#nor do i usually try to get my way. i am content to let ppl figure their lives out and i will live mine | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

road-rhythm · 4 years ago

Note

For me, shipping is Y/Z = explicit content so ppl know. My default for DNI notes is to respect boundaries because people have reasons to curate their own space, but what happens if I interact with someone's ao3 where they don't have that note and I didn't know beforehand until I read their blog, or if I just don't see the note until after interacting? Ao3 is easier because people tend to DLDR or have more boundaries, but idk how to account for other cases? That's just one question I have.

ETA: It turns out page jumps don't work in ask-reply posts, so the topic list below—which was supposed to be navigable—is just dead text. Nor do the footnotes work. I am disproportionately bitter about this but cannot fix it.

I'll level with you, anon: I was thrown for a loop that anybody would ask this blog, of all blogs, for advice. But the issues I understand your questions to be about are interesting to me, so while I'm not sure I'm the best resource on this, I will answer as well as I can.

Which brings me to the first thing I want to say: any time you're going to argue on the internet, it can't be with the motivation of changing the mind of the person you're arguing with. You probably won't. Therefore, the payoff needs to be something else. Often people get into debates in the hope of convincing onlookers rather than opponents; while that does have a better chance of success, my own motivation is usually more that I want to organize my thoughts about the topic.

With some of these questions, I get the feeling that you're looking for articulate responses to be able to give when you want to push back against people who are trying to dictate how you participate in fandom. If so, you should know that being articulate won't fix that. It won't protect you from hate, criticism, or general malcontent. It can give you clarity about your own positions and feelings that's very worth having, but it won't by itself defuse any emotional tensions or forestall people who are already upset with you. Articulateness can help a conflict management strategy, but it isn't one.

A cool side effect it does have, though, is helping you build a better friend group by making it easier for like-minded people to understand what it is you have in common—and what you don't. That won't remove all conflict from your online social life, but it can help bring it to manageable levels.

Before I respond, I'm going to go through your asks and paraphrase them. These are the questions I think you're asking; if I have misunderstood something, which is probable, please feel free to let me know.

1, C2: What ethical obligations does a DNI note impose?

2a: How do I not feel bad when I have a different opinion from other people I'm interacting with in fandom?

2b: How do I not feel bad when enforcing my boundaries?

3: Why do some people go after others who write content that happens not to be to their taste?

4-5: Why do some people go after others who interpret or interact with canon in a way they disagree with or that happens not to be to their taste, and what should I do about it?

6b: If I engage in discussions with people who see something very differently from me, how do I maintain my own boundaries without feeling bad if people get personal and invalidate lived experiences which I based my meta and fiction on? (verbatim) (elaboration/example of 2b)

6a: If I write something that is somehow different from my previous output and it turns out someone can't handle it, does that mean I have harmed them?

C1a: If I write something that is somehow different from most other output for that pairing/trope/etc. and it turns out someone can't handle it, does that mean I have harmed them?

C2: What responsibility, if any, do I have to followers or subscribers who are distressed by content that I have tagged but which they find somehow distasteful or objectionable?

Rather than taking these one by one, I'm going to talk about a few areas that I think intersect most of these questions somewhere. Fair warning, anon: this is long as hell and I'm pretty sure most of it isn't even what you were looking for. I hope that enough of it's useful enough to make it worth your while, and if it not, sorry. Whatever sort of reputation I have, I'm fairly sure it's not for giving people what they actually wanted.

DNI notes (block me yourself, bitch)

Why are people?

Expectations, surprises, and distress vs. harm

How do I not feel bad?

———————————————————

DNI notes (block me yourself, bitch)

[W]hat happens if I interact with someone's ao3 where they don't have that note

Not a thing,

and I didn't know beforehand until I read their blog,

not a thing,

or if I just don't see the note until after interacting?

and not a single, solitary, country-fried thing.

DNI notes are interesting to me, partly because I'm not sure where they came from. They seem to be a fairly recent phenomenon, but no one agrees on what platform primarily popularized them: one source says Instagram, another Twitter, another Tumblr. My perception is that DNIs are much more common among younger users, say under 25 or even under 21, but I don't have data to back that up. (If anyone does have any sort of reliable information about DNIs' emergence/use, please drop it on me somewhere!)

Anyway, here's my thought about DNIs as boundaries: they aren't.

Not to say I will disregard a DNI note if I see it. "W*ncesties DNI!" lets me know I'll probably be happier not interacting with whoever has that in their profile, so the note is already serving most of its practical purpose. For that matter, I'll avoid interacting with someone who has "Hellers DNI!" up top for the same reason: I'm not in the category named, but it's still a good clue I don't want to get involved and that there will be content I don't want to see. In that capacity, it's like hazard lights on a car. Another stripe of fan will see a pointedly offensive DNI and deliberately violate it, at which point the note gets to serve the rest of its practical purpose; viz., stirring shit for the bored and attention-starved. In that capacity, it's more like a mating signal. Those setting the bait and those taking it usually deserve each other. Either way, the DNI achieves a goal.

But it's not how you set a boundary. It might even impinge on others', inasmuch as it attempts to foist a kind of contract onto random strangers. Again, it's not the not interacting that I think most reasonable people will dig in their heels about when confronted with a DNI—it's the implication that they have been invested with the responsibility of curating someone else's internet experience for them merely by that DNI existing. It's trying to say that this line in your Twitter bio automatically creates a covenant between you and all who read it, and maybe even those who don't.*

Reasonable and effective boundaries don't work that way. It is fine to express preferences about what topics you dislike or prefer to avoid, and your Twitter or Tumblr profile is a fine place to do it. It's the "About You" section, after all. But if your emotional wellbeing depends on strangers on the internet clicking through to your profile to check if you have a note banning all shippers of, IDK, Dobby/Davros from interacting with you before liking some GIF you posted on a site that is designed to disseminate your post as widely as possible, you fucked up somewhere.

Interpersonal boundaries can be societal or individual. Societal boundaries are things like personal space (so, variable by culture), and you don't have to set them yourself, though you may unfortunately be required to enforce them. A fandom-relevant example would be an expectation of freedom from targeted harassment online, which is socially recognized and codified in the TOS of pretty much any site that allows users to interact with each other. You shouldn't have to tell anyone in advance not to send you unsolicited dick pics, blitz your DMs with slurs, or drop suicide bait in your asks.

Individual boundaries are ones you cannot reasonably expect others to know unless you tell them. A preference for all individuals who enjoy a given fictional pairing not to speak to you in any context falls here. Yes, even if the pairing is kinky. Yes, even if it squicks you. Yes, even if it medically triggers you.

A DNI note isn't a good faith effort to tell anyone this preference. Blog and microblog profiles aren't like TOS consent pages—and they're definitely not like the consent pages you click through to use AO3. Unlike a TOS pop-up, you have no technical means to force eyeballs connecting with your posts to pass over your profile first. Short of pasting your DNI note into every post you make, then, you have no reasonable expectation that the people viewing your content will ever see it.

Leaving the issue of the DNI note's visibility to one side for a moment, what about the "I" part? So long as you're being proactive about notifying people of your preferences, do you get to claim any extent of interaction as a boundary? Can you declare content you publish off-limits to a class even for consumption, and claim their reading it as a violation? If you've got a line on your blog or a tweet somewhere telling people, "Do not consume my fanworks if [X]" and you expect this to restrain all members of X from reading your fic over on AO3, it's plain why that is dumb; but what if you paste "Do not read if you ship Dobby/Davros" into the header of every chapter of every fic you have on AO3? Do people have an obligation to respect that boundary?

Honestly, no, sorry. You chose to post it on a public archive. If the thought of some freaks who are into twisted shit reading your lovingly crafted tales about your comfort characters makes your skin crawl, then frankly, that discomfort is something you're inflicting on yourself. (I would wager that inflicting it on yourself is even the point.)

Not all boundaries are reasonable or necessarily deserving of respect just because they're there. Replace "wincestie" or "heller" or "anti" or "bronly" with a religious or ethnic group, and this becomes instantly apparent. Asking, "are we obligated to follow a DNI if we know about it?" is pretty much just asking, "are we obligated to respect someone's preferences whenever we know them?" And the answer is always some combination of "depends on the preferences" and "depends on the situation."

There's a difference between being exposed to content and being exposed to people, and there's a difference between interaction and association. I can't think of any matter in fandom that would override your right not to associate with anyone you don't want to. No TOS can allow someone to be your friend. On the other hand, there's all kinds of crap that could override your preference not to have a group of people you think have icky ships interact with you via matter you've posted.

"I don't want to read Wincest/DeanCas/whatever the fuck": fine and reasonable boundary. "I don't want to hear a peep out of any member of a group of people I devote large amounts of time and energy to slagging off in public": not a fine and reasonable boundary.

(Whether members of the group in question should avoid interacting for their own sake is a separate question.)

It's not someone else's job to hide themselves from you. No matter how repulsive you find them, it's not their job to create the conditions that will allow you to pretend they don't exist. Especially if you're not actually going to.

Erring on the side of respect is a good rule of thumb: absent some more compelling interest, do as people ask. But 1) people may indeed have more compelling interests, and 2) if you're asking other people to assume responsibility for your experiences on the internet, there's already no respect there. You can't put that on another person, particularly not a fellow fan who doesn't know you and is no less likely to be dealing with their own shit than you are. You can't do it both in the sense that it cannot be accomplished and in the sense that you are kind of an asshole if you try.

Are DNIs all created equal? Obviously not, because "X/Y shippers DNI" != "Buddhists DNI," et cetera. So what about DNIs that are about real-life stuff rather than ship wars, like "racists and TERFs DNI"? Personally I find those a lot less eye-rolly than the fandom ones, but if this is the only or the most effective way you can find to send the message that you disagree with bigotry… ehhhhh? (When was the last time fandom had its biggest problems with anyone who'd admit to being either of those things, anyway?)

What about "minors DNI"? Not wanting to talk to children you don't know is indeed a reasonable boundary, for many reasons, but you can't rely on a note in your profile to establish it. Not discussing adult content with minors you're not responsible for is a societal boundary—because the designation "adult content" is a societal boundary—and it's codified on all the platforms we're discussing, including AO3, with requirements to tag in some way. Not wanting to discuss anything with minors at all is an individual boundary, and you will need to set it accordingly.

So I won't say that DNIs are Bad or never serve any function at all, but most are on the same wavelength as "unfollow/block me if [X]!!1!" Like, block me yourself, bitch. I'm happy to ignore all kinds of people, but I ain't curating your social media for you unless it comes with dental.

Why are people?

Why do people attack other people "who write certain content"? Why do people go around telling other people they're "wrong for interacting with media in [some] way"? Why are people constantly treating hobbyist fiction as "a moral thing" and cause for flame wars or outright harassment? Why are people like that—and in fandom, of all places, this thing that literally exists for fun?

I shouldn't waste time seriously trying to answer those kinds of questions, but it's a guilty pleasure. Dynamics in fandom fascinate the fuck out of me lately. I've got a shortlist of factors I've been considering as underlying causes for the kinds of conflict you're describing, most of which interact with or reinforce each other: tribalism, id-buttons, hypervigilant reactivity, conversion kink, and safe exploration.

The short version of all of this: emotional reasoning is a thing; news at eleven.

Tribalism: is a gimme. It might be kind of unsatisfying, but it explains at least half the dumb shit we do (we, homo sapiens and we, fans). What else can you say? Groups define themselves against outsiders as much as they do by common ground within. And we're all hungry for identity, so that's a lot of juice going in. Both sides of any given ship war will do this, SPN's most definitely included. I don't even think it has to be an evil thing: it does aid bonding; that's why we do it. But it's a strong force that tends toward conflict and self-righteousness, and on that level, it doesn't really matter how good your "side's" actual position is. Tribalism brings out the worst in us a lot more frequently than it does the best.

Which really sucks if you're a multishipper. If you're actively fannish about two or more ships (or characters) that fandom at large has decided are opposed to one another, you're going to see the worst of each side while being treated as suspect by both. I don't know your exact situation, anon, but it sounds like that's you.

I don't have a great solution for you. It sucks; it'll continue to suck; the way to make it suck way less is to curate your fandom experience aggressively, so if you're getting shat on coming and going by friends who can't tolerate ships they don't share with you, get better friends.

Same for cliques within a ship. In my experience those are usually organized around purity/fanpol stuff or "anti-anti"-dom: the subgroup defines itself by what it abhors, so crusading against those atrocities is the primary bonding activity. It sucks; it'll continue to suck; the way to make it suck way less is to curate your fandom experience aggressively, so if you're getting shat on coming and going by friends who enjoy one end of your creative output but can't tolerate the rest and think they're entitled to govern all of it, get better friends.

Id-buttons: really just my personal shorthand for that thing that happens when we experience strong emotion without clearly understanding what has triggered it. Being upset and not knowing why is an unpleasant state, but not a particularly dangerous one. Problems start when we misattribute the cause.

How well do any of us understand our own inner workings? In fandom we talk about idfic or (my fave) describe things as "iddy." Id-stuff is powerful, highly individual, and belongs to a realm reason can barely touch. Why do I love the psychic nosebleed trope? It's dumb as hell. It's dumb. Why do I love it? Fuck if I know. All I can tell you is that the sight of Sam Winchester trickling red out of his over-sized nostrils hits my eyeballs, travels a fast track down to the depths of my psyche, and mashes a button in there that I experience as extreme gratification. My prefrontal cortex knows psychic nosebleeds make no sense. My id thinks psychic nosebleeds are fucking marvelous.

A lot of fic, God bless us, goes whole-hog on whatever is iddy for the author; as such, idfic tends to be Marmite. One fan's kink is another fan's squick, and that goes as much for stuff that's not sexual in any obvious way—maybe goes double. The psychic nosebleeds that make my id do the Bulbasaur eyes make many others facepalm. H/C? It's love it or hate it, and even those who love it often require that very specific characters occupy very specific roles or they're gonna nope out. The id wants what it wants. Nudge an iddy dynamic two inches in the wrong direction and it becomes a live wire of squick and/or cringe.

