#personal triumphs

[korya-elana]

I have such a deep-seated fear of therapy. I have two core memories of therapists fucking up my life. Some other part holds the memory of being recognized with DID professionally so sometimes I doubt that ever happened and I've been delusional this whole time.

I've tried before to convince us to get back into therapy but it's never worked. We run before we can walk through the door. Sometimes I wonder if that fear was placed intentionally into us. Groomed or programmed into avoiding therapy.

I started realizing earlier this year that the realization of our sub-Systems and the suspicions we started to have about our past were really starting to fuck up our life and we had reached a plateau in healing that we just could not continue to do on our own.

So yesterday, after months of coaxing and persuasion I requested an appointment with a trauma therapist that came highly recommended by a close friend whose been trying to get us back in therapy for like ... seven years lol.

I know that when we get the email to schedule, there will be a lot of difficulty. I'm pretty suspicious of Haven's sub-System in particular trying to delete/sabotage things. But that's a problem for later.

Right now I'm just proud of us.

[ninjakitty15]

This is a small personal triumph as I was never taught how to braid as a kid like so many other girls were, either their own hair or those string friendship bracelets. After pinteresting a ton of viking hairstyle tutorials for my frost queen loki cosplay, I finally figured out how to style the wig for next year's con yesterday morning. It's no Queen Lagertha like I first envisioned but for someone that has no hairstyling skills, it's not bad either. The little things....

[nonasbirthday]

Tbh? I don't like Paul. I don't want Paul. I understand that Paul serves an important narrative function and that Paul is the best possible ending for Camilla and Palamedes given their situation, personalities, and relationship. However what I really want is for Camilla and Palamedes to attend the ATN wedding as two individual humans and for Pal to be a lightweight who loses his tie in the garden fountain after three drinks and for Camilla to do exactly one shot with the group, keep Gideon from ripping the sleeves off her dress shirt, and absolutely kill it at lawn games during cocktail hour. Since this scenario is a wild tonal mismatch for the series and also Palamedes was already dead, this was unlikely to ever happen. However Paul is the final nail in the coffin for the theoretical existence of this scene and I can't help but resent them for that

[lackadaisycal-art]

Love the energy of the new doctor who episodes, love Ncuti Gatwa's charisma and the show's willingness to take risks. That being said I'm a bit sad we don't seem to be getting the old character focus of the og RTD seasons. I really like Millie Gibson's performance but on a script level Ruby Sunday doesn't feel like a real person to me. What drives her, what are her flaws, what's her socioeconomic background and how does that inform her behaviour, what are the unlikable parts of her, what does she want most? What's her relationship to her mother like beyond aspirationally and non-specifically positive? How does she dress when she's just sitting around at home? What might she butt heads with the doctor about???

[anonymous-ampersand]

Isn't this what you wantеd? Time sure feels like it's running out Just finish what you startеd Queen of nothing Wearing such a heavy crown

PLEASE listen to Queen of Nothing by The Crane Wives !

[moyazaika]

people don’t write it often, probably bc it’s a bit intense and can be triggering

but my favorite type of darling are the ones who are 100% seriously willing and able to kill themselves to escape their yan

i don’t care about the having the will to survive and escape i want to have the pettiness and spite to take away the only thing they truly love (me)

ooooh ur right nonniee!!!! ☝🏽☝🏽

iii i agree it can be quite triggering. think for a lot of people it also breaks the immersion; if ur reading yandere to feel like you matter to the extent where someone is so enamoured with you they’d condemn the law and their own morals, it defeats the purpose if darling just ,,, like,,,, kills themselves,,,,,,

but there’s also a sort of power in that!!

the sheer devastation it would entail for them, to lose the object of their affection by their own fucking hand. they promised to keep you safe, tucked away from the rest of the world and all its dangers; and yet, in a tragically ironic way—

you were the one thing they couldn’t protect you from.

wonder who gets the last laugh, then.

