#loneliness crisis

[susanoos-wife]

A lot of people need to learn this:

[susanoos-wife]

I think it largely depends on what you mean by loneliness. If you're only talking about loneliness in the context of romantic/sexual relationships, then men are far lonelier than women, since men express much more desire for romantic/sexual relationships than women do and complain a lot more when they can't get romantic/sexual relationships than women do. This is likely un-fixable by nature, as men generally have a higher sex drive than women do thanks to testosterone and thus the two sexes will never really be able to see eye to eye on that subject.

If you're talking about all types of loneliness, however, including platonic relationships, that's pretty much equal between men and women, and there are always going to be people who want to have friends/want to have more friends/want to have better friendships but are unable to have those things. This problem is easier to fix, but still very difficult, and not everyone will be able to fulfill all their emotional needs regarding platonic relationships either.

Either way, there definitely is a loneliness issue in modern society and fixing the various causes of the problem will be difficult at best and even in the absolute best case scenario, there will still be people who will be unable to form the kinds of relationships they want to have. Ideally, however, it's in all of our best interest that we do what we can as a society to make it as easy to meet other people as possible and then from there give people the freedom to interact with each other however they wish so long as they don't break any laws or purposefully hurt other people.

i find the term "male loneliness crisis" kind of galling because like i think its likely that people are lonelier than they used to be but see no reason to think this affects men more than women

[gilly-moon]

I would do anything for him

[rowanellis]

video essay: female loneliness and the catch-up friendship crisis

"I kept seeing conversations about friendship in crisis everywhere. Articles about the effect of COVID on friendships, the subgenre of “I have no friends” youtube videos, the panic of men’s loneliness and mental health, the lack of “third spaces” to spend time socializing, TikToks of girls openly crying because no one showed up to their birthday dinner... In this video we are going to dive beneath the surface to see what lurks below, in the hopes of discovering why so many of us feel so alone in a world that has never been more connected - and maybe figure out what we might be able to do to fix it.

[madthehatter]

I don't know how to exist. I don't know how to live.

[the-greatest-fool]

Plan for fighting the loneliness crisis, saving pluralism and liberalism, and reigniting the spirit of democracy: more parties (maybe less drinking, though *I* certainly like it), more sports, more concerts, more volunteering, more churches even.

We need to bring back the sense of common good and social bonding with our horizontal neighbors, no matter their background. Maybe then we’ll start inculcate an ethic of community again.

Do whatever it takes to make people have fun with people again, send tweet.

not even as a joke i think we should be encouraging partying for the sake of public health. like it is exercise it's community it's socialization it's mindful it's present it gets people off their phones and tuned in to each other.. we all need to go out

[zahri-melitor]

Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths:

I finished working my way through this as an event, and I've got to say that DC can't decide what it wants to do with the Multiverse. We've just gone from restoring the 52 Earths (Mostly around Convergence/Multiversity) to discovering the Dark Multiverse (Dark Nights: Metal, 2017), to rebooting the Multiverse at the end of Dark Nights: Death Metal to form the Omniverse (2020), but also restrict things back to 52 Earths only, to rediscovering Infinite Earths in Dark Crisis (2022), to the conclusion of Absolute Power being "we have once again cut off the Multiverse, but now we're going hard for Elseworlds instead" (2024). Make up your minds! Do you want to use the multiverse or not??? Please stop switching it up every 2 years!

Okay that rant aside, this is yet another event that cares very deeply about plot points and characters from COIE that have barely been seen in the intervening 36 years (and generally only in other events that reference COIE heavily). I don't have any emotional attachment to Pariah and the Anti-Monitor.

Structurally, it was an interesting event, in that there were about 4.5 plots going on.

Plot 1: the Justice League get trapped on dreamstate Earths born out of their subconscious wishes. In terms of commentary, Barry trapping himself in a 1950s comic book, Clark wanting to raise Jon (on the farm, with literally no other heroes from the Superfamily around), and J'onn J'onzz creating a future where he's merged humans with cephalopods/octopus so that they're psychic were probably the most interesting of the lot. Barry proves once again he's disconnected from the present, Clark is obsessing over his loss of Jon's childhood at the expense of everyone else, and J'onn...is once again mourning the loss of his culture and looking for a way to feel less disconnected from Earth. Still not quite turning into the sands of Mars tho boyo. Blah blah the League are feeling they're not communicating properly, they need to take a break and focus on themselves.

