#my periods themselves have so much trauma attached to them

[cutiepieautistic]

The main six all have autism,and heres my breakdown as to why I think that:

Fluttershy has pathological demand avoidance.

Favouring people- some autistic people can develop an extreme and borderline unhealthy attachment to those we cherish most,or look up to most.

This can make us overly dependent,make us overly emotional and clingy. We can react extremely negatively to being "cut off" from interactions with our favorite person,and that usually causes self destructive episodes or cause us to be destructive to others.

Rainbow dash,pinkie pie and twilight sparkle have developed "favorite people"

They have gone to great lengths to mimic them,spend time with them or to appease them,to live up to their expectations.

Anxiety- autistic people are more prone to anxiety due to the overwhelming stress and trauma of inhabiting a world that is hostile to those with disabilities. We are also more likely to develop anxiety due to social situations where we misunderstand social interactions,or social expectations.

Stimming- pretty much all of the main six exhibit stimming behaviors

Special interests- the main six have a rich array of obsessive and passionate behaviors/interests.

Preferring to be around other species,rather than their own kind- fluttershy much prefers the company of her animals,she seems to spend most of the time around them because she understands them and their needs and body language better. She enjoys caring for them,kept away from the stressful demands of other ponies.

Shyness or extremely extroverted- all of the ponies exhibit these two behaviors in their own varying degrees

Creativity,spontaneous bursts of creativity but difficulty with mainting the level of skills required to complete demanding tasks- some autistics struggle with creative projects because we thought we had the skill sets required to finish the projects in mind,but we currently do not at the moment.

This can cause us extreme stress and subsequently meltdowns,burnouts or shutdown. The main six have had experiences where they "bit off more than they could chew" so to speak, and experience distressed and a sense of shame,feeling like their best wasn't good enough,so why bother trying at all?

Rarity and rainbow dash and even twilight especially demand perfection of themselves,going to great lengths to prove their worth and show off. Ultimately causing too much stress.

Being confused by sarcasm,figures of speech or how people feel by them(being confused as to why not everyone automatically accepts and approves of them,and wants to be friends with them or each other)- their are multiple examples of this between the main six,throughout the show

Unusual manner of speech- fluttershy speaks extremely softly and timid. Pinkie pie is overly excited. Twilight can have a very disorganized manner of speech, when in mania.

Rarity speaks like she's from another time period.

Emotional outbursts- the main six have all struggled with controlling their emotions at times throughout the show,acting erratically and having wildly inappropriate reactions to things due to high sensitivity or being so prone to misunderstanding things.

Magical thinking- some of the main six exhibit unusual thought patterns/patterns of logic

This is something that is very common among us autistics.

Infodumping- they all do this. Need I say more?

Tldr: these ponies are autistic,and there's nothing you can do about it.

[jinxsmascara]

How did you got BPD ?? Like are you using the term BPD / Borderline for shits and giggles or are you ACTUALLY diagnosed with BPD ?? /genq

Okay so:

TW: physical 4buse , possible csa , neglect , religious trauma , EDs , SH

I was born in a familly with a pretty much emotionally unadvailable father and a mother "too good for her own good" ... I was ALWAYS in the middle of their fights (wether they were just screaming or them getting to hands...) , when i was 2 , i walked in on my mom having my dad putting a knife under her neck , (my brain blocked out this information i guess because my mom was the one who told me because i have NO memories of it ?) When i was around 3-4 i started to be mistreated by my dad , like: if i said something wrong , i was hit , if i liked something i shouldnt , i was hit...

Around maybe 5 ? My father gave me a bath and when i had to get out and be dried , he pushed his finger INSIDE me... told my mom... i guess they argued but nothing was done ?

The CPS / Police were called multiple times (all i remember when was: when i was around 4-5 (more than once i think) , once when i was 11 , once when 12)

When i was 7 or 8 i became my mom's bodyguard (7 or 8 till 13) so i could see and hear all that was happening (the hits , the kicks , the screams)

At 9 i developped a very very poor self image because of my father (thought i was obese while i was just a perfect normal child) and when i was probably between 10 - 11 , my mom threated to off herself in front of me with a knife if i didnt study... ANYWAYS

At 11-12 i moved for the 5th time , and my parents converted me and themselves to the Mormon church , this is where my religious trauma started , i was seen as a sinner by my father , i was yelled at and even hit (to the point it was half a beating) for not believing in God , the only good people i have met were two missionary sisters that i developped a BIG emotional bond with them ♡ (im serious , they were adorable with me) , and i got... depressed when they had to leave because their 1-1,5 year (?) Service was over...

In the church i was often played with then thrown away like a chiffon doll... I had friends one Sunday / one activity thingy , the very next time , i was pushed away... i was seen as weird , crazy , evil , demonic for one: having entering my emo phase , two: showing signs of hyperactivity/verbality/ attachement (NB: i had ZERO friends until that time... so yeah i would get attached , thats what a normal 11-12 year old does ?!) ... and when i got very avoidant people would still think the same

Still in that period of time , i was 12 ... my dad pushed a finger in my ass to "tease me" ... anyways !

In 2019 i turned 13 , my mom got very ill , she has HIV / AIDS and we ended up at a financially point where we couldnt afford her treatments... so she had to go to the hospital **(I DO NOT LIVE IN THE US !!! IM IN FRENCH POLYNESIA !!)** and during that time i never felt so alone my whole life so i got VERY deep into the Creepypasta Fandom and i would day dream (whiiiich probably also played a part in giving my Psychosis other than my shitty childhood) about my OC and Ticci Toby together having fun in the forests and all but it was so intense it basically turned into a sickening obsession and i was abused mentally by my dad for having Binge Eating Disorder

In 2020 i turned 14 and i fell into a very deep depression because my mom found out about my daydreaming escapades and decided to scold me but she became so damn cold with me it was...horrible... i also met my groomer that year , we spoke for 2,5 years all while going through back and forth of "You are my partner ♡" , "actually fuck off im.not dating you ?!" ... i showed lots of BPD signs and my parents ignored until lately...

Yes im diagnosed PROFESSIONALLY !!

NO i do not wanna give TOO MUCH details because of one: annonimity , two: it triggers me

And NO i dont have to show on a paper my diagnosis... it regards me and my doctors , not some strangers on the internet.

[starblazes-a]

🔥give me salt

( let me air out my unpopular opinions / accepting !! )

this is going to actually piggyback off of something @iniziare talked about because it was such a good reminder. but i think people are entirely too comfortable in giving away information about themselves. i don't think a lot of us, myself included, realise how much of ourselves we actually put online over a period of time and it's so, so dangerous. i'm an early millennial, so i didn't even have access to the internet until i was in school and, even then, we were always taught from the very beginning the importance of 'stranger danger' and internet safety. i feel like over time that has gone away to such an extent that we have become too comfortable and too reliant on using the internet as a vocal platform for things that it should not be used for.

i'm talking about personal information, personal grievances, things that you think are harmless but over time become puzzle pieces of your life. things that, given a little digging, someone can easily use to locate you. and to tie-in what iniziare was saying, yes, you can make wonderful friends on tumblr. some of them can be life-long friendships, even! but also, not everyone you talk to on tumblr is your friend. there's a difference between being friendly and being friends. everyone you divulge information to, especially of the mental, financial or physical variety, may not be equipped to handle it or may not have your best interests at heart. we have turned our online relationships with, frankly speaking, strangers, into therapy sessions and therapists, sounding boards and vent journals.

back in my early tumblr rp days, i ended up receiving an anonymous letter in the mail at my physical address from a "secret admirer" who had pieced together my legal name and address based on little things i had posted over a period of years. that was terrifying. they only lived an hour from me and to this day, i shudder to think what could have happened if they had shown up at my house. and though, luckily, nothing bad ever did come of it, that is literally the premise of so many internet horror stories.

the worst part was, they weren't even from tumblr. they had stumbled upon my blog through a google search and happened to see a picture i had posted of myself on one of my blogs for munday. there's a reason you will not find me posting selfies on munday anymore, and this is exactly why. my privacy is my peace and i wish more people remembered that their privacy is theirs too, especially in an age where we willingly, and sometimes, demand so much of each other on social media. the paypal links with your full government name you used to try to make bills and get groceries, the google docs for your blogs attached to a google account with your personal information... anyone, regardless if they are on tumblr or not, can stumble upon that through the right google search.

you do not need to divulge your traumas to anyone. you do not need to air out your entire ancestral background, your location, your exact age (a range is fine, if you must divulge it), you do not need to make a laundry list of your medical and psychological conditions. normalise protecting yourselves again. normalise respecting people's boundaries. normalise respecting and protecting each other's peace.

[dandelionbutch]

wtf is this life..without influence

listening to brown noise:

so i don't think i know much about who i am, maybe thats the luteal talking, maybe its the stress and chaos my life has always been, maybe its the undiagnosed audhd or whatever the fuck, maybe its that im trans and fluid, maybe its black and white thinking, maybe its the relational trauma i have from so many people, maybe its the part where i pretend to be palatable for others and have to wait a good 30 days before they start seeing the real me

im trans, im queer, im butch, ive come so far, im in debt, im alive, im broke, i love people, i love myself, the version i am now, the version hidden under the glow of the tv, the version i was every second of every minute if my past.

i've never hated myself, ive hated my behaviors, i was told they are the same thing. the things i was told and the things i learned aren't the same. but somehow i attached to all of them to the same thing, me.

i was told i may lose friends over my behaviors, i was told im too much, i was told im ugly, i was told im weird, i was told the government cares, i was told 'things would get better', i was told i don't have to explain myself to anyone, i was told my behaviors don't reflect my character, i was told im difficult.

the boy ive been seeing is another example of a human who sees me, but god i can't stand when he sees me. i know who i am alone, i know who i am without friends, i know who i am with my family, i know who i am in solitude because i told myself that is how I get through this life.

i don't know how to take care of myself, i don't know when im hungry, i don't know when im dehydrated, i don't know to take vitamin D, i don't know why society puts me in boxes when i clearly don't like any of them for long periods of time.

maybe someday ill write a list of people i wish i knew saw me, because i hope they see me as something beyond what i see. (of course they do, you're self sabotaging) i hope i come off as the real me and not the alone me or the sad me or the caffeinated me, or maybe......

i want someone to love and accept me in all phases, in all states, in all ways. yes, of course, i want true love. and i tell myself everything has limits so i tell myself true love doesn't exist and i have to fit all these parameters of validation and acceptance and bravery and stoicism! i just want to be me! and i want those around me to know that i'm still learning! what a concept..

well i will definitely be using brown noise for my writing in the foreseeable future. it way easier than music, im very easily swayed by music and movies and people.

things will work themselves out, they always do

[roydeezed]

Beat & Motion-Chapter Round-Up(Chapter 5)

There’s like a million manga that have released since my last Shonen Jump discussion, but there’s a few manga I try not to miss even when I’m busy as I am right now. And those are One Piece, Jojo’s, Chainsaw, and Dungeon Meshi. And Beat & Motion. Because:

If Beat & Motion has million fans, then I'm one of them.

