍀

There's plenty more symptoms you could make arguments for, but these were some of his more prominent traits. ADHD shares symptoms with a lot of other disorders, though, so let's see some other possibilities...

Counter-Diagnosis #1: Bipolar II Disorder

Bipolar II, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, is characterized by a a pattern of depressive states and hypomanic states (notice the hypo- prefix). We can attribute Aran's demeanor in Super to a depressive state, and his demeanor in Wii to a hypomanic state. I've chosen bipolar II instead of I due to the specifications of a "manic state" not fitting his Wii portrayal as closely.

Hypomania (literally meaning "less than mania") shares many characteristics with full-blown mania, but is more toned-down. People who have experienced genuine hypomanic states usually describe it as helpful towards their productivity, while manic states are notoriously more harmful and often directly affect productivity. Symptoms of mania include restlessness, racing thoughts, pressured speech, overconfidence, increased agitation, impulsiveness, a disconnect from one's surroundings, extreme anxiousness, and many others. Already, we can observe many of these symptoms in Aran's Wii portrayal that are shared with the ADHD diagnosis. However, hypomania tends to lack the "reality disconnect", and we can see that Aran is very aware of his surroundings. Him being in the World Circuit in both Super and Wii can be interpreted as a sign of the hypomanic states being more helpful than detrimental (maybe less so in Super because of the existence of the Special Circuit, but I digress).

I think this take has a lot of ground, maybe more than the ADHD hypothesis. A lot of my earlier points in favor of him having ADHD can also apply to him being bipolar (specifically hyperactivity, recklessness, and especially emotional dysregulation) as well, which blurs the line in some places, but it's still a very strong argument.

Counter-Diagnosis #2: Oppositional Defiant Disorder

According to Mayo Clinic, ODD is "a frequent and ongoing pattern of anger, irritability, arguing and defiance towards parents and other authority figures". The characteristics of ODD can be observed in both SPO's and Wii's Aran.

I think this one's weaker, for a few reasons. First, ODD is considered clinically relevant only during childhood; from then, it can "evolve" into a number of other conditions, including but not limited to borderline personality disorder and the aforementioned bipolar disorder. Obviously, Aran isn't a child, but he could have had this disorder in the past and "grew out of it" from a clinical standpoint.

You could make an argument for the anger issues due to a few of his behaviors, as well as his voice lines in Wii having a sort of "growl" to them, but his irritability is infrequent and mild enough to where it can be attributed back to emotional dysregulation, and the "growl" could just be how the character or his voice actor naturally sounds (I haven't found any clips of Stephen Webster speaking out-of-character, but if anyone has any, I'd love to hear them).

Counter-Diagnosis #3: Antisocial Personality Disorder

The DSM-5 defines APD as consistent displays of deceitfulness, issues with authority, impulsivity, irritability, recklessness, and a diminished capacity for remorse after hurting someone. Again, a few of these symptoms are shared with ADHD, so there's a significant grey area here. Yet, I believe it's stronger than the ODD argument, since his cheating can be a sign of deceitfulness and his apparent antisocial traits in Wii. However, boxing as a combat sport doesn't leave much room for feeling remorse, since doing so can result in throwing or forfeiting a match. I'm not going to count the lack of remorse due to the nature of the sport, but you as a reader can interpret it how you like.

Counter-Diagnosis #4: Autism Spectrum Disorder

Because of how broad the autism spectrum is, you could easily go crazy in-depth with this. I'll do a miniature version of the ADHD symptom setup, which includes traits observed in canon. I won't be including every shared trait, but do keep in mind that ADHD is comorbid with a bunch of different spectrum disorders, and misdiagnoses, especially in women, are fairly common in the real world because of it. I know I'm going to fail to list certain symptoms due to just how many ASD traits there are, so if anyone reading has any more connections to make, be my guest! This "counter-diagnosis" section is for provoking further discussion, after all, and I'm happy to learn from you all.

Hyposensitivity

In PO Wii. To wind up for his right uppercut, Aran hits himself in the side of the head, and after round breaks in Contender, he hits himself repeatedly. Considering his gloves are confirmed to be loaded in his Contender fight, his relative indifference might be a sign of this. People with autism have reported tuning out various stimuli if they become overwhelmed by a bunch of them (sometimes related to meltdown or shutdown), and it's possible that that's what Aran is doing here. The bright lights of the venue combined with the crowd noise and the feeling of being sweaty could be overstimulating, and the supposed hyposensitivity towards being hit is caused by this "tuning out" to avoid a shutdown mid-bout.

Stimming (repetitive movements)

In PO Wii. The leg bounce in his Contender round break can be interpreted as a stim, as well as the wind-ups for his right uppercut (bopping himself in the head) and headbutt (choosing to wind up on the ropes). His bouncing around Mac could also be stimming.

Pathological demand avoidance

This phenomenon can also be comorbid with anxiety, which happens to be a risk factor for ADHD, so we're looping back around with this one. PDA is characterized by a person exhibiting an intense aversion to something that is asked of them, even if they wanted to do it beforehand. It can be associated with feelings of unfairness and like they don't have any control, so someone with PDA may "break the rules" to feel as though they have some control over what happens to them. Aran's high infraction count in Wii could be a sign of a more obsessive form of this. Avoiding the process of carrying out the demand can be conflated with executive dysfunction as well.

TL;DR get this man into a psychiatrist's office ASAP

[sugudoe]

HI BABES <3 hruuuu

I've been on ur page for a while and was curious about the jjk matchup and wanted to try 😭

btw feel free to ignore this if u don't wanna do it 🫶🏻

-appearance wise- short? Not athletic at all, casual goth/alt kinda style hijabi/curly ASF short hair, (kinda really conventionally attractive according to shit ton of people ig😭?)

- schizophrenic? Borderline personality disorder and adhd 💀

-Quite smart actually but js lazy asf so usually no efforts

- procrastinates ALOT like that's a huge part of my life atp😭in literally everything

- not really the type to care for own health or anything

-Got a really bad rbf in public +not talkative AT ALL outside of home💀

a huge girls girl

-Really weird mood swings so either talk wayyy while making zero sense or fully mute

-Overall quite confident esp in own body and all so it's pretty hard for other person to win any argument/insult type of things

-Kinda narcissist? Like 1st priority is me so pretty hard to settle for anyone

-childish in relationships cuz ykk trauma🥰🫶🏻

- not taking ANYONES shi esp from partner soo.....

ANYWAYS THAT'S IT ILYYY BYEEE MWAH

my first sukuna!!!! i’ve been waiting for you mwah. this is true form!sukuna and heian!sukuna. also you’re so badass i got inspired to write a one shot, yay.

•⁀➷ 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠. . . ﹫ 𝘴𝘶���𝘶𝘯𝘢 ៹ ༉‧₊˚

sukuna does not give a fuck about anyone that isn’t him or uraume, so when you came on this temple he took for himself with a lot of blood as a payment, he was left wondering.

you arrived as an offering from your village, they couldn’t deal with your personality and ways. never putting your head down or allowing anyone to talk shit. and you, a cursed user, had no restrains on using your technique to defend yourself or prove a point. somehow, they still managed to get you unconscious.

throw at sukuna’s feet, you woke in a daze and you were mad at everyone. seeing this fragile looking little person raising chaos and destruction intrigued him. he killed all of those you didn’t, and you hated him for it.

“hey, you big asshole!” you stormed all the way to his seat. “they were mine.”

“and you are mine now, go with uraume to receive your tasks.”

. . . what?

you start to work under sukuna after that day, he says he doesn’t give a fuck, but it’s an easy lie to spot. sukuna wants to know about your powers, your anger, your everything. and since asking you would be inconsistent to his nonchalant personality, he makes uraume be near you at all times.

uraume hates you. not for jealousy, they just hate how lazy you are with the work. the three of you have an intimidating aura, the closed off faces of you and uraume and the devilish smirk of sukuna is a common last view for anyone who dares face you all.

sukuna begins to view you as something other than a soldier when you keep back talking him more and more. he gets offensive, you defend yourself and nearly gets you face burned or body slashed, that makes you even angrier. he finds amusing your scowling and screeches, so he keeps “missing” his assassination attempts.

sukuna does not court you or asks you on a date, sorry! he will just make clear one day that you are his, like in your first encounter, except this time anyone that comes into his room will be met with a not friendly sight of you on his lap.

now, uraume hates the two of you.

──── 𓇼 ° ⋆ FUN FACTS ᵎᵎ

۫ ּ ﹗it’s all a lie, uraume actually likes you both. and if you ever get sick, sukuna will not help you, but the cooker will make you soup and that’s it. don’t ask the ingredients, though.

۫ ּ ﹗sukuna has a short temper, and you have the light to ignite his anger. you both are very explosive, and yet he stopped getting angry a long time ago, he rather see you worked up. you know where this ends.

۫ ּ ﹗he sees you with a gothic dress, his many eyes won’t leave you alone, never.

۫ ּ ﹗when the culling games start, you come back thanks to kenjaku. it’s like the day you first met, you come his way in a confused state and angry. he missed you a lot.

[liliadrawingstuff]

Coming back for one day after my monthly disappearance

here's art I did in the meanwhile

Little rant to the drawings and a bunch of old art under the cut

1. Imma start with the "Gothic AU" that I probably dedicate an own post to because this AU has been on my mind a bit too much. But hey! Faba is your typical Coward Diva Royalty Lord and wants to become King of England in the dumbest ways possible. Also Colress is there too! He will be the calm looking chaotic overpowered smug but "haha ◻️7◻️" butler.

He and Lilac basically have just a "Villains in love" kinda dynamic here. And Faba and Colress will be very chaotic too hehe

2. Group cuddling!! Yayy

3. I have designed Faba and Lilac some formal outfits (but never posted them) so ye. Carry that little beany

4. As much as I love the "you are great" - "I know I am great" Faba. It's a guilty pleasure of mine that he actually gets slightly flustered when you REALLY mean it. Poor guy probably didn't hear any genuine compliments in his life or didn't realized that he was actually complimented

5. A kissu. Yknow. Seeing all my Art together and seeing that 4 of them have them have the "surprised flustered" Faba face makes me unable to talk myself out of this. But yea... flustered Faba is just cute I die. Funnily enough in the gothic AU he is JUST smug (and stupid) so maybe I post more smug Faba in the future whoaa!! XD

6. 3 of the 4 Lilac moods that she can have. The soft idiot in love, the self confident flirt that she can only be with Faba tho, and the dense airhead. The 4th mood is her empty/sadness but I prefer talking about happy things hhh. But one thing I like to say together with the second last image is that Lilac actually feels chronically empty. (Thank you quite bpd. Life would be so cool without you). If she can't be a use for someone, make people happy or meet up to people expectations perfectly she just spirals down into a massive amount of self hatred. And that's what my Yumeship Story is literally about... Faba and Lilac trying to deal with their mental struggles, their uncontrollable feelings and thoughts they often have towards themselves and others and live a happy and healthy life because thats what I need. Life is enough angst and pain most of the time. :")

7. Just telling your boss how amazing he is. Stroke that ego *patpat*

8. Have ya ever heard that NPD and BPD often go hand in hand? This time they do literally- (Also disclaimer that I dont want to seem like I cutify disorders; both of them are very life ruining to live with and I wish these on nobody)

9. A huggy for everyone that wants to after reading this whole chunk of text or looking at my art.

Happy Holidays to you!

[punkpandapatrixk]

The Kind of Sad You Can’t Understand

Certain days I feel very deeply that I want to cry but I don’t know why.

For such a long time I lived with this kind of mood without being able to express it anywhere, not to anyone. I was struggling for my sanity; I was constantly thinking of destroying myself; and I was hoping someone would see me, and rush to save me. But nobody ever saw that of me.

I was a badass. I was a cool girl. I seemed to everybody else a smart, talented, expensive girl who's got all her shit together. Even on days she wasn't all that together, she had an enviable life anyway. I appeared on the outside too glamorous for anybody to even imagine that on the inside I was rotting. I was this close to being dead, all the time.

Who in their simple-mindedness would've thought a girl like that could be so macabre all the time? And that’s how I experienced an entire life witnessing people’s lack of empathy. I guess my point of view was fragmented but that was how life was for me anyway. Ironically, some intuitive peeps who were able to see the macabre in me thought I was frightening more than anything HAHAHAH That was all the same in the end. Enough with the gossips. I don’t know what normal people expect from everybody else they meet, to be honest. I don’t know what I’d expected from them either.

I guess it’s because the society I grew up in was like that that I couldn’t bring myself to show anybody my distress. Trauma. Mental illness. Disordered personality. All of that was nothing but insanity. And insane people don’t belong in society.

So simple. Yet so cruel.

Thank you, Jesus. Mother Mary. Catholic Church. Thanks for all the rejection. I’m SO happy now!

That’s fucking twisted.

In a society brimming with nothing but pretenders, we meet and chit and chat and act like all of our troubles are manageable to say the least. ‘Yeah, it’s not that bad, to be honest.' But it was; you've just got to pose real strong otherwise people think you're a loser. 'I guess I’m OK.’ But you weren't; you've just got to really make it sound like you're still keeping it together. 'I'll be just fine.' But you wouldn't know; you didn't even know if you'd still wanna be alive tomorrow.

In the midst of all those meaningless exchanges, I hated quite nothing more than to hear, especially from men, how strong I was as a woman. I hated it like I'd never hated anything in my life.

