#impostor syndrome is a very real thing and i feel your pain

[sick-sad-little-world]

"When you write your own lyrics, you tend to be overanalytical.  One second everything you do is brilliant, and the next, everything is garbage, and I want to be able to express personal things without being made to feel stupid."

Details, December 1996 

(via @lovehate-love)

[whumpcereal]

Hi! I absolutely LOVE your writing, I’ve reread both Behavior Modification and The Kennel more times than I can count and I am always devour your posts whenever you make them. You really have an incredible way with words, characters, and whump, and it’s absolutely INCREDIBLE. One thing I think you also do really well—and which I’d like to ask for some pointers on, if it’s not too much trouble—is writing Ivan’s perspective in a way that effectively portrays him as downright despicable, but also complex, engaging, and believable. I want only horrible things to befall him, but I do enjoy the parts of Behavior Modification that are written in his POV as much as the others, and I think it really adds to the work! There’s a part of my (private, unposted, never to see the light of day) story coming up that absolutely has to be written from the villain’s perspective or it’ll spoil a big twist. I’m not used to hanging out in my bad guys’ brains, though. It feels much easier to focus on the victims and their emotions, which are much more understandable and ofc more sympathetic. How do I give my awful bastard a feeling of depth and authenticity when I feel like I can’t relate to pretty much anything he thinks, says, or does? (For all that I do technically dictate his atrocities for that good whump…)

Hello, kind anon!

First of all, THANK YOU! I am going through a big dry spell with my writing right now, and I appreciate all of your kind words more than you can possibly know. Impostor syndrome is real, and we all need reminders to help us feel a little bit more confident, so--thank you so much for that. <3

Second, I think, when it comes to writing villains, the most important thing is remembering that they are their own heroes. Ivan is a shit, yes, but he believes in his own scientific mission, he believes that he has been wronged by Joe, and he believes that he is helping Jack fulfill a destiny that he might have missed. Ivan is just an instrument of science; this is what Jack was always meant for; and Joe deserves the pain of watching Jack fall away because he is the bad guy for not having given Ivan what he wanted back in the day.

If you find your villain's rational motivation for being a villain--for Ivan, it's science and little petty revenge; for Doc, it's a delusion that he's helping people who would otherwise be forgotten and doing it better than WRU--it's easier to write them with complexity. Your readers know your villain is awful, but your villains don't! Why didn't Joe love Ivan? Why didn't Doc's wife understand his rescue operation? They're just people out there peopling, and why doesn't everyone get what it is they're trying to do?

Real people who do bad things--unless there is something very specific amiss in their mental chemistry--sometimes don't understand why what they're doing is so bad. Sometimes they feel remorse too. But their behavior is driven by extremes that I think they either aren't entirely aware of or would believe are beyond their control. They aren't cartoon characters, and perhaps they aren't even inherently evil, but they are deeply flawed.

TL; DR--humanize your villains and see where it leads you.

[linawritesocs]

my ocs (+ ships) as palette names!

here it is!! all titles are from this post AND HONESTLY I LOVE THEM SO MUCH SOME OF THEM SOUND LIKE REALLY COOL CHAPTER TITLES

all palettes were assigned based only on the titles and not the colors! though some palettes (the (name)-core ones) do have my ocs' vibes ndjdkddk

avery: wishing to rant about fanfiction but not wanting to show how much of a nerd you secretely are, you can’t just ask a guy why he’s in love, some days i’m afraid i will cut my eyes by the sight of glass shards (yes i picked this one only bc of his surname jdksksdkl IT DOES HAVE HIS VIBES THOUGH)

vance: only the floor candy can sustain me (vancecore), the act of balancing a bottle of juice on your head, some days i feel like a lobster on a skateboard 

merrill: next time maybe don’t go into the forest at night hm buddy? just a thought, you are who we say you are because public opinion beats self worth every time, putting on a show to seem alive / when i don’t feel alive (wow these last two are SAD) 

allen: focus on me (ignore the blood), do you remember when you told me that you love me when you told me that you love me when you told me that you, murder and other expressions of love 

roland: stand still as the darkness grows roots in your mind, i loved you i did so how did we end up like this, men like us die alone because we think we deserve it (;w;)

fake!jay: hey quick question are we really about to commit arson? (literally his dynamic with allen), the doctor tried to check my heartbeat only to find out i don’t have one (a reminder that he's not really human!), the privilege of being born somebody else (THIS ONE. OH GOD THIS ONE) 

real!jay: the lack of self esteem i’ve felt since i learned how to read or write (;w; AGAIN), soda cans are great i love accidentally spilling liquid on myself, when i was a small child i held an iguana once 

austin: i’m always at least a little bit scared hopeless and frustrated, a classmate of mine once borrowed one of my pens and then decided it was such a good pen he’s just gonna keep it (austincore), crying because cats are cute and deserve the world 

minnie: this is the third time someone put strawberries in the bathtub who keeps doing this please stop (minniecore), the horrifying ordeal of having loud neighbours, unexplainable excruciating pain that started suddenly and will never go away 

hayden: an unhealthy relationship with one’s own identity (THIS IS LITERALLY HAYDEN), what flavour is your mind (a reference to him trying to understand other people's personalities more so that it's easier for him to manipulate them), the only thing greater than my ego is my impostor syndrome 

riley: i’m a weirdo who likes to eat chalk, have you found yourself or your loved ones suffering from a case of empty eyes, an overemotional state projected upon the unsuspecting public (LITERALLY HIS UNIQUE MAGIC)

angel: this will hurt you more than it’ll hurt me - and that’s okay!, the girl in a blue dress that lives in every village ever (angelcore), the magical princess’s strawberry-scented battle axe of infinite bloodshed 

bunny: wasting your life feeling like an underperforming tool in someone else’s hands (her relationship with angel..), the eye lips eye emoji face fills me with unbridled rage, what do you MEAN there was a fire 

seth: your house has no anomalies but i’m reporting you for bad taste in art (YEAH THIS DOES SOUND LIKE SETH), you love them now you’ll hate them later (sethcore),  i haven’t left the house in months (his backstory 😔)

and now, the oc ships!

avery x allen: what are you doing in my house / now now i don’t usually make it a habit to - stop yelling - break into people’s homes but as you can see sometimes i do, once again i am forced to ask what in the world did you bring into our home / what do you mean what did i bring it’s very clearly a radioactive waste barrel don’t pretend you don’t know that, the tall faceless lad out the corner of my eye who watches me sleep while pointing at the door 

vance x riley: the man who looked at me so sweetly in soft flavours of deep beige, wish me luck honey (i couldn’t ask for more), just friends but we kiss sometimes 

merrill x cater: can you help me find what’s wrong with me, men like us aren’t supposed to feel these things, it’s past my bedtime and i’m thinking of you (i don't talk a lot about this ship but trust me, i love them SO MUCH)

merrill x austin: of all the things you could be doing why are you romancing soda cans, wish we could go out for coffee but you hate me and i hate coffee, sorry that your rant about how the game i like ruined the whole series forever didn’t make me like it any less 

allen x nemis: my girlfriend said i eat corn weird which now that i think about it would explain why i’m consistently covered in butter (listen it does sound like them), look at her go biting everyone who comes near her like a champ, here’s cheers to the man who stole my heart away 

allen x hayden: let your tender hands rip me apart, what’s a little murder between friends, i’ve been chugging poison waiting for the day you inevitably take me up on my offer and take a proper bite out of me (THIS ONE. POWERFUL)

minnie x sebek: your love has brought me to the point of no returning, don’t try to tell me how i’m supposed to breathe, people ask me how i manage to think of you everyday and to be completely honest i never know what to say because it feels so natural 

hayden x elpys: i need you to understand that i really do want what’s best for you - and that simply isn’t me, you are a dream in a crowd of nightmares, you must have real self confidence mortal to attempt flirting with something all holy 

seth x riddle: dunks you in tea LOL, get your shoes off my bed you animal (these ones are chaotic and i love it), he to whom the cake’s dedicated 

seth x rollo: i touch you and my hands burn my hands burn my hands burn (what have you done) (yeah it was painful to type this one), give me salvation i swear i won’t bite, well first of all i am positive what you did is a criminal offense / and second of all why didn’t you invite me (hiii i love "seth x rollo as a villain couple" so much <3)

[redtail-lol]

I'm sure some are but I think most people with autism and ADHD who have lower support needs that don't identify as disabled, aren't not IDing as disabled because they're ableist. I used to not consider myself disabled because our needs and struggles are constantly downplayed and we end up with impostor syndrome

The disabled community itself has been very welcoming and I have been happier since acknowledging that I have a disability. It's outside influences that have told us we're not disabled. A lot of us fall under the "gifted kid" stereotype, where we absolutely struggle but we do well enough academically that it's all anyone ever focuses on. "How can you be disabled? You're so smart! You get such good grades," they say, even when you haven't got any friends because the only thing you ever learned how to do was get good grades. When you struggle with getting chores done because what needs to be done isn't obvious to you, or you lack any initiative until asked directly to do a single specific thing. When you end up stressed from going out in public for too long. When you genuinely lack real skills like the ability to search for stuff and they assume you're pretending to be incompetent. When you're incapable of focusing on a task or completing it if you don't want to or it literally pains you to do it. And when you have a perfectionism complex where any amount of failure is scary and you can't handle it. A bad grade will kill you because getting good grades is the only thing you've ever been able to do. Which makes it harder to admit to yourself that you're disabled - you're smart, you always got good grades, how could you be disabled when you're supposed to be gifted? You can't possibly have it bad enough to say you're disabled. You'll feel like you're invading disabled spaces and inserting yourself where you don't belong. You should just let the real disabled people have their space because you aren't allowed to have your struggles acknowledged by anyone else so, they mustn't be real, or be that bad.