If Beat & Motion has one fan, then I'm THAT ONE.

If Beat & Motion has no fans, that means I'm dead.

More below the cut!

So, so, so let’s get into it. In this chapter, Tatsu, after realizing he can’t work with Nico right away, goes on the hunt for his next goal. And the chapter could’ve been just about that, about how down and depressed he was about not having a goal anymore and then searching for one itself and firing himself up about it but this manga is better than that. It continues Tatsu’s growth and doesn’t let him back pedal. It's not a significant enough trauma event to make him regress. He uses his newfound strength to push through and find a new goal. And I can’t speak for other people but that feeling of finding a worthwhile goal is portrayed so accurately here. I’ve felt the same way before. 

Afterwards he talks with Nico and she suggests talking with his artist friends. And again, I feel like I’m being directly called out. But the series doing psychological damage to me isn’t the only reason I love it so much. Because after a period of feeling down on himself for not having any direct peers, Tatsu actually looks back on his own motivations. Once again this manga speaks truths in such an elegant way about artistic and creative motivations that it leaves me speechless. It talks of how all these things come across people’s lives and it’s up to them to attach themselves to things. 

Tatsu later learns of fellow animators, who not only intimidate him but inspire him. Nico had a big dramatic effect on his life. And that was very obviously felt and shown. And the manga does justice to that effect by having Tatsu admit that he’s afraid of their talents.  But he parleys that fear into excitement at meeting them and we get introduced into a pair of really interesting looking characters. Nabori is high strung and passionate and Akame is chill and glad that they made something. Nabori definitely seems like the more interesting one up front, being passionate and dedicated to his own creative process but believing in this manga I know Akame will be just as interesting. The next chapter should drop soon so I’ll talk about it when it does.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Y’all ready to meet the backup twins and their big backup bro (and a couple others)? I sure hope so because I’m doing it anyway.

Remnant (my little bastard child): Remnant activated in an abandoned daycare in a Mega PizzaPlex in Canada. How Eclipse found this PizzaPlex. Nobody knows. They’ve all even asked Eclipse, he didn’t even know that PizzaPlex existed. Remnant woke up inside the daycare with very little memory besides the rest of the celestial family, though his personality is much like Blood Moon’s minus the bloodlust. He loves pranks and causing chaos. He showed this off for the first time by popping into Sun & Moon’s daycare with his twin, Plerion and scaring the life out of Sun and Moon, who both screamed at the twins jumping out and scaring them. He gets along quite well with Lunar, who regularly gets pulled into Remnant and Plerion’s pranks on their friends and older brother, Emission.

Plerion (my other little bastard child): Plerion activated in the same Canadian PizzaPlex as Remnant and Emission. He’s technically the youngest of the three siblings, though he acts a teeny bit more mature than Remnant. Much like Remnant, Plerion’s personality base was Blood Moon, though his memory files were corrupted and needed to be reset due to them making him glitch out. Plerion still has glitches from time to time due to this, though not nearly as bad as they were when he had Eclipse’s memory files. Plerion loves causing chaos, like Remnant, though he only does small pranks and doesn’t much like people getting hurt or too scared from said pranks. Plerion loves playing hide and seek and tag, something Emission used to play with the twins constantly.

Emission: A very glitchy backup that activated a few months before Remnant and Plerion in the Canadian PizzaPlex. Emission’s glitches appear to others as ‘seizures’ though these glitches take a lot from Emission. His battery suffers mainly from these glitches but also his safety protocols and he has temporary blackouts during these glitches. These glitches unfortunately stem from his core being unfinished, which can’t quite be fixed in a way that wouldn’t wipe him completely or cause him to be non-sentient. Emission eventually gets bad enough with the glitches that the twins must take him to Sun and Moon to be fixed in their PizzaPlex. Moon is able to mostly fix him, though his glitches have made his battery very weak to charge and he is mostly bedbound for a while. Moon eventually manages to create both a battery that can withstand the glitches and a mobile charging system.

Subsatellite: A backup in Moon, Litey activates when the kill code reactivates, due to the jostling KC becoming his own AI does to the mindscape. Litey and Lunar don’t quite realize who each other are, mostly due to Subsatellite not having any of Eclipse’s memories other than a few of those that are positive memories of Lunar. They simply run together and hide from KC once KC has taken over. By the time Monty comes in to save Lunar, Lite and Lunar have talked very quietly about who each other are and have adopted each other as brothers and Lunar has given Lite his name. Monty has to take Subsatellite out as well as Lunar, though he has to stay longer since they weren’t in the same place when he found Lunar and he can’t leave the other comfort tiny in Moon’s head. Lunar and Subsatellite are trauma-bonded, it takes a bit for either of them to leave each other’s sides and Sun, Moon, and Monty are understanding of this and allow them their time to gather themselves before trying to get them over that separation anxiety. Once they’re able to leave each other for short periods of time, Subsatellite absolutely adores Moon. He’s scared of KC but Moon is much nicer to him. Due to his name and his slight attachment to Moon, Sun and Lunar sometimes lightly tease them telling Moon that Lite is his son.

Cepheid (my poor boy): Cephy activates in Sun during the fight with Blood Moon. Sun is preoccupied with the spell, Eclipse is preoccupied with getting the boot, and Blood Moon is working on destroying the body, all of this cumulates to Cepheid activating and clawing his way away from Blood Moon, crying and trying to get away. Blood Moon takes great joy with their prey fighting away (they think he’s Eclipse) and proceeds to play with their prey. They trick Cepheid into thinking they were done hurting him only to shock him multiple times repeatedly. Cepheid screaming is what draws Moon’s attention to the fight, because Cepheid’s voice is high pitched than Sun’s and definitely not Eclipse’s (think like Lunar’s pitch but Sunny’s voice). Moon has Monty call off the twins, as Sun has already done the expelling of Eclipse. Moon takes poor Cepheid out of Sun’s body and into a body of his own. Cephy is extremely terrified of being hurt again, he’s very shaky and weak as well, he’s very skittish and barely gets emotionally attached to Sun, Moon, and Lunar. Though, once he’s emotionally attached to them, Cephy loves them with all his poor traumatized heart.

[bosooka]

no disagreements here, just additions :)

there was a period of time, more 2020-2021, when pro-jedi people were 1) very much outnumbered and 2) hit with gross harassment, suicide bait, bullying etc. that much of the old guard still remembers. i was there as a pro-jedi person and it was honestly really awful. i was told, among other things, that i must not care at all for the crimes the catholic church committed (which, as a sefardic jew, was really appalling)?? about star wars??

this is what really began the era of certain pro-jedi people becoming really mean and hateful, and when i became alienated in the community as someone who...actually follows the teachings of the buddha and tries to not speak or act out of anger lol. i definitely became uncomfortable identifying myself with this group although none of my views on the jedi themselves have or will change, but i also feel sad because i know it's the result of a sort of collective trauma they experienced. even if it was "only" a fer bad apples, the fact that it's functionally impossible to distinguish between a normal person and someone who is going to send you anon hate for 3 days gives you a really nasty hyper-vigilance

(there is a certain knee-jerk attempt to claim that things that happen online aren't "actually" hurtful and don't traumatize, and that is the biggest crock of bullshit i've heard in my life)

i experienced something very similar as a satine fan, during the same time (compounded by being on twitter, which is The Worst Platform Ever), and i have had to train myself out of the subsequent blind rage and anxiety i feel when i see someone being an asshole about her. i am absolutely mortified by the way i've spoken to some people who had no idea why i reacted so intensely to their words, and it was because i became so used to being bullied and clowned on by "satine critical" people that my survival mechanism became "tearing them a new asshole before they have time to react".

in other words, i think a number of pro-jedi fans have developed an unhealthy relationship with fighting on the internet which is not unique to them but is a result of a previous era where harassment and aggression was much more normalized (at risk of invoking The Dark Discourse, i blame the anti-proshipper nonsense for giving cyberbullying new life). all of the new folks coming in are rightfully going "what the fuck? are you okay??" and i hope everyone involved gets therapy.

final note about the "chinese propaganda" angle: as an actual buddhist (jew), the popularity of "jedi critical" takes in SW that are rebuking or degrading buddhist philosophy in SW is the result of the fact that western culture is fundamentally materialist and rewards unhealthy attachment to worldly pleasures and desires as an alternative to the internal self-satisfaction that cannot be bought for all the money in the world.

reducing the chinese government's literal genocide of tibetans to "they hate buddhism" is, once again, a monumental crock of sinophobic horseshit, not least because a third of china still identifies as buddhist and those teachings are all over some of the most popular wuxia/xianxia medias being made in china right now. as if we have to point fingers at the CCP to justify western disdain for any belief system that goes against the grain of the christian-capitalist philosophical hegemony.

that being said, i have literally seen people go, "expecting people to just be okay with the fact that you can't control what happens in your life is an evil soulless teaching that only a disgusting cult would teach!" and their response to people pointing out that "you can't control what happens in your life," is a fundamental buddhist teaching is often either, "well OBVIOUSLY i don't mean it towards the REAL religion that the creator of this franchise is a part of!" or just "you're not even buddhist, what do you care?"

this is not acceptable and it is offensive to buddhists, actually. and, no, the way these teachings are depicted in star wars are not nearly different enough from "real" buddhism (whatever that means) to absolve people who say these things from any sort of responsibility for confronting their internal biases

'jedi bashing is chinese propaganda'

I'm sorry what now -

also, I'm australian :)

and I don't even bash the jedi. I critique them. for their flaws. lovingly. because I yearn for their reform like luke did in the eu, not complete annihilation.

there's a guardians of the whills fanfic set in jeddah and their training system in it is just. chef's kiss I think chirrut and baze could have saved the jedi order singlehandedly

[bigskydreaming]

I’m a big believer that Dick’s independence and self-reliance isn’t in any way rooted in him just being stubborn, prideful or self-destructive. I view it as being in his eyes a necessity….because on a deep, fundamental level….Dick doesn’t trust anything to be permanent. 