[bumblingbabooshka]

[Tuvok & Janeway: Control, Distance, Duty & Connection.] Sources: St Voyager Transcripts / Mitski 'First Love Late Spring' / Disco Elysium

[butchgambit]

In light of butch gambit (& femme rogue soon #trust) gaining traction (amongst butch versions of many others), I thought it'd be fun to share my rogue and gambit headcanons here! I'll place it under a read more since it's long :]

(little disclaimer: some of them are already in canon but rarely touched on again or is only implied so I've listed them here anyway in case y'all are wondering why something's listed that seems familiar!)

general Gambit hcs:

permanent burn scars on his hands & forearms + faint scars on his palms as well

has moles all over his body + shoulder freckles

has beauty marks all over his face

tan/sun kissed complexion (slightly darker than canon)

eyes glow into his signature pink when he's visibly angry or using a lot of energy of his mutation 

broad shoulders with a slightly curved waist + a little tummy 

hairy body but usually prefers to keep his facial hair to his scruff/stubble

has rounded cheeks but a chiseled chin & nose

has matching scars with rogue from being impaled with her (see: X-Treme X-Men (2001) #16-#17)

has faint scars on his back, knees, & legs

has a crooked/hooked nose 

prefers gold jewelry

had his ears pierced in multiple places (lobe, upper lobe, helix, tragus, flat)

paints his finger nails occasionally

loves to buy cringey matching shirts with rogue to wear around the house

gets matching items for the cats & him

stress cooks/bakes

has slight eye sensitivities to bright lights

tends to be a night owl but makes sure to be awake before rogue to make her breakfast & coffee 

more personal Gambit headcanons: 

intersex stone butch on T 

t4t butch4femme

top surgery scars that formed a flame like appearance

has undiagnosed audhd 

has ptsd & sexual trauma he masks

fidgets with his cards or things he keeps in his duster pockets

cut off the headpiece to the X-Men uniform so his hair would stick out bc he thought it looked stupid 

prefers to keep his hair neck/shoulder length until it starts to bother him 

loves having his hair played with by rogue 

has an intense hair care routine 

has a hard time letting rogue help him with tasks around the house 

has chronic pain in his hands & arms 

gets phantom burning pains all over his body when his antarctica trauma gets triggered

^ gets triggered by extremely cold weather + during the winter but he deals with it better with time & with rogue's help + reassurance

quit smoking but chews on items when he's distracted or stressed 

gets jealous & possessive over rogue but then feels guilty about it 

love language ranking is quality time —> words of affirmation —> physical touch —> acts of service —> gift giving

enjoys taking candid photos of rogue, the cats, & the team + has a general love for photography

keeps a flash of all the photos he's taken in a safe so nothing happens to it 

has rogue help him with doing testosterone injections since he's afraid of needles & medical things due to trauma

general Rogue hcs:

extremely curly hair + dark brown

her white patch of hair covers the top half & flows down into a stripe towards the middle of her hair

her eyes are more of a bright hazel green

has perpetually rosy cheeks

freckles along her nose & cheeks & a few scattered towards her forehead

has pouty full lips

has a warm yet slightly pale complexion due to covering up

light scattered freckles on her shoulders, back, & chest

has dimples & a soft, round face

her nose is less of a button nose & more downturned at the tip

has toned arms & legs but a soft belly & pronounced curves

has a matching scar with gambit from being impaled in the heart (see: X-Treme X-Men (2001) #16-#17)

^ the healing factor she absorbed from wolverine made it not as prominent as gambit’s

prefers gold jewelry & likes to wear some of gambit’s

has faint scarring all over her body from before she had absorbed any healing factor

has beauty marks on her nose & cheeks

wears clip on earrings since they're easier

pretends to hate the cringey shirts gambit buys but wears them more often than he does

stress cleans & bakes

always cuddles with the cats in the mornings before getting out of bed

doesn't talk & only makes noises in response to gambit until she's fully awake/had her coffee

tends to be clingiest (/pos) in the mornings & before falling asleep

attempts to make gambit’s favorites when he's having a bad or rough day until he ends up cooking with her to help

is incredibly stubborn, much more so than gambit

prefers baking & is better at it than cooking

personal Rogue hcs:

nonbinary high femme lesbian

t4t femme4butch

is autistic + has ocd & ptsd

has sexual trauma

even before her mutation she struggled with lots of touch which only then furthered when it manifested

makes sure her gloves are always the right texture

pulls at her hair & fingernail skin when frustrated or overwhelmed

tries to befriend any animal or critter that she can/will let her

doesn't mind getting a little dirty outside but too much can trigger her ocd

her southern accent gets extremely pronounced the angrier she gets

has sensitivities to touch & sounds due to her own mutation & the other mutations she's absorbed

enjoys reading romance, thriller, horror, & fantasy novels

enjoys watching super cheesy & crappy movies

picked up painting as a hobby to help her work through when her mind is busy or through her trauma being triggered

love language ranking: words of affirmation —> physical touch —> quality time —> acts of service —> gift giving

gets jealous & possessive over remy who indulges in it which makes her smug

has a skincare & hair routine when she has the time

makes gambit join her in her skincare routine & got them matching headbands

loves the little touches from gambit either on her skin or over her clothes

buys Gambit cute band-aids to put on him after helping with his testosterone shots

