#probably better if im ignored

[thelittlefirepup]

💜💜💜💖💖🎶

I want to make otherkin/therian (or alterhuman/nonhuman, whatever term y'all prefer) friends, but interacting with people is so scary and half the time I barely have the motivation to function, let alone socialize.

So...uh.........

Be my friend? Please? 🥹

(No pressure of course)

(Also, I've realized that I forgot to mention that I'm 19 since it was never relevant to this blog. So, keep that in mind before dming. <3)

[archivebottles]

Happy birthday to the most special girl in the universe!! Wanted to try something ambitious and ended up with the biggest comic I've done to date

[valtsv]

this part of VAL's monologue about how she was created keeps coming back to me, because while it isn't the only time that we see her being capable of empathy or sympathy, and of recognising other people as victims of the same cruelty and violence that she herself was (as we hear when she talks about the civilians killed at dutler's weald), it is the one time that she doesn't try to separate herself from them entirely, as though that will protect her from being made the same - helpless, and suffering at the whims of others. perhaps because she sees the person she was before she was hallowed as a separate entity already - the one who made the decision that damned them both - but perhaps also because they are her, or what she could have been, and she them. i can't help but wonder how many nights she spent telling herself that the doors to the cells in that substation would miraculously unlock, and they would all walk free. that the cellmate whose screams kept her awake would take to the latest hallowing brands, or at least stop being in so much pain. that her mother would come back, and her hands would be soft. that someone would apologise for what they were doing to her. to all of them. i wonder how many lies she whispered into the dark before she stopped believing them. perhaps it was when she realised that hers was the only voice left calling out into the silence.

[teapetal44]

All For One should have stayed on the sidelines as a character after Kamino. His evolvement in everything after that significantly weakens the story. Building up Tomura as his protégé, framing him as the next symbol of evil, and then pulling the rug under everyone’s feet, is the worst writing decision Hori has ever made. In concept, All For One failing at passing the torch to Tomura is good, because it directly  parallels All Might and his mentorship to Izuku. Unlike All For One, Toshinori was aware the younger generation needed to take up the mantle. All For One is a selfish and controlling person, it makes perfect sense for him to be unable to give up his power to someone else. But in execution it falls apart the moment All For One continues to force himself upon the narrative, continues to serve as the big bad. All For One’s inability to pass the torch and Tomura as a main antagonist can co-exist without weakening the themes of the story.  

Like, imagine how cool it would have been if All for One was destroyed by Tomura after he tried taking control over his body and mind. Tomura realizes his master is holding him back from achieving his full potential and his goal, the thing he literally lives and fights for. Triumph over his master would be Tomura’s final step to becoming the new symbol of evil and his self-liberation. Then, he would truly be free of everything holding him back. AFO, the puppeteer, the man always one step ahead of everyone else, would be conquered by the very same person he molded – he planted the seed, but at last, what grows is out of his control. In a sense, he would be punished by the story for failing at passing the torch and Tomura would be cemented as the final antagonist, and his journey would feel satisfying.

All though, I see why Horikoshi didn’t write it like that – cause that would require giving Tomura actual autonomy as a character. Something he actively avoids doing every chance he gets. It’s easier to have a character who is crafted to be evil by one powerful bad man before he was even born, than to portray an abused child failed by a fundamentally corrupt society that values consumerism over actually helping those in need, who ended up in the hands of the powerful bad man because the child slipped through the cracks of said society. MHA conveys to the viewer that there are no bad systems, only bad people within the established systems.

Tomura couldn’t own his conception, nor his heroic goals, not even his abuse. Nothing ever happened to him because of society as a whole or because life is cruel and merciless. It happened because Anime-Satan said so.

[receding-tides]

Did You Know making grandfest outfits for your ocs is fun. and everyone should do it

[jacksprostate]

Treatise on why No, the doctor just giving the narrator of Fight Club (full name) his requested sleep medication or sending him to therapy would not have Fixed Him

Firstly, saying giving him the insomnia meds would’ve fixed him ignores the reason he has insomnia in the first place. He is so deeply upset by his place in society that he literally cannot sleep. Drugging him to sleep would not change that. That, of course, is the easy, quick response.