It was suffocating to be seen as holding it together when you were literally breaking at the seams...

I wanted someone to be able to notice I was screaming on the inside. That I was gasping for air every second I was sitting there listening to their trivial chitter chatter. Who cares about your silly drama? Would you care for mine if you knew my life was on the line? And I hated those expectant eyes. All of them. Were they expecting me to share in their self-made woes and console them in the end? HAH. Go to hell, losers.

I always thought, none of MY problems were created by my own reckless behaviours that would've obviously hurt myself or others. Not in the beginning, at least. Unlike some idiots, I was never into drugs, one night stands, or even smoking; I never caused anybody any trouble. So why did everybody cause me trouble when all I wanted was just a peaceful, normal life? Shit, what even was my IDEA of a normal life? I can't remember now.

Certain days I feel very deeply that I want to cry but I don’t know why. There's always not enough reason to do so now. Haah... If it weren't for my abundance of Aquarius, which makes me incredibly lazy and antisocial, I'd have paraded around town and rallied to become a Neo Hitler and kill everybody in this rotten world. I hated this world so much.

The first ever PAC I put out here was ‘What’s Your Crazy?’ What ever was my reason for writing that? I was crazy and I needed some explanation.

I used to look like the girl in the third pic before I chopped all of my hair off everyone began to suspect I was gay. I wasn’t gay; I was depressed. Those unassuming idiots.

[whumpshaped]

hey i’m really sorry if this is dumb but do you ever feel bad about enjoying whump? if so, how do you deal with it? i’m having a hard time with liking it. i love reading it but it occasionally makes me feel like a terrible person

its not dumb! i have some disorders that make it hard for me to feel bad abt stuff just for moral reasons alone, but i do get the terrible feeling sometimes when im afraid others will think im a terrible person lol if that makes any sense- so yeah i get the shame around it. i was lucky enough to be the quirky fun guy anyway so having slightly stranger interests wasnt a big deal for me.

this got very long bc i always have many thoughts on this

let me just start this by saying u totally dont have to feel bad for liking it. at all. everybody tends to like some form of whump, even if they dont call it that. the middle aged christian woman reading her 100th romance novel packed with fucking angst is an avid enjoyer of emotional whump in my book. and the guy who jokes about whump enjoyers being crazy and then turns around and watches marvel movies with blood and beat up heroes in it, well-

humans are just fascinated with pain. physical, emotional, all of it. it's just how we are, i think. we love to explore pain in fantasy, through characters separate from us, while we sit in our room comfortably (controlled danger! like rollercoasters). it can be cathartic. it can be how we find and understand ourselves. it can be comforting to know hey, this character went through something like that, that means the author must have some experience with it. there's at least one other human who gets me.

enjoying/reading/writing whump can be a perfect outlet, like hitting a punching bag repeatedly. it can be how someone digests their own trauma. it can just be a kink thing. it doesn't have to have deep moral things attached to it, sometimes seeing fictional characters hurt just tickles the brain and that's that. it doesn't matter, because it's all fictional, it doesn't hurt anyone. unless your preferred media is like, literal hate speech and propaganda against real life people, (in which case it DOES hurt ppl), there's literally nothing wrong with looking at a character being beaten and going "hey, thats cool".

also i will never not say this but even the fucken bible is straight whump and no one will ever change my mind. i tried to be a good christian and what did i find? whump.

also, there's like... a huge portion of people who read whump for the comfort of it. yes the character goes through shit, yes it's horrible, but guess what, they come out on the other side unquestionably changed but still worthy of recovery. they find peace, they heal, they find friends and family, they're comforted and listened to. that's something a lot of people read whump for. there's a reason it's called hurt/comfort. and there's also a very good post about how so many of us read it because the whumpees' trauma is always acknowledged. maybe not in the story, but we as readers understand that they went through some shit, and thus their trauma is always validated in some way. that can be a comfort as well, in a world where so many people's issues get brushed under the rug and ignored and overlooked and straight up invalidated.

but even if you're not into the comfort aspect (which i wasnt for a long time!!!!! i was strictly here for the hurt!!!!!!) you're not some sort of monster for it. i'd say quite the contrary. i'd say if you regularly engage with media like this, where the character's emotions are laid out so bare, and explored so deeply, you're more in tune with your own emotions too. i couldve punched holes in walls like some people i know (i have anger issues), but instead i grabbed my laptop and wrote about a character being beaten to a pulp. no damage to person or property. done. others read it and enjoyed it, and i even got serotonin from likes and reblogs, which lifted my mood, so that was a whole net positive.

seriously look at the most popular media too. it's whump. always has been. a good friend of mine whos a little weirded out by some of the gore i write is OBSESSED with game of thrones for example. and he recommended it to me because hey i love bloody stuff dont i? and i loved the torture scenes and he loved to hate and be enraged and a little grossed out by them. we enjoyed the series together. neither of us was terrible for it.

all this to say, you're not the odd one out. even if your interests count as more "taboo", like some of mine, unless you go out there and punch someone in the face, youre good in my books. and again, even punching someone in the face can be morally neutral or positive between consenting adults so. HUMANS JUST ENJOY EXPLORING PAIN. THATS MY HOT TAKE FOR TODAY.

thank u for coming to my ted talk

[borom1r]

WEIRD fuckin ask but we talked about it once and it would not exit the brain. Flavours of neurodivergence within the fellowship: discuss?

OGH. no, good ask. good ask I love it. AUTISM FLAVORED bc that is my own experience :3

Aragorn— autism of the “I Am 100% A Changeling, I Have No Idea How To Relate To Humanity” variety. like yea being partly raised by elves didn’t help but he absolutely wandered around mimicking people to learn how to Behave Like A Person. autism trait absorption for the win!! comes to Minas Tirith and gets a painful crash course in masking, but never quite figured out how to Not stare at someone like a feral cat when he wants something from them (despite the Stare, HATES eye contact)

Boromir— OPPOSITE AUTISM. very direct. EXTREMELY rigid routines. military history special interest (literally just undiagnosed dad autism). probably has food sensitivities but he’s spent so long as a soldier he can just eat anything now. he hates it and he won’t eat a big portion of non-safe foods, but at least he can swallow them. he IS absolutely 100% undiagnosed and doesn’t think there’s anything wrong but if he doesn’t get to perfectly make his bed every morning he will be in a Noticeably Bad Mood for the rest of the day < does not understand that this isn’t normal

Gandalf— oh there’s definitely something going on there, but good luck with figuring THAT out

Legolas— AuDHD king. the autism/ADHD comorbidity is real and he barely bothers to mask. least of all in front of men?? he’s an elf prince and you expect him to act “normal” by human standards? I love how jacked up the Hobbit film timeline is bc Thranduil implying to Legolas “yeah go hang out in Rivendell with a ten year old” is SO funny. canon to me tho. there was a very significant chunk of time where Aragorn was just Mini Legolas. hell world for civilized Rivendell elves. unlike Aragorn, however, prefers very direct eye contact. WILL fully hit you with the 👁️👁️ almost unblinking for a whole conversation

Gimli— I’m gonna be real here. I think neurotypical but in the sense of like. literally nobody cares. dwarves are craftsmen, artisans, smiths, you think they’re going to risk squandering talent simply because somebody needs some accommodations? are you nuts???? like yea maybe somebody’s a Little Weird Sometimes but they can work the forge just fine or tool leather for straps/handle wraps, or draft designs, or stamp metal for decorations, like?? doesn’t particularly grasp the need for labels when you can just work with ppl to figure out what’s best for them + then everyone’s happy. fully has to stew on the fact that Men Don’t Do That, men are actually very rigid about what is socially acceptable and won’t provide accommodations Unless there is a label. wild.

Frodo— autism/depression hell combination. no meltdowns, only shutdowns. auditory processing disorder!! definitely also has poor temperature regulation (CONSTANTLY cold). hey did u know that’s a symptom of ASD? crazy. WILD. anyways. Sam knows he can barely handle the feeling of mittens/gloves so half the time when they’re hanging out is Sam just holding Frodo’s hands so they actually fucking warm up for a bit. not too rigid about Big routines, most of his are Little (always putting a specific amount of sugar in his tea, for example)

Sam— neurotypical but in the sense of my dad where he was just SO used to me being Autistically Strange that he was just like. “well, that’s Strider!” < blissfully unaware. fully just SO used to whatever’s going on w/ Frodo+Merry that it’s Normal to him. like wdym they’re different?? those are just his friends?? hello??

Merry— ADHDDDDDDDDD. and look ik Tolkien said pipeweed is just tobacco but that’s a lie and we all know it, right? right. self-medicating with pipeweed.

Pippin— neurotypical but Pippin-flavored

[wonieleles]

project: stay single — bonus two : and they were WHAT ???

word count: 838 ! (screenshots below!)

warnings: mentions of weight and toxic families, implied eating disorder, unedited !

“come on, why do i even have to go?” y/n whined as she neared the dreaded entrance. “eomma, you know how much i barely know them.”

“yes, but they’re your family and my siblings and cousins. i just want you to get to know them better, especially since you never know if you’ll see your cousins somewhere else in the future,” y/n’s mom explained, hoping to lift her mood about seeing her family.

“worse case scenario, we can always dip after lunch,” sunghoon whispered when their mom turned around. however, sunghoon was never a subtle or quiet guy, so his words were crystal clear to their mom, which she responded with a glare.

“you’re both not leaving. do you not see how angry your mom is right now after hearing that?” their dad shivered at the thought of his wife being mad at him and headed inside with his wife.

after giving a knowing look to her brother, y/n and sunghoon both entered the house full of their least favorite family members.

“oh my, sunghoon, you’ve gotten even taller and handsome since i’ve last saw you,” her aunt gushed, lightly hitting sunghoon’s arm before bringing her hand to her face. “you have to tell auntie your secret.”

“uh, yes of course, auntie hyeyoung,” sunghoon replied awkwardly, eyes sending you a help signal.

“oh and y/n, hi, you’ve gotten,” hyeyoung passed to eye y/n up and down, “fatter.” her voice spitting venom to emphasize her disgust, “did you stop doing ballet? cause it’s really showing.”

y/n fidgeted with her hands for a bit, trying to not let her aunt’s snide remark get to her, especially since she knew aunt hyeyoung never quite liked the girls of the family. “um, yeah i did actually. eomma and appa thought that it was draining me, so they made me stop.”

“oh, maybe i should talk to my sister about that then,” her aunt said, insinuating that there’s some problem with ending her ballet career. “goodbye sunghoon…and y/n.”

“are you okay?” sunghoon asked with concern. he gripped his sister’s shoulders as he stared at her with worried eyes.

he always knew his family on his mom’s side, especially aunt hyeyoung, were extremely toxic, and how sensitive his sister could be. he didn’t blame her; they were messed up for mentioning such a sensitive topic with little thought. he almost wanted to go off on his aunt after she said that because he knew how much weight was an issue for y/n. after all, he watched her become extremely weak and depressed over that number on the scale, and he promised himself that he’d never let that happen again.

“yeah, i’m fine. you don’t have to always worry, you know. i’m not a little kid, loser,” y/n joked, hoping to distract her brother.

“hey!” sunghoon glared before flicking y/n’s forehead, “stop confusing me with yourself. it’s getting really weird.”

“aw, are you gonna cry now?” y/n taunted.

“literally die, oh my, why are you always so sunghoonphobic? like i didn’t want to be related to you either.”

as the two siblings continued with their bickering, another person noticed the familiar fighting. he watched as the two pointed at each other and made faces like 10 year olds in arguments, smiling at the two’s actions.

unfortunately for him, his mom caught notice of his starting, and approached him.

“jungwon, sweetheart, why are you looking at them? why don’t you join them? i’ll introduce you,” jungwon’s mom told him with a smile.

“uh, it’s alright, i already know them,” jungwon answered, blushing slightly at the thought of y/n.

“oh really? i didn’t think you guys ever met,” jungwon’s mom laughed at the shocking news. “okay then, at least let me introduce you guys again. you know how much i love to talk,” his mom said before dragging jungwon with her.

“hi y/n and sunghoon,” jungwon’s mom greeted the fighting siblings.

“oh, hi…auntie?” the two responded with confusion.

y/n’s eyes wandered to the boy standing next to her—jungwon. what is he doing here?

“yes yes, i’m your mother’s cousin, but i don’t think i’ve ever introduced myself or my children,” jungwon’s mom started, shifting to gesture at jungwon, “this here is my son, jungwon. and i’m not quite sure where my daughter is, but i’ll introduce her to you both when i find her.”

there the three of them stood with wide eyes and open mouths at the news. because why the hell was their aunt telling them that jungwon’s their second cousin? and why was jungwon’s mom saying that y/n, the girl he finally realized he has feelings for, related to him?

“beep beep. beep beep. beep beep,” y/n’s alarm rang throughout her room. immediately after, y/n’s arm raised to turn it off, body jolting up as well.

getting a glimpse at her surroundings and smacking her face lightly, she finally realized that that was all a dream. thankfully.

synopsis: when being the youngest and only girl of the park household, strict parents and overprotective brother and cousins are a given. therefore, park y/n sworn off dating until she enters college (not that she had much of a choice). but when the awkward but terribly cute yang jungwon is placed in her lab group, she finds herself wanting to break the number one rule in her family—no dating till college. or maybe they could be just friends, right?