Even when you get over the impostor syndrome and call yourself disabled internally, no one around you accepts it. Because your family spent so long being proud of you for being so special and smart - and any unconscious ableism they have means they don't want to have a disabled child. They can't see the struggles you may have been keeping in. So you can't call yourself disabled without abled people around you shutting you down for it.

All I can say to these people is, try to work through it. Don't listen to abled people who say your suffering isn't bad enough to count. You do struggle more than most people and you are disabled. The disabled community is extremely welcoming and nice and will not treat you with intolerance. It'll help you recognize your struggles as a disabled person and be kinder to yourself. All you'll be asked to do is to accept other disabled people of all kinds. Abled people have no right to say you can't be part of this community when it's ready to welcome you with open arms even if you're still struggling with impostor syndrome. And if you're not ready, work through it first (with help if needed) so you can feel comfortable enough calling yourself disabled.

[kojinnie]

Why you should NOT date AOT boys...

Headcanon on what kind of headache you're bound for when dating the AOT boys, and why I advise you NOT to date them! Enjoy, loves!

levi - eren - armin - reiner

part two here | erwin - zeke - jean - connie

— LEVI

He's an incredible man with a lot of talents and he'd be doing real good at his job, that dating him would give you a huge sense of pride. However, this man suffers from being emotionally constipated. He'd always keep you in the fine line of "are we or are we not?", even though you’ve been seeing each other for a long time. He’d never say “I love you” or any type of flashy display of affection. His love language is acts of service and quality time, so if you’re the type to wanting outward reassurance of how someone feels about you, Levi’s not gonna be the person to give you that. 

This problem stems from his deep, unresolved insecurity about the nature of relationship. It’s not just the “Am I good enough?”, he genuinely thinks that he is not a good person, and thus the inherent belief that everybody will abandon him in the end  — something he picks up from his traumatic childhood. He’s wary about establishing relationship because he’s afraid to succumb into his own feelings and vulnerability. He fears at certain point he has to feel and suffer the emotional consequence of being left by someone he cares for. He dreads the idea of getting caught off-guard with being fragile.

You gotta be extremely patient and understanding when it comes to Levi, the reassurance needs to come from you, and frequently too. Bluntly saying, “I’ll stick around” or “I’ll accept your shortcoming” is really soothing for Levi, because although he never shows it, he really thinks he does not deserve you.

— EREN

If you wanna be frustrated in a relationship where you constantly feel like you’re in an endless coaster, then dating Eren gotta be your poison. Sure the honeymoon phase was intoxicating, sure he makes you feel like the prettiest girl in the world. The morning text, the playful neck peck out in the public, the butterflies you feel in your tummy when you catch him staring at you even from afar with those oh so enthralling green eyes. But once the honeymoon phase over, Eren is quick to get bored. Especially if you’re an unproblematic, matter-of-fact type of person. Eren likes to fight, he gets thrilled by it, and he’s high with the rush of adrenaline. He likes it if you’re jealous, if you sulk, if you argue. He likes you to be ‘childish’ because then he gets to be the adult, the savior, the knight in shining armor. It grinds his gears. If you’re unfazed by his antics, if you’re easy to forgive, if you’re chill, Eren will think that you’re not really into him, and will exit the closest door out before his ego gets bruised even further.

Eren is sort of babied by people around him – his parents, his friends, and constantly being compared to his older brother doesn’t help either. He realizes that he got saved a lot of times by a lot of people. And this creates a deeply rooted insecurity with him that turns into an incessant impostor syndrome. The constant thought of not being good enough and the idea that all the achievement he’s ever got was the result of someone else’s help really crush him. You can shower him with praises and reassurance, but he would completely dismiss it, because he thinks your compliments are not based on objective views and that he does not deserve it. He painfully seeks for approval from any authority figure that (he thinks) does not have any emotional connection with him. And it can be really hurtful when he constantly dismisses your sincere compliments while desperately chasing from others who don’t care about him.

— ARMIN

It’s really hard to hate Armin. He’s a really nice man through and through, but what is his strength can also be his deepest weakness. He’s too nice and unsure about a lot of things. He knows he is knowledgeable, but he often doubts himself for being too ‘text-book smart’. Which is a valid cause, because at times he would get very oblivious to how relationship works, and treat feelings like it’s a quantifiable system. It will literally take years for him to finally get down and say how he feels about you, because all these times he was so busy filling the check-list in his mind to convince himself whether you truly like him or not, even though you couldn’t be any clearer with your intention towards him.

He is perceptive with what you think and how you feel, unfortunately this does not materialize into any action as he doubts his own intuition when it comes to his significant other. He fears that his own sentimentality has affected his intuitive judgment and thus deems it invalid, which is completely untrue because every hunch he has about you has always been accurate! That’s just how much he understands and knows you from years of quietly observing and taking each of your word into account.

He really relies on you sitting him down and telling him in details how you feel and the things you expect from him. He will do it, in a flash with no hesitation, but really, he just needs that verbal affirmation that he is doing the things that you want, and it’s not just based on his assumption. So, if you like sweet surprises, impulsive dates and expect your significant other to read your mind, Armin might not be the person.

— REINER

Oh my, truthfully, he is such a sweetheart, and can be completely smitten for the entirety of his life if he has found that one person. However, it’s a treacherous road for both Reiner and you to get to that stage. Initially, when you start to get closer to him, he may seem rigid and uninterested. The first date you had with him probably went awkward and although you really liked him, you were pretty sure he didn’t like you back, until he texted you the morning after, asking for a second date. That’s basically how being with Reiner is, a series of you being sure that he feels nothing towards you, only for his following action to prove the otherwise. He is really awful in displaying his emotion, he tries to be stoic all the time, and it often frustrates you because you cannot really tell how he feels, and you fear that you might have hurt him without realizing.

He may start to open up, only when you open up first about yourself. He thrives in romance with someone who he thinks shares his inner pain, and that’s very important for him, because he is always in a position where everyone expects him to be strong, and to have a significant other that understands his struggle is all he wants. But this gets hard for you, because sometimes Reiner’s sadness can be quite extreme and you cannot match that. Once Reiner realizes that you’re not on the same boat, he may become withdrawn, as he thinks he’s a burden and inadequate for you, and may end up self-sabotaging the whole relationship he has with you.

Although he does not like to admit it, but Reiner often slips into his sadness too deep, that it almost seems like he victimizes himself with his self-hatred. He will be the one to say stupid shit like, “You deserve someone better.” Or “I cannot make you happy.” When in fact you are perfectly willing to be with him all the way through.

With Reiner, you gotta be the bigger person, with bigger gestures and bigger patience. It’s because Reiner needs an anchor and a figure to lean on. In returns he would be the best lover that you will ever have for he is selfless and will be helplessly devoted to you.

Racking my brain writing for the rest of the boys (Erwin, Jean, Connie, Pocko) because they're the ones we SHOULD date.

Update: Thanks thanks thanks for everyone who read this! I received a lot of love and you dunno how much this encourages me to keep going. Anyway, 2 things:

- My Masterlist

- Talk to meeee ♡

[ON-GOING REQUEST EVENT]: Kojinnie's 200 Followers Celebration - 24/7 Writing Event

[rocorambles]

Meeting in the Middle

Pairing: Sakusa x reader

Genre/Warnings: NSFW, Yandere, Misogyny, Controlling Behavior, Degradation, Non-Con/Rape, Spanking

Summary: Sakusa shows you that he’s more than capable of meeting you in the middle and listening to you for a change. But be careful of what you ask for.

A/N: This is for the Poly Wives Angst Collab~ RIP us and our never ending collabs we create for ourselves.

If someone had told you five years ago that you’d be dating one of Japan’s most eligible bachelors, a professional athlete fawned over by media and fans nation-wide, the epitome of the strong and silent type, you would have laughed in their faces. What is this? Some silly fairytale? The childish checklist of “things I want in a boyfriend” you’d written in middle school?

But life has a funny way of working and you find yourself in an obnoxiously lavish and rowdy nightclub, made only more crazy by the surprising appearance of some VIPs.

It seems like volleyball has somehow become Japan’s national sport overnight and although you aren’t necessarily the biggest follower of anything remotely athletic, even you know exactly who the rambunctious trio catching everyone’s eyes are.

You can’t deny there’s more than just a bit of appeal in the way their button up shirts cling to toned muscles, but you’ve never been one for crowds and you stray to the emptier corners of the establishment to avoid being swept by the crowd of excited fans. But when Atsumu cheesily winks and flirts as he signs scandalously bared skin of female fans, you mockingly gag, only to whirl in embarrassment when you hear an amused snort from behind you.

“Not a fan of Miya Atsumu?”

Staring wide-eyed and slack jawed when someone asks you a question is very rude and you want to answer. But you don’t trust yourself with basic human speech when Sakusa Kiyoomi is staring at you expectantly. So you shake your head side to side instead, heat rising to your face at the small upward curve of his lips.

“Neither am I.”

Atsumu never lets the two of you live down how he’s the one who technically brought you together, even if it was at the cost of his pride. (You chuckle when you remember his loud squawking when Sakusa recounts the dialogue exchanged at your first meeting.) But even months later, even after Sakusa has officially introduced you to the rest of the MSBY team, even after they’ve accepted you as part of their cozy and rowdy family, you can’t stop feeling impostor syndrome.

Dating Sakusa still feels unreal and you can’t help but feel like you’re living someone else’s life, stuck in a rose-tinted dream, playing dress-up and make believe as you parade around in clothing far more luxurious than you’re used to, whisked around on your lover’s strong arm as you follow him around the world from match to match. And as lovely as it is, you long to truly make this relationship your own, to feel the rawness and grittiness of love and life, to experience the charm and comfort of being true to yourself and knowing Sakusa loves you just as you are.