Plot 1.5: The Flashfam go to extract Barry and work out WTF is going on because they're the most reliable multiverse jumpers, and the Lanterns recruit everyone as bodies are needed (as all the heavy hitters are as stated trapped in dreamstate Earths).

Plot 2: Jon Kent forms the most underskilled novice Justice League since the early 1990s that largely consists of the latest legacies of various families, getting some direction from Black Adam. Their collective experience as superheroes MIGHT total 20 years active, and if it makes that it's because Booster and Ted are supplying most of that experience.

I am underwhelmed by this team, to put it mildly. There's a lot of "I need to be Superman as my father isn't here!" from Jon, and a lot of boring "Damian grows up to be Batman" foreshadowing where Damian outright insults people a lot, and Yara looks confused and irritated over why she's hanging out with them both. Jackson's trying his hardest, bless his heart, but because nobody really cares much about the Aquas they get that bit of the plot out of the way early on. I'm not sold on what this lot were actually trying to accomplish, despite once again being presented at the future of the DCU.

Plot 3: Dick and the Titans realise they have to step up to actually take leadership, because as noted Jon Kent's Justice League is out there competing with Justice League: Task Force days of "there are four warm bodies here, and only half of them are under the age of 18, we're good to go right?" for level of threat defence. Also Slade's busy trying to kill both Dick and Gar because he can something something dark forces corrupting him mad about Grant's death for the 87th time blah.

Plot 4: Young Justice get kidnapped into a further separate reality to keep them out of the way while the two generations on either side of them try to step up to leadership, and have a bunch of angst about being left out/left behind (I am going to discuss this separately. Spoilers: I thought it was one of the most interesting parts of this event).

My general impression of the entire event was the intended purpose was to showcase both Dick and Jon's leadership abilities. I think it achieved this, but not necessarily in the hoped for way. Dick showcased once again why he is the centrally trusted character of the DCU and can convince everyone and anyone to follow him. Jon showcased that he is absolutely not a leader, he needs to stop thinking that he is required to fill Clark's shoes, and DC need to stop trying to make it happen.

The bit where I most started rolling my eyes is when they decided that Jon Kent, half-Kryptonian powered by sunlight, from a species famously incredibly vulnerable to magic, needed to lead the team going into the magical pure darkness/demon dimension that has no sunlight "because his connection to the sun protects him". Jon's biggest weakness not starting with K is magic. So let's put him in a dimension consisting of magic and have him have to survive off the power of his sunlight...which he immediately wastes and burns off a lot of power by trying to fly. Power that he can't recover, because he's in said dark demon dimension with no sunlight.

Jon, sweetheart, you are not the brightest bulb.

My second biggest eyeroll was meeting Red Canary, Sienna, who accomplished exactly nothing when she accidentally got caught up in Damian's strikeforce that otherwise consisted of "a teleporter for travel, Peegee for her experience with the Cosmic Tuning Fork, and Dr Light because Kimiyo is both COIE linked AND has strong light based powers to fix the situation". I am still unsure of what the point of Red Canary being there was, because she mostly just snarked with Damian and got into trouble. Even if she was intended to eventually be revealed to be Sin Lance with memory problems or something she was not a convincing character.

The Flash storyline in and of itself was fun, but I'd actually already read it when I was reading through Adams' Flash run. It worked just fine in context of the event and it worked as a tie-in where you just skimmed over the event. Adams' Flash run is very entertaining.

As far as DC big summer events go, this one felt more about 'we want to reach these end conditions' (Justice League disbanded for a while, Justice Society of America back, Titans to step up as the headline team) than the actual content of the event itself. It was an event for the sake of having an event, you know?

I dunno. Maybe I would have cared more if I'd actually read COIE, but it felt derivative and like there was a lot of time wasting for the sake of referencing specific things that happened in COIE, whether or not they made sense for this storyline.

Oh and as a note, one other useful thing this event did do was specify that Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is supposed to be in continuity for Kara, and basically contemporaneously too.