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note: sorry for any mental stress i might’ve put onto you while reading 🙏🙏 it was an idea i came up with in the shower and i thought it was funny 🤭🤭 also thought i’d give you guys something since it’s been a while since i update !!

if you enjoyed this, please leave a comment or reblog to let me !!

taglists in the reblogs !

[arwenlalaith]

Between the Blues and the Pinks (Ch. 11)

Ship: Alex Blake/Emily Prentiss

Summary: The Baby Blues: The temporary feelings of sadness following having a baby. Also known as Postpartum Depression. The Baby Pinks: The mild mania experienced following having a baby. Also known as Postpartum Euphoria.

Warnings: Mental health issues, postpartum mood disorders.

Word Count: 1053

"So?" Emily said expectantly and, perhaps, hopefully. She already knew it wasn't good news, based on Tara's expression and the churning feeling of dread in her gut. But she just hoped it wasn't quite as grim as she feared...

Tara glanced over her shoulder at Alex's room where she was attempting to breastfeed Lindy, making sure that she wasn't trying to eavesdrop on their conversation...though she likely had already intuited everything they were going to say. Looking back at Emily, she offered an apologetic smile (that was really more of a grimace). "It's not good, Em," she admitted quietly.

Emily nodded, attempted an expression that she hoped looked stronger and more capable than she felt just then. Though, to be perfectly honest, she had a feeling Tara already knew just how frayed the thread she was hanging on by was...afterall, she'd always had an unfortunate habit of reading Emily like the open book she tried very hard not to be.

"I'll want to run some tests to rule out other causes, but I feel quite confident in diagnosing Alex as having postpartum psychosis," Tara informed her.

"Shit..." Emily said on an exhale, her expansive vocabulary failing her in that moment. While she'd feared the worst, this hadn't even been on her radar as being a possibility. She knew what it was, of course – it had been mentioned in the numerous What to Expect... type books Alex had made her read, but she'd ignorantly assumed that would never happen to them and thus had barely even skimmed the sections.

Tara reached over and rested a consoling hand on her shoulder. It was a friendly gesture, but Emily couldn't help but feel a little patronized. "I know it's not the news you were hoping for, but it is treatable." A beat. "That's the good news..."

Emily's eyes went wide. "What part of that was good news?" she asked. The words came off significantly more scathing than she'd intended them to be and she briefly thought about apologizing for her tone, but found that she really didn't want to apologize. If anything, she wanted to blame and punish...

Tara's expression was apologetic, then, as if she knew what was running through Emily's mind. "Em, I'm sorry to tell you this, but I think it would be best for everyone if Alex were admitted to the psychiatric ward," she said quietly. It was clear she hated having to say it, especially to one of her best friends, but knew it had to be said.

"You want to put my wife – the mother of a newborn – on the psych ward?" Emily repeated incredulously.

"Emily," Tara said very seriously, "The alternative is you taking Alex home, in which case you will literally have to supervise her every second of every day. You can't leave her alone with Lindy. She is a risk to herself and others. I know you love her and want what's best for her, but – and I mean this in the nicest way possible – you cannot do this alone..."

Before she'd really thought it through, Emily was already speaking, "I won't do it alone, then. But I'm not putting her in the looney bin." She'd truly never before in her life been quite this angry. She knew it wasn't Tara's fault, that she was just trying to help, but she didn't have anyone else to blame – the alternative was blaming Alex and she couldn't even begin to fathom being angry with her over this...

"Em..." Tara tried again.

But she wasn't listening. "I'll do whatever it takes to keep her at home," she vowed. She turned and was about to march off...but then she seemed to think better and turned back around, narrowing a glare at Tara. Pointing an accusing finger at her, she snapped, "You know, you're supposed to be my friend..."

"Emily, I am your friend," she insisted.

"No, you're not," she said adamantly, "If you were, you'd actually want to help instead of locking her up like some kind of fucking animal! I can't believe I ever trusted you..."

And, though Emily was expecting Tara to lash out right back, she surprised her by saying, "What else?"

A beat.

"What?"

"What else?" Tara repeated. "You've clearly had a lot on your mind – get it off your chest. Really sock it to me."

Emily seemed confused, then. "You... You want me to yell at you?"

"Yes!" Tara insisted. "You obviously need to yell at someone – you're overwhelmed, overworked, and scared shitless – you're not going to take it out on Alex, so take it out on me."

She sighed, shook her head. "I'm not going to yell at you," she said, sounding as if all the fight had left her, leaving behind only exhaustion.

Tara could tell part of her still wanted to, but the Ambassador's influence was far too strong to let her make a scene like that. "Well," she said, sounding just a little disappointed, "When you eventually realize you're at your boiling point, call me."

________

"I suppose you're here to tell me you're going to commit me?" Alex asked acerbically when Emily joined her in her room.

Trying not to take her bitterness to heart, Emily gently eased the baby from her hands and settled her in the stroller. "Get your coat, Al," she said, "We're going home."

"Really?" Alex asked, sounding completely and utterly shocked. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she was quick to jump to her feet and follow Emily towards the exit. "What did Tara say?" she wanted to know, jogging slightly to keep up with Emily's brisk pace.

Emily scowled. "She thinks you have postpartum psychosis," she said.

Alex frowned at the odd emphasis. "She thinks?" she echoed curiously. "You have a different opinion?"

"Maybe not a different opinion," she said, "But I disagree with her methods."

Her frown deepening, Alex asked, "So, your plan is...what?"

"I don't know yet," she admitted, "But it sure as fuck isn't locking you up."

[actual-changeling]

Ohhhh, this is an incredibly good point.

I can confirm that a feeling of trust and safety is super important, combined with knowing that you will not be judged no matter what and that the other person will offer a space in which you can process it.

And you also have to be able to trust that they will not make it about themselves.

I agree that Aziraphale is quite bad at creating that atmosphere, not just for Crowley but for literally anyone he ever interacts with.

The starmaker/angel!Crowley is visibly upset about his stars not being taken seriously and destroyed sooner rather than later, and all Aziraphale responds, with a very judgemental, passive-aggressive tone, mind you, is "don't question the Almighty."

Start of Season 2. Maggie is visibly distressed and crying about her shop not bringing in enough money, which puts a lot of strain on her not just when it comes to rent but also her life in general. What does Aziraphale do?

"Ok sure whatever I don't care. Do you have my record or not?".

Forgiving her the rent after making it all about himself and his music is uhhhh not the kind act that he thinks it is.

Paris, the Bastille, and Crowley is being quite serious in both his verbal and non verbal expression.

"My lot do not send rude notes." "Well. aNYWAY I'm hungry."

(He ACTUALLY SAYS well anyway. This is the closest Crowley has come to telling him about how horrible hell is (iirc) and this is his reaction????? Flabbergasted.)

Then there's the entire 1827 Edinburgh incident.

Wee Morag is (once again visibly) distressed and the mood is sad and serious. "You're going to hell :("

Aziraphale, sounding chipper: "Quite right!! :D"

And then the entire morality argument.

"The lower you start, the more opportunities you have. That's ineffable :)" With that word choice i think it's very much directed at Elspeth and Crowley. This is up to interpretation, but one way of looking at it could be "You are a demon and bad and evil, if you just try to be good and kind you will work your way up again."

Generally, every single time it comes up, Aziraphale's message is "you deserved what happened to you for being who you are (-> evil and a demon)".

I will never understand anyone who expects Crowley to share without the topic ever being initiated by Aziraphale.

Exactly. I have a very bad case of cPTSD among other trauma-related disorders, and I have been with my therapist, who is very good at her job and whom I trust deeply, for over a year. She knows me better than any other person in the world.

There are still things I have not told her because I can't. Talking about my trauma is exhausting and requires a lot of work, trust, and determination on my side, and a lot of emotional work for her, too.

We had several discussions about how to react when I share certain things because I can tell you from experience that if someone fucks up even once in their reaction to you sharing something incredibly vulnerable, you likely will never do it with them again.

If I was Crowley I wouldn't tell Aziraphale about anything even remotely personal, emotional, or vulnerable.

After the shitshow in season 2, I honestly hope for Crowley's sake that he a) finds someone to talk to and b) doesn't share anything with Aziraphale until he can actually be receptive and compassionate.

Something that gets debated a lot re: Aziraphale and Crowley's communication issues is "Crowley should've said" vs. "Aziraphale should've asked."

I can't speak for the interpersonal structures of anywhere but the good ol' American Midwest, but isn't the expectation in most social interactions that you don't volunteer personal or unpleasant information unless asked directly? Or, at a minimum, unless the person you're talking to has made it explicitly clear they want to know you on that level?

Because, Aziraphale has definitely not asked. Bro really saw Crowley get sucked into hell after saving Elspeth and wrote in his diary, "And that was the last I was to see of Crowley for quite some time." Is it any surprise Crowley doesn't tell him shit?

[bonky-n-steeb]

𝐵𝑅𝐸𝐴𝑇𝐻𝐸

𝙿𝙰𝚁𝚃 𝙾𝙽𝙴

𝘿𝘼𝙍𝙆!𝘽𝙐𝘾𝙆𝙔 𝘽𝘼𝙍𝙉𝙀𝙎 𝙭 𝙍𝙀𝘼𝘿𝙀𝙍 | ���𝙊𝘽!𝙎𝙏𝙀𝙑𝙀 𝙍𝙊𝙂𝙀𝙍𝙎 𝙓 𝙍𝙀𝘼𝘿𝙀𝙍

𝗦𝗨𝗠𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗬: Your life is as good as it gets. The perfect husband, the perfect daughter, the perfect job. But what you are unaware is that your husband is a deadly assassin and your long-lost friend, now a fearsome mob boss is hell bent on getting you back. But what you don’t know can't hurt you, right?

𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦: psychological disorder, PTSD, domestic abuse, yandere, obsession, violence, cursing. If you find any of this triggering please DNI. Also inform me if I left something out.

ᴛʜɪs ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ʙᴇᴛᴀ ʀᴇᴀᴅ, sᴏ ᴀʟʟ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇs ᴀʀᴇ ᴍʏ ᴏᴡɴ

Oh, lawd! i have to post everything again! Send me all your energy. If you wanna be tagged, just inform me!

Also, I’ll be changing the story by a little, (or by a lot, idk) from my previous version.

You were feeling like John Travolta from the music video of Stayin’ Alive. Vibing to your own rhythm, living your own freedom. Attending college miles away from your hometown, you were the captain of your ship. Though you loved your parents more than anything, you were glad for the freedom granted upon you.

Your Freshmen year had just begun and you had already made a few friends. But what you didn’t want to accept just yet was your crush on one of them, Bucky. With his steely blue eyes and boyish charm, even a goddess might fall for him, and you were just a mortal. You were simply happy with being friends as you believed he would never like you and well, a little crush never hurt nobody.  

Completing your shift in a local bookstore, just outside the campus, you were walking back, lost in your own thoughts. What caught your attention was a group of howling high schoolers; from the look of it, they were barely a year to two younger than you. A group of tall and popular kids were bullying a skinny, helpless dude; ufff the usual cliché you thought to yourself. What you failed to notice though was his bleeding nose.  

You were a kind soul, always helping others, but you were no fool. All alone in an unknown town, you weren't going to confront the burly teens who were twice your own size. After giggling and cracking some stupid jokes on the poor dude trying to impress a girl, they left him and that’s when you noticed all the blood. You quickly crossed the road and walked towards him. He seemed smaller than he was as he was crouching down and trying to rub all the blood.

“Hey! Pinch your nose, don’t disturb it by rubbing.” you said while bending down. “Uhh, okay... thanks!” he looked at you with big doe eyes and you were utterly mesmerized by the blue oceans he had for his eyes. “Do you.. Do you need something else kid? Where do you live?” you asked giving him a candy and your water bottle. “I’m no kid!” he exclaimed and you flinched.  

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. You are helping me and here I am shouting at you.” You could clearly see remorse in his eyes and you wondered why would someone hurt him? “yeah, yeah.. It's Okay... now have this candy, the sugar will help you feel better.” you said with a soft smile. “thank you so much... and by the way I live two streets across. I mean I can go by myself, I'm a grown-up.. But...” he trailed off and you helped him get up.

“I’m Steve” he tried his best to smile and you followed by sharing your own name. And with that his chatter train began, he explained that he was just trying to help another girl getting bullied, when the bullies decided to change their target and chase Steve instead.

“you should wear your own mask first and then help others wear theirs.” you quipped and instantly bit your tongue. “Hmm, what?” he asked genuinely curious. “what I meant is that you did what is correct and very brave, but sometimes you gotta think for yourself too. But these are just my thoughts.” you shrugged. “I’ll remember that.” he said with a genuine expression. And after a million thank yous he finally went in his house. By the size of his house, he seemed rich and you wondered maybe this wasn't that cliché.  

☮︎︎☮︎︎☮︎︎☮︎︎☮︎︎

The next day, you were walking back the same road, when you thought of Steve. He really was a kind and sweet person. This world needed more of people like him. And just then you saw him smiling brightly and waving at you, his nose bandaged. He had a huge box in his hand.

“Heyyyyy! Thank you for helping me yesterday. So I just... kinda got this as a ... a token of appreciation. I considered you might like donuts, so I got you this.” He said rubbing his nape. His cheeks had become so red he looked like a ripe tomato. “well, if you haven’t already given me diabetes by saying so many thank yous, after eating sooo many donuts I’ll surely get it.” At that you both chuckled and the atmosphere became lighter. As you picked a donut, he looked at you with such admiration you thought you would melt then and there.