But your desire to be with him, to call him your own trumps your own wishes and you find yourself quickly backing down everytime you suggest something that he’s quick to turn down, desperate to appease and please him even at the price of your own desires.

He’s never outrightly rude about his preferences, never raises his voice. But somehow that makes the judgement and disdain in his dark eyes that much more apparent. You remember a rough day of work you had, the relief you had felt about being able to swiftly swap your constrictive work apparel for a pair of worn-in shorts and a baggy t-shirt. Your outfit would certainly not win any fashion awards, but you blissfully sigh at how comfortable you are as you call a local pizza shop, ordering delivery self-indulgently.

You could feel yourself becoming one with the couch you’re lounging on, the television playing in the background. But even in the hazy in-between of sleep and alertness, your eyes snap open when the door opens and you lazily smile as your boyfriend enters your shared apartment, returning from another grueling practice.

“You look like you’ve had better days.”

Your smile slips, anxiety flooding through you as you self-consciously curl in on yourself while his lips purse, eyes scrutinizing your sloppy appearance.

“Umm, yeah...tough day at work-”

“Maybe you should freshen up with me. You might feel better in a...real outfit.”

You know better than to think that it’s really a suggestion, cursing yourself, humiliation coursing through you when you think of how foolish you were to get so comfortable so quickly. You’ve seen the caliber of the women who lust over your boyfriend unabashedly despite his long-time relationship with you. You need to try harder. You need to be better.

Self-deprecation rips you to shreds as you painstakingly groom yourself, donning a dress you know Sakusa loves, applying a full face of makeup and a spritz of his favorite scent. And despite how exhausted you are, how much you’d rather be slumped on the couch, gorging on a slice of pizza, it’s all worth it when you see the appreciative look in his gaze as his eyes rake over your figure.

But worry gnaws at you once more as the doorbell rings and his eyebrow raises questioningly at the interruption. It’s a painful walk of shame as you plaster on a fake smile, tipping the delivery boy, the usually tantalizing smell of cheese and grease only making you nauseous as you bring the box to the dining table.

“What is that?”

“Dinner…”

Your voice trails off and you feel so small, so pathetic as Sakusa’s face borders disgust as he observes the offensive item.

“You didn’t cook?”

The disappointment in his voice has you spewing excuses and apologies, your heart shattering when he merely waves off your ramble, telling you he’d order a salad from elsewhere and to enjoy your meal.

You never order pizza again and a steaming hot plate of freshly cooked food is always waiting for Sakusa when he returns home while you patiently wait for him with a painted face and impeccable outfits.

Your friends and family tell you how grateful you should be, how envious they are as they oggle your latest high-end designer pieces, cooing over how picture perfect the two of you always are, staring wide-eyed at your gorgeous home, not a speck of dust or object out of place. Who would have thought that you would be the epitome of the ideal housewife in such a short time?

Yes, you wonder. Who would have thought? Certainly not you.

If only they knew how deep down the deception goes, how lost you are in this pretend world you’re stuck in. And your heart twists and turns when your friends share about the little and big spats that happen behind closed doors, giggling and sighing in an understanding you’re not part of when they playfully complain about how much work love is.

But it’s always worth it in the end because the good always outweighs the bad if you’ve found the right person (not to mention the makeup sex is a bonus). Or so they say, but you wouldn’t know what any of that feels like. Sakusa doesn’t leave room for any arguments, any disagreements, any hint of anything less than a perfect relationship.

Even in the privacy of your bedroom, you feel like you’re in a cheesy porno, dressed in the prettiest white slip dress decorated with dainty lace and a string of pearls around your neck. You feel like a doll as you’re positioned on the bed, eyes demurely looking down, letting Sakusa do as he pleases while he guides you, calloused hands roaming over your skin. You’re sure he means for it to be pleasurable and intimate, and you can’t deny that he knows your most sensitive areas, shuddering when he grazes over your hardening nipples. But there’s a coldness to his movements, a calculating aspect in the way he examines you, dark eyes scrutinizing every inch of you as if they’re looking for a blemish, a reason to lecture you on not taking care of yourself.

Yet as predictable and standoffish as he is, he does know how to pleasure you and you writhe underneath him, moaning, lower lips dripping in your own arousal. But you whimper when he growls at you to stop moaning so loudly, to stop acting like a slut.

“I’m dating a lady, not a whore.”

The words cut you, pain and emptiness mixing with the rising pleasure, muddling into a confusing and overwhelming mess insides of you. You don’t trust yourself to speak, hot tears pricking at your eyes, unsure whether a moan or harsh words would slip past your lips. But you know that neither will work in your favor, so like always, you hold your tongue, doing whatever you can to keep your lover happy. You close your eyes, letting yourself get lost in the tightening knot inside of you, submitting to the waves of pleasure that crash over you as you cum, fingers tangling in the rumpled sheets, back arching in ecstasy.

Only when Sakusa is asleep, his back turned to you, the two of you cleaned and freshened up, do you let your tears stream down your face, feeling more alone than ever in your shared bed.

You hold out longer than you should, much longer than you should, in the hopes that things will improve, that Sakusa will loosen up, reveal his true self to you, let you reveal your true self to him. It’s just early dating jitters, early relationship issues. Things will get better.

Except it’s months later and things aren’t better. If anything, they’re worse and you can feel the weight of his expectations and the stress of perpetually living by a prewritten script crushing you.

It’s time to put an end to this charade.

It’s just another uneventful night and you idly stare up at the ceiling as you wait for Sakusa to join you in bed. Your heart is racing, throat feeling dry and choked up as he slips under the covers. You’re terrified, of Sakusa’s reaction, of ending everything, of starting from scratch. But you know it’s the right decision and when he finally settles in beside you, you begin to speak.

There’s only the sound of your trembling voice as you quietly tell him how you’ve felt all along, how everything has felt so prim, proper, fake, how everyday just feels like another session of rehearsing your lines, making sure you meet whatever standard he’s set for you. You want passion, real love, fights, laughter. You just want to be yourself. You just want to be with someone who loves you exactly the way you are.

“Kiyoomi, maybe we should break up. I don’t think we’re right for each other. I don’t think I’m what you want. I don’t think I’ll ever be what you want.”

“You’re right. Despite how much time, work, money, and patience I’ve spent to better you, you haven’t changed at all.”

You’re left reeling from the matter of fact harshness of his words, the slight exasperation in his tone, as if this is all your fault, as if you’re just a bothersome misbehaving pet.

“Prim and proper? Passion? Fights? So you’re tired of manners? Tired of being a respectable woman? You just want to fight and fuck like animals?”

You open your mouth to protest, anger licking at the open wounds his verbal assault leaves behind. But before you can retort, the air is ripped out of your lungs in a stunned yelp as your body is swiftly flipped over, your face shoved into the mattress until it’s a struggle to breathe, fabric and cushion all you can taste.

Your arms flail as you struggle to breathe, nails clawing at the sheets, arms trying to push yourself up against. But it’s no use against Sakusa’s strength and just as specks of black begin to enter your vision, fingers tangle with your roots and you gasp as your head is harshly jerked up, neck bending painfully back, jaw forced open from the strange position.

You whimper, tears beginning to blur your sight as a calloused hand turns your face until you’re staring at a condescending impassive countenance.

“If you want to be treated like a slut that badly, I’ll be a good boyfriend and give you exactly what you want. Ass up. Now.”

There’s no room for disobedience and spurred on by fear and pain, you listen, awkwardly shuffling into position, shame heating your face at how exposed you feel. But it’s only the start and you scream as a heavy strike lands on your bare ass, more and more blows raining down upon you, until you’re sobbing for mercy, agonized cries forced from your mouth, thighs trembling at having to support yourself through the torture.

Your upper body slumps in relief when the hits finally stop, but you flinch when fingers methodically prod at your entrance. You instinctively try to lurch forward, away from the touch, but it’s no use and you clench your eyes in humiliation at the sloppy wet sounds betraying your arousal.

“This is the wettest I’ve ever seen you. You really do like being used and treated like a bitch.”

You wish you could deny it. You wish you had the spirit to talk back, maybe even spit on that handsome face. But all you can think of is how full you feel as Sakusa’s cock slams balls deep inside your dripping hole, how deep he is inside of you from this angle, how overwhelmingly pleasurable the mix of pain and lust is as he uses you like you’re nothing more than a warm breathing sex doll.

All you can do is lewdly moan and take it, tears slipping down your face, drool seeping into the ruined sheets, eyes rolled back in your head. The coil in your stomach tightens and tightens no matter how hard you try and hold it at bay, desperately trying not to cum, not to inadvertently admit your body’s betrayal as it succumbs to every thrust. But it’s too much, the unfamiliarity of this brutal pace, the overpowering sensation of his tip reaching new depths inside of you, and you shatter to pieces, pussy convulsing, body twitching, pleasure like you’ve never felt before surging through you.

All through it Sakusa continues his relentless rhythm, a sneer marring his flawless face as he watches you suffer through your orgasm, writhing underneath him. It’s disgusting how much you love this, pathetic, pitiful, and yet he’s harder than he’s ever been, more turned on than he ever thought possible. And all it takes is a few more thrusts before he’s spilling inside of you, a strong hand holding you still and tight to him as his groin presses against your ass, not an inch of space between the two of you as he paints your insides white.

Maybe you had a point all along. You’re absolutely filthy and wrecked and he grimaces at the tear, sweat, and sex stained mess he touches as he shoves your exhausted body away from him. Yet there’s a certain appeal to your disheveled appearance, how ruined you are because of him.