[imaginesyphilishappy]

and what if I told you that the world's most powerful people have, near the top of their agenda, the goal of making you more individualistic and lonely?

people who are lonely and isolated have their own netflix accounts, cars, insurance policies, internet plans, etc. and are much more likely to grab fast food, starbucks, etc. They are more likely to buy gadgets to entertain themselves and are less likely to share these with others. Individualism leads straight to mass consumerism which leads to corporate profits at the expense of us and the planet

[wanderingmind867]

I feel like I'm even more sad and angry and existential lately. And I'm blaming my birthday for that. I turn 20 in February. 20! That doesn't feel right! I don't know if it will for a while! It feels like the past two or three years have all been a blur! My mom died! I learned I had to graduate high school! I had to do this and this and this, and it all felt like a series of snowballs hitting me, and merging to become one giant avalanche of stress.

I then had to deal with yet more stress. This year is almost definitely my last year for High School and the online Social Skills Class, which is almost agonizing. I still haven't managed to make any real friends from the class (besides maybe the teachers), because I never kept in touch with anyone. Now I'm nearly 20 with no friends. All my brain wants to do is make me worry about this still being a problem for years, which is great. I also worry college will be so different that I won't be able to handle it. And if I can't handle it, that means no more school for me ever again. And my brain can't cope with that either.

On top of all this, my dad keeps texting someone. And then he randomly asks me if i'm okay with him dating again. And like, what am I supposed to say!? No? Should I be the jerk who deprives their father of happiness? Or should I make myself deal with all this, when even thinking about it sends my mind into a tailspin of thoughts? I don't know. But my dad keeps randomly bringing it up, and then I accidentally saw some sexual stuff on his phone's search history. And that made me think about stuff I didn't want to think about. So that was great too.

And just to be clear, I'm not depressed 24/7. It's been a bit more frequent lately, and my stress does seem stronger than usual some days. But I still have happy moments, and calm moments. They're just…they usually end up feeling less memorable then my stressful moments and my sad moments. Maybe that's a bad thing, but it's just a simple fact. sigh…

[strayheartless]

When you go quiet I hate myself:

**title credit to Dodie Clark’s song “hate myself”**

*****

Wanting to be left alone was all fun and games until you didn’t want to be alone anymore. Cloud knew this intimately. Being alone meant safety. It meant there was no possible way he could say the wrong thing, or be too blunt. He couldn’t upset someone with his resting face, nor could he make someone cry by telling them he really didn’t care.

He didn’t do it to be mean. He did it to be honest. Kindness wasn’t a foreign concept to him, but it was hard to master. Nobody gave you a book on how not to be an asshole. Nobody told you “hey, here’s all the rules you need to know in order to survive social interaction!”

No, you were simply thrust into it, naked and newborn and you just had to cope. He understood survival of the fittest, but he was not the fittest and he sure as shit wasn’t surviving. He just… was.

Maybe he’s feeling like this because it’s the first time Zack has been away since they started being friends. Maybe it’s because everyone else in the barracks went out for a drink and he hadn’t been invited. Regardless of the fact that he would have said no… he still felt the tang of rejection like breathing in air freshener just after it’s been sprayed. Nasty and bitter but oddly exactly like it smells.

He’d been asked before and he’d always said no. Of course they would stop asking eventually. It was just common sense. He’d done this to himself. He was the reason he currently felt so cripplingly alone. He just had to suck it up and get on with it.

Cloud rolls over and checks his phone again. Nothing.

Zack had said that he wasn’t likely to be on a non contact mission but so far it had been radio silence from the one person who always met Cloud in the middle. It was killing him, and he knew why… he just wasn’t willing to admit it yet.

Zack had given him his girlfriends number. He’d said she would be happy to keep him company while he was away. He’d said she had been keen to meet him even.

Zack was an oblivious fool.

Cloud was sure Aerith was quite lovely. Zack painted her to be Midgar’s sweetheart, and Clouds sure she was just fine… but he was also sure he’d be rude to her on purpose. All because she had the one thing he wanted and that wasn’t fair to her.

It wasn’t Aerith’s fault Cloud fell in love with someone so out of bounds it was ridiculous. Dark hair, exceedingly kind, willing to put up with his moody bullshit? Yeah Cloud was aware he had a type.