Suddenly with a stern expression you asked “what if it’s drugged?” His eyes widened and he stuttered, “I... I would never do that ...” he looked down and you thought he might cry. “hey waittt.. don’t get so sad.. I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry. I was just joking. I have this really bad habit of saying things when I shouldn’t. God I just ruined everything.” You just made a mental note not to joke around him, he seemed to be quite emotional. Though it was going to be difficult to tame your tongue. “don’t be. I just take things too literally.... anyway let’s have some donuts what say?” He said with such shine in his eyes you wondered whether he was sad just a moment before.

You both walked up to your university campus, munching on donuts. You both shared things about yourselves. You told him how you were passionate in becoming a doctor. He on the other hand talked about his struggles in studying. “will you help me? You are so smart and bright, will you help me study if I have a doubt or something?” he asked giving his big doe eyes.

You weren’t going to agree at first, you had just met him a day ago. But after looking in those calm blue pools of his eyes you agreed. Seeing the joy on his face, you wondered whether he just won an Oscar.

What you didn’t know was that Steve had already fallen in love with you, yes love, he was convinced that you were the one for him, his one true love. Not a moment had he been able to think of anything but you since he had met you. You were everything he needed and wanted and much more. He was simply desperate to spend more time with you.

☮︎︎☮︎︎☮︎︎☮︎︎☮︎︎

It had been around six months since you met Steve. Over the time you two had turned out to be best friends. While Steve had fallen even more in love with you, you had fallen hopelessly in love with bucky. While you always told bucky about Steve and vice versa, you never confessed to Steve about your love for Bucky, thus furthermore increasing his hopes. You desperately wished to make Steve and Bucky meet. They were two important people in your life and you more than anything wished that they got together well.  

Today was the day when you decided to arrange a small meet and greet at the park where you and Steve met every day. You and Bucky walked together towards the tree where you usually sat with Steve waiting there for you. You knew both would like each other, but somewhere deep within your gut you were getting a not-so good feeling about this.  

Steve’s eyes lit up seeing you but as they turned to Bucky, it felt as if all the energy had been sucked out of him. You didn’t like that one bit. “Bucky!?” Steve exclaimed in half disappointment and half fear. “You both... you both know each other?” you ask bewildered. You tried chuckling to lighten the mood but by the looks of it they were sworn enemies, but you prayed that you were wrong. “yeah, we know each other a little too well... Uh... We were good friends once.” Steve quietly admitted.

All this time Bucky had his jaw clenched, dragging in a deep breath he began. “I knew it! I knew it would be you, you little fucker! You want to have everything don’t you? Goddammit! I had this feeling it was you but I thought it was too much of a coincidence, but no. fate had to be so cruel.” you were shocked to see Bucky's sudden outburst. You wondered what conspired between the two, as either hadn’t ever mentioned the other.  

You were snapped out of your thoughts with Bucky calling your name. “let’s go. I don’t want to see him even for a minute more and neither do you.” Bucky started pulling your hand but you stopped him “Bucky no. I guess you have some misunderstanding; Steve is a good person. And you don’t get to tell me who to talk to and who to not.”

Suddenly Bucky turned back to Steve, anger written all over his face. “You didn’t tell her, huh, did you? Don’t worry I'll tell her. Steve is the son of Joseph Rogers and he is the freaking Don Corleone of this area. Do you know how my father died? Steve’s father had him killed just because unknowingly he provided shelter to his father’s fugitive. Steve just pretends to be a caring, emotional person but he is a snake behind that mask, so is everyone in his family.” towards the end Bucky was in tears and you were in utter shock. Now that you tried to remember, Steve never really did tell you much about his family. And the fact that Steve wasn’t denying any single allegation made you want to puke your guts out.

“You have taken too much from me. But not this. Not her. Not the woman I love more than anything.” Bucky said it out loud in the heat of the moment. You were too dumbstruck to even blink. Did Bucky just confess that he loved you?  

Bucky turned to you and held your arm with such softness you wondered if he was just now screaming his lungs out at Steve. “I know I can't tell you who to be with, and I promise I never will in the future, but trust me you want to be caught up with him or his family. And still, if you choose him, well then, I can’t be with you.”

You knew you had to make a choice then and there, there was no going back, and you chose Bucky.

[papa-rhys]

Thoughts on Jack and His Borderline Personality Disorder and How It Shows Through His Behaviour - Because I Cannot Stop Analysing Things That Ultimately Aren’t Important

Symptoms/behaviours under the cut because holy hell this guy has a lot of them. Like, honey, are you okay?

Okay, so I’m pretty sure I can trace Jack’s BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) back to his grandmother. His mum abandoned him, which shows a reckless/irresponsible behaviour and her mum had fits of rage that didn’t correlate at all with the trigger (ie; drowning Jack’s cat because he didn’t make his bed). So I think he has a family history of it, with both his mother and grandmother having BPD and passing it down to him.

Either way, Jack definitely has it. In fact, he’s a textbook case of it.

Impulsivity

Spending sprees: he bought a pony made of diamonds because he was bored and throws money at all kinds of ventures to keep him occupied and because he wants to. I really don’t know how else to describe this one lol. He bought a pony. Made of diamonds. Because he could.

Gambling: won some of the things on his trophy shelf through poker and owns an entire casino. Hunting the Vaults themselves were a huge gamble too, especially the first two, since he wasn’t truly sure that they existed. He was prepared to sacrifice a lot in order to come out on top in both his career and his social standing. All in all, he’s reckless.

Binge eating: he doesn’t even like pretzels, but still eats them because he’s either bored or stressed. Talks about food quite a bit in conversation, too, especially his cravings.

Substance abuse: admits to being high on uppers for the duration of the pre sequel (and his time on Elpis as a whole) and tells further anecdotes about drugs and getting high in tftbl.

Promiscuity/unsafe sex: nothing about having sex with Nisha is safe lol. But in all seriousness, there’s no way to prove this one. He does strike me as the reckless sex sort though. No proof, just 7 years of knowing him as a character.

Emotional instability

Inappropriate trigger response: he strangles a man to death for simply mentioning his wife, stabs Lilith for talking about Angel, and tries to kill Rhys for not being sure about his grand plan (more on this later). His response to triggers is disproportionate, often resulting in extreme anger over small things that don’t warrant that intense of a reaction. He gets big angry about almost everything; there’s no middle ground. His reaction is never really “you’re annoying me a lot” or “don’t talk about that, I don’t like it.” His reaction to almost everything is “oh my god I will murder your first born child how dare you-”

Quickly changing mood: aside from being prone to fits of rage at the flick of a switch, Jack also flicks back to “normal” pretty quickly, too. He flips between telling you to kill yourself after surviving the train and then talks casually about his day. He’ll be filled with rage after Angel’s death and then suddenly he’s laughing about you jumping into lava and having fun tricking you into visiting his grandmother. He can be intensely angry or sorrowful one moment and then nonchalant and sociable the next. His moods don’t last very long.

Idolisation/devaluation

Jack does this with numerous people across the games, but the two shining examples are Moxxi and Rhys; Rhys being the most notable. He idolises Moxxi, complimenting her on how attractive she is and how smart she is and including her in his circle of close friends/teammates. Then the inevitable happens and she lets him down and he instantly changes his opinion on her as if he’d never thought she was good to begin with. The same happens with Rhys. Throughout tftbl, Jack is best friends with Rhys and seems to form a one-sided connection with him where he idolises him and thinks they’re going to be best friends for ever and that they’re the perfect team. You cannot make him mad at you in tftbl (trust me, I’ve tried). He’s encouraging to Rhys the whole way through, like they’re brothers. Then the second Rhys displays doubts about something Jack is passionate about, Jack reacts violently and completely devalues Rhys, claiming him to be his mortal enemy and trying to kill him. People with BPD do this often. They have strong convictions and have a tendency to feel betrayed by people who go against those convictions. Jack does this regularly and it leads to the breakup of a lot of his relationships.

Paranoia

He vented a room full of scientists into space, just in case. I mean, that pretty much sums it up, really. Jack is under a lot of stress at this point in the game and stress-induced paranoia is a particularly difficult symptom of BPD. With him already feeling the pressure, the mention of a possible mole is a huge trigger for Jack. Especially since he’s reeling from the recent betrayal from a friend. His brain is already working over time, planting uneasy feelings of distrust and being unsafe. So when he’s presented with the idea from an outside source, he runs with it. Betrayal goes on to become a big button to push in Jack’s life to the extent that he actively betrays people before they get a chance to betray him (ie; killing Wilhelm). Paranoia feeds into a lot of Jack’s bad decisions, particularly in the pre sequel era.

Delusion

Jack wasn’t lying when he told us that he’s the hero. He absolutely was not the hero at all, but he wasn’t lying about it. Because lying about something implies that you know it’s not true, and Jack genuinely believes he’s a good person. The best person, in fact. It’s not a lie because in his mind, it’s the god given truth. He’s massively delusional, even before the events of the pre sequel. He’ll spout all the cheesy 80s movie lines about saving the moon and being the hero and he thinks he’s the protagonist of his own big adventure. We know that’s not what’s happening, but Jack doesn’t see it that way. Another delusion is the idea he has about how much everyone loves him. He thinks Moxxi is obsessed with him and he thinks Angel is being forced to work against him. He cannot conceive of a world in which people don’t like him or agree with him. Because why wouldn’t they agree with him? He’s the hero. Everybody loves the hero...

Intense but unstable relationships

Moxxi, Angel, Lilith, the Vault Hunter; I could go on. Jack’s relationships with people are volatile and rocky, even when they’re seemingly on the same side like with Moxxi or even Nisha (who he forms a tight bond with very quickly). People with BPD feel all emotions intensely, which causes a roller coaster. Jack really likes Moxxi, but then he doesn’t want to talk to her, but then he wants her on the team, but then he gets mad at her for calling him a pet name and beign friendly, and then he’s telling her she’s sexy, and then he’s cursing her, and then he’s hanging pictures of her in his casino. It’s the same with Angel - he subjects her to physical torture, then he loves her, then he’s mad at her for helping the Vault Hunter, then he’s doting on her, then he’s manipulating her, then he’s grieving for her. Everything is a whirlwind.

Distorted self-image

Oh boy. Jack has this physically and mentally. Mentally in the sense that he thinks he’s a good person when he actions are abhorrent and also because he’s massively insecure. BPD often comes with a lack of identity, which causes insecurity to begin with. Throw that in a pot alongside some childhood abuse, betrayal, work place bullying, and grief, and you got yourself a big pot of insecurity soup. Put plainly, Jack doesn’t really know who he is at his baseline. His personality and interests and ideas and needs all change on an hourly basis. He morphs to suit his circumstances. He can be open, honest and down to earth when he’s trying to trick Rhys. He can be full of worry and desperation when he needs you to head to grandma’s house. He can be cunning and clever when he’s tricking you into killing Wilhelm. He can be fatherly, he can be nasty, he can be torturous, he can be laid back, he can be clever, he can be ignorant, he can be sheepish, he can be cocky. He’s everyone and no one all at once and this probably leaves him feeling very hollow and empty; which is another symptom of BPD. In the physical sense, Jack issues with self image are pretty clear. He wears a face over his face to hide his face. Yup. And he does this because he thinks he’s disgracefully ugly. This scar he’s so vehemently protective of is something that defines his whole persona going forward. He literally claims himself as Handsome Jack, forcing people to adhere to the idea that he’s so attractive that it should be his title. Even though he doesn’t feel that way and does everything he can to hide the real him. He thinks he’s hideous and he struggles between loving himself and hating himself because of it.

Fear of abandonment

Aaaand here we are at the crux of the problem. BPD boils down to the intense fear of abandonment and this is probably what guides Jack for most of his life. His father died, his mother literally abandoned him, his grandmother neglected him, his first wife died, second wife left, girlfriend and friends betrayed him, and daughter killed herself to get away from him. Abandonment is practically coded into Jack’s DNA at this point and every time it happens, it confirms his fears more. He clings to Moxxi after she betrays him - taking her ideas to try and rile her up and even going as far as to recreate her entire bar in his casino because he wants to keep her presence around. He fights tooth and claw against Angel’s rebellion, begging both her and you to stop what you’re doing and leave. The only time he begs you is when he’s facing perceived abandonment, that’s how strong the fear is. His final words to Angel are “I’ll still forgive you.” Jack isn’t a forgiving man by any stretch, but he’ll say anything he has to in order to prevent her from leaving him. He’ll stalk people, he’ll manipulate them, he’ll lie to them or keep them physically locked up - all to prevent them from abandoning him. The worst possible thing that could happen to Jack is that, and we see the spiral he slips into after Angel. After Moxxi. After the Meriff. After his wife. He can’t bare the thought of someone leaving him and he’ll do anything and everything to prevent his fears becoming a reality.

So yeah! There it is, I finally got around to posting it lol. There’s probably a lot more little details that I’ve forgotten, but I cannot think of them right now. I’ll probably update if I think of any more! The tl;dr is that almost all of Jack’s behaviour can be linked to massively untreated BPD. He needed meds and therapy, but he didn’t get them and he spiralled as a result.

[writingtoforgetreality]

Speak Of The Devil (Malcolm Bright x Winchester!Reader) | Prodigal Son/Supernatural Crossover

[Prodigal Son-Masterlist], [Supernatural-Masterlist]

Summary: What started as a normal case for the NYPD ended in you needing help from your family. Malcolm had never met your brothers & they had no idea you were dating. Things were bound to get complicated, it was inevitable. Still, you had to focus on this case before another person got killed.

