#imagine not having a mental breakdown every single day... imagine not being suicidal...imagine being content

[butchvamp]

that reddit post or whatever that’s like how does anyone live like this is life not incredibly hard for everyone else

[jamiepaige]

Constant Companions Closeup #5: CADMIUM COLORS

(also on bandcamp and spotify!)

Once again, welcome back to the Constant Companions Closeups - a series of in-depth dives into the songs off of my latest album, Constant Companions! Last time, I wrote a whole diatribe about my OCs while talking about I Wish That I Could Fall, and today, we're eating paint! Cadmium Colors featuring Soneji of Project Mikan!

Consider this a content warning: this post will discuss the pandemic, struggles with mental health, and suicidal ideation/attempts. I'm hoping it'll ultimately be uplifting, but the discussions at hand are incredibly heavy, and it wouldn't do this song right to be vague. Please be warned.

---

Let's talk about COVID.

At the beginning of 2020, I was in the midst of a long-term break from making music. It wasn't completely cold turkey, and I might not have even called it a break if you'd asked me at the time, but things were dire. I was still dealing with the burnout I'd sustained from the making of Autumn Every Day; I'd had my ego bruised by a live performance at a house party that went so hilariously bad it'd hurt even the most stoic performers (imagine watching an entire packed room of people clear out in 5 minutes flat from the already hyper-exposed vantage point of being on stage in front of them and knowing you single-handedly caused that lol); I had just moved across the country, and was preoccupied with trying to make ends meet as a 22 year old dealing with pure adulthood for the first time.

I was working a shitty minimum wage job at a discount clothing store I will not be naming, slogging through late-night shifts that wouldn't get me home until 3 am some nights. I had friends and roommates, but they were all just as overworked and exhausted and dealing with their own shit as me. I was mentally ill and unmedicated. Suicidal ideation was rearing its ugly head at my lowest moments.

Then, as I turned 23, a global pandemic shut the world down, my grandpa died with me being unable to attend his funeral, and I had a catastrophic mental breakdown that suddenly turned the voices in my head into a deafening cacophony of self-inflicted malice.

In hindsight, I think being 23 kinda just does that to you

---

Fast forward to 2021. I was back at my retail job with the pandemic raging in full force, my sense of self was held together with duct tape, positive self-talk essentially didn't exist for me, and I was the loneliest and lowest I had ever been. I was working the fewest hours I could get away with, and still, almost all spare time I had was taken up either by work or by my recovery from it.

This was around the time I got an email from Crypton, of all places - the people that make Hatsune Miku, for anyone uninformed. They wanted a remix of the song Happy Synthesizer for a Digital Stars compilation. I could not for the life of me tell you how I lucked into this or why they reached out to me of all people, but they did, and I was deathly determined to prove myself worthy of it.

This was August of 2021. I was staring down the barrel, languishing in what felt like only half of a life, fantasizing about death and trying to twist my thoughts into something that could at least keep me blearily shuffling forward another couple days. It was untenable.

(I'd also recently been diagnosed with OSDD 1b - this is a whole can of worms I can't really open until we talk about Breeze Blows, but it's important to at least mention that coping with this was a significant part of this turnaround.)

It's melodramatic, but I had only two options - make things again, or die.

I finished that remix within 24 hours of getting the stems, and I will gladly toot my own horn about it - it's really fucking good, in my opinion. Bittersweet ended up coming together in a mad dash over the next couple months as well. I was making music again.

Even though I was exponentially busier, things paradoxically got easier. I made the creative process a priority in my life, and not only did it give me an outlet for everything that had otherwise been eating away at my soul, but it struck a chord with other people who had been struggling as well. Things just... started getting brighter.

So I kept making music and living and yadda yadda blah blah here I am. This is all a lot of words and very personal stories of mental health struggles to say this:

One: The line between being an artist and being one of countless people forced to work jobs that go nowhere, that put their life at risk, that force them to strip parts of themselves away - it is a faint and transparent line built on circumstances of class and privilege and luck. Making Art and being an Artist aren't magical elevated states of existence, but something anyone is capable of if given the space to nurture their creativity. I believe the world should be a place where any person can do this.

Two: It's easy to convince yourself that art is meaningless in the face of the world at large. And yes, revolutions aren't fought by poetry and paintings, and people aren't fed through songs. But art is a source and a medium for connection; Art is how we find beauty in a disorganized and entropic world; Art is what we come home to and what words we write and pictures we paint and songs we sing to remind us that people matter to us and love is real and life is worth fucking living. Maybe that's corny and stupid, but it's true.

Three: So help me God, I will never work retail again in my entire life.

---

This is another song that is heavily inspired by artists like Prefab Sprout, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, and other artists of that ilk - very 80s, very flowery and sentimental lyricism, focused on telling a story. I greatly admire songs that aren't afraid to paint otherwise banal or ordinary scenes in abstract reverence!! I wanted the verses to contrast heavily with each other in that way, with verse one's relentless poeticisms (prosaic practice of depravity) and idioms turned on their head (suspending innocents above their disbelief) against verse two's incredibly straightforward depiction of a factory worker's circumstances.

The flowery language might have worked against me somewhat, though! I've seen a lot of folks that thought the ending was darker or much more defeatist than I intended, and while some of that is just inevitable with a work of art, I want to be clear.

Translator's note: this means "don't kill yourself, you idiot"!!

As you may have picked up from the previous post in this series, this song does heavily feature a leitmotif or two predominantly performed under pudgy pretenses. I'm not going to go on that whole novella-length spiel again, but rest assured knowing that this song, too, is one that makes me think about my OCs. Since it's something many people missed, however, I will take a moment to point out that this song quotes none other than Autumn Every Day off of my album of the same name!

Painting and visual art have been something of a reoccurring obsession of mine in my own art. I grew up around visual artists, have always been friends with many visual artists, and generally have a really intense love of it as a medium and a mode of expression. However, there's also always been a sense of... well, I don't want to call it jealousy, but it's jealousy. I've tried many times to start making visual art of my own, and I have made some things, but it's been a struggle, and I worry sometimes that my eye has permanently outstripped my ability.

However, in my quest to toss out grand expectations and simply have fun making art, I did recently pick up a cheap little drawing tablet! I'm excited to be a beginner at something artistic again...

Finally, I want to thank a couple people: Soneji of Project Mikan for the gorgeous, soaring saxophone solo; friend_xp for the mindboggling MV editing; and especially my good friend Que for the GORGEOUS painterly art that goes along with this song! Que's style was just perfect for this, and really tied the whole thing together immaculately!! There's no joke or deeper lore or anything I just fucking love Que's art go follow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And with that, I think this post is complete!! If you have anything else you wanna know about, ask away in the replies! Tomorrow will be Breeze Blows with Marcy Nabors and Marlow Jacobs!!!

MAKE ART AND BE GAY

[baku-bowl]

broke 1,000 followers (the fuck? I don't even make content people), so decided to write up a list of some (but not all, I'll make other lists later) of my favorite Bakugou-centric fic recs. my tastes run towards hurt/comfort, as you'll probably figure from the list. if there are some Baku-centric fics that you've enjoyed that aren't on here, please add them - this is definitely not a complete list of the ones I've read and love, but I'm always up for some recs. <3

fair warning, most of these are wips.

------------------------------------------------

Social Media 101 by WindsChild8178

Part 1: Survival Guide to Fucking Up

[Solely Bakugou’s point of view]

Katsuki Bakugou doesn’t have a gentle bone in his body. He’s aggressive in everything he does and does everything with 100% of his heart in it. After the Sport’s Festival, Katsuki starts to get harassed by strangers for his unheroic demeanor. It starts with letters but it doesn’t end there. The moment Katsuki realizes the harassment has entered dangerous territory and he needs to tell someone, it’s already too late.

Part 2: Post Traumatic Life Disorder

[Point of View opens up to Bakugou, teachers and classmates]

When the Dorms are finally built, everyone is settling in well, but things become tense as people begin to realize something isn’t right with the recently rescued Bakugou.

[Cannon compliant right up to after the License Exam]

hands down my favorite fic in the fandom right now. it’s the one that converted me into a Bakugou lover. if you have any fondness for Bakugou as a character then it’s likely you’ve read this one already, but if not, I can’t recommend it enough. incredibly depressing, but with the hope that comfort is coming soon in the next few chapters.

The Kids Will Be Alright, Eventually by NotWithThatAttitude

Bakugou is spiraling in the aftermath of Kamino and his friends are starting to notice. He's stubborn, aggressively independent, and less than willing to dig into his past, but after a breakdown that ends with a painful secret revealed, he starts to get help.

Whether he likes it or not.

Meanwhile, a new kind of villain threatens an uneasy peace following the loss of Allmight. Whispers build as a new narrative slowly takes shape:

Hero society needs to change.

Feat. Therapy, Dadzawa, best boy Kirishima, dysfunctional families, healing, growing up, and the mortifying ordeal of being known

guys.. the medical accuracy of this fic is just... *chef’s kiss*

I rarely see mental health genuinely handled well in fics, but this one goes above and beyond. kudos to the author for doing such excellent research into psychology, and making the application of it in here not-boring. also, while this one does have abusive!Mitsuki, it’s done in a way that feels realistic, and how I usually will see it occur in real life, rather than just for the hurt/comfort feels.

fair warning, the fic can be incredibly triggering (themes of severe depression, PTSD, panic attacks, rape survival, abuse survival, suicidal ideation/attempted suicide, among other things), so be safe and heed the tw’s if you decide to read. legitimately one of my Top Favorite fics in this fandom.

Lock and Key by autochorystalize

Bakugou made a choked, gravelly noise before croaking out a low, “You can’t be serious.” His fingers ached to blow up everything in the room.

“I’m sorry, young man, but you can’t change reality! This sometimes happens.” Recovery Girl clicked through his file, adding a new symbol in a previously empty slot.

- - -

A pair of eyes discreetly locked on to an explosive blond plowing his way forward, parting people in his path. He recognized the kid, of course. Anyone in the underbelly of society would recognize him, after the publicity of both UA’s Sports Festival and the events leading up to All Might’s fall. The uniform he was wearing cast away any doubts about the young man’s identity.

It was a bit of a surprise that the little firecracker presented as an omega.

- - - - - - - - -

Or: there are certain types of evil that seemed too distant, archaic violations and perversions that would never actually threaten bright-eyed heroes-in-training in the clean, modern world...but sometimes those evils aren't as distant as one might think.

remember when I said that I love a/b/o fics that are full of plot and world-building and gender-induced tension? that’s this one. the OC’s are fabulous and you love to hate ‘em. also, it’s the fic that made me fall head-over-heels for the TodoBaku dynamic, so it’s got a special place in my cold, dead heart. 

be warned, there are rather explicit non-con scenes between an adult (OC) and a minor (Bakugou) in this one, but the author warns for them in advance, and you could likely skip those parts without missing too much if you need to.