Squicks I conceptualize as: this thing took aim at a button your id doesn't have; so it hit your regular, squishy brain matter instead, and since it wasn't designed to do that, the whole experience is like chomping down on psychic tinfoil. Ew, but you spit the tinfoil out and carry on.

Then there's stuff that hits our ids in ungood ways that go beyond squick or cringe. If there are green buttons waiting in everybody's id, there are other buttons that are very, very red. Like the green ones, we don't always know where they are. We may not even suspect they exist until they get hit, and—here's the kicker—even when they do, we still don't necessarily know what the fuck just happened. And it's hard to sort it out when you just got laid out flat by an emotional tsunami.

The stronger an emotional reaction, the stronger our need to explain it. Not just that, but the more important we assume the cause must be. So when people's red id-buttons get smashed, they need a framework to explain what just happened to them, and moral frameworks tend to feel satisfying because morality is important.

Another way we might misattribute the reason for our upset is if the real reason is somehow unpalatable. Why might it be unpalatable? Well, it could be bound up in issues that we're not ready to look at for one reason or another, including trauma. It might be something we think reflects poorly on us, like ingrained prejudice. Or it might be something we think is objectively dumb. The lengths we'll go to to justify a dumb antipathy are impressive. The justifications can be well reasoned, and insightful, and even accurate; but the really high-voltage emotions are still coming from a different place that happens to be dumb as a psychic nosebleed.

That combination is hard to get past, because admitting that some reasons for a preference or antipathy are basically dumb feels like you're invalidating others that might not be dumb at all. But that's all that is: a feeling.

Incidentally, the absolute last thing most fans will admit as a reason for any conviction is their ship.

Anyway. Here again, I do not have a great solution for you. Telling somebody they're confused about the real reasons for their own emotions is unlikely to go over well, and frankly, even though I believe it happens to all of us very frequently, I don't think it even should. Especially if you yourself are going to proceed to offer theories of your own as to what those real reasons are to fill the void. Emotional reactivity isn't something you can persuade someone out of; the best you can do is be watchful for it in yourself.

Hypervigilant reactivity: Not all disproportionate reactions are about id, though. A reliable source of heightened fear, anxiety, and, yes, anger is hypervigilance. A hair-trigger danger meter makes us susceptible to interpreting as threats things that are not; once we feel threatened by something, we are far more likely to erect justifications around the feeling than examine whether it's realistic. That's just human nature.

Many if not most antis are not trauma survivors, but as @soulless-puppy has pointed out elsewhere, if you want to recruit people to a cause, trauma-related hypersensitivity is very exploitable. Give or take a few outliers, it's not like anybody is sitting around twirling their moustaches and asking themselves, "How can I manipulate trauma survivors to spread my puritanical or pro-censorship message today?"; it happens stochastically. But thanks to social media, it does happen.

Conversion kink: Why are so many fans who demand moral purity in media (and/or fanworks) drawn to fandoms like It, or Hades, or Hannibal, or Supernatural, of all things? Why are some people marching into tags or fanworks that clearly indicate the ships or other features they contain only to object to the contents? Why aren't they just… watching and reading shit that has the messages and representation they ostensibly want entertainment to provide?

Outrage is addictive; anybody with a Twitter account knows that. But these folks aren't just hate-reading or hate-watching. Some of them have devoted literal years to ranting about a given ship, or lambasting fanworks they find offensive, or even campaigning for a show to change course to give them something they consider Good Representation and/or Healthy (usually in the form of canonizing a specific ship). That's a lot of time and energy, and while fiction does impact us—else why bother reading it—most arguments that problematic fiction is morally liable for widespread social ills are easily rebutted by things like the fact that sexual violence was not less common in 1823 than it is today. Triggers are very real, but it's pretty odd to vigorously oppose the existence of fanworks with content regarded as commonly triggering while enthusiastically consuming canon that makes the same content its bread and butter. Media and stories that tick a lot more of the boxes these fans say they want ticked are out there. So why can't they stop reading or watching the "bad" stuff, or at the very least shut the fuck up about it?

The first thing I suspect is: they don't find the "good" media that compelling. The unproblematic stuff doesn't speak to their id. But, see above re: dishonesty about our own preferences and emotions: they think unproblematic is what they should want, so they sure as shit can't admit the fucked up stuff turns their crank because it's fucked to hell.

And the second thing I suspect is that they get off on making other people change.

Metaphorically, of course. I'd class this as a non-sexual kink, where the gratification lies not in the object—canon, fanwork, or just somebody's position on the internet—being Good or being absent, but in causing the object to transform. So, a canon that's already Good isn't worth much to these people because they didn't make it be Good. And if they do harass a fan into taking down a Bad fic or artwork, that will be gratifying only for a moment; once the thing doesn't exist anymore, they will have to seek out something else that's Bad, because they get their dopamine hit from seeing the world change to conform to their vision.

Whether there's anything more to this than your basic widespread human need to mind everybody's business but your own, I've no idea. The best solution to this one is to tell those people to fuck off to the ends of the earth and then ignore them.

What all of these factors have in common is that the only thing you can control to improve your experience is yourself.

Expectations, surprises, and distress vs. harm

I understand your anxiety in 6a and C1 as: "What happens when someone comes into my work with expectations that are not met?" And I guess the question underneath—apologies; I’m running the risk of mistaking what I'm personally interested in for what you're trying to ask—is, "What is the compact between author and audience, and what does it mean to break it?"

Since you’ve chosen my blog to ask, you probably have some inkling of what my position is already. Perhaps you just need to hear somebody else say, "Fuck the haters, write what you want"; perhaps you need to practice saying it yourself. I dunno. In any case, "Fuck the haters, write what you want" is pretty much the upshot.

Let's back up a minute. I'm going to clear some of the relatively trivial examples off the board first, then get down to the messy, meaty core. Spoiler: there aren't any pat answers down there.

Your example in C1:

[I]f i have an audience that is used to certain content (for example fluffy Sam/Cas)… but then I write a fic that some people might not be able to handle the tags with because i changed what type of relationship it was (so like, unhealthy Sam/Cas) and they aren't used to me writing content differently, do I just tag it? What if someone can't handle something I wrote and isn't expecting to see that tag? Is that my responsibility?

First of all, whether you're at fault if someone follows you, sees a tag they don't expect—not even the fic; the actual tag—and is distressed… no. Hell, no. Even if the distress rises to the level of injury: no. If the tag itself is an obstacle for you, that really, truly sucks, but it is going to have to be your part to manage your needs there because no one can possibly do it for you. Tags are the system everybody else uses to curate their own experiences. So asking a tag not to be used is really asking for all content described by the tag not to be posted at all (because without the tag, no one can filter out the content).

Nobody has the right to ask for that in a shared space. You may, from time to time, encounter someone throwing a hissy fit to the tune of, "I shouldn't have to filter out incest/pedo/abuse/this thing that is neither incest nor pedo nor abuse but that I'm going to call all of those things because it squicks me personally!" Perhaps you will wonder—worry—if they have a point. Why should they have to filter out such terrible things?

Because it's none of their business what other people jack off to and they don't own the platform, that's why. If they want a space where they don't have to curate their own experiences, they can build it themselves or rustle up a few million and come back when they've bought Tumblr. Until then, they can fuck off.

(Unless you want to commit to a path of education that requires a shitload of self-restraint and bears fruit slowly if ever, though, don't bother explaining any of that to them. Don't fire back at them, which will confirm them in their sense of being aggrieved. Just block them and move on.)

But I'm assuming the meat of your question is whether you're at fault if someone is upset or indeed triggered if they expect one thing from a tag, but your content, though correctly labeled with said tag, delivers another. And my answer is, still, no. Hell no, fuck no, Christ no, sorry but no.

Your example uses a ship. A ship! Something as broad and open for interpretation as a whole-ass ship! It's shortsighted to expect a genre or even a trope to portray only one dynamic or strike one tone, but a friggin' ship? Hell will freeze before an entire fandom agrees on what the "default" dynamic for a given ship is in the first place, but let's suppose for a moment that it were possible and this condition did obtain. Suppose that one day, to a fan, everybody agreed that the default dynamic for Given/Ship is "unproblematic and fluffy" and achieved 100% concord on what qualifies.

Then the next day, somebody new reads or watches the canon for the first time and excitedly dashes off a darkfic.

No, seriously; if we say that "fandom norms" need to be respected as a baseline, what the hell are new fans supposed to do? Perform a lit review before posting so they can flag any departures from a fandom consensus that almost certainly doesn't exist? Run a poll to check what everybody else expects from Given/Ship before they tag their fic, accurately, with Given/Ship? What percentage reporting should we require on that poll, is 80% of all fans sufficient and are there membership lists somewhere to establish who is or is not a fan?

"Hang back in respectful silence and observe our traditions" is a reasonable instruction to, like, postulants in a monastery or congressional interns, but it's a bit much as an entry requirement for squeeing about a TV show.

You can't expect anyone else to know exactly what your expectations are in a fandom. More to the point, you can't expect anyone else to sign on. And if you're an author trying to gauge other people's preexisting expectations, you can't be sure of accuracy. Or uniformity.

Assuming that you've offered your example as an example merely, though, I don't want to get too hung up on the details of it. However obvious and universal a certain expectation may seem to us, it will never be shared by or obvious to everyone, and a failure to make peace with this is a major factor in most wank about specific fanworks. But the salient feature in the situation you're describing is that you are aware that your work will run against the grain of some readers' expectations. You know the mismatch is there. You have a reasonable expectation that they will be surprised, and experience tells you some of them aren't going to like it. So if you know some set of potential readers expect X, and you know this thing you wrote subverts or defies X in some way, do you have a duty to notify those readers in advance? Are you hurting them if you don't?

I want to take a minute or several to look at the notion of harm in fiction. (Look at, not dismiss.)

In the fandom spaces I happen to watch, it's become oddly common for people to talk about stories as perpetrating harm, storytelling as a brand of violence. The rhetoric has ramped up even more during the pandemic, as the end of Supernatural closed the conditions under which that fandom's TJLC-esque conspiracy theories operate, all the usual terms get extra-weaponized in the wank bubble that accompanies most series finales, various hashtags focused on this idea of narrative-inflicted harm get bandied about on Twitter, etc.

Mind you, even in fandom, these are still outliers; pull up any really large forum and find a post to the effect of either "an author harmed me with their correctly labeled fanfic" or "canon harmed me by failing to conform to my expectations," and the bulk of the responses you'll see will be asking if OP has lost their grip on reality. Outside of fandom, stuff like that just gets laughed out of the room. This is a niche problem. Of course, the niche matters to me, so the problem does, too; and "subculture" does not mean "hermetically sealed jar."

As far as SPN goes, this too shall pass, but it’s possible this "stories = attacks" framework is going to be with us for a while. @ameliacareful sees puritanical fan culture/teen culture as part of a broader societal pendulum swing between extremes of permissiveness and conservativism, and as such, part of an ebb and flow that's been present for all history and inevitable. She terms it "the New Victorianism"—and she points out that though OG Victorianism (predictably) became a cage and always had radically different implications for members of different social groups, many of its traits began as responses to real threats and abuses women faced. (Unevenly applied depending on women's socioeconomic status and ethnicity, but what ever isn't.)

The non-fandom example my brain keeps going back to is the US marriage equality movement in the ’00s. A big part of the push for marriage equality (which is intertwined with fights for a host of other civil rights issues such as employment, housing, and adoption rights) has been trying to convince straight society that LGBTQA+ people are Just Like Them.

Don't be afraid of queer people getting married/adopting children/teaching your children, Straights! Queer people, too, enjoy planned communities, financial stability, station wagons, pedestrian infrastructure, farmer's markets, fantasy football, keeping Obama 2012 bumper stickers on your car long after they begin to peel, and optimal neighborhood saturation with Panera Bread, Just Like You.

What? Leather daddies at Pride parades? Oh, no, we completely agree with you: not suitable for children. But please know, that's not all of us. "Queer" is not a synonym for "kinky" any more than it's a synonym for "deviant," and we hate that some people are out there giving society the wrong idea. In fact, we'd like to ban leather from Pride. It's not that we mind what consenting adults do in private, you understand, but there’s a time and a place. We want Pride to be for everyone. Here, Straights: have a rainbow lei and don't be afraid, because we are Just Like You.

No doubt my tone gives clues to my personal feelings about respectability politics, but here's the bitch of it: it weaponizes ideas that are in some wise true. Queer people aren't some fucking exotic species; and we did and do have to counter lurid misconceptions; and "queer" isn't a synonym for "kinky" and is sometimes treated like one; and there are prevalent and pernicious ideas that queerness is inherently obscene laced all through our culture that do untold material and psychic harm to queer people, and it's not even that much of a leap to think that maybe leather daddies at Pride help keep those ideas alive in some people's minds.

So I can understand a desire to purge "deviance" from the image American cultural consciousness holds of queerness. I can understand queer teens wanting to be able to hold hands with their crush and explore innocent young romance without feeling the weight of centuries of cultural baggage on their shoulders, or indeed to have a thoroughly normal adolescent sexual relationship that isn't construed as an act of rebellion in and of itself. I can understand not wanting your existence to have to be a rebellion. I can understand queer adults just not giving a damn about leather or kink and not wanting to hear about it and not particularly enjoying all the straight onlookers who, because they associate queer sexual orientations with kink, now believe they know something about total strangers' sex lives and who not infrequently feel at liberty to fucking talk about it with them as a result. I can understand wanting to be accepted, at any age. And so on, and so forth, because there are millions of queer people of all ages with varied lifestyles, interests, political leanings, and feelings about all this shit, and that's before you even leave America, never mind the West.

I can understand, which is why I try to be gentle about it when I tell anybody who wants to chuck free expression under the bus in favor of respectability politics to get fucked.