How beautifully you break.

Well if you have no desire to improve yourself, he can learn to meet you in the middle, learn to let you be the low-life whore you have no desire to move up from. After all, that’s what you said love is, right?

Accepting each other’s differences.

[olivieblake]

I discovered you with Clean, Marked and Youth and then proceeded to quickly read almost every other fanfiction you wrote (How to win being my all time favorite) and the whole time I was like "THIS PERSON IS WAY TOO GOOD A WRITER TO BE JUST A FANFICTION AUTHOR". I mean your fics are better than the actual Harry Potter books. I was obsessed with them and I still love to go back to them sometimes.

Anyway there's no real point to this message expect to say congratulations again and you deserve all of it, try not to have impostor syndrome too much, you really are extremely talented and I look forward to reading everything else you will write.

And here we are a few years later (I have no idea how many ??) and look at you now, I was so right ! I keep telling people about your success because I feel proud that I recognized your talent from the beginning, but really there's not much pride to have about that, it was very obvious.

Just finished My mechanical romance by the way and it was everything I'd hoped for and more !

I just did a lil tweet about this recently so adding it here for Relevance

but seriously, it means so much to me that you've been here this whole time. it delights me that you still go back to my fanfics and it's slightly embarrassing that I sometimes do too (I'm GOING to try to replicate the effect of modern romance in book form someday, I don't know how I could do it the same way but I feel that an attempt should exist) but mostly I just want to say that I'm happier than anything to have proved you right all along. if I've earned one thing then let it have been you. SINGLE TEAR EMOJI, MANY TEARS EMOJI, PAIN FACE PAIN FACE PAIN FACE

I love you and I'm grateful for you and I'm so glad you enjoyed MMR!!

[lassieposting]

Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.

What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying. 

Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.

tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.

Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.

But we also had:

SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.

Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.

China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.

The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.

Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.

It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.

Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.

"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:

Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)

Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)

Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)

Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)

China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)

Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)

If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.

Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.

MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:

ADHD: Skulduggery

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile

Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB

Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two

Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie

Autism: Clarabelle

Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.

TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.

Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...

Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss

Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas.  There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.

And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:

1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.

Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.

GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.

So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.

There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."

And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”

Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.

So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.

The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.

The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.

Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".

Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.

(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)

Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

Sick Little Games: Twenty-Nine

Clint knocked back the rest of his whiskey and took a deep breath. Today had been hard. Really hard. And he hated watching on the sidelines while you fought a bitter, bloody battle. 

You had fought hard. It was a valiant effort. But it was in vain. It just hadn’t been enough. And Clint knew you were heartbroken.

What he didn’t know was how it had gotten so... bad. How everything had gotten so far off track and into the woods. In his head, he could hear a conversation. One from long ago. One from the night he met you.

He and Natasha had been the first people to meet Tony. He’d been doing some consulting work or... something. Whatever it was that Tony had allowed SHIELD to pay him to do. 

Clint had met him following him around while he did Tony things, and of course, Nat had met him before that. It had been exhausting, and all Clint had wanted to do was eat and be unconscious for a little while. Tony was really good at making him feel like an idiot, and his impostor syndrome was in full swing. Because, how can Clint be worth his spot on the team if they want someone like Tony? A high school drop out with a GED and no real claim to fame other than some incredible marksmanship. 

At least. At least until Tony had declared that he was hungry and demanded some food be ordered. Clint had to give it to him, he was charming. Charming in a way that made you want to punch him in the teeth even as he made you laugh. But Clint was less than interested in talking. He was in full sulk mode. 

He didn’t want to be noticed. But that didn’t stop you from noticing. Newly instated as an official agent. Clint had heard of you but never seen you. Natasha was in charge of training you, and she had good things to say. You were green but had some up-and-coming talent, powers, and augmentation aside. 

Still. As you picked your way up to his perch, like a little nimble mountain goat, he couldn’t help but smile a little. 

“So,” you muse, handing him a plate, “How much chaos can I cause with a nerf gun?”

Clint cocked his head and gave you a look, “Chaos, huh?”

“It’s been a while since Fury’s been reminded he can’t control everything,” you say, smirking.

“And how exactly are you gonna remind him of that with a toy?” he asks around a mouthful of pizza.

“Wanna fuck around and find out?” you counter, pulling one out of your cargo pocket.

And Clint knew he should say no. And council caution but your smile had made his brain stop working and, as he watched you take aim at the side of Tony’s neck, Clint couldn’t say no. It was satisfying. So very gratifying that Stark was about to be under siege with nothing he could do about it. And as it devolved into nerf darts and makeshift barricades, not even Clint’s impostor syndrome could keep him from participating. He’d had your back, enjoying teaching you the finer points of sniping people from shadowy corners. 

He wished, studying the amber liquid in his glass, that you’d bothered to learn those lessons a little better. That you had learned to lie and sneak. To press your advantage and destroy someone. Because in the end, it had been your honesty. Your heart. That had been the undoing of all your careful plans. The same heart Bucky had exploited once, had betrayed you again. And Clint couldn’t even be angry at you. He knew that anything he could say was only a fraction of all the hateful things you were saying to yourself. And somehow, that had hurt more than he could say. 

_________

You lay on the mat where you fell. The day's exertion and your exhaustion keeping you down as you play your day in court back in your head. You’d had a strong case. Good lawyers. An Ace in the hole. Everything you needed. 

But you’d underestimated the fear of you. And the religious fervor that persisted in that county. So much so that even an endorsement of your character by Captain Fucking America hadn’t been enough. 

Not once, Bucky had given his statement. He’d said that Cap didn’t know what you got up to in your off time. Promiscuity. With him. Premarital sex. An abortion. It had been everything he needed. And, God bless the boys. Too young and indoctrinated to understand that someone could lie about you. The misogyny of the church too ingrained. When it had come time for them to speak, to be your ace in the hole and say that they had contacted you. That they were afraid of Stirling and had been seeking safety. They’d called you a Sorceress. Told that they feared you instead. And you knew. You knew they’d never come to you now. They could forgive a lot of things in service of getting out from under Stirling’s thumb. But not that. Not when they’d been told all their lives that a woman’s purpose was to have children and raise them.  They hadn’t looked at you again after. You were a murderer. Beyond redemption. They may not be able to judge you, but they were pretty sure they knew how god would, and. As such. They wouldn’t even attempt to come near you now. 

You wished you could have lied. Hidden everything. Even from Clint and just stayed away. If you had stayed away like you wanted, none of this would have happened. You never would have seen your family again. Never would have been abandoned again. You’d wanted this so much. To save your boys. But nothing was going to make it happen now. They didn’t want you. 

When the training room door bangs open, you pull yourself into a sitting position slowly. But you don’t turn. You know those footsteps, and you know it’s Bucky. 

He stands next to you, and you don’t move. Or turn to look at him. 

“Y/N,” he said, his voice approaching something like tenderness, “I did it for you.”

When you don’t answer, he presses on, “You wouldn’t be happy out in the country playing housewife for Barton and cleaning up after those kids.”

He offers you a hand, wanting to pull you to your feet.

You look up at him slowly, and he smiles a little, “C’Mon. I’ve got a place we can go to. No one will find us. Not till the dust settles.”

“Fuck you,” you bite out, shoving his hand out of your face. 

Bucky pulled back, calculating. You were supposed to be broken. Properly broken. Willing to come with him. Shaken out of all your little pastel daydreams.

“You don’t mean that doll,” he rumbled, trying again, “Come on. I can make it feel better.”

You get to your feet and try to get away from him. Not trusting yourself to keep your anger in check. Not trusting yourself not to kill him if he didn’t back off. And metal fingers close insistently around your wrist to stop you. 

And you don’t think. All you do is react. Eyes glowing silver and nothing but a red, raging, awful haze takes place where reason and compassion usually sit in your mind. 

And when you rear back to hit him, Bucky plans to deflect it. He thinks he can dodge it. But when he puts his hand up to block it, the force of the impact shattered every bone in his arm and left Bucky reeling back from the pain, and he knew that if someone were to touch his arm, it would feel like a tube of toothpaste with marbles in it. And he also knew that the healing process was going to be excruciating. 

“Touch me again,” you growl, teeth bared.

“Y/N,” he said, a sense of danger rising in the pit of his stomach. 

“Fuck around and find out Bucky,” you tempt, “You wanna see how easily I can rip someone apart? You wanna see what else those fuckers did to me? Touch me again. I promise. I’ll slow it down so you can watch.”

Energy crackles as your fingers curl into fists at your sides, and Bucky knows. He knows that he has to tread very lightly, or you're going to tear him to pieces. He knows that currently, no one in the tower can stop you. And not for the first time, he’s thankful for his metal arm. At least that one you can’t liquify. 

So as he rocks back on his heels reluctantly taking his fighting stance and you start forward, he knows he only has once chance. He has to stay out of your way because if you get a hold of him, not a force on Earth can pull you off of him. Even the one on Asgard has to struggle to do it.

_________

Across town, the hair on the back of Clint’s neck stands up. He knows that you asked for space. For a little time to wallow and sort out your feelings. But maybe, just maybe, he figures he ought to get on home and make sure you weren’t doing anything you couldn’t undo. Because he had a sense. And awful sense that that was probably exactly what you were doing. 