Words: 5,557

Warnings: spoilers for 2x02 (doesn’t follow the actual plot obviously), murder, demons, language, confused Malcolm, lil hint at Destiel (barely there, could be missed if you don’t pay attention - sorry, I couldn’t help myself), I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun while writing something

If you like my work & wanna support me: a coffee would be highly appreciated ❤

The NYPD was assigned to solve a “creepy ass case”, as JT so lovingly put it. As Malcolm & you got to the crime scene, you understood what your fellow coworker had warned you about. Ugh, you hated churches with your guts. Well, that was not entirely true. But whenever a murder happened on a holy ground, nothing good ever came out of it. That was what you experienced before you started working for the police. Before that…you also worked for the police somehow? Just, they were not aware of that & you might have done some criminal things. For the greater good, though! Your brothers & you had saved thousands of people. They still did. You just needed to get out of this life & see if there was more for you to achieve. And there was. Not only did you find a great family who was also your team, at the same time you found Malcolm, your boyfriend.

Back to the case. Walking into a crime scene had always been bizarre to you. It showed you how close you still were to murder, even though you promised your brothers to distance yourself from it entirely. Technically, you did. This was different, though. At least you told yourself so. Gil, JT, Dani & Edrisa were already inspecting the scene when you two walked in. Oh no. This could not be good. The image in front of you seemed familiar & if it were not inappropriate to roll your eyes at a dead person, you would do it. Gil briefly explained the situation to you. Apparently the victim had been a member of the church for 30 years. The Lieutenant & Malcolm interrogated Sister Agnes. She was the one who found the body. There was another thing bothering you, so you did not really pay attention to whatever she was saying. Your focus was solely on JT, who had been through way too much to stand here & act as if everything was fine. A slight touch on his shoulder made him turn his head in your direction.

“Hey, you okay?” of course you were concerned about him. He was family, after all.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” he brushed you off as if he did not know what point you were trying to get across.

“Really? Because usually when Malcolm says he’s fine…well, he’s everything but.” a chuckle lightened the mood a little. You had to keep a closer eye on JT for the time being. Just in case.

“Our victim here performed an exorcism.” Malcolm’s statement let your eyes snap back to where he was standing. Edrisa smiled excitedly at him. This woman…She was the sweetest soul. Could be annoying, too. But in a sweet & loving way. Maybe she should turn down her excitement for murder. Who were you kidding? Your boyfriend was probably worse when it came to that. Wanting to have a closer look at the book Malcolm was referring to, you put your gloves on & carefully walked over to him. Trying not to mess up any possible clues left behind by the killer.

“Can I have a look?” you gestured to the small book & Malcolm handed it over to you. Shit. If you remembered correctly, there was a similar one back at the bunker. A look inside the pages confirmed your assumption. No need to freak out right away. There were tons of crazy people out there. Just because of this murder in this church & this book did not mean that there was anything supernatural involved. You just hoped it would stay that way. For everyone’s sake.

Your face fell when Edrisa said that there was a note left behind, written in blood. To the others, it looked like a sign without meaning. It looked familiar to you but you could not quite pinpoint where you remembered it from. Sister Agnes’ words made you stop in your tracks.

“Abaddon.” she breathed out. Sure, why the hell not? Okay, maybe this case was something for your brothers. But wait a damn minute…last time you checked, Abaddon was stabbed with the First Blade. She could not possibly be back, could she?

“Now we know our killer’s name.” Malcolm’s words gained the attention of the entire team. There was no way he had everything figured out already. You knew he was a great profiler but even that would have been too fast for him.

“Oh? Who is it?” Gil asked intrigued.

“You know.” Malcolm paused for a few moments. Probably for dramatic effect but what did you know? “The devil.” you could not help but laugh at his words. Great, now everyone was looking at you weirdly. Oh, he made a joke. Of course he did. Sometimes you forgot that you were not an active part of the hunting life anymore. A few coughs from you stopped the awkward tension in the room. At least a bit.

In no way did you want to defend Lucifer. He had made your life literal hell one too many times. But even he would not go as far & do something as cruel as this. Again, last time you checked, he was dead. But death did not agree with Lucifer. How many times had he died? You probably should not be the one to judge. You were not better by any means.

Excusing yourself to get some fresh air, you grabbed your phone out of your pocket. Hopefully he would pick up. It had been a while since you last talked. The phone rang & rang & slowly you lost hope. Maybe he really was mad at you for being radio silent for so long.

“(Y/N)?” his voice startled you slightly.

“Sam! Uh, hi.” suddenly you turned shy.

“It’s so good to hear from you! How are you?” he was happy that you decided to call after so long.

“I’m good, thanks. Actually, I need to ask you for a favor…” you started.

“What is it? Everything alright?” Sam was growing concerned. Back then, you hated relying on another person, too stubborn to ask for help, because you wanted to do everything on your own.

“There’s a case here in New York…I believe it’s your kind. And I genuinely don’t think I can deal with this on my own.”

“But you’re safe, right?”

“I am, as safe as one can be.” you chuckled. Working for the police & all that. Not that you would tell Sam on the phone. If they were to come by, he would find out sooner or later. “I’ll send you the details, alright? Be here as fast as you can.”

“Okay, no problem. Take care, okay?”

“You too. See you soon.” wow, you were about to see your brothers again. Hopefully everything would be fine & nobody would rip your head off.

“See you, (Y/N).” Sam ended the call & you let out a breath you did not know you were holding.

The phone call should stay a secret for the time being. People breaking out in panic was everything but convenient. Besides, you did not need your team looking at you like you were a lunatic. Malcolm explained possession trance disorder when you joined everyone again. How could one human being know so much about so many unimportant things? Like, this man was a human dictionary. Looking over at Gil, you had to grin by how hard he was trying to make sense of what Malcolm was saying. Gil noticed you staring at him & gave you a look. The one that made you not want to mess with him. Still, you laughed shortly, you could not keep it in any longer. Malcolm gave you a questioning look but you simply shrugged him off by a wave of your hand.

The last interrogation of the day was with the guy who was currently doing the painting job inside the church. Unfortunately, you did not get any more information. Everything he told you, you had already heard from the others. Basically, after interrogating everyone, you were certain that this was not a common case for the NYPD. And you were more than happy that your brothers were on their way to come over. How would you explain any of this to Malcolm? He knew you had two brothers but you had also told him that you were not necessarily talking, only when it came to emergencies. Great, Malcolm would freak out. Even more so than normal, probably.

“Why do we have to visit your father again?” you shot the question at Malcolm as you were walking over the psychiatric yard, looking for Martin. He rolled his eyes at you, exhausted by your constant questioning.

“I’ve explained it a thousand times, (Y/N).”

“Well, I don’t see how any of this is connected to him.” you argued. Whenever Malcolm had the great idea to visit his father, you tagged along. Simply because you knew it was always hard for him & you wanted to support him wherever you could. Right now, though, you were losing your patience. After all, you knew the cause of this case. But your brothers had yet to arrive so you should play along for now.

“Malcolm, my boy. (Y/N)! Always nice to see you.” Martin started, excited to see his son accompanied by you. The first time you visited Martin, he took an immediate liking to you. Probably because he could see that you were good for Malcolm & his son meant the world to him. Still, he was a narcissistic psychopath. Remembering clearly how he had told you that everyone had flaws during your first meeting. Ah, good times.

“I wish I could say the same, Dr. Whitly.” a sarcastic smile plastered on your face. From then on, you let Malcolm do the talking, not really paying attention to what he was saying. Your thoughts were with your brothers, hoping they would get their asses here quickly before you had to endure more of this bullshit. It was frustrating when you knew how to solve this case but there was nobody you could talk to, not about this. Malcolm desperately tried searching for a non-supernatural explanation. Of course he did. And you just stood by, not being helpful at all. Malcolm did notice your quietness but did not comment on it. Not when you were with his father. He would ask you later today, when you were back at home.

Sam sent you a message earlier today, asking for your address to meet up. This meant that they would not take much longer. The knock on the door was confirmation enough. Malcolm walked over, ready to open it & you did not have enough time to warn him. Oh, this was bound to be fun.

“Uh…Hello?” Malcolm, everyone. Great first impression.

“You’re not (Y/N).” you could make out Dean’s voice. Walking up to where Malcolm was standing in the doorway, you looked over his shoulder & smiled at your brothers. They really were here, it had been too long. Softly pushing Malcolm out of the way, you pulled both of them in a long overdue hug. It was only then when you realized how much you had missed them. Malcolm observed the interaction from afar, confusion obviously shown on his face. Right now, you could only focus on the men in front of you, though.

“It’s good to see you guys again.” smiling widely at them. Sam nodded at you & even Dean could not hide the small smile that was forming on his face.

“I’m sorry…Can I help you guys?” Malcolm spoke up, waiting for answers from either you or the strangers that now entered his apartment.

“No, but we’ll help you.” Dean walked over to Malcolm & patted his shoulder.

“Sam, Dean. This is Malcolm. Malcolm. These are my brothers.” you awkwardly introduced them to each other. Malcolm’s mouth hang open & he could not form a coherent sentence.

“Nice to meet you.” Sam held out his hand & it took Malcolm a second to shake it.

“Your brothers?” Malcolm whisper-yelled.

“Yeah?”

“And what are they doing here?” it was not his intention to sound rude, you knew that. Yet, he seemed rather frustrated because you clearly knew they were coming over but decided against telling your boyfriend.

“Remember when I told you that they had a similar job to ours?” Malcolm nodded at you. “This case we’re working on…that’s one of their kind. We wouldn’t be able to solve it without their help.” you tried explaining.

“We have the best working team out there! Of course we could’ve solved it alone!” but you simply shook your head at him. He would understand sooner or later.

Sam & Dean sat down on the expensive couch, Dean putting his feet on the coffee table. Good thing Malcolm did not care too much about his furniture. Malcolm & you brought drinks from the kitchen & sat across from them. Dean only eyed Malcolm, though. The inevitable was about to happen, you just hoped Malcolm would deliver accordingly.

“Who the hell are you?” he was judging Malcolm & neither Sam’s elbow nudging him nor your dirty look changed the way he looked at him. What could you say? Dean was very protective of you, even after ages of not talking.

“Malcolm Bright, profiler for the NYPD.” that made the brothers’ eyebrows raise. Thank God he did not let slip that he was the son of a serial killer.

“You’re working for the police?” Sam eyed Malcolm, now being confused as to why you would get them involved with the police even though you were aware of what they had been through.

“Well, yeah. I mean, (Y/N) & I met there.” Malcolm reasoned. Great, the cat was out of the bag now.

“Seriously (Y/N)?” Dean looked…disappointed?

“Okay, wait a minute. Let me explain!” Sam & Dean nodded at you to continue. “When I left you guys, I really tried to leave this life behind. I did. But I still wanted to help people. So…one thing came to another & then I was part of the NYPD &-“ you were interrupted by Dean, of course.

“And slept around with this guy?” Dean looked Malcolm over & you rolled your eyes at him. Malcolm looked offended but stayed silent.

“This guy is my boyfriend. And his name is Malcolm.” you defended him. “And I asked you to help me with this case, not with my dating life.” looking at Dean sternly, he nodded at you & apologized. He could get caught up in the heat of the moment but you had more important things to focus on.

Throughout your talk, Malcolm sent you questioning looks every now & then. You brushed him off, telling him you would explain it later. Sam & Dean got the message & tried keeping the talk casual. Clearly, your boyfriend did not know about the supernatural & it would be better if it stayed that way.

“Okay, so tomorrow, we’ll talk to Norman & see what we can find out.” Malcolm concluded after some long confusing hours.

“Sammy & I need some sleep after that long ass drive anyway. We’ll be meeting at his house first thing in the morning. Don’t be late.” when he said that, he stared at Malcolm. Rolling your eyes at his childish antics, you slapped him lightly on the chest.

“Do you wanna stay here for the night?” you asked when they were walking to the front door.

“Um, no. We’re checked in at the motel a few blocks down. Besides…” Dean gestured wildly with his hands. “This entire apartment looks too luxurious for us. How did you get so much money anyway?” Dean asked, again motioning at the expensive looking apartment.

“It’s actually Malcolm’s…I moved in not too long ago.” explaining to both of them. Sam nodded, looking satisfied with your current living situation. Dean, of course, had another thing to comment on.

“Oh wow, (Y/N)…Good catch.” winking at you, you shoved him out of the apartment, shaking your head.

“Good night!” you said before closing the door behind them, letting out a long sigh.

“Your brothers are…nice.” Malcolm started. You winced at his choice of words. In your head, it all worked out way better.

“I’m sorry, Mal…They can be quite protective.”

“No, it’s fine, I get it. They’re, uh, very into this religious thing, huh?”

“Oh, you have noooo idea.” you chuckled.

“Why didn’t you tell me they were coming by?”

“I don’t know…I guess I didn’t want you to think that you’re not good enough for this case.”

“But?”

“But I need you to trust me when I tell you that Sam & Dean are the ones who should handle this one.”

“I trust you, you know that, (Y/N). But you have to give me permission to say “I told you so.” when we solve this case without their help.” Malcolm held out his hand for you to shake.

“Deal.” you smiled at him. Your brothers & boyfriend might not become best friends but you did not expect them to. All you wanted was to get rid of whatever killed that priest. And you knew that the supernatural feared Sam & Dean. This would be over soon.