The point I went spelunking down that thousand-word digression for is that while I think the push to subject stories to moral tests is not born out of nothing, it's misguided, and ironically enough, ends up being actually immoral. Cultural pendulum swings happen. That they are inevitable doesn't make all of them a good idea.

In fandom's New Victorianism, stories are assessed not as engaging or boring, effective or flat, interesting or bland, beautiful or trite, but as good rep or harmful. Not even just harmful, but harm. When these fans call a story "traumatic," they're not using hyperbole to express that the story evinced strong feelings on account of being engagingly written; they mean it literally.

Their use is incorrect.

It would be overstepping to say that stories can't ever contribute to trauma, because it seems clear to me that microaggressions can and do contribute to trauma, and fictional representations can be microaggressions.† However, that legitimate use has (much like "grooming") been co-opted in onanistic motte-and-bailey arguments so long and so hard it's lost all meaning in common fandom discourse—and 90% of the time, it's not what these people are talking about in the first place.

Rather, they're using it as a synonym for "triggered."‡ As in: "Reading this story triggered me, and that is trauma."

Being triggered is not trauma; it is a trauma reaction.

Does it still suck? Oh, yeah. Is it reasonable to want to avoid it? Very.֍ But they are different things, and the distinction matters in a discussion about whether publishing/broadcasting particular stories constitutes harm.

Distress is not harm. Distress may accompany harm, but it may accompany a hell of a lot of things. Distress is not a signal that someone is hurting us. It signals something, and we should pay attention to it, but to assume it indicates someone with whom we are currently interacting or whose work we’re reading has just harmed us is a misinterpretation.

In the case of a trauma reaction to a story, the distress stems from past harm. The person who has perpetrated that harm is not present. The story is not perpetrating harm; the author is not perpetrating harm. Someone else perpetrated the harm, likely years before, and they're either not around to eat the consequences, are too powerful to have consequences visited upon them, or both.

But here's this fanfic author, just an AO3 comment or a Tumblr ask or a Twitter dogpile away.

Say an author posts a story, accurately (whether or not all readers agree if adequately) representing its content with rating, tags, summary, and/or other front matter. Someone with a history of trauma reads the front matter, takes it seriously, and still thinks that what's inside won't surpass whatever emotional limit they're prepared to deal with at the moment. So far, so much good faith from all parties.

The reader decides to read, but even though the front matter was accurate and their assessment of same was reasonable, nevertheless something in the story takes them past their limits. It could even be something like your C1 example: you post unhealthy!Sam/Castiel with tags and a rating and summary that are faithful to the dynamic the story explores; but a reader who's only ever seen fluffy, wholesome!Sam/Castiel, and who due to their perspective doesn't connect the dots on the very real clues your front matter provides, reads the story; and something in it intersects somehow with (say) a personal history of abuse such that the reader ends up with an experience far more intense than they foresaw.

Perhaps the fic even triggers a flashback to the abuse they experienced. Possibly the flashback has material consequences: the reader misses meals, or uses self-harm to try to counter their distress, or snaps at a client and gets written up at work. Suffering both the immediate distress and all its ripple effects, they accuse you of causing them, giving you an earful about how harmful your story was. After all, they were fine before they interacted with your story, and look at them now.

Yikes on a bike. Did you, the author of this unhealthy!Sam/Castiel fanfic, do this to this reader? Is your story harmful? Are you culpable?

No, you fucking well didn't; no, it fucking well isn't; no, you fucking well aren't.

You know who harmed this person? Whoever perpetrated their abuse and whatever social structures enabled their abuser. Apparently your story reminded them of their abuse, and that sucks, but it's not the same thing and if they're lashing out at you, they're forgetting the first rule of Fight Club: their mental illness is not their fault, but it is their responsibility.

In interactions like this, there is a culpable agent somewhere—but usually it's so far outside the immediate exchange that it can't even be complained to much less forced to make amends. Precious little justice will ever be forthcoming from most abusers or abusive systems. That is a very hard thing to live with.

Defenses of CNtW or darkfic tend to devolve into "Well, it's their own fault for not taking the tags/their own mental health seriously" pretty fast. Which, to be fair, is probably because often that's exactly what happened. But it's not rare for people to read the front matter, maybe even consult with a friend who's read it, carefully consider whether the story is for them, and still find painfully that it is not. They weren't stupid, and they weren't cavalier, and they weren't lacking for information. So what went wrong?

Nothing.

The author didn't do anything wrong. The reader didn't do anything wrong. The tagging/rating system was not deficient. The story was not some innately abominable superweapon that should never have seen the light of day. Everything worked here. The reader might revisit their criteria for selecting reading material—but they might decide they won't be changing anything because the risk is still worth it to them, and so long as they continue to take responsibility for themselves, there's nothing wrong with that, either. It is possible to have an interaction where people get hurt without anything actually being wrong, or anyone acting wrongly, within that interaction.

But accepting "I got hurt even though no one was at fault here, not even me" is really fucking hard. Most of us need to blame somebody: it's preferable to conceding a lack of control or the impossibility of justice from the parties who actually owe it. We need to believe that somebody in striking distance fucked up.

Conflating pain with wrong done by a proximate agent is the fallacy that allows, even requires, people to recast "I experienced distress when I read this story" as "this story harmed me." Doing that robs our experience of the story of much dimension, completely fucks our conceptual relationship to the author, and sends our collective conversations about storytelling straight to hell. Maybe this is all part of that New Victorianism pendulum swing and there's nothing anybody can do to shift its path; but if so I'll probably spend the whole of the cultural moment getting progressively more flamboyant manicures on both my middle fingers, because I hate the whole thing so much.

Having, I hope, gotten some clarity about questions of culpability and harm, I want to circle back to expectations and the author-reader contract.

On the most recent episode of the Conjoined podcast, @teiandcookies gave a particularly insightful response to a question she and @lovetincture received about "misleadingly" presented fics. The question is nominally about CNtW, but Tei illuminates how it's only incidentally about tagging at all. The following excerpt starts from 02:27. Bold text is my emphasis.

TEI: An anon sent us the following question:

…I've been burned in the past by fics [where] the author sets it up on purpose to look like one kind of fic and then puts in rape or major character death or extreme gore, when if the fic was what people thought, obviously they never would have clicked, and that feels mean-spirited to me. Just not warning is one thing, but when you're putting other tags you know are popular to lure readers to read something because they're going to think it's something else, then that's fundamentally dishonest….

…I think even a couple months ago… my initial reaction would have been, "Well, how often can that be happening?" More recently I have been doing a volunteer role with the OTW and… as a volunteer, I have now been seeing more of this kind of stuff…. Obviously this gets into questions of intent, and how can you tell what someone's artistic intent is; and there are many, many cases (probably the majority of the cases) where you really can't. However, there are some pretty clear-cut cases where you can say, "Yeah, this is just a fucking troll, and this person literally just wants people to be upset by this and that's what they're getting off on." So, I think that's the kind of thing that this person is asking about, and I have to agree with them that, yup, that absolutely happens.

But I think the word "trolls" is maybe more important in that sentence than any other, because I think this is… a conversation about trolling that is disguised as… a conversation about Choose Not to Warn. And it's easy to get those mixed up, maybe, because trolls use the tools that are available to them….

So you can't stop the misuse of your tools, right? Every platform has different tools, and every platform has people misusing those tools differently. And I think… you can go down some unfortunate paths if you convince yourself that you can stop trolling if only you find the correct set of tools. Right? If only you make people use the site correctly, then they'll use the site correctly. Because that's just never gonna happen.

So you can't stop it, [but] I think what you can do is decide whether the misuse of a tool is worth the correct use of the tool. So, for sure, Choose Not to Warn is one of the tools that trolls have on AO3 to convince people to click or, y'know, trick people into clicking on things that they wouldn't otherwise click on.

It's certainly not the only one. Another really obvious tool that trolls have if they want you to click on something that is not going to be anything even close to what it looks like it is, is, for instance, relationship tags. Because something that people may not know is that the only tags on AO3 that are enforceable—as in, if they're wrong, you can report them to Abuse and they will be changed or deleted—are fandom tags, language, rating, and warnings. So if those things are egregiously wrong, you can essentially force them to change it; but other things, like relationship tags (significantly) and any additional tags, if they're just flat-out wrong? That's not against the Terms of Service.

Here Tei gives "the top-kudosed Reylo fic" on AO3 as an example and points out that while this trolling could perhaps be circumvented by making relationship tags enforceable, it would be completely impractical "to have a team of volunteers litigate whether every single fic qualifies as being the relationship." She concludes:

I think the question isn't so much, "What do we do about trolls in general?": it's more, "Is this tool worth the price of admission?", and the price of admission is it being used wrong. In this case, paying the price of admission is just that sometimes you're gonna click on things you wish you hadn't. And this is where it's totally reasonable, I think, to disagree about what prices are worth it to pay.

I think for me, the fact that someone could use these tags in a way that is intentionally misleading is an acceptable price… and there aren't solutions that would easily eliminate that problem in a way that wouldn't have [their] own much larger costs, so to me, I kind of look at this right off and say, "Yeah, this is okay, this is worth it." Other people might feel differently. But I think it is important to make sure that we're talking about the prices of various things and not just laboring under the delusion that there's some kind of Platonic ideal of a set of features that are impossible to abuse, because I don't think that really exists.

From your acute anxiety about hurting people, anon, it's apparent that whatever your motivations as a writer, you're not trolling. I pulled this out because—well, partly because it's just a really good discussion that places probably half the tail-chasing around CNtW in its proper context. But also because I want to place the conversation about the author-reader contract and what stories "owe" us in its proper context, which is that benefits have costs.

What, presentation-wise, is the Reylo example actually doing? It's leveraging readers' expectations and AO3's front matter conventions to get people interested in one topic to enter the story and, once they're there, telling them something they might not want to hear. At the level of that particular fic, that process can fairly be labeled a mere bait and switch.

A lot of people will slap the "bait and switch" label on pretty much any story that subverts their expectations, though, and I think often an apter concept is Trojan horse. If the author knows the audience expects one thing, and leverages that expectation to say something different—even if the horse is constructed out of 100% ethically sourced clue-by-fours—then yes, it is a bit like they're sneaking a message past the reader's… well. Here, some might say, "past the reader's boundaries," and revile it as an act of disregard and violation.

Some might rather say, though, "past the reader's preconceptions," casting it more as a technique to force an audience to confront something overlooked or ignored. Including their own biases. If this is a trick, such subversion seems to say, it's a trick you're playing on yourself.

Not only do I prefer the second formulation because I value being surprised, but I have some beef with the first one. I think it's the reader falling down on their half of the author-reader contract. It looks a lot like disavowing, when convenient, the fact that cognitive and emotional manipulation (if you want to call it that) is exactly what we come to fiction for. It's one thing to complain that the massage you got sucked, but it's shitty if your whole one-star Google review is bitching that the process involved laying on of hands.

So what is the line between artistically justified subversion and mean-spirited baiting? Good faith, probably; but what's "good faith"? "Clear-cut" cases like the Reylo fic aren't usually what people fight about. I'm not even as convinced as Tei that the clear-cut ones are what her anon is thinking of, because when people are upset about a surprise, they tend to form immediate, vehement opinions about the motives and intent of the surprise's author. I know this for reasons.

Readers don't only end up surprised because authors are trying to surprise them; there are real disagreements about what's obvious, and I want to keep that in sight. But deliberate subversions force us to evaluate what the contract between author and reader actually is in a way that accidental surprises do not. What do authors owe audiences? What do audiences owe authors? What are we all showing up for?

When you get all the way down to the bottom, the question is, "Should art be safe?" And I come down, really hard, on the side of no—not because I think "challenging" should be the default instead of "comforting," or because I think challenge is more important than comfort, but because I think art's ability to comfort is inextricable from its willingness to challenge.

And because it can't be safe. Sometimes experiences aren't what we expect. Sometimes they're exactly what we expect, but they hit us in ways we don't. Sometimes they're exactly what we expect, and they hit us exactly how we were told they might, but advance knowledge is not the same thing as living. Sometimes there's no way to be warned for something.

Someone might point out that driving a car is never risk-free, either, but it's still a moral imperative to take every step to reduce the risk that we can. Behind the wheel, efficiency or entertainment or style have no business overriding safety. Or take architecture: you don't build a structure that has a one in a thousand chance of collapsing no matter how cool it would look or what emotions it might inspire. Why should authors be held to a different standard?

Stakes are why. If a writer fucks up, people lose interest or get offended; maybe justly, but they're still breathing. If a structural engineer fucks up, people die. This isn't some kind of side-issue or technicality; it's one of the major functions of storytelling.

Art is one of the safest experiences open to us—even when it's uncomfortable. That's why we do it. It's sandboxing.

I don't want to be dismissive of the impact stories can have, whether we're talking about their impact on our mood, the complex interplay between art and society, the mirrors they hold up to us individually or collectively, or any of the other ways they are important to us. If I didn't believe fiction mattered, I wouldn't spend so damn much time making it, never mind thinking about it.

But I do think here in our fandom bubble, we sometimes overstate its… not importance, but consequence. It does matter that the events in fiction are not real. Bizarre that we've arrived at a place where it needs saying, but apparently it does. A lot of voices in this echo chamber have gotten in the habit of giving fictional and real-world experiences equal weight. That's why it's so easy for people to conflate distress with injury, why it's so hard for them to distinguish trauma reactions from trauma.

Some of the greatest vitriol I've seen toward CNtW or the very idea of shock in literature has been from fellow fanfic writers. I don't think that's coincidence. Who else is more invested in elevating what we do? That South Park episode with San Franciscans smelling their own farts comes to mind. Look: surprises, even nasty surprises, can be totally fine in fanfiction because art has no duty to safety, only duties with which safety can be either compatible or incompatible. I'll cheerfully die on that hill. And when people get all, "Think a lot of yourself, do you?" over calling fanfiction art, my internal response is something along the lines of, "Bitch, I'm not the one out here making it out to be life or death."