Never and Always, Eventually by Wawa_Boonliang

"Katsuki can remember the exact moment that he and Deku…that he and Midoriya Izuku became friends. He can also remember the moment he and Izuku became fierce rivals, a time when they were almost enemies.

However, what he remembers most clearly about their relationship is the moment that they moved passed rivals and became something more close than mere friends. Something more like brotherhood, something forged in fire and secured in the middle of a battlefield or in the midst of natural disaster where the number of the dead was climbing ever higher. And then it was torn from him."

Katsuki is given a second chance. A chance to save everyone. A chance to change everything.

But should he?

y’all. I’m a slutty, slutty whore for time travel fics. a time travel fic with autistic!coded Bakugou? it was love at first read.

Lessons Learned by Sif (Rosae)

Rather than the police station, Katsuki's friends bring him to a hospital after rescuing him from the villains. His wounds were minor, but it didn't make having them treated any less important. As it would so happen, Best Jeanist was also brought to this hospital after the attack.

Sometimes, small choices have a big impact on how a story plays out.

classic Bakugou hurt/comfort. this fic opened me up to the potential that could be a genuinely good Best Jeanist & Katsuki mentor-mentee relationship, and I kind of dig it and search ravenously for it in other fics now. I’m also a huge fan of the behind-the-scences Pro Hero Chat group.

Slope by sunfleurmoon

“I’m not a hero. Or a good person,” Katsuki says, giving Aizawa a pointed look, “So leave me alone. I don’t care about the League or UA, or you—” The two years he’s been away have been fine, more than fine, fucking fantastic actually if you ignore the bi-monthly near-death experiences. He doesn’t need this place. He doesn’t miss this place.

And yet, longing, a childish desire to tear up, or maybe blow something to bits, they all twist in his chest like a band of traitors regardless. “—I just want to go home.”

Or: the one where Katsuki and Izuku fail the first term exam, Aizawa discovers their pasts, and Katsuki is booted from UA. Featuring questionable descriptions of villain organizations, a slightly illegal moving shop, and your favorite emotionally constipated badass in distress with a newly discovered penchant for collecting strays.

paaaaaaiiiiiiiin. the hurt is ALIVE in this one. lots of tortured, angsty exploding child goodness. the OC’s are excellently crafted, and the Bakugou & Eri relationship? beautiful. definitely deserves a read.

Ground Zero by WindsChild8178

In the wake of Kamino, Katsuki is tested more than anyone could imagine. Bound by a villain’s quirk to keep his silence or die, he lives each day knowing it might very well be his last. He continues to work towards becoming a hero, keeping his secret from his classmates and teachers, focusing on making it through each day and trying not to allow the panic or depression to get the best of him. When the villain finally corners him with demands in exchange for his life, there is really only one answer Katsuki Bakugou can give.

honestly don't know which I want updated more - social media 101 or ground zero. this author's fics are amazing, and I really wasn't expecting the twist in this one. can't wait for windschild to come back to this fic some day.

The Defect by LadyGreenFrisbee

"Why do you want to win the Sports Festival so badly?" 

Because I want to see if the defect could usurp the masterpiece.

(In which Endeavor holds a terrible secret and Bakugo has to suffer since childhood for it.)

a great concept, and I adore the shouto and Katsuki sibling interaction here. hoping the author will come back to this one some day.

A Name That You'll Remember by Heronfem

Kirishima Eijirou is a Hero. Bakugou Katsuki... is not. Trapped in his toxic workplace and increasingly desperate to get out, Red Riot's days are only brightened by a new villain known as Caution, who's not exactly villainous and keeps accidentally doing good deeds. But when a real villain appears, a threat from the past that demands that Red Riot make the ultimate sacrifice to keep the public safe, Bakugou is forced into saving the day... and eventually, Red Riot himself.

sob story good guy villains are my weakness, this fic is a gem, and I'd kill for the sequel.

Our Hero by AnonymousTwit

He felt everything jerk to the side and throw his balance off before he saw anything, dust clouding his vision and irritating his lungs as the earth itself opened up to swallow them whole. For a single moment, in a millisecond's time, his wild eyes locked with Raccoon Eyes', hers alight with fear and adrenaline-fueled desperation. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized that it was the first time she'd looked at him with something other than long-deserved hatred in days.

And then he was free falling.

Or

After a particularly nasty encounter between childhood friends, the class learns about Bakugou and Midoriya's dark history and practically ostracizes Bakugou while trying to defend Midoriya. An earthquake during an outing has all sides regretting their decisions.

just fucking tear apart my self-sacrificing faves in every way imaginable while their loved ones watch on in terror. 💖🥰💖 this one is heavy on the Bakusquad and Class-1A feels, and VERY heavy on the Mina & Bakugou relationship (platonic).

Running back the tape, watching it replay by Faralyne

For someone ripped from their time, ripped from the few but strong relationships built by time and personal development, by self-reflection and swallowed pride, ripped from the one thing that made him feel worthwhile and needed and put-together, and forced to forge everything over again—Katsuki thinks he is handling it pretty fucking well.

Or

A villain’s quirk sends a 29-year-old Bakugou back in time to his middle school days.

am I a sucker for time travel? yes. am I a sucker for vigilante!bakugou? also yes. am I a sucker for this fic? literally refreshing the page in wait for an update as we speak.

Liability by sandelf

After All-Might dies rescuing Bakugou from the League, Bakugou is determined to prove it wasn't for nothing.

But the world is against him, his grief is overwhelming, and his stability is splitting at the edges.

very self-indulgent bakugou angst. tw for harassment, severe depression, and suicidality.

Special Mentions:

How To Win The Sport Festival: A Step By Step Guide by mhwright

Short re-imagining of the Sports Festival Arc if Shinso had planned a little better and worked a little harder to win the Sports Festival and if the match-ups had been slightly different. Self-indulgent fic of watching him succeed.

this is completely Shinsou-centric, not Bakugou-centric, but I love and adore it and am dying for a sequel. Shinsou is Best Boy here and you'll be rooting for him the whole time.

[lazyliars]

Tubbo for the character breakdown? :D

How I feel about this character

c!TUBBO MY BELOVED.

The Sidekick. The Yes-man. The Pawn. The Child Soldier. The President. The Government. The Revolutionary. The Fool. The Scientist. The Husband. The Best-friend. The Leader. The Follower. The Underestimated.

Tubbo is a man with many titles, and as the situation calls for it, he can wear any of them comfortably.

Tubbo is defined, more than a lot of characters, by those titles, and by who calls him by which ones. The roles that he has played over his tenure on the server have left a more dramatic impact on both how he is perceived by others, and his own self-image.

He’s Tommy’s Sidekick and Best-friend - but he’s also Ranboo’s Husband, and Snowchester’s Leader, and A Scientist with Jack Manifold, and an (ex) President to Techno, and a Pawn to Dream.

What's interesting is that this relationship with titles is one he shares with Technoblade, and it's a unique way in which they foil each other. None of either of their other foils really share this dynamic, and to add to it, they both propagate this in each other. The difference is in how they deal with, feel about, and utilize it.

Techno is “The Blade” and “The Blood God,” and he hates it. He feels used, objectified, and reduced to a weapon by these titles. At the same time however, the actions he ends up taking only reinforces the way the average people perceive him – violence, blood and anarchy. The reputation Techno has aqquired often overshadows the person who might prefer to be seen as.

Tubbo on the other hand, tends to slip into the these titles without much resistance. He accepts them, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. He's happy to be Tommy's sidekick; He takes on the role of President of L'manberg; He accepts Dream's metaphor for himself as a Pawn. But to his advantage, his flexibility within these roles and the ability to put them on and take them off as he pleases gives him a uniquely wide arsenal of social tools.

There is so much more to say about c!Tubbo but If I keep going I could be here for hours...

All the people I ship romantically with this character

I am an enjoyer of his marriage with Ranboo, although I wouldn't call myself a shipper really.

I think their dynamic as two people who value kindness, but who also possess the capacity to be surprisingly ruthless, makes them an unusually dangerous and honestly, somewhat thematically opposed pair.

Tubbo is one of the people on the server who has the longest and most consistent relationship with what Ranboo would consider “sides” which automatically sets him up as a foil. Before even L'manberg, it was Tommy and Tubbo vs. Dream, and Tubbo has always held that loyalty close to his heart, and likely wont be cutting that off anytime soon. As a consequence of this, he naturally adds Ranboo to the list of people “on his side,” quietly, but surely.

Ranboo's somewhat correct, somewhat misidentification of “sides” as the root of all conflict on the server, in contrast to Tubbo, drives him to be more individualistic, “choosing people over sides.” And accordingly, it would be a stretch to call him a member of Snowchester, despite how deeply entrenched he's become in it's founder's life. At the same time, it's clear that Tubbo is one of, if not the most important person to Ranboo out of everyone on the server, and he's willing to do anything to protect him.

All in all, Ranboo and Tubbo end up being an odd couple for a multitude of reasons, who, despite some very core differences in personal philosophy, both end up caring for each other ferociously.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

I would love to be contrarian here, but I just can't. Clingy Duo 4 LYFE!

Tommy and Tubbo's friendship, from the start of their time on the server to the current day, has been one “thing” that I continually return to, and that the story over all returns to. They are the emotional anchor of the server in a lot of ways – both a representation of it's innocent, idyllic past, and it's forward march into a darker future. Whenever the narrative wants to make a story beat feel strong and impactful, they'll often end it by echoing the scene on the bench that started everything, whether or not it's Tubbo and Tommy specifically; their Bond resonates so strongly throughout the DNA of the story that their Bench has become a Symbolic Archetype all in itself, and is something that no longer even requires the two of them present to recall it's power as a representation of Attachments, Loyalty and Platonic Love.

TLDR; Clingy Duo is the glue that keeps the core of the story together, and intentionally or not, most important friendships will end up either paralleling or foiling them by the sheer fact of how impactful their relationship is to the greater narrative.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don't know how unpopular or not this opinion might be, but I do consider Tubbo to be a darker character than a lot of the content for him I see produced.

One way this expressed: he's incredibly pessimistic. He's a person who lives his life hyper aware of how easy it is to die, and with a full acceptance that, if a worst case scenario should arrive on his doorstep, he would die without hesitation, if he had to.

That isn't to say he isn't invested in preventing that, far from it – but there is an undercurrent of absolute certainty that he is living on borrowed time.