But with regard to therapy? The biggest flaw is that it ignores a central tenet of the book. Part of what tortures the narrator and drives him to invent Tyler is that his feelings about this collective, systemic issue are constantly reduced to a Just Him thing. His seatmates ask what his company is. He’s the only one upset at the office. He gets weird looks if he says the truth of what he does. People will do anything in their power to pretend he is the issue, as an individual, because it is far scarier to consider the full implications of the systemic issues implied by what he is saying. Everyone treats it as if the issue is him, so he goes insane. He does anything to get someone to say, holy shit, that’s fucked up, what you’re a part of is wrong. In an attempt to feel any sort of vague sympathy and catharsis, he goes to support groups to pretend to be dying, because then at least people don’t habitually blame him for his anguish. 

Saying therapy would fix him ignores that his problems are not individual. They are collective. It’s the reason the entire story resonates with people! Something deeply, unignorably wrong with society, where people would rather blame you for bringing it up than try and address it, because it feels impossible. I don’t blame people for this, really, because it IS scary. It’s terrifying to sit and feel like you’ve realized there’s something deeply, deeply wrong, but if you say something, people will get mad at you since it’s so baked into everything around you. Or, even if they agree, it’s easier to deal with the dissonance by pretending it’s individual.

And it’s not like that’s not the purpose therapy and medications largely serve, anyway. Getting into dangerous territory for this website, but ultimately, the reason the narrator was seeking medication was because it’s a bandaid. A very numbing bandaid. For these very large, dissonance causing problems, therapy does very little. Medications do what they always have, and distract you with numbness or side effects. It’s a false solution. He is seeking an individualized false solution because he has been browbeaten with the idea that this is an issue with him alone, when it's plainly clear it's not. 

Don't get me wrong. Obviously he has something wrong with him. But it's a product of his situation. It is a fictional exaggeration of a very real occurrence of mental illness provoked by deep unconscionable dissonance and anguish.  There is a clear correlation between what happens and his mental state and his job and how isolated he is. 

The thing is, even if he were chemically numbed, I do think he would’ve lost it regardless. Many people on meds find they don’t fix things. For reasons I’ll get into, but in this case because even if numbed or distracted, once you’ve learned about deep, far reaching corruption in society, it’s very hard to forget. Especially if, in his case, you literally serve as the acting hand of this particular variety. He’s crawling up the walls. 

So why do people say this?  Well, it's funny I guess. Maybe the first time or whatever. But also, often, they believe it, to a degree. Maybe they've just been told how effective therapy and meds are for mental illness, they believe wholeheartedly in The Disease Model of Mental Illness, maybe they themselves have engaged with either and have considered it successful. Maybe they or someone they know has been 'saved' by such treatments. 

But in all honesty.... What therapy can help with is mentality, it's how you approach problems. For issues on a smaller scale, not meaning they are easier to deal with my any degree, but ones that are not raw and direct from deep awareness of corruption; these are things that can be worked through if you get lucky and get an actually good therapist who helps build up your resiliency. But when your issue is concrete, something large and inescapable? It's useless. At best it can help you develop coping mechanisms, but there is a limit for that. There is a point where that fails. To develop the ability to handle something like this requires intense development of a comfort with ambiguity and dissonance and being isolated and a firm positioning of your purpose and values and and belief in wonder and all the other shit I ramble about. The things that the narrator lacks, which lead him to taking an ineffectual death knell anarchist self-destruction path. Therapy, where the narrator is, full of the knowledge of braces melted to seats and all the people that have to allow this to happen? It fails. 

And meds — meds are a fucking scam. We know the working mechanism of basically none of them, the serotonin receptor model was made up and paid its way into prominence. We have very little evidence they're any better than placebo, and they come with genuinely horrific side effects. Maybe you got lucky. I did, on some meds. On others? I don't remember 2018. The pharmaceutical industry is also known for rampant medical ghostwriting, and for creating 'off-label' uses for drugs that have gained too many protests in their original use, then creating a cult of use to then have 'grassroots' campaigns for it to be made a label use (ie, legitimize their ghostwritten articles with guided anecdotes). 