If the first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious, the second is to assume the unserious isn't important, and the third is to run around being a fucking asshole about art you don’t like.

So where does that leave us, on a practical level? Those of us out here on the mean streets of fandom, just trying to make some porn?

A bit later that Conjoined discussion, @lovetincture quotes Margaret Atwood quoting Alice Munro: "Do what you want and live with the consequences."

That. Do that.

At 17:46, Tei points out that "[t]here's a difference between 'consequences' as in, 'I know that this thing might happen' and 'consequences' as in, 'this is in the right.'" It's a crucial distinction. Plenty of reactions are predictable, but not all of them are just. Some of them are predictable precisely because they're unjust. Directly protesting an unjust reaction is often a waste of energy, but just knowing for yourself which is which can take a lot of the weight off.

The possibility of encountering bad actors is the price of admission for both reading and posting fanwork. On the posting side, there are certain stories (and ways of presenting them) where you'll know it's going to generate backlash. There are others where you won't see it coming, but you can accept that the potential is always there. It's up to you first to decide whether the backlash would be just, and then whether this thing you want to say is worth weathering any backlash that’s unjust.

If you decide it isn't, the consequence you live with is leaving the thing unsaid.

Here's what you owe your readers, whatever you know about the expectations they're walking in with: respect. Compassion. The best story you can tell that day. Whether that feels like a warm hug or a backhanded slap depends on you, them, and the story.

Here's what you don't owe them: more of those things than you owe yourself.

How do I not feel bad?

There's kind of a lot of this question salted through your others. "How do I not feel bad while establishing and enforcing boundaries that will let me have the experiences I want in fandom?" "How do I not feel bad while writing and sharing the things I want to write and share?" "How do I not feel bad while exploring sensitive topics, and myself, and what it means to communicate through art?"

Anon, the answers are above my pay grade either way, but I think "How do I not feel bad?" is the wrong question.

In the process of becoming who you want to be, and writing what you want to write, and building the relationships you want to build, and discovering and integrating into the communities you want to be a part of, you will do things like distance yourself from people you once called friends, disagree with people you once agreed with, disagree with people you still agree with on other matters, lose respect for people you once respected, embrace new people of whom old acquaintances disapprove, and experiment with everything from liberal application of the block button to stone-cold skullfucking porn. Even if you act faultlessly at every turn, which you will not, you will sometimes feel bad doing it. You will feel bad when you break off a friendship, or someone breaks off a friendship with you. You will feel bad when a friend wants you to wade into an argument that you know will suck the time and creative energy right out of your day, forcing you to weigh up which sacrifice will leave you least dissatisfied. You will feel bad when someone flames your fanfic or harasses people you care about over shipping. You will feel bad if you censor yourself to try to avoid being targeted.

So a better question is probably, "How do I feel as comfortable in my own skin as I can?" And one of the most helpful things I've ever done toward that goal, personally, is work on accepting that sometimes I will feel bad.

That doesn't mean accepting any level of discomfort without question, any more than the fact that not everyone will like you is license to be a raging asshole. But I've generally found that in running, BDSM, and interpersonal relationships, there is a distinction between good pain and bad pain. I can't always correctly assess which I'm feeling. Nor is it a strictly black and white thing, any more than bodies or morality are. But I can generally figure out what really matters to me and thus when discomfort is worth it if I try, and I get better at it the older I get.

Compromises are part of life. People disagree about which ones are acceptable. There is none that will please everybody, so I recommend pleasing yourself and being forthright about your selection.

Or as @stripy-tights put it once, "Self-actualization is giving yourself permission to say, 'Fuck you, the horse you rode in on, and your extensive DNI list that includes people who wear pink on Wednesdays.'"

Good luck. You'll be fine.

——————————————————— ———————————————————

*Note that "[X group of fans] are disgusting" or whatever does not have the same problem. It's clearly designed to be dickish, but it doesn't seek to transfer responsibility to an unconsenting party; it's not posing as a covenant. Here in fandom, we are all a beautiful rainbow of infinite, slightly different ways to be assholes to each other.

†From a tagging/warning perspective, this is a case that's largely irrelevant, because tagging/warning debates are about the onus on authors to label their own work, and authors who are writing the kind of works that are bona fide microaggressions are not going to be aware of or admit to it. You wouldn't debate about whether Margaret Mitchell should have tagged "racism" for stereotypes like Mammy and Prissy, because Margaret Mitchell was never gonna see the problem.

‡Often they're using "triggered" as a synonym for "upset," but I'm not interested in judging whose use is or isn't in good faith and don't think an attempt to do so should be part of this argument.

֍Here is where often, in tagging debates, someone pipes up to say that the literature suggests trigger warnings may do more harm than good by encouraging survivors to "see trauma as central to their identity," and that what's needed to improve symptoms is in fact exposure therapy, to which fiction—being fictional—is ideally suited. I'm sure well informed people could debate this point, and if you're an educator considering how to present your syllabus, you might actually need to; but within fandom, this whole question is interesting but functionally moot. The only people who get to decide when or whether or how someone undertakes exposure therapy are they and their therapist. So please leave the efficacy of avoidance as a coping strategy the fuck out of tagging debates, or at an absolute minimum, let them who have never procrastinated on their taxes cast the first stone.

#asks #Aquinian Anon #meta #fandom meta #AO3 warnings #DNI notes #tagging #stories and surprise #tagging and morality #morality in fan spaces #purifying the problematic #the Conjoined podcast #long post is long #discourse for ts #The Reader will too soon discover that so large an interval of time was not spent in writing this discourse #the very length of it will convince him that the writer had not time enough to make a shorter

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perhapsthanatos · 4 years ago

Text

05:23 am with kun ♡

nct's kun x gn!reader (i got inspired when researching about hades & persephone’s myth/story for a project as well as watching an unhealthy amount of apartment tour videos on youtube while feeling incredibly lonely + the songs listed below)

alternate title: the devil i know well

genre: a tiny bit of angst. mainly fluff. non idol au. demon boyfriend!au.

word count: 800~

playlist: door by caroline polachek, nightime by oklou & backseat by charli xcx ft. carly rae jepsen.

warnings: none. lower case intended.

a/n: hello again yes im back & way sooner than i thought :)) tysm for giving love to odd counterpoises, in all honesty i didnt expect ppl to like it nor did i expect that much attention given to it it bc tbh it was kinda rushed, but bc of that i immediately got motivated to do this fic & better this time i promise ♡ this fic was actually supposed to be a winwin fic but after seeing kick back & getting aggressively biased wrecked i just had to give it to kun & plus i felt it fit better :(( hope u enjoy!!! oh & i almost forgot to mention but did yall see that one vid w kun w red hair omg pls

your eyes struggle to stay open and focused on the television in front of you. it plays some sort of dramatic film that you haven’t been paying attention to. but it’s not like you remember any of the other plots of the previous films from awhile ago anyway. you were simply trying to stay awake, waiting for your boyfriend to come home. but with the given hour, you easily start to doze off, your body disregarding the cup of coffee you took 2 hours ago.

“funny, i knew that i’d find you here.”

your head snaps up and meets kun’s gaze. he’s at the door way removing his black blazer, hanging it on one of the hooks by the entrance. you look at him in awe as he unbuttons a few buttons of his white dress shirt. for a demon, he looks incredibly angelic, even in the dim lighting. his hair is red with messy waves, his glasses are resting on the tip of his nose and his yellow eyes seem more tired than usual. he removes his shoes and walks over to you, planting a kiss on your forehead.

“did you sleep alright today?” you stay silent for a bit, eliciting a laugh from him (which shows off a bit of his cute fangs) and continues before you can even object. “don’t you dare lie. it’s so easy to tell.”

“stop making fun of me,” you pout, crossing your arms and turning away. his heart wavers, you’re too adorable for him to handle.

“no, no. i just think that it’s cute that you stay up for me.” he smiles, turning to you again, tucking a stand of heir behind your ear lovingly. “as much as i should be scolding you… i can’t help but be flattered that you do this for me. i know its been kinda hard that we can’t see each other as much as we’d and it’s a bit annoying that hell is nocturnal but at least i have something to look forward to when my day ends.”

he runs his thumb over your burning cheek as you take your finger to push up the bridge of his glasses which were threatening to fall off. “anyway, dearest one, let’s get to bed. i’m not gonna let you fall asleep on the couch like last time,” he starts to lift you off bridal style. “will you come with, though?” you ask, resting your head in the crook of his neck, starting to doze off again. “duh. going to bed is a group activity, you dummy.” he snickers as you flick one of the small horns on his forehead in retaliation, too lazy to argue.

reaching the master’s room, he sets you gently on the bed, watching as you settle in the blankets. he moves to the other side, setting his glasses on the nightstand, then climbing in as well. “i’ll change later. i’ve waited the entire day for this.”

you lift up the other side of the blanket and welcome him in. on instinct the both of you easily attach to each other. your head nuzzled in his neck, and his cheek resting on you’re forehead. he sighs in content.

“oh, have i told you that i love you today?”

“you said it earlier, before you left.”

“well, i’m saying it again. i love you so, so, much and i want things to be like this forever.”

you pause for a moment, eyes now wide open. you look up at him. “you’re getting sappy so suddenly again, what’s wrong?“

“no, no, it’s fine. there’s just a lot on my mind, that’s all.” he sighs, the mood slowly shifting.

“you know you can tell me, right? you don’t have to, but it might make you feel better? promise.”

he looks at you and takes a deep breath, taking his hands and cupping your cheeks, making you look straight into his golden irises.

”like i said, i love you. i really do. but you’re a human and i’m a demon. other demons will try to have a go at you, angels will try to come ‘save you’ from me, and humans will see you as a victim.” he pauses for a bit before continuing. “but i don’t care about any of that. i love you, and that's all that matters. i will forever move heaven, hell and earth to keep us together.” he speaks softly and slowly, a tone that assures you completely despite the initial fear.

“but please,” he shushes you, placing your head back gently on his shoulder, beginning to stroke your hair. ”i don’t want any of us to worry about that. right now it’s time for bed, you haven’t slept at all and i’ve had a busy day.”

“mhm, alright. i love you lots, beb.” you place a sleepy kiss on his lips as he smiles into it.

“goodnight lovely, i love you too. so, so much,” he whispers as you both fall into a deep slumber.

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theunconcernedembalmer · 4 years ago

Note

what’s the issue with elisop? is it just bc you hc aesop as ace? im so concerned by seeing ppl adamantly opposed to mlm/wlw ships but im also genuinely curious about why you dislike it and other lgbt ships so much lol

hmm. that is a strong accusation, n i find it just a bit odd. are you new here? or perhaps you are taking personal offense at my dislike towards a favourite ship of yours and using the lgbt argument as moral high ground?

whatever the case may be, i thank you for asking. if u r truly looking for an answer, its below the cut n it is very very long. mind u these are all my personal opinions n i am in no way policing how others enjoy ships. just in case this wasnt clear; i dont wish to start discourse on this blog, especially since my takes are probably... unpopular.

firstly i would like to address the “disliking lgbt ships” bit, because this has very strong implications in itself. i have nothing against lgbt ships. i enjoy them, even. if the two characters have chemistry between each other, i ship it. however, the moment characterization is broken for the sake of romance, i lose interest. this is generally my stance on ships in general, n this applies for both straight n lgbt ships.

the ships themselves are fine. however, i do have issues with the ship dynamics, so ill let u in on that.

i want to touch on mlm ships in particular; i believe u are familiar with the top/bottom dynamic that is rampant in these kinds of ships? (i wont deny that this dynamic can be found in other types of ships, but for arguments sake i will be focusing on gay ships because i feel that this occurs more commonly here) its such a popular dynamic that is prone to stripping the personality from one if not both characters, only for them to be reduced to being dominant/submissive. for a character to be pigeonholed into a stereotypical category based on... preferred sexual positions? its just downright insulting, never mind the larger more problematic implications of it. top/bottom is not indicative of someones personality, by the way. flattening multi dimensional characters into these stereotypes is so so so insulting.

unfortunately this is The Most Popular portrayal of just about any gay ship around. ive seen it being used everywhere in so many fandoms n it just about becomes apparent to me that ppl come to stories looking for a Ship. not the stories, nor the characters, just a ship. while id like to say theres nothing wrong with that, keep in mind not everyone is just looking for 2 characters that look pretty next to each other. if i ship something, i see interesting n meaningful interactions between 2 characters, which is so often not the case once u bring in the top/bottom dynamic. why is it so popular? because somehow this is what ppl like from a gay ship n hence it sells. ppl want the drama, characterizations be damned. ppl want to see the big kiss that happens in the end, n maybe the sexy parts that come after. characterizations be damned.

so u can say im a little wary of gay ships when they cross my feed. hell, as a joseph aesop shipper i see this trope everywhere n im pretty disappointed as well. small tangent but i feel like this is the reason why zh0ngli n ch1lde is so popular in g3nshin. i try to see the appeal, i really do, but after a long while of analyzing their respective characters i dont think they have as much chemistry as ppl think they do. dont even get me started on how incredibly ooc they make either of these very interesting n unique characters in ship portrayals. all because of the top/bottom dynamic that ppl want to see. i say this for that particular ship, but this is pretty much the case for a lot of ships out there, n the latter part is painfully true even when the 2 characters do have potential between each other. ill say it again im disgusted by the blatant disrespect to the characterizations if all ppl ever want is 2 pretty puppets to mush lips together. cos thats what theyre essentially reduced to this way.

n its so obvious to see when an artist subscribes to this rhetoric, because u can so clearly see it in the way they draw their characters. the “top” generally has sharper features to go with their “dominating personality”, while the “bottom” has disturbingly softer, feminine, dare i say sometimes child like features “to submit”. n thats where the uwu soft gay trope comes from, i believe. which, in case u still dont know, i hate with a burning passion.