One interesting development on this is how he's expressed this – during the Disc Finale, Tubbo has already accepted his own death. He tells Tommy that he's “done enough” and that he should let him die so that Tommy can have his disc back. He tries to get Tommy to resign, to not fight Dream in the end because he can tell that they've already lost and he doesn't want him to have to die too or suffer more.

Contrast this to Snowchester now – as we've learned that the Nukes have dead-mans switch; a suicide button, that only Tubbo knew about. It's a far more proactive expression of this mentality, a final ace up his sleeve, so to speak, so that if an unwinnable situation should occur again, he can turn it from a loss into sick kind of pyrrhic victory.

It's important to note that Tubbo has not yet projected or pressed this mentality onto others; this is self destruction only, and I do think that says something about him, although it's less positive and more tragic.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

VILLAIN ARC. VILLAIN ARC. VILLAIN ARC.

Okay, as a specific example, there is sooooo much missed potential for Egg!Tubbo (and Egg!Tommy) and I will die on this hill.

Imagine, in a world where Tommy isn't immune: Tubbo gets trapped and infected by the egg, as it offers to grant him the one thing he wants most in the world.

The vines grow around Snowchester, seeping into the cracks in it's walls and then hardening into a scaly form, creating a shell around his home. The ambient radiation causes the egg to grow faster in this area, and form odd spikes that loom outwards from the heart of the town, like blades pointed at anything that gets too close.

Tommy realizes too late what's happened, and when he tries again and again to convince Tubbo to just come with him, please come with him to Church Prime, he’s sure that they can find a way--

--he ends up letting Tubbo lead him, and follows him down to the depths of the egg.

When the doors behind them are covered in thick vines, and the humidity of the room increases, and every breath feels like it draws in clouds of dust, it’s already too late to run.

Tubbo stays with Tommy for the two weeks it takes for his will to break and the egg to infiltrate his mind; it's offers of wealth and vengeance and rebuilding L'manberg and resurrecting Wilbur and making people love him and making him powerful and giving him the whole world--

--all rejected, until finally, in the sickening red haze of Tommy's mind, a single scene; a clear blue red sky, the sun high and bright, a warm breeze blowing in, a bench, the sound of good music, and there--

Tubbo moves and the vines around him creak, having been undisturbed for days. He places his hand on the mass of crimson where Tommy is trapped waiting.

--Tommy grins and rushes forwards, all of the weight in his heart, all of the dread and responsibility and fear and anger and hurt and pain, all of it suddenly gone on the breeze as he takes his place next to Tubbo on the bench.

The Eggpire grows. The vines begin to appear in more vulnerable places – peoples secret rooms, near their pets, wherever they keep their most sentimental objects.

Tommy loves causing harmless mischief, and the feeling of being accepted, of being cared for? It's perfect. Nothing can touch him now, where everything is simple and easy and just the way it should be.

Tubbo knows. It's not a deep feeling, it's not a secret part of himself still in there, still fighting. He knows, and when he sees Bad staring him down, piercing through him, he knows that Bad knows too.

There is no kinship for them. There can't be. That would be too close to rebellion against The Crimson. That would be too close to comfort.

But Tubbo knows quietly. He's not a follower by nature, but he'll follow now, simply because he's seen the most logical way to attain what he wants.

And he and Tommy will make a kinder, safer world then the one the Crimson is eating now.

[caramujotan]

disco elysium text-form #thots:

i finished my first run last friday because i went stupid and played the game for nearly 24h straight. i could literally not drop it. i called it a 10/10 when i was about 2h away from finishing it, finished it and kept that score. it’s a real good game and you can stop here with my endorsement but if you want some more in-depth spoiler-free thoughts on it you can read the rest of this post. it’s big.

due to the content of the game, i talk about mental health topics, suicide, drug use and - obviously - cops 🐷

in a way calling this by numbers feels reductive (scalding hot review take, i know). a 10/10 score doesn’t reflect the awe i felt when gilding through the end-game. it doesn’t say a thing about how viscerally my body reacted to a few pixels and lines of text. it can’t tell you that i spent 2h in bed trying to sleep but couldn’t keep my brain off of it and got up at 8AM to finish it; or how much i’ve been replaying the game in my head, curious about how certain quests or events would have gone if i’d tried a different approach or character build.

i have this funky little medical condition that goes with my autism that makes it difficult for me to identify and process most emotions that i feel. but i can tell you how my body reacted. this game went into my gut. it felt like a leaded fist burrowed through my throat into the pit of my stomach and shredded my insides. it got me fucked up, is what i’m saying.

obviously i can’t go into what caused me to react like that without spoiling the shit out of this game, and since i wish i could gently lobotomize myself in order to experience it again for the first time, i heavily recommend you go through it knowing as little as possible. what i can do, however, is talk about the technical elements of it.

the art is beautiful. the art direction is top-notch and it was definitely of the things that drew me to this game first. the oil painting aesthetic is sublime - gritty and ethereal in equal parts whenever each purpose is called for. finding out that the art team was spearheaded by painting majors from russian fine-art schools made perfect sense - it shows, and the game made peak use of it. the philosophy behind their visual approach is woven into the fabric of the game itself - it’s a perfect compliment to the writing and storytelling, and i’d struggle to imagine this game without it. it permeates and elevates every environment, every interaction, every character build choice - from the character portraits, to the UI, to certain skills and game events. real art cop hours all my homies kin the art cop.

the music by british sea power is subsided and haunting and gives the game that british/european post-industrial melancholic flavor. i’m no music critic sadly. it fits the mood and it stands out beautifully in a few key scenes, but that’s as much as i can say.

the biggest turn off for me was in the voice acting. if you’re interested in playing this game i’m going to assume with 75% certainty you’re in your early 20s to 30s and are politically located to the left side of liberal at a minimum - so i’ll just come out and say it plainly: every second NPC (especially in the late game) is voiced by a leftist podcaster. i’m sure this is a plus for some, and it’s not the kind of thing you’d immediately notice anyway unless you’re a quote unquote dirtbag leftist with terminal irony poisoning twitter brainrot. most of them do competent work, but the sound mixing and general performance is weaker in comparison to the NPCs voiced by actual voice actors. 

it’s not that bad, but it’s there - and the fact that this is probably my biggest complaint about the game should say enough of my opinion on it. either way i was cringing with recognition every time it happened and it took me out on more than one occasion because i kept hearing felix chapotraphouse in one of the game’s big tense climatic scenes.

‘but caramujo!’ you say ‘this doesn’t tell me what this game is about’. hold on, i’m about to blow the ‘i can’t do literary analysis unless things are explained to me in clear cut absolute terms’ gang out of a career and spell the themes of this game out for you in detail:

it’s about loss, and renewal - both personal and interpersonal. it’s about rising from the ruins of something that’s been in motion long before you were even thought of, having little power over it, and soldiering on. it’s about heartbreak and the end of a relationship and how that can warp your mind and infect everything around you. and you won’t get better right away - the end game doesn’t wrap everything up with a little bow and lets you cause systematic upheaval. you can’t revolutionize your way out of this one. shit will, for the time being, continue to suck. 

it’s about waking up in a body that’s fucked up with a heart that aches in a world that’s been torn apart - and still making the decision to try to make it better - because you’re alive, and your heart beats, and there’s other beings in the world that are tethered to you and we all owe it to ourselves to make it better. communism hasn’t worked, baby - but so hasn’t love - and we’re not gonna give up on that. that’s what it’s all about.

it should be pretty clear right now that i did my first run as a bisexual/questioning communist feminist hobo who kinned karl marx. but i can assure you there’s other ways to play this game, and there’s more to it than that because of it. 

the quests (both side quests and a main story) are varied and had me laughing and dropping into existential despair on different occasions. other than trying to be the biggest communism builder, this game is also about:

- having a heart attack because a chair is too uncomfortable, but it’s OK because your buddy cop holds you in his arms like in the buddy cop movies. 

- doing copious amounts of drugs and turning on, tuning in and dropping out, maaaaan. 

- going on an x-files monster of the week episode to track down a curse that’s dooming the local businesses.

- shilling for the free market to come fix it all with its beatific invisible hand while standing in a town so fucked over by economic embargoes and poverty that the local union leader is a corrupt toad with a plan to revitalize the region by gathering the work force into a nationalized worker owned drug enterprise of the legal and illegal varieties - and it still comes off as one of the more levelheaded economic decisions one could make in that situation. 

- trying not to fucking kill yourself even though you have to live with that thought every single day. 

- winning the trust of a 12 year old crackhead with a deadbeat dad by becoming a positive masculine role model. 

- turning into a fascist you so can get buffs from drinking alcohol, and therefore becoming a raging alcoholic and having to walk up to important story events carrying half a liquor store in your inventory so you don’t have a mental breakdown or kill yourself from lack of morale whenever someone calls you out on your ethnonationalist bullshit.

it’s also - and i cannot stress this enough - about making sure you can find a tape to sing karaoke and make kim kitsuragi smile. it slaps. it’s real good writing.

i don’t know what else can say. pretty sure the game is on sale on steam now. anyway please play this absolute masterpiece and stan studio za/um for clear skin. ACAB.

[awkwardtaco056]

so now that i’m no longer in the Hell that was school and after finding the lovely blog @endcringe i’ve decided to talk about my own experiences with cringe culture, bullying, and why it’s Really Bad to not let people enjoy inherently harmless things, especially neurodivergent people (read more because this is gonna get long and triggering at times, TW for mentions of bullying, suicide, child abuse, a brief mention of incest shipping. I won’t be naming any of the peers that I discuss my experiences with, because my point with this post is Not to “cancel” anyone, I just want to speak out on my experiences)

I’m neurodivergent; I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 8 years old. I didn’t know a lot about it, and a family member even painted it as “oh it’s nothing blah blah blah just apply yourself more. Because of this, I had no idea about the concept of hyperfixations until I was in my late teens. Due to that, I would obsess over random things and my family would shame me relentlessly for it. My mother said I had an “addictive personality” and that she feared I’d end up a drug addict or alcoholic because of it.

I look younger than what I am, I’m short, and small. AKA, the perfect candidate for being picked on by people bigger and stronger than me. People made fun of my art when I was around 13, but fortunately that was an instance where spite fueled me to improve drastically. However, just because I happened to take the shitty comments and have it fuel me then does NOT mean bullying people will have that effect all the time. At some point someone put my old South Park fan art on a cringe blog. I was temporarily hurt, and a little angry, but I realized that if someone was making fun of a 15 year old’s art, they probably didn’t have much going for them in life, so I moved on.