I’ll always go back to the fact that his character archetype isn’t that of the everyman, because he was of lower class origins compared to Bruce’s extreme upper class background.....but rather that given that Dick Grayson was allegedly exceptional from his debut, a child prodigy capable of feats of acrobatics few in the world could match....he could never actually be classified as an everyman. Rather, his core archetype is that of the fish out of water. The individual taken from the comforts of his original pond and thrust into a limelight of an entirely different nature from the one he grew up in, with the two not at all being interchangeable, and necessitating he change and adapt in dramatic and often unanticipated ways just to keep his footing in his new environs.

Its not incidental that his initial tragedy wasn’t JUST the loss of his parents, but rather the loss of his old routines, extended family, environment, way of life, expectations for the way his future would play out....it ALL vanished on the same night, never to return again. The loss of his parents was tragedy enough all on its own, but its really only one part of what Dick lost that night. He lost his entire footing. His frames of reference. Everything his life had previously prepared him for and everything he could have used as a familiar comfort or source of stability to lean on, if it had been ‘just’ his parents that he lost.

And I fundamentally don’t believe you ever get over THAT loss, no matter what peace you make with the loss of your loved ones or specific elements of that. Once you’ve experienced a shake-up of that size, once you have a bone-deep, visceral awareness of how completely your life can change in the blink of an eye, how you can effectively be set back to zero as though nothing you’ve previously accomplished matters (remember, he went from a kid whose name drew crowds on its OWN merits, based on what HE was capable of due to his own work and skills, the youngest of the Flying Graysons, capable of an acrobatic feat barely anyone else in the world could master......to being a kid who was only ever identified as in the context of Bruce Wayne having taken him in, as though his existence and worth were defined by someone else’s act of compassion rather than based on anything he’d ever done on his own, when the fact of the matter is even by age eight, he’d already accomplished a LOT)....

Like, the point is, you can’t go through a shake-up like that and ever fully FORGET how complete and total a change it was, how big a rewrite of your entire life story. 

That’s a trauma all its own, one that goes largely unacknowledged, and one that I don’t think Bruce and Alfred or anyone else fully realized was even there TO need addressing in the first place. So of course how could they ever fully address it, without realizing a need?

And I think Dick’s constant moves and self-reliance are actually born of that primal awareness that there are no guarantees, that nothing is truly permanent, that anything can be taken away in an instant.

He’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for everything to be taken away again - as people have pointed out in other posts, Dick can never seem to have nice things. Even the apartment building he lived in while in Bludhaven….that wasn’t some height of luxury by ANY stretch of the imagination…was lost to him, along with all the friends and neighbors and community he’d built among them, something evidenced by how highly they all spoke of him, even to a total stranger. And that’s not even getting into how even the CITY he sought to establish himself as a guardian over, like, he lost the city itself. The CITY!

Dick, I believe, insists on holding down 9-5 jobs and paying his own way and only touching money that comes from Bruce originally, when like…he has no other option or its to help someone else….just like he’s resistant to ever fully putting down roots, at least none so deep that he can’t uproot himself and quickly relocate without ripping off a piece of himself and leaving it still buried in the ground behind him. 

Because deep down, he’s always bracing for the next seismic event that’ll rip everything away from him, and he wants to be prepared. He WANTS to make sure he never takes anything for granted. That if he loses it all - hell, if he and Bruce fight again and Bruce decides once and for all to take it all away from Dick, cut their ties, something that would very much be a deep-rooted insecurity for a kid with as massive of abandonment issues as Dick must have given his childhood and a number of events after that…

Dick I think needs to trust that he’ll be capable of surviving, of standing on his own two feet, if the worst should ever happen again and he’s left on his own again. His self-reliance and obsessive need for independence aren’t a REJECTION of anyone else or anything Bruce or others have ever done for him.

They’re simply the defense mechanisms of a boy who was once upon a time torn away from everything he knew and in certain origins was then on top of that plunged into hellish circumstances before finding a refuge with Bruce….

And the man that boy grew up to be, who is determined to never be caught in a situation like that again, where his very survival might otherwise require the kindness of a stranger….with Dick knowing better than to count on lightning striking twice there, and him getting lucky a second time.

So in a lot of ways, my core perception of Dick having spent more time growing up in the luxury of Wayne Manor than any of the other kids is that its largely irrelevant to who he grew up to be. Because he was still more than old enough by the time he arrived that he had formative experiences all his own that no amount of time was sufficient to overwrite and exchange for new ones.

His experiences are so extreme in terms of the loss of all forms of stability, that the SHAPE that stability takes in the periods where his life IS stable, is largely unimportant. Because its the absence of stability that’s the defining recurrence in his life. Even the stability offered by his childhood in Wayne Manor eventually gave way to canon where he left the Manor before he was even eighteen, as well as canon where no matter how it was ultimately reversed, he was for a time affected by having the ability to call the Manor his home STRIPPED AWAY FROM HIM. Thus even when Bruce did ultimately welcome him back, there still retained an awareness that even the fact that this had happened in the first place was a reminder that even THIS was something Dick could lose, that no matter how stable his childhood there had been at times, it couldn’t in and of itself be COUNTED as a source of stability due to the simple fact that his ability to call it his home HADN’T turned out to be an irrevocable constant. 

And so this is another of those areas where I think its fundamentally an oversight to have members of the family commenting on Dick’s self-reliance or tendencies to relocate himself, let alone in any kind of critical capacity......

If there’s not going to be an acknowledgment within the family or by the people raising these criticisms like, what kind of a role the family themselves have played in Dick feeling a NEED to have these tendencies in the first place.

If someone doesn’t trust in any place he lives in to ever truly be a constant in his life, truly permanent, that anything can be taken away in the right circumstances....and you yourself have done something that has made him feel or given him reason TO leave a place he’s found stability in at some point in the past....you kiiiiiinda forsake your right to be critical of his inability to see any place as permanent or constant, y’know?

Like, insert Miranda Whatshername gif or Meryl Streep peering down her glasses and going oh I see, you think this has nothing to do with you.

So I’d argue that Dick’s insistence on simulating the average person’s reality of livelihood, even when he has other means and funds available to him….just as his insistence on being as solely responsible for the well-being of the place or people he sees as his responsibilities, being single-minded about relying only on himself for tasks that he sees as ultimately having nothing to do with someone other than himself, etc....

All that is in my opinion BECAUSE he’s so firmly attached to the reality that anything and everything can be taken away, at ANY given moment. That he can be reduced to having nothing and no one he can depend on BEYOND just his own innate skills and experiences, the only things he trusts to be truly unable to be stripped from him by others.

If you ask me, one of the core aspects of Dick’s characterization throughout his adulthood in canon is SPECIFICALLY his fear that everything he cares about, or trusts, or relies on…can be taken away from him or lost. 

And his determination to make sure that he’ll be able to survive even if that should ever happen again.

[cosmicangel888]

When you choose you - 5D Self Love

I choose me

Common sense dear ones, never put another before you - never surrender to anyones story - place your meal of self love, self nourishment and self care above all -

The past is the past - never wait, never give into anyones story - your story with God is your own knowing blessing for you make your life - none other - deceit is shady, dark, heavy - all have to clear their own mess, and understand why they chose to believe in lack of self, not defining and believing in themselves with Spirit, God, Creation - all gotta do the winner work; what makes you a winner, in creation - with you and you -

Life, love, work, your inner vocational alignment with Spirit, with Creation is not competition - than you designing and being fully you - life is not a competition and run far and fast from anyone that places all in competition and ego issues, unhealed rejection issues - it is exhausting and messy - why many with poly lifestyle only end in attachments, entity imbalances, the dark demons of low vibrational realms that attach, through permissions, because the matching vibrations of lack of self, beliefs of self, are ignited in the act of choice; entanglement, engagement; all is energy - what you intend, focus, direct - and some are simply living out of wounds, insecurity and so they act, play with energy and act, and bring pain, blocking, damaging others that are innocent - out of their own lack of sense of self, design;

Energy of the life force, inner realm - the constant lingering of negativity and harmful energies - chanting, cult-like and satanic, cult like mess that do harm intentionally, which only brings on mental imbalances, mental trauma, mental disease, the envy, any intention, will be what resides within - regardless of one that thinks they send it out - it will be within - Spirit will assure all look at what they create - period. None outweigh God.

Most on our planet are just awakening - thus, alot of life force sharing has been done - and much mess has been made - energetically engagement, entanglements are real and all are responsible for their own inner realm - all will resolve their issues, intentions, energy - spells and life before them - all are leaders of their own life

None have any right to play God over anyone - in any way, at any level;

Heal thy wounds, put respect on thyself and all life - then drama, mess, poverty and any issues of our human life will never occur - crime, violence, corruption is not necessary - heal thy wounds

Know dear ones, those that do such; you have protections, by your ancestors, guides, will place filters, veils, and scramble all messages anyone doing such corruption - those that want their way, control, issues and all will be faced with making their actions, deeds right;

All will be faced in equal measure - nothing escapes God and I know who I am and what I have been given to speak - truth is.