Tags:

@lancsnerd, @thorfanficwriter @blameitonthecauseway @etherealwaifgoddess, @stevieang, @beautybyfire, @sunmoonandbucky @mrsfox79, @bbmommy0902, @mendes-fan, @iheartsebastianstan, @wtfcas @pinknerdpanda, @process-pending, @ladifreakingda, @leasly, @coldbookworm, @hv-chw3, @past-perfect-future-tense, @starkrobb @beardburnsupersoldiers, @petlaufeyson, @queenoftheunderdark, @potatoheadthewise, @thehyperactiveteen, @thefridgeismybestie, @boyett514, @an-awkward-human-1, @sunshine-and-riverwater

[albatris]

Hello hope you're well on this Saturday may I ask what the deepest fears of each of the ATDAO cast members is, thank you and goodnight

oh you’re just gonna dive right in with the hard-hitting questions I see

thank you for the ask!!

under the cut because rambles, of course, I literally do not know how to be concise I’m so sorry, you probably already knew this was coming HAHAHA

Tris’s deepest fear aside from Literally Everything In The Universe would be uhhhhh....... being somehow responsible for harm coming to the people he cares about? either directly or indirectly. I think on a big scale the whole concept of the butterfly effect stresses him out hahaha. on a small scale, he spends a lot of time stressing about his friends and family, he has a lot of intrusive thoughts about what horrible things could potentially happen to them, he worries about accidentally hurting them, etc. etc.

n I haven’t really talked in depth all that much about the specifics of Tris’s psychosis, but there’s definitely aspects of it that become pretty intense and aggressive in terms of commands and orders and “some terrible and/or violent thing will happen to your friend / sister / neighbour if you don’t do this thing”, lots of prickly parts of it that like to make threats to his safety and the safety of the people around him if he attempts to ignore or resist them. so even on good days he’s got this constant background-hum anxiety that if he chooses to disobey something or if he misinterprets a sign or if he steps out of line, his loved ones are going to be punished for it, which is just.............. a lot

a fear of helplessness and a lack of control also factors into it, like, ever since he was very very very small he’s had this idea ingrained that you can do literally everything right and the universe can still squash you like a bug at any second, n he had absolutely no way to even begin processing that in a healthy way so it just manifested in the fact that he pretty much only ever feels safe when he’s accounted for every tiny detail and is following very specific routines and has left as little room as possible for anything unexpected to catch him off guard. he’s got these rules and systems and rituals he clings to ‘cause they offer him some illusion of safety and control even though they kind of........ won’t actually do anything to stop the universe fucking his shit up

Noa’s is................. I’m not sure if “being left behind” really covers it

if we’re talking in a real broad big scale sense, I think it’s a fear of being forgotten or brushed over or not being seen, or more, people refusing to see her? it’s a fear of, like, fighting her hardest to make noise and be seen and the world just completely and utterly turning its back on her. she’s spent a whole lot of her life trying to carve out a space for herself and make her voice heard, n between illness and financial difficulties and a piece of shit dad, she and her mum have struggled to stay afloat in systems that have just consistently, consistently failed them and whose best advice is “just try harder” and “we can’t help you if you don’t help yourself”

and, like, Noa’s very full of rage about it and has made some restless peace with the fact that she has to look out for herself and the people she cares about, because no one in any position of power is gonna throw them a stick, but it’s not something she’s comfortable with and it’s a horribly alienating and frightening experience

n I guess a fear of being left behind does play out on an interpersonal level too, though it’s not really in the same vein as the other stuff? I’ve talked a lot in the past about how she’s resistant to people getting close to her ‘cause she’s got a lot of paranoia and fear and doesn’t wanna be vulnerable, but there’s also just............ a whole lot of impostor syndrome in the friendships she already has, she’s always on some level convinced that she’s somehow tricked people into liking her and one day they’re gonna wake up and realise she’s not all that special or that nice or that fun to be around. I don’t think she really views herself as someone who’s allowed to be loved just for who she is, or that “who she is” is someone who already has value or anything to bring to the table in terms of friendship

Shara’s deepest fear is the idea that there really is Absolutely No Meaning To Any Of This

that the universe is all just chaos with no purpose and no direction, that there are no bigger forces at play, that there’s nothing good and right and loving at the centre of it all, that it’s all just chance and machinery and completely unfeeling

I think one of the main ways she processes the world and is able to feel safe given the collapsing nature of reality is her desperate and adamant belief that There Has To Be An Answer, that it’s all something that can be untangled and solved, and that if she can manage to figure it out then she’ll be able to make some peace with it and things will make sense again

there’s a lot of stuff from her past that she has no real closure for, particularly the loss of one of her close childhood friends as a result of some unfortunate interdimensional fuckery, and she’s still trying to sort out her feelings about it and find a way to live her life in relation to it, she’s still trying to find a way that something so cruel can make sense

Kai has............................ a lot of fear. many many fear. I will not talk about all of it. I will talk about two of it

one of the main ones is this idea that the only reason they try so hard to care so much and help people and have a positive impact on the people around them is because deep down they don’t actually care at all, that they’ve kind of just fooled everyone into thinking they’re a good person when in reality they’re the worst, they’re a liar and a fraud

which is just kind of......... I mean, they’re not really someone who’s ever considered their own mental health at length so they haven’t really got any point of reference for what’s happening to them post-time-loop, which is basically just. panic attacks, dissociative episodes, blacking out for days at a time, not recognising themself in the mirror, feeling completely numb, not even fully convinced that this is even real life. all very understandable reactions to what they’ve just been through

but definitely the thing that hits them the hardest is the fact that they can look at the people they’re supposed to love and care about and just not feel anything at all, which fuckin terrifies them. they spend a lot of time in crisis about it, feeling like they’re an actor trying to play the part of their own life, they’re doing what they think they’re supposed to but they’re just completely disconnected

(they eventually open up to Noa about it in a full breakdown and are like “I’m a terrible person” and she’s just like “you’re traumatised you fucking dumbass let’s get you some therapy”)

and on equal footing to this and one that deserves a mention is the fact that they’ve been psyching themself up to Go Back Home for the past year and then psyching themself out again, repeat x infinity. A Lot Fucking Changed in the years Kai was gone, and their family had a funeral for them and mourned them and had to deal with all the grief and the fallout of losing their sibling / child / family member and their mum broke down in a real bad way and they’ve all spent the past seven years trying to claw their way back to anything resembling a normal life

and Kai is kinda A) unsure whether it would be selfish of them to try and re-enter their lives now, whether it would be disruptive and confusing and more pain than it’s worth given how much work they’ve put into trying to move on and create a new normal and B) fucking terrified that they won’t even know these people anymore because they’ve all changed so much and Kai hasn’t, they’re not going to fit here or be welcome anymore, and that no matter how much they try to return to normal they’re never going to have a home again

and that is just

kind of a :( note to end on but here we are, at the end

thanks for coming to my ted talk?

!!! thank u for reading if you read this far in my rambling please have an excellent night

[heedra]

Exalted Secret Santa Journal: 2020

Apologies for the slight delay! My journal this year is going to be pretty much the same one as last year; I was working on an additional reference but it absolutely got away from me, so I’ll give it more time and save it for next year. Without further ado:

Daia Shan- Serenity Caste Sidereal

Once just a troublesome junior bureaucrat in the halls of Yu-Shan, Daia truly gained infamy upon her selection to accompany a strike team of Exalted heroes on a mission into the depths of the worldbody of the Yozi Oramus, and her subsequent escape and return from that impossible prison, nearly a thousand years later. The experience left her profoundly changed; even now, the spite of Oramus hangs like a mantle around Daia, ensuring that the waking world she fought so hard to return to will never feel like anything more than a dream. And then, of course, there is the matter of the power she took from the Sevenfold Peacock willingly… and how that power might be changing her still.

Daia is a somewhat petite woman, belying an athletic build. She is ethnically from the Blessed Isle, with dark grey hair that she prefers to wear up, usually in a bun or a knot. Her face, which she tries but fails to keep free of stress and worry lines, is usually found bearing a smirk or an expression of dangerous faux-politeness. Her eyes bear the iconic starry blue of the Serenities caste, but are also shot through with bands of a strange prismatic iridescence. She bears a large pair of bull horns atop her head, a mutation received during her time inside the Worldbody. The nature of the power bequeathed to her by Oramus is such, though, that her very nature is beginning to blur around the edges, and it is not unusual for her day-to-day appearance to fluctuate strangely as mutations come and go like glitches. She is a bit of a fashionista, favoring blues, dramatic and sharp femme looks (she avoids ruffles and prefers sleeker outfits), and jewelry of all sorts (a lot of it). She rarely wears the same exact outfit twice, so do not feel obligated to stick to the reference- you can get creative! She wears makeup, but prefers cool colors and an understated application.

Daia’s most important accessory is her longfang, the Sevenfold Peacock’s Tailfeather. Forged from starmetal, orichalcum, and a crystalline shard of Oramic essence, the weapon contains knowledge of every martial arts technique known by every user to have ever wielded it, and seems to hunger for more to the point where its obsession has bled over into Daia herself. Even more potently, it bears deep within its core the secret to a martial art concocted by the Dragon of Not himself, whose charms grant the power to ignore the limits of impossibility at the cost of making the wielder more and more alien to the waking world. It is a temptation that Daia has drunk deep of, despite all signs pointing to that being a very bad idea. Daia sees the spear as a trophy stolen from her greatest nemesis, but it’s very possible the Yozi himself sees it as a clever snare for hubristic Sidereals. The blade of the weapon is prismatic crystal that resembles a jagged bird’s beak, the pole is jet black starmetal shot through with an orichalcum starmap of constellations, and the orichalcum pommel is fashioned to look like seven golden peacock feathers woven together into a sphere.

While her exaltation may brand Daia a chosen of the Maidens, the elder Sid is a loose cannon, an agent of Heaven in only the most general of terms. She is mercurial, theatrical, fond of causing petty chaos, and utterly disinterested in the politics of the Bureau, unless there is way for her to stir up drama. She has tendency to get ahead of herself with her schemes, and the vast majority of her ‘downfalls’ can be traced back to her own hubris. Beneath all that, she is a lonely woman who feels adrift in a world that no longer feels real to her. She’s a terrible flirt, a huge showoff (especially where martial arts are involved) and has a weak spot for dangerous women. She’s Creation’s wildest and worst gay aunt.