Fast forward to high school. Everything was horrible and I’m not exaggerating when I say I barely made it out alive. I was living in an abusive household up until January 2018 and I found comfort in many different interests. I’ve always found great comfort in music and the arts in general. In 2016, I drew a picture of a mermaid. I was inspired by the chocolate opal gemstone, and I thought it’d be fun to draw a gay chubby mermaid with dark skin and a rainbow tail and freckles. Junior year was lousy and I wanted something that sparked Joy. I was immediately told that “scientifically, mermaids wouldn’t look like that. Mind you, my take looked like this:

Obviously I wasn’t going for realism, I just wanted to draw a cute mermaid. However, they continued to tell me that they wouldn’t look like that, going as far as writing so on the back of said drawing. When I got angry at her for taking it too far (as I’d established before that I didn’t like it when people wrote on my art without permission), they got angry back, accusing me of being unable to take criticism. Heated by the accusation, I went as far as asking my art teacher if it was fair for them to say that, and she said no, stating that constructive criticism would be talking about how I could improve my lineart and coloring in the digital version. I took her actual helpful criticism and since then have improved Drastically in digital art. Even with that being said, I found myself hesitant to participate in things such as MerMay because I was leery of hearing that peer berate me for having cartoony mermaids. 

 During high school I grew to love many musicians, a lot of emo/alternative stuff, a couple being Twenty One Pilots and Melanie Martinez. I love how unique TOP’s style is, their open discussion of mental illness, and as someone who had a rough childhood, I connected with every single song on Cry Baby. It was like nothing I’d ever heard. I started listening to mashups featuring all these different artists I love, adoring how they could change the tone and sound so drastically. A peer Bully of mine in junior year condemned these two artists, declaring that they made “Bad Music” simply because it didn’t fit their tastes. They’d throw my drawings on the ground, write over them in pen, steal my headphones so I couldn’t listen to music, push me around, complain that mashups sucked and gave them a headache, and in general shit all over conetnt that was actively preventing me from committing suicide. 

Some family members were no better. Once high school hit, I began listening to Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, and My Chemical Romance. Their deep complex lyrics stuck with me. I would write down quotes from my favorite songs and thanks to hyperfixating, I remember each studio album in order My mother resented when I fell in love with the “Emo Trinity” because “the Columbine  shooters were emo and that event traumatized me” Despite that, not only did the Columbine tragedy occur in 1999 and none of the bands got together until the early 2000s, but I have a pretty good feeling those groups aren’t For gun violence. The other side constantly criticized the fact that I love FOB, P!ATD, and MCR because I’m black and “why must you listen to that white people music.”

 I grew fond of Dan and Phil in high school (and I’m still a fan to this day!), I loved Phil’s kindness and positive aura and I deeply connect with Dan’s sense of humor and personality. Their content made me happy during some very dark times in my life. It’s November 2017, I’m over a close peer’s house at the time, and notice PINOF is upon us. I drew the PINOF whiskers on my face, my plan being to quietly watch them in the corner of peer’s bedroom on my phone through headphones, the others were doing their own thing and I knew they didn’t like them, so I thought they’d respect it if I silently indulged in it. Unfortunately, the complete opposite happened. I was immediately shunned and locked out of the bedroom, told that I’d only be let back in if I washed the whiskers off because “absolutely not”. Me, being stubborn, washed them off temporarily but drew them back on in the room. Life during then was especially bad for me, as the abusive household I was in was getting worse. They noticed, of course, and even though all I wanted was to enjoy this small tradition in a time during a deep depression, I was immediately shoved out the room and locked out, only to have said peer’s family members notice. I’m a relatively shy person, so this was honesty a really harrowing experience that had a lasting effect on me. 

I grew to adore Sanders Sides as well, but the moment I found out most of my peers didn’t like Thomas, I was terrified.  I stopped watching Dan and Phil’s content for months and shied away from other fandoms too, only occasionally indulging in times of complete solitude. One time when said peers were due to visit my house for the first time, I saw the Phandom and Fander stuff I’d hung up on my wall in my little sanctuary that was my bedroom (it was the first time in years I’d had my own room), and I was filled with panic and fear. I took them down and hid them away, genuinely terrified of what they’d do to me if they saw. It’s still incites so much anger in me to this day because they turned around and ended up shipping incest, but somehow liking D&P and Sanders Sides was So. Much. Worse.

They were baffled by my actions, despite having humiliated me Twice by going on a private blog of mine separate from everything so that I could fully indulge and laughing at everything on there, once at a peer’s house, once right in school. I don’t think they realized how traumatizing it was to have a large group of people in public laughing at something I was deeply self conscious about for all of my life. I put on a brave face at the time, but ended up crying in the bathroom after first period began. I continued to be treated as lesser until things came to an ugly head August 2018 when I ended up in the hospital because I nearly attempted suicide. Years of child abuse, bullying, and being deemed “cringy” made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be alive, that everyone would be happier if I were gone.

After arguably one of the lowest points in my life, I cut them off and slowly began to embrace the Real Me. I started letting myself enjoy the things again, made true friends and even found love, my first boyfriend ever at 18. I still get choked up retelling it, but when PINOF 10 dropped, after he found out how much I’d been hurt over the incident in 2017, I was greeted with a photo of him with the whiskers on his face. I cried for a while, blown away at such a pure act of kindness. He listens to me ramble about my interests, he compliments my taste in music, he watched K-12 with me. 

This got incredibly long, but my point is this: Cringe Culture hurts people. You might think it’s whatever if the Thing doesn’t apply to your interests, but content you’re denouncing as cringy could be something that’s keeping them alive, that one flicker of light in a void of darkness. When I was contemplating suicide, I listened to The Black Parade, repeating Gee’s words to myself over and over, that nothing in the world was worth hurting yourself over. Some friendly joshing here and there is okay, but actively ripping someone to shreds constantly to the point where they have a mental breakdown in front of you and later on plan their own demise is disgusting. Nobody should abuse anyone for having harmless interests, no one. Unless you’re participating in p*dophilic/inc*st/s*xual assault/inherently abusive ships/content and pretending it’s not bad because “Fiction doesn’t impact reality!”, you have every right to like what you like and be happy. Read homestuck. Play Undertale. Draw up the Wildest OCs you can imagine. And stay away from people who try to rob you of innocent fun, life is too short and in this cruel, unforgiving world, you deserve to be happy, whether you’re a 13 year old who draws cute furries, a 16 year old cosplayer on TikTok, a VSCO girl, a 30 year old who writes/draws self insert art or a 20 year old who adores Invader Zim. 

Cringe Culture is just bullying under a different name, and it can lead to many instances of people, especially fellow neurodivergent folk to feel isolated and ostracized. Attempting to bully someone out of an interest they have isn’t going to fix them; it’s more often than not going to cause more damage. I suffer from diagnosed C-PTSD, anxiety, and depression, and sometimes I still find myself trying to over-justify my interests. To all who are roped up in bad homes and lousy “friends” who berate you for your innocent passions, I’m sorry you’re suffering, things will one day get better even if it doesn’t feel like it, and fuck those people. I’d also like to note that sometimes even if it seems more terrifying, it’s better to have one or two close friends you can truly trust than a whole group that walks all over you. You have every right to call them out for treating you poorly, and if things don’t improve, you also have every right to leave.

You have a right to live your True Self.

[vopium]

A Framework for a Healthier YouTube

-by Andrew Cherry

YouTube, the video-sharing platform owned by Google that we all rely on for one reason or another, is routinely cited as one of the top used websites from around the world. There are few other places you can get daily long form vlogs, makeup demonstrations, cooking tutorials, cat video compilations, and television show breakdowns while being a click away from intense political analysis or video tutorials of open heart surgery. Part of the draw of this goliath website is the ever-expanding quantity and variety of videos available to the consumer for “free.” I use the phrase “free” here because while users don’t have to monetarily pay to access video content, there are major drawbacks to the site that end up negatively impacting both content creators and the general viewing public. My goal here as an active user of YouTube is to provide a set of recommendations that I believe would work to push back against some of the more harmful and toxic effects of the site. I hope not to change the fundamental structure of the site or stifle people’s creativity, but rather, I hope that these changes would make the site safer for everybody and work to ensure healthy discourse both online and in real life.

Re-Design the YouTube Algorithm

One of YouTube’s biggest issues is the way that their video recommendation algorithm suggests viewers to watch more and more extreme videos, in what is being called by some as the Alt-Right Pipeline. While the site has evolved to become much more than just a company in a lot of ways, it still strives to make money, and thus, the algorithm suggests similar but more extreme videos knowing that this gradual escalation will keep people actively engaged and generating more ad revenue. This Vox article does a good job of laying out the issue, whereas people start watching conservative YouTubers like Ben Shapiro who himself has explicitly disavowed the alt-right, but then YouTube’s algorithm continues to direct these viewers to further-right videos and cements their radicalization to the far-right over time. While I do see the irony of linking to a YouTube video here to drive my point home, this video titled “The Alt-Right Playbook: How to Radicalize a Normie” takes a pretty comprehensive, step-by-step approach to demonstrating how this radicalization can happen online.

The Vox article above notes how persuasive these extreme YouTube videos can be and even quotes sociologist Zeynep Tufekci in saying that “given its billion or so users, YouTube may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century.” Given the long term and deeply alarming implications of that quote, it’s necessary to unpack why the site wields such influence in the minds of its users. I would argue, in terms of Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion, that authority and social validation are the two strongest feelings associated with YouTube’s persuasiveness. With respect to his concept of authority, I argue that YouTubers like Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, and Joe Rogan become expert authority figures in the minds of their frequent viewers, which then makes these viewers more inclined to check out the videos produced by frequent guests on these shows. These guests, however, are often content creators even further to the right than the original hosts, which compounds with the perceived authority of the YouTube algorithm to push people further down the Alt-Right Pipeline even quicker.

Furthermore, I argue that the YouTube ends up plays on people’s lack of social validation to encourage them to stay on the site longer. This principle explains that as you see people around you doing something, you are more likely to also do that thing in order to fit in. In a time when people around my age are often incredibly anxious and feeling isolated from the world at large, it can be more common for people to latch onto social groups where they feel somewhat understood. One such area is alt-right comment sections on YouTube or by following alt-right YouTubers on Twitter. By deriving their social validation from these circles and by delving deeper into that online bubble, people are more likely to follow the examples set by these online agents, regurgitate their toxic talking points, and influence more people to go down that path.

In order to combat this issue, I recommend that YouTube take a serious look at how their algorithm is designed and make changes accordingly. It should no longer be the sole motive of the algorithm to keep people engaged to drive ad revenue. There should be a team of human moderators involved who understand the dangerous nature of online radicalization and work to prevent it from happening. This is not to say that conservative thinkers should be censored online, but rather to say that YouTube has an outsized influence on modern culture and should be aware of the role their site has played in disseminating fascist ideologies as simply free speech from right wing thinkers.