so again for ppl with impaired reading comprehension, im fine with ships, including lgbt ones, but the moment u break characterization for the sake of the ship, im not that okay with it. u want to do it for a short crack comic? fine. but if thats the only way ur portraying the 2 characters then im immediately wary of ur content. ill still look at it cos usually the art is really good, but im very very wary. so im not “adamantly opposed”, just very critical of how the ships are being portrayed. if other ppl want to enjoy their ships like that, sure. just dont expect me to join in on something i dont agree on.

now id like to address not shipping “because i hc aesop as ace”. for ppl who are new to the blog (hello there), im an ace in a romantic relationship, so thats definitely not the reason i dont ship elisop. its more of being in a relationship has largely shaped my views towards romance as a whole. even before i met my boyfriend, i hated the romance genre in stories n media. most of it comes off as incredibly forced, especially those love triangles they seem to love putting into teen novels. thats one reason why i stopped reading when i was younger, but i digress.

did i partake in shipping when i was younger? i did. for a gay ship too (if anyone really wants to know, its kurotsukki from haikyuu. at least this was one that i can remember, i was mostly working on my 20 odd ocs for the longest time). i also used to write little short romance ficlets that i never posted anywhere cos i hated (n still do hate) my writing. but writing romance when u dont have experience was really just a way of projecting n probably a way of coping for myself, not that i knew at that time. but after i actually started a relationship with my boyfriend (whom i love n cherish a lot thank u very much), i began to see how much all these have skewed my views towards romance n have actually done some harm to our relationship. the bullshit that the general media feeds u constantly doesnt help in the slightest either.

quick topic shift to elisop in particular (about time, right?). i already stated that i only ship characters if i sense chemistry between the two personalities, n if u have seen the part where i dont ship elisop then u must have seen how agonized i am over not being able to have a concrete personality for eli. that is the main problem i have with elisop: eli does not feel like a solid character to me. n that is a huge problem, because if he doesnt have any defining characteristics besides being mild n nice, then he can be whoever i want him to be. (i have done this in my exorcist comics, i will admit this. n the fact that i can just do that... it really does not sit well with me personally.)

n that is dangerous.

back to young me doing lil ship things. i think its also pretty safe to say when u really do ship 2 characters, chances are u kinda really relate very very hard to at least one of them. that very quickly can turn into projecting, n shipping therefore is not “exploring the relationship between 2 characters” n it becomes “my preferred dating simulator 101″. of course this isnt always the case, but at least it was for me, n subconsciously it might be for lots of ppl too. n since this is ur mental playground, u call the shots, n there is no consequences if u slightly (or even entirely) alter one or both personalities to fit ur desired narrative. n u wouldnt even notice or know, cos ur blind to ur own biasness.

we bring our perceived notions into real life, im sure u know that. so when ur partner does not become that perfect knight in shining armour, or when they get upset at things that u do (which is a very normal thing by the way), n u think (very subconsciously), That isnt what my otp would do, something is wrong here (nothing is wrong, actually its just ur skewed perception of a stable romantic relationship). why wouldnt ur otp do this? because u are both halves of ur otps, there is no hidden secrets between them (apart from the pining part but thats irrelevant), n again they have been altered to fit ur preferred narrative.

a real relationship requires a lot of communication between parties, because newsflash, liking someone doesnt mean that u have to like every single thing they do, they will make mistakes n it will hurt u, n guess what, the reverse is also true. if u do go with absoutely anything that they would do with 0 objections whatsoever, ur not crushing on someone, ur idolizing them, n that power imbalance is detrimental to a relationship. these things are not obvious to ppl, especially when the whole climate is hell bent on getting into romantic relationships by a certain age or some bullshit. communication is key n is pretty much the only way to solve relationship issues, because the other person has a lot that u r not seeing n vice versa. as similar as 2 ppl can be, i doubt u can have 100% the same thoughts on all things. i dont make the rules.

so in ur mental playground u focus on the fluffy parts, maybe there is communication, but rarely is there any meaningful conflict. thats unrealistic, n if u bring that mindset to an actual relationship, thats not going to end well. i say meaningful conflict, because yes, generally u shouldnt have conflicts with ur significant other. but inevitably when ur with each other for long enough, u will realize that there are habits that u must change in order to be with the other person. habits that are harmful to the other person directly, or harmful habits towards yourself that indirectly harm the other person. these are meaningful in a sense that if left alone, it will manifest into larger problems that will harm u, the other person n the relationship as a whole. its meaningful to the relationship.

all these is made even worse if ur neurodivergent. maladaptive coping practices, self sabotaging behaviours, inherent disabilities. all these must be adjusted n addressed. im so incredibly thankful for my boyfriend for being incredibly patient with me when working all these out, n it has not been easy for me to work on myself n all my problems, n im still not done working on them. this aspect is often not explored in romance in general (or properly), n there is a very good chance i would have still been stuck in the unhealthy mindset of “this isnt like my otp, maybe we’re not meant to be”. because loving someone is a choice. no one is made for each other, it is a conscious choice made between 2 ppl to make things work. this is how arranged marriages work, i am told, n i do see the appeal, not that it actually does appeal to me culturally.

special mention to the kurotsukki ship, cos from there i found a very, very good fic that explored their relationship before n after getting together, n it actually showed aspects of this problem in the incredibly slow burn of (at that time) 20+ chapters. it was just one fic (n a very good one at that, i believe it was called Leviticus), but it had a lesson i never thought i needed to learn, n learn it i did, with a lot of help from my dear.

this is also probably the reason why i dont really want to delve too much into romance now. i know its a lot of work, n everything (mostly) that the media feeds u is really false advertising, but ppl eat that shit up n so it remains one of the most popular genres to date. im just very wary that if i do start on a romantic story, i want to be able to show it in a way like that fic did, the truths of relationships, because i dont want to make something that sells, i want to make something that meaningful to me, if a little indulgent. n that also includes being very careful in how the respective characterizations will change in a relationship. almost too careful now that i think about it, but its not something that i mind. i was never one for romance from the start, n now im very careful about shipping because of what happened to me persoanlly.

okay enough about me, lets talk about aesop. in any au u put the character in, the essence of the character must remain despite the change in environment. so lets say we have ur typical modern au. dead mom, check. shitty mentor doing illegal stuff? also check. autistic boy with social anxiety? we’re good to go. all these have implications on aesop as a character, n while ppl are aware of this, again the way they go about portraying it can go, in my personal opinion, very wrong. ppl who immediately woobify aesop completely because he has autism annoy me. ppl who reduce him to uwu soft boi cos he has social anxiety do not know how the disorder really works n as someone who has that i hate it to the core. ppl who do all these for the sake of ship have lost my respect. its insulting.

remember the top/bottom dynamic? not that elisop is completely free from that (even if i dont know much about eli, to put him in either one of those stereotypes feels very insulting to his character. i wont even say anything about doing it to aesop its so upsetting), but its not entirely made up of either. but now i want to introduce another trope i am very wary of, which is “i can fix him”. im sure u guys have seen the meme going around poking fun at this trope (for those who havent, its along the lines of “u can fix him? well i can be his worst nightmare”) n no doubt yall would have seen it n gotten sick of it in some forced hetero romantic bullshit. we have one damsel in distress with a saviour that solves all their problems just by existing n being romo with each other.

remember “my preferred dating simulator 101″? this is not mutually exclusive n from my point of view this is dangerously close to this trope. lets be real, if it was actually a thing that all ur deep rooted trauma magically disappears if someone were to waltz into ur life, we would want it. definitely. no painfully dissecting ur own problems n constantly facing them head on. real life states that this is not the case, but it will not stop us from dreaming. n so this trope is born n lives n will go on.

(finally) pulling aesop n eli into this, at least in my mind, u have one severely traumatized boy with lots of issues n u have this. nice mild guy who can be anything u want him to be. i hope u can see where im going with this, n thats the direction i see some elisop heading towards (i dont read a lot of elisop to be fair). if u came from my eli character talk, i mentioned that it is incredibly one sided. this is exactly what im talking about.

putting it all together in case u havent already, aesop is the damsel in distress, whose problems magically disappear because of elis godly kindness n little to no work on improving himself, n they lived happily n gayly ever after.

can u tell how much that does not appeal to me.

never mind the butchering of character that inevitably happens somewhere somehow, the unrealistically perfect themes n implications of this trope makes me so viscerally uncomfortable. this is, of course, due to personal reasons, n i definitely see the appeal of this dynamic because i would probably have been interested in this once upon a time as well. but as i am now, with everything i have explained up there n everything i have been through, i would politely rather not.

n its difficult to think of another dynamic, because of how little i know about eli apart from him being this saint, which easily makes him a candidate for being aesops trauma panacea. never mind aesop rarely, if ever, does anything for eli as a character in return, n its so damaging to buy into this rhetoric, where a person like this who would solve all ur issues no strings attached exists somewhere in the world. they really dont. a relationship has to be mutually benefitting, or it will be draining n disastrous. maybe u say, Oh its nice to imagine it once in a while. n yeah, i agree, except once in a while is a little difficult to keep track of n that is sort of what happened to me. id rather stay as far away as possible from this kind of unrealistic fantasy, i just got this shit sorted out with myself n my boyfriend.

i have some other reasons, but theyre more personally problematic, so i wont go into them here. but this is mostly n generally why i do not ship elisop romantically. if u do, u do u, and have fun, but again dont expect me to join u. thank u for coming to my ted talk, this took a lot longer than expected.

#mun rambles #its me the mun #unconcerned ramblings #posting this now cos this is a question ive been getting #although this has been worded in the most unnecessarily passive aggressive way possible that i do not appreciate #im wary about all u so called social justice warriors championing this n that liberal idea when all u want to do is stir shit #thankfully i dont have much experience with this but just passively seeing all these ppl run their mouths is getting very annoying #but just know that i will not tolerate any of that bullshit here. because if u really do care about ppl as much as u say u do #then why r u attacking ppl period #ur really just hiding behind a righteous excuse to harm people. thats disgusting. i dont want u here

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sunsetsover · 5 years ago

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I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on Ben having BPD

ok WHEW you just opened a fucking can of worms this about to be the longest post i’ve ever made i hope you have your seatbelt on

let me just preface this by saying nearly everything i talk abt in this post will be based off of my personal experiences w bpd. some people experience it differently, some people might not agree w some of the things i say, but i can only talk abt my own pov. therefore, this just my own personal opinions on ben having bpd. so yh lmao

and disclaimer!! i’m not a doctor!! don’t take anything i say in this post as diagnostic criteria! i’m not an expert or mental health professional!! when it comes to your own mental health or the mental health of ppl in your life, do not consider me a source to reference like ‘oh well lauren sunsetsover said xyz’ like pls just don’t do that. do your own research. and most importantly consult a doctor!!!!!! i am not one!!!!!!!!!

also there are very few sources in this post bc most of this is just shit i’ve absorbed over the years from doctors and doing my own research lmao

now that’s out of the way let’s go! (this became part character study, part informational masterpost on bpd. also it got really fuckin long, hence the read more, so be warned lmao)

warning for potentially triggering content (abuse/mentions of suicide and self harm - nothin too bad but i do touch on ben’s behaviour and history, and this is a p serious mental health issue we’re talking abt here so! take care of yourselves!!)

ok so! some things to keep in mind before we even get to ben:

i believe (at least in the uk) borderline personality disorder is considered to be an outdated name, and one that essentially isn’t appropriate or fit for purpose anymore, so in my experience, a lot of the time now it’s referred to as eupd (emotionally unstable personality disorder) in medical settings. which is way more apt name imo, and tells you more abt what bpd actually is (but i still call it bpd bc it’s easier and ppl know what that is lmao). so like. emotionally unstable personality disorder. i bet that conjures up a way more vivid idea in ur head than borderline personality disorder does.

no one 100% knows what causes bpd, though it’s thought to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors, like most things. but the general consensus is that bpd develops when something (usually traumatic, but not always in an extreme sense. ppl w bpd have often been victims of some type of abuse in their childhood, but that’s not necessarily always the case) happens in your childhood that impacts the development of your personality. kind of a bizarre metaphor but hopefully it will help u understand: u know how in finding nemo, the egg nemo was in got damaged by the shark? and even tho the damage looked minor, it actually meant that one of his fins was permanently damaged - it was malformed, it didn’t grow right, he couldn’t use it properly? well imagine the fin = the personality; that’s what happens to a person w bpd’s personality. smth happens to us in our childhood that permanently damages our personality, and so it doesn’t grow and develop properly as the rest of us does, making it less functional than an average person’s. u can imagine how that can lead to all sorts of problem (we’ll get to them later)

but bc it’s a mental disorder that affects the personality, you can’t be diagnosed w bpd until you’re 18, when your personality is basically developed fully (i believe it can be diagnosed slightly younger, but those are rare and extreme cases). however, symptoms can start to present themselves earlier, as ur personality begins to develop and mature. (mine started presenting in my early teens)

bpd doesn’t really go away, and treatment with medication generally isn’t effective for long periods of time. however symptoms can be treated with continued therapy, and symptoms sometimes can start to ease as you get older!!

bpd also gets misdiagnosed a lot bc a lot of the symptoms are similar to that of other mental health problems. the biggest one it gets misdiagnosed as seems to be bipolar disorder, which i get tbh. i’ve always considered bpd very similar to bipolar, just like… quicker cycles. there are even memes about it. also bpd has a tendency to coexist w other mental health issues, which makes it harder to recognise and diagnose.

so now lets look at this from a diagnostic perspective

in order to be diagnosed w bpd you basically have to deemed, by a medical professional, to be meet certain criteria, and to have been meeting these certain criteria for a significant amount of time. there are some variations to this criteria, and proposed subtypes and basically different flavours of borderlines but i’m not even gonna go there. i’m just gonna talk abt what i’m most familiar w and how i think that applies to ben.