“You sure these are the same guys who were at our apartment yesterday?” Malcolm whispered to you when you were approaching two men in suits. Not their usual flannel attire, they were working a job after all.

“Just play along, alright?” Malcolm nodded at you. He promised to trust you on this & you seemed like you knew what you were doing.

“Detectives.” Dean greeted you.

“Shut up.” you threw back almost immediately. Sam & Dean laughed at your comment.

“I missed you, lil sis.” Dean said with a genuine tone, one that made you smile wildly.

“Alright, let’s do this.” Sam knocked on the door, waiting for it to open. They introduced themselves as FBI & showed the woman in the doorway their badges. Shooting Malcolm a look as if to say “Don’t ask.” & he just acted as if he had not seen this. The woman led you upstairs to a room. She warned you to not cross the salt lines. All of you nodded. Well, all but Malcolm. The poor man could not understand a thing. Sometimes you wished you were this innocent when it came to cases like this. If it were not for Malcolm, this would have felt like the good old days when you spent your time solving case after case with your brothers. Yeah, it had been dangerous & exhausting but you still liked being a hunter. Also, the three of you were one hell of a team.

The door opened & you were met with countless geometrical lines made out of salt. Because a simple circle would not do the job or what? Fucking show-off. Careful not to mess with the salt, the four of you stepped inside the dark room. Norman’s back was facing you. While Sam & Dean simply took in the room to check for any indicators of anything supernatural, Malcolm started interrogating Norman. You signaled the boys to let him do his job.

“The salt keeps him out.” suddenly, Norman’s voice was way deeper than when he first started talking. Weird guy. Still, you did not think it was him.

“Who?” Malcolm asked in a calm voice. He was good at this. Even though he almost always got himself killed.

“The demon.” Norman said. What the hell was wrong with him? Malcolm turned around to you & found the three of you rolling your eyes. Really desperate if a person wanted to be a demon.

“He’s clearly mentally ill.” Malcolm stated quietly.

“Oh, really?” you sarcastically shot back. Who would have thought? Malcolm started lifting one of his foot, meaning to cross the line.

“Mal, wait. Don’t.” you warned him but when did Malcolm ever listen? You were not sure how Norman even noticed Malcolm crossing the line, his back was still facing you after all, but all of a sudden things escalated. Apparently, Norman thought Malcolm was a demon. He was everything but, really. He just had some demons to fight but he was not one. Norman was grabbing a lamp, wanting to attack Malcolm with it but you got everything sorted before anything bad could happen. Norman was on his way in the hospital & you were just glad that everyone was fine.

When all of you were outside the house again, Sam & Dean looked annoyed.

“Dude, we wasted time with this madman.” Dean started. “That’s bullshit.”

“Dean, stop.” you cut him off before the situation got too intense. “He was the only suspect we had. We couldn’t have known he was mentally ill.”

“We should check out the church tonight.” Sam suggested.

“Why at night?” Malcolm asked curiously.

“Oh, look how precious he is.” Dean mocked. If he kept acting that way you might as well salt & burn his bones next. Turning to Malcolm, you tried reasoning with him.

“Because we can’t risk people watching us. Not when we’re doing this.” Malcolm understood but he also planned a lot of questions for when you were back home.

“Alright, we’ll meet there later. Dean & I will take care of everything we might need.” Sam said before walking off to Baby.

“I see you took great care of her.” nudging Dean, motioning at the beautiful ’67 Chevy Impala. Another thing you had missed dearly. Countless nights had been spent in the backseat, you associated this car with a lot of happy memories.

“Always.” Dean smiled at you. “Baby misses you, too, you know?”

“I’m sure she does. After all, I had the brains. Of course she misses my smartness.” Dean shook his head at you, rolling his eyes at the same time. Saying goodbye & turning around, Malcolm gave you a look.

“What?”

“Baby? Her? You sure you were talking about the car?” oh, that was bothering him. Now you understood.

“It’s a long story.” you laughed & gave him a kiss on the cheek before walking past him. He let out a short laugh & smiled at your actions.

“(Y/N)? I think we should talk.” Malcolm started shortly after you entered your shared apartment.

“Oh no…that’s never a good sign.”

“What’s going on here?” you could tell he was serious. Fuck, you hated lying to him. One of the reasons why you had barely mentioned your brothers was to avoid questions you did not want to answer. It was now or never. Telling Malcolm to sit down, you were about to start at the very beginning. There were still a few hours left before you had to be at the church, might as well use it appropriately. Hopefully, Malcolm did not decide to leave you after opening up to him.

“So…you’re telling me that monsters are real, your brothers hunt them down & you used to help them before you left.” you nodded when Malcolm tried processing what you had just told him. “And my girlfriend saved the world more than once.” he concluded.

“Pretty much, yeah.” he was silent for a few seconds. That would be the moment he would ask you to leave.

“My girlfriend is a badass.” Malcolm mumbled & started laughing then. You joined in.

“Really? That’s all you have to say?” you questioned, not really believing that he dealt with it so casually.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m freaking out.” he confessed. “You know, makes me think of all the cases we couldn’t solve. Maybe we weren’t successful because of…supernatural beings playing a part. But honestly, it’s just another thing that got added to my plate. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Mal…”

“No, really. I mean it. Besides, now I know that if I ever meet a monster, you’re here to fight it off. Or your brothers. If I were a monster, I’d be scared as shit of them.” Malcolm finished & you laughed, throwing your entire body back on the couch. That actually went quite well? At least something positive.

Churches were creepy in general. But churches at night? That was a whole other level of madness. You met Sam & Dean at the Impala, Dean’s face buried in the trunk, looking for suitable weapons. Malcolm had promised not to question your actions & you were thankful for it. Because you had other things to focus on. Dean handed out weapons which you gladly accepted.

“Mal? You gotta promise me to stay behind.” concerning eyes met his & he knew better than to argue with you. Malcolm gulped but nodded anyway.

“You ready to do this?” Sam asked.

“I am but I think (Y/N)’s a little rusty.” Dean commented.

“Just...let’s get this over with…” rolling your eyes at Dean, you hated to admit that he was most likely right. You had not been on a hunt in a very long time but you knew you could fight when push came to shove.

The four of you entered the church silently, weapons at ready. After walking around for a while, Dean lifted his hand to stop you all. Trying to get a better look at what made him freeze, you were shocked when you saw Jonah, the painter, pacing these holy grounds. Why did you not think of him? It was quite obvious, really. Maybe you were getting rusty.

“Well, he is a demon, no doubts, but he isn’t Abaddon.” Dean spoke, quietly enough as to not get caught. “So if you guys distract this son of a bitch, I can catch him off guard from behind & stab him.”

“No, wait. You can’t kill him, Dean.” you argued. There was still a possibility of a human being somewhere inside.

“What? Why?” Dean turned towards you & tilted his head in confusion. Sighing out, you tried to talk some sense into him.

“Let Sam do an exorcism. We don’t know if Jonah’s still in there.” Dean thought about this for a few seconds but nodded afterwards. Sam grabbed an old lore book with the exorcism inside. He remembered the words by heart but better safe than sorry, right? Your plan was to stay hidden, the church was dark enough to do that without getting caught.

The demon was confused when he heard the first words of the exorcism, already struggling to stay inside Jonah. Good, he was not a strong one. Malcolm stayed close with you. Sam & Dean each took one side of the church, just in case something went wrong. Sam continued with the latin words & the demon was unable to move anymore. He was trapped in one place. That was when all of you made yourself shown to him. Hopefully, Jonah was still alive in there. If not, you had a lot of explaining to do. You already had but another dead person would make everything even more complicated.

“I AM ABADDON!” the demon screamed & you noticed that he barely had enough strength to stay in Jonah’s body anymore. Malcolm stayed in the background, simply observing & letting you do your job.

“I’m sure you wanna be, pal.” Dean got closer to the demon but not too close for it to be dangerous. “But we got rid of her a long time ago.” and it was true. Abaddon’s death was years ago. Why this demon thought to be her? You were not sure. But you also did not care. You just wanted this to be over. Sam finished the ritual & black smoke came out of Jonah’s mouth. After that, he fell to the floor & all of you ran over to him. Malcolm checked for a pulse & nodded when he felt it. Letting out a breath, you were glad that you could save him. Grabbing your phone out of your pocket, you dialed 911 & called Gil right after.

In no time, cars were surrounding the church. Sam, Dean, Malcom & you were standing in a small circle outside. Gil approached you.

“What the hell happened? And who the hell are you guys?” the second question was directed at your brothers who coughed a little, not knowing how to answer. Time to sell a little fake story.

“Gil, these are Sam & Dean, my brothers.” Gil shook both men’s hands.

“Didn’t know you had brothers.” he noted.

“Long story…Anyway, they came to visit & stayed at our apartment. They kinda overheard Malcolm & I talking about the case. Sam, here, has the brains-“

“Hey!” Dean feigned hurt at your words.

“And he pieced everything together. We didn’t wanna waste time & before I even had the chance to call you, we had already caught him.” as soon as you finished, Malcolm joined in to help with your little white lie.

“Jonah was poisoned by the lead in the paint he was using. It can cause dissociative behavior that can be mistaken for possession.” thank God for Malcolm “Human Dictionary” Bright. Gil could not argue with this so he simply went back over to the rest of the team. Nice job.

“Thanks guys.” addressing Sam & Dean.

“So that’s it, huh?” Sam asked, sad that he knew he had to let you go again. Yet, he supported your decision.

“Hey, Malcolm?” Dean looked at him. “I wanna show you something, come on.” Malcolm followed Dean to the black car which left you alone with Sam.

“He’s gonna kill him, isn’t he?” Sam laughed at your words.

“Possibly.” then he turned serious again. “I miss you.” Sam confessed, his jaw clenching.

“I miss you, too, Sammy.” looking up at him, you continued. “And I’m sorry for disappearing off the radar. It’s just…when I left, this entire starting new thing took more time than I thought it would.”

“I get it & I’m not asking you to come back with us. I can see that you like it here. You’ve finally found your happiness & by the way Malcolm looks at you? He’s utterly in love with you, (Y/N). Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will, I promise. You, too. Call me when you’re starting the next apocalypse.” you joked with him. He then pulled you into a big hug, one that you had missed so much. Sam always gave the best hugs.

“What is it?” Malcolm asked Dean, nervous as to why he wanted to talk to him alone.

“Look, man, (Y/N)’s my little sister & I’d do anything for her. So if you ever hurt her…know that I’ll beat the crap outta you.” Malcolm gulped but found enough courage to answer him.

“I love (Y/N). I’d never to do anything to hurt her. I get why you worry, I do. But she’s safe here. I promise.”

“Hey Dean, go easy on him.” their heads snapped in the direction your voice was coming from. By the smile on your face, he knew you were joking. Sam & you reached the car.

“I’ll miss you.” approaching Dean, you were more than satisfied when he opened his arms for you to pull you into a hug. He pressed a soft kiss on top of your head before releasing you again.

“Malcolm promised me to keep you safe.”

“Did he now?” turning around, eyeing your boyfriend with a smirk.

“Check in with us, okay?” Dean grew serious.

“I will, I promise. You guys take care of yourselves, okay?” both men nodded. “Tell Cas I said hi. How are you two doing anyway?” you stopped briefly to wink at him which made Sam chuckle quietly. “And bring him next time.”

“Alright, goodbye.” Dean said, laughing at you, Sam joining him.

“Bye, guys.” you waved at them when they got into the car.

Leaning into Malcolm’s side, you could feel his arm sneaking around your waist to keep your close. For a few moments, you stood there in silence, watching the Impala slowly disappear out of your view.

“Do I need to be jealous of this Cas guy?” Malcolm asked all of a sudden & you broke out into laughter. His confused face was hilarious.

“Trust me, Mal. If you meet him, you’ll know that there’s no need to be jealous.” tears were threatening to escape your eyes. The simple image of you & Cas together made you laugh out loud.

“I guess I need to trust you on that.”

“Hey, remember what you said when you thought we wouldn’t need help solving this case?” you asked him, changing the topic entirely. His face showed you that he did, in fact, not remember.

“I told you so.” you smirked at him, enjoying how his smile slowly faltered. Rolling his eyes at you, he wanted to say a witty remark. You knew what he was trying to do but before he had the chance, you silenced him with a long, soft kiss. That always managed to do the job. Pulling away after a few seconds, you lovingly stared into his eyes. This moment could have been overly romantic. If it were not for you putting salt into his wound.

“I told you so.” repeating your previous words, you walked away from him, sarcastically smiling as you did so. You were right about this & Malcolm prepared himself to hear the same words over & over from now on.

Published (04/15/2021) by Cathy

Tags: @thefictionalgemini, @prodigalsonlovingbisexual, @octopus5555, @claudiaparker30, @the-unknown-fan-girl, @popcornanon, @jasminetea-andpaisho, @anatanotegami, @blackandwhitejoker (thanks for your support <3)

[honeybeanboo]

genshin boys with eating disorders : pt. 1

DISCLAIMER: okay first off! i have an eating disorder and i wondered what my favorite characters would be like in my situation! i am not pro-ed whether it be BED, ednos or anorexia or others. i'm using this for comfort and please do not use this post to further your own disorder!