Make Monetization Practices more Transparent

In the past few years, YouTube has faced extensive criticism for the ways in which they control monetization practices on the site. Content creators who make videos and upload them on the site sometimes come to find that their content had been age-gated, hidden, or simply demonetized. This means that for people who rely on YouTube as their primary source of income, demonetization on popular videos means significantly less money coming in and they are often not provided with any explanation from the company as to why a video was demonetized. This article on The Verge highlights the accompanying problem to larger demonetization issues, which are the arguments that YouTube was automatically demonetizing videos from LGBTQ+ creators simply because of their identities. While they deny these claims, YouTube was also accused of showing anti-gay ads before LGBTQ+ videos, further contributing to the belief that the site says they support these lifestyles but then acts rather differently. It is important to note here as well that even if the videos become remonetized after YouTube reviewers check it out, the creators of the video do not get reimbursed for the money lost in that time frame and these types of practices can work to hide this type of information from the marginalized people who may need it.

Thus, I argue that YouTube needs to make their monetization practices more transparent and provide YouTubers with more in-depth responses after demonetization happens which explain why it happened and how to quickly appeal if they feel it was unjust. If they need to hire more reviewers to engage personally with videos and decide more quickly whether they should be monetized or not, then so be it because the site surely has the money to do so. Not only would this help to retain active YouTubers that are starting to feel sidelined, but it would help to bring in more users because as authors Kraut and Resnick explain on page 199 of Building Successful Online Communities, “Providing potential new members with an accurate and complete picture of what the members’ experience will be once they join increases the fit of those who join.”

Increase Child Protections and Age Restrictions

As mentioned previously above, setting 18+ age restrictions on LGBTQ+ content simply because of the creator’s identity is harmful because it prevents young, questioning individuals from viewing potentially validating and reassuring information that they could not get elsewhere. On the other hand, however, there needs to be a larger effort by the site to ensure that the videos that are allowed in the family/kid friendly side of YouTube are actually safe for children to watch. Last year, Wired reported that they found videos “containing violence against child characters, age-inappropriate sexualisation, Paw Patrol characters attempting suicide and Peppa Pig being tricked into eating bacon” that were discovered by following YouTube’s recommended section or just allowing the site’s autoplay function to do its job.

These horrifying videos would be scarring even to an adult, and I cannot imagine the type of long-term psychological damage that it could inflict upon children without their parents even being aware of what is happening. It is imperative then for YouTube to do a better job of ensuring that the content allowed to be viewed by children is safe for their eyes by improving the age restriction settings and increasing human involvement in the scanning of these videos for child protection. This will have to be done carefully, however, because subjecting people to scanning these types of videos all day long would also likely have negative lasting mental health effects. I would recommend ensuring that the workers have proper mental health services to go along with it and allowing for the rotation of workers in and out of this type of moderation position.

I am not naïve enough to think that these are all simple solutions to such complicated and encompassing problems. Alt-right fascists will not simply disappear if we better regulate YouTube content and fix the radicalization aspects of their recommendation algorithm. Certain videos will most likely always get demonetized or age-restricted even when their creators don’t think its necessary. It can be hard to catch every single disturbing video uploaded to the site when there are over 500 hours of content being uploaded to YouTube every minute. But, it is my hope that these recommendations are taken seriously and at the least, start a conversation about how the site can do better, and at most, can be used as a framework for how YouTube can become a better, more healthy site for all parties.

[meredithritchie]

Mask of Anonymity: Anonymous Asks as a Teen Outlet

[The following is an article I wrote for a campus submission. I retained the rights to publish it here, as well. It regards my experiences as a fandom blogger.]

“Hi, I’ve been suffering with what is probably depression for years without any help and recently it’s been getting worse,” begins the anonymous message that drops into my inbox one night. It’s a teenager asking me how to keep themself stable until they can get a diagnosis from a pediatrician. I tell them I’m proud of them. I tell them I’m not an expert. I tell them to be kind to themself. I tell them they’re loved.

Since founding my Tumblr blog in April of 2017, these messages have become almost routine. In just a few months of actively posting my fanedits and fanfiction online, I amassed almost five thousand followers.  In this particular fandom, where the most popular bloggers have ten thousand followers, that’s a dramatic amount. Via the blog’s anonymous ask feature (colloquially called “anons”), anyone in the world can drop a question into my inbox without revealing their username, even if they aren’t one of those five thousand. Many if not most of these followers are minors, and some of them are not even of the minimum age to use the site: thirteen. My sister is twelve and loves watching fandom videos on YouTube, and in one year, she will be old enough to make an account with access to my blog and the blogs of all five thousand of my followers. I wonder if she’ll be one of the faceless messages I get in my ask box.

“Could I ask for some advice? It's about gynaecologists and vaginal health while being trans.”

“What I’m wondering is, how did you go about narrowing down lists of colleges to go to?”

“I basically cant[sic] think anymore and it's really hard to do school work because of this. Do you have any advice?”

“How does one stop obsessing over someone, when that person will never be theirs?”

“Hey I really need some help like older sister stuff help”

“I had a breakdown at school today. At least I think that’s what happened because I don’t remember it clearly.”

Some of it is generalized, and some of it is specific, but it all comes from a recognizable place of teen struggle and fear. Sometimes these messages linger in my inbox, as I try to struggle for just the right words. Other times I feel urgency, and dash off a response as quickly as possible. I re-read the post later and wonder if I said the right things, if I said what I meant. I’m not the only one.

Other fandom blogs, some even larger than I am, have turned off anons or closed their ask box entirely because of an influx of personal rants, requests for help, and even suicide notes. While Tumblr’s anon feature is meant to be a place for shy and intimidated users to express themselves in a way that isn’t possible via conventional social media like Facebook and Twitter,  the double anonymity of a hidden screenname offers confidence to say things that are otherwise difficult or even unsayable. When it comes to personal questions and statements, many young people lack a safe location to speak them, and the ask box offers a unique relief. Many teens don’t want to speak to their parents, teachers, or guardians about their sex life, their mental health, or their personal problems. Even Googling answers sparks fear that a teacher will confiscate their phone, or a parent will borrow their laptop, and evidence will be left in view. With a generalized segregation of America by age, most teens also don’t have other adults which they can speak to on a friendly basis, let alone speak to face to face for advice on difficult issues. Often the only adults that young people interact with face-to-face are authority figures like older relatives, teachers, and coaches. In the absence of face-to-face interactions, teens instead turn to the leaders of their fandoms, who often foster online personas  as Fandom Rens, Moms, Uncles, and Sisters. Plenty of older fandom members cultivate this image, though “older” is relative and in a small community these members may be only eighteen or nineteen years old, though they are generally in their twenties and thirties. While many fandoms have a primary userbase of tweens and teens, these senior members often run the most popular blogs and produce the highest quality fanart, fanfiction, and other fan content. During fandom “discourse,” these older members often lead the way and resolve conflict.

“Discourse” in fandom is not like discourse in the academic sense. While academic discourse encompasses many elements of rhetoric and debate, fandom “discourse” is essentially a euphemism for argument, frequently with an ethical element or discussion of “problematic” behavior. This discourse can involve either relationships between real human beings like celebrities and fandom members or the content of any fictional work contained in the fandom canon. The wide umbrella of “discourse” covers everything from discussion of whether a fandom celebrity’s recent comment was racist all the way to whether fanwriting two characters romantically is incestual when both characters are figments of a third character’s imagination. In essence, discourse gets hairy, complicated, and even philosophical. Like real political and social issues and like fandom itself, discourse gives some young people a sense of belonging and also the feeling that they are on the side of right and reason. An individual’s choice to participate in discourse becomes part of their identity.

In this way, fandom becomes what Mary Louise Pratt refers to as a contact zone, “where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other.” Through fanfiction “AUs” (alternate universes) fans of color write white characters as PoC, queer fans write cisgender/heterosexual characters as LGBT+, and neuroatypical fans write neurotypical characters as autistic, depressed, anxious, or otherwise neuroatypical. While alternate universe only emerged as a genre with the rise of the internet, these stories reflect a longer history of the insertion of the subordinate into dominant texts. Pratt refers to a text called The First Chronicle and Good Government, in which a man native to South America uses the language of his colonizers, the Spanish, to talk about the experience of the indigenous people, “in which the subordinated subject single-handedly gives himself authority in the colonizer’s language and verbal repertoire.” Through this text, Pratt touches on what she calls transculturation, a product of the contact zone, in which “members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture.” In the modern world, the dominant culture produces Steve Rogers, a cisgender man, and fandom reinvents him as a transgender man. The dominant culture creates Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, two white children, and fandom reinvents them as black and Indian. The dominant culture offers Legolas and Gimli, both ambiguously straight, and fandom reinvents them as a gay couple. For young marginalized people encountering this kind of contact zone for the first time, fandom becomes a community that is irreplaceable and unique, where they have the ability to express themselves and see themselves in characters.

Between the aspects of community in fandom itself and the discourse which offers a cause and creates both positive and negative relationships, it is hardly surprising that young people turn to fandom elders when they encounter a problem. After watching older fandom members participate in, manage, or even quell discourse, younger fandom members begin to look up to them as people who have all the answers, as leaders of this unique community. The availability of anonymity makes the opportunity even more enticing. A kind older fandom member becomes everyone’s shoulder to cry on, everyone’s outlet, and everyone’s therapist. While this may serve as a resource for plenty of teens, there is always an associated toll taken on the mental wellbeing of the members who serve them. Fandom creators want to help their followers, but may be struggling with their own past or present depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, body image issues, and attacks on their identity.

Self-proclaimed “Fandom Grandpa” @randomslasher (known in the community as LJ) runs the largest art and writing blog in my fandom and has struggled with a history of anon rants and anon requests both to themself and to their partner Thuri, who also runs a popular blog. As long ago as 2013, LJ posted, “I don’t think I will ever understand people who hide behind a mask of anonymity for the sole purpose of making someone else feel bad. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should [emphasis original].” LJ has made additional posts before and since requesting that people abstain from ranting into their inbox, but the issue continues for LJ and other major bloggers who gain new followers every single day. Many of these anonymous messages are never published, as evidenced by posts like this one, which appeared on LJ’s blog in 2018: “Anon i’m sorry to hear that, but that wasn’t a safe ask to send someone without a trigger warning, and i won’t publish it. Try to get help if you can.” The message of the post alone is ominous, and one can only guess at the content of the ask.

The teenage years are known to be a time of struggle, both personal and social. This is significant now more than ever as depression and anxiety rates among teens rise, and many teens experience suicidal ideation, unhealthy relationships with their own bodies, and struggles with their gender and sexuality in addition to the classic problems of teenhood which should be no more serious than asking someone to homecoming, getting a driver’s license, or taking a chemistry exam. However, as student struggles become more severe, especially among marginalized groups, resources to cope with this period is not moving apace, and young people use fandom as a resource to get answers and to express themselves. Older fandom members are suddenly bearing the weight of hundreds of teen struggles, and most of them have no formal training or resources to cope with them.