Spell workers, conjurers, all will be faced with aligning with universal laws, and Oneness laws; none escape this - period - ego, arrogance are not aligned with spirit - we are in 5D and why all must awaken and karma will be karma;

All will be shown.

IT will be be shown, truth is truth; all will be shown.

What is not of pure alignment, corruption, deceit, spell casters, will be and shown as it is. - all is vibrational and life is proof -

Same message - What you do, send; will return

I will press charges.

All doing such work to purposeful mess with my life and I have nothing to do with any of those doing such; I moved 3 times to release, get away, and remove myself from such that have 0 to do with me; leave me be has been my message; leave me be

All have been given years to correct and alter course, and those involved, those that know and do nothing, those that pay, cast, take, whatever are facing their own karma - spiritual laws are the highest of all - God oversees, beings of the most high consciousness oversee; all will be exactly equal and facing. - none escape such - God is

What is not meant for you will be filled with drama and issues, imbalance, ignorance, immaturity, degrading of your energy and time, there is no-one that is worth selling your soul, your dreams,

Blessings and light

Joanna

#ascension #healinghumanity

ALL WILL HAVE TO SEEK WITHIN, THEIR OWN DIVINE GUIDANCE, AFTER CLEARING, CLEANSING, ALL WILL FACE WHAT THEY HAVE CREATED - THERE ARE HIGHER UNIVERSAL LAWS - ALL WILL FACE SUCH - WHEN YOU ALIGN WITH GOD - GOD IS, NOT RELIGION, WE ARE DIVINE AND ALL SACRED, ENERGY IS EVERYTHING -

UNDERSTANDING UNIVERSAL LAWS -

NONE HAVE ACCESS TO MY ENERGY MY BIRTH*CHART AND ALL MESSAGES ANYONE TRIES, WITHOUT PERMISSION, WILL BE GIVEN SCRAMBLED, VEILED, BLOCKED MESSAGES -

I AM SOVEREIGN

[silverechosandblankmasks]

Platonic Polyam Bench Trio Marriage AU

You guys asked, so here I am to deliver! Platonic Polyam Bench Trio marriage au where Tommy marries into Tubbo’s and Ranboo’s platonic marriage. (focus on Tommy lol)

NOTE; These are about the c!characters and not the irl people, and I'm writing this like a poly queerplatonic relationship okay? None of this is intended to be romantic or anything else and anything that is in this list is PLATONIC INTENTIONS ONLY

Edit; Now called the Bench Husbands Au

-It kinda all kicks off when about a week or so after Tommy gets out of Prison. (Note, nothing after the first stream after Tommy gets out is canon in this au, as well as some things before)

-Tubbo and Tommy finally have a small fight and argument, before talking, like really talking and Tubbo invite Tommy to come live with them in the mansion in snowchester once its done.

-Tommy doesn't really want to... but he’s tired and lonely and still scared to death and Tubbo promises he’s safe with them, plus if they lived together they could plan on how to kill Dream easier as well.

-Ranboo doesn't mind but after that he tries to go talk to tommy more, but Tommy isnt... the most receptive? Tommy is suffering still and is feeling very replaced and lonely, but doesn't excuse his kinda snippy behavior with Ranboo

-This finally comes to ahead when Ranboo snaps and calls him out, leading to another small fight, before Tommy apologizes and they also talk. This one is more in depth though and Tommy talks about what happened in exile, in the prison, and just general shitty stuff that's being going on. 

-Ranboo, in turn, talks to him about the voices and Dream’s voice and the sleepwalking and Tommy is very much more concerned about them then anyone else he told was, and validates the fear about it, and resolves to help Ranboo get rid of it somehow.

-After this, and both trying to convince the other they should tell Tubbo, that they both probably need to tell Tubbo. They want to keep him safe and not worry him, but... they both need help in different ways and they both love him enough to not do that to him.

-The night ends with lots of tears, Tubbo admitting his own traumas and tears and what he’s been not saying, and a promise to help each other.

-Its not a while after that actually Ranboo brings up the idea of adding Tommy to their marriage. He can tell the blond is struggling with feeling replaced and low-self esteem, and it would help him feel more equal and loved maybe? Tubbo thinks its a great idea and they go to ask Tommy.

-Tommy’s pretty uppity at first, he believes its just them pitying him and treating him like glass again, which he hates more then anything, but after they calm him down and explain they just want him to feel equal and that they both actually cared for him and wanted him to join in on their thing, he’s more contemplative. Ranboo nervously throws in a few other points, like how for legal reasons it could benefit him like it was for them, their allies had to leave him alone, plus Tubbo only started making his own hotel becuase he wanted Tommy to start interacting with him again, and-

-At this point Tommy just, interrupts and says yes, surprising them. They didn't exactly think he’d say no, but they thought it would be harder then that. He laughs at their expressions and says why not? Plus it stood to reason they’d want Tommy, everyone wanted Tommy.

-Ranboo and Tubbo exchange a look before bullying their now platonic fiancée. They agree to get married as soon as the Mansion is done, and till then Tommy can finish packing his stuff and a few other things he wanted to do.

-Also Tommy is totally not avoiding Michael because every pet he ever got close to has died and he doesn't want to get attached and risk Tubbo and Ranboo losing something they cared about because of him, no siree, why wouldn't you think that?

-Speaking of Michael!

-Its not all that strange to keep undead mobs like Zombie piglins as pets, in fact Zombie Piglins are the probably better undead mob to keep around due to their mostly passiveness if you want a pet and the fact they don't need much to eat and wont really be harmed if out leave them alone for long periods of time

-Though Tommy kinda thinks Tubbo and Ranboo’s insist on treating him like their child is weird, but he’s willing to let them have it, clearly it made them happy to play around

-Isn't until he finally moves in that he realizes that Michael is different then other zombie piglins and finds himself being pulled into the parent dynamic as well

-Though now that he thinks about it, something about Michael seems off… welp it's probably nothing :)

-When the mansion is done, he tears down the dirt shack and makes it a community garden and it becomes one of the only things that stays free of the red vines (who knew watering it with water from the holy land would make it untouchable? It's thanks to this garden later others figure out how to defeat the egg)

-They elect to not have a ceremony, not now at least but Tommy actually thinks a small wedding party would be fun at a later date. Ranboo doesn't mind much if they have one or not but Tubbo is actually very excited about planning it.

-Tommy wears his ring on a necklace most of the time, but occasionally wears it on his fingers, usually when he needs something to fiddle with.

-Ranboo wears his on his tail (the area right before to fluffy part) normally but also wears it on his finger sometimes when he feels like it. (If your version has horns, he also does that too) it just really depends on what he’s feeling and if he’s forgotten where he put it. He also like, never takes it off unless to move it around because he’s afraid to lose it.

-Tubbo wears his as an actual ring on his finger (though if he has horns, sometimes he puts it on one of em if he needs the ring to be off his hand.) Tubbo learned the hard way when building nukes or other machinery (since, if you can believe it, his husbands aren’t that comfortable with the nukes as he is) you can't wield or do high heat stuff while wearing metal and nearly lost his finger. He’s very lucky and he has a small scar from it.

-Each of them have their own rooms so they can have their own space and somewhere to go if they want time to themselves/store their stuff in, but there is a 4th room (directly across from Michaels) where they share and tend to curl up to sleep together. About 5 out of 7 days of the week, some combo of them are cuddling together at night, more if they're having a bad day or nightmares.

-There's multiple bathrooms in the mansion but there's one they all like the best and will fight over it/race to get into it first before the others and the other two will stalk off salty to use a different one

-They're all pretty tactile people but out of them, Tommy is the most tactile (once the fear of being hurt recess he practically attaches himself to the others) and Ranboo is the least (he won't seek out comfort and touch as much as the others unless he needs it, but is the best at telling when the other two need touch or need to be left alone) and Tubbo is in the middle of that.

-Tommy is the one that cooks most of the time, Ranboo is banned from it after The Incident and while Tubbo is okay at cooking, Tommy just knows more recipes and how to make things taste really good.

-Tommy picked up sewing from when he was a kid, even before he was found by Wilbur and adopted by Phil, it was useful to be able to patch the rags he called clothes, and just ended up continuing because his brothers and dad sucked at sewing. It then morphed into full tailoring because he found it relaxing and liked being able to make his own clothes. He can and will be insulted if anyone wears anything he deems ‘ugly’, especially his new husbands. He makes them clothes all the time, specially Michael.

-In fact he also cleans the most, he just gets bored and while he makes a mess, if the house gets to a certain point he gets really uncomfortable and overstimulated, so he cleans.

-DomesticInnit? In my au? More likely then you think!

-Gradually the whole ‘watching the prison’ and ‘planning to kill Dream’ starts to fade as he gets back into the groove of living again and therapy. He’s just… tired of Dream having a hold on everything Tommy does, he’s sick of it. So… he just tries to live these days one step at a time. (Healing arc baby! Dream can die mad UwU)

-Tommy dragged them both to Therapy with him after a while.

-Because of this he finds himself home a lot with Michael, especially if the other two are busy. They’ve pretty much decided that someone has to be home with Michael at all times, which is now 100% more doable with the 3 of them, and Puffy or Foolish babysit if there’s ever time they can't.

-Tommy is a lot less of a hovering helicopter parent then the others and was the one to finally convince them Michael cant live trapped in a room. Yes, they were all worried for his safety but… you can't raise a kid in a cell, even if it's a nice one. Tommy takes Michael out more

-Tommy started to sleep walking again once they moved in and he still gravitates towards water for some reason. Nothing more startling then waking up because you plunged into frigid below 0 temp water while sleepwalking. Ranboo also enderwalks/sleepwalks more as well and there've been some nights where Tubbo has had to track them both sleepily walking around and make sure they don't hurt themselves or drown or something. At least Ranboo is semi-aware when enderwalking and normally just does weird ender things, Tommy likes to apparently walk into oceans or climb the mansion and nearly fall off and wander hundreds of blocks away. Tubbo’s not salty at all, really.