[cementcornfield]

https://x.com/oliviaraytv/status/1792351489773752635?s=46&t=4nsvGMTnbYsCN_2D0a2rJg

Joe and Ja’Marr worked out together 😭 I know it’s not that special but Joe did asked Ja’Marr when he was ready

Actually me and Joe threw one time in California. I actually took a trip to go take a chance to go see him and hang with him for a time. And that was our first time throwing after, I think that was his fourth session when he first started to throw. So I caught him early.

[bestworstcase]

I have a question about some of your Salem thoughts

If Salem is 110% certain that she can take down the Gods (assuming that's her goal since we don't actually know), why wouldn't she communicate her plan to Oz? Especially if she truly doesn't want anyone to die like you say. Oz would jump at the bit if Salem said "Hey I want to stop fighting" since that would mean their shadow war would stop. I really don't think Oz likes the Gods either, and even if he's afraid of them, if *Salem* is that confident she can stop them (she's far from an idiot), I'm sure he'd at least hear her out (which would tell Salem a LOT).

If she's that confident and truly doesn't want to fight, why wouldn't she tell Oz her new plan? And why would she kickstart her plan by attacking the kingdoms/Academies? Surely she could find a way to steal the Relics without flat out attacking them (like sending in double agents to take the Maiden powers)? Like... she would've known she'd get people killed, including children and innocent people. Even if she did damage control (which I think is just strategic, why bother going after people if she's focusing on the Relics? She's not gonna waste precious time and resources), she surely knew people would get caught in the crossfire.

Don't get me wrong, I like what you bring to the table!! Your posts are thought provoking and unique. But I can't see Salem being somehow secretly good. I don't think the show is setting her up that way, and I think she's a fantastic villain, so from my own perspective, doing that kind of twist would be a disservice to her character. I don't think she's inhuman or a complete and total monster who should go, but she's definitely not a good person especially if she can't communicate that she supposedly doesn't want people dead. She seems to be an "the ends justify the means" kind of person, and the show I think has stated that that isn't a good mindset i.e. Ironwood.

Sorry, I rambled and completely strayed from my point 😅 I don't mean to be mean if I come across that way. I hope my ask is interesting or thought provoking though :P

my position is that salem is right, not that she’s secretly good—that is an important distinction. i think she sees the gods clearly for what they are, thinks the divine ultimatum repulsive and unjust, wants remnant to be free, and believes that humanity is transcendent over their creators; she also, quite plainly, does not have any compunction about doing whatever it takes to achieve her ends and while i do think she is still fully capable of and driven by love, she is so TERRIFIED of being hurt again and so CERTAIN that no one could ever care for her that when she does care for someone else it comes out in very, very twisted and often cruel ways. she’s not good, she’s not nice, she’s just right.

equally the heroes are good but not right, because they have yet to really grapple with the premise of the divine mandate (that humanity as it exists right now does not deserve to exist) or their own role in upholding it (their immediate goal is survival, but when they envision the ending of this war they imagine salem driven back and the relics squirreled away again in hope of at best everlasting stalemate). the point of structuring the narrative this way is that neither side can get to the proverbial good ending alone; they need to work together, salem’s ends with the heroes’ means.

like. she’s evil. lol. that’s not in question and i think it goes without saying that she is doing evil things so i don’t feel the need to make a “but she’s still evil though” disclaimer every time i try to tease out what’s going on in her head. notice how my reaction to salem razing vale was OH GLINDA LAYS SIEGE TO THE EMERALD CITY, WE’RE REALLY IN IT NOW and not, like, shock or dismay that salem would do such a terrible thing. brgdfjs

(i DO think she has mostly been trying to avoid ozma and not reciprocating the shadow crusade against her prior to about fourteen years ago and that she isn’t about wanton destruction or killing for the sake of it; and in that sense i think she’s not as bad as the general fanon reading. but that comes with the territory of thinking she has actual reasons for doing what she does as opposed to being, like, a genocidal lunatic.)

anyway. to your questions. the short answer is she’s just as scared of oz as he is of her.