[ceylanhannahetem-blog1]

My Story On Mental Health

So here goes..

I want to break the stigma on mental health. I know, i know.. very cliche for people that suffer with mental health, but i really hope to make a difference, even if it’s only for one person.

I know a lot of people don’t understand mental health, i know a lot of people don’t agree that it’s something that affects our day to day lives, but i’m writing this to hopefully shed some light for those who are willing to understand our pain and hopefully in time, help us.

Here’s my story..

I’ve been suffering from different aspects of mental health from a very young age. I was only 4 years old when my parents got divorced and the older i get the more i come to understand that, that was more than likely the root of the problem. I don’t think it’s fair on my parents or my family if i go into too much detail on what happened or why but it did take an impact on me. Why me though? i have 3 other siblings that went through the same thing however i am the only one who had to deal with these issues in such a crazy way? so why me? maybe it’s the way my brain is wired? maybe it’s because i would never do the things to my children that was done to me? These are questions that i’m still asking myself 15 years later.

Don’t get me wrong, i had amazing times in my childhood, i got the opportunity to go on holidays to many places including Las Vegas and Florida. I got many things that a lot of other children that age would only dream of getting. I had good times, i really did.

But nothing will ever beat the feelings of waking up not wanting to be in this world.

It started off with the rush of feelings of anger, sadness, fear. The feeling of wanting to be respected and more or so accepted.

“Accepted” in a sense because of the people that would bully me for my different name, different skin colour, different way of acting. I don’t understand. All i ever wanted to be was liked for the person i am and not for what i looked like.

*Trigger Warning*

I first started self harming when i was about 14. I wasn’t able to control my emotions and i had a split second thought of “what if i just try something different?” so there i was, with a pencil sharpener to my arm and that was when i knew, this was it for me.

Self harming for me is a release and i know a lot of people will know what i mean. I never felt good enough, i felt the constant need that i HAD to be punished. Seeing myself bleed or in pain would make my brain go “Ok good, you’ve punished yourself now, it’s fine”. So many people will read this and go “what about a stress ball?” or “why don’t you write it down?” or “why don’t you go to therapy?”

PLEASE! If only it was that easy, right? I have tried so many different things over the years but nothing worked. The only thing that genuinely made me feel better was seeing myself in pain.

The self harming was going on for about 5 years. I would have a bad day at school, i’d go home and release the pain. I’d have an argument with a family member, i’d go up to my bedroom and release the pain.

It got to the point where i was doing this almost everyday because everyday i couldn’t control my emotions so i felt like i had to constantly put myself in that position.

2 years ago is when everything changed for me…

I was going through breakdowns weekly, i stopped self harming and turned into beating myself with a hard object or my own fists and this would be to the point where my legs were so swollen i wasn’t able to walk properly. I wanted to cut myself so badly but i knew i shouldn’t do it so i had to find another way to inflict some pain on myself.

I was not able to control my emotions, i would lash out on everyone i loved and cared about and to those people reading this i am deeply sorry. I never meant to cause you pain and i never meant to act the way i did, i know it is no excuse but it really wasn’t me. At this point, i couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be in this world and i felt like i would rather me die than be in this war with my own brain. I couldn’t handle it anymore. The sleepless nights, the constant crying myself to sleep, the feeling of NO ONE caring about me.

I didn’t think about anyone else, i only thought about myself. I thought my family didn’t love or care about me, i thought no one will accept me for the absolute mess my brain is in.

Who is going to love someone like me? who will ever be able to support someone like me? so why don’t i just end it now? why don’t i just make things easier and leave? everything would be so much easier, right?

There was one day where i was arguing with my family and it got to the point where something in my brain switched and i just didn’t even think. I went upstairs, took out the pencil sharpener, washed and cleaned it and started slitting my wrists. However this time, i was doing it for real, i wanted to feel my veins burst and i wanted to see the blood dripping down from my arm because i was so angry i didn’t care.

Once i saw how much blood was leaking and how faint i started feeling i ran to the hospital that was only a 2 minute walk from my house, walked in there with a trail of blood from my arm and was seen straight away. When i was cutting myself i can’t begin to describe the feeling of relief because i hadn’t done it for SO long. it felt amazing. it felt great, but as soon as i looked down and saw my arm with cuts that are so deep you can see the fatty tissue and muscle, so deep that they can’t be glued together. I was shocked, disappointed and angry with myself.

WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?

WHY DOES MY BRAIN JUST SWITCH?

I hate this, i really bloody hate this.

After i got seen by the doctor they suggested i go and stay in the mental health unit but i said no. Maybe it was fear? with what i had seen in films and documentaries about how they treat people in there, i thought to myself, if people didn’t accept me as i am now imagine what they would be like if they knew i was in there? I know the things i had seen weren’t exactly realistic but i was still scared. So all in all, that was a big NOPE for me. I told them i’m fine, i won’t do it again, i’m fine i swear.

Fast forward two weeks..

I felt the pain. i REALLY felt the pain. I can’t describe it, it’s like my heart was hurting. Something wasn’t right.

EVERY SINGLE DAY i felt this constant pain in my chest since the hospital. I knew deep down what it was. I still didn’t want to be here. I was fighting a constant battle in my head, i felt so alone and so fed up.

This is EXHAUSTING…

And there i was, laying in bed, thinking of any sort of reason as to why i shouldn’t do what i was about to, but there was nothing. I wrote down a note for my family, scribbled it out. It wasn’t right. Wrote another one and there, it’s done. It didn’t feel real until i finished the letter. I Apologised profusely to my family, it wasn’t their fault, it was mine. I was the burden in this family and i just wanted everyone to feel better and i feel like the only way that would be is if i wasn’t here anymore.

So that was it, i took about 30 tablets and hopefully i was just going to go to sleep.

…

Typically, my luck changed.

It didn’t work. Going into hospital with the excruciating pains in my stomach, constant nausea and severe confusion.

Laying in the hospital bed i had an epiphany. I wanted to die, i really didn’t want to be on this planet anymore but somehow, some reason, i didn’t. This changed my life.

Maybe i didn’t actually want to die? actually, i DON’T want to die!

i was 19 and have not done anything exciting in my life, my niece and nephew were just born so why am i gonna throw away an amazing bond with them and a chance to live my life the best i can? This is it. This is the switch that i wanted all this time! But why did it take me so long to realise this? it only took me to almost ending my life to actually be able to realise that this is not what i want. I am going to change for myself and for the better.

After this happened i started with the appropriate medication and steps to change my life. After the tests and assessments i got diagnosed with BPD and then everything started to make sense.

(Borderline Personality Disorder - not as scary as it sounds. No it’s not the same as schizophrenia. It’s the chemical imbalances in your brain where basically you can go days/weeks with feeling extremely happy and then one day you’ll feel the complete opposite and this could last days or weeks).

Unfortunately, it didn’t last too long as i got into hard drugs for about less than a year. I got addicted to the way it made me feel when i was high, almost like a constant trance but everything was happy and good and everything bad in my life went away. In a way, i guess i was doing this because i knew it was harming my body and mind so instead of self harming with the cutting or hitting, i thought drugs would be a good option. Now, i am not condoning drugs in ANY way. If anything they actually really messed with my brain even more because of my serotonin levels and i would never want to put myself in that position again so i stopped.

2 years later and i’m still suffering but i haven’t self harmed and i haven’t even thought about suicide. I’ve had the odd down days but i think i’m starting to finally feel okay in myself.

I know that there are a lot more people in this world who go through and live in worse situations than me and i can’t explain how much i appreciate everything good that’s happened in my life.

The feeling of accomplishment and the feeling of finally being able to say “i’m okay” and really mean it is something i will treasure forever. If this is the feeling of change for the good then i can’t wait for the end result. I am so excited for the rest of this journey and what more is to come. I feel so happy in myself and content in my life and thankful for the family that i’ve had around me to support me and help me through these hard times even though i wasn’t near my other siblings or my dad they still did the best that they could for me.

This will never go away. This is something I will have to live with, but you know what? i am SO happy i have gone through these tough times because it has made me a very strong woman.

I don’t want this to be another “story”, this is just a small insight of my life and something that is apart of me forever, but it is okay and i have learned to live with it.

Mental health is not talked about enough and when it is spoken about people will talk about it for a day or two and say how much they want to help, but nothing is being done.

Something needs to change, WE as a society need to change and break this stigma.

If you’re reading this and you’re going through something similar, or going through a tough time i just want to tell you, you are enough, you are appreciated. You will have some really tough days, days where you want to stay in bed and cry, days where you won’t want to go out or speak to anyone, days where you feel like you can’t eat or can’t stop eating.

It’s okay. You can get through this. No matter how hard the times get there is ALWAYS a light at the end of the tunnel and you will beat this. You are special. You are one of a kind.

You will be okay.

Written by Ceylan Etem.

[wlovefromemo2000s]

And my Scars Remind Me that the Past is Real...

One day, you’re 18 and experiencing the joys of life for the first time. My first love, came just weeks after I turned 18. I gave him my number on a waitress’ note, signed with my nickname and a heart. He kept that piece of paper in his wallet for the entirety of our relationship. He was four years older, having graduated college when I graduated high school. A four year age gap is cake to me these days. Back then, it was difficult. Not being able to go to bars with your boyfriend? I had no idea what a bar was even like. Insecurity rang through my body. Top it off with the tolls of long distance on a fledgling relationship. Everything I had prayed for, everything I had imagined my soulmate be. The same taste in music, the hobby of stargazing. One moment, you think you’ve found the love of your life.

The first year passed, blissfully enjoying one another, with the presents of the firsts. First Thanksgiving, first Christmas, first sleepover. I’ll never forget when it really started to turn. An August evening, I had just come back from being on vacation with my family. His brother had a show that he was going to...it was at a strip club. He said the event was 21+...it was actually 18+. I could have gone. He didn’t tell me to come after he had found out it was 18+. I was annoyed because he hadn’t even bothered to find out if I could come. I was excited to see him after being a week away. already having suffered from anxiety and depression after my first year four hours away. My ego had suffered from poor grades, something I did not struggle with until I was in college. I had to reconsider my whole dream of being a doctor. That whole year, while blissful, was filled with anxiety. It’s crazy to think that at that time, I had no idea I was suffering from anxiety and depression. My entire life was changing before my eyes. This wasn’t according to plan. 