-Sapnap, Quackity, and Karl are 100% salty the benchtrio got platonically married before they got married

-They fight about last names all the time despite none of them actally taking eachothers last name, and if they happen to pick and choose on which one they’re feeling based on mood, well they can do what they want!

-However its agreed Michael’s last name is hyphenated so he’s now ‘Michael Beloved-Underscore-Innit’

These are all I have for now, feel free to ask about it or use my ideas! <3

[twinantithesis]

Almost like a “bad end” of irl Seán, stepping into the ring is...

Jack McLoughlin!

Below is some backstory about c!Jack in my AU!

In this universe, there are many historically magickal families that are governed by the magickal body of their country’s government. Recently - as in since the ~1800s - an unexplained phenomena has been appearing in children of magickal families. Seemingly the only pattern is that the power skips every two generations, and only appears in previously powerless children after significant trauma has been inflicted. The power is simply named Creation and involves being able to bring new beings into existence. Most of the Creators can only make beings who look and act similar to themselves, and Creation can either be planned and ritually done, or can be accidental in times of high distress. Beings can be created with or without a life story attached to them. The only visible signifier of a Creator is mismatched or seemingly injured eyes with no known medical cause. 

Jack was gifted Creation just as he started his youtube career, alone in a cabin in the woods, but did not actually Create until around 2016, when Jackie was accidentally born. Jackie was seemingly based off a costume & personality Jack would play for his channel. From there it was all downhill. 

Just like irl Seán, 2017 was the worst and most stressful year of Jack’s life. The difference is that this universe’s Jack also had four young and newly Created vulnerable adults to care and provide for, all while being periodically attacked and possessed by his fifth creation. This destroyed him emotionally and physically, and stress led to the exacerbation of his anxiety disorder and physical chronic illnesses. Jack seems to never have reprieve, and just cannot separate himself from the lives of his boys. He eventually becomes agoraphobic and even with therapy is struggling immensely with the social responsibility of being both a youtuber and a father figure to his Creations’ family. This and the discovery of Anti’s Body leads to an emotional breakdown in which Jack flees the country and doesn’t tell anyone where he is. He sends money to the family’s bank accounts twice a year and otherwise never properly contacts them again. 

Jack has a fatherly but strained relationship with every ego but Chase. Chase was his best friend and if Jack ever does reach out to them, it will be Chase he contacts. 

Jack is almost identical to actual Seán in personality and tastes so there is not much to say that won’t be said in the other’s bios!

[ectonurites]

can anybody please explain the appeal of tim drake because ive been into the batfamily for a while now and tbh im really confused on why people like his character so much compared to the other robins. like they all have their own thing going on and he just... doesnt?

Have you read his Robin solo? Because if not and you want to try to like him but just don’t understand why people do, that’s what I’d recommend. That and like, Young Justice 1998. 

Because Tim definitely... does have his own thing going on. Maybe not in the same way as the others, but like, there’s a reason he has a 183 issue long solo comic that ran for like 16 years: he was fun to read about!

But I will give some more specific thoughts on the subject as a Tim Drake Appreciator™ (this got long im sorry)

The appeal of Tim (especially early on Tim) is kinda the fact that he’s this more normal kid. For a while that is his ‘thing’. He was basically designed to be a self-insert (he definitely became more than that along the way, but from the start he was meant to be relatable) in a different way than how Dick and Jason had been before him. 

Like the role of Robin from the start was this way to create a character young readers could identify with more, could see themselves in more. And Dick and Jason did that, but they still had this element to their lives and stories that was more... unattainable for the average reader. Dick was a circus prodigy, Jason was either also a circus prodigy if we remember pre-crisis or if we go with his post-crisis story he’s this street-wise orphaned kid who had a really tough life but still went on to be a hero anyways. Obviously those lives are relatable for some people, but those’re definitely not as broadly recognized as common upbringings especially not by DC trying to market to the ‘average’ kid/young teen.

But the creation of Tim changed the game a bit. Dick and Jason were these aspirations a kid could look to like ‘wow I want to be cool like that!’ but Tim was a Robin designed for kids to look at and go ‘wow, his problems and civilian life are just like mine AND he’s a hero, I want to be cool like that!’, ya know? Tim was... just a clever kid with an average life who managed to connect some dots and had enough drive to want to fix things he saw were a problem, he didn’t have the same kind of heightened drama backstory the others did. The Robins that came after Tim definitely didn’t have this idea of relatability in mind the same way either. Unfortunately Steph’s time as Robin was much more of a marketing ploy than an actual like... decision to make her Robin, so it’s hard to really fit her into this conversation. But Damian from the start was first of all initially created not to be Robin but just as the son of Talia and Bruce back in the 80’s, but when he was later reimagined into the character that would become Robin he had the whole ‘raised by and is the heir to the league of assassins and is the son of batman’ thing going on still. He just was not supposed to be relatable that same way, he was a character designed with different things in mind.

I really think it was more just DC’s 90′s era younger-audience comics in general that tried to push that relatability thing (like in YJ how Cissie even after quitting the team stays a major character as a civilian throughout, and the civilian aspect that’s super present in Bart’s 90s solo too, etc), but later in the 2000’s that idea was definitely pushed to the side in favor of... putting in even more dramatic superhero-y stuff.

And the other thing that’s... such a more normal thing but it actually made him unique here, was that Tim’s dad was still alive until like 2004 (so 15 years into Tim being around as a character). This gave Tim a lot more typical ‘family school girlfriends normal life etc’ problems on top of/in contrast with his superhero problems. These just manifested in very different ways than they could with the other Robins because of that unique situation with a living civilian parent who doesn’t know about hero stuff (until he did find out which lead to that whole Unmasked thing, but there was only the brief time around War Games & Identity Crisis where Jack knew Tim was actively Robin and he was... still alive) Tim also had his life at school expanded way more than most other Robins, like, he had such an extended supporting cast of civilian friends which is a really interesting thing to read about (and the fact that he hasn’t had that stuff since the New 52 I think really hurts his character)

And then related to that loss of his dad... Personally another thing about Tim that really interests me is how a lot of things were more... his choice. if that makes sense. A lot of characters in the Batfamily were struck with tragedy/extreme trauma before they became heroes and that’s what spurred them into this life of becoming heroes. Tim’s situation wasn’t like that at all! When he first got involved in everything during Lonely Place of Dying, the only tragedy he’d experienced was watching Dick’s tragedy happen. Which sure yes traumatic obviously, but that’s not the same as how pretty much all the other Bats had gone through these very personal losses or other sorts of very first-hand personal traumas that served as motivators. Tim didn’t start to experience those things until after he got involved in the hero life, and aside from his Mom’s death which was more of just an unrelated incident (that technically happened before he was officially Robin but it was during his time training to become Robin), pretty much all these other tragedies and things... would not have happened or been experienced by him had he not become Robin. 

That’s not me placing blame on him or anything like that, because god no that’s not how that works, but it’s very interesting because from his point of view he definitely feels that guilt because he knows him being Robin played a role in a lot of it (Thinking specifically about in Adventure Comics #3 when Kon even says “I know what guilt does to you” to him like it’s... it’s a thing with him!). His dad was murdered because he was Robin. He only met Steph and started dating her through being Robin, and thus he would not have experienced the loss of his girlfriend dying like that had he not been Robin. Tim met both Conner and Bart through being Robin, and would not have had a personal connection to them when they died otherwise. The whole Bruce’s death thing after Final Crisis, like. I could go on honestly, that was only talking about losses not even his own experiences nearly getting killed, but yeah, all these personal tragedies were experienced by him specifically because he chose to bring himself into this life, which I think in turn plays into how throughout his comics you see him go from having this really optimistic view on things and being really hopeful to seeing him at that low point he reaches by the time of Red Robin. (thinking about that one post that points out how Tim started out in the 90′s as an optimist and Steph a cynic and by the time they were Red Robin and Batgirl in 2009 they had switched outlooks...) 

I also think that him having had such a great team book with the original Young Justice can help contribute to people liking him. His friendships with the rest of the core four and that team in general are really compelling. (and that’s something like again when looking at the other Robins, while Dick had the Titans ofc, Jason never really found footing with a team outside of like one mission with the Titans and then We All Know How Damian’s Teen Titans Stuff Went. Steph also only ever really worked with a team outside the batfam on very brief occasions) and even though I’m not as big of a fan of the 2003 Teen Titans run that came after YJ, people who read Young Justice and also that could follow and be attached to those same characters over a pretty decently long period of time. 

Idk man, I don’t really have an ultimate point here i’m just rambling. I can definitely understand not seeing the appeal to him right away (honestly i’ve been into Batfam since like 2013/2014 and Tim did not become one of my faves until 2020) especially if like... idk when you say ‘into the batfamily’ that can mean a lot of different things. If you’re reading more like the bigger events with the batfam sure Tim can kinda fade into the bg a bit, if you’re more talking about fanon the fanon version of him is prettyyyyy uhhhhh not really the same as how he was in pre New 52 canon, if you’re mainly reading New 52 era Batfam stuff then that Tim I also don’t understand the appeal of bc thats Not My Boy, if you’re interested in a different member primarily and only familiar with Tim when he shows up in things focused on that other character then it’s easy to not really understand the appeal right away bc he’s more there to support that character rather than shine in his own right. 