i’m copying and pasting the diagnostic criteria part from here bc as far as i’m aware this is the criteria doctors use for diagnosis. there are 9 different ‘indicators’/’criteria’, and you have to display or meet at least 5 of them in order to be considered for a bpd diagnosis:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

this is one of, if not the biggest part of bpd. that trauma i mentioned earlier? often stems from or is related to abandonment, or perceived abandonment, in childhood, be it physical or emotional. for example, a child that’s being abused by one parent might feel abandoned by the other parent if they don’t do anything about it, even if the second parent has no idea the abuse is going on. sound familiar? a similar thing happened to ben, with stella. phil not doing anything about the abuse ben was facing at the hands of stella - even though he didn’t know it was happening, even though phil did do something once he found out - was an abandonment to ben. and that’s just the tip of the abandonment iceberg for ben - kathy faking her death and leaving him was an abandonment (even when he thought she was actually dead), phil’s own abuse was an abandonment, as was his reaction when ben came out, and so on. and abandonment like that skews your thinking so you believe that everyone is going to abandon you, sooner or later, that they must be abandoning you for a reason, you must be a terrible person, you must be unworthy of people’s effort/time/love etc etc.

even when paul died, that was an abandonment to ben! like logically we know - and ben probably knows too - that paul didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to leave ben, he didn’t deliberately leave ben. but that doesn’t matter. mental illness is illogical, bpd is illogical, esp when it comes to abandonment. e.g. my therapist had to cancel a few of our appointments once bc she was ill, and it felt like an abandonment. like it was personal somehow, like she wasn’t coming into work bc of me, bc i was too much work, too hard to handle. ofc that wasn’t true, but that’s how it felt. it’s illogical. so ofc my solution was to just not go to my appointments even when she came back, bc like what other response is there lmao. it’s just that everything a person does feels personal, like it’s because of/about you, even when it isn’t. even when it has nothing to do w you. that’s probably why ben can come across at selfish at times, like he’s making everything about him. because it is all about him, in his mind. everything is because of him, is his doing, his fault etc. his way of thinking is skewed into thinking like that, bc shit keeps happening to him and ppl keep leaving him, so it must be his fault.

and!! ‘frantic efforts’ isn’t necessarily what u think it is!! it can be desperate begging ‘i’ll do anything to keep you in my life’ type actions, but it just as equally can be lashing out and abandoning someone in order to prevent them from abandoning u first - a ‘get them before they get me’ mentality (the whole scene where phil was in the hospital comes to mind - the ‘why doesn’t he love me back?’ was the more desperate part of him, tho it wasn’t necessarily an ‘effort’ per se, but then him trying to kill his dad basically in order to have the abandonment be at least on his own terms? that’s lashing out, and def qualifies as a ‘frantic effort’ lmao). and how often do we see that in ben? lashing out at jay in the hospital because he knew he was mad at him, and he’d rather hurt jay physically before he could hurt him emotionally? ben trying to support callum and showing him kindness, only to turn around and threaten to out him when he finds out callum asked stuart to sort him out? everything that happened w his dad, trying to fuck him over before his dad can get there first, trying to get rid of keanu so he can’t be abandoned in favour of him (although that didn’t really work, but it rarely does work the way u want it to lmao). and the biggest one to me, though probably one that people have already forgotten, is him breaking up w that guy he was seeing in newcastle even tho they were into each other bc he ‘had to, otherwise [he] would have ruined his life’. even tho we don’t really get details, that says it all to me. it’s v much a pattern that’s present in ben.

2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by extremes between idealization and devaluation (also known as “splitting”)

i feel like this one doesn’t need much explaining lmao

here is a definition of splitting from here (which is a very good article on splitting imo if u wanna read more abt it): ‘Splitting is a term used in psychiatry to describe the inability to hold opposing thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. Some might say that a person who splits sees the world in terms of black or white, all or nothing. It’s a distorted way of thinking in which the positive or negative attributes of a person or event are neither weighed nor cohesive.’

a little explanation of it from me: ppl w bpd can sometimes have very simplistic, all or nothing views on things. and splitting is basically when ur opinion on something or someone changes very quickly (sometimes instantly), often to an extreme (e.g. going from loving and idolizing someone, to absolutely fucking hating them, or from having a neutral opinion on something to suddenly becoming extremely angry abt it) sometimes without even having an identifiable trigger. it links into black and white thinking, which u may have heard of before - u either love someone and they can do no wrong, or u hate them and they disgust you. either something is amazing or it’s terrible. there is no grey area, no in between. it goes back into the whole ‘not being able to regulate ur emotions properly’ thing lmao there’s rarely nuances to our emotions or feelings, we’re all or nothing a lot of the time. so splitting is when ur opinion rapidly changes to one of these extremes. sometimes u can even go back and forth, splitting over and over on the same person/thing which is super fun.

ben splits on his dad all the time. all the fucking time. he doesn’t care about phil at all and wants to ruin him, then he wants phil’s approval and to be welcomed back into the family fold and the business. then ben hates him and wants him dead, then 5 minutes later he wants his love, wants to be a good son again. that’s splitting. u can also see it w jay, too, but no where near as extreme as w his dad. and i’ve seen it a couple of times w callum too, but again, it’s way more subtle. u probably wouldn’t notice it if u weren’t looking for it, whereas w phil it’s obvious.

but like i don’t need to explain ‘unstable and intense interpersonal relationships’, do i? just look at the relationships w phil, w jay, w lola, w callum, even w paul - they were unstable back when they first got together, and were arguably kind of intense too. (he settled a bit w paul, but his death/perceived abandonment fucked him up a lot beyond the expected ways). he’s always arguing w the ppl he loves. he tried to get poor billy killed, and yet since then he’s had no problem w him!! none of his relationships - apart from maybe his mum and ian (i don’t include lexi bc she’s a child) - are stable. and i would definitely describe his relationships as intense lmao

3. Identity disturbance: Markedly or persistently unstable self-image or sense of self

u can see this most - as most things - in his relationship w his dad. he fluctuates between seeming to know his worth (and demanding other people know it too), knowing he deserves his dad’s love and approval (why else would he be so mad abt the fact hes not getting it, if not bc he knows he’s worthy of it? if he didn’t think so, he wouldn’t be so angry abt not getting it - he’d be accepting/understanding, wouldn’t he?) and being desperate to do anything to get his dad’s love/approval, even things that are below him, turning into a child, begging to know why his dad doesn’t love him, why he’s never been enough. that scene where phil had found out abt ben trying to frame keanu and leaving him for dead is the epitome of this. u can see ben fluctuate between a hurt, traumatized little boy, begging his dad for some answers, some explanation as to why he’s not enough, begging him not to start drinking again, and a man who is angry, angry at his dad, angry at himself for crumbling like this, bc he should be stronger than this. u see him change multiple times in that one single scene. go watch it again. you’ll see it too.

some more examples: his absolute certainty that he is better and more qualified than the likes of shirley and keanu for working with his dad, and then being like ‘my dad was right, i’m good for no one’ - they don’t line up. does he have self esteem and know his worth or not? also his entire relationship w callum is an example of this - all those changes in his attitude towards cal and their situation? he often treats callum like they’re equals who understand each other, yet sometimes it seems like he thinks he’s superior to callum (e.g. the scene outside the cafe), and others he behaves (keyword) as though he thinks he’s not good enough for callum (why else would he just take all that shit from whitney and not say anything in retaliation? why, if not because he deems it more important that callum has an easier time of it than he does; that he regards cal’s comfort more important than his own? and why would he do that, if he held himself in such high regards? i mean he certainly acts like it sometimes, so why not then?)

also like……. who is ben? is he the bastard who cares about no one but himself, who’s always causing trouble not only for himself but for the people he cares about? is he the guy who just completely folds when people he knows hurtle abuse at him, accepting it lying down, who thinks he’s no good for anyone? the guy who goes out all night and drinks himself silly and purposefully gets himself into fights? the guy who shows callum so much empathy even tho it brings him nothing but pain, who loves jay unconditionally, who tried so hard to help bobby when he came back from prison? which one is he? which one does he want to be? does he even know?

(and you could argue that people are just multi-dimensional, but there’s just such a vast gap between these different facets of ben’s character and he can flip through them so fast it’s jarring, which is why i think it’s more like he straight up doesn’t have a consistent sense of self. which is a big part of bpd)

4. Impulsive behavior in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)

again, does this need explaining?

doing illegal shit, excessively drinking, becoming unnecessarily violent, fucking up his relationships, just generally doing reckless things regardless of the consequences - this has always been a part of ben’s character.

(his constant hook ups could be another one, but the jury’s still out on that one. if anything it’s less the sex that worries me and more the flippant attitude he has when meeting up w ppl - they could be anyone and do all sorts, at the end of the day)

it became most obvious recently around the anniversary of paul’s death - drinking himself sick, gambling all his money away, deliberately starting fights. but even before that and since then it’s been there.

it’s basically just a way to self sabotage.

i feel like this one isn’t a consistent part of ben’s behaviour like the others are, but it is undeniably there, so.

5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-harming behavior

although ben (to my knowledge) hasn’t displayed any suicidal behaviour, he has at times spoken in ways that could kind of sway that way. (i’m no good for anyone, i’m not worth it, why do you care etc)

also self harming!!! just because he doesn’t hurt himself in a direct way doesn’t mean he doesn’t deliberately put himself in situations where he’ll get hurt, and that is self harm!! letting stuart beat him at pride was self harm!! picking that fight w those homophobes at e20 was self harm!!! drinking to excess is a form of self harm!!! putting himself in harm’s way, even if he doesn’t get hurt, is self harm!!!! just bc he might not be self harming in the traditional sense doesn’t mean he’s not hurting himself!!! this one has been on my mind for so long!!!! oh my god!!!!! he absolutely has a pattern of self harming/self destructive behaviours, and just a general disregard for his own safety and well being!!!! the fact that it doesn’t worry more ppl in his life is so upsetting to me!!!!!!

6. Emotional instability in reaction to day-to-day events (e.g., intense episodic sadness, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)

aka the biggest part of bpd: pt 2

i feel like this definition doesn’t really do justice to this aspect of bpd. this is basically you literally having no control of your emotions. ‘day-to-day events’ have fuck all to do with it half the time. u could be sitting there minding ur business and all of a sudden you wanna smash up the entire room, for seemingly no reason. one time i was crying - like uncontrollably sobbing, a complete mess - and had been for maybe half an hour? and then all of a sudden, literally mid sob, it stopped. like it just stopped. i was done, i wasn’t sad anymore. i went from inconsolably crying to perfectly fine in a split second. can you even imagine that? it’s fucking crazy. that’s what having bpd is like. it’s like mood swings x1000 (that’s why i describe it like bipolar on a smaller scale - their mood swings last days/weeks/months, ours last minutes/hours, sometimes days but not often). you can be fine, then all of a sudden you’re not. or you can be not fine, and then all of a sudden you are. you can be ecstatic, then all of a sudden all the joy gets sucked out of ur body n u wanna die. then 5 mins later ur fine again. u can cycle thru every single human emotion in the space of a few hours with no warning whatsoever. u can go from feeling so many emotions u don’t know which one to focus on to feeling none at all. it’s exhausting. so yes ‘day-to-day events’ (this can be as minor as the way someone speaks to you, or not enjoying ur food as much as u thought u would, and it can make u terrifyingly sad or spark uncontrollable rage in u) can trigger it, but it’s like… at least that’s kind of justifiable. most of the time u just cannot regulate, control or predict ur emotions whatsoever. and often the emotions u do feel are not appropriate for the situation at hand lmao

on top of that, ppl w bpd have massive problems processing their emotions. while most ppl have the capacity to identify what they’re feeling and why, ppl w bpd often can’t. and bc they can’t identify it properly, they don’t know how to process it. that’s why emotions and feelings are so often black and white - we might develop the ability to recognise Big Emotions, like love and hate, happiness and sadness etc, but we can’t figure out the smaller, nuanced emotions. it becomes or, not and.

this is also why our emotions feel so big and all encompassing!! we can’t ignore our emotions!! they are our focus in a lot of ways. when ur sad, it feels like the world is ending, every single time. when ur happy, ur euphoric and nothing else matters, and so on. every emotion has the volume turned up to 100. that’s why our emotions sometimes come out in extreme or unhealthy ways - our emotions often feel so big we have such a hard time handling them. so we go to drastic lengths, whatever they may be, to cope.

(also bc most ppl w bpd are victims of abuse, we’re often hyperaware of other people’s moods, which can impact ours. someone can be annoyed for some innocuous, innocent reason, and yet bc we can sense it, we become scared or defensive and may lash out.)

and ben… little old ben, have u ever seen him have a rational reaction to anything in his life? how often have we seen him have an appropriate response to smth? my dad is shit, so i have to destroy him. failing that, i have to kill him. oh, my brother isn’t gonna let kill him? time to punch him in the face. my daughter ate all my cereal? it’s Overreaction Time. (this one in particular is Very Me like yes lexi is a child and he was unfair but my 7 year old cousin once drank all my j2os and i almost had a breakdown so i Get It) i’m feeling like shit? time to antagonise these homophobes until they beat me in the middle of the street. i sleep with this man once? time to get overly involved. he shows me a little bit of love and kindness? time to develop feelings for him despite him insisting he’s straight, the fact that he’s with a woman and i have been harassed and beaten by his homophobic family multiple times. but it isn’t going the way i wanted it to? time to impulsively hit him for not knowing what he wants, then immediately regret it.

and like. he went from crying his eyes out in his dad’s kitchen to threatening kat slater within the span of what, 10 minutes? he went from trying to kill his dad, to falling tf apart w jay, to trying to manipulate his dad - who had just woken up from a coma - for his own gain again, in the span of maybe an hour. if that doesn’t say rapid cycling, inconsistent emotions idk what does.

like idk enough about the old bens to say if this is a consistent characteristic of his or not (although based on the fact he killed a woman bc he was angry w his dad, i’d say it’s fairly safe to assume lmao) but ever since he came back his reactions and emotions have been pretty much never once been rational, stable or consistent.