Side Note: Daia is partially deaf, due to an old and potent supernatural injury. She employs the use of what magic/technology she can to aid her, but relies as well on sign language and interpreters. She’s very used to it at this point.

here’s the link to a better-resolution version of this image bc tumblr kinda fuckt it

and here’s the link to her toyhouse page, which has further images and info!

________________________________________________________________

Avenging Phoenix- Dawn Caste Solar (Formerly Ravenous Vulture Picks Clean the Bones of Creation, Dusk Caste Abyssal)

Orphaned at an early age, Phoenix was adopted by a Guild mercenary and raised as such. He spent his later mortal life as a city guard captain in Thorns, where he exalted during the fateful siege itself, disillusionment and rage at the circumstances of his death making him an easy recruit for the Mask. His path has weaved far and wide since then, a slow painful crawl from rebellion to eventual redemption; a journey that ultimately gave him a place among the saviors of Creation. Along the way, he played a role in liberating a group of orphaned children from the clutches of the Dowager, and now finds himself settling into the role of an adoptive dad to them, hanging up his metaphorical (and literal) axe and trying to live a gentler life. It’s not always easy. Violence and trauma etched in that deep doesn’t just smooth out perfectly over time. On top of that, he has impostor’s syndrome when it comes to his redemption by the Sun, and still feels uncomfortable thinking of himself as a peer to the other members of the Solar Host. Still, as long as his soul is on this side of Lethe, he is determined to fight against the Void- not because he considers himself antithesis to it, but because he has known it and survived it. And while some days it’s hard, other days it feels like, maybe, fighting against the void can be planting sunflowers for your children on a sunny spring afternoon.

Phoenix is of Western descent, very short, fat, and beefy, with warm brown skin and a round, open face.  He keeps his burgundy hair closely shaved, not fond of dealing with the mess of wavy curls it becomes when allowed to grow out. His eyes are dark brown, almost black, the outside of the iris rimmed with the faintest edge of golden yellow. His nose looks like it has been broken multiple times in the past, and never properly healed. Due to unfortunate wyld misadventures his tongue has been mutated to resemble and function like that of a frog’s, though this is only really apparent when he opens his mouth to use the damn thing. Frogs and toads are a definite motif for him in general- small, grumpy-looking, and round as they are.

Phoenix’s casual clothes tend to be simple, comfortable, loose, and in sharp contrast to his prickly combat garb. He enjoys floral patterns, and the color pink. He’s got a very ‘open hawaiian shirt and flip flops dad’ vibe, basically. He does not dress fancily unless pressed to for big occasions, and in those cases usually grudgingly follows the fashion direction of the one twisting his arm. When he’s on actual exalt business, he’s most frequently found wearing his armor; black jade full plate embellished with cruel-looking spikes, and occasionally a shaggy grey fur cloak made from the pelt of some hunting trophy. A horned skull helm, made from the skull of a nephwrack’s war-body, often completes this ensemble. The helmet is a minor artifact: when worn, it causes his eyes to glow balefully behind its sockets and makes his voice gravelly with deathly menace. He is reluctant to take it off unless he feels at ease in a situation.

Phoenix is somewhat bumbling and gruffly soft-spoken, with tendency to look more tired than he feels. Beneath this is a talent for strategic leadership and a determination that gets fiercer as the going gets tougher. On the battlefield, he is utterly terrifying when he needs to be, but would much prefer to be at home in his garden than on a battlefield these days.

His anima banner starts as burst of gold-and crimson fire that solidifies into the form of a fierce and predatory-looking phoenix, with aspects of a garda bird and a lammergeier both. It moves as he does across the battlefield, swooping and rising with each swing of his axe, its fierce eyes focused on his opponent. Additional refs:

link to his toyhouse page, which has a TON more reference images

what he looked like as an abyssal | his grand grimcleaver looks like this except made outta fiery golden light | rough sketch of his skull helmet

[nerdstrings]

This is a personal ramble.

It’s been twelve months since my spouse moved out.

Twelve months since I laid in my mother’s arms and cried and cried like I was three decades younger. Thirteen months since I went to my two closest lifelong friends and spilled my guts about how things had seemingly gotten better and then suddenly so much worse and I didn’t think we were going to make it. Twenty-three months since I felt completely invisible on Christmas Day. Thirty months since I began seeing three different therapists per week, and couldn’t remember the last time I’d been told I was loved. Thirty-four months since I was locked out of part of my own home for days after having an honest conversation. Three and a half years since I came back from a long trip and was told I hadn’t been missed. Six years since I shared something intensely vulnerable and was walked out on. Nine years since I first felt something wasn’t quite right, but didn’t know what it was.

I miss ten years ago.

Not all of the in-between was actively bad. Actually, very little of it was. It was just that the bad things were so sharp and heartbreaking that they began overshadowing all the things that weren’t.

I went into self-imposed isolation months before COVID-19 drove most other people into quarantine. If 2020 weren’t the year of pandemic, I still would have spent the bulk of it hermited away in a home that didn’t quite feel mine. I curled into my protective shell, I didn’t display my pain to those who intersected my life, I didn’t want to talk about it because I’d already talked ad nauseam for two years straight (see: three different therapists per week). Instead, I invested what energy I had into finding ways to make my living space tolerable, into tending my wounds, into finding out, slowly and carefully, who I was when there was no “other half.”

The message I got, from people whose voices mattered deeply to me, was that I was doing it wrong. At that time, I felt that had to be true. Of course I was doing it wrong. Of course I had done it all wrong, and I was all to blame. If only I’d tried this, if only I’d told them that, if only, if only.

And I’d spent so long with impostor syndrome over knowing myself and being an adult that I actually believed it – for a time.

It’s been twelve months since my spouse moved out, and the paperwork is almost done. The house is almost refinanced, the living room is almost my vision, I almost feel like my own, real, capable person.

Twelve months ago, I couldn’t cook a meal. I lived on cold cereal and packaged microwave dinners and doubt.

Four days ago, I cooked an entire Thanksgiving meal for my small, immediate family. I baked, I sauteed, I mise en place’d, I simmered and reduced, I roasted to perfect temperature, and I did it all while adhering to special dietary needs so nobody was left out of any part of the feast. It was the best meal this house had seen in far more than a single year.

I look at myself from twelve months ago, and I look at myself now, and I did not do it wrong.

The things, the relationships, that these twelve months broke? Maybe they weren’t built on strong enough foundations to begin with. The things I built during these twelve months? Are the things I am proudest of in my entire life to date.

I miss ten years ago, but I wouldn’t do it again.

These last twelve months have been the hardest, and the most satisfying. I would do them again.

Part of me is spitefully angry about that. Because, twelve months ago, he told me he just wanted me to be happy. There was so much more than that, so many reasons and so high a pile of issues and bullshit, but that was the thing that made me the most angry, because fuck you for thinking the pain of these twelve months would make me happy. Fuck you for only focusing on one single thing out of the pile and making that your lynchpin. Fuck you for putting me in the position of either having, or having not, while I stared helplessly at both options and saw nothing but loss in every facet. Fuck you for making the call, and then telling me it had actually been in my court all along, even though you’d taken the ball and left. Fuck you for thinking I’d be happier without you.

Fuck you. I am.

[hiddeningrid]

ok just like that, i am no longer on the medication. god. god god god. i almost puked and passed out this morning. plus all the heart palpitations and cold sweats and literal brain death where i was just staring at the wall, the nausea, rash, shaking hands, vertigo. and then the whole thing where it was like my nervous system had become a cockpit where a cat was just meandering around, turning things on and off, knocking shit down. it was literally just all over the place, cold spots, dizziness, numbness, buzzing under the skin, bright stinging pain, burning pain, like beep beep boop boop somebody is freestyling my nervous system and i don’t have the dj’s number. at night i got this burning pain in my ribcage just from breathing? laying on the floor made my brain literally bop with my heart beat. and then i’d have pulling sensations and everything like, it was like my entire body’s wires were faulty.

i’m unsure if it actually did something to the pain in my hand or if it’s just a coincidence that the pain lessened considerably the days that i was on the meds. it didn’t eliminate the face pain or tooth pain which is what it’s supposed to target. so ???

i don’t know. i guess the neurologist will be able to shed a light. maybe they’ll be like, let’s put you on this medication again. i dunno, i found the side effects so hard to deal with and freaked out when i just literally spent 3-4 hours laying on my bed this morning while my body had apparently unbeknownst to me been tossed into the ocean. but it wasn’t as bad as those other meds, since i didn’t actually puke. gold star! the side effects should maybe perhaps lessen in like a week or so but im really unsure how im gonna be able to be on them for a week? maybe im a baby but i threw in the towel since im home alone and dont want to like, faint and puke and if im unable to feed myself or shower myself i will probably be in pretty bad shape soon.

i don’t know what’s going to happen to me next. it’s suddenly struck me that i am kind of really sick? like pretty seriously sick. like i mean i’ve known that i am, but since i have to hide and skulk in the shadows so much i just pretend that i’m a lazy normal person. but i have a pretty serious complicated pain disorder and pretty serious nerve pain and like. it’s real and i’m on some serious medications for probably a long ass time once they find something that works with me. how did this become my life? and i’m just running away from it and ashamed of it. like i’m ashamed to go to the neurologist and don’t feel like i should even go? like i’m not worthy of treatment, of getting better? underneath all this shit and filth of being sick i just feel like i am fine and there’s a lot of people who are actually sick and i’m just a bad, fake sick person. hello impostor syndrome, i am an impostor sick.

well to happier thoughts, i read through the possible side effects for the meds and it was like the War and Peace of side effects. like literally, the “serious side effects“ part was like one a4 long hahaha, and the “all side effects” was like 1,5x that. they had “don’t drink grapejuice“ like three times, THREE TIMES on there and they wrote it in all-caps at one point. DON’T DRINK GRAPEJUICE. and apparently the meds can trigger psychosis. and cuts in your genitals, which was like a VERY BAD STOP IMMEDIATELY thing. well many of them were like that. i didn’t even read all of it since i just got to the “if you pass out, stop taking the medication and consult your doctor immediately“-bit and it was... there was just too much on there.