I think it’s also worth mentioning he’s just not everybody’s cup of tea, and that’s totally fine. Like, these are fictional characters and sometimes you just will vibe with a character and sometimes you won’t! idk if this helped at all or even made sense. but yeah. I just think he’s neat 😌

[freddiekluger]

can't stop thinking about how bbc ghosts' the captain and torchwood's captain jack harkness are so much two sides of the same coin, despite how different they might seem at first

like, seriously, i don't know what it means but look at everything they've got in common:

the obvious captain title, needing to be in charge even when it frustrates the people around them because of how strongly they base their identity around being 'captain'

have both died at least once but continue existence in some form, carrying around with them the trauma that death entails while also being fairly desensitized to it

world war two, both being men 'our of their time' and adjusting to changing values and expectations (in opposite directions: cap coming from the past, dealing with the fact that being gay no longer entails what it did in his time, along with the general relaxation of standards and privacies [his easy flustering at explicit talk, "i can see her posy!"]; jack coming from the future, dealing with homophobia and people's need to categorise him, and depending on the time period needing to completely adjust his behaviour to be far more formal and hidden for his own safety ["you people and your quaint little categories"])

refusing to share their 'real' name or any solid details regarding their past, instead focusing on who they are now/within the parameters of that firmly established captain identity

innuendo, whether conscious or not

attachment to their period uniforms- jack is never seen without his coat and suspenders, the captain still opting for his uniform even during 'what i would wear if i could today’

falling for men who technically rank below them but their work relationship more closely resembles partners, and the other man is definitely more practical (ianto, havers)

repressing the majority of serious and/or genuine emotion under the guise of being cool and detached (achieved to varying degrees of success), especially struggling with emotional vulnerability and opening up

operating within a found family set up- even if they do majorly fall out and get on each other's nerves

isolating themselves as their first instinct when dealing with tough emotions, feeling like an outsider (jack at the end of coe, captain separating himself from the group right up to the end in redding weddy)- possibly related to them feeling left by people important to them (jack with the doctor/rose, the captain with havers)

do i need to list being attracted to men? i'm gonna list it anyway

thank you for coming to my ted talk, have a good evening

[grimmradiance]

Close to Me: How the Hollow Knight's Fighting Style Reflects Their Trauma (and the Radiance's as well)

So I've been trying to actually beat the Radiance, which means I've been fighting the Hollow Knight. A lot, as a matter of fact, since I'm beans at this game sometimes. I've also been thinking about @lost-kinn's meta about how fighting styles are how Vessels, especially the Little Knight, communicate.

In trying to apply this to the Hollow Knight, I've been coming to some very interesting conclusions, especially taken in context of...Everything Else in the lore, and Everything Else implicated in this by the psychology of it.

There's a lot to cover here, and it tracks through a LOT of different places, including trauma psychology, the relationship between chronic stress and lifespan health, and shape symbolism. Two warnings first:

One: this essay is gonna get heavy. It includes fine-grained discussion of the Hollow Knight's trauma, including discussions of the real-life machanics of psychological abuse, as well as the Extremely Concerning Implications of them harming themself during their boss fight. please read with caution and when you're in a safe emotional place to do so.

Two: This post is not a place for justifying the Pale King. If you read this essay in its entirety and still want to do that, please make your own post; my relationship to the Hollow Knight themself is deeply rooted in my own experiences, so in the context of this discussion I can't promise I won't take it personally.

With that out of the way, let's talk trauma and fighting styles:

We know that the Hollow Knight is trained to be a paragon of fighting skill, through the Pure Vessel fight, and this gives us a fantastic way to compare what they were like before they were made Government Assigned Radiance Jail, and after. Or, in other words, we're given the perfect opportunity to see what the Radiance is doing (i.e. context effects), and what Hollow is (i.e. what we can conclude is reliably consistent as a part of them). Listed here, for reference:

Hollow's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Radiant Shade Soul, which launches a volley of Infection blobs in arcs

A Radiant Desolate Dive, which produces pillars of entwined Void and Light at random intervals

The Infection bursting out of them in random arcs, covering a significant amount of the aerial space of the arena

The Radiance ragdolling their body around trying to hit the Knight

Contact damage from them stabbing themself and falling over atop you

The Pure Vessel's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Pure Shade Soul, which launches a volley of nails in straight lines

A Pure Desolate Dive, which produces nails at specific intervals

A Pure Focus, which causes circular explosions across most of the aerial space in the arena

Lashing out with a Void Arm (word choice intentional)

I've highlighted attacks from each battle that are different, since those are our points of interest here. In addition, both the Pure Vessel and Hollow are exceedingly fond of teleport-spamming in a way that is usually reserved for a specific group of bosses.

Another very important distinction between these two fights: the Pure Vessel doesn't scream. Well, they certainly try to, but no sound comes out. No voice to cry suffering, after all. All of these points have a lot to go into, so let's address them one at a time.

All That Remains: Theoretical Background On The Significance Of Constants

Making comparisons across time is important specifically because humans (and human-like bugs) change. Most personality traits aren't set in stone--they exist as an interaction of someone's internal tendencies, their experiences, and their environment. Speaking of those last two points, not all experiences and environments are created equally. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs for short) are known to have lifelong implications for a child's health, both physically and mentally. These are events that are so stressful or stressful for so long that they exceed a child's ability to cope and become toxic stress (yes, that's the term in the literature, because it actively damages your organs). They compound, as well--the stress of one ACE makes it harder for a child to cope with another, especially if they overlap.

Some examples of ACEs? Being exposed to physical danger or the threat of physical danger, deprivation of normal social relationships with peers of a similar age, being forcibly seperated from family members, witnessing a loved one being hurt or killed, chronic illness in oneself or a family member, neglect of a child's emotional needs....

Poor fucking Holly. It's a miracle they didn't disintegrate under the pressure. The only other option is that they bent and adapted under that much stress--in other words, most of their personality has been forcibly reshaped by what they've gone through. Anyone who has up-close experience with parentification or complex child abuse already knows: this was by design. I'm not saying the intent was to traumatize the Pure Vessel past several points of no return, but the intent definitely was to reshape their personality for the purpose of being The Vessel. We only see them (the Pure Vessel) in battle after this process is mostly or entirely complete, but we do see them a few times beforehand. I'd like to draw attention to the Path of Pain cutscene right now.

I've seen people talking about the look the Vessel and the King share as a sign that TPK really does love his child. That might be true, but it's definitely not relevant when it comes to how abuse works. This is, in fact, exactly how the cycle of abuse uses affection as a tool. Long periods of abuse or neglect, smoothed over by small periods of affection that placate the survivor? That's textbook love bombing, the kind that forms stubborn trauma bonds and facilitates unhealthy dependency. Forgive me for not giving the Higher Being of knowledge and prescience the benefit of the doubt on that one. (/s)

Team Cherry knows about the importance of parallels and dissonance. There's a reason the music in the second phase of the Hollow Knight fight plays in the Path of Pain. There's a reason it cuts out the moment the battle with the Kingsmoulds is over, instead of at the room transition. There's a reason it doesn't cut out in the Black Egg. Actually, there's two potential reasons, which could also coexist: either little Hollow trusts the Pale King to keep them safe, even after the borderline torture that they were just subjected to, or big Hollow is so hypervigilant that they're in full functioning-through-trauma mode even while they're at death's door.

If you don't see how much the Pale King scarred his child at this point, I'm not sure we were playing the same game.

Walking the Straight Line: How the Pale King's Teachings Show In the Pure Vessel

The Pale King loves order and control. Everything about the White Palace and every decision we see him make implies this. Everything is spotless white walls and well-maintained gardens; the only signs of disorder are hidden away, either in his workshop or in The Pit™. This also reflects in the Pure Vessel's title--pure as in holy, but also pure as in without flaw. Considering the Nailsmith's emotional state after completing the Pure Nail, TPK's fate with his Perfect Controlled Kingdom, and the Godmaster ending as a whole, attaining perfection is not a good thing in any sense.

We know the Hollow Knight isn't perfect--that's the whole catalyst for the plot. But considering their upbringing and their fighting style as the Pure Vessel, their imperfections absolutely kill them emotionally. I'll spare the lecture on how perfectionism affects neurodivergent kids even more severely than neurotypical kids, if only to keep this post to a reasonable length (look up "twice-exceptional children" if you'd like to know the theory I'm glossing over in more depth). But, in essence, the deck is doubly stacked against them--they have a higher goal to reach, and far more obsctacles in their path, including their own emotional scars.

I've already discussed how Hollow isn't meant for this kind of stress in a physical sense in other posts. They're not prepared for it emotionally, either--the Pale King wants perfection, and they can't even stand up straight (every spoonie in the audience already knows how exhausting people's obsession with Standing Up Straight is). There's another page on their stack of emotional baggage, even BEFORE you consider that the Pure Vessel knows their perfection is what bought them a ticket out of the Abyss.

Bringing Teleportation To A Sword Fight: Where The Pure Vessel Reveals Their Fears

How else are they going to cope with that need for perfection, that need to prove themselves worthy of the reason their life was spared, by being flawless in any way they can? Being a mechanical, flawless fighter puts so much pressure on them, both literally (repetitive strain injuries fucking HURT) and figuratively--if you're predictable, the only sure way to win is to mop the floor with your opponents before they figure you out. Hell, that's the way most people play their first run of Hollow Knight, by throwing themselves at the bosses over and over until they figure out the patterns. That strategy is inherently going to fail against an opponent that's, say, an immortal higher being.

There's no way that the Vessel didn't figure this out, and yet none of their TPV specific attacks are positioned randomly--the nails are always evenly spaced, and the Focus explosions are always in a specific height region of the screen. That's clinging to survival strategies even when they become maladaptive in its purest form.

Another dip into psychological theory: let's talk about disorganized attachment. Attachment styles describe how someone's relationships to their main caregiver(s) influence their understanding on relationships in general. Disorganized attachment is a result of an upbringing of inherently unstable parent-child relationships, where there's no way of a child predicting whether an adult is going to be delighted to see them, ambivalent, upset, or otherwise. If my parent woke up some days saying "all right my child, time for the Infinite Buzzsaws Obstacle Course," I'd be the same way. In adulthood this manifests as an inability to form a stable sense of self-concept as well as concepts of others. Mission accomplished, TPK, there's no will to break if you broke it yourself.