That type just happened to always be off limits. With Tifa it had been the fact that she was the towns only girl and therefore she was hoarded like gold by the boys she played with and the parents who had labelled him a problem. With Zack it was because he was straight and an idiot.

A gorgeous idiot… but an idiot never the less.

Zack had given Cloud a colour pallet with which to paint the world by and Cloud had realised too late that he could only access it when Zack was here. Being friends was fine, but the never ending torture of hearing him be in love was maddening. The constant reminder from everyone around him that he was terribly, awfully, chronically, terminally alone was agony.

But Cloud liked being alone, he always had. Being alone meant nobody could hate you for being you. Being alone meant that you controlled the quiet and the game and the rate at which things happened to you.

Being alone meant deafening silence and the knowledge that you still felt like a fucking child.

He’s aware he’s only twenty one. He’s aware that there will be time for relationships and life plans and families if he wants one.

He’s also aware that Denny in dorm C had just had a baby with his girlfriend. That Kai in his dorm had asked his girl to marry him. He was aware that people were sleeping with eachother casually and that even the underground queer community within the troops were going to the honey bee on weekends for drag shows and mixers.

He knows that he’d bypassed the pride parade for three years now because that many people all making noise in bright colours was Clouds idea of actual hell. He’s aware that even being bisexual, he’s still on the outside of the crowd. He’s never known what the in crowd looks like and he thought it was fine.

But now he aches. He aches so much he feels physically paralysed by it. Lying in his bunk staring at his phone and begging Zack to just… send a thumbs up. Anything to let him know he’s at least important enough to warrant remembering.

The phone stays silent.

Cloud pushes it off of the bed and turns over.

He pulls the covers over his head and feels the need to cry but it won’t happen. It never does.

He slams his head back on the matress, but it doesn’t hurt or even make him feel better. So he growls in fustration, shoves his head under his pillow and digs his nails into his scalp.

He tries to sleep but it is disturbed and full of anxiety and pain. Eventually he just pretends with his eyes closed and his head stuffy and numb.

He doesn’t see the text flash through from Zack. He doesn’t know that Aerith is wondering if she should make the first move.

‘Hi buddy, miss you tons. Gonna be back in a few days. How are you? Aerith said you haven’t text? No pressure man, I just worry your isolating yourself again. Call me when you see this?’

[phoenixcatch7]

Various headcanons about sephiroth that come from someone who does not know enough about ff7 to have any sort of credible opinion:

He got artificially aged a couple years as a kid. This lines up with hojos astoundingly selfish, cruel, results oriented modus operandi. It gets results faster and means he doesn't have to deal with an infant/toddler for the usual years. It's said in some ff7 encyclopedia that he was on the front lines before he was ten, but his mind and body in ever crisis do not reflect that. And I SINCERELY doubt even propaganda fed soldiers would accept a nine year old in a war zone. That and he's the youngest of the 1st trinity, with them being very young adults, but looks fully matured (if with the face of someone who's never had a single spot ever lol).

His hair isn't normal. There's no way that's just normal keratin it simply isn't. I don't know what it is but it's as weird as the rest of him. Maybe it's like polar bear fur and suuuuper thick but hollow like bird feathers. Did you know their skin is pure black?? Do you think his hair reflects rainbows in the right light like glass tubes???

Speaking of his hair he probably started growing it out the second he stepped on the battlefield and away from hojo. Probably a buzz cut when he was a kid. I imagine it to be a combination of a symbol of independence and self care (as it is to me), taking control of his own appearance, and picking up a bit of the samurai/noble warrior culture alongside his katana during the war with wutai, which (in real life eastern cultures, notably traditional Japan and China, but do NOT quote me) associated long hair with nobility and high ranking samurai, and short/shorn hair with slavery and criminals. (Also, lions manes shorten or even fall out when they lose (gain injuries in) fights, and that's very funny to imagine sephiroth dealing with.) His bangs? They're the only part of his appearance that actually needs regular upkeep, so why does he have them? Simple. They're the same bangs as the picture of his mum lucrecia he got as a kid. Their hair spikes up there the same way ToT.