[thepen-andtheink-mari]

“BIOPIC OF A LOST CAUSE.”

This is the introduction to the reconfiguration of my individuality. A collection of some of the rawest, most horrifyingly candid moments of my growing up, to then further branch out into my most prominent moments of ruin. It’s me, but isn’t really me. The animosity of the protagonist is there to incorporate the loss of youth, the cognitive dissonance, the impostor syndrome; the overall calamity brought upon my own sense of self. It’s there to force you to submit to the pain tethering you to your life, as mine. It’s a collective suffering, to help you not feel so alone.

PRE-LOGUE:

‘HATE ISN’T A STRONG ENOUGH WORD.’

I stare blankly at the pages that sat in front of me, the pencil I had in my hand would be screaming out in agony from the crushing pressure of my hand, had it been alive. My foot taps incessantly against the floor, my blood boiling as I’m sat across from both of my parents at the dining table. My Qu’ran practice books, sitting there perfectly in line with each other, are staring back at me, taunting me with the lies I knew them to have held.  The very same lies my parents had been blinded and tantalized by. Though, I never was one to blame my parents for their beliefs. Never would I decide to shame anyone for their own deep-rooted belief system, least of all my parents, despite all the pain they may have caused me over the years. 

And that’s the weird thing about abuse, no matter how intolerant I may be about certain aspects of the way my parents have treated me throughout the years, it’s hard for me to fully hate them.

Little things tend to pile up as I become insufferable to the feeling of having them fester in the back of my mind, no matter how much I may try to shove them into tiny little boxes that are never to see the light of day again. It’s inescapable. 

It’s hard to hate them for what they did. It’s hard to hate them for letting everyone get in my head about all the supposed “ease and utter happiness” that should’ve come with giving my all to something that I can’t even remember if I genuinely believed in the first place. I hate the way they manipulated me into thinking that I could never be anything but what they raised me to be. I hate the way they micromanaged every single moment of my life, keeping me from ever being able to be who I really wanted, or at very least, thought I could be while growing up. Taking away my youth from me the very moment I was born, as though it was never mine to begin with. I hate the way I was never allowed to have problems of my own within my life, how I had to separate them from the view of my parents to keep them stress-free. Because to them, the question of “what kind of havoc could be wreaked upon our lives by a child mentioning they feel sad, and who wants their parents’ comfort to ease them?” had only one answer. “Force the kid to solve everyone else’s problems, never giving them the opportunity to take care of themselves to distract them from the made-up “noise” within their mind that they claim to suffer because of.” I hate that I had to live my life as a different person in their presence, the real me never having been able to live up to their binary standard of living. In the end, I gave up fighting, forcing myself to conform to their wishes every single second, every single day, of every single year. Until infinity reached its end. 

They were supposed to be the most important people in the world to me, the ones I wanted to share all of my life with; what kid wants to grow up living their life hidden away from the ones that gave it to them in the first place? I realized early on that I hated everything they did to me, but I still can’t find a way to stop loving them. 

The sound of fingers snapping in front of my eyes brings me back to the present. I see my parents still sitting across from me at the dining table, the books still splayed in front of me perfectly, because if they were in any other position, I’d be clawing my hair out from the roots in a frenzy. 

“Honey, are you paying attention?” my mother’s voice rings through my ears, her concerned expression makes me feel nauseous. Just looking into her eyes sent me into a rage-infused frenzy, it felt like my insides were shriveled up. 

The lingering feeling of the bruise she left above my left eye from the belt she whipped across my face earlier from when I made the mistake of telling her I still hadn’t finished my homework gnaws away at my skin. The bandages on my knees hiding the cuts from when my father threw me into the broken glass that I accidentally let slip from my hand during dinner last night was rubbing against the pajamas I wore, the sensation becoming unbearable as I was just itching to scratch at my skin until it was unrecognizable, but not in an attempt to relieve myself from the itch. 

“I just wanna see if it’ll hurt even more than the pain…” I mumbled under my breath, a dopey smile graced my face as my mind ventured back into the depths of the abyss held within it. 

“What did you say?” my father questioned, I instantly jolted back to reality, clearing my throat, letting a quiet “nothing” slip past my lips in a sad attempt to hide what I just said. Thankfully my father was as clueless as they come, the fatal attempt triggering nothing more than a lecture to begin about how I need to “learn to speak up, no one is bound to take me seriously if I can’t even form a coherent sentence.” 

I tuned him out, the second I did the world had a feathered touch against the edges, I couldn’t tell what was and wasn’t real anymore. I couldn’t make anything out with my wavering eyes other than my trembling hands. One question was running through my mind, 

“what the hell is wrong with me?”

[sixfeetunderisntgoodenough]

Self-sabotage. An interesting topic. Trying to think about this with a clear head when I allowed myself to numb out is a hard feat, but I at least owe that to you. So why do we as humans sabotage? It stems from a sense of fear. A lot of fear. I’m scared one day you’re going to get to know the real me and find out I’m not who you thought I was, or that you don’t want who I truly am. Yep, there’s that impostor syndrome. You’re going to see I’m not as smart or deep or as enlightened as you thought, and you’ll move on. Or you’ll see I’m way more broken than you thought, which I don’t even know if that’s possible because at this point I’ve shown you I’m pretty fucking stupid. This fear drives a need for control; if I can control the narrative I can mitigate the rejection and the hurt. You can’t reject me or tell me you don’t love me, if I tell you first that this isn’t going to work. But that’s not fair to you. Not only does that take away your say in the matter as a human being with feelings, it hurts you too. I’m sure my view of myself is skewed in comparison to how you see me, and the value I have. And I don’t want to hurt you. I just want you to get the best, and that’s not me. There’s no way I’m the best this world has to offer you. You’re so smart, with so much emotionally intelligence, and the capability of your mind is crazy. Your potential is outrageous, you need someone who can help develop that. I don’t want to hold you back or be a disappointment. Oh wow. I typed that and it hit me, I don’t want to be a disappointment. I don’t want you to look at me and regret the choice you made. I’m terrified of that. So instead I guess it seemed easier to sit here and try and blow things up in my own face. Because I guess if I can see it coming then it won’t hurt as bad? I think that was my logic but it doesn’t seem too logical now. Because I can’t feel at the moment, but I know as soon as I can that I will deeply regret this action. And I think that’s the thing. No one really talks about that aspect of self-sabotage. You think you’re saving yourself pain, but you’re not. Not only do you have that pain, but then you have the added guilt to carry around from doing this to yourself and the person you care about. So it doesn’t really work out like you want it to in the end. Being out of control is very hard for me. And the way I feel about you, I don’t have a lot of control over. That scares me. But I don’t want to lose that either. And now here I am, worried that my self-destructive tendencies are going to take the one thing that brings a little happiness away from me. I don’t get to make decisions for others. It’s not my place. I don’t get to decide. If I’m sitting here and I know I love you and I don’t want to lose this, I should let you have the same ability to decide that for yourself. I’m sorry. I know it sucks. I know dealing with this isn’t fun, I wouldn’t want to deal with it if I were you. Oop, there I go again though. If you tell me I’m worth your time and energy, I should believe that. You don’t lie to me, so I should trust that like I do everything else you tell me. That may have changed after tonight, who knows. I hope not.

[infpisme]

10 Life-Changing Pieces Of Advice For Empaths And Highly Sensitive People

“And those who were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.” ― Nietzsche

Highly sensitive people are too often perceived as weak or broken.  But to feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the characteristic of a truly alive and compassionate human being.  It is not the sensitive person who is broken, it is society’s understanding that has become dysfunctional and emotionally incapacitated.  There is zero shame in expressing your authentic feelings.  Those who are at times described as being ‘too emotional’ or ‘complicated’ are the very fabric of what keeps the dream alive for a more thoughtful, caring, humane world.  Never be ashamed to let your feelings, smiles and tears shine a light in this world.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, because it can be so confusing, right? … Why you get overwhelmed by run-of-the-mill tasks that others take in stride.  Why you mull over slights that ought to be forgotten.  Why subtleties are magnified for you and yet lost on others.

It’s like you were born missing a protective layer of skin that others seem to have.

You try to hide it.  Numb it.  Tune it out.  But the comments still pierce your armor: “You’re overthinking things.  You’re too sensitive.  Toughen up!”

You’re left wondering what on earth is wrong with you.

I know, because I was in my mid-40s when I stumbled across the term ‘highly sensitive people.’  This led me to discover how delicious it feels to be one of thousands saying, “You do that?  Me too!”

Since then, I’ve learned that many sensitive people feel isolated from others.  They feel misunderstood and different, and they usually don’t know why.  They just don’t realize that they have a simple trait that explains their confusing array of symptoms and quirks.

There’s even a scientific term for it: Sensory Processing Sensitivity.  Dr. Elaine Aron, a psychotherapist and researcher, estimates that 15-20% of people have nervous systems that process stimuli intensely.  They think deeply.  They feel deeply (physically and emotionally).  They easily become over-stimulated.