(and like i wanna say i am saying all of this from the perspective of the bad days. so if you’re thinking ‘well, ben isn’t like that all the time’ ur right. neither am i. some days i’m fine, some days it’s not that bad, sometimes i can cope. but i still have bpd, even on those days. and imo, so does ben.)

7. Chronic feelings of emptiness

this is one i don’t really see in ben. we maybe see moments of emptiness, but certainly not enough to call it ‘chronic’.

also a lot of the moments we do see emptiness in ben, i feel like it’s forced emptiness, more for his own benefit or for the benefit of others rather than actual genuine emptiness. it’s not that he’s not feeling anything, it’s that what he is feeling he’s not showing. that’s very different from actually feeling empty.

8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)

this! is! such! a! massive! part! of! having! bpd! and it’s a part that no one ever fucking talks about either!!!

and again, does this one need explaining?

ben is anger. he’s a ball of it, and he has been for a very, very long time. he’s angry at his dad, at the world, at himself. for all sorts of reasons, both complex and simple. if i sat here and tried to get into all of it this post would be twice as long as it already is. and i don’t think i really need to, anyway. it’s not as if any of us need to dig very deep to see it, is it?

‘frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights’ like i really don’t need to elaborate do i? bc what does ben do when he’s angry? his temper flairs up, he gets physical, lashes out, makes threats.

and he’s so often angry in response to emotional pain, which is the saddest (and for me, most relatable) part. just look at paul’s anniversary, how angry he was just in general, to everyone - even his mum, who is like the only exception to his anger since he’s been back - when he was just hurting and sad. how angry he got when he found out keanu had replaced him in phil’s will, when really he was just hurt. he gets angry and violent so people don’t see him as weak bc he’s hurting. he has been conditioned to get angry instead of getting sad. it’s not healthy at all.

there is so much more but i feel like it’s unnecessary for me to get into it. bc u know. ben’s not exactly subtle in his anger is he lmao

9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

this is the only other one that i don’t see in ben at all, and it’s one that i don’t really experience myself either so i don’t even have any insight to offer lmao

so!! more or less 7/9!! that’s a passing grade for diagnosis!!! welcome to the club, mr mitchell!!!!

all of this, of course, has been purely from a medical, diagnostic standpoint (w some of my personal experiences sprinkled in lmao). there’s so much more to say from like a ‘living w bpd day to day’ standpoint but like, this post is already way too fuckin long so i’m just gonna hit on a few that i feel are important in regards to ben, and ones i have’t spoken abt yet

most ppl w bpd have a ‘fp’ or ‘favourite person’ (tho it can be multiple people), which sounds nice but it’s kind of a really complicated and difficult thing tbqh. here’s the best definition i could find: ‘When someone with BPD uses the term “favorite person” to describe someone else, they are typically insinuating that this is a person they cannot survive without. For BPD sufferers, the favorite person is the person who is a source of emotional support and dependence. This individual has the ability to truly impact the BPD sufferer’s day in either a positive or negative manner. The favorite person to someone with BPD holds a critical role in their lives by holding the power to ‘make or break’ the successful navigation of daily tasks and struggles.’ it’s a difficult thing to explain/understand (so please feel free to google ‘favourite person bpd’ to get a better understanding), and is not always as dramatic as it sounds, but it’s like… even if they aren’t a source of ‘emotion support’, ur mental wellbeing can hang on this person’s every move. (which is not healthy, i know, but it’s just a thing that happens w bpd!) and phil is absolutely ben’s fp. ben hates phil, and yet is still so desperate to be in his good graces, in his life no matter what that costs him… and ben’s self esteem, his actions, his moods are so dependant on phil. it just?? makes so much sense to me. i realize it may not make much sense to someone who doesn’t have any understanding of what a fp is, but like if u do, i’m sure u see what i see.

i think maybe jay was another fp of ben for a while in the past. i don’t think he is as much since ben has come back, but in the past?? maybe. like less in the ‘my happiness is dependant on u’ way and more in like a ‘i’m very very attached to u and need u in my life and would maybe go crazy if anything or anyone got in the way of that’ way.

and i think callum might be sneaking into territory now too tbqh. it would explain why callum’s actions and words have such an impact on ben’s moods despite not much really happening between them. and like i wanna say: someone becoming ur fp is not a choice. it just happens. it’s not like ben is going ‘oh im going to get overly attached to u just for a laugh’, no. this would be completely out of his control. and when it happens, it fucking SUCKS. so if that is what’s happening, it’s going to have a massive impact on ben - and it seems like it already is.

and like taking the whole fp thing out of it (bc i know it’s complicated and hard to grasp) bpd would explain why ben seems to be so attached to callum even tho very little has actually happened between them!!! like bpd will have u falling in love w someone who just shows you basic human kindness and decency, and i mean that very literally!!! bc like i said when you have bpd, you struggle to navigate and handle basic emotions, so all the nuances of romance and love? jesus christ. it goes back into black and white thinking - i either love this person or i hate this person, there is no in between. so callum, showing ben kindness? showing him support with what’s going on w louise and what happened w phil? not hating him and thinking he’s despicable and evil and all those things people say about him? and ben, having bpd? he probably wouldn’t be able to comprehend that maybe cal’s just being friendly, esp not after they slept together. so ofc he would latch tf on to that. i would latch tf on to that. his behaviour towards callum just seems very on brand for having bpd to me, genuinely.

and !! all those things whitney said the other night !! people complained about him not arguing back, but like… she’s almost saying what ben wants to hear, when it comes to callum. bc i touched on it before but like the thing is when, you have bpd ur thought process is like ‘i care about this person, they are good, i don’t deserve them, i am bad, i am going to ruin them, i’m probably manipulating them into spending time with me and caring about me, but i can’t let them go, i need them, i bet they don’t even like me, i don’t deserve them, i don’t want them to get hurt, i don’t want to hurt them, i am going to hurt them, in the end.’ (and eventually it spirals into ‘actually they’re probably going to hurt me first bc everyone always does so let me completely destroy this relationship so it’s unrecoverable and hurt them now so they can’t hurt me later’ but that’s another story) and whitney more or less confirms that for him!!! in essence, what she says to him is ‘you’re bad, he didn’t want anything to do with you but you manipulated him into it. you don’t deserve him, you’ve hurt him, you’ve hurt me, how could you do this?’ so like… ofc he’s not gonna argue w her. he’s already had a shit day, all of the fight is gone from him, and he agrees w her!! i’m sure he was thinking that he deserved what whit was throwing at him - not necessarily for what he’d done to her, but because he is Bad and callum is Good and he needs to stay away from him, otherwise he’ll ruin him. bc that’s just what bpd brain tells u, even when u’ve got no basis to believe it. (unless ur splitting or experiencing a big emotional high, but again, that’s a different story)

and that kind of makes sense as to why he’d go to the wedding. going back to the anger instead of sadness thing - he’s hurting, so he’s going to get angry and vengeful. he has been hurt, so now he is going to hurt in return. esp considering both callum and whitney have seen him in such a vulnerable state. it’s probably a pride thing, too.

also just to expand a little more on the ‘unstable sense of self’ thing - ppl w bpd (and also victims of abuse, but sometimes that particular venn diagram is a circle) tend to change the personality based on who they’re with. which is what most people do, yes, but i mean the Extreme version. it’s a trauma response thing - u’ll reflect parts of a person’s personality back at them, or even take bits from personalities of ppl u know they like in the hopes that they’ll like u more like that, as opposed to ur real personality (if u even know what that is). and sometimes those parts stick (esp when you idolize the person u stole them from/they’re your fp), and it’s like u all of a sudden realize ur entire personality is built of parts of other ppls personalities that you’ve stolen. so it makes sense to me that ben seems to have so many differing personalities/sides to his personality, bc he’s learned which parts to show to who, and in what situations - in response to his abuse as a kid, if nothing else.

(and before anyone can even go there: that is not an act of manipulation. it’s a trauma response. it’s something that happens without us consciously having any say in it, as a way of self-preservation. it’s like if i make myself likeable and appealing to u, you’re less likely to hurt me, physically or emotionally. and yes ben has a habit of manipulation, but this is not a part of it. none of ben’s manipulation is directly bc of his hypothetical bpd, it’s bc that’s just who he is. i don’t ever want to see the two equated, or see anyone say any shit like ‘ben must have bpd bc he’s manipulative’, ever.)

just for the hell of it, here are some spicy bpd memes, bc that’s how we communicate on the internet. (here are two in particular seem quite relevant to ben rn lmao + bonus one for phil!!)

so! there we are!!! i’m sure there’s some important stuff i overlooked and that this is not what u expected when u sent me this question, but there are so many misconceptions and stigmas out there surrounding bpd that i wouldn’t have felt right half assing it. and i hope, if nothing else, u learned something abt bpd that u didn’t know before :-)

if u read this far ur a trooper lmao but if anyone has any questions, be they abt ben having bpd or bpd in general please feel free to ask!! i’ll do my best to answer them to the best of my ability 💖💖

#ben mitchell #ballum #eastenders #petty as hell but it was really bugging me that this wasnt showing up in tags so i'm posting it again lmao #sorry if u already liked/replied to it :-(#bpd #anon #question

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awesome-legendarystudentcho-blog · 6 years ago

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Jasonville Indiana Cheap car insurance quotes zip 47438

"Jasonville Indiana Cheap car insurance quotes zip 47438

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Just got a new quote on home owner insurance. It is slightly better than my last insurance company, but not by much. Is this quote negotiable? Or it is what it is, take it or leave it?""

Car accident and they got old insurance.?

I got in a car accident last November and they tried to hit me with 6 duis with no evidence. We got the FDLC results 6 MONTHS LATER, and it came up with nothing. I have no idea what they had to charge me with 6 DUIs, however... It was reduced to reckless driving. Anyways, when I got in the accident, I left in an ambulance. The police gave out the wrong car insurance (I had just got statefarm the day before.) They gave like esurance to everyone, which was the WRONG insurance. So, I ended up having to tell the hospitals etc that they gave out the wrong insurance. Then I got a call from one of the people I hit's insurance, and they queried about what insurance I had (They said the policy they were given expired in like 08.)... Part of the deal of reckless driving is that I pay restitution. My lawyer is unaware that the police gave out the wrong insurance, but he told me that there should be like nothing (insurance should cover all of it.) I just got a letter in the mail yesterday saying that I owe 2500 to some person. Is it possible that he was given the wrong insurance as well, thus me getting charged for this?""

Does Florida auto insurance work in Virginia?

What if you have Florida auto insurance coverage but you move to Virginia? Are you still insured?

Estimated costs for restaurant insurance?

I am working on a business plan for school and need to know what types of insurance an upscale restaurant in Chattanooga, TN would need. Approx. 15 workers, alcohol will be served, and there is outdoor seating. I am having trouble getting any idea of how much this will cost because the online insurance quotes require quite a bit of information, which I don't have because this is not a real business. Any info will help. Thanks!""

Car recommendations for a college student?

I'll be getting my first car in the spring of 2012. I'm staying in an apartment near the campus, and I'll have a bike for that. The majority of my driving will be errands around town, and driving the 117 miles back home occasionally to visit family. Low insurance, high gas mileage, and safety are top priorities. I've got about $15,000 to spend on the car. I will have a part time job to pay insurance/gas/etc. So far the only car that appeals to me is the 2010+ Mazda3 because it has a nice exterior, and I love the interior and features compared to other small cars. Gas mileage is decent, but not the best. Also, if I go for the hatchback, will that raise my insurance costs? Do you have any other recommendations? The Mazda3 has the best interior that I've seen so far, that's the basic factor that's keeping me from other cars.""

First car very expensive insurance?

Hi, Ive passed my test about 2 months ago. Ive checked few price comparesing websites for inurance and they all tell me prices around 2000 per annue!!! My friends telling me its impossible it would be that high even as first time driver! I also passed Pass Plus which should give me additional discount. I dont understand I thought it might be postcode fault but its not. every postcode I checked its the same. any ideas? car im trying to insurance quote for is 2005 diesel clio. which is group 2-3. I also checked few other cars and its the same. which website is the best to check for quote? thank you guys!""

What effect does not being at fault in an automobile collision have on your insurance premium?

Doesn't the cost go up any way?

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Mandated Health Insurance is different from Mandated Auto Insurance how?

The Supreme Court will be deciding if the government can force us to buy health insurance from a private corporation. The government forces us to buy auto liability insurance from a private corporation. I am at a loss to see the difference.

What is the best insurance companies in NYC?

Medical insurance question?

I'm 21 and under my parent's military insurance, I had to be a full time student in order to be back under their insurance. I got my new ID, I'm back on medical insurance but I'm struggling intensively in one of my classes, and I can't find tutoring for this specific class. There's also no book or feedback from my professor, thus making me withdrawing from it. Withdrawing from the class would leave me with 11 credits. Since I already have my ID card, and I'm under medical insurance and have my insurance card and everything, will this effect my eligibility or will I still have medical insurance under my parents?""

Whats the cheapest auto insurance for honda civic?

I'm 19 years old, i have had a license for a year and a half. i have had one speeding incident where i was going 100 miles per hour. Other than that i have no records of bad driving. i drive a honda civic sedan. what is the cheapest car insurance i can get so i can drive again?""

Insurance for a new financed car?

I'm planning on financing a car. (May be a Kia Forte, Hyndai accent, or something simmilar). Right now I just have liability insurance and want to know what type of insurance I have to have legally to drive a new financed car. All advice are appreciated. Thanks.""

What are the best/cheapest insurance companies in the uk for motorbikes?

and yes i will only of just passed my Direct Access and likely to be riding a 600cc.....thanks

Car Insurance for a 17 year old male...?