Getting back to the story of where it began to turn. He was supposed to pick me up at 10:30. He didn’t pick me up until 1 to spite me. He was angry with me for being mad that he didn’t know it was 18+. I was weak to his grip. I went down to his mother’s with him at 1:30 am, even though it was already so late and I was angry. I stared out the window, listening to Jack Mannequin’s Dark Blue on repeat with my headphones in my ears. His way of making it up to me was getting those chicken bites from Burger King on the way home.

This was the beginning of the end. That next year, I went back to college. I would secretly return home to spend weekends with him. He lived in a one bedroom apartment with his roommate and roommate’s girlfriend. Yes, they shared a room. The apartment was super small. I was eating ice cream out of the carton in his living room. The next thing I know, I am berated by his roommate. Apparently, the way I ate off the spoon was annoying and rather triggering. Having already been on the edge from my undiagnosed depression and anxiety, I had a panic attack. I had a mental breakdown. I was suicidal annd wanted nothing more than to not exist in that moment. I had never felt so small....It brought me back to the feeling that I used to get when my dad would berate me.

Having such a hardcore reaction to being berated, his roommate started to talk about how he thought I was bipolar. He had no idea what I had been through, and no self awareness to see that there was no need for such a reaction. Looking back now, I would have screamed at him and gone home. My boyfriend did nothing.

My boyfriend’s brother picked up on how insecure I was. My boyfriend probably told him. He would tell me things like my boyfriend was going to fuck any girl I was insecure of. Coworkers, people that he knew. My boyfriend did nothing.

My boyfriend’s brother shoved my face into the staircase, after telling me I should strip for a living. “You would make a lot of money because you’re thick.” My boyfriend did nothing.

My boyfriend would go to lunch with his female coworker. His brother told me that she was hot. I looked through his phone. Flirty texts, but nothing incriminating enough to break up.

A Punta Cana trip. Twenty of his friends. Day 2 and my phone isn’t working. I use his to contact my loved ones and tell them I’m safe. I get the inclination to look through the phone. A deep dive search. It’s 3 am and he’s knocked out. Texts to a woman off of craigslist. Phone calls and a burner phone. She had sent him a picture of her tits. He had sent her a picture of his face. I’m not sure what panned out, as the texts ended abruptly followed by some mysterious phone calls. I screamed at him. I broke the glass table in our room. I had made him tell his entire family what he did. I said some of the worst things I have ever said in my life. I felt captive, stuck in a miserable place. I did not know what to do. Do I tell my parents? They had paid for me to go on the trip. I didn’t want them to pay for me to come home early. He offers to leave. I do not want to stay on this trip alone with his friends. His friend’s sister was my saving grace. She was fun to hang out with and after I found out he cheated on me, they had offered for me to stay with them. Again, I felt captive. It was my own problem and I had to solve it. I quickly encountered Stockholm Syndrome, having to spend every waking minute with him for the next week. 

I had no idea what to do after that. I obviously didn’t trust him. I was sexting other men behind his back, having no loyalty after what he had done. I had told his mother what a piece of shit he was when I was drunk. I was a mess. I was my worst self. At 20, I had gained thirty pounds over the course of a year. I had to change majors, entire career paths. And I was dealing with my boyfriend and the bullies he surrounded himself with. I had never in my life felt so alone. Looking back, I can’t believe that I made it to this point. I’ll never forget, end of sophomore year. I was at my lowest point and my great grandmother reached out to me through my dreams. The girl I was then would be so proud of the woman I am today.

I’m so thankful for my friends. My best friend from elementary school had saved me in a time of need. A college party, where she asked me if I would ever be able to trust him again. I couldn’t. I would hook up with my old best friend that night, knowing that I was going to break up with my boyfriend. The next day, I went to spend the rest of the weekend with him. He knew something was up. I told him we should break up the day I go back to college. He said okay. I never went back.

I’m sitting here at the age of 25. That was 5 years ago. How far I’ve come..truly. I followed the career path I had chosen. I made new friends my junior year. Many who are my best friends today. The women around me showed me acceptance and love. There was no judgment. I was one of them now, single with the world at my fingers.

I have a great job now. I have my best friends. I have never been stronger. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Recently, I went on antidepressants. I go to therapy. The combination saved my life. I’m moving to an apartment I only ever dreamed of living in. I’m thirty pounds lighter, some of my healthiest years. My dating life is abundant. I’m fortunate to have options. It has been hard to trust again, I won’t lie. I’ve been trying to better myself. I had to work to find the self love that I had lost in that relationship. Only recently have I been able to be content being alone with myself. I’ve had to restructure my image of men. I don’t know what exactly clicked in the last year, or maybe it was the antidepressants, but I’m finally happy. I look forward to the weekends to spend time with my best friends. I enjoy going to work. My workouts and my diet fuel me. I’m proud of myself.

[ileolai]

I’m a bit nervous about posting this, because it’s a big nerdy splurge about Doctor Who, and why it is so very important to me, and there is quite personal stuff in it that I have never posted publicly, but. It’s a little over a day out from the finale, and I can’t not talk about something that totally consumed me for seven years.

When I say personal stuff, I mean stuff like suicidal ideation and mental illness, so there’s a content warning.

I wish Steven Moffat, and everyone else who has poured their lovely hearts into making this show, could know what it has done for me.

I've found it somewhat difficult to pinpoint what my favourite episode of Moffat era Who should be. It puzzled me for quite a while. Not because there are no tremendously stellar episodes that stand above all the rest -- there are quite a few of those to pick over. In terms of actual writing skill, narrative cohesion, magnificent direction and all that pretentious stuff, it would have to be Heaven Sent. I could watch that episode over and over again until the heat death of the Universe. 

But I think my actual favourite episode, the one nearest and dearest to my little anarchist care bear heart, has to be The Beast Below. The one with the whale that was technically more up in space than it was below. I realize fandom consensus does not consider it the pinnacle of Moffat’s storytelling, but I don’t care. The ideas in that episode, and it is so full of lovely ideas, are what made me sit up and start paying attention to the potential this show had. 

Specifically, what got me was what it said about child abuse and neglect as an essential cog in the machine of fascism, or something. Which I had never, in my whole entire life, seen so earnestly articulated on TV before-- in a children’s television show-- with a goddamn whale. I can pinpoint that as the exact moment this show snatched me and hurled me, screaming, into fandom.

[Later, A Christmas Carol would draw big red underlines and exclamation points all around these ideas... that's my other favourite episode. But The Beast Below did it first and hooked me.] 

There’s more to it besides that, though. This is the deeply personal emotional context stuff.

So, here is something you may or may not know about the nerd creature that is me. I was quite homeless at the time The Beast Below aired. And I had nothing -- literally nothing, you see. I was in a totally unfamiliar city in a fairly unfamiliar country, post-psychotic break, post-marriage-engagement breakdown, and I was more alone than I'd ever been -- and I'd been your standard lonely friendless geek my whole life, being Autistic, and what have you. I had just escaped an incredibly abusive, toxic group of people upon realization they were not so much a group of friends, but a cult. Yes, an actual cult! I was in one of those. I was also very, very ill with an immune disorder. And the only member of my family who ever accepted me, the only one actually still talking to me after I gave my narcissistic rage monster mother the finger, had just died of cancer.  This had all occurred across the space of, oh... one year? Almost entirely within 2009, leading into 2010. I was a wreck. And if you piled all this nonsense on a fictional character all at once, I'd probably say you were being gratuitous and change the channel. I was too miserable to even know how miserable I was-- just sort of wandering around in a dissociated haze, surviving entirely by the instincts of my autonomic nervous system. A good friend of mine described it to me later as ''you were sort of frozen'', and she was right. So. I downloaded the space whale episode over a wi-fi connection, illegally, on an ancient computer, in a library [haha how appropriate is that?] because I quite liked all the other Doctor Whos I had seen before, and this new writer fella had done Press Gang, a fond highlight of my otherwise wretched childhood. 

I watched Amy Pond and the Doctor cavorting around dystopian space Britain, having casual conversations about the nature of fascism, in a show marketed to 10 year olds. My sad little eyes pressed right up to the computer screen, irradiating my retinas, and I whispered: ''I've waited 20 years for My Show, and someone finally wrote it. It even has a mad ginger immigrant in it, and she's me. The Universe made this just for me.''

It also had a whale, and the whale was in space. 

And that is how I was propelled into my seven year character arc, my precious nerds. Because this show, from series 5 onwards, has done more for me than anything else on the planet. And I don't care how ridiculous it sounds to attribute my self-actualization to a goofy TV show about loveable alien miscreants saving space whales, because it's true. It took a while, but I learned what I actually value and what actually properly matters to me through this show. Or rather, I re-learned it, because I'd become so lost chasing approval and moulding myself to other people's perceptions to withstand their abuse, I didn't know what I was anymore. 

This show, and this goddamn fandom, helped me pull all the chopped up little bits of me back together more than any therapy or self-help nonsense I had tried. I went back to university and got serious about doing actual work, in part, because ''we're all just stories in the end... make it a good one.'' kept looping in my brain. It made me determined that my life could never be summed up with a single sentence like: ''He was sad and boring, and he wasted away in his apartment -- achieving nothing, leaving no trace''. 

[I still don’t get out much, to be honest. But I’m trying. At the very least, my epic marathon through 500 wildly divergent university degrees says something, yes? Maybe I can set the official record for ‘’the world’s most reluctant to graduate student’’.] 

Anyway. This show, this fandom... gave me so much. It gave me my voice as a creator of things, as a writer, and an analyzer, and it gave me people like me, real and fictional, people I didn’t even know existed anywhere. 

And you know…. this is heavy stuff again-- but it honestly gave me the motivation to get through to another weekend sometimes, when I was apathetic enough and in enough physical pain to contemplate not doing that. It really did. I didn't want to miss an episode of Doctor bloody Who, arthritis and schizophrenia and poverty be damned, and that kept me here. There were points, where one of the few things that restrained me from taking a decisive dose of Oxycontin, was River Song's storyline. I'm serious. And as shameful as that probably is, it's still better than being dead, and not getting to watch Doctor Who anymore. 

Cuz Doctor Who had a whale in it, right? A great big pink whale filled with benevolent intentions, and it was in space, and everybody hugged at the end, on top of the whale, after overthrowing the government! Moffat Who came out of the gate telling ten year olds ‘’OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT’’! I needed that with all my aching nerd heart. The Universe made it for me.

And then they put queer characters in it, and mentally ill characters, and abuse survivors, like me, and it valued them, and it valued children. And then there was River Song, and hugs, and self acceptance, and found families, and sparkles all around, and Bill Potts. And a big Jungian tapestry of meta and mythology. Just for me. There was nothing else on TV like it.