“but he’s the good one!”—think about this from her perspective for a minute. set aside your opinion of her and oz, presuppose for the moment that i’m correct on her motivations, and consider what everything ozma’s done in the last few thousand years looks like to her.

she knows that the gods were monsters. she witnessed them slaughtering the whole world and she saw how little it mattered to them after. she was alone for millions of years, and then hated and feared for thousands of years because she didn’t look human. all that suffering because the gods are punishing her for praying to them. yes?

then ozma returns to her, somehow. he doesn’t explain how or why—maybe he tells her he just doesn’t know—but that’s alright. what matters is that he’s here. he asks what happened to her, and she tells him the truth: the gods ended the world. cursed her. killed everyone. she was alone for so long. (maybe not the whole truth: there are things she’s afraid to say, because the gods did it all to punish her, and it’s her fault, and she’s so scared that he’d despise her if he knew everything. the only reason for her to fear ozma would reject her is if she blamed herself. you don’t hide things out of shame if you don’t feel ashamed of them.)

they learn each other again. fall in love all over again. things are finally okay. they fix up her house. they’re happy together. one day ozma tells her that he’s worried about how divided people are. she wants so badly to make him happy; she would move mountains for him. salem herself has no interest in ruling over people as a god—if she did, she wouldn’t have been living alone in a rotting shack in the middle of nowhere—all that enthusiasm is for him. to support what he wants.

they build a following, found a prosperous kingdom, start a family. four children! how long do you think they were married—ten years? twenty? and the whole time, the whole time, ozma was keeping these secrets from her. that the god of light, who’d condemned her to eternal suffering for praying to his brother, who’d shown utter indifference to the deaths of millions, had sent him back to redeem humanity FROM HER SINS, from what SALEM did. that the point of all this is cleansing humankind of her defiance and inviting THAT MONSTER to remnant to judge whether this world deserved to be subjugated under the brothers’ tyranny again or else be put to death.

imagine how she must have felt when ozma finally told her the truth, knowing that the first thing she told him was that the gods ended the last one. imagine the sickening realization that their whole marriage is built on a lie, because she would never, ever, ever have agreed to help him unite the world if she had known what he sought to unite them for, and ozma knew she never would. that he deceived her! manipulated her into serving the will of a god she knows to be a monster!

and even then—even to the very end—she loved him enough to try. she was willing to forgive all of that and figure out a way to move past it together, and the only thing she asked was that he walk away from his task of submitting this world to the judgment of THAT MONSTER. and he wouldn’t do it.

there’s a gap we don’t get to see, in between ozma backing away from her and salem catching him leaving with the girls, but we can infer that ozma walked out of that room and salem didn’t. imagine how she felt. ten years, twenty years, however long it was, and he was lying to her through it all, and he left her with hardly a moment’s hesitation when she refused to help him enact THAT MONSTER’S retribution against herself. because that is, ultimately, what this is all about; humanity is found guilty by association with her.

imagine how she felt. used. worthless. duped. like a fool for ever trusting him. did he ever love her at all, or was that a lie, too?

when she caught him in the hallway later that night, they both attack each other in the same instant. ozma remembers her attacking him first, but their volleys meet in perfect symmetry and right before salem throws her first bolt of magic, her eyes flicker down in surprise as she tracks the motion of his staff (which we see in the previous shot)—salem remembers him attacking her first.

because they were both so tense and scared and angry at each other that they snapped in exactly the same moment.

their battle is so intense they blow up the castle, and when the smoke clears, salem is a pile of ash. ash! he incinerated her! imagine how enraged you have to be to burn someone to ash. that level of fury, of absolute hatred of her, is literally burnt into her memory as the last thing he did to her before she managed to kill him, inextricably twisted around the guilt and unbearable grief she feels for her children.

he’s dedicated all but a handful of his lives since then to getting rid of her. finding a way to destroy her. (how far is he willing to go? what would happen if salem tried to move on, find community and solace somewhere far away from him? would he come after her? would he follow his god’s example and go after the people she cared about to punish her? is she willing to risk that he might?)

do you think salem understands why ozma did any of this? she doesn’t. she doesn’t get the luxury we do of jinn narrating his side of the story and showing us the anguish he felt, wanting so desperately to be with salem but eaten alive by terror of dooming the world for his happiness. she doesn’t know.