CHARACTERS:

albedo ✔

bennet ✔

chongyun ✔

diluc ✔

kazuha

kaeya

razor

childe

venti

xiao

xingqiu

zhongli

MAJOR TW //

eating disorders, mental health challenges, bodyshaming, dysphoria, self harm, fatphobia

┅ albedo ┅

❂ restrictive eating disorder

❂ started + time had: before the traveller arrived, he's had it for a year or so

❂ who knows: sucrose suspects although doesn't hasn't told anyone yet

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

the nature of albedo's ed is forgetfulness and recording

he works in his camp all day, at his desk, doing experiments which in itself takes up a ton of his time! what started the behaviors was simply overworking himself and to the point where he was almost getting sick [ :( albedo ] the alchemist would forget to eat, multiple meals a day he would skip, chemicals in the vicinity making it unpleasant to eat, so he would opt for nothing at all

albedo doesn't recognize what he's doing as an eating disorder, he pushes the thoughts away when they remind him of what he's doing and that it's wrong,,, over time, he would end up having a small breakfast and wouldn't eat until dinner, subconsciously slipping into a routine and writing down each meal he would have, taking care to never fill more than half his note-page

chemicals in his lab constantly are bubbling and changing, so even when he decides to eat, they interrupt him and he constantly leaves unfinished food on his desk for sucrose to find later and wonder why he always leaves it there

- has always been secluded but avoids mondstat more and more, sending sucrose into town for errands and stays in dragonspine to do experiments -- this leads to never getting new clothes and in turn, him working to stay in the clothes he has

- denies everything if mentioned, seems confused at the mention

- very protective of his notebook

THIS MAKES ME SAD ALBEDO SOBSD

┅ bennett ┅

❂ restrictive eating disorder

❂ started + time had: around the time he became friends with razor and met fischl - around 6 months

❂ who knows: fischl definitely knows but chooses not to say anything due to how bad she is with talking about feelings :(

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

the nature of bennett's ed is dysphoria and responsibility

as we all know, bennett has always had horribly bad luck and although he doesn't know it, a lot of people admire him for his perseverance, albeit avoiding his company

he almost always finds a way to overcome the overwhelming hopelessness and guilt of always relying on other people for help and bringing them down with him, but as he enters his 15th year, it gets too much :(

when he met razor, and befriended him, the boy was something of a miracle, he stuck around, he helped bennett and taught him survival tactics :D he was bennett's best friend but bennett felt so incredibly guilty about relying on him for protection, friendship, and good food, he began to turn it away and began to disappear without warning to neither fischl or razor

he would go out adventuring, trying to bring back things to cook for lisa, for razor, for fischl, for kaeya, for diona, he felt like a burden and gave back as much as he could to make up for the consequences his company brought

≡ trans bennet headcanon: he's always been told he's small and thin by his dads, even before transition, so after he began to do more physical activity and bulked up a bit, it weighed on his mind

- dysphoria plays a lot into bennett's ed, not wanting to fill out the curves he always hated

- after a particularly bad batch of eggs he had cooked up, he threw up in the cat's tail's bathroom and that in turn started a small purge cycle before someone in town noticed and took his to the doctor which scared him enough to make him stop

bennett i will just sob and cry on the floor

┅ chongyun ┅

❂ restrictive / purging eating disorder [overeating in beginning]

❂ started + time had: started during his intense studying period for his exorcisms (can't remember the specific method he mentions) - around 2 years

❂ who knows: no one, although an older woman that works at Wanmin Restaurant is worried about him

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

the nature of chongyun's ed is control and work

chongyun has always been unstable, whether it be physically or emotionally, due to his build-up of ying energy, so it's no surprise when he bubbles over during the crunch of studying. his teacher pushed him harder and harder each lesson and the things he had to do to keep his stirrings in check weren't the healthiest, one of which was eating specific foods in excess

he bubbled over one day and had a full on mental breakdown, but with his family not near the place he took lessons, he turned to the thing he thought was making his ying energy multiply, not the workload but instead the food

the exorcist's disorder waned off when he met xingqiu, it being the happiest time in his life, a friend to talk to about practically everything, but then when his exorcisms began to only cause distress to the people he thought they would help, his energy became too much and he began purging, which helped enough for him to continue [ :( i'm so sad ] the popsicles help to calm his stomach after a purge and he came up with a low cal recipe to eat tons of

- the calories didn't matter much to him, but xingqiu was very into numbers as well as books, so it began to weigh on him

- he passed off any bad mood as just tiredness from his work

- xingqiu, my man i love him but he's completely oblivious although slightly worried about "burnout" for his friend

┅ diluc ┅

❂ restrictive eating disorder

❂ started + time had: around when him and kaeya were fighting, like really fighting and he hurt him badly - 3 years

❂ who knows: a lot of people suspect, but either dismiss it, or are too scared to confront him due to his intimidating nature T-T

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

the nature of diluc's ed is discipline and control

diluc tends to be very critical of himself and very hard on himself, which you may not know just from talking to him, or even from being a friend of his, as he tends to keep a lot of stuff to himself - if he makes a mistake, he takes all measures to make sure it doesn't happen again

when he and kaeya were fighting and things got violent, he burnt him quite badly right on his eye which is the reason why the captain wears his eyepatch - this scarred the brothers' relationship badly and diluc quite took literally took those scars unto himself,,, he would let himself be burned easily by his elemental powers, constantly feeling the immense guilt of their tension :[ he healed easily, but would do it again and again

although kaeya forgives him, diluc continues to remind himself every so often that he is the reason for problems, taking the responsibility to fix them, even though they may not even be his! he acts alone and aloofly even when the other person doesn't blame him in the slightest [ TT ]

diluc doesn't drink, he doesn't want to lose control, he never wants to loose control, which is why people almost never see him eat

he eats in small portions and toughs it out, disciplining himself, trying to prove himself worthy to no one but himself

- people have offhandedly mentioned that the bartender never seems to eat or drink - "hardly seems human sometimes"

- when he was caught by the traveler being the darknight hero, this worsened this "discipline" for himself, the man not thinking himself worthy if he was defeated so easily

≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡

and that's part 1! i'll make a part two soon because this is really fun and i really enjoy making these- i will include a more wide range of eds in the second part which will be kazuha, kaeya, razor, and childe

bennett's really made me sad dang

anyway bye!

[crystalkleure]

I’m pretty sure I have DID.

And that’s not something I would try to self-diagnose with lightly.

I had a trash childhood. My mother completely isolated me from a young age, beat me, said vile things to me, and continuously found some frankly very creative ways to torture me just whenever she was in a bad mood about anything at all. I don’t want to get into the gory details of that because 1. I don’t remember it all all the time, 2. it was extremely gruesome and would be upsetting both for me writing it and probably for other people reading it, and 3. that woman did so much fucking shockingly horrible shit to me that we would be here all day if I tried to list it all out [if I even could, which I can’t]. Severe abuse was an every day, multiple times a day occurrence, for as long as I can remember. For most of my childhood, I was never not bruised.

And I’ve had so much, just...damn weird shit happen to me in my life that I could never quite fully explain before. Every explanation I settled on to rationalize the weird shit away never actually 100% fit right, I just didn’t have any better ideas about what the fuck was going on. I didn’t know what a dissociative disorder was.

Hearing voices, for one. Uh, sort of, at least. Not literally “hearing” in the auditory hallucinations sort of way, it was more like...thoughts in my head that I wasn’t putting there and couldn’t make stop? And they were usually just minding their own damn business, thinking a perfectly coherent line of thought about one thing while I was trying to think about another thing/do a different task, interrupting my damn train of thought and being annoying, but some of them [especially one in particular] did actually “speak” [more like “think at”] directly to me. Sometimes just to bitch about “hey I wanna be doing that other thing but you’re doing this thing, stupid body isn’t moving how I want it to wtf, hey, hey, hey, goddammit I wanna do the other thing c’mon man” but also often just making random uninvited remarks about shit I was doing. Nothing particularly bad, just kind of gleefully bothersome? A very consistent personality attached to this voice in particular. [Though, in hindsight, the ones that DIDN’T speak directly to me {at least until recently} were consistent as well, I just paid less attention to them, because this particular one was Extra Obnoxious As Fuck, and also...]

Now, when these “voices” were not Addressing Me Directly, I just wrote them off as my attention span sucking ass and my thoughts just wandering no matter how damn hard I tried to stay 100% on-task, I just thought my brain was extra noisy, Had A Whole Lot Of Thoughts In My Head, Very Loud In There Sometimes, and didn’t really know what else to make of that. Wondered sometimes if maybe it was ADHD, but the other symptoms of that really just didn’t seem to fit. But as soon as That One Guy started Actually Talking TO Me [around age 12 iirc]? I thought “Oh. It seems I have been tortured so badly for so long that I have finally just snapped and gone crazy. I have Voices In My Head, Talking To Me. That must be that schizophrenia thing like from the movies. Well, at least the voices aren’t REAL, even if they’re annoying, so they won’t have any power over me if I just don’t listen to them! I’ll just ignore them and not ever tell anybody, I don’t want to be thrown in the looney bin, I’m sure I can function. I’m fine. I just won’t listen.” [Spoiler alert: The voice apparently WAS real because the voice was apparently an alter, and ignoring him did NOT make him Not Actually Exist, because He Is An Actual Separately-Conscious Part Of My Brain, Not A Figment Of My Imagination. lol. He was very much capable of Controlling My Body sometimes, I just never realized that’s what was going on because 1. he shut up Thinking At Me for the most part while doing that since he was preoccupied with Driving The Body now, and 2...]

I also, for the longest time, just thought I had a REALLY goddamn amazing “autopilot system.” I noticed I could be totally “zoned-out,” “retreated into my head,” putting NO effort into moving my body or saying anything out loud at ALL, and yet my body would continue doing tasks and holding perfectly coherent conversations with people. Even while I was just, like...not actively telling it to. Like I was not intentionally making myself do the things I was doing, and was not even able to predict exactly how Doing The Task would go, or what specifically I would say in the conversation next. It just happened and was perfectly satisfactory. I genuinely just thought I was “on autopilot” and my autopilot was just really fucking awesome.

So, hearing voices? Damn, guess I’m just crazy and hallucinating now, better ignore it and remember it’s not real. Body doing things I’m not specifically willing it to, or specifically predicting it will? Dope fucking autopilot system, look at me Doing Tasks and Holding Conversations without even TRYING, totally sweet. Sometimes during an “autopilot” episode I’ll notice myself talking/emoting like [insert character I’m really attached to], and can’t will myself to Not do that during those times? I’m definitely autistic, that’s gotta just be mirroring [Nope! I do mirror, too. Distinct difference that I can see now -- I am CAPABLE of forcing myself to stop mirroring if I notice myself doing it. Can’t force an alter to Not Talk/Move Like That, though]. Shit memory? Must have been that nothing particularly important happened during that period of time [nevermind concerning evidence to the contrary ig]. Headaches that coincide with “autopilot” episodes so frequently? Well, 1. if the reason I’m stuck in Daydreamsville instead of Putting Effort Into Doing Things Externally is because something Very Stressful just happened and I’m desperately trying to not think about it [lol literally dissociating] then that makes sense bc stress causes headaches, and I am DEFINITELY super prone to stress headaches [lol. lmao. Gee.] or 2. perhaps the headache is the reason I can’t focus in the first place. Posting things that I don’t remember posting, typed in a way that REALLY doesn’t feel like “me” [this is why I’m constantly rephrasing shit like my bios/carrd/etc. all the goddamn time]? Guess I was just in a weird mood and also...not really paying attention or something. Frequently can’t FORCE my fucking body to do something I REALLY WANT TO DO, I just keep watching goddamn YouTube videos or something that I don’t even really care about, wtf? Well, I know I’ve got Depression real bad, so...executive dysfunction ig, or task inertia [nevermind that I much MORE frequently have NO problem changing tasks, even changing tasks into an activity I DON’T want to do, like an annoying chore]...?

So there’s a ton of shit that I just rationalized away as Various Other Things; switching was “autopilot,” switch/split headaches [I can figure out that’s what a TON of those were based on the timing of them and also the lack of other apparent causes for them in hindsight] were “stress headaches,” funny accents I absolutely couldn’t Not Do sometimes [and, lol, I ALSO couldn’t do them INTENTIONALLY, they ONLY properly happened during those instances I was unable to control, I couldn’t ever get them quite right when trying to do them On Purpose] must have just been weirdly hardcore mirroring or vocal stimming, etc.

But there’s always been a handful of experiences I’ve had that I absolutely could not explain. I just tried not to think about them because it disturbed me that I could not produce any rational explanation for them. In hindsight, these things were fits of fucking blackout amnesia.

One time, when I was pretty young [probably older than 10 but not by much...?], I had to endure the longass car ride to my grandparents’ house for the millionth time. And that was always a suckass experience, my mom was driving which meant I was trapped in that goddamn car with her for hours of Nonstop Verbal Abuse, but this time my sister was riding with us, too. Our mother has always done atrocious things to her as well. She was extra pissed at mom that day, so they started fighting pretty much immediately. I remember sitting in the backseat, staring at the back of the drivers’ seat in front of me, just focusing REALLY hard on the fabric of the seat, trying to drown out/ignore the Extreme Terrifying Loudness in the car around me, thinking over and over to myself “I wish this ride were over, I wish this ride were over already, I wish we were there, I wish we would just hurry up and get there...” and then...my sister was lightly tapping me on the shoulder. “Hey, we’re here.” I notice the lighting is entirely different; the sun has fucking set. But it was still broad daylight just a split fucking second ago. And we are indeed parked in my grandparents’ driveway, mom and sis are getting out of the car Right Now. What the fuck. I tried to convince myself that I had fallen asleep, but I knew I hadn’t. My eyes were open. My body was completely upright, muscles currently very much fully in use to keep it that way. Not even leaning back in the seat. It was like I had just fucking time-warped, I didn’t even feel like I had blinked. I was so sure my eyes had never even goddamn closed! It wasn’t even a split second, it was fucking instantaneous!