The DSM itself is basically a marketing segregation plot. It's an attempt to legitimize the disease model by isolating subgroups of symptoms to propose individualized treatments for subgroups that are not necessarily all that separate. But if the groups exist, you can prescribe more and different medications, no? Not to mention, if you use the disease model, you can propose that these diseases are permanent, or permanent until treated, considered more and more severe to offset and justify the horrific side effects of the medications. Do you know why male birth control doesn't really exist? Same reason. They can justify all the horrible side effects for women, because the other option is pregnancy. For men, it's nothing. 

And they're not bothering to invent new drugs without side effects. When they invent new drugs it's just because the last one got too bad of a name, or they can enter a new market. Modern drugs don't work any better than gen1 drugs. They still have horrific side effects. At best, the industry will shit out studies saying the old one was flawed (truth) so they can say this new gen will be better (lie). They're doing it with ssris right now. 

Fundamentally, the single proposed benefit of any of these drugs is that they numb you. To whatever is torturing you. It's harder to be depressed if you can't feel it, or if you just can't muster the same outrage. Of course, there is people who find that numbness to be helpful, or worth it. But often, it's stasis. For the people who have problems that can be worked on, it serves as a stopgap to not actually work on said problems. The natural outcome of the disease model is stagnation for those whose need is to develop skills and resiliency. It keeps them medicalized and dependent on the idea that they're diseased and incapable. Profitable. Stuck in the womb. 

I’ve been there. It’s easier, to wallow, and resist growth because it’s difficult and painful and unfair and cruel and you can think of five billion reasons to justify your languishing. But don’t listen to anyone who tells you you’re just permanently damaged, no matter how nicely they word it, no identity or novel pathologization, no matter how many benefits they promise, especially if they swear up and down some lovely expensive medications with little solid backing and plentiful off-label usage and side effects that’ll kill you. Some days it feels like they want us all stuck in pods, agoraphobic and addicted to the ads they feed us to isolate the markets for the drugs they’ve trained us to beg them to pump us with. Polarization making it as easy as flashing blue light for go, red like for stop, or vice versa. I worry about the kids, for fucks sake. That’s a bit dark and intense, and I apologize. But I want you (generic) to understand, there is a profit motive. Behind everything. And they do not mean well. They do not care about your mental health or your rights or your personhood or your growth. They care about how they can profit off of you.

For those struggling with immovable, society problems, like the narrator grappling with how his job fits into and is accepted by society while his rejection and horror in the face of it does not, it can work about as well as any other drug addiction. Your mileage may vary. From what I've seen, recovering from being on prozac for a long time can be worse than alcohol. They put kids on this shit. They keep campaigning for more. Off label, again. A pharmaceutical company’s favorite thing to do has to be to spread rumors of someone who knows someone who said an off label use of this drug helps with this little understood condition. Or, in the case of mental illness, questionably defined condition. And like, damn, I know I'm posting on the 'medicalization is my identity' website so no one will like all this and has probably stopped reading by now, but yall should be exposed to at least one person who doubts this stuff. Doesn't just trust it. Because I mean, that's the thing right?

It's so big. What would it mean, for this all to be true? Yeah, everyone says pharmaceutical companies are evil and predatory and ghostwriting, but to think about what that really entails. Coming back to the book, everyone knows the car lobby is huge and puts dangerous vehicles through that kill people. What does it mean if the car companies all hire people to calculate the cost of a recall and the cost of lawsuits? No one wants to think about the scale that means for people allowing it or the systems that have to be geared towards money, not safety like they say. Hell, even Chuck misses the beat and has the narrator threaten his boss with the Department of Transportation. And shit, man, if every company is doing this, you think Transportation doesn't know? That they give a fuck? You're better off mailing all the evidence to the news outlets and hoping they only character assassinate you a little bit as they release the news in a way that says it's all the fault of little workers like you, not the whole system. Something something, David McBride, any whistleblower you feel like, etc. 

So I don't blame you, if your reaction is "but but but, that can't be right, people wouldn't do it, they wouldn't allow it" or just an overwhelming feeling of dread that pushes you to deny all of this and avoid thinking about it. Just know, that's in the book. That's all the seatmates on the flights. That's all his fellow officemates. It's easier to pretend, I know.