So now here we are, the eve of the final episode of series 10, which I have slobbered and fawned over almost as much as series 5, the one that grabbed me. And... I’m kind of terrified, to be honest. Because all the connections I made here, are so tied up in this show, and talking about this show, and picking apart this specific era of the show... I’m afraid I won't have anything to talk about anymore? and I'll drift apart from my friends, and…. never have something quite like this lovely little hive of internet debauchery and meta and space whales ever again. 

That actually scares me so much. Some of you have been here nearly a whole seven years, longer than almost anyone else in my life, apart from my husband, and I am grateful the vast and mysterious machinations of the Universe dumped us all together in the seething hell-pit of fandom. Those of you who have not yet run screaming into the night from my 957 daily posts about Doctor Who... you don't know how much you have helped me, and brighten my day, just by existing.

Yes, even Proton, who is old, and frequently incorrect, and a cyborg. And Elisi, who speaks utter nonsense that confuses my head. Really. I know my primary method of interacting with people is emphatically, and tactlessly, listing every single way they are wrong about things, but I do occassionally have actual emotions like ‘’appreciation’’. 

Do not worry, though. This audaciously out-of-character display of sincerity will now be deleted from your memory. 

Gone? Good. 

So it's been seven wonderful transformative years for me, and the Doctor Who they made just for lil gay anarchist crazy pants care-bear me is ending forever soon. I mean... there will always be Doctor Who, and it will always be Doctor Who, of course. It will be there at the heat death of the Universe, while I’m still salivating over the utter perfection of Heaven Sent. And a sentient gas cloud in a jar will be running it, or something-- because the show has gained its own level of quasi-sentience, furiously transcended all sensible laws of television, and refuses to die.

But the Moffat era came into my life right when I needed it, and it changed me, and I can’t imagine any other era can be that personal to me. It won’t be my Doctor Who anymore. 

Steven Moffat doesn’t know I exist, and yet, has tormented my televisual experiences since I could barely even comprehend television. I have him to thank for two glorious book-ends to my childhood and adolescence: Press Gang, and Doctor Who. Thank you so much, Moffat, you scheming Scottish bastard. Thank you for everything. 

I don’t think I would be the sort of person I am now without this damn show, it’s fandom, and its unapologetic, space whale flavoured idealism. I honestly just wouldn’t be.

[fitnesswomenshealth-blog]

Men’s mental health: How dad’s suicide helped me become a ‘real man’

New Post has been published on https://cialiscom.org/mens-mental-health-how-dads-suicide-helped-me-become-a-real-man.html

Men’s mental health: How dad’s suicide helped me become a ‘real man’

IT WAS Saturday, March 28, 1998, when I received the news that would cast a shadow above the relaxation of my lifetime.

I was 16 decades outdated, and nothing would ever be ‘normal’ as I understood it, yet again. My father had killed himself and now, 20 decades on, I nevertheless have a father-formed hole in my coronary heart that won’t at any time be stuffed.

My dad and mom experienced break up up five many years before. Additional in truth, my father experienced walked out on us — my mum, my two young brothers and me — the day before my 11th birthday. It would be the initial of a lot of I would expend with out him.

We saw father on university holiday seasons. Most periods we invested a week with him, and most summers it was two months.

But in the summertime of 1997/98, I’d turned 16 and my brothers and I put in 3 total months with our dad — it was the longest extend of time given that he moved absent.

That summer season, dad and I connected as two individuals: it felt at the time like we were starting to be much more than just father and son — we were being getting buddies.

Dad promised to get me an old automobile for my 16th/17th/18th birthday offers and said we’d do it up together for the duration of faculty vacations. He was a auto guy and said I could have any kind of older automobile I wanted. The selection was mine … so lengthy as it was a V8 Holden Leading. What a option! I was content regardless, as it would type-of be ‘our’ motor vehicle.

My dad and I had our first beer together and our second cigarette … our very first shared smoke was when I was seven and requested for one particular out of curiosity and father obliged (1988 was a quite diverse time!).

I talked with father about my idea of shifting in with him following I concluded significant college, and my approach to go to uni in Warrnambool and enable with his fourth son, my substantially-young brother, who’d be school age by then. Father-and-son taking on the planet with our restored automobile. I could not wait around!

All my lifetime my father was my idol, my hero, even with him currently being moody and absent a ton, even in advance of he moved absent. Father was large and powerful at 6 foot 3, and as reliable as a brick s***household. He was a tough footy player and usually kicked luggage of objectives, obtained into a fight on the industry (he normally gained), and even took a grand remaining-saving speccy 1 calendar year, which I had on video clip and watched a ton.

Information.com.au is highlighting men’s psychological wellness troubles as element of its campaign The Silent Killer: Let’s Make Some Noise in support of Gotcha4Daily life and the Movember Basis.

In distinction with the hard male some others generally noticed him as, my normally-tender father overtly instructed me he liked me and hugged me no matter how old I was. His good stories at bed time experienced manufactured me huge-eyed with marvel. That really like of tales and open up expression of appreciate are also large components of my have character as a man or woman, specially now as a father, with three kids of my own.

So in 1998, to be connecting with my father as a mate and arranging a potential with him, was a particular dream that was beginning to occur genuine.

But … none of the issues my father and I prepared basically happened. Not 1 of them. Due to the fact 8 months soon after that summer time jointly, just as we’d started out to come to be the friends that I experienced extensive wished for us to be, my father wrote a be aware of goodbye, walked into his garage, and took his have life.

My father still left me. Yet again. And permanently. Why would a father pick out to leave his children permanently? My love for him turned clouded by hatred for what he’d completed.

I’ve puzzled given that on so numerous instances, why he didn’t just pack up and take off to the center of nowhere for on the other hand lengthy he essential a break for. Why not just disappear right up until he felt good again?

But he didn’t. He opted out of my existence in the most permanent and irreversible way.

In the 20 a long time considering the fact that father killed himself, I too have faced some major difficulties. Whether or not it’s from genetics or trauma from elements of my childhood, I’m not certain, but psychological ill-health has come really savagely for me, too.

My first key dim interval climaxed when I was 22. I was ingesting a whole lot at that time and not dealing with issues well. Following a single also a lot of setbacks (and significantly much too several drinks on this individual evening), I was in more pain than I felt I could tackle.

I walked out of the pub and jumped off a bridge. I landed on the road about seven metres below, and mostly due to the fact of how drunk and limp I was, I survived with only a broken pelvis and wrist.

3 months of bed rest, actual physical treatment and psychological rehabilitation followed. Through people prolonged and pretty bleak months I arrived to see just how pained my father must have been at the finish, and how helpless he should have felt. I experienced just about joined him, but a tiny flicker inside me hadn’t gone out, and I soldiered on.

‘I FELL Apart COMPLETELY’

I turned a father 10 many years ago and it was the most wonderful sensation to say the really the very least. Father’s Working day would be a joyful working day for me once again, just after a decade of crying on the initial Sunday of September every single year — on the lookout at the sky and cursing my dad.

My son Leo was afterwards joined by his brother Gus and sister Ada. I have a few great little ones who are all delighted, healthful, and good, and I’m so happy of them.

But as it so often happens for people who have battled the Black Canine, I’ve again been visited by mental unwell-wellbeing, even however my existence — on paper — was rather excellent. This final dark time period for me culminated in possessing a total breakdown just as my marriage to my kids’ mom ended a few of a long time back.

Just before my marriage ended, the producing was on the wall for a few yrs. My then-spouse and I had grown as well far aside and weren’t ready to bridge that considerable divide.

A couple of weeks just after my now ex-spouse and I both agreed we must separate, my GP forced me to choose a month off function so I could aim solely on surviving — it truly was that fraught.

I discovered a spot to are living, moved out, and fell aside fully. I was informed to just take one more month off perform, then one more, and at some point I resigned from my promising company vocation and uncovered my complete life altering all at the moment. And every working day due to the fact, without having exception, the risk of suicide has popped into my intellect as a feasible way to wipe away the damage and sadness and tears and despair that have virtually drowned me.

But the upside of losing my father to suicide signifies I know what it’s like to be the child left driving. And it’s definitely, truly, terrible.

THE SILENCE THAT KILLED MY Dad

My father did not talk to for any support. He did not speak to everyone about how bleak things seemed, enable alone see a experienced for healthcare help. And that silence intended he died.

I want the opposite final result for my little ones, and for me as a father. So in buy to achieve the reverse end result to my dad, I also choose the reverse techniques to him: I speak to folks, I search for and settle for clinical support, and I really do not considerably care what other persons imagine of me remaining so candid.

I am incredibly open up about my troubles with my psychological wellbeing. I am now pretty open up about my suicide try 15 a long time in the past.

It’s my love of storytelling that led to me sharing the tale of my father as a 1-man or woman ‘compassionate comedy’ exhibit, Humpty Dumpty Daddy. At fringe and comedy festivals all-around the nation, I have stood on phase and poured my heart out to audiences for an hour at a time, sharing every thing I have in this short article, plus additional.

The reaction from audiences has mostly been pretty heart-warming. Soon after I wander off phase, I wait around at the exit and thank men and women for coming together. And each solitary time, I have viewed one particular or extra burly males with quivering faces, or open up arms for a significant person-hug, or a pair of eyes that bore into mine with a declaration of camaraderie and shared trials.

Girls are much more verbally open up about what they believe and the raw heat and honesty they say they feel from observing one of my reveals. My audiences seem to be to be 2:1 women of all ages to males, but it’s the adult males who have more powerful and additional impactful psychological responses. Really a couple of have contacted me later on on and shared their personal story, and some have come to be people I still correspond with. It is amazingly exclusive, and I’m so grateful that by staying vulnerable and open, I feel related to far more individuals than I at any time have.

I know now it is not my fault, but I was not more than enough to hold my dad alive. He missing all hope wholly, and of training course I desire I could have completed some thing to end him. But I could not. I have the reward of dwelling in a more being familiar with time than my father, although there is a long, very long way to go, as the 10 for each cent maximize of suicides from 2016 to 2017 attests.

And even though it is taken me almost 20 several years to recognise, I can now see that the finest lesson my father at any time taught me was what NOT to do.

My father felt a failure at daily life and succeeded in dying. I failed at dying but am starting to come to feel a achievements at lifetime. Not a poor improve in 1 generation.

JC Clapham utilized to dress in a match to work each individual working day. He is now retraining as a mental health and fitness worker, does storytelling exhibits and writes about psychological well being and masculinity.

If you or someone you know requires guidance with their psychological health, remember to call just one of these support organisations:

• Lifeline 24/7: 13 11 14 or www.lifeline.org.au

• Suicide Get in touch with Back Provider: 1300 659 467 or www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au

• MensLine Australia: 1300 78 99 78 or www.mensline.org.au

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