I lied there's another part of his appearance that needs upkeep. Man is wearing eyeliner and mascara. I get it's a character design choice to bring attention to his eyes but that is definitely eyeliner and the rest of his hair is white as snow, so mascara as well. The whole of gaia (ff7) is pretty 90s metal scifi dystopia and the general fashion (cohesive character designs) feature plenty of belts and earrings (but only for the men??) so it's unlikely to be any sort of big deal Mr macho war mascot is wearing subtle eye makeup.

But I do get the feeling he doesn't have earrings because he heals too fast. Like even cloud has a stud. I like to imagine the three of them went and got them all at the same time but only sephiroths didn't stick.

Those weird metal cuff looking bracelets all soldiers have are used to brace your sword with. Sephiroth is the only one I've seen use them through, so they're obviously very reinforced XD! But he can probably backhand all sorts with them. Wish they got more usage. Imagine charging sephiroth with a claymore or something (side eyes cloud) and he just slaps it away and his stupid leather glove doesn't even have a scratch.

He got taught reading and writing pretty late. You know the way he reads with his finger keeping track of where he is like a little kid? That's definitely an old habit. When you raise a super strong, super intelligent kid in the labs you're gonna want to restrict the information he can get, and I sincerely doubt hojo was going to be invested in getting his baby alien child soldier a well read education. Gast probably taught him some if he was old enough to understand. He might have originally been taught Ancient text before that fell through. Might even be mostly self taught.

You just know he's got a dog eared dictionary somewhere in his apartment.

Hojo has got a winter soldier style shutdown code in him as a failsafe. I sincerely doubt sephiroth would know, but he might suspect something. In canon sephiroth went off the rails exactly the way hojo wanted, so it was never used, but that man's psychopathy and tendency for mind manipulation combined with his thoroughness and self serving god complex (and general sadism) makes for a perfect breeding ground for that sort of brainwashing when dealing with a subject capable of ripping his blackened heart from his chest in a microsecond. The first word is jenova, because why would sephiroth suspect a surge of adrenaline at the sound of his 'mother's' name? Also I think it'd be super scary and ripe for fics.

Sephiroth doesn't experience gender the same way as humans. Not a chance. He'd totally use neo pronouns. Star gender. He achieved his safer form and had the biggest wave of gender euphoria ever (outside of that black wing arm which reads to me as a sign of corruption from.. *waves in shinras direction*). If a sane sephiroth saw it he'd be so jealous. (In contrast angel and genesis don't.)

He's got cptsd from hojo and labs/doctors in general. But he wouldn't know until he got therapy and exited survival mode lol.

I get the feeling he tried really hard to have morals and kindness even if it didn't come naturally until the library. It probably didn't come naturally but listen he was trying his best and succeeding!! But then his last thread snapped and he was like 'fine. If I'm a monster I'll be the worst monster they've ever seen' and went on to do exactly that.

He thinks he's rebelling and shedding his chains exacting vengeance etc etc but hojo handed him directly to jenova. Like he went from one slave master to the other he doesn't even know what his chains actually look like. Hojo was jenova yes man he was so happy to do anything for her out of scientific curiosity and sadistic glee. He was happy to watch the world burn if it meant he had a hand in it.

Sephiroth is actually a pretty good blend of his parents. Got all his looks from his mother though XD. And his temper. But his laser focused cruelty is all hojo.

Him and aerith probably knew each other in the labs at least peripherally. I like the idea they knew each other as kids.

He can't taste sour well at all, can taste water like cats and dogs, and craves fish. These have zero basis in canon and are mostly from a really good fic (ROADTRIP! by copper_nights on ao3, who does my absolute FAVOURITE characterisations of sephiroth and the gang) but I like the idea of him craving fish because of the whole 'part planet eating alien' thing and the fact life first developed in the oceans. So seafood is probably a pretty big part of jenova diet XD. But hojo probably has him on a more red meat based diet for ~protein~. Get this man some sushi!