According to my research several successful historical figures were highly sensitive, such as Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, and Steve Jobs.  I see this as great news, because it means us sensitive types aren’t inherently disadvantaged.

But when we don’t realize how to handle our sensitivity, we end up pushing too hard to keep up with everyone else.  We try to do what others seem to handle with ease, and try to do it better than them.  And this leads to problems.

For a time, we do a first-rate job of using our natural gifts: we’re creative students, conscientious employees, and devoted family members.  But when we hammer on beyond our limits, doing so can eventually take its toll.  It shows up in things like unrelenting health conditions, muscle tension we can’t get rid of, and being endlessly fatigued or on edge for no good reason.

If you resonate with any of this, here are 10 actions you can take to stop struggling and start thriving:

1. Quit searching for someone or something to fix you.

Sensitivity is a temperament trait, not a medical disorder.  So nothing is inherently wrong with you.  Sadly, though, many certified health practitioners don’t understand this because sensory processing sensitivity is a recent area of health research.

Sure, highly sensitive people are more likely to have allergies or sensitivities to food, chemicals, medication, and so forth.  And they’re more prone to overstimulation, thus quicker to feel stress — which can lead to other health issues.  But sensitivity in itself is not something that needs fixing.

Successful sensitive types realize that they’re not “broken.”  If your mind is exhausted from busily researching yet another solution to take away your “flaws,” know that the answers to living in harmony with your sensitive nature lie inside you.

2. Tell yourself, as often as necessary, that you are not a fraud.

Impostor syndrome isn’t exclusive to highly sensitive people.  Many conscientious and high achieving people fall victim to this nagging fear.  But the simmering discomfort about being found out is often constant for a sensitive person.

Why wouldn’t it be, considering you’ve spent a lifetime of feeling different from others and trying to fit in?  Maybe you blame your tears on dust in your eye during that cheesy TV commercial; or you sign up for the company fun run, even though you hate running and you know you’ll feel ashamed of how long your body takes to recover.  But even if you grew up displaying your sensitivity with pride, it’s unlikely you escaped the cultural pressure motivating you to disguise your real self to fit the norms.

Successful sensitive types respect that their nervous systems are wired differently from 80-85% of people.  If you’re constantly thinking about who you should be but aren’t, and what you should be doing but can’t, understand that valuing your achievements and signature strengths allows you to show yourself as you truly are, more comfortably — even when you’re the odd one out.

3. Seek out kindred spirits (and know that you are NOT alone).

You probably feel different and alone.  But the truth is, you’re not.  Many have experienced confusion in isolation before discovering that hordes of people have some idea of what it’s like to be you.  They’ve felt the surge of power that comes from being supported by like-minded souls.  And they want to pay it forward.

The key whenever possible is to hang out with sensitive people who are already flourishing, or at least open to those possibilities.  They understand not only how to manage their sensitivity, but also how to wield its superpowers.  They know what it’s like for you to feel endlessly under siege, and they can offer firsthand experience and wisdom to help you make your sensitivities work in your favor.

Successful sensitive types appreciate and relish the strengths of sensitivity, in themselves and others.  If you’re feeling unsupported or misunderstood, find a sensitively knowledgeable coach, mentor, or community who gets you … and nurture that connection.

4. Look for the hidden positivity in every situation and soak it up.

The brain is a powerful filter that molds experiences and perceptions of reality.  If you think the world is a dangerous place, your brain is wired to hunt for evidence of danger.  If you believe it’s a loving place, you spot more loving opportunities.  What you focus on, you get more of.

As a highly sensitive person, the more negative the environment, the more you suffer.  But the opposite is also true — the more positive, the more you thrive (even compared to others).

Thoughts are stimuli for your nervous system.  One of the most important things a sensitive person can do is acknowledge the negative (not ignore it — because what you resist, persists), but then let it go… immerse yourself in positive thoughts and situations that make you feel good, or at least give you a soothing sense of relief.

Successful sensitive types decide to see the world brimming with opportunities to feel grateful for, and to marinate in that positive vibe.  If you’re feeling at the mercy of your emotions and circumstances, understand that your thoughts (and the emotional charges they trigger) are always within your control.

5. Find new spins on old flaws.

Your gifts of sensitivity include deep reflection and an instinct to see all angles and consequences.  But by being so deeply tuned into details, you’re easily overwhelmed and exhausted by unyielding stimulation.  And when you don’t understand why you feel and behave in the ways you do, it’s easy to frame these as flaws.

In truth, these “weaknesses” are simply your unmet needs and unique gifts to nourish.  In reframing your past and nurturing your present, you set yourself up for success in your future.

Successful sensitive types rethink old perceptions in light of their deeper understandings of sensitivity.  If you’re weighed down by the hypersensitive and neglected (even, despised) parts of yourself, seek to discover the other side of the coin … where you’ll find some of your greatest strengths: intuition, vision, conscientiousness — and the list goes on.

6. Treat yourself with compassion.

As a highly sensitive person you are deeply compassionate.  So much so that putting others’ comfort and needs before your own is second nature.  On top of that, you’re often your own biggest critic.  You push yourself hard, and then you beat up on yourself when you miss the mark.  You criticize yourself in ways you’d never dream of judging others.

Controlling your nagging inner critic is essential to self-compassion.  But contrary to popular belief, you shouldn’t do so by relentlessly ignoring it.  Deep thinking is one of your gifts, so why not embrace that power?  Take control by hearing your thoughts without judgment (after all, there might be gems of wisdom hidden deep) and then pivoting to thoughts that trigger kinder and more loving emotions in your body.  From that better-feeling place, you’re better able to choose actions to care for yourself and others.

Successful sensitive types show themselves the same loving compassion that they’re naturally good at giving others.  It may feel selfish or vain at first, but it’s not.  If your critical inner voice is devaluing who you are, answer back with self-kindness … this is the antidote.

7. Create healthy boundaries, not rigid emotional walls.

We live in a culture that values “take a painkiller and push on” far more than it values sensitivity.  We grow up hearing: “no pain, no gain; survival of the fittest; life isn’t fair — get used to it.”  We admire those who show grit to prevail over their terrible plights.

As a highly sensitive person your reflex reaction may be to freeze up or struggle to toughen up.  You build walls to shield yourself from hurt …  Emotional walls, such as suppressing feelings or creating dramatic turmoil to distract from the real causes of pain.  Physical walls, such as piling on layers of weight to hide behind.  Mental walls, such as tuning out with alcohol or drugs.

Or, you may let all your boundaries collapse at once, thereby unconsciously absorbing others’ energies and feeling devoured by unpredictable events and emotions.  You try to escape the feelings by getting caught up in overthinking everything: endlessly planning and searching and analyzing, while completely losing touch with your intuition.  And in the process you confuse conscientiousness with overwork, empathy with over-identification, compassion with over-tolerance.  So you beat yourself up about how you know you should have better boundaries.  It’s a vicious cycle.

Successful sensitive types embody gentle but firm personal boundaries.  If you struggle to put your own needs first (which doesn’t come naturally to a highly sensitive person), make a conscious choice to practice the skill of saying “no” with love and grace, or carving out alone time to recharge … and decide to feel good about that.

8. Tune in to your body (to avoid seesawing between emotional extremes).

Many highly sensitive people learn to ignore the messages their bodies are sending them.  They switch it off to avoid overwhelm or they tune in to others’ needs instead of their own to meet what’s expected of them.  Does this sound familiar?

Doing so leaves you swinging like a pendulum.  Too much, too little.  Too fast, too slow.  Too in, too out.  Back and forth between being over-stimulated and mind-numbingly bored, dieting and then bingeing, or exercising hard and then needing several days to recover.  And so on and so forth.

Successful sensitive types tune in to the physical sensations in their bodies; they accept that it’s not always comfortable, but they trust their bodies to guide them.  If you have a habit of hiding from feelings or passing the point of overwhelm, learn to recognize your body’s subtle signs of overstimulation.  You’ll spend less time being thrown out of balance, and more time swaying gently within your nervous system’s range of optimal arousal.

9. Design healthy habits that fit your unique needs.

Eventually, it all catches up with you.  Grueling hours at work, followed by hard sweat at the gym and keeping on top of chaos around home — all fueled by crappy diets and minimal sleep or downtime.  It’s an easy trap to fall into because you’re simply living the way you see most people get by on.

What’s more, some seemingly healthy habits hit hard on a sensitive nervous system — like “health” foods that are heavily processed and pumped with sugar and artificial additives, or intense exercise that’s not balanced with ample recovery time. If you allow too much stimulation and too lousy replenishment, you run the risk of chronic illnesses (as many sensitive types have learned the hard way).  At the same time, if you overprotect yourself, your genius goes unexpressed, and that also can lead to stress and ill health.

Successful sensitive types practice habits that truly nourish them.  If you struggle with energy or well-being issues, prioritize habits that nurture these areas of your life (such as more sleep and alone time), and limit those that over-stimulate or drain you (such as too many high pressures activities — even if they are so-called healthy).

10. Stop smothering your sensitivity.

After a lifetime of being bombarded by stimuli, it becomes second nature to push sensitivity out of the conscious awareness.  Tuning out from relentless sensations, for example, so you can pretend you don’t give a darn.  Toning down intense feelings (good and bad) so you aren’t on a roller coaster.  Suppressing emotions to get a break from feeling anything at all.

This self-protective mechanism might fool your conscious mind, but it doesn’t fool your sensitive body.  This oozes into your health, your relationships, your career, every aspect of your life … or, it builds tension inside until something has to give.

Successful sensitive types let go of the grasp for control.  When you free the energy used to hold yourself tight, you free the gifts of sensitivity that have been lost to you: empathy, creativity, and heightened joy, to name a few.  And you allow your true potential to blossom.

By MarcAndAngel