all she knows is how he treated her: the secrets, the deception, the manipulation, the immediate and absolute rejection when she told him no, the explosively violent anger at the end, then centuries upon centuries systematically erasing her from history and enforcing her exile whilst searching for the relics he needs to summon his god for the final judgment. which she knows will inevitably end in the annihilation of the whole world and yet more torture for her with no hope of reprieve, because if all of this was not enough to satisfy the god of light’s grudge against her for, again, just praying to his brother, nothing ever will.

salem feels about ozma now the way blake felt about adam. why did he lie to her, why did he use her, why does he keep coming back, why won’t he just LEAVE HER ALONE, hasn’t she suffered enough, hasn’t she been punished enough, when will it be enough—and intertwined with that, she is being EATEN ALIVE by the conviction that no one could ever truly care about her or feel for her or want to help her or think that she deserves help or even just see her as a person, because if ozma—ozma, the one who saved her from her father’s tower, who knew her and loved her before all of this happened—if ozma thought her so worthless that he would rather serve a god who ended the last world and promises to condemn this one too than suffer her to exist at all in this world, why the fuck would anyone else be any different?

thousands of years later, she still flies off the handle when anyone lies to her. (except cinder. but cinder is always the exception, to every rule.) there’s a reason she recruits the kind of people she does—desperate, broken, angry people starving for something she can promise to give them if they make themselves useful to her—and it’s because she does not believe that she can get anything better than strictly transactional relationships with people who have literally nothing and nowhere else to turn. and when she actually cares about someone? she fights herself tooth and claw over it because she desperately doesn’t want to open herself up to more heartbreak. look at how erratic and cruel she is with cinder.

it’s not rational. salem is smart and very, very tactically shrewd but she is making all of her plans and all of her choices from the assumption that she is and will always be alone in this, because she is unlovable, because she is worthless, because she is the reason this world is damned. and she’s terrified of ozma because to her everything he does suggests that his conviction and dedication to the god of light has never wavered. she cannot see his doubt. she cannot see his misery. she cannot see how much he misses her and desperately wants to make amends. all she can see is that he’s zealously guarding the relics and spreading his god’s word and training children to fight and die in the name of keeping her exiled.

why doesn’t ozma just go to her and tell her he wants to make amends? because he’s terrified she’ll never forgive him and terrified that he’ll damn the world to annihilation if he follows his heart. they’re the same. they’re exactly the same.

but this is also what makes it so possible—even easy—for salem to undergo a villain-to-hero arc, because the only thing that needs to happen is a spark of real hope. that someone, anyone, could really care about her. like. the things she says in her soliloquies about the transformative power of hope? “even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change,” and “it’s true that a simple spark can ignite hope, breathe fire into the hearts of the weary…”—that’s her. one small reason to hope. that is all she needs to change.

she doesn’t want to be razing kingdoms to the ground or cutting a bloody path through children to get those relics. she is willing to do it because she truly, genuinely, from the depths of her soul believes that it’s the only way to free herself from the torture she’s been subjected to for millions of years. she’s driven to this by desperation. she won’t keep doing it if she’s given a reason to feel less desperate.

but she does need to be given a reason, first. she’s hemorrhaging. this is why the winnowing of her inner circle and the split between everyone else in vacuo versus salem + cinder + summer in vale is important; Those Two are the ones she cares about—technically we don’t know for sure regarding summer yet, but the level of trust she has for the lieutenant holding beacon is suggestive—and that being reciprocated is what ignites her hope.

[profanityandprose]

[clonerightsagenda]

Someone who reads more in the romance genre could probably make some interesting connections between the classic 'handsome noble falls in love with a poor young woman and elevates her' and 'powerful individual from the imperial core falls in love with a colonized individual and Changes Their Ways' that I am observing now but I don't know enough to know if I'm onto something here

[amaditalks]

Me, 715 days of every biannual period: I am anti-nationalism. I don’t think countries should exist. Our arbitrary categorization of ourselves and creation of imaginary lines on maps has never done anything but harm.

Me, during the Olympics:

[unopenablebox]

today i succeeded at a quest called Enable Your Girlfriend To Eat Dinner Before 3AM and i feel reasonably good about it

[daily-hanamura]

to pair with the ‘your house is there’ post, these panels from the mange imply (a teeny bit) that souji going to yosuke’s house might be a regular occurrence ♥

[why-d0-i-exist]