The way he fights is very offensive unless he's sparring (obviously) but the way he takes damage is by being absolutely fine until he abruptly keels over. Like cats. This worries everyone around him and is entirely hojos fault. It's partly ff7 having limited gore like most media and partly the fight in advent children where he acts untouched, gets off a one liner to cloud and then IMMEDIATELY dies of his injuries. Kadaj survives about another twenty seconds. It's very classy big bad video game boss but it's also hilarious how much he refuses to ragdoll at any cost. He may be insane and clawing his way back to the earth's surface by kidnapping children but man has his dignity!! (Literally the only time he goes where he's sent is in rebirth when he grapples cloud for?? Absolutely zero reason?? And lets himself be pushed off and even then it's because he's playing mind games. Remake sephiroth is wild.)

He was also degrading before he died. As the youngest and most stable he lasted longest, but just like genesis (and Angel) he went downhill real fast even before he got thrown into the reactor. The degradation seems to start mentally before bigger symptoms appear, with paranoia, irritability, tunnel vision. I don't doubt chronic pain, which would exacerbate everything.

He LOVES space. It's almost hypnotic to him. He can navigate by stars amazingly well.

And I hit the character limit XD.

To round off briefly, I also feel he would be disappointed or betrayed upon finding out about/meeting lucrecia, for not being able to get him out of the labs (like elmyra did for aerith) because he probably struggled a lot with realistic power levels and his idolisation/fantasies of his mother, but I don't like that and also they both deserve a proper reunion so I usually ignore that lol.

And Vincent would have been his godfather, which is another reason hojo shot him - he could have lost legal guardianship over sephiroth, and thus, total control. A top ranking turk would have been the only person capable of successfully hiding such a child. Maybe they had the paperwork all ready.

They might be just headcanons, but I really like them XD! I don't usually make these, I prefer fleshing out canon with sturdier stuff or straight up making aus, but sephiroth sends me feral so lol.

[susanoos-wife]

If you want to know why the loneliness epidemic is so bad these days, just search the tag "male loneliness epidemic" on any social media website and there's your answer.

Note: Anyone can be lonely regardless of gender, but that doesn't stop people from being part of the issue.

[loullipopx]

incredible time to be having an identity crisis

[heliosphere-underthesky]

How do you see blackholes? as like enemies, threat or anything like those?

Howdy! Actually during the first times I worked on black holes years ago, they were supposed to be antagonistic. They were evil and crave for destruction, and that's a reflection of how I used to view them.

Hence why Cygnus X-1 was designed to look like a villain in his earlier sketches. However, I wanted to pull a twist on that in my more recent art because of how my views on black holes changed as years went on. He may still look intimidating, but he's actually really nice and considerate!

We also get this silly quaso man, destroyer of worlds but also pretty silly. The solar system is personally scared of him, but he's really trying not to be! (Also he was designed only last year, that's why he didn't have old sketches of him looking antagonistic unlike Cygnus X-1 did.)

Nowadays, I just see them as part of life. Like yeah, they're scary, destructive, but they must be there for a reason we can't understand! I quite like this excerpt in Interstellar, I think it explains my stance on black holes quite well.

[mypersonalventaccount]

i've literally been spending the last few weeks (months atp) in bed, pretty much almost 24/7, alone, either sleeping or crying or needing to be on strong medication (alongside my regular medication) to cope at all, unable to check social media much cause all it's been doing is bringing me further down. with barely anyone checking on me, barely able to let my few closest (online) people know that i am still hanging on, still alive even though i wish i wasn't. unable to get out of bed, having relapses, literally being isolated and alone and constantly thinking of ending it all. all that exists is my room, getting so out of touch with reality. hoping people would reach out, desperately yearning to feel loved and seen, to feel anything at all while not having the energy to respond anyway let alone checking my phone/messages that much. switching between feeling so painfully hurt, incredibly lonely, all kinds of emotions all at once or not feeling anything at all, just empty, numb. the self-loathing is intense. being so mentally ill that even your psychiatrist is out of ideas. it's honestly been and STILL is a nightmare, i can't seem to get out of no matter how much and how often i try. this is my current reality. i haven't been able to function, feeling like the pain and loneliness are killing me. being disabled and mentally ill is taking everything out of you, i could go into detail about how i haven't even been able to take care of myself as much but there's things i'm too embarrassed to even speak of.

i don't know how much longer I can do this.

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

I want there to be an animated batman series that focuses on jaybin so bad. I just want it to start like bam this is batman you know him. Here's his second child he just picked up. Now let's watch them go on adventures together