But think about, how the response fits in with the themes of the book. The story, as a movie too. What drives the narrator’s mental breakdown? How would you handle being in his position? How would you handle being his seatmate? It’s easy to say you’d listen. But have you? Have you had any soul wrenching betrayals of how you thought society worked? How about a betrayal by the thing that promised to be the fix of the first? Can you honestly say you wouldn’t follow that gut instinct, saying follow what everyone says, that person must just be crazy, evil, rude, cruel, whatever it is that means you can set what they said aside?

For a lot of people, they can do that, I guess. Set it aside. Reaching that aforementioned state of managing to cope with the dissonance and ambiguity and despair is very hard. The narrator made the Big Realization, but he couldn’t cope. He self-destructed. Even when people don’t make the big realization consciously, they’re already self-destructing. It’s hard to escape it when it feels easier than continuing anyway. When it feels like the only option,

Would therapy fix the narrator of Fight Club? Would meds fix the narrator of Fight Club? No. He knows too much. All meds will do, by the time he’s in the psych ward, is spiritually neuter him. A silly phrase, but really. Take the wind out of his sails. 

Is he fixed if he doesn’t try to blow up town? If he just shuts up and settles in and stops costing money? If he still can’t cope with the things he’s unearthed? Do you see how this is a commentary in a commentary in a commentary?

Fight Club is an absolutely fascinating story because of this. The fact that it addresses the fallout of knowing. The isolation. The hopelessness. The spiral that results from a lack of hope. This is, I think, what resonates most with people, even if not consciously. Going insane because you’ve discovered something you wish you could unknow. It’s a classic horror story. Should our society be lovecraftian evil? I don’t think so. 

Do I think changing it will be easy? No. Lord knows a lot exists to push people who make these sorts of Realizations towards feelings of individuality and individualized solutions and denial and other distractions and coping methods. And to prevent people who make One realization from expanding on it and considering further ramifications. Fight Club itself gets into this; the isolation of men being a strict part of the role society shapes for their sex leaves them very vulnerable to death fetishes, in a sense, and generally towards self destructive violence. It helps funnel them away from substantial change and towards ineffectual change. Many things, misogyny, racism, serve to keep people isolated from one another, individualized, angry, and impossible to work with. Market segregation; god knows even appealing on those fronts has become such a classic ploy that companies do it now, the US military frames its plundering that way, etc. 

I’ve wandered a bit but ultimately, my point is this: Fight Club is a love letter to the horrors of critical thinking, and the importance of not falling into the trap of self destruction and hopelessness in the face of it. The latter is why Tyler was an anarchoterrorist instead of anything useful. The latter is why it was a death cult. It’s important to work through the horrors of critical thinking so you can do it, and stand on the other side ready to believe in each other. It’s worth it.

[churrorat-art]

I have cried so much this week and have no hope for tomorrow, I am aching, piled by work and need sleep.

Huh. I guess I'm living life.

[jade-len]

luo binghe better than me fr i think i would've gone fucking apeshit if the person i loved with my entire soul pretty much said "fuck you" because of my race and pushed me down into literal hell for me to suffer for years

i've said it before and i'll say it again, i really don't think we give binghe enough credit. that man was on concerning levels of forgiving all the way from the start

[masochistikitty]

rough draft

[glauces-notebooks]

rewatching night at the museum for the first time in a while and wow. i missed this film.

[r7inyz]

Oscar Avila from the Hit (Not) Series Fazbear Frights

HE HAS A PLUSHTRAP 💥💥 (Which is definitely very normal)

i drew your design for him because it is very cool,,

[fudgecake-charlie]

Joe & Cleo life is strange AU!

Joe gets time control from a haunted polaroid camera, Cleo reunites with an old friend because of her near-death situations, a storm is brewing on the horizon, and none of the original game’s plot is real here :]

Close-ups and textless version under the cut!

Also rambles are in the tags if you wanna hear art and AU thoughts. send an ask if you want!

[phagodyke]

the masculine urge to take a saucepan off thr draining board and bash myself repeatedly over the head with it until I pass out and no longer have to experience feeling Bad 😍

[valtsv]

okay fine i'll read homestuck. whatever. i've cracked i can't take it anymore i need to fuck around and find out.

[sidebaxolotl]

Sometimes i think i should have just stayed in denial for the rest of my life. But then i hear about these horror stories of women in het marriages realizing they're gay and i could never lmao

[todayisafridaynight]

caller / receiver