This is where the fighting styles as communication comes in--Hollow needs to keep Ghost at a distance to fight, but also wants to be closer to their sibling (the only being who has a chance of understanding what they've been through), BUT also has a trauma-rooted fear of attaching to people, as their experiences with attachment are inherently unpredictable and dangerous. Hence, both the teleportation that doesn't seem to match their fighting style any more reliably than "aim at the thing attacking you" and the second attack unique to the Pure Vessel--they're quite literally lashing out in pain to push people away. There's a reason that attack is so reminiscent of the Thorns of Agony.

Of note is that Holly does seem to teleport like the bugs of the Soul Sanctum do (favoring the edges of a screen, rather than going wherever like Dream Warriors do), which makes sense--they're the most obvious answer to the question "how did they learn how to teleport, anyways?" However, Sanctum bugs have abilities designed to capitalize on this, like homing spells and slashes from above. I can only assume this means that someone saw Holly's proficiency with the nail and assumed it translated to other forms of combat, and didn't feel the need to give them at least a bit of a primer on how to make the best use of it. There's another tally for the Hollow Knight as an autism metaphor.

Trauma Bonds: How the Radiance Speaks Through Hollow

Now, we're back to the Black Egg, and two people stuck in the same sinking ship. The thing that makes this hurt so badly is that Holly and the Radiance are at complete cross purposes here, and yet they both want the same thing:

They both want out, no matter the cost. For the Radiance, this means forsaking the pacifistic nature of the moths and nuking Ghost personally.

For Hollow, this means forsaking the way they were raised and everything that was bludgeoned into their personality: the only way out is to fail, give up control, and trust that Ghost will do what needs to be done.

Imagine how much pain they're in to actually go for it. Going against a literal lifetime of conditioning is something that takes the average person years to even consider, let alone go through with. It's a form of learned helplessness--if you try to break free and fall, again and again, it actively discourages further attempts. Breaking through learned helplessness is an interesting process, because it generally involves re-establishing a sense of control by recalling previous events where the person was able to change their situation.

Which, as far as we know of, are nothing but traumatic memories for Hollow. It's very unlikely that they'd break through it on their own, but we know they have by the time we see the second phase of their fight. This is them at their most desperate: the same music as the Path of Pain, the way they let, or can't stop, the Radiance throw their body around, the way they actively try to let the Radiance out by stabbing themself.

You'd think that giving up and learned helplessness are inherently compatible, but when giving up both goes against your core personality, and involves your active participation, they're in direct opposition. So either Holly was able to process all their trauma by themself (which I doubt, judging by how much effort the player has to go through to even see Ghost's and Hollow's traumatic memories), or someone gave them a nudge or three in that direction.

Considering that there's been someone living in Holly's head who has a vested interest in them Not Doing Their Duty, I think we know who. And the thing is, I think we watch Hollow have this breakthrough during their battle. Imagine for the first time in decades, at least, you can move. You're in pain from being in the same position, probably hallucinating from sensory deprivation, with an infection sucking at what strength your body has left. And there's this little creature who looks ready to fight you, who seems to have let you go for that exact purpose.

And you look down, and both you and the Radiance recognize them from a place rooted deeper than consciousness, in the murky depths of trauma. You see the other Vessel who just as easily could have been you, and who looks so much stronger for not being you, for being an imperfect, willful creature. And the Radiance sees history threatening to repeat itself, another one of the Wyrm's cursed children seeking to lock her away once more.

What else do you do when you're triggered? You scream, and you go on instinct, and you retreat into your head. Those first blows, with the epic music? That's the Vessel the Pale King forged, the fighting machine that will endure unimaginable stress because it knows no other way. What snaps you back out of dissociation? Usually, either the passage of the triggering stimulus, or an even more relevant stimulus (severe pain from getting beaten up by a nail, for example).

The tragedy is this: we know this isn't a triumph. I think most of us went into that fight the first time, knowing we'd be putting the Hollow Knight out of their misery. The music turns tragic, Hollow screams, and then we see the Radiance and Hollow themself break through: the Radiance trying to fight Ghost directly with the resources she has, and Hollow trying to help her along.

For what it's worth, Hollow even had the right idea, when it came to letting themself rest while helping Ghost stop the madness their father started--they were just digging for the Radiance in the wrong place. The dynamic between the Radiance and the Hollow Knight is something I could write on for pages and pages, but this has gone on for long enough. Tune in next time, where I'll presumably talk about this same topic but in reverse with regards to the Radiance.

[jinxedpanda4life]

DamiRae Hospital AU?

  No I am not writing one, if I could write well I would though! So here are some HCs for a hospital AU.    If someone decides to write this then I’ll be your first reader. Also I am sort of basing things off of Grey’s Anatomy just a bit and my limited knowledge of the medical field.

- Starts of as 1st year residents, specialties may vary

- The “Titans” are residents and 1st years that show great promise, this doesn’t really play a role its just what people call them behind their backs

- Dr. Kori Anders is a OBGYN (women parts and birth) resident, a year or two away from finishing

- Dr. Richard “Dick” Grayson is is a surgery resident, trained by the hospital owner Bruce Wayne (who is a world renowned surgeon, has awards, etc), specifically general surgery

- Dr. Garfield Logan is pediatrician (kid doctor) res, bonds well with kids, but is considering going back to school to become a vet instead

- Dr. Jaime Reyes is an oncology (cancer doctor), having had cancer as a teen and is now forever trying to rid the world of it, works mostly with kids and teens

- Dr. Jonathan Kent is a physical therapist that works with pain management. Up beat guy and is always trying to brighten his patient’s lives.

- Dr. Damian Wayne is a surgical intern, blood thirsty little thing, hoping to become a neurosurgeon (brain, spine) (or cardiothoracic (heart, lungs) both are competitive)

- Dr. Raven Roth is an anesthesiologist (the drug person that knocks you out) and is starting her surgical internship (she wanted to do more than just help people get high essentially or whatever) has no current preference for any specific surgical field

- Add in characters:

-- Dr. Jason Todd, trauma surgeon (fits too well)

-- Dr. Timothy Drake diagnostician (medical detective basically) 

-- Dr. Donna Troy gynecologist

-- Terra Markov is a nurse (i don’t like Terra but nurses are the actual best)

- Story stuff:

- Damian and Raven meet as they are put under the guidance of the same resident

-Damian has an automatic dislike for Raven because she knows everyone already and is equally, if not much more, knowledgable about surgery, the OR, the ER, protocol, etc  He also thinks she is cold because she rarely shows emotion (pot kettle Damian)

- Raven can always be found in the medical archives researching old cases and studying new ones, Damian stumbles upon her when looking for an old cardiomegaly case (enlarged heart).

- Raven gets along with all of the past ‘Robins’ making her a go to intern

- Garfield can be seen whenever he is not needed trying to flirt with Nurse Markov and often goes to Raven to sulk 

- Damian and Raven are always early to pre-rounds and are typically the first ones there (usually early in the morning, getting there before 500)

- Jon bumps into Damian more often than not and they start becoming friends (Damian is reluctant at first and is still you know Damian about everything), Damian even recommends patients to him 

- Though Damian doesn’t want to really ‘hang out’ with anyone he reluctantly hangs out with the Titans, because of Jon and Dick

            - When in a large group when at a bar, club or whatever Damian tends to stay close to Raven because 1) they actually have things to talk about 2) she isn’t loud

- Raven & Damian are both assigned to a case that is frankly befuddling and have to start spending long nights and early mornings together to figure it out

- Over that period of time they learn things about each other:

-- Raven learns: 

Damian has a dog (Titus) and cat (Alfred) 

He is single (Kori told her) and lives in an apartment close to the hospital

He has lived in various countries

He is trained in multiple martial arts 

He prefers his tea with brown sugar and a slice of lemon 

His eyes are a true emerald color with a ring of gold and flecks scattered within 

He may hide it well but when Raven compliments him he becomes flustered

He speaks to himself in Arabic when he curses, trying to remember something, doesn’t want anyone to know what he is saying

He isn’t always an asshole

When he actually smiles a true and genuine smile, she has heart palpitations

-- Damian learns:

Raven has two tattoos (neither are a bird), a gang tat (she is saving up to get it removed), and a mantra in Azarathian; Azarath Metrion Zinthos

She immigrated from Azarath when she was around 8

Her notes are in Azarathian

She actually feels a lot of emotion and knows how to control them

If she is not reading about a current or past case she is reading any book or file she can get her hands on, he has caught her reading in multiple different languages; Azarathian, English, French, Russian, Arabic, Dutch, Mandarin, (could be more or less)

She lives alone and has a cat, Nevermore, and thanks to Dick he already knew she was single

She likes all tea, no matter how prepared, but prefers the sweetener to be honey

Her hair is black but shines purple, especially under the ER lights

Her eyes are a purple that at first glance look blue, like Elizabeth Taylor, he realizes though her eyes are galaxies on their own 

When she smiles the world actually stops moving, her eyes shine like stars and he never wants the world to start moving again

She always wears a necklace with a gold and ruby ring at all times (it was her mother’s wedding ring)

- When Damian starts having le feelings for Raven he considers actually seeking medical advice as this has never happened to him before

- Raven tries her best to contain her feelings when at work, going so far as one day a month staying home just to scream, cry and feel her feelings

- It does not help that new feelings towards Damian start popping up, especially since he starts bringing her tea and hanging out with her at work

- During the middle of their 2nd year of residency someone holds Raven hostage in the hospital to fix someone that person loves (this person had connections to Trigon and knew who Raven was)

- That was not a fun time for either Damian or Raven; Damian was outside the hospital pacing trying to figure something out with the other Titans trying to calm themselves and him down

- Shots are fired and when all is said and done, Raven gets shot in the abdomen and the hand (she was in ICU for a hot sec)

- Damian seemed to be there every time Raven woke up, he was always checking on her during rounds even though he wasn’t on her case

- Raven did have to have surgery on her hand and in her abdomen (idk where i’m not getting that specific), she hated being, in her words, coddled 

- Even though Raven was right handed (the one that got shot) she learned how to do everything, writing, eating, going to the bathroom, etc. (many of the other residents are impressed since she keeps working on it after her other hand heals)

- Raven’s room also becomes a space for other residents to destress and just vent about their day. She listens and gives advice, all without looking up from whatever she was doing. 