Another time, a few years later, I was playing with a bug I found marching across my bed. Not, like, hurting it or anything, I was being very gentle. I like bugs. I Very Very Carefully And Slowly reached out with just the very tip of my finger, intending to get the bug to turn in another direction, and as soon as the very edge of my nail touched it...poof. The bug was fucking GONE. Like, instantly, just fuckoff teleported. I assumed [and continued to assume] that it must have just jumped, even though it was very slow-moving and I hadn’t seen it tense up at all, but, on closer inspection...the light coming in the window was a slightly different colour now. The bedclothes were rumpled differently now. All instantaneously, just in a flash [without an actual flash of light or anything ofc]. It was like a timeskip again, but this time only a couple of minutes or so rather than hours. And also I felt weird, there was suddenly like...adrenaline in me, like I had just been spooked, BEFORE I had even realized the Weird Time Jump Thing had even happened. [Best I can figure, in hindsight, is that a headmate of mine switched in and was afraid of the bug, and killed it or swatted it away or something -- the bed being struck would explain the suddenly-different rumpling of the duvet. Maybe the bug bit them or something, but my finger didn’t hurt.]

And THEN, just a handful of years ago actually, oh this one frustrated me so bad lmfao...I had an issue where I would set my alarm clock, but I would apparently sleep right through it. No memory of waking up at all. But I could see that the “alarm set” switch on the back had been flipped to the “off” position to make the alarm stop, so I must have woken up enough to turn the damn beeper off and then fallen back asleep [nevermind that I normally always remember waking up even for a moment, I’m a pretty light sleeper]. Okay. Clearly I needed to Fully Wake All The Way Up in order to turn off my alarm, to prevent myself from just rolling over and going back to sleep. I took the clock off my nightstand and moved that bitch into ALL SORTS of places. I set up fucking low-key PUZZLES for myself that I would have to complete before I could make the beeping stop. I would have to get out of bed entirely, navigate through some dumb part of my room, and strain to Retrieve The Clock to then turn it off. No way would I not wake up enough to remember doing that, right? lol. Several times, that STILL didn’t fucking work. I would still wake up HOURS after the damn alarm was set to go off, and it was clear that I HAD gotten up out of bed and done the dumb bullshit. Clock alarm switch was turned off, clock was sitting somewhere different. I woke up in a completely different position that I had fallen asleep in, when I normally don’t toss and turn that much in my sleep. Yep, obviously got the fuck up COMPLETELY and then went back to bed?? Come on. And I didn’t remember any of it, fucking at all! [Apparently I have either 1. a spiteful headmate who does not like to be woken up and knew exactly what they were doing when they shut that clock off and went back to fucking bed, or 2. a headmate who did not REMEMBER why there was an alarm set, assumed “Huh, guess I was just trying to fix my sleep schedule, bleh, mind changed, not worth it” or something, and went back to bed after shrugging and deciding there was no really good reason NOT to go back to bed bc of No Memory Of The Task We Were Supposed To Do Upon Awakening.]

And even now, now that I’m actively wondering about how much amnesia I experience...I notice, when I’m standing in front of the microwave, that the timer jumps down so much faster than it seems like it should have sometimes. I notice all the little instances of people telling me about Things That Happened that I apparently Witnessed WITH Them, but that I just...have no memory of whatsoever. [What do you mean there was a stray siamese tom cat hanging around our house for a few months several years ago?? Huh???] It’s...distressing, actually, to now be aware of the fact that I don’t remember so much shit. Even shit that I know I would have enjoyed. Read the tags on {this post}. This is what I was talking about there.

It’s a little funny, how I finally figured out what was going on. It was more than a year ago but less than two, I think. See, I made a friend who has DID. It seemed to cause distress to him sometimes, so I wanted to know how I could Be A Good Friend to someone with that problem; I wanted to at least vaguely understand what he meant when he talked about his experiences with it, and I wanted to make sure that I could accommodate it thoughtfully. You know, like how you’d wanna know how you could help someone with a migraine by dimming the lights and keeping the noise levels down, if possible. So I looked up DID. Very Thoroughly Read Through a ton of Science Papers and Personal Experience Stories about it, made sure my information was as good and accurate as possible. I was initially just On A Mission To Be A Good Friend! [Psychology is also a long-standing major special interest of mine, so all the little details were also Highly Intriguing to me, which compelled me to Read Even More About This Disorder I Had Never Heard About Before Outside Of “Multiple Personality Disorder” In The Movies {which, it turns out, is often a Deeply Inaccurate Depiction of the thing! Hollywood is Super Egregiously Unrealistic, damn who would’ve thought huh lmfao}]

But then I started to realize that, for the first time in my life, I had just found something that fully explained all of my Previously Unexplainable [Or Badly-Explained-Away] Weird Fucking Bullshit perfectly. This disorder fit like a fucking glove when nothing else ever had. And I was exactly the kind of person who was at an extremely high risk of developing it, I had the exact right kind of Inescapably Repeatedly Traumatic Trash Childhood. I even checked out a bunch of different things that could be easily confused with DID [Borderline Personality Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder, Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder...] and none of them fit fully the way DID so effortlessly did. [Except maybe MaDD. I actually might have that. Probably, even. I’ve heard it’s comorbid with DID/OSDD a lot. It alone just failed to explain too much that DID covered perfectly.]

And it was, uh, terrifying.

This is a very highly stigmatized disorder with no cure. My brain is going to be like this forever and people are going to be terrified of me and think that I am dangerous because of all the shit misconceptions about how ~multiple personality disorder~ [don’t call it that, outdated inaccurate term with Not Great connotations] works. They’re going to assume there must be at least one Uncontrollable Evil Serial Killer Personality in there somewhere and there’s just not. We are literally all just guys. With C-PTSD, but. Literally none of us are any more dangerous than someone with C-PTSD who has their OWN body that ISN’T shared with a bunch of other guys. I’ve stopped trying to ignore The Voices™ now that I know they aren’t just Not Real/Hallucinations, I’ve communicated with several of these guys. Pretty extensively. None of them are even assholes. Some of them might not have very pretty coping mechanisms but I wouldn’t say any of these guys are bad or even unreasonable, and especially not dangerous to anyone except maybe sometimes themselves. Please don’t be terrified of them? They’re good guys. I like these guys. [You’ve literally even already met most if not all of these guys because they’ve been here the whole time. We share this body and therefore this blog lol.]

And in fact, actually, realizing what was wrong with me was SO fucking terrifying that I didn’t tell anyone I even suspected it for months. Months that I spent reading even MORE closely and thoroughly about DID/OSDD, looking desperately for a way to logically rationalize that I DIDN’T have this disorder, and not finding any way out of it. Damn near every single little goddamn thing I learned about it fit my own experiences just more and more perfectly.

So I just sat there fucking agonizing over what I was going to do with this Newfound Terrifying Knowledge, what the fuck was I going to say to people, are my friends going to be fucking afraid of me now or at the very least are they going to feel awkward and weirded-out, I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable around me, what if someone I care about reacts badly to this, etcetera. There was this HUGE amount of fucking fear and shame just fucking crushing me, for months [which is itself apparently The Most Common Way People React To Learning They Even MIGHT Have DID/OSDD. Hm.]

And you remember that Loud guy from before? The one who had Talked Directly TO Me In My Head for so long? The one who was never shy about Annoying Me Until I Made The Body Do The Thing He Wanted It To Do, the one that has always had fun bothering me [but is not malicious -- only playful]? That guy? Me worrying about this So Much for So Long eventually culminated in him saying “Oh, fuck it. Just spit it out already.” and forcibly taking control of the body to do exactly that. He informed our close friends that he was pretty sure we have some sort of dissociative disorder, pretty bluntly, a little awkwardly. He just got it over with so I would stop freaking out worrying about how to say it. And he was perfectly friendly, not rude to them, he didn’t do anything wrong at all -- I’m actually thankful he handled that for me now, he was indeed doing me a favour and I am grateful for it, but at the time it was happening...it was, once again, fucking terrifying. And it was surreal. I watched him do it, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I got shoved back into my own head, watching from behind my own eyes, as he made the body type out and send those messages. I was like...beating on the inside of my own brain, screaming at that guy to STOP THAT, OH MY GOD, THIS ISN’T HOW I WANTED TO HANDLE THIS NO NO NO NO, but was completely out of control of my own fucking limbs. I just watched. And then it finally irrefutably clicked that “autopilot” was definitely not just “autopilot,” because this is exactly what my “autopilot” always was. This was the exact same sensation. The only difference is now I was watching my body do something I DIDN’T WANT IT TO DO, not just something I Did Want To Do or at the very least Didn’t Mind Doing. It doesn’t matter if I fight it or not, I am not in control. [I finally did end up wrestling Control Of The Body back away from him, but only after he had gotten those messages spit out. In other words, after he was done with the task he was hellbent on doing, so he wasn’t holding onto the metaphorical steering wheel quite so hard anymore. Let his mental guard down a little.]

That event actually did make me finally Fully Trust that guy though, funny enough. He knew what he was doing, he knew it had to happen, he handled a hard situation for me. I like him a lot. He’s a fun guy and he’s got my back. I’m okay with him being Stuck In My Brain Forever, finally. Sorry I spent so many years “La la la, I’m not listening to you, you’re not real”-ing you, man.

Hm. This post is getting way too long. So, there’s that. That’s a thing. It took me a damn year+ to spit the thing out in public, but there it is. It feels kind of good to finally get the thing fully off my chest.

[duckymcdoorknob]

I’m sorry.

But I have to get this off my chest.

It’s put me in such a bad depression that I can’t do basic things anymore.

Even doing comforting things doesn’t work for me.

I just have to do my Gov that’s due at midnight then I’m leaving to come here all night.

I don’t want to sleep. I want time to feel better.

CW BELOW!!! Bulimia, Ed talk, Ed rant, wacky shit.

My best friend of eight years outed my eating disorder at lunch today.

So basically she was trying to be helpful. She offered me pocky sticks and just said “here.”

And pockys are #1 gross to me since I developed it, and #2 the worst thing I could’ve possibly had in the moment. They’re pure sugar and processed and kinda yucky.

So I said no with a disgusted face.

She proceeded to shake them at me and said quite loudly “eat them since you don’t have anything for lunch again.”

And another one of my homies, who knows, was like “you don’t have anything for lunch?? 🥺”

Before I could reply with “oh I just forgot it in the car” . she even louder said “Nope. She never has anything for lunch ever and she won’t have any energy.”

Everyone at the table perked up and listened as she berated me about how I wouldn’t have anything to eat until 4:00 at night. And how I “literally come to lunch every single day without a single thing to eat”

(As if that isn’t what I do every fucking day)

So guilt tripping me is her best solution to something I can’t control??

It wouldn’t have bothered me as much if it was just all the close homies at the table, but it wasn’t.

We had 3 new people sitting at our table that day, and the other tables were in close enough vicinity to us to hear her.

I mean she was loud. She was almost yelling at me.

Anyone with their fucking ears tuned into the world could’ve heard it.

So that’s up to 10+ more people who could know now.

Shit actually it’s probably closer to 15 and I think my dean of students was walking by our table.

So my hellsite paradise may be short lived if he finds out and tells guidance. Bc guidance knowing is a 1 way ticket to the funny farm.

It put me in such a god awful mood that I couldn’t do anything but come home and sleep.

I tried to watch an episode of Big Windup, something that has always INSTANTLY lightened my mood.

Nothing.

I don’t feel sad, not hurt, not betrayed, not angry.

I haven’t cried, doesn’t seem like I will.

I just feel fucking numb.

Empty

Stoic.

I could’ve gone to bed for the night at 4:30

Easily

It felt fine that I hadn’t had anything to eat all day.

It felt good

It felt great to know that I was taking the steps I could to lose weight.

(To answer your questions, yes. I’ve had dinner today. Pizza and a banaenae 🥸)

It felt amazing.

Knowing I was on the road to be small.

On the road to get rid of my mom’s off handed comments.

But the thing is? She knows it’s a disorder.

I’ve told her that I most likely have bulimia nervosa. I’ve been on a binge and restrict cycle since October.

The silly goofy thing also: I think she thinks I’m doing it for attention or something.

It’s not my fucking decision [Redacted], I’m sick.

Why does it have to be this way?

Something that’s supposed to keep me healthy and alive is the thing I dread the most.

It’s become the worst part of my day, so I can only stand to do it once before I tap out.

The word “eat” and all forms of it make me want to cry

The word “food” or any noun that fits under that criteria makes me fucking gag.

The smell of anything warm makes me sick.

I have no safe foods, just shit I force down so I don’t fucking die or get arrhythmias.

I thought I could trust her.

She doesn’t even seem to actually care.

She never seemed to from the beginning

I don’t want to give her the silent treatment or anything because then she’s just going to black sheep me and make it my fault again.

I’m so tired of this, you guys.

Why the fuck can’t I be normal?

Remember when I was dreading going back after break? This is fucking why.

This is Ducky, signing off for a few hours.