I am looking for car insurance as I will (fingers crossed) have passed my test by christmas. I need insurance on a 1997 P Reg 1.4L Renault Megane (which I have learned in, so will be buying off my dad) ... either that or it will be a 1.0L - 1.2L probably M Reg 3 door car, something cheap, small and cheap to run. Most places are either refusing to insure me, or are giving me ridiculous prices of between 3500 - 5000. Also, I am getting quotes as though I already have the full licence, and not provisional. I know people of the same age going to these companies with bigger and newer cars getting insured for 2000. Whats going on? U.K. answerers only please :-) Ta. J. X""

How much will car insurance cost me if im 16 and getting a Scion Tc?

- 16 Year old ; Male - Just got my license - From Massachusetts - Took Drivers Ed I'm looking at a Scion Tc. The money I have saved up is there for the car. I am just worried on ...show more

What is good Car insurance in Atlanta?

I'm moving to Atlanta. What is a good car insurance to get and at a reasonable price. I'm not sure the whole breakdown but state farm was about the best price I could find for about 120 dollars a month and that includes renters insurance for about 10 dollars a month. Please tell me what insurance you have and the breakdown of it and how much you spend a month on car insurance in the Atlanta area. Thanks a lot

How can I get health insurance for myself and family and pay for it as business expense without employees?

I'm a successful part time entrepreneur in California, but I maintain my day job because of the group health insurance they offer. I'd like to cut the apron string and go out completely on my own, but the insurance situation holds these plans hostage. I don't want to buy private health insurance, I would like to structure my one man business so that I can easily purchase group health insurance for myself and family. I'd like to purchase group insurance as opposed to private insurance so that I don't have to deal with preexisting conditions and riders, etc. Since I'm still a sole proprietor, I have plenty of leeway in regards to business structure, and I'm willing to change whatever is necessary to get the best deal possible. How can I get health insurance for myself and family and pay for it as business expense without employees?""

Car Insurance Question?

I am a little under 15 and a half years old and my dad has debated and almost bought a lot of cars for me, from ford f650's to 1965 or higher mustangs and jaguars. but so far we have thought that the car that would be good for my first car would be a 1994 Ford Mustang with a V8 with 30k miles0. which is perfect because that was the year i was born. So my question is that since its a sports car and its V8 about how much would my insurance be when i could start driving by myself?/ insurance for the other kinds of cars/trucks?""

Rental Car Insurance-I don't have a auto insurance.What are the coverage i have to buy from rental company?

Hi,I'm new to US.I stay in california.I want to rent a car and confused with the insurance options.could anyone help me,what are all the coverages(LDW,SLP etc) that i need to rent a car?.I don't have a personal auto insurance.""

Do you think i could get a used car and insurance with under $3k?

i really need a car to get around, i have full time job, n part-time student. It's getting to my nerves that whenever i need to go somewhere, i have to ask my brother or sister to take me. Yes i am a student 18 yo, i don't have much money, and my parents refuse to buy me a car, reason because my mom said insurance is too expensive, and she doesn't give a shitt about me. Do you think i could get it anywhere? i was thinking about buying the car 1st then insurance later on because i can't afford it. idk what should i do?""

Any car insurance agents out there?

I really need someones honest opinion. My vehicle was stolen right out of my driveway a few nights ago. I am hoping that it is recovered, but in the event that it is not. How does my insurance co determine how much they will give me for the vehicle? Please explain in dumby terms because I am not in this line of work. I appreciate all the help you have to offer.""

I don't know anything about car insurance?

Determine the claim amount (with deductibles). For each of the following situations, what amount would the insurance company pay? a) Wind damage of $835; the insured has a $500 deductable b) Theft of a stereo system worth $1,300; the insured has a $250 deductible. c) Vandalism that does $425 of damage to a home; the insured has a $500 deductible. Please explain how you got to your answers thank you.""

Anyone know where to get affordable international health insurance?

I am wondering where I can get some decent health coverage to cover me during my international adventures . Does anyone know where to look for this stuff? Please give websites and phone #'s if you have them. Thank you.

Arizona Law on insurance pulling your driver record ?

does anyone how long (in term of years) can an insurance company pull your driver record? i know here in Arizona i can pull my record from servicearizona.com for 39month. but some people tell me they can pull up to 5 years from your record.

Do i need an auto insurance to drive a motorcycle? how much that would be if it is yes? higher than auto insu?

I think i need to know before i buy a bike that whether i would pay more $ on my insurance if there is 1 or would it be cheaper than an auto insurance, like car insurances?Ooh, i am an new driver so how much would it be?""

Should I stop paying my insurance?

I got a D.U.I. five years ago when I was 18. I got my license back one year later but I had to have my SR22 for three years. The DMV told me Oct. 7 2013 was the last date I had to posses an SR22. My insurance company is still having me pay $50 every month and they threaten to have the DMV suspend my license if I don't pay. I talked to my insurance broker but she doesn't explain the situation to me very well. What I got from her was that the monthly insurance payments are to give me insurance to drive any vehicle. Why must I have insurance to keep my drivers license? My father has the vehicle I drive insured so why do I need it?

How can I get medical insurance if I have a history of pancreatitis?

I've never had medical insurance b/c I've never had a reason too. Never had any major sickness before now, never a broken bone and never sprained anything. My pancreas suddenly became inflamed. It wasn't caused by drinking, I hate the stuff! I believe it was caused by smoking. I've had a few episodes of pancreatitis and was hospitalized once in which it cost an arm and a leg. Should have went to the hospital this last time, but I was so scared of the extra costs. Your pancreas is a major organ. You can't live without it. Am I going to just have to grin and bare it and leave a debt to my family when I die?! I tried applying for the discount but I wasn't eligible b/c I don't have a job. I haven't had one in 4 years. What are you to do. No insurance company will accept me due to the medical problems. I'm scared of what I'll be charged, but even more scared of the pancreas killing me.""

Does a car not in use need insurance?

Just wondering what the laws were in Canada if I need insurance on my car that is unplated and probably going to the junk yard in the next 2 weeks (have to scavenge some parts before I let it go) Calling my insurance company tomorrow to add on the new car but wondering if I should take the old car off altogether?

Costs of insurance for Young people 16?

Could you write how much do/did you pay/paid for your insurance now/before?? Also could you add you car engine etc..

Can someone help me find car insurance for my dad?

my dad is looking for a car insurance company that insures anyone who drives his car, ie. his children. is this possible? what insurance companies offer this type of insurance?""

If a car looks fast will insurance cost more?

its for a new driver. say they were driving a muscle car with a small block 350 and it also looks fast would insurance in anyway be affected? would an older car cost more insurance because of less safety features?

Where is the cheapest place to get motorcycle insurance?

I am 21 have a clean driving record and have a motorcycle permit. I got a quote of $30 a month that's with comprehensive with a deductible of $100. Is this probably as cheap as I can get?

Jasonville Indiana Cheap car insurance quotes zip 47438

Can I get a driver's license without a car or insurance?

I'm older than 24 and never got around to getting a driver's license because I went to college at a young age. Now I have an opportunity to use my mom's insured car for a couple months, and I want to practice and get a driver's license, just so that I'll have the driving test out of the way (and won't feel so weird being this old without a license). However, I still don't plan to have a car, I'll be moving somewhere that I don't need a car, etc. I don't want to have to pay any insurance for having the license. Can I just get a permit and practice and take the driving test and get a license, without ever buying a car or auto insurance? And then I won't use the license, I'll just have it until it so happens that I might need to drive (perhaps use the insurance that you can buy along with rental cars, if I need to rent a car?). Also, I'm not sure if I'll be covered under my mom's insurance for permit driving because I am older than 24. I really don't know much about this. I just started looking into it about an hour ago. I've had an illness for a couple years that prevented me from driving but I'm getting better and thought maybe I should learn to drive now.""

Whats the average cost if you dont have health insurance to have a baby in the hospital?

I have health insurance I'm not sure yet if they will cover my pregnancy, how much does it cost to have a baby if you dont have health insurance? How much are sonograms, doctor visits etc. Thanks""

Added my newborn to my insurance after 30 days?

help ! after i had my new baby things wre so hectic for me. he had jaundice and in and out of doctors.. my toddler had dental promblems . i had post partum issues myself and by the time i called to add baby to insurance it was abt 12 days after the 30 day period . my insurance is united healthcare thru my previous employer that im currently on cobra with.. they denied adding my newborn and said they wll send me a letter so i can appeal but im afraid that wont help . any advice on what i can do .. i cant imagine nt hvng insurance for my baby..especially we just got home from the hospital yestrday bcz he has broncholitus .. so i wl be billed for that . i know i called to add him late but hopeflly there gtta be something i can do. i means its for a child i live california .. any advice on how to handle this

Can relative use Insurance to get car towed?

Hi everyone. Had some trouble with my car in that it broke down 30 miles from home. The insurance company ( Halifax but outsourced to green flag) have told me that it would cost 160 as it is outwith the 10 mile radius ! So i had it towed to a local garage who tell me it needs a new engine !! Bad luck this car. I have arranged for a company to buy it back home despite being non-runner, so question is can my mum use her insurance to get it towed 30 miles free of charge ? Possible problems being that she might have to be at the car or they won't tow to the car buyer. Help please.""

What would the cost of insurance be for a 16 year old driving a 1994 3000GT Mitsubishi?

Car insurance Age: 18?

How much is insurance on average for a 18 year old in the UK

Why do people buy insurance?

is it for saving or protection of life? What are the reasons that motivate people to buy insurance?

Car insurance?

I have hear that car insurance can be a little cheaper if its a 4 door. Is this true? I have a son getting ready to drive and I was wondering.

Why is my car insurance so expensive?

I'm a 20 year old who just passed my test 3 weeks ago and I can't seem to get a quote lower than 2400! I am the registered owner of a 1.2 V reg Vauxhall Corsa, however it doesn't seem to matter what car I am driving. Has there been a huge increase in car insurance during the past year? I always expected a cheaper quote than this.""

Insurance Rates?

I'm a 17 year old male and I just got my 1st speeding ticket today and it was a 6 point ticket how much do you think my insurance rate will go up by

How long after an accident can I file an insurance claim in NY?

About 2 weeks ago I slipped off an icy road, drove my van into the woods on state land. There was no property damage, this is a very rural area (as in no homes within 5 miles at least). It did take out my rear corner window, crushed my headlights and damaged my hood. I drove right out of the woods afterwards. I was going to do the repairs myself, but found out the window repair would be over $500 and for that price I might as well file a claim and get the rest fixed. My questions are: Is it too late to file a claim? Are there any legal ramifications for not reporting this accident?""

My 31 year old son is moving back in for a while can I put him on my car insurance so he's covered driving ?

I have state farm insurance I just want him to be covered if he's driving one of my cars in case he has a wreck

What factors affect car insurance premiums?

My mom is going to give me her old car once she gets a new one, and she said insurance is about $100/mo. My friend asked what insurance would be and I told her, and she thought that was really low The car is a 1999 saturn SL1 and it's standard, is the insurance cheap for this car? My mom has a great driving record I'm now wondering what affects car insurance premiums? I know age, gender, driving records, and other stuff.. but what else?""

How much will a porsche 944 be in 4 years time and what will the insurance be if I'm 18?

It doesn't matter about fixing it as my uncle is a mechanic and I will be training soon.My uncle has got one now and I love it !!!

How long before insurance premiums start to drop?

My family health insurance premiums are about to go up to $800 per month. I don't think we can afford that kind of premium on a $65K household income. Will it get better once the insurance exchanges kick in? Talking to friends, they're also seeing their premiums double in some cases.""

How can I apply for Insurance???

Is there a site where i can go and Apply for Insurance??? Is there another way to do it?? Thanks that would be great.

Quick insurance quotes with no personal info?

Hi, I'm doing some research into what I want my first car to be. I've narrowed it down to the original Golf GTI, original Mini Cooper S and the Peugeot 205 GTI. I love all these cars but I need to insure them for a 17year old boy. I am a careful driver but you know how expensive insurance is. I live in the UK and want a quick insurance quote without having to put in all my details such as where I live. Any websites that can let me do this? Thanks!""

What are some good California medical insurance options?

Is bike insurance cheaper then car insurance?

Car and insurance help?

I had turned 17 yesterday and im going to do driving lessons, so if I get a cheap car for christmas and do it up ( fixing, accessories ect..) while its on my drive without being used atall, will I have to pay insurance?""

How much is teen insurance?

Typically how much is insurance for teens in general? For just an ordinary, average car? thanks""

I have no insurance but I want to get pregnant...?

My husband and I have been together for 4 years and we have been TTC for 2 years now. We have no insurance , so I've used 2 OPK's but all of the come out negative or with no results, and my periods have ALWAYS been extremely irregular so I can't calculate or predict my ovulation. I know we're gonna need insurance when and if I do get pregnant, here in the state of California you receive free health insurance for you and the baby while your pregnant and until the child is 18 or you get a different insurance carrier. I feel helpless and I don't know what I should do next... I find myself searching for clomid online but I know that is extremely dangerous with Dr. supervision. And we have looked in to other insurance carriers, but none of them cover fertility treatments. Please help!!! I need to know what my next step should be?""

2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse RS. Need Reviews & Insurance prices?

Hi, im 16 I am thinking of buying a 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse RS Mileage: 72,130 Transmission: AUTO $3,960 Is this car good for a teen? Is maintenance expensive? Will my insurance rate be higher than usual? Thank you.""

Can drivers of the same car have different insurance companies/policies?

I just got my license in December and I'm driving my mom's car but I need car insurance under my name. We all know how expensive that is, especially for a teenage/new driver. So IF I were to find a different and cheap insurance company, can I cover her car under my name? My mom has Safeway Insurance, if that helps.""

Will insurance be cheaper for our 2010 Hyundai Elantra than our 04 Tahoe?

We just bought the Hyundai Elantra yesterday and were looking to see how much of a difference we could expect .

Jasonville Indiana Cheap car insurance quotes zip 47438

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