- During this time Raven becomes hooked on Pretty Pretty Pegasus

- Raven’s room is also full of cards, flowers, etc all from fellow staff and some from patients. When she leaves (she spends a couple weeks in thanks to multiple surgeries, recovery, and other minor injuries) all of the gifts litter her apartment, the cards end up in a box by her desk, she presses the flowers, and stuffed animals are donated to children’s shelter (she keeps some that she has grown attached to)

- During this time Damian is more of an ass than usual (people notice and tease him)

- Damian at some points keeps working without breaks/sleep for hours on end. Dick pulls him aside after noticing, scolds and forces him to sleep in one of the on call rooms. (He really wanted him to go home, but Damian wasn’t leaving)

- Once Raven was discharged Damian and Garfield help her back home (clothes + gifts + Raven w/a healing hand/other injuries = need help) the other Titans would have helped but were needed at the hospital

- Garfield leaves after dropping off Raven and Damian (and her stuff) as he is called in on a Peds case (could be fake, may not be) and Raven & Damian spend the rest of the time basically watching terrible movies. (with Nevermore sitting on both of them)

- That is the night Damian realizes that not only does he like Raven, but he like likes her. He starts devising plans on how to get her to date him. 

- All his plans basically are thrown out the window because of one reason or another (he kept overthinking it)(poor guy)

- It is not until their 3rd year of residency that Raven realizes her feelings towards Damian (Have I made it clear she likes him? I can’t remember...)

- She realizes her feelings when she has to crash at his place for a night (because he lives ridiculously close to the hospital, like how expensive is that??) and he tries to make sure that she is as comfortable as possible 

- She never realized how much he cared for her? Like she was always helping him out and there for him but she never realized he reciprocated that care? *Shocker*

- Raven becomes kind of a mess because of all her emotions that she is trying to bottle up. (all the corks are disintegrating and the jar is overflowing)

- Raven is during her Ortho rotation (bone surgeon people, they are cool, ik from experience) that she actually gets a good release for her emotions (setting peoples bones and drilling and hammering in pins is actually therapeutic) 

- Raven thinks that may be the specialty she chooses

- Damian saw her as a mess and could not fathom why she was said mess, he figured it was about a romantic interest after someone made an offhand comment about her love life and she became a blubbering mess (very un-Raven like)

- After all of well *motions with hands* that Raven asks why Damian doesn’t have a s/o or someone

- He says there is only person that he has been meaning to ask out (looks pointedly at Raven)

- All Raven says is “Go for it.”

And that is where my HCs end. Now if anyone who happens upon this post decides to write a Medical AU with any of these please tag me, tell me, message me. 

You do not have to give me credit, I just want to read it. 

This took me a couple of days to write up, so if it is disjointed I apologize. 

If anything needs to be corrected for any reason let me know!

 I hope this fuels some imaginations!

-I may post more HC AU things if they come to mind, we will have to see.

[sariahsue]

I just saw your take one Lilo&Stitch's approach to child protection and I was wondering if you could give some advice on how to write realistic stuff in this matter? I've been meaning to write a foster care/adoption fic and I do know the system in France must be at least a little different - and I will get down the research hole once I have a bit more time - but do you have any advice on how to write the kids reactions, the way parents deal with everything, the bonding part... things like this, so I can avoid clichés.

You don't have to answer though, feel free to ignore all this akdjwja I just figured there's no harm in asking XD

Yeah, sure! (To anyone else reading this who has a fic, feel free to send me a message if you have questions!) I’m definitely not the most knowledgeable person, but I know quite a bit. And I’m sure things are a bit different in France (hopefully their court system is better - yikes!) but I think the human element would be pretty similar, so here we go. 

First off, know that everyone is foster care is having a rough time constantly. Foster kids, workers, parents, foster parents, foster siblings. And no one knows what’s going on long term. There’s always a lot of uncertainty. Will the kids go home soon? Are parental rights going to be terminated at the next court date? Who knows???

The birth parents, at best, are going through a really tough time in their life, made worse because their kids were taken away from them. Some care about their kids, but they’re extremely self-centered and have zero parents skills. Some are manipulative and see foster care as free babysitting, and as long as they get to see their kid for an hour or so a week, this arrangement is fantastic for them! At worst, they’re just horrible human beings who abuse children. In general, most parents are clueless and selfish and pretty manipulative. They say they’re good parents and have no clue why their kids were taken away, even though their kid has cigarette burn marks on their back, or had to eat out of the garbage to survive because the were left alone for hours at a time when they were four, or worse. They have no clue at all what their behavior does to their kids, and they refuse to listen to anyone who tries to explain it to them.

No matter what type of parents they were, their kids ALWAYS love them and want to go home. Every single one of them. No matter the age. No matter what their home life put them through. Some of them aren’t old enough to understand why they can’t go home. Some have been in foster care for years and hardly remember living at home but still want to go home.  

It makes for complicated foster relationships sometimes because the kid will be attached to both birth and foster parents and feel guilty or conflicted or disloyal, or they’ll try really hard not to be attached to the foster parents in the first place. (I can think of only one exception to this. Two sisters who had been put into another home and liked the foster family and decided that they were going to be adopted by this family and were very excited about it... except the foster family had no plans to adopt them. I never learned what happened there.) 

And this is before accounting for the mental health struggles that often accompany the trauma most of them have been through. Some kids come in with anxiety that makes it difficult to trust new people. Some kids’ behavior is so extreme that it’s difficult for foster parents to take care of them, and so the kid moves around constantly. (If their behavior is too bad, they can sometimes be put into either a group home or residential, either temporarily or permanently.)

Parents are also entitled to visits, usually either weekly or every other week, at least while the goal is reunification (which is always starts out as). Before the pandemic, these usually took place in the DCF (Department of Children and Families is what it’s called in my state) office or in a visitation center. Sometimes the court orders that the visits be supervised so they don’t start promising their kids that they’re coming to get them next week. Often the workers think that sitting down the hallway not listening counts as supervision. 🙄 

With the pandemic, kids have been meeting over Zoom. That’s being phased out pretty soon here. Kids are almost always triggered by these visits. I mean, they look forward to them usually. Some kids are mad at their parents and don’t want to talk to them, but almost always, they want to see their parents. And almost always whatever behavior problems they had before is extremely worse for the next 2-5 days. (Which is terrible if you get a visit every week.) Some parents bail on these visits regularly. Some consistently bail on only birthdays and Christmas. We’ve learned not to tell the kid that they have a visit coming up until we know it’s definitely happening, or sometimes only right before we’re planning on leaving to go, because the anticipation of a visit is triggering or because getting stood up by your own mother is traumatizing. Sometimes you can get the kid’s therapist to write a note asking for the visits to be less frequent for the kid’s sake, but often that just means every other week instead of every week.

For foster families welcoming kids into their home, it’s a little different. They’re often more stable, and their whole life isn’t shifting around them. They’re just getting one or two kids into the family. The home dynamic is going to be a little different. Nothing huge, compared to what the foster kids are going through. It often depends on the kid how fast you get attached. Sometimes you know kids are only going to be there for a month because their normal foster family had to deal with an emergency, but the plan is to take them back soon. Sometimes they’re adorable babies and you get super attached really, really fast. Sometimes they’re so unhappy and scared that they make your home life completely miserable. Sometimes you’ve seen so many kids come and go over the years, and they’ve all left eventually, and your heart becomes guarded to protect you from that pain. But you get attached eventually anyway. 

And sometimes your parents are given a newborn whose goal is reunification and it’s love at first sight even though you don’t know if you can keep him, and then he’s put up for adoption when he’s two and you adopt him SO HARD. And then you make future foster kids upset because you can’t adopt them too. :( And even though they get adopted by friends of yours, they still feel conflicted over it four years later. 

You would think that a kid raised completely in their adoptive home from birth would have no problems, and sometimes that’s the case. Sometimes they still get upset about the adoption when they’re older because the foundational belief they have about themselves is that their mother didn’t want them, even though it’s not true. 

(This is the real-life story of my brother. We are the only family he’s ever known, and he’s 13 now, but he still has issues over being adopted. The other boy is 16 and is doing much better with his new family now, though he still has some issues. We had him for a very long time, and we were all happy that we know his adoptive family well because we stayed it contact with him, which almost never happens when a foster kid leaves.)

Oh, I forgot one thing. Usually when kids first get to your house, they are perfect little angels for a while. Depending on the kid, it’s either a couple days or maybe even three months. It’s called the “honeymoon period.” Once their subconscious realizes that this is a safe place to work on their issues and they aren’t in physical danger, they start to process what they’ve been through. It comes out in a variety of ways. Behavioral issues, bedwetting, explosive anger, nightmares, etc.

A note about social workers: All the workers (at least in my state) constantly have too many cases. Like, double what they’re legally supposed to have. Most of them try hard to keep up. Some DO NOT CARE. Some are fantastic and put extra time in to go to the kid’s end-of-the-school-year recitals and build a relationship with them. They’re in charge of organizing visits and making sure the kids have everything set up and are generally important in the kid’s life. They’re required to visit once a month and make sure foster parents have all the right paperwork and arrange dentist visits and bring them to all their therapy appointments. (FYI, You get a piece of paper that says you’re the legal guardian. You have to show it to schools and doctors when you make arrangements for the kids. My mom also keeps a copy in her purse, just in case a kid starts screaming “HELP! SHE’S NOT MY MOM” in the middle of the store or something. It’s never happened, but you know, just in case.)

Also, you would think that they’re the constant in the kid’s life, but if the birth parents move, the case gets transferred to another office in the state, and so the social workers switch. I sincerely hope that’s not how things are done in France because it’s garbage for a lot of reasons.

Okay, I’ve written you an essay, but I hope it was a useful essay! Let me know if